What do you wear to a swingers’ club?

No, not a ’40s-inspired dance club. My wardrobe is well set up for such an establishment. I mean a down-and-dirty, no-holds-barred (whatever that means) sex club.

I stand in my closet, a space rather devoid of PVC and latex. And other than an ill-advised pleather skirt, I possess very few clothing items made from oil by-products, with the exception of a few lycra workout tops. Which even I don’t think are de rigueur at swingers’ clubs.  Read More….Click on Headline.

I settle on a little black dress. A dress I last wore with pearls out to dinner with my in-laws. I decide to leave the pearl necklace at home, lest it send the wrong message for the evening. I do, however, pair it with my highest of high heels and a kicky little scarf. I look like I’m ready for a cocktail after the PTA meeting. Oh well.

Who knew that swingers are suddenly a big deal again? It’s a phenomenon I thought died with the ’70s — key parties and hairy-chested men and suburban dinner parties gone terribly wrong. But apparently swinging has been rebranded for new millennium — it’s called “The Lifestyle” now, and apparently everyone is living it. Or at least 50 million people in North America, according to a study by Dr. Curtis Bergstrand at Bellarmine University in Kentucky. AdultFriendFinder.com, one of the oldest sites for, well, adult friend finding, has over 30 million members, with an additional 20,000 people joining on a good day. And Edmonton is home to four — count ’em! four! — Lifestyle Clubs for meeting and greeting and whatever else you do at a Lifestyle Club.

Which I’m about to find out.

But first, I want to talk to some swingers, or Lifestylers, to find out what to expect. Which shouldn’t be hard to do, since I have 50 million people on the continent to choose from.

Except no one’s talking. Swinging seems to be the final taboo. In a sex-obsessed culture where everyone talks about everything — and on network television, no less — swingers are the last to kiss and tell. Discretion and anonymity are the watchwords, with real and severe consequences, including job loss and family dis-ownment, should they be discovered. For that reason, everyone appearing in this article, even me (as I work with children in other aspects of my life, and I don’t want folks to draw false conclusions after a quick Google search) are here under false names.

So I’ve searched for weeks to find brave swingers willing to talk to me. I understand the unwillingness to air one’s clean and dirty laundry in the public arena of an alternative newspaper. But I also have to question why, especially if people know their identities will be protected, no one wants to talk.

Finally, through a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend, I find a couple who is willing to talk about their little secret. “We’ve been swinging for about two years,” says the woman I’ll call Katie. Katie is much like me. In her thirties, professional, well-educated, married. In fact, Katie rather fits the mould for female swingers, according to Bergstrand’s research. She was 31 when she and her husband started swinging, and had been married for almost 10 years before they joined the Lifestyle. They are also actively religious — also common, according to Bergstrand. And her reason for doing it is also the most common response: “It makes life just that much more exciting,” she says with a cheeky grin.

Katie’s husband — I’ll call him Charles — agrees. “Before we started swinging, we were caught in the nine-to-five grind. We had a mortgage, full-time jobs, a dog. We still have all those things, but now the grind is gone. We have a lot of fun.”

Just how much fun, I want to know. “We’ll go to the clubs a couple times a month,” says Katie. “Or we’ll meet people we’ve found online. We’re pretty active, but it’s not our whole lives,” she’s quick to reassure. She also belongs to a book club.

So now for what I really want to know. What happens at a Lifestyle club? “Not a whole lot,” says Charles.

Really? That’s disappointing. But I’m also kind of relieved.

“I mean, sure, stuff happens,” says Katie. “But most of the really juicy stuff happens off-site. It’s more of a place to meet people.”

And by “juicy stuff,” Katie means whatever your imagination can summon, all within the confines of adult consent. From straight, full swap (i.e., trading partners with another couple) to orgy-rific fun with one or two or as many more partners as you’d like to the more gentle of options — “play,” meaning heavy petting with any or all members of a group of whatever size you determine. BDSM activities are also popular, with gentle (or not so gentle, depending on your predilections) flogging and bondage all part of the fun. And by the way, says Katie, “the Lifestyle isn’t just about swinging; it’s about open-minded play and woman-centred sexuality.”

Open-minded play and woman-centered sexuality. It sounds like a brochure. I almost expect Katie to whip one out of her purse. But what does that really mean?

“It means that Lifestylers truly revere women,” says Charles as Katie nods enthusiastically. “Women control the activities, and it’s all about female satisfaction,” says Charles. Katie nods again, her grin even a little brighter.

Charles regales me for some time on the benefits of the Lifestyle for women. “It’s a chance for a woman to embrace her sexuality and to have a wide range of experiences with the safety of her partner,” he says. “It’s so much better than exploring these things outside of a relationship, because she always has her partner to look out for her.”

