Loose Strife

An MP3 blog

Monday, June 20, 2005

#11 - Cleveland Rock City

“See Emily Play” - The Pink Floyd

Today, out of oblogation [sic] [heh] and despite the lingering jellyfish slosh of the post-wedding hangover, I visited the Rock and Roll (tellingly, not “Rock’n’Roll”) Hall of Fame and Museum, a big glass temple to the music situated on Lake Erie and designed by architect I.M. Pei---a pretty dull corporate-vibe modernist, I think, measured against the more rocking likes of Frank Gehry (the admittedly overexposed It architect of Seattle’s competing Experience Music Project), or the power-chordingly high-concept, if somewhat morose Daniel Libeskind (slated to design the 9/11 memorial on the World Trade Center site).

But it’s in keeping with the vision of the place, as narrow and safe and Rolling Stone canonical as you’d guess, fixated on the Stones/Beatles/Hendrix triumvirate, giving dutiful nods to old black bluesmen and perfunctory ones to the usual punk suspects and some random new wave acts (of the latter, in my admittedly cursory tour, the B-52s and Duran Duran---who share a huge wall opposite the Stones shrine---seem to get the most space). Hip hop is ignored almost completely, ditto disco and electronic music, although I suppose they aren’t, properly speaking, “rock and roll,” and in the case of rap and techno don’t really make the 25 year cut for consideration by the Hall of Fame. But the museum did find a huge space for a “Teen Idols” exhibit to display outfits worn by Britney Spears, Tiffany, N’Sync, Backstreet Boys, and Hanson. What the fuck?

In fact, aside from a handful of instruments (a broken Kurt Cobain guitar; an unbroken Leadbelly one) and various stage props (the Weezer “W” light array, the Phish flying hotdog-mobile from their 1994 Boston Gardens New Year’s Eve show), the museum is largely about clothes. And it’s amazing how empty a musician’s clothes are when they’re not in them. Hendrix’s chartreuse suede boots. Mick Jagger’s UK/US flag cape. Even as I stand before the jacket---made of paper, I discover---that Bjork wore on the cover of Post, and the kimono she wore on Homogenic, I’m weirdly unmoved, despite my reverence for the artist. Actually, I never thought these outfits were real: they seemed, unlike Bjork’s famous swan Oscars gown (she wouldn’t give that one up for the exhibit, I guess), like they’d been fashioned digitally for the album covers in question. In reality, they seem drab, unmagical, not iconic at all.

This saddens me.

Two large exhibits are on the upper floors, which are devoted to rock’n’roll on film. There’s a Tommy exhibit, and one devoted to Pink Floyd’s The Wall. I stand there complaining to Nelson, my ex-roommate at the U of M and a daily newspaper film critic in Milwaukee, about how it all seems a shill for Hollywood Studio product and DVD sales, and how I never liked The Wall anyway, it being musically leaden and vastly less psychedelic than Wish You Were Here, let alone Ummagumma or the early Syd Barrett stuff (like the promethean “See Emily Play,” above, which of course has personal meaning for me), and that in any case, the full-scale, 10-ft-high replica of the Wall in question was clearly not the one used in the few stage performances of the album back in the ‘80s, since that one was knocked down during the course of the performance, and this one seemed to be made of sheetrock, which would have presented an obvious problem if it were to come crashing down on an actual stage.

Right then, a teenage boy standing next to me---he was 15 maybe---loudly declares “That’s awesome.”

He says it with such a tone of reverence that at first I thought he was being sarcastic. But he wasn’t.

“That’s awesome!” he repeats.

Within that “awesome” is nearly everything there is to know about a music fan’s faith and passion---the initial seed, anyway. It’s purity is blinding. I recognize this only in retrospect. In reponse, I make a weak reassertion of my point that it’s a fake, like one of those corny dramatizations they use in TV documentaries.

“I don’t know if it’s the one from the concert, but who cares---this is totally, totally awesome,” he says, not even deigning to address me directly, talking half to his parents, who are standing behind him, and half to The Wall.

I look at the fake Wall, its tabula rasa of white sheetrock, and I feel like some secondary character in High Fidelity who had, literally and figuratively, lost the script.

