Newsletter No. 41: IF FOUND THIS SIDE UP, CALL 911 "The actors who play the characters are not supposed to be actors. They are characters that actors are supposed to play but cannot. They emphasize the difference between what they are and what those so-called actors who are trying to play them areŠWhen the curtain comes down, we applaud the actors who have acted the parts of characters that are too real to be played."‹Anne Paolucci "AN ACTOR'S A GUY WHO, IF YOU AIN'T TALKING ABOUT HIM, HE AIN'T LISTENING."-- MARLON BRANDO What could it be? What could it be that disturbs the soul on a night like tonight when the heat throbs in the blood and the angels with knives smile at you and offer the only confirming affirmation that you're likely to hear as you sit like I do, on the end of the bed and wonder why people make you hurt them. MAKE you shuffle them along into burlap bags of rue. MAKE you fuck their best friends. MAKE you raid their medicine cabinets. And finally MAKE you crash their new car. Why? The fuck if we know. Between the last newsletter and this one a few things have happened. We CANCELLED the June 29th, Bottom of the Hill show. If you showed up, we blame you for MAKING us MAKE you show up. But it went like this: A) We have a show. Great. B) Eugene says "I wonder if the leg that I got kicked to fucking pieces by K1 World Champion CUNG LE is strong enough to support an OXBOW show." C) He discovers in the midst of gravel-bagged hill run that No. No, it is not. We notified Bottom of the Hill. If they were a lover we think it'd be fair to say that they seem to not be talking to us now. We still love them but we think it should be known that true love is only deepened through continued betrayal. And on that noteŠ SHOW ME YOURS OXBOW is playing: 1) The EAGLE on Thursday, SEPT. 16TH w/ ROPE: and in case you've forgotten ROPE is the great Family Vineyard band. 2) The SILVERLAKE LOUNGE in LOS ANGELES on Saturday, SEPT. 18TH w/ROPE: and in case you've forgotten ROPE is better than you are. 3) The EMPTY BOTTLE in CHICAGO on Weds., SEPT. 22nd: This is part of the WIRE Magazine-sponsored Adventures in Modern Music Festival. OXBOW will play with Boom Bip, A View From the Window featuring Axel Dorner, Franz Hautzinger & Keith Rowe, and Leafcutter John. Show starts at 9. Don't expect us to be nice. TEN RECORDS AND WHAT THEY MEAN TO YOU This is going to be new a section on Buddyhead.com that will become an archive of music knowledge for our readers. It'll be a regularly updated section where musicians, artists, and true music fans alike (that means you if you're getting this email) can turn the general public (or at least everyone who reads Buddyhead.com) onto (or off-to) ten records of their choice with an explanation anywhere from one word to as many as it takes to get the fan's point of view across. Basically a top ten list of anything as long as it's music related... and try and keep in mind that we're trying to aim this at the "kids" who read Buddyhead we've probably never heard most of the records in your collection. Think of it as informing the youth... Thanks, Travis Keller EUGENE from OXBOW/www.theoxbow.com 1) Raping a Dead Slave: The Swans In the midst of proto-metal mania and the need for speed, The Swans crushed, killed and destroyed with a sensibility that truly gave voice to those big ticket punk rock items only hinted at by bullshit armchair politicos both before and after. Power, domination and drunk man bathos and hopelessness. If you were 20 at the time this more than successfully hinted toward the fact that the rest of life was not going to get any better. And it didn't. 2) From Her to Eternity: Nick Cave Forget those fucking goth dandies in bathroom mirrors slathering themselves with eyeliner and bracelets with skulls on them. Forget the fact that southern gothic when done by anybody NOT from the south is sort of embarrassing in the same way that seeing a 14-year old smoking a cigarette is. Nick Cave circa 1984 managed to make a record a spiritual heir to James Brown's Please Please Please in its love-lost-hunger and sort of reminded everyone NOT from DC that romance was not dead. It was lurking. With a knife. Somewhere. 3) The Great Adventures of Slick Rick: Slick Rick Genius. Sure, sure dismiss rap if you want but this record fucking kills. Repeated listenings reveal nooks and crannies and a layering that show an artist's eye to fucking detail. Both dense and sparse. And perfectly of its time. 4) King of the Jews: Oxbow Asswipe-ish to put your own band but being an asswipe is a specialty of ours and the reality of it is this record wouldn't be on here if it wasn't for the fact that this record and repeated listenings of this record pull you closer to the abyss. Or the abyss closer to you in its dogged determination to squeeze every bit of joy OUT of life like every bit of joy was squeezed out of our lives when we made it. Yeah yeah, go ahead and laugh. Wretchedness makes us laugh too. 5) Open Fire, Two Guitars: Johnny Mathis Creepy, creepy, creepy. And great. The label tried to NOT release this and it was released over their objections and became a huge hit. Makes me want to put on tennis socks, tighty whities, and sorrow. Fuck yeah. yeah...a top 10 list that goes to 5...because i'm sleeppppppy. cheers, Eugene THE SCROTUM: SACTUS MAILUS RE: AN EVIL HEAT "The end of last summer saw me 'entertaining' a woman in a recording studio I was looking after in the Mission. On a perfectly San Francisco morning, laid and coffee wired, I put on a copy of 'An Evil Heat' that was laying around and enjoyed (loosely, baby, loosely) what is perhaps the finest capture of the Oxbow aesthetic on record. But I only got halfway through the thing as I had business to attend to in the East Bay. Something about the 'The Snake & The Stick' got me thinking of an old Whipping Boy song wherein the narrator is sitting in a chair, by your account one of the electric variety. (You may recall the phone call.) By the time I got home that afternoon I had written a response lamenting this character's rut and the inevitable bloody fucking mess that would rise out of it. Well, the music came fairly easily; the thing was born without breach. It was a vastly different tack and like the Bible said, it was good. The next day a friend of mine killed himself. I'm not saying it was YOUR fault butŠ Fast-forward to last weekend when the same woman and I made use of 'An Evil Heat' to explore some, ah, how shall I put it, FUCKING, amongst other things. I'll forego describing the interplay of song and sex throughout but when 'Shine (Glimmer)' extended into post coitus and the mind drifted into the heat of the room, I had one of those Kubla Khan moments. It was beautiful, only perhaps not quite in the sense Coleridge might have recognized. Now, on principle alone, I usually decline audience with opuses. The only way that the vast majority of them can be distinguished from one another is by title. So, you know, fuck THAT. I don't suffer fools at all let alone listen to them jack off for thirty minutes. At any rate, call this a letter of thanks. Call it kudos and warm regards for the soundtrack. You gentlemen are dirty. Excelsior, Mr. Ferreira P.S. The piano work is amazing. Really." MY NAME IS JUDGE ROY BEAN "Hi, my name's Roy Culver and I just noticed you posted my review of the DVD on the site but didn't know the author's name. The article is actually posted on the Bandoppler web site http://www.bandoppler.com down in the DVD section. It'll show up in the print copy of the magazine in a matter of weeks. FYI! Roy PS - come play southern CA. Please! http://www.bandoppler.com/5_R_Oxbow.htm" SEE ABOVE, MR. ROY. SEE ABOVE. AND BECAUSE THAT FINE ASS BITCH ERICA, FORMERLY OF LOST GOAT AND NOW PERMANENTLY AWOL, REQUESTED IT: OUR FIRST NEWSLETTER THAT DIDN'T BREAK FIVE PAGES. NEXT MONTH: LETTERS FROM JAIL [ Newsletter ]