Katie continues to nod and grin. So I ask her. “Oh, yes,” she says. “I find it very fulfilling. I can pursue fantasies, but I always have my anchor in my husband.” She’s still nodding.

How did they get into it, I ask? “We were married for 10 years,” Charles says, “and frankly a little bored. With ourselves, our lives. We were having some trouble, and thought about splitting up.”
“But we didn’t,” says Katie, fervently. “The Lifestyle saved us.”

Perhaps my face reveals what my brain is thinking, that I have a hard time believing that sleeping with someone else is going to save your marriage, because Katie quickly jumps in with “I know it sounds strange but it really works for us.”

Hey, to each his own.

I have to admit that throughout our conversation, I’m struggling hard not to judge. I have an overwhelming urge to critically dissect each statement they make and view it with a psychologist’s eye. Which surprises me, because I like to think that I’m an accepting, open-minded, liberal person. I like Charles and Katie, but there’s something in their proselytizing air that I find, frankly, threatening.

Or maybe I’m just nervous about going to the swingers’ club.

My mother doesn’t help. “Don’t do it,” she says, when I tell her where I’m headed for the sake of research. “They’ll rape you at the door.”

My mother is not the only one picturing images of Caligula’s cave. Residents along Edmonton’s Stony Plain Road have been up in arms for months at the prospect of a new swingers’ club moving into part of the former Jasper Cinema, claiming that a sex club will lower property values and cause the neighbourhood to go to pot. And this is a neighbourhood of pawnshops and porn stores.

As the hours count down to our grand entrance at the club, I get more and more nervous. My husband tries to be reassuring. “Don’t worry,” he says. “I know kung fu. Well, at least, I’ve seen it on TV.”

Thanks, honey. Which leads me to question, what will we see at the club? What will the people be like? Sure, Katie and Charles seemed normal, nice, even. Is their normal act a cover for rash violence and drug use? Will we be raped at the door?

Finally the time has come. And, as it turns out, the only rape at the door is to our wallet. A steep club fee is charged to pay for the privilege of meeting and mingling with people who may or may not want to sleep with us. Which makes me wonder; it’s hard enough to meet one person’s criteria when dating as a single. Is dating as a couple even harder? How can anyone (or any two) meet two people’s ideals for sexual compatibility?

We walk into a large-ish room. Leather couches to our right, a bar to our left. A small dance floor. A few tables and chairs, a pool table at the far end. Seems pretty much like any neighbourhood karaoke bar. Except for the large screen overhead playing some truly bizarre fish porn. Yes, that’s right: a computer-generated woman is on the receiving end of a strange fish-man’s tongue. Talk about your fish-out-of-water stories.

But as my husband and I settle into our chairs and sip our water — it’s a dry club — I realize the room isn’t quite what I expected. No one is chained to the walls, moaning in terror — or ecstasy. There are no whips or sex toys. There isn’t even any nudity, except in the fish porn. And the women in the room are dressed much as I am — little black dresses abound. A few brave souls are wearing scanty lingerie, but I find out later it’s for a fashion show. Otherwise, people are generally sitting or standing in couples or small groups, looking vaguely bored. Kind of like any bar.

But one of the things that makes it different from Jasper or Whyte Avenue is the mix of people. It’s definitely an older crowd. I see one or two girls who might be in their twenties; otherwise everyone is on the other side of 30. Or 40. Which is admittedly kind of nice. It’s not the kind of bar where you have to worry about stepping on broken glass, or getting your nose broken in a fight.

And they’re such a mild-mannered crowd. Men in button-down shirts, most looking slightly geeky and uncomfortable. I suspect, from their general demeanour, many of them are accountants. The women are a little showier, but the atmosphere is not unlike a school dance after the popular crowd has gotten drunk and left early. There is a sense of quiet desperation in the room, a desire to fit in, to find a home.

Some have definitely found a home here. A few of the women walk proudly in their five-inch heels, strutting, enjoying the attention from both men and women. These women look like soccer moms in their other lives, but tonight, tonight they can be goddesses.

As for what goes on in a Lifestyle club? Katie and Charles were right. Not a whole lot. At least in the public room. A lot of standing or sitting, swaying to ’80s tunes. We try to make eye contact, to at least appear friendly, for the sake of research. But no one even looks at us, let alone comes over to talk.

Perhaps they can tell we’re not swingers. Maybe there’s a secret handshake or something.

A few couples and small groups do make their way to the private area, and my husband and I decide to check it out. The rules are simple. You can peek, or you can participate. But there will be no loitering.

