This is the, what, third time I’ve referenced Sesame Street on this blog. I love Sesame Street. If I wasn’t a lame 9-to-5er, I would still watch it. So today’s news roundup is brought to you by the letter B – Boredoms, Benoit Pioulard, Boduf Songs, Bedhead, the /b/ board, baseball, booters, and the Bear Market Bailout. Botta bing!
Anyway, there are so many songs (11 MP3s to be exact), and so much content here, that I have no idea what to categorize this entry as. So consider this your News and Super Swingin’ Mix for the day. I’m not posting again today, this post is epic and I’m tired.
Let’s do this like Buddhists…But first, since we’re still somewhat on the topic of Sesame Street, peep this article: “Big Brother and Big Bird.” Grover is droppin’ a new book about how to prepare for emergencies and terrorist attacks. The end is nigh, no matter what your age!
Now back onto music, let’s talk about Boredoms. The truth is – no other band generates as much excitement for the Gregorian Calendar as Boredoms.
As you may recall, Boredoms (or Vooredoms… like Prince and/or Ol’ Dirty Bastard, I’m never sure what they want to be called) revamped their original 77 drummers on 7/7/07 event with this year’s 88 Boadrums in New York and Los Angeles. Rumors about some sort of DVD for either performance have lingered for quite some time, since one was screened earlier this year. Luckily, all that waitin’ with bated breath has paid off, as the documentary DVD for the original 77 Boadrums event in Brooklyn is here. And guess what! It’s conveniently called 77 Boadrum! And it conveniently costs a shit-ton of money!
No worries though. Our do vs. don’t friends at Vice have the entire movie streaming here. Or you can watch it here and say “whuddup” to my friend Tom.
However, if you’re a Boredoms completist, or if you have a George Lucas-esque Dolby 12.1 (or whatever) entertainment center and want to experience the event as only better living through technology can provide, you can make a purchase here for just shy of $70 USD. Is the 88 Boadrums documentary soon to follow? Will they have another go for 9/9/09? Will they expand it further and hit every major city throughout the globe next year? Will Boredoms clinch more than ten drummers for 10/10/10? Stayed tuned! Same bore time, same bore channel.
In the meantime, if you’re one of our friends livin’ large in the +000 GMT zone, you can catch a couple of dates next month. Only three drummers for this tour, but hey, Three’s Company, amirite?
10.18.08 – Groningen, Netherlands – Vera
10.19.08 – Hasslet, Belgium – KC Belgie
10.20.08 – Kortrijk, Belgium – Sonic City Festival
10.22.08 – Manchester, England – Academy
10.13.08 – Glasgow, Scotland – Arches
10.24.08 – Aberdeen, England – Moshulu
10.26.08 – London, England – The Wire/Electra Festival
10.28.08 – Dublin, Ireland – Deaf Festival
10.30.08 – Cardiff, Wales – The Point
Finally, if you’re also thirsting for a taste of what 88 Boadrums was like, don’t forget the eight videos that I have over here. And at the end of the page, you can enjoy 12 big minutes of “Super Going.” SHINE IN! SHINE ON!
It’s hard trying to discover news bands for this blog, as I’d rather just listen candy-ass ’60s psych pop all day and be done with it. But Boduf Songs grabbed my attention a la Raven Sings the Blues. Boduf Songs has a serious For Carnation and Bedhead thing going, which is great. I miss slowcore, especially after Low discovered caffeine in 2005. Moody, stark, atmospheric… all that jazz. And of course, it’s on Kranky. You can pick up a copy of his latest, Lion Devours the Sun, there as well.
And since we’re rollin’ with B, how about I post some aforementioned Bedhead up in here as well. Nobody writes about Bedhead anymore, and they were the original restrainers. Find it below. And let’s sling a For Carnation track up here too, for the fun of it. Ballin’.
Nice flora, dude! Ann Arbor-cum-Portland dream folk wrecker Benoit Pioulard has a big ol’ sophomore record dropping next month called Temper, and it’s going to be fantastic. “Ragged Tint” brings the John Fahey meets Slowdive feel of Precis, one of the best of 2006. His musical pallet has expanded since then, as has his musical dexterity, proving Benoit Pioulard to be a sort of sinister, paranoia-inspired baroque pop composer, like Love on a bad, bad trip. Daring and delicious. Temper is also on Kranky (no pun intended), cuz Kranky just kranks out the hits lolz (pun intended).
