it's too much for a young heart to take

Or even a no-longer-young one. But let me start at the beginning:

I knew something was up tonight when I saw my screen door ajar. A bundle of something was propped up inside, gently swaddled by rubber bands and a concealing blanket of magazines and a Cushman's citrus catalog, left on the front porch like an offering to some neglectful god. Its secret lay deep inside, in the exact center of the pile, white and gleaming with a boldface injunction against uncaring fate:

"VERY FRAGILE. **vinyl record enclosed** PLEASE don't bend or stuff."

Yes! My Caulfield Sisters split 7-inch from American Laundromat had arrived.

It was a great pre-Christmas gift and is a beautiful artifact. The vinyl is blue and translucent, as advertised, with a whimsical cover illustration to accompany the title Divine Candy. It does seem indeed to be from a limited edition of 500 (it's numbered and everything), so definitely rush to order this if you haven't already. Sell your body if necessary.

The true treat is the music, of course. This is the performance of the Jesus and Mary Chain's "Some Candy Talking" that was streamed live on KEXP on April 5, 2005 (a date I have thenceforth celebrated as Caulfields Day, incidentally). But for any of you jumping to ask "Wait a goldarn second, hoss! Isn't that the same performance I've already listened to a higgledy-jillion times on my iPod-like thingie and/or my computer?", the only valid response is: Nope. Not like this.

Really, listening to this performance on vinyl in front of real speakers is a revelation, almost an entirely different experience. Cindy's voice is so much stronger. You can hear all of Mary's backup vocals (even the parts that didn't seem so obvious before). Kristin's drums sound like they're in the room with you. That accordion feedback seems to rumble when Cindy hits the lower registers with it. Wow!

This is instantly my favorite Caulfield Sisters recording of all time, if only because this feels like the closest thing to seeing them perform live. Which, speaking wistfully, I hope to actually do someday. Plus, they do such a damn brilliant version of this song.

The flip side, Julie Peel's cover of the Breeders' "Divine Hammer," is mighty fine as well, sort of a jump-up-and-dance counterpoint to the Sisters' delightful walk down melancholia lane. Julie's apparently French, so it looks like we have the Brooklyn Breeders meeting the Bordeaux Breeders ... um, meeting the Breeders. Could anyone possibly resist this?

And it gets better! It seems the label has "had so much fun pressing this one" that it's now starting a split-7" series. The next one is called So Long City Skies and features John P. Strohm and some band called Dylan In the Movies. It comes out in January and will be on black vinyl.

Where else will the series head? No idea, but it's off to a great start. Thanks, all!

P.S. Back to the Sisters: You can still listen to the whole KEXP performance on the station's website (linked above), or download it as an mp3 from the Sisters' site (though that version seems to have some gaps in a couple of places, including the middle of "Dumbfound You"). The bonus is the interview, including that "broke wind" joke, John's enthused "Way to hooooooooooo!" exclamation and the discussion of traffic in Midtown. You'll find yourself exclaiming: I wanna get more of that stuff ... of that stuff ...

all the way to china, and i dug

Wow. Whatever happened to summer?

No matter, and don't mind me while I dust some of these cobwebs off. Once again I find myself apologizing for all these months of blog silence, but this time I have an excuse: I had sworn upon the altar of God that I would not post again until A) Nancy Pelosi was elected Speaker of the House; B) Thomas Pynchon came out with a new novel (admittedly Salinger would have been a more appropriate choice, but like that was ever going to happen, so I went with the reclusive author behind Door Number 2); and C) the Caulfied Sisters finally got some of the respect they deserve from the Alaska news media.

If you think about it, it's sort of miraculous that it all came together this quickly.

Anyhoo, to sum up what's happened in the interim:

• American Laudromat's website got blowed up, sadly (server woes, they said). For now they're operating from a MySpace page, and it looks like they just set up a blog.


• Kristin's come out with her first solo album, Ports of Call, a lovely work and a marvel of subtlety. "Domesticity Song" might be the saddest song ever.


• As promised, Say It With Fire is now available on iTunes, and includes as a bonus track a shiny new version of "First Bridge of Summer." Well, I'm not sure if anything about it is really new or if it just sounds brighter in that AAC format that Apple uses instead of the previous mp3 encoding. The drums might seem a little more prominent (did Kristin redo Billy's parts?), or maybe that's just my imaginings. No matter what, it's a treat nonetheless.


