January Budget 2007

finger puppets: $11.82

Autumn Sweater

"What time do you want to meet up? 9pm? Does that sound okay?"
My head tilted left, holding the phone between my shoulder and ear, my hands busy cutting the corners of one more little bucketboy picture. "Mmmmhmmm, Trav, that sounds fine. I think I'm going to take a nap before the show." My stomach growled, I closed my phone and tried to get the tape sticking to my fingers off of one, then another, transfering the little spare pieces in a Charlie Chaplin type of innocent confusion. What? What? Eyes darting from one hand to the other. I WAS tired. I rubbed my palms together, gathered up my coat, turned off the light and collapsed on the couch.

"What are you doin'?" My feet stretched across the arm of the stale, paisley couch. I kept my head underneath the warmth of my deep wool coat, pressing my ear closer to my phone. Gorjus's voice drawing me from slumber with a yawn. "Sleepin'. What are you doin'?"

"Shouldn't you be getting ready for the show? It's almost 8'o'clock."

***********************************************************

Brooks and Rebec-co and I stood underneath the staircase to the left of the stage. Leaning up against the railing in the room full of so many surprisingly unfamiliar faces. Who were all of those people? Seriously? We'd become so used to the returning crowd at the Bottletree, the carousel of regular customers coming out to every show, we'd kind of decided that was it. It was a little jolting to be amongst this sea of strangers and it was also decidedly inspiring. They had come out for the show. Maybe they would come out for more.

I found myself completely taken in by Georgia's pale and quiet grimace of intent. I sketched her face again and again, trying to capture that perfect concentrated gaze as she set the pace through every song.

Halfway through the set, I walked down the steps to the floor and caught the eye of my friend Greg who was standing to the right of the stage. He motioned for me to come to him, and I turned and pushed and turned and slipped past the crowd to his side. I stood right under Ira's Compact Deluxe.

My eardrums were vibrating with fury. The boys next to me were wavering with every note that Ira played, the girls with their arms held tight to their chests. In my head I kept thinking that this moment was meant for something else, for someone else, not for me. It was too much, too much for me to hold. I was wrapped in the distortion, this mess of sound. I was taken to nights, roads, driving, in the dark, around Highland Avenue in the winter chill. I was turning up the road and up the stairs and into my old apartment, in the dark, in the aftermath of a storm. Jessica was there, candles and darkness, blankets and beer and hours of conversation.




When the song ended, I had to step back and look around. Travis had appeared at my side, smiling. The guy next to me was still dancing. The faces around us were fixed on Ira's crouching form. James approached the keys and with one quiet measure the journey began again.

By the Time It Gets Dark

One foot on the ground, one foot pushing upon the side of the bar, I sipped my redneck corona, and swiveled back and forth in the barstool. Merr sat at the end of the bar, pushing a pen across a blinding white page. Brock stood across from me, looking to the rather large movie screen that filled the south end of the room. Garbage Pail Kids were sitting in a semi-circle, moving gruesome heads from side to side, most probably discussing evil plans in the glowing light. Nicole pointed out their creepy muppetness. We all nodded and turned back to the screen, eyes bright. Midlake's "Roscoe" flowed over the speakers and I found myself singing harmonies, my lips pressed onto the cold metal tab of the beer can, a sigh of lime catching my inward breath.

"Thought we were devoid....
A change or two...
Around this place..."

I picked up my little leather bound notebook and began to scribble form after form, the back of stripey shirt guy, the squares upon the wall, Brock pushing the hair off of the tops of his glasses with inside of his arm, the awkward cut in the stacked cinnamon cake under a thick glass dome.

This was the end of my day, Sunday evening, the end of my weekend. Not at all what I had planned, but better than I could have hoped.




*Taylor Moore and Sunni*


Friday night was Taylor Moore's going away party at Cosmos. The great Book of John played a set as Taylor Moore wandered around the room, sitting at one table and then another.



