Little Debbie, Little Debbie...I'm a comin' on home...

I sat at an ancient wooden school desk, lacquer brown and dirty, stale, names scratched into the surface, "Jake loves Raychael", "Keri and John", crosses and faces and blue block letters. The stripes and deep dark plaids etched into the surface of the smooth rectangle beneath my arm. I was leaning on my elbow over Andy's shoulder. As we waited for the next Scholar Bowl match to begin, he flipped through the pages of my CD binder, smiling, excited, pointing at the bands he liked. I looked down at my extended foot, hovering above the ground, faux Doc Martens and shredded stockings. So what if they were taupe and not fishnet. I was stuck in the middle of the Midwest, in a small town with a "Heart of Gold", 5 miles out from Interstate 70, 70 miles from the closest city, no MTV, a fuzzy signal from the closest alternative radio station. Spin Magazine and Seventeen where all I had to drive my style. Floral skirt and combat boots, long blonde hair, slight makeup, quiet eyes. I walked the halls day after day, bored and drowning, confused and wanting so much more than this life. I stared out the window of the Study Hall Room as Andy pulled a Prayer Chain album out with a questioning expression.

"Underground Christian Alternative band. My friend Rich made me a tape of them at church camp one Christmas."

"You went to church camp over Christmas?"

My mind suddenly flipped to Richard Gary and walking through the dark night at Covenant College, winter of 1994. "What are you majoring in?" He had asked. He had mistaken me for a counselor, and I let him believe it. I had come on the trip with a youth group from Birmingham, Alabama, a youth group with whom I'd had little association or could really even relate to, me with my wide legged pants and NIN t-shirt, my vintage suit vest and plaid flannel converse.

I dragged my feet in the gravel on the parking lot. "Psychology?"

It seems so funny now that I lied at a church camp, that I spent the whole trip like some bad eighties teen movie ruse, trying to make myself out to be older and cooler. I guess at that age we all want to be something we're not or at least something more. I came from Brownstown, where I was pretty much the only one like me. I hungered for music. I longed to see art, movies, culture, anything but those asphalt roads and endless plains, anything but the closed minds and pointing fingers I'd come to know so well.

Richard finally figured me out, I think. We remained pen pals for a while and he sent me the best packages. I grew to love the music he loved, Starflyer 59, the Prayer Chain. He gave me the jump start into the christian indie that would eventually lead me to Greenville. Funny how paths are changed because of such small things like a mix tape and a late night conversation.

I came back to the moment, Andy was laughing and gesturing at a couple of compilations I forgot I had owned. Andy was a treasure. I was a senior in High School. He was in 8th grade, had traveled over with the Beecher City scholar bowl team to help them out. We talked of music alot that day and exchanged addresses. We'd go on writing each other until the summer came when I'd be free to drive the back roads to Beecher and we'd sit for hours in his basement bedroom, listening to music and creating things. That summer we made a heart shaped box and covered it with articles of bands we liked, pictures, lyrics. We filled it with mix tapes and books, an ugly hat, some drawings, every moment that we could possibly place into that box... He was an unusual boy. He painted 7 foot tall Grateful Dead bears cartwheeling around the wall of his room. He made me listen to Southern Culture on the Skids. I can still see his slight form in the tall white room, arms turned and jumping back and forth, dancing to the music. God, he made me laugh

"Yo ye Pharaohs, let us walk
Through this barren desert, in search of truth
And some pointy boots, and maybe a few snack crackers....."

When I moved back from college and started working for Disk Jockey Records, we spent almost every night sitting in a booth in the Effingham Denny's, drinking coffee and whiling the hours away deep in conversation. I would write, compiling my book of bad poetry, he would draw. We would take day trips to St. Louis, get coffee at the Grind, pillage Vintage Vinyl, run through Forest Park, go to shows. Over the next three years, I watched him grow up, fall in love, and we grew apart. Right before I moved away he came to me with a paper bag. It contained the contents of our heart shaped box. I took it without question and stored it in my own little box of memories.

Vomit Lasers Family Band

The Black Lips/ Dark Meat/ Fatal Flying Guillotines
February 22, 2007 @ the Bottletree











"I feel as if I were being vomited inside an amplifier inside of a volcano"
- Jacob Tubbs

The first band, Fatal Flying Guillotines, were so extremely loud that we had to text message each other to converse about how loud they were. Greg, the bartender happily handed us two sets of earplugs and Jacob flashed his T-shirt that was under his sweater, which featured a Spinal Tap Amplifier dial that went to 11.

