The Wily Filipino

Two Possible Poem Epigraphs.

From E.E. Evans-Pritchard's Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande (1937):

Thus when six or seven of the sons of Prince Rikita were entrapped in a ring of fire and burnt to death when hunting cane-rats their death was undoubtedly due to witchcraft.

And from Ron Silliman:

"Turk Street News" was the name [of] a porn theater where I once watched Kathy Acker on the big screen having sex with several men, one of whom was flogging her with a head of iceberg lettuce.

Speaking of poetry, we "blew" most of my Thursday class spending almost an hour discussing just two of Eileen Tabios's poems "After 2 A.M" and "The Wire Sculpture" -- and identity and colonialism and resonance (not meaning) and what made poems "difficult." (Eileen: "difficult" in quotation marks, mind you -- please don't hurt me! At least... don't flog me with iceberg lettuce.)

Your New Favorite Song.

I used to be only a casual listener of Gillian Welch, but the last two years or so have slowly turned me into a big fan. (Seeing her in concert a few weeks ago cemented it.) I bought her very good first album, Revival, when it came out after hearing "Paper Wings" on some free compilation CD that came with a magazine. 1998's Hell among the Yearlings was merely okay, but it took the brilliant Time (The Revelator) -- including the mesmerizing, hope-it-never-ends "I Dream A Highway" -- to get me back on track. (Her appearances on the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack also helped, since it was played practically nonstop back at the house for a long time.)

This particular track is sourced from a 2004 London concert whose bootleg torrent is here (sorry, you may need to log in to see the setlist). I've taken the liberty of converting this one track into a lossy mp3; if you want the whole thing, complete with Dylan / Parsons / The Band covers, and a few tracks with Old Crow Medicine Show, you should probably download the torrent yourself.

Other than her own stuff (the guitar/banjo duets with David Rawlings alone are well worth the download), the jewel here is a gorgeous and utterly heartbreaking cover of Radiohead's "Black Star," which I've been playing over and over the last two days. (There's a lovely version on Christopher O'Riley's True Love Waits as well, but not like this.) It's something of a nod, you cynics might think, to the indie kids in the audience, but I think Welch has always been beloved by the black-rimmed glasses crowd anyhow. I hope a studio version appears soon.

In any case, she owns this song now.

And because Thom Yorke's lyrics are brilliant as well, here they are:

I get home from work and you're still standing in your dressing gown
Well what am I to do?
I know all the things around your head and what they do to you
What are we coming to?
What are we gonna do?

Blame it on the black star
Blame it on the falling sky
Blame it on the satellite that beams me home

The troubled words of a troubled mind I try to understand what is eating you
I try to stay awake but it's 58 hours since I last slept with you
What are we coming to?
I just don't know anymore

Blame it on the black star
Blame it on the falling sky
Blame it on the satellite that beams me home

I get on the train and I just stand about now that I don't think of you
I keep falling over I keep passing out when I see a face like you
What am I coming to?
I'm gonna melt down

Blame it on the black star
Blame it on the falling sky
Blame it on the satellite that beams me home

Hear it (9.2 mb).

Peñaranda / Reyes Reading, 11/4.

A Reading by
Oscar Peñaranda
and
Barbara Jane Reyes

Thursday, November 4, 2004, at 4:00 pm
Richard Oakes Multicultural Center
Cesar Chavez Student Center, San Francisco State University

Oscar Peñaranda was born in the seacoast town of Barugo on the island of Leyte, Philippines. He earned his B.A. (in Literature) and M.A. (Creative Writing) at San Francisco State University where he became part of the struggle to establish Ethnic Studies in the schools. He taught at SF State for 12 years, Everett Middle School for 10 years, and is currently teaching at James Logan High School in Union City. He is the author of a collection of poetry, Full Deck (Jokers Playing), and a collection of short stories, Seasons by the Bay.

Barbara Jane Reyes was born in Manila and raised in the SF Bay Area. She received her undergraduate education at UC Berkeley, and is currently a MFA candidate at SF State University. She is the author of Gravities of Center, and currently at work on her second book (a book-length poem) entitled Poeta en San Francisco.

