Great Moments Move Through You

This was the text message I sent my wife and few other folks yesterday at about 12:13. I’m still sort of accepting the fact that this happened at all.

But first, the night before: Costello played an outstanding show at the Ryman. I dare to say you won’t find a more vital artist of his age than Costello — he still performs with more drive and focus than I see in some folks half his age. The setlist was ballsy and fantastic: EVERY SONG from his new (very urgent, very immediate) album Momofuku, plus a smattering of gems from the back catalog. The highlights:

• new tune “Flutter and Wow”, which could very well be among his finest songs ever
• a jaw-dropping solo rendition of “Alison”
• a very solid and fluid four-piece take on the slick production of “Everyday I Write the Book”
• truly amazing vocal performance on “Either Side of the Same Town” from The Delivery Man
• “Man Out of Time”
• “Beyond Belief,” “Accidents Will Happen,” and “The Impostor”
• A totally breakneck-paced version of “Radio, Radio”

My gripe: the crowd. Here’s this amazing, energetic set delivered by an absolute master who’s charming and talkative and generous enough to deliver 4 stellar encores, and the jaded mostly middle-age Nashville audience just sits there like they’re waiting for a Hot Pocket to come out of the microwave. I really hate when the Ryman audience sits through a rock show (you just can’t feel it the same way sitting down), but c’mon Alice — the least you can do is bob your head from time to time. I saw numerous people refuse to stand during the ovations, and about an eighth of the balcony left immediately before or after the first set. There was even a mad dash for the door after the first chorus of the closing rendition of “Peace, Love, and Understanding.” Look, I know you’re going to have to wait 5 more minutes to get your Yukon out of the parking lot if you leave with everybody else when the final note has been played, but what’s five minutes in exchange for showing an artist a little respect. I saw the same thing at R.E.M. three years ago, and even at the Tom Waits show a few years back. Bottom line: most of the time, I think Nashville doesn’t even deserve the moniker of “Music City”, because some of the quote-unquote music-lovers in this town are jaded idiots.

But put that aside. Elvis came to Grimey’s on Thursday.

Honestly, I felt like a 10 year old girl. I was completely nervous in the hours before his arrival, all sweaty and listless, kind of wandering the store aimlessly. When he arrived, we were ushered quickly to the side for group photos (sadly, no solo pic of Elvis and I in a bromancely embrace). During all of this, Elvis was looking around the store, making comments about the inventory. He made a great (and reverential) Prince joke, although I can’t remember what it was about. I felt like he was sort of shopping the whole time he was there, just looking around, connecting all this vast musical knowledge in his head.

We pretty quickly opened the door to let people in, so I stepped aside and helped keep the line in order. I stood about 12 feet or so away from Elvis while he talked to folks, and he was really charming, very witty, and very friendly to everyone. He told Grimey’s regular (and supreme vinyl collector) Joe Crook that he liked his Son House t-shirt, and I thought Joe’s head was going to explode. While there was a little lull in the line, Larry and I jumped over and introduced ourselves, shook his hand, and thanked him for being there, and it was pretry surreal and a little hazy, even in the moment it was happening.

When the line evaporated we closed the doors so Elvis could shop, and he spent a good 30 minutes going through the store, asking for recommendations from Doyle, and making requests. There were a few straggler customers still around, and he made some recommendations to them in passing, which was pretty much the coolest thing ever. He bought a box worth of stuff, said goodbye, and then took off in his bus.

So yeah, yesterday was one of the coolest and most surreal days ever.

Sidenote: if you haven’t heard Momofuku yet, go hear it. It benefits from a very immediate, almost tossed off vibe. Great songs played almost effortlessly from a very friendly genius with a nice hat.

Soul crushing news In regards to this evening’s New Pornographers/Okkervil River show:

Hello friends,

We have some very unfortunate news to report. Neko had a really bad fall in Washington DC, which resulted in a fractured ankle, and will be leaving our tour today. She was really trying to be a trooper and stayed on as long as was possible through Richmond and Athens, but it has gotten to the point where she must return home and have her ankle taken care of and to recuperate.  She’s very upset about having to leave, it’s been super fun having her on stage and around the bus.

