April 30, 2004 (0) Comments

Saw live Savath and Savalas, not because certain folks think Eva is fine, nor to prove sexed-up indie boys wrong, not even because I am a fan. (Which I am.) I saw them mainly for Susie Ibarra, one of my favorite drummers pretty much ever. It was the first time I'd seen her play, outside of those women in jazz and John Zorn documentaries.
Watching her approach rock-ish drumming from a pristine, graceful improv platform was hard evidence of her malleability. The rest of the show was pretty fabulous, too, and more immediately compelling than the record—Catalan-folk uptwisted with little Free Design/Brazilian psychedelia vibration, and a full band, playing in swathes.

What up to the phenomenal Scott Herren-recommended Clube da Esquina, con Milton Nascimento y Lo Borges.

April 30, 2004 (0) Comments

Thank God, Sasha finally made the Post for something other than chucking bar glasses at Shannen Doherty.

YEAH SASHA!!!

April 28, 2004 (0) Comments

Not to get all USA TODAY on yr asses, but this is freaking me out:
does anyone else find it slightly Jolie-familia that Britney WISHED HER BROTHER "HAPPY BIRTHDAY" WEARING A GARTER BELT AND A BUSTIER?
AND: Liv Tyler's father admits in the latest Rolling Stone that he is PHYSICALLY ATTRACTED TO HER.
Three pages later, Usher Raymond's (AKA "Cha-Cha") rather amazing OCD self offers up the juice about P.Diddy's housekeeping habits, AND THE FACT THAT HE PROPOSED TO CHILLI MID-SEX.

I am passing out from creep-out.

April 27, 2004 (0) Comments

A couple tours, a full-length, and 1600 more T&G mailers from Burrelle's have not hurt TV on the Radio's live show. I was perched at my usual front-and-center pelican-eye magnetic dance spot; halfway through song 3, a man jitterbugging like he got the orders from God himself bulldozed into me, grabbed my arm passionately as if we—the lone early-in-the-show-dancers—were predestined. As though our ectoplasmic souls would bleed into one, for our mutual, physically manifested love of "Staring at the Sun." Not to be a buzzkill but I was like "yo, don't touch me," in my firmest "boundaries" voice. But it wasn't in tongues, so he didn't hear me; he just went on like that, twittering like seizures, flipping sweat in arcs and just as quickly, he was gone.

Later, I had to tell this woman and her boyfriend not to freak me.

April 26, 2004 (0) Comments

Grazie Fluxblog for the heads-up on Loretta Lynn vs. Jack White vs. "Portland, Oregon" sloe gin fizz/heartbreak epic waltzage. 'Tis beautiful, captures the old-timey booziness that kept PDX in biz til the straightedge takeover of '97. Can't listen to it the same, tho, after hearing Amy Phillips' EMP paper "White Blood Sells," on the White Stripes' subtextual racism. I know the ILM massive has spewed hate-goop in Amy's path, partially based on her unpopular yet brave opinions (OR does she say what ya think but too chickenshit to speak?) and also partially based on envy—that envy shit'll undo you like Oprah's Book Club. ANYWAY, Amy's paper took ish with White Stripes' freakishly antebellum lifestyle choices, including an unsettling moment on Conan where Meg was escorted to and from her drumset by a large, butler-esque black man, a la protector and bodyguard, and also a la dainty pale belle, shoeless, emaciated, a vision of beauty on some real 1833 shit.
It was interesting and Amy made the case pretty well; my main complaint was that it too reliant on quotes from texts, rather than personal conclusions based on said quotes (I thought she should have argued it more, STATED rather than questioned). But if it was her effing dissertation, then I'm sure academia wasn't hating on her use of like, Lacan (not a real cited source; I just cannot remember who she quoted). Her quotes culled from Jack White interviews, especially his much-deconstructed Bill O'Reillian stance on hip-hop—plus his very conservative call for a return to values, old-style values, where a man was a man and a woman was his dawg, or whateves—paved a clear road up to her thesis. She then took to task the CRITICS who want a return to values, or rather a return to rock; the critics who see in the White Stripes so much hope for the perpetuation of guitars; the critics who still love to love the stuff on the Victrola at their teenage dance parties*; the critics who, despite comparatively not-mindblowing alb sales, wheatpaste the Stripes' pasty mugs 'cross every mag cover in Anglo-Saxia, up to and including the New Musical Express. AKA the ILM poison apple "rockism."

I agree with about 14% of what Amy Phillips says, but I am stoked on her tuff chutzpah and think the line "this is the kind of music indie boys put on when they want to have sex" is amazing. Her points are sharp and she speaks for culture, not just list-cataloguing. She forgoes the dewey decimal in favor of the real. Diggable.

