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I was offered the opportunity to be a part of yesterday’s BOADRUM 9 in Troy NY, and turned it down…to remain on daddy duty.

Boredoms. 9 drummers. Me backstage with EYE.

Instead, it was blanched broccoli, Elmo diapers, repeated readings of The Little Island, and gauging how many inches I can actually pinch these days.

Cooley dispatched intermittent and rabid media files my way last night. Here are some of them:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Cooley (and his companions Herb and Tanner) are planning to write all about it, so I’ll leave it to them to tell you how awesome and life-changing it was. I’ll just go pre-rinse some cloth diapers instead.

Good times.

At home, that’d be on channel 17. In person, that’d be at 294 N Winooski Ave in the BTV.

But about documentaries…they seem to be getting more and more popular.  Obviously 9/11 is a biggie, but I can’t help but wonder if the whole Reality-TV craze has helped ease the general public into actually finding these films interesting.  Because last I knew, the word documentary had a big boring PBS cardigan-wearing stigma around it.  ”It’s a documentary.”  ”Ewwwwwwwwwww.”  Now I’m imaging (with the help of the advent of the digital video camera age) a whole slew of documentaries coming soon, about everything you can imagine.  It’ll probably get pretty shitty…there’ll be movies about smelly socks and working in record stores…but I’ll bet there’ll be some good ones, too.  Just about anything is interesting if presented realistically (now the word real has a stigma to it…of gaudy fakeness).  Um…what the fuck am I talking about?  I don’t know.

Bought some records a few days ago.  Felt good.  Saw !!! last friday with Olsen and Gustav.  Also felt good (thanks Mia!).  Good good good.  (Trying to motivate myself into some postive thinking.  Is it working?  Nope.)

All growing up I remember being wrapped up in clothes I’d never seen before … I had no idea where they came from … and my family, along with thousands of Norwegians from all the boroughs would converge in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn to march down 3rd Ave in celebration of our pre-independence. There are women adorned just like my mother in the picture pushing baby carriages with little infants dressed accordingly, red white and blue streamers (our Norsk colors, don’t get them confused) hanging from the handles … both my grandfathers carrying little flags and dressed to the nines, the inky gloss of their well-buffed shoes swallowing light and blinding the rest of us.

This year I celebrate my Norwegian heritage by playing a rock show at a coffeeshop/bar in Vermont. Come see it– I might be dressed.

If you’re in NYC, the 52nd Annual Norwegian Constitution Day Parade takes place on Third Avenue in the heart of Bay Ridge in Brooklyn. Two visiting marching bands from Norway will participate.The Parade theme this year is ”Norwegian/Americans honor the Family”. The guest speaker will be Finn Kristian Marthinsen of the Norwegian Parliament. Entertainment and the crowning of Miss Norway at conclusion of parade in Leif Ericson Park. The Parade starts at Marine and Third Avenues, and concludes with a program at the Grandstand, 6th Avenue amd 67th Street, Brooklyn, NY. The parade starts at 1:30 pm, program at Grandstand at approximately 3:30 pm. (212) 531 4877.

The fucked up thing about the parade is that its on the 18th … WTF?

May is going to be a busy month around here.  Finishing up the School Bus ”Blue Button” CD, mixing some Kochalka tracks, finishing up the Kochalka album, preparing for the very first School Bus live performance (May 17, w/ Swale at Radio Bean), Kochalka gig opening for Mike Watt (May 3, Higher Ground), tooth extraction (May 16), and finally, picking up Led LO/CO at the airport (always a fun job) and driving them to their marathon gigs at Red Square (May 9) and Nectar’s (May 24).

James Kochalka depicts me in his comics as a dog with a robot brain.  When we went to Oklahoma last year (which has become the subject of a tune on ”Blue Button”) we were presented by a girlie named Heather Peanut with sculptures of our characters.  Thanks, Heather.

Friday was Cat Power.  Mmmmm…Chan.  All that shit people say about her, her rep for being difficult, I didn’t see much of that, maybe a few little hints.  But I don’t blame her, especially when most of the audience is loudly gabbing away throughout the entire show.  I don’t know what’s wrong with this town.  Shitty-ass grooverock bands like Deep Banana Blackout and Strangefolk get undivided attention, Cat Power gets a bunch of talkative hipsters there because Alternative Press magazine told them it was cool.  There was a war going on in my head between my concentration on her, and the relentless babble that raged behind me.  Fucking losers.  And another thing…where are all these 7-foot tall indie rockers coming from?  And why do they always have to be in the front row?  Hey, beanpole…your view of the stage will be great anywhere you fucking stand.  Aside from that shit, Cat Power was great great great, standoffish and pretty and flawless.  It’s too bad she definitely won’t be coming back here again.