• Cindy's been engaging in an experimental-ish song/sound/poetry side project called Musical Typing with Suzanne Thorpe of Mercury Rev. Cindy describes it thusly: "When your bass player has a baby, this is what happens." In contrast to the Sisters' more straight-ahead tendencies, these songs bury Cindy's voice under waves of sound, so that they end up feeling like one of those dreams where you know you're saying or writing something incredibly important, something that will change your life forever if only you can seize those words and drag them out into your waking world, but then you awake and all you're left with is: "The lawn chairs of death? You're going to need these for later?" I mean that in a good way.


• Speaking of absent players, the Sisters themselves have issued a long-awaited message to their fans, announcing a forthcoming split 7-inch with their cover of "Some Candy Talking." The flip side is Julie Peel covering the Breeders' "Divine Hammer." Anyway, it's on blue vinyl and is a limited edition of 500. Can you say extra-special Christmas stocking stuffer? I thought you could.


• The Sisters also announced a show with Hopewell for Nov. 10 at Matchless (it was supposed to be a "Beacon's Closet-palooza," Hopewell's website said), but it didn't happen for some reason. I hope everyone's OK.

All right, I think that takes care of most of the major cobwebs. Everyone go have a safe Caulfield Sisters holiday season. I hear that "Box of Glass" is the new choice for Christmas caroling.

nobody looks when eternity's dying

"Somebody laughs again,
somebody's hurt again,
somebody's stranded or just breaking down
and you in you're bubble,
you're offshore in your bubble
and rolling away"
-- Nailbiters, "Someone Else"

This has been a week of mourning for Mike O'Neill, the astonishingly gifted songwriter, guitarist and singer who led some of the greatest bands ever to come from Tampa Bay -- Monday Mornings, Nailbiters and The Unrequited Loves. Others have spoken of this more eloquently than I ever could, but this is a huge, huge loss for those who love independent music in Florida. He was our Paul Westerberg and our Elliott Smith, a songwriter whose music was tortured, heartfelt and painful, and usually buried under a chaotic shroud of twangy, roaring guitars.

Mike was 41 and by all accounts (bolstered by years of his own lyrics) had suffered for a long time from depression. On Monday, July 17, at either 6:52 p.m. or 6:48 p.m., he drove from St. Petersburg toward Bradenton, parked on the center span of the 200-foot-high Sunshine Skyway Bridge, and jumped to his death into Tampa Bay. It probably took him 3.5 seconds to fall. It looks as though he'd updated the Unrequited Loves' MySpace page earlier that day.

His friends have set up a MySpace page to post memories, condolences, photos and a rotating collection of his songs. It's become the electronic hearth where people have gathered to share their sorrow. So has Jenny's wonderful Internet radio show, which aired a 3-hour tribute to him last Sunday (the podcasts are available here, and she's also posted some anguished thoughts on her blog).

Another tribute page is up at Tampa Bay Muse, co-proprietors of the web radio station Strange Agents Radio, where Mike hosted 10 episodes last year of a show called "The Loneliest Person" -- you can see his setlists here.

His passing is being noted on more websites and news articles and columns than I can count or link to. OK, here are a few more -- and here, here, here, here, here and here -- not to mention some collections of photos that a friend of Mike's has posted. And here's another photo. So I'll leave out the handful of sites that are being marred by ignorance, hate and all-around asshattery (what is it about depression that makes people unable to recognize the fact that it's a disease?). This is what some of those who knew him had to say:

• "I want you all to know that Mike visited me nearly every day after work when I was in the hospital. He would call ahead to tell me if his shedule that day was too hectic and give me a phoner pep talk. I'm not telling you this to let you guys know how 'close' we were, I am telling you to show what an extraordinary boy this was. By far, this was his worst year (mine too: lots of parallels with our lives, jobs, etc) , and yet, he still made time to be of service to people. He was in so much pain, and he would put it aside to come sit with me. And believe me, I knew it. I realized the irony that I was fighting for life and he was fighting it." -- Gina Vivinetto, on that MySpace page (where she also posted a song or poem she wrote for him)


• "you were something special, in so many ways. always a kind soul and a wonderful song writer. you were truly meant for the stage. never before have i seen someone walk into a gig 5 minutes before they had to play, looking like you just woke up, aimlessly wandering around while setting up, making it look like the show was about to be a complete disaster. but then, like clark kent, the mild mannered mike would just explode with life. gone were the sleepy eyes, replaced with fire. the words and twang effortlessly flowing from the stage with such a passion. and when the set was over, he was back in disguise until the next gig." -- Gabe, on the same site


• "I never knew Mike O'Neill suffered so inside. And it makes me think...and wonder...if he truly had any idea how much people loved him. How much he mattered to people. How much his sometimes nonsensical conversations stuck with people and made them think and smile and question. And we all wish Mike would have reached out and asked us...if we cared. Because we all would have said yes. Yes Yes Yes Yes Goddamnit Yes. Stay with us. Sing your songs to us some more. Tell us your stories. Try harder." -- Jeremy Gloff

Mike had been a big part of Tampa Bay's music scene for a long time. Monday Mornings, which included Mike and his then-girlfriend Karen Collins, might have been the best band that ever took root in that area, although Nailbiters would be extremely close competition, as would Rosewater Elizabeth, Clang, Bullwinkle, Home and of course Pee Shy, along with other bands I'm probably being criminally negligent in forgetting to mention now. What an astonishing collection of talent that area produced in a few short years.

