April in June: LA Times Bookfest, Day 2, and Santa Barbara

The last day of the festival started off with one of my favorite living poets, Kim Addonizio, and it was good to run into her in the green room, along with Elena and Carol Ann and catch up briefly before the reading, and to meet Barbara Hamby again, who lives just about 80 minutes from my south Georgia home. We headed out quickly, though. The last day often is lower energy after Saturday, but not today. Here was the line up:

10 a.m.

Kim Addonizio, Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within

10:30 a.m.

Kevin Prufer, National Anthem

11 a.m.

Barbara Hamby, All Night Lingo Tango

11:30 a.m.

Jim Natal, Memory & Rain

12 p.m.

Carol Ann Davis, Psalm

12:30 p.m.

Mark Irwin, Tall If

1 p.m.

Jeffrey McDaniel, The Endarkenment

1:30 p.m.

Juan Felipe Herrera, Half of the World in Light: New & Selected Poems

2 p.m.

Brendan Constantine, Letters to Guns

2:30 p.m.

James Ragan, Too Long a Solitude

3 p.m.

Sesshu Foster, World Ball Notebook

3:30 p.m.

Douglas Kearney, Fear, Some

4 p.m.

Gail Wronsky, Poems for Infidels

4:30 p.m.

Readings from the Great Poets

Kim pulled out her harp and blew blues in the middle of a fine poetry set and the crowd was awake and alive. Students I introduced her work to five years ago still talk to me about her influence, and her poems have made their way into the high school curriculum of at least two schools in south Georgia. Kevin Prufer, good friend of fellow poet Noah Blaustein, was charming and affable and his excellent work was well received. Barbara made the audience laugh and think, which is a perfect Sunday morning combination, better than church. The rest of the day was packed with LA area poets, except Carol Ann, who now lives in South Carolina. While it might be easy to dismiss the locals as locals, these are good writers. Jim's an old friend and his poetry is wonderfully observed. Carol Ann read from Psalm, mostly, a book I own and like. Mark, who teaches at USC, read his relatively more avant garde work, which I enjoyed, and so did the crowd. Jeffrey McDaniel's subversive, hilarious poetry pushes the boundaries, and I like that. Juan, who spent many years in Fresno, is aging nicely, and his beaming smile warmed the crowd. Brendan, whose poems I hadn't heard before, was sharp-witted and his performance brought lots of people to the tent. James, who draws a big crowd every year, gave his usual strong reading. I missed most of Sesshu (Margaret beaned in, and I had to escort her to the Green Room to hang out briefly before her meeting with Pico Iyer), but he kept the crowd, and quite a few of his young students showed up. Douglas Kearny read with spoken word energy and joyous ferocity, and he didn't let the stage restrict him. His work surprised me. (I read from the books I buy when I come back, and his was probably the class pick.) Gail writes dark, edgy poetry, and she's kind of an LA rock star (No, wait, that would be her daughter playing guitar in Kate Crash). Some of us closed the day reading poems from whomever wasn't us. The last slot is usually slow, so we wanted to spare a reader the indignities of a vanishing crowd. More people were there than we expected, though. I read a Larry Levis poem from California Poetry, an anthology co-edited by Chryss Yost, who provides a nifty segue into the next paragraph, the next city, because she lives in Santa Barbara and she would be joining us for dinner.

Elena tried to get me to stay for drinks with some of the poets, and it's an offer I hated to refuse, but I'd promised my Santa Barbara hosts Amy and George that I'd be in Santa Barbara for dinner, so I hopped in my lame-ass rented Aveo and headed north on Highway 1 through Malibu. Even in an Aveo, it's a beautiful drive, and in about 90 minutes I was there, greeted warmly by Amy and George and Mookie and Nigel. The plan was to dine at the Hollister Brew Pub, where they make excellent beer and good food in a mall. I headed up to Chryss' briefly to catch up with her and her menagerie. And we headed to Hollister for dinner. It was very, very good, but not as good as the company, because, along with Amy and George, Chryss, Dave, Patrick, Cookie Jill, and Barry came out and we enjoyed dining and drinking under the TVs tuned to various sporting events. The casual atmosphere allowed us to be, well, casual, boisterous, and loudish (but never loutish) at times. After dinner, we headed back to the house for a nightcap or two from George's cellar. We started with an amazing Golden Eye pinot and we concluded with a Williams Seylem Sonoma. In between I know we tasted something Rhonish (a grenache, I believe) from Paso Robles, and, after everyone left and Amy had gone to bed (early Monday meeting), George put The Bird and the Bee on while we sipped the last of the pinot.

The next day was quiet, as everyone worked. I went out for Indian food and wandered around on foot, the weather too overcast to head to the beach, and then had a nice coffee at Jeannine's with the ageless Barry Spacks and ageless Chryss and it was good to catch up on the local poetry scene and everything else. Ageless George and ageless Amy had tickets to see a famous blues act whose name eludes me, so many of the people from the night before came over and we hung out until they came back and we enjoyeed more wine and hung out and ate pizza and watched part of the Joy Division documentary, finishing off this too quick visit in high spirits. I had to drive to LA and fly back the next day, classes to teach, finals to write, energy renewed by this trip home, this time with good poetry and great friends and my wonderful hosts. I've been very fortunate to spend this time every year working the book festival and renewing my bonds with friends in LA and Santa Barbara. Soon after I returned home, the San Jesusita fire threatened George and Amy's house and Chryss' (the fire literally stopped at the end of her road) and probably several others and brought home the tenuousness of everything, my great fortune in these few days each year with the best people I know.