Sunday, June 19, 2005

#10 - Apology

These posts are long, I know. But hey --- I’m on vacation. And this blog thing is still new. I’m sure I’ll get bored and these posts will be reduced to paragraph-long squibs like everyone else’s in due time.

#9 – Thinking about soup, an excellent hangover cure

“Onion Soup” – Vic Chesnutt

It is already night, and I still cannot move out of this hotel room. I’m starved, yet the idea of eating actual food appalls me. This is highly unusual.

Being Roman, Lori’s parents threw a big Italian wedding, which means the food was actually good. They served a good traditional wedding soup, of course, which I love and which my mother sometimes makes, although it always spurs unpleasant dinner conversation about relationships I’m not in, etc. (Call it simply “meatball soup,” and you can enjoy it without baggage.) At the moment, in my current state of hangover, it’s about the only thing I think I could stomach. But not having had the forsight to take some to-go from the wedding reception last night, I'm shit out of luck.

After hyping it so much, I'll give you a basic recipe. There are millions of variations on this soup, which I think is Neapolitan: some use escarole instead of spinach, some add celery tops and carrots, some use egg (either hard boiled or whipped in a la egg drop soup) or add shredded chicken, some poach or bake the meatballs instead of frying them. You can freestyle; it’s pretty hard to screw up. Serve it with an un-oaked Italian Chardonnay or a young Chianti Riserva. Add some crusty semolina and a salad and you’ve got a perfect pre-club crawling meal---light enough so that a tab of E should kick in reasonably fast, as opposed the delay you get after a big meal. (Do people even take E anymore? So sad.)

Wedding Soup (Zuppa Maritata)

Meatballs:
½ lb ground beef
¼ lb ground pork
¼ lb ground veal (use turkey if you’re anti-veal, or more pork)
1 egg
¼ cup breadcrumbs (plain Italian style. Japanese panko is nice too; makes a slightly fluffier meatball)
Broth:
1 clove garlic, minced
¼ cup Italian flat-leaf parsley, coarsely chopped
4 cups chicken broth (yo, Pacific brand organic broth in the box beats those musty boullion cubes, and it’s only $3 or so)
1 cup orzo
4 cups fresh spinach, washed & chopped (or 1 cup cooked)
¼ cup grated Pecorino Romano
¼ cup grated Parmigiano Reggiano
1/2 tsp salt
¼ tsp pepper

Using your hands, mix ground meat, egg, bread crumbs, garlic, salt, pepper, and half the parsley in a bowl. Form into walnut-sized meatballs and saute in olive oil in a large skillet until lightly browned, turning periodically. Drain on paper towel and set aside.

Bring broth to boil, add orzo and cook according to package directions al dente, about 5 minutes. Add spinach and meatballs, return to simmer for another 2 minutes or until spinach is soft, turn off flame and stir in pecorino. Serve sprinkled with parmesan and remaining parsley. Serves 4 – 6, depending on what else you’re having.

There’s a depression-era number later popularized by Cisco Houston called “Soup Song” that goes in part:

I'm spending my nights in the flophouse/
I'm spending my days on the street/
I'm looking for work and I find none/
I wish I had something to eat/
Soo-ooup, soo-ooup, they give me a bowl of soo-oo-ooup/
Soo-ooup, soo-ooup, they give me a bowl of soup!

But my favorite soup song is “Onion Soup” by Vic Chesnutt, from his recently reissued Is The Actor Happy?---a record who the wise folks at Aquarius Records in San Francisco (one of the country’s best indie record stores, and maintainers of an annotated web catalog that’s as useful a resource for record reviews as most any “magazine”) agree is probably his best. The song, btw, shows its titular broth in a more positive light than the aforementioned ditty. Chesnutt is a talented songwriter and a brilliantly hyper-literate lyricist with an ability to make phrases like “even her freakish nipples were akimbo” sounds heartbreakingly sincere.

As a young man, Chesnutt was in a car crash that left him crippled from the waist down. I believe, if I have the story correct, that he was drunk and he plowed into a telephone pole.

Talk about learning to live with your past mistakes.