We hope that you understand Nashville, St. Louis, Chicago, Madison, and Cleveland. The rest of us will just have to play that much harder to put on the best show possible.

Aside from Neko’s fall, this has been a SUPER great tour for us, and thank you thank you thank you for everyone who has come out so far and bought tickets for the remaining shows.

best,
TNP

April 2008 still rules, alhtough ever-so slightly less.

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

                      - “The Wasteland”
                           T.S. Eliot

First off, big ups to my boy T.S. Eliot.

So, yeah, it’s been kind of stale here on the blog for a few days. Life trumps blogging, and life has been a little, well, larger than life the past few weeks.

First off, April started off with some serious shit.  Two weeks ago, after 5 solid days of rain, ye olde Briggs family home basement flooded for the first time in a few years. It’s a helpless feeling to walk into your house and find half of your carpet soaked with mud water, seeping up through a crack that conveniently runs through the middle of your foundation.  While we took the step to proactively put indoor/outdoor carpet in the basement a few years ago, we had yet to test it’s effectiveness, so we spent essentially an entire weekend second guessing ourselves and deconstructing the sub-level of our house, spreading baking soda, renting a carpet cleaner, rolling wet carpet back, buying mops, and later buying stiff brushes and getting on our hands and knees to scrape up the aforementioned (now-crusted) baking soda.  Honestly, the weekend was a bit spirit beaking — we found ourselves in a swampy house, more ready than ever to move, but still unsure of my career situation. And I ended the weekend angrier than ever about the 18 months I’ve seemingly wasted with an employer I have no interest in working for.

Things changed, though. If I were to make a top ten list, April 2008 is probably the second best month of my life–putting it just behind September 2006, and just ahead of June 1999 (wich is incidentally also the last time I vomited).

I must have banked some serious karma, because the week of my birthday was a complete 180 from the weeks before. On Monday, I was contacted for an interview.  On Tuesday at 3:30, I want to that interview. And at 4:45, I walked out of that interview with a job offer.  I checked on my other options, and on Wednesday I accepted, Thursday I turned in my notice, and Friday I left work at 2:30 to go drink copious amounts of Woodchuck and eat a weekend’s worth of junk food in celebration of my birthday.

My new job is almost exactly what I was hoping to find, and I can’t wait to start.  First day is a week from Monday.

But that’s not the only reason that April 2008 is keeping it real.

1. On Thursday of last week, after turning in my notice and putting our basement back together I get an e-mail that alerts me to the fact that ELVIS COSTELLO WILL BE AT GRIMEY’S ON APRIL 24 TO SIGN RECORDS.  Which means that in a week from today, I’ll meet one of my favorite artists of all time.  I was speechless for 10 minutes after learning this fact, which was followed by a few minutes of only cursing.
2. Grimey’s Record Store Day celebration is this Saturday, which I’ve been looking forward to for quite some time.  (Come buy records from us!)
3. The aforementioned new R.E.M. album, which, after living with it for a few weeks, I can say with confidence is at least 90.9% good, and more like 45.4% great / 45.5% good.
4. Going to see the New Pornographers and Okkervil River tomorrow, which means that I’ll be seeing Okkervil for the first time, and (hopefully) having the opportunity to lust over my Indie Rock Girlfriend once again.
5. New Elvis record and the Elvis show next week.
6. An end of month backpacking trip.
7. Preparation for the big Left Coast Vacation next month, which I can’t wait for.

So yeah, full respect to the genius of T.S. Eliot, but the first line of “The Wasteland” definitely does not apply to me right now. Life is good. Great moments moving through me, and I’m taking hold of some of them.

Nothing says “adventure” like the name Allan Quartermain.

