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Newsletter No. 44: FILE UNDER: I HAVE BEEN KNIFED
"Everyone thinks you're so out of control. OUT... OF... CONTROL. But I've discovered something about you: you are one of the more rigidly controlled people I've ever met. And I don't like it." - A Detracting Supporter "I WILL KILL YOU. KILL YOU!!! I WILL FIND YOU, KILL YOU AND FUCK YOU, JIM. YOU THINK YOU CAN HIDE FROM ME, JIM, WELL THINK AGAIN JIM O'MARA FROM CLEBURNE, FUCKING TEXAS. YOU WILL BE FOUND IF YOU EVER CALL ME AGAIN. LISTEN TO MY VOICE NOW THAT I'VE STOPPED SHOUTING JIM AND ASK YOURSELF ONE QUESTION: IS THIS THE VOICE OF A MAN WHO IS LIABLE TO BE JOKING ABOUT FUCKING YOU AND KILLING YOU?" - EUGENE ROBINSON to JIM O'MARA, erstwhile BILL COLLECTOR It played out all over his face. Like the groundplan for a robbery soon to go awry. The animal hungry eyes sunk deep into darkened pools of taut skin. He wasn't eating. He wasn't sleeping. And if truth be told, he wasn't wanting to. His hungers had grown refined. Like sugar. Or cocaine. But that's OK, that's OK, that's OK - we will live longer and healthier lives being chockfull of desires that lack fulfillment. You see? We don't want to get better. Mostly because we weren't that bad to begin with, but mostly because we will beat this life right out of life and beyond. Bed and bath, indeed. This is the fucking capture of the quickening spirit. Enjoy it will you can. SHOW ME YOURS THE ROBINSON-WENNER OXBOW ACOUSTIC DUO is playing: 10/04/04 Sabala's Portland OR 10/05/04 Graceland Seattle WA 10/07/04 15th St. Tavern Denver CO 10/08/04 Replay Lounge Lawrence KS 10/09/04 Big V's St. Paul MN 10/10/04 High Noon Saloon Madison WI 10/11/04 The Note Chicago IL 10/12/04 Mac's Bar Lansing MI 10/13/04 Comet Bar Cincinnati OH 10/14/04 Nyabinghi Youngstown OH 10/15/04 Broadway Joe's Buffalo NY 10/16/04 The Space Portland ME 10/17/04 The Warehouse Washington DC 10/18/04 Sidebar Tavern Baltimore MD 10/19/04 North Six Brooklyn NY 10/20/04 WFMU New Jersey OXBOW is playing: 1) NOVEMBER 11, 12 & 13: LOS ANGELES: The Troubador POMONA: Unknown SAN FRANCISCO: Great American Music Hall With oh mighty ISIS. Details still as of yet sketchy. WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED? "My name is Eugene Robinson. This is what I am writing you regarding the following shows - The EAGLE on Thursday, SEPT. 16TH w/ ROPE and THE ENABLERS. - The SILVERLAKE LOUNGE in LOS ANGELES on Saturday, SEPT. 18TH w/ROPE - 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. I make no claims of accuracy, fairness or equanimity." THE EAGLE: The great ROPE are doing their spasmodic and spasming detuned assassination of cleanliness and godliness...and, but wait. I get ahead of myself. Terri Wiest and Tracy Hankins band opened the show. BITCHES OF SOMETHING OR OTHER. The full name eludes me possibly because they were going to change it so why would I remember it? I did a reading with Terri like 10 years earlier when I rode with her in van with ROLLINS' interpreter MARK SPERRY to a Santa Cruz coffee shop to bring disinterested hippies reminders of why they remain in Santa Cruz. Tracy I know from knowing her. She has changed her name to Precious, I know not why, and her band plays. But I can't listen as closely as I might because The Eagle is an open layout. Even taking a crap in their bathroom later I'm reminded of how a Gay bar is in a lot of ways like a prison with their penchants for open air bowel voiding and non-restrictive toilet placement. Anyways, people are coming up and talking to me and so even though I'm sitting in the front the whole time I hear only half of what they're playing. But during ROPE's great set, the hecklers start. Invited guests include a few writers from WWW.SKULLGAME.COM, which is almost exactly like saying MEN THAT WILL FIGHT YOU. And they're white blood cell-like moving on and toward the offenders. Looking at me. And waiting. For a sign. Anything. But San Fran shows are weird and it's dawned on me that this could indeed be fan appreciation night. Which in my mind I give them the go-ahead to steal their beers and chase them into another part of the club. Perfect. The great Enablers play. Oxbow plays. We, none of us, end the evening in a steely ball of flame and twisted wreckage. Perfect. THE SILVERLAKE LOUNGE: TRANNIES ALWAYS DISTURB ME. WITHOUT FAIL. IT VIBES WOMAN. ALL THE MAGAZINE TRAPPINGS AND SMELL OF COSMETICS AND