excuse my absenteeism but the heatwave levelled me--having asthma and serious allergies to pollen and mold made my life miserable for a bit there but i've got a bit of a reprieve so i figured i'd check out the news...and what? no one posted? hmph! and why do i have to post about maria mckee? i did not go alone. i thought she was fun and funny but i sorta was a bit disappointed as the video for shelter featuring maria mckee in a platinum haired frock and dock waif look was my fashion for the late 80's--her and ugghh...natalie merchant---i got stopped several times around that time by people who asked if i was natalie tho when i grew my hair long it was edie brickell so i totally gave up waif thing and what do i find when i watched the live part dvd of the woods--i've nearly achieved fashion oneness with carrie brownstein which is like not novel because she looks a lot like lauren graham/lorelei and tons of other people but short waist coats with low jeans rule tho i did notice she has the same problem i do--the pant slippage issue...i should tell her about the secret of buying dollar used ties as belts--i'm not sure they really help but anyway the reason i brought up lauren graham besides the fact that lucky jeans is having a half price sale and if anyone loves me they can buy me a pair (kidding) but when i was flat on my back with a sinus headache that made me wish for a guillotine i watched a repeat of the gilmore girls and lorelei said to luke "this town, our town, it's so glamorous" referencing the go-gos of course so that made my aching head feel no better but it my favorite gogos song so there was a poignant moment i suppose.
the other weird music moment was when my mother forced me out into the toxic air to attend the "town picnic" which was bizarre and i have the pictures to prove it. i have to post them. there is one i took of a kiddie elephant ride all folded up to be moved and i swear it looks like the last jeff koons show i saw. somehow i'm so confused by headaches that i have this memory that one of his fake amusement park inspired pieces fell down but unlike richard serra no one died and i don't know if richard serra's "sculpture" ever really killed anyone of if that is just urban legend...so anyway the weird music moment--i was wearing one of my 8 or so sleater-kinney shirts and the dj they hired was playing icky non-family rap and then she's a very kinky girl and i thought this is insane so i asked him if he had any gogos (not that the gogos themselves are family entertainment but their music is better than rick james)...and as i was walking around he put on the b-52's and then the ramones and then my mom wanted to go so i don't know if he ever played the gogos but it dawned on me could the sleazebag dj know sleater-kinney and know "i wanna be yr joey ramone?" i will never know....
i am actually posting because i'm trying to download my backlogged itunes and load some old cds on my ipod and one of the things i found to stick on there was what i think was the last installment of the kill rock stars comps stars kill rock and i remembered the last song kathleen hanna's cover of ben lee's i wish i was him...and that was like one of the best songs of the mid/late 90s for me. that and his indie world...whatever anyone thinks of mll (i know at least two ex-holeys--yes jeffrey you count as a holey and if you just post ANYTHING i will take it back) actually i've been so sick i haven't done laundry in forever and i got stuck wearing that dumb hole shirt with the grey heart on thursday and i want to hand paint the back--i used to think she was interesting and at one time made decent music but she's a lunatic who is obviously in a plastic surgery comp with joan rivers and altho my sympathy goes out to anyone forcibly detained--i draw the line at law breaking and dysfunctional child rearing...so i felt like an idiot in that shirt but it was the only clean thing i had and the day before i wore my old verso anniversary shirt that says in french (ugh) the beauty of the streets and has a siloheutte drawing of a girl in a mini-skirt heaving a brick over a barricade and i get starred at for that one too but i'm sure because it is in french the chance that anyone here knows that barricades have uses other than in highway constructiion are minimal...
so besides that krs comp...i found a magnetic fields song i actually like it is on a merge anniversary cd i found when i cleaned my study--plant white roses is great...so finally i found one i like! and i listened to the softies lp i bought years ago and never unwrapped and that was good...anyone know what rose melberg is doing now? i know she sang back up on neko case's virginian but i lost her after that...and i found this dumb cd i ripped off from my father's cds (hey what's he going to do complain?) called supergroups of the 70's and the first song is boston's more than a feeling and that made me eyeball this huge pile of lps and 45s i have in a box ready to sell and i thought--didn't sleater-kinney cover more than a feeling one either their first villa villa kula 45 (which is in the box to sell or their first EP?) i remember even hearing someone asking to hear it when i saw them at some dive bar with like 20 other people...and that is a big reason why i can't stand seeing them anymore...one their sound system ALWAYS sucks and having been nearly clobbered by carrie swinging her guitar i figure i've seen them at small venues why bother with bigger ones? okay here's another what happened to ....what happened to juliana hatfield? i never liked the blake babies but the krs mll EP features her on backing vocals on lights are changing and i like that cover....
