Sam’s Place

E took the baby to the inlaws for a few days so I could study for the Series 65 exam. The investing parts were OK but the irrelevant regulations made my eyes pull back into my head. But I passed the test today. I don’t have to read boring stuff anymore.

My MySpace site is now up & running. Now I just need to customize it a little to make it less ugly.

I realize that I forgot to mention Ben Riseling, now of The Wigg Report, & now living in North Carolina. At least he’s not (back) in Brooklyn like everyone else. He played sax on the Tyler recording.

So I went ahead & set up a MySpace music site using the Tyler recordings. It’s a mess right now, can’t even post a blog message there for some reason, but it’s a start.

The Tyler project was Dennis & me from the Sarnos plus a number of other people who I’ve lost track of. Let’s see how many I can find. There was Tod Preuss on drums, formerly of A Subtle Plague (did those guys move back to Germany or something?). He went on The Sarnos last mini-tour up the West Coast, then recorded for the Tyler project. I googled his name & saw other recording projects of his but no website for him. MySpace lists someone w/ his name, around the right age, in Everett WA, but it’s just a shell account w/ no other info.

Adam Cohen/ Adam Elk, ex-Mommyhead — he produced about 1/2 the songs, played instruments, sang, etc. I viewed him as Mr Music but he seems to have quit when the ’90s rolled over. I know he moved to LA, then back to Brooklyn, & I googled that he recorded a couple of songs w/ ex-Mommyhead Michael Holt (who lives in Toronto) in 2004, but that’s it.

Jeff Palmer produced the songs Adam didn’t & he played coconuts or something on the song “Acoustic Coconuts and Moonbeams.” Jeff’s been in more bands than anyone else & now plays w/ Radar Bros., & records w/ Greg Freeman (who we recorded w/) as Checksum.

Jen Clapp sang on some of the Tyler songs, including her angelic bridge on the song I’m calling “Open the Dirge,” available on my MySpace page. Her husband, ex-Mommyhead, Dan Fisherman is drumming w/ her now, & they live back East, instead of a block from me, where they used to lived. That means that all of the Mommyheads have left San Francisco.

Alice Bierhorst sang w/ Jen, & she’s in New York now too, & I see she’s still playing music w/ Jen & Michael Holt.

Jeff Krebs sang on a few songs, & played Middle Eastern banjo on one. He also was my co-worker & helped get me my job at Red & White Fleet many years ago. He moved to Michigan, plays solo & w/ the band Bourbon Sprawl. In the ’80s he was in SF band The Easy Hoes, w/ that guy from Everclear, & w/ Kim Rohrbach, who later played in the band Four Eyes w/ members of Red House Painters but who appears to be no longer performing music, but who is still in SF, & is known in Noe Valley for her Real Foods organizing drive. (I used to work there too.)

Raul Navarrette played trombone, & I see he’s playing latin music in NY now (w/ no website).

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Also, The Colonial West

and Norad 9/11 over at the Antiwar.com blog.

Previous episode here: http://www.samkoritz.com/?p=83

You can see where this is going: both of my acquaintances, my boss & my buddy, who killed themselves apparently had mental suicide soundtracks. Which got me thinking about how easy it is for people to be swayed. Movies, for example, are absurd. We watch them knowing that the actors are pretending, the same plots are rehashed over & over again, yet we pay good money to be emotionally manipulated. (My cousin Nan Goldin wrote that the moment just before a movie starts is when she’s most happy — or something like that.) And music plays an important part in making movies work. Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the tv show) quickly moves from comedy to melodrama to horror, & after watching the episodes a 2nd or 3rd time you start to notice how, for example in ”The Zeppo,” the sappy romantic music drops out mid-scene to mock the show’s own overheatedness.

Scientists are divided about why music exists. Some intriguing info from “Sorry, Maestro Barenboim. Music is for idiots and Neanderthals,” by Terence Kealey, The Times:

Geoffrey Miller has examined the gender and age of the singers of 6,000 recent jazz, rock and classical albums, and showed that 90 per cent of commercial songs are produced by males, and that their peak age of production is 30 (the peak age for male success in coition, apparently).

Dr Anne Fernald has shown that babies respond appropriately, with smiles or frowns, to praise or admonishment when delivered in baby talk, even if the language is foreign. “What a good girl!,” delivered in French, provokes a happy smile in an English nursery.

Studies on mothers have shown that, in the privacy of their homes, 100% of mothers sing to their babies.

Jenny Saffron has shown that human babies are born with perfect pitch.

More music science here: http://www.progressdaily.com/?s=music.

