Category: Andrew Earles

Eight stars out of five. Stupid like stupid should be.

WAKE UP, PEOPLE!! I live in a fantasy world with the stupid comedies and romantic dramas, so I must hand it to the Arriaga/Gonzalez-Innaritu team for continuing the trend of stirring moviegoing and attending church/going to rehab into a blur. Thank goodness we have these merchants of emotional suffocation to hand out the needed shots of REALITY. That’s what movies are for. Time to leave your comfort zone!! I-N-T-E-N-S-E.

Like the equally unrelenting and pretentious 21 Grams, Babel feels like eminent disaster as each scene begins. This genre reached its pathetic conclusion with Crash, gave the movies of Todd Solendz an unfortunate reason to exist, and should have ended with American Beauty. Sure, they look different, feature disparate cultures, but the message is the same: We need constant reminders of just how fucked-up the world has become. You know what does a good job of letting me know how fucked-up life can be? Life.

 

Good news!!

The next time you’re loitering in a book store or dumpster diving, look for my various pieces in both The Onion and Harp Magazine, two brand new additions to my resume. Maybe you should buy Harp, so I can continue writing for them, and The Onion is free.

I’m especially excited about the Harp feature (should be the issue hitting stands next week). It’s an extensive interview with Tom Scharpling and Jon Wurster of…Scharpling and Wurster fame, plus a sidebar history of seminal comedy duos.

For The Onion, I’ll be penning an essay about Marilyn Manson (among other things). Yep.

PEACE OUT!!

Listen to the next Load Records 12″ by choosing ‘Senator a no-show for another session‘ from the playlist (to the left).

I just returned from L.A., where I wore my body to shreds. My heart feels like a baby birds, beating inside of a thin layer of skin and muscle. Also, I need to start coming up with some better posts (see various criticisms in various comment sections).

To hold you over a day, if you are a non-regional reader, here’s the transcript of Sen. Ophelia Ford’s 911 call (this occured right after the incident detailed in my previous post)…

911 CALL TRANSCRIPT

This is the transcript from a 911 call placed by an employee at the Sheraton Hotel Downtown Nashville. The entire call can be heard by clicking on the link at the top of this story.

Dispatcher: Metro Nashville Police and Fire.

Caller: Hey, this is Jeff at the Sheraton Hotel Downtown Nashville.

Dispatcher: Yes sir.

Caller: Um, I have, uh, I need someone to come and take a look at one of our guests. They took a fall out of one of our bar chairs upstairs in the concierge lounge on the 24th floor.

(Caller gives address and phone number of the hotel.)

Dispatcher: And you think they need an ambulance?

Caller: Well, I don’t necessarily know … she’s, she’s extremely intoxicated so I can’t tell.

Dispatcher: Are you with her now?

Caller: I am.

Dispatcher: How old is she approximately?

(Redacted from tape.)

Dispatcher: Is she conscious?

Caller: She is.

Dispatcher: Is she breathing?

Caller: Yes, she is.

Dispatcher: About how long ago did this happen?

Caller: Oh, about 20 minutes ago.

Dispatcher: What caused the fall?

Caller: Uh, intoxication.

Dispatcher: Is she completely alert?

Caller: She is.

Dispatcher: Is she breathing normally?

Caller: Yes, she is.

Dispatcher: What part of the body was injured?

Caller: Uh, she landed on her upper back, neck area.

Dispatcher: Is there any serious bleeding?

Caller: No, no, no bleeding that I can see.

(The caller gives directions to the concierge level and says he’ll meet paramedics. The dispatcher tells the caller not to move the person unless she’s in danger and not to let her have anything to eat or drink.)

Dispatcher: Just let her rest in the most comfortable position and wait for help to arrive.

Caller: OK.

(Dispatcher instructs caller to call back if person’s condition changes. He agrees.)

 

 

This post is for non-regional readers.  

Yes, there’s the snappy, likeable but confusing Harold Jr., but the remaining members of his family make for an illiterate and corrupt addition to my local news on an almost nightly basis. I hope that the book is epic and done right.

Please read about and listen to the ridiculous rant that Ophelia Ford barfed out earlier this week. Funny, I get the same thing yelled in my face when seeking help at a T-Mobile outlet. Anemia? Sure, whatever spins your way, but it also seems that Mizz Ford suffers from a bad case of C.P.T., and proves that her true calling may have been the JC Penney returns counter.

