Stuff I've been writing: Ape School profile, Origivation Magazine 2/10

The primary interview for this joint took place at sunset in a grass patch behind the North Star Bar in Fairmount last July, but due to technical difficulties (publications folding, my procrastination), it wasn't published till now. It's by far one of the chillest, friendliest interviews I've ever done (another candidate for that, my chat with Reading Rainbow, will appear in the March issue), and I still think Ape School is criminally underrated in Philly and elsewhere.

In other exciting news, Origivation has a new editor with a lot of new ideas, so expect something more than long-ass profiles (not that there's anything wrong with that; I've written enough of them) in the future.

Most Listened '09

I am incapable of keeping up with music or having any clue what the Best Of anything of anything are, but here's my survival Top 10 -- the songs that helped me make it through another crap year of crap, according to my iTunes. Youtube links where applicable, mp3s forthcoming if I ever figure out how to upload them:

1. Orange Juice -- Simply Thrilled Honey (slightly different version, but they are in an OJ factory!)
2. Times New Viking -- Drop Out (live in Houston)
3. Silver Jews --Long Long Gone
4. Bob Dylan / The Band -- You Ain't Going Nowhere
5. Fleet Foxes -- White Winter in Hymnal (got me through Jan. in Pittsburgh and has not been listened to since, actually)
6. Barrett Strong -- You've Got What it Takes
7. Camera Obscura -- Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken
8. Little Iva & Her Band -- Continental Strut
9. Roy Acuff -- This World Can't Stand Long (found a live Dylan cover from 2000)
10. Al Green -- Funny How Time Slips Away

honorary most youtube'd
Grizzly Bear -- Two Weeks
Lady Gaga -- Paparazzi acoustic version

the smell of it

Let us suppose that a traditional hierarchy of criticism still floats out there in the ether somewhere. You know, literature and visual arts at the top, then maybe dance and theater and instrumental music, then all those things affiliated with the grubby masses like movies and pop music and TV on the next rung (I said traditional), then food and fashion, both of which are too aesthetic to rank any higher but still employ an admirable and tangible amount of skill. Then, down in the dust at the bottom, are the provinces of the effeminate and the frivolous: wine, cigars, perfume, hotels. Writing about these is just more or less an arena for rich dilettantes to throw around made-up terms like "wet rock mouth feel" or "strident floral accords," n'est-ce-pas?

One reason often given for the fruitlessness of writing about scent is that it's too personal, too evocative of individual memories. But come the hell on -- that only makes sense if hearing a certain song doesn't call to mind how it played every half hour at your old job and the sensation of the too-high cash register drawer slamming into your rib cage after each sale (the song being "Marianne" by Leonard Cohen) or if the taste Neapolitan ice cream doesn't transport you to your grandparents' yellow kitchen on a Saturday night. In other words, I don't buy that one of the five senses is any better at evoking memories than the other four.

There's also the old chestnut that goes "Writing about ______ is like dancing about architecture." This also is b.s. The whole point of writing is that you can do it about anything, if you're good, and make it interesting to read. And I'm no modern dance expert but someone has probably choreographed an homage to Frank Gehry or Frank Lloyd Wright, and it's probably pretty cool.

Writing about writing does pose less of a challenge than writing about music or art or dance, of course. Attempting to translate the visual into the verbal was my favorite part of art history classes and essentially the reason I majored in such a useless subject.

So maybe that's why I've developed a thorough appreciation of perfume reviews lately. How does one convey the sensation of smelling something into language? And not just language for its own sake, as with some poetic turn of phrase, but into words that enable readers to mentally conjure the same fragrance and decide whether or not it's something they want their bodies to smell like.

