Good morning. Hello. How are you? #454
Good morning! Hello! How are you? I am okay. It is Monday and I’m not in a full-blown existential crisis, so, you know, baby steps. Had a lovely weekend, lots of physical activity. Always healthy. There is a small bug circling round my face right now and it is driving me crazy. I just missed the bug and slapped myself. WHAT FUN.
I recorded a new episode of my podcast, and here it is, but I gotta tell ya, I kinda phoned it in. I should have gone deeper on each subject, explained myself better. Not my finest performance. I will do better next episode, I promise.
Watched the Wax Trax records documentary Industrial Accident this weekend. It was very good. Great story, sad ending, never really knew much about the founders, which is kind of interesting, given how I kinda knew all about the founders of my other favorite labels like Factory, Mute, 4AD. Man. The golden years of Wax Trax, like 1986 to 1991 or so was insane. So many great records, so diverse. They really did nail the label aesthetic properly: Wax Trax had a sound, had a look, but the difference in sound between all of these bands really was radially diverse. Also I never really thought about it before, but they had signed the new bands from all four of the former members of Throbbing Gristle. And they had the KLF. The number of interviewees in the documentary was really amazing. There was a great interview with David J — the Wax Trax guys had booked one of Bauhaus’ early shows in America — and behind him, in the interview inexplicably, was a Fac 1 “Use Hearing Protection” Factory Records poster, which was great and odd since neither Bauhaus nor Love and Rockets were ever signed to Factory.
But my favorite part was the interview with Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys, who had the original VHS edition of the Star Trek Films box set prominently displayed behind him:
Anyway, very good doc. Informative, poignant, moving. And the part in the barn in Arkansas? Oh my god, that got the Lizard Brain Storage Wars part of my subconscious all hot and bothered, not gonna lie. I would have loved to organize that.
Did a bunch of gardening. Planted lettuce and spinach indoors, some more carrots outdoors. I also made a giant hoop house, completely screened in. This is going to be my now anti-animal protection. Just put every container in there of stuff that they eat. It is not the best-built thing in the world, but I think it should do the job. I am excited!
And I got my new giant workbench for my studio and assembled it and got it into the studio and in place. This was a whole project. The thing is made of heavyweight steel and hardwood. It is heavy. It was a two-person job to assemble, then I had to wheel it down from the garage to my studio door in the basement. Then I had to squeeze it through the door and around my desk over to its proper position. It barely fit. If it hadn’t fit that was going to be a nightmare of furniture and cable moving. Lucky. Then I had to disassemble the small temporary Cubitec shelf that was in the place where it was going to go. Then I wheeled it in place (that’s my new thing — all furniture needs wheels) and arrange the lighting on it. But it looks great! And it solved some very specific storage problems that i had. Exciting. Also, only $300! I mean, that is a bargain these days.
Hrm it could probably be moved to the left a little bit, huh.
Friday night I watched Jane and did bedtime and came downstairs for our usual TV time but Emma said she was gonna Facetime with a friend instead. So I had a couple drinks and watched a ton of music videos on YouTube and out of my Plex. Watched a bunch of old TG and PTV live performances, but then got re-obsessed with the Robert Levon Been and The Call show in LA that happened several years ago. I am not usually a big fan of children of celebrities becoming celebrities in the same medium as their parents, but there’s something I just love about Michael Been of the Call and Robert Levon Been of Black Rebel Motorcycle Club and I keep coming back to it. I think it’s because neither ever really achieved superstardom. Michael Been came close, but never quite made it, even though The Call had like four songs that you’d recognize right now. And there are so many little touching details — that Michael became Robert’s sound man for BRMC after his heyday. That Michael died on a BRMC tour. That Robert got the rest of Michael’s old band together and did a tribute show, doing his father’s vocals. It all really gets to me.
I saw the Call once, in Boston, at the Boston Garden, on one of those WBCN festival type shows: with Hothouse Flowers, The Masters of Reality featuring Ginger Baker, and local bands O-Positive and Tribe. went with my friend Paula. It was a great time. I already liked “Let the Day Begin” by the Call, and I vaguely remember them playing it. But I wish I remembered the show more. Paula was great. But I sure wish I could remember more about The Call show. The setlist on Setlist.FM is, alas, blank.
Also, I think it might be time to watch Dig! again.
Here’s a picture of some onions I grew.
I was thinking more this weekend about my imbroglio with Jason Sanford of Neptune back in 1998 that I wrote about the other day, and the Cindytalk tour, and I think one thing that kept happening back then is that I was embarrassed things were harder or taking longer because I was running out of money on each of these projects. Because back then I kept pouring every penny I made into art projects. And it was embarrassing to not have enough to finish them. And I realize now that there was nothing to be embarrassed about, that oftentimes these people probably didn’t realize I was pouring every penny into these projects, and they probably just assumed I was being a flake, because I didn’t tell them.
