BLAME CANADA

My write-up of the new Kataklysm disc, in the Cleveland Scene.

FLAMENCO IZ THA SHIT, YO

Last night my wife and I saw the Ballet Flamenco de Anadalucia at New York City Center (roughly around the corner from Carnegie Hall). A male and a female lead dancer (the female lead was Cristina Hoyos, who choreographed the whole thing), seven male backing dancers, and seven female backing dancers. They performed a three-part piece that had a little Martha Graham in it, and a little Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, but was mostly pure flamenco dancin'. The music was two guitarists, a percussionist, and three vocalist/clappers. Plus lots of clapping from the dancers, and castanets from the female dancers. I'm on a big flamenco jag lately, and this kicked much ass. (I also saw guitarist Juan Carmona at Globalfest at Joe's Pub, and he was fucking amazing, but his new album, Sinfonia Flamenca, features an orchestra behind him, and it's a little too lush for my taste, not nearly as raw and burnin' as the show. See him if he comes on tour, and find the older albums.)

The vocalists were almost totally unhinged, which was great. I like flamenco's vocals because the melodic progressions are unfamiliar; they don't follow, for example, the traditional expected rise-and-fall of the blues, which is inbred into Americans at this point. You know when a blues singer's gonna take it out, for the most part. With these flamenco guys (and girl), I couldn't predict which direction their vocal lines were gonna go, or when they were gonna get all screamy, so it was like free jazz in a way, and just as compelling as seeing a saxophonist go into the stratosphere right before your eyes at the Vision Festival or the Village Vanguard. The guitarists were fantastic, too, slapping those steel strings around in an almost Albini-like manner. If you want a CD that has nothing to do with the show I saw last night, but contains all the good qualities I'm talking about, pick up the new self-titled releas by Son de la Frontera, on World Village. Highly, highly recommended.

THANKS FOR NOTICING

Why, no, there hasn't been much activity here lately. I'm busy writing other things besides blog posts, is why...an essay on Gaucho for that book I'm editing (now that I don't have to write a whole book on it, or my other proposed subject From Elvis In Memphis, for the 33 1/3 series), various contributions to the magazine I edit for a full-time paycheck, freelance record reviews 'n' whatnot for Alternative Press and The Wire and the Village Voice and the Cleveland Scene and Jazziz and Relix, and interning at night so I can get my audio engineering certificate. Oh, and maybe finishing the book I started a few months back, which I'm just over 100 pages into (depending on which font I choose to use on the laptop) and which I have completely plotted out...it's just a matter of finding a spare moment to actually pound out a page or two a night for, say, three or four months straight.

But I am gonna come back and talk bullshit about some tedious thing or another in this spot sometime soon, really. So stay tuned.

VITAL SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

Getting a piglet drunk, then firing it out of a cannon.

MOVIE MEMORIES

The first two movies I ever saw in theaters were Pinocchio and the 70s remake of King Kong. Up here in NY/NJ, Channel 9 (used to be WOR, is currently UPN, will probably soon be WOR again) showed King Kong, Son Of Kong and Mighty Joe Young back-to-back every Thanksgiving, and I remember watching them with my brother at my grandmother's house several years in a row. The only drive-in movie I've ever seen was Up In Smoke (double-billed with Reefer Madness), and this was first-run, so I was sitting in the back of the car with absolutely no idea what was going on while my dad laughed it up and my mom giggled a little at a couple of things. The movies that remain strongest in my kid-brain are E.T., which I didn't much like at the time and saw again recently because my wife had never seen it before (it hasn't improved, and she absolutely didn't give a shit when he died, which I kinda admire in a first-time viewer); and a bunch of the crappy early 80s 3-D movies (Jaws 3-D, Metalstorm: The Something Of Jared-Syn, The Last Dragon, and particularly Parasite, which scared my brother and me so badly we had to leave the theater while my dad made fun of us). Of all of those, the only one I still like is The Last Dragon, which was on Univision a few weeks ago - it's even better in Spanish.

In high school, when most of my nerdy friends were memorizing Monty Python dialogue, I knew every line from Repo Man. I still use "Plato Shrimp" as a pseudonym for porn stuff occasionally.