Luca Turin and Tania Sanchez are the reigning monarchs of this particular art. Their Perfumes: The Guide is an encyclopedic work from 2008 (with updates available online) that can be read from A-Z, it's so entertaining. It provides a good foundation, including several essays and a glossary, and immediately made me want to hunt down and smell every 5 start scent they describe. Take this bit, from the review of Dior's Dune:

"Dune is a strong contender for Bleakest Beauty in all of perfumery. It is clearly headed from the start for toward that peculiarly inedible cheap-chocolate drydown that made Must, Allure, and a thousand others, though Dune's is the best of the lot, dissonant but interesting. But the way it gets there is extraordinary, with a beguiling transparency, even freshness, particularly in the anisic carrot-seed top notes. It is hard to pin down what makes Dune so unsmiling from top to bottom; it's as if every perfumer accord had become a Ligeti cluster chord, drained of life, flesh-toned in the creepy way of artificial limbs, not real ones. Marvelous."

Color me fascinated. Of course, the 1 star reviews are much funnier: "A trite, canned-fruit-salad concoction of no interest except to illustrate the cynicism of its makers," Turin writes of Armani Remix for Her.

This being the age of Web 2.0 (or Web.2, as a former professor of mine would always say), the anonymous hordes have of course gotten in the perfume-reviewing game. Obtaining samples has gotten easier and cheaper thanks to the internet, too; instead of trekking to Grasse, or at least NYC, one can now purchase .5 ml samples of even highly obscure fragrances from sites like The Perfumed Court for $3-10. So that's at least a good 50 new smells a year if one were to allot a $6 weekly perfume budget.

Basenotes and Makeup Alley are the main places to find the layman's opinions, along with a fair number of amateur blogs. Like Yelp or Netflix ratings, reading between the lines is key. Sometimes it's possible to tell that a scent that one person hates is exactly the sort of thing you will love or vice versa, such as when a Makeup Alley user named fitmom2 declares Jessica Simpson's perfume, Fancy, "yummy, sweet, soft, romantic...If you love the smell of cupcakes, frosting, soft petals, and vanilla, this is superb." And although there's a whiff of mass hysteria about it, certain perfumes elicit such strong reactions that it's clear something is going on, whether it's Art or not.

Apres L'Ondee (forgive my lack of appropriate accents), a Guerlain scent first formulated in 1906, is widely held to be one such masterpiece. The name means "After the Rainstorm," and according to Turin and Sanchez it's one of the 20 best ever composed. Reading the peanut gallery reviews makes it sound even more like a magical elixer:


This makes me feel spent and hopeful, as though I'd been crying my eyes out and have just realized that things will get better. Chopin in a bottle.

Pale, impressionistic watercolor evoking the saddest damn song you ever heard, the one you keep playing over and over again because it puts you in such a good mood. Fleeting and lovely, emotional and nostalgic, this is a fragrance for a woman who doesn't really mind being a little bit sad.

Sometimes this fragrance moves me to tears of joy. When I wear it, I feel like I am being bathed in bright, bright, sunlight. I think it conjures some memory deep in my subconscious that soothes my soul. I don't wear it all the time because it is so difficult to obtain. I will never be without this.

A smell that makes you cry? I've cried at books, movies, songs, but never to my recollection a scent. So I bought a sample. And here I sit with the last few drops smudged into my wrist. It smells a little like sweet herbs, a little like rain, a little like powder, a bit like what I thought lavender smelled like before I had ever actually smelled lavender. I am not currently weeping. But maybe I lack a certain faculty of discernment, just as I can't tell an E flat from a B sharp by ear, or whether the baba ghanouj needs more salt or more garlic. It's a good smell, and distinctive, probably one I will be able to recognize easily if I ever smell it again.

But it dissipates almost instantly, which sort of defeats the point of perfume. Lately I've taken to wearing Bois D'Iris, a more modern variation on the theme that's a bit earthier (it smells like a flower that still has wet dirt on the roots) and lasts longer. The idea of finding The One, the single signature fragrance that somehow both expresses your worldview and locks your scent into the lizard brain of anyone whose nose gets close enough to your neck, has to abandoned if there is any hope of true connoisseurship. It'd be like trying to pick a single theme song for your whole life.

