Lucid Culture

Arguably the best show we’ve ever seen her do. We’ve given Jost a lot of space here this year, because she’s earned it. A cellist by trade, she did a long stretch in Rasputina before hanging out her own shingle. Tonight she started out on acoustic guitar, then switching to piano, then to cello and so forth. The songs in the set, a mix of new material and stuff from a long-overdue full-length cd were a richly melodic grab-bag of styles, from jazz to chamber-rock, with bits of gospel and surf music added for extra spice. Jost’s work is very intricate and very playful, and it was clear that the band of Julian Maile on reverb-drenched Fender guitar, Rob Jost (no relation) on upright bass and Rob DiPietro on drums were having a great time up there (after a crowd of fans, the bartender and another great songwriter each took a turn at the sound board, trying to get it working properly – the sound is always hit and miss here).

One accident of having dodgy sound was that it forced Jost to run her acoustic through the club’s little Peavey amp which was turned up to where it was about to break up into distortion. How fortuitous that was: suddenly the songs had a grit and a growl they’d never had before, and they liked it! One of the highlights of the night was the bouncy, irresistibly catchy piano pop hit Vertical World, which as it turns out may be about how New York is changing for the worse – Jost’s lyrics are very subtle, so it’s hard to tell – but at the end of the second verse, she ends up sardonically grinning, “here I am, in Krispy Kreme!” Another tune, I Wait, is something of a mini-epic that turns into a surf instrumental about halfway through. Maile played a mix of finely refined skronk and classic Ventures licks, ending his solo with some fast tremolo picking a la Dick Dale. Serena Jost jumped in and continued the solo, playing the same lick staccato on cello and the effect was mouth-watering. Her almost-namesake on bass (whose name is pronounced with a J instead of a Y) played sinuous, fast fills, sneaking in effortlessly to make a contribution to the melody whenever he had the chance. DiPietro felt the room perfectly and didn’t hit too hard, although he had plenty of opportunities to contribute to the songs’ crescendos and nailed all of them. It’s always more fun when the band themselves are clearly having a good time: tonight was a prime example. Serena Jost is doing a cd release show early next year, watch this space for details.

 [editor's note - this is an actual email from the Knitting Factory to somebody who's playing there in the near future. Read this and gag]

From:  loser loser@knittingfactory.com
Date: Nov 14, 2007 1:30 PM
Subject: advance for XXX XXX
To: XXX

Here is the advance for [band]
Please confirm and let me know if you have any questions.
We have very strict sound level limits, please adhere to the levels that our club engineer and manager set.
XXX time doors
XXXX show
XXXX load-in
sounccheck before set
$XX ticket
You receive 70% of your polled draw after the first 10 paid to see you
See the night manager for payment after the show.
The night manager will need to photocopy a photo ID at settlement. [editor's note - CAN YOU FUCKING BELIEVE THIS - CAN YOU IMAGINE DR. NO FROM BAD BRAINS PRODUCING A FUCKING PHOTO ID TO GET PAID? WHAT HAPPENED TO THE DAYS OF PUNK ROCKERS RIPPING APART VENUES WHO DIDN'T TREAT THEM WITH RESPECT!!!????]
1 guest per band member   (please give guest list to the box office that night)
Please send me your instrumentation as well as any equipment requests.
All bands in the Old Office must use the house drums & bass amp provided.
We also have guitar heads & cabinets that you are welcome to use.
Guitar gear must be reserved in advance.
Specs for all backline is below.
Please tell me the number of people in your band.
All audio and video recording on the part of the artist must be cleared in advance and may be subject to a site fee. [Editor: so I have to pay these assholes $50 so I can record the show with my minidisc so the band can listen to it afterward and hear how badly they fucked up?!?]
We are located in a residential neighborhood, so please don’t hang-out outside the club after your show and keep noise to a minimum when outside the club.  Please be respectful of this a nd our neighbors as they would love to see us shut down. [asshole luxury housing Wall Street scum who deserve to be shot]

Please load-out right after your show, but feel free to come back and hang out inside the club. [come back and spend whatever money you just made - assuming you made anything - but make sure you move your van so the worthless pieces of shit who inhabit the adjacent luxury building don't call the cops]
I am not always at the club [translation: I cringe whenever I think about being at the club] but between the sound engineer and night manager [good luck, motherfuckers], they can take care of anything you need.  Please introduce yourself to one of them upon your arrival. Thank you,
Loserface Intern

