The Two Thousands¹, it's too complicated to say, right?  Seems people have settled on the term "the aughts."  Which is fine. It's been an overall shitty ass decade if you asked me (or weighted heavy at least).  Even before September 11th and the paranoia that subsequently, quickly, ensued over this land, all was not beginning right.  A dubious election had been held, many felt stolen. A second intifada quickly began raging in Israel/Palestine.  Amidst this, a band called The Strokes released an album and then rereleased it with one song cut from the LP - "New York City Cops," whose chorus repeats those four words a few times and then croons (ha... crooning about cops): "They ain't too smart."

Now had NYC not been attacked on 9/11/01, and thusly had so many police officers not lost their lives, the song would have remained on the early LPs and come across as yet another throwback for The Strokes' sound, which borrowed from late 70's powerpop, mixed with a Feelies angularity and speed, and a Johnny Thunderish postpunk play on the same era of downtown New York rock; but coming from uptown prep school kids with the smarts, looks, and damnit - you couldn't help but admit they were cool....aggh....ahem. First time I saw them in San Francisco, I remember the band playing a very short, and not their greatest set (looking back on it), but the crowd went wild, ate it up. And afterwards, at the bar, of course Julian Casablancas has to walk up in his white suit, aloof, and start talking to my girlfriend at the time, giving me this looking awry handshake dismissal. (oooh… wasn't gonna be upstaged by these kids.  Nope, not gonna meet them for drinks later. WTF…?

Looking back on it, he might have done me - and her - a big favor.)

Writing that might get me in trouble no matter how I type it, but oh well. I just want to come clean and full circle, musically with this decade, and admit that maybe the British NME's pick for best or most defining band of the decade wasn't such a bad decision.  I've grown to like The Strokes, who grew up unfazed by the term "hipster," which many have blamed them for proliferating, for instilling by their doings, stirrings, stylists, legerdemain, whatever it was. 

I was thinking about them again when blurbing The Love Language article, which Brian Howe nailed, but I wanted to argue with his conception of "lo-fi," an unplanned (believe me) movement that had been ushered in at the beginning of the last decade, with albums from Pavement and Sebadoh charting the course. Later, towards the tail end of the fin de siecle (middle of the the 90s), a band from Dayton, Ohio started grabbing the spotlight with a new spin on lo-fi. A Vampire on Titus/Propeller double cd came out in 1993 - mailed to me by Dennis Cooper - and was the first thing I heard from this band², and like The Love Language, Guided by Voices was cloaked in even more (well ten fold more) of a backstory.  GBV'd been around for years. YEARS. Robert Pollard was a school teacher from a military town, a once high school athelete who dreamed of arena level stardom. He was also a kind of genius poet, capable of David Lee Roth style leg kicks³ with a Pete Townsend sensibility leading a band of 30 somethings that almost seemed as if they would have missed the boat had not Thurston Moore and Pete Buck "discovered them." 

I had the good fortune of seeing GBV at a legendary kind of coming out concert⁴ in Los Angeles (at Jabberjaw in June 1994) with Buck and Moore and my friends Dennis Cooper, Jesse Bransford and Matt Greene in the audience.  To me it was an equivalent of being at the first Sex Pistols show. Guided by Voices showed another generation that anyone could start a band.  You didn't have to be cute kids. You could play for 20 years and then explode onto the scene and charm audiences for at least a decade before touring (and/or your liver) starts slowing you down.



I could go on about GBV. Maybe not as much as band member Jim Greer (read this), but when I saw in Stereogum this morning NME's list of the 50 most influential albums that Is This It was at the top for the last ten years, I was like, hmmm, yeah...  Later I was listening to youtube, finding some great alternate versions of The Love Language's infectiously danceable "Lailita." It reminded me of the first Strokes song that had me hooked, even if I kept it to myself, "Someday." 

And then later today I find this video I'd never seen before. It was, or may as well have been, the passing of the torch to a new generation, the pivitol beginning of the aughts.  The fatherly Pollard and GBV playing against The Strokes on a mock-up of Family Feud, a video to "Someday."  One of the questions from the host: "If you were the world's biggest slob, what would you go a year without washing?" 

"Hands," Casablancas says pretty assuredly (the band claps behind him, also confident)… Later, as they win, another Strokes' hand is offered to GBV in consolation. The shake isn't reciprocated.⁵

Which means nothing (hey, he said he didn't wash his hands, right?). To me GBV's songs are eternal. Which is why it didn't matter what age they were when they got started, noticed, ended, what have you. The Strokes - well they had youth and beauty on their side, and an attitude that, in retrospect, opposed to a lot of bogus Strokes' ripoffs over the decade, has been incredibly sincere. They had/have a kind of dangerous allure, like they just might steal your girlfriend, and if that's not what rock has been about (I say 'should be about') since the Beatles, well, then I have no idea what all the screaming was for the past few decades (I can actually hear Paul McCartney when he plays live now, which means...less).

Wonder what the tens will hold for music? Besides - I bet - another "lo-fi" revival.

-Casey McKinney

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Oh, couldn't embed that video of "Someday", which the initial image above is taken from, so go here again to listen watch and enjoy. Look for some GBV too while you are it.

_{1. Is 'the two thousands' harder to say than Bee Thousand?  We sure liked that phrase in the 1990s.}

<sub>2. I first had some dates wrong about cds when I originally posted this from memory, then today thought aha, the internet, it has a plethora of date information...I'll double check. And sure enough this cd that I thought wasn't released till later (due to other erroneous internet info tricking my mind) had actually come out in 93, the double combo release of Vampire on Titus & Propeller.  I originally wrote the Fast Japanese Spin Cycle EP was the first GBV cd I heard, but that came out in 1994.  Hell maybe I didn't hear any of it till 1994, and maybe Dennis sent both, but anyways afterwards I did listen to plenty of it, even before Bee Thousand arrived, and soon saw them first at the Jabberjaw show in June '94 and then soon again catching up midway through a Lollapalooza tour they were on that summer that I covered for Spin. Ages ago.

