Halloween Death Trip

As October slides into the dark night of November we gather tonight to celebrate the onset of darkness dressed as skeletons, devils, witches, and, uh, beer cans.

Life, Death, and Record Stores

oldnow
Originally uploaded by BarrettJ.

As I type this post I see people walking by on the street below carrying yellow Tower Records bags. Those bags will soon be memorabilia as the chain is set to disappear. I bought my first record in a Caldor in Ridgefield, Connecticut. I'm pretty certain it was Some Girls, which was the latest Rolling Stones record at the time. I still have it, with the original cover, the one that includes all the photos of celebrities, before it was pulled. (No Beatles Butcher Block though). So I started this post to talk about record stores and wound up on a nostalgia trip. But it is kind of weird to realize that many of the stores where I once bought music are gone. And not just the stores have changed. Listening to music used to involve getting up and flipping the record every 20 minutes. Then you had the CDs that played for an hour. Now my iTunes library measures music not by hours but by days. So much for original album covers...

What You Bring Is Who You Are

The other day as I was packing for a two night backpacking trip on the Appalachian Trail I thought about a post I'd read recently by Pete Townshend who talked about what travelers take with them when they travel. With backpacking you have to eliminate everything that isn't necessary because whatever you bring you have to carry on your back. Even the little things add up. Do you sense an analogy developing here?

Out on the trail, in a woods where the silence was punctuated only by the sounds of bird songs and rustling leaves, we passed a hiker listening to his iPod as he hiked. What he considered necessary seemed ludicrous to me. But obvious to him.

So what did I bring? Besides the obvious food-clothes-shelter? I brought a book. And a camera. I like books because the act of reading allows room for my imagination to play. And I like taking pictures for the same reason.

Afternoon in the Dream House

Yesterday I traveled to New York city to visit the Dream House, the sound and light exhibit created by LaMonte Young and Marian Zazeela. I've wanted to go for years but never made it for one reason or another. The house is on a busy street in the Tribeca neighborhood. Young and Zazeela live in the same building, one floor above the installation.

I'm still in the early stages of learning about the work of LaMonte Young. I'd heard that John Cale had collaborated with him in the early 60's and I knew that Spacemen 3 were devotees but that was about it until fairly recently when I began to take a closer look at the New York avante-garde music scene of the early 60's.

Anyway, back to yesterday. I climbed up the stairs to the third floor where I removed my shoes and entered the apartment. Once inside, I walked down a hall to a large carpeted front room lit in magenta light with four speakers putting out a very loud range of drones. My first impression was that it sounded like a big engine. The really trippy aspect to this installation is that the sound changes depending on where you sit or stand. So if you move your head slowly, various ranges of drones will come in and out of hearing. It's hard to describe but fantastic to experience. When I left I was surprised to discover that I'd spent two hours in the room. I had no idea I'd been in there that long.

And just to give you an idea of the complexity of Young's work, here is the title of the piece that was playing in the dream house yesterday (which he's been working on for the past 15 years and has yet to complete):
The base 9:7:4 Symmetry in Prime Time When Centered Above and Below the Lowest Term Primes in the Range 288 to 224 with the Addition of 279 and 261 in Which the Half of the Symmetric Division Mapped Above and Including 288 Consists of the Powers of 2 Multiplied by the Primes Within the Ranges of 144 to 128, 72 to 64 and 36 to 32 Which Are Symmetrical to Those Primes in Lowest Terms in the Half of the Symmetric Division Mapped Below and Including 224 Within the Ranges 126 to 112, 63 to 56 and 31.5 to 28 with the Addition of 119.

Got that?

911

9.11 memories

Fire Purification Ritual

Comets on Fire finally blasted through DC this past Friday night, during the height of Hurricane Ernesto. I'd wanted to see them for years after I heard a track ("Beneath the Ice Age") on a Ptolemaic Terrascope sampler (POT-33) that was such a total Amon Duul II freak out it caught my ear immediately. They played the Ottobar in Baltimore last summer but I missed that show.

