1)
this article about Van Morrison at DAR left me with a lot of questions about nostalgia and the experience of live music. McKenna seems really bummed that Morrison couldn't get it up for Brown Eyed Girl and roundly injured that Morrison is kind of a chode. It just makes me wonder about the responsibility of the artist/celebrity and the kind of expectations one derives from a $350 ticket. Truth be told I investigated this show when Morrison was in NYC but couldn't reconcile a desire to zone out to Astral Weeks live, which is maybe one of my top zone out albums of all time, with a $95 dollar nosebleed seat - I have rent to pay, assholes. So, while it is pretty hideous that Morrison yells at band mates and roadies like on some regal Versailles madness, it's interesting that McKenna immediately intones a desire for the hit maker Morrison, suggesting that for some fans a jukebox might be in order - is attending a live musical event about the pick and choose, temporary glory of the jukebox experience, or something more?
2)
When I was 20 and working in a hierarchical retail book seller's cafe, I used to come in early mornings before school and open the retail space - brew hideous batches of coffee, bake cookies in a highly flammable easy-bake, and fill the sticky ice bucket below the soda dispenser with chemical-laced ice. A lot of mornings alone in the cafe I had ample time to fart as much as possible before customers started showing up - one morning this manager Charles that I had a crush on came down to the cafe to get a spoon for his yogurt cup maybe 20 seconds after I had just blown my own self away with noxious fumigation. The spoons were at waist-level next to where I was standing, I think my face was red for a full 2 hours into morning service. All of this was pretty amazing though, because before the store opened, I could blast whatever music I needed to stay awake and minimize morning space-out. That was the summer of David Bowie, the general rotation was Hunky Dory and the live Beeb sessions so that I could hear Queen Bitch as a studio jam but also catch the BBC version where he hisses YEAH YEAH and makes these incredible hot soup-slurp noises
What didn't I say, What didn't I say?
The other weekend we watched Ziggy Stardust, the Pennebaker joint, which has some amazing footage of what it was to be David Bowie in 1973 - character-driven, edgy, sexual leg fest, wailing amazing tunes to a crowd of frantic, sweaty girls. Awesome. Then there are parts though when you see Bowie backstage, getting his hair and make-up done, getting sewn into elaborate, naked costumes, and it kind of sucks to see. I want my musical lust to be perpetuated by musicians onstage, by the performance and the energy and the insatiable sweatiness of loving shit. You know, illusion and grit. (The insatiable sweatiness of loving shit = my autobiography) Maybe this is the same as McKenna and Morrison, I just sort of think he's being a pussy about deflated "Tra La La's"
3) You don't have to be Paul Auster to talk about people watching other people, if you were then you could call it post-modern and walk away with the royalties. Check out the video below from the Washington Post, it's actually pretty sick and definitely wastes fewer brain cells than trying to decipher what exactly Audriana is so blank-faced about. Watching people watch is the future of reality TV - it's even cheaper than the current set-up and there's no embarrassing, manufactured dialogue. somebody tell soumik