COSMETIC SMELLS BUT THERE'S ONE SMELL THAT WON'T BE HIDDEN FROM ME: COCK. UNMISTAKABLE. AND THE DISSONANCE CONSISTENTLY BAFFLES. And as luck would have it THE SILVERLAKE LOUNGE is rousting us early because of a tranny event they're having. But before that the guys from ISIS show up, the folks from HYDRAHEAD, some NEUROSIS-affiliated folks, and all of RADIO VAGO's fans. Radio Vago headlined actually. And they were fucking great. I had to tell them so several times after the show. And several times I heard in return from their singer.... "I really wasn't ready to hear you all tonight. I really wasn't ready." But she was so cute, all these Ani DiFranco-esque women, the tribes of EYL (earnest young lesbians), that it just tore my heart out. Like, well, like something that tears your heart out. But we call this THE DAVID TED SHOW...here is a letter we got from MR. DAVID TED prior to playing this show. "I HAVE EVIL HEAT. I'M INFATUATED WITH THE HEAT. I LIVE IN HOLLYWOOD AND I WANT TO COME TO YOUR SHOW THIS SATURDAY. I'LL LET ALL YOUR BAND MEMBERS FUCK ME ON STAGE. I'LL LET YOU FUCK ME AND HUMILIATE ME IN FRONT OF WHOEVER IS THERE. I DON'T WANT ANY BLOOD ON ME BUT I WILL LET YOU FUCK ME WITHOUT A RUBBER. I DON'T HAVE A DISEASED ASS SO THERE'S NO NEED TO WORRY. I'LL LET YOU FUCK ME, AS HARD AS YOU WANT. I KNOW ALL THE WORDS TO EVIL HEAT. I'LL SING FOR YOU WHILE YOU FUCK ME ON STAGE IN HOLLYWOOD. YOU DON'T EVEN HAVE TO TALK TO ME IF YOU DON'T WANT. I'LL WEAR A BLINDFOLD BUT I WANT ALL FOUR OF YOU TO FUCK ME. ESPECIALLY THE UNCIRCUMCISED ONE. I STILL HAVE A TIGHT ASS. David Ted" And we responded: From: "OX BOW" To: brokn@hotmail.com Subject: RE: I'll fuck the whole band. Date: Mon, 13 Sep 2004 03:55:28 +0000 David Ted: I have Evil Heat. OXBOW: this is good. or bad. DT: I'm infatuated with the Heat. O: this is bad. DT: I live in Hollywood and I want to come to your show this Saturday.> O: wanting to and doing so? often a world apart. DT: I'll let all your band members fuck me on stage. O: well there's only one that might take that offer seriously and you'll recognize him right away. he's the one with the microphone. but he's a, um, large man. a long and large man. DT: I'll let you fuck me and humiliate me in front of whoever is there. O: but Oxbow always runs counter to your desire. that's curiously how the phenomena works. you don't LET Oxbow do anything to you. Oxbow DOES to and if it ends up with you being fucked and humiliated, then so be it. perhaps a cup of warm urine will help wash down the humiliation. DT: I don't want any blood on me but I will let you fuck me without a rubber. O: again with the LET. DT: I'll let you fuck me, as hard as you want. O: Note: the third LET is the deepest. DT: I know all the words to Evil Heat. O: we don't. score one for you. DT: I'll sing for you while you fuck me on stage in Hollywood.> O: and you'll wake up feeling....refreshed. DT: You don't even have to talk to me if you don't want.> O: this is probably the closest thing to a guarantee that you have. DT: I'll wear a blindfold but I want all four of you to fuck me. O: all FOUR of us? you're a bold man. DT: Especially the uncircumcised one. I still have a tight ass. O: how is THAT possible? > DT: I think by the tone of your response you don't take me seriously. O: I think by the tone of your response that you don't think we're taking you seriously. DT: I've attached a photo. Can you pass it along to the singer? O: Done. DT: In fact, I'd rather speak with him, I think he'd understand why this has to happen. O: You run the distinct risk of getting seriously hurt, and we're not talking about feelings, if you're thinking that you're going to establish a "bond" with him. But we'll forward this and what happens will happen. DT: Sometimes, when you hear something or see something it comes at just the right time. 