TIRED, CRANKY, BUSY BUSY BUSY

The other night I did a 90-minute phone interview which was one of the best times I've ever had talking to an artist. Part of it was, I'm not a huge slavering fan, so I was able to express my doubts about the guy's body of work (and believe me, I've got some) in the form of "devil's advocate arguments" without fear. And the guy answered me without fear, too, which was great. He's apparently really excited about being the subject of a major profile in the magazine for which I'm doing the piece (and you'll notice I'm being cagey about who it is and who it's for - well, too bad, you'll have to wait a month to find out), and was thus willing to open up. I've read interviews with this guy in the past that have been all surly, one-word answers intended to show up the interviewer as a stooge unworthy of the interviewee's time. Not in this case. Like I said, we talked for 90 minutes straight, and laughed and threw art theory back and forth and generally had a real melding of the minds. It's gonna be interesting to see whether the genuine pleasure I had in talking to him, and the enthusiasm I have for one of his projects (a project I'd ignored because the band he was in before that pissed me off so much), comes through properly in the piece, which is due on Friday. The last piece I was this excited about was a Tom Waits cover story I wrote for The Wire back in 2002, and that turned into a whole big shitstorm, and I'm not all that happy with the final document as it exists today. So I'm kinda hoping that my own lukewarmness toward some aspects of this dude's output can be contrasted with my newfound love for other aspects of it and my respect for his thought processes and attitude, and the whole thing can be balled up and sealed with sweat and spit and turned into something decent. I think it can. I got five days to prove myself right or wrong.

Don't have much to say about Hunter Thompson's death. It took me too long to work his influence out of my own nascent prose style to look back now - I'm like Orpheus heading out of the underworld. Eyes front, keep marchin'.

My cokehead rock-critic uncle-by-marriage told me when I was 13 or 14 that Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas was the only book that really understood the Sixties. I think he was right, if only because Thompson was already mourning the death of the Sixties in 1971 - it took a lot of other folks until at least Carter's election to realize that it really had failed, that the country really had gone to hell, and we weren't coming back out anytime soon. (We still haven't.) I think I'm gonna buy a new copy of Fear And Loathing On The Campaign Trail '72 and see if I can make it all the way through this time. The part where he tries to run out the clock by interviewing himself always dooms my efforts to reach the end.

If it doesn't snow too much, I'm gonna go see Interpol on Tuesday night. I've heard they're duller than the Hall of Presidents live, but the show's at Radio City, and Radio City has excellent sound and really comfortable chairs, so a dull band onstage is less agonizing than it'd be at, say, Irving Plaza, a shithole that the best show you've ever seen in your life can't fully redeem.

Well, time to go pound out 5000 coherent words in five days. Back on Monday, maybe. In the meantime, get your metal on at my other spot.

MIKE, CECIL, COLSON...

New online: my review of General Patton Vs. The X-Ecutioners, which is much better than I expected it to be. (I like Faith No More's Angel Dust; pretty much everything else Mike Patton's ever done, until this album, I've found worthless and frequently masturbatory.)

Saw Cecil Taylor at Iridium last night. It was a trio date, which was good; his big orchestral things always fall flat for me. I don't know who his current bassist and drummer are. The last time I saw him, he was using Dominic Duval and Jay Rosen, but this wasn't them. I kind of missed Duval bowing frantically, sweating through his black T-shirt as his ponytail bounced around. This guy was a little too hippieish for me; he liked to play this thing that looked like a bowl with a bunch of slim metal rods around its rim - he'd bow the rods to get a weird violin-like sound, or tap the bowl for some other semi-wavery ringing tone. When he actually played the bass, he was much better. The drummer was too busy. Sometimes he had something to contribute, but for most of the set, I tuned him out and focused on Cecil.

Taylor was in top form. The first, 35-minute piece began with a brief poem (and some of that weird thing the bassist liked), but quickly became a typical Taylor tidal wave of sound. Watching his hands fly across the keyboard, in total control at blinding speed, is really one of the most intense live-art experiences you can have.

The second piece was just as good, if slightly mellower. There was more space between notes, and little melodies repeated throughout, with slight but significant variation. One of the friends who came with me was reminded of Debussy.

It was a good show, and it was good to get out of the house. I went to Kim's, too, and picked up some CDs:

Earth, Living In The Gleam Of An Unsheathed Sword
Bo Diddley, The Best Of Bo Diddley: The Millennium Collection
Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz, We Run The South
Cold Bleak Heart, It's Magnificent, But It Isn't War

And I got the new issues of Harper's and The Atlantic. Harper's promised a piece by Colson Whitehead on going to the movies, and they delivered, but I was disappointed. It's more of a prose poem about the experience of moviegoing than, say, a critique of contemporary cinema, which is what I actually wanted. (I still remember his writing for Spin.) The rest of the issue looks to be the usual warmed-over half-baked lefty crap, that chases away half its potential audience by its sheer obtuseness. And The Atlantic is its usual (current) crypto-right-wing self, including an article about how a Harvard education ain't all that. What the fuck ever.

SUMMARY OF CURRENT ACTIVITIES

I'm revising my novel, hoping to finish by the beginning of May.

I'm starting another book, to be co-written with an online buddy who's way funnier than me (which is good, since the book is intended humorously).

I'm freelancing for Cheri, Celebrity Skin, The Wire, the Cleveland Scene, the East Bay Express, Jazziz, Revolver, and the Village Voice. If I could find more outlets willing to publish my writing, I'd write for 'em.

Plus, I've started an MP3 blog here, because the MP3-blog community badly needs an injection of raw metal.

Oh, and I'm currently reading Robert Neuwirth's Shadow Cities, part of that 50-books-a-year deal, I guess.

THIS POST NEEDED A TITLE, SO HERE IT IS

Hey, remember American Head Charge? No? Well, they're back, and they've got Otep and Candiria with 'em. (Otep's actually the headliner, I think, but whatever.)

The Village Voice Pazz 'n' Jop critics' poll is also back.

Here's how I voted.

Here's the ballot that crystallizes all the reasons people hate the Voice and the critical community that hovers around it.

FREE FINANCIAL ADVICE

Here's a link to a review of the new Behemoth album. It's really good. You should go buy it.

You should also buy the new High On Fire album, which came out on Tuesday.

I didn't write this review, but I did contribute to the book that is its subject. The book's good. Go buy that, too.