And speaking of Buffy & singing, here’s a song from 1 of my favorite episodes, “Once More with Feeling“:

Every single night the same arrangement
I go out and fight the fight
Still, I always feel the strange estrangement
Nothing here is real,
Nothing here is right
I’ve been making shows of trading blows
Just hoping no one knows
That I’ve been

Going through the motions
Walking through the part
Nothing seems to penetrate my heart
I was always brave and kind of righteous
Now I find I’m wavering
Crawl out of your grave you’ll find this fight
Just doesn’t mean a thing

She ain’t got that swing

Thanks for noticing

She does pretty well with fiends from hell
But lately, we can tell
That she’s just

Going through the motions
Faking it somehow
She’s not even half the girl she…
Ow!

Will I stay this way forever?
Sleepwalk through my life’s endeavor

How can I repay?

Whatever
I don’t want to be

Going through the motions
Losing all my drive
I can’t even see
If this is really me
And I just wanna be
Alive

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Also, Intangible Assets http://www.progressdaily.com/2006/10/08/intangible-assets/

Previous episode here.

As I was saying, I was listening to some loud music a while back & it reminded me of a time in the early- or mid-90s when I was working at a “record store.” One evening after we closed the owner blasted Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky.” He usually didn’t play music in the store, & at no other time that I know of did he play music at a deafening volume. He shortly thereafter killed himself but it wasn’t until a few weeks ago that I made the connection, somehow.

A few years later, an acquaintance of mine gave me a tape of songs by his band. For no apparent reason he ended the tape w/ a recording by Ozzy Osbourne, “Goodbye to Romance” — video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PibEhjo54XM. Lyrics here:

Yesterday has been and gone
Tomorrow will I find the sun
Or will it rain
Everybody’s having fun
Except me, I’m the lonely one
I live in shame

I’ve been the king, I’ve been the clown
Now broken wings can’t hold me down
I’m free again
The jester with the broken crown
It won’t be me this time around
To love in vain

And I feel the time is right
Although I know that you just might say to me
What’cha gonna do
But I have to take this chance goodbye
To friends and to romance
And to all of you
Come on now

And the weather’s looking fine
And I think the sun will shine again
And I feel I’ve cleared my mind
All the past is left behind again

I say goodbye to romance, yeah
Goodbye to friends, I tell you
Goodbye to all the past
I guess that we’ll meet
We’ll meet in the end

(To be continued.)

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Plus, Women, Education & Income & Information & Decision-Making

And a new Backtalk

I just finished reading Lisa Carver’s Drugs Are Nice: A Post-Punk Memoir. If the names Costes, GG Allin, Smog, & Suckdog mean anything to you, it’s worth reading, otherwise probably not. There seems to be a trend of 30-something women writing about their youthful sex, drugs, & music/writing shenanigans. The best of these that I’ve read, imo, is Michelle Tea’s Chelsea Whistle: blue collar Massachusetts, divorced parents, weird stepdad, lesbianism, prostitution, San Francisco, spoken word, creative writing. Drugs Are Nice: “white trash” New Hampshire, divorced parents, criminal dad, performance art, Paris, music, San Francisco, prostitution, drugs, s&m, marriage, divorce, motherhood. Beth Lisick’s Everybody in the Pool: intact family, suburban California, attempted bi-sexuality, San Francisco, M. Tea’s spoken word group, creative writing, music, marriage, motherhood.

Previous episode here.

Boys Life was not the only Boston band whose singer affected an English-ish accent.  That was one of the new music memes at the time. (Gang of Four-influenced) The Proletariat, for example, managed to be a respected punk band despite their Anglo-inflected singer & propagandistic lyrics. I liked their song “Options” but thought it was unintentionally funny:

Bend my ear
Twist my arm
Tell me the options
Tell me the options
Military service
Factory employment
Welfare assistance
Tell me the options

Turns out (see Prole link above) that the band members dropped out of college & worked blue collar jobs.

(To be continued.)

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Also, More Monkeynomics

Power of Music I, II, & III 

I thought of someone else from Malden, the band Boys Life. They were a good band that made surprisingly sophisticated music, considering their home town. I thought Malden was somewhat better than Everett, which was somewhat better than Chelsea. Michelle Tea writes about moving to Everett from Chelsea briefly & feeling like she’d moved to a better place. But an early punk rock fan friend of mine from Everett transferred to a private school in Malden & got beat up & stuffed into & locked in a locker (I seem to remember that he toned down his punkness thereafter). Not much of that treatment in Everett; though I remember an old man in Brigham’s Ice Cream yelling at DD: “Why don’t you get the hell out of this country.”

Boys Life’s singer sang in a sorta British accent, bizarrely. Kinda like Psych Furs. Their lyricist/manager wrote a book of poems called Malden. Here’s one (I can relate to) called “The Savior,” about Bobby Orr & Phil Esposito:

Streets reserved seven days a week
for endless games of street hockey
tennis courts and school yards
filled with stick wielding boys
all pretending to be Bobby
Ice rinks popping up in town after town
to accommodate
all these Bobbys:
Working class kids.
Working class Bobbys.
Irish and Italian kids.
Irish and Italian Bobbys.
all Bobbys.
all
except me:
I pretended to be Phil.

