Proclivities Live

It must be noted here, on this "gravestone in the ether," that db and rb did an impromptu performance of the grindfolio "Proclivities" at db's house party in Middletown, Conn. last weekend.

We were sitting in the darkened living room, where a few xeroxed copies of "Proclivities" (2004) and Dan's "Sticks and Rocks and Stars" (2003?) beckoned from the bar. As usual, I wasn't sure what was happening when someone handed me an acoustic guitar. Its action* was so poor that only the first two frets were playable. "Get me a real fucking guitar and a beer," I said, then resumed speaking to the people around me. Within seconds, people I don't know handed me a phenomenally expensive Yamaha acoustic and a fresh cup of Long Trail from the keg. So something had to happen.

Dan demanded blues, so I did some standard riffs and all the new Infrastructure material. Once I started playing, I noticed that Erich was now playing basslines on the busted-ass guitar. Dan thrashed about the living room awkwardly, reciting such grind classics as "i can't talk; i'm too busy remembering the alamo" and "same dead animals, great new taste" in a nerdy, loud monotone. Sometimes people clapped.

I don't know what anyone thought, but I don't care**. We didn't perform under a name, but this was as close to a Future Suicide Heroes show I've gotten since 2003.

*Distance between strings and the fretboard.
**I didn't even remember that this happened until this morning. Since doing this show in Middletown 8 days ago, I've been to dinner in the Bronx, home in Queens, in my office in Manhattan, back in Boston, presenting stuff in Guelph/Toronto, at a function in Austin, spent the weekend in Austin, and got back last night. I am very happy that I actually do things while I'm getting things done.

dear dan barry,

if you still read this, could you please create a song called "lack of a positive female role model"?

banishing exile

teeming and pregnant with chaos, the original muse communicates through gaudy stainless, timeless neon, third rail sparks. the possibilities are suffocating.

fung wah in the superbourgeois

coasting crests
buscando un parking and a comet tail of whores

Being Young is Easy (By Yourself)

I just had the greatest date, with myself. It involved about 14 miles of biking, the Edward Hopper exhibit at the MFA, the Ingrid Michaelson/Jenny Owen Youngs "anti-folk" double-bill at the Paradise Lounge, and a scallion pancake in Brookline.

First, I decided to finally see whether the Hopper hype was worth it. Left at 7:03 for the 8pm showing and made it there in only 30 minutes flat. Shame on the MFA for not having a single bike rack. World-class my ass.

I give you my notes from the exhibit, unaltered and uncensored:

"b. 1882
sold 1 painting 1st 41 yrs

[The Lonely House, '23]

illus/printmaker until '41

ALL OF THESE
PAINTINGS ARE
REALLY PHOTOGRAPHS

shards of past--surrounded by extremely rich-looking people--their offspring give them away

wall words continually use "vernacular" and "middleclass" interchangeably...could you do that once?

'John Sloan's lusty nudes were the working-class counterparts to Hopper's more withdrawn middle-class women'???

Screen in NY Movie="gray, not silver, gray," from something I wrote

FACES VIEWING NIGHTHAWKS

TEXTURE OF
THE SURFACE
OF THE
IMAGE
"

I started thinking about grind and how Hopper ground and I wanted to write new grind. In the guestbook, at the end of the exhibit, I wrote:

[Name:] RB 7/25/7
[Comments:] GRIND.

They didn't have any little magnets of "Sun in an Empty Room," because it was a suicidal painting, so I didn't buy any magnets. I retrieved my bike from a parking meter post.

Close enough to the Paradise Lounge, I figured I would at least check out the show DB had let me know about: Jenny Own Youngs with Ingrid Michaelson opening. The girl:boy ratio was about 15:1, no joke, so I just hung out with a Maker's. Jenny was an excellent musician, but her performance seemed unfortunatley anticlimactic after the POP! of Ingrid Michaelson and Allie Moss. At the show neared its end, I left and got a scallion pancake across the street in Brookline, after reading a very decent Weekly Dig article on scallion pancakes between sets.

When I returned to the Boston side of Comm Ave, all was dead and the musicians were loading up their autos. I wanted to talk to Allie Moss but she was on her cellphone. She looked at me as I unlocked my bike and then I biked BU Bridge/Memorial Drive/Harvard Sq/Porter Sq/North Cambridge/Teele/home with no lights and didn't get killed and now I'm typing this shit because, as everyone says at work, "I feel compelled to."