I remember one time, with another project — the fantastic Archenemy Records compilation Know Your Enemy — it was months late, through a combination of my money woes and customs bureaucracy. It had a mirror-finish Digipak. I got them printed in Belgium, because that was the only place I could find to print a mirror-coated Digipak. I found them because they had printed the Digipaks for the John Spencer Blues Explosion album Orange, which was also mirrored. But the thing is, JSPX (I assume) had the assembled Digipak+CD packages imported into America, thus using the standardized “Compact Disc” tariff rate. But I did not, I had a discount on CD Manufacturing through work, and was getting the CDs pressed in the US and only importing the Digipaks and apparently the customs office had no published tarriff on importing Digipaks only, and it was taking literally months for them to make what is known as a “binding ruling,” which is basically them deciding on how much to charge me to get my beautiful Digipaks. Which, of course, then I would have to pay.
Now, none of this was my fault and I could have just explained this to the twenty or so bands on the comp, but I was embarrassed about it, so I just didn’t explain any of it to anyone, until Sean cornered me and asked what was up, and I explained the whole thing, and he was like “Wow. Okay. That is a seriously complicted situation and not your fault. So what I think you could do is you could explain to all of these people what is happening.” It was so great. He suggested it to me like I was five. Like I would suggest something to Jane right now.
It had literally never occurred to me.
And even with that, it never occurred to me that there was something noble about spending every penny you had on someone else’s artistic project, and that if they knew that, they’d probably be honored, and patient. But I was just embarrassed.
Friday night I randomly got a “so-and-so liked your review on Goodreads” email, and it was about Martin Aston’s history of 4AD records, Facing the Other Way, so, you know, topical. And I remembered that for a year or two there I wrote really detailed reviews on Goodreads, and so I went and checked, and sure enough, this was a long, nostalgic, detailed review of the book.
But the best part is this. Here’s a passage from the review:
I grew up in the middle of nowhere, in central Alaska, and I can remember the first time I ever saw a 4AD record - This Mortal Coil's "16 days" single and the Cocteau Twins' Victorialand, at a local Comic Book Store of all places. 1986? 1987? It was like finding an artifact from another world.
And here, from seven years ago, is the only comment on the review:
Victorialand wasn’t released until 1986.
What a perfect, wonderful encapsulation of the internet.
And here it is, seven years later, and I just noticed this. And I want to go track that guy down and be, like, what is your problem? Which, as well, is a perfect encapsulation of the internet.
My Amazon book royalties came in for the month they were $167. I am swimming in it.
This reminds me I don’t think I’ve seen an actual royalty check from my publisher in a while.
My friend Kelly and I were talking the other day and we found this fantastic Wikipedia page of celebrities with advanced degrees. The biggest surprise to me is that Ken Jeong has an MD. From UNC Chapel Hill!
Okay. Look. Sorry. It is very hard coming up with new things to write about every single day when you never leave the house! I was reading another fantastic Hell World this weekend, thinking “yeah well of course this is good, dude got to go to the beach! dude walked around on some rocks! Dude actually did something!” It is a lot easier to write about things when you do things! That, to me, is this whole exercise. How interesting can you stay when your entire journey is interior, or at least domestic.
Could a generational spaceship ever produce a great author?
Of course!
There’s always something.
On that note, I would like to close by thanking my daughter for making me stop and smell the roses, as it were. Maintaining a childlike enthusiasm for the little things. I mean, I suppose she doesn’t make me — I could be one of those parents who doesn’t get into the kid stuff with their kids. But she reminds me, and that is enough. We were doing our games last night — Bonk Bonk, ABC circles, Climb on Daddy, Under the Covers, Roughousing — and it really is very rewarding. To just stop thinking about the cosmos and evil Republicans the burning earth and just think about walking in circles while saying your ABCs for a while. A litany, a ritual, finding peace for a moment. Lovely.
Also, she is starting to draw original drawings, which is very very exciting. And she’s making up songs. I’m thinking if I can record them all I might make an album. Isn’t that gloriously clicheéd? So into it.
OK let’s do a mix. W Hotel Lobby Playlist mix. My favorite mix series. Mostly new, a few old. Voices Inside My Head came on the other day and I thought “oh yeah I like this tune” and it was the first time in, like, a decade that I had a positive feeling about The Police. I used to love them but just got sick of them. Or something. And now they play the same five or six Police songs on XM First Wave, so I’m kinda sick of those five or six, even though they were probably my favorite ones back in the day. But for a brief moment there, I was like “oh yeah this is a good song.” So that was nice. I’m over disliking the Police because of Sting’s late-period solo output in concept. It just hasn’t clicked in reality. I’m really kind of over that whole concept — Sting’s just a man, maaaan. If he wants to mellow out and put out AOR in his later years who am I to judge. Let him do his thing.
Okay have a lovely Monday! Well, a tolerable one. Get through it. We’ll get through it together. Hold my hand. Ready?
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