(Sounds of) Kaleidoscope opened. They used to have a mid-sixties Kinks sound. Now they sound more like Jesus and Marychain. I like both those bands (but I'll take "Waterloo Sunset" over "Just Like Honey" every time).

(Sof)K are loud, but Comets on Fire are louder. You know a band is loud when they wear earplugs onstage. I chose to bathe unprotected in the full sonic assualt. Molar-rattling volume puts me in an altered state (the Black Cat's pint glass rum and cokes probably contribute). Kevin Shields spoke of My Bloody Valentine shows where "...people would experience a type of sensory deprivation, and they would lose the sense of time. It would force them to be in the moment, and since people don’t usually get to experience that, there’d be a sense of elation...1/3 of the audience would always think it was really shit, and try to leave, or get as far away as they could, and the other 2/3 really liked it." By the time the set ended, the area in front of the stage was almost empty. But those of us who liked it managed to get them out for one encore. After that there was nothing left but a high-pitched ringing in our ears.

Ironic Moment

Friday afternoon in a cafe inside the headquarters of the International Monetary Fund. Groups of well-groomed men and women in business attire sit at tables, discussing global financial matters. In a corner near the coffee counter a boombox plays a song at low volume. It's Bob Marley, singing "Them belly full but we hungry"

Robyn Hitchcock on Syd Barrett

"I feel really sad about Syd´s death. I´d just got used to the idea that he´ d never do anything again - just sit there forever in Cambridge, being Roger. And with Syd a dwindling spectre in the distance, his host body Roger could potter about, this strange combination of old man and small child. The idea that he actually died is an incredibly decisive thing to do, for him; it´s the highest profile thing he´s done since 1972, although it wasn´t his idea.

I suppose I hoped, like a lot of people, that there´d be some kind of rekindling. Not that he´d write songs again, but maybe he´d give an interview - that there´d be some sort of glimpse of how he saw it all, before he went. But obviously there isn´t. That´s it. He´s taken his silence to the grave.

I think there was a struggle between "Syd" and "Roger". I know he didn´t like to be known as Syd. The people in the Floyd camp say he was upset by being reminded of what he´d been. He had this struggle because he was briefly a glamorous pop star, but he was also an avant-garde artist, and this was back in 1967. And I think he found the two incompatible. But I think he probably also blamed himself for not being able to hold onto it. He was very frustrated with himself, but you can´t really see into how he must have felt, at having been so creative and losing it. He did paint. I think he probably rebuilt himself to carry on where he´d left off as an art student. And I know he´d had fantasies about being a doctor because that´s what his father was. So I think he tried to rebuild a life, skirting around the crater of having been Syd Barrett. We´re all talking about "Syd Barrett", who really hasn´t existed since 1971. But behind that, there was this human who, however distorted things became, felt the emotions that produced that intense, beautiful, solitary music, which are still my three all-time favourite records. What I love about his work is that you can feel the person in there. He probably wasn´t capable of introspection; maybe that´s why he flipped out so badly. I´m one of the few who prefers the solo work. There´s a real honesty about it, in a world where so much is doctored and calculated and done for effect - even being a rock´n ´roll casualty. What Barrett produced, he couldn´t help producing. And when it had gone, he could do no more. There are a lot of people making records now who´ve been stars in the past, and their records aren´t bad. But they just don´t matter. I don´t think that Barrett ever made a record that didn´t matter.

Favourite track: "Wolfpack". Or "Rats", the angry child taking it out on himself."

Un-Plugging

Earlier this month I spent over a week off the grid. No email, no web browsing. Didn't use a cell phone, didn't read a newspaper. Didn't even wear a watch. I hadn't really planned to unplug, it just felt like the right thing to do. For part of this time I was in the woods of Vermont, so a lot of my technology gear wasn't available. But for part of the time I was back home, in a place where I normally plug in and join the online world.

Having that time away made me realize how much time I devote to web things, and what rewards I get from them. I found that I was happier in my own head, or talking with Stereogab, than when I'm typing at the terminal. Because with the terminal, while there's always the possibility of connecting with other people, it often feels like I'm typing and posting in a vacuum.

