Chi-town

Well, people...I will be away from a computer for a while. This is probably a good thing, overall. I am moving this weekend and then Monday I am headed to Chicago. Yee haw!! Hopefully, I will be able to squeeze in some writings while I'm there next week...

I will leave you with this picture of Jack Black to keep you sated until my return! Chicago>The movie HighFidelity>Barry> Jack Black. This is how my mind works.]

get a load of me; get a load of you

Yesterday I received a strange Friendster message from someone I didn't know. I accepted him as a "friend" and he in turn wrote this "testimonial":

Sep 21, 2005 07:10 AM
Matt: Brianna has written the world's single most ringing and inspired defense of Liz Phair ever, a work of rhetoric so potent and persuasive it nearly obscures the fact that Liz Phair sucks arse.

Right. So, I rack my brain: when did I write this masterpiece (har har)? Oh yeah! two friggin' YEARS ago! When Liz Phair released the much maligned self-titled release which earned her a top 40 hit and also reviews that blasted her, recalling an indie-rock version of the lone audience member (representing all disenchanted folkie followers) calling Dylan Judas at his Royal Albert Hall performance in 1966 where he ripped it electric.

I wrote it when I was interning at City Pages and my editor and I were always talking about the whole Liz "controversy." [she ends up having a whole thing with Chuck Klosterman at the Kitty Cat Klub--he wrote about it in his last book, yadda, yadda, yadda]. SO, I wrote it and she put in on her blog for the world to see. This dude who contacted me is a writer and friends with her. He lives in L.A. right now and he found this ancient piece online. He has to write about her now; presumably it's gonna be something about her upcoming album, "Somebody's Miracle"(even I admit the title doesn't sound very promising this time around...).

SO, here's what I wrote then...we'll see if things change once the new album rolls out...

