Lew Welch — The Song Mt. Tamalpais Sings

Scanning the used books over at the wonderful Book Passage in Corte Madera, I came across several faded paperbacks by Beat writer Lew Welch. One of the lesser-known Beats, Welch is probably best known as the other hopeless drunk in Jack Kerouac’s majestically depressing Big Sur. Flipping through his work, however, I found Welch to be a gifted poet with a value system more in line with the nascent hippie movement that was emerging in the mid-to-late-’60s.

That Welch disappeared into the woods around Nevada City with his 30-30 after writing a goodbye note only adds to the mystery of this important writer I had somehow missed during my fascination with all things Beat. Welch’s brief, lyrical chapbook The Song Mt. Tamalpais Sings, originally published in 1969, and reprinted with three additional poems by Berkeley’s Sand Dollar in 1970, features a stunning wrap-around scratch board illustration of the Marin Headlands with a slightly more provincial San Francisco peeking (peaking?) over the hills.

The title poem, the first in a pair of bookends that feature the mountain, intones the mantra: This is the last Place. There is nowhere else to go, as Welch boils down the western movement of humankind.

Centuries and hordes of us,
from every quarter of the earth,
now piling up,
and each wave going back to get some more.

Welch, you have no idea.

The last poem, Song of the Turkey Buzzard, looks deeper into a riddle posed in a triptych of Zen-like riddles (complete with commentary by the Red Monk, whoever that is):

If you spend as much time on the Mountain as you should, She will always give you a Sentient Being to ride … What do you ride? (There is one right answer for every person, and only that person can really know what it is)

Of course Welch, like anyone would, wishes for a cool totem animal like a mountain lion, but the mountain has other ideas:

Praises, Tamalpais,
Perfect in Wisdom and Beauty,
She of the Wheeling Birds

Throughout the course of the poem, the mountain throws some pretty clear hints at him until in the second canto, he finally acquiesces, and given his final act two scant years later, it begs one to wonder if he hadn’t been planning it all along.

With proper ceremony disembowel what I
no longer need, that it might more quickly
rot and tempt
my new form

NOT THE BRONZE CASKET BUT THE BRAZEN WING
SOARING FOREVER ABOVE THEE O PERFECT
O SWEETEST WATER O GLORIOUS
WHEELING
BIRD

Arcata Spring

Strange quiet
the hustled mad City traffics
are replaced
ramble-shackle clankings of old American
trucks on muddy tracks
ghost bangings of lumber
trains in the silver
silent background and growing things rising
so fast you can almost hear them
greening
streching so hard they’re likely to split wide
open and spill humid inner secrets
To grow is pain but necessary
above all else
To grow that fast must be religious and Christ
the lawn needs mowing again

***

Published in Toyon, Humboldt State University, 1994, Vol. 40

Their Ingenious Set

Above the tree line irritably shaking
Heralds and hawks both watch
Straining to hear the ingenious set
Of angels naked and magnetic

Heralds and hawks both watch
While on the side of sobriety we bite the hands
Of angels naked and magnetic
Whose songs mock the seductive pull of furtive carnality

While on the side of sobriety we bite the hands
Whose virtue saps the forces of love
Whose songs mock the seductive pull
With household readymades lashed to their bodies

Whose virtue saps the forces of love
Straining to hear the ingenious set
With household readymades lashed to their bodies
Above the tree line irritably shaking and giddily apocalyptic

Karl Strauss Brewing Company — Tower 10 IPA — 6.5%

Having peeps that wander down to San Diego now and again, I’ve heard good things about Karl Strauss, but for whatever reason, I have never been able to find their beers up in the Bay Area. Finally, I’ve been able to find two: their Tower 10 IPA and Red Trolley Ale.

The Tower 10 pours a light pumpkin color with a small, but tight head, leaving little lacing. The nose is all about the malts, which surprised me. I usually like my IPAs to be more hop-forward, but the balance works here.

It started out with ultra-smooth caramel notes with a sweet citrus finish, but I found that as the beer warmed, it gained a coppery aftertaste. Perhaps it’s the hops making their late entrance, but instead of piney/grapefruit goodness, I get to suck on a penny. Maybe this one’s gone south.

