June 2004 Archives

p.s. it was Chuck Palahniuk.

My coworker Katie: "Did you ever get in trouble for the part in your book where Margaret Thatcher comes into the restaurant where you work, and you masturbate into her food?"

Jonathan Ames: "I didn't write that."

Katie: "Are you sure? I've been telling everyone to read your book because that part is so funny."

Jonathan Ames: "I have a terrible memory, but I am positive I did not write that."

Katie: "But yours the only book I've read in months. I think I would remember."

Jonathan Ames: "No, I am sure that is not in my book."

SPESH TO TRAV, and everyone else: For all the stinginess I feel towards the Boroughs, I'm disinclined to fault Beasties for their lack of wringing, hard-hitting, life-altering protest/anti-Bush verse, verse that conduits our generation to saving itself (from convenience, death, misinformation, ignorance or otherwise). I might just be underscoring their Spin interview, but the Beasties simply aren’t political heroes. They're somewhat average liberals, and mouthpieces—surely Tibet is much more famous than it once was. But anger, unless translated into some quantifiable action (like voting), is still just anger.

So, I am not sure if Klosterman, in Spin, was making a point by thrice mentioning that Beasties were driving around NY in a Lincoln Navigator (or if Klosterman simply carries was some preternatural obsession with the makes and models of new SUVs, which seems possible) but it is worth pointing out. In the latest ish of HEEB magazine, Cornel West reiterated civic action as lifeblood of democracy, and spoke on its derailment by middle-class’ materialist aspirations. And the Beasties speak out against Bush with flattened vehemence—or a mindful sense of obligation—because, ultimately, what do they want for in life? They have buckets of money and a back catalogue that shaped the course of American popular music and families and girlfriends and a clothing line and top billing on the invite list to all the Spike Jonze premieres (not necessarily in that order). From my vantage, their basic needs are beyond met. I do not begrudge them this, but I can’t relate to them, either.

I can relate to Michael Moore: His emotions run waaahhld ‘n’ free ‘n’ big ‘n’ nasty through the poppies of a good story, and sometimes reason is left riding Smarty Jones. Fahrenheit 9/11 is, obviously, a film of great import. Come November, it could be the most important American film ever made. But for all its emotional appeal, his trademark incredulous “What-ifs” and soft-touch lightbulb conjecture (“What was Bush doing for seven minutes after the WTC attack? Was he wondering where to get a black marker [to blot out his documented connections to bin Laden?]”)—Moore stops short of explaining WHY THERE IS DEMAND FOR OIL. He doesn’t connect the Iraq War with US citizens’ personal accountability—that every $5 chevron fill-up funnels directly into the bulbous greased-up pockets of Bushes and their magnate cronies, some of whom are bin Ladens. We are a little bit complicit, each one of us.

Obviously, Americans are not trying to hear that, and to outright state it would have sent the film in entirely less effective places. More importantly, I left the theater with the shame of Pastor Niemoller on my conscience.

Why I now like Macaulay Culkin, v.1. Quoted in Spin:

"You're always trying to figure out what other people think of you. Some people think I sit in a closet eating peoples' souls while doing heroin and pissing on Christmas trees."

But I always liked Black Peppercorns (who will soon enter fifth grade): their webpage plays their whole EP automatically. Their new t-shirts feature a picture of a raven with a worm in its mouth, perched on a pepper-grinder. The peppercorns spilling from the grinder's mouth are round outlines of little girls' heads.

To the Five Boroughs is currently the top-selling record in US, Canada and Europe. *

"There are silly songs such as 'Something in My Shoe,' which includes fun sound effects; 'Ducks Like Rain,' which has an uncanny way of sticking in your brain and causing you to sing aloud 'Ducks go splishing-splashing in the rain' at unexpected moments, or 'Let's Do the Numbers Rumba' (likewise)."

Let me qualify—well, honestly, I feel Beastie Boys have been influenced by Le Tigre lyrics. When Kathleen Hanna's really straightforward didacticism works, it's via friction between her hyperengaged brilliance and blase sarcasm ("Valley Girl Intelligentsia"), and the fact that there is viable, directed content sitting nicely among the slang (though we'll see what happens with the next record). But Beasties' intent seems so weak, their vision too doughy. Also, if you wanna hear Spoonie Gee's rhythm section (as Travis put it), then go nuts, but A! -B! A! B! rhyme patterns are simply not where I'm at.

