present & future, I'm gonna love you

dear friends,

welcome to september! or what I like to call, spendtember, since this is the month (thanks to the alarming proliferation of birthdays, including my own on 9/25 [insinutating cough]) where I shop like a frenzied piranha feeding on fresh kill. no bone is left unpicked. I'm serious.

it doesn't help that nyc is particularly bedazzlin' this month, what with cmj, the new york film festival, the fact that uk bands seem to like skipping across the pond right about this time & all those back to school sales. I'm telling you, my soul & non-existent wallet are gonna be sorely tested. what can I do? it's a disease! AAAH!

1. when full of rage there's nothing like a good song to turn that blood boil into something productive like a dance routine. I've written about the duke spirit & the particular charms of their singer, ms liela moss* on soft communication before. I've put their song drinking you in on a few mixes & one of those lucky recipients said this to me during a happy hour jaunt:

(pointing at me emphatically)

"that song, THAT song, the one that goes, (singing) "you took the loooooooooooooong way, it was the wrong, wrong way". yeah! that was awesome! WHO is that?"

(question concluded with a loud yet utterly charming nose laugh)**.

I smiled & thought to myself "ah. a satisfied customer."

to those mix-receivers & you, I recommend the best I-feel-so-good,-I'm-gonna-tear-someone-apart-tonight*** song that's out there right now, the duke spirit's love is an unfamiliar name from their full length, cuts across the land. one of those songs that's just big drum muscle car with guitar skronk decals; it hurtles forward violently & all you want to do while you listen to it is be so much more of a badass than you really are. swilling whiskey & snarling all answers & wearing too much black eyeliner &/or leather & a t-shirt that you didn't rip yourself but got that way from an actual fight. over this pummeling beat, moss vocalises away in her kittenish rasp & sometime around the end when she goes for the gold with an insistent barrage of "woo-oo-oo-oos!", it becomes darn near impossible to not shake it. I was listening to this last weekend whilst standing in the pointlessly large hoyt-schermerhorn station waiting to transfer homewards. I was shimmy-ing & mouthing the "wooo's" in that oblivious psychotic way of certain people who listen to music on public transportion. all that was missing was a sneer & some bleached hair.

ms moss is featured on a new album by a band called brakes. she duets on a cover of that carter/cash & hazlewood/sinatra classic, jackson. I need to get my paws on that NOW.

2. the monkey hates musicals. so naturally, when we went to london last year I dragged him to the west end to see a new production of stephen sondheim's sweeney todd. I did this because a) it is a musical that even people who hate musicals can enjoy since the leading character is a barber who likes to cut people's throats after he shaves them because he's really, really ANGRY at the world & the great INJUSTICE that was done to him. there's a little human meat pie eatin', some self-flagellation/wankery, disturbed homeless people & screeching strings; basically, all the things you won't find in musicals where people sing about the beauty of the morning, being a star or the cat afterworld. the folks in sweeney sing about how people are nasty, venal creatures & desires can be so overwhelming, they lead to EEEEE-VIL. (insert unnervingly loud factory whistle)

besides, & this is the b), I heard that in this production the actors were also the orchestra, so when they weren't talking about "turning kittens into pies" they were gonna be doing a mean trumpet solo. I figured this would all go down well with my boy & it did. it was a terrific show.

I hear that this staging is hitting broadway, with previews starting next month. it will star patti lupone**** & michael cerveris, who I had the pleasure of seeing do queen's dragon attack & the smiths' there is a light that never goes out with the loser's lounge folks, as the titular murderer. nice, eh? from morrissey/marr to sondheim. good one. anyone who wants to see a musical that won't make them vomit, now's your chance to pop that cherry. anyone who already worships at the altar, start hyperventilating now.

3. I often go see bands on name alone. I've been toying with including one ghetto listing every month of a band I've never heard but whose name I'm feelin'. I was going to go see this band called outrageous cherry this winter at the hook but I was felled with crippledom before I could make it. at the time I didn't know anything about them 'cept for the fact that I liked to say their name thusly: OUTRAAAAGEOUS CHERRY!. so in a spoken sentence everything is at a normal volume until that name comes up, then you channel your inner little richard & shout it. no pompadour necessary.

I finally heard them last week & while they certainly don't sound like little richard, their singer, matthew smith, does have a pleasing, if familiar sound since he veers between circa-hang on to your ego brian wilson (see: you've been unkind) & in his lower register, like jim reid from jesus & mary chain (see: the astral transit authority). so yes, the beach boys are in there but there's also tiny pieces of shoegaze guitar but never so much as to eclipse the 60's power pop sound. outrageous cherry is playing with electric six at bowery ballroom on 9/30. check it, check it out.

love, d

songs to seek: love is an unfamiliar name/the duke spirit, you've been unkind/outrageous cherry, astral transit authority/outrageous cherry

* j, another convert to the spirit, was talking about them with someone he met at bowery ballroom. this guy told him that he had caught them during cmj last year & that he had been incapable of taking his eyes of moss for the entire show. apparently, she is quite the looker. if photos are anything to go by, she strikes me as one of those good looking but hard-eyed girls in high school who'd sneak smokes in the bathroom. I don't know about you, but those girls were usually friends of mine so my take on her look is one of me sayin' "hey daisy! how you doin'?" rather than "boo! hiss! bored lookin' mean girl!"

still. I suppose he's right. she's pretty good looking either way.

** this was said by a friend who would make a great contributor if only she could manage to figure out how to accept an invite to join this here sewing circle. SIGH. damn that technomammology!

*** thank you mr. richard thompson.

**** who sold her soul to the devil so that she play every diva role ever created in a musical & also, cry on cue. naaaah! just playin'. she didn't really sell her soul. that's just a rumor, never been proven.