Yesterday, we spent a few hours of our first full day of retirement in Decatur, Georgia at folk-music venue Eddie's Attic with singer-songwriter Damien Jurado.
Portland's Corrina Repp opened. We often find solo acoustic singer/songwriters, which is really just a long, roundabout way of saying what we used to call "folk singers," tedious, and if it weren't for our appreciation of the sheer artistry of Mr. Jurado, we probably wouldn't have gone to this show. Which is to say, we didn't have high hopes for the opener's set, but we were very pleased to hear Ms. Repp's performance.
Rather than just strumming chords to accompany her singing, she let her electric guitar reverberate and echo, and used a repeater pedal to produce interesting soundscapes to support her fine voice. The sequential processing portions of our brain loved hearing how she created new textures and structures, even if we didn't experience any veridical rushes of familiarity.
It was a very good set, and we hope to hear more from Ms. Repp in the future.
Damien Jurado did, in fact, just strum along on his guitar as he sang - no pick, just his thumb across the strings. But the fascination with Mr. Jurado's music is not in his accompaniment (although we've heard him in a variety of settings, from full band to solo), but in his singing and the raw emotional honesty he brings to his dark songs. He has a voice and a quiet presence that fills a room, and even though we recognized very few of last night's songs, we were spellbound throughout the set.
If we recall correctly, Jurado opened with the song Lincoln from his latest album In the Shape of a Storm. After that, it was all new to us, including at least one song he introduced as his first time playing it in public. Toward the end of the set, he played Museum of Flight from 2012's Maraqopa, arguably our favorite album of his and one of the few vinyl records we actually own.
But other than that, it was all new to us, which made it all feel even more like Mr. Jurado was speaking honestly from the heart directly to us.
Bonus points: it was an early show (7:00 p.m. start). Eddie's likes to run two shows on a Saturday night, and after being treated to a fine set, we were home by 10:00.
We watched the movie Ex Machina on Netflix to close out our night.
Saturday, June 29, 2019
As we look back at our life, it seems to break down into three chapters. Childhood, Chapter One, actually lasted for us well into our 20s. Chapter Two was our adult career years, The Rat Race, nearly 45 years spent, in various proportions, earning, spending, and saving money, along with sundry romantic entanglements that never seemed to result in a satisfying conclusion for us. Long story.
Today was the first full day of Chapter Three, Retirement. We're not sure yet how this chapter will read, although we do know how it will end. But before the close of this chapter, will it be years of relaxation and quiet enjoyment, or soul-crushing loneliness and isolation? Will it be spent pursuing our various interests, or a slow decline into depression and alcoholism? Will it's length be measured in decades or years? Or months or even weeks?
There's really only one way to find out, so here we go.
Our first morning of Chapter Three was spent, as we suspect many mornings will be spent, in bed with a cup of coffee and the Times crossword puzzle. We read one full chapter of the current book we're working on (Demonic Males, more about that, we're sure, in a later post). A little time playing video games and then a quick run to the supermarket before today's Red Sox/Yankees game in London. The Sox are playing so awfully today that we could only watch the game for a few innings before we had to avert our eyes. Right now, after only four innings, Boston trails by 8, 14-6. Disgusting. Tonight, we're off to Eddie's Attic in Decatur to see Seattle singer-songwriter Damien Jurado.
These little diversions and modest entertainments will probably tide us over for a few days, at least through the July Fourth holiday. After that we'll likely start in earnest some of the yard work and home improvement chores with which we've tasked ourselves. And beyond that, well, is anybody's guess. We'll just have to see how it all unfolds.
While we were writing this, the Yankees scored three more runs in the top of the fifth and now lead the game 17-6. An 11-run lead, and the game's only half over. At least they play again tomorrow, giving the Sox a chance at some measure of, if not redemption, then at least revenge.
We interrupt our Sun Ra retrospective once again just to acknowledge that after a 38-year career, we're officially retired as of today and are finally free. We can't think of a more fitting song to match our mood at this milestone in our life than Eno's Golden Hours from 1975's Another Green World (even back then, we were listening to songs about growing old).
This is how we feel today, and this is the mood we're taking into the next chapter of our life, which begins. . . right. . . now.
We're told that every day, a 40-foot tree takes in 50 gallons of dissolved nutrients from the soil, raises this mixture to its topmost leaves, converts it into 10 pounds of carbohydrates, and releases about 60 cubic feet of pure oxygen into the air.
Big deal. We're not impressed. Why do they have to be 40 feet tall? Who do they think they are, anyway, Bill de Blasio? Why do trees have to put all those tons of timber so far up over our heads? We think they’re just planning to kill us. Revenge for polluting the planet and for clear cutting, maybe?
Fun fact: giant sequoias deliberately drop high branches from time to time to keep other seedlings from growing up too close around them. And you thought trees were such noble and eco-friendly beings. Well, news flash - they kill other trees!
Anyway, Tolkien was right - trees are nothing but evil Ents out after our lives.
And what about shrubs? Why don't they get any credit? Mountain laurels and bushes sequester just as much carbon and release just as much oxygen as trees, but don’t feel the need to put hundreds of tons of lumber up over our cars, houses and heads, and then threaten to kill us during each and every thunderstorm. Trees suck, man.