For some reason I thought that there were only two bands playing. As we heard instruments murmuring behind the movie screen on the stage, we got up from our table and moved toward the front, ready to see the infamous Black Lips. But when Merrillee rolled the screen up, Jacob and I both were a little overwhelmed to discover, this was not the Black Lips, this was THE LARGEST BAND EVER, Dark Meat, a music collective from Athens. There were almost 20 people on that little stage, guitarist, two drummers, bassist, 3 girl singers, a horn section (which featured an unamused fife player), a girl with a pair of marracas, and a guy with drum sticks and other gadgets who beat on pretty much everything. Oh, an did I mention that they had an EXTRA saxophone player?

It was the loudest, craziest thing I'd heard in a long long while, the totally packed stage was positively writhing with activity, people in costumes, dancing, jumping, whirling. I looked over at Jacob and he still had Chachi on his finger while he bobbed back and forth, the people all around us were dancing too, hands in the air. One guy in front of us, a long haired metal dude, knelt down to the stage as if he was at the invitation at a baptist church, probably praying to the gods of distortion.

As I looked at everyone on stage, I realized that two of the girl singers were Page and Claire Campbell, the sisters from one of my FAVORITE bands/collectives/whatever Hope For Agoldensummer. I cannot tell you what a joy I've always found watching them sing and play. I've booked them at the Moonlight. Absolutely incredible. Now, to watch them wail over a bursting madness of instruments...it was a bit euphoric.

After the set, I realized how late it was, and like Cinderella ran out the
door, down the steps and into my awaiting coach. I hated to miss the Black Lips, but sometimes I feel the need to do this really lame thing called "Sleeping" before I work a full day at the Emergency Room.

I got a little bit of sleep. I dreamt of Jacob dancing in front of the
stage, in front of the Black Lips, Beer in one hand, Chachi on the other, arms in the air. He was sort of riverdancing, and in his Freddie Mercury Halloween Costume. But that's cool.

singing me to sleep

I have 13 minutes to write. 13 minutes until I yawn and stretch my toes and fold myself into a great pair of quilts my great grandmother stitched together to keep her family warm. They do keep me warm. Warm and safe. I will soon drift away on a sea of sleep and the sound of Claire Campbell's hollow, soft alto singing me a secret:

Do you laugh,
Do you cry in your secret room?
Do your wings make a sound?
Do your feet touch the ground?
I love like a sailor.
I dance like a princess.
Tomorrow I will stand in the middle of the road.
Until I get run down.
Until the sun sinks beneath the ground.
I sing like a werewolf.
I shoot like an outlaw.
I love like a sailor.

--Love Like a Sailor

words adapted from a poem by Ben Roth
performed beautifully by
Hope For Agoldensummer
on the album
I bought a heart made of art in the deep deep south

http://www.hopeforagoldensummer.com

not a problem

It's super okay, rolling over the days like this. The distortion from the Black Lips kills what quiet thoughts I had left. My head wags back and forth and as the pressure runs from side to side and settles in the back of my skull, I start to remember. I run to their car, jump inside, the tail lights bobbing as we pull away from the curb. We turn onto College Ave, up the street and on into the night.

On nights like this we'd drive through the country side, the flat dark backroads beyond St. Elmo, into the oil fields and pastures and woodlands. Shawn and Josh and little tiny me, laughing stifled teary laughs in the wind that flew through the broken sun roof of the El Dorado. The curves of the night, the gravel and broken pavement, the fresh green field-filled air, the genius of teenage invention. We spent the hours on the edge, the only edge I knew, this dangerous quick turn, my hands extended out the window, my eyes closed taking in every jolt, every rev-v-v-v of the tired engine, the night air whipping the long locks of my hair into my eyes and face. Shawn, from the passenger seat, nodded his head in time, his curly hair just hitting the shoulders of his flannel shirt. He turned up the stereo and Josh peered back at me in the rearview mirror and smiled. I sat in the middle of the back seat, hands steadying as we took another turn. I stared back at him through one eye and then the other, turning my head slightly with each small look. I leaned forward between the front seats, elbows pushing against the sides, my head resting on Josh's right shoulder. Shawn pulled a paper bag from beneath the seat, motioned for me to sit back, pulled out his lighter and lit a bottle rocket, flinging it out of the sun roof and into space, a POP resounding in the dark distance behind us. Josh leaned forward, the drumming hum of the car, the crushing sound of rock'n'roll through broken speakers pulling us out into the night and on into the future.

