ok, this is a test– i need to start recording music again and messing around with music and generally being musically active. right now i have computer stuff i’ve been working on, but that’s a realm of endless tweaking. so…… ten people request songs for me to cover and i will cover them, and post them here before the end of the month. you cannot request a song that you have written, but you can request a song that i’ve never heard. i can’t promise my cover will be faithful. give me a title and a performer. i will only do this if ten people make requests, and i have ways of telling when one person is pretending to be more than one person on the internet. oh, actually, mike benedetti gets one automatically, because he’s been really helping me out lately / always. so, first nine, plus mike.

ok, let’s go– burn it. even lurkers– let’s go.

well, sure enough a few days go by and my memory’s completely shot. let’s see what we can dredge up, eh?

friday one of my favorite bands, best friends forever played at the go go with the terribles, dead mom the dog (previously the foundation), and bob carlton. i was bummed because i didn’t get asked to play, despite being requested by the bffs, but then the terribles played my song “jla dreamer” and i sang and it felt great to sing for everyone. none can keep me down but me! BFF played last year at this time and it ruled, this time it was even better because everyone knew all the words, and people went super-crazy. they’re like the smiths to me, lots of clever lines about crushes, and everyone clutching at their own shirt and rolling their eyes back.

the next day they came to the shoppe and filmed some scenes for the cosby show idea, which is a little more than halfway through in the filming department, and is going on hiatus so i can do other things with my life. i’m giving myself two weeks from now to have a teaser commercial up on youtube, a few edited scenes, with the backdrops and laughtracks and everything. again, what we have so far is really really really awesome. andy fish is going to help me stage the premiere at the worcester art museum, a prospect i am delighted about.

saturday after work we went to the king st block party, which had as many people and as much music as last year, but everything suffered from lack of a bumpin’ sound system– speakers couldn’t be heard, music didn’t inspire dance. so let a lesson be took: bump it. slept over at purtle’s and all the next day hung out with him and j9, just shooting the shit and almost not going outside, which ended up driving everyone crazy. that night drove to providence for a terribles show at the intersection of batty and vermin st (no joke!) that had to get moved due to a trying-to-sleep baby. the car was briefly broke down and had to be pushed slightly uphill, a task that proved impossible due to the fact that it was biodiesel and the whole backend was greasy and slippery from condensed china lantern vapors. uh, everything was fine with it, ultimately– no worries.

got some more books, including the kirby bio “king of comics” (which is not exactly exceptional but is honorable and necessary and has more than a few amazing pages) and the incredible “rationale of the dirty joke” by g legman. i first learned about this latter book in this article (a good a place to start as any) from the new yorker some years ago. i remember quoting this specifically, but i’m unable to search out wherein i did:

“Legman was a handsome man, with thick dark hair, blue eyes, and a strong nose; because of chronic poverty, he was typically dressed in threadbare clothes with a length of rope for a belt. Friends describe him as tetchy and difficult, but exhilarating to be around. Academics were put off by this autodidact from the murky demimonde, whose rambling prose was full of marginal jeremiads. Legman, in turn, was disdainful of folklorists with Ph.D.s, whom he called “Phudniks” and “cacademics.” Yet, by freely making available to them materials that academic journals were afraid to publish, he helped establish erotic folklore as a respectable subject for scholarly study.”

the book is a tremendous work cataloging thousands of dirty jokes in their original dialects and providing their lineage across time and space, all in a very erudite but readable and even charming manner. in other words, it’s pretty much perfect. in addition to being the world’s foremost scholar of erotic folklore, legman was also instrumental in introducing the art of origami to the west, and claims to have invented both the slogan “make love not war” (possible), and the vibrating dildo (most certainly false). truly a character for the ages. here’s another nice article on our man, here’s his wikipedia entry.

oh yeah, and i saw DP last night and he told me he’s got a new band called “pregnant polaroids” and could they buy some songs off of me. big tiiiiiiiime…

last wednesday’s power day was so righteous. blister pack was great, kpars’ first band playing guitar, and they had a song quoting jonny houston– “i like it, it tastes good, i have one.”. also they played “where are they now?” and i lost my mind yelling the names of people that moved out of worcester. bone zone and terribles are a classic one two, nothing surprising but everyone was playing as hard as they could. the terribles had fresnel lenses hanging in front of their microphones, so their screaming faces dwarfed their miserable bodies. genesis climber was two basses and drums, and one of the bass players knows old friends by their old old names, a nice surprise. very prog, ripping for days. at one point someone called out for rise above, but they didn’t know the words so dominic jumped up perfect and in a pinch. i realized only later that all their songs are about ascension. black rainbow killed it. lots of fun, lots of moving around, everyone going nuts all night. i even went swimming afterwards (and possibly caught a pond infection in my throat). in the morning, breakfast in the fashion.

