Do you hear me, people? Baseball season has started, and this is glorious. Baseball is good, baseball is old-timey, baseball is the only sport where the defense has control of the ball.
I'm in Los Angeles at the moment, and had a grand old time at Dodger Stadium, where it was Dahdgahs vs. the Giants, and my long beloved SF team did not disappoint their long tradition of disappointing me. My East coast team, The Mets, fared much better though, so I'm not crying myself to sleep tonight.
One thing though: I really do prefer the old-timey baseball uniform of the shorter trousers worn with stirrups. This new fad of wearing one's uniform trousers of full-length, and baggy is really too much.
It looks like all the players should have "Juicy" across their ass, rather than their name across their shoulders.
I know it's a little, or perhaps a lot, ridiculous to talk about feeling old at 25, verging on 26, but I hope you'll bear with me.
According to my best estimates, about six months ago, a switch was flipped. This switch flipage has had the following outcomes:
1.) My back will not allow me to sleep on someones floor without feeling it the next day. It's not debilitating, but I feel a little achy. Couches are now necessary when crashing at friend's house whereas I used to be able to sleep on the floor, behind a fridge, upside down and in -15 degrees, comfortably.
2.) While the places where I'm able to sleep have now been apparently been restricted, that does not mean that my ability to nap has been so touched. On the contrary, I could wake up at 9:30 AM and be ready to take a nap by 11:45 AM, just on a bed or soft couch (made of chintz?). Also, I'll be ready to fall asleep by midnight, whereas I used to only be ready for sleep around 2:30 AM. Depression? Narcolepsy? Who knowz!?
3.) I own a pair of clogs.
4.) I used to have skin that was, for lack of a better word, elastic. By that I mean that I could have an atrocious cherry-red sunburn, and I would wake up the next morning as freakishly pale as I usually am (which is pretty freakishly pale). Now, if something happens to my skin, it stays that way. If I pick at a blemish -- tada! It scars! If I see what happens when I add SCOTCH (+) HIGH HEELS (+) SNOW (+) THE CORNER CURB OF WEST FOURTH STREET, I get: KELOID SCAR ON MY KNUCKLE. QED: This sucks ass.
5.) Large crowds of teenagers make me feel cranky, and I want to tell the boys to pull up their pants and the girls to shut the fuck up.
6.) I own a pair of clogs.
Has anyone else noticed this? When did your older person switch get flipped? Is there something in particular that makes you feel old?
I mean, if being older means I get to be as smart and hilarious as Doris Lessing and as hot as Helen Mirren, then fuck -- bring it on.
My friend Anika argues that we're the sort of women who are hotter at 32 than 22. I think that's true. Then again, I also thought it was true that Donnie Wahlburg of the New Kids On The Block was framed for setting fire to his hotel room, so what do I know.
Am returned from weekend trip to Boston with Goody Warren to visit Gentleman Dave, which was an all around success. Well, sort of. See, I was supposed to see The Mountain Goats. Dave had invited me about three weeks ago, and because I'm me, and because I have shit for brains, I fucked up the dates. First, I naturally assumed that because I was in Boston last week, the show must have been that weekend. It wasn't. Then I assumed that the show was this Saturday. Ah, but no. It was Friday. Early Friday. So when the Gentleman called early Friday to see when I was getting in... Yeah.
Anyway, Erica and I got in Saturday afternoon and all was lovely -- including the reunion of the World Famous TA25 with our former housemate and current Scholar, one Mr. Deschere.
Two Things:
1.)Raspberry Beer is really superb and makes me feel decadent.
2.) Cambridge always looks like fun whenever I visit. There's a fabulous bookstore there, The Harvard Book Store -- I didn't buy anything, but I added to my extensive tote bag collection. We did go to a great little comic shop, The Million Year Picnic where I picked up "other works" by two of my favorites, Craig Thompson and Bryan Lee O'Malley -- Carnet De Voyage and Lost At Sea.