So maybe I will post some quick Turin and Sanchez style perfume reviews of the samples I've amassed, to see how I do at the scent-to-language translation. Or maybe that would be inane. In any case, I will certainly keep our audience updated the moment I find the smell that makes me cry.

Stuff I wrote in winter (so far)

For your consideration: my interview with Jarrett Dougherty of Screaming Females, one of the few new bands to catch my ears in recent months.

Stuff I wrote in fall

The December issue of Origivation -- in which I interview North Jersey punk powerhouse Screaming Females -- will be out very soon. In the meantime, check out their video for "Buried in the Nude."



Also, I never posted my November feature on intergenerational Philly duo Saudi Arabia, plus reviews of albums by Ola Podrida and Junk Culture. Caleb's take on the recent Feelies reissues is there, too! Behold:

Linguistics 101

Every trip I take to Raleigh becomes fodder for the ongoing mental debate over moving back to N.C. The "Con" column includes the facts that all my friends are in Philadelphia and that 75% of this town is suburban sprawl hellishness anyway. In the "Pro" column: people are so much nicer here; I would get to hear words and expressions that I love but forget about when I'm away too long. Such as pine straw. I had not thought about pine straw in so long, but here it's everywhere and used to be such a fact of my daily life (often entangled in my hair). PINESTRAW. jeez.

Another expression I like a lot is the simple, all-purpose response "Do what?" I think of it written as a hyphenate or one word: "Do-what?" or "Dowhat?" or "Dowhatnow?" It can be used anytime you don't understand what someone has said to you either due to mishearing or it being rank nonsense, as demonstrated by the following T-day exchange at the appetizer table:

Great Uncle Warren: "What's this here green?"
Me: "It's salsa verde. It's made from tomatillos!"
Great Uncle Warren: "Dowhatnow?"

The "might could" and "might should" constructions are also faves. For my part, I tried to convince my cousin's wife that it's called a cheesesteak, not a "steak and cheese."

Supernerd update

Halfway done.



Rather chuffed.

Two skeins of Cascade 220 "Sand" arrived two days ago. Progress report:



I have 16 days to knit another 9' or so; in the past two hours, I've done almost 6". I'm not worried.

New Origivation writings

The October issue of Origivation is so, so out right now. I've got features in there on These United States and the Independent Music Awards. Read away.

In which I appear in the paper

The first time I was ever in a newspaper, I was 10 years old and wearing a black-and-red flannel shirt and a purple bike helmet. My similarly Angela Chase-ly-clad elementary school friends and I were walking our bikes across Six Forks Road on our way home from elementary school, probably about to go to the Taco Bell and get cups for water and then fill them with all the different horrible sodas. In the caption, my name was "Alex Taylor." Fact checking!

Fast forward 10 years and I have a sheaf of college newspaper blathering and a healthy sprinkle of my own electronic opinion strewn about the web. So it's kind of weird for me to be like "Look, I'm in the paper!" but here I am, an expert witness to tabloid feuds and contemporary ladymade music. My mom called me at the ungodly hour of 11:30 this morning to ask if I was "Philadelphia-based, feminist music writer (and former Raleigh resident) Alexandra Jones" -- "That couldn't be a coincidence, right?"

Wanna take bets on long before The Rachel Maddow Show comes callin'?

New Origivation Magazine feature

I wrote another feature for Philly music rag Origivation on acoustic/rock artist Kevin McQuiston. Check me out!

If you don't want to download a pdf (although there are other cool pieces in the issue too), here's the text.

Emerging
with Alexandra Jones

Kevin McQuiston is probably happier than you. Not because Sway, the first EP from his latest project, Refurb, blends slick-as- hell rock with heartrending, emotional lyrics. Not because he gives the impression of being the hardest-working musician in Philadelphia, burning out his BlackBerry to promote his projects. Not because the way he’s selling Sway is a new platform that could change how bands market their music online.

He’s happy, it seems, because he wants to be.

