Back on the Blog

Hi, I'm back. Let's see, since I was last here I've continued with No Pussyfooting on East Village Radio for over a year now, while the blog has been taking a nap. Currently, my show airs late Sunday night/Monday mornings from 4 to 6a.m., but you can stream it any time. I'm at the top of the schedule, and my buddy Jeff is at the bottom with his show "Bring Out Your Dead." What fitting bookends! Check in at www.eastvillageradio.com for updates, because we're about to shift over to a new website shortly. It's pretty exciting.

But what exactly have I been up to? I don't know. I finished my Master's at NYU a while back, and spent a year in Pittsburgh working towards a Ph.D. Now I'm on a leave of absence for at least a year, back in New York. Those are the highlights. I've also been writing things here and there, and now that I'm unemployed I'm trying to step that up a little bit. I just wrote a short biographical piece on Sue Lyon (the female lead in Kubrick's Lolita) for the next issue of Stop Smiling. I also translated an article from Spanish on a top-secret file sharing website that's in the current issue of Film Comment that looks like this:

I've also got a teeny review in there of the new DVD of Cassavetes's Husbands, which Sony is going to release in mid-August, finally. Here's a summary of my already short review: This movie is great. The performances are incredible, the cinematography is beautiful, buy the DVD.


That's it for now. I think I might check back in later with my thoughts on The Hurt Locker.

blog on,
Margaret

Update

Hello. Just letting you know that no pussyfooting is now on the air, on east village radio. Check me out! I've also got a myspace and all that jazz.

the future of the past

the music on this one matches the cover. i don't even think a description's necessary.

so what have i been up to? well, a few months ago I finally figured out "music on the computer" and "downloading." Long story short, I had Mike Parker give me a tutorial on gigabytes and now my iTunes is using up about 45 of them. I bought an ipod off of ebay to catch up. Evidently it used to belong to someone named "Yulia" who lives in California, and judging from her musical tastes, I'm guessing she's a college girl with an indie bent, perhaps even a music student. she might be into physical therapy.

pretty soon after going digital I started to cool it a little with the guitar grooves and started getting into some of the more artificial stuff. like keyboards. and krautrock. i felt a little sickened just now writing that, like I turned my back on my baby or something, but don't worry-- I know it's only a passing phase. and i'm still wasting money on records. It's just that I love good sounds, or at least what I consider to be good sounds. I love when guitars talk to me, when atypical instruments produce neat tones, and when r & b guys sing through vocoders. That was the first thing that really drew me to Enoch Lite-- those kooky, crazy, vintage futurist sounds accompanying the most banal melodies. Anyway, I started my journey where I left off in my last blog, with some of the more experimental moog-ers like Morton Subotnick, Dick Hyman, and Donald Erb, piquing my interest in early electronic music- which encouraged me to take a tangential trip into modern classical--I did that over spring break (woo-hoo) and came out with more than a few major gems, so in the interest of space I'll just drop one for now: MESSIAEN.

what else? well, Belgain prog has taught me to open up a little more to female rock vocalists. some of it still makes me feel a little weird and embarrassed, though. Like Mad Curry. It took me a while to get beyond the diva-ness of Mad Curry lady's voice, and her awkward speech impediment [am I the only one hearing this, by the way?] before realizing that they actually rule.

I'm really surprised that three people have actually bugged me about slacking off on the blog- thanks dudes, I appreciate the interest. check back within a few days, because I'm thinking about trying to make a few of the links "special," although I'm not sure yet. I'm kind of busy right now counting down the days until Spider Man 3 comes out. [2009 edit: Spider Man 3 was lame. couldn't live up to Spider Man 2. I'm not even a fan of comic books, super heroes, or whatever--but I have to admit that Spider Man 2 was excellent.]

another list or, "the Evening Redness in the West"

over a month has passed; here's another list of 13 albums I've listened to a lot recently:

