Go Metric

Are You Receiving Me? #52 — Yo La Tengo's Fade

By Mike Faloon

Yo La Tengo
Fade
Matador

The Debut and Demise of the Yo La Tengo Five Minute Song Theory

The Minutemen version – the best Yo La Tengo songs are over five minutes long.

The Yes version – I’ve never tested this theory. It came to me when I opened Fade for the first time. As I looked at the times of the songs I wanted to fast forward to the gold, to the songs that were going to stick, the tunes I’d be going back to over and over again. I always like songs on Yo La Tengo records. I seldom listen to Yo La Tengo records from start to finish. My favorite songs are the long ones, the ones with a kaleidoscopic mix of guitar feedback and organ and hypnotic drum beats, vocals squished into the background somewhere. I’m thinking of “Sunsquashed” and the best tunes from Elect-O-Pura (1996) and I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One (1997). 

I was confident Fade would yield wonderful material. I also assumed there would be songs best skipped. Could I use the lengths of the songs to predict the former from the latter?

Are You Receiving Me? #51— Time to Go – The Southern Psychedelic Movement 1981 - 1986

By Mike Faloon

Various Artists
Time to Go – The Southern Psychedelic Movement 1981 - 1986
Flying Nun Records

A few years ago a pen pal came through town. We’d traded records and zines over the years. We hit the record stores, grabbed a bite. Good time. Along the way he talked about how he studies scenes. Some people get into a band, binge on the side projects and B-sides, he delved into whole scenes, very specific scenes—Cleveland in the mid-‘70s, New York loft jazz from the early ‘70s. Sounded more like anthropology to me, more like work, like the “where” and “when” eclipsed the “what.”

Over time I’ve found I have the same affliction. I started off wanting to hear Popllama bands like the Young Fresh Fellows, Fastbacks, Posies, and Squirrels. I found myself wanting to hear Red Dress and the Acoustinauts and the ever-elusive Boy From Hell box set. In short, everything listed in the label’s catalogs. Went through the same thing with Dirtnap Records. Lately it’s been Recess Records — they get everything right. 

Even if I don’t love the release in question I’m glad to have heard it. Relieved in some cases. A gap has been filled. An itch scratched. Better yet, a favorite new record often discovered.

The scene I go back to most often is New Zealand pop and rock from the ‘80s and ‘90s, especially the Flying Nun bands. Time to Go collects 20 tracks from the label’s early years. It’s a wonderful record. I say that now because I’m going to veer a bit and I want to put the conclusion up front: Time to Go is terrific.

Now: what I feel to be obligatory background info re: the record’s subtitle, The Southern Psychedelic Movement 1981 – 1986. There’s the potential for confusion, especially among those of us in North America. I know there was for me. Last part first. 

1981. The year Ronald Reagan was sworn into office. But not all was bleak on planet earth. On the other side of this big blue marble Roger Shepherd was doing his best to save us. He formed Flying Nun Records. In short order he put out the Chills, the Clean, the Verlaines, Sneaky Feelings, and dozens more. The Flying Nun back catalog is an overflowing treasure chest.

“Southern” equals southern New Zealand, Christchurch and Dunedin, to be more precise.

“Psychedelic” does not equal the conventional “long jams, Lewis Carroll, and flowers in gun barrels” use of the term. In the liner notes Bruce Russell makes a roundabout claim for these New Zealand bands borrowing from the American and English bands of ’65 - ’67. Conceptually, sure, just don’t expect to hear echoes of Jefferson Airplane, the Dead, or crossing the pond, Soft Machine or Pink Floyd. I do hear the other groups Russell mentions: Wire, the Fall, Joy Division. But it’s more shared influences that the unoriginal swiping of ideas, riffs, and/or attitudes. (That said, the flute part on the Look Blue Purple song could have floated out of Golden Gate Park in early ’67 and it’s none the worse for its seeming heritage.)

