Record Review 15 Rilo Kiley: "Under The Blacklight"

Rilo Kiley
Under The Backlight



Rilo Kiley has been thrashing around for a number of years. They were an L.A. band who took off for the wilds of Omaha to take advantage of the burgeoning rock seen spawned by bands like Bright Eyes and Cursive. They thrived and Jenny Lewis who has a sweet voice and is considered “hot” and “cute” among some desperate teens became an indie rock heart throb the likes of which we have not seen since Juliana Hatfield of the Blake Babies. They had some indie rock hits on their last CD and solidified with solid touring and then moved back to L.A. where Jenny released a critically commented upon (not necessarily good or bad) CD that did not torpedo her as an individual talent. I really was a fan of that last album and really liked it both technically, song-wise and just the general feel of it. It was cool, her voice was pretty and the guitar keyboard interplay was tight. Blake Sennett toured and worked with his band “The Elected” and released an album that the critics were a little more enthusiastic about.

This CD is problematic. Blake and Jenny and company are talented but on this CD they seem a little schizophrenic and they seem to have lost their way. More then anything the whole CD seems like an exploration of styles for her voice. I say it is problematic because her voice, the hooks and the production values are all excellent but it is so disjointed in a lot of ways as to be, kind of, pleasantly jarring. While that might sound dramatic, for me it was just distracting.

The CD starts off with “Silver Lining” which sounds at the beginning like they are going to break into George Harrison's “My Sweet Lord.” There is nothing wrong with the song but with hand claps, chimes, synthesizers and guitars it is too layered for a simple straight forward song and Lewis’ lilting voice is not enough as she channels Tori Amos. The second song is “Close Call” where we get more Tori Amos (especially in the warbling) but you also get a little Cher from her “Gypsies, tramps and Thieves” days. This is not a compliment. The next song in “Moneymaker” and at this point you start to say oh my god (small G) as we get Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac...not at their best.

On the fourth song we get a break starting with some sweet strings and some synth where she starts to whisper as Sennet plinks a guitar but then the song is marred by background vocals which sound like 70’s pop (Starland Vocal Band) bullshit. Still the song lays out her vocals. The title cut “Blacklight” is better though we get Tori Amos again. But this is a really good song that is worthy of inclusion on some mix tapes. It is a simple song with some type lyrics. The songs all seem to fall for me on the chorus which is always layered and textured with something where it seems her voice would suffice. Next we get “Dreamworld” and for me things get icky again in a kitschy over produced muck where Blake is breathy and Jenny backs him up... back to the 70’s.

Dejalo as she sings in what I am going to presume is Spanish is once again ruined on the chorus. 15 might be a nasty song or even a provocative song as she sings about “him” being seduced by a 15 year old...and then there is the bad chorus...”she was only 15.” Blech! So I keep looking for a high point other then the title cut and think maybe I have one on the song “Smoke detector” and this song rocks along until Jenny is singing about a girl on the dance floor in a tube top, not wearing a bra...and I start to realize what the problem is really...Jenny has nothing to say. She wrote most of the songs and there is just not a lot of substance. We get a little of her country CD sound on “Till The Angels Come Around” and this simple ditty proves to be the next highest point on the track primarily because it is just a straight forward simple country song with a slight rocking guitar and drum. No over production and very little posing. Sweet. The CD closes with a mess called “Give A Little Love” with hand claps, drum machine, (drum machined hand claps?) along with a piano and her singing and this song sounds like it could be on any bad commercial or perhaps in one of the sad scenes on the new “Drama” “Gossip Girls.” It sucks.
So...this is a bad review. This CD is at best non essential and at worst just a directionless mess exposing Lewis as a talented singer with a nice little band along with Sennett but not with a lot else to offer. Perhaps the 70’s feel of the CD (unintentional retro) is the fault of the phalanx of “additional musicians” which appear on the CD including Jackson Browne (who I really loved in the 70’s but have never thought of as someone you would add as a “musician”. Perhaps he and Lewis are involved in yet another boring California Spring/Fall relationship which might serve as an excuse for this CD.

4 Slingers on the 10 scale

Concert Review Number 9: The Good Life

The Good Life
The Gargoyle (Washington University)
September 25, 2007



Sooooo...what do you say about a 46 year old man out on a Tuesday evening to see a show at Washington University...free for students...ten dollars for...lets just say all others. The wife and I decided we would get out to see The Good Life. I had planned to go to the in store concert at Vintage Vinyl at 6:30 for a little taste and then get to bed early but then I realized at 6 that the in store was at 6 so I was not going to go at all. But...we had dinner and then i called my son Jon and asked him whether the show was missable and he said absolutely NOT! So rather then waste yet another night in front of the TV...we were off to Wash U.

