Dunce Cap Quarterly - Daily

One of These Things is Not Like the Other...

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 03:51:22 -0400

Sound AIDS prevention advice on all fronts, Indo-Tibetan Border Police…save one:

More Good Music and Less Crap, Waiter.

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 06:41:00 -0400

We’ve conducted a company-wide poll (yes, all three bi-coastal, night-lit, wi-fi-capable, dumbwaiter-equipped offices) and concluded that Telefon Tel Aviv needs to release more records (a LOT more!) and tour more (a LOT more!), and almost everyone else needs shut it down completely, today, right now.

Joshua Eustis, the surviving half of the original TTA, was last spotted at Manhattan’s Mercury Lounge and is apparently still under contract with Berlin music label BPitch Control, which released the former duo’s last album, Immolate Yourself, which was, and remains, utterly fantastic. BPitch Control’s website lists only one upcoming show, and it’s at some dump called Berghain, which could only be somewhere in central Europe and, thus, nowhere near where it needs to be.

Josh, we need you to bring the road show back to your home country. You have fans here. You sold out the Merc Lounge — on a warm late summer Saturday night, mind you, when New Yorkers had about seven trillion other entertainment options made all the more attractive by the looming six-month deep-freeze — and you know you have loyal followings in other American locales.

We need you now more than ever. Yeah, there’s some okay music coming out here and there. But it’s a seller’s market if we’ve ever seen one: The radio waves have been hijacked by some R. Kelly/Weezy hybrid and a floozy who used lezploitation to get big when Jesus didn’t pan out. People in San Francisco are so desperate for a new jolt they’re paying scalpers $100 a pop to see Die Antwoord, those South African chavs behind the “I’m a Ninja” web video that made the rounds a couple years ago, while in New York, the same ‘zef’ (we looked it up, too) jokers were anointed the new Gogol Bordello after their Governor’s Island show yesterday. Officially. Michael Cera and ~~Dash Snow~~ Terry Richardson presided.

So come back, Telefon Tel Aviv, and play a 70-city U.S. tour and drop three albums before next spring. Our collective sanity depends on it.

When David Cross Had (More) Hair

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 05:27:00 -0400

We feel okay about posting embarrassing pieces on people we respect and admire for a couple reasons:

1.) The majority of these guys are masters of self-deprecation whose very personas render any attempt at mockery as effective as a tag attempt when you’ve clearly declared “forthfield.” Many of their careers and attendant are made off self-mockery. They laugh at our silly little efforts.

2.) We’ll never be as famous as they are, so there’s little risk of meaningful retribution. Although, in the case of today’s venture, there’s plenty of potential ammunition (see: Bowl-Cut Era, 1985-89).

3.) We only target those who can dish it at least as well as they take it. That means no nonagenarian academics, humorless professional altruists, or dogs.

There. Disclaimer delivered. Now, at the risk of suggesting the influence of a publication defined by fake stories and plaid-clad trust-fund kids misinterpreting irony and heroin chic, let’s get down to making fun of 1980s David Cross:

In this shot, sent to us by a reader, David sports a blood-red, cobweb-plastered vintage velour sweater in a misguided homage to two seminal sci-fi films that defined* his youth: Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and The Giant Spider Invasion. The grin, nestled below coke-bottle glasses, seems to present a less cynical incarnation of the smarm modern-day Cross has come to embody, while the tuft of Jew-fro (no idea if he is Jewish) is receding in a manner that suggests it is not long for this world. Dave’s arrived at the party, he’s wearing his red cobweb sweater, and goddammit, where are the pretzels.

*=unverified. Quite possibly wildly inaccurate.

From Bat to Teddy Bear: The Meat Loaf Interview

Tue, 11 May 2010 16:08:00 -0400

By Stephanie R. Myers

With a career whose roots reach back to Broadway—he performed in the original Broadway cast of Hair and, of course, immortalized the role of biker Eddie in The Rocky Horror Picture Show—it makes sense that rocker and pop culture icon Meat Loaf has a highly attuned sense for the theatrical when it comes to his music. And his fan base, which goes back to 1977’s Bat out of Hell and before, wouldn’t have it any other way. For Meat—as he’s colloquially known—perfectionist recording sessions and intensely physical live shows are par for the course (the 2007 documentary Meat Loaf: In Search of Paradise showed firsthand how self-flagellating he can be of his live performances).

For his latest foray into the studio, Hang Cool Teddy Bear, Meat has joined forces with veteran producer Rob Cavallo (who produced Green Day’s American Idiot album, which is currently enjoying another incarnation as a successful Broadway musical). The pairing is a seemingly idyllic one—Meat, who approaches his songs with an actor’s intensity of a character study, has Cavallo in his corner for this go-round, who himself is no stranger to character-focused concept albums. Hang Cool Teddy Bear, whose title is taken from a line in Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, is the musical story of a soldier (“Patrick”) who is dying on the battlefield. Instead of watching his life flash backward, the album tells the story of his experience watching his life flash forward into his imagined future. Meat also brings on a few guest pals on board for the ride, including Jack Black, Hugh Laurie, and The Darkness’ Justin Hawkins.

Meat took time out to speak with Dunce Cap Quarterly about how his musical influences range from Kings of Leon to John Phillip Sousa, why good albums are akin to circuses, and how this record may be his last studio album (you heard it from DCQ first).

DCQ: Congratulations on the new album—it’s great. I hear you’re really happy with the way it turned out.

ML: I’m beyond happy. What is it, ecstatic? Let’s go above ecstatic. It’s spiritual. [laughs]

Can’t beat that. I heard that in working with Rob Cavallo, he’d come to you and said “I’m here to do a Meat Loaf record, not a Rob Cavallo record.”

