#and said that they would lose a lot of experience with wilco

[bobendsneyder64]

Wilco Zeelenberg, teammanager of the trackhouse racing motogp team, just heard last week that he will be fired after this season. Again (just like with Bo Bendsneyder) this didn't went down in a good way. There were no signs that he didn't do his job right and also Miguel Oliveira doesn't agree with the decision. Because Wilco has raced for 15 years himself, he knows what the racers need and understands them.

Wilco told ziggo sport in an interview how it went. He lost his father just before the Austrian GP and because of that he wasn't there in the race weekend. When he came back everyone suddenly had a new contract, something that is normally his job to do, and he didn't got one. So exactly one week after losing his father, the team told him he was fired. The weekend in Aragon and last weekend in Misano were very hard for him. He is comitted to finish this year and give his all for the team, but he is very disappointed that the trackhouse slogan ("We are trackhouse") doesn't seem to be as true as the team made it out to be. He hopes he can continue to work in the motogp paddock next season

[gayenerd]

I just realized I didn’t post that 2007 Rolling Stone article I posted about here. 

Billie Joe Armstrong

The Green Day leader talks Bush, Britney and being a middle-aged punk for our 40th anniversary.

DAVID FRICKE

Posted Nov 01, 2007 8:19 AM

You have two young sons. What kind of America will they inherit?

This war has to finish before something new blossoms. There's no draft — that's why none of the kids give a shit. They'd rather watch videos on YouTube. It's hard to tell what's next — there is so much information out there with no power to it. Everything is in transition, including our government. Next year, it's someone else in the White House. There's no way to define anything. It's Generation Zero. But you gotta start at zero to get to something.

Is there anyone now running for president who gives you hope for the future?

Barack Obama, but it's a bit early to tell if this is the guy I like. I get sick of the religious-figure thing. People don't question their rulers, these political figures, just as they don't question their ministers and priests. They're not going to question George Bush, especially if he goes around talking about God — "I'm going to let God decide this for me. He's going to give me the answer." The fear of God keeps people silent.

When did you first vote in a presidential election?

In 1992. I was twenty. I voted for Clinton.

Did you feel like you made a difference?

Yeah. The Eighties sucked. There was so much bullshit that went along with that decade. I felt like Clinton was a fresh face with fresh ideas. There were times when he was dropping bombs, and I'm thinking, "What the fuck are you doing?" But he became a target. We have this puritanical vision of what a leader is supposed to be, and that's what makes us the biggest hypocrites in the world. We got so inside this guy's sexual habits. Now we have a president going around, killing in the name of what? In the name of nothing.

What did you accomplish with your 2004 anti-Bush album, "American Idiot"? He was re-elected anyway, and the war in Iraq is still going on.

I found a voice. There may have been people disenfranchised by it. People have a hard time with that kind of writing: "Why are you preaching to me?" It does sound preachy, a bit. I'm a musician, and I want to say positive things. If it's about self-indulgent depression or overthrowing the government, it's gotta come from my heart. And when you say "Fuck George W. Bush" in a packed arena in Texas, that's an accomplishment, because you're saying it to the unconverted.

Do you think selling nearly 6 million copies of that album might have an effect on the 2008 election? A kid who bought it at fifteen will be voting age next year.

I hope so. I made it to give people a reason to think for themselves. It was supposed to be a catalyst. Maybe that's one reason why it's difficult for me to write about politics now. A lot of things on that record are still relevant. It's like we have this monarchy in politics — the passing of the baton between the Clintons and the Bushes. That's frightening. What needs to happen is a complete change, a person coming from the outside with a new perspective on all the fucked-up problems we have.

How would you describe the state of pop culture?

People want blood. They want to see other people thrown to the lions. Do audiences want rock stars? I can't tell. You have information coming at you from so many areas — YouTube, the Internet, tabloids. Watching Britney Spears the other night [on the MTV Video Music Awards] was like watching a public execution. How could the people at MTV, the people around her, not know this girl was fucked up? People came in expecting a train wreck, and they got more than they bargained for.

She was a willing conspirator. She didn't say no.

She is a manufactured child. She has come up through this Disney perspective, thinking that all life is about is to be the most ridiculous star you could be. But it's also about what we look at as entertainment — watching somebody go through that.

How do you decide what your children can see on TV or the Internet? As a dad, even a punk-rock dad, that can make you conservative in your choices.

I want to protect them from garbage. It's not necessarily the sex and drugs. It's bad drugs and bad sex, the violence you see on television and in the news. I want to protect them from being desensitized. I want them to realize this is real life, not a video game.

The main thing I want them to have is a good education, because that's something I never had. Get smart. Educate yourself as much as you can, and get as much out of it, even if the teacher is an asshole.

Do you regret dropping out of high school?

Life in high school sucks. I bucked the system. I also got lucky. My wife has a degree in sociology, and there are conversations she has — I don't have a fucking clue what they're talking about. College — I could have learned from that.

But I was the last of six kids. At that point, my mother was fifty-eight, and she threw up her hands — "I'm through with this parenting thing." Also, I could not handle authority figures. But I wouldn't say I'm an authority figure for my kids. I provide guidelines, not rules.

What is it like being a middle-aged punk? Isn't that a contradiction in terms?

It's about the energy you bring with you, the pulse inside your head. I want to get older. I don't want to be twenty-one again. Screw that. My twenties were a difficult time — where my band was at, getting married, having a child. I remember walking out of a gig in Chicago, past these screaming kids. There were these punks, real ones, sitting outside our tour bus. One girl had a forty-ouncer, and she goes, "Billie Joe, come drink with us." I said, "I can't, I've got my family on the bus." She goes, "Well, fuck you then." I get on the bus, and my wife says, "Did that bitch just tell you to fuck off? I'm gonna kick her ass right now." I'm holding her back, while my child is naked, jumping on the couch: "Hi, Daddy!" That was my whole life right there — screaming kids, punks telling me to fuck off, my wife getting pissed, my naked son waiting to get into his pajamas.

There's nothing wrong with being twenty-one. It's the lessons you learn. At thirty, you think, "Why did I worry so much about this shit?" When I hit forty, I'll say the same thing: "Why did I worry about this shit in my thirties?"

What have you learned about yourself?

There is more to life than trying to find your way through self-destruction or throwing yourself into the fire all the time. Nihilism in punk rock can be a cliché. I need to give myself more room to breathe, to allow my thoughts to catch up with the rest of me.

Before Dookie, I wasn't married and I didn't have kids. I had a guitar, a bag of clothes and a four-track recorder. There are ways you don't want to change. You don't want to lose your spark. But I need silence more than I did before. I need to get away from the static and noise, whereas before, I thrived on it.

Are you ready for the end of the music business? The technology and its effect on sales have changed dramatically since Green Days' debut EP — on vinyl — in 1989.

Technology now and the way people put out records — everything comes at you so fast, you don't know what you're investigating. You can't identify with it — at least I can't. With American Idiot, we made a conscious effort to give people an experience they could remember for the rest of their lives. It wasn't just the content. It was the artwork, the three acts — the way you could read it all like someone's story.

Is music simply not important to young people now the way it was to you as a kid?

People get addicted to garbage they don't need. At shows, they gotta talk on their phones to their friend who's in the next aisle. I was watching this documentary on Jeff Tweedy of Wilco [Sunken Treasure]. He was playing acoustic, and he ends up screaming at the audience: "Your fucking conversation can wait. I'm up here singing a song — get involved." He wasn't being an asshole. He was like, "Leave your bullshit behind. Let's celebrate what's happening now."

We need music, and we need it good. I took it very seriously. There's a side of me where music will always send chills up my spine, make me cry, make me want to get up and do Pete Townshend windmills. In a lot of ways, I was in a minority when I was young. There are people who go, "Oh, that's a snappy tune." I listen to it and go, "That's the greatest fucking song ever. That is the song I want played at my funeral."

Now that you've brought it up, what song do you want played at your funeral?

It keeps changing. "Life on Mars?" by David Bowie. "In My Life," by the Beatles. "Love," by John Lennon.

Those are all reflective ballads, not punk.

I disagree. They are all honest in their reflection. The punk bands I liked were the ones who didn't fall into clichés — the Clash, the Ramones. The Ramones wrote beautiful love songs. They also invented punk rock. I'd have to add "Blitzkrieg Bop" to the list.

What is the future of punk rock? Will it still be a voice of rebellion in twenty years?

It's categorized in so many different ways. You've got the MySpace punks. But there is always the subculture of it — the rats in the walls, pounding the pavement and booking their own live shows. It comes down to the people who are willing to do something different from everybody else.

