Events calendar

This is it, y'all. We just have to make it through the next week and a half and we can take the rest of 2016 off.  All the things are about to happen.  Here's a quick look ahead.

Today: The Saints celebrate their actual 50th birthday this weekend by playing the most pivotal game of the year.  Win this and we get to flirt with .500 again, and probably a few more times before the season is out. Lose and... well.  Just to make matters more interesting, the Seattle Seahawks are in town. You might remember them from two of the Saints' three most recent playoff losses including the infamous Marshawn game.  Also they brought "I'm Jimmy!" Graham with them along with a large number of the NFL's most insufferable fans.  So that's fun.

Mostly, though, this is the Saints' Groundhog Day. What happens here determines the course of the next few months.  Keep an eye on whether or not Dannell Ellerbe "leaps and bounds" out of that tunnel. He is our Puxatawney Phill.

Monday is Halloween.

Wednesday, November 2: A handful of Senate candidates participate in a televised debate.  This handful includes David Duke, which should make for some interesting TV, especially considering the setting.

Ongoing: City budget hearings. Expect more drama at City Council.

Saturday, November 5: LSU is going to beat Alabama.

Sunday, November 6: Saints back to .500? Drew vs Kaep? Maybe... Also GBV at Republic.

Tuesday, November 8: Our long national nightmare ends in a flurry of Blue Dog stickers. Then we will sleep.

Plain white T-Shirt

Or maybe it's blue and black. Either way, they didn't seem to try very hard with this one. I haven't tried very hard training this year so I guess that fits.

In other news, the best album ever recorded by anybody turns 20 years old on Saturday. You can listen to it on the YouTubes but it's one of those playlist deals that keeps playing ads in between the songs. That would take something away from any album but it especially messes this one up as the glossy sounding commercials break up the wall to wall hiss and fuzz atmosphere.

Oh well, here it is anyway. I have a cassette of this I bought at Paradise Records in Baton Rouge back in nineteen something and five. I'll let you listen to that some day.

Beauty queens and dream machines are never wrong

Here's a pretty good "retrospective" on the now likely finished for good GBV. In 2014, the last records (presumably) to be released under that name came out.  

It's difficult to explain this to people who can't remember a time before the internet became a ubiquitous pipeline through which anyone could connect to anything instantly.  But there was a significant portion of my adult life when I was the only fan of this band I was personally aware of. Now such people are everywhere. Well.. most everywhere.

And yet when I ask most of my friends and colleagues (admittedly, the normal ones who don’t obsess about music like some of us) if they’ve ever heard of them, they invariably ask if they’re some kind of Christian rock band.

Which, when you think about it, is pretty much the most legitimately indie rock thing a band can do. A bunch of regular dudes from Nowheresville, Middle America produce a copious quantity of stellar music, garner tremendous reviews, approach the edge of rockstardom, and, due to their unrelenting dedication to that idiosyncratic “immanent process” of artistic production, walk the fuck away from it all. Better still, they aren’t even discouraged by their failure, and continue to churn out more songs before breakfast than you have in your entire life.

Anyway, not a year goes by when Pollard doesn't write the most perfect song for it.  I can't imagine that will change. Here's the song for 2014.

Count the days that we have wasted from the start

Here are some notable anniversaries that passed during the month of June.  I meant to mention them sooner but I've had a busy month.

Happy 10th anniversary to Antigravity Magazine.

If you're of a certain age, you might remember a time when the only "music scene" in New Orleans anyone ever wrote about seriously consisted of 1) The sorts of acts old white people RVed in from Wisconsin and bought Jazzfest tickets to go see. And 2) That's about it.

And if you're a bit younger or maybe just recently arrived to New Orleans you'll know that not a whole lot has changed.  But also now there's Antigravity.  Here's a list of blurbs from some of their contributors over the years.  This quote is from Leigh.

While much of New Orleans and its visitors has been stunned by the spotlight on more traditional local culture, such an environment has allowed Antigravity to stealthily arrive and thrive in this town for ten years now, raising a raucous— sometimes downright unruly—yet always relevant voice on what has been deemed “alternative” culture. That Antigravity is predominantly a free paper first and foremost in a time seeing the rise of virtual media makes it all the more precious as a cultural touchstone, a small, potent remnant of DIY zinedom available in many locations around town.

