I subscribe to the Vulgar Boatman email list, and bandleader Dale Lawrence posted this today:

The Boatmen are playing two special Halloween shows next week, masquerading as the Velvet Underground.

Friday October 25 at Vertigo in Bloomington (IN): It’s a fund-raiser for the Pin-Up, a local arts publication. The club itself will be masquerading as Andy Warhol’s Factory and the Boatmen will play two full hours of your (or at least our) favorite Velvets songs.

Saturday October 26 at Radio Radio in Indianapolis. A Halloween theme night featuring seven Hoosier combos, all in disguise (Pink Floyd, the Beatles, etc). The Boatmen go on at midnight and play an abridged (30-minute) version of their Velvets set.

I’ll give you a nickle if you attend both nights.

Believe me, this has every possibility of really being something. I am hosting ten songs from a show the band played in February, 2001 which sound uncannily like Exploding Plastic Inevitable era VU. This is possibly by design, since they cover Foggy Notion (unfortunately, the file I’m hosting cuts off… but the recordist promises more from the tape this Thanksgiving).

If you’re still kicking around Indiana, go to this show.

No Nostalgia has updated their site this week.

They are the label-side of both the Mysteries of Life, whom I’ve written about at length here, and the Vulgar Boatmen, whom I’m overdue to write about.

As with most things, it’s just a matter of sitting down and doing it.

But.

Not tonight.

Instead, I’ll call your attention to the No Nostalgia hosted Dale Lawrence article, “On Mashups“, which Eric Sinclair noted to me when it appeared in the Chicago Reader a few weeks back; Dale is writing about his appreciation for the form which is currently best known for propelling Elvis back to his proper #1 place on the charts with “A Little Less Conversation”. Dale does not write about this record however, but rather about more obscure remixes which combine two disparate tracks to create a new work, frequently completely unauthorized. He digs the crazy kids, baby.

I’ll also point out Dale’s recounting of An Extra Week in New Orleans this spring, when he made time, among other things, to attend the Mystic Kights of the Mau-Mau‘s First Annual Ponderosa Stomp.

The Stomp was a nearly-unbelievable lineup of greats and obscurities from the heydey of American regional rock, which I encourage you to learn about both from Dale’s article and from the Mau Mau site.

Dale is the reason I love rock music, no bones about it: his music taught me everything I know and believe on the topic, so reading his account of watching Scotty Moore play “Heartbreak Hotel” in a small-club setting had special meaning for me (Moore was Elvis’ guitarist on most of his early records, including that one).

Too bad Buddy Holly lies in his grave lo these many years, as I nurse the thesis that Holly stands to Dale as Dale stands to me (with the caveat that I’m not in the same musical league, mind you; matters of taste and theory only, uh, theoropositated).

Anyway, at least one good pal of mine was involved in getting the Stomp together, and it pleases me greatly that some sort of dialog should result. In a way that’s not too far fetched, Dale’s music helped make the Stomp a reality, and helped conjure Scotty Moore there in front of him.

It’s a conjure town, they say.

Blöödhag. It’s an interview with a band I used to practice down the hall from. I saw the link at Boing Boing, and posted the following at the comments thereof. Then I thought, oh, you people would be interested in this.

Blöödhag is an “edu-core” band. They play ultra heavy speed-metally thrash. They also like reading.

To learn more, hit the interview. The website, Bloodhag.com looks to be down.

—

I practiced down the hall from them here in Seattle for years – about the time they were first getting local press, I was getting ready for a gig and they were having a band meeting.

I was puttering around, packing gear, and I kept hearing shouts, the sounds of young men expressing opinions.

(They all wear post-punk black and converse all-stars and glasses – kind of an ultra heavy nerd-core look. It made me fond of them.)

So I paused to hear more clearly. The shouts went like this:

“No, NO NO! We MUST put JRR Tolkien before Ray Bradbury! We gotta!”

“Are you CRAZY? Why the heck would ANYONE put Issac Asimov there? I think you’re more after, like, Philip K Dick, or maybe Murray Leinster. Actually.”

And so on.

It sounded like the craziest science fiction convention argument of all time. Like people ranking SF and fantasy authors by some secret system that they all understood but which was opaque to even a knowledgeable SF reader, such as yours truly.