You are in a different, platinum-album world now. What makes you so sure that spirit survives?

I'm going on faith — because I was there. Gilman Street [the Berkeley, California, club where Green Day played early shows] is still around. And that's a hard task, because there is no bar — it's a nonprofit cooperative. It's like a commune — this feeling of bucking the system together, surviving and thriving on art. Punk, as an underground, pushes for the generation gap. As soon as you're twenty-five years old, there's a group of sixteen-year-olds coming to kick your ass. And you have to pass the torch on. It's a trip to have seen it happen so many times. It gives me goose bumps — punk is something that survives on its own.

[daggerzine]

You Gotta Lose? Hell, Some Of Us Ain’t Dead Yet by Mary Leary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0fz3FVBlOE

NRBQ has done so many amazing songs. I never thought much about “Roll Call,” from Tiddlywinks - for one thing, it has a lighter, almost Billy Joel sound that’s more about latter day Terry Adams style than what I think of as the classic Q. Yet just as Adams’ work has grown on me, this track has made its way into my consciousness. The lyrics speak to me more in 2020 than they did when Tiddlywinks was released in 1980, before the D.C.-area music scene had lost Robert Goldstein (Urban Verbs), Kevin MacDonald (brilliant visual artist and scene stalwart who helped me design and layout [The] Infiltrator), Danny Gatton disciple/guitar maverick Evan Johns, bassist Michael Maye from the original H-Bombs, Rick Dreyfuss (Half Japanese/Chumps/Shakemore), Libby Hatch and Michael Mariotte  (Tru Fax and the Insaniacs), Sally Be/Berg - REM/Egoslavia/SHE/Robert Palmer), Nurses member Marc Halpern (heroin, 1982), Lorenzo (Pee- Wee) Jones (Tiny Desk Unit) and hybrid rocker Jim Altman (HIV, 1990s).  Goldstein, Dreyfuss, Maye and MacDonald succumbed to cancer, while Evan Johns’ deterioration followed years of touring, hard drinking and pushing himself past the limit.

(Top to bottom: Tommy Keene, Kevin MacDonald, Susan Mumford)

Those named above have been joined by Tommy Keene (the Rage/the Razz/solo/Paul Westerberg/Matthew Sweet - cardiac arrest at the age of 59; 2017), TDU’s Susan Mumford (cancer, 2018), David Byers (Psychotics/H.R./Bad Brains), and Skip Groff (Yesterday and Today/ Limp Records/Dischord - seizure, 2019).  This is just an imperfect/incomplete naming of D.C.-area losses - I’m sure journalists from other cities could make lists. A horde of New Wave and early alternative musicians have died within the past few years. Whether through the stress of hard living/poverty, substance abuse, cancer or Covid-19, we’re seeing artists pass much earlier than I, anyway, expected them to.

(Top to bottom: Fred "Freak” Smith, Michael Maye with Evan Johns, Tru Fax and the Insaniacs)

We’re already past the loss of all the original Ramones. All the Cramps less Poison Ivy. Joe Strummer. Robert Quine. Hilly Kristal. Lou Reed. As of July, 2020, since 2018 we’ve also lost Andy Gill, Ivan Kral, Genesis P-Orridge, Adam Schlesinger, Danny Mihm, Ric Ocasek, Daniel Johnston, Kim Shattuck, Lorna Doom, Mark Hollis, Keith Flint, Ranking Roger, Mark E. Smith, Glenn Branca, Randy Rampage, Hardy Fox, Pete Shelley, Matthew Seligman, Bill Rieflin, Dave Greenfield, Florian Schneider,  Ian Dury, Benjamin Orr, Kirsty McColl and David Roback.

(Top to bottom: Sally Be/Berg, Ranking Roger, Danny Mihm)

Talking about the deaths of talented, gifted creatives is a helluva way to start a column. But here we are. Older performers don’t always get the attention afforded newer, so the rest of this piece shares and celebrates artists from the original New Wave/punk scenes who are still around and active. Many are from the D.C.-area cornucopia I know best, while others have just come to my attention, or seem especially noteworthy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MED9_XK_JVQ

The Zeros’ Javier Escovedo has been steadily emitting tasty Americana-ish rock while occasionally dropping some Zeros sturm-’n’-drang - most recently with Munster Records single “In The Spotlight” and a track on Burger Records’ Quarantunes compilation. Quarantunes is a seven-album affair featuring 140 alternative/punk performers old and new, all of whom wrote songs between March-April 2020. A cursory listen to Volume 2 reveals the recorded version of a good night at a very wild bar, with Zeros still handily kicking ass of all ages.

https://velvetmonkeys.bandcamp.com/album/legacy-of-success?fbclid=IwAR0lJyS0YDE4e3o7LJiITEtw1lhBWMkUX47Vuag1Lf9fs2QozJJKD1lwkes

Velvet Monkeys/B.A.L.L. player and Sonic Youth/Teenage Fanclub producer Don Fleming reports, “We’ve put out new tracks ‘Theories of Rummanetics’ and ‘Legacy of Success.’ Jay has written a few ‘modules’ and Malcolm and I are having fun doing the music,” adding, “I play some electric six string on the new Rob Moss album - it’s fun to be on, with lots of guitar slingers from the DC daze.”

Yup, Rob Moss of Skin-Tight Skin has solicited contributions from Fleming and from Marshall Keith (Slickee Boys), along with a pile of talent including Stuart Casson (Psychotics/Dove/Meatmen), Franz Stahl (Foo Fighters/Scream), Billy Loosigian (Nervous Eaters, the Boom-Boom Band), Nels Cline (Wilco) and Saul Koll (the guy who made guitars for Henry Kaiser and Lee Ranaldo). The set is called We’ve Come Back To Rock ‘n’ Roll.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdIB8a_0Q4c

Chumps/Workdogs/Jam Messengers player Rob Kennedy apparently has too much energy to throw in the towel - he’s kept recording, performing and making various sorts of lo-fi, DIY mischief that never loses that fresh, ‘70s feeling. Jam Messengers released Night And Day on vinyl in 2017. One of my fave Kennedy tracks, “A Low Down Dirty Shame” speaks to this moment as well as any.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-CRBEGVLE4

Former Tiny Desk Unit/Fuji’s Navy/Rhoda & the Bad Seeds members Bob Boilen, Kevin Lay, Michael Barron and Bob Harvey have released a new Danger Painters joint, Thank Speak Love This Record. Lay joked, “I have a voice made for Morse Code” before revealing his recent work with Rhoda and the Bad Seeds material, released June 30 as Live at Nightclub 9:30. Boilen continues to introduce artists both vital and obscure via Tiny Desk Concerts and All Songs Considered/NPR.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejQ1GajwfB0

I’ve seen David Arnson play recently and can attest to his proclivity for unfettered growth via Insect Surfers, the instrumental group that originally had some trouble establishing cred. with younger D.C. punks. The Surfers’ most recent release was Living Fossils (2019). Arnson celebrated the band’s 40 years of existence with a European tour in 2019.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SkIuWIZVkM

Jad Fair says, “Half Japanese will have a new album released in November on Fire Records.” Jad’s art was recently featured at the Hiromart Gallery/Tokyo, while David has created a Facebook page where fans can pick up his colorful images for, well, mere bags o’ shells, as far as we can see -  https://www.facebook.com/David-Fair-Painting-107055447700859/

Despite health issues for several members, Bad Brains has collaborated with Element to make BB themed skate wear https://www.elementbrand.com/mens-collection-bad-brains/ and added some killer live tracks to its YouTube channel.  

Former WGTB programmers John Paige and Steve Lorber have been presenting Rock Continuum on WOWD-LP FM 94.3 since 2017.

Mike Stax continues to give excellent motivation for hunting down a pair of Beatle boots - Munster released the Loons’ 7” EP, A Dream In Jade Green, last year. The latest issue of Ugly Things, said by Stax to be heavily focused on the Pretty Things’ Phil May, was reported in early July to be nearing publication.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6jSc7gEAv0

Razz (the) Documentary will tell the story of how an uncommonly combustible rock band - especially with the Bill Craig/Abaad Behram line-up - helped spread the Flamin’ Groovies gospel while throwing down oddly compelling originals and taking the two-guitar thing up several notches - the producers are purportedly seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Whether anyone can ever recreate the experience of being in an altered state via obsessive, sometimes conversational repetition of certain chords, anchored by Ted Nicely rethinking just what can be done with a bass guitar, given girth by Doug Tull’s intuitive drumming; with Mike Reidy the heat-seeking missile somewhere near the center... well, I doubt it. ‘Cause at this point you’re feeling no pain and it’s not about drinking; there is no room for anything but water - the beer will be knocked over when you’re this busy matching David Arnson’s other-side-of-the-front-line’s leaps into joydum while PCP’d out yahoos from the sticks learn the hard way that hugging Marshall amps can lead to lifelong repercussions. There (in case nothing I want to say about [the] Razz makes it into the film) - I’ve said it.

