Catchin’ up

Blogging very little as of late, but hey, I’ve been busy.
The big news is a promotion. I’m enormously excited and perhaps the only down side is the realization that with work-induced elation, I’ve taken another scary step toward full and complete adultness.

Wednesday night was a Luna show at Congress. Phenomenal. I know very little of the band, save one song somebody threw onto a mix tape for me years ago. But the urgency of a farewell tour and the lack of other good touring shows lately drew me in. Once again, damn.
Luna is in many ways indescribable - simple descriptions like mellow to mid-tempo indie rock just don’t come close. The two guitarists and the bass player all trade off with leads and the tunes are these ever-shifting collaborations that really hit home. Early off I hung toward the back, but toward probably the latter third of the show, the floor opened up enough to mosey through and I joined Freaktown right up at the stage. Glad I did, ‘cause only then did I get to really see the blend of energy and precision the band played with.
The songs were all great, and especially in the encore (both encores!), the band was wild, loose and passionate. You could just tell they’re putting all they have into every show, knowing that it’s all coming to an end and wanting that end to be the band’s highest peak.
Dean Wareham is a unique songwriter, merging bittersweet, mysterious lyrics with music that brings soaring guitar leads.
And Britta Phillips is abolutely gorgeous.
I urgently need to get more Luna albums. I’ve thrown Bewitched on a half dozen times since the show.
It’s a strange bittersweet feeling to finally catch onto a band at the end of their run. I felt the same way getting into Warren Zevon when he was already diagnosed with terminal cancer. I never caught a Zevon show (but did see Dylan play Accidentally Like a Martyr and Lawyers, Guns and Money), and I’m damn glad I did get to see Luna. That, and I’m damn glad they’re not all dying.
Regardless, never have I been so impressed with seeing a band I knew so little about. That’s probably a top-10 all-time show.

Rocked out with a few folks on the porch last night and then woke up early (yes, 11 a.m. is in fact early) to watch the Wildcats pound the shit out of Stanford. There’s nothing like an absolute, thorough demolishing to set the tone for a day. I’ll go right out and say it: Salim and Channing are the best senior duo in the country, the perfect inside-out combination and fiery, hungry competitors. Even after some terrible missteps, there’s reason to feel real strong about this team heading into March. And I’ll get one more chance to see them, having just picked up tickets for the Tempe game, me and Stu’s Christmas gift to Gramps.

And in the ever-lasting saga of Truth being quite Stranger than Fiction, here are some of today’s headlines:
Linguist unearths a new language
Police hit pay dirt: 3.6 million nickels
Woman sues after girls try to deliver cookies to her door

January

January is a long month.
The winter slows everything and whether it’s sniffles or something severe, everybody’s health stumbles a bit.
I can’t hide in books and movies, as much as I’ve tried. There needs to be friends; there needs to be the General and Freaktown.
There’s basketball, and football playoffs, but they’re frantic, fleeting matches. There’s not the steady march of summer’s sentinel, the great blue-sky game of baseball.
Even in the great desert Southwest, it’s hard to barbeque.
I’ve been writing, and dreaming. I’ve been drinking more tea than coffee, more whiskey than beer.
December’s flow of out-of-state pals has dried up. And what’s more, since I’ve seen ‘em all so recently, I ain’t got much to say, so there’s little phone or email communication.
January is a long month, with little redemption.
I’ve been playing basketball, driving and throwing creative and wildly imaginative passes that sail out of bounds, or coming off a pick for a three-pointer. Then, after my legs die, I got nothing.
It’s a month of distraction and wheel-spinning. But none of it unpleasant. There’s no rush. Cabin fever is still a month off and here it’s short and unbelievably mild.
I’ll be relaxing under a beautiful blue sky with a bratwurst and monster beer soon, sunburned probably by the seventh inning, sometime the first week of March.
January is a long month, with little redemption, but also little pressure and few worries. It’s an even-keel month, mostly, but maybe leaning just a bit to stir-crazy.
I went to the mountain last week and walked my old favorite trail. I missed a crucial turn - it was either buried by snow or destroyed by fire. So I just turned back, really on a slow saunter more than a hike. The air was cold but full of life. The snow was old, but still six or eight inches deep in places and had turned crunchy. I tried walking like I did as a kid, careful not to break through that top crust, as if tip-toe turned me weightless. There was a girl and a dog, neither one mine.
January is a long month, with little redemption but even keel, a pause as much as a start.

