Trip

Back from the trip! Had a pretty great time with the wife so now I'll just go back to the beginning and lay it on out! We were good and got up real early on Saturday. I boarded Horace so we had to wrangle him up before leaving and he gave us our money's worth trying to catch him. We finally got him and dropped him off. So sad. First time I've ever boarded him (or any pet really, but I guess he's the only pet I've ever had as my pet and with me being a grownup and all that). But hopefully he was in good care. He needed someone to inject him with fluids with a needle every day so, yeah, having him at the vet was the best call. Also, right when we dropped him off he peed and there was blood in his urine so they called me to do a urinalysis. He apparently has a uti, so it was good he was there.

Okay, so we're off to Kentucky. We took an unusual semi-backroads-ish way because our first goal was to his some special barbecue place on the way to Louisville that's in rural western Kentucky. A little out of the way, but not too bad and worth it for a kind of food I've never had before: mutton barbecue! That was good. The place was called Old Hickory in Owensboro. It was some good stuff. As Mary Beth said, it was almost like sauerbraten. Their beans were really good too. Then after the hours we get up into Louisville and made pretty good time. First thing was I let Mary Beth off at this bar she wanted to go to while I went record shopping. I did a pretty big tour and got quite the haul. I went back to pick her up twice, but she wanted to stay there so I kept venturing out and pushed on. I did get mixed up quite a few times. The streets in Louisville are an exploration of angles. I likened the experience to the cover of Autechre's ep7. Also, the road will keep going straight but the name will change and the name of the street you were on turned in a different direction. That happened a few places. Anyway, I managed to get around in spite of a few mix-ups and detours.

The first record store I went to was Guestroom Records. They were pretty good. Standard indie record store with a pretty decent selection. Here's what I got: Godspeed You! Black Emperor: Yanqui U.X.O., Ennio Morricone: Crime and Dissonance, Pharoah Sanders: Karma, Sunburned Hand of the Man: s/t, Black Dice: Mr Impossible, Bill Ding: The Horrendously Named EP, The Cramps: Psychedelic Jungle/Gravest Hits, David Grubbs: The Thicket, and Jesu: Silver.

The next place I hit up was Matt Anthony's. It's a pretty tiny place and there wasn't a whole lot but it was alright for the size. The lady working there was super, almost-scarily nice. Boisterously friendly and chatty. I only picked up one cd: Labradford: E Luxo So.

Next in my adventures was the motherfucking motherlode: Modern Cult Records. This place was fucking awesome, not tiny but not huge but with a well-catered selection. I took it as a good sign when the guy working there complimented my DNA shirt as soon as I walked in. Well, here's the shit I got (and there was a bit more I wanted to get and ended up putting back...): Teenage Jesus and the Jerks/Beirut Slump: Shut Up and Bleed, Agitation Free: 2nd, Agitation Free: Fragments, François Bayle: Les Couleurs de la Nuit, John Cage: Shock Vol. 1, Roberto Gerhard: Electronic Explorations from His Studio + The BBC Radiophonic Workshop 1958-1967, Harry Partch: The Harry Partch Collection Volume 1, Terry Riley: Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band All Night Flight, Boredoms: Super Roots 3, Boredoms: Super Roots 5, Boredoms: Super Roots 6, Boredoms: Super Roots 8, v/a: Bali | Gamelan & Kecak, and Excepter: Alternation. With the Boredoms stuff I'm replacing most of those Super Roots things that I have on bootlegged cdr compilations that I got in that record shop adjacent to the 40 Watt Club so many years ago when I didn't realize they were bootlegs. I did get mixed up and make a bit of a mistake when I realized the next day that I already have #6 as a standalone. Oh well, a little gift for someone. Talked a bit to the guy about music. Talked about Agitation Free and how most psych isn't very good (but how it can be really good). Also he asked if I was going to the Pere Ubu show, so yeah. He pointed me to a contest on their facebook page for the show. It was a picture and it was asking something like, what relationship does this dude have with Pere Ubu and what is the name of his science of imaginary solutions. So I answered that shit right away because I'm both a music nerd and a book nerd (I recognized it right away as Alfred Jarry riding a bicycle). So yeah, he wrote Ubu Roi which they got their name from (though at the time I couldn't remember the exact title) and his absurd science is Pataphysics. Yeah. Haven't read him, but I know that shit about him. So I answered and supposedly won some newer Pere Ubu cd, but I didn't run into him at the show. I may bug their facebook page with a message about it tomorrow or something. He also told me there was a show I should check out tonight, Parlour (the same group I mentioned kinda recently that I saw opening for Mogwai way back in the day). It was the release show for their new album. It was at Zanzabar (the same place the Pere Ubu show would be) so I said I might check it out (which I did, more on that later when I get to it).

