JUST A LUCKY SO AND SO.

I think he and Louis Armstrong might be friends someday.

MAPS, AND OTHER CONFUSIONS.

Childhood is a branch of cartography.

- Michael Chabon

(yes, which may have something to do with how frequently I get lost, but discover a lot of cool places along the way)

PORTLAND INK.

Playlist: Bounce 2010

I have been to many music venues. Big and small. Indoor, outdoor, intimate, epic, short, long. I have a special place in my heart for the Doug Fir Lounge (Joseph Arthur three times, including a memorable date in late 2006 when Becca was pregnant with Magdelana). 




I also have fond memories of the Gorge at George, including Tool frontman Maynard James-Keenan strutting onto stage at dusk in a full-length dress and brunette wig. Also, there I saw Snoop Dogg and Jack Johnson.

But it is tough to beat the Oregon Zoo for best family-friendly venue. Their Summer Concert series is a treat for everyone - green grass, food, families, picnics, billions of hollering children, the skunky aromas of a thousand creatures' poop melding with nachos, sweaty hippie dancers...the music almost becomes extraneous.

The Zoo's first 2011 Wednesday evening concert is July 13. I am not familiar with Plena Libre's Puerto Rican Afro-Caribbean sound, but I hear they are terrific. Swing by Trader Joe's beforehand, grab some snacks and blanket, and show up ready to dance like a hippie banshee with a lawnful of kids, families, and good cheer. 

With that in mind: Eleven Songs in summer 2010 that got our little family dancing.

1. July 2010. It became evident in the opening ten seconds of Caravan Palace's zoo show that their performance was not going to be extraneous to anything, including the elephant with the elephantine dangling appendage watching from his home in back. Jolie Coquine is electrofied gypsy-jazz at its danciest. Raw joy with the scat vocals of delicious frontwoman Sonia Fernandez sounding Nancy Sinatra-sexy and Billie Holiday-soulful. We danced, and everyone danced, and the animals that could dance, did.

2. Did Vampire Weekend's Holiday get played way too much in 2010? So I hear. Guess what? I rarely (voluntarily) listen to the radio*, so I have no idea what sort of masochistic captive audience lets themself be subjected to it on overload. I like to listen on my own terms, which is why I don't listen to radio. Which can be silly, in a hermit-crab kinda way - in 2003, I accidentally tuned in to a California hits station and discovered a song that was catchy. Hmm, this is fun, I unfortunately said aloud, and then discovered that the rest of the world had already been listening to Hoobastank's The Reason all summer long, sixteen times a day on every Top 40 station in the country. Oh well. I also discovered The Simpsons in Season Ten. So, Holiday: bouncy, cheerful guitars that sound like they're on vacation. Like what Jimmy Buffett might sound like if he rolled out of his cabana, borrowed a Strokes guitarist, and drank coffee instead of margaritas.

3. Story Told. M.I.A. (Mathangi "Maya" Arulpragasam) bangs her Roland 505 sequencer with the effervescent energy of Jack White on his six-string. Deadpan recitations about information displacement and media reporting in the digital age slog their way across occasional strands of actual singing and roll in and out of background chants and Middle Eastern bleeps, sirens and electronic growls. Chills as she keeps circling back to the reverberating chorus: 

All I ever wanted was my story to be told

All I ever wanted was my story to be told

I want M.I.A. and Saul Williams to duet.

4. Crown on the Ground. Sleigh Bells may be a one-trick pony, but they are a pony with the growl of a wart hog.* Fuzzed up group shout-outs about not liking popular kids, or something like that. I would guess they are fans of Winona Ryder's third-best film ever, Heathers. Band members obviously did not have a good high school experience. Whenever I play it loud, I think a speaker cone is broken. Terrible production, crazily catchy; ironic wink coupled with huge hippopotamus smile. The lyrics are ridiculous and buried under miles of blown-amp guitar shots. The beats are big and the adrenaline is redline. You will dance. You will.

*do wart hogs growl? I like to think so.

5. Scott Pilgrim 16-bit by Camilo Diaz Pino. Blurbly, old Nintendo game-channeling instrumental that Magdelana emphatically loves every time I play it. Does it withstand the power of a thousand listens? I doubt it. But that's what's great about making conscious choices with playlist choices: it will always be a delightful soundtrack addition to a year in our life. And its incessant, repetitive bleeping is shadowed by Magdelana's simple declaration I like this. I really, really like this song.

Also, we double-heart Michael Cera, although Becca still refers to him as George Michael.

6. All rock & roll since 1964 can be traced back to the Fab Four. Some bands wear that debt in subtle fashion (Radiohead, Badly Drawn Boy); others in blatant adulation (Elliott Smith, Oasis). The phrase Beatlesque Pop is like saying "Stalinesque Authoritarianism." Overkill and overstatement. At some point, all pop music sounds a little like the Beatles. It's always interesting to try and pinpoint a band's other reference points. I have rarely heard such barefaced tribute to an idol as OK Go's End Love, a song that ostensibly has nothing to do with Prince, but sounds exactly like him, like an outtake from Sign O' The Times.

Okay, not exactly. But it is very Prince-like. I suppose any song that is sexy and danceable goes back to him at some point too.

7. Los Cuatro Muleros*. Josephine Foster and the Victor Herrero Band romp through three minutes of furious handclaps, castanets, and guitars like operatic Spanish bullfighters. I have no idea what she is singing in her soprano tremolo, but it is spirited, melancholy, and toetappingly irresistible. I really need to learn Spanish. Tal vez mañana.

