Goings on about town

Today I heard Kyle Bruckmann's Wrack, on Monday I heard the Singleman Affair and Sir Richard Bishop, and two days before that, Josephine Foster, Akron/Family, and the Angels of Light.  And they were all good.  In fact, Wrack, Bishop and Akron/Family were fantastic.  It was hard to imagine Bishop as being part of anything remotely like the Sun City Girls—he's balding and had a grey goatee and looked like he belonged in a café (which is to say he looked very appropriate for what he was playing: Djangoesque, slightly Spanish and Arabian-influenced jazz solo guitar).  When he did play an SCG song, Horse Cock Phepner, it was like your dad belting out a song that was popular when he was your age.  Weird, but not as weird as Anton Hatwich, whom I previous said looked very bass-player, looking, in a collared shirt, creased pants and no cap, a lot like Matt Damon.  Very disconcerting to see the talented Mr. Ripley really getting into a bass line.  Just about as weird as imagining the vaguely nebbishy Kyle Bruckmann being in Lozenge, though (one wonders why I take such account of appearances).

The point of all this, though, is that the Singleman Affair—a babyfaced dude who keened melodiously while accompanying himself on guitar and sitar (no lie, a sitar.  He was wearing what may well have been a tie-dyed shirt)—had a video projection going on during the performance.  The video had a kind of Bill Morrison/Guy Maddin feel to it, and at one point there was a scene from the U of C quads ... depicting J. Z. Smith (aka the smartest man alive) having a contemplative exhalation of cigarette smoke.  It must have been a while ago since he was standing more or less upright.  Surprisingly jarring!  What made it weirder was that while walking to the Empty Bottle I had been thinking about what it would be like to have left and have memories of, and return some time later to, Chicago (Western, being a wide street, is well suited to being looked down contemplatively—distant lights and the sounds of cars passing and whatnot), and then I was presented for about a minute with grainy, slightly jumpy footage, to basically nostalgic music, of an old man I strongly associate with the U of C.

Comments

[dave zacuto]

Do you really think he's the smartest man alive or was whenever he was alive

[ben wolfson]

He is still alive, and he is wicked smaht, boy.

[dave zacuto]

does this have something to do with his critique of the dying and rising god idea