she’s gonna be a writer and no one can stop her

You know, I think those remarks by Obama's pastor are getting misconstrued by the media. Clearly, what he meant is: "God damn! America is so totally ready to see and hear more from those Caulfield Sisters!" And who could possibly quarrel with that? (Yes, Senator McCain, I'm looking at you. But is there any truth to the rumors that Hillary's a fan and, if nominated, plans to give an acceptance speech that consists solely of a dramatic reading of the lyrics from "Mosquito Song"? Take that, Samantha Power.)

Anyway, if you've been waiting all this time trying to make up your mind about whether to buy a physical copy of Say It With Fire, the Sisters' splendid 2004 EP with that cool cover depicting what looks like a homespun floral dress that's suffered some tragic ironing mishap, you're just about out of luck, slim. American Laundromat's online store now lists the disc as "out of print," and my quick-and-dirty perusal of Google, GEMM and eBay turns up a whopping total of one used copy for sale in the entire universe. (Actually, it's amazing that even one person who has ever purchased the EP feels like parting with it.) Feel free to keep checking GEMM if you're truly desperate, but I'm just glad I scarfed as many copies from multiple vendors as I did when the album was still extant. Sure as shit worked out better than all that Bear Stearns stock.

Yes, the album's still available from iTunes. I suppose you can also buy a Bentley instead of a Rolls, or vacation on the Adriatic instead of the Riviera, if you feel like lowering your standards a smidge. Your call.

On the other hand, we live in an amazing universe, so opportunities still abound to partake of Caulfields-esque magic. Cindy side project du jour Land of Tomorrow is still stalking the Earth like the wildebeast of musical wonderment that it is and last night was scheduled to conduct what I can only assume was a majestic show at Glasslands in Brooklyn with Oakley Hall, and if you missed that there's always April 19 at Cakeshop.

Meanwhile, Kristin's other band Gloria Deluxe just celebrated the release of its new album Must Don't Whip 'Um, containing songs from the second operetta in its Accidental Trilogy. This will allegedly be available on Amazon, iTunes and CD Baby soon (I definitely recommend the CD Baby option), but meanwhile you can squint at one of the photos on this page and see Kristin drumming away happily up on the riser.

Kinda overwhelming, isn't it, having all these options? Or as the Rev. Wright might put it: "God damn!"

no, she can do it with her eyes

I hope everyone is having a good MLK Day. Here's a treat for y'all: Someone has uploaded a second live video of the Sisters onto YouTube, this time showing them performing at Pianos, which I'm guessing was a few years ago.

The camera moves around a lot and offers a good look at all three, each seeming very serious but rocking out nonetheless. Is Mary amazing on that bass or what? Kristin's got her headphones on and is drumming intently with that right shirtsleeve cuff unbuttoned, and late in the song Cindy starts wailing on the pedal and pounding on her guitar like she's trying to knock some sense into it.

Damn, what an amazing contribution to Western civilization and the Milky Way galaxy they are.

Anyway, here goes:

the flood will take us when we're in our sleep

Let's just say, hypothetically, that you drive five hours across the state to see a wonderful band whose debut album has been immeasurably enriching your life during the past couple of months, but then because of some absurdly inaccurate Google Maps driving directions coupled with extreme fatigue and your usual stupidity you arrive just in time to catch the last song and a half of their set, for a total of maybe five minutes. But this is the most glorious five minutes ever. And the band that comes up next also rocks the joint hard, and so it is with less disappointment and chagrin than you probably would have expected that you sleep off your embarrassment in some hotel, wake up early the next day and make the trek back home, trying not to worry too much about that weird bird-chirping noise your front left wheel suddenly seems to be making. And you finally arrive at your house without further adventure, aside from the hour you spent napping in a turnpike rest stop when the exhaustion finally became too much to bear.

You'd be in the mood for some relaxin' at this point, wouldn't you? I certainly am. I mean, yeah, you would be.

And you'd be in luck, because the always-enterprising Ms. Cynthia Wheeler has formed yet another new band, this time called Land of Tomorrow, whose mission statement, she explains, is to service one's psychic needs on those "'jesus, i need to chill the f*ck out' days." (This is the band formerly known as Mostly Water, according to American Laundromat's latest e-mail.)