Everyone my age who has kids college age should go to a student run event at another school in order to make themselves feel good about their own children. We arrived at 7:15 because doors were at 7:30 and the opening band at 8:00. When we arrived there was...nothing going on. Bands were warming up but no one was there. they showed up about 7:45 smiling awkwardly about the band..oblivious to their lateness, clueless about whether there were any tickets left...or any tickets at all. Anyway... other then the two of us there was one fat girl with a scarf and leggings and a pierced upper lip and a tiara like head band and pinched judgmental mouth and her skinny, awkward, long suffering boyfriend with a narrow brimmed fedora. he was trying to paw her and she was brushing him away dismissively...waiting for the band.

The opening act was Capgun Coup and they were...unremarkable. They were followed up with a Lawrence Kansas Band called 4th of July. They were a Good life sounding 5 piece band of 20 somethings.  Big bass. Ugly guitar playing dwarf. Bearded hobbit lead singer. Keyboarder does a trumpet which mean he would pick up the trumpet and blow about three clear notes (more as percussion) and then start playing the keyboards again. They were kids. The songs were well written but the guy could not sing but the songs were good. They had a Greg Allman look alike on bass. They really came apart on slow songs where they just don't play well enough to play slow. "why did I drink so much last night" typified strengths ans weaknesses. Good show and great opener for The Goodlife. I bought their CD...I have listened to it...it is...non-essential.

The Good Life is Tim Kasher, Roger Lewis, Ryan Fox, Stefanie Drootin. Kasher is a famous scion of the Omaha mope rock scene. He has a band by the name of Cursive that a lot of people say rocks but...I have never lived for them. But the Good Life came out with their third CD about two years ago called “Album of the Year” and it was a song cycle all allegedly written for the same Omaha bartendress and...it was great. And it had steel guitar and he twanged a little. So I became a fan. The new CD is also very good and is Diner review Recommended. the review will come shortly.

The crowd at Wash U is a problem. perhaps it is any college crowd or and free show at a college but you had several groups:
1. Student Government/Student Union Organizational Types: They all had badges and clipboards and cameras and videos and acted very “knowing” about the “scene.” hated them.

2. Music Heads: Boys standing alone, forlornly...staring at the girls and not talking to them. Staring at their shoes. Singing all the words of all the songs to themselves along with Kasher. these are my people.

3. Couples: Always a mistake at a show. Either the girls are there because they are in love with (want to provide sexual favors for) the band and the boy is just a crutch to be ignored and dismissed (see fat girl and skinny boy referenced above) until they do not go home with the drummer at which time they go home with the boy to punish him for the sins of of the aforementioned drummer...or the boy wants to hear the band and the girl just wants to be with him and is going as a favor. Very rare the latter and it never works out.

4. Creepy stalked like 46 year old men (me).

Kasher puts on a good show. his voice does not really hold up well outside the studio. The demigod Will Sheff of Okkervil River also has a problematic voice but he has a wide range and so is interesting in concert as well as the studio. Kasher has a bad voice with a narrow range but like every good artist he takes his weakness and makes it a strength. He bantered with the audience several times as they were working out equipment problems (this was the second show of an east coast swing) and at Wash U that was a mistake. Engineering kids who are too clever by half love to shout back answers at his erroneous TV trivia questions (Family Ties?) and loving discussion about the beauty and yes cleanliness of his own ears. He was annoying at these points and the audience was worse. Perhaps it is just because I am an old man.

His band is very tight. Roger lewis and Ryan Fox are an awesome Guitar and drum combo although the guitarist looks like a dork and the dread-locked drummer is a little too cool but they were very tight. His bass player Stefanie Drootin is 5’3” with short bobbed ringlets and is very good. She can play and watching her little hands move over simple runs was vaguely erotic. Is that a bad thing to say? She also provides background vocals which are very pronounced on their albums but got lost in the muffled basement sound of the Gargoyle.

Kasher rights excellent bleak relationships song for this band. They are bleak. Often he hates the women and they hate them but...they keep laboring on in the relationship and living with the good and the bad. The songs are a lot like real life which is hard to swallow but ultimately sweet. This band is more then a side project for Kasher, it is a calling and even in a crappy venue with poor sound and his iffy voice, it was an excellent show and to be honest...my son was right.

Concert Review Number 8: Okkervil River

Concert Review
Okkervil River with Damien Jurado
Logan Square Auditorium
September 18, 2007





Why you might ask does daddy need to drive to Chicago to see one of his favorite bands? That is an excellent question and indeed a very sad one that pounds home the point that St. Louis is of course not, and never will bill a first rate city. I mean when an average indie rock band on the Jaguwar label can snub this town for years, then what can we do? What can we say?
Sooooo....you miss some work, you skip some school, you find a place to crash and you disappear for 18-24 hours for a solo road trip to see some good music. I am obsessed by Okkervil River. Will Sheff fascinates and confuses me. He writes some of the darkest most complex songs out right now. So I headed for the Logan Square Auditorium, one of the few venues in Chicago I have not been to. It was a cool venue for something called an “auditorium”. I got to drive up 55 all alone listening to their new CD. Is there anything worse then the drive up 55 to Chicago? It is the ass end drive of the world. Nothing to see, nothing to do...just a strong cross wind over fields of soy and corn. Lousy dirty towns and a Mc Donalds every 10 miles. White trash backwards ass Illinois countryfuck heaven. On the other hand... it is the way to Chicago.