That’s the complete opposite of any other producer I’ve ever worked with, where they would say, “well you know, my name is on this too and this is my career too.” And Rob Cavallo – he just doesn’t go on that. He’s secure with who he is, obviously.

Right. So was the recording process just completely miles away from anything you’ve ever done, studio-wise?

Completely. Yeah, any other time I’ve ever done a record, people would go, “don’t we have to the studio?” And I would go, “Yeah, yeah.” “Well, aren’t you gonna go?” “Yeah, I’m gonna go down there, yeah yeah.” “Well, shouldn’t you go?” “Yeah, I’ll go in a minute, yeah.” And with this one, I would wake up in the morning just dying to go. I’d get up in the morning and go warm up, and I’m gone. “Okay, I gotta go. Bye.” I’d wanna be there. But then, I get tired around 11 o’clock and I have to leave. And Rob kind of moseys around in the afternoon. It’s very funny, the energy level. My energy level is like 112 in the afternoon and his is running about 80. And around about 8 o’clock, mine starts to drop and his picks up about 11 o’clock, he’s running at 140 and I’m like, falling down. So I go, and they’ll stay about another three hours and do all kinds of stuff, and the next day I’ll come in and hear what they did, and he’ll go, “you like it?” and I’ll say “yeah!” or “no, I don’t like that.” And he’ll go, “okay, well, don’t use that, erase that.” And it’s great—he could spend three hours doing something and I could walk in and go “I don’t like that.” “Okay, cool, no problem, get rid of it.” And that’s the beauty of Rob. It’s like “okay, nope, who cares. If you don’t like it, we won’t use it.”

That’s probably why there’s such a range of styles on this album, too.

Yes, there’s a range of styles. I’ve always tried to do that. I always considered it being like going to a circus. And a circus would be really boring if you walk into a circus and there was two-and-a-half hours of an elephant. I mean, you’d be going “what is this?” But when you’ve got camels and giraffes and – maybe I’m using the wrong thing here because sometimes circuses can be cruel to their critters, but you know what I mean. They’ve got trapezes, they’ve got clowns, they’ve got all kinds of things going on. And it makes it a really interesting fun, visual kind of thing. So when I make records, I want them to be fun and visual. And this record would have been the perfect record in 1972 for [Lee] Strasberg to give to his actors studio image Method class.

Ha, absolutely.

It would have been absolutely perfect for that. I would have loved to have seen the visual. This is actually to me even more visual than [Bat out of Hell]. Bat is incredibly visual. But I think this is a more –it’s an easier road to walk down in the visuals.

I was really struck by your vocal range on this album. Did you have to do vocal rehabilitation after being diagnosed with a vocal cord cyst on your European tour in 2007?

Yeah, we did with the cyst. They put me on the road when they shouldn’t have—oh God, you have no idea what misery it was from 2006 until the end of 2007. It was just—I was in hell. I mean I literally was in hell. And they just wouldn’t stop beating me. It was like, you know, basically they were saying, “well, he’s not ever going to do anything else, so let’s get everything we can get out of him while he’s still standing.” And I had the cyst on my vocal cord, and once the cyst popped, they were trying to put me out on the road in February and the doctor yelled at them and said, “he can’t sing for a good six or seven months. He needs three to four months of doing nothing, and then we’ve got to rehab him for three or four months.” And they booked shows in June that I didn’t even know about and put them on sale, the old managers. And I’d just gone through this whole thing in Newcastle where I had to walk off the stage and I was at my lowest point ever. And all of the sudden they put me back on the road in the summer of what, 2008? And I’d have a show that was okay and I’d have a show that wasn’t good at all. My vocal cords just wouldn’t hold up. So I was just quitting. I was going to quit, and then I said “I can’t go out with that record.” The [Bat Out of Hell III] record. ‘Cause visually it was wrong, the character studies were all wrong, there was no polish to the characters. That’s what I kept trying to tell people, and they’d just look at me like I’m crazy. And I’d keep going, “show me where your character is here.” “Oh, he’s right here.” And I’m going, “yes, but where’s the development of him? How did you develop the character from this?” “Well, it’s right there.” I’m going, “there’s nothing there.” And they were going to record companies behind my back—and it was just mind-boggling what was going on. And so then I changed management, and I got Rob Cavallo, and you know what? If I end now, it’s great. I’ve had the greatest experience ever in my life going into the studio with Rob Cavallo, and if it ends, I’ve delivered a record that I think is spectacular and I don’t care what anybody says. I know that these characters and these songs are so well-written. True screenwriters, true playwrights—if I got anybody to review my record, that’s who I’d want to review it, because they can see these songs for what they are and understand what we did to develop these characters and understand the line of the development of the story. And they would love it. And it’s a beautiful, beautiful piece and so well-written. And the songs—because I’m so emotional about this record and I do wear my heart on my sleeve—that if anybody says anything about the songs, I’m incredibly upset. Because those people are ignorant and know nothing about songs. Nobody wants to work for anything, it just all has to be hand-delivered to them constantly, and these songs are so well-written and so well-crafted, that they’re brilliant songs. But I didn’t write them, I helped with pieces of them. The reason I can say that they’re brilliant and I’m not being pretentious or bragging is because they’re really not mine. You know, “Love is Not Real,” I wrote some pieces on that, and “Song of Madness”—there’s bits and pieces of me in there. There’s bits and pieces of me in every none of them, but I’m not the guy who started the song, I’m the guy who finished it.

I love the narrative of the album with the flash-forward and then the flash-backward at the end.