Many of Flying Nun’s best known bands appear on Time to Go. There are cuts from the Chills, the Clean, Sneaky Feelings, Tall Dwarfs, and the Great Unwashed (a Clean side project). Each of them is represented well. But the real joy here is the number of bands I’d never heard before. The Pin Group, the Gordons, Look Blue Go Purple, Shallows, the Double Happys, the list goes on. 15 of the 20 cuts rise above. That’s a .750 clip. Reach for the mouse. Clink the link below. Thank me later.

I just wish there was more information about the bands. The heft of the gatefold is considerable, and Bruce Russell’s liner notes paint part of the picture. But still relative newcomers, like myself, are being introduced to the most of these combos and we need to know more. It’s enough to dig a tune, I want the backstory.  I want to know the extent to which I’m hearing the tip of the iceberg. Is this their one tune or do other potential gems await on some album or EP? Can’t just leave a music geek hanging.

>

Are You Receiving Me? #50 — Young Fresh Fellows

By Mike Faloon

Young Fresh Fellows
Tiempo de Lugo LP + CD
Yep Rec Records

Another Ten Reasons to Dig the latest Young Fresh Fellows record, Tiempo de Lugo:

 1) Tiempo de Lugo opens with this lyric: “All crumpled up like a highway wreck on the cold black floor of a desert discotheque” (from “Another Ten Reasons"). Pretty grim, eh? The narrator knows that his better half has ten reasons to split for every reason to stay, and yet he presses onward, ever onward. Despite a seemingly self-effacing metaphor, the Young Fresh Fellows (YFF) are in far finer shape than that desert car crash. 

2) The YFF write with equal parts humor and heartache. A lot of people have a distorted perception of the band’s humor angle; they peg the Fellows as a novelty band. In part, it’s a reaction to the band’s name. Fair enough, to some extent, on a limited surface level. In part such a reaction reflects the either/or thinking of the digital age. Republican or Democrat? PC or Mac? Serious band or funny band? We can’t peg you, Fellows. Thus, we deem you novelty!

Regardless, so many of my favorite performers — from Buck Owens to Boris the Sprinkler — balance both. I came of age in the ‘80s. Though I didn’t feel so at the time, I was pretty lucky. There were tons of “both” bands — Camper Van Beethoven, the Replacements, Scruffy the Cat. There were so many I could afford to pass on the lesser members of the pack (Dead Milkmen).

3) Kurt Bloch on guitar!

4) I love puzzling over the narrative to “Cleflo and Zizmor.” I had a theory even before I heard this song. The title characters sound like a pair of WWI-era immigrant anarchists.  Slavs or Pols, probably not of Italian descent.  Regardless, they're falsely accused, rounded up in the Palmer Raids, their story lost to the sands of time.  Except for those letters Zizmor sent from prison to some Kansas City broadsheet whose archives were wiped out in a suspect fire during the Hoover years. Turns out the song is about a doctor who advertises on the subway.

5) There is a treasure trove of wonderful phrases in the album’s lyrics. Here’s one from “So Many Electric Guitars”: “Some are not very proto punk.” The Fellows, and Scott McCaughey in particular, have a wonderful knack for redistricting language. They incorporate such a rich variety of words and phrases, many of which are associated with genres beyond the boundaries of typical rock lyrics—music criticism, short stories—and draw them into tunes both straight forward and ambiguous. 

6) Tiempo de Lugo is on LP! This is the first time since 1992’s Low Beat Time that I’ve enjoyed a new YFF disc on vinyl. All the ridicule I endured during the ‘90s and ‘00s for buying records and now the dang things are back, kind of.

7) There are six Tad contributions. Tad Hutchinson, that is, drummer, lyricist, artist. Those six cuts represent 50% of the songs on Tiempo de Lugo. That’s an historical high. (Or “a” historical high. It seems that changes are afoot re: which article to use in such cases. In the past month both my dad and my wife’s uncle have pointed out this transition. In both cases they did so with a hearty contempt for contemporary writers. I argued that spelling and grammar and language evolve. I think this is a good thing, but in the interest of establishing common ground I cited such lame newcomers to the lexicon as “blog” and “ear buds.”)