April in June: LA Times Bookfest, Day 1

The nice thing about going west from east is the ease with which I wake up early, since 6:30 LA is 9:30 GA. I shower, shave, dress up (for me), and zip to the UCLA campus to hit the green room before Elena and I start working the Poetry Corner Stage, which features a new poet every half hour. You'd think we'd get tired of hearing two full days of poetry, but it doesn't happen. We have too much to do but still we stop and listen. Elena's already in the green room buzzing with authors and entourages, and she's sitting down for coffee with David St. John, and I rush to join them. It's always a joy to see David because he's so welcoming and much more stimulating than the coffee I set down at the table. Robert Pinsky (who taught me much at Berkeley) comes in and Frank Bidart, who won the LA Times Book Award for poetry, and Marie Howe and Linda Gregerson and Dana Goodyear and Victoria Chang and we're introducing and sitting and chatting for twenty minutes before we have to get to work. It's a whirlwind of conversation, threads across time and place and new threads randomly. Robert mentions that we should get innoculated for shingles based on his own recent experience with this common illnes (and I think my friend John Guzlowski would agree). I talk with Frank about having heard that Lee McCarthy, a mutual friend and fellow central valley poet, had recently passed away, and we connected and appreciated her unique energy. Then Elena and I had to go work the stage.

It's always wonderful to see Bill and the staff of Small World Books (their presence is the best part of Southland Tales), who stocks the tables with a fine selection of poetry from people who'll read at the stage and other excellent poetry books that you should own. Saturday's lineup (and their most recent publications)? Funny you should ask:

Poetry Stage

10 a.m.
Dana Goodyear & Victoria Chang , Honey & Junk and Salvinia Molesta respectively

10:30 a.m.
Robert Pinsky, Gulf Music

11 a.m.
Matthea Harvey, Modern Life

11:30 a.m.
Linda Gregerson, Magnetic North

12 p.m.
Carol Muske-Dukes, Sparrow

12:30 p.m.
Frank Bidart, Watching the Spring Festival

1 p.m.
Marie Howe, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time

1:30 p.m.
Jill Bialosky, The Intruder

2:00 p.m.
This was supposed to be Jorie Graham's slot, but she cancelled.
To avoid dead air, Elena Byrne, Tony Barnstone, Sarah Maclay and I took turns reading from our works (and one of Jorie's poems).

2:30 p.m.
John Felstiner, Can Poetry Save the Earth? A Field Guide to Nature Poems

3 p.m.
David St.John, The Face: A Novella in Verse

3:30 p.m.
Cole Swensen, Ours

4 p.m.
Connie Voisine, A Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream

4:30 p.m.
Mindy Netifees & Richard Silberg, Sleepyhead Assassins and Deconstruction of the Blues

5 p.m.
Get Lit Players: Classical Teen Poetry Troupe


Saturday featured a strong lineup with good variety. Robert and David and Connie were my personal highlights, and it was good finally to hear Frank Bidart read in his driving style. I went to Utah with Connie and she was a prize nominee this year! Her book is terrific and I'll teach it in the fall (note: order books, dumbass). Richard Silberg, an avant garde icon, and the Get Lit Players, a troop of young spoken word champions, were very pleasant surprises. John Feltsiner gave the first lecture at one of these events, which he peppered with other people's poetry. Good message, but I think some in the crowd were puzzled. It was one of the smoothest days we'd ever had. Only one reader forgot how to tell time, but we handled that quickly. And Jackson Wheeler, David Oliveira's Solo co-editor, showed up, and we caught up best we could.

Elena hosted a party that night at the Ruskin Center. I enjoyed the drive up, listening to Henry Rollins post-punk program on KCRW, Television, Joy Division, and especially (because I hadn't heard it in ages) The Normal's "Warm Leatherette," which bled into one of my own poems (albeit with a very different ethos), among his many fine selections. I showed up early, set up chairs and tables, while Elena and Carol Ann Davis cooked pasta and made lovely sauces and salads and there was wine. Lots of LA poetry royalty arrived at this casual gathering and to name a few would slight the many, but we ate and drank and enjoyed a fine first day of poetry and conversation and pasta and a perfect LA evening in the Miracle Mile.

April in May: Los Angeles and Santa Barbara, Day 1 and 2: my LAs

My annual trip to California for the LA Times Festival of Books was a quick and busy foray into my home state. Because of my teaching schedule, I didn't make it home to Fresno, so it's just LA and Santa Barbara this year, with a side trip to Huntington Beach.

After landing, I checked into the Airport South Travelodge (clean, cheap, but a bit noisy right on Sepulveda) and called my friend Margaret, left a message, then wandered across the street to Ralph's to buy fruit and wine for my stay, walked around El Segundo to enjoy the cool, unusually clear weather and wake up after a day of travel, then went back to see if Margaret had called back. Making contact was more complicated this year, since stupidly I left my cell phone on my futon in Georgia.