black print on a white t-shirt

I start up the car in the dark of the night, pulling out from the curb and into the thin vehicle-lined road. The street lights seem dim on this cold night. I fumble with the front hem of my velvet coat, buttoning 25 buttons as I turn onto University. I'm no warmer. I feel the small of my back press into the car seat as I turn onto the interstate. Lucinda Williams tells me something. Her wavering voice tells me that it's true. And I believe her.

John Ciba has a simple way of telling me his thoughts, the simplest way for a girl like me, who dreams in measures and spinning harmonies. His mix cds are the pure gold, the most precious of my collection and tonight I will share one with you from 2002.

Lucinda Williams - Something About What Happens When We Talk
Jean Plum - Look at the Boy
Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham - I'm Your Puppet
Venice Shoreline Chris - Rocksteady
Louis Armstrong and Oscar Peterson - Let's Fall in Love
The Specials - You're Wondering Now
Flying Burrito Bros. - Cody
Magic Sam - All I Need
Reigning Soung - You're Not as Pretty
The Band & The Staple Singers - The Weight
Dusty Springfield - Willie & Laura Mae Jones
Mike Ireland & Holler - I'd Like Too
Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks - Sweetheart
Marion Williams - He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother
Nina Simone - Want a Little Sugar in my Bowl
Style Council - You're the Best Thing
Big Star - September Gurls
Beulah - Lay Low for the Letdown
My Bloody Valentine - Drive it all Over Me
Uncle Tupelo - Wait Up
The Wailing Wailers - Mellow Mood
Nikki Giovanni - Butterfly
Vera Hall - The Wild Ox Moan

The track listing is ironed on to two white cotton t-shirts, each song with it's own commentary or story of why John loves it or just what he was thinking or how it pertained to our lives at the time. It was one of the most honest and beautiful things ever given to me and is a testament to the true and thoughtful nature of one of the best friends I've ever had.

One of my favorite notations by Mister John Ciba:

"The Band and the Staple Singers. The Weight.

From the Last Waltz documentary, the Staples team up with the Band to create a version superior to either of their own seperately. They never actually made it to the concert but this was recorded afterwards and added to the documentary. I went and saw this a few months ago at the theater. After this performance, all thirty people stood and gave a round of applause for the next few minutes. It was one of the most beautiful things. I was so moved I went and bought the box set at Tower after the movie."

Revelation Big Sur

"and through the rhythm of the timeless season...."
-Mark Kozelek

My favorite flower is in bloom, the daffodil. Their yellow heads are leaning over the monkeygrass in my front lawn, a tired but bright morning greeting as I head out to my car.

When I was a child, my father would take me to a place, just outside Bluff City, called Sonneman's Cabin. It was a getaway for an attorney from my father's practice, two generations before his time. In my tiny blond head, it was like a dream. The two room structure was set in a field of green and yellow, daffodils as far as the eye could see. I would run off into the woods and come back, small fragile arms overflowing with butter colored blossoms and bluebells. We drove back there every year, to take pictures, just to catch a glimpse of this lovely vision of spring.

When I was old enough to drive, through high school, college, and ever after, I would find myself traveling the winding back road to the cabin, after school, on the weekends, late at night. The clear moonlit sky would cast an eerie glow on those golden heads, wavering in the night air. I'd sit in my car and listen to Mark Kozelek, America, Glen Phillips, weaving together ghost stories through each turn of the guitar, brought from the dark corners of the barn across the way, midnight tales of love and death and eternal longing. I never asked my father of Sonneman. I never was told a truth about this small place. I was afraid of it, that my father's plain sense would knock my sensibilities off of the face of the landscape. "He just had a green thumb," would be his answer. And all of those stories I had written, all of those songs in my head of devoted tribute to a lost love and glorifying the paths that she once walked would wither into such a short sentence.

It's been five years since last I drove down that road. 500 miles away, I can still see it, clear and quiet. Maybe I'll ask a friend from home to search it out, as soon as the Midwest winter thaws. Darren, I know how you love driving those back roads. Are you up for the task?

