The Saddest Sign

Been noticing signs like these on public restrooms, dressing rooms, etc. lately. That's "family restroom" as in "distinct from the male and female restrooms, but absorbing the disabled bathroom while pushing the wheelchair dude to the side and making him significantly smaller in the grand scheme of bathroom symbolism."

The dad who brings his little kid into the multi-stall public restroom is one of the more unstable, insecure creatures you can observe in a public place. But I think normal bathroom-goers need to be nearby, to check his behavior—for the child's sake. Especially in places like airports, where I've most often seen this sign. Most likely, the family we're aiming for has been crammed into a single room in the Quality Inn 20 minutes from Disneyland for a week now, sharing two miserable twin beds and four shitty little plastic cups and a cracked, leaky ice bucket and a rented 1996 Tercel. This is the last group of people who should be locking themselves into a tiny room outfitted with sturdy porcelain fixtures and shiny railings. Especially if three of them have already been pushing wheelchair boy through the Space Mountain line and helping him dunk in the shitty motor-court swimming pool for several nights in a row. Yes, folks, force these people into the more-public public restrooms, where shame will restrain them from killing each other. A family that needs quality-private-bathroom time is a family that needs some fucking lithium.

Concept Restaurants

Too bad I don't have $6 million to throw around. If I did, my entrepreneurship would be nigh-on on unstoppable. First, I would establish a series of concept restaurants.

Watch: Closed-circuit TV cameras and large flat-screen TVs are mounted all over the white, otherwise undecorated walls and ceiling of this very sleek restaurant. You are served generous portions of expensive gourmet food, but you can't avoid the televised sight of yourself or others eating it. People in a control booth will be able to zoom in on chosen eaters and annotate scenes with JumboTron-like humor and commentary. They can also switch on a special nutrient-imaging system that brings the most fatty parts of your meal into infrared-style relief as they dangle half-gnawed from your mouth. Think you can hide from the self-consciousness in the bathroom? Spend more than 15 minutes there, and the camera in your stall goes live. No one goes to a restaurant to watch people eat, but that's going to change, whether anyone likes it or not.
If it's your birthday: You'll be served our Giant Flourless Chocolate Surveillance Cake. A small camera placed inside it exposes your hoggery—yep, looking right up into your syrup-smeared face—as you dig further and further in. One year greedier, motherfucker!

The Meat Locker: It's kind of cold inside this restaurant. You enter through a large, insulated door, which is slammed behind you from the outside. There is barely room for a table in here, because you'll be eating your massive, bloody, choice-cut steak amid swinging sides of meat. Move your plate aside for a sec—the butcher needs some workspace.
If it's your birthday: PETA slaughterhouse footage will be projected on the walls/sides for free.

Drunken Derby: Live out your drunken-driving fantasy in bumper cars with realistic handling, safety reinforcements, and mandatory $10,000,000 insurance policies. Obstacles, precarious curves, amputee stuntmen you can hit, ice patches, storefronts to crash through, traffic signals to defy—this ain't no lonely suburban back road as your paper-bagged bottle of Early Times dribbles away down by the clutch. "Officers" pull you over to unload fresh servings of booze and gourmet nachos into your vehicle. "Sir, I'm gonna have to issue you a citation—of Wild Turkey 101 proof! No, sir, you haven't had enough—save it for the judge."
If it's your birthday: Suck down that complimentary bottle of Andre fast, get your drunkymobile up to full-speed, and put on this NASCAR-surplus firesuit we hope still works, because you've got a Flaming Birthday Baked Alaska Wall to plow into.

Vandalism?

This map's on the bathroom wall at a local bar, and it appears vandalism is welcome because people draw and write shit all over it. I figured I'd add to their list of Iceland-associated artists. (Just Bjork? C'mon.) This is exactly the kind of place, though, that would attract someone who knows a bunch more obscure Icelandic stuff, yet has the dignity not to go around writing it on bathroom walls. And no, the middle finger isn't mine. In retrospect, maybe I should have included "part of Fields."