I was heading up to downtown (I like to say that) to rendevous with the Knipstein and the frightening law student Adam Smith and the beautiful and talented Rachel Lauber. We dined at Peace Brewery and met up with young Jon Becker and two friends from school. Much pizza was consumed before hopping on the train and heading a few stops to Logan Square. We could not find the place but I finally asked for directions and was pointed to an innocuous building where we walked through a narrow door and up a set of steps to what appeared to be an old school gym revamped into a place to hold wedding receptions and small concerts.

Damien Jurado opened for them. I was not familiar with this guy prior to the show. I listened to his CD on the way up as well. Kind of a wispy voice with these over raught, heartfelt songs. He came on stage with a amped down lead guitarist and a girl who was percussionist, background singer, keyboardist and sometimes admonisher of the crowd for not paying attention. She was just insufferable and poor Damon who starts with mopey songs...just seemed like he should have a gun in his mouth...a really ugly gun...like a cartoon gun. Anyway the whole thing was surreal and it was so tiring. the show was supposed to start at 8:30 but they moved it back to 9:30 and with how slow and boring and whiny big old Damon was.... well I was just exhausted.

But... he finally got done and there was a brief break, and another Budweiser and I went and looked at the merchandise and their was a cool poster comemorating the show and then Will Sheff and his bad made there way to the front of the gym...because there was no back stage or for that matter even a stage...and they trailed up...took their places, thanked everybody for coming out...and tore into the new CD “Stage Names” with the opening track “Bad Movie”.... and we were off!
Sheff is an ugly man. Thinnish, lank haired bangs that hang over slightly beady pig eyes but...it works. he strums the acoustic guitar...plays with the microphone and rocks...woefully...plaintively...and awesomely. He has a a band full of multi instrumentalists including keyboards, trumpet, percussion, guitars, percussion, bass, percussion and background vocals. He alternated songs from Stage Names with his back catalogue and Stage Names is solid enough to work with. Great songs including ”8 Chinese Brothers” where he uses song names to tell everyone that no one cares...
“Nobody cares about your 97th tear”....the 100th Luftballoon, the fourth time you were a lady, the 51 ways to leave your lover...”.

Brilliant. he just writes great poignant songs and the band just plays so seamlessly with him that it works in beautiful..loud...shrill...brilliant way. (I will need to do a whole blog entry just on the song “”8 Chinese Brothers...look forward to it) The band slowly peels from suits down to t-shirts as they rock on and on into the night. They finally leave the stage at Midnight before the demand of encores...it is odd when there is no back stage... and they go and stand on the side of the stage toweling off....before coming back to rip through a few more songs. The encores were awesome and they finished with “Westfall” which is one of the greatest mentally ill murder songs since...since... Warren Zevon’s “Excitable Boy” at least.
The evil law student was ready to go home and so before the end of “Westfall” I took our little group and got to the back of the gym so we could bail on the last chord. I did not even say goodbye to my son (father of the year award) and then we hightailed it out for the train and back to Division Street. I talked the boys out of a drunken White Castle run and we had one more beer and I crashed on the couch. I want to say... for the record...that 45 (almost 46) year old men should not sleep on couches. I started on the futon but actually found the hug old squisht couch more comfortable. Then up at 6 to breeze back home in time for a 2:30 partner picture in front of the foutains at Kiener Plaza. I looked great.

Tour of Missouri

The Tour of Missouri

How much fun is this. My love of the Tour de France is well documented and looked upon somewhat problematically by many of my freinds as it seems to veer over to obsessive compulsive as i am going home every night to watch the race replay. But it is good stuff. Everyone can ride a bike which is one of the appeals of the sport....but not everyone can ride up a 20 mile hill...at speed.

So I was excited that our possible foot tapping Luitenant Governor Peter Kinder worked his ass off from his ceremonial spot in government to put together the Tour of Missouri. The Tour of Georgia has been around a long time along with various events in Colorado and California and Texas but this was big time cycling coming to Missouri of all places. The race was in 5 stages and took you from KC to Springfield, Branson, Columbia, Jefferson City and finally St. Charles and St. Louis. How cool is that?

I remember some pro cycling race that went through U-City on a circuit race that took these guys tearing down Delmar over and over again and it effected me powerfully. When watching on TV you really cannot fathom how fast they are going. thee idea of “drafting” on a bike, in other words letting someone else break the wind for you, seems to be a minor advantage at best. Until you see these guys tear by in a back at 30 or 40 miles and hour. You feel the wind of their passing and realize at that speed you really can be sucked along by a slipstream... it amazed and frightened me.

Do to work schedules I really was not able to watch any of the tour until it’s final day in downtown St. Louis. The day also had a day baseball game and football game so downtown was chaotic at best. The route headed downtown to lap Kiener Plaza on one end so I was looking forward to looking down on it from my firms conference room on the 23rd Floor of 800 Market.

