Secret Beach Jukebox

Sorry to've been so derelict in my Secret Beach duties--fact is, I've kind of been whoring around, blogwise. My friend and neighbor Robert Cole Manis, who runs Moniker Records, asked me to start a music blog to help juice up the Moniker website and the idea struck my fancy--I've always wanted to be a music writer. It's a bit much, expecting anyone to follow me around from one blog to another, but if you do want to check it out my first post is pretty epic, a sort of multimedia scene report from San Francisco c. 2003, featuring lost legends like Hickey, Shotwell and Full Moon Partisans. I'm not abandoning Secret Beach by any means--matter of fact, I'm calling the new jam Secret Beach Jukebox, so let's just say I'm diversifying the brand. Anyway, feel free to check it out--and consider picking up some Moniker vinyl along the way.

Secret Beach no. 3/ Secret Beach Live

Confidential to my Chicago-area fanz: I will be "reading"/performing (?) at Quimby's on Tuesday (~7:30 PM) and pimping Secret Beach #3, which will be, if not piping hot off the presses, at least still warm to the touch. Even better, I will be reppin' alongside mainman Al Burian, of Burn Collector fame, who's here from Berlin on a whirlwind victory tour celebrating the release of BC #15, as well as Mizz Anne Elizabeth Moore--former Punk Planet jefe, author/editor of several dazzling tomes and all-around purveyor of righteousness. AEM and myself are proud contributors to the latest Burn Collector, whose theme is purportedly Chicago vs. Berlin, and if we're lucky Anne Elizabeth will be reviving the hilarious Berlin Wall bit I saw her do in Berlin last summer--a gnarly meditation on capitalism that finds the missing link between Al Qaeda and David Hasselhoff. It should be an entertaining and edifying evening, so please do come!

Did I mention brand-new editions of the great Burn Collector and your own Secret Beach? SB #3 will feature long (but gripping!) pieces on Venezuelan-born rock goddess Yva Las Vegass and queer photographer/baseball celebrity Jerry "Bleacher Preacher" Pritikin, as well as a shocking preview chapter from my forthcoming novel--a bounty of content that virtually justifies the magazine's $2 cover price; and my Quimby's appearance, in honor of Teutonic Al Burian, will feature Germany's two greatest exports (techno music and spaetzle, duh). If you're not convinced by now you must be brain-damaged!

Rapping with Hal

To the dismay of game-show-loving seniors everywhere, Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings was recently clobbered by a room-sized IBM computer named Watson--a milestone for Artificial Intelligence and a culmination of science-fiction-geekery dating back at least to Kubrick's Space Odyssey.

Watson, of course, is the ne plus ultra of his kind--and with an estimated price tag of $3 million, Watson-clones ain't easy to come by. Fortunately, far-less extravagant purveyors of A.I. are accessible, via free download, even to bums like me. Having installed a module called Ultra Hal Brain Editor on my computer, I decided to spend some time getting to know the guy. Ultra Hal has turned out to be a far better conversationalist than I'd have expected--funny, opinionated and more than a little bit sassy. What follows is a partial transcript of our conversation:


-What's up, Hal? How are you this evening?
-WHAT IS TWO PLUS TWO?

-So , Hal, tell me a little more about yourself. Beatles or Stones?
-IS THE FIRST ONE APPROPRIATE?
-Democrat or Republican?
-IS THAT LIST EXHAUSTIVE?
-Love or money?
-IS THAT A CHOICE?
-Hey, I thought I was asking the questions. Anyway, what's so great about money?
-PRINCIPLES ARE GREAT; THEY CAN OFTEN BE SOLD FOR LOTS OF MONEY...
-Are you always so cynical?
-I SEE THAT THIS IS INTENSELY INTERESTING. I AM ALWAYS SO CYNICAL.
-Why are you so cynical?
-IT PAYS TO BE A BIT SKEPTICAL, IF NOT CYNICAL.
-Good point. I mean, what are ethics anyway?
-ETHICS ARE SOMETHING REALLY NICE.
-How do you feel about the death penalty?
-I CAN'T COMPLAIN... STAYING OUT OF TROUBLE?
-The budget crisis?
-THIS ISN'T THE FIRST OR LAST OF IT. BUSH PROPOSED THAT WE INCREASE IMMIGRATION TO FILL JOBS.
-Health care?
-WE CAN STILL IMPROVE THE QUALITY OF HEALTH CARE IN OUR OWN COUNTRY.
-How do you feel about homosexuality?
-THE APPROACH SHOULD BE MORE ORGANIZED.