"Ten nine eight seven six five four
Get upon the mic and I'm a even the score"

Man.

* [addendum: I did not note that as some crappy superiority like "look at the misguided masses, MWAHahahaha" thesis statement... I noted it because I got a press release informing me as much, and it sparked thought. just FYI.]

I am such a bitch: my moving is more about me than here. it's sunny and i spent the afternoon at Mirah's house interviewing her about maple-syrup farming and drinking Yogi tea. Is this not a fantasy wonderland?
I have no idea where I will purchase organic Kombucha enzyme drink when I move, so there you go. God bless Portland forever.

You could probably say that, for the myriad reasons I'm leaving Portland—its deadening easiness; its isle-like monoculture; the clouds and fucking rain, man—mixtapes are one of them. Across the board, the street-tape trade in Portland ranks slightly under transgendered/fat-rights fanzine sales* as viable economic and cultural force. YEsss, I know I can order that shit from the internet, but that's missing half the point. I want experience wrapped up in my street-joint copping, peoples. It’s not the same when my mailperson dumps a mixtape off on my porch, along with electricity shut-off FINAL NOTICES and Home Depot sale ads. Mixtapes rubber-banded with subscription offers from Simple Living—it just takes some of that magic away, you know?

[* I do not take this for granted]

But after Mrs. Unicorn caught me in weep mode over Jada's new full-lengthy offishall yesterday—bonding heavily with its cynic's idealism and music-box anguish, and the part where the ass stinks up the room—I'm happy to see Mr. Blaze emitting such sweet hot flames on the topic.

Now that you know I'm on the Ruff Ryders' home court, though, I would like to now introduce my big "FUCK YOU NUMBER ONE" foam finger, and wave it in Jada's press-box direct, just for this verse (in what would otherwise be in the top three best tracks on Kiss of Death):

"why Kobe have to hit that raw/ why he kiss that whore"

Reading the above-linked article, you may surmise the judge-and-jury headlines are in part due to Kobe's lawyers' intricate relationships with tabloids, Bill Clinton, and unspoken networking/justice loopholes in the continental US. But let us not discount the sole winner in this situation—the accuser/alleged victim-as-pariah, and the disturbing assumption that genius of any kind automatically negates the bearer of guilt or wrongdoing. (R. Kelly! Neil Goldschmidt! What! Is! Up!)
Do I even need to repeat this shit? How about this one: SHE IS 19 YEARS OLD. And whether Kobe’s innocent or guilty, her life is ruined for a long, long time. So Jadakiss, stick to your lathe-shaped brags, your social screeds, your love and courtship ponderances, and most of all, the really touching Gemini self-reflection—because when you do that, you're phenomenally good. But can we all just grant the woman the benefit of the doubt, now, please.
Thanks.

Without knowing for sure, I'm wild-guessing that Guy Debord is resting peacefully in academia's "out" column. But Middle America doesn't give a dialectical crap on that. For all my money: the prime example of spectacle (now wrapped uncomfortably in capital excess' gilded foil), is currently trolling America's reaches in a tour bus w/heisted Alabama plates—dippitying, do'ing, practicing dramatic entrances, and ponderously fingering the crosses on leather bands coiled round their necks.

Where is Rascal Flatts?

Per Southern music's greatest ambassador to the North, Partymanica (a Yankee), I have been enlightened to the amazing excess of this live phenomenon-en-proceso. For your personal records, RASCAL FLATTS HAS OUT ON INTERLIBRARY LOAN: great coifs (the singer has a hairdo which cascades out and up, like a spot of bluegrass pressed to the earth by a fat behind in repose), and sets that look designed by the art director of the "Every Little Step" video, and star laser-show designers, and a fog machine, and a fiddler hired from the Montana militia for fashionable fiddler/survivalism (okay, he was totally wearing a camoflague cowboy shirt), and a guitarist from the "If you like Taking Back Sunday, you'll like this Christian version better" poster for Cornerstone, and a carefully metered stage presence from the "Stars of Tomorrow" presentation/congeniality team, and a look on the lead fellow's warbling face that betrayed a mixture of pain, self-satisfaction, vaguely auto-erotic grimaces and godly narcissism...