I just now found out that Boys Life’s sax player later played in Black Cat Bone — a sorta goth/blues band I liked. I knew 1 or 2 of their members, because they lived & practiced near our Thayer St loft. (1 of their songs is on this comp CD.) Small world.

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Also, The Wisdom of Independent Guessing

Power of Music I & II

Norman Greenbaum grew up in Malden, Massachusetts, near my home town. Everett, Chelsea, Malden: these are cities of tens of thousands of people yet very few celebrities. Greenbaum is the only celebrity (if that’s what he is) Maldener that I’m familiar with. Everett had football player Dan Ross, who I don’t think would be considered a celebrity any more. Also actress Ellen Pompeo. DB saw her on a talk show & she said she’s from “Boston.” At least one online source says she was born in Everett but lived in NY as a child.

Chelsea spawned Chick Corea, Scientologist jazz keyboardist. And terrific memoirist Michelle Tea.

Old roommate of mine, PN, worked w/ Greenbaum in a kitchen in Northern California in the late-’80s or early ’90s.

(To be continued.)

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Also, Ambiguity http://www.progressdaily.com/2006/09/26/ambiguity/

Power of Music I here.

Where was I? Oh yeah, “Spirit in the Sky.” Here’s the video to Doctor & the Medics’ ’80s cover. It was a hit a Britain, inexplicably. The arrangement is very similar to the original’s, the recording is uninspired, & the video is ridiculous. The only innovation is the haircut. Here’s the original. (To be continued.)

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Also, Re-emerging economies http://www.progressdaily.com/2006/09/20/re-emerging-economies/

Loss Aversion http://www.progressdaily.com/2006/09/22/loss-aversion/

Confirmation Bias http://www.progressdaily.com/2006/09/24/confirmation-bias/

GDP http://www.progressdaily.com/2006/09/25/gdp/

I was listening to Barry White’s “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love Babe,” playing the little CD player louder than usual, & thinking how good that song sounded. & it reminded me of another time I listened to abnormally loud music. It was sometime in the early- or mid-90s. I worked at a record store (that’s what we still called them then), & one night after we closed the owner blasted Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky.” [To be continued. But first, some lyrics:]

I’ve heard people say that
Too much of anything is not good for you, baby
Oh no
But I don’t know about that
There’s many times that we’ve loved
We’ve shared love and made love
It doesn’t seem to me like it’s enough
There’s just not enough of it
There’s just not enough
Oh oh, babe

My darling, I can’t get enough of your love babe
Girl, I don’t know, I don’t know why
Can’t get enough of your love babe
Oh, some things I can’t get used to
No matter how I try
Just like the more you give, the more I want
And baby, that’s no lie
Oh no, babe

Tell me, what can I say?
What am I gonna do?
How should I feel when everything is you?
What kind of love is this that you’re givin’ me?
Is it in your kiss or just because you’re sweet?

Girl, all I know is every time you’re here
I feel the change
Somethin’ moves
I scream your name
Do whatcha got to do

Darling, I can’t get enough of your love babe
Girl, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know why
I can’t get enough of your love babe
Oh no, babe

Girl, if I could only make you see
And make you understand
Girl, your love for me is all I need
And more than I can stand
Oh well, babe

How can I explain all the things I feel?
You’ve given me so much
Girl, you’re so unreal
Still I keep loving you
More and more each time
Girl, what am I gonna do
Because you blow my mind

Baby, let me take all of my life to find you
But you can believe it’s gonna take
the rest of my life to keep you

Oh no, babe
My darling, I can’t get enough of your love babe
Yeah, I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know why
Can’t get enough of your love babe
Oh my darling, I can’t get enough of your love babe
Oh babe
I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know why
I can’t get enough of your love babe
Oh babe

And:

When I die and they lay me to rest
Gonna go to the place that’s the best
When I lay me down to die
Goin’ up to the spirit in the sky
That’s where I’m gonna go when I die
When I die and they lay me to rest
Gonna go to the place that’s the best

Prepare yourself you know it’s a must
Gotta have a friend in Jesus
So you know that when you die
He’s gonna recommend you
To the spirit in the sky
Gonna recommend you
That’s where you’re gonna go when you die
When you die and they lay you to rest
You’re gonna go to the place that’s the best

Never been a sinner I never sinned
I got a friend in Jesus
So you know that when I die
He’s gonna set me up with
The spirit in the sky
Oh set me up with the spirit in the sky
That’s where I’m gonna go when I die
When I die and they lay me to rest
I’m gonna go to the place that’s the best
Go to the place that’s the best