Anyway, this thing exists only to help me sharpen my writing skills. I've been too busy to write lately, and I still am, but not writing is literally bad for my health. I'll do some record reviews again to start with - I've got a backlog of at least a dozen that I have to write something about.

More later. Jes.

And so, seemingly without warning, poof! Brian Eno returns with his first full pop/vocal record in...27 years. 1978's Before And After Science was the last one, considered the end of his Rock Phase before turning to ambience and production for a long time to come. 1990's Wrong Way Up was a fine duet record with John Cale and is full of exemplary Eno pop - Spinning Away and The River come immediately to mind. That was a treat in itself, Eno singing again. As is this, and like Wrong Way Up, it's great not only because we've wanted one of these for awhile, but also because it's not at all what one would expect. But what can you expect from this guy, besides the unexpected? Expect something like an ambient pop album, but don't try to imagine what it will sound like, because, as often happens with this guy, it sounds quite a bit different from anything you've heard before.

Highlights: "This" starts the record off much where Wrong Way Up left off. A fine odd pop song with a snappy retro beat and streamish of consciousness lyrics. "And Then So Clear" is less scrutible, but reveals more pleasure with each listen. A delicate vocoder pitches Eno's voice up to robot-angel hights while the background reveals some rather discreet and beautiful chords. "Going Unconscious" is a pretty gorgeous hybrid of ambient music and narrative strangeness, with particularly great percussion. "Caught Between" is stunning space-gospel with appropriately selfless lyrics, "Passing Over" is more urgent, nervous and turbulent and features the man's knack for innovative backing vocals and weird borgish vocoder. "How Many Worlds" is the masterpiece, in which just a strumming, synthesized guitar, some chimes and the greatest string arrangement of the decade back up one of Eno's all time best songs. The title track is right up there with it, or just a tiny half notch below it, impossible to describe really. A slow funk groove with galactic sounds and swirls? It's better if I don't try.

The rest is really good too. It's a quiet record, and much less direct than you'd be likely to expect. The effects and instrumentation are so much more subtle than anything you're currently into, and the arrangements ride the line between performance and ambience for much of the album - it's not a record you could make your mind up on after one listen - something that obviously happened with the Pitchfork review. As usual, they get it completely wrong. Mark Richardson makes the mistake of trying to keep Eno's ambient music and his pop music separate. Hi Mark, there's a record Eno did called Another Green World that you're not so familiar with apparently, although it is one of those records that probably changed pop music forever. Though Another Day On Earth isn't trying to recapture that album's feel or songwriting style, it definitely shares a lot of its moods and its ambient slant. Richardson does a good job of letting us know how much he knows about Eno, but he doesn't get the record at all.

The only problems I have with the record is that it's not a little longer and it ends on a rather perfunctory note. And that there's a very Fripp-like solo here done not by Fripp but by someone who can kinda do Fripp. For Brian Eno, you'd think that only Fripp would do. Maybe they were weary of each other's company after recording the Equatorial Stars, which I'll write about hopefully in the next couple days. These are pretty minor quibbles though. This is my favorite record of the year so far.

NOTE: This record also marks the return of Hannibal Records, the great label that brought you Nick Drake, the Incredible String Band, Richard Thompson and the great producer Joe Boyd. Ryko has owned much of its properties for some time, and hopefully the resurrection of this imprint means great things to come.

- DB

OK, so here's the deal. I've been listening to the new chemical bros
uncontrolably. esp in my car. i've become one of those people with the
thumping bass. what the fuck is up with galvanized? what a
fucking--and i only say this once in a while when the word truly
fits--SICK-- track that is! I get insane listening to it. MAN.

********

That's about right. Easily their best since Dig Your Own Hole. Q-Tip's rap on Galvanized is the best thing ever, and I'm close to a rap Hater.

I grabbed this record because the artwork was genius, scummy and in black and white, and from the list of singers I figured it was all obscure reissue. Nope - all new, all recorded in NYC in the years since 9/11. The Version City Rockers are King Django's extremely accurate roots reggae house revival band. Or something. Information is somewhat cryptic, and tonight I am lacking the patience to do all the necessary research. Released by the ultra cryptic Antifaz label, this NYC-based project has my reggae tongue wagging for more more more. Over the past few years since 9/11 Django has pulled in some bona fide reggae legends into the room for some stunning returns to the mike - some of these people haven't been active for years. Sugar Minott (now enjoys a hot best-of just out on Soul Jazz), Yabby You, Ronny Davis, Sister Nancy, Glen Brown, Cedric Brooks and Congo Ashanti Roy all turn in great performances, and King Django is not fucking around. Most modern reggae is embarassing, digital, stiff and fake, as bad and insincere as anything from Nashville in the 80's. None of that here. The band has the wise restraint of any great Studio One lineup from the 70's, and it's recorded beautifully on vintage gear. As follows, each singer turns in a performance on par with anything else they've ever done. Highlights include Glen Brown's "Let's Live Love", a dramatic, emphatic gem, Sugar Minot's raveup "Nah Boodah Wid It", Skatalite saxophonist Cedric Brooks' moody "It's Up To You", and Congo Ashanti Roy (of the legendary Congos) post 9/11 lament "Why Dem A Galong So", which is one long sad answerless question, like our history since that day.

