Lasting

Today's not only the last day of 2012, it's the last day the Lenox Lounge is open.

This past year has been filled with many good moments, but spending time in the noisy, busy, buzzy environs  of the historic Harlem jazz club rates at the top. For all my love of New York City and its vibrant energy, there was something uniquely, defiantly old-school, bad-ass NYC about the LL. It had a rich sense of history, pungent through every aspect of its being: from walls to drinks to the look of the patrons and musicians alike, something winked, with long lashes, as lacquered nails held stubby cigarette, "history, baby..."

The Lenox Lounge will be history tonight.

A certain sadness over lost places presented itself during a recent Toronto visit over the December holidays. All my old youthful haunts -the Uptown Theatre on Yonge Street, Flo's Diner in Yorkville, Sam The Record Man near the Eaton Centre -are gone, replaced with shiny-glass/hard-concrete boxes. They're monolithic symbols of an infuriating brand of unquestioned cultural homogeny, the pervasiveness of which I find totally depressing. No one remembers -and if they do, they shrug; who cares?

Now, nostalgia is a word - a concept -I don't always like, but it does have its uses. And, it must be said, I do mourn the loss of historic markers signifying another time and era. It worries me to think I've turned into one of those white-templed, sharply-cheek-boned women tut-tutting the kids of today who "don't know any better!" But perhaps there's nothing wrong with becoming that grand old dame, either. "I remember when!" might be a good mantra; there's something good about being a (hopefully somewhat glam) living, breathing collection of memories of a lost era. I tell younger friends about loopy, wild times enjoyed in the Toronto and New York of old, and I get dumb stares. It wasn't perfect, but it was fun. We felt we were connected to something larger than us -the people who'd gone before, generations who'd worked on those old buildings, warm bodies and flustered souls who'd sweat in those old theaters and clubs and stores, curious types who passed through, looking for fireworks and noise and fury, leaving with new colors, shapes, ways of being and seeing in the world. There was something older, grander, larger around us, a history that wasn't choking but enlivening, not constricting but yawning wide in a creaky old embrace. Everything was crooked, dirty, cock-eyed, chipped and scruffy; nothing looked the same, because nothing and no one was. Way Back When wasn't shiny, but it could hardly be called dull.

"I remember when!" It's a mantra that commands a weird respect, even as it inspires reminiscence tinged with whimsy, sadness, and regret. You feel your age when you say it. Bones creak. Breath tightens. Nose hairs appear. Another year passing means more buildings knocked over, more places like the Lenox Lounge vanishing. It's good to cherish the past but it's troubling when you're stuck in it. Problems arise when "I remember when!" comes "To hell with tomorrow!" So maybe it's best whispered, as jazz joints and record stores and grand old cinemas vanish, to remember those places with a smile and to wait, with baited breath, for what 2013 might bring. I remember that, but I'm curious about this.

Just please, keep the glass boxes. Bland has no place in the future I envision.

(Photos taken from my Flickr stream)

Get Back

Inductees to the 2013 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame were announced yesterday.

As Slate noted, bands like Joan Jett and the Blackhearts and Kraftwerk were passed over in favor of Rush. It's strange to put two such different bands into the same huge, gooey melange that is the Hall of Fame nominations. Looking through reactions across social media, I've noted more than a few expressing disgust that so few perceived "greats" have been admitted, somehow looked over in favor of more popular, mainstream acts.

I have a whole-hearted indifference to the entire affair. Like the Grammys or the American Music Awards, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame represents little of the true state of popular music, much less its fandom or current culture. It's a fond museum piece that's made a formerly-dangerous artform respectable. Certainly more upscale than the AMAs but far less distinguished than the Kennedy Center Honors, the Hall of Fame seems like a quaint exercise in industry back-slappery designed to garner as much hate as adoration. Any reaction is a good reaction in the music industry of 2012.

But the position of rock and roll as dangerous, unsavory, ill-mannered, lecherous, and immoral has become as pre-packaged and pre-fabricated as the soon-to-be-extinct Twinkie. Was it ever thus? Perhaps. Artists have always known image is important -though maybe they felt it a little more in August 1981. It follows then, that while bands that have changed, so have listeners -our listening habits, of course, but beyond that, our expectations around what popular bands should be, how they should sound, and how they should present themselves to the world at large.

