Spark

“At the cinema, we do not think, we are thought.” – Jean-Luc Godard

I saw A Serious Man today. Impeccable. I would like to review it, but I’m not sure I can. Perhaps in time.

RS

Greg Behrendt and I, Talking on Phones

Like most of my days, today began with a phone call to a high-profile celebrity. So just use your imagination to imagine Mr. Behrendt’s hands full of phone instead of artfully-wrapped vegetables.

Read read all about it:

Interview with Greg Behrendt

RS

Dirty Projectors – Antone’s, 10/26/2009

Full admission: Dirty Projectors have not paid me to write this review. All the hyperbolic gushing you’ll find below is nothing more than sincere.

Well, they did it.

As much as I love Dirty Projectors, I had my doubts. Could they really do those things with their voices outside the studio? Could they weave them in and out of each other like so much brightly toned thread? Essentially: could they make it sound like the record? Now, that isn’t what you what from a show, the idea being you could have just slipped on headphones and saved the 15 bucks rather than stand, sweaty and cramped, smashed against strangers. But because Dirty Projectors operate on a post-human level of musicianship, they proved to be the exception to that rule. I wanted to hear them recreate impossible sounds. And they did.

Early in the set they launched into “Remade Horizon,” one of Bitte Orca’s most demanding songs (to my ear) for vocalists Amber Coffman and Angel Deradoorian. Performed live, Haley Dekle stepped up in place of Deradoorian to mirror (and subtly distort) the arpeggios coming from Coffman’s mouth. They alternated syllables in perfect time and with no shortness of breath, just like the record told me they would; it was beautiful. Truthfully, I felt more than a stab of nervousness watching them. What if they made a mistake? What if the finely oiled machine that was their voices came off track, what if the gears slipped and they fell away from each other like a Steve Reich tape loop? Would Dave Longstreth leave the stage? I’ve read that he’s quite the taskmaster, demanding insanely long rehearsals of all his bandmates. Stupidly, I found myself scared for Coffman and Dekle.

What a schmuck I am. Because they didn’t screw up. Serenely and with eyes closed, they made the music with their mouths. Despite Longstreth drawing out the song’s intro, they never faltered.

At no point did any aspect of the show falter. They held me in rapture from first to last note. I feel as if I’ll be living in the afterglow of the experience for weeks to come.

There’s so much more to say: the selections played from Rise Above, an album I feel a near religious-devotion toward; the sheer sexiness of this co-ed band; the full, dark mustache the bassist somehow stole from my father circa 1978; each angular guitar note simultaneously chinking and reaffirming the texture woven by all those voices. But really, words die in the face of art like this. So I’ll waste no more of them.

If you have the opportunity, see this band. That’s all I can say with confidence. Maybe everything else I’ve failed at.

RS

The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust

So Three Rivers Arts Festival is a project of The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust. After the Festival ended, I did some freelancing for the Trust, writing pieces for their blog on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette’s website. This position required me to step out of the office a bit more – I conducted more interviews, met with gallery curators, covered the openings of new businesses in Downtown Pittsburgh. I even trolled YouTube for videos of David Copperfield illusions (eyeopening, truly). Take a look:

Dozen

David Copperfield and His Best Illusions

Physical Conditions (Interview with Murray Horne)

John Tesh

Church Basement Ladies

Interview with Greg Behrendt

RS

Three Rivers Arts Festival

I began work for Three Rivers Arts Festival back in 08 as a marketing intern. Before the Festival, I worked on press releases, pieces describing the headlining bands, etc. During the Festival, I did everything from sorting garbage to taking pictures of artists and musicians. Then, during last year’s Festival, I came back aboard, this time maintaining the Festival’s blog. Below you’ll find links to a selection of my posts, sort of an Arts Festival Blog Greatest Hits. No filler, no fluff – you get the idea.

The Black Keys

Formula412

Donora

Booker T.

Openings Bands I

Interview with Tom Sarver

And now for a special treat. Here’s one post that was deemed, a-hem, too provocative for the blog. Apparently, it’s depiction of trash was too real for some people. So now, for the very first time, a post you were never supposed to read:

The Greening of Three Rivers Arts Festival

It’s hot. Despite all the warm suntan lotion I’ve smeared on the part of my neck the baseball cap’s brim doesn’t shade, the strip of naked skin still feels like it’s cooking. Of course, that’s an exaggeration… but it is hot. Hot enough that if you leave a water bottle sitting in sunshine for even five minutes, you won’t want to drink from it.

And the garbage smells. Excuse me – the garbage and the compost.

Last year when I worked trash detail at Three Rivers Arts Festival, I became intimately familiar with the difference between garbage and compost. For example: aluminum foil? Garbage. Corn dog (with stick)? Compost. Cup from McDonalds? Garbage, definitely. Spoon from the Festival? Compost.

And that’s where the problems would start:

“Sir, that spoon you got at the Festival actually isn’t trash. It’s derived from potato resin and can be composted.” Pause.

The man with the grey beard and the Harley Davidson sleeveless shirt, the one featuring motorcycles with eagle wings soaring across the rolling fields of America, stares at me like I’m speaking in a foreign tongue.

“All right,” he says, and dips his tanned arm into the bag of trash to grab his spoon. Then he tosses it into the green compost bag.

I could applaud this man.

Not everyone was so kind. Sometimes you’d just miss stopping the sullen looking teenager from dropping his half-eaten paper plate of funnel cake, complete with compostable Festival forks, into the garbage. And when you told him, he’d stare at you, maybe toss his hair back, and then walk on.

Because of things like this, I came to love rubber gloves. Your hand would turn a ghastly shade of sweaty white if you left it on for too long, but it kept you food free when you went adventuring through bags of garbage, looking for compostables.

Believe it or not, I came to enjoy the job. Each piece of aluminum foil I fished from a bag of compost boosted my happiness meter by three or five points (depending on how the day was going). The sun didn’t feel quite as hot when people noticed the signs and disposed of their trash correctly, or stopped to chat with me about how wonderful the greening initiative was. That was maybe the most impressive part of the job – just how many people composted at home and were ecstatic that the Festival was finally catching up with their private environmental crusades.

To all those people, I say thank you. I also say: Good news. The greening initiative is back.

In 2008 Festival patrons diverted 50 tons of waste from landfills. This year, let’s shoot for more. Let’s keep the Festival at the cutting edge of event environmentalism. And yeah, I’m working on this blog, but that doesn’t mean that you won’t see me at the Festival in 2 weeks, showing you where to put your trash. But maybe you’ll already know.

RS

Inaugural Address

First post.

Essentially, this will function as a reservoir for work I have published elsewhere and new pieces I write as I figure out what I’m doing in Austin, Tejas. Stay tuned.

Coming soon: Links – so many links; links to all the other great material out there that bears my signature. Also, I’ll be seeing Dirty Projectors at Antone’s this Monday – expect a review shortly after. Maybe I can get all Christgau on it’s ass. He’s one of my current obsessions.

RS

p.s. – a special thanks to LB for vigorously slapping my wrists about starting this blog