Return Of The West Country Walking Society

Foul weather? What foul weather? It looked grim when we left London, and looked even grimmer when Danny phoned just as were coming up on Reading to tell us that it was simply bucketing down out west and that we'd better abandon plans to trek across some sodden stretch of the Cotswolds in favour of having a wander around some picturesque market town like Bradford-on-Avon.

Only trouble was, Richard had already set out to the rendezvous point at Haresfield Beacon, some 50 miles in the other direction, and for reasons unbeknownst to us, wasn't answering his phone. "I've half a mind to let him sit up there in the rain by himself," groused Danny, but in the end, of course, we all agreed we couldn't abandon our comrade and altered course back toward Haresfield.

After a hair (and hare)-raising careen over a one-lane mountain track on which Danny had assured us "nutters in SUVs are always trying to kill horse riders" (we were, as it happens, in an American SUV, but saw no horsemen or horsewomen to target), we pulled into a car park at the top of a vast expanse looking somewhat like the picture above. Almost instantaneously, the rain stopped, and within an hour the sun had appeared (as in the picture above).

Richard was there, blithely unaware that his phone was switched off, and Danny and Bella pulled in moments later. Longtime WCWS stalwart Shely was regrettably absent, having relocated from Poole to her native land, the Isle of Man, which was not quite so easy a commute. The weather having now turned for the better, against most predictions and all common sense (it's a weekend, we're out in the country miles from anywhere, of course rain is the logical outcome), there was nothing to do but set off along the escarpment in the direction of the troublingly named village of Painswick.

Having only heard Danny speak of it and not having seen it on the map, I naturally assumed that it was spelled Payneswick or Paineswick, and innocently asked if Thomas Paine had once lived there (not such an extreme assumption, as one of our previous walks, back when we were more of a South Downs Walking Society, had taken us to Lewes, which actually was the old firebrand's original home town). But no, Danny took, erm, pains to point out, it was actually a wick (archaic term for village or town) of pain that we were headed for.

You certainly would have thought so from Bella's reaction. She's not too keen on these Sunday walks, and often only comes along out of loyalty to Danny (her partner) and the rest of us in the WCWS. Not without reason, she has come to suspect Danny of fudging the distance and arduousness of our planned journeys to make them appear shorter and more appealing, and regularly peppers him with questions aimed at elucidating the true extent of the challenge facing us.

Danny, on the other hand, is a past master of feigned innocence (he is a journalist, after all) and replies to all her queries with a wounded expression and some version of "How could you doubt me?" or "Why on earth would I want to lead you astray?" In order to pull this off, he also has to exude unwavering confidence that the route he has chosen/is choosing is the correct one, something which, when following rural English footpaths, even Daniel Boone himself could not always be sure of.

As it happened, this particular path was not well signposted, and Danny's much-vaunted GPS was not being too helpful either. A bit of a row, thankfully good-natured, ensued when I asked him why he refused to carry his GPS in London, where its ability to identify street names and landmarks would make it actually useful. He insisted that he had no need of it in London, because he knew his way there, to which I replied, "Well, it certainly would have helped last Monday when we were lost in the City and trying to find Liverpool Street Station." "We weren't lost," he contended, "we just didn't know which street would get us to Liverpool Street." "Isn't that more or less the definition of lost?" I countered, and so on and so forth.

Ropey GPS or not, we eventually wound our way down several muddy hills into the picturesque (and not, as it emerged, especially painful) village of Painswick. We had an excellent lunch in a pub dating from 1545, seated by a window looking out onto the street and a similarly ancient graveyard. At one point, and sadly I have no photograph to prove this, I noticed a flash of colour out of the corner of my eye and looked up to see Santa Claus riding by in a horsecart laden with presents. It happened so fast that I didn't even have time to alert my companions, so naturally none of them believed me. But you do, dear readers, don't you?

Before heading back to our seemingly faraway car park, we had just enough time to stroll around the village, uncovering such Hogsmeadian gems as The March Hare and The Fiery Beacon before taking what Danny and his GPS assured us would be a "short cut." With the weather looking to take a turn for the grim, and evening quickly descending (it gets dark at 4 in the afternoon at this time of year), it was nervous going for a while, especially when we were faced with a choice between a busy highway with no footpath or shoulders and plunging into a dim and dismal wood.

We chose the wood, and as it turned out, Danny and his GPS had not steered us wrong, for we emerged out of it and into the car park just as rain began to fall for the first time since we'd set out. Wes, Richard and Danny stood about drinking tea under the overhanging tailgate of Wes's SUV, and then we all climbed into our respective vehicles and set off for London, Bristol and Bath. An excellent outing, all round, and the only other thing I want to mention is the place names we passed along the way, which practically read like poetry (or a Monty Python sketch) in themselves.

Examples: Ampney Crucis, Duntisbourne Leer, Lower Chedworth, Ready Token, Cricklade, Daglingworth, Brimpsfield, Birdlip, Nailsworth, Nympsfield, Owlpen, Moreton Valence, Quedgely, Dursley, Dowdeswell, Tuffley and... Well, the list is thousands long. You get the picture.

Pickled Dick

Why would you want to name your band Pickled Dick? And what does it mean, anyway?

That's what I should have asked the members of the band when I met them tonight, but I'm afraid I was too busy marvelling over the guitarist's t-shirt, which said "I may look like Sideshow Bob (he did, too, with his enormous semi-dangling Afro dyed blond on one side and brown on the other), but you look like a CUNT." I wanted to take a picture for my almost 12 year old nephew, because he's a huge Simpsons fan and would have found it hilarious, but uncles have to set some sort of example, don't they? Not to mention what his parents might think.

The Dick are a very English band, which might stop them ever getting too popular in the USA, and by English, I mean a bit quirky and zany and jolly in a way that American bands, who, even if they're joke bands have to be serious about their jokiness, could never get away with (and would never want to try). That being said, they're also outstanding musicians, a fact brought home during their cover of Green Day's "Who Wrote Holden Caulfield," in which the drummer unleashed a roll that Tre Cool himself probably couldn't have managed in the Kerplunk era.

Many of their songs are very intricate and longish, to the point where I described them as "bloody rock operas," but with their three-part harmonies and stop-on-a-dime changes, they're also incredibly catchy. Pickled Dick get my vote as one of England's better pop-punk bands today, and they get extra points for their homoerotic baiting of the audience and their "I (heart) Dick" stickers.

Also met a guy who was wearing my favourite Lookout Records shirt of all time, the Patrick Hynes-penned cartoon rendering of the Lookout office circa 1991, featuring me at my desk penning diatribes about pulp mills, Chris and Pat gabbing over the coffee pot, and Thadicus shouting "I can't hear you" over the din of his electric guitar. "That's me upstairs," I pointed out to the somewhat bewildered guy, and then proceeded to tell him how Patrick, responding to complaints (possibly from the recently mentioned Janelle) that there were no girls in the drawing, added a little hair and some breast squiggles to some of the boys and said, "There are now."

The Lookout shirt wearer turned out to be a pen (erm, email) pal of Pat and Erika at Little Type, but sadly I only learned after he left that he was also a devoted Fulham fan. We could have done a little comiserating, as Fulham went down to yet another humiliating defeat today. Thank goodness it was away to Everton, or else I would have no doubt been sitting in the rain at Craven Cottage wallowing in the misery of it all. Bright and early this morning (i.e, in about six hours) we're off to the Cotswolds with the West Country Walking Society. Storms, gales and torrential downpours are predicted. Should be fun.

Zatopeks Are Go

Jim Testa, aka Jim Jersey Beat, writes to urge that I do a comparative study on the difference between an English and American record shop. Unfortunately, I told him, I rarely set foot in an American record shop if I can help it, and avoid English ones as well, except when I stop by Rough Trade in Notting Hill to visit my friend Sean.

But Sean works in the basement, so my involvement with the actual record-selling part of the store is usually minimal. It's true there once was a time when I would stop and peruse the racks, but this was mostly back in the long-ago days when I had a proprietary interest in what was and wasn't being sold in the way of records and CDs. Since leaving the business end of the music business, it just doesn't interest me all that much.

I'm also trying to avoid buying records and CDs at all, and to get rid of the remaining few that I have. This is kind of sad in a way, but they take up space and often annoy me when they get underfoot (what, you keep yours on shelves? that's way too complicated for me to fathom). No, for me the digital age couldn't have come soon enough. The idea that my entire music collection can now fit into my pocket fills me with delight. The only thing that would delight me more if if (or, more likely, when) some scientist figures out how to store music in thin air, accessible or disposable with a click of the finger. Or better yet, if I wanted to hear a song, I could just think it into being, and similarly think it away the second I began to get bored with it.

That being said, I did add one CD to my dwindling collection the other night when I met up with Sebby in a backstreet City pub (it was all very stealthy, almost like a dodgy dope deal) and handed over £8 for a copy of the Zatopeks' brand new release, Damn Fool Music. I immediately transferred the music to my computer and will probably end up passing the CD on to someone who needs it, but the fact that I was willing to actually buy a physical music-related product shows how much I was looking forward to this.