Hamell On Trial

Hamell On Trial, aka the furious one-man acoustic punk storm of Ed Hamell, played Café Carpe in Ft. Atkinson (about 30 miles outside Madison) Sunday night. He mostly showcased songs and stories from The Terrorism Of Everyday Life, a performance/DVD project he's working up. Highlights: A hysterical anecdote about a friend's dead mother, smoking a dead guy, and John Lennon telling a young Hamell to fuck off. Oh, and recent favorites like "Coulter's Snatch," which surely counts as a unifying hit among his cult audience. But lest that song make you think he's some kind of novelty humor act, head to Righteous Babe Records, where you can stream his latest album, Songs For Parents Who Enjoy Drugs.



Rocking, telling stories, and just generally being awesome.

Corporate Commendation: The Championship

Milwaukee band The Championship stopped at Mickey's Tavern in Madison on Thursday night and ended up playing to a very cool and appreciative crowd of about 15 people. I'd never seen the band before, but I've had its 2005 album, Dance Casador!, in pretty frequent rotation since Steve turned me on to it. The record filters the band's strong, baritone-voiced twang through dreamy electric guitar work. It's got the earthy tones you'd expect from a country record, but also a modern, sleek feel. The phrase that keeps coming to mind is: Cosmic American music for our times. (Perhaps I should send that down to WBC's thesaurus jockeys for a little fine-tuning.)

This time, the band brought along a multi-instrumentalist, who played steel (on the bar!), mandolin, harmonica, and some guitar leads. Bands playing Mickey's usually get tucked into this little corner near the door, and against all odds the bar's acoustics worked nicely, letting the room fill up with The Championship's rich, warm sound. Also, they're nice people. It looks like they're mostly playing within Wisconsin, with one Chicago date scheduled this month and a couple stops in Texarkana later on.

Jon Dee Graham And The Fighting Cocks

7/2/07, Kiki's House of Righteous Music, Madison


Jon Dee Graham's an amazing guitar player, a former bandmate of Alejandro Escovedo, and a strong solo artist in his own right. So, if you get a chance to see him in someone's basement, go. The set started off with "Tie A Knot," from his lastest solo album, Full. Graham's coal-gargling voice gets him a lot of Tom Waits comparisons, but that doesn't really sum the music up.


Sorry for the blurry-demon-wraith photo quality--didn't want to flash right in their faces.


Memorable banter moments:
-"When someone comes up to you and says, 'It's all good,' they're either an idiot or a fuckin' liar."
-To bass player Harmonie Kelly: "I'm not the one drinking wine out of a Muppets glass... did you just correct me on which Muppet it is?"


Opening: Kelly Pardekooper, a Madison-based, country-centric singer-songwriter who's attracted some international airplay and tour dates over the years. His latest, Brand New Bag, is a pretty solid set of songs, and, according to a one-sheet, includes performances from John Doe, Greg Brown, Junior Brown, and Jo Dee Messina. Here, his friend and also-reliable local singer-songwriter Josh Harty backed him on guitar.

Missed Connection: Gut Reactions Show

Yes, the sun did shine upon that show, but not on our chance meeting.


ME: Early 20s writer/fan hanging out at the show, minding my own business at the bar between sets.

YOU: A 30s-ish couple couple, a tad mismatched in terms of personality and attractiveness, sitting a few seats down at the bar, looking a bit out of place.

Your male half greeted me, apropos of nothing, with "GET A HAIRCUT, HIPPIE!" even though I've been keeping it short lately. It all turned out to be in good fun, and you also went on to note that I "look like a baby," yet I couldn't help but wonder why you both continued to pursue conversation with me, or why your female half bought me a beer (which was nice). Was some sort of cult and/or kidnapping scheme afoot? After getting through the standard questions about my age and origins, she explained you were there because he'd read about the headlining band "in the paper," but so far had been disappointed. (For the record, I thought all the bands were lots of fun.) "Where'd you read it?" I asked. "In The Onion," your male half replied.

"Oh, I wrote that," I said.

"Will this band rock?" he asked.

"Yes. I have seen them rock before. I have also heard them rock on record. Believe me, you will be sufficiently rocked."

Then you left two songs into the band's set, failing to partake of the very rocking that, because of me, you had sought. But I felt like we made a real connection, especially while messing with each other and trading softball insults. We brought out each other's weird sides, and I felt fireworks in my belly. Maybe I'll run into you at a Hinder show someday, should you seek to be rocked there. Would love a chance to share with you my handmade bedroom garments, crafted entirely from Fruit Roll-Ups, and creepily observe your domestic foibles.

