When I'm on vacation, the gravitational allure of book and music stores seems to increase. I swear, it's as though the stores just know I'm in the area and proceed to toss a couple of extra pellets of collector attractant into the furnace.

So yesterday I'm skulking (mostly in the jazz section, though just for fun I did pick up Sir Mix-a-Lot's Mack Daddy) around Bull Moose Music. Three recordings leapt from the racks into my hands. Susie Ibarra's Folkloriko, Big Satan's soulsaved.hear, and Bill Frisell's Richter 858.

The Frisell CD was a special project for him. Music inspired by the paintings of Girard Richter. The group of musicians included past cohort Hank Roberts on cello and newer faces Eyvind Kang (viola) and Jenny Scheinman (violin).

If you described this music as "guitar with string ensemble" that would make it sound kinda staid and formal. Not even on the same planet. If you're familiar with Frisell's work you have to go all the way back to his early, mostly acoustic records to dig out the first reference point. Then move forward to the electric freakout of a collaboration with Vernon Reid on Smash and Scatteration. The string section here is closer to a jazz rhythm section, with Frisell shifting from clattering, dissonant punctuations to full-on, ham radio tuning noise skronk. It's as textured as Richter's paintings.

Now if you'll excuse me, Becky's Diner awaits.

It's about that time.

The tree is up (though in our case, the tree is coming down, to be replaced by another...first time ever I've had a sick tree. Freshly cut 'n everything!), the presents are wrapped (if I close my eyes and wish real hard, that's sorta true), the dinners are planned (oops, might need one more round of shopping for that) and the Christmas cards have been mailed (OK, I don't want to talk about it).

What I'm really looking forward to is just some down time with family. With that spirit in mind, let's talk about the obvious.

A Cheap Trick concert.

Yes, my yearly holiday music CD came to me by way of a Cheap Trick show I attended during the early 1990's. I've written about it before, but the concert is infused with just so much memory juice. The opening act for the show was an unknown New England-area band called Knots and Crosses. Fronted by singer Carol Noonan, they knocked us out. You know how warmup bands are often booed, sneered at or outright ignored? Not this time. The combination of the band's jangly rock and Noonan's incredible, trilling voice just blew us away. They ended with an acapella version of "Gimme Shelter". It was one of those things where you stand there and, for a moment, forget who you are. After I was done clapping and yelling my brains out, I wiped the drool from my chin and dashed over to the music concession and nabbed a copy of their CD.

Knots and Crosses broke up but Carol Noonan has gone on to make several solo records. She and husband Jeff are also attempting to put a stamp on their local (western Maine) arts world by converting their barn to a performing arts center. Quite an undertaking and also a heartfelt effort at community involvement.

Noonan's latest release, a collection of Christmas recordings, reminds me of what attracted me to her voice in the first place. I might get tired of hearing this music by the end of the season, but Noonan's phenomenal version of "O Holy Night" will never wear out its welcome. Not to these ears. There are a few original tunes on this collection as well, my favorite being "Christmas of '64", about Carol's first guitar (Yes, I remember my first guitar too).

So here I sit on my couch, coffee to my right, world's best cocker spaniel to my left, view of the local church steeple (all white, roman numeral clock, snow on roof) through the window straight ahead. It's time for a little more coffee and a little more music. Yep, it's about that time.

Merry Christmas everybody.

This must be literary hootenany week. Last night, just a few hours after that Hot Topic literary foolishness, I was sitting around flipping through the winter issue of the The Threepenny Review. My first thought, exactly the same as when I read the previous issue, was "Gee...Why the heck am I receiving this publication?" Turns out that TheWife got an ad card for it in the mail and signed me up. Fantastic. There are so many perks to being married to a fellow bookworm. (There are disavatages too...like lack of free and open wallspace due to bookcase dominance).

"Stories of a Bad Song" is a Greil Marcus essay that chronicles the lives of Bob Dylan's "Masters of War". The lives? The first was the initial, protest song, Freewheeling-era unveiling. The second was when Dylan brought the song back into his playlist in the 80's followed by the bizarre performance at the 1991 Grammy Awards. The third was at a talent show at Boulder High School in 2004.

I'm going to talk about how meaning is generated in cultural work, over time; I'm going to talk about how it is that bad art, a bad song, can make its way through time so persistently that questions of good and bad may become absolutely moot. I'm going to talk about a very old song by Bob Dylan.