The phone light wasn't blinking, so I called my friend Noah to say hello, and he insisted that I come over right now. I called Margaret back; she was writing a script and committed for a few hours anyway, so I headed to Noah and Cristina's to see them and beautiful Siena and the bubbly new baby and the redesigned house. The house was redesigned so dramatically that I walked up and down the street twice before I realized I was directly in front of it. They added a storey (and a view), updated the look, made it architecturally fabulous and open and flexible. Noah either performed or supervised the work, so I told him he should get a contractor's license; this talent (and just about any other) pays more than his poetic talent, considerable though it is. He was justifiably proud and he beamed and Cristina and Siena played with Lego's, built another tiny happy house. I was impressed. They've together made a home in LA, where transience is the preferred mode of existence. Since I had later plans with Margaret, I had to turn down their generous offer of a meal and a Laker's playoff game on the flatscreen and I headed back to the motel to check for a blinking light.

It didn't blink. I called and left a message and Margaret called later to explain that the writing had gone well and she couldn't stop and I couldn't fault her for that; I wish I had more of those days writing. We agreed to meet at the same El Salvadorian restaurant run by a warm, beautiful, matronly woman and her family. Nothing in the world can beat papusas and carne asada and Margaret's lazer-bright gaze. She tells me what I need to hear instead of what I want to hear, so I value her friendship and counsel, and I'm excited to hear about all her new creative projects. She still acts, but now producing and writing are taking over. She can do exactly what she wants, and to be in the presence of her confidence and calm bearing amid LA's chaos pleased me. I'm the one turning fifty in the fall, but she's the wise one this night, the one with insight and advice on what I should think about, how I should move. I went back to the motel full of beans and light, sipped some wine and reflected, listened to the whoosh of trucks and tv through the thin motel walls.

I took Friday slow, worked out, ate a gyro at a local popular Mediterranean restaurant, came back. The light blinked, Elena touching base about the festival. The prize ceremony I usually attend had been downsized and people who merely worked the festival no longer received free tickets, and you couldn't buy them anymore, either. You had to be invited, and I wasn't, and I might be upset ordinarily, but my dear old Santa Barbara friend and co-editor David Oliveira was reading in Huntington Beach Friday night, and I would have skipped the awards to see him anyway. I left Elena a message not to worry, that I was happy to miss it for David and that I'd see her bright and early Saturday morning.

David lives in Cambodia now with his partner, teaches at a University, and this would be his last trip for a few years, so I had to see David. He offered to pick me up and we drove down together and talked about old times and our current lives. We made a side trip to Long Beach so he could drop a letter off to a friend, and he showed me little Cambodia and told me about the local history, which I knew nothing about. LA seems monolithic, partly because we just call it LA, and that works if you stay on the freeway, but we're really talking about so many different places. Long Beach is not Santa Monica is not the San Fernando Valley is not Sherman Oaks is not downtown is not Montana Street is not Hollywood is not Echo Park is not Venice Beach, etc.

Cambodian signs make me want to stop and eat, but David wants to make sure we get to Huntington Beach with plenty of time so we can eat and find the reading location. He wants Mexican because it's one of the pleasures he misses, and he fills me in on his Cambodian life, what he can get only there and what else he misses from here. I want to go visit him in his home on the Mekong river, browse his considerable poetry library, and share as we have so often a good bottle of wine. His reading was a wonderful success, his voice clear and his new poems authoritative, his new life beginning to emerge in them. I met again Mifawny Kaiser, whom I'd met briefly at various poetry events, but I enjoyed getting to know her better. She's a writer who runs Tebot Bach press and brings poetry to and into the world. I was grateful to be there on a clear night at Golden West College to hear David and another poet I'd met before, Carol V. Davis, read their works. The crowd seemed populated mostly by retired people, and there would be an open mic. I usually cringe at these events because they're too often merely festivals of annoying self-indulgence, but there were surprisingly good writers there and David and I talked about this on our hour long drive back to LA. He came in and we shared a serviceable Bordeaux and a long, warm hug before he left me to another night of whoosh and muffled roomsound.

Thinking about Craig Arnold

Go back to the sunlit world and tell your story.
from "Hymn to Persephone" by Craig Arnold

Thinking because that's all I can do at the moment. That, and worry. I have a trip to blog about, people to thank, papers to grade, but since returning home to the news that Craig never returned to his hotel from his hike up the volcano on Kuchino-erabu-shima, it's been difficult to think of much else than Craig's sudden absence from the observed world. I yet have hope. As children, we all play at getting lost, being rescued. We practice this. We want to find new worlds, bring them back to share with friends and family. This is my hope, that Craig will be found soon, that he found something amazing he just couldn't leave, something he'll bring back to the sunlit world, a story he'll yet tell us. Please.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=74254019683

Update: Oh, Craig, we'll miss your mischief, your song, your light. Until I too am merely story.

Pond Monsters

Hiking around in the woods behind my house both keeps me in touch with nature and also reveals what we humans do to it. Big storms deposit garbage throughout the flood plain, from fast food wrappers to lost soccer balls to dumped futon mattresses. Wildlife is nevertheless abundant, especially birds, including owls, hawks, and great herons, but I've also run into raccoons and snakes, turtles and salamanders, lizards and, once, an armadillo. I've blogged previously about evidence of beavers back there (which has attracted many one-handed typists to this blog, according to the tracker), but there's been no recent beaver activity.