Defending Phair in 2003
It took a good friend's innocent comment about Liz Phair's "dumb blonde highlights," and that was it for me; I had to write something for public view. Since her new album, the self-titled poppy gem of a record, came out, I have been incensed and inspired by what everyone's been saying about Liz Phair. I can not remember a time in recent rock criticism history that such a slew of writers sounded so angry, disappointed, even betrayed by Phair's slight (yes, slight) departure from her usual brand of smart, distinctive songwriting and singing style. But more infuriating has been the focus on everything but the music. If I read one more goddamn comment about her age (36), her single-divorced-mother status or the "inappropriateness" of certain songs at this time in her life, I might explode like a Spinal Tap drummer.
But nearly everyone makes note of this: She's this indie-rock-critical-darling that has deserved every gush of praise she was given for her catchy (yep, you heard it here first!) stunning, funny, sad, filthy, literate and rocking debut, Exile in Guyville. (Which was more a "fuck you" to indie rock boys and their esoteric club than a nod to the Stones' Exile while outdoing baby-voiced contemporaries like Mary Lou Lord and her well-intended "(I Don't Fit into) His Indie World," but I digress.) And then the review usually takes this turn: But, oh, isn't it sad and so disappointing that she never has and never will match her Exile glory. Look, she's teamed with pop producers! (Watch out, kids, David Bowie--or Bough-ie, of you're Avril--is working with the Matrix, too!)
More blatant (and seemingly out-for-blood cruel) reviews have popped up almost everywhere (the most nasty from pitchformedia.com and the New York Times). These particular reviews have made me wonder if these words would have been punched out with such fury if Liz were a man. I really do hate to cry "unabashed sexism" if it's questionable, but it seems rampant in the critics' (both male and female) reactions. References to her "swearing" and her frankness about sex seem as if they were written in 1985 (and 1992) when idiots railed against Madonna for doing the same damn thing. Are music writers still this fucking sexist? Are they that uneasy with a woman calling woman's magazines sexist and dumb as boxes of hair with the song "H.W.C."? Poking fun at the semen-as-a-part-of-a-beauty-routine crap that bullshit mags, ahem, feed females, is apparently not clear enough for this new crop of Liz-haters.
After listening to Liz Phair for the first time I was pleasantly shocked (after reading embittered reviews that actually included the phrase "career suicide" in them) that is was still the same old Liz. Same voice (yes, it sounds a little more grown into, a little more polished, but what's wrong with that?) same smart, stream of consciousness lyrics, using common words and phrases and with eyes-rolled (think Madonna,"Lucky Star" video) she still stamps it with her deep, wry, "Oh-my-God" Valley girl delivery.
For me, Liz Phair is a natural progression from the fantastic, underrated, Whitechochocatespaceegg. Liz's very own eerie, foreboding Tunnel Of Love doomed marriage album, is full of great stuck-permanently-in-my-brain melodies, turns of phrases and jokes it made total sense after Whip-Smart, which was almost a companion piece to Exile...see where I'm going here?
As soon as my 13-year-old brain started digging Liz Phair, I had discovered one of the most perfect creations of a rock chick that I had ever heard or seen. Here was a small-framed woman roaring in pixilated, trashy black and white photo, bearing nipple, on the front of her first album, bursting with fierce sexuality, brilliance (the smart-ass kind and the art-school kind) and humor. Dry, very dry, wit and girly cajones. This was refreshing, this was something new.
Sure, Madonna got there first. But here was Liz, ready to acknowledge the Lady Madge and all her glory. Stealing poses, glares and sexual irony from "Desperately Seeking Susan"-era Madonna. It was as if Liz served as the Camille Paglia of rock chicks, analyzing, worshiping and borrowing the artful, manipulative, intelligent sexual energy and rebellion that made Madonna so effective as a pop culture figure. Liz took Paglia (and others') brand of feminism (keep the sex, lose the sexism) and made it raunchy, while making it relevant.
I must note that, as Liz is always sure to point out, (many songwriters will agree) her songs are never necessarily about her, or even in first person. So when I refer to Liz grabbing everyone by the balls, I mean her music and her lyrics, not the fact that the "characters" or even she herself is all about wanting lots of sex and power and money. I always found it more a commentary on what she observes around her.
Liz Phair's first single "Why Can't I?" has been the most abhorred by rock critics and long time fans of Liz. Criticisms that the song could be sung by anyone, or that the lyrics suggest a weaker, "teen-like" (read: Avril-like, due to Liz's collaboration with the pop-machine songwriters/producers the Matrix) are just lazy. While I do hear a much more externally poppy sound, a melodramatic chorus, I also hear Liz's songwriting voice tackling a new topic for her: the guilt, lust and frustration of jumping into an extra-marital affair. I hear the chorus and get that this female character in the song is surprising her self with guilt and second-guessing cheating on her hubby while her lover is doing the same to his "girlfriend" and saying "it isn't right." Oh, and it happens to be fucking catchy as hell.
Never been anything wrong with that. And here is what is so right and so a test of an effective pop song: the waitresses I work with love it. They murmur and belt along, eyes squeezed shut, knowing all the words (and they work hard for the money, remember?). Awesomely, a few of 'em own Exile. And they'll probably behind me and next to me at the show on Thursday treating "Flower" and the fantastic new female-camp-fire-sing-along-anthem "H.W.C" in the exact same fashion.

Holyshit; Jesus, Mary and Joseph; Always Look on The Bright Side of Life, etc.

Fantastic article from yesterday's Science Times (NYT):
Almost Before We Spoke, We Swore
By NATALIE ANGIER
Published: September 20, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/20/science/20curs.html?incamp=article_popular

Great article on swearing and the linguistic evolution and importance of it. Includes (of course!) a ref to George Carlin, my *main* man. I think that if I had an opportunity to meet/interview any one celebrity, it would have to be Carlin-- hands down. To be face to face and hear him riff about language alone... He's a brilliant wordwielder; a self-educated genius. He realizes, like almost no one else out there (in entertainment, anyway) how powerful words are. How harsh curse words sound-- physically. As the artice from the Times notes, those gutteral sounds--formed into words like fuck, shit, etc.--make the brain and body respond viscerally. It's so true.
But, then, of course Carlin's most (in)famous schtick is his "Seven Words You Can't Say on Television," his point is words are *just* words. They can't *really* hurt you! [My favorite bit has to be about the word, tits: "it sounds like a nickname! hey Tits! How's it hangin'?!" OR "It sounds like a snack! Cheese Tits!"]

man, that shit is funny.

beck is movin' this way; his beat is correct & Green Day for President!