The past few decades, it feels as if the world of rock and roll has turned into a meticulously-micro-managed PR affair, complete with stylists, makeup artists, nutritionists, fitness consultants, an army of assistants, and a bucketful of "I'd-like-to-thank-God-and-our-fans"-style honors from supposedly respectable societies. All this grooming, primping, praise and applause, happens while maintaining an air of groundedness and connection -to roots, family, country, God, whatever it is we, as a society, are supposed to cherish in our own lives. This "just like us" corollary is, of course, laughably false: no one's family is perfect, everyone has complicated relationships with their God, and very often we think of hometown roots as either desperately uncool or hipster-fied beyond all recognition (but that's the point, isn't it?). Yet the quest for conveying authenticity continues. It seems awfully important to an awful lot of rock and roll people. 

This quest tends to express itself lately in unexpected collaborations. Should we be surprised hiphop and rock have blurred, the respective heroes from each striking poses that reflect and relay the supposed "rebellion" of the other? Nothing seals so-called "street cred" like skipping across (pre-approved) cultures -or generations, a fact I was reminded of in reading that none other than Sir Paul McCartney will be joining the surviving members of Nirvana for tonight's Hurricane Sandy 12/12/12 benefit concert in New York. Purists may make faces, but there's something simultaneously clever and nauseating about two generations of music icons purposely diluting their beloved respective brands -to what, create something new? Perhaps, though it seems there's also a deliberate attempt to attain some kind of cool creative "cred" in the process. Authenticity through dilution? It seems like a way of holding on to the creative spark, however weak, dull, and muddy the spark itself may be to outsiders.

So where are the true rebels, you may ask? Where are the mouthy ones, the daring ones, the hell-raising risk-loving leaders? Where are rock and roll's authentic voices? It's an ever-changing thing, hard to define, harder yet to hold and not snuff out. But when I think of the phrase "rock and roll," I don't automatically think sex and drugs; I think of daring, I think of risk, I think of being challenged and even a bit (/a lot) unsettled. I think of a band like Pussy Riot and Tinariwen. I think of PJ Harvey and Fela Kuti. I think of Pearl Jam and The Virgin Prunes, of Grinderman, of Run DMC, of Public Enemy (who did, by the way, also get inducted yesterday), of Massive Attack, Throbbing Gristle, The Cramps, of Patti Smith, David Bowie, Marc Bolan, Scott Walker. I think of  Meshell Ndegeocello. I think of Jacques Brel and Leonard Cohen and Little Richard ...and and and. Artists with something to say, something to prove, a unique way of saying it and an incredible propensity to create various levels of thought, reflection, insight, perspective -even discomfort in listeners/viewers. They're artists with a visual side (or defiantly non-visual, as is the case with Pearl Jam, a statement in and of itself) as well as a brash, beautiful sonic side. They don't need to prove their groundedness; they answer only to their respective muses. There's an authenticity that stands firmly outside grooming too, even if some (hello Misters Cave, Bowie, Cohen) maintain(ed) an intoxicating air of smashing, scintillating physicality.

So while I applaud the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's far-overdue recognition of disco with its induction of Donna Summer (and she was so much more than that, by the way), and its symbolism in terms of an ever-expanding, all-encompassing genre of sound, the award means little, if anything, becoming more and more of a footnote in my perennially growing musical palate. I don't love awarded artists any less, or any more, for the nods they do or don't receive. I'm sure they're well award rock and roll has changed -some for good, some for bad. It isn't what it was. It won't be. But so long as we all stay curious, educating ourselves about the past while adding our way through the thick fog of the future, perhaps we'll find a place where rock and roll actually matters again. Maybe we'll land at a spot where a perfect face matters far less than a messy, chaotic, imperfection-is-perfect sound. That would be a true rebellion indeed -and maybe just what we've been waiting for.

(Photo credits: Top photo via HBO; Scott Walker photo via The Quietus)

Remember Laughter?

This blog was started as a means of celebrating a sense of "play," both in work and in life. Lately that element has gone sorely missing in my life.

Amidst stresses personal and professional, playfulness is often the first thing to be jettisoned; it's as if the dour responsibilities of adulthood stand diametrically opposed to smiling whimsy of play. Why is this? Why do we dump fun things when the going gets tough? Maybe we have to give ourselves permission to have fun, without any guilt "oh-I-should-really-be-doing..." Maybe we have to give up our inherent need to please everyone around us. Maybe we have to throw open the door to a tiny bit of fun chaos every now and again.