And don’t even get us started on grasslands and lichens.
And hemp!
Wednesday, June 26, 2019
We were four, maybe five, car lengths behind the car in front of us this morning on our soon-to-be-over daily commute and there were no cars behind us for at least 50 yards. We know this because we're always well aware of the traffic around us when we drive - we pride ourselves on our spatial awareness behind the wheel. So we're the last car in this little convoy heading up the six- or seven-lane highway on our way to work.
Suddenly we hear someone blaring their horn off to our left, and then from seemingly nowhere a car comes flying across at least two lanes of traffic to cut into that small space between us and the car in front, and then, having just cut us off, across two more lanes to the right to make it to the exit ramp we had almost just passed. Instead of just tapping on their brakes for a mere nanosecond, not to stop but just to slow down from, say, 80 mph to 79 for just a moment, they could have easily passed behind us where there was no traffic, little chance of collision, and easily have made their exit. But no, they accelerate, warn everyone else that they were coming through by leaning on their horn, and almost cause a collision or a series of collisions by cutting us off as they drift across at least five lanes of traffic.
No accident, but some people. . . .
Each day, we see cars driving 20 to 25 mph over the speed limit on this stretch of highway, weaving through the other cars driving a mere 10 to 15 mph over the limit, swinging out wide across three, four, or more lanes of traffic, and mercilessly cutting off people in the other lanes. All this while 18-wheelers are lumbering along, choking up the slow lanes to the right. There are accidents somewhere on the Atlanta highways almost every day, many times fatal, oftentimes with grievous injuries, almost always resulting in backed-up traffic jams for hours. Which just makes the drivers that much more aggressive when they finally get past the blockage and are free once again, but now feel they have to make up for lost time.
We can't tell if the driving has really gotten that much worse as of late, or if it's us, the psychological effect of our breakdown earlier this year on this stretch of road. We were stranded and helpless for 25 minutes in the high-speed HOV lane while cars sped by, narrowly missing us or screeching to a halt behind us when they couldn't get over. A friend or ours whose husband is a cop and knows a thing or two about these kinds of things says that's a textbook example of PTSD - 25 minutes is way too long to be pinned in a helpless situation fearing for your very life.
Then on top of a possible case of PTSD, our anxiety is increased knowing this is our last week of commuting, only four more trips - two each way - and we're done. If life were a movie, this is when we'd buy it on the highway, and the guy shoveling our remains into the meat wagon would say to his buddy, "Shame, he was only a day away from retirement."
And then on top of the PTSD and the sense of impending irony, we worry that this might somehow become a self-fulfilling prophecy - we have an accident because we subconsciously believe we're going to have one.
Best not to think about it at all. Just get it over and done with and then stay home with the cats.
Two more days. One hundred more miles. Couldn't end soon enough.
Our last week of work, so we started the week off with a Monday-night show at The Earl with the Montreal band Operators. Toronto's psych dance-punk band Doomsquad opened.
Doomsquad were good and they provided another flute solo, our second after the TOPS show a week ago Sunday. Is is the effect of Lizzo, or is it just time for the flute to make a comeback? Either way, Doomsquad put on an energetic, eminently danceable set of quirky music.
Operators is the latest band from Wolf Parade's Dan Boeckner. Wolf Parade is a Canadian band with two frontmen - Boeckner and Spencer Krug. Both have their own side projects, and we've seen Krug's other band Moonface a couple of times, and we've seen Boeckner's previous project Handsome Furs before. We've also seen Wolf Parade themselves, but we missed Boeckner's other side project, Divine Fits, with Spoon's Britt Daniel - otherwise, we'd have all the holes punched in our Wolf Parade card and would be eligible for free tickets to a Frog Eyes show (we guess).
Anyway, Operators are not dissimilar to Handsome Furs and can even be called a further extrapolation on some of the ideas and templates first laid out by Handsome Furs, which is a good thing.
Handsome Furs is basically Dan Boeckner on guitars, vocals and occasional synths, with Devojka supporting him on synths, backup vocals, and on at least the song Despair, guitar. They were one man short - their drummer/percussionist Sam Brown was missing. According to Boeckner, he was suffering the effects of a bad shrimp plate, although Devojka challenged that theory on stage and said no one knows how he got sick. Whatever the reason, they still sounded great last night, with synthesized drums filling in nicely for the ailing Mr. Brown.
The Earl filled up slowly during the course of the evening, from only about 5 or 6 people when we first arrived, to about 50 during Doomsquad's set, to we guess maybe 100 for Operators. But it seemed fuller than that - everybody was pressed forward by the stage and everyone was enthusiastic, dancing in place or at least nodding along to all the songs. Boeckner, who can come off as moody on his LPs, seemed to be in a good mood, joking and chatting between songs and generally having a good time.
Also, kudos for the very trippy light show. Great stagecraft, guys. It really added to the experience, from the abstract opening before the band even took the stage (while the PA played To Here Knows When by My Bloody Valentine) to the constantly changing selection of vintage films and computer effects during each song.
It was a fun show, and here's a quick sampler of the set, featuring the psych-out opening to MBV before the band took the stage and a few seconds of Devojka on guitar during Despair.
By the way, today we learned that the name "The Earl" is actually an acronym for East Atlanta Restaurant and Lounge.