Monday Mornings could be overpowering live (even more than one can really tell from the unfortunate vocals-to-the-front production on their lone CD, despise our world?, which they objected to at the time), but they also played the occasional acoustic show in 1990-91 at Three Birds, the bookstore that Cindy co-owned on East Seventh Avenue. That album has always struck me as having interesting parallels with Dream Syndicate's Days of Wine and Roses, with Karen playing the Kendra Smith role. Nailbiters' two albums, Unsorted and Every Wasted Second Gone, always had me imagining the path R.E.M. might have taken had they stuck closer to their garagey pre-1983 roots, maybe with some of GBV's dark energy thrown in. (The first album also inspired an especially odd review from the St. Pete Times, which wrote that "the only obvious problem here is the strong R.E.M. influence that colors much of the Nailbiters' work." Um, why was that a problem?) The Unrequited Loves seemed to have a stronger Sixties vibe. And who knows else might have come?

I never knew Mike O'Neill, and I feel like kind of a fraud mourning at such length here. I only knew the words, which frequently dwelt on some of the ugliest emotions humans can harbor, and the music, which exploded with so much life the songs almost couldn't contain them. Listen to the sung words spilling on top of each other in "Unsorted," or the soaring chorus of "Unsurreal," or the way the guitars fly apart in the final verse of "Drillinstructor." Or, for that matter, the "it's Disney magic!" soundbite that comes just before "That's Just Dumb." Just listen to them all. How sad that their creator somehow became so convinced that his place in the world was under the ground.

Rest in peace.

"And a dream came true for someone that afternoon
Then split down the middle
I shook at the sorrow of it
I stepped out of line
I stepped over the line and finally stepped out of myself
Nobody notices eternity's dying out"
-- Monday Mornings, "The Eternal Afternoon"

maybe i'd sleep at night

Belatedly, some more actual Caulfield Sisters news from Joe, indicating that the Lost Three Wheeler Demos may soon resurface:

... you'll be happy to know the Caulfield Sisters are rehearsing again after a long hiatus. No news on new recordings yet but I can assure you I will gently guide them into a recording studio within the next several months.

In related news... as you know, before Cindy and Mary formed The Caulfield Sisters, they recorded a 5-song demo for Mercury Records under the name "3 Wheeler". The demo was never released and Mercury gave them ownership of the songs. These 5 songs were just remixed and mastered by Peter Katis (Interpol, The National, Guster) at Tarquin Studios in Bridgeport, CT. They sound AWESOME!!! As promised, one track (First Bridge) will appear as a bonus track for the Say It With Fire EP. I'm going to ask Cindy to let me release a second "iTunes Only" EP featuring the other tracks. Keep your fingers crossed.

I didn't know "Last Bridge of Summer" was an official Three Wheeler song, although the personnel were the same. This is what an article from the time (early 1999) had to say about the band:

Though playing under a new name, the band's sound isn't one to throw Pee Shy fans for a loop. From Wheeler's jangly guitars and velvet delivery to Guidera's punchy bass lines to Orrico's restrained drumming, the band builds on groundwork laid out in its previous incarnation. With crunchier guitars and more driving rhythms, Three Wheeler's sound flirts with modern power pop, though its roots stick firmly in indie rock.

"It's a harder sound, but it's the direction we were headed in," Wheeler said, describing the sound of the band's demos.

Lacking the some of the restraint found in Wheeler's previous work, Three Wheeler's material packs a stronger punch than Pee Shy material. From the commanding yet subtle guitars of "Bleeker Street," reminiscent of the Smith's Johnny Marr or Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders, to the jangly, echo-ridden "Radio Waves," Three Wheeler cranks out a sound with the intertia and power of MTV's Buzz clip material without the inherent idiocy of high-rotation material.

The band's songwriting grows along with its ventures into harder sounds. Team songwriting makes an appearance in Three Wheeler's material, with Wheeler and Guidera sharing songwriting duties, with Guidera penning music and Wheeler providing lyrics and lead vocals.

