Kathy from Glass Rock shut down the Glass Rock Essay Contest only to have more time to work on her essay, which has now won the Award, destroying Matt and Aaron’s entries but let’s face it not besting Dave’s rodeo interview. Says Kathy, “I’m so busy with other projects that I even forgot I entered this contest.” Enjoy her award winning essay below.
“A day in the Life of” by Glass Rocker Kathy
When we were on our UK tour, I was often mistaken for Lady Gaga because of my extremely sexy outfits, blonde hair & devil-may-care attitude on stage. This is understandable, and I tried to take advantage of it by asking for discounts on our gas station sandwiches. Recently, however, in my hometown of Detroit, I suffered another case of mistaken identity. When a man approaches you in a vehicle and says “Would you like to make some money?”, there is a 99% percent chance that you don’t want to do whatever it is that’s going to make you the money. With these odds in mind, I said no.
I kept on walkin to my bank cuz it’s Friday and I got my paycheck and guess what I’m going to the sauna later. This motherfucker however, thought that I said “I’m a prostitute and just need a little encouragement” when I said “No.” So, he pulled up next to me a second time and showed me his nasty January cock pumping through his left hand. “Please touch it just a little bit!”, he said. So I said, “You dirty motherfucker, get the fuck away from me before I call the cops, you son of a bitch motherfucker.” And I said it like I meant it. He put it in reverse and got out of there, leaving me to rant and rave in the streets like so many other of my Detroit brethren.
With no time to ruminate the why’s and how’s (Was it my pants?), I headed off to my next errand, picking up my cat Gerome from the vet. I take Gerome to the vet in a cardboard box from Staples because he won’t go (or seemingly fit) in a regular cat carrier. With Gerome in hand(s), I walked home, along the way meeting a delightful child who wanted to know if Staples was giving out free cats. I said I don’t know about that but this one’s mine.
Finally(!), I was able to get back to work. With Gerome back in his window seat and a cool crisp twenty warming up my back pocket, I opened up my web browser and continued scouring Craigslist for juicy personals (missed connections in particular) cuz I’m supposed to be writing demos for Glass Rock II and I’m running out of emotional material………Glass Rocker Kathy
Received some e-mails at glassrocklife@gmail.com about the Rynnn Sawyer interview. Curiosity has saturated distortion levels (Aaron, help!) related to claims made about drums as well as [the obviously no disrespect to the Great] Ozzy [Osbourne]. Enjoy your Sunday morning buttress and youtube advertisement.
“The second solo? I don’t think I liked it as much as the first. Not that it matters…My opinion doesn’t matter much. What’s Lee Konitz doing on a record with these guys?…The rhythm section has no guts at all.” -Downbeat Blindfold Test 1960
In the meantime, enjoy a clip of Glass Rock’s “Possession” live in London from Pure Groove. [The obviously no disrespect to Charles Mingus] Mingus says-
“The bass player sure was in tune–I knew that right from the start.”
The Catcher in the Rye caught [my] eye on the bookshelf this morning and it seemed worth a link to the NY Times’ excellent obituary -Salinger Dies at 91 from yesterday. [I particularly liked the Onion coverage- Aaron] In an era of micro-documentation of our lives (see Glass Rock’s four websites, your mother’s blog), it interests [me] that when we talk about Salinger, we talk about his work and “J.D. Salinger” not J.D. Salinger (nor do we paraphrase Raymond Carver).
At a bar one time, a woman asked [my] favorite book endings and [I] said “Don’t ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everbody,” spoken by Holden Caulfield, which is not [my] favorite book ending but [I] still love it and feel it embodies the ’shift of mood’ innovation as mentioned in the Times obituary. The woman at the bar replied “How obvious” and [I] retorted with “Yeah, well drinking’s gonna kill [me].”
Ten Years After, here’s Glass Rock’s Friday Photo of The Day, as bit from unkut.com, the best hip-hop website going, and followed by a sweet tweet that made it across [my] desk. Have a nice weekend getting fucked up!!! Be sure to check out Lion Dance with Rynnn as well as Red Dawn II tonight in Bushwick 4 hardcore fucking action.
Wow. Interviewing Rynnn Sawyer from Glass Rock is like fending off a very smart lion with a chair and a Jimmy Castor 45 i.e. keep talkin fella and please don’t eat a tape recorder and hand sandwich. Rynnn answered all these questions candidly and off the cuff unlike Kathy. He’s the best drummer in Brooklyn too. We are obligated at this point to metion that Kathy played drums on “U Have Never Been Lonely.”