The Zatopeks just may be the best band going right now. I've only had a chance to listen to the new record once so far, so I won't go all the way out on the limb and instantly proclaim it the best record of 2007, but it probably is. I used to hang out with young Will Zatopek back in the days when he was an 18 year old aspiring Ben Weasel clone, and to be quite honest, never suspected he'd follow through so triumphantly on his dreams of musical and literary glory. Of course back then what we mostly did was argue; I was not only taken aback, but practically aghast that someone could be so argumentative as Will (well, someone other than myself, I mean).

Now Will is nine or ten years older, lives in Berlin, has written a novel, is fronting one of the world's best bands, and, well, I guess he showed me. Perhaps it will teach me not to argue so much? Eh, probably not. Anyway, remember that you heard it here: Zatopeks. Get them now.

Jamie And Kate

Apparently this is ancient news to anyone who keeps abreast of celebrity goings-on, but I was nonetheless surprised to pick up a copy of one of the local tabloids and discover a picture on the cover of my old mate Jamie snogging Kate Moss.

I haven't seen too much of Jamie in recent years - in fact it's probably been a couple since I've seen him at all - but he was a regular fixture on the relatively obscure London punk scene ever since he came to London at the beginning of the 90s. The first time I remember meeting him was upstairs at the old Laurel Tree in Camden, when he was playing with Scarfo, one of the earlier British emo bands (note to my younger readers: emo meant something rather different then; though I wouldn't want to go so far as to suggest "different" meant "better," it certainly meant at least "less bad").

Actually, Scarfo were pretty decent, considering their genre, though it's hard to say, as I was going through one of my rare "open-minded" periods at the time, wherein I tried, or at least pretended to try to like almost everything new and adventurous. Hell, I had just come back from touring with Huggy Bear, and if you've ever heard them... Well, suffice it to say that if you know me at all, you won't be trying to hire them to be the entertainment next time you throw a party in my honour.

Even though he lived in South London, I used to run into Jamie from time to time in my neighbourhood, and he was invariably charming, especially considering that I didn't know him all that well. I tend to marvel at people who can do this, struggling as I do with being charming or for that matter civil even to the people I know and love best. I saw a bit more of him once Allison from Discount moved here and teamed up with him to form The Kills, aka the über-stylish British White Stripes (yes, I know that's horribly simplistic rock critic-type writing, but it's Saturday morning, I'm a bit foggy, and have no other facile analogies on offer).

Being in The Kills seemed to transform both Allison and Jamie, her more than him, as she went from being an almost painfully timid nonsmoking teetotaler to, well, the opposite, and he, well, he mostly did more of the same, only much more darkly and intensely. I went to see them a few times and appreciated the artistry that went into the whole package that was The Kills, but couldn't get that far into the music. Well, let's be honest: if they weren't friends, I probably wouldn't have listened to it for very long at all, but that's also because that interval of open-mindedness I wandered into back in 1994 didn't last very long at all, and I've since made up for it by refusing to listen to much of anything except what I already know in advance I will like. And those who know me personally will attest that this is only the very slightest of exaggerations. If at all.

Apparently the News Of The World and the rest of the tabloids have been round to see Jamie's old flatmates offering shedloads of money if they'll spill the beans on what "the real Jamie" was like, but none of them seem to have taken the bait, and any journos who stumble across this blog should be advised that I've already said everything I know here and that some or all of it might be made up. In the absence of genuine sources, the media have had to fall back on their usual stock in trade, i.e., hysterical speculation, like the Daily Mail speculation over whether Jamie is just another "bad boy rocker" like "Pete" (I love how the upright Voice of Middle Britain is on a first-name basis with garden-variety junkies when and if they date somebody rich enough).

I also don't have the faintest clue what a "bad boy rocker" is or if Jamie measures up in that department. Personally, I've never seen him use drugs other than alcohol and cigarettes in the entire time I've known him, and anyway, I never thought being a pathetic, sniveling junkie à la Pete Doherty made anyone "bad." Pitiable at best, and even that's a stretch. Anyway, God bless the young lovers, wherever they are; judging from a quick run through just this morning's tabloids, they'll need it.

Buffeted By Gales

Well, I went back to Carnaby Street after dark, and the giant construction paper loops were lit up, not from within, which would have been awesome, but at least spotlighted, which didn't look too shabby. Also, the atomic/molecular structure snowflakes over Regent Street do light up from within and constantly change colours, which makes them look far better by night. Their greatest appeal, though, would probably be to people on drugs, who could easily get so caught up in gawking at them that they might be run down by a speeding taxi and never even notice.

What else? Didn't mean to diss queens in yesterday's, and on reflection, Christmas decorations and store windows in nearly every city are most likely the province of amped-up Godless queens. I mean, who else could so fully get into that sort of spirit? It's not without reason that it's common here to refer to something being "as camp as Christmas." I think the problem with London's decorations is more that the queens are subject to the dictates of the same council committees that gave us tower blocks and tried to replace Christmas with "Festivus" or "Winterval" so as not to offend any non-Christians. Much of English civi life has taken this give-no-offence policy to such extremes that virtually everyone is offended.

In other news, great gales blew across the British Isles early this morning, fiercely rattling my windows of my top floor garret and sending leaves and rubbish flying down the streets, but otherwise barely troubling this grand old house. I did for a moment think my windows, which are shaped like - there must be a term for it, but I don't know it - church windows, you know pointed at the top (must be a challenge to find glass to fit them if they ever break) - crashing in on me. But they held fast, even though a great deal of the gale did come seeping in through the gaps. Fortunately, it was an almost preternaturally warm wind; I didn't even need to turn the heater on today.

And now the storm has passed, there's a dazzling blue sky overhead, and England is awash in gentle sunlight. Or at least it will be until the fast-approaching dusk (around 4 in the afternoon this time of year, and it's already almost 3) or the next storm arrives, which, given the fickleness of this climate, could be even sooner. In the meantime, I'm off to town.

Here Is London

Well, worse has come to worst. No, my plane didn't crash, and no, I wasn't arrested for making terrorist threats against the fat bloke who kept belching and farting a couple seats over, but I did arrive at my home for the next week to find that I was without internet access. Hence, no blog yesterday, and those that do appear in the coming days may have to be truncated and picture-less unless this problem can be rectified.

What's particularly galling is that the whole house has excellent wireless access; it's just that nobody seems to be able to remember what the password is. Either that, or they do know and are trying to do the internet a service by keeping me off it. Speaking of the house, it's rather magnificent, a Grade Two listed, four-storey duplex from the 1870s, with 15-foot high cathedral ceilings and all sorts of original features.

Unfortunately, it's also rather cold, owing to a characteristic bit of idiocy on the part of the government: because it's a listed house, it can't have insulated or double-glazed windows, so you can feel the oceans of cold air flooding in or the currents of warm air ebbing out to destroy the ionosphere, whichever way you prefer to look at it. Compounding the idiocy: a previous owner had (illegally) installed insulated windows, but a neighbour complained and the local council forced the new owner to remove them at a cost of thousands of pounds and replace them with old-fashioned wooden windows that approximately double his annual heating costs and carbon emissions. Kind of cancels out making him pay the £8 congestion charge for driving into Central London, don't you think?

I was one of only a handful of Americans on the flight coming over. In the past it's usually been the opposite: a plane full of Americans talking loudly about what tourists sights they're going to see and a handful of Brits looking sheepish and out of place. But apparently the sky-high pound has Yanks staying away in droves. Pretty much everyone on the plane filed into the UK/European Union customs queue while I had the "Other Passports" queue and 8 customs agents all to myself. Literally. I was a "line" of one.

London doesn't look too bad for this time of year, and the weather is certainly an improvement over New York. Overcast and grey, yes, but when isn't that true? Still, we had bright sunshine for a while when I arrived, and the temperature has mostly been in the 50s F/teens C. All over Soho, people are still sitting out at sidewalk tables in front of cafes and bars, something New Yorkers have ahd to give up several weeks ago. Also seen clustering outside said cafes and bars: smokers, who at long last have been banished to the proper place, i.e., befouling someone else's air. What a great improvement, but then we've known about that in California and New York for years already.

Ooops, time's up here at the internet cafe, so I'll have to get back to you with the rest of my exciting news at a later date. Bye for now!

P.S. It's now several hours later and the £^%*~@$% internet cafe browser shut down on me before I could post this because my credit had run out. And I had to be somewhere else almost immediately, so I had no choice but to come back and pay an extra 60p just so I could post my latest blatherings. I hope somebody out there appreciates it.

P.P.S. Also, I don't want to hear any complaints about British spelling being used herein. It's long-standing policy of this blog, decreed by the Head Blogger himself (that would be me) that I use whatever spelling is local to the place I'm in when I post here. Unless it's like, you know, Polish or something.

P.P.P.S. I'm just off Oxford Street at the moment, and the Christmas lights and decorations here are kind of rubbish compared with those in New York. Especialy disappointing are those in Regent Street, which usually has a much better display than tacky old Oxford Street. Not this year, though; Regent Street is adorned with some bizarre objects that I suspect are meant to be stylised snowflakes, but more closely resemble inflatable renditions of Our Friend Mr. Atom that you might see in a primary school science class.

