skip to main |
skip to sidebar
It’s far too easy to write about the South. Everything is broken and there are very few repairmen. It’s a place where they're still holding on to Confederate currency and all the best barbecue stands still fly the rebel flag. In short, it’s a writer's paradise, so far away from New York and the rest of the civilized world that it’s difficult to recall the existence of the other when you’re stationed in one.
Why don’t we write about the South more often? I’ll tell you. Like a photo of a beautiful sunset becomes just another snapshot when compared to all the rest, reports filed from below the Mason-Dixon line seem to wilt when held up to the opening coda of To Kill A Mockingbird, the poetry of James Dickey. After such history, such tradition, what’s the point of trying? New writers line up like tourists next to those Southern giants, ready to capture all the contradictory quirks without the any of the measured perspective it takes to both live in and write about this fucked-up place.
The kind of place that, earlier this week, turned the national gaze away from a philandering father with a plus-sized family to something more serious—politics. Well, the politics of philandering, anyway.
When I first heard the governor of my childhood state had gone missing, I was sitting on the cement floor of my family's fireworks store in Columbia, SC. How unlikely, I thought, to misplace the governor of a state. Amusing catastrophes call for amusing solutions, so I proposed the formation of an elite task force made entirely of governors to find and rescue Mark Sanford.
Leading the team would (obviously) be California’s Arnold, the only man strong enough in his convictions to coax ex-Gov. Jesse Ventura to out of retirement for one last mission. Also re-joining the ranks of Team: Governors would be Medical Officer Kathleen Sebelius. Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm would play the wheel-woman. Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush would round out the team as an expert in logistics—and knives.
Our Team would track Gov. Sanford along the Appalachian Trail, only to find that he was held captive by angry ex-Governor and criminal mastermind Mitt Romney as a lure to unite all the governors in the fight against Washington.
As I saw it, sitting cross-legged on the concrete, pricing fireworks, it was a pretty funny idea. Kind of like Saturday Night Live’s “Ex-Presidents” cartoon series, only fewer people would get the joke. And, like most of my dumb jokes, I decided to forget about it.
Then yesterday happened, with the press conferences and the national attention and nothing was funny anymore. Mark Sanford is nothing if not an idealist. Here is a man who so despises any hint of socialism he turned down $700 million in government stimulus funding. What Sanford has done for the history of political philandering is no less monumental. No, Sanford wasn't funny anymore. I, for one, thought he was borderline heroic. This was something I had to see for myself.
They’re pouring new asphalt in the capital city, so when I drove the family truck down Assembly St, the roadway was a rough shawl, a reject from the long-closed mills downriver. The old truck took 10 minutes to summit Governor’s Hill, the square block where 12 or 13 families sit at the feet of the Governor’s Mansion. Southerners haven't forgotten their castes.
By now, I’m sure you know what amounts to the full story. Sanford allowed a “special friendship” with a woman who was not his wife to simmer for eight years across two continents. He flew to Buenos Aires, telling his staff he would be hiking the Appalachians. He spent those five days “crying in Argentina” to try and get resolution to the relationship with this woman.
And after at least five months of cover-up, after five days in absentia, during one of the most honest and sad and completely human press conferences I've ever seen, he didn't seem like he'd found any resolution at all. For all of his apologies, Sanford seemed to forget the most significant one; he was still in love.
As someone who is also currently in love, I completely and totally understand. How else could Sanford have booked a flight and stolen out from one America to another? What could he have been thinking—what was the best possible outcome of his trip? Did Sanford think he would be welcomed in South America with open arms, maybe elect him Governor of Argentina out of sheer goodwill?
No. He didn’t think that. He wasn’t thinking at all—he was in love. Like I said, I get that.
The better question is this: How did he get away with it for five days in the age of cell phone cameras and Twitter? I figured it out when I drove past the Governor’s Mansion to find—nothing. No TV crews, no press compound. There are no paparazzi in the South—no 24-hour news cycle constantly monitoring credit card transactions and tracking whereabouts of celebrity politicians. How did Sanford slip away to Argentina? I assume he just bought a ticket and left.
The two cop cars parked at the Mansion’s front gate sat empty. It seems that even the new Southern police gave up trying. What’s the point of crowd control when the reporters have all given up—it’s just far too easy.