This guy is my hero

Man peed way out of avalanche

National Arlo Day

I forgot to post this the other day, but what the hell:

It's the 10th of January, and I still ain't had no sleep...

Catfish at the record shop

I started off blogging last year with an impulse to make my own statement on the music of 2003. And so you're stuck with me. To continue, here's what struck me in 2004, simply the best:

1. Modest Mouse - Good News For People Who Love Bad News
2. Wilco - A Ghost is Born
3. Green Day - American Idiot
4. Elliott Smith - From A Basement On The Hill
5. Arcade Fire - Funeral
6. Social Distortion - Sex, Love and Rock ‘n’ Roll
7. Steve Earle - The Revolution Starts Now
8. Walkmen - Bows + Arrows
9. Ted Leo/Pharmacists - Shaking the Sheets
10. Killers - Hot Fuss
11. Rilo Kiley - More Adventurous
12. Old 97s - Drag it Up
13. Giant Sand - Is All Over the Map
14. Loretta Lynn - Van Lear Rose
15. Interpol - Antics
16. U2- How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
17. Roger Clyne and the Peacemakers - Americano!
and a tribute, EP and live collection:
18. Por Vida - A Tribute To The Songs Of Alejandro Escovedo
19. Calexico - Convict Pool
20. Bob Dylan - Live 1964, Bootleg Series 6: Concert at Philharmonic Hall


Not being rich or a professional music critic, it’s hard to get to some albums in good time even when there’s tremendous reason to do so. And so the honorable mentions, the would-probably-be-on-the-list-but-I-haven’t-heard-them set:
Drive-by Truckers - Dirty South, Neko Case - The Tigers Have Spoken, Iron & Wine - Our Endless Numbered Days, Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat, A.C. Newman - The Slow Wonder, Brian Wilson - Smile, Streets - A Grand Don't Come For Free, Tom Waits - Real Gone, Flatlanders - Wheels of Fortune, TV on the Radio - Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, Pinback - Summer in Abaddon, Mason Jennings - Use Your Voice, Marah -20,000 Streets Under the Sk, Dave Alvin - Ashgrove, Richard Buckner - Dents and Shells

Research help: The Onion and Rolling Stone.
Check out Catfish Vegas presents... review of 2003

Catfish at the cinema

As promised, here's the my list for the top flicks I caught this year:
1. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
2. Fahrenheit 9/11
3. Hero
4. Kill Bill 2
5. Shaun of the Dead
6. Incredibles
7. Dodgeball
8. Garden State
9. Door in the Floor
10. (tie) Spider-Man 2 and Shrek 2

Then I ‘spose there are the “honorable mentions,” or more precisely movies I didn’t catch but probably should (or should have). They could make a whole new list: Sideways, I Heart Huckabees, The Life Aquatic, Before Sunset, House of Flying Daggers, Closer, Ray, Dig, Aviator and Finding Neverland.

The year in politics

I'm sick of what goes on behind the curtains of this here democratic process, but for a fun take on the previous year, check out The Carpetbagger Report's year in review.

One Year...

