Whoa, Maybe I Should Start a Heady New Brooklyn Music Blahg Brah

conduct breast cancer screenings every year on your friends

Or maybe not. But with the amount of time I have been wasting spending listening to music lately — both live and, er, dead? — I thought I would share a couple of recent thoughts and finds. In recent posts I have talked about rappers with interesting voices and the fact that listening to late-50s era Hawaiian records on cold gray rainy days could theoretically make you happier and more productive, but I caught a show last week (does that phrase sound like a euphemism for getting a venereal disease?) that revitalized my love of live music, especially "catching a show" that doesn't cost a ridiculous amount of money to see (or cure).

When I lived in Athens, GA, there was always so much music to be seen, and covers/tickets were always pretty cheap, otherwise I wouldn't have gone because I was a broke college student whose monthly budget — and how I spent my time — was usually broken down as follows:

~ 35-55% finding "things" with names like "Hawaiian Sativa", "Princess", "Grape-le", "Outdoor Indo"

~ 25-35% eating, trying to eat, driving somewhere to eat, grilling on the front patio, buying food

~ whatever % is left was for drinking, girls, drinking with girls, reading, drawing, listening to music and school (and school was always last)

But you could go out on a random Tuesday, plop down a $5 cover and see a great performance from a band you'd never heard of before (this link also shows the beautiful Georgia Theatre before it burned down). I even saw Kings of Leon (when they were good, around 2004, which was coincidentally when they could barely play their instruments other than make a bunch of noise and howl) and My Morning Jacket play at the 40 Watt Club, a small standing room only venue that only fits about 300 people. The MMJ show was a "costume required" show they called the Under The Sea Prom — everyone was required to wear prom or "under the sea" attire and they threatened to deny entrance unless you conformed to the dress code. They wore pastel tuxes and rubber Elvis hair, played songs like "Dancin' In The Moonlight" and "Johnny B. Goode" and even elected a King and Queen for the night: it was a three-hour dance party and the most fun I've ever had at a concert.

Pre-show dance party at my brother's apartment, listening to The Rolling Stones' Beggar's Banquet, the best pre-show album of all time:

At the show, random blond stickin' her finger in my nose, probably because I was groping her all night.

lookin' for love in all the wrong places

All that being said, (probably unnecessarily) I went and saw Morning Teleportation at Brooklyn Bowl last Friday for $5, and it reminded me just how great SOME of the music here in Brooklyn can be: Just like Athens, there is a ton of flotsam, basically the result of the ratio of available time slots at bars, lazy club bookers and underemployed twenty-somethings wanting to have a band and skateboard.

This was one of my favorite songs of the night, because I think it best represents the band's rootsy, picking guitar playing that doesn't come across as folksy, but instead modern and splashy.



The whole performance is up on the band's YouTube channel and is worth watching if only to look for the guy wearing the neon green suit; I think the "hit song" that you may have heard is Expanding Anyway.

An upcoming show that isn't crazy expensive and worth checking out if you're in New York is my friend Kurt's band, Country Mice, at The Knitting Factory on Friday. If you don't like the song "Ghost" (streaming from the link above), I probably won't like you. It's a damn-near perfect rock song, just like Kurt's mustache is damn-near perfect.

Also, my token African friend Jasper's band, North Highlands, is fresh out tha studio and is playing later this month at the Mercury Ballroom. Go see them immediately (later this month). I will be in Ohio filming a documentary about Lionhead Rabbits, but you should go and dance and twirl and go to Nice Guy Eddie's afterward to eat cheap hot wings, drink shitty beer and play Naked Photo Hunt and just have an all-around classy night out on New York's hip and trendy Lower East Side. (That is the grossest sentence I have ever written.) Here's their amazing video that features Jasper's amazing van.



Finally, for a band that I have no ties to but has come onto my radar (which sounds vaguely dirty porno sexual if you change the spelling a little) is a band with a relatively awful name, Apache Dropout, but with a lo-fi anthemic sound that I'm diggin' on right now. I want to listen to them while dancing with girls dressed all in black with bleach-blond hair, drinking whiskey and cheap beer from cans and making out while waiting in line for the single bathroom with a broken lock. You can download the first side of their LP at the link above: Listen to "Sam Phillips Rising" over and over and support your bad habits and theirs by buying the album.

Love the cover art, courtesy of Bull City Records:

Also, I think my rabbit's tail is getting too long? Does anyone have any information about this? How long is too long for a bunny tail?

Oh, three more things then I promise I'm done. One: You should save up your allowance and get cultured and smart by seeing my dear friend Cat on Broadway in War Horse, which officially opens today! It had a huge run in London and it is Steven Spielberg's next film, which is slated to come out in December. Congrats to Cat who is the hardest working woman in show-biz that I know, and here's to a long, multi-season run! While you're in that area of town gettin' some culture, don't be fooled by thinking you'll take a break from being smart if you follow this sign:

It is NOT a midtown location for the Insane Clown Posse but instead a bunch of artsy photographs, if you're into that kinda thing, so don't be fooled.

