Man on the Run

Spring has sprung in Ithaca. 

Something of a landmark weekend this weekend for the Actual Facts. Our first out of town show, and first show with Gregg, our new drummer. We packed up John's VW camper and drove up to Rochester for a show at Monty's Krown, supporting John's brother's band Hinkley. Our newest member, Gregg is a reluctant history Ph.D. scholar at Cornell looking for a good excuse to drop out, and he seems to think the Actual Facts is a good bet. He likes our songs, and enjoys playing with us. For the first time, it feels like we're a real band.

The show went well, despite the fact that my shirt was apparently not rock and roll enough, and a guy at the back yelled insults at us throughout. After the show he told me he liked us a lot. I asked him weren't you yelling "You suck!" in between songs. He said he meant it in an encouraging way, so I said okay and got his name for the mailing list.

Did a double-take this morning reading today's Achewood strip. It's one letter away from my last name but close enough to have me briefly believing Ray Smuckles had a special secret message for me. (To fill you in, in the previous strip we learn that Ray has been sending money to a shady sounding video company.)

Here's a link to a fascinating comparison of Leonard Cohen's "Take this Waltz", one of my favorite songs, with the poem it was based on by Frederico Garcia Lorca.

Anthony Tognazzini finally has a web site. The site includes dozens of his short fictions and will soon include songs too.

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

John and I are trying to come up with a name for our band. John has been taking his mp3 player around town and assaulting various local musicians with our demos and the response has been particularly positive, but we still don't have a name for people to remember us by.

It's hard to find the name that's evocative and easy to remember and that the other band members can agree on. Thankfully, because we are a power trio (!) and currently lacking a drummer there are only two of us, which should make things a little easier.

Here are the suggestions I've brought to the table so far:

Behinder (Rumsfeld used this word in the recent leaked memo about Iraq. Something like, "the more effort we make the behinder we become." That's not good English is it? Might be a good band name though.)
The Rulers (A current favorite - Kate's idea btw)
The Capsules
Mimi Won a Ham (I have this friend Mimi. Not long ago she won a ham and I got this great idea for a band name)
Lint
Lint Mine/Spill/Commander/Obsession/Ambassador/Emotion/Trip... I dunno, just something to do with goddam lint.
Quiche Abrasion (gentle send up of middle class mores or something... like you could hurt yourself on a quiche)
The Victims (too goth or something probably - we'd be required to wear makeup. Still it's kinda self-effacing, kinda serious)
The Stays (too preppy?)
The Facts
The Actual Facts (I like this one)
Night birds (I liked this but Anthony says it's too pedestrian. Maybe he's right? He agrees with me about Dynamite Ham though)
Man on the run
The Conformists
The Memes (Album name "Word of Mouth") (see below)
The Heavy Memes (nice but will require explanation every goddam time you bring it up, "Memes? What is that? How do you spell it?"...)
The Phonemes (too pretentious)
Abalone (a type of sea shell)
Ironside (wheelchair possibly incorporated into band logo)
The Accidentals (has vague geographical/racial connotations - which gels with the cross-cultural nature of the band)
Dollar Bazaar (I don't think anyone likes this but me so I'm not gonna fight for it)
Pterodactyl (could work - doesn't sound like a T-Rex rip off does it?)
The Secret Way Out (sort of interesting. Too pretentious?)
That Stupid (will get us play on WICB as a bratty punker band - I guess I don't even like this one)
The Car Crash (hmmm...)
The Cutups (not bad I think)
The Treats (too cute? Could work maybe?)
My Treat (people might be fooled into thinking their friends are paying the cover for them, "Hey, wanna come to the show tonight? It's My Treat." Okay I don't really suggest this band name)

Good for our bluegrass side project:
Rag Tag Band
R. Shucks
(R. Shucks and his Rag Tag Band)

It's list time again folks. This time Rolling Stone's top 500 albums.

I often find these lists mildly irritating, mainly because it seems like the votes are cast based on received wisdom and long memorized standings. But you know what, there's a lot of my favorite music in there, and it's hard to get mad when the list is 500 frickin' records long. Most of what I like is in there somewhere.

I would reverse the order of some artists' releases. My preference for Roxy Music, Nick Drake, Parliament/Funkadelic and Bowie is pretty much the exact opposite of the Rolling Stone rankings. And I would always switch Revolver and Sgt. Pepper (I can't remember the last time I listened to Sgt. Pepper, but I listen to Revolver all the time). I also listen to Highway 61 less than most of the other Dylan albums listed, but received wisdom seems to make this #1 Dylan record on all lists.

Including compilations and greatest hits collections seems slightly dubious to me, as does the scattering of Miles Davis and Coltrane albums to represent the entire jazz canon. Gosh boys you like jazz too! Such unsuspected depth!

See a picture from the legendary Desks performance at the Herman wedding in Washington DC here!

Another photo here.

And here's a spiffy group shot - Left to right: me, Eric Herman, Daniel Herman and Matthew Zapruder.