They've got a couple sound clips up at their MySpace site, and as far as chilling out is concerned, all I can do is echo Mr. Bush: Mission fucking accomplished. Cindy's laughter at the beginning of "I Loved" is pretty damned beguiling too.

Best of all, the band will be rocking out live Thursday night at the Cake Shop in NYC. So go check 'em out. My advice: Bring a goddamn map too.

P.S. Looking for another band to check out? Wye Oak! Wye Oak! Wye Oak! (formerly Monarch)

from my east side, from my west side

I'm running out the door to go listen to Paul Krugman (who's basically the Mary Catherine Guidera of John Bates Clark Medal-winning Princeton economics professors who write columns for The New York Times) speak at the Miami Book Fair. But when I get back, looks like I got some downloading to do, thanks to our friends at American Laundromat:

We promised you we'd be releasing the "Deal Breaker Demos" on iTunes and we have. Just after the break-up of Pee Shy and the formation of the Caulfield Sisters, Cindy and Mary recorded a demo for their old label under the moniker Three Wheeler. The demo was never released and Cindy and Mary went on to form the Caulfield Sisters and record "Say With Fire" which was a stunning debut that earned glowing reviews, landed them opening slots for bands like Interpol, and charted on college radio for months. The Deal Breaker Demos are a fantastic collection of songs that could have been part of the Say It With Fire sessions; haunting melodies, great hooks, and all the cool we've come to expect from The Caulfield Sisters. Sean Glonek at SRG Studios (Kristin Hersh, Frank Black, Tanya Donelly, Dresden Dolls) mastered the tracks for us. Buy it on itunes now.

Thank you! Thank you! And fuck you, David Brooks!

now that's a thought i can follow

I have nothing constructive to add, just thought it worth noting that a cool person named Stacey took some photos at this month's Caulfield Sisters/Hornrims show at Don Hills. Besides the one above, you can see the others in their natural habitat here.

Did anyone else know that besides Look It, Cindy and the flute goddess Suzanne Thorpe were in a second band called The Forest For the Trees? Suzanne mentions it here, and here's an atmospheric photo of them in action. Apparently Cindy concocts bands the way Bush keeps coming up with excuses why we need to spend an extra 6-18 months in Iraq.

Also, it seems that the Caulfield Sisters are trendy. I didn't know that, but let's hope the trend continues.

Meanwhile, it turns out that there's a second Caulfield sisters video on YouTube. But it's just a home movie made by two sisters named Caulfield. I wonder if they know about their namesakes.

Another loss in Tampa: There was some very sad news a few days after the show: Jeff Wood, the former drummer for the Hornrims' Joe Popp, along with Barely Pink, the Fugitive Kind, one configuration of Monday Mornings and a slew of other Tampa bands, died Sept. 12 after a long fight with brain cancer. He was only 42. My condolences to those who knew him. Joe has set up a tribute site here, and you can read more here, here, here and here.

but when she falls, she's lighter than air

I'm guessing that the Sisters have departed the stage by now, that their faithful fans have enjoyed the comeback show at Don Hills, and that the Earth has resumed spinning on its proper axis. I hope it was everything a Caulfield Sisters performance should be -- life-changing, psoriasis-curing, the type of experience that leaves you with your soul cleansed, your hedges trimmed and your cuticles sparkling. Or something like that.

Did the Sisters have another show scheduled for this week? I thought I saw one mentioned on the message board before it succumbed to all the spam.

Anybody who's still hanging around the tri-state area might want to check out Kristin's other band Gloria Deluxe peforming Must Don't Whip 'Um at the Philly Fringe Festival. The shows run Wednesday through Friday at Temple University.

Anyway, I just wanted to say welcome back. Now when's the world tour?

i hope it's got a face that i know

Yowza yowza yowza. I mean, damn -- when those Sisters pull a comeback they don't fuck around. No, they just go ahead and stage the most glorious resurrection since a certain Nazarene kicked a stone out of his way a couple of millenniums ago. Here are the tidings of joy from American Laundromat:

1. "The Caulfield Sisters will be playing a show on September 8th at Don Hills in NYC."


2. "In the next few weeks we’'ll be releasing the original demo version of Fine” on iTunes. The demo version is much different than the Say It With Fire –EP version and fans will love having this track in their collection."


