Monday, February 03, 2003

I Must Say Don't you love that expression? The suggestion of compulsion, of being forced, or helpless, to say, even when, as now, the million dollar question is say what? Something, certainly. What was I going to say? That's another good one, and the story of my days of late, all day, every day and long into the night. There always seems to be something lurking in the peripheries, moving in and out of the shadows, the hide-and-seek of an exhausted consciousness. Earlier today I felt certain that there were two lines, or two strands of thought, almost ideas, that at some point I felt should be recorded, or at the very least preserved somehow, committed for some purpose to memory. But they're gone now. I've been sitting here for an hour with a pen in my hand, trying to find them again, but they appear to be gone. They've slipped back into the brush and headed for the river. They're drinking beer under the bridge even now, avoiding the moonlight that's making a moving screen of the water. I can just barely hear the distant murmur of their voices carrying back up the river. By tomorrow they'll have forgotten themselves. They will have wholly disappeared. I can't keep track of all the fugitives. They go right from bright-eyed babies to fugitives to just plain gone. 4:53:44 PM

A Question About Kukla, Fran And Ollie: Was that puppet with the teeth an alligator or a dragon? 4:29:21 PM

My Nascar Days I've had my fill of motor sports, make no mistake. The noise of it, the bare breasts, the urinating in campfires, the sheer incomprehensibility of the spectacle itself. I couldn't even begin to tell you how many nights I spent naked in a tent, so drunk I couldn't even speak my own name, tossing there in the swirling dark listening to the roar of several hundred radios and boom boxes, every one of them blasting some different racket. Lord knows, I needed to sober up. I knew that much. The other optometrists at my clinic were younger than I was, and didn't know the meaning of the word 'moderation.'  They were the ones who dragged me into the ruinous lifestyle; it was they who encouraged me to go out tomcatting with them every night. And they were the ones who introduced me to Nascar racing. I'd be ashamed to sit down and tally up all the money I spent flying off to those races every weekend, running off to live in a refugee camp with thousands of other inebriates. I don't need to tell you that it cost me my marriage. The owner of the clinic came in one day and was appalled to see all the Nascar posters on the walls. The entire staff got written warnings, but things were too far gone at that point. Our client list had been declining for six months, and we were all eventually dismissed. The clinic was sold, and I consider myself lucky to have landed a temp job unloading tour charter luggage at the airport. It's a tough economy for an out-of-work optometrist with a spotty resume. Even now, as I lay in my bed at night, I can still hear the roar of those engines and the braying of my drunken companions. Believe me when I say that I'm trying hard to convince myself that I don't miss it. 4:16:53 PM

The Perils of Child Rearing My son recently brought home this little booklet the kids in his class had put together where they each drew a picture representing themselves as what they wanted to be when they grow up, along with a brief caption. Let me go on the record right now and say that I think that's a terrible question to ask a kid. Face it, they don't have any idea, and most kids at that age are little fascists and wide-eyed dreamers. I have some vague memories from when I was in third grade, or whatever the hell it is; everybody wanted to be cops or astronauts or scientists. A couple of the little hippie kids wanted to be artists. That said, there are kids in my son's class who have some extraordinary ambition. No less than three of the little bastards wanted to grow up to be president, and there were a few others who were dreaming of film careers or pop slutdom. And then there was my son, who had drawn a stickman standing in front of a house with what I guess was supposed to be a pizza box. "I want to be a Domino's man," he wrote. "I like pizza. I think it would be cool." 4:00:15 PM

All Hail The W(indie) City My musical taste has always been disproportionately influenced by independent labels. Some of that is by design --I have a longstanding aversion to the whole sick culture of major labels-- but another factor has been the sway those labels have long had in the undergound community of record stores, clubs, and 'zine culture that was such an important part of my early days as a music fan. Since I routinely spend way too much money on CDs (and records), I make every attempt to target the bulk of my spending on indie label product. I wish I could say I was more consistent and principled about this sort of thing, but I can't. I haven't, unfortunately, had much luck over the years in applying the same discretionary restraint to my book buying. It's not, I fully realize, that independent publishers aren't producing great, neglected stuff, but for some reason the small press literary scene has never had much luck building and sustaining the kind of grass roots, word-of-mouth community that has allowed hundreds of bands and labels to survive --sometimes just barely-- the incursion of major label culture (in every sense of the term). The world of indie labels is by and large the province of the true believer, and one of the many virtues of these outfits is the extent to which their catalogs generally reflect the passion and taste of the people who run them. Such compact and relatively small rosters makes it easier for music fans to get a quick handle on the sort of music these labels produce, and to ascertain whether there's anything in the list that's up their alley. A tour of my record collection reveals the extent to which I have been a hostage to indie music trends and the labels that helped define them. I have, of course, a large sampling from the Twin Tone catalog of the 80s, as well as decent caches from SST, Dischord, Radioactive, Bar-None, Alternative Tentacles, Muse and Rough Trade. Moving into the 90s there are loads of records from small alternatives ranging from Am Rep and Matador to Alias, Merge, and Kill Rock Stars. Most of these labels have managed to survive, and newer indies have continued to pop up all over the place, invigorated by even greater musical diversity, the passion of a younger generation of fans, and a marketing savvy that was often missing in many of their pioneering forbears. Chicago has always been a leader in all things independent, but the city's recent music history has been largely overshadowed by its storied past as an incubator of jazz and blues innovation. Some of the great indepent labels of all time are Chicago institutions --think of Chess, Saturn, Delmark, and Nessa-- but these days the hog butcher to the world is also producing more terrific and interesting records than at just about any time in its history. It's only occurred to me recently that so many of the indie labels I now love are based in Chicago. It's a long list, and virtually every label on it is producing distinctive, defining music. There's Bloodshot, of course, the alt-country No Depression standard bearers. And Drag City, Thrill Jockey, and Minty Fresh. And then there are two of my current faves, Kranky and Atavistic. Kranky is a marvel, a niche label that continues to push the parameters of its niche in cool new directions. For sheer sonics and badland atmospherics the Kranky catalog can't be beat. I'm not a huge Low fan --the band's trademark sound is rapidly becoming a schtick-- but I love LaBradford, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Stars of the Lid, Pan American, Jessica Bailiff, and, especially, the new Out Hud record, S.T.R.E.E.T. D.A.D. John Corbett's Atavistic is an even stranger labor of love, and is exploring a largely neglected fringe of a larger largely neglected fringe. Atavistic's Unheard Music series, a batch of reissues or unissued records mostly from the deepest scruff of the free jazz underground, is full of funked up noise and ecstatic workouts from such almost completely unknown or willfully obscure characters as Joe McPhee, Peter Brotzmann, Clifford Thornton, Luther Thomas, Fred Anderson, and Sun Ra. I haven't heard anything from the series yet that didn't push my ears around and get me jumping all over the room.   3:45:00 PM

© Copyright 2003 Brad Zellar. Last update: 4/6/03; 9:58:26 PM.