Whatever demons he is living with (we all have a motel full), he went on to become a truly great artist without succumbing to the sort of despondency you’d guess might drive him to something extreme, like, say, Kurt Cobain. There’s a lightness to even his saddest music, a rickety playfulness, a searching sort of whimsy. It’s like he finds strength in whimsy---simple verbal whimsy, the whimsy of heartbreak, the pathos of whimsy.

I love that word: “whimsy.”

Chesnutt knows about loving words. His new album, Ghetto Bells, is his best in years. I'm grateful he didn't take the easy way out.

#8 - Drunk dialing, semen solicitation

Ugh---sorry, no music today. I am truly, spectacularly hung over.

I didn’t want to do it, but somehow last night, after typing my last entry, I walked back to the entrance of the hall and, rather than go inside to the dancefloor, I thumb-pressed and held the #1 button on my phone---still the speed-dial designation for Emily.

Emily is my ex-…ex-something. Ex-best-friends-that-had-sex-once. Well, twice. Almost.

This call demonstrates the foolhardy act of drunk dialing. Let it be a warning. All dialog accurate to the best of my memory.

Emily Bitte (not her real name, but close): Hello?
Loose Strife: Hey.
EB: Who’s…Robert?
LS: Yeah…sorry to bother you. I’m at Dan and Lori’s wedding.
EB: They got married? You sound really wasted.
LS: They did, yeah; I am. I was thinking about you.
EB: I can’t believe they got married. All they ever did was fight like psychotics…
LS: Well, that’s because they have a passionate relationship….We never fought.
EB: Well, no, I never threw a wineglass at your face. He needed like ten stiches, didn’t he?
LS: It was just, like, three or four I think.
EB: Could you see the scar when he was saying his vows?
LS: I guess a little. He used pimple cream or something.
EB: Nice.
LS: But I think he likes it, actually---it’s like a battle scar, his hard-earned love badge.
EB: [a brief silence; the sound of ice being dropped into a glass] Are you having fun?
LS: Not really. Are you?
EB: I’m waiting for Amy to get home; we’re seeing Sleater Kinney at the Bowery.
LS: Do you like that new record?
EB: I haven’t heard it.
LS: It’s actually pretty weird---weird in a good way. They recorded with the guy who produced the Flaming Lips, so it’s kinda tripped-out and noisy. Carrie is playing all this weird guitar, feedback stuff. Corin too----although I saw them recently and Corin looked sort of befuddled when they were playing some of the new stuff, like she was thinking “why am I making feedback? Lesbian punk rockers don’t make feedback.”
EB: [the sound of sipping] What makes you so sure she’s a lesbian?
LS: Oh please. Do you know something I don’t? Was there some lesbian punk rock message board posting?
EB: I’m just saying you can’t always label someone gay, even if they sleep with girls.
LS: Obviously.
EB: [Pause ] Even if she said she was a lesbian years ago, how do you know she still is? I don’t know that she’s announced it. She has a baby now.…
LS: But she must’ve turkey bastered that…
EB: I think she did. But I’m just saying, How can you know, really? How can you know what someone feels in their heart from day to day, or minute to minute?
LS: Yeah, I guess you’re right. I don’t even know what I’m feeling from minute to minute. Still, I was just making a joke.
EB: You know, Amy and I talked about having a kid.
LS: Jesus! Really?!
EB: Why “Jesus, really?!”?
LS: I’m surprised. You never really seemed to like the idea of kids.
EB: That’s so totally not true! Well, maybe I seemed that way because of your daycare job. That was like having twenty kids by proxy.
LS: So who would have it? Your kid, I mean.
EB: I would, I think, since I’m younger, and less gainfully employed. Not like I’m arguing for the job. But it makes the most sense.
LS: So how would you do it?
EB: Get some sperm, right? By any means necessary! [laughs]
LS: No, seriously. Would you, what, go to a sperm bank?
EB: I don’t think so. We’d rather have the father be someone we know. Actually, we were thinking of you.
LS: Me? [at precisely this moment, a drunken, wide-eyed Nelson taps my cel phone and gestures by holding his fingers to his nose that it’s time to go into the bathroom and do a key bump of coke.]
EB: Yeah, you. Who’s that?
LS: Me?! Oh, that was Nelson…
EB: Oh, what---is he breaking out the coke?
LS: …no. Yes, actually. But,….whoa. Wow. You’re joking.
EB: I’m not joking. We were going to call you next week, but you beat me to it. If you decide to do it, though, you’ll have to stop doing things like coke, at least for a little while before we take your ejaculate.
LS: You are freaking me out right now. I am going to go.
EB: Hey, look, you called me, remember?
LS: Yeah, but I didn’t call to ask if I could jerk off into a cup to father your child.
EB: Yeah, well, it wouldn’t necessarily have to be done that way.
LS: I’m going now.
EB: Go. Goodbye. Call me.