An old friend visited recently, which afforded the opportunity of pulling out some old toys we used to share, enjoy, and occasionally war over as kids. In that magical moment, all the trappings of our dour adult lives got put aside: the complicated jobs, the painful relationships, the pressing money issues, the maybe-maybe-not plans for tomorrow, the droning ugly siren's call of Monday morning. Silliness and imagination took precedence; neural pathways of joy were blasted open in a joyous expression of carefree loveliness. Nothing else mattered but living in the moment of our shared creativity. It wasn't a drunken series of incidents, either; amidst bites of tomatoey veal and sips of red wine, there erupted much laughter, as we posed superheroes and bits of every day ephemera in a sort of cacophony of cartoon surrealism. Our old worried selves became carefree kids once more.

I'm thinking about those moments of play a lot right now as I face a particularly stressful series of situations yawning, with ugly, hooked fangs, before me this coming week. Something about the joy of that experience feels light, instructive -redemptive, even -and beautifully pristine, as if I can always return to the warm, nurturing arms of play. Those arms are never really as far away as I'd imagine. I don't have to wait for the proverbial "tinkle trunk" to access that joyousness: it's already there. Just takes a bit of reminding, a bit of time away from the computer, thinking everything has to be done right away, this very instant. Allowing myself permission to laugh freely at silly things is good. Giving myself permission to smile is grand. Discovering I had the keys to the kingdom all along is a shock. There's a sort of divinity at work I'd never imagined.

A few superheroes still sit on the kitchen table. Far from being false idols, they're talismans, reminders, fortifiers. Cheerleaders for play. Adulthood doesn't have to be all misery; sometimes it's good to allow play in to brighten up the room, the week, the grey pallor of grown-up-hood. I'm glad I did. We plan, God laughs. Maybe it's time I started laughing more.

Look and Like

This is my most popular post on Tumblr. Hell, it's probably my most popular blog post. It's not my most popular post online ever... yet. What makes this photo so beloved? How did it earn 1,313 notes, exactly?

I came across this in June as part of the Hyperallergic newsletter that lands in my inbox twice a week.

"Oh," I thought, "that's kind of pretty and creative - I bet the kids om Tumblr would like it." It has just enough unusual-ness, mixed with just enough eye-catching design, and a certain crafty appeal that made me think it'd be perfect.

Um, yes?

I do stop and wonder if anyone who's liked or reblogged this from me has actually tried this; more than that, I'm curious how much traffic Sugar Nails (the originator of the photo) has seen from it. But mostly, I'm amazed - just flat-out amazed - at how much Tumblr-ers like and share this around. One thousand-plus notes?! Wow.

My big regret is that I didn't pull a meta-moment and take a photo of this to stick on Instagram - because the popular photo-sharing service has now surpassed Twitter for users. How many more "likes"? How many more "notes"? How many more shares? Following the numbers can be a breathless business, and more than a little addictive. It's nice to be popular, even (or especially) when you don't have to reveal a thing about yourself in the process. No one knows whether or not I paint my nails, or indeed, I may've tried the nail art above (confession: I haven't). But the more I work in digital journalism, the more I'm determined to keep my private life private; I curate what I share from my real life the way I do with links, news, @s, photos, and status updates. But what to do when something awfully personal goes viral? How would I feel if an awfully personal aspect of my life had 1,313 notes?

Online culture is, in many ways, a numbers game: how many followers, how many "likes", how much, and how fast. It's less about originality (hey, these aren't my nails after all, much less my photo) and more about who's first and who gets noticed when. That can ratchet up personal drama online, resulting in a sometime-CAPS-lock style proselytizing. Some are able to channel drama into a meaningful expression and assessment of their experiences (see: my friend Diana Rodriguez' smart blog). Some are able to build a solid brand through their particular sort of online sharing. And yes, I could gain tons more followers by publicizing various aspects of my life, but the price feels too high.

And so, I find photos of things I find curious, interesting, share-worthy, and I post them, and people share. Sometimes they share my professional (/original) work -which is even better. Every time that happens, I'm reminded of my gratitude toward my followers across various online platforms -my Facebook subscribers, my Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter followers, my blog and Digital Journal readers: I'm grateful for all of them -you, that is -and always will be, nails or no nails. Now here's a neat online thing - please like and share it!

