Heurism

I miss trips to the used CD parlor. I love Reno, but the used CD scene here is beyond dismal. Beyond. So what do I do for music these days? eMusic, Amazon MP3s, and Amazon Used CD’s in that order. My eMusic account nets me 50 credits a month. Not even a year ago almost any album on the site could be had for something between 9 and 12 credits. So thats something like 5 or 6 albums a month for less than $20. Some of the bigger labels have fucked with this ratio, but it’s still a great deal. The tracks are in MP3 format, legal, and have no DRM on board. The MP3s are usually in the 256 range. So…just short of CD quality. eMusic has a steady stream of new music and now and then adds some major label stuff…but if you are only in the market for Top 40, it’s probably not going to be your thing. Instead, it’s got a pretty dang good search engine and good ways to find artists that are similar to the stuff you like already.

Ok…so here is a list of stuff I’ve found that I totally dig.

The blues gods: Elmore James, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, etc.
Black Mountain – heavy psychedelic stuff
Cracker – It’s Cracker. Not everything they’ve done…but a fine collection. Countrysides is amazing
Dave Alvin – Dave was the Blaster’s guitarist way back when but has gone on to a great career as purveyor of Americana
Heartless Bastards – Just go buy these albums. Seriously. One of my fave new female voices
Steve Earle – the ultimate Nashville Outlaw has carved out a late career of speaking the truth, no matter how ugly it is
Led Zeppelin – I added Presence and In Through the Out Door to my already hefty Zep list
King Khan (and the BBQ Show, and the Shrines, etc) – The best garage rock around
Patrick Sweaney – No idea how I stumbled on this…but damn…I LOVE his record
R.L. Burnside – the dirtiest gruffest blues on the planet
Roky Erickson – The new album with Okkervil River is devastating

And…the Warlocks, The Weepies, Slaid Cleaves, The Ponys, The Dirtbombs, Richmond Fontaine, Phosphorescent, and on and on. Seriously. Check it out.

I was trying to talk music with one of my student workers the other day. He is a pretty well informed music fan, even if he is only 21. The place we differed was on listening to whole albums. He is, like alot of folks these days, what I call a single listener. He only listens to songs he has purchased off of iTunes or Emusic, and he never buys an entire album, just the song he likes. I tried to talk to him about the “album” experience. He was resistant.

Keep in mind that I grew up listening to the apex of AOR radio. AOR was, rather pointedly, not about singles, but about the whole piece of music. I’ve always listened to entire albums. Always. I know what track is supposed to come next. I can get a feel for what the artist/producer/engineer/etc was trying to say with sequence. Shoot to Trill comes after Hells Bells, it just does. Three Days (the Stairway to Heaven of my generation) is a perfect follow up to Been Caught Stealing, it just is. When the Levee Breaks is a great album closer. Seriously. At work I listen to a ton of music. It’s always on in the background. And it’s almost always whole albums. Start to finish. I feel like I’d be missing something if I just listened to singles.

Songs I’d have never heard otherwise: Tattooed Love Boys (the Pretenders), Darling Nikki (Prince), Midnight Rambler (the Stones), The Great Curve (Talking Heads), Eurotrash Girl (Cracker). None of these songs were the hit single off their album. But they are all better in my opinion. I’m not saying that listening to singles is bad. I’m just suggesting that their is something more to the experience of consuming an entire album.

Albums people…it’s albums.

I don’t always get M.I.A. to be honest. She rips stuff wholecloth from punk artists and calls it new. But I have to say that this song (dig the nod to punk godfather Suicide) and video are amazing. Rough. Brilliant. Satiric. Timely.

Oh…and NSFW.

Please find below a quick recap of food/eats from the trip bin and I took to the bay area last weekend. Yeah, I knew you’d be interested….

Sat:

Ferry Building: We arrived too late to partake of the many food trucks (sorry Tom) that are usually there on Saturday (some rather severe traffic coming in over the bridge). We did, however, hit up the Slanted Door for drinks and appetizers. The food was amazing and the drinks citrusy and well thought out. We’ll be going back here I think.

Elephant and Castle Pub: Meh. Gross.

Sunday:

Mifune Don: bin had been on the look0ut for SF okonomiyaki since visiting Japan years ago. Yelp recommend this place. Mifune Don (not to be confused with Mifune) is in the smaller portion of the Peace Plaza in Japantown. It’s a tiny little place that features some classic Japanese food. We had some delicious tempura shrimp and the amazing okonomiyaki which is a rice flower pancake topped with cabbage, seafood, crisp noodles, sauce, and more sauce served in a skillet. Wow. I was totally blown away. I’m SOLD!

Cafe Zoetrope: Francis Ford Coppola’s little cafe in the financial district. We had a prosciutto pizza which was pretty damn good (I mean…how wrong can you go with prosciutto pizza?) and some really damn lovely wine. We got to make fun of the couples next to us who came in to a wine cafe and ordered a Mai Tai. Not great, but good…and wonderful atmosphere and a place to just hang out and take in the city.

