The Big Green House

Thank You, Friends

The death of Alex Chilton has left me feeling absolutely sucker-punched.

If there is one thing I have learned over the years, it's that if you live long enough, your culture heroes will start dying off. Even with that knowledge, it still (usually) comes as a shock. Some you can see coming - once June Carter passed, you knew it wasn't going to be too long before Johnny Cash went as well - and some just sorta blindside you (Joe Strummer being the biggest example - up until now).

Big Star got me through some of the roughest times in my life, specifically via repeated listenings to #1 Record and Radio City. I had them both on a 90 minute cassette, with a couple of Nick Drake tunes stuck on the end of each side. I still have it, somewhere. I think it’s still playable, but only just. Not so much due to age, although that would have to be factored in, but the sheer number of times I’ve played it over the years, rewinding to repeat certain songs over and over. The tape has got to be pretty thin and brittle by this point.

I know it’s not a very fashionable position to have these days, but I still firmly believe in the redemptive potential of rock & roll. It’s a lot cooler to be all post-modern and detached and whatnot, but fuck that. I’m well past the age where being cool is even an option, much less something to be concerned about. Was my life saved by rock & roll? I suppose you could say that, although it would be more accurate (and a lot less melodramatic) to say that my life was made more bearable by it. As Pete Townshend once said, rock won't solve your problems but it will let you dance all over them. Which, given all the options, is good enough.

I'm not really in any position to write up a proper appreciation of Alex Chilton, to tell you why you should listen to him. I don't really have the aesthetic distance to pull it off at the moment. I guess I just wanted to say thanks for the dance.

It's all too much

Sorry for the radio silence.

My grandmother died on the 31st. Not that it was any sort of surprise - she was 94 and had been in decline for a year or so - but she had a series of falls right before my birthday and, well, her body just sorta gave out. I saw her in the nursing home she was released to after her stay in the hospital. Her body was there, physically, but she herself was halfway out the door, if you follow me. She recognized me briefly, I'm pretty sure.

Anyway, it's taking me a little longer to process her passing than I originally thought it would. Add on several metric tons of work stress (oy, don't get me started on that) and all the other horrible things happening daily... I'm not really ready to get back in the saddle again just yet.

Nietzsche was a pussy

Ya gotta love academia. Who else would over-think black metal to this extent? If you’re too lazy to read the article, here’s the money quote:

“The black metal event is a confession without need of absolution, without need of redemption,” (Niall Scott of the University of Central Lancashire) said. It is, he added, “a cleaning up of the mess of others.” He invoked the old English tradition of sin eating by means of burial cakes, in which a loaf of bread was put on a funeral bier or a corpse, and a paid member of the community would eat the bread, representing sin, to absolve and comfort the deceased.

“Black metal has become the sin eater,” he intoned. “It is engaged in transgressive behavior to be rid of it.”

As a former adolescent boy, I’d like to point out to Mr. Scott that, while there may be some for whom his theory holds correct, for many the appeal of transgression is… (wait for it)… transgression itself. “I’m not supposed to do X? Watch me!” It’s all about pissing off the squares.

As an adult who still enjoys metal (in a completely unironic way, at that), I can understand the urge to dress it up in something a little more, uh, mature. In poking around the web in search of new tunes, I’ve come across some otherwise really intelligent, critically-minded writers who can’t seem to find a better put-down for someone who disagrees with them than “faggot”.

It’s depressing, really, but it seems to come with the territory. It stems from the same “rock & roll = rebellion” thing as the over-the-top “Satanic” thing. I suspect that most of the time they’re both just blatantly anti-PC middle fingers being raised by people who don’t feel like they have much control over a large portion of their lives, rather than something meant in earnest. Which is not to say that there aren’t truly homophobic devil-worshippers in the metal world, of course; I just think that most of that sort of thing is knee-jerk reaction rather than any sort of philosophical statement.

Phoenix-like, I rise: crispy and covered in ashes

Uh, hi.

It’s been awhile, hasn’t it? Almost exactly a year, I see. Well, it goes like that sometimes.

I have the funny idea (peculiar, not ha-ha) that I should start writing here again. I’m not sure why; reading back over some of the stuff I’ve put up here in the past was an exercise in wincing, to say the very least. I’ve found that I absolutely can’t stand the voice I tend to use, to the point of wanting to punch that guy in the head, repeatedly.

On the other hand, it would probably be good to shake off some of the mental dust. Brain gets sloppy if you don’t use it, or so I’ve read. I don’t know how often I’ll have the time to do so, but I may as well take it out of the barn and ride it around a bit.

Look for some redecorating/redesign soon, and possibly even some content. In the meantime, please enjoy some Red Fang.

Snowpocalypse Now

As you may have heard, we’ve had a bit of weather lately. I loves me some snow, but this is just silly. We got about six or seven inches last Thursday, another seven (give or take) on Saturday, and maybe four on Sunday. It’s all light and fluffy powder. (Well, except for that bit of freezing rain we got Saturday night – that just made a thin crust of ice over what we’d already gotten. It was kinda like when you get one of those soft-serve ice cream cones that gets dipped in the crunchy chocolate coating, but with more dirt and dog pee.)