8) Nothing beats the sound of longtime pals sweating through a stack of new ‘60s styled pop and garage rock. Every time I get a new YFF record I think, Enjoy it, man, it’s their last. Hopefully they’ve found a lasting home at Yep Roc. (Then again what to make of the “guitars sticking out of an open casket” image on the back sleeve?)

9) The cover art is excellent. Looks great on a green t-shirt, too. Not shilling, just saying.

10) And at the end, after cycling the dozen tunes and getting ready for another lap, I’m left with a head scratcher: Who’s Jerry Marsdale? His name adorns the head of the kick drum on the back of the record.  He’s listed in the thank you’s.  Who is he is.

I found this on a blog called Seattle Pi: “They (YFF) continued with their intermittent jokes, a lot of which I don’t think I fully understood because they had some history to them. Jerry Marsdale took a jab at the band’s age by busting out an oversized calculator he pretended was a cellphone that he was calling David Duchovny of the 90s hit show ‘The X-Files.’” 

Then I emailed Scott McCaughey and asked about Jerry Marsdale: “Jerry Marsdale is just Tad I guess, or a fictional Tad, or a Tad drumming alter ego.  Who knows the way that guy thinks!”

11) After I let the above list site for awhile I went back to the album. Still a corker. Only change I’d make would be to move “A Fake Hello” back in the sequence. Seems too slow for the third cut on the album, especially after opening with the killer combo of “Another Ten Reasons” and “Tad’s Pad.” 

But that’s a quibble, a pick of the nit, one of those moves critics lapse into to justify praise of a worthy work—I want people to accept my celebration of this record, better mix in a criticism or two.  There's street cred to consider! 

Then I got over that nonsense and realized that “So Many Electric Guitars” is one of the finest songs Scott McCaughey’s ever penned. It’s got lyrics about rock and roll, baseball, and mortality.  Granted only 2/3 of those topics are actually stated in the lyrics. Undaunted I returned to the song repeatedly. I thought I had it figured out. I realized I didn’t. Scott McCaughey was kind enough to field a couple of my questions. I’ll note up front that he didn’t make fun of my theories. Nobleman of Edenbrook Forest, indeed.

Now the interview…

Go Metric: Is there anything to this theory about “So Many Electric Guitars”: the verses are about what becomes of old guitars. The chorus is about what becomes of old baseball stadiums, like the Seattle Kingdome. Finally, implicitly, the song is about what becomes of old(er) musicians?

Scott McCaughey: You’re probably giving me too much credit — not sure I thought about it that hard. It started simply with the thought of how many guitars are out there in the world, because in general, electric guitars don’t go anywhere to die. They just become cooler over the years — even crummy guitars, or one’s that are only cool for ironic reasons. This can also indeed happen to ballparks and musicians, although obviously not always the case!

GM: There’s a line in the chorus about “The Beach Boys, Clash, and Wings.” I’ve looked for connections among them. I’ve found none, come up blank. What am I missing?

SM: These are all bands that played there, in the generally woeful sounding Kingdome acoustics. I saw the Beach Boys, after a Mariners game, and the Clash, opening for the Who. Didn’t see the Wings show, it was before my time in Seattle. But it was captured for eternity as the filmed show from that tour. Why they picked the Dome I don’t know. The chorus (to “So Many Electric Guitars”) about the Kingdome only relates to the rest of the song in my own mind — thinking about the loud guitars that were played there, often somewhat ineffectually. The connection between the verses and the chorus is tenuous at best, but in my impressionistic thought patterns it felt right for the song.

GM: The lyrics to “So Many Electric Guitars.” I’ve puzzled out most of them, but can you fill in the gaps? (Note: I had most of the words right. I’m not such as cad as to ask a dude to type out his song lyrics!)