What about “Let the Moon Get Into It” [Soft Location] takes you there? Well there is the slow fade in that makes you wanna see what’s coming. The placement late on the record doesn’t hurt either. Then there is the ever-so-slight synthesizer’s hint at the melody ballasted by the pulsing bass. “I know the way your fingers cross…” and you are hooked. Like what the fuck is she talking about?!? But what really, “takes me there” is the ascension that makes this song cyclical and a true rising force. Volume and density combine to make a slowed euphoric vision. I guess what I’m saying is it’s like the kundalini rising in thee olde tantra. Thanks Soft location!!
And then the 125th time you listen to it there emerges the rest of the lyrics…some of the tenderest and sad around. Even if the person in question is sitting right next to her holding hands the lyrics are still excruciating. No one should love someone this much.
Is there vicarious living when you read noir fiction? Have you encountered a noir character with a heart of gold similar to yours? Would this not appeal because of the vicariousness i.e. seeing the world through the eyes of a hardboiled jerk rather than through the eyes of real-life-good-guy rynnn sawyer? I guess I relate to so many of them. My 1st would have to the Firsesign Theater’s Nick Danger. I’ve loved that character since i was like 8 years old. He was the brain child of this hippie radio show troupe from Los Angeles. He doesn’t pose a threat of vicariousness as he is so ridiculous.
Surprising Firesign Theatre Fan Ryan Sawyer
I think Chester Himes’ Coffin Ed and Gravedigger would kinda fall in that same category. I definitely relate to the Dude from the Big Lebowski.
But the big guy i relate to is Elliott Gould’s take on Philip Marlowe in Robert Altman’s The LongGoodbye. From the very beginning when you see [him] strike match stains anywhere above his wall to the horror on his face when they slash that poor girl. When you think about it, the meanest thing he does is try and lie to his cat about the food he’s feeding him. Plus he talks to himself all the time in a strange little mutter. What’s not to relate to?
Is your goodness overrated? It’s hard to over rate goodness, even mine. But Glass Rock could find a way and bottle it and sell it as merch.
How was Fresh Fest? I dunno. I don’t think I was there.
What is a DJ supposed to do? As a DJ, what record will never fail you? A dj is supposed to hear the vibe of the room then get underneath it slightly and slowly raise said vibe until the people are dancing and raising the roof themselves. Also, take requests if you got the record and it fits. Dj-ing is a lot like life in that way, try not to be an asshole.
A record that never fails is side 3 of Funkadelic’s America Eats its Young. It’s got a song for every occasion.
Have you heard Bill Ward sing “It’s Alright?” I have. Technical Ecstasy? I wonder what Ozzy was up to when they played this live. I hope he wasn’t off stage doing drugs.
“Apache” or “Heaven and Hell is on Earth?” What’s wrong with both? That’s why there are two turntables man! I imagine “Apache” has been sampled a lot more. Though I am sure 20th Century Steel Band had a lot more fun throughout their career than the Incredible Bongo Band. Funny that they both had the names of their premier instruments in their name [Glass Rock Incredible Bass Band]. What I really wanna hear is the 1970 Edgar Broughton Band release of “Apache Dropout”, a pairing of Captain Beefheart’s “Dropout Boogie” and “Apache”.
Can you explain the presumable benefit of the Russian baths? It’s easy to underestimate relaxing.
Is music spiritual or is music music? What’s it about? Well there is a spirit in music for sure. The spirit of the folks who make it. The spirit of the people who are hearing it. I don’t necessarily believe in a creator but if I did i am certain music would go straight to its center. For me, music transfers the most amount of information in an exact and precise way. I think that makes me feel something as close to spiritual as anything else I’ve ever experienced. It’s up there with sex and helping people. If that’s not spiritual then we’re all fucked.
Do you care what the Fall album Aaron likes best? Of course. I love talking to my bandmates about music. Live at the Witch Trials is my personal favorite. With Kurious Orange in second. Trying to get the ball rolling.
What’s the last work of art that made you sad? The Arthur Russell song, “I Couldn’t Say it to Your Face” and Teddy Pendegrass’ “Love TKO.”
As you get older and presumably organize and re-organize your values pyramid, what ranks near the top? What ranks near the bottom? Lately it’s been pretty hedonistic…Sleeping late, eating fine foods, wine, good drugs, etc. If we are being honest. So now I think being honest is higher than that. But maybe it’s just me that’s high. Also, frenz have been pretty important but that’s nothing new. Playing music with urgency and still being in the cut is paramount as well. I don’t notice the bottom ranking shit.
Despite her immediate shutdown of the Glass Rock essay contest, head Glass Rocker Kathy agreed to do Interview Spotlight. Enjoy her smoky answers and check out Wasted, GnR’s new song, for elucidation.