April 26, 2004 (0) Comments

Discussed hardline politics at length with Anti-Flag's Justin Sane this morning, and while he's not the source of this website, it is somewhat appropriate:
John Kerry is a douchebag, but I'm voting for him anyway. Dot com.

In other news, my mom, aka my personal case study/barometer of midwest conservative politics, has expressed voter apathy towards 2004 election, which is huge. Moms' thrown herself at the Republican boot since like, '44; things aren't so hot on the 13th floor of the Amway building, it seems.

April 25, 2004 (0) Comments

My Saturday plans did not include facing down five squad cars, heavy with cops in the exoskeletons of riot gear. There was no reason for 2:1 officer-protester ratio. The Police Accountability March was peaceful; its leaders shouted as much, through megaphones, for an hour beforehand. And yet, there were more officers than teachers in schools. The bike force, queued like bees in yellow uniforms, ushered our path, barred us from jaywalking; batons jutted from their spokes, for silencing emotion should it gather more breadth than permitted. A crusty-punkish, dreadlocked fellow was arrested for crossing incorrectly; according to his friends, he has been arrested for similar infractions at every single protest over the past year. A foot off the sidewalk on a flashing hand will land you a $239 ticket and a night in the pokey. God Bless Portland.

We were protesting the violent and unjustified murder of an unarmed motorist, by a police officer, at a routine traffic stop. We were trailed by paddy wagons, escorted by cops on horses, paraded by ominous trucks of tasers and pepper spray. I felt solemn.
The protests in which I participate—which, to be honest, hasn't been since the intial Iraq War protests—are always about lives. Individual people. And so it's a curious line to toe—feeling solid anger at a unified "police" as representative of "the failed system"—but understanding that the notion of a reductive faceless mass is what leads to racial profiling, and what lead to these murders. It takes effort to humanize a man wearing a Darth Vader uniform. An older woman, denim-clad, held a sign—"Justice: Police Accountability"—and spoke directly to the officers: you can work from the inside, you can make real change, you can do what is right. When we stopped our march in front of Mayor Katz's house, the yellow bike cops swarmed around us. It is grounding, knowing you're doing something out of hope and idealism, but staring down the evidence that you are considered a threat. My throat got lumpy, my face flush with the force of hundreds and high tensions. But one bike cop asked, in a kind voice, "Are you going to the inquest?" I felt as though he would have patted me on the back.

Then we had a house party, with DJs—Chris Funk, Fremont Slim, Seoul Brother #1. You can imagine: they played Pete Rock. And Nu Shooz, "I Can't Wait," to shout out Portland. (You thought the Stoudamires were our only good natives?) And I saw Eternal Sunshine—miles better than Human Nature—and Gondry is biting himself, I think, or Kaufman is biting Gondry, because thematically, Eternal Sunshine is the exact concept as Bjork's "Bachelorette" video. Trains, love never lost, forward motion into the dark halls of repetition, blank slates. Maybe not biting; just elucidating. For that, I promise Gondry now I will always love being alive.

April 23, 2004 (0) Comments

Jason Sery, the Portland cop who shot James Jahar Perez five times in the first 19 seconds of a routine traffic stop, received the Portland Police Officer's award for Portland's Top Cop last Saturday. Now, the grand jury has let him walk.
The Oregonian reports the officers told Perez he would be shot if he reached his hand into his pocket. What they don't ask is WHY THE COPS DRAW GUNS WHEN THEY PULL SOMEONE OVER FOR FAILURE TO SIGNAL.

Be at Pioneer Square, noon, tomorrow (SAT April 24) for the Police Accountability March.

Don't forget the March for Womens' Lives on April 25 in D.C.

In lighter news, Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich will be celebrity-judging a vegan chocolate chip cookie baking contest at Food Fight Vegan Grocery on May 1, from 1-1:30 pm. Seriously.

April 22, 2004 (0) Comments

The filing fetish of my mini iPod seats Mirah's "Exactly Where We're From" next to Murs' "Bad Man!" "Exactly Where We're From" is very Garrison Keillor in its quaint affection for province; I suspect Ms. yom tov Zeitlyn wrote it whilst navigating the Appalachians—the mountains of her birthplace. She's bird-cooing and whistling, as though the extra breath will push her little car up the burning incline of the Penna Pike, and sings a lullaby: "We have been blessed with certain thoughts/ and speak with very little talk."