"Alternative culture" doesn't accurately describe Antigravity's beat, though.  Those words imply a kind of pretentious affected otherness that, frankly, sounds more to me like the imagined New Orleans experience that Jazzfest visitors are looking for when they buy their vacation packages.

But there's no phony exoticism  in AG.  It's just a music magazine. But it's a magazine about New Orleans music rather than about New Orleans Music^TM. And  that, in this increasingly tourism obsessed city and media market, is what makes it seem like an "alternative" publication.

Happy 20th anniversary to a great rock album.

I drone on and on about how great GBV is so I'll try to avoid that here. Although I will borrow a great quote from David Giffels's book about  the rust belt that Leigh highlights in her Antigravity blurb. 

“Rock and roll needs a void, and we had that, in abundance. We had empty garages and basements and warehouses, and great stretches of empty time, and—most important—no one paying attention.”

GBV is very much a product of the declining post-industrial midwest Giffels is writing about.  The mythology and appeal of the band; middle aged school teacher creates a sort of alternate universe of rock history in his basement with his drinking buddies;  is tied to the idea of, not so much escaping that scene, but  persevering and making it your own even if there is "no one paying attention."

Leigh is right to connect that ethos with the antediluvian New Orleans that spawned Antigravity back in 2004. Were the New Orleans and Ohio of that time, "parallel lines on a slow decline"? It's a hard thing to see from here.  There's a contrast between that time and the seemingly "vibrant" New New Orleans you might read about today. Much of the New NOLA  is an illusion of course, but sorting that out is beyond the scope of this post.  For those of us who came of age in the slowly fading New Orleans of 90s and early 00s, there's some resonance in this music.  At least for me there is. 

Bee Thousand is actually the second GBV record I bought. it's also my second favorite but that's not important right now. The consensus of the critics is that it's the important one.  I got it at Paradise Records in Baton Rouge back in Nineteen Something And Five.

Here's a faux-listicle that actually breaks down the record quite well.

And here is the whole thing on YouTube.





And finally, Happy 20th Anniversary to this 1994 World Cup USA T-Shirt I wasn't sure I still had.  It's not exactly wearable but neither is my 20 year old car (Happy Birthday to that too!) and I keep that around for some reason. There's no rational reason to expect the US to move past Belgium on Tuesday.  But worrying about that sure beats arguing over Jimmy Graham's contract this week. 

Throw the switch

It's rock n roll time

Big weekend coming

There's this concert I figure many people will want to see.

There's the first of what will no doubt be several ABSOLUTE FINAL CHANCEs for the Saints to make something of their season. 

Oh and Rising Tide 7 is coming Saturday. (Register here!) So there may be periodic mentions of these upcoming events this week.  Such as this RT explainer from Mags. (No idea why she writes in all lowercase)

seven years later, rising tide is still basically hoping to do the same thing: draw folks in; blow their minds with brilliant speakers who run the gamut from academics to grassroots activists to politicians to culture-makers and more; get their synapses firing all while offering them a great networking opportunity; and hopefully inspire more folks to get involved in shaping the future of our city.

Today Tom Benson inducted himself into his own team's Hall of Fame

Meanwhile Drew Brees is unsigned and clearly unhappy.

I'm beginning to wonder if Benson isn't punishing Brees for having been among the leaders who sued the NFL during the lockout.  With so many of his players suing the league, Benson must be catching grief from his peers these days.

Anyway it's been a busy Friday for me so I'll keep the bitching on the internet to a minimum. Go read NOLA Femmes for Lunanola's account of yesterday's hot HoZone action. 

Update: Dambala also has notes and commentary from the hearing.

I'm opposed to the very concept of declaring any part of the city a "Zone" that belongs more to tourists than to residents. But  I think Sen. Peterson's amendments have made the bill at least palatable despite it all.  It will be interesting to see if the Mayor rejects the plan now that it actually dedicates more money to infrastructure maintenance since that was his major talking point in pushing it. If he pulls the bill now then he has to admit it was all just a ruse to put his board of hoteliers in place.

More later but right now I'm going to see about getting tickets to this GBV (fuck yeah!) show.

Oh also the Sepras Signal is up.