Oh yeah! [The character] is in California pretty much the whole time. The first song—see how well-crafted it is—the first song sets up the situation and tells you his position in life. The first line of the song says “goodbye my friends, it was good to know you, I hope you understand.” And how he’s done nothing with his life. It’s really kind of a bit of a wallow in self-pity from time to time, but if you’re dying, I suppose you’re allowed to do that. He talks about how he loves his mama. It’s really well-done. And the second song [“Living on the Outside”] really tells you who he is. “I’ve got a nickel in my boot, I’ve got losers for friends, and I’ve got my mama’s gun”—they’re outlaws. He’s a total outlaw. He’s everything that is not what is supposed to be. He would be looked down upon as like a bum, a loser. So what happens to him is that immediately, his life flashes forward, and he immediately goes to who he is. And he lives in hell with that woman in “Los Angeloser,” having to follow her around and be her puppy dog and be the guy who walks behind her two steps. And then the speech in that song, an option was “I wanna thank all you women, especially the ones who have shown a little love for someone like myself,”—this pitiful character. But I had to maintain some credibility with him, so he had something to move on with, so I chose it that way. So when I’m doing vocals, while every other singer goes in and does notes and meter, I’m saying to Rob and them, “now listen, I’m trying to make these words come across like this.” And they’re looking at me like I’m insane. When I do that and we’ve got the vocal, and they go “well, what about the notes?” I go, “well, I don’t care about the notes.” And Rob Cavallo then coined a phrase about me—that I’m an actor who acts like I can sing. Because I always try to twist the meaning of everything. I pointed out all kinds of stuff to Rob. I move too fast. Once I’ve locked my character in, and I know where I want to twist him and move him, I can’t sit around and explain him. I don’t have time, we gotta move while we can. But when the recording was over, I showed Rob some pieces in there, like in “Love is Not Real,” where I sing the line “love and hate.” And I sing “love” like I hate you, and I sing “hate” like I love you. And I’m constantly doing that with lyrics all the time, through every song. I give it the other side of the meaning.

I think it totally works on here. Because of that characterization too, I wasn’t surprised to hear that there’s talk of possibly making Hang Cool into a screenplay.

Oh yeah, I would love to do that. Or even a stage play. A stage play, it would work really well because not only would it be very dramatic in places, but it also has a real sense of humor in the sense of the movie M*A*S*H. It had a lot of drama, but at the same time it had all of those comedic characters. They tried to make light of these bad situations and that’s kind of what this is about. I never wanted the tracks to get heavy-handed. I took “Peace on Earth”—which is a very dramatic song—and took the strings and told [conductor] Dave Campbell, “I don’t want these European melodramatic strings, I want the John Phillip Sousa kind of instrumental going on behind it. An upbeat kind of thing, instead of dark. And I told Rob, “we want to make all the songs upbeat, because what we’re going to talk about a lot of time is very dark. But I’m going to twist it so it becomes a National Lampoon kind of humor that’s dark but it’s funny.”

Right—it’s got that twist.

Yeah. I’m always twisting everything. I only know how to twist. [laughs]

I heard that with this upcoming tour, you’re not only going to be singing songs from Hang Cool, but that you’re looking to incorporate material from every album, back to [1971’s] Stoney and Meat Loaf.

Yup, yup—well, even before then. I’m actually going to play the first song I’ve ever wrote, and then people will know I don’t write songs. [laughs]

Are you looking forward to the tour then?

Yeah, I am looking forward to it—you know what I look forward to is putting it together. I have it in my head. It’s like I had this album in my head, but Rob Cavallo came in and exceeded every expectation I possibly could have had. So now it’s my job to make what’s going on in my head happen with other people, like Bill Sheldon and some of the people who are doing the graphic stuff with me for the stage show, like some of my inflatables and things that we use to make it all come to life. And exceed my vision.

In going along with the touring, for the In Search of Paradise documentary—

Oh yeah, I’d learned one thing from that. If anyone asks me after the show “how was it?” I’m going to say “it was fine, thank you.” [laughs] I didn’t even know I did that. It’s like every time they asked me how it was, I’d say “no, it wasn’t right. No, it wasn’t good.” But I do that with everything. I beat myself up every night. Every day.

Did seeing that documentary change the way you perform live or the way you approach performing live?

I don’t know. It may have, subconsciously, in a sense. See, what’s funny is that what I do—it’s just not normal. [laughs] If you go see a Bon Jovi show, you go and you see Jon. You go see Bruce, you see Bruce. I mean, yeah, they have a persona and they take the persona on stage and that’s what they are—I’m different in that I create a different character for Meat Loaf for every tour. So every tour has some different persona going on. I’m working off a different back story. Basically, I get a different back story for every character and I take him out there. So now, for this album, I obviously can’t go out and play a 24-year-old, so what I have to do is create a back story that brings me forward so basically what you’re going to get from me is the persona of [Hang Cool’s main character] Patrick, who did live and is now up on stage. But he’s now 62 as opposed to 24. [laughs] So we have to deal with that. But I bring these different personas up every time. Like I see these videos from Bat out of Hell, and that guy should be committed.

From the original Bat—it’s just too much, huh?

I work things completely different. I’m an actor who acts like he can sing. I bring different characters to every movie, so why wouldn’t I bring a different character to every tour?

What are you listening to right now?

