December 2007 Archives

You know when you’ve just finished a very good book? One you’ve been working on for a while- and then, abruptly, it’s over, and you’re thrust out of that world and back into your living room/bedroom/seat on the bus? But you’ve been so wrapped up in this other place that you aren’t yet ready to return to your life, and you just sit there, holding the book, and dwelling on what you’ve read, and wishing that you could find a way to get back there?

I saw the Bob Dylan movie yesterday- you know, that one where, like, six different actors play versions of him? It got under my skin, they way films never do. I’m not much of a movie person- for whatever reason, they just don’t resonate with me the way that books or music do. It is much easier for me to inhabit a story or a song. Actually, that kind of holds true for my relationship with Bob Dylan’s music, too- it doesn’t let me in. I appreciate it, I listen to it, but I never take it fully under my skin.

But I walked out of the Pickford last night, and didn’t have words. The film hit me where books hit me: when they’re over, I’m still too immersed in my interior world to be able to translate the experience to the external world. It was not good, or bad, or any one thing. I would use words like, “phenomenal,” or “brilliant,” but they don’t have any meaning in this context. How do you summarize ten completely different films in a sentence or two?

Most of it was just giant inside jokes- in one of the many parts that put me in mind of A Mighty Wind, Julianne Moore talks to her cats and plays the role of a Joan Baez character. And there’s that one scene that’s totally a reference to the cover of “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”! But there is substance, also. Todd Haynes has done that unique thing- he has striking imagery, and obscure references, and intriguing story-telling- he has married both style & content, in a film that contains both Richard Gere’s circus-village-at-the-apocalypse and Cate Blanchett’s reflections on the inadequacies of pop music.

I don’t intend a film review. There are already plenty of people who regurgitate films on the internet. But Cate Blanchett’s Jude Quinn is fantastic, revelatory, a female understanding of masculinity that confounds and reminds one of how rarely this gender presentation appears in mainstream film.

And there was a part in the middle, where one of the Dylan characters defends himself against charges of chauvinism, saying something along the lines of this: “I adore women! Everyone should have one!” His wife goes all Cixous on him. And I felt that the ghost of Ellen Willis was vindicated.

I do, actually, listen to bands  with men in them.  Sometimes. To prove this fact, and  because this has become somewhat of a forum for me to air my (sometimes shameful) musical histories & obsessions, I would like to tell you about a band called Bottomless Pit.

But first, a preface:

A] I used to listen to the local music shows on both KNDD and KCMU (and then, KEXP) when I was in junior high/high school.  I have boxes of tapes from these shows- the Young and the Restless taught me pretty much everything I needed to know about radio, local music, and life outside small towns.  (Let this be my brief and inadequate homage to Marco Collins, Jason Huges, the Reverend Adam Green, and the other Y&R djs circa 1998-2002).

B] Whilst listening to the local show around age 15, I heard a song called “Our Mother the Mountain” that stopped me dead in my tracks.  It was unlike anything I had ever heard.  An eerie, otherworldly song.  The version being played was by Joel R.L. Phelps and the Downer Trio, from their out-of-print “Inland Empires” EP on now-defunct Moneyshot Records.

The EP includes covers of songs by Fleetwood Mac, Iris DeMent, Steve Earle, an original or two, and “Our Mother the Mountain”- a song written by Townes Van Zandt.  It’s one of my most beloved and still-surprising records, the sort that is on my mental to-do list of things to grab on my way out the door if my house ever burns down.  To this day, “Our Mother the Mountain” is one of the most beautiful and unsettling songs I’ve ever heard (and eventually led to my Townes Van Zandt obsession).

However, before Joel R.L. Phelps formed the Downer Trio (which includes William Herzog and Shins-brother Robert Mercer), he was in the venerable Northwest band SILKWORM.  Like allmusic says, they fall somewhere between CCR and the Minutemen.

C] My wallowing secret pleasures for long winter afternoons in this dark corner of the country: jagged NW rock of the everyday-despair variety.  764-HERO, This Is A Long Drive-era Modest Mouse, Carissa’s Wierd, Waxwing, Juno, and, recently, Silkworm.  Thanks in part to the Young and the Restless, my love for depressive/explosive Northwest indie-proto-emo runs deep.

C] Silkworm represents this “genre” (I guess) at its best.  Silkworm formed from the ashes of Missoula post-punk band Ein Heit in 1987.  Phelps left the band in 1994 to do solo stuff, but SKWM continued to play together until Mike Dahlquist’s death in 2005.

But Silkworm broke up; 764-HERO broke up; Waxwing broke up.  What’s a body to do but sit around and listen to late-90’s records over & over during these long bleak winter months?

