New Gun's N' Roses track leaked from the least-released album in history. Not entirely ridiculous, which is somewhat of a let-down. Sounds like LA, kinda.

"IRS" - Listen

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Marika Takahashi shows you how to get right for the summer.

Concert Review: Fiery Furnances

Alright, let’s get one thing off the chest: Eleanor Friedberger in white hot jeans is enough to make any red-blooded male start speaking like his tongue is five sizes too big. Which is why, after the show, when I asked her to sign a copy of Gallowsbird Bark, I mumbled out something which sounded like something else. I tried to say, “I’m a horrible fan, I’ve never asked anyone for their autograph before,” and she heard “You’re a horrible band, blaeh bluu blahjeh blah bleh.” Likewise, when I tried to pay her brother a compliment about his intricate and expansive songwriting, I just ended up saying, “Dude, you guys are gods!” I didn’t so much crack under pressure as just melt into a fanboy.

The show itself was far outside any such disappointing behavior; loud, and less strategic, the concert was a great sonic embellishment of their albums. The differences in trying to reproduce are largely supplanted by noise and power, though Matt Friedberger had a decent set of effects pedals to mimic the orchestra weirdness of Blueberry Boat and Gallowsbird. The Who and Led Zepplin were on the stage in spirit as much as any other influence, much moreso than on their albums. Another big difference was Eleanor taking over most of the vocals, which is no surprise given the versatility and personality of her voice, but it disappointed me not hearing the of Matt’s lines from “Chief Inspector Blancheflower”:

And said Michael is there something that you need to say to me?
Well I don’t know how to tell you.
You can tell me any
Thing that you want ‘cept I started seeing Jenny:
I started seeing Jenny.
My Jenny?
And he looked down at the floor.
You know damn well she ain’t your Jenny no more.

Selections from their newer album, Rehearsing My Choir, were reinterpreted completely, with Eleanor singing all of her grandmother’s lines, and eschewing most of the rambling complexity of the instrumentation in favor of raw chord power. Which I don’t blame them for; Busta Rhymes can’t rap as fast during a concert, but he’s still a presence and has enormous energy; likewise with the FF. Bringing the lyrical and biographical elements of Choir to a live performance is a big counterintuitive. The album has been described by multiple reviews as an experiment, a sort of oral family history in the modern mode. But the selections they played from Choir were crowd-pleasingly fun, and its tempting to think what a live version of that album might do for the original.

In any case, see them live if they’re coming by, and at the least check out the links below.

- A review of Blueberry Boat on Slate, with multiple links to song clips
- An incredible analysis of all the songs on Blueberry Boat
- Band Website

The Originalist

Ok, so, after all, Simon buys a phone. Not without some reluctance, for both big, sociological issues (i really don't like the way cell phone companies are run in the states, nor the prevalent ethics underlying public cell phone use), technological issues (is a camera on your phone still a selling point, or is it ever a convenient gadget, like, say when your out-modelled tub breaks and you need to send your architect father a picture of the spout so he can call around and find a horribly rare 1" fine-thread tub spout with a catch), as well as the strictly personal ones (get off my back, ex-girlfriend).

Those around me certainly aren't surprised by the 7 months i've spent without a personal locator device. Part of the subtle reasoning is that i miss my London lifestyle, where i rode double-decker busses to work, had free incoming calls on convenient Virgin phones without contractual strings, and drank constantly like yeast was a vitamin supplement (which it was, >10 pints a week and i never got a canker sore the whole time there). I've also been months without a car, which is as necessary in North Carolina as it would be ludicrous in London. I get by, though, happily, because the busses are regular, and i am nothing if not a creature of habit. Such is the course of an academic career, always being within a half-decent transit network, and always being forced to listen to innane conversations from how-drunk-i-gots and how-hot-she's-nots.