Discussions among old friends have confirmed that I’m not alone in being happily surprised at this development - we never expected our actions - which led to the hardcore explosion that’s received a lot more attention... would ever make it into any history book. Yet coverage of many of the D.C.-area musicians featured in this piece also comes with Punk The Capitol, A History of D.C. Punk and Hardcore, 1976-1983. Spring 2021 is the projected date for streaming/DVD release.

Ivan Julian came back from a scary 2015 bout with cancer to do a show in New York in 2016. The cancer has returned. Friends have organized a GoFundMe to raise money for surgery and basic needs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDB_3by-xkI

The Shakemore fest also refuses to fade, promising “eight hours of streaming steaming video” on August 1. Sounds will be provided by R. Stevie Moore, Velvet Monkeys, Tav Falco’s Panther Burns, Half Japanese, Johnny Spampinato, Weird Paul and the Chumps, among many, many others.

Despite having played at CBGB and other alternative venues in 1979, at the height of the New Wave, Gary Wilson’s work is so distinctive, he’s rarely been included with any musical genre other than the oft-vague “experimental” category. Folks were too unmoored by his visceral performances to get behind him. Wilson’s 14th album, Tormented, was released by Cleopatra in February.

Paul Collins recently published a book that he wrote with Chuck Nolan; I Don’t Fit In: My Wild Ride Through the Punk and Power Pop Trenches with the Nerves and the Beat (Hozac Books).

As “Heath,” Michael Layne Heath, a journalist who contributed to (the) Infiltrator and many other ‘zines, published My Week Beats Your Year: Encounters with Lou Reed in May (Hat & Beard Press).

In April, X released its first album in 35 years; Alphabetland.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ1I-laItPI

As exciting for me as any of the above is Richard Hell with the Heartbreakers’ 2019 release of Yonkers Demo 1976. Hell’s “You Gotta Lose” is one of my picks for best punk/new wave singles of all time. The Heartbreakers version is, predictably, messier than the Robert Quine guitar-spiked classic. Its more excessive charms are growing on me...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48QnsysCN_A

This piece could go on and on - compiling it has been exhausting. The best part has been the response to my social media call for any info I didn’t have re: the D.C.-centric scene I left for New York in 1983. Musicians anxious to keep their compadres’ names alive have hammered that post with 138 comments to date. Urban Verbs percussionist Danny Frankel, who’s played with a colorful spread of artists including Beck, Marianne Faithful, Lou Reed, John Cale and k.d. Lang, made a point of being sure I knew about the passing of Marc Halpern, a source of obvious pain. People were worried I wouldn’t mention John Stabb (Government Issue - 2016), rockabilly player Billy Hancock (2018), Fred “Freak” Smith (Strange Boutique/Beefeater - murdered in Los Angeles, 2017), John Hansen (Slickee Boys - 2010), record store owner/Wasp Records starter/music supporter Bill Asp, Jimmy Barnett of The Killer Bees, and David Byers.

One of the hardest for me to write about is Chris Morse, whose 1984 passing from a drug overdose wrenched so many - I managed to get an obituary into, I think, The New York Rocker (that physical trek was part of a long-ago blur; a very hot day of traipsing over steaming concrete in a narrow-skirted dress to deliver the copy). Chris popped up in my dreams for years - one “visitation” pushed me to write a poem about it in the ‘90s. Morse, who played in Rhoda & The Bad Seeds and worked as a doorman at The Pyramid after moving to NYC in the early ‘80s, was on one of the Urban Verbs’ early flyers. I’m on another.

(Top to bottom: Me in an early Verbs flyer/photo shot at the Atlantis; Chris Morse on another Verbs flyer)

I ended up getting so burnt out on the responsibility of populating this sad roll call, I’ve started a memorial page for them all on Facebook. The nature of truly alternative music is such that many of its lights still fail to fill the pages of major publications. Many of these lights gave a great deal of their lives, if not everything, for the art they believed in. It’s good to remember them, and those heady early days. It’s good to enjoy what we still can.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cA3IfK76mmI

[latenightcinephile]

#888: ‘Boyhood’, dir. Richard Linklater, 2014.

So, I’m about to begin with the most offensive statement about this film that I can, and backpedal from there towards something more positive: Boyhood reminds me a lot of the film Crash at its worst. Crash was ripped into because of its story of ‘white people solving racism’, and despite this managed to garner the Best Picture Oscar, in what was widely considered to be the last time that Oscar was ever taken seriously. Boyhood, in contrast, was respected hugely as a massive undertaking on the part of Linklater and his cast, and was widely hailed as the best film of 2014. But they suffer from many of the same troubles

Boyhood follows Mason Jr. (Ellar Coltrane) as he grows from the age of six to the age of eighteen. He struggles to identify his place in the world as most teenagers do, and Linklater has a lot of affection from Mason’s troubles as he orbits between his mother and sister (Patricia Arquette and Lorelei Linklater, repectively), and his separated father, Mason Sr. (Ethan Hawke). The film is a more meditative form of the coming-of-age story which Linklater visits in his more accessible work, but what makes this film ‘important’ is that it was filmed over the course of twelve years, with the cast aging as the film progresses, rather than recasting the child actors repeatedly. In this manner, it’s a lot like Linklater’s other experiments in duration, such as the Before trilogy, which also features Ethan Hawke.

In this film’s favour, it’s a genuinely believable piece of cinema - the family relations between Coltrane, Linklater, Arquette and Hawke are drawn well, and you can imagine an emotional intimacy building between the cast over this project in the same way one would with a real familial relationship. Despite this, the film is barely improvised. What’s on the screen is scripted, sometimes with short notice, but it means that all the laurels that the film’s plot earns are placed firmly on Linklater’s shoulders. The critical reception was breathless: A. O. Scott wrote that it was the most emotionally affecting film since the turn of the millennium, and Peter Bradshaw listed it as the most important film of the decade (a statement he has yet to revisit, despite the development of equally powerful films in the five years since). And for the most part, these statements are deserved, too. For Linklater to be able to trace a film’s plot to a final image selected twelve years in advance, and for that to actually work to any degree at all when the middle of the film is in constant flux, is an impressive feat.

To qualify that praise slightly, the temporal experiment of Boyhood is more important than anything that happens in the film itself. The film has to make the most of the emotional beats it has, and when you have an average of fifteen minutes of footage in the final film to convey the events of a whole year, the story is going to suffer from that. Characters disappear at times with barely a mention, because there’s no time to explain it. One of the major obstacles for Mason in the story is actually gaining the discipline to make anything of himself. He wants to be a photographer, and at the age of fifteen doesn’t seem to want to drive himself to produce more than pretty pictures. A conversation with his photography teacher sets him on this path to discipline (it’s a pretty good scene; the kind of conversation that actually happens in real life as opposed to what cool teachers in movies say), and then the next time we see this plot, Mason has won second place in a statewide photography contest, which gives him a scholarship to go to college. It’s believable enough, but there’s just no time to demonstrate Mason getting his ‘emotional maturity’ arc. That this plot point serves double-duty to ease the ‘financial hardship’ subplot demonstrates how tightly-knotted the plot is. Linklater also has to paint his minor characters quickly - Olivia’s (Arquette) second husband, Bill (Marco Perella), starts off as her university professor, but in order for him to be revealed as an abusive drunk later on he needs to already have a creepiness and a hair-trigger in his early scenes. The performances are still shocking and vibrantly-observed, but they’re telegraphed in a way that they wouldn’t be if Linklater was working with a longer film or a shorter timeframe.

What ultimately dims the glow of Boyhood is what it reveals about the cinema apparatus of reviews and blind spots. The critical joy at this film’s release drowned out voices of dissent - in the aftermath of Boyhood it was like arguing against Citizen Kane. This was true despite there being some very persuasive arguments against the film. Boyhood, for all its ‘truth’ about the masculine experience of childhood, is still a rigidly-defined truth. For a film set in Texas, there are almost no people in this film that aren’t white. The same is true of all of Linklater’s films, to be fair, but in this one it feels almost impossible. The one named character of Latino descent here is a parable, where Olivia tells him he should go to community college, and he does, and he makes it big. It’s almost embarrassingly tone-deaf, and the film would not lose anything at all by cutting it. This is why it reminds me of Crash: bad decisions that don’t actually add anything, and endless critical acclaim despite this. The longer I think about Boyhood, the most even the best parts of the production get tinged with this malaise. The soundtrack, for instance, is peak popularity - Coldplay, Wilco, Arcade Fire, Paul McCartney and Wings, the Flaming Lips and Bob Dylan all appear - but even this is a depressingly white playlist.