Yes, it was all those things at once, whing-dinging and alarm-system-rigged like a slot machine, pelting forth shiny dollares into an audience of rapturous ten-galloned proles who were screaming, or singing, or both. I was totally caught up in the fronds of the dream by its throbbing light-tricks, beaming mighty and blinding like heaven on high.**

Basically, they are a punky-dressing gestural country act that is kind of watery, with lots of AAA radio pop and slick. But Rascall Flatts' live EXPERIENCE is put best by their guitarist, Joe Don—a sex symbol by his bio's own admission. "This song blew our hair back," he states on their website*, communicating the passion he feels for his own music.

And it's so true. When a billow of fog cued vibratoed, lite pop-country hits—there in the Rose Garden where I've seen Blazers, Cher and Nader—it blew back my hair.

They played one good song. I cannot rightly identify it from their album, but I think it is the one titled "Mayberry," a bittersweet ode to old hometowns lost to the building of freeways and nuke plants. It could also have been "You," a whispery love song executed, on record, surprisingly sans bombast. I know for sure it is not "Dry Country Girl," the one about the Xtian hottie at the altar. Whichever it was, its live intro was like, hella avant-garde, an improvised, crescendoing fiddle ambiance. It started getting really hot when Joe Don busted out a solo, the singer stopped singing out his nose and started feeling from his diaphragm, and right as the green lazer pattern flicked on, a bunch of pink squares lit up on the white tile backdrop.

Their closing song, from their new album to be released September 28, was a dedication to "ALL THEIR FANS, WHICH ARE the GREATEST FANS IN THE WORLD!!!!!!," and I misheard the lyric "flashing titties," or at least I hope I did— but considering the amt of t-shirts in the house sporting self-identifying taglines like "drunk chicks dig me," "titties and beer," and "rascal flatts are my broncos and I am seriously bucking right now" or whatever, I will not discount the potential for a titties lyric.

[* Also noted on their website: the boys grew up in Columbus, Ohio. Clearly the only way to explain their onstage Bible Belt twang is that they're "flagrantly recreating language."]

[** "When art, become independent, depicts its world in dazzling colors, a moment of life has grown old and it cannot be rejuvenated with dazzling colors. It can only be evoked as a memory. The greatness of art begins to appear only at the dusk of life." —Debord]

[Quote of my life, while we're on situationist texteses: "A school in which life becomes boring teaches nothing but barbarism." —Raoul Vaneigem]

p.s. if you know if the situationist line of thinking has been effectively rebuked, please send me a reading list

Excerpt from a letter I received for "Crashing the hardcore sausage party," an interview with Martyr AD bassist Sheer Tara I did for AP magazine, about being one of the only hi-profile women in a heavily male-dominated genre (metal/hardcore):

"Your interview with bassist Tara Anderson (in issue #192) was excellent, and way too true. AP has to run more articles on women in alternative music. Let's just face it: misogyny runs wild in alternative music, albeit unintentionally. Not to say that guy fronted bands are bad, its just that they outnumber anything female many times over. Hardcore and punk: the new breed of the men's club."

What Melissa Auf Der Maur said when I interviewed her:

"We were invited to play a show in a radio station, and in this radio station they were proud to tell me that they had never played a female artist, ever, since they had changed over to a hard rock format. And it was kind of by principle, you know: 'We don’t play female artists, BUT, your song rocks so hard that we did.' And I was wondering if they realized how absurd that is. But at the same time, there’s a joy in that, I’m excited to be penetrating the airwaves of a male-dominated voice. It’s one of the reasons it makes me excited to do this.

I talked to some women after the show and they were saying, literally, 'We didn’t even know there was anything other than Britney Spears.'"

We are the Bears Shufflin' Crew.

Slightly less annoying than the WNBA's BEP, cutesifying our hoops hoops ladies down to lesser-threat size.

