Boxer vs. Boxer

Of these two warriors, IntangibleArts' own GOMEZ is the slightly smaller one. Motley has the white patch on the back of the neck...It's a tender ballet of joy, as performed by a pair of spastic knuckleheads.

Orpheus Mon Amor

I'm a bit late in posting this, but for all the vinyl addicts in the area, there's still time if you hustle down to Arlington THIS WEEK...

The news of Orpheus Records' closing was made public a while ago, and The Faithful have been flocking to the Wilson Boulevard shop ever since, to pick the bones of that poor, dying beast.

When I got there, Carl (longtime Intangible Comrade and, conveniently, part-time employee of the shop) informed me that, to paraphrase:

It's a good thing you made it this weekend: We've had no word from the landlord (re: extended lease arrangements) which means by default, the store is dead next weekend, and Rick will be packing up the store on Saturday...

So, pardon the Old English expression (or is it Germanic?) but holy shit!

So this is it, then? I asked if the remaining stock was all going to some kind of graveyard auction. Nope, he said, anything not sold is going into storage. And THAT would likely be a whole shop's worth of records right there, no matter how much he sells before next weekend.

I had already assumed this would be my last trip to the store before it finally closed, since it isn't THAT easy to get from my place in DC to the shop in Arlington... but I also assumed that we still had another couple of weeks with the old place.

Anyway.

I've been reading Nick Hornby's excellent memoir Fever Pitch, which marks the significant events in the author's life against Arsenal matches. Thus, it's a life viewed through the eyes of a hopeless obsessive. In Hornby's case, it's an addiction to English football culture. And there are loads of incisive, perfectly worded bits in that book that describe the obsessive personality, from the inside.

In my case, it isn't soccer (although that could happen as well, as soon as DCU starts kicking this season), it's a record-collecting fixation. So Hornby's other book (High Fidelity) might be more appropriate.

So. Last chance at an Orpheus run. Fine. Pick the bones like a ruthless buzzard. Start at A, and work down to Z...

The bins were pretty well picked through, so it became an exercise in collecting "filler" material. That would be albums I have on CD, which I previously had on vinyl, but sold years ago when CDs came out, BUT now will re-purchase on vinyl and sell the CDs. This is because I've finally come to my senses and realized that VINYL is the ultimate form of musical permanence. And CDs are just temporal fluff. That's right, bloody "technology"... you heard me.

So the "filler" consisted mostly of 80s semi-underground pop that I'm too nerdish to resist: Nina Hagen, XTC, Oingo Boingo, that kind of thing. And some headier stuff: Nektar, Jane, and a still-sealed copy of The Muffins' Open City...And, after passing it by for years, I finally bought the lone copy of "Jehova" My Black Ass by Peach of Immortality (infamous local '80s noise band, one member of which went on to form Jackhammer Orchestra, Furnace, and the more successful Chemlab)...

Fifteen albums for $53 is a good day.

I was going to take a last-chance photo of the Orpheus storefront, but it didn't feel right. It was like taking a portrait of a dying friend in a hospital bed. Weird vibes. And with a heavy sigh, I hauled my goodies down to the Clarendon Metro. And home.

Crap: As I waited for the train, I remembered I already had a freaking vinyl copy of Open City. So call me the ultimate Muffins fan. Or an imbecile. Call it the fog of war. Other collectors would understand.

Orpheus and the death rattle

Ah, screw it.

I was going to write a very long-winded and tear-jerking elegy to Orpheus Records, one of the last great vinyl record stores in the greater DC area. I was going to sing the death-song of a musical mecca. I was going to provide an amazing amount of insider reporting and weepy, record-collector saliva.

But ehh, screw it.

Marc Fisher did a great piece in the Post about it here, and blogger brethren Vinyl District mirrored it here. I could pursue my sources and try to provide something new, but........eh, screw it. It's all been done. We've been to this funeral already, for other shops.

In fact, the store is uniquely valuable for that reason: Orpheus owner Rick Carlisle ended up with the bulk of the remaining stock from legendary Silver Spring record store Vinyl Ink, after George Gelastino died several years ago. George had closed his store on Bonifant Street to go exclusively online, and even THAT was a local tragedy for us old farts who love the classic vinyl-flipping ritual. Record-shopping in person. In the flesh.


