Good morning! Hello there! How’s it going?

I apologize for yesterday’s post. I meant to put a cute Jane drawing or a meme or something, some sort of transitional image between the paragraph on Ulvade and the paragraph on humanity’s Ammonia addiction. You know, something to break up the wall of misery. A palette cleanser. A breather. Forgive me, forgive me. I was specifically thinking of this Dall-E-generated image of cyberpunkTaylor Swift:

Do you live in Boston? Did you go see Tears for Fears last night? Wasn’t it awesome? Can’t those two dudes sing? Both sixty years old and both still have their vocal chops after… let’s just say a lot of hard living. Did you see any teenagers singing along to “Break it Down Again?” Abby reported no teenagers around her at the show, and said that the crowd was, to put it gently, “older.” But, you know, maybe all the kids were down in the pit. Or something. And the Tipping Point love seems like it was stronger in NC too, from the reports I am receiving. Still, man. Would love to see them again. What a show, what a show. A friend told me that Tears for Fears are bigger than Depeche Mode on Spotify. Isn’t that crazy?

It was 96 degrees here yesterday. Normally, our cut-off for taking our evening walk is 95 degrees, but Jane wanted to go, so we decided to give it a whirl. Not too too bad? But then she threw a stalling fit and we were just stuck out there for a while, at the far end of our neighborhood, waiting for her to talk and suddenly it felt… very hot. Thankfully that hot spell — second in two weeks — is over and we’re back into the 80’s for the next ten days or so. I don’t mind the heat as much as I used to, it’s so weird. When I was in Boston and New York I hated it, but that was mainly because I was on pavement, so it felt worse, and I was amongst people, so I was way more self conscious of all the sweating. Now, here, it’s mostly green, and if I get sweaty I just go inside and change my clothes and move on. It’s just generally a lot more pleasant. Also, no subways to get in and out of, and no beautiful film stars to run into at Balthazar while you’re too sweaty. Really does make things more tolerable.

Though I sure do miss Balthazar. Be hilarious if they opened an NC branch. More New York insitutions should be opening up branches in completely random US towns, like Knitting Factory. There are Knitting Factories in Spokane and Boise. Be awesome if there was like a Katz in Norman, Oklahoma and a Balthazar in Saxapahaw, NC or someting. Also the Knitting Factory in Williamsburg closed, that is sad. Real institution right there. I mean, not as much as the Knitting Factory in TriBeCa, but it was still a great venue, super cool layout, it will be missed.

Speaking of New York insitututions that kind of did do this, though I guess in reverse, been thinking about the Limelight the last day. Dave Kendall was filling in for the (vastly underrated, dryly hilarious) Sluggo on XM First Wave and I hadn’t heard from Dave Kendall in a long time. I recalled that I twice saw him introduce bands at Limelight: Pop Will Eat Itself and The Legendary Pink Dots. Got me thinking about that place, it really was an amazing club. Amazing to see a live show — the main room was just gorgeous, majestic. And amazing to go to a club night — so many weird little rooms, it felt like slowly unfulring adventure and danger just brilliant and terrifying and so cool. I started thinking about 24 Hour Party People and how Michael Winterbottom and crew meticulously recreated the Haçienda for the film, and in order to film the club shots, they threw a Haçienda reunion party. And how much I love that film, because I never got to go to the Haçienda, and sure, I’ve seen it a billion times in documentaries but seeing it in 24 Hour Party People made it feel more real, thanks to being, you know, HD, instead of grainy video from the 80’s. Simulacrum and Simulation, etc. etc.

(speaking of which, if you’ve ever doubted New Order’s prowess live, check out this performance of “Sunrise” live at the Haçienda):

Anyway, I was thinking there had to be something like that. I feel like someone must have recreated it for a film. I did some digging (with the help from my friend Noah) and eventually remembered the film Party Monster, which I did see, but I don’t think it actually recreated the majestic main room of the Limelight in it. Does anyone recall for sure? I do not feel a burning need to re-watch that film otherwise. I was talking to Emma about the Limelight, she never went, and sure, we could look at it in documentaries — turns out there is a documentary about both the New York Limelight and it’s original counterpart, the Atlanta Limelight. But unless someone shot the thing well-lit, with motion picture film, and then did an HD scan, it won’t look that, that good. I want to feel immersed.

Huh maybe this is the first thing I would be really compelled to do with VR. I would SO check out a meticulously-recreated VR Limelight.

