Ruminations, Haunts, and Errors

Went over to see/hear Cowboy Mouth at Taste of Randolph, again on short notice as they seem to pop up in town once or twice a year. Entertaining, as always. In many ways they’re just another straightforward rock band–not that there’s anything wrong with that especially when all the band members are talented and they play tightly together.

But their live shows are something else…I have yet to see another lead man–who’s the drummer to boot!–work a crowd quite like Fred LeBlanc does.

Christmas in Bartonia means lots of driving of late, from Milwaukeeland to the southern end of the collar counties. As my passenger has a tendency to succumb to highway hypnosis, all that time in the car lends itself to various ponderings…

• Good driving requires multiple things from people: Rules of the Road, Operating a Vehicle, Situational Awareness, Predictive Analysis, and Temperment. That our training and licensing systems only really deal with the first two aspects probably explains in large measure why so many people do stupid or annoying things on our roadways. (Okay, there’s some implicit training in Situational Awareness, but Not Hitting the Object Right in Front of You and Checking Your Blind Spot are hardly comprehensive.) While the other three aspects are more difficult to teach or measure, arguably they are more important–especially on city expressways.
• WXRT fades out around Racine, so we ended up listening to an all-Christmas music station for a while. Fortunately they played a wide mix of songs covering all styles and eras. The juxtaposition of classic crooners (Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, etc.) and more contemporary acts (Luther Vandross, Mariah Carey, etc.) allowed me to identify exactly what drives me nuts about American Idol-style singers: they put vocal embellishments on essentially every note and phrase rather than simply using them for effect. Tony Bennett and Billie Holliday knew that extended notes sometimes need a vibrato to make them interesting, and bent notes or variant rhythms add a nice jazzy style to a song; in contrast, the modern divas can’t seem to sing any part of a song straight, so it sounds to me that they’re either just showing off or else don’t appreciate the more subtle aspects of musical phrasing.

Things you don’t expect to see at a rock concert:

• Ushers in jackets, vests, and bow ties showing patrons to their seats
• Upholstered seats
• Gilded columns and arches

The opening act was some band called Deerhoof, who sounded like Belly trying to channel some 1970s art rock with a dash of Bjork…but with only limited success. I appreciate what they were trying to do, and certainly understand why they were paired with Wilco, but they’ll need a lot more work to properly hone the ability to throw dissonance and sudden style/theme/phrasing changes into their songs.

As for the main attraction, they sounded quite good. The sound engineers did a very good job with the balance, not getting it too loud or tinny; although on a few of the more cacaphonous endings it got a little muddy, that probably was due to where we were in the back reaches of the main balcony–can’t make it sound perfect everywhere. The band did an excellent job of arranging their main set, playing most of the slower, more mellow songs at the beginning and transitioning to a higher proportion of more intense songs as the show went along. Jeff Tweedy kept his banter to a minimum, with most of the non-musical content coming from various film loops (of flowers, buildings, bugs, fish, etc.) on a large screen.

Overall, the show fit my expectations of good art rock. Wilco’s music is a mixture of mellow and intense, with the mellow not falling into sappy ballads and the intense not rising to the music-to-piss-off-your-parents level. Some songs are straightforward and catchy, but more experimental arrangements and phrasings are thrown in here and there. Playing live allowed them to jam a little bit on some of the codas of their more upbeat tunes, but they didn’t go overboard.

• Trey Parker is certainly no stranger to crossing the line with raunchy stuff, but the MPAA’s attempt to rate his new movie, Team America, with an NC-17 rating due to a sex scene between two puppets seems absurd. C’mon, decapitating puppets and throwing them off buildings is okay, but having them flop around each other is too much for the impressionable youth of our country? The farce surrounding puppet sexual activity aside, I can’t figure out why people find violence in movies acceptable but sexual situations are anathema. What kind of message is this supposed to be sending, anyway?
• On a more upbeat note, there’s an interesting (if somewhat longish) article that analyzes the economics of hits vs. obscure items in the music, movie, and book industries. The conclusion is interesting: by showing that there’s a huge market for the non-hits, outfits like Amazon, Google, eBay, and NetFlix may be at the vanguard of a change in the entertainment industries that allows broader availability of, well, everything–not just the proven hits and in-vogue acts. I hope this analysis proves true, for not only would it result in downward pressure on prices, more importantly it would allow greater exposure for artists and writers who want to make stuff that is good–well, at least genuine–rather than just what can appeal to popular tastes. An interesting read, definitely.

We went up to Ravinia last night to see–well, hear–the BoDeans. The sound was good, they played a nice quasi-acoustic set, and the rain held off to allow a nice evening picnic. I always thought Highland Park was a nice suburb–pretty houses and tree-lined streets, an actual downtown area–however a couple of things that I experienced as we were trolling for parking eroded some of the town’s luster in my estimation.

First off, the whole parking situation was terrible. The signage from the Edens over to the downtown area was fine, but once there it was very frustrating. Now, I recognize that they need to arrange things primarily for the benefit of their own (tax-paying) residents, but as long as they use Ravinia as a drawing card they have the responsibility to make accomodations for visitors. The problem is that it’s not obvious from the parking signs, which indicate a myriad of zones with various restrictions, where exactly Ravinia parking is allowed–or prohibited. Would it be so hard to add some signage that says ‘Ravinia parking allowed’ or ‘Ravinia parking prohibited’? Oh, and how about a few ‘Lot open’ or ‘Lot full’ signs…these could even be hand-made. Yes, there are police and some staff standing around to answer questions, but when people have to stop, roll down the window, and talk for 30-60 seconds, it just snarls traffic that much more.

Second, I noticed ‘good citizenship’ admonitions on the folded-up stop signs in the downtown area. In and of itself that raised my hackles a little bit as being somewhat Orwellian (although my irritation over the parking situation probably had something to do with it too). Fortunately, most of them seemed somewhat banal, things of the ‘look both ways before crossing’ variety. However, one simply said ‘Respect authority’. Ugh! That implies one should respect an authority figure because he/she is an authority figure, which is just plain wrong. Achieving authority on merit and exercising it with restraint and diligence deserves respect; gaining authority questionably and/or exercising it incompently deserves scorn; gaining authority improperly and/or exercising it capriciously deserves outright defiance.