09 September 2009
WE WENT TO JAIL AND NOW WE'RE BACK
mr. dream - 9pm
the tony castles - 10pm
acrylics - 11pm
saturday september 12
union pool
484 union ave, brooklyn ny
l train to lorimer stop
$6
(many thanks to jona/yacht for the poster)
Labels: acrylics, mr. dream, tony castles
17 August 2009
MR. DREAM GOES TO JAIL - COMING SOON
22 July 2009
JULY 30: MR. DREAM VS. HOSPITALITY
THURSDAY JULY 30
BRUAR FALLS
245 GRAND ST
WILLIAMSBURG
MR. DREAM - 8PM
HOSPITALITY - 9PM
HORSE'S HA - 10PM
SUNDELLES - 11PM
MR. DREAM GOES TO JAIL
Labels: mr. dream
13 July 2009
MR. DREAM GOES TO JAIL
06 July 2009
PERINEUM ISSUE 3: GUEST EDITOR LIZZIE WIDDICOMBE
NOW ACCEPTING PREORDERS
Perineum #3 features new works by Philadelphia writers Artemis Lang and George LaRue. Guest-edited by The New Yorker's Lizzie Widdicombe, it arrives Sunday July 12. Preorders can be made by emailing Zach Baron and Nick Sylvester at perineum.nyc@gmail.com.
Labels: perineum
18 June 2009
MR DREAM CAKE SHOP JUNE 29
27 April 2009
GUEST RIFF MONDAYS: THE DEAD AT MSG
Every so often I check the inbox at riffmarket@gmail.com for guest riff submissions. I get a lot of Jim Jones fan fiction still, stuff that's basically unprintable by the third line in, when "Jimmy" inevitably "pops a 'joner'" and it's... the whole piece is just too graphic not to have been submitted by someone really close to the action. But this morning, after pages of PR emails, I found a long, detailed account of the Dead's show at Madison Square Garden, April 25, 2009, written by Duncan Bigsby and Derrick Trimble. I'm running it in full below. Enjoy. -NBS.
The Dead at MSG
By Duncan Bigsby and Derrick Trimble
Another grown man in a purple shirt ran up Eighth Avenue--communicating via cellular phone with a comrade inside already, did I miss anything did I miss anything, skip-sliding through a crowd of non-believers with his left hand keeping the contra banded, just like the first purple shirt man we saw--and that was when we realized there was something special about tonight. Madison Square Garden (April 25, 2009), we began to think, might have a spot next to Winterland Arena (December 23, 1970) and Frost Amphitheatre (October 10, 1982)...
Something about the duality of the night so far, something you notice in the good Dead show, Grateful or otherwise. Two drummers on stage of course, two Persian rugs, two atoms of oxygen in THC, two sides to the bagel we scarfed down by the entrance, two front seats in the Chevy Nova on 21st St, the one covered in Deadheads, which (as you know) have two colors: red and blue, irreducible, two colors that, even in 2009, refuse to run. Two flags in Madison Square Garden, the United States and Canada, which is also a country. Two seats, which we had paid for with two hundred dollar bills, two twenties, two fives--to an old black man with two hands and two feet. Madison Square Garden (April 25, 2009)... it really could be better than Sam Boyd Silver Bowl (June 24, 1994) couldn't it. One of us sold a lot of t-shirts at that show...
First few songs tonight were Jerry's. I (Derrick) hope he was listening up there. Somewhere between "China Cat Sunflower" and "Shakedown Street", somewhere in the Gordian knot of Lesh and Weir's dueling guitar solos, was a quote of John McLaughlin's solo in Miles's "Right Off." What a cad, whoever who played this one. Reminded me of a hyperbola, those two (two!) disjointed lines bending caddycorner: the first arpeggio reached towards infinity, then the second arpeggio, doomed never to touch the ground again...
You know how sometimes you just, like, know? "Shakedown Street" hadn't even began yet, but the man in the pirate skull-print cargo shorts already had screwed up his face into the shape necessary to speak our truth: WELL, WELL, WELL, YOU CAN NEVER TELL. "I knew it," he said, an index finger in his girlfriend's face, "I fucking knew it." He had called "Shakedown Street" in the car-ride over; don't tell me this town ain't got no heart... Every time I (Derrick) hear this song, and I hear it a lot because it's my ringtone and the factory warranty on my automobile has expired, second notice--every time, I think to myself: Well I forget what I think at the moment, but I just realized this is a disco tune and I'm not sure how I feel about that.