*Bekah, Taylor Shaw, and Alex Mitchell (also featuring the floating head of Amber Quick on magic tambourine)*


It didn't seem real, that he was leaving us, this smiling, smirking creature. I think back to so many moments from this last year, this extraordinary year, how many moments did he take part in, how many songs had he sung, walking around Sunni's living room, sitting on the front drive, the back yard. How many quiet notes had he whispered from the stage in stooping, bouncing way and how many instances had I been completely enchanted. Here he stood, in front of the microphone as Taylor Shaw and Alex and Bekah took a break. His arm was up in the air waving several bound volumes of Hemingway. He reached into a coffee mug and pulled out a peice of paper "C-7". Door Prizes. I cheered every time. These random gifts, the last of his things packed in boxes at home, this was all that was left: a cassette of Christopher Lee reading Edgar Allan Poe, a half a pack of pez, some 3-d glasses, a glove from his sister (a large red one designed for use while helping with artificial insemination of cattle), a DVD set...um, borrowed from Amber (she won it back, of course).

Taylor Shaw started to sing some Jeff Buckley, his face so earnest, we smiled around my small table and sung along under our breath. Another round of drinks, a phone call from Gorjus, too many text massages to count. Rebec-co and I made our way outside, winding around conversations through the Pickwick walkway and down to the the Upsidedown Plaza.



*Sara Leah & Rebec-co in 3-D*


Saturday morning, 10:45 in the morning, I rolled over into the pillow beside me, covering my face as my cell phone rang, the piercing sound breaking through the tequila still in my head. Grasping the phone through the haze and pulling it to my ear, Amber asked about the plans for the day. Scottsboro? Unclaimed Baggage? Sleep a little while longer? Yes please. Covers up over my head, Grizzly Bear's Yellow House playing on my stereo, I drifted back to slumberland for another hour.

We piled into the car, one after the other, Pelham, then Highland Ave, then Roebuck. The French Kicks set the soundtrack for our trip into unfamiliar territory. Destination? Unclaimed Baggage, the fabled Solomon's Mine of Bargainness, a Treasureland of the lost and found. The drive up was beautiful, the curves of the Tennessee River, Clay Mountain, the hills sinking into the dreary January day in the distance.

Unclaimed Baggage (-)
Picked over and over priced. But I did find a very cool picture for my friend Merr:



Dinner at Rebecca's Cousin's restaurant The Docks (+++++)
The best broccoli I've ever had (gorjus said that I'm most probably the first person to ever say that phrase in the whole world. I disagree. I'm sure people have said it before, as broccoli can be very tasty).

*********************************************************

This morning I scraped the frost off of my windshield with the CD case for Yo La Tengo's Prisoners of Love. The muffled dreamy licks from "Did I Tell You" drifting up from clouded windows, I couldn't wait to get inside the toastiness of the car and be on my way.

Tomorrow, Yo La Tengo will be playing at Workplay.
Saturday, Jeff Tweedy will be at the Alabama.

It will be a Mike Moore sort of weekend. I'm so excited.

short sleeps and shallow hearts

On Tuesday afternoon, I fell asleep in my Medical Reimbursement seminar. Who wouldn't, right? It was only for a second (like six times). It was that crashing cymbal kind of falling asleep, where your brain sort of floats down into the floor until it makes contact and then you pop up and look around, your ears full of sound.

It's been quite a week. I finally finished Rob Sheffield's "Love is a Mix Tape" yesterday. My outfit this morning is beautiful nostalgic mess because of it. I dug to the back, the very-very back of my over-crowded closet and found my plaid flannel skirt from high school. You know the one, with the largest safety pin in all the world stuck in the side to keep it together? Yeah.

As a testament to the rock'n'roll, this actual safety pin was once worn on the jacket of Jonathan McKnight, an art rock angel whom I met on the steps of the St. Louis Art Museum during a class field trip in 1993. He had cut class at his magnet school to come and sketch passers-by and listen to his walkman. I stumbled in my doc martens off the bright yellow country school bus, long blonde hair flailing around my black and plaid attire. The boys in their ball caps and car-harts lined up in front of me, the girls in their tight levi's and big hair behind me. I stuck out like a sore thumb. Jonathan sat on the stone steps a little bewildered by the sight. He helped me gather myself and my black leather satchel, and my journals and pens which had fallen all over the sidewalk. I smiled a foolish smile. He returned it and nodded. I ran away.

