Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1383
Godspeed and Alan Sparhawk at an old mill, except Godspeed cancelled and it was crazy. Walmart run, tons of gardening and networking chores, Gregor Samsa, Dune, Godzilla.
Hey hey hey happy Monday. Good morning to you, fine sirs and madams. Are we all bright-eyed and bushy tai ––– haha no, no, screw that. My existential terror has not particularly subsided.
But what a weekend, nonetheless. So much has happened that I can’t really remember the details of my Friday Walmart run, severely delayed due to my daughter being home sick. But you’re in luck, dear reader, because I actually hit up Walmart three times this weekend. Walmart Radio is back, announcers and fake call-ins and all. They got a thing going whre if you look in one aisle, velcro cable straps are only available for sixteen dollars for thirty of them, but in the next row over you can get a hundred for six bucks, so, yeah. I went to Walmart one time, on Saturday, dressed up in full country hick regalia, wearing my orange over-alls and a light blue work shirt and a trucker’s hat. Not a shred of black on me. Oh, goth, what have I become. They have moved the hoses. There was not a single zip-up hoodie for girls, wtf. Just, like, fake athletic-mom pullover fleeces n shit. Cmon, man, she’s seven.
We are listening this morning to someone named Gregor Samsa, I don’t know who he is but he makes some awesome moody-ass post rock. It’s like goth Mogwai or something. Rick recommended, Rick approved. Album is self-titled. Look for Gregor on a Rick mix tape soon.
Lots of good chore time this weekend. Finished up the pump house project — put the last bit of insulation on the tank, got a mounting hangar for the hose so it doesn’t get buried in the leaves, got the Cat6 cable into there, hooked up a POE switch and a Ubiquiti U6 Pro router, a Eufy security camera (those Chinese spies can look at the inside of a pump house for eternity if they want), an Eve Weather temperature sensor, and added a smart plug to the LED light that illuminates the stained glass rosary. Then I realized that the pump house was beyond the reach of my Thread network, so I had to — and, god, this is embarrassing — add a HomePod Mini to the whole setup to get thread over there so that the Eve Weather and SmartPlug would work. This pump house is ridiculously over-teched. BUT, I can set here at my desk and tell you that last night the coldest it got in there was 54 degrees, and the coldest it got last night was 45, so that is pretty legit.
And I put this whole winterization project to bed by doing a bunch of work in the greenhouse as well. I bought a better — well, older, cheaper – space heater with analog switches so it can turn on and off when you supply power, and I put it on one of those rheostatic outlets god I love those things. I placed it close, but not too close, to the plants and, as in the pump house, I trained the surveillance camera on it so I can remotely check from home whether the heater turned on when it’s freezing, because this is exactly the sort of project where you do all this work and then one little thing goes wrong, the first time you actually need it, which is the first night it freezes, and despite all your work, catastrophic failure ensures, so, you know. Better to indulge your paranoia.
Also raised up a wire shelf in the greenhouse to make one more row of storage, but lifting it with some sawed and painted treated 4×4s and begun construction on two more shelves for the potting bench area but did not, alas, finish them, what with the three coats of epoxy on each side for waterproofing. Next weekend. Promise.
Got all the rest of the Chinese surveillance cameras put up around Chore House, I regret buying those but they sure work well and I have blocked all internet traffic to China from Chore House. This is, of course, easily bypassed, but, you know, it indulges my pettiness nicely. Then I got an old Unifi AP I had forever up and running in the back “yard” of Chore House that should mostly provide Wifi to the entire are between the two houses. Probably not all the way to the main house, but a good bit of it.
Oh yeah somewhere in there I planted a giant bed of garlic, too. I am excited about that. I want to plant more garlic, but that will mean giving up on my fall roma tomatoes, and they are still kicking. Not quite ready to do that yet.
Then I started working on my bin organization which was becoming really bad, all these cheap plastic Sterilite bins not made for being outdoors, their lids cracking, water getting in and everything. I’m not done completely but I did get halfway. Behold:
Saturday night I watched Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire which is a film that people made. The fifth in this particular Godzilla “monsterverse” franchise and, god help me, I’ve watched them all. Though I gave up on the Apple TV Monsterverse-adjacent series after literally five minutes. Not because anything was wrong with it it’s just… I mean, every once in a while I need to zone out and watch something dumb and these Godzilla movies hit that spot nicely. But a ten hours series? No thank you. I’m not watching Godzilla movies to get invested in the characters. Except for that little girl from Skull Island who doesn’t talk. She is great. Excellent addition to the series one, maybe two films back.
Sunday night I was supposed to see Godspeed You Black Emperor! with Alan Sparhawk with my friend Nick, who drove over from Wilmington. But, get this, while Nick was on the road, that afternoon, Godspeed cancelled the show. No explanation. So, Nick gets here, and I have just checked my email and realized they cancelled. But we made the best of it. Emma had already gotten a babysitter — we weren’t sure if Nick was coming — and Alan was still going to play the show (pay what you can, your tickets to Godspeed still good in the future, whether you show up or not), so we went to Saxapahaw to the Haw River Ballroom anyway and got some dessert at the four-star Truck Stop. There was a woman wearing a Swans shirt there. I wanted to talk to her and ask her if she, too, received the new bonkers-AF Swans shirt in the mail from the “band” along with the new 4LP box set of Live Rope. That shirt is so insane. No Swans fan will ever wear it. I have so many questions. But, alas, she left before we did and I did not see her at the show, though obviously she was going.