Suddenly it hit me. All their songs – every last one – are named after authors. They were arguing about a set list or release order. Read the quotes above, but insert “Louie, Louie”, and other song titles. You’ll get it.

I did, and laughed out loud, and went down the hall to share my amusement with them.

Vee-Jay covers the interesting story of this label.

Here are A and B of a record they put out.

I’ll provide you with these tidbits:

The record shown lacks a sleeve.

I found it in a record bin in the boonies someplace in North Carolina, and paid $2. it was a, like, Mom and Pop antique shop. I still wisht I’da bought the armadillo charranga they had.

(a charranga is the lil bitty guitar-like thing you see in use by your local Andean buskers, and sometimes in the context of mariachi combos. It’s similar to a uke, but has more strings, if I recall aright.)

It’s not clean. Someone stepped on it and pivoted, possibly while wearing Converse Chuck Taylor All-Stars.

Alright record geeks, (there are at least two of you out there….) GO! What’s so special here? I’ll help, never fear!

NPR : The Sights and Sounds of Schizophrenia

Man, this is cool.

I’d love to get the soundtrack from the sim to put on at a party.

I lived wth a schizophrenic man for a couple of years in Bloomington. He was seriously tormented by his illness. Once I awakened to find him inserting another roommates’ discarded medical injection needles directly into the veins on the back of his hand while yelling, in obvious emotional distress, at his voices. He had selected these enormous large-bore needles that the other roomie used to rehydrate his meds – I mean these needles had an interior diameter of up to 5mm.

My schizoid roommate had these needles stuck into all his veins and it was as if he’d just pulled a stopper out of his circulatory system. Blood was everywhere; when he’d gesture to emphasize a particularly compelling rant, streams of blood would go flying around the kitchen.

I got really angry with him and browbeat him into yanking the needles out, helped him bandage his hands, and made him promise that he’d never do anything like it again. It was a suicide attempt, I think; but it was hard to say with him because he was so in-and-out of coherence. He was not coherent that night.

I talked with him at length, over time, about both the general symptoms of the disease and experiences he has consequently had; and also his internal system of explanations and justifications that he’s developed and maintained since the onset of his disease, as a teenager.

I hope very much that this sim is released to the general public.

Fresh Air for today (Thursday – August 15, 2002) is featuring Eric Klinenberg, author of the just-published “Heatwave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago”, about the horrific heatwave of Summer 1995.

I’m listening to it right now. It’s selling the shit outta the book; I’m definitely gionna pick it up.

Funny thing about me: when others read horror novels or true crime (a pox on the serial killer entertainment genre, a pox, I tell ya), I prefer to read journalism or history about catastrophic failures of systems generally designed to provide for our collective safety.

Watching Chi-town writhe and die under God’s magnifying glass that summer was, at the time, both horrifying, and a complete vindication of my abandonment of the Midwest. The weather back home, quite literally, was NOT habitable.

Every summer, when I was a child, I would wonder what failure of self-preservational instinct led pioneers to stop in Indiana and Illinois. GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN!

OK, I’m kidding, kinda. Better you than me, I guess. And I miss the hell outta fall. But be sure to spit on the snow for me.

Andromeda is one PHP (or ASP if you’re on wintel) script that acts as a streamer for your digital meda collection.

I have a pile of mp3s that are legitimately shared at mp3.whybark.com; until now, I’ve just shared the raw directories and or referenced the files from sites such as modock.whybark.com.

I downloaded the tryout from the website above, renamed it from “andromeda.php” to “index.php”, and BAM, I’m in.

See for yourself at mp3.whybark.com – it’s pretty cool!

Sheep Entertainment – Ukulele Chord Finder

Aah! That’s fantastic! Now, why ain’t there one of these online for mando?

…pickhits…: Worlds Collide!

Man, you’d think I’d hear about this on the Vulgar Boatmen email list, but noooo…

Anyway, Eric notes that Dale Lawrence has an article in the August 8 Chicago Reader. Sadly, the Reader doesn’t do online content.

In slightly related news, I actually started my Dale Lawrence piece for this blog last week but was interrupted by various real-world duties. Hope to pick it up Real Soon Now.