Is it hot in here or are you Iggy? - Iggy and the Stooges in Boston

My head is spinning by the time we reach our nosebleed seats for Iggy and The Stooges at The Orpheum. I can’t remember the last time I had to climb so many stairs in a venue, and I also can’t remember when I’ve had seats this crap for a show. The only things I am sure of is that the workout my butt and thighs are getting, and that when we get to our seats, due to heat rising, it’s going to get seriously hot. Still, when we finally do arrive in Row Y of the balcony, I can’t argue with the spirit of the night. Nearby seats are packed with an array high school-aged punk rock kids, and oddly important looking gray haired men in their early-50’s who you want to ask “Didn’t you used to be somebody?” We’ve not bothered to come early enough to see openers Sistahs in The Pit who have a bad name and who we know we’d have to pay top dollar to drink beers during the set of. By the looks of how many people are seated after we arrive, we’re not the only ones with that idea.

I’m not sure if I’m really old, and thus think that The Stooges sound pretty damn good, or if they actually are pretty damn good, even if I discount the fact that most of them are about 60 now, and thus, the right age to date my Mom. But when the show kicks off with a pair of crunchy, muscled versions of “Loose” and “Down In The Street” from Funhouse the crowd is as happy as they should be. After all, the room is split between those who’ve waited half their lifetime to see a reunion like this, and those who were not even born last time this gang played together in public. Pretty freaky, eh? One of the reasons I’ve wanted to come tonight is the fact that recently I got a copy of the DVD of Tom Snyder’s Tomorrow Show, which includes amazing footage of a bleeding, kicking, platform shoe wearing Iggy performing “TV Eye.” It’s been 25 years or so since then, but tonight Iggy is no less strange or memorable. He’s shirtless, his drawers are heading south, his hair flounces and floats around his head, his dance moves and stage presence are crazed, bizarre, sexy,… hey, maybe I don’t want this guy messing with my Mom after all. But that said one of the benefits of a band having put out their last record like, 30 years ago is you know most of what they have to play tonight is going to be classics, so indeed we get almost everything we’d like to hear: 1969, 1970, I Wanna Be Your Dog, Dirt, TV Eye, No Fun, and Real Cool Time, along with new songs like My Idea of Fun, Trollin’ and Fried, that are, like, um, OK.

An hour and a half later, the most notably missing track from the evening is Search and Destroy, which collectively the audience figures the band is saving up, but when the band come back for an encore of new songs there is a collective, “Huh?” Descending the stairs toward a chilly Boston night outside, I run into Steve Venable aka Poundy of bands including but not limited to Fudge, Cherry 2000, and Rock City Crimewave, but most importantly local Stooges cover band The Scrooges. “How can they end with a NEW SONG?” he bellowed from beneath his trademark cowboy hat. “Does anyone care about the new record? Come on, show of hands, who cares about the new record?!” (no response) “Now who just wanted to hear Raw Power? Come on, hands!” (one man on stairs raises his hand) “Ah hah! As I suspected! I am not fucking alone!”

Hear the whole show (or reasonable facsimilie thereof) can be heard here courtesy of NPR.

Incidentally, on Amazon you can’t listen to a sample of anti-war single “My Idea of Fun” thanks music retailer from protecting all of us from poisoning our minds with… what you are retailing.

Quote of the Day - John Doe of X

After all the years and frustrations, how do you keep yourself from getting discouraged?

"A short memory and... It’s what I do. Drive. Drive to express something and search for a new subject and a new way, or to express a familiar subject in a different way."

--- John Doe, taken from an interview in The Weekly Dig.

Vulvapalooza!

It's not often I come across an event with such a great name as Vulvapalooza. Apparently a benefit concert to raise money for local domestic violence shelters this evening of music features Rose Polenzani, The Grey Sky Girls, Kevin Allred, Matt Meyer and Michelle Cummings (get it? - oy vey). Anyway, I know almost none of the performers performing, but I have to heartily endorse it just because of the name.

Friday, March 23rd: Vulvapalooza Benefit Concert
Location: Spontaneous Celebrations (45 Danforth St, Jamaica Plain, MA)
Time: 8:00pm-10:30pm (doors at 7:30)
Admission: Sliding Scale $7-15

Want more vulva (I'm so excited I get to write that)? Come back Sunday for what the press release describes as "A day of vagina-friendly carnival-style fun" The Vagina Fair! No, I'm not making this up! An afternoon which will include face painting, balloon twisting, raffles, music, performances, rummage sale, auctions, Vagina Monologues merchandise, and lots of games. And if you can explain to me how even half of those are vagina friendly, or not vagina friendly, well... oh just forget it.