Please note -
We only have on street parking and are unable to reserve spaces.
Leonard St. is commercial loading & government permit parking from 7:00 am to 7:00 pm on Monday through Friday
If you leave your vehicle unattended during those hours you are likely to get a ticket.
The street is free and legal from 7:00 pm to 7:00 am Monday through Friday as well as all weekend long [shows at the Knit start around 8, go figure

Please note the current parking situation-
The city is digging up our street [in order to provide water, electric and sewage for the adjacent luxury building], which means there is no parking or double parking on the block.
This makes load-in very difficult, please leave extra time to get in.
PLEASE DO NOT PARK ON THE SIDEWALK ANYWHERE ON OUR STREET
Because you will not be able to park on our block, please do not leave any valuables in your vehicle.

[THIS IS WHY WE SHOULD GRAFFITI EVERY LUXURY BUILDING PROJECT IN NEW YORK BEFORE IT'S FILLED WITH ASSHOLES FROM NEW JERSEY!!!]

 XXX
Knitting Factory
74 Leonard St.
New York, NY 10013
212.219.3006 xXXX
212.219.3401 fax
XXX@Knit.net

posted by delarue 

The king of mid-80s sentimental Lite FM folkie ballads died this week from prostate cancer at age 56, ostensibly. That would have made him 26 in 1977, which is pretty dubious. Before his heyday - or at least his commercial heyday - he did a couple of albums with Tim Weissberg, a flautist (ordinarily he’d be called a flute player, but “flautist” has just the perfectly arch, pretentious connotation) who played with Bob Dylan at one time. One of them was called Twin Sons of Different Mothers, a spot-on Mighty Wind moment if there ever was one.

Like everyone else alive in the 80s, I too was tortured by Fogelberg’s radio hits in supermarkets and 7-11s. But I’ll always have bittersweet memories (he would have LOVED to have known that, no doubt) of one of his songs. The Reach is from - if memory serves right - a 1981 triple album that he dubbed a “song cycle.” It was a big 6/8 seafaring epic with a full string section, something that actually makes the days of big-budget major label productions seem a whole lot better than they actually were. Even so, not the kind of thing I’d be caught dead listening to under ordinary circumstances:

It’s Maine…
And it’s Autumn
The birches have just begun turning
It’s life and it’s dying
The lobstermen’s boats come returning
With the catch of the day in their holds
and the young boys cold and complaining
The fog meets the beaches and out on
the Reach it is raining…

And the morning will blow away
As the waves crash and fall
And the Reach like a siren sings
as she beckons and calls
As the coastline recedes from view
And the seas swell and roll
I will take from the Reach
all that she has to teach
To the depths of my soul  

And it was Maine. And it was autumn. And I wanted to take from the Reach all that she had to teach to the depths of my soul. Except there was no reach. She would graduate in less than a year and I was a freshman, and she knew better (even if we shared a completely  inexplicable fondness for the song, among other equally inexplicable things). She was far too sweet to ever allude to it, but I was the last person anyone should have had a relationship with in those days. I’m still probably the last person anybody should have a relationship with.

And the song is a hornet’s nest of cliches - verbs where they shouldn’t be, adjectives following the noun, all kinds of pathetic, gratuitous attempts at “poetry.” But as far as I know this is the only Fogelberg song with any sense of metaphor, whatsoever. Otherwise, his stuff is all straight-ahead narrative, no double meanings or other lyrical devices.

I never went so far as to get the album. The only version I have is a muddy, bass-heavy mix recorded off the radio on a cassette tape. And I wouldn’t have it any other way. Something tells me that the old hippie would have approved. Wherever you are, Dan Fogelberg, I forgive you for Leader of the Band, Same Old Lang Syne, etc., etc., etc.

This week has turned out to be Fun Band Week. Frontman Joe Maynard is a hell of a songwriter when he wants to be, which is basically all the time. He may have the outlaw country singer look down cold, but he’s actually a funny Southern literary type (he’s from Nashville originally). The band is called the Musties because Maynard is a rare book dealer. If Kinky Friedman is your cup of tea, or you’re secretly a fan of David Allan Coe (and wouldn’t be so secretive about it if the guy hadn’t been such an egregious racist), Maynard and his band will push your buttons.  Tonight they mixed in some new material along with a lot of older songs from his former unit, the retro country act the Millerite Redeemers.  Maynard’s approach may be humorous, but he doesn’t mock the twisted characters who populate his songs: there’s an unexpected compassion and humanity there. Starting most of the songs solo on guitar and letting the band jump in about a bar later, he delivered the amusing St. Mary’s in the Toaster (inspired by a story in the World Weekly News about someone who saw the face of the Virgin Mary on a piece of toast), the darkly comedic, Tom Waits-ish Rocky and Bessie (about a romance between a couple of stray dogs in Fort Greene), and his big crowd-pleaser, I Thought I Was Country Til I Found I Was Queer. He also did a heavily reworked version of the very dark Millerite Redeemers song A Lot of Things Happen to Beautiful Girls (use your imagination).

