Folkyeah Presents Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, tonight (Thurs.) at The Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur!
With support by Cass McCombs and White Magic.
Tickets still available! Go to henrymiller.org or call 831-667-2574 to buy’em over the phone.
We’re 1/4 mile south of Nepenthe. Doors at 6, music at 7.
When the Henry Miller Library was a young, wide-eyed 20 year old, a one-way ticket to California in its hand, all of our friends back home in the Midwest said, “Don’t forget where you came from! Don’t get all famous out in LA and forget your roots!”
The Library shook its head and said, “Don’t be silly!” as it boarded the Greyhound in Topeka, grabbed a window seat, and waved out the window as its dusty hometown – and the rugged past associated with it – slowly faded in the distance.
Well, this morning we got a call from an indignant old high school pal. We’ll call him Bill. “Saw you in the Huffington Post today,” he said snarkily. “Oh! Mr. Big Shot Henry Miller Library – look at me, I’m in the Huffington Post, the largest content aggregator on the Web…the content engine of AOL…No wonder we haven’t gotten a Christmas card from you in 5 years. You’ve changed man!”
And there is a kernel of truth to what he said. The Library was in the Huffington Post, and whatever man, it’s cool. If that makes us a sell-out, fine.
So, while reading their article about Nancy Grace’s “wardrobe malfunction” on “Dancing with the Stars,” you may have also seen a neat travelogue about how great Big Sur is, and there we are, on page 9, if you click through. Here’s what it says:
The Henry Miller Library is a must see for even casual fans of the author, (who lived in Big Sur between 1944 and 1962), and for anybody interested in an eclectic assortment of literature, historic coastal culture and interesting characters. Located in a small house, the non-profit library is an artistic and cultural hub for the central coast and is earning a reputation as one of the United States’ finest concert venues.
Artists including Animal Collective, Phillip Glass, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Fleet Foxes have all played under the redwoods on the Library’s front lawn. Gang Gang Dance, Ryan Adams and Jenny Lewis fill out the remainder of this season’s concert calendar. The Library is also excited about their upcoming Children’s Writing Workshops.
I think, ultimately, mean people are just jealous. I’m no shrink, but I think this logic can be applied to Bill back in Kansas. The Library did finally reach out to him, saying y’know, sorry I’ve been so out of touch, Bill; it’s not that I’ve sold out here in California, it’s just that it’s been a busy summer, what with our 30th anniversary, tons of amazing shows like tomorrow’s Thurston Moore; tix available here, etc.
Bill took it well but still, the Library couldn’t help but notice a tinge of envy in his voice. After all, Bill hasn’t really aged well. He has 4 children, is the manager of a Hardee’s right off of Route 40, and in his 33 years has yet to venture further west of Wamego.
With Thurston Moore playing here on Sept. 29th at the Henry Miller Library – tickets available here – you don’t need us to tell you about how great “Daydream Nation” is.
But I will anyway. Actually, I won’t. I’ll let Pitchfork do the talking. After all, they ranked it the single greatest album of the 80s, besting, to my eternal shock, Robin Gibb’s “How Old Are You.” (1983)
And it’s also fun and easy to just cut and paste a lot of text that someone else wrote, especially after a long night of dancing to the Four Tops at Fernwood.
So anyway, here’s why “Daydream Nation” is/was the greatest album of the 80s:
“I could sit here and force-feed you dietary information about Daydream Nation ‘s purported Importance, and because it’s ended up as our 80s MVP, perhaps that’s expected. But really, the reason I like Daydream Nation better than anything else spawned between 1980-89 is that, hell, it’s just the greatest fucking album. Few musical moments are more guaranteed to bring me joy than the joyous riff and snare rim clicks that kick off “Teen Age Riot”.
Never was the elusive Sonic Youth balance of noisecraft/songcraft kept so gloriously intact– despite containing few songs under five minutes, this is still the most accessible album they ever made (including even that brief period when they were trying to be accessible).
Thank their confidence in allowing themselves to stretch out their improv legs in the studio, to present the record with bright, clear production, to keep all the SKREEERAWWWKKK within the context of actual melodic songs. Thank the highest Lee ratio ever to be found on SY product, and unparalleled composition consistency from Thurston and, gasp!, Kim.
Daydream Nation was a noisy punctuation mark to the evolution of sub-radar rock in the Reagan years, and as long as people are still listening to guitars, it will remain a milestone.”
Henry Miller wasn’t fond of memorials, and it’s hard to say what he would have thought about our sleepy lil’ bookshop in the redwoods.
