Archive for March, 2011

Jeff Tweedy at Portland

Posted: March 28, 2011 in Music ... reviews and ramblings

Jeff Tweedy
State Theatre Portland, ME
March 26, 2011

I have seen Wilco and Jeff Tweedy twice in the past two years, once as the group and, in this latest, solo. I have learned TWO important things.
First. Although I consider myself a fan of the group and the musician, the live concerts have convinced me that I have missed much of their output and catalog. Perhaps it’s the renewed interest drawn from live performance, perhaps the presentation freshens the work. Perhaps I just haven’t deepened my library adequately. But I leave a concert wanting more, wanting to hear particular songs a few times to better understand the lyrics, which can be moebius-stripped puzzles, or at least obscurely reflective. Like looking through someone else’s prescription lenses, it takes getting used to. Unlike REM, which are so closely aligned to my verbal and visionary style that hearing the music and listening to the lyrics has a hand-on-heart understanding, or at least feels so. The set list for this evening was packed with songs I’ve never heard or rarely attended to.
The Second Observation is somewhat of a subset to Observation One. I have found that in live Wilco/Tweedy concerts, if I am unfamiliar with the work or hazy on lyrical content, I need not worry. For there, behind me, or perhaps to my left… or down and to the right, will be a Wilco/Tweedy FAN. They are quite happy to lend boisterous voice to lyric content. It’s like they’re taking a shower, singing some Tweedy/Wilco tune and well, you and Jeff happened to transport somehow from an alternate, parallel universe and there you are….in THEIR shower. Welcome! Hope you enjoy the show! Pass the soap? Let’s SING! Concert as musical … lovely….where are the costumes?
All to say that the State Theatre rousingly welcomed Jeff. And rightly so. I think Jeff loves Portland almost as much as Portland loves Jeff. It was a love-fest. Almost too much of one. Like when your girlfriend hasn’t seen you for so long that she gets drunk with the idea that you’re gonna show up. So when you do, she’s so shit-faced it’s embarrassing. There IS such a thing as undeserved enthusiasm. I’m trying to think of a way that Jeff Tweedy could have disappointed some of the audience. I don’t think he could have.
He showed up. With a bunch of acoustic guitars in tow, he did not “rock out” as would have happened with Wilco. Some in the audience were clearly disoriented by this…but since they were already disoriented from other activities, his lack of “noise” was merely replaced by their riotous adoration at practically everything he did. This was not an audience he had to win. This was an audience he had to tame, or at least channel into, perhaps, concepts of listening and being present. “Attendance” may not be necessary, but it sure is appreciated.
But enough. Suffice to say that when the audience is more notable than the performance, one needs to reorient.
I’m not sure why Jeff Tweedy went solo for this tour. Boredom? A need to be away from the band? To strike another spark, start anew? A need to revisit the well that dwells within? Who knows?
There were two signifiers for me, hinting a superior show. Of course, seeing the bank of six acoustic guitars before the first note was plucked dashed the idea of a Neil Young style acoustic/electric solo series, and I was okay with that…although obviously some people didn’t read that news flash at all. The second hint that we were in good woods for wanderin’ was when Tweedy came out to the stage to start off “Via Chicago”….. no intro, no hello’s, he just wanders out kinda hunched with an acoustic guitar and harmonica…..said to self… “it’s Bob Dylan”!……and like Dylan, the song is about trying to get back home…this time “via Chicago”
It’s weird to look at a setlist of a concert you’ve gone to and realize that you can easily recognize only 8 of the 22 songs. The concert itself was intimate, well-played and really moving in a lot of ways. I dunno…is it the song titles, my personal lack of familiarity? What is it that makes it hard to place song with title? My notepad is scrawled not with a list of titles but a string of caught phrases and lyric runs. Those are my hints as I string back like greek mythology to the opening, to where the wandered run began.
So……my home run songs of the evening.

Jesus Etc…….a beautifully written song about the difficulties of relationships and why the hell do we bother with….I heard it with full Wilco and solo….both great, but I lean toward the solo acoustic just because intimacy has its rewards. Perfect for the transition in lyrics from “each star is a setting sun” to “our love is a burning sun”….cool

One Wing ……. A couple breaking up at KFC ? Perhaps but I don’t think so. A fun metaphor, not hugely deep but still filled with neat lyric content like “you were a blessing and I was a curse”….one of his icy/honest works, reflective in an accusatory way. “How we grow” etc etc ….

“Shot In the Arm”….. really worked acoustically …. A good set of riffs and excellent voice.

I really appreciated his final song “Acuff Rose”, which he performed not only solo acoustic but un-amped as well…..not even a microphone. Jeff Tweedy walks to the edge of the stage and, well, plays an old white acoustic guitar, no amp, and sings “Acuff Rose” …no mic….how intimate is that? The song is from the old Uncle Tupelo years, a nod to what drew him then and what draws him now. Great story-telling and songwriting that strides over the years and speaks to everyone decade after decade. And it shifted the rowdiness into a quiet way to leave the space…..

“Via Chicago”…the opener. Not familiar with the song until concert. Drawn immediately to the concept of trying to get home “somehow” as soon as possible. The sense of distance and desire. “I’m not where I want to be”

“I Am Trying To Break Your Heart”….given that the band version has all sorts of studio/audio tricks, a huge palette of sound structures and conflicts that emphasize the decay within his desire, Tweedy’s acoustic version has a rawer, direct edge.

