Transformation rock.

What is there to say about the day that wasn't said by just living through it.  Yesterday was beyond the brushes, beyond the best words.  I owe it to posterity to say the lesson was duly learned not to double down on a bag of Hopi mushrooms when the first round of Lucky Charms is circling the drain.  Maybe I should've opted for a nap and a salad.  A long walk.  Prayer.  I pulled through and all internal organs meet the dummy class test;  they are operational, I am alive.

Howler's.  Last Night.

It was a great show with friends and neighbors, Dark Lingo, who don't so much sound like, but very much evoke the shambolic domestic dynamism of Royal Trux.  They are an awesome force to behold, tribal and funny--without ever being noodly and silly.  There is an obscure density to their music, and yet, the couple's personalities play clear and magnetic through their music:  It is a sincere hope that they'll wind up at the great Brickbat Books in Philadelphia someday to underscore my sincerest claim that the Pittsburgh live scene is formidable--and that DL embodies the best elements of it.  The Burndowns, another local blast--and heldover admiration from my blogroll (frontman Steve Anderson is the voice of 7" Slam, a blog that gets written far too infrequently), followed.  One thing I love about Pittsburgh is how expertly--and uncannily in unison, this live climate ferrets out fashionable acts, trends that squat on the crests of waves, dudes in skin tight broomstick-leg jeans, and "little black glasses" as Lingo's Nick nails it.  The Burndowns make fantastic and superbly clear, unfussy punk rock.  When rock and roll of any variety works it does so by untethering its own energies from the past, without denying its debt.  The Burndowns made my head ring, and on the brief walk home (which is to say I had only to cross the street) I earmarked Stiff Little Fingers, Jerry Lee Lewis, the first Clash record, The Sonics and inexplicably, Tony Conrad, for the week to come.  With both Dark Lingo and The Burndowns what excited me most--and maybe this is a compliment owed to the music community on the whole as, at this moment, I can think of no egregious exceptions, is that I have such a thin stylistic connection to what any one of them does.  I don't dress like them, the music I listen to day-by-day sounds nothing like theirs.    But the connections they foster are electric, instant and halcyonic.  

I sacked out on the couch with the dog, saw the first half hour of the Rouben Mamoulian version of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde from 1931 and passed out before the young, itinerant Frederic March succumbed to his own nocturnal chemistries.  When I left him our night was dignified and intact.  We'd been seduced by it, but were--at least when I went to sleep, mannerly and human.  

Gooski's.

I put to you that album covers are more patriotic than the flag.  The archaeologists will look back and say, see, look what they loved.  How they loved it!

These are ten things I learned and observed while cleaning the bar, Gooski's, Polish Hill, Pittsburgh, PA, USA, yesterday, Saturday February 14th, 2009, beginning at 2:15 PM, ending at 3:05 PM.

1.  I am most likely sterile from a single application of the caustic sanitizing formula used to mop the floors.  Effective as it is, if you drop a fork when eating there do not observe the five second rule.  Let it go.

2.  The lozenge I found beneath the Dark Knight pinball game machine, it turns out, is hydrocodone.  Initially I mistook it for a Runt.  Do you remember Runts?

3.  One should never abuse opiates.  Abuse leads the direct way to the obliteration of self love.

4.  Music helps distract from the odor of fetid revelries.  I like Slayer's Haunting the Chapel or Schoenberg, as their abrasive qualities--and only their abrasive qualities, can surpass the annihilation of those fetid revelries of Friday.

5.  Emptying skunked beer trash bags in flurries on Polish Hill has a humbling Bruegelesque quality to it.  Also, the visual gratification of seeing one's own breath at the mouthing of the words: fuckin a.  That's also nice.

6.  Women, by volume and weight, produce significantly more lavatory garbage than do men.  Also, their graffiti is better.  Also, their minds are spectacular and dirty.  

7.  By 2:00 AM on any given Friday gravity will have brought roughly $4.65 in spare change back to the damaged Earth from which it was augured.  

8.  Oh, and a $1 bill.  But believe you me when I tell you I compromised when I fetched it from the swamp.    

9.  The sobriety of a ping pong player can be determined, after the fact, by whether or not he or she sat the paddle at a cant atop the resting ball.  The sober always do.  And, need I clarify, by sober I mean serious?

10.  There is simply no stifling the gag reflex when changing a soiled urinal puck.  The monastic humility fostered in the act is transcendent and rewarding. 