The New Orleans Police Department’s Traffic Division will conduct a sobriety checkpoint, in Treme, beginning at approximately 9:00 P.M. and will conclude at approximately 5:00 A.M.  Motorists will experience minimal delays and should have the proper documentation available if requested, i.e., proof of insurance, driver’s license, etc. 

Do not fret, drunk drivers.

Government Grants To Rock

This is actually a response to a comment two posts down but I'm putting it here because it's kind of a personal mission statement and I don't want to lose it.

In response to my post about my fear of being priced out of my neighborhood, Ricky P. says:

Sounds like you need to find a way to get paid for your blog, then you can join the cause for gentrification.

The truth is no one should ever pay anyone to blog... especially no one should pay me to do it. But there was a time when I had made it my life's ambition to stumble upon just the right obscure grant or other accident of fate that would allow me to just get around New Orleans every day watching people, reading the news, and then going out to eat and getting stupid drunk every night.

My friend Ros and I used to talk about this back in the Pre-Katrina days when living in New Orleans wasn't such a big fucking hipster fad. We'd fool someone into giving us a stipend to be here because we had the, then very rare, quality of actually enjoying it. We'd live for free, hang out and dine out a lot and then at the end of the year write up some bullshit report on whatever we could contrive the value of our experience to be. We'd submit it to some sleepy little known federal department of cultural preservation or keeping it real or whatever. They'd send us a check. Nobody would know or care.

But that never happened for us. Of course nowadays there's a whole industry in that sort of thing. Only it's a more sinister and attention-seeking version that capitalizes on the death and horror wrought by the Federal Flood. Witness Treme, Ed Blakely, Kirsha Kaeschle, numerous internet start-ups, half the assholes in town selling T-shirts. But really I like to think of this as a crass debasement of our original vision of what would have been a very quiet little racket.

In 1997 this vision was crystallized for me when I saw GBV (the Cobre Verde Mag Earwig version of GBV) play at the old Howlin Wolf. It was either a Wednesday or Thursday night and Bob was getting ready to start the second encore. It must have been about 2 am. Bob says to the crowd

"Don't you people have to work tomorrow? Does anybody work in this town? Or do you all just get grants from the Kingfish?"

And then there's a quick pause after which he adds,

"Government grants... to rock"

This and Ignatius Riley's "Employers sense, in me, a denial of their values" are still my two most prized personal mottoes. I don't think of this as decadent self-indulgence so much as an admission that most of us, our lives, our labors or what some of us arrogantly think of as "talents" aren't really all that special or even necessary. But we are all alive and we are all people and we all ought to be allowed to appreciate that at least a little bit. There's so much wealth and knowledge and industry in this world but its product is stupidly distributed according to the most severe and fraudulent definitions of what people do and do not deserve. Instead I submit that we'd be better off recognizing that everyone should have at least a modest little grant.. to rock.. or whatever works for them. The older I get the more convinced I am of this.

Government Grants To Rock, in fact, should probably be the title of something. Probably a memoir or maybe an album. But I like to think of it as the title of my long lost dream of being paid to not work. Maybe someday. For now it's still just a matter of hanging on to my sinking paradise.

GBV

In the White House now

Rockin' Jay Carney: Responding to a question about Frank Sinatra's impact on popular culture,(incoming White House Press Secretary) Jay Carney announces that Guided by Voices, the Dayton, Ohio, riff-rockers, are his favorite band.

The Satchel Paige of rock and roll

Just one of the great insights from this interview with Philadelphia sportswriter and GBV fan Reuben Frank the following line being the highlight.

One night in New York he (Pollard) was onstage ripping Bright Eyes, just killing ’em. He was going, “Ask the person next to you if they own a Bright Eyes album, and if they say yes, punch them in the face.” And it turned out Conor Oberst was standing about 10 feet behind me.

Stuff

Just what we needed on a Wednesday afternoon. More randomly associated bullet points.

• Gambit's Matt Davis reports from the Mayor's budget hearing in New Orleans East Monday night.
  
  

  There was plenty of emotional testimony about the problems being faced, but the most newsworthy exchange came toward the end of the two-and-a-half hour meeting, when Mayor Mitch Landrieu directly addressed his race in the context of the city repossessing blighted properties from black property owners who have failed to return to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. “I want to talk about race,” said Landrieu, responding to the testimony at the end of the evening. “You start taking people’s homes, people start asking ‘why you trying to stop people coming home, Mr.Mitch, looking the way you do’ — do I need to say it?”
  