NY Times On Icky Thump

"The White Stripes’ junk cart would have spinner rims."

It's Summertime

And that means time for giant marshmallow cocks pink handlebars. Boy, oh boy, are they swell! So foamy and grippable!

New Section

If this bank mailer can co-opt hip-hop through the medium of a creepy white guy, so can I.

As if I had time to keep up a respectable blog in the first place, I've now launched another, which will function as another section of (read: will be just as neglected and semi-literate as) WBC. It's called Drop A Ambulance, and it's there to motivate and collect my thoughts on hip-hop, a genre I know little about yet have enjoyed often, especially over the past couple of years. Fun times.

Michigan Ave.

Parts of this sign were clearly slapped on over old parts, so perhaps his message has evolved over time, from one crazy cut-and-paste assertion to another. It is, however, an awesome piece of trashy, comic-book-inspired art, or something like it. Ideal for your own living room.

But the real question is, can you really trust a man with socks like that?

Inspector Owl: Under-Covered, Well-Merchandised

Went to bed at about 3:30 a.m., woke up around 7:30 a.m. What kept me up so late? A fine show here in Madison, whose highlight, for me, was Illinois band Inspector Owl. (I've posted about the band before.) Also there: Milwaukee's Those Royals, Madison's always tight and infectious Awesome Car Funmaker, and a newer local group, Romance Language (missed their set, unfortunately). Basically, a solid four or five hours of happy. What got me up so early? Well, perhaps a subconscious urge to start sippin' from my Inspector Owl coffee mug. The band's selling these for a thrifty $5 at its shows, and it brings some much-needed flair to my bachelor's kitchen. No idea at what point they decided it was worth having coffee mugs, but I'm glad they do. Maybe it will kick-start their marketing strategy, or something, and help their new EP and excellent shows attract the attention they're worth. Last night's show sounded a bit better than IO's last stop in Madison. Perhaps they had a better sound guy this time, but whatever it was, everything, including the violin, keys, and ocassional trumpet, came through much clearer. Appropriate, as the new EP sounds bigger and fuller than their previous records.

I've also previously mentioned Kid, You'll Move Mountains before. Corey, who sings lead and plays guitar in Inspector Owl, also plays in KYMM, and he says they're working on an actual album.

Evolutionary Thoughts; and D-Bags in Minivans

Finally saw 28 Weeks Later--Scott Tobias' review at A.V. Club is pretty spot-on, in retrospect. It's a worthy-enough follow-up to 28 Days Later, though it builds up some expectations that it doesn't quite make good on in the end. The beginning is fantastic. There's nothing like an act of complete cowardice (Robert Carlyle fleeing as his wife presumably gets ripped apart by rage-infected zombies) to inspire empathy from the very start. An unexpected act of heroism? Well, that's what we'd like to see in ourselves, but it's a safe bet many of us would just bolt and soak up the regret for the rest of our lives. Anyways, the movie's fictional rage virus, like any living organism, seeks to keep itself around for the long run. Especially through puked-up blood, which doesn't seem all that effective. But it's a shitty organism for sure, which made me wonder: Has there ever been a species that just decided to keep it concise?

"Hey, you guys are looking serious over there, with the fins and all. And shooting nails out of your heads, that's a nice touch. So you're in it for the long haul, like the rest of us biological groupings, eh?"

"Eh. Nah. We're just gonna do a good five generations, eat some lionfish, fuck, then call it a day. Maybe split our DNA up into some solo projects."

"But don't you seek to last forever, biologically speaking, and maybe try and dominate other creatures?"

"Nope. Fuck it. Five generations, no time to stagnate, make a good solid run of it."