1. I.d. - 'Company' [half Inga Rumpf (hippie shit), half Dagmar Krause (creepy freak-out)]
2. The Free Design - 'Kites Are Fun' I'm not going to lie, this album is like, changing my life. I'm not ashamed.
3. Osmonds - 'The Proud One' ok, I am a little ashamed of this one. at least I'm being honest.
4. Cos - 'Babel'
5. Chrysalis - 'Definition' what the fuck is going on with this band
6. Autosalvage - s/t
7. Gandalf - s/t
8. Pharoah Sanders - 'Karma'
9. Matching Mole - 'Smoke Signals' I've been revisiting this one after a few years. ain't nothin' out there like "Instant Pussy." my favorite snippet of vocal improv.
10. The Everly Brothers - just about all of their stuff. I'll do my cryin' in the rain, thank you very much.
11. 'MOOG: The Electric Eclectics of Dick Hyman' this guy also happens to be an excellent OBGYN... did I really have to make that joke?
12. Bo Hansson - 'Music Inspired by Lord of the Rings' I've never felt so nerdy as I did one second ago as I typed that out. It's nowhere near as bad as the title implies. again, I'm being honest.
13. a certain italian prog album that I'll hopefully write more about later...

not a particularly interesting or proggy list, and a little light on testosterone-fueled riffs (at least in comparison with last month)- but hey, let's not forget that I am, first and foremost, a member of the fairer sex. plus I've been busy doing other things, like cooking, hanging out with friends, trashpicking (and purchasing) junk, and putting together puzzles. and reading lots of Cormac McCarthy and Antonin Artaud:


uber-violent westerns and writings about madness and opium. maybe that's why at the end of the day, all I want to do is chill out to that "feelin' groovy" song---actually no, it's not really all that deep.

smooth sailing

Last weekend was pretty progged out. Friday I saw the alliterative trio of Hugh Hopper, Fred Frith, and Chris Cutler perform at the Stone, followed by a small, all-night record listening party at my apartment, where at some point this happened:



A new friend brought over a stack of records, and we listened to a lot of great stuff, including but not limited to FUSIOON, SHAMPOO, PICCHIO DAL POZZO, COS, PUSSY, THE WEINBERG METHOD, CHRYSALIS, some incredible Scottish prog, and who could forget RASTAKRAUT PASTA?? I tried to open some minds to the psychedelic efforts of the Four Seasons and the Osmond brothers (a new personal favorite)- but I don't think it went over too well.

Speaking of music that most people pass over-- hopefully I just legitimized my prog "cred" by mentioning a slew of foreign band names, because now it's time for me to come clean about what's really been spinning on my record player all week: easy listening. I guess the seed was planted about a year ago when I started listening to David Axelrod, although I've been partial to smooth sounds (and sweet falsettos) for longer than I can remember. I've also been pretty open about my appreciation of what I call "prog-lite," my unconditional love of the Electric Light Orchestra, my fidelity to just about the entire Bee Gee's canon, and my curious attraction to Todd Rundgren and his big-nosed ballads. Anyone who walked into Big Jar Books during the five(?) years that I worked there and was subjected to "A Dream Goes on Forever" or "Mr. Natural" can attest to that. Recently, however, I've really been dumbing down my groove, perhaps in an effort to balance out the Queen II and give my mind a rest from all of the bullshit I've had to conjure up to make it through my first semester of grad school. I've started to keep a careful eye out for good Moog records, and I'm now totally sucked in to this Enoch Light album:



groovy stuff. There's also the Osmonds thing that I mentioned already, although I'm not ready to really discuss that yet- partly because I'm still in the visceral stage, where I'm thoroughly enjoying certain songs, even though the intelligent-thinking part of me is fully aware that they kind of suck. Right now I'm working on dismantling my critical side, and soon enough I'll be able to convince other people without any guilt!

