adrian is rad

Somehow I started a tradition a couple years ago of donating some money to charities around my birthday. Here’s how it worked out this year:

• 20% Catholic Charities, CYO, Archdiocese of San Francisco—local—I feel like they’re one of the better organizations serving the poor et al in San Francisco
• 20% American Red Cross (National Disaster Relief Fund)—national
• 20% South African Development Fund—international/ South Africa
• 20% African Medical and Research Fund (AMREF)—international/ Africa—they do research and have medical aid for AIDS and malaria, among other things.
• 20% Freedom from Hunger—international

Criteria: I like Africa and South Africa in particular. I like efficient organizations. (I only donate to four star charities.) I think international charities can help more people per dollar than American charities. My primary concern is saving lives now and in the future. At the same time, I think one should strive to help out locally and nationally as well.

Okay, that’s it, I think. I’m a little reluctant to post about this as always.

I first heard about the mounting protests by monks in Bangkok. Considering Thailand is a neighboring country to Myanmar, I was concerned that it might just be a region news story. I’m glad it’s not.

I am concerned about the fact that monks are being beaten. The countries Minister of Religion (or something like that) even said “If the monks go against the rules and regulations in the authority of Buddhist teachings, we will take action under existing laws.” Wow.

The images of so many monks marching is pretty powerful:

Alright, don’t have much time here, so I’ll just mention a couple things.

All Watted out I’ve seen about 15 temples (Wats) in the last two days. I’ll all Wat-ted out. There were some very impressive ones.

How fucked up is this? A lot of the temples were in Ayuthaya. It’s the old capital about 60km north of Bangkok. I was taking the train to get there (I should note: 15 Baht, about 50 cents). (Also, the seats were wooden. And no A/C.) Not very far out of Bangkok the train stops. And stays stopped for about an hour. I thought it was an engine problem.

Eventually I got out and looked. The train had run over someone. Curiosity really did kill the cat this time as I didn’t feel very good after seeing the body under the train (and again after they’d cleared it to the side and we went past).

He got all Thai-ed up in the ropes I went to see some Thai boxing (Muay Thai). It was pretty cool. They punch, kick, knee, headlock and all sorts of stuff. Possibly more interesting was the very intricate and complicated set of hand signals people used up in the peanut gallery to denote how much and who they wanted to bet on. I saw a lot of money change hands. In a place where you can stay a night for 200 Baht (about $6.65) and eat lunch for 40 Baht (about $1.35), people were placing 1000 to 8K or 9K on single fights and there were 9 in the night. Pretty absurd.

Thanks for the good suggestions. Here’s who I ended up donating too.

• local 1/4 Catholic Charities CYO, San Francisco Archdiocese They provide a variety of good services to people in San Francisco and San Mateo (my) county.
• national 1/4 American Red Cross national disaster relief fund. I think the Red Cross does really good work and you never know when the next disaster will be.
• international 1/4 African Medical and Research Fund I like that they’re doing research into malaria, which is a major problem, in addition to many other major problems (HIV/ AIDS, TB, safe water, etc.)
• international 1/4 Compassion International A suggestion of Colin last year. Worthwhile services for impoverished children in the developing world.
• international 1/4 South Africa Development Fund They sponsor a wide variety of worthwhile programs of all different sorts in my ancestral home.

Yup, that’s 5/4. I ended up finding more worthwhile charities than I originally was going to donate to so, I just ended donating more.

Mister Rogers was pretty incredible.

In high school, I remembering visiting a friend, Waller, who was doing a week-long camp/ program at the Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, where Mister Rogers did his theological studies. Mister Rogers had stopped by the previous night. Waller was so excited about that; it had made her week. At the time I thought it was a sort of nostalgia-based, ironic excitement but now I realize it was probably authentic.