This event, co-sponsored by the Department of Asian American Studies and the Richard Oakes Multicultural Center, is free and open to the public.

Your New Favorite Song.

Okay, Karen: I give.

(This is a six-minute live version, and yes, it kicks Gwen's skinny ass.)

Hear it (11.4 mb).

Random Notes on The Debut.

When I asked my Filipino lit students* how many people had seen Gene Cajayon's The Debut, I was surprised to see that almost everyone, except the third of the class that was non-Filipino, raised their hands. The Debut was a genuine Filipino American phenomenon: an enthusiastic grassroots campaign, entire families and classrooms lining up in front of the theaters, in support of a truly well-made film. (I bet that some of you can read between the lines and pounce on "well-made" as if I were writing a lukewarm letter of recommendation.)

And because of this campaign alone -- the film's official website spends a good deal of emphasis on how the film was made and marketed -- the sometimes clunky dialogue could be forgiven (I was probably the loudest groaner during the boy-meets-girl scenes), and Dante Basco, who is otherwise an appealing actor, isn't given terribly complex material.** "Charm" isn't necessarily the kind of word filmmakers like to hear, but The Debut at least has a lot of that, and I mean that in a sincerely complimentary way.

The Debut works somewhat schematically, but it still works. The main character, Ben, moves almost like the Campbellian hero of myth through clearly demarcated domains: from "American" to "Filipino" to "Filipino American" and back and forth. The soundtrack, while performed by all Filipino American musicians, marks each passage nicely, if telegraphically: folk music here, hiphop there, guitar-driven rock for Ben's passages into whiteness. (There's a nice scene when Ben is listening to some Slipknotty-stuff on his headphones, working in his room, when his dad bursts in to confront him -- and the door opens, letting the banduria music from the outside fill the room as well.)

The writer drops the ball, unfortunately, in terms of character development. (The obligatory testosterone scene does have to do with balls -- a basketball, in this case -- and guys all dressed in wifebeaters.) This is something of a letdown, since the film makes a point of dropping crucial hints here and there about him wearing clothespins on his nose and so on. His "search for identity" turns out to be disappointingly trite, and in the end assumes the same tired trajectory as, say, Jade Snow Wong in Fifth Chinese Daughter. (But in contrast, Jade Snow learns the lesson that white women are infinitely generous and emotionally open; Ben learns that white women vomit on you and call you ''chink.'')

When I asked the students the significance of the title, my student Tahnee wisely replied that it was also Ben's "debut" as a Filipino American. Or so it would seem: it still isn't clear that any such realization or resolution takes place, despite the narrative gestures toward this conclusion. (If anything developed at all, it's the father's grudging admiration for his son's art at the end.)

This is one reason why Jessica Hagedorn's extravagantly messy The Gangster of Love works on an engaging level: it refuses to anchor the heroine's narrative to anything remotely resembling something paradigmatic. Cajayon deliberately (or, I suspect, carelessly) ends the film in ambiguity, as if he loses his resolve midway to further politicize Ben's muddle regarding his identity.

In comparison, Hagedorn makes this an intensely personal and therefore random and arbitrary quest for her character Rocky. (The truncated conclusion when she visits her estranged father in the Philippines -- which my student Ron characterized as somewhat tacked on -- is at first reading a concession to the demands of the "immigrant narrative," i.e., a return "home," but it seems to be yet another purposely loose thread in the Original Gangsta's meandering, another doomed opportunity to connect.)

*My original plan was to show the class Sana Maulit Muli, Olive Lamasan's at-times hysterical film about Filipinos in the Bay Area that was clearly made for consumption in the Philippines -- alas, no subtitled versions in English were available -- and my second choice, Rod Pulido's fascinating if terribly simplistic The Flip Side wasn't even available commercially.

And in case you're wondering why an anthropologist is teaching a lit class -- well, I'm not sure either.

**Though Eddie Garcia's walk-on role -- and it's practically only a cameo, since it's all saved up for the big blow-up at the end -- deserves applause; Garcia has the best voice in the business, and he can dish out contempt (or lasciviousness) so effortlessly even the audience would wither in their seats.