I was supposed to stay with the group. These boys who would most likely rather be bow hunting than gazing at a Degas were sticking close together, a pack of little wolves with darting comments and biting glares at anyone who seemed to be enjoying themselves. The girls giggled and cackled and clucked, fists resting on hips, fingers pointed at anything they thought was weird or unusual. I think for once I was relieved to find that the things they were pointing at had nothing to do with me. We walked slowly through the galleries. I, with every turn, pulled further and further away from the group until I finally found myself all alone, staring straight into the swirling, spilling greens of a Van Gogh landscape.

"Hey."

My eyes flickered to the side and stayed, held by a pair of big, doe eyes and a quiet smirking smile.

"Hey." I looked down at his boots, worn and ragged, the frayed laces dragging on the floor. I looked to his hands, clutching a book, covered in stickers and dark drawn faces, overflowing with bits of paper. I looked to his face, relief filled my shoulders and chest. It was something about his face. I knew it or wanted to know it and knew it was okay. He was okay. We walked to the next room together, sat down on a bench. He asked me where I was from and handed me his notebook. I told him about the bus ride in, about my tiny town in the flat plains of Illinois, about listening through the static to bits and pieces, those precious moments I could get of morning show on the Point everyday as I got ready for school. "You're lucky," I breathed, flipping through page after page of beautiful forms and lonely faces, "to have a station like that. I have nothing in my town. No way to find out about new music." He laughed a little, "It's nothing. It's not that cool. I'll tell you about GOOD music. Can I write to you?" "Sure."

He did. Long letters full of confusion and lonelness. Drawings full of distorted faces and shallow hearts. That day that we met. He hadn't just cut class. He walked out of school. He walked out and intended never to go back. His favorite art professor had killed himself the day before. Jonathan's music was twisted and broken. And every other song he sent to me over the next year, from Pavement to the Smiths, Skinny Puppy, the Pixies, was a testament to some deep drawn emotion he was winding through during his days. He was working at an IHOP. Somehow, whether by his parents wish or my urging he returned to Art School.

I met Jonathan only one other time. Months later, I went shopping with my parents at a mall in St. Louis. I slipped away from them while we wandered through a department store to call him from a pay phone. He took the bus and met me in the food court. He had changed in those few months. His eyes, though still brilliant, were older, harder. He'd gotten several piercings, his eyebrow, lip, and nose. It didn't make him seem anymore edgy or frightening. It was like he was wearing that pain that he felt in his young, mangled heart, he was wearing it for everyone to see. But no one seemed to get it. I got it.

Before I left to find my parents he handed me this large metal safety pin. It was the length of my hand and heavy. He pulled it off of his leather jacket with a jagged smile. It was my token. He said that besides the letters, the drawings, it was something real, something i could hold and wear and know it was his, that he was alive, that I had known him. I hugged him and told him that I'd write and ran away.

A month later I got a frantic call from his mother. He had disappeared. He had taken some clothes with him, his sketch books, a little money, not much else. A few weeks after that she called to say they had found him, living on the streets in Indianapolis. He had been picked up by the police for vagrancy. His parents put him in the hospital. They said that he'd be okay. I never heard from him again.

"Quiet, quiet, you go away,
to short sleep and shallow hearts.
They do not hear you,
they'll never say,
that everything will be okay."
-SLM, 1993

dear sarah shu

-Hello you beautiful bloodshot eyes.
How are you doing today?
-I'm on my second diet coke and third cup of tea
and it's only 8am.

grrr....

While leaning up against the counter in Jay and Jaxxie's kitchen on Saturday night, I glanced up into the corner of the room and saw a framed poster for a benefit show. One name from the roster stood out to me and with a blazing piece of heartache in my hand (also called a buttershot), I couldn't get John Vanderslice's steady dream of a voice out of my head for the rest of the night.