One of the best of the new songs was a murder ballad that Maynard appropriated from some obscure 1920s British literary figure and set to his own melody. It’s told from the point of view of the victim. They closed the set with a sarcastic, apocalyptic new number possibly titled It’s Been a Good Life (as in good life for a couch potato who doesn’t interact with anyone or participate politically in anything, websurfing while Rome burns). The band gave it a long, crescendoing, extended outro, violinist Naa Koshie Mills and steel player Drew Glackin building a beautiful mix of ambient textures rather than doing any extended soloing. The audience loved it and demanded an encore, and Maynard obliged with the Amy Allison classic Drinking Thru Xmas. Tonight was a pleasant reminder that despite the ongoing Losangelesification of New York, there’s still a very substantial audience here for music that makes you laugh, and makes you think at the same time

[editor’s note – we’re still here, believe it or not, despite a relatively protracted absence this past week. Another of us, unfortunately, is not]

Country Music Hall of Famer Porter Wagoner, who battled drugs, alcohol and depression throughout his spectacularly successful sixty-plus year career as a country crooner, tv personality and Grand Old Opry emcee died of lung cancer this past October 28. He was 80.

Porter Wagoner – that was his real name – grew up in the Ozark Mountains of Missouri during the Depression. He first became involved with country radio in the late 1940s, playing guitar and singing commercials. He signed his first recording contract in 1953, which began a succession of hits which lasted through the 1970s. Wagoner was best known for his series of duets with Dolly Parton, culminating with Please Don’t Stop Loving Me in 1974. Rumors of an affair with Parton were ubiquitous – Wagoner’s second marriage ended abruptly after Parton began appearing on his popular syndicated tv show the Porter Wagoner Hour – and Wagoner did nothing to deny them. The relationship between Parton and Wagoner soured in the late 1970s as the two went to court over business deals.

Wagoner was the original rhinestone cowboy. He owned dozens of custom-made rhinestone coats costing thousands of dollars each. His television show, at its peak in the 1960s, reached an audience of millions. However, his career was marked with several stretches of inactivity as he fought with depression and problems with alcohol and drugs. While he was more accomplished a songwriter than conventional wisdom dictates, his greatest achievements remain his role as an interpreter of other peoples’ material, and as a tirelessly charismatic goodwill ambassador for country music.

Another week, another funeral. Or so it seems. In this venue’s early days, I once spent the entire duration of a set sitting at the bar – back when it was situated to the left of the door as you walked in – without anybody even acknowledging my existence, let alone asking me if I wanted to spend some money and have a drink. Apparently I wasn’t cool enough. That incident was endemic of the venue at the time, and earned them a perhaps undeserved reputation for being impossibly snooty, too clever by about fifteen sixteenths. But try to imagine a bunch of outsider jazzcats who’d grown too weird for the Knitting Factory trying to start a club in the present day. Laughably absurd, right? Nine years ago, they actually did it, and considering how the permanent tourist class and their luxury condos have pushed out so many musicians and artists over the last couple of years, it’s a miracle that Tonic lasted as long as it did.

I never played there. You couldn’t just call and book a show there: you had to be invited. I guess I never leaned on any of my cool friends who played there to get me on the bill.

The place mellowed with age: after they moved the bar to open up more room on the floor, the vibe changed and it even started to feel friendly. I have so many good memories of just hanging out, shooting dice in the basement with Dimestore Dance Ensemble, swaying to Moisturizer or Big Lazy or Botanica or LJ Murphy or the Dog Show…so many great shows. They’ll be missed, hole in the roof and all. They close on April 13; right now they’re re-booking some of their more popular acts at the auditorium at 466 Grand St., way east past Kossar’s Bialys on the other side of the street, while they look for a new space. Good luck, John and Melissa.