So many electric guitars
More than all the derelict cars
And even the homeless few
String 'em up, it's waiting for you

Somewhere there's a teenage band
Somewhere in Grow A Moustache land
Getting a trash can Trashmen tone
From a new Korean Epiphone

Where did the Kingdome go?
Where did the Kingdome go?
When they blew it all to smithereens
For the Beach Boys, Clash, and Wings

Some guitars look like space junk
Some guitars are not very proto punk
Green dazzlers, Old Black in a hearse
White Falcons and Tobacco Sunburst

So many electric guitars
Where's the electric guitar junkyard
They don't die when they get old
No, they turn into solid gold

Chorus

Chorus

When the dust settled in the ground
did the echoes finally drown
The big boss gold top sound

So many electric guitars

 

 

Top 10 Records of 2012

by Mike Faloon

Black Wine,
Hollow Earth, LP
Read review

Figgs,
The Day Gravity Stopped, LP
Read review

Measure
My Heart and the Real World, LP
Read review

Mind Spiders
Meltdown, LP

Reports
Dinamo Cambridge, 12" EP
Read review

Toys That Kill
Fambly 42, LP
Read review

Treasure Fleet
Cocamotion, LP
Read Review

Various Artists
Busy Doing Nothing, LP & Calendar
Read review

Various Artists
Time to Go: The Southern Psychedelic Movement 1981-86, 2xLP

Young Fresh Fellows
Tiempo de Lujo, LP

There's a Rev. Norb Book! — Day 6

Are You Receiving Me? — The Annotated Boris (Day 6)

By Mike Faloon

Finished The Annotated Boris today. It gets surprisingly dark down the home stretch. The post-Boris the Sprinkler Suck days were marked by internal turmoil and external decline (in terms of recorded output). I was aware of the latter. I assumed the former but had no clue as to the extent of how unpleasant life within one of my favorite Clinton era bands became. (I can’t believe there was a period in which Paul #1, the band’s guitarist — Boris’s Keith Richards — wasn’t in the band. That was messed up. That remains messed up.)

The band's final days weren’t that decadent—not compared to the nonsense I’ve read about in band biographies and recall from the days of VH1’s Behind the Music — but the “creative differences” depicted are ripe with awfulness. I noticed, however, that as Boris's internal workings became less fun and less productive that the following things occurred in the book: a) the lyrics lost their “nation of the weird” luster, provided less bounce, more thud, b) those same lyrics sparked fewer footnotes, c) the narrative/memoir sections became longer and more compelling (except for the exhaustive play-by-play of the band’s attempt to record a Devil Dogs cover for a European compilation. Who would have thought that such a small ripple in the pond would induce such duress?).  By then it was clear that everyone had lost sight of the prime directive, if indeed a prime directive still existed.

Where does that place The Annotated Boris?  It's one of the most enjoyable music books of the past decade.  Much as I've dug music bios in the past I've had my fill of what came along before I was dipping my toes in the punk rock waters.  I'd rather read about what other people were doing in the '90s and beyond.  In that regard The Annotated Boris belongs right next to Todd Taylor’s Born to Rock (and just above Eric Davidson’s The Gunk Punk Undergut).

Next in line: a collection of Norb’s best zine columns followed by a round up of Boris the Sprinkler’s finest non-LP sides.  I'll wait patiently.

http://www.bulge.biz/

 

There's a Rev. Norb Book! — Day 5

Are You Receiving Me? — The Annotated Boris (Day 5)  

By Mike Faloon

I paid off the last of my grad school loans today.  I celebrated by running errands and cleaning the house.  Productive?  Sure.  Satisfying?  Indeed.  Time to read?  No.  When I had time for a break I watched a couple episodes of Batman: The Brave and the Bold with my kids.  My son calls it "Batman and His Friends Who Help."

I forsaw some version of this taking place and emailed Norb a question yesterday.  Prepare to get your comic book geek on!  (Although that phrase reminds of when my teachers used to say "get your thinking caps" on--why wasn't it assumed that such lids were always in place?)