'Evil Heat' came at the right time. I have listened to it over and over for almost a year now. I have to have this, some deep penetration by the creator of it. O: file under: I Have Been Knifed. DT: I'd drink a cup of piss from the creator of 'evil heat', O: this you may receive. DT: i'd take anything oxbow had to give me. O: better a cup of piss than a head wound. DT: i'll send you a picture of my asshole if you need to see it. O: can you send us cash? We need to see some cash. Well to make a long story much longer he showed up. Which was strange for us as we expected it was a lunatic friend or a SKULLGAME habitué. But not, it was him. And we knew it was him because he watched us in the parking lot and he watched us in the club. And he watched us while I listened to the whisper of my pistol. And he stood at bar end and stage foot, gearing up for his triumphant return to right time and place, AMERICA. And we started playing and both his tension and his desire started coming on but with a wholly new sensation that he hadn't counted on and this was real mortal fear and dread. And I was watching him from the corner of my eye and waiting. Waiting and watching and wondering if he wanted to mess with my problem. That is, the problem of insoluble and deep-seated emotional difficulty. He watched a few a songs and I encouraged him the best I knew how. Using all the psychic tricks but he didn't move until I turned my back and that was to flee the club. Ah well. Somedays you feels like a nut and somedays, apparently, you don't. They pay us and we drive home. Quickly. ADVENTURES IN MODERN MUSIC Here is a scenario: Me: NOT jerking off. I sit wedged into the front passenger seat of the OXBOW van on the 2.5 day drive into the heart of Chicago for this show. That is: 5.5 days of driving for 45 minutes of playing. Perfect. And Niko and I drive while Dan and Greg, those of us fruitfully employed. That is, employed as fruits, fly in. This leaves a lot of Together Time for me and Niko. But this in total will play a lot better on me. It's like clown fish and the sea anemones. I'm immune from the heavy lead-like poison of my world view. It festers and flowers for me. But Niko is looking green around the gills and though I should stop I'm driven to go until he finally screams at me at the end of this vignette... She: Are you a faithful man? Me: Why? She: Well, if you were unfaithful and you weren't unfaithful with me AT LEAST ONCE well I'd be really pissed off because... And Niko screamed "stop it...It's too crazy....Too crazy...I don't want to know anymore...." And this Clockwork Orange outburst left me thinking about the movie FARGO and "total fucking radio silence" and the fact that America is a huge, crushing country. But we show up. And I get DRUNK. I don't mean tipsy. I mean rubber legged drunk. No food, no sleep, road madness and a bottle of red wine. PERFECT. HIGHLIGHTS: 1) ME almost having to stab my good friend BRIAN MAGGI for heckling me from the audience. 2) ANNE from THE WIRE introducing me to a bunch of other musicians and then they all lapse into NORWEGIAN and I am totally baffled since to the drunken mind Norwegian, under the best of circumstances, sounds totally made up. 3) Getting reamed for $50 for yet another broken piece of stage equipment. 4) The SHOW itself: while we were not ON...mostly on account of the road, the goddamned road, and the sometimes nature of OXBOW shows and our rigidly controlled standards for channeling our fight with God, well, sometimes it's not as good of a fuck as others but it was cool enough to be in the midst of all of that Chicago-Euro hipster and just grind our cigarette butts into the hopeless and disturbed eye of cool. And then... Almost three days of driving back. All of them as torturous as the first. If not more so. God. We love this shit. Apparently. Since we leave tomorrow for the ROBINSON-WENNER OXBOW ACOUSTIC DUO TOUR. No one returns alive from this. Sure, we'll walk and talk but things will be different. Two men from a band like OXBOW, two men given to morbid self-attentions with nothing to do but think, think, think. This will not end well. Oh well. A LETTER FROM US TO A YOUNG MAN NOT NAMED DAVID TED there were lots of civilian casualties in Dresden. in Korea. in Vietnam. in Grenada. in Israel. in New York. In Moscow. I don't want to relativize this fella's concerns but I'm not so sure that I'm enough of a humanist to think that there is any way out of our stupid animal predicament (the condition of being alive) other than stupid animal politics. these are car wrecks sure. we live on Planet Car Wreck though. and on this planet EVERYONE dies. yes yes, better to die in bed from old age then to be eviscerated by ordnance but to paraphrase Mirbeau, some people are just destined to be eviscerated by ordnance. and some in bed at 94. with a diaper full of shit. que sera sera. it's not numbness I'm feeling. it's philosophical enlightenment I'd like to think. cheers, Eugene NEXT MONTH: A CIGARETTE AND A NAP [ Newsletter ] |