Location: Spontaneous Celebrations (45 Danforth St, Jamaica Plain, MA)
Time: 12:00 noon - 4PM
Admission: FREE

The Captain of what?

So there I was, waiting for some friends to join me for dinner, and just as I'm deciding between the squash risotto and the coffee-rubbed tenderloin on the in house sound system comes "Love Will Keep Us Together" by Captain and Tennille. I know the following is something I find surprising to say, but this song actually isn't half bad. In fact, it's really quite a winner. Penned by Neil Sedaka - the man who authored plenty of other kicky little hits like "Calendar Girl" and "Stupid Cupid" - it has a jaunty little hook, a sassy strut of a piano line, and a booty shaking bridge where Tennille wails "Young and beautiful, Some day your looks will be gone. When the others turn you off, who'll be turning you on? I will! I will! I will!"

I certainly can't recommend Muskrat Love (ick) or anything else the Captain and Tennille produced, save their son Dennis Dragon who went on to form The Surf Punks (go ahead look it up, I am not shitting you). But "Love Will Keep Us Together", well, you are admittedly worth a second look.

"That Debbie Gibson sure can take a punch!"

Again, forgive me for being a girl, I’ve just gone to see the new Hugh Grant/Drew Barrymore film “Music and Lyrics” and it was admittedly fun.

In it, Grant plays a washed up 80’s popstar whose musical output is not far from that of Wham, and Barrymore plays his irrepressibly cute houseplant-waterer nee aspiring pop song lyricist. Without even telling you anything more than that, you know where the story is going and where it will end before it ever gets there, so the reason to watch is not for plot but for the washed up popstar theme which is nicely explored.

The film opens with the video from Grant’s 80’s band Pop and their hit single “Pop Goes My Heart” which is complete with every 80’s stereotype all in one place: black and white checkerboard outfits; uninspired synchronized dance steps; an appalling narrative and Grant with an awesomely floppy early 80’s hairdo. From there we get to see Grant perform at a number of embarrassing venues, high school reunions and amusement parks and get offered a spot on a very VH1 looking show where has-been popstars box each other for the right to sing a new song at the end of the show. Grant’s fabulous lines about said show include: “I’m pretty sure I can take A Flock of Seagulls because we once toured with them and we beat them then and they cried like a bunch of babies” and “Did anyone see battle of the has-beens last night? That Debbie Gibson sure can take a punch.” Oh if only.

It’s light fare, and you’ll want to plan your bathroom breaks to coincide with most of the musical numbers which are mostly terrible and sung quite poorly by Grant, who should stick to being English and chappish and aging rather sexily rather than attempting to croon in any place other than his shower ever again.

Again, I may be a girl, but so is 52% of the population you know.

Rememberances of Shins Past

It was a night at the visibly crumbling Orpheum Theatre to see The Shins with Viva Voce. I haven’t been to the Orpheum in quite a while and I’d like to assure you there have been no improvements to the place since I first went there in 1983 to see The Cure. The stained and torn chairs are hardly connected to the floor, and the balcony seems hardly connected to anything. Our seats were excellent and strange, just parallel to the stage in the far left box, a place that I feared if I jumped up and down in would fall crashing to the floor below.

Entering in the middle of Viva Voce’s set I found myself with a problem. I was trying so hard to like them, but found myself repeatedly stymied in my efforts. The most outstanding problems with Viva Voce are:

• The band’s love of overlong cock-rocking guitar solos that devolve into masturbatory noodling. Now granted, the key difference between the usual cock-rocking and this rocking is these noodles are cooked up by pretty girl guitarist Anita Robinson. So for a while I considered the idea of a woman laying down these licks as joyfully breaking the mold, but after the umpteenth guitar solo I realized that even feminism can’t justify how tedious this is.

• The attire drummer Kevin Robinson wore on stage, which included a bicentennial colored headband with his ears poking out between his greasy locks. Hey, I dressed up to come out tonight, since I’m paying money to sit in this chair, do you think you could bother to do something too?

