What It Is

I remember the guy who gave me my first Birthday Party tape in 1988, a guy who liked me and hung around the disreputable biker bar where I worked, hoping I would sleep with him, which I didn’t. He made a bunch of great tapes that were later stolen from me; the Birthday Party tapes were among them. I remember his face, his taste in music (Violent Femmes, Soft Boys, Stooges) and his curly hair. I don’t remember his name. He wasn’t quite grandiose or dangerous enough for me at the time.

My loved one & I went to see Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds a couple of weekends ago, because we love his new direction in both the Bad Seeds and Grinderman. I think his collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Warren Ellis is genius. While it was great to see them do classics like Mercy Seat, Red Right Hand and Stagger Lee, I really like the new sh*t even better. Nick Cave, to my taste, is triumphing in his 50s, just like Lucinda Williams and Alejandro Escovedo, making hardcore literate rock music that’s perfect for my sensibility. Dig Lazarus Dig is an album that makes my stomach ache with joy.

That said, I was massively disappointed by the crappiness of the Theater at Madison Square Garden, and I swear I’ll never see another show there. Although the performance was exciting and the light show was well done, I’m super-jealous of DC fans who got 2 shows at the 9:30 Club. Also, the audience was so dressed-down that the LO proclaimed them “post-rock”. Not a compliment. I played a game of spotting the rock crowd (people who looked like those you would have seen at a show in 1994), like scoping out VW Bugs on the highway on a long road trip with my parents. No lie, people used to dress up to go out. Sharpen up, people, life’s too short.

And, last criticism, bad swag. The Tshirts were just flat-out ugly. And the album cover and videos are so stylish. Nick, honey, what happened?

I will have to make a shirt and send it to you somehow.

You probably weren’t paying real close attention to the music that was performed at the DNC on Tuesday, but the tremendous, just-on-the-verge-of-blowing-up-huge Alejandro Escovedo played “People (We Only Gonna Live So Long)” from his new album Real Animal, a great documentary story-telling epic about the old days of the late 70s in New York. Alejandro is so cool he has roots in Texas, New York and San Francisco, and he’s been on stage with Bruce Springsteen recently. That’s pretty big stuff for an artist who was well-known and respected in Texas, but barely known at all anywhere else. And now he’s played at the DNC!

Another thing that makes his newest album particularly delicious for me is that it was produced by the legendary Tony Visconti, producer of T. Rex and David Bowie, among many, many others…including, ahem, me. I had the ridiculous good fortune to work with Tony a time or two during my low-level rock star period (though sadly, none of those recordings was ever released), and it was a whole education just to have dinner with him. He had these beautiful photos of him and Bowie hanging out back in the day that he had decided to hang in his bathroom. So cool. And that he was married to May Pang at the time made it even more fabulous.

Anyway, check out Alejandro’s website: http://www.alejandroescovedo.com.

PS His previous albums A Man Under the Influence and Bourbonitis Blues should be required listening for everyone. Yeah, everyone.