Category: music

New Rotic – A Slight Return


The spooky, velvet-caped Powers That Be have blacklit New Rotic DJ’s Retrograde and Retrovirus for a DJ slot at the Convergence 13, in sinister Portland, over the weekend of May 25-27. We will be dusting off the black vinyl, and the records too. Keep your glassy, web-worn orbs here for details on when you can catch a set of time-tested D-rock and forgotten goffic dance hits.  We’d love to see you there. Or, your presence might bring a wry smile to play on these world-weary lips. Or something.

Celebrity Ice Cream

With the history of Ben Jerry’s celebrity ice cream flavors, starting with Cherry Garcia and Phish Food and Stephen Colbert’s Americone Dream, the name of Willie Nelson’s Peach Cobbler is disappointingly average. The Pulitzer Prize-winning Oregonian tries to counter the mediocrity with a celebrity ice-cream naming contest for a nominal prize.   Here are my entries, don’t steal ’em.

1. Morrissey’s William, It Was Really Nothing Like Sherbet

2. Prince’s Purple Rain…Bow Sherbet

3. John Popper’s Blueberry Traveller- Now, with hidden arsenal flavor! or, John Popper’s Obese Gun Nuts.

4. Robert Smith’s Icing Sugar Smoothie ( a joke for the real ones)

5. Michael Richard’s N is for Nougat Swirl

6. Britney Spears’ Oops, I’m Nuts!

7. Marilyn Manson’s Mechanical Animal Crackers

8. Beck’s Mellow Golden Caramel

10. Prince’s Caramel-Colored Funk or Prince’s Under The Cherry Spoon

11. Nick Drake’s Pink Moon Pie

13. Snoop’s Doggy Chow

Postscript: Well, the results came out and the winner of a motorized ice-cream scooper was for “Dick Cheney’s Go Fudge Yourself.” I guess the world’s not ready for the truth!

Do You Wonder?

Naked Pool

Hello there! Did you ever wonder what happened to the pictures that you and your friends took naked, playing pool, in your parent’s basement in 1996?

You stuck them into a 7″ by SF straight-edge band, “Resist”, that you later sold or was stolen or something. Surprise!

The most unfortunate thing is that these fellas are str8-edge, ‘parently, so they took naked basement pictures totally sober.

Underland, Featuring the Music of Nick Cave

I just ran across this event coming up in Portland on March 13th: You’ve got yer Nick Cave music and your  modern dancers and you mush it all up with costumes by Imitation of Christ and that’s what you’ve got.

Here’s a really over-compressed short video about the show.

Underland video

Some of the songs included in the program are: Wild World, Mercy Seat, The Carny, The Weeping Song, The Ship Song, Stagger Lee, and Death is Not the End. The dance opens with a reading from his novel, “And The Ass Saw The Angel.”

Songs Least Likely to Appear In A Nick Cave Dance Program: Scum, 6″ Gold Blade, and Little Empty Boat.

Postscript: Wow, was I wrong about not using Stagger Lee in the program! When it started as a very intense, Apache-style duet between the brute and the maiden, and the first F-bomb dropped in, I heard the row of nice fifty-year old ladies in front of me take in breath sharply, and I thought, “wait until we get to the line about crawling over fifty good p*ssies to get to a fat boy’s assh*le.” A couple disgruntled ballet fans walked out, but I think the fifteen year old dance students were pretty psyched about a getting to hear a filthy dirty song.  My review of the ballet is a million, jillion gold stars, flecked lightly with blood. It was so super, I can’t tell you. If you hear about it coming through your town, I highly recommend it.

I love you, Farin Urlaub!

Farin Urlaub – Sumisu

For the Halloween season, enjoy this German pop song by Farin Urlaub about the Smiths, set to a video about Nosferatu. And Morrissey. So, it’s a German song about a British band, and the title is “Smiths” in Japanese. Welcome to the new world order. You know, the British invented Goth, but the Germans have really perfected it.

Laurie Anderson at PICA’s TBA

I am looking forward to seeing the Queen of Performance Art and half of the Coolest New York Downtown Couple, a Laurie Anderson,  performing in Portland tonight as part of  PICA’s TBA festival.  I have been a fan of hers since before I knew who she was, after I caught the last third of a performance of “Babydoll” on SNL in 1986, and carried the voice around in my head for two years until I was at a friend’s house listening to “Sharkey’s Day” from “Mister Heartbreak.” I met her once in Houston, TX, in 1992 at a pro-Dem art event, where she sat coolly on a picnic blanket in a baseball cap and I gibbered to her like an idiot.

And yet, I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about meeting Paris Hilton.

P.S. It was a lovely show! Spouse was surprised that we were on the front row, because evidently did not understand the level of my Laurie worship and ninja ticket-buying skills. She has stripped down from previous shows to storytelling and violin playing, with a minimum of extra clutter. She dressed like a little Buddhist monk and told stories about her stint as N.A.S.A.’s first (and last) artist in residence, and about the 10 day walks she’s taken with her rat terrier, and about space and time and nature and owls and Thomas Pynchon.

Left my heart in S.F. but my signal splitter in Oakland


We are back from a splendid wedding in Oakland, CA, involving some wonderfully genial and good-looking people in love, and their family and marriage vows and a dysfunctional photo booth and lots of liquor and cake. I played dance music on four Ipods, two turntables, and a laptop, which makes me feel a combination of shame and indignance- while playing MP3’s does not have the street-level credibility of playing records, I also did not want to schlep 500 records on an airplane. Pictured is a hilarious Ipod “mixer” that I got to use.

Because the groom works for a popular “rock and roll” group (GREEN DAY), a large percentage of that band attended. I had hoped that the presence of celebrities would generate gossip fodder, but in fact everyone was nice and appeared to have a great time. I had difficulty distinguishing band members from their friends and crew, because they were not wearing the eyeliner from their MTV videos, but were resplendent in suits and Vans. There is not a one of them I could not lift, if afforded the opportunity. A blog reader wrote to ask if they are as old as he has heard, but since Mr. Armstrong has exactly one year on myself, I will say that they are glowing with youth and vitality. Or at least, their wives and girlfriends were.