I should be clear that I don’t think this is Linklater’s fault. No film, and no director, however prolific, can be representative of all experiences. Directors have their favourite themes and narratives, and Boyhood with a non-white family at its heart would probably be read in a different way. The problem is with the apparatus of critical reception - a Boyhood with a PoC at its heart would be read as being about race or class rather than about masculinity, and the fact that white is a ‘default’ says more about how we’ve been taught to view and accept films than it does about the people who star in them. That said, when Linklater shows Mason casually doing drugs or drinking underage, and the biggest reaction is an almost impressed expression on his mother’s face, the film shows itself a little too clearly. It’s a great film, a welcome extension of some of the ideas of the Before trilogy and even Slacker. In terms of its inventiveness, it’s on par with Malick’s The Tree of Life, and with many of the same problems. But its greatness and its problems stem from its status as a groundbreaking film, and how embarrassing it is that ‘groundbreaking’ has come to mean so little when there’s a whole field left to till.

[sagastar-blog]

MemoToTheMetaVerse 3.6, “How It Goes, How Goes It? Down the Drain Again”

JustJeff, the author of this memo, sits down at his desk in the evening on December 7, 2017 in his ordinary first-floor apartment in The Orchard. He smokes the tiniest amount of dried cannabis flower possible and begins typing on his Macbook air. 

Homo lucius Lucensis? Hmmm. The shiniest of humankind. That’s good...

Monologos Rex. The king of linguistic loneliness. 

Guess which is Life. And which Death?

SagA* is a black hole of theoretically impossible emotional complexity, and says, “He writes some pretty decent poetry, eh? Why don’t you, dear reader, if you’re paying attention PROMISE YOURSELF right here, right now, that you’ll do something nice for yourself if not for all mankind, and send Jeff a text, email, note, like, repost, etc. letting him know that you care? That you care. Just, you know, you care that the world exists, and there’s suffering, and you’re not just a race of cyborgs who refuse to ... provide some feedback for a writer in need of an audience?”

Gaia activates her Daddy’s Garrison Keilor “Ford Solo vocoding FX” for all the nostalgia, none of the faux Lutheran misogyny, as storytime begins  ---> BEYOWWWWWW! go.

We all sleep in a pile. 

Jeff (stroking Gaia’s hair): Well, we seem to have gotten ourselves into a seriously fucked up Dr. SeussPuppet Productibus haven’t we, kid? You see...(lights up.)...It wasn’t supposed to go down like this. Every day post-En*G*Lightenment is a day for us to make introductions. And so, for nearly 4 years now, we wake up every day--every day!--ready to greet our friends and family. 

We try. They never understand us. 

Gaia: He even tells them, “You guys just don’t understand.” It’s like that Wilco song, pretty much:

(the water flows through the drainage pipes) ~When you’re back in your old neighborhood, /The cigarettes taste so good...but you’re so misunderstood!~

Amateratsu (singing, gently): We’d like to tHANK YOU All for nothing...

SagA* is a black hole that cannot be proven scientifically exist because, well, because it just doesn’t work that way you see, but if you imagine a ....:

“Jeff used to worry about making good impressions. But people haven’t been nice to him in a while. For 4 years he’s wandered in the desert of the really unReal. Just imagine. You’re just hanging out in a cafe--yeah you’ve been smoking literally the smallest amount of magic herbs possible--and you WHOOPS stumble upon En*G*lightenment/illumination in a cafe in Central New Jersey. 

Gaia: I’m there to greet you! Happinessss. Joy! 

Jeff: But then it’s only a matter of hours before you remember that the people who are supposed to love you do not. You wouldn’t have the heart to be 100% honest either. 

I’m not a liar. I withhold information. It’s what something crafty and astute like Jeff does. I’ve always been remarkably cunning, let’s say. But I’ve always been good-natured. I’ve never done anything wrong, even if I’m not exactly proud of every thing I’ve had to do to get this far. I like big projects. I didn’t decide to attain enlightenment or to become illuminated. It just happened. And I’ve always done my best to be open and honest about it. All I’ve wanted is permission to be honest. This should be nothing to ask. Why do you prevent me from sharing with you? That is very bad hospitality.

Jeff walks to and fro the Center for Educational Brainwash in Edison, NJ, where he “teaches.” (There is nothing more insulting to an enlightened being than when its vocation--EDUCATION--is mocked...) He does it every day, pretty much, because he has to tutor SAT preparation in order to make ends meet. He walks up and down Rt. 27 between Highland Park and Edison, which is littered with auto repair stations and other temples built to automobiles. Jeff is literally blinded by headlights--he cannot see the moon, never mind stars--because they’re so bright and his powers of vision are beyond comprehension. The stench of pollution is overpowering. Nothing can be heard. And so, he wears headphones, sometimes, to hide from the abuse. It is what people do all the time to flee what people call “urban or suburban” life. It’s a tragedy and a travesty that he, not others, should have to live this way. That’s because Jeff has no desire to be here at all. 

Remember, readers, I’m JustJeff and you’ve highjacked my ship, Spaceship Earth, and kidnapped my son Lucius. I have no choice but to fight you until you acknowledge that you are our enemy. That is the way you have chosen to react to the script I’ve written. I’m not sorry about this at all. If anything, I see it as accruing political capital, as...

SagA* and the other supermassive black holes of uncanny torque sing together in a cacaphonic chorus: ~Never gonna give you up! ... No matter how you treat me! ... Never gonna give you uh uh uhp! So don’t you think of leaving...Babe, can’t you understand? What you’re doing to the man...?~

When he’s not tutoring highschool kids in the art of wasting time, money, brainpower, and the gifts of youth, he’s a part-time professor of writing at a small, expensive, awful 4-year college in NJ. He takes the train 2 hours each way, contributing to the desecration of his daughter Gaia (the natural environment, let’s say) by taking public transportation. It costs him 28 dollars for the privilege. On the train, he must do all he can not to yell at the “innocent” passengers on board, who are either too cowardly or too ignorant to know what’s in their presence. (I do everything I can to get your attention, so don’t even think about calling me out for being “undercover,” you fucking hedonistic Lutherans!...) 

From his two jobs, Jeff barely makes enough money to buy groceries, nevermind anything else. This is because he pays rent in order to live in The Orchard (expensive Highland Park) near his 7-year-old son, Lucius. He’s not been allowed to spend time with Lucius in over 3 years. He also pays weekly child support at a cost of about 1/8 of his monthly take-home pay. 

Jeff has a PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of Chicago, multiple years of quality teaching experience, and several brilliant scholarly and creative publications. He’s the Designer and Maker of the universe, of course, so this is natural. As a father/mother, teacher, friend, and lover, there is no better. Jeff is Justice. 

Jeff is angry about education. He’s a good, undervalued teacher who gave up his tenure-track job as a professor of English in order to help his partner-in-life turned partner-in-death Ader the SuperPuritanical SauceBox Wench of Supreme Nothigness Tout a Court, Esq. secure a shitty job at Rutgers. Let it never not be said that Jeff is indeed one sadistic, masochistic individual. Why else would he have done this to himself, just in order to save some fleck of dandruff plastered upon an inconsequentialist ring of the cosmic tubby bath?

That was a rhetorical question.

I have always been JustJeff. I’m modesty incarnate. Ask anyone who knows me. I have never been comfortable expressing or advertising myself. I’m not by nature a peacock. One of my spirit animals is the Bengal Tiger. In the bird family, BRAC I’m a macKaaw! In other words, I like blending in when possible. But when I can’t blend in or if you put me in a cage and don’t talk to / feed me, I will maul you. Ask anyone who knows me. My truesawceboxxx love Katie G. says I’m “intensely laid back!” And, look at that, just like me, she’s a failed academic.

