You should probabaly follow this blog. Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous, but also hilarious. My brother Jim and his girlfriend Julia have way too much time on their hands. While you're at it, follow their real blogs, too. They make cool art.
Mid-Week Mix coming tomorrow, but in light of the passing of our great Michigan icon, a fantastic YouTube video.
As I moved to Michigan circa 2000, I only heard two of the seasons before he retired. The Tigers were awful in those days, and I didn't listen on the radio as much as I really should have. But I still get chocked up watching all these retrospectives (the DetNews has a cool interactive one; I like the Freep Tigers beat writer's obit above, however). He's got that effect. This video, however, is all happiness.
There's been a flurry of art news within the past week or so, and I've started to keep a close eye on how a lot of museums are coping with tough economic times. Some museums have considered selling parts of their collections. Waves of criticism rolled in when Brandeis made that announcement.
Still, some museums, like the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, receive $25 million donations. In the case of LACMA, it didn't come without strings.
While a Detroit museum got excited about finding lost art in a school basement, Greg Sandow published a piece in the Wall Street Journal arguing that "the arts are going to need a better strategy" for finding money. And in the end the arts need to be more self-sufficient, not dependent on government support.
On a lighter note, nobody has managed to rule out Jean-Pierre Houdin's theory of how the Giza pyramids were built. His new revolutionary theory about an internal ramp system shook the archeological world...and the theory still stands.
Fun fact: The Justice League of America once went through such a rough patch that they had to move to Detroit. I guess Aquaman knew a guy who knew a guy, or something.
When I was driving to Michigan on New Years Eve there was a radio show on KDHX (called "Hip City") that played two straight hours of nothing but JB. It made me want to shake my ass all the way through Missouri and Central Illinois (except the station died as soon as I got to Effingham, which, coincidentally might be the least ass-shakable place in the Midwest).
I only lived there three months, but I can't help but be a defender and a spokesperson for Detroit. I still follow The Detroit News as much as any newspaper. So I was intrigued by a Weekly Standard article about the big bad city. It's probably my zest for Detroit that mucks up my reading of the article, but I'm having trouble deciding if I like it; if I think it's fair and accurate or revelatory in any way. I do think it puffs up one DetNews reporter a bit too much ... my hero will always be Josar.
+ Strange Maps is super great at combining quirky wonderment with more heady ideas. Most recently: pareidolia: perceiving significance in stimuli that have none. Especially in maps.
+ The best mug shots of the year. Follow the links to see more odd mugs and the story of a man arrested 1,000+ times.
+ I'm on the street fashion blog bandwagon now. This NYTimes article is a helpful guide to finding a few good ones. ... not sure why they're so fun to scroll through ...
Tuesday night, the loudest band I have seen live will appear on Letterman to promote their new album, Songs in A&E. Our crowd should appreciate the Dirtbombs' backing vocals on the seething "Yeah Yeah".
Because they may be the best thing going these days, I asked Boo to join me in writing about Wolf Parade -- their new disc is out and we each saw the band on their current tour.
Boo: The opening band, The Listening Party, was very good to humble shades of great. Consisting of a (very talented) vocalist/plastic-garbage-can percussionist and a guitarist/backup vocalist, it took a while for me to get used to it, but in the end, I was converted. They seemed to be shooting for a style that married American roots-esque folk and country melodies with echo guitar lines, heavy, driving, complex percussion loops, and indie sensibilities. In terms of their songs and delivery, what some might have called repetition, others might call a reinforcement of a single, solid aesthetic and style, and whatever your point of view might be, they drove home that very musical point without straying too far into other stylistic territories. After the end of the half hour, I knew what they were about -- and I liked it.
Tony: I skipped the opening acts but grabbed a good spot on a railing in the balcony at First Avenue with Katie.
Boo: Then came Wolf Parade. This was their first show of the tour, and it was at least highly impressive and at most life-altering. Emerging from the side stage entrance and comprising the group were Arlen Thompson (drums), Hadji Bakara (synth, theremin, and noise effects), Dante DeCaro (guitar), Dan Boeckner (guitar and vocals), and Spencer Krug (Piano, synth, and vocals). They started the set with "Language City," a strong Boeckner tune from the recently released "At Mount Zoomer," which was soon followed by a driving, hypnotic performance of "Call it a Ritual" that reinforced the strength and command of the opening track and made clear the intention of the band that night: to fuck shit up in the best possible way.
Tony: Wolf Parade opened in similar fashion in Mpls, but I'll note here and throughout some of the differences between this most recent show and that which I saw two summers ago in Detroit. At that point, I wrote:
Wolf Parade bashed harder. They smashed chimes. They played their entire album and new songs, and finally only had one song left to play, and made its seven minutes into even more. I danced and jumbled with a drunken couple. The louts clobbered the crowd but I didn't mind, because they gave me an excuse to get rowdy right back. They poured beer on me and I danced and I stripped off my shirt in the parking lot before we ate Taco Bell on a raised lawn with ants invading my tossed-aside shoes.
This show wasn't quite like that, in part because of the new album material. I don't know what it means when an album has the ability to "grow on" you, but that's what "Mount Zoomer" did for me, especially in the run-up to the concert. I think there are more "movements" within each track on the new disc, which when played live, make for lots of anticipation.
Boo: The one aspect that I never fully realized when listening to Wolf Parade (yet became highly apparent live) were the fantastic drum parts of Arlen, and how his beat placement and basic, almost oddly dance-like, rhythms truly push the songs forward and provide a moving if not sprinting energy to Spencer and Dan's fantastic song arrangements. The propulsive drums and stable grooves are not as strongly emphasized in the recordings, but literally knock you back at the most intense moments of the songs, whether the remarkable build up of "California Dreamer," the classic "Grounds for Divorce," or the simply epic, urging explosion of "I'll Believe in Anything."