At least on Carnaby Street they're a little creative. You know those looped chains of construction paper that you used to make (also in primary school) and drape on the Christmas tree (they probably have a name, but I can't think of it now)? Well, on Carnaby Street, they've got giant plastic versions dangling from building to building. If they light up (don't know if they do yet, as I saw them in the daytime), they might look pretty great. But still, New York does it better. London seems to turn its decorations over to a committee of dizzy queens who don't believe in God or Christmas and see the deal as more of an audition for St. Martin's College. Enough bitching, time's up again.

Snow Falls In Brooklyn

It's a sad state of affairs when I have to find out we've had our first snowfall of the season via an internet message board rather than by looking out my window. Especially when my window is closer to my bed than the computer.

But apparently the computer has become my true window on the world, because that's where I seem to head first most mornings, this one being no exception. It wasn't until I logged onto the Pop Punk Message Board, saw Rich Grech's complaining that although the was beautiful, and thought, hmm, if it's snowing in Queens, it very possibly is in Brooklyn, too, that I determined to do some empirical research by opening the blinds to see what might be out there.

And there, to your left, is the spectacle that awaited me. If I'd grabbed the camera only a minute or two earlier, you could have also seen the host of fluffy white snowflakes that had been filling the air, but instead you only see the window screen that turned out to be a lot more visible on camera than it appeared to be in real life. The snow was piling up fast for a while, to the point where it looked as though it would soon be deeper than the tops of my shoes. Since I don't have any boots yet, and since I had an early engagement in the city, this could have been a problem, but about 15 minutes before I was due to leave, the snow stopped and up and down the block, the shovels came out.

It's been a long while since I've lived in a snowy city, so maybe my memory isn't quite accurate, but I don't remember people being so anxious to tackle their shoveling duties back in Detroit. Or maybe I'm projecting; I know my own attitude was always to put it off as long as possible on the grounds that a sudden warm spell might blow in or that it was only a few months more until spring or that it was only going to snow again anyway. By the time I had to walk to the subway, all the sidewalks were clear and apart from the slight chill in the air (21F/-6C), it was a beautiful morning.

So maybe I'm being excessively optimistic about this winter thing (especially since it won't even officially start for another three weeks), but I'm thinking maybe it won't be too bad. I've heard all sorts of complaints from longtime New Yorkers to the effect that you might as well curl up in your apartment, hope you've got good heat, and not come out again till April or March, but so far I've found that if I dress warmly enough, it's not really a problem at all. We'll see what I'm saying come January or February, though.

And that's all I have to say today, or at least all I have time for. I'll be in London and Bristol for the next week and a half, hopefully blogging from there if the internet gods don't throw a monkey wrench (I suppose I should say spanner) into the proceedings. Next Sunday marks the semi-annual reunion of the West Country Walking Society, and apart from that I'll be visiting other friends, lolling about in cafes, and, thanks to the strength of the pound/weakness of the dollar, looking at lots of fabulous things there's no way I could afford. Hopefully, you'll hear from me tomorrow; if you don't, it means either I or my computer are suffering from sticker shock or that we've plunged into the Atlantic Ocean. Wish me well, and hopefully I'll speak to you soon.

The Real Janelle

It's hard to say for sure how many songs (or records) are about her; the only two I can identify with some certainty are the song "Janelle" from the Born Against/Screeching Weasel split EP and Bratmobile's "The Real Janelle" (both song and EP title). I just read on Wikipedia that Bratmobile's choice of that title was inspired by the Weasel/Born Against split (the song was written by Ben Weasel, performed by Born Against). If true, I did not know that.

There's also "Janelle, Janelle" by the Queers. I believe Joe Queer denies that this song is about Janelle, and while I should know whether he's telling the truth or not (I was with him when he was writing it), I do not. I think we were driving down from Portsmouth to New York at the time, and all I remember is trying to think up rhymes and having him laugh (or worse) at most of my attempts.

But I suspect there are other songs or stories or works inspired by the formidable and charismatic East Bay presence sometimes known as Janelle Blarg after her long-running fanzine, Tales of Blarg. It was, by the way, in Tales of Blarg that the legendary tale Laurie L., teenage tramp gone wrong (she murdered her parents and fed their bones to the next door neighbor's dog so she could go on tour with Green Day) first appeared.

(I find, much to my chagrin, that I no longer have a copy of this epic story, so if any of you out there do - it appeared on the CD and album insert of approximately 1,000,000 copies of Green Day's Kerplunk - would you be so kind as to email me a copy?)

I first encountered - if that's the right word - Janelle at Gilman Street. She was around 12 years old at the time, though there is some dispute over when she first turned up there. I first got to know her as the companion/possibly girlfriend of the equally legendary Robert Eggplant, who made his own Gilman debut at age 14, regularly traveling the 9 or 10 miles from Pinole on his skateboard until he saved up the scratch for a bicycle.

Janelle was also from Greater Pinole, as was her best buddy Holly (Pinole Valley High is also the almost alma mater - i.e., it would be if he'd stuck around to graduate) of rock luminary Billie Joe Armstrong), and if my memory serves me well (it often doesn't), she and Holly briefly double-dated with Eggplant and Joey Perales, the erstwhile drummer of Egglplant's rock-cum-burlesque aggregation, Blatz.

I fell foul of Janelle quite early on by snapping a photo of her and Holly and printing it in Lookout magazine with the caption "The Punk Rock Bobbsey Twins." Although we generally attempted to be civil to one another, and although she even worked briefly at Lookout Records, any time that we spent more than a few minutes in each other's company or attempted a conversation that went beyond the usual pleasantries (or unpleasantries, as the case sometimes was), we seemed to get in an argument.

This may have been my fault - Janelle certainly thought it was, and she may have been right - because I have tended over the years to be a genuinely argumentative cuss. But it was also frustrating, because apart from the arguing, we seemed to like each other pretty well. But, as it turned out, all it took was time, and after 10 or 15 years of regularly sniping at and brawling with each other, the arguments began dwindling down to more or less good-natured spats, and eventually almost disappeared completely.

It's tempting to attribute this to Janelle's growing up, but I suspect it has far more to do with the arrival of my own greatly arrested maturity. Regardless, we're excellent friends now, or so I'd like to think, even though a continent divides us. She was in New York ever so briefly last summer, which is when the photo above was snapped at Luis Illades' (Pansy Division, Avengers, Urban Rustic) loft, and hopefully I'll see her at Christmas when I run out to the West Coast to visit my family.
The lower photo was taken sometime in the early to mid-90s at Lookout Records HQ when Janelle must have still been a teenager (and I completely disavow any knowledge of how that large can of beer got into her clearly underage hands). Now she's all of 32 and routinely refers to herself as "old and busted" and "a granny," which seems kind of ludicrous to me, but hey, if it works for her...

Tales of Blarg is still going strong, and incorporates a lot of Janelle's top quality comics. She's also been active on the musical front, as a founding member of the Tourettes (who arose out of the ashes of jailbait-core Raooul), and in more recent years with Panty Raid and Baby Jail, the latter two also featuring Seth from Gravy Train. And if you haven't heard enough about Janelle by now (and believe me, there's much, much more to tell), I suggest you skedaddle on over to her website, Gimme Action, and let the girl and her work speak for themselves.

On The Town With Gabrielle And Flat Sally

Readers not familiar with Flat Sally will have to refer to yesterday's entry to bring themselves up to speed. Those more au courant with Sally and Gabrielle will be pleased to know that, bundled up tightly on a distinctly wintry night, we meandered up 6th Avenue from 14th Street to 50th and 5th, where Gabrielle and Sally paused briefly to show the Saks mannequins how it's done.

We also stopped to admire the Christmas tree and ice rink at the heart of Rockefeller Center, where Flat Sally had the many tourists gaping and smiling, though one nearsighted mother exclaimed to her son, "Oh, look, it's Flat Stanley!" I had to patiently explain that Stanley is Sally's older brother, and that Sally doesn't look anything like him. Apparently this traveling paper doll thing has really caught on among the elementary school set in recent years.

Hanging out in front of Saks caused me to wonder what sort of gown Gabrielle was planning on wearing on the red carpet at Cannes next year, at which she made a sour face and declared, "I'll wear blue jeans."

Oh no, you won't, I said in horror, and vowed to turn her over to the Chelsea queens for a serious schooling in frockery and frippery if need be. "And I suppose you're going to show up for your Academy Award in jogging shorts," I said rather flippantly before realizing that Academy Awards were not completely in the realm of fantasy; her collaborator already has an Oscar sitting on the mantelpiece for a previous screenplay. I voted for something in violet or lavender for Cannes; we'll worry about the Academy Awards when the date draws nearer.

Despite all the time I've spent in New York over the past 40-some years, I've never really been here in December (apart from a two-day misadventure on the Lower East Side in 1967), so while I've always heard that the run-up to Christmas is one of the best times of the year to be here (it always looks that way in the movies, too, doesn't it?), it wasn't until tonight that I really experienced the full effect for myself.

