Too busy to write any thinkin'-type words, but here's some pictures...

Apparently some sickos out there are finding my website by googling the words "child nudist" based on a lousy joke about Jandek and a photo of my son that used to live here. This message is to those people: either get therapy now or go blow your goddamn brains out, you fucks. If you choose the latter option, be sure give everything you own to the International Society for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect here: http://www.ispcan.org/. You owe this to humanity if you aren't trying to get better, shitbird.

I read Beto Hernandez's Palomar, but I'm waiting on a promised review from my friend Joe so I can post his and my own review side-by-side.

In the meantime, here's an entertaining flyer.

Pitchfork has a great article on the RIAA lawsuits against their own customers.

I think Steve Gordon is far too kind, if anything, to record industry executives with his suggestion that they have some worth to music biz. Well, maybe I'm going too far here. They have some worth in terms of promotion, but that worth is nowhere near the compensation they receive.

Gordon is dead-on, though, in his argument about the willingness-to-pay of customers and the prevalence of risk assessment, however subconscious. For instance, putting ethical issues aside, most people don't shoplift because there's a, say, 50% or greater chance that they'll get caught. If caught, they'll have not just the public shame to deal with, but the costs associated with reimbursement, court costs, lost work, and so on. It's not only that it's wrong; it's potentially very expensive to try to swipe that new Wilco album from one of the (disappearing) big box stores. With P2P file sharing, though, the potential of being caught - the risk - is far less. The RIAA has quite a bit of hassle to go through just to get your name once they've identified you as a person with music files on your computer (which is apparently the gold standard, as the RIAA now seems to believe that all ripping and burning violates fair use). However, some people are being caught and the RIAA is asking for a settlement that would be cheaper for the defendant than court costs. On the user end, the number of legal downloads are up significantly (although not enough to cover the drop in record sales). This shows that despite the low risk of being caught illegally downloading music, people will use legal sources if the price is right. Clearly, a high-quality, low-cost alternative to illegal downloads would be successful if the price is right, but it is just a clear that the RIAA would rather pretend that they are the mafia and it's 1954 than attempting to come up with such an alternative.

Gordon also nails the reason behind this: the RIAA is concerned that legal downloading is not as profitable to the executives, promotional departments, and other music biz leeches (wanna meet these bozos? Come to SXSW). Although this means greater profits for the artists themselves,* who gives a shit about those people?

Thus, the RIAA's current strategy is deplorable. When faced with the crisis of shifting paradigms (see how I use the biz talk correctly?), the only incorrect stances are digging in one's heels and attacking one's own reluctant supporters.

* Excluding Metallica (natch) and/or the other multi-gazillionaire artists who are the ~1% that actually profit from the current record industry.

Book No. 7: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers by Mary Roach



Roach, a sometimes Salon columnist, has written a witty, breezy book about dead bodies. You've probably heard about this book from friends or on NPR, but it's well worth a read. Roach somehow turns the subject into something so light that the stories stick with you without any distaste for the subject. There's a lot of reviews about this one out there, so I'm going to just mention that I read and recommend it.

Book No. 6: The Devil and Sonny Liston by Nick Tosches



This is the best Tosches book I've read thus far. The arc of Sonny Liston's life is laid out as a tragedy on the grand scale. The marriage of boxing, mafia, and race relations in the mid-20th century are the real story here, playing Liston like more rook than pawn, pushing him forward in straight lines towards some goal that he could not possibly understand. Someone should write an opera.

Book No. 4: Love's Forever Changes by Andrew Hultkrans (33 1/3)
Book No. 5: Elvis Costello's Armed Forces by Franklin Bruno (33 1/3)



In preparing myself to start working on my book, I thought it best to read a few more 33 1/3 titles, and these two, which I'd been wanting to read, seemed the most promising choices. I read Forever Changes back around the end of January/early February and Armed Forces through the middle of February, so my impressions are a bit duller than they were when I had just finished the books.

Hultkrans's book is much more enjoyable than Barney Hoskins's Arthur Lee book, which I read last year, although he uses Hoskins as a source. Hultkrans is mainly concerned with the voice of Forever Changes, a voice he calls prophetic in the Old Testament sense. I'm a little distanced from my initial impressions now, but I have a new, greater appreciation for the lyrics of the album, which I had already thought fantastic. "Live and Let Live," in particular, sounds even more like the end of the world, and maybe it is.

Bruno's book doesn't seem to have a central thesis about the album, but is full of fascinating little details and detours (rather like Bruno's music, I think) and similarly heightened my appreciation for an album already near the top of my personal pantheon. One of my brother music geeks described this one as the greatest 33 1/3 book thus far. I don't think I'm willing to go that far, but it's certainly a damn sight better than the one on The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn, and definitely in my top rung.

So. I didn't plan to take a two-week hiatus, but there it was.

I took my little boy down to SXSW day shows every day, but we didn't see anyone really worth mentioning. I got out one night for the Fiery Furnaces at Red's Scoot Inn, and they proceeded to tear the roof off the mother. Well, there's no roof on the back patio there, but ok. No keyboards in sight, and some of the crazier-ass rewrites of songs I've ever heard, as if Tony Iommi is Matt Friedberger's muse these days. Yowza.

I should catch up on books, but I'll do those in separate posts. Research on the book is going well. I'm working on refining my interview questions for the people who've agreed to talk with me.

TV: My wife and I obtained copies of the rest of Battlestar Galactica's 2nd season (the first half is out on dvd, but I haven't seen any announcements about when they're going to release the rest of it). As with the previous season-and-a-half, the show has some serious quality control issues, but when it's good, it's pretty decent. Also obtained copies of The Sopranos first two episodes of S6 (I'll watch the third tonight). I'm interested to see where this goes, and highly recommend Matt Zoller Seitz's analyses.

Music: Picked up Wilco's Kicking Television, a live double-CD. I love the sound of Nels Cline integrating with the music, but they occasionally tip the scales from lovely Television-esque guitar god perfection into thoughtless, crappy Jerr-Bear noodliness. The main offender is "Ashes of American Flags," and I halfway suspect it's the guitar tone that I hate more than anything. Also bought Richard Thompson's release from last year, Front Parlour Ballads, that's like almost every album he's put out in the last 16 years: some tracks are brilliant and some are half-baked. The man has made some extraordinarily well-conceived albums, so it's a shame to hear him put out songs that feel like he could have spent a little more time fleshing them out, but, then again, who the hell am I to judge him? The sheer volume of his best work is stunning. I could pull a single five-star album out of his last two (which are both 3-4 stars at best), but perhaps the less-great tracks provide some valuable context for RT's brilliance. I read one review of his box set saying that his brilliance is best appreciated in a mix with other artists. Maybe the varying factor of having another voice is why I put 4 of the 6 albums he made with Linda (his ex-wife, not that I think anyone reading this needs a RT primer) in my top tier, while I would only put 4 of his 15 solo studio albums in that same tier. For those keeping score at home, those 8 best RT albums are: Starring as Henry The Human Fly, I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight, Hokey Pokey, Pour Down Like Silver, Shoot Out The Lights, Amnesia, Rumor and Sigh, and Mock Tudor.

I'm playing next Saturday, March 18, at 5 or 6 pm...

UPDATE! I'm not playing next Saturday as I've just been unceremoniously tossed out of the band! This sucks for me because I've been wasting my leisure time learning someone else's music. But I am not the guitarist they are looking for. I just wished they had known this a month ago!

Fortunately, I have Parks & Wildlife, and I actually care quite a bit about that project.