How’s traffic, you ask? Well, in a word, I’d have to say that it’s fucked. The roads are sheets of compressed snow with various layers of ice on top. Getting around by car is difficult, at best. Going by foot is easier, yet still treacherous. I know this for a fact, since the ice weasels got me while crossing an intersection yesterday. I slipped, fell, and spent the majority of my 48th birthday in the ER of the UW Medical Center. Not because I’m severely injured or anything, I hasten to add; it’s just a fairly mild sprain which I’m compressing and elevating even as we speak. (I’m getting the hang of the crutches, but they are not my friends.)

No, my extended stay was due to two things: the hospital was short-staffed, and there was no ground transportation to be had – no cabs, no busses that went anywhere near home. We were able to call a neighbor who was brave/foolhardy enough to fire up his Forester and come pick us up. If Science Girl didn’t work in another wing of the hospital, I might very well have been stranded there, since she’s the one who can remember phone numbers.

Anyway, yeah. Not really what I’d had in mind for birthday fun. And now I’m trapped here in the house, held prisoner by a sea of ice and slush. Whoo. On the other hand, it's kinda pretty outside. See my pre-carnage pictures here, if you're so inclined.

Pipe Wrench Fight!

It's hard enough being born in the first place: who would want to be born again?

Oh hi! Remember when I said I wasn’t gonna have a lot of screwing-around-online-time when I switched to day shift? Turns out I was mostly right.

Even a blind pig finds an acorn every now and again. (Although apparently there’s a little extra difficulty with that this year.)

So. Wutcha been up to?

Me? Not much. We went down to Portland last week for Science Girl’s birthday and spent way too much time & money at Powell’s. That was fun.

While we were there, I read (and was utterly charmed by) this little article. Man, I wish we’d had a club like that back in the day. Although we did have our own confused little music posse, having access to better equipment would have been nice. I want to buy one of their t-shirts so I can support their club, but it seems that you need to be on the myspace to do so and, well, I have enough trouble keeping this thing going.

Also, while we were down in Stumptown, I picked up a copy of the new Fucked Up CD. Holy cow, is it good! Although I keep seeing references to their being “hardcore”, which just leaves me scratching my head. Maybe it’s just due to the utter degradation of the term “punk rock”, but I’ve certainly heard my fill of hardcore in this life (and then some), and this ain’t anything like the strictly defined musical straitjacket that is/was hardcore. Or maybe things have just changed, I dunno, I’m older than dirt now & they say that the memory is the first thing to go…which, y’know, is probably a good thing. If I had to put a label on the Fucked Up sound (and I don’t but people seem to like that sort of thing, so…), I’d probably go with something stupid like “progcore”, but really it’s just glorious noise of the rockin’ sort that we so love here at TBGH. You should check it out.

Choose or lose

Eat the rich

The Rainier Valley Food Bank ran out of canned goods recently. When we heard about it, we went out to Costco, got some stuff, and made a small donation – not because we’re super-groovy people (although there is that to consider), but because it needed to be done. A small drop in a very big ocean, to be sure. Then again: from each, according to his abilities; to each (hopefully), according to his needs. Or something like that.

There was an interesting piece by Michael Pollan in the New York Times magazine this weekend, regarding some of the food-related issues the next president should address. Oddly enough, I’ve recently been thinking about some of this stuff myself. While I don't know that I'm onboard with everything Pollan asks for (the barcode idea seems especially dippy, for example), on the whole I think he's on target.

The idea of intentionally making food more expensive is going to be a tough sell, given the way things are going at the moment. (And may well continue going, as far as I can tell. Given all the expert economist bullshit we’ve been fed all our lives about the market being self-regulating, I don’t think anybody really knows where the economy is headed at the moment.) While I agree that the prices are being artificially propped up, seeing the food bank running out of good this early in “The Crisis” makes me wonder how those props can be removed without creating more economic stress for folks who aren't really getting by as is. Also, it's going to be a task to convince a generation (or two) raised on McDonald's that that good whole food is just as tasty as the processed stuff.

On the other hand, it is really exciting to think that we are on the brink of having an administration in power that won't necessarily dismiss this sort of thing out of hand. I can’t imagine a Bush government addressing… well, anything Pollan mentions, really, and I have no reason to believe that a McCain White House would be any different on that score. On the other hand, I could totally see Barack Obama pushing the idea of, say, Victory Gardens.

One of the things about last week’s presidential debate was when Obama mentioned wanting to deal with the search for alternative energy sources as we did the race to the moon. If he could tie some of Pollan's ideas into that, I'd be pretty damn happy.

Further Adventures in Sound

Here’s another perspective on that Nick Cave show.

You’ll note that the reviewer didn’t mention the sound problem. I talked to Science Girl about it this morning; she said that she’d noticed it a little, but not enough to have it dampen her enjoyment of the show.

This leaves me sounding like a bitter old crank. That’s not an inaccurate assessment at all, but what I would point out is that I’m not a bitter old audiophile crank. I don’t really mind crappy sound, as long as I can hear what’s going on. At this particular show, I couldn’t.

Might this be due to the earplugs? It might well be. There was no corresponding problem during Earth’s set, though (which was a lot less loud than I was expecting). Also, as I noted in my review, Mr. Cave did not seem at all pleased by what he was hearing from his monitor. Something wasn’t right, and I’m guessing that it was exacerbated by my earplugs.

Frankly, I hate the damned things. I know that I’m missing part of any show I go to now. On the other hand, going to shows was actually becoming painful, so it’s not entirely a bad trade-off.