Unfortunately I am...as many of you know.... an idiot. The race started and ended at Union Station and then went west avoiding the heart of downtown and Kerner Plaza by about 8 blocks. Arguably it is hard to be so stupid but for me it came easily so after watching half the Rams game I made the walk up the street to see a little bike racing. All I can really say about is....wow. I cannot fathom the speed these guys roll along in and their proximity to one another. I think there might have been a time in my life....16-23 or so where I would have considered this a cool thing to try. Such is not the case now. Rolling along at that speed on a bike with one hundred other guys riding around me...several of them inches from my wheel would absolutely freak me out. So I am old and weak....so what?

Hincapie and the Discovery Team were rolling into town with hincappie in the lead and the Disco boys planning to go out with a bang instead of a whimper. Tour de France winner Alberto Contador was on his squad and the best line of the whole Tour of Miossouri came from Hincappie who said “I have a Tour de france winner bringing me water bottles.” That is seriously messed up.

This was at best a troubled year for cycling...the second one in a row. Too much doping and too many people forced out of the Tour de France in what even their defense lawyers would term “awkward” situations. So coming to Missouri, rolling through the Ozarks and down the Missouri River with a 100 or so Europeans and South Americans might be just the thing to return boring, old school respectability to cycling. Nothing screams respectable like invoking Harry Truman and “The Show Me State.”

Hincappie ended up winning by protecting his lead and a brilliant Discovery team sailed slowly off into the sunset. All in all it was a party and I hope to watch a time trial next year. I hope it comes back next year. Might save me a trip to France.

The Tour Of Missouri

The Tour of Missouri






How much fun is this. My love of the Tour de France is well documented and looked upon somewhat problematically by many of my friends as it seems to veer over to obsessive compulsive as I am going home every night to watch the race replay. But it is good stuff. Everyone can ride a bike which is one of the appeals of the sport....but not everyone can ride up a 20 mile hill...at speed.

So I was excited that our possible foot tapping Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder worked his ass off from his ceremonial spot in government to put together the Tour of Missouri. The Tour of Georgia has been around a long time along with various events in Colorado and California and Texas but this was big time cycling coming to Missouri of all places. The race was in 5 stages and took you from KC to Springfield, Branson, Columbia, Jefferson City and finally St. Charles and St. Louis. How cool is that?

I remember some pro cycling race that went through U-City on a circuit race that took these guys tearing down Delmar over and over again and it effected me powerfully. When watching on TV you really cannot fathom how fast they are going. thee idea of “drafting” on a bike, in other words letting someone else break the wind for you, seems to be a minor advantage at best. Until you see these guys tear by in a back at 30 or 40 miles and hour. You feel the wind of their passing and realize at that speed you really can be sucked along by a slipstream... it amazed and frightened me.

Do to work schedules I really was not able to watch any of the tour until it’s final day in downtown St. Louis. The day also had a day baseball game and football game so downtown was chaotic at best. The route headed downtown to lap Kiener Plaza on one end so I was looking forward to looking down on it from my firms conference room on the 23rd Floor of 800 Market.

Unfortunately I am...as many of you know.... an idiot. The race started and ended at Union Station and then went west avoiding the heart of downtown and Keiner Plaza by about 8 blocks. Arguably it is hard to be so stupid but for me it came easily so after watching half the Rams game I made the walk up the street to see a little bike racing. All I can really say about is....wow. I cannot fathom the speed these guys roll along in and their proximity to one another. I think there might have been a time in my life....16-23 or so where I would have considered this a cool thing to try. Such is not the case now. Rolling along at that speed on a bike with one hundred other guys riding around me...several of them inches from my wheel would absolutely freak me out. So I am old and weak....so what?

Hincapie and the Discovery Team were rolling into town with Hincappie in the lead and the Disco boys planning to go out with a bang instead of a whimper. Tour de France winner Alberto Contador was on his squad and the best line of the whole Tour of Missouri came from Hincappie who said “I have a Tour de france winner bringing me water bottles.” That is seriously messed up.

This was at best a troubled year for cycling...the second one in a row. Too much doping and too many people forced out of the Tour de France in what even their defense lawyers would term “awkward” situations. So coming to Missouri, rolling through the Ozarks and down the Missouri River with a 100 or so Europeans and South Americans might be just the thing to return boring, old school respectability to cycling. Nothing screams respectable like invoking Harry Truman and “The Show Me State.”

Hincappie ended up winning by protecting his lead and a brilliant Discovery team sailed slowly off into the sunset. All in all it was a party and I hope to watch a time trial next year. I hope it comes back next year. Might save me a trip to France.

Book Review 12: "The Lincoln Lawyer"

The Lincoln Lawyer
Michael Connelly
Warner Books
508 Pages

Every once in a while daddy needs to read a little trash. While I am hesitant to buy books like this in hard back there really is nothing else like a hold in one hand paperback page turner. Soooo...it was Mogerman’s fault that I read this. Let me start by saying that and so absolve myself from the guilty pleasure of michael Connelly’s book. I was not formerly familiar with his work and this book will not really force me to go seek him out but this was a fun read. It was reccomended on the basis of the premise that this lawyer out in LA had no office but practiced out of the back of his Lincoln Town Car. He had a driver, who was a former client partially working off a debt and an ex wife to took messages and handled his books. It sounded...intruiging.

