It's a magical world

My dad and I went to the National Constitution Center to see the exhibit From Asbury Park to the Promised Land: The Life and Music of Bruce Springsteen. I have mixed feelings about the NCC; I have none about Bruce Springsteen, or about the exhibit, which was pretty damn awesome, and for Springsteen fans, well worth the trip.

The National Constitution Center is part of the post-2001 reshaping of the heart of the "Historic Philadelphia" area in Old City, and as someone who has very fond memories of the old mall and the old Liberty Bell pavilion, I really just am not a fan of the NCC. It is big, it is ugly, the new parking garage put a hump in the mall that obscures the sightlines to Independence Hall from a block away, and it is fundamentally weird to have an entire museum dedicated to a document that is…in Washington, D.C. That said, I have gone through the NCC's permanent exhibit, "Freedom Rising," which despite the idiotic name is an interesting take on the history of the United States in that it is framed through the prism of the Constitution and the idea that the history of the United States is the history of the extension of that document's privileges to successive groups of formerly disenfranchised people. Which, yes, is a task that is not yet done and is also a particular romantically progressive delusion, but on the other hand narratives make history and our sense of the future and I don't think it's a bad story to tell people, although the exhibit does not, I think, completely hit its mark. Well, as Benny F would have agreed, the great work is still unfinished.

It occurred to me as my dad and I were leaving that the NCC should have the Bad Romance: Women's Suffrage video in its collections. It doesn't, of course, and it won't. ( Video embedded below )

The Bruce Springsteen exhibit is on one level an odd choice for the NCC, and on the other, if you've ever half paid attention to any Bruce lyrics, a perfect fit. The exhibit collects a lot of archival memorabilia (I have seen the guitar and the leather jacket from the Born to Run cover, the guitar that Bruce has played in hundreds of shows, in person!) and in particular dozens of pages from Bruce's notebooks, showing his obsessive rewritings of some of his most famous and most obscure songs. For me, the insight into his creative process alone was worth the price of admission, and it also sharpened my appreciation for his genius: just where does he get these words? Who the hell talks like this, let alone writes songs like this? Where did Springsteen come from? From New Jersey, from the US of A, from the spirit of the times that summoned him up and has animated him and his career ever since, from the heart of rock and roll. You would never think, listening to a masterpiece like "Born to Run," that the lyrics--which seem so natural, so inevitable--had been rewritten nearly fifty times before he ever cut the demo track. But they were.

( Baby we were born to run... )

So it goes, I guess.

Billy Joel, "A Matter of Trust," 1986.

# Björk has a new album/multimedia project, Biophilia, coming out next month. I am excited. I think Björk is one of the best, most fearless, and most interesting musicians out there, bar none.

# With her commissioning the creation of a new instrument, the gameleste, for the album, the history of the gamelan outside Indonesia has entered a new chapter.

# This Michel Gondry-directed video for one of the album's tracks, "Crystalline," that features the gameleste, is pretty amazing: 

( And it makes me want to rewatch Charmax's vid Space Girl, so I did, I did, I did. )

1. What's the best but least-known (to Westerners, to Japanese people in other parts of the country, whichever) thing about Kyoto you've discovered?
Hmm, this is tough! Kyoto never ceases to throw new things into my path, but on the other hand, I've grown to know the city fairly well (partly, yes, because I had a lot of time and money and few responsibilities the last time I was here).

So, let's see. One of the things you can find in Kyoto that I love, and that even people from Kansai don't often know about, is hiyashi ame, cold ginger juice. It is SO GOOD. I've found it two places in Kyoto (actually near Kyoto technically, but close enough): at Mii-dera, across the mountains in Shiga, and at Mimuroto-ji in Uji, during the hydrangea season. I also found it at the Tenjin matsuri in Osaka last month, which was awesome.

As for places…I love just about all of the major Kyoto sites, which is good because I inevitably wind up making a circuit of them when I show people around, but some of my really favorite places are slightly more out of the way. Mimuroto-ji in Uji above, Ishiyama-dera a bit further east, Kajû-ji in Yamashina, Myôshin-ji up in the northwest (it's so cool to wander around there, just so cool; it's like a little town made up entirely of temples). I also really love the Garden of Fine Arts up on Kitayama, which bills itself as the world's first outdoor art garden and is a cheerfully bizarre little place, with architecture by Andô Tadao, who is one of my all-time favorites and luckily for me a Kansai native, so there's lots of his buildings around to explore. The Garden of Fine Arts is quirky and awesome.

It's really hard to choose, actually. I just love Kyoto, period.

2. What's your favorite thing about A:TLA (a character, a trope, an episode, etc.)?
Well, I think my favorite trope is actually the willingness of the show's creators to remix so many things from actual history and Asian cultures with such wild, though respectful, abandon. The most obvious example is the fauna (turtleducks! they are awesome!), but you see it everywhere (how awesome is the lion turtle? How awesome?).