But none of these issues crop up for Kanellos. He's just annoyed at Apple because they seem to offend his cultural predisposal towards mookery:

"The thing that has somewhat troubled me about Apple and the Mac community over the years, I now realize, is that there seems to be an overt agenda geared at giving everyone a makeover so that they can land a marketing position. It is always about presentation and posture with that company."

So Apple is kind of the Martha Stewart of computer companies. It is not the Microsoft of computer companies, thankfully, and so they do things differently from how they bungle it up in Redmond. They make great stuff that families and companies can use to their advantage if they desire, apps like iPhoto and iMovie. This only annoys Kanellos. "Who puts a soundtrack to their family photos?" he squeaks. "Most of us are lucky to have poorly labeled computer files, a cardboard box with prints and/or a vague idea of who is in the picture." (The second half of that sentence btw, Mr. Editor-at-large, good fucking work). Maybe if you're a shallow, coke-hoovering, hooker in every town type of weaselface. You don't give a shit about this sort of thing, but maybe there's a legion or two of people who'd like to do this sort of thing for their sister's wedding, or their nephew's bar mitzvah, or their kids' first 12 birthdays, or their stoner parties in college, or their keggers, or maybe they might want to show off some photographs on the web (you can easily publish to the web with iPhoto), or make a short movie to see if you really like to make movies, etc. I think that when Kanellos refers to "Most of us" he's referring to he and his bunch of soulless mook buddies who sit around drinking shit beer and bitching about their ex wives' monetary treachery. He pretty much admits it later in the article: "There is also a personal bias here. I have knuckle hair that a rhesus monkey would envy."

Really, when you get down to it, I think the guy really couldn't come up with anything decent to write about in regards to Apple's foray into the mainstream PC market, so he decided to write an article that's more revealing about him and his personal problems than the subject at hand. He has to try to persuade the reader that Apple is annoying because they make software that you might enjoy using and might find good for your whole family.

Whatever man. C-Net has been in Microsoft's pocket since it's inception, and this thing was probably paid for and planned weeks in advance. What gets me is that he actually gets paid for writing something that lame, weird and biased. He almost gets political - "Mac people seem to want you to go into advertising. PC people don't give nearly as much career guidance" - perhaps trying to reinforce the bogus cultural divide that separates Mac users from PC users. He even goes so far to claim that these Apple products are short on substance (while quoting Castiglione, to demonstrate his apparent depth). Just what this substance Apple is short on is not stated. After all, Gates is struggling to do something similar with Windows, as evidenced by various muddy Windows Media releases and biproducts.

What Kanellos cannot mention is that Bill Gates more or less unsuccessfully tried to demonstrate similar things a week before, during an awkward and unfunny "presentation" with Conan O'Brien. There's a giant elephant sitting in Kanellos' office, not making a sound, wearing a t-shirt that says "Who's product rollouts do you remember today? Microsoft's or Apple's?" Kanellos can't even look that way, because if he did, it would shrink his two inches of solid steel.

Uh.

Did I write that for all of you? Or probably just for me. Next time, I'll talk about white female jazz singers in the early 21st century.

"That's Gay."

"Do you like Franz Ferdinand?"
"They're alright, but some of their stuff is kinda gay."

"I don't feel like going out tonight."
"Don't be gay, come on, let's go."

Avril Lavigne used it in an interview, which went to pains to explain what she meant by that. No gay rights group has denounced her at the time of this writing.

I don't have any problem with it, and seriously, neither do any of my gay friends who don't have major personality disorders. There is a sprinkling of people in my crowd who do have a problem with it. They share certain traits, but I won't go into it. One of them is a former roommate of mine, a sort of skid row alcoholic actress and devotee of self marginalization. And a fag hag. Absolutely had to get on the soap box when I declared a record she was trying to get me to like to be gay. Took pause, didn't catch the way back reference when we all used that word constantly, before any of us knew we were gay, or any of us knew anyone who we knew to be gay, etc, or the sheer silliness of it. Getting all mealy mouthed, and already slurring from drink, the best she could sputter was "you just caaannnnn't use that word that way!" The Movement, The Cause, it all started welling up in her bleary eyes. Another guy who I didn't suspect would be so damned PC (and isn't in many other areas of his life) confidentially mentioned to me that it bothered him that a friend of ours used the G-word often. Shit dog, I said, I use that word too. It's funny. No, he didn't think that was right. This from a guy who hits on waitresses. I said there's no connotation really, between Gay As In Dumb, Lame, Etc and People Who Like The Same Sex.

