Enemyster.

[edited]
so, coachella then. some moments:

moment:lying on my back listening to tortise's neo-floyd space rock, a bit of rest after a hard-fought saturday and a bit of prep for the rest of sunday evening, clear air and blue sky and palm trees rimming the periphery of my field of vision.

dicuss: i had never heard tortise before and they were great. i got up near the end of their set to meet my friends before heading over to see sonic youth and damn near half of the polo ground was littered with people knocked near unconscious by the groovy* (*not hippy, actually a bit forboding) music.

moment:kweli rips a freestyle about pres. george w., us foreign policy, etc. it was well reasoned and well worded and well rhymed.

dicuss: talib kweli is dope. what struck me about this was not what he said or how he said it but that almost none of the other performers i saw mentioned world affairs. the beasties mentioned the war a bit awkwardly, but that was it. i feel like we're at an erie place somewhere between fear and disbelief and intimidation. it's not that people aren't blasting bush and co. some are. it's more the sense that everyone's still partying like it's 1999. things have fundamentally changed in so many ways and to have so little public mention of that, let alone debate and discussion, feels strange to me. This is not necessarily the responsibility of musicians, but it's tough to accept that artists are not feeling the effects of geopolitics, and the absense of artists adressing this with their words or music scares me a bit. they're feeling it. we're all feeling it. some of this silence is likely a result of clear channel's demonstrated willingness to blacklist those artists that to loudly voice their discontent with the administration (see the dixie chicks, of course, and the pro-war rallies across the country during the war that were largely organized and promoted by clear channel radio stations. an obivously unrelated aside: the guy who runs clear channel is a friend and buisness associate of dubya from back in the day.) I won't go off on the FCC's proposed media ownership consolidation plans. this isn't really the time, and i have something else more pressing i need your help with:

playboy is searching for the "sexiest babe of indie rock." in the absense of some of my personal nominees being included, I am throwing my support behind Michelle Mae (of Make-Up/Weird War/Scene Creamers/Frumpies/etc. fame). I mean, she's wearing a fucking wizards jersey in her profile picture. how sexy is that!?!?! Anyway go vote for her now. The city and state of Washington need your help. in return, i will help you, uhh, vote for things on the internet.

back from coachella, exhausted, at work. details to come, but to start a TV-guide stye Cheers & Jeers:

Cheers: stooges, talib kweli, tortise, el-p/murs/mr. lif/rjd2/et al., sonic youth, fischerspooner, von bondies, hot hots, white stripes.

Jeers: not too many. the lines to get in the first day, jack johnson and all of his fans (go back to margaritaland), the hives, getting up for work today.

Boohbah

one more reason to love the internet.click everywhere, because this is deep. flash required.

(s)wish me luck at court tomorrow morning

the World as a Blog

i hate to get meta and bloggy on you but this is pretty fucking cool: real time blog posts from around the world projected onto a map.

I'm going to be busy today getting all sorts of shit done before i co to court tomorrow morning and to coachella this weekend, but hopefully i'll be back later today/tonight to go off on why it is not such a bad thing that a lot of rock musicians are taking themselves seriously these days.

did i ruin 4100 bar? because ever after i wrote about the night when kiefer s-land was bartending it's been packed with westsiders, and they mentioned the kiefer thing in the Blender article about silverlake being the #3 most rock and roll town in the country. i wasn't the only person who saw it, but i was likely the first to mention it in 'print.' and then the rush. there's always an f'n line. i don't really care cause i hated the place to begin with. but from here on out i will not mention certain spots by their proper names.

check out the 'saving los angeles' article in fader this month. it's like the blender silverlake articke except not bullshit. and like half the people in the pictures are my drinking buddies. it's kinda weird. there are a couple other of my peeps sprinkled through the rest of the issue too. it's actually really weird. pete bauer got hosed in the startime picture though, he's entirely covered by someone's middle finger in a group shot.

congratulations hayley.

word to nina simone.

love to the bar i am not allowed to name.

word to the women who never look the same.

word to cem. this will be the best trip of my life, and i'm not even going on it.

