Every Tuesday I go up to the USC radio station because I have a friend that dj's there. When I got there, he told me that Lou Barlow was making an in-studio appearance. Lou Barlow! At first I didn't believe him. But, at 4:30, like he said, there stood Lou with an acoustic guitar. He played a few songs and answered a question of mine. I had always wanted to know where Sebadoh (one of his many bands) got their name. He told me that it was just something he made up in high school. Before he started playing, he put a piece of paper between his feet. After he left, I went to see what it was. It had what appeared to be gibberish on it. The side facing up said: streets make untie the bells get in another we're gonna had enuff call me lame ____________ lookin the way the neon gotta way homeo tongue , enuff the other side was written in pencil, and the sharpie from the other side kinda bled through, so not all of it is legible, but, after minutes of analysis, I deciphered it. imaginary lawyers serve your memory winter burned my cold [this line is crossed out.] crystal burned me cold facial tics and brickk to build a wall between you + everything we can't control we re-enact the legendary tragedies i could wear the mask if you ask nice I may be a voyeur you're not royalty that is some weird stuff.

who?

Lou Barlow. Lou Barlow of Dinosaur Jr., Sebadoh, Sentridoh, Folk Implosion and Deluxx Folk Implosion. One of the kings of indie rock. Let's see. Back in, oh, say, 1996 or 1995, Folk Implosion had a moderate radio hit off of the KIDS soundtrack, "Natural One." It wasn't really representative of their sound, but the corporate rock kids ate it up and then promptly forgot about them. But Lou and his numerous side projects continue to release records. The funny-sad thing about all that was that the guy who was supposed to follow my friend after his shift ended was out of town. So my friend had to pull in another three hours. But: the guy who never showed up is a humongous fan of all of Barlow's work. Like Mondo Big Fan. He didn't know that Lou Barlow was coming to his show. Such are the twists and turns of Fate.

Wow. Was that like four whole years ago? Was that like when Abe Lincoln was around?

abe lincoln had a beard. nothings gonna stop the flow.

Everyone knows,that was a disguise.

Hey, I saw Lou Barlow! It was supposed to be a Folk Implosion concert, but only Lou showed up. It was really good....his voice is much better (very pretty) in person than it is on the recordings. He made every song sound sad and wistful, which would normally make me sick, but he did it really well. His acoustic version of "No Need to Worry" off the latest FI album was gorgeous. Yay, Crawford! I'm glad he answered your question.

i bet abraham lincoln would've really dug sebadoh.

I have always been weak for Sebadoh's cover of "Everybody's Been Burned," written by David Crosby. Everybody has been burned before Everybody knows the pain Anyone in this place can tell you to your face Why you shouldn't love someone Everybody knows it never works Everybody knows and reads I know that door that shuts just before You get to the dream you see I know all too well how to turn, how to run How to hide behind a bitter wall of blue But you die inside if you choose to hide So I guess instead I'll love you

Hey, I'm listening to the very cd which contains that song. i really hope he didn't need that piece of paper for his concert last night.

if he did would you love him less? tell me, tell me it isn't so. you fall in love with the artist and not the man and when the artist dies the man is left alone. unloved. forgotten. a cigarette butt tossed out the window late at night on a desert highway. an ant crushed by the boot of expectations. cruel. cruel. cruel. creul. crul. crule. krull. ever see that movie Krull. wasn't sting in that shit? i only remember the video game.

you stole lou barlow's set list?!

Sting wasn't in Krull - you're thinking of Dune. Krull was pretty awesome though. Apparantly the soundtrack is something of a collector's item - i believe my brother told me it was that one guy who composed the music for Braveheart and Titanic, it was his very first movie score.

i saw sebadoh open for the flaming lips....... zzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzz

if you're nervous use a payphone. i saw the flaming lips open for......somebody. guess it wasn't that good of a show.

lou barlow is a whining pansy jerkoff

jerkoff i like that word. it's like "cellar door" it rolls

i hate lou barlow. i know, i say "i hate . . .whatever" a lot. i recently said i hate fu manchu. now, i totally rock to fu manchu. this sort of thing happens to me all the time. fu manchu rock. fu manchu also rolls well. rolls good. yup. lou barlow rolls but does not rock. is there a difference between butt rock and cock rock? meathead or bonehead?

