Favorite Records, 2010

1.  Camu Tao, King of Hearts – It’s a shame the first full-length solo by this Columbus legend is just coming two years after his death, but we’re all richer for having it.  This record is an open wound, an open bottle, and punk as fuck.  Full of surging, catchy beats using pop interpolations that always cut deeper than you think at first; the ramshackle lo-fi nature of the record makes it feel more personal but also makes it sound fresher, makes it jump out of the speakers at you.  Passion and urgency, time isn’t long on this...

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Favorite Art Exhibits, 2010

1.  Paul Thek, Diver, Whitney Museum, NYC – I knew of Paul Thek’s work but I didn’t really know it when I walked in to the museum on a beautiful late October day, but coming in from the street all orange and golden and into this, all blue and pink and meat sculptures, it was like being slapped,  The impermanence of every damn thing is driven home all through this retrospective, but so is the truth in transcending the limitations of society, of inhibition, of the body.  As moving a collection of work as I saw all year. 2.  Marina...

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Favorite Theatre and Dance, 2010

Theatre in Columbus is having something of a renaissance in the last few years, at least to my eyes.  I’ve always loved seeing a play but I remember some lean years where there was very little I wanted to catch.  I put theatre and dance on the same list this time because – and I know this is wrong – I tend to approach dance in some ways from a text perspective.  I respect what it uniquely does, but I still tend to lump it in my head with plays/monologues.  1.  Merrily We Roll Along by Stephen Sondheim and George Furth,...

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Favorite Shows of the Year, 2010

  First of a series of four posts of art that really drove me nuts this year, that let me sleep like a baby or disturbed my sleep for days or made me sit down and write something about it or made me write three drafts I just threw out because I couldn’t get it or made me write something completely unrelated.  That made me call somebody or send somebody an e-mail even if I just found myself saying, “Man, so it was, I mean, you know… shit.”  Everything in all of these posts is in Columbus unless otherwise stated. Saw around 80 concerts...

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At the End You Come Out Yourself; Stop Sign Language

“I too am minute as ashes with the fine grain of my feeling running crisscross into dark where I sight you enviously at the blurred roots and the ospreys play there, they have second sight like sponges, loving both canal and river, commuting as you on water, fearful of this group of buildings, even going underground. You like it because your eyes see further, even as a rock quarry is graceful with your initials as the sorrowful poem’s end.” -Barbara Guest, “Even Ovid” When news of the accident...

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Merrily We Roll Along, Available Light, 08/28/10

Available Light never shirked from chances, and their first musical – beating much more established companies in town – doesn’t pander or dodge tough questions in any way.  Sondheim’s much-maligned Merrily We Roll Along written with George Furth (book) based on the play by George Kaufman and Moss Hart, with its backwards-looking story structure starting at 1976 and ending in 1957, hadn’t been produced in central Ohio in 20 years, and then at Denison University.  This production is a wonder, if you’re still doubting seeing it, go. Go....

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Time Turning in on Itself and Turning on You, A Parallelogram, Steppenwolf, 08/09/10

Saw the premier run of Bruce Norris’s (Clybourne Park) new play in Chicago with Tom Irwin (a little ashamed I still remember him most from My So-Called Life), Marylouise Burke, Tim Bickel, and Kate Arrington, directed by Anna D. Shapiro.  This’ll be shorter than usual because I don’t want to give anything away, but t0 start with, Jesus, it’s good.  Go see it.  Believe the hype. It starts with an argument about a football game and perceptions, “If you saw this in a television show, a man like me, a white-collar white man, yelling...

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The ‘60s, Illuminated Through Different Means

“The music is like that , makes you see in the dark, cause the dark be you first.  Understand.  Can you see in your self?  See the mission and the magic.  The way and the cross.  The hope and the double cross.  The music is like that.” -Amiri Baraka, “David Murray, Addenda to a Concert” Started out this Saturday in Chicago – in a musical sense – after a Cubs game at the Empty Bottle for the Hoyle Brothers honky tonk happy hour: a packed room with $2.50 Shiner Bock on special and a dance instructor giving two step...

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Current 93, “Baalstorm! Sing Omega”

“Solitude and contentment are the product of the mystical; we are never alone and, by rights, never at peace. Such is a space that, called into being, or given, transforms everything from what we know it to be, mishandled by the world, to what it never was, blessed. -Charles Bernstein, “Amblyopia” When a new Current 93 record’s coming out it’s a cause for celebration in Sanfordtown, and Tibet and his shifting cast of comrades have been on a hot streak the last few years starting with Black Ships Eat the Sky, but this new...

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Back again.

Being in the Philippines for three weeks and working your ass off will throw off  your ability to blog.  Heard some records but no kind of a live music/social context.  So I’ve been making up for lost time.  Last weekend’s music was about how much of what you love is assimilated into your personal language, how much you hang around your neck intact, like a medallion, and the kind of swagger you need to pull that of...

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Exuberance, A Hollow Mask with a Beard Painted On, and the Difference

“You know Louisville is death You have to up and move Because the dead do not Improve” -Silver Jews, “Tennessee” The unifying trend of the music I saw that really affected me in NYC this past weekend was a grappling with tradition, and they either hit it dead on, they transcended, or they flared out in a ball of irony and slavish imitation.  The Nouvellas, still running hot on last year’s self-titled debut record, played the tiny tiki bar Otto’s Shrunken Head on a Wednesday night for the twice-monthly Copycat night, this one...

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Distance and the Gap; Four Photography Shows in NYC

You all know I love Columbus, but the wider range of interesting cultural stuff – especially visual art -  in New York isn’t even up for debate, right? I’ll try to hit the highlights of my four days in NYC but in a few posts, this one’s grouped by medium.  Today’s it’s photographs – Catherine Opie, Robert Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson and a variety of other artists after the jump. Catherine Opie was the biggest find I got from the Wexner Center’s recently closed Hard Targets, somehow she completely slipped under my radar until her photos...

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Scott Woods, Women of the World, Killadelphia, The Scion Rock Fest, and the Absurdity of Writing Poetry

“I’ve driven your highways and backroads, I rode the great dog Through the snow and the sleet and hail, Through the sunlight, through the fog. I’ve heard the ravens call morning up With their little raw saxophones But the darkest of ravens was Nina Simone. Yeah, we’ve all been to hell and come back Where love cut us right down to the bone But walking beside us was Nina Simone.” -Tom Russell, “Nina Simone” I try to see as much as I can, as time and money (and the corollary effect of needing to keep my job)...

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