But just because he was anti-memorials doesn’t mean this blog should, like, y’know, talk about his actual books every now and then. (Furthermore, knowing Henry as I do, I probably would have blogged furiously; the trick is to think of him less as a “writer” in the Dickensian sense, and more of a rambling, mildly-irritating-yet-frequently-profound gadfly glued to some bar stool in a Polish bar in Williamsburg.)
Take Tropic of Capricorn, for example. Not nearly as well-known as “Cancer,” but interesting in it’s own right if no other reason than Miller – more than anyone else I’ve read – acerbicly (?) articulates how working in an office for a corporation can be a total drag.
Remember: the New York Miller was talking of was pre-WWII, pre-1950s conformity – decades before it became fashionable, all Beat-style, to rail against the squares. That said, I admit, Miller didn’t invent the “complaining about your work” genre, but his hatred of, again, that arch-typical Grey Flannel Suit starchiness, was, IMO, kinda prescient. (Ditto regarding his “Air Conditioned Nightmare.”)
And Henry was cool cuz rather than stare sullenly into his margarita during Friday night happy hour at Applebee’s after work let out, trying to drown out his career-colored existential angst, he straight-up quit, moved to Paris, and walked the starving-and-horny-writer walk. Bad-ass.
Does that mean “Capricorn” is an easy book to read? No. Does that mean I actually read the whole thing from cover to cover? Hmmm….wellll… Does that mean we hate corporations and that they’re all inherently evil? No and of course not, don’t be so hyperbolic!
(Besides, as others have noted, corporations are only bad when they askew beauty. Apple – also a corporation, and an arguably amoral one at that – can be just as nasty, but their products are so darn beautiful, so they get a pass. I mean, how does the ipod, when on shuffle, know to play the Byrds and Mamas and Papas whenever I drive down the 1?)
Back in college, there was a course on Joyce’s “Ulysses.” Students spent, like, 4 months or whatever dissecting a single book.
I rolled my eyes at the thought, but upon further reflection, I figured why not? Sure, Joyce didn’t know what it mean. I don’t know what it means. The Phd’s professor doesn’t know what it means. But why should that stop everyone from analyzing it and unearthing deeper elements of it, such that it makes you feel nice inside?
Admit it: the best art is stuff where you don’t know what it means.
Anyway, with Thurston Moore playing the Library this Thursday (info here,) it’s only natural for me to say that they should teach an entire college course on a single song: Sonic Youth’s “Schizophrenia.”
It’s the lead-track on their 1987 classic “Sister,” and it is one of the most stunning pieces of music ever committed to tape. In time, it’ll be up there with Cage, Glass, whatever.
What’s the song about? Who knows? Who cares? Well, I kinda care, and I think it’s pretty simple: Thurston, as the narrator, talks of a menacing, demonic woman/girl who happens to be the sister of his friend. She’s also bat-shit crazy. He sets up her presence like some sinister apparition (“she was laughing like crazy / at the trouble I’m in.”)
But then, he woman/girl speaks soon after, in the voice of Kim, and the insane gal comes across as sympathetic, a lost little girl, an out-of-focus child-seer (“My future is static / It’s already had it.”)
Who do we believe?
In the process we’re transported to this ethereal world of madness and, well, beauty, and that’s because the tonal constructs; the song is, essentially, a seamless suite of four mini-songs. It’s like your swimming around in her twisted id!
Good god this song is amazing!
In closing, in my opinion, I think they should teach a college course on “Schizophrenia.”
If some dude analyzed the pronoun usage of any other artist, besides the Beatles, we’d roll our hungover eyes. But the Beatles get a pass.
Cuz some dude did precisely that.
James W. Pennebaker is his name and it’s actually a nifty little experiment, I guess. The bottom line: the 15 songs that John and Paul definitely wrote together are far more uplifting and positive than their respective and subsequent quasi-”solo” songs, which over time, became more dark and world-weary.
And while this shift…um….shifted, there was a simultaneous drop in first-person singular pronounces (which is counter-intuitive, kinda.) For those keeping track at home, the drop in use of first-person singular pronouns dropped from 14 percent in the group’s early years to 7 percent in the final years.
Hmm.
Lose you yet?
Here’s a quote:
Mr. McCartney was clearly attuned to how pronouns could provide different perspectives in songwriting (even if he goofed when he told the biographer Barry Miles that “She Loves You” was a “personal preposition song”). But Lennon was no slouch in the pronoun department. He could take a third-person song like “Nowhere Man” and use pronouns to forge a sense of identification: “Isn’t he a bit like you and me?
Ultimately, this article is a testament to the positive side of the growth of cubicle-based employment. Reading stuff like this makes the day go faster. Provides a nice little distraction. I feel like we all worked in the fields this article would never have been written.