Then we hung out on the balcony of the Haw River Ballroom, overlooking the old river, man, that place is just gorgeous. And we listened to the opener — a strongly solid woman singer-songwriter on acoustic guitar named Bella Nona of whom I can find nothing on the internet — and then watched the first couple songs of the Alan Sparhawk set…
…which was just fucking insane. To recap: Alan Sparhawk, one-half of the legendary, critically-acclaimed band Low, along with his wife Mimi, who passed away 2 years ago of cancer. He has been making music with their son since, as a very weird duo called Derecho Rhythm Section, and solo under his own name. His new music is so weird. I mean, it’s kinda awesome music, but he does this weird soprano-vocorder thing to his voice on every song. And I honestly cannot tell you confidently whether I can’t stand this because it’s bad or because Alan is doing it and it’s weird to hear him do it and he has a great voice and I just want to hear something like Low. Like, I am deeply into bands such as 100 Gecs that make heavy, heavy use of this same technique. And I have been thinking a lot lately about the utilization of this and similar studio techniques by transgender artists to change their voice to match their self-image. 100 Gecs does this, and I have come across a few other artists doing it recently. There’s something there, is what I’m saying. Buuuutttt…
So then on top of this weirdness - and I am not 100% sure about this, but when you Alan perform tracks from his new solo album White Roses, My God, he has one additional musican with him. And the additional musician…. looks just like him. In my head, I had this separation between Derecho Rhythm Section — his band with his son, which is collaborative and includes young blood and is of course going to sound very different than Low — and Alan Sparhawk solo musician who, in my mind, would be picking up where Low left off. I mean, I should have been disabused of this notion already. White Roses My God sounds nothing like low. But the division persisted in my head.
Until I saw him live, and I realized Alan is touring with his son. They are wearing matching overalls. They both have long, total redneck hair. And Alan’s demeanor in this solo set is totally different than in Low. In my head even as an electronica act solo Sparhawk was something restrained, oblique, aloof, sorta like one of those Aphex Twin sets where he plays crouched behind his decks and you never see his face (man that was a great set). But no! He is out there, jumping around like the hype man that tours with 808 State or something. A total MC. It is so weird.
Even Critically-Acclaimed-Musician-Alan-Sparhawk aside, it is so freakin weird that two bumpkins from outside Duluth, pale, white-ass dudes in overalls, are making this music and touring with freakin Godspeed You Black Emperor with it and playing Primavera and shit. Just bonkers.
But then you sort of start to realize that the whole thing is a father and son trauma bonding over a monumental loss and, well, you kind of want to cry.
The whole thing was so weird.
And then on top of that! We have a real moment of opportunity here. He’s got a standard setlist on this opening slot of this tour and the other solo shows he’s done of late. But here, suddenly, he’s the headliner! He might do something crazy! You never get to see Alan Fucking Sparhawk of Low with a crowd this small anymore (about 150 people, like us, came out to Saxapahaw anyway). What if he plays a Low song in that beautiful room?
Buuuut… We all gotta get up early, it’s a school night, we’re testing out a new babysitter, and the premiere of Dune Prophecy (It was awesome, strong start) is on, so… we go. Setlist does not have an updated setlist from last night. Doubt if it ever will. What if we missed something rare, one-off and spectacular. But I honestly don’t see how they could do it. They only had a bass guitar and a laptop. And they haven’t been doing it at any other shows this tour. But god what if they did what if they played a Low song in this crazy-ass way? I may have missed something un-repeatable.
I don’t wanna know.
We drove there through the back roads and farms. On the way home we took the two-lane “highway” route 54 back into Carrboro then out to Chatham County. Lotta Trump signs still up out there in Alamance county. Somewhere on the drive home, you pass a magic line where it becomes the bluest town in the state, one of the bluesd towns in America. There is no sign marking this. The sign would have to move every year, anyway, because the blue dot is expanding. It would be awesome, though, if there was a sign: “Now entering: Blue.”
Jane’s cough persists, but it is somewhat improved and she is back at school this morning. She liked the new babysitter. She is killing it in her Duolingo math. We had a good weekend together. At Bonjangles Saturday morning, there was a sixty-plus year-old man who looked like Robert Duval and was singing along to Bizarre Love Triangle, which they were playing at a Bojangles at 8 AM in rural NC. Why shouldn’t he sing along? He was probably like 21 when that song came out.
Anyway Jane was great this weekend. Behaved for the babysitter, and only did like three radically unkind things all weekend. Progress.
Moody and Quiet playlist for you today. MOre from the great new Mount Erie, I think this the end of my Sky Cries Mary revisit, love the new ambient Claire Rousay, very into these new artists Mhm Mhm and Sherehzaad, new Fazerdaze has some real gems on it, and here’s some Gregor Samsa for you as promised. Oh yeah and Laura Marling she’s on my in-progress Nepo Baby But Good playlist but so far I only have about 30 minutes on that one. Need more nepo babies!
All right until tomorrow. Let us now turn our attention to, you know, our job.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.