Bourbon and Branch: A speakeasy smack dab in the middle of the tenderloin district. You have to have a reservation (email only, please) and the password for the night. Otherwise, you aren’t getting in. The club is nicely decorated and the aura is interesting…but to be frank I was a bit disappointed. The service was horrible. You’d think that a place serving super high-end cocktails would be constantly coming by to refill your drink, but that wasn’t the case. The waitress really pushed the Valentine’s Day menu (I mean REALLY pushing it) so bin and I had some. Mine was really rather tasty. We finished up with a flight of Irish Whiskeys including a “peated” version which did, indeed, taste like camping. Truth be told, the Chapel does just as good a job of combining high end liquors and home made concoctions into tasty cocktails…with less pretension, lower prices, and much better service.

El Sol Taqueria: Hot damn. This is a hole in the wall a block’s stumble away from the Bourbon and Branch. We had the hugest plate of hot, delicious chicken nachos ever and a beer for 8 bucks. Easily the best Mex food I’ve ever had in SF.

bin’s Bradley Collins in our room: bin is perfecting her version of the Applejack based Bradley Collins. It’s a thing of beauty.

Monday:

Ton Kiang: All the way out Geary in Richmond is Ton Kiang…home for reasonably priced dim sum. Good lord I always walk away from this place pleasantly stuffed. Shrimp and scallop, shrimp and shrimp, shrimp and chive, pot stickers….mmmm. Highly recommended.

All in all, we were totally blissed out with food and booze. Can’t wait to go back.

Ye old Boing had a link to this the other day. This here, folks, is a trailer to the new documentary by dickhouse films (Johnny Knoxville’s production company)…and yes I said documentary. White trash observation is something of a hobby for me, and this film looks *right* up my alley. I’m stoked.

This is a damn fine article about the governance of California. Fascinating, in depth, funny, scary, it has it all. Since I lived in Cali for nigh unto 20 years I feel every word. Highly recommended.

Link

and yes…that is Jerry Brown, aka Governor Moonbeam…

It seems hard now, at times, to remember how full of menace the Stones were. Starting even as early as ’64 and culminating in the dark dark days of the ’70s, they were the band your mother warned you about. Could this song be any more sexually menacing? Really?

All gods are homemade, and it is we who pull their strings, and so, give them the power to pull ours.

- Aldous Huxley

//rant on

I gave up my directv connection months ago, so pretty much the only TV I get is at bin’s place, and while eating sushi. But even I couldn’t escape the bombardment that was yesterday’s death march madness surrounding first Farrah Fawcett, then Michael Jackson. The media in America likes nothing better than celebrity. Except for celebrity debased, or celebrity destroyed, or celebrity on the funeral pyre.

Farrah had been America’s Sweetheart #30356.5a, the “embodiment” of wholesome ’70s sexuality, as opposed to Bo who I suppose was the embodiment of unwholesome ’70s sexuality. Or something. She did one season of Charlie’s Angels then struggled for the rest of her career with a stop in made for TV movie land or two. Her best role, by far, in my opinion was as Robert Duvall’s wife in The Apostle. An amazing piece of acting. She hadn’t really been on the cultural radar until she started to die. Sadly. Then for 6 or 7 hours she was famous again.

Then Michael.

Michael was the walking, talking, crystallized personification of the post MTV Celebrity as crazed, disabled deity. Michael made some of the great pop music of all time, and then paid for it. He paid for his brutal upbringing. He paid for never topping Thriller. He paid for it all. He lived a life of what seemed to be huge amounts of weirdness, insanity, discomfort, sad highs and lows. Michael’s talent can never, probably, be separated from his desperation to be something else, /anything/ else. He too had lost a great deal of his celebrity, reduced to a punch line, tainted by years of eyebrow raising hijinks with kids and money and sheiks and increasingly odd white women. Then he died. And now, he will be famous all over again.

I think Anderson Cooper is an ok media guy. He usually has something interesting to say about world events and can speak with clarity about whatever event has befallen whatever region. Listening to him try to mythologize Michael made me want to cut my ears off. Listening to the parade of hangers-on, minor celebrities, never wases, and talking heads babble on about his gift while the funereal flames stripped away the taboo of his supposed child molesting made me sad.

So there.

//rant off

Sunday afternoon bin and I took in the waning hours of the Nada Dada Motel Project. The project is a once yearly event that takes place at two “weekly” m(h)otels in Reno. The idea is that you rent a room for the week, set up your art (whatever it may be) and people come and browse. Because of the surroundings (the legendary El Cortez, and the less legendary Town House Motor Ledge) hijinks are bound to happen…are even *supposed* to happen. Since we got there a bit late, some of the crews were already cleaning up. Some highlights:

Joy Wong: a damn intriguing portraitist. Check her out.

Christopher Robin Blum: some nicely photoshopped photos. Here.

Christopher Umana: a terrifically talented illustrator. Here.

And yeah…the room of 1,000 dildos. Completely crazy. Oh…and the rose room. Even crazier. One thing that really struck both of us, however, was a room at the Town House Motor Lodge between two NadaDada rooms. Keep in mind that people continue to live in these spaces even during this art event. This room, full of boisterous teen somethings and perhaps an adult or two had a sign taped to the door…it said simply, “No Art Here.” Really? Isn’t that the modern definition of “art”? Sorta. Ish? I made bin take a surreptitious photo.