3. "Cindy and Mary have agreed to allow American Laundromat to exclusively release the 3 Wheeler “Deal Breaker Demos” on iTunes. The 3 Wheeler demo was recorded after Pee Shy disbanded and before The Caulfield Sisters formed. The songs are a perfect blend of dreamy indie rock and smart pop we’'ve come to expect from The Caulfield Sisters. Mary herself is working on artwork for both the Fine single and Deal Breaker Demos."

Can it get any better? Oh yes it can: "Look for both in the next few weeks."

All I can say is: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seriously, I just need to faint somewhere.

The Don Hills show seems like it should be especially magical, since the club's calendar says the Sisters will be appearing with The Hornrims, whose members include Cindy's old Ybor City co-conspirator Joe Popp. Perhaps Cindy and Joe will bring back the old Ybor Orchestra while they're at it, maybe do an impromptu rendition of "Fiddle on the Griddle." We can dream, can't we?

No we can't. Not now. This is far too much great news in one sitting to possibly justify hoping for more.

OK, one final question: Will these iTunes releases be available in iTunes Plus? The only thing better than hearing new music from the Sisters is hearing them at 256kbps resolution instead of 128, plus not having to engage in annoying technical rigamarole to play them on your non-iPod player. That would make all this beyond perfect. But hell, I'll take them on eight-track if that's all that's available. (Hmmmm ...)

In any case -- thank you, thank you, thank you for the great news, and congratulations to everyone involved for all the hard work that no doubt went into making this happen. You guys rock.

days grow long as the days go on

Great news: Various folks who know much more than I do say the Caulfield Sisters juggernaut is getting ready to roll, to which all I can respond is a mighty yee haw. See these snippets from the American Laundromat message board plus the comments to my prior blog post for more. Really, I was just expressing my fears out loud so they'd turn out not to be true.

Meanwhile, anyone looking to get their sororal fix can listen to a few new songs featuring Kristin on her other, other, other band Gloria Deluxe. The GD is also working on two new albums, has a bunch of shows coming up in Philadelphia, Los Angeles and Chapel Hill in the next few months, and has set up a new website for Accinosco (a\k\a the Accidental Nostalgia Company), which is essentially Gloria Deluxe plus a bunch of supporting players. Think of them as the Talking Heads circa 1983, as opposed to the Talking Heads circa 1977. Sure, they're not the Sisters, but they've been known to put out a snappy tune now and again.

the girl's in the ground now

So is this the end of the Sisters? Have the Caulfields gone off to that great musical-literary rye field in the sky? Is it possible that a band that hasn't performed in public for almost two years might not technically, you know, exist?

Interpret this as you will, but Cindy's gone off and formed yet another band, according to this alert passed on by Caulfield Sisters mega-fan madtempest:

From: Cindy
Date: Jun 10, 2007 11:21 PM

My new band, MOSTLY WATER will be playing this Thursday June 14th at Matchless in Greenpoint.
557 Manhattan Ave at Driggs.
10 pm
For those of you who know Sarah P from Beacon's her band BEZOAR will play @11pm. So come on out and get blasted some sweet ass rock.

wheel

The Sisters' MySpace page offers similar tidings as well, without offering any details on what this means for the rest of the Trinity:

Cindy W from The Caulfield Sisters new band MOSTLY WATER play it's first show. Please come and behold AMPLIFIED AUTOHARP WITH LOTS OF PEDALS...

As always with Cindy's bands, Mostly Water sounds extremely intriguing, especially since we all are, of course (mostly water, I mean). No idea if she's drawing any parallels with the radical activist Canadian news site of the same name, but maybe she can work out a sponsorship deal with them. Perhaps we'll see her performing at G8 summits and anti-globalization rallies while the tear gas rains down. And then maybe, as the accordion feedback wafts over the barricades and into the shuttered conference rooms of the world leaders, Bush and Putin and Sarkozy and the rest of them will look up from their scripted talking points and say in unison: "Hey! Why don't we cut out all this shit and just fucking give peace a chance?"

Or maybe the Caulfield Sisters could come back to us and stage a glorious resurrection. Which seems more likely?

