MULCH no. 3

Hot off the press, here 'tis. The third issue of MULCH features a whole mess of music recommendations as well as a collection of essays. Topics include food, fashion, music and culture. Gary Blaster shows up again, answering a reader's question about genetic mutation and revealing his true identity. You can find MULCH in Portland at Powell's on Burnside (while supplies last) or you can get in touch with me and I'll mail you one.

Sooo Bro

Who likes hot dogs? I know I do. Despite the common knowledge that they’re composed of lips and assholes, something just feels right the moment you bite into one, like hitting a homer. Though it’s a German food, we Americans have made it as connected to our culture as apple pie. It’s no surprise then that hot dogs are sold at almost every American sporting event, fair and festival. In fact, more hot dogs are consumed at baseball games than the storied peanuts and cracker jacks.

My appreciation of the hot dog is a deep one. Fed them as a child, I’ve always enjoyed their unique texture and familiar but hard-to-characterize flavor. It was that appreciation, and a hearty craving, that brought me to a Portland hot dog vendor last week. Bro-Dog sits among several other food carts in the pod at Southwest Fifth and Stark. It boasts as diverse a menu as you’d expect from a hot dog stand – that is to say, it’s not all that varied. While the hot dog turned out to be fine, the real treat was interacting with the guy who runs the joint.

A 30-ish man in flip-flops, cargo shorts and a T-shirt that read “Ask Me About My 10” Wiener,” he greeted me as I approached. “Hey dude! What-cha thinkin bout?” he hollered as I glanced at the set of choices. “Thinkin bout a dog, eh bro?”

“Yeah, man,” I responded. It was true: I was thinking about a hot dog.

“Dude, we got that chicken-apple dog – sooo bomb,” he emphatically stated, nodding with wide-eyed sincerity. “Or the jalapeno-cheddar dog, we got that one too, bro. It’s like ‘BOOM,’ for real!”

Clearly, this guy was serious about his frankfurters. I weighed my options as he went on about the Polish dog (“hella tight, bro; you bite into that one and it’s just like ‘aah yeeeah.’”) and busied himself behind the counter.

After he affably helped me make a choice according to my level of hunger and threw my dog (a 10-inch all-beef) on the grill, he asked if I wanted grilled sauerkraut or onions. ‘Grilled sauerkraut?’ I thought. “Yeah, man. That’d be great.”

“You got it, dude! It’s all you, baby!”

Really, the guy was pleasant enough, the hot dog was tasty, and I left satisfied. I just found it all funny; it was as if the local chapter of a fraternity had set up a hot dog stand as a fundraiser. This bro was just so bro. I guess the old adage is true: you can take the wiener out of the frat, but you can’t take the frat out of the wiener.

Rodriguez: Cold Fact

My friend at Saint Cleveland turned me on to this re-released gem from 1970. Sixto Diaz Rodriguez was a full-time factory worker and a part-time freak-folkie from Detroit. His music, a blend of the fading idealism of the 1960s and his own stark vision of the future, reflects the sense of dismay coming over many rust belt residents. While the social unrest and urban decay of Rodriguez’s home city weigh heavily on his songwriting, he ably combines elements of beat poetry, psychedelic rock and funky pop to great effect. The loping strut of “Hate Street Dialogue” calls to mind another Motor City fixture, only this street-walking cheetah has a heart full of worry, not napalm. The heavy-handed “Only Good For Conversation” is part “Smoke on the Water,” part “Big Bottom” – so much so that I can almost see Spinal Tap’s Derek Smalls on the double bass when I close my eyes.

Actually, the most glaring influence on Cold Fact is Donovan: “Sugar Man” and “Crucify Your Mind” are both so Donovan-esque, with mystic hippie statements like “silver magic ships, you carry…sweet Mary Jane” over languid guitar strumming, that it’d be safe to call Rodriguez the Detroit Donovan. Conversely, “I Wonder” is straight-up doo-wop-pop with an infectious bass line and a counterculture bent.

The entire album is colored by a serious feeling of disillusion, made clearer with a pointed frustration not unlike Dylan’s. The second to last track on side two, “Gomorrah (A Nursery Rhyme),” is a haunting blues with a choir of ghosts singing “America the Beautiful” on the fadeout. The song details the seamy underbelly of not only his city (“the ladies on my street aren’t there for their health”) but “your city.” Observing Detroit as a place of poverty, squalor and depravity, Rodriguez applies his thinking to the rest of the country, commenting on the sad state of the union. Though I’m sure he wasn’t alone in his disenchantment, his record didn’t sell for shit. Here’s hoping that the recent reissue can reach a new generation of the pissed-off and bummed-out, if only so the music can be heard.