  The crowd murmured support for Landrieu.
  
  “The question is is this about race? Or is about the city?” Landrieu asked. “And when is the day when we start focusing on these properties? Is it now? Is it September? Is it November? Or yesterday?”
  
  The crowd cheered when he said “yesterday.”
  
  “I’m just asking, I just want to make sure I heard you,” said Landrieu. “Because I promise you as soon as I lay it down, somebody’s going to lay it down, and there’s going to be a march.”
  
  “We got your back, Mitch,” shouted several people in the crowd.
  
  The idea of repossessing vacant properties in New Orleans East and the Lower Ninth Ward has been increasingly on council’s radar over recent months. At a meeting of the council recovery meeting on June 30, consultant Greg Rigamer told council that of 52,800 New Orleans applicants to the state’s Road Home program, 34,921 applicants have closed on their homes and are moving forward, but about 14,000 are showing no sign of progress after having received the money.

  
  
  I'm not sure that this is a conversation about "race". The Mayor and the people attending the meeting all seem to want it to be a racial kumbaya moment but it sure reads to me like a room full of comfortable middle class homeowners all agreeing that they don't care if the poor people make it back or not.




• St. Bernard child, Pistolette writes about the places Dow'na Road after reading Bob Marshall's series about the fishing village of Delacroix in the Times Picayune.



• Here's another T-P series on soon-to-be-inducted NFL Hall of Famer Rickey Jackson who was, to put it plainly, the best football player I ever watched. Ever.

  Despite the fact he never wore thigh or knee pads -- that slowed him down -- and never taped his ankles, Jackson played in 195 games with the Saints, starting every one, and he started 30 of 32 games with the 49ers. He missed just two in his career when he fractured his right cheekbone in an automobile accident on Sept. 11, 1989. Initially, it was expected that Jackson would miss four to six weeks. On Oct. 1, 20 days after the accident, Jackson returned to the field, starting for the Saints against the Washington Redskins, who, try as they might, were powerless that day to slow Jackson, even though they often double-teamed him with an extra tight end or a pulling lineman.

  When the Saints finally made the Super Bowl this year, a lot was written about the bittersweetness of Buddy D not being there to see it or Archie Manning not being able to enjoy it. Not enough was said about how great it was that Rickey Jackson got to see it happen. During his career, Rickey embodied the collective passion and frustration of the fans more than most players. Having him named to the HOF the same year the championship happened was pretty special for everyone.



• Prop 8 overturned and there was much rejoicing. That is until some right wing something or other says something stupid in 4, 3, 2....



• Favre. Shut up. No, make it stop. Seriously.



• Nagin. Shut up.



• Here are 100 great (nobody can really pick the 100 greatest) GBV songs with notes on each one including this which pretty much sums up why Pollard is God.

  Let's face it: GBV is to beer as the Grateful Dead is to LSD




• And finally, there's this Forecasters: Hurricanes' effect on oil unclear Seriously, though, at this point we're more interested in oil's effect on hurricanes. It's high season and everything that appears out there keeps breaking up. Not that we're complaining or anything.

Beaten by the target

Okay so I'll admit it is pretty much what makes Thers's blog awesome... but (ahem) I've been doing it longer and you never see me complain.

The bus will get you there yet!

Longtime Yellow Blog readers are well aware that GBV is the greatest rock band in the history of the universe. Recently fans and friends of the band organized an outdoor party of sorts in Dayton, OH called Heedfest. There are videos of various knuckleheads performing covers for the crowd at this Youtube address.

Since it's Saturday, and since you're likely getting ready to go out and tear up the town, I'll share with you this highlight from the festival. It's a GBV reunion of sorts featuring Nate Farley, Jim MacPherson, Chris Slusarenko, Greg Demos and a wiffle ball bat wielding, Bob Pollard performing the "drinking anthem" A Salty Salute for the happy crowd.



You can't watch that and not be fired up. But... again since it's Saturday... and since you obviously need more rock, this link will bring you to a Strokes cover of the same song.

Later, kids. I'm off to find the club that is open.