Pike Brewing Company — Pike Pale — 5%

This pale ale from the great north woods of Seattle pours with a wonderful nose of malts (I guessed caramel, but it turns out to be a mélange of pale, Munich, crystal, and malted wheat) all adding up to evoke the sweet breadiness of an English biscuit.

The Pike Pale pours with a tight half-inch head with more lacing than your grandma’s Irish curtains. Designated a pale, this “heirloom amber” is surprisingly well balanced, with its hop profile of Magnum, Willamette, and East Kent Goldings not really making their appearance until the brew warms a bit.

The clean mouthfeel lends itself to ultimate quaffablity—useful as Bay Area Indian summer temps begin to rise.

Jeff Johnson — Tattoo Machine: Tall Tales, True Stories, and My Life in Ink

Portland artist Jeff Johnson gives readers an unvarnished look behind the tip wall in his first book, Tattoo Machine. As part owner of the Sea Tramp, one of the oldest tattoo parlors in town, he sees enough crazy shit on any given night to curl the hair of the uninitiated and grizzled veteran alike; however, it is Johnson’s gift for language, metaphor, and unflinching introspection that gives the book its heart. Of course it’s a flaming heart with barbed wire and maybe some wings—but it’s a heart. You don’t have to care about tattooing to take something worthwhile away from this entertaining look at human nature and the art of self-expression.

Jonathan Lethem — The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye

This collection of short stories from Berkeley-by-way-of-Brooklyn writer Jonathan Lethem explores the same sort of absurdist science fiction landscape as his novel Amnesia Moon. These seven pieces show the depth and breadth of Lethem’s creativity as he explores the outer reaches of this genre.

The stories that were previously printed in Asimov’s Science Fiction magazine are among the standouts in this collection and speak both to the editor’s catholic tastes and Lethem’s ability to inhabit vastly different worlds and report back with chilling clarity.

The Happy Man, the lead off tale of a guy who spends half his time in hell and the other half trying to make up with his increasingly distant wife and troubled teenage son, sets the tone for the volume. In this troubling story, the reappearance of a ne’er-do-well uncle in his Earth-bound life begins to draw the two worlds into closer proximity. Lethem telegraphs his final blow but it is devastating all the same. This story stays with the reader and reveals the barely-disguised malice in our classic fairy tales.

Vanilla Dunk, is a slightly futuristic story of professional basketball in a time where the sport is in an advanced state of atrophy and has begun to consume itself like a snake eating its own tail. Powered exosuits give players the sampled skills of the greatest athletes of all time, turning the game into a live fantasy league.

Lethem uses the post-sport spectacle to probe the issues of race (when a white hotshot draws the much-vaunted skills of Michael Jordan) and fame like a tongue returning to the socket of a broken tooth. This is quite a different story than The Happy Man and it’s a testament to Lethem’s deft touch that one doesn’t need an understanding, or fondness for that matter, of basketball to enjoy it.

Not every story in The Wall of the Eye is a slam dunk, but the penultimate tale, The Hardened Criminals, shows what an incredible imagination Lethem possesses. To give away the story’s main conceit would be a crime in and of itself, but it ends up being a chilling indictment of the prison industry and the way that it is set up to strip away the humanity of those stupid, crazy, or unlucky enough to fall under its purview.

Lethem is a prolific novelist as well as short story writer and at times his prose reads dangerously close to poetry as in this introduction of the prison in The Hardened Criminals:

The prison was an accomplishment, a monument to human ingenuity, like a dam or an aircraft carrier. At the same time the prison was a disaster, something imposed by nature on the helpless city, a pit gouged by a meteorite, or a forest-fire scar.

21st Amendment Brewery — Brew Free! or Die India Pale Ale — 7.2%

San Francisco’s 21st Amendment Brewery is probably best known for jumping out in front of the microbrew-in-a-can trend. I was bound for the annual family stay at Lake Tahoe where I knew I was going to need some good beer, so a couple six-packs of a portable, beach-friendly IPA were just what the doctor ordered.

As tasty as it was straight out of the cooler as the thermometer flirted with 100 degrees, it was once I got back to the cabin and found myself a pint glass that this tasty, well-balanced brew was given a proper chance to shine. The Brew Free! or Die IPA pours a light-golden hue with a prodigious cotton-colored head with some serious lacing. Its looks alone invited interest from the macro-beer drinkers at the cabin.