So, we peek. The room is dark, with plenty of private corners. I get a fleshy impression of a naked couple on some leather chairs close by, and there’s something going on behind closed drapes on the other side of the room. The group we followed in have found a trio of leather chairs in the corner and are quietly chatting.

Our peek is in danger of turning into a loiter, so we leave. And then we leave the club, content with the fact that we are leaving with each other.

So swingers’ clubs as dens of iniquity? Not exactly. As chambers of purity and innocence? Not exactly that, either. As bastions of open-minded play and woman-centred sexuality? Okay, with reservations, I’ll go with that. The women certainly seem to rule the roost and many have found a place to be, ahem, revered, to use Charles’ word.

But I can’t help but feel that if I were setting up a fantasy sandbox to play in, there’d be a lot more hot guys. The absence of hot guys, my husband excluded, makes it feel like either a wonderland for the bi-curious and their beards, or a middle-aged male-driven fantasyland and its perception of female satisfaction. Not to paint myself as overly shallow, but my sense of the room made me question whether the slightly geeky accountant-type would be as thrilled if his wife were swapping up — instead of just swapping. Would swinging be as popular if the women could actually make all their fantasies come true? Where are Brad and Angelina when you need them?

So anyway, my one night as a swinger was pretty tame. Can’t say I felt like I fit in or found my people, but it also wasn’t a night dodging secondhand smoke, lame pickup lines and bar fights, like my night on Whyte Avenue a couple of weeks earlier.

I guess, really, to each his, or her, or their own.

Theophilus London smartly appropriates Lindsay Lohan’s video shoot for Muse Magazine for his track Oops! off of the I Want You mixtape. Considering that we’d seen the Muse footage before, London’s new take is even hotter, overlaying the film with his sexy tune and beats making us want to dive straight into bed. Directed by Yu Tsai.

By Xifer Fortier

The only thing better than reminiscing about not listening to rock radio in the 00′s is reminiscing about not listening to rock radio in the 90′s. The 90′s was FM’s last gasp as a culture-defining institution in America. AM radio telegraphed the evolution of ideals in the 60′s. In the 70′s FM solidified the unity of a generation with respect to sex, politics, money, recreational drug-use, and ill-advised facial-hair.

In the 80′s, radio was a manipulator. It absorbed our discontent, boredom, gayness, quaint modernity and coke-fueled excess and served it back to us warmly in a caramel demi-glace, indulging our collective sweet tooth while tacitly allowing us propriety over our eccentricities. We were addicts, blissfully unaware of the conspiracy afoot. With sensei-like precision, radio reversed it’s polarity over the course of the decade, morphing from mirror to puppeteer.

In 1990, radio scampered into the theater like the director of Cats on callback day, ready to move units, make money and PUT ON A SHOW!!! The script was mighty clever; the angst and the party were there. The disaffected youth. The dedication to our friends, who were more ironically evolved than the rest. The industry was even smart enough to take a few darlings from the 80′s and anoint them 90′s superstars. “Ok, ok, you can keep REM, but tell that guy to stop mumbling…”

Waddle down memory lane with me. There were Sugar Ray and Matchbox 20. Kid Rock. Smashmouth. Everlast, Everclear and Silverchair. TLC, STP, EMF and Jesus Jones. Live, Bush, and Pulp. Creed, Tool, and Incubus. There was Garbage. LOTS of Garbage. There were Goo Goo Dolls, Gin Blossoms, Cranberries, Cardigans and Semisonic. Every decade claims at least one song geared specifically toward getting stragglers laid at last call. The 60′s had “Let’s Spend the Night Together.” The 70′s and 80′s had “Let Me Take You Home Tonight” (Boston) and “Take Me Home Tonight” (Eddie Money) respectively. The 90′s got Semisonic’s “Closing Time,” with it’s no-mystery chorus, “I know who I want to take me home …” meticulously under-crafted to be singable at otherwise paralyzing blood/alcohol levels.

Photo by Merkley??? www.threequestionmarks.com

It was when “dynamics” meant playing soft, then loud, then soft again, then loud again. Clever. Metallica charted hits. The Chili Peppers decided Anthony Keidis should croon. Third wave ska came into its own as a cult wherein the faithful got back-tattoos, smoked Mexican weed and faced Long Beach, bowing in daily prayer.

It was an era of empty platitudes; verse after vacant verse about how I woke up and got all angsty for no other reason than ” … well, I’m sketchy on the details but maaaan, it all just sucks … ” “What’s Going On?!!!” shouted Linda Perry, because she didn’t really know. Neither did we, although we were informed that she woke up in a shit mood, did an enormous bong-rip and was compelled into a wordless sing-a-long that she hoped might heal us all.