Among other faiths, McQuiston identifies as a Buddhist, and applies a beatific, live-and-let-live philosophy to daily life and relationships. “[Being happy]’s not easy, but it’s really pretty simple,” he explains – to passengers in the cab he drives for his day job. “You do this, you do this, and if that doesn’t work, you try that.”
As chill as he can be in person, however, McQuiston is dedicated to his art, his band and its marketing. He’s gone beyond the independent musician’s typical marketing toolkit with “Karma Currency,” an online platform that gives potential listeners a few different ways to pay for music. Would-be listeners can choose between four options to acquire digital downloads of individual tracks: Pay “market value,” the iTunes standard of 99 cents; pay what you want, à la Radiohead’s In Rainbows; accept the track for free as a gift from the artist; or pledge to do a good deed – helping others, animals or the environment, perhaps – in exchange for the download. The last option requires users to type in how they’ll pay it forward, which might seem like more of a guilt trip than it’s worth. McQuiston, of course, sees the good in the system.

“You’re not responsible for what other people think, say and do, just what you think, say and do,” he says of the honor code implicit in Karma Currency. “You can actually ask for it [as] a gift. If they’re so harried that they can’t find a kind moment, we’ll give it as a gift. We’ll do the kind moment for them.”

While McQuiston’s ostensible goal is to gain exposure for his music, the Karma Currency model fits him in particular. When his last band, acoustic-pop outfit KMB missed out on a record deal when their A&R man left his record label, McQuiston
turned away from rock ‘n’ roll fun and entered an interfaith seminary in New York City.
But hold that thought – McQuiston is no Scott Stapp. “I don’t think I’ve ever written a non-secular song,” he says. “And yet everything I write, because I write about love - love is my religion. I might wrap it in Buddhism and Taoism and Quaker Unitarianism, but to me, really, everything’s about love. Love and fear, [those are] the only two things in the universe. Everything’s based in one or the other, and I base mine in love.”

True enough - although the songs on Sway evoke the longing, bitterness, and loneliness that can accompany unrequited love more than its warm, fuzzy counterpart. Despite McQuiston’s cloud-nine disposition, his muses are lost loves, or loves that
never were.

“Somebody asked me the other day, ‘What’s the harder part, writing the words or writing the melody?’” the singer explains. “And I said the hard part is living through it. Having that thing mean enough to you that you need to express it. I have to cough this shit up on a regular basis, so, to me, it’s gotta kinda mean something.”

What made McQuiston transition from acoustic music to electrified rock? “It could have been like a midlife crisis, I suppose,” he says. “I bought a Les Paul and a Marshall [amplifier], and I’d always kinda had this sorta Ani DiFranco-meets-Chris-
Isaak-on-crack kinda [thing].”

Refurb, however, is a four-piece outfit that sets McQuiston’s songs, from cool brush-off tunes to gritty breakup missives to straightforward rock ‘n’ roll. They’re billed as “indie-tinged alt-rock,” but the music doesn’t bristle with quirky-as-hell instrumentation or sound like it was recorded in a bedroom closet. What defines Refurb is the combination of McQuiston’s deeply felt poetry and his band’s ultra-tight but soulful vibe – a solid formula that would benefit from neither bells nor whistles. “Everybody Likes You” is the badass riff-rocker of the EP, while the bittersweet “Too Much For You” boasts a vibrant, voicelike guitar melody.

The band is McQuiston’s project, but he gives even more credit to the other three members of Refurb as he does himself. Darnell Hillary plays drums, Ron Telfor (who was also involved with KMB) is on bass, and Kirk Abernathy rocks keyboards and guitar. “People just go ‘You’re so lucky,’ and I just let them be themselves,” McQuiston says of Refurb’s sweet skills. Although he has to be his own street team, the setup works for him. “On those nights when I’ve been online for like eight hours promoting a show, or sending out MySpace bulletins or flyering or press releasing or whatever, and I’m
like ‘[I wish] I had a regular band where the people help me out.’ And then I remember, these guys, they show up and they kill, and they’re so underpaid by me compared to the other people that they play for,” he says. “They play with me because they like my music, and they like what they do, and it works out pretty good.”