I love these knock off films — this is the same company that brought you Snakes on a Train and Transmorphers. I’d really love to do a study of the types of people who go to the local video store and pick these gems out from everything else.

“Hey, kids. I Am Legend is all checked out, but they’ve got 5 copies of I Am Omega starring one Mark Dacascos.”

And finally, am I the only one who seriously thought for a minute that the star of Allen Quartermain and the Temple of Skulls was Survivorman? Uncanny resemblances all around.

Recently saw this done on another blog, thought it’d be interesting to do myself…

Total Length
» 13,727 songs, 37.4 days, 49.78 GB

First and Last Songs (by title)
» “A-Punk” - Vampire Weekend
» “3000 Flowers” - Destroyer

Shortest and Longest Songs
» “Untitled” - Grizzly Bear - 4 seconds (from the Friend EP.  Upon listening, this is just 4 seconds of pleasant silence.)
» “Funky Skunk” - DJ Shadow - 1:06:19 (Funky Skunk is one album-long mix of mostly funk cuts from Shadow. I honestly can’t say if I’ve ever actually heard all of it at once.)

First and Last Albums (by title)
» A.M. - Wilco
» 1999 - Prince

First and Last Artist (by name)
» A.C. Newman
» !!!

Top Five Most Played Songs
(Unfortunately, this is skewed since we recently moved our files from the PC to the Mac, and I couldn’t figure out how to move my 4 years of play data with it. Really, only four or five months of data is showing here, and the wife and I have obviously been wearing the newest Okkervil River album out).

» “Our Life is Not A Movie Or Maybe” - Okkervil River - The Stage Names (22)
» “A Girl in Port” - Okkervil River - The Stage Names (15)
» “You Can’t Hold the Hand of a Rock and Roll Man” - Okkervil River - The Stage Names (15)
» “Unless It’s Kicks” - Okkervil River - The Stage Names (14)
» “A Hold to Take Hold of the Scene” - Okkervil River - The Stage Names (12)

Search for the following words. How many songs show up?
» Sex: 72
» Death: 85
» Love: 716
» You: 1553
» Home: 115
» Boy: 209
» Girl: 195

First five songs that come up on Party Shuffle
» “Greatdayindamorning’/Booty” - D’Angelo - Voodoo 
» “I Know You Tried” - Luna - Bewitched
» “Two States (live)” - Pavement - Slanted and Enchanted (reissue)
» “K Hole” - Silver Jews - Tanglewood Numbers
» “Let There Be Light” - Justice - Cross

Going back through some old work today for a point of reference on some new writing I’m doing. I’m stumbling across things I have little to no recollection of writing.

In late 2003, Avenues were working on what would eventually become our EP, These Years Come To Rest. I had a very vivid idea of what I wanted our next recorded work to be about, and this came from a very real and personal place, but I struggled more than I would have liked in the actual writing of that concept. I’ve got pages upon pages of freewriting– hours spent blankly scrawling whatever came to mind. Looking back today, I’m surprised to see how effective this practice was — even writing “nonsense” with no self-editing, in retrospect, was laying all the concepts out on the table. I had more than enough material here to seam together a complete narrative.

The piece below is the most surprising to me — it’s almost structured enough that I’d consider it a finished work, and a pretty succinct summary of exactly what was going on in my head in those days immediately after graduating college. It’s a bit stream of consciousness (typically not my thing), but I guess that’s kind of the point here.

*******

November Eighteenth Two Thousand Three. A Crisis of Beliefs.

I looked back. everything was close to me. interstate lines and hotel rooms. a morning met too soon. I set things down, couldn’t keep them in. a flood that sweeps from within. There’s light in a window miles away. you are there, I think. shifting light without me. I knew the first day. things would end this way. salt and sea. we’d drift apart. I believed. the bus stop. your last request. words secular and sweet seeping from my breath. my fingers trace. every word refers to you.

this might have been what I wanted. a hundred nights. a river wide. a parting scene. parked cars and gasoline. I waited for something to come, something to stalk up from behind and take me. something to mean. anything to believe. something that gives. a silent ending to relive. a year to regret.

