Fear of Flying

Three thoughts that drilled their way through our dura matter upon being exposed to that Technicolor abortion that is the video for Morningwood’s “Nth Degree”:

1) Artie Bucco’s wife has a band?
2) This shit is going to age worse than Big Bad Voodoo Daddy.
3) I’m sort of ashamed to be alive right now.

Also, Chan Marshall has called off her U.S. tour for unspecified health reasons. It’s a shame: With The Greatest, she finally put together a coherent, cohesive album, featuring songs that are not only richly fleshed out, but free of the stylized ataxia that made a lot of her earlier work so exasperating. We were looking forward to seeing her play with a full band; then again, having endured one of her nakedly awful onstage freakouts––a series of false starts, botched verses and an eventual dissolution into tears that made everyone in the house feel complicit in her misery––we can’t imagine that Marshall has completely come to terms with the performance side of the business she’s in. (Some never do: XTC’s Andy Partridge comes to mind. And Lord knows what we’re in for when D. Berman rolls into town for the Silver Jews show at Webster Hall March 17.) You can’t wholly discount the grimy allure of voyeurism, either, and in a sense, it’s what gives her music a great deal of its power. And it isn’t just her sex that keeps the moths coming in for a kiss of the light; we took note of the same sort of morbid anticipation at a solo Elliott Smith show at Town Hall about two years before his murder/suicide/washing-up accident. Or, in microcosm, we’ll admit to having spent a number of minutes many years back watching in rapt suspense as E___ D____ tried to spread ketchup on a garden burger without getting it all over his pajamas. (Without getting into too much detail, we’ll say that most of the ketchup wound up safely on the underside of the bun, although the operation was suspended when our subject, um, “fell asleep,” butter knife still poised between jar and plate. Just say no, kids.)