notes from..the souther states stepping off the world tour
Monday, June 5, 2000
now i have a little more time at azalia'a friend kaiser's computer to ramble and try to recapture some of the flavor of this wek in l.a. the show in san diego was part of a monthly series based mainly around the trummerflora collective of musicians and writers down there. they have a web site if anyone is interested at www.trummerflora.com. the musicians put out records on some local
labels called accretions and irrevinvention music. some of the people performing that night included alan lechusza, nathan hubbard, hans fjellstad, all three in one ensemble. then there was another group which included tim o'keefe on marimba, michelle li on upright (i don't think i got her family name correct), perter segerstrom and brian crabtree on electronic processors, and greg schneiderman on horns. pork torta i remember jason the sound guy told me also use bubble machines and we heard them because he played their music at the end of the night. it reminded me of minutemen combined with some other heavier influence like the melvins. it was very entertaining just to listen to but when he described their live show i was pleased even more because i used to live in tucson and we drove through that town at night so i didn't get to see it and we were making tracks across the desert so we couldn't stop anyway but the memories came back and azalia and i punctuated our journey with a lot of stories from travels and friends and people who lived and died that we new and know and love and maybe don't love too always with some kind of geographical connection. in fact that's what she says she moved to l.a. for: the geography. and to tell the truth echo park and the silverlake area is actually very pleasant as long as you don't mind driving. i personally only want to drive for something very important and not for every simple thing that comes up during your day. it's hard enough keeping track of things without risking your neck every couple of hours because you want to visit your friend. as i noted in my last posting we played live on kxlu and had a really good time there and then did the holly matter gallery show that night. happily rat bastard from miami was in town and he played at the silverlake lounge where scott sterling runs a live music club called the fold on tuesday wednesday and thursday. on the weekends it's a gay bar. so we rush over to the silverlake lounge to catch rat since he wanted us to play with him in a laundryroo squelch but we arrived right when they left the stage. his line up this time was john playing bass with a drumstick and singing, rat played ato sax with a plastic transistor radio in it and rolled around the whole time, and then he had nandor who lives in los angeles just screaming and preaching and generally freaking out jumping and rolling ontop of everything. nandoor brok the mike but everyone loved them anyway according to the people i talked to. this was part of a one hour set in which ten bands played, ten noise bands. and it was totally packed. nandoor was smashed and made so many hilarious comments and off the wall jokes about indie rock stars we laughed a lot and then rat had to drive him home. we played there the following night to a full house and everything was great until it came to the evil money issue. i think road weariness and basic crankiness from being in cars and in other people's places for three weeks made me leave with a bad vibe but it all worked out well anyway. azalia and i both had some of our best performances and we met a lot of new people which is always gratifying. when total strangers who know nothing about you come up and say nice things and want to buy records i feel like i'm doing my job right. and if it weren't for the drudgery of existence i would tour non-stop or for as long as possible. it's hard to deal with so much traveling but i found that performing everynight in fron of a different crowd is perhaps the most gratifying experience i can think of at this point in my life. that same day rat and azalia and i drove out to malibu and had fish tacos and hung out on the el matador beach in the afternoon. there were giant rock formations all around us in the sand and rat had so many excellent insights on ground breaking music. i can't say enough great things about rat. he went to see cock esp at smell and an amp fell on his foot so he came over until his midnight flight to san francisco was to leave. he dozed off immediately and snored really loud and i made tuna pasta befor azalia and i went to sleep but he didn't hear me when i was offering it to him. then on friday came the last show of the tour and it was the most interesting by far. amber pierson is one of a few daredevils involved in the steady transformation of downtown los angeles. her gigantic space was filled with the projections of emerson balla, the collage work of peter johanson and the futuristic plant