Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds; or: Holy Shit. These Guys, They Are Loud! (I'm so glad I remembered my earplugs)

Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds. I got to see them play. Last Wednesday (like with the Shellac show/post combo, I preferred to let things dull into the fogginess of my memory before posting about them. This way I can make stuff up with fewer pangs of conscience). I was introduced to these guys in 2000 or thereabouts by the Brothers L.——probably moreso the younger than the elder. I've been diggin' 'em since around that time.

So, the show. At The Kool Haus. Which is massive and open and solidly floored. Which we learned after waiting in line for at least half an hour, slowly progressing toward the entrance. That's what we get for getting there only ten minutes before doors opened, I guess. So, we ended up with a line of sight not all that great——especially for Gabrielle, which I felt bad about the entire show. Especially when the six foot something fellow moved, about halfway through the show, directly in front of her. So close that when she blinked, her eyelashes got stuck in the weave of his sweater. The extrication process was long and painful. I could see most performers from about the waist up.

The openers, Black Mountain, were unimpressive I found. I thought every song, at its commencement, was a cover. And not of anything spectacular. Imagine Black Sabbath stripped of all their darkness and bluesiness and converted into even more stereotypical arena rock. There you go. The woman who sang in the band, with her sea-sickeningly wide vibrato, reminded me of Grace Slick. So, I guess that's a good thing.

To Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds!
Their setlist (from what I could remember when we got home——I'm not sure on the order for parts of it, but I'm almost positive I've got every song they played listed):

The Night of the Lotus Eaters
Dig, Lazarus, Dig
Tupelo
The Weeping Song
Red Right Hand
Hold on to Yourself
Love Letter
Midnight Man
The Ship Song
The Mercy Seat
Deanna
We Call Upon the Author
Moonland
Hard On for Love
Papa Won’t Leave You, Henry

Encore. Of course.:

Get Ready for Love
The Lyre of Orpheus
Stagger Lee

I was a bit disappointed that it was mostly their rockers that were played, though not surprised. And they rocked them well. Watching Jim Sclavunos and Thomas Wydler go at their kits was an entertaining sight; the contrast in their styles was... readily apparent. J.S. was a wildman behind the kit. All flailing limbs and contorted body. T.W. was the epitome of calm. Perfect posture; light, spare movements——though no less hard hitting. I think I have the names right. Just to be on the safe side, though, reread this section and swap the names.

Nick Cave was pretty much the quintessential Rock Star. The traditional "I love you, too"s; the incessant "fuck"s. That sort of thing. A wicked showman.

Except for "Get Ready for Love," which suffered from tuning and timing issues (and the lack of the gospel choir), the set was damn near impeccable. Oh, yeah: add to the peccadilloes: the lack of my favourite verse (among others) in "The Lyre of Orpheus" (I think they just wanted to get out of there at that point. Because of this lack, I'm going to post the lyrics, and put everything he/they skipped in bold [and my favourite verse in italicised boldness]):

Orpheus sat gloomy in his garden shed
Wondering what to do
With a lump of wood, a piece of wire
And a little pot of glue
O Mamma O Mamma

He sawed at the wood with half a heart
And glued it top to bottom
He strung a wire in between
He was feeling something rotten
O Mamma O Mamma

Orpheus looked at his instrument
And he gave the wire a pluck
He heard a sound so beautiful
He gasped and said O my God
O Mamma O Mamma

He rushed inside to tell his wife
He went racing down the halls
Eurydice was still asleep in bed
Like a sack of cannonballs
O Mamma O Mamma

Look what I've made, cried Orpheus
And he plucked a gentle note
Eurydice's eyes popped from their sockets
And her tongue burst through her throat
O Mamma O Mamma

O God, what have I done, he said
As her blood pooled in the sheets
But in his heart he felt a bliss
With which nothing could compete
O Mamma O Mamma

Orpheus went leaping through the fields
Strumming as hard as he did please
Birdies detonated in the sky
Bunnies dashed their brains out on the trees
O Mamma O Mamma

Orpheus strummed till his fingers bled
He hit a G minor 7
He woke up God from a deep, deep sleep
God was a major player in heaven
O Mamma O Mamma

God picked up a giant hammer
And He threw it with an thunderous yell
It smashed down hard on Orpheus' head
And knocked him down a well
O Mamma O Mamma

The well went down very deep
Very deep went down the well
The well went down so very deep
Well, the well went down to hell
O Mamma O Mamma

Poor Orpheus woke up with a start
All amongst the rotting dead
His lyre tucked safe under his arm
His brains all down his head
O Mamma O Mamma

Eurydice appeared brindled in blood
And she said to Orpheus
If you play that fucking thing down here
I'll stick it up your orifice!
O Mamma O Mamma

This lyre lark is for the birds, said Orpheus
It's enough to send you bats
Let's stay down here, Eurydice, dear
And we'll have a bunch of screaming brats
O Mamma O Mamma

Orpheus picked up his lyre for the last time
He was on a real low down bummer
And stared deep into the abyss and said
This one is for Mamma
O Mamma O Mamma

Another low point to the show (though not, entirely, the fault of the band): the dude beside us getting uncomfortably excited at the line "I'm gonna give the gates a shove" during "Hard On for Love." The dude was beside himself with something; I'm not too sure I want to know what, though.