It was one year ago today that Sgt. Pepper taught the Catfish Vegas to blog.
And what a remarkable year it has been.
For starters, I have to say my detective fiction serial was pretty
impressive.
And remember November, when I blogged in nothing but haiku, execpt for
Sundays, when blogging was done in only sonnets?
And once I finally got a keyboard with the proper capabilities, I reproduced
my very first writings - kindergarten letters to Santa Claus - in sanscrit.
That screenplay collaboration with Charlie Kaufman was pretty cool too.
And who could forget that wicked back and forth with that son-of-a-bitch
Paul Wolfowitz? Oh, the things comment threads can do.
If only I'd have thought of that million-dollar trivia sweepstakes
earlier...
And weren't the Cambodian leaders nice to let me post the new constitution I
wrote for them, even before it was submitted to Parliament?
Gosh golly what a year...

Stay tuned all week as the staff here at Catfish Vegas presents... rolls out our picks for the best of 2004.

The glory boys

Good-bye Brian and Luke, you’ll be missed.

“Memory is untouchable - It keeps such bitter distance
And silence is a photograph - A still and stone reminder
And in time we fade
Left in only recollection
Holding on is the hardest thing to do,
When everything is so out of touch
And nothing really means that much
When words don’t last beyond our lips
And promises are barriers
This same reflection, a portrait of contempt
A faded story book it’s pages over read,
Oh well, I’ll have plenty of memories to hold me when I’m gone
And if the pen permits I think I’ll write a few more songs
Cause nothing brings me back the way those old ones do...
It’s tried and true
So on and so forth, it’s so hard to see
We all fall down eventually
To bones - To graves - To history
And change won’t change a thing
A subtle keepsake
Our triumphs and our tears
Find innocence betrayed by fact and ignorance instilled...
And so
This one’s for the boys back home I hope you’re all alright
A childhood remembered in a song against the night
Embers on the wind, we were a spark of hope and pride
In the journey to find somewhere to ignite
For times we shared I give to you
The only words I know to say
You’re every part a part of me,
Amazing what a name can mean.
It’s a friend who knows you in this terminal unknown...
I’m coming home.”

- Bueno, “Glory Boys”

High/low

What a divide for my hoops teams:
The Suns have the league's best record and lead everybody in scoring.
The Wildcats manage to win at Marquette but score just 48 points, the lowest in a win since Lute came to town.
The Suns have all five pistons working together, the 'Cats are lucky most games it seems to have one functioning piston.
For the Suns, the most I can ask is an injury-free season, 'cause little else looks to derail a run deep into the playoffs.
For the Wildcats, at least the focus on defense and rebounding will overcome some weaknesses of the past.

Late or never, you make the call

I’m pretty damn far behind here, but a couple of albums from this year I got recently are just outstanding.

Green Day’s American Idiot has got to be one of the absolute most dead-on recordings in terms of capturing the cultural and political climate in the United States this year (Steve Earle’s The Revolution Starts Now also does quite well).
For one thing, the album is remarkably ambitious in its scope. The “rock opera” and “concept album” tags are so misused in general and I hate to throw trite cliches at an album I’ve really been enjoying. Let’s just say it’s a centrally themed statement on modern life a la (dare I say it?) Darkness on the Edge of Town or OK Computer.
They don’t have the bombast or the urgency of the Clash, don’t level the sharp attacks of Rage Against the Machine, nor can the neo punkers muster the righteous anger of Bad Religion, but Green Day is nobody’s little brother. American Idiot is intelligent, poignant and musically remarkable considering the band has never rated too highly outside the high school set. For godsakes, they burst onto the scene with an album called Dookie and paved a rather regretable road that brought Blink 182, among much, much worse.
When it’s all said and done, I’d say American Idiot will be remembered as one of the top several albums of this year at worst, and an undeniable classic at best.

