perfidy

Recently, I noted that the New York club The Bottom Line was in danger of closing.

Witness the power of the grassroots! Jeff Lang, a New York University alumnus, has begun a petition drive to persuade NYU (The Bottom Line's landlords) to spare the venue. You can see the petition and further information at savethebottomline.com. Alumni can petition here, the rest of us can go through the main page.

Via slashdot, this delightful article from the pointy heads at the Wharton School. The author, G. Richard Shell begins by making the fairly obvious point that suing your customer base might not be the best idea, but then goes on to give us some solid historical precedent for that conclusion, notably the efforts of the Automobile industry to sue Henry Ford's customers.

Fascinating article, and a valuable perspective on the future of the RIAA's attempts to make itself a pariah. 

Now THIS is a movie to go see! From the disclaimer at the end of the New York Times review of Clint Eastwood's film Mystic River:

"Mystic River" is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has profanity, abundant violence and existential despair.

Existential despair!

No, but really, my compatriot brdgt (not her real name) has posted the review here, and I think you will agree it's well reviewed.

The book, by Dennis Lehane, was superb. Lehane captured the essence of working-class Massachusetts-- insular, fiercely loyal, fucked-up like a family, real-- better than any other author I've read, and early reports from the film (which was shot in Boston) say that Eastwood captured this on screen.

I can't wait! Existential despair, Boston style! And just in time for the Red Sox nation's own annual rite of existential despair, ashes-and-sackcloth wearing, unconsidered recriminations, and drunken, heartbreaking promises that next year, next yeah, Mackie, is gonna be the yeah.

Which it is.

On the topic of the Blues and music industry perfidy, Fat Possum Records has a page up on their site taken from the New York Times explaining why Fat Possum Artists didn't participate in Martin Scorcese's "The Blues."

It boils down to this: Fat Possum treats their artists well, and didn't think that the rates the producers were offering for use of the music were close to fair. The publishers for the film-makers responds, as does Bobby Rush.

Last night I was idly flipping channels before hitting the sack when I came upon the third episode of Martin Scorsese's The Blues, directed by Richard Pearce.

Fuck.

The Blues is a gigantic thing that most people (and most fans for that matter) never explore beyond the tourist areas populated by the national-touring giants of the trade. I personally started out with Hendrix, Stevie Ray, BB King, and Robert Johnson, and had to blaze my own path into the high weirdness from there.

My favorite blues-- the realest stuff-- are the performances that seem just a little tacky, and the singers who are too weird to be true. If I'm not a little repelled, yet totally drawn in, it's probably not hitting the mark. For my recorded fix, I'm a huge fan of everything put out by the people at Fat Possum, from the white-boy skronk of the Black Keys (hello, Akron!) to the offkey broken-down shambling of Bob Log III and Cedell Davis. I will make exceptions to this rule to include the transcendendental players like Guitar Slim or Robert Cray, who can help you achieve enlightenment with one bent note. But in general, the weirder the better.

Consequently I was a little afraid that Martin Scorsese would do to the Blues what he did to New York in 1863. That is, I was afraid he'd make it visceral, dirty, and cruel but then fuck it up by using electro-trance music and casting beautiful people. HA! Could I BE more wrong?

I flip on WGBH. The Blues. Onscreen, Bobby Rush is dressed in a red, blue, and gold silk brocade shirt and electric blue hip-huggers. His head sports jheri-curl. He is playing to a mixed-race audience in a bowling alley, and singing a song called "Pecked by the Right Hen." The crowd is going apeshit. Bobby stalks the makeshift stage like a lion tamer, working the crowd. The crowd works back. Then the camera pans right, and we see the sight. A young, schoolmarmish woman has jumped onstage and is shaking her booty at the crowd, such booty-shaking as to make a Pastor recant. She shakes and shakes and shakes and shakes and shakes and it becomes clear that Bobby Rush is taming no lion... he's only hoping to contain the booty. Bobby sings to the booty. Bobby talks to the booty. Bobby begs the booty for a little mercy. Bobby introduces the booty to the crowd, and the crowd hollers back. Bobbys's shirt slithers and shimmers like it's going to take a verse. All the while, this woman shakes her ass like it's on hinges.

Bobby finishes the song, and we cut to church. Bobby Rush, in a nice brown suit with a gold tie, grinning and mouthing the pastor's words as he sings a gospel song. Intercut a tour-bus interview in which Bobby Rush explains that the same people who are out on Saturday are in Church on Sunday, the only difference being to whom they are petitioning for salvation.

And that's it. You better BELIEVE I'll be tuning in for every remaining episode, and buying this set on DVD. The soundtrack? Ehhh, maybe, if I get tired of my Otha Turner bootlegs.