Sure, we can still get our fix by purchasing records online, but it's the thrill of the hunt, dammit, we love the dusty fingers, the shock of the unexpected discovery:

(Oh SHIT, I was here in the miscellaneous 'G' section, hoping to find some old Brain-label Grobschnitt records, but here they have some early Guru Guru! Jesus!)

If you don't have the disease, you wouldn't understand. But shops like Vinyl Ink and Orpheus were really good for that.

Anyway, the bottom line is, the lease is up on the site where Orpheus now resides and, years after Rick moved the shop from Georgetown, he doesn't have another move in him. The neighborhood is gentrifying beyond recognition. And besides, Rick has been in this business for a king's age. So the shop will die slowly, over the next few weeks. Sale prices, etc.


So get down there while you can. Orpheus has been one of the only things that can get me to cross the river, for crissakes. So once the store is shuttered for good, I may never set foot on Virginian soil anymore. Unless of course Ben Chasny plays Iota again.

So, while the patient still lives:
Orpheus Records
3173 Wilson Blvd, Arlington VA
...mere shouting distance from the Clarendon Metro.

Six Organs of Admittance

I owe my fascination with Ben Chasny's music to comrade Quisp Quake, who had a phenomenal radio show at Colby College's WMHB in Waterville, Maine. Several times during my episode in Bangor, I'd go down there with a box of CDs and co-host the show with him.

It was a great format, dubbed Dueling Freaks: We'd take half-hour shifts and devastate each other with recent musical discoveries. It was totally self-indulgent, but good fun. And a great way to ward off the Maine winter swirling outside the studio.

One of the tracks Quake played was something by Six Organs of Admittance called "It Was Written", from a split 7". It was decidedly lo-fi: just guitar, vocal, and hand percussion, but something was bubbling inside. It was spacious and folksy and trancelike. It was vastly psychedelic, yet minimal.

I was immediately hooked.

Fast-forward to 24jan08: Six Organs was scheduled to play at IOTA in Arlington. Immediately, snap into action! Start figuring out how to make the show while taking care of a young dog that needs to pee regularly, and a wife who is nursing a broken knee and is thus quite immobile... BAH! It must be done!

Opening the show was DC's own Kohoutek, who droned out a very strong, hairy wall of psychedelic trance-rock. It was hard to figure how much of it was improvised, and/or how much of a structure was worked out beforehand, but it came across like a fairly telepathic jam, with alternating passages of riff and loose noodling. The set sounded like the louder side of early Ash Ra Tempel, or The Spacious Mind, or maybe F/i... Not a bad thing, if you can pull it off. And they did.

This time, Six Organs of Admittance was an almost-duet, consisting of Ben Chasny and Elisa Ambrogio (of Magik Markers fame).


The first half of the set was Chasny solo, performing a selection of quieter numbers from the back catalog. It was truly awesome to hear favorites like "Spirits Abandoned" and "This Hand" (both from the excellent Dark Noontide lp); slow and haunting and full of color and wind.


Eventually, Chasny was joined by Elisa, who provided chanting vocal harmonies and some guitar support, and then they promptly exploded: I forget what the hell tune it was ("Dance Among the Waiting" maybe?), which grew from a low mantra to a swirling vortex of amplified crackling bees. Elisa stomped the bees out of her guitar, wailing a pungent stew of noise like a cyclone of dreaming devils, while Chasny churned his own blast of guitar heaviness. Both of them were weaving a very large braid of noise that filled Iota like a sunburst.


A click of a pedal, and we're back to the mellow side... It was magical shit, children.

I had to boogie as soon as it was over, and get back to Marian's broken leg and the dog's full bladder. So: no time to linger and schmooze. Hit the merch table, score some choice vinyl (the new 6 Organs lp, plus the out-of-print Basalt Fingers lp), and hustle through the frigid winter night...

It was a damned fine evening.

Shirlington Dog Factory

This amounts to a sequel of my recent report on the DC dog park situation. Several people had suggested Shirlington Park as an alternative to Wheaton... In fact, we were pummeled with enthusiastic Shirlingtonian propoganda. It sounded like there was a mad hoarde of dog owners out there, who believed this Shirlington place was the BEE'S FREAKIN' KNEES, and we'd be idiots to report on the scene without visiting that place.

And so we did. Even though it's on THAT side of the river.

