Brandon Burke

In a different world, I'd be able to do that. But, as it stands now, I'm a poor grad student with a broken driver's side window that I can't afford to fix, rent payments at two different places when I do my internship at Library of Congress over the summer, and....well, lot's of other stuff that $1,200 a month doesn't cover. So a good keyboard is way down there on the priority list. Someday.....

Read Robert Coover's Briar Rose (1996) during my plane rides over the holiday. Very good. I don't have very much time for recreational reading but, when I do, I tend to go with the American postmodernists (Coover, Barth, Barthelme, Pynchon, etc.). Calvino as well. Anyways, I very much appreciate that Coover continues to write books that are at least readable. At this point in my life, I don't have the time to commit to Pynchon.....and Barth is just being a dick about it altogether. He must be on a quest to write the most difficult text ever. I've given up on anything he wrote past the 70's. Back to the point, Coover keeps it fun and absolutely bursting with metaphor. He and Barthelme are two of my all time favorites in any genre.

It is.

Second half is just as great. People seem to lose sight of the fact that the plot takes a turn for the ridiculous the moment that Charlie decides to cave in and employ his brother's corny Hollywood shlock ideas. This is why so much stupid bullshit like the alligator sequence happens. It was by design. As Charlie begins to use Donald's ideas to rework the narrative for his screenplay so too goes Adaptation itself in what must be one of the most definitively "meta" metafilms of all time. I agree that Eternal Sunshine and Malcovitch are better but watch it Adaptation again. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Why do you assume that Idol "sucks?" Do you simply mean that you don't like such reality shows or are you presupposing that the show is something more than it attests to being? Don't mean to single you out, but a lot of people (mostly those who don't watch the show) knock it for "sucking" but the "fact" is that a few of the singers are really quite talented. Actually, I was talking about Buffy but I see what you mean. I will, however, say that there's a stong argument that the vast majority of the people who watch American Idol are probably in it for the camp factor over the potential of seeing some great musical performances. I mean if it were such a legit talent search would Simon have to be such an ass? That's why most people watch it. These are the same types of people who watch all of the other "reality" shows. In fact, an interesting user study would be checking out how many American Idol viewers also enjoy things like The Bachleor, Survivor or.....(gulp).....COPS. I mean, let's be honest here. I think you'll find that most American Idol viewers don't tune in with the sole purpose of get wowed by a moving rendition of "Up Where We Belong". You know what I'm saying?

With apologies to Lee Konitz, nothing else makes sense. Or AS much sense. I like that.

I meant to reply to this earlier, Lon. The Euclid booth was indeed ridiculous. Tons of good stuff. Overpriced, as usual, but cool all the same.

I love Days Have Gone By. No shit. I remember liking it when I first heard it but it really of crept up on me over the past couple of years. I usually say The Transfiguration of Blind Joe Death or Death Chants, Waltzes, and Military Breakdowns when people ask but I keep coming back to this one like an old friend. you can imagine how pleased I was to find it on Takoma for all of six dollars. BTW: My LP copy of Transfiguration was purchased for me by my last girlfriend for one whole dollar at a library book sale about three years ago (and it still had the stapled booklet of fictional liner notes by Fahey!).

I can totally understand getting sucked into American Idol if my girlfriend/wife was into it but I'm not in that situation. Have been before, though, so I know how it works. My last gf was into Sabrina the Teenage Witch and, as a result, I ended up watching is as well. Cute show, actually. And completely different than watching Buffy for ironic enjoyment. I can't do that shit. For whatever reason, I have competely lost the ability to enjoy something based on the fact that it sucks. In fact, it's amazing that I even have to defend that belief; as though enjoying something because it sucks is an entirely rational situation.

Finally saw this film tonight for the first time and liked it very much indeed. Enough so that, frankly, I'd prefer not to pick it apart at the moment. Maybe later......

I decided that the next record I put out is going to be called You Took the Birds Right Out of My Mouth.

I posted this in another thread some months back. It is an original print add for the BYG/Actuel Festival in Paris. Needless to say, not all of it fit into my scanner but you get the goods....

Reminds me of that Beefheart quote to a groupie: "It sure is cold out there in space. You want to hold onto somethin' warm?" Damn, I forgot about that quote Cliff. Hilarious.... Y'know how people write "LOL" to indicate that they think something's funny (but probably aren't actually laughing out loud)? Well, I'm laughing out loud.

Oh yea, my buddy Mark put together a band for just one show called The Clown Clown. I've always really loved that one. Subtle but still strangely unsettling.