And it DID heal someone: the suburbs. Rock radio before the 90′s was biased toward the deeply urban and the deeply rural. The 80′s were all about the style and excess of New York, London and LA. In the 70′s the radio gods embraced southern rock (for example) because, with the rise of the Allman Brothers and Marshall Tucker, they could count on a stronger market share in places like Mobile, Macon, Tupelo and Jacksonville. This same process was applied in the 90′s with our pals, the ‘burbs, and this time it was a go-for-broke, hostage-situation.

Suburban culture had never been so celebrated, had never felt so accepted in the rock music world. Pre-90′s, only suburban outcasts had been granted rock radio credentials (The metal world mined the suburban-misfit dollar as early as the first KISS record in 1974). In the 90′s the Recording Industry put the thickening necks and fattening wallets of the proper suburbs in their cross-hairs and forged a product perfectly suited to mall-shoppers from gated communities everywhere.

The songs were pandering and about nothing. The production values were like fists of pure ham. The drumming was perfectly gibbon-like, consistent with a gnostic directive called (perhaps), “The 10 Beats That Work.” The guitars, squashed mercilessly between the monstrous snare drum and yarled lead vocal, were played with calculated abandon.

It was dreadful and brilliant. And it worked … for a minute.

Photo by Merkley??? www.threequestionmarks.com

By 1998 it seemed we were sentenced to a popular music trajectory that would always make room for the next generation’s Korn, Offspring, or Limp Bizkit and their endless soundtrack to meathead hijinks.

And then … poof! The genie exited the bottle in early 2000 when AOL leaked the code for decentralized file sharing and reintroduced music consumers to their own listening destinies. Napster was born, sued, and beaten into submission. When the dust cleared, music-seekers discovered that as an internet-savvy republic they could look somewhere besides fascist FM radio for music that spoke to them.

A thousand lawsuits later, old-world radio plugs along in denial of its own demise, but in truth, the landscape couldn’t resemble the 1990′s less. I couldn’t be more grateful. In the last decade it has grown infinitely easier to discover an amazing band or performer on our own or through our personal online networks. New artists aim to create viral online content as opposed to pursuing record-label signing advances. This formula makes for fewer aspiring rock-stars and a greater focus on making compelling things to listen to and watch.

To be fair, the concept of radio may have a (temporarily awkward) place in our future. Genome-based Pandora and Slacker show signs of longevity, which suggests music-fans are as much seekers as ever before. Social networking helps. If Facebook is to be believed, people talk about bands and forward MP3s and videos to each other. They invite each other to shows. In radio times, such things were unnecessary. Everybody heard the same songs on the same station and music-fandom meant bragging about how we slept out all night for Journey tickets. Its likely community-based radio will adopt a new, non-regional face, with happy dimples, worry lines and a farmer tan but I’d be surprised if it took less than a lifetime.

All Photos by Merkley???

sex and design, music, sex+design, red devil lounge, radio, fetish, erotic, songs, 90′s,

By Jane Parton

Last night I had a few separate conversations involving the phenomenon known as “floor drugs” – you know, the lucky moment where you spot a lost bag of some unfortunate soul’s drugs lying unclaimed on the floor. One of my friends recently dared to try his found drugs and this morning told me he was feeling pretty shitty as a result. I, on the other hand, have had a few floor drug experiences in my day, all of which were actually pretty decent.

So this is the conundrum – you’re in a bar and you’ve found some drugs. How do you decide if the obvious sketchiness outweighs the potential fun? And, if moments like these make you all warm inside, are you willing to risk experiencing the major shame attack sure to follow a night of doing what will most likely be shitty drugs in an even shittier setting? From my experience, a lot of it has to do with where you are. From this you can make educated guesses as to the source of the lost drugs, which give insight into the quality and potential shady factors. To help you answer these all-important questions here is my personal cost vs. benefit commentary.

COST VS. BENEFIT ANALYSIS

18 and Over Clubs – It depends on the night, but I’d say for the most part that floor drugs found here either belong to over-privileged suburban 18-year-olds or to weird, yuppie sex predators planning to offer them to said suburban 18-year-olds. Either way, cut as a motherfucker, but probably not with anything too shady.

Dudebro/Dirty Hipster Bars – You get the satisfaction of knowing that these drugs belonged to one of those lame dudebros who you hate for “ruining the Mission” on weekends. This dudebro is (or will be in 20 minutes when he goes to do a bump and can’t find his drugs) hella bummed, and you helped make that happen! But let’s be honest, this shit will be total garbage and if you’re over 21 you will hate yourself for doing anything you picked up off the floor at a one of these places.