The Killers’ Hot Fuss is simply fun. It’s catchy, festive, loud and arrogant. It’s a drunken swagger, just like the Las Vegas it comes from. (Hell, for all I know they’re really from the Henderson suburbs, but equating them with the Strip just seems to make more sense.)
It’s 80s rock all over again, there’s no doubt to that, but what a brilliant swirl they make of it. Like Ryan Adams Rock N Roll (an underrated ball of fun in its own right), the album is practically a track-by-track game of name-the-influence, which in the wrong hands is piss-poor. But they’re songsmiths who know how to both dress like their heroes and be themselves at the same time.
The lyrics can get ridiculous, and it’s hard to tell at times whether they’re tongue-in-cheek or just kinda stupid, but the focus is really just the catchy tunes.
The Killers may be a flash in the pan act. With such a winning debut I actually care, but I really hope not.

And the winner is...

Mr. Chair takes the prize with the all-too-predictable U2.

The Since and the In Between

Since the November Debacle, when the 10 p.m. news rocked my stomach with the same sinking feeling as the final buzzer of 2001’s NCAA basketball championship, I’ve more or less resolved to force politics into one of the furthest back closets of my mind.
I half hoped that in doing so I’d stumble across something in one of those closets to bring out and immediately throw into the lineup. Like benching politics in favor of say, science fiction, in the batting order of my mind and time.
Didn’t happen. While I did more or less cut politics almost cold turkey, nothing slid in right away to fill that void. No old interests bubbled up anew. No past curiosities reasserting themselves, nothing. Or more specifically no one thing. I’ve wrapped myself up in photography more, I’ve opened my ears to more music, but they’re just fragments of interests in the place of the monolith of the November election.
And it’s been really strange. I’ve been scattered these past six weeks. It’s a better sensation than constantly furious, but there’s little in the way of solace and even less in the way of any worthwhile pursuit. And that scattered-ness has certainly had an impact on my writing. I haven’t yet really felt comfortable switching away from the opinion, the argument, and back into the storytelling. But it’s coming.
I’ve enjoyed long stretches of highways with trees and highways with cholla. I’ve been surrounded and embraced by some of the best rock ‘n’ roll music there is. I’ve seen some remarkable films, particularly one chronicling Warren Zevon’s final months. I’ve concocted a supreme mix cd. I’ve drank beer late into the night, laughing on porches with old friends visiting from out of town.
They’re stories and they’re feelings, and they’re not the slightest bit political.
There’s a horizon now that holds with it more travel, more old friends. It holds family and hope, good food and new toys. The weather is chill and projects are taking hold.

Zimmy

So I emailed a bunch of people reminding them to watch Bob Dylan's 60 Minutes interview Sunday and some people now think I'm compelled to comment on the interview. So here goes.
Dylan seems to be offering very little in terms of separating Bob Dylan the man from Bob Dylan the character, which is hardly surprising. He never looked like he enjoyed the interview, which begs the question why he agreed to it in the first place. It's not like his publicist prodded him into it. When your author is Bob Dylan and the subject is himself, traditional promotion hardly seems like it would matter.
Aside from Dylan's guarded, if not strange, demeanor and the feeling that he never really opened himself up at all, the interview was actually quite good. What was more revealing than his answers for the most part was Ed Bradley's unrestrained glee at the interview. He mentioned in the lead-in how he's always wanted to interview Dylan and it was evident. More importantly, as the interview progressed, he seemed to become thrilled at the conservation itself. I wonder how much the editing played a role in shaping the interview. There were a lot of cuts to historical voice-over shite and it would have been nice to see what was trimmed from the actual interview.
The most compelling part of the whole thing was Dylan's description of how some of his best songs seemed to be written almost by magic. At some level, genius or greatness simply is. You can disect an artist in so many ways, but the very fact that some simply have a greatness beyond others is unexplainable.
I wasn't really surprised or impressed by anything in the 15-minute segment. He certainly won't win any new fans just because of the interview. But the character of Bob Dylan, if not the man himself, is so wrapped up in mystery that some mumbles and a dour expression are expected from a television interview.