Originally in SpliceToday at: http://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/southern-comfort
After the too-short, two-year stint that Canada enjoyed at the top of the proverbial indie rock food chain, those Converse-wearing, tight pant enthusiasts who pick the next cool thing (probably in a back room somewhere in Silver Lake) decided that Brooklyn was to be the next source of what's next, and we all started listening to blog-pop with an appropriate amount of disdain.
During the Canadian reign it was okay to like big, soaring rock-y anthems. It was okay to listen to musicians who shared their feelings and sang about love. It was okay to like, even love, Feist.
For a short time, it seemed like Canada's main export was 9.4-rated records. The nation's figurehead band, Broken Social Scene, described it well enough. The band itself was comprised of as many as 19 rotating members, with at least 5 spinoff side-projects (Feist, Apostle of Hustle, Metric, Stars, and Do Make Say Think). Broken Social Scene had a diagram drawn on their Web site, presumably to keep all the connections straight.
The two Canadian bands who stopped by Echo Park on back-to-back nights last week have similar pedigree. You might know the duo Handsome Furs by lead singer Dan Boeckner's other band, Wolf Parade (not to be confused with the other Wolf Parade side projects: Sunset Rubdown, Swan Lake, or Frog Eyes—Canadians and their side projects, eh?). The second band, the Constantines are atypical with only five members and no spinoffs (yet).
When I first saw the Constantines perform in my hometown, Detroit, they had a penchant for being theatrical. Playing their guitars behind their heads, standing on their instruments, jumping in unison, they yelled for the "death of rock-n-roll" while delivering its re-birth. I walked into the Echo last Wednesday as they hit the call-and-response verse of their signature song “Nighttime/Anytime, It's Alright,” just in time to scream the response: "Turn it up!" Lead singer Bryan Webb smiled his big, goofy smile, but I was the only member of the audience who actually participated.
Certainly there was enough drama in Webb's voice, which carries the fire of a young Joe Strummer, and in the musicianship of the rest of the band. But something was off.
Whatever it was, it struck the Handsome Furs the following night at the Echoplex too. After announcing that they were "fucking terrified" to be playing in Los Angeles, the husband-and-wife duo launched into material from their new release Face Control. But as energetic as the Furs were running around the stage, dedicating songs to hack directors, and as loud as the audience cheered them on, they couldn't get comfortable, remarking only, "Quiet crowd."
Maybe our friends to the north could sense the sea change. Certainly I could. Or maybe I’ve already taken my first step towards being a curmudgeon-y music fan, a path that will lead inevitably to an embroidered Constantines Reunion Tour 2030 Hawaiian Shirt and a beer gut.
But all is not lost. Across town, another Canadian band, Ontario's The Tragically Hip took the stage at the Troubadour. The Hip have performed as a band for over 25 years, outlasting fads of genre, not just location. So, cheer up, young Canadian bands. the early 00's might be over, but that doesn't mean that Canadian rock is forgotten. Or irrelevant. Those Hip shows? Sold-out for two nights.
Originally in Los Angeles Magazine at: http://www.lamag.com/do/blog.aspx?dt=06/18/2009
For a local artist, Frank Fairfield did a fine job playing hard to get. There he was, the opening act for the now-legendary two-night Fleet Foxes residence at the Echo before their popularity really kicked in. Fairfield was just walking off the stage when I walked in the door (okay, I was late). And there he was again, packing up his gear at the 2008 F-Yeah Music Fest, surely the only act to bicycle away from the show with a guitar, a fiddle, and an antique wooden chair strapped to his back (okay, so I’m always late).
When I finally did catch Fairfield, opening once again for the Fleet Foxes on the L.A. leg of their victory tour at the El Rey last year, he looked straight from Walden Pond. On any other musician, the garb of a 1920s Dust Bowl farmer would have rung false. Hell, in this town of musical opportunists, playing a banjo sometimes seems like more of a gimmick than a lifelong passion, but, here again, Fairfield is different.
To begin, his voice: Fairfield sounds like Skip James—as if he’s singing with a knife sticking out of his back. He cries blues songs with train-wreck tears. He’s authentic.