I don’t wish to demean this beer in anyway when I say that this would be a good introductory IPA for those wishing to start developing a palate for them. It throws an inviting sweet citrus nose with subtle sourdough undertones. Not at all like the piney hop bombs that I usually drink; of course, those have the added bonus of keeping less resin-wrecked taste buds out of my stash.

All in all, very quaffable, with a velvet-smooth mouthfeel that reveals the underlying hops. Its drinkability and portability assures that I’ll be taking this beer along on all my summer water-related excursions.

Sonic Youth — The Eternal (2009)

At this point, you are either hip to what the Youth are puttin’ down or you couldn’t be arsed. Love ’em or hate ’em, you have to give them props for following their own collective muse for longer than a quarter of a century now. Remember when we were worried that their jump to a major label meant that Sonic Youth had “sold out?” Ha! Good times.

For what it’s worth, the band’s sojourn in the beige carpeted wilderness has finally come to an end, and they seem to have escaped unscathed. Maybe that’s because DGC/Geffen/CompuglobalHypermegacorp never really knew what to do with the band except leave them alone to make consistently engaging records.

Which brings us to The Eternal, the new album released on Matador, home to fellow squall merchants/musical geniuses, Mission of Burma. With the first atonal clarion clang of Sacred Trickster, the band announces a new-found drive and celebration of independence. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed the hazy, bucolic cruise through their Own Private Connecticut over the last decade, but I have to admit that from Diamond Sea, the closing track on 1995’s Washing Machine, through Do You Believe in Rapture? on 2006’s Rather Ripped, the serene, coolly psychedelic jams aren’t the ones I reach for when I want to drive like a lunatic or jump around the house scaring the animals.

With former Pavement bassist Mark Ibold onboard, replacing multi-instrumentalist Jim O’Rourke who left in 2005, the band sounds more focused, and hungrier than they have in a decade. Those of us lucky enough to catch the epic Daydream Nation shows in 2007 caught a preview of the new lineup that seems to have put a burr back under their saddle.

Trickster kicks off the album with a Kim Gordon vocal that calls to mind the concisely-fractured indie rock of ’90s milestone albums Dirty and Goo. Gordon’s songs have long been highlights of the sets that contain them; unfortunately, her compositions have been few and far between the last few records. As usual, she cuts straight through the bullshit and nails those with no imagination to rise above the cliché, whether in dealing with sexual politics or the business of rocking so hard for so long. What’s it like to be a girl in band? / I don’t quite understand / That’s so quaint to hear / I feel so free, my dear

As the last bit of heavy reverb dies away, Thurston Moore jumps in with a classic rock riff to announce a duet with his wife. Anti-Orgasm flips the meme of sex as violence on its head as it nihilistically proclaims that Anti-war / is anti-orgasm. Sonic Youth has the vortex of guitars sound down by now, but rarely in recent years has it sounded so vital. Around the two-minute mark, Ibod’s bass starts a counterpoint riff that adds a new dimension to the usual expanse of sounds. At three-and-a-half minutes, the band stretches out into a bit of what they have taken away from their flirtation as the punk rock Grateful Dead before Ibod’s figure reappears and brings the whole beautiful mess to a close.

Just as you think that they may be back to drifting however, Lee Renaldo’s What We Know kicks the paranoia up a notch and drives it home with a relentless riff recalling the band’s hardcore past. This strategy is also used to great effect on Poison Arrow, as percussive chordal stabs close out the track.

According to Billboard, The Eternal sold 19,262 copies in its first week and is currently 16th on the Top Digital Album chart. What does that mean in this post-everything marketplace of ideas? Probably nothing—but it could be that Sonic Youth is finally spending some of that famous indie cred. The mandate is rock.

Suggestion Box

Everyday upon entering the coliseum, I see it
Well crafted from exotic hardwoods
Stolen, I’m sure, from some forest primeval
Hand-polished brass hardware makes certain
All submissions remain confidential
Goddamn thing probably cost more than I make in a week

Passing by, I project poison through the smooth slot
A gill of gall in your hogshead of cream
The unspoken knowledge that if I told you what I really thought
The linoleum floor would rend beneath your feet
You would become helplessly entangled
In basement chain and sour mop heads—things you know nothing about

My first suggestion would be to get rid of that box