Out walking at lunch I found one Czech crown nestled in the grass near the bike racks of the hotel school. I have to say this unexpected discovery didn't set off Proustian flashbacks of the balmy Prague days, but it was very pleasant to find, and it did remind me of the dream I had last night in which I was back in Prague with some of the old crowd:

We're at a party in someone's apartment, and Anthony is there, only he's also Bob Dylan, and Woody Guthrie is sitting across from us crooning a song on a guitar. Something about Woody's singing doesn't seem right and suddenly I turn to Anthony/Bob Dylan and say, "Dude, he's singing just like you! He's using your style!" Anthony/Dylan nods seriously. Then the song suddenly becomes unbearably sad and everyone in the room feels it, and I have to use my forearm to cover my eyes so no one will see I'm weeping to the tune.

At this point one of the cats jumped on my head and woke me up, and I rose disoriented and slightly annoyed, but with the image of the dream very clear in my head, and I could still remember pretty clearly the tune Woody Guthrie had been singing. It sounded like "Pianoman".

The wedding was a delight. A perfect fall day in DC, Saturday. Blue skies and not too cold. Kate and I took a trolley to the church mid-afternoon and waited outside briefly while other trolleys arrived disgorging many strangers along with many familiar faces met previously at Herman related events. Ben's group of friends spans many disparate social groups and it's rare that you get to meet a large number of them all at one time. Watching the people dismount the tram was a bit like watching the dramatic finale of one of those films where the different characters from the previous scenes end up coming together. Thankfully there were no devastating secrets revealed or murders committed, as often happens in such films.

The ceremony (a full catholic mass) went well. Cara looked radiant despite having been so sick the previous evening that she had to miss the rehearsal dinner to go to the hospital. Ben seemed relaxed and happy, and looked spiffy in his tux.

The reception, at the Museum of Women in the Arts, was very social and genuinely joyous. It was plain to see that everyone was happy for Ben and Cara. The terrific wedding band "The Gentlemen and Their Lady" got everyone dancing to Motown and funk standards (everyone except Ben, of course, who refrains from dancing as a matter of principal).

The "guest" band went surprisingly well. Despite the fact that the four of us had never played together before, and we hadn't had a single rehearsal, and no sound check, we sounded pretty rockin'. The captive wedding audience seemed to enjoy it - we got a lot of compliments afterwards - and no one seemed to notice the occasional screwed-up chords and muffed lyrics. In the end we were announced as The Desks, but everyone, it seems, misheard it as The Guests, which is maybe a less exciting band name but definitely more appropriate.

Ay, Oh! Let's Go!

Going to DC this weekend to see Ben and Cara get wed. I'm excited for them both, and the wedding is sure to be a lot of fun. And wild! I hear they have free cranberry juice at the bar until ten thirty.

I'm going to be performing in an ad hoc rock band Ben has assembled to do a few songs late in the evening. The rhythm section consists of Ben's two brothers, Matthew Zapruder will be on lead guitar and I'm on rhythm guitar and lead vocals. The band may or may not be called The Desks. We will be playing together for the first time, without the benefit of rehearsal. Should be interesting.

Just discovered Buzznet, a free website that lets you post your own photos. I put a picture of Dudley up here. Expect more in future posts.

Sarah Holmes came over last night, at my request, to make some recordings. Sarah is a veteran of the open mic and I like her stuff a lot. She has a seemingly endless number of self-penned songs, often blues or gospel-tinged, with poetic, ghostly lyrics. Mostly she sings unaccompanied. Her delivery is lazy and imprecise but she has a sweet sound which she accentuates with delicate, almost imperceptible tremelo.

I had in mind to record her unaccompanied just like at the open mic, but she arrived with all kinds of ideas. I don't know a lot about recording, and there are serious limitations to what I can acheive in the back bedroom of the apartment with just the four-track, so initially I had some doubts as to what I might be able to come up with that Sara might be satisfied with. In the end, however, things went swimmingly. We worked on one of Sarah's songs called "Nego Beach" in which a male character competes with flocks of stricken birds for the affections of a saintly woman figure. It's a strange lullaby with a sort of Brothers Grimm eeriness and beauty to it.

John Parkins turned up early on and started playing bass through the behemoth bass amp I have on permanent loan from Neil Danziger. The bassline he came up with was perfect for the song, snakey and sinister and at the same time propulsive. I got a nice sweet sound from the Telecaster hooked up through the chorus pedal, and following Sarah's suggestion I play something reggae-sounding I started strumming a staccato riff on the off-beat. This must have sounded sufficiently reggae to Sarah because she didn't complain, but to me it sounded like Marquee Moon by Television, so it satisfied both our sensibilities.

Learning the song and getting the parts right took a couple of hours so we didn't have time to make a proper recording but we did make a rough recording through one mic which is pretty listenable. It's a good song. It's been doing repeat plays in my head since the session.

This lunchtime I came across the most interesting band ad that I've seen since I've been in Ithaca. A band called The Accidents is looking for a drummer. The ad caught my eye at first because the name of the band is on my list of potential band names, (next to "Quiche Abrasion" and "God's Holy Trousers"). (Actually, I just checked, and the one I have down is "The Accidentals" which I like more because it has geographic/racial connotations). The Accidents list their influences as Nirvana, Pixies, Velvet Underground, Talking Heads, Beach Boys, New Wave, No Wave... some other cool and varied stuff followed by "19th Century British Politics, Dr. Strangelove, The Moody Blues", with a smiley face next to Moody Blues to indicate cheeky humor rather than huge pretentiousness. There's some other stuff about how the drummer needs to be able to play hard but be flexible, and then at the bottom are the words, "We are NOT a jam band".

These guys seem to have the right spirit. I give them my full support.