I looked back. I didn’t breathe. you still hold a part of me. you still hold a part of me. you still hold a part of me. a hotel room, a night or two. eleven hundred days full of you.

The Sitening Blog just tipped me off to the fact that Street View in Google Maps now includes Nashville. I’m sitting here staring at a picture of my house made by GOOG. It even looks like I was home at the time.

Luckily it seems the grass was recently cut when the Google Cam drove by, so the old place is looking pretty good. I even checked out Grimeys, and business is looking good.

Know our address? Take a look.

Props to Nashville locals (and nice dudes) Hotpipes for just releasing another great record, Future Bolt – that’s two outstanding albums in two years, with each being a significant step forward from their previous work. This time around, they continue to do “bombast” better than most anybody, and they apply that sound to the sharpest set of songs they’ve written yet.  This one’s in heavy rotation right now.

Hear samples at  http://www.myspace.com/hotpipes 

Told you there’d be more zombie posts.

So tonight is going to eat my brains — I’m going with my wife and friend “Evelyn” to see the midnight sneak preview of Diary of the Dead at the Belcourt Theatre, which is (if you’re not geeky enough to already know) the newest zombie opus from George Romero, the Eddie Van Halen of of zombie horror.  And to make this event even more telling of how lame I am, Romero himself — Zombie Chief of Staff — will be at the showing to introduce the film, examine Nashville folks, and probably think of new ways to make social commentary out of gratuitous violence and dead folks with voracious appetites.

The wife and I watched Night of the Living Dead last night in the spirit of getting ready for such a marquee event.  It’s been a while — I had kind of forgotten how strange the movie is, with almost absolutely no violence in the beginning, and then suddenly — bam! — zombie buffet after the truck blows up due to some REALLY poor gas pump usage. ( I mean, seriously, why hold a torch so close to a gas pump?  I know you’re scared, but how do you forget the basic concept of fire + fuel = zombie barbecure?)

I’d also forgotten how non-threatening the zombies seem at first — they’re just kind of chilling outside in the yard, like the folks you usually see standing outside an Olive Garden with the coaster pager, waiting 45 minutes for mediocre ravioli, not looking particularly excited about the meal they’re about to have, just knowing that they can have as much salad and as many breadsticks as they want.  Except the breadsticks are appendages, and the salad…. well, there’s no salad in this analogy.

Stereogum.com just reported that Elvis Costello’s new record — awesomely titled Momofuko — is coming out April 22nd. And get this: it’s not even going to be available on CD, but rather as vinyl-only with a free digital download.

This puts gas in my go-cart for three reasons:

1. I admittedly have a man-crush on Elvis Costello. Seriously, it’s a completely hetero-obsession with his amazing body of work, his unique and surprisingly versatile voice, his genius songwriting, and his penchant for big glasses and looking totally cool while holding a guitar. His last record, The Delivery Man, is one of the most solid albums I’m aware of from an artist in his fourth decade of output, so I can’t wait to hear this followup.
2. As a vinyl collector, this move is almost like EC writing me a letter and telling me how cool I am. Vinyl has become my format of choice, especially now that most labels are making free downloads available with vinyl purchases. It’s the best of both worlds — I get the warm, analog sound and the killer physical artifact, and a hassle-free digital version for flexible listening.
3. This now means that April, the month of my birth, contains three of my most majorly anticipated releases: the new Elvis Costello, the new R.E.M., and the long-awaited (as in ten years) third record from Portishead.

EC is playing the Ryman on April 23. We have great seats, thanks to my wife — one of the best birthday presents ever. It will be my first time to see EC live with a band. (We saw him last year with the Nashville Symphony. Amazing, but I’m looking forward to seeing EC hold a guitar like a badass and hopefully play “Hope You’re Happy Now” or “Man Out of Time” or “Welcome to the Working Week”.)