The high point of the show, though was "The Mercy Seat." They emphasised the intensity of the song, building and building to the clever climax. I love the lyrics to this song, the progression through the story. It's very well laid out.

Other highlights: Gabrielle's creepy as all get out eyes before the show started. There were black lights everywhere. So: CREEPY. And wicked.

Other high points (song-related):
— singing along with everything at, or near, the top of my lungs.
— Warren Ellis
— Mick Harvey
— "We Call Upon the Author"
— "Deanna"
— "Red Right Hand"
— and, of course, the obvious set closer: "Stagger Lee"

Upon rereading this post, I've realised that I say pretty much nothing. It's apparently really difficult for me to write about a band that's as high up on my list of favourites as these guys are (I mean, seriously, check out my last.fm profile!)

I went to the show expecting to be entertained, and expecting the band to blow my mind. I was definitely entertained, but I'm not sure if the band entirely blew my mind. Maybe my expectations were too high? Though it was an amazing set, don't get me wrong. Everything was played with an excess of energy and everything sounded good, full, large and they all looked like they were having a good time. Maybe it was the overwhelming size of the audience that cut down on the show's goodness for me. Since I wasn't comfortable, the quality of the show diminished? It's probable.

But, yeah, nice work, boys.

RACCOON!

Not long ago——maybe a week and a half——I was lying on the bed reading (David Maine's Fallen) when I heard rustling in the backyard. Rustling followed by silence; silence followed by crashing. I looked out the window and saw a raccoon which had attempted, I think, to climb down one of the support columns of the trellis, but instead sort of fell down it. Once on the ground it looked around and just plodded along, content, at ease. So I went to get my camera, of course. And snap some FUN!

Little fella!:


Here it's climbing down to the lower level of the yard.:


Time to go back up!:


...and back down...:


Checkin' shit out!:


Back up (over the bar this time)!:


OH SHIT!:


Ensuring the sturdiness of the solar-powered lights.:


And, finally, going to hang out with the kids on their lunch break at the elementary school next door (little fella didn't even flinch when the bell rang, thus positing a sense of courage [et cetera] more steadfast than my own.:


Good times.

It's curtains, folks!

This afternoon, Gabrielle and I paid a visit to the second hand shops on St. Clair West (well, more accurately, the second hand shops within a limited stretch of St. Clair West [there could be countless others tucked away in other corners of the street. There could be scads of them. SCADS!). So, first: Salvation Army Thrift Shop. We were, specifically, looking for a small table for the front porch and curtains for the living room (and possibly some other things). No luck there; although, there was an almost winner in regards to a jacket, which, unfortunately, was too big for Gabrielle. It would probably have looked more appropriate draped across a larger person's frame. Lurch's, for example. What I mean to say is: it was a nice jacket.

After this shop we headed to the Goodwill Store. And success in the form of MAGIC appeared before our very eyes. Hanging amidst the bed linens and tablecloths and valences and material riddled with holes was something almost too marvellous to imagine. A long thin strip of fabric that screamed decadence, aging luxury and possibly a few curse words.

We took the fabric home (as well as Stephen King's Skeleton Crew), but not before stopping off at the Saturday afternoon Green Barn Farmers' Market (on the corner of Wychwood and St. Clair), where we picked up an incredibly tasty baguette. And then we were homeward bound.

We ate a lunch of baguette (that's how we know it's incredibly tasty——we don't just take the seller's word for everything. Caveat emptor and whathaveyou.) and cheese and then got down to business, cranked some good tunes (Ringers, Ampere, This Is My Fist and This Bike Is a Pipe Bomb. In that order. Conveniently, we finished working just before one of my records was to come up in the rotation).

We cut the fabric into three strips and hand sewed into the top a space for the curtain rod that was here when we moved in. And, gosh, they look good!

CLOSED!:




OPEN!:

Shellac attack! or: how to survive auditory surgery

Tuesday night: The Horseshoe Tavern.
Pre-show: rum 'n' cokes at home (commencing, perhaps, somewhat earlier than most would assume a good starting time).
Excitement: high.
Also: I waited for at least 40 hours to post this, just to ensure that things would be a bit dimmer than they should be when one is writing a review of something.