My next step was to walk around the corner to Underground Sounds. It was okay. Nothing could compare to the wonderful experience I just had though. But I got some good stuff there too: Rachel's: Music for Egon Shiele, Rachel's / Matmos: Full on Night, Sonic Youth: Spinhead Sessions • 1986, Nurse with Wound: A Sucked Orange, Nurse with Wound: Sugar Fish Drink, Nico: The End... (two disc version with bonus stuff), and Eric B. & Rakim: Paid in Full. There were three other guys there just standing around chatting with the guy working there. So I did a little talking to them as I was buying stuff. One guy was real into the main Rachel's album I was buying. One guy was curious about what the Sonic Youth I got was. Then they were talking about King Crimson and where they drew the line for stopping with their stuff (Discipline was the near-unanimous last good album for them). Someone was saying Beat was pretty good but there was disagreement. I chimed in saying I'd heard one song from it and liked it, liked all I'd heard with that lineup in the 80s, but also I didn't like any of their "classic" stuff so I probably wasn't the right person to ask. One guy was like to each his own and another suggested I should listen to some albums that I've heard and don't like.

Okay, now I've made a good score and I pick up Mary Beth for real! I decide I'm full-up on cds enough to skip the last store I was going to go to. We had a dinner or snack (as our late lunch was damn heavy...barbecue mutton for chrissakes...) at this place called Garage. We had a flight on fancy hams. I was excited by this drink on their menu with blueberry and rhubarb, but they were out. It was replaced by something with peach and cilantro. A little disappointed because the first sounded SO good, but what I got was still really damn good. I also got to try the local soda: Ale-8-1. That was really awesome. It's like a ginger ale crossed with a sprite that's doesn't taste crappy, or a lightly citrus-y ginger ale.

Well, it's getting on in time in the evening and we decided it'd be fun to check out the show. It was pretty good timing. We missed the opening band (not that that was intended, just weren't ready in time and it wasn't something we were expecting anyway). Parlour was just about to get on when we got there. It was cool 'cuz it gave us a chance to check out the venue before the Pere Ubu show. It's a pretty cool little divey bar (but in a good way). It's got an arcade with quite a few pinball machines and a few arcade games. A pretty nice comfortable atmosphere. The area with the stage is pretty damn small and intimate so I was pretty excited we'd be seeing Pere Ubu in that setting. Parlour were really good. I ended up getting a t-shirt and their new cd which appears to be self-titled. After that it's not super-late, but still pretty late so we head to the hotel to get some sleep 'cuz we gotta wake up early and shit.

So we get up to head over to this place called Toast on Market for some breakfast. Had some good damn food, peanut butt and banana "king"-type (french toast was it?) and their hash browns were damn good with this red pepper flavoring. Then we wanted to check out some sites in the town. We tried to go to the Muhammad Ali Center, but it wasn't open yet. Then we decided we'd check out Old Louisville. As it sounds, it's this old Victorian part of town. We walked around, admired the houses, walked around Central Park (a medium-sized work by the Olmsteds). We also managed to get some fathers day calls in (though mine, when I finally got my dad, was about as brief as he could be, they were on vacation in Orlando at the time and were at Universal Studios so it was almost "hi-thanks-bye").

