it's all in my pocket

FROM September 13, 2004

I am learning to love Fashion Week; when you walk by Bryant Park, women in Jackie-O wigs and pink tweed (what else!) will hand you bags of crap for free. Today, I got an electric toothbrush from Shop Etc. magazine.

The absurdity of last night hit critical mass when the guitarist started humping the keyboard. It was a side-hump, on the corner of the synth, and it must've hurt, because he didn't do it for very long. It should have been sexy, but it was a moment of lost-in-the-rock, unselfawareness; I like it when the band comprises the dorkiest people in the room. They are a trio from Australia that sounds remarkably like Led Zeppelin, mostly from the singer's voice dead-ringing for Plant, and they seemed to me like some 17-year-old kids who'd heard Zep, smoked some weed and hooked up after science extra-curriculars to jam, then time-traveled from their 1971 basement to a SoHo art gallery, 2004. For that, and their pink-cheeked enthusiasm, and their street-sweeping bass, I dug them.
CERTAIN PEOPLE reneged on plans, so I was forced to enact Plan B: the fashion party/Nylon magazine release EVENT. Next to the stage where Wolfmother howled its wares, models playfully removed their jeans (because it was also a party for an Australian denim company, obviously) behind a backlit white screen, silhouettes in hypnotic quasi-titillating motion, making any number of references--Beyonce's "Naughty Girl" video, 91/2 weeks, modest peep shows more blushing than Gypsy Rose. The effect was poorly conceived art project-meets-sexy slumber party. Meanwhile, men with industrial grade video cameras were filming NOT the band, NOT the party, but the screen, as if these shadow-models were more interesting than the sweaty, skinny curly-heads playing their guts, which I guess if you are a straight man or a lesbian, maybe they were. A woman standing behind me who, I swear to god, was either Jane Pauley or looked exactly like her (I've never seen more sensible hair), everytime Wolfmother finished a song, would daub her index finger into her ears and complain about the sound. I laughed the whole time I was there, but I left after the band played, because they weren't giving anything away for free (besides copies of Nylon for Men).

On the train home, a woman keened loudly for Jesus, freestyling about bathing in the blood of the lamb and singing him the highest praises all the way Bway-Lafayette to Jay streets, at least. She was wearing an American flag on her head like a turban.

Got out of the train, and a mariachi band was playing in Dizzy's, the park slope brunch cornerstone, which is kind of like having a Greek festival in a bodega.

Life is sweet. New York is one big, funny art installation.

The guitar melody of "Ground Zero" on the Mash Out Posse record is a complete rip of Fugazi's "Waiting Room," which is fine with me 1. because "Waiting Room" is a great song and 2. I love to know Brownsville's finest are fucking with DC punk mythics.

Can I live in a song? Can I live in the chorus of a song? The part in Sleater-Kinney's "Oh!" when Corin Tucker takes over the mic, "Nobody lingers like/your hands on/my heart/and/Nobody figures me out/like you figure/me out," Moog screaming ascension, it steps tall and unbound.
I'm all about music for escape lately… not escapism, but affirmation and possibility. LIGHT.