Part 1 – The lyrics to Boris the Sprinkler's "113th Man"

"She Cola Cool like Fury's eyepatch" 

Part 2 – Footnote #563 from The Annotated Boris

“As we all now know, thanks to Samuel L. Jackson, the Marvel Comics character Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., wears an eyepatch, and is the coolest, most stubbly-ass mofo in the Marvel Universe ((i was actually awarded a No-Prize for pointing out a discrepancy involving Nick Fury's eyepatch being used in a story set in 1959, when had been previously established that Fury didn't wear the eyepatch until 1963, Marvel time. Ask me about it sometime if you've got about an hour to kill)).”

Part 3 – I take Norb on that offer

As I said above I expected today to be light on the “reading and responding” time.  I emailed Norb and asked for album version of the Nick Fury/No Prize story.

Part 4 – Norb’s response to my request

Norb: After New Avengers Vol. 2, #10 ((May 2011)), i dashed off an epistle of the following tenor to the magazine's editorial offices:

-------------

Ay yi yi yi yi...you've got Nick Fury wearing an eyepatch in 1959? That, i'm afraid, is wrong as wrong can be! According to the events of SGT. FURY & HIS HOWLING COMMANDOS #27 ((Feb. 1966)), a delayed result of Fury's refusal to undergo an eye operation during WWII led to his finally losing the vision in his right eye in 1963. This was, presumably, intended to explain why Fury wore no eyepatch in his first "present-day" appearance ((FANTASTIC FOUR #21, Dec. 1963)), but did wear an eyepatch starting with the onset of the "Agent of SHIELD" strip starting with STRANGE TALES #135 ((Aug. 1965)). In other words, in 1959, when this story takes place, Fury's eye won't fail for four more years. My solution to this deathless quandary is that, in the years leading up to 1963, Fury's eye -- as the doctor warned him might happen -- began failing intermittently, causing him to wear an eyepatch off and on from 1959 thru 1963, when his injured eye failed completely, and he began wearing the eyepatch full-time. I'll take my vintage 1959 no-prize with extra tailfins, s'il vous plait.

 -------------

...to which (Marvel Editor) Tom Brevoort replied...

-------------

Norb,

I'm well aware of that issue of SGT FURY, but I made the conscious decision at this point to not be handcuffed by a limitation to explain a single off-handed story published close to 50 years ago. Had Stan and Jack known that they would soon thereafter be doing Agent of SHIELD, they would have given Nick the eyepatch in FF#21. And to me, in 2011, it was more important that readers of today be able to easily recognize Nick in 1959 than it was to be faithful to that one slightly-absurd story.

That all having been said, you fulfilled the criteria, so if you want to send me along an address, I will send you a No-Prize.

Tom B

-------------

...and that's the short and long of it! Thanks for caring!

Regards,

Norb

http://www.bulge.biz/

There's a Rev. Norb Book! — Day 4

Are You Receiving Me? — The Annotated Boris (Day 4)  

By Mike Faloon

Ever since I had an allowance I’ve been a steady book buyer.  But from my teens through my early thirties I didn’t read much fiction.  That part of the bookstore gave me headaches--I didn't know what to look for and felt stupid as a result.  I kept trying different writers, kept trying to find a novel I enjoyed as much as To Kill a Mockingbird, which I'd read in high school, but I kept running aground.  Finding non-fiction titles, on the other hand, was easy.  First, sports books, then musician biographies.  I’d read about virtually any one.  Most of the time I wanted to read about the bands I was trying to figure out.  (Thank you Nicholas Schaffner for writing The British Invasion and Ira Robbins for those Trouser Press books!)  But prior knowledge has hardly a prerequisite.  (I had no interest in buying George Jones records but I couldn’t put down I Lived to Tell It All.)

Then about ten years ago I did a 180—I’d finally found writers I could rely on and dove into the fiction stacks.  It started with zine writers-turned-novelists such as Jim Munroe, Sean Carswell, and Todd Taylor.  Their books boosted my fiction-buying confidence and led me to Lewis Nordan, Kurt Vonnegut, and John Steinbeck, among others.  Good times indeed. 