I'm increasingly intrigued by comics and graphic novels. They can handle the unbelievably personal stories (I'm thinking of Blankets, but there are more) which I think might suffer under scrutiny in another medium -- maybe there's a balance between the medium and the meat of the story. I struggle a lot with bringing the personal into writing -- humiliating blog posts about being rebuffed by bartenders who spend their tips at Hot Topic notwithstanding. There's of course the concern for privacy (uh...yeah...the blog, I know. "My hypocrisy knows now bounds.") but there's also the constant nagging of the Voice. The Voice.
The Voice is something I've picked up reading too many snarky blogs and working at one. It undercuts anything that pops into your head, makes you doubt any trace of... well, anything. Some really smart humor comes out of that voice, and it can cut through many layers of bullshit but I don't want to write in that voice all of the time. Anyway, because I'm trying to kick the habit, and in honor of long conversations with stogies and scotch on frigid Boston porches, and also because of a St. Patrick's Days several years ago, here's a very small piece of something I've been working on for a very long time. It's sort of like the stone that I keep pushing up the mountain -- you know how it is.
---
The sound of me shaving my legs, sitting on the steps of our camper in the dry Dodge City afternoon.
We took highway 10 through the southern states. They were lazy and over-ripe with summer. You couldn't see straight it was so hot, the lines of heat above the asphalt made everything blurry. My mother and I met different sorts of heat. First it was the dry and thin heat of Barstow. The hotness was quiet there. Albuquerque's heat still weighed you down at night, when the empty skies were teal and clear. In Louisiana the heat was thick and heavy. You had to swim through it and it swallowed the sound so everything was muted. But really, I remember Texas heat.
The whole trip must have taken the better part of a week, but Texas alone seemed to span months. That's the thing about the 10; it just goes on and on, but especially in Texas. The heat in Texas came with smoke, curls and wafts. In Texas, even the empty highway sweats. That was when it happened. It's like she caught a cold. Cells, multiplying lawlessly, spread deep in her lungs like algae growing on top of a swamp...
Sitting at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, I noticed that every time someone made a joke about the flailing music industry, the entire ballroom paused to take a swig from their drinks. The gut reaction of music lovers has been to blame the collapse of music industry on corporate greed: the inflation of prices on goods that are cheap to produce, while artists gain minimal profit. The sudden introduction of free online file sharing and downloading pulled the carpet out from beneath Big Business' feet, leaving record companies scrambling. Traditional album sales have fallen 40% since 2000, and they only continue to decline. Well, not so much decline as plummet. No one really knows how to make money off music any more... but that doesn't mean that the music itself has suffered. On the contrary, mix tape culture is still going strong and bands all over are still invested in creating, inventing and playing for audiences rabid for something new. And that's what matters. Case in point: my favorite local New York City band, La Strada.
Anyone who loves music knows the joy of discovering a new band. Someone mentions them to you in passing, maybe you catch their name on a flyer, and before you know it, you're hauling yourself across the city on a freezing cold night to pay too much for a bad beer, hoping that this band is worth loosing two toes to Old Man Winter.
Wandering into Sound Fix on just such a night, the first thing I noticed about this band I'd heard about was the accordion. It wasn't really what I was expecting. Same with the cello -- really, the entire string section. Lord save me from these "lots of instruments" bands! You know what I mean: there's a bevy of quirky instruments like a hurdygurdy or a harmonium, and everyone switches around playing them. Without a strong drummer leading the way, these bands fall apart like flan in a cupboard.
About half way into their first song, I realized... Not only does this band have it together, they've got something to say, and they're... good. Named after the film, La Strada combines gypsy influences with what sounds French drinking songs. They make you want to swing red wine bottles around, pretend to speak French, and make out with someone. Which, if I’m being honest, I always want to do, so really, it was love at first sight.
