Good morning. Hello. How are you? #723
RIP Brother Cleve, A visit from Nick, Spiritualized at Cat's Cradle, Gardening, Video up-rezzing project, the myth of sterile urine.
Good morning! Hello there! Have a nice weekend? I did, it was lovely, thanks for asking. My friend Nick came and visited from Wilmington, bringing along his little camper trailer and parking in our driveway. We had a lovely pizza dinner with Emma and Jane and then he and I went into Chapel Hill to see Spiritualized at Cat’s Cradle. Before the show, we stopped by a lovely little gallery / shop called Peel, owned by a woman we haven’t met but is also from Boston and is friends with a bunch of our friends in Boston. I did not meet her, but the shop was lovely, the art was awesome. There was an auction, and I wanted to bid on a piece, but the bid book was mysteriously missing the page for that piece. I suspect someone already bought it.
I did not know Brother Cleve well, but we met here and there through the years. Always seemed great. He was a tremendous addition to Boston, to the nightlife scene, to the music scene. He will be missed, and my heart goes out to my friends who knew him well, and who are hurting over his loss. If you are in New York, consider stopping by Lullabye, in the Lower East Side, the bar in which he was a partner. If you are not, let’s all listen to Combustible Edison today, one of New England’s most original bands, or perhaps The Swinging Erudites. Man, they were great. He will be missed.
Spiritualized were awesome. Let me just check my gig list here. My gig list says that was the thirty-third time I have seen Spiritualized. The first time I saw them, I realized at the show, was thirty years ago. I have seen acoustic Spiritualized shows with gospel choirs (twice), I have seen them with symphony orchestras (on two continents). I have seen them in clubs, in arenas, in tents in deserts, in tents on ranches. I have seen them in seven states. This was probably the best Spiritualized tour in twenty years. I confess before the show, I peeked at the setlist from the night before in DC. I wasn’t super into it. Very light on the old songs, very heavy on the current album, and then on top of that, didn’t even have my favorite song — a single! — from the new album. The old songs that he picked, though, were enough to make me look forward to it. For the last ten or so years he’s been playing my favorite Spiritualized song ever, from their first album, thirty years old. He went maybe eighteen years without playing that song, in the Ladies and Gentlement heyday of Spiritualized coming to America multiple times a year. But then, a couple years ago, it entered the setlist and it’s been in there since. But other than that, and two other songs, it is a setlist shockingly light on the oldies, shockingly light on songs from their biggest albums.
But now that I’ve seen the show, I get it. Man. What an epic journey. Soul, drone, noise, free jazz, gospel, folk, krautrock — there was one point in the middle Nick said “this could basically be a Van Morrisson tune.” It is a journey and it is awesome. What I realized once I was watching the show is that it was totally fine that so many of the old stalwarts of the setlist were gone, because honestly Jason has a giant catalog at this point and it was getting a little stale that he was always picking the same ten or so songs to play. But no more! So many great new live tunes in the set. Songs I had never heard live, songs I didn’t know would be live, songs that are pretty good on the album but sound majestic live. The A Song! My god. What a masterpiece live.
Nick and I headed back home and had a great time chatting with Emma on the patio. Lovely evening. The next morning, Nick brought me McDonald’s hash browns and made Jane laugh, I gave him some cassettes for his new old used car that had a cassette deck, and he headed back to the coast. Fantastic time.
Saturday I got my gardening done, which was a challenge because it was raining, so for a second week in a row, I did not get any video made. I did get the tomatoes harvested, and I really spent some time fixing their trellising, and cutting off the dead leaves. The tomatoes are doing great, six feet in the air, outside of the hoop house. Inside the hoop house, they’re just vines. It is real weird. I think everything old — the stuff in the hoop house — got sun scaled, basically, so the new growth is where it’s at. Next year I need to a) make the hoop house higher, b) use shade cloth! I will get better at this, I promise. The peppers are going gangbusters, got a bunch of them, harvested some lettuce. Thinned the bok choy. Radishes are about ready to harvest and I have a good batch of beans ready, but I didn’t have a window to take care of those. Lots to do in the coming cooler days of late summer. Just give me a long, sunny weekend, boss.