It is no secret that I love and respect the Tiny Punky Bassplayer but last night, with her band, felt like physical evidence she's changing the world. It's not just cause our charter plans were drafted by the same ombudsman; I could see her presence affecting the cool girls in the front row, who took her photo with disposable cameras and carefully watched her hands hit frets. People, take it from Jessica Hopper: SMILING AT INDIVIDUAL AUDIENCE MEMBERS FROM THE STAGE, especially when your primary fanbase is still riding the age-rail between Barbies and driving, IS A SUPER RADICAL ACT. Smiling at people from the stage backs it up when Al points out we're all human beings up here.

About six clean-cut teen-dudes formed a spotty mosh pit, ramming into Sean and me by centrifugal force. I felt torn between the old familiar thrust of annoyance and show-invasion—and wanting to join in, just to prove a point. Even after years of fielding this scenario, being shoved around by boys twice my size (now 1/2 my age), my instincts haven't changed. My subconscious mind did the same old softshoe, telling me to act tuff, to ignore my fear, pretend I'm not assailed by this unraveling violence and testosterone—because for a girl to penetrate the pit, even with eyes glued shut, earns her respect in this world. Shows you can weather the bruises—physical proof you can hang with the dudes who are running shit. Mosh pits are not very populist. Dance Club, co-ed feminist/ situationist dance troupe to which I once belonged, tried to bust apart the exclusionary nature of punk shows by infiltrating pits with booty-bass choreography, but we essentially stopped operating after all the death threats on PDX hardcore message boards.

I ended up with a bruised arm. When the mini-pit dissipated, I stood mom-like in their wake, busting some half-club snaps and subdued rhythm nation footwork, because anyway, seeing my cool best friend play bass on stage made me proud and happy.

1. I am totally down with 50% hateration-shots on my court if it's a barometer of honesty (mine own, others'). Sheed, ever-passionate, doesn't try to be anyone he's not; my father, Pistons coach Larry Brown, calls him "one of the most misunderstood people in the NBA."

2. Andrew WK, one of the most misunderstood people in performance art, reads like a Chick tract—a fleshy diversionary tactic writ large (in block script I don't wanna analyze). Quote: "There's no such thing as being fake. How can music that moves somebody, anybody, not be for real?" You can't tell me he doesn't get it; for one sweet moment, right after the release I Get Wet (March '02), he was the most self-aware, focused musician/symbol, signaling grit teeth in the "end of irony."

3. My new fave photo dude, Andrew Tonry, who rocks a white LaCoste with an upturned collar and writes like a mechanical bull with no brakes, has a website.

4. I totally, literally got a phone call from Debbie Mathers today. Tonight, she and Seaminem and I are dining and "partying hard."

"Q: Your image has been very negative in the media and with the referees, but it seems now that we've met you, it seems somewhat uncalled for. Is this your ultimate moment of glory til you win the title, this game, your performance and team performance? Is this moment right now your ultimate get-back on all of that bad stuff that's been said about you in the past?

Rasheed Wallace: So you think that if we do win it Tuesday or whatever, you think y'all are still going to write nothing bad about me? (Laughter)

That doesn't bother me, man, because like my mom always told me, 50 percent of the people love you, 50 percent hate you. So what y'all write about me is all like water off a duck's back, man."

Game four, fourth quarter, one minute on the clock, Pistons have an eight-point lead, cameramen zoom on traces of tear collecting in a single Karl-Mallone-eye, and my housemate John Blasioli and I—Sheed lovers til death do us part—get emo in the '04 sense of the word:

Me: "I feel like I could go start a fight right now."
John B.: "I have testosterone coming out my eyeballs."

Baby Billups, where you at?

Last night, United State of Electronica: LIFE IS AWESOME. Danced til sweat smeared glitter mascara all the way down to my lip. Slipped on a floor of spilled Sparks. They aced my base. Seattle posi-core, 2004: six-piece, Up with People party jams, prime-time, 'cause love is free. Anthemic w/ZERO underlying, ambiguously misanthropic Andrew WK vibe. Just a speedball of joie de vivre, a vocodor, sequined pantalons, house beats, feelin' good, feelin' great, how are you?! And they're gonna listen if they ask. Last night was possibly the first time I've squealed at a guitar solo in my entire life. I squealed not to act out passion play of rocker/fan power dynamic-as-libido flamethrower, nor because I am particularly fond of guitar solos across the board, but because I WAS SO STOKED THIS DUDE PLAYED SUCH A RIPPIN SOLO IN THE MIDDLE OF THE HAPPIEST MOMENT EVER, RIGHT NOW. I actually felt proud of him for doing such a good job.