Partway through the set I found if I positioned myself so the large stack of monitors were blocking my view of drummer Robinson I was able to enjoy Viva Voce much more, but even this couldn’t fix the band’s herky jerky songwriting structure which would start in one direction, then veer off to not only somewhere different, but somewhere I had no interest in going. I guess this is why they say you can take the hippies out on tour, but this still doesn’t make them hip. Congratulations Viva Voce, you are the first boy/girl drum/guitar combo I have ever actively disliked.

Thankfully headliner The Shins were perfectly lovely in nearly every way. The band opened by ripping through the first 4 tracks on their new album “Wincing The Night Away” and kept the fevered pitch going the rest of the night. Singer James Russell Mercer’s voice was sweet and high and the band were tight, grabbing their hooks as if to wring every bit of sunshine they could from each song.

The interesting thing about The Shins at present, is they seem caught between where they once were (indie rocking small clubs) and where they are now (debuting at #2 on Billboard), and their show hasn’t quite evolved to the new space they’re in. So there was a backdrop behind the stage, but nothing happened with it, there were lights, but nothing really happened with them either, the band put on a fine show, but one lacking the kind of frills you often see in a room of this size.

Fortunately, this didn’t seem to matter to the devoted group of thick necked guys wearing baseball hats who had come out to see the band - you know, the kind of guys who would have beat The Shins up in high school? So when they launched into a blasting cover of The Modern Lovers’ “Someone I Care About" for their encore - thinking it would surely connect with a Boston audience - instead, for the first time all night, there was no dancing or singing along, just a group of 3000 standing stock still with question marks floating over their collected heads. Oh, to be young (and thick necked, and be wearing a baseball cap).

It’ll be interesting to see where The Shins are in another year or so, if their own heads will be fitted for baseball caps as well, or if they’ll be playing for an entirely different team by then.

A reason to love Justin Timberlake

I know it's old but I've just seen it for the first time this weekend. Genius.

Like the most wonderful dream I could imagine

There I was, flipping around the stations just before going to bed and what did I come across but an episode of House starring Dave Matthews. According to the blurb on my cable info box Matthews was portraying a pianist who comes down with some malady House has to find the cure for. During the 3 or so minutes I watched, the handsome blonde English doctor on the show attempted to give Matthews a gigantic hypodermic needle in the tongue. Matthews screamed and yelled and was eventually subdued and injected. Seeing this purveyor of musical horribleness shriek, wail, and be injured just tickled me pink. Knowing that the show couldn't get much better than this (House usually does save the lives of those he's charged with, no point in staying tuned for that), I turned off the TV and whisked myself away to bed and a night of peaceful slumbers.

One Hit Wonder

First off, I won’t pretend that “One Hit Wonder” by Lisa Jewell is not chick-lit, because it is. That said, it’s damn fine chick-lit. Predicting your next question, which would be “What could possibly be defined as good chick lit?” Well, if the premise doesn’t involve the main character desperately and pathetically casting about as she attempts to procure a wedding ring, a baby, or exceptionally expensive shoes, that’s a fine place to start.

The main character of One Hit Wonder, Ana, is thankfully not pursuing any of the items above. What she’s after is finding out what prompted her sister Bee – a fictionalized one-hit-wonder from the eighties – to a lonely suicide in a grotty London apartment. By the end, she finds out, in a tale that is actually some nicely crafted storytelling with colorful characters and a few surprises along the way. Admittedly the details of Bee’s life are hardly the focal point of the story, but this book gets big points for not only describing our failed pop star as looking exactly like another one hit wonder of the time, Corinne Drewery of Swing Out Sister (whose hit “Breakout” can consistently be heard in grocery stores all over America), but also chalking up her professional demise to a problem that has legendarily plagued next big things; mistakenly believing that you are as competent as your producers to pen a hit song. Although certainly not identical, the premise pleasingly recalls that of Nick Hornby's "About A Boy" in which the main character lives off the proceeds of an appalling Christmas novelty single. It makes one wonder if all the UK is stuffed full of people who are one hit wonders. After all, it’s not a big country (no pun intended) and they do seem to export an inordinate number of pop stars. Regardless, Jewell certainly gets a thumbs up for this book. When reading, it doesn’t hurt to be a girl, but should that not be the case already it’s certainly not necessary.

In other advertising news...

Wendy's bacon double cheeseburger is now advertised to the tune of "Blister in the Sun" by the Violent Femmes. Advertising your foodstuff to the tune of a song about masturbation. Ewwwww!