Personal space in cruising cocoons

this is the best breakdown of what it's like to live in LA that i've read in a while. (registration required):

"Los Angeles is all about being in a city but not of it. Or at least not a city as defined by everything leading up to the 21st century. The gossiping front stoops of Baltimore; the laundry strung between buildings like birthday banners on Chicago's South Side; the living, breathing, briefcase-toting sidewalks of Manhattan -- in the American imagination this is City, but it is not the city of our choosing."

another monday morning, with everything broken, after another weekend rocked a bit too hard: 2 shows, 1 party thick with hipsters, and an easter afternoon filled with plastic eggs with tequila in them.

here's what i learned this weekend:

It is not necessarily in your best interests to befriend the bartender everywhere you go. (a gin and tonic should have some tonic in it if you want to retain your composure).

a corollary: the sleeves on a t-shirt were not designed to be worn on one's head.

have a few drinks before it's time to decide who drives. it's a subtle way of putting your finger on your nose before anyone else.

the faint are kinda boring, but les savy fav are more rockiner than most. according to jinners they are apparently also quite skilled at erotic photo hunt. after seing them that doesn't surprise me.

this will ruin my life. with entertainment.

if you know who the tamale guy is, you should read the article in blender this month about silver lake being the third most rock and roll town in the country. you don't need to actually buy the issue, though. blender honks.

it's nice to take a week off anything.

how meta can you get?

instead of file sharing, it's friend sharing, and you can leave 'testimonials' about how cool or slutty or annoying your friends are like they were e-bay sellers. anyway:

friendster

to find me on it search for derek@realisticrecords.net.

the fuck?

edit: fixed. weird.

and misadventures of

featured link of the week is above. my friend cem, pronounced jem, like the 'outrageous' bandleader, just passed through LA to begin his world tour. starts in cairo, may pass through baghdad. and he can write.

my life can change -- things can happen, significant things -- and i don't have to tell you anything. i forgot that for a second.

i'll be back on monday.

hi pap pap.

spring break

I'm a bit burned out. I'm taking a week off of affordable justice to work on other projects and do some spring cleaning in many senses. over the course of the week I might post some of my favorite photos i've taken over the last few years. I'll be back, maybe sooner than i think, but for now my brain and my typing fingers, if not my body, are off to cancun, coney island, and calcutta for a bit. see you guys in a week or so.

seasons, a long drive, and goodbyes, part II: a long drive

....A long drive then, down sunset boulevard, which streches the length of the city from the pacific to downtown, passes both UCLA and my house, and will give me time to think.

I turn onto sunset, and the sunset is behind me, the road is curving and....

---
and then my lunch got here, and i've got work to do, and i have to finish this later. sorry folks. i'm trying though, i really am. where the hell is salam pax?

i went a' walkin'

bored at home, i went for a walk last night, around the neighborhood:down benton, down sunset to silverlake, then up to effie. probably saw 2 people on the sidewalk, other than those hanging out infront of rock and roll clubs. i didn't plan to rock, though, it just happened: about halfway through my 'evening constitutional' i realized i needed some rock and roll. this will happen. i popped into the silverlake lounge first: $5, acoustic, ugh, peace out dudes. on to spaceland. $8, black keys headlining. i'd heard the name before, in some distant but positive context. why not? lets rock. opening band was boring, australian retro/southern rock -- they had apparently just opened for the stones in aussie-land. it felt like the lords of altamont without the acid, and the acid is what makes the lords great. selah. during this set everyone was pretty short, shorter than me, which is rare. i'm not too tall.
then black keys. the crowd gets taller. i stay the same size.

an aside: if you are 6'3", and have a white-fro 2 feet in diameter, in the majority of rock-club situations you don't need to be in the front few rows of folks. i don't care how much you love the band, you're 6'3". and look at your hair. thInk about it dude.

so although i was at most 10 feet from the stage i couldn't see that much, which thankfully was alright. black keys still did it up, playing some of the most honest and rocking blues i've heard from 2 white guys, jon spencer without the new york city, blues with a different kind of explosion, dirty and dusty. his voice was a bit breathy for my taste, too 'fake-authentic,' but when the vocal and guitar lines moved together, or when the jangle of guitar notes on the downstroke resolved breifly to a brief two-note melody on the up, i didn't mind so much.

oh and beck was there, which i guess makes sense, because apparently they'll be touring together.

more of this later, i will finish it, but it might take a week. i have it all in my head though. it's not going anywhere.

seasons, a long drive, and goodbyes, part I: seasons

i woke up late for work yesterday. i just forgot to turn my alarm on. it happens, but it has been happening to me too much. my eyes shot open, my clock showed 2 minutes after i was supposed to be at work, and my commute during morning rush was an hour. fuck. drove to work, unshowered, no breakfast, angry and dirty and embarrassed. ready to give up...something. pissed that i was so stressed about a relatively mediocre job in the entertainment industry.