The Weekend.

I was in a coffee shop (drinking a pint of Widmer Hefeweizen, of course) Saturday afternoon when No Doubt's cover of Talk Talk's "It's My Life" came on -- a cover that I actually rather like. (I told Karen this once and her response was "Oh my God," in the same tones as if she had discovered that I was a Bush supporter or something.) Despite Karen's run-in with a younger Gwen Stefani -- too bad it doesn't end with Gwen eating dust bunnies, but it's a great story nonetheless -- I'm not taking it back, even if it sounds like heresy: it's really not so bad. At least think of it this way: I bet Mark Hollis got a nice chunk of royalties for it, and if this enables him to make another Laughing Stock, then so be it.

Saturday at Fringale was Asian-Women-With-Their-White-Boyfriends Night. No wonder it's so hard to get a date around here.

Then it was off to the Clinic show at Slim's. I had been warned by someone that they perform in scrubs and masks, but I refused to believe it until I saw it. Great show, but it was mostly indistinguishable post-punk pummeling. (Best part: the opening act Autolux, who sounded like a nice mix of MBV and SY.) Then I ran into my student Irene on the sidewalk: luckily I was still coherent!

(To Barb and Darren: Gatorade and Tums worked like a charm!)

Saw this Friday, in the first floor men's bathroom of the recently-renamed Ethnic Studies / Psychology building:

(You can't see it very well in the photo, but someone had scrawled "Who dat?" on top of Carlos Bulosan's spray-painted head -- that makes two things the underpaid custodian will have to paint over.)

I have the urge to caption it "If You Want To Know What We Are, We Are Revolution!" but irony comes so cheap nowadays.

And last of all -- always the best part of my weekends:

Izzy blows a raspberry...

...and admires the spittle on the window.

Anthropologists and the Lockout, Part 3.

Rob O'Brien -- nothing like having a fast blog trigger finger (yes, AAAUnite is a blog devoted to the whole mess) -- has been working mightily to organize AAA members, including the possibility of a counter-conference. Check out his letter to the AAA President, which just about perfectly encapsulates what I hope are many of the association members' sentiments.

The AAA Executive Board's decision to move the conference to Atlanta just plain stinks (and yes, before anyone writes in, I have no idea what it takes or costs to run a big non-profit organization). For logistical reasons alone, the decision is incredibly impractical; at least San Jose was in the same time zone as San Francisco. (The date is also when universities start going on winter break, or plunge students into finals week.) A good number of academics (and certainly graduate students) cannot easily afford to change plans so drastically.

Most important, as I've already written, the decision is terrible in principle; it results in hardly any benefit to the union. The only real winner here is the Hilton group, and AAA's rank capitulation to them makes me ashamed -- a nice gob of spit in the face of the 4,000 locked-out employees.

I've just sent a letter to my department chair at SF State, hoping that there might be a chance -- though it might be a logistical impossibility -- that a counter-conference could be hastily arranged here. We're close enough to downtown, after all -- closer than San Jose or Atlanta -- and I'm betting that there would be a good amount of angry anthropologists with non-refundable tickets who would want to participate. I can't think of a better opportunity to discuss -- and demonstrate -- the relationship between the academy and local communities, or the anthropologist's ethical responsibilities.

Anthropologists and the Lockout, Part 2.

I'm a little stunned:

October 22, 2004

MEMORANDUM

To: AAA members
From: Liz Brumfiel, AAA President, and the AAA Executive Board
Subject: The 2004 Annual Meeting

In a teleconference held on October 21, 2004, the AAA Executive Board voted to move the 2004 Annual Meeting from the San Francisco Hilton on November 17-21 to the Atlanta Hilton, December 15-19, 2004, a change in both venue and date.

Many of you are already aware that the San Francisco Hilton Hotel and thirteen other hotels in San Francisco are in a labor contract standoff with Local 2 of UNITE/HERE, the union representing cooks, dishwashers, bellmen, servers, room cleaners and switchboard operators. Union members struck the hotels several weeks ago and were subsequently locked out. Picket lines are posted at the entrances to the Hilton, and it appears likely that contract negotiations between the union and the multi-employer group representing the 14 hotels will not be settled by November 17, the time originally scheduled for the AAA's Annual Meeting.