life sculptures of steven filger, with an installation room including the works on paper of sara flicker and clothing designer brittany ali. we had a bare bones p.a. but that place has so much natural reverb and echo everything sounded amazing. the place filled up right when i went on and tricia halloren and joel and stephanie and kaiser and amanda and angie and the bicycle thief guys who are bob forrest from theolonius monster and his guitar player josh were all there. there were lot's of nice people. i met so many people that night including johnny the audio engineer and editor and alice behind the bar and stephanie's boy mj and the great pleasure was of course meeting danny from the supreme dicks whose vocal style and guitar playing i really admire. it was a really fine send off. the whole room, all 6000 square feet of it up to its thirty foot ceiling was buzzing with color and music. that charlemagne palestine sounded fantastic between sets. the sets. i've played a lot with the sets but i've usually started with black power and waltz because they share the same tuning, then i'll go into the darker stuff mainly comprised of half thirtycabminute songs and half count no count songs with silk road stuck in now and then in case the audience is really paying attention. i played that one with a really free tempo, very rubato, very legato, with stops and pauses, during rush hour live on kxlu. we had about thirty callers for tickets. so on friday after the bicycle thief played then colby and his gang got up and mixed funk and a very eclectic set of obscure rock music. blake, who toured europe with azalia last year made the final and very clever transition to end the night by playing the first side of the second my bloody valentine album. we got back to azalia's place late after chatting too much and lo and behold the boy who she really wanted to come to the show was waiting there at the apartment. it was her lucky day. last night we were going to stay in and rest but bambi and angie came over and invited us to a party ad ed ruscha 2's house. the beachwood sparks guys were there and the radar brothers and some other known personalities i should probably not discuss here. i got smashed and gave bambi a bear hug and then azalia decided we should leave so we did but it was a lot of fun and i was happy to meet ed who is friends with charlie inskip in london. today we couldn't manage a visit to venice to see gulbin but we got a chance to visit nick's cool loft space on fountain street in hollywood and we took a long walk up in the runyon canyon. that and the drive through malibu canyon on thursday made me appreciate once again the stunning beauty of the southern california geography. and the mexican influence on all the wal art and the colors of the building and the signs. over here in echo park and around the silverlake area it might be possible for someone to find a way to live. i think azalia has and i'm happy for her. i fly back to new york tomorrow and a new reality will be waiting there. i'll be glad to be home and to be with aranka. the bills and the functioning of daily life will take a while to adjust
to. thanks to everyone who came to the shows or wanted to, thanks to the arena rock recording company, thanks to all the radio people and the mailmen who delivered the posters where they belonged. adios for now. sayanara. ciao. au revoir. i can't wait to get back to manhattan.
posted by dean wilson on 6/5/2000 6:54:49 PM
Sunday, June 4, 2000
very quickly now here's a note about some of the events this week: we had great fish burritos from valentine's in san diego and the sun was setting over the pacific as we drove down. it was slightly overcast but it never rained. we played with two free jazz groups from the area. i have copious notes but i can't stay on this computer very long. the stage had black padding all around it. we got turned on to
pork torta by jason the sound person aho has his own band. he says he likes to drive the seven hours to tucson to see pork torta more than coming to l.a. becaus they are big mexican guys who wear tutus and afro wigs and all kinds of funny hats and other indecent things. the casbah is an excellent place to play. we played live on the air at kxlu which is the loyola station here in l.a. and chris from beachwood sparks was the dj. it was a really good session and we got a great live recording from that thanks to andy saldana at the controls. after that we went straight down to the holly matter gallery and played a show and the owner's boyfriend attacked the photographer for taking pictures which we all found amusing especially since after ward no one seemed to remember it even happened. that was a really nice show because the audience was seated and very close to the performers. more later on the silverlake lounge where we played with irving and our nice night at the laboratory which is a cavernous space run by an amazing woman named amber pierson.
