Long Days, Long Months: 10 August

And now for some old writings, from the blog I had at My Space; I'm afraid that the erstwhile social-networking favorite will up and disappear any day now, so I want to preserve these here at Google, which at least has the staying power of, say, C B S News or your local public library.

First, a travelogue: New York (city), September 2006:

1/
I'll begin by telling you about "harbor country," Michigan, which is across the lake from Chicago. My brother's wedding took place there, Labor Day weekend, in Union Pier. The area - "harbor country" (I think the locals would like me to say the phrase a lot.. you know.. it's called branding) - had a pleasantly tacky feel to it. Very Mid-West, like the Wisconsin Dells. Cute bed-and-breakfast's, fruit markets filled to the brim (It must be nice living in a part of the country where there's still a lot of farming) remarkably sandy beaches - and a state park to the north of "harbor country" which features sand dunes, mountain-like masses of sand with trees sticking out... from where?

2/
Monday, Sept. 11, I avoided the city (and any sort of anniversary-memorial stuff going on, except for the two beams of light projecting upward from the W T C site, which I saw later in the evening) and took the Metro-North train to Beacon, New York, a beautiful scene most of the way, as the train travels along the Hudson River for much of the trip. Beacon is home to Dia: Beacon, part of the Dia Foundation of the Arts that also includes Dia: Chelsea and various site-specific works. The Beacon museum was once a factory, now a space specifically for large Minimalist and conceptual works that would have trouble finding a home otherwise.

Walking into the museum, one is immediately greeted by a long rectangular room housing a work by Walter De Maria, consisting of sets of one metal bar and one metal circle each [the circle is open], placed one after the other the length of the room. They are silver, and apparently each set gets slightly larger as you progress forward in the room, in order to counter the tendency of one's eyes to perceive things farther away as being smaller. Then again, the differences in size are minute enough that, when walking up the room, I could not note the difference.
An Andy Warhol work filled one room. I'm not sure what material the boards which ran along the entire length of the room's walls (except the entrance-ways) are made of, but on them were printed one of either two images. There did not seem to be a pattern to the arrangement of the images, especially as what were originally shadow-y black-and-white prints had been colored various gaudy shades of pink, yellow, green, etc. As with the De Maria, the experience of being able to sit down and appreciate a work from a distance, yet (considering the scale of the works) not so far as to preclude studying them closely, was refreshing.

3/
On what was my second night in the city, I went to see To Live and Shave in LA at a sort of "unofficial" (that is, I presume, "illegal") venue in Bushwick, which is east of Williamsburg. Indeed, the venue was a space in the East Williamsburg Industrial Park - perhaps the name is a relic from a time when "Bushwick" did not exist, or those who named it preferred the more-recognizable name. Either way, I suppose Bushwick, especially when as far out as this industrial park, is at the farthest edge of gentrification - the "avant-garde," if you will.

The place was pleasant enough - reminded me of the basement of the original Eyedrum in Atlanta, where Rock shows took place, or perhaps the Backdrop gallery, also in Atlanta, which at least for a while (or perhaps just the night I saw Silver Apples there) hosted Rock gigs in its basement. There was a Rock band whose name I forget (I'll try to look it up) that was good, largely low-key instrumental. Then, To Live and Shave in LA played. Good set, I'll say. Noise Rock with vocals - which almost automatically makes it better than regular Noise Rock. Apparently, Andrew W K was playing with the band that night, as Tom Smith, the main guy (the singer), always has a revolving cast of musicians backing him up.

Going there, I had exited the subway station, and found myself not sure where to go -the all-too-typical N Y-subway experience. I ran into another person, Emily Easterley - a singer-songwriter who had recorded a record years ago with Rat Bastard, a member of To Live and Shave in LA. Together, we managed to find the place. Going back, the subway line was not running anymore, so we shared a cab home. This part of Bushwick is obviously not dangerous, since there seems to be so few residents at all, let alone criminally-minded ones; it's just empty. I'm glad the taxi driver showed up. Would've been a long walk home.

4/
For my last night in New York, my friend Nathan (with whom I was staying) and his friend Steve and I, joined later by Nathan's girlfriend Grace, went to several bars across Manhattan, all of which at least date back to the early twentieth century. I had read an article in Village Voice about such historic bars and decided to be a pathetic tourist for once and plan this fun, yet uninspired, outing.

We started with Chumley's, in Greenchwich Village, which started as a speakeasy in the 1920's and which had great bar food - or, in some cases, "bar food"; after all, I had free-range chicken, not exactly dive-bar fare. We went to the Whitehorse Tavern next, where Dylan Thomas often went to drink, a lot. But it was filled with yuppies and big TV's and was very crowded. Of course, Chumley's had been crowded, but we didn't have to wait long for a table... and, besides, they had book covers all over the walls - books by writers who'd come there over the years.

I'm sorry, but I don't remember the names of the other two bars. One of them dated back well into the Nineteenth Century, but like Whitehorse was boring. Another was much nicer, well-lit with large mirrors behind the bar. I'll try to look up their names sometime.

