Noncommittal yet wholehearted enthusiasm for the best/worst year I can remember

Some best concerts of 2003:
* BPitch Control Party at Love Parade: Ellen Allien /MIA/ Sascha Funke / DJ Feadz at WMF in Berlin
One reason being: minimal techno sounds like being born after five hours of trance–like being born from the deepest womb of hell. Paul Van Dyk had a float on the Alexanderplatz filled with half-naked ravers wearing furry neon chaps and blowing whistles. Ellen Allien had a lone DJ groupie who would take a drink everytime she took a drink, and give her high-fives whenever she picked a hot track, which was about every song. Understated fans: the way to go. MIA played an air-raid siren, an amplified French horn, and were backed up by the Berlin Brass Marching Band on one song. Sascha Funke and Feadz DJ sets blew our hearts clean open like a failed angioplasty. We were the most enthusiastic dancers all night, very obviously American, until 6 or 7 or 8 am, and the party was barely slowing down, and collapsed in Hanna’s flat in East Berlin like two ragged dogs, hair manged up from cigarette smoke and sweat. I can only imagine what would have happened to us if we’d made it to Ibiza.
* Deerhoof w/The Planet The at Blackbird in Portland
This was the last show at the Blackbird. Deerhoof is purity. We let off sparklers.
DJ/Rupture w/Nice Nice at Holocene in Portland
Even after their van was hit-and-run-rearended on the road and Jace lost many rare dubplates I feel sick just thinking of it, he made people I’ve never seen before (rare in PDX show circuit) shimmy as though possessed. Nice Nice are consistently great, although they’ll probably tell you differently.–I think of them akin to improvisational producers or live remix artists, and I wish I could internet-stream every one of their shows in case their record maybe doesn’t go bang until you realize they’re doing it all with drums a guitar and 288477 pedals, three percussive instruments. They are like that MIT radio device, that filters common denominators from the radio and makes one keening yawl, except Nice Nice are filtering the music from the radio and making it their own.
The Hold Steady at Knitting Factory in NYC
* I used to hate Lifter Puller then saw Craig Finn live now I love them. “Everyone’s a critic but most people are DJs,” etc. I used to hate rock music until the Hold Steady. This is both the truth and a lie. They make me want to work construction and write poetry on my lunch break.
* Aesop Rock CD Release at Slim’s in San Francisco
Ta-Nehisi Coates nailed it in his Village Voice review of the NYC show–El-P was fully ball-hogging the Bazooka Tooth tour. Aesop Rock, though. Lots of my friends hate his record and here’s why I love it: the quadruple entendres of his lyrics, the crackled nasal knifey cadences. Density. He’s fragile and frazzled, the selvage end of fine cloth. I can take or leave the beats. I just like how he twists words inside themselves and back out again. And his voice– I think if he hadn’t quit smoking (detailed in a funny if slightly bizarre “just say no”-esque skit between himself and Mr. Lif on his most recent tour), his next album for me would be solely about the tone of his voice, the way I can listen to Magoo for hours and not like it per se, but rubberneck– like a train wreck or curio–slightly horrified, yet unable to turn away.
* Lifesavas at Berbati’s in Portland
JUMBO TOUCHED MY HAND!!
Really, though, as much as America has poured love on the Lifesavas (especially Ta-Nehisi Coates, again), I have to assert how very Portland they are–how, at this show, they had an entire crowd fist-pumping to their activist song “Resist” and reciting the chorus:
“Resist/ are you an actor or an activist… realize you’re the catalyst… refuse.”
And the ever-classic “Fuck 95.5” (portland’s mainstream rap station which plays fabolous and chingy in alternate rotation) chant which DJ Wicked popularized at PDX hiphop shows so many years ago (I remember one LIving Legends/Busdriver show where he actually called 95.5 and had the entire crowd scream “Fuck 95.5,” into the receiver).
In Portland there are still the underground vs. mainstream Pick Your Allegiances arguments and unfortunately not a lot of dialogue about whys or wherefores, so you get mainstream nights and underground nights and entirely different crowds for both, divided very much along racial lines. Like a lot of smaller American cities, I suppose. But Lifesavas have bridged the racial gap, something I haven’t really seen since I’ve lived here.
Anyway, Lifesavas. Portland. They are leftist and spiritual, boys next door and powerful talents. Free Cascadia.