Sunday I spent the entire day watching videos and shit. It was weird. I was sick! It felt like a terrible hangover. I did have a bit of a hangover Saturday, not gonna lie, but… two days later? I did not drink near enough for that. So of course I became convinced I got COVID at the show and, three days and three COVID tests laster, I am still not completely convinced that’s not the case. Though weirdly, I feel fine today. Which is a relief, because I have to get my vaccine booster today. And that was kind of how my sickness felt — like vaccine sickness. And I wasn’t particularly looking forward to getting vaccine sickness on top of vaccine-like sickness. But I guess it was just some one-day bug or something. Or maybe a hangover but, man, five very light beers through the course of a long evening causing a two day hangover is somewhat alarming but whatever I basically never drink anymore anyway. Lotta good youtube videos, though. And Episode 8 of Ken Burns’ The Vietnam War. And House of the Dragon. I am all caught up on the YouTubes. Feels good, feels good.
Video up-rezzing Plex project is going just great. Blu Rays are coming in fast and furious from Amazon and Netflix. Over the weekend I added: Fellini’s Roma; Decasia The State of Decay; The Great Muppet Caper; Foxy Brown; Somewhere in Time; The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover; and Near Dark. A reader asked me to make these lists more legible with semi-colons. I must confess I don’t really get semi-colons, I never use them. Did I do that right?
Okay. So. 1997 or so. I was at Harborlights, which might have been called Bank Boston pavillion at the time. Who can remember all the names of that place. It’s harbor lights. Looking through my show list, I’m gonna say it was the Teenage Fanclub, Dandy Warhols, Radiohead show, though honestly, I don’t remember what show it was. Maybe Dead Can Dance in ‘96. What I do remember, vividly, is going to the bathroom. I had to pee. They have one of those trough pissers where all the men line up and pee into an oversized gutter. Hate those things, Anyway, at face level, on the way, sign. It’s an official sign, from the Harborlights people and, like, the Boston Sanitation Dept or whatever. It explains what happens to the sewage from Harborlights. It says that the shitter goes to the sewage treatment plant, but that the urine goes straight into the harbor, because “urine is sterile.” I remember this vividly. I remember it because I never knew urine was sterile, that seemed wildly improbable, and highly unlikely. But why were Harborlights and the Boston Sanitation Dept looking to deceive me. It is for this reason — that I never knew this highly unlikely fact — that the moment stuck with me for the rest of my life.
I gotta say, I have been dubious ever since. I mean, come on. But I’ve seen this fact over and over! From doctors! From reliable sources! It’s always seemed crazy! But I fell for it, I believed it.
And then! Yesterday, my wife Tweeted this:
THANK YOU ASHLEY WINTER MD UROLOGIST. Someone in the replies is like “what? A fluid that comes out of a body has living things in it? Impossible!” I mean, the conceit that urine is sterlie is so manifestly, prima facie absurd, yet everyone says it. The replies to that thread are filled with stories of doctors telling people urine is sterile. It’s insane!
I’m convinced people are looking for another word, one we don’t have. Something like “almost certainly doesn’t carry diseases and is a mild astringent” or something.
But it’s not sterile.
And I was lied to for decades, and I fell for it, even though I knew it was absured.
Shoulda stuck to my guns.
Look I know I posted a photo almost exactly like this on Friday, but this one is better and I should have used it and it deserves its day in the sun.
Justa mix for today. New and old. New Holy Fawn is great, new Afghan Whigs is great, I’m only a couple songs into this Jockstrack band’s album but i like it a lot. New Built to Spill is weird but I am into it so far. And a bunch of old songs of a certain type. Mellow pop I guess you could call it. I stuck almost all of em in a row in the middle what can I say maybe this mix is two mixes in one fighthing for supremacy.
Okay! New week new you. Good luck out there.