Categories
music

Music / Bob Dylan — Ten of Swords

Flickr photo


Last week­end, my friend Greg invit­ed me over to lis­ten to his copy of Ten of Swords, the clas­sic 20-side Dylan boot­leg. It con­tains a com­pre­hen­sive — no, exhaus­tive — selec­tion of live shows, alter­nate takes, and demoes from Dylan's most ground­break­ing years — 1961–1966. The high­light is the infa­mous Man­ches­ter show from 1966; it's filled with mur­mur­ing dis­ap­proval of Dylan's elec­tri­fi­ca­tion and reach­es a cli­max when an audi­ence mem­ber shouts "Judas!" right before the band kicks into "Like a Rolling Stone." (A side note: One of the most sat­is­fy­ing things about No Direc­tion Home, Mar­tin Scorsese's biopic of Dylan, is the rev­e­la­tion that Dylan, after hear­ing the taunts, shouts to his band: "Play it fxxk­ing loud!" as they launch into the song). Since the release of Ten of Swords, many, if not most, of the tracks (includ­ing the entire "Judas!" show) have been mined by Colum­bia and assem­bled into offi­cial releas­es (with bet­ter sound qual­i­ty, it should be said), but this didn't damp­en the thrill of hear­ing tracks like "I Was Young When I Left Home" on the orig­i­nal, illic­it vinyl. All I could think after­wards was: Thank good­ness there was no eBay dur­ing the height of my Bob Dylan craze. UPDATE: An infor­ma­tive Salon arti­cle about the 2004 release of the Rolling Thun­der bootleg.UPDATE: Damn you, eBay! As I was get­ting a sense of what Ten of Swords might cost nowa­days — curios­i­ty, noth­ing more, I swear — I noticed a Bea­t­les boot­leg set called The Com­plete BBC Ses­sions, a sort of Bea­t­les-ori­ent­ed Ten of Swords in response to the offi­cial ver­sion called Live at the BBC. The num­bers: 10CDs, 239 tracks and a vari­ety of chat­ter on the Com­plete Ses­sions to 2CDs, 60+ tracks, a lit­tle chat­ter on the offi­cial release. This NYT cri­tique of Live at the BBC issues some point­ed crit­i­cism at the Bea­t­les' label: "While Apple has fid­dled and lit­i­gat­ed, boot­leg­gers have catered plen­ti­ful­ly to col­lec­tors inter­est­ed in these things."

Categories
ecology new york

Food / Park Slope Food Coop

Flickr photo


Like most things in New York, the Park Slope Food Coop is exclu­sive, filled with beau­ti­ful peo­ple, and a source of high dra­ma in the lives of every­one involved with it. Most every­one I know in Brook­lyn is a mem­ber, and all of them are on some sort of weird coop pro­ba­tion because they're behind on their shifts. Skip­ping shifts is real­ly naughty, and the lengths to which some mem­bers will go to get out of them has become the stuff of folk­lore. On the oth­er hand, oth­ers seem almost patho­log­i­cal­ly con­sci­en­tious — in a recent issue of the newslet­ter was a sto­ry of a mem­ber who had writ­ten into the coop to explain his absence. You see, he was in prison for eco-ter­ror­ism. So he may not, you know, be able to cov­er that Tues­day after­noon pro­duce sort­ing shift.

Categories
tip

Google calendars & World Cup

I've been bug­ging out on Google cal­en­dars recent­ly, and I found a real­ly nifty one for this year's World Cup. Oth­ers: Bot­tom of the Hill shows (rock n roll!), Giants games (hey, bat­ter), Dolores Park movie nights (bring: jack­et, beer).

Categories
flickr urban visual

Alone in Houston

Flickr photo

I put some new pho­tos on my Flickr page recent­ly. This one is from a recent trip to Hous­ton. I took it while dri­ving around (I believe it's called) The Belt­way. The pho­to makes Hous­ton seem emp­ty, which, as I recall, is like the oppo­site of what it is. Espe­cial­ly the free­ways. I don't recall more than a few moments when I wasn't sit­ting in traf­fic. Which makes me won­der: Did I real­ly take this pic­ture? How did it get into my phone?

Categories
music the ancient past

Silver Jews / 27 goes into 50,000

In the Sil­ver Jews song "Trains Across the Sea," there's a line that goes: "In 27 years, I've drunk 50,000 beers, and they just wash against me like the sea into a pier." That's 5+ beers a day from birth until your 28th birth­day. If you start at 16, you're drink­ing a 12-pack a day to get there. (I didn't account for leap years, actu­al­ly, so you'd have 2–3 days to let your liv­er recov­er dur­ing those 11 years).Recently, I came across a diary I kept in 1994, the year I moved to Cal­i­for­nia. I was clear­ly obsessed with the Sil­ver Jews at the time, and I'd done a lit­tle math in the mar­gin to cal­cu­late how I matched up to them, beer-wise. (I was 22 at the time). Shock­ing­ly, I found that I had to cram rough­ly 40,000 beers into the next 4.5 years. That's a lit­tle over one case per day, every­day, i.e. a true 24x7 sort of endeav­or. Did I make it? Short answer: No. How­ev­er, I did pre­dict that I'd be get­ting there by the time I was 33, my cur­rent age. Am I there yet? In my esti­ma­tion, no. Prob­a­bly not, any­way. My revised cal­cu­la­tions put me at the land­mark some­where around my 43rd birth­day. I'm com­ing for you, Dave Berman! Watch your back!