John Vanderslice. His lyrics are beautiful cryptic little stories. Sometimes it feels to me that as he's singing, he's across the street from me, observing and thinking to himself, wishing, wanting, hoping that these thoughts could instantly travel through air and into my head. And here I recieve them. And love them. His latest album, Pixel Revolt (released on Barsuk in August of 2005), is filled with letters and conversations, observations of humanity and it's tendencies. His wit is playful and honest, yet full of imagination and sometimes sorrow. I love him best when he takes these everyday situations, such as changing jobs or losing a friend's pet, and turns them into a warning, an adventure, a well wish, a love song to something that does not exist:

dear sarah shu

dear sarah shu,
I leave for you
all I knew about this job
on microcassette for further review

what it meant to me
how you’ll make it dear, hopefully
it’s dangerous here
yes it’s dangerous here

peer round corners with dental mirrors,
heed the threats, taking cautionary measures,
in the end, it is love
you’ll have to learn to survive

dear sarah shu,
I leave for you
all I knew about this job
on palmcorder for future review

your office will flood every night,
it’s water, don’t try to fight it
suspend all your files using
my system of hanging wires

break apart what I connected
show what I only suggested
’cause in the end it was love
I had to learn to survive

picture me by the window sill
wrapped in copper wire, my autumn sleeves,
with torn up directives
spread round the floor like shoreham leaves

picture me locking office door, now
kneeling down on the floor,
screaming: “protection,
I can make it, I can make it!”

peer round corners with dental mirrors,
heed the threats, taking cautionary measures,
but in the end, it is love
you’ll have to learn to survive

so long, sarah shu,
farewell to you,
stay calm, stay sweet,
regards from the other side of the teeth

break apart what I connected
show what I only suggested
’cause in the end it was love
we had to learn to survive

The imagery is dramatic, yet there seems to be no seriousness to it at all. In contrast, another of my favorite songs on this album, dead slate pacific, is a despondent dream of a song, containing rivers of quiet and pain:

at my low point
I went to a professional
he asked me some questions
sent me to a doctor

there’s a moment there,
when you’re under a doctor’s care
when you’re safe and hopeful

punched in the code
ran up the stairwell
he asked more questions
gave me celexa

that’s when I really knew
the only thing standing between
me and that long rope over a carpenter’s beam
was you

I went off the pills
bought my ticket
I used to think
there was nothing between us
just 6,000 miles of
the dead, slate pacific

but on that united flight
in a white hot panic I
sank to the bottom of the sea

my countless horrible creatures
complicated undersea secrets
if I didn’t go diving there
with a spear gun, knife and flare
how would I ever make it through

that’s when I really knew
the only thing standing between
me and that long rope hung on a carpenter’s beam
was you

I've been following John Vanderslice since the late 90's...(it feels really weird to say that, as if it's so terribly long ago). MK Ultra opened for Sunny Day Real Estate on the SubPop How It Feels Tour (Mississippi Nights, St. Louis). That night, that show, changed the way I had thought about music up to that point. And it wasn't just that I finally GOT the dischord and timing and distortion of Enigk and CO and the slowing mapped out guitar work and sarcastic tones of John. It was the entire experience. I know I've written of it before. The strange mixture of the crowd, the droning wave of heads and hands as the first notes trickled through the speakers, the energy bouncing from soul to soul, the dark and brilliant charge of light through every phrase. I remember this. I remember how much it affected me and my twenty-year-old heart.

http://www.johnvanderslice.com
http://www.myspace.com/johnvanderslice
http://www.mkultra.com

The JV's diary from the Subpop tour:
http://www.mkultra.com/html/tour.html
I love the entry about St. Louis, February 25th.

NYE!

At some time in the midst of NYE! festivities and after about 25,000.82 knee-knock inspired Kir Royales, I got the notion in to my pretty hairsprayed head that if I looked up in pictures taken of me that I would look much more attractive.










You know how that happens. 250,682 PBRs (with Lime) into a night of pool and other quite general debauchery you find your sense of reason must have packed up and beat it for Bonita Beach, while you stood there balancing a completely borrowed cigarette on the side of your puckered lip as you sized up the next shot. Reason knows that leaning back on said table will cause nothing but ash and pain and spilt beer. You however, believe that you most probably look incredibly hot stretched to the side over the pool table. Hot and willing to take dangerous risks. In reality, what my friends and co-conspiritors observed was Sara Leah after I just spent a shot squirming on the table, then having fallen down but having also found my limey Pabst attached to the cup holder on the side of the Plaza's pool table (right where I left it...)with wails of the great unspeakble joy of discovery. Ahh, and that my friends love me just the same. Amazingly wonderful.