A couple weeks ago, I finished Body Piercing Saved My Life by Andrew Beaujon (named after the “clever” shirt.) (Amazon, , one review, two mp3-blog like posts by the author about Christian music)

It’s a look at Christian Rock, capital C, capital R, by an outsider. Beaujon is a writer for Spin so he comes from the mainstream rock criticism side of things. I’ve never been really involved in the scene he talks about although I stood at the edge of it a couple years, so I’m a bit of an outsider to it as well. (Which reminds me of a post about an article of the same topic and perspective…)

He spends chapters looking at aspects and events in the Christian music world. He looks at particular bands and people as well as other cultural forces like Mars Hill Church and Tooth and Nail Records. There are various people that come off earnestly and then there are some more slimey people. I’d heard some negative things about T&N (that they don’t give their bands a fair shake) and they were sort of confirmed in this book.

Perhaps my favorite section is the chapter about David Bazan (at the time of the interviews, still in Pedro the Lion). Where a lot of interviewees seem to sidestep questions that might result in controversial answers, Bazan seems to take any and all questions head on without flinching. Sufjan denied the interview request, apparently, so there’s only a brief section on him, which was a bit disappointing.

Overall, it’s an interesting, informative and well-written book about a large cultural phenomenon (Christian records easily outsell jazz records currently). I’d recommend it if you are curious about the scene or genre.

I’ve since moved on to the Dave Eggers editted The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2004.

I generally avoid writing about religion or politics, though I have a half-written post from months ago on exactly this topic. What brought it up this time is Barak Obama’s keynote speach at the “Call to Renewal” conference. It’s the sort of topic that could alienate people on both sides, but the speach is well-written and I think it walks the line pretty well. I admire someone that’s willing to put his thoughts out there like that, though. I’d recommend reading it all the way through.

(Incidentally, Call to Renewal is run by Jim Wallis, who wrote this book, which looks like it might be interesting.)

Now to go back to being apathetic about politics.

I had some backup in the blogworks so I’m doing a somewhat abbreviated and consolidated post here.

A few weeks ago now, I saw Mogwai play at the Fillmore. Mogwai is a Scottish guitar-based post rock band. Honestly this is a bit long ago at this point so I’ll do the executive summary. First trip to the Fillmore (I think): it’s good, better than the Warfield by a lot. Mogwai’s set: super loud and apocalyptic stuff->softer more minimalistic poppier stuff->loud stuff->20 noise fade-out from their encore. They played some of my favorites especially those from Rock Action like “2 Wrongs Make 1 Right” and “Take Me Somewhere Nice”. I mostly liked the softer more mininmalistic stuff.

Mogwai - 2 Wrongs Make 1 Right (ATP Version)

A week ago Friday I saw Danielson at the Bottom of the Hill. Danielson is sort of a quirky indie pop folk band with epileptic fits of craziness in the middle of their songs. The first openers were a band called Pants Pants Pants. They had a fun electro indie rock thing going. At one point their drummer came out from behind the drums and just started dancing crazy. The second opener, Young People, were just so bad that I’m not going to talk about them further. Danielson came on close to midnight in light-blue-with-navy-accents Salvation Army-style uniforms, each with a patch of the player’s name on the breast.

This band is just crazy. Quirky is probably a better term. They have these softer or sweeter parts to their songs interspersed with these intense, high-energy parts with often high-pitched vocals. It’s almost disorienting to see them play. Daniel Smith, the leader of the group, has this way of singing that’s half in falsetto, but the parts of his mouth and throat that he uses to sing aren’t normally used by people unless they’re imitating a cat meowing. His two sister and the keyboard player, Evan, all sing with such energy that it seems like they’re yelling into the mics. There were a couple probably unintentional funny bits where Daniel asked the crowd to clap along to the songs and then proceeded to show us incredibly complicated and rather long clapping rhythms that no one could follow. It’s the sort of music that you probably either hate or it puts a smile on your face. One guy whose face had a giant grin on it was John Ringhofer of Half Handed Cloud who was standing a few feet over to my left.

Already 1am by the time they were going back on stage for their encore, I took off. The next morning I was waking early for my Tahoe Century bike ride. It was fun while it lasted though.

