clarification and dream

A small clarification, first. This is not exactly an MP3 blog; it's a personal blog that happens to include MP3s on a fairly regular basis. I realized that I don't want to ever feel like I can't write about, oh, Aunt Sally's thyroid medication problems because people will be anxiously tapping their feet and saying "we don't care, give us some tunes"; I"m not getting paid to do this, I do it for fun--these songs are part of the fabric of how I live and what I think about--and so this is the way I'm doing it.

With that out of the way. very odd dream last night. In the main and longest scene, I was in a huge circular concert hall, divided in half by a wall with a few doors; one half had a stage recessed into the wall, on which there was a music festival going on, and the other had a bunch of booths for commerce. I was hanging out in the non-stage half, chatting with somebody else at the cafeteria-style table I was sitting at, when I saw a flash of a familiar white suit through the door. "Bowie! It's Bowie!" I said. Sure enough, when I got to the concert side, David Bowie and his band had just taken the stage--they were the unannounced special guests at the show. I was right up front to see them do a medley of "Burning Down the House" and "Wild Thing." Since Lisa wasn't with me, I tried to call her on my cell phone to send her a Bowie-gram; Bowie recognized me somehow, and came over to me and sang a line of "Wild Thing" changed to mention Lisa. (But then I looked at the phone and it wasn't transmitting.) After they finished, I went to the commerce area and was flipping through a book for sale that was handbound and also handwritten; I talked to the woman who'd made the book for a while, but when I went back to the concert side, people were coming out of it in droves saying "man--they were AMAZING." It turned out that some kind of black metal band had just played, and had been impressive enough that even people who don't think they like that kind of thing had loved it. I didn't even catch their name. In a second, shorter scene, I'm in my parents' house, talking to my father about its architectural oddities ("wow--I never realized this place has 20-foot ceilings on the lower floor!"--it doesn't, really), but a thunderstorm breaks out and he convinces me to head outside to stand under the roof and count lightning flashes.

I'm assuming that that part of the dream has to do with ongoing house angst. We haven't looked at any houses since the other day, but on Friday evening Lisa and I went out in the car, and noticed that there was a huge bulldozer in front of the picturesque, slightly decrepit old Victorian that's kitty-corner from our apartment. "Hmm," we thought aloud, "wonder what it's doing there?" Two seconds later, with an enormous CRUNCH, it tore off the entire façade of the building. "AAAAAH!," we thought aloud. When we came back two hours later, the house was a pile of splinters. Now we hear rubble-removing noises all day long.

Last night, we went to the showcase for the Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls--the weeklong summer camp program that teaches 8-18-year-old girls to play in bands with each other. 17 bands in all, this time, plus everyone at the beginning singing the camp's theme song, led by Rachel from the Decemberists, Chelsey Johnson and Carrie Brownstein. At which point I realized that this IS the best thing ever. Some of the bands were definitely a little more coordinated than others, but a few of 'em were wonderful on their own--I especially loved the Bookworms, two VERY tiny girls whose song was called "The World Is Becoming a Wasteland" and sounded like the very early Germs, and the Scorchers, who switched instruments mid-song twice. Others seemed to have unintentionally gotten into "Puerto Rican Ghost"/"Spectre Vs. Rector" territory, which is not a bad place to explore. And when Splenda played, I thought: wow, that drummer's fantastic! Then I realized: oh, right, that drummer's Jody Bleyle!

Jody was, of course, one of the mainstays of both the legendary Portland band Hazel and Team Dresch, who are reuniting for a one-off show next weekend at the Homo A-Go-Go festival in Olympia--I'm strongly considering going. And--oh, look, here's a song now: Hazel's "Blank Florida" (removed)! (Thanks to Jody for permission to post it, and to her friend Lucy for acting as a go-between.) Hazel played this one at their reunion show a few months ago, and I jumped higher than I have in a while. I love its sense of a three-way conversation--the way the drum fills act as hooks, the vocals sometimes synching up and sometimes diverging, switching off who's in control. Deceptively short, too. Anyone want to take a guess at what the title means?