Tony: Agreed, but I always knew it. It did take about four songs for the sound mixing to bring the keys and synth up to a level to compete with the drums.
Boo: As to the performers themselves, it was to watch them play. Firstly, Dan Boeckner is rock and roll. His stage presence consists of cigarettes, tight jeans, and spasmatic, brilliant, euphoric releases of gritty, seasoned vocals and aggressive lashes at his guitar. Carly noticed what she called his "funny head thing" as well as I did -- how he manages to have his left leg and head move in an almost coordinated epileptic fit while the rest of his body seems relatively unaffected and oblivious to them. And his charisma and energy only built from there, since by the time they ended the main set with a remarkable 15-minute version of "Kissing the Beehive," Boeckner was on the floor in front of his amplifier, swinging the guitar against the speakers, stabbing at the pickups with his cable, twisting and bending the mechanical vibrato arm on the instrument half-hoping it to snap, and generally being as overwhelmingly dedicated to the creation of static, noise, and electronic screams as any human being has ever been. It was fucking sweet, Ira Kaplan style.
Tony: There's something about Minnesota crowds. Something shitty. Spence kept calling us "nice," which we were, which doesn't cut it. Boeckner never would have had the momentum to go to the ground like that. Same lame crowd as at the New Pornographers show I bet...
Boo: Now there is Spencer Krug, a completely different side of things. Carly giggled in surprise when I pointed him out -- in his early thirties he looks to be, at most, a boyish 21. He's also the most distracted, odd, and engaging performer I've ever witnessed. He would kind of half-sit at his keyboards and rock back on forth on his seat with one leg wrapped around ready to stand, sit properly, jump up, or literally just walk away prepared to wander around in his region of the stage for a portion of a song -- which he did. He would play relatively complex and highly brilliant keyboard parts, hammering heavy octaves on his electric piano, weaving fascinating threads of notes that managed to be shockingly clever as they are subtle in the mix, and delivering playful, inspired melody lines and accents on what looked to be an older, toy Yamaha synthesizer position atop his main piano. He managed to do all of this and then suddenly back off and look off stage for a few seconds, or maybe gander at the lights around him for a bit, or, looking bored, take a drink of a beer off to the side of the stage before practically leaping back into the music and almost in a split-second start playing even more inspired keyboard parts than you remembered him doing previously.
Just watching his performing makes you realize how subtle yet brilliant their song arrangements are, such as how "Grounds for Divorce" builds around the main keyboard theme introduced at the beginning, and how the vocal lines, guitar jabs, and additional keyboard parts all reinforce the repeated theme. There isn't a simple 3-chords-and-a-melody approach to songwriting happening with Wolf Parade, but rather a serious and thoughtful development of musical and lyrical themes and variations on them.
Tony: There's also something incomprehensible about the band's lyrics. Some sort of chanting-a-catch-phrase mantra that doesn't make much sense, but which nevertheless is exciting to sing along to (singing along to single phrases, here and there).
Boo: By the time they finished with an encore of "It's a Curse", "I'll Believe in Anything" and a ridiculously awesome "Fancy Claps" it was clear that even another 8 hours would have been the incredible combination of not enough and too much, just as the past 2 had been.
Tony: Perfectly said by Boo. The encore, perhaps identical, really left me wanting more and wondering if they shouldn't have built to that frenzy earlier.
Boo: Reluctantly we filed out along with the rest of the crowd, and, somewhere in the neighborhood of 1 a.m., Carly and I ran into Spencer Krug and the two members of the listening party outside the venue. We had a brief conversation, discussing how the band hadn't played together for 10 months before brief rehearsals led to this first show of the tour, the new album, those little orange bracelets that band members have to wear, how Pontiac is a ghost town, etc. Spencer was polite and I was starstruck, and it managed not to be too awkward before Carly and I left to try and get some sleep, as hard as that would most likely be.
Ernie Harwell, the classic (he retired in 2002) voice of the Tigers, turns 90 today. I checked the Freep site tonight and saw the his picture on the front page and freaked out, thinking maybe he had died. But no. It's just his birthday. If there's one reason to read the Free Press instead of the News, I'd say his every-two-weekly-ish columns are it. I can't find any archived on the web so you'll just have to take my word for it and wait until baseball season (or read the collection of them my dad gave me for Christmas)
To tell a semi-personal story, the same guy that essentially screwed my dad's old college to the ground, (Tom Monaghan, a.k.a. Mr. Domino's Pizza) also tried to fire Ernie Harwell in the early 90s when he owned the Tigers. Actually, more like did fire him. For two years.
This just confirms his status as high up there on the douchebag list.
PS I spent the entire evening, from about 7 - 12, watching You Tube videos of classic Pistons - Bulls games. While this probably wasn't the wisest of moves, I did find this. Notice how the Pistons used "The Final Countdown" as their intro music when it was brand motherfucking new - in other words, un-ironically (Christ almighty, I didn't think that was possible...). Also notice how much of a nerd Bill Laimbeer looks next to Isiah, Rodman, and Joe D. Finally, notice how the warm-up jerseys have the players' first names on them. Sort of a neat little ode to the whole "Detroit-working-class-average-Joe" thing. The point here is to say that, man, the NBA was so sweet back in the day...
Well, now...I'm starting feel a bit like Evan Moran and should probably take a shower to atone for the night's sin of wasting away on YouTube.