Up There

"Everyone should see this."

That was my first thought upon leaving Discovering Columbus, the new art project from Public Art Fund in New York. There's so much going on in Tatzu Nishi's incredible installation -from climbing the six stories, to the views, to the wallpaper and TV in the "living room" -that it's hard to take in on one visit alone. Beautiful, deep, shallow, troubling, whimsical... it's a lot of things at once, just like its (immense) subject matter, America itself.

Nishi comes at Russo's statue of Christopher Columbus, and its busy locale, with an outsider's perspective; I was especially taken with the books lining the shelves in the installation. The works of Woody Allen, Ernest Hemingway, Walt Whitman, Malcolm Gladwell, Jeffrey Toobin and Steve Jobs and many more were like little glints of inspiration, offering exquisite, lacey detail to the fantastically-fitting dress that is Discovering Columbus. The statue itself is scary up-close -scary, and perhaps a bit bitchy; the exaggerated pose, hand on hip, imperious stare, and judging expression wouldn't be out of place anywhere in Manhattan.

I'm in the midst of putting a feature together on it - but seriously, GO AND SEE IT.

Addendum: Feature is now up. Go see! Go like! Go comment! Yay!

"Money Creates Taste"

On any given day, I'll plug a series of favorite tags into Tumblr to see what come up. I'm curious to see if there's anything new, inspiring, or interesting about my favorite topics or people. Something that catches my eye might get a "like" or even a reblog. Tumblr has a pleasing immediacy of visual experience that's utterly lacking in strict classification (unlike Pinterest), which makes it somehow more visceral and pleasingly jolting than other platforms (if also occasionally challenge to post to - you're never sure just what'll blow up, or why). Tonight I plugged in the name of a longtime favorite artist, just to see what came up. I wasn't prepared for the result.

Jenny Holzer, it appears, has gone high-fashion. Her truisms are appearing in Vogue Italia alongside model/singer/actor Milla Jovovich, carefully posed and poised in a variety of high-end settings. Is this to coincide with the release of Resident Evil: Retribution? Is it making a political point? Is it trying to bridge the worlds of high fashion and art (not that they need help)? My initial reaction was deeply unsettled; I felt dismayed Holzer would sell her talent out to an industry that is so reliant on the ephemeral, the superficial, the temporal and the boringly inauthentic. Her art has always struck me as the precise opposite of those qualities; real, deep, fierce, and deeply, sarcastically challenging of the expected norm, it also possesses a deeply feminist quality that separates it from many other contemporary artworks. Holzer's work is ferociously female and isn't afraid to express that through her art, while retaining her sense of being a human being -and human creator- first and foremost. (For an interesting corollary -and contrast - check the work of Cindy Sherman, who recently collaborated with M.A.C.) And there's something awfully disconcerting about seeing Holzer's snippy, snide truisms stuck beside super-pricey, high-end frocks most people will never wear, much less be able to afford. What the hell is someone as smart as Holzer doing in the flaky, flimsy, aesthetically-obsessed, surface-worshipping world of high fashion? And why would it be with someone who's known for being very pretty, but doing very little, outside of (wildly successful, if deeply lowbrow) zombie movies (and games), oodles of posing, a very mediocre album (yes, some of us bought it), and a mysterious Oscar appearance? Why Jenny, why? I'm sure my snobbery's showing at this point, but... c'est la vie.

In re-examining these images now, an hour or so later, I find myself intrigued, challenged, confused -and rather enjoying that mix of feelings. (Also, Peter Lindbergh's photography work is truly gorgeous.) I recently told a friend, after she'd viewed the work of Egon Schiele in-person and found it "upsetting," that art shouldn't be about making one comfortable, that art isn't about reassurance, or validating our world view; it's frequently about riling up feelings of discomfort and challenging our smug, too-cozy preconceptions. I wrote this to her last week, and now I'm being confronted with that very experience. Karma, irony, just-desserts, call it what you will... but I'm glad I plugged Holzer's name into Tumblr tonight. Maybe it's about creating a strong contrast - between all that high-end frockery and the raw realness of Holzer's art. Maybe it's about confronting women like me with our pre-conceived ideas relating to art, fashion, self-image, and empowerment. Maybe, amidst the shallow parade of lights and finery, there's some fierce depth going on.