So, just as a reminder, the Library is celebrating it’s 30th anniversary this summer. And a common misconception – often perpetuated by yours truly – is that it was only until relatively recently that the Library became a hip and wonderful concert venue.
Not true!
At least according to these artifacts recently unearthed by Magnus.
Check out this awesome photo of the cryptically-titled “Katie Lee” concert held here in September of 1982 (!) Look how bucolic the vibe is. Notice how small the deck is. Notice there are no port-a-potties in the background.
Further underscoring the gravity of this archeological find, we also have a secret Rosetta Stone to help us determine who, in fact, is in the picture. Check it. On the far left is the main main himself, Emil White, Henry’s BFF and Library founder. He’s the reason why I am able to write this.
Two people over to his left is Nancy Hopkins, who, if I’m not mistaken, penned “These are My Flowers,” a book compiling letters Nancy wrote to her parents in Berkeley after she married Sam Hopkins and moved into their new home on Big Sur’s Partington Ridge in 1948.
Wow!
Well, so much for the myth that shows at the Library were invented by an intrepid sailor-Swede who shall remain nameless.
Next thing you know, you’re gonna tell me that Einstein was wrong about the speed of light!
We’re going out with a bang this summer at the Henry Miller Library. Only 4 “big” shows left. Here’s the first: Twin Shadow, tomorrow. Doors at 6, show at 8.
Perhaps AllMusic said it best:
“Lush, intricate pop certainly shares a lot with chillwave icons; but there’s more to Twin Shadow than that. The songs are undeniably nostalgic, yet they often sound like they could be blurred by a veil of tears just as easily as a fog of memories.”
I think we know what they mean. It’s the feeling you get when you listen to, like, “Cry Baby Cry.”
So yeah, tickets are still available. Get ‘em here. It should be fun!
In the context of the Sept. 29th, ((folkYEAH!!))-curated Thurston Moore show – tickets available here - we must admit we’ve been somewhat backward-looking, talking about “Bad Moon Rising,” “The Year Punk Broke,” and “Daydream Nation.”
And, as we all know, nostalga is a bad thing. Gets you no where. A friend of ours disagrees, saying, “embrace the tapestry that is your life,” but I prefer to abide by the wisdom of Ricky Nelson: “If memories were all I sang / I’d rather drive a truck.”
But you can’t blame us, given Thurston’s oeuvre (and the fact that some of us got on stage during a SY show at the Beacon Theater in NYC in ’94.)
But the past is the past, and homeboy is doing some incredible things now, in the present, which can be rare. Most specifically, his new acclaimed, Beck-produced LP, “Demolished Thoughts.”
If you’re looking for the typical aural apocalypse of Sonic Youth or his previous solo jams, you’ll be in for a surprise treat. “Demolished Thoughts” is acoustic-based with tasteful flourishes of harps and strings.
Money quote from the afore-hyperlinked Pitchfork review:
While Moore’s been putting out records for three decades now, Demolished Thoughts feels vital and purposed, more like a debut than an encore. It’s the work of a restless artist fighting successfully through his own skin to not only outstrip our expectations of how he sounds but also of the sort of music acoustic guitars and harps can make.
With Demolished Thoughts, Thurston Moore solo albums have become more than fields of noise throwaways spiked with the occasional gem, more than Sonic Youth stopgaps. A lot of people retire after 30 years, but Moore has added another great line to an overwhelming résumé.
See you on the 29th!
We here at the Library put our money where our mouths are/is. We talk a lot about art – art this, art that, art whatever; art who? art where? etc. – and you know this. We provide provide movies, music, and readings – all things that you’d consider art.
But it gets better. We also put together an annual literary magazine featuring some of the best writers around the world!
Make no mistake: Ping Pong is the glittering ruby in the Library’s bejeweled art-tiara. (And who wears the tiara? Well, it depends on who’s drinking the wine. winks)
And we’re pretty darn proud of this, our pretty little Ping Pong.
So without further ah-doo…
The Henry Miller Library in Big Sur, California is pleased to announce the annual publication of Ping•Pong, a journal of the arts. The editors continue to serve up the best artists from the global art and literary scene by publishing a vibrant group of poets, writers, artists, and photographers.
This issue continues Ping•Pong’s commitment to a cultural dialogue between contemporary artists and the aesthetics set forth by Henry Miller and Anaïs Nin.
Miller was and is as much an international literary figure as he was/is an American one; therefore, Ping•Pong reaches beyond our shores in order to bring unknown, or lesser known, writers from around the world into more prominence in English.
More info here; to order, just give a call: 831-667-2574.