Today I found interesting pondkill. At first I thought it was a dead snake, especially given its size, a bit longer than two feet. Upon closer inspection, I determined that it was some kind of amphibian, with its smooth, slimy skin and tiny eyes. It appears to be an amphiuma, and they can grow up to three feet long. They have sharp teeth and can inflict serious damage, should I for some reason decide to start wading in ponds at night. They're nocturnal and stay mostly in water, because their tiny legs are vestigial, but they can move on land if they have to, mostly to lay eggs. It's big, but only grows to about half the size of the largest salamander, either the Chinese Giant Salamander or the Japanese Giant Salamander (sources disagree which one is actually the largest).

Harvest of Hope, Saint Augustine, Days 3

I know you're on pins and needles, having waited, both of you, so patiently for my review of day three of the Harvest of Hope festival. I arrived around 1:30, since there were few acts I'd wanted to see in the morning. I only have two ears, and I'd almost used up both of them the night before, so a quiet morning was a good way to prepare for the day and night ahead.

Canada's Tokyo Police Club was first up for me. They'd rescheduled their Friday performance due to a "minor health issue" according to their website, and I was grateful for whatever effluvium delayed them because they provided probably my most pleasant surprise of the festival, with their upbeat sound and clever lyrics. Maybe it's the English major in me, but when they sang "Give us your vote" in "Your English is Good," I was ready to. I don't know, maybe think of kicking them through the goalposts of The Decemberists on one side and Los Campesinos! on the other. Oh, Canada, indeed.

Israel's Monotonix was next up on stage one, or, rather, in front of stage one, since they're renowned for performing in the crowd, for being "chaotic." I didn't last long, though. The music was unremarkable, and watching a hairy Levi Elvis wipe his naked ass crack with the mic filled me with ennui. Junior varsity G. G. Allin schtick on a beautiful spring day was as wrong as the hype. Nevertheless, the tight donut of cultish fans morphing around the trio seemed to be enthused, malleable to every one of Levi's commands. I just hope, for the sake of the acts to follow, LE brought his own mic.

So I wandered a bit. Stage two mostly featured rap on Sunday, and I went to check out Inspectah Deck, but he was late and some guy was stalling with his own soul, which wasn't bad, but the crowd was restless. Monotonix thankfully gave way to Holy Fuck, an electro band that interestingly features live precise bass and drums to nail down all the throbbing computer riffs. The musicians around (including aformentioned fellow Canadians TPC) were impressed, but the music seemed suited to more chemical moods than my state at the time.

I wandered back to stage two briefly. Inspectah Deck had finally shown and was rapping while GZA watched and helped. It was hilarious to see the large crowd of all white suburban indie kids from St. A and Gainsville raise their skinny fists like antennas to Compton when ID said, "This one goes out to all my homies in the 'hood," as though he meant them. ID was congenial and I enjoyed watching, listening, but I needed to head to stage three, where my real homies, Ninja Gun, were going to play. I passed through the nearly non-existent crowd for Tiger City, pausing to hear what they're like. It seemed their crowd hadn't made it out from the 80's to hear their legwarmedover Duran Duran/"Mr. Roboto"-era Styx tunecraft.

Tim Version, another of Gainsville's gruff punk mainstays at HOH, was up on Stage three, likable guys with a sense of fun. Gainesville punk is essentially good, Irish-inspired drinking music, and these guys can fuel a good beer binge. I wandered from the stage to say hello to Jessie and Marie, who were "manning" the merch table with Coody and Thad (when they weren't checking in on TV) before the show. (Thanks for the T-shirt, Coody.)

In SAT analogy parlance, Gainesville style, Tim Version is to Gaslight Anthem as Ninja Gun is to:

a. Fake Problems (ok, they're from Naples. You got me, but who said the SAT was fair?)
b. Against Me!
c. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
d. Grabass Charlestons

The answer is c. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Of course, I have to qualify this some. Ninja Gun is from Valdosta, not Gainesville (even though they're bigger in Gainesville), and, while Tom Petty might be more their entree than any of the Gainesville bands I've heard, their sides would have to be the Kinks and T. Rex. Maybe some Buzzcocks or early Beatles for dessert. That is, their blend of country punk is sweet tea cool, and their songs are wryly observant and well-written. "Eight Miles Out" showed off their angular guitar-drenched driving rock capabilities, while "Darwin was a Baptist" revealed their strong sense of regional irony in its beautifully satiric chorus: "Can I get a little more church in my state?/" (and this is an enjambment to make an old poet like me jealous), "give me one more reason to hate/ everything around me/baby it surrounds me" John Coody is a bona fide, Johnny Cash lib'ral, and it's a pleasure to listen to him weave his words through classic rock and country territories, sounding both familiar and brand new at the same time. They're going on national tour starting this month. Look for them.

Grabass Charlestons and Whiskey & Co. were up next on three. Grabass is a longtime, popular Gainesville punk outfit, a little slower, grungier than most Gainesville bands, and they're good live. Whisky played a fine drunken country sprawl of a set, a nice follow-up to Ninja Gun. "Happy Hour" could be a bar anthem if it wasn't so short. Set it on loop and watch out for the floor, honey.

I stepped over to one to check out Ra Ra Riot for a couple of songs. They weave violin and cello nicely into their new-wave inspired sound. Fortunately, they refract the more interesting side of the 80's with updated, sophisticated, multi-layered pop and clear vocals. If you typically like who NPR recommends, check them out.

