Big Trouble/Big 44/Big Saturday at White Squirrel

Big Trouble is back at “it” this Saturday. “It” means playing two 45 minute sets at White Squirrel between 6p-8p on Saturday. We had rehearsal on Saturday and we got through another one of Peter’s new tunes and worked out some issues with a couple new Steve charts. Adding new songs into the mix has given me excitement about what this project can be about. I am blessed to be in the presence of musicians who are passionate about their music, my music and collectively, our music. And on top of that I have to make three turns from my house to get to a music venue with a caring sound person, charming bartenders and a crowd of people who get into this type of music.

I don’t always know how to describe Big Trouble’s music. It’s instrumental. But that is not a genre. To me we are a band that won’t shake off our personal histories and preferences even as we coalesce as a band. Peter Leggett, our drummer, loves evocative, harmonically dense ECM jazz with Scandinavian dynamics of quiet, loud and scary as hell. Josh Peterson, one of our guitar players, loves all the atmospheric guitar-centric outfits who build in textures and move methodically through techniques to support a song. Steve McPherson, the other guitar player, loves all that stuff but his fingers will always best know the alternative rock to blues pipeline that he came out of. Sean McPherson, our me, loves funky bass lines, the allure of a bass part that disappears and the experience of a bass note shifting the ground that a song is walking on. So we all do those things and cook it up to be good combination. Big Trouble is a “bring your whole self to the jam session” type of band. It works out. And we get to share that monthly at the White Squirrel. What a treat.

Tired of our faces? Who isn’t? Enjoy some pixels. Design by Steve McPherson

(if you don’t want to hear a man reflect on what he’s done with his life skip this next section and also the grand majority of this blog in general tbh)

Monday also marks my 44th birthday. At what age are you safe to have gotten past the midlife crisis? I’m sure it’s not 44. I’ve had so little time to think about my forties. The shit just keeps on going. Horrible pandemic? Struggles at home? The difficulty of raising children? Inept and cruel leadership at the national Level? Unresolved issues from childhood? Continuing to be a creative person in the face of diminishing enthusiasm from yourself and collaborators towards a project? I’ve had it all. It’s been hard. I’m spending time in good feelings and bad feelings.

The time I do spend reflecting back on my forties so far lean heavily on “pretty good, considering.” So much to consider. Can we have good years anymore as a world? As a country? Can these twenties roar? We can’t Make America Great Again. That’s a crock. That’s a weapon. That’s a shitty hat. But can we head somewhere better? I think we can. I don’t think there is some fundamental reason why America can’t grow, mature and become a better version of ourselves than we’ve ever been. Can the counter-response to the cruelty of this Trump administration usher us into something better. I think the answer is “why not?”

I love being a part of community radio. It matters to me. I am listening to Radio K right now and I feel like I’m listening an extended family of broadcasters and community members. I love Big Trouble. I feel like I got an incredible amount of growth in my therapy sessions towards resolving many of the issues that linger from childhood.

At 44, I’m past thinking that I’ll have to load some plan b career into my future that I will find disagreeable. Will I be fired or laid off from a radio gig in the future? Absolutely. Do I have fundamental skills in that realm that suggest I’ll be able to jump back in in a different role? I do.

I am the owner of Trivia Mafia. Trivia Mafia is very successful. Trivia Mafia has been so successful since I’ve left that a very small portion of me worries they’d be less successful if I had stuck around and kept on trying to help. I don’t question that fact that I was instrumental in laying the groundwork. I also think I helped laid groundwork that a bunch of other people would’ve fucked up. Chuck and I are responsible for the core identity/vibe of Trivia Mafia and I’m happy to tell you it’s an awesome core identity/vibe.

I don’t know what the next chapter for Heiruspecs will be but we do not have any shows on the horizon and it shall remain that way for quite some time. The door to new music is wide open at the moment and it remains to be seen how widely we will open that door. This development scares me. Heiruspecs is central to my identity. Playing shows is central to my understanding of what Heiruspecs gives to the world and to ourselves. I just have to give it time and it’s hardest thing to give. I wanted to be in a band that is an important part of the story of Minnesota music. That goal mattered to me years ago and it matters to me now. Heiruspecs did that. I was a very important part in doing that. That makes me proud. But thinking that most or all of our story is past tense is very hard for me. It should be hard for me. Transitions are hard.

I have a beautiful family. I love being a father and being a husband in ways I am not sure I ever would! I also hate being a father and being a husband in unique and special ways I never would’ve imagined. But that’s the deal. I don’t know what the next chapter of home life holds for me. I am just getting to the point where my 8 year old daughter S. is a little too big to be carried for much more than a flight of stairs. S. can also really hold her own in bed wrestling with me. We are Jewish so it was low-stakes but she did hit me with some “is that Easter Bunny business for real” material. Spoiler alert: I told her the truth. The bunny isn’t real. She is seeing her world, learning her likes, navigating her path. I’m terrified. Our five year old N. has turned some corner in her life where her relationship to the world and to the humans in her world is much deeper and compassionate than it was just months ago. And this is all built on a really strong relationship between Rachel and I. I couldn’t fathom being married period, let alone for 10+ years. And now I can’t imagine life without her. Life without us. We are partners in an amazing adventure and we are also just two humans who love each other.

At 44 I just don’t want to fuck anything up super bad and I want to keep on making awesome things and experiences that matter to people. Sometimes I’m worried to create the next set of awesome things I might have to fuck some things up on the way. And I want to celebrate again even though I just celebrated 3 years at Jazz88 a month ago. So I’ll celebrate at White Squirrel on the 26th. I hope it’s nice out and we can move the party to the patio after the show is over.

Sean of 44

Reuniting with Ela

I’ve never felt worse about being in an indie rock band when compared to post-hardcore/emo and post-hardcore/math rock as potential style descriptions

Bill Caperton has been making his way back into my life. He was one of the first people I befriended at Central High School. Right at first when I got there it was really Martin Devaney, Kevin Hunt, Tony Bell (R.I.P.), Felix from Heiruspecs and Bill Caperton. Bill Caperton to me is forever wearing a Dave Matthews Band shirt under some overalls. Caperton was already in a band. Caperton was already ruggedly attractive. Caperton was a sweetheart. I’ve never really thought about this before, but I’m probably Bill’s closest and most frequent collaborator. We’ve made a bunch of records. I love playing his music. I love the way he plays guitar. I love how he writes. And I love how he performs. He doesn’t fill up the room when he performs. He fills up your head. He can create intimacy in a room filled with people. It’s a gift and it starts with his creativity. Our main project together is with the group Ela. Ela made two records. Our first one, Stapled to Air, is pretty fucking great. It’s the strongest release I’ve even been remotely involved in. I think I pay about $75 a year to keep it up on streaming sites so help me defray some costs and listen to it now.

We made another promising record after that. Not the high water mark that number one was. It was too ambitious, and too many cooks in an over supplied kitchen. And we didn’t have the same singular focus we had on album one. But I still enjoy it.

