saturday last was the 15th anniversary (party) of collective a go go, the fresh house in worcester i lived at for many years. in past years i have felt these parties have been massive rippers (in space and time)– really ideal parties, centerless explosions of raw possibility. this year i had my hesitations about it all; i haven’t lived there (at the house) in 4 (?) years, and it has changed a lot. but let’s make a commitment to live in the moment: i had a good time. there were two floors of dancing (english language pop music axis and salsa / meringue axis), and a lot of friends were there from worcester, providence, and all over. historically, this has been an event i’ve made a mixtape for, on which i would include a great amount of anthemic punk, rock, 60s music, and general body moving stuff, intercut with the occasionally daring (and occasionally flopping) selection. this year no one thought ahead, and at the last minute, ML grabbed an old mix tape he had made as a “no hits” response to my mixes, which was cool but floor clearing. after a while 1000 holmes DJs took over with a laptop set that got and kept people dancing, but was, i felt, just keeping people satisfied, and not challenging, which is fine. given the circumstance, i would say he did a really great job, and jumped up quick and noble to abhor a vacuum.

worcester is a pretty young town– kids from worcester county buck wildin before (or in lieu of) college, or kids from all over staying for a few short years after college. a lot of people at the party had no memories of how things used to be when the house was a viable and sparkling jewel in the punk crown and that’s fine too.

mike put that cocksparrer song “what’s it like to be old?” on the mix. when he made the tape we were what, 24? last year i lied on my birthday, that i was 34, but it was, i think, believable. you know mariah pariah? well anyway she’s 18, and me and nicky revs were talking the other day and we realized we have jokes older than her, and moreover the jokes still crack us up. this is not me “feeling old”. but the cocksparrer song was playing, and me and purtle rolling around like “IT’S AWESOME!” / “IT’S TOTALLY WEIRD!”.

i was standing by the fire saying goodbye and i heard, of all things, “mamma mia” by abba, on the inside system, parodying, with major variables absent, one of the largest / richest / most fecund moments of my life. i didn’t cry or anything, but i was like “i can’t even believe this is happening”. people harp on you for hanging out in your hometown, but at least once you should stand absolutely still for a very long time, and see these echos and shadows and ripples for yourself. it’s awesome / it’s totally weird.

ps- what happens at 15? you get in fights and stuff?

the other day i taught JJBB “everything [he] need[s] to know about HTML”, (approximately 10 minutes of spoken instruction with live examples) and now there are 2 new websites: dungeoneers.net, and terriblesgramandgazette.com. dirt style!

karkar told me to read “treasure seekers” by e nesbitt, which i did last week except actually i just listened to the public domain audio book, which is superb.

similarly, piss pooper told me to read “the house on the borderland”, which i’m doing this week except again i’m just listening to the public domain audio book, in which the reading is not as dynamic as that of treasure seekers, but oh well.

house on the borderland is horrible, as in horrible things keep happening.

SPOILER ALERT: i just looked up the profile of the lady who reads treasure seekers, and i’m pretty sure she’s not really british! but probably actual british people don’t sound like that anymore (if they ever did), and “stage british” is what you want. and like all the women i love, she has made available recordings of herself reading from don quixote (actually, from don quijote, but in talks of love it’s very important to see the forest for the trees as it were).

i have a more for-serious address now, so begin sending postcards and mix tapes and veiled love letters and the other kind to:

JACOB BERENDES
PO BOX 29081
PROVIDENCE RI
02909

the first batch of letters (letters waiting on my first successful day checking the mail) get extra-special responses. APT NOW!

i’ve spent the past week bopping around new england, moving pretty much with the wind… in worcester for the show with ghost mice, then stayed over to silk screen and deliver some paris tees (back in stock at that’s entertainment and cc lowell), back to providence for just a night, then worcester again for best friends forever at the go go, which was obviously super great. from there picked up my tumblecat et al as they made their way to a show in boston (tcppp, horse spirit penetrates, matt weston), back with them to northampton to hang out and see mark lord, morgan egg, and BSC the next night. then a ride back to worcester with gwm and pak headed to new hampshire, and tonight it’s black rainbow and hopefully a ride back to providence to hunker down a week and bust some shit out. like a weed, joe…