once again Dave. has saved the day.

right. and the check's in the mail.

i really like fu manchu. i've been told my voice sounds just like the guy from fu manchu. which isn't really saying much. they can still get a groove on though. how bout that for rock video music fans.

fu manchu make me laugh, plus they have a really kickin album cover, the one with that 70s skateboard guy railing the pool. butt rock, i equate to the likes of Michael Bolton or Enrique Eglasias as in he seems like the type to take it up the butt whereas cock rock, i equate to the likes of Ratt, Guns & Roses, (searching for contemporary comparisons), LA Guns, as these seem like the type to give it up the butt

When Lou was in the studio he played a cover of a Ratt song. "Round and Round," I believe it was called.

i had the Ratt tape that that song was on. i got it in 5th grade.

Mr. Barlow played Foreigner's "Cold as Ice" for us. It was pretty.

He played "Cold as Ice" in the studio too. It was part of a deal wherein he would play the first part of a song, then the first caller with the correct title and artist for the song would win two free passes to the show.

I don't know who lou barlow is, so I'm going to tell a totally unrelated story: Last night, I was hanging out at a friend's house in FB getting kind of drunk. Someone said that you can call Elk (A neighboring town that's far away enough that from FB, it's a toll call) for free from any payphone. I didn't believe them, so I ran out of the house and found a payphone. I'll be fucked. It works. I left a random message on some woman's answering machine. It was awesome. Now, can someone tell me how this would work? You don't have to put any money in the payphone--you can just dial any number with the Elk prefix. Very odd.

excellent story, Isolde. thank you. i don't know you so i don't know: where is "fb"? can you call "fb" for free too (i guess not)?

FB? gotta be fairbanks. especially with a neighboring town called Elk. shit probably works a lot different in alaska.

it's northern california. far north.

Fort Bragg. Sorry. We all call it FB so I get used to abbreviating it. Elk used to be Greenwood, but another Greenwood appeared and the post office got royally confused so they changed the name--called the town after an animal that hasn't been seen there in about thirty years. We see Elk in Fort Bragg, though. Go figure. Our working theory on the payphone thing was this: the Elk prefix is 877, and 877 is a new toll-free prefix, so perhaps the phone is fooled. However, consultation with residents of Elk indicated that this has worked for longer than 877 has been a prefix. Hm. Curioser and curioser, said Alice. Now I'm all gung-ho about trying to get free calls. Ad I have a big mark on my arm where my TB test is. Does this mean I have TB, or does it always look like this?

i almost said fairbanks OR Fort Bragg. those were tho only two FB's i could think of. guess i should've known with the "getting drunk" clue. although in fairbanks that wouldn't be that unusual either. is curioser a word?

It is now. Fort Bragg, CA, not to be confused with Fort Bragg, South Carolina. Or is it North? I think there's one in Maine, too. A Fort Bragg, I mean, not a Carolina.

thats North Carolina...wife is from there, sicko nazi crackhead town, 81st airborn.....the meanest, most amoral grunts in america...there is a reason they are first to go. I tend to call it Fayette-nam........scary fucking town....pffffft to think the parental in-laws expected us to get married there.........

My uncle was stationed at Fort Bragg during the Vietnam War (he didn't get sent over because he has severe asthma). He said he helped put together napalm bombs. He also said that as a punishment for sticking his finger in the hot fudge sauce while on kitchen duty one day, he had to eat the whole tub. Only he didn't, of course, because he got sick about 1/8 of the way through. More about me and my kinfolk that you didn't need to know.

jed move away from there...

I live in Main Carolina. Oh. Wait. No I don't.

I'm all drunk. I met mark lanegan and mark arm tonight, finally. I like seattle. I love portland, but seattle's just fine.

What were they like?

are they still junkies?

you did not meet mark arm! i'd give my left nut just to see mudhoney in concert much less meet mark arm in person. holy fuck. did he ask about me?

