THIS is a CLOSE-UP?

The pic to my right isn't the most current photo of the band -- Steve Kilbey (second from left) has shaved his beard, while Marty Willson-Piper (right) has the long hair and beard of a Grateful Dead member -- but it's still a good photo of The Church , the Australian group that's closing in on thirty years of performance. [Founding member Peter Koppes (right) and Tim Powles (second from right) round out the group, their contributions essential.] And while most bands of their ilk would be content to ossify into '80s fossils, The Church is still a vital and creative unit, both on record and live in concert. [And actually, if you are a fan of the Dead, you might dig the newer, more atmospheric and exploratory music of The Church.] They're is out touring the U.S. as I type, promoting their latest spacey epic Untitled #23 , and while it's not as jaw-droppingly great as their last album Uninvited, Like The Clouds , it's still pretty fine. Due to my having to wo

Hard to get more provocative than that title, huh? But Wald's comely text isn't throwing scattershot rhetorical bombs here; instead, it's a measured examination of popular music of the 20 th Century, a story of artistic serve-and-volley between black and white musicians, swing and jazz, ideas of commerce and "authenticity," the turkey trot and the twist, and much more. And Tom Waits loves it, I guess, which is good. [Trust in Tom.] The rock & roll material (Elvis, Beatles, etc.) is largely saved towards the end of the chronological narrative, and to connect to the title, Wald takes a cursory skip through the career of the Beatles, from the maximum R&B outfit of the German clubs in the early '60s to the full-out Beatlemania period to the Revolver / Sgt. Pepper's retreat to the studio. It's there that Wald makes his most sad and trenchant point: From that point on, white folks [the U.S./U.K. variety] tried to make their own Pet Sounds , whil

I'm a firm believer that you have to be at a certain place in your life for specific things to really hit you, to capture your heart and your mind and your wallet, to connect and make sense on a meaningful level. Sometimes these things come at you too soon, and other times it's just a bit too late, but when there's a confluence, a happy accident of time and space...well, you'll be surprised how fast you'll be hooked. In fact, you can't imagine life without your new discovery. Of course, I'm not speaking about something substantive, like home ownership or heroin or relationships. Instead, I'm talking about the band called Sparks . [Well, not just Sparks. Just last night, I watched David Cronenberg's film version of Naked Lunch , based on the seminal William S. Burroughs novel, for the first time since '95. And I have to say that this 'go-round, it actually made sense in a captivating and hallucinogenic fashion, in ways that were absent i

I've always been a David Letterman guy, going all the way back to my first mid-'80s exposure to his ground-breaking 12:30am Late Night on NBC. His ironic, acerbic, Midwestern, sarcastic, intelligent, thoughtful and creative persona appeals to my sensibilities in many ways, and (for better or worse) he's one of the biggest influences on my teaching persona. I watch him as often as I can, because there will be a time fast approaching when he will no longer inhabit the landscape of television, although his innovative influence will continue (especially in the work of Conan O'Brien and Jimmy Fallon). Like many, I've been watching the fallout from Letterman's relatively innocuous jokes last week about Sarah Palin and her immediate family. (For those that aren't in the know, here's a nice summation .) As a long-time watcher of The Late Show since its inception on CBS, I possess more than a passing understanding of Letterman's comedic sense, and the j

This past weekend found me in St. Petersburg [FL] at a conference for the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. [The specific info is here .] I've attended the SSSS (or "Quad S") conferences before in 1999 and 2002, and both times I found some solid material that helped out my Human Sexuality class. However, this time was not so rewarding along every meaningful level of assessment, and I'm not sure if I'll ever attend a SSSS shindig again. So what went so wrong? For starters, as I'm a social psych guy at heart, I respond more to presentations of data that are more quantitative (measured) than qualitative (observed), and there were too many presentations that relied on qualitative examinations (also known as the "isn't that interesting?" approach) for my liking. For example, one of Friday's lead-off presentations was Trends in the (gendered) content of US adult films , which examined 27 adult films for content in gender-typed pre

This past weekend, I was on the road for over a thousand miles, driving from Petoskey to Detroit to Grand Rapids and there and back and whew and whoa and hither and yon. The purpose? Three concerts in Detroit and two days of AAU volleyball for my niece's team. [And they finished third out of twenty teams, so not so bad for the youngest and almost-tallest of my relatives.] I can't remember the last time I saw three shows back-to-back-to-back, so I set off on the adventure not knowing what to expect. Holy Fuck wsg Crocodiles [Friday @ The Magic Stick] -- I've been to the Magic Stick dozens of times over the years, but this was my first visit since they've added an outdoor patio and bar, which offers a nice vantage point to bathe in top-notch urban decay. But for the most part, I stayed indoors to watch the bands, and was more than happy with my decision. After slogging through a local opening band (--yawn--), the San Diego duo called Crocodiles fired up the red ligh