Writing Updates

While Concert Haikus remains my first and most passionate love, I have branched into different areas of writing since its closure. I figured I would be remiss were I not to link them here... just in case!

I began a weekly column called "Waxing Philosophical LA", in which I visit and write about record stores in LA, and review the records I purchase while there. It's published every Tuesday, and here are links to the first 5:

1. Wombleton Records in Eagle Rock
2. Records LA in Culver City
3. Vacation Vinyl in Silver Lake
4. Amoeba Records in Hollywood
5. Family on Fairfax

I have also been keeping a reggae podcast, which I release bi-weekly. You can check out the three most recent here:
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5

You can always catch label updates at Complicated Dance Steps or on our Facebook Page.

Miss you, haikus.

American Beauty. 7/14/2011

Jerry Garcia.

That's Jerry fucking Garcia singing backup vocals on this track! All of a sudden, this song, "Box of Rain", is no longer one of my friends, but someone esoteric and famous. "Box of Rain", who personally got me through one of the hardest eras of my adult life; "Box of Rain", who helped Lindsay (of Freaks and Geeks) figure out which way to turn out; "Box of Rain" who single-handedly turned a shitload of people into amateur Dead Heads. I feel as though I can love songs as I love people, and I love this song like a best friend. And yet today, as I listened to it for the thousandth time, I noticed Jerry's voice cushioning Phil's towards the end of the recording. And my heart fluttered, as though a local deity had been mentioned.

I have certainly found, in life, the way to keep myself spiritually fulfilled, and it is through describing the effect of music on my heart. I love falling in love, and each night, as I step out into this town to feast my ears upon its local delights, I get to do just that. One night, we could be watching Frankie Fairfield and Blind Boy Paxton at the Redwood, being transported instantly to the dusty, fragrant pages of an old copy of The Grapes of Wrath. The next night, we could be watching Seth Kasselman and Caitlin C. Mitchell of Warm Climate annihilate the confines of time signatures as they paint their fantastic aural cyclone around our heads. The weekend brings about Part Time Punks, where the sleekest recent period 5-pieces flaunt their competitive authenticity, and free Mondays promise the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed pop bands exerting their practiced kitschabilities.

It's happening all around us, every night. This town is electric with the efforts of thousands of artists, working in every medium of every era ever recorded. And our computers! We have these little boxes of technology that we trust like mothers, and through them we find access to everything that people ever took the time to recall, to consider noteworthy, to create, to record. We can see it, and we can hear it. We can figure out a way to find access to it. We can learn everything our brains can hold from it. We can contribute to it. We can contribute to it.

Concert Haikus has been the contents of my mind since I didn't even know what was going on in it. I have considered myself and this blog synonymous, and usually identify most with it when looking out over my artistic and record label-related projects. It has also been my way of watching my life and taste change during an intense and exciting era in Los Angeles music history. That is why, although this is sad to no one but me, I say goodbye with a heavy heart. I love describing music more than my mental thesaurus can provide words for, but I have started to reach a point where the shows I attend are no longer observed with objective ears. In each of the haikus I wrote for the blog, I tried to tell the most accurate tale of how the night affected me. If ever I came across as disrespectful to a band, please know it was meant to convey a feeling, and feelings change with the wind. I'm sorry for any offense caused, and thankful if I ever inspired any pride.

I have loved every show, every night, every band and every experience, negative or positive, because I'm starting to realize how special this moment in time is. We are lucky for the world at our fingertips. We are standing in the center of a rift in time, where the future and the past are the same thing, splayed out before us, a 360-degree universe of possibility. We have access to EVERYTHING, no matter where we are, but we have to keep looking. We have to keep contributing, keep paying attention, keep following that scent-trail of forward thinkers. There is a lot of beauty, a lot of effort, and a lot of life cradled in the folds of these additions to our culture and our legacy as a people. When our future is the past, whatever we added to this strange phenomenon could be someone else's future again, no matter what happens after we die. I am ready to contribute more than just 17 syllables a night now, and I have to honor that.