And yes, it is quite lovely. I found myself not minding the cold at all, thanks in large part to my new (fake) fur hat. After we'd shown Sally the sights we strolled back down 5th Avenue and stopped at the Starbucks on the ground floor of the Empire State Building for a winter warmer.

Now I've never been much of a Starbucks partisan; in fact I've always regarded it as a lowest common denominator, last resort sort of place, the McDonald's of cafes, if you will. But last week I discovered - and this is a completely unsolicited plug - a Starbucks drink that is one of the best things ever on a cold winter night (or morning), better than hot chocolate, even.

It's a white chocolate mocha (I always get mine with decaf, which means I can even have it right before bedtime), and while I normally hate people who wax rhapsodic over food or drink items, this is just so good I can't shut up about it. Gabrielle had the decaf peppermint white mocha, which sounded a little dicey (or candy cane-ish) to me, but turned out to be nearly as excellent.

Then we continued down 5th Avenue for a couple blocks before deciding to walk over to Park Avenue and get the subway. Gabrielle called her boyfriend to tell him that she was coming over. He asked where she was coming from, and when she told him, he said stay right where you are. Seconds later his cab (okay, the cab he was riding in, not his cab) glided to a stop alongside us, swept her up, and disappeared into the night. It seemed like one of those perfect New York moments, though perhaps I watch too many movies and/or too much Sex In The City.

I made it back to Brooklyn via the slightly less glamorous L train, where I've got to start packing . Flat Sally and I are headed off to London Sunday night.

Music In The Night

Can you guess which one is me? Of course you can; I'm the starry-eyed one. Well, the more starry-eyed one. This is my brother, myself, and another friend, taken on Sproul Plaza, probably in 1972.

And it has absolutely nothing to do with what I was going to write about tonight. When I resolved to go back to (or begin) writing in this blog every day if possible, I made a separate resolution to spend at least 20 minutes or half an hour every day playing music of some kind.

When I was marooned up on Spy Rock in the mid-80s, one of the ways I whiled away the hours was playing the piano. When I was growing up back in Detroit, we had a piano in the basement; it was ancient, cheap, and execrably out of tune, but from the time I started banging on as a 5 year old, it had an almost magical resonance for me. As has pretty much every piano I've encountered since.

But only occasionally in the years since I left home have I been lucky enough to live with one. Spy Rock was the exception: a piano came with the house, and pushed up against an inner wall, it seemed to use the entire house - itself a study in pine and redwood - as its sounding board. I hadn't played regularly since I was a teenager, but the rudimentary knowledge I'd gained of the notes and scales back then was enough to get me started picking my way through the several books of sheet music I'd accumulated.

Most of them were "fake" books, giving only the melody line and a diagram of the accompanying guitar chord. Hunched over the piano with the neck of my guitar lying across my lap, I would transpose the guitar notes onto the piano keyboard and try to turn them into an arpeggio-like accompaniment. Some days I'd be at it for 12 hours at a time, operating by candlelight when the solar-powered batteries ran low. It was maddeningly slow and painstaking work, the musical equivalent of double-entry bookkeeping, but gradually I began to be able to play some recognizable tunes. Erm, recognizable to someone apart from myself, that is.

After about a year of this, I was almost good enough to play an occasional gig at the Mad Creek Inn, a 1920s roadhouse turned hippie restaurant nestled in the redwoods just off Highway 101. The owner, widely known as Mad Mary, would bustle amid the candlelit tables in her floor-length dresses while I noodled away at the keys, half the time just plain making stuff up à la the New Age mood music that was coming into style at the time, then swinging into a bit of Neil Young or the Beatles, and, when I really wanted to get fancy, the four or five Cole Porter tunes I'd (sort of) mastered.

I don't know if the customers were all stoned to the point of non-discernment (I'm sure quite a few were), or if they were just too polite to complain, but some of them actually seemed to like my playing, and even started dropping bills in my tip basket to show their appreciation. One of them, literally the first dollar I ever earned playing music, hung on the wall above my piano up on Spy Rock for almost the next 20 years (I think I eventually spent it on a newspaper or something like that).

After leaving Spy Rock, I never again lived in a place where it was possible to have a full-fledged piano. That's not completely true; I could have squeezed one into my London apartment, but I was worried about the neighbors complaining. I had a digital (electric) piano stored back in the States, but decided it was too expensive to ship over, instead spending ten years dithering over whether to rent an acoustic or buy an electric piano and ultimately doing neither. Meanwhile, my painfully acquired piano playing skills, such as they were, slowly wasted away.

Now that I'm finally reunited with my digital piano and have worked out a time when the downstairs neighbors aren't home to be bothered by it, I'm slowly getting back into it. Sadly, I have to relearn most of what I taught myself in the 80s, the main differences being that my brain works more slowly now and that I have to wear glasses to read the notes (those years of playing by candlelight appear to have taken their toll.

Another difference is that I literally have to make myself sit down and play. In the old days, I would just naturally gravitate to the piano, often without even being aware of it. Once I start playing, it's fine, and sometimes I end up having to tear myself away for the sake of other responsibilities (blogging, for example). But it's sometimes hard getting started.

Tonight I practiced my rendition of "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas," which with a bit of work should be ready by Christmas Eve, then gave a quick go-round to "Silent Night," which is literally the first song I ever learned to play, at age 9, and then gave a doleful rendering to the Potatomen's "Iceland." The latter two I can play blindfolded and in my sleep (making about the same number of mistakes as when I'm wide-eyed and wide awake), but "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas" is in a different key and employs different chords from those I've used in the past, so learning it is rather like the old days, minus the candlelight.

But it's nice. Heals the soul, and all that, and gives me something to write about as well. Tomorrow I've got a date with my niece Gabrielle Bell and our mutual friend Flat Sally. Gabrielle's just back from Japan, where she's been for the past two months, filming an adaptation of a graphic short story (well, "comic" doesn't sound dignified enough) about a girl who turns into a chair. Her collaborator, Michel Gondry, co-wrote the screenplay with her and also directed. The film is part of a trilogy called Tokyo, also featuring contributions from Bong Joon-ho and Leos Carax.

Oh, and Flat Sally? Well, according to her press kit, Sally is flat because "a bulletin board fell on her." She belongs to my 6 year old niece Carmen, and has apparently made it her life's work to be photographed in as many exotic locations as possible before journeying back to California to live out the rest of her days on the wall of Carmen's first grade classroom.

She's already been snapped all over Tokyo, Zurich and the Swiss Alps, and a Mexican restaurant in Greenpoint. Tomorrow night we're taking here to see the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center and possibly the dinosaur at the Times Square Toys'R'Us. Who says I don't lead an exciting life?

This Is Where I Used To Live

Looks a bit Christmasy, doesn't it? But don't worry, I'm not about to go off on a paean to or rant against the holidays. Not just yet, anyway.

This is actually a picture of my old house up on Iron Creek and/or Spy Rock Road, depending who you're talking to and the degree of precision desired. For those few of who really feel a need to know, the entire area, probably covering 50 square miles or so, was known to not-quite locals (i.e., townies or residents of other canyons/watersheds/mountaintops as "Spy Rock," because it was Spy Rock Road that led up from Highway 101 into the rabbit warren of roads, trails, and wilderness where an eclectic collection of hippies, hillbillies, eccentrics, Deadheads, intellectuals (yes, there were/are a few), ranchers, cowboys and - especially - pot growers clung to the side of some pretty precipitous mountains.

But those who actually lived up there were more specific about their neighborhoods, unless of course you looked like you were a revenuer or a bill collector: they might be from Wildwood or Registered Guest, Simmerly Road, or the Loop (Upper or Lower). My neck of the woods was generally known as Iron Creek after the rather respectable little stream that came cascading off the back side of Iron Peak and tore itself a not always gentle path down to the Eel River Canyon.

I'm not sure why I suddenly felt impelled to post a picture of the old house or wax nostalgic about it; maybe it does have something to do with the time of year, since as you can see from the photo, it was well situated for celebrating old-fashioned, country-style Christmases, the kind you see in movies or magazines but not too often in real life. That being said, of all the Christmases I spent there, only one was picture-perfect, but that one was a doozy. One of the advantages of living in the middle of a vast pine and fir forest is that you can cut your own Christmas tree (and since you can just clip off the top of a larger tree, you don't even have to kill it), and one of the advantages of a house like the one I had was its 12 to 18 foot ceilings, allowing us to have a tree that, while not quite the size of the one adorning the front of the Rockefeller Center, was, considering the context, very nearly as impressive.

Part of that context was that we had very little in the way of electricity, having to rely entirely on solar panels, which were at their lowest output levels in the dark and stormy months of December and January, and the occasionally functioning generator. Because of that, winter was always a dimly lit affair, usually limited to one or two flickering 12 volt bulbs, the kind you see in trailers or RVs. But for the couple weeks leading up to Christmas, I would pull out all the stops to store up enough battery power to run several strings of lights, some of which, like the old-fashioned bubble lights, dated back to my grandmother's day.