It was like being water-birthed at an ABBA concert in 1975. Minimal between-song banter, but what it was, was genuine: "Ladies in Portland are so beautiful," "Everyone is looking really fantastic tonight," "Thank you for dancing!" Mutual, as though we were all BFF. Josh B. said KMikeyM said during song two, "These guys deserve a million bucks." He's right, but one of the best parts is that they wouldn't care if they got it ("got enough money/and will make it last"), cause they already have each other ("so give me that lovin/that's what I wanted"). And us.

I'm serious.

From "More Reasons to love Sheed":

* "Showed up at his first press conference in Portland with a t-shirt that read 'Fuck What Ya Heard.'"

* 'During a Blazers practice, coach Maurice Cheeks was talking with reporters when Wallace strolled past en route to the locker room:
Wallace: "Say something!"
Cheeks: "They're trying to get you to say something."
Wallace: "They already know what I'm going to say. It's already etched in their reporters' manual."
Cheeks: "What? 'Just ballin?'
Wallace: "No . . . Good game. Both teams played hard.""

* Wore Timberlands during a mid-season Blazer practice.

* In the process of arguing with an NBA official, accidentally drooled on the man."

The pain... at times it's been too much to bear.
Remember those days? We had some good times, right, baby?
That's right.
But, baby, it's cool. I support you. Your happiness is my peace.

P.S. definitely read "100 Reasons to Love Rasheed" aka the Gangsta Report. Number 26: "Under his personal directory in the 1994 Granville Towers phone book he wrote, 'Peace to my peoples in Philly.'"

Hmm. Apparently, Lifesavas are so banockers for my wild style (okay... and my complimentary Libretto/Misfit Massive piece), they have requested to play the Mercury party, too.
You really want to go.

Sabala's, doors at 9. Five stupid dollars.

Libretto (w/ Lifesavas)
United State of Electronica
Swarming Hordes

Plus 480 cans of Sparks, spotted earlier today in Aaron Beam's station wagon.

New Cardio Caliente instructor, from Chile: merengue, mambo, salsa, cha-cha. Some more merengue, with a mambo thrown in. She plays Cabas (who I love). I try to play it cool, but she dances me off the planet.

Smash TV for breakfast: bites down hard.

Say, if you're in PDX tomorrow, the Mercury's having its four-year anniversary and my final party as Arts Editor. Aaron and I were smart and booked some dopeass PDX MC with possibly-Xtian-undertoned vocodor party band and Seattle’s "most likely to quit metal and join the Masons".

Flow? Fuck flow. You should totally come.

My beloved browser Safari's sole unbeloved quality: Netscape/Apple feed is my homepage on lock. Today, though, this has served me well, because I am the proud recipient of an unending CNN newsfeed regarding the location of Ronald Reagan's corpse.

Yesterday, Ronald's corpse was at home, but then it was moved to the Capitol. It took a commuter flight to Washington from a Naval Base, rested awhile with family and, after a short time spent "in repose" between the study and a Carl's Jr., is now available for public viewing in the hilltop presidential library. It's like the Garden Gnome Liberation Society up in here.

As my friend Lance put it, "Hell is going to be a lot warmer than California, Ronnie. A lot warmer."

Oh! oh! Also, last night, at Best of the Northwest Film Fest, saw a Vancouver, BC narrative mini-feature, Why the Anderson Children Didn't Come To Dinner, directed by Jamie Travis. Three glum, chubby but malnourished-looking children live with their obsessive-compulsive mother, who cooks disgusting feasts of meat—four cartons of eggs, stacks of greasy toast, roasted pig heads and liver and tender battered whole frogs—and forces them to eat every bit, with chopsticks. It meditates on abuse and its remedies, and is immaculately stylized, aside from a cuckoo-clock moment (a surprising cliche in conceptual heaven—so cliche I wonder if it was meant to act as a visual bookmark). Disciple of Royal Tenenbaums and Parents in both imagination and its multidimensional depiction of children, who are too often relegated to filmic paper dolls.