Don't hate.

Robert Leo Heilman, an Oregonian, contributed a critical piece to the University of Oregon’s magazine, Oregon Quarterly, about irrational people (specifically the far right-wingers). I thought it was a tad smug, a little presumptuous, but overall, pretty thoughtful. An excerpt that I think rings especially true:

I have known a great many people over the years—nice people, decent people—who cling to harmful and repugnant beliefs that are racist, homophobic, xenophobic, misogynistic, or politically intolerant. What they all have had in common is their high levels of frustration and fear. Each has felt insecure and cheated somehow, denied their fair share of power, ignored and disrespected. Many (though not all) have been economic losers, bitter about their failure to succeed. Some have been emotional cripples, unable to sustain loving relationships and unable to tolerate ambiguity. Many have had their lives fall apart due to compulsive boozing or drug abuse or gambling. Others have simply been crushed repeatedly by an indifferent and impersonal system of things that exploits them because it is profitable to do so. Some are people who blame themselves for having suffered terrible blows that came for no good reason at all. All became, in one way or another, shell-shocked veterans of life itself.
What is there to cling to when, by your own doing or by others or by cold fate, you have lost everything? Stripped of dignity, mired in failure, caged in by tough circumstances and uncontrollable forces, what is left to people but to embrace comforting nonsense and to rage against perceived injustice?

Click here for the full piece.

Watch where you point that thing.

Last Friday night Roy Messenger crashed his car into a utility pole, knocking it down and ending up in a ditch. Miraculously, the 50-year-old Elma, Washington man was uninjured. He climbed out of his car and called a relative to help him get it out of the ditch. But when his family finally made it to the scene, Messenger was dead.

So what happened? A deputy with the Grays Harbor County Sheriff's office says that Messenger must have relieved himself in the ditch while waiting for his family. He likely died after urinating on the live power line he’d downed. Though an official autopsy will confirm the cause of death, it’s apparently clear that the burn marks show where and how the electricity entered Messenger's body.

Pretty shitty way to go, if you ask me.

The T.A.M.I. Show

David Fricke is a Senior Writer with Rolling Stone magazine. He’s apparently valuable enough to the famed publication that he’s allowed to choose his own assignments, writing features on the old dudes, interviewing legends and reviewing only the tastiest new albums. My favorite contribution of his to the mag is “Fricke’s Picks,” a column that gives him space to write about under-the-radar bands, reissues of forgotten records and other music minutiae.

In the latest issue, Fricke talks about “The Greatest Rock Concert Movie Ever.” I couldn’t agree more with his choice. He writes:

All that is dull and predictable in modern rock-show films – caffeinated-jitter edits, hagiographic close-ups, the cheesy melodrama backstage – can be traced to this fact: The best example of how to do it right, The T.A.M.I. Show – a 12-act revue topped by James Brown and the Rolling Stones, shot live in Los Angeles with a delirious audience on October 29th, 1964 – has been officially unavailable, in its entirety, for more than four decades. The T.A.M.I. Show: Collector’s Edition (Shout! Factory) is the movie’s first release on DVD. Class starts now.

The first lesson: Get to the music, immediately. After breezy opening scenes of the artists heading to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium – Smokey Robinson and the Miracles in a limo, hosts Jan and Dean on skateboards – director Steve Binder (who later directed Elvis Presley’s 1968 TV special) jumps to a sly, bracing zigzag of Fifties roots and Liverpool cheek, Chuck Berry alternating hits with Gerry and the Pacemakers. Everything follows at the same velocity – Marvin Gaye’s manly lust into Lesley Gore’s vengeful-schoolgirl sugar; the proto-garage rock of the Barbarians.

There are also long, magnetic highs, when a single camera finds a thrill and stays there. When the Beach Boys (with a smiling Brian Wilson on bass) leap into “Dance, Dance, Dance” like the Ramones with tans, you see Dennis Wilson racing at the drums like Keith Moon during all of Carl Wilson’s guitar solo. In “Prisoner of Love,” Brown’s face slowly fills the lens as he staggers offstage, in his cape, before spinning back to the mike for more spectacular agony.

