Miles natters on about stuff. Probably music, knowing him. He leans more Faulkneresque than Hemingwaylike, so there'll be a lot of words. Unlike Faulkner, not all of them will be wonderfully deployed.
Well, my readership has tapered off by half so far this week. I guess that's what happens when you end up skipping a couple of days! I was struggling with having enough time to write something in which I was really invested...
...but then it occurred to me today, ex post facto, that I should probably have just blogged about what was actually going on in my life the last few days, however geeky or mundane it may be.
So I'm taking my own advice! Here's what I've spent the bulk of the last three days doing:
Catering! My wife and I have been working on launching a catering company since July. She's a talented chef with over 20 years in the culinary industry, so the business is built on her mad food skillz and her astonishing creativity. Business has picked up a lot lately, and over the last few days, we were doing everything associated with two orders, one of them pretty large. Pricing, shopping, errand-running, assembling, delivering, you name it. Keep your fingers crossed that this continues to be the state of affairs: we want to stay this busy!
World of Warcraft! WoW launched its major pre-Wrath of the Lich King patch yesterday. Patch days for any MMO are insane, but this one makes a lot of stuff obsolete that players had been used to since at least 2006, and in some cases since the game's launch in December 2004. So there wasn't just the usual server unavailability and instability associated with Patch Day, there was also a major decision on respec'ing talents awaiting every one of us, on every character. I had things mapped out pretty well for my main character, a holy priest, and a quick heroic run late last night went painlessly. However, my other level 70 toon, a paladin, took the opportunity (at the urging of a guild leader) to respec from holy to retribution. So now I have no idea how to play this character that I've carefully built, leveled, and equipped in an entirely different way. I'm really struggling with it, and none of the player guides seem up to date for 3.0.2 ret pally spell rotation. Thow in dozens of add-ons that won't function yet in the 3.0.2 environment, whose absence is messing with my play style, and my little hobby hasn't been very fun for the last 36 hours.
Several days ago, when I composed this post about Echo & the Bunnymen's "The Killing Moon," it occurred to me that while I like several singers who were clearly heavily influenced by Jim Morrison - most notably Julian Cope and the Bunnymen's Ian McCulloch - I don't really care for Morrison himself that much. There is something cool about the deep voice action, sure, but so often Morrison's delivery is sooooo over the top, and the lyrical misses sooooo bad, that I don't think I could ever describe myself as a Doors fan (sorry, Dan).
This got me to thinkin' 'bout other cases where I like the sons better than the fathers. Here are some that came to me right away:
The Byrds REM, Robyn Hitchcock, Tom Petty
The Beach Boys Lindsey Buckingham, Lloyd Cole, the Blue Nile, The Negro Problem / Stew
Big Star Game Theory/the Loud Family, the Replacements, the Posies
Stereolab Broadcast
I'm getting diminishing returns from thinking about it more, so I'll throw it over to the readership at this point.
Oh, and while I'm not a Doors fan, I am a fan of this skit. "Greatest hits albums are for housewives and little girls."
While I'm hardly the first blogger to post an image of a restaurant sign that depicts animals, often wearing chef hats, merrily serving themselves or their relatives as fare, this one adds a layer of voyeurism to the proceedings. Are these barnyard fowls trapped in a pollo concentration camp where they are forced to watch friends and family members succumb to the roaster one by one, the witnesses contemplating their own similar, inevitable fates?
Or do they freely choose to watch their late defeathered friends cook? The scene certainly suggests a family gathered around the TV set for an evening of entertainment. Perhaps it could be the poultry version of Tyburn, a public meting out of justice for the main dish's crimes against chickendom.
I'm also disturbed by the choice of pollito instead of pollo. I'm no Spanish speaker, but I know there are a number of unsavoryconnotations for the word. And after all, you want nothing but savory connotations if you're advertising your roast chicken.
I'm relieved that Nashville Barbies can now get their peach fuzz removed. And that they don't have to make an appointment for it!
Incidentally, this place is at least consistent with their apostrophes; it's "PERFECTION'S" not only on this changeable copy sign, but on the permanent sign affixed above the door.
REM had held that position from 1983 on, but 1998's Up, the first in a series of snoozefests, left them vulnerable. In '99, Wilco released Summerteeth, their third long-player. Wilco's first two albums were terrific, especially 1996's double-disc Being There. But Summerteeth not only represented continued growth and exploration from an already-stellar band, there was something about the way Jeff Tweedy was expressing his own struggles with identity and adulthood that resonated deeply with me. "A Shot in the Arm"'s refrains of "something in my veins / bloodier than blood" and "what you once were isn't what you wanna be / anymore" hit me right where I was living.