Thought of a couple more today. First of all, I was reminded of a late-80's D.C. band called Bells of.... That one always struck me as odd. Now..... Get this one. Some friends of friends used to be in a band from Omaha called Vida Blue. Sure, it's a cool baseball reference and all but nothing to write home about, right? Well, a few years ago one of the dudes in Phish approached them and said that he wanted to use the name Vida Blue for a side project. He offered to buy the name from them outright for $10,000. They accepted and subsequently changed their name to Ten Grand. Now that's funny.

I should add that just tonight I had to start relearning all of my (piano) parts on a MIDI keyboard so we can play out. It sucks, man. I hate it. Drasticaly changes my available dynamics. This keyboard does not have weighted keys and the supposed 'volume action' doesn't really cut the mustard. It's especially problematic on the quiet numbers because I don't have any "touch" anymore. Plus, since the keys aren't weighted, if I accidently hit a neighboring key it sounds because there's no resistance. Uugh....

Okay..... Well, assuming you aren't kidding, the trunk begins at the bottom of the image, just barely left of center. From there, the trunk goes up at about a "one o'clock" angle. The branches spread in all directions from there with the largest branches pointing to about "ten o'clock". I hope that makes sense.

I took this while trying to capture a very rare snowfall here in Austin. As it turns out, the flakes were so big and fell so slowly that the tree looks like it's floating in space. NOTE: It looks much better when not condensed to 72 dpi but....whatever right.

I totally ignored their later stuff in that post but The Marshall Suite does indeed have some great songs. I remember people calling that (yet another) comeback for the Fall. How many is that now......four....five comebacks? Also, I highly recommend that you see them when they come your way. I went to see them over the summer when they played Austin and it was fantastic. I had heard that in recent years they/he'd become really lackluster--not to mention Mark E. Smith's tendency to leave the stage after like ten minutes. Anyways, it was really very good and they played some nice surprises too including "I Am Damo Suzuki", "Mr. Pharmacist", "The Country Life" and a rousing version of "New Big Prinz" as the closer. At the end of "New Big Prinz", Mark threw his mic into the audience and, instead of everyone screaming and yelling, the crowd continued to sing with the band (who was still playing): "Check the record, Check the record, Check the guy's track record. Check the record. Check the guy's rock record. He... Is.... Not.... Appreciated!" It was a great monent and the band was very clearly jazzed by the crowd's enthusaism.

No shit. "The Classical" is definately an amazing jam. This particular era of The Fall pretty much ruined Pavement for me, especially Slanted and Enchanted.

The Fall huh..... Well, I absolutely adore everything up until, say, I Am Curious Oranj which really sucks other than the brilliant first song ("New Big Prinz"). Many people that I know stopped paying attention once Brix joined the band because she took off some of the edge. I , on the other hand, like some of those records quite a bit. If I had to only pick a few--and this is assuming that you aren't quite sold on the older and admittedly more 'difficult' material--I'd suggest: This Nation's Saving Grace (1985) - Their most accesible album that's still worth a damn. Many people consider this their last 'great' record. Perverted By Language (1983) and The Wonderful and Frightening World of the Fall (1984) are great as well. Again, these are the most accessible records from the days when they were still considered a 'great' band. From there, I'd work backwards slowly and go for Hex Enduction Hour (1982), Grotesque (After the Gramme) (1980), and Live at the Witch Trials (1979). Of course, another, more afordable, way to figure out which period of theirs you like is to get the excellent singles comps Palace of Swords Reversed and 58489 A Sides. You can't really lose with those and each one gives you a glimpse of a different point in their long and storied past.

Sandy Duncan's Eye

It certainly helps if you're a Beefheart fan already. And I don't mean this in a Beefheart/Zappa kind of way because Zappa, whom I would also consider a genius, is too self-consciously *wacky* for me. I can't get into that silly shit, man. Songs about rubber bands and tits.....? F*ck that. Pere Ubu, Beefheart and the Red Krayola I consider on the same level. Very out there and definitively post-modern yet they all strive to attain a level of "artiness" that postmodernism doesn't recognize. So they kind of walk the fence in my opinion. I also would include Tim Buckley's Starsailor LP but that's his only legitimately weird record. By the way, after years of trying to "get" it, I finally had that watershed moment with Starsailor a couple of weeks ago and.......damn......

Interesting. I didn't know about those. Too bad I already have the CDs (all of which are brilliant)...... I should add here that, at this point, I'm totally disinterested in vinyl reissues. Scott Colburn digitally remastered much of the Revenant catalog--and quite well I might add!--but the fact remains that they're digital remaster jobs pressed on vinyl. What's the point...?