1) Do you care what the Fall album Aaron likes best? Actually yes.
2) Does discussing the procees behind songs and painting dillute the intagibles of creating them? Are there intangibles? Intangibles are the funnest thing to talk about! That’s what creative metaphors are for. And dancing.
3) What was it like riding around as a young person in a car with Fred Leisen of Hard Place? Fun & free.
4) Dave Mies salutes the free spirits of Southeastern Michigan people, who are currently repatriating to Queens, New York and/or remaining in wide open Detroit. Why is it that [these people] love nude beaches, gardening, Awesome Color, massages, garage music, riding bikes, Perfect Wieners and Butts, dancing, Leon Chase, the Electrifying Mojo, and funk 45s? High levels of Intangibles.
5) Do you feel that dancing to Sweet Leaf on ecstasy in San Francisco was the beginning of Soft Location? It’s getting close.
Kathy gets intangible stage right at All Tomorrows Parties
6) What band did you like most at All Tomorrow’s Parties? Sleepy Sun
7) What are the ethics of having a personaler? 1. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. 2. Make an effort.
Thank you Kathy for your forthrightness. I.S. hopes to hook-up other interviews soon, please check back, and we’ll aim for elusive figures like Kathy. Here’s a song from her old group Soft Location featuring Chris Morris, Ben Good, Leah Retherford, and Matt Kantor.
Look for new exclusive! demos up soon. However in pursuit of information about Bill “Spaceman” Lee, you may have ended up here to enjoy this quote.
“I think about the cosmic snowball theory. A few million years from now the sun will burn out and lose its gravitational pull. The earth will turn into a giant snowball and be hurled through space. When that happens it won’t matter if I get this guy out.”
Well said. For those obsessed with counterculture pitchers, Glass Rock are a band with songs– 3 Joints to sample on myspace–and a new album.
We’ve received reviews for which we are grateful, even ones which use phrases like ”jazz dinner waffle” which sounds like eating pancakes with a chocolate chip smiley face for dinner i.e. corrupt and immature but not evil.Speaking of breakfast, enjoy some Glass Rock approved jam this morning.
So few photographs of drummers surface that this nice shot by Claudia deserves top billin. This is Rynnnn doing his thing. As we focus on 2010, Glass Rock II, and the nude beachi.e. spring and summer, a Move on from Tour Already shout to great supporters Clash magazine who gave our liveness a rip roaring review from Manchester DEAF INSTITUTE WRITE-UP. Sincere thanks.
Though Kathy shut down the Essay Series, Glass Rock has found a way around that. In order to share Dave from Glass Rock’s thoughts on the rodeo we now present the first entry in our new Interview Spotlight. [Please be advised that this interview contains language and imagery that you may find titilating.]
Glass Rock: What was the rodeo like?
Dave Mies: Awesome (I really dug it, great show), but next time I’m bringing a flask. I blew twenty bucks on two beers; the next time I wanna get fucked that hard I’ll weld a steel dildo to my bicycle seat and ride down a flight of stairs.
GnR: How do you rate the shit-kickin’ state-fair-rock factor at the event, especially given the Manhattan location?
DM: Having a rodeo in Madison Square Garden is kind of like taking a shit in a urinal. It’s not like the deposit is so far off the beaten trail, but the receptacle just aint’ made for it.
This sport makes two fat fucks in boxer shorts beating the tar out of each other seem reasonable by comparison. This is what amounts to a bunch of [people] in cowboy hats betting their entire sexual future on the chance to stay on a gigantic, raging, frustrated bull for a “graceful” eight seconds. Make no mistake, this is genitorture. From where I sat, riding a male cow seemed comparable to laying your sack on a cutting board and letting your meanest ex girlfriend loose with a hammer. I bet New Yorkers would have paid triple the price for some of that action though.
Speaking of Seattle, the city once hosted the Seattle Pilots, a time chronicled in Ball Four by Jim Bouton. Aaron from Glass Rock wrote an award-winning essay (that might get mentioned in the State of the Union address, hint to tune in tonight) on this B.C. slice of American literature.
Why I love ‘Ball Four’ by Jim Bouton
by Aaron Mullan
Some people think of this as a book about baseball, or about heros being cut down to human size, and those things are incidental to the book but I would suggest any Roger Angell collection for the former and maybe John Barth’s Chimera for the latter if that’s your bag. This book is a real-life story about an earnest, intelligent guy caught in a world where his alleged peers turn out to be likeable, clever, or interesting, but rarely all three. A masterpiece of observational humor set in 1969 and written from the viewpoint of a malcontent within the crew-cut mainstream who sympathizes with the Hippies but seemingly has no desire to enter their Universe. If you liked the animated version of Doc Ellis’s LSD no-hitter you will love this book.
