STICKY POST
Tuesday, 20. June 2006, 01:54:38
Music
To play the music, click on George or Glenn's picture.
(Please be patient. It will take a minute to connect with your media player.)
George Friedrich Handel
Suite in d-minor HWV 447
Courante
Artist: Keith Jarrett
Format (MP3) / Timing (02:31)
Light and dark combined.
J.S. Bach
Partita in G Major BWV 829
Praeambulum
Artist: Glenn Gould
Format (MP3) / Timing (01:47)
Now playing in a galaxy near you...Didn't know where to put this map, so I'm putting it here.
Monday, 3. November 2008, 18:56:43
Music, The 80s
Back in the 60s there developed a club scene in England that you could
call the Temporary Club scene. For a single night, space would be rented
out at some warehouse or in some cases a theater and musical groups
would play. You would find people like Donovan or the young David Bowie
on the bill. The concerts generally weren't advertised, or if they were
it was only by way of flyers that people would pass around or stick up
on kiosks. In certain cases the location of the venue wasn't even given
-- it was part of the scene that you had to find the concert by way of
word-of-mouth.
Here in the U.S., the Temporary Club thing developed in the late 70s and
continued on into the early 80s. Similar to the earlier London scene, the
Temporary Clubs here mainly featured new artists, bands that couldn't get
gigs in the mainstream. This was particularly true on the early Punk and
New Wave scene.
In Dallas in the early 80s I met a guy named Rocky. Rocky was a silver
spoon -- his parents were loaded. But he was what you might call an
"okay" silver spoon. He didn't live fancy. He lived in a cheap apartment.
He drove a Mercedes-Benz -- but a very old one that was almost slumming it
for a person of his economic background. Most of his money he put into his
main passion in life, music.
In about 1983 Rocky rented a warehouse in near East Dallas and started
having bands in. It was a very large warehouse, but the ceilings weren't
as high as some warehouses -- only about 20 feet high. The floor was of
course concrete. There was a restroom that was shared by both the men
and the women. The men would piss in the sink and the women would use
the toilet. In the back of the warehouse there there was an archway and
in back of that a narrow area that sort of ran the length of the rear of
the warehouse. There was also a small office that Rocky used for after
hours get-togethers with friends.
Rocky charged admission, which was usually about $3 to $6, very cheap
compared to most concerts. And if you didn't have the money, you didn't
have to worry about it much, Rocky would usually let you in. He didn't
get back even close to what he put out on the bands in admission anyway,
so he really didn't give a shit. The concert hall didn't have a name. And
as to whether there were going to be bands there on any one night, that
you had to find out from connections or by calling Rocky.
Normally there would be 2 or 3 bands in a night. It was all Punk. Mostly
Punk bands from California. I saw the Circle Jerks there, and Really
Red. The other names I either didn't know or have since forgotten. The
concrete floor and the low ceiling made for some strange acoustics. The
space seemed to work as a second amplifier, making everything much
more loud and with more noise -- which of course was perfect for Punk.
It was BYOB. I would usually take a six-pack, of which I would get maybe
two beers after giving some to people who asked me for one. I didn't
care much. I was usually pretty well lit even before I walked into the
place. And of course there were drugs. The area at the rear of the
warehouse through the arch was were most of this type of business was
transacted. It was also a place where some people engaged in quickie
sex.
All of this -- the crazy unisex restrooms, the drugs, the sex, might
tend to make the place sound very sleazy. And maybe it was, I don't
know. It didn't seem sleazy to me at the time. And to be honest, it
still doesn't. For the most part it was a concert hall, and the emphasis
for us was on the music, not the meaningless peripherals.
I ran into another Temporary Club a few years later while living in
Phoenix. The unnamed club in Dallas was up-scale and spacious compared
to this one. This nameless club was basically a small, gutted out business
building. The ceiling was low, and the slightly elevated stage looked
like it would collapse at any moment. I lost one of my contact lenses
right next to that stage one night, and by some miracle -- virtually
in the dark and on a dirty floor -- I found it again. Which was even
more of a miracle given the half-pint of Cuervo Gold in my pocket that
was two-thirds empty at that point.
Unlike Rocky's club, the little Phoenix venue was mostly New Wave.
Most of them weren't very good. But the energy was high, and there
were very few bona-fide clubs in Phoenix who featured the type of
music they played there.
The little club also had what had to be the world's worst restroom.
Or maybe I should say the worst toilet, because that's all there was,
there was no sink, just a toilet. I was incredulous the first time I
saw it. So much so that I went home and got my Polaroid camera (I only
lived about four blocks from the club) and went in and took a picture
of it. Some people promptly came down on my ass. They thought I was
from the Board of Health. I told them I wasn't, that I just thought it
was an interesting subject for a photograph. After weighing it over,
they decided I must be on the level and let it go.
