We can make you feel like everything that's gone wrong happened for a reason

Dear friends,

I'm a'tired. I've woken up the past couple of days feeling like my eyes had just acquired their very own Birkins to carry. This heat is making me feel swarthier than ever. The sweat mustache has returned. Call me Zorba!

1. Last Friday was the first official Soft Communication Mix Exchange ("Covers" theme)/the Great Cover Band Project. I neglected to hit the office supply store early, so I had to use sad, little falling down blue post-its for name tags. People wrote their names on them but they could not be read. The bar did not accept my free drink marker 'cause I failed to cash it in on time. I got called a fascist or something like it by one contributor for not providing the name of the bands doing the covering on my mix (on purpose, I'm crafty.) I repeatedly got called a crazy by a snort-laughing would-be contributor (I say would-be because they have been unable to accept the invite to join yet) because my list of choices for covers for the band project was "like the bible" and "who can read that much?." I hit the bottle(s). The monkey provided vegetable fried rice. People at other tables looked at us funny. At some point Contributor George got a few brave souls to head out to see The Battle. We were late but we got to see some charmingly wrong-headed covers (musical theatre girl with outrageous cleavage trilling Ask) As well as some interestingly inventive ones (unnamed group doing a breath-heavy and foreboding Hanging Garden). Now, if those Loser Lounge folks would update their website and provide information as to who did what, that would be grand. The Smiths wuz robbed, natch. We left defeated but unbroken. Then the Monkey and I got a very nice cabdriver to take us back to the aerie in Brooklyn. Living large.

Despite all my kvetching, I had a fantastic time. Note to self: rent out the VFW Hall next time. Then things can get really rowdy. With opinions!

Since I don't know how to make an additional page to this, you can go here to see the play lists and/or comments for the cds offered by the pioneers of mixage. I will be posting the other playlists in the next couple o' days. Feel free to comment on your favorite covers. AND if you want a copy of anyone's, send me a blank cd and I'll mail one to ya.

2. I am listening to the new Gomez CD, a live offering called Out West. I like Gomez. I always have. Ever since seeing a video of theirs where they are being experimented on by scientists as they try to record a very silly song about getting yourself arrested. Heads are measured, coils are attached to guitars, door stoppers are placed under feet and so on.

For some reason or another, partly because some of their music makes white girls do that horrific waving arm boogie (you KNOW what I'm talking about), Gomez has been labeled a jam band. Jam music is not for me. I have no beef with jamming in general, it's just the whole "we play, therefore we JAM...endlessly" aesthetic makes me feel like I have no options. I can take a 10 minute version of a song, heck I can take 20, but a 40 minute version of a song? I start to panic. The voices in my head start going "I can't leave, can't get out, I'm TRAPPED!" and the musos improvise themselves into noodles AS I GET DIZZIER and DIZZIER. But enough about that...if any of you want to write about your love of the jam, please do, someone has to explain the why's of love in this world.

Back to the Gomi. It's true. They get crunchy at times. I blame one of their three(!) singers, Ben Ottewell, a guy who looks like Poindexter but sings like an unholy combination of Tom Waits and that guy in Canned Heat who wanted to go up the country. I do like his voice and still find it hard to believe that it comes from that body but it can be a bit much for an entire album, that's why I look forward to the interruptions by the other two singers, Ian ball and Tom Gray. Ian is the resident pin-up, scrawny and little boy lost looking. He also writes the "I'm a total screw-up" numbers guaranteed to keep attracting women for the rest of his rock 'n' roll existence. He's got a voice like a can of talcum powder trying to sound tough and this is an excellent weapon to use when fishing his tales of fuck-up disaster. Of late, he's started writing about a vague sort of redemption which makes me think 12 step but who cares really when it works and doesn't come across like an after school special. On the driving Nothing Is Wrong with its oh so satisfying opening scratch riff, he goes from repeatedly stating that "a little was too much" for him to confessing that too much was NEVER enough in a matter of minutes and manages to make this sudden inversion sound reasonable. He could be talking about any kind of vice, including the vice of needing constant support from well-meaning friends. Confusing ambivalent rock? Yeah. Tom or "The Hobbit" (seriously, with his pocket-sizedness and jovial appearance, you could easily slip him into the movie) as I like to call him, is nasally and conversational. His interest lie more in the personal arena. His tender, sad resignation of a song Sweet Virginia seems to be a long delayed reply, NOT to the Stones song of the same name, but to his own Sound of Sounds from the album In Our Gun. While the latter is a hymn-like realization of need for your partner, the former is a string-laden letting go, of themselves, their paramour, of anything that might matter too much. Sound a bit cringe-inducingly sensitive? It might be if the presentation were heavy-handed. The band, luckily, hold back. And so does Gray, it never gets too much like guys, as Contributor Mary likes to say, "having feelings".

Live, Gomez is a wonder. The Hobbit jumps around like a maniac and tries to get the crowd amped. He's like the band's Bez* but with tremendous musical ability and without the crack. One particularly cruel but funny moment occurs when he makes Blackie, the bass player, give up his bass for the drug comedown turned rave song In Our Gun (better than my description suggests.) The Hobbit proceeds to seriously rip it up on bass and when he's done and hot steam is rising from the instrument, he gingerly hands it back. It almost seems like a sexual humiliation in concert. Ouch! Ian is like a closed-eyed crooning Twiggy with a glittery guitar. His guitar work is clever; he always finds unexpected ways to go against the beat in a way that adds texture to what might otherwise be very plain progressions. Ottewell is a decent lead guitarist. Sometimes he gets a bit samey but then he turns on you by doing these little sneaky bits in songs (like in Shot Shot, which is like the child of Radiohead's National Anthem but faster, more straight-ahead rawk) that make you feel sure he cheated and got a guitar ghostwriter to fill in. Their drummer, the absurdly named Ollie Peacock, is powerful and stylistically versatile. If you see them live, nothing beats the incredibly goofy grin he gets on his face when the band kicks into the pseudo-Latinisms of These Three Sins. It's like he realizes he gets to be Hispanic for four minutes and he can't believe his freakin' suerte.

I'd recommend starting slow with the Gomez so as not to psych yourself into thinking you can smell patchouli coming from somewhere. In terms of albums, I think Split the Difference is a good place to start (though "atypical" and "difficult" In Our Gun is probably my favorite.) In terms of songs, a chronological list is provided below.

Love, D

* "Dancer" for The Happy Mondays. See Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People.

Songs to seek: 78 Stone Wobble, Get Myself Arrested (Bring It On), Rie's Wagon (live on kKCRW), Shot Shot, Detroit Swing 66, In Our Gun, Even Song, Ruff Stuff, Sound of Sounds, Army Dub (In Our Gun), These Three Sins, We Don't Know Where Were Going, Sweet Virginia, Chicken Out, Extra Special Guy (Split the Difference), Fill My Cup (Live), Nothing Is Wrong (Live) (Out West)