Anyway, if you're in New York on Thursday night, you know what you gotta do.

it's a sausage grinder

A few more thoughts on the no-longer-lost video:

• Comparing the Pee Shy video with the Caulfield Sisters' concert footage can be both fun and educational. For instance, ponder Cindy's sultry swaying-back-and-forth in "Little Dudes" (perhaps amped-up for purposes of the video) versus her ironclad gravitas when playing the accordion in "Some Candy Talking." In the latter, I was struck especially by how strong her upper arms must be, how she wields the instrument as if it were a part of her body, and especially by the epic way she fucks with it toward the end of the song. (She was messing with accordion feedback as far back as Who Let All the Monkeys Out?, of course, but not nearly to this extent.)
  
  There's probably not enough evidence here to say for sure whether Kristin is a better drummer than Bil. At the very least, she has more to do here than Bil did in "Little Dudes," which after all was originally an accordion-and-clarinet song with no drum part.
  
  To make the comparison complete, of course, we need to see Jenny performing one of her own post-Shy songs. So here she is rocking out on "Harbour" last October in St. Pete:
  
  


• For some reason, the Monkeys version of "Little Dudes" has always struck me as suffocating and inert, as if everyone had been locked in a tiny room unable to move, not at all as jaunty and organic as the original demo version from Don't Look. Fairly or not, I've blamed that on Rick Chertoff, the head of the Mercury/Blue Gorilla label, who apparently insisted on producing "the big hit" himself.
  
  Chertoff brought along his recording pal William Wittman, who had worked with him on Cyndi Lauper's She's So Unusual, along with two-fifths of The Hooters. In my opinion, the results don't have nearly the fun or dynamism or even the melancholic twinge of the rest of the album, which was produced by Dean Wareham of Luna and Galaxie 500. Wareham really seemed to get what Pee Shy were about; I can't imagine a better recording of "Smoking Gun" or "Dance Motherfuckers" or "Red Ink" or "It's the Love" or "Godforsaken Baby."
  
  This is not to diss Chertoff, who after all had the supreme good taste to release not one but two Pee Shy albums and deserves major props for keeping their musical vision intact. But the band members apparently were smart to pick Wareham to produce the rest of the album. Anyway, their presence in the video seems to restore the song's personality somehow, even though the audio is identical to the CD version.


• It's easy to focus on what some consider the "perverted" aspects of the "Little Dudes" lyrics (I prefer the term "gleefully demented"). After all, this is a song that uses the word "pedophile" to humorous effect and references the ick factor of the Barry Williams/Florence Henderson dalliance. And it does appear on the same album as other classic Wheeler lyrics such as "dance, motherfuckers" and "bend over, want you to meet a friend of mine."
  
  But there's more to the song, as one of the commenters on that song-meaning website hints at:
  

  I don't really think it's about these women wanting sex with younger guys, but rather them wanting a 'relationship' without the complications that come with normal relationships with other adults (maybe even sex?).

  
  More to the point, I think, is Cindy's subtle feminist critique, for instance in the women's appreciation that the younger guys "never try to tell us what to do." They value their autonomy and don't want to surrender it solely for the sake of being with some guy, even though folks like the website commenter think that this kind of submission is just one of "the complications that come with normal relationships." Compromise is a part of any relationship, but Cindy appears to have a problem with the notion that it's supposed to be one-sided. And of course, the statement "when you were born I was already 10" would be no major obstacle at all if the genders were reversed, at least if both people were adults.


• Did Pee Shy belong on a major label to begin with? Cindy has said she doesn't think so. This video seems to revive that question, with its combination of the patented made-for-VH1 alternapop panning and color schemes, mixed with Cindy's circa-1993 just-learning-to-write-songs lyrical style and Pee Shy's classically unorthodox subject matter. It's a fascinating combination but clearly wasn't as marketable as Mercury had hoped. And from what I've read about the label's lack of promotion, whatever success the band had was due largely to the members busting their collective ass.
  
  On the other hand, the two major label albums made their music available to many more people than might have heard them otherwise, and have ensured that the CD's remain widely available in the Amazon Marketplace afterlife to anyone who wants to catch up on what they missed. So yay for that.

i told you, so don't lie

Oh. My. Fucking. God. Part II.

