Flying Is for the Byrds

I’m not sure who originally said that “getting there is half the fun,” but I don’t think they had flying in mind. Our journey began with awaking at the butt-crack of dawn, making our way to PDX, zipping through security, cooling our heels at the United Club, and realizing that our original adjacent seat reservations were tossed out the window for what looked like random seat assignments that put us 5 rows apart. In middle seats. What the actual hell? Apparently this is a fairly regular practice, which again brings me to ask, “United, why can’t I quit you?” Air miles and club passes. Derp.

One quick flight later, we landed in San Francisco (United doesn’t offer direct flights from PDX to LAX; other airlines (cough Alaska cough) do, but United came up the cheapest in the airfare lottery), again chilled out a tad in the United Club, then embarked on the second flight of the day.

Another quick flight later, we landed Los Angeles where ongoing tarmac construction has forced incoming passengers to use shuttle buses to get from the plane to the terminal. After being herded around on buses, we claimed our rental car, punched in our AirBnB address, and made our way through the LA sprawl.

Nobody Walks in L.A.

Having grown up in Houston, which is an urban sprawl in the guise of a gigantic concrete dish, I’m no stranger to (a) having to drive everywhere and (b) sharing the roads with the hordes of motor peers doing (a). Perhaps it’s having lived in Portland for a bit, but the density of traffic and the sheer concrete-ness of the city took a bit of acclimating (which I’m not sure I did in the 2-1/2 days we were there).

I think one needs motorized transportation go get from point A to B in L.A. Whether it’s via your own set of wheels or a hired set (public transport or Uber/Lyft), the city is just too huge. And probably by extension of that, and by movies, songs, TV shows, etc. set in Los Angeles, the streets themselves become as ubiquitous as celebrities. Sunset, Melrose, Wilshire, Santa Monica, etc.

We drove past a playground that made me think of the scene in Terminator 2 where Sarah Connor has the dream about Judgment Day. I don’t think that was the actual playground where the scene was filmed, but again, it’s as if I’ve already known the city through images and sounds filtered through someone else’s lenses and soundtracks.

Drive, Eat, Repeat, Win

Roughly an hour after leaving the rental car lot, we made our way to the Silver Lake neighborhood, grabbed some mighty fine lunch at Flore Vegan (including a fantastic pumpkin “cheese”cake), did a quick shopping stop at Ragg Mopp Vintage (where Nancy found a couple of Marimekko dresses – we got one of ’em), and checked in at our AirBnb, which incidentally is a bone’s throw from a huge dog park. That required us to go stretch our legs to ogle at floofers, borkers, and puppers (shush, you snickering speakers of Norwegian!).

Later that evening, we met up with our friends and their bandmates at Hyperion Public for drinks and food, nerded out over Peter Hook, The Left Banke, The Mighty Lemon Drops, and Amazon Print-on-Demand. Wonderful conversation and great eats (their fried “rice” – cauliflower – is fantastic), and before yours truly turned into a pumpkin at midnight, we retired for a well-deserved snooze.

A Beach is Life

The next morning, we fortified ourselves with some caffeine and meal bars, and headed out west towards the coast. One amazing breakfast at Lily’s Malibu later, we were strolling along the beach at Point Dume.

It was a delightfully misty morning (not to be confused with the brownish gauze that hung around the hills the previous day) which eventually cleared to a hazy shade of sunny, but I was still inspired to grab these images in black and white. There’s something about southern California that lends one to view things in monochrome. Not sure what exactly it is, and maybe it’s just me.

Even more canine companions to be spotted here, and one of ’em gave us a knowing look. About what, I can’t begin to guess, but we did share a moment in that look.

When You’re a Tourist, Tour Like a Tourist

And what vacation/junket/jaunt would be complete without a bit of retail therapy? We made our way to the Santa Monica Uniqlo store, picked up a few wintry things (which felt a shade odd considering the balmy weather, but hey, fall is a bit cooler and way wetter in Oregon), and headed back into the city, specifically to Little Tokyo.

Our main objective was to visit the church where John Carpenter set his horror classic Prince of Darkness, which we’d just seen in 35mm at the Hollywood Theatre with soundtrack composer Alan Howarth performing a medley of his works afterwards.

And there it was:

The space is now the LA Artcore Union Center for the Arts, but enough of the film-infused ambience is there.

Remember the bit where Alice Cooper’s creepy vagrant skewers the graduate researcher with a bicycle? And the bit where the green goo zombies get tossed out the window? That’s the alley where the magic happened!

The spot where that guy turns into a pile of insects? It’s still a parking lot, but a paid one. Kinda like the spot in East London where Mary Kelly was murdered is now a car park (i.e., parking garage). I seem to recall that the Soviet NKVD had buried Hitler’s remains in an East German parking lot at some point. Death = parking? Anyway….