Trendy Hipster Bars – Keep the following in mind – the nights one is likely to find floor drugs at trendy hipster bars are weekends, the same nights bridge & tunnel douche-bags are drawn to these spots like R. Kelly to pre-teens. As you’re considering floor drugs, evaluate your fellow patrons. See that pudgy Middle Eastern computer programmer guy in the sand-washed True Religion jeans and bejeweled Bret Michaels-esque cowboy hat? Yeah, that guy over there with his Bluetooth still in his ear. Those drugs could be HIS DRUGS. Do you really want to get high off of what that guy gets high off of? I think I’ve made my point.

Hole-in-the-Wall Bars – Most of these are so mellow and cozy I find it hard to believe that people would even do drugs in them … until I started doing drugs in them. If I actually paid for my own stuff, I’d save it and do it somewhere the setting would be more enjoyable, ie. do you really want to be high on stimulants listening to songs off of Neil Young’s “Prairie Wind” album? But if it’s free, why not? I will say though, that overall, I think finding floor drugs in these spots is pretty unlikely.

Music Venues – I would imagine that the floor drugs you find in clubs like these will typically be pretty speedy. People want $40 grams but are unwilling to sacrifice on potency, so shitty amphetamines are substituted to close the gap. If you just want to get fucked up and are on board with it regardless, I’m not judging you for it. Just take it slow …and be prepared to spend the next day or two feeling dehydrated and inconsolably depressed.

College Bars – If you find floor drugs here I’d say you kind of came up. They probably belong to someone you “kind of” know. 15 minutes after you’ve found a baggie, you’ll bump into this person in the smoking room. You’ll ask how their night’s going, they’ll say, “Good, except I just lost a big bag of drugs!” (sad face) at which point you’ll get to hug them and be like, “Bummer! Well, hey, want to come do a bump with me?” and now you’re the hero and everyone’s happy.

Bike Messenger Bars – The fact that there even are floor drugs to be found at places where people exercise for a living is kind of ridiculous, but I can vouch because last summer I definitely found some. I didn’t do them because it was like 6pm, still light outside, and even I have to draw the line somewhere. As far as sketchiness goes, they’re probably fine. Anyone who brings stimulants to a bar that only serves fancy beer and sausages is kind of winning at life.

By Dorey Kronick

Every once in a blue moon a band comes into your life that makes you want to shout its praises from the rooftops. Here I go. “Yay Battlehooch!” Whew. Quickly gaining steam amongst those music lovers “in the know,” Battlehooch, a ridiculously fun, six-man band from San Francisco, will make you daaaaaance! Make you yell (apparently), and make you question your conception of music and its supposed theory.

“Death Runs Wild”, the second video in a series of “Desolation Shows” highlights the beautiful and barren landscape of America. This video, set in Arizona’s Red Rock Canyons, is merely one in an arsenal of yet to be released work that will pretty much blow your mind and rock your pants off.

Catch Battlehooch LIVE in San Francisco @ their homecoming tour!:

November 19th, 2010
Bottom of the Hill
9pm

Check out their sites and songs and discover the band that is undoubtedly going to change your life:

Battlehooch’s Facebook Page

Battlehooch on Last FM

By Mr. Brownsuit

Like many of you, when I’m hit with a friend’s all-too-frequent “Dude, you have to see this video!” excitement, I curse YouTube and settle in for 2 minutes of life I’ll never get back. Yet, every so often, the baton is passed and before you know it – you’re that guy. Today, that guy is me. Seriously, you have to see this video!

Quite possibly the best song ever written and sure to be a viral success, Cee Lo Green kills it for all us guys who have ever dated cold-hearted bitches (yeah Stephanie, I’m talking to you) by spinning the sophomoric “Fuck You!” into musical gold. Thank you Cee Lo for giving all us jaded men a voice in a song equivalent to the Mona Lisa.

Braincookies by Xifer Fortier

I recently browsed through Here Come the Regulars: How to Run a Record Label With No Money by Ian Anderson. No, not THAT Ian Anderson (godfather of hobbit-rock). THIS Ian Anderson owned an indie record label in 2003. He was 18. The book was published in 2009. To be honest, I didn’t get very far — it was in the bathroom, and my house-mate returned it to the public library later that afternoon. It’s informative enough, mostly about ways the modern recording artist can maintain a commercial identity without a lot of major-label money.

Anderson goes ass-over-tit wrong almost immediately, however – somewhere around page 2 – when he suggests that major labels still look to indie acts for the next Nirvana. He states this without a hint of awareness that he is writing from a 2003 mindset and is thus dangling an imaginary dinosaur dick in the faces of otherwise promising, aspiring musicians.

Later in the same page, he says something obvious but poignant: He acknowledges that the blueprint of modern super-stardom was defined and epitomized once and for all time by the Beatles.

