Getting Back Into Getting Back Into Life

The Silver Jews have a new LP coming out in a few weeks and I am so excited my feet hurt. Drag City has a song from it up on their site and it is indeed great. Many people have heard it and are unable to tell me how good it is because they are still weeping and silent in the presence of the album's greatness.

When Matt and I were young, we had a band and used to play "New Orleans" (from Starlite Walker). I remember buying the cassette in Cut Corner in Lexington, Kentucky, and driving around Man O' War painfully early, the next morning (I had to take Johnathan to the airport) and listening to it for the first time. It was Fall, cold, grey, and I rolled down the windows after I dropped him off for a freeze out. I was perfect. (Not a typo.)

I bought American Water from Ear X-tacy in Louisville and listened to it on the front porch of our house on Hubbards Lane, alone, with a warm beer in the October air. Leaves stopped falling, clouds stopped dissipating and trains stopped leaving town (around this time there was a serial killer on the loose, following the train tracks up from Nashville and they went right by our house. I just knew he would kill me.)

Ryan sold me my copy of Bright Flight at CD Alley. "It's great," he told me. "I knew it would be." It didn't catch me right away, but in the last year I have grown enough to appreciate it. Some time if you don't like an album right away it isn't because the singer didn't do his job--it's because you aren't doing yours.

David Berman is not only my dad, but he keeps giving birth to me. Why?

I have nothing to add to the dialogue now going on with regard to the new album. Go to Dust Congress, Soi Disantra, or SJBB (if you like to curse) to engage. Me, I am just waiting.

Ladies love Language

" IN a village of La Mancha, the name of which I have no desire to call to mind, there lived not long since one of those gentlemen that keep a lance in the lance-rack, an old buckler, a lean hack, and a greyhound for coursing. An olla of rather more beef than mutton, a salad on most nights, scraps on Saturdays, lentils on Fridays, and a pigeon or so extra on Sundays, made away with three-quarters of his income. The rest of it went in a doublet of fine cloth and velvet breeches and shoes to match for holidays, while on week-days he made a brave figure in his best homespun. He had in his house a housekeeper past forty, a niece under twenty, and a lad for the field and market-place, who used to saddle the hack as well as handle the bill-hook. The age of this gentleman of ours was bordering on fifty; he was of a hardy habit, spare, gaunt-featured, a very early riser and a great sportsman. They will have it his surname was Quixada or Quesada (for here there is some difference of opinion among the authors who write on the subject), although from reasonable conjectures it seems plain that he was called Quexana. This, however, is of but little importance to our tale; it will be enough not to stray a hair's breadth from the truth in the telling of it."

Wusses!!!!

This Friday, September 23, Local 506 will host the Yep Roc Records Hurricane Katrina Benefit show with CHRIS STAMEY, CITIES, AMERICAN PRINCES and more (which includes at least one Yep Roc act whose name we can't announce.) Although not on Yep Roc (YET!), the night will be rounded out with THE WUSSES,

Ric and Biggs Workday Task

OUT.

OUT. was a great band from Louisville. Once, I saw them tear up the basement of a Baptist Church out somewhere off the Dixie Highway. There aren't many bands as good as this. And of course, they don't last long.

Here is a song of theirs. Highly recommended for PIPE fans.

Wetlandz: Saturday Y Wednesday

Saturday Night Lives: at Wetlands above Hell!

mowing lawns
cantwell gomez & jordan
d.c. nahm (comedy stylings?)

Wednesday Night Leaves: at Wetlands above Hell!

Maria Taylor
The Physics of Meaning
Erie Choir

KPII

from White Noise by Don DeLillo (1984):

"These things happen to poor people that live in exposed areas. Society is set up in such a way that it's the poor and the uneducated who suffer the main impact of natural and man-made disasters. People in low-lying areas get the floods, people in shanties get the hurricanes and tornados. I'm a college professor. Did you ever see a college professor rowing a boat down his own street in one of those TV floods? We live in a neat and pleasant town near a college with a quaint name."

Donation Links

Katrina Post

AP spent last week worried and upset. Our friend John Norris just moved to New Orleans a few weeks ago. I grew up with John and he is like a little brother to me. When the Nein played Baton Rouge, John let them stay with him. The first time John ever played a song live, Matt played guitar with him. John is a good friend of the band.

So, the storm hit, and I got worried. A few days went by and he wrote and said he was fine, and evacuated to Baton Rouge and is staying to volunteer.

Once I was able to stop worrying about John, I worried about everyone else. I can't say anything about this disaster, so I won't say anything. I have tried, but there is nothing that I can say.

Please, if you can donate time, money or supplies--do so. I don't have links for you, but they shouldn't be hard to find. Churches, schools, Word Nerdy--everyone has a way to help. Please do.

Thanks

Oh Piggy