[singing, soulfully] "I like the crotch on you...did R. Kelly really say that? Yes he did."

--Beck last night at Roy Wilkins. Crazy good show. So comforting to know that Beck's still got it going on. I saw him for the first time when I was 14 years old at First Avenue. He's not as balls-out dancing, playing to the crowd as he used to be, but I was so impressed that he didn't change his attitude or capacity for the campy-fun-time-party-booty-action-show-that only Beck can put on after the downer break-up album "Sea Change" (the ONLY Beck album I do not own!)

I will leave you with this for now:

I like the ... with big booties in 'em/ I like the crotch on you/ I want what you've got baby/ Girl I like those daisy dukes on you/ Girl you look so fine, I wanna get with you/ So tell me who's your man, We will have a talk with him

AND *I* will add this:

Green Day was a spectacle, man! This is my annoying, "singular words" review. you love it.

D.I.Y. D.I.Y. D.I.Y. : that was the theme of the night. Every show on this tour, Billie Joe finds three kids/adults in the audience that can play the bass, the drums and the gee-tar.

"RAGE": That's what was written on B.J.'s white arm band. I thought it said "PEACE." I was wrong. "rage, rage against the dying of the light." "rage on."

Pot: how influenced the band still seems to be by the drug--so many songs, oh, and their fucking name!

PyroTown: Countless number of ear-poppings, eye-burning, face-warming sparks, flames and general stage explosions. It kinda got old.

"Pandering": I really don't know how many times B.J. said the words "Minnesota," "St. Paul," and "Minneapolis." But it was over the freaking top.

All Ages: I truly think this was one of the most diverse aged crowds I have ever been in. The ages of people I saw: 8 (the kid who got onstage to play B.J.'s guitar was fucking 8, I swear), teens, twenties (me and several others, at least) thirties (those who were teens when Green Day was first taking off) and my dad's age-- 50s. Very cool. Very inspiring.

Best line of the night: "Stand up for what you *fucking* believe innnnnnnn!!"--Billie Joe. Oh, and coming n second a very Madonna B.J., groping himself slowly, comically and kind of sexily starts moaning--breaks into bigger, more dramatic moans and then: "Somebody FUCK ME!!!!!!" A cry for a real road-fuck? Adrianne would be pissed, dude.

The night was filled with fantastic hooks, 16 years of music to play from, energy and fire from all *six* musicians, eye makeup, tight black vests, political-fueled anger and focus. The song, "American Idiot," never sounded so angry and so precisely about Dubya.

thank god it's them and not cLodplay

Walking from breakfast last Sunday with Elizabeth; we hear loud singing over the sunny-Sunday-silence. Attractive, shirtless, young man is riding his BMX towards us. He's got headphones on and he is singing his heart out on Hennepin Avenue. "And I don't care! woo! woo! And I don't care! woo! woo!" It's that great lil' bratty bit from Green Day's 9-minute epic, "Jesus of Suburbia" from the Townshend-worthy-epic, "American Idiot."

Why it works: it's sprawling, but focused, tight and catchy. And it rocks. They're doing it with heart and not cocky bombast. It feels real, and a lil' desperate--which it should. Desperate times...right? Oh, and um, Billy Joe already had "real" tats, K? (oooooh! snap!) (wait, did I just write "snap!" yep, guess I did. must've been called for. ha. not A-Ha. that one's fer Phil)

Sweeping MTV's VMA's; hugenormous record sales, the chilling, timely "Wake Me When September Ends" video, big ol' arena tours (apparently the only current U.S. act even doing arena tours right now), Green Day actually *is* the biggest band on the planet right now. And that is so fucking rad. They so deserve it. Berkeley street kids-friends of Rancid-EAST BAY FOREVER!!! When the lights go down in the cit-ay, and the sun shines on the ba-ay-ay...

ANYWAY:

I'm seeing them tonight in fair St. Paul's Xcel Center.