In 1983 I bought a new set of batteries and added two new solar panels, and the resultant light show could be seen up and down the mountainside with spectacular effect because, well, because they were quite literally the only lights on our side of the mountain. If you've ever noticed how astoundingly bright and alive the stars look when you're out in an otherwise unlit wilderness, well, the same holds true for Christmas lights.

That year pretty much our entire extended family was there, something that rarely occurred, and my sister even had a newborn baby to add to the mix. It snowed just enough to make everything look like a Christmas card, but not enough to make the roads impassable (something that happened quite often up there; I was once stranded for five weeks). Even my dad, who hated the mountain and anything even slightly rural, was temporarily content.

Christmas 1983 was such a smashing success that I tried to do it up even bigger and better the following year. Taller tree, more lights, more people, too, with Olivia coming in from England to be with her grandchildren/my sister's kids. But this year there was more sleet than snow, my dad's car got stuck, a backdraft from the wood stove filled the house with smoke, and my nearly four year relationship with Anne was visibly and painfully unraveling.

By New Year's it was over, she and everyone else were gone, and life up on Iron Creek entered into an inexorable decline, taking me with it. Christmas 1985 found me broke, despondent, and barely able to muster the energy to cut enough firewood to keep the house warm. As often as not I couldn't afford enough gas to make the 40 mile round trip to Laytonville, the nearest "town," and in my darkest moments, imagined that I would die up on that mountain. And that my petrified corpse wouldn't be found before spring, if ever.

Of course a different set of events was, without my being aware of it, already in motion, one that, as the Rancid song puts it, "no premonition could have seen." During the previous year of my discontent, I'd half-heartedly started a little xeroxed zine and a laughably amateurish but almost painfully earnest punk rock band, and before another year had gone by, they'd start leading me off the mountain and back into the city I had sworn I was leaving for good.

I guess every place and time has its crystalline moments, when you know exactly why you're there and can't imagine anywhere in the universe that it would make more sense to be. But leading up to and away from those moments often involves a long, bewildering and tortuous route - rather like Spy Rock Road itself, as it wends its way from Highway 101 up into the clouds that wreathed Iron Peak - a route that we don't have any choice but to follow if want even a prayer of getting back to those moments that define our lives and ourselves.

Hibernation

Last night at this time the temperature was in the mid 60s; tonight it's in the low 40s and dropping. We've had a few warm days this month, but more often than not it's been downright wintry. Wintry by London or Northern California standards, anyway, which, apart from occasional brief visits to more arctic climes like Winnnipeg, is the only experience of winter I've had since the 1970s.

But the cold weather, combined with my new apartment having some cavernlike and Swiss chalet characteristics (it's a stretch, but go with me here), seems to have me feeling less and less inclined to set foot outdoors. Great, you say, then you can stay in and tackle some of those long-neglected but also long-promised tasks like creating a proper website, rewriting your book, unpacking and organizing the rest of your stuff that's still sitting around in boxes, maybe even (ahem) updating your blog.

But no, for like America under Jimmy Carter, I've been suffering from a great national malaise. It's not just the weather or the dwindling hours of daylight, though I'm sure that has something to do with it, nor is it just my own bad moods exacerbated by laziness and procrastination (though that probably has quite a lot to do with it).

Above and beyond that, though, there seems to be something in the air, a bleak cloud of not quite despondency, but certainly disillusionment and discouragement settling over the land. Perhaps it's just my imagination, but I felt something similar during the waning years of the Carter presidency and for nearly all of the first Bush (senior) presidency.

Am I trying to blame the government for my own lack of accomplishment or good cheer? Well, not exactly, though what good is a government if you can't blame your troubles on it? Seriously, I've had good times during some of the worst governments America's endured in recent decades, and miserable times during some of the best, so there's no clear correlation.

What I do note is that when things are going badly in my personal life, the sense that they are also going badly in the larger community certainly adds to the overarching gloom. That being said, I'm feeling a lot better than I was when I started this post (nearly two weeks ago). I finally reached a nadir in which nothing at all seemed appealing except perhaps playing computer solitaire and watching endless Law and Order reruns (you must understand, of course, that I'd never seen this show prior to my return from the UK, and that it is - especially in the episodes featuring Jerry Ohrbach, very good).

But as much as the prospect of being able to sit around watching TV all day might appeal to those forced to show up every day at jobs they hate, it does start eating at the soul after a while. I do know people who seem perfectly content to do nothing or something very closely resembling it, but I am not one of them. There are books to be read - and written, music to be played and listened to, people to talk to and see, but, as I'm hardly the first to observe, the more free time one has, the less of it seems to get done.

So I've had to give myself a rather firm kick in the ass, and one aspect of said ass-kicking involves returning to this blog with renewed verve and fervor. After a year or so of deep contemplation over what I should be doing for a living - or a life - I realize that there aren't a lot of things I know how or am qualified to do. A lifetime of work-dodging and angle-seeking has left me in that predicament, and while I'm currently mulling over the merits of becoming a New York City substitute teacher and/or a Starbucks barista (not sure yet which pays better), I keep coming back to one of the few things I do know, which involves putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard and stringing words together in an artful or informative or entertaining fashion.

Do I have anything all that worthwhile to say? That remains to be seen. It hasn't stopped me saying volumes of it for the past 20 or 30 years, but the longer I go without writing, the more time I have to brood about my shortcomings if not downright worthlessness as a writer. So, it's up and out of my lethargy once more. Hopefully, anyway. I ran into an old friend on the subway yesterday; he asked me what I was doing and I reeled off one of my main projects/ambitions at present, only to have him respond, "That's what you were doing ten years ago."

Not too supportive, you might say, but then just a moment earlier I'd gratuitously corrected his French, so I probably got just what was coming. Not to mention that he was right: I had embarked on this exact same project - transferring and compiling all my old writing, photos, music, etc. onto the computer - way back then, and done little or nothing on it since.

Until now, that is, and if you want proof that I'm actually doing something now, check this out:

That's me when I was 17 or 18, just as lazy and sullen as I can be now, albeit with a bit more style and youthful good looks. It was taken around this same time of year, and is part of the first batch of photos from the 40s, 50s, 60s and 70s that I've now at least got on the computer, even if I haven't yet managed to get them onto my still-nascent website. Anyway, it's some small progress, as is the fact that I've actually succeeded in writing something on this blog again. I've resolved to try and do so just about every day from now on. Check back tomorrow and see how I'm doing.

Back To "Normal"

I didn't immediately blog about the end of the Fest because I was kind of exhausted, and had to get up very early the next morning to drive to Tampa, and also because for me (and I think for a lot of people), the Fest kind of petered out on the last day rather than wrapping up with a resounding bang.

It seemed as though there weren't nearly as many as shows on Sunday, and that those that were happening tended to conflict with each other or be on opposite sides of town, forcing people to make difficult and sometimes dispiriting choices. Also, a cold (at least by Florida standards) wind blew in along with some rain, and most of us weren't really dressed for it, and on top of that, people were pretty worn out from tramping all over town and (not in my case personally, but for many others) staying up all night drinking and/or trying to sleep on bathroom floors in hotel rooms with one bed and 17 occupants (the room, not the bed, that is, though I can't vouch for every situation).

Pretty much every representative of the PPMB and New York pop punk crew was on hand for the double-barreled finale of Short Attention and the Ergs. Non-PPMB Festgoers may not have known exactly what to make of Short Attention (though they seemed to like them), but went completely insane for the Ergs. My misguided masochism led me to stand right up front for them (perhaps it was some mad macho posturing attempt to prove that a 60 year old can still handle himself in the pit), and it proved to be a bit more challenging than the Avail pit, though the stage divers and crowd surfers tended to be a bit less beefy. I still took a moderate kick to the side of the head from one doofus, but also played a crucial role in sending several others crashing to the floor.

By the time the Ergs finished - around 8:30 pm - there wasn't much else going on in the other venues. There was a Small Brown Bike reunion, but I'd never got into them the first time around, and some band called Seaweed, whom I remembered as being vaguely big sometime back in the 80s or early 90s. I think they had long hair and were kind of in that Nirvana vein, but whatever it was, it had nothing to do with me, so I stood around with the rest of the Ergs crowd outside Common Grounds, renewing old acquaintances, making new ones, and trying to stay warm. Eventually I ended up in one of those 17-person hotel rooms for what was supposedly a "party," but looked more like a bunch of guys and on or two girls lounging around drinking beer while the last World Series game played silently on the TV.

It was still technically my birthday, remember, so I left on my own and got some Krispy Kreme donuts in lieu of a birthday cake (I seemed to have become immune to the smell, which was a bit worrying), and headed back to my hotel to sleep. In the morning I made it to Tampa in record time, caught a plane to Washington, and despite my aching feet, did some sightseeing, taking in the White House, the National Mall, the Washington Monument, and the Capitol. I'd seen the first three previously, albeit briefly, but this was the first time I'd ever got a good look at the Capitol. Pretty snazzy, I must say, though I'll have to go back another time to take the tour and see the inside.

