Take a break.

ALL DISTORTION, ALL THE TIME
by Derrick Brown

Someone plug my lungs back into the guitar amps!
I want to live on
All distortion, all the time.

Aren’t you sick of being appraised as just wholesale?
Aren’t you sick of sailing on listing ships?
Aren’t you weary from playing cellos with ex-lover’s bones?

I want the butterfly brigade to grant me a year with no stomach drama.
I want a piano that will not warp outdoors
when the rain demands slow dancing.

I want to skew the difference between Tai Chi and Chai tea,
and end up drinking a tall glass of your graceful force.
I want to lick my hands after I touch someone that has just become
razzle dazzled by tomorrows oncoming lightning.
I want birds to come close enough to hear them speak Aviation Spanish.

“Abierto! Abierto!”

I want your record collection in my throat,
and my thumb in the electric ass of the all night jukebox.

I want my shoulder blades mounted in the museum of the most fantastic knives.

I want church in a bar. I want to pass out and hear you say Amen.
I want a skeleton night light in the closet.
I want your wow in my now so we become NWOW.
I want the light in your attic to shine down to where the sidewalk ends.
I want free shit to not cost anything. That’d be nice.
I want you to feel like a disco ball of fish hooks
so you can hang on my words and I can spin in your small miracles of light.

I want my kitchen to be a Brazilian dance floor
with a pot of your sweat in the oven
and a fridge stocked with booty lust.

I want your silver muscles cut into a quilt. Let me sleep under your strength.
I want more pony lamps. No reason.

I want to sing this feeling into all tail pipes
until I’m exhausted.

I want to smell everything.
I want to remember that the sky is so gorgeously large.
I feel stranded beneath it.

When I gasp beneath it,
I only want to gasp for more.

(Thanks to Meg Worden for the introduction.)

I am he as you are he as you are me

Don’t forget: you are not immune from groupthink.

Even when (especially when) you’ve succeeded in surrounding yourself with people who get you.

Examine what you’ve assumed to be truth. Measure it against your empirical knowledge.

Never stop thinking.

Languages I Do Not Speak

• Neil Young
• Colin Firth
• Reality television

Scenes from a benefit

(@sandrajapandra and I hit Los Feliz for Sending Love to Japan at Fresh Pressed.)

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

“…group activities were confusing for me as a little kid, because little kids are jerks. If I’m no longer confused by group activities it’s not because grown people are any better. Isn’t that what growing up is? Learning to ignore the hell that is other people?”

- Julie Lauren Vick

Gig Review: Grinderman at The Music Box (11.30.10)*

Of all the inane questions to ask Nick Cave, this one tops the list lately: “Is Grinderman a return to The Birthday Party?” Who could blame the man if it wears on him? (For the uninitiated, The Birthday Party predated the Bad Seeds as a vehicle for onstage and vinyl angst and mayhem, with Cave at the wheel.) Sure, Grinderman is a return to The Birthday Party, in the sense that today is a return to yesterday by virtue of being another day.

No, in other words. It’s not. Let’s move on, shall we?

Grinderman is a band of four growling (or at least mysteriously snarly-looking), grown-ass men whose musical chops are as strong as the trust they have for one another, creatively speaking, and at least as strong as their love of performance. November 30th found them at The Music Box in Hollywood, in a fittingly gritty part of town. The crowd, mostly aging post-punk hipsters, was subdued in that I-may-wet-my-pants-from-excitement way that a certain segment of music lovers employ. For once, it was faintly touching, rather than pretentious: the love and reverence for the main attraction was palpable.

After a ragingly irritating opening act, comprised of a very beautiful man who played theremin solos for the better part of an hour — hilarious for about thirty seconds; not so much once into the second stanza of Ave Maria and/or the theme from The Godfather – the lights went down and Grinderman took the stage. Kicking off with Mickey Mouse and the Goodbye Man, the poundingest, most visceral blues song ever to be played on electric guitars, they started the show cranked up to 11, and just never let up. Each man was utterly relentless. Martyn Casey, in his white suit, never appeared to move more than two feet in any direction, and certainly he didn’t appear to work up any kind of a sweat, but his bass kept going, going, going. That, and Jim Sclavunos’s pounding, masterful drumming (sometimes with maracas, rather than drumsticks) created the backbone for the Grinderman monster.

Warren Ellis, who amazes simply by not sounding anything at all like Charles Manson when he speaks, is one of the most talented and fascinating musicians around today. Playing heartbreaking violin pieces (and sticking the bow, broken strings a-flapping, into the back of his shirt for no particular reason), beating the living daylights out of a snare drum with a maraca, or doing modified sit-ups and shouting “EVIL!” into a very low microphone with each execution, his performances are equal parts whirling dervish, military drills, Salvador Dali and Iggy Pop.

Then, of course, there’s Nick Cave. One reviewer referred to his ability to make the tambourine seem like an extension of his virility — an apt observation. Cave was not born a golden-throated singer, but his charisma is nothing short of commanding, and his ability to manipulate a crowd is masterful, to say nothing of his absurdist sense of humor. One minute he crooned a love song written for his wife [Palaces of Montezuma]; the next, he bent down and went nose-to-nose with members of the audience to plead, “I’m just tryin’ to relax! I’M JUST TRYIN’ TO RELAX!” [Kitchenette]. In between songs, he addressed the audience in a very polite and courteous manner. With his gaunt frame, bobbed and thinning hair, and exquisitely tailored shirt open nearly to his navel, revealing a gold chain, nothing about Cave’s appearance, as my companion that night noted, should work. But it does.

The show closed with a slowly-building rendition of Grinderman, during which the band’s considerable talents were more obvious than ever. In a way I’ve yet to sort out, they began the song as four separate entities, none of them doing anything that seemed to sync directly with any of the others. But where there should have been a cacophony, there was instead a syncopation, an almost visual representation of each instrument, each individual. Gradually, the song grew recognizable as the instruments made their way onto the same path. And then Cave turned up the charm, turned up the command, turned up the performance. If the show began at 11, it closed at 25. Ad-libbing parts of the song, he sang, I wanna be your man/I wanna hold your hand in that way of his, evocative of a little-boy-lost-cum-Crawling Kingsnake.

Particularly in this age of bands made up of nothing more than a couple of schoolmates armed with an angsty diary, it’s a rare treat to see real musicians giving it their all, totally cognizant of the strange alchemy that music is, a blend of mathematics and magic. Grinderman have it all. And so they should. It’s good to know that there’s still something to be said for years of hard work and dedication.

*Previously published on Beardrock.co.uk. Also: that’s my own photo, dude. Please do not use without my written (emailed) permission. Thanks!