Sadly...it was intuiging. The protagonist Michael Haller is a criminal lawyer with a daughter and two ex wives and all three still love him...and he them. There is some seediness involved in his practice. Drug dealers, murderers, motercycle gang members, prostitutes with hearts of gold...the whole nine yards. A lot of it is trite and simple and frankly that is what makes it works. I am not a reader of Crime or Detective or Mystery or whatever you call this genre but it hooks you in pretty good early and then takes you for a ride....in this case in a Lincoln Town Car. The characters in the book are simply drawn but generally believable and likable.

Haller is a classic lost middle aged man who is unsure of his calling but too busy to think too much about it. Early on in the book he gets hooked up with a “Franchise” case. A rich guy who is accused of trying to murder (afting beating her) a prostitute. The client in the beginning appears to be hapless, somewhat pathetic scion of a reach domineering mother in the real estate business but as the character develops the readers view of him changes slowly and then on accelerating curve as you see him as a soul less, amoral source of almost unbelievable evil. The transformation is handeled well and just being in this guys orbit starts to screw with our heros life in a main way. In the end evil is stymied and a new slightly unexpected evil is just plain shot dead.

One of the over arching themes of the book is the typical quandery of a criminal lawyer. How can you do this? How can you represent people who you know are evil? While our guy starts strong and brusque regarding peoples constitutional rights and how he is a needed check and balance in the system by the end he...and the reader are questioning whether ALL people are really entitled to a defense and whether some people are so evil that vigilante justice is really the only “right” result. Our protagonist the defense lawyer (hero?) is excited about the money he will make but as the case goes on the money becomes not so important when faced with the safety of those he loves and perhaps... on a larger scale his own soul come into play. Finally the book is about choices and about redemption and though they are big picture things they are not given big picture treatment. As far as good, evil, having a conscience and building meaningful relationships and leading a meaningful life....this is the MTV version. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

There are many plot twists and turns and keeps the interest throughout it’s almost 500 paper back pages. It is reasonably hard to put down as if you read it every night before bed (as I do) you go to bed each night thinking things are not as they seem and focusing on yet another twist and wondering where it will take you. The important thing about “The Lincoln Lawyer” and I assume other books of the genre is that even when it seems hopeless...you know in your heart it is going to end well. Sometimes you need that. This one should be made into a movie.

Diner Check list Extended and Expounded Upon: Part Deux

Sure my first diner list was good but we need something more substantive. Something that every diner can use to grade and guide his experience. Once again I feel the need to ask all of you to help me out with things I am missing. I hold these things out, not as comprehensive but towards compiling such a list...as a matter of public service.

1. Visible Grill Area (VGA): This is important for “authenticity” (see item 20 below) because of course, in sight it must be right. Steak n Shake...if they cared about breakfast would still be a great diner. You want to see what there doing. You want to see what they grease the grill with. Is the bacon precooked? What the hell are they doing with my hash browns. Lots of kitchens turn out excellent food but...daddy likes the VGA.

2. Counter: The existence of the counter used to be directly related to the VGA but no more. Many, many places have counters and stools along with a kitchen. (see Dennys). The counter is important because even though I rarely sit at one they offer the place for the colitary diner to come in, read a paper and become as involved as he or she might want to be with another diner. lack of a counter makes any establishment’s dining cred “sketchy”.

3. Jukebox: This is an add on but an excellent touch. It is important to have the option of music if you need it. Free Bird in the morning can really take the edge off a hangover. You can certainly do without a juke box but... why not have one?


4. Calendar (how many?): William Least Heat Moon in his book “Blue Highways” made this a consideration. His theory in traveling the country was that the diner with the most calendars showed that it had a good local clientele. Any establishment would post the calendar of any hardware store or insurance agent who provided one for them. it shows good local color and loyalty of patronage.

5. Hashbrowns: Should I need to discuss hash browns anymore? Nope. They are critical. They must be shredded...not chpped. Not the hated "breakfast potatos" but shredded and preferably pressed down into something patty like. Lightly browned Golden. perfect. Like Christmas.

6. Cream Gravy: Cream gravy is important. You need it on a country fried steak. You like to have the option to pour it over your sausage and/or your hashbrowns. I like to cut up my hashbrowns and sausage and cover them in gravy...then cut them up some more. But you need good gravy. Not white paste. Slightly off white in color (due to bacon grease) with some sausage or ham chunks in it...a meal in itself.

7. Pancakes: Too fat? Too thin? How many? Blueberries? (for god sake I hope not if they are out of season). Should syrup be a separate item? These are important questions and well...pancake quality matters.

