More Triumphalism

As another indication of our growing academic legitimacy, a researcher at Radcliffe has produced a study of bloggers:

Type I. This consists mostly of girls who are found naturally in literature courses and men who are going in for law. The type is nervous, high-strung, very imaginative, has the capacity to be easily roused and intensely interested. Their attention is strongly and easily held by something that interests them, even to the extent quite commonly expressed of being oblivious to everything else. But, on the other hand, they find it hard to concentrate on anything that does not catch the attention and hold the interest.... I could never get them to write well unless I got them distracted by talking to them or making them talk to me. The more interested and excited they got the more their hands would write. Their results in writing were of two kinds: either they would be taught a movement and then hold it firmly until the next one was taught, or else, being taught one movement, they would stick to that resolutely, and it was not possible to draw them away from it. As soon as they stopped talking, or their interest flagged, there was a strong tendency for the movement to slow up and soon stop....

Type II is very different from Type I, is more varied, and gives more interesting results. In general, the individuals, often blonde and pale, are distinctly phlegmatic. If emotional, decidedly of a weakish sentimental order. They may be either large, healthy, rather heavy and lacking in vigor, or they may be what we call anemic and phlegmatic. Their power of concentrated attention is very small. They describe themselves as never being held by their work; they say that their minds wander easily; that they work on after they are tired and just keep pegging away. They are very apt to have premonitory conversations, they anticipate the words of their friends, they imagine whole conversations that afterward come true. The feeling of having been there before is very common with them; that is, they feel under given circumstances that they have had that identical experience before in all its details. They are often fatalistic in their ideas. They indulge in day-dreams, but not those of a very stirring nature. As a rule they don't seem to have bad tempers — are rather sullen. Many of them are hopelessly self-conscious and rather morbid.

They write best as a class when they are quiet. The effort to explain something usually stops the hand. They get rather sleepy, the arm and hand get cold and occasionally go to sleep. As a rule they are highly suggestible and learn movements readily, but instead of getting a new movement and sticking to it, they often show great vacillation, a constant tendency to return to other movements taught some time before. And even when a new movement gets fixed, there is a constant tendency to outcroppings of an old movement in most unexpected places. [...] The sense of otherness, of something else pulling or setting the arm going, was a very common experience.

I might use this to organize my loglist.

Ba-lue Mun-deii Ba-lues-Are : Ed's Man's World

Like everyone else I liked Mudhoney and acknowledged the one hit of the one-hit crybaby. But my favorite grunge band was Ed's Redeeming Qualities. When I first heard them in '89, Ed's consisted of four songwriters and one musician:

• Dan Leone (now L.E.) wrote patter songs and songs about chickens, played ukulele most always, and played M.C. at shows.
• Carrie Bradley, the musician, played mostly fiddle and guitar, wrote dozens of songs about mania, depression, and manic-depression, and sang them hearty through a blinding Billy-Zoom-ish grin.

• Stately plump white-haired balding Neno Perrotta wrote least, sang least, played bongos, and centered the group. "At times like these you need a friend who can help you with a kind word...." On October 20, 1991, I drove into the Oakland hills against the flow of evacuees to retrieve a young housesitting acquaintance. I brought him back to San Francisco for the day, and that evening at his insistence drove him back again to resume his duties. It felt odd to turn away from the sunset and aim dead-center at that wide glower. I left the car with him and caught the last westbound BART of the night. The train was packed and reeked of something other than conviviality. At 16th & Mission, my ticket failed and I had to argue my way past the agent booth. By then I was beat and decided to see if the 22 bus was nearby. Waiting for it was Neno, so I waited with him and then sat with him. We talked about the fire, and about Ohioan bohemia vs. San Francisco bohemia, and about how cool and talented Carrie was. I got out at Haight & Fillmore. Neno got out too because he'd missed his stop and needed to walk back a few blocks.
• And relative-baritone Dom Leone played worst, drew cartoons, and dropped song-organisms as simple-minded and inexplicably powerful as Eugene the Jeep. His most widely heard number, "Drivin' on 9," represents him well: an instantly unforgettable driving song which sounds like the driver's making it up on the spot. If I was the kind of dope who believed in the spirit of the folk I'd say he was a direct tap into the spirit of the folk.

Together they seemed happier than they expected to be apart; they sounded like a 1989 unheated-apartment version of boiled cabbage at the Hungry Hash House. Or, OK, then, they sounded like "garage-folk, with an emphasis on storytelling and black comedy and poignancy." They taped a couple of cassettes and released an EP, curated and hosted a fine vaudeville series, made mistakes on the radio, and then Dom Leone got sick.

Characteristically the opening number of Ed's next release, a final cassette of the original line-up, promised "So many things that can kill you dead; if you don't have cancer there's a hole in your head." Someone like They Might Be Giants could easily have recorded a tribute to the periodic table of elements; Ed's made it personal.

Carrie, Dan, and Neno moved to San Francisco, kept playing Dom's songs, and kept sticking Dom's scrawls on the merchandise. Their first CD was gratingly bare, but their second seemed more at home in the trio format. Third was best, recorded live, with all-musician no-songwriter Jonah Winter to put sonic love handles on the old favorites.

For now, though, and with the aid of these fine digitizations, I'm reaching back to 1989. From the "Ed's Day" EP, Carrie Bradley explains how the patriarchy maintains power in one solidly idiomatic pun. From a tape made the year before, Dom Leone explains how the patriarchy maintains power in one completely moronic consultation.