It was a symbolic moment of the first order when later in '99, I saw Wilco open for REM at northern Ohio's Blossom Amphitheater, a coincidental passing of the "Miles' favorite band" laurels. As if that wasn't enough, during Wilco's set, the band brought out a birthday cupcake for Jeff Tweedy, and someone onstage - Jay Bennett, John Stirratt? - said it was his 32nd, which meant that he was a fellow 1967 baby. Yup, me, Tweedy, and Kurt Cobain - bumper crop, eh?
Not that sharing the same year of birth ensures fellowship; if it did, school would have been a lot easier. But knowing this small fact about Mr. Tweedy made me feel like it wasn't coincidence that Jeff was feeling the same things at the same time I was feeling them, or, from what I could tell from interviews and the music itself, that he seemed to have a lot of the same experiences and perspectives as me.
Even though Summerteeth was and is my pick of the Wilco litter, I'm reaching back to Being There for the song that belongs in the "kick-ass songs of the '90s" series: "Misunderstood."
The leadoff track of Being There, "Misunderstood" begins with 45 seconds of instrumental mayhem: Nashville's Own Ken Coomer driving the drumkit forward as an ominous undertow of guitar feedback emanates from Tweedy and multi-instrumentalists Jay Bennett and Max Johnston.
Then, almost abruptly, it's piano, acoustic guitar, and Jeff Tweedy's voice, solemn, wistful:
When you're back in your old neighborhood The cigarettes taste so good But you're so misunderstood You're so misunderstood
A lot of Being There is about being a music fan, and/or maybe a musician (later on the album, "The Lonely 1" captures the fan/musician relationship in exacting, heartwrenching beauty). It's hard to tell what's going on lyrically sometimes, as Tweedy cagily shifts perspectives, not just from song to song, but within an individual song. "Misunderstood" is no exception:
It's only a quarter to three Reflecting off of your CD You're looking at a picture of me You're staring at a picture of me
Is the "you" a fan of Tweedy's? An old friend or lover? Is Tweedy narrating this song, or a character? Like a lot of my favorite music and art, the ambiguity forces the listener to do some interpretation of their own, which also results in the listener investing in the song in a way that wholly straightforward narration can't match.
After Tweedy quotes some telling Peter Laughner lines ("take the guitar player for a ride / 'cos he ain't never been satisfied"), the feedback, which has been bubbling under the acoustic interlude all along, surges front and center, threatening to tear the song apart. But after a few seconds, it recedes, leaving Tweedy' plaintive voice once again exposed:
There's a fortune inside your head When all you touch turns to lead You think you might just crawl back in bed With the fortune inside your head
I know you're just a mama's boy You're positively unemployed So misunderstood So misunderstood
As that last "misunderstood" slips out, now the song cashes in the tension that's been building for over four minutes: Coomer's drums roll and cymbals crash, the electric guitar trio reconvenes, and as the crescendo mounts, Tweedy has to shout to be heard:
I know you've got a god-shaped hole You're bleeding out your heart full of soul
And then the third-person narration turns into something crueler and uglier, a messy explosion that's equal parts anger at the world and self-loathing. And guess what? It's not third-person any more, no sirree.
I'd like to thank you all for nothing I'd like to thank you all for nothing at all I'd like to thank you all for nothing
And then the whole band hits each of the next words in unison, drums and vocals and guitar and god knows what else all punching together, each "nothing" a sledgehammer blow, pulverizing everyone and everything in their path:
Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing at all Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing at all
And then there's nothing at all, or nearly so: nothing but ruins anyway, shards of feedback falling to the floor, as the wounded basic riff of the song somehow still is ticking along somewhere in the wreckage.
Wilco's live performances of this song were often exercises in confrontation between artist and audience. The raucous feedback and Tweedy looking dead at the audience, screaming "I'd like to thank you all for nothing!" - and often extending the number of "nothing!"s far beyond the studio version - created a palpable tension in the room, providing a direct challenge to an audience that seemingly was expecting something more convivial. And when the band performed in front of half-indifferent audiences, as was more common before their Yankee Hotel Foxtrot / I Am Trying To Break Your Heart canonization, those bracing "nothing! nothing! nothing! nothing at all!"s carried extra venom.
I wanted to link a YouTube performance of the Bennett / Johnston / Coomer lineup doing "Misunderstood," but all the ones I could find are from the more recent Nels Cline / Pat Sansome / Glenn Kotche era. While all three of the latter-day gentlemen are probably better musicians than the guys they replaced, I think Wilco was more ferocious and raw in its prior lineup.
Nevertheless, I'm linking a "Misunderstood" from a 2007 show, and it's a good performance which will get across some of what I'm talking about. (And the guy singing along at the beginning either shuts up or gets drowned out pretty quickly, never fear.) But to me, this is a shade too smooth and ornate, and, as my friend doug might opine, "needs more demons."