today (ssaturday) at HBML we’re doing another silk screen day. the image is a geisha applying make up to her tense face, but i blanked out all the patterns on her clothing, so you can color it in with the pattern of your choice post hoc. i will have some fabric markers there for this purpose, although i don’t know about drying times. hustling all day yesterday to prepare a zine for the event, or at least a little one-sheet, about different patterns and their meanings, japanese and otherwise, but my nice, perfect for this applictation, “japanese patterns” book is MIA. i even tore apart my room, in a way that made it more orderly even, to no avail. very frustrating. i tried to not do everything super last minute this time, but here it is, nigh-on to the last minute…

tomorrow is my earth day. i will be entering my 30th year, continuing my infinitesimal creep towards death.

inthe past few days i’ve been doing a fair amount and being lazy about writing and then remembering that when i don’t write i get sort of crazy. sunday was bratfest, i missed opie and king tuff’s band PHASED OUT but still had a fun time, hanging out with dan wars, jackie susanne, and a miscellany of locals and nigh-locals. KT has another band called NAM BUDDIES that is full grunge riffers, led by some 17 year old baggy pants, it was awesome, as was RUTHIE.

deer tick / jana hunter show was great. jjbb also played, as did a lady with a totally fake shampoo commercial singing accent, who coasted through a brief set on popular themes. jana added phrase sampler looping pedals to her repertoire, and even though those things usually rub me the wrong way, this time it was perfect. i gripped the new record, which is as the last one: good. deer tick played a bunch of new songs that are great and spotlight his incredible use of vocal overtones. also this line: “i don’t want to be a millionaire / if it’s only a million of one thing”.

me and JK and jay skonietch went to see boris at the middle east, and it was pretty boring. i like boris but my buttons just didn’t get pushed. plus it’s weird now seeing a big show with a stage and lights and everything. so mediated. also matt carroll’s brother band opened up and were followed by a very similar band: BORING. and not even actively boring, like a drone band or something. this was just rock music with nothing going for it, no personality or weird twists. jimmy’s a nice guy, but this was just boring rockers boringly rocking, no finesse, no lack of finesse, no transgression, no refinement.

the yoni show was fun, i played a computer set, all sine wave cultivation and reading from “remembrance of things past” (or whatever you want to call it), which i threatened to do and then realized that was my best idea at the moment. as promised, yoni played for a long-ass time, it was awesome and matt coe was in heaven starting from the soundcheck.

silk screen saturday last weekend at the shop, the deisgn was a t rex stomping on a gas station labeled “HBML”, under which it said “FOREVER”. someone asked me what it meant and i said “either ‘HBML FOREVER’ or ‘PICTURE A T REX STOMPING ON A JUNK SHOPPE FOREVER’”. i’ll be making a few extras on white shirts with spray paint accents, look for them next week.

this has been fujichia core dump, an essential part of fujichia minutia reportage.

tonight’s show ruled hell hard. i didn’t play any exactly new ssongs but no one seemed to mind, annikki dawn was indeed “that lady with the tiny guitar who sings beautiful and… kind of medieval?”, diego perez was perfect and whimsical and approachable and glib, and geez, ID M THEFTABLE was awesome! sadly he had car trouble and broke down a few blocks from the house, but he decided to play “full acoustic” instead, and it blew everyone away. his act is “extended vocal technique”– lots of gargle, throat-clear, inward singing, stuff like that, organized in a freeform fashion and with playful changes in density, and also conducting the audience to “do as i do” when his hand raised. in my mind the audience participation “get everyone involved” angle is what pushed everything from being interesting to being important, a real group thought ur-vibe. i always get nervous booking a noise sshow, or a show with a noise act, but thus far (and remember that i know how to choose ‘em) it’s been gnagbusters all around, with folks i think won’t be into it getting waay into it. i feel like this was a big show for a lot of people. lovelife. out!

dan burke is a professional soul singer and his band is called “the orange ocean“. ssaturday they had a big cd release party in a weird downtown office, it ruled. the music is kind of like, i don’t know, 70s piano pop? i kept giggling the whole night, thinking about the cops showing up and being super super confused by a bunch of stunners from the nonprofit sector party-lit by red lights and robotic globes, mellow choogling to classic keyboard patches while the cops silently turn around and walk out, or sometimes don’t even leave the elevator, and a dog raises its dog eyebrow, whimpers maybe. a quest for aggression harshed.

some notes:

• my girls from the art supply store were there, they flowed me drinks flowed to them by a be-flirted and inebriated barkeep.