Two, I want to once again issue a formal apology to my friend Stephanie for missing my call to be in Abel Ferrera's new film and get yelled at by Willem Dafoe. That was a mistake I'll never live down and I'm sorry.

Three, I am now going to start editing/programming my friend Matt's great website, Staccato, featuring the best micro-fiction available on the webz. What began as a literary mag in Athens is being reborn once again in Brooklyn and soon in paper form! But for now, check out the website where we will be publishing submitted stories twice weekly. Submit! Read!

Final non-sequitur, this disturbs me: What is corn up to? And what is Korn up to?

 

"My Tweets Are Down" And Other Words of Wisdom

Boerum Hill might be the yuppiest neighborhood in Brooklyn, and it's where I'd probably live if I wanted to live in the West Village or SoHo but had read the gospel in Time Out NY that said Brooklyn is better. Or if I was richer/older/fatter/had a downtown marketing job/unlimited metro card/home office full of taxidermy pheasants/wore Oliver Peoples' horn-rims/wrote an antique watch blog/raised heirloom-breed chickens in the backyard.

windows to my soul

That being said, I am a self-loathing would-be yuppie with moths in my pockets and holes in my socks. But as I was eating at one of my favorite restaurants in the city, a whiskey bar, I heard an oddly rotund thirty-something ex-frat bro sitting next to us look at his smartphone and exclaim, "My Tweets are down." His was one of those statements in which very few words are able to convey very many ideas. It was a skillful use of language and I commend him for it, even though it was a brainless accident from a guy who probably misuses 'your' and 'you're.' It was like spoken micro fiction at its finest. Ernest Hemingway once wrote a piece of micro fiction in six words: "For sale: Baby shoes, never worn." If you think about those words you'll realize just how much emotion and meaning is hidden in a powerfully short, simple statement. You immediately recognize the situation, but its gravity lies in the unanswered questions it elicits.

That's how I felt when I heard, "My Tweets are down." In an instant, I knew so much about the speaker but there still remained unanswered questions that I could not ask. It's amazing to me that a person in a social situation — sitting with "friends" eating a late, leisurely Saturday lunch — would even have the chance to notice such a trivial thing as how many inane Tweets he'd posted. Do people really keep a close eye on that shit? Were his friends so boring that his Twitter account, where he was probably alerting the six people who follow him (3 of which were at the table) that he was "totez pounding pork nuggz and slamming bourbon this afternoon who's in? #longwknd #ballerbrobrunch" was more important than his surroundings? I would think the people you're with should be more of a priority than your Twitter account, but maybe I'm reading too much into this. All I know is that it made me want to leave.

(Wah! My life is so rough I have to listen to losers at the next table WAH! Wah! My hammock blew off my patio because the wind was blowing so hard now I have to go get it out of my neighbor's tree WAH! I got a piece of hair in my mouth today at the same time I ate a piece of gum someone gave me and I couldn't get it out of the gum so I just had to chew a free piece of hairy gum on the subway WAH! Someone gave me an unlimited metro card today but when I went to use it I found out it was expired WAH! (All true stories, BTW. Also, double parentheses? YouTube sensation in the making?) Anyway, I guess my life is okay if these are my problems and I always can choose to do something or go somewhere else. Wah.)

So I did leave. I had to get back home so I could feed Stephanie's chinchilla.

(Really, feed her chinchilla. She's out of town. That isn't a euphemism.)

So, @WallStLgnd99 @CharNo4, here are some words from actual smart people (and 1 crazy person):

I would go as far as I could and hit a wall, my own imagined limitations. And then I met a fellow who gave me his secret, and it was pretty simple. When you hit a wall, just kick it down. – Patti Smith, "Just Kids"

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play; his labor and his leisure; his mind and his body; his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing, and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself, he always appears to be doing both. – Francois Auguste Rene Chateaubriand

You don't necessarily have to write to be a poet. Some people work in gas stations and they're poets. I don't call myself a poet because I don't like the word. I'm a trapeze artist. – Bob Dylan

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "Press On" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race. – Calvin Coolidge (thanks C.A.)

I got a job at Gray Line Tours for one reason only: To meet and seduce women. It certainly isn't for the money. – Timothy "Speed" Levitch, "The Cruise"

All of these quotes hold special significance to me in rationalizing my actions in life. Words like these fortify my resolve that I'm on the right path even when I take a few detours.

Speaking of, here's a little Speed Levitch teaser... you should check out "The Cruise" if you haven't seen it. It's an hour and fifteen minutes of this guy talking:

Should I wrap up this yuppie-ass, whiny, non-nonsensical, wannabe highbrow-meets-lowbrow, Hemingway and Dylan-quoting, documentary-watching post with a picture of a designer rabbit? Probably. No, definitely.

"BUNNI MANE" dats how my baby do

P.S. this:

probably my favorite email in months