*Four Mules

8. Khaira Arby's Khaira. Malian vocalist with a voice that gently melds a butterfly and a water buffalo. 

9. Delicate Steve's Butterfly. A sweet, simple, complex instrumental that feels simultaneously electro and organic. Deceptively layered. Like an onion, or Eminem.

10. Radiowave. Germany Germany. I have a special place in my heart for substanceless techno and Eurodance. My dancing has occasionally* been described with words such as spastic, dangerous, and arrhythmic. Thank you to you who have used these words to compliment me. I accept your compliments. Generally, when these compliments are paid to me, it is directly inspired by the beautiful emptiness of a track such as this playing at Geiger-counter levels. My moves are impressive to Becca. Ask her.


*frequently

11. Caravan Palace's La Caravane: more gypsy swing that has got our family this close from selling our possessions on eBay and moving to the streets of Paris to hang out with street musicians and bebop our way from one croissant shop the next and just feel that rhythm. Sexy guitars. Sexy voices. Sexy beats. Sexy everything. Umbrella-ed with Joy. 

Honorable mention: the first five seconds of Lady Gaga's Bad Romance. I don't even care about the rest of the song. I'm not even sure I've heard the entire song. But her "Ra ra, ah ah ah roma, roma-ma gaga, oh la-la" opening is UNBELIEVABLE. I could hum it all day. Unfortunately, I have done so, and have got Becca and Magdelana growling it out too.

Ra ra, ah ah ah roma. That is songwriting. 

Dance. It inspires smiling. Do re mi fa, so long.

the Day

Mowing and Conventional Wisdom

Becca and I are such a good pair. We had a great run with the two of us. Just the two of us, for almost five years. Her, I like. Still.

I've always loathed "ball-and-chain" analogies when it comes to relationships. The whole idea of "you better do _____ now, while you're still young, before you get tied down, before you have the whole wife and family and job tying you down..."

Anyone who knows me knows my aversion to accepting "accepted protocols" and absorbing conventional wisdom about how to do this or that. So why would I approach marriage, or childrening, or my career any different?

My bride. My children. My family, they are a part of almost everything that is part of my life. When I got married, I didn't have some massive lifestyle shift. I continued doing the same things I did, but I added a constant partner into those activities, as well as adding some additional ones. Activities, not partners.

And then Magdelana, and now Johannes. My priorities may be reframed from a decade ago, but my interests, my lifestyle, and the type of person I am is still the same. They are a part of my world now. I make art, and Magdelana throws paint around with me. Editing or designing, Johannes hangs out in my lap. Night rolls around, Becca and I snuggle up for an episode of Big Love, Psych, or Globetrekker. Okay, when she falls asleep I may occasionally switch over to True Blood or Sons of Anarchy.

Also, Magdelana has been helping me mow. Sitting on my lap, with huge ear protectors and safety goggles, steering one-handed and helping me mow most of our 1.5 mowable acres. Maybe she will remember someday, and maybe she will not. I certainly will.

Point: I grow weary of so many people complaining about their kids, their spouses, their families, as if they were forced upon them. There is no idyllic existence 24/7 in any family, but when you make a choice, a pre-existing choice ahead of time to have fun with your family, to involve yourself in each other's lives and activities, then you prime yourself for successful, healthy relationships.

Successful, healthy relationships not only within your own family, but with the rest of the world.

I don't know who I am musing to...just chilling to Beach House while Becca and Johannes snore on the couch, and I wait for Magdelana to pop out of bed and come join us in the next hour.

Their Teen Dream from this year is a beautiful, hazysexy album of dreampop delights. Great for late summer evenings. And nights.

Also, we hit the zoo concert last Wednesday. Rocked hard to the gypsy electro-swing stylings of Parisian coolsters Caravan Parade. So good. One of the best outdoor shows we have ever seen. Danced the night away.

We bought a family pass to the Oregon Zoo this year. $130. One of the best investments we have made - it also gets us free admission to the Summer Concert Series every Wednesday evening. Families, food, music, dancing, great atmosphere. Blast.

Bobcats

Bunny Stroller

ZOO AND THE HOLDING OUT AND HOLDING OF HEROES.

M's first zoo trip last weekend. She had a grand time, other than slumbering through five-eighths of it. Coincidentally, we shared the same favourite animals: hippos, turtles, orangutans, baboons, tusk boars, fruit bats, and her mom, the latter whom she was fond of shrieking for in a voice that is reminiscent of a hoarse walrus dueting with Bonnie Tyler*. Odd though it may sound, it is music. I love her voice. Shrieking, crying, laughing, burping, and especially hiccuping.

She is so incredibly, hilariously fun.

*Fact: Bonnie Tyler is the singer behind the greatest sing-a-long song ever, Holding Out for a Hero (coincidentally, also the Greatest Song Ever). Every time I hear it regardless of where I am, I lurch for the nearest hairbrush, throw back the hair, and lip-synch like there's no tomorrow, except there is one because we're waiting for a hero.

*Note: there will be more zoo pictures. A priceless shot of mating turtles will be appearing soon. It's obvious once you see it that humans are not the only species who take pleasure in coupling rituals. The look on old Phillip's face...priceless (Phillip is the amorous shellback mounted atop his playmate).



Bonnie Tyler

Holding Out for a Hero

Footloose soundtrack

1984