Goodbye, Jon Cook

You can’t revisit your childhood, because it no longer exists, I told myself.

— Thomas Bernhard, Extinction

Jon Cook from Crain and Rodan, two of my favorite homegrown bands, was finally taken off life support tonight, ending two days of tortuous rumors and speculation. He was a bright spot in Louisville’s underground in the ’90s, which makes his senseless death sadder still. I guess he had been going through a long decay for most of the last decade, maybe longer: drugs, alcohol, dereliction.

Crain’s music was huge; sometimes angry, sometimes delicate, not unlike the people who made it. But more than the music, Jon was a rallying point, someone who repeatedly left our little provincial burg to travel the country in a van, bringing treasure and glory (well, not much treasure — it was rock ‘n’ roll, after all) back to us.

I remember running into him at an all-ages club one cold night in fall 1992. He and Crain had just gotten back from Albini’s studio in Chicago, where they’d recorded songs for a new EP. He was energetic; manic, almost, but who wouldn’t be? Steve Albini was a legend to anyone who played non-commercial pop music in the ’90s; the fact that a kid in a band could just drive up to his studio and record was special, particularly from a teenager’s viewpoint. People like Jon fulfilled that basic need to feel part of something bigger, important to a frustrated adolescent.

Jon was a friendly and kind man. Bands wanted to come to Louisville because in the ’90s he brought every touring act on the indie circuit — from Fugazi to the Jesus Lizard, from the Riot Grrl! bands to the Rollins Band, from Sleepyhead to Hammerhead — to Louisville and let them stay in his mom’s house, where she’d make them hearty spaghetti dinners.

Later, the old Victorian mansion he owned called the Rocket House became a sort of creative crash pad. There was always a band playing there, or maybe staying there while on tour, and the walls were festooned with the numbers and names of virtually everyone in the ’90s underground — Ian McKaye, Kathleen Hanna, Jenny Toomey, Corey Rusk — written in magic marker. If you stopped in, you might see Jeff Mueller making a sculpture out of junk, or you could hand Bob Weston your joke band’s demo, or you might end up as the extra in an indie movie, or you could hang out with older, perhaps not-always-wiser people.

But what I didn’t think of as a teenager was that Jon Cook had a Victorian mansion at age 21 because his own dad had passed away, I think, in a house fire started by a cigarette. I met his mom, Peggy, on several occasions. She was nice, too, and I thought it was funny that a woman my mother’s age would pour me such stiff gin and tonics. Maybe there’s something to be learned there that I still don’t know.

Back in the ’90s, I heard he was supposed to take meds but didn’t. I heard a lot of stuff.  I heard he wrote a novel. He definitely drew cartoons. He kept making music. Once, I walked into a bar and saw him play on guitar, unaccompanied, a song written by a friend of mine that I didn’t think anyone else knew very well. He played it beautifully, and then indie legend Lou Barlow got on stage and played. And then Jon was nowhere to be seen. The last time I saw Jon was in summer 2010 and he seemed friendly — too-friendly; unbalanced. I got spooked, and I took off.

We have an idea that someday, we can go home and things will be a little bit like they were when we left. But the people that defined my home keep leaving for good. Tony Bailey, Jason Noble, now Jon Cook — these people who were larger than life once keep leaving life behind. What they leave behind is a gaping void.

Goodbye, Jon. Rest in the peace that seemed so hard for you to find, and rest knowing that for the brief period you were on this planet, it was a better place.

 

Zombie Rock and the Duke of Hazard

What’s going on with hipster music? It’s an interesting question. About ten years ago I wanted to write a piece for my local weekly, Baltimore City Paper, on how the fuzzed-out, overdriven indie rock of my youth, largely springing from the AmRep and Touch & Go labels, had been replaced by another genre with the same name but sporting not only a totally different style of music, but seemingly a different ethos towards life. They never bought my pitch and I moved on to other things for most of a decade.  In that decade, it seems like rebellion turned into reflection which turned into introspection which just devolved wholesale into whining.