We believe we may have inadvertently mislead a bunch of people. For some reason, our few remaining coworkers decorated our office with "Happy Retirement" and "Off the Clock" banners and streamers. We posted pictures of our decorated office on Instagram and Facebook, and many people assumed as a result that last Friday was our last day at work.
As if. We still have one more week to go.
We're already settling into an old man's post-retirement rhythm, however. Yesterday, we laid in bed until past 10 a.m. completing the NYT Sunday crossword puzzle (no clues to inspire us to throw the I Ching this time, though). We then had our morning coffee and puttered around the house until noon, and then watched the final two episodes of Netflix' Russian Doll.
By the time we were through with that, it was mid-afternoon but we managed to get our grocery shopping done and returned back home just before some torrential rains started falling. We were quite proud of ourselves on our timing. While it was raining, we went on-line, paid some bills, and finally set up our Medicare account. We made some dinner, played some Metal Gear Solid V, and then watched our Sunday-night soaps - Little Big Lies and Euphoria - on HBO with an old pal or two.
After that, it was time for bed so that we could get up bright and early for our last week at the office, where we passed the day away today watching the US beat Spain in the World Cup and then composing this post. Tonight, we have a show (the band Operators) at The Earl.
"See?," we tell ourselves, "there's not nothing to do in retirement." It just takes a lot of patience, some creativity, and a reliable source of high-speed internet service.
"The will to overcome an emotion is ultimately only the will of another or several other emotions."
- Nietzsche, from Beyond Good and Evil
"In trying to please other people, we find ourself misdirected toward what lies outside our sphere of influence. Do not try to seem wise to others. If you want to live a wise life, live it on your own terms and in your own eyes."
Yesterday was the solstice; today is the first full day of summer. Like clockwork, the Earth has returned once again to that place in its orbit where the Northern Hemisphere is most tilted toward the Sun. And then this morning, one of the clues in the NYT crossword puzzle was "Practices cleromancy" (spoiler alert: the answer is "casts lots"), reminding us, now that the solstice has come and gone, that it's time to cast the I Ching again.
Practicing cleromancy (throwing the coins) today, the first three lines formed the trigram for "thunder," with no moving lines. Thunder down below in the lower trigram, and as the lines are all unmoving, thunder before and thunder later. The next three lines, the upper trigram, were all yin lines, the trigram for "earth." But lines four and six were both moving lines, the yin becoming yang, and our "earth" trigram is changing to that of "fire."
The full hexagram, all six lines, is Hexagram 24, Fù, or "Returning." The returning that the hexagram contemplates involves the cyclic nature of the earth's orbit around the sun and the ebb and flow of tides. Everything that rises eventually retreats, and everything that fades, eventually returns. To the creators of the I Ching, the entire cosmos ran as a sort of intricate clockwork, wheels turning within wheels, and everything eventually ran the whole circle and came back around again.
Interestingly, considering that we cast the hexagram while contemplating the summer solstice, Fù is usually associated with the winter solstice. It consoles us that the shortest day of the year, if nothing else, is a reminder that days will start getting longer and nights start getting shorter. The same, or rather the inverse, could also be said of the summer solstice - the longest day of the year, when the world is most out of balance between light and dark, marks the beginning of a return to equanimity, to a balance between day and night. That's not to say that the forces of darkness are taking over - the still quiet of the nighttime can be taken as a metaphor for contemplation and meditation. Following the summer solstice, the frenetic activity of the daylight hours gives way to the deliberate stillness of the evening. That seems a fairly apt metaphor as we leave our busy career behind and head into the twilight years of our impending retirement.
Everything comes around again. That is the lesson of Fù - do not despair at defeat, for the defeated shall rise again, and do not triumph in victory, as there is nothing gained that lasts forever.
Our two moving lines - lines four and six, offer us a consolation and a warning. Line 4 is an example of a good return - one who is alone but walks in the middle of the road (the path of moderation). The text states that a wise game player keeps his pieces in the middle of the board; in modern terms, a cagey basketball player knows that by staying in center court, more possibilities are open than along either sideline.
Line 6, on the other hand, is a warning to those who return in disorder. As is the case for an army with no exit strategy or a force too distant from its command, disastrous mistakes can be made, and the people suffer misfortune as a consequence.
The key to understanding Fù is said to lie in Line 4 and its implication of a Middle Way, the thunder in the center of the earth. As long as the thunder is there at the center, no action is needed until returning begins. And with no moving lines in the lower trigram (thunder before, thunder ahead), our center seems secure.
Applying all of this to the here and now, to our current life one week before we retire from a long career, we are advised to keep all options open and to stay close to our center. The unmoving lower lines indicate stability and that it's an auspicious time to make our move, but warns us not to commit to any particular new line of action. Instead, we should just take things as they come, let our new life open up and reveal itself to us, and accept the changes as the occur.
Further advice against blundering ahead and trying to force our new life to fit some preconceived notion of what retirement should be is provided by the new hexagram that's formed from Fù by changing the moving lines: Shì Kē, Hexagram 21. This hexagram advises us that it is always beneficial to carefully investigate when encountering something unexpected. The term Shì Kē refers to biting something and then cracking it between the teeth, like one does with seeds. But in this action there is always the risk of forcibly biting on something that is very hard or something decayed, so one needs to first carefully investigate what one is biting on.