I’m sure the Union Center folks see people like us skulk around the space on a regular basis, geeking out about John Carpenter, etc. I’m glad they don’t seem to mind.

A bit of wandering around Little Tokyo afterwards…

…and made our way to the Echo Park neighborhood for a bit of delicious Thai food…

…and record shopping…

…and back to the AirBnB, at which point Nancy went over to the Silver Lake Dog Park to witness the dressed-up and put-upon canines of the Howl-o-ween Costume Contest. I took a nap. Yes, I missed out.

Rock Out with the Sox Out

It says a lot about how out of touch I am with the world sports in that I had no idea that (a) the World Series was happening and (b) was happening at Dodger Stadium, which is a long stone’s throw from the AirBnB, but is close enough to see wrecking astronomers’ views with light pollution (not that I saw too many telescope jockeys).

We headed back to Echo Park and witnessed a minor miracle of an open parking spot relatively close to Echoplex (the venue where our friends were playing). On a complete aside, the rear camera in the Kia Soul is a godsend when it comes to parallel parking.

The Ocean Blue and The Luxembourg Signal

Our friend Beth sings with The Luxembourg Signal, and our friend Oed plays guitar and keyboards (and sings) with The Ocean Blue. Both bands don’t play out much as their members are geographically scattered (across continents in case of The Luxembourg Signal). So shows by either band are pretty rare, requiring not a little bit of logistical heavy lifting to make them happen.

It was a fabulous show with both bands in proverbial top form before a full house of enthusiastic fans, and my typically overanalytical brain stopped taking notes to simply enjoy the evening of music and friends.

I got to finally meet in person a music pen pal of sorts from the 90’s who recently relocated to southern California, at least two other social media friends and acquaintances, one very proud parent, and Beth’s beau Bobby whose Chuck Taylors are pictured below along with Nancy’s Fluevogs and my Bogs.

We Had to Leave Los Angeles…

… but not before (a) doing some record shopping and (b) dropping a lame, sideways reference to the title track of X’s debut LP!

The Los Angeles location of Amoeba Music may be almost as large as the San Francisco one, which is pretty freakin’ huge. I suspect once upon a time I could have spent hours picking through the racks upon racks upon racks of CD’s (and emerged achy, but jubilant with a stack of deals, steals, and finds).

This time around, I found myself immediately overwhelmed by the volume of stuff, so I hung out in the parking garage, answering emails, jumping on conference calls, working on Jira tickets – basically the stuff I do normally, but not while parked under a gigantic record store.

Nancy, being more adventurous and tenacious than I, persevered through the record racks and emerged triumphant with a number of awesome finds, including the triple LP reissue of the Zweistein album.

And then, a drive to the airport, a hop on the rental car bus, a crawl through security screening, a couple of short flights that felt way longer than they were, and finally we returned home late that night.

Toot Sweet, Tout Suite

And the following day, being my birthday, we went over to Pip’s for a celebratory dozen donuts and mugs of chai! As that song went, “today was a good day,” and this trip was a good trip.

BUTT First, a Message from Our Sponsors

On Saturday afternoons (4-6PM Pacific Time) Nancy does her DJ magic on Freeform Portland (KFFP-LP 90.3FM and KFFD-LP 98.3FM), and here we see the artist at work in the midst of a broadcast studio that was completely overhauled and rearranged in the past month.

While Nancy did her tuneful thing, I was installing the new streaming source client (i.e., the machine that turns analog output from the mixing board into an MP3 stream which goes to our Icecast server which then goes to the rest of the non-FM-reachable world which is pretty much everywhere). The streaming client is an open source application called Broadcast Using This Tool, or BUTT which has been a goldmine for puerile humor whenever the previous BUTT server kept crapping out (see?).

And with our community radio duties done for the week, we headed to the venue!

Winging It for Dinner

From what I understand the Portland neu-Thai eatery Pok Pok is a world-famous dining destination for tourists (and locals alike), and what I learned this past weekend (and way belatedly so) is that Pok Pok has a satellite location that cranks out its mainstay dishes – spicy chicken wings and papaya salad – with no fuss, less muss, and even less waiting.

Recognizing that I could go into “hangry mode” without nourishment, Nancy bravely held our place in line so that I could go stuff my face.

And Now, On to the Show!

This was the first time I’ve seen Mr. Hitchcock in performance (I did “see” him before, in an upscale vegan restaurant in San Francisco where we were having an anniversary dinner, and I’d mistaken him for Kurt Loder…), and on this particular pass through Portland we were treated to an acoustic solo set and a four-piece electric rock set.

To say that this man has a vivid imagination is a gross understatement. The surreal, yet poetically coherent lyrics of his songs are only the sprinkles on the delicious cupcake that are his between-song monologues, which from I’ve been told, are spontaneous waking-dream expositions. Boy I wish I had a recording of his monologues from that night, as what little I remember is just too damned little (although we’ll be making references to his Queen Victoria on a steam engine busting down folk music peasants’ hovels in Cornwall).