posted by dean wilson on 6/4/2000 11:34:02 AM
Monday, May 29, 2000
yes we made it to los angeles. crossing the desert mostly at night we entered a liminal consciousness punctuated by olidies stations and rock trivia and lo fi tapes of good horsey and wallpaper and nate ashley and beachwood sparks and gbv and on and on we drove throught the night casually but slightly pressed by the sense of returning. azalia is settled in her home here and she was happy about getting back. there were things i remembered from houston and austin that i don't want to forget like the name of the twenty four hour joint where we ate incredible food in houston: it was named spanish flower; and the red velvet curtain covering the curved semi circle of the back of the stage at red eye fly: it was lit by red lights and late one blue one; doug took the live tape from rice and agreed to send mp3's to arena rock to post and he still has the cassette. doug played with heath and gary from chapel hill n a three piece called buckle and he played theramin with azalia at red eye fly. his cory worked at the shooting gallery in new york and we talked a lot about film. azalia and i thought those two were such a well suited couple. they call each other dude and whenever you say something doug say right on with his thick southern drawl as a sign of comprehension. what angels they are. the sound was so good that night with the crickets in the background and the occasional jet. i'm looking forward to getting my hands on some of the various live recordings from this tour like the one from chrichil's in miami. jared is supposed to make mp3's and send me a copy; that, plus the rice one and the smattering of video tapes should be a nice documentation of the tour. the car went through gas at a very reasonable pace i would say. i mean it was a big luxury buick regal with smart everything but since azalia is still moving it was packed with stuff so i was impressed since i generally hate cars and being in them and i got used to the gas pumping ritual and the convience junk food shops attached to the gas bit which reduntantly mark up the highways in clusters of other burger and fries chains. azalia and i had relatively synchronized bladders so we didn't have any not one irritating or inconvenient pit stop and no arguments and no d\fender benders and so running out of gas or flats. we got back to her place delerious after twenty four hours of driving and only one two hour stop to sleep in the car. somehow it seemed perfectly natural. rat bastard is here in l.a. to perform three shows with cock esp. we may get up on stage with them on thursday. i worry constantly about bills and just today i was able to talk to aranka again after a three day silence. what bliss. i don't think i could ever live in los angeles. random hurried typing now. sleeping is a different sort of activity now since i've been sleeping in short intervals. i don't think i'll ever buy a car again. we gained time because of the time zones and so we got more and more mellow approaching the city. i don't know how to describe the incongruity and space between things or the way people fly a way out here. azalia and i talk a lot about what people want and about they get. she keeps on going. she's taught me a lot about moving on and about continuity. but also i've confronted our differences and learned a lot about myself. the new grandaddy album turned out ok. the girl house sitting while we were away is rachel haden one of charlie haden's triplets. she was nice to meet and i was surprised she didn't know any music theory and that she's had a record deal and is working on new material. she's friends with the four carnation too. also the vivacious and irrepressible brittany was so happy to see azalia and she helped a lot in promoting our shows here in l.a. it looks like the feature on i.k. for the l.a. weekly got lost in the shufle even though supposedly it was already written. this place is filled with a kind of telepathic fog. we napped up there in azalia's little echo park sanctuary and then went to play mr. t's bowl. a band called the pushkings opened the night. i think they were a little peaved about something but i could be wrong. enough on that subject. the place is strangely inhabited by local drunks local mexican boys underage and semi-hip scenesters but on a good night i hear it swings. arlo the tech was a nice guy and they simulcast the performances on their website. behind the stage huge letters spelled out time zone. i felt like a wet t shirt contest should begin soon and i started repeating each word i said three times sometimes five whenever i spoke to the audience. we went to and after party which was set up to promote our show next friday at the lab gallery and the models who were functioning as dj's spun mostly seventies funk soul and some humble pie and donna summer now and then. almost everyone wore bell bottom hip huggers and had self conscoiusly greasy hair parted in the middle and snap up shirts with flap pockets and big belt buckles. it was surreal and i ended up dancing a little when 30 days in the whole came up. we had cheap delicious sushi today with azalia's pal nicky and we met his pal todd who lives in this little enclave where mary warnov lives now. i had met mary in 1987 when bob mann lived in los angeles and i came out for a visit. her studio was in the same builing where she and bob had apartments. his apartment was small but her's was pretty huge and her studio was impressive because of it's litght. we spent time together then and i wrote a lot about that trip in old journals and poems. it was strange to be so near where she lived again. she must be 55 by now and still painting. today i did a telephone ionterview with hap mansfield who called from minneapolis. hap is sort of telepathic and our conversations sometimes go on too long but it was a fun chat and i hope the label gets her a cd soon because she's such a believer. we go to san diego tomorrowand then we do live radio and two more shows in l.a. i have to hustle from place to place to get computer access so my postings are a little sporadic. we're winding down out here in the ether. but i'm very proud to say my performances have been consistent the entire time. i'm getting better at that: being consistent. out for now