Ominously, the warning of what may be in store for us if we don't heed the advice of Fù and Shì Kē, that is, if we don't allow things to come of their own accord and then carefully examine the possibilities when they do arrive, is the realization that the our emerging hexagram, Shì Kē, is generally associated with . . . criminal prosecution.
. . . and here we have it. Of course there's a Lady Gaga cover of Sun Ra's Rocket Number 9. We'll leave it up to you to determine if this is a tribute or a blatant rip-off, or something else altogether.
No one will mistake this club-thumper for one of Sun Ra's many versions, so at least there's that, and if La Ga Ga has to appropriate some jazzman's oeuvre, maybe by taking Sun Ra's she'll inadvertently lead some listeners to dream of the masters.
Much to our surprise, some of our favorite music of 2019 has come from Helado Negro and Y La Bamba, both of whom have lent a significant Latin flavor to what we've been listening to lately. Albums by both bands, This Is How You Smile by Helado Negro and Mujeres by Y La Bomba, made our 10 Best LPs of 2019 (So Far) list almost as soon as we first heard them, but both of these records have richly rewarded repeated listening, and our appreciation only grows deeper the more time we spend with each LP.
Helado Negro's music is unceasingly cheerful and amazing in its simplicity - few musicians have conjured more joy and happiness from so little. Helado Negro is Roberto Carlos Lange, a South Florida native born to Ecuadorian immigrants and now based in Brooklyn. The video above was recorded in Paris last April, and if we can spend our imminent retirement just hanging out by that canal every day with these folks, we'd be more than contented.
Veteran band Y La Bamba, on the other hand, have produced a complex and sophisticated album fusing music from all over the spectrum - mexicano, folk, electronica, dream pop, psychedelia, and more. Portland's Y La Bamba is the project of Luz Elena Mendoza, a first-generation Mexican-American artist. When we first heard the song Conocidos, we thought it might have been an early Animal Collective track that we had somehow missed. The more we listen to the album Mujeres, the more little touches we discover in the music.
No big point or theme here - we're just pleased that these Hispanic artists and bands have contributed so much to our musical enjoyment this year.
Tuesday, June 18, 2019
Eight more working days left to our so-called career. The job does not bring us joy. It does not nourish and it does not nurture. We don't got no satisfaction, so it's time to Marie Kondo this experience into a past-tense plane of existence.
According to news reports, the U.S. has been hacking computer code into Russia’s electrical grid and other targets. We hope Russia doesn't find out about this (nobody tell them!). Meanwhile, Homeland Security and the F.B.I. have alleged that Russia has inserted their own malware that could sabotage American power plants, oil and gas pipelines, or water supplies in any future conflict with the United States.
So it seems both the U.S. and Russia are weaponizing long-term blackouts against each other, making them ever more likely to occur.
This morning, the news tells us of that a massive power blackout stripped all of mainland Argentina and Uruguay of power yesterday, affecting tens of millions of people in an electrical failure of unprecedented scope. The total population affected by the blackout was greater than that of California; Argentina has more than 44 million people and Uruguay about 3.5 million. The total size of the area affected was four times that of Texas.
Fortunately, power had largely been restored to both countries as of last night, but the cause of the failure remains under investigation.
This should cause no small alarm for Americans, nay, for all the world. Here in the U.S., our power grid and infrastructure are antiquated and overstrained. At some point, significant swaths of the country could find themselves in a predicament similar to Argentina's. We should be modernizing our infrastructure and investing in new power sources now instead of providing tax cuts for the already wealthy.
Power outages for a short time, like the one we experienced Saturday morning two weekends ago, are mere inconveniences. But outages for a longer period could cause a panic for lack of water and food -- most of us have only a few days worth of food on hand before it goes bad, and pretty much no one can grow their own in time for dinner. When the power goes out for two days, not just 6 hours, food perishes, and after 8 to 12 hours, water pressure drops and then stops altogether. No more tap water, no kitchen sink, no showers or baths, and no flush toilets. Generators will run out of fuel and there is no way to get more fuel after the pumps stop running.
It can take up to two weeks for stores to be restocked when an outage is longer than 12 hours because the laws require all perishable foods to be thrown away, and restocking such a huge quantity of goods requires a major logistics effort. Usually, each night trucks provide what was picked off during the day and the logistics for that are well organized. But the multiple trucks required to restock every store would require weeks.
If the electricity went out for a prolonged period, the damage would be like a bombed out city. Eventually, even in the absence of opportunistic looting by bands of thugs, civil unrest starts when people get hungry and desperate. Short term losses are no big deal, but those in the defense and police establishments know it's the length of time the power is out that matters.
We'll repeat what we said at the top of this post - both Russia and the U.S. are weaponizing power outages for use in potential future conflicts. It will happen. Are we the only ones worried about this?
An interesting thing happened almost exactly halfway through Montreal band TOPS' set at The Masquerade last night - the guitarist, who had been silent all night, said something into the microphone (we couldn't tell exactly what he said, but he did say something), and after that all of the fuzz and gauzy ambience that clouded the sound for the first half of the set suddenly disappeared, and finally we could distinctly hear all of the musicians in the band. We don't know what happened exactly, if someone simply turned the reverb off at the soundboard or if the treble was reduced on the guitar, but thirty minutes into the set (there's a clock next to the stage at The Masquerade for some reason, so you can't help but know how long things have been going on) the band finally started sounding like they were playing for a live audience, not just trying to reproduce studio tracks in a live setting. Just like that, the set went from an "okay" show to a "great" show.