Also, I really just unreservedly love Toph. TOPH I LOVE YOU.

And also, 3x17, "The Ember Island Players," is just golden, golden, golden.

3. Are there other quintessentially Jersey musicians you dig as much as Bruce Springsteen (like, dare I ask your feelings about Bon Jovi)?
Hmm, there aren't that many musicians that I think of as being quintessentially New Jersey! Really the only ones I can think of are The Gaslight Anthem, Titus Andronicus, and My Chemical Romance. The Gaslight Anthem really only have a few songs that I like, but I do like "High Lonesome" a lot. As for MCR, I really love their newest album Danger Days, which is ironically the least obviously Jersey-ish of their albums because it's (not) a concept album, but their older, more Jersey-ish music is less of a surefire win for me. But I really like Titus Andronicus a lot (their album The Monitor is really quite good, if you like alternative/indie rock-ish music exploring what the hell is with the States now via the Civil War), though I've been told that they don't perform live well. There's just something about their music--it's not even completely my experience of New Jersey, because just from their music I can tell that they are so, so North Jersey, and honestly the album that probably best reflects my experience of growing up in (the northern portion of) South Jersey is Arcade Fire's The Suburbs, which tells you a lot right there, but even so, Titus Andronicus have managed to tap into the core of New Jersey somehow, not just place but people. And, yeah. It doesn't have to be my experience of home to remind me of home.

I actually enjoy Bon Jovi, but only on a song-by-song basis, and usually only at parties or when driving around in a car singing along with the blasting stereo.

4. What do you want to be doing this time next year?
Well, I'm hoping to either spend the summer in China doing language study, or to get a summer fellowship at the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco. Hopefully either or both of those will actually be possible…the real question is whether I should be trying to be in the Beijing or the Shanghai area. Opinions on that question welcome!

5. What's your favorite outfit for daily wear & for fancy occasions?
Hmm. It depends on where/when I am! Here in Kyoto I have basically fallen back into what I think of as the gaijin uniform, namely Bermuda shorts, a shirt, and sandals or sneakers, though my bucket hat and umbrella-repurposed-as-parasol, and geta (wooden sandals) when I wear them, are adaptations of Japanese fashion that I couldn't live without. On the days when I actually wear a skirt or a sundress I feel much more in step with the people around me, though I just don't have the wardrobe to layer in the summer months, unlike people here.

In California my sartorial skills have also backslid; I tend to wear jeans, a shirt, and sneakers or sandals, with a scarf and a blazer or hoodie as appropriate. Given that I'll be teaching starting this year, though, I'm going to be making the effort to dress a little more professionally, again. This is basically in direct conflict with a) the campus ethos and b) the fact that I really love T-shirts, but clothes are a quick route to being taken more seriously, so there it is. When I make the effort to wear a skirt or a blazer I usually wear heels, though I also sometimes wear heels with jeans, just because I can.

For fancy occasions…I have several dresses that I wear frequently, depending on the weather, and several pairs of higher-heeled shoes that I enjoy wearing for short stretches of time, but one thing about grad school so far is that there's a dearth of fancy occasions in general, and half the time I just throw on my suit for the academic ones. Mind you, I love that suit (three-piece), and it looks good, so that's okay, but I will need another one eventually. I'd like something slightly less classic; we'll see.

I also need to get a good hat, like a straw trilby, before I come back to Japan again.

Low, C'mon (2011)
I really like Low a lot (I'm going to see them in September, I hope, finally!)--they're usually a three-piece from Duluth, and their music, which gets typecast as slowcore but doesn't, I think, quite fit that mold, really appeals to me. That said, it took me a couple of listens to realize that this album is unusual both for being shorter than most and for having most of its songs in a major key. My favorites are still Drums and Guns and The Great Destroyer, but this album's pretty great too.

The Decemberists, Live at Bull Moose (2011)
A live EP released for National Record Store Day, it's mostly songs off the new album The King Is Dead, but if you like The Decemberists live, you'll like this.

Patrick Stump, Truant Wave (2011)
This is a six-track EP of outtakes from his upcoming album Soul Punk, and if it is a trifle overproduced, it's still completely awesome. I'm still blown away by the man's sheer musicianship, and talent.

Sunset Rubdown, Shut Up I Am Dreaming (2006)
I love Sunset Rubdown and their art rock, and if this record isn't quite as good as Dragonslayer, which was amazing, it's still pretty darn good. Indeed, it's interesting to listen to this album and hear at least one song off Dragonslayer in embryonic form.

Daft Punk, Tron Legacy: Reconfigured (2011)
The original soundtrack to the movie was great, but holy shit, this one is a hundred times better. If you liked the movie music, go out and get this album now.

I went to see The Decemberists in Oakland on Valentine's Day. It's my fourth time seeing them (and my first time seeing them without my sister ;_; ), but I always enjoy seeing them a lot--they put on a really good, really fun show every time, and every time the music sounds different, even when they play some of the same songs.