posted by dean wilson on 5/29/2000 3:16:46 PM
Friday, May 26, 2000
we got into houston weakened from the strange effect of the road and the new geographical conditions. after talahassee the whole landscape got swampy and pinyt and many i'm sure have heard this or thought this before buut driving across those immense swamps between louisiana and alabama and the eastern part of texas is a major shift in a person's perspective. the heat alone and the introduction of the expansive landscape changed our sense of space a lot. we managed to get to rice university on time after rushing out of curt's place and we performed in a below ground level sculpture garden at what is known as sewell hall. it was serene and austere but the natural echo created by the vaulted brick walls around us elevated the audio quality. we went to a vibrant all night joint for some amazing tex mex seafood late that night and chatted about david lynch and architecture with the seven rice students who came alonfg with us. we also talked ab out the launfdryroon squelchers and their appearence at the record shop there in houston. david was among the audience members that day and he was frequently without words describing the event as was rick when julie said the straight story was like a children's movie. with superb food and again surrounded by super kind people we ended up spending the night at rick's hilariously filthy apartment and he and i riffed on adorno and habermas and husserl's theory of history which made azalia laugh about my perpetual readiness to get heavy as she put it. rick will be in paris this summer so we looked forward to catching up in the near future. off we were then at three after a banking endeavor in the texas heat headed for austin and arrive we did but we couldn't find the springs. there is again very little time to write so my comments may lack elan but that may also be due to the general weariness. i talked to my grandfather today for his ninety-third birthday and i had a very moving talk with aranka because for some reason we both feel like we've been apart for a year. azalia and i laughed until tears over the way david letterman drinks his 'coffee' on this show and we continued to delve into the fiber of our lives durting long road trip conversations that provided some relief from the unfortunate recourse of playing pop music on the tape or disk player. inside a car there is a clear limitation to how much pumping and thumping and clever melodicizing and harmonizing i can take. combined with the thunder of road noise i find myself craving earplugs the way i do in the manhattan subway. by the way rick had some extraordinary john fahey stories from the time this past year when the man performed at rice. houston was excellent and the recording we made of the show should soon appear on this site or parts of it at least. in austin two super loud bands played before us and there was confusion about the set times but they played the charlemagne palestine intro music and we had the best staff party yet with doug on theramin tonight. doug and
cory and azalia and i went to magnolia's for more incredible food late tonight where license to ill was blasting and we talked a lot
about film production and the magic of migas. peace out. we have a twenty six hour drive to l.a. starting now. stepping off the world
and into los angeles. i haven't been there for fourteen years. across the texas plain and across the mohave. small details. waterloo
records. neither rice nor tulane university radio stations had illyah kuryahkin records to play. hap masfiled's friend james came out
tonight and a bunch of azalia's friends from her innumerable previous tours including julie and incomprehensible cos. the red eyed fly is a decent rock club and chris the engineer was extremely competent. the drink deals for bands are funny in the rock clubs. there were people who wanted to see azalia whom she had never met yet. it's always amazing how few people know about the staff party recordings and who plays on them. i now have no apprehension whatsoever about performing after an eight-hour drive with out rehearsal or sleep. it's become the nourishing seed of my daily existence: performing that is.
posted by dean wilson on 5/26/2000 10:28:37 PM
Wednesday, May 24, 2000
we're rushing off to houston now. there isn't much time to write. a deep glowing mood in new orleans. stayed with david and linda whom i hadn't seen in ten years. jai alai or however it should be spelled played first last night and i meant it when i said i loved their set. the drive was significant because we touched alabama and entered louisiana. the atmosphere has completely changed. the performances are getting better and better. lack of sleep and decent food. relying on the supreme kindness of others which always seems to be available. went to the tulane radio station before loading into the mermaid. the latin chap stopped his show to let us announce our arrival and play some music from azalia's soft bloom and i.k. outtakes. there is so much to write that i won't be able to get to until we reach l.a. and there is a little time to reflect. pines and humidity and sun with a dark warmth. the houses in new orleans unidentical and perpetually suprising. this place is
marvelous. talahassee was also a surprise. the david dukes of hazard would have impressed someone as astute as the residents. and curt was nice to put us up. ian came down from georgia. he played percussion with azalia. daniel videotaped azalia and i staff partying. her we go. more to come.