Two bumps later, I was convinced this was an incredibly cool idea. This morning, I am not so sure.

Saturday, June 18, 2005

#7 – A Midwest wedding

“I’m Your Puppet” – Marvin Gaye

In beautiful Cleveland, OH for the wedding of a pair of old college friends. Everyone in our crew, the KUOM (“Radio OM”) posse circa 1990-4 at the University of Minnesota, is now coupled. There are a couple of married guys that come solo, their wives home with the kids so they can avoid the regurgitated reveries of yet another college reunion that isn’t theirs, and to grant their husbands the illusion of undergrad freedom for the weekend---a deposit in the bank of the endlessly negotiated settlement that seems to be wedlock.

Otherwise, I am the only single man. I get appropriately drunk and dance passably to old-school hip-hop (I’d forgotten that “The Humpty Dance” may have the funniest/nastiest bass line ever recorded) with the mother of the bride. She introduces me to a woman, apparently single, who smiles like she has a gun to her head.

The first dance selection is Marvin Gaye’s definitive reading of the Penn/Oldham classic “I’m Your Puppet.” A brilliant song for the tip-toeing Northern Soul melody and especially the lyrics, which capture both the bliss and the somewhat terrifying helplessness of that thing called love.

Pull the string and I'll wink at you, I'm your puppet
I'll do funny things if you want me to, I'm your puppet

I'll be yours to have and to hold
Darling you've got full control of your puppet

Pull another string and I'll kiss your lips, I'm your puppet
Snap your finger and I'll turn you some flips, I'm your puppet

Your every wish is my command
All you gotta do is wiggle your little hand
I'm your puppet (2x)

I'm just a toy, just a funny boy
That makes you laugh when you're blue
I'll be wonderful, do just what I'm told
I'll do anything for you
I'm your puppet (2x)

Pull them little strings and I'll sing you a song, I'm your puppet
Make me do right or make me do wrong, I'm your puppet

Treat me good and I'll do anything
I'm just a puppet an you hold my string, I'm your puppet
Yeah, I'm your puppet

Walking, talking, living, loving puppet
I'm hanging on a string girl, I'll do anything now

I'm a walking, talking, living, loving puppet, and I love you

I'm a smiling happy face when you want me to
Even make you happy when you're feeling blue


Is this a proper sentiment for a wedding song? Maybe a little too honest? (Or ironic? Post-ironic?)

At the last wedding I attended, the couple chose Nick Drake’s “Northern Sky”, a beautiful love song except that the line “Will you love me ‘til I’m dead?” always reminds me that the singer killed himself with sleeping pills---perhaps by accident, perhaps on purpose---all alone in his bedroom.

Why am I unable to see the simple joy in these moments, these songs? Am I sick? Or is pure joy simply boring?

Maybe I expect too much of songs.

More to the point: why am I sitting in my rental car in the parking lot of the reception hall posting and downloading off a hijacked wi-fi signal when I should in fact be experiencing the wedding I’m writing about?

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

#6 - A chat with Bright Eyes, breakfast in Minneapolis, boys that want lovers they don't have to love

“A Lover I Don’t Need To Love “ – Bright Eyes

This interview with singer/songwriter Conor Oberst (aka: that Bright Eyes dude) was conducted over early afternoon bloody marys at a killer Minneapolis breakfast/lunch cafe called Hell's Kitchen (89 South 10th Street), right around the corner from the landmark Let It Be Records. We mainly drank, but it should be noted that their wild rice porridge---made with cream and berries and toasted hazelnuts---is to die for. Ditto the breakfast bruschetta with marscapone, their homemade lemon-vanilla yogurt, as well as the homemade blackberry jam, orange marmalade, and chunky peanut butter (spiked, I’m guessing, with candied peanuts—an inspired touch) that arrives at your the table on a condiment tray for free (!). Easily one of the top ten breakfast joints I’ve ever eaten in. The original Ralph Steadman art on the walls only makes it tastier.