A reunion is one thing. It’s beautiful to revisit the tunes you loved. The ones you played in the Uptown Bar. The ones you played at a Chinese restaurant in Dayton, OH to no one. The ones you played in New York City when you thought it was gonna happen for your band. “Happen” was always ephemeral, some sense of no more shitty jobs, people buy your records, a sound guy travels with you, you get your own hotel room, when your record comes out Pitchfork cares. I don’t know. Something in there. None of that happened for Ela, but the records stands up and the formula stands up. Bill writes amazing songs and Peter (drums) and I (bass) do a lot more than just trace em. We kind of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot em. Change em up. Break em down. Push ourselves to use our instruments in weird ways. FUCK I HATE THE WORD SYNERGY BUT HERE I GO. There’s a lot of synergy. There is care for what we’re doing. There is camaraderie. There is 20 plus years of shared history. There is years of sharing things we love and hate. But until you open up the notebook and start making new stuff it’s all just high school reunion stuff. But now we’re going somewhere.

Bill’s making a poetry book which is a plausible thing for Bill to do. He’s been bringing in these poems and we’ve been songing them. Finding how they breathe, finding where they break, finding out what they need. And I didn’t know if we’d play them live. Because playing live is strange and Peter has limited nights to do it. Same for me. I like to see my family if I take my day off from the radio station. So not a lot of options to rock a Thursday. But the right night came along and now in a couple weeks we’ll be playing at Cloudland. I hope you’ll come. Bill’s new music deserves to be heard. It’s excellent, it’s beautiful and I’m eternally grateful to get to play on it.

Big Trouble Video From White Squirrel

My main job is cooking dinner for my family, doing dishes and raising two beautiful daughters and aspiring to be a great husband to my wonderful wife. On the side of that I am the Afternoon Host and Musical Director at Jazz88. And on the side of that I am a member of Heiruspecs, but we are relatively inactive at the moment. And when I say relatively inactive I really mean like all the way inactive. I send out records in the mail. I limp through paying our taxes. I tell folks who want to book us that we aren’t playing live at the moment. That doesn’t scratch my itch of being in a band.

But thankfully Big Trouble is having a bit of a renaissance. On the last Saturday of the month we are at the White Squirrel playing music from 6-8. If we were just rehashing the Big Trouble songbook of yesteryear that would be one thing but we are churning out new songs. And when I say churning I mean churning. My brother and Big Trouble guitarist Steve is probably averaging one and a half charts a month, me and guitarist Josh are probably hitting one a quarter and our drummer Peter Leggett just put two new ones together! Peter is a special writer who is deeply steeped in the harmonies and textures of ECM. The love of ECM sounds comes through loud and clear on his new original “Beneath the Mississippi.” The recording turned out great and I’m happy to share it with you here. Our next show is on April 26 over at the White Squirrel.

Indochin’s Shrimp Panang Curry Refuses to Stop

Did you grow up with panang curry? I sure didn’t. I don’t think I hit a panang curry until maybe late 2010s. I don’t even remember checking for it when I started going deep on Thai food in my twenties. Panang curry is creamy, nutty and the vegetables just sing in the dish. They don’t seem beat down or soaked in a too thick sauce. During the pandemic my wife Rachel and her friends would often go to grassy area of Hidden River Middle School and all bring take out, sit far apart and visit for a couple hours. It was a treat and I started to ignore every other option for food for those visits and just got serious about panang curry from Indochin.

Also, have you tried shrimp? Shrimp is amazing. My family is Jewish and it is our policy to not have shellfish or pork in the house but all rules are off when we are out of the house. I have grown to believe it’s kind of awesome to not be able to eat one of your favorite foods in your own home. I will get shrimp anywhere. I would buy shrimp off the street if a person had a laser printed sign that said “SHRIMP 4 SALE!”

So look, I like the Shrimp Panang Curry. I like to put most of the rice in early so it grabs up the sauce and makes it a whole tasty involved thing. And that’s what I did today. In fact, I forgot to take the photo until after I had riced up. But listen, get the shrimp panang curry. It’s $16.95. It’s worth it. It’s a lot of shrimp and a lot of vegetables. I had never had their wonton soup before today either and wow, it was stuffed with vegetables and it was great. It was the most vegetable forward wonton soup I had ever experienced.

Saint Paul Lunches

I had two really good Saint Paul lunches this week that you should consider adding to your repertoire.

The BBQ Black Bean Burger from J. Selby’s

Goddammit I love a Black Bean Burger. Acadia at one point held the crown. The Depot at one point held the crown. But I think at some point I got out of touch with both of those burgers. I went to J. Selby’s a bunch during the pandemic but it has been a long ass time. They have a great Big Mac rip off but I wanted to get the Black Bean burger. I also wanted to get the crispy cauliflower but I’m not made of money, that would’ve been a $31 lunch. But the BBQ Black Bean Burger was $15. And that comes with fries. (My wife thinks that it should be illegal to serve a burger without serving fries with it for no additional cost and I completely agree. We can accept chips instead if they are real good chips that are housemade).

This was a fine ass Black Bean Burger. The fake cheese tasted real good because fake cheese is actually pretty legit. Technology has really brought us some good fake cheese. The BBQ flavor was not overbearing and the whole scene was great. I wish I had gotten a side of ranch for the fries cause the ketchup wasn’t cutting it but I have no notes for the burger situation itself. Spectacular.

The Tarragon Chicken Salad from Yum!

Greens tossed in a tasty understated vinaigrette is some of the best. French Meadow might do it the best. But the chicken salad sitting on top of these nicely dressed greens is out of this world. Yum! is a big clean fresh ass feeling place and when they walk over this plate you feel like you are a smart media consultant who makes a lot of money and has a super clean house and a dog named Cinnamon who smells amazing.

I think tarragon is one of those fake ass spices that doesn’t do anything much of anything special when I use it but whatever they’re doing here is working I mean wow really working. Dive in and enjoy. This is an elite eat and keep going lunch. And at $12.95 you’ll feel like an asshole for eating it but not a huge asshole.

Fake Drugs

The family vacation was to D.C. last week and it was a whirlwind. Walked through cherry blossoms on a perfect breezy day and felt as though there was nothing better on Earth than the weather and the company that day. Went to the Lincoln Memorial, The Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, The Thomas Jefferson Memorial, The Vietnam Memorial, The African-American American Civil War sculpture outside the Memorial. Saw Tucker Carlson talking on an iPhone in a wrinkly suit. Had after kids bedtime drinks twice with my brother.

There’s a fake drug we take as parents of young kids. A sense that life is too overwhelming as a parent to still be involved in the messy work of protest, of civic engagement, of anything non-recreational, revenue generating or parental. That fake drug is bolstered by a reality. Raising children is inarguably exhausting in regards to time and also emotionally exhausting on a different level. The fake drugs make you believe that it’s frivolous to keep on making new music. The fake drugs let you feel like it’s either the work of your seventy something year old dad or a teenager in Sweden to save the world, you’re busy. Any measure of soul searching will turn up counter-examples to this drug; heroes and ordinary folks lost to history juggled a lot more than I’ve ever juggled and still found time to push for a cause. For centuries profoundly disenfranchised people have fought. As I was struggling through some of this with my friend and colleague Pavielle also mentioned an angle I hadn’t considered. . .what will this teach my kids? When our kids see their parents involved in protest and activism what will they see? What will they be inspired to do?