I promise to report.

elizabeth, the great

just sent me a card with this picture in it. (you can see freckles on her arms! hooray for freckles!!) it made my choatic day a lot more....peaceful...I feel ready for a nap, now. thanks, e.

looks like the 40s, like Europe in rubble

I think I have an unhealthy obsession with all things from the World War II era. I just re-watched one of my favorite films from my childhood, "Hope & Glory," about this great family living in midst of bombed-out London and...I found myself (like so many times before) wanting to be a part of it. Of course being a total anglophile in general, putting that together with recently reading about the Stones' and Beatles' growing up during WWII in England probably helps quite a bit.

Scraping by, going crazy over actually having jam (course it's German jam--great scene), having your little bro draw a fake line up the back of your leg to fool the hot soldier's eye into thinking you've got nylons on, (but you really don't because they're just not available), dancing and falling in love with those soldiers, losing next door neighbors during an air raid, etc. Why is this so appealing to me? It's mostly the Hollywood then, the hair, the clothes, woman are starting to be seen in the workplace because of the war, Eleanor Roosevelt, progressive changes all around, all to be almost obliterated by the stifling, frightening 1950s. Looking back, not having lived it myself, it seems as if socially, things were more progressive when the war was on then afterwards. As hard as that is to believe... Of course thousands of people lost their lives and oh, yeah, there's the fucking Holocaust. So, don't get me wrong, I know that "the good ol' days" never existed anywhere, ever. I know, I know.

Anyway, I bought this great dress for a swanky wedding I'm going to. It's really 1945 and I adore it. The plan is (with help from loyal comrades, Jessica and Elizabeth) to do up my hair all Heather Graham in Swingers, or maybe, if we can handle it, Rita Hayworth style! (see above). Rarrr. We'll see.

my friend Paul

...is so funny. I just received an email from my friend Paul, a newspaper journalist who lives in Tacoma, WA. I was supposed to visit him in August, but it just didn't happen. So, when I read this kinda stuff, these encounters, I think: damn, that coulda been me! I need to lighten the mood on here, so...here you go. (also, as an excuse to randomly post a picture of Elvis, given the Graceland ref.)

Anyway...I gave him a tour of thehighlights, which mainly includes the three or four bars that I frequent. We had a bizarre conservation with this
heavily tattooed guy at a bar that's shaped like a giant teapot (don't ask) in which he told us that he was a flight attendant. He also said that "if my job was to eat shit I would probably like that job more than being aflight attendent." Very strange. He plopped down in our booth andintroduced himself by saying, "You ever go to a bar by yourself andjust get really fucked up?" He proceeded to force me on stage to singMotley Crue's "Shout At the Devil", but left me up there alone duringthe verses, which he didn't know and neither did I. Yikes. Did I mention this bar is mixture of the Turf Club, the Jungle Room at Graceland and that rainforest restaurant at the Mall of America? Also,we were sober when this happened.

way down

I think this is something that needs to be read, talked about, acknowledged.

From today's NYT:
(UPDATE: originally I also posted the link to this story, so you could actually see the morbid, but necessary photo that accompanied the story. I just looked at it again, and they removed it from the website. Hmmm. Is there the similar controversy/uproar that came with showing photographs of body parts and people jumping from windows of the World Trade Center?

I really see both sides. We had the WTC discussion in my ethics class in j-school... I think, in the end, it's important for people to see some "real gore" to be able to process the gravity of what's going on...in the gulf coast...right now--shit is STILL going down, OK? And that's news and that's reality and TV violence and movie violence is graphic and nasty and bloody.

And, yes, I know that woman is someone's daughter and maybe someone's mother. And I think that's why we show it. The photogs know that they're shooting history, and they're transporting a tiny slice of reality--what it's like to walk the streets of New Orleans *right now* and see this kind of war-zone, apocalyptic nightmare shit is all around. I'd rather us know about it and feel ashamed that dead humans are covering the ground like discarded trash, than shut our eyes and ears to it.