Actually, that was just one of at least four interesting thing that happened last night. There may have been other interesting things as well, but for the sake of this post let's say four interesting things happened, and we'll review them in reverse order to recount the evening.
INTERESTING THING 1: TOPS' SET
We first heard the band TOPS back in 2011 when we drove out to Athens, Georgia to hear the band Prince Rama at a restaurant (Farm 255) one December evening. As always, the Prince Rama show was great, and we got to hear several new, upcoming Athens bands open for them (none of which we had ever heard from again). But after the show, walking back to our car, we heard the sound of a nearby band playing outside on a nearby deck, and we wandered over to check it out. The band sounded fantastic, quite possibly the best music we had heard all night, and we asked some rando in the audience who this was and he said "TOPS. From Montreal."
TOPS in Athens, December 2011
We liked them, and we've been following their career ever since, which hasn't been difficult because they record at a languid pace. Their first LP, Tender Opposites, came out in 2012, followed by Picture You Standing in 2014, and as far as we know, they haven't released anything since Sugar At The Gate in 2017. Three albums over 8 years - yeah, we can keep up with that. We know that they have played Atlanta at least once before, but it was the same night back in 2014 that West Coast bands Motopony (Seattle) and Family Crest (S.F.) were playing the Drunken Unicorn, so we missed them. Don't know how often they've been through these parts other than that.
But we weren't going to miss them yet again, some seven and a half years after that Athens encounter, so last night we caught their set at The Masquerade. Not surprisingly, all these years later, they looked and sounded much more polished, much more professional, and much more accomplished, although they still had their characteristic charm and sweetness, thanks largely to singer and frontperson Jane Penny.
As we said above, the sound mix for the first half of the set sounded fuzzy and gauzy, and it was hard to hear Penny's vocals over the mix and the guitar sounded more like washes of chords than individual notes. It gave the set a dream-pop ambience, but after guitarist David Carriere announced whatever it was he announced, the guitar suddenly sounded so much clearer and Penny's voice could finally be heard above the instruments. Much better, and things took off from there, including this instrumental passage at the end of one of their songs:
All your favorite indie bands are now jam bands. As the instrumental jam above, while great, is not really representative of TOPS' sound, here's a cut from their recent Sugar At The Gate LP to give you a better sense of their indie pop style:
The club was only about half full but the audience were clearly TOPS fans, singing along several times and enthusiastically applauding each and every song. And everyone left with a smile on their face.
INTERESTING THING 2: THE OPENING ACTS DIDN'T SUCK
TOPS apparently aren't touring with another act, and both of the opening bands last night were local Atlanta outfits. While Atlanta is blessed with a large number of excellent bands, oftentimes at least one of the bands on a bill like this is either playing a live set for the very first time and making all sorts of rookie mistakes, or are the band of someone's boss's son and bereft of any musical talent.
Not so tonight. Both bands, Breathers and Fantasy Guys, were fun. Openers Breathers played 80s-sounding synthpop with earnest vocals and eminently danceable beats.
The middle act, Fantasy Guys, also trafficked in A.M. pop with jazzy instrumentation and falsetto vocals.
Both bands were good compliments to TOPS' indie-pop sound and played enjoyable sets, neither of which devolved into endurance events ("when will they finish?"). So that was nice. And, um, interesting.
INTERESTING THING 3: WE GET PROFILED
The Masquerade is not our favorite music venue, and many of the bands that perform there play in genres other than our liking: hip hop, hardcore punk or punk-pop, metal, and emo. It's basically music for teenagers, but no problem - everything doesn't have to be to our liking, and it's actually kind of convenient to have one venue that it's pretty consistently safe for us to avoid.
But the complex has three stages and puts on a show in at least one of those stages nearly every night, so statistically, sooner or later, someone we like will eventually come through (such as last night's TOPS show), and while it's rare, from time to time we still take in a show at The Masquerade.
Yesterday we arrived early, at least before the first set began, and waited around for the music to start by nursing a beer and scrolling though our phone. At some point, we made eye contact with one of the black-tee-shirted bouncers, who asked us, "How you doin'?"
"Okay," we replied.
But not 60 seconds later, he asked again, "You doin' okay?" We thought maybe he didn't hear us the first time, so we said, "Yep. Doin' good, man."
We took a couple steps away from him, but when we looked back just to see if his attention had wandered somewhere else, he asked a third time, "You okay?'
We walked back to where he was standing and said, "You keep checking in with us. What's up?"
"Well," he answered, "You're a little, um, different, than our usual customer."
Okay, we told him, we acknowledge that we're older, in fact a lot older, than the usual fan at The Masquerade, but we like new music and don't know many people our age who share our interest but we're not going to let that keep us from going out to shows. He seemed to like that answer, but pressed us a little more about what music we liked. "You like hip hop?," he asked.