This week we’re got the LA Weekly treating us to a pretty snarky, if not accurate, takedown of the 20 most annoying hipster bands. I take some issue with putting TV on the Radio, who treated me to a phenomenally energetic and sweaty set in London in 2004, on the list, but for the bands on the list I’ve heard, it’s spot-on. Beirut has the sound of a precious kid who just discovered world music, pilfering from the Balkans and the Middle East equally blithely. The Decembrists play the same sort of bland pop that was just taking over a decade ago. As for Black Keys, remember Jon Spencer Blues Explosion? People accused him of stealing from the black musical tradition (a silly premise, given how most of what’s good about American music comes from free-flowing musical miscegenation), but at least he smashed things and “fucked shit up.” Most of the music in the LA Weekly piece is more about image and solipsistic preening than the raw emotional release that blues, rock and punk are famous for. It’s a funny piece, but there is some anger in the last write-up, a takedown of Bon Iver:

What happened to us as a generation that this guy gets to bear our sonic torch? Those who came before us rocked, bumped and grinded. They exuded raw sexuality and riotous anger; sweaty human realism. They hoovered drugs or angrily rejected them, they humped strangers in club bathrooms in adolescent indiscretion; they broke shit, laughed, cried, partied on rooftops or in warehouses, exercised cultural demons and personal failures, made spectacles. We, instead, get a whiny guy who built his own studio in the woods; perfectly exemplifying that narcissistic hipster ethos of “Whatever man, I’m just gonna go over here and be chill, I don’t want to be bothered or have my mellow harshed.” Bon Iver coos the celebratory ballads of hip poseurs who refuse to get their hands dirty, that is, unless that filth is quaint and photogenic.

Well said.

There are a couple of different issues going on with rock music lately — Sasha Frere-Jones is particularly trenchant in his examination of the lack of miscegenation in a New Yorker piece from a few years back. He also points out that “pop music is no longer made of just a few musical traditions; it’s a profusion of strands, most of which don’t intersect, except, perhaps, when listeners click ‘shuffle’ on their iPods.”

For this reason, Michael Jackson was the last pop star in the way that Kurt Cobain was the last rock star — there are so many subgenres and subsets now with the new media that it seems like it might be hard to have that one unifying figure. More to the point with punk and guitar music, one can see some kind of clear line between the fifties rebels, the hippies, the punks, and grunge/aggressive nineties loud guitar music. “Wild Thing” played really loud is a pretty great anthem no matter what decade you’re in, if you’re into guitar sounds. Black Flag covered “Louie Louie” as a sort of goofily, violently frustrated punk anthem in the eighties, and  the glorious Laughing Hyenas covered “I Want You” by the Troggs regularly — reclaiming heart-on-the-sleeve anger for the grunge generation from the MC5’s revolutionary fervor. A lot of the early punk sounds a lot more ’50s than ’60s. There was continuity.

Many of the bands slammed in the LA Weekly‘s piece emphasize style over substance, image over guts and cuteness over beauty. (Watch Nataly Dawn’s precious annoucement to her fans if you don’t believe me.) Even in deep in the underground this has been true for most of the last decade. For example, in my erstwhile home of Baltimore, bands were always high on the theatrics but there was also a core of good rock songwriting underneath — Buttsteak and Lee Harvey Keitel Band took pleasure in outlandish names and bountiful literary and philosophical references, but they were good musicians and songwriters, too. A bit later, Oxes dominated the Baltimore scene. They wrote instrumental math rock, played wireless, and their schtick was to run around the audience mugging. Seen once, it seemed to push boundaries — but seen more than that, it seemed like self-conscious schtick. Later still, Dan Deacon got huge with his whole Wham City collective, basing his style on audience participation and performance with laptop electronica songs.

Rock and roll’s death has been proclaimed many times, and each time it proves its resilience. Lately maybe it’s a bit zombified, to borrow from another hipster trope, by navel-gazing one-man shows backing themselves up. But some good can come of all this: one of more intriguing acts I’ve heard lately is Adam Brewer from Hazard, Kentucky who follows in the great tradition of other Appalachian hollerers such as Hasil Atkins. But this isn’t backwoods psychobilly — it’s raw rock and roll.  It seems like no one else in Hazard was interested in playing live with him, so his shows are him singing to a backing tape of his band, of which he is the only member, the Globsters. Some is abrasive noise in the mold of Slap-a-Ham records, but much of it actually displays a refreshing honesty laid over genuine melody; a shiny penny of a song emerging from a zombie-grave dirtclod.