"Body and beats I stain my sheets I don't even know why
my girlfriend she's at the end she is starting to cry
let me go on like a blister in the sun
let me go on big hands I know you're the one..."

It's A Sign

So here I was, posting away and found myself grooving out to "Feed It" by The Candyskins. There I was singing along at the top of my lungs to the refrain "You don't know what it is until it's gone gone gone..." when I realized I wasn't listening to the radio or the CD player. What I was listening to was an ad for Lay's potato chips trailing in from the TV in the next room. First EMF, now this. Why are all these britgazers being tapped for American snack food ads? And more importantly, can we all wonder for a moment if the Candyskins made more money from this chip ad or from the release of their sparkly "Death of a Minor TV Celebrity" CD 9 years ago?

The intersection of oral hygiene and rock and roll x2

About 1 second after espying the “Tooth Tunes Toothbrush” by Tiger at my local CVS I had 3 in my hand and was headed for the cash register. Who could deny the snappy packaging, promising the item inside will “Rock your teeth clean” to the songs of Kiss, Queen, Kelly Clarkson, and The Black Eyed Peas among others? At last someone was able to marry two things close to my heart – rock and fresh breath. Well this had to be investigated.

A few hours later, toothbrush in mouth, I began to find out that the Tooth Tunes toothbrush is even odder than I expected. First off, the toothbrush has no speaker system to speak of, so oddly the music (which thankfully is original recordings) is transmitted via vibrations from the bristles into your teeth. Brush harder, the music is louder, brush softer, the music gets softer. You could effectively remix a song in this manner. But perhaps the most important question for me to answer here is “What is it like to receive music in your head via a toothbrush?” The answer is “Entirely uncomfortable, thank you very much.”

I often dream of getting to work at a company that makes strange niche-market items with incredibly limited appeal like this one (I mean, haven’t the folks at Tiger noticed that brushing after meals and rocking out are hardly compatible?). I'm already having visions of the collectability of this item. After the first lot sell out, I can’t imagine them making a lot more, so get yourself to the drugstore and get one now. If you do, I hope the folks at Tiger will be lead to believe there is a market for a Cheap Trick toothbrush, and I personally can hardly wait to hear “Dream Police” vibrating through the bones in my head.

In a nearly related story, Mark Matthews, former bass player of British jangle-pop pioneers The Dentists is bringing his new band The Echo Heights on a mini-tour of the Northeast US next week and everyone should go.The Echo Heights are a deeply pleasing psychedelic pop delight toned with hints of ennui in all the right places.I suppose this kind of thoughtful strum is less popular with the kids now than it once was, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth adoring.Dates in Boston, Worchester, NYC, DC, and Nashville are on tap. Pop on down, won’t you?

Book Report

My new year’s resolution this year was to actually read all of these lovely books I amass here in the house yet never read. The first of these books was a cheapie I picked up just because of the great title and back jacket description. “Dreaming of Gwen Stefani” by Evan Mandrey has a great premise, Mortimer is an obsessive-compulsive hot dog maker at one of those places in New York City with the word “Papaya” in the name where the hot dogs are perfect and sold for 75 cents. When flipping around TV stations late one night, he stumbles across a video of Gwen Stefani and falls in love with her. This fervor increases when, after pathetically researching the minutiae of Gwen’s life, he finds out her favorite food is (wait for it) hot dogs at the very place he works. The rest of the story follows Mortimer as he crazily readies himself for the day which he knows will come soon, when Gwen will come to the Papaya place, get a hot dog and (of course) fall in love with him. With a premise this good it’s surprising how horribly wrong this book can go. Endless uninteresting chapters about the building blocks of biology are thrown in, along with a heavy handed and clumsily executed moral that is so entirely self-congratulatory and immature were I the author, I would be embarrassed that anyone might think this was ‘the deep statement I wanted to make with my book’. By the end I was left with was a strong desire for a Papaya Plus hotdog, though sadly I found myself about 200 miles away from one.