8. Sausage: Sausage is imortant in a real and metaphysical way. It can be hot, spicy, mild, sage.... almost anything. In it’s worse form it is generic Bob Evans or Oscar Mayer. A really good place makes their own or orders their own...most of the time these places are in rural areas but...always worth finding. pork sausage is what is doctrinally correct.

9. Bacon: What do you do...what can you do without quality bacon? Nothing! Bacon is the anchor around which all breakfast reside. You can (and I often do) have breakfast without bacon but why would you? Bacon is key. Good bacon...a hot griddle and perhaps one of those metal presses that you lay on top of the bacon in order to fry it evenly AND press it flat. Do not under estimate the importance of evenly cooked...flat bacon. I do not like fancy bacon. I am suspicious of hickory smoked bacon and of course thick bacon, though a clever anomoly is simply uneeded.

10. Coffee: I do not love coffee...not my area... but all of that having been said it is a lot to expect decent coffee at a diner. It sits for a long time on a hot plate...it is made irregularly...sometimes it is cooked....like tar...anyway...i don’t give a shit.
Iced Tea: I AM however an iced tea nazi. If they are not making tea on a regular basis and vertainly fresh tea at 6:00 A.M. every morning it is not worht talking about. Additionally...if they have flavored tea....it is unforgivable. the tea should be black tea but the closer it is to Lipton...the better.



11. Service: there has to be some expectation that service should be indifferent at best. be suspicious of too good of service but there is no reason to be forgiving of bad service...indifferent...that would be the key.

12. Chili (Slingers): It seems like a must to have Chili. It is preferable if they have chili like God intended...without beans but also the bean filled chili for the infidels. the chile can be eaten by itself with cheese crackers and onions in a bowl...it can be eaten on top of hash browns, it can be eaten in a variety of forms with spaghetti noodles and of course it can be made into a slinger. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slinger

13. Butter or dreaded butter “substitute”: Although i rail against the butter substitute I believe it is the norm for diners.
Stools: Silver stainless steel base with a round pleather top. The top should hopefully be red or black. The stools should line the counter and over look the grill. This is most certainly true.

14. Booths: You almost GOTTA have booths. there is something about the lack of comfort afforded by a booth. The bumping of knees and the close quarters. Where do put a coal in a booth? A diner without booths although possibly not morally wrong is certainly doctrinally incorrect. be careful of these places that label themselves “diners” but lack booths.
Pricing: It should be cheap. But what can you do? Good food costs.

15. Location: You cannot tuck a diner just anywhere. Though a strip mall...if seedy enough is always appropriate you cannot be in a mall out lot. You cannot be in a really good neighborhood. Free standing is good. Near a highway...better. In a lot of ways the worse the neighborhood...the better.

16. Authenticity: This is tricky...and it is up to the eye of the beholder. But you know what I mean. Is it authentic? Is it a real diner? Do real people eat there or is just a bastion of West County or a refuge for faux hipsters slumming it?
Can you get a beer? I mean seriously...if you really need one. This is of course only really applicable to your bar/diner... but seriously...they are the best anyway. And also...seriously...and respectfully....is there ANYTHING better then nursing a hangover with a bottle of Busch and breakfast? I think not my friend...I think not.

17. Bathroom? Do they have one? Do they have two? Are they filthy? Do you have to go through the kitchen to get it? Do they regularly refill the toilet paper? Have people gotten sick in there in the last 24 hours? Did anyone make ANY effort to clean it up.

18. Hot Sauce: Availability and selection. Although not important to me I seem to spend too much time with people who put hot sauce on everything...including gravy. It is good if they have more then typical hot sauce showing some character and discernment by the owner.

19 Cigarette Machine: I don’t smoke, I don’t like cigarette smoke but how the hell do you know that you have been having breakfast unless you leave stinking of cigarette smoke. It is appalling but...it really is important to have a cigarette machine. If one of the patrons has to go to a gas station to get his cigs...well how does that make him feel. The non smoking diner is the faux diner. People who work for a living smoke. People who smoke need cigarettes. Do you follow me?

So do we grade these things on a 1-3 scale, 1-5 scale, 1-10 scale? I need some input here. Are there items I am forgetting? Once again...how about some input...some thoughtfulness...something from the 8 of you who occasionally read this. Do something for God sakes...eventually even I had to move out of my parents basement.

Record Review 14 Spoon: "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga"

Spoon
GaGaGaGaGa
Merge Records 2007






Spoon is an intriguing band in a lot of respects. Classic indie rockers out of Austin who wowed the critics with their 2002 release “Kill The Moonlight” with grabby summer anthems “Small Stakes” and “The Way We Get By.” The followed it up with “Gimme Fiction” which took it in a harder long where they tried somewhat unsuccessfully to craft a straight ahead rocker. With Ga... they are on firmer ground and returning to their artsy, tuneful roots but with some more maturity. They continue working on the hippest indie label Merge.(www.mergerecords.com). This is a great album.