The Stones follow Brown’s set (the first time many white teens saw such black fire) with a prophetic mettle. The extended leaping-devil shots of Mick Jagger capture him sharpening the sex and danger in his own R&B choreography. Note the glimpses of a cocky, grinning Brian Jones and, too, the way Keith Richards plays guitar while facing drummer Charlie Watts. Some things, even in rock-concert films, never change.I’m glad the movie is finally hitting shelves. I remember reading about the legendary show a few years ago (T.A.M.I. stands for Teenage Awards Music International) and, as a serious Stones fan, being seriously intrigued. The film being officially unavailable, I ended up finding a bootleg on eBay and having it shipped from Brazil. It did not disappoint. In addition to publishing and distribution disputes way back when, I think that some of the artists held up its official release for whatever reason. Though my version has performances by the Ronettes and Ray Charles, they don’t appear on the version now available. Either way, the movie is a must-see, must-hear if only for JB and the Stones. You buy!

the games

The 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver officially ended last night with the closing ceremony. It was an eventful affair to say the least, with the tragic death of a young luger, a high-stakes skiing competition, and a nail-biting men's hockey final all making for over two weeks of exciting thrills and spills. When it was all said and done, the United States had been awarded 37 medals, the highest total count. Germany was second with 30 and Canada was third, finishing with 26. Canada did however earn 14 gold medals, the most any host-country has ever received and a record that any other nation would be proud to set.

I'm reminded of something I wrote about national pride during the summer games of 2008: http://gimdang.blogspot.com/2008/08/pride.html.

Tacos, man.

What’s so great about a taco? Some might say, “big whoop, it’s just a few things in a tortilla.” I say, Really? That’s like saying a Rothko painting is just a few colors on a canvas. To the uninitiated, I suppose that could be true but, to others in the know (those with an appreciation for the finer things), that couldn’t be further from the truth. The singular joy of the taco has as much to do with what’s in it as what isn’t in it. Less can be more, there is beauty in simplicity.

Take the carnitas taco. Simply stated, it’s a pork taco. This pork however, at once tender and caramelized to a crisp, is magical. Slow-cooked with salt, oregano and cumin (along with the chef’s choice of other herbs and spices) and typically garnished with a bit of cilantro, onion and queso fresco, it is often served on a hand-sized, hand-made corn tortilla. A good one is rapture, a bad one can still be pretty good. More importantly, the taco is not weighed down with excess ingredients that might otherwise overwhelm or distract the eater.

The pork is the centerpiece – taking the focus from it would be a disservice to the chef and his/her creation. The same can be said for the carne asada taco, the tinga taco and the pollo asado taco. All feature a lovingly prepared meat as the focal point, no more than three complementary extras, and sometimes a salsa. Distinguished more by the main part than the sum of many other parts, the taco is a lot like the Cleveland Cavaliers – a great team of guys that play well together with one main guy that leads and carries the team. LeBron James is the meat – consistently good and essential to the taco’s success.

Though the tortilla on which it’s all presented is basically just a vessel, its importance cannot be understated. Warm and flexible, its subtle taste and texture hold everything together, literally and figuratively. The tortilla might even be more important than the meat – if it were to tear, the taco would cease to be a taco. If it broke down, the taco would fall apart. Think about it this way: if the taco is like the Cavs, then 2009 NBA Coach Of The Year Mike Brown might be the tortilla.

I’m not saying the taco is the perfect food. I’m just saying it's fundamentally the best. Just because the taco doesn’t always wow or hit every time doesn’t mean it’s not king. Even LeBron misses sometimes. The star of the team, the star of the taco – either way you look at it – the meat is still the main attraction, the star of the show. It can stand alone, but it tends to do a little better with some accompaniment.

just a thought

We use tools for any number of things. A screwdriver screws, a drill drills, a saw saws. Necessity being the mother of invention, all tools were thus born of a direct need to serve a specific purpose. So what was the first tool?

In all likelihood, it was probably the hammer. Or something like a hammer – an object for striking, pounding and crushing. The hammer is, to this day, the most rudimentary tool. Its action is basic, its use simple, its result predictable. Still, I’m thinking that it might not have been the first tool.

Consider the backscratcher. Or something like a backscratcher – an object that reaches where a hand cannot to satisfy that most primal of urges.

