April 19

On my Facebook dialogues, I often discuss the career of Liberace, especially in the context of his having come out [if not literally] of Milwaukee, Wisconsin ... well, technically West Allis, where I made a pilgrimage to his all-white childhood home a couple years back, a trip as moving as my regular visits to the Shrine of the Bronze Fonz downtown.  But when people talk about Liberace being a great pianist and all that, yeah, he was a technical whiz, but when you hear someone like Yulianna Avdeeva playing Chopin’s First Piano Concerto at Symphony Center last night, you understand that differences between the sublime classical and the inspirational kitsch.  The best seating for listening to music there is the Gallery where the full sound of the orchestra is lifted up to the neo-baroque ceilings: the first row is particularly good, because you get a sweet view of the pianist's fingers gliding over the keyboard with trills and flourishes.  Yeah, sure, Liberace himself could trill and flourish like crazy mad, especially when he was performing his variations on Chopsticks, but Yulianna did it with smooth and elegant touches off the keyboard that played to the genius of Chopin, and didn't distract.  And she didn't have to wear a greatcoat of ermine fur to pull it off, either. 

Speaking of music, Wax Trax Records is holding a release party for a reissue of Kooler Than Jesus by My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult on Sunday.  Oh, I'll be there, no doubt, simply because Wax Trax plays a big role in my new novel, Zelda Rising.  Most notably, the setting for the continuing monologue is a bar called the Crash Palace, long gone now, that was decorated with Roman Catholic iconography so you could sit there at the bar and stare into the eyes of a suffering Jesus on the cross while you were listening to, oh, let's say a selection from The Scream by Siouxsie and the Banshees on the jukebox.  The narrator also talks about what the music means to him, like:

1000 Homo DJs and their twisted prayers to Black Sabbath:
and the synthesized blips and beeps and clicks and snaps of Chris
and Cosey: and My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult who were Kooler
Than Jesus, forever loaded: and the Revolting Cocks, with music
like they were working warped hymns to the smelting of burning
oils and rubbers in some sex shop warehouse on fire. Not to
mention Acid Horse, Pailhead, the Ash Wednesdays …

No such group as the Ash Wednesdays, of course, but the images of "ashes" is all over the novel, so I made it up.

My favorite Cubs player, Seiya Suzuki, is out for at least 10 days with an oblique injury.  Of course, the Cubs got him from my favorite Japanese baseball team, the Hiroshima Toyo Carp ... not that I've ever seen them play or anything, just that, I have a psychic connection with the lead singer of Babymetal over the team.  But that's an entirely different story that I really should tell in depth some day, maybe in this blog.  Cubs vs. Marlins was postponed due to rain yesterday, nice to see former White Sox player and pugilist Tim Anderson with the Marlins.  Sox didn't play.