After that we went back downtown to try the museums. First was the 21c Museum Hotel. When I first heard it described, I'd thought of a regular hotel that just had some good art in the lobby that people went to to look at. But then we get there and I find out it's really a hotel that's both a hotel and a museum. So I'm thinking it might be the cheesy kinda gimicky art, maybe kinda quaint, you'd find in a hotel lobby, but no. It's an honest to god contemporary art museum. So I guess it's more of the trendy type of hotel I can never afford to stay at. But the museum was free. And it was pretty big, two stories with art. And I was surprised to find most of it was overtly political. There was some really good stuff in there too. One feature is the men's bathroom wall where the urinal is is a one-way (two-way?) mirror (outside a mirror, inside a window) so you can see people when your weiner's hanging out and urine's spurting out of it. It also has a motion sensor that starts a big waterfall down the glass as you approach. Kinda cool. After I showed my stuff to nobody, I came out and there was this lady talking to Mary Beth about how some old lady once was standing in front of it laughing and pointing (pretending she could see who was in there) and some guy thought she could see him and freaked out and ran out. Then we successfully went around the corner to the Muhammad Ali Center. Nothing too revealing, but it was nice to see a bunch of stuff. And it felt nice going seeing how he passed away so recently (we'd had it planned to go even before he died). At parts there was some heavy corporate sponsorship that was kinda weird, but it was pretty cool to just bask in the presence of a bunch of stuff about Muhammad Ali. Okay, now we need to go to the store for some stuff so I need to jump for the moment. I'll continue this stuff.

A Tale of Two Villages

Okay, so continuing our Louisville adventure. Next we're off to this bar before the show. It's this brewery that's built into a baseball stadium (though it itself has nothing to do with baseball) called Against the Grain. We had some pretty good food (I had a shiitake burger that was actually pretty damn good, I love mushrooms but fake burgers can be dangerous territory). A Wolverine movie was playing that I thought had to be some tv show because of how shitty the quality was, but it was a major motion picture.

Anyway, on to real stuff. We had some time to kill. I went to the last record store holdout (Better Days) and it wasn't that great. Okay, but kinda hard to find anything to actually get. I picked up a few things: Radiohead: A Moon Shaped Pool, Fugazi: End Hits, and Fugazi: Instrument Soundtrack. Then we went to this ice cream place called The Comfy Cow and had some damn good ice cream. I was little bummed 'cuz I thought I was being cool and getting something Louisville-specific with the bourbon ball flavored ice cream, but bourbon balls apparently are or have chocolate-filled bourbon so I had to pick out the bits of chocolate (which I think made it just a difficult to eat vanilla). That's what I get for being a local poseur. Then it's off to this coffee place next to the venue. I got something that I thought sounded awesome: peach coffee soda...but it was more coffee than anything so it was nasty-tasting to me (so I gave it to Mary Beth who actually likes coffee and she thought it was really good).

