- 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.
6 comments:
I seem to remember Cindy getting a kick out of the WMNF reaction after I told her at Three Birds. Sean almost lost his FCC licence. He didn't get a kick. That poem needs to be posted as an MP3.
I'm sorry. I wasn't into Pee Shy. I was punk rock. I was listening to the Afghan Whigs' Congregation and Sonic Youth's Daydream Nation, like mad, when the Pee girls were kicking out the accordions.
The Caulfield stuff reminds me of My Bloody Valentine. That's high praise from me.
Well, I'm sorry if my comments seemed like a slam (no Three Birds poetry puns intended). You're certainly right that a fair number of people did regard Pee Shy as a novelty act when they first started, especially when they were just a duo playing in front of their friends at poetry readings. I remember the Tampa Tribune describing them as "campy," and no doubt some of the local scenesters were surprised when the chicks with the accordion and clarinet got a major label deal. (I'm thinking of the music scene fixtures who were always getting adoring write-ups from Philip Booth in the Trib, schmoozing at the Southeast Music Conference, doing those "Live at Morrisound" sets for Charlie Logan on WYNF, etc.) But Cindy and Jenny were both inspired and inspiring right from the beginning, and damned if they didn't take their musical ambitions seriously. It was a glorious thing to behold.
As for the poem -- that's so weird that he'd get in trouble for playing it before dawn while Jenny was playing it on Sunday afternoons. And what would the FCC go after? I don't think it contains any explicit words or anything, although Cindy certainly implies a great deal. Not sure about MP3's, but it's on the Tampa Sucks compilation, which is still for sale on Screw Music Forever.
By the way, I always sort of hated the way Paul Reller lowered the pitch on Cindy's voice. But with modern software it's easy to raise it back up so it sounds like her again.
Totally with you on the My Bloody Valentine thing. Damn, now I have the urge to run out and buy Loveless.
Hey, thanks again.
Also, please see the posting above this one explaining that this is not the Sisters' blog. Sorry if there was any confusion. I'd suspect that if they did have a blog it would have more solid info and a lot less gushing than this one does.
I never assumed it was written by the Caulfield Sisters. I didn't think would write about her riff with Jenny. Not that anyone should care.
I played the poem, but I was a former WMNF volanteer. Sean Jerkins had the FCC licence. The station couldn't go after me.
The morning listeners wanted their Jimmy Buffet fix. The poem shocked the shit out of them. The former station manager was setting up his show while the phones were lighting up. I told Sean we better get the hell out of here. He didn't answer any phones. I had three people scream in my ear.
I never heard the piece before I played it. I saw the title on the Tampa Sucks CD. This was after I got over the shock of opening the CD and seeing Tom Roe's face staring at me. Not something I want to see at 5:40 in the morning after pounding beers.
It wasn't the poem. It was the complaints that worried WMNF. The morning listeners donate most the money.
The in-group scenesters comments is correct.
Q. Where are all the best musicians on a Saturday night?
A. The Hub.
Tampa scenesters will get the joke, but it's true.
What can you say about musicians who keep playing gigs for Steve Cable and keep getting ripped off of the door money.
(On a side note: I have a friend who was a roommate of Cable's. The stories I heard. He also worked at the Masquerade. Remember Thumper?)
What can you say about the Creative Loafing/Weekly Planet music critics who write more about Fred Stoltz's parties or Gina Vivinetto's garage sales. If the music critics don't take their jobs seriously then they can't expect readers to get excited when they rant about supporting the scene. That column isn't for guest lists and status. Unfortunately, that's how it's been treated.
What can you say about band's who refuse to tour because one member really wants to get that promotion at Kinko's. Hey, $7.50 hr. buys more beer and CDs. Rock on!
As for Charlie Logan: he was the program director of a classic rock station who at least tried to promote local music. WMNF fought for years against a local music show (which they eventually axed.) That great support from a community radio station that raised money from having bands play for free.
Pegasus Lounge is playing local music and getting big crowds on the weekend with no PR. (One WP article after it became huge.) The kids have taken it over. Along with acoustic shows at Sacred Grounds. The problem is the WP and WMNF has no interest. That's how local institutions become relics.
OK, I just thought I might need to clear that one thing up, because I noticed that the Monkeyfilter page says "The Sisters post a response on their blog." I don't want anyone to think I'm claiming to speak for them.
I'm sorry to hear support for local music in Tampa has gotten so bad. My impression is that Pee Shy did get a lot of support from most of the critics of their era, especially from the Planet (not so much from Booth, but at least the Tribune did write about them from time to time), and both Cindy and Jenny were the subject of nice profiles in the Times. Even the Bradenton Herald had that music writer who used to pop up at shows in the Rubb and the Stone Lounge wearing her Winnie-the-Pooh backpack.
And I remember learning a lot about the local music scene from WMNF, especially Jenny's show, Layna Ayre's, Bob Pomeroy's, a lot of the Underground Circus, and that Tampa Inside Out show (which I guess is the one you were referring to). I liked Charlie Logan's show too. It was great to be able to hear an amazing new band on the radio and then go see them perform a couple nights later. That hasn't been available in any other place I've lived since leaving Tampa.
But it was really discouraging to see WMNF turn away from playing new music, at least during prime time, when the management decided it could make more money playing folk music for aging yuppies (and I say this as someone who liked the morning show and Early Risers, just not 24/7). The split between the station and the underground created lots of bad moments, like Randy Wynne announcing on Layna's show, with Layna sitting next to him, that he intended to cancel her. And there were some funny ones, like Jenny's dead-on mockery of some stupid promo Randy had done for Better Than Ezra ("are they good? no, they're GREAT! or at least ..."). If a spoken-word piece by Cindy was enough to shake those folks up, more power to them, and you.
I'm glad the kids are at least taking things into their own hands.
Man, your mentioning of Cindy's poem makes me want to go dig out my old copy of Tampa Sucks. She has that talent for being both funny and disturbing, and the piece certainly was both. That bit about being baptized in the same pond where you'd gone waterskiing the day before, or that part where she keeps asking "Have you been washed in the blood of the lamb?" ... I can just imagine all those radio listeners spitting out their coffee.
Is that Tom Roe's mouth spitting out food on that cover? Definitely not a sight for the pre-dawn hours.
100% dead racoon
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