Check out the Bottletree Myspace for all of the incredible upcoming shows this spring. John Vanderslice - Midlake.... holy crapness.

off to bed.

All the day long

It doesn't have to be like this. I wait and wait and nothing comes to mind. Nothing but this ringing in my ears and the quiet hum of Adem on my car stereo. Driving in the dark, on a roaring, stale winter night in Birmingham, Alabama, I turn the volume up a bit and stare down at my dashboard and then out to the tail lights and head lights scattered across the horizon. My eyes are burning from hours staring at a glowing computer screen, first at the ER, then at Skybucket. My face is itching with the creeping tingling of exhaustion. I wait. And maybe that's the problem. The hours of rest ahead of me have been whittled away to almost nothing. And it's my own fault.

When I arrive home, I return to my computer, scrolling through pages and pages of words and ideas, listening to Eddie Hinton wail through pain and addiction, brave love and sad desire. His scratched and broken soul scream, I hear it in my sleep at times, driving in the day, staring out of the window at work. I hear the rolling composition of his songs, the power and brass of the horn section, the winding guitar with his signature tone, the years of his ragged working man's heart put into every single lick.

To meet someone who knows of him, I find myself grasping a brother or sister's hand, as if the memory of that primal note on Hard Luck Guy makes us family. But it is so rare, even in this town, to find and that is a shame.



The Legendary Dick Cooper's short bio on his friend Eddie Hinton

I've also posted "Hard Luck Guy" on the seldom updated Chachi Loves Vinyl Myspace


PS - It's ON! Soul Show next Satuday at the Bottletree featuring Roscoe Robinson and DJ John Ciba. More details soon. I promise.

Prediction

This morning I awoke with glitter on my pillow, my shoes covered in cheese, and my knees terribly sore from channeling David Bowie.

It's going to be a banner year.



(Picture courtesy of DC)

Christmas Cakewalk

I lean over the counter, in slight hand writing the word "Visitor" in the top left hand corner of sticker after sticker. In the right hand corner, I write the date "12/25/2006". It's Christmas Day. From my scribbling imagination forms an elf carrying a gift, giving the thumbs up. He's got curly hair and pointy ears and doesn't mind hanging out with me all day on this quiet, hollow holiday in the big drafty waiting room of the ER.

Today is the first day that I've noticed that my shiny new computer doesn't have a CD drive. I've spent the first hour of my morning very productively navigating the media player's online radio site for some good Big Band stations, preferably a Big Band Christmas station... still searching....in the meantime, on the jukebox in my head, The Ravens' "White Christmas" winds around and around as the rain outside falls down.

I think I may be going into a diabetic coma. The nurses keep coming up to my desk and force feeding me Christmas chocolate. Damn them and their chocolate mousse bonbons.

So, I want to share this with you. I've made a few copies of this out-of-print gem to give to friends this holiday season.

1. White Christmas - Ravens
2. Far Away Christmas Blues -Little Esther Phillips
3. Love For Christmas -Felix Gross
4. Trim Your Tree -Jimmy Butler
5. Wonderful Christmas Night -Dan Grisson
6. Rudoph The Rednose Reindeer -A.B. Green
7. Silent Night -Big Maybelle
8. White Christmas -Charlie Parker
9. Mr. Santa's Boogie -The Marshall Brothers
10. Christmas Blues -Gatemouth Moore
11. Christmas Blues -Washboard Pete
12. Frosty The Snowman -A.B. Green
13. I Want To Spend Christmas With Elvis -Debbie Dabney
14. Santa's Secret -Johnny Guarnieri

Released in 1994 on Savoy Jazz (...where bebop began and the artists still swing...), this little compilation is especially notable for the terribly addictive rendition of White Christmas by the Ravens, Jimmy Butler's gyrating Christmas Shag-a-thon "Trim Your Tree", Big Maybelle's beautifully soulful "Silent Night", and Johnny Guarnieri's hilarious side smile "Santa's Secret".