The one band I really, really love is Kings of Leon and mostly because I like who they are. And I love the Foo Fighters too, I love Dave Grohl. I mean, those guys—anytime you meet somebody and they’re really nice and they’re genuine and they’re great, then I tend to really love ‘em. When I meet ‘em and they’re pretentious pricks, I really could care less. But those guys, Kings of Leon, are really good kids and really got their feet down on the earth and I really admire them for their attitude. And the Foo Fighters are not only a great band but really a bunch of really good guys.

What advice would you give to struggling musicians trying to get awareness for their music, seeing as record labels aren’t necessarily the way to go these days?

You know what—I have no idea. You gotta figure it out. Someone’s going to come along with something and figure something out. If you’re really serious about it, you do whatever you can do to get it done. You go out and play for people. It’s always the people who matter in the end. The audience is out there and the audience is starved. But we’ve gone into this other world when it’s all about celebrity and it’s not about artists anymore. And it’s completely different from anything I’ve ever seen.

It’s definitely taken a change.

But the audience is there. They’re starved for good stuff. You just need to present it to them, but the problem is they’ve lost their trust. And even though somebody might tell you, “this is a really good record,” they’ve lost their trust. It’s not different in the movie business either. There’s very few of the movie stars they can use to open a movie anymore. They’ve lost their trust and it’s all about something else. Give ‘em a remake of Friday the 13th or Nightmare on Elm Street and you know what, they go, “well, we know what that is, so we’re gonna go there, ‘cause we know what we’re getting.” The business on all sides—from the book business to the music business to the film business to politicians—everybody’s lost their trust in everything and it’s all splintered. And no one side trusts anybody and it’s a shame.

Do you see that there’s the pressure in the music business to retread the same path?

Yeah, they’ve been doing that to me for 30-something years now and finally I just go, “no, I’m not going to do that anymore, if we’re going to do something, I’m going to do it this way.” And we got Rob Cavallo and basically I did it my way, with the help of Rob. I did it Rob’s and my way.

And do you think for future projects and albums, are you planning to enlist Rob?

I have no idea, but I wouldn’t do another record without Rob Cavallo. So either I never do another record, or I do it with Rob Cavallo.

So is there a chance this could be the very last studio album?

Yup, there’s a good chance. Yup. Pretty good chance.

Would you consider continuing to tour even if you weren’t recording in the studio?

Nah. [laughs] You heard it first here!
________________________________________________________________________

Meat Loaf’s latest album, Hang Cool Teddy Bear, drops nationwide in stores and is available on iTunes nationwide on May 11.

Rocker Patti Smith -- Live at the NYPL

Mon, 03 May 2010 12:50:00 -0400

Over the course of a few decades, a host of superlatives have been ascribed to rock legend (there’s one already) Patti Smith. Godmother of punk. CBGB-era trailblazer. Rock’s poetess. Thing is, the most accurate descriptions of Smith are probably the most understated, as evidenced by her appearance at the New York Public Library’s series Live From the NYPL on April 29. The event, which was held (mostly) to discuss her new book Just Kids about her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, also managed to shed light on a few more things you probably didn’t know about her:

She’s hilarious. When moderator Paul Holdengraber would try to steer the conversation, James Lipton-style, into a somewhat solemn tone (“Patti, let’s talk about your yearnings as a child”), Smith’s reaction—a mugging to the audience—was almost sheer comedy cabaret.
She possesses an infectious, childlike enthusiasm—when discussing in amazement how she viewed Virginia Woolf’s cane and Charlotte Bronte’s writing desk earlier in the day in the NYPL collection, one rather tends to forget that this is the woman who penned the controversial song “Rock ‘n’ Roll Nigger” back in the day. More than simply enthusiastic about her favorite topics, the woman is practically bubbly. “If we maintain radiance, often radiance will come our way,” she told the crowd.
She wasn’t necessarily destined for music—perhaps it was the other way around. “You know, kid,” Smith deadpanned, channeling what her waitress mother had told Smith when she first moved to New York, “you’re never gonna make it as a waitress.” Lucky for us, her mother was prophetic.

But then again, music and poetry often tend to press the same buttons. Smith, who took the stage for three songs over the course of the event, described how music affects her. Upon first hearing an aria from Madame Butterfly as a child, she told of how that experience was equally moving to her as hearing Little Richard for the first time, calling both “a physical reaction—a sensual reaction as much as a child could have.” It’s a thread that seems to have weaved its way through her life. But even as she spoke of tragedy she’s faced, such as when she related the story of Mapplethorpe’s passing, Smith still managed to find the silver lining. She told of the morning she heard of Mapplethorpe’s death, and described hearing one of her favorite pieces by opera singer Maria Callas’ arias come on. The song? “I lived for art, I lived for love.”

Prophetic, indeed.

Where We've Been

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0400

We’re slowing things down at DCQ Daily for the time being to focus on our next print issue, slated for publication this summer. We’ll still post web-exclusive pieces, albeit more sporadically, over the next couple months. In the meantime, join the DCQ mailing list for updates (shoot an email to duncecapquarterly@gmail.com with “SUBSCRIBE” as subject — addresses sold only to our friends in Nigeria) and tell your pals to get down with us here and on Facebook. And if you’re in the Bay Area, you can now snag one of the last remaining copies of the Preview Issue at any of these fine establishments for the low, low price of a shiny silver dollar.

Blue Oyster Cult Still Has Young Groupies

Mon, 15 Mar 2010 01:18:00 -0400

Photo: Fin Costello/Getty Images. Circa a long time ago.

If you think “Blue Oyster Cult” and immediately think “more cowbell,” it’s doubtful that even the band would fault you—even band member Eric Bloom mimed the bovine-based percussion at the beginning of “Don’t Fear the Reaper” at their late show at B.B. King’s in Manhattan on Saturday night. Then again, whether it’s Will Ferrell vogueing or a long-forgotten song given a second life via a commercial, the usual conduits of discovering music don’t seem to apply anymore anyway—and it’s hard to see that as anything but a positive thing.