McQuiston has also been working with Sway’s producer, Mike McCarthy, in yet another project. “Don’t Miss You Like I Used To,” available on McQuiston’s personal MySpace, is a smoldering, “Sexy Sadie”-esque ballad boosted by McCarthy’s near-jazz flugelhorn melodies.

He’s not yet sure what will happen with Refurb – a soul project next, maybe? “I know I’m changing styles,” he says. “I’ve been listening to a lot of Amy Winehouse…”

Wherever he goes, McQuiston seems to have it – whatever “it” is – figured out.

“When I was younger, I wanted a deal,” he says. “I wanted a record deal and a limo deal and an actress girlfriend deal, and now all I want is to make a living from my craft.”

Review: Max Tundra, Parallax Error Beheads You

Of the handful of CDs I'm reviewing for Beyond Race, this one is my favorite. I still haven't heard Some Best Friend You Turned Out to Be or Mastered by Guy at the Exchange yet.

Go listen to "Orphan" from PEBY.

My first Beyond Race review: Femi Kuti and Positive Force

Here's what I think of the new Femi Kuti and Positive Force album. It's pretty bangin' -- "Tension Grip Africa" might not have the same familiarity and cachet as "Paper Planes," but it'll fit perfectly on the playlist for your next "Global Clusterfuck, Let's Dance" party.

My Origivation debut and such

Heyo, my first reviews for Origivation, a Philly-based music mag, are out in print and pdf form! I reviewed Sexcop's new EP (witty and spry pop ballads, rather 69 Love Songs-y) and did the mini-blurb for TVOTR's Dear Science in the Top 10 of '08 list. Read them here (I'm on pages 35 and 38).

More nooz: I'm currently in the throes of reviewing a bundle of discs for Beyond Race magazine's blog, woohoo. Be on the lookout for my thoughts on Femi Kuti, Chairlift, Rio En Medio, Max Tundra, and the new Danielson 2-disc set.

Silver Jews in Philadelphia, 9/9/08: Preface

It's hard (for me) to write well about music with which I've developed a significant personal relationship. Not just stuff I like or love, of which I consider myself a fan or devotee, or for which I'm willing to withstand hours sweltering in a dimly-lit church basement to hear and see. It's not the music I obsessed over as a 13-year-old -- remember when "repeat" was considered a totally sweet feature?

Rather, I'm tripped up by the music that serves a desperate need. Plenty of great music has the power to seduce, creating desire for a sound and feel and then fulfilling that desire. I'm talking about the stuff that blindsides you because you'd been feeling a need for something for a long fucking time -- sure, call it an ache -- and then you hear a record that fills in the ache a little, or makes you feel a little less unhinged than you think you might be. The need at its core isn't met (no record will do this), but maybe you can fight it off more easily, or you understand the need better, or you can at least think about something else for 40 minutes.

Compared to the heavy ruminations I tend to stumble into (see above x10), describing the airy lift of an organ hook sometimes seems beside the point.



David Berman's work falls into this category. I could go on about brilliant-sad-funny lyrical moments, twangy and dark atmospherics, spooky mocking rockers, etc. But more often I find myself at a bit of a loss because his songs evoke a very specific, alienated, period of time for me. Not because the songs on American Water boast the best of the above traits but because the first time I heard it (because of and with Michelle, in Ann Arbor, and I was probably wearing hideous ankle boots and too much eyeliner) was in the grasping, chaotic early stages of a years-long period of depression. Silver Jews brought me a little bit of comfort (sure whatever let's call it that) as my mind adjusted around whatever it was that I needed, or profoundly lacked, or was hiding from. I still listen to all of their albums on a weekly-or-so basis, still derive enjoyment and comfort and artist-modulated doses of humble but wry despair. But now, parsing Berman's newer works and recent performances critically feels like analyzing depression: I do it in my head all the time, but when you break that shit to the rest of the world, you feel uncomfortable, exposed, unable to do justice to a thing that, well, if it was such a big deal, you should have a better handle on.