Eeeh, that was bad. Anyway, no pre-order option yet on the label’s site, so head over to Amazon if you want to grip it before it comes out… which you do. These fools smoke Grizzly Bear. I also included a track from Precis because that LP brings the pain.
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Now I’d like to talk about some not-really-related-to-music news stories, and attempt to connect them to some jams. Yes, I know I’m swingin’ hard on Swan Fungus‘ balls with the whole news+MP3 gig. But hey, I can’t write about zone out times all the time, right? I like to be an informed citizen able to actively contribute to democracy, so I read the news, and have thoughts on it. These thoughts consequently end up on my blog. Deal. Fucked up news coupled with fucked up music – you can’t get more psych than that.
Kids playing at home – see if you can match up the songs provided with the news story they correspond to! (PROTIP: the corresponding songs are in order, from top to bottom, exactly as the stories appear in this post)
I probably shouldn’t mention this, but I do troll the /b/ board on 4chan.org. Don’t hold it against me. As such, I have a completely different view of Yahoogate.
Last week, /b/ (also known as the Internet group Anonymous who fucks with the Church of Scientology and a variety of other organizations) hacked into Sarah Palin’s email account. You probably heard about it, but if you didn’t, the timeline is mapped out here, and the subsequent saga is outlined here (with screen caps).
Despite being a pretty big fan of the Fourth Amendment, I found this hilarious. Moreover, when you become a public figure, you pretty much fofeit your privacy, so that’s how I justify the entertainment of the “hacking.” Plus, Palin scares the shit out of me (banning books? is this Fahrenheit 451?). It’s rather annoying, though, to read all these news articles talking about Anonymous being liberal hackers, cyber terrorists, or a rigid organization with some sort of agenda. No, that’s not it at all, and most of these reporters did absolutely no research into the history and general ethos of the image board.
In the storied tradition of Ebaum’s World, Something Awful, and the like, 4chan is autonomous entertainment. It’s an image board and nothing more – you post funny and fucked up pictures, you laugh, you ridicule, you amuse yourself, you amuse others, and you find ways to get your kicks. The only lofty goal that binds /b/ and Anonymous is its anti-censorship stance, but otherwise, anything else goes. Case in point, Scientology represents censorship. So does Sarah Palin. But ultimately, most Anonymous call to arms are executed for the sole purpose of seeing if it can be done. Mission Accomplished? Lulz. Mission Not Accomplished? Epic Fail. It’s as simple as that. It’s subversive, it’s offensive, and if you’re thick-skinned, it’s fun. But Anonymous is not a political group. Last week’s Palin Email free-for-all was not a political move (despite the claim that the “hacker” was the son of a Tennessee Democratic lawmaker), and it’s not supposed to be representative of anything other than 4chan proved Sarah Palin to be none too good at Intarwebz.
The “person of interest” (I don’t think he’s exactly a “suspect” yet) might not have even hacked into the account, as this blogger demonstrates that you could retrieve a password from Yahoo if you did enough research into publicly available information about a public figure’s personal life and answered the password retrieval security questions. Fail safe, indeed. But mostly fail.
So the moral of the story? Um, I guess there isn’t one, other than reporters are also not very good at Intarwebz. In general, when you see a bizarre image on here and you wondered where it came from, chances are over 9,000 that it came from 4chan.
Big week in baseball, with Yankee Stadium closing up shop, and here in Chicago, those Go Cubbies snagged the NL Central title over the weekend. Unfortunately/fortunately, I don’t care. Not to sound like an old curmudgeon, but you can’t do anything on the north side when the Cubbies are home. Shorty and I tried to see the new Coen Brothers film this weekend, Burn After Reading, to see if the CoBros remembered how to tell a good story (since they seemingly forgot last year with their stinker No Country for Old Poop). By the way, the Kenny Bloggins verdict on Burn After Reading: very good. Anyway, I don’t know where I was going with this, except to curse the Cubs and their benign bladerdash.