Protesting is dangerous at many levels and it can be tacky as well. First off, someone might beat the shit out of you and that someone might be a state actor. People have died for the freedoms we enjoy. It can be tacky cause you have to perform your views in a way that feels so un-nuanced. I have never felt 100% chanting “the people united will never be divided” or “Black lives, they matter.” I agree wholeheartedly with these sentiments, with these slogans. But I feel like a dipshit chanting them. Why? I think part of it is related to being a cool musician. I grew up thinking musicians should act cool. If you’re at the protest it’s to play a song and inspire the masses. Or if you’re at the protest you play the back, you shake hands and everyone is just so overjoyed that you left your genius laboratory for a scant few hours to hang with the lowly masses. I want to shake off this attitude. There is little value in SEAN MCFUCKINGPHERSON being there. There’s just value in being there, in my kids being there. No soloist, just choir. But my head struggles. And I get goldilocks on the whole affair. Can you please schedule a protest at a time where my kids won’t miss bath time, Sunday school, guitar lessons, circus class and please also avoid any nationally televised Timberwolves games. Thanks! Yes, the People United Will Never Be Divided unless its Wolves/Warriors on ESPN. That’s what I’ll chant.

I’m telling you all this because I think you might understand it. We want a protest that doesn’t block highways. A protest that MetroTransit knows about in advance and can send more train cars. We want an easy protest. And sure! Why not. If it can all be gained with easy protests why not make it easy? If there is no counter-response, wonderful. Grab your Sharpie, make one sign, let Elon take the down the essence of the message and he’ll start acting on it tomorrow.

I’m telling you I’m telling you this because I bet you understand that part and this next part. There is always a counter-response. Not everyone wants what I want. My fellow countrymen like where we are headed. There are responses and counter-responses and protest is part of that. I’ve been to, I bet, fifteen protests in my adult life. Every time I’ve felt something. Every time I’ve done something more after the protest. I’ve been fueled to donate, to email, to volunteer or to read. I’ve been fueled to go to more protests.

While my family was in DC we ran into Lizz Winstead. She’s a comic genius. She laid the groundwork and was the first director/leader type for the Daily Show. I interviewed her on the Current a number of times. She was walking around the capitol with her colleague Moji. Lizz was out for a big protest; reproductive rights and more issues. Standing in front of the Supreme Court to see someone who created one of the most distinguished programs of our time out there pushing for shit she believes will help the world. A joy to see her, to be reminded of someone who has restructured their life and career to prioritize protesting over comedy. I’m inspired. I’m humbled. I’m struggling to say the right thing. Lizz you inspire me and you remind me that I could do more.

My brother, who is very skilled at seeing things from 10,000 feet above was maligning the ambition of our country and the bankruptcy of our moment. Are we aspiring to something better? Are we curving the moral arc of the universe? Which direction? Are we heading into something worse? Are we all focusing on ourselves while collectively letting the world go to worse than shit? To cruelty, to disgrace, to denial of the merit of fellow humans. Steve helps me see the National Mall and the Capitol from a vantage point I can’t muster in myself. I see the grounds, the humans, the strollers, the photos, the solemnity. I don’t see the bankrupt, not while I’m there. I see my kids. I see the other kids.

We got home on Thursday. My professional life moves into days of fundraising. Asking folks to part with their money to support Jazz88. I can do the work wholeheartedly, I believe in Jazz88’s present and I believe even more in what’s next in our story. But it is exhausting and it is overwhelming. I am good at fundraising but that does not me it is easy for me. It is exhausting and it is intense. But a look at my schedule and it says nothing will stand in the way of bringing my daughters to the protest after guitar lessons on Saturday. The Hands Off! protest starts at noon, we won’t get there til 2. My wife Rachel will meet us there. I want to take the Light Rail in. I want to see the people carrying their signs and going home. I want my daughters to know that people do this. It’s one of the most important things people do.

There is a never released documentary about the Twin Cities Hip-Hop scene from maybe 2002 (called Elements of Style) that interviews graffiti writer YEN34. YEN34 says part of why he writes is to show people that there are folks who don’t go out to party and dance on Saturday nights. There are people who climb into train-yards, onto billboards and under bridges just to write their name. I want my daughters to see that not everybody goes to circus class, watches YouTube and makes slow cooker meals. There are people who are fighting. There are people who are fighting back. There is a role we have in this world beyond being a consumer, learner and lover. We have responsibilities baked into us to push for things to be better. Some of those people are on this train. My little sign says “FREE SPEECH IS FOR ALL.” If you asked me four months who the right to free speech applied to in our country I might’ve thought it was just citizens. I was wrong. Blissfully wrong. Hearing about the extralegal attempted deportation of Mahmoud Khalil disgusts me. He’s got a partner at home who I think is DEEP into a pregnancy. He has all the right paperwork to be here. He has the right paperwork to be here forever. He didn’t get snatched up on a technicality of any sort. No misdemeanor to support the pretext of ushering someone out of our country who had vocally opposed Israel’s actions in Gaza. No pretext. Just raw state power silencing a voice that has a right to be here. Just state power ruining the last couple months of a family getting ready to usher a new life into this world and into this country. And the man is guilty of nothing, but he is tainted for protesting. It sickens me. My eight year old S. looks at my sign and takes the Sharpie and she writes on her sign JUSTICE IS FOR ALL. I did not cry then. I am crying now typing this to you. She is exploring her mind and soul. She is finding her message.

She is finding her way. We are on the light rail we are making our way to the protest. The trains going the other way are packed. Absolutely fucking packed. I’m nervous we will miss it all. We don’t.

Mayor Melvin Carter is speaking and there is a sea of people. More people than I’ve seen on our capitol grounds in my life. I actually can’t see the Mayor. I am looking at the signs. I am looking at the people. My heart is full of optimism. I am seeing resistance in person. The wind is blowing. Rachel is coming. My 4 year old N. is on my shoulders.

At some point in the early 90s MTV put a tremendous amount of stand up comedy on their channel. I don’t think any of them were famous. But Steve and I watched so much comedy. A comedian made the joke that men just think about sex all the time. The only time they can think about anything else is for the thirty seconds after they cum. He acted out an orgasm and then quickly got serious voice and said “okay I have to get groceries, pay taxes, make dinner, get a doctor’s appointment” and then moments later the comedian returned to thinking about how to get laid again.

That’s how it felt as I walked out of the protest and into the parking lot of the old Sears. Suddenly my brain is momentarily not thinking about the stains of our country, the ugliness of our moment, the distinct possibility that the bad guys will keep winning, that the resistance will lose, that we will live out our years in a country descending deeper into cruelty with my countrymen cheering it on, thinking they won cause others lost worse. But for a moment I didn’t feel that way. Today, typing this, I question the fullness of this feeling. Did I earn it? Did I do enough? Does S. think that one Sharpie and the back of a cardboard box keeps justice as a key feature of our life? But I didn’t feel that then. Cold spring air hitting parts of my face that had been too hot. I felt lightened. I felt unburdened. I felt like we could do bath time that night and go to bed and feel good. Feel whole tonight. Feel optimistic tonight. I don’t think this drug was fake. It did wear off. And it should. And I will recharge it. But it felt a lot better than the fake drug of parental paralysis.

Photos of Big Trouble

A band full of sex symbols delivering it for you on stage at White Squirrel.

Farewell YMCA Paul

I just learned that Paul Engebretson died. Travel easy Paul. Know that you did amazing things in your life. You connected with people. You spread your enthusiasm about music. You fostered community. You helped. You shined.