On October 18, AAA's Executive Board held a teleconference meeting in order to consider potential responses to the lockout situation. These included moving our function space from the Hilton to other locations in San Francisco and moving the meeting to other cities, including Orlando, Atlanta, Chicago, Oakland, Philadelphia and San Jose. On October 19-20, the Board conducted a poll in which AAA members who had pre-registered for the meeting were asked to express their preference for what, at the time, seemed to be the three most likely possibilities for the meeting: staying at the San Francisco Hilton, moving the meeting to San Jose, or canceling the meeting all together. A summary of the poll results is provided in the table below.

Two factors weighed heavily in the Board's subsequent decision. The first factor was the wishes of the AAA membership. Fifty-six percent of those responding to the poll favored moving the meeting to San Jose or canceling the meeting entirely as their first choice. Only 44% favored holding the meeting in the San Francisco Hilton as a first choice. Moreover, a great many respondents, including some who voted to keep the convention at the Hilton, indicated that they would find it impossible to cross picket lines and that they hoped that the AAA would not meet in a hotel that was locking out unionized employees.

The second factor was the financial position of the AAA. While we could not be sure that the San Francisco Hilton would recover the full amount, breaking the contract with the San Francisco Hilton would expose the Association to potential damages in excess of $1.2 million plus legal fees. Losses of that magnitude would have meant a reduction in program and services for AAA members, and/or the need for a special assessment or voluntary contributions from AAA members.

In response to our informing the Hilton that many of our members would boycott their hotel, the Hilton made us an offer: they would allow us to move our meeting to the Atlanta Hilton this year without the threat of a law suit, if we agreed to return to the San Francisco Hilton in 2006 (when we were scheduled to meet in Atlanta). In effect, the San Francisco Hilton and the Atlanta Hilton would trade their years of AAA meetings. However, the Atlanta Hilton was booked for our scheduled dates of November 17-21. December 15-19 was the first open date that the Board thought reasonable.

The Board realizes that this option is far from ideal. It entails substantial expense and inconvenience for all our members. Many of you have non-refundable tickets and will have to pay a $100 change fee. Some of you have already paid for your hotel rooms in San Francisco. Some of you will already have plans for the new dates. Still, this option allows the AAA to avoid two very serious outcomes: asking our members to cross picket lines and exposing the AAA to a $1.2 million suit by the Hilton.

The sad irony is that the Atlanta Hilton is a non-union hotel. The unionization of the Atlanta Hilton will be a battle for another day. But even the San Jose option would have meant signing a contract with the local Hilton. A committee appointed by the Executive Board last spring is developing a policy to favor living wage municipalities and unionized hotels in choosing future meeting venues. We will also seek a strike cancellation clause in future contracts with meeting hotels.

We deeply regret the cost and inconvenience of this change. We were presented with a situation not of our making, with no good options. The AAA staff moved very quickly to inform us of the situation as it arose and to explore the several possibilities available to us. An additional advantage of this move: it will be easier to orchestrate than the move to San Jose, and it gives the AAA staff slightly more time to engineer the move. The result should be an annual meeting that runs smoothly.

What isn't being mentioned above (why?) is a letter dated Oct. 21st from the San Jose Convention and Visitor's Bureau committing not only to space in the San Jose McEnery Convention Center and hotel space that covers "100% of [the] guest room requirement," but also hotel rates that "include a financial consideration estimated at $150,000 that will help to offset any cancellation fees" and a promise to negotiate with airlines about reducing change fees. (The letter is already being circulated through anthropology e-mail lists, but I'm a little wary of reproducing it here.) While one point may have been made -- the union apparently estimated a $5 million loss to San Francisco if the AAA, the biggest conference in the city of the month of November, pulls out -- it still leaves the union hanging, with little incentive for or pressure on the San Francisco hotel collective to end the lockout. The financial fears of the AAA are clear -- and certainly there will be association members who will not support a special assessment or pay extra dues -- but surely the fine can be negotiated, and there will always be members (like me) who would be willing to pony up something. (Granted, I can donate that money to Local 2 now.)