Oh yeah… so growing up, I loved baseball, and had allegiances to the Indians and the Reds, depending on which league I was feelin’ that day. I liked Daryl Strawberry a lot, in part due to his prowess at the game, but mostly for snortin’ rails in the bullpen. America’s pastime is innately, and often unintentionally, hilarious. However, my favorite baseball player of all time is Dock Ellis of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Ellis has the distinct pleasure of being the first baseball player in history known to be under the effects of psychedelics during game play. LSD, specifically. He also has the distinction of being the first baseball player on LSD to pitch a no-hitter against the Padres.
Cue June 12, 1970. Ellis drops acid on a day when he didn’t think he was playing. He, of course, found out shortly before game time that he was totally mistaken. So like a good trooper, he showed up to play, swirly colors and light tracers be damned.
“I can only remember bits and pieces of the game. I was psyched. I had a feeling of euphoria.
I was zeroed in on the [catcher's] glove, but I didn’t hit the glove too much. I remember hitting a couple of batters and the bases were loaded two or three times.
The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn’t. Sometimes I tried to stare the hitter down and throw while I was looking at him. I chewed my gum until it turned to powder. They say I had about three to four fielding chances. I remember diving out of the way of a ball I thought was a line drive. I jumped, but the ball wasn’t hit hard and never reached me.”
- Dock Ellis on pitching with his third eye wide open
For these reasons three, I want his baseball card. Next up, Michael Phelps reveals his photo finish win under the influence of purple drank. Screeeeeewed.
I’m about to get all Bruce Springsteen on that ass, so let me preface with a little HTML <rant> tag…
So last week, a booter was shot on Chicago’s south side, and is still in hospital. What’s a booter, you ask? Well, a booter is one who boots your car. Specifically, a booter is an employee of the City of Chicago’s Department of Revenue. After three accumulated parking tickets, a DoR representative will visit your car and attach a big yellow Denver Boot to your front drivers’ side tire. Then, they present to you a big orange sticky note on your windshield that reads like it was penned by Darth Vader: “Your vehicle has been immobilized by the City of Chicago.” The police don’t do this, interestingly, it’s exclusively the jurisdiction of the Department of Revenue, and as such, parking ticket issuing is strictly a business venture over law enforcement. We can thank Mayor Richard M. Daley for that, pictured below as both a caricature and a pretty vile man who laughs at us Plebeians.
The notion of parking in Chicago is a strange thing. Chicago is in a sort of nether region between New York/San Francisco and Los Angeles. Chicago is not as densely designed as New York or San Francisco (where most people don’t even bother owning a car), making the notion of parking in the city plausible, but infinitely more built up and less sprawled than Los Angeles (where you need a car), making parking very difficult. As such, there are many people like me who have a car in the city, but don’t use it. I drive my car twice a month, usually for the reasons of moving it for street cleaning or the like. But if I want to leave the city, I need it. This isn’t Europe.
Chicago maintains a myriad of tricky parking regulations, and they vary from neighborhood to neighborhood. Just in my neighborhood alone, you must keep track of which streets are cleaned on which day(s) of the month, which streets have upcoming construction projects, and whether the Cubs have a home game or not, in addition to general parking no-no’s like yellow curbs and loading zones. It’s more modus operandi to have a ticket on your car than not. I usually spend about 30 minutes looking for parking. I check my car twice a week to make sure it’s still there. This is why I don’t drive.
Now, with the city strapped for cash, the DoR is becoming even more rigid in ticketing and towing cars. They’re cutting costs where they can, such as eliminating the amount of booters in a specific zone (and thus, eliminating “safety in numbers” for tougher neighborhoods), and coming up with extremely corrupt schemes to quickly and surreptitiously ticket cars. The Expired Meter has a great story about an “uprising” in Pilsen when they tried this and the people in the neighborhood took a stand. The police sided with the residents, and you had a clash amongst city employees. Explosive.
Most people will not fight tickets, out of hassle or lack of understanding that they indeed can fight, so this is a great way to generate extra income. One of the reasons the aforementioned Expired Meter exists is to give the public information on how to fight tickets and other violation notices. And they’ve found that there’s a disturbingly high percentage of completely bogus tickets issued, with the mindset that most people will just tuck their tail inward and pay the fee.