Conor Oberst has very thin, very beautiful hands that tremble when he lifts his glass. This makes me worry for him in a paternal way---though by our second round, the trembling has stopped. He fingers his string necklace, a gift from Todd Baeschle (now Todd Fink, having taken his wife’s last name; very cool), a childhood friend from Omaha who fronts The Faint. His band opened for Bright Eyes last night at an all-ages show at my beloved First Avenue, where I spent literally hundreds of night watching bands back in college in the ‘90s, and did an absolutely glorious version of the Neutral Milk Hotel song “Holland 1945,” which, with all due respect to his royal Conor-ness, was the highlight of the evening (Jeff Mangum, where ARE you? You are SO FUCKING MISSED! Olivia Tremor Control are reuniting – come on, dude! You don’t even have to call yourself Neutral Milk Hotel. Just make music for us again!)

Conor [sipping and making a puzzled face]: These taste, uh….
Loose Strife: Funny, weird. Interesting….yeah, I know! Apparently, the history of Bloody Marys holds that the drink was originally made with beer in it. Here in Minnesota it usually gets served with a little glass of beer called a “beer back.” But as a point of pride, these guys make it old school, and actually mix the beer in….
C: Huh. It’s pretty good, actually.
LS: Yeah. This place is great. Sorta goth. I thought you’d like it….Hey, I thought you just drank red wine? You were drinking beer onstage last night.
C: Yeah, I’ve been diversifying [smirks].
LS: So I wanted to ask you a few things. Has your life been threatened since singing “The President Talks To God” on the Tonight Show? I thought that was so amazing….
C: Surprisingly, no. I…
LS: I….sorry to interrupt…but I remember when Sinead O’Connor tore up the picture of the pope on Saturday Night Live, which is the only TV moment I can really compare it too, and she caught no end of shit for it. Frank Sinatra dissed her….
C: Well, he’s dead, so I guess I’m safe there. I heard there were lots of fucking right-wing nutjobs writing stuff on the internet…
LS: Well, yeah---that’s what they do, when they’re not fucking up the world. Where’d you get your outfit? It was totally Travis Tritt!
C: The rhinestone shirt I got from the Omaha Salvation Army; that hat I got in Nashville.
LS: Did Emmylou Harris hook you up with the haberdasher?
C: No, actually, I
LS: She’s so hot, my god…she must be like 60. Is she single?
C: Uh, no. [glances around room like he’s looking for someone to rescue him]
LS: Sorry, sorry---I know, that sounded sleazy…I’ve just always had this thing for her.
C: She was so totally nice when I met her; she was like your super-cool aunt with a million stories….she’s really seen some shit.
LS: Wow. [interviewer, obviously braindead in the headlights of a star, fails to ask the painfully obvious follow-up “what were some of her stories?” Sorry.] So I read online about the line you ended the song, um….
C: What song?
LS: “When The President Talks To God,” on Leno with…
C: Oh. That phrase “Fil mish mish,” you mean? It’s Arabic for…
LS: It’s like slang for “when pigs fly” or something?
C: It literally means “when apricots bloom in spring,” I think---it’s basically Arab street slang for “I doubt it,” which is the last line in the song.
LS: Where did you learn it?
C: A friend in Los Angeles, an Iraqi girl. She taught it to me. I figured if I was gonna be on TV all over the world, I should at least say something to the millions of Arabs that hate our guts because of our fucked-up President. That he doesn’t speak for all of us.
LS: Right on, brother….So I liked the show last night. It was definitely a different vibe than the Leno performance. Very new wave. Like you were a different person, almost.
C: Yeah, well, it’s a different thing.
LS: So I gotta ask you something: I’ve noticed that, after years of girls yelling “Conor I Love You!” at every show you play, more boys are yelling it now. At the shows I saw last year, it seemed about split---half girls professing their love, half boys. But last night it was definitely more boys. What’s up with that?
C: You think? That’s disappointing [smiles]. No, seriously, that’s always kinda weird no matter who’s saying it. Actually, I’m cooler with hearing guys say it, ‘cause…..um….I dunno, actually. Maybe ‘cause it seems less, like, exploitative….
LS: Exploitative of the fans?
C: Maybe that’s not the right word. Less, um….I don’t feel as responsible for the guys yelling it, I guess.
LS: But they might love you just as much as the girls, yeah?
C: I doubt it…Fil mish mish [laughs]
LS: But what do you think they’re latching onto? I noticed a LOT of guys singing along to “Lover I Don’t Need To Love.” Like sports-bar guys, not the sort of guys you’d expect to be Bright Eyes fans.
C: Well, that’s good, I guess---right? You don’t want to always just preach to the converted.
LS: Sure. But it’s the classic fallacy of authorial intent. I hear that song, and I perceive it to be equally about a boy and a girl, the boy singing the first verse, the girl the second. And it’s so sad, and empathetic to both of them --- about how love is painful, and yet we all have this weirdly masochistic desire to be hurt, again and again…
C: Uh-huh… [nodding and scanning room]
LS: …But watching these guys sing along, it seemed like they were just reducing the complexities of the song to “I want a girl I can fuck and forget about in the morning”---like it’s some anthem to the boring, stereotypical unwillingness of guys to be emotionally available for any longer than it takes them to shoot a load.
C: Well, you can’t control the way some people are going to interpret your music…But the song is sort of about that, too, really. And…well, don’t you think that’s a little condescending? You don’t know how sensitive these guys might be, or what they’re feeling. They might be hearing the same things you are, feeling the same things you are.
LS: Yeah, well, I guess. But I doubt it. Fil mish mish, right? [laughs stupidly]
C: [Standing up] Hey, I really gotta go, dude. I gotta get back to meet the guys in the band. Thanks for the drinks.
LS: Dude, thanks so so much for talking to me. You are, like, my hero.
C: No problem.….What’s the name of your site again? I’m sorry---I’m out of it….
LS: Loose Strife. It’s a flower. But it’s about music and sadness and blogs and food and self-loathing and other stuff too.
C: Cool. [reaches out to shake LS’s hand while looking him directly in the eye, very sincerely. Note: Conor’s fingers are remarkably delicate.]
LS: Thanks, dude. See you around.
C: See ya. [walks quickly towards front of restaurant and out the front door, turning left towards his hotel on Nicollet Mall. LS finishes the last gulp of his Bloody Mary, then reaches over and finishes the rest of Conor’s. The waitress, a tall, big-boned, quintessentially Midwestern goth chick with a rat’s nest hairdo that’s dyed half green and half blonde shoots LS a faintly disgusted smirk.]