We Often Dream of Trains

With a short interval (i.e., “intermission” for us former Colonials) Mr. Hitchcock (that sounds just so New York Timesy, dunnit?) returned with his backing band, the Nashville Fabs and started the “electric” set with a suitably augmented version of his classic “I Often Dream of Trains.”

I guess when one has about four decades’ of songs to choose from, the set list will consist of the classics, the newer works, as well as the obscure (and beloved) oddballs.

The dedication of the Soft Boys standard “I Wanna Destroy You” to Brett Kavanaugh went off like fireworks with the delighted Portland crowd, and the repeated reference to songs from a “Norwegian album” I took in nodding stride as something else that was made up on the spot (until Nancy looked into it and found that yes, there really is such a thing!).

The very last song of the evening was the fantastic “Airscape,” the “title” track from the equally fantastic Element of Light album. While I’m usually out the door during the cheering for an encore to get a head start on the drive home, thanks to Nancy and her righteous sense of persistence, I got to enjoy that awesome tune.

I found the whole thing extremely inspiring. Mr. Hitchcock remains in top form, playing and singing wonderfully, the backing band was spot on, and the songs were awesome as expected. I’d strongly recommend you catch him, with or without the Nashville Fabs (preferably with), whenever he comes through your neck of the woods.

Completely Unrelated Postscript

The next day, we made our way back to Pok Pok Wing, as the tofu wings that Nancy had bravely foregone to secure a place in line would not be denied. Afterwards was a hop into downtown Portland where I had an appointment with the Geniuses at the Apple Store. Along the way was this bit of signage:

The choice of the bowl icon for the second vowel had me seeing “puke” at first glance. At least it caught my eye? It was kinda like the awning for another Portland eatery, Thai Pod, which used a combination of capital letters and sans serif typeface that made the sign read “Thai Poo” (they’ve since replaced said awning). Evidently my mind churns in childish, scatalogical ways….

For our most recent radio show on Freeform Portland (KFFP-LP 90.3 FM in north Portland, Oregon), DJ Gilliflower and I (Eeronomicon) tag-teamed on alternating sets of tunes.

In order of appearance:

Pye Corner Audio “Into the Maze” [Sleep Games]
The Watersons “Windham” [Sound, Sound Your Instruments of Joy]
Jon Brooks “House Among the Laurels” [Music for Thomas Carnacki]
Eclection “In Her Mind” [Eclection]
Paddy Kingsland “A Special Kind of People” [The Changes (Original Television Soundtrack)]
Selda “Eco’ya Dönder Beni” [Vurulduk Ey Halkım Unutma Bizi]
Beak> “Spinning Top” [>>]
NEU! “Negativland” [NEU!]
Peter Baumann “Phase By Phase” [Romance 76]
Carol Batton “Intro (Bee-ing)” [Folk Is Not a Four Letter Word]
Fotheringay “The Banks of the Nile” [Fotheringay]
Four Tet “Glasshead” [Glasshead / Calamine]
Lilys “The Escape” [Zero Population Growth]
The Trypes “Music for Neighbors” [The Explorers Hold]
Peter Hammill “Happy” [Fool’s Mate]
Mark Raven & Joan Mills “The Captain’s Apprentice” [Death and the Lady]
The Abstract Truth “Original Man” [Silver Trees]
Popol Vuh “Singet, denn der gesang vertreibt die wölfe” [Coeur de verre (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)]
Fridge “Aphelion” [Eph]
Cavern of Anti-Matter “Solarized Sound” [Hormone Lemonade]
Sun Ra “Angels and Demons at Play” [Angels and Demons at Play]

Stay a while and listen!

It is the third album from Buddha on the Moon, a Texas-based sonic escapist exploring and obfuscating the gray boundaries of song, drone, and soundscape.

BotM’s previous album, ‘The Last Autumn Day,’ came out in 1998, and the near-dozen intervening years should have been sufficient for at least a half-dozen more albums; but not existing as a proper band, with no time tables for rehearsals, shows or tours has a way of stretching time and so conventional norms of schedule or agenda become obsolete.

As such, ‘Between Seasons’ came about at its own pace, on its own time and space, recorded, sampled, processed and tweaked, mixed and remixed, forgotten and rediscovered over a period of four years using a wide array of digital and analog media, mountain dulcimer, kantele, guitars and basses acoustic and electric, various synthesizers, and a collection of ‘modestly-priced microphones’.

— Sonic Oyster Records

Originally released as a limited edition cd-r of 50 copies on the Sonic Oyster Records label of Glasgow, Scotland.

Sounds & Words: Buddha on the Moon
Additional Voices: Nancy Novotny

Thank you Andrew, Ian, Keith

For Nan