Talkin' Ponderosa Highway Blues

I just finished up the new biannual mix:
Talkin' Ponderosa Highway Blues

(intro)
Steve Earle - The Seeker
Gin Blossoms - Keli Richards
Social Distortion - Don't Take Me For Granted
Fountains of Wayne - No Better Place
Dan Bern - Black Tornado
Wilco - Company in My Back
Big Star - September Gurls
Elvis Costello - (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding
Talking Heads - This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)
Modest Mouse - One Chance
Shins - Fighting in a Sack
Drive-by Truckers - (Something's Got to) Give Pretty Soon
Warren Zevon - Lawyers, Guns and Money
Goshon - No More Wasted Nights
M Doughty - Madeleine and Nine
Townes Van Zandt - If I Needed You
Bob Dylan - Boots of Spanish Leather
The Band and the Staples - The Weight
Solomon Burke - Diamond in Your Mind
Ray Charles - Baby Don't You Cry
Roberta Flack - Hey, That's No Way to Say Good-Bye

This one follows Momentary Fires.

Play it again, Sam

We're all wrong. Rolling Stone has copped out once again with one of those "Weren't the 60s and 70s great" best of covers: The 500 Greatest Songs.
At least Dylan took the top slot (and 14, 59, 68, 106, 185, 190, 203, 230, 332, 364 and 404)

But screw it, let's play again. Repeat your guess if you'd like. Winner gets... well, nothing, though I 'spose I could buy somebody a beer or something.
But wasn't it fun? Hells yeah, so let's do it again!

Who will be on the cover of the next Rolling Stone?

Cover of the Rolling Stone

Who’s it gonna be? C’mon, you pop-culture freaks, indie-rock snobs, movie junkies and the like, think ya know? Well, who’s it gonna be?
In a game that never quite got off the ground, some folks and I tried getting together a little lottery a couple years back. The simple premise: who will be on the cover of the next Rolling Stone. I think George got one right once and the gig just sorta fizzled out.
But since it’s such an immediately fascinating notion, I’ll bring it back right here. Not as a contest sort of thing, ‘cause I don’t feel like administering it, but just for discussion (and argument!):
Who will be on the next Rolling Stone cover (current one is Eminem)?

post your answer in the comments

President war-monger and the freedom of speech

This just about says it all about the state of the country and the world today:

Bob Dylan's Masters of War is a hard-hitting, anti-war song produced more than 20 years before any current Boulder High School student was born.
More than 40 years after its release, the song has been resurrected at Boulder High with huge and confusing repercussions that prompted Secret Service agents to pay the campus a visit Thursday.
Some students and parents apparently let the Secret Service and talk-radio stations know they were unhappy with the plan of a trio of students to do a poetry reading of the song, accompanied by background music, according to Ron Cabrera, the school's principal.
Rumors were rampant that during an audition and rehearsal for today's talent show, the students changed Dylan's powerful last verse at the end of the song to say that they hoped that President Bush was going to die.
The last verse begins: "And I hope that you die; And your death'll come soon."
Secret Service agents interviewed Cabrera on Thursday to determine what all the uproar was about and whether any threats were being made against the president's life.
"They were following up and doing their due diligence," Cabrera said of the agents' visit. "They had been receiving calls from the community and, in the course of the talk show, felt like they had heard (the students) inciting physical harm to the president."

Are the sedition acts coming back with the draft?
"Masters of War" is about the most fitting song anybody could be listening to these days. And remember, those who do not learn from the past...
U.S. Soldiers killed in Iraq: 1,170
UK and other "coalition" soldiers killed in Iraq: 146
U.S. Military wounded: 8,458
Iraqi civilian deaths: at least 14,304

To another year of good reading...

If you're a Catfish Vegas reader who doesn't already stay up to date on the adventures of Kip Rudolph Chair, by all means go check out Mr. Chair, who entered his second year of blogging today. The Life in a Dormant Volcanoe series is riveting.

... I heard you seen a little rain

Off soon to see Richard Buckner at Congress. To reprise me feelings heading up to his last local show in February, Hey there thunderhead.