According to my iPod, Murs answers, "All I wanted was to fuck from the start, I never lied/ Now it hurts my heart to have to see you cry." Parity? Mirah did have that song a couple albums back about pegging w/a strap-on, and Murs, ever-sensitive, "gotta find a new chick/ someone who's gonna understand a man's gotta be a man/I don't wanna have to lie just to get into your pants." I wonder if Murs believes he has any women fans, AT ALL; 3:16 is like, straight from the dudes-only billiard room: "I love chicks on E... they use it as an excuse to misbehave." MALE CONFIDENTIAL. Go tell it to the bathroom stall.

Annoyingly, I find Murs funny at times and—also at times—smart, though he was wittiest when was ruling the world, and I'm not just saying that cause I got a pen out of it; but at least "these thugs do what they like/ Some of them be on Friendster tryin' to find a new wife" is some improvement over "Fuck a tramp who don't swallow," or whatever.

I also don't know how anyone can get away with reviewing 3:16 without mentioning "And This is For," a precision indictment of white appropriation of/ownership over hiphop and its cultural tendrils:
"Any white boy who thinks he knows my struggle
Because he listens to Pac and his adrenalin bubbles
I ain't got problems with you bein yourself
But when you front and use the N word it just don't help
I might not trip and your friends'll laugh at you
but I know some real niggas that'll straight up slap you
Now you could be down
but let's act growed up
cause we ain't the same color
when the police show up"

He goes on to explain that "yes it is jazz and yes it is blues and yes it is the exact same way they did rock/ but i refuse to watch the same thing happen to hiphop/I refuse to watch that bullshit."

Now read the entirety of this Quannum review.

On the positive sex end, here's what's really really hot: "Tush" by Ghostface & Missy sends all sorts of sparks to my "the jam" receptors; the unexpected lyric, "charlie horse threw me off balance/ when all I wanted was to show you my talent," especially. It's Ghost admitting weakness, or rather letting humanity shine through the breaks in his pro-kegel, Pretty Toney superhero suit; smack amid the hottest 'bout to get it on song, eager to please'n take off the thong song. Lil' Kim is conjured as signifier for sexual accomplishment (twice! on this record, in separate rhymes by both Ghost AND Missy), plus Missy's like, "you got a lotta nerve" to wanna get with her total radness. It's not just about the panting high-hat, though there is that; "Tush" is just so unequivocally REAL. Dirty humor, bravado, skepticism, cockblocking: it's specific, honest in regards to power dynamic.

[ADDENDUM: this is not to say I think Murs isn't being real RE: sex, because I think he's being VERY real. I just think he's got a broke M.O.]

[ADDENDUM 2: Pertinent to this post is Jay Smooth observing Renee Graham in Boston Globe—because this issue holds such close hands w/economics.]

[ADDENDUM 3: Article & discussion on Davey D boards, interesting debate on multiculturalism in hiphop.]

April 20, 2004 (0) Comments

Also, my description of JEssica der STUTGART makes her sound like she has become Mother Teresa, or Juan Diego, but she has not. INdeed given over to god, (but not building w/the god), she is just helping Sasha over there on the goat farm. Both of them will return soon, freshly woven sweaters in hand.

Someone may want to tell Kenny Chesney that Tiki Bars are a whole lotta flammable.

If you have sent me an email in the past week and I have not responded, please send it again: entourage ate all my email AND my address book. If you have not sent me an email, do consider it: julianne@portlandmercury.com.

If you missed the neumo's opening "party" thing at EMP, or even if you didn't, Randy Jones (AKA CARO) was scheduled to play; I specifically requested his presence in order to conjure the spirit of Philip "sailing the seven seas" Sherburne, and/or please those many with an interest in nasty electro, superb tech-house, sexy experimental disco, and cowbells. He runs the Seattle label Orac Records, has actually performed in STUTGART (no word on whether he helped with the goats) and when he is not making like, brilliant computer shit for Radiohead, he is frequently slept on. I think that is dumb.

April 19, 2004 (2) Comments

Aaron Burgess forwarded this under the header "the most amazing thing i've read all year." Boys wearing girls' pants as actual trend, lends new meaning to the query "is there any more room for me in those jeans?"

April 13, 2004 (0) Comments

Jessica Lucky Genius, who you may know is my best friend (we are like the corsican sisters/ also we both look cute in pirate pants), called from the car on the way to the airport to Germany, where she is doing spoken word in the Bratwurst Emcee Ensemble/ spreading the word of The Christ. She called to say she is driving behind “An ’86 white dodge panel van, with budget bling rims and a gold foot step thing. On the bumper, in hardware store red appliqué letters, it says crookedly, 'PAYBACK'S A BITCH: 9/11/01.' On the spare tire, it says USA in plastic rubber stick-on letters. Otherwise, there is no detailing. The man driving it looks like he might be an ex-con and the woman might be his lawyer. She is on a cell phone.”