Heading into the heart of the evening, stage one featured Jacksonville's Pitchfork-darlings-then-rejects The Black Kids (they sold out SO FAST). They were more enjoyable than I expected, having downloaded their initial ep and, sure, it's clear they requested "Love Cats" and "Let's Dance" often on 80's dance night and they probably have tapes of Talk Talk and Culture Club somewhere in the back seat. "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You" is genuinely fun, but the next new thing? Pushing that pile of expectation on top of them could have ruined them. They're virtue, after all, was their uncritical, charming enthusiasm, and I'm pleased to say that, live, their enthusiasm still shows through as they project a nerdish affability.

But I left The Black Kids to check out KRS-One, and he was preaching the virtues of old school (90's, not 70's, the real old school) hip hop, arguing that it's not dead, showing off quick rhymes over anything. Dixie said she admired him for his experimentation, bringing any musical genre into rap, and when he freestyled over "In the Mood," I was convinced.

So when she and Camille said to check out Paul Baribeau over at stage four, I tagged along. I'd never heard of him and I knew what Gaslight Anthem was gonna sound like. PB put out some fine, amusing, observant acoustic guitar, coffeehouse music perfect for thirty-somethings who like a little wisdom and experience along with their sound. Paul would have fit nicely in Saturday's Vanderslice/Darnielson mix with his simple voice and humorous banter between songs. "Think of all the things that are wrong with your life and fix them." He makes it sound easy and fun.

We lingered for acoustic punk-folk activists Ghost Mice, and enjoyed their energy, which flowed nicely after Paul B., but I'd had enough enthusiastic acoustic and headed after a few songs back to stage one, where New Jersey's Gaslight Anthem was finishing their crunching mainstream blue-collar punk set. They've played in Valdosta and they're nice guys.

I wandered over to three briefly to check out the Young Livers, yet more Gainesville punk, maybe angrier, but I needed something slower, so I went back to one and waited for The National, the last act of the evening, while the Ninja Gun crew were headed to three to support Fake Problems, whom I'd seen in VD.

Brooklyn's The National were professional, serious, passionate, which was why I wanted to see them live. The crowd knew the songs, reflecting aging worldliness underlined by music that can ring melodic fatigue or erupt into a frontal guitar assault. They played exactly an hour, and, while it's easy to put them in the Springsteen rivival pigeonhole along with The Hold Steady, these songs fit me better, since I've enjoyed that slowdive baritone style via Tindersticks and Arab Strap for some time. I nominate "All the Wine" to the top ten wino list just for its chorus ("All the wine is all for me"), and "Fake Empire" still stirs with its reflections about what we've become, those optimistic horns prophetic at the end, I hope. Unfortunately, they had to cut their set short due to the 11 PM curfew, and so "Abel" didn't make it into the warm spring air that night. I left with the image of Matt Beringer banging together two white wine bottles (which he'd dutifully emptied during the course of the set) along with the beat to one of the songs, but I don't remember which. "All the Wine?" "Squalor Victoria?" "Mr. November?" "Apartment Story?" I think it was "Apartment Story." It punctuated nicely, sounding about to shatter. I left feeling "tired and wired," somber and wanting wine myself, but red, not that white Matt was drinking.

I ran off the festival Monday at Anastasia state park, the waves my music, the white beach my stage.

Harvest of Hope, Saint Augustine, Days 1 (sort of) and 2

Large music festivals are always crucibles of noise and odors, and clearly the allure of wonderful noise makes us tolerate the portapotties and the unshowered aromas of musical sophisticates pushing against you toward the stage. Year one of the three-day, four stage Harvest of Hope Festival (schedule), a benefit for migrant workers, was no different. The Saint John's County fairground location was reasonably accessible and spacious, and it was a quick drive from lovely Saint Augustine (and my hotel room; I like showers).

While I had to miss Friday's shows and headliner Girl Talk (not well-received by those I talked to), I did catch two of the acts, Cheap Girls and Failure's Union, the Wednesday before the festival at a local shed show. Excellent bands both, and friends of Ninja Gun, so we were lucky to have them until the cops showed up and shut us down. Michigan's Cheap Girls played a set pleasurably ensconced between 80's Minneapolis punk and 90's Ohio indie, while Buffalo's Failures' Union crunched through a healthy set of blue collar punk. FU's Jason also plays bass in Lemuria, a terrific band my Pandora station introduced me to.

I arrived Saturday, early afternoon, in time to catch Her Space Holiday's last two songs, and then I headed to stage three to hear Alabama blues vet Willie Green sing and blow harp for a small but enthusiastic tribe. Excellent grounding for what was to follow, though he deserved more than the twenty minutes they allotted him. I rambled over to stage four to catch some of Gainesville's excellent Towers of Hanoi (thanks for starting with fave "Empty Chapels" ) before checking in on Pitchfork darlings Deerhunter. They were pleasant enough--sort of Ian McCullough fronting Saucer-Full-of-Secrets-era Pink Floyd pleasant--but it was 2:00 pm, brightly sunny, and there weren't any chemical enhancements save beer around to chill the crowd into the kind of nodding acquiescence toward ecstasy the music suggests.