posted by dean wilson on 5/24/2000 9:48:29 PM
Monday, May 22, 2000
we've stopped off in palm harbor on the west coast of florida to visit my old friend jerry and spend the night. i'm writing on his computer in the kitchen. he's found domestic bliss and has two kids and a good marriage and a pool. there is a problem apparently with the last posting i sent in. i think i botched the host name of dan's email address and my journal entry from miami never arrived at its intended destination. we're trying to find it and i'll put down the broad
strokes here just to present a general picture. we had a good night at king's in raliegh north carolina even though there was this chek quy who kind of terrorized us with his big surround sound multi-media scaffolding thing right nin front of the stage. azalia convinced him to break it down but he was adamant about leaving it up all night. it was actually kind of funny since he played first. we got in the car at the end of the night and drove straight through to a suburb of miami called kendall and just went on stage with zero sleep. it actually turned out to be an amazing night in many ways because we stayed with rat bastard the noise genius of south miami and i videotaped one of his many projects called the laundry squelchers which was unbelievably mad and fun. he was the best host anyone could ask for and every moment of our time in miami was elevated by the generosity of both rat and hans morgenstern who had composed a feature article on azalia in a local newspaper and helped promote our two miami shows. we did two radio interviews too. actually i couldn't make it to one because i had been up for forty hours the day before and azalia went alone and played i.k. music in my place. i drove
twelve hours straight from raliegh after a full day of hitting record stores with heath grant and gary tedder on tuesday. we listened to national skyline and heath turned us on to his band analogue and all of his impressive kung fu movies. he also demonstrated some of his own advanced kung fu skill. in miami we got to swim in the ocean and had a really great time with rat who just put out a 36-hour cd of mp3's and
real audio music and videos. its called 'drunker than pollard'. rat loves robert pollard and when we played at churchill's on saturday night he did an acapella cover show of robert pollard songs. he sang about forty songs in thirty minutes. i played second and then azalia. and then arlen who lives in brooklyn i guess. i was funny because arlen and his band were also staying at rat's and rat kept calling him a hippy. the other radio show was for the internet station eye-q radio with hans on the dials. during that show he played other music by
macha and some old sebadoh in between i.k. and azalia snail material. there was also a david bowie 'low' song we picked together. it was one of the instrumentals from that album. we drove out yesterday a little blue because it was so much fun down there with rat and hans and everybody else. but the drive across the everglades was serene and we
talked extensively about new york and the changes in our lives over the past seven years or more. our road conversations take on an exploratory sensibility but they are always pleasantly stabilizing. we're both dealing with a lot of pratical crises at the moment that pop up and suddenly disturb everything. we head now to talahassee and will continue westward from there. this west coast of florida has
changed very rapidly in the past few years. i keep getting these odd impressions of how all across america a strange duplicity exists between the homogenous mass media culture and the striking contrasts in the geography and among the people of different regions. i hope this message gets through and up on line. in the meantime i'll keep trying to find the more extensive and spontaneous version i seem to
have lost of the events in miami. i don't want to forget the
intriguing paloma and the outrageous and sincere alise and page and that orange glow that descends onto every surface of miami with every sunset. i don't want to forget how terrified i was of the suburban developments or the deliciousness of the late night food we got at the eleventh street diner. i don't want to forget the heady oxygen buzz from all that green in the carolinas or the georgia pines.