Final Score: Hilton wins, UNITE HERE still gets nothing, and the AAA... why do I hear the sound of a toilet flushing in the distance?

So: Atlanta, in December. As my friend Jeff quipped, however, in light of the "civil-rights clause" in the union's demands, "I assure you that the Atlanta Hilton will have plenty of African Americans on the staff." [rimshot]

Anthropologists and the SF Hotel Workers' Lockout.

The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is in something of a quandary. Their annual meeting will be held in San Francisco in less than a month. The problem is that 14 hotels, including the San Francisco Hilton where the conference will be held, have locked out 4,000 employees -- housekeepers, cooks, dishwashers, telephone operators -- of Local 2 of UNITE HERE.

As the San Francisco Chronicle points out, this isn't just any "ordinary" strike. (The main issues that face the $26K/year employees are rising healthcare premiums and workweek hours, which is in a sense are "commonplace" demands.) While the union is overwhelmingly composed of immigrant workers (two-thirds are Asian and Latino) it is also demanding, in a so-called "civil-rights proposal," that "quality hotel jobs [be made] more accessible to San Francisco's African American community" -- a population that has been steadily declining in the hotel workforce. I'm sure you folks can see the implications here: a victory would mean the creation of a greater solidarity between more workers of color, as well as a disruption of Management's over-a-century-old tactic of pitting immigrants against African Americans.

As I write this, the AAA is scrambling to figure out what to do, and the debates among its members have become more and more heated. Breaking the contract with Hilton, signed in 1996, exposes the Association to possible financial damages of $1.2 million (and certainly more, because of legal fees). This is not to mention the 5,000-odd participants whose flights and hotels are booked (though I'm willing to bet they haven't written their presentation papers yet -- I have, ha ha). (One non-profit organization I'm familiar with promptly moved their event from one of the hotels (unfortunately to a non-unionized hotel), and is now having their lawyers contest the contract fees, which is in the few thousands.)

It has been suggested that one could still hold the conference at the Hilton, but to not buy food at the restaurants or stay in the rooms. Another alternative is to conduct the conference as usual, but to provide a special venue for the strikers in the conference (or for the participants to join the picketers as well, or to write -- I chuckle at this part -- a strongly-worded letter to the Hilton). Neither alternative seems very tenable, as they both entail crossing the picket lines; scabs will still be responsible for cleaning the conference rooms and filling the water pitchers and so on. Another solution is for different societies within the Association to decide among themselves to move their respective panels to alternative venues, but the ensuing chaos doesn't seem worth it. (San Jose has also been floated as a possible site, but finding 5,000 hotel rooms and the conference space -- not to mention paying the additional expenses on top of the impending Hilton fines -- seems impossible, certainly in less than a month's time.)

I write this from a somewhat lucky position: I live in San Francisco, and so I will not have to eat any airline tickets or hotel reservations. (For utterly selfish reasons, it's a bummer that I may not get to present my paper -- it's not very easy to get a paper accepted -- but that's just it: "a bummer.") While not all anthropologists are so lucky, some will hopefully have universities that will reimburse their expenses. But canceling the conference will send a powerful message to the hotels' Multi-Employer Group. I'm as cash-strapped as any Cal State assistant professor is, but my life is a lot more comfortable than a $26,000-a-year dishwasher now being paid $200 a week out of a strike fund, and if the membership has to absorb some of the damages, then so be it. (What sucks is that Hilton won't be losing very much money over this, and it doesn't necessarily help the union financially, unless the hotels' collective bargaining group see the light after AAA cancels and end the lockout before Thanksgiving.)