Midafternoon's S1 acts didn't appeal, so I headed back to S4 and its regional punk flavor for Saturday. Moutbreathers were loud and raucous, and Hometeam featured sloppily affable beer-fueled punk, so, drunk with that noise, I headed over to catch some of Strike Anywhere and touch base with many of the Valdostans who attended, but left quickly to S2 to catch the end of Alabama's Wild Sweet Orange's set (definitely worth listening more into) in anticipation of John Vanderslice and Mountain Goat's John Darnielle's back to back sets. Vanderslice made it feel like he was home, and he was close, playing his well-crafted and intelligently penned unplugged pop. I checked in on Bouncing Souls between the sets, and they pleased their crowd, but I left quickly to hear Darnielle, accompanied at times by Vanderslice, play his Mountain Goats nerd-chic witty or wry song narratives concluding with "The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton," giving me the chance to yell out "Hail Satan" and smile big.

Among the most anticipated Saturday performers, Bad Brains took over stage one and proceeded to lecture the crowd into irritation. I mean, just play. You don't have to explain to those who don't get that you're covering all of your genre-bending oeuvre (hardcore, reggae, and metal). Who cares if they get it? Nobody goes to music festivals for the lectures.

I left to go hear Nebraska's Tilly and the Wall, at Dixie and Camille's suggestion, and I wasn't sure at first. I have what I hope is a healthy skepticism about the new wave revival; I think most of the groups are listening to the wrong bands, the sappy, superficial leg-warmer synth-pop of the 80's played to excess at so many 80's dance parties. Tilly also features, to my knowledge, pop's only tap-dancer as a key percussion component. She's cute and keeps the beat, but she made me feel a little like I was at a dance recital. Still, the band managed to win me over. I think it was their cover of Yaz' "Only You" that finally won me over, and "Pot, Kettle, Black" has a nice, hard, anthemic, nasty adolescent edge.

I caught some of Gainesville's Against Me!, much lauded and big supporters of the HOH cause, on the main stage. It's the popular punk style these days, and they're enjoyable enough, but after a few songs I gravitated back to S2 to catch Lucero's driving set. The music is honest and you feel it in the belly and the heart: "I kissed the bottle when I shoulda been kissin' you." Pedal steel slide and Ben Nichols worn out voice found that front-porch moonshiney place that hadn't been touched all day, and the crowd love it. I headed back to stage one for the last act, Propaghandi, but it was the wrong energy after Lucero, so I took that with me out to the car and the short drive back to St. A. and a night's sleep before Sunday's musical feast.

Listen Up

The Kids are Alright: House Shows, Georgia Style

Somebody posts a bulletin on Myspace, flyers the walls at school, texts a few people, and we show up. Jason and Eric's. Ria's House of Sin (bring some paint for the walls). Jackson's shed in our many warm months. Or Bobby and Tina's (especially if she's baking cakes). Bonfire and trees and Spanish moss, kids on porches, lots of vinyl against the wall. Drums and guitars. Music in South Georgia happens in homes, because the bars want cover bands so drunk sorority girls and jocks can sing and swill along. It's not that we don't like covers at the house shows--a good song or two in a set is expected. But there are few places for original bands to play in this town, which surprisingly boasts much excellent original music. In this blog, I will summarize the last few weeks here, why I stay.

Last Friday Madeline came into town on her way to Gainesville and she played a solo set at Jason and Eric's. John G. opened and sang his childlike, offbeat songs and strummed pleasurably as the crowd grew inside and on the porch. One might say that he's our version of Daniel Johnston, but John is finishing an MA degree in Biology, so whatever madness compels him comes most likely from a bottle. (Later he was excused after excess overcame him and he accidentally put Bo's head through a window, but usually there's no drama, and even so, all is quickly forgiven).

Madeline Adams of Madeline was lovely and her voice bell perfect as she belted out songs of love, loss, grief, and the classic conflict between desire and faith ("the bible or the bottle" indeed). Her new album, White Flag, set for release this month, boasts some of her best songwriting to date. And as listeners to the album will discover, surrender isn't necessarily a bad thing. Even in the face of death and despair and lost love, desire remains her touchstone. So surrender. Maybe it was because it was a house show, but she looked up into the audience while she sang, asked for suggestions, seemed, well, at home, hanging out with friends. They knew all her songs and she played until she ran out of ones she remembered the words to.

Trailer of Tears (affectionally known as TOTs) played next. TOTs is a side project of local music godfathers Ninja Gun's drummer Jeffrey Haineault, and blends doo-wop, psychedelic rock, glam, and punk with exciting results. He and NG's talented frontman Jonathan Coody recorded the Myspace tracks at the infamous trailer, though now Jeffrey has surrounded himself with a live band of local talents. Travis of Gainesville veterans Towers of Hanoi remarked at their Gainesville debut last week that Jeffrey seems to be in one of those amazing creative zones. He doesn't know what he can't do yet, and let's hope he never finds out. Travis said Pavement and I said Roy Orbison and we both said yes. And we could have said Brian Ferry and Jerry Lee Lewis and T. Rex and Chuck Berry and Replacements and we would have said yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. The Myspace songs are just the tip of what has been coming down from their DiCaprio-killing iceberg, given the new songs they've added to their oeuvre that aren't even recorded yet. When they play house shows, it's loud and fun and the crowd is effervescent with energy (and PBR). Taylor Patterson keeps a steady beat on drums along with Bobby on bass, while Jason adds deft lead to Jeffrey's punked up doo-wop/glam croons.

