Hey Man.
I'm a little sore that my comment to your Germs post didn't make it through moderation. Sure it was rambling and not entirely relevant, but I thought the link to Dan Graham's documentary Rock My Religion was mostly on target since it examines, among other things, the same era (although it does so through a New York camera lens).
In any case, the link is entirely relevant here since Sonic Youth contributed to the film's soundtrack.
Speaking of Sonic Youth, I saw that a Ciccone Youth track was included on Brand Neu!, a compiliation of tributes and covers to the early 1970s German noise rock band Neu!
Funny story about me and Neu!
Last summer I helped my friend John Scane build 14 plywood recessed spotlight housings. The housings were simple five sided boxes with holes cut in one side for the illumination to escape and attachment points for the light fixtures and the rods from which they would be suspended from the ceiling. The boxes were to be installed at Pharmaka, the Downtown LA arts co-op Scane co-founded.
Here's the tricky part. Pharmaka had been chosen for one of those Cable TV renovation shows, something green on Planet Green, and the boxes needed to be finished and prepped for paint before the next day's shoot.
It was a long, long day in the shop. We loaded up the van at 1:00am or so, made the run from Scane's shop in Long Beach to the gallery in LA, made the delivery and turned for home. We were punchy as hell, halfway into our Red Bull boosters, enjoying the muscle ache and fatigue that comes only after you've pushed yourself further than you thought you could go and done more than you set out to do, when, from near the chatter of old tires on cracked freeway and inside the shush of wind on steel and glass, there came a steady driving drum beat, simple and insistent, and a steady driving guitar note, chikk-chikk, chikk-chikk, chikk-chikk, on and on, then another guitar came in from somewhere over the top, soaring near and far, as simple and insistent as the rhythm underneath.
I turned up the volume. The music went on and on and so did we, rolling down the night-vacant freeway under the soaring 105 Freeway overpass and on to the lights of the harbor.
We flew like that for ten minutes or so, the song lifting us off the road and out of our bodies and then the song faded back under the wheel sound and wind noise and another began and it wasn't the same and I said, "Goddamnit, man. Why don't the DJs ever tell you the name of the song when you need to know?"
The next morning I visited KCRW's website and browsed the playlist and eventually figured out we had heard Neu!'s "Hallo Gallo". From 1972 or so. How in the world had I missed it for so long?
The headboard I made recently.
Here's the top after a coat of varnish (Tried and True with a couple of tablespoons of old recipe Marine Spar Varnish (now banned in California)). That's Plyboo with a strip of cherry at the bottom. This part is 58 inches wide and 25 inches high. The base it rests on is 60 inches wide and 25 inches high (making the total 60x50).
Here's the base. Solid cherry, which is a waste, really, since most of it is hidden behind the mattress. Also finished with Tried and True and a bit of banned Spar varnish.
Here's a closer look at the joinery.
Here's the dog relaxing in front of the installed headboard, 10 seconds before she gets yelled at for sleeping on the bed.
Starting to look like a show dog..
Unspooled.
All wet.
Yesterday I took Doughty out back for her morning constitutional, as usual. It was dark and foggy and chilly. There was a tinge of smoke in the air and I assumed one of the neighbors had stoked the fireplace the evening before to celebrate the arrival of the Fall chill. Doughty did her thing, then she did her other thing, which is nosing around the yard's nooks and crannies, looking for trouble. She's becoming an expert at nosing out trouble.
After a minute she joined me on the deck and took up one of her chew toys. Then she stopped chewing. She dropped her toy and sat up and looked off to the south through the fence toward the alleyway that runs down the middle of the block. She tilted her head and listened. In a moment I heard it too, pops and spits, as water drops sometimes sound when they drip off the eaves. The dew and drizzle in the gutters I thought. Louder than usual because of the fog and the forty percent chance of rain.
But Doughty wasn't convinced. She continued to listen intently. The sound grew louder, became pops and cracks and sizzles. More like a campfire than the dew. I stepped down into the yard and peered over the fence.
Two houses down the alley, flames engulfed a trash can. I hustled back onto the deck and grabbed up Doughty and rushed inside and deposited her in LMA's sleepy arms {"There's a fire in the Alley! Call 911!") and raced out to the garage and grabbed the shovel and blitzed down to the fire.
The shovel wasn't much good, of course, and the fire had begun to lick and gnaw at an old wooden fence. I whacked at the flames and trash and spread as much as I could across the pavement. It hissed and burbled. Soon one of our neighbors appeared, dragging a garden hose from out of the shadows, and soon after that the fire was a black hissing pile of tin cans, melted plastic, charred fence.
Firemen appeared ten minutes later to confirm that the blaze was extinguished. Doughty had long since returned to her spot on the deck to confirm that her Nylabone was delicious.
Doughty's First Day Home
This is the pup we picked. She's coming home next weekend.
Sometime in the last two and half hours, somebody stopped by and left a ding, a scratch, and a tire smudge behind.
Didn't leave a note. Must have been an oversight.