Some participants and members of the AAA have already threatened to cancel their association memberships if the conference continues at the Hilton. To cross the picket line seems to me, in this case, a violation of the AAA Code of Ethics, and I quote the relevant -- indeed, the basic -- section here:

Anthropological researchers have primary ethical obligations to the people, species, and materials they study and to the people with whom they work. These obligations can supersede the goal of seeking new knowledge, and can lead to decisions not to undertake or to discontinue a research project when the primary obligation conflicts with other responsibilities, such as those owed to sponsors or clients.

I think the Association would do well to heed that reminder. If anthropologists are indeed obligated to seek social justice -- or at the very least, to remain the tiniest bit relevant to communities outside the academy, especially in an era where workers' rights both in this country and overseas are consistently and systematically eroded -- then I see no other recourse.

Jin / Hung.

Yesterday quietly marked something of a milestone in Asian American history: not one, but two, mainstream album releases -- Jin's The Rest Is History and William Hung's Hung for the Holidays. Discuss.

The Weekend.

Izzy was in a terrible mood all weekend: a tantrum when she didn't get to read an extra book before bedtime, a tantrum when she didn't get to wear the new dress; didn't want to get out of the stroller to see the clownfish or the turtle or the penguins being fed at the aquarium (she eventually did); didn't want to take her nap, and more general wilfullness, including, worst of all, biting me twice! Hopefully she snaps out of it, as she is usually positively angelic. =)

Saw Caetano Veloso at the Masonic on Saturday night, and he was absolutely fantastic. (I wasn't too enamored of his latest album, A Foreign Sound, quite frankly; the world doesn't really need yet another version of "Cry Me A River," but Veloso's unerringly beautiful voice makes it all worthwhile.) Highlights: an awesome "Baby" (one of my favorite songs of all time), Jacques Morelenbaum plucking out Krist Novoselic's bass line on his cello at the beginning of "Come As You Are," and -- of course he wouldn't forget the big crowd pleaser -- "Cucurrucucu Paloma," which was fucking sublime.

Played hooky (after much work today, and grading all last week, thank you very much) by going to SF MoMA with my friend and colleague Ben to the William Eggleston show, probably my favorite photographer. Much has been said about Eggleston's use of color and his "democratic" eye, but for me it has always been the unsettling manner in which his photographs transform your ordinary; one looks around one's world and sees Eggleston in the details.

For Helen.

Helen Toribio left us too soon. Her Great Work -- as historian, teacher, leader, fighter, scholar -- to her, was never done, for she never rested. Now she does; she is greatly missed.

You've Got The Power To Know.

Held court at the Edinburgh Castle last night with Barb and Darren: Maker's Mark, Knob Creek and cider for them, Belhaven and Anchor Steam for me. '80s Karaoke Night planned soon, so we can hear Darren's singing voice (George Michael and Tony Hadley, he says).

No good segue here, but here are links to two of the greatest videos ever:

Har Mar Superstar's "DUI", and Carl Lewis's -- yes, that Carl Lewis -- video for Break It Up.

Kool and Hot Things.

(No Sonic Youth content though.)

One of my favorite films ever is finally coming out on DVD: Georges Franju's Eyes without a Face: read the DVD Savant review.

A shockwave film, titled Pentagon Strike. Fun, but irresponsible in the bigger scheme of things.

I also just got an e-mail message from Wrye Martin, the co-director of Aswang, commenting on something I wrote about a while back. I don't post about movies very much on the blog, so you know they have to be good. =)

Found via the Postal Blowfish mailing list: beats "Fast delivery; great item; excellent seller. A++++++" anytime.

And... I don't know Elouise Oyzon at all, though I'm on her blogroll (will return the favor soon): but this is just about the hottest thing I've read in a while.

A 747 in Your Living Room.

The now famous Ed McGowan, who bought a copy of the Guided By Voices album Propeller on eBay for $6,200:

I’ve seen a lot of bands in my day and GBV when they’re "on" are far and away the most exciting rock and roll experience you will ever have. Remember when you were a teenager, the feeling you got when you blasted "The Punk Meets the Godfather" into your headphones while looking in the mirror? Or, oops, was that just me? Expand that feeling over three hours in a room full of screaming, sweaty, jumping people and you have a typical GBV show. To paraphrase Bono, the live GBV experience is like having a 747 land in your living room.