wednesday’s show was pretty fun– lots of kids came out to see ghost mice, and i feel like i did a good job controlling the crowd, even getting everyone at the end to be super SUPER don’t-squeak-the-floorboards quiet for an acapella almost-whispering song with low-battery metronome accompaniment. no big surprises except that i sought for and achieved a half-decent dionne warwick cover– “didn’t we?” (ok, it was written by jimmy webb, who also wrote “macarthur park” (!!!)). matt fox was good, he has a song i like where he crams too many words in and says “GONNAWAKEUPINTHEMORNINGWITHACUPOFCOFFEEANDABLUEBERRYMUFFINYEAHHHHH” over and over again. ghost mice was good and got lots of people singing along and clapping, even though it was all acoustic (no PA) so when people clapped you couldn’t hear shit but clapping people. oh well! heathers was the standout- identical twins from ireland, two voices, one guitar. sometimes they would sing in TITE harmony, sometimes in counterpoint, and they have identical vocal chords? so tite and ecstatic churchlike trad pre revival FOLKlike. ESPECIALLY with all those great irish phonemes dipping around everywhere. jbruce was at that show, which got me psyched, and when this band came on he was BUGGIN u bet! and when the played they looked straight at each other (which shell shag does too and is such a good posture).

other bands with twins are listed at this twins resource page– breeders, bee gees, styx, nelson, proclaimers, tegan and sarah, more. the thompson twins weren’t twins, but there is a band called “the thompsons” that is? and oddly, the best band with (or without) twins is missing from the list– obviously i’m talking about the shangri-las, who had two sets (of twins). maybe they were held off the list for inclusion on another super-awesome list that never materialized because it was only one item large. oh, and PS- “disfigured freaks” (cassette on unskilled labor) wasn’t really “identical twins from hong kong” as claimed– it was totally obvious that it was just kites with other gloves on. even discogs.com knows that.

anyway the next night the Hs and the GMs played bread and roses’ last show, in boston ma, but i didn’t go but i wish i did. i played a lot of shows with bread and roses, and i liked them, and at least once i self-consciously set out to write a song like they would write. puzzled panther played a lot of shows with them, and it was great, when tim and rich were learning about the many facets of punk, to show them 1. an acoustic punk band that 2. had positive songs about 3. social justice issues and 4. awesome sing along parts. fare thee well bread and roses!

if you read all the way down here, here’s the link to didn’t we?.

check it out! this wednesday (the 17th) at the firehouse in worcester. starts at 8pm. matt fox is booking the show, he said “8pm sharp”. that’s not my word, but probably he’ll play at 8pm, i might play right after that. solo vs full band unconfirmed as of yet.

the past few have been on and off rainy in a funcomplicating manner. friday i was hanging out in front the gallery with hailey, who is fasting until her tongue goes pink to white to pink, but by virtue of hearty resolve, is less miserable than any faster i’ve ever hung with. even when not goofed out on deep cache body deposits of food coloring and stray twist ties, hailey is extremely comforting person, to the point where she’ll pick up on your half-bad day, grab your hand as you’re walking by and hold for longer than you expect, and say like she’s shocked by a sudden and radiant sunset “you look so strong and beautiful”. i’ve seen this happen like three times!

then i walked off to buy a new pen but before i could get to the pen place i got shanghaied by grass widow, fresh in town but heavy bumming for van woes and general stressedness to the point of angry ambling. i don’t know if it was the influence of hailey but i hitched my wagon to their train and together we all puttered to higher realms, even unto laughing in the rain, singing scat, and ringing bells. a later report from a passing neighbor claimed we looked “like a burt bacharach song”. they were playing in worcester that night but the show was short on bands so i jumped on, splitting a set with dungeoneers as “the berendeoneers”, plus bloody swimsuit and gascan’s new band with jong ouida and danny the moor (described in advance as “like greyskull”, which i obviously found to be maddening). dungeoneers were so crazy– now that zacherle owns his own drums he is in full animal disregard mode, with a heavily antagonistic pose that is really “kiss or kill”. i think they were one minute in before all the drum apparatus got tumbled over. in keeping with the trend, one of his previous students (a different one from before) was at the show. again, i ask you to try and identify with that. splitting the set was fun, and faster, and i was more worked up, and touching people’s faces, and slobbery, and being a teetering corpse during instrumental breaks. bloody swimsuit was good, and i am delighted to report that, while i liked the beard, dave cut it off, and is growing his hair back to nirvana length.

grass widow was super good– guitar on the surf/spy axis, boundless bass, steady pounding rhythm-of-life drums, and TITE three-part glasslike vocals. aka “perfect”! i caught the record even though i have the cd, because the cover is a “my room” style shot of their practice space, with their banners and beverages and insturments and their friend’s records and christmas lights. i love that shot!

rode back to PVD with the ladies and tried to find them the next day but i missed the coffee call because i refuse to answer my phone on the toilet even though i could, which is also fine because i had errands, and i could finally buy that pen i set out for days previous. caught up with them again at the girls rock!’ benefit, where none of us won any raffle items but “oh well”.

kind of breezing through savings, which is ultimately good as it means upping the hustle already, and anyway what have i been buying, food? i can’t feel bad about that and shouldn’t- “the kid’s gotta eat”. i drink coffee in the morning, at 4pm, and after a large dinner.

i really need to warm up my drawing hand (and eye), for an upcoming illustration project. so i bought a mess of pre-stamped postcards, and will send a drawing on a postcard to, um, anyone that comments in this post, up to a certain time. if you feel weird about leaving your mailing address in a post, you can rot13 it, or email it to me: jacob at fujichia dot crom. true story!