Not sure if I'd describe "First Bridge of Summer" as "hard," but it's interesting to see how they evolved from that sound to the Sisters' melancholia.

That article mentioned that Mercury had "sprung for a Three Wheeler demo, which is still under evaluation" (I guess we know how that turned out), and quoted Cindy as saying: "I think they're be a home for us somewhere."

Yes, Cindy -- in our hearts.

we're like orpheus and what's-her-name

Could there be a Pee Shy Curse, similar to the Seinfeld one? 'Cause not only did Pee Shy break up, but now -- a mere 12 years after she and Helen A.S. Popkin shared the stage with Cindy, Jenny and Bil one glorious night at the Stone Lounge in Tampa -- Gina Vivinetto has gotten the boot from the St. Pete Times.

Her crime? Blogging.

Yes -- imagine that! By day, Gina called herself a responsible citizen, a loyal patriotic American, an ethical (though "bad-ass") journalist and music critic, a "relentlessly fun, super sassy and hyper intelligent ...one-of-a-kind lesbian," a Crayola fan and even an amazingly talented musician and award-winning short story writer, in that admittedly little-known giant-headed-supermodel genre.

But that was just a front. For beneath it all, Gina had a dark side. A secret life.

She blogged.

That might make her, oh I dunno ... wait for it .... a blogger.

And not only that, but she posted comments on other people's blogs -- scurrilous blogs that, believe it or not, someone was writing anonymously. I know, that's hard to comprehend. I get the vapors just thinking about it.

One of these sites was about Hillsborough County Commissioner Rhonda Storms, a conservative whom some people (not me, naturally) seem to regard as a crazy, nudity-obsessed, homophobic, rule-bending, self-promoting wingnut who may or may not bear some resemblance to the Wicked Witch of the West.

Again, that's what some folks say. I don't live in the Tampa area, so beats me if any of this stuff is true. It seems, however, that some of Ms. Storms' critics have launched not just one but but two fake Rhonda Storms blogs. And it was on the second such site that Ms. Vivinetto, using the name of an art/music gallery she owns in St. Petersburg, posted the comments that proved so fatal to her journalistic career. To wit:

• "You left your panties here."


• "The panties had a red inscription, over the crotch: 'T.G.I.F.' And, they were musky."


• "Can we expect you Friday night at Bombshell, hot stuff? There will be a lot of HOT, YOUNG LESBIANS!!"

Shocking stuff, I'm sure you'll agree.

Now, you Vivinettan apologists out there might say hey, wait a second -- didn't the Times pay for Gina to write a (not too funny) parody of MTV's The Real World that mocked Rhonda? Didn't Gina host a political fund-raising concert last year aimed at opposing Ms. Storms' agenda, not to mention her role in producing a documentary rebutting some of the commissioner's comments, with no apparent objections from her editors? Hadn't Ms. Vivinetto's somewhat outré sense of humor been on display all these years, what with that "Mr. Brady is Gay" column she'd been writing for the newspaper? Doesn't an ethics expert at the Poynter Institute, the nonprofit journalism school that owns the Times, seem to agree that Gina "has a point" in sensing some inconsistencies in her bosses' actions?

Sorry, it won't wash. Clearly, the Times had no choice but to sever its ties with Gina, lest she taint the newspaper's august Stuck in the 80s podcast. One minute, she might be reminiscing about A Flock of Seagulls or Toni Basil or that Cyndi Lauper song "She Bop," and the next second she might blurt out another Rhonda Storms panty joke.

No, Gina's bosses simply had to demand her resignation. Even if they had to do it while she was hooked to an IV tube while recovering from surgery to remove a tumor. I feel safer already.

Now that Gina's gone, can someone go after all those anonymous bloggers?

hide my mood in the bright and blue

Yet another triumph for the good folks at American Laundromat: Joe announces that the Sisters are releasing Say It With Fire on iTunes, including a whale of a bonus track -- a rereleased, remastered, remixed, re-whatevered version of the greatest song in the universe, "First Bridge of Summer." Peter Katis is doing the production honors at Tarquin Studios, just like in the old school Caulfields days. So you know it'll be good.

I've already explained in all-too-exhaustive detail why I love this song so much, so let's just say this news makes me happier than Dick Cheney armed with a loaded double-ought and a bellyful of Maker's Mark.

Hey, while we're plundering the Caulfields archives, any chance we'll ever see "Shackleton" again?