Fairfield's latest local appearance, a free concert on the back patio of Stories bookstore in Echo Park last weekend, was similarly down-to-earth. In the darkness of the evening, the graffiti that frames Stories' backyard softened, noise from eastbound traffic on Sunset faded, and when the 30-or-so people in attendance concentrated long enough on Fairfield and his opening act, Triple Chicken Foot, the patio began to resemble, as advertised, a campfire. That is, until a Quinceañera, complete with what looked like a bouncy castle, thundered up across the municipal parking lot. Fairfield took the stage with Afrika Bambaataa's “Planet Rock” thumping away, looking like a visitor in a foreign land. But with just one flash of his wrist, Fairfield's fiddle silenced the distractions and recaptured the mood. After that moment of initial uncertainty, the crowd was rapt, whooping and hollering with each humble showing of skill. At one point, Fairfield even seemed to hold a quiet control over the party down the street, their low baseline matching the steady tap of his foot, the crowd looking at one another in half-belief, all knowing they were witnessing something special.
Two hours after the show had ended, long after the loud party had shut down, I passed Stories again on my way to get a slice of pizza. From the patio came that unmistakable voice. It couldn't be, I thought, but there he was, Frank Fairfield, sitting in his wooden chair with the members of Triple Chicken Foot surrounding him, a bottle of Jack Daniels at his feet, still singing the blues.
Originally in Los Angeles Magazine at: http://www.lamag.com/do/blog.aspx?dt=06/16/2009
It was hot inside The Smell. The small rock club that shares an alleyway with that paragon of air conditioning, The Edison, has a way of heating up. It was so hot that my camera lens fogged up uncontrollably. It was so hot that unbuttoning most of the buttons on my shirt seemed like a reasonable idea.
The Smell's patrons, a mix of shorter-than-average flannel-wearers, didn't do much in the way of dancing on this past Saturday, June 14th, though that might not be attributable to the heat as much as the on-again, off-again fashion of dancing. That night, with a triple-header lineup of Nite Jewel, Abe Vigoda, and Telepathe, dancing seemed decidedly out.
Certainly it didn't help that the night's big name, Brooklyn's Telepathe, is a fundamentally cool band. You could play their music at full blast in a vodka bar for an hour and none of the ice would melt. Part of this is owed to the vocal harmonies shared between the group's founding members, Melissa Livaudais and Busy Gangnes, which have been compressed, condensed, and (can't avoid it) chilled just south of Ladytron.
But that's not to say that Telepathe is, as the nameplate of their electronic contemporaries suggest, music for robot women. There's a definite life to it - a clattering, beating heart that suggests the youth of the artists. If the all-ages crowd at The Smell looked like they were all breaking curfew, the band on stage somehow looked even younger.
And that is just how it should be - a young band playing cool music in what will likely go down as the hottest club in Los Angeles.
Originally in Los Angeles Magazine
I talked with the artist Coop for 20 minutes about the following topics: Mexico, rally racing, drinking, and hot rods. Not mentioned: Art.
For the past three years, the LA-based artist has competed in the La Carrera Panamericana race up the backbone of Mexico to the US border, surviving more than a few hairpin turns and washed out roads. Unlike the Gumball 2000 rally, which has softened over the years from a true race into more of a mobile posing platform, the elites nudging their Rolls Royces cross-country, the biggest danger being a wayward bug hit at five over the limit, Carrera has stayed true to its roots. Racers drive the same vintage cars that thundered over the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the early 1950s. Transit courses are still run on the same pockmarked two-lane roads, with unexpected competition from the locals and only a passing glance of protection from the Federales.
Coop told me about races past, silencing his cell phone when it rang, excitement deep in his voice. And all cliches aside, I felt as if I understood more about his art than if I questioned him about it directly. His forms are just as vibrant and full of life, just as incendiary and raunchy as a decal-sprayed hot rod racing Carrera in the 1950s. His latest collection, shown at the Corey Helford Gallery in Culver City, is crowded with lascivious figures: Smoking devils next to smoking women, all winking cheekily at political correctness.
The real Coop is too busy thinking about racing and adventure to worry if his paintings are too raunchy for the middlebrow. He's too busy working for his play, playing for his work. After all, that makes for the better story.
Originally in Los Angeles Magazine