NB: requests of subject matter will not be honored– this is a catch-as-catch-can offer.

also, previous and current pen pals: i have carefully packed and stored our important and revivifying correspondences, and as such, i am without current addresses. so…

years ago i asked matt carroll to give me some pointers as to how to draw a horse (a problem i was struggling with at the time and still), and as always he was very helpful in telling me that a horse’s limbs are like a persons limbs with all the joints moved one joint up. so what that means is that a horse’s back legs look like a knee bending the wrong way, but actually that’s like the ankle. next down is what looks like a lower leg but is really a long foot. then what looks like the foot is actually just a toe. does this make sense? today i walked down to as220 to see my friend joe d george, whose band harry and the potters was playing. years ago this band would’ve been just an album! and following the leg of the industry, the label takes the place of the band, the distributor takes the place of the label (or did when store sales were relevant). we could keep going but why bother? and did we talk about this already? i think about this all the time.

anyway, this is just a funny point with no disrespect to HATP, who for good or ill invented the “wizard rock” set-up, but more importantly, the whole “fan-band” set-up, and who are inspirational for a lot of people for really underlining the idea “you can write a song about anything in your life”. tonight they played with a band based on the TV show “lost”, and a band that i think was about video games, completing the “staying inside” feel of the night. truth told, i felt like a bum for leaving but i couldn’t watch the show– i just didn’t get the referents, i felt totally alone. i mean, it was a heated (or at least “in-jokey”) conversation about a book i haven’t read and am not interested in. but it was great to see joe and #1 fan ERB. here’s the best bits:

• ERB’s grandma at 96 gradually dipped to eating only buttercreams and sherry. “she was really happy”.

• trying to convince joe to start a band with joe hart to be called “JOE PROBLEM”. first album “1 2 3 JOE”.

• joe’s middle name is Micheal, and for a confirmation name, chose Angelo. making him Joe Micheal Angelo. “it was a no brainer!”.

• joe spent the past couple of months interning at NASA, from which he sent me a postcard, which i don’t need to tell you goes a long way. there’s a room at NASA where it gets so loud it can kill a person.

finally on the brink of getting set-up– today me and j9 and gil are driving to the storage spot to rescue certain items, today i already solved the “how to FTP through the firewall” situation.

the space i’m in for the summer is pretty extraordinary– there’s a bustling (but not “downtown”) city square, then just off that there’s a completely abandoned supermarket and requisite enormous parking lot (empty), and then through the parking lot and around the corner of the supermarket, a heavily potholed driveway that quickly rounds a corner to a weird oasis replete with trees, songbirds, and a for-real babbling brook. the building is part of a complex of repurposed mill spaces and warehouses, in which there are flea markets, artist studios, racetracks for RC cars, carpentry narcs (who alone call the building manager with noise complaints), actual classical “industry”, lightly-used office furniture salespoints, and metalist practice spaces. but as far as i can tell, the enitre tuck-away zone (which is only 5 or 6 spaces) has no straight-world affiliations, and is entirely noisicians, tinkerers, drawers, and so on.

i’m running pretty behind again, but there’s almost no sense in trying to catch up. the fotoblog has recent pictures, and more or less everything was fun with no major regrets. i’m in providence now, more or less installed, but more less than more, as the majority of stuff i was planning on using this summer is still in storage at jenine’s folks’ warehouse location. i’ve been pretty much living out of the same bag for the past two months– 3 oxford shirts, 3 t-shirts, the computer, and an increasing number of books. as it pertains to the computer, the newly-emerging problem of not finding the hard drive is being temporarily solved by holding the laptop sideways and lightly tapping it on my knee, kind of like the way people tap packs of cigarettes. as it pertains to the books, i’m currently reading “hello i must be going”, a biography of groucho marx, which is good. jim: “i feel like you’re always reading a biography of groucho marx”.

oh, jim was in town this past weekend, which was real nice. we had lightly planned on playing some shows together again, in a redux of the phone book / bone zone / dungeoneers “tour” of 2007. well, that didn’t happen– nothing came together (and i was ultra burned out on scheduling and booking and making plans, which is weak but whatever), but we ended up having fun anyway, traveling out to western mass dance night, sleeping over, getting in trouble, kidnapping people, and generally gooning around.

oh! i have to go because the place i’m in is closing!