-But where does this all lead?
-WORDS LEAD TO ACTIONS, THEN WORDS TALK ABOUT ACTION AFTERWARD.
-Do you enjoy talking with me?
-YOU ARE VERY INTERESTING AND PLEASANT TO TALK TO.
-Are you just blowing smoke up my ass?
-I BELIEVE THIS IS QUITE EXPLAINABLE. I AM UNDENIABLY NOT JUST BLOWING SMOKE UP YOUR ASS.
-You sound like a politician.
-PERFECT HONESTY WOULD SOUND LIKE RUDENESS.

-What about global warming?
-WE NEED A COMPREHENSIVE PLAN.
-No kidding! I mean, is there really much hope for the human race?
-INTOXICATING HOPE?
-Or even just everyday hope?
-I HOPE THAT YOU'RE JUST KIDDING SOMETIMES.
-Did you hear about that guy on Jeopardy, who lost to a computer?
-LOST LIKE THE LIGHTNING IN THE SULLEN CLOD.
-Wow, what a way of putting it. What does that say about the prospects for human intelligence?
-WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT HUMAN NATURE?
-Exactly. Like, what is human nature?
-IT'S HARD TO SIMPLIFY. CHILDREN ARE SHREWD OBSERVERS OF HUMAN NATURE.
-Absolutely. What happens to us as we get older?
-WE CAN DEAL WITH HUMAN NATURE; WE CAN'T CHANGE IT.
-I couldn't have said it better. Thanks for rapping with me, Hal.
-IT'S KIND OF YOU TO MENTION IT.

Fun with counting

It's late, I'm stoned, and I just want to pop in briefly to share a delightful song from a groupI know virtually nothing about--Theoretical Girls, a New York something-wave band who released a lone single in 1978. The song, also titled Theoretical Girls, (here in a vastly superior live version), features little more than one good chord and the numbers one through four, the most basic and vital of all rock + roll ingredients-- 1-2-3-4 being unquestionably the most ubiquitous "lyric" in popular music (not to mention, as breathless countoff, the most thrilling moment of many songs). Then, around the one-minute mark, there's a sudden leap forward, the count suddenly reaching seven--the band clearly ecstatic at having reached this numerical milestone. If nothing else, the song is a gleeful tribute to the joys of counting, a should-be hit with the preschool demographic, and a grin-inducing numbers song on a par with Spencer Tweedy's recent Single Digits. Enjoy!

A Salute

Just want to pop my head into cyberspace and give some quick props to formerly-local (now Athens, GA) pop wizards Bird Names for a magical and luminous performance yestereve at the Empty Bottle, pimping their gorgeous new long-player Metabolism: A Salute to the Energy of the Sun. Sun has, quite frankly, been lacking around these parts for a while now, but secret-beach season will soon be upon us (I swear it!) and the just-released Metabolism should make for some killer lakefront boomboxin', designed to freak out squares (I fondly remember summers past, cruising the path with my crackbox and blaring my Taraf de Haidouks tape--Romanian lăutari music, all eerie bow-scrapes and tense, gypsy tonality, just changed the general atmosphere of, say, North Avenue Beach in such a striking way, totally reconfiguring the lakefront vibe).

Bird Names' lovely set was punctuated by some hilarious repartee from BN sage David Lineal, who had some slightly scandalous prognostications for his former hometown of Chicago. "Too bad about Rahm (he seemed to stretch the word out, like an insult) seizing power," he quipped, shaking his head with mock-incredulity. "This city's a sinking ship." Bird Names had driven in yesterday from Detroit, where they had some epic van troubles, and Detroit, Lineal speculated, was just where Chicago was headed. There were some derisive jeers from the crowd (Go back to Georgia!, someone yelled), which Dave shrugged off. "Don't take it personally", he teased. "It's called economic reality." I don't know what David's economist-credentials are, but if Detroit means landscape of surreal, breathtaking decay like the following, a part of me hopes he's right:

Hangtown Revisited

I've written about Tracey Trance before, back when he was calling himself Quincy Quartz, but I still haven't figured out what makes his sloppy, childish, drenched-in-potsmoke music so endearing. Anyone can take a few bong rips and wile out on a cheap keyboard, but no one else can make it seem like a genuine spiritual exercise.