September 8, 2005
Macabre Reminder: The Corpse on Union Street
By DAN BARRY
NEW ORLEANS, Sept. 7 - In the downtown business district here, on a dry stretch of Union Street, past the Omni Bank automated teller machine, across from a parking garage offering "early bird" rates: a corpse. Its feet jut from a damp blue tarp. Its knees rise in rigor mortis.
Six National Guardsmen walked up to it on Tuesday afternoon and two blessed themselves with the sign of the cross. One soldier took a parting snapshot like some visiting conventioneer, and they walked away. New Orleans, September 2005.
Hours passed, the dusk of curfew crept, the body remained. A Louisiana state trooper around the corner knew all about it: murder victim, bludgeoned, one of several in that area. The police marked it with traffic cones maybe four days ago, he said, and then he joked that if you wanted to kill someone here, this was a good time.
Night came, then this morning, then noon, and another sun beat down on a dead son of the Crescent City.
That a corpse lies on Union Street may not shock; in the wake of last week's hurricane, there are surely hundreds, probably thousands. What is remarkable is that on a downtown street in a major American city, a corpse can decompose for days, like carrion, and that is acceptable.
Welcome to New Orleans in the post-apocalypse, half baked and half deluged: pestilent, eerie, unnaturally quiet.
Scraggly residents emerge from waterlogged wood to say strange things, and then return into the rot. Cars drive the wrong way on the Interstate and no one cares. Fires burn, dogs scavenge, and old signs from les bons temps have been replaced with hand-scrawled threats that looters will be shot dead.
The incomprehensible has become so routine here that it tends to lull you into acceptance. On Sunday, for example, several soldiers on Jefferson Highway had guns aimed at the heads of several prostrate men suspected of breaking into an electronics store.
A car pulled right up to this tense scene and the driver leaned out his window to ask a soldier a question: "Hey, how do you get to the interstate?"
Maybe the slow acquiescence to the ghastly here - not in Baghdad, not in Rwanda, here - is rooted in the intensive news coverage of the hurricane's aftermath: floating bodies and obliterated towns equal old news. Maybe the concerns of the living far outweigh the dignity of a corpse on Union Street. Or maybe the nation is numb with post-traumatic shock.
Wandering New Orleans this week, away from news conferences and search-and-rescue squads, has granted haunting glimpses of the past, present and future, with the rare comfort found in, say, the white sheet that flaps, not in surrender but as a vow, at the corner of Poydras Street and St. Charles Avenue.
"We Shall Survive," it says, as though wishing past the battalions of bulldozers that will one day come to knock down water-corrupted neighborhoods and rearrange the Louisiana mud for the infrastructure of an altogether different New Orleans.
Here, then, the New Orleans of today, where open fire hydrants gush the last thing needed on these streets; where one of the many gag-inducing smells - that of rancid meat - is better than MapQuest in pinpointing the presence of a market; and where images of irony beg to be noticed.
The Mardi Gras beads imbedded in mud by a soldier's boot print. The "take-away" signs outside restaurants taken away. The corner kiosk shouting the Aug. 28 headline of New Orleans's Times-Picayune: "Katrina Takes Aim."
Rush hour in downtown now means pickups carrying gun-carrying men in sunglasses, S.U.V.'s loaded with out-of-town reporters hungry for action, and the occasional tank. About the only ones commuting by bus are dull-eyed suspects shuffling two-by-two from the bus-and-train terminal, which is now a makeshift jail.
Maybe some of them had helped to kick in the portal to the Williams Super Market in the once-desirable Garden District. And who could blame them if all they wanted was food in those first desperate days? The interlopers took the water, beer, cigarettes and snack food. They did not take the wine or the New Orleans postcards.
On the other side of downtown across Canal Street in the French Quarter, the most raucous and most unreal of American avenues is now little more than an empty alley with balconies.
The absence of sweetly blown jazz, of someone cooing "ma chère," of men sporting convention nametags and emitting forced guffaws - the absence of us - assaults the senses more than any smell.
Past the famous Cafe du Monde, where a slight breeze twirls the overhead fans for no one, past the statue of Joan of Arc gleaming gold, a man emerges from nothing on Royal Street. He is asked, "Where's St. Bernard Avenue?"
"Where's the ice?" he asks in return, eyes narrowed in menace. "Where's the ice? St. Bernard's is that way, but where's the ice?"
In Bywater and the surrounding neighborhoods, the severely damaged streets bear the names of saints who could not protect them. Whatever nature spared, human nature stepped up to provide a kind of democracy in destruction.
At the Whitney National Bank on St. Claude Avenue, diamond-like bits of glass spill from the crushed door, offering a view of the complementary coffee table. A large woman named Phoebe Au - "Pronounced 'Awe,' " she says - materializes to report that men had smashed it in with a truck. She fades into the neighborhood's broken brick, and a thin woman named Toni Miller materializes to correct the record.
"They used sledgehammers," she said.
Farther down St. Claude Avenue, where tanks rumble past a smoldering building, the roads are cluttered with vandalized city buses. The city parked them on the riverbank for the hurricane, after which some hoods took them for fare-free joy rides through lawless streets, and then discarded them.
On Clouet Street, where a days-old fire continues to burn where a warehouse once stood, a man on a bicycle wheels up through the smoke to introduce himself as Strangebone. The nights without power or water have been tough, especially since the police took away the gun he was carrying - "They beat me and threatened to kill me," he says - but there are benefits to this new world.
"You're able to see the stars," he says. "It's wonderful."
Today, law enforcement troops began lending muscle to Mayor C. Ray Nagin's vow to evacuate by force any residents too attached to their pieces of the toxic metropolis. They searched the streets for the likes of Strangebone, and that woman whose name sounds like Awe.
Meanwhile, back downtown, the shadows of another evening crept like spilled black water over someone's corpse.

