The Counterforce No. 20
PNW Tour Dates, Wes Anderson, White Reaper, Hanif Abdurraqib, Songs Not In English, and more...
Next week I’ll be in the Pacific North West for some Ballad Of Buttery Cake Ass readings. I’m pretty thrilled about this. I’ve never been to Seattle or Olympia before, and I loved the two days I spent in Portland in 2017. Rancid’s ‘Olympia, WA’ has been on my stereo a lot this year, especially during the course of my travels, and as I was writing the press release for that event, I remembered that when I was 18 I had wanted to attend Evergreen State simply because Kim Thayil from Soundgarden went there. The Clock-Out Lounge show will also feature readings by Adam Tepedelen and Brett Hamil, with music from Atrocity Girl. Tour dates below. Hope to see some of you there!
It’s been a heck of a busy few weeks. Feels like all I’ve been doing is getting my next manuscript ready to send off to Sagging Meniscus, who will be publishing it next April. But I have found time to do some other stuff as well. Went to see Asteroid City the other day and LOVED it. Could it be Wes Anderson’s best work yet? There was so much going on, and so incredibly stylish (though that’s to be expected). It was amazing to go the movies in the middle of the afternoon, pay less than $10 for a ticket, and have almost the entire place to oneself. But the best part (besides marvelling at the film of course) was getting to wear my beloved scarf in July, the room being so dang cold from the A/C. When I got back, I pulled out my beautiful editions of Matt Zoller Seitz’s The Wes Anderson Collection and The Wes Anderson Collection: The Grand Budapest Hotel and have been taking great joy in going through them.
I also made it out to The Space Ballroom in Hamden to see White Reaper for the first time. Driving up, I felt almost guilty, abandoning my desk with so much left to correct. But it is always a good thing to ROCK, and ROCK we did. Bass player Sam Wilkerson wore a jacket the entire time over a Jam Sound Affects t-shirt, explaining that someone told him on his way onstage to take it off, so, despite the dense heat of the Connecticut summer, he defiantly kept it on all thru the set. I honestly don’t know how he did it. The show was so good that they didn’t even play my favourite song - ‘Last 4th Of July’, the one I came really wanting to hear, thinking it was a given with it being July and all - and I still thought it was awesome. As live shows should, it sold the new material to me even more. The title track of the latest album, Asking For A Ride, coming across more hardcore than the metal I had heard on initial listens. And they ended with ‘Judy French’ which has been stuck in my head on loop ever since. A good thing. A very good thing.
I’ve been listening to Hanif Abdurraqib’s They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us. I first learned of this book when I stopped into Two Dollar Radio Headquarters in Columbus, Ohio on the third day of the Buttery Cake Ass tour back in February. Erik, the owner of this awesome indie bookshop/performance space/vegan cafe, was pointing out their stock to me, and laid special emphasis on how great this book is, Two Dollar Radio just having published the Five Year Hardcover Anniversary Edition. I made a note of it, still trying to keep to not to buying anything on tour. I came across Hanif again in Raeghan Buchanan’s excellent The Secret History Of Black Punk: Record Zero, and this sold me on picking up the audio of They Can’t Kill Us… I’m so glad I did. The writing is so powerful, so full of life, and deals with so much of what I love, even getting me to check out stuff I normally wouldn’t. I don’t claim to know much about hip-hop, but Hanif writing on Chance The Rapper and Atmosphere (whose When Life Gives You Lemons, You Paint That Shit Gold is one of the all-time great album titles) had me pausing the book to dial that shit up for the stereo.
He writes with such love, deep knowledge and deeper feeling for his subjects, you feel blessed to be in such company and receiving these. Although there’s only two Fall Out Boy songs I really like (‘Sugar, We’re Goin Down’ and ‘Disloyal Order Of Water Buffaloes’, but I must say I have great love for both of these), I could listen to Hanif talk about the band for hours, with him having caught their early basement shows when they didn’t even have a name yet through his changing impressions as they rose to heights greater than they ever thought. Eve L. Ewing’s introduction to the book is lovely, with her waxing lyrical about what she gets from Hanif’s writing. Such honest expressions of magic being in your life are a wonderful thing, and a wonderful rare thing. And this comes across strongly in her intro. Eve also highlights his chapter on Carly Rae Jepsen and oh man… Hanif’s thoughts on CRJ’s music and what it means, and how she might not be a pop star because her music is too honest for that and that she isn’t interested in the spectacle anyway. But also his ruminations on what type of friend she would be, someone who is ebullient and overenthusiastic about what they can share with you, what they want to give you…this was all so touching that it brought tears to my eyes.
Despite all the hardship that he deals with so compassionately throughout, the tragedy of friends dying and this country’s long horrendous history of murdering black people of all ages, and just how long and difficult life really is, Hanif possesses an optimism that I envy. An optimism that has been hard-earned, and not one that is ‘everything’s going to be alright’, but rather that there are things in life that are worthwhile - namely love, friendship, music, the fight to be who you are and treated fairly in a world intent on devaluing you to the point of death - and that these things should be cherished, and cherish them he does. Reading Hanif Abdurraqib you feel just how much these things matter.