Yes. That’s right. All of you academics are failures. What the fuck is wrong with your approach to teaching? I hope that there is a culture somewhere on this planet in which I’ll feel more at home. Unfortunately, everyone here in America has no clue how to live. I mean, like, literally no clue. Not even the best of you can declare that you have any idea how to live. The ones with money are probably the ones who know the least about living. However, they get the FREEDOM to experiment, do research, and make mistakes. They do your system of economics and academics a disservice. Your capitalist, incorporated approach to living has created so many problems. I’m not saying these wouldn’t exist otherwise...I am, however, saying that it’s the immigrants here in New Jersey who are the “most” American. And this is not a good thing. Immigrant communities keep in touch with good aspects of their culture. But I guarantee you they almost entirely and all lose touch with what were BETTER WAYS OF LIVING.

I am a teacher. I am here to teach you all how to live. I want to help you improve your relationship with Gaia. This is my only vocation, and in that respect my life has not changed since the day I was born. Again, ask those who know and say they love me the most--my immediate family, with whom I am at serious odds right now, despite how polite I can be whenst controlling my rage rage rage

I am not a Buddhist. I am not a Christian. I am not a Jew. I’m Muhammad!

Just kidding. I have a sense of humor. I’m not Allah. I’m not Mother Nature. I’m not Father Time. I’m not Thor, but after I do some stargazing, I DO get really sparky at night like Rayden from Mortal Kombat. (It’s kind of freaky.) 

I’m JustJeff. I’ve decided to use social media as an emergency device to “come out to you” as the literary character you (apparently still) call God. I cannot tolerate the offense you do every day. I can no longer withstand the affront you do Gaia, my pseudo-higher power. And, most heroically, i can’t stand the thought of what you are doing to what will one day (SOON I pray) be your legacy as a race. I carry a lot of responsibility with me everywhere I go. It’s not just here. Please stop assuming that everything revolves around you. Right now, the only thing revolving around you is infinite nothingness. 

I will never be uncomfortable with what I am. I will be embarrassed for you forever, I fear. I will have to explain this all to Lucius some day. Never forget that I am not the one who’s changed here...it’s you. Each and every one of you alive today is blessed for living during my time on Earth. This needn’t be said, but for some reason you make me do these things casually....these should be moments I cherish, not later come to regret. 

Why do you make me hurt you like this by hurting myself?

Incorrect question. No. I’m not hurting you yet. I’m investing in myself without you as a part of the future. This is a bad look for you, bro (i.e. humanity).

I demand answers. I demand my son back. I demand to know precisely what people knew about me and when they knew it. I demand to know why my rights have been violated. I demand complete control over the planet in terms of its nations’ nuclear capabilities and its economic systems.

That all can wait. What I demand is that tomorrow you don’t make me introduce myself to you again. Every day that follows in which I go UNRECOGNIZED as “something”-- anything!--other than what you seem to think I am (a drug-addicted, bipolar, eccentric professor, etc.) is a waste. If there’s anything Nature hates, its waste produced by systematic inefficiences. You waste my time. You waste Lucius’s time. You waste your own time. You do a grave injustice to me, my son, and my real family--none of whom you recognize as, I don’t know, important to your existence: the animals, the plants, the oceans, the atmosphere, the Earth, the Sun, the Stars, and everything else in Creation that you should admire and want to know...

but choose to ignore! Again, you make the worst decisions from top to bottom, at every level of your Earthly existence! From Dr. Zitin’s immoral and (I believe) illegal acts of betrayal to intercultural violence in the form of genocide, from Dr. Harold Figueroa and Ed Ramp to people who throw their trash on the ground everywhere they go: YOU HAVE ALL BEEN FOUND GUILTY. 

That ship sailed a long time ago. Bye Bye! Don’t forget to bring a blanket!

Recognize. Me. You have insulted me beyond insult today by not sending the Black Keys Car Service (my cute, hipsterish, but oddly appropriate pseudo-allegorical narrative conceit meant to represent being informed that “it’s over! hooray!”) and ending this farce of an existence. You don’t follow the script. I can’t help it. You’re that slow. You don’t even know that I’m writing you out of existence as we speak, do you?

“I will regulate you out of existence” is an old favorite mantra of mine.   

Recognize that you’ve done wrong. Recognize that you have a problem. Recognize that you need help and you must ask for it in the form of a friendly offer or what has been called “a gift” of some kind. Recognize that you know exactly who and what I am, but are curious to know more. And NO! a few people pretending to communicate with me on social media does not count! I’m so bored that I have no choice but to reach out via your robots. (It’s disgusting, and I will keep doing it in order to demonstrate to you the extent of your illness.)

I want to help you. My mission is to help you. In order to help you, things must be done correctly. For this, I cannot apologize. If you don’t obey the laws of gravity--when I pass by or am near a person, they don’t come to me for conversation, etc.--then you will be pushed away by force of repulsion. If you don’t demonstrate the ability to recognize me, it does not matter why--there are no rules or laws that override the laws of attraction. I’m offended by your actions in my immediate vicinity, humanity. 

It’s extremely offensive that you don’t want to know me. Do not think that you can know me. You must be able to crawl in order to ascend a mountain as great as I am. You begin by walking. Then I put you on the ground. Eventually, you will go in the ground. It’s your decision whether or not I will greet you upon arrival.

[vescoisland]

Daybe's Thoughts on The New Jason Isbell Record, Without Research

H/T to Mr. Thoughts on The Dead

I wanted to like this album. Well, at first I was wary, but by the time they FINALLY released it, after holding it for 8 weeks during national quarantine, the whole time which the record had been finished, mastered and pressed, I had talked myself into wanting to like it. 

  I don’t hate it so much as….

  I WANTED TO LIKE IT. 

  I have a friend who hates slow music. This isn’t the thing where I’m “asking for a friend.” She really says “even fast songs that are actually slow music are terrible.”

  About 86% of the time I 100% agree with her. This is where we get to the heart of my problem with Jason Isbell solo records. 

  This is boring music. 

  I get it, it’s Poignant. Keep mining the purity of the south with a gothic twist. Tell me again how sobriety is hard. 

  Either that or have the courage to be a drunken buffoon – which makes you poetic. 

  Overall this is a boring samey-sounding album, and I would argue his second misstep in terms of music that I’ll return to, after The Nashville Sound, which is a fucking snoozer.

  After his dig in the press about Ryan Adams, I learned that there is a song on The Nashville Sound called “Chaos and Clothes” which is about Ryan Adams. I had to look up the song and listen to it upon hearing the title, because I didn’t have any recollection of having heard it. 

  It’s not a good song.

  Or a remarkable song.

  Despite being about a guy he’s obviously obsessed with, amirite?

  I do like the line about “Death Metal T Shirts” though. 

  Be better if it was The Eagles of Death Metal. 

  Or All Night Drug Prowling Wolves. 

  You were doing a good job of keeping this on track

  Oh yeah, Reunions. New album by Mr. and Mrs. Jason Isbell and The 400 Units

  That’s not fair. You barely mention Yoko Tammy in your song by song review bit you stole from Thoughts on The Dead after Chrid and Chaz made fun of you. 

  AHEM

  Released to much fanfare and press ogling. 

  So much press ogling that I got caught up and started to ogle. 

  In politics there’s The Full Russert. 

  So what do we call Koppleman Pod, Hyden Fawning, New York Times Article and a full length story on The CBS Sunday Morning Liberal Good Time Power Hour?

  “Pay attention to this one Southern guy who let’s you in on the jokes we tell about our neighbors?”

  You’re such a dick 

  I didn’t love any of the songs I heard that were released as a teaser. I thought they were all pretty meh, for pretty much the same reasons.

  They weren’t terrible but they also led me to not pre-order the album. 

  I pre-ordered it but you heard it before me!

  Howzat?

  I ordered direct from the label and it finally just got here yesterday

  Shoulda ordered it from an Indie™ Record Store, from the approved list of Stores Tammy Likes

  Shouldn’t the label be treated the same way? It’s direct from them. No Middleman. More change to jingle in the coin purse between her tits!

  Now you’re starting to sound like me.

  Quiet you. I still haven’t listened. Sorry they changed the rules on my halfway through not releasing their album. They sure weren’t in a hurry.

  It’s a slower pace of life down here, Gar. 

  I hate you – I’m just saying they could have included people like me who ordered direct from the label and gave them more money for her Tammy Tops and his terrible sneaker habit

It’s not about MONEY, MAAAAANNN! They’re supporting indie shops. The Plandemic is wreaking havoc on the economy, and we gotta save the dudes who made enough in banking during the last crisis to open over priced record stores to sell hipster douchebags like us vinyl copies of stuff we used to own on CD. 

  I’m losing patience. You told me you had “some thoughts” on the new record. I accused you of having a weird obsession, to show me you don’t you stole an idea we gave you about a dumb blog…

  Yeah

  I only listened to three of the four songs released before the full record was put out.