It wasn’t until yesterday, reading The Annotated Boris, that I realized the extent to which I've done another half circle in recent months, most of which has been music books.  First there was Pete Seeger’s In His Own Words.  Then Ed Sanders's Fug You.  Then Steve Wishnia’s When the Drumming Stops (well, this is framed as fiction but draws heavily on his days with the False Prophets).  Each altered the way I think of the respective era but for the most part they didn't send me back to the music on which the tomes were based.  Pete Seeger inspires like few others but his tunes are best consumed in small doses.  Ed Sanders helped me chip away at a long held sense that the sixties generation can’t let go and move, but didn’t propel to seeking out his former band, the Fugs.  Wishnia’s book is highly recommended—it’s a warts and all look at the punk scene in ‘80s New York, written with a surprising amount of heart—but I’m not about to reopen the False Prophets case file.  (Wishnia’s participation in the short lived, criminally overlooked Iron Prostate is a whole other matter.  Loud, Fast, and Aging Rapidly!)

With all of these books, though, I'm reading about someone else's era, things that had come and gone while I was still in school or earlier.  The Annotated Boris is one of the few music books whose events overlap chronologically with my own--playing pop punk in the '90s, self-releasing 7" records, going to MRR columnist night at Coney Island High.  Is there the risk of excessive sentimentality or "you should have been there" nostalgia?  Sure thing.  To what extent that's a problem is someone else's call.  But I'd argue that time period, overlapping or otherwise, isn't the glue that binds with The Annotated Boris.  It's this: being an oddball in the U.S. is all right.  Children's literature is dense with "You're weird?  Party on!" tales, but not so much for adults.  It took me awhile to find a subculture that felt right.  I agreed with the hippies' politics but not their manner of dress or choice of intoxicants (not to mention the often relaxed approach to personal hygiene.)  I was on board for a lot of '80s punk sonically but didn't share the anger nor was I that strident about what others were imbibing (aka the straight edge movement).  It wasn't until the pop punk scene of the early '90s that it came into focus--a strong sense of building things yourself, a healthy skepticism for mainstream culture, along with great melodies and a sense of humor.

Boris the Sprinkler were the best of the bunch and The Annoated Boris is a smart, funny, kick in the trousers reminder that walking your own path is a far more interesting way to spend a life.

http://www.bulge.biz/

There's a Rev. Norb Book! - Day 3

Are You Receiving Me? — The Annotated Boris (Day 3)

By Mike Faloon

On Parenthesis – A Special Christmas Edition Go Metric Mini-Interview (aka Rev. Norb on Certain Aspects of Grammatical Choices in )

Go Metric: One of my favorite aspects of your writing is the high volume of parenthetical clauses.  When they build up to four or five in a sentence I’ll re-read said sentence verify that it checks out.  To what do you attribute this habit?  A particular writer?  Genre?

Rev. Norb: I cannot actually attribute this to anything other than eighth-grade algebra, and learning about the order of operations and parentheses and brackets and curly braces and the what-not, as well as my own practically pathological compulsion to say every single thing i know about a subject, when i am talking about said subject. It just sort of became the best way to corral my various tangents while sort of keeping the main narrative moving in one direction ((or so i try to imagine)).

GM: Recently I’ve noticed that you use double parenthesis for the initial parenthetical clause.  Where/why did this change occur?

RN: This parenthetical double-bagging started when i was working in the video game industry, and was sending out lots of typed communications to team members that involved discussing sections of script or code which included parenthetical expressions. The double parentheses was meant to signify that it was me talking in parentheses, as opposed to the single parentheses, which were part of the code. For example: "Please add 'Play3DSound (snd_Explosion1);' to the end of the particle effect function call ((unless it breaks something))." My boss said he liked the double parentheses so i started doing it all the time.

GM: I also noticed that the parenthetical clause on the book’s cover reverts to the single parenthesis?  As they say in Spanish, por que?