The delicate taxonomy of the sabbath.

So the last time we had one of these I was hooting and raising high the neighboring Mummers' roofbeams for the Curtain from Two Street.  Miss Kate came home to an apartment redolent of mostarda and spare ribs, PBR and hoarse enigmatic victory.  That's in the past.  Back in August I cleaned the place, thawing the last of  some mustard and honey drenched pork belly, ate it (unwisely) and left our keys by the stove.

Already today I feel a Noahic flood of loud strong sentiments, and have been assured--both in whisper campaigns and in the pre-order tickets fattening my wallet, that I'll sell more wings than Boeing at Gooski's tonight.  I have a picture of the crowd in my head.  A lot of the regulars who have been bellied up for every game.  When we were down they would clear the bar to enhance the flow of positive energy.  One would ask for a glass bottle of Heinz ketchup.  It stands for Pittsburgh, homophonous with the wide receiver, number 86--the MVP the last time we found ourselves in this position.      

Ideally it'll echo the AFC game. I'll wipe the honey and olive oil on my pants and play Primal Scream's 'Movin On Up' on the jukebox.  The scene will recall the land dispute early in Speak, Memory when, once solved, Nabokov's idealized father was flung from the landworkers' rejoicing arms into the sky like a hero.  I try to tell myself none of this means anything.  When Obama won Carl asked, does this really mean anything.

Christ, how should I know.  GO STEELERS!

The walk home thru Heaven on Earth, Bloomfield and the afterhours place ideas.

It could be Bloomfield cast in lead by Anselm Keifer.  Last night or, rather, this morning, around 4:30 when I inched home from a nightcap or so at the Castle the entirety of our neighborhood was encrusted in an infrared ice tundra.  Detailed mottlings of ice rain pools obscured the basic boundaries between curb, sidewalk, Liberty Ave.  It was something.  You might as well nail it above the Squirrel Hill Tunnel:  Pittsburgh:  Where Nothing Beautiful Is Ever Kind. 

Just a quick shot now to cut the heady stuff I've been laying out lately.  Not sure how I feel about it, or what the future will hold.  The frigid assaults on Pittsburgh have awakened a wild Coleridgean energy and on so many fronts I have been exhilarated by new ideas.  Tag along.  

One thing about which I am confident is this Sunday.  The Super Bowl has compelled us to double the Gooski's stock in wings and all things fry-o-latable.  There have been rattlings in my dreams, trying to satisfy some vegetarian friends' game day cravings.  I forecast roasted serrano and baby eggplant involtinis;  a freak show tent cross-pollination of the falafel, hush puppies and beans and rice.  You won't catch me saying it aloud but I think this unnatural fritter will carry the moniker, the Pinto Puppy.  I know, it's fucking silly.   

Omnivorous notions too have abounded.  After nearly a week of brainstorming the very simple concept of the Caesar salad--done right one of my favorite foods, I think I arrived at a nice spin.  Not an innovation exactly, after all a proper Caesar is perfect as it is, more like a pairing:  classic romaine heart, anchovy and parmesan mayonaise dressing with garlic croutons (all par for the course)  heaped alongside grilled flatbread and deep-fried smelts.  To me that's ideal bitter beer drinkin' food.  that's Steelers stomping birdass food.

I'm still trying to refine my pizza crust technique, and am constantly on the lookout for disused bricks to modify Gooski's oven for a better pizza making environment.  That accomplished margheritas and pierogie pies will resume in the chewy glory for which they were conceived and destined.

I'll be trying out several new wing flavors as well.  No hints on those.  Sufficed to say one will be incendiary in nature.  And in general expect to get my ass handed to me at halftime.  I must say little could excite me more.  The aggressive temperament of this winter bodes well, I say, for the Steelers' hopes.  More to the essence it evokes the best of the city.  It snows, it rains, there are golden towels in the air.  When the elements converge it is out of a harsh and most reliable love.

   

Our son.

I've been cruising Craigslist looking for a cd player for the Gooski's kitchen. This morning I came across this ad under the Barter heading. It encapsulates all that is beautiful about Pittsburgh, PA. There is a sense of sacrifice underlying this ad so crisp and true that its worthy of an O Henry story:


I am going to assume we are going to win tomorrow. I am going to post my 2 Lower Level tickets on the 20 yard line up for sale, and I'm sure they will go for a pretty penny. I am interested in an assault rifle. AR15, Mini-14, etc. Email me if you would be interested in a trade. My seats are about 25 rows from the field on the 20 yard line. Home side of the stadium.