The evidence is in, so I’m not afraid to ask it: Is it possible for an African American to rise to political rank in Tennessee without becoming unbelievably corrupt? Again, remove Harold Jr. from the equation, and the answer is a resounding “noâ€Â. I’d love to read someone’s defense of this trend. Lay it on me. Our Mayor? Holy Moses!! This man suggested the SELLING OF OUR PARKS as a solution to the city’s debt problem, and that’s Willie Herrington on a good day. Edmond Ford? John Ford? These nuts regularly run people off of the road, sexually harass interns and underlings, threaten people with bodily harm, take bribes, publicly cheat on their spouses….the list goes on and on. The head of our power company (Memphis Light Gas and Water)??? He allowed a Ford family member to lapse on his bill….to the tune of $16,000.00!!! If you are a Wire fan, let it be known that Tennessee’s (and primarily Memphis’) political issues are almost identical to the ones fictionalized on that show.

Are white politicians any better? Of course not, but we don’t have white politicians (except for Warren Zevon fanatic Sen. Steve Cohen), so I run with the available material. When I come to power, however that may happen, I will sentence the Ford family to a year of ruling Olympia, WA.

*See Paula Poundstone on Real Time With Bill Maher? I see that she’s just gone full-throttle with the trademark David Byrne suits (Maher’s “dressed like a clownâ€Â comment was expected but funny), and she consistently strayed so far from relevance and humor (that zombie movie joke was so bad it hurt my feelings) that the show appears to be scrapping the barrel for guests. Like anyone in her position, she writes books now.

*The latest episode of Tony Soprano Wakes Up, Lays Around, And Deals With Nagging Wife was a pot-boiler, and stayed true to this final season’s tendency to jump around a little too much. At least there was no tackling of gay bars (not unlike Police Academy’s depiction) and goth kids.

*My new favorite channel, Retroplex, has been wearing out Mel Brooks’ The History of the World Pt. 1, a movie that does not hold up.

*Chrysler’s in trouble, but the real matter at hand is: Who in the hell needs a Lincoln? Old people that absolutely MUST buy American? Need a truck? Buy a real truck. And this thing? Drive a Camry. And for the assholes with no style, there’s Old Reliable. There is no visable difference between this guy and the flagship SUV’s being manufactured by Hyundai and Kia, and no visable difference between the scrawny, shrill, Yoga-Iggy-Pop-bodied ladies that drive them all. The only Lincoln that I can get behind is the Town Car, and they give the Town Car the weakest engine. They also give the Town Car a front bench seat and rear-wheel drive, which you gotta love, for some reason. Poor old Town Car.

*I’m attending a funeral tomorrow morning. An old friend died, one that could have been considered my best friend if one were to look at my late teens/very early-20’s. We drifted apart, and barring the immediate situation at hand, tomorrow morning will stand as an incredibly tense, odd experience re: old friends. I will write about this over the next few days. Let that be a warning….unfunny, personal post coming up!!

*Last night, I passed out in the middle of Phantasm 2, and tonight I’m going to pass out in the middle of this blog entry. I will not write about this over the next few days.

 

This article appeared Friday in the New York Times. Despite my issues with the subject matter, which are laid out below in the form of endnotes, it is astonishingly poor journalism and writing. This made it through the editor gauntlet at the NYT?? Incredulous.

