Year in review

"I'm a knight in shining armchair..." ~ Paul Westerberg

Denver Blizzard part II

Those of us who had to drudge out into the elements found a pleasant camaraderie with the people we encountered. You’d expect everyone would be in a foul mood but instead I found just the opposite. Pedestrians, drivers, even people in their doorways were all in pretty good spirits, just making the best of the situation. (Click on photos to enlarge images.)

Denver is a beautiful city, perhaps no more so when it is frosted.



Capitol Hill, our favorite neighborhood. You listening Pill Hill? Beacon Hill?



Broadway was empty. Imagine East Wash or Comm Ave or Wisconsin Avenue devoid of activity.



The Public Library, the Colorado Historical Society (that Buffalo is taller than either you or I), and the new wing of the Denver Art Museum.

The Capitol, outside the Denver Post, and an Inner City Sasquatch.

The view from work. The Library and Art Museum overlooking Civic Center, Civic Center sans drug dealers, and the the State House.

The sun peaked out just before setting. And I biffed pretty major on my walk home.

The Denver Blizzard

Moore School on Capitol Hill - Wednesday morning

Moore School - Thursday morning

Even the snowman was burdened by snow

Capitol Hill facing East to Cheesman Park

The King Soopers parking lot is normally packed by this time of day

It snowed and snowed and snowed and snowed
And when it stops nobody knowed.

Albert Ayler In the Aeroplane Over the Sea?

Sometimes you can convince yourself you hear something even if it isn't really there. For instance, is that Albert Ayler keening amidst the horns on The Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea?

The short answer is no, for Ayler, the free jazz saxophonist, died under mysterious circumstances in 1970, nearly thirty years before Neutral Milk released their master work.

The longer answer leaves the door ajar, as the ears don't lie.

For those of you who don't know Ayler, he grew up in a household that encouraged him to engage music. As a young man he joined the army, where he played in the army band. Many of Ayler's songs begin deceptively simple, with bold, military march-like statements or folk-like melodies. He quickly dismantles the familiarity of these formats, though, usually after running through a melody's first phrase. He eviscerates his songs and pushes them as far as he can, either by expanding them to skyward or folding them into some minute, mitochondrial corner. The results make for exhilarating, if not difficult listening.

The universe he unfurls finds a kindred spirit in Jeff Mangum's voice, itself a rude but convincing instrument, and instrumentation found on In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.

Mangum's lyrics have a certain biology to them, the human body and the human condition are fraught with bewildering emotion, but also clinical objectivity. When he sings "Now how I remember you / How I would push my fingers through / Your mouth to make those muscles move / That made your voice so smooth and sweet," I cannot tell if this is a tender moment, or one of self serving discovery. Need they be mutually exclusive? Ayler explores a similar sentiment in his songs, especially as he allows his rhythm sections to explore their instruments with an intimacy befitting of any Two-Headed Boy.

To that end, I cobbled together an album of both artists.

In the Aylerplane Over the Sea :

1 : Ghosts: First Version : Albert Ayler (Spiritual Unity)
2 : King Of Carrot Flowers Part 1
3 : King Of Carrot Flowers Part 2 & 3
4 : In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
5 : Two-Headed Boy
6 : Our Prayer : Albert Ayler (The House That Trane Built Impulse Records Story)
7 : Holland, 1945
8 : Communist Daughter
9 : Oh Comely
10 : Ghost
11 : Our Prayer : Albert Ayler (At Slug's Saloon Vol. 1)
12 : Two-Headed Boy Part 2

Any takers?

A thousand tents in Wisconsin

Or, A very EAoD summer



My favorite musical moment of the year comes two minutes and forty-two seconds into Everything Absent or Distorted's "The Exit Parade," from their novella The Soft Civil War. Just as the song lulls listeners into a soothing but knowing round of "And we love you..." its promise is interrupted by a Salvation Army brass line. For a split second the horns threaten to scatter the tranquility, but instead they bolster the mantra and allow the song to ride out on a wave of hope.

Were it not for a friend of a friend I might never have known EAoD. Since that fateful April night ("Change instruments!") I've discovered a band that:

...makes you wanna dress in pink to meet friends and strangers at a cemetery to flail about wildly whilst toting balloons while contemplating exactly whose grave it is you dance upon.



...makes you wanna dance with friends and strangers into the wee hours of the night even if the band has requested the deejay spin "The Final Countdown."