Hanif has a podcast, Small Joys with Hanif Abdurraqib. I listened to the latest episode with Raeghan Buchanan and very much enjoyed it. His question at the end was about one’s own personal small joys. And I immediately remembered how throughout my life one of those has always been finding an out-of-order parking meter. A brief respite from having to pay all that Life extracts from us. And then I thought of how now, with everything being online, even that has been taken away.
A few weeks ago my family went to Rockport, MA. My favourite place in the United States and one I feel a strong connection to. My family has gone there every year since my mother was a teenager, and this year we went to celebrate Mama Stone’s 75th turn around the Sun. I was still mostly working on getting this final draft ready, but it was wonderful to wake up every day and dive into the (very cold) ocean. So refreshing, getting one’s mind ready to work. And also to stroll out onto the rocks at the end of main drag and let the water carry away one’s thoughts for a while. I was walking my nephew out on these one evening when I heard “Hey! Aren’t you the author?” It was a young lady who had happened to be in the record store when I read at Stereo Jack’s in Somerville and actually stayed for the reading. This totally made my day. On the day of departure I was heading into Boston to work on music with Sean Drinkwater for our new project, but before I left I sat out in a very light drizzle next to the beach, further correcting my stories. It felt amazing. Then I stopped into Manchester By The Book, an excellent used book store that if you’re ever on the North Shore I highly recommend. I could’ve spent hours there. I did pick up the Vintage Collected Works of Auden that I had been looking for, so result! They also had all the old Wizard Of Oz books on display which were really cool to look at.
The night before, on my mom’s actual bday, my father hired a party bus and we drove around taking in sights and sites that were special to her - where she went to college, etc. At my mom’s request, I made a playlist for the journey. Favourites both personal to her and the family - ‘Everybody Is A Star’ by Sly & The Family Stone, James’ ‘Sit Down’, ‘Something’ by The Beatles (my parents’ wedding song). I always credit my love of music as coming from my mother, as she would always play me records ever since I was born, especially ‘Everybody Is A Star’. I also included Gino Paoli’s ‘Sapore Di Sale’ which was a hit in Italy the summer my mother went to Italy as a teenager and she and my aunt brought back the 45.
And Kyu Sakamoto’s ‘Sukiyaki’, which all the Stone siblings have also known since birth. When this came on, as we always do, the family reminisced about the time when my sister was a teenager and a friend of hers was in the car with us and this came on the mixtape that was playing and my sister’s friend was visibly shocked as the rest of us were all singing along with the Japanese syllables.
Growing up with these songs, it never occurred to me that they might seem odd to others, and something being in another language being a barrier is something I’ve never understood. Movies have subtitles, after all, and music is a universal language beyond words. So this week’s Seven Songs are ones that are not sung in English
SEVEN SONGS
Gwenno - ‘Patriarchaeth’. Utterly gorgeous pop tune. I remember the first time I heard it, before the record came out. I had driven to the Eisteddfod in Llanelli. A long, long day, getting up at 5:15 to leave London for the train to Cardiff and then getting behind the wheel on the opposite side of the road for the first time. Arriving at these fields as the Sun was going down again, tired as I was, it was the perfect mental state to take in Gwenno’s new tunes. As throngs of teenagers got drunk for the first time all around me, I stood in that dark field, thousands of miles from even where my nebulous home could be considered to be in those days, and let this beautiful music wash over me. When she bust into ‘Patriarchaeth’ (‘Patriarchy’) it was like an elevator to heaven, and the memory of this tune kept me smiling for days.
Sarolta Zalatnay - ‘Itt A Nyár’. This song ROCKS. An awesome 70s freak-out. First tune on the 2007 Finders Keepers compilation.
Nina Brodskaya - ‘Zvenit yanvarskaya vyuga’. Back in 2006/2007 when I was attempting to learn Russian, I would use Netflix’s dvd delivery service to order Russian films, soon learning of and obtaining the screwball comedies of Leonid Gaidai. And whilst watching Ivan Vasilievich: Back To The Future (from 1973, well ahead of Michael J. Fox’s film of [almost] the same name), I came across this wonderful tune. I then spent quite some time trying to find more Soviet pop from that era of this calibre, but alas all my efforts came to nothing. Which considering the oppressiveness of the regime versus the nature of pop music, stands to reason
Lijadu Sisters - ‘Come On Home’. Ok so, some of this is in English, but it’s too glorious of a tune not to include. The rest of the song sung in the Lijadu Sisters’ native Yoruba tongue
Isabelle de Funès - ‘La Journée D'Isabelle’. A lovely, lovely tune, discovered on Silva Screen’s Swinging Mademoiselles 2005 compilation
Yura Yura Teikoku - ‘Hoshi Ni Nareta’. I first heard this song on a night that would resonate with the title (‘I Turned Into A Star’). A summer in London, staying up late with Swedish friends over for a visit, playing each other tunes we’d never heard before. And in the wee hours hearing this for the first time and being swept away by its beauty
Kim Jung Mi - ‘Haenim’ . I’ve been going on about this one all year, really one of the most beautiful songs I’ve ever heard
I’m also collecting all these Seven Songs lists here on a monster Apple playlist