A phone call at 5 a.m. this morn­ing total­ly freaked me out. It was a wrong number.

While you’re here, be sure to check out my review of Shin­ing’s “Win­ter­reise” which fea­tures an inter­view with Shin­ing’s auteur, Jørgen Munke­by. By the way, I did­n’t get chance to talk about “Moon­child Mindgames,” but if you ask me it’s Serge Gains­bourg’s “La Javanese,” played with a know­ing wink.

An unpub­lished ques­tion from the inter­view, after the jump:

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Regret­tably, you can add Brook­lyn punks Matt and Kim to the list. I wish upcoming.org could not only remind me of shows, but take me to them and drop me off after­ward. No hard feel­ings — it’s real­ly SEP­TA’s fault.

[I love “Yea Yeah” so much because it’s a total “Dot Dash” ripoff trib­ute. Care­ful though — Wire pret­ty much copy­right­ed punk. Just ask Jus­tine Frischmann.]

Not that I’ll ever post any­thing there again, but I’ve reclaimed the old Black­mail Is My Life space from weirdo fake tech spam blog­gers who prob­a­bly would­n’t know a Fukasaku movie from When Har­ry met Sal­ly.

The East Vil­lage seemed dead Tues­day. 2nd Ave strikes me as New York’s answer to South Street in cer­tain respects. One the one hand you’ve got places like Lit, on the oth­er you’ve got strip mall reg­u­lars like Cold Stone Cream­ery. I had­n’t been up for a vis­it since last sum­mer, but since then so much has changed: Cedar Tav­ern closed last Decem­ber, TLA closed in Jan­u­ary, yet some­how Maryan­ne’s returned? New York is an ever-chang­ing city, but right now some­thing’s just not right.

Con­tin­ue read­ing →

• Pro­fess love for Marnie Stern’s In Advance of the Bro­ken Arm [see above] despite miss­ing her house show in West Philly tonight. See also, minus con­cert-going: Ortho­dox’s Gran Poder, Deer­hoof’s Friend Oppor­tu­ni­ty.
• Come to appre­ci­ate Pazz & Jop com­ment joke about U.S. out­sourc­ing pop to Cana­da, Swe­den. [Link?]
• Vis­it friends in New York City tomor­row, take pic­tures, enjoy “warm” weath­er, Bur­ri­toville, Brook­lyn lager.
• Final­ly fin­ish Flaubert’s Par­rot. Bet­ter under­stand dimin­ish­ing returns of pro­long­ing enjoy­ment of books, movies, albums through pro­cras­ti­na­tion and ignorance.
• Fin­ish review­ing Shin­ing’s “Win­ter­reise.” Explain “death jazz” con­cept to friends, fam­i­ly. Bask in Jor­gen Munke­by’s bril­liance. [Thanks for the love­ly interview!]
• Real­ize that it’s Fri­day again.