After 11-12 years of being locked in some forbidding, Dick Cheney-style netherworld in some record company's vault, the video for Pee Shy's "Little Dudes" single has finally surfaced. So for anyone who ever wondered what the Sisters were like before they were Sisters, back when Jenny was still in the mix, Bil was just being Bil and the Shy's classic configuration was fully and absolutely in command of Da House, feast your eyes:



I'm not sure if this video ever got any airtime in 1996, so for the past decade it's been an object of intense curiosity among Pee Shy fans -- as eagerly sought after as those original Velvet Underground acetates, or a missing Gutenberg Bible, or maybe even the lost tapes of the Butt Chakra sessions. Many have embarked on manic quests to find this footage only to be driven mad in the attempt, waking up years later, naked and in a drunken stupor, in the middle of some uncharted Antarctic penguin colony just as the ice sheet is breaking off into the sea amid an ecological apocalypse.

Did I say "many" have done this? I meant "none." Can you tell that at this point I'm basically just making shit up?

But that's a sign of how amazed I am to have stumbled upon this piece of Shy history. Look at how young they are! (Not that they're not still young now, of course.) Look at how much hair Cindy and Mary have, and Jenny's blond little 'do, and that wonderful clarinet waggling back and forth, and the ivory Bernini accordion that doesn't seem quite as beat up as in the Sisters' 2004 Rothko video. Mainly, just feel that vibe among them, back when the band was cohesive, still having fun and seemingly about to conquer the alternative-pop music world. (I was predicting the cover of Spin within six months. Of course, I also didn't think they needed to add a bass player. When I'm wrong, I'm wrong.) Witness the assemblage of charisma and brains and talent that so captivated audiences all the way from the Blue Chair record store to the Stone Lounge.

Now, granted, this video takes a somewhat creepy Mary Kay Letourneau-ish turn beginning around the 2-minute mark, freaking out even the child actors by 3:19. Clearly, this was just an attempt to match the light-hearted theme of the song, unless maybe the label was trying to provoke controversy. Either way, it seems unlikely that this approach would be able to fly nowadays (as one of the folks on the YouTube page asks, "Did Debra LaFave write this song?").

One could also question: Is the video even chronologically accurate? Jenny and Cindy were both pushing 30 when they wrote the song. "When you were born I was already 10." Do the math. I never got the impression that the real-life Little Dudes were 12, as is portrayed here. And what self-respecting Nineties kid was going to sit around playing Pong? Wasn't that a game for ironically detached Gen-Xers?

But that's just quibbling. The label's hopes for "Little Dudes" to become a sleeper hit never came true; one could even suggest that the company was way too fixated on this one song, when by '95 the band had written stronger ones that would have made much better singles. (*Cough* "Yellow Race Car." *Cough*). But at least they've left us this glimpse back to the early days of this musical dynasty, and for that the universe can be grateful.

Bonus round: Can't get enough of "Little Dudes" reminiscences? OK, maybe you'd like to join these folks, all of two of them, who are having a grand old time debating what the heck these cryptic lyrics mean. "I love this song because it's so perverted," writes one.

trying hard not to be the piece of cloth that it is

For anyone who's interested, looks like those message boards at American Laundromat are finally back. And there's a special corner all set up for discussions of everyone's favorite accordion-, bass- and drum-slinging trio -- even though it's accompanied by some disquieting hints that the Holy Trinity have retreated into their own state of Salinger-like seclusion:

What can we say about these ladies? Even though they are on a semi-indefinite hiatus, we still have the candle lit for an eventual reunion, new 48 song CD, and world tour...

Semi-indefinite? Isn't that term they used for the Iraq war? Or was that a "slam dunk"?

Anyway, this has me wondering anew what's going on with the Sisters' official site, which apparently expired on April 24 (looks like the name can be renewed for a year for only $30, according to these folks, in case anyone's thinking of getting them an early Christmas present). Or why the MySpace page for that Cinnamon Girl Neil Young tribute lists Cindy, not the Caulfield Sisters, as contributing.

I just hope all is well with them (aside from that whole new-motherhood, not-sleeping-for-two-years thing that Mary has no doubt been going through). Then again, Cindy has always said they're taking a zen approach to this Caulfield Sisters business. And it has always seemed like her projects take a long time to percolate. They happen when they happen, and the results are almost always glorious. So I'm happy to light another candle, set it by the window and wait.