At least one subspecies of the human race should try this approach. Specifically, douchebags who insist on yelling at people on the sidewalk from their cars. I seem to encounter this type at least three times a week. It's usually unintelligible, but that's fine. All they're really saying is: "I AM IN THIS VEHICLE AND YOU ARE OVER THERE AND I AM ABRUPTLY INTERACTING WITH YOU SO I WIN!" A few nights ago, I was out taking a walk and I crossed the street in front of a minivan at a stoplight. A moment later, one of the guys in the minivan yelled out "Faggot-ass bitch!" This to my back, and right as the van is pulling away--and his voice sounded really hesitant and shaky, as if he'd been building up to it from the moment he spotted me and wasn't sure if he could pull off this little masterpiece. No eye contact, of course. And no conviction! Come on! As impersonal as a randomly selected personal insult can be. All I can really say is, you're still the guy in the minivan. Maybe you just need the storage space for your tremendous balls.

I Believe I Will See You See You Somewhere Safe

Had to skip the very worthy Madison Area Music Awards and head out of town last night. It's a long story that's got nothing to do with the actual content of the show--in fact, I was really looking forward to seeing such acts as Bob Manor and the Getaway Drivers. Yet some very good and rather odd reasons arose. Groan.

Let's just say those reasons, among other shit, made it an all-too-perfect weekend for sulking in splendor with Morrissey at the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee.

Trying to understand all our strange emotional stirrings is like trying to read the facial expressions of a jar of leeches. So we magnify them and pretty them up and distort them until they make sense in our terms. And if anyone's guilty of doing this to excess, it's Morrissey, parading his doubt, anger, and pity with all the subtlety of a vaudeville show in a strip club on D-Day. This really means that Morrissey songs are horribly, perversely accurate, and that nobody wants to admit it. What a precious, self-involved twerp, and what a perfect companion for, well, anybody who can stomach the thought that they're one as well. Oddly enough, the few memories of mine that include Morrissey or Smiths songs are all pathetically precious.

So of course:

-His shirt came off during "Let Me Kiss You," just as he reached the line, "But when you open your eyes/ you see someone you physically despise," and he threw it into the audience and promptly trotted off stage to get a new one.

-Of the dozen or people who tried to rush the stage during the encore, the last was a skinny young man with an eerily perfect, lacquered head of Morrissey-type hair.

-His five backing musicians wore matching tight pants, short-sleeved button-up shirts, and close-cropped hair. One juggled guitars, keys, trumpet, trombone, and backing vocals. And the drummer had an enormous bass drum and gong that he pounded at the end of "How Soon Is Now."

-The stage backdrop: three ceiling-height photos of James Dean.

Apparently he's been bringing back more Smiths songs on this tour, and he opened with "The Queen Is Dead." The band lent itself best to newer songs like "I Will See You In Far Off Places" and "Irish Blood, English Heart," and even originally more delicate tunes like "The Boy With The Thorn In His Side" got a loud, electric-guitar-heavy treatment. Granted, this didn't make for a ton of sonic variety, but Morrissey's voice tied it all together--just a couple of brief rough patches throughout the set, and otherwise as silky, wistful, and theatrical as ever.

The only negative, all in all, is that opener Kristeen Young was atrocious. Imagine if PJ Harvey and a donkey had a child, and that child got run over by a Mary Kay car. It was a rather hurty 45 minutes, and if there was anything redeeming about it, it was nothing that didn't seem borrowed from Harvey or Tori Amos.

Grand Forks, etc.

I feel most comfortable in a city where mental patients can freely roam the streets. If the freaks aren't circulating, something must be wrong. Even in Evanston, we lived around the corner from a long-term nursing facility--basically a low-security halfway house for recovering alcoholics and the like. It somehow comforted me to know they could mingle with the people their conditions supposedly placed them below, ocassionally making a bomb threat at the nearby bank ("nearby" meaning just steps away), but mostly just smoking a lot and spouting gibberish at scared college students and yuppies. One night I saw one of the patients sitting in the middle of the road; luckily, a bouncer in a nearby bar had just ended his shift and helped me lug the guy back. We knocked on the door, waited, and met a lone night nurse so obese she could barely walk.

The big cities are really there for the part of the human race that needs to see its own turbulent image reflected back at all hours of the day. To love Chicago I first had to hate Chicago, and what a ridiculous clusterfuck it is. Madison's a great deal smaller, but also strikes a certain balance of pleasure and aggravation. That's what makes a good city for me. In short, a good city needs to be extremely perverse. It needs to make people ask themselves: "Why the fuck do I live here, again?"