For me, it's nice to sit in BB King's Blues Club among velvet curtains, dine on a twenty-dollar steak and take in a show by the great Duke Robillard. It's even okay to sit in a Texican joint in Marblehead, Massachusetts as the Cat Sass Blues Band pounds the joy out of "Got My Mojo Working." But goddamn it if the bowling alley isn't the place to be. It's what Greil Marcus called the "old, weird America," and it do feel a bit like home.

[update] Cross-posted to blogcritics.

As I read this article, I am reminded anew of the crazy shit men will do in the quest for record sales.

(Oh, it's for a cause, I hear you say? What about the rats in a blender? Was that for a cause too?)

It's Friday! Hedonism rules!

Over at Slate, Mike Steinberg is bashing California wines, and well may he do so. The vast majority of the California wine I've had recently has been the oenophilic equivalent of Con Air: big, loud, clumsy, vaguely shameful, and a chore to get through.

Recently the taste in the "O" household has run more toward New Zealand, Australia, Argentina, and Chile. The cheaper end of the scale from those regions still offers good balance, depth, and interest, and since Chile especially isn't yet well-known, you can get some insane bargains. Goodwife O especially likes the tropical fruit flavors that sometimes come across in the Aussie wines, and I'm a sucker for South American whites for some reason. Better for us a $7 bottle of Yellowtail ("Australian for 'wine'") than a $25 bottle of some overfruity Moulin Rouge California Zin.

But that's not to say that no California wine is worth tasting. The Goodwife and I got a case of Rancho Zabaco 2001 Dancing Bull Zinfandel for our wedding, and it was just... great... and they're from Sonoma.

I'm not getting paid to do this or anything. I just want everyone to enjoy the good things.

But whatever. Tonight it's martini time! Or Reisling time. Depending on whether I make it to the wine store. But martini time sounds more hep. "Throw some Arthur Lyman on the hi-fi! It's martini time!"

Just because I feel like doling out a tiny crumb of largesse today (too much caffeine, too little rest), please visit cdbaby.com.

They only carry music made by small artists, on small labels. Their search engine lets you search by mood, geographic location, or random word, and they have a terrific associative function that lets you enter an artist's name, say "The Flaming Lips," and gives you back a list of albums they carry that you'll like if you like the Flaming Lips. And most stuff is about ten bucks.

This, folks, is how it is done. Please give them your support.

The Bottom Line will remain open, at least for now. Good news!

Comments from my previous posting to Blogcritics had argued that the club's booking and management have gone downhill in the last decade, and that closing wouldn't be such a shame. Based on the postings on the marquee back when I lived in New York, that's fair enough. The club should be booking Jason Mraz and Josh Rouse instead of faded older stars. In their defense, both Ute Lemper (!) and Odetta are in town soon, and, c'mon folks. Those ladies kick much ass.

Well, maybe a near-death experience will help re-invigorate the club and return it to prominence and quality. It will never be the Mercury Lounge, booking-wise, but at least it can compete with the Village Underground, Town Hall, and maybe even Tonic (if they're smart) in the boutique music niche.

Get your copy here, and expect lower productivity from certain ministers in the days to come. Neal Stephenson is the voice of my generation, if by generation you mean my narrowly defined psychotopographical coordinate.

Other readings of Minister Johno of late:

• Thomas Paine: Common Sense
• The Portable Thomas Jefferson
• Edmund S. Morgan: Benjamin Franklin
• Simone de Beauvoir: America Day By Day
• Peter Guralnick: Lost Highway: Journeys & Arrivals of American Musicians

Wow... America, America, America. Even when I'm reading a French writer she's writing about America. Ah, what the hell. Other countries are dirty and they talk funny and they don't have the right kind of coffee-- it's too thick and bitter-- and the beer's warm or it's too cold and the clothes fit funny and what's with their money and why can't they just speak english like normal people?

Australia is the "world's gayest country".

and from Drudge (who has a knack for good headlines) "Mutant Rats on Rampage in Central Asia" and "House of Filth."

[Update]"Student cuts off penis and tongue after drinking hallucinogenic tea."

Go read the history of Murphy's Law. I insist.

New York City notes, part II.

My favorite parts of Manhattan have always been the East Village and the Lower East Side. Starting at about 10th street and heading south, and going no farther west than Broadway, is where I find the places for people like me. I am happy to report that Disney has not yet gotten a toehold here. Canal Street is still a crazy parade, Clinton Street is still full of Latinos, Welcome To The Johnsons, Motor City Bar, Barramundi, Lakeside Lounge, Beauty Bar and Tonic are all still open, and The Pickle Guys are still holding it down next door to the accordian store and the yarmulke wholesaler.

Walking around that part of the city the day after Johnny Cash died made me miss Joey Ramone all over again. The Lower East Side was Joey Ramone's New York, and it fit him to a T. Gawky and alluring, deceptively savvy yet bashingly simple, chaotic, surprisingly kind, and tragic. It was a bad week... Warren Zevon, Johnny Cash, and John Ritter, who I seem to like a lot better than most people do.