One assumes that Blue Oyster Cult is likely to agree. Judging from the liberal sprinkling of young-looking hipsters in the crowd for the show, it seems to stand to reason that a well-known SNL sketch ended up giving the group’s fanbase a new life. But despite the fact that the band penned such seemingly novelty-styled tunes like “Godzilla,” there are surprisingly few kitschy things about a BOC performance. The band, having been around the musical block more than a few times, knows exactly how to please both their hardcore fans of decades and more casual listeners within the live realm—give ‘em energy, give ‘em the hits, give ‘em your all. Truly, no easy feat—and somehow they manage to pull off even the kind of lengthy guitar solos that would seem masturbatory in the hands of the wrong group.

Delivering a relatively quick but aurally dense 75-minute set (their second show of the evening), the band left some fans so intensely demanding an encore that the group had to come back onstage and let the audience know that they had to wrap up before a late event began at the club. Judging from the reactions, it doesn’t look like AOR is poised to die anytime soon. Don’t fear it.

E-Tastic Embed Friday: Elk, Elephant Seals...Electric Violin

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 04:53:00 -0500

‘Cuz it’s Friday and the weather’s nice and, know what, just shutup, that’s why. At least we’re lazily posting originals for once:

40 Years Later: The Greenwich Village Weathermen Explosion

Sat, 06 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0500

Note: This post ran in a different form on March 6, 2009.

Pop quiz! Guess which of these Greenwich Village townhouses exploded exactly 40 years ago today…

a.) The one that looks different than all the others; or
b.) One of the others

Answer: a! The building with the funky-angled protruding living room.

Yes, that’s the one. A few members of the Weathermen (l/k/a the Weather Underground) apparently mishandled some nails and dynamite and…yeah, kablooie. According to ever-reliable Wikipedia, it took nine days of body part collection to determine that three people had died in the blast. Two others survived and escaped arrest, with one remaining on the lam for more than a decade before getting pinched for pulling an armored car heist with Tupac’s stepdad. I am not making this up.

A slightly more thorough reflection from Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn here.

DCQ's Guide to Sneaking Shit In

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 13:52:11 -0500

Note: With baseball spring training opening this week and March Madness nearly upon us, we thought it wise to revisit a topic we originally dissected last August, lest any of you end up sober at a sporting event this fine spring. (Re-)Presenting Dunce Cap’s Guide to Sneaking Shit In:

On a sultry Friday eve last summer, DCQ’s New Yeez contingent ventured out into the wild bacteria stew of the Hudson on a decrepit ferry stocked with booze, 150 people and one RJD2. With payday a distant glimmer on the horizon and said booze bogarted behind a “cash” bar, we resorted to the familiar tactic of “sneaking shit in (SSI).”

This is an art form we’ve refined over the past dozen years, with the primary media being sports and concert venues. Our first stab at SSI came in September 1997. Giants vs. Padres. It began with a friend’s spectacular fake ID, used to procure an armload of Mickey’s 40s from the Oak Grove corner market (‘bodega’ hadn’t yet entered our lexicon) behind school. We had the angles scoped: Malt brew transferred to green 7-Up two-liters and hidden in closets overnight, then wrapped snugly in hoodie cocoons as we pulled up to Candlestick Park. This being the glorious buyers’ market of pre-South Beach Giants baseball, security shoved us through the turnstiles with nary a sideways glance. As it happened, the game was actually sold out, and we sat in the second-to-last row of the upper deck in center field — approximately 1,200 feet away from the plate. But all was good: By the third a sickly Mickey’s buzz was had, by the fifth we were bouncing off the walls of the concrete spiral stairways that encased the hulking mass, by the seventh we were taking turns calling earl in the nearest bathroom stall, and by the end of the ninth, as Barry made his famous stand atop the home dugout, we were passing out where we sat.

In the years since, we’ve become more efficient and creative. The prevailing opinion is that hard liquor’s the way to go, and a fifth is the biggest you can pull off with confidence. If it’s a day game and you’re nursing a hangover, long pants and knee-high socks filled with tall boys are acceptable. The fifth — whiskey or rum only, child — goes right-side-up directly in front of the jimmy, belt buckled as tight as possible so as to secure the bottle with the bare minimum of above-waist frontage. If possible, go for the male security guard — he’ll be less inclined to check certain essential areas. In rare cases, through extensive field research, you may uncover a unique perimeter flaw that allows you to do wondrous and otherwise unimaginable things: At the Giants’ new(ish) baseball stadium, for example, you can bring in giant beers in styrofoam cups, purchased for a pittance at the pizzeria across the way, simply by entering the park through the team store.

Large sporting events are fairly easy. The latest innovation came in the recent discovery of an MLB-sponsored DUI prevention program that doles out free Cokes to attendees who identify themselves as designated drivers. These make cheap grog more palatable. AND you get to show all the college girls your hero-status DD bracelet! Bonus. Where it gets tricky, however, is at certain music venues where organizers seem to expect most patrons to be carrying some form of intoxicant. Many a would-be SSI champ has been knocked down to amateur status here. In such situations, we’ve come to employ a tactic used for decades by certain Suburban-driving Sinaloans: The mule wave. Break the juice into as many pint-sized water bottles as possible. Give one or two to each person you’re with (better make it two or three if it’s an all-day festival). Use the same crotch placement process as with full fifth, tightening belt to keep bottle from sliding down to your ankles (mysterious bulges are to be avoided). Spread out as you enter so that security doesn’t recognize that you’re together. This way, you’re virtually guaranteed a passable stock of booze even if one or two of your homies takes a fall.