Britt Daniel is still driving the band and is in his best form on this CD which might be their best effort yet. He knows his way around a hook and the band is good enough to more then stay with him. It is crisp and has 10 songs that clock in at 37 minutes and it hearkens back to the good old days of 3 minute, radio ready pop tunes.
“Black Like Me” leads off and is as strong as anything out there. the whole CD evokes quality Squeeze tunes but in a lot of ways is so much better because...well I don’t know why but probably because of recording improvements it just sounds so crisp and sharp...and his lyrics...and the tunes hold up to crisp and sharp.

“I'm in need of someone to take care of me tonight
As I walk into Dorian's, can you see it in my eyes?
My boots are on the mend and they ain't walking home
Street tar in summer'll do a job on your soul
Jenny's watching cover shot, my head's feeling light
I'm in need of someone to take care of me tonight
Anyhow, anyway, so I split
Like just getting out of there is gonna get me outta this
I spent the night in the map room
I humanize the vacuum
I'm in need of someone to take care of me tonight
As I'm lookin' out at you, can you see that in my eyes
On the mend, now they could lead me home
Street tar in summer will play a trick on your soul
Jenny's gone day and night
Ah, It made me feel so light
Just someone to take care tonight
Jenny's watching day and night
My head's still feeling light
Someone to take care tonight
All the weird kids up front, tell me what you know you want
Someone to take care tonight”
Nice imagery and what a great last line finally looking to the weird kids up front at a show for final redemption..





“Finer Feelings” has an “Afghan Whigs” feel to it and rocks along nicely. “My Japanese Cigarette Case” might as well be a Squeeze song with winsome harmonies and hooky guitars and lyrics and the next song “The Underdog” and even the next one continue in precisely the same pleasing vein. The next song “Rhythm and Soul” feels like newer Decembrists and is so listen-able as to be a little painful. “Don’t You Evah” returns successfully to the bands more signature sound which relies on Daniels voice and clever wordplay and “You’ve Got That Cherry Bomb” introduces some big horns and kind of reminds me of early graham Parker and nice swinging British sound. “The Ghost of You Lingers” is a promising song title but unfortunately is likely the only real failure on the album with an annoying piano duh duh duh duh duh duh...that so distracts overs Daniel’s voice that you really cannot care what he is singing about. The CD finishes with “Don’t Make Me A Target” which is just a great little pop, paranoid, why is everone messing with me song. And it is song with enough passion and anger to make it work. If you buy it on iTunes there is a bonus track “Deep Clean” which is stripped down and a little whiny and... you don’t need it.

The CD is a very solid effort. I always wonder how an “Austin” band gets such a brit rock sound and i think you either credit or fault that to Daniels singing style but it is, for the most part, delightful. As I said earlier one of the CD’s primary charms is the short, sharp length of the songs. As one who has tired of jam bands and 4 minute “solos” you have to admire the attempt at Beatles-esque concise writing and playing. Punch it out and let me tap my feet and smile.

Book Review 11: "Martin Luther" Martin Marty 2006 Penguin Books

“Martin Luther”
by Martin Marty
2004
198 Pages
Penguin Press



Sooooo...I am a Lutheran. Born a Lutheran, raised a Lutheran, educated in Lutheran institutions for 14 1/2 years. Lutherans are a considerable minority in this country. nothing wrong with that but like any religious minority you better know what you believe. Christianity is not the easiest or most logical thing at best (not much different then any other “faith”) and when Hitler occasionally quoted your founder you can really be on the defensive quick.

The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod raised me with film strips on Luther showing him as a dynamic reformer. Nothing I learned growing up veered too far from that including the recent Ralph Fiennes movie which portrayed Luther as at least very good looking and earnest. All that having been said there are plenty of Luther biographies but most of them are through Church publishing houses which are sometimes less then reliable in reviewing their icons.

Marty's book is a nice concise effort. It hits all the high spots and I think gives a really nice sense of the man. It goes right to the heart of a guy raised as a righteous Catholic (capital C) who had a gigantic intellect and ego. He started to attack what was at that time a very sick Church and in some ways a very lost Church. He rebelled against the papacy and what he viewed as the churches leaving the basic tenets of the Gospel and keeping people distant from the essential empowering message of God’s Grace and even worse profiting of dispensation of that Grace.

He blamed the church hierarchy and one of his huge tenets was that through baptism we all became priests. He shook the order and started the reformation and then rode the wave while being almost paralyzed by the chaos which ensued. He benefitted from the politics of the time and Germany’s general dissatisfaction with Rome and the papacy and under their protection took even more advantage of the internet of the time which was the printing press.

He wrote and wrote and wrote, using this new technology to inundate the intellectual population of the time and even more to put his thoughts and the Gospels into the language of the people instead of Latin. The book does not dwell too much on his personal life. He left the monastic life and married the un-hot Katie and sired a nice family before he died. the book makes clear that he suffered from what we would call depression but what he referred to as “anfechungen”. These dark moods colored a lot of his writings and his life.