Lesson? Not all art will conform to my definitions and world view -to my experience of being a woman, of being a writer, a culture vulture, a human being -and perhaps some of it -especially the work of favorite artists -shouldn't.

Thanks for the confusion, Jenny. Thinking too much can only cause problems.

(Note: Title of this blog post is also a Holzer trusim!)

Power of the Poles

Possibly the best way you'll spend four-and-a-half minutes today.

People like Jim Power -and the art he creates, and the community it, in turn, creates -are the reason I love New York City so much. But the fact he's homeless is infuriating. Makes the stuff in Tampa right now a lot harder to watch, much less stomach.

Holy Spirit

One of the strangest things I overheard about the Pussy Riot verdict occurred recently when I was out with friends. An older woman at a nearby table was talking into her cellphone, eyes obscured by heavy tortoise shell glasses.

"I'll tell you what," she said not-so-softly, tilting straw hat ever so slightly toward the blazing sun, "you can't just go around saying any goddam thing you like anytime , any place you like. They should've known better, those girls."

They should have known better. The words echoed and bounced around in my head as the gin and tonic glinted in the the afternoon sunshine. Should the members of Pussy Riot -Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 22, Ekaterina Samutsevich, 30, and Maria Alekhina, 24 -stayed quiet? Writer Lynn Crosie recently observed that the girls' actions were "hideous" to have happened in a church. Watching the video for their new single, it's not difficult to see how they offended traditional, church-going sensibilities. The elderly nuns look perplexed and more than a bit pissed off by these pesky masked aerobi-dancing young women. But the protest did not involve any swear words or cussing, nor did it use a holy name in any obscene way; it lasted less than a minute and invoked a religious figure, in a sincere request for delivery from a perceived (if very real, to every day Russians) evil. The hypocrisy of the trial and obscene harshness of the sentence are all out of proportion to the actual crime, but Pussy Riot have become an international cause celebre in the process.

The whole affair points to a fetid underbelly of the ruling Russian politburo worthy of deeper investigation and exploration. The name "Anna Politkovskaya" floats somehow, ghostly, above all of this. But what's been heartening lately has been the outpouring of sincere support from various outspoken celebrities, including the holy (and wholly inspiring, to my mind) triumvirate of artsy female greatness; Madonna, Bjork, and Patti Smith have let it be publicly known they stand with the three members of Pussy Riot. Madonna donned a mask and wrote the band's name in marker on her own body during a concert in Oslo; Bjork did a manic live dance with a bevy of female chorister-musicians, shrieking in her signature banshee-like howl above the din. It was a beautiful, if perfect echo of Pussy Riot's own protest in one of Russia's holiest sites.

"Jesus Christ would fucking forgive them!" roared Smith at recent concert in Stockholm. One senses she's right. Surely Jesus would smile at the ballsy, youthful vigor of it all. It's surreal, the protest -tacky, surreal, unsettling, gormless, and... young. That brave, outrageous, ballsy stuff we do when we're young translates into the stuff we awkwardly admire from the comfortable distance of gap-toothed time and fat adulthood. We may not do it again... but damn, we want to.

The childlike sincerity of Pussy Riot's protest dances with a childish desire to shock, which isn't so childish if you know the admittedly scary politics of Putin's Russia. It's as if the rioters, in using the slang for female genitalia so boldly, and doing their funky young-wooman-goddess-thing in a Christian environ, are asking people to stop and think where true power lies in 2012 Russia, and where it should lie; they're daring people to stop, to think, to choose, and to reconsider. As Crosbie wisely notes, "the word “pussy” has been on everyone’s lips for weeks. It’s hard to imagine a more simple and more complex way of disseminating the blunt, beautiful nature of the girls’ mission." Those colorful masked figures are 2012's gangly, Gaia-like, guitar-slinging Teletubbies, Mother Russia's monstrous, balaclava'd court jesters, pointing up the ridiculous nudity of Sovereign, State, and Society. All we can do, us boring grown-up women, is stand and smile as they call upon the Saint for delivery, mouths open, eyes wide, inspired by the bravery of youth and the beautiful danger of pussy power in holy houses made flesh and blood.