Everyone called him Front Row Paul and that guy really was out at shows all the time. I don’t know when I saw Front Row Paul for the first time but I feel like it was at least ten years ago. I’ve been playing shows forever, he’s been going to shows forever. But a couple years ago we started to see each other at the YMCA in Saint Paul. He and his wife went a shit ton. So do I. Paul was lifting weights, making friends. He had the earbuds in, often told me he was listening to the Shackletons. He loved music and he had a powerful enthusiasm for Minnesota music. It was always so good to run into Paul at the Y. We also lived really close to each other. We did the wave around the neighborhood thing.

I wasn’t close with Paul but he exuded a pureness and clarity in life that made even a small friendship feel bigger. He talked about music like his life depended on it and to look at his schedule I imagine that was true. He also didn’t go to the shows to act cool and hang in the back. It’s important to underline something about the nickname Front Row Paul; the man was in the front. Actually watching the show. Letting music do what it’s supposed to do, immerse you, pause the rest of your bullshit and deeply reinvigorate you.

Paul, I hope you are in a better place now. Here where I am is a better place because of you. I’ll miss seeing what band shirt you’re wearing at the Y.

Big Trouble with New Songs on Saturday

These fucking guys.

Big Trouble performs in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The capital city. The city of third chances and Pearson’s Nut Rolls. In Saint Paul it’s always Thursday. Saint Paul, you’re good. Anywho. Saturday Night. March 29. A celebration of music with Big Trouble. We’ve learned new songs. Peter wrote one. Steve wrote one. They’re both really awesome. We’re playing them. Catch you at White Squirrel on Saturday. 6-8. Free of charge. Your kids are welcome. They can even bring you.

To Really See Someone Improvise

Saturday was a good one. There haven’t been a ton of unadulterated good ones lately. So many things can make your day beyond shaky/shitty right now. You find out that the economic downturn has touched you or someone close to you. You open a news app, even though you promised you wouldn’t this morning, and there is a headline whose utter cruelty and destructive spirit makes you wonder about the human spirit at its most basic level. You realize there is no fathomable way our country will regain some of what we are hacking off our operations at the moment. But I didn’t come here to write about that. In some sense I came here specifically to not write about that.
I had a rehearsal with Big Trouble on Saturday morning that was so enjoyable. Here’s a horrendous photo of me from the beginning of the rehearsal.

Wow rough.

We as a band have finally hit that age where there is a vastly more giving spirit than there is a self-oriented spirit. I remember playing with some adults when I was in high school. It was Harry Chalmiers, then President of MacPhail, and Clea Galhano, then teacher at MacPhail. We were playing two songs at a fundraiser and we were going to do “Black Orpheus.” Everyone was trying to make their solo shorter, more collaborative, more inviting and spicy for the players supporting. It was night and day to my experience playing jazz with the high school student peers I was with most of the time. And, lest I sound like I was above the high school bullshit, I was absolutely oriented towards getting my solo in, getting my feature in, getting my shine on. But I saw this future, far away at the time and now firmly in my pocket, of truly generous collaboration. This weekend Big Trouble was making little tucks, trims and coda adjustments to make some new songs sing. Throughout the whole affair the goal was to tease the fundamental out of the composition. It was song-oriented, it was selfless, it was rewarding. It was also efficient, but not in the mode of ruthless efficiency that I have been sometimes praised/critiqued for throughout my years as a bandleader. This was the efficiency of four adults trying to get the most out of their 2 hours away from their families, jobs, et cetera.
After that it was off to a guitar lesson for my daughter S. and then we stuck around for a concert from Bring Your Kids at Cadenza. This was our second time seeing this group and the first time was amazing. Comedy, music, kid-oriented. The improv is front and center in the group and it gave me a moment to hone in on two improvisers who are on a whole different level than the rest of the players on the gig. All the players are good, no doubt. But these two people (who I suspected and just confirmed via online bios are a couple) have that comfort of improv that appears effortless but but being a middling improviser I understand is about as far from effortless as you can get. It’s Alsa Bruno and Morgan LeClaire.
To see great improvisation is to often see the absence of something. It’s the absence of overly formalized intros. It’s the absence of unnecessary adjustments to a speaking voice to accidentally call attention to the fact that this is suddenly improvised, everybody watch out, I’m pretending to be a lumberjack. It’s a comfort with blankness, a comfort with fullness. And an absolute commitment to something, and an equally absolute commitment to ditching that particular something when it has served its purpose. I’ve been around great improvisers in my life. I’ve seen poets and emcees arrive in a moment with no preconceived notions of where they will go, I’ve seen them rest on no crutch, rely on no safety net and deliver an image, a moment, a performance that is deep, rich and blissfully unscalable. It isn’t a moment waiting to be committed to tape. Not a moment to be committed to the page. Just a moment, imperfectly drawn in to a room, god-crafted for the energy in that room. When I see Morgan and Alsa improvise I see no artifice. I didn’t see the moment where the brain decided it was time to start improvising. I didn’t see the moment where the artist felt the trappings of the stage. The performance for me started long before the listed show time. The guitarist was playing. The kids were interacting. My youngest N. was connecting with them before we even found our seats. When Alsa or Morgan took on a character or altered their voice they did so completely. They did so with an unflagging memory for the traits of the character they were taking on and when the bit ended they seemed to shed the concept so thoroughly as to have never occupied it. Alsa used a stuffed animal to pretend to be a high pitched nasal sickness and the impact was so thorough and deep. I bet reading that sentence you are scratching your head. It’s a kids show, he was pretending to be a cold with a weird stuffy, who cares. I care. I care about great work and that was great work.

Watching them I thought about the great pianists I’ve played with, the drummers I’ve seen who fluidly become a vessel for the music, seeming to lose the indecision that most of us attach to musical choices. A vessel for entire sets, for entire universes, for an eternity that only stops when the eternity ceases being eternal. Where is the self-editing? Where is the self-policing? When do you stop? When do they stop? What should you play? How can I be generous and dominant? How can I be generous and miniature? How can I give the moment what is asked for when I am part of the moment? How do we paint so together that the word together is too distant? If you ask you’ve stopped improvising and started thinking.

Joe Horton is one of the greatest improvisers I have ever had the honor of playing music with. Horton made an amazing piece of art called “A Hill in Natchez.” Visuals, music, theater all at the Southern many years ago. He closed the piece with a statement in his voice that I paraphrase/remember this way “In making this work I realized we aren’t all related, I realized we are all one.” It stuck with me, especially when it came from someone who I had seen go so deep into a moment, someone who had worked hard to be available for anything in the realm of improvisation.
I was wearing very comfortable pants while watching this Bring Your Kids show. Why was I wearing comfortable pants? Well I was just out to bring the kids to their lessons so I wasn’t wearing anything remotely fancy. I leaned back a couple times in a wide ass stance on this couch at Cadenza with my arm around my daughter N. while witnessing these two utterly amazing improvisors and smiling from ear to ear. I’ve spent a lot more money to see great improvisors in much less comfortable pants and I have to say I preferred this. Thank you Alsa and Morgan and thank you to the rest of the Bring Your Kids performers.

10:50 Saturday Morning

Parking ramp at the Highland Lunds. Radio K is playing some long God Speed You Black Emperor dirge and I let it play. Pull out of the exit, disoriented in this new part of Highland where everything is new. I’m driving over an old Ford plant. The song is moving crazy slow. The small signs are all around of St. Patrick’s Day. That’s why they were selling corned beef. That’s why they had the cabbages on the end cap.