But the majority of our trip this time was spent in Brooklyn, kicking around Park Slope and Williamsburg. Being a partisan for Queens myself, I had never really spent much time in the BK apart from a few bars on Smith Street, a party or two in eastern Willamsburg, and that time I spent at a hospital just south of downtown Brooklyn when my testicle was trying to kill me.

Know what? I love Brooklyn. Moreover, the two friend we went to see both live in impossible sitcom apartments. Especially the Vet. The Vet is fresh out of Evil Animal Medical School, moved to New York to take a job in Queens, and lives in a converted warehouse space in the heart of Williamsburg. Apart from being the finest living space I have ever had the pleasure to inhabit in New York, the hipster tide around the neighborhood has ebbed just a little because the thirtysomething liberals and older hipsters have moved in with their money and chased the young Onanistic hipster crowd somewhere else. Where? Hell if I know. East New York? Flatbush? Bed-Stuy? Who cares. It's fantastic! And it makes it possible for actual human-type people to live in spectacular apartments with exposed brickwork, skylights, and four fire doors between them and the outside world. Wonderful. Brooklyn is what Manhattan would be if the power and allure of limitless money hadn't twisted it, Gollum-like, into something crabbed, grasping, and unpleasant.*

Up next: Sappho, Johnny Cash, and Performativity in Art

*Except the St. Marks Bookstore! Long live the St. Marks Bookstore! Unaccountably, I was unable to find a single book at the Strand that I wanted to buy, but at St. Marks, the Goodwife had to physically discipline me to keep me from buying the whole store.

And also the vegetarian chili cheeseburger at Veggie City Diner on 14th. They should build a statute to its immortal glory.

And also the exceptions noted above. It is possible that the usually worse-than-useless J/M/Z subway line is actually a giant viaduct of ley energy, funneling Brooklyn-vibes into Lower Manhattan and Lower Manhattan-vibes into Brooklyn as a guard against the encroaching armies of Disney. That'd be cool, and explain an awful lot.

New York City Notes, Part I.

So the Goodwife and I took the Chinatown bus to New York on Friday night as part of the Goodwife Birthing-Day Festivular Extravaganza 2003 celebration. It's been a long while since I had time to see the city to any great extent, since previous trips back had been on business for the Death Star, my former employer. All I can say?

Sheesh.

My erstwhile city has gone downhill in some strong and meaningful ways. That's not to say that we have slipped back to the Early Koch Years where violence could leap at you from any doorway. Rather, the Disneyfication of Manhattan has proceeded faster than a case of the gangrene up the leg of a Confed'rate soldier left in the mud at Antietam.

Case in point. On Saturday night, at the behest of new friends, we went to a bar in Chelsea, not too many blocks north of the Meatpacking District, about which more later. The Chelsea I remember was a maze of gay bars, wealthy hipsters, and arty/literary types flocking to the new galleries in the Twenties between Tenth and Eleventh. It was remote, a little barren, and a little too ugly to properly gentrify.

As we came up the stairs from the subway at 14th and 8th, it was already clear that change had happened. Roaming packs of women, dressed up like self-hating hookers, were charging up and down every street and avenue, especially coming east from the Hudson. Guh? There's no public transportation in that direction! All that's over there is the mouth of the Holland tunnel (twenty blocks south...) and... oh... Jersey. Right. What are they doing? Walking the river bottom like zombies? And what are they doing not standing in line for Puffy's place over in the Flatiron district?

The bar we ended up at was unreservedly awful, but we stayed out of kindess for the host. It was a beautiful space with a very large, multitiered, brick garden, with $11 drinks and a vew of the stupidest humans I have ever been in personal contact with. Between 10:30 and midnight, we watched the crowd flip over from cheesy debutantes and aftershaven tools living out the Wall Street Dream on the last hundred dollars of their credit line to a 90% bridge and tunnel crowd. In Chelsea!! What the hell? I have never seen that many huaraches, white pants, or hungry leers in my life, outside the gay bars that used to line the street where this place stands now. I have never felt more out of my element in New York, a city that doesn't look twice if you walk down the street stark naked with a giant rubber chicken head on your penis. So, we left. And got hassled by the staff on the way out for not being beautiful. (For the record, I looked effing fabulous)

Worse than this, the fucking meatpacking district, where gay men used to come to, erm, pack meat, is now a fucking tourist and trading desk jockey playground. Fuck! Goddamn Bloomberg, and yes, Giuliani, have a lot to answer for. All the fun, mildew, grit, soul, and nastiness has been bled out of that stretch of lower Manhattan, in favor of the hooting, backwards-hat wearing motherfucker crowd and the hoochies that hang on them like lampreys and I hate it forever.

One of the writer friends we were out with put it well. "Manhattan is the liver of New York."