“I’ll Fight”……not necessarily due to the performance but more the discussion that Lu, Frank and I had over breakfast the following morning. It’s a song that can fold and reveal, hide and reflect ideas on adolescent relationships, cultural imprimaturs and the bestowing of honors to the dead, no matter how they got there. “why do we do what we do and can we change that”?

“THE UNKNOWN NEW SONG”…..I wrote down quickly a lyric “middle of the mind of mystery”…..it seemed like an opening for Jeff Tweedy…..creativity being cracked open, just for a line or two….the process….the process…..like Woody Allen about the creative process “ 90% of Life is showing up”

the woulda/coulda/shoulda’s

Songs I feel Jeff Tweedy could have pulled from the catalog and it would have worked (for me anyway….and given my sense of Tweedy’s audience…it IS about them)

“Deeper Down”

“You Are My Face”

“Impossible Germany”

“Kamera”

that’s my early observations…..????

ernie

My annual St Patrick’s Day salutation

Posted: March 17, 2011 in Readings

The Haw Lantern
The wintry haw is burning out of season,
crab of the thorn, a small light for small people,
wanting no more from them but that they keep
the wick of self-respect from dying out,
not having to blind them with illumination.

But sometimes when your breath plumes in the frost
it takes the roaming shape of Diogenes
with his lantern, seeking one just man;
so you end up scrutinized from behind the haw
he holds up at eye-level on its twig,
and you flinch before its bonded pith and stone,
its blood-prick that you wish would test and clear you,
its pecked-at ripeness that scans you, then moves on.

By Seamus Heaney
From “The Haw Lantern”, 1987
R

Common As Air

Posted: March 15, 2011 in Readings

Common As Air
Lewis Hyde
FSG 2010
306 pg, 252 pg text

Building from the evolution of individual property from tribal times to our present-day discussions of the boundaries of intellectual property, Lewis Hyde presents a history of the dual nature of the individual. On one plane, each of us a new singular voice speaking, writing, creating. On another plane, each a communal spirit, drawing from heritage and culture, reflecting on and adding to a collective memory, pushing the “tribe” and humanity forward. Although the ultimate discussion of this book is the current controversy of intellectual property and corporate attitudes toward copyright, Hyde presents the current issue as arising from an historical progression. Tracing a broad take on a world of different cultures and societies, Lewis Hyde introduces a variety of approaches human beings took to the concept of “property”, and then progresses to the more ephemeral concept of individual creativity and to the split between the individual’s willingness (or unwillingness) to share such innovations and thoughts, and the communal rights or interests of the tribe.
This could be very dry reading as much of it describes the evolution of legal terms and concepts of “what is” property, but Lewis Hyde uses case descriptions and legal decisions as a motive force and keeps the narrative forward. In the same way that artists build upon the works of predecessors, Hyde shows that law and social constructs use the past as a descriptor and justifier of “the next step”, which in the case of intellectual property seems to result in longer terms of copyright and tighter strictures toward public use.
Hyde is quite honest about his perspective on this progression toward such exclusionary rights. He’s against it…. He views it as a stifling concept, which will limit the progress of the culture and create a society of the uninformed and infantile. However, he is very thorough and honest in presenting the interests of those who have created a work and why some degree of compensation is warranted. The question he does not answer (purposefully) is: where is the point between reward for the creator for the creation, and the rights of others in that culture to copy or build or deconstruct the work. What is appropriate artistic compensation and what is culturally debilitating greed? What is a genuine benefit to social intercourse and progress for humanity …and what is appropriative abuse by the “tribe”, to the detriment of the artist and in the long term, the social structure.
There are more questions posed than answers given in this very well-written book. And that is how it should be. Our culture and society (and genuinely the world’s) is at a philosophical, ethical, moral and spiritual crossroad. The answers for a society at such a place should be a collective answer, not a commandment handed down, but a demand from the collective. A demand for honest information, for shared ideas and discoveries, for progress for everyone, not just for the few. Nothing can be built if the tools and materials are locked away.

an older photo

Posted: March 5, 2011 in Selected Photography Over the Years

But a good one nonetheless (if I say so myself)….this land is actually for sale and once in awhile as I drive to work I take the side road that runs by this tree…and wonder why it’s drawn to me (and me to it)….. it has a grand presence, like it’s been here way before my time and will be here way after I’m gone….

The Vertigo Years

Posted: March 3, 2011 in Readings

I’m not generally a reader of History…I mean, why read about dead people and dead years? Don’t we know how the story ends? A biography of Lincoln would perhaps include his assassination by John Wilkes Booth (NEWS FLASH!)

But two books of a specific era have caught me…the first Paris 1919 by Margaret Hamilton took me more than a year to read…it was written wonderfully, but the material was so fraught with implications of our own times that I would practically weep after every chapter…the arrogant divisions of territory (Iraq was created from three tribes to create a country for oil exploitation….and does that reverberate through the ages or what?)…on and on….tough reading just because of the weight it brought to this world

This latest took me less than a week…Philipp Blom’s The Vertigo Years is an exercise of descriptive history that really does hurtle you into a vortex of super-concentrated history, a conflation of circumstance and personality, of the beginnings of this fevered century from the perspective of Europe, 1900-1914. Connections can be made (and you will) between the circumstance of our time and the one described. It’s heavy reading but written in a whirly way that befits the chaos of the times, now and then. Highly recommended by a person that, again, really doesn’t get into history much