Check out “Pretty Women” (“pretty women, rockin’ and rollin’, gimme a beer, I’m high as a kite”), “Freddy Krueger” (“I’m not afraid of Freddie Krueger, I am absolutely horrified by you/you’re the one/you’re the one that keeps me up all night”) and “Roll You Up and Smoke You” (“you’re so cute/I just wanna roll you up and smoke you/ we were sitting on the couch/listening to records/I just wanna pass a bowl and smoke it with my baby girl”) are honest youth anthems of rebellion, love and angst. Perhaps there is some hope for rock and roll after all.

Check the mini-documentary from august punk bible Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll.

Thanks to Johnny Cuba for the inspiration.

Goodbye, Jason Noble

I knew Jason Noble was sick about two years ago, and I knew it was a nasty cancer, and I knew he’d beaten it for the moment. I didn’t know he was sick again so I was surprised this morning when a fellow refugee from Louisville told me that he’d passed. Jason, along with his musical cohorts at the Rocket House and at ear X-tacy made being a teen in a city where open-mindedness did not come easily a lot more palatable.

It’s rare in the narcissistic, instant gratification-fueled world of 21st-century communications that a person with a public persona passes and is genuinely mourned. To a geeky, bored, often angry kid seeking any kind of interaction beyond teachers and churches, Jason was a kind, gentle and open soul. His art — from post-rock epics to simple sketches — made perfect sense to those who grew up in the same fishbowl. He clarified the distortions and gave voice to the frustrations.

RIP, Jason Noble. As a writer greater than this scribbler once said, his spirit shines through him.

On the Last Rock Star

Weather Changes Moods

On a hot August evening, the sun was setting over Barricata beach out on the Po Delta. The beach bar was deserted and the lifeguard-cum-barman started up his tractor and began to pick up the sunbeds. To do his work he put on the sound system and turned it up, loud. Sandwiched between the usual forgettable pop, the opening chords of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” rang out.

Twenty years later after Nirvana blew apart the stilted, machine-produced world of pop music, the commentariat is busy trying to answer a question first posed by fellow travelers Sonic Youth: Nevermind — what was it anyway?  Interpretations range from the interesting — Nirvana burying rock machismo, for a bit anyway, to the blatantly commercial and sentimental.

I bought the record the week it came out — convinced by a friend to pick up the new one when I had my eye on Bleach for pure street cred — and spent the next few weeks learning most of the songs.  The prevailing order of the day — sarcasm and apathy — meant that I had to act completely blasé about Nirvana’s successes. It wasn’t purely baseless: it would have been hard to be a stranger to the independent record label world that begat Nirvana in the home of Squirrel Bait, Slint and Kinghorse. And our “little group” quietly celebrated the mainstreaming of our underground: what else could get a gang of teenage boys to rush home on a Saturday night to watch TV? In this way, Cobain succeeded where our parents did not.

The 1990s were the era that birthed the sensitive man, for a variety of cultural reasons beyond the purview of this post. This new-found sensibility bore heavily on Cobain, who rejected fame’s embrace and embraced the rejected, using his celebrity to openly discuss gayness, feminism, domestic strife, drug use, and depression — conditions that pop culture accepts as part of its landscape now. Because of this, grunge had a gravity that escaped the happy nihilism of most of the first wave of punk bands.

Contrast Cobain’s desperate howl with the gleeful madness of Johnny Rotten telling listeners he’s going over the Berlin Wall.  Cobain mumbles along for most of Nirvana’s hit before exploding in yawps of “a denial” — of what, exactly, it’s never said. Pleasure? Pain? Fame? Life itself? A few years later the man himself exploded tragically, while today, most first-wave punk bands have been able to soldier on, either for lucre (Sex Pistols), pleasure (Buzzcocks) or sheer cussedness (the Fall).

Just as Michael Jackson was the last great pop star, Cobain was the last great rock star. He presented himself as an iconoclast, who stood for ideals and ideas that he thought were greater and better than the dreck that brought him up and enveloped him. It’s unlikely in today’s atomized world of pop music, with its countless sub-genres, that there will never be another. The songwriting, which could appeal to the most craft-oriented REM fans or to the most noise-devoted Albini enthusiasts, reflected this completeness of vision as well.