And then I didn't  go right out and start a rock band... but I did quit journalism ...for a while.

3. If Pollard ever ran for President, he'd also certainly be the one you'd choose to have a beer with. Then again, The Strokes can do a very nice "Salty Salute" (the GBV drinking anthem) too. et.</sub>

^{4. I think it was the first show after (the album that made them legendary) Bee Thousand came out.}
<sub>5. But then again, shortly after it's all over, Casablancas runs over, tackles GBV, and a hugging melee ensues.

* Last Image note, from Jesse Bransford, outside Richard Telles in Los Angeles, from a show titled The Freed Weed (1994) that featured the work of Bransford, Greene, Fances Stark and so on.  Dennis Cooper and I wrote the "dossier" for the show.  Opened within days (maybe the same day, I can't recall) of that GBV Jabberjaw show.</sub>

We've not ignored this event, Performa - perhaps New York's most exciting new biennale, founded by RoseLee Goldberg in 2004, and focused on performance art - we just couldn't decide whether to do 3000 words a week on it (as Thom Donovan did a superb job of writing about the first week on his blog, WHOF) or blogging about it more briefly here. Alas, before the whole shebang comes to an end, here are four performances to check out. From Alyssa Bianca-Pavley…


Brody Condon: “Case”
For one of his two Performa pieces, Condon has taken William Gibson’s cult novel classic “Neuromancer” and created a performance around it. Ray Radtke and Sasha Grey, as well as other notable people, will perform in a reading based on the book. This is your only chance to catch “Case” in New York. However, Missourians are in luck! If you live in Missouri, the performance will be coming to you in the summer of 2010. “Case” will be performed at the New Museum (235 Bowery) on November 22nd at 12:00 PM. It costs $12

Katie Paterson: “Ancient Darkness TV”
On November 22nd, at 11:59 PM, Katie Paterson and the Manhattan Neighborhood Network will help you take a glimpse into the deep, dark depths of space with Paterson’s minute long broadcast. Amazing and you don’t even have to get off your couch. “Ancient Darkness TV” takes place at the nearest television set, on November 22nd from 11:59 to 12:00 AM. It is free.

Mike Kelley: “A Fantastic World Superimposed on Reality: A Select History of Experimental Music”
Mike Kelley, artist and founder of “Destroy All Monsters”, has curated a two-day experimental music festival within Performa. With an emphasis on the avant-garde and atonality, the festival will unite both the past and present of experimental music. “A Fantastic World” includes presentations of works from John Cage and Bruce Nauman, as well as performances by Genesis Breyer P. Orridge and John Zorn. “A Fantastic World” takes place at the Gramercy Theater (127 East 23rd Street) on November 20th to November 21st, from 6 PM to 12 AM. It costs $50 for both days, $30 for one.


_{Mike Kelly}


Christian Tomaszewski and Joanna Malinowska: “Mother Earth, Sister Moon”
Artists Christian Tomaszweski and Joanna Malinowska have teamed up to create a stellar installation that blends Soviet-era space exploration and science fiction. The installation includes a gigantic space suit sculpture that viewers can go inside of. The space suit is an epic recreation of the suit worn by Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space (way before Sally Ride). The installation includes three fashion shows held inside of the space suit, though it the suit itself is open for viewing and exploration until Performa ends. “Mother Earth, Sister Moon” takes place at Chashama 679 (679 Third Avenue) from November 4th to November 21st. The installation is open Tuesday through Saturday, from 12 to 6 PM and is free. Tickets to the performance on November 21st at 8 pm cost $12.

For more information about these and other events, as well as Performa ’09 in general, check out their website: http://performa-arts.org/

Not able to sleep at 5 am this Sunday morn for some reason, I flip open the laptop and find an interesting etymology debate on the word "OK" -  as I debate whether to cancel my New York Times Sunday edition that costs me $30 a month and should be on the doorstep by now. Having just scanned Media Bistro's Revolving Door, which seems lately to be one big slaughterhouse of journalism job cuts (making me rethink, guiltily, of that cancellation. Really, if I wasn't such a carpetbagging ex-New Yorker, I should be getting the AJC... But um yeah, then again I could, for only $15 bucks a month, still be a Times online subscriber, get the editorials [do I really need to read Maureen Dowd? or find out if Paul Krugman is right that this market uptick past 10,000 has been yet another bubble we've had since March?], the Times magazine, the crosswords, and a nice new electronic reader version, plus a beautiful Reader App that works with Adobe Air.... Jeeez I should be getting paid to advertise all this...). 

I'd almost cancel just because their yearlong Weekender ad campaign is so awful. Should I get up or what? back to sleep? OK? O.K.?  Maybe. yeah? No... Okay, I'm getting up.

In the latest Bookforum there's an article about the resurrected last novel of Vladamir Nabokov, a book he meant never to be published, if he died before finishing it, that is.  But of course his wish goes against the wishes of his fans, and alas we now have it in our possession. I wonder, with modern technology, yikes, what all stuff writers really never meant to have published will be unearthed from their quickly typed emails, IM chats, scrap digital thoughts, credit card receipts and so on. The literary biographer these days will have much less room to fudge and embellish that's for sure. Is one's reality as black and white a culmination of all that gets typed (and filmed and recorded), some mere formations of thought, the muck before the edited classic is allowed to be published?  Oh well, whatever, Nabokov has no say in this, so read this review and then get yourself a copy of The Original of Laura.