Much better was a book I bought a year ago, in hardcover, lent to my boyfriend at the time, and then never read myself “Killing Yourself to Live” by Spin writer Chuck Klosterman. I first encountered Klosterman a few years back when a friend bought me his crazily brilliant love letter to a youth loving heavy metal “Fargo Rock City”, a book that I have now bought for at least 5 other people. “Killing Yourself” follows Klosterman on a Spin-funded expedition across the US, visiting the sights of various rock celebrities deaths, obsessing all the while on every girl he has ever had (or hoped to have) sex with. The resulting treatise is painfully honest, embarrassingly geeky and pathetically rock-dorky, but damn good reading. As proof I hold up the fact that at one point the author actually goes to the trouble of letting us know which member of Kiss each of his past loves would be. This includes members who were in temporary lineups, managers, the kind of thing an in-depth and perhaps dismayingly over the top knowledge of Kiss is required to fully grasp. It is brilliant. It is pathetic. Go read it now.

Emily Post for Rock and Roll

Last night I went out to see “This American Life - Live!” at the beautiful Boston Opera House.This venue is so entirely opulent, I’m glad it was resurrected, if not only so that I can visit where I went to see The Smiths and Billy Bragg the day before I graduated high school oh so many years ago.

So many delightful authors were there reading including Sarah Vowell (who I never like in her books, but always like on the radio) and Dan Savage (who thankfully kept his potty mouth to a minimum - after all, I was there with my Mom) as well as seeing the now finally just vaguely aging TAL host Ira Glass in all his wonderfully nerdy glory. If this tour is coming to your town, it is most certainly a must see.

The musical guests for the tour are the Mates of State, who revealed under questioning from Ira that they haven’t practiced in over two years, since the birth of their daughter but they did maintain that being married is not necessarily the opposite of rocking out. The Mates’ music was entirely charming, and reminded me of how - like with old favorite of mine The Spinanes - that sometimes less (a girl, a boy, a piano, and a drum kit) can definitely be more.What was the only problem with their wee sets? The fact that audience members seemed to think nothing of getting up during the band’s songs to go to the bathroom or otherwise wander away. Hey people, it’s a show! I certainly didn’t see anyone getting up and leaving while Ira spoke. Poor Mates. Maybe these people felt that listening to married people rock out was the opposite of having any manners.

Linda! Linda!

It’s a good possibility that tonight I’ll see “Linda Linda Linda” - a Japanese film about a group of high school girls who form a band in order to play the Blue Hearts’ single “Linda Linda” at a school competition. Japanese teenage girls singing the punk rock. Now what could be cuter than that?

Around 1990, I recall getting the sole Blue Hearts’ US release on Juggler Records. It’s not hard to sell me on a band that was being marketed a “The Japanese Beatles” (not to be confused with the band The Japanese Beetles, which featured members of Big Dipper and Shonen Knife). The 6 song ep was a hodgepodge of the band’s hits including “No, No, No”,"Kiss Shite Hoshii (I Wanna Kiss)" and "Be Nice" - chipper little numbers designed to get you pogoing on your tatami mat in no time. Every one of these tunes was a winner even if they weren’t sung in Japanese, but of course being not in English meant the band would never make it big in the US. It’s a sin how language keeps up apart isn’t it?

Inauthenticity is what's hot in 2007!

When I was out seeing a friends band last night, I was pleased to discover the band who was on just after them: Paper Thin Stages.

Sort of a Minutemen/Mission of Burma kind of thing, but with a bit more art school thrown in – all three members all wore glasses, sang minor chord harmonies and the bassist played bass as if he were playing a guitar (with chords). Songs were angled, striving, uncomfortable, and yearning - nothing not to like there. Dying to go home after a long day at work, I ended up pushing myself to stay for their whole set, which gave me the pleasant feeling that there is hope for music.

This same feeling was one I had nearly lost last week upon hearing the gutless sound of a new Fall Out Boy single played on NPR as they discussed “What is hot for 2007”. Isn’t it evident to anyone with the smallest bit of real hipness in their soul, that the moment one is able to articulate “What will be hot”, it immediately ceases to be hot? But of course hot or not Fall Out Boy (a band the NPR commentator pleasingly repeatedly called “The Fall Out Boys”) are just the kind of thing I loathe – a band who are entirely inauthentic, feigning to be deeply authentic. Does this mean that feigning authenticity will be what is hot in 2007? And if so, is there a reason that would make it different than any other year? I don't know how to break it to Paper Thin Stages they won't be hot this year. With any small amount of luck they'll never read this blog.

Rock and Roll Love Letter

I’ve been in a serious Undertones mood for a few weeks now (well possibly for the past 10 years, but I meant more so lately). Reaching what I would call an unhealthy obsession with playing a copy of their debut album at least twice a day. How lucky I am that CD’s don’t wear out (anyone else remember being told how the grooves in vinyl will heat up if you play a song twice in a row)?

