Combat Angels...

"And I'm at the stage, where I want my words said and no one wants to listen though. No one wants to listen 'cause everybody's yelling, about you and yours and how I'd have the answer if only I'd open up up up and let you in. They must be out of their brilliant minds"

-Furniture "Brilliant Mind"

Penningtron said...
You know, you can tear yourself up about obscurity, but the truth is that people like us love the Go-Betweens or Felt as much as the Smiths, or the Comsat Angels as much as Joy Division. Is that fervent love any less spectacular just because only a few feel it? Actually, I think it's moreso.

This deserved a response.

I think this "immaculate obscurity", is the very issue that I was struggling with after Andrea left, struggling with when I wrote that first diary entry. It's hard to keep one's perspective on the work, to remember that the quality of the work in is the specialness of the experience of its audience (how ever small) and not in the width of its audience (however small the experience.) I completely agree with this above comment, and hope the fans of My Favorite know that. I can't say its not hard when Interpol opens for you at CMJ 2001, and you open up for Haunted Pussy (www.hauntedpussy.com) in 2005. But for every surreal humilation, there was a triumph, and its bad manners to overlook them. The rough bits are part of being an artist, and many before have had it worse, and had a better stomach for the hardships. We never had the courage to quit going to University, to tour the nation sleeping on people's floors, the way our friends in The Bouncing Souls did in the early days. We also never had the trust funds to be full-time micro celebrities, with a staff of publicists and ad exects the way a few of our peers have. We had a choice of forks in the road and chose the chopsticks...and however few the blessed grains we managed to grasp, I assure you we savored them all. I am getting the feeling I may be letting my need for supper influence the quality of my metaphors.

On a only slightly related note...this news story from the New York Daily News has been on my mind a lot lately...

DIES FOR HIS ART: Man drowns in bid to save his poetry. TRAGIC LAST WORDS: 'I CAN'T LET THAT STUFF GO';

KERRY BURKE, AUSTIN FENNER and TONY SCLAFANI DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS. New York Daily News. New York, N.Y.: Oct 7, 2005. pg. 30

Copyright Daily News, L.P. Oct 7, 2005
AN ASPIRING Brooklyn poet apparently drowned after jumping into the Hudson River to retrieve a book bag packed with his writings, cops and friends said yesterday. "I can't let that stuff go," Dennis Kim, 22, told a friend before leaping from the railing of the Christopher St. pier in the West Village Wednesday night.Kim, of Brooklyn, lost the green-and-black bag - with his spiral notebook and Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer" inside - when he leaned against the rail, and the bag fell into the drink, his friend told the Daily News.
So he emptied his pockets, ripped off his shoes and shirt, and dived into the 75-foot-deep water.
He swam out 30 feet and hooked the bag over his shoulder in minutes. But on his return, the current overpowered him, leaving him gasping."Help!" he shouted once before going under, said his pal Jennifer Hare, 17, who witnessed the tragic drowning.
"He let it [the bag] go and tried to swim back," Hare, a Queens student, said hours later. "He floated on his back, but the current was just too strong."
Hare called 911 at 9:50 p.m. and pleaded with others to help, but no one did.
A team of NYPD divers searched until midnight, then resumed hours later, but there was no sign of Kim.
"It wasn't just some dumb kid pulling a stunt. His work was important to him," Hare said.
His mother, Olivia Choi, and sister, Stella, fought back tears as they watched cops scour the river for Kim yesterday.
"Nobody was working over here. There was no life tube. This is a public area. If it were safe, my son wouldn't have died," said Choi, 51.
Kim, of Bay Ridge, waited tables at the Murray Hill restaurant LaCarne and planned on returning to Loudonville College in Vermont after dropping out in his sophomore year.
"He's very intelligent," said his sister, Stella Kim, 19, a fashion student from Forest Hills, Queens. "He's a great role model . . . He wanted to write poetry."
tsclafani@nydailynews.com
[Illustration]
Caption: Dennis Kim LINDA ROSIER DAILY NEWS Stella Kim mourns at Christopher St. pier where her brother Dennis Kim jumped into the Hudson River Wednesday night in an effort to retrieve his book bag.

Sigh...I'm always bumming people out. It's not my finest trait. But this kid is kind of my hero, my inspiration these days. God keep him.

I bid you all adieu for the weekend. Those in NYC come have a drink and dance at the halloween Mondo party....check the link section for details.

Floating,

Michael

Dean's 7th Dream

'Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood. When blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud. I came in from the wilderness, a creature void of form. 'Come in,' she said, 'I'll give you shelter from the storm.'

-Bob Dylan

You should not drive in the rain.
You should not drive in the rain in New York City.
You should not drive in the rain in New York City listening to Bob Dylan.
You should not drive in the rain in New York City listening to Bob Dylan, watching a decades worth of storms play out inside your memory.