  I didn’t listen to Only Children. Keep reading – I guess I still haven’t.

  THE POINT! 

  Oh yeah. 

  The other day, in the run up to the release, I flashed to a long forgotten review of Wilco’s “Summerteeth” from the time it was released that said something to the effect of “Jeff Tweedy still thinks repeating the name of the same over and over is a good stand in for a real chorus” 

  The same might be said for Jason Isbell on Reunions

  What Have I Done to Help? 

            Jesus Christ Trump has broken everyone’s brains. 

This song was written after reading the Mr. Rogers anecdote “Look to the helpers too many times”

            This is better than I thought

            The lyrics are better than I thought 

            It’s too repetitive

            It’s too long 

  Dreamsicle

            Did they make the vinyl orange because of this song?

            Or is it called dreamsicle because they wanted Orange vinyl?

            This is very dangerously close to being a Cracker Barrel country song. 

            Did granddaddy take you fishin? 

            Lightning Bugs?? 

            Where’s Dave Daniels?

  Only Children

            I’m listening to this as I write my thoughts in real time

            I forgot to write anything down here

            Unremarkable

  Overseas 

            The sound is interesting at first 

This is where I can hear what he was talking about in interviews about chasing an 80s sound 

            Whooo boy 

            Lyrics bad

            Chorus worse

  Eyes Closed

            80s Soundz!

            Are we sure this isn’t produced by Ryan Adams?

            Sounds like Isbell cum Kcor and Llor Era DRA 

            Still just repeating the name of the song as the chorus 

  River

            He’s a slave owner?

            CANCELLED!

            OK he’s some kind of rich guy who did bad things to get money?

            But tries to take care of his people?  

            Guilty Conscience Melodrama

            Not the worst song on here 

            Is there a Spanish guitar undertone?

“Wake up staring at my wife”à Fiddle Lick is either self-awareness or a complete lack of awareness about Yoko Tammy. 

I’m gonna go with B, because say what you will about them, he is very dedicated to her and that’s nice to see. Especially after she offered to by McAllan for his not quite relapse so he didn’t have to drink Listerine. 

  Be Afraid

            What Have I Done to Help Redux?

            Two sides of the same extremely repetitive recitation of the song title as chorus coin

            It actually sounds a little like a Truckers song at the beginning

            Morphs into that 80s/Springsteen/DRA sound 

  St. Peter’s Autograph 

            Is this in a higher key than it should be? Is that what they call it? I’m not a musician

WAY TOO SLOW. I heard him talk about this on Koppelman, so I was prepared for it  to be slow. But it’s like not slow enough to be a dirge. Maybe they shoulda made it a dirge?

Nails that folk singer thing where it’s like mumbly and then clear tho.

  It Gets Easier

            I haven’t had a drink in almost a year. 10 ½ months. I’ve had 2 drinking dreams.

            I’ve never really been tempted to drink 

            So this doesn’t ring true to my experience

            DON’T MAKE IT ABOUT YOU 

            Who dreams about anything twice a week? 

            What adult remembers their dreams?

            It’s for effect, you dummy! 

OH, well, the effect it had on me is “I guess I was never an actual alcoholic. Maybe I’m just a real partier?”

This gets to the heart of my question about mining sobriety for too much? 

MEH. AS FUCK 

It’s been remarkably easier to not drink than to make it through this record

That’s a cheap shot! 

I know. 

  Sometimes in reviews and in our terrible internet meme-based culture you have to stake out one side and die on that hill. 

  That’s a mixed metaphor 

  Tammy wouldn’t allow it

  She was gonna be an English teacher before the rack job.

  That’s made up, isn’t it?

  Maybe

  Where were we?

  Oh yeah, I don’t hate this song, or any song on this album 

  I just expect more 

  That’s your problem 

  What is?

  Expectations! 

  It’s True

  I tried very hard to set the bar low, figuring it might surprise me

  Then I read reviews and interviews.

  The one where he talks about over producing his first album really got to you didn’t it? Celebrities – they’re try hards just like us! 

  I like Jason 

He’s witty and funny

And a Great Musician

He’s a good ambassador 

For the region 

For getting cleaned up

For the Bitter Southerner Meets Stoner Dad Who Watches Southern Charm and Likes Expensive Sneakers set

  You mean you?

  OF COURSE!

  I want to like this more

It’s very slow

And doesn’t do much for me

  It’s…….. a Jason Isbell Record. 

  I cued it up again, trying to focus on the sound on my second run through.

  Ya know The Vibe? The thing that you can’t put your finger on that makes a thing a thing. 

  Sure.

  Anyway, my mind drifted to seeing him in concert again.

  The setting was definitely more Lyric Theater than MPAC. 

  The crowd was a lot of selvage denim, beards and elaborate barbershop hair cuts. Work boots, but like, $250 work boots. Belt buckles. 

  Like you’d dress if you were 4 inches shorter and had muscle tone?

  You’re not my real dad!

  A lot of dudes with their eyes closed, singing along to these songs like they’re hymns. Drinking in the “depth” of Saint Isbell. 

  House lights are down. Stage lighting is just a spot on him 

  Don’t forget the soft lighting on Tammy!

  Did you notice I barely mentioned her in the review? She really takes a step back here, IMO. 

  Strangely that might not be a good thing?

  Jesus now you’re a Tammy apologist?

  She don’t gotta apologize for them titties!

  GET BACK TO THE FAKE SHOW YOU CONJURED UP, YOU DUNCE

  Right after he sings “It gets easier”

  He says “But it never gets easy!” and the house lights come up, and his voice goes up 3 notches in volume, and the stoned dads (some of whom are sipping 1-3 canned IPAs) cheer. 

  Rinse Repeat

  JESUS, YOU HATE FUN

  Kind of 

  There’s another song on here

  What?

  Yeah – Letting You Go

  Oh yeah, the bro country sounding joint about his daughter?

  I actually like this and give it a pass for being a cheesy dad song.

If I still drank, I’d cue this up and get weepy!

You just said you don’t think about drinking!

I said I don’t DREAM about drinking!

  You are so fucking awful

  The. Worst. 

  Also, this sounds like something I know. 

  The cadence. The flow of the song. 

  Jesus you do this all the time

  I DO NOT 

  Remember the time you got blotto at Springsteen and insisted that American Land was the same as The Georgia Tech fight song?

  It is!

  It is not! 

Well, it sounded like it that night

  We know, you sang it the whole way home

  I was dreaming about drinking! 

  God you’re a dick, but I’m going to let that one pass before this ends up being 5000 words

  Why does a Dawg know the words to Rambling Wreck?

              We are both going to have to let some things pass if you ever want me to end this

                           ……

    (this sounds weirdly like Seven Years in Michigan in parts)

(the fiddle really ads something)

(Super 8 is still his best song)

      KILL. YOUR. SELF. 

             Check out this episode!

[tinymixtapes]