GO STEELERS!

A year of music listening and warming pierogies.

After leaving A.K.A. Music my resources have slimmed for compiling a year end music list.  It was one of the simple pleasures of life in Philadelphia to walk down the aisles and recall albums of the year, cover by cover.  It is a different sensation--though one no less gratifying, to have nothing whatsoever to do with the alley-catting of the critics and otherwise hip.  Truth be told, after a while it got kinda hard to take any pop music seriously.  I've worked in record stores, bars and restaurants of all class strata and ethnic origins, and the result is always the same:  you come to loathe the wares you traffic.

That said, I continue to find differences with pop music--that could take a while.   Pitchfork still ain't helping.

New (and some old) finds include Hamish Milne's superb Bach Piano Transcriptions: 5 on the English Hyperion label.  The performance is witty and penetrating, especially in the somber Goedicke versions. I don't often comment on it (because I don't often detect it) but the disc earns as much praise for its crystalline production, which grants a hologram of recorded space: the silence is as nice as the music.  

On the other hand it's been a great year's end, spent on the floor of Jerry's classical aisle, rummaging through mostly crap 78's to find shushing Carusos and Kathleen Ferriers--though no true believer in Woody Allen's last ditch resuscitation bid (white collar Scarlet Johanssen porn) the austere Match Point made handy use of Allen's inevitably terrific antediluvian record collection.   But heads above these dust plates are the precious few Alfred Cortot's scored through several (not exactly cheap) French eBayers; their lanky native son looked kinda like Basil Rathbone, and played like a Steinway shambling down a fire ladder.  So wild.

I have a few others from those visits in the currently infatuated with stack, so comment shall be presently withheld.  More blog stuff on that to come--though you can scroll back to the Howard Hanson piece to see the first spoils of the expeditions.

Dan sold me on The Hold Steady, while the cathartic liquidation of my cd collection has lead to revisiting some missed connections and forgotten faves:  Gillian Welch's Time, The Revelator, Wilco's A Ghost is Born, Oval's awesome Diskont 94 and Tindersticks' sadly neglected Waiting For The Moon. 

Tindersticks' latest, The Hungry Saw, is also a fine showing.  I do miss Dickon Hinchliffe's sophisticatedly haunted arrangements, but the new (Americ-indy) simplicity benefits from some terrific songs.    

After listening to my pal, Daniel, sing the praises of Lil' Wayne I finally caved.  An easy favorite of 2008.  As usual Daniel is right: 2008 was a banner year for Wayne, yielding  Tha Carter III. the jawdropper bootleg mixtape Da Drought III, and The Hood Internet (often linked through Pitchfork's "eh" Forkcast) turned up a mash-up with Wayne on T-Pain's "Can't Believe It", set to The Rosebuds' latest title cut.

On to The Rosebuds.  Once again, to very little fanfare, they've put great new pop songs into our midst.  Life Like improves on Ivan's recent mystical bent, while Kelly has never sounded better.  Going back to The Fall's Brix-era I can hear that 'we hate everything in love together' viscerality in the (albeit nicer) Rosebuds swooning domestica.  It's been so long since his & hers synth pop has sounded so gothic and stirring.  

So much of me lives in the past that labels like Soul Jazz & Honest Jon's have acquired perennial status:  this year's are the already lauded Give Me Love collection from the latter (already went there) and the former's Steppas' Delight, which manages to bottle the proverbial lightning of U.K. dubstep on four annihilating discs (when I left Philadelphia they were still selling compact discs, of which you needed but two to make the set--but come on).  There's a fine Boxcutter tune, and Burial crony, Kode 9, returns.  But it's the one-two punch of Uncle Sam's cocky summer jam, "Around The World Girls", followed by the bone-crushing, feministic electro-ragga of The Bug & Warrior Queen's "Poison Dart".  The comp never stoops to define dubstep, as so many of its assortment lessers did.  And for its liberality it kinda defines it anyway:  The complements of popular reggae derivatives and dark funk/electro rhythms converge, it all works.   

The Vibrators' "Baby Baby", on Gooski's jukebox, is decidedly not new. But it too, makes the list.  Did I mention Veedon Fleece?  That too.