[edit as of 7/11/2009] Just found this version of "Misunderstood" on YouTube, posted after Jay Bennett's death. While this version doesn't have the three-guitar gonzo finale that I remember from the '99-'02 shows, it's splendid, it's got the right lineup and it's far more what I was after. Hopefully it also illustrates some of the aforementioned differences between that Wilco and present-day Wilco.
That got me to wonderin' if future generations will get this joke. I mean, in and of itself the plotline is funny. But the real deliciousness of Jerry's line comes from knowing the meta joke: it's a reference to NBC's practice on its "Must-See Thursdays" of airing sitcoms more lame than Bania's act in the 8:30 PM and 9:30 PM eastern/pacific slots, i.e., in the gaps between huge ratings hits Friends (8 PM), Seinfeld (9 PM) and E.R. (10 PM). No matter how insipid or atrocious or savaged by critics these shows were, they'd always be in the Nielsen top 10 because enough people wouldn't bother to change the channel between shows. Veronica's Closet, The Single Guy, Madman of the People, Union Square... need I go on for anyone who lived through this era?
In the world's best-ever Rolling Stone interview, NewsRadio creator Paul Simms dubbed NBC's approach to Thursday nights "the shit sandwich." I can't find the full text of the interview on the Internet anymore, but I can quote my own quoting of it from this Fegmaniax post of mine from days of yore:
Simms on NBC's "Must See Thursday": "People are starting to realize Thursday night is like a big double-decker shit sandwich with three good pieces of bread, and in between..."
Q: If "NewsRadio" doesn't last, would you turn your back on sitcoms? "Yeah, this is the best I can do. Pretend you're God and you say, 'If you do a show about a single father who's dating a lot and has two teenage sons, and it doesn't have to be funny, and it'll be a huge hit.' I'd say, 'Fuck you, God.'"
It's all of this that went into Jerry's joke, which made me guffaw when the episode first aired, when I watched it last week, and probably will for years to come. But as NBC's "Must-See Thursday" recedes into the dustbin that's already home to CBS' '70s Monday night comedy juggernaut, the true resonance of the "timeslot hit" line is likely to be as lost on the young'uns as the archness of Alexander Pope is to me. Annotation is no substitute for living memory.
If you think tonight's U.S. presidential debate is getting round-the-clock coverage in your neck of the woods, imagine what it's like if the debate is happening nine miles from your home. This debate logo is plastered on billboards all over Nashville, and the minute last Thursday's Palin-Biden debate ended, local news went from daily coverage of the Belmont Debate* to saturation coverage. Heck, I'm surprised Snowbird isn't the moderator.
It also means that Nashville is going to be seen on every news outlet for the entire day, and that's never any fun if you live here. Why? Because most of the time, it's an excuse for columnists, TV hosts and copy writers looking for an easy angle to whip out the most hackneyed tropes about our town being the capital of hillbilly doofusdom. For what it's worth, it doesn't matter to me if it's Fox News or The Daily Show doing it; it still rankles me. Today, when I read that right-wing shill and poor excuse for a country artist John Rich (you may know him from Big and Rich, lucky you if you don't) serenaded John McCain on CBS'sEarly Show this morning, I audibly sighed. This is exactly the kind of Hee Haw nonsense that Nashville doesn't need.
So rather than opine about the politicians or the debate itself, I'd rather use this space to let you know that Nashville is a great place to live, and is far more sophisticated than any way it's likely to be portrayed today or in the post-debate punditry. It may be the capital of a "red state" (god, I hate that "red state/blue state" taxonomy - did the news outlets hold a Council of Nicea in 1993 or something to regularize which party was red and which was blue? I swear, I remember the party/color correlation varying from network to network until then), sure, but Davidson County itself went for both quasi-native son Al Gore and purported Yankee elitist liberal John Kerry in the most recent presidential elections.
We have an opera and an Opry. We have a bazillion international dining options, a large and still-growing Hispanic population, an internationally acclaimed symphony, the greatest live rock band ever, and snowball-throwing polar bear statues:
not risking motorcade traffic to go take a fresh pic myself)
It's not London or Paris or New York, but it's got enough of everything for me. Today it also has BarackObama, John McCain, and millions of viewers, but keep in mind as you watch the festivities that you not only need to be sorting out truth from fiction when it comes to the candidates, you need to be doing the same thing with what you see and hear about Nashville.
*held at Nashville's own Belmont University, which was Belmont College when I moved here in '88, and was previously best known as That Formerly Baptist College That Vince Gill Is Always Donating To That Turns Out All Those Music Biz People. The "Battle of the Boulevard" referenced in my title is what the local press calls the basketball smackdowns between Belmont U. and their just-down-Belmont-Boulevard denominational-college neighbors, the Church of Christ's own David Lipscomb University.