I didn't get to hang out with them or anything, I just met them briefly. but I'll drag out the non-story into something long and especially boring. I wanted to go to the mark lanegan show with agatha, but apparently she couldn't go, so I went with steve fisk instead. we were in a band together a long time ago, and I saw him at lunch my second day at my new job here in seattle. we talked for a long time in the men's pants section of the downtown banana republic. last night I got home and drank the rest of the red wine I'd opened a couple nights earlier, the night I showed a friend my new nightgown and we ended up making out to pavement's "wowee zowee" on the low-pile hotel-style carpet. then I went out to sushi with rich guy and got drunker on $12-a-glass sake. then I came back home to get my ticket. I thought I'd be heading to the show alone, where I'd see steve and hang out with him. but as I walked in the door, the phone was ringing. apparently steve left during 764-hero to come see if I was around. he was at the concierge desk. I had them let him up to the dot-com's temp condo, where we sat on the couch on the balcony and watched the ferries and drank beer and talked about old times. then we went to the show. mark hadn't started playing. "you know, I've always wanted to meet him," I said. we'd once gone to a screaming trees show together, after "uncle anesthesia" came out, and I was too shy to insist that he let me come with him when he went to the bar to go hang out with the guys. I'd worn nice black underwear that day, just in case I got to meet mark lanegan. but I'd met up with another friend at that show, and I stayed with him instead. "he has to be in a good mood. or you don't want to be anywhere near him," he said. "maybe he'll be in a good mood." mark played. with some guy from ministry and some guy from soundgarden. and he was great. I knew he wasn't always great when he played with the trees, and I was afraid he might sound bad tonight. but his voice was on, always. the showbox was full, and everyone loved him. I hadn't done my homework and I didn't know most of the songs. he played "mockingbirds," which I love, and he improved on some other song that had been on the second solo album. steve and I had talked about that album. it had no coherency. when mark played that song -- I think it's the first song on the album, I got excited and told him, "listen to what the album could have sounded like!" then I told him that mark's leadbelly cover was better than nirvana's. "no that nirvana's wasn't great," we were both quick to say. "mark's version sort of informed nirvana's," steve said. "yeah. it sounded like they were playing his song, not leadbelly's. like with the cover of the vaselines cover. they did them both well." we had more dumb little drunken happy rock conversations about all the old grunge heroes. mark left and came back and played another song. then he left again and they turned the lights on. "that can't be all. he has to come back. he has to." I started getting scared, but then he came back and I heard those deep, foreboding opening bass notes to "where did you sleep last night." he played it. we were all enchanted, like we were in a fairy tale, not the happy-ending part but the scary part where red riding hood is in the woods with the wolf or when hansel is locked in the oven and sticks out an old bone and pretends it's his finger. then he really left. he had to be happy, I thought. he was totally triumphant. steve started talking to some other dark-haired woman, and then introduced me to her. mark lanegan's sister. "let's go say hi," I said. "ok," he said. we headed for backstage, and I was drunk, and I asked, "is that mark arm?" duh. of course it was mark arm. that nose. he was standing right there. he was really cute, those huge blue eyes with pretty hair falling over them. I'd forgotten that they would know each other. mark arm talked to steve but looked at me. oh yeah, I thought, I'm a babe tonight. some random girls had asked me about my shirt in the bathroom. I bought it from the designer in portland, and it was really cute. the girls said what the designer had said about it, "it looks like it was made for you." I'd been propositioned by three guys since I'd put it on at 7 p.m. mark arm, who seemed very sober and healthy, was with a guy with an australian accent. "that must be that guy in blood loss," I thought. we all chatted for just a minute about how great lanegan had been. I later told steve about how the first time I ever drank a beer at a show was when I'd been underage and was smuggled into this private thing where hammerbox had played, this was in 1990 or 1991, and I stood next to mark arm, and I drank the beer even though I hated beer and was still secretly into wine coolers, and I kept thinking, "I AM AT A PRIVATE SHOW, I AM DRINKING A BEER, AND I AM STANDING NEXT TO MARK ARM!!!" now that I'm back in seattle, it's like I'm reliving all this old shit, but doing it better. now I'm actually talking to mark arm and he's totally checking me out. this is cool. then we sort of got shuffled on back, and we got pushed to the front of lanegan's receiving line. I looked at the other fawning admirers. lots of hip, carefully dressed chicks who weren't terribly pretty. I'm just as tall as mark lanegan, and oh my god, he looks so good all cropped and sober. no drugs or booze for two years, I had been told. I believed it. he didn't look red and puffy, like he had in some photos I'd seen of him from a couple years back. now just cigarettes. he was lean and fine. he was in a good mood. he laughed with steve and asked about a few old friends. I would have loved to have basked in his presence for hours (he was my very favorite rock star for so long, and I was wearing nice underwear this night too), but he had all those other nice people to chat with too.

wow. thats fucking awesome. i felt like i was there with you. i could almost feel the black underwear. have you ever heard monkeywrench? it's an album mark arm, steve turner, tim kerr and some other seattleites put out back in the day. it rules.

i'm glad lanegan's doing better. anyone wanna place bets that he loses a lung before he hits 45?

i like his new stuff with queens of the stone age.