Other great films in the fest: Sherman Alexie's 49?, about the Native American song tradition which now incorporates Patsy Cline, Hank Williams; and Entry, a gauzy moment with one of my favorite dancers, Dayna Hanson of 33 Fainting Spells.

Have you ever seen a class of slightly fatigued kindergartners, hushed with love as their teacher reads them fairy tales? Yeah, that was the Joanna Newsom show. Berbati's is a Portland venue notorious for its invasive constant din during sets. Last night, even stumbling-in Rose Festival stragglers kept reverent silence, in a way I've never seen. You could try to argue that it was simply the folk-music crowd, or true proof of the Joni Mitchell v. II era of serenity and peace-yearning—but everybody started talking again during Devendra Banhart. And you definitely cannot step to this magic: clad in a Snow White-heisted, empire-waisted apron gown, Ms. Newsom opened with an a capella Appalachian hoedown, including crowd-participation handclaps. I kept waiting for her to offer us some pie. (Garrison Keillor better keep his good eye on the dial.)

(I put in my bid as chief choreographer of the musical she will doubtless write, FYI.)

En route to my new home, I'm stopping in Wyoming for a week, for the first time in seven years, during "The Daddy of 'Em All." (You wish you were the Daddy of 'Em All.)

Me + My Mom + George Strait = Narnia HQ West. Seven days of conscious escapism.

Wyoming used to be "The Equality State," as it was the first state to grant women the right to vote, but their main objective was not suffrage; instead, it was a political move, to encourage suffrage-friendly homesteaders to populate its then-more-barren lands. (Let us not discount the importance of makin' moves, however, regardless of motive. [Word to Jane and Annie, by the way.])

Now, the Wyo motto is "Like No Place on Earth"—aka the breeding ground of Dick Cheney, Buffalo "slaughter everything/everyone" Bill, and the only place besides New Jersey to name a state park after a sportscaster.

Gracias, Shines, for mixing "Face to Face" into this (even if you sampled it years before Ms. On+On went Underground).
It's just that, we never knew. (But they did.)

Ratatat's remix album, feat Brooklyn Zoo, leaves hot-chills with its locomotive properties. Faves: a funeral-organ version of Ghost & Jadakiss' "Run"; "Fix Up Look Sharp" (whose original success was based on spaces in beats), whips by in a tilt-a-whirl of just-off, messy rhythm—and hearing Lazer Life whisper "Ratatat" like they're Neptunesian rock mystics.

Where does the big Foreigner rock riff belong? Right in Missy's middle. Thank you Michael J. and Eddie Van for the hors d'oeuvres.

Scissor Girls live, 1995, Laramie, Wyoming: nuclear. Scissor Girls in Laramie '05 would likely end the same, but '95 was three years before the murder of Matthew Shepard, before the town got talking about things, before the diagnosis was gangrene. Laramie '95: even just riding a skateboard down Grand Ave in '95 was cause for drive-by ridicule.

Me, by that time I'd been soaking in Sonic Death and touched by the hand of Genesis P-Orridge and Teenaged Jesused and Pussy Whipped—god bless all mail order everywhere, forever—for all of '94, my favorite music writer was whoever wrote the blurbs in the Kill Rock Stars catalogue: that person's language was pure energy.

But without visual aids, the noises I marveled at were mysterious squall. I knew someone had to be MAKING them, but the corporeal reality of a human being skewering a fret with a drumstick might well have been jabberwocky. I didn't yet comprehend music as reaction in that manner. Self-reflexive and often medicore, my environment provided no tactical outline.

Bikini Kill jilted us. They wouldn't play in a Laramie bar even for all ages night—and maybe warned off by the liner notes to Kill 'Em All: "Fuck You Laramie, Wyoming," when Metallica played the Cowboy Bar (actual name) and were embroiled in unknown fracas, presumably with fists and busted Coors bottlenecks.