A few weeks back, I went to see Paul McCartney (the cute one) perform to 40,000 fans at AT&T Park in San Francisco. Total bucket-list moment. A few friends and I threw our hands up and our heads back and paid for good seats. $250 each. Beatles don’t do comps. The show was amazing. In the 3 hours between note one and the final chords of the encore, I swear I grew a skirt. Pom-poms sprung from my hands where there hadn’t been pom-poms before.

photo by Helen Pogrel

It was sold out and the entire crowd was of one mind and heart. Somewhere between the singing along and the open weeping, I had a moment to recognize that in 2010, one kinda has to be a Beatle to pull that off. The guy who defined the medium and it’s bigger-than-life stature is among the few who can live up to the unsustainable business model — who can pay a staff of hundreds, finance the infrastructure, sell 40,000 tickets, park 20,000 cars, check 30,000 I.D.s, sell 150,000 Coors Lights (at $9 each) and 20,000 orders of plastic nachos and have everyone go home happy.

The superstar of the latter 20th Century is vanishing before our eyes. More will not be farmed from the indie world. We will try to manufacture a few in our lifetimes. They will not transcend. We will not remember them fondly a decade down the road. None will be as timeless as the volume that begins with Elvis, peaks with the Beatles and ends … where? No matter what I say I’ll get hate mail. Guns and Roses? Nirvana?

Its not important where or with whom the buck stops. We’re not speaking (directly) about a lapse in artistry. We’re discussing the phenomenon of the artist whose music spans generations, who “sells” untold millions of “records” to their fans who then flock to see them perform high-production concerts in arenas, stadiums and ball-parks. Their concerts sell out early because 40,000 people in every major market in the world will pay $50 to $1500 to see them in person.

Most of these artists are over 60. Some are dying off. Others have teamed up. Aerosmith AND Sammy Hagar. The Eagles AND Fleetwood Mac. The younger ones are canceling tours. The Jonas Brothers, Christina Aguilera, Limp Bizkit, Rihanna, and the American Idol summer tours are all canceled or scaled back and those are just the ones you don’t care about. The Lilith Fair considered changing its name to “Vagapalooza” as a marketing ploy but wound up canceling outright. U2, John Mayer and Mastodon? Also canceled.

To be fair, U2 would have pulled it off if Bono hadn’t hurt himself.

More pertinently, I include Mastodon — an example of a band that plays in smaller places AS IF it has packed an arena, which makes sense artistically and fiscally. The new rockstar plays smaller joints. A week after Paul, I saw Tool play to a mere 10,000 people in Sacramento and if they can keep that up for a while, they’re way ahead of the curve.

Photo by John Karr

Acts that can pack a 5,000 seater? They’ve got a good thing going. In my estimation, the band that can sell-out a 3000 seater (to we Bay Areans, that’s the Warfield, the Fox and the Paramount) in every major market has reached an enviable pinnacle of success. If you can make it happen in the 500 – 1500 seater (somewhere between the Independent and the Fillmore), good on you too.

A focus on smaller venues and a more reasonable level of celebrity has become the primary feature of live music’s evolution. It paints the artist in a more human and accessible light. It encourages more intimate and personal performances. It respects real financial issues — the fickle economy and the tendency on the part of the music industry to eat itself. It panders to certain cultural realities, to wit: we as a music-consuming people have grown too cynical to all like the same thing for very long, UNLESS its the Beatles or some other aging Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-caliber performer.

The Hall of Fame itself will become superfluous. It is only a matter of time before we run out of rock-stars to put in there. Madonna’s in. Talking Heads. The Police. They’re the YOUNG ones. The Ramones and REM. Prince and U2. Who then? Metallica? In there already.

Radiohead? Sure, someday. Coldplay? Do we have to? If there is justice, Motorhead, Ween, Beck, and the Flaming Lips will all be welcomed before we seal the Hall shut.

My friend, Nick, foresees Lady Gaga landing in the Hall. None of us know it now, he avers with a hint of 30-grit scorn, but she will matter and we will someday see her astride that Cleveland steamer with Paul Simon and Patty Smith. Honestly? Lady Gaga, taking her rightful berth next to Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Iggy Pop, Michael Jackson and AC/DC? Maybe my glasses are dirty, but I’m not seeing the longevity. I’m not seeing the deep catalog. I’m not foreseeing ground-breaking innovations or palpable cultural impact. I’m certainly not seeing a 3-hour multi-decade-spanning set performed by Lady Gaga at a baseball park in 2055.