Now some people will tell you that "Sugaree" in the first set was the treat, but I point you to the noble grandeur of "He's Gone": On the hottest day of the year so far, this folk-rock classic went down like an ice cold beer. So what if he's had a beer before, this man wants another, and it tastes just as good as the first. Grown men stood up for this one like it was the National Anthem, crossing their arms in salute, tilting their heads just slightly to the right and smiling, as if to say, "My son, you have returned." Like a steam locomotive rolling down the track... The jam grew quieter, stretched into the distance like the backlight of a subway car. In real life, the light of that car becomes too faint to see at a certain point. But imagine if you could still see that light. Two billion light years away, in a different life, you could still feel it. Nothing's gonna bring you back...
We met Dave, a young insurance salesman. His face was too small for the broad smile it wore, and his baseball cap hid a mind well-expanded. He "fell off the wagon" five years ago--that's five years without the Dead, he explained--but now he's back. He said he surfs and sells insurance plans to colleges, racks up so many miles that he can pretty much go surfing wherever he wants. He wore a sports jersey with numbers printed on it. We had no reason to doubt him.
In the bathroom, the conversation among the men was one, each person building on the last person's thoughts--like a well-choreographed dance: "Pick a favorite..." a man in line said. "How can I pick a favorite? 'Cassidy' was the weakest and it was above average," said the man behind him. A different man emerged from the stall to wash his hands. "It's already better than last night," he said--and then the man to my left asked the shaman who put this jam-on-jam in motion when the set started. Did he miss anything before "Ship Of Fools", seems to be the question. They tell him, he nods--and then they all turn towards me, wanting to know what I think.
Space and drums start the second set. There's some pretty serious drumming on the giant hanging sheets behind the kits. I found it deeply elemental and moving. "Similar to the Blue Man Group," Derrick pointed out. Makes you think about that moment in '75 or '84 when someone said to himself, "What if I did a show with the same drumming, but three drummers. Everyone's in body paint. Everyone is free..."
Three words in Blue Man Group, three syllables...
The Dead--the band, its doings, setlists yes but also details like "where were they standing onstage"--are obsessively documented. Tonight I (Duncan) had planned to do my part, using a camera with a telephoto lens. "Is that a telephoto lens?" It was the man in the pirate skull cargo shorts. I sensed his disapproval; Dave, the insurance salesman, had mentioned something too, now that I think about it. So did the woman next to me, who made a habit of smacking my arm every time I took a photo, gesturing sharply at the stage with a disbelieving expression on her face. It's hard to imagine how they manage to document this band so obsessively, when documenting seems to be forbidden--to say nothing of the fact that there are probably better ways to get someone to relax and take it in than by smacking his arm and staring him down like Gollum.
My brother, meanwhile, followed the setlist as it evolved online, texting me how lucky I was to be there. I disagreed. He had seen the Dead play "Good Lovin'" in Worcester a week before, so for now he was the lucky one. I was in a bad spot when they finished "Unbroken Chain" and the applause died down and--wait a minute. I recognize that guitar lick. And the drums coming in behind it--that's, I mean that's what happens when the Stones play OH MY GOD CAN YOU BELIEVE WE'RE HERE FOR THEM PLAYING THIS. "Gimme" Fucking "Shelter"? Two words... This was suddenly more than a Dead show--it was a Dead show.
On the way out, where good feeling was palpable, one man high-fived a bearded member of the event staff, a sleeper agent for the cause in arena uniform. In the crush of bodies outside the front gates, another man's hand triumphantly held a sunflower aloft, foregrounded against a backdrop of the giant mural with all the hockey players. The crowd thinned and we saw a man playing what I (Duncan) now know is the djembe but at the time identified as a "hippie drum", playing what I now know was the beat from Missy Elliott's "Pass that Dutch" but at the time identified as "beat that makes people lose their shit to the dance." A girl with dreadlocks danced in a way that you knew she knew would make every guy there fall in love with her. We stood there and played our part, taking in contact satisfaction from the satisfaction our people emanated.