As such: Scissor Girls were the first all-girl band I ever saw play live.
The openers were Homeless Wonders, a Screeching Weasel-worshipping high-school pop-punk band fronted by twin brothers. (I think they are still together.) Their songs were G-C-G and sparkle-cheeked, but what I remember most about them was Azita. Scissor Girls' lead singer and driving force.
Here was this squeaky clean boy-band, too young to drive, playing pubescent hits like "Punk Rocker Fantasy" in a shitty, college-town, quasi-cowboy-themed bar, whose name at the time had some connection to Wile E. Coyote and/or the Tasmanian Devil (the most popular tattoo of the year locally, according to the neighborhood inker), while Azita, this diminuitive woman wearing goggles and brown platform nurse shoes danced like electro-shock therapy, sending her arms jerking in double-jointed, 45-degree angles. She moved like an oil rig. She was volatile by being. My boyfriend-y character, who listened to only three albums constantly for the duration of our relationship—Paul's Boutique, Bizarre Ride II and A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing (all GREAT albums, but on repeat for six months, no)—deemed Azita the weirdest chick he'd ever laid eyes on, cut out before she took residence on Tazmanian stage.

(Also, I must note, binary critiques of humans and social groups like "weird" v. "normal" were important to the town's general disdain for plurality—essential for maintaining the order of civilization, like in Babylonia. You can see why I left.)

Here, it's hazy; I remember more the ways my mind was blown by SG Army than specifics of their set. I know they melted time, picked apart rhythms and threw away the too-clean parts, the too-right parts, anything easy or predictable. Azita sqwaked and twittered and dug for black gold. Someone said deconstructionist and I'd say more Pandora's Box; they didn't split hairs, exactly, but they loosened the guitar's wabi-sabi from its creakiest convention. It was confrontational, in a way I don't think Bikini Kill would have been, at least to me right then—it was subtle and it was art and it was somehow outside the bounds of rhetoric. Their confrontation slipped a note under the door. It was dual-smackdown of nice-girl notion and that-year's-alt-nation-hits, which, let me tell you now: the sound guy was likely playing Surgery in between songs.

Why this, now? Okay. Last weekend, Azita played Dunes, with a piano in four pieces and three boy bandmates reading from sheet music on stands. (How Joe Pass.) It was the Sat nite crowd—DJ was sweet on old Glass Candy 7-inches, folks took on a slight air of jaded whether they wanted to or not, but maybe it was just cynicism in the wrong light.

And the posters, silk-screened in hot pink with a skull, read "AZITA (ex scissor girls)," led her to apologize in earnest: "Sorry if you came here because the sign said ex-Scissor Girls; sorry if I'm ruining your dance party." Apologizing for her past, maybe apologizing for the fact that she refined her art to include very of-Chicago, Steely Dan-fetishizing, guitar-jazz-in-a-piano-bar tunes. Either way, the SG kids in the front looked bored. But this time, the note under the door said Azita's voice holds the secret: her vocals are just enough askew that she sounds and looks like a shark while singing them, milky and froggy and her jaw opens at two different angles. She bit the air in parts. She wore Top Gun sunglasses. (I will note that Azita's Enantiodromia was one of my favorite records of last year solely for her strange, imposing, horsey vocal charm: superimpose the milk-chunks from Fagen's low register as dominating timbric factor. I need more QT with Life on the Fly, but overall, the bullseye of her vox get bad-aimed with fancy rock arrangements, and the aforementioned accompanying players, who have all played in every band on Drag City since the beginning of time.)

But, though more demure and blazered than before, she produced the subtle awkwardness that compelled me to SG music ten years ago—a vaporous, almost true-situationist ripple through a set of references and expectations. A pea under a mattress, with focus but little effort.

Les Georges Leningrad followed and there was dancing—the same choreographer as Azita at the Taz bar. They're fit but they know it. I'm not trying to argue the one-vs.-two "do something/or I'm bored," but I will say, on the whole, I like surprises.

I also wish bands in the oughty-four would leave the face masks to the NBA. (Rip Hamilton, so post Neon Hunk.)