Soo Doh Nim's blog

The Mekons were and are a great band, and I thank my editor Derek for turning me on to them. I got to the Mekons by going to two (very different) solo shows by one of its frontmen, Jon Langford. Through Derek, I since have discovered that Langford operates side bands. One is called the Pine Valley Cosmonauts. Another is called the Waco Brothers. I went to a Waco Brothers show last week, which featured the strange addition of a Jesus Jones former member on bass, while former Pere Ubu bass player Tony Maimone hung out in the audience. How hip!

Anyway, the Waco Brothers are a Chicago-based punk-country band, and that doesn't mean they are rockabilly. They are country, they play in a punky way and they rock. They also jangle. Go see them. They do a mean cover of "Revolution Blues" by Neil Young, and Langford, bless his heart, covers Procol Harum when he plays solo. Also check out the Waco Brothers song, "Plenty Tough, Union Made." Brilliant.

I bought the Waco Brothers album, "... To the Last Dead Cowboy." Check out a sample somewhere. I can't recommend Mekons albums yet because I don't have any, but I can say nice things about two Langford albums I picked up, "All the Fame of Lofty Deeds," which has a gorgeous if creepy cover, as well as "Gold Brick."

What makes Langford more appealing is that he's pissy AND friendly. For someone who's just well known enough to have people mob him at times, he is still adept at hanging out at the bar before the show and having just enough personal conversation time with people that he comes off as someone who is a human being and a professional musician. Tough combination. My editor Derek is writing a book about the Mekons, and has spent some real time with him, and I thought it nice, as a result, that when he reintroduced me to Langford, he remembered me as one of the Reuters guys.

Happy listening.

I was reading an article in The Atlantic about how Google may be making us stoopid. It made passing reference to the way that The New York Times devotes pages 2 and 3 of its front section to abstracts of other articles. A Timesman says that it's something that makes it more efficient for readers to figure out what's going on than to turn the pages. The article's author then uses this as evidence to say that old media feels it must change to suit the tastes of people raised on the new.

My contacts on my job laugh at the Times for doing this, saying it's ill-suited to what it does and not what its role should be - an abrogation of its duties to be the intellectual, if rather stodgy repository of smart writing and deep reporting (which it has and hasn't been since 1851, but that is another story). I would note that if the Times had not taken this step, however, people would continue to level the other big criticism at the Times that they level at other newspapers: Why can't they change? They must if they want to survive.

They can't get a break.

Of course, the argument that newspapers must change applies more to their business model: advertising, mainly classifieds, brings in 75 percent of the money, while the subscriptions and newsstand sales make up the difference. That's not really an argument that newspapers must change the material that we read or see. That argument has gone on for ages. Consider how when you were young and the newspaper tried to present an article that it thought would be hip and edgily written, a zine inside the Home section. Think of the Post's Sunday Source. Then retch. Newspapers have always been duds when it comes to cool, and that's happening more now than ever as the editors make the reporters dance to a rhythm that neither really gets.

This is a digression of course. The point was already stated above: Newspapers get nailed for looking like old ladies in tight dresses when they try to spiff up the presentation. They get nailed for being old ladies in sensible tweeds when they persist in being what they are. They should consider this: report the news the best that you can, apply your reporting resources where your strengths are, break news instead of whining about how you can't break news (this is a letter to myself, culprit No. 1) and show advertisers that this is where you are hot. The competition may be fierce, but newspapers have the brand. Now they just have to keep up the brand's stock. Blah blah blah.

Learned by happenstance that Wire was playing a free show Friday night at the South Street Seaport in Manhattan. As an owner of the following albums,

Pink Flag, Chairs Missing, 1-5-4, Document and Eyewitness, Turns and Strokes, The Ideal  Copy, A Bell Is a Cup  Until It Is Struck, It's Beginning To and Back Again, Manscape, The Drill, The First Letter, and Send,

and singles/EPs,

Snakedrill, In Vivo, Wirvien, 12XU

and solo works,
Dome 1&2, Dome 3&4, Or So It Seems, Hail!, Take Care, Catch Supposes, Matching Crosses, Immanent, Pre>He, 8Time, Whilst Climbing Thieves Vie for Attention, Because We Must, Pacific Specific/In a Different Place, This Way, The Shivering Man, Music for Fruit, Insiding, Ab Ovo, In Esse,

... and others, I decided that I had to go.

Great show. They still have it. They played mostly new music that hadn't been performed before, and what old stuff they played was great, but not as good as the new music.

If you want to know about Wire and their drastically different albums, start with Pink Flag, move to Chairs Missing and 1-5-4 and then to The Ideal Copy. The others are expendable, though all have great moments.

I don't know anything
You know more than I do
That's not really what I do
I haven't heard a thing
That's not true
I'm not the person you should be calling
I'll let you know if something changes

Any more? Feel free to submit.

http://gawker.com/392785/youre-high

The Triffids: Born Sandy Devotional.
Don't ask questions. Just buy it. If you want to try one song first, make it Wide Open Road.

Fuck yeah. Back in the land of the living.

Sweet.

DELHI - The bars of Calcutta and Delhi play a lot of music that you've heard on compilation CDs. No one responds when Aqualung comes on (except your humble namesake), nor when they give Hotel California a workout. But Anupreeta says that your greatest hits of the 70s, 80s, 90s and today are standard fare at big city bars here. When we were in Calcutta, the places where white people and Indians of a certain hauteur congregate will play a couple of standards:

- that one-hit wonder Hot Chocolate and whatever that damned song is they did. Ah yes: You Sexy Thing.

- Kiss by Prince. THANK YOU India.

- With or Without You. ONE TWO THREE FOURTEEN!

- INXS: Beautiful Girl, Suicide Blonde.

- And nearly everywhere, from the bar to the bookstores: Black Magic Woman. Though they always cut it out before the Gypsy Queen instrumental. Too bad.

Is this where Karaoke to the Death came from? Still no Bohemian Rhapsody, though with 24 hours to go and several coffee bars yet unpatronized, I can see it happening.

A couple of necesssary corrections as pointed out by a new commenter on the blog:

- Good lord, yes, Khushwant Singh -- not Vishwant. Terribly sorry. I leafed through some of the man's books at the airport and wanted to buy them all because I couldn't choose one. I picked none instead, hoping I can find him at the library when I get home or at least buy some secondhand copies. I think he's in his 80s or 90s so he's probably set up already, moneywise.

- Lodhi Gardens, yes?

- Calcutta has nothing on Delhi as the raw force of nature. There's something more like New Orleans decaying romance going on there. Delhi is the powerhouse, however. And both have impressive traffic. As for the gins-and-tonics, neither city has the edge. You still must ask for "plenty of ice."

- A POSITIVE side note on differential pricing: At the Buzz bar in the Saket neighborhood, domestic gins get a heavy discount at happy hour. Of course, they had neither the Gilbeys or Seagrams that we were hoping for, but thank goodness for bathtub's finest, Blue Riband [sic], which the waiter discovered, presumably to his horror, white fellers don't mind drinking. We don't mind going blind, you see, what? Chak de India indeed!