Long Way Down
this was a very eventful weekend, o best beloved, though it brought me no closer to finishing, nor indeed, even starting my pop conference paper about morrissey... in fact, when i get around to house cleaning (six solid hours worth, just on the closets, yielding 5 trash bags worth of trash, wire hangers, and goodwill fodder), it's a pretty safe bet there's something I'm supposed to be writing. let's not even get started on the joni mitchell book. literally.
friday night was an epic bro-down with josh and brad, that started after work (if not during) and ended, in a shambling mound (30 years of maximum D&D) at 3 AM. the details aren't important, really, except to say that i really thought it would be my last heavy drinking session for a while. (my latest commitment to excellence, in the form of only drinking top-shelf liquor or nothing at all, is yielding no dividend other than an absence of hangovers when i drink to excess, which, frankly, isn't all that often.) then I had a beer on saturday afternoon when brad and i indulged my newest hobby/obsession: watching premier league (and champions league, and any league) soccer on big screen TV at the george and dragon pub in fremont. what the hell happened to me? from there, I went to ballard to meet up with [name drop alert] robyn hitchcock at the michael penn show. penn has been a marginal figure in the pop world since having that one medium-sized hit in 1990, "no myth," and is therefore of automatic interest to me. i'm also a huge fan of his, despite seeing all the holes; and his music has very specific Seattle associations. i bought the cassette of the album that had the hit, "March," on a brief visit to seattle in '90 (at peaches on 45th, which became beehive, which became my absolute fortress in '92 when i moved here and worked across the street at the metro, spending my nights in lake forest park watching videos rented from beehive, trying to come up with reasons not to put my head in the oven). back at high school, none of my dorm-mates could stand the tape, though i found i really loved it, maybe all the more for feeling like it was all mine (and smart and pretty). i can still sing every song all the way through. later, i found out about his follow-up record ("Free-For-All"), when i heard, at 3AM (on one of many many maudlin, sleepless nights), on the brand new radio station KNDD the first time i'd ever heard it (they were giving away passes to "singles"...), the song "call the doctor." i bought the record and loved it even more than the first. it sounds much much better, and the songs are more impressive all around. still, no one i ever knew could be forced to admit to even half-liking him, and so i became a fierce proponent of his genius. then he put out a couple of not-so-great records and became (along with his wife aimee mann) one of those unbearable musicians who does nothing but write and talk about the music business in interviews and on albums. still, i had this lingering admiration, and whenever his name came up, i would do my little bit to champion him. like, he was in boogie nights, and i hated that film, but i would give it props for having michael penn in it. big deal, i know. i interviewed him for the stranger a few years back and found him to be one of those interviewees who insists on having nothing to say about himself or his work. i'd only seen him one other time, at the showbox, on the tour he did with aimee mann and david cross, where david cross did all the between song banter (a nice conceit, but ultimately frustrating; are these songwriters, who get all kinds of love for their lyrical cleverness, really too fucking delicate to say "thanks, this next one's about fire..."?). he was good, but obviously overshadowed by his tourmates, and didn't do much. then, saturday, he had to play early, since the tractor was double booked for an alejandro escovedo show that night. accompanied by his own acoustic guitar and a long-haired piano player, he played some excellent new and old songs (including "bunker hill," my very favorite), and made constant reference to how much he hated talking between songs, while talking, incessantly, between songs, about how dumb the president is (zzz), record labels (zzz), and los angeles in 1947 (kind of interesting, actually). he also had a book, by jon davidson, from which he read tips about stagecraft. funny, but snide, like many angeleno musicians of his extraction. again, i say, if you don't want to talk, you don't have to. but if you must, don't fucking make such an agony out of it. the worst moment came when he was trying to explain why his new record had been so oft-delayed (it's coming out on spin art, which he acted like was some nothing label no one had heard of; i resented that on behalf of the label home to clem snide, apples in stereo, the dears, and other fine artists), he told the story of the swap meet painting he'd gotten the album title from, and how it was a long hard road to find the artist, and when they finally tracked him down, they discovered he had died a week before. penn then recounted how inconvenient the artist's death had made it for him to use the work as an album cover, failing to note (or even notice, I think) that this guy had died and maybe the family that was getting in the way had, i don't know, a few other things on their mind? whatever. he closed with "no myth," which he introduced by way of a long, condescending speech about how no one seemed to really get what the song was really about, and how romeo and juliet had nothing to do with love; despite the crowd going wild for the one song they all absolutely knew, the subtext was clear: how dare you admire my work, world? and on the last chorus, he changed "maybe she's just looking for someone to dance with" to "someone to fuck with." buzzkillasaurus, man. a vivid lesson was being broadcast to me, and i won't soon forget it.
deep breath...