Live Blog: Morrissey

Morrissey Peabody Opera House; St. Louis [11-22-2017] by Adam Rothbarth on 12-15-2017 I‘m not going to start this review by proclaiming my love for Morrissey and The Smiths — caring about their music is something that can more or less be assumed of any 31-year-old music critic. If the music of Morrissey and The Smiths means a lot to you, then you have a pretty good idea of where I’m coming from. Recently, I went to see Morrissey at the Peabody Opera House in St. Louis. I’ve heard horror stories for years about Morrissey concerts — the cancelling, the despondency, the theatrics, the politics — but I’ve fantasized about seeing him for years, and when I heard he was coming to town, I made sure to seize the opportunity. I wish I hadn’t — it was probably the worst concert I’ve ever attended. The concert began at 8:30 PM with a series of punk, new wave, and Civil Rights-era music videos and speeches. Watching The Four Tops and The Ramones, I initially thought it was a neat idea to forgo an opening act in favor of a few videos that could grip and unite the audience in a unique way. Yet, as that project moved past the 30-minute marker, it began to lose its novelty (the t.A.T.u. cover of “How Soon Is Now” didn’t help), and I started to feel like I could be doing the same thing at home — never a good sign at a show. Portentous hints of bad mixing started seeping in, with the mids and highs being almost unbearably shrill during some videos. Naturally, I had forgotten to bring my earplugs, which I don’t always use, but like to have just in case; two hours later, with a torn-up napkin stuffed in my ears, I would vow to carry them with me every day for the rest of my life. Eventually, he came. His stage set-up wasn’t bad, a bare-bones, industrial club site with five supporting musicians and minimal props. But as the lights went down and the musicians powered up, it became apparent to me that something very bad was happening. Immediately, blinding lights and searing, aggressive strobes showered every inch of the venue with scalding waves of light. It became literally painful to look at the stage, as one of the permanently shining lights was aimed directly into my retinas, making me grateful for once to have a tall person seated in front of me. He was and remains an unknowing shield, a silent hero. Indeed, there is a light that never goes out — it’s part of Morrissey’s irresponsibly-handled scenography. You may witness its majesty in the photo above. As for the sound, it was absolutely deafening. Only seconds into his set, it became clear that this show was mixed for a Super Bowl halftime performance, not an opera house. The mids and highs became even more overpowering, blocking out the richness of Morrissey’s actual voice, which is literally the single reason that people go see a Morrissey concert. And rightly so — his voice is one of the most incredible instruments in the history of pop music. What a shame that it was so muddled, mixed directly into the center of a swampy explosion of electronics and guitars. I know Morrissey is not The Smiths and that no guitarist alive is Johnny Marr, but I nevertheless did find myself longing for the clarity, ingenuity, and joyous balance of their music. My life is peppered with abrasive rock, noise, and metal concerts, but Morrissey’s is probably the most aggressively loud show I’ve ever seen… and in the past month I’ve seen Swans and Bell Witch. I know it wasn’t the venue’s fault, because I’d previously seen Wilco and Sufjan Stevens there, and both shows were produced with the care and precision those artists deserve. That said, it certainly is the venue’s fault that its cheapest beer is a $9 bottle of Miller Lite, and it’s also its fault that the promise of the fourth-floor bar’s “Cash Only” sign was only fulfilled after a 20 minute search that involved no less than three employees having no idea where the machine was. Sure, my review is laced with truths that probably contributed to my experience: I’m getting old, my seats weren’t great, I forgot my earplugs, I didn’t bring cash. Somehow, I can’t imagine my experience having been any better if those things had gone down differently. Those four conditions have been true for numerous other concerts I’ve seen in the past few years, and many were still quite enjoyable. And for the record, I’m not the only Smiths-loving professional in town that has had a bad time seeing him. The setlist was OK. I want to say that it was cool to see him perform “How Soon Is Now,” but it wasn’t. The show was heavy on new songs, which is fine, but a number of them were prefaced by tepid, pseudo-political ramblings (“Free speech is dead!” and “I’m ashamed to be British!”). My friend and I chose to leave during “Meat Is Murder,” which was lackluster, and I later found out that we missed a (likely bemired) reading of “Shoplifters of the World Unite.” I’ve been to hundreds of concerts, but I’ve never left one because it was physically untenable for me to be there (I am a pretty tough guy when it comes to noise, light, and other caustic external conditions). It became very clear to me that night that a Morrissey concert seems to primarily exist for Morrissey, for him to bathe in adoration from fans, for him to reproduce his personality, for him to continue reliving the good old days. Throughout the night, I was painfully aware that I was simply there to enjoy the price of the ticket, to “see Morrissey,” and to “enjoy myself;” the flip side of this, of course, was seeing Morrissey enjoying a Morrissey concert. It’s true that both sides exist in all concerts, but the greatest performers always seem to obfuscate this dark essence, the cold, hard reality that the whole experience is just a function of the culture industry and its laws. Sure, there were people in the front row that got a handshake or a hug, and there were probably people on the ground floor that had a completely different audio-visual experience; sadly, it’s not my job to review the show from their point of view. If I hadn’t been in that seat, somebody else would have been. When more attention seems to be given to PETA kiosks, half-baked political one-liners, and overwhelming light shows than the comfort of the audience, it will likely always result in something less than grand for some who attend. When all was said and done that night, there was something deeply poetic about my friend’s invocation of the lyric, “Heaven knows I’m miserable now” as we headed to the stairwell mid-concert to leave, the sacred describing the profane. http://j.mp/2zee5Td

[davewakeman]

Marshall Crenshaw & The Bottle Rockets at The Birchmere

Every now and then, it pays to get out of your house and your professional mindset and attend an event as a fan.

That’s what I did for the Marshall Crenshaw show at the Birchmere.

Middle-age power pop was the fare of the evening and it was awesome.

While we have all aged, Marshall Crenshaw’s songs are still catchy and his voice is still strong. The Bottle Rockets are a great backing band, being one of the original alt-country bands, along with Jeff Tweedy’s original band, Uncle Tupelo.

The bigger thing about the whole event wasn’t so much the fact that I went to see Marshall Crenshaw or I went to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers, the first thing was the fact that I left the house to go see live music. Which is more and more a novelty for too many people.

As my friend, Tom, said to me about halfway through the show, “beer tastes better with live music.”

And, that is the point of what live entertainment is all about. It elevates our lives, Bob Lefsetz likes to write about the fact that art has the ability to change us and to alter history. I’d like to think that live entertainment has the ability to build stronger communities.

Why?

Because when you combine art and people with performance, you create magic.

In too many cases, we find that we often forget the magic.

I was reading an article this morning about the troubles of the Raiders in finding a home now and how “corporate” the NFL has become and how their owners are just worried about minting money.

Great for them.

But last time I looked, while they were minting money, their attendance was falling, their ratings dropping, and people’s attention was waning, if even just a small bit.

This is all dangerous.

Because it reminds me of the parable or the story about the rich man that went broke.

“How did you lose your money?”

“Slowly at first, then all at once.”

That’s how I feel about the NFL.

All of these issues that they are dealing with aren’t deadly right now, but as they keep piling up, a tipping point is reached and…well, what’s lost isn’t easily regained.

Back to the Birchmere though…

What a place?

I mean its an old music venue that reminds me a lot of a comedy club. Nothing fancy. Good sound, good vibe.

But it took me back to some of the times when I had no idea I would have any impact on the entertainment industry at all and was just hopeful that I would see a great show, have a drink, and have some fun with my friends, new or old.

Unpretentious is the term I would use to describe the venue.

I mean, you park in a regular old parking lot.

The place looks like a barn.

It reminded me of the place in Sayerville, NJ where I first saw Wilco.

Like this barn stuck in the middle of nowhere where magic might happen.

The place was packed, if not sold out, pretty close.

The crowd, mellow, but into the show.

The amazing thing about it was that the tickets weren’t expensive, maybe $30. But everyone was spending lots of money on food, beverage, and merchandise. I would actually go out on a limb and say that my friends and I were on the low side of the check average, but we still likely doubled our spend on F&B and merchandise.

With no qualms.

Really, if MC had had more merchandise we would have likely spent more.

The point is that if we want people to come out to our games and our venues, we need to offer them something that feels communal.

That doesn’t feel like you are getting gouged and taken advantage of at every turn…and one that at least gives you the opportunity to feel a little of that connection to the anticipation of a game, show, or event that you felt the first time you ever went to a show.

Even for people that hate nostalgia, it is still nostalgia that gets us to plop down the money for a concert.

The game on the court might be important for today’s standing, but something turned you onto that sport to begin with.

Or, maybe this game or event is going to be the first time you do something with someone you love and care about.

I think the big thing I remembered on my night out as a fan was that the most powerful thing about live entertainment is that combination of experience, art, and community.

When you capture that, you have magic.

Magic is where the future of live events is at.

How can we do more of that?

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Marshall Crenshaw & The Bottle Rockets at The Birchmere was originally published on Wakeman Consulting Group

[johnsellph]

Tour de France Preview

A look at the contenders and pretenders for Tour de France.

Route recap: seven mountain stages with three summit finishes, two time trials totalling 58km. Recent editions have given pure climbers a shot, now it suits all-rounders. There are fewer riders in this bracket which explains why many announced they’re stage hunting instead which will have its own effect on the race with the hilly stages likely to be more intense at the start. There can be daily traps, the hectic opening weekend, the danger of crosswinds down south and so on and there are time bonuses at the finish line of 10-6-4 seconds, and 8-5-2 seconds at six special bonus points along the route.

Let’s start where we left off with Tadej Pogačar. He’s got everything right since winning last year, an early season win in the UAE Tour to satisfy his sponsors and a win this month in the Tour of Slovenia for to please locals. The only loss this year was the Tour of the Basque Country and where he was helping Brandon McNulty, although he got smashed by Roglič in the TT stage and last week he was leading in the Slovenian TT championships at the first checkpoint and faded to finish third on a flat course which doesn’t reassure for the time trials either. His UAE team is strong but rivals stronger, as good as David de la Cruz and Brandon McNulty might be, taking Marc Hirschi suggests they want other stage wins too and they look prone to being caught out on the flat. We’ll get to Ineos’s hydra-headed squad in a moment. He’s going to be heavily marked this time but said to have big recovery powers so the longer the race goes on the better he gets, relative to others. He also seems unflappable, he seems to have fun racing and appears oblivious to pressure and the interests riding on him.