• there was a duck yao table of food items for sale. i had to watch it while someone smoked a cigarette, so i wrote party slogans on the underside of all the hors d’oeuvre plates: “I’M ‘PREPARED’ FOR ‘WHATEVER’” “I SEE YOU SEEING ME” “HEY, SHUT UP”.
• JK the sensual vampiya told a guy crowd-scanning with a digicam “any pictures that have my face on them, you have to delete”. i said “yeah, he has a… thing” real nebulous and the guy said “oh yeah, totally! no problem!”. later: “i feel like this is both being an asshole and being reasonable.” i agree! also, JK made a joke about goethe and his theory of colors, then at least an hour passes before a guy none of us had ever seen turns to us and makes the same joke! i was like, are you fucking kidding me? as it turns out, neither of them had read the book, they just both knew that it was “important”. cherry, baby.
• dan burke is a great guy who is really good at what he does and what he does is something i wouldn’t necessarily seek out, but it’s delightful and a wonder to behold. guys, i’m not saying it’s “cute” or “quaint”, and i’m not trying to use world music language here. but let’s be frank: i left my zone. and: i had a super fun time in the traditional custom. and: i saw the strangeness of a border area and: that strangeness was cowed where all rivers meet. i know, this is like “duh”. but again– a squatted office, party heels, tom petty, cape codders, spinning dance lights, spray paint, sitting on the fire escape above the city with a beautiful manager, where the DJs still play “hey ya”. all one or none!

pictured above is LA in his natural state. i’m thinking of getting a photo hosting community thing– anyone have any recommendations?

the barbeque yesterday was really fun: lots of folks, lots of food, music and dancing, and wrassling, and getting muddy. billy blue played what he said might be his last worcester show, being as he’s moving to portland oregon, and we wish him all the best. terribles played their long-awaited cd release show, for the new joint “in congre∫s”. the terribles take turns in designing album art, this time it was matt carroll’s go, and he chose to make it look the title page of common sense: “Of the SYNCOPATION and HARMONY of Mu∫ickal in∫truments in general, with con∫ise Remarks on the A∫pects of Righteou∫ne∫s.” etc.. and of course it’s matt carroll, so *everything* is *perfect*. well done gentlemen.

the party was in the backyard of billy’s house and no one called the cops, and it rained a bit on three occasions throughout the night but nothing got ruined and that includes no one getting electrocuted. AND, in addition to this ssummer being “summer of worcester (again / still)” and “summer of having love” and somewhat inexplicably “summer of hand-whittled zippers”, it was also decided that this would be “platinum summer”, so pars whipped out the bleach and many got did, including yours truly. also, it was the first genuinely hot day of the year, so there was a lot of leg showing all around– a lot of fresh, weird, frog-belly leg.

all this week i’ll be bleaching my hair over and over again, until it looks like my head is made of pure cocaine.

a few weeks ago me and nik perry were in the liquor store getting swamp water supplies when he noticed that the nice indian ladies who work at this particular liquor store had drawn a beard and mustache on the babe calendar. we broed down a little about this compulsion, then as we were leaving, the lady said something in hindi to her mother, butme and nik both thought she was talking to us, and we both heard “good luck, archimedes!” and we both didn’t know how to respond, which is probably for the best.

the other day there was a guy at the grocery store going on and on in the meat section about how good the haddock was, to point of stopping people who were walking by and saying “you gotta try the haddock!”. i told him “you sound like my wife– it seems like every night she has a haddock!”. the guy said “huh.”. i’m sorry but this did happen, and i’m sorry.

karaoke was fun, i sang a few, including “fernando“, which was just out of my range so on the high notes i had to grab my throat and physically change the shape of my windpipe, which is something i read about akon doing.

the show last night was also fun, although for no reason i was totally out of it. as in, my brain and body were all weird. i liked all the bands, especially grass widow, and it was super great to see matt tobey tear on the guitar! and the house totally smelled “crusty”, which is cool.