* Sleetmute/Nightmute at Dunes in Portland
They were a noise band, and this night they were on the verge of murdering each other. Sonic Youth’s first tape is eating its heart out. RIP Sleetmute/Nightmute. (P.S. Ladies, don’t ever join a band with your boyfriend. It is a bad idea.)
* Silentist, anywhere

He’s a one-man, avant-garde/death-metal pianist/drummer/guitarist. He’s moving to DC soon but touring on the way and I will post the dates here because everyone should see his genius.
Best Visual Arts Experiences of 2003:
* Jan Fabre’s Je Suis Sang in Barcelona
It was all in Spanish (not Catalan), which I don’t speak (long story re: ethnocentricism, wyoming, familial apathy). But dialogue might have been distracting from the overt and dramatic imagery: blood, Christ, sex, masturbation, insanity, gluttony, marriage, resurrection, religion, etc, all culminating in one scene where the entire cast was ass naked, tarred and feathered, simulating sex in a flood of fake blood and red wine. This was also the most profound/absurd moment of 2003.
* Donna Uchizono Company’s “Butterflies from My Hand” at the Time Based Arts festival in Portland
Where modern choreography has gotten jerky and repetitive, imitating the monotonous motion of our lives, the twitch of our viewing eyes and the tap of our typing fingers, Donna Uchizono streamlined unnatural contemporary movement into an organic, fluid scheme, where everyone slithered like caterpillars and relied on each other’s movement to cue their next step. Right: like life. She handed them scissors and they cut apart the floor, pulled up crimson silk from underneath, the blood of the earth, the spark of ideas. She dressed her dancers like blooming flowers. It was a serious piece, as it had to be, but it was humorous as well, certain subtle motions hitting that mysterious place where we understand something as funny, but it’s not spelled in letters. A beautiful two hours, definitely the most next-level, visceral performance I saw this year.
* Joan Miro Museum in Barcelona
I used to dislike Joan Miro, and then I saw his entire collection and read about his life. Now I don’t love Joan Miro, but I like him, and understand him. This is the truth. A lesson: Art reproduced in books will never compare to the impact of the actual works.
* Roman art/architecture museum in Berlin
1. Paintings from driftwood on the tops of Sarcophagi: how ancient Egyptians looked, wide-eyed, when they died. 2. People were shorter in 59 BC. 3. Looking at a stone sculpture and knowing it’s old as philosophy is really humbling.
* Philip Guston retrospective at SF MOMA
I am glad comics are regaining mass respect, like they used to. Philip Guston used pop art/comics in a way I don’t find co-optive/shallow (i.e. Warhol, certain Johns works et al)–he used his paintings to protest the Vietnam war, while still working within the age-old “Artist Self” idiom. The self as recurring subject is not boring, when the self is painted as a giant one-dimensional eyeball, sometimes w/boot.
Most Dissapointing Visual Arts Experiences of 2003:
* Going to SF MOMA to see Diane Arbus retrospective, only to find a Marc Chagall exhibit in its stead (because the NY Times Magazine ran its Arbus article one month early). Marc Chagall paintings being THE PAINTINGS OF MY NIGHTMARES.
* Going to NY MOMA, only to find they had changed their hours/days open, and going to the NY Museum of Natural History instead, only to find the OCean Life exhibit (aka the only thing I truly wanted to see) was closed for a business convention
2003 et cetera:
Most disappointing moment, in a sort of half-assed manner of disappointment: When The Shins’ Dave Hernandez told me I am his “mortal enemy,” yet was too drunk to explain why
Smallest small world moment: Riding the Eurail from Berlin to Paris w/Jessica, and landing in the same compartment with Patrick Daughters, from NY, who not only knows everyone we know, but recognized my face from editing hours of footage of me in the front row dancing at Yeah Yeah Yeahs shows. We friendstered him, and his fakester Rango-Tang, immediately afterwards.
Amount of time it took to become bored of Friendster: 4 months
Most exciting non-Iraq war specific activist/lobbyist groups: Pink Bloque, Future of Music Coalition
Best scene in Wild Style: Basketball Throwdown
Best Fantastic Fiver: Whipper Whip
Best Blazer: Z-Bo Randolph
Most Nefarious LeBron James Endorsement:
Nikes inspired by Hummers
Least Effective Rookie Recommendation for my Pathetically Losing Fantasy NBA team: Jarvis Hayes (Thanks a bunch, Travis!)
Cutest Beatle: Yoko