We’ve all experienced the torture of an itch that just can’t be scratched. We’ve seen pets flip out, twisting their bodies to feverishly gnaw at a patch of skin. We’ve seen videos of bears rubbing against trees, the satisfaction on their faces almost perceptible. It’s such an animal instinct that I have a hard time believing that a primitive human wouldn’t do anything in his power to get relief from a nagging itch.It makes sense that a scratching tool (doubtless just an unaltered stick) was the first tool, the first object utilized for a particular function. It was also perhaps the spark that ignited the fire of discovery, opening the developing mind to hunting-and-gathering tools. Some might stake this claim against a spear, a blade, a digger and a hammer. How might an enterprising human know that a spear could pierce, or a blade could cut and scrape, or a digger move earth, if not for a scratcher’s effect on his skin? Just a thought.

sing to me

Sometimes I hear things. I hear things in the white noise of a ceiling fan, in the dull tumbling of the drier, and in the forced air of the furnace. What I hear sounds like a band. Or a voice. Like a distant radio, it’s faint but nonetheless present.

Though I can almost make out a tune, I’m quite sure the dishwasher isn’t really playing music. My refrigerator didn’t come equipped with the AM/FM option and the microwave isn’t tuned to my frequency. So what am I hearing? And why?

I don't know. Perhaps it’s a subconscious thing. Is my brain conditioned to create rhythm or cadence from an otherwise bland sound? Maybe it’s an inner attempt to spice things up a bit. Of course, I could just be going crazy.

The faucet speaks to me, too.

Best of 2009

I don’t listen to a lot of new music. Regardless, two of my favorite releases of 2009 are described below. In trying to decide which was best, which deserved to be GimmeDanger’s album of the year, I had a fairly difficult time. Both are great front to back, both were well-received, and both will likely stand the test of time. But one album was about coming together -- one album was about breaking apart. And that, not the artistic merit or songwriting prowess of the creators, made all the difference.

GIMDANG album of the year:
Monsters of Folk, Monsters of FolkA band’s music is the sum of its parts. When those parts are Jim James of My Morning Jacket, Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis of Bright Eyes, and M. Ward of uh, M. Ward fame, it’s not presuming to expect the Voltron effect. That I haven’t listened to much of these guys individually doesn’t preclude me from saying that they’re great together.

Though the band has been endlessly compared to the super-groups of yesteryear, Monsters of Folk are no Traveling Wilburys. True, there is a very real sense of mutual respect, of fun and community – the sound of four fine musicians creating a joyful noise. But unlike the Wilburys, the Monsters don’t share the same influences. They don’t really even play the same kind of music with their respective bands. I liken it to a jigsaw puzzle with each member as a piece. The Wilburys fit together seamlessly, resulting in a fine (albeit simply constructed) product. The Monsters however, don’t fit together as easily; their edges don’t quite line up and a little more effort is required to complete that fine finished product. Therein lies the beauty of this album: those pieces, and the very different ingredients they bring to the table, combine to great effect the same way a perfect recipe does.

The first single, “Say Please,” is a testament to the power of a band in its simplest, most pure form (check out the video). Everyone sings a verse, everyone plays an instrument and every individual unites to make music. The fact that they’re all exceptionally talented doesn’t hurt either.

Instead of sticking to down-home folk rock (as the moniker implies), the band members flesh out their own sounds with the help of the others. Though the main songwriter for each song is clear, their different styles mesh well together. The freewheeling bounce of the MMJ-sounding “Losin Yo Head” is anchored by Mogis’ deft bass work. The poetic and pointed lyrics of Oberst get the M. Ward treatment on “Ahead of The Curve” as urgency is abandoned and the pace is slowed to the speed of the song’s subject, a restless drifter. The moments when the band really falls in line are awe-inspiring. The campfire strumming and gentle pulse on “Temazcal,” the toe-tapping Everly-Bro time of “Baby Boomer,” the remarkably close harmonies on the ultra-soft “Sandman, The Brakeman and Me” – all are transcendent.

The unheralded champion of the album is multi-instrumentalist Mike Mogis. The dobro on “Goodway,” the mandolin on “The Right Place,” and the Wurlitzer effects and pedal-steel accents he peppers throughout are simply sublime. Though he takes a vocal back seat, his recording and mixing contributions are innumerable.