I’d cheer her on every step of the way if I thought it was remotely possible. I’d make a documentary about her rise from over-hyped and disposable through her over-exposed years, and the dark period of excess and legal troubles (Amy Wine-who?). It might culminate in the unprecedented come-back, complete with sassy make-over and career-defining masterpiece. It could end with the super-slo-mo, teary-eyed fist pump that punctuates every unlikely triumph, and like “A Hard Day’s Night,” it would be a comedy, a drama, and a love story.

Read More Braincookies:

The Gay 90′s – Why Rock Radio Sucks

Caribou and the Art? Behind Math Rock

Braincookies by Xifer Fortier

Let’s talk a little about the longest lasting marriage in show business, shall we? I’m speaking, of course, about music and cocaine and the way they interact – for better or worse.

Cocaine-use, in my experience, turns up as a personality trait. This observation is glib and a little judgmental, but true. From a musical standpoint, I’m not convinced that this is all bad. Am I making a pro-coke statement in print? Is that a smart career move? Will my mom ever speak to me again? Answers: “No,” “No,” and “Probably” (she’d have plenty to say).

Maybe you do coke all the damn time so as to enhance every experience – which, btw, you actively pursue with your every waking moment: the magic, the transcendence, the wonderment, the pulse of the night.

Or MAYBE you tried it once (against your better judgment) after some show. Nobody wanted the night to end and your friend (who has a sweet gig in the industry) had a hookup. Quick text. Quick text back. Cab ride. Cash. Wait. Go to someone’s house after purchase of 12-pack and vodka from corner grocery that sells booze until 1:59 am (someone has lemonade).

It looked like a ritual you might wanna experience in this lifetime. You didn’t get high (maybe a little), but the process sure was dark and dirty and fun. Your personality was altered that day. The hang changed your life. Friends (new, old and not really) spilled poignant details of their lives with a rhythm approximating a Hanna-Barbera retrospective.

The thing that coke “does” for us (in musicland, in particular) is this: It allows us to think a moment we experienced made sense on simultaneous social and sonic levels. This moment respected everything we thought about growing up, through our adolescence, and touched vaguely on our so-called adulthood…indeed until this very evening. In a world characterized by degrees of disappointment, coke reminds us slyly and with bedroom eyes that another half hour might make all the difference. The only reason “we” do it is because the promise delivers — occasionally. For every seven disappointing nights that result in the Mount Rushmore of hangovers and 3 to 5 regrettable text messages, there’s a moment the drugs/music combo brought us momentary soul-mates.

I don’t do a tremendous amount of drugs these days. In the great tradition of funnyman, Bill Hicks, I don’t have a lot of bad things to say about them. BUT, I’m one of those guys who ‘used to smoke a buncha weed’ and ‘smokes really rarely now.’ It’s great fun – when the spirit moves, the music is good, conversation is a celebration and my inner rock-star wags its tail. I get really high. I’m not maintaining.

And yes, I’ve done some coke in my lifetime. In a society culturally reticent to express it’s immediate affections, coked out clowns who enjoy the same music bond in a way that allows them to express temporary love to the point of utter stupidity. And if THAT isn’t dangerous for the music-economy, I don’t know what is …

Again I’m paraphrasing Bill. He was discussing mushrooms, and how the spiritual clarity he derived from various fungus-oriented occasions made him realize we’re all one; Nature. Creatures, humans, that chick on the Progressive Insurance ads — all of us. He might have also discussed acid’s capacity to bring to light the fractal nature of the social universe.

If you’re still reading, you’re laughing. If you’re mocking me, fuck off. If you’re reading this, its because you’re thinking, “Hmmmm.. drug rant? This could be good ..” which means YOU have been that person, have spoken earnestly about the great patterns of our existence, have felt the heartbeat of the earth or have (at the very least) declared emphatically, in front of all present, that you love them and shall be their friend forever. No foul.

Read More Braincookies:

The Gay 90′s – Why Rock Radio Sucks

Caribou and the Art? Behind Math Rock

Braincookies by Xifer Fortier

I hated calculus.

I aced math through junior high and high school. Given my adolescent awareness of life’s contradictions, math was comforting. There was an answer that was correct or not. There was proof. Math helped feathered-hair, acne-pocked me understand what was happening: how tall I wasn’t, the price of beer versus the pittance of my allowance, would she ever kiss me, when, and how many times?

Two eighths made a quarter and we could split it 3 ways. We would divide it in half until the end of time eternal. A negative number had no square root — or so we were told. Until…. Calculus!!! Calculus, for those fortunate to miss it, is a way of describing an unnatural obsession with the integer i, or the square root of -1.

NEGATIVE ONE!!! I had been HAD!!! Math was ambiguous! My reliable, black and white math world was no more! Never mind that calculus was the gateway to most major science. I wasn’t having it!

