12.04.09

the dirty dozen, part II {twelve seasonal things}

pneumonia, she is an adventure in self-discovery. in the past few days, i've learned that my disdain for hypochondriacs has made me the worst sort of stoic: i ignore serious shit (like, you know, coughing blood*) in service of this weird lady-machismo*** that impresses no one. it's the same sort of impulse that led me to eat a handful of semi-raw habaneros on my honeymoon in london: just weird, and i suffered for it. per doctor's orders, i'm stuck at home until tuesday and on three kinds of antibiotics (and a self-prescribed bowie-on-vinyl cure; predictably, low is the best soundtrack for being in a room you can't leave). no stoicism in 2010!

05 on bowie, i read a rather entertaining take on his life (marc spitz's bowie) a few months ago. it's imperfect (though spitz mentions blade runner a few times, he doesn't mention that the note bowie sent with flowers to his brother's funeral is a quote from the movie), but it's full of excellent anecdotes, including the following, from when bowie and brian eno were recording low at a château in france:

The château was wired with an elaborate and clunky bank of synthesizers collected by Bowie and [producer Tony] Visconti. Eno would saunter into the main room, pick up a small keyboard, and begin pressing buttons. Occasionally he'd ask Visconti what these instruments were meant to do. One, the Event Harmonizer, he was told, "fucks with the fabric of time." Eno grinned and loudly declared that they must use it as much as possible.

06 i have a weakness for themed christmas trees (see: the war on christmas, harrison ford in the cupboard), and i realized as i was falling asleep the other night that the new apartment might need a princemas tree this year. decoration research led me to the purple store ("for people who love purple and those who shop for them,") and i'm going to go ahead and declare their 6.5 foot, pre-lit purple palm tree the acme of western civilization. that might be the azithromycin talking, but can you be sure?

07 i also finally got around to reading black postcards, better known as That Memoir in Which Dean Wareham Shits on Everyone. i like dean wareham the musician (both galaxie 500 and luna were fine bands) very much, but i went back and forth on whether or not i wanted to support his snark; happily, used copies of black postcards are cheap these days. the book isn't as vitriolic as i'd expected it to be (wareham's biggest enemy is a bad hotel), but it did yield a few amusements.

Every French interviewer asked us about the Pixies. They figured that since we were from Boston, we must love the Pixies. Nonsense. We had no love for the Pixies.

Sometimes Galaxie 500 got lumped in with this whole shoegaze movement (we were later dubbed protoshoegaze), but we had nothing to do with it. We didn't listen to Ride, Chapterhouse, Lush, Slowdive, Moose, or even the Jesus and Mary Chain (who were derisively known as the Jesus and Money Chain back home in our world).

All the bands hung out in this amazing backstage area, enjoying the barbecue and the sun and the scenery. All except the Ramones, who stayed in their trailer and had pizza sent up from town. This was very punk rock of them.

And what about the Edge? What was he, ten years old, calling himself the Edge?
What if I decided I wanted to be called Cool Breeze?
"The Edge is cool," said Sean [Eden].
"The Edge is not cool," I said. I don't think U2 is cool. Remember that awful video from Red Rocks, where Bono prances around with a big flag, singing, "All I have is this guitar, three chords, and the truth"? I have not forgotten.

I have a theory: If you put four monkeys in the studio for a year with [Daniel] Lanois and Eno and [Steve] Lillywhite, they would make a pretty good record, too.

08



that last one was a bit of a cop-out, but the pestilence tires me, internets. forgive.

so, princemas tree: yea or nay?

*which, incidentally: way less attractive than baz luhrmann would have you believe it is.** i have never looked less like nicole kidman in my life.

**i really hated moulin rouge!.

***not marianismo, mind you; that sounds lame.