Gales of arguments could roil forth from that last sentence. There is a connotation of course. But I think using Gay that way is only pointing towards a sort of insipid stereotype that actually exists, and it's more a personality type than a sexual orientation, and it certainly isn't pointing towards the entire Alternative Lifestyle Movement. I know people who, when they were in the closet, didn't talk like Carol Channing, but now they do. That's gay.

For the record, I have gay friends, associates, clients and colleagues living and dead that I love and respect, I'm for gay marriage and I'm glad the issue got forked onto the table to wriggle and crawl for all to see and deal with - I thought it was too soon, but now that it's happening, the sooner the better, because it's going to take a long time, no matter what. In 1997 I was a drag show announcer at the Gay 90's. I was backstage and saw stuff that would make any rocker blush. I say Gay. I say it in front of Gay people. They think it's funny. Well one didn't, he scowled at me. He had a toupee that, if you pushed the knot of his tie, would spin around. That guy had 27 credit cards and he shot the balance around on all of them in perpetuity. He cheated on his boyfriend constantly, snorted a lot of coke and stole money from people if he didn't have cash. Wouldn't let his boyfriend smoke pot. It was horrible. They finally broke up, and he wound up living in a car and wearing the same cheap apholstered suit and trying and failing to beat any friends of his ex's up. That's not gay, that's just wrong.

I'm not saying that it's completely right to use the word Gay That Way. It's not quite, but it will be eventually. There has been no uproar. Probably because, as we all know, the word already has dual meanings. It means attracted to the same sex, yeah, but it (still) also means happy. It really does. I'm sure half the population of Kennebunkport pointedly uses the word in that context...

George: It's another beautiful day Barbara!
Barbara: The sun is shining and the weather is absolutely gay!
George: Let's have some iced tea and sandwiches on the porch.

And, I can say with authority that, as a child growing up in the midwest 70's, I (was) dressed gaily for every school and family portrait photograph from grades 1-6. In fact, I don't think there's any other way to put it.

This is rather acerbic but it's a start...

Up and running. This is where I'm at right now: Uptown, Minneapolis, it's the Art Fair. It's a human aquarium, where you can find enormous people trucking in from NEW JERSEY to buy "crafts" and "arts":;:

"Arts" -> usually paintings of steer and Aztec sunrises
"Crafts" ---> painted bark with googly eyes glued on, things of that calibre

And people who ask you where they might find a bathroom. When I lived on Irving and Lake, somebody actually rang the doorbell to my 2nd level apartment and asked if their family could use the bathroom. Miserable tots peered around from the back of his knees. I said "$20/head". He was not impressed. He was getting mad. It's the same thing now, now that I live on 34th & Hennepin - You get a guy who can actually wear a yellow shirt and dark khaki shorts and yellow droopy socks and the same flattened Bass weejuns he's had since 1986 and some really freaked out Oakley shades walking down the street with his wife who has plump shiny legs and bad roots. And then he looks at you like you're an alien. You tell him he looks like Phil Donahue and he doesn't belong in your neighborhood. He growls like an animal and you pour your iced coffee down his fucking pants.

Or you get a pair of Barbara Bush clones in front of you waddling up the sidewalk at .2 miles per hour. They walk by Lund's, the tony grocery store where single women dress up to buy produce and find husbands (*seriously), and one Barbara Bush says to the other Barbara Bush: "I just love this Art Fair!" And the other one replies "I just wish they held it in a better neighborhood."

At first I thought "now I know what it's like to be a townie." But then the thought kind of changed to: "These people are human filth."

Ask anyone who's ever lived in Uptown what they think of the Art Fair, and you'll see that I am by far the most humanitarian of residents towards Our Annual Visitors.

You will see Keillor gently avalanching down the road on Sunday, wearing sunglasses and a wide straw gardening hat for disguise and for shade. He'll pick up a painted pine cone and sniff it loudly and wheezedly. You will probably find my sister, who lives down in Eagan, with her daughters and possibly her husband, and they'll be wondering why they came down, and the answer is because it somehow got into all of their daily planners, so it is nobody's fault. You will find freewheelin' Somalis, hanging out and nonchalant in their gold lamé pants and Ben Sherman shirts, talking on their cell phones. You will see the bicyclist who shot his agressor dead outside of Azia on 26th & Nicollet. That is one fucking weird story. And you'll see one or two people you used to know who wouldn't be caught dead at the Art Fair even five years ago. They've cleaned up, gone direct, and have completely lost their minds, and they know you know it. Offer to buy them a drink at the Uptown and they'll hold out a get away from me hand and smile and shake their heads to say "you my friend are in our past."

The First Weekend In August Is The Hardest And Most Fatal
How Gay Is Gay?
Dumbass.txt

Thanks and enjoy,
DB