Jesus would forgive them - even if they knew better, but most especially if they didn't.

(Photo credits: Pussy Riot members [top] from Pitchfork.com; Madonna photo from nme.com; Pussy Riot [bottom] by Igor Mukhin.)

Live! Live!

The idea of imitation being the most sincere form of flattery is one I've been mentally turning back and forth the last while. If someone stands up on a stage and imitates someone else - well - does that make them a great artist too, or merely a gifted technician?

This question came into focus the last few months as I attended two different musical theater events, Million Dollar Quartet and Backbeat: The Birth Of The Beatles. Both works are based on real people and real music history events, and both involve the depiction of cultural touchstones. Constant comparison is an evitable part of such events, especially if one's been exposed to the real thing -or even, bizarrely, a good imitation of the real thing.

In the former, my companion turned up her nose to the performer playing Elvis Presley, dryly noting she'd seen far better impersonators in concert, and noting the actor playing Johnny Cash wasn't menacing enough; she'd seen (and met) the real thing years before, and the performance (/imitation) simply didn't measure up. Similarly, attending Backbeat afforded me the opportunity of unfair comparison, having seen Paul McCartney perform at Yankee Stadium last year. It wasn't so much the performer didn't measure up that bothered me as it was the knowledge he never could.

At the end of Backbeat, people were cheering and applauding, out of their seats and dancing to the loud, raucous sound of "Twist and Shout" - but what were they cheering, really? The performance? Or the music itself -and their memories associated with the music? It struck me as a surreal sort of nostalgia, one magnified by years of people having a casual connection (however tenuous and imagined) with their pop idols via the internet, where a few clicks yields live performances they very well may've been at themselves. Who wouldn't want to re-live happy memories, of happier times, with a younger self, bright and bushy-tailed, full of beer and brawl, piss and vinegar, howl and hope? The internet provides a quick, easy hit of nostalgia, available 24/7 - but I wonder, at what cost?

In June, I saw Patti Smith perform material from her remarkable new album "Banga." Before an excited audience at the Barnes and Noble near Union Square, Smith and her band (including longtime guitarist Lenny Kaye) did three numbers from the album: the swirlingly romantic"April Fool", the 50s ballad-like "This Is The Girl", and the album's title cut, with its fittingly literary inspiration. The audience smiled,  cheered, clapped, initially hesitant but eventually exuberant. There were no calls for "Dancing Barefoot" or "Because The Night" though I'm sure a few people were panting to hear them. This wasn't about nostalgia -it was promotion, after all -but Smith seemed far more interested in forging an authentic connection with her audience; it was refreshingly to see an artist of her calibre so genuinely happy to be there, wandering through the crowd before the show, chatting, and later, proudly presenting new material and carefully explaining various songs' origins. I found it especially encouraging to note so many young women in the audience, hanging on Smith's every word. The smartphones and cameras were firmly away when she spoke. The crowd, quiet but ready to laugh at Smith's knowing, occasionally self-deprecating asides, was genuinely interested in hearing -and experiencing -new material from an old favorite, first-hand.

New memories are forged through this sort of event; the holy spirits of exploration, expansion, and inspiration ask us, as arts lovers, to go see and do something just a bit different, regularly, rather than live in the spin cycle of favorite playlists, repeated ad nauseum. It's nice to revisit old times and places (and people) with a few clicks (or swipes), but I wouldn't want to re-live those times, live, at any concert; a few well-chosen old nuggets are just right when placed beside newer, more unfamiliar material. There's always a wealth of new memories being  created -sometimes it's new sounds that give them the nudge into creation. More than ever, I want to celebrate that creation.

(Photos from my Flickr stream)

Loss (& Magic)

Roughly an hour after my review of a new musical was posted came word that Chavela Vargas had passed. There was something eerie in the timing; my review had got me thinking more than ever about Astrid Kirchherr and women like her  - the strong, uncompromising female artists who refused to fit into tidy pre-determined roles around their femininity and whose art was never determined solely by their gender or the place that put that at in the world.

Vargas, the throaty Latin singer had long been a favorite of mine. The first time I saw her, in Frida, I was entranced. What a voice... what a soul... what a presence.