To be honest, I am quite new to Shellac. Only in the past couple years have I heard them, though I had read reviews of albums, shows, long before I knew of Steve Albini as anything other than a producer.
Anticipation was running fairly high as we journeyed to the bar; there may have been an excited whoop from someone in the party, but I cannot be certain of this. Certainly, though, there was enthusiasm.
The opening performer, Chris Brokaw, played some interesting pieces——his chordal choices were interesting, and it was fun to compare the (other) music nerds in the audience to the other folks; the (other) music nerds (and maybe I was doing this, too. But there are no witnesses, and I am, to be fair, an [possibly THE] Unreliable Narrator) bobbing their heads, to the 6/8 tunes, counting in two, whereas those less inclined toward music theory were straining their necks once——actually, twice per triplet, since this head-bobbing phenomenon involves an up and down. And that equals twelve strains to each neck per measure! A little excessive, to be sure. But, let us return to Mr. Brokaw, leaving his audience where we belong. Some poorly-chosen (to my taste) effects marred some of the pieces; for example: flanger. I've never really been able to get behind that for anything but its novelty value (yeah: that's coming from the guy who made a lot of the loud stuff happen in HJT. [please refer again to that whole Unreliable Narrator conceit, please]). However, I enjoyed his voice——it reminded me, at its finer moments, of Elliot Smith on "Needle in the Hay." As a whole, though, it was a passably enjoyable set.
And, like many of the people there, I'm sure, I was mostly looking for Shellac; the opening performance was essentially irrelevant. A time killer. But a better time killer than many others out there. So, of course, once the time was killed, more time had to be killed in waiting for Shellac to set up.
From the moment they started into the first song, Shellac put on a great show. An intense show.
Imagine being tied to a tree and witnessing a herd of seismosaurs charging toward you, chased by an allosaurus or three. And maybe——just maybe (best case scenario)——the seismosaurs rumble on past you, step on your toe, knock the tree over, send up a few clouds of dust. You still have to deal with the one (or three) allosauruses (allosauri?!). And they'll probably devour you whole (much easier than continuing to chase the big guys. I mean, you have a broken toe, probably——you won't be able to run all that well——and, of course, you're still tied to a tree [please note: allosaurs are lazy]).
Now, in case you're wondering about the relevance of the above: I will explain it! (see what I'm doing here? It's a trick referred to as: A TERRIBLE THING TO DO. Never lay out the gameplan like that, guys. A faux pas if ever there was one. Just go: BAM! and hit the reader with the thing the gameplan is made of; don't badger them with the plans.)
Shellac was like that. Inevitable. Devastating. Rending everything in its path. And (like a charging allosaurus [or three] invariably is) awesome.
The show was great. It's as simple as that.
The high point for me came when they played "Squirrel Song." It was the first Shellac song I'd heard, way back in the times of mist. And I'm quite sure it's my favourite (which seems to be the case with some other people, too [not that "Squirrel Song" is their favourite or their first, but that the first Shellac song they hear is their favourite]). Everything was played bang on.
And it was nice to see a bass player who gave a shit about what the drummer was doing. Bob Weston, whenever he moved away from the drums for any reason, could be seen inching back toward them, his eyes glued to the snare and hi-hats. Which leads me to my next point (please refer to the paragraph starting "Now, in case..."): Shellac is tighter than... something which is sealed up as tight as a drum. If you stuck your finger in a vise, and tightened it as tightly as it can be tightened: Shellac would be tighter (and possibly hurt less).
It was the best show I'd seen since the last best show I'd seen (and that doesn't even bring the allosaurs or the seismosaurs into consideration). Also note: the last best show I saw was The Evens at the Haviland Club in Charlottetown. I mean: COME ON! Ian MacKaye in Charlottetown! (and it still wins)

(unfortunately, I missed the last two songs: I was overcome by heat, hunger, thirst, sheer volume, fatigue and the big crowd and had to sit on a bench in the blackly painted basement, gulping in air that wasn't overwhelmed by too many people sucking it in)

(and the way to survive this sort of auditory surgery: wear ear plugs. LOVE YOUR EARS! PLEASE! They're the only ones you'll ever have! Unless you buy some new ones from some enterprising young person somewhere.)

David Foster Wallace

Eli Horowitz told me to name one of my wiimotes after him. It was before I had read Infinite Jest. After reading it, I decided to do just that. It's an amazing triumph over words.

Taylor just sent me this link from metafilter. Which also led me here. I'm sort of shaking right now.

Also, to commemorate writers' night here at The Morass, I'm posting some stuff at my "literature" blog. First posts.