We just had a solid week of rain, and poor Gomez was completely insane with cabin fever. He hadn't had a decent walk in ages. So the plan was to let him explode at this Shirlington place, and then settle back at home while he died on the floor in a puddle of exhaustion. Maybe we'd finally watch that Netflix copy of The Usual Suspects.

[No spoilers in the comments, please. Marian hasn't seen it yet. Not as of this writing, anyway.]


The park is a huge stretch of fenced property behind South Four Mile Run between Shirlington Road and South Walter Reed Drive. For us, it's a simple hop down North Capitol Street to NY Ave and 395, off at the Shirlington exit, and we're practically there. It runs along a shallow stretch of water, which is fenced off, so the humans have some control over whether the dogs have access to the water.


Gomez leaped and porpoised in the water like the wicked banshee monkey-faced cocaine-riddled freak-puppet he really is, and made some new friends in the process.

But here again, the real Dog Park Experience has as much to do with the humans as the facility itself. The place is so incredibly spread out, some folks simply trust their dogs to behave, whilst they sit on benches and read books or flirt with each other. For the most part it works fine, but the occasional aggressive dog can ruin the party for everybody, while the owner is off somewhere...

So the final grade for this place is very favorable, but peppered with caveats... The facilities are amazing, with ample room for billions of dogs. The steep embankment on the other side of the stream is not fenced, and one couple told us they DID witness a dog scale that side and vanish. But it would take a very determined, obsessive, neurotic dog to do that; I'd call it a minimal risk. Poo-bags are provided, as are sturdy benches and a few picnic tables. The place is well-shaded, and people clearly know about the park: We arrived at 11am this morning (Sunday) and the place was hopping with activity.

But for overall nice-nice vibes, the winner is still Wheaton Regional Park. It's hard to describe, and granted, this was our first visit to Shirlington. But the typical, random gathering of dog owners at Wheaton tends to be more open and conversational than the crowd we experienced at Shirlington. And that's an important dynamic to have in a dog park when, uh, excuse me, your black lab is mauling my little japanese pipsqueak, could you remove it please, before I kick it's miserable face in? Thank you, lovely...


But no matter! Gomez dug it like a superstar, and he crashed immediately upon getting home, as planned.

I figure that's the prime motive for doing the Dog Park thing. It's all a conspiracy to wear the suckers out. And on that score, Shirlington wins by a drippy nose.

Balloons for Blues

Sunday: We took a walk through Old Town Alexandria, and promptly encountered a parade of dogs in Halloween costume. Very weird. (keep walking, look normal...it could be a hallucination). Then, where King Street meets the Potomac, we discovered Curtis the blues-man (above), serenading a balloon-wielding blues fan. A decent, mellow end to a fine Autumn weekend.

Thee Maximalists!

Of course I realize that I'm following an entry of live music pix with ANOTHER entry of live music pix, but what could I do, this was THEE MAXIMALISTS, dammit!

For the unaware, the core lineup qualifies Thee Maximalists as a veritable supergroup: Paul Sears (of The Muffins, drums), Yanni Papadopoulos (of Stinking Lizaveta, guitars & guitar-like appendages), and Keith Macksound (of Present, bass) concoct a truly un-rehearsed mash of ProgJazzNoiseRock that will overjoy the strong and reduce the weak to tears.

Saturday was their leaping, gnashing, vile debut upon the Old Town Theater stage. A fantastic performance (although not quite as 'gnashing' as their blast at Orion earlier this year, but then, that's improv for you). There is a larger incarnation of Thee Maximalists, which includes an improv vocalist and a mellotron player (!!!!!) so please tattoo this into your brain for future times: they don't play out often (members are scattered far & wide across this earth), but when they do... one must attend.

The headlining performer was one Cyndee-Lee Rule: an electric violin virtuoso who treated the Theater to a heady mix of TechnoProgSpaceRock, including a scorching cover of Hawkwind's "Hassan I Sahba" as well as an Irish reel that owed as much to stomping drum programming as it did to the Northern pubs. She joined Thee Maximalists briefly during the end of their set, and the chemistry was perfect (lads, consider this for future gigs).

In all, a charming evening, sadly under-attended like the Spaceseed gig. Where were you, my children? (for more pix, see the Flickr collection here.)

Sonic Attack!