When we told him rap wasn't really our thing, we could appreciate what they do but it's not necessarily something we're excited about going out and watching live, he haughtily replied that hip-hop and rap aren't necessarily the same thing.
"We know that," we said, and then proceeded to tell him that while we weren't big fans of hip hop, over the years we have seen Snoop Dogg live, and Wu Tang, and De La Soul, and going way back to the day, even Digable Planets. He liked the name dropping and seemed glad that we knew at least a few hip-hop bands, so we went on and told him that while we've never seen Kendrick Lamar live, we consider him a hip-hop genius and his album, To Pimp A Butterfly, nothing short of a masterpiece. "Yes!," he enthused, so we dug a little deeper and said that once we heard King Kunta, the first cut off the album, we knew this would change everything.
He was so happy about that he high-fived us, and we even sang "What's the yams?" (a line from Kunta) to prove we knew what we were talking about.
"So we okay?," we asked him, and he said yes, but it was his job to check things out and make sure there wasn't going to be any problems. "I can see you're here for the music," he said, and picking up then on his actual concern, we told him that we knew we stood out and that we go out of our way to avoid even the appearance of being there to bother or creep out young girls.
That was it. "Yeah," he said, "I noticed you walked away any time a girl stood near you" (which wasn't really true, but we weren't going to argue). "I appreciate that."
So that's what it was all about. The bouncer picked us out of the crowd based on our age and then interviewed us to make sure we weren't some sort of molesters or creeps, and due to our appearance we had to convince him we weren't, both by passing his hip-hop name-dropping quiz and then by acknowledging his very concern.
Now, while on one level we're glad that someone at the club is keeping an eye out for the safety and security of underage girls at The Masquerade, our encounter was nothing short of being profiled, being treated differently than the rest of the audience based solely on our age. Age discrimination. We know this experience is far more pervasive and far worse for people of color than for us, but it still doesn't sit well that we were "interviewed" not because of anything we said or did, but because of the way we looked and one bouncer's preconception of who we might be and what we might do.
Fuckin' Masquerade, man.
INTERESTING THING 4: WE ACTUALLY WENT OUT A SECOND NIGHT IN A ROW
Yeah, that's a thing. Last weekend we went out to two shows on two consecutive nights, one all the way out in Athens, and felt like we had "lost" a weekend, and then this weekend, we went and did it all over again. Friday night at Variety Playhouse and last night at The Masquerade. And we even went out to brunch and a walk during the day yesterday.
We're old and inclined to stay cooped up home alone if at all possible, so it's actually pretty extraordinary that we went out to two shows in a row. We may be low energy, but who can resist the option of getting out to molest teen girls hear live bands?
Ruban Nielson didn't waste any time - on the very first song of Unknown Mortal Orchestra's set at Variety Playhouse last night, he launched into an extended electric guitar jam/freakout, playing a part of the solo sitting back in the egg-shell chair conspicuously present on the stage, and other parts walking among the audience followed by a six-foot fluorescent light.
And things only took off from there.
Unknown Mortal Orchestra, in case you don't know (and the show appeared to be sold out, so you're apparently in the minority if you don't), is a Portland, Oregon-based psychedelic rock band primarily composed of New Zealand singer, guitarist, and songwriter Ruban Nielson, along with bassist Jake Portrait. They're released five albums to date, four of which consist of their quirky take on rock songs and the fifth a progressive set of jazz-rock instrumentals recorded in Hanoi.
The set was loud and the stage beautiful - racks of hydroponic plants behind the band looked like some sort of botanical laboratory and Nielson's egg-shell chair added to the comfy retro-futuristic look. The band rocked the songs harder than the recorded versions sound like they were intended to be, and the band would jam out at the drop of a hat, lending credence to the recent Washington Post article about how all your favorite indie bands are now jam bands.
UMO played a great set list of songs across all four of their rock albums, from early favorite like Ffunny Ffriends to an encore performance of the new Hunnybee. We honestly don't think there was a song they played that we didn't know.
For obvious reasons, the personnel from the Hanoi recording (including Ruban's father on saxophone) weren't available and it was impossible for them to have covered any of those songs. Pity, as the album is nothing short of a post-punk jazz-rock masterpiece, reminiscent at times of everything from Alice Coltrane to Jack Johnson-era Miles. We would love to hear Nielson cover these songs live sometime (Big Ears would seem like the perfect venue).
Okay, back to Sun Ra (R.I.P., Dr. John!). To give you an idea of the variety of different versions of the same Sun Ra song, here's another studio version of Rocket Number 9, this one from Sun Ra's "Greatest Hits" LP subtitled Easy Listening for Intergalactic Travel. As the album was posthumously released in 2000 (Ra passed in 1993), it consists of earlier sessions and dates, and it's impossible to tell what year this particular song was recorded. (Okay, it's not "impossible" to tell, we just don't know, alright? Got a problem with that?)
This version of Rocket Number 9 opens with the song's typical rapid-fire, bebop lines reminiscent of Salt Peanuts, and then gives the band some room to jam, including an outstanding tenor solo by John Gilmore and then some terrific bowed bass from Ronnie Boykins, before Sun Ra brings the solo to a crashing end for a piano interlude and then the song's new closing lyrics, "The second stop is Jupiter." So, we learn more about Rocket Number 9's full itinerary . . .