As any nimrod (that’s you, Jack) can see, we’ve had some time to fine-tune our playbook (though perfection, as always, remains elusive). Which made it surprising — nay, stunning — when the token security guy checking passengers boarding the RJD2 boat nabbed the bulk of our supply during what experts predicted would be a harmless formality. We suspect somebody dropped a dime on us because the guy went straight for the above-junk area without any attempt at acting out the proper pat-down sequence (ankles-legs-hips-ribs-arms-back-THEN abovejunk as an afterthought, if at all…everybody knows that). Luckily, despite all signs pointing to an SSI Level Green, we’d divied the stash up beforehand, and our backup made it in.

So you see, DCQ nation, the key to a successful SSI operation lies in the artist’s ability to assess and adapt — that is, to change up the strategy on the fly and, to be certain, on the sly. But even the most practiced and universally-lauded practitioners sometimes slip up.

A skeezy Little League baseball coach once told us a common off-color joke he’d blessed with a personal touch: “Close only counts in horseshoes, hand grenades and fat chicks.” We were only 10 at the time, so we didn’t really get the last part, but the rest seemed to have some sense to it. In any case, replace “fat chicks” with “SSI operations,” and it rings true. But it still won’t make sense to a 10-year-old.

Enjoy. And use responsibly.

West Coast Launch Party TONIGHT

Fri, 26 Feb 2010 11:48:05 -0500

If you find yourself in the greater Los Angeles area tonight, drop by Red nightclub in Newport Beach as we celebrate the launch of our Preview Issue with booze, Thunderjazz courtesy of Tango & Camaro, and good times to be had by all. RSVP with us to get on the list or you’re stuck with a $20 cover, cabrones!

Who: DCQ Friends and Family

What: West Coast Launch Party Extraordinaire

When: Friday 2/26, 10pm to close

Where: RED Nightclub, 4647 MacArthur Blvd, Newport Beach

Why: Because we love you!

RSVP on the Facebook event page or to duncecapquarterly@gmail.com

World beard champion Jack Passion digs our shit

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:46:00 -0500

We stumbled upon this cat at Bottom of the Hill on Friday and thought he was just some dude with sturdy follicles and a “twisted” (HarHar) sense of humor.

We thought wrong.

Meet Jack Passion: part-time author, occasional bassist, and full-time furious fuzzfarmer. The Sultan of Knot. Barry Bearded Bonds. The motherfucking “Tiger Woods of facial hair competiti on.”

And he held our sticker.

Lazy Embed Friday

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 15:28:00 -0500

If you’re in San Fran tonight, go to Bottom of the Hill for Boy in the Bubble’s record release soiree. Veteran SF notables Birdmonster to headline; Girl Band and Here Come the Saviours will also make noise. Doors at 8:30.

If you’re in Brooklyn, post up at The Nest and laugh at people eat shit on the ice patch across the street (via):

These are Hospitals, Part 1.

Wed, 17 Feb 2010 07:00:00 -0500

We’re pleased to unveil DCQ’s new “Features” section, future home for an untold number of award-winning investigative articles, fictional and fact-based short stories, and longer nonsensical expositions. We’ll also post pieces that had previously been published exclusively in our print editions. Case in point: “These are Hospitals,” the first in a multi-part series chronicling one man’s exploration of public health care facilities in urban America. The story ran in our Preview Issue; to cop a copy, join us next Friday at a club in the city made famous by the Bluth Family Banana Stand.

SAN FRANCISCO - A block from City Hall, the Tom Waddell Health Center lies hidden in an alley that houses a diverse and entertaining troupe of homeless people who, lacking a convenient alternative, have no qualms with urinating on your car tire if you pick the wrong spot. The walk from my apartment takes me through Civic Center and past the $400,000 gilded dome of the Hall, cutting through groups of bureaucratic suits returning from schmoozy lunch hours. The sun is shining. Pigeons are flapping. Activists with bullhorns are protesting something. Everything’s right as rain.

Thirty seconds later, I’m straining to find a comfortable position in a scratched plastic chair in the clinic’s cramped, L-shaped waiting room. Six or seven others wait for their numbers to be called, each holding a paper slip retrieved the butcher-counter number dispenser on the wall. Everyone’s black except for me and a gaunt man sitting across from me. He pulls out a stack of wrinkled napkins as he brushes a few long strands of wiry hair from his face.

“Does anyone mind if I change the paper in my shoe?” he announces.

Nobody seems to notice.

“Why paper in your shoe?” I ask, bewildered.

“I have problem feet,” he answers, pulling off a shoe and slowly pulling out a long trail of yellowed toilet paper. “Some people mind — that’s why I asked. Most don’t.”

“Hmm,” I respond.

That was that.

I fill out the registration forms and pass them through a smeared plastic window to one of the administrative workers. An hour and twenty minutes pass. There’s a little kid across from me, probably four or five. The man he’s with is talking loudly with a pal who just showed up. Everyone seems to know each other here. Eavesdropping, I gather that these two have a substantial history — they’re playing the catch-up game. Thus far, the conversation has centered on which friends are in jail, which are out on parole, and which are headed to court. They’re both cursing up a storm, albeit in a jovial manner. Still, there’s children and shit. I consider objecting, but my instincts tell me these fellows might know fellows who do bad things to fellows like me.