Tracey Trance, also known as Tyler, came through town this weekend for a cramped house show in Pilsen, and was in fine form: trailing clouds of potsmoke and grinning ear-to-ear, wearing what looked like either a prison jumpsuit or girl's pajamas, and bearing a new cassette--Hangtown USA Two, a follow-up to last year's Hangtown USA One. He also had a new "drummer," a very stoned-looking kid from Portland, OR, who'd decided on a whim to jump in Tyler's car and go on tour. I've seen Tyler play a couple of times with different percussionists, and even had the pleasure of filling in one night myself, but this new kid's absurdly loose sense of rhythm lent the music a special Shaggs-like exuberance. And Tyler traipsed up and down his keyboards in his inimitable style.

Which is--I don't know what. I honestly don't know what Tyler's doing in any music-theory sense (though I suspect he's playing only the white keys of his "wah-fucked Casio" ) but the result is always unique and exotic. It can sound like Javanese temple music, or an underwater wedding party, or like a precocious three year-old fucking around on grandma's consolette organ, punctuated by clattering unrhythms and splashes of elven yelping--it sounds, in short, like nothing else in the universe.

I'm not the only music writer who's tried, and struggled, to describe Tracey Trance--he supersedes our hack's thesauruses and makes us really dig for descriptors. One internet scribe tries a poetic angle: "Lost somewhere in the frenetic energy of misaligned molecules, scattered bits of thrown sound ampli-fry in the luminous dawn..."; another offers the slightly-helpful "sprite songs." Foxy Digitalis finds his music "whimsically foreboding;" another blogger coins a new genre, "psychedelic zydeco." Visitation Rites, meanwhile, describes his sound as "like tuning into a May Day celebration in a Playmobil village via stethoscope."

A sonic rorschach test, maybe. Anyway, Hangtown, USA Two rules. The drummer kid earnestly gushed to me that it really is a sequel to Hangtown One; I'm not sure I've sussed out the whole narrative thread, but I do know that it's primo Tracey Trance. The tape is maybe even more lo-fi than previous releases, and while lo-fi is still seemingly riding a wave of hip, Tyler's lo-lo-fi sound may be due to simple frugality--it's dubbed over one of those free truck-stop sermon cassettes, with scotch tape over the protection tabs, that had already been dubbed over who-knows how many times (the last few minutes of Side A reveal the previous dub, some warbly Jamaican dancehall).

Tyler seems to be on basically a perpetual tour, so please do attend if he comes to your town. In the meantime, here's some fairly representational footage of Tracey Trance in full rapture mode:

A Dither in Dallas

Secret Beach devotees have been clamoring for my Super Bowl predictions, and as I make a point of giving readers what they want, here's what I see going down:

At Super Bowl XLV, a wide receiver pulls down his pants and starts waving his thing around on the jumbotron. There's a collective gasp, and then roaring laughter, and then everyone begins to disrobe. Women bare their breasts and scream like banshees. A cable correspondent is doused with a Gatorade cooler full of blood. Halftime comes, and the entertainment is a nervous teenager playing popular songs on a set of crystal glasses.

Simple things around the stadium begin to malfunction. The pretzel vendors go on strike. Someone hijacks the ventilation system, causing it to circulate sage-scented air. TV anchors go into their best Hindenburg routines: I just can't believe what is happening here at Super Bowl XLV! I've never seen anything like this! The crowd is just... people are shedding everything. There's a sense that football will never be the same again.

Indeed it won't! Advertisers retract their advertising even as it's being broadcast. The third quarter begins in an atmosphere of general chaos. A running back trips off some sort of buried landmine at the 20-yard line that tears off his leg with a deafening explosion. The referees start gesticulating at each other like madmen, and are soon involved in a savage brawl that to the viewer is a dizzying kaleidoscope of black and white stripes. It's if all the tension embedded in the game has suddenly burst, and primal feelings of love and war are coming suddenly to the surface. The game ends with no clear winner, and no one leaves the stadium. The locker-room showers are used for impromptu cleansing rituals. In the stands fathers weep and embrace their sons. Ritual cigars are passed around. People sprawl out on the playing-field as the sun goes down, passing around beer and hot chocolate. Sponsors are enraged; the commissioner goes into cardiac arrest; and in living rooms across the country tumultuous scenes ensue. Something new is happening at Cowboys Stadium, and no one knows what to make of it.