Anything but a vanity project, the entire album is an impeccably-concocted mixture of rock, folk and Americana with a dash of electronic texture: the result of four guys bursting with creativity, connecting, being free to do what feels natural, and supporting each other in the creation of good music. It’s almost as if this new crew of Monsters heard the advice of one Wilbury (the former Beatle) to carry on the super-grouping tradition: “Come together. Right now. Over me.” Lucky for us, they heeded it.

Highlight: The final song, “His Master’s Voice,” with Jim James’ piercing tenor telling a tale of faith and allegiance, is the perfect curtain.


Runner-Up:
Girls, Album
Girls, a duo from San Francisco (who are actually guys), reportedly crafted their debut on a speed binge. You wouldn’t know it by listening. Album is a sweet slice of Fifties-pop pie layered with a healthy serving of shoegaze and surf rock. While “Laura” could be the soundtrack to a stoned jaunt through Breakup Park, “Big Bad Mean Motherfucker” is a beach jam with a sand-storming guitar sound and a Johnny-Thundering solo. “Hellhole Ratrace” is built upon a teetering wall of sound that seems to have been hastily erected as an emotional shield while “Darling” comments on the redemptive qualities of a good song. The general tone of the lyrics is achingly sad; singer Christopher Owens lets most of the words seep out with a dynamic warble to rival Elvis Costello’s. Treading water in a sea of foamy distortion, he moans with all the despair of a lone cetacean, separated from its pod and its mate. Indeed, this is lonesome music. It’s a beautifully detached album – an album that might be best absorbed alone.

Highlight: The atmospheric “Headache.” It was so deeply imprinted on my consciousness that it haunted a series of my dreams one night.


Honorable Mention:
Neko Case, Middle Cyclone
The pipes on this gal are otherworldly, like the calm before the storm, the hurricane and the aftermath. Her album boasts a collection of songs that are at once arresting in their simplicity and awesome in their grandeur.

Help Haiti

HOLY CRAP. I’m starting to get overwhelmed with all this Haiti business. It is unbelievably devastating. Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that the poorest country in the Western hemisphere was rocked by a 7.0-magnitude earthquake on Tuesday. Haiti’s infrastructure and government were already ill-equipped to handle a significant challenge; now the nation is trying to cope with a disaster of epic proportions.

International response was quick. The US and its allies all pledged their support along with many other countries around the world. Aid groups were mobilized and ready to handle the dead, treat the wounded and provide shelter, food and water. The people of America have also been generous, raising money through social networking websites and donating to charitable organizations. Still, the process of helping the victims has proven to be a logistical nightmare.

With nearly all of the poorly constructed buildings in the capital of Port-au-Prince collapsed, rubble is everywhere – hiding bodies and rendering hundreds of thousands homeless. With the shipping and receiving ports in ruin, with the airports clogged with cargo planes and with nearly all the roads impassable, the distribution of aid has been painfully slow.

Dead bodies are piling up (the toll is conservatively estimated to be around 50,000). Many are still trapped in the wreckage. Human waste is everywhere. Injuries are going untreated, infection spreading. People who haven’t slept in days are thirsty and hungry. How long will it be before aid can reach the people who need it? How long will it be before animal instinct takes over and chaos reigns?

The fact that President Bill Clinton, the U.N. special envoy to Haiti, has taken a lead role in the relief effort is heartening. It’s like Jules Winnfield’s line in Pulp Fiction when Marsellus Wallace tells him The Wolf is on the way: “Shit, negro – that’s all you had to say!”Still, the cleanup and rebuilding will be protracted and laborious. It will take years for things to return to normal, which admittedly weren’t that great to begin with. The whole thing is just so unfortunate and dismaying.

The most immediate thing we can do to help is to give. In addition to the major aid agencies, local organizations that can help are in need. Many employers will match your donation or sponsor a fundraiser. A little goes a long way.

http://www.mercycorps.org/
http://www.redcross.org/
http://doctorswithoutborders.org/

Art Scoop

OKAY MOUNTAIN is an art gallery/studio/collective in Austin, Texas run in part by Michael Sieben. ARTHOUSE, a larger gallery/studio/collective in Austin, commissioned OKAY MOUNTAIN to create a piece for the PULSE Contemporary Art Fair in Miami, Florida. The resulting mixed-media piece is a detailed convenience store stocked with ridiculous tienda items. Apparently, it “serves as a tongue-in-cheek critique of the art fair environment.” Corner Store earned OKAY MOUNTAIN both the PULSE Prize and the People’s Choice Award. More info. Click on the PDF of the circular for a closer look at the store’s wares.