I had a fraction of a second before I hit the cab. I skidded through the intersection. If it hadn't been rainy, I probably could have stopped. If I was listening to The Arcade Fire I probably could have stopped. You might think that the lyrics to my song "le monster" might have went flashing through my mind, as they sort of deal with exactly what was about to happen, but they didn't.

Instead I thought about the last car accident I had, in maybe 1994. I crashed the car Andrea's parents had just bought her as some kind of graduation gift. She was in the passenger seat. We were in New Jersey driving to old skinhead/ska record shop in Passaic Park, called I think, Two-Tone. The roads in New Jersey twist and turn in all sorts of directions. Sometimes you have to go right to make a left. I haven't driven in New Jersey since. The impact sounded like a bomb going off, but it wasn't quite head on and we survived...the whole thing was a blur. Spanish speaking children were crying. The car was totaled. My leg was bleeding and Andrea was dazed. We had a show that night in Hoboken at Maxwell's. So we had the wreckage towed to the street outside the club, because we didn't know what else to do. We weren't really thinking straight.

The show was pretty bad. It was one of the first where I played rhythm guitar, which was hard enough for me without a concussion. I was dressed in a white tennis sweater and white trousers a with a little blood on them. I remember someone from the Rough Trade record shop was in town and at the show, and they posted some snarky comment on the indie pop list. Something to the effect of "They sucked, and mods don't wear tennis clothes!" I slept for three days after the show, and did not bother responding with a partial treatise on the post-Gatsbian Long Island modernist straightedge skinhead--- not because it was ridiculous (which it was)--- but because I did not feel well.

We never got Andrea's car back from New Jersey. Every week for about a month we had to go to various courts or impound lots in some of the saddest, sketchiest hoods in Jersey City. We got out of a prison sentence, and eventually we got the car out of the impound lot. But no one could fix it, and we didn't have any money. One of those days in exile we were leaning against a razor wire fence in the middle of South Jersey City, in dirt and dust and 100 degree heat, waiting for someone to give us the corpse of our car back when our lives were saved by the angelic jingle of a Mr. Softee ice cream truck that came a ramblin' down the road to nowhere.

And this was what I thought about on Saturday Night in that instant before I crashed into the cab... not the lyrics to Le Monster or James Dean Awaiting Ambulance. I thought about the coldness and softness and sweetness of a chocolate Mr. Softee ice cream cone eaten in Purgatory with someone you loved.

The impact was not as bad as the last time. I braced myself, and did not so much as utter a whimper. It only went black for a second or two.

My car was ugly, but drivable. The cab was only slightly dented. An off duty police-officer and his attractive girlfriend helped us exchange insurance information. I called my brother and told him I wouldn't be making it to the vegan restaurant where I was to meet him and my old friend Matt "Spike" Kelly, who's departure from My Favorite, was the reason I was playing rhythm guitar in Hoboken that night in the first place.

I managed to get the car back to Queens. I ordered some takeaway pad-thai, and brought it back to my cold apartment. I watched the film version of Chicago on NBC. I couldn't believe how much I enjoyed it. I must have been mildly concussed. I couldn't make it past the second SNL sketch before I fell into uneasy sleep without any dessert.

One pumpkin away from
destruction. By His grace.

.

.

.

.

Sincerely,

Micky

.

photo by J. Hensberry

Concerning Stars and Comets

"Bill, I still hum all their songs. But I'm miles from their smiles and I've nowhere to sleep. If I don't grow old I can't become an antique. So I just stay a freak, for someone to keep."

-Comet Gain, second song on the cassette.

It was the morning of the first day after we sent out notice that our pop group, My Favorite, had dissolved. I brushed my teeth while staring in the mirror, the fine lines under my tired eyes reminding me of the fine lines in vinyl that my world once revolved around. They both revolved I suppose. I think it's entirely possible that I'm not a kid anymore.

I buy my toothpaste at a Korean 99 cent store on Roosevelt Avenue for two reasons. The first one is that it costs 99 cents. The second is that the tube of Crest is embellished with colorful Korean writing, making it look somewhat like an interior design choice.

I brushed while I traveled through time. My bathroom is like something out of Picasso's blue period as seen through they eyes of a 1970s Greek manicurist. But the blue tiles and tub and toilet sort of enveloped me and comforted me. I wore a wrinkled Harris Tweed blazer and striped tie to the college to teach my courses. I rarely ever did. I usually wore a battered polo shirt of some sort and three days of stubble. I only wore a tie when I felt in particular need of a bit of strength, and a bit of dignity.

I came down the stairs of my apartment building to find a package crammed into my mailbox. It was from a friend from the Pacific Northwest who did a fanzine back in the day. Inside was a taped cassette copy of the as yet to be released new Comet Gain record called, I think, City Fallen Leaves. I believe it will come out on Kill Rock Stars records.