Variations on a mutated pop song, although once again, not one to be mistaken for something by Lady Gaga.
Actor Keanu Reeves is apparently going to be a character, rock singer Johnny Silverhand, in the upcoming video game Cyberpunk 2077.
Given the specificity of whom this info might appeal to, and the speed this kind of info travels on the internet, you either know this already or you simply don't care. But the Games Desk learned about this on Sunday and got all excited, and then had to wait three days to say anything while the other desks covered Kishi Bashi and Josh Rouse shows and then something from Jon Stewart. Now we're worried about what might happen if all that pent-up energy doesn't find an outlet soon, so we're letting the Games Desk finally post the video below, including the big reveal in the last 30 seconds, to get it out of their system.
"OMG, OMG, OMG, it's Keanu!" the nerdier parts of the internet (and the Games Desk) were saying all day on Sunday as they played and replayed that big reveal at the end of the trailer. Cyberpunk 2077 is the highly-anticipated new game from revered game studio CD Projekt Red, the makers of Witcher 3, hands-down the best open-world, role-playing game ever released. Cyberpunk has been in not-so-secret production for several years now, but very little has leaked about the game itself, and no one ever so much as guessed that Keanu Reeves might somehow be involved in the project.
Keanu is not only a bona fide legend to gaming fans for his roles in The Matrix and John Wick movies, as well as Point Break, Speed, and A Scanner Darkly, he's widely known as one of the nicest, most generous, and least egotistical stars in all of Hollywood (the late Bernardo Bertolucci even cast him as the adult Buddha in the film Little Buddha).
For a cinematic analogy, imagine learning that Georgia Lucas' Lucasfilms studio was remaking Gone With the Wind, and then it was announced that the film would star none other than Oprah Winfrey as Scarlett O'Hara. No, that doesn't capture it. Imagine learning that the surviving members of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were uniting to form a new supergroup, and lead guitar was going to be played by the resurrected spirit of Prince. No, even that still doesn't quite capture it. Imagine that HBO was going to return The Sopranos to the air and that it was going to feature the cast of Game of Thrones, except for the role of Tony Soprano who was going to be played by . . . Keanu Reeves! Yeah, we think that might capture it.
So, Keanu's involvement in Cyberpunk 2077 was Sunday's big reveal, and then on Monday, at the big E3 video game conference, this happened as Keanu was on stage hyping the new game:
"You're breathtaking!" became the most overused expression on the internet for the next 48 hours or so, especially after it was learned that CD Projekt Red gave a free advance copy of Cyberpunk 2077 as a reward to the person who shouted out, "You're breathtaking!"
And then, as if the hype wasn't amped up enough, everybody completely lost their shit when it was learned that the person who had won the free game told CD Projekt Red to give the money to charity instead of a free game to him. Somehow, his selfless generosity just made Keanu look even greater, and memes like this started showing up all over the place:
By all accounts, Keanu is truly one of the few fine, outstanding - dare we say "breathtaking?" - people in Hollywood. If you need any further evidence, listen to his answer on The Late Show when host Stephen Colbert tries to throw him with a difficult, if not nearly impossible, question:
Okay, so we got that out of our system. We feel better now. Meanwhile, as Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't come out until April 2020, we're still playing through Metal Gears Solid V. According to the in-game stats, we're only 10% of the way through but we'll keep on plugging along (although it's not nearly as bad as we had first thought), at least until something better comes down the pike.
Two things: first, Stewart is absolutely right - we should have passed legislation at least a decade ago giving free medical care for life to every 9/11 first responder. Second, this is why we need Jon Stewart back in the public discourse.
So, the very next night after seeing what might possibly be the best show of the year, we were back in Atlanta (Decatur, actually) to see our old friend Josh Rouse at Eddie's Attic.
We're not sure what to say about Josh Rouse in 2019. He was arguably our favorite, certainly one of our favorite, musicians back in 2003. Before we had heard him, we read a review of his LP 1972, written and performed by Rouse in the style of and as a tribute to the music of the year of his birth. We bought the CD and enjoyed it, and it had the added benefit of being one of the few CDs that both we and our girlfriend at the time could agree on, so we listened to it a lot.
At that time (2003), we were listening to a lot of what we would call chillwave today but back then was called chill-room or Zen lounge or Buddha Bar, plus jazz, ambient and German electronica. The girlfriend liked modern R&B, pop, and upbeat folk. In short, she hated our music and we hated hers. But we did find a couple of "common ground" records, and Rouse's 1972 was definitely among them.
Not only did Rouse absolutely nail the blue-eyed Philadelphia soul sound of the titular year, but the album also got us to first explore his earlier records, especially his debut Dressed Up Like Nebraska, and then later to follow him through subsequent albums Nashville (2005), Country Mouse City House (2007), and El Tourista (2010). A restless soul, each album was a sort of paean to wherever Rouse was living at that time, and together the recordings form a sort of musical travelogue or, more accurately, biography of the musician. The songs became earworms and nestled into our subconscious, and had enough funky backbeats and rhythm to make good music for driving in the car or background music for our domestic life.