Mint teatree tooth pick in my mouth. The coffee tastes really good for the first time today. The coffee this morning felt like no coffee taste. Maybe I have a cold. I couldn’t smell the gross old salmon that Rachel is feeding the dogs either. The coffee wakes me up. The toothpick is invigorating. The song is slow, methodical. Clean guitar playing long single note lines with minimal support. Cloudy skies but not shitty yet. The weather is supposed to be strangely shitty later. Snow, rain, cold. For stretches of minutes I won’t be able to remember what month it is, always been that way. Is it one of the months where the weather is shitty, but soon it’ll be even worse (October, November)? Or is it one of the months where it’s shitty but it is about to get insanely amazing (March, April)? Corned beef. Irish flags. People walking to bars well before noon. It’s March. The leprechaun saw his shadow, we are moving into a positive season. Four women who I want to call girls cause I bet they are twenty three or younger getting dropped off by an Uber on Ford Parkway. Layers of makeup. Hair spray. I can imagine the bouquet of perfumes, lotions and sprays surrounding their entourage as they walk by the bus stop, probably going to Tiffany’s. Those white tops that look kind of laminated and perfect. I bet they have put makeup on the necks and what is that word for the top of breasts? Decolletage? That is not it. Necklaces. Hairspray. Green highlights like scarves and things. Green hats. One girl in a Vikings jersey cause fuck it Skol. I am thinking about St. Patricks Days in my late 20s/early 30s. Ipod in listening to I-Self Devine and drinking big gingers and getting lost in the drinks. Embracing the insanity of it all. Terrible weather. Muddy tent in the parking lot of Shamrocks. Bumming a cigarette and regretting it. Smelling the party vibes. Enjoying the party vibes. Taking out the headphones. Looking at the girls. Laminated white tops. Mardi Gras beads. It’s not Mardi Gras. The song on Radio K is still going. I have parked. The fajitas supplies are coming in the house. I am coming in the house. I am thinking about St. Patricks Day. And I am thinking about dirges, toothpicks but mostly how a gaggle of young women smell stepping out for a St. Patrick’s Day observed that starts at 10:50am in Highland.

A Cultural Rope-a-Dope?

In the pages of the New York Times the longtime person-on-TV-exaggerating-his-Southern-accent James Carville proposed a political rope-a-dope for Democrats in this era. In a nutshell he suggested the Democrats lay low and let the Republicans show their ass. He pointed out that the Republicans struggle when they are actually running something and the ideas they are forwarding are not the ones they were elected on. In fact the ones they are pushing are not even popular with their base. I am not going to spend a long time on Carville’s ideas primarily because I don’t know how I feel about them. Right now the Democrats don’t control a branch of government at the national level. At the national level we are flailing for a strategy and the idea that the Republicans could be their own undoing seems quite possible to me. Services are being gutted. Businesses are being ruined. National Republican policy will be wildly cruel to many Republican constituents. The idea of a rope-a-dope is at least worth entertaining at this moment in my opinion.
I move the frame of Carville’s piece in my mind to the cultural landscape. The mediums on which the grand majority of artists, broadcasters and writers build their audience are primarily awful. Why exactly do I want to create a great Instagram video? Instagram sucks. Even when I see a great Instagram video I think. . .it sucks it’s on this site. It sucks that me falling in love all over again with Chris Dave’s drumming makes Mark Zuckerberg money deflates me. It is where my eyeballs go, it might be where your eyeballs go. It’s a level of attention capture that is draining the possibility of making an impact without being on the sites.
I’m lucky. I’m on the radio. I can share beautiful music, vital news and positive energy on a medium that I think is quite good. It’s a medium that in my section doesn’t rely on keeping the audience listening at any cost. It involves keeping the audience listening and also feeling good enough about the overall service that they will part with some of their money to keep it going strong or stronger. Very different. It works for me. But, as I want to share more of my writing, my playing, my thoughts I butt up against the fact that the places to share have their own shitty reward system.
Is there a point in a cultural rope-a-dope? Stepping away from the mediums that are severely anti-artist? Creating a garden of output that thrives in places where the terms are better? That thrives in places where the outcomes can be deeper? I think there is. But it feels hopeless cause I don’t know how much real flight is happening from these services. Do I believe there will be a moment where a considerable portion of the population can’t be talked to, sold to, marketed to on Social Media sites? I do believe that. But I believe a lot of shit. I believe a lot of unlikely shit. I think ultimately people in their fastest thinking want to see somebody get drilled in the nuts by a tire, or they want to see a beautiful woman who is quasi naked. And if there is a machine in your pocket that brings you those things it will only be in the rare moments where most people pursue something else. I think it will take some level of big brother type controls, some stigmatizing that will help. Some fancy thinkers are guessing that at some point phones will be treated like cigarettes culturally. I think that’s possible. But I think a lot unlikely shit is possible.
The difference between the Carville play and the cultural rope-a-dope I’m considering is that there is some pride in a cultural rope-a-dope. I don’t believe there can be any pride from letting Democratic positions and institutions be denigrated and demolished. We don’t elect people to Congress to go take the punches. We elect them to solve problems and seek solutions. I believe it is possible for politicians to this. But I believe a lot of unlikely shit. But in this regard I do believe that artists, broadcasters and writers can wage the good fight. I believe they can wage the war on higher ground. They can care about where their art shows up. They can care about in what environment and under what conditions their art is discovered. Can you do this while trying to reach the maximum amount of people? I don’t think so. But I believe the allure of reaching the maximum amount of people is becoming less alluring. I’ve got a beautiful little garden over here on my newsletter, on my website, with my releases. I think if you found my work you might’ve found it in a feel good way. You might not have found it on your third scroll through Instagram. Maybe you found it from a friend, or from the radio, or from a local publication. I think there is a value in presenting yourself under terms that work specifically for you and your message. I don’t know that that transfers one to one to the political landscape, but there’s some value in this idea in a cultural setting.

Button down Monday, hello ladies.

Farting at Gentle Yoga

It should happen even more than it does if you think about it. I am in gentle yoga at the Y on Tuesdays. Average age I’m gonna guess is probably mid 50s but we have a pretty big age spread. And this month the specialty is “spine work” or as it should be called “fart conjuring.” I have a couple friends in the class from having been a regular for a year plus. My friend Emily’s mom goes, let’s call her Danielle, cause I for sure don’t know her name, sorry about that Danielle. There’s some lady who knows my friend DeVon from classical music stuff. I’m closest with Brian. He’s a retired fireman who wears ankle high socks and spends time in Florida in the winter. I have personally never farted in the class. As a 43 year old my anus is not yet fully autonomous from my control. In my experience, there is some age where any control of the farting schedule is completely placed in the hands of the anus itself. Nothing better than an old couple with one rogue anus and the other member of the couple keeps on hopelessly saying the other’s name; Robert, Doris, Ted, Helen, Anne. We need a punctuation mark that is a half exclamation mark because that is how it is always said.

As stated above, I have never farted in the gentle yoga class. Have I felt a fart hanging at the gates, looking around, deciding if now is a good time? Yes absolutely! Have I miraculously willed a fart back into the butt waiting room with sheer force of will? That’s a yes. Have I stopped doing some form of stretch and pretended to address a non-existent muscle cramp just so that I didn’t fart? I did that yesterday. But I have not farted. But I have thoughts:

The farts from the youngs are stronger and louder. Any fart a younger lady is letting out has been forged into diamond strength in her butt crucible. She has done everything she can to not let it get out. When it gets out it is fully pressurized. Same for a young man, but there aren’t many young men there besides for me, and like I said, I haven’t farted in the class.