I'm telling you stories. Trust me.

That pair of sentences appears no fewer than four times in The Passion by Jeanette Winterson. A book which happens to be able to call itself my favourite. I've read it no fewer than eight times. It resonates with me. I feel it in my gut, head and heart (in order of intensity, lowest to highest). It's also one of the very few books in which I see, in my mind's eye, when I drape flesh over the characters, one of the main characters as me (another one being Clive Barker's Imajica, which might be a story for another day). Henri, in case you were wondering.
The motif of storytelling is one which Jeanette Winterson tackles more than once in her œuvre and is also something which I've been working into Jürgen; or trying to, at least (though from what I hope is at least a slightly different angle). The very idea of storytelling, the importance of it fascinates me. Its encapsulation of elements of culture, of history, of the interpretation of these(this last being, at times, the most important element from my perspective). I guess that's what being a (quasi)storyteller does, huh?
Another common motif of Winterson's is time. She is a master of manipulation in this regard; time is almost always twistable, bendable, corruptible in her works. It is not what you expect; it exists beyond any set of laws.
But, yes, back to The Passion. It is the story of Henri. He worked for Napoleon. In his kitchens in the field. (I'm not very good at talking about books——even worse than I am at talking about music, it seems. I'm not really sure why, but I can never seem to find the words. Especially with a narrative as breath-taking as this one. Maybe it's because I know I will never write anything half as powerful, half as evocative, half as invested with meaning.)
It is the story of Villanelle. She is a Venetian who has lost her heart. It is the story of Henri and Villanelle, twined together, spiralling into a tight mesh of their two voices.
Winterson's prose is incredible; simple, compact, emotive; and, at times, as near as any writer could come to perfect. It never stumbles; every word rings out on the proper note.
Without Jeanette Winterson, I don't think I would ever have decided to really try my hand as a writer (and, if she were to know this and to ever read anything I write [I'm allowed to dream, all right?], I hope she would not find the idea too repulsive, too insulting). No other writer has made me——through the same sentences (found in her essays in Art Objects)——so desire to write always and to never write another word, so inspired me and made me so contemn my own words.




(An update on my writing: Jürgen has, since I last posted about it, swelled by about five thousand words. The last section I finished, however, made me need a break——I was sort of overwhelmed by it, which is a good thing; I hope it'll have the same effect on others who may (eventually) come to read it.
Also, I've been organising some of my poetry in the hopes of completing a manuscript in time for submission season [January to March or April for most publishers I've checked out]. Not that it's likely at all to find a publisher. But it certainly won't if it just sits in my computer, gathering digi-dust and world wide cobwebs [yeah, I know: I groaned, too].
And, of course, I'm always working on shorter things, too. And, when each piece——if I think it good enough——is completed, I will submit them singly to publishers of short fiction anthologies and the like.)




But back to Winterson, for a moment, if I may.
Jeanette Winterson is my favourite writer. She writes things which resonate deeply in me, which inspire me, which swallow me whole.
Please read her. Please lose yourself in her words. Please jump, with abandon, into her worlds. You'll thank yourself, I'm sure.
Let me close with words from Jeanette Winterson, words from Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery (an extract of which can be found here.):

In the West, we avoid painful encounters with art by trivialising it, or by familiarising it. Our present obsession with the past has the double advantage of making new work seem raw and rough compared to the cosy patina of tradition, whilst refusing tradition its vital connection to what is happening now. By making islands of separation out of the unbreakable chain of human creativity, we are able to set up false comparisons, false expectations, all the while lamenting that the music, poetry, painting, prose, performance art of Now, fails to live up to the art of Then, which is why, we say, it does not affect us. In fact, we are no more moved by a past we are busy inventing, than by a present we are busy denying. If you love a Cézanne, you can love a Hockney, can love a Boyd, can love a Rao. If you love a Cézanne rather than lip-service it.

S'more Spore?

All right, so I don't actually have Spore (nor have I played it), but I've been, off and on, since around 2(ish), watching Gabrielle play it. Peeking over her shoulder, straining from the completely stretched-out length of my headphones' cord, leaning back in my computer chair. And now I want to play it. It looks like a good time. Also: an incredibly difficult time, from the sounds of things.
But, I have had the trial version of the Creature Creator for about a month or so. It doesn't have all the parts and whatnot, but it's still pretty wicked. Being able to build messed up looking little fellas from the ground up is a pretty swell time. So, I added a widget to this blog. Yeah, I know, I know. I just like showing off my little guys.
Maybe some day I'll actually play the game, too. Who knows these things?

(Also: check out my SQUIPONY!!! [oh, combatwoundedveteran])