Of course, there is always a movement towards personal destruction. I just tend to do it in more obvious ways. In Pittsburgh I did it with my thoughts (reading far too many German and Russian authors), in London i did it with my body (drinking far too many lagers instead of ales), and here i am doing it in my actions: i am rejecting the conventions of the rushing populace. Not that this is any particular feat of social triumph, or that riding a bike to catch a cross-town bus constitutes anything but a ridiculous travel schedule and a debilitating lack of sleep.

Implicit in such identification of 'deviant' or 'destructive' behavior is, however, a 'normal' life. Not necessarily the 2.5 kids variety, but at the least a pointing to what some might call the Principles of Modern Life: call back your friends, live near your work, don't be a skeez, and don't hurl pumpkins after November. I think these pricinples, or morals, whathaveyou, are fluid, and take at least a few years to get established. But when they are, the ubiquity of those principles is nearly absolute, and those happy in the orignal world are forced to change.

Example: lets say you live in a pre-cell phone world--lets say this is W1. Then cell phones come along, creating W2, and the question suddenly becomes binary: do you have a cell phone? Yes or no? If yes, great, give us your number and do what cell-phone havers do. If no, why not? And suddenly, the person who wants to live in W1 is made to feel initially insufficient. I say initially, because after 7 months of not having one, the same people who berated me for not having a cell were used to the fact, and stopped berating me (as much). I approached a world that was a little easier, something in-between, maybe W1.5.

But the principles of the new world are forever present, they don't go away if you ignore them, and they make a mark on even those that make a concerted effort at "backward living": bicycles as primary transportation, backyard farms as primary sustenance, sweaters as primary heating device. But every co-op has to live within the context of urban sprawl, and every car pool has to negotiate the gridlock of hybrid cars. I have no stomach or motivation for this sort of social action. Frankly i preffered the decade where i wasn't hyper-aware, and a little disconnection was just part of the day-to-day.
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Fire & Bile

Dale Peck. Firebrand Literary Journalist. Publishing Badboy. Critical Hatchet-Man. I find it rather difficult to speak about the contrarians that i admire. Which is not to say that my admiration extends far beyond the words they get on a page. I suppose a nasty review or an opposing view is always more fun to read than a glowing or conciliatory one.

But the reason i keep reading these assholes is because they so often make me mad by extending their to realms for which they aren't in premium form. Hitchens gets to rail on the American South, of which he sees himself as a resident (a rather dubious claim, based upon his 15-year residency in Washington, DC). He gets away with the typical nostalgia, th effect of which is like watching an episode of the Dukes of Hazzard, narrated by Shelby Foote. Not that Hitchens commands half of the authenticity of the Mississippian. And Dale Peck gets to write a children's book, which given the language of his criticism ("literature needs an enema") might be a bad parenting choice.

But what these bastards take away from the arguments they ruin by overextending they bring back in glamour. Peck, after his review of The Black Veil (with the infamous "Rick Moody is the worst author of his generation" line) is now the "current laureate of critical evisceration", and Hitchens gets on either MSNBC, Fox, or Bill Maher every week. Peck gets all sorts of glorious press, some he creates, like when he reviewed The Revenge of the Sith, or the glamour is visited upon him by force, such as getting smacked by Stanley Crouch for writing a review of his novel Always in Pursuit (titled: "American Booty"). I mean, you can't script this kind of excitement!


Choice Items:
- autobiographical essay in The New Republic.
- a review of Hatchet Jobs in Slate, focussing on Dale's paternal abuse
- a more academic analysis on the NY Review of Books
- an gosspy interview with Dale on Gawker
- another, more studious affair on The Morning News


Choice Quotes:
"Let's face it, cancer has become, in narrative terms, less a fatal disease than a gift, a learning experience, a personal triumph."

"Ulysses is nothing more than a hoax upon literature, a joint shenanigan of the author and the critical establishment."

"I have problems with Tim O’Brien’s writing. Because he lies and he tells you that he lies. And then he tells you that it doesn’t make a difference."

"I have this sense that human beings spend most of their lives with more or less of a layer of culture between them and the life they are actually living. That there is always something getting in the way. "