Damn straight. So we hopped a train back to Brooklyn where we belong.

Next: Joey Ramone, the Lower East Side, real life sitcom living arrangements, and smashing success in the outer boroughs. Fucking Manhattan may rot.

Even though the RIAA is Johno's bete noire, I seem to be posting a lot about it lately. That Junior college across the river from MIT must be keeping him extraordinarily busy for him to miss this incredible monument to recording industry hypocrisy.

The wired article details the activities of BigChampagne, a company that creates databases of information on song downloads, sorted by region. It sells that information (at a substantial markup) to the record labels. When a label sees that one of their songs is being played once a week at three in the morning, and in the same market that song is the number ten download on kazaa; they can put the arm on the local radio station to increase its airtime.

On the one hand, this is clever, sensible and good business. BC has found a need in the market for a certain type of information, and it has filled that need. The labels are responding to the actual desires of real customers by trying to get frequently downloaded songs onto the radio. Which will increase their album sales.

On the other hand, it is rank hypocrisy for the labels to be using this information gleaned from file download services to increase their profits while simultaneously extorting $2000 from twelve year olds, and sueing the grandmas who are using those same file download services. Even congressmen, not known for being with it, are saying that, hey, record people, if you keep going like this, people aren't going to like you.

The record industry needs, at the very least, step down its evil to the level of Microsoft, and adopt an "embrace and extend" policy. By using the file trading services, they could (especially in combination with clever ideas like selling cheaper cds) increase profits. And not be quite so evil.

The September 11 Digital Archive is being added to the Library of Congress's permanent collection, and the LC will host a day-long symposium on Wednesday, September 10, 2003. If you're in DC, play hooky and go. In the meantime, you can view the collection of images, video and stories here.

Yesterday, I remembered that I had not read the Limey Brit in some time. Instantly, I rushed over and found... a movie review.

Limey raves about the movie Equilibrium. Convinced by his sparkling prose, I rented the movie last night. It kicks ass. I have not enjoyed a movie as much since I was forced to watch Boondock Saints. (I have watched that movie of my own volition several times since. It also kicks ass.)

I have a few quibbles with the plot, but on the whole, it was fairly well thought out. And the action sequences are amazing. The Brit was right, this is not guns and martial arts, it is guns as martial art. Clever idea, and perfectly realized on film. Curiously, I am reading the Gunslinger series from Stephen King, and it gave me a new way to think about what the gunslinger does. Added bonus.

The funny thing is that I might have watched this movie months ago, but for the fact that when I picked up the box at the lackluster video, the front screamed, "better than the Matrix!!!" Needless to say, I was dubious. Oh well, now all is right with the world, and I need to find someone to teach me gun fu.

Joe Bob says, "Check it out!"

Have you ordered your copy yet?

If you need to ask what Quicksilver is, or who Neal Stephenson is, get off my webpage immediately. Thank you, come again!

Apologies for the light posting. Even community college staff get slammed sometimes.

Over at Yahoo, we hear that the RIAA is planning to sue another 261 music enthusiasts. The RIAA back in August said that it would only persecute the most egregious file sharers. In a further gracious move, the association offered an amnesty program - anyone afraid of being sued could admit in writing that they illegally traded music online and vow in a legally binding, notarized document, to never, ever do it again. Of course, the amnesty does not apply to anyone the RIAA already has subpoenaed for information regarding file swapping.

"We're willing to hold out our version of an olive branch," RIAA President Cary Sherman said. At least he noted that it was their version of an olive branch. About 57 million Americans use file-sharing services, according to Boston-based research firm the Yankee Group. We'll see how much of an olive branch the RIAA extends to them - they're only a fifth of the US population.

I think I hate Doktor Frank. Upon reflection, that's a bit harsh. I ought to sharpen that a bit, and say I am gripped by a seething jealousy of Doktor Frank. There. That's more like it. The reason for my seething jealousy is this post. It's a wonderful discourse on the joys and perils of music wonkery, the nature of the individual experience of music fandom, and the subjective, atomistic nature intrisic to the experience of musical enjoyment. Except he's not an asshole about it like I am.

Also worthy of jealousy is this two-part post on My Completely Random Life (one, two), on the Culture Wars and the relative decline of Rock and Roll as the ruler of all. My compatriot mentioned this post previously in this same forum, but it's so good that I think it deserves a second glance.

Finally, Slate asks the irrelevant question, "Was Lester Bangs The Best Rock Critic Of The 70's?. Irrelevant doesn't imply un-interesting, though. An older wiser Lester would be the first to admit that everything he wrote about Lou Reed was, in the end, totally irrelevant. Irrelevant, but interesting, illuminating, tortuous, tortured, thoughtful, eager, and compulsively readable.

Watch, as I try to tie all this together like a monkey toying with a piece of twine. Go, monkey, go!