Saturday we made the trip to Montreal to see Jackie O Motherfucker and Godspeed You! Black Emperor.  After getting a few rounds of beer and sushi we made our way to the club.  Nice place with a balcony.  Jackie O Motherfucker SUCKED.  No other way to put it.  It was just nothing.  I don’t get it.  Their albums are really good…after a few technical difficulties, Godspeed came out and just rocked.  It was truly exhausting, in the way seeing Lightning Bolt was exhausting.  The enormity of what was happening sonically was almost too much.  My brain was going into these weird zones where it was like being asleep.  They sound just like they do on their records, but being there and feeling the music hitting your chest is something else.  Fuck yeah.

Yesterday (Tuesday) we went back to Montreal to see Yo La Tengo at the Cabaret, which is such a nice little place to see a band, I’ve seen quite a few there now, GBV, Mouse on Mars, Mogwai…Portastatic opened and they sucked.  Superchunk were such a good band, I don’t know much about Portastatic, but it seemed like they were Mac’s Superchunk reject band.  The songs just weren’t good, particularly the lyrics, typical “hold my baby tight, hold my baby all through the night” type stuff.  Oh well.
YLT were great.  They can’t really fail.  And they’re so nice.  So talented and yet, so nice.  They actually like the fact that people like their music, no apathy towards their fans, although when one idiot started yelling “Freebird” Ira very cleverly suggested that yelling “Freebird” at concerts (which so many idiots do) might be the cause of SARS.  And yeah, YLT rock beautifully.  Although, again with the beanpole indie dudes in the front.  Fuck that.

So I feel like I’ve been on some sort of indie rock tour, except I’ve gone home to sleep in my own bed every night.  It’s cool.  I’ve seen a lot of amazing bands, amazing music in the last ten years or so.  I feel lucky.

so I saw Daniel Johnston last night.  Jesus.  I must
explain.

I got there with James and Amy and Kimya Dawson played
in front of 20 people.  I was expecting her to suck (I
don’t know why) but she was actually really good.  She
finished and then people started showing up, maybe 80
people were there…apparently they were there to see
this Dan Bern guy, who’s some honkin’ fuckin’
country-rock Ryan Adams boogie balladeer macho fuck.
And people were into it.

While this was going on Daniel was sorta walking
around trying not to make eye contact with anybody but
not going backstage to be alone.  James tried to talk
to him but didn’t get too far, so he told Daniel that
he heard he liked comics so he was going to get him
some.  This made Daniel happy, so I drove James to his
house and picked up some books to give Daniel.  Daniel
liked them and drew James a picture.  Then he went
back to wandering around the club, mostly
unrecognized, because eveybody was into the
shitloafers grinding out the blueshammer pickin’
cotton blues slop.  They even had a guy come out and
‘sit in’ with them on some bongos.  People were
yelling for an encore, and then the club turns up all
the house lights, like the show is over.  The roadies clear
off the stage completely, till there’s just a chair,
some mics, and an electric piano.  Daniel comes out
and they turn down the lights and Daniel yells “I need
the lights!  I can’t see the words!”  He had a
notebook with his lyrics to read from.  Then his mics
weren’t even on.  This made the whole thing even more
shaky than it was going to be.  I really felt like the
club was trying to screw Daniel over at this point, or
that they were just so fucking cluless to who he was
by having some fuckin hard-rockin’ country rock band
play before him to make their money back.  Assholes.
So Daniel’s playing and now there’s only about 30 of
us watching him, most of everyone else has left, and
about 20 people are in the rear of the club partying
down, playing video games, pool, and talking really
loud.  Mia Sladyk was among them, scenester club
gooddess or whatever she was.  Daniel was playing his
songs on a little guitar with nylon strings.  His
playing was nervous and frantic, he was mashing
whatever strings he could hold down and singing he was
just fine.  He’s Daniel.  He burped during one song
which made him laugh, but mostly he looked like he
didn’t want to be there.  He was playing the songs
faster and faster until the words weren’t matching the
music anymore.  Then he went to play some songs on the
piano.  He put the notebook on the piano and
accidentally turned it off.  He turned it back on and
put the notebook down and turned it off again.  This
happened a few more times until he yelped “Help!  I
need some help!”  His voice is so child-like and
fragile, man.  Then when somebody was finally helping
him, the keyboard got put into some psychedelic whimsy
cheese mode and that made Daniel laugh then he played
two songs and said “Bye” and ran off the stage outside.
That was it.  20 minutes.  That was fine.  I  don’t think anybody
was there taking care of him, he might have just been there by himself.
He’s playing like 40 dates on this tour.  I don’t know why.  I hope
nobody is forcing him to do it.