Categories
bikes san francisco

Bike-to-work day 2006

Today is Bike-to-Work Day, which means that Mar­ket Street was slight­ly more alive this morn­ing. As every­day is bike-to-work day for me, I would real­ly rather see the "ener­giz­er sta­tions" (PDF map of the Bike Coalition's cov­er­age) out there dur­ing the win­ter, when the wind is howl­ing, the streets slick, and the cyclists few in num­ber, but still, it's nice to see a few more peo­ple out there dodg­ing pot­holes and Muni tracks, and the snacks were tasty. Thx, SFBC.

Categories
cinema visual

TV / Wes Anderson's Amex ad

"Why would I put on a hat if my best friend just got blown up in front of me?" An excel­lent ques­tion posed by Jason Schwartzman's char­ac­ter in Wes Anderson's excel­lent Amex ad. In just under two min­utes, the ad encap­su­lates the bril­liance of Anderson's vision: it's filled with snap­py dia­logue, exquis­ite pro­duc­tion design, and per­fect­ly pitched non sequitors. It begins with a car explo­sion. Ander­son shouts "Cut!", acknowl­edges that it's an ad ("Any­way, Amer­i­can Express ad"), and pos­es the ques­tion, "Mak­ing movies. How do you do it?" He then strides through a series of vignettes while attempt­ing to give direc­tions: "First, think up a good sto­ry," but he's then inter­rupt­ed by a PA who wants to intro­duce him to the daugh­ter of a man who loaned the a sports­car to the pro­duc­tion. "Two, how do you tell it?" he says and then directs a prop­mas­ter to put a bay­o­nette on a .357 mag­num. "Next, there's your col­lab­o­ra­tors," while a PA is telling him that the pro­duc­ers won't pay $15000 for a heli­copter rental. As he pre­pares for the next shot, he con­cludes: "You mix it all togeth­er and that's more or less it." Slate post­ed an admir­ing review yesterday.

Categories
baseball

Baseball / Bonds-ron

As Bar­ry Bonds approach­es Babe Ruth on the life­time home­run list, he's get­ting a heck­u­va lot of ambiva­lent cov­er­age: Vet­er­ans express ambiva­lence and skep­ti­cism (SI), even San Fran­cis­cans sour­ing on the event (AP via ESPN), but base­ball has seen worse, though not by much (ESPN). I fig­ured I'd do some first-hand inves­ti­ga­tion this after­noon, so I rode down to AT&T Park dur­ing lunch. When Bonds came up to bat, there was the req­ui­site "Bar-ry, Bar-ry," but even this seemed pret­ty half-heart­ed, like every­one felt that they kin­da had to chant along. Cyn­i­cal com­ments rip­pled through the crowd. It seems weird to say this, but maybe you don't have to like Bonds as a per­son to feel drawn to his achieve­ment. Or, how about this: Maybe there's a whole dif­fer­ent kind of enjoy­ment that one derives from watch­ing vil­lains break records? What­ev­er it was, it was def­i­nite­ly not 2001 all over again, when a Bonds at-bat sent pal­pa­ble elec­tic­i­ty through the crowd. In 2006, it's more akin to watch­ing Enron execs lie their ass­es off in court.

Categories
ecology new york urban

Liz Christy garden / cradle of urban gardening

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The roots of (mod­ern) urban gar­den­ing can be traced to the Liz Christy Gar­den on New York's Low­er East Side. (Some good 70's pho­tos of urban hip­pies get­ting their hands dirty). When I vis­it­ed, the cher­ry blos­soms were going off.

Categories
architecture visual

Architecture / 560 Mission

Flickr photo

I ride down Mis­sion Street every­day, and I always admire the JP Mor­gan Chase build­ing at 560 Mis­sion between First and Sec­ond Street. Most build­ings in down­town SF are earth-toned, and rid­ing among them can feel like flash­ing back to the Gap in the ear­ly 90's — put­ty, mauve, beige, taupe, moss. In con­trast, the Mor­gan build­ing has black steel-and-glass facade with a green­ish tint, pleas­ant­ly blend­ing erec­tor-set order­li­ness with an aquar­i­um-like glow. Today I found out it was designed by Cesar Pel­li, aka the guy/firm behind the Petronas Tow­ers. Each archi­tect in this review of recent archi­tec­ture in the SF Busi­ness Jour­nal describes 560 Mis­sion as their favorite recent SF project.