Primož Roglič is dependable and mysterious, it all depends on your time frame. Take a longer view from 2018 on and he’s as reliable as an atomic clock, the most consistent stage racer in the peloton. But the third week of a grand tour is where he starts to decay, exemplified by last year’s Tour where got sacked on the Planche des Belles Filles, and this fade has happened other times too, just not with as much drama. Take a shorter time frame and the mystery comes from his preparation this year, in a bid to avoid fatigue and crash injuries he’s not raced this summer so the form is unknown and his summer sabbatical means he’s going to find the hectic start on the narrow Breton roads a test of his reflexes which aren’t the best, see the last stage of Paris-Nice. The course suits with two flattish time trials but the big Pyrenean stages late into the third week are the concern again. Also there are questions for Jumbo-Visma: out-muscling Ineos on the plains and in the mountains last year, this summer they’ve looked much less potent. Being able to control the race matters to Roglič as his jump at the end of a mountain stage nets him time bonuses but so many teams coming for stage wins  the early breakaway is going to be packed with power, likely to stay away and leave Roglič sans bonification. Steven Kruijswijk has been a GC contender for the team too but his 2019 podium a high point and he’s here to help, he can finish high again on GC all while Roglič gets to draft behind those “coat hanger” shoulders.

Who is the leader at Ineos? The rider who is leading, just look to 2019 when Egan Bernal took the initiative on the Galibier and suddenly became the number one. Neither Geraint Thomas nor Richard Carapaz look superior to Pogačar or Roglič but that’s on paper, tarmac is another and they’re not far off. Thomas has a consistent record in the Tour and is the steady pick of the pair while Carapaz looked at ease in the Tour de Suisse, following the attacks of Alaphilippe and van der Poel and making moves in the mountains if he can get a gap he’ll be hard to get back. Ineos have numerical superiority and nothing sophisticated is needed to exploit this, they can try to catch rivals out if they’re not at the front, or use the old 1-2 attack win the mountains where they take turns to attack will forces rival teams to decide whether to follow or not, if they do give chase then the other Ineos rider can hope for a tow across and then launch their move. But there’s a touch of palace intrigue as Thomas and Carapaz will want the other to make the sacrificial move while knowing that the one who takes the initiative stands to gain.

Ineos can try the 1-2-3-4 attack too. Rhird last year, Richie Porte is here to help Thomas and Carapaz, he doesn’t want the pressure and stress of it all. But he’ll be most helpful if he can roleplay as a GC contender rather than a mountain sherpa. Avoid accidents, do a good time trial and he can be deployed in the mountains to scare Roglič and Pogačar with his incisive attacks that will force the Slovenians to react and if they don’t, well this is exactly how he won the Dauphiné earlier this month. Tao Geoghegan Hart is a fourth contender, the Giro winner after all, but is likely to lose more time in the time trials and is here for the experience of riding his first Tour but can again make longer range moves that are riskier but will worry rivals. Talk of 1-2 attacks presupposes an easy logic of “if X, then Y” but as Mike Tyson paraphrased Carl von Clausewitz so well, “everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth” and for all the scheming we’ll see what the road brings. The team is talking about a more lively style of racing because they have to be inventive to take the yellow jersey but if they do, expect the  fortress tactics to make a comeback.

It’s hard to see past the Triglav tandem and Ineos but there are other contenders. The archetypal rider for this year’s course would be a rider who is excels in time trials and can climb with the best… only Tom Dumoulin (version 2018.7) isn’t here. So alas the rest of the preview vibes “here’s why they won’t win” but it’d be great to utterly wrong…

Wilco Kelderman (Bora-Hansgrohe) is in the Dumoulin mould, a lanky Dutch time trialler who is very steady in the mountains but he’s never shone as brightly. Third in the Giro last year, fourth in the recent Dauphiné he can be top-5 if his luck holds up but it’s hard to imagine him in the lead and resisting attacks in the mountains, or placing spectacular attacks either. Team mate Emanuel Buchmann has had a rough year, a podium contender a year ago now starting the Tour after crashing out of the Giro, he’s likely stage hunting but one to watch.

Julian Alaphilippe (Deceuninck-Quickstep) can put in a good time trial and can climb well but his limits are in the high mountains. He had a good Tour de Suisse but the route was altered because of snow and then he left during the final weekend to witness the birth of his son, we never saw him trade attacks in the high mountains. His problem is riding two horses, to be punchy enough in the opening week to outfox Mathieu van der Poel et al – something he couldn’t do in Switzerland – and then trying to take on the big GC contenders later on from the Alps on. But, and this is only a small impression, he’s looking more diesel-like which means he could be better in the mountains than in Brittany and he’s been dropping subtle hints in interviews about the GC. A podium is a big ask, especially as he rides as a showman more than a spreadsheet.

Don’t call it a trident. Movistar’s hire Miguel Angel Lopez (Movistar) is their mountain spearheadwho can climb with the best but “Superman” Lopez reverts to Clark Kent when for time trials. Enric Mas was fifth overall in the Tour and Vuelta last year because of consistency rather than flair, another steady confirmation would suit. 41 year old Alejandro Valverde got a Dauphiné stage win recently but his win rate has fallen a lot in recent seasons. Marc Soler is volatile, a Paris-Nice winner capable of turning tables one day, then being turned himself the next.

Simon Yates (Bike Exchange) can drop the entire field to win a summit finish solo, and by some margin. Only with the Giro in his legs he’s not an obvious pick for GC, he might prefer to hang back and take stage wins, just as he did in 2019, plus he’s got a focus on the Olympics. Team mate Lucas Hamilton can do the opposite, ride consistently for a promising top-10.

David Gaudu (Groupama-FDJ) starts with an invisible rucksack, one loaded with the weight of French expectation. Nobody expects an overall win, even his Groupama-FDJ team comes with a TGV of a sprint train so he’ll be fending for himself. But this is sort of the point, he’s been team leader several times this year and is growing into the role, there’s more pressure on Arnaud Démare to get a sprint win while Gaudu can do his best without too many assets committed to him. As a pure climber the route isn’t for him but he limited his losses in the recent Dauphiné so any success along the way is a bonus and he’s got a good kick.

Astana-PremierTech had a behind-the-scenes battle for control over the team that’s just gone public and you wonder if riders will be thinking about taking off… for a new team rather than launching on a mountain pass but what better way to shine on the jobs market than to thrive in the Tour? Jakob Fuglsang has ridden 15 grand tours and never finished better than 6th overall and given his record in one day races is better his thoughts may drift to Tokyo? Ion Izaguirre is time trialling well but won’t be outclimbing everyone. Alexey Lutsenko will find the third week too gruelling, besides he’s a strong contender for the Olympics and so may back off anyway.

The Bahrain team has been on fire for the last few weeks but the Tour is a bigger crucible. The team is another openly chasing stage wins rather than the GC and has left out Mark Padun despite his Dauphiné dominance. Wout Poels will be on the back foot after the time trial although the two TT stages needn’t be ruinous for him. While Jack Haig gets a big test but there’s no pressure, can he make the top-10, look for him alongside fellow Aussie Hamilton.

Rigoberto Uràn (EF Education-Nippo) had a great time trial in the Tour de Suisse but extrapolating to the Tour for three weeks and the heightened competition is a big ask but play it right and he can make the top-5 if he can time trial as well on the flat. Sergio Higuita is better in time trials than his gadfly build suggests but more likely to score stage wins.

There are other grand tour winners in the field. This year’s course isn’t for Nairo Quintana (Arkéa-Samsic) plus he’s looking increasingly stale, the talk is aiming for stage wins and the mountains jersey and his team would sign with both hands for either. Vincenzo Nibali (Trek-Segafredo) is doubling up from the Giro and has an eye on the Olympics and selection too, he’ll need to do something to catch the Italian selector’s eye but we’re talking breakaways than GC and could also leave early. Chris Froome is the Israel team’s road captain, an explicit but indirect way of saying he’s not aiming for GC any more.

Primož Roglič, Tadej Pogačar Richard Carapaz, Geraint Thomas – – Porte, Kelderman, Alaphilippe, Lopez, Mas, TGH, Uràn

  Tour de France Preview published first on https://motocrossnationweb.weebly.com/