The band came together like most people hook up in New York: Craigslist. Parisian-born lyricist James Craft posted an ad looking for people to make "music with fire," "It said 'accordion, driving rhythms, gypsy inspired, lots of vocal harmonies.' People had to be able to play, they also had to be able to sing." Devon Press, the man behind the melody, responded and brought along guitarist and long-time friend Ted Lattis. Classically trainer viola player Corrina Albright, was drawn by the promise of something new and challenging, "In the conservatory, I was always more drawn to what the jazz people were doing--- improvising. It's not that I don't love classical music -- I do -- it's just that I'm never satisfied." Cello player Maria Jeffers was solicited on the subway by Craft: "I was on the train in midtown and saw someone with a cello on their back, and I'm like "Do you play cello?" and asked her if she's like to play with a band."
When I asked about all the instruments, Lattis replied, "We can do everything we want to do, any fantasy of sound, we're not hindered by the very classic rhythm section set up with a frontman. We're all constantly trying to expand our repertoire - especially Devon. His apartment looks like the back room of a Sam Ash." As long as their "fantasy of sound" keeps people singing along like they're at a soccer match, I'm all for it.
With bands like the Decemberists, Beirut, Gogol Bordello and others, popular rock music has evolved past the standard set up of guitars, bass, possibly a little piano thrown in for kicks. Says Baer, who also comes from a classical background, "It seems like people are really hungry for stuff that sounds different these days. I started playing in bands in San Francisco ten years ago, and I was always in bands that had a similarly eclectic and unusual instrumentation. But at that time, it was an uphill battle to be playing in a band that wasn't a standard rock band. I don't feel like that's true at all anymore."
Over all the band has seven members: Craft on the accordion and lead vocals, Lattis and Press trading up lead, rhythm and bass guitar, Daniel Baer on violin, Corrina Albright on viola, and Maria Jeffers on cello (she also occasionally plays with Sufjan Stevens). I would tell them that if this whole music thing doesn't pan out, they have enough people for a great intramural dodgeball team, but seeing La Strada live, it's obvious music is what gets their blood pumping. The cacophony and crescendo of "Starling," (the band's favorite number at the moment) makes your heart pump and your throat ache to join in -- even if you can't harmonize for shit.
Drawing on archetypes, folk tales and Franco-Baltic harmonies, La Strada offers up the best of the New York indie scene: interesting music made by talented people who have a point of view and a love for what they do. With a new drummer in Brady Miller, and plans for recording an EP, La Strada exudes the optimism and joy that all young bands need to keep slogging. Craft gushes, "It's transcending the folk influences, it's getting bigger. And that's exciting." Indeed.
If CD's aren't selling like they used to, let's focus on this: if the music is good and exciting, people will always buy it. Businesses have to learn to evolve like the rest of us, and if more publishing and recording power stays in the hands of bands, whether they're recording their first EP in Brooklyn, or if they're Radiohead, who recorded and released their most recent record, In Rainbows, without a record company. As Tom Yorke said, "I like the people at our record company, but the time is at hand when you have to ask why anyone needs one. And, yes, it probably would give us some perverse pleasure to say 'Fuck you' to this decaying business model."
If you'd like to check out La Strada and live in the New York area, come on out to Brooklyn and catch them April 5 at the Luna Lounge or you can see them April 25 at Union Hall, both fabulous venues. See you there!
After dinner last night with friend Erica, we made our way to a Union Square bar where, I'm not proud to say, we had one too many drinks. Not slobbery, you know, but maybe a little more cheeky than I am on any given, sober day. So I thought I would take a stab at leaving my number on a napkin for the cute bartender -- even though he sort of looked like he shopped at Hot Topic. I mean, it took me two napkins to get my own number right, but I thought was I very slick. I mean, what the hell? Why not? I'm a grown woman, time to act like one, shit!
En route back to the train, my phone rang with a number I didn't recognize. Gasp! Did my newfound skillz already pay off?!? I should try this "bold" thing more often!!!
"Uh, hey. It's the bartender. You didn't leave the receipt. How much did you tip me?"
It looks like all the players should have "Juicy" across their ass, rather than their name across their shoulders. 