By the by, the Ralphie count this morning was very, very low. Surprising.

Last year it was so high that I warned all of my friends with small children to buy protective gear (i.e. - helmets, elbow pads, knee pads, full body armour) to avoid forevermore the peril of Christmas morning excitement/present-opening maiming/accidents.

Have a safe holiday, my friends, and take care.
I'll be at the Bottletree tonight for a little after-work/family dinner drink.
I'd love to see your lovely faces.

Terrificrap

He stood behind the microphone, gripping the back of the neck of a cornsilk cabbage patch kid, making her jump and lurch into the mic as if she were singing with him. She was, in fact...at least there was a vocal track corresponding to his crude puppeteering of one of my generation's childhood icons. He turned her face slightly towards his. My ears finally tuned in over the hum of the fan and the washing machine. My god, they were performing a duet about abstinence set to the tune of "Summer Nights" with rows of Barbies and Kens singing back up. Was this some sort of bizarre, cappucino ice cream induced dream? I rubbed my eyes in disbelief. Oh EWTN. Oh dear. What programming bliss.

At that moment, I was curled up with Emilybird in a large yellow and white quilt on the couch in the sunroom. I had fallen in and out of conciousness for the last few hours. Those moments awake, I spent flipping through the channels until I could find one with a decently boring narration that might induce me to fall asleep. (i.e. C-span press conference, Discovery Channel doc on The National Mint, anything starring Judith Light)

My lungs have been lined with Pink Panther insulation since last I posted. While the pinkness is super awesome, that pesky tendency to want to breathe is kind of getting on my nerves right now. Good lord, I take enough vitamins to keep my good friend Jaime Voss's extended family (she has like 123 first cousins) in ruddy good health. How did this happen to me? Um...yeah. I work in an emergency room. And lately we've had our lion's share of running, screaming, coughing, snotty-nosed kids. Hurrah. Three times today, I've caught a kid with his/her mouth attached to the cool granite countertop of my desk. Why? Is that really necessary? Is it really that tasty?

Last night, Aisha took some time while decorating the Nick for the annual Christmas Martini Party to tell me a few of her memories of Greg McReynolds. Back before the turn of the century (What?? It's true!), Aisha worked at the Music Hall. One day, soon after she first started, she was talking to Greg about the Ramones. He smiled and suggested that they go visit the Ramones on tour. She said that she laughed at the thought that that could actually happen. Not long after this conversation, Aisha found herself in her pajamas, hanging out with the Ramones, having a slumber party of sorts on tour. And this happened not just once, but twice. Greg was like this. He made little impossible dreams come true for so many of his friends.

Tonight is the memorial service for Greg. His sister and brother will be there. They've never really known their brother, although they lived less that twenty miles from his front door. Tonight, his blood relations will meet his family. Seems strange to say that. But for Greg, his friends were his family. In Aisha's words: Friends are the family that you choose for yourself.

Greg McReynolds

My fingers fumbled with the corners of the plastic radio station banner as I lifted it above my head to stretch it against the wall. In the darkness of the venue, I reached my right hand behind me, to pick up a pair of scissors I had left on the table. Instead of the plastic and metal I was expecting, I felt a warm hand grab mine and pull me with a giggle and a guffaw away from my post. I spun out into the room and found myself dancing in the arms of Greg McReynolds. Glen Phillips was on the stage before us, testing his microphone. He smiled and broke into a song. This is my best memory of Greg. This 6'4" bear of a man, twirling a tall twenty-one year old girl across the dirty floor of the music hall. The pure joy of that moment I could never, ever convey to you.

Greg and I met soon after I moved to Birmingham in January of 2000. I spent a great deal of time at the Five Points Music Hall, promoting and attending shows for the radio station. Greg was the first there to welcome me into the fold. Often as I would walk through the back door of the club, arms full of banners and supplies, I would find myself enveloped in his arms. His hug became the best part of my day.

As the years passed on, Greg continued to work with music. Between projects and tours, Greg would work the door at Zydeco or Workplay. Late night he could be found leaning against the bar at the Nick, telling stories, talking about his latest project, love interest, or adventure.