It feels as if this year has been a horrible one for losing strong female artists and presences. Zelda Kaplan, who passed in February, was another sparky figure I greatly admired; my clubbing days would've extended longer, I think, had I had gone with her. There was an Auntie Mame-esque joie de vivre about her. Alternately, Nora Ephron and Maeve Binchy felt like confidantes -the sort who'd be hilariously blunt with how ugly those jeans look on you, and why you (I) should stay from men who don't do a lot of reading or like art galleries. Donna Summer was the woman who stopped everyone talking (and got them dancing); self-contained in her sensuousness, confident in her calm sexuality, she never had to try hard, she simply was. Real sex appeal, as I recently told a friend, can't be faked. It only fools some of the people some of the time.

Donna Summer's moans, simpers, sighs and statements were a declaration of her independence, alright -the exact same way Chavela Vargas' anguished, fierce, defiant tones were. They still are, for me and female artists everywhere. Their tunes didn't definer them as a woman; they defined them as fleshy, living human beings: let me be what I am, here and now.

There's so much more I could say, should say, about these women, but it's not the time or place, and I still haven't finished meditating on their role in my life, or mourning their loss. Lou Reed's 1992 album Magic And Loss captures much of this feeling, of losing personal friends who were also artistic heroes. Creative and personal so often bleeds over in life, and in art. That's probably a good thing.

All I can say at this point is: Dear Ms. Kirchherr, please hang on. I haven't met you yet, and I want to.

Unearthing Ireland

As has been noted, part of my mission this summer is to educate myself about music a little more - new music, old music, everything in-between. Being an arts journalist has afforded me a ton of opportunities to go exploring, even if time constraints mean I frequently feel a bit of a musical dilettante, skipping from one artist/band/era/genre to the next. But one thing caught my attention, and it's stayed glued there for months now. It even resulted in my writing a formal feature.

July 16th saw the release of Strange Passion, a compilation of sounds from the Irish post punk era. The first tune I heard from it (back in June) was SM Corporation's "Fire From Above", which has since become my unofficial summer anthem. With its bouncy beat and bleepy-bloopy electronic sound, along with a vaguely keening-esque vocal line, it's really the best sort of earworm to have through the heat waves and hot storms dominating the last couple weeks. In deciding to do a feature length story on Strange Passion and post punk in Ireland, I knew I'd be falling, delightedly head-first, into a cultural landscape I find deeply fascinating, even now. 

The Dublin of the late 1970s and early '80s was anything but glamorous, but, based on research and interviews (and frankly, the music), it was an inspiring time for artists. As Gavin Friday told me, sometimes the best art can come from the smaller, less glamorous cities; I turned this over in my mind after he said it, considering the home cities of some of my favorite artists (Prince is from Minneapolis; R.E.M., from Athens, Georgia; even The Beatles are from Liverpool, which was hardly a hotbed of hip cultural life in the late 1950s). There's something to be said for geography being destiny for artists: why, how, if (or when) they leave, they always carry a piece of their locale with them in song and sketch and spirit. 

Bands like Major Thinkers, Chant Chant Chant, and The Threat may not have lasted in any literal sense, but I'd like to think that listening to them affords me a peek into a creatively compelling place and time, one that's bled over into our own multi-faceted era of mixed sounds and places and experiences.

Addendum: For a detailed examination of the bands on Strange Passion, do check out Ian Maleney's excellent piece over at The Quietus. 

Good and Hot

The New York Times featured this lovely work by animator Gary Leib today. With a gorgeously simple sax soundtrack by Mike Hashim, the just-over two-minute video portrays city life in all its surreal splendour an sordid squalor. There's so much going on this piece of animation that reflects life in New York in 2012: peoples' sense of isolation mixed with a weary independence; their close relationship to pets; their love/hate relationships with nature and nurture; the dreariness of work; and the fortifying comfort of old (addictive) habits as a means of bolstering an ever-shifting identity. The animation is both whimsical and surreal, innocent and haunting - suitable for a man who created the sublimely bizarre underground comic Idiotland (gorgeous front and back covers here),  and whose work I've enjoyed seeing in The New Yorker now for a while.

Also: viva coffee! Though I used to be a hardcore tea drinker, lately I can't start the day without a good strong cup poured from the French press. Thank you NYT; thank you Mr. Leib; I'll think of ravenous birds and waitresses with bottomless carafes as I take my first morning sips now.