"Friday Night Frolic" — Pretty Little Lamb(chop)

Look, with an album named Mr. M, cryptic lyrics hidden therein, boys slinking about their own island, scratching and whispering, mocking emotion, well, it seems this evening calls for the proper attire—though, the Suburban Soliloquist is having difficulty locating her black Ray-Bans. (Maybe that's because she doesn't own black Ray-Bans.)

But she's got the T-shirt and she's guessing the geeky Kurt Wagner wouldn't mind her slipping it on. Not at all. Especially if she were pouring him a glass of white. Which she is. He will arrive, Wagner, yes, this very night (tell her traveling hubby and she will deny it), but she can't tell you when or how, or else...

And because the Suburban Soliloquist is in the midst of packing (of which she can't, or won't?, again elaborate), and feels at this moment that she can say it no better, she will permit the Village Voice—which does not hide, scratch or whisper—to speak for her. But first, she'll tell you this: Lambchop is a band. True. Lambchop is  also a...

...vanishingly rare band allowed to exist over several geologic eras of pop-culture time, pursuing a singular, demented muse. Lambchop is an island, removed from the squalor of everyday world, so terrifically inscrutable that you even start looking for significance in their name: not pork chop, but lamb chop. Surely that must mean something. 

Mr. M is, at once, one of the band’s most open-hearted and acidic records. It opens with a flourish of strings that invoke memories of Frank Sinatra’s great, gloomy indigo-jazz records with string arranger Nelson Riddle. The clothes are old ones, slightly threadbare, and they are ones Lambchop have a winking relationship with, dating back at least to 2001′sNixon. You can smell the used-record-sleeve on them. And so, apparently, can Wagner, something he’s quick to draw your attention to. When he enters the song, he appears to be both commenting ironically on its motion and somehow directing its action: “Grandpa’s coughing in the kitchen/ But the strings sound good/ Maybe add some flutes/ And how do get the cups out from over there?”

  Lambchop - If Not I'll Just Die by MergeRecords

*   *   * 

And now, she's pouring him that glass of white...

  Lambchop - Gone Tomorrow by City Slang

The wine tasted like sunshine in the basement.  (For some peculiar reason, this little nugget nudges the Suburban Soliloquist to reach for her 1960s flashcards.)

What were they doing in the basement? Hmm...

Wagner, and his pretty, pretty Lambchop. How they do it they'll never tell.


Listen to more Lambchop here. Lambchop visits Jimmy Fallon, late night, tonight.

(To be honest, er, um, the Suburban Soliloquist has no secret information, she's not even sure who wrote this post.)

(But, the wine did taste like sunshine in the basement.)

Friday Night Frolic - Cold, Cold Ground

Then came the ice birds, through the bleeding sky, over the undulating, aqua field.  The white forest, frozen in dream, did not hear their trumpeting, nor the crunching upon the crisp ocean as a gaggle landed on its crystal beads. 

One eye open and one eye shut, they rested uneasy, gulping the heaving field's abundant air—until impatient and hungry grew the gosling, who cried!

Mother goose took the lead, dew-tipped tails waddled behind, the bleached horizon in the distance pined. 

Where the red sky meets the blue plain, dusk and dawn are the very same. 

A poem, at times, must be scrutinized, to uncover certain clues—this is what the schoolmaster uttered, his tapered pointer a dancing muse.

Ice birds fixed on the cold, cold ground of the ivory shore as they shuffled in cedilla form 
(unlike their innate, accent circonflexe arrays in ruby heavens).

The silver gander considered the graze, and advanced along the inversion, his broad crown alert to what might fill the gizzard. 

Somewhere in the sea of brush: berries, sedge and root. (Had he expected fish?) Then came the ice birds, mandibles wide and serrated, pulled up all the grasses, swam along the scrub, filled their bellies with white forest and frozen dream.

* * *

TOM WAITS

                                                         

No one writes more imaginative story/songs/poems (especially the scruffy, down-and-out sort)  than Tom Waits. Loss, lies, love, lowlife, liquor, loners and lullabies, he covers a lot of ground with a mean growl. Only Bukowski (whose influence on Waits is palpable) growled more prolifically. But Waits is the master of pairing poetic story with melody. And his ballads are beautiful.

From Franks Wild Years (1987)

From his 2006 album, Orphans:

From Mule Variations (1999):

From Alice (2002):

Waits's most recent album, Bad As Me, was released in 2011after a seven year absence in the studio. On Bad As Me he's back like the geese, mandible wide and serrated. You can read (or listen—highly worth the 45 minutes) more about the release on this October, 2011, NPR Fresh Air interview with Waits. 

____________________________________

The geese, as they were this morning (minus inverted color), in the undulating field.

"Friday Night Frolic" - You Know What I Mean?

Internet source unknown

During dinner the other night, just my daughter and me, we kicked about a sticky situation. One of those whatever-I-do-there'll-be-goo situations. I advised her to not get caught in the middle. Let her friends find another fixer and emollient.

You know what I mean? I asked.

She, with that too-serious-for-an-eleven-year-old look of hers, shook her head and said, I know what you mean.

I know you know what I mean, I replied. (I couldn't help myself.)

She straightened in her chair immediately. Little pings going off in her head. A what's-mother-trying-to-do-here kind of smirk. She bleated, I know you know that I know what you mean.

Quick I said, I know you know that I know that you know that I know that you know what I mean.

She squirmed in her chair, and tucked the lower half of both of her legs underneath the back of her thighs so that she sat higher above the table, and spouted, I know you know that I know you know you mean that you know that I know what you mean!

It went on like this, like a 1930's vaudeville act, like Abbot and Costello, like Laurel and Hardy, until we laughed so hard it ached, until we could no longer count the knows and means, and by the time the verbal volley ended she had all but forgotten the knotty position in which she was tangled.

I thought about the old slide projector, and the tripod-style white-textured screen Dad rolled up, hooked to the top of the metal rod. And the black and white movies, and all that equipment. The nights before we ever thought to say, Not the slides again! On those nights Dad pulled the projectors, slide carousels and round, brown canisters of 8mm film out from under the window seat, set it up on a TV tray, plugged in reels, and threaded film through the heavy projector, and we watched grainy slides and the brilliant banter of Abbott and Costello in Who's On First.

While I know Lulu—the girl who loves word play, puns, clever linguistic twists and rhetorical excursions—would appreciate an Abbott and Costello video, I didn't mention them. I'm going to wait until I can retrieve all that heavy equipment and dazzle her with a vintage movie evening with Abbott, Costello and the like. In the meantime, I had  her listen to another form of vaudeville, a musical vaudeville nouveau that dazzled me with its honest lyrics and brilliant rhetoric.

April Smith and the Great Picture Show:



Sassy, quirky music full of swagger that takes you back to the days before CDs, vinyl, cassettes or 8-track. Way back to the early days of the juke box. Cabaret. Burlesque. Vaudeville. And then, zip, right back to today.

With stunning vocals. (By a girl who made her first album with the help of kickstarter.com)



You know what I mean?


Oh, one more...



I can't help myself.