We were unable to discern whether they meant "eff you USA" or "eff you terrorists," but i think it is a sign that Jessica in Germany will convert many wayward souls to our riot grrl gang, and that I won't freak asthmatic reading my paper on Saturday. But that if I do, Jessica, Xtina and that man in the van may be spirit guides. Also, Bratwurst.

April 12, 2004 (0) Comments

Please scroll below and click on the "WHAT NOW THE VINES" entry comments section, where two C'n'P faves Jay Smooth and Rjyski the Cexual Transcender Kidwell have been giving with the mighty rigor RE: RA the misogynistic rugged man, and whether he deserved ass-kickings, which evolved into metadiscussion on bad -isms in music and mean reviewers. (description annotated)

April 10, 2004 (0) Comments

Last night, typing diligently with a view from the window, an elongated van the color of a burnt hot dog rolls up, trailer in tow. My cross-street neighbors, America's fave carnie-friendly folk-pop band les D3c3mburrists, bound out in procession like clowns emerging from a toy car, embracing a sole Tecate and screaming my name from below. It is as if someone has ordered me a Queen's English candy gram, to be played on lap steel. I am disappointed the trailer contains instruments and not baby performative Clydesdales. They have not been home in 30 days, doing sold-out shows at le Grand Ole Opery and, like, Spaceland; Fonk lowers himself to push-up position and actually kisses the ground, which is disgusting because of the rats. For 10 minutes, it is fam-reunion, block-party style. The van, comically huge like Willy Wonka's hot air balloon, takes up the entire drive-way, so that even kids rocking bikes must find alternate routes. It is like that Janet Jackson video* w/Cab Calloway & Syd Charise, attached to which song I cannot remember.

Absence, hearts and whatnot. Welcome back to the gulliest well-turned ankles representing Irv Park.

*or the EMP Funk Blast (RIP) [sans weird racial subtext], or actually, now that I think about it, nearly every Janet Jackson video ever from like, 1987-1991 ("Pleasure Principle" excluded--that was a celebration of self.)

April 9, 2004 (0) Comments

Today, looking for picante, the company fridge yielded Hooters brand tabasco sauce. Startling. Lacking options, I put it on my tofu. It wasn't very hot.

Jammin 95.5 bleeps out the word "hos" in Twista/Kanye's "Celebrity."

After spending $37,000 on the magical downloading jukebox, just to hear "Doo Rags" by Nas, it bleeped out "herb" in the context "puffin' they."

April 8, 2004 (0) Comments

For those of you who were planning your weekend around it (aka me), the Portland MF Doom/RA el Hombre Rugged (y Dirty) show has been postponed to 4/18, apparently because they are detained at the Canadian border. Eff that.

April 8, 2004 (1) Comments

short story relayed by my housemate:

"This guy was telling me at Seder he got paid $100 to DJ a dog's birthday party. He said he made lots of jokes like, "Yo, this one goes out to Rover! You're MY DOG!!"

Tonight, various conditions beyond our control sent the household’s collective meta-feng shui into snarls and snafus. For inspiration, we broke out the SweetTart SweetHearts, left over from Valentine’s Day, and looked at our fortunes. Most of them were mundane/trad in the "Let's Kiss" or "TLC" vein, but unlike Kirk Cameron, technology has not left SweetHearts behind. Other romantic Valentines included:

URA10
Page Me
Go Girl
E-Mail
IM Me
Fax ME

And, inexplicably:
Let’s Read
Book Club

Like, among the selection committee of five 13-year-olds advising SweetHearts phrases, a mutinous Luddite hijacked the press: "Ulysses!" "Multiplication tables!" "Chess match!"

April 6, 2004 (1) Comments

Star C'n'P commenter "jacksonbrowne"—whose comments come straight from the paint and never swipe the cylinder—has stepped into le chambre du blogging!

Rarely suckling the "cathode ray nipple" (!)/ crippled by the wet nurse (no wait... !!!), I can only imagine what American Idol is really like. Luckily, I have O-Dub to break it down: "It's like all the white people on the show are competing to get thrown off."

Will someone with TV invite me over, s.v.p.? Cable helps. I'll bring specialty snacks and we can braid hair.

April 5, 2004 (0) Comments

Rjyan Kidwell's subconscious mind is chronicled daily in dream-form here.

While Sasha is off on sabbatical (volunteering on a goat farm in New Zealand), la lady Jeanne Fury, Jessica and I shall be helming the helm, and hopefully not docking that ship on the world's biggest iceberg. I have already linked to the most popped-open, choose-yr-own-adventure-cover cgi-animation of a leprechaun in a clearing, smoking a pipe and contemplating his pot of rainbow, while faeries frolick on mushrooms and two kids wearing a MI beavers shirt peek out WONDEROUSLY from behind a tree.