Read It Here

OFF THE BEATEN BEAT

by Mylena Ryzik
  ON Monday night inside the GlassLands Gallery, a converted warehouse in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 100 or so people (1), alerted by MySpace pages and music blogs, gathered for a concert by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. For an hour, the singer Karen O yelped and shrieked and pranced around a makeshift stage in a paint-splattered gold bodysuit, often wading into the audience a few feet away. At the end of the night the band took requests; to close the set, as her band mates played on, Ms. O paraded most of the crowd toward an alley behind the building, a musical moment as intimate as a reigning rock star can have (2). “We hardly play small venues anymore, but this one is definitely special and personal,â€Â Ms. O said afterward. “My favorite kind of party to be at or show to see is a house show. This is as close as you get.â€Â (3) Amid the teeter-totter energy that currently defines New York’s music scene — where the lamented demise of one club is offset by the splashier opening of another — many artists can be found outside that playground entirely, performing at off-the-beaten-path locales like warehouses, rooftops, apartments or inside a Brooklyn oil silo (4).
Music fans with limited funds and a taste for adventure (5) look forward to the summer concert season, which is about to turn the city’s parks and other public spaces into musical free-for-alls. But there are already many places to see bands for little money, without sellout crowds, ticket surcharges or security pat-downs. (Yes, Virginia, there’s even cheap beer.)
And the lineups are diverse. Experimental music did not die with the closing of Tonic (6), nor did grungy rock (7) with the fall of CBGB. With a little planning and an active MetroCard you might catch the next Arcade Fire performing in a parking lot (8).
“Anything is a venue,â€Â said the promoter Todd Patrick, known professionally as Todd P. For six years he has made it his mission to program music in far-flung places, from divey bars in Greenpoint (9) to Lutheran churches to private lofts. Now New York’s alt-location guru, he has recently expanded to work with bands on the verge of stardom (Animal Collective, which he booked in 2005) and even nationally known acts (Oneida, Trans Am) at large clubs like Studio B in Brooklyn, winning the attention of the music industry (10).
But Mr. Patrick’s hallmark remains the cheap, on-the-fly, do-it-yourself concert, promoted through his Web site (toddpnyc.com), his e-mail list (13,000 strong) and MySpace, blog and newspaper and magazine listings. Essentially a one-man band, Mr. Patrick, 31, has interns who work the door (ticket prices rarely go above $10) and stamp hands (he only does all-ages shows) while he helps set up (11).
“Because the idea is about D.I.Y., I like to show the strings,â€Â he said. “I want people to come to the show and see me build the P.A. system, (12) see that there’s nothing glossy about what we’re doing. I think alternative venues are a great way of doing that. It just kind of throws it off. If a club is the quote-unquote appropriate place to see music, why do people have so much more fun in a warehouse?â€Â
Last weekend was typical: On Saturday night he booked shows at two unexpected spaces, an Ecuadorian restaurant across from a low-income housing project in Bushwick, Brooklyn, and a loft apartment in Ridgewood, Queens. (13) Both drew several hundred people to outer-borough neighborhoods not typically known as destinations.
The restaurant, Don Pedro, had a full menu of ceviche, $3 bottles of Negra Modelo and a small stage in a brick-walled back room where Cass McCombs (14), a singer with a Lou Reed croon (15), performed to a packed house. William Alberque, 36, a Defense Department analyst visiting from Washington and a longtime fan of Mr. McCombs’s (16), said he preferred seeing him anywhere but a rock club. “The D.I.Y. spirit is wonderful,â€Â he said. “It’s just you and the band, five feet away. You buy into what’s happening so much more. It gives you musical butterflies.â€Â (17)
At the loft there was even less distance (and more butterflies). The headliner, Dan Deacon (18), a sensitive electro-party rocker from Baltimore, performed on a patch of carpet in the middle of the room. No stage or bouncer separated him from his audience, which swarmed around, fists pumping, creating a heaving, dancing, steaming mosh pit. (19) Even the walls vibrated.
In shorts, a sweat-soaked Mickey Mouse T-shirt and his trademark oversize red spectacles (think of Sally Jessy Raphael), (20) Mr. Deacon leaned over his keyboard and mike, persevering despite sound problems. His 20-something fans had started singing along even before he passed out lyric sheets. (21) Crowd-surfers easily reached the ceiling, and a camera crew from Vice magazine recorded the whole thing for hipster posterity. (22)
Skip to next paragraph Mr. Deacon, 25, credits Mr. Patrick with helping propel his career from unknown novelty act (23) a year and a half ago to headliner today. (He plays the Mercury Lounge tomorrow.) “He helps out-of-town bands break and get known in New York more than anyone else I know,â€Â (24) Mr. Deacon said in a bedroom after the loft show. Nearby, interns counted the door money; Mr. Patrick takes 10 percent before expenses (security, interns) and the rest goes to performers. (Mr. Deacon noted that he made more money at Mr. Patrick’s shows than at regular club gigs.)
Along with low overhead other common traits of this scene include out-of-the way locations (a long walk from the subway is common), online promotion, candles instead of spotlights and a high tolerance for graffiti: GlassLands, where the Yeah Yeah Yeahs performed as part of a video shoot, has two rooms where anyone can scribble on the walls, markers and paint provided. (25) Many places lack proper licensing; Mr. Patrick switches locations often to avoid the authorities. (Don Pedro is a legal establishment with a liquor license; the loft space was not.) (26)
Of course not every alternative site is scruffy or hard to reach (27) — or illegal. The Apple Store in SoHo has free performances by bands like Blonde Redhead and the Bravery several times a month (28), often before their sold-out sets at major halls. At Monkey Town, (29) a performance space and restaurant in Williamsburg, a back room lined with stylish, low-slung white sofas and walls outfitted with video screens offers a high-design setting for lo-fi acts. (30)
The city’s nonmusical cultural institutions also frequently book scene makers: Cat Power performed at the Museum of Modern Art this year, and later this month the American Museum of Natural History morphs into a disco with a D.J. party given by the event guide Flavorpill (rocking out beneath the blue whale garners at least as many cool points as trekking to an outer borough). (31)
But adventure — or a sense of discovery — is important. (32)
Perhaps the biggest wow factor lately comes from seeing a show at a former oil silo on a stretch of the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. Occupied for the last two years by Issue Project Room, an experimental arts organization, the silo is hidden behind an imposing metal gate with a small sign just off the Carroll Street bridge. Between the lapping (if occasionally stinky) water, the courtyard filled with poplar trees and the warm glow emanating from the two-story performance space — the top floor is reached by an exterior metal ladder — it’s as far from mainstream clubland as you can get.
Rebecca Moore, a singer and violinist active in the protests over the closing of the Lower East Side club Tonic, performed at the silo last week. “I am very grateful for Issue Project Room,â€Â she said from the stage: a rug at the front of the room. “We couldn’t get away with playing staplers at many other places.â€Â (33)
And that’s exactly the point, said Suzanne Fiol, the founder of Issue Project Room. “We are trying to be a breeding ground for experimental work, and we need spaces like this to nurture it,â€Â she said. (34)
(Issue Project Room will leave the silo in July, but another group, MeanRed Productions, will move in. An outdoor concert series is planned; Nicodemus, a D.J. and founder of the traveling party Turntables on the Hudson, is already booked for Turntables on the Gowanus.)
And the alt-location audience is eager to trade accessibility for authenticity.
“It feels good to give money to something that’s not so commercial,â€Â said Laurel Frazier, 42, a corporate travel agent who came to see Ms. Moore. “It seems more supportive of the artists and their freedom to do what they want to do.â€Â (35)
For Mr. Patrick, who said he considers his bookings a form of being a curator, that independent spirit matters. “It actually does totally come up from the grass roots,â€Â he said. “There is not someone in a boardroom sitting around deciding what the new bands coming out of Bushwick are going to sound like. (36) I really love going to shows, and I really think it should be a more purely appreciative-of-the-art experience than it often is.â€Â
And, he added, “almost inevitably there’s a party afterward.â€Â (37)
Ms. O, for one, appreciates Mr. Patrick’s events, like a Deerhunter loft show she attended the night after seeing the band perform at Mercury Lounge. “The energy, the vitality of it, was on a different level,â€Â she said. (38)
Though he’s no longer working with Studio B, Mr. Patrick is being courted by several other places, including actual clubs in — gasp! — Manhattan, and he said he hopes to open his own legal space. (A previous attempt at an underground spot was halted by the authorities in 2005.) In the meantime he is working on a long-held dream to book a show in the upstairs dining room of a 24-hour Midtown or Wall Street deli. Because, well, why not?