I failed that class. How could I excel at something I was mad at? It wasn’t the first time I had been the victim of the ol’ bait-and-switch, and it would not be the last, but I had trusted math. When I caught it with its hand in the imaginary number jar, I took it hard.

Its all bygones now. We talk, math and I, but it isn’t like the old days. We’ve grown up, and I’ve come to appreciate math in ways I never expected I would.

Music, for example; You’ve got your beats and poly-rhythms, time signatures, and so forth. There’s even a sub-genre of rhythmically complicated music referred to as math-rock. At its best, math-rock is music played very seriously to men who are not having fun (in any classic sense), but are repeatedly nodding in a fashion that indicates they understand what is happening musically. This appears to please them a great deal. At its worst, it is as cumbersome to hear as it is to dance to.

The Independent, San Francisco 5.24.10

I spent last Sunday and Monday evenings working with Caribou at the Independent in San Francisco. Caribou is the artist name of Daniel Snaith. Much has been made in the music press about the fact that Snaith has a PhD in mathematics and has (in interviews) cited abstract math as a conceptual inspiration.

In the shadow of a psychedelic video-jam, Caribou played a 90-minute set that careened wildly from electro-dance party to noisy, epic space-rock explorations.

The sold-out crowd was an amalgam — burners, early-20′s dance-club kids, and fixed-gear bike-hipsters in full regalia. One pie-eyed gentleman was fully dressed as a leopard. By my estimate, roughly half the room was tripping balls. They were in love with this band, themselves and each other.

There was this level of abandon that is, in my experience, reserved for raves and jam-bands, which is compelling because Caribou is a jam-band for folks who grew up in a culture where the DJ is king. Go ahead and laugh. In the same way the Grateful Dead synthesized bluegrass and jazz into electrified sound-scapes for the ecstatic, Caribou borrows aesthetic cues from electro, techno and break-beat culture and jams it out so the psychedelically-inclined feel alright. Its not a ho-down with a noodley guitar-solo. It’s a remix, performed by human beings who are near you, playing instruments a few feet away.

The sum of parts is more metaphysical than mathematic; Snaith plays with our expectations, worries us, extending noisy or dissonant passages for as long he can before relieving us with a satisfying da-boom-tiss-boom, da-boom-tiss-boom, da-boom-tiss-boom, that encourages us to breathe.

Band and crowd connect. They agree on a lexicon of sonic touchstones and an arc of musical drama. It is interactive and nerd-sexy. It speaks to the cultural role of music in a way that might make DJ and hippie-rock cultures both blush.

Snaith and bassist, John Schmersal sing the word “sun” repeatedly for 5 minutes. Their voices disappear in a synthy lightening bolt. The snare drum rolls and cymbals swell. The writhing mass awaits the climactic corner where dedicated drummer, Brad Weber, and Snaith (on 2nd drum-kit), break-beating in unison, bring it to the next level. By the time they return to the “sun” chorus for another 5 minutes (5 minutes is a long time, btw), eyes are closed and arms are raised.

Smiles are downright goofy. Band and audience have discarded any concern with looking cool – They are 5 and it is Christmas. Snaith is drumming, hunched and squinty, like an accountant changing a tire in the rain (the way nerdy guys express joy). The room is a celebration.

They arrived at this place as a result of a group effort of soul and spirit, hope and faith, toil and sweat. There are enough variables to make ridiculous the question of how this formula fits neatly into an equation. In fact, it suggests Snaith has less in common with Isaac Newton than he does with Jerry Garcia.

Say what you want about Jerry. He was a guitar craftsman on a par with George Harrison, Curtis Mayfield, and Joe Pass. Jerry heard a sound that he chased for a lifetime and was fortunate to play for a devout audience that searched day in, day out for that same sound. He played on an empathy for desire typical to the human condition, to wit: We all desire a journey wherein comfort is threatened by chaos which is eventually conquered by joy itself.

Jerry was also the driving force behind the highest grossing concerts of the 90′s. Go ahead and laugh.

There are few creatures as idiotic and misdirected as the 17-year-old American male. I have no recollection of why I felt so cheated by a concept so tepid as predictability. After my breakup with math, I came to realize that a world we can count on to behave consistently isn’t just impossible. It is hopelessly over-rated and boring.

The Quadratic Equation isn’t funky. We don’t revel in the expected outcome or dance to the absolute value. We require the bravado of the incongruous. We pine for the algorithm of transcendence.

We invite the feeling of falling, that we have then been caught, and that we subsequently saved the world together. The idea that one of us, individually, arrived at a repeatable, correct answer is not only joyless. It is as imaginary as the integer i.

Read More Braincookies:

The Gay 90′s – Why Rock Radio Sucks