Okay, so then the show at Zanzabar! Like I said before, the venue is pretty small so it was a nice intimate setting. The opening band was Obnox and they were pretty awesome. A bit punk, in the good way. The drummer was pretty badass. It was just a two-piece with the drummer and the guitarist/singer. They also had bits where they played along to a sample on an mp3 player (the same one I have, and it was cute when the singer struggled with the "new technology"). Okay, so then Pere Ubu. Musically they were spot on and fucking incredible. Like I probably have said before, they're touring for a new box set reissuing their early run of albums (75-82) so they only played that shit (you know, their good shit!). And they did a pretty good spread of all that material. They fucking opened with my favorite song of theirs ("Heart of Darkness"). The band was pretty incredible. It was cool to see Robert Wheeler in action (as I'm a huge fan of those albums he did with Allen Ravenstine. He mostly played an MS-20 mini some little synth box and a theremin. The drummer was especially incredible. He played both fast and really hard. Everyone was doing justice to the original spirit of all the songs. And then there's David Thomas who was, as usual, an incredible asshole. The first show he was mostly abusive to the sound guy (though the guitarist got a bit of it too) and the second show he was mostly abusive to the band (especially the drummer). I'll focus on the first show for now. At one point David and Robert got into a shouting match at each other. David made a bitchy comment about there being too much of Robert's sound in the monitor and Robert lashed out that someone had moved his monitor and it was pointing towards David and not himself and he couldn't hear himself. At this point David said they were taking a ten minute break and the band left the stage (where I'm sure there was lots of yelling). The monitor was fixed and after a bit they resumed the set. Here's where things got weird. While waiting, I went to the bathroom. While I was gone they started to make their return. We were right by the stage (literally about just standing next to the band as the stage was tiny and only a few inches tall). Well, David walks with a cane (he sits down on stage) and would use people to prop himself up while getting back on stage. He tried to use Mary Beth as support while he got back up and put his weight on her while she wasn't looking and wasn't aware and almost knocked her over. Okay, at one point later the lights went out in the venue (except for a few of the lights at the back of the stage) and David started bitching about it at one point saying they'd quit and end the show if the lights weren't fixed so the audience reacted and someone with the venue had to shout for everyone to fucking calm down and someone was looking into it. At one point they were about to start a song, Robert said he wasn't ready and David he didn't fucking care and started the song anyway. He'd make lots of hand motion directions at the band members (usually to be quiet). Once he did it to the guitarist so he played more quietly and he kept making the motion so he just stopped playing, eventually picking back up at the next part. He kinda had this internal eye-roll look of someone who knows what's not even worth bothering to fight. I'm trying to remember as many of these details as possible. I guess that's it for this show.

We woke up the next morning and had breakfast at the North End cafe. They had something called a potato melt so I asked the waiter what it was. Similar to homefries with some awesome stuff and then he went a step beyond and recommended adding an over-easy egg on top and bacon. Ooh, it sounded so good and it was so good. I loved the serendipity of the fact that had I just ordered it I wouldn't've ever thought to get the extras that pushed it over the top. That was a happy breakfast for me.

The next thing we did was hit the road for Nashville, but I just remembered a chunk I forgot to say. The day before this, the day of the show, before the record store we stopped at a grocery store to get some Louisville-specific stuff (I got a bunch of Ale-8-1...fuck yeah). Well, with this new algorithm-driven anti-fraud junk banks are using now and how they're extra sensitive, Mary Beth's card got declined, then my card got declined (luckily my credit card was accepted). Well, then at the record store my card was declined again. I tried calling the bank but they're fucking closed and don't even have a 24 hour assistance. Just a recording to call back during normal business hours so my bank account is fucking locked and I'm out of town and can't use my fucking money so that's pretty damn annoying. They called the next morning while driving, so when we got to the diner for breakfast I called back. It was an automated system where I had to verify the purchases. Okay. Then they call back again a few minutes later with the same verification shit I'd just gone through. Talk about insult to injury. Exaggeration, but it was pretty annoying.

Okay, so we get to Nashville and the first thing we did was go to Grimey's! On the used side I picked up: David Bowie: Blackstar, Beak>: s/t, Mike Ladd: Negrophilia, Echo & the Bunnymen: Porcupine, Growing: All the Way, Excepter: Self Destruction, Excepter: Sunbomber, Excepter: Throne, Man or Astro-Man?: Is It . . . Man or Astro-Man?, Merzbow: Dolphin Sonar, Uzeda: Different Section Wires, and The Soft Moon: Deeper. Then next door to the used side: Bernard Fèvre: Cosmos 2043, Amon Tobin: Foley Room, Pauline Oliveros: Accordion & Voice, The Body/Krieg: s/t, The Body & Full of Hell: One Day You Will Ache Like I Ache, and Zombi: Shape Shift. Okay, yeah, so I bought a fuck ton of a fucking lot of records this trip. That's my pleasure. Okay. Then we had a bunch of time and we were tired so we went back to the hotel to just fucking rest. Actually, we hung around a little bit then it was out for some food. First it was to Riverside Grillshack for some of those amazing burgers and fries that we got last time. Then to Jenni's again for some amazing goddamn ice cream. Then back to the motel and just digest and fucking relax. Mary Beth read to me from the Gentleman 33 1/3 book. When it was about time, we went out to Exit/In for the show!