We don’t have a God bless you equivalent for farting. When someone sneezes you say “God bless you” or “Gesundheit.” I believe when someone farts other people should say “you farted” with no emotion, no exclamation mark, no grabbing a doorknob. Just a simple “you farted” with sort of an accepting tone.

You don’t say excuse me when you fart in a yoga class and I get that. When you do fart in a yoga class, you don’t say excuse me. I’ve ran through the scenario for me and I believe if I fart I will go “oh my gosh Brian, fighting some fire this morning are we?” and then get up and walk out of class with my fingers clasped around my nose. But I believe you should have to slap the ground lightly after you fart. Everyone in the class is doing echolocation to figure out who farted and that extra piece of acoustic action would really help. I won’t do anything with the information, I just want to know who farted. So toss a slap out there, for the culture.

You should leave if you fart twice on one exercise. I’m no fart detective, wait yes I am. But look, if you fart twice in one position, it’s time to call it a day for that class. Come back for the step class, but you’re done with gentle yoga. Hit the fart showers, fart friend, cause it’s done. Farting twice isn’t terrible, but no one has ever farted twice. If you’ve farted twice your body is just letting you know there’s more where that came from. And we don’t want more where that came from to come in this full ass yoga class. If you fart twice, you’re out.

Reporting live from fart yoga, over and out.

The Friend Vortex

I spend a lot of my tangibly finite adult life longing for the infinite expanse of my childhood. Just today I texted my neighbors and asked them if they would agree to never see a movie in a theater again for $8,000. Some said yes, some said no. Depressingly I started thinking about how many more movies I would see in a movie theater before I shuffle off this mortal coil. I’m probably averaging a movie in a theater every year and a half. I assume that number will shoot way the fuck up when my kids are a little older. I would happily watch a movie a month if it didn’t involve a babysitter or taking the day off of work. But even at say six a year for the rest of my life. Maybe that’s forty more years. It’s a countable amount of movies.

I don’t have many friends outside of Minnesota. I think it’s maybe about ten close ones, five super close ones. Betsy, Izzy, Afi, Conor, Steph. How many more times do I see each of them? Everything is countable, everything is finite. Every time I hang with a friend someone has to work in the morning, someone has to relieve the babysitter. My life is a calendar. But my life used to be a wide open field; a bowling ball rolling on a street like the Breeders video for Cannonball. I’d spend days at Conor’s house. Multiple day sleepovers. I’d spend hours doing nothing with my dumb, beautiful friends. Lucky/stunting for me. . .the rhythms of a too-long sleepover became my office for my 20s and 30s as a touring musician. It extended my childhood.

Heiruspecs would just get to a town five hours early and post up at a Barnes and Noble and read magazines. And bullshit. And fight. And buy a drink. And me and Peter would smoke cigarettes. And we’d listen to records. Or go swim at a hotel, if we had a hotel. Or just sit in the van with the windows rolled down waiting for the first staff person from the bar to show up. An infiniteness. An adult childhood. A sleepover with performances. And there was no gaggle. No one tagging along. One time two dudes followed us and came to like three shows in a row in the Southwest. One time a friend named Jenny from Chicago traveled with us for two weeks. But basically it was just five dudes sleeping over, drinking, sitting around, begging to get a late check out so we could see both episodes of Dawson’s Creek.

Heiruspecs’ serious touring days ended in December of 2006. Since then we’ve played shows outside of Minnesota but almost always just one and then back home. Finite. Back home for the job. Back home for another gig. Back home for kids. Finite.
—
My final group of childhood friends is the Dessa band. Dessa is a singer/rapper/poet who has a thriving career and has a new set of musicians who are the Dessa band of now. But when I talk about Dessa band I’m talking 2010-2016 me, Dustin, Joey, Aby, Dessa. The old Dessa band. Last Monday me and the old Dessa band got together for our semi-annual get together and have drinks and talk. This one was probably less drinks than ever and certainly heavier talks than ever. Our parents getting older. People getting divorced. Bands taking breaks. Our own kids getting older. Our country going to shit.

The forties are a period of great struggle. They can often be the lowest levels of satisfaction that you’ll feel in your adult life. Weighed down with children or with the stress of not having children. Mid-career. Midlife crisis. There is a lot to worry about. And all around the table we worried; we shared the triumphs and the struggles. The struggles outweighed by a factor of 2 to 1. But we also laughed. And we laughed with the intimacy of childhood friends.

I’ve spent more time with Aby Wolf than I’ll likely spend with any new friend I’ll make for the rest of my life. Was it quality time? FUCK NO. It was staring at the back of her headphoned head bored out of my mind, annoyed that the Subway sandwich she’d take a bite out of every twenty-five minutes smelled like it was an onion sandwich made on onion bread with onion mayonnaise and with extra onions on it. But it was all day. And it was brazenly smoking bowls with the van doors open at 10:30am at a gas station in Missouri. It was seeing Joey’s child like love of getting a number of adults to aqua-jog around the perimeter of a pool to ever so briefly turn it into a vortex.

——
I don’t know what depth of friendships will be available to me when I am out of the years of deep ass hands-on-all-the-time-parenting. People grow up. They don’t like to stay out as late. They don’t like to watch one more thing on YouTube. They don’t want to drive to Rochester from Saint Paul just to eat at the Golden Corral cause that’s the closest one. I don’t know that I want to do that. But I know there is this special depth that only comes from this quantity of hang, this infinite hang, this forever talk. And I make new friends. I actively make new friends. I love it. And I got just a little taste of the infinite again during COVID. I hung heavy with the neighbors. Long hangs, long talks. Fires. Questions. Inside jokes. Peeing in the yard. It was magical, but it was fleeting. And fleeting is okay. The last real time the old Dessa band played a gig was July 16, 2017 in Rochester. I understood it was the last one. No completely clear articulation, but there weren’t more gigs on the books and there wasn’t much appetite to keep it going just like this from Dessa. I remember breathing in the fun, the crowd, the music, the quality of the band. We had gotten really good. And we had become magical friends. Close like childhood friends. And I knew it would be a bond that wouldn’t break up even if the band did. And that was all true. I didn’t realize it’d be the last group of friends I’d make that felt like that. And I’m grateful for that. A summer night - a group of friends turning it into a vortex one last time.

I Played Bass on a Bunch of Tracks on Brother Ali’s New Record

I got a great text a couple months ago from my guy Joe Mabbott. Joe Mabbott is one of the great producers and engineers in the Minnesota scene and in my reckoning the best mix engineer I’ve ever collaborated with. He runs The Hideaway Studios. But he’s also truly a super great friend of mine. If he texts me it’s usually to play racquetball or to play the card game Deuces with our friends Rachel and DeVon. But recently I got the text to play bass for some new recordings for Brother Ali. What an honor.