I've never really thought about the lives of particular songs, for me it's mostly albums that count. Still, Marcus does point out (to me anyway) that sometimes pieces of music can grow beyond their humble (or not so) beginnings to encapsulate so much more. So when somebody slings around the word "nostalgia" as some kinda sneery verbal mud, they're discounting the fact that this stuff means something to folks. It's not just madly wiggling air molecules, it's a part of life.

Check out out. Me & the boys yak it up about whether it's OK to love books with characters such as insance, murderous clowns.

And stuff.

So Mariah Carey received 9 nominations. What the hell is that all about?!

As I related a couple of years ago, I came upon the music of Tom Waits more or less by accident. I heard "Pasties and a G-String (At The Two O'Clock Club)" on a local college radio station. The song, and the subsequent discovery of the rest of the Waits catalog, really opened up my head for the possibilities of what music had to offer.

Though I didn't know it at the time, that day's the little epiphany turned out to be one of the keys to my future writing life. Wow, all from one little song about strippers. Who'd a thunk it?

Well, I discovered Blogcritics in a similar way. I heard a few stories about these things called "blogs" and ventured out there onto the Internet in search of them. One of my favorite blogs was something called "Up Yours And Other Helpful Hints". It was full of what makes a blog great: high energy bitchin' about life via some perfect-rendered potty mouth. Well sure, there was a little sex talk too, but that wasn't the main attraction...at least I don't think so. OK, you all can wipe off the grin formin' on your face!

Ahem...

So the author of that blog was none other than Dawn Olsen. Pretty much the holder of the MasterPottyMouth trophy until The Duke. More important, Dawn's husband, a Mr. Eric Olsen, turned out to be a writer who was starting a new type of group blog thing. Oh yea, sign me up, I think.

And the rest is history. Only a few years of history mind you, but chock full of changes for all manner of folks, myself included.

So the point of this thing, if there is one, is that this Friday Morning Listen happens to be my 500th post to Blogcritics. I tell you, I had absolute no idea how my life would change just from reading that one snarky little blog. Now I've got piles of new music laying around, stacks of old first drafts, busted #2 pencils, reviews and such posted on the Internet, collaborative writing pals, proposals in the works and head-scratching writing sessions 'til 2AM.

I'm still a little amazed by it all.

I will now list the musicals of stage and screen that I have loved.

Rocky Horror Picture Show. Fame. Well...maybe list isn't the right word to use.

OK, so it's the pair of musicals that I have loved. No, I did not love Saturday Night Fever. Never even saw Grease. The Sound Of Music? The hills are alive with the sound of me changing the channel.

I can't tell you how many times someone has said to me, "You must love musicals!" They're always taken aback to see that uncomfortable look spread across my face. I don't know what it is about the genre. The emotions seem too...telegraphed? And just when things get interesting...a song! (One weird counterexample was Steven Bochco's gawd-awful Cop Rock. So bad that it was good. Sort of.)

So why review Rent, the soundtrack? Simple. I gave it a listen and enjoyed the hell out of it.

I hope that fans of this movie (Are there any? I keep hearing bad voodoo coming from reviewland) are not upset by the following facts: I don't really know what Rent is about (which is only fair, since I don't know what La Boheme is about either). I haven't seen the play. I haven't seen the film. I probably won't see the play. Or the movie.

Well, maybe.

In any event, this soundtrack is just full of fun tunes. Here I have to admit that the smorgasbord of styles is making me remember sitting around blasting the Fame soundtrack when I was a kid (Sorry, but "Hot Lunch Jam" was a great song). "Seasons Of Love", asking us how we place value on a year in the life, is pretty inspiring. The thrashy "Rent" is a blast. "Out Tonight" is a pure arena-rock fistwaver. I also like how "Take Me or Leave Me" puts a new spin on the old pop nugget "Lean On Me".

Right, so after hearing these songs it's pretty obvious that there's a lot of yearning going on, that the characters are struggling through (and trying to make sense of) life. Hey, who doesn't? Surely a universal theme.

Shoot, maybe I'll see this movie after all.

After thirty minutes or so of rippin', at blinding speeds of 2X to nearly 3X (OK, so my laptop's CD player is a little old), it was time to plug in the iPod for an update.

Mr. USB connector gives that muted 'click' and then...nothing.

I unplugged and tried again. Still nothing. No iPod in iTunes. Nothing. Come to think of it, my computer didn't complain when I just yanked the cable out.

Hmmm....maybe it's the computer? Down to the office I go to plug into my Linux box.

It reboots on me.

So...a more tech-savvy person might decide that there's something wrong with the cable. A less tech-savvy person would attempt to plug the iPod in again.