kevin driscoll has a new screwed-down mixtape, it’s good, even though it’s named after a kind of fart: NIGHT WIND. george washington carver myers also has a screwed mix tape that just came out, but the source material is all dancehall, and when you screw down the huge bass drops already present in reggae they turn into a sound like a cable is a little loose, or something is improperly grounded. my screw tape is coming out next week, dead serious, cd + download, another “new trend” release.

here’s the flyer for tomorrow’s B*X+Q. nik perry made it (the flyer):

bo diddley passed away today in his florida home. he was 79.

bo diddley remains one of my favorite musicians. important notes are:
• named after an expression meaning “nothing”
• has a rhythm named after him
• songs sometimes only had one chord
• lots of guitar gimmicks and instrumental jokes
• band had a maraca player

when i first started playing guitar i would play the bo diddley riff for literally hours on end, which would make me feel like a mountain (i remember thinking this exact thought).

bo diddley bo diddley RIP. • - - • - - • - - - • - • - - -

today me and purtle have the first real performances of the play we’re in, with live strangers. but i’m more psyched about this (email from anne):

Come One, Come All! See the Dragon Sorcerer as he meets his match in our five heros.
Friday and Saturday May 9th and 10th Doors open at 7:00 Curtain at 7:30
First Unitarian Church, 90 Main St. Worcester

The Dragon Sorcerer Play is a culmination of our school years worth of work at the Stone Soup Learning Coop. The students and staff researched knights and ninjas, learned about the literary concept of a quest and all it’s elements, learned about CORI laws and reform, created a story line together, and then a student took the story line and wrote a wonderful play with it. Now we are building sets, making costumes, and rehearsing, so that we can give the performance of our lives. We’d really love for you to join as and share in the amazing work these students have accomplished this year.

Tickets Suggested donation $10 Adults $2 Under 12
Tickets available at the Door

carolynn is in this, and plays an ogre whose power is burping, which is typecasting, but whatever.

also, the overheard bitch album is done and available for download. or pick it up as a double cd greatest hits debut. i think it’s eight minutes total, with celebrity remixes by me and little andrew. overheard bitch is kpars and nrevs, and the songs are all (or mostly) things they overheard people say, regarding bitches, rapped with wanton disregard for rhythm or being near the microphone. the album is called “what are you smiling at, bitch?”, it’s really really weird.

yesterday was a pretty weird day that i won’t get into but it started with eating cereal in the park with annie p (which was totally sweet) and ended with going to see autechre in boston with josh tumblecat, chris cooper, and holmes. me and josh and chris all had pretty much the same experience, which was wondering what the show was going to be like, and then once we were there, saying “oh yeah, this”. what it was was looking towards a darkened stage where presumably music was somehow being controlled, a few people head nodding, a few people hand pumping, but for the most part people just standing there holding beers. really, i’m only familiar with one autechre style, which is “things skittering out of control / atomic dissection often in reverse”, and that’s what i used to try and extrapolate the show during the deciding-to-go-to-the-show process. needless to say, that style was not in effect, and the night was mostly semi-anthemic bangers (which, as mentioned, few actually banged to). we ran into marky metal at the falafel palace afterwards, where josh and chris got turkish coffees and we had the pleasure of watching chris navigate his famous mustache around that tiny tea cup. lots of really horrible conversations that were fun to overhear at the restaurant. all in all, another great night.

oh yeah, and i guess me and purtle’s play is sold out already. sorry i didn’t get the ticket information out earlier, i didn’t know what it was (i didn’t know the information).

saturday i had lunch with my sister and her family, which now includes a baby, as previously noted. unlike the last time i saw her (her the baby), she can focus her eyes, so she was heavy eyeing just about everything. i was clowning a little, then i realized that a baby doesn’t have encoded the “set of agreed reality” that makes things that are commonly funny commonly funny. they were in town for stephanie’s wedding. congratulations steph! stephanie can be heard here and there on the “interview with a frankenstein audio issue” from some years back, which i should put on online already.

ran to the store two hours late where i found mike benedetti waiting to tell me that tom lewis passed away. tom was a great guy and a friend to mike and the snow ghost, and a teacher to ML, jambuck and d-bird. unfortunately i never got to really span time with him, we just hung out at pizza hut once, and he came to the HBML volunteer meeting. nonetheless he was an inspiration– scott wrote a really good testimonial on the pie and coffee page.