Very light attendance, at the Old Town Theater on Friday. Those lucky few (20, to be exact) who turned up were treated to a very special evening indeed. Local mad-scientist John Battema opened the show with an impressive wall of spacious synth noise. It was like a blissful mix of the intricate dynamics of Klaus Schulze and the full-on attack of Merzbow. The set was too short, but SPACESEED (above) was to follow...with added punch via the SOLAR FIRE lightshow.

Joining Spaceseed was veteran Hawkwind keyboardist Harvey Bainbridge (inset). After a brief set of Spaceseed originals, Harvey did a solo set of his own brand of electronic freakout heaviness. We all became elastic ghosts, being drawn into the black hole at the center of the projection screen...stretched into thin jelly ribbons, spiralling around the stage like glowing eels...acid-soaked spermatazoa in blind pursuit of that egg of sound...

Then, Spaceseed took the stage again for a final set of classic Hawkwind covers (including a fiercely extended version of "You Shouldn't Do That" which, for all serious Hawkwind geeks, would be worth the price of admission...It all wrapped up shortly after 1:00am, and the long Metro ride from Alexandria passed in a fatigued blur.

In conclusion, I offer a public safety message:

An intersection blinking RED at 2:15 in the morning is to be treated as a four-way stop. I believe this fact is covered in most high-school Drivers Ed courses. As I passed one such intersection, on my way home from the gig, two vehicles exploded into each other with unbelievable force. Vehicle 1 compacted into a mangled fist. The broadsided Vehicle 2 catapulted in a sideways, hurling roll into some shrubs twenty-odd yards away. Really. Seriously. If I had crossed at the light (and not jaywalked in my urgent pursuit of a bathroom), I would have been UNDER the wreckage of the thrown vehicle.

So please, drivers: GET OVER your inflated sense of urgency, you arrogant pinhead bastards. Rather than calling for help, any witnesses should have beaten you to DEATH with their cellphones. NONE OF YOU are too cool, sexy, or important to have your life suddenly jarred out of your body to scream at the mocking stars while they pull your remains out of a mangled car. And worse than that, your self-absorbed suicide would inconvenience others who might have READ their drivers' manuals. What a waste.

There. 'nuff soapboxin'... It was a great show.

Room 211

Checking out... the fire-alarm unit on the wall of our hotel room provided some mild amusement before we finally packed up the car and raced back home. It was a magnificent time, but exhausting. Hit the road, climb the coast back north to DC and all of its more familiar evils...

Virginia: First Landing State Park

So the heat eventually drove us off the coast. In our hasty retreat, we spotted a state park -- a way into the marvelous wood... These shots were taken along the Bald Cypress trail. It was still freakishly hot, and this was a much swampier sort of wood than I'm used to, but trees are trees, and that calming maternal vibe came to the rescue. We'd all but forgotten about the hoarde of Elvis...

VA Beach 2

Further lurking in Virginia Beach... couldn't figure out WHAT THE HELL was being implied by the "no cursing" signs. Also found a lovely pigeon having a rest within the gaping maw of death, and who can refuse a self-indulgent self-portrait within the reflective flesh of a beachfront telescope? By now, sunburn-related dementia is creeping through the brain... must find forest... shade... shade... gatorade...

VA Beach 1: Cancer of the Elvis

Weirdness. After all the wedding-related business, we had an extra day before returning to DC. We walked a bit along the Virginia Beach boardwalk before retreating to the woods for some quiet & shade. The woods were a magnificent thing, but that's a later post.


First, we need to clear the air from all this Elvis. SOMEONE PLEASE explain to me the connection between Virginia Beach and Elvis.


We reached the beach just in time for an obscene parade of Elvisian Effigies, both human and inflatable. I felt I had gone magnificently insane.

At the reception

Chesapeake, Virginia, at the reception following the wedding of a nephew-in-law. A very pleasant time, and a welcome change of scenery.


Huge turnout at the wedding & reception...gobs of people. I knew almost none of them. Least of all, the fellow facing the camera (above), but when the lights are creating such insane hairlos (halos of the hair), some innocent bystanders must be sacrificed.



And here, we discover how well "JUST HITCHED" adheres to an auto chassis. The entire vehicle resembled a sadly sunken souffle by the time the happy couple emerged from the dance-floor. Cheers to Chris & Marybeth...