Greg always turned up in the most unlikely of places. It always seemed to be just when I needed one of his beautiful, fierce hugs and a word of encouragement.

On a particularly miserable day during my week long adventure with Shelly in L.A.(Spring 2001), I found myself escaping teary-eyed and heart-heavy out the back door of the Key Club and straight into Greg McReynold's open arms. I'd no idea that he was even in town. I felt this relief just seeing his smiling, dimpled face. He and Angie and Shelly and I sat later in the evening at the Rainbow Club, just down the street, conversing and laughing over drinks...it turned out to be one of the most enjoyable nights that I had on my entire trip. He was like that, putting people at ease, making them laugh. He had this warm light in his eyes that resonated from that huge loving heart of his. It was like a beacon. Bringing us all close and making us feel safe and loved.



(greg w/ mike courtesy of Mikey d)


Greg "Tiny" McReynolds passed away on Wednesday, December 13th.

Greggers, you will be missed, my lovely friend, so, so much.

XO
Sara Leah


********************************************



GREG EVENTS:

(message from Tom Bagby of Pacific Stereo)
We're dedicating our debut performance of The Electric Mountain to the memory of Greg. Tell everyone. Let's get shithoused in his honor.

December Nights

Erin, do you remember standing in that church basement on a Fall's eve, 9 years ago, watching Karin and Linford burn beauty with song. I remember a happy sun painting on the wall behind them. I remember candles on the merch table and a content drive home, full of plans of the following days adventure to Indiana. Still the best road trip of my life.

I'm listening to the Over the Rhine album "The Darkest Night of the Year" right now. A gorgeous collection of hollow holiday tunes...not hollow as in empty, but yes, strangely, to listen to this album, you might as well be sitting in a dark empty room, to the side of Linford at an upright grand with a candle here and there. Karin stands at Linford's elbow, arm rounding the top edge of the piano, chin up, voice beaming, eyes closed. On a cold northern night, lazy drifting snow slowly filling up the landscape, street lights beckoning to each other, "can you still see me?" "are you still there?" "Am I alone?" The glow of the warm voices and candlelight rests weary hearts. This is what I hear.



--- Original Post 12/10/2005
***************************************************************

My back to the heavy curtained door, I still felt the cold of winter stretch out it's icy fingers to carress my shoulders as people wandered in and out through the night. The dinner stretched on...through true delightful company and hesitant service. Bottle of wine. Salads. By the time the coffee and desserts came around, the suits, the small family with their over-dressed boy in secret battle-won sneakers and his Shirley Temple in hand, the couples spaced out along the wall, eating their dinner in small bites while clipped with uncomfortable first date conversation...they had all finally departed. We were left alone, with our laughter and stories, bright and beautiful faces... What a merry holiday.

***********************************************************************

This week:







be there.

Down Broadway, yeah Funky Broadway....

"Hipster Critic's Friend: Have you seen The Raconteurs live?

Indie Critic 1: No...they play at venues that seat more than 152.5 people. I saw The White Stripes in a loft in Brooklyn once. There were four people there. 3 of them had mustaches. The other one was dressed as a Kentucky Fried Chicken. (It may have been a protest)."

-- from Passion of the Weiss's latest article, "The Year in Review: The 7 Albums That Aren't Nearly As Bad As You've Heard"



*************************************************************************

I stared at my computer for a little while this afternoon, completely befuddled by the date. The 8th? What happened? How did I get it wrong when one of the things I do all day is write those magic numbers "12/08/2006" on the top right hand corner of medical consent forms. It's a mindless task, one that starts so early in the morning that by this afternoon, when I finally sat back and looked at it, it seemed like a foreign language, like a secret code, like a total disappointment.

The Ralph Jackson show in Chicago was tonight, the 8th, which is not tomorrow.



As I'm sitting at the ER desk because I'm working a double shift, because I love my bosses, and because by the time of my discovery this afternoon it was too late for me to leave from Birmingham...

Crap.

Good luck, my friends. I hope the Hideout was packed. I hope Bob Mehr danced. And Emily, I hope to god that you boogalooed your heart out.