No More Analog closed out this night, Taylor back on drums along with the Captain on bass and vocals and Jackson on lead and vocals, and this fine trio played a strong set of pumped up punk and power pop. NMA isn't afraid to raunch it up, and so if songs about pregnant sex ("No Vacancy") and hermaphrodites ("Pseudosexual") offend, well, you wouldn't have been invited in the first place. But their sound blends bass forward fist pumping punk with classic 80's and 90's guitar pop sensibilities (think Replacements, Cracker, Soul Asylum, Pixies) with an irreverence only a place this deep in the south could produce. They're newest song, "Fresh Romance," sounded especially fine, as its chorus screams, "Tonight."

Just a week before that, pretty much the same lineup of locals showed up at Jason and Erik's in support of Greenland is Melting, a "fauxlk" band featuring banjo, an old suitcase fitted with a bass drum pedal, mandolin, the occasional guitar, and lots of vocal enthusiasm. It's hard not to get caught up in their downhome upbeat songs laced with irony and humor. They're fun and coming back here next month for more and I'll be there.

P.A.W. (Pinnacle of American Weaponry) played their two songs that night. P.A.W. is a new project featuring Nick Riggle of VD veterans Second to Edison along with Jake and Jeffrey from Ninja Gun and Jason Storer of TOTs. Still too new to characterize, so far I've heard driving guitar-driven rock and I'm looking forward to more from them.

And a week before that, Ria opened her House of Sin to a ten-band show featuring most of the local bands above, along with False Arrest and Mandala.

False Arrest is a phenomonal band of four young men intent on resurrecting 80's hardcore, if only to pull its brain out by the stem and smash it to the floor. I missed them at the House of Sin show, because I was hosting David St. John's poetry reading, but they play all out. Jimi is a gymnastic frontman screaming out vocals and slamming his slim half-naked form all over the floor ("I don't even know what's going on in my own head"). Teddi and Bo handle guitar and bass, and Anthony machine guns on drums.

I walked into the show while Mandala was playing their psychedelic instrumental space jams. Some of their extended guitar riffs remind me of Hum or Quickspace, dense and throbbing and complex, at times majestic in their sound scape. I love "Readheads, Huh," which I can hear Dave, bass and guitar, saying in poetry class quizzically and without irony. They've threatened to write lyrics, but it's the guitar interplay and complex rhythms that make this more than acid jams.

Meanwhile, people are coming and going, painting on the walls, a sudden Francis Baconesque figure at the back of the house, pixies and cartoon balloons, the obligatory naked manikin hung from the ceiling. Or vinyl Joe Jackson spinning while folks are still arriving, or the hot shed full noise and mirth when it's warm. Tina will be usually be dancing and everyone is welcome, even the police officers if they happen show up to shut us down, and they occasionally do, but not before a lot of good music has fed our local starving ears. Ya'll come over for the next one.

Los Campesinos! and Titus Andronicus, Jan. 19, Jack Rabbits

Multiply literate existential anarchists Titus Andronicus, from New Jersey, could be the bar band in a Thomas Pynchon novel. At Jack Rabbits in Jacksonville, Patrick Stickles perched above the rest of the band, impassioned channeler of the songs, more medium than singer. It's the only way I can explain his remarkable range of vocal influences, from Lou Reed to Replacement's Westerberg to Clash's Strummer to Pogue's MacGowan, though he's slight and jerks around sometimes as though possessed by Ian Curtis. The band lays a storied sonic tapestry underneath Stickle's voice, woven through with rich influences from sock-hop and surf-rock, classic punk, jig and dirge, grunge and 90's indie, even the Boss. Two of them have literature degrees, but, while allusions from Brueghel (clearly Auden's) to Hunter S. Thompson and Albert Camus to Cormac McCarthy punctuate their work, they're working class scholars and know that when the revolution comes, they'll attack the ivory tower first. That is, their songs are accessible and ironically intelligent anthems for the meaninglessness of life, which I suppose boys from the New Jersey suburbs know more about than the rest of us. The pinaccle for me was "Fear and Loathing in Mahwah, NJ," as Stickle hammered out a long closing jig crescendoing into collapse and a bleating recorded reading from the darkest passage of the bloodiest Shakespeare play. Fuck this description, which is just lists and lame comparisons. If you like nothing, you will love Titus Andronicus.

Envoi: After the Los Campesinos! finished, while fans milled about groveling for autographs and conversation (myself included), Patrick started playing around with Los Campesinos!' glockenspiel, fascinated, picking out a melody, utterly absorbed. Perfect.

Los Campesinos! followed with a strong and strikingly upbeat set (despite the absence of ill Harriet [get well] and her violin), but certainly not diminished in enthusiasm or dancibility. They're difficult to describe, but think Toy Dolls backed by Arcade Fire (on nitrous oxide) singing songs Robert Smith and Siouxsie Sioux might have composed chronicling their various beautiful dissipated difficulties and darknesses. LC! threw out their ironically, clashingly upbeat symphonic tight pop in all its exuberantly desperate yearning. No matter how fucked up the situations in the songs, it's hard to be sad when you're dancing, and everyone was, from the "classics" like "Death to Los Campesinos!" through the new songs dealing with love and loss and the sad, shitty state of the world we're all slogging through. I especially enjoyed the "Box Elder" intro into one of their songs. Which one? I can't recall, but we should all be happy that, as the title song posits, "WE KID OURSELVES THERE'S FUTURE IN THE FUCKING, BUT THERE IS NO FUCKING FUTURE." And we collectively were, carried by Garreth's bright cheery vocals and Aleksandra's Elizabeth Elmore-ish countervocals and the band's perfectly timed chaos and even that one girl on the dance floor who never, ever stopped dancing.