uneventful day at work, and i left a bit earlier than usual. i'm taking a journalism class at ucla. my plan, in the medium term, is to go to journalism school somewhere on the east coast. I miss seasons: that magical moment just as the first snow is accumulating on city streets and everything goes silent, snowflakes shine as they float past streetlights, and you can actually hear each flake falling on top of another like white noise in heaven as a cab crawls carefully over the slick streets; the first spring day when you can go out in a t-shirt, and you are free, finally, you skin feels like it's glowing and everything is green and everyone is smiling; the five-o-clock-alypse, a thunderstorm that rolls in from nowhere on sticky summer afternoons and drops huge raindrops like kamazazi bumblebees as viscious lighning cracks, lights up the sky, now thick and dark but blue and beautiful ten minutes ago, terrible rumbling thunder, and, if you're lucky, you have a copy of 'flight of the valkyries' in your car or your walkman, and you turn it on, and you are on top of the world; the crisp smell of winter, and fires, the crunch of leaves covering the ground, whips of smoke from fireplaces, and football.

as a means to the end (the end, in this case, is seasons, whereas los angeles is, in part, the end of seasons), i am taking this journalism class.

but when i show up i realize (read: the security guard told me after looking at the enrollment papers I hadn't looked at well enough) that my class didn't start till next week. re-cue anger and embrassment. two similar fuck-ups in one day. if i lived anywhere else I'd have taken a long walk to clear my head, but this is los angeles, and if they see you walking aimlessly they think you're a terrorist. A long drive then, down sunset boulevard, which streches the length of the city from the pacific to downtown, passes both UCLA and my house, and will give me time to think.

next: a long drive

the walkmen are on the road right now to memphis to record their second album. vaya con dios, gentlemen. jinners has a rundown of their triumphant 3 night stand at the bowery ballroom in nyc.

pigface would like to welcome you to the photo gallery from last night's sharp ease show at the decor squat.

MIKE.JPG

this is why i love the internet.

lobstergirl would like to welcome you to the french kicks photo gallery from last night's show in pomona.

it is windy again today, and i'm sitting at the reception desk at the office. every few minutes, the door opens and shuts as a gust comes through. i hope this is happening all over the city today, a thousand ghosts of the industry rushing to and from appointments.

the french kicks are in town. their new drummer, hugh, was, as you can probably tell from the photo, in the recoys. they played a budget show last night at the UCLA food court, and play again tonight at the el rey. i might take photos.

it is cooler than usual here, and windy. the city is full of lightweights and lunatics.

the war should be over soon. the peace will take forever. babylon does not fall lightly.

is it time for progressives to storm the democratic party?

pride will be my undoing.

Silicon Valley - Dan Gillmor's eJournal - America's Other War: On Liberty

o, canada....da da da da da duuuuuum.

hey hot hot heat: i was wrong. you guys were right. how much is it for a flat in victoria?

how many neoconservatives does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

one highly mobile, gps-assisted crack team of 3 special engineers to change the bulb, 300,000 servicemen and women there to watch the rest of the lightbulbs in the house change themselves, and when the other bulbs don't change themselves, when the house burns down because the new bulb the first 3 put in started an electrical fire, it takes another 300,000 servicemen and women to clear out the wreckage of the house, and plant nice apple and cherry trees while buddies of the first 3 sell the oil that was under the house to the neighbors. it was an ugly house in the first place.

HST - Love in a time of war

hunter s. thompson for espn:

"Indeed, we are truly the sqanderers of what was once the American Dream, and our own dreams, for that matter. In two disastrous years, this Waterhead son of Texas has taken this country from a prosperous nation at peace to a dead-broke nation at War, and that is a very long fall."

when i was growing up the president's chelicopter would fly over my family's house on the way from camp david to the white house.

it's the beginning of april and everything's broken.

there will definitely be a recoys reunion show and record release party in nyc when the record comes out. max and i plan to fly out for it and expense the plane tickets once the record company is big and rich and everything.

and some good news: Reuters is quoting 'senior defense department and administration officials' as being 'confident that saddam hussein was killed' in the first strikes of the war almost two weeks ago. hopefully resistance will melt away. thank god.

my review of the baptist generals cd, no silver/no gold.