In related news, Matt from Glass Rock discovered this morning that Detroit, MI gave us Killer by Alice Cooper and Funkadelic by Funkadelic in the same year 1971. Matt had already been working on an essay on the Alice Cooper Group’s “Dead Babies.”
Why “Dead Babies” by Alice Cooper Group Fascinates Me
by Matthew Kantor
Extremely extreme for the time and even now; this song delivers on its title, indeed about dead babies, and features the resignations “We didn’t love you anyway” and “We didn’t want you anyway.” The original Alice Cooper Group played tightly in real freak-out fashion, psychedelic mixed with garage and cabaret and the band as a band remain underrated. As the song unfolds, Alice at first seems like the bad guy but then the narrative turns evil-er as it appears the parents have killed their child. A song needed to be written about this? This is recommended for anyone who likes songs that make you feel terrible for breakfast as well as those fascinated with the motivation behind Ghostface Killah’s “Maxine” and those who can hear Jesse Helms saying “It’s outrageous filth.”
Also, Glass Rock begins our Valentines Day fire sale on pull out quotes; soon to follow and you can pay us when you see us.
Many indie, college, and internet radio stations have been kind so far, including the aforementioned WFMU as well KEXP in Seattle, whose concise review came across [my] desk this morning-Excellent and Psychedelic.
Ted from Viva Radio has also been great and we unearthed some photos from a sloppy Sunday session with the man himself. Shouting out radio station call letters will always be cool; and Detroit folks may remember the old days of WABX , WLLZ, and WRIF bumper stickers included for any of you MIs reading this who get warm and fuzzy (and whose parents conceived you in the 1970s).
Greg Baise is the mysterious Detroit neighbor (what up doe) who linked Tall Firs and Soft Location vis a vis WFMU. Greg’s not mysterious to anyone who’s ever played music in southeastern Michigan, either homegrown or smuggled ashore, and Kathy from Glass Rock wants him praised and mentioned. That leaves us no choice but Greg deserves it to the nth for being a killer concert promoter and great fellow.
Tall Firs Meet Soft Location available via LP and download from Ecstatic Peace!, the must have release for Valentine’s Day, Fourth of July, and some Wednesday night you mistakenly hit the town. Also via iTunes.
Glass Rock is a song, is a band, is a way of life. Glass Rock is the crystallized movement formed by the molten lava makeout of the two bands of the album title: ‘Tall Firs meet Soft Location’. It’s a werewolf and a rhino on a first-date rampage of Korean Food and poppers, doing the Cabbage Patch on the boardwalk, kissing babies with beer breath. The core elements of the Soft Location sound are Kathy Leisen’s haunting voice and boneyard guitar, and Matt Kantor’s slo-mo jet fuel bass jamminating. Add Tall Firs: Ryan Sawyer’s could-blow-your-pants-off-but-prefer-to-slowly-work-them-over-your-hips drumming and Dave Mies and Aaron Mullan’s creamy dual-savant guitar stylings: two dudes who don’t even know how the other guy’s guitar is tuned but nonetheless have brought the tandem knockout reverb dropkick since 1991.
The band actively refuses to discuss influences, even with one another. With two pairs of childhood friends in the band, the music just happens and the listener is left to speculate. The serious aficionado is thinking Martha Reeves, Amon Dull II, the Gories, Otis Redding. But Heads know: this thing is wigs, Pepsi commercials, Sam Cooke, hardcore festivals, free stuff on craigslist, and connoisseur-grade sandwiches. In reality, Glass Rock are a prisonyard football team: a motley collection of wizened lifers, small-time pimps, and the wrongly convicted. Leisen is their Burt Reynolds. A painter on the Outside, she woke up back in the huskau of a recording studio after Awesome Michael ratted her and Kantor out to Ecstatic Peace. In the yard Tall Firs were hanging around bench-pressing twice their body weight. This record documents their crushing and dramatic gridiron defeat of the prison guards, and their harrowing escape during the ensuing melee.
GnR II are truly Chimeric. This ain’t reference-rock. This is the half man/half shark/half alligator sung of in days of yore, with inflatable Sasquatch feet and one popsicle arm. This thing will get bestial with you on the dancefloor, and will hold you tight on a pre-dawn canoe ride; staring at the stars crying at the wonder and terror of it all. Glass Rock ‘Tall Firs meet Soft Location’ is available from Ecstatic Peace! via LP and download. Also via iTunes. Recommended for people who wanna get laid.