Nirvana’s meaning and accomplishment will continue to be discussed, debated and exploited.  If they did nothing else, the fact that two decades later in an isolated place far away from Aberdeen, Washington, one can hear a song written by a real human being and not manufactured by a profit-driven industry is no small feat.

Fashion Week Begins

And what will she do with Thursday's rags when Monday comes around ?

The fashion week party, or rather, pre-party drink like one of those early punk shows I went to when I was a boy: you feel you have total freedom to do whatever because everyone is doing anything. A man is a fluorescent toga-like dress with his whole head shaved except for a little random-seeming tuft on the side with a long lock sticking out of it attracts no attention, and his example was only the most egregious. There were weird Americans with platinum hair and bangs eating cherries that the bartender popped into their waiting open mouths, strange Milanesi discussing the best clubs in (actually outside) the city in English to each other and telling me the ones in town were filled with ‘rednecks, politicians and mafiosi,’ a hyper-active, hyper-competent bartender who fulfilled my request for ‘un negroni – FORTE,’ Germans dressed for a soccer game, and a tortured electronic version of ‘Killing an Arab’ blasting from the DJ booth. As I was waiting for my drink, which was suitably strong, one thought went through my head:  “Men from Kentucky and Italy are dying in Afghanistan to preserve this way of life.” I didn’t see the picture of Hemingway hanging up on the wall which, until I got there, was the only thing I knew about the place.

In the middle of the throng on the street was our humble little Meet-Up group of mainly Italians looking to practice English: the mag ed dapper in his blazer, drinking a beer from a bottle and wondering why he didn’t check that it was fashion week before, and above us, the mass of the Duomo, stained glass ablaze for the third time this year, watching over us all, the gold eye of the Madonnina peering down to via san Raffaele of a Thursday night in September.

Why — or How — Italy Works, and Why No One Wants to Leave

The motorist tries to run you over and you get into a yelling match on the street. The phone company is billing you for your old and new internet, although neither work. You’re getting laid off, you lose your private office and have to share a cramped space with people who don’t believe in the AC and it’s unseasonably hot. No water, coffee, phone or internet at work. You’re forced to come home to use the toilet and pause to buy fresh lettuce, grapes and peaches from the Sicilan at the open air market that’s outside your front door. He calls you ‘caro’ and sells you the items at a ridiclously low rate, offering to lop off a bit more if you don’t have change. The doorman walks by and calls you by name like you’re a long-lost friend. You met him the day before.  You salute him in return and come home to eat your produce. It’s the best lunch you’ve had and it’s just three ingredients. You’re king of the world for a little while. That’s why.

On the Artistic Theater of the Cenacolo

Jesus' 15 minutes of fame

A trip to Lugano reminds one of what Italy is missing, and what would make it better — courteous drivers, spotlessly clean streets, apartments and offices free of the suspicious layers of security ones finds in Italy. But in contrast, a trip to the Cenacolo, aside from being a moving experience in itself that should inspire all kinds of questions about permanence and meaning, also reminds one that Italians, diabolical intentions aside, are wonderful at creating a sense of mystery.

You show your ticket, and then everyone is hurried down a short hallway where the temperature drops noticeable. Then everyone crams into an airlock-like chamber, huddled in front of the door to the refractory of Santa Maria delle Grazie. The attendents let the tension build. The chatter dies down to silence. Looking at our reflections in the one-way glass, I counted thirteen of us. One can see, at the bottom, a few feet marching somewhere. Then, the curtain — in the form of noiseless, remotely-controlled doors, pulls back, revealing — darkness. Empty space. On a sunny August morning, it takes some time for the eyes to adjust. You look left, but that’s not the right mural, then right, and there it is. The moths are drawn to the flame, and it’s well worth it.

Italian Switzerland is well-worth one’s time, but the Italian arts of surprise and showing off have their moments to shine as well.