Then we turned the corner and saw the balloons. Not the festive ones that had been bouncing around all show... These were filled with gas spewing out from missile-like nitrous tanks, manned by sober overweight men grabbing wads of cash from people's hands and handing over balloons as quickly as the missile could fill them. These people lined the brick walls and loading docks of 31st Street, the length of an avenue, unclenching their thumbs and sucking down the gas in nervous, horrible gulps.
An old man--maybe he was an accountant, or somebody's father, definitely he was somebody's son--collapsed from his high. He slid down the wall like someone had shot him. Neither man on either side of him moved. Maybe they'd seen it a thousand times before. Maybe they themselves were too zonked to care. But these were the people who couldn't end the night by dancing it out. Who physically couldn't handle the withdrawal symptoms. They coped by keeping the party going, sucking on these balloons until there was simply no more left.
77 RIFFS
The Dead at MSG
By Duncan Bigsby and Derrick Trimble
Another grown man in a purple shirt ran up Eighth Avenue--communicating via cellular phone with a comrade inside already, did I miss anything did I miss anything, skip-sliding through a crowd of non-believers with his left hand keeping the contra banded, just like the first purple shirt man we saw--and that was when we realized there was something special about tonight. Madison Square Garden (April 25, 2009), we began to think, might have a spot next to Winterland Arena (December 23, 1970) and Frost Amphitheatre (October 10, 1982)...
Something about the duality of the night so far, something you notice in the good Dead show, Grateful or otherwise. Two drummers on stage of course, two Persian rugs, two atoms of oxygen in THC, two sides to the bagel we scarfed down by the entrance, two front seats in the Chevy Nova on 21st St, the one covered in Deadheads, which (as you know) have two colors: red and blue, irreducible, two colors that, even in 2009, refuse to run. Two flags in Madison Square Garden, the United States and Canada, which is also a country. Two seats, which we had paid for with two hundred dollar bills, two twenties, two fives--to an old black man with two hands and two feet. Madison Square Garden (April 25, 2009)... it really could be better than Sam Boyd Silver Bowl (June 24, 1994) couldn't it. One of us sold a lot of t-shirts at that show...
First few songs tonight were Jerry's. I (Derrick) hope he was listening up there. Somewhere between "China Cat Sunflower" and "Shakedown Street", somewhere in the Gordian knot of Lesh and Weir's dueling guitar solos, was a quote of John McLaughlin's solo in Miles's "Right Off." What a cad, whoever who played this one. Reminded me of a hyperbola, those two (two!) disjointed lines bending caddycorner: the first arpeggio reached towards infinity, then the second arpeggio, doomed never to touch the ground again...
You know how sometimes you just, like, know? "Shakedown Street" hadn't even began yet, but the man in the pirate skull-print cargo shorts already had screwed up his face into the shape necessary to speak our truth: WELL, WELL, WELL, YOU CAN NEVER TELL. "I knew it," he said, an index finger in his girlfriend's face, "I fucking knew it." He had called "Shakedown Street" in the car-ride over; don't tell me this town ain't got no heart... Every time I (Derrick) hear this song, and I hear it a lot because it's my ringtone and the factory warranty on my automobile has expired, second notice--every time, I think to myself: Well I forget what I think at the moment, but I just realized this is a disco tune and I'm not sure how I feel about that.
Now some people will tell you that "Sugaree" in the first set was the treat, but I point you to the noble grandeur of "He's Gone": On the hottest day of the year so far, this folk-rock classic went down like an ice cold beer. So what if he's had a beer before, this man wants another, and it tastes just as good as the first. Grown men stood up for this one like it was the National Anthem, crossing their arms in salute, tilting their heads just slightly to the right and smiling, as if to say, "My son, you have returned." Like a steam locomotive rolling down the track... The jam grew quieter, stretched into the distance like the backlight of a subway car. In real life, the light of that car becomes too faint to see at a certain point. But imagine if you could still see that light. Two billion light years away, in a different life, you could still feel it. Nothing's gonna bring you back...