...makes you wanna leave your house on a weeknight to pogo like its 1995 and shake pompoms if kind strangers happen to provide them.

...makes you accept the women's XL t-shirt (that doesn't fit anyway) when what you really wanted was a men's medium.



...makes you feel like a moderately decent pool player.



...makes you finally get around to self-publishing that little book.

At their record release party in August the band invited everyone out for an evening of music and dancing and flowers, and yes, "The Final Countdown." For that night audience and artists happily commingled. As I shuffled out of the Hi-Dive with the rest of the faithful, it was with a feeling one wishes to make greater acquaintance of; hope.


Thanks guys.


PS I have not asked permission to post most of these pictures. I would be happy to pull/credit any photos upon request.

The Empathy Suit

For some reason, walking through a maternity ward in a 35 pound "empathy suit" that simulates pregnancy makes my truly pregnant wife a little uneasy.

Me? I had a fun experience last night at baby class, when I donned the suit for 45 minutes as we toured the maternity ward. It provided the tiniest sliver of insight as to what my wife is going through.

Without assuming what my wife is going through I noticed the following:

It is difficult to stand in one position for more than 20 or 30 seconds. I was constantly shifting my feet or leaning against walls, furniture or doorways.

Once one sits down, one does not so easily stand back up.

It is odd to look down and find breasts where one has never found breasts before.

For entirely different reasons, I understand a bit of the self-consciousness pregnant women experience; they are truly not in their own bodies. Nor was I, the bearded man with breasts and a pregnant belly in a denim smock as I walked the halls of the maternity ward.

The other men in our baby class seemed a bit uncomfortable around me. The other expecting mothers were more open to asking me questions and asking how I felt (and letting me know they wanted to see their husbands in the suit) than their husbands. Don't get me wrong, these are all good guys, but there was something about a bearded man with breasts and a pregnant belly in a denim smock that took them a while to warm up to. Towards the end of the tour they were joking with me and asking me questions. I am curious to see if any of them don the suit next week.

There's something about your bearded husband with breasts and a pregnant belly in a denim smock that makes a wife uncomfortable.

A five pound weight on one's bladder, even an empty bladder, is an uncomfortable position to be in.

Special thanks to my wife for being a good sport!

Letter Never Sent

Sometimes the mails provide the strangest things.

My friend Troy spent the last year living in Amsterdam. We stayed in touch through a mix of late hour phone calls, emails and well-timed care packages.

Earlier this year he told me he was going to the Anne Frank House. He asked if I wanted any souvenirs, to which I replied just a postcard.

Though Troy told me all about the trip, he never sent the postcard because soon he moved back to the states, where we got to hang out over several weekends as he visited family in Colorado. One of the first things he gave me was the postcard, complete with a filled out address and "Nederland" postage. Only the message side of the card remained blank.

The card displays a 1954 photo of the movable bookcase used to hide the Frank family and the others who went into hiding with them. I think Troy picked the bookcase because he knows I am a bibliophile who appreciates the subversive nature of books.

I displayed the card on my desk for several weeks, and somewhere along the way I employed it as a bookmark. I hate to admit, but I hadn't noticed its absence.

Yesterday afternoon, after walking home from a productive but tiring Monday at work, I checked the mail before hitting the elevator to finally carry me home.

There was the post card.

Though a bit roughed up, its original stamp was now accompanied by American postage, as well as the following message written in a careful script:

THIS CARD -
FOUND - 8-9-06- DENVER -
INSIDE A LOVE SUPREME - THE
BOOK;
BY A PERSONAL FRIEND OF SR. JOHN COLTRANE;
WHO HAS-TOO VISITED
AMSTERDAM A.F. HAUS c. 1969
THIS CARD: FWD: AS A PEACE MISSIVE -ON-
EARTH

Only after reading the card did I recall that I had last seen it while reading a library book on John Coltrane. I've always said that in a library nothing is ever truly lost, just misplaced sometimes.

The Hitlist:
Holland 1945 – Neutral Milk Hotel
Acknowledgement – John Coltrane
Bureai Of Yards And Docks – Everything Absent or Distorted
Fiction – The Lucksmiths (Oh why would I lie to you?)

The House that TRANE Built

In 1997 Smithsonian Folkways re-released the Anthology of American Folk Music, Harry Smith’s official bootleg of 78 rpm folk records. Originally released in 1952, the collection gets much credit for fostering the folk boom of the 1950s and 60s.

