Low?

 

As 2006 bled into 2007, there was a messiness to my life, what was happening in it, that I found distressing. Between Temple being what it was and the poetry world being what it was, I found myself stretched beyond any ways or manner I'd been stretched before. Seemingly out of the blue (though I'd seen her earlier in '06 on Stoning the Devil), and as if on cue, Mary H. called me and asked me to pose for her. I did. The result was this portrait, more than half of which was painted on one day. To the tune, interesting to note, of something I brought to her studio off Broad Street in North Philly, not far from Temple, for us to hear: David Bowie's Low album, from 1976. Mary, though we were on the verge of reuniting, was low too: by painting me as a composite of myself and Abby Heller-Burnham, she let the cat out of the bag; she was none too pleased that I'd consummated something with Abs. We were similarly low that day. But she liked the Bowie. 

Sara Starr

Sara Starr is now out as a single on Soundclick. As of 11-18, we stand at #15 in Alternative, #4 in Indie. As I say on the page, another one churned from the bowels of Manhattan. This 2007 pic, taken by Mary H, is of me standing outside the Sidewalk Cafe on Avenue A in the East Village. I read there then. Back in '99, during the months I spent living at 10th and A, the Sidewalk, and the attendant anti-folkies, were one pivot point for what I was doing. Lach, the kingpin, wouldn't give me a gig playing music, but he did set me up to write for the Sidewalk fan-zine Anti-Matters. And my friend Briana Winter dragged me onstage during one of her shows, to let me do Riding the Waves, with her singing back-up. At one of the Monday night soirees, I also bothered to play a Bowie-d out version of Wild is the Wind.

Bowie: what Sara Starr is musically tried not to showboat, but can't not reveal the connection to Ziggy-era Bowie. Why, during the Darkyr Sooner months in '99, I was so Bowie-besotted, I don't know. Actually, living at 10th and A, I kept hearing that Iggy Pop lived right around the corner on B, but I never saw him. I did walk out of the apartment I was crashing in to find Spike Lee standing on my stoop. This is an outdoorsman kind of track— written partially in Tompkins, partly in Washington Square Park, where I was hanging with Todd Smolar and more NYU film dudes. Another dead zone track, too. Who Sara is is my little secret. As per the time signature warp woven into the tune— maybe you'll like it, maybe you won't.

Planning Sessions

Mike Land spent the mid-Aughts living in the Adelphia House at 13th and Chestnut. With me ensconced in Logan Square, we had two viable flats available to use for the bullshit sessions, used to plan what the next move for Philly Free School, and our Highwire Gallery shows, would be. Worth noting that Mike Land, as of 04-05, was still enrolled as an undergrad at University of the Arts in Center City. The U of Arts tribe are their own brat-pack around Center City, and Mike was keen to include as many of them in the shows as he could. Mike's own major was film. Anyway, to set the proper mood, we often used Steely Dan, so that a lot of Highwire antics in my brain are keyed to Becker-Fagen tunes as well. Do Steely Dan slot in as a more suave, less kamikaze version of Syd Barrett? Mike's flat looked directly down at the intersection of 13th and Chestnut. It was a much less mellow picture than me at 21st and Race. But the circuit we created, Logan Square-City Hall, worked with Steely Dan and other things we had going to transcendentalize what we were doing into something momentous for us, for the golden year it lasted. 

Love Me, Blame Me on hearthis.at

For the week ending 11-6-22, Love Me, Blame Me charted at #5 on the hearthis.at Rock chart. Cheers!

What could they do with Mary H?

Mary H had interesting musical peccadilloes, too. She had a fascination going, on many fronts, with the Depeche Mode album Violator, from 1990. Martin Gore's lyrics pushed her buttons the right way. For instance, Mary H had, as few would expect, a Jesus fixation. It was personal, and did not bother to affix her to any organized religion, but Jesus, as he appeared in Renaissance art and also in literary history, always gave her pause as a figure of great substance and imaginative heft. Personal Jesus was exactly who she wanted to think about, along with whatever else could be personal for her in Biblical myth. Likewise, Mary H had a habit of slipping and sliding about what she said to who, who she promised what to, what she could fulfill and not fulfill in practice, making Policy of Truth so uncannily about her that it used to make me laugh. Mary's self-contained system of checks and balances in her life made Clean appropriate too. And the generalized ambiance of Euro around Depeche Mode was a nice one for Mary H, as a way of re-extending her heritage in that direction. 

Spun at the Last Drop

On a day to day basis in the Aughts, we Free Schoolers had responsibilities to attend to, just like anyone else. When we had free time, one favored place to congregate was the Last Drop, a coffee shop at 13th and Pine, near but not in the gayborhood, close also to South Street. The Last Drop was a hipster's paradise, from the high, coffered, ambient ceiling (think Paris) to the Making Time DJs who both worked and held court there. The Last Drop was open late, too.

What was spun, at the Last Drop, was half the fun. In the early Aughts, the map of what the Last Drop played was widely expansive, from Le Tigre and Belle and Sebastian to Hall and Oates. The Last Drop phase which I found most intriguing happened later: in late 2007, for several months, all we heard was Black Sabbath (Sabbath Bloody Sabbath) and King Crimson (In the Court of King Crimson). This was engineered by one Annie Daley, who clearly had something to say then, and said it.