Over the years I've posted MP3s of my music to various places. It's not satisfying; there's no sense of an audience. Music is the most immediate of the arts and isolating it on a web server (or, for that matter, on a CD even) devalues the experience.

I'm beginning to think that maybe the web, for all its community aspect (blogs, forums, etc), actually enforces our isolation. When was the last time you surfed the web with a friend sitting next to you?

Mike Tamburo and Larkin Grimm tour

August 25 kingston, ny alternative books (early show 6pm) August 27 syracuse, ny a cena
August 28 baltimore, md
August 29 washington dc the red and the black
August 30 new york, ny the lucky cat (with jesse sparhawk)
August 31 philadelphia, pa the compound
September 2 amherst, ma tba (with larkin grimm, niagara falls, mv/ee and bummer road, christina carter, max ochs and a bunch more)
September 3 chicago, il spare room gallery (with zelienople and kathleen baird)
September 4 iowa city, ia hall mall
September 5 omaha, ne tip top
September 8 san diego, ca the habitat
September 9 los angeles, ca il coral (with refrigerator mothers)
September 12 san francisco, ca the make out room (with sean smith)
September 13 bay area (help needed) tba
September 14 bay

Konono No. 1 at the Black Cat

I guess we're a little behind the curve on discovering the Congotronics sound, although I recall Hackmuth playing me a track a long time ago. But after Tom turned us on to the second disc, which includes some amazing footage of performances on DVD, we were big fans. So we bought our tickets many weeks before this Friday's show and awaited the night with great anticipation.

When we got to the BC there were some frat boys at the door asking for their money back but we didn't pay them any mind, figuring they didn't like the music. So we got stamped and climbed the stairs to enter the main room to find ......... no air conditioning. None. Not a trace. It was fiercely hot. Congo hot. After bitching we resigned ourselves to a sweaty night.

What gives with the Black Cat? There wasn't any air conditioning in the back room when we saw the Foreign Press earlier this summer. This is DC in the summer. People need air conditioning.

So anyway, back to Friday night. It must have been 120 degrees at least in the club. Sweat poured off us. Coked-up college kids were smoking cigarettes and having loud conversations. Chopteeth, the opening band, was terrible, but Konono No. 1 was fantastic, with waves and waves of interwoven rhythms just going and going and going. At times, with the heat and the Red Stripe in my system I began drifting to another plane. We danced and danced. We danced away the frat boys, we danced away the cig smokers, we danced away the wars in the world and the violence in our city, we danced away every single care, and when we came out onto the street, soaked through, we felt cleansed. That's what music is supposed to do, right?

Touch of Gray

chefwendell
Originally uploaded by stereogab.

Deep in the dog days of summer it's time to celebrate my dad's birthday today. Happy Birthday Dad!

To Be Viewed With Your Third Eye

transart
Originally uploaded by BarrettJ.

All is illusion...

a weekend at Wave Farm

mvwavefarm
Originally uploaded by BarrettJ.

We spent the past weekend at the Campfire Sounds festival, which took place at Wave Farm in upstate New York, up the road from Saugerties. Wave Farm is thirty acres of forest and fields owned by free103point9. Performers on Saturday included Dust Dive, MV+EE+Bummer Road, and others. Stars Like Fleas did a great set up in the woods beneath a big old tree. But the performances were really just an added bonus. The real pleasure was camping at the edge of a sunny field, walking around listening to the day's set being broadcast to dozens of radios scattered throughout the property, and mingling with the crowd, which was a mix of students, musicians, artists and friendly fellow-travelers.