RN: I was being wishy-washy and thought it was too hard to read for a front cover blurb that way. If you look at how the type is organized for that subtitle, the first graf ((as i believe such a thing is called)) only consists of two words, "AND OTHER." Eight letters and a space. If you add one parenthese, so the first graf is "(AND OTHER", ten percent of the characters in the first line are parentheses, which seems okay. If you add a second parenthese, the graf becomes "((AND OTHER", and now 18.2% of the characters in the first graf are parentheses, which seems like too much. Basically, double parentheses just didn't look good with the type stacked up like that in that particular section, and my graphic designer instincts trumped my literary instincts. For which i apologize.

http://www.bulge.biz/

 

There's a Rev. Norb Book! — Day 2

Are You Receiving Me? — The Annotated Boris (Day 2)

By Mike Faloon

Day 2, part 1:

This from Norb:

Mike: You're a saint. I think the upper case "I" was just a typo -- autocorrect forced me to go back and change all the upper case I's to lower case i's one by one. However, my rule is that, if the "I" in question is part of me quoting someone else, then it's upper case, because it's them saying the "I," which is different than me saying the "i." I just do it because i like how the dot looks. Huzzah!

This from me:

The purpose of a book such as The Annotated Boris is to clarify the underlying meanings, remove doubt as to what was intended with the various lyrical offerings of Boris the Sprinkler.  I’d just like to point out that I...

a) managed to come away with a misunderstanding, however brief,

b) managed to pull off said feat on the back of the title page

c) managed to accomplish a and b on the basis of a typo!

Day 2, part 2:

We were at our neighbor’s yesterday.  Their daughter asked if she could “watch one TV.”  This struck me as a new way of asking to watch television, thinking of tube time in specific units.  She’s used to watching shows on DVD, one episode at a time.  It is in that spirit of digital age “quantitative thinking is go!” that I focus on the footnotes in The Annotated Boris.

There are 982 footnotes in The Annotated Boris.  When I first saw a draft of the book a few months ago I was hoping that the need could be found for 18 additional footnotes.  The prospect of a mini “1000” at the base of the page was pretty cool.  Kind of like watching my car’s odometer flick to 150,000 a couple months ago—certain numbers in certain contexts are, to my mind, cool.

And it’s on that basis alone—the accumulation of 982 footnotes that I could declare Rev. Norb the King of the Footnote.  Most people would argue that this title should be bestowed upon David Foster Wallace.  I’ve never finished a David Foster Wallace book.  I read bits of Consider the Lobster but couldn’t finish it.  I liked it fine but another, newer book came along and I’ve yet to return to The Lobster.  Wallace’s essays were fine and his use of the footnote impressive but at no point did he depose the previous King of the Footnote, Nicholson Baker.  A number of pages in Baker’s book The Mezzanine are more footnote that body text — check out p. 27, for example.  It could be taken as a parlor trick—That lengthy footnote looks cool!  Such lengthy footnotes are certainly not easy to replicate!  What’s the purpose again?—but I think it worked to pretty great effect. 

One gripe, however, and it’s a gripe I wasn’t aware of until diving into The Annotated Boris.  It’s this: Baker resets the footnote count on each page.  As a result of this seemingly innocuous decision the book’s first footnote, on page three, is labeled “1,” and the book’s second footnote, on page four — about watching a straw rise in a can of soda — is also labeled “1.”  Norb, on the other hand, yields to the quantitative fun — makes the wiser choice — and lets the footnote count accumulate.       

What’s the point of having the all footnotes if you don’t keep track of them for the reader?  Surely the sheer number of footnotes in The Mezzanine was intended as part of the book’s appeal, why not keep a running tally?  Someone must have kept track, either Baker or his editor, but they kept the results to themselves.  So it’s not just the total number of footnotes that moves Norb to the top of the AP and UPI “King of Footnotes” polls.  That is but one factor.  The other is simply keeping track.  And this is the next reason I highly recommend The Annotated Boris.

http://www.bulge.biz/

There’s a Rev. Norb Book! – Day 1

Are You Receiving Me? — The Annotated Boris (Day 1)