I used to like that monkeywrench album. I haven't listened to it in a long time.

i never saw mr epp, i was just too young for that shit but i've never really been a fan of mark arm except for superfuzz bigmuff. green river was boring. post-superfuzz mudhoney was basically boring and the monkeywrench is also boring. the thrown-ups were entertaining but they sucked (on purpose). i think mark arm is seattle's calvin johnson or calvin is olympia's mark arm. either way. i'm sure every town has their local hero. they can put their name on pretty much anything and people will be interested even though it's not necessarily interesting. but, since you have a crush on him now, you should locate a copy of monkeywrench and listen to it. imagine mark singing to you with that wry, impish, leering grin and contemplate the underwear you'll wear at your next encounter.

maybe i was out of line with that last bit. upon re-reading, it sounds more caustic than i had intended it to. i hope no one takes my bitchiness too seriously anymore.

I don't really have a crush on mark arm. mark lanegan, yes. I just thought that mark arm was sort of cute -- I'd never thought so before. but I was very excited to drink my first show beer while standing next to him. I was 19 and easily impressed. but the only small-time celeb I've worn cute underwear for is mark lanegan. when I lived in that closet in the u-district, I'd get drunk at night to invisible lantern and wake up to the winding sheet. he's so tall and skinny and had such beautiful long hair and such pretty eyes, and, my god, that voice. I already have the monkeywrench cd. the only mudhoney I've ever liked is that superfuzz bigmuff + early singles cd. recently bought my first beat happening album. black candy. used, $8. I used to think calvin johnson was really gross -- I was offended by the way he moved his hips onstage and would then hit on my bashful friend christine after their sets. now I'm not offended by anything. but if you feel bad, dave, then just call me a cave bitch (no one ever has!) and that will make everything even better.

better than what? cave bitch� is swine's thing. i'll have my people talk to his people. we'll see what we can come up with. we'll see if you can put cave bitch� on your business card. hey, you earned it.

isn't cave bitch a seattle band?

even better than they already are.

they who?

oh. things!

oh. cyst, you just used an exclamation mark. life is good?

I am really happy. I went to ikea for the first time today. I think I bought four lamps. I have a real job and I'm meeting new people. if only I weren't impossibly in love and didn't have these two huge zits on my face. but still.

I didn't go to any shows while I was in Portland. Typically, my stay was bookend by two groups/artists I have never seen but want to -Yo La Tengo and Meg Lee Chin. Wo do i get here? Fucking Styx and Korn.

yo la tango are ok live i dig the music but they are kinda dull

unlike man or astroman.

correct even better, a side project of man or astroman called servotron. THATS a fucking show!

Mark Lanegan -- great musician, or greatest musician alive today? His voice, oh Lord. He sounds like a Horseman of the Apocalypse, any one of them. Thank you, Dave, wherever you are, for suggesting I listen to him all those years ago. Has he ever done anything wrong, musically speaking? Everything he sings is gold. These are my favorite songs of his: One Hundred Days Wedding Dress ("The end could be soon, you'd better get a room, so you can love me" slays me in my seat) Museum Kingdoms of Rain Resurrection Song Live With Me (cover of the Massive Attack song -- his voice is perfect) Strange Religion We Have Met Before Cyst's tale of when she met him was woefully short on the details, but this is great: "he has to be in a good mood. or you don't want to be anywhere near him," he said.

Also (from a 2008 Magnet article): Says Homme, �He is, and I say this lovingly, the meanest nice guy I know.� That's how I saw Dave.