Here's a list of thirteen albums that I've listened to repeatedly over the past two or three months, because for some reason that's the kind of thing people do on BLOGs. Maybe I'll make one every month?

in no particular order:
1. Sparks- Kimono My House
2. Hawkwind- self-titled (and Spaceritual, too)
3. Sly & the Family Stone- A Whole New Thing
4. Faust- Faust Tapes
5. Tears for Fears- Songs From the Big Chair (I don't care. this album is unreal.)
6. Jones- Chains and Black Exhaust (black psych comp.)
7. Queen- Queen II
8. Pink Floyd- Saucerful of Secrets
9. Hall & Oates- the one with the silver cover, where they look like women
10. Roy Harper- Stormcock
11. George Russell- Electric Sonata for Souls Loved By Nature
12. Donald Byrd- Black Byrd
13. Fripp & Eno- No Pussyfooting

happy holidays!

"I reign with my left hand, I rule with my right"

A few weeks ago I was having a phone conversation with my friend Michael Anton Parker- discussing some important shit- when Mike suddenly made one of his characteristically bold statements, causing my brain to shake in my head a little bit. I tried to formulate a response to this grenade that he just tossed at me over the phone, but at the time I was too baffled and unprepared to do so. This event in telephone history prompted me to enter the blogosphere and release my inner prog lady. The brain-shaking statement Mike made was that the first, self-titled Queen album is better than Queen II.




I'll admit that when I talked to Mike I hadn't even heard the first album, although my appreciation for the "black side" of Queen II runs deep enough to incite a profound skepticism of the comparative value of any of the band's other efforts. Since then Mike has thoughtfully emailed me the first album, and I've listened to it several times. Unfortunately I've also over-listened to Queen II so much that its sweet progmetal has merged with my bloodstream, my awe has extended to the formerly disposable "white side" (which is mostly written by guitarist Brian May), and any scrap of objectivity I may have once held is now completely obliterated. The only song on the album that I find even mildly questionable now is "The Loser in the End"; the only track written by the drummer Roger Taylor, with Brian May singing like an angry Rod Stewart. That being said, I'm still going to try to draw a comparison.

The first album really is good. "Great King Rat" is a lot of fun, "Liar" has handclaps (always a plus), "My Fairy King" and "The Night Comes Down" are both excellent. The parts that I think are incredible, however, are fragmentary--the unbelievable instrumental section near the end of "My Fairy King," for example, or those killing first few seconds of "Son and Daughter" before the song dissolves into a headbanger--whereas Queen II maintains a seamless continuity throughout the entire black side (as every good concept album should). The self-titled is a sort of prog / hard rock hybrid, which holds its own appeal, while QII has a metal edge that's more proud spandex and calculated guitar gymnastics than Hot Topic wallet chains and beer-soaked tailgate parties. The first album was an unwarranted failure, and so QII on the whole is more insistent; it demands your attention with higher shrills, greater bombast, sweeping arrangements and thank god--more overdubs. I may be a little biased on that last observation, though- I'd probably buy an album with an overdubbed harmonica on it.

Certain details of the black side elevate QII over the self-titled for me--Roger Taylor's falsetto is better utilized, providing a foreshadowing of his total emasculation in "Bohemian Rhapsody," and the vocals are so intricate and multi-layered they seem to twist shapes in the air. There's also a split-second of "The Fairy-Feller's Master-Stroke" that serves as a real selling point for me: smack in the middle of the song, Freddie Mercury dangles an absurdly dainty harpsichord riff, sandwiched between orchestral guitar and pounding dude-bass-it's like he just dips Louis XIV in a pool of shred and then pulls him right back out. And then of course there's "The March of the Black Queen." That song is pure genius, the highlight of the album. It's unfortunate that the band would eventually devolve into a flaccid collage of Wayne's World, Live Aid, and hockey games, although it could have been worse. And there are some noteworthy moments on most of their later albums- Jazz has some special parts, too, but that's a whole other BLOG-- getting back to my original argument: like I said before, the first album rocks ... but does it rip?

"Ogre Battle" Hammersmith 1975