I love you for reading, and I am sorry that I used this usually concise forum to expose my thought processes. I know it's intimate and preachy, but please don't feel obligated to emotionally invest. I just wanted to let you know how much I appreciate you for being present with me for this, for being curious about what happened at shows, for being musicians who put your heart out there on the stage for someone to describe for others later. I appreciate everyone who ever checked in, wrote comments, or critiqued my endlessly terrible spelling. I appreciate my friends for indulging this for so long. Thank you.

Los Angeles is, to me, like "Box of Rain". The city and the song are both mine, home and confidant, keepers of my most humbling secrets. Simultaneously, their legends are so crushingly huge that the whole universe can fall as in love as I am, and said expanse is provided the same intimacy. As we listeners access time in universal directions, this city transcends space. No matter where you are, when you were here, you were in L.A. with me. To say I appreciate your company on this journey is almost too inadequate to allow, but I've used all my best hyperbole over the course of the last 3.5 years on this blog, and I have tried not to bore you with repeated adjectives too often.

I'd be remiss if I departed on anything other than the blog's namesake, so without further ado, a haiku for American Beauty by The Grateful Dead, the living room concert that inspired the end of an era:

A memory is
An immeasurable clue
To a world sans time.

With love,
Christina

Yellow Magic Orchestra with Yoko Ono at The Hollywood Bowl, 6/26/11

YMO

Flawless, they are,

In each imaginable way,

Especially there.

Yoko Ono

Epic, fearless, and

Above all, charming, she asked

of us only love.

Bill Callahan at The Troubadour, 6/16/11

Photo courtesy of Ms. Stevie Raya

His monopoly

On placing words perfectly

Renders haikus trite.

Psychic Reality and Sex Worker at Where's Yr Child NYC, 6/3/11

Psychic Reality

Soulful, sensual,

She brought perhaps the hardest

Dance groove of the night.

Sex Worker

Oozing with pain and

Candid emotion, his was

An arrow heart-bound.

Sun Araw and Matthewdavid at 285 Kent St, Brooklyn, 6/5/11

Matthewdavid

When he finds his sweet

Spot, the result arrests me

And demands movement.

Sun Araw

Coiled tightly around

A central notion of thick,

Serious grooving.

La Big Vic with Future Shuttle at The Kave Cafe (Vibes Mgmt HQ) in Bushwick, NYC, 6/4/11

Future Shuttle

Jellyfish tunes from

Unorthodox instruments

In campfire circles.

La Big Vic

One of those upper-

Echelon bands that warrant

More syllables' praise:

I'm thrilled to have seen this band play. Their aural scope is interesting in a completely inviting way and I plan on listening to the hell out of that record this summer.

The Undertones with Exploding Flowers and The Sweater Girls at The Echoplex, 6/2/11

Exploding Flowers

Familiar like

A fantasy jukebox in

A time-travel dream.

The Sweater Girls

Perhaps put best by

A bathroom goer: "Well, this

Is funny music..."

The Undertones

So abundant,

Their excellence and fervor,

Like 5 shows in one.

Sleep Over, Pure X and This Will Destroy You at the Echo, 5/17/11

Sleep Over

Though sultry and with

Elegant intentions, their

Mix was over-soaked.

Pure X (Ecstasy?)

The humble drum kit

Made their watercolor down-

right Moby Grapeish!

This Will Destroy You

For those who have not

Witnessed Robedoor, I could

Understand the draw.

Harassor at Pehrspace, 5/16/11

For such a hellish

Sound palette and attitude,

An angsty love fest.

Daughters of the Sun and Jonas Reinhardt at The Show Cave,

Daughters of the Sun

HOLY HELL! They're the

Aural manifestation

Of horseback riding!

Jonas Reinhardt

They're invincible.

We were rendered powerless -

Our moves, their command.

Dam Funk at The Smell, 5/5/11

Feels inherently

Right to see such music live,

Yet so rare... a treat!

Mudhoney and The Adolescents at the Echoplex, 5/1/11

The Adolescents

Provided us a
Clear reminder of what high
School was all about.

Mudhoney

Their proficiency,
The sole indicator of
Their age - such a VOICE!