1.     Ooooh…..INTIMATE!!!! Alert: Here comes the obligatory “we’re getting back to the small venues/real fans despite our superstar statusâ€Â!!!
2.     Is the future editor of an oral history reading? Where they there!! Sure hope so!!! History is being made!!!
3.     No, a house show is as close as you can get.
4.     Chaos!!
5.     No, adventure is getting lost in the woods. Standing around with your fellow hipster action figures in some shithole performance space or “off-kilterâ€Â location while a band fidgets through music that no one will care about in a year….not an adventure.
6.     Unfortunately.
7.     “grungy rockâ€Â – did my 74-year-old aunt write this?
8.     Did I just read a grammatical error in the NYT??? Was this writer so overtaken with the idea that the Arcade Fire (who it should be noted sound like some ill-advised artsy of The Hooters and are a horribly slow-moving target that I shouldn’t be wasting a sentence on…..though I will admit to opening a “Creative Bankruptcy: Main Offendersâ€Â file on AF…they’d better watch their back!!!) might play a park or vacant lot that he can’t write straight???
9.     Music in a “diveyâ€Â bar??? What a slice!!! Pack heat!!! DANGER.
10.  Mmmm….tell me about these elusive “show promotersâ€Â that are setting the world on fire….
11.  Whoa, slow down. Are you saying that he….PUTS ON SHOWS?!?!? This is too much.
12.  Again, it appears that no one has EVER SEEN A FUCKING SHOW BEFORE. Build the P.A.? Who are you, fucking Springsteen mopping the bar after a performance? You bring your metal lunchbox, too, mister punch-the-clock-rock? D.I.Y.? Why is this being presented as a new, interesting concept? Oh, and there’s nothing “D.I.Yâ€Â about any band mentioned in this article.
13.  Just stop. It’s overload. The history of rock is being rewritten. A show in a loft apartment? A rock show in an ethnic restaurant? Are these destinations considered “adventurousâ€Â because the Brooklyn hipster plague is partially replaced by, oh I dunno, people that grew up in the neighborhood or might speak Spanish?
14.  Need I explain that people have been putting on shows in this fashion for decades? I really need to map that out?
15.  Oh good, I now know exactly what I’m getting into. As a music writer, it’s not TOTALLY against the rules to authoritatively comment on music that you obviously haven’t heard, but at least make it funny or inject some meta or Situationist bullshit into it. Cass McCombs sounds nothing like Lou Reed.
16.  Cass McCombs has been around for what, 4 years? Longtime fan? I suspect his longtime fandom of impressionable 20-year-old indie chicks far outweighs his love for McCombs.
17.  Yep, you bought into something alright.
18.  The latest “outsiderâ€Â artist that has nothing to do with true outsiders and everything in common with the herd mentality running rampant within this “undergroundâ€Â, “D.I.Y.â€Â culture.
19.  …..of lemmings.
20.  There’s a misconception that this guy rocks an original “nerdyâ€Â or “touchedâ€Â agenda, when, as you can see, he is indistinguishable from every third cookie-cutter 25-year-old walking up and down a Bedford Avenue.
21.  Cute.
22.  Hmmm… “posterityâ€Â is the word I’m having a problem with here.
23.  “Noveltyâ€Â acts require something novel.
24.  Great, we need more bands.
25.  Did this writer start going to shows at age 30? Is this concept really being presented as imaginative?
26.  Not that I’m a fan, but when stacked up against the NY club kid situation of the early-90’s, this seems like a Wheel of Fortune party.
27.  Oh well, thank god for that, I was getting nervous.
28.  Both known for their D.I.Y. aesthetic.
29.  Great name.
30.  Ok, so now it’s “lo-fiâ€Â. Is there a Rock Terms For Dummies book floating around that I haven’t seen?
31.  I have no idea what to write about that statement.
32.  Then direct me to someone who actually writes about that.
33.  And you shouldn’t. Still waiting for that “wowâ€Â moment. Playing staplers…thanks for exemplifying a moment when experimental = worthless.
34.  Well, looks like you have a built-in audience that will unconsciously fall for the widespread hoodwink of improve noise.
35.  This paragraph deserves repeated readings. The article seems to focus on 20-somethings, yet none of them would talk to this writer.
36.  Think again, Mr. Idealist. And if that doesn’t exist, it wouldn’t have to, as I’m sure that these new bands are just palatable, plagiarizing, and indistinct enough to satisfy any boardroom’s needs.
37.  NO!!!! The shows in lofts w/out bouncers and people getting to stand in front of bands was almost too much, but AFTER PARTIES???? Stop!!!
38.  You mean it was like….a show, which happens each night in every single city or town in this country?