So how can I react to the mythical lure of a place like North Dakota: Healthy people working hard, being happy, making steady incomes, striving in serenity--what the fuck kind of fun is that, and will the junkies be on crack or (how gauche!) meth? In two days in Grand Forks, I met at least a dozen people who just seemed to have it figured out. Bright, giving, kind, worldly people. Not that there's nothing urban or restless going on in Grand Forks or neighboring East Grand Forks, MN--at least two new restaurants should include "the aroma of our gleaming young hardwood floors, much like a handsome sheik's well-oiled chest, with a side of drycleaned business-casual" on their menus, and at least a few bars melt the mind's defenses with cruel 22-oz. pints. But most people there just seem to have their nerves under control, in a way that immediately projects warmth to the newcomer. Maybe I was just meeting the right people (for the most part--there are assholes everywhere, of course). Soon enough, I stopped itching to see other neurotic, hyper types. But now I'm back to normal.

Worth a note: An exhibition called Beyond Likeness at the North Dakota Museum of Art. I haven't been able to find many good pictures of the works online, but here are some from Lalla Essaydi, who creates mesmerizing, calligrapy-laced images of the lives of Arab females. The most memorable part, based on sheer creepiness, was Eidolon, a video by Elizabeth King. See the still? Well, it's basically 11 minutes of that mannequin just kind of staring at you, making movements that are just lifelike enough to startle.

On A Dark, Wet Night In April

Not only is Ted Leo exciting as hell in general, he always seems to bring out an audience's better side. Every Ted Leo show I've been to (tonight at Club 770 in Madison was the third) has been full of people who know the lyrics better than I do, and enjoy it without shame or pickiness. By the second or third song, Leo's a sweat-and-saliva faucet, and by the show's end, he's down to two or three guitar strings. Most people there have probably already heard favorites like "Biomusicology," "Timorous Me," "Where Have All The Rude Boys Gone?" and "no, I won't play the Kelly Clarkson song" dozens of times, and they're still fresh and sharp. I'm hoping that songs tucked away on singles and EPs like the recent Mo' Living, including "Old Souls Know" and the closer, "Rappaort's Testament: I Never Gave Up," become fixtures as well.

Lucky me, lucky mud

"If you make people laugh or cry about little black marks on sheets of white paper, what is that but a practical joke?"

--Kurt Vonnegut, "Self-Interview"

Assorted: Amiina, Tom Brosseau, Inspector Owl, Kid You'll Move Mountains, Ladyhawk

I done tried to write real durn good all week... so here's a half-assed rundown of stuff that's caught my attention lately. Want better writing? Well, make an offer and we'll talk. It's the fucking weekend, after all.

Amiina and Tom Brosseau, 3/21

Why, gee golly shucks, folks, Tom Brosseau's 'bout the kindliest guitar-picker this side of the... No, no, it doesn't actually matter that much, but that is almost how he talks between songs, in the voice of a nervous 12-year-old. He sings that way, too, with a high voice that cracks and might even make you think he's a bit shy. Even if this is some kind of persona he puts on--and that actually seemed more and more doubtful as his set went on--it's an ideal fit for his constantly disarming songs. His new Grand Forks centers on the 1997 flood that wrecked his hometown, but starts with an optimistic lift, "I Fly Wherever I Go." And with that optimism, close to childlike innocence, he inhabits a tough and dark world. The stage at the rather small Café Montmartre in Madison was packed with Amiina's equipment, so Brosseau played his set standing in front of the stage, at floor level with the audience, just the right height for playing songs like "Plaid Lined Jacket." The song's about being homeless, and he played it right after telling us about the shitty rental car he had to drive after his flight got diverted to Milwaukee... Yes, apparently the man lives in a universe of picturesque, hopeful screwiness. He makes it sound like the most natural place to be.

Brosseau and Amiina are an unlikely match for a tour, but it works--perhaps because Brosseau puts people in docile, friendly listening mode for the delicate spectacle that is Amiina's live set. It's difficult to tell someone the facts about Amiina without making the group sound scary and bizarre and messy--it's four women in color-coordinated dresses, they're from Iceland, they play strings, glockenspiel, wine glasses, a laptop, musical saws, and on and on--and maybe people came to gawk, but this was one of the quietest and most patient audiences I've seen in a long time. And at a venue that often draws the talky-est crowd in town, no less. For the encore, all four played saw. And it was beautiful.

