Classical Review: Dennis AsKew, UNC-Greensboro, 9/16

My review of UNCG tuba/euph prof Dennis AsKew's latest recital is up at CVNC. Take a look, won't you?

This song won't change your life

I hate lots and lots of things. An average day is peppered with quick, passionate bursts of loathing, disgust, and frustration for myriad aspects of the world around me: 24-hour news, people who don't use their turn signals, a sequence of workplace frustrations baffling in their simultaneous mundanity and magnitude, Michelle Norris' vocal delivery, women's magazines, the Lexus-SUV-driving aging yuppies who have encroached on my tacky but otherwise decent suburban neighborhood. And those are just everyday ire-raisers; my ever-pissy nature gets a lot worse when I chance upon stuff like this or this or this.

There are greater and more pressing problems with the world than the existence of Nancy Grace, Target's continued foisting of smocked garments upon the nation's young female demographic, or the insistence of my area college radio station on playing naught but snooze-inducing electronica after 8 p.m. four nights a week. But the really bad stuff can feel so overwhelming that reacting with more than an exhausted sigh would probably reduce me to tears. This way, I can exorcise my frustration with the immutably shitty state of most of the world by screaming at the grotesquerie of Pat Buchanan when he pops up on MSNBC, or bitch about the schlubby, middlebrow music of Billy Joel.

The flipside of this aspect of my eerily Gemini-esque nature occurs when I encounter a book, news item, previously unheard band, much-lauded but never-seen TV show, or, you know, actual person that's incontrovertibly awesome/genuine/entertaining/life-affirming/giggle-inducing: I fall hard.

I'll curl up on the futon for hours with my cat and three seasons of the new Doctor Who, or fuck up my sleep schedule because I was mainlining The Wire until dawn (I was particularly susceptible to this during the stevedore-tastic second season). I'll spend all of the driving I do for two weeks practically getting high off the mind-blowing sonic and ideological scope of the new M.I.A. album. I'll commence online stalking of objay d'crush and suddenly deem it necessary to be made up to maximum hotness whenever I venture outside on the off-chance of an encounter.

Next comes the proselytizing (a&e-wise, anyway; I tend to keep mum when I'm enamored with a particular person). Since I've clearly just seen or heard the light, I commence assaulting everybody I know with phrases like "Oh. Mah. Gahd. I canNOT stop listening to this album, you HAVE to hear it," or "Okay, so there's this thing called a TARDIS? And also David Tennant is really adorable? And, like, you don't have to give a crap about sci-fi to get into it?" whenever I've had a few beers.

Strong opinions are generally a good thing when you want to make a living as a critic, but even among amateur arbiters of taste, there's a stigma of mild uncoolness associated with getting a little gushy about your latest media crush in conversation. I risk coming off sounding like Comic Book Guy (er, more than I already do) or Natalie Portman's insufferably quirky epileptic from Garden State (thanks for ruining the Shins for anyone with discriminatin' tastes, Zach Braff), but spreading the word a little when you've found something that cheers or finspires of ascinates you just makes sense. Occasionally effusive friends and associates have turned me on to such rays of sunshine as the Pixies (I have lovely slo-mo memories of hearing "Debaser" for the first time the day after I returned home from Governor's School), Lynda Barry's Cruddy, Television Without Pity, early Woody Allen films, the Constantines, the post-glam work of David Bowie, dada, and countless others. If anyone digs a band or book or whatever that I recommend anywhere near as much as I've come to adore some recommended gems, increasing my potential to annoy too-cool types with vocalized enthusiasm has been so freaking worth it.

I'm all for those transcendent and private moments when it's just you and whatever's coming out of your headphones. But it's only natural, in the afterglow of finding a new fave, to try to spread the good vibrations around. This song won't change your life, but if you're like me, it might make you feel a little better about the way things are.

The Dude Culture of Music Criticism

Pandagon's Amanda posted a few pointed truths about women in and around the overwhelmingly male-dominated world of music criticism (not to mention music itself) and the Insufferable Music Snobbery that has a lock on music and, increasingly, pop culture in general. Her post was spurred by an intrepid Gawker intern's recent analysis of Pitchfork articles affirmed that fewer women write their douchey reviews than do guys named Mark.

I don't have much to say about this in the short time I've got to post--gotta finish writing a review of a tuba recital I saw this weekend (it's not Austin City Limits, but it'll do). Except: The more I think about this, even though I've known it was true and lived it for years, the more I'm determined to put some of the ideas I've had for this blog (and my fledgling career) into action.

So I'm going to rework this blahg to serve its intended purpose--giving me someplace to write about music while I'm unattached to any pop-review-publishing publications.

this is just to say

http://www.doctorwhoscarf.com/

Just a morbidly late-night post about something awesome. I'm not as into The Believer as I used to be -- it feels like their fascinating articles about topics you didn't know were fascinating credit has begun to run out in the face of boring reviews of contemporary novels by up-and-comers and a disappointingly dull CD companion to their recent music issue -- but I've spent my last three hours of insomnia catching up on the aforementioned music issue and their August issue. In it, okay but kinda dad-lit author Nick Hornby interviews David Simon, the erstwhile Baltimore reporter and current co-creator of HBO's supposedly unparalleled The Wire.