It's a rainy day here in Birmingham. A dark day. The cars are flying by on the overpass by my window, their headlights a waterfall of light.

Mister Murray Lightburn: I still don't love you. I gave you another chance on the drive in to work this morning. My heart never turned your direction. It stayed curving through traffic, from lane to lane, and then on into the morning.

Maybe someday.

Friday - yadirF

It's Friday night. I could be out, celebrating the fact that I've finished the week. I could be sitting in joyful banter at the end of a bar. Instead this evening, I sat wrapped in quilt at the cusp of the fireplace, my father sitting back in his chair across the room, our eyes staid on the screen of the tv. Kermit and Miss Piggy walked down the aisle, singing to each other. The colors of Jim Henson's creations lept from the screen. I turned to my father and smiled. In the darkness of the living room, I saw his glowing grin, his laughter that rolled through his entire torso. Our eyes met and we looked to the other chair. My mother turned, afghan spread across her lap, hand to chin, sleep drowning out every bit of jumping Muppet exclamation to be heard.

We watched the Illusionist. I found myself moving closer to the television as the story progressed, until I ended up sitting directly in front of it. I didn't catch the smell of cookies in the air, nor did I notice at all when my father placed a bowl of chocolate chip cookies and ice cream in my hand. I ate it, completely entranced, and in a moment, I looked down at my bowl. Magically, it was gone.

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

"You didn't like the last album, so you're going to just write them off entirely?"
Travis held up the latest Dears album, eyebrow cocked. I could feel my face screwing up into the expression I give my mother when we're out shopping and she holds up a shirt.
I nodded to the affirmative. He sighed. We were standing across the cd rack from one another at Schoolkids last Saturday afternoon, each with an armful of cds.

The Dears? I couldn't help it. I was let down. Stratis, Kristin the Canadian's best friend, had played them for me almost two years before, a few of their previous albums...I found that the tracks were dripping with warm tones and catchy beats and I was hooked. So on a trip soon after to the House of Karls in Nashville, I flung aside my usual affliction of Buyers Amnesia (which I have said before, even though I complain about it, I totally enjoy) as I entered Grimey's Music, and laid down pretty much the last of my trip cash for No Cities Left. When I pulled out onto I-65 to make the journey home, I threw in the CD and after a few tracks, began to slowly die inside.

I did enjoy one track, which I included on my 2005 Life Soundtrack CD, but only because I enjoyed singing harmonies on the song. Maybe my expectations were too high.* Maybe I have terrible taste in music. Maybe I have incredible hearing loss. * Maybe I have lost all sense of reason.

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

The Dexateens Show
Hardwire Healing CD Release
The 40 Watt, Athens, Georgia

Holy Hell. The Rock and Roll.









Check out Nathan's pics from the show

SaraLeah-co + Car Wreck = Wendy Whiplash

I heart Miami Vice Wednesdays

6:30am:
On the drive to work this morning, I'm sitting at a stoplight, getting ready to turn onto I-65, listening to Yo La Tengo (can't stop listening to the goodness of YLT). In one flash of a moment, my whole vehicle is lurching forward, cds flying across the passenger seat and to the floor. This can't be happening.

7:30am: I pull onto the interstate. My dad has just jumped the battery to my car, which died while sitting with the radio and lights and heat on in the cold. The lady who hit me is sitting in her daughter's car. Her vehicle is being lifted onto a tow. Green puddles of coolant and plastic parts are scattered across the pavement.

8am: I walk into work and check myself in as a patient. I feel very silly.

11:30am: 20,000 xrays and about 3 and a half hours (of ridicule by my co-workers) later I head home with a neck foamy thing (which I suppose is to keep my pretty head attached) and some painkillers.

Noon: I deposit myself on the couch.

Sometime later: What is this show? I've not watched television in so long. I'm not sure what I'm seeing...dear god...how did this end up on the lifetime channel?

Sometime after that: Where's the ice cream? I've got legs.

Top Chef: (a bit of lucidity in the madness of culinary rivalry) No Foam!

Rebec-co: Stops by after a trip to visit family in Alabaster. We form a band.

The Vicodins



Wendy Whiplash



Catatonic Candi

I'll be on the couch all day tomorrow. Awesome.
Send me a line.

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.