also on the cd is elo's evil woman which i swore for years was "medieval woman" and now that cbs has fired cousin brucie and changed to jack-fm and plays tons of 70s supergroups i'm sure i don't need it on my ipod but it is too late...i loaded the whole cd except santana's cover of black magic woman because i still have never heard the fleetwood mac version but i have this feeling i'll be underwhelmed because to me fleetwood mac is all about stevie...so if i found a version of stevie doing black magic woman i'd give everything i own for it...when i was a kid cousin brucie once was signing autographed pictures of himself at shop rite and i had one hanging in my room when i was like 4 and i never knew who he was...now he's like the symbol of generational cultural conflict and another reason not to ever own satellite radio--cousin brucie and howard stern and i think i heard martha stewart was headed there but maybe i dreamed that...
okay this incomprehensible post is going to end shortly--the only thing i was left wondering about maria mckee and her interminable search for the "right" band which anthony and i both of course thought of another singer we are fond of who has similar "right" band issues is why do some singers like maria m and the other singer we love get so obsessive about bands and someone like neko case will set up and sing with like next to any band she finds? some singers get so stuck on the band thing and others don't and i wonder what the difference is--is it a personality thing or a creative thing or a little of both?
i'm tired so anthony can explain what i mean (or at least i hope he can). and so now i posted...everyone else here has to post one thing cuz i'm sick and i posted at 4am--make the leap!
later...
I'm probably gonna post my own Maria McKee post some time this week, okay? But I just needed to post that I feel vindicated in telling you that you had the Carrie look in December when you cut your hair. Now the circle is completing itself.
Posted by: anthony | June 20, 2005 at 11:28 PM
the funny thing about the whole band concept: part of the reason i didn't post for twelve days is that when i come up with an idea for a post, i get caught up in whether or not it's worth posting about, whether it will fit in with the tone of other recent posts, whether it will take focus away from something else recently posted. you, franny, have known me long enough to know that i know your endless frustration over my endless inability and unwillingness to write. my dream as a teen/college student was to write in some way and i've been told the key was to keep journals and to just write, write, write - but even on other message boards and mailing lists i've always had trouble just sitting down an posting.
so i totally get the mindset of maria and of that other singer we love because i think i have it. but i think of it as a character flaw! i hate that about myself and i wish i had the discipline to be sponteneous. and i think if i had the talent to sing or play that i wish i had, i'd be totally caught up in making sure i had the right chemistry. and that goes against almost everything i love about the process of art as an observer, because i think in order to let ideas come to fruition you have to let them grow organically and fail a lot. i spent most of my time as a potential writer pissed at myself for not getting it all at the same time, and that even goes against that rilke quote about not looking for all the answers at once.
which is a lot more convoluted an answer than i thought i was going to give, but does that make any sense? i think it's a mixture of both the creative and personality things. the thing is, i also think - well look at the guitarist that we love that the singer we love loves who ironically is more of a neko-type - that the formula is that if you do play where you can it helps you anyway, because you're so visible and because you can develop a following. one of the things i found inspiring about the flaming lips movie is that wayne didn't let a little thing like talent get in the way at first... he literally kept the band going until they were actually good. that's a special kind of passion right there.
the other thing is that i think you have to do what makes you happy. robbie robertson would almost never play live after leaving the band, and would just work in private and release something occasionally. john lennon disappeared for years. i think forcing yourself to do anything that makes you miserable would take away from the work. but i'm the one who thinks about posting for a week before he does.
on a weird side note: for canada day the new pornographers and the sadies are going to play a double bill for relatively free in prospect park. NO NEKO! she's recording her album with who knows... so the sadies will play a sadies set and the n.p.'s will have a new temporary female vocalist. though maybe not so ironic since neko isn't really from canada.
honestly i think that maria m and the other singer should play with the sadies because it saves the sadies from playing on their own.
Posted by: anthony | June 21, 2005 at 10:46 PM