been gone...and back, as it were. mardi gras day in new orleans have 'mardi gras mambo' in my head more than anything else. god damn it! host suggests i write 'tourist songs' for new york city - as if anything beyond 'ny, ny' could summarize the shattered ideals of that place better. hmm. i guess i could write tourist songs for brooklyn, since it seems only hip hop celebrates the boro.

met this crazy guy who knows tons about music - the type of person who targets his own ideas to the conversation bc he can talk on any subject, totally without pretension. realizing how valuable nerding out abt music is in other cities, why people use the internet more outside of nyc to figure out what's going on in the world of sound. the catch 22. anyway, he was a great guy and lent me david toop's book on ambient sound, which i will read dutifully as a former wire mag nerd.

the guy i'm staying with is a big jpop fan, almost listens to it exclusively when not in the back-catalog of goth/ambient stuff...very strange to think of latter genre as something all-encompassing..it seems rather flat to me, so disgustingly optimistic and naive...which is why i can't stand most indie-pop either, because it emulates this with that moment of bittersweet added as if to make it real. realizing how adult my reactions are to music now. did like mia doi todd however - a strange blend of cat power and nico filtered through non-western sensibilities. might have to pick some up if it isn't impossible. apparently on the other music kids' top tens for 01. fantastic.o.

just rereading and realize 'adult' in context sounds like a snub - which it isn't - only that i feel that i'm coming into my own adult reactions to music, added with the fact that i just finished 'mystery train' by marcus, my first read by him...and it continues to freak me out how much i 'don't listen' to music. how much more is always there, how much more thought can be done about it. marcus is a cock-sure dinosaur but it's interesting for me to see the ideas of such mainstream idols -elvis, robert johnson- exploded and laid bare, contextualized in a way that i might be able to do with a semester of cultural studies class devoted to each artist, a lot of money for back-catalog, some good wine and free time - things i simply do not have...

blah blah blah - who will be the people exemplifying our times? who the critics write about 30 years from now, the canon, as it were? hard to say, with media pluralism...some are obvious -radiohead, pavement (man, my brain's fried as this is all i can think right now), but who knows what history will pick up on? if in 20 years people will look back on matador or morr music or interscope the way people look at factory....nah..won't happen.

what else? parade bands - again, the maybe racist but entirely truthful statement that white marching bands just don't get it - that nola's black inner city bands always steal the show, that the all-girl marching bands blew me away (with all those talented high school girls, why aren't there all-girl rock/jazz bands in the south? why?) and the precarious and strange situation of a dance-troupe parading to that blur song -Who hoo! from their "we love America" album...among the dozens of others who just copy the 'bring it on' sentiments with c+c music factory et al. why are dancers so fucking cheesy? it's a tragedy. not that many tits or even costumes this year as lame patriotism invaded the country's only true debaucerous family-fun festival.

blah blah - i'm still trying to figure out what zydeco music is, that is my goal while i'm here.