here come old flattop, he come grooving up slowly (New Jersey in the mornin' like a lunar landscape)

So, it’s pretty obvious by now, right? Chuck Berry *IS* the Goddamn King of Rock and Roll. Recently references to the man have jumped out at me, everywhere. Jon Pareles recently pointed out one of Mr. Berry’s many students. In his review of the Stones’ latest album, “A Bigger Bang,” he writes, “When the guitars surge in for the three-chord chorus and Mr. Richards plays his 10,000th version of a Chuck Berry lick, it's inescapable: the old tricks still work.”

Yes. Keef fucking worships the man and his riffs. And, damn, talk about riffs. Like Edina Monsoon once said to Patsy Stone, “Every thing just hangs off of these cheekbones, dah-ling”—well, everything, and I mean *everything* just hangs off of Keef’s riffs, dah-ling.

But, back to the man and his music. Wait, the lyrics. That’s the thing that’s been flooring me recently. I was listening to:

“You Can’t Catch Me”
Chuck Berry

I bought a brand-new air-mobile
It custom-made, 'twas a Flight De Ville
With a pow'ful motor and some hideaway wings
Push in on the button and you will get a scene
CHORUS:
Now you can't catch me, baby you can't catch me
'Cause if you get too close, you know I'm gone like a cool
breeze
New Jersey Turnpike in the wee wee hours
I was rollin' slow because of drizzlin' showers
Here come a flat-top, he was movin' up with me
Then come wavin' goodbye a little' old souped-up jitney
I put my foot in my tank and I began to roll
Moanin' siren, 'twas a state patrol
So I let out my wings and then I blew my horn
Bye bye New Jersey, I'd be come and gone
(chorus)
Flyin' with my baby last Saturday night
Not a gray cloud floatin' in sight
Big full moon shinin' up above
Cuddle up honey, be my love
Sweetest little thing I've ever seen
I'm gonna name you Maybellene
Flyin' on the beam, set on flight control
Radio tuned to rock 'n' roll
Two, three hours have passed us by
I'll be 2 dropped to 5:05
Fuel consumption way too fast
Let's get on home before we run out of gas
(chorus)


And in it, I heard the entire car-theme/essence of Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska.” The obvious Jersey refs, of course. (as well as the DIRECT rip: “New Jersey Turnpike in the wee wee hours”) but just the feeling of motion, of escape—racing down the highway (running away from something--from someone) in a classic car, with yer baby cuddlin’ up next to you. As well as talking about the car so sensually, if it were a sexy, powerful woman. (hey: pink cadillac and little red corvette.)