I’ve known Ali since I guess 1998? I remember him calling my parents house when I was in high school before I had a cell phone. I think it was before anyone had cell phones really. And I’ve had the honor of playing bass on a lot of his big records. It’s been a special relationship for me and I hope for him, ANT and BK-One too, but probably about nine years ago I thought that relationship had come to an end. No real stress but a lot of the Rhymesayers artists had started using a musician named G Koop for most of their live musician needs. All good. But I wasn’t getting the calls. Life goes on.
So it was an unexpected text that I was glad to get. I got to head over to Joe Mabbott’s studio The Hideaway. This is a space where some of the most magical moments of my life have happened. Recorded A Tiger Dancing and the Heiruspecs 2008 Self-titled album there. Played bass for Eyedea and Abilities there. Hung out with Stage One for the first time there. Spent a lot of time just partying there. So to be back there playing with old friends was great. That night it was just Ant and Joe. Ali lives in Turkey and is mainly just coming back for shows at this point. Anywho. I think the songs turned out really well and I believe the chemistry between Ant and Ali is undeniable. Here are the tunes I played on all lined up for you to check out and enjoy.

Performing with Big Trouble on Saturday February 23 at White Squirrel

Big Trouble is back at it with new material at our monthly gig. I can’t tell you how grateful I am get to play with this group every month. We’ve got a rhythm dialed in and we are adding great material. When ever I’ve been in a band that plays for 2 hours we have always had maximum an hour and forty five minutes of material. It’s always either been playing a song we don’t quite know or sewing a couple extra long solos onto arrangements. But Big Trouble probably has a solid 3 hours and fifteen minutes of shit we really know how to play. So to hit two fifty minute sets? We can be picky! We can follow the vibe. We can call audibles. We can make it happen. We are making great music up there. I hope you come through and check us out! Family Friendly 6-8pm situation.

Deerfield Dispatch

I am changing my mind right now. The Atlantic Ocean is to my left or straight ahead depending on how I have the chair position. I am in pain in paradise. Charles Mingus is playing too loud or too quiet, depending upon what instrument is soloing. A Florida breeze is hitting the glass and an obituary for a neighbor’s dad sings out from behind the glass of my iPhone. I think about Shawn Smith and Andrew Wood. Two Seattle musicians I love who died young. Shawn Smith died in 2019. . .torn aorta, high blood pressure. He made songs that escorted me through the hardest times I’ve faced in my easy ass life. Play the Satchel song “Suffering” while you are trying to turn your dad’s whiskey in your glass into the joint you wish you had. Listen to it when it shows up in the movie Beautiful Girls while you are watching it in the theater in Middletown, CT and you have a mercilessly real crush on your brother’s college friend and you’re in high school and there is no feasible universe where you ever date her. There is no feasible universe where you share a moment with her. Now look at that whiskey and remember that there is a Beautiful Girls poster sitting by the door to your basement that your wife bought you but it’s not on a wall cause you can’t frame anything, literally and figuratively. An active God, an involved God, a meddling God would take down Shawn Smith’s systolic by 25 and say “I’ve got you covered Shawn. You took care of another one of my children, Sean McPherson, with that song Suffering, so I’m going to make sure you live a long life.” We don’t have a meddling God. We don’t have a meddling God. There is a code that this universe sits on. It can never be written all the way down. But if someone all powerful is enforcing that code Smith’s aorta is not torn.
Andrew Wood died because he did heroin. He was the leader of Mother Love Bone. He and his groundbreaking spirit laid the groundwork for the juggernaut that is Pearl Jam. Eddie Vedder is in the crowd this weekend for SNL turning fifty. Maybe he even played some uke before I turned the TV on. But Andrew Wood, and the movie about his band Mother Love Bone, taught me that it was okay to be a freak who wears make up and believes in making up silly songs and he lived with Chris Cornell, and maybe if the code you can’t read is enforced, they’re both alive today. Stone Gossard said Wood had a tragic flaw. But there’s no tragic. Your suffering isn’t for a purpose. Your non-suffering isn’t for a purpose. You are purpose. Plain, simple and unadulterated. Your flaws aren’t tragic. Your flaws aren’t flaws. Charles Mingus made music that touches me. It probably touches you. But if Charles Mingus decides to watch baseball games every night in the summer instead of make some of the world’s greatest music it’s not a tragedy. No one put Donald Trump on this Earth to make it worse. No one put the people who make the world better on Earth to make it better. We seek out what we can do. We do the best we can.
My neighbor, his dad died last week. It reads like the man did the best he could. It’s an obituary you’ll remember forever. He worked too much. Most of us do. But he raised a family. He liked to cross-country ski. He died young. His son is still in his thirties. It hits me, that hits me, that cuts close. My mom died when I was in my twenties. God didn’t take my mom. God didn’t give my mom. God didn’t take my neighbor’s dad.
There are breezes. There are courtyards. There is music. There are war crimes. There are children. There are shots at the buzzer. There are divorces. There is pure evil. There is toast with egg yolk on it. There is good. There is Mother Love Bone. There is the ocean. There is high blood pressure. There are tantrums. There is being in a hot tub on a windy day when your nipples are hard from the cold and your legs are melting into the bench. There are wounds that never heal. There is suffering and there is joy. There is a code but there is no enforcement and there is no appeal.

New Weapons For an Old Fight

In the last ten years I’ve learned two competing truths: social media is wildly powerful; social media is useless.
It’s a lever problem. I am the product. I am not the customer. The product is not always wrong, but it is always pliable. It is always a secondary concern to the customer.
I scream into an abyss on social media and the medium is designed for the disagreers to yell back. It is designed to sew foment.
Previous political mediums may not have been designed to do the opposite, but I feel they did the opposite.
They leaned toward building alliance, they leaned away from gridlock. They made gridlock costly. Social media makes gridlock vastly more profitable than consensus.
There is advertising to be sold to how I feel now. BLVGARI or someone else is buying ads on the New York Times so that when I look to find my outrage for the day I consider buying a medium sweater from a bearded man from Europe with a fine lady on his arm.

Social media doesn’t just feel futile, it feels warping. It warps some other me that could exist. I want none of it. Except I want to see my friends play music, I want to see the best musicians on earth shed in the studio, I want to see great dunks, I want to see friends like Desdamona talk about what is going on in their life in a low-impact way. I want MN music drama to be played out on Facebook and I want to eat my popcorn and watch and never comment. I want a lot of what social media offers. But it warps me. It has already warped me. How do I fight without it? How do I protest without telling you I protested and sharing a photo? Maybe that is part of my duty. I’m not without followers on these social media channels. Is it my duty to fight or to win? Am I the arbiter of what fighting is and what winning is? Is the mob on social media the arbiter?
But how is a weapon designed and consistently controlled by someone like Elon Musk a weapon I can wield to stop someone like Elon Musk?

——-

Social media killed many hierarchies in our world. There was a week in 1991 where Nielsen and Billboard changed how they tracked the Billboard 200 and overnight artists like Skid Row, N.W.A. and Garth Brooks were sitting shoulder to shoulder with who we thought were the biggest pop icons on planet earth because we switched to data, not anecdotal reporting. The gatekeepers before June 1991 were record store managers and other intermediaries who thought they had a sense of what actually moved units out of their stores. But they were wrong. Rap, country and heavy metal were profoundly under-indexed by record store managers. But when they started actually keeping track, they realized that those genres were wildly popular.
There are mainstream parts of our culture that I believed were on the absolute fringes before social media. The alt-right comes to mind. That’s the big one. But, so many micro-movements, so many things I didn’t read about in the paper, or in the magazines. So many things I believed were small were actually the N.W.A. of the 2010s. Fandoms built up in muted unison and then rejoicing when it is confirmed that the tribe is huge, the voice is strong, the movement is real.
Social media has made dreams and nightmares come true. And some of my dreams are some of your nightmares and vice versa. Social media will get us into problems it can’t get us out of.

