The UC Berkeley Music Library does not circulate CDs except to graduate students in the Music department, so I go to the Berkeley Public Library in its recently-renovated beautiful building downtown. Like the Urbana Free Library, my old haunt back home, the classical music selection is rather extensive, especially if you browse the shelves of LPs in the back. I realized that I have the habit of enjoying pieces in concert and then never listening to them again, so I’m trying to rectify that and also improve my knowledge of the Canon of Western Music™
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Music I’ve been listening to lately:

• I — The Magnetic Fields
• Fantasma — Cornelius
• Black Angels — George Crumb, performed by the Kronos Quartet
• String Quartets Nos. 1 & 2 — Charles Ives, performed by the Lydian Quartet
• Mingus Moves — Charles Mingus

I thought of a great new album that I will have to make, perhaps sometime this summer when I have more time: Bangin’ Bingen : deep house anthems from DJ Hildegard.

Yes, I have officially started to lose it.

The Anchor Song by Bjork is ridiculously simple, but somehow captures part of the essence of German cabaret music that I love so much. Perhaps it’s the simple horn lines, the very song-ness of it of the structure, or just Bjork’s voice. But I could honestly listen to it over and over again. In fact, I’ll do that.

I had three really good conversations with friends recently, but unfortunately only one of them was with someone local. Walking with Dave Taylor from downtown at midnight and talking about life and math and work and love made me realize how short the walk home really is. I caught up on the phone with Deb and talked about buildings and theater and life after school and the acting bug. And then I talked with Dustin about renovating your life, just obsessing about some new thing for a month as means of reinvigorating yourself, how to clear out back tension, and real life human ninjas. As I told Dave — if every night could be like those then my life would be most blessed.

I would issue a desultory philippic, but the urge to rant has left me of late. Perhaps it’s this Shins‘ album, Chutes Too Narrow, which is pretty good. Other fun new music in my ears comes from Les Sans Culottes. And now to finish my taxes. Vile ravishing (and impovrishing) beasts that they are. In California we write our check to the Franchise Tax Board, which, as Josh Kornbluth pointed out, sounds like a Mafioso family.

Last night Erin Rhode and I went to Ashkenaz for an evening with Lavay Smith and her Red Hot Skillet Lickers, an East Coast Swing/Lindyhop show. Ashkenaz is an odd venue in Berkeley — all sorts of world music, hip-hop, cajun, swing, klezmer, you name it and they play it, as long as it’s not rock-n-roll. The inside resembles a barn more than anything else, exposed rafters and everything. It’s not that big, but there was still quite a bit of room for dancing.

Erin managed to teach me the rudiments of a rock step and a few turns after dinner at home, but I was totally intimdated by the swing-savvy in evidence on the floor. She convinced me to dance one number before I (a) re-twisted my ankle badly and (b) stepped on some woman who looked like my 6th grade teacher and who proceeded to glare at me in a way that suggested detention was in order. I nearly fled the place but ended up driving around the block until my embarrassment faded. We spend the rest of the night standing or sitting and watching the other dancers (lame, I know).

Lavay Smith ended up annoying me more than entertaining me. She was very lackadaisical in her singing, preferring instead to do a few vocal nods in the direction of growling and wailing, and otherwise tossing off lyrics like she was too good for the place. What drew the line for me though was that she started the second set visibly intoxicated. Erin picked up on the slight slurring first, but once it was pointed out to me I could tell some of the band members weren’t sure how to proceed with the show while she waved at various people in the crowd.

All that aside though, I had a good time. Even if she was not so hot, the Skillet Lickers were hot enough to compensate. I was particularly impressed with the alto sax player. And they played Blue Skies, which is one of my favorite tunes. I’m still looking for the Brent Spiner version from that otherwise atrocious Star Trek movie — if anyone has a tip on that, let me know.

I just picked up one CD from 69 Love Songs by the Magnetic Fields, and was groovin’ to it this morning while working on some research, but was disturbed by the crazy skipping action on my CD player. Turns out that Amoeba sold me a skipping CD — first time ever with them. I’m a huge fan of buying used media, but with books you can flip though and see if the pages have been dog-eared (a pet peeve of mine) or if there’s gratuitous underlining, whereas with CDs you cannot. I think it goes back to an underlying problem with the way in which music is marketed. You cannot judge a CD by its cover any more than you can judge a book by its cover, and many CDs get little to no radio airplay. Especially if they are older. So how are you supposed to tell if that 1995 album is one that you want? All of this is old news and old thoughts of others, of course.