Nova Ahead 11

This weekend, I made one of the great fires of my life, with my brother. The pandemic would normally mean that unless we were bubbled together, the traditional Sunday football hangouts would be off the table. We have persevered however, through remarkably unfriendly weather; this weekend particularly gave me pause as the windchill was reportedly going to be below zero. But when my brother and I decide that we are going to do something, we’re doing it, freezing digits be damned. We made a fire that looked like it was on the beach of an 80s movie about disaffected teenagers, a football casually being thrown around, perhaps a transistor radio in the background with a handful of people doing that jerking, swaying motion prevalent at every school dance and disco, smoothly navigating the dangerous combination of sand and schnapps. I mean, maybe I’m not giving us enough credit; we devised a sort of pentagram of dry cordwood, swirling up in layers, filling the middle with scraps of hardwood, and at one point a very well-watered Christmas tree. Now that I think of it, maybe it was a little more sinister of a teen movie beach fire. Maybe the fire did the dancing and there was a shiny, shirtless, bodybuilder playing the saxophone as vampires stalked the concert for new recruits. Or perhaps the fact that we did all of this to watch football, on a tv attached to an unwieldy hundred foot extension cord wandering out of the garage, makes it all more akin to a group of bank robber surfers running plays on the beach, though who was Bodhi and who was Johnny Utah I couldn’t say. The last time that we were in a position to create such a fire on a beach was some years ago on tour; could have been West Palm Beach, but the sea turtles were coming ashore in droves to lay their eggs, and we were trying to pitch our bottles so the warm night wind would sing to us. We sipped, tilted the bottles, and listened, endeavoring to tune a chord, several people doublefisting beers until all we ended up with was a decent buzz and sand in our shoes.

This week, to accompany this bit of fire and brother inspired lore, I want to lay a couple of things on you, for your consideration. First, let’s begin with one of my brother’s favorite albums, which when he played for me, I thought he had lost his goddamn mind. The Microphones’ perennial classic, The Glow Pt 2, struck me as a collection of weird themes, haphazardly cross-panned, and definitely did not fit into what I understood about music or record making. Luckily for me, I was able to tune myself to properly receive what Phil Elverum was broadcasting: an impassioned loveletter to the Pacific northwest, to the pure unbridled energy of love and confusion and possibility. That record still inspires me whenever I put it on, and I’m thankful to my brother for hipping me to it. 

Speaking of calibration, have you seen The Watchmen? I’m a comics person, but I also respect the fact that things can change, lenses can shift, and meaning is never fully static. When I read Alan Moore’s 1986 opus which simultaneously dismantled and reinvented the superhero genre, I thought it was amazing, and singular to the degree that it didn’t need to be expanded upon; it felt very much like a complete work. HBO came along and released a limited series last year which turns the source material upside down, but without disrespecting it or bastardizing it in any way. I know that some “comic nerds” were up in arms about Black folks having any part in this fictional world, but this series delivers a logical follow-up and a welcome perspective to what was praised for being gritty, grounded, and realistic. It also is so eerily prescient, and provides so many bizarre parallels to what we are currently going through today, that it deserves your attention for those facets alone. Even without an understanding of the original comic book storyline, this saga about beauty, strength, redemption, power, and reparations is pretty mind blowing. It elaborates upon and recontextualizes the source material in a way that makes the Moore book even better. He is notoriously underwhelmed by any adaptation of his work, but I have to think he was psyched on Regina King’s heavy and thoughtful performance. 

As you may remember, I’ve been getting by with a decent amount of country music in these lean times. The next livestream that we have cued up is local lady April Cushman, who is a good old-fashioned, hard-working, country singer / songwriter, traveling all around New England to perform because she truly believes and has faith in her songs. I always have a lot of respect for those who trust their own work enough to put it all on the line, night after night. If you have found yourself playing that Kacey Musgraves song “Slow Burn” on repeat over this past year, you may want to tune in to check out something homegrown.