Of almost as great a fascination is all the people who are his contemporaries. Henry The VIII, Holy Roman Emperor Charles, Pope Leo X, Erasmus, Zwingli...so many great leaders and thinkers hastening in the age of enlightenment. He battles with them all with the help of his faithful Philip Melancthon who helped ease Luther’s personality difficulties, smooth over things and make peace with people and even more to be his organization and energy when he was suffering his bouts.

Luther had some very closed and bigotted attitudes. He often found the politics of time gave an advantage to demonizing "the turks" who were the moslems as they encroached on europe and he played upon fears sometimes to strengthen and popularize his other positions. He often referred to the pope as "the antichrist" which although once again popular with his audience might seem to be lacking in Grace. Finally he often wrote with harsh and unforgivable language about the Jews. The biographer (and I have read this several times in other sources) claim that he expected his "new" message of Grace would be embraced by the Jews who he expected to reclaim Christianity as their faith... and that he never got over their failure to do so. This does nothing to condone his bigotted mean spirited writings which have been used to justify some of the most unforgivable crimes in history. Aside from his mean some times mean spirited writing he was often rather wrong in regard to man and wife relationships. While parading the sanctity of marriage he did not rail against some infidelities in the absence of being able to produce children, encouraging the cheating husband or wife and their spouse to hold it together and pretend that nothing was amiss.

The book paints a portrait of a brilliant man, but a man. On that is troubled, depressed and deeply fallable. That is one of the great things about the Protestant movement is that we rarely (never?) hold out our leaders and thinkers to be anything more then deeply flawed men (and sometimes women). The book pounds home is that for all his faults, God (or perhaps some would argue the Devil) used this man to change the world.

Book Review 10: "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?"

Book Review
Philip K. Dick
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
244 Pages

Soooo... I am an idiot. I have seen this book on shelves and heard it referred to and...well... I thought the name was “Do Androids Dream of Electric SLEEP?” Which frankly I believe would be a VERY cool name too. Maybe even more cooler...most coolest? I guess that is why I don’t write books. I read one of Dicks books earlier in the year and found it good but not all that compelling. Still, since I am reading Jonathan Lethem who really loves Dick...I need to read to Dick because as you can all tell by now.... I don’t know Dick.

This is an awesome book. A great summer read.

The book is set in the future...naturally. It is post apocalypse...naturally. Earth is not doing that well. There is radioactive dust which is slowly killing everyone left on the planet. People are being sent out to Mars and other planets to colonize. Things evidently are not going all that well out there either but as an inducement for people to go they are given and android. Evidently some of these very real androids are creating a variety of problems on the colonies and some are coming home. they are so realistic that we earth people have bounty hunters to track them and...”retire” them.

The chief protagonist is a bounty hunter and we are introduced to him as he wakes up and deals with his depressed wife. He then goes to the roof where he pretends to take care of his electric sheep and deals with a snotty neighbor with a real horse. Evidently in the apocalypse animals faired even poorer then humans. He covets his neighbors live horse and is embarrassed regarding his electric sheep.

A new posse of androids has been discovered and one almost killed the chief bounty hunter in San Francisco which gives our hero a chance to make some money to buy a live animal. The story is basically about his life while he is doing so.
At the same time we are dealing with a parallel story of a “chicken-head” who is also dealing with, and falling in-love with these rogue androids. A chicken-head is a “special”...someone who has been mentally damaged by the radioactive fallout. Eventually they meet. The “chicken-head” has run into several androids which our hero is supposed to “retire” and although they have not treated him well they have shown him a type of community which humanity has more recently denied him.
In between we are dealing with all kind of real issues. The religion of the day is “Mercerism” which is as good of a new age religion as any. Wikipedia defines Mercerism this way: Mercerism is a prominent religious/philosophical movement on Earth. The movement is based on the fable of Wilbur Mercer, a man who lived before the war. Adherents of Mercerism grip the handles of an electrically powered empathy box, while viewing a monitor which displays patterns that are meaningless until the handles are gripped. After a short interval the user's senses are transported to the world of Wilbur Mercer, where they inhabit his mind in an experience shared with any other people using an empathy box at that moment.

Mercerism blends the concept of a life-death-rebirth deity with the values of unity and empathy. According to legend, Mercer had the power to revive dead animals, but local officials used radioactive cobalt to nullify the part of his brain where the ability originated. This forced Mercer into the "tomb world." He strives to reverse the decay of the tomb world and ascend back to Earth by climbing an enormous hill. His adversaries throw rocks at him along the way (inflicting actual physical injuries on the adherents "fused" with Mercer), until he reaches the top, when the cycle starts again.

The over arching theme of the whole book though is what does it really mean to be human? At every turn the story is dealing with the main character trying to judge whether the entity he is dealing with is human or android so by definition....inhuman. Also without asking it is constantly raising the question of, who are we to judge what is more...or less human. It explores these themes in a very weird and easily readable way. The book was written in 1968 and when you consider where we were then, and where we are now it has a spooky relevance and that is a quality rarely seen among futuristic books, 40 years later. It is very close to the best book I read this year and certainly a better read then Huckleberry Finn... or at least an easier one.