Amazon.it Brought to Heel by Levi Law

Hon. Levi

While trying to research publication information on the Italian guidebook that profiled my home state, a visit to Amazon.it, which just opened this year, revealed the following warning:

Dear Customer,

It now seems certain that by September 1, a law on the price of books in Italian will come into effect. The main article states: “It shall be allowed that, on the sale of books to the end consumer, by whatever means or method, including mail order, even if such is brought about by electronic commerce, will have no discount to exceed 15 percent of the cover price.”  In compliance with this law, we will continue to offer great prices on our selection of millions of titles in foreign languages. Soon we will offer you the opportunity to choose from a catalog of hundreds of thousands of used books.

Please be assured that you will continue to find very low prices on Music , DVDs and Blu-ray ,Video Games , Electronics , Computers , Gardening and Garden , Home and Kitchen , shoes and bags , watches and many other categories in the future.

Thank you for your trust in Amazon and we reaffirm our commitment to continue to offer not only competitive prices and free shipping, but also the best buying experience.

The team at Amazon.it

PS Till August 31, we will be offering one last opportunity to purchase up your favorite books at prices never before offered. See, for the next few weeks, more than 235,000 books in Italian that we’re offering at a discount of at least 40% cover price.

The law in question is the Levi Law, named after the 52-year-old Democratic Party senator who also introduced a law to gag bloggers in 2007 (the “Levi-Prodi” law), which hasn’t passed yet. (Prodi, darling of the Anglo press for his liberalist views, gave his name to law by virtue of being Prime Minister when it was introduced.) According to Corriere della Sera, over 1000 people signed a petition against the law and sent the petition to Italian President Napolitano.

Back home, where Wal-Mart rules the roost, I miss my neighborhood book and music vendors. There is an argument for small stores and the specialization that they provide. Transactions can transcend mere consumerism and can be a learning experience and create community. Anyone who’s ever had a favorite book or record store knows this feeling. (I can cite Hawley-Cooke and ear X-tacy in Louisville and Normal’s in Baltimore as contributing heartily to my current ethos and worldview.) Italy’s small stores, when they provide this experience, are to be valued and appreciated. But at a time when Italy’s economy continues to stagnate, for the 40th-odd quarter in a row, with low growth that is the fault of too many small businesses and low international investment, this doesn’t seem like a particularly savvy move.

For whatever reason, Hon. Levi seems particularly harshly opposed to the internet as a means of facilitating communication and commerce in Italy. That he is a typical figure of the Italian left should help explain why Berlusconi has held reign for most of the past decade and a half.

But, Italy’s parliament’s slowness this time may be to the market’s advantage. As the iPhone and various tablets take over e-reading, the law may not have much effect.  Amazon has already signed an agreement with Mondadori to distribute ebooks, and Edigita, a consortium that includes RCS and Feltrinelli, will distribute 1000,000 books from 30 different publishing houses.

I wonder what Tim Parks, who spoke eloquently about the rising costs of publishing to the Foreign Press Association in Milan, might have to say about this.

**UPDATE**

The Washington Post reports that even in a weak economy, there still is a niche for small, independent booksellers:

The small, independently owned bookstore is staging a modest rebirth in the midst of a bone-killing economy and the exponential growth of online retailers and e-books.

I wish someone would tell Italian lawmakers that you can actually have Amazon and good, small bookstores too.

**

Update #2:

I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the closing of mega-stores like Borders. I’ll never forget being at the flagship Barnes & Noble store in Baltimore‘s Inner Harbor shopping district, watching a clerk tell a customer over and over again that Invisible Man was in the science fiction section. The customer stood his ground and said, “no, not H.G. Wells’ The Invisible Man — Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.” Assured by his computer monitor, the clerk told the customer that that book didn’t exist.  I’m sure that up in Washington Heights, Ellison did a series of half-gainers in his grave. And you shouldn’t have to guess the races of the characters in this story.

il Kentucky

We’re often curious as to how others see us. To that end, today’s offering is composed of translations from an Italian guidebook to the USA on my home state and city. Factually, it’s largely accurate, with a couple of exceptions (the Louisville Falls Fountain was scrapped 13 years ago), but the amusement for Louisvillians and Kentuckians should come from the nuance. Largely, the Italians give the Commonwealth high marks for natural beauty and traditional culture. Coming from Italy, that’s a high compliment.

**UPDATE**

Upon closer inspection, the book is actually the Italian translation of a UK-published volume, DK Publishing’s USA Eyewitness Travel Guide. Well, although not Italian, it is still foreign, so the basic premise remains, but it’s less fun.