In prior visits to Washington, I'd been mainly occupied in protesting (1967) or seeing an Avail show (1994 or 95), and hadn't really had more than a cursory look at anything. I did walk past the White House in 1967 - this was back when you could still get a lot closer than you can now - and imagined I saw President Johnson looking out an upstairs window with the weight of the world on his shoulders. It was later that same night when I met two teenyboppers from Baltimore down near the Jefferson Memorial, where we in turn were picked up and given a place to stay by a young man who worked for Senator Fulbright and had a picture of himself as a teenager shaking hands with John F. Kennedy. I may never be able to prove it with any certitude (unless I meet him again and ask him), but I'm about 99% certain that our host that night was a 21 year old Bill Clinton.

My sightseeing this time was cut short by my sore feet and temperatures that were way too chilly for the wardrobe I'd packed with Florida in mind. I ended up staying indoors after dark instead of investigating Washington's night life, assuming it has any (it certainly didn't in the neighborhood where I was staying, where everything, even the Subway and the Starbucks, seemed to close up by 7 pm). The following morning I caught the train back to New York and arrived just in time for the long-awaited Weakerthans show.

My friend and hero John K. Samson had grown a beard for the occasion, prompting me to ask him if he was honoring the spirit of Gainesville, though his beard would have been far too neat and kempt (I know that's not a word, but it should be) for the Fest crowd. Perhaps they in especially high spirits because of having the next day off, but for whatever reason, the Weakerthans played a full hour and forty-five minutes, something that would be unforgivable in most bands, but in this case was still barely enough. They did two encores which together added up to almost a show in themselves, and ran through nearly half of the songs from their new album, of which "Sun In An Empty Room" hit me with the most impact, especially followed as it was by "Left And Leaving."

As I explained to John afterward, the last three and a half years for me have been all about empty rooms and leaving places behind; first Spy Rock, then London, and finally Berkeley. I especially remembered the look of the Spy Rock house as I said my last goodbyes to it, with the sun spilling though the windows and splashing off the wood, looking so rich and warm and inviting and at the same time so desolate and forlorn.

And I guess I feel a bit desolate and forlorn myself at times, cut adrift from so much of what was familiar and waiting for my new life to take form. Part of my problem in the past was that while I was always ready to try new adventures in new places, I could never quite bring myself to let go of the old ones, so I'd find myself in the uncomfortable and untenable position of trying to live several places at once.

Now there's just one place, here in Brooklyn, and while my present living circumstances are not completely ideal, I can't think of anywhere else I want to be. It's still not quite home, but more and more it's beginning to feel that way. Tearing across Manhattan today on a series of errands, arguing with an intractable bank clerk who didn't want to let me open an account there because "you don't live or work in the neighborhood," zipping up my fleece and shivering slightly as another foretaste of winter blew in off the Hudson, I thought, yes, this is my life now, and you know, it's a pretty good one.

20 Minutes Is The New Half Hour

Because of the insane number of bands scheduled to play the Fest (I'm guessing about 180 offhand, though I gave up trying to count) and the limited amount of space and time in which they can do their playing, many, if not the majority of the bands have been limited to 20-minute sets.

I'm here to testify that this is a very good set length, perhaps the ideal set length, and one that should become an all-purpose benchmark, rather like the three minute song (two to two and a half for pop punk) or the 90 minute movie. There are exceptions, of course, mostly for the bands who have been around forever and have a whole host of classic songs that everyone (or at least someone) just has to hear, but the way I'm thinking tonight, any band that can't say what it came to say in 20 minutes needs to rethink it message and/or MO.

Day two of the Fest ended a bit anticlimactically for me, with the Sidebar, where Dear Landlord were playing and where I'd expected to spend the waning minutes of my 50s, so overcrowded that people were lined up down the block in the vain hope of getting in. I'd laughed at my friends for going in an hour earlier, but they had the last laugh, as I was left cooling my heels out on the sidewalk and finally deciding to call it an early night after a long and strenuous day. No birthday cake being in evidence, I stopped at the 24 hour Krispy Kreme for some donuts and decaf, and while I'm not all that familiar with Krispy Kreme establishments, being more of a Dunkin' Donuts man myself, I feel I have to share the news that the Gainesville Krispy Kreme is very possibly the worst smelling retail food establishment in the entire United States of America, if not the the entire Western Hemisphere. The stench, something like rotting lard mingled with rancid butter and decomposing body parts, hits you the minute you walk in the door, and leaves me completely bewildered as to how anyone manages to stand it long enough to order some donuts (which, surprisingly if not shockingly, are very tasty).

Tonight was a real party at the Krispy Kreme, in fact, with an exuberant white lady who'd just come back from the Florida Gators game drowning her sorrows over the Gators' loss by buying donuts for half a dozen adults and children who happened to wander in from an African-American church outing. "Hallelujah, we've been blessed!" one lady kept telling everyone, including yours truly, and I thought of putting a bid in for a free birthday donut or two, then thought instead of paying for the donuts of the person in line behind me, but ultimately rejected both notions.

Or perhaps I was distracted by the counter lady, an elderly African-American, unleashing a stentorian barrage of abuse at her white boss who'd been foolish or careless enough to get her in way while she was trying to get donuts out of the display cabinet. "How many times I gots to tell you stay in yo back room? You gettin' all underfoot, how the hell I supposed to do my job!" I almost thought she was going to give him a clip around the ear as he went scurrying back to his lair. It would appear as though race relations in the Deep South have undergone a bit of a revolution, at least insofar as the local Krispy Kreme is concerned.

Anyway, to recap the day: made it down onto University Avenue, the Fest's main drag, a little before two, just in time to be too late for the much-anticipated Max Levine Ensemble. They were just carrying out drums and mopping up sweat as I strolled in. Stayed for a some of Environmental Youth Crunch before stepping next door to Chez Subway for my breakfast sub, then back into the club for The Dauntless Elite, who put on with the best and liveliest sets thus far, and further enlivened it by speaking in charming and endearing Yorkshire accents (they're from Leeds), which filled me with nostalgia for my time in London, where a northern accent of any kind, but especially a Yorkshire one, is often the cause of instant merriment, functioning much a Southern accent in the United States.

Then it was time for Delay, the Columbus, Ohio identical twin-fronted power punk trio that is one of the most exciting live bands in existence today. In order to see them, I had to miss the Copyrights, also one of my favorite bands, but choices had to be made, and I think I made the right one. I think I've now been a Delay fan long enough that I can actually tell the twins apart, or maybe it's that Ryan has started drinking beer, leaving him with a more raffish and ruffled look than Austin, who has retained the edge. Just a theory, folks.

Caught a bit of Hot New Mexicans before joining up with the PPMB posse for a scenic tour of University Avenue, then back to 1982 (the club, not the year) for one of the best shows of the Fest (there have been several of these already) from Mississippi's One Reason. I'd never heard them, and had always assumed from the name they were some sort of youth crew posicore outfit, but not at all: they're a straight-ahead punk band with powerful, anthemic female/male vocals and a crowd that obviously adores them. Way intense.

Then it was time for American Steel, who I last saw nine or ten years ago at Gilman, when they were in their first heyday as the darlings of all the Gilman kids who were too young to have seen Operation Ivy and Crimpshrine. Now, having apparently decided that Communiqué, their Interpol tribute band, wasn't working out, they're back to what they do best, and the crowd absolutely loved it.

I did, too, but not so much that I didn't cut out a bit early to see Boston's Witches With Dicks play some frantic melodic hardcore to a packed house at the Sidebar. They're nowhere near as slick as American Steel, but every bit as exciting.

On my way out of the American Steel show, I ran into my old friend Beau Beau from Avail, who I barely recognized at first, because his beard had gotten so long (not to mention his Davy Crockett coonskin cap, which I hadn't seen him sporting before). He told me Avail were going to sing Happy Birthday to me from the stage, which they ended up not doing (probably a blessing for all concerned), but Tim, their lead singer, did dedicate not just a song, but the entire set to me, which was, to say the least, rather touching.

I was watching from the back at that point (Avail crowds can get, shall we say, quite lively), but after receiving that dedication, there was no way I could stay there, and went charging up to the front of the stage, where I spent the better part of an hour fending off lumpy bearded stagedivers who seemed determined to land on me, and got a big sweaty hug from Tim in the midst of it all. Things really went off during the last song, sort of they way they do during the last few minutes of a fireworks display, and at one climactic moment, three stagedivers simultaneously crashed into my head and shoulders, causing me momentarily to think I'd dislocated or broken my neck.

This is going to sound great in the emergency ward, I thought: "Um, sir, you're 60 years old and you broke your neck in the pit at a punk rock show?" But I guess the years of t'ai chi and my new gym regimen have paid off, because the old neck stood up under the onslaught and I walked away sweaty but unbowed.

Things tailed off after that; I watched part of Dillinger Four, who if possible elicited an even more insane crowd response than Avail had, but who left a bad taste in my mouth when Paddy gave a shout-out to "Brooklyn cocaine." Ironically (though I'm not sure he would have seen the irony), just a few between-songs diatribes earlier, he'd been slagging off the 70s, which of course was the last time rock stars helped create cocaine chic (as well as launching a thousand lucrative rehab centers).