If I can't do justice to Berman's music in a standard 500-word review, then let the fact that this is the first thing I've written about in four months do it for me.

Next: The First Unitarian concertgoing experience, Monotonix, and the Jooz live in action.

Post-absentee ballot Obama rationalizing

The way this woman seems to feel toward Obama, I think, mirrors how I think about him: He hasn't won me over the way he has most of his supporters, and I'm pretty tough on him. Then again, the thought that he really could restore dignity to the White House while simultaneously repairing our fucked-up policy situations is really freaking exciting, and I'm actually counting on him to pull it out.



[via Wonkette]

The second half perfectly showcases the Obama charm -- easy banter, loudly enthusiastic supporters, jokes, a sliver of youthful edge. He can hype my mom into writing "Yes We Can!" in the margins of letters to me.

Still, I guess I'm cautiously optimistic. 2004 was devastating; 2006 was awesome and I honestly celebrated -- congressional scales slightly tipped in our favor, Macaca, Rahm Emmanuel, Rumsfeld resigning -- but that hasn't lived up to the hype. And now it's hard to trust even the politicians we like with our hopes.

i think some things about some other things

My first music reviews at the Feminist Review blog are up! Not sure what albums I'll be reviewing for next month, but one of them might be Mixel Pixel's Let's Be Friends, which I picked up at their seriously awesome performance at Special Agent Dale Cooper last week (more on that in my upcoming Recent Live Music roundup).

Otherwise occupying my time: re-learning to ride a bike, re-watching The Wire, reading 33 1/3 books, listening to the Kinks all damn day, experimenting with frittatas, and pointing shoppers in the direction of the nonpariel capers.

Status report

The last time I posted, I lived in North Carolina.

Now I live in Philadelphia.

Before, I was self-exiled from real adult life (or what passes for it at age 23, anyway). Never did I picture myself moving back in with my parents for any reason, ever. In school, I loved running my own damn life, cooking, catching buses. Even the detestable act of paying a bill would bring on a little surge of pride. I stayed on top of that shit this month. For a time, I was schoolin', cohabiting with what I thought (with increasing doubts) was a pretty decent boyfriend, enjoying not fast-tracking myself to grad school. I was in Ann Arbor, and if you don't think about it too much and the weather is nice, Ann Arbor is just the right size to make you feel like you're in control and getting stuff done while the big shit, like money and self-worth and the future, nuzzle up on the edges of your easy, yuppie-lite life.

I knew I was not okay when I found myself crying uncontrollably in the middle of my course on Dada & Surrealism. And walking home from the student newspaper. And any time I'd visit a favorite teacher at office hours, trying to get some kind of affirmation that I wasn't going crazy or throwing my life away.

But I kind of did, and I kind of was.

I went on antidepressants, started counseling (I've had three great counselors and one awful one since), and broke up with my live-in boyfriend right after graduation. He smashed a guitar when I told him, but we rode out the rest of the summer together. (Now he's engaged to some girl four years his junior and working in a chicken restaurant outside Detroit.)

I moved back home and spend most of my time in my pjs or working at either of two mediocre part-time jobs, blowing my money on CDs and student loan payments and generally moping. I got more and more miserable over the summer, saw the opportunity to move away to Philly (a 4-month lease; it's a start) and spent September through January anxious as hell about the move and completely head-in-the-sand about job prospects. I managed to save a few months rent, packed a few bags, got on the train, and now I'm here.

It's kind of scary and very intimidating and I like the city but it can make you feel, well, transparent. Still trying to find jobs, hoping to find some more freelance work, ready to leave behind the aftermath of the mindfuck that was my last relationship and that rudderless post-graduation feeling.

Okay, so that's what's going on. Now maybe I can post something deeper and more interesting than personal life bullshit without making excuses to myself.

