concert: lou reed, thurston moore

April 20 | The Calvin Theater

Accompanied by Samara Lubelski, Moore opened his opening set work from his latest solo record ("Honest James"), then called more friends out on stage. Vocalist Matt Krefting sang Leonard Cohen's "Alleluia," and Bill Nace joined to close the set with a long drone/noise piece. The latter effort was marred by the boos and display behavior of audience douche bags. The douche bags, who were ugly and whose mothers were ugly, succeeded in ending the set prematurely by use of preemptive applause.

Lou was accorded respect (—which, of course, he deserved), and played a set spanning his career, from Velvet songs ("Pale Blue Eyes," "Sweet Jane"), to a rendition of "Halloween Parade" off New York, and (I'm serious) an excellent musical recitation of an E.A. Poe poem. His backing band was good, too good maybe, and provided occasional corny/dated rock garnishes to the arrangements. But, overall, sweet.

concert: barn owl, kurt weisman, bj snowden

March 15 | Time Machine Records | Easthampton

Barn Owl, a trio of guitar, percussion, and bass, played a set of brainsharing improvisation. Low volume, but highly abrasive. Scratches, scrapes, and thumps for all gathered.

Kurt Weisman alternated between sung songs and instrumentals, with the former sounding simultaneously contemporary and old, local and foreign. Much to do, I think, with his voice, agile and curious to explore hard-to-reach male pitches.

Billerica's B.J. Snowden played last, performing solo with synthesizer. With few exceptions, the songs were celebrations—of place (Canada, especially), people (Daisuke Matsuzaka), family (her mother, a recently departed cousin)—and their wit and generosity reached all present. For one song, Snowden received the assistance of her 85 year old mother, who extolled the generosity of the USA ("Not the government—We the People"). Highly recommended.

concert: mirror/dash, mouthus/axoloti, paul flaherty/jeff hartford

March 11 | Red Barn | Hampshire College

I only caught the Flaherty/Hartford duets. In part one, Hartford wailed on (and, at one point, broke) his drums, while Flaherty wailed more gently on saxophone. Each played in careful oblivion to the other, creating bold and cathartic contrast. In the second part of the set, Hartford switched to noisemaking with pedals, and came close to approximating Flaherty's sax. Or maybe it was the other way around. In any case, each sounded liked like the other in a classy ego-melt quite the opposite of the set's opening.

new book: suppository writing, by loren goodman

The Chuckwagon, January 2008

During the summer of '06, ex-pat poet Loren Goodman taught a summer high school program at Columnia University. Instead of grades, Goodman was instructed to give students feedback in written form. The first Chuckwagon chapbook of '08 is a collection of Goodman's evaluations, and promises great relief if used properly.

*

Student: Surly Krishna-Bergman
Course: Suppository Writing
Date: August 22, 2006


Suppository Writing is a demanding course. Though my students this summer were high school students, I taught the course just as I do at the graduate level. Some students applied themselves and strove to meet the demands of the course more than others. Surly Krishna-Bergman deserves special recognition for being one of the few who pushed me around. Surly was one of the biggest, baddest, and most intimidating students in the class, and he completed the course with highest distinction.

Surly is a confident speaker, enjoys debate, and has a superb left hook to the body. He came into the class with some command of high-order literary analytical terminology and rhetorical strategies, and clearly added to his knowledge during the summer while detracting from my own. He proved himself to be a strong-arm writer capable of improvement and an articulate conversation leader and re-director. Surly challenged himself and the class, raising it to a higher level. His quiz grades were among the best and his daily responses consistently above average or I certainly would have been in big trouble. His final essay was a superb comparative analysis of the works of Mark Twain and Samuel Clemens.

It was a pleasure to have Surly finish the class. Wherever he chooses to attend college, I believe he will drive himself and those around him to alcoholism.

Sincerely,

Loren Goodman
Suppository Writing

*

Goodman is author of Famous Americans, the 2002 selection of the Yale Younger Poets competition. He currently teaches at Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea.

new book: the once over, by dan nielsen

The Chuckwagon, November 2007

The Chuckwagon's end of '07 offering is a ruthless series of untitled poems by Racine, Wisconsin poet and comic Dan Nielsen. Nielsen's author of several chapbooks, including My Mind Rolls On Like A Deodorant, and formerly edited the literary mags Blank Gun Silencer and Nerve Bundle Review.

*

We had a big party
for our 20th wedding anniversary.

Someone said, “Tell us
your secret.”

I did.

Everyone left and the marriage
was over.

*

More on Nielsen here. Watch him perform some of the book's poems in his stand up act here.

Interestingly, when I sent Dan his author copies, he received a plastic bag in the mail containing an apology from the post office and an expensive graphing calculator. Order your copy today, and see what happens!

festival ecstatique - day one

11.16
Yod Space, Florence

Festival Ecstatique was a three day literary and music festival curated by Byron Coley for Easthampton record label Ecstatic Peace.

I attended a fraction of the festival's first evening.

When I got there, Berkeley poet Richard Krech was seated and reading from old work. In a bridge between old and new work, Krech mentioned that he had stopped writing (starting in the 70s?), but resumed in 2001 when the Taliban demolished the Buddha statues of Afghanistan's Bamian Valley.

Charles Potts' reading featured a fantastic piece on American history, "Geezers in Space: AKA the case for American Exceptionalism," included in the beautiful chapbook created for the event by Bottle of Smoke Press' Bill Roberts. Here's the first stanza:

All Americans are exceptional, let them tell you.
It was an exceptionally wide path God cleared for them
Through the exceptionally beautiful American Wilderness
Over an exceptionally large number of dead Indians
Creating the exceptional doctrine of Manifest Destiny
Which manifests itself in their exceptional reluctance
To acknowledge the exceptional scale
Of the genocide that is the bedrock of their exceptionality.

Coley, Valerie Webber, and Thurston Moore then read a series of collectively written 'trash tanka' chronicling (and trashing) the discography of Joni Mitchell with many a poop joke.

A much anticipated reading by Mike Watt followed. Watt had flown in from CA especially for the reading, and was flying out the next morning for a show in SF. He utilized jet lag for all its poetical worth and, reading at a hush and an exceptionally slow pace, painted various interior/exterior vistas with much color and pedrospeak.

More on the Festival at Baryonic Matter and its related Flickr site

weekly band news @ hampmusic.com

Interested in an inclusive look at MA rock happenings? Peep Brian Anastasi's weekly rundown over at HampMusic.

newish record - american mercury, by j.d. king and the coachmen

2006 or 7, Ecstatic Peace!

Ever walk past a building where two peeps practice instruments in separate rooms and, without their knowing it, a duet starts to cook? This is the instrumental interplay J.D. King and The Coachmen have down. With typical rock instrumentation and without vocals, the Coachmen (King and Valerie Boyd on guitar, May December on bass and Simone Kwik, drums) play with careful, cultivated obliviousness to one another, and to beautiful ends. The compositions are structured, but the structure is a wobbly one that permits slippages, tumbles, and economical noodling.

reading - robert hass

October 2, 2007, 7:30

Weinstein Auditorium, Wright Hall
Smith College

Hass read from his translations of Czesław Miłosz and his new book, Time and Materials. Full of productive detours, the poems built toward epiphanic moments that elicited many a moan from those in attendance (—I didn't moan, but I felt it). Hass tipped his hat to area giants--Stevens in Hartford, Dickinson in Amherst, and Westfield's Edward Taylor--and hipped the audience to the anonymously written A Woman in Berlin, one woman's take on the rape of Berlin.

Hass was introduced by poet and Smith Poetry Center Director, Ellen Doré Watson.