The 1997 release was a music-altering event for me, and the ensuing years witnessed a blue grass revival, and the unanticipated success of the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack.

I called this a music-altering event because the Anthology changed the way I listen to American music. Though the performers were segregated, the influences were not. If we are right to question whether American society is truly a melting pot, the Anthology suggests that musically we are far more connected and harmonious than we are socially. I make this assertion based solely on the ease with which the collection’s white and black music, as well as secular and religious, vocal and instrumental, old timey, Acadian, blues and gospel songs follow one another, reference each other and ultimately create a soundtrack of American music that no one single artist or even genre could.

The Anthology introduced me to a bizarre world of coo coo birds, lizards in the spring, murderers, folk heroes, unrequited love, unimaginable buffoonery, kitchen sweats, and near psychedelic religious fervor. It is not much of an exaggeration to say that after buying my copy, I listened to little else for the following six months.

It’s been a long time since a single collection of disparate artists has aroused such excitement and devotion (though the all-too brief Sock It To ‘Em Soul came close). This week, however, I picked up the Impulse Records retrospective The House that TRANE Built: The Story of Impulse Records, and cannot help think I’ve stumbled into something.

When it comes to jazz I am squarely in the novice camp. Over the years my small collection has grown slowly and deliberately. I suppose I lean a bit more towards the experimental than the traditional, and prefer instrumental to vocal, though I am not hardened on these preferences.

The first time I truly connected with jazz came riding the subway in Boston, where I found myself listening to John Coltrane’s Stellar Regions. At the time the closest thing I might have compared it to was Sonic Youth, but in retrospect that doesn’t fit. What finally turned me on was the way the music in my ears corresponded with the erratic movements of the crowded underground environment. The crisscrossing of commuters into different trains and the brusqueness of the announcers all seemed determined to fly apart from each other were it not for subway’s pervasive rumblings holding it all together.

I cannot claim I was hooked, but soon after, Blue Train muscled its way into my steady diet of indie rock and pop and I started to learn how to listen. It wasn’t difficult, it was just different. Trips to Wally’s Café and Top of the Hub followed, as did recordings by Stan Getz and Joao Gilberto. In Seattle we saw Ray Brown at Dimitriou's Jazz Alley. Since moving to Denver I try to hit El Chapultepec after each Rockies game I go to, have the Jazz Cabbie on my phone list, and have come to appreciate the likes of Cal Tjader and Howard Rumsey.

But I always go back to John Coltrane.

And that is why the Impulse Records collection is so exciting. Its four discs and 38 songs include plenty of Coltrane – the label’s hub and resident master, as well as household names such as Count Basie and Charles Mingus. For the most part, though, the artists here are either new to me, or I ones with which I had only a passing familiarity. Some reviewers complain about the narrow scope of the collection, or that it relies too heavily upon the personal taste of its compiler, Ashley Kahn, author of a companion history of the label. For me, the novice, I am satisfied.

Out of the gate I am quite smitten with Chico O'Farrill & Clark Terry’s Latin-soul concoction “Spanish Rice,” as well and the rhythms of Gabor Szabo’s “Gypsy Queen.” I no longer think of Alice Coltrane simply as John’s wife, as her “Journey in Satchidanada” begins with a pensive drone that builds into something more transcendent, indescribable. Meanwhile, Albert Ayler’s “Our Prayer” seems, to these ears anyway, to pit a ragtime dirge against something baroque before uneasily reconciling the two.

My favorites, however, come with the one-two punch of Shirley Scott’s “Rapid Shave” and “Mama Too Tight” by Archie Shepp. Both of these jazz-soul groovers march to a loose and confident swagger capable of shaking loose the stiffest of figures or chasing away all but the fiercest blues.

Not a bad way to spend an evening.

Stosh'n

Just back from my native Wisconsin (and Milwaukee) for a friend's wedding and visits with friends and family. Returned with, among other things, a bean bag of Stosh, the famous racing sausage you might catch at a Brewers game. Stosh - the Polish sausage - became a favorite of mine largely because of his striped shirt, euro-shades and oh-so casually tilted cap.

Being of German extraction, my sister and I wonder, what's with the get-up? What makes this a Polish costume?

For those who care, Stosh proudly wears number 2, which he shares at Miller Park with Brewers super-rover Bill Hall.