Frankenstein vs. the World

When my friend Stephanie passed through town two weeks ago she played me this Phoning It In session from Davis Hooker at 7 a.m. one morning after we’d stayed up all night talking in Forest Lawn Cemetery. I met Davis once when I was in Portland but we were barely introduced — Daniel knew him from a warehouse they were both working in at the time, and he and some friends crashed at our campsite one night after their band …WORMS played the What the Heck Fest ‘08. We were all really drunk, & I remember Dan and I worrying that we were wearing out our welcome with the family at the site next to ours. A baby kept crying from their RV. Davis was a member of The Watery Graves of Portland, too, and was also releasing stuff for awhile under the moniker A John Henry Memorial. He’s also, according to Stephanie, one of the main collaborators behind Marriage Records. Anyways, none of this prepared me for these songs on Phoning It In, which kind of took my breath away. This was recorded a little over a year ago, and the record he’s playing from still hasn’t appeared yet, but I am excited for when it does.

I like this a cappella last one:

I DON’T KNOW (REPRISE)

Now that I am old
And all my regrets …
Let me reap what I’ve sown
Let my teeth fall out
Let my back break down
Let me always be alone
Ghost that I am
With my head in my hands
Let me never find a home
Why must I always go my own way
I don’t know I shouldn’t have today

Podcast
MP3

Tags: davis hooker.

Tags: paul baribeau.

Tags: das racist, we'd like to thank g-chat.

Tags: mama cass elliot.

I love Dottie’s guided tour through the Stevie Nicks archive on YouTube. As always Dottie’s effortless insight and ability to cut right to the (wild) heart of things is startling and impeccable. My favorite parts are where she talks about the video above, where she compares Stevie’s voice to both Chanel No. 5 & a family of crocodiles, and where she talks about Stevie being OK being stupid in an interview on CBS. I think it’s an important thing, to be OK being stupid (don’t I know it).

Watch this short clip in which Nicks supposedly talks about her songwriting.  It’s hilarious how she suffers the stupidity of Rita Braver in that interview, who seems to have no clue about her music or even what to ask her, so she just lets her ramble on about her permed 80’s hair. I love how unafraid Stevie Nicks is to say nothing of substance at all. She does say something interesting though about her songwriting in the beginning—that she gets inspired a lot by everyday things and she’ll write a line down and start a poem (I think it’s cool how she thinks of her songs as poems). She seemed to indicate also that there are lots of lines that don’t become poems, that are just random lines floating in the ether. I respect this kind of quotidian freedom of hers to create beauty out of seemingly nothing at all.

Tags: dorothea lasky, stevie nicks.

My birthday is this week. My wish for my twenty-sixth year is to meet a girl who will look at me with “Natalie Merchant eyes” (see below). True love.

Tags: billy bragg, john prine, michael stipe, natalie merchant.

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“Backwoods” by Cub

Tags: lisa marr.

Hey you
You’re getting closer to the box
And when they close it and they put it underground
You’ll have no way out again

There’s only one horse
And 20 riders
Only one of them
Will get to ride it
And all of the rest
Are gonna have to see it go go go
Choo choo da do

I think I might’ve built a horse
Out of the bones you have left behind
And all the blood that I have puked since I
Found out I have gas in my veins
Choo choo da do

– “I Think I Might’ve Built a Horse“, the Beets

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Tags: allen ginsberg, arthur russell, nam june paik.