Around and Around

In the midst of the 25,000 times that the power went out this evening in Pelham because of the terrible weather, I found myself dancing with Blake and Kristie in their living room on a dark, rather dead end street in Southside, Adam Sears and Daniel beautifully and lopsidedly wagging their head on the couch while watching Krull...

I thought to my little self, I love this moment (which I conveyed on a misfired text message) and I wish that David were here to enjoy this.

I drove home, listening to a mix of Red House Painters songs that another lovely friend named David had given me long ago. As I pulled out onto the Valleydale exit, a streak of lightning hit near the La Quinta Inn and I found myself in darkness and a heavy rainfall. Not a great combination. The road was dark and I kept seeing sparks fly from random business signs as the lights flickered on and off in the distance. I made it home and shall now go to bed,

Around and around
(John Denver)

Time as I've known it, it doesn't take much time to pass by me.
Minutes into days, turn into months, turn into years, they hurry by me.
Still I love to see the sun go down, and the world go around.

Dreams full of promises, hopes for the future, I've had many
Dreams I can't remember now, hopes that I've forgotten, faded memories.
Still I love to see the sun go down, and the world go around.

And I love to see the morning as it steals across the sky.
And I love to remember, and I love to wonder why.
And I hope that I'm around, so I can be there when I die, when I'm gone.

I hope that you will think of me in moments when you're happy, and you're smiling.
And that the thought will comfort you on cold and cloudy days, if you are crying.
And that you'll love to see the sun go down, and the world go around, and around and around.

-covered by Mark Kozelek, Rock'n'Roll Singer

Laying down the gun....

This morning as I mindlessly packed my little bag for work, I pulled the Hope For Agoldensummer album from the towering stack of cds sitting dangerously close to my bed and slipped it into the inside pocket. I had to bring it with me, because everytime I've taken a moment to daydream in these last two days, every minute wonderfully wasted, I hear "Laying Down the Gun" and it has been building and building and building into a frenzied triumphant chorus.

I see my friend Sunni just as she sat on her couch Saturday night, leaning back with Ralph's steel guitar, pushing her golden hair out of her eyes and picking out the all of the tiptoeing, intricate loveliness of every line as we sang the harmonies high and whispered:

"It turns out, instead of blood you've got love songs traveling through your veins. What I found were all the words you ever sang tapped into the bones of your rib cage...."

I think of the first time I saw it performed live, upstairs at the Moonlight, the tense and burning energy turning around the stage. Deb Davis and her xylo. Will Taylor wavering from side to side, cello churning. Claire's eyes are closed. She's sitting straight and tall, her face turned up into the light as she's crying out:

"Instead of stopping our hearts, we play music because we're rock stars.
We come together and we work and we fall apart...."

I listen to the song again and again and it burns brighter every time.

"I play music because I'm in love with silence and sound. Just like a machine I picked my pen...."

And all of the sudden, it stops.

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There is a cave up by Garden City that is rumored to have been used as speakeasy during Prohibition. The Welch* brothers told me about it today. They smiled at me, standing to either side of their elderly mother as she was signing her paperwork, and looked up into the flourescent light above my head and then at each other. Jeff* turned to his brother and then to me,"It's still intact. I think so...at least it was when I was younger. You'll have to use a rope to get down into some parts of the cave, but it's worth it....Banger Cave is the name." Interesting. Sounds like an awfully good adventure for the spring. If anyone possesses any additional info about the cave, please let me know. Joe* gave me some general directions.

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Pictures:
From Saturday night's Skybucket Workforce Extravaganza


Amber and George the Turtle. BFF.

(from a play-by-play sent to gorjus later that evening)

"...the deadly Connect Four match between George the Turtle and Michael Douglas the B.H. Action Squirrel. A few borrowed Busch Lights into the evening, Travis and I dueled (through our plastic animal counterparts) and sadly, I must say that Travis and Michael Douglas won. After realizing that he had the winning row, Travis promptly jumped to his feet, hoisting Michael Douglas with his wildly wobbling head into the air and raced out the front door and down the street, yelling "We WON! WE won! YAYYYY!!!" all the while."



I, in the mean time, collapsed into the floor, defeated and downtrodden.