More Syd Barrett Stories

Story of a blind date with Syd in 1967

Nick Kent on Syd

Syd's astrology life path number 9

Syd Barrett perfume

A Pitchfork feature

A previously unknown Arnold Layne video

An interview with his sister

Two friends remember

Syd Barrett Links

A 1971 Rolling Stone interview

A BBC tribute site with some interesting comments

A Newsnight tribute broadcast last night

Joe Boyd remembers

Pink Floyd performing on Look of the Week back in the day

Scream Thy Last Scream: Syd Barrett's Last Trip

By now the news is spreading like wildfire. I'm sure in the next few days there will be more outpourings like this one. I know many fans cared deeply for the man even though they'd never met him. I suppose I'm one of them, although over time I've come to realize that my interest in "Syd" was more about what he represented than who he actually was. For a very short span of time he channeled some very intense energy into a small body of work: "Piper At The Gates of Dawn", one song on "Saucerful of Secrets", two solo albums- "Barrett" and "The Madcap Laughs" - and some unreleased gems like "Vegetable Man" and "Scream Thy Last Scream". Then he disappeared, walking from London back to Cambridge, as the legend goes, to live a life of seclusion. It's all very Romantic English Poet Tragic, a pop-culture Keats trajectory that still resonates thirty-years on. But while the story is fascinating, and the pictures are fun to look at, it's the music that first spoke to me and continues to speak to me all these years later. Songs like "Lucifer Sam" and "It's No Good Trying" are the heaviest psychedelic shit I have ever heard. Heavier even than "I Am The Walrus" or "Purple Haze". Heavier than the dozens of lesser-known bands whose output I have collected obsessively over the years since I first heard "See Emily Play" and thought this sounds fantastic! The music was a transmission from a higher plane, portraying a revolution in consciousness where typical words and chords were transformed into something new, unique, and exciting. And that's the lasting appeal of Syd. Like the shamans of long ago he took the trip and came back to communicate what he'd glimpsed so that all of us could share the experience. That's the work of a true artist and that's who Syd Barrett was. Rest in Peace.

Happy Birthday!

barrettwparents
Originally uploaded by stereogab.

Today is my mom's birthday. My mom has been through a lot this year. Her Swedish Minnesota Lutheran upbringing equipped her with the strength and stoicism to endure the various hardships that life has tossed her way over the years. She is now the matriarch of her family, having outlived her three sisters. She keeps in touch with her nieces and nephews and even marks the birthdays of their children. She touches many children's lives in her work as librarian in a public library. I am happy to honor her today, and every day.

Latvian Repose

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Originally uploaded by tomcakuls.

Tom C is in Latvia right now. he posted some summer solstice snaps. funny, I was just thinking about him, wondering how his visit is going.

here in DC on the solstice we cooked the first veggies from our garden (zucchini, sage, radishes). I don't know if they taste better because they're so fresh or because we grew them.

Black Star

My friend Chet is from Ghana. His family lives near the capital, Accra. He's a member of the Ga tribe, one of many tribes in Ghana. Yesterday we sat together in the cafeteria at work and watched the World Cup match between the United States and Ghana. The World Cup is a big deal here at work. They have TVs set up everywhere, with broadcasts of all the games. It's funny to see clusters of normally staid economists whooping and cheering for their teams. And everyone is doing it; as I watched the game, Chet was seated to my right and to my left was my boss's boss's boss.

I don't really follow the World Cup but I wanted to watch the match with Chet because he was so excited about it. After the second goal by Ghana he was so nervous and excited he was almost shaking. When they won he jumped up and cheered at the top of his lungs. The rest of the crowd laughed and applauded; he was the only one from Ghana in the room and they were happy for him and for the underdog team that had pulled off such an upset. On our way back to our offices he kept running into fellow Ghanaians and hugging them. He gave me a high five slap so hard my hand stung for half an hour afterwards.

I read a New York Times article today about the troubles in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (once known as Zaire). The article said 1000 people are dying every day as a result of a four-year civil war. Four million have died so far. That's a lot of people. To us Westerners, Africa is a backwards place, kind of a nightmare continent. If we think about it at all it's usually with pity ("those poor starving people"). Or contempt ("why can't they get it together?"). Much of it is fucked up but its also home to millions of people who are proud of their lives. People like to be proud of their home. And they invest their emotions in a team (the Redskins, etc) because they feel the team represents their home and when that team wins, they can share the pride of being on the winning side. In that sense it's more than just a soccer match. It's fulfilling a basic human need: pride.