Civil War Cannons

Kentucky

With its passages through the Appalachians and hilly pastures where horses run through acres of bluegrass, Kentucky is one of the most picturesque states in the country. The land in the west is mountainous, and was at one time inhabited by Indians who forcefully resisted settlements of the white colonists. Today Kentucky is known all over the world for its horses and in the area around Lexington you can find many thoroughbred farms. One of racing’s most prestigious events, the Kentucky Derby, takes place in Louisville. The state is also famous for its traditional style of country music. Highway 23 along the eastern border of the state is nicknamed Country Music Highway.

Louisville Sluggers

 

Louisville

Founded near the falls of the Ohio River in 1788, in Louisville (pronounced “Luuavol”) you’ll find one of the most famous horse races in the world, the Kentucky Derby. The Derby is to Louisville what Mardi Gras is to New Orleans or what the Masters is forAugusta: the event around which the whole calendar turns. Since the first Derby in 1975, countless three-year-old horses have run down the track at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May. Kentucky’s high society turns out in spring dress for the event, with hats and striped cotton suits. The unofficial drink of the day is the mint julep, a mix of bourbon ice, sugar and fresh mint typical of the south. The song “My Old Kentucky Home” is sung as the horses are led to the track for a race that lasts less than two minutes. The winner brings home the coveted trophy, adorned with a silver horseshoe in the form of a “U” — “so that the good luck can’t escape.”

La mia vecchia casa del Kentucky

The nearby Kentucky Derby Museum shows off the history of horse racing and offers a tour of the racetrack Churchill Downs. A couple of blocks from the old downtown by the riverfront, the Louisville Slugger Museum produces the noted baseball bat in a factory marked by a 36-meter-high bat.

The J.B. Speed Art Museum on South 3rd Street offers a grand collection of paintings and Renaissance sculpture. At Riverfront Plaza on the banks of the Ohio River, between Main and Fourth Streets, there are many paddlewheel boats that offer a tour of the area, and a fountain that sprays water 115 meters in the air. The old warehouses that surround the old downtown have been changed into cafes, galleries and stores.

Three kilometers to the northeast of downtown is Cave Hill Cemetery, one of the biggest cemeteries in the United States. Many Louisvillians come just to feed the ducks or to wander on the well-kept lawns. Fifty kilometers southwest of Louisville you can see the federal gold deposit at Fort Knox.

Country Music and Bluegrass

Poa pratensis, field fodder

Like the Mississippi Delta is for the blues, the strip of eastern Kentucky(along with West Virginia) has one of the biggest concentrations of country music artists in America. English, Irish and Scottish immigrants brought with them their ballads, rhythms and Elizabethan instruments, which they used to create a typically American style now called “country,” characterized by rapidly-played violins, an occasional yodel and lyrics about the hard life in the southeastern United States. Highway 23, which goes from Ashland to Pikeville along the eastern border of the state, is nicknamed the “Country Music Highway” to commemorate the number of musicians born along it. The road passes though the birthplaces of Billy Ray Cyrus, Loretta Lynn, Patty Loveless and Dwight Yoakam. The great fields of Kentucky bluegrass inspired a particular kind of country music that bears the same name, which comes from a kind of music played at the end of the ’40s by Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys. The name bluegrass stuck and this style of acoustic folk music is quite popular in the region. The traditional bluegrass instruments are the guitar, mandolin, five-string banjo, bass and Dobro.

If you outlaw whiskey, then only outlaws...

Use and Consumption of Alcohol

Compared to the rest of the country, inhabitants of the south are predominantly teetotalers. Many are Baptists, a religion that disapproves of the consumption of alcohol. In some rural regions, one can find counties, mainly in the mountains, where alcohol cannot be sold or served to the public legally. But the exceptions to this tradition are legendary: producers of “moonshine”, a homemade whisky made from corn, earned their fame as outlaws in the days of Prohibition by hiding from federal agents in the depths of the woods and using their stills only at night – thus the name “moonshine.” Drinking a mint julep on Derby Day in Louisville is local tradition so beloved that local girls begin collecting the traditional silver cups starting at age 12.