Since we had gotten our fill of up-close and intimate in the most perfect setting and since this club isn't as intimate anyway and really we were just pretty tired at this point, we sat on the balcony to watch the show. Obnox were good again. I'd say both bands were better in Louisville though. Maybe a little of it was we already saw it and new what to expect, but I think there was a little more on top of that. Obnox's set was a little different. The drummer put a hole through his bass drum head at a point. Which is pretty cool he did that, but also the rest of the set they played less drum-intensive songs (it was all stuff playing along to the samples and were more hip-hop, the drummer still played but it was more simple beats, good but it was sad we didn't get any more of his crazy shit).

Pere Ubu wasn't as awkward at least in that they didn't just leave the stage in the middle of their set. David was more abusive to the band. They seemed less like they were enjoying it, the drummer especially. He seemed in good spirits the first show, the second one (after being specifically chastised) he seemed less into it and less happy, though his played was still just as incredible. David usually talked and told stories between songs, but at one point he just sat there in awkward silence for an awkwardly long time just waiting for the band to start the song. At another point he said something along the lines of wondering if "these people" could know their cues and start the songs when they were supposed to. One song ("The Fabulous Sequel") the drummer counted in and started and then David stopped it and yelled at him that he was playing before he sang "it's me again" instead of after. Mary Beth's made an astute discovery that totally went by me, but David was apparently stealthily sniffing coke and it would be right after he'd take a hit that his abuse at the band especially erupted. I forget who yelled something along the lines of "nobody fucking cares" when a member said something. Oh it was the drummer. He may have yelled "shut the fuck up" when he tried to talk back (over one of the songs starting "fiascoes"). Oh he also complained about the band taking too long to start songs, this was after the song the guitarist broke a string and had to switch guitars. It's just especially funny 'cuz these guys are playing so fucking well and working really hard at this and just being top-notch professionals and David just sits there, having a cool voice, but not really requiring much else in the way of having to work to make sure the songs stay together. Or "leading" the band by motioning to someone to be less loud here and there or disrupt to derail the show by going off on something else that's minor. So yeah, I know I saw direct evidence of his being an asshole at the Rocket from the Tombs show so many years ago, but yeah more of that these shows. Anyway, I did pick up merch. Forgot to mention. I got two shirts (a pink one and one specific to the tour titled "Coed Jail"). I got that at the first show. At the second show I picked up an Obnox shirt.

Finally this morning I got caught up pretty well on rest for the first morning of the trip. Late nights (and Saturday was unexpected we'd be up late, but it was good we got to see that show). Before I continue I wanna mention something about Exit/In. Above the bar they have this huge board with all these bands that have played there. There's lot of big names and legendary acts, but then there are some weird random bands nobody's heard of with dumb names (along with some bands that were popular once, especially in the 90s, but now pretty embarrassing and are generally not listened to anymore). Okay, so it just makes you wonder what makes them decide to pick which bands to go up there. I mean, it's been around a long time and lots of big names have played there and continue to play there and I'm sure some way more impressive bands have played since some of those others have been put up there so what makes 'em decide to leave some of them up? Anyway, that's a half thought that's maybe more amusing while looking at the board and laughing at some of the goofy names and translates less well from a remove on a computer screen.

Okay, back to this morning. We eat breakfast at this place called Monell's. Southern food and it's family style. So they sit you at a big table with a bunch of strangers and you get unlimited food and it's just passed around and it was pretty fucking awesome. The food itself was great and the atmosphere was even nice. I'm not a social person, but I had a good time sharing food with random ass people. It was a pretty awesome experience. Yeah, then head back home! First thing when we got in town was pick up Horace from the vet. He was so so so talkative. He had to give me a piece of his mind! He forgave me pretty quickly and let me pet him and so forth, but the upset meows just kept coming and coming. It's good to hear him be spirited anyway. What else? Cleaned, unpacked, did some errands. Alright. Great trip. Pizza was ordered and I haven't even had any yet. I should fucking do that!