Comet Gain, for those who don't know, are a real good British indie band who evolved out of the same post-riot grrl indie scene that the earliest incarnation of My Favorite had, at roughly the same time. They are one of only a handful of bands from that time/ideology who still make music under the same name. I had kept up with their releases for the most part, watching them take a shot at soulful chart pop (albeit Marxist chart pop), only to return to their original shambling folk/punk sound. This returned them to the quasi-ghetto of obscurity reserved for unfashionably earnest (or good) music.

I popped the cassette into my car stereo and got onto the Long Island Expressway. The early daylight was eerie and I felt slightly like driving off a cliff. But there were no cliffs. Perhaps that is why the expressway runs through the flat center of this tremulous isle.

The first song was a decent noisepop number, but the second song was staggering. An acoustic guitar strumming along with a single warbling synth. A voice which seemed in the space beside you, as opposed to in the speakers, like the closet mix of VU 'pale blue eyes', or The Smiths 'Please, Please, Please.' Its repeated refrain of "these are the days I forgot to write down" covered my mind like ivy as I rewinded the tape and listened to the tune at least twelve times. It seemed to be asking the same question which I had faced while facing my face in the mirror.

Why play music when not enough people listen to you? Why play music when not enough people listen to anything? Why play music when the bombs will always be louder? Why play music when you actually have to hope one of your song is used to sell m&ms....so that you yourself will be able to afford m&ms? Where are your friends? Why isn't anybody happy? Why I do think that nobody's happy?

David from Comet Gain seemed to want the answers--- and not want them at the same time.

It all struck a nerve, broke a rib.

In The Last Days Of My Favorite this July, we toured the west coast, hoping to grab the attention of labels like Capitol Records and Subpop, who we were told were coming to see our young, up & co tourmates. A decade separated us from them. There were similarities, we were both configurations of contradictions. But they were different contradictions. They had a studied carelessness, a kind of knowing naivete, which could only be grasped when seeing them play five shows in a row as we just had. We, on the other hand (despite a dozen years of doing this,) had just the opposite, a kind of careless, shambling, short-hand grandeur. They also had a bit of rock star swagger, but it was camouflaged behind Beat Happening t-shirts and American beer in a can. I dressed like The Thin White Duke's shabby cousin, clutching a sparkling inch of scotch with my metaphorically golden nailpolished fingers, but took the stage with the same awkwardness, and tentativeness that I did when giving my tenth grade oral report on The Cuban missile Crisis. All my bandmates did. Our tourmates were 10 years younger than us, but understood the music industry and how to work it 10 times better. And they were also quite good to boot. They were however, also a definite evolution of the indiepop idea which I had taken so seriously at their age, and I recognized that mutation as having something vaguely to do with The OC .

We had struggled in the last years of the band with reconciling our past with our present and future. We started out as a teenage art-pop band of fanzines, and boxing gloves and crackling 7-inches. Then we became an actually quite good rock n' roll band by accident. Through it all, I tried to write about life in a way that made sense to me, to take chances with words and artifice, to promote a kind of uncool caring. When a big management/production company flirted with trying to turn us into the next Interpol, we blew it badly, maybe half on purpose. Because in the back of one's mind, one is always doing algebra.

If X=being better & different than Interpol now, and Y=becoming similar to Interpol, doesn't Z=became similar and worse than Interpol?

I barely passed College Math. We failed Becoming a Successful NYC Hipster Band. We registered for it, but barely showed up. I kept sitting behind the Sculpure Building with the same ten freaks I already knew, smoking Gaulloises. Was it because I was scared of failing or passing...I honestly don't know.

So that final tour, save for the amazing San Francisco Pop Fest, did more to end My Favorite than anything before it ever had. Faced with the industry's ambivalence towards us, and the increasing difficulty of surviving in one of the most expensive cities on earth, people within the group had to re-examine the music in the context of their lives. And I had to examine why it wasn't making me as happy anymore either.

But one level, it wouldn't matter. It was over. And Comet Gain's song, sung with such pure intention, made me feel ashamed of our last summer as a gang. Made me feel ashamed of everything we did and everything we had failed to do, and all the things which we let hurt us which should never have been able to.

Fame, fame, fickle fame...it can play hideous tricks on the brain. But still I'd rather be famous than righteous or holy any day, any day any day.

And thus St. Stephen damned indie-dom to the hell where it now resides, where its brightest star, St. Sebastian, is famous for being righteous and holy. I wanted to make records, and for people to care. I wanted health insurance.

I've got some thinking to do. All I know is that this song, which arrived at just the right exit upon desolation road, also made me want to keep playing music. To take all those impulses--- to be famous, to be righteous, to be holy---and suss them out. Because of all the plastic gestures I have littered my life with, this one felt the most like being alive. This one was bringing me closer to a living end. I just had to make sure that I kept making soul music, for the Templars, not the Camp Followers.
Going for dollar Budweisers at The Phoenix, with jukebox money.

Love,
MGjr

"Brent, you don't surf anymore, but you drown so slow with nowhere to go. If you're fucked it's alright its Saturday Night, and you are alive, and you are alright. These are the days I forgot to write down..."

-Comet Gain