We met Dave, a young insurance salesman. His face was too small for the broad smile it wore, and his baseball cap hid a mind well-expanded. He "fell off the wagon" five years ago--that's five years without the Dead, he explained--but now he's back. He said he surfs and sells insurance plans to colleges, racks up so many miles that he can pretty much go surfing wherever he wants. He wore a sports jersey with numbers printed on it. We had no reason to doubt him.
In the bathroom, the conversation among the men was one, each person building on the last person's thoughts--like a well-choreographed dance: "Pick a favorite..." a man in line said. "How can I pick a favorite? 'Cassidy' was the weakest and it was above average," said the man behind him. A different man emerged from the stall to wash his hands. "It's already better than last night," he said--and then the man to my left asked the shaman who put this jam-on-jam in motion when the set started. Did he miss anything before "Ship Of Fools", seems to be the question. They tell him, he nods--and then they all turn towards me, wanting to know what I think.
Space and drums start the second set. There's some pretty serious drumming on the giant hanging sheets behind the kits. I found it deeply elemental and moving. "Similar to the Blue Man Group," Derrick pointed out. Makes you think about that moment in '75 or '84 when someone said to himself, "What if I did a show with the same drumming, but three drummers. Everyone's in body paint. Everyone is free..."
Three words in Blue Man Group, three syllables...
The Dead--the band, its doings, setlists yes but also details like "where were they standing onstage"--are obsessively documented. Tonight I (Duncan) had planned to do my part, using a camera with a telephoto lens. "Is that a telephoto lens?" It was the man in the pirate skull cargo shorts. I sensed his disapproval; Dave, the insurance salesman, had mentioned something too, now that I think about it. So did the woman next to me, who made a habit of smacking my arm every time I took a photo, gesturing sharply at the stage with a disbelieving expression on her face. It's hard to imagine how they manage to document this band so obsessively, when documenting seems to be forbidden--to say nothing of the fact that there are probably better ways to get someone to relax and take it in than by smacking his arm and staring him down like Gollum.
My brother, meanwhile, followed the setlist as it evolved online, texting me how lucky I was to be there. I disagreed. He had seen the Dead play "Good Lovin'" in Worcester a week before, so for now he was the lucky one. I was in a bad spot when they finished "Unbroken Chain" and the applause died down and--wait a minute. I recognize that guitar lick. And the drums coming in behind it--that's, I mean that's what happens when the Stones play OH MY GOD CAN YOU BELIEVE WE'RE HERE FOR THEM PLAYING THIS. "Gimme" Fucking "Shelter"? Two words... This was suddenly more than a Dead show--it was a Dead show.
On the way out, where good feeling was palpable, one man high-fived a bearded member of the event staff, a sleeper agent for the cause in arena uniform. In the crush of bodies outside the front gates, another man's hand triumphantly held a sunflower aloft, foregrounded against a backdrop of the giant mural with all the hockey players. The crowd thinned and we saw a man playing what I (Duncan) now know is the djembe but at the time identified as a "hippie drum", playing what I now know was the beat from Missy Elliott's "Pass that Dutch" but at the time identified as "beat that makes people lose their shit to the dance." A girl with dreadlocks danced in a way that you knew she knew would make every guy there fall in love with her. We stood there and played our part, taking in contact satisfaction from the satisfaction our people emanated.
Then we turned the corner and saw the balloons. Not the festive ones that had been bouncing around all show... These were filled with gas spewing out from missile-like nitrous tanks, manned by sober overweight men grabbing wads of cash from people's hands and handing over balloons as quickly as the missile could fill them. These people lined the brick walls and loading docks of 31st Street, the length of an avenue, unclenching their thumbs and sucking down the gas in nervous, horrible gulps.
An old man--maybe he was an accountant, or somebody's father, definitely he was somebody's son--collapsed from his high. He slid down the wall like someone had shot him. Neither man on either side of him moved. Maybe they'd seen it a thousand times before. Maybe they themselves were too zonked to care. But these were the people who couldn't end the night by dancing it out. Who physically couldn't handle the withdrawal symptoms. They coped by keeping the party going, sucking on these balloons until there was simply no more left.
77 RIFFS
Labels: grateful dead, guest riffs