The Tindersticks at the Luckman Center for the Arts, 4/20/11

The most affective

Public intimacy I

Have ever witnessed

Tinylittle and Plasma Centre at The Smell, 4/22/11

Tinylittle

Personality
And vim radiated from each
Fireball of a song

Plasma Centre

Their magnetic lead
Singer was but one of the
Charms of their live set

The Miracles Club at Where's Yr Child at Show Cave, 4/14/11

Timeless, in that I

Could forget the concept of
Time in their presence

Linda Perhacs at McCabes Guitar Shop, 4/10/11

As reverent as
In a church pew, we soaked her
In, captivated.

HONORARY HAIKU: LCD Soundsystem at Madison Square Garden (live streamed on Pitchfork.tv), 4/2/11

To this moment, I

Am hard-pressed to control the

Emotions they stir.

Thanks for the everything, LCD. Especially that Harry Nilsson cover at the end there.

Suzi Star, Fielded, M. Geddes Gengras and Sneaky Snake at The Eagle Rock Log Cabin by George, 4/1/11

Suzi Star

Robotic fairy

Tale of curiosity

And tender promise.

M. Geddes Gengras

Cyborg argument

Conducted over inter-

Galactic wavelengths.

Fielded

Her astute, graceful

Latticework of sound is all

I want to hear now.

Sneaky Snake

Set their morning scene,

Then vibrated it awake

With beat flirtations.

Salem, Gatekeeper and Light Asylum at The Echoplex, 3/29/11

Gatekeeper

Once they crossed

That acclimation threshold,

They fucking killed it.

Light Asylum

Operatic yet

Pendulous, 'tween Soul Stirrer

And Billy Idol.

Salem

An uninspired mess

Of affected, pompous, mean-

Hearted jacking off.

Tecumseh at Pehrspace, 3/25/11

Dark repercussions

From inside a bell tower

Deep collective trance.

Harassor, Tenstairs, and Tenderizor at the F-Haus, 3/16/11

Tenstairs

A cage of neon
Within which our minds could bounce
And vibrate brightly.

Tenderizor

The desperate screech
Of signals from pillars at
Each of Earth's corners.

Harassor (ft. Greh Holger)

A locomotive
Engine's worth of fury and
Godless momentum.

High Wolf, Robedoor and Blank Realm at Landslide, 3/12/11

Robedoor

Of and for the moon,

Their silver sound both soothed and

Rattled my being.

Blank Realm

A band that we've been

Subconsciously waiting for

To scratch our rock itch.

High Wolf

Bollywood and the

Seductiveness of French noise,

Watercolor jams.

The Elephant 6 Orchestra at The Satellite, 3/4/11

A monopoly

Clutched in their earnest paws on

Perfect melody.

Sun Araw at The Satellite, 3/3/11

The sexiest of
Grooves shifted slightly to the
Left, strategically.

Endless Boogie and Arbouretum at The Satellite, 3/1/11

Endless Boogie

Delightful cock rock

Devoid of the genre's cheese-

Ball, dickish affects.

Arbouretum

Their chthonic sludge

Folk summoned the Middle Earth

Child in me to war!

Godspeed You! Black Emperor with Om at the Fox Theater, 2/22/11

Om

Gregorian groove

Setting the ominous scene

Vibrationally

Godspeed You! Black Emperor

Tectonic music

The breath of a moving earth,

Climaxes in waves.

The Radio Department at the El Rey, 2/16/11

I can't fault them for
The drum tracks when they insist
On sounding so sweet.

Robedoor, Warm Climate, and Alpine Decline at Pehrspace, 2/11/11

Robedoor

Jagged shards of light
Slicing declaratively
Through the drone's shadow.

Warm Climate

"Exhilaration!"
Was all I could process as
My jaw hit the ground.

Alpine Decline

An emo streak a
Mile wide down the center of
Their snow-laden path.

Chelsea Wolfe at Vacation Vinyl, 2/11/11

The lacy visage
Analogous for spider-
Web-intricate sounds.

Matthewdavid and Red Mir at Mondo Palazoid, 1/15/11

Red Mir

A dead symphony

An orchestra of ghosts in

Climactic seance

Matthewdavid

Intimacy 'twixt

A man and his creation.

He never saw us.

Graf Orlock at Vacation Vinyl, 1/14/11

A sonic junkyard.

Them: carrion feasting on

Pop culture's dark meat.