By Mike Faloon

The Annotated Boris arrived today.  Happy days.  Not jumping the shark, slamming the side of the jukebox, “Howard!” Happy Days, but rather celebratory days, and what could be more apropos?  It’s December 23.  The holiday season is in full gear.  No work for ten days.  Good times with the family.  Consuming an inordinate amount of salty snacks and malty beverages.  Plus, I’ve got gobs of good music lined up for the coming days (the new Treasure Fleet should arrive any day, just got the new Evens record).  The only thing missing from my holiday landscape is a good book.  I just finished Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother?  It was wonderful and left me longing for an equally great read.  I’ve picked up and put down three or four books in recent days.  None of them stuck.  A couple days ago I read the first chapter of Philip K. Dick’s The Simulacra.  Pretty good.  Most likely it’ll blossom into a compelling read, but it hasn’t crossed that line yet; I’m still thinking as I turn page to page.  But I’ve got The Annotated Boris in hand. 130,000+ words from Rev. Norb, complete with 982 footnotes.

The Annotated Boris is subtitled Deconstructing the Lyrical Majesty of Boris the Sprinkler (And Other Tales As the Need Arises).  As the title implies it’s a thorough break down of the 70 some odd song lyrics that Norb wrote while a member of Boris the Sprinkler, one of the best bands of the ‘90s.

I didn’t expect this book for several months.  Back in September I found myself the lucky recipient of an email from Norb in which he’d emailed me a PDF of the book.  I thought it was still in feedback stage.  Something to be released in the coming spring or summer.  I tried reading that PDF and stopped rather quickly.  My brain started to ache, overwhelmed by the avalanche of goodness.  In part it was the book itself—tons of dense, pop culture rich reading.  In part it was my aversion to reading anything longer than a paragraph on a computer.  (I’m forever missing bits of emails because I end up skimming them and overlooking the later parts, which are often the main purpose of the email.)  In part it’s my shock and dismay at receiving a Rev. Norb book.  For years I’ve talked with friends about the idea of Rev. Norb book.  I've hoped for a collection of Maximum Rock and Roll and/or Razorcake columns.  I remember Sean Carswell saying he’d mentioned such a book to Norb but it never came to fruition.  Or maybe it was Todd Taylor.  In either case I don’t think many of the columns—written from the mid ‘90s forward—survive in workable formats.

So today I have The Annotated Boris.  I got as far as the back of the title page before stopping to reach for my notebook.  I noticed that Norb used “I,” the upper case version of the pronoun.  Norb is a legendary proponent of lower case “i.”  I’ve never understood why he makes this choice.  I think I asked why once.  I don’t recall his answer.  Regardless, the deviation from the norm, the use of upper case “I” caught my attention.  Here’s the scenario that unfolded in my head: The use of “I” signified that Norb, the writer, the person, the civilian was stepping out of character.  (“i” = punk rock frontman, zine columnist; “I” = the real Norb, the actual Norb)  I glanced at the facing page.  I saw an abundance of “i”s.  Aha, I thought, the use of “I” was deliberate, a conscious choice.  It was not merely a formatting issue.  (Nor was it, I assumed, a norm imposed by an editor or publisher because The Annotated Boris appears under the “Bulge” banner.  In essence a self publication.)

In that fleeting moment I tried to conceive of aspects of Real Guy Norb.  Wherein lay the differences?  A change in voice, lower in register?  A change in deliver, less manic?  A change in attitude or outlook?  I got stuck on these variables.  I didn’t want—wouldn’t want—them to change.  I dig immensely what I’ve read from Norb lo these many years.  The confidence he projects, the precision of his thinking, the unapologetic genius level of recall—I see in these attributes an idealized “some day” version of myself.  And all the while, over the course of hundreds of columns, I’ve operated with the idea that Writer Norb is equivalent to Real Guy Norb.  I assumed I’ve been getting the peek behind the curtain version.  That’s been the point.  He digs into what’s really there and lays it out with a level of spontaneity and insight that's perfect.  (Lenny Bruce meets Jack Kerouac meets Lester Bangs meets Rev. Norb (yes, there are precedents and predecessors but there’s but one Norb). 

I’ve found my book for the holidays.

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