Danielson - Did I Step On Your Trumpet

This past Friday I saw The One AM Radio at Fort Oregon, a house in Berkeley. The One AM Radio is an electro indie singer songwriter. I arrive just in time to see the last song by a kid called Hank May. When I say a kid, I don’t just me a “guy,” I literally mean, a kid. He was probably 15 or 16 years old. Turns out he’s the touring guitarist for the One AM Radio (and apparently a cousin of a friend of Hrishi’s) right now but he had a solo set to start out the night. The one song I caught, I was actually pretty impressed with. He wrote a song with skill beyond his years. I’m going to check him out further and probably keep an eye on him.

The next act, Earthen Sea, was a improvised guitar/ loops group/ guy. It was good and pretty relaxing and he played a multi-parted piece with smooth transitions and some nice parts. Michael Zapruder’s Rain of Frogs was next. They were an alt-country sort of group with cello and violin (and wurlitzer 140B!) in addition to the usual suspects. They had their more rock-based numbers, which I think they crowd liked the best, and the more folksy numbers, which I liked better.

Somewhere in there, I went back to the merch table and picked up a shirt and his split EP with Ted Leo. I mentioned that I’d gotten something in the mail designed by him, which was a wedding invitation for my best friend’s wedding. We chatted about the wedding for a bit and Hrishi said he wished he could go.

I said the “crowd” up there, but this was a concert in a basement about the size of my livingroom (which is a decent sized living room, but it’s no rock club). By the time the One AM Radio was on, I’d say about 40 people were there. I was sitting on the floor (like most people) about 3 feet from Hrishi’s (tOAMR’s main guy) mic.

The One AM Radio went on next. They warmed with “Drowsy Haze” and Hrishi asked the audience to sing a repeated back up part on it. First rule of winning over Adrian when he’s in your audience: ask him to sing or clap (rhythmically, not just on the back beats) along to your song. Just a FYI on that one.

They—Hrishi on guitar and vocals and manning the laptop, Hank May on guitar, a guy on stand up bass and two guys on french horn—continued with a set filled with mostly old songs but a handful of songs that I hadn’t heard before. I liked the old stuff, of course, and I liked most of the new stuff. I was a little tired and the One AM Radio isn’t dance music or high energy at all and I was sitting so I caught a couple winks here and there, unfortunately. Their last song was “All I Can Recall is the Haunting” where Hrishi once again asked us to sing along to a part, a part that went “The sea swallowed up the sky.” It’s a gorgeous song and it was the same song they closed with last time I saw them— that time with jdawg werberg in a basement at BU. Just like that time, I left the concert singing that phrase over and over again. This time the trip home was a bit longer so I didn’t sing it all the way home.

An Interview w/ The One AM Radio

The One AM Radio - Flicker

I saw the Apostle tonight. I’m not sure why I put it in my Netflix queue, but I did.

It’s a film about a southern preacher who puts his wife’s lover into a coma and then flees to rural Louisiana. Robert Duval wrote, directed and starred in it.

There are few performances where there is no explanation for the transformation from the actor to the character. Which is to say, Robert Duval does an absolutely amazing job as the preacher. He has all the stylistic elements down and acts this complex character very well.

I have a soft spot for the charasmatic southern preaching style and good southern gospel and it’s nice to see it done right in this movie.

Anyway, a well made and well-acted movie. Also, the DVD has a good “making of” feature, but it basically has spoilers in it, so only watch it after watching the movie.

The BBC3 put on the Manchester Passion, a passion play/ musical in which all the music was by Manchester musicians, including New Order and Oasis. Some current local (to Manchester) rockers and actors play key parts in the play. It appears it was performed and broadcast live while roaming through the Manchester streets, ending up at the city hall.

It looks pretty cool. You tube has plenty of video of it, including Jesus singing “Love will tear us apart again” at the Last Supper.

Pretty cool idea, I must say.

GQ, of all magazines, has an article about a giant Christian rock festival call Creation. It’s lengthy and sort of interesting.

As someone who’s never seen the appeal of “Christian rock,” even to Christians, I took some particular joy in this passage:

That’s the last thing I’ll be saying about the bands.