posted by dean wilson on 5/22/2000 7:22:55 PM
Wednesday, May 17, 2000
its one pm on wednesday may 17 and charlamagne palestine plays on the box at gary tedder's house. this is chapel hill and gary's never heard charlemagne palestine before and we were up late after the local 506 show blabbing out of our minds and laughing. gary's girlfriend emilee works at the university museum and the tony oursler catalogue is sitting here on the table so he had fun talking about oursler's devils and wierd little heads bouncing off of sceen walls. azalia and i went into school kids records after the road trip down from maryland and sold some records and then we put up some posters and wandered around until we ran into david who just happened to be part of the wxyc chapel hill station. we walked right in and read the sometimes outrageous reviews that station people had written about our records. azalia had so many records in the racks that she quickly built up steam so that when we got to the broadcasting room she was ready to pull off a call in thing. we played songs from our records and did trivia contest call ins and jarret from red eye distribution was one of the callers. he was on his way home from work and called in when he got home so we were able to give him some free tickets to the show. the show. at first i felt like it would be impossible to dive into the performance full on. then i took the tragic step of drinking beer before going on. it was during gary's 'cold electric fire' performance. it was three solo performers last night. an interesting innovation in a way because we were all not folk and not really teched up. just kind of sub-tech and in the house p.a. with all our might. i had a fun time talking to rob the engineer who had a band called black mountain. he said it's very 'patient' music and extremely loud. he said the melvins and then he said the magic word: earth. one of my biggest favorites from the ninetees. brilliant unsung noise minimalists. we talked about dale crover's umbelievable sense of time and his total control over his abilities. i seem to be spreading the tony conrad gospel on this tour since almost no-one besides quentin and jason has known about him and lamonte young. by the way, i misspelled quentin's name yesterday which is ironic because everywhere we go people misspel or mispronounce the name of my one-man band. at the khyber it was billed as illyad kuryakhin. last night the tragedy of drinking some beer before playing was crucial. i was able to dive down down down into the song world and really touch people. you can sense it when that happens. the whole room is a sort of soft massive static fuzzball. so by tragic i mean necessary in way. that is, necessary for stepping off the world. it wasn't really the beer as much as the beer helping me to forget my petty ruminations. i actually got up and joined azalia for a final staff party freak out detuning my guitar to low low low whatever god forsaken notes and we abruptly stopped at the peak of frenzy. i haven't really improvised for a long time and that was refreshing in a way. but i felt like it also changed the way peoplepercieved me because my performance was something completely different. the town was virtually empty because classes are over and there is something irreal about this kind of place when the transient inhabitants are mostly gone. it's like a resort or something. and the locals are rich with interesting objects and trivia. we'll be in raliegh tonight at a place called king's and today i'll probably start reading pessoa. it's gone cloudy but the southern air is so rich right now. we've definitely entered another world. that alone is remarkable. there was a point while driving yesterday when azalia and i were listening to an oldies station and the c.w. macall song came on. we laughed about the vibrato in berton cummings voice and the golden era of a.m. radio and the supreme rock illustriousness of mott the hoople with their story of the rock. there was a time before f.m. was formatted into the gridlock and segregated mess it's in now when people could not only hear the entire allman brothers live at the filmore album on the radio but when on the a.m. stations you could hear led zep next to the fifth dimension and what else oh yeah we marvelled at the early who pop sensibility and
of course we got into the pink flag era wire azalia had on tape and i can't sign off with out mentioning that on that trip down ninety-five we gotour monds blown by dear mister fantasy from traffic with that wonderful stevie winwood guitar bit. then i knew. i knew we had hit the southern states and there was a big industrial plant with the words 'southern states' painted hugely on the columns but i wasn't quick enough with the vid cam to shoot it. ok that's it for now. maybe i'll get some kind of idea later that will seem important and worthy of posting. like how some people catch on to the way sampled drum tracks benefit certain genres of music and how other people can't bear anything but the band playing a pop song and how texture can become a cliche and how genres are such an unfortunate circumstance but they help us know contrast and differentiation. something to do with identity. how important some people find the idea of identity or dare i say the visceral urgency of identity. especially those who are in the eyes of
others oppressed in some way. genres give us a way to identify inegality. but they are so prone to ruin and to spoil the possibility of intuition and originality, without anyone even noticing.
posted by dean wilson on 5/17/2000 2:01:40 PM
Tuesday, May 16, 2000
so last night in philadelphia was interesting. hanging out with jacy
from the strapping field hands and his wife denise at the khyber. their
new band is really fun. and the azusa plane blokes jason and quinten
played with azalia for some fine improvisational staff party moments.