The party breaks up and, once again, the room is quiet, save for the low moans emanating from a withdrawing addict to my left. The woman twitches constantly, fiddles with a stack of documents, mutters to herself about a friend who done her wrong. Hazy light filters in through a thick, rectangular window, the kind, threaded internally with chicken wire, that is omnipresent in urban gymnasiums.

Another thirty minutes pass. Counting downward, the voice over the loudspeaker lethargically draws closer to my number. Just then, the clinic’s front door creaks open, and a moment later, a jittery, smiling man pops his head into the waiting room. He saunters into the cramped space, pulls a blue Nalgene bottle out of a filthy backpack, and begins filling it under the Alhambra machine in the corner.

“Nice little watering hole they got here,” he says to nobody in particular.

Nobody answers him. Nobody cares about his watering hole.

Impervious, he adds, “One thing when you come to this part of town is you always got fresh water.”

He throws the knapsack over his shoulder, clad in a ripped denim jacket, and walks out the way he came. I gather this is a routine stop along our cowboy’s daily Market Street bushwhack.

The loudspeaker crackles with more numbers. Eventually it says mine, and I follow a curt Asian nurse through corridors to an airy room with a steel surgical table in the middle. The doctor will be right in.

Twenty minutes pass, giving me time to study every corner of the space. There’s a large, angled skylight at the apex of the ceiling, thirty feet above me. The room must be forty feet long and twenty-five feet wide. The air is cold. So is the steel. Glancing at my watch uneasily, I grimly consider the types of surgeries that might have come to fruition on the table I now sat upon. Autopsies? Where the fuck is this doctor?

She arrives and, in the absence of a simple fucking hello, asks me to pull up my pant leg so she can look at my injured knee. It’s been hurting for six months, I explain. Rest hasn’t helped, nor has exercise.

Three hours after I first took my seat in the waiting room, Doc quickly fills out a small form and hands it over, referring me to San Francisco General Hospital for an X-ray a month out. Then she’s off, leaving as silently, as frigidly as she came.

Back in the waiting room, sick people are literally crying out for help. Meanwhile, a McCovey longball away, San Francisco’s anointed leaders spend taxpayer millions examining Golden Gate Bridge barrier designs intended to prevent people who actually want to die from achieving their goals.

This is…the San Francisco Public Health System.

West Coast Launch Finally Here!

Tue, 16 Feb 2010 00:54:00 -0500

If you’re in the greater Los Angeles area, be sure to join us on the 26th as we celebrate the launch of our Preview Issue with booze, Thunderjazz courtesy of Tango & Camaro, and good times to be had by all.

Who: DCQ Friends and Family

What: Launch Party Extraordinaire

When: Friday 2/26, 10pm to close

Where: RED Nightclub, 4647 MacArthur Blvd, Newport Beach

Why: Because we love you!

To avoid cover charge, please RSVP on the Facebook event page or to duncecapquarterly@gmail.com.

No, Studio B isn't moving to Burlingame

Sat, 13 Feb 2010 00:12:00 -0500

Disclaimer: This post will be relevant to almost nobody who reads DCQ.

A couple Dunces grew up in Burlingame, Calif., a “leafy” suburb south of San Francisco. The town is known for its politely progressive vibe and for producing an abundance of garage bands and a sum total of one professional athlete. Over the past decade, Burlingame also gained a reputation for fostering a slightly more lively bar scene than the slightly more boring suburbs it is wedged between (the Bay Area beyond San Fran proper being one oval-shaped clusterfuck of unbroken suburbs).

Thus, it would seem somewhat less than entirely impossible that a nightclub in Burlingame would find a way to commandeer the artists behind the marketing for Studio B and Santos Party House in New York:

Not the case: SonicLiving, through a partnership announced last spring (yeah, we know, we’re slipping) with burgeoning urban clothier/art space Upper Playground, provides poster templates created by UP-backed artists for anyone who lists an event on the site. More examples below.

As for this “Club 261,” I still say it sounds fun. I’m in. We’ll reminisce on the good old days and talk about Vegas and real estate. Don’t forget your Giants hat and Tapout tee.

As Seen on the MTA...

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 12:16:00 -0500

Foto del Dia goes to Queens straphanger and DCQ pal Todd Obolsky, who swears he remains neutral on the flashpoint issue of guys sitting wide-legged and taking up two seats on the subway:

Renegade Night Fishermen Run Amok in Brooklyn

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 05:25:00 -0500

Brooklyn resident Ben Sargent has attracted a rumbling of local press over the past week for running an underground (in both the “unlicensed” and “in his basement” sense) lobster roll joint in Greenpoint; the buzz seems to have emanated from Liza Mosquito de Guia’s fun video profile of The Underground Lobster Pound for food. curated.

Upon further investigation, it turns out Sargent hosts a weekly online radio show called “Catch It, Cook It, Eat It” for Heritage Radio. On said show, Sargent recently interviewed a memorable group dubbed the Night Crawlers: As the name suggests, the Night Crawlers are fishermen who prefer to spin their reels under cover of night. Armed with a simple motive — “to find the best fishing possible” — and a shared frustration over the dearth of public shore access, the Crawlers duck under barbed wire fences and pogo between rusty pier pilings to find and exploit underutilized fishing spots along the East River waterfront in Brooklyn and Queens.