I saw Mark Lanegan on Saturday night and I was happy. He played 3 of the 8 favorite songs I listed two posts up three years ago, plus my absolute favorite song that I didn't include in that list probably because I hadn't yet heard it: a cover of the Leaving Trains' "Creeping Coastline of Lights". I recorded this song with my cheap camera, so please excuse the almost total lack of picture: linky Also, the beginning of the song is cut off because the camera would not cooperate. I recorded six other songs and put them on Youtube; you might be able to see them in the related video bar. Most of the set was music from his latest album, which I found sadly lackluster. The reassuring thing about him, though, is that he's been making music for almost 30 years and he constantly plays with all kinds of people, so there's no reason to worry that the well has run dry. He's like Tom Waits that way -- a lifetime of consistently interesting creative output and a demonstrated openness to learning new ways of making music. Also, his voice is amazing. Not just the tone, which is...what it is, but the fact that he's always on key. That's good on its own and it's wonderful when he plays with terrible singers like Greg Dulli. (Whom I love and the guy can write some great music but, holy smokes, his voice just gets more and more terrible as the years go by.) He ended with "Harborview Hospital" (my favorite song off the latest album) and "Methamphetamine Blues". Some other dude at the show that night recorded "Harborview Hospital" on a much better camera than mine -- you can hear it (and see the stage!) here. Many years ago, Dave recommended that I give Mark Lanegan a listen -- if it weren't for him, I wouldn't have had these years of enjoyment and this night of happiness, so thanks, Dave.

i was in austin the last 4 or 5 days. i stayed at the old farmhouse with my sister's family. my 4 year-old niece, who can work my ipad as well as i can, discovered an old clip of my cousin and me playing bob dylan's "you ain't goin' nowhere" together. my cousin - sally - is singing. my niece would sneak my ipad off and play it over and over. before i left, she had me play it for her one last time. she watched it with serious concentration and tried to sing along. it was all nonsense words, but they actually went with the music. there is hope yet. dave tried to turn me on to mark lanegan, too. but i never got to to like him. if i were to be truthful, i don't think i have good taste in music.

Do you sincerely believe that? :)

i can't tell, anymore.

Measuring taste is a meaningless activity, isn't it? So many people conflate "I like this" and "this is good", and the reverse. And "you don't like what I like" and "you have bad taste." I sometimes feel like my taste has stagnated because I don't like much of what is new. I just listen to the same musicians I have for years, or when I do decide to listen to somebody new, it's somebody new-to-me but long since retired. Are you in that boat?

i think "taste" is purely subjective and not based on some cosmic measuring stick. these days, i feel it pointless to argue about which music is the best. i think one reason i like jazz so much these days is that there're no words, just sound. graham greene and other people have pointed out that, at a certain age, you stop looking at the arts for answers and start looking at them for confirmation. ya know? i'm very tired as i write this. i mean that sense of finding something new stops. i think that, these days, i actually spend more time playing music - on a ukulele or whatever - than listening to recordings. if i listen to singers, it's only to find songs to sing myself. my dream is one day to end up in a quonset hut out in the hills playing music and drinking tequila till i die. today i was on youtube to find a clip of bascom lamar lunsford doing "i wish i was a mole in the ground" (1928). i did, and a cover by a deutsche eletectronika band. it was nifty.

I can't say how much I love this song Трудно сказать, как я люблю эту песню.

about an hour and a half ago (at 10pm my time), i played that mark lanegan song from the may 18 link. it was good, i guess, but i'm still not won over. maybe i'm just a bastard. anyway. it made me want to listen to townes van zandt: so i found a clip of him doing "flyin' shoes" live. looking every bit like the cowboy junky he was. halfway through the song, there was was a "thump thump thump" on my wall from the adjacent apartment. a young woman, a stewardess, lives there. she has already complained about me playing loud music once before. in all the twelve years i've lived here, only she seems to have heard anything. as if she waits by the wall with her ear in a glass waiting for any sound. but this time it was 10pm, and it was a quiet ass country song by one guy on an acoustic guitar. i don't know how she could have heard it. i guess i'll have to wait to see if the landlord calls me again.

Hi droopy, it is good to hear it from you again. Quite frankly, I don't think your landlord going to call you, we all knows that they aren't doing anything anymore.

hi, doc. you're right, nobody called. either i'm paranoid or i've just been quiet.

LOL, that is what I thought about from times to times. Let's hope this incident never happened...but small thing is not a big deal anyway. :-)