Inspector Owl and Kid, You'll Move Mountains
I can't talk about one of these bands without talking about the other. They share one member, and though they certainly don't sound exactly alike, they've got similar approaches--a luscious, dark, and danceable mish-mash.... Inspector Owl just put out a new EP called Life Finds A Way, and some of it is streaming here. Kid, You'll Move Mountain's just been selling a CD of a radio performance (complete with hysterical between-song banter) at their shows, and it's actually pretty good, some tracks here. They've been selling each copy with a unique Polaroid taken near the location of the sale. Both are swell live bands. At KYMM's show here, lead singer Jim Hanke talked about The Office, and at Inspector Owl's show, lead singer Corey Wills talked about Battlestar Galactica. Good form!

Ladyhawk
I was looking forward to Ladyhawk's show here as, well, the only decent option on Monday night during a slow week. A decent guitar-rock band from Vancouver? Meh, why not? And I'm still kind of on the fence about their album, even though it's decent. As a live band, Ladyhawk's much louder and a lot more fun, with a tight-yet-rugged sound--basically, a damn good road band's sound--the album doesn't really capture. So, hooray.

Nicola
I have nothing to say about this person's music, but is this not the worst use of cleavage on an album cover ever?

In your best Terry-Jones-as-female voice: "'Ello, love! 'Ave a look at me milky pillas!"

Savoring, Savaging: TV On The Radio and Subtle

It was almost like being back in Chicago--a theater filled with the preciously overdressed, the out-of-towners, and the invisible in-betweens. Even once you've been to a lot of shows, you realize that this combination of heat and noise is still rare and exciting, and that you're not so different from the people who mistakenly clap when the roadies come on. TV On The Radio basically sold out the Orpheum Theatre in Madison on Friday night, and the band skipped Wisconsin, I think, on its last tour leg--the all-too-familiar Chicago-to-Minneapolis jaunt that many bands I want to see make. But TVOTR still played like a band that had just exploded out of Brooklyn, looking and sounding foreign but quickly getting familiar on a primal level.

Dave Sitek hung a set of wind chimes from the head of his guitar and dangled them over the drum mics as he and Kyp Malone scrubbed out furious chords behind Tunde Adebimpe on the opener, "Young Liars." It's a climactic song, and this is a band that can start at the climax and stay there for an entire set. During the encore, four members of Subtle, who are opening for TVOTR on this leg, came on to pound on extra percussion, making for an amazing, nearly all-percussion version of "Let The Devil In." It's one of the most exuberant songs they've ever recorded, and a perfect example of what's best about TVOTR's music--no matter how exotic it gets, it's never that far from your gut.

TVOTR's warmth was even easier to notice after Subtle's opening set, all whimsical theatrics, complete with props. If you're going to sound as unusual as Sutble, you might as well follow through and look and act strange. MC/mastermind Doseone bounced between center stage and his little bank of gadgets, warming up the crowd with assorted jokes and plastic-fork giveaways. Of course, this is a college town full of hip hop-loving white kids, so a strong flow gets a guy a long way, even if he's playing with five other guys, including a cellist. As Doseone sputtered through his blank-verse lyrics with the precision of a snide computer-talk program, it was surreal to think that he used to battle-rap against guys like Eminem. Subtle's music isn't that hard to connect with if you're willing to embrace the confusion, and it has a fantastic sense of humor--"Midas Gutz," from the group's last album, For Hero: For Fool, imagines a beauty contest in which people cut themselves open and compare intestines for the prize.

I hadn't seen Subtle before, but it is kind of sad to see the group without Dax Pierson, who was paralyzed from the chest down when the band's van crashed during a 2005 tour. He's been recovering with the support of friends and fans in the Bay Area and elsewhere. The band also got robbed of about $15,000 worth of money and equipment in Spain last year, and, at least until recently, Doseone was raising money by drawing portraits (from photos sent by fans). A friend of mine got one done and it's rather nifty.

That "Apathy" Demographic's The Trouble...