Or, no, wait, there’s this: The fact that I didn’t think I heard a single interesting bar of music from the forty or so acts I caught or overheard at Creation shouldn’t be read as a knock on the acts themselves, much less as contempt for the underlying notion of Christians playing rock. These were not Christian bands, you see; these were Christian-rock bands. The key to digging this scene lies in that one-syllable distinction. Christian rock is a genre that exists to edify and make money off of evangelical Christians. It’s message music for listeners who know the message cold, and, what’s more, it operates under a perceived responsibility—one the artists embrace—to “reach people.” As such, it rewards both obviousness and maximum palatability (the artists would say clarity), which in turn means parasitism. Remember those perfume dispensers they used to have in pharmacies—”If you like Drakkar Noir, you’ll love Sexy Musk”? Well, Christian rock works like that. Every successful crappy secular group has its Christian off-brand, and that’s proper, because culturally speaking, it’s supposed to serve as a stand-in for, not an alternative to or an improvement on, those very groups. In this it succeeds wonderfully. If you think it profoundly sucks, that’s because your priorities are not its priorities; you want to hear something cool and new, it needs to play something proven to please…while praising Jesus Christ. That’s Christian rock. A Christian band, on the other hand, is just a band that has more than one Christian in it. U2 is the exemplar, held aloft by believers and nonbelievers alike, but there have been others through the years, bands about which people would say, “Did you know those guys were Christians? I know—it’s freaky. They’re still fuckin’ good, though.” … In most cases, bands like these make a very, very careful effort not to be seen as playing “Christian rock.”… And here, if I can drop the open-minded pretense real quick, is where the stickier problem of actually being any good comes in, because a question that must be asked is whether a hard-core Christian who turns 19 and finds he or she can write first-rate songs (someone like Damien Jurado) would ever have anything whatsoever to do with Christian rock. Talent tends to come hand in hand with a certain base level of subtlety. And believe it or not, the Christian-rock establishment sometimes expresses a kind of resigned approval of the way groups like U2 … [These bands] take quiet pains to distance themselves from any unambiguous Jesus-loving, recognizing that this is the surest way to connect with the world (you know that’s how they refer to us, right? We’re “of the world”). So it’s possible—and indeed seems likely—that Christian rock is a musical genre, the only one I can think of, that has excellence-proofed itself.

Then again, it likely falls into the same trap that he accuses Christian rock of falling into: preaching to the converted. (I can’t imagine the average GQ reader to like Christian rock).

Much of the article is about five (I think five) crazy friends from West Virginia that the author meets and hangs out with. There are some interesting happenings.

I like that their relationship ends like this:

Darius said God bless me, with meaning eyes. Then he said, “Hey, man, if you write about us, can I just ask one thing?”

“Of course,” I said.

“Put in there that we love God,” he said. “You can say we’re crazy, but say that we love God.”

Overall the article is a pretty good read. It falls into some of the usual traps of misinterpreting Christians and Christianity, but surprisingly, the overall effect is not slamming either.

I really want to get this shirt, but, alas, I’ve given up buying stupid crap for lent.

Those crazy mormons!@

The 2nd of 3 concerts I saw last week was the Polyphonic Spree at Bimbo’s 365. I went with Judit and Shad, but ran into (Kenny and Michelle) and (Julee and Droid) there.

From Bubble to Sky was one of the openers. They were a solid indie rock band, more or less playing their own songs that could have been Beatles songs. Very much in that style. I’m not going to go out of my way to hear them, but they were enjoyable to watch.

The Polyphonic Spree took a while to come on and it took even longer for the crowd to warm up to them, but once they were going, boy, were they going. A really good show. I’m always amazed at how much energy they can put into a show. If you have the chance to see them, do.

A few more things to note about the evening:

• Droid and Julee left because Droid didn’t like the religious overtones of the show. That’s just dumb. Hello! They wear robes and sings like 10 songs about the Sun. Of course there are overtones.
• Jon Brion played guitar for that night.
• it was the last night for the trumpet player Logan Keese, who, up to this point, I believe, has been the only trumpet player to play with the Spree. He was really good. They had a second trumpeter there, I guess learning the ropes from Logan.
• It was the last PS show for a while. The implication is that they’re taking a break and revamping the show/ the band. We’ll see what comes next.