ANYWAY, i hooked up with RH and we took a taxi downtown, where he went to his hotel and i browsed in stores until it was time to go to the two bells for one of his infamous hootenannies.
(to be continued)
friday night was an epic bro-down with josh and brad, that started after work (if not during) and ended, in a shambling mound (30 years of maximum D&D) at 3 AM. the details aren't important, really, except to say that i really thought it would be my last heavy drinking session for a while. (my latest commitment to excellence, in the form of only drinking top-shelf liquor or nothing at all, is yielding no dividend other than an absence of hangovers when i drink to excess, which, frankly, isn't all that often.) then I had a beer on saturday afternoon when brad and i indulged my newest hobby/obsession: watching premier league (and champions league, and any league) soccer on big screen TV at the george and dragon pub in fremont. what the hell happened to me? from there, I went to ballard to meet up with [name drop alert] robyn hitchcock at the michael penn show. penn has been a marginal figure in the pop world since having that one medium-sized hit in 1990, "no myth," and is therefore of automatic interest to me. i'm also a huge fan of his, despite seeing all the holes; and his music has very specific Seattle associations. i bought the cassette of the album that had the hit, "March," on a brief visit to seattle in '90 (at peaches on 45th, which became beehive, which became my absolute fortress in '92 when i moved here and worked across the street at the metro, spending my nights in lake forest park watching videos rented from beehive, trying to come up with reasons not to put my head in the oven). back at high school, none of my dorm-mates could stand the tape, though i found i really loved it, maybe all the more for feeling like it was all mine (and smart and pretty). i can still sing every song all the way through. later, i found out about his follow-up record ("Free-For-All"), when i heard, at 3AM (on one of many many maudlin, sleepless nights), on the brand new radio station KNDD the first time i'd ever heard it (they were giving away passes to "singles"...), the song "call the doctor." i bought the record and loved it even more than the first. it sounds much much better, and the songs are more impressive all around. still, no one i ever knew could be forced to admit to even half-liking him, and so i became a fierce proponent of his genius. then he put out a couple of not-so-great records and became (along with his wife aimee mann) one of those unbearable musicians who does nothing but write and talk about the music business in interviews and on albums. still, i had this lingering admiration, and whenever his name came up, i would do my little bit to champion him. like, he was in boogie nights, and i hated that film, but i would give it props for having michael penn in it. big deal, i know. i interviewed him for the stranger a few years back and found him to be one of those interviewees who insists on having nothing to say about himself or his work. i'd only seen him one other time, at the showbox, on the tour he did with aimee mann and david cross, where david cross did all the between song banter (a nice conceit, but ultimately frustrating; are these songwriters, who get all kinds of love for their lyrical cleverness, really too fucking delicate to say "thanks, this next one's about fire..."?). he was good, but obviously overshadowed by his tourmates, and didn't do much. then, saturday, he had to play early, since the tractor was double booked for an alejandro escovedo show that night. accompanied by his own acoustic guitar and a long-haired piano player, he played some excellent new and old songs (including "bunker hill," my very favorite), and made constant reference to how much he hated talking between songs, while talking, incessantly, between songs, about how dumb the president is (zzz), record labels (zzz), and los angeles in 1947 (kind of interesting, actually). he also had a book, by jon davidson, from which he read tips about stagecraft. funny, but snide, like many angeleno musicians of his extraction. again, i say, if you don't want to talk, you don't have to. but if you must, don't fucking make such an agony out of it. the worst moment came when he was trying to explain why his new record had been so oft-delayed (it's coming out on spin art, which he acted like was some nothing label no one had heard of; i resented that on behalf of the label home to clem snide, apples in stereo, the dears, and other fine artists), he told the story of the swap meet painting he'd gotten the album title from, and how it was a long hard road to find the artist, and when they finally tracked him down, they discovered he had died a week before. penn then recounted how inconvenient the artist's death had made it for him to use the work as an album cover, failing to note (or even notice, I think) that this guy had died and maybe the family that was getting in the way had, i don't know, a few other things on their mind? whatever. he closed with "no myth," which he introduced by way of a long, condescending speech about how no one seemed to really get what the song was really about, and how romeo and juliet had nothing to do with love; despite the crowd going wild for the one song they all absolutely knew, the subtext was clear: how dare you admire my work, world? and on the last chorus, he changed "maybe she's just looking for someone to dance with" to "someone to fuck with." buzzkillasaurus, man. a vivid lesson was being broadcast to me, and i won't soon forget it.
deep breath...
ANYWAY, i hooked up with RH and we took a taxi downtown, where he went to his hotel and i browsed in stores until it was time to go to the two bells for one of his infamous hootenannies.
(to be continued)
posted by Sean Nelson at 1:38 PM
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