A less tech-savvy person might also decide to not plug in again after the second straight reboot.

The third computer (honestly, I wasn't trying to destroy every PC in house, it just looks that way) actually did something useful. It said that there was a power surge on the USB port. Aha! It's the cable after all. A short. Dang, befuddled by technology again.

The irony of this happening while attempting to review a Depeche Mode record is not lost on me. Their music is built with technology and, unlike my ham-handed flubbery, these guys have figured out how to make the silicon do their bidding.

Playing The Angel doesn't really step too far outside the Violator envelope. It instead takes that era's sound and makes it listen to Music For The Masses and Black Celebration. You know, for all of the (admittedly self-inflicted) crap this band has been through, they still know how to make some big noises.

The opening track, "A Pain That I'm Used To", blasts off with the shrieking synth riff from hell. This is followed by the swagger of "John The Revelator", on which the female sorta-gospel chorus flares out a Nick Cave-ish vibe. A nice and intense 1-2 greeting.

Years of hard living have not made David Gahan hide his voice. The ominous and sparse beats of "Macro" don't obscure that instrument as he slips the lyrics ("I Hear My Blood Flow...I Feel It's Caress". Yes, that line on back of the CD hits the mark: "Pain And Suffering in Various Tempos") over a seriously tension-inducing melody, further darkening the already downcast mood.

The slow tunes here definitely harken back to Black Celebration and Music For The Masses. In particular, "Damaged People" and the closing "The Darkest Star". The latter song could be an alter-ego of "Pimpf", with that rising,bruised bombast.

It's funny, but now that over fifteen years have passed since I walked out of a Depeche Mode concert (on the Music For The Masses Tour...they played "Pimpf"->"Behind The Wheel" and then just mailed it in from there) I have apparently come full circle with this music and technology thing. That disappointing concert seemed full of synthesizers, sequencers and not much humanity. Now their humanity is the first thing I hear. Maybe I'm able to look past the technology.

Now I've got to get my own gadgets under control.

That is how much money Howard Stern will be receiving for his move to Sirius. Good gawd.

My mother asked me when I would be making that kind of scratch. I told her that she'd be embarrassed to hear stuff about my sex life on the radio. Her response was that, for $100,000,000/year, she didn't give a damn what I talked about.

It started in the middle of yesterday afternoon, continued on through the evening and finally, mercifully...ended somewhere around 4AM this morning.

A headache of monumental proportions. Though of the sinus variety, it reminded me of when I used to get migraine's once or twice a week. Not so much with the pain thing (migraines hurt much more) but with the feelings of disorientation and 'slowness'. I felt just plain dulled. If I'd let my jaw hang slack I could have passed for an older version of Napoleon Dynamite.

This morning I woke up realizing that I'd only had about two decent hours of sleep. Ughh. I don't need a whole lotta sleep but two hours is nowhere near the five or so that I can live on. Still shaky and mentally wobbly, I forced myself out of bed and into the gray, snow flurry day.

Ah, but what to listen to? Something jarring, so as to give my foggy brain parts a good smack? No, that would be kind of violent. How about something formless and non-demanding? Maybe Eno's Ambient 1: Music For Airports? No, that'd be taking the 'easy' way out. Plus, I might remain smooshy head for the rest of that day.

The solution is music that manages to parallel what it felt like to be inside my head for much of yesterday. Gino Robair is a percussionist who is definitely not afraid to let his imagination take flight. Singular Pleasures is fully improvised set of music played on Robair's collection of percussion instruments and non-instruments forced into service. Did you like to bang on pots & pans when you were a kid? Robair gets to do this as an adult! I love his attitude to this:

This music is improvised, both out of desire and necessity. I approach whatever drums I happened to be using as a set of surfaces which I "prepare" using an array of elements I carry with me. This often includes drums sticks, motors, marbles, cloth mutes, Ebows, brushes, small cymbals, woodblocks, game calls, dog toys, a suckerball, etc.

When Robair recorded this record, he was interested in "the complex resonating characteristics of a drum covered with objects". He liked the unpredictability of that setup:

For example, a towel may cover part of a drum head on which resonant objects are placed - sometimes overlapping and colliding with each other, and often falling off of the drum and striking other objects on the floor. Things occasionally break or explode.

That rattle,clatter and danger of breakage was a major theme inside my head yesterday. Thank goodness it's gone, though I can still enjoy this interesting and thought-provoking music.

P.S. This music may not be for everybody, but when you see a title like "Fricatives in Bovine Portraiture", don't ya have to be just a little intrigued?