One night I was smoking just outside the club. There was a girl there,
also smoking, the classic New Wave babe look -- short skirt, heels,
pixie hair. I went over to her. "You're a total fox" I said. She looked
me over. Back then I still had my hair short on the sides and feathered
in back, the Duran Duran look, though I had cut my front long-lock off
when I got to Phoenix. I had my white jacket on with the sleeves pushed
up, a black shirt with a skinny crimson tie. She decided that I fit the
bill. "You're scary" she said back to me, looking me in the eye and
taking a long slow draw of her cigarette. "Really?" I said. "Because you
know, some other girl told me that I was silly. So, am I silly in a scary
type of way? Or scary in a silly type of way?" She thought about that for
about five seconds. And then her brain shut down completely, and she
walked off.
Wednesday, 22. October 2008, 18:25:49
Music
(Just click on the pic to watch the
video on youTube.)
The past week I've been listening quite a bit
to a couple of songs on youTube.
The first is "Challengers" (above) by The New
Pornographers (or, if you want to look at it
another way, by Neko Case and her future
back-up band).
The other one is "Lullaby" by Freakwater (below).
Catherine Irwin is awesome, I think.
(Just click on the pic to watch the
video on youTube.)
Thursday, 2. October 2008, 13:15:57
Culture, Movies, Music
The rather intimidating Catherine Weaver
of The Sarah Connor Chronicles.
I was watching an episode of The Sarah Connor Chronicles the week
before last, the season premier of the show, when I came across a face
that seemed very familiar. I had never watched the show before that, or
looked into it on its web site or whatever, and knew pretty much nothing
about it other than the obvious fact that it was a Terminator spinoff.
The actress who had caught my attention plays the character of Catherine
Weaver on the show. She has red hair, is definitely a fox, and has this cold
and vaguely threatening air about her. In fact I find her more intimidating
than any of the evil androids on the show. Between an evil android who
can crush your skull in two seconds or a redhead giving you "that look,"
I would prefer the evil android. In any case, to present that type of
character well takes some pretty good acting ability as well. And as I
mentioned, she looked very familiar. There was just something about that
face.
So I found the show's web site and looked her up. Turns out the actress
is Shirley Manson, singer for the rock group Garbage. And in fact I had
just seen her and that group in 2007 on a segment of Soundstage.
They say that the grass is always greener on the other side of the hill.
And in fact it seems that many musicians want to try the movie thing,
and many actors or actresses are drawn to the music thing. Which isn't
all that surprising. Most actors and actresses grew up listening to music
and, like most of us, wished they were a rock and roll star or whatever.
Just as a lot of musicians grew up watching movies and television shows,
and I'm sure thought about what it might be like to be in front of the
camera.
The list of these crossover gigs would be a long one. You have people
like David Bowie and Mick Jagger being featured in the occasional movie.
Some musicians, like Frank Sinatra or Elvis Presley, became serious
actors in their own right. Johnny Depp started out as a musician also,
though he didn't have all that much of a track record as one before he
got into television and film.
And then you have the actors and actresses who have gotten into music,
or at least who have tried to. This would be another fairly long list. The
one that pops into my head first, probably because I was just looking up
some information on him a couple of weeks ago, was actor Telly Savalas.
Savalas took his famous Super-Greek persona that was developed on the
Kojack series and managed to work it into a rather successful music career
that included a couple of albums and a few songs that made the charts.
Occasionally, you have someone who inhabits both worlds simultaneously
pretty much from the start. The one I think of most in terms of this was
Judy Garland. Bing Crosby also comes to mind. It's fairly difficult to really
separate Crosby's musical career from his film career. And of course there
were others.
Since the early 80s and the rise of MTV, the music world has become
tremendously video oriented. In fact it's almost impossible for a new
artist to break in these days without doing a music video. So today,
the two worlds are linked even closer.
Well, it's certainly great seeing Shirley again on the show. Though that
doesn't mean that I wouldn't like to see Garbage come out of their "hiatus"
and do a new album.
And incidentally, I thought that there was some very interesting trivia
about Shirley listed on the Internet Movie Database. You might check it
out.
Shirley Manson in her Garbage days.
Tuesday, 16. September 2008, 07:06:41
Music
Sunday, 14. September 2008, 01:22:19
Music
(Just clic on the pic to watch the video on youTube.)
My mom was always a big Glen Campbell fan. When I was a kid she had
one of his albums -- I think it was the only album she owned -- and she
would listen to it occasionally on the phonograph. She listened to the
radio a lot, and when one of Glen's songs came on she would go up and
turn the radio up just a bit. She didn't like loud music. But for Glen,
she would turn the volume dial at least a bit higher.
She got to go see him in the early 70s at the Butler Bowl in Indianapolis.
Strangely, she went with my dad (her ex-husband) and my dad's girlfriend
Esther. New girlfriend or not, she was going to see Glen Campbell, and the
new girlfriend could just go to hell.
Gee, I wonder where I get my attitudes from.
Anyway, here's Glen singing "Galveston." Not exactly a light song. Most
AM songs don't include a line like "I'm so afraid of dying."
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