What else? Had an outstanding Cuban sandwich (it's a specific type of sandwich, not an ethnic classification), ran into Toby Jeg from Red Scare Records, who despite his ferocious and belligerent online personality, turned out to be jolly and friendly as can be, and had a few minutes to reflect on how lucky I am to be here at the Fest. Just before I left New York, Aaron Cometbus said, "Don't you think it's kind of risky spending your birthday there? It just seems like there are that many more things with the potential to go wrong."

And I thought maybe he had a point, but decided to do it anyway, and it's been nothing but awesome, beards, drunks and all. Most if not all people are totally friendly, there's an embarrassment of riches when it comes to good music, and even though it's not sunny, it's warm enough to stroll around in shirtsleeves all through the day and night.

I was telling somebody that ten years or so ago, I might have been afraid to come to an event of this type because there were so many punks who claimed to be mad at me for "ruining" or "selling out" the punk scene. I often did encounter hostility from complete strangers when they found out who I was, even at places like Gilman, that had been more or less my second home.

But not only has all of that faded away - or perhaps it's just that most punks no longer know or care who I am - but also, looking around at the numbers and the enthusiasm of the people here, any attempts to "ruin" or "sell out" punk would have been pointless anyway, because it's bigger and stronger and better than ever. And I just thought, wow, all these years and all these people, all this crazy, life-giving and life-enhancing energy and I'm still here, right in the middle of it. Someday, sooner or (hopefully) later, I won't be able to do this any longer, but right now, in this moment, I can't think of another place on earth I'd rather be.

The Fest So Far

New York seems so far away at the moment, especially because my trip down here was not the straightforward affair it might have been. Knowing I was going to miss my old friends Pansy Division and the Avengers, who will be playing at New York's Knitting Factory on Saturday night, I made a side trip to Baltimore to catch them on Wednesday.

Baltimore looked better than I remembered it, perhaps helped by the fact that Matt from Dead Mechanical and the Sick, Sick Birds took me in hand and guided me to not one but two fine dining establishments, the first where we had an excellent Afghani meal. My review, apart from the very good food: "This place has tablecloths. I usually can't afford to eat at New York restaurants that have tablecloths."

We then had a second dinner with members of the bands (actually, just dessert for us) at the charmingly bizarre Zodiac Cafe and Bar, very close to the Lo-Fi Social Club, where the gig actually took place. It was a long and leisurely meal, full of scandalous sex and tour stories (I had none of my own to offer, but it was fun to listen) before we had to dash through the now-pouring rain for the show itself.

Which was good, but I'm in a hurry to finish this Fest post so I can get back to the Fest, so let's just cut to the following morning, when I caught a train to Washington DC's very impressive Union Station (never been there before; it puts New York's Penn Station to shame), where I had a few minutes to step outside and marvel at a few fancy buildings before hopping on the similarly impressive Washington Metro, which is just like San Francisco's BART (same builders, I believe) except that it's cheap and it works. Anybody connected with BART should be ashamed (if those vampires of public transit were capable of such an emotion) to see how much better Washington has done with its system. It took me to National Airport in 23 minutes for (I think) $1.45 (compared with 65 minutes, three separate trains, and almost $6 to get to SFO), and I got a plane to Tampa.

Tampa was the home of the much ballyhooed pre-Fest show, which turned out to be about a thousand drunken beardos, some of whom were actually quite nice, and about a hundred regular people milling around inside and outside a skate park on the edge of, if not right in the middle of one of Tampa's, shall we say, less affluent neighborhoods. All the bands sounded like Crimpshrine with beards, which could be either a good thing or a bad thing, depending, but I couldn't stick around too late (apparently the show went on till 4 am), so I left around 11 and drove to Gainesville, rested up, and on Friday afternoon met up with PPMB luminaries Chris Grivet, Chadd Derkins, Carla Monoxide and Chelsea Short Attention for an alligator hunt which proved fruitless, though we did turn up a whole slew of giant snapping turtles.

After that I explored a bit of Gainesville before the shows actually started, featuring yet more bearded Crimpshrines, but also the poppier sound of the Methadones and the now almost legendary SoCal veterans Toys That Kill. We stopped in for about 45 seconds of Naked Raygun before Grivet proclaimed, "Okay, it's history and I've seen it, let's go." I will say that the NR singer looked as though he hadn't aged a bit since I last saw them sometime in the 80s. That was impressive. The music, not so much.

Apart from that, most of the time was spent hanging out on the sidewalks of University Avenue, watching the freak and beard parade stroll and stumble by. Oh, and at the very first show of the night I found myself standing behind my onetime business partner and co-founder of Lookout Records, David Hayes, whom I hadn't seen or spoken to (apart from a couple email/internet exchanges) in at least 10 years, probably more. He was sporting - what else? - a beard, and seemed rather startled to see me at the Fest, as well he might be, since up until a year or so ago, I would have been startled to see myself here as well. Unfortunately he left before anyone turned up with a camera, but maybe today or tomorrow.

Okay, I'm off to see the Max Levine Ensemble, Delay, Vagina Sore, Jr., the Ringers, possibly Avail and American Steel, and about 10,000 other bands. Next time you hear from me it will probably be my birthday, which starts at midnight tonight and, thanks to the end of Daylight Savings Time, carries on for 25 rather than the usual 24 hours. Wish me well or not as the case may be; the fact remains that I'm at the Fest and you're not! Well, except for you sad Festgoers reading this on your Blackberries, of course...

A Plague Of Musos

It's old news now, because my life is so disorganized and chaotic that I can never manage to blog about things when they're going on, but last week was CMJ week in New York City, CMJ standing for, oh, I don't know, College Music Journalism or something like that? It's an annual dealie where thousands of writers, PR flacks, label honchos, scam artists and quite a few musicians convene in lower Manhattan for purposes of getting off their faces and running deals past, through and around each other.

I never participated in it during my years in the "industry" (perhaps you can infer why from the comments above, and it was a source of some chagrin when my successors at Lookout Records started laying out the big bucks not only to attend, but to put on major showcases. To be fair, though, many of the kids growing up in New York during that time (late 90s/early 00s) have very fond memories of those CMJ shows, and frankly, if I hadn't been such a grumpy puss, I probably could have come along and enjoyed them,too.

But as it was, I never attended a CMJ event until this year, and then only because various friends of mine were in attendance, in certain cases friends that I wouldn't be likely to see again until, well, at least next year. Foremost among them was Mr. Grant Lawrence, former (and perhaps future; there's increasing talk of a reunion) frontman for Vancouver's mighty Smugglers and present CBC radio personality. Grant was in outstanding form as he regaled anyone within earshot with amazing tales of people, places and the music business, all of which had at least some elements of truth to them, but which were equally well seasoned with a rather substantial dollop of fanciful invention. As they should be, Grant being a firm adherent to the "Never let the facts get in the way of a good story" school of thought.

Celebrity has clearly been doing Grant some good. Once the oldest-looking 25 year old in Western Canada or at least from Vancouver to the Sunshine Coast, Grant has somehow magically been transformed into one of the youngest looking 30-whatever-he-is-nows you're likely to meet. How exactly this has been accomplished remains a mystery to me, though I hope it doesn't involve the CBC's rather generous surgical benefits program.

Anyway, it was great to see Grant once more and be inspired by close communion with someone who lives so close to the beating, throbbing heart of rock and roll. I also found time to call in at the Weston acoustic show, where three members (sans drummer) dragged bales of hay, cowboy hats, chimes and a rain stick up onto the Mercury Lounge stage for an hour and a half of campfire-style singalongs and coruscating comedy, much of it courtesy of Dave Weston and the inadvertent humor of a rather intoxicated (or just plain loony) female audience member.

This was on Day 1 of CMJ; two days later I met up with Grant again at the Mint Records showcase, and by then I was all CMJ'd out. Anyway, if you noticed an unusual increase in the number of dark-clad hipsters and their limo-driven paymasters on the streets of New York City last week, now you know what was up. And you can safely forget all about it, until next year at the very least

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The Marxist "Punk"

I don't usually have much time for Terry Eagleton, though I did appreciate his demolition job on Richard Dawkins's ridiculous The God Delusion. For the most part, however, Eagleton is one of a hopefully dying breed of obfuscatory lit-crits who helped turn muddled pedantry and sophism into an academic benchmark that did untold damage to the reasoning abilities of a generation of liberal arts and humanities undergrads.

Now that his brand of bafflegab is fading from fashion, Eagleton, naturally casting about for ways to sustain interest (and, more importantly, book sales), seems to have hit upon a winner by launching a feud with the family and heirs of Kingsley Amis. So far Martin Amis, Kingsley's son and an author of some renown in his own right (not a patch on his father, though, I think most would agree) has stayed largely above the fray, but other members of the Amis clan have weighed in, ensuring that this one should run for a while.

The fact that the Daily Mail, aka the Voice of Middle England, has dived into this brouhaha with such alacrity (three articles in less than a week) should indicate that Eagleton's strategy is working, though it's hard to imagine most readers accustomed to the punchy and pithy (well, short, anyway) sentences of the Mail would react to the tortuous and opaque prose favored by Eagleton.