Which brings to me the point concerning the aforementioned assault. Certainly this story raises safety concerns, and like repo men, a booter is a dangerous position to hold. Dangerous enough to where the city issues bulletproof vests and equips DoR vans with security cameras.
Another important aspect of this story that has not, to my knowledge, been discussed is what this story says about public reaction toward overzealous municipal policies. This is the general policy in Chicago: when the city needs money, instead of cutting out pork barrel projects or adjusting budgets and salaries, they go after motorists, common people, first.
In doing this, the city illustrates a textbook example of class struggle. The wealthy can afford to shell out $200+ per month for personal parking, or own luxury condos that come equipped with a parking garage. As for the rest of us, we deffer our automobiles to the street curb.
Mayor Daley’s response to complaints about booting policy is, verbatim: “just pay your parking tickets.” Sure, a 6-year-old could understand that. But it’s not that easy. Each ticket usually costs between $30 and $100, and doubles within a month. If you can’t afford parking, that suggests that you live somewhat hand-to-mouth. Your car is boot eligible after three tickets (and because of the current economic crunch, an ordinance is being reviewed in council to lower that number to two). Not everyone can drop this money immediately. These are, obviously, hard times for many people – people who work full time but still have trouble getting the bills paid. If you can’t pay your tickets, the city will boot and tow your car, so add a $60 boot fee and a $150 impoundment fee to whatever your parking violations fees add up to.
Now let’s go to the south side. South Chicago has a lot of poorer, economically devastated neighborhoods – just like the one where the booter was shot. You see many of these people in a pretty desperate situation, people who were not granted privileges in their life (contrast to neighborhoods like Lincoln Park, where most people are the dreaded “trust fund babies” and sit around in cafes all day). You have lots of people that just lost their retirement this month. You have people who can’t afford to live in their homes anymore, due to internal forces such as a personal employment issue, or external issues, such as gentrification. All that shit compounds on the collective psyche of a community. And to top it all off, here comes the Department of Revenue wanting a few hundred dollars from you for keeping something you own, your car, inside the city proper, because the municipal government cannot manage their funds. So what does that lead to? The person who represents these trumped-up parking policies, a DoR working man who has nothing to do with these policies and is just putting food on his table, is shot in the lower back.
This isn’t just an issue of “oh snap, south Chicago is crayyy-zeeee,” this is a reaction to governmental numbskullery. This is a reaction to a pristine example of injustice and a city government run amock. This is a reaction to the innate socioeconomic bias in the city’s parking regulations. “Just pay your tickets.” If people could, they would – if for no other reason to avoid the hassle. But many can’t, and when you reach a dead end, you make irrational choices. That’s the issue here. The city would do good to take notice of this, both the logistical and safety concerns of their city employees, as well as the message sent from the citizens they govern.
It’s just a cryin’ shame that this DoR employee had to pay the price for corruption. And it makes me want to jettison the fuck out of Chicago very soon.
Anyway, if you have a moment, and especially if you live in Chicago, please sign this petition to express your disapproval over the proposed booting ordinance.
</rant>
Finally, OMG BEAR MARKET! I don’t remember a whole lot from my college Macroeconomics class, other than it was a difficult-ass 50 minutes of my life thrice a week. However, the Huffington Post’s 23/6 breaks down our troublesome economic landscape rather nicely:
While Lehman Brothers is going down, down, down in flames, the Decibel Tolls is going no where but up in readership and Technorati scores. Now is the time, says baldyman Jim Kramer – buy, buy, buy stock in the Decibel Tolls. Q4 is lookin’ reaaaaal good from here.
MP3 :::
Boredoms – Super Going
Boduf Songs – Mission Creep
Boduf Songs – I Can’t See a Thing in Here
Bedhead – Left Behind
The For Carnation – Tales (From the Crypt)
Benoit Pioulard – Ragged Tint
Benoit Pioulard – Together and Down
Deerhunter – Backspace Century
Animal Collective – Runnin’ the Round Ball
The Seeds – Pushin’ Too Hard
Indian Jewelry – Seasonal Economy