Thought-Purge: Caetano Veloso, 11/7

So I saw Caetano Veloso in Chapel Hill last night. His performance was part of the Carolina Performing Arts series, the UNC version of UMS (for y'all Michiganders) except with (presumably) no sleeping outdoors. I've enjoyed the stuff they've brought to Memorial Auditorium so far, despite the deplorable lack of legroom in their seats.

I have to admit that while I cover any sequence of world-music-ish events for CVNC, by no means do I possess encyclopedic knowledge of the sounds of foreign lands. I have a cursory knowledge of West African and Indian music thanks to some exposure in school, and I can only hope my enthusiasm and curiosity will carry me through to some kind of non-hack insight into whatever I'm listening to. This results a lot of illegible-in-the-harsh-light-of-day scribbling about each piece, embarrassing phonetic interpretations of lyrics, hastily transcribed basslines that all end up looking like large-type braille.

And although I knew more about him than the likes of the griots, cimbalists, oud players I wrote up this year, I was totally unprepared for the sexy, weird, magnetic sexagenarian who's been called the Brazilian Bob Dylan. I guess that, from the fact that I had seen him headlining at the likes of Hill Auditorium (I think I bought tickets for his show one year at UM and couldn't go for some reason), looking all serious-like in the posters -- eyes downcast, face shown in profile, forehead against guitar neck -- he'd be, I dunno, boring.*



I could not have been more egregiously wrong.

To my credit, I didn't have a whole ton of notice before I signed up to review the gig (unlike my unsuccessful lobby to review a NC Symphony pops concert featuring Elvis Costello), and I even bought his most recent disc, Cê, which was released earlier this year. I only listened to it once before the show, and my impression was that it was a little toothless -- catchy enough for me to be able to pick out four or five songs from the disc he (and his band of hot young Brazilian rockers) played during the UNC set, but waaaay too easy on the ears. It deserves further analysis, but before the show, Cê sounded like an overprocessed reworking of the Cars' clean, catchy pop formula.

I was transfixed by the following during the show:

-Caetano looking unbearably hot, even from the back row, in contrasting denim and a beat-up polo that came off as more slacker/dorm room floor than lame old dude. The voice, which delivers a rippling stream of delectable Portuguese most of the time, doesn't hurt. Add to this bright-orange shoelaces and he was seriously adorable.

-His, um, quirkiness? Which manifested itself in a variety of ways, like his goofy-as-hell, coltish jogging/dancing across the stage during particularly rockin' instrumental interludes; baring his midriff during one of these treks to the edge of the stage (to which the small but vocal home crowd reacted quite positively); the RIDICULOUS overuse of strobe effects/blinding lights of the caliber usually confined to gigantic sports stadiums.

-The guitar he used during full-band numbers, which was some kind of curious wireless git-outline with no strings and a truncated neck (since it needed no pegs). It was brought out and taken back (so his arms were free to gesticulate spastically, of course) after every other tune.

I might sound put off, but I really think I just lack context; this thought-purge is an attempt to get my colloquial thoughts and first impressions out of my system before I write my review tomorrow. I'll follow up with thoughts on his larger body of work, but for now, I leave you with the translated lyrics to "Homem" ("Man") from Cê.

I'm not jealous of maternity
or of lactation
I'm not jealous of adiposity
or of menstruation

I only envy longevity
and multiple orgasms
and multiple orgasms


Damn, I wish I knew Portuguese.

*This atrocious sentence originally had no ending. I was kinda drunk.

Jugalbandi Fever; In Way Over My Head Re: Jazz

Two more CVNC reviews up after last weekend's triple crown of concerts.

My attempt to evaluate and describe a really cool performance of ragas by santoor master Tarun Bhattacharya and Hindustani vocalist Anurag Harsh (and there was a harmonium! Squee!).

And making my jazz-related ignorance work for me at a genre-nebulous performance by Charlie Haden and Hank Jones at Duke University's Following Monk festival.

Look for reviews of the 60x60 2007 International Mix's NC State debut and totally freaking sweet Pamina Devi: A Cambodian Magic Flute at UNC-Chapel Hill.