So that was then. We still heard occasional new Rouse songs released with his subsequent albums, but as indie rock came to dominate our listening from 2005 to 2015, we didn't buy any more Josh Rouse LPs after 2010's El Tourista. Not that we didn't like his music anymore and not that the songs that we had heard didn't still have a special place in our heart, it's just that we had moved on to other vendors and other bands. But we still caught the occasional show when Rouse came through town and revisited those beloved tunes with a nostalgic pleasure.
On this tour, last night, Rouse was performing solo, just a singer and his guitar, and while he still managed to evoke the rhythms and the funk of his full-band performances, everything was a little more stark and rarefied. But hearing the old familiar songs once again, our friend still caused our mind to release veridinal doses of music-loving endorphins, and we enjoyed the mellow show, even if we never challenged our sequential system.
Rouse covered songs from throughout his career, mixing in newer material from his recent (2018) Love In the Modern Age with classics all the way back to Nebraska, and, happily for us, several songs off of 1972, including the titular song. Several songs led to spontaneous audience singalongs and there was clearly a lot of empathy between the audience and the performer. We apparently aren't the only ones with a soft spot for Josh Rouse in our hearts. We enjoyed dusting off the memories, but if you weren't already familiar with the tunes and the lyrics, it might not have been an inclusive experience.
Interestingly, it was an early show (doors at 5:00, music at 6:00) and it felt odd to leave a show at 7:00 while it was still light outside. But after the late-night drive coming back from Athens the evening before, the early end was a welcome relief.
Last night, Athens, Georgia native and Japanese-American musical treasure Kishi Bashi kicked off his latest tour with a home-town set in the Georgia Theater. It was a magical night and if you weren't there, you missed possibly the best show of the year.
Bonus points: There were seats! We didn't have to stand for the whole show!
Atlanta's Japanese-American cello player and new member of Kishi Bashi's band, Takenobu, opened the show accompanied by his recent fiancee, Kathryn Koch, on violin. Their set alone would have been worth the 75-minute drive from Atlanta to Athens. We've been fans of Takenobu for many years now, ever since we first heard his masterful Exposition, but we can honestly say he's upped his game recently and last night he and Kathryn put on the best performance we've heard from him yet.
That was a great way to open the evening, and Takenobu and Ms. Koch returned to the stage as a part of Kishi Bashi's impressive six-person back-up band.
Kaoru Ishibashi is an American singer, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter. For a few years, he was a member of the band of Montreal but since at least 2012 has been performing as Kishi Bashi. He's put out several delightful albums (151a, Lighght, and Sonderlust), each one seemingly better than the one before, although they're all quite good, and he has just released what sounds like a major statement, his latest album Omoiyari. As Kaoru explained last night, the title is a Japanese term about being considerate, having compassion, and feeling empathy, and the album's overall theme is about the Japanese internment camps of the 1940s. Despite the solemnity of the subject matter, however, the album is a delightfully cheerful collection of pop-rock songs, featuring Kaoru's multilayered instruments and sweet alto voice.
Discussing the album on NPR, Kaoru said, “It’s a love story set in World War II, about falling in love in an [Japanese American] incarceration camp and ultimately losing that love. The significance is that the idea of love, loss, and desire are consistent themes throughout history and help us to empathize with a people in a disconnected past.”'
Last night, he played several songs from the new album pretty much in sequence, starting with the lovely Penny Rabbit and Summer Bear, followed by the biting F Delano, and then Marigolds, A Song For You and Summer of '42.
Not to totally confuse his audience, Kaoru patiently explained each of the songs, it's subject matter or it's inspiration, etc. For example, while Angeline sounds like a love song for the titular woman, it's actually named for a work camp in Jim Crow-era Tennessee, where newly freed slaves who had been arrested were forced back into the same manual labor from which they had just been granted emancipation.
That sounds grim and heavy, but Kaoru's sweet voice and the new backing band gave the songs a joyous presence and a lush orchestral backing. They also performed a bunch of songs from older Kishi Bashi records, with the band adding new depth and resonance to the pieces and making the veridically familiar sound sequentially new (there we go again). A special shout-out needs to be given to vocalist and flutist Pip the Pansy (really, that's what Kaoru kept calling her on stage and how she's listed on the album credits), whose flute trills and backup singing really made the ensemble's playing sound so much richer.
He even brought the entire band down into the audience to play several songs unamplified, including the new album's closer, Annie, Heart Thief of the Sea. NPR said that particular song sounded to them like a hootenanny sing-along, and last night, it became exactly that.
The floor show also included the technically challenging Violin Tsunami from the new album, and after three songs, the band returned to the main stage for a grand finale of sorts and their encore set.
We have no idea how long the show lasted because from the moment Takenobu first took the stage for the opening set to the end of Kishi Bashi's encore, we were so entranced that we didn't even look at the time until sometime during the drive home. Bonus points for adventure: the payment machine at the parking lot ate our debit card and didn't return it (we've already cancelled the card and ordered a new one) and the GPS "suggested" that we return home not by the infamous Atlanta Highway of the B-52s Love Shack but by a circuitous route on the distant interstate (we rebuffed the suggestion).
From Athens, the Omoiyari tour jumps to the West Coast for shows in LA, SF, PDX, and Seatac, and then back East for shows in DC, NYC and Boston. If you can catch any of those shows, we strongly encourage you to go, and if you can't, Omoiyari can be purchased directly from Kishi Bashi at their Bandcamp page.