After the lights came on, the band hung out and chatted and signed merch. Garreth is personable, charming, and as cheerful as the band sounds. Aleksandra is absolutely lovely and a bit shy (I mentioned my fondness for Elizabeth Elmore's Sarge and The Reputation). Tom, lead guitar and song writer, turned out to be a fellow Califone fan, so we had that, you know, irritating to anyone not in the know, whole nerd fan conversation.

Stuck in the Office

It's raining outside and I'm stuck in my office, so I'll make the most of it by writing my first blog of the year, two days before Obama takes office and even as the sigh of national relief begins its slow release, not toward rest, but to regather for the hard work ahead--so much damage to undo, more than we even know of, no doubt. Expectations are high, but I'm just hoping he can crash land this mother like Sully into the Hudson. Extracting the tendrils of incompetence (i.e. ideological hires in career positions) from so many institutions is going to prove tricky, at best, but here's to hoping for the best. But he can change the American ethos.

Two of the members of my Harlem Renaissance class are attending, and they will offer their first-hand accounts in class. It's a good time to be teaching a Harlem Renaissance class with its theme of liberation and free expression in the face of a nation besotted so long in bigotry and lynching. Harlem in the twenties offered hope through literature, art, and music that carries through all of this, and so, as the music plays and as Elizabeth Alexander reads her poems this week, I have to think those early voices speaking out, those humanizing voices, have finally won their argument.

Year End

It's been a long one and over too quickly at the same time. Much has happened that I skipped because love needs me to for now or because I was too busy. Importantly, I failed to record my parents' 50th anniversary, which I attended in Fresno, and the trip to get there, which took me through Santa Barbara and visits with many of the friends and fellow writers about whom I've written previously in this forum--my hosts George and Amy and Chryss and, since it was Amy's birthday and she had a party, a cavalcade of Santa Barbara's elite (well, they're elite to me). There was an all too brief side trip to visit Chris and Nadya in Lompoc to deliver my tiny book. Then on to Fresno, a warm and lovely trip, topped off by my surprise arrival to the celebration that my sister Kelly organized magnificently, and which included many family members, cousins and uncles and aunts, including my brother Todd and his family, and even one old high school buddy, Mark Driscoll--some of whom I hadn't seen in years. Mom and Dad were radiant as I've ever seen them, even youthful. Then the next afternoon, I drank another bottle of wine and conversed with Peter Everwine (I wish everyone this new year the gift of a fine bottle shared with an imminently wise friend), and then briefly visited Charles Hanzlicek and his wife Diane and talked about life and politics and their war of election signs with their neighbor. In many ways, this trip was both time travel and another coat of laquer over the grain.

Time is weird. It passes largely outside of us, around us, because in this moment we feel largely the same, fizzing away in our acuities and abstractions, ebb as flow, so when we re-arrive into a bubble of familiarity many years later, its passing is writ in wrinkles and frailty on others and to them, I suppose, on me. But for me (and, yes, you), now is always now, and I feel much as I did back in school, a kid with a new piece of chalk or worried about Daisy Wallace and would she be all right after the fire that took so much from her. It never leaves, the senses of possibility and concern. Certainty and uncertainty swirl, and the un becomes one like Schrodinger's cat and you open the trunk and, looking right at it, you still aren't sure if it's dead or just sleeping. Yearning mediates each moment still, if not as uncontrollably, and loss accumulates irrepressibly, and to what end is always the wrong question to ask anyway. There's never an end. There's just stopping, and there's just going until you do. So, go.

On the Road Trip that Never Ends: Skipping Woodstock

I like writing about road trips, car full of scraps of places I've been, things I ate, windshield the best movie I ever saw, skies and skies. Asphalt and shoulder and exit and merge and falling rock. That painful self-extraction from the driver seat after three and a half hours at 80 miles per to buy gas and a bag of m&ms.

But I can't go to Woodstock they way I've gone everywhere else. I can't just report on the KTD monastery and my hike up the mountain, Bread Alone, beautiful Devil's Kitchen (and the black trumpets I picked there), The Poet's Walk on the Hudson, my crappy motel, buying a little Tibetan carpet, coffee and ice cream, Annadale and Rheinbeck. You see, I was with Amy those three days, and to try to report on all these moments, sweet as they were, makes all this too complicated for here. Love is not a tourist. I can't separate it out, and so I won't.

I went to Woodstock, and then I went home, spent one more night in a Virginia motel, sauteed those trumpets in butter with pasta, and arrived home to three cats and looming fall classes. I've been waiting for distance to kick in so I could narrate all this, so I could take what's inside and put it out here. I can't.

It's a Girl

Results

We guess http://sensesworking.blogspot.com is written by a woman (57%), however it's quite gender neutral.

Thanks to George (Georgia?) and the Gender Analyzer and Julia Kristeva, and yes, we just gotta have fun.

Seven Squared

Birthday starring two classics: a 1982 Leoville Las Cases and The Big Lebowski. Thanks to Rob for the latter. Thanks to my patience for the former.