As befitted a show on Valentine's Day in California, they opened with "California One" and played a lot of their more romantic(-ish) songs, including "We Both Go Down Together" and some of my absolute favorites, including the complete "The Crane Wife" (what's the word for a little epic within a larger epic?). Since they're touring for The King Is Dead, their new album, they played a fair few songs off of there, though fewer than I was expecting in all honesty. Just as excitingly, the violinist they hired for the tour--Sara Watkins of Nickel Creek--played violin parts on every song, and she sang backup on "The Mariner's Revenge Song" and took the lead on "Won't Want for Love" from The Hazards of Love, which was really cool. Also really cool was doing "The Mariner's Revenge Song" at the end of the first encore; this is the first time they've not done "Sons and Daughters" either as the last song of the set or the final encore, which was cool. Also cool was that they made us all scream and wail and groan like we were being swallowed alive by a whale.

But the best thing of all was that during "The Chimbley Sweep" the drummer married a couple on stage, and then they pretended to be a crappy wedding band. Yup. It was awesome. My complaints about concert-goers out here still stand, but by the end just about everyone was into it; it was great.

So I went with troisroyaumes and her significant other S. to see Janelle Monáe and Of Montreal two three weeks ago. Short version: Janelle Monáe was AMAZING. And oh yeah, Of Montreal were fun too.

Longer version: So the awesome thing about this tour is that both these artists have appearances on each other's new albums, and each artist came out on stage to sing that song with the other during their sets. So I got to hear Kevin Barnes doing "Miss the Bus" with Janelle Monáe live--Kevin was also fully clothed, which really does make it a once in a lifetime opportunity, and Janelle Monáe did her song with Of Montreal too.

It was also really, really awesome seeing The Archandroid brought to life! She didn't do the whole album, but she did at least 2/3 of it, in a different order, and it was really, really cool--Cindi Mayweather delivered a video address from the future over the overture before Janelle Monáe and two backup dancers came out in Sith robes. You can tell this from the videos, of course, but HOLY SHIT JANELLE CAN DANCE, and even more than that, her singing is absolutely AMAZING live, just amazing--even better than on the album, and who would have thought that was possible? We were all on our feet by the end, and it was just awesome.

Of Montreal were less so, for a variety of reasons, mostly due to the fact that their music just doesn't grab me the same way. Bay Area audiences also have the habit of smoking tons of pot at shows, which is something I just don't get, because mellow is not how I want to feel at a concert, but that definitely contributed to the general downward trend in crowd energy by the end of the evening (we left at midnight to not miss the last BART, before the end of their set). Also they did my favorite song, "Suffer for Fashion," second, which sort of robbed the set of the power of anticipation for me, and finally, there's just no getting around the fact that after a while a mostly naked Kevin Barnes pretending to have sex with the backup dancers in marathon costume changes gets boring after a while. It's basically what their stage show boils down to, and if that's your thing, more power to you, but it's very one-note; there was hardly any spontaneity or even the appearance of it at all in their set.

So, yeah. Come back Janelle! Help me, Cindi Mayweather, you're my only hope!

I have five million things to do, but I have to say this: I went to the Mann Center with sparrow_hawk  to see Arcade Fire touring in support of their new album The Suburbs, which came out today and which I bought last night and which is phenomenal. I met seekingferret there at halftime, which was cool.

ARCADE FIRE ARE AMAZING.

No, seriously, that is it, and that is all. I have seen them twice now on two continents and they are hands-down hands-up the single most uplifting, awesome concert experience I have had.

They still have many shows available in North America and in Europe, and if you like music, you should go. Even if you have never heard their music ever, you will like them--I have dragged two friends who had never heard Arcade Fire ever to the shows with me, and each friend came away saying, "Wow! That was awesome! They are awesome!" Because they are.

If and when they come to the West Coast I am going to see them again. As great as their music is recorded, they are phenomenal live, and listening to the new album reminded me of that.

One thing I totally forgot to mention in my post on The ArchAndroid is Janelle Monáe's voice, omg.

(H/t to deadbrowalking.)

Janelle Monáe. The ArchAndroid. Bad Boy Records/Wondaland Entertainment, 2010.

Dubious claims and inconsistencies aside, is Janelle Monáe crazy? Is she truly from the year 2719? Is she making music with apparitions? Is her direct cloned descendant the ArchAndroid? Is the American government tied to the Great Divide? Is there a world called Metropolis waiting for us in the future? A world full of elves and dwarves? Humans and androids? Clones and aliens?

And most importantly, if the ArchAndroid does exist…can she truly save us?

The ArchAndroid, to agree with the guys on NPR's Sound Opinions, is one of the best albums I've heard in years. As much as I liked Monáe's first EP Metropolis: The Chase Suite I, The ArchAndroid, which comprises parts II and III of the suite, is just worlds more amazing--and the Metropolis EP was pretty darn awesome.

( This might be the album of 2010, if not 2008-10 )