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.