And for all the invective Eagleton has hurled at Amis père and fils, it seems as though no response would be necessary beyond pointing out that Eagleton is a self-described Marxist. Doesn't his subscription to such a completely discredited ideology pretty much negate any credentials, academic, intellectual or moral, he may have acquired along the way? It's like an astrophysicist expecting to be taken seriously after informing us he's a member of the Flat Earth Society, or a human rights activist who's still touting the virtues of National Socialism.

Just Like Old Times

When I was living/squatting/hiding out from the East Village in 1968, it was not unusual for young hippies like myself to be approached by black panhandlers and/or scam artists who would try to guilt trip us into parting with our cash as, you know, our way of apologizing for slavery and segregation and all that sort of stuff.

Sometimes this would involve the good cop-bad cop approach, where one guy would be all menacing and threatening and then the other would be like, "Hey, don't be messing with him, he's not like most of them white people, I can tell he's cool, ain't that right, brother?" This particular approach once worked well enough (granted, I was very high on LSD at the time) to persuade me to accompany three unsavory characters down E. 11th Street past Avenue B, then generally considered the point at which all hope should be abandoned (and also, not coincidentally, where I lived) to get my head smashed in with the barrel of a gun.

Usually things didn't turn out that badly, though; more often a result satisfactory to all parties was reached with the handing over of a buck or two, sometimes but not always in exchange for some oregano or similar marijuana substitute. Even when they realized they'd been hustled, many white kids who'd only recently arrived in the city from more affluent suburbs felt a certain glow of accomplishment, thinking that they'd assumed their proper position in the urban food chain.

The knock on the head, resulting in my coming close to bleeding to death, disabused me rather more quickly of such romantic notions, and soon - it happened just as often in San Francisco and Berkeley - I could see what was coming before most hustlers could get a "Yo, brother" out of their mouths.

There were times - not often, but occasionally - where I'd hand over some cash, either because the guy's story was exceptionally good or because it seemed like the better part of valor, but even when I did, I rarely pretended to believe what I heard. And gradually people stopped asking. I don't know if that sort of appeal went out of fashion or if it just didn't look like something that would work on me, but until tonight it had been years - decades, more like - since someone tried the race card on me as a means of extracting cash.

It didn't start out that way. The guy followed me into Ray's ice cream and fries shop on Avenue A where I was getting my ritual black and white cone (Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder may have ebony and ivory; the black and white cone is my bit for racial harmony) before heading home for the night.

He was rattling a cup with a few coins in it and asked for some more "so I can get something to eat." The cloud of alcohol fumes enveloping him told a different story and I pointed that out. A lively discussion ensued for quite some time while Ray was refilling the ice cream machine, during which Ray would occasionally shout from the back, "Get a job, panhandling is no good!" Eventually I was almost willing to believe that the guy genuinely wanted something to eat, and though I wasn't going to give him money, offered to buy him some food.

Then things went downhill, when Mr. Beggar started spouting off about how Ray was "rich" and how his daddy must have given him the money to buy his shop, when in fact Ray had worked over 20 years as a dishwasher to earn the money. Then, perhaps even more unwisely, he claimed to be making more money than either Ray or myself and that he begged only "for something to do, to get out of the house."

At this point he whipped out a bottle of vodka and took a large swig, claiming that "I can drink if I want to," which had never been under dispute, only the matter of who was going to pay for it. I said that I wasn't going to, and perhaps unfairly withdrew my offer to buy him some food.

That's when it turned ugly. "I never got my 40 acres and a mule, either. You people enslaved me, you owe me now."

The appropriate reaction to this would have been uproarious laughter, but instead I got mad, pointing out that though he did look the worse for wear, I was pretty sure all the slaves had been freed at least 100 years before he was born and that neither I nor my ancestors were anywhere near this country when that whole slavery thing was going on.

By now the discussion had moved out onto Avenue A, and got uglier. "I don't need to ask for no money," he snarled, "I could just take it, you know." At that point I blew a fuse and started shouting that I was calling the police and for him to get the fuck away from me. This got quite a reaction from the peanut gallery of drunks and occasional spare changers who usually congregate outside the bodega.

At first they laughed at me, thinking I was being way too paranoid. Street robberies are not exactly common on that stretch of Avenue A; in fact, I can't remember the last time I heard of one. So I half yelled at, half reasoned with them, explaining just why the guy had set me off like that, and so impassioned was I that they ended up more or less agreeing with me. Or at least giving a pretty fair impression thereof.

Meanwhile the original beggar had slunk off into the darkness and I headed off for the subway, now only mad at myself for being such a doofus. As messed up as the guy was, I felt I was in the wrong for first promising to buy him food and then going back on the promise, and resolved to apologize to him if/when I see him again. At the same time, that whole reparations/"you owe us" scam really does set me off, whether being worked by street hustlers or professionals of the Sharpton-Jackson ilk.

But trying to reason with a drunk guy about the finer points of racial history or socio-economic theory? That's the kind of thing only other drunk guys have even a shred of an excuse for doing, and I haven't been drunk in over six years. In fact, one of the last times I got into a confrontation of this sort was when I was drunk, sometime in 2000 or 2001, and found myself wrestling with a crackhead on the rain-slicked pavement of Oxford Street over a lighter he'd borrowed and refused to give back.

It was a definite clue that something wasn't quite right with the way I was going about life, and I'm generally pleased to say that since I stopped drinking, voilà, no more wrestling with crackheads. But I found tonight's encounter disturbing for much the same reason: although I wasn't drunk, I was acting and (not) thinking dangerously close to the way a drunk guy acts and thinks. Perhaps it's time to take a hard look at my ice cream cone habit.

"Moral Reasons" Or Just Plain Nuts?

I must admit that while I often lose patience with aging baby boomers (myself included), the ones that most stoke my ire are those who not only seem to have learned nothing from the decade-long plunge into drug-fueled nihilism that tried to pass itself off as a "revolution," but who continue to this day to fuel the flames of ignorance and misinformation by insisting that there was actually something noble and admirable about the 60s generation's flirtation with totalitarianism and violence.

The worst offenders tend to be those who weren't actually there at the height of the "revolution," who for one reason or another didn't make it onto the scene until it was becoming obvious to most sentient observers that as bad at the US government may or may not have been at the time, a bunch of fantasy-driven young terrorists drawing upon the likes of mass murder Mao Zedong for inspiration, were not likely to represent an improvement. Like most kids who show up on the scene when the scene has already evaporated or moved on, they tried desperately to be even more radical, even more outrageous than their big brothers and sisters.

Ward Churchill, the phony Indian who managed to lie his way into a lucrative professorship, was one such; 30 years after the scales had fallen from most people's eyes, he was still lauding mad bombers and bank robbers from the 60s and early 70s as American heroes, and calling for the sort of violent revolution that, in the unlikely event it ever materialized, would spell disaster and death for the people - especially genuine Native Americans - he claimed to be advocating on behalf of.

Another, considerably less well known, but similarly befuddled, is Ron Jacobs, who when not reminiscing wistfully about taking drugs at bad early 70s rock concerts, waxes equally nostalgic about the bomb-planting young fascists and mental cases of the Weather Underground. He's written an entire book extolling their alleged virtues, and regularly submits articles to Counterpunch pushing a similar theme.

In his latest piece, Jacobs muses over why young people who come to hear him speak about the 60s radicals "seem to be looking for some kind of psychological flaw in the members of those movements." Um, possibly because they're not on the same kind of drugs you were, Ron? I mean, we are talking (in this piece, Jacobs cites with some admiration convicted Weather terrorist Cathy Wilkerson, who hosted the Greenwich Village bomb making party that blew three young radicals to smithereens in 1970) about people who, by most accounts, were constructing anti-personnel bombs of the sort that routinely go off in Iraq, Afghanistan, and the West Bank.

Can't kids these days see, Jacobs wonders, that yesterday's terror bombers (does he feel similarly about today's?) were motivated by "moral reasons" and "conscience?" The fact that most of them can't cheers me immensely, and the only reason that I bother writing on this subject is that there are still young people - sometimes, like their 60s counterparts, motivated by the best of intentions - who still idealize or glorify the solipsistic megalomaniacs of the 60s "underground."

As I've noted here before, I knew and was quite fond of one of the Weatherpeople who blew herself up that day in 1970. A couple different forks in the road, a slightly different combination of mind-altering drugs, and it's quite possible I could have come to a similar end. But once the drugs wore off, it was painfully obvious just how tragically stupid the whole business was, and how fortunate I and many other 60s survivors were to have gotten out before the insanity reached a point of no return.

Of course for pampered scions of the ruling class like Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorhn, there was no such thing as a point of no return; Daddy's money was able to buy their way back into polite society when the "revolution" didn't work out, but working class radicals - yours truly, for example - didn't usually do so well. Considering how much money my dad could have spared for my defense out of his Post Office salary, I might, if I was lucky, be getting out of prison right about now.

Oh, but there I go stirring up class warfare again, so perhaps I'd better cool it before someone mistakes me for a commie.