ANSWER: BOTTOMLESS PIT

Obsessive fan-mumblings aside,

Bottomless Pit = Andy and Tim, formerly of SKWM.

It will get me through January.

Lo, the weirdness of holiday music!

The glee and awe I experienced upon listening to “A Christmas Gift to You from Phil Specter” has been bested by my latest find: David Bowie and Bing Crosby singing “Little Drummer Boy.”  The “special multimedia CD” includes a full length music video, prefaced by a holiday skit!

Bowie: “Well, I sing, too!” Bing: “Oh, good!  What kind of singing?” Bowie: “Well, mostly contemporary stuff. Do you, uh, like modern music?” Bing “Oh, I think it’s marvelous, some of it’s really fine!”

MINE EYES HAVE SEEN THE GLORY.

This is one of the best things I have heard in a long time. Jessica Hopper sees two teenage girls at a party and decides to befriend them, so they won’t feel left out among the grown-ups. Upon befriending them:

The girls were asking me and Lil’ Dave Maher for recommendations on records they should pick up. “Well, what sort of things do you like?” we asked. They really love the Delta 5, and are in a Delta 5 cover band, just the two of them, but it’s just french horn and tamborine. We were kind of stunned, and professed that they were the coolest people at the party and totally didn’t need our help. The pressed on. Dave told them why Double Nickels was crucial. I suggested Au Pairs, Slits, Antena and disc one of Best of The Whispers.

A Delta 5 cover band with just French horn & tambourine. Like whoa.

And this video my sister sent me? Of “Rock Lobster,” covered by Calvin Johnson, Sarah Dougher, and Sleater-Kinney? And not only covering, but actually impersonating Rick and Cindy?

ALL I COULD EVER ASK FOR FROM LIFE.

[youtube sMnuEGnMGAc]

Oh, friends, it has been one of those weeks. I feel like I have been impatient and crotchety with the people I love the most. But now it is better.

I got an email this afternoon from one of my professors:

Hi Jenn, I need to get your final paper for 501 before midnight tonight or ASAP afterwards. If there will be a delay, please let me know. Thanks.

After opening this email, I had a few moments of pure terror, in which I convinced myself that I had utterly forgotten to complete a major paper for my class, which will result in my getting an “incomplete” and thus being kicked out of my master’s program.

This did not happen. Because I completed this paper on Tuesday & delivered it to Teacher School HQ at 2:00 in the afternoon, before joining my brother for a delightful luncheon of burritos. And this is what I told my professor, and all is well. His fault, not mine. Whew.

Also, the radio station has been a pit of stress & anxiety for the past two weeks (boss gone, scheduling, me having to be bossy towards people who are my friends, trying to figure out who will run the station over Christmas).

But all that is behind me now. After I left the radio station, I danced a little jig. I went to the Co-op and bought whatever foods enticed me. Then I took them home and cooked them up and made a delicious hearty vegetable stew.

It is amazing to me (since I am not a very accomplished cook) that I take find such enjoyment in the preparing food. I don’t care so much about the eating of it- that is beside the point- but the chopping and slicing and stirring is so relaxing. I converse with a roommate, we listen to Christmas music, the kitchen is warm, and I don’t have to worry about work for a week and a half.

I was feeling ambitious, so I also made some rosemary shortcake cookies. They were kind of weird, but look fancy. Which is really all I ask for. [Tangent: I should not end words with prepositions. I do not know the reason for this, but I feel like I was told this rule as some point in my schooling. And as a future English teacher, I feel that I ought to be much more careful about these kinds of things, if I am to educate The Next Generation. Because our socio-political system will crumble if they split their infinitives! But honestly, I can’t always remember what an adverb is, so I guess our society is doomed.]

Cheers.

Apparently they are making a movie of “Prince Caspian” (my favorite book in the Chronicles of Narnia, these days).  I thought (was hoping?) they’d stop after the first one- really, they aren’t planning to make all seven, are they?

I just watched a preview, and was terribly disappointed.  Maybe I was too influenced by Pauline Baynes’ illustrations in the books I grew up with, but these movie versions do not remotely approximate the atmosphere of Narnia.  They are too full of action and badly-cast characters.  If I remember right, Caspian was supposed to be about Peter’s age- around fourteen, I always thought.  In Pauline Baynes’ illustrations, he always looked so boyish; but in the movie, he looks to be played by a man in his mid-twenties.

Mostly, I’m resentful because these books were my life when I was a kid.  Being a know-it-all, I didn’t really have any friends in elementary school, and just retreated into stacks and stacks of library books and my active imagination.  Until I got to middle school and made real friends, my head was more in Narnia than it was in the real world.

As much as there has been criticism of the role of Christianity in C.S. Lewis’ books, I did not even notice it until my dad pointed it out, on maybe my second or third re-reading of the series.  And even then, it made perfect sense to my childhood sprituality- of course the natural world is conscious, and animals can talk, and a noble lion is a metaphor for God.  For a while, in elementary school, I even directed my prayers to both Jesus and Aslan (although I don’t think that was exactly orthodox).

And you know that if they even attempt to make a movie of “The Dawn Treader” (which would be the greatest travesty), they’ll probably pick someone like the kid who played Dudley Dursley to be Eustace Scrubb.  Whatevs.

However, they do have Warwick Davis as Nikabrik.  That should be worthwhile, at least.

Of late, there has been too much talking and not enough rocking.

Came across a John Wesley Harding Christmas EP. It includes “Talking Christmas Goodwill Blues,” JWH’s 1989 take on one of my favorite Woody Guthrie songs, “Mean Talkin’ Blues.” (Sidenote: If you’d like to hear the Woody Guthrie song, it’s set to a bummer of a George Bush slideshow here on youtube.) I can’t stand to see you there all fixed up in that house so nice, I’d rather keep you in that rotten hole, with the bugs and the lice, And the roaches, and the ternamites, And the sand fleas, and the tater bugs … And the spiders, childs of the earth, The ticks and the blow-flies — These is all of my little angels That go ‘round helpin’ me do the best parts of my meanness. And mosquiters…

Woody Guthrie : Bob Dylan as Bob Dylan : John Wesley Harding, so it’s a nice sort of cross-generational/cross-continental shout-out & acknowledgment of musical debts.

There’s a fella who I always see hanging out around the building I work in. He wears cowboy boots and a leather hat and knotty shoulder-length dark hair. I think he must work in one of the restaurants in the building; I see him outside, leaning against the bricks and smoking. I am fascinated by his willful anti-hipness: he looks as though he exists in his own private Beggars Banquet universe. Rock and roll when rock and roll was still excess and hips and glamor; and not remotely literate, wholesome, or lo-fi in any way. Rock without being punk; he’s the sort whose hipness is native, not tied to age, nor associated with (and perhaps even in spite of) fluctuating standards of cool.

The Golden Compass was pretty much as I expected it. I read the series in middle school, and haven’t revisited it since, but I was surprised by how much came back to me as I watched it. I didn’t like it much when I read it then; it felt too grown up, too unsettlingly ambiguous. Not a kid’s book, really.

As a child, my taste in books was voracious and mostly uninfluenced by what was cool- I didn’t share book recommendations with anyone outside of my family, and of course I didn’t read book reviews as a nine-year-old. So, unlike my other tastes in media (which have been obviously and indelibly influenced by the opinions of others), I’ve always thought of my taste in books as somehow organic or essential. In sum: Philip Pullman rubbed me the wrong way in eighth grade; I’ve had no reason to change my mind in the intervening decade. Like Lloyd Alexander, I always thought that Philip Pullman was vastly overrated when compared to some other, lesser-known writers of young adult speculative fiction.

I might need to rethink this. According to Ritchey’s really excellent post, Philip Pullman intentionally constructed his stories to counter all the dude-centric quest tales that are the bread and butter of fantasy authors. Whenever I can find a cheap copy of The Golden Compass to reread, I’ll take a look & report back on the radical content.

Although it’s true that Philip Pullman is unusual (when compared with traditional fantasy) in creating a story with a girl at the center, I am wary of heaping too many accolades at his feet for this choice. I wouldn’t be the feminist I am today if not for all the strong-girl stories I read as a kid- Robin McKinley, Garth Nix, Jane Yolen, Ursula K. LeGuin, Angela Carter, etc. If The Golden Compass is as transgressive as Ritchey reports, then P.P. deserves credit, for sure- but there is also a girl-hero fantasy tradition out there that is both thriving & subversive.

From an installation by Dan Graham.

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Skill Share was a huge success. It snowed all day, and we had a house full of people making/learning things. We’re putting together a zine from the day; if you would like a copy, email bhamskillshare@gmail.com.

Next on the agenda:

-monthly ladies-only music parties -community band -facilitate some all-ages and/or house shows -form a couple of shredding girl bands -more zines -punk rock book club (Food Not Bombs folks) -Rock Camp for Girls B-ham -Skill Share 2?

Etc.

And SO MUCH THANKS to everyone who collaborated on Skill Share. My heart is full of love, respect, & inspiration.