Don’t Let Your Deal Go Down

Now I've been all around this whole wide world
Down to Memphis, Tennessee
Any old place I hang my hat
Looks like home to me

The story goes that when Walker Burke got drunk that night, in the back of Malone’s saloon, he brought down his beer bottle so hard the bottom busted.  It was said around town that the sound could be heard for miles.  Woke up the cows.  Caused the fish to swim upstream.  Cats jumped.  Walker just laughed and Malone the bartender frowned and cut him off.  No more drink for you, boy.  Boy? Walker’d said.  Who you calling boy?   Malone, used to this sort of thing, put out his hand.  Easy there, no sense in gettin’ riled up.   

The crew from the late shift at the textile mill fell back, giving him some room, some rope, just to see what he’d do with it.  How far he’d take things.  Walker pushed back his barstool, wobbling a bit.  Tom O’Connor, the muscled late-shift foreman slid off his barstool and slunk forwards menacingly - a shock of red hair curling over his forehead.  Little Pat Dupree’d edged over and put his arm around Walker’s shoulder.  Everyone thought Walker’d shrug off Pat’s arm and start throwing punches.  That there’d be a fight. 

“I only keep you on at the mill as a favor to your old man.  He at least knew how to put in an honest days work.”  Tom said.

Walker moved towards him, pointing, repeating himself -  “Did you hear me? I’m not going back in them damn mills.”   What happened next is a bit in dispute.  Even now, the shape his face was in when he staggered out of there depends on who’s telling it and when.  The only thing everyone agrees on is that the boss laughed to himself the whole time.  Turned and muttered to the bartender – “Don’t he know?  In the end, everyone has to go back.”

Walker told the story, the one about the beer bottle busting, the bartender cutting him off, and the blood on the floor, just so he could get to the part about never going back.  He told it at campfires and behind meeting tents and while on stage, between songs.  He told it in Memphis Tennessee and North Carolina and Virginia and New York City and plenty of places in between.  So many places that eventually it slipped into legend.  Did you hear about that Walter Burke?  Never going back!  Folks’d say it on their way into the job.  Punching the time clock.  Waiting for the dinner whistle, then the final blow.  They’d say it and crack up grinning.  Then they’d say it again, under their breath, wistfully.

There were plenty of people who’d claimed to have been there and seen the whole thing.  More than could fill all of Malone’s saloon.  Trouble was it wasn’t true.  There was a Malone’s saloon all right and Walker’d been there plenty of times, but he never busted open a beer bottle there.  Truth was he’d slipped away one night - dead quiet, stone sober - with a knapsack and a banjo case slung over his shoulder.  Pat Dupree by his side.

Walker could do that to you, set the truth so close to the lie that they leaned into each other – forming an arch that only he could squeeze through.  And when his voice slipped into a pleading moan, the arch became a doorway, slung open to the world and the truth was only as real as those who heard it wanted it to be.  They could make their own truths – slip out of the mills or mines or fields on Walker’s shoulders, grinning and tapping their toes the whole time.

Roky Erickson - Rock & Roll Hotel - 11/12/12

The band slipped in, with the stage barely lit, picked up their instruments and began a slow chord progression with a hint of the old Bo Diddley beat.
It picked up, they began singing. And then, to the right of the stage, but just off to the side, he appeared. Large, with a wild mane of hair and that beard. The energy in the room shifted abruptly. Intensified. Bo Diddley was a Headhunter. (Hey Bo Diddley.) He stepped up onto stage and was ceremoniously handed his guitar. And it began. A chaotic, intense, primal, exploration of that perilously thin line between mid-60's psychedelia and blues-drenched prog rock. The lights stayed dark. Roky's face, hidden in shadows (except when the iPhones flashed), was hard to read. At times it looked like he was going through the motions.. but there, just under the surface, was that voice - rough, sure, but still recognizable. He played little from the Elevators (no "Baby Blue", no "Levitation"), and the hits were saved for the encore, a short but brutal "You're Gonna Miss Me" and a rattling version of "Two Headed Dog." It was all over far too quickly. As I slipped back out into the light rain and rode my bike home I couldn't shake that image of him, standing to the side of the stage before the show began, like a surfer about to dive into the ocean. But content, for the moment, to let the waves lap around his feet. It was a bit like this:

Books finished recently

The Marriage Plot - Eugenides
The Third Reich - Bolano

Thoughts to follow

Trampled by Turtles - 9:30 Club - Nov. 18

So I wasn't quite sure what to expect - the reviews out of Newport and Telluride were impressive, but the clips I'd heard online didn't quite blow me away. Showed up a bit early with DK and headed up to the balcony, stage right, and got settled in.

The opener, Johnny Corndawg had quite a look when he took the stage - bright green sweater, tall and lanky, and a voice that shot through generations. Unfortunately the band was just OK - playing a solid two-step rhythm like any Austin dancehall band could, and plenty of the lyrics and songs were cute jokes that never really developed. But oh how Johnny could sing. He did a Hank Jr. cover and sang a few pieces acapella and you could see there was something there under the surface...

Then came the Turtles. Simply sublime. They had an undeniable, unforgettable acoustic energy - and a level of rich songwriting and musical prowess that it was just an honor to be in the same room. Like the White Stripes they're soon going to need a bigger room. And with the upsurge in acoustic music (Avett Bros, Mumford) the wind seems to blowing their way.



So catch them if you can..

Odd Futurism

Yes. And yes.

A nice (perhaps the best) exploration of the Odd Future phenomenon yet. Bethlehem Shoals in Poetry Magazine comparing Tyler, the Creator et. al. to F.T. Marinetti and the Italian Futurists.

Link here.

At the same time, the sophistication that informs much of OFWGKTA’s output clearly marks them as children of a particular Los Angeles scene. They are, at once, wacky skaters whose antics are solidly in the Big Brother/Jackass tradition, and aesthetic terrorists who know that filth isn’t just fun—it’s also, when employed in the most dispassionate, pastiche-driven way imaginable, its own kind of creative mischief-making. OFWGKTA isn’t looking to shock audiences—they’re out to show off their own desensitization. That explains their seeming indifference to context, or connotation. If you’re second-guessing the level of irony this requires, watch any of the skate videos in which the crew exults over a remarkably ordinary move. This use of language, and visual signs, is both provocatively naive and knowingly subversive. What makes them endlessly fascinating, at once visionary and always somewhat scrambled, is OFWGKTA’s desire to have it both ways.

Jakob Dylan & Neko Case - 9:30 Club, 4/23/10

Images, then sounds. Jakob's wide-brimmed hat. Bleached out photos of a midwestern field behind the stage. The entire band dressed in suits (some with pocket squares and pocket chains). Neko in a red dress, Kelly in black.

Jakob's voice was strong, his phrasing direct. The new album hadn't blown me away, but live the songs came into their own. Neko threatened to steal the show on multiple occasions - and the crowd cheered her on.

And yes, there was a sameness to the sound throughout. Jakob lacks his dad's restless sense of discovery of roots music - there's no deep assimilation of pre-war blues. But he's above all a poet, and can create songs of staggering beauty and depth and urgency. And sometimes that's more than enough.

Colm Toibin - Brooklyn

So I finished Brooklyn yesterday, sitting at a table in the basement of my law school's library. I thought the book was solid, well-written, but ultimately nothing extraordinary.

Toibin writes very solid sentences that hold together well, but as rich and textured and detailed as his descriptions were, I really didn't _feel_ Brooklyn or Ireland came alive quite enough. The protagonist, a young girl who doesn't quite know who she is or what she wants was, I think, part of the problem - I found myself neither surprised by nor interested in what happened to her. She felt flat and as a result the book felt a bit flat.

But the descriptions of Ireland were amazing and it was an interesting glimpse into the world of someone torn between two countries. Though it had nowhere near the level of complexity and feeling you get from similarly displaced characters in a Jhumpa Lahiri short story.