——-

You are not going to be shocked that old Sean McPherson thinks that Donald Trump’s second term is already a huge problem. He is denying the humanity of so much of humanity. He is firing throngs people in cruel ways. He is investigating and deporting law-abiding humans in cruel ways. He is cruel. He is cruel to the world in a way the world has never been cruel to him. I have harbored some guarded optimism about a path forward in Palestine and Israel in the past two months. Trump seems to be unnecessarily derailing these potentials sby denying Palestinians a right to their homes and asserting Americans right to their land. Shame on you Trump. In an article about couples therapy in the New York Times I found this quote by Daniel Oppenheimer:

Epiphanies are real, but they’re fragile. They are a one-leafed seedling, pushing up through the crust of the ground, or a blind hatchling waiting, naked and alone, for its mother to return with a worm. They are easily crushed under foot or done in by harsh weather. If they’re not protected and nurtured, they will crumble and blow away in the wind, as though they never existed.

I immediately thought of the very shaky ground our world is built upon. The recently built alliances, the threadbare string tying two parties previously at odds together, ever so precariously. I feel conservative Anna. I want the changes to come slowly, purposefully, legally, humanely, carefully.

The changes are not coming this way. The speed of the changes is itself one of the changes.

——
What are the new weapons for the old fight? Are they the old weapons we had eschewed in favor of more efficient ones? I listen to Brother Ali’s podcast. He talks about the network of street team people across the country that he and his team let atrophy when they thought it could all be done on social media. Fuck a poster. Share it on Facebook, let the message spread that way. Ali now laments losing that network you could touch, that network you could email, that network you could put on the guest list and say thank you face to face to. That network you didn’t pay a third party to reach.

At a dinner on Monday a friend asked how you learn of protests without searching on social media. The table had no legitimate suggestions for how to do that. Has that network atrophied? The political bookshop that used to be at 25th and Lyndale. Posters up for protests. I don’t know if the network has atrophied. My access to the network has atrophied. The muscles I used to know of these protests has atrophied. They have been replaced with full-time jobs, little children, musings on text about favorite movies and early bedtimes.

What are the new weapons for the old fight? What do you stop first when the sky is falling? Do you stay local when the problems are national? Have folks you’ve had conflicts with before part of the same team for a greater good? Are you fighting to fight are you fighting to win? The winning message is never “fuck no, not this stuff.” The winning message is a message, not a counter-message. What is our message? Don’t be cruel. It’s nebulous, it’s reactive. It is what I feel. I just don’t want my country to wield cruelty at home and abroad against disenfranchised people. I don’t want my country to trample on the progress that has been made toward a more equitable world.

What are the new weapons for the old fight? I’m sure it’s not a blog with a peach background. I’m sure it’s not a Facebook post. What is the message? What is the medium? Where is the protest? The most optimistic and organized in my network are working on it. I get the emails, I read the google docs. When are the least optimistic and least organized like myself going to join? When I am going to start sacrificing for the movement? I’m typing cause I’m asking. I’m typing cause I believe it will push me to do more than type. And I’m publishing cause I think it might do the same for you.

Hosting Best New Bands at First Ave on Friday January 31

Friday night I’ll be hanging at First Ave for Best New Bands of 2024. I had a great time last year and I’m looking forward to this year. This is a great way to see a bunch of great bands from the scene all at once. I hope to see you there.

Flyer for a show at First Ave!

L to R: Sean McPherson, Jill Riley, DJ Horse Girl, Krista Wax

Romans and Reconstructions

I write a trivia question everyday for the Afternoon Cruise on Jazz88. I read it at 4:30 and I have a nice little crew of maybe 10-25 people who take the time to write in their answers. My favorite trivia to write at this point in my life is “on this day in history.” I enjoy going to the Wikipedia page about whatever calendar day we are in and finding a point of departure for trivia questions. This means that most days I read about some absolutely insane shit that happened during the Roman Empire era: An 8 year old becomes co-emperor of the Empire, an emperor designates the next emperor from his deathbed, an emperor who bought the emperorship on auction from the Praetorian Guard. The Roman Empire is chock full of absolutely wild, unfathomably wild leadership. My modern mind imagines some citizens of the Empire coming up to the capital and saying “this shit looks crazy Didius Julianus. We are going to look wild on wikipedia. It is going to be obvious to everyone reading our history that we are currently heading in the wrong direction.” But nothing of the sort can be done. There is no button to press to stop decline. I think about this as I feel the country moving in a wrong direction for me. I think about large corporations both saying “we are going to make it a priority to have better recruitment and retention of Black leadership” and four years later saying “We aren’t. We aren’t going to make it a priority to have better recruitment and retention of Black leadership.” Saying both things within some non-generational period seems categorically more insane than saying either thing. I am learning that things I thought were lines in the sand for our country were just trends, reasonable and fashionable only at the time. Does it turn your stomach to think of that? I ask this of you even if we stand on a different side of an issue. If you think prioritizing better recruitment for Black leaders does it bug the shit out of you that Target was front and center on that issue for a couple seasons? Does it bother you that it was just a trend, just the wind blowing a certain direction and bringing many corporate policies along with it?

Reconstruction is a heartbreaking and fascinating period of our country’s history. I believe Andrew Johnson is our worst President. He’s our worst President because at a moment when so much was pliable and enforceable with military force, he found a path back to fortifying institutional racism. He never believed in the cause of the Civil War. He didn’t believe in reconstructing our society with a seat at the table for Black people. When he had the opportunity to put his thumb on the scale to favor slaveowners or slaves he chose slaveowners. Garbage. But I hear Reconstruction echoes right now. There is an obsession with undoing the policies of the Biden administration. But this is not an orderly undoing with an eye toward decency. This is an aggressive yanking, stripping and deriding of policies that sought to reconstruct our society with more seats at the table for more people. Are these policies being removed because they worked? Are they being removed because they didn’t work? Around MLK Day I realized for the first time that the 16th Street Baptist Church Bombing in Alabama took place weeks after the “I Have a Dream” speech and the March on Washington. August 1963 for the March for Freedom and September 1963 for the bombing. The Civil Rights era tells a story of resistance. It tells the story of America hearing Dr. King and other leaders and not changing minds but instead buying detonators and dynamite. Will 2020-2024 be looked at as a period of Reconstruction? Will the policies aimed at changing policing policies, renter’s rights, clean energy, diversity and equity commitments be looked at with the shock of how truly radical Reconstruction was? If you spend a lot of time writing trivia you will often hear of a Black person landing an elected position and being recognized as the first Black person to hold said office since the 1870s or 1880s. One at a time these asterisks can be looked at as an outlier. But they are not; the gains that Blacks made in the 15 years after the Civil War were clawed back violently around the country.

Gains are being clawed back right now. A new, indecent, vindictive America is not being born, it is coming of age. 8 year-olds will be Emperors. Money will be printed with our current king on the obverse. I want to walk out and tell the leaders “this isn’t decent, this shit looks crazy Didius Julianus. When they read about this part in the 2070 edition of Wikipedia, they’ll wonder why it wasn’t stopped.” But I don’t have faith it will be stopped. In fact I have faith it won’t be.