Like, when I visit Facebook and find a colleague, a college friend of my brother, is friends with leading Philadelphia photographer Zoe Strauss, who is also friends with one of my favorite bands (where the leader is in a different tab in my browser, blogging about making an album with rubbing alcohol and razor blades) and posting links to long-form print journalism about post-war medicine that reminds her of Ender's Game.
Glad to read Marah's Serge Bielanko and his family are safe after a fire hit their rural Pennsylvania house last week. Even more glad to read a fundraiser to help them raised $10,000 in half a day. A HuffPo account, "The Internet Rescues a Family," has the details. For future donations, Serge's wife Monica, a stellar blogger, recommends the Red Cross.
Thanks to friend and fellow Marah fan Randy for the alert on the news.
(Video from mpiccorossi who may or may not have also been at #ona11.)
Before the night drops too far back in time, it must be said the Marah show at Jammin Java a couple weeks ago was a fun, fun time. Brother Serge rejoined Dave and Christine for a tour leg or two after a three-year absence — raising children, living in Utah — and you know how it is when family gets together. The gathering is loud, messy and full of laughter, everyone happy to be in the same house once again. If you add drinks, a packed, supportive club, a borrowed bass that sounded like a kazoo, and massive quotation marks around "acoustic," and you had a contagious mood that put you in the Marah family too. Audio on the above video isn't terrific, but you get the picture. The band asked the club to run the smoke machine whenever Christine played drums.
Other materials from the evening: Serge explaining what he's been up to ("I sand stuff with a sander…. I'm not necessarily building anything, but…."). A nice version of East. Always nice when a sound takes over the room (and where I was standing with the cool Treehouse folks in the second row). Below, my Blackberry camera tries as hard as it can. The lineup. Serge on bongo drums. Serge on harmonica, Dave with a tambourine on his head. I wish one of Christine on drums turned out. Atop keyboards, accordion and everything else (like holding the band together to make it to a reunion), she's starting to kick ass on them.
Looking forward to seeing the reunited Bielankos and the Marah family (Christine!) tonight at Jammin Java. Especially after this tour rehearsal.
Marah soon plays the D.C. area for the first time since the rapture. The band is going to do Jammin' Java on September 14, and expectations are running high/curious. This leg of dates has both brothers Bielanko for the first time in a few years. Serge and family have returned to the East from Utah. The arrangement, however, doesn't appear to be any return to the old days. In a new interview, Serge says he's only coming back partially, and… well, it's one odd interview. Or set of interviews.
The second and third questions with Dave:
SWERVE: Were you set to play longer that night? You made a comment late in the set about going longer, but seemed like you pulled the plug early because of the sound.
DB: N/A
SWERVE: (And feel free to let your true feelings fly as we here at Swerve are pretty sure our review of their shitty job at the Thunderbird and a subsequent review of another act at the Hard Rock Cafe, where the sound man left the board numerous times during a set, have us on a ‘list to not be invited back.’ I knew you were fighting an uphill battle when the sound tech couldn’t get the lights dimmed after you asked and he, actually, brightened them twice before doing what was asked…)
DB: zzzzzzzzz
But it gets better. Serge: "I have no fucking clue what people like or why. The world is the world and it spins fast; stuff goes flying in and out of your head at a thousand mph. What sticks and why: no one knows. If you don't manufacture/deal in oil or carbonated soda in the Western World, then you're simply rolling the dice."
A similarly fun recent passage?
Serge talks to my buddy Randy about a Badly Drawn Boy album for Randy's RockTorch.com. "I think it there might be magic spells hidden back behind the chords. Whenever I put it on, usually in the car, I see deer and rabbits and shit. Wild things come out of the forest. That doesn’t happen with most records, you know. I never had it happen when I played any other albums, so I quit listening to most of them."
Shortly following the rapture last night, I was sitting with friends in the grassy backyard of Takoma Park's VFW, drinking $1.50 Bud drafts and eating one of the best pulled-pork sandwiches I'd had in a good while.
The weather couldn't have been a better mixture of warm, breeze and blue, and we were waiting for Marah to take the patio stage and play a show. If the world had indeed ended, the afterlife was okay by me.
The concert was the first off-site show for Treehouse, the host of last year's Marah house party, and it sure felt like a success. On the lawn you had rock kids, families, couples, and vets. On stage you had Marah in great form. The sound got right after the first song, and a makeshift light system worked well. It was terrific to hang out with friends Laura, Randy and Lourdes. And when I made a new friend during a beer run, we talked about artists, both musical and motorcycle-painting kinds.
The music: The band played my special rapture request, Can't Take It With You. The acoustics really worked well for mid-volume numbers like that, filling the night yard. Formula hit the same sweet spot, especially the Great Speckled Bird ending. Honky tonk angels! Dave discussed his love for Cal Ripken Jr. Christine played Blondie's Rapture and later on a gorgeous version of Stardust. The teenage kid from the holiday show, Alex, had a fun return appearance, this time on both guitar and keys.
One of my favorite post-no-rapture quotes today comes a Family Radio staffer: "When you say something and it doesn't happen, your pride is what's hurt. But who needs pride? God said he resists the proud and gives grace to the humble." Fair enough. Next time, just come with us to the VFW. We can hang out and enjoy a great band and its music.
It's three in the morning when the bottle comes down
And oooooo the razor goes round,
But your time is your time
And nothing will change, nothing will change,
Gimme a dollar and I’ll say it again,
Here comes nothin'…
First things first: The good folks at Treehouse Concerts say there may be more room at Marah's sold-out May 21 Washington-area concert, since its move to the Takoma Park VFW. If you want in, join their waiting list now. Marah's last Treehouse show, as you'll recall, was a truly excellent night.