For my money, The Undertones are a perfect pop band. 5 pimply teenagers from Derry, Northern Ireland fronted by the uniquely warbly voice of Feargal Sharkey playing brisk, jumpy, 3-chord wonders that stick pretty much to the topics of chocolate, girls, and teenage hijinx. I recently bought a documentary made about the band - “The Undertones: Teenage Kicks” where band members spend considerable time wandering the Irish countryside reminiscing with their guardian angel, the late BBC DJ John Peel. The documentary itself though is as much an upper as a downer. Hearing about the band’s early days and seeing Peel with the band who even now in their 40’s still reek of a sweet earnestness is lovely. But Sharkey, filmed sitting in a room somewhere quite far away from the rest of the band spends most of his on-air time being far from proud of singing in a truly seminal punk/pop band. Rather he gives the impression that he views his time with The Undertones as a lead up to his horrible solo career, capped with his odious soft rock single “A Good Heart.” Seems Sharkey was always a hired hand even in The Undertones, singing someone else’s lyrics to someone else’s music, a fact which he’s oddly self-righteous about. Lord only knows why.

I actually just corrected the band’s Wikipedia listing to include their 1999 reformation with new singer Paul McLoone, which led to 2003 the release of the surprisingly good CD “Get What You Need”. Who would have imagined the band could put out a release which would hardly suffer for lack of Sharkey’s unique vocals? And what is Sharkey up to nowadays? Hanging with all those other singers who refuse to tour with their old bands like Dennis DeYoung and Steve Perry?

Random linkology:
My favorite Undertones song. My recent obsession. And thank you for playing football in a video for no reason.

Tom Waits for no man (or 14 year old girl)

I’ve had two encounters of the Tom Waits kind this week. The first was finally seeing the gent in the Jim Jarmusch film “Coffee and Cigarettes” where he discusses with Iggy Pop that the previous generation was the “coffee and pie generation, but" he brilliantly declares "we are the coffee and cigarettes generation”. A few days later I caught him being interviewed on The Late Show with Jon Stewart, being gruff voiced, irreverent and delightful as ever. After the interview he returned to sing “Day After Tomorrow”a lovely song about soldiers, war, and futility, which was depressingly cut off so the network could go to commercial. Even on cable there is hardly a respite from capitalism!

20 years in, Waits is able to convey so much that is both intimate and true, yet profound and global with his music. There are a few imitators (more artists who have drawn on his work for inspiration, like Reverend Glasseye and His Wooden Legs) but no one I'd quite call a 'contemporary.' He remains one of the few musical artists I can think of who is onto himself a genre. And what exactly is that genre? Well, I remember seeing Waits interviewed (I think) by David Letterman probably more than a decade ago. The question was "What are you listening to lately?” and Waits replied “I’m listening to the sound of the radio in the other room, when it’s tuned between two stations and there’s a lot of static...” Yes, that seems about right.

I’m beginning to believe that the people most worth listening to musically are the unfashionably old and the very young. The former because they know exactly what they’re doing, and know how to use their talents to convey a message eloquently; the latter because they haven’t yet arrived at having their honesty and passion beaten out of them in favor of what (they believe) will sell. Witness my blossoming interest in Smoosh, a band comprised of two pre-pubescent sisters whose music, although not always perfect, is pleasingly experimental, and oddly adept, yet not nearly as painful as The Shaggs.

Do you have to be a 14-year-old girl or a 57-year-old man to be able to breathe the heady air of uncontaminated creative selfhood? You shouldn’t have to be, but lord knows it certainly doesn’t seem to hurt.

Prescription Drug or Metal Band?

This item brought to me courtesy of my sister.
And no, I didn't know which was which either.

The Rock is All Around Us

When going to see my doctor today due to seek a solution to the ringing in my ears that has not abated since I went to see The New York Dolls last week (fortunately gigantic antihistamines were the answer), I mentioned by way of explanation that I go to see a lot of rock concerts. My doctor, a momsy lady with graying hair who I’d guess to be in her mid-50’s said “Oh, if music is a big part of your life, do you know who Conor Oberst, "Bright Eyes" is?” Surprised at seeing my sweet middle aged Doctor suddenly getting all edgy I told her “yes” and she informed me that he is her nephew.

??!!