that night, a show at the wheelchair. the show was good, lots of good bands, the best of which was no fucker, an awesome d-beat band from utica with two (!) wah wah pedals (bass wah and the other kind) on the guitar. the craziest “brain drill” sound yet. d-beat is a genre that descended (with minimal change) from the band discharge, who had a distinct visual style, a trademark off-kilter drum beat, and the constant lyrical theme of nuclear armageddon. matt smith was at the show and intimated that they were pretty much third wave d-beat, via disclose. it’s interesting to see the attention to detail, and to see what is now a fairly large scene based off a fairly small sample set. all d-beat bands use one of two discharge fonts, one of which is based on a single instance of magic marker scrawl of the word “discharge” used on one of their logos, which someone later extrapolated an entire alphabet out of. no fucker used the magic marker font, which i’m sure to anyone else looked like just a hastily scrawled note. so it’s interesting, but i have to mention, i’m watching a bunch of kids singing along to outrage about nuclear holocaust, currently in fashion, but tom lewis was 68 years old, and stayed poor, and refused job offers so that he’d have the freedom to go to jail for his outrage about nuclear holocaust. i don’t know everyone’s politics at the show, i’m not saying that people don’t believe in these songs, and i couldn’t tell anyone what is and is not appropriate response to a lifetime of possible obliteration. i just couldn’t stop thinking about it.

the other interesting thing at the show was the there was a fight and purtle got a little manhandled (but not roughed up). exactly what was at the center of thingss, no one can be 100% sure of. but i’m pretty sure it was a case of a few wasted older dudes straight up olderwastedduding it, and trying to prove themselves to themselves (one was celebrating a 35th birthday). anyway they singled out jen millis as keeper of a score that needed settling, so they barked back and forth while the dudes waited for someone to jump to her rescue, and this person, they would fight. well purtle knew some of the guys from years back so he stepped in to say “this is nothing, don’t worry about it”, which had success with the main lout but his buddy said naw, and grabbed purtle by the neck, as if to choke him. i saw this from the door and had two thoughts in quick succession– the first was pretty obvious and immediate: if purtle gets beat up, i get beat up. or to put it another way, i will not allow him to get beat up alone. the second thought was that this first thought was pretty much universal, and sure enough, even the manhandler’s pals jumped up to say “whoa! what are you doing? we love this guy!”. almost immediately it all simmers back down to merely “a tense situation”, as everyone there that didn’t see it happen (seriously, everyone) asks “was someone fucking with mike leslie? because we’ll kill them!”. we both left while things were still tense, but i spent some time talking to a friend of the choker’s, trying to keep him occupied and convince him, uh, that everything was nothing. on this conversation i have a further three points:

• the guys were mostly skins, and as such, clung to the curious victimhood of “people always think we’re neonazis, but really that’s got nothing to do with it”. this statement is mostly true– traditional skinhead culture is old ska and other reggae-variant music, and general football hooliganism. then the look (the dress and sound) was co-opted by fascist groups and as such made an impression in the popular imagination. but any whining doesn’t hold much to me– i mean, even charlie chaplin shaved his mustache after “the great dictator”.

• the guy gave two explanations for the tension: “that girl put a cigarette out on that guy’s face” and “that girl called my friend a jock”. the first is pretty extraordinary, but given the girl in question, i’d have to say, if it happened, it happened for a reason. the second one seems pretty likely, but that the two are offered as reasons for the same action gives both the same weight, which is pretty crazy, especially when you are talking to a weightlifter (technically a jock, although that’s a still a loaded term).
• the guy described himself and his friends as “old school punk rock dudes”, and did so as if to justify their actions, and as if to say “you guys aren’t real or you’d recognize this”. but historically, loutish bald brawlers are not the oldest school in punk rock– the oldest school consists of skinny arty kids of indeterminate orientation and weird shopkeepers that sell bondage gear to teenagers! i realized this on the bike ride home and got pretty psyched.

so i think pretty much nothing happened afterwards, or i would’ve caught wind of it. all in all it’s like dr king said 40 years ago this week, on the eve of his assassination: “It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence.”. well, that’s how it is for an all-ages punk venue anyway.

ssunday me and ML drove out to easthampton for the first big practice for this play we’re in at the end of the month (”go to the chateau”). it went really good, and we both had a great time, and i feel like we did a lot better than everyone else in the play (actors all) thought we would.