Silliman in SF.

Gonna have to hightail it from my class Thursday night to catch Ron Silliman's reading at the Unitarian Center -- a shame I can't make it to his talk at State (damn classes!).

A couple of weeks ago my class saw Curtis Choy's classic documentary The Fall of the I-Hotel. I was told, not sure by who, that Silliman is in the scene when the camera makes a long pan across the crowd and Al Robles recites the organizations involved (longshoremen, Glide Memorial Church, The People's Temple -- my students never get that last part). No surprise that Silliman would be there, but alas, my only photo of Young Silliman is The Age of Huts-era Ron, and that was almost a full decade afterwards. Maybe I'll ask him on Thursday. And just for Rhett, I'll be wearing a black sweater and a necklace pendant with a big A on it.

Ghost / Gillian Welch.

Ghost was awesome -- who would have thought that their loose-limbed psych folk would create such a tight, rocking monster on stage? (The new album, in any case, is harder than usual, more Amon Duul II than Amon Duul I.) They started off with a whirl of guitar chaos and theremin feedback, and went on from there: the band stopping and starting on a dime, Masaki Batoh signalling the beats with each crank of his guitar -- not quite approaching the levitational intensity of Second Time Around, but producing a movement somewhat alien to a Ghost concert: headbanging. With flute. "Sun is tangging indeed," to quote an old review.

(The same, alas, could not be said for White Magic or Six Organs Of Admittance. I otherwise liked the former's Through the Sun Door album -- thoughts of a cross between Cat Power and early Helium came to mind -- but live, the songs weren't nearly as compelling. Dust and Chimes spent a good amount of time in my stereo this year, but Ben Chasny's solo, all-acoustic set -- maybe he was joined by other musicians at some point, but I didn't stay long enough -- was tedious and unbearable.)

[The next day, back at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival.]

I can't say enough about Gillian Welch and David Rawlings -- their interplay on stage is amazing, and combined with a stellar repertoire of songs spread over only four albums (Welch already hit the ground running with her debut album Revival), this was for me the main draw of the bluegrass fest. A massive crowd (almost as large as the one that saw Ralph Stanley yesterday) greeted the duo, who started with "I Want To Sing That Rock & Roll." This was also Izzy's very first concert ever, and she was quite pleased, dancing to "Big Rock Candy Mountain" and the standing-ovation crowd sing-along "I'll Fly Away." What an awesome fifty minutes -- I'm really tempted to see them again this weekend...

Bluegrass etc.

Just came from Day One of the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass fest in Golden Gate Park.

Highlights:

- Michael Peasall (I figure he's the dad) saying of the Peasall Sisters (they're teenagers now, much grown since O Brother, Where Art Thou?, "But if any young men looking for a girlfriend come by the merchandise booth to introduce themselves, I've got a gun and a shovel and I won't hesitate to use them both."
- The Hot Club of Cowtown was a revelation -- joyous, infectious Western swing. I gotta check one of their albums out.
- A blistering cover of "Cumberland Blues" from The Waybacks, with Darol Anger on guest violin. (Only downside: a ton of hippies in their fifties freaking out while this was playing.)
- Nick Lowe ending his mostly-solo set with a hushed, dead-serious version of "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace Love And Understanding."
- I had to choose between John Prine and Steve Earle -- went to Earle's moving though predictably downbeat set, though he opened with a hearty "F The CC." (Loved the way some parents had to cover their kids' ears, especially when he asked the audience to shout "F-U-C-K" with him.
- Ralph Stanley's hilariously immodest self-introduction. Well, he's earned it.
- Best of all: Buddy and Julie Miller singing the heartbreaking duet "Forever Has Come To An End" -- and then Emmylou Harris, in full Meg-Ryan-Goes-To-Safeway gear (she was wearing dark glasses and a baseball cap), jumps on stage to do third-part harmony. The audience seemed stunned, as was I.

Later tonight: White Magic! Six Organs Of Admittance! And best of all, Ghost!

Tomorrow, depending on whether my daughter Izzy will put up with it: Gillian Welch!