the ty cobb crew was out and azalia and i ended up staying up late
playing records with quinten from mazarin. bruce who plays percussion
on thirtycabminute and his wife catherine came up from wilmington which
was a delightful surprise. we listened to moondog on the way over to
the azusa household. then this morning kurt from the lilys came over
from next door to quinten and jason's house there in fish town. he
apologized for his bare feet and key west shirt and short hair. he
wanted to blend in with the neighbors as a sign of his supreme
compassion. we laughed a lot about everything that popped into our
sleepy heads over coffee and said good bye after a little umberto eco
talk and freaking over robert wyatt's cover of i'm a believer. the
buzzcocks were playing when azalia and i drove off. it was one of those
simply perfect days after a long rain. the fish town enclave is
surrounded by giant abandoned industrial buildings that seem haunted by
the undead souls of rum running politicians. but some are actually
inhabited by artists and squatters and there are spots with gardens and
god it's been a long time but philadelphia is still a very foreign land
somehow. i found out my old college buddy brian dilworth is a big
booking agent now and i'm learning more about talking to audiences and
selling records at shows. i guess it depends on the situation but i
never thought that was a good idea before. now i make the effort.
sometimes it seems a little naff but the t-shirts do look like soviet
eye charts and that sounds funny in a way. i really like playing solo.
i like the blending of the organic and intimate contact of just being
alone with the totally synthetic sonic environment created by the sound
system. maybe maya is right. maybe it is brave but i don't feel
particularly brave i just feel like i'm not a commodity or a phoney
manufactured product and that i have a chance to generate some form of
creative work that i won't regret later because it was trivialized by
whatever that trivializing monster uses to trivialize everything; or
make it boring and irrelevant. like when i was on that insound chat and
there was no one else but me at first and i started writing about the
prevalence of advertising. it will probably get deleted by some editor
in the archive but what i wanted to say is that the chance to employ our
faculties of mind freely is not really being advanced by the
preposterous ideologies we are fed. rather it is being cut off at the
knees. and if a person considers for one second the quantity of media
and images in existence at this moment and the accelerating increase in
the means to generate more and more media and images it becomes pretty
clear that a crueler divide than ever exists between the mind and the
planet. i'm tired now. perhaps this has become embarassing and boring
and irrelevant. we're in silver spring maryland for the night very near
takoma village where john fahey lives. i usually forget the profound
effect john fahey had on me when i was learning to play guitar. i don't
really understand that. selective memory; or simply pretension. last
night i played moonking for aranka who i miss terribly already and who
has a cold back in chelsea. and i played blacklightroom because we were
listening to it in the car yesterday. and i had that black light
feeling. i told the whole paul verlaine arthur rimbeaud story and about
how clifford brown came up in wilmington. i didn't play sundial even
though i had planned to. over and out for now. we have a long trip
tomorrow and an even longer one wednesday. down down down. i got my
head out the window. and my bare feet on the ground. to hell with
people who send creepy grudge-insinuating messages out of nowhere who
know nothing about the reality a human being endures through years of
perpetual difficulty. to hell with dilletante opportunists and
parasitic careerists and corporate traitors of every kind that consider
esthetics according to plutocratic and categoric aggression and hide
behind the alleged neutrality of archives. cowards one and all i say.
d. boon once asked wisely: where's you're courage? but d. boon of
course was not really what one might consider an entertainer. alas.
what is good? azalia and i talked about relationships a lot today too
while driving. and about people with babies or who are about to have
them. the concept of the child as a commodity and the popular urge for
immediate celebrity came up. i go now.
posted by dean wilson on 5/16/2000 8:13:00 AM
Saturday, May 13, 2000
so we'll keep doing the best we can
posted by dean wilson on 5/13/2000 5:58:37 PM
today is the last day to put things together for the tour. so many loose ends. azalia and i had a crepe on ninth avenue this morning and talked about all the friends along the way who are willing to put us up. the show in philadelphia tomorrow night will be the first actual tour date. the knitting factory show last monday was very nice with a seated audience and a good mix. the house was full and we had a great time with andy who was visiting from new orleans and with dave milsom who is now here in new york and wallace and dee dee and dan it was a blast. aranka and i ended up at some place called fun with huge video screens looking for miguel at three am. i was happy maya showed up and so many of my japanese friends.
posted by dean wilson on 5/13/2000 5:35:12 PM
this seems to be just right dan. only how can i dial up quickly and directly to this page? it took a while to get here.
posted by dean wilson on 5/13/2000 5:28:24 PM
Thursday, May 11, 2000
Dean, what do you think?
posted by dean wilson on 5/11/2000 8:17:02 AM
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