*Lyrics:

"Lover I Don't Have To Love"

I picked you out
Of a crowd and talked to you
Said I liked your shoes
You said thanks can I follow you?
So it's up the stairs
And out of view
No prying eyes
I poured some wine
I asked your name you asked the time
Now it's two o'clock,
the club is closed we're up the block
Your hands on me
Pressing hard against your jeans
Your tongue in my mouth
Trying to keep the words from coming out
You didn't care to know
Who else may have been you before
I want a lover I don't have to love
I want a girl who's too sad to give a fuck
Where's the kid with the chemicals?
I thought he said to meet me here but I'm not sure
I got the money if you got the time
You said it feels good I said I'll give it a try
Then my mind went dark
We both forgot where your car was parked
Let's just take the train
I'll meet up with the band in the morning
Bad actors with bad habits
Some sad singers
They just play tragic
And the phone's ringing
And the van's leaving
Let's just keep touching
Let's just keep keep singing
I want a lover I don't have to love
I want a boy who's so drunk he doesn't talk
Where's the kid with the chemicals
I got a hunger and I can't seem to get full
I need some meaning I can memorize
The kind I have always seems to slip my mind
But you but you
You write such pretty words
But life's no story book
Love is an excuse to get hurt
And to hurt
"Do you like to hurt?"
"I do! I do!"
"Then hurt me."