Second things second: Sorry the BlackBerry photo is a Blackberry photo.
The Friday night before Easter in a big city is not an easy night to play. The conditions worsen when a cold rain comes out of nowhere on the weather map and pours from early until late. But a night that's not an easy night to play can become an easy-playing night. Which is to say the night's dark outlines don't have to win. When the playing can see those clouds and sidestep under an umbrella, the music has a chance.
I'd never heard a Marah concert quite like the other night at Iota. The crowd hung back but seemed genuinely happy to be there. The band, just Dave and Christine on this run, got deep into moodier works but came to them by a certain peace. Contrary to the most recent album, for this show and apparently others recently, life was not a problem. Life was life and as good of an excuse as any to play beautiful music.
We got the pretty little lyric in the title of this post, in Body, along with Blue But Cool and Crying on an Airplane, all languor and naturalism. We got old stuff, even a cut off the old-old Rock & Roll Summer Camp '98 album, and we got new stuff, with Tramp Art getting a nice reception. Dave wrote that song so long with so many words, but its greatness has made it catch. And we got loud at times, of course. For as many years as Catfisherman had behind it by now, the song swung harder than ever into funk. Outside the songs, we got threats of tweeting.
"I like watching the girl," friend Sheri said at one point, and she wasn't the first newcomer I'd heard say as much at recent shows. The Dave-Christine partnership seemed in strong shape Friday night, balanced and whole on stage. Christine was at least on keyboards, tambourine, harmonica, accordion, and drums. I've possibly forgotten a few others.
Random moments of interest? Mention of new material. Talk of Serge's return to Pennsylvania. (A highlight from his wife Monica's great blog, after renting a home sight unseen, based on Dave's report to Serge: "He said the kitchen looks like Burger King and YOU DIDN'T TELL ME THAT?") Dave also expressed much love for Iota, which looks terrific after its renovations. Marah has experienced some profoundly weird times at the joint — a karaoke night, a water main blast — and some simply profound ones. I was glad, as always, to live down the street.
Previously: Marah, Jesse Malin and the miracle of the Christmas beer.
I love the kill-your-idols musical exercise. Trash legends, destroy past praise and unquestioned adulation and return balance to the scales of critical history. But I don't go as far as our time's greatest practitioner of the exercise. Former Sun-Times critic and famous Springsteen hater Jim DeRogatis literally writes the book on it. I don't have the desire to kill anything, musical acts or otherwise. A thorough deconstruction and devaluation are enough for me. I believe balance in my own opinion is adequate, and the world has plenty of shouters to work the extremes.
Nick Hornby taking on the challenge is intriguing. His sentimentality has been open across much of his writing, often a major artery and subject for complaint upon pure rock writers. But kill-your-idols is exactly what Hornby's latest book, Juliet, Naked, turns out to be. He invents a mess of a once-dramatic, now love-broke, pop-rock singer-songwriter whose life and music appear deep with secret stories but remain emotionally accessible, perfect for aging fan boys to "analyze"-slash-moon-over.
If you've ever read his High Fidelity, 21 Songs, About a Boy, A Long Way Down, Fever Pitch, or generally anything Hornby has written, or seen the movie adaptation of his books, or heard him talk about music live (with Marah or elsewhere), you know he is admittedly — proudly — an aging fan boy. If he didn't admit such, he would on one level feel he was denying his humanity and on another level call himself a wanker.
ALL [singing]: "Have Gun, Will Travel" reads the card of a man. A knight without armor in a savage land. His fast gun for hire heeds the calling wind. A soldier of fortune is the man called — Paladin.
TEDDY [singing]: Paladin, Paladin, where do you roam? Paladin, Paladin, far, far from home…
GORDIE [considering their water supply]: We could fill up at the junkyard. My dad says it's a safe well.
VERN: Not if Chopper's there.
CHRIS: If Chopper's there, we'll send you in.
VERN: Ha-ha. Very funny.
Back in the fall, I wasn't sure what to do with this post. I still haven't decided, so I decided just to post it. Meghan and I hopped this fence on the way to a Marah show at the Rock and Roll Hotel. Marah was in a mood, telling an interviewer, "There’s nothing to gain from another fucking comparison to Bruce Springsteen." Dave had recently gone on the wagon, and the show had equipment problems, sound ones. As a result, everyone was in some mood, whether on the surface or not.
The only exception was Bob Fleming, a USAT colleague I knew of but never met until that evening. He had apparently been a Marah fan for years. We had great conversation before the show, hanging around different parts of the bar. Toward the end of the show, I felt a tap on my shoulder. There was Bob, passing me a beer, one fan to another. Who knew two virtual strangers, sitting at different ends of meeting rooms on occasion, could have some rock and roll in common? Less than two months on, Bob passed away. I was glad to have met him.
If you get a chance to see a double bill of Marah and Jesse Malin, go. Their "It Came Upon a Midnight Beer" Christmas tour hit Jammin Java last week, and Randy, Emily, Jim, Katy, and I had a great, loud time.
Malin went first, and he and his new St. Marks Social band played like they'd been together for years. I'd somehow never seen Malin before and oh had I missed out. Deep in Virginia's suburbs, he and the band couldn't have been more into the set, no silence between the songs.
Except when he wanted to tell stories. Like the one where he tried to find J.D. Salinger and the cops hauled him in. Or the one in the middle of covering the 'Mats Bastards of Young, when he came into the crowd, sat on the Java floor, had us all sit with him, and started a sing-a-long.
After Malin, Marah came on as only Marah can, with Coolerman — who I don't think I'd seen since my last Marah holiday concert, a Halloween show at the Marage — playing Oh Come All Ye Faithful on his bagpipes.