There’s nothing especially remarkable here thus far — after all, Brooklyn seems to have become ground zero for urbanites who harvest their own food within murky legal parameters. What makes the interview indispensable Monday-morning jackoffery, rather, is the Crawlers’ approach to the taping: They arrived at the studio resembling a gaggle of Zapatistas, donning hoodies, ski masks, dark shades and bandanas while insisting on using voice distortion technology throughout the recording. The “Fish Slayer” and a couple of his sidekicks spend a half-hour schooling Sargent on the nuances of NYC trespassing law, the joys of falling into the soup (“I was lucky enough to fall in at high tide”), and the thrill of the potentially carcinogenic chase (“It’s sort of like a video game. There are, like, different stages, (and) the stakes are higher and it gets more and more difficult the deeper you get in…Yeah, it’s really fun because it’s a balancing act: You literally jump over stuff. I mean, it’s just like Donkey Kong sometimes”).

The highly-recommended full audio interview lives here. To put ~~faces~~ disguises to the voices, jump to the 4:25 mark in the video below:

First Annual Brooklyn Fishing Derby from Brooklyn Chowder Surfer on Vimeo.

The Importance of Proper Dog/Bun Ratio

Fri, 05 Feb 2010 05:32:01 -0500

(Note: Yes, another re-run. At least we can call this an anniversary commemoration. The bulk of this post originally ran on February 5, 2009. Yes, it’s completely obsolete at this point. Read the part about the celebrities — it’s okay. At the very least, you’ll be four minutes closer to happy hour by the time you finish. Dicks.)

We were in the rafters at MSG last night to watch BronBron dump 52, 11 and 10 on the Knicks. Among the highlights:

The Celebs: The second quarter is apparently when the arena Jumbotron guy decides to get close-ups of all the famous pretty faces and pretty famous faces in attendance. I think my grand total from last year (in only like three games, but still…) was James Blunt, who warranted a couple “oh, that guy”s from a 60 percent-full house. Last night’s game was sold out, and the celeb faction repped hard: First up on the big screen was Chris Rock, ten seats down from Spike Lee near the scorers’ table. Today’s tabloids ran a photo of Lebron taking a break to give Spike dap. I’d accept said dap too if I thought it might convince the dapper to sign a megalo-contract with my team come 2011. Two minutes later they flashed to the token black Spice Girl, who’s a.) still alive; b.) promoting an exercise video or some shit; and c.) much less scary in real life. She scored courtsides as well. THEN they scanned up to Willis Reed, the one guy in the building who’d have a legitimate claim to a lifetime of comp courtside tix…and he’s in like the third tier. It was kinda sad. Apparently Whoopi and Jay-Z and Puff fucking Daddy were all in the mix as well (check out the ridicu-fotos of Diddy flashing cash to buy kettle corn and poor Bobby Bacala sitting next to Whoopi and Ciara but nobody gives a shit; come to think of it, Bobby actually got Jumbotron Love at a game I was at last season versus the Bucks or some embarrassment. They probably just comp him seats so the Jumbotron dude has a reason to get paid on slow nights). Apologies for this fanboy rant — it was just cool to sit and look down from the 12th deck while sipping on a fine spiked beverage and be like, “Hey, Chris Rock’s scratching his nose, maybe. Spike Lee’s baggy sweatsuit looks really comfortable.”

The Delicacies: The biggest hot dog on the menu is, indeed, impressive. Concessions people’s approach to the bun, however, is one-size-fits-all. Which it most definitely does not. The result is like squeezing a whale into a pair of Tic-Tacs connected by another Tic-Tac. That hijacked and bastardized analogy worked better in its original form. They also sell delicious Cokes that are complemented exquisitely by most brands of mid-range Kentucky whiskey, the latter preferably served in a reused plastic Tropicana orange juice bottle.

The Last Rebound: Win in the bag, Lebron had his teammates clear out on the last Knicks shot of the game, then almost broke an ankle falling out of bounds after lunging to grab a meaningless 10th board. People cheered like we all got free tacos or something, which we didn’t. He became the first player to score 50 in a triple-double since the 70s with that rebound, which was essentially the basketball version of Michael Strahan’s record-setting “sack” of Brett Favre in 2002. And speaking of Fav-rah, check out his douchey cousin, Trent. He’s into sexy shit like “Premises Liability Defense,” proving that the family is good at offense and defense! Ugh. Somebody smack me with a frozen Eggo.

Happy happy weekend, friends.

A Tribute to Puerto Rican Day and the Return of Summer, Part 1

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 14:09:48 -0500

(Note: Every so often, we run short of rational ideas and dip into DCQ’s archives. The bulk of this post, intended to remind our East Coast followers that the specter of the eternal winter is so much peacenik propaganda, originally ran on June 20, 2009.)

Puerto Rican flags and bandanas were flying off the shelves in Los Sures and Spanish Harlem and on D-Block over the last few weeks. On recent weekend days, you couldn’t round the block without catching Big Pun blaring from a passing SUV. The PR trinket hawkers crowded out the Halal cart guys and the Mexican mango stands, pushing them off the corners with sprawling setups dripping red, white and blue. Then, finally, Sunday came: The one day of the year when browns outnumbered whites on 5th Ave. With the JAPs and WASPs retreating to their Hamptons cottages, the Upper East Side belonged to the Boriqueños.

Def Jam’s street soldiers came out:

As did the hooptie crews:

And the merengue fellas, with the requisite porcine drummer man:

Then there was this guy; photos don’t do it justice, but as you’ll pick up, the owner’s clearly a fan of vintage Pacino:

Backside detail: so excessive, it just might be genius. Or a ludicrous waste of money — jury’s still out:

Chicken trike man rocked a picture of his chicken trike ON his chicken trike! A proud fan of fowl:

Jewish Hipster or Hip Jewster? Hewish Jipster? (Did we manage to offend TWO long-persecuted ethnic groups with the latter? Awesome.):

Puerto Ricans do MDMA, too:

Warning: NOT a real horse: