The Templeton Chronicles

Your Exclusive AGOFR 2010 Calendar is Attached

2010-03-31T16:53:00.000-07:00

(Email sent to friends on December 26, 2009)

Ah...2009! What a year for the music! Who could have foretold on that fateful day so many years ago when I found that used copy of Aliens by a band with the most singular name of Horslips in Temple Bar, Dublin where the future would lead? Who could have foreseen that I would one day be sitting in a sold-out house of a venue not even yet built and listening to that same band return triumphantly to form?

But as the crowd of twelve-thousand whistled and stamped and cheered through that legendary chant of "Horslips! Horslips! Horslips!" (except for the guy two rows down for me who kept bellowing for "Sharon! Sharon! Sharon!") and the building intensity of the opening chord of the opening song exploded with the spotlight's corona into a fiery King of the Fairies, I suppose I couldn't help but wipe away a wee tear.

"Ah," I said to myself, even as I uploaded the first of fifty pictures of the Night to Facebook and Twitter fans gathered online and following along in real-time around the world. "Truly, my work here is done."

A bittersweet joy, yes, but sadly it is so.

For it must be admitted that when it comes to Celtic music, yours truly (That's me. *waves* Right here. In the flannel nightgown and just finished with the really scary episode of Dr Who with the Bowie reference) prefers the Obscure, the Overlooked, and the Unloved.

(Hence the reason I pass on Enya. One out of three is not enough.)

And in the world of Celtic music, they don't come more Obscure, or Overlooked or Unlovable than The Guireans.

It will always be one of my dearest honors to champion the music of Horslips to its much-deserved place of greatness in Irish rock music history. (And I know I follow in the footsteps of several lifelong fans who will always have my true admiration!) But how much more fun it is to champion the music of The Guireans in the very teeth of their own low-res, self-referential, belligerent obstinacy!

And then there's the quality of their music...

Yes, it must be said that my efforts to promote the Guireans have probably only succeeded in increasing the number of people who now hate them.

I do want to take a moment here and acknowledge the Dun Ringles of Stornoway, who would have been worthy successors for my fangirl devotion. Rather like their heroes in Horslips, The Dun Ringles had a triumphant Thirty Year Reunion of their own music scene (The famed Avante Gaelic Obscurist Folk Rock and note that crucial word "Obscurist" there. Yummy! And here they are with the YouTube sensation Airidhbruach.) at this last summer's Sounds on the Grounds festival. But they release albums, perform gigs and may even possibly headline the next year's Bootstock Festival in Tain.

So, you know, where's the fun in that? They're half-way to a cover story in Mojo.

But it's the Guireans who continue to forge a solitary path of musical achievement that avoids those industry cliches of pitch, rhythm, tone, rehearsal or performance. Somehow they're convinced that fame beckons anyway and they've launched the first in what we all can hope is a one-off tradition with the AGOFR 2010 Calendar.

Lovingly detailed with all the major holidays of the Outer Hebrides such as 30 Mar: Fleekeen Clapton’s Birthday, man: Public Holiday (J*e Ell*ot’s House); 2 Apr Latha na figuring out yesterday was Latha na Gogaireachd: (Airidhbhruach); 23 Sep Fleekeen Springsteen’s Birthday: Public Holiday (Thon MK II Escort in Perceval Square Car Park and featuring vignettes and folkloric scholarship of island life like:

Until it was forced to close by clean air legislation, the miasma of decaying fish offal exuded by Stornoway's Herring Byproducts plant (also known as "Tigh nan Guts" or "The Gut Factory", gave the town a distinctive and inspiring character (see the Dun Ringles' "Fish and Education").

The spectacular Xmas Lights at David Iain's are one of Sandwick's seasonal wonders, with goggle-eyed motorists from as far as Branahuie and Plasterfield braving the chicanes and speed humps of North Street especially to see them.

But there's no need for me to quote the entire calendar gem by priceless gem. Because it is attached here as my gift to you (requires some assembly. Refer to attached photo of calendar in office environment) and is now yours to enjoy and savor in the months to come! For as long as there are friends who will say "Yeah! You were right about the Dun Ringles! They were totally class. But that other band you sent....Not So Much," I will be a true and hopelessly devoted fan of the last practicing band of the once mighty genre of Avante Gaelic Obscurist Folk Rock.

(PS, I've cc'd the Guireans here so you can personally contact them and request to never hear of their music or marketing efforts again. You can really rub the salt into the wounds by writing the Dun Ringles and and tell them how excellent it was that they made the recent Horslips concert in Belfast and wish them all the best for this year's upcoming festival season in Lewis. Be sure to cc the Guireans on that one for maximum salinity.)

Happy Day After Christmas Which America Doesn't Have a Proper Name For!

Miss Templeton

(To which I received this reply)

Huidh, Huidh, Mrs T

On behalf of Plook Records CEO Coinneach, we wish to congratulate you on a top class piece of AGOFR marketing. Your message was targetted at a group who stand little chance of understanding or gaining any pleasure from the product (although admittedly that applies to pretty much everyone) and laced with sufficient factual inaccuracy to ensure that if anyone did - for some reason - experience a glimmer of interest and investigate AGOFR or the Guireans further, they would become totally bamboozled, think "fleek this for a game of soldiers" and quickly give up.

Best of all was the following:

I do want to take a moment here and acknowledge the Dun Ringles of Stornoway, who would have been worthy successors for my fangirl devotion. Rather like their heroes in Horslips, The Dun Ringles had a triumphant Thirty Year Reunion of their own music scene (The famed Avante Gaelic Obscurist Folk Rock and note that crucial word "Obscurist" there. Yummy! And here they are with the YouTube sensation Airidhbruach.) at this last summer's Sounds on the Grounds festival. But they release albums, perform gigs and may even possibly headline the next year's Bootstock Festival in Tain.

The Dun Ringles??? That there was the AGOFR Supergroup aka the "Lechends of AGOFR", which may have included some Dun Ringles but also members of the Guireans, Cyclefoot, Zing-Pop, Frogaidh Beag and many other AGOFR bands. The AGOFR Supergroup's YouTube Sensation "Airidhbhruach" is (ahem) a Guireans song. And the 30th anniversary was calculated not from the beginnings of them upstart newcomer Dun Ringles bleigeards (who have not even been 20 years on the go) but on the 1979 recording of the Guireans' first album. For it was with the Guireans and Zing-Pop that AGOFR began.

The Dun Ringles are, as you know, signed to Tape Records, bitter rivals of the Guireans' label Plook Records. The AGOFR Supergroup is an uneasy (and no doubt temporary) marriage of convenience contrived by CJ Mitchell and our Coinneach, the respective and mutually antagonistic CEOs of Tape and Plook - kind of an AGOFR Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

As EVP Marketing North America for Plook Records, you have just bigged up your rival label's flagship artistes and given them credit for the only thing your own label's top talent has produced in 30 years that anybody liked. For this display of complete AGOFR marketing genius, Coinneach is proud to promote you to Plook's Executive VP Marketing for the entire Americas and Asia/Pacific Region. So get practicing your Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, and Tagalog for 2010. Oh yus, and Pidgin as well... Coinneach reckons there's real sales potential in Papua New Guinea.

The only minor criticism we would have is that you sent out the calendar in time for next year. It would have been a more classic AGOFR marketing masterstroke to forget about it until early February 2011 and send it out when it was all too late.

Congratulations on your new appointment and we look forward to great things in 2010!

Chearaidh an dradhars agus Bliadhna Mhath Ur when it comes

The Guireans

Cuchulain of Muirthemne at the Doggie Diner

2009-04-29T07:24:00.000-07:00

The Patrick J. Dowling Library, out on 45th and Sloat, is open from 1:30 to 4:30 three days a week: Thursday, Friday and Saturday. In an exchange of emails late last month with Wendy King, the head librarian, I was told that it was a good idea to call before making any trip out to this local, volunteer-run resource of Irish literature and reference material.

So a couple of Thursdays ago, after a petty business teleconference call, I was sitting at my desk with a scratchy throat irritated by April blooming allergens and nursing a less than enthusiastic attitude toward my Outlook in-box. Easter weekend was two items on a task list away.

And that's when I had a sudden flash of intuition, picked up the phone and called. Wendy answered.

I introduced myself as the person who wrote to the Library with a wish list of reference books for a summer project and that she was the one who kindly researched these for me and found some of them in her collection. Per her suggestion, I asked her if the Library was open at the moment, adding that I guessed it probably wouldn’t be on the following day of Good Friday.

"Oh yes," she agreed. "We're here today. Not tomorrow. But we're here today. We should be open...Oh!...right now."

Was that a guilty glance at a wristwatch on the other end of the line? A hurrying step to unlock cashboxes and swing open the front doors?

"No worries," I said, "It's going to take me a while to get there. But I think I'll stop by today."

Ten minutes later, I was signed out for the afternoon with a ½ day sick day and standing on the Muni underground waiting for the L Taraval train. Playing Bejeweled on the iPhone and calculating the afternoon time I had to find and copy the material I was looking for before I needed to travel back along the same line for the 4:25 ferry home.

I had sent Wendy a list of titles that I was interested in by email. She responded immediately:

Hi Lora Lee,

I've checked out catalogs and see that the library has 6 of the 8 books on your list. I included their call numbers:

• Celtic Heritage - Ancient Tradition in Ireland and Wales - Alwyn Rees and Brinley Rees (Thames & Hudson 1961) - 398.2 REE
• The Celts - The Thomas Davis Lectures - edited by Dr. Joseph Raftery (Mercier Press 1964) – 914.06 RAFT
• Irish Sagas - The Thomas Davis Lectures - Edited by Myles Dillon (Mercier Press 1968) - 398 DIL
• Irish Myths and Legends - Eoin Neeson (Mercier Press 1965) – 398 NEE
• We have both The First Book of Irish Myths and Legends and The Second Book of Irish Myths and Legends
• Saga and Myth in Ancient Ireland - Gerard Murphy (Government Publications/Mercier Press 1961) – 398 MUR
• Cuchulain Of Muirthemne - Lady Gregory (Colin Smythe 1970) – Cuchulain of Muirtherne: Story of the Men of the Red Branch of Ulster - 398.22 GREG
• Ancient Legends of Ireland - Lady Wilde (Speranza) (O'Gorman Ltd) – Don’t have
• The Middle Kingdom - The Faerie World of Ireland - Dermot Mac Manus (Colin Smythe 1973) – Don’t have

The library is open Thursday, Friday and Saturday 1:30-4:30. It's a non-circulating library; books are not loaned out. We do have a photocopy machine -- copies are 15 cents each.

And then the part about how I should call before visiting to ensure that the library was open that I mentioned before.

Confession time now: A week before writing Wendy, I managed to bag copies of Irish Sagas and Irish Myths and Legends over at Alibris.com. Had received and read them both already on a recent trip back East. I was instantly charmed by the whole franchise, described here in the Irish Sagas intro: "Every autumn, winter, and spring since September 1953, Radio Éireann has been broadcasting half-hour lectures named in honour of Thomas Davis….to provide in popular form what is best in Irish scholarship and the sciences."

The little books themselves are nothing more than printed transcripts of those lectures. Published by Mercier Press, Cork and Ireland. And they’re classic paperbacks too; perfectly sized for purse or pocket with that spare, modern abstract graphic style that instantly says “coffee house” and “college dorm” circa sometime in the sixties.

More confession time: Earlier in the month, a lunch-hour walk to the main branch of the San Francisco library, an art-techno opulent palace for the homeless that's a block over from my office, almost delivered a chance at the Neeson and Mac Manus. Neeson even showing up on the online catalog as 'on the shelf' at that very branch! But after gliding up the Buck Rogers meets Noel Coward elevators to the third floor and walking along the long row of folklore and fairy tale in the 390s, all I found was a misfiled volume of Native American ghost myths taking Neeson’s place in the stacks. (Mac Manus showed as 'sorting' which means I'll be heading back over sometime this next week.)

Last part of confession time: I also had a remaindered copy of Cuchulain Of Muirthemne already in the house. It's even available as an iPhone app download, so how hard is that? Just pure laziness on my part to send Wendy the whole list, which was just a cut-n-paste of another email. It was only Rees, Raftery, and Neeson that I needed now.

And what am I up to with all this hunting around for set of books on Irish myth; all of which were published before 1973?

Well. I am so totally stoked you asked! Thanks!

With lunchbreak minutes from my office day and scant hour or two in the weekend free-time, I am currently attempting to write a scholarly paper for presentation this June at the Third Annual International Conference on the Ulster Cycle. The Conference will be held in late June at the University of Ulster, Coleraine, Northern Ireland. Medievalists specializing in Irish literature and history will be gathering from around the world to discuss the many facets of one of the oldest pieces of literature in Irish history which is an epic-length collection of stories that exists primarily through two manuscripts – both almost nothing more than glosses and summaries of older sources – transcribed by Christian monks in the 12th century. Rooted in an older oral tradition of almost unknown origins.

And somehow in the middle of all this: me. With my as-yet unwritten paper with no journal publication offers. Furthermore, I’m listed somewhere in the conference system as an 'independent scholar' because I'm not now, nor likely to be, affiliated with any literary department of any university.

The whole enterprise is a project so out of character for my time and place in life that I rarely mention it to anyone who knows me nine to five. I have requested the needed vacation days and I'm trying to fit the trip in with business commitments in either Berlin or San Diego. To grow a travel fund, I'm giving up morning lattes and sit-down weekday lunches and regularly eye Safeway's $5 Friday night specials and weekend coupon ads in the local paper.

he L Taraval breaches the earth's crust at West Portal Station to become a slow moving streetcar travelling past tidy garden-proud Victorians along Ulloa Street. Then it swerves at 15th over to Taraval to climb up the avenues and down to the oceanfront through a variety of mid-20th century stucco storefronts of the Sunset District.

It's all along Taraval that I'm admiring classic shop signs in Chinese and neon decorating the storefronts. A near perfect mix of neighborhood restaurants, bars, travel agencies, hair salons, dry-cleaners, liquor stores and the occasional Spanish language formalwear store with the bridal dresses and Quince Primavera ball gowns. These are the classic after-work conveniences of a local neighborhood and there’s not a major chain in sight. I love it.

One block up, I see the citrus-hued awning of Rick's and wonder if this is that great restaurant in this neighborhood where I've met up with friends and had dinner at a couple of years back. In online reviews, Rick's stands out from the rest by combining the ambience of an English pub—admittedly: as interpreted by a Californian—with a monthly full-on Hawaiian luau feast. The usual brass rail and wood trim and fern-plant of a mid-eighties urban jungle lounge, if it is indeed the place I remember. You wonder how many women were tempted away from the live music and the crowded bar of Rick's to a nearby waterbed or futon or car backseat by the promise of a chance to listen to the new Donald Fagen album. How many relationships – from one-night stand to lifetime – got their start here on a Saturday night?

But then, as the train passes, I see blank windows under the awning and dead shrubs in the planters. Brown paper across one of the glass plates. "After 29 years" and "closing its doors" are all I can read before I pass on to the next block and the next set of storefronts. And now I'm seriously bummed because this is one more gone. Three decades of small talk and singles mating dances and liquor swimming in and out of fashion papered over with a handwritten sign. Damn.

The L Taraval had been crowded with young professionals when it was underground running along Market. But now thinning out as the streets climbed into the 30s. By the time it swung left on 47th for the last leg of the journey, I'm the last remaining passenger and I can feel the chill, salt air seeping in through the window cracks, turning the promise of an early spring afternoon into a leaden grey landscape. The ocean, two blocks away, visible at every cross-street intersection.

And this isn't a placid bayside wharf of tourist traps and ferry crossings either, but the real, raw deal. The full, unfettered force of the Pacific eating away at shoreline. Wolf Larson country. Magnificent, impervious waves of white foam curl invitingly, but I even know about the rocks underneath that make them off-limits for surfing. And for those few brave souls who might be tempted to paddle out beyond the rocks: sharks – maybe even Pacific Great Whites – is what you get for your efforts.

The whole neighborhood deserted in early afternoon. Anyone who lives in these homes and is still working was finishing up their workday somewhere else down the peninsula. And the local economy was just the classic, faded signs of a beach town out of season. A few older, two-story motor court hotels in oceanliner-deco style stucco and Easter Egg blues and pinks and greens. Midcentury semi-detached houses, stucco again but brave with faintly Spanish flourishes of grillwork and arabesque, offer up their little courtyards and backyards and balconies to the cold, damp weather. Topiary, sculpted into smoothed mounds by endless ocean winds, permanently humping against walls for warmth. Over on Sloat, a bar and grill with outdoor café style seating but no takers. And, finally, the city's Zoo.

And a block over from the Zoo: The United Irish Cultural Center of San Francisco. Built in 1973 but designed with the aesthetics in an earlier decade. A mostly windowless structure covered with big, smooth boulder stone masonry on the ground floor and nondescript wood and paint on the second; both capped with a huge too-seventies Miracle Mile mansard roof for the third. This last sporting two lonely dormer windows decorated with Book of Kells style heraldry. The main door to the place covered with that sort of awning you find for the older urban restaurants with the big upholstered booths and stuffed leather covered menus with the silk tassel bookmarks. And I can personally vouch for this: one of the features of the place is a main dining room and restaurant that could do for an episode of Mad Men if the scriptwriters ever decide that Don Draper needs to visit Frisco.

There's a separate entrance on the boulder-strewn ground floor that gets me to my destination. Shivering along past Sloat Nursery (a local chain that apparently takes its name from this very street), I see the door is open and there’s a small rack of books for sale outside. Yes! Open for business!

Inside are three people: two women and one morose man who is hunched over the main desk's computer. Although he'll be there for most of my visit, he never says one word to me or to the other two women the whole time. So this is the last I'll be mentioning him.

One of the women is clearly someone's grandmother, with fluffy white hair and a pastel pearl-button cardigan. She's bent over a P-Touch labeler, working her way through a pile of books next to her, but she looks up at me with polite curiosity as I enter. The other woman, younger, is standing over her. Assisting with the P-Touch process with energetic assurance. I make the guess that she's Wendy King and she is. She's happy to see me.

"Did you bring the printout of the books you're interested in?" she asks. Right down to business!

But I have already discovered, on the L-Taraval, that I have not. I printed it out after my call and then left it on the desk in my cube. I share this.

"But it's okay. I have my iPhone!" I say and hold it up for display.

With a slight hint of disapproval at my slovenly carelessness, Wendy reminds me how she'd gone through some effort to look up the call numbers of my books in her reply email.

"Yes, but that's okay. I'll just use the iPhone to pull up your email." I say.
Wendy moves over to the desk. "I could look up the email here on the computer, if Gerald is finished..."

Whereupon Gerald (okay, so, apparently he will be part of my story) hunches protectively over the keyboard, baring his upper teeth at us. I detect a territorial issue here. Now I'm trying to assure both Wendy and him.

"No really, that's okay. I've got my own laptop too. I'll just set up the laptop and plug in the iPhone and pull up the email and we're good."

Wendy moves from disapproval to concern. Gerald has dropped out again, presumably to go back to the horse-racing stats site he's browsing. Wendy continues, laying the groundwork for my eventual disappointment.

"But we don't have Wi-Fi here," she says.

"Okay, that's fine. I have the iPhone." I hold it up again for the home audience. "It's got its own...3G thing. I just need to run power to it through the laptop."

I'm hoping I won't need to get into the explanation of why the iPhone batteries are dead, but they punked out on me right as I was reaching the West Portal station and Level 9 in Bejeweled Classic. Once again: just carelessness on my part.

"So I'll just set up now." That's me again, looking along the baseboards now for a power outlet. And it's here Wendy plays her final card.

"I'm so sorry. We only have the one working power outlet. We blew the other two out last month at the block party."

She looks back at Gerald. Obviously, that would be the one working power outlet under his feet. The one serving the desk computer he's at and the small home-use copier behind him. He doesn't even look up. The sweet old lady at the P-Touch tucks her head down into her own private Idaho, concentrating on her own concerns.

Standing there at this impasse, I realize that the transition from my office life to here has perhaps been a little too quick. Frenzied corporate energy must be snapping off me in sparks and I'm overloading what should have been a nice, quiet afternoon of compatible solitude for these three people. Maybe I should just go next door to the bar, plug in the laptop somewhere and grab a quick bite. I can even get coinage for the copier from the bar – another thing I forgot to do downtown.

But the bar is closed.

"So what I'll actually do," I explain to Wendy and the gang as I bustle back in to the place. "Is just set up the laptop to run on batteries here and then the rest of it like I said and I should be fine." Whereupon P-Touch slides her own work in close to her, courteously offering me the majority of her table's space for my work.

Waiting for laptop to power up, I look around. I realize I've only been to this place once before. Killing time waiting for another event to start next door. It's roughly the size of the first floor of my 850 square foot condo. So: approximately 420 feet? Mostly square with one little alcove off to the left of the door and another alcove behind our garrulous Gerald. From the front door to the front corner, we have the main desk and a set of file cabinets and the aforementioned alcove. Then shelving along the wall to the back in a length that allows two aisles of freestanding shelves; one of them endcapped with a genuine wooden drawer library card catalog. No power outlet required! Then the long back wall covered in shelves running its length into the alcove where they U-turn back on us and finish off the fourth wall with a periodicals rack and a small reception table. A central space for a round working table with chairs and another longer table, stunningly beautiful, with a representation of the island of Ireland in inlayed wood decorating the surface. There was a card on the table mentioning the artist and donor and I should have made an effort to write that information down. But just trust me that it was a gorgeous table. Settling into it, I thought that the place looked a lot less disorganized than I remembered from before.

Then my eyes narrow as I see some empty bookshelves.

"You aren't thinning the collection are you?" It's a little more abrupt than I meant it to be, but I have suddenly flashed on the secondhand book sale I attended out here last year. And I make the connection: where did that stock come from? I move pretty quickly from suspicion to conviction. Bastards! And to think I once thought of leaving my own library to this place in my will!

Wendy had returned to assisting P-Touch and conferring quietly with Gerald. But now she looks up at my question and smiles with proprietorial pride.

"Oh no! We're just reorganizing. We've expand our shelving and we're moving things around. For instance, we've moved the Genealogy reference section to over there." She points to the alcove behind me. "And we're actually going through books that haven't had a chance to be displayed for a while and bringing them out into the collection. I've been going through boxes and boxes in storage. I'm amazed at some of the treasures we have here! Books signed by their authors. We have Maud Gonne's autobiography signed by Maud Gonne!"

Yeah fine, whatever, but what about the book sale? That's what I'm thinking. I know the temptation...I'm organizing a yard sale of my own next weekend and the stairway is already lined with volumes on their way out the door. It's the shelf space real estate that always gets you. The husband tripping over one too many piles of books and making a federal case out of it. But Wendy keeps up with the reassurance.

"When we find a duplicate, it will go to the book sale. But no, we're not reducing our collection."

Now it becomes her turn for the questions. She asks me about this project of mine. I explain. In general terms, I describe the Ulster Cycle conference and indicate that I'll be one of the scholars presenting a paper. She enthuses and then “Now are you a teacher yourself then? Will this article be published?”

So I have to confess that I'm not your average scholar. I explain that I work for a major publisher downtown, yes, but that this is all separate from that. I admit that most people who present papers usually have a journal that will publish that paper for them or are professors in that chosen field of study.

This is embarrassing but I'm glad to go there. Because the other direction is explaining that my paper is actually a study of two separate rock bands who both, thirty years apart and independently of each other, did concept albums of this story of Maeve and Cuchulain and Ferdia and that puissant brown bull of Cuailnge and all. Like maybe the only journal that might actually publish my paper is really Classic Rock magazine or Rolling Stone or some dweeb fansite (my own, perhaps), but probably not whatever leading journal of Celtic Studies is out there.

Indeed, the reading list that brought me here is actually the same list of titles that Eamon Carr, lyricist for one of the bands, had studied back in the day when he was writing the songs for his group Horslips. Essentially, these books are the source materials for the album's concept, lyrics, artwork notes and spirit. Colin Meloy, of the Decemberists, was inspired by a book as well: Thomas Kinsella's famed 1970 translation of the Cycle which, I've been told, Carr avoided to some degree. Reading his list has been tremendously exciting because they provide me with a glimpse of the actual tools an artist I admire used to create a work of great power and importance. Within the parameters of seventies glam- and prog-rock and popular culture and rock and roll and all, that is.

Fortunately, despite my lack of university affiliation, this explanation restores my cred with Wendy. She's very interested now and asks where the paper will be presented. I mention the University of Ulster at Coleraine with a pre-emptive wince in Gerald's direction, expecting him to pounce on my mispronunciation of that name. This is a legitimate fear. For instance, I'd only learned a week before, during a phone interview with Horslips bassist Barry Devlin (who has also been extremely helpful on this project) that I'd been stressing the wrong syllable in "Kinsella" all this time. I have been practicing a list of all unfamiliar terms I’ll need to know by June ever since.

The laptop is still running through startup scripts. Waiting for it, I run an eye along the nearest shelf and I spot the Neeson titles. There! How hard was that? Didn't even need the iPhone. A couple of shelves up: the Rees! Alright then!

Wendy had mentioned in the email that there are two Neeson volumes. Flipping through to the table of contents of one and then the other, I quickly realize my target is Volume One and the chapter marked “The Combat at the Ford.” It's about twenty pages, but I quickly calculate that I'll get two-per-coin in the copier. Ten total. Fifteen cents a go. Six for a dollar with change. And I got at least two dollars in quarters. I'm rolling now! Stacking my coins like Vegas chips, I head over to the copier. But it's Wendy again.

"You found something? Great! But let me know if the toner needs replacing. It's been running low." Then she's eyeing my coins. "Oh, just keep count and we'll charge for the final total. It's not a machine that takes coins."

That's even better! I can now rack up a high charge and pay with greenbacks. I skirt around Gerald to the copier and get ready to place the book face down on the glass. Rock and roll!

But when I open the little book to the aforementioned chapter start page, I feel its binding glue snap like a KitKat bar. And I suddenly realize that this pristine paperback has made a remarkable journey from Mercier Press (Dublin or Cork) in 1965 to someone's private shelf wherever to here now where it has sat, whole and cared-for, since possibly 1973 even. Only to finally have its spine carelessly broken in 2009 because I'm too compressed for time to sit down and quietly read it, make notes and return it to the shelves.

Guilt much?

Not for Wendy.

"You'll need to really press down on it if you want a good copy," she advises.

And she's right. On my first page, the type runs down the center of the copied page into illegibility, like water running off a table. I give that spread a second go, applying a little more pressure.

"You'll have to press down harder still," she says, critically surveying my efforts. But that poor book! I can't do this. I push back.

"No, no. It's good. I can read it. Look: 'So, messengers were sent to Ferdia to bring him to Maeve's tent, for she said that she would see him herself to persuade him. But Ferdia denied, declined and refused these messengers, and refused to go with them, for he knew very well what Maeve wanted of him.'" I rattle off the wavering, distorted text from the page. "See? I got it. I'm money."

She backs off at that, but by copy page eight we've got another problem.

"Say, Wendy? Did you say you were about to replace the toner here?"

She comes over. The most recent page is a shadow of the first few.

"Can you still read it?" she asks anxiously.

I admit I can, but then the next page is even fainter still. It's dropping out on the right side of the screen first. Fortunately, Neeson's little volume is orientated toward the left side of the plate so most of the image I'm copying appears over on the side that still comes through. Wendy and I are side by side now watching each impression as it comes out. And somehow on the last page, the toner rallies and I'm done with Neeson. Whew!

Pushing my luck (and taking advantage to check in with the iPhone who has now joined our regularly televised program already in progress) I come back to the copier with the Rees volume on Celtic Heritage. In my opinion, it's only four pages on the Tain that I need here. The copier, rested, gives me a great page one. But then a waffle weave pattern of legibility shows up by page two. I catch Wendy's eye.

"Yeah, I think we need to do that toner thing now." I say.

She comes over and looks at the page. She looks up at me, almost pleading.

"Can you read that one? Can you try one more?"

I admit I can and I do. The third page is even fainter still. I look over expectantly at Wendy. Where's the new toner cartridge, I want to ask. Just give it to me and I'll swap it out. Easy-peasy. Do it all the time at the office. But she stares me down.

"We really run everything we've got to the last possible moment of use around here," she finally admits.

Yeah okay.

I run the numbers through my mind, silently. The UICC was built in 1973 by a prosperous generation abandoning San Francisco's central urban core to BART and the Vietnamese. That particular crowd would now be conserving whatever's left of its energy for its own private needs. And we can guess that their children are paying off mortgages and car payments and building their own children's college funds somewhere down the Peninsula. And then generation after that is going to Daly City High School and downloading Flogging Molly songs off iTunes.

Membership-fund attrition is what I'm talking about at here. And as soon as this recession clears, some sharp-eyed developer (and there's always a sharp-eyed developer in this town) is going to come along and see an oceanfront neighborhood renaissance in the form of luxury condos where this place once stood. The mere fact it didn't become a Medieval Times theme restaurant sometime in the early 90s is already a triumph against the odds.

I close my eyes and add it to my personal litany: newsstands, newspapers, amusement arcades, tiki bars, San Jose psychedelic bands denied their place in rock history, independent record stores, Market Street bookshops, the unique character of longtime urban neighborhoods, honeybees, immigrant-founded community centers and now this: a small, volunteer-run library operating with a single power outlet and a failing printer cartridge and hanging off the edge of America.

Okay you know what, people? Someone's going to have to start meeting me halfway here, because I can't save you all.

I make the last page of Rees (which held only one upper left-handed side paragraph I truly needed because I can study up on the Ossianic cycle some other time) and back away from the copier. I look at Wendy and make my offer.

"If I wanted to help out, you know, with your Library here...I'm thinking it would be better for me to donate something like printer toner, right?" I just say it like that. "You know. Instead of donating books?"

"There are many ways to help out," Wendy responds. "By paying for these copies, you are contributing to our budget. By buying from our booksales, you help. And if you do donate books and they duplicate something in the collection, you help again by adding to the booksale."

So there's nothing for it now but to step outside into the cold to see what's on the secondhand cart that can qualify for a pity-buy. And that's when I spot one of the other icons in the neighborhood: the old Doggie Diner sign that the City of San Francisco has installed on a metal pole on Sloat.

There's a story here too:

The Doggie Diner sign is San Francisco's favorite beleaguered would-be landmark. In March 2000, the Board of Supervisors responded to a rally by members of the Ocean Beach Historical Society and others to save the kitschy sign after owner Sloat Garden Center went public with intentions to remove it from the spot it has occupied since the early '70s. The Board declined to make the fiberglass sign an official City landmark but agreed to assume ownership of it and to keep it in its original location outside the Carousel Restaurant until at least 2005. Barely more than a year under the care of City officials, the sign was knocked over during a gust of wind and fell onto Sloat Boulevard, mangling the pooch's nose. Horrified fans of the sign expressed disappointment that the city did not act sooner to repair the rusty 20-ft. pole on which the sign sat, despite their frequent requests and the availability of volunteer assistance from Painters Union Local 4. The Doggie Diner sign was repaired by the City and returned to its location on Sloat Boulevard on June 30, 2001. The sparkling refurbished sign is said to be very close to its original appearance. The huge head was one of many that once dotted the Bay Area at Doggie Diner fast food hot dog joints more than thirty years ago. For fans of the pup its appeal needs no explanation, rousing a sense of play and harking - or barking - back to carefree days of childhood.

I had so forgotten that Doggie Diner sign! He smirks down at me, like he's trying to catch my eye and tell me something.

Here's what he says.

Well just check out little Miss You with all your gloom and doom in a laptop carrying bag! This is nothing more than a foggy Thursday afternoon in Ocean Beach. Early Spring San Francisco with fog! Damn, maybe we'd better call KTVU with that breaking news story, huh?

And then there's this collapse of the authentic urban community kick you're on. Get over yourself! What do you know about the Cultural Center? You thought the Novato I.D.E.S. Hall was a boarded-up property headed for foreclosure until Chuck Graham invited you to that Festa of the Holy Spirit in 2006 and everyone in the world and their grandmother was there bidding on the auction before the disco dance and muscling in on a second helping of sopa. Yeah let me tell you, Miss Thing, you should see THIS place when the Rose of Tralee dinner happens in May. You think you can find street parking around here? Forget about it!

And finally, what's all this angst about things needing to last forever anyway? They don't! Here's another newsflash for you: forces of oblivion gather around us all. Believe it. But for those things that bring us joy or define our better selves or gather us as a community...when they're worth remembering, there's always someone working on a way to pass them along. You can just bet on that, sister! They write it down or put up a statue or make painting or a song or collect a bunch of it together or find whatever way they need to find to give it some other kind of chance at making it a little further along down the line. And, sure yeah, maybe those forces of oblivion claim more than we can all save, just like ocean waves eating away at a coastline, but it happens and it just makes the things we save all the more valued and loved. So buck up!

It's a lot of wisdom for a fiberglass doghead wearing a chef's hat to impart, but he manages it. I'm cheered.

Coming back inside to pay for my copies and my pick from the secondhand cart, (It's a collection of James Joyce's poetry...it's not what he's best known for, but you know: another fifty cents for the effort here...) I find that Gerald has now fecked off to parts unknown. Maybe the bar next door has opened for business for the after work crowd. The sweet old lady is still hard at work at the P-Touch; however, and Wendy, now sitting at the main desk, takes my money and counts the change with bustling efficiency.

"I gotta say this has been a great help today," I tell her. "This is a great library. Are there others like this that you know of?"

Wendy tells me that there are at least two she's in contact with. "There's a big one in Chicago. They've bought an old school as their building. And there's one in New York City. The Irish-American Library. I'm not sure about Boston. But there's probably one in Boston. You would think."

I contribute my two cents. "Sure. That makes sense about Chicago. I know there's a huge trad music archive there. The Ward Music Archives. I'm on their fanpage on Facebook."

"Now where are you going to give this paper again?" Wendy is asking as I stuff the last of my things back into the laptop bag. I repeat the part about the University of Ulster at Coleraine. She hands me her business card.

"Will you tell them about us?" she asks. "That's how we can continue. When people know about us and support our efforts. Take as many business cards as you need. Just be sure to mention us to anyone interested if you can."

And I promised her that I would.

Vieux Carre in the Rare Old Times

2009-04-11T13:27:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I have a Danny Boy story.

For this, we must journey back to Mardi Gras week, 2004, New Orleans Louisiana. It's an 'on the cheap' trip with us staying at the house of our close friends Steve and Maureen Pisani. My husband Jef and I have been told that, along with good friends Dorene and Steve, we're practically guardians of Brian, their son. In the event of...which hasn’t happened I might add! And won't either!! But on that day Steve and Maureen were downstairs asking my husband to be a part of their son's future, I was upstairs teaching Brian how to sing Damn it Feels Good to be a Gangsta and we watched skateboard videos on the Internet. So you can tell I'm the right choice for the task.

I mention this background business only to show how these people and I are practically family. Also with us are Dorene Giacopini, second generation Sicilian-American, who works for California State Gov’t and, rounding out the party, everyone’s friend Owen, the role play gaming/computer geek who was worth many millions before the dot.com crash. (Now only worth *just* a few million. Guess that Oracle stock was a safe bet.)

Other members of the cast include Maureen's extended family of friends and relatives of the greater Metairie suburban area. And the dregs of every frat house in Mississippi in town for the week. And also asst'd prostitutes; freaked-out evangelicals; overweight tourists; and vampire goths. And Uncle Bobby! (We'd spent an earlier vacation with the Pisanis in Key West, where -- rather ironically -- Uncle Bobby had the last of his heterosexual relationships with a couple of waitresses and a snowbird or two. This was the year his son made it to Jesuit college, and Uncle Bobby had just divorced the wife of many years. Less than six months after that, he re-emerged as a 'confirmed bachelor' in classic Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil style. This year was his debut at one of the more exclusive same-sex balls.)

It was all madness. And things get noticeably more intense as the big day looms. On Monday, we'd spent the day with a morning history walk through the Quarter for propriety's sake, but were drinking pretty steadily by 11:00 a.m. on. I remember people throwing free airline-size bottles of tequila from a balcony and I had pocketed a tidy supply. The goal was to find and maintain a responsibly mellow buzz without toppling into full oblivion.

The main event of the evening was the Orpheus parade, introduced only recently by Harry Connick, Jr. Absolutely beautiful floats and stunning presentations. (I was now a jaded connoisseur of the things after my fourth parade or so). And by then, we'd all managed the art of getting the people on the float to chuck their beads, cups, medallions or whatever they had at us.

Not with the tacky method most assume is expected. It was really more about persistence and some other weird alchemy between you and the masked person on the float. It is marketing at its rawest.

I did also discover that a small child with a winning smile works well too. Get out there in the street and hustle it, Brian!

All of this is to say that by 9:00 p.m., we are quite drunk and dripping with beads from our necks, our arms, our belts, and hauling overloaded, sagging bags of more. Owen, in particular, looked like some kind of hybrid between the Holbein portrait of Henry VIII and a network publicity still of Mr. T.

And that’s about the time Maureen's friend says "Do you want to go to Danny O'Flaherty's Irish Channel Bar now?"

Did I want to go to Danny O'Flaherty's Irish Channel Bar? Of COURSE, I want to go to Danny O'Flaherty's Irish Channel Bar! Not only did it fulfill the requirements of my yearlong strategy of avoiding amateur nights by displacing the holiday theme (as in: spending St Patrick's Day at a Chinese restaurant, Cinco De Mayo at Moylan's, Chinese New Year at Las Guitarras), but also because I'd been hearing about Danny O'Flaherty ever since I'd arrived.

(Now these are all real people in this story. There are probably connections and degrees of separation that I can't begin to fathom. My full and complete apologies for anything inappropriate in what follows. But does that stop me? Not. One. Bit.)

From what I'd been told, Danny O'Flaherty was pretty special. I gathered that he and Maureen's friend had had 'a thing' some time before. I also gathered that, as a local woman, she wasn't alone in this distinction. She offered to be our guide and introduction to the evening.

Also, Maureen's house was about three blocks from the old Channel that made the City possible. It was dug by Irish immigrant labor in the 1830s (because the African-American labor was considered a more expensive commodity) and then filled and paved over in 1950. Sometime along in 1990, I was told, Mr. O'Flaherty paid the big bucks for a very cool memorial to those workers of the previous century. We’d see it out in the middle of the green space of the old channel every day on our morning walks. It took a few days to actually get out to it to read the plaque, because whenever you left the sidewalk, your feet would sink into a soft mass of grass, mud, and rapidly rising lake-fed water.

So yes! By all means. Let's go to O'Flaherty's!

A long, hallway entrance dividing a bar space from a larger room. "Dinner?" said the man taking our door-fee. "It's buffet service only. And you'd be in the Ballad Room. If you are here to 'party' you can just go straight into the bar.* Dining Only in the Ballad Room. Danny's performing tonight."

(*The bar was called the Informer. Danny is very proud of his Literary Connections.)

We looked at our local Virgil for the night. She nodded toward the Ballad Room. "Remember," she whispered, "You are here to listen. Danny doesn't like rowdy behavior in the Ballad Room."

Yeah, okay. I'll remind you: it's Mardi Gras week. All over the City people were pushing themselves into the last 24 hours of riotous, carnal abandon. Whereas we were sheepishly flattening our hair into respectability and looking for the font of Holy Water to bless ourselves with before entering the Ballad Room.

Where there were approximately nine other patrons. And on stage: the one and only Daniel O'Flaherty. Accompanied by a youngish man on keyboards that I -- please remember I'd been drinking tequila for at least eight hours! -- that I cruelly nicknamed Bono Baggins within the first five minutes.

But we settled down with our very excellent plates of jambalaya. Which goes quite nicely with Jameson. (Whether Jameson goes with Tequila is another question...but there’s Ash Wednesday to find that one out, isn’t there?) And Danny graced us all with his musical presence. Maureen's friend casting submissive, doe-eyed glances at the stage whenever his gaze raked past our table.

So it was maybe four songs and most of the first shot of Jameson, into the set that he then gave us "In the Rare Old Times," a song by Pete St. John that I knew, yes, but only through the ramped-up punk and unintelligible version from LA band Flogging Molly. (2002)

But here it was slowed down and the keywords I recognized "Dublin... cooper... house... Peggy... child of Mary... black as coal... in the rare old times..." were now unfolding themselves into a fully developed narrative. One that was cutting through my tequila buzz like an extremely bright sunrise on a severe hangover.

"My God," I remember saying to my husband. "When you slow it down and can hear the lyrics, this song is really f*ck*ng depressing!"

And God forgive me but for some reason the only thing I could do with that epiphany was to start giggling. Which immediately brought our table to the attention of Mr O'Flaherty, who broke off mid-verse:

"This is the LAST year I'm going to work this town during Mardi Gras," he snapped. "All these out-of-towners. They don't know how to listen to good music. They have no respect for our City."

Everyone at the table (and the two or three other people in the room) gave me a look of pure disdain. The uncouth Yank in their midst. I was sobering up fast and ducked my head in some semblance of apology.

The set resumes and we order another round. By now, the place is starting to fill up a little bit with other patrons -- all of them clearly making the last stop of the night from some other event. An hour after his initial chastisement of me, Danny is back in a mellow mood. A couple across the room in formal dress (he in a tux; she in a full ballroom dancer chiffon evening gown) are now digging the vibe. They're clearly establishing a cozy rapport with Danny by the time the lady orders another round.

By now, Danny is the genial, expansive host. (Only slightly making a point of ignoring my table as the pit of unshaved Yahoos it clearly is...) "Any requests from the audience?" he asks, spreading arms to encompass all sixteen of us. Chiffon Evening Gown takes the floor with a whiskey and cigarette accent that tells me she's been by that free-air Tequila balcony too.

"You know what I want to hear?" she slurs. "There's a song you can sing for me. There's a song. A special song. Back in Chicago, this was the song..."

Now I'm not normally psychic by nature, but something warned me in those last moments. That mention of Chicago, maybe. I should have started some distraction right then and there. Evening Gown gestures to her husband for confirmation:

"You know the song I want, don't you, honey? C'me-on, you know the song. I know everyone asks for it, but I just want to hear it tonight."

And that's when she requests "Danny Boy."

At that point, the title of 'Worst. Patron. Ever.' passed from me to her. You could feel the electric charge as it flew across the room. And O'Flaherty went ballistic. A full ten-minute lecture on anything and everything followed. A complete history of all of it. At one point Dorene (second-generation SICILIAN, I remind you!) leaned over and said "You people really hold on to stuff, don't you?"

Meanwhile I was beginning to match the dress of this hapless couple with the dignitaries I'd seen on the main float of the evening's parade. "Jesus, Dorene!" I whispered. "They were on the main Orpheus float! They're total New Orleans aristocracy. O'Flaherty better not need a building permit from City Hall anytime soon!"

The flustered lady, by now fully humiliated, exits to the restroom. I go into group conciliation mode. "Nancy Spain!" I start yelling, trying to get to my feet and attract O'Flaherty's attention. "Let's hear Nancy Spain!"

Bono Baggins (whom I've kinda bonded with by this point by realizing he's a decent musician trying to hold on to a difficult gig) smiles over at that. "That's good. He likes Christy Moore," says Bono. "Imagine my surprise at this news," I want to tell him back. Instead: a brainstorm "Lakes of Pontchartrain! PLEASE play Lakes of Pontchartrain."

Danny, probably coming to his senses on when and where it's appropriate to lecture patrons [hint: maybe not during Mardi Gras week], inquires somewhat kindly of the missing lady. When she returns to collect her accessories, he hastily goes into the "Land of Joy" variant of the song she requested. The couple stays for that one and then make their dignified exit. After that we get Lakes of Pontchartrain.

Maureen's friend never speaks directly to me for the rest of the visit.

But we all went back the next two nights and had a great time with Beth Patterson, who did a viciously humorous imitation of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in a song about the Titanic, in the cozier and more informal nook of the Informer. Bought some of her CDs and eventually flew home.

It was a great trip. Give it up, y'all. For New Orleans.

The Irish Channel Bar did not survive Katrina.

Best [Rediscovery] of 2007 (3) "With your head held high and your scarlet lies, you came down to me from the open skies..."

2008-01-15T15:22:00.001-08:00

First

you hear a contrail echo in the sky. A distant flight. Then celestial chords. On heaven's own synthesizer. They are spread apart...even, paced, a majestically slow sequence; as if across a greater space. A void. Remote beauty. Cold. A major key’s inevitable descent down the scale. It could be the soundtrack for the stately elegance of humanity's great things collapsing in slow-motion. The booster rocket drops away, the capsule escapes the bonds of gravity for only a moment and then tragedy's televised burst of flame for eternal replay. Little rills of sequenced notes running alongside this; remoras swimming in a great white's rippling wake.

It's that quaint twentieth-century fear: civilization's eventual decay. That timeless teen-age preoccupation: the adult world is not going to be what I need it to be.

And then: a voice.

“Just on the border of your waking mind,
there lies another time
Where darkness and light are one.
And as you tread the halls of sanity
You feel so glad to be
Unable to go beyond.
I have a message from another time”

What is it about the vocoder? Ensnaring the sound of human speech in some mechanized parody of self? More importantly, what is it about the teenage male and robots? All those Transformers and RoboCops and Terminators and other clanking, lumbering, destructive, unlovable things? But when the robot is of a feminine gender...here's where you'll find the under-the-mattress dreams of pulp and porn: Cherry 2000, Blade Runner, Maria of Metropolis, Tin Lizzy. The design of desire.

Maybe some social psychologist can help me figure this one out.

“I have a message from another time”

1981 is not the year for concept album rock. Sure, Pink Floyd has rolled like a juggernaut into the new decade with their double-disc misogynistic bit of boomer self-pity. But it's the movie holding this one together, along with countless Laserium shows in all those science museums turned party zones for the night. (And what teenager isn't going to buy a song with a chorus in piss-poor grammar stating "We don't need no education?" How long did A&R kick that one around in marketing?)

Canny casting of New Wave lion Bob Geldof as "Pink" doesn't hurt either, and he delivers an exceptionally good performance as a self-involved rock star tortured by phone calls home to the wife who *spoiler alert* has this Alan Rickman sound-alike warming her sheets while our boy Pink passes his time in the States with his own 'dirty woman' complete with her American accent; a particularly dim groupie who seems to be unable to process the startling fact that a musician might own more than one guitar.

It's eerie, actually, how good Geldof does this role.

But a nation's worth of laserium nightshows only goes so far in this brave, new decade and the rock concept album is just another skeletal triceratops in the unlit Hall of Geology next door.

“I have a message from another time”

Also, 1981 is the year that cable television will alter the music industry’s landscape forever because it’s the year that...

“I have a message from another time”

By all standards, Xanadu should have been one of the greats. Starring red-hot Olivia Newton John, looking even better than she did during her term at Rydell High only two summers before. Music from one of the leading stadium/prog-rock bands so well known that all that sufficed to advertise their presence in town was an emblem of a jukebox-hued, chrome-fitted spaceship on the concert poster. Beautiful, bronzed, buff Los Angeles setting. A healthy, athletic cast ready for the 80s. New dance craze touted as disco's latest; disco’s best. Missing only the golden touch of producer Robert Stigwood, who previously defined an earlier decade with a single camera shot tracking John Travolta's hardware store-bound ass. Is that where it went wrong?

But, look, you really need to remember that Stigwood had misfired himself a summer or two before with his own voluptuous cinematic mess of Beatle songs and Bee Gee hairstyles. And if Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band was the warning shot across concept rock's bow, Xanadu was the poorly mounted cannon that left its carriage on a long, lethal, careening path across all decks. Dragging broken main mast and tangled rigging on its final pitch overboard. Taking nearly all of the passengers and crew to the bottom with it.

How does a respectable rock band crawl back to shore from that?

“I have a message from another time”

and

Now

THERE’S

sudden freefall back into gravity's pull, asteroid swiftness, a fiery weight burning off in the thickening atmosphere...and none of this celestial chord business either. You get four solid notes. Three notes climbing and then a jump to the fifth in the sequence. Once. Then Twice. A third time. On the fourth repetition, the open sequence closes with a drop from that fifth to the fourth in the set. Once more on the full five to be sure it has your attention. Somewhere along the way you also get drums. Guitars. Rock and Roll.

The last of the great concept rock albums is underway.

Best of 2007 (2) "You've got no eyelids and sweet Ella loves me so..."

2008-01-03T17:48:00.000-08:00

Heathrow Airport, once you've made it past the ticketing counter, baggage check and overturned anthill that is the security gate, has its charms. For one thing: alcohol is sold at several venues, including a passably accurate Irish bar, 24/7. The same cannot be said for the airport in Atlanta, as I discovered to my chagrin this last summer.

But, with hours to spare before the trans-atlantic flight home, a round of impulse buys at that HMV kiosk. Email written shortly after on one of the many little "five-online-minutes-for-one-pound/two-Euro" Internet stations:

I'm certainly in the Heathrow terminal bound for San Francisco. Just across from me a group of college-age kids are sharing an acoustic guitar and singing whatever comes into their mind. One of them with beard and bandanna just did the old Four Non-Blonds anthem from the early nineties "What's Going On" ("Twenty five years and my life is still/Trying to get up that great big hill of hope...")-- which I'll admit to liking even after saturation airplay back in the day.

I can't believe I just described the early nineties as 'back in the day!'

Allowed myself a brief shopping spree in the terminal kiosk of HMV records and here's what I scored

--The Fratellis - Costello Music ("Indecently Rousing" says the Independent on the sticker promo and that's good enough for me!)
--Fields - Everything Last Winter ("2007 will surely be theirs" enthuses NME)

Both of these purchased on instinct based on album artwork that they might be worth checking out

and then:

--Sting - Songs from the Labyrinth featuring the music of Elizabethan songwriter John Dowland

From the moment I saw it, I said "But of COURSE Sting would have to do a John Dowland album!" Not that I'm much of an expert there, but Maddy Prior and the Carneval Band did something with Dowland some time ago and it was such a lugubrious track on the otherwise sprightly CD I had to research further. Read up on him in Wikipedia. And now: perfect. Sting. John Dowland. What more could a publicist want?

Off to grab one last pint. The only nice thing about airports is that all proper times for civilization are abandoned and people can breakfast whenever they want, drink cocktails whenever they want, and sleep whenever they want!

Sting? The Fields? Yeah, I think I listened to those CDs a couple of times.

But the Fratellis? Oh yes...

And it's alright, she'll be sucking fingers all night
Wearing those shoes, oh any excuse to go to the gang fight
And oh she's alright, everybody says she's uptight
Sick in the head, first in the bed
So easy to be Friday's wonder

That's what I'm talking about...

"Lady in velvet recedes in the nights of good-bye"

2007-12-31T20:34:00.000-08:00

Best of 2007 (1) "So wait for the stone on your window...your window..."

2007-12-14T16:50:00.000-08:00

Everybody's heard the story. The Decemberists were a indie band from Portland, Oregon that had the nerve to do a concept album based on the ancient Irish epic The Tain. That was late 2004 and I, ever the intrepid Horslips fan I, went to see these upstarts at the Great American Music Hall.

And walked away with four of their early efforts.

But like Peter before the crowing cock, I denied them within the Horslips circle of fans and quietly muffled my own opinions that a great epic can have many versions and perhaps even needed one from an American band struggling to give voice to alternative viewpoints in the shadow of the early years of Iraq.

2007 found the Decemberists on a major label, with sell-out gigs at the Village in Dublin and at the Warfield in San Francisco, and on sale at the counters of Starbucks across the nation. That an album featuring the deeply chilling ballad "Shankill Butchers" could sit side by side with biscotti and half-dipped dark-chocolate madeleines of the Frappacinos and half-caf mochas of the world should surely be one of the year's signature moments.

I had the opportunity to hear Colin Meloy sing an acoustic version of this on KFOGs morning show. Romeo and Juliet in South Central. Same as it ever was...

"He kept a shop in London town,Of fancy clients and good renown..."

2007-12-07T14:02:00.000-08:00

A recent splash ad on MySpace tells me there's a new Johnny Depp movie in the offing. A Tim Burton/Johnny Depp venture, which should be about as good as it gets. And perfect for the holidays too: a musical in a nineteenth century London setting. That's Dickens Town, by golly! City of chimney sweeps and cherubic pickpockets and parlor games at the nephew’s and Tiny Tim, who did NOT die, casting a universal benediction on us all. Or, even later along in the century, a child’s deceptive haven of waistcoated rabbits visiting from Oxford and mischievous pixie fairies who live in the Park. Where nannies float down from the coal-soot skies and little lost boys in search of their shadows tap on the nursery windowpane.

But, of course, Mr. Depp is not giving us a new Ebenezer or Mr. Banks or Captain Hook (though the last IS a thought...just sayin'). Instead, his own gallery of risky performances will now include the doomed story of Benjamin Barker, Fleet Street barber convicted of a false crime and sent to Australia. But escaped, and returning home and searching for wife long lost and child long grown.

London London London. Damn me. London.

My first trip over in July 2002, I spent two days on my own in London. World Cup Weekend it was. Using Travelocity, I originally booked some delightful sounding place, but co-workers reading the postal code on my reservation form told me I was well away from City center. So a hasty reshuffling landed me the only reasonable vacancy, something near the Gloucester Station on Cromwell Road (yeah, not forgetting that soon). Later I realized from reading Mrs. Palfrey, a novel by Elizabeth Taylor (No. Not THAT Elizabeth Taylor. The other one.), that I might have been staying in what was more akin to pensioners housing offering a semblance of self-sufficiency in the City and a tenuous toe-hold on middle class respectability. Which would explain the enormous pile of empty gin bottles collecting on the back stoop. But it was cheap and within (what I, urban hill-climber that I am, considered) walking distance to Harrods.

After checking in early in the mid-morning, I headed off in a quest of food and City fun. Slight confusion as the streets twisted and turned about and I was seeing less commercial and more residential and a directional sign saying "Shepherd's Bush" and, drawing on my history of the Who, I knew I was headed in the wrong direction. Back again and finding the Gloucester Station shopping area, I went inside to the first lunch counter I saw and ordered a meat pie. When it arrived, all steamy and flaking, I crooned down to it: "Mrs. Mooney has a pie shop. Does a business, but I've noticed something weird. Lately all her neighbors' cats have disappeared. Wouldn't do in my shop! Just the thought of it is enough to make you sick. And I'm tellin' you...them pussy cats is quick!" And the waitperson behind the counter hustled me out into the street.

Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd...

Stephen Sondheim's masterpiece. Listen ye, Andrew Lloyd Weber, and grovel before it.

What doesn't this musical have? Escaped convict, vengeance, lust, barber chairs and medicine shows, cannibalism, madhouses and lunatics, sailors and holiday seaside songs, beggar women whores, corrupt government officials, true love and tragedy. And meat pies. God, that’s good.

Still, I'll confess that I'm more than a little worried about Helena Bonham Carter here. We're not seeing much of her in the preview and we're hearing less. Mind you, I saw the great Lansbury her very own self bring the doting, daffy and quite dangerous Mrs. Lovett to life on the stage in '79. And this after weeks of listening to the original Broadway cast recording of the whole thing so that I would know each bawdy pun and wheedling caress of her voice by heart and can type all this from memory even now.* A canny businesswoman, first and always: "What's my secret? Frankly dear, forgive me candor. Family secret. All to do with herbs. (And mind, now: pronounce that 'H') Things like bein' careful with your coriander. That’s what makes the gravy grander!" A tender mother's heart of tatted doilies and seaside mementos denied its rightful place in the safe haven of home and family: "Nothing's going to harm you, Toby, not while I'm around." A spurned and desperate lover: "Your Lucy! A crazy hag picking bones and rotten spuds out of alley ashcans? Would you wanted to know she ended like that? Yes, I lied because I love you. I've been TWICE the wife she was! Could that THING have cared for you like me...?"

Oh it's a GREAT role. Ms. Carter better be up to it!

But I'm not in London this December. That's breaking a personal record, though we have hopes for January. Still, if I'm not there, the Duke de Mondo is and I’m trying my level best to not be consumed with a deep, resentful envy as a result. Which makes it all the harder to say that his new blog London in Broken C is every bit as good as anything he's written in the past. As with his Dublin of Sinead and the Savage Purple and hometown Belfast, another world-famous metropolis has found in the Duke an able chronicler for the new millennium of all of its wild attractions, its inexplicable eccentricities and its ageless sorrows.

*I'm onboard the Mendocino at this very moment, so there's no Google on hand to double-check. Of course, I could only post this later when next online, but I swear: straight from memory.

ByeSpace? (2) "I am a Rock, I am an Island..."

2007-12-05T06:00:00.000-08:00

And I am a Vampire (Catholic Schoolgirl class); right-brained; attending the world's largest Octoberfest; in possession of an IQ 15 points lower than my friend Mal McGinley of Antrim; in a torrid 'poking' contest with photographer Sean Hennessy; a member in good standing of the HUGE Horslips and Horslypse fanclub; and rating local restaurants and my exhaustive CD collection.

Yes, I am on Facebook.

Sometime in October, Birmingham-based guitarist Joe Forde enticed me over to Facebook, the social networking site eclipsing ole MySpace in the buzz. By November, something else was eclipsing Facebook, (It's LinkedIn my coworkers affirm and I'm there too, but strictly for professional reasons. No Zombie Games need apply.) but I found myself enjoying it anyway. Until the constant round of apps started piling up and I thought "What am I to my friends? Some 'chump' (that's a vampire victim in the game, actually) who's gonna sit down and participate in every little interactive piece of stickiness that a Silicon Valley nerd came up with on their lunch hour?

Facebook Fatigue hit approximately 26.5 days after signing up. I needed to go somewhere quiet to rest. And so, back to MySpace. Where the honest hustle of flash animated ads of Britney Spears being shaved by that creepy looking doctor felt almost like instant nostalgia. I logged on. THESE were my real friends!

And bloody hell! I had over 480 of them! Who ARE these people? A recent article in the Wall Street Journal states that we all have a ceiling on the personal contacts we can manage to maintain in our lives. That number: 150.

I had nearly 500 in the Horslips profile alone. 220 in my poetry/lit profile. And nearly 1500 in the Irish pub and ballad profile. Quoting Joni Mitchell:

"I do my best
And I do good business
There's a lot of people asking for my time
They're trying to get ahead
They're trying to be a good friend of mine"

And trust me: after the first few weeks in '06 of making friends with friends, I vetted each request carefully with the following guidelines:

if you are a voluptuous blonde with an 'i' ending first name (Candi, Brandi, Bambi, etc), you better have at least The Waterboys listed as one of your favorite bands
if you are a young, sculpted, dark-haired lad with puppy-dog eyes and a Mediterranean tan, it doesn't necessarily have to be The Waterboys. Big Country will suffice.

Seriously, I did use the following as warning signs to quickly cull some of requests:

obvious political banners/mottoes/messages.
band that falls completely outside of the genres I've indicated interest in.
band with more than 1,000 friends (harsh because I had 1,300 friends myself by this point on the pub profile -- but remember: I'm not the one out there building a mass mailing list).
band that isn't based in Ireland/Scotland/England/Wales or the great pub cities of America. Recently added Germany and Netherlands as "I'll give your song a longer listen" countries because I am digging some of the great stuff from those scenes!
excessive use of glitter gifs in profile/avatars.
Ponies and seascapes are a warning sign too.
anyone who hasn't bothered to edit their profile beyond the basic "Tom of MySpace" look.
anyone who hasn't bothered to kick Tom out of their Top Eight friends.
anyone who mentions "real estate" "vitamins" "investment" in their 'About Me' section.
guns or balaclavas in profile/avatars. Click. (But do LOVE the new Artic Monkeys song!)
red font on black background is not Goth. It is just hard to read. Click.
same thing goes for the jpeg that's too small to tile as wallpaper attractively. Click.
the American flag is inspiring, true, and we all love eagles. But. In. Moderation. Click!!
I'm sorry, was that Loreena McKennitt I saw listed in your influences? SO click.
Yes, I'm proud to be Irish and/or American too, but I don't seem to need to mention it quite so often!
okay, you know, everyone else's MySpace page only took two seconds to load. What was the freakin' hold-up with yours? Believe me, it wasn't worth the wait.
(Here's the actual page that generated this part of my rant: blueflashinglightmeup)

This is not to say that I haven't made firm, fast friends with some people who broke these rules. For example, The Guireans of Sandwick, Isle of Lewis have done f*ck all for style and presentation on their MySpace page, but they are head and shoulders above any other friend I made for inventiveness, originality and true artistic achievement:

The Guireans

Yet even with this stringent guideline, I still find myself up to the neck in chain letter bulletins and self-advertising comments. And now is the time I'm expected to go around and wish Holiday greetings to the lot.

480 friends? Caroline Astor managed with just 400 and she had a big house. It was time to start cleaning mine.

(Stay Tuned)

Hot for Preacher (3) - Chapter One: I am Born

2007-10-12T16:53:00.000-07:00

And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them; and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.
2 Luke, 8:10, Bartleby.com

Coll: Something's wrong with this baby.
Gib: I'll say: he looks like our sheep!
Coll: Let me see, Gib! (Mak and Jill try to escape)
Daw: I see thieves trying to sneak away!
Gib: That was clever. I've never seen anything like it.
Coll: What a fraud!
Daw: Yes, men, wasn't it? Let's tie her up and bind her fast. A false scold when she's caught hangs at last. Look how they swaddled his four feet in the middle?
I've never seen a horned baby in a cradle before. I know him by his ear-mark. He's ours.
The Wakefield Second Shepherd's Play, a medieval retelling of the Nativity and some other stuff, translation by Karen Saupe.

Paul was a cranky baby. He cried most of the day. Peace only settled on the new house after he went to bed where, exhausted from the trauma of his waking hours, he slept long and soundly. Iris tried all known methods to still the noise coming from the cot. Her sister Ruth would come over to lend a hand. Onagh Byrne, a sympathetic neighbour from two doors along, was also enlisted to help pacify Paul. Norman, who was now a sensible eight-year-old, often walked his young brother around the block to give Iris a break.

David Lee Roth was born on October 10, 1953, in Bloomington, Indiana, where his achievement-oriented father, Nathan, went to medical school.

Iris was sure something was wrong. Nobody would cry like that just for attention. When he was two, Iris took Paul to Dr. Lee Kidney, a noted specialist at Crumlin Children's Hospital.

David was an energetic kid, but he was plagued by allergies and fought with health problems that forced him to wear leg braces from almost the time he could walk until age four. Then he was shipped off to therapy for the better part of a decade. At nine years old, he began three intensive years of clinical treatment for hyperactivity. He had a few healthy outlets--Roth's parents called his dinner-hour routines "Monkey Hour," when he acted out cartoons and sang revved-up vaudeville songs for dinner guests.

Dr. Kidney couldn't find anything wrong with his young patient but suggested he stay in the hospital for a week for observation. The good news, seven days later, was that Paul was healthy and normal.

Everyone else was simply having trouble playing their part in his continuous mental picture show, a fast, animated flipbook of MAD magazine and Playboy.

The bad news was that he was unlikely to stop seeking attention.

...his roots were knotted tightly around the Old World--his grandparents were Ukrainian Jews who traded the mountains and steppes of Eastern Europe for the sweltering cornfields of the Midwest. In fact, all four of his grandparents spoke Russian. "My great-granddaddy died dancing," he later joked with a TV interviewer, "at the end of a rope."

Hot for Preacher (2) - A Brief News Update

2007-09-28T03:40:00.001-07:00

Bono Awarded Liberty Medal

U2 frontman Bono has been awarded the Liberty Medal in Philadelphia. The award is given annually and recognises leadership in the pursuit of freedom.

...

After being awarded with the medal, Bono paid tribute to the US, saying: "In the American body politic there's no poetry like the poetry of the Declaration Of Independence and the Constitution.

Actually, I happen to be pretty fond of Casey at the Bat. And there's still bars up in Sitka where a spirited recitation of The Cremation of Sam McGee will set you up with free rounds of Yukon Jack for the night. (Technically, that one's Canadian, but none other than Seamus Heaney has cited it as a childhood favorite.)

Speaking of Canada:

Hail to Van Halen

Van Halen's two-hour-and-10-minute performance kicked off with a triple-shot of great classic rock -- their cover of The Kinks' You Really Got Me, I'm the One, which the band stopped mid-song to rapturous applause -- "It only took us 20 years to get this far," said Roth -- and Runnin' With the Devil.

In between, there were such classics -- all from the Roth-fronted years of 1978-84 -- as Romeo Delight, Beautiful Girls, Dance the Night Away, Everybody Wants Some, their cover of Roy Orbison's Pretty Woman, I'll Wait, And the Cradle Will Rock, Hot For Teacher, Little Guitars, Jamie's Cryin', Panama, and Ain't Talkin' Bout Love.

Truthfully, it was hard to maintain the energy of that trio of opening songs, but the band definitely aimed to please with a hits-heavy set list and backed by impressive green laser lights, an enormous video backdrop and confetti raining down on the audience by the very end.

"I can't tell you all how excited we are to be here tonight," said Roth.

By the way. It's 'brown' M&Ms. The green ones were valued at my high school for their supposed aphrodisiacal qualities, which probably led to my confusion. And, having read to that point in the story, I've learned that the brown M&M clause was a cold and calculated business trick, further encouraging my growing respect from the little old rockers from Pasadena.

Hot for Preacher (1) -- Mano a Mano con Bono

2007-09-24T16:05:00.000-07:00

Ever since Grace Cathedral ruined my grand finale¹ for last December's email carol of The Twelve Days of Bono, I've felt that there's been some unfinished business betwixt myself and Mr. Hewson.

I knew that I needed something new to focus my somewhat unexamined, but always emailed, feelings for the man and the band who continue to haunt my life in strange and unexpected ways. (Most recently by very nearly providing Hillary Clinton with her '08 campaign song.) Maybe even something like that worked like a kind of penance or atonement for all those cheap jokes and unpurchased albums.

And although I hadn't a clue as to what form that it might take, I knew there would be a Sign. A Path. I had Faith that Providence would Provide. (Providence seems to be good at that. Hence, perhaps, that name it's got. 'Providence.') A Way would be made Clear. I would also Need to get my Caps Lock Key FIXEd.

Or I'd just find a really cheap, used copy of Eamon Dunphy's Unforgettable Fire at the record store where I probably bought the bulk of any U2 vinyl I ever owned. And I'd think "Yeah, that'll work. I'll read Unforgettable Fire and write snide rants to my friends who will quietly block my email address and alert the appropriate authorities. It'll be like a book club meeting that goes on and on and there's nothing you can do about it."

Reader, I bought it!

And after a couple depressing thoughts on the twenty year old copyright date, I started in. And there we are, onstage in 1985, at Wembley. It's Live Aid, clearly the greatest stadium concert with [as the book says] "the greatest rock 'n' roll bill of all time." And off we go:

It all hung on Bono. At moments of acute need like this it was as if he was the vessel into which all their fears and hopes, ideas and emotions dissolved. In him and through him the pool of accumulated sadness, joy, anger and yearning swelled and began to flow -- from Edge's guitar, through Larry's drums and Adam's bass the music gathered force, bursting out through Bono whose task it was to give it words, meaning, substance on a day like this. He was the medium for their message. When Bono prayed that day, as he always did backstage, he asked for strength...

Right there. That's when the needle scratched across the vinyl of my attention span. Praying backstage. At a ROCK concert? And am I the first to catch that "through him, with him, in him" echo in the second sentence? Yet I keep reading. A page later, we have Bob Geldof and Paul McGuinness crying like reunited brothers in each others' arms.

Oh dear. It's going to be a looooong book.

I understand atonement and all, but shouldn't a rock-n-roll biography have something a little more ...ah...carnal about it? Like underage blonds in hotel suites, roadies with bicycle chain belts and tattoos, mirrors and razors, M&Ms painstakingly sorted by flunkies backstage, wads of under-the-table cash exchanging hands, suits from the record label harshing the buzz...all that sort of thing? At the least, a certain snarky, smart-ass tone capturing the hustle and balls of it all?

For example, here in Ian Christie's new book Everybody Wants Some: The Van Halen Saga, published by Wiley. (Oh yes it is!) Does the legend of Eddie, Alex, Michael and Dave start with prayers and hugs? Let's take a look:

Like the stories of other great Americans from Henry Ford to Walt Disney to Fievel the Mouse, the saga of Van Halen begins in an ancient land, far from the United States and its constant supply of hot water and electricity. As a narrator would say in the old movies: Among the windmills, tulips, and wooden shoes of lovely Amsterdam, Holland, there lived a kindly musician named Jan van Halen.

Now that's not too bad on the snark-o-meter, but to be fair and balanced we need to give it a full page of text as we did for the other. And so to:

As they traveled all around Holland and sometimes across the border to Germany, the boys saw the practical aspects of a musical career firsthand, and on some of the more rustic and ribald nights they discovered the perks--Alex reported losing his virginity at age nine after one of his dad's gigs.

Hot DAMN! You can almost hear that clicking sound of green M&Ms being sorted now.

And so I've decided that I will read BOTH books. At once. As in together. Randomly. Flipping from one to the other whenever the mood strikes. Confusing names, places, venues, genres until I forget whether it's Bono or Alex who trips over a cable and twists his ankle at the Anaheim Stadium in '78. Whether its Paul McGuinness or David Lee Roth who gets sent down from Trinity College, Dublin. It's a Lit-Crit Mash-up! Prayers AND M&Ms backstage! Let there be ROCK!

I am running a little bit hot tonight, now that you mention it. I can barely see the road from the heat coming off. So I reach down between my legs and I still haven't found what I'm looking for...

^1. How did they get wind that I was planning to attend the much vaunted U2charist with two of the City's leading members of the leather community and a young, brash, rising star in the drag performance firmament, that's what I want to know.

Husband says "Best CD you played in the car stereo in a long time."

2007-09-14T06:48:00.000-07:00

It's not often that one of my music choices on the Saturday shopping drive earns an instant response from the housemate, but Lady's Bridge, an album from Sheffield artist Richard Hawley, managed it. Eamon Carr reviews:

Hawley Grail

..."I'd be a shit rock band. On all my records the influences I draw on are well before 1969. I still listen to Marty Robbins, one of the best singers that ever lived.

"I don't hear that very much in a lot of modern music that I hear. People seem to be scared to expose themselves to what they're feeling."

For a man who's quite relaxed and not bolshy or argumentative, Hawley has fixed ideas on what makes interesting music. "If I'd been in a pub band playing blues or whatever I'd be happy," he says. "When you earn your living out of music there's a honesty to it that I like. I refuse to compromise. When I write songs the first person I have to please is myself," he says.

The songs on Lady's Bridge pass the test. It's the most compact treatment of loss and lonliness since Frank Sinatra recorded In The Wee Small Hours in 1954 or Roy Orbison, the Sultan of Sorrow, performed surgery on heartache in the 1960s. Echoes of that bruised baritone haunt Lady's Bridge...

Whole review at the link.

"if i knew the way, i would take you home"

2007-09-06T19:36:00.000-07:00

Found while looking for something else

2007-09-06T18:28:00.001-07:00

On the other side, also in my writing: "Charlemagne! How do you spell relief? R-O-L-A-N-D-S" which is clearly a play on the old Rolaids advertisement. Proof that I was destined for marketing all along.

The paper opens up to a flier that asks, on the other side, "Would You Be Interested in Tutoring? The Learning Center Has Tutoring Opportunities..." All the 'o's are shaded in and there's another sketch of a Greek goddess in profile in the margins. Her proportions are slightly off.

Well, it's like Tom Leher said "Bright college days, oh, carefree days that fly, To thee we sing with our glasses raised on high..."

I do like the oars coming out of the wheel-wells on the bus though!

As seen on Doc 40, but not in the UK

2007-09-06T06:11:00.000-07:00

The critically acclaimed album Trouble Pilgrim -- the first Radiators from Space album in many a year -- is due for an upcoming UK release. But it won't be featuring the album artwork that the band wanted it to have.

The controversial cover (shown below) provides a glimpse into one of those mid-century American moments of synchronicity that Don Delillo would savor: James Dean and Ronald Reagan co-starring in some forgotten TV drama of dubious artistic quality.

Read what Mick Farren has to say about it over at Doc 40

"Fuld og skæv og bange vakled’ jeg til Mollys kammer"

2007-09-03T07:37:00.000-07:00

Originally written in late 2002 with some updating over the years. Smart-ass tone is vintage to the period.

In permanent rotation on my playlist is one variant or another of that Celtic classic known as Whiskey in the Jar. This is the song with the highwayman relieving a uniformed officer of a substantial amount of cash and returning, with cash in hand, to a woman who betrays him to his erstwhile victim. The song with the 'wack fo the daddy oh" chorus. The song covered by the Clancy Brothers, the Dubliners, the Pogues, Tempest and every bar band from here to Buffalo New York.

Now, in the world of folk music, there is no such thing as the ‘correct’ version of a song, but there is certainly such thing as a ‘favorite version’ or ‘the kick-ass version’ or perhaps even ‘the only f*ck*ng goddamn version worth playing.’ And in that category, there is for me only one version of Whiskey in the Jar.

And that would be the song with the nasty sawed-off guitar riff that tears through the lyrics EXACTLY in the way a primer-coated late-model Camaro, filled with empty cans of Bud and a bunch of teenage thugs ditching shop class, tears through a high school parking lot.

The song that CD Universe lists as “heavy metal.” The song ably covered by Metallica. The song with Molly instead of Jenny.

Yes, the song by Thin Lizzy.

It is not just a question of style. Thin Lizzy’s version of Whiskey in the Jar just tells a better story than the one you are likely to hear from the local bar band. Plot, pacing, characterization – line for line Thin Lizzy’s Whiskey in the Jar delivers a cynical classic of greed and betrayal. All other ‘Whiskeys’ – particularly the ‘Jenny’ labels –are just inferior rotgut blends. It’s Jameson vs Yukon Jack.

But let’s examine in detail…

First, there’s the encounter on the highway, which manages to suggest both premeditation and opportunism – an ambiguity of motives and consequences that persists throughout Thin Lizzy’s version:

As I was goin' over the Cork and Kerry mountains
I saw Captain Farrell and his money he was countin'
I first produced my pistol and then produced my rapier

With some geographic confusion aside, most versions get immediately to this point. Even the one where Sergeant Pepper has been promoted out of his post as band leader:

As I was a-walkin' 'round
Kilgary Mountain
I met with Captain Pepper
as his money he was countin'
I rattled my pistols and
I drew forth my saber.

Actually, I always thought one rattled sabers and drew forth pistols, but threatening weapons have been produced and that’s the important thing. As for ‘walking ‘round a mountain’ it just seems like it would take some time.

Then most versions -- the ‘Jenny’ versions¹ -- just get silly:

As I was a going over
Gillgarry Mountain,
I spied Colonel Farrell and
his money he was countin'.
First I drew me pistol
and then I drew me rapier,
Sayin' stand and deliver
for I am your bold deceiver.

"For I am your bold deceiver?" What kind of hold-up line is that? What the hell is a "bold deceiver"? Frankly, it sounds like something Amanda Wingfield would buy for her glass figurine-collecting daughter Laura in the first draft of a Tennessee Williams play: "Now, Laura dear, be sure to pin those bold deceivers securely in your bodice, so your gentlemen callers don’t discover our little secret..."

Yeah, maybe when Colonel Mustard is finished giggling he’ll hand over the loot, but for the moment he’s being robbed by Trelane, the childish alien with Liberace’s wardrobe in Star Trek: Original Series. Whereas,

I first produced my pistol and then produced my rapier
I said stand and deliver or the devil he may take ya

makes a far more effective threat.

Then there’s the chorus; the “Musha ring um du rum da” part which I have no complaints with in any version². But let me point out that Thin Lizzy injects more menace into “Musha ring dum a doo dum a da” than you’d expect. They’ve got your “Whack fol my daddy-o” swinging.

The second verse introduces our third character. In most versions, she’s named Jenny:

He counted out his money and it made a pretty penny,
I put it in me pocket to take home to darling' Jenny.
She sighed and swore she loved me and never would deceive me,
But the devil take the women for they always lie so easy.

Nice pun there on ‘lie so easy.” Yes, I expect they do, especially when a pile of gold coins is on the table. But this is Jenny, the heroine of the lesser Whiskeys and it’s just an obvious rhyme with penny. There’s another traditional version with a rhyme that introduces us to Molly:

The shinin' golden coins
did look so bright and jolly
I took 'em with me home and
I gave 'em to my Molly
She promised and she vowed that
she never would deceive me
But the devil's in the women and
they never can be easy

Although Molly’s shortcomings will soon be undeniable, it’s not worth a sweeping generalization of the failures of womankind. And, besides, the pun on easy is gone, which is a shame. Molly and/or Jenny couldn’t be easier if it was Girls Gone Wild on Bourbon Street and you’re the lucky sod holding the video camera.

So it’s with a rocker’s sneer at the requirements of rhyme and rhythm that Thin Lizzy gives us another story:

I took all of his money and it was a pretty penny
I took all of his money, yeah, I brought it home to Molly
She swore that she'd love me, never would she leave me
But the devil take that woman, for you know she tricked me easy

Which is a good thing, because the word “jolly” has no business in a rock song, unless it is followed by the word “roger.” And “roger” is a dicey word in any genre, so it’s best to avoid the whole business altogether.

Thin Lizzy’s Molly is a secret unto herself. She’s warm and loving; she’s full of tricks. And, in the lesser versions, as Jenny she may have cause for complaint:

I went into me chamber
all for to take a slumber
To dream of gold and girls
and of course it was no wonder.
Me Jenny took me charges
and she filled them up with water,

Now, there’s just too much Freudian imagery for me to analyze here, especially when we reach the crisis of the story:

Next morning early before I rose to travel,
There came a band of footmen and likewise Colonel Farrell.
I goes to draw me pistol for she'd stole away me rapier,
but a prisoner I was taken I couldn't shoot the water.

Yeah, my friend had that problem too, but Viagra³ cleared it up.

I’m not sure why Jenny is so quick to betray our narrator, but perhaps an hour invested in taking care of her needs before dreaming of “gold and girls” might have saved his worthless hide.

Now in the Thin Lizzy version, the moment of discovery packs a little more tension and a lot more drama:

Being drunk and weary I went to Molly's chamber
Takin' money with me and I never knew the danger
For about six or maybe seven, yeah, in walked Captain Farrell

No ‘next’ morning here. And no unnecessary cast of thousands with footmen and such. Drunk and weary, maybe, but also in Molly’s chamber with money. And losing track of time. This is a man who knows a little bit about savoring the spoils of victory, and perhaps even coming back for seconds. And then, ‘in walked Captain Farrell…’ Now, maybe I’m a romantic, but I always see this moment as the bad luck of evil co-incidence and poor scheduling on Molly’s part. I don’t think Captain Farrell, or Molly, or our hapless narrator; expect to see the intersection of their three lives at this very moment. Maybe Molly has been providing the hospitality of her chamber to both highwayman and captain without incident for years, but on this fateful night she’s gotten her Palm Pilot entries mixed up. Though the sense of shock and three way betrayal is strong, not a moment of hesitation (or watered-down pistols) on our hero’s part:

I jumped up, fired my pistols and I shot him with both barrels

Well okay! Vaya con Dios, Captain Farrell. And doesn't that teach you not to flash your paycheck while wandering around alone in the countryside of Cork and Kerry? And, sadly, Molly’s active role in the song is pretty much done at this point too. But with the Captain dead and our hero in serious trouble, she’s certainly up one bag of gold with no questions asked. Let's hope she used the swag to book passage for Boston and finance a Day School for Young Ladies of Good Massachusetts Families with herself as headmistress. That’s certainly what I’d do, at any rate.

In the ‘Jenny’ versions, matters go their dreary course:

They put me into jail
with a judge all a writin'
For robbing Colonel Farrell
on Gilgarry Mountain.
But they didn't take me fists
so I knocked the jailer down,
And bid a farewell to
this tight fisted town.
I'd like to find me brother
the one that's in the army,
I don't know where he's stationed
in Cork or in Killarney.
Together we'd go roving
o'r the mountains of Killkenney,
And I swear he'd treat me
better than me darling' sporting Jenny.

Well, pal, which locality is it? Cork or Killarney? Where I live, the County Jail gives you only ONE phonecall on the gov’t dime, so you’d better know what you’re about. And why is the brother going to be especially motivated to abandon three hots and a cot to go roving o’r the mountains with his jailbird sibling who’s also expecting him to be a substitute for ‘darling sporting Jenny?’

Trust me, there’s no substitute for what Jenny/Molly can deliver.⁴

And, besides, introducing the brother at this point just messes with the neat triangle of characterization established so far. Furthermore, knocking down the jailer after arrest is no way as exciting as unloading a double-barreled blast on the Captain himself at the moment of discovery.

So. Far, far better is the dramatic power of the stripped down final verse in the Thin Lizzy version. Savage electric guitars dropping away, the story shifts from past glory to present miseries:

Now some men like the fishin' and some men like the fowlin'
And some men like to hear, to hear the cannon ball a roarin'
Me I like sleepin' especially in my Molly's chamber
But here I am in prison, here I am with a ball and chain yeah

And there it is – a tale of gold, love, murder and the vengeance of the law in four neat verses. No post-arrest escapes, no brother. And this is the only version I’ve found that brings Molly back for the finale, and that wistful tone of regret for her chamber strengthens my argument that Molly was guilty of nothing more than loving too much (or too many…) but no grudges are held.

Musha ring dum a doo dum a da
Whack fol my daddy-o
Whack fol my daddy-o
There's whiskey in the jar-o

¹It has recently come to my attention that the Dubliners sing the "Jenny" variant of this song, which has probably led other bands down that road.

However, I would submit that the Dubliners could sing "Sunshine and Lollipops" or "I'm Just a Girl Who Can't Say No" or “Genie in a Bottle" or any such song with any such lyrics and still be one bad-ass band.

²Just try singing it with boys after three pints. Huh buddy? Where’s your self-respect now?

³[2007 edit] I’ve since learned that Viagra was invented in Cork, Ireland. Yes, it does have a kind of ‘coals to Newcastle’ feeling, doesn’t it? I imagine the lab conversation as follows: “Say, you know what I think? I think this world could use more langers. Big, proud and ready-for-action langers!” “Funny you bring that up. I’ve been working on this pill…” *The two scientists then beta-test the pill.* “BRILLIANT!”

⁴[2007 edit:] Unless you are ex-Senator Craig [R], Idaho. Nice job supporting those American family values, Senator!

"Gimme a 'D!' Gimme a 'U!' Gimme a 'C!'..."

2007-08-31T09:15:00.000-07:00

Yes, the famous Country Joe McDonald DUCK cheer. Heard many a time over the years. Latest incarnation this morning on KFOG, live from the historic Poster Room at the Fillmore.

(This image and other Rick Griffin artwork on display at www.myraltis.eclipse.co.uk/griffin)

"Is it out of line if I was to be bold and say 'Would you be mine'?"

2007-08-22T10:17:00.000-07:00

Bought on a complete impulse at the HMV kiosk at Heathrow ("Indecently Rousing" said the Independent on the sticker promo). Then discovered I could listen to it as a featured CD on the inflight entertainment. Back home, listened again lots of times in the car. The sort of play where you let the song finish out before turning off the engine. And then on office iTunes.

This one here is my favorite song of the moment. In that top forty way where you need to hear the song every hour or so. It's endless summer.

Then finally had the presence of mind to check out The Fratellis over at Wikipedia. Turns out: Glasgow.

Told the husband "I know I was intending to wait til you could come with me, but I can't fight it much longer. Next time over, I'm going to Scotland."

Merv Griffin and his Doorman

2007-08-14T13:07:00.000-07:00

If you've seen the Buena Vista Social Club, you'll know a story of once-famous musicians in Cuba rediscovered by Ry Cooder on his own musical journey. The resulting movie and recordings brought a second fame to such capable musicians as Ibriham Ferrer and Manuel Galbon, Orlando "Cachato" Lopez, "Guajiro Mirabal, Jesus "Aguaje" Ramos and Roberto Fonseca.

Something like that has happened before. In New York City. And the rediscovered music was the traditional Irish form of singing known as sean nos. Here's how that happened (as told on the Irish Rochester.org website):

Merv Griffin is best known as the producer of such popular game shows as Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. In the 1960s he was the host of his own late afternoon talk show, always on the lookout for new and interesting guests. One day when he was vacationing in Ireland, he entered O'Donoghue's Pub in Dublin and was startled to see a familiar face on the wall. That's my doorman! the celebrity exclaimed in surprise. That, said the patient publican to the ignorant Yank, is Ireland's greatest traditional singer! They were both right. Joe Heaney (October 1, 1919-May 1, 1984) was acknowledged then (and is still so regarded) as the greatest exponent of Irish sean nos singing, but unlike Sarah Makem (see below) he had to leave Ireland to receive the popular recognition that was his due. The first prize winner at the Dublin Oireachtas in 1942 and again in 1955, musical partner of Willie Clancy, Seamus Ennis, and Mick Moloney (among many others), and a recording artist for Gael Linn records, he was a regular participant in the traditional music scene of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

...

If, as the Bible says, "A prophet is not without honor except in his own country and in his own house," Joe was more warmly received in America. In 1965 he appeared at the Newport Jazz Festival and the following St. Patrick's Day appeared on Merv Griffin's television show. In 1980 he was appointed an adjunct professor in Irish folklore at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut and was later appointed to a similar position at the University of Washington in Seattle. He was a regular performer at concerts and festivals across the country. Finally, in July 1982 he was presented with the National Heritage Award for Excellence in Folk Arts by the National Endowment for the Arts. Ever a modest man, Joe never took himself or his art too seriously. "Where I come from," he said, "they all sing like that."

I've been to O'Donoghue's myself a time or two and sat under that very photo in 2004 and reeled this same story off to my husband and friends. And I certainly recommend the double CD set The Road from Connemara.

So let's raise a glass to Merv Griffin who was lucky enough to know Joe Heaney and to America who was lucky enough to see Joe at Newport and on TV, thanks to Mr Griffin.

It's Tourist Season in San Francisco!

2007-07-31T08:20:00.000-07:00

Just yesterday on the Ferry sat next to a group of Married Cousins from Over There who were happily pawing through their bag of the day's acquisitions: Alcatraz Penitentiary Swim Team t-shirts for the whole extended family.

Meanwhile, I've discovered a treasure trove of photos over at the San Francisco Public Library's online archives. Here's another visitor to our fair City from back in 1919! (Tall guy in back, sorta looks like Alan Rickman. Not the statue.)

There's another great photo of the same guy out in front of a Grateful Dead concert at Winterland (still open back then) holding the requisite "I need a miracle" sign. The Library said he was on a business trip, talking with Silicon Valley venture capitalists for some funding for a start-up.

Strange Sounds from the MySpace Grounds

2007-07-28T09:17:00.000-07:00

The new Dun Ringles CD has arrived! Only 100 copies of this exceptionally pure prog-rock sound from Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides will be made available for the general public.

I was out of my blogging habits when I first met the Dun Ringles (and their much more avante friends The Guireans), so I'll have to quickly summarize by quoting liberally from their MySpace Page:

Band Members - Jason; Lead Guitar, bass, drum progs, keyboards,mandolin, backing vocals Robin;Keyboards, mandolin, accordion, backing vocals Wattie; lead vocals, bass, backing vocals Jon;lead guitar,mandolin, fiddle, backing vocals
Influences - Peatstacks Tractors Salmon Poaching Jethro Tull Horslips Cardiacs Crowded House Jori and Innes Isles FM The Comhairle Queen Deep Purple Blackmores Night The Valtos Outdoor Centre The Castle Grounds

Keeping the flame of Avante Gaelic Obscurist Folk Rock alive in the Outer Hebrides. Two sets of brothers( jason and jon/robin and wattie) fused together by an irrate record company and not allowed out to play until they have played Madison Square Garden at least twice and sold more than 2 copies of Redun from Fonn. Writing idiosyncratic songs about life in the Western Isles is all they do, spending long hours in candle-lit garrets and sipping from bottles of Absinthe whilst wearing fingerless gloves and muttering to themselves like some old geezer from a Dickens novel. Written seven or eight albums worth of songs and amassed a small but fanatical fan base (which also has a branch on Norway!!!!!!!! thanks Irene) whislt trying to keep the wolf from the door. If you want to know about Peatman, the illusive Funky Peatstack, Hump-backed lobsters and many characters of a Stornowegian slant, then this is the band for you.

The Unfortunate Cup of Tea

2007-07-21T11:42:00.000-07:00

"She was a cattleman's daughter, but all the horse men knew her."

Lately, my husband has lured me into a weekend hobby that is giving the Internet a run for its money. A hobby so compelling that it has me looking at horses with a whole new level of respect.

What's involved here are six plots of land in our community garden: two are ours in perpetuity and then I'm exercising squatters' rights on the other four for the purpose of growing pumpkins. (Being a slightly later season crop, this was an ideal use for the plots left unclaimed after mid-April.) I have one main field of jacks and sugar-pies, complete with a fierce "Road Warrior" style scarecrow, a left-over prop from a college production of Macbeth, and a sign proclaiming it The Great Pumpkin Patch. Nasturtiums and purple bush bean plants here and there for the color (and as an open invitation to ever-helpful bees.)

Spilling over from this thriving metropolis of autumn delights is the run-down suburb of transplants and stragglers. Over to the right from that, a new community of sugar-pies planted too late for All Hallow's Eve but sufficient for turkey and football a month later.

But far in the back, in the field we used to dump our rocks and dead soil, is a solemn triad of hills, each only holding two plants a piece. These are the monster pumpkins. We've lost one of the six, and we'll be lucky to bring the five remaining plants -- each allowed only one fruit -- to harvest. These are the pumpkins that can weigh as much as 100 pounds a piece. These are the pumpkins who taught me that horses are a farmer's best friend.

A neighbor, looking at the seed packet as we planted, said "You'll want some manure tea for these."

And so it was that we were shown the large plastic bucket in her patch where she brewed her daily batch of mineral-rich water for plants with "tea-bags" courtesy of her horse in a West Marin stable.

Yesterday, she brought in a fresh round of 'leaves' and gave them to me. It was the coolest gift I'd had in a long time! (I'd made tentative arrangements with my hair-dresser, who also has a horse, to go out to the stable where she kept it and get myself started there. But this is even better: one horse, lovingly fed on the best.)

Today, we brought in our own pots and cozies (buckets from the paint store, the feedbag cut in two and bungee cords.) I divided up the goods and wetted them down. There was an immediate buzz in the vicinity as all the flies sensed the opening of a high-end four star restaurant in the neighborhood (organic too!) so we hustled on the feedbags and left our buckets to brew in the hot summer sun.

Now I can turn my attention to the gophers...

"Someone told me long agoThere's a calm before the storm"

2007-07-19T17:41:00.000-07:00

I know. It's been coming for some time.

See. This is why I go in the winter. No expectations: no disappointments!

"English guys are not beyond two girls at a time."

2007-07-14T07:50:00.001-07:00

One of my prized pieces of vintage trash is a little paperback entitled "Groupies and Other Girls: A Rolling Stone Special Report" from 1970.

Absolutely loaded with primary source interviews, including this little segment on international relations from "Sunshine":

English guys are not beyond two girls at a time. They're not beyond anything they might want to try. American guys are very conservative. An Englishman at 19 is as mature as an American at 26--or 27. I thinks [sic] that's because most Englishmen are broken in by older women. They don't fumble into it, they learn it right. They're gentle, never pushy. Englishmen, a lot of them are bisexual. They're not hung up. I know a lot of them who have slept with men to see what it was like. American men are constantly trying to prove their virility. They won't wear lace shirts or anything like that. They don't realize that there isn't a woman in the world who can't be had by a man who know he's a man. A woman is only as good as the man she's with.

Much more of the same and some names are named. (Rod Stewart! Who would have thought!?!) All of it edited [with the one free hand?] by the guy who wants to keep the Monkees out of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Classy.

Now it is true, in '70, that the flavors of the rock 'n' roll lollipop were predominately American and English. Makes me wonder what sort of backstage compare/contrast reputation was earned in the hands of these ladies a mere decade later by Bono and the boys?

"Twilight, I only meant to stay awhile"

2007-06-28T08:31:00.000-07:00

Okay. Who knew that ELO managed not one not two but three albums after the cocaine-fueled and airbrushed car-wreck that was Xanadu? Not me obviously. In 1981, I was snapping up Devo and Blondie singles and saying "When is the cable company going to get on the stick with this here MTV? That Cars video looked HOT!"

But perhaps there was a reason beyond my own young impatience with the (by then) sodden sound of corporate rock and the desire to try everything (anything!) newer.

According to Wikipedia entry on Time, "Many of the group's fans consider this album to be Jeff Lynne's "forgotten masterpiece," partly due to the perception that Lynne has allowed it to languish (ironically) over the course of time. Lynne has since admitted that Time and the two subsequent ELO albums (Secret Messages and Balance Of Power) were only recorded to satisfy contractual obligations, and while material from every other ELO album was performed during the short-lived Zoom tour in 2001, none of the material from these three albums was included."

As I wander around this wreck of a town
Where people never speak aloud
With its ivory towers and its plastic flowers
I wish I was back in 1981

Wow! Time to see if there's still a Laserium show with Pink Floyd music happening somewhere!

And as for Xanadu, a certain decline of aesthetic standards that heralds an impending midlife crisis has me regarding fondly, if not the vintage movie or upcoming Broadway musical, then at least those devotees who have tended Kira's altars and kept the flame burning all these years. You have to believe we are magic.

Accidental Fan: The Decemberists

2007-06-20T06:03:00.000-07:00

There are times where a strange set of circumstances leads me to a new infatuation. So it was with the Decemberists. Back in the day when I used to Google daily on 'Horslips' (in 2004 I was not yet familiar with Google News Alerts), I stumbled across a Boston Globe review of a Portland Oregon indie band that had had the nerve to do a concept EP based on The Tain. The same band was in town that very week at the Great American Music Hall. And so on and so forth.

Inevitably, there could be comparisons between Horslips' own 1973 masterpiece and the Decemberists' 2001 oddity. Both have literary roots: the Horslips album quotes W.B. Yeats introducing Lady Gregory's Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902), and Colin Meloy is on record crediting Thomas Kinsella's 1969 modernist edition as his inspiration. Found in a Portland bookstore. In the early days of the Bush administration. This cultural distance, in my opinion, is exactly why it is worth a listen with Meloy delivering a strangely unanchored and 'dislocated' take on the saga. Then there's the gap of years and the consciousness of style-experimentation from The Decemberists, who were thoughtfully exploring prog-rock and metal from an almost archaeological perspective at the time, as this review details:

Pitchfork Review: The Tain

"I never was a metal head," remarked Colin Meloy in an Earlash interview last July. "It's something in my later years I've come to regret a little bit just because everybody has their stories of when they were a metal head. And it wasn't until recently that I started listening to Black Sabbath and started appreciating it."

Two albums and a six-song Five Songs EP into their career, The Decemberists' are beginning to seriously define their sound; a sudden plunge into, say, heavy metal, seems unlikely. Yet the first movement of The Tain EP, the band's new 18-minute composition based loosely on the 8th-century Celtic Ulster cycle's central poem "Tain Bo Cuailinge", finds Meloy and the others most immediately concerned with-- am I about to say this?-- serious Ur-metal riffage. Granted, Decemberist metal is not going to weigh down the Dominique Leones of the world, but make no mistake: Never has this band sung a flag so black, a maiden so iron.

The opening of The Tain is indeed jarring, though there's always more than meets the ear with this band, and the disc's dark acoustic guitar opening is not without foil: Pay attention to how Colin overdramatizes the dark line with his heavy plucks, disarming its sense of foreboding. When the rest of the band joins him in unison, what should be enough of a killer riff for friendly genocide is undermined by the organ's funny whir and Rachel Blumberg's gentle cymbal taps. In short, the sound is off-kilter, though not without ample deception, and only hints at the level of sophistication to come in the remaining movements.

More at the link. And that was some time ago. The Decemberists are now signed to a major label, sell out dates in Dublin and San Francisco, have their newest album Crane Wife at the Starbucks counter near you and, once in a very great while, you even hear them on commercial radio.

Decemberists Homepage.

Double Half-Caf, Soy Milk McCartney with Carmel Topping

2007-06-09T06:29:00.000-07:00

Yes, it is true that I still owe the world my confused thoughts on Starbucks: the music store that sells coffee. For only this last spring I purchased a CD from the amazing Sounds Eclectic: the KCRW music program hosted by Nic Harcourt.

I bought it to hear Damien Rice cover Radiohead's Creep and I was a bit harsh on ole Damien 'cause he wimped out and wouldn't say a word that Bono (practically an archbishop these days) tosses around like loose change. (Hmmm...do you think Bono is familiar with 'loose change' anymore? He can probably pay Bill Gates to pick up that five dollar bill for him!) Later I realized Damien was probably constrained because it was National Public Radio and all and we don't want our tax money spent on obscenities.

The main point being: I can't throw stones at Starbucks and its music franchise anymore. But with Paul McCartney signing to their label, I might need an extra java jacket to ward off the shudder. Eamon Carr reviews:

Paul McCartney's Full Circle Review

WHILE the world celebrates the fortieth anniversary of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band, his own concept, Paul McCartney releases a new solo album which explores his 64 years of memory.

But, interestingly, he appears to have forgotten about EMI, the company associated with him and The Beatles since the beginning and, instead, assigned this album to a label that's part-owned by Starbucks.

Is McCartney's music now a side-order to a sandwich? Or is it once again the main course?

While he expertly tapped into the King's Road/ Haight Asbury zeitgeist in 1967, we don't expect McCartney to nail the mood of the times these days.

He playfully acknowledges this by sticking a comfy armchair on the album cover. This is the first sign that this isn't simply a throwaway collection or mere contract filler...

ALLLRIGHT!!!!! "Oh, oh big ol jet airliner, Don't carry me too far away"

2007-03-19T18:38:00.000-07:00

Direct flight to Dublin finally set

After four years of trying by city officials to establish a nonstop flight between SFO and Dublin, Ireland, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom said Friday that the airline Aer Lingus is expected to begin a five-day-a-week, direct flight by the end of the year.

Joined by Supervisor Sean Elsbernd and Martin Cullen, the Irish minister for transport, Newsom said it was an important milestone for the 11 percent of Bay Area residents who are of Irish descent. He said it would prove an economic boost, providing more than 900 jobs and bringing in $6.8 million in taxes each year to the city and state.

The European Union's Council of Transport Ministries must approve the flight -- which it is expected to do at its meeting next week

Hey Heathrow!!! B*te me!

Pretzels for the President

2007-02-07T16:00:00.000-08:00

Boz reviews the Radiators' Trouble Pilgrim

TROUBLE PILGRIM is the sound of a band reconnecting with all the musical roots which initially inspired them, but as people with life experience rather than as teenagers. The Flaming Groovies in particular stand as a comparison to the resultant sound - a blend of very many raw underground influences with the more sophisticated likes of The Byrds, Love, Bowie, Elvis Costello etc... It could of course be assumed that the band had already arrived at this sound much earlier.... many of their odd-bits - BUYING GOLD IN HEAVEN (80), TAKE MY HEART AND RUN (80), PLURA BELLE (87) would sit comfortably within this collection of tracks.

The opening track TROUBLE PILGRIM is a rigid garage workout and in many ways ( EPs aside ) the perfect introduction to where the band have landed soundwise. Not content with the basic band ( although that’s pretty much what you get live ), they’ve embellished the rawness throughout with 12 string guitars, vintage synths, organs and even Glockenspiels and French Horns. There’s little doubt this expanding of possibilities in the studio was learned and noted while working on GHOSTOWN with Tony Visconti, but here it’s driven by their own experience rather than the guiding hand of a hotshot name producer.

More at the link. Boz, the reviewer, contributes great editorial cartoons to my local paper. Also does artwork for various punk bands of my acquaintanceship.

"For I am a poor and a wretched boy, A chimbley, chimbley sweep."

2007-02-04T14:37:00.000-08:00

Tales from the Dark Side

The Decemberists let their inner weirdos shine, with songs that hark back to a literary tradition of gruesome morality tales and also embrace more modern abominations such as the Shankill Butchers. Singer Colin Meloy talks to Jim Carroll

A COUPLE of years ago, Colin Meloy had a day job in a bookstore in Portland, Oregon. "I remember one day seeing this children's storybook, The Crane Wife, coming into the store. I had an idle hour and I flicked through it and I was really taken by the story." When it came time for his band, American indie folk-rockers The Decemberists, to record their fourth album, that old Japanese tale about a poor peasant who nurses a sick crane back to health kept coming to mind. It seemed to be the perfect starting point for an album which Meloy felt could be both epic and quirky.

"It's an amazing story, and I suppose what I find interesting is that you have all these different themes about greed and curiosity and love running through it, which have an universal application beyond what that one tale is about."

The Crane Wife is a hugely ambitious undertaking for The Decemberists, one of the most thoughtful and bookish of America's new indie school. The album consists in the main of longform songs reminiscent in some ways to their earlier work, The Tain, which was based on the Ulster mythological story once also musically explored by Horslips. The Crane Wife is a major league outing from a band raising their game on every level.

Meloy has always taken an interest in ancient fables and tales, particularly the more gruesome ones.

More at the link.

I've been a fan of The Decemberists for about three years now. If my discovery of Horslips was nearly accidental, the path to The Decemberists was almost random in its happening. They first popped up years ago under a Googling of "Horslips-News" in an article in the Boston Globe. "And just who is this upstart Portland band who thinks they can do a concept album on the Táin?" I said as web engines ferreted out the official site. "Oh," sniffed I, once there, "Playing next week at the Great American Music Hall are they? Well. We'll just have to go see about THAT."

Came home with three of their albums.

“Vertigo is the conflict between the fear of falling and the desire to fall.”

2006-12-09T16:17:00.000-08:00

Previously on our Trip to Cork: It is a bank holiday weekend and our flight to Cork has become an extended tour of circling the airport for nearly an hour and then flying off to refuel at Shannon. At Shannon, a deserted airport lounge is our home for the next couple of hours or so. Dinner has become a priority over missed entertainment. Fortunately, I have discovered that the vending machines at Shannon accept US dollars. (It's because of the military flights, my husband explained later. Well, Yankee Doodle Dandy!) And now: Part the Second of

MY FIRST VISIT TO CORK
or
THE AMERICAN TOURIST & THAT F**KING STONE
Part the Second in a Series of Three

Before going further I should explain, in 2002 I was traveling on business to Europe quite regularly. We were involved in a major programming effort with the subscription fulfillment software and the whole thing was based in Bognor. I was identified early on as the one person here who could represent our interests and be responsible for the testing. In retrospect, I was woefully unprepared. But we made the deadlines. And now I generally go over just once a year for upgrades or enhancements.

But it was on these trips that I could take a Friday night flights over to Ireland and enjoy a weekend. The first trips had been to Dublin – the first one would be officially B.H. (before Horslips) in summer of 2002 – but even the June 2003 trip was still before I knew many people in the guestbook and my plans were my own to make.

So I thought I'd branch out from Dublin a bit. I identified Galway and Cork as other possible weekend spots. I flipped a coin. And Cork it was.

And you've already heard about the flight over from Heathrow.

But by midnight, we were finally on the ground in Cork and I went out to catch a cab to the hotel. Mossie Daly was the cab-driver's name. I have his card somewhere.

Because revenge is a dish best served cold.

I wasn't, as you can guess, in a cheerful mood. But I quickly explained the whole business traveler on a weekend jaunt and been to Dublin and everyone says Cork is very nice, etc. etc. Then Mossie said "Are you going to visit Blarney Castle?"

Oh. Shit. That's here? I gave an inward sigh. Should have gone with Galway.

"Oh! Wow! That's here?" I enthused politely. "To think I nearly went to Galway!" And the Bernard Hermann score from Vertigo started playing softly in the background of my imagination.

(Backtracking for a moment: I have a fear of man-made heights. My earliest memories are of the terrors of down-escalators in shopping malls. I tend to avoid window offices in tall building, high balconies, or modernist stairs where the treads are held by metal risers, allowing you to look down and down and down the flights. I believe that my eyesight, which plays tricks on my depth perception, is part of it. But there's also just a primal response beneath all that. And whenever I mention that I'm going to visit Ireland, someone will invariably say "Are you going to kiss the Blarney Stone?" And then because it is not nice to say "Sure, when Hell freezes over" I usually change the subject.)

Mossie went on for a bit about the area and offered his services for a day's tour of all the regional highlights. Something he does for the visiting Japanese golfers. I suggested I was more of a 'find my own path' sort of tourist and probably would be too busy enjoying the many attractions of Cork throughout the weekend.

So by 2 p.m. the next afternoon after I had thoroughly savored the many attractions of Cork, I called Mossie. "Okay, you're on. But that Castle is out of the picture."

To his credit, I did see much more of the area than foot travel or mass transit would have given me. Cobh, in particular, was the highlight of the day. And through the radio station in Mossie's cab, I discovered the whole genre of Irish country and western. So there was my money's worth right there.

But he would not let up about that Castle. Finally I agreed that it would be a shame to come all this way and not just go see it. From the ground. Get a few photos for the album. While he checked in with his sons who were keeping a running report of the day's football game going for him via cell phone.

And when I was standing at the Tower's base I looked up to the highest part and saw the hole with sky beyond suddenly fill with the head of some foolish tourist – for all the world like Marie Antoinette at the guillotine – and Bernard Hermann cranked it to 11. I looked back down to ground level to steady myself and found Mossie holding two tickets for the climb.

"They come as part of the package," he smiled apologetically. "I'll be right there with you. It's all right. It's very safe!"

Really, I still can't remember how he convinced me, but it might have been a play on my innate sense of competitiveness. And the climb up was quite a bit like hiking a particularly rocky trail. (Natural heights are not a problem. I'll peer over the edge of a volcano with no fear at all.)

But the shock of the Tower's hollow core at the top – the rook in my chess set isn't hollow! – seriously unsettled me and early signs of full panic were beginning to manifest. My ears began buzzing and it became very, very important that I not look over the edge of the railing into the interior of the tower's depth where I imagined I would see the broken bones of some poor Japanese golfer...silken tropical shirt faded by the elements...at the bottom. It was also important to not see the stones of the parapet's edge in the foreground. Instead I kept eyes focused on the distant horizon and followed the ant-trail of tourists around to the exit tower.

Mossie tried pushing his luck one final time when we reached that hellish spot where the hole in the crumbling masonry allows people to slide out on a cardboard mat and do what they think they need to do. There's someone there too, with a tip jar, and he offers to spot you and help with the process. He looked up at me expectantly. Mossie looked at me expectantly.

"You know," I turned to Mossie, trying to keep my voice low and steady. "It's a good gig. God knows the mouldering bones of P.T. Barnum are rotten green with envy. But I'm not kissing that damn Stone. I'm in marketing. I think I'm fine as is. I also think I'm going to need to sit down soon."

I did nearly break into complete panic at the exiting stairs. The uneven and worn stones that would require close foreground attention and the little frayed rope railing for gripping pushed me dangerously close to the faint I was trying to avoid. Only the press of tourists at my back and the thought of what sort of rescue effort would have to be mounted to get my unconscious body out of there kept me anchored to alertness.

By the time we reached earth, I think Mossie was finally convinced that I wasn't just being an obstinate American tourist. He let me sit down on the grass until the buzzing in my ears stopped and my heart rate slowed.

Later he bought me an ice-cream cone and didn't even add it to the day's bill. And we drove back to Cork listening to T.R. Dallas and Margo on the radio.

Stay tuned for Part the Third:
"One foot in the grave, one foot on the pedal
I was born a rebel..."

"That clinking, clanking soundCan make the world go 'round"

2006-12-03T05:30:00.000-08:00

Consolidating some of my older website essays to here where Google can have its merry way with them. Also, as an acknowledgement that it was my company's IT department that made my Horslips addiction possible, these old travel stories are fair game for inclusion here. This was originally written in Autumn 2003 and recounts

MY FIRST VISIT TO CORK
or
"YOU NEVER GIVE ME YOUR MONEY"

Part the First in a series of at least Two

On January 1, 2002, twelve countries sharing the centuries of common history that comes from proximate geography, apposite culture, and occasional bouts of intra-nationalist animosity took it upon themselves to unite behind that symbol of humanity which we all value.

I refer to, naturally, money.

And so as it was written, so was it done that Mac and PC programmers were set to the task of creating a ALT key shortcut, which – when executed – delivered the following:

€

And, lo, the Euro was born.

Yes indeed, for the Yank tourist traveling between Belgium, Germany, Greece, Spain, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal and Finland, life was no longer the border-crossing ritual of learning new coinage, new denominations, and new terms. Harder it was for the locals to hide the fact they overcharge for the regional warmed-over variant of cerveza; easier it was for the cosmopolitan traveler to breeze through the airport not passing the Monetary Exchange booth and not collecting 200% in currency conversion fees.

Twelve countries. It could have been a baker’s dozen…but for one nation state that decided it would opt out of the new currency and remain with the monetary unit that saw it through the glory days of the Empire and the no less glorious, if slightly refracted through the prism of Washington D.C., days of New Labour.

I refer to, naturally, England.

Sure, Denmark and Sweden opted out too. However, as they aren’t directly responsible for my nightmare Friday night in Counties Cork and Kerry in Ireland, this rant is dedicated to the one nation in the three that does NOT contribute significantly to tasteful interior design or the international porn industry. In for a penny, Chancellor Brown, in for a Pound.

Now I’ll be the first to say that there’s something pretty damn satisfying about walking into a pub somewhere down in Sussex County and slapping a fistful of Pound coins down on the bar. Their weight, their thickness, that Latin or Welsh scratched into the edge like some Elven inscription waiting for Gandalf to decipher – Spend Friend and Enter – the Pound coin can take you back to the age when six people hauled trunkfuls of similar stuff ashore to some Caribbean fever-ridden swamp and only one person returned to the ship tucking up his sleeve the freshly drawn map made from what the rest of the crew hopes is just vellum and red ink. Why just the ring of those coins on the counter at the Dorchester Arms or the Prancing Pony! “Rum, Jim, rum!” I’d bellow. “Tell me when I’ve worked my through THAT, woman,” I’d say, throwing the leather coin purse at the landlord’s doxy. Yarrrgh….

And when pub talk was dull, nothing could kill a few minutes of time like lining up all the coins in chronological order and tracing the sag of the Queen’s chin line through the years. I think they should do one more coin for each monarch showing their final corporal state. A memento mori, if you will.

True, America’s got this one quarter for every state thing happening now, but it doesn’t compare to the fun of wondering exactly what that Welsh phrase is saying about its role in the United Kingdom. What is the Welsh word for Langer, anyway?

But for every pleasure, there is a price. And in the case of those of us who work a week in England followed by a weekend of vacation in Ireland, that price is carrying around TWO separate pirate hoards of coin and currency.

And for God’s sake, Europe...why so much coinage? Both Euros and Pounds have a TWO DOLLAR coin! Lovely, yes, and fit for presentation as a medal, but haul around a pocketful of them and you feel like some Vegas granny that won’t cash in her chips because she thinks it’s more valuable that way.

So, after my fourth business trip, I had a small haul of both pounds and Euros which I kept in separate bags for obvious reasons. Also, when leaving England, I kept a portion of the pounds with me in carry-on, but checked the other two bags of surplus poundage and the Euros in my check-in luggage.

Why would I do that, you ask? Let’s review the situation. Solitary American tourist, late Friday night weekend flight from island to island, and – why, what’s this on the X-Ray? - a mass of metal bits in a loosely shaped container hiding in the carry-on luggage. Spent a lot of time at the ‘special search’ area getting acquainted with security guards those first few trips that way.

So the routine was: taxi to Heathrow with trip and tip in pounds; one last English beer at the airport’s hostelry, a competitor with TGI Fridays for charm and authenticity, again in pounds; candy bar and paperback at the last English airport newsstand in the Irish departure terminal with the astounding collection of porn (and what’s up with THAT, Mr. Irish business traveler?), once more in pounds. Fly to Ireland, claim baggage, and commence the weekend...in Euros.

It all works like a charm, until one bank holiday weekend in June 2003 when the Cork City Airport tells your pilot that he can’t land until the runway lights are fixed. And then, after two hours of circling get the fuel to the point where a side trip to Shannon commences, a long evening of wandering around the deserted Shannon airport terminal teaches you the lesson of what Ireland would be like if there were no pubs at all.

A handful of English pounds, a planeful of fairly grumpy people who are not living up to that Tourist Board image of welcoming Yank strangers like myself and enfolding them to their bosom (or just maybe sharing their goddamn package of crisps, anyway), and a terminal full of shops and restaurants that closed hours ago. "Still," I thought, "at least you get a chance to see another part of Ireland" and I hurried over to the windows to see what could be seen before the gloom of darkness dropped its curtain. No lights, no hills, no buildings, no features of any kind except Vladimir and Estragon hanging out under a blasted tree. And at that moment, I knew their chances of having a fulfilling evening were better than mine.

It gets to the point where I eat all the cough drops and breath-mints that I have. I make a half-hearted effort to get the flight attendants to go back to the grounded plane and get something from the cabin kitchens, but since this was supposed to be a fifty minute (HA!) flight, there’s nothing doing with that. Then, on my way to the bathroom, I spot a vending machine with that universal red and white logo of carbonation and caramel water. "Don’t know what good that will do," I say to myself, "because it’s just going to want a Euro" but wander over any way. There’s a whole bank of vending machines back there it seems: peanuts, Oreos, candy bars, fruit drops, cheese-its, licorice...a bacchanalian vision that Epicurus would savor. O, for a Euro!

Then, I see him! Engraved near the coin slot--showing the direction his paper banner is to be inserted—is the father of my country, the only George to hold a certain leadership office with any merit, that old cherry-tree chopper himself: General Washington.

Here, in the farthest western reaches of air travel in Ireland, with the dark wilderness of bog and mountain held back by the thinnest veneer of late-twentieth century plate-glass windows, is a vending machine that Takes U.S. Dollars!

And, Mark or Yen or Euro or Pound, I ALWAYS carry Uncle Sam’s greenbacks! Five of them later and I was fit and full, ruminating comfortably over my paperback porn in an airport row chair, waiting for the announcement that Cork Airport found their D-Cell batteries and we could all get on that plane and back to our weekends.

A weekend in Cork, I thought, will more than make up for this unfortunate beginning.

Stay Tuned for Part the Second: Blarney Stoned Again...

"You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant"

2006-11-27T06:47:00.000-08:00

(In which we conclude the song and if there's any leftover turkey still lying around your house, you might think about moving it on.)

I went over to the sargent, said, "Sargeant, you got a lot a damn gall to ask me if I've rehabilitated myself, I mean, I mean, I mean that just, I'm sittin' here on the bench, I mean I'm sittin here on the Group W bench 'cause you want to know if I'm moral enough join the army, burn women, kids, houses and villages after bein' a litterbug." He looked at me and said, "Kid, we don't like your kind, and we're gonna send you fingerprints off to Washington."

And friends, somewhere in Washington enshrined in some little folder, is a study in black and white of my fingerprints. And the only reason I'm singing you this song now is cause you may know somebody in a similar situation, or you may be in a similar situation, and if your in a situation like that there's only one thing you can do and that's walk into the shrink wherever you are ,just walk in say "Shrink, You can get anything you want, at Alice's restaurant.". And walk out.

You know, if one person, just one person does it they may think he's really sick and they won't take him. And if two people, two people do it, in harmony, they may think they're both faggots and they won't take either of them. And three people do it, three, can you imagine, three people walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. They may think it's an organization. And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day,I said fifty people a day walking in singin a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends they may thinks it's a movement.

And that's what it is , the Alice's Restaurant Anti-Massacre Movement, and all you got to do to join is sing it the next time it come's around on the guitar.

With feeling. So we'll wait for it to come around on the guitar, here and sing it when it does. Here it comes.

You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant

That was horrible.

If you want to end war and stuff you got to sing loud.

I've been singing this song now for twenty five minutes. I could sing it
for another twenty five minutes. I'm not proud... or tired.

So we'll wait till it comes around again, and this time with four part
harmony and feeling.

We're just waitin' for it to come around is what we're doing.

All right now.

You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Excepting Alice
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want, at Alice's Restaurant

Da da da da da da da dum
At Alice's Restaurant

-----

There was Thanksgiving 2005, of course, which saw me back at the family table and mumbling through a prayer vague enough to exasperate a Unitarian. Or Thanksgiving 2003, when President Bush got on a plane of his own and presented a plastic turkey to the (vetted if not yet veteraned) troops in Baghdad. Which reminds me yet again that every single holiday under his watch has been a wartime holiday. There was Thanksgiving 2001, where the collective determination of the nation could have pulled every balloon in the Macy's parade by willpower alone and the commercial for the USPS featuring Carly Simon's "Let the River Run" and a montage of the ordinary postal workers of the nation had me crying through three balloon characters and a marching band. That year is now bookended with this year's Mardi Gras parades in New Orleans.

There was this Thanksgiving, which saw me cooking pies and making the turkey gravy from scratch over at my brother-in-law's where we all played host to the three members of Josh Lederman y Los Diablos, the visiting Boston band on its first-ever west coast tour. Over turkey, I discussed the latest project offered to me by Culann's Hounds. "They want to do some Bay Area Celtic Music showcase," I said. Non-committal grunts from the boys reaching for seconds. "But I've been thinking." Indeed, I was thinking right there out loud, "I've been thinking more like a whole American roots thing. Inclusive. You could get a number of the Bay Area scenes going with that." Rick, the drummer, brightened. "Oh YEAH, that's a good idea!" And full-mouthed but still quite enthusiastic agreement from the table. So that concluded the market research on the feasibility of a Bay Area Folk Punk-Roots Festival and the more I think about it the more I like it. It can also be a benefit for the National Veterans Foundation, which Culann's Hounds has already done some community work for as well. There could be a whole day of ukulele jamming, some of the bluegrass, some klezmer. And who knows what the kids are up to on Grant Street?

I also sent around the bit of Alice's Restaurant quoted above to my lit-group list. One of them wrote back:

I'm sure you know there really was an Alice's restaurant, a coffee shop in Stockbridge, Mass., which is a beautiful town next to the one I grew up in in the Berkshires. The basement bar in the Red Lion Inn, a 200 year old big, wonderful inn, is still there, but no longer features Arlo singing, as it did when I hung out there in the 60s. Alice's was right around the corner, in what is a very small, picturesque New England town. Because of the number of colleges, prep schools, writers, poets and estates, the Vietnam War was heavily protested way out there in the woods, as the Bostonians refer to it and the hippie movement hit it in full force far quicker than the Boston area, which eventually came around.

Stockbridge looks like a movie set to this day, although Norman Rockwell's small house gallery has moved to a large estate overlooks a large pond and includes a barn workshop for artists, a house for fundraisers and a museum designed to feature all of his work in perfect style. Most of those covers for Post were 6 ft. x 6 ft. paintings. Some of them are breathtaking - such as the Thanksgiving one, the moon walk, the brotherhood faces - some are heartwarming and some are quite humorous.

Thank you for this message. Obviously it hit a cord with me, a jog down memory lane, knowing that we need this sentiment today. My son and I were talking about this yesterday. His generation didn't do it (35 yrs. old), his sister's didn't (30 yrs.), but it's time for another 60s type thing to happen to slow down everyone's march for things bigger and better. Much as they seem like babies now that I'm over 50, I realize it does take energy and idealism of the very young, the 20 -25, those of college age, to start a movement, then the older join in. While the anti-war started the 60s movement, it was carried out via changes in education, psychology, workplaces, whole communities - a slow down and smell the flowers. 'Course, once the pendulum starts to swing, it seems to go way too far, and needs to head back a bit, but heads back too far also. Will we ever get it right?!

"there on the other side, in the middle of the other side, away from everything else on the other side"

2006-11-26T16:24:00.000-08:00

(Still finishing up our meal at Alice's Restaurant)

And I proceeded to tell him the story of the Alice's Restaurant Massacre, with full orchestration and five part harmony and stuff like that and all the phenome... - and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, did you ever go to court?"

And I proceeded to tell him the story of the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and the paragraph on the back of each one, and he stopped me right there and said, "Kid, I want you to go and sit down on that bench that says Group W .... NOW kid!!"

And I, I walked over to the, to the bench there, and there is, Group W's where they put you if you may not be moral enough to join the army after committing your special crime, and there was all kinds of mean nasty ugly looking people on the bench there. Mother rapers. Father stabbers. Father rapers! Father rapers sitting right there on the bench next to me! And they was mean and nasty and ugly and horrible crime-type guys sitting on the bench next to me. And the meanest, ugliest, nastiest one, the meanest father raper of them all, was coming over to me and he was mean 'n' ugly 'n' nasty 'n' horrible and all kind of things and he sat down next to me and said, "Kid, whad'ya get?" I said, "I didn't get nothing, I had to pay $50 and pick up the garbage." He said, "What were you arrested for, kid?" And I said, Littering." And they all moved away from me on the bench there, and the hairy eyeball and all kinds of mean nasty things, till I said, "And creating a nuisance." And they all came back, shook my hand, and we had a great time on the bench, talkin about crime, mother stabbing, father raping, all kinds of groovy things that we was talking about on the bench. And everything was fine, we was smoking cigarettes and all kinds of things, until the Sargeant came over, had some paper in his hand, held it up and said:

"Kids-this-piece-of-paper's-got-47-words-37-sentences-58-words-we-
wanna-know-details-of-the-crime-time-of-the-crime-and-any-other-
kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say-pertaining-to-and-about-the-crime-I-
want-to-know-arresting-officer's-name-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-
you-gotta-say", and talked for forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, but we had fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there, and I filled out the massacre with the four part harmony, and wrote it down there, just like it was, and everything was fine and I put down the pencil, and I turned over the piece of paper, and there, there on the other side, in the middle of the other side, away from everything else on the other side, in parentheses, capital letters, quotated, read the following words:

"KID, HAVE YOU REHABILITATED YOURSELF?"

----

But Thanksgiving 2002 was a work-related absence and excusable and as has been told: an effort was made to observe the ritual pieties. Thanksgiving 2004 was a flat-out refusal to do any such thing, with the actual meal of Thursday being whatever the airline choose to serve to the handful of us passengers on the flight. The formal meal on Friday was at Milano's, an Italian restaurant in Dublin, and a fine, upscale swanky joint it was too. Too excited to do anything as mundane as eat, I think I managed a few bites of an artichoke and pesto pizza for one. At Milano's I was joined by a few of the other Horslips fans that I had befriended online in the course of the last two years. Some of them had traveled as far as from Cork and from Ballymena. Others were from Dublin. A few sent text messages in. To lend a certain weight to the thing -- to show the husband that my earlier boasts of a 'launch party' had some basis -- there was even a delegation from Horslips themselves. The evening unfolding with one of the community meeting us at the Baggot Street hotel where we were staying. I was given a bottle of Baileys, a package of Barry's Tea and, most prized and soon to hit the seasonal turntable, a copy of Happy Surfin' Santa, the story behind which has been related in this blog previously. Then we walked to the nearby pub where the rest of the party was gathering for pre-dinner drinks. And so with the rush of introductions and explanations, my husband and I were quickly embraced by a general mood of warm hospitality tempered, perhaps, with more than a little touch of curiosity from our hosts.

Then one of the band arrived and delivered an opening line that still reverberates in household travel lore: "This place stinks of businessmen's farts!"

Indeed, it did seem that the interiors of Irish pubs had changed subtly since one of my earlier visits and I became aware that the now banned cigarette smoke had performed its one forlorn beneficial function as a mask of other smells usually encountered where the monied and well-fed gather. My husband shot me a quizzical look. I smiled back in brave re-assurance. Still, as it stands, the remark was the closest thing to a Thanksgiving prayer we could come by on that year.

"I wanted to look like the all-American kid from New York City"

2006-11-24T08:15:00.000-08:00

(Continues the saga of Alice's Restaurant)

They got a building down New York City, it's called Whitehall Street, where you walk in, you get injected, inspected, detected, infected, neglected and selected. I went down to get my physical examination one day, and I walked in, I sat down, got good and drunk the night before, so I looked and felt my best when I went in that morning. `Cause I wanted to look like the all-American kid from New York City, man I wanted, I wanted to feel like the all-, I wanted to be the all American kid from New York, and I walked in, sat down, I was hung down, brung down, hung up, and all kinds o' mean nasty ugly things. And I waked in and sat down and they gave me a piece of paper, said, "Kid, see the psychiatrist, room 604."

And I went up there, I said, "Shrink, I want to kill. I mean, I wanna, I wanna kill. Kill. I wanna, I wanna see, I wanna see blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth. Eat dead burnt bodies. I mean kill, Kill, KILL, KILL." And I started jumpin up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL," and he started jumpin up and down with me and we was both jumping up and down yelling, "KILL, KILL." And the sargent came over, pinned a medal on me, sent me down the hall, said, "You're our boy."

Didn't feel too good about it.

Proceeded on down the hall gettin more injections, inspections, detections, neglections and all kinds of stuff that they was doin' to me at the thing there, and I was there for two hours, three hours, four hours, I was there for a long time going through all kinds of mean nasty ugly things and I was just having a tough time there, and they was inspecting, injecting every single part of me, and they was leaving no part untouched. Proceeded through, and when I finally came to the see the last man, I walked in, walked in sat down after a whole big thing there, and I walked up and said, "What do you want?"

He said, "Kid, we only got one question. Have you ever been arrested?"

---------

Thanksgiving 2004 wasn't my first time astraying from the amber waves of grain. In 2002, I spent most of November in Chichester, England working on a major transatlantic software project for my company. It was a great month. I quickly became a regular at the local Boots (that Botanica line rocks!) and adapted well to the custom of a pint at the pub right after work. Had one serious bout of homesickness, which was an actual physical reaction with nausea and insomnia and loss of appetite. Cured it by going to the local Chinese restaurant and pretending it was Grant Street and then going back to the flat and watching Full Metal Jacket on TV, reveling in the accents. Meanwhile, through the news, I stayed up to date with the Hans Blix and his UN team of weapons inspectors on their way to Iraq.

But the IT team -- Kevin, Dennis, Neville, Andy, Saroj, Malcolm, Sarah, Ian and Gwenda-- were mindful that I was missing out on the traditional four-day bacchanal of food and shopping, so they organized an ad hoc substitute for Thursday's lunch. A local pub had a carvery and confirmed a supply of turkey for sandwiches. The cranberry sauce was a little closer to chutney, but present and accounted for. The 'mash' half of a bangers and mash regular lunch supplied the potatoes and I think they even managed stuffing. Brussel sprouts were apparently the available greens, but an anti-sprout cabal made sure they never made it to the table. No doubt, for the best.

We had a great lunch. All that was missing was the televised roar of a stadium of American football fans and the rapid East Coast patter of a sports announcer in the background. Malcolm even tried for an obligatory heated family discussion when he took me to task for the undeniably poor track record the American settlers left in their dealings with the Native American tribes. Which was another one of those strange moments of zen that life likes to throw at me now and then.

In the evening after work, the town rounded the day off with a Christmas tree lighting and street fair marking the beginning of the longer shopping hours of the season. A local charity had a table selling small mince pies, so I was happily covered on that issue as well. It was on this visit, probably even on this evening, that I found my second Horslips CD - the Best Of double CD set on the Edsel label -- in the MVC music store on South Street.

"But thats not what I came to tell you about"

2006-11-23T07:49:00.000-08:00

We walked in, sat down, Obie came in with the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, sat down. Man came in said, "All rise." We all stood up, and Obie stood up with the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures, and the judge walked in sat down with a seeing eye dog, and he sat down, we sat down. Obie looked at the seeing eye dog, and then at the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one, and looked at the seeing eye dog. And then at twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one and began to cry, 'cause Obie came to the realization that it was a typical case of American blind justice, and there wasn't nothing he could do about it, and the judge wasn't going to look at the twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with the circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. And we was fined $50 and had to pick up the garbage in the snow, but thats not what I came to tell you about.

Came to talk about the draft.

------

Sometime during the summer of 2004, Maurice Linnane made an announcement in the Official Horslips Guestbook that the footage shot at the Derry Exhibition had become the genesis of a full documentary on the band, with archival footage, interviews past and present, and much more. Then as summer drifted along into autumn rumors flew about that the members of Horslips were gathering at Grouse Lodge and recording a new album. That was confirmed as Roll Back. Rumors then flew about a launch party in late November, conveniently timed for Thanksgiving. At the Halloween office party (a potent place of mojo for me) I hatched a scheme in the Horslips chatroom that I would get myself over for this album launch. There was some discussion back at the house on the subject of traveling on a day usually held sacrosanct for America, Flag and Family. And not just traveling. Traveling to Europe. For a rock album release party. And even after tickets were tentatively purchased, there was a further bit of anxiety when another session in the chatroom revealed that there was no launch party really and the album release had been delayed by artwork issues. But by this point, the November elections had passed and Bush was relected and I would have dissed Thanksgiving that year for a Westlife autograph session at the Patrick Street branch of HMV in Cork. What I managed to tell my husband I really can't remember, but we packed our bags and headed for the airport.

"And we went back to the church, had a another thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat..."

2006-11-23T05:19:00.000-08:00

After speaking to Obie for about forty-five minutes on the telephone we finally arrived at the truth of the matter and said that we had to go down and pick up the garbage, and also had to go down and speak to him at the police officer's station. So we got in the red VW microbus with the shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the police officer's station.

Now friends, there was only one or two things that Obie coulda done at the police station, and the first was he could have given us a medal for being so brave and honest on the telephone, which wasn't very likely, and we didn't expect it, and the other thing was he could have bawled us out and told us never to be see driving garbage around the vicinity again, which is what we expected, but when we got to the police officer's station there was a third possibility that we hadn't even counted upon, and we was both immediately arrested. Handcuffed. And I said "Obie, I don't think I can pick up the garbage with these handcuffs on." He said, "Shut up, kid.
Get in the back of the patrol car."

And that's what we did, sat in the back of the patrol car and drove to the quote Scene of the Crime unquote. I want tell you about the town of Stockbridge, Massachusets, where this happened here, they got three stop signs, two police officers, and one police car, but when we got to the Scene of the Crime there was five police officers and three police cars, being the biggest crime of the last fifty years, and everybody wanted to get in the newspaper story about it. And they was using up all kinds of cop equipment that they had hanging around the police officer's station.

They was taking plaster tire tracks, foot prints, dog smelling prints, and they took twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. Took pictures of the approach, the getaway, the northwest corner the southwest corner and that's not to mention the aerial photography.

After the ordeal, we went back to the jail. Obie said he was going to put us in the cell. Said, "Kid, I'm going to put you in the cell, I want your wallet and your belt." And I said, "Obie, I can understand you wanting my wallet so I don't have any money to spend in the cell, but what do you want my belt for?" And he said, "Kid, we don't want any hangings." I said, "Obie, did you think I was going to hang myself for littering?" Obie said he was making sure, and friends Obie was, cause he took out the toilet seat so I couldn't hit myself over the head and drown, and he took out the toilet paper so I couldn't bend the bars roll out the - roll the toilet paper out the window, slide down the roll and have an escape. Obie was making sure, and it was about four or five hours later that Alice (remember Alice? It's a song about Alice), Alice came by and with a few nasty words to Obie on the side, bailed us out of jail, and we went back to the church, had a another thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, and didn't get up until the next morning, when we all had to go to court.

_____

Officer Obie and Arlo Guthrie have little to do with Horslips or the year 2004, but 2004 had been a milestone year for the Horslips fan community. It began that March with the first History of Horslips Exhibition in Derry. Organized by three of the band's most dedicated fans (Jim Nelis, Stephen Ferris, and Paul Callaghan), the Exhibition gathered together Horslips albums, posters, tickets, instruments and other memorabilia from all over the world. The Exhibition travelled on to Drogheda in October 2005 and Belfast in February 2006. The Derry installation, being first, also had Maurice Linnane on hand to film the evening as it unfolded. All of this made the Official Horslips Guestbook chat and even a relatively new fan of the music (I have only recently seen them perform live) could tell it was important.

"And we had never heard of a dump closed on Thanksgiving before..."

2006-11-22T14:50:00.000-08:00

This song is called Alice's Restaurant, and it's about Alice, and the restaurant, but Alice's Restaurant is not the name of the restaurant, that's just the name of the song, and that's why I called the song Alice's Restaurant.

You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant
Walk right in it's around the back
Just a half a mile from the railroad track
You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant

Now it all started two Thanksgivings ago, was on - two years ago on Thanksgiving, when my friend and I went up to visit Alice at the restaurant, but Alice doesn't live in the restaurant, she lives in the church nearby the restaurant, in the bell-tower, with her husband Ray and Fasha the dog. And livin' in the bell tower like that, they got a lot of room downstairs where the pews used to be in. Havin' all that room, seein' as how they took out all the pews, they decided that they didn't have to take out their garbage for a long time.

We got up there, we found all the garbage in there, and we decided it'd be a friendly gesture for us to take the garbage down to the city dump. So we took the half a ton of garbage, put it in the back of a red VW microbus, took shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and headed on toward the city dump.

Well we got there and there was a big sign and a chain across across the dump saying, "Closed on Thanksgiving." And we had never heard of a dump closed on Thanksgiving before, and with tears in our eyes we drove off into the sunset looking for another place to put the garbage.

We didn't find one. Until we came to a side road, and off the side of the side road there was another fifteen foot cliff and at the bottom of the cliff there was another pile of garbage. And we decided that one big pile is better than two little piles, and rather than bring that one up we decided to throw our's down.

That's what we did, and drove back to the church, had a thanksgiving dinner that couldn't be beat, went to sleep and didn't get up until the next morning, when we got a phone call from officer Obie. He said, "Kid, we found your name on an envelope at the bottom of a half a ton of garbage, and just wanted to know if you had any information about it." And I said, "Yes, sir, Officer Obie, I cannot tell a lie, I put that envelope under that garbage."

Yes indeed, this is gonna be a multi-part post dedicated to Arlo Guthrie as the mood hits me. Gotta beat the tribute to Wednesday Addams's Thanksgiving what we did post in this very blog last year.

It might also be noted that I used Thanksgiving Weekend 2004 to get myself on a jet plane as it taxied down the runway leaving these great United States and to fly on over to Dublin to attend the launch party of Roll Back, the new CD from Horslips.

"Is it true this was a place of sin?"

2006-11-21T13:44:00.000-08:00

In the office, I am to Horslips what Roger H is to The Beatles.

And so it was that Sunday evening I was on my way to the City with Roger to see Sean Lennon at the Great American Music Hall. Now I went mostly to have a good time and to see if the kids are alright (they seem okay) and how Lennon Og grappled with the family legacy.

And, interestingly, even though his own music was squarely in the style of today's sophisticated, dense, neo-psychedelic, alt-indy what-you-will, there were undeniable traces of a paternal influence. "It's the chord progressions!" I said to Roger after a song or two. "The key changes and whatever is going on in the tonal structure."

But it struck me that this still did not separate his music from his contemporaries or stigmatize it as derivative, but rather that they ALL have absorbed something from a primal source. Indeed, one album in particular.* So on the turntable today: Magical Mystery Tour.

Another surprise was Sean's easy-going relationship with the audience. "Great album!" someone shouted. "Whose album? Houses of the Holy by Led Zepplin?" he batted back. "That's a great album." This led to a few quick runs of signature Led Zepplin riffs to cheers and hoots. "Yeah, that shit's rad." he concluded. Another extended discussion with the front of the room on the subject of Maxon Crumb, holy madman and street sufi of the City. Then a shout-out to sister Kyoko in the house. Finally, the obligatory honoring of the locale. "Is it true this was a place of sin?" Sean asked, hand sweeping out to indicate pillars, balconies, bars, and dancefloor. Indeed. Cat house, opium den, rat-gambling pit, Shanghai floor saloon, or church: there isn't a nineteenth century structure in San Francisco without sin. The audience affirmed Sean's question.

"Well I'll tell you," he said. "It's a beautiful place to get a blow-job in."

And from the back of the house, male voice, booming: "Where isn't?"

*I already had an inkling of this when I went to see The Decemberists two years ago (at the very same venue) and one of their opening bands did a trance-electronica take on Blue Jay Way. It was pretty cool, actually.

My Love is in America

2006-09-10T20:28:00.000-07:00

(Ash Wednesday, 2002. Photographer: Miss Templeton)

A New York Second

If the sky that we look upon...

Ghosts of the Faithful Departed

2006-09-02T16:15:00.000-07:00

Selections from the Exhibition

"There were thousands of poor people didn't have no place to go"

2006-08-21T08:28:00.000-07:00

Jazz funeral for pets lost to Katrina
JANET McCONNAUGHEY, Associated Press

Madona, an offshore cook, and Smith, a house painter, took turns wearing the big brown head, which bore resemblance to Scooby-Doo. Smith said they inherited it from friends who didn't return to the city after Katrina.

Madona said the costume piece looked like his Doberman, Phideaux (pronounced "Fido"). The flat-nosed blue stuffed animal represented his red-nose pit bull, Blue, while a small black stuffed dog was for Smith's Chihuahua, Baby, which died before the hurricane.

Madona said he had to leave by bus for Houston, and couldn't take his pets. Smith stayed through the storm. She said she rescued her neighbors' dogs, covering their paws with duct tape to keep their claws from breaking the rubber raft a neighbor had left. She kept one of the dogs.

John Clark of Arabi and friend Mary Horaist of Kenner carried small sunflower bouquets and photographs of their 15-year-old dogs. They took both of them out of New Orleans, but both died afterward.

Clark, personnel director for St. Bernard Parish, had to have Katie-Raz euthanized after the power went out in Bogalusa and she went into respiratory failure.

"I promised Katie that when she would die, she would die looking into my eyes," he said.

Horaist had been nursing Fred through kidney failure with subcutaneous fluids even before the storm. Power outages, downed trees and phone failures left her unable to reach a veterinarian from the blueberry farm in Poplarville, Miss., where she had taken refuge.

Before the march began Sunday, the Rev. Bill Terry of St. Anna's Episcopal Church spoke briefly with members of the Treme Brass Band. "You know what to do," he told them. "You've done it a million times before."

Later, he told the crowd: "We're New Orleans. This is how we mourn."

Jazz funeral marches traditionally start with a dirge for the mourners' sorrow, then move into an uptempo celebration of the loved one's life and salvation.

This time, the march stepped off to a slow rendition of "Just a Closer Walk With Thee."

There was a bit of silence. The drums rattled briskly, and the band swung into "Just a Little While to Stay Here."

Whole article at the link.

Here's the official page for the current White House pet.

"I'm ready for my close-up now, Mr Farren!"

2006-07-23T16:19:00.000-07:00

I'm hot. You're hot. He's hot. She's hot.

Mick Farren is hot! My friends in Omagh are hot!

And Europe? Europe is le Haute!

Europe cooler but deadly heatwave set to return with a vengeance.

But the good news is: President Bush rejected the Kyoto Treaty way back there in March 2001...because Global Warming really isn't scientifically proven yet. And President Bush must know what he's talking about, or New York City wouldn't have hosted the 2004 Republican Convention! New York City! And If you can't make the presidential nomination there, you can't make it anywhere...!

Husband: Name the Top Ten Movies about heatwaves...
Me: Ah...okay. Cujo.
Husband: Predator. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Lawrence of Arabia.
Me: Do the Right Thing.
Husband: Cool Hand Luke...
Me: I'm too hot to think of anything else.

But whatever. The thing is: I'm back. Got me a copy of Give the Anarchist a Cigarette and I'm ready to talk.

"Let's do the Time Warp again..."

2006-07-20T06:21:00.000-07:00

(A Slice of Fine from the Doctor Who entry at wikipedia)

When I first met Mr. T, he had a rather extensive collection of home-taped videocassettes all bearing the hand-scrawled legend "Doctor Who." Then, too, our proximity to Silicon Valley and its legions of gnomic obsessives ensured that our PBS station carried the series (and Red Dwarf and Blake's Seven and Black Adder and the venerable Monty Python and Nova and Stephen Hawking and shows about robots) endlessly. It was the Tom Baker-era Doctor, and I gamely gave the thing a go.

Now, let only she who did not watch the rubber-mask monster and suspiciously flat-floored cave era of original series Star Trek cast the first stone. (And what about all those Class-M planets, huh? What were the odds there?) But I just couldn't summon up enough suspension of disbelief when the Doctor called on our house. "These Daleks," I said. "They don't seem to be able to step up on surfaces, do they? So...perhaps you climb a set of stairs? Problem solved?"

Eventually, as with his similar mission on behalf of the Three Stooges, my husband gave up the prosthetizing effort to convert me. But that was a long time ago. And now, reading that David Tennant has finally reached his childhood goal of playing The Doctor, I find that I might be of an entirely different opinion on the matter after all.

"Ain't Got A Home"

2006-07-16T14:07:00.000-07:00

From the recent Fourth of July weekend:

Steve: Katrina Fatigue? Bullsh*t. Anyone in the media using the phrase "Katrina Fatigue" can kiss my ass.
Me: Did they ever find your next-door neighbor?
Steve: No.

Program aims to keep musicians in Big Easy

NEW ORLEANS - Dan Oestreicher is a 23-year-old saxophone player, not long out of college, who has lived with friends since Hurricane Katrina's floodwater drove him from his apartment. A new housing program aims to turn him into a homeowner.

Oestreicher is one of dozens of New Orleans residents who have signed up to help build the so-called Musicians' Village, a collection of houses in a section of the Ninth Ward flooded after the storm, in exchange for a bargain price on a brand new house.

He said he liked the idea of living near fellow musicians. He also likes the idea of paying $500 a month to own a brand new, three-bedroom house worth about $90,000.

More at the link.

Well, I got a voice
And I love to sing
I can sing like a bird
And I can sing like a frog
I'm a lonely boy
I ain't got a home

I ain't got a girl
I ain't got a son
I ain't got no kin
I ain't got no one
I'm a lonely frog
I ain't got a home

Jeremy Harding on Syd Barrett

2006-07-15T23:05:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday, I searched the LRB archives in vain for this article. It is clear that the editors have since made a decision to put it online, and -- even more to the point -- have made it available for free without subscription. Full article at link.

Afternoonishness

...Barrett's afternoonishness was far more supple and engaging. It superimposed the hippie cult of eternal solstice on the pre-teatime daydreams of one's childhood, occasioned by a slick of sunlight on a chest-of-drawers or a snatch of plainsong in the radiator - a daydream that quickly filled with gaudy archetypes and very private, custom-built creations. Barrett's songs are full of both: bog-standard gnomes on the one hand, homeless mice called 'Gerald' on the other. His afternoonishness is lit by an importunate adult intelligence that can't quite get back to the place it longs to be.

Remarkably, Barrett created the same, precocious longing in adolescents who heard his music at the time. I remember 'See Emily Play' drifting across a school corridor in 1967 - I was 15 then - and I remember the powerful wish to stay suspended indefinitely in that music, just as I wanted to hang about for ever in another, much darker song of the same period, 'My Eyes Have Seen You', by the Doors. I also remember the quasi-adult intimation that this wasn't possible. Which may have been why the first strains of 'Emily', even then, marked the onset of sulkiness and regret; the thing you adored was eluding you even as you heard it. Roll on teatime...

"So me and a hundred more, To Americay sailed o'er."

2006-07-04T16:26:00.000-07:00

But I digress. The thunder of our two brave cannon announced the Fourth of July, at daylight, to all who were awake. But many of us got our information at a later hour, from the almanac. All the flags were sent aloft, except half a dozen that were needed to decorate portions of the ship below, and in a short time the vessel assumed a holiday appearance. During the morning, meetings were held and all manner of committees set to work on the celebration ceremonies. In the afternoon, the ship’s company assemble aft, on deck, under the awnings; the flute, the asthmatic melodeon, and the consumptive clarinet crippled the Star Spangled Banner, and the choir chased it to cover, and George came in with a peculiarly lacerating screech on the final note and slaughtered it. Nobody mourned.

We carried out the corpse on three cheers (that joke was not intentional and I do not endorse it) and then the President, throned behind a cable-locker, with a national flag spread over it, announced the “Reader,” who rose up and read that same old Declaration of Independence which we have all listened to so often without paying any attention to what it said: and after that the President piped the Orator of the Day to quarters and he made that same old speech about our national greatness which we so religiously believe and so fervently applaud. Now came the choir into court again, with the complaining instruments and assaulted Hail Columbia; and when victory hung wavering in the scale, George returned with his dreadful wild-goose step turned on and the choir won of course. A minister pronounced the benediction, and the patriotic little gathering disbanded. The Fourth of July was safe, as far as the Mediterranean was concerned.

from The Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain, cub-reporter, Alta California, San Francisco, 1867.

To my various email correspondents of late: it is a great honor to me to be called a “Yank,” in whatever spirit you intended, as I share this title with Mark Twain, an author whose collected works inspired not only the post-modernist masterpiece Finnegans Wake, but also the general spirit and vein of the collected works of Flann O’Brien. I only hope that I can live up to the legacy that your deep respect for my online scribbling entails.

Another perspective on the Fourth of July from Samuel Clemons.

From Flann O'Brien's Third Policeman:

'Is it about a bicycle?' he asked.

'Not that' said the Sergeant. 'This is a private visitor who says he did not arrive in the townland upon a bicycle. He has no personal name at all. His dadda is in far Amurikey.'

'Which of the two Amurikeys?' asked MacCruiskeen.

'The Unified Stations,' said the Sergeant.

'Likely he is rich by now if he is in that quarter,' said MacCruiskeen, 'because there's dollars there, dollars and bucks and nuggets in the ground and any amount of rackets and golf games and musical instruments. It is a free country too by all accounts.'

And finally:

God prosper the bold hearts on both land and ocean,
Who go in defiance of danger and scars,
And send them safe home to their wives and their sweethearts,
With the Harp of old Erin and Banner of Stars

Bless me Blogger for I have sinned...

2006-07-03T20:00:00.000-07:00

It's been nearly two weeks since my last blogging (that Whitby greeting doesn't really count, does it?). I've committed YouTube several times. (It's just so easy to cut and paste those things!) And I've been remiss in visiting Generic Mugwump, Doc40 and many others. It's almost the Fourth of July and I don't even have a theme post planned.

But I do have news on Paul McCartney and Yoko Ono:

Vegas Very Much in "Love" with the Beatles

Ringo Starr walked the red carpet Friday night with Yoko Ono and George Harrison's widow, Olivia, at the Friday premiere of Love, a new Cirque du Soleil extravaganza set entirely to Beatles music handpicked by the Fab Four's main producer, George Martin.

Paul McCartney was also expected to attend the show, which has moved into a $130 million, 2,013-seat theater at the Mirage Hotel that took two years to build. Every seat is equipped with three speakers, to better immerse the audience in the magical, mysterious world populated by "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds," "Eleanor Rigby" and "Lady Madonna."

More at link.

And news from Hot Press:

PACO PENA AND FRIENDS PLAY VICAR STREET AS PART OF WALTON'S GUITAR FESTIVAL OF IRELAND

If the five-string is your thing, here's some useful info for you: Ireland's "biggest and best" guitar festival is preparing for a hive of activity next week, with the lion's share of its events taking place between 4-9 July.

In addition to workshops, special events and seminars, the festival has attracted respected acts such as the Niall Toner Band, Clive Barnes and John Williams & John Etheridge.

A highlight will be Paco Peña & Friends, who play Vicar Street on Friday 7 July.

Tickets are available via Ticketmaster for E35.

More information on this event, and the festival, is available from www.gfi.ie

www.gfi.ie

Okay. Off to Generic Mugwump for a while!

The Man Who Built America: Thomas Aloysius Dorgan

2006-06-14T13:49:00.000-07:00

While spiffing up one of my MySpace profiles, I was skimming through some color plates in my copy of The Big Book of American Irish Culture, Bob Callahan, editor* and read up on the source of the plate I was turning into website wallpaper. And what do I find? The cartoonist of the panel I really admired is from San Francisco, baby!

Thomas A. Dorgan

(April 29, 1877 [citation needed] - May 2, 1929[1])("Thomas Aloysius Dorgan," "Tad Dorgan", "TAD") was an American cartoonist who signed his drawings as TAD. He is credited with coining more popular words and expressions than anyone else.

He was born in San Francisco. When he was thirteen years old, he lost the last three fingers of his right hand in an accident with a factory machine. He took up drawing for therapy. A year later at the age of 14 he joined the art staff of the San Francisco Bulletin. By 1902 he was not only the top sports cartoonist for the New York Journal, but also a reporter and sportswriter. Jack Dempsey described him as "the greatest authority on boxing".

Dorgan is generally credited with either creating or popularizing such words and expressions as "dumbbell" (a stupid person); "for crying out loud" (an exclamation of astonishment); "cat's meow" and "cat's pajamas" (as superlatives); "applesauce" (nonsense); "cheaters" (eyeglasses); "skimmer" (a hat); "hard-boiled" (a tough person); "drugstore cowboy" (loafers or ladies' men); "nickel-nurser" (a miser); "as busy as a one-armed paperhanger" (overworked); and "Yes, we have no bananas," which was turned into a popular song.

His New York Times obituary brackets him with George Ade and Ring Lardner as popularizers of "a new slang vernacular," and also credits him as originator of "Twenty-three, Skidoo," "solid ivory," "Dumb Dora," "finale hopper," "Benny" for hat and "dogs'" for shoes.[1]

(A sample of TADs style found on www.lambiek.net)

From that site:

When he was thirteen years old, Thomas Aloysius Dorgan lost the last three fingers of his right hand in an accident with a factory machine. While recuperating, he drew a lot of cartoons as manual therapy. A year later, he found himself a job as staff artist on the San Francisco Bulletin. In 1902, he was employed by the prestigious San Francisco Chronicle, where he created his first weekly comic strip, 'Johnny Wise'. He was hired away by newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst and put to work at the New York Journal as a sports cartoonist.

(More of TAD at an Ohio State University collection.)

*The mere fact that this book is in my personal library, along with the Encyclopedia of Southern Culture and the indispensable Encyclopedia of Bad Taste, is really all you need to know about me.

"From Brixton's lovely boulevards To Hammersmith's sightly shores"

2006-05-28T09:09:00.000-07:00

Ah...me.

From what I can tell, The Duke de Mondo is in the throes of another romantic entanglement, and he has done the very sensible thing of listening to Rum, Sodomy and the Lash while he figures things out:

...Aye, I tell her. These gloriously wretched tableau's and episodes, I been catching glimpses of them e'er since that momentous afternoon when first I hit play on Rum, Sodomy & The Lash.

But the other London Shane talks about, the London of "long-gone songs from day's gone by" carried along the swell o' the Thames, the London of "Rainy Night In Soho," I been pining for that, y'unnerstann.

"Rainy Night In Soho," I remind her, is maybe the most beautiful song ever written, certainly the most beautiful ever written about Soho.

Was goin to be the first song at the wedding I almost stumbled into, by the by. We used to dance drunkenly round the kitchen in time to the sway o' yon strings.

"I took shelter from a shower
And I stepped into your arms
On a rainy night in Soho
The wind was whistling all its charms"

But beyond all that is the startling development that The Duke has made a decision regarding his literary future:

I got a burning in the belly reeks o' a craving for to be heard and read, I say. I point out that the longer I sit here in this back room with the fag in the maw and the fags in the brains, with the fringe getting blacker and the eyes getting redder, with the stacks o' Chapter One Paragraph One getting closer to the roof-slates with each tick o' the time-tock, the longer this goes on, I say, the closer the factory gets.

Fore a fella knows what's happened he's stood in yonder production line checking pharmaceutical paraphernalia for anything out of the ordinary, yacking all about how he's gonna get a novel out one day, soon as my agent gets back to me. Soon as the publisher's ready. Soon as this leg gets fixed. Soon as the doctors let me go. Soon as I get this black from out my lung.

What I say is don't get me wrong, not for a second. The factory, it's a place humming with strong and beautiful and soulful and special and dedicated human beings. But I'd be lying, I say, if I pretended yon grinding and sparking and thumping didn't scare the yellow out my pish.

So aye. I'm going to London. I'm taking a couple bags fulla personality, a guitar tuned to Blue and a case filled wi' y-fronts on account of I wore boxers once in 1999 and my knackers ended up moored off Arran for a fortnight.

Ever the one to encourage and enthuse, I'm reminded of George Orwell's delightfully brilliant Keep the Aspidistra Flying:

Sharply the menacing wind sweeps over
The bending poplars, newly bare.

As a matter of fact, though, there was not a breath of wind that afternoon. It was almost as mild as spring. Gordon repeated to himself the poem he had begun yesterday, in a cadenced whisper, simply for the pleasure of the sound of it. He was pleased with the poem at this moment. It was a good poem--or would be when it was finished, anyway. He had forgotten that last night it had almost made him sick.

The plane trees brooded motionless, dimmed by faint wreaths of mist. A tram boomed in the valley far below. Gordon walked up Malkin Hill, rustling instep-deep through the dry, drifted leaves. All down the pavement they were strewn, crinkly and golden, like the rustling flakes of some American breakfast cereal; as though the queen of Brobdingnag had upset her packet of Truweet Breakfast Crisps down the hillside.

Jolly, the windless winter days! Best time of all the year--or so Gordon thought at this moment. He was as happy as you can be when you haven't smoked all day and have only three-halfpence and a Joey in the world. This was Thursday, early-closing day and Gordon's afternoon off. He was going to the house of Paul Doring, the critic, who lived in Coleridge Grove and gave literary tea-parties.

It had taken him an hour or more to get himself ready. Social life is so complicated when your income is two quid a week. He had had a painful shave in cold water immediately after dinner. He had put on his best suit--three years old but just passable when he remembered to press the trousers under his mattress. He had turned
his collar inside out and tied his tie so that the torn place didn't show. With the point of a match he had scraped enough blacking from the tin to polish his shoes. He had even borrowed a needle from Lorenheim and darned his socks--a tedious job, but better than inking the places where your ankle shows through. Also he had procured an empty Gold Flake packet and put into it a single cigarette extracted from the penny-in-the-slot-machine. That was just for the look of the thing. You can't, of course, go to other people's houses with NO cigarettes. But if you have even one it's all right, because when people see one cigarette in a packet they assume that the packet has been full. It is fairly easy to pass the thing off as an accident.

'Have a cigarette?' you say casually to someone.

'Oh--thanks.'

You push the packet open and then register surprise. 'Hell! I'm down to my last. And I could have sworn I had a full packet.'

'Oh, I won't take your last. Have one of MINE,' says the other.

'Oh--thanks.'

And after that, of course, your host and hostess press cigarettes upon you. But you must have ONE cigarette, just for honour's sake.

Hmmm...on second thought, perhaps the Duke should avoid that particular read until he's on his own second or third publication.

I will be following the Duke's September adventures in the City of Dickens and Wilde with great interest.

The Things You Find in Google

2006-05-08T19:15:00.000-07:00

Was doing the classically egotistical thing of googling on my name (coupled with Horslips, so as to eliminate the Franklin-Templeton* Fund hits) and found this!

Aaron McMullan Reviews.

Which guilts us into a visit to Mondo Irelando to see what might be new.

Skirting the temptation to read The Duke's opinions on Anne Coulter (and goodness! What is he going to say that Mick Farren doesn't already say with pictures of leather and bondage!) I find that the Duke has gone and seen Brokeback Mountain:

"Hells fire, mean did you ever find yourself all touchy-feely round about a man o' your self-same sex?"

What I say is no, what I say is what kinda mania you hopped on, anyroad?

Behind the eyes, you'll be aware, s'all sortsa flashback.

"D'You Know What I Mean" by Oasis, I'll be damned, s'just gone Number One, this record, sayin, this record's gonna be amazing.

Fella sat beside me way back then, he's sayin aye, I'd wager it'll be tight as a vicar's arse, you can be damn sure ain't gon' be no songs longer than three minutes, ain't gon' be no outlandish production, gon' be focused, oh aye.

Be Here Now, they're calling it. S'gonna be amazing, don't you know?

(And it was, dammit, and I'll defend it to the slight discomfort, best believe it.)

High on the rugged throat o' Gallagher, we set off for to find a tavern might accept a couple moments gruntin' and a cigarette in the yap as answer enough to the question "You got any ID?"

On receipt of a barman sympathetic to our plight, we settled 'side a jukebox stuck on H17, bein "Revolution 9" by The Beatles, that discordant cut/paste symphony spinning close to two dozen times afore someone in the midst of a beered-up brain-wank tore the plug out the wall and trampled the fucker to chards o' mangled mush.

Soon enough, talk took a dive t'wards the mysteries o' the bollocks.

"See", he gets to yackin, "I fancy her, but I can't stand her. Mean to say, I love her, I think, but she curdles the pish in me guts."

Me all nodding. I understand, I'm saying, s'like that lad I asked out, and yet, hetero to the back a the nuts, I am.

"Aye, for sure." And then; "What?"

Sometimes a fella just stumbles into these things, just opens the yap without thinking and next thing anyone knows there he is, flailing in the hedgerows o' hell with those words round about slinging sulphur 'gainst his jowels for all eternity.

Well, like, y'know, that fella. I kinda, y'know.

"And did he?"

Well not then. Later on, like.

Later on round back the club, with the snow to the ankles and the mumbled beats all crashing from beyond the walls. Nothing X-rated, I'm telling him. Just. Y'know.

He studies the end o' his cigarette for a time. "This is some momentous fuckin shit you're flingin on me here."

A silence, aye, thick as the man-slush o' Zeus. Then it's all come on, for fucks sakes, the hell kinda tosser are you, anyroad, a big ol' tosser likes o' which I never once laid eyes on, that's what kind, if'n you accept that sorta banter as Gospel. Fuckin wi' your mentals like there's no tomorrow, that's what I'm doin' here an now.

Couple pints later it's forgotten.

On the kerb by the KFC, the lass is asking me, "So what, then?"

What what?

"Well, did you?"

A shrug from yours truly. Who's to say, in this day and age?

More at the link. And always worth the read.

*Me (to husband who is downstairs): Honey?
Husband: WHAT!!!
Me: Are we related to the Franklin-Templeton people?
Husband: NO!!!
Me: (sotta voice) F*ck.
Husband: I HEARD THAT!!!

"Where the Seats Have No Name"

2006-04-29T12:52:00.000-07:00

Ancient Gaelic on the walls and perfume in the ladies’ room
Dark wood tables, each brought over
Piece by piece from Boru’s tomb
Bridgid brings a round of Smithwick’s plus a Power’s on the rocks
Raven tresses though her sister sports the wild fiery locks

(chorus):
Pints in glasses, raise a din
They never shoulda let us in
We’re all wicked liquored up at the upscale downtown Irish pub

Shortly after New Year’s Eve, I was walking around O’Farrell and Cyril Magnin and happened to notice that Johnny Foley’s was closed for seismic retro-fitting. A quick count of weeks to mid-March told me this would either be [a] the fastest seismic retrofitting in town which means someone had an inside track with the Building Permit Department – not a far stretch, really - and dust would fly or [b] Johnny Foley’s was perhaps not to return.

But Johnny Foley’s returned to great fanfare in the California Irish Herald and the local grapevine. And in time for the big day.

A week or so after the last green plastic cup was carted off to the local landfill, I stopped by to say 'hello' to the good folks I used to see on a regular basis until the hamburgers jumped to $9.95 and they started charging extra for the bleu cheese.

Marie met me at the door and showed off the remodel with proprietorial pride. She made me list all the improvements I could see, without telling me first.

Me: New wallpaper, I see that right off, and it’s beautiful. I love that color. New art nouveau sconces, nice! And new taps…that’s a lot of brass there! Okay, what else? Those stairs to the cellar, that’s a whole partition now. And the bookcase over there, well that’s gone. And – hey! -- the ‘Hippies Use the Side Door’ sign, that’s gone too!
Marie: And so’s the side door.
Me: I can see that! But I liked that sign!
Marie: It’s over here, by the bathrooms. And we’ve got new pictures up by there too.
Me: Fidel Castro with a bottle of Powers. Cool.
Marie: What else do you see?
Me: The whole bathroom layout is different, obviously, no more payphones here and the coat rack is gone. And…oh my god!
Marie: What?
Me: That’s a stunning portrait of Bono you got there!

One week later, I had Mssrs Pachinko & Hoover down to see this. Their reaction was near to mine. We hadn’t planned on staying for a meal, but the new waitress mistook our interest and seated us right at this most august of tables.

(Joe Pachinko, San Francisco poet. Photographer: Miss Templeton)

I tried to convince my friends of the significance of this addition to the time-honored, tradition bound iconography of the joints I had known most of my life. "Look," I said. "This puts the man in a whole new realm. This is beyond lunch with the President of the United States or meeting the Pope or being in a video with Sting. Love him or don’t, we now have to give Bono the respect of someone who is Up on the Wall of a Pub."

Although my lunch mates were dubious, I warmed to the theme. "First of all, almost everyone else in a gilded frame in this room is dead. And not of old age either. And with Bono, we are clearly beyond the categories of politics, literature, and sport."

"Maybe he fits under 'literature' as a writer. A songwriter." Hoover offered.

We gave that some thought as we ordered another round.

"Perhaps," I said. "But it is still new ground. Songwriting as poetry? It’s a pretty bold step forward! Why, next there will be women on the wall!"

My companions hugged their glasses close and inched away, cringing against the lightening sure to strike me at this blasphemy.* But the moment of danger passed.

"No," I said. "This is historic. This is the dawn of a new era in pub décor."

It’s a new phenomenon, one for a new millennium
Sippin’ in a classy joint and not a dive just like some bum
This is grand, we’re well-behaved with voices at a decent pitch
Mind your language and the doorman, he’s a big son of a bitch!

Pints in glasses, raise a din
They never shoulda let us in
We’re all wicked liquored up at the upscale downtown Irish pub

*EXTRACT from DO THE RIGHT FECKIN’ THING, Draft of Spike Lee’s 1989 film with Jennifer Connolly as Buggin’ Out, Aidan Quinn as Brian, and Martin Sheen as Mike. Script was subsequently re-written for a different cast.

ANGLE--PUB
________________________________BUGGIN' OUT
-------------------------Mike, how come you ain't got no
-------------------------sisters up on the wall here?

_________________________ ______MIKE
-------------------------You want sisters up on the Wall
-------------------------of Fame, you open up your own
-------------------------business, then you can do what you wanna
-------------------------do. My Irish bar, men up on the wall.
____________________________________________________________________15.

_______________________________BRIAN
-------------------------Take it easy, Mike.

_______________________________MIKE
-------------------------Don't start on me today.

_______________________________BUGGIN' OUT
-------------------------Mike, that might be fine, you own
-------------------------this, but not only do I see men
-------------------------eating in here, I see women.
-------------------------So since we spend much money
.........................here, we do have some say.

_______________________________MIKE
-------------------- You a troublemaker?

Brian walks over to Buggin' Out.

_______________________________BRIAN
--------------------You making trouble.

_______________________________BUGGIN' OUT
--------------------Put some sisters up on this Wall
------------------______-of Fame. We want Mother Jones,
-----------------_____---Maureen O’Sullivan, Rosie O’Donnell
-------------------------tomorrow.

"They gave me a sneer and a guitar pick, and a yellow dandelion."

2006-04-23T16:20:00.000-07:00

"I love songs about horses, railroads, land, Judgment Day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humor, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak and love. And Mother. And God."
--John Cash.

Look here. About a month ago, I left for Dublin on the southbound train from the Portadown station hours before some strike or another that would hit on Tuesday 28 March, and checked into an airport-side hotel in Dublin in happy anticipation of a flight home via Paris on that same day.

And that very Tuesday morning found me at the Dublin Airport staring at the word "Cancelled" next to my Air France flight.

"What I can do is book you for the same flight tomorrow." said the sweet young thing at the Air France counter after handing me a government-funded mimeograph that explained how there wasn't a whole lot I could do about any of this.
"But what if the strike is still going on tomorrow!" wailed I, good-nature falling apart like a set of EuroDisney mouse-ears left in the rain.
"At this, we would say 'C'est la Vie.'" she replied. "Do you wish the ticket or not?"

So it was WEDNESDAY, March 29 that found me racing through the Parisienne Airport with a scant twenty minutes to catch the plane that would take me home to beloved San Francisco. O it was horrible! Every ugly American impulse to complain, to speak loudly, to demand to see management pounded in my veins. One of the security men actually made a bit of fun of my whimpering. But then...they held the flight for us! And they booked all of us in first class.

When the flight attendent came by for the first meal, he asked my wine preference. "Oh, red wine please" I said. Can't do white. "Very good," he replied. "2003 Merlot or 2002 Pinot Noir?" And then two bottles were flourished for my perusal. A choice of wines on a flight! I wanted to stand up and kiss him. I wanted to say "Condoleezza Rice is so f*ckin' outta line, man. France rocks!" Instead I said "Let's start with the Merlot and see where the flight takes us."

And with a meal of fresh salmon and a glass of a pleasantly brash Merlot, I turned to the inflight entertainment. And that's where I finally saw Joaquin Phoenix and Reese Witherspoon going to Jackson -- and Nashville and Vegas and San Quentin -- in Walk the Line.

I should have written this film up long before. But fortunately, Duke De Mondo has taken care of all that for me:

The line Walk The Line walks most perilously is the one atween Selective Portrayal an Fuckin Slander. The flaws it presents; took a buncha pills an did some shaggin around; are sparks in the furthest flung corners a the gargantuan fires Cash scorched himself within. The virtues; he was a good lad wrote a good song; are further still from the pulsatin brilliance of his true beauty.

The flick, y’unnerstann, is shallow an predictable where Johnny Cash had the depth a the Mariana’s Trench an the unpredictability o’ an erection in a convent. It’s enjoyable an emotional an touchin, most certainly, but when the credits roll an the real Johnny an June are rippin the speakers apart every which way, a fella can’t help but reflect on the disservice it does to the man.

The True Story Of Johny Cash. Here it is;

Johnny Cash Live At Folsom Prison.

Johnny Cash Live At San Quentin.

Bitter Tears.

America – A 200 Year Salute In Story And Song.

Johnny Cash Sings The Ballads Of The True West.

Songs Of Our Soil.

American Recordings III – Solitary Man.

When those records’ve eaten into your every wakin moment till hardly a note passes your ear ‘thout facin comparison wi those incendiary, astounding, achingly beautiful pieces a work, then most likely you can assume you know as much as there is to know.

Records like shots a blazin fuck to the back a the brains, records about life an about justice an about redemption doesn’t come as easy as the cold turkey montage would have a fella believe. Records that sound like the rumble a the Earth’s gut one minute, an like the opium sanctity a sleep the next.

Records serve as teachers an pupils, records to feed the hunger in the dream-space, y’unnerstann.

Whoever he was, this man Johnny Cash wi the feet all scorched an blistered on account a the heat o’ those dunes, whoever he was, ain't much sight of him in Walk The Line.

Just found myself in the Duke's link list this weekend. So I'll have to repay that courtesy with lots and lots of visits to Mondo Irelando.

Diary of Johann August Sutter

2006-04-17T22:46:00.000-07:00

January 28th. [1848]

Marshall arrived in the evening, it was raining very heavy, but he told me he came on important business. After we was alone in a private Room he showed me the first Specimens of Gold, that is he was not certain if it was Gold or not, but he thought it might be; immediately I made the proof and found that it was Gold. I told him even that most of all is 23 Carat Gold; he wished that I should come up with him immediately, but I told him that I have to give first my orders to the people in all my factories and shops.

(Could have been this morning at the Union Square Post Office. Why don't more people file their taxes online!?! Image from sfmuseum.org)

So it's goodbye Molly Durkin, I'm sick and tired of workin'
And my heart is nearly broken, but no longer I'll be fooled;
And as sure as my name is Cooney, I'm bound for Califooney
And instead of diggin' mortar I'll be diggin' lumps of gold.

Well, I landed in Castle Garden, sure I met a man named Burke
And he told me remain in New York until he got me work.
But he hasn't got it for me, so tonight I'll tell him plain,
For San Francisco in the morn I'm going to take a train.

Trains. Trains are a whole other story! But as we've finally managed to work it back to music, I'm bringing this series of posts to a close. But remember: keep 72 hours worth of food, bleach, and fresh water in the house. Check those flashlight batteries and discuss alternate transit strategies with your household today. At work, they recommend that all employees keep a change of frillies (or male equivalent thereof) and a toothbrush and toothpaste at the office for unexpected overnight stays. That's not a bad idea either.

Oct. 15 OAKLAND (Moore) 5 San Francisco (Reuschel) 1

2006-04-17T21:50:00.000-07:00

1989 World Series

Known variously as the Bay Area Series and BART Series (for Bay Area Rapid Transit), the 1989 Fall Classic opened in Oakland, and Athletics ace Dave Stewart was brilliant, tossing a complete-game five-hitter to shut out the Giants, 5-0.

The results were similar in Game 2. Mike Moore and two relievers limited the Giants to four hits and one run, while the A's tallied four in the fourth inning - highlighted by Terry Steinbach's three-run homer - on their way to a 5-1 victory.

(Logo from Baseballliving.com)

Earthquake hits San Francisco

A powerful earthquake has rocked San Francisco killing nine people and injuring hundreds.

The number of dead is expected to rise significantly. The two tier Bay Bridge and Nimintz freeway both partially collapsed and rescuers are waiting to recover bodies from cars crushed by the quake.

The epicentre of the quake, which measured 6.9 on the Richter scale, is thought to have been Loma Prieta, 10 miles north of Santa Cruz on the San Andreas fault.

A massive rescue effort is now underway in what experts believe is the second biggest earthquake ever to hit the United States.

Officials have reported "unbelievable damage to infrastructure" with collapsed bridges and freeways, fires, shattered buildings, gaping cracks in roads and land slides.

Tremors from the quake, which lasted 15 seconds, were reported 400 miles away in Los Angeles and 200 miles away in Reno, Nevada.

The quake struck at 1704 local time (18 October, 0004 GMT), as people were making their way home after work. Traffic was brought to a standstill and many homes left without power.

Fans waiting to see the baseball World Series match at Candlestick Park were also caught up in the quake. Supporters ran onto the pitch as the whole stadium swayed.

(Image from the sfmuseum.net)

U.S. Geological Survey Intensity Map for the 1989 Loma Prieta Quake

The highest concentration of fatalities, 42, occurred in the collapse of the Cypress Street Viaduct on the Nimitz Freeway (Interstate 880), where a double-decker portion of the freeway collapsed, crushing the cars on the lower deck. One 50-foot (15 m) section of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge also collapsed, causing two cars to fall to the deck below, leading to the single fatality on the bridge. The bridge was closed for repairs for a month and one day, reopening on November 18. While the bridge was closed, ridership on Bay Area Rapid Transit and ferry services soared.

Wikipedia Entry on Loma Prieta Quake

(Embarcadero Freeway blocking Ferry Building from the city, 1960s. Image from shapingsf.org)

(Where the Embarcadero Freeway once stood. Image from Mike Humbert's Idiosyncratic Guide to San Francisco)

"The Bay Area is so beautiful, I hesitate to preach about heaven while I'm here."
~Billy Graham

"You are fortunate to live here. If I were your President, I would levy a tax on you for living in San Francisco!"
~Mikhail Gorbachev

"Somehow the great cities of America have taken their places in a mythology that shapes their destiny: Money lives in New York. Power sits in Washington. Freedom sips Cappuccino in a sidewalk cafe in San Francisco."
~Joe Flower

From the San Francisco Chronicle, September 2, 2005:

In 2001, a FEMA report ranked hurricane damage to New Orleans as one of the three most likely catastrophes facing the country (the other two were a terrorist attack on New York City and an earthquake in San Francisco).

"Mary Ann Singleton was twenty-five years old when she saw San Francisco for the first time."

2006-04-17T21:28:00.000-07:00

Heros and Icons: Harvey Milk

But banking bored him, and the gay Greenwich Village milieu that he slipped into was full of scruffy radicals, drug-addled theater queens and goofy twentysomethings fleeing Midwest bigotry. Milk befriended or had sex with many of them (including Craig Rodwell, who would help lead the 1969 riots outside the Stonewall bar that launched the gay movement). By the early 1970s, Milk had moved to San Francisco, enraptured by its flourishing hippie sensibilities.

The few gays who had scratched their way into the city's establishment blanched when Milk announced his first run for supervisor in 1973, but Milk had a powerful idea: he would reach downward, not upward, for support. He convinced the growing gay masses of "Sodom by the Sea" that they could have a role in city leadership, and they turned out to form "human billboards" for him along major thoroughfares. In doing so, they outed themselves in a way once unthinkable. It was invigorating.

(From Woodmere N.Y. to San Francisco CA. Harvey Milk and Market Street in the mid-70s. Image from sfgate.com)

A long, long time ago, let's say 1976, in a place very far away (Cedar Rapids, Iowa), a convent of Roman Catholic nuns lent some retired habits to a group of men performing their version of The Sound of Music. Three years later, those habits resurfaced in the streets of San Francisco's Castro district...
(From Sistory: A Blow by Blow History of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence)

Despite the characters' rueful and frequently baffled quest for romantic fulfillment, there's a giddiness in the very fabric of the Tales; it's the rush of liberation, an elixir familiar to any misfit who ever relocated to San Francisco, including Maupin. The author, who remembers himself as an "uptight, archconservative, racist brat" during his Southern youth (he even worked briefly for Senator Jesse Helms), came to San Francisco at the age of twenty-seven and came out of the closet shortly thereafter. His work as a journalist made him privy to all manner of gossip about society high and low, and his participation in the emergence of a new kind of society-a sort of republic of pleasure-fed his desire to write.

Literary Bent.com site for Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City

SF Pride Parade: Official Site and 2006 Registration Entry Form

While his first three tries for office failed, they lent Milk the credibility and positive media focus that probably no openly gay person ever had. Not everyone cheered, of course, and death threats multiplied. Milk spoke often of his ineluctable assassination, even recording a will naming acceptable successors to his seat and containing the famous line: "If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door."

Candlelight March for Harvey Milk, Market Street, November 27, 1978

"There was cowboy Neal at the wheelOf a bus to never-ever land"

2006-04-17T20:35:00.000-07:00

San Francisco in the middle 60's was a very special time and place to be a part of. But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive, in that corner of time in the world. Whatever it meant. There was madness in any direction. At any hour, you could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right. That we were winning. And that I think was the handle. That sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense. We didn't need that. Our energy would simply prevail.
-Hunter S. Thompson

"The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer -- they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer."
-Ken Kesey

Tarnished Galahad: The Prose and Pranks of Ken Kesey

(Scanned from private collection.)

By 1968, though, Bill Fuller’s attention was firmly focussed on one of his greatest dreams yet: building an Irish village in Galway Bay. While he was doing this, the American rock promoter Bill Graham flew to Ireland in a desperate attempt to obtain the lease on The Carousel Ballroom in San Francisco. It was easier than Graham had imagined. Fuller was waiting for him when he arrived at Shannon Airport at 8am, ordered a bottle of bourbon, shook hands on a deal, finished the remaining shots of liquor and then announced that he was going back to work on his building site. By 5pm, Graham was on a flight home, all set to turn The Carousel into the legendary rock venue, the Fillmore West.

We had all the momentum. We were riding the crest, of a high and beautiful wave. So now, less than five years later, you go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look west. And with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high watermark...that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
-Hunter S. Thompson

But as Garcia said, you know, the '60s ain't over till the fat lady gets high. And that means that whatever it takes to get you high: sometimes grief, sometimes it's prayer, fasting. I prefer a joint.
-Ken Kesey

"riverbank sunset Frisco hilly tincan evening"

2006-04-17T20:06:00.000-07:00

"It seemed like a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness of the late afternoon of time."
-Sal Paradise, On The Road

(In the road ... Bob Donlin, Neal Cassady, Allen Ginsberg, Robert La Vigne and Lawrence Ferlinghetti outside the City Lights bookstore in 1956. Photograph: Allen Ginsberg/Corbis as reprinted in the Guardian.co.uk)

"Jack Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million Levis to both sexes."
-William Burroughs

About Levi Strauss & Co.

Sunflower Sutra, Allen Ginsberg

I walked on the banks of the tincan banana dock and
....sat down under the huge shade of a Southern
....Pacific locomotive to look at the sunset over the
....box house hills and cry.
Jack Kerouac sat beside me on a busted rusty iron
....pole, companion, we thought the same thoughts
....of the soul, bleak and blue and sad-eyed,
....surrounded by the gnarled steel roots of trees of
....machinery.
The oily water on the river mirrored the red sky, sun
....sank on top of final Frisco peaks, no fish in that
....stream, no hermit in those mounts, just ourselves
....rheumy-eyed and hungover like old bums
....on the riverbank, tired and wily.
Look at the Sunflower, he said, there was a dead gray
....shadow against the sky, big as a man, sitting
....dry on top of a pile of ancient sawdust--
--I rushed up enchanted--it was my first sunflower,
....memories of Blake--my visions--Harlem...

The mad road, lonely, leading around the bend into the openings of space towards the horizon Wasatch snows promised us in the vision of the West, spine heights at the world's end, coast of blue Pacific starry night—nobone halfbanana moons sloping in the tangled night sky, the torments of great formations in mist, the huddled invisible insect in the car racing onwards, illuminate.—The raw cut, the drag, the butte, the star, the draw, the sunflower in the grass—orangebutted west lands of Arcadia, forlorn sands of the isolate earth, dewy exposures to infinity in black space, home of the rattlesnake and the gopher the level of the world, low and flat: the charging restless mute unvoiced road keening in a seizure of tarpaulin power into the route.

"Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much."

2006-04-17T19:32:00.000-07:00

AMERICAN BARBARISM: The Apostle of Estheticism Exposes Our Sins, San Francisco Daily Chronicle, March 30, 1882

A scene of considerable excitement occurred yesterday afternoon when Oscar Wilde ventured out in search of Celestial handiwork. In company with a lady and an escort, he called at a Chinese store on Sacramento street, below Kearny. No sooner had he been seen to leave his carriage than a general rush took place, and in a moment the street in front of the store was utterly impassable, and it required the bear-efforts of Officer Curtis to prevent the spectators from precipitating themselves into the store.

(Image from sfmuseum.org)

"It's an odd thing, but everyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city, and possess all the attractions of the next world."
-Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Grey, 1891

San Francisco City Search: Wilde Oscar's

"49 square miles surrounded by reality"

2006-04-17T19:21:00.000-07:00

~Paul Kantner rock band Jefferson Airplane

(Image available for purchase at art-posters.net)

"I will sing in San Francisco if I have to sing in the streets, for I know that the streets of San Francisco are Free."
~Luisa Tetrazzini, San Francisco's all time favorite soprano, on the occasion of breaking her New York contract

"One is the loneliest number"

2006-04-17T08:34:00.000-07:00

U2's 'One' Voted Britain's Favorite Lyric

LONDON - The Irish band U2 has given Britain its favorite song lyric, according to a survey released Monday.

ONE more sentence and I'd be quoting that one in full.

Also, I promise the full story with picture of Bono and Johnny Foley's seismic-retrofitting remodel job. Maybe tonight. Oh! And speaking of seismic retrofitting:

I never will forget Jeanette MacDonald...

(An affordable fixer-upper, Just three mil on the market.)

More Metal Fret-Wankery on MySpace

2006-04-09T08:31:00.000-07:00

Part of the fun of the John Matrix Blues Quintet is seeing what genres its members consider themselves. The current choice of "Death Metal / Afro-beat / Psychobilly" starts out on the right track and then just becomes a mockery of every earnest MySpace band's desire to pigeonhole their music in the proper category so that it will come to the attention of the hordes of American teens taking a break from snapping incriminating cellphone-cam shots of each other.

Before this I believe the JMBQ saw itself as "House / Psychedelic / Disco" - a delightful trio of styles right there.

Two new tracks: The Nib Atrocity and Shoelace Metal Symphony. I detect a Pink Floyd influence myself. Or perhaps Aker Bilk.

The responsible parties for this music also contributed to a round-table discussion on Chick Flicks over at BlogCritics.org. It comes as a pleasant surprise that Duke "Chicks Dig Whinin'" de Mondo is a bit of a romantic:

But if we are to assume, as Sir Fleming did, that two flicks are being presented to yours truly, and that I know nothing about them save for the fact that one's called some shit like Zero Degree X and the other's called Two Folks Love For A Time, I'm gonna go with the fella meets the lady and the lady likes the fella but woe! He's married to some filthy whore treats him like a bag o' busted bladders. Dump that ho, I'll say, and get with that woman writes you songs and then sings them to you but pretends they're covers of Sheryl Crow b-sides cause she knows you got a ring on yonder finger.

Also, such a motion picture is more likely to feature Kirsten Dunst and be written and directed by Woody Allen.

But the Duke also warns:

But if the rest of the flick sucks, well, don't matter how many montages it's got all about he misses her, she misses him, maybe they should put their differences aside and get filthin' again, it ain't gonna save it.

"'Cause they'll be rockin on BandstandIn Philadelphia P.A."

2006-04-01T18:16:00.000-08:00

Kids today! They don't know how it was. They don't know!

Back in my day, one week away from your usual online routine usually meant a bare hour or so to clear out the email box and delete the invites to those enticing online casinos, the charming solicitations from various and sundry ladies of alluring names -- I'm reminded here of the Tom Waits line in 9th and Hennepin: "All the doughnuts have names that sound like prostitutes" -- and that whole medicine show of various pharmacopeias of invigorating strength and vitality to add inches to your life. (Which were probably useful products to ingest before a virtual night on town at the Texas-Hold'Em online casino with the lovely French Crueller by your cyber-side.)

And now there's MySpace. 24 hours away from this little virtual social network, and you will return to a pile of friend requests, messages, event invites, and bulletin board readings that will make you wonder if the Luddites had the right idea all along.

How did this happen? How did a website that has all the aesthetic charm of Winston Smith's description of the Victory Cafe emerge in 2005 as one of the top ten most visited websites in the world?

Because as far as I can tell, MySpace only has two things: teenagers and rock-n-roll.

And nothing good ever came from that combination.

There are points to consider. The basic template style is fairly uninspired:

Trading ’spaces
Why your MySpace page isn’t nearly as cool as Pinback’s

So they just came out with this new thing that’s pretty awesome. The local bands are all about it—not just the cool ones, but all of ’em. It’s called MySpace. Heard of it? No? Oh, man, it’s all about that six degrees of separation shit and how the whole world’s connected through technology and the democratization of art and how our generation doesn’t need fucking radio or MTV or any of that shit to get our music out.

OK, while all of that is true (sorta) and, yes, MySpace is (kinda) mind blowing, we need to back up a minute.

First, MySpace was reportedly designed by super nerds who could have cured cancer if their dream hadn’t been bringing people (and stalkers) together online. So why are so many bands’ pages either really boring or look like a 9-year-old designed them on a Speak & Spell?

And if it’s all about individuality and creativity, then why do all these bands’ fans (read: mostly young women) look so alike (read: mostly slightly blurry camera-phone pics of young women with puckered lips slathered in a dozen tubes’ worth of cheap lip gloss)? Surely, there’s more to MySpace than this...

Possibly, MySpace has already sold out to The Man:

Skate Company Builds MySpace® Army to Promote their Store

"Our customers are a moving target" says Rick Davis, one of the company's owners. "They are extremely passionate and fiercely loyal. Skating is not a sport, it's a lifestyle. If you can win them over, they will go to end of the world for you."

So how do you win these kids loyalty? Davis says "Almost everyone underestimates them. These are intelligent, savvy kids. They have been exposed to the most extreme marketing techniques in the history of mankind since their birth. A 13-year old can smell a sales pitch coming from a mile away." So what is the trick? According to Davis, there's not one. "Just be sincere. You have to be truly sincere in what you do and say. Be absolutely consumed with delivering whatever is best for your customer. They know the difference. Try to fake it and they'll leave you cold."

Fueling this MySpace marketing concept is the age old snowball effect. On the news ticker that Roller Warehouse developed, each topic delivered contains the first 30 to 40 words of the article. Each topic is hyperlinked; clicking it will take you back to the company's original blog page where you can read the entire text. On the blog page, the option to add the news ticker to your own page appears. Thus, the cycle is repeated.

There's the legitimate concerns of parents at all this sudden connectivity between the children in the family and the world:

Parents beware: Teens using Web site to build social status

On the surface the idea is fine, but like most things it has become reflective of the worst of society. MySpace has been taken over by teens and young people ("tweens") who are putting up all manner of content about themselves on the sites. We're at a perfect storm here when it comes to issues like these.

First, kids now have access to digital cameras and can take photographs of themselves and their friends that never pass through the editors of my day, namely my parents and the photolab. That means MySpace is full of photographs of risque photos, to put it politely.

What the kids of today don't seem to understand is the Web is forever. On the practical side, that photo of you with your underwear on your head using a beer bong may be kinda funny to you today, but won't be all that amusing 10 years later at your Senate confirmation hearing or your job interview for law partner.

Man! It's that old principal's threat made real "This is going on your permanent record, young man!"

And there is the equally legitimate concern that anyone using the net extensively must acknowledge:

Internet 'Friends'

'The problem is that kids have this false sense of security online,' said Joseph Donahue, a State Police investigator who works in the Albany headquarters of the Computer Crime Unit's ICAC (Internet Crimes Against Children) Task Force.

'If they're not meeting people face-to-face, they feel like they're 8 feet tall and bulletproof. They feel nobody can bother them, but that's naïve and makes them much more vulnerable.'

What has raised the concern of law enforcement is MySpace.com. Since it was launched three years ago, the Web site now counts more than 60 million members, and is growing daily. The majority of those congregating are teenage girls, according to Donahue.

The secret to its popularity is in its simplicity. With an e-mail account, users can join up and create their own personal pages, post photographs, movies, music and share diary-like commentary with the world.

More on all stories at the links.

I started looking for MySpace stories on the blurred line between Official and Unofficial music sites as the accidental result of becoming a 'friend' of two separate Boomtown Rats sites. The second one is more informative and professional looking. Also, they invited ME to be a friend, so I'm kinda hoping they are the Official one. I also believe that the role of MySpace in popular music will rival that of earlier technologies such as the jukebox, transistor radio, the FM broadcast frequency, and the 45 rpm single.

"Sweet Little Sixteen
She's just got to have
About half a million
Framed autographs
Her profile's filled with pictures
She gets 'em one by one
She gets so excited
Watch her look at her run..."

"Under Clery's Clock at eight..."

2006-03-24T12:10:00.000-08:00

Even without a working cellphone, my appointment was made and kept. Thanks Tom!

Well. Yes. Dublin!

And a big 'hello' to the journalism students of University of Gloucester! Now get back to your schoolwork--you have a very strict professor!

Venus and Mars: Valentines Weekend in Dublin, 2003

2006-02-26T16:04:00.000-08:00

Husband: It's late Sunday. Mardi Gras is hours away and you're still grinding your gears on Valentine's Day.
Me: True. But you know...supposed to be resting my eyes this weekend.
Husband: Are you sure that's all?
Me: I don't want to write up that argument at the church.
Husband: It wasn't a big deal. We got lost walking there and when we showed up they were in the middle of something. And so we left without the ring blessing thing which I wasn't too hot for in the first place. There. Now it's written up.
Me: And my mother did like the gift we found for her at their bookshop.
Husband: Fifteen minutes later, I was already in a better mood.
Me: Oh, now I remember how that came about!

***
"She Died of a Fever"

We were back on Grafton Street and walking toward O'Connell Bridge. Suddenly the bulk of my husband's presence was no longer keeping pace with me. I turned to see what snagged his attention.

Husband: Well hey! Where do they keep the ones like her?
Me: In a plastic surgeon's office in Beverly Hills.
Husband: Can we grab a picture of this?
Me: Oh goodness. Let me deconstruct this moment of 'culture' if I may. That happens to be there courtesy of a company called Jury's, which is in the hotel business. So what you see here is the local variant of the grass-skirted hula girl icon designed to evoke pleasant associations in the visiting male psyche.
Husband: Well yeah!
Me: O come on! What person would walk around half-exposed like that in damp weather? No wonder 'no-one could save her!'

On my last visit, my camera was not handy to catch a charming shot of a local youth reclining on the barrow of cockles and mussels, smoking a cigarette and using the ample cleavage at arm's reach as his ashtray.

***

"The faces seem familiar,
And I know those songs they're playing."

My husband has a hard time keeping track of me in the crowds on Grafton. He's actually even approached another woman of my build and color, thinking she was me. But we negotiate the obstacle course from Jigsaw to Bewley's and other stops. I've been fighting a sore throat from my week in England and want something to sooth it. My husband remembers that he's forgotten to pack something indispensible for our weekend of romantic abandon. Both needs are met easily.

At one of the record stores, I find a copy of The Book of Invasions by Horslips. It has been recommended by those who would know as one of the first albums to move along to after the double CD of greatest hits. Much later in the day, I'll accidently buy the same album again from a different store. That copy is later given away as a gift.

I buy clothing wantonly. There's even a temptation to buy slacks, which I never do, because they look as if they will not require hemming.

Living in a tourist town ourselves, we easily ignore the more aggressive vendors of the usual in t-shirts, postcards, mugs, and china figurines. We do not even consider joining our fellow Americans on one of the tours designed expressly for our kind.

It's funny how my world goes 'round without you -
You're the one thing I never thought I could live without.
I just found this smile to think about you;
You're a Saturday night far from the madding crowd.

***

Merrion Square

***

After three years, it is hard to remember what day we visited the museums and galleries. It seems improbable that we did all of these on Sunday, but our Saturday plans swerved into an unexpected direction at midday.

The day before, on February 14, 2003, Hans Blix had delivered his latest report on Iraqi compliance with Resolution 1441 to the UN Security Council. In part he said:

How much, if any, is left of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and related proscribed items and programmes? So far, UNMOVIC has not found any such weapons, only a small number of empty chemical munitions, which should have been declared and destroyed. Another matter - and one of great significance - is that many proscribed weapons and items are not accounted for. To take an example, a document, which Iraq provided, suggested to us that some 1,000 tonnes of chemical agent were "unaccounted for". One must not jump to the conclusion that they exist. However, that possibility is also not excluded. If they exist, they should be presented for destruction. If they do not exist, credible evidence to that effect should be presented.

We are fully aware that many governmental intelligence organizations are convinced and assert that proscribed weapons, items and programmes continue to exist. The US Secretary of State presented material in support of this conclusion. Governments have many sources of information that are not available to inspectors. Inspectors, for their part, must base their reports only on evidence, which they can, themselves, examine and present publicly. Without evidence, confidence cannot arise.

If we'd picked up a copy of the Guardian that morning, we would have seen the following article:

A case for war? Yes, say US and Britain. No, say the majority

Britain last night insisted it would press ahead with framing the resolution. An official said it was unlikely that a draft resolution would be circulated over the weekend. Instead, it would be pushed back until Tuesday at the earliest. "If you slap down a piece of paper right away, it doesn't look like you were listening."

The French and Russian foreign ministers were given rare applause in the council chamber yesterday when they demanded more time for inspections, in striking contrast to the stony silence that greeted hoarse and irritable insistence that time had run out from Colin Powell, the US secretary of state.

Me: I had forgotten that the march was today. I saw them organizing a bus for the people in the village to get to London last week. They'll be travelling from all over England for it.
Husband: They were already covering it in San Francisco before I left.
Me: Do we have anything scheduled this afternoon?
Husband: We do now.
Me: Alright. Let's go.

Next: "When we got to Yankee land..."

Venus and Mars: Valentines Weekend in Dublin, 2003

2006-02-22T19:43:00.000-08:00

Valentine's Weekend 2003 was the one. After a week of work on a transatlantic project that still looms in office legend, I was off for the usual extra day or two in Dublin. But this time, after much persuasion and the fortunate alignment of a three day US holiday weekend near the traditional day for romance, I had convinced my husband to join me.

For me, it would be my fourth visit. For him, the first time travelling outside the United States. For both of us, the last time visiting this place in the pure, heedless state of tourism: knowing no-one and no-one knowing us.

As the advance scout, I had already discovered the Georgian on Baggot Street. The Harcourt Hotel, of my first visit, is fondly remembered for several reasons -- one of them being its appearance in Patrick McCabe's The Dead School and therefore part of the personal Horslips walking tour for me -- but it was one long trek to and from anything. And though closer to the action, the Comfort Inn on Talbot Street was an experiment not repeated. So the Georgian, where you go outside to get back inside, where a double set of Winchester Mystery House stairs misleads you every time, and where suspiciously rounded humps in the carpet seem to shift location during the night, won out in the end.

And in 2003, registering at the front-desk with a man in tow, I was rewarded with a vast, top floor suite and a high wide-mattressed bed fitted out in soft white linen and down-filled duvet. And a shower of unimaginably warm and ceaseless water. That first afternoon, I lost one of my earrings in the bedding.

It was a shame, actually, that we had so much sightseeing planned for the weekend.

The next day we followed the advice of the taxi-driver and set off to find the Church with the relics of Saint Valentine. Apparently, we were told, they'd bless our wedding rings for us at the place.

Me: Remember that church?
Husband: I remember we got into that bad argument there.
Me: Yeah. I was remembering that too. What were we fighting about?
Husband: Can't remember. Remember the museum?
Me: Which one? The Art Gallery or History museum?
Husband: I was thinking of the Dead Animal Zoo.
Me: Remember the guys at the Cobblestone?
Husband: And that dinner after the march?
Me: Remember the march?
Husband: That was like four percent of the population there.
Me: We found that other place...not as good as Cobblestone. What was that?
Husband: We went to Trinity too. Remember?
Me: We did a lot!
Husband: You could write some of that up.
Me: I'd have to do it over a few days. That's a lot to write up.
Husband: Use pictures too.

So, yeah. Three years ago, we went to Dublin and saw some sights. It might be something I could write about over the next few posts. Not as exciting as some. But there'll be pictures.

There's a MySpace for us...

2006-01-23T19:14:00.000-08:00

I first heard about MySpace via the Duke De Mondo, who said something along the lines of "There's a lot crap music posted on MySpace."

Then I was invited to be a 'friend' to the good folks of Drumming Up Hope back in October. I went through the motions of registering and let it go at that.

In January, the Radiators from Space -- Phil Chevron's and Pete Holidai's great Dublin punk band -- invited me to be their friend.

That got me to upload a vintage photo and make a half-assed attempt at a profile. And to browse around.

Five minutes later, I realized that there was indeed a lot of crap music posted on MySpace...and a lot of good music and a lot of music in between. There's the John Matrix Blues Quintet and their song Arnie Syndrome, for instance, which takes a bunch of my Governor's famous movie quotes and strings them out over some "metal fret-wankery" (as one commentator describes it) and basically calls it a song.

After the first 24 hours of listening to it, I've told more people about this Arnie song than I did in a month about my first Horslips album.

To be fair, if Horslips had sampled a local politician in the mix (Gerry Brown? Sonny Bono? Or--God Forbid--Ronald Reagan?), I'da had an angle.

But imagine my surprise at my coworkers' reaction when I mentioned the source of all this free music. And this forum that has expanded my musical-interest base exponentially by the hour.

Me: So I've registered at MySpace and you'll never guess...
Coworker #1: MySpace? Isn't that for kids?
Coworker #2: You saw that program on TV this weekend? About that girl?
Me: Kids? The guys who got me hooked were playing punk rock in Dublin. In the 70s!
Coworker #2: And then this other thing on the radio was talking about the kids who bully on MySpace.
Me: Okay. There's a whole section on CyberBullying with tips and resources! And it is NOT just for kids.
CoWorker #1: My friend was telling me about MySpace. Actually...his kid was telling me about it.
CoWorker #3: Hey. Ease up. MySpace is a perfectly capable and popular Virtual Social Network. One of the most popular on the net...
Me: There! See?
CoWorker #3:..for kids.

The MySpace Generation

At the same time, her boyfriend IMs her a retail store link to see a new PC he just bought, and she starts chatting with him. She's also postering for the next Buzz-Oven concert by tacking the flier on various friends' MySpace profiles, and she's updating her own blog on Xanga.com, another social network she uses mostly to post photos. The TV is set to TBS, which plays a steady stream of reruns like Friends and Seinfeld -- Adams has a TV in her bedroom as well as in the living room -- but she keeps the volume turned down so she can listen to iTunes over her computer speakers. Simultaneously, she's chatting with dorm mate Carrie Clark, 20, who's doing pretty much the same thing from a laptop on her bed.

You have just entered the world of what you might call Generation @. Being online, being a Buzzer, is a way of life for Adams and 3,000-odd Dallas-area youth, just as it is for millions of young Americans across the country. And increasingly, social networks are their medium. As the first cohort to grow up fully wired and technologically fluent, today's teens and twentysomethings are flocking to Web sites like Buzz-Oven as a way to establish their social identities. Here you can get a fast pass to the hip music scene, which carries a hefty amount of social currency offline. It's where you go when you need a friend to nurse you through a breakup, a mentor to tutor you on your calculus homework, an address for the party everyone is going to. For a giant brand like Coke, these networks also offer a direct pipeline to the thirsty but fickle youth market.

Preeminent among these virtual hangouts is MySpace.com, whose membership has nearly quadrupled since January alone, to 40 million members. Youngsters log on so obsessively that MySpace ranked No. 15 on the entire U.S. Internet in terms of page hits in October, according to Nielsen//NetRatings. Millions also hang out at other up-and-coming networks such as Facebook.com, which connects college students, and Xanga.com, an agglomeration of shared blogs. A second tier of some 300 smaller sites, such as Buzz-Oven, Classface.com, and Photobucket.com, operate under -- and often inside or next to -- the larger ones.

"We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now."

2006-01-16T08:46:00.000-08:00

By all that is rock-n-roll, Hapa’s cover of U2’s Pride (In the Name of Love) wouldn't rate much from the critics. With the righteous majesty of Bono’s vocals replaced by Barry Flanagan’s sincere, understated delivery of the lyric and a blend of female backing vocals on the chorus, the song feels less like a rock classic and more like a communal hymn--the sort heard in one of the many open-walled, seafront chapels of the islands. Edge’s pyrotechnic guitar-work is not recalled either. Instead, Flanagan’s years of study in Kiho Alu, or slack-key guitar smooths the melody’s rough edges down to elemental form, polishing away ostentation and fire.

Like grey, featureless pieces of driftwood found in the wash of the tide, U2’s soaring tribute has undergone a sea-change in Hapa’s hands.

But if Hapa has detracted from the power and might of Bono’s stadium anthem, their version brings other qualities to the song. These -- as I describe them -- will sound like the theatrically emotional tricks of the overly-earnest. There’s the inclusion of the recorded voice of Martin Luther King Jr. himself, giving his “I have been to the mountaintop” speech, which, as the link says, he gave in support of the striking sanitation workers at Mason Temple in Memphis the day before he was assassinated.

And then -- and this is the part that will sound the most ridiculous as I describe it, but never fails to send an electric charge of thrill through me when I hear it -- there is a male voice -- older certainly, but strong -- that begins reciting in slow, cadenced Hawaiian a fragmant of the oral, tribal history of his people.

‘Hapa’ in Hawaiian means ‘half.’ It is often used as an adjective to modify a noun signifying some element of aboriginal cutlure touched by the post contact world. ‘Hapa-Haole’ -- half Hawaiian, half white -- describes the macaronic songs in the island’s catalog of music. “Tiny Bubbles,” properly sung with all the verses, is Hapa-Haole. “Little Grass Shack” on the other hand is pure Haole.

As their website states, Hapa, the band is "an amalgam of influences ranging from ancient Polynesian rhythms and genealogical chants to the strummed ballads of Portuguese fisherman, Spanish cowboys, and the inspired melodies and harmonies of the traditional church choirs of the early missionaries." Barry Flanagan, who left New York in 1980, is the founder. Fellow guitarist Nathan Aweau is from Honolulu. Charles Ka’upa, who provides the chant described above, is from a family that

comes from the island of Moloka‘i with another part of the family well established on the island of Hawai'i as well. He has spent the better part of his life teaching, be it History, Culture, Religion, lecturing not only at Maui Community College, Maui Campus, but on the islands of Lana‘i and Moloka‘i as well. He has also traveled to Washington D.C. to lecture at the National Geographic Headquarters, performing there as well at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian's ground-breaking ceremony.

Much can be written about what it was that Martin Luther King Jr. delivered to America. I am inadequate to this task. Instead, I believe that King’s own words speak for his life the best:

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him.

I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.

I believe that even amid today's motor bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men.

I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land.

LPs, CDs and Mp3sIt Goes to Show You Never Can Tell

2006-01-09T05:33:00.000-08:00

When I posted yesterday's news about this Christmas being the digital music Christmas, I made an effort to find a rock quote that mentioned the technology of the era...because that 'record machine' in Eddie Cochrane's Twenty Flight Rock was no doubt affordable and portable. And check out the lyrics here in Chuck Berry's Mississippi romance:

It was a teenage wedding, and the old folks wished them well
You could see that Pierre did truly love the madamoiselle
And now the young monsieur and madame have rung the chapel bell,
"C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell

They furnished off an apartment with a two room Roebuck sale
The coolerator was crammed with TV dinners and ginger ale,
But when Pierre found work, the little money comin' worked out well
"C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell

They had a hi-fi phono, boy, did they let it blast
Seven hundred little records, all rock, rhythm and jazz
But when the sun went down, the rapid tempo of the music fell
"C'est la vie", say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell

I will assume that the 'seven hundred little records' were 45s. The common currency of rock-n-roll music for a long time until album-length rock became ascendant. And Eddie's rockin Queen would have a fine collection of Sun 45s herself. Put your cat clothes on...

Ticharu makes a great comment under the post:

I currantly own over 3,ooo CDs but the writing is on the wall. Smaller is better. Full circle can't be far behind, where once again musicians will make a living simple playing live for an audience.

And it occurred to me that full circle has already been reached, in part, as the Mp3 of a single song standing alone or in the mix of many, many songs on the Mp3 player is well and truly a descendent of that 45.

Another thought: album length vinyl is actually on the rise among certain groups. I recently thrilled to finding an album from an obscure British psychedelic band called Forest that had first been released in 1971. Looking at the cover in the Brighton Record Shop, I was perplexed to see a web domain for the record label printed on the cover. After buying the album and -- so very carefully -- taking it home, I opened it up to find I had a brand new record! Re-issued obviously, but manufactured in this decade. Delicious!

"Well I got a girl with a record machine,When it comes to rocking she's a queen."

2006-01-08T15:32:00.000-08:00

Digital music enjoys a dream week

LOS ANGELES (Billboard) - There was so much legitimate downloading in the final week of 2005 that it recalled the impossible tallies research firms used in the late 1990s to dazzle venture capitalists and scare the daylights out of major-label executives.

In the seven-day stretch between Christmas and the new year, millions of consumers armed with new MP3 players (primarily iPods) and stacks of gift cards gobbled up almost 20 million tracks from iTunes and other download retailers, Nielsen SoundScan reports.

In the process, consumers shattered the tracking firm's one-week record for download sales.

A look inside the numbers shows just how unprecedented a week it was for the download business:

- Before the week ending January 1, 2006, the record for the most downloads sold in seven days was 9.5 million tracks -- set just one week earlier.

- Sales of 20 million songs were almost three times the amount of digital tracks sold in the same seven-day span a year ago.

- Fifteen songs on the current Hot Digital Songs chart surpassed the one-week record for sales of a single track.

- Rap group D4L's "Laffy Taffy" took the top spot with 175,000 tracks sold, more than doubling the mark of 80,500 downloads Kanye West's "Gold Digger" set the week of September 17.

- Each of the top 11 titles on the Hot Digital Songs chart sold more than 100,000 downloads.

For the year, the digital track sales tally reached 352 million -- a 147% increase over 2004's total of 142.6 million.

In comparison to the volume of music that is downloaded through peer-to-peer networks, those numbers may not seem like much. P2P monitoring service Big Champagne estimates that at least 250 million tracks are downloaded worldwide each week from file-swapping services.

But a dramatic rise in the tide of authorized download sales in recent weeks suggests that changes may be afoot in the consumer's relationship to digital music.

The important question for the music business is whether 20 million downloads represents the new baseline for digital track sales. A year ago, a 33% pop in download sales in the week following Christmas permanently raised the bar on weekly download volume by 2 million tracks.

Technology and distribution executives at the major labels are not holding their breath that download sales will now run at a rate of almost triple the 7 million tracks that were being sold on average in December. They say big sales of gift cards are likely creating the current volume of such significant downloads.

Yet gift cards were available in 2004, too. If the market can retain volume gain as it did last year, the numbers are tantalizing. Last year, sales fell by about 20% in the weeks following New Year's; such a drop this year would yield a weekly volume baseline close to 16 million tracks. That would put the download market on pace for sales of 750 million to 1 billion tracks in 2006.

Likely to drive the download business is the fact that the number of iPods and other MP3 players in distribution have exploded in the last year. The Computer Electronics Assn. estimates that MP3 player revenue increased 200% to more than $3 billion in 2005.

Apple claims to have sold more than 30 million iPods to date, but will likely have shipped a total close to that number in 2005 alone.

Research firm NPD Group estimates MP3 player revenue at leading retailers topped $500 million on sales of more than 3.3 million units for the five weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas--a 65% jump in dollar volume from the 2004 holidays. Sales of MP3 accessories were big too, topping $160 million during the five-week period.

NPD figures exclude direct sales of iPods through Apple Computer and online sales.

And for the first time, sales of MP3 players are surpassing sales of personal CD players and CD shelf systems, NPD reports.

"We have definitely moved," says Stephen Baker, VP of analyst services for NPD, "from MP3 players being a computer-oriented product to a consumer-directed product."

Reuters/Billboard

Posted in full because it's important news. As soon as one of the digital music sites I've been involved in for a while goes public, I'm buying stock.

It was written in 1843, after all...

2005-12-24T09:01:00.000-08:00

After pulling out my small copy of A Christmas Carol for yesterday's title quote, I continued reading on a bit for the pure enjoyment of the writing. Came to the part where Marley tells Scrooge to expect his visitors on each subsequent night (it is 2:00 a.m. at this point). Scrooge awakes to hear twelve chimes on the clock and is disoriented by the sense of going backwards or far forwards in time:

“Why, it isn’t possible,” said Scrooge, “That I can have slept through a whole day and far into another night. It isn’t possible that anything has happened to the sun, and this is twelve at noon!”

The idea being an alarming one, he scrambled out of bed, and groped his way to the window. He was obliged to rub the frost off with the sleeve of his dressing gown before he could see anything; and could see very little then. All he could make out was, that it was still very foggy and extremely colkd, and that there was no noise of people running to and fro, and making a great stir, as there unquestionably would have been if night had beaten off bright day, and taken possession of the world. This was a great relief because “three days after sight of this First of Exchange pay to Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge or his order,” and so forth, would have become a mere United States’ security if there were no days to count by.

Wow! Slam! Right out of nowhere with that one! Well, who’s your daddy now, Ebenezer?

Moments of aroused chauvinistic patriotism aside, I’m quite happy that A Christmas Carol is out there as one of the seasonal classics. First of all, and most importantly for a holiday story, it can scare the crap out of you as a kid (which it did) and features no less than three speaking parts for ghosts. (TGOCF doesn’t speak…remember?) It stands relatively alone in the field of holiday fiction in its use of the macabre to make a point. The Nightmare Before Christmas now possibly running a close second.

Then there's a whole gamut of family and extended family vignettes: young Ebenezer left at school for the holiday break; the classic office party at Fezziwig’s where we can imagine Ebenezer’s friend Dick dropping trousers and climbing up on the printing press to leave an amusingly inked holiday impression for the Monday morning crew; the lighthouse keepers celebrating alone with grog, song, and companionship; that insufferably cheery nephew’s party (take me away from this, o Spirit!), and – at the heart of it -- the threadbare Cratchit household which is quite depressing if you pay attention to the details. Almost the whole economic scale there.

I believe I’ve read somewhere that Dickens didn’t ‘do’ aristocracy, and their absence in A Christmas Carol is pretty telling. Instead at the very brink of the most cheerful Hallmark moment scene of syrup and sweet, The Ghost of Christmas Present pulls back his robe to reveal two small children:

They were a boy and girl. Yellow, meager, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shriveled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say that were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

“Spirit! Are they yours?” Scrooge could say no more.

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!” cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand toward the city. “Slander those who tell it ye! Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse! And bide the end!”

Recommended quick read: John Nichols on “The Rebel Jesus”, Commondreams.org.

***

The other great thing about A Christmas Carol is that it has loaned itself to endless variations and parody over the years. I've seen the lot, but have a special fondness for the Jim Backus-voiced version with the song about Razzle-Berry Dressing:

"Oh Ebenezer, you've done it again!"

(From DVD Movie Guide)

and the WKRP one with the brownie-wielding Dr. Johnny Fever as the Ghost of Christmas Future:

Johnny Ghost: Bailey runs a television station in Chicago. Travis is breeding guard dogs in New Mexico. Venus owns a clothing company called "Upwardly Mobile." Jennifer married and bought herself an entire island off the coast of Sardinia. Les Nessman? The Republican whip of the United States Senate!
Mr Carlson: What about you and me? Fever and me?
Johnny Ghost: Well, Fever just sort of ... disappeared. There were rumours, of course, but really not much else.
Mr Carlson: And me? No no, don't tell me, I don't want to know. I'm dead, aren't I?

But this year, after seeing a Lifetime channel ad for some piece of fluff with a soccer mom over-extending her cellphone bill and not having enough 'face' time for the kids (I may be extrapolating on this plotline, but I'll bet I'm close...) called "A Carol's Christmas" I decided to ignore any more Dickensian tributes, homages, parodies, rip-offs and such.

Then I visited Generic Mugwump...

Now whatever little 'thing' the Duke De Mondo has going for Conor Oberst's fringe (yeah, I finally found that essay), it pales in comparison to the torch his otherwise-sensible friend Aaron Fleming keeps lit for Jeff Fahey.

It is a dark world where highways intersect with crash cymbals, and large portraits of varicose-veined eyes line the sky. Fayhey and his guide reintegrate beside a flaming Porcupine having sex with Bodger, this is indeed a mad world. As Fayhey stands looking at the chaos surrounding him, alphabet spaghetti starts to rain down from the sky. “What is the meaning of all this?” he asks the feedback. “Well,” it replies, “this is what will happen if you continue with this propensity to miss classic films at Christmas.”

And from this morning's visit to obtain these last few links, I see that the Uncle Duke De Mondo has had a change of heart and given us a Holiday themed Mondo Podcast #14.

Why, that even beats of bowl of razzle-berry dressing!

"I awoke in California, many miles from Spancil Hill"

2005-12-13T12:33:00.000-08:00

The last of my Euros is paying for a bit of time online, but I'm coming home tomorrow and will repay all the kind visits from Brownie, Count Screwloose, Guy Wonders and others.

My 72 hours in Dublin can't rival the Duke De Mondo's, but a last minute inspiration and a good (new) friend got me to the Phil Lynott statue. Pictures may not be the best, but they were taken.

All in all, a fantastic trip.

More to follow.

"For Dublin keeps on changin' and nothing seems the same"

2005-12-11T09:13:00.000-08:00

Well DAMN, but isn't Smithfield the wi-fi hotspot these days? When someone like me -- who has only been visiting for the last few years -- can tell that things are not what they were, you know that we're moving at a rapid pace.

I'd call it the South of Market of Dublin, but it is on the Northside, where I've spent the entire day today.

The lone ice-skating rink that was my landmark to the Cobblestone is now a full-blown Christmas Carnival and community meeting point. Buildings that weren't there last year...or indeed, when I went into the bar for a drink...are crowding the skyline. And any Bay Area realtor will tell you that these babies ain't cheap.

(Photo thieved from www.sherryfitz.ie)

Part of it must be that Luas Red Line running down
Jervis Street. And every passing train I see is filled to the gills with townbound and homebound shoppers.

Also along the Luas line, an internet cafe that has just knocked the Grafton Street internet cafe out of first place in the "most hip and functioning Internet Cafe ever" competition that I run for my own benefit. And the Grafton Street joint held that title for three years running.

The only disappointment is that my Saturday night entertainment would have been much improved if I had found the energy to get over here last night. For, at the Cobblestone, Leo Kelly, one of the members of my new enthusiam Tir na nOg (Good Lord! To have missed it by that much!) packed the back room at the Cobblestone. Tonight Grada does much the same. On New Year's Eve, New York City band The Prodigals will be in the house, and that's pretty fine because I caught them a few years ago too on Third Avenue and they play a hard and fast set. Indeed, one of their songs is partly responsible for me always choosing Baggot Street for my hotel when I'm in town.

So. Yeah. Smithfield! Not too bad at all...

Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor

2005-12-11T02:19:00.000-08:00

James Joyce & Ulysses exhibition at the National Library

I didn't allow myself enough time to properly enjoy this unexpected pleasure, but they had to chase me out at Closing.

Not surprisingly, there's a great virtual tour online linked above. The Exhibit itself was one of the best uses of interactive computers and scanned images that allowed visitors to 'turn the pages' of manuscripts including Joyce's Paris-Pola Commonplace Book, two of the notebooks Joyce kept while constructing Ulysses, working drafts of the novel, and the novel itself.

Highlights for me were the recreation of the shopfront of Shakespeare and Company; an interactive family tree of the various publishers and editions of the novel; another recreation combining elements from different apartments in Zurich, Trieste, and Paris (loved the books piled on the floor and everywhere!); and -- naturally -- the small traditional display of sheet music and theatrical posters of the time which illustrated the source material for allusions and imagery.

And, indeed, there on a playbill for a Pantomine (!) of Sinbad the Sailor, you read down the cast of characters and see

Sinbad the Sailor
Tinbad the Tailor
etc...

Which naturally flips up the memory of:

Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the Jailer and Whinbad the Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer and Finbad the Failer and Binbad the Bailer and Pinbad the Pailer and Minbad the Mailer and Hinbad the Hailer and Rinbad the Railer and Dinbad the Kailer and Vinbad the Quailer and Linbad the Yailer and Xinbad the Phthailer. (U 17.2320-8)

"Dude!" I wanted to grab the guy standing next to me. "It's from a pantomine! I've just seen a pantomine! I got it now! It's totally popular culture, isn't it?"

I did manage to muffle my American enthusiasm at chipping away one more chunk of cultural ignorance, and I may have missed other little treats such as that in my haste to see the entire thing before closing. So I plan to spend time online at the link above.

With apologies to Kate Bush, Emily Bronte,

2005-12-10T02:36:00.000-08:00

Cathay Airlines* and possibly even LHR, which wasn't too bad again today.

Terminal Nights**

Up in the wiley, windy skies
I'd soar and fly in blue
You were the airport for my connection
So big. So crazy.
How could you fail me
When I need to get past you?
I hated you. I loathed you, too

Ice storms in the night
They told me I was going to miss my flight***
Stuck behind in Terminal, Terminal, Terminal Nights

Heathrow, it's me Cathay
Going home. I'm so cold!
Let me land-on-your runway
Heathrow, it's me Cathay
Going home. I'm so cold!
Let me land-on-your runway

Ooh you take Pounds! You take Euros too
At the coffee bar by the loo
I eat some junk. I buy some junk
At Terminal Two
I'm getting bored, love****
Cruel Heathrow, my one stop
My only option....

Too long a line out of sight
I'm checking my passport twice, and hold it tight
I'm spending time in Terminal, Terminal, Terminal Nights

Heathrow, it's me Cathay
Going home. I'm so cold!
Let me land-on-your runway
Heathrow, it's me Cathay
Going home. I'm so cold!
Let me land-on-your runway

Ooh! Let me have it
Let me grab that food voucher***** away
Ooh! Let me have it
Let me grab that food voucher away

Heathrow, it's me Cathay
Going home. I'm so cold!
Let me land-on-your runway
Heathrow, it's me Cathay
Going home. I'm so cold!
Let me land-on-your runway

Heathrow, it's me Cathay
Going home. I'm so cold!
Let me land-on-your runway
Heathrow, it's me Cathay
Going home. I'm so cold!

*which may not fly through LHR, but too good of a name to pass up...
**Briefly considered "Londoning Nights" because of the sound-alike parody value. But it's a pretty silly, meaningless word isn't it?
***This actually happened in Frankfurt, but I wouldn't put it past Heathrow either.
****Actually composed in ten minutes' time at Gate 90. I wanted to post it up right there for the justice of the moment, but the Heathrow Internet access points have Blogger.com blocked for -- and I quote -- "Excessive porn content." They need to check that last newsagent stand before the Aer Lingus gates if they're worried about such things!
*****When your flight is delayed, they'll give you a food voucher for about £8. Can't buy alcohol with it, and you've probably got a pocket of Euros which Heathrow will accept unless -- wait for it -- you are using a food voucher.

A hotel room of one's own

2005-12-09T15:34:00.000-08:00

waits for me at the end of the hall to the left.

To my right, an airport hotel bar filled with twenty-somethings putting the moves on each other to the pumping beat of Madonna's Get Into the Groove.

Outside, a sky holding a half moon and the trails of airline flights departing for all corners of the globe. Mine will depart for Dublin tomorrow for the long weekend of vacation after a week of work.

And I think Roger will agree with me when I say:

Virgin Megastore at Piccadilly Circus in the City
It's alright It's alright...

"I fell in love with you before the second show"

2005-12-08T09:29:00.000-08:00

There's a 1994 album called If I Were a Carpenter which features the leading young bands of the time taking on Richard and Karen's catalogue. A list of the various artists reads like a roster of yesterday's hitmakers: Cracker, 4 Non Blondes, The Cranberries, Shonen Knife...and on track 3 Sonic Youth with Superstar. With an embalmed vocal scraping away at the claustrophobic space of the lyrics and a guitar that slowly breaks down into careening noise by the third verse, it goes:

Don’t you remember you told me you loved me baby
You said you’d be coming back this way again baby
Baby, baby, baby, baby, oh, baby, I love you I really do

Loneliness is a such a sad affair
And I can hardly wait to be with you again

What to say to make you come again
Come back to me again

It ends with a sound effect that sounds like a shot. I've never checked on whether there was an intended subtext, but I can't hear this version of the song without thinking 'Dakota' or 'gun' or 'I'm your biggest fan.'

Twenty five years on, I did not expect I would find myself here in England for this particular anniversary. I didn't think I would have Liverpool in-laws or that I would have lost a close member of my own family to violent crime. Has any of this given me any insight? Not much, but I do think when the train sweeps by a long, depressed area of industrial decay or when I share a pint at the local pub with a life ruined by a lifetime of diminishing opportunities and expectations, I may just have a glimpse at what was going on when John Lennon added -- let's go ahead and say screamed -- the lyrics "I want to be Free" to Barrett Strong's Motown hit Money.

But twenty five years ago, I was watching Sunset Boulevard on a local television station when the news broke. That is, I watched up to the scene where Norma Desmond throws a grand New Years Eve party for her screenwriter turned sulky lover Joe Gillis. After that, I was listening to the radio, along with everyone else awake in America.

Much later I realized that the myth from Hollywood and the news from New York City that night were telling me two sides of the same dark, hungry story. Norma, crazed into murder by the fading glow of stardom leaving her, becomes a metaphor for the thing that is at the heart of the matter at hand. For behind the blinding hot spotlight of Los Angeles or the dark stage doors of the Dakota, there is that thing that wants fame. And when fame does not come, it will accept notoriety.

Celebrity and fame are bigger than ever these days. It would be too easy for me to blame that, but I can't. Or to castigate the ordinary person who devotes themselves to a jukebox hero. But it is a false argument. Many people survive the intense thrall of fandom and look back in rueful affection on their earlier phases. Others learned early to recognize the borders, where fandom becomes something a little less wholesome. One Take That fan recalled her days of loyalty in yesterday's Guardian:

Hailing from their hometown we enjoyed elevated status, but fans the world over made the pilgrimage to Manchester. They sneaked hallowed pebbles from the dirty pavements into their handbags, they graffitied the walls, they consumed the world's supply of Kodak film, they left lipsticked, scented love letters. The hierarchy was split in two; between "cravens" (ie screamers, the worst of the bunch) and those diehard followers who were actually known to the band and need not, therefore, scream. The latter category included Lisa-from-Burnage, Blonde Streaks, Emma'n'Karen (unbearably cool by virtue of being 17), and Alex-from-Germany who had relocated to Manchester, swapping her life for her love of Mark Owen.

To meet Robbie, though, you had to venture beyond the M62 to Stoke-on-Trent, and brave the risk (much rumoured) of Rob throwing buckets of water on fans, swearing at them and other such unimaginable horrors.

"Do me a favour, babe," grimaced Robbie one fine day as I melted into the pavement. "Get yourself home safely now."

Oh my God, "Rob" called me a babe! Could it have been my sparkley silver eyeshadow from Superdrug, now smudged across my face, or perhaps my favourite £6.99 green leggings, or the two highlights in my hair that were intentionally of a sophisticated deep maroon colour but somehow washed to a frizzed out ginga?

The world of a groupie is indeed a sad one. It takes place in liminal spaces: airport lounges, hotel lobbies, football sidelines, deserted city centre streets at four in the morning long after the concert is over, your head still hurting from all the screaming. It is the life of an outsider standing in the dark, looking into brightly lit chandeliered rooms.

The hardcore fans even ventured as far afield as London for the Brit Awards, the Smash Hits Poll Winners' Party, for (what was supposed to be) their final concert at Earls Court. They were the kids who would wait the longest, wait even though they knew TT wouldn't turn up, they were yearning to be part of a "group", emptying their pockets to fill their hearts.

Anoushka's mum was "a right old bitch who battered her" and her dad "couldn't give a fuck about her" but "Markie" apparently did. Whenever the word came out to "go home now, girls," she would desperately not want to.

At this point, it might be occurring to you that this entry has been written by someone running an unofficial fansite and a blog shamelessly devoted to all sorts of fan musings on a variety of things. I thought I'd be writing mostly about the irony of that. I thought I'd have to write and say "I have no neat conclusion for these observations." I also thought I'd write about my antipathy to ask for autographs, which looks like it dates from about that year. Even that time-honoured exchange between star and fan, which Lennon was willing to perform again after five years of staying far away from fame's glow, feels intrusive for me. Actually I don't know what I thought I'd write about. But twenty five years ago the night I spent grieving next to the radio was a night also spent writing page after page of bewildered rage in my sketchbook journal, and so it seemed only fitting that I write something tonight.

"It's Behind You!"

2005-12-07T08:15:00.000-08:00

After a dull newsday yesterday, I spent the evening at the Four Chestnuts leafing through the day's tabloids and garnishing tidbits of interest that I am dying to share! Here's just a preview: Bono and the Pope. Bono and Justin Timberlake. David Cameron and Morrisey (Its just shocking too. Scandelous).

And I'm also working on a longer, more thoughtful piece for this week.

But not tonight! I apologize for the sparsity of news and there won't be any until tomorrow.

Tonight I'll be in (Jack) Worthing, watching Puss in Boots which, though described as a pantomime, I have been assured it will have lines and speaking and not too much white pancake makeup. From what I've heard, I should enjoy myself.

"Oh no you won't!"

"She's got it. Yeah baby, she's got it..."

2005-12-04T03:31:00.000-08:00

A couple of years back at a friend's house for a BBQ, the women of the party decided to camp out in the rec room while the men grunted and postured around the Weber in a contest to see which one of them would invent fire. After driving the kids away from their gameplayers, we ladies decided to pop in a video of The Wedding Singer, which I hadn't seen.

It kicked off with a full-on shot of Adam Sandler in a narrow lapelled blue jacket, Johnny Cash coal-black hair standing up under a can and a half of mousse, and the world's skinniest black tie.

Then he started singing You Spin Me Round by Dead or Alive.

A dizzying thrill which was equal parts repulsion and the-years-drop-away attraction went right through me. I suppose you learn you've entered the long period of middle age, the first time you look back on a fashion once worn to strut and stalk the world's pleasures (day-glo fishnets, rosary beads as necklaces, acid-wash jeans, Members Only leather jackets, or, say, crushed velvet elephant loon pants) and you think "Did we wear that?"

And sometimes you think "Did we listen to that?" And with You Spin Me Round, we did. We don't need to annotate those lyrics or develop a fansite for it; we don't even think we own a copy. But we are not going whitewash our musical past by denying that the song -- during its brief moment of glory -- got the job done, just as it does in the Adam Sandler movie. You listened, you danced, you made eyes at the rest of the neon-lit crowd and you had a good time. And if the next song was Bananarama's Venus...well, you kept dancing.

Until yesterday, I had no idea that this wave of disposable pop that flooded the charts of the eighties had a backstory. But it does, and it makes for a wild read!

Right round. Like a record, baby
Right round round round

Return of the Hitmen

Initially, the trio specialised in a pop take on "hi-NRG", the electronic dance music that soundtracked early 80s gay clubs. Indeed, they were so closely associated with the gay scene that on their first meeting, Dead Or Alive frontman Pete Burns automatically assumed that Waterman was homosexual. Says Waterman: "I wore a red leather suit with a white stripe down the side, my hair was green and blue, and I had a great big golden ear stud. When Pete Burns came in, he thought Mike and Matt were my boys and I was the madam."

Despite the confusion, Dead Or Alive's spectacular You Spin Me Round (Like A Record) was Stock Aitken Waterman's first number one. The trio claim its success sparked their war with the press and the music industry. The press were horrified by their autocratic style of making records ("If you get too friendly with an artist," counsels Stock, "the next thing you know, they'll be asking to do their vocals again or change the lyrics or something") and their refusal to countenance anything other than low-budget pop aimed at an audience they proudly described in 1990 as "ordinary people with Woolworth ears". According to Waterman, the industry was "intimidated because we were independent, we had our own studios in south London, we started our own label [PWL] when no one would sign Kylie Minogue".

It's hard to tell how bothered the trio were by the constant criticism. They can quote 20-year-old reviews, deliver word-for-word accounts of conversations with record company bosses who dismissed Bananarama's 1986 hit Venus. Aitken points out that their 1989 version of Do They Know It's Christmas? has been quietly erased from Band Aid's history by Bob Geldof, Midge Ure et al: "The bastards." Waterman starts telling a story about Sonia's record label publicly disowning her first number one, You'll Never Stop Me Loving You (1989), and works himself into such a froth that he ends up comparing the chirpy scouse songbird to Jesus: "Please don't get me wrong, but it was like trying to deny you knew Christ when the cock crows."

And yet they positively ooze belligerent self-confidence. "We did a record with this band called Brilliant," remembers Waterman, "the reviews were phenomenal and it got to 58 in the charts. I remember saying to the guys, fuck that for critically-acclaimed music, you can't pay the fucking rent with that."

"The Long and Winding Road"

2005-12-04T03:09:00.000-08:00

In every pub discussion, in every chat at a Brighton flea-market stall, in the radio, in the newspapers, on the television and under the awning waiting for the rain to stop; this was the story yesterday.

Tears and rain mingle as Belfast's beloved son makes his final journey

Sean O'Hagan joins a nation in mourning at a sombre, respectful and heartfelt tribute
Sunday December 4, 2005
The Observer

It rained. And then, it rained some more. Belfast rain, drizzly and relentless, falling down over the city and its countless steeples, and the hills beyond. And yet they came in their tens of thousands, lining the streets of Cregagh in east Belfast, the Knockbreda dual carriageway, the rainswept roads around Stormont Castle, and the long sweep that is Prince of Wales' Avenue from the ornate gates to the steps of the parliament building.

They came from Belfast, and Northern Ireland, and from over the border, and across the sea. And though they applauded as the cortege passed, and threw flowers, and turned several sites in the city into impromptu shrines, the event that many had thought would teeter into showbiz artifice, and a collective outpouring of grief, somehow not quite real, was, in fact, the opposite: sombre, respectful, heartfelt. Even in death, then, George Best surprised us.

I think the only parallel in American sport would be the funeral of baseball legend Babe Ruth:

At 8:01 P.M., on August 16, 1948, the Babe passed away. He was fifty-three years old. He lay in state in "the House That Ruth Built" for 2 days as more than 200,000 paid last respects. Grieving fathers held up their sons and daughters for one final look.

Three days later the funeral was held at St. Patrick's Cathedral. There were tens of thousands in the streets outside and tens of thousands more lined the funeral cortege route. At the funeral, Ruth's old teammates were pallbearer. Claire Ruth, Babe's widow, lived on at their apartment at 100 Riverside Drive for another 28 years until her death.

In contrast, Joe DiMaggio's funeral had been quiet, but he is well loved at Lefty O'Doul's on Geary and -- in my opinion -- we should rename the local corporate poker chip that is our ballpark after him.

A bit more on George Best:

Eriksson sheds a tear for Best

England manager Sven-Goran Eriksson wept for George Best in Belfast.
As thousands stood in the pouring rain outside Parliament buildings during the football legend's funeral service, the England coach admitted afterwards the heavy emotion of it all had become a little too much.

He said: "I have never been to a funeral like that before. It was beautiful and George and his family got the respect he deserved. It was fantastic... Yes, I shed a few tears myself."

International Football Hall of Fame

Rumble in Brighton Tonight

2005-12-03T03:04:00.000-08:00

Just thought I'd write up an open post to the Duke De Mondo (and perhaps Simon of No Rock&Roll Fun who won't like it one bit) that I have just purchased

Motion Sickness, Bright Eyes
Down in Albion, Babyshambles
Capture/Release, The Rakes

All found at Rounder Records, The Lanes, Brighton. Rounder listed Capture/Release as its personal pick for #2 album of the year. I wasn't too sold on Bright Eyes until I saw the song When the President Talks to God. Down in Albion has received good reviews from other quarters, so there you are: the Mondo Irelando podcasts have made a significant impact on my music purchases to date.

Speaking of Brighton, have met up with a fellow business traveler who was home for a visit from his new digs in Spain. His name is Harry, which is easily remembered because I keep stifling the desire to sing Ray Davies' Harry Rag in his honor.

We started talking about -- what else -- music and he proudly recounted how he had a police record for a long-ago weekend in Brighton back in the days of the Mods and Rockers.

Me: Oh hey! Like Quadrophenia.
Harry: It was brilliant!
Me: Okay. I have to guess if you were a Mod or a Rocker.
(Quick furtive look at hairline, clothing...no clues there.)
Me: A Rocker?
Harry: No! I was a Mod!
Me: Look, you just told me that one of your life goals was to drive a Ford Mustang through the streets of San Francisco. That's something a rocker would want to do. And you knew your classic American cars. That's all I had to go on.
Harry: Nah...not me. Madras jackets, winkle-pickers, the lot.

And so on. Last night, Harry told me about a great three piece blues band down at the Fountain. So we had to go check it out. When they launched into John Mayall's All Your Lovin, Harry and I exchanged looks that said "Not bad, huh?" At the break the musicians stopped by our table, which had grown to a party of six, and we somehow got into a comparative discussion of Gary Moore and Rory Gallagher. "Rory," said the lead guitarist of the trio, "Rory was the pure thing."

And who could disagree?

I left Harry and the others to enjoy the music til closing time. Tonight I'll be solo at the Festival Theatre, but that's the music news so far from Brighton.

The Lonesome Boatman

2005-12-01T12:10:00.000-08:00

All at Sea

The basic facts are these: Irish Ferries, which runs ships between Britain and Ireland, wants rid of 543 of its workers. It wants to replace them with cheaper workers, mainly from eastern Europe, and for pretty obvious reasons, the existing workers, and those concerned with the import of cheap labour from overseas, do not think it is such a great idea. The security guards were smuggled on board the ships to make sure that the handover to the new, cheaper crew went smoothly.

This conflict is rather more than a little local difficulty. Questions have been asked in the Irish parliament and a national day of protest is planned. There are dire warnings from trade unions that the dispute could ruin almost 20 years of good industrial relations. There are growing fears that the dispute could have implications for the shipping industry across Europe, perhaps even for land-based industry too. And there is more at stake than 543 jobs: this may spell the end for that most traditional, and romantic, of British workers - the ordinary merchant seaman.

One of the officers holed up in the engine control room of the 34,000-tonne Isle of Inishmore is 46-year-old marine engineering officer John Curry. He went into the engine room to protect the ship from supposed attack; he has stayed in protest at what was actually going on. "This is not just about us and our jobs," says the father of four, speaking to the Guardian from the engine room on a mobile phone. "It's much wider than that. If this company is allowed to get rid of its workers in one fell swoop, then what's going to stop other countries across Europe doing the same?"

Typed up at the Cyber Cafe - Southsea near Portsmouth. Not to be confused with Southsea which is not near Portsmouth. Because the one is pronounced Sow'see with both syllables carrying the same weight and the other is SOWZzy with the first syllable in the lead. See? No confusion whatsoever between the two should exist. (But thank god the taxi driver checked.)

Visitors from these shores to California have my permission to pronounce tortilla as if it rhymed with Godzilla, and I shall smile politely and not make comment. Offer expires on January 1, 2006.

"My thoughts I confess, verge on dirty"

2005-11-30T06:04:00.000-08:00

It took less than four hours from wheels hitting runway to find myself listening to Come on Eileen on a store music stream for what will not be the first time.

On Edit: Now listening to Bohemian Rhapsody. Apparently there's a musical at Dominion Theatre, Tottenham Court Road, London, W1.

The time is the future, in a place that was once called Earth. Globalisation is complete!

Everywhere, the kids watch the same movies, wear the same fashions and think the same thoughts.

It's a safe, happy, Ga Ga world. Unless you're a rebel. Unless you want to Rock. On Planet Mall all musical instruments are banned. The Company Computers generate the tunes and everybody downloads them. It is an age of Boy Bands and of Girl Bands. Of Boy and Girl Bands. Of Girl Bands with a couple of boys in them that look like girls anyway. Nothing is left to chance, hits are scheduled years in advance.

Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality

Goodness! How distopian.

Still, my Friday nite plans aren't firm, so this one is on the list. If only so it can be bumped by something else.

22 Grand Job in the City

2005-11-30T05:47:00.000-08:00

Heathrow gets passing marks today, I'm amazed to say. Still remodelling those long labyrinthine hallways of theirs, but the lines were short and the baggage appeared unmolested by its travels. A young rock band was checking in behind me. Two guitar cases, a drum kit and a keyboard. They aren't too famous, because no screaming groupies greeted us at arrivals. They also aren't EU citizens because I spent time with them in the Passport line. Just a young group travelling and getting a few gigs on the way.

But Virgin is looking a little shopworn these days. Not as free with the online refreshments as before. And I miss the "Think Pink" radio stream with Jackie Clune.

The town is now a 'university' town, and there's the new movie theatre/bowling alley shopping complex to explore. Went into an MVC and Johnny and June were singing about Going to Jackson, which I'll accept as a good omen. Still: no copy of The Rakes. My taxi driver was a Hawkwind fan and his kids can't stand his taste in music. We had a great talk about everything including politics, media, the sorry state of the world and -- naturally -- music.

Off to check the work emails now.

75mg: a new album from the Duke De Mondo

2005-11-24T07:27:00.000-08:00

I honestly don't know how people close to him can stand the Duke De Mondo.

To be in any real-time proximity must be wearing as all hell.

First there's the writing. His seven-part series 72 Hours Raw in Dublin was like a Red Bull and cigarette-fueled collaboration between Jack Kerouac and Patrick McCabe holed up in the Talbot Street Comfort Inn with nothing but Shane MacGowan and Pete Doherty songs on the mp3 playlist. When I first read it, I actually thought I was encountering someone with decades of writing experience behind him. Not so.

Then there's the website, linked above. One guestbook visitor said "My favorite amateur website ever." It does read a little dark on my own workstation screen, but that screen may be a thing of the past now, so whatever. The design, layout and graphics are -- again -- something you'd expect from someone with years of experience. And it is loaded with essays and rants, sound files and pictures, and god knows what else. I haven't even visited the Asia Extreme section.

And then there's the podcasts. Here, for the first time, we have a chance to hear the early forays of inexperience. Mondo Irelando Podcasts 1 through 3 are worth a listen and probably hold up against 95% of the other podcasts out there. Also, my drop-jawed admiration for anyone who would play a Charles Manson composition (indeed creeping out the audience with the actual recording of Manson singing it) and then follow it with one of their own songs! But I'm getting ahead of the story.

With Podcast 4, there's something more that gets started. And the way that he handled "the following program contains obscene language that may be inappropriate for some listeners" in Podcast 6 should have Stan Freberg crawling out of the grave and dragging his bones to Belfast just to shake the Duke's hand. Podcast 13: brilliant. Simply brilliant.

I've got the gap between Podcast 8 to 12 to cover, and there's apparently a Podcast 14 on its way.

Okay. What else? He's some sort of bigwig at www.blogcritics.org.(The Bubba Ho-Tep review picked at random there.)

And on top of that...he's a songwriter. Because none of that other stuff is apparently enough.

I mean: damn!

I came on this with 120 Removed (April Songs), which I thought was a breakup album with his muse Sinead. Indeed, I still haven't figured that one out, but the first song "I Do Believe You Are the Devil" seemed to be the cathartic release of inviting your buddies over and trashing some poor person from a past relationship. The lyrics described the sort of thing people in San Francisco will pay top dollar for in certain Folsom Street establishments:

I do believe you are the devil,
Got me bent naked for the lash,
Those 120 days of Sodom heading up this way,
Twisting and writhing in the ash.

I'd been listening to buckets of Nick Cave at the time, so I wasn't immediately impressed. Did appreciate the Soggy Bottom Boys chorus of the other guys in the background.

But then there was Chicks Dig Whinin.' "Ah HA!" I thought. I just knew this would be some misogynistic piece of male superiority laughing at female sentiments that I could download and post to the good ladies of Guerilla Girls, who would, in turn, administer a post-feminist cyber-pounding on his ass. But the song did not play out as expected. Instead, it revealed an understanding of female psychology that I'm not too pleased to know is in the hands of the opposite side in this eternal battle of the sexes we've all got going on.

Taken as advice, the song could help a lot of guys get a lot of action:

Chicks dig whinin’, this I know,
Their sympathetic eyes say so,
And whispering to friends – “It’s true,
Man, he’s so cute when he’s so blue”

Chicks dig guys who fantasise,
Bout helping dry her weeping eyes,
And guys who choke on hateful lies,
“I’m sorry! I apologise!”

Chicks dig songs bout loneliness,
And songs bout life that sound like death,
And pausing for to catch my breath…
And cough the shit from out my chest

Chicks dig talk of Jesus from a fella’s not a preacher,
Just some fool left to make sense of senselessness,
And all my senses,
They are dragging me towards her and I’m scared I’ll never reach her,
Chicks dig weary resignated sighs…
Chicks dig when a man can’t help but cry

And it is sung to the tune of Jesus Loves Me. Again: brilliant. Just brilliant.

But he's got a new album out now, and all that's going to happen is everyone who is already a slavering online fan of his hyper-creative output is just going to download it and praise it and pass it along to their friends. (I haven't had a chance yet, but the one track on Mondo Irelando Podcast 13 was pretty damn good.)

What he needs is some new, impartial listeners. Listeners steeped in the full five decades of rock music and not easily swayed by clever graphics or streams of prose. I believe a few Horslips fans should get in there and make their opinions known, certainly, but I encourage any and all to check out 75 mg.

There! Thank God that's finished. It makes me tired just writing about him.

Did you know that Van Morrison wrote a song about Heathrow Airport?

2005-11-23T09:32:00.000-08:00

For Roger H and Peter S: so it's a work-related post!

Heathrow Shuffle

Ba-ba-doo-day, ba-ba-doo-day, ba-ba-doo-day
Ba-ba-doo-day, ba-ba-doo-day, ba-ba-doo-day
Ba-ba-doo-day, ba-ba-doo-day, ba-ba-doo-day
Heathrow shuffle, Heathrow shuffle, yeah
Ba-ba-doo-day
Heathrow shuffle, Heathrow shuffle, yeah
Ba-ba-doo-day
Gotta go to Heathrow, gotta go to Heathrow, yeah
Ba-ba-doo-day

Okay. I could have written that! Maybe it's the way Van sings it.

But there you are, Roger and Peter: can't wait to be the Virgil to your Dantes as we descend to the ninth circle of baggage check!