I've been putting off Netflixing The Wire, simply because the likes of grimy, cuss-happy Deadwood and blinky, shiny, sexy Doctor Who have been occupying my TV-on-DVD devotion of late. An excerpt from the interview is here; the whole thing is really enlightening and inspiring, that there are some people working in Hollywood's idiom who are actually fucking real and principled about what they do.

This is the part of the interview that made me jump to queue up the show and trumpet a little of its creator's awesomeness:

DAVID SIMON: My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell.

Ha! So maybe David Simon's a little more David Milch than I thought. This is also, by the way, my intellectual objection to spending my life churning out articles about fucking dog parks or property taxes or "Midtown Raleigh" at the likes of The News & Observer. (ETA: Although the seeming drudgery of straight news reporting doesn't appeal to me, their arts/entertainment/lifestyles coverage is pretty damn good for the Triangle's sadly undersized cultural scene.)

Thoughts on The Wire forthcoming. It's gonna be intense.

David Berman, Rebel Jew

An hourlong documentary about Silver Jews hombre David Berman's relationship to Judaism was screened at film festivals this spring and is coming to DVD; for some reason Blogger won't let me link when I'm using Safari, so info at http://www.silverjewmovie.com. Understandably, I'm a little wary about big religious epiphanies (see, "Dylan, Bob in Popemode") in my musical idols. But hey, if it keeps him off the smack, you know? Also news of a new SJ album being recorded AS I TYPE. Can't remember where I read all this crap or I'd link.

Okay, this isn't where I read it, but Pitchfork (jayzus) posted a bunch of SJ-related info a few weeks back:
http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/news/44039-silver-jews-work-on-new-lp-berman-seeks-intern

Also, DCB was apparently looking for an INTERN???? Good god. The mind reels. Sour grapes: it would probably suck, and I couldn't do it anyway, since one of the requirements is "musician/writer types need not apply." But he was looking for an arts admin person, which I kinda sorta wanna be one day, so...Maybe I'll look into this. Hell, just this afternoon I was thinking of going to the ANTM 10 casting call at NC State. Perverse social experiment, anyone?


Slightly related: Janet Weiss is now a Jick!

Thriftstravaganza No. 2

I haven't been able to do this for a while because I just wasn't finding any good stuff--and not for lack of trying, 'kay? This collection of random stuff is culled from multiple trips to three different Raleigh thrifts over the past coupla weeks.

Item: Awesomely patterned ruffle-collar blouse
Cost: $4.99 + tax
Location: American Way, Raleigh



Even though this doesn't button over my boobs (like 99.9% of shirts, dammit) I bought it anyway because I so loved the colors and the jellybeans-and-paperclips pattern. Any of my more reasonably-proportioned pals are welcome to it.

Item: Fat plastic white hoop earrings
Cost: $1.99 + tax
Location: American Way, Raleigh



As a rule, I don't usually pay more than a dollar for a used hunk of cheap plastic, but I really liked the shape of these earrings. I tend to be picky about wacky old earrings, eschewing the Jackie Collins-esque hunks of primary-colored gold-rimmed metal that so many obnoxious stick-necked chicks can pull off okay, so I'm willing to splurge a little when I find some I deem acceptable.

Item: Royal purple negligible negligee
Cost: $4.99 - 25% = $3.75 + tax
Location: Cause for Paws on S. Saunders St., Raleigh



I bought this as what I thought was some kind of hilariously businesslike piece of sleepwear that I'd tool around the house in reading romance novels and eating bonbons and swooning over daybeds in. When I tried it on at home, my mom thought it was meant to be worn outside. It's got goddamn sheer pinstripes, but a slip or two underneath would fix that. Let's examine the evidence, shall we?



Businesslike pinstripe pattern. Score one for outside wear. Ditto the cuff-like buttons at the end of the sleeves. These clues notwithstanding, I must point to three features of this garment that condemn it to indoor use only: Its stringy, satiny "belt," brothel-chic collar ruffle, and scandalous wrap neckline. Did I also mention it's see-through?

Verdict: Power garment for the mistress of a lushly-appointed whorehouse with an antique gimmick. And even then, you're not gonna be going outside all that much.


Item: John Lee Hooker, Mississippi River Delta Blues
Cost: $2.98 - 50% = $1.49 + tax
Location: Tryon Hills Thrift Store, Raleigh



Only like eight tracks on this one, and at least two of them are pretty misogynistic. I mostly just jumped at the chance to buy a disc by a half-decent artist from a thrift store.


Item: Faux sun print framed fabric panel
Cost: $4.99 + tax
Location: Cause for Paws on Crabtree Blvd., Raleigh

This one was found under a flukey stroke of luck. I knocked off a bit early from temping, simply because I COULD NOT copy and paste one more column into another column in Excel without going insane and blinding myself with a staple remover, and checked out The Neighbourstore (fancy Euro spelling theirs), a church-run thrift in the Crabtree Thrift Alley that's sometimes good for hilarious old-man clothes. Nothing of interest there, but I couldn't help popping into Cause for Paws. I hit their furniture room first and found this fetching cotton print.





No price on the frame, so I got it for cheap. The fabric is just flimsy cotton, but I dig the nautical theme. I haven't decided where to hang it yet.

I think I might try to venture out to Garner and Durham some this week if I have time. Seriously, where's all the good crap?