April 5, 2004 (1) Comments

...vs. the undistilled self.

Quannum World Tour kicked off last night in Portland; if you are unlucky enough to live elsewhere, I advise to beg, borrow, steal, or hijack a Ticketmaster/local news satellite van for tix in yr town. It was sold-out to 1500 people, but was so much like a house party, bulbous with love and posi-energy, I felt compelled to ask my neighbors if they wanted cookies or lemonade, and show them the way to the bathroom. D-Sharp, Rev. Shines, Xcel and Shadow DJed behind a long table a la The Last Supper; emcees emerged alternately for two numbers each (including Latyrx united like Germany), and then banded together as one. Fuck a Ziegfeld Folly; presented simultaneously, they are dazzling pinata-candy of styles. I wasn't even mad that Lyrics Born/Joyo performed virtually the same set as their show last week, cause it felt like a celebration. It's nice to see a show and feel innately that the performers have healthy self-esteem, and a clear and present respect for humanity; that their show is FOR YOU, not FOR THEM, or TO FULFILL A ROLE or vacuum you into their personal artistic vortex--that all showperson energies are directed outward, altruistically, fed into a genuine audience vs. performer interchange, with zero dynamics of validation/worship/reverence. I believe this phenomenon is entitled "breaking down the fourth wall." They lift us up, so that they may lift us up.

One question: did Lifesavas kill my fave Tracy and the Plastics with the DVD turntable? Will technology squash her worst/best idea video-splicing muscleonix? Shadow announced mid-set that the Quannum WT'04 extravaganze is the first ever to incorporate the device into a whole tour; essentially, it syncs up audio with video (no, REALLY!!) so if someone's DJing a sample of Heavy D, you will also see the accompaying Heavy D video on the giant screen behind them, for the length of the sample. For Lifesavas' "HelloHiHey," in which Vurs converses with his own ego about his stratospherical/megalomaniacal emceeing, a pre-recorded Irv on the DVD rhymed the ego parts, conversing with the real Irv on the stage, a la Wynne Greenwood performative-art, transgressive-boundary, commentary of the self. Irv, however, was not wearing a wig. Wynne's probably safe, but non-multimedia concerts from here on out are in peril; there's something satisfying about watching the video for "Deception" while the selfsame Gift of Gab rhymes it in reality. Things to look at: I want more.

April 4, 2004 (0) Comments

I have been walking around my house with a computer wrapped around my head like a cucumber-mud face wrap, the summer flip-flops of perpetual working and a cell phone attache containing IMPERATIVE MISSIVES from the Tiny Lucky Chicago Unicorn only, advising that today is Easter (except that it is in fact Palm Sunday, the day my dad leaves to visit my Pentacostal half sister's rendition of the passion in Mississippi. How real is that). Sun comes out, I retreat into work. That is fuct, nay? Four things for now: Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue, to celebrate my betrothal to my iBook:

OLD: next time you are in front of 2 turntables, mix Dizzee Rascal "I Luv U" and Memphis Bleek "Is that your chick" and see what happens

NEW:Initial thoughts on the new !!!: DANCE FOR POLITIX G-dammit!! A bludgeoning; like Jumprope for Angioplasty

BORROWED: my housemate connie wants to know what happened to Belinda from fannypack.

BLUE: Now we are barbecuing, pre-Quannum Show barbecuing. If you know my address, come over at 5 pm. Some people will be here. "Expect surprises."
(BYO Portabello mushrooms)

April 1, 2004 (0) Comments

Amazing. Billy Corgan writes on recording, baseball, God, his birthday, his cats, his "immoral" ex-bandmates (!), and Cowboyz 'n' Poodles' third-favorite topic, La Virgen--from a docile, reverent Piscean perspective. Sample lyric:
"One only needs to look at a bumblebee on a flower to know there is a higher power than little ol' us."

April 1, 2004 (0) Comments

For the second time in less than a year, a white Portland PD officer has killed an unarmed black motorist pulled over for a routine traffic stop. Reportedly, the victim--father to a five year old child--still had his seat belt on, and was tased after being shot several times. The officer in question had a history of violence against what he thought were "gang members."
Mayor Katz is, as usual, conspicuously mum on topics of racism in the PPD.

April 1, 2004 (0) Comments

Holding it down til 2073, always the final say on Dierks Bentley, a connaisseur of fine rhymes: Jon Partymanica. You will soon silkscreen his face on your number-one foam finger.