I couldn't help but end the night with a visit to Marz Bar, which has only been around since the 1980's but which I enjoyed the several times I went there during my '05 trip to the city, when I was staying in Chinatown, not too far away. Marz Bar is a grimy "punk" bar in that East Village/Lower East Side in-between area. I suppose it's a throw-back to the pre-gentrification days, but of course the very fact of me saying such suggests it too has a "theme." In the end, it's all about the alcohol (and whatever other substances you may take) and the people, so you could just as well go to Applebee's. But the food won't be as good as Chumley's.

5/
Saturday, Sept. 9, there was a mini-festival, I'll call it, held in Bushwick (same industrial park as the To Live and Shave in LA show); apparently it was supposed to take place in a parking lot, but was moved to a rented-out floor of a building - very run-down and gritty, which I'm sure all the Brooklyn Indie Rockers just love.

The highlights of the evening were Growing, Comets on Fire, and of course Excepter, who I hadn't seen since my trip last year, in the meanwhile doing the correspondences with their main man J F Ryan for Sweet Pea. There was another decent group, Ex Models; a dismally bad group called Matt and Kim, who as it turned out turned up in Athens a couple weeks or so later, playing at Secret Squirrel; and some other stuff I missed or don't recall the names of.

Excepter's performance was an especially dissonant affair by their standards, while Comets on Fire's fit what I've read regarding their new record - very Rock, which was mildly disappointing, as Will Hart had told me when he saw them at Arthur Fest in LA in '05 they were quite good, with lots of electronics and sound-manipulation going on. Growing ended the night beautifully, with a space-y set that did a good job of drone-ing out the spastic flights of all the earlier acts.

Unlike the night of the To Live and Shave in LA gig, the subway back to Williamsburg was running. Still, it was long; it's not often you're in NYC and there's ample parking and you wish you had a car.

6/
Walked through what is supposedly Long Island City, but which seemed more like Astoria, from the subway to the Socrates Sculpture Park, on the East River. Besides a couple men at work, I notice a woman, the only other person there. Listen to one sculpture which is also a sound-art work, the winds leading metal balls to strike a surface. Very pleasant.

Go to the Noguchi Museum; the woman it turns out is the museum guide. The Noguchi Museum is amazing, absolutely one of the best places to go in the city. I could have spent hours in the outdoor sculpture park, with the basalt rocks that Noguchi had only altered slightly, keeping the artist's role minimal, yet still in the choosing and placements of objects the center of attention. Noguchi set up the museum himself, in the later years of his life; indeed, focusing on one artist at a time, I prefer. This same trip, I went to the Jackson Pollack exhibit at the Guggenheim, devoted to his paintings on paper, and found the experience of getting to view works across his career, seeing the gradual developments, to be revealing - an academic tendency, I guess.

After Noguchi, I head south, cross a pink bridge that is perhaps a draw-bridge to Roosevelt Island, which is mostly ugly apartment buildings from the '60s/'70s, and then take the tramway back to Manhattan. The tramway ride costs the same as a subway ride, and while the view is not especially great is still worth the surreal experience of riding a tram in NYC. The only other time I think I've ridden a tram is at Stone Mountain.

7/
To sum up, during my trip, I also saw the Finnish electronic duo Pan Sonic at the Brooklyn venue Northsix; went to the Pollack exhibit at Guggenheim I already mentioned; went with Nathan and Grace to Jackson Heights in Queens to eat Indian food; given that I was staying in Williamsburg this year, explored areas of Brooklyn I had always ignored, such as downtown, Fort Greene, Prospect Park, et al.; walked from 49th st. to Chinatown in the rain my last day there; and of course bought some books at the Strand and some C D's at Other Music.

Williamsburg I found to be rather drab. There's an interesting used-record and -book shop that also shows 16mm films in the back next-door to where Nathan lives on Grand St. I don't recall ever seeing the name of the place. I hope it survives, as it seems that, despite one good bookstore and some music shops, Williamsburg is mostly bars and bad coffee shops. To be frank, I'd rather go to a diner in the Upper East Side and talk with blue-haired ladies about Mayor Bloomberg...

8/
I nearly forgot about the Howling Hex gig at Mercury Lounge, which you must believe was a highlight despite my having forgotten about it temporarily. I assume that at least a few of the musicians playing with Neil Hagerty that particular evening regularly play with him over in his current home of somewhere, New Mexico. Either way, Hagerty and the dude playing saxophone got in a lot of free-improvising on top of the great back-up provided by a bass player and a drummer. Hagerty is finally putting into practice all that talk over the years of applying Ornette Coleman's harmolodics. Now, of course, Coleman's "theory" of harmolodics has ultimately amounted to gibberish, which is not to discount in any way the extraordinary music he has made. It's just that, at least Harry Partch or Anthony Braxton were able to put their thoughts down on paper... Coleman, on the other hand...

All this is another way of saying that Hagerty was getting unbelievable sounds out of his guitar, the songs went on and on - inspiring, fun, surprising - and that's all.