Two other notes: gotta dig the already self-referential line, “I'm gonna name you Maybellene,” (Beatles, Oasis, countless others…). And speaking of the Beatles…Lennon, were you soaking up some Berry with your drugs when you wrote “Come Together”? I think so! (“Here come a flat top, he was movin' up with me,” next to “Here come old flat top he come grooving up slowly.”) OK, maybe that one is just me…But, there’s no escaping the fact that Springsteen, Richards, Lennon, McCartney, and…well, countless others have been digging on this shit for years and years. Impressive. Roll over Beethoven, yes. His influence should be ranked up there.

Augh. By the way: please avoid Jon Bream, if at all possible. Today, it wasn’t possible for me. I had to read his STrib review of the Stones and it was…so…damn…bad. As Jessica rhetorically asked, “was this written by a fifth grader?” Maybe it was. He has kids, right? But if he did write it—shame. How can someone so fortunate (he gets to vote in Pazz and Jop, yadda, yadda, yadda) be so *lazy*?! The first and the last line take the cake. I will not do you the disservice of posting the link, it’s just bad news.

I will leave you with goodness. One of my many favorite Bruce lines. This one, under the heavy influence of Mr. Berry:
from "Open All Night,"
"Your eyes get itchy in the wee wee hours/ sun's just a red ball risin' over them refinery towers/ Radio's jammed up with gospel stations/ lost souls callin' long distance salvation/ Hey, mister deejay, woncha hear my last prayer hey, ho, rock'n'roll, deliver me from nowhere."

Looking Forward

I adore this man.

Anglo·phili·a

As much fun as it is to "get an email" from "Richard Ashcroft" (see below), it is really not fun to see that he is "supporting" Coldplay. Ick. What universe am I living in where Clodplay (I think that's what I want to call them, now) is one of the biggest bands around-- the first UK band to actually "break" the US in a really long time.

Why couldn't Travis do it? Fran has the cutes (the whole band even has the non-threatening cuddle-able sexuality that the 13-year-olds can dig) they have the melodies, the accessibility--I don't get the Yanks sometimes and I am one. I am an Anglophile, but I still am a full-fledged Tom Petty-ed American girl. (I think I could live in MaDchester right now--or maybe just on December 19th, again, see below).

*I want to write more on this...I have more to say.

*I feel really good, physically-- I had been having terrible, life-altering allergies and now... they're gone! Could be the drugs I got from the MinuteClinc (uh...yep, prolly) or the awesome "work trip" I went on Tuesday night to Duluth (no, but that sounds better). The air was clean and fresh and our hotel was on The Edge (that's what the hotel is nick-named) of Lake Superior. We went to the this precious, quaint, dirty, hole-in-the-wall place, The Anchor Bar where they have perfect quality hamburgers for $3 and $5 pitchers of Leinie's red. C'mon! It was peaceful and relaxing, and I'm telling you my allergies disappeared. (and yes, Paul, Elizabeth and Cate-- you are all correct.)

*I have a semblance of a vacation sort-of-planned!! Whoot! Going to Chicago with Adrian on September 25th. Then I have to move out of my slummy apartment the day I get back. damn.

*I know I need to (and really, really want to) write up my meeting with Juila, 14-year-old music goddess woman-child. I visited her at the Fair--she's working at this lil' ice cream place. How perfect is that? *sigh* I am so obsessed with the Fair. What a wonderful, wonderful place. I'm going for the second time this Sunday with my pops. I have been to the minnesotastatefair every summer of my life--since I was three weeks old.

* I *really* ReAlLy want to write about seeing the White Stripes (my third time, whoa) and all the feelings and ambitions it stirred up inside of me. Stir it up.

*So, those of you who care: I plan on writing more sooooon.

Richard Ashcroft New Album and Coldplay Support Announced!
Hello everyone,Just a quick note to let you know that Richard Ashcroft is in the final stages of completing his new album for Parlophone Records... details will be coming shortly.He is also confirmed as support for Coldplay in December:DecemberWed 14th Earls Court, LONDONSun 18th Telewest Arena, NEWCASTLE Mon 19th Evening News Arena, MANCHESTERTickets will go on general sale at 9am on Friday 2nd SeptVisit seetickets.com to book your ticketswww.richardashcroft.com is currently being updated to include up to date info on what Richard is up to, so keep checking the site.To be the first to receive up to the minute news and updates, sign up HEREAll the best, catch you soon