It’s hard to even find a good still photo of the Limelight on the interwebs but here is a good one from a Vanity Fair article:

Of course, I went mainly for the live shows (Psychic TV, Sisters of Mercy) and the goth nights than they clubby club club nights, but those were pretty insane too.

My other nostalgia k-hole yesterday was getting Aug Stone to remind me of which prog rock band from the 70’s bought adjoining castles and waged psychic warfare on one another, and which Julian Cope autopbiography told this tale. Aug clearly has a better memory than I, and within seconds he texted back telling me that the band was Magma, and it was the second Cope autobiography, Reposessed, which tells the tale, which I will excerpt for your reading pleasure:

“the original group had come to a stunning and savage conclusion in Spain after a wild magic battle between Magma’s leader, the percussionist Christian Vander, and the epically named bass player, Jannik (sic) Top. Vander had rented a hilltop castle for his own uses, which had annoyed Top’s ego. He had rented a similar place within sight of Vander and the two proceeded to wage magic war upon one another. [Magma’s manager] Martin Cole told of how he had ended driving from one castle to another trying to patch the band up, only to discover Jannik Top with serious chest wounds, screaming that Vander had caused him to tear his own chest open.……

I think about this story often. Keith Butters and I used to have a pact that if we sold Barbarian for tons of money (far more than for what we actually ended up selling it), we would recreate Magma’s magic battle and both of us would buy castles in Spain, in adjoining neighborhoods. We would then spend our excess cash on engineering increasingly more sophisticated water ballooon trebuchets that would launch water balloons at each others’ castles. It might be months between attacks, as one party or the other spent time, energy and money engineering a new, more effective non-lethal water balloon trebuchet. You might be out gardening, when then, suddenly, boom. Water balloon attack. Keep you on your toes, it would.

Anyway, I decided yesterday to revisit Magma’s third and most legendary album, Mekanik Destructiw Kommandoh. It was… a lot better than I remember it? I remember it being “dumb jazz,” (as Ian McCullough slagged it off to his bandmate Julian Cope) but no, it is bonkers. It has an interstellar choir, a made-up language, in a lot of ways it is the precursor to Sigur Ros more than anything else.

Recommended: Magma’s Mekanik Destructiw Kommandoh.

I think that’s about it for today? Oh, finished Obi Wan Kenobi last night. The ending was… simultaneously really good and… just fine? I have given up expecting the Star Wars Universe to, like, follow the laws they laid out themselves about how long space travel takes. Apparently in their galaxy all the planets are five minutes away. This has been a problem for a while so nothing new there I guess. I have one specific nitpick about how *I* would have had a certain event go, and it would have been better, but by and large they were pretty locked in to a specific outcome by the end, what with it being a prequel and all. I super enjoyed the whole affair even if it was a bit predictable, since Ewan MacGregor makes a fantastic Obi Wan and he deserved material better than the prequels and he got it. Also it’s hilarious how much people simultaneously love the prequels now and don’t like this stuff when new Star Wars is manifestly better than the prequels. Even Episode 9, which was mostly hot garbage, is better than the prequels. This is all known, but I was thinking that it seems possible — likely, even — that in another decade or so people will love this stuff a lot more. Like it will be revised in people’s minds, there will be a new appreciation for Disney+ Star Wars stuff like there was for the prequels. Maybe. Conceivably.

Also the things I feel like Disney+ is mostly doing really well is making shit look cool, and they get good performances out of their actors, and they write pretty good dialog, so I suppose the path is clear. Disney ought to just remake the prequels. Same cast. Just do it again, with better dialog, effects, and acting. The plot of the prequels isn’t too too bad. Maybe throw in some scenes from the Clone Wars into a live action universe (this was Sean’s idea and it’s such a good one). A redux of the prequels, if you will. Simulacra and Simulation. Like my HD fictional Limelight.

OK club mix for you. Mostly new, except for a Chemical Bros remix of Primal Scream and tacking on a Working Man’s Club track to the end, because I keep thinking about that band and I keep meaning to give the more time cuz that album was really solid. Other than that, mostly the sort of Spotify collaboration remixes that fill up your Release Radar and whatnot. Oh right and Justice, because that album was the VinylMe Please record of the month and I’ve been listening to it a lot and it’s been taking me back to SXSW 2007 or so seeing them in a warehouse at the C3 Presents party. Back when we all said FTW a lot.

Okay let’s do this Thursday. I made almost zero progress on my work product yesterday, so we are definitely going to do that today. Definitely.

Webb Chatham Report

Good morning. Hello. How are you? #670