It’s bedtime. I’m in no condition to be writing IN MY WAAAAH IN MY WAAAAH IN MY BLOG. Here are some creative mistakes that bring a great big smile to my incredibly handsome face:

1. Illbient -  When you have a genre spearheaded by a man that subheads his already perfect-storm-of-stupid moniker with “That Subliminal Kidâ€Â, well, you have a pretentious (yet mercifully brief) movement that is deservedly slotted to wash through the cracks of music history, hopefully never to return. Say it to yourself: “ILLBIENTâ€Â “ILLBIENTâ€Â “ILLBIENTâ€Â

2. The Black Dahlia – It takes real talent to fuck up a story/book quite this bad. DePalma deserves to be locked in a room with the Yoko Ono boxed set!!! Un-f*cking-believable!!! I gave the seven foot tall “daddy-oâ€Â of noir James Ellroy a ride to the airport once. What a walking cartoon.

3. Paris, Texas – Wim Wenders is officially my OVERRATED DIRECTOR OF THE WEEK. Paris, Texas? Uh, I have shit to do this afternoon…can’t make it. â€ÂOh wow, watch how he utilizes space and silence!!â€Â Yeah, watch nothing happen for the sake of a flimsy story. Check Puh-leeeeeze!!! No more movies for people that f*ck to NPR!!!!

 

 

See previous posts re: this. Watch those first.

Mo’ Mooch.