In separate (though, I hope, not totally unrelated) news, Laundromat is doing another of those cover-compilation thingies -- Cinnamon Girl, featuring women doing Neil Young songs. No idea if the Sisters will get involved, but right now my imagination is going wild thinking of Cindy's voice on "The Needle and the Damage Done." (I can also envision the Sisters doing a wild version of "Rockin' in the Free World" or "Crime in the City," but the list doesn't include anything after 1979.) Naturally, there's a MySpace page for all this.

No idea when either of these projects will see the light of day, but I'm hoping they'll come out before the nuclear war.

fight the things that bite

That last post inspired a mighty cool response from Michael Hussey, the Tampa fan who posted such kind words about the Sisters and started that discussion on Monkeyfilter.

But I do need to clear one thing up real quick: This is not the Sisters' blog. It's a fan blog about the Sisters. They've neither approved nor authorized anything on here, nor do they seem to be into the whole blog concept. (To quote Cindy, "blog schmog.") I'm not in contact with them and certainly don't speak for them.

This site mainly attempts to act as a gathering spot for all the various tidbits of news, interviews, gossip, concert reviews, reminiscences, etc. about the Sisters that are strewn across the web, because as you may have noticed this stuff is scattered all over the place. But for any statements from the band, I think you're best off relying on the official site or the American Laundromat Records message boards.

My apologies if that wasn't clear. I said a lot of this stuff a long time ago, but it probably needs repeating periodically.

Thanks again, and welcome.

white, female and godless

Dang but it's been quiet in Caulfield land, the kind of extended, awkward pause accompanied by much coughing and shuffling of feet that one might expect to encounter if one were Katrina Vanden Heuvel at an Ann Coulter sound-alike contest. But I'm not; and, I trust, neither are you. So on to the nearest developments, shall we? (In ascending order of significance.)

• Cindy has been communing with Johnny Marr, at which time music was exchanged and banjos may have been discussed.

• The insanely ambidextrously talented Kristin (seen here perched atop a precarious fire escape) is coming out with a solo album (an excerpt from which may be savored here), just recently did a solo gig at Freddy's Back Room, has found yet another musician to drum for, and will soon be heard drumming on a cover of a Ricky Nelson song. Hello Kristin, goodbye heart.

• Meanwhile Gloria Deluxe, Kristin's other band featuring a Southern-born, accordion-playing Cynthia, is doing some more performances of Accidental Nostalgia, this time in Columbus, Ohio, which is an excellent place for a road trip I think we'd all agree. (Ticket info here, although this indicates they'll be performing songs from Part II of the trilogy, Must Don't Whip 'Um. Well, go anyway and tell us which one it was.)

• Yet another old Pee Shy fan from Tampa has discovered the Caulfield Sisters and may never be the same. He also started a discussion about them on Monkeyfilter, which includes a hilarious story involving Cindy's classic poem "Things You Do On Your Knees." I have to dispute his depiction of Pee Shy as a "novelty act," though.

• Could this be a thaw in the old Cindy-Jenny alliance? Not sure, but Jenny got listed as a friend the other day on Cindy's MySpace page, for whatever that's worth. (And no, one definitely doesn't want to read too much into such things, or you end up like those CIA guys who used to spend all their time scrutinizing which commissar was up there on the stage with Brezhnev wearing some goddamn fur hat in Red Square on May Day. Then again, it beats running secret prisons in Eastern Europe. Anyway, as I recall Cindy's a big believer in animal rights and would be opposed to fur hats, although she's wearing one in her photo. Maybe it's faux. Where was I?)

• Oh yes, the best for last: Jenny's got her own MySpace page, where you can encounter images of her with her offspring, some of little Aaron's artwork (possibly magnetically adhered to a refrigerator even as we speak) and, best of all, four wonderful GoJenny songs that you can download, listen to obsessively and then attempt to perform at your next drunken karaoke night. Only one was a song I hadn't heard before ("The Bright Side," which to be honest I'm still learning to love), but it is so, so, so amazing to finally have a non-scratchy version of my new favorite song in the universe, "Spiders in My Guitar," which is both heartbreakingly beautiful and wonderfully sad in its evocations of age, decay, lost time and slumbering (though perhaps not dead) dreams.
  
  The song's subject matter reminds me a little of the Suzanne Vega song "Rusted Pipe," another attempt to reclaim a silenced artistic voice by singing about the silence, but in this case it's not entirely clear from the lyrics that the clog (or the spiders) won't win out. It's also classically Jenny in the way she says so much with so few mundane details; but her voice, the way she alters speed and pitch and at times seems to carry the world's sadness, is beyond almost anything I remember from the Pee Shy days. I've said this before, but there's no need for nostalgia where any of these folks are concerned. They've all gotten better.

OK, that's enough for this edition of Caulfields Quarterly. As they say in Japan: Be spring-like.