Belongings: A Story About Amy Winehouse

I came to know about Amy Winehouse the way any knowledge-lacking music fan would—by proxy. Someone, somewhere had said or read or reread something about the (at the time) up-and-coming Brit-pop-soul singer and a song that might—should the circumstances be right—become popular and/or famous.

So, amid a respite from graduate school—in the summer of 2007—back home at my parents' house, I happened to first see the video for Winehouse's "Rehab." There, in mom and dad's family room, me in a chair and Amy on a couch inside the television, I knew it was her. My instinct told me, in the face of my knowledge-lacking musical fandom—long removed from the days I lived and breathed music—noodling guitarist and evolving cynic I was and perhaps still am—and with that my strange connection with Amy Winehouse began.

Grad school, at the time, was a mess, that summer between semesters. I lacked direction, lacked craft, and lacked any sort of love life. Not yet set in my ways that would lead to my eventual MFA thesis, I ventured into areas of art quite unknown to me, leading—long story short—to my dragging an artificial lighting kit to my apartment on a late summer evening, in an effort better my technique, to enable my elevated distinction in some way. Dare I say it: to become a better photographer. That stupid plastic army battle tank case of lights, bulbs, and cables, still giving me a crink in my shoulder to this day as I think and write. I hated it. I hated what it contained.

This all occurred the summer I had moved away from family and was truly living alone. My isolation, in retrospect, was higher than ever—perhaps leading to my increased creativity and productivity—and I relied on the web (Internet) to reach out to others. I transitioned from public to private, from physical to virtual, and the night I lugged a bomb shelter case of strobes to my apartment happened to be night I bought my first digital music download.

I don't know exactly why I felt like buying digital music at the time, with those strobes in their black Kevlar case staring at me. And I don't exactly remember why I had never previously purchased a digital album at all. But until that point my digital music collection—already, even in 2007, becoming less personal and more stoic than ever—consisted solely of burned copies of every CD I owned and a random assortment of illegally downloaded Napter music from freshman year of college.

Even amid reservation to becoming a little "like everyone else" I decided the first album I'd ever download from iTunes would be Back to Black by Amy Winehouse. And I listened to the thing—though to this day, music that exists only in digital form still doesn't feel like a "thing" to me—and enjoyed it, all while getting nowhere with those artificial lights, the artifice of the the digital album booming in the night.

As I left behind the last remains of music as a physical medium I lost myself in those lights. And it was terrible. The lights, not the music. Neo-doowop-soul pouring from my meager computer stereo speakers, and I was awash in technical conundrums in my brain. Do I change this switch here? Does this setting change there? Why are these images so dark, what speed syncs with this equipment? Though I've since figured out how to use light kits like the one I danced with that night, the thought of that evening still makes me anxious.

It was strange new circumstances, indeed, in the way Back to Black came into my life. From Amy on the video couch on MTV2 to the night I played with strobes to no avail.

Jump to four years later, again it's the summer, with everything about my life wildly different, and I am on the verge of embarking onan entirely new chapter of existence. There's twenty-six feet of belongings behind me, and our moving truck is lurching at a snail's pace up the winding embankments of Interstate 84 known as Cabbage Hill. I have several years of memories with me amidst the struggles of the diesel engine.

The truck is part of my future wife-to-be's great migration eastward to be with me and start our life together as homeowners; we're moving. Picking up and going somewhere else. In a day's time we'll be sipping beer and eating pizza (and, frankly, when does pizza taste better than after a big move?) having transported her belongings from her place and mine from mine, all into our new place.

As we wind our way around Cabbage Hill, a story comes on the radio about the death of Amy Winehouse. I'm struck by this in a way that still stands with me, curious and cold, buffeted by the hauling of six tons of baggage up the hill with me, Amy's baggage released by her death and mine gaining altitude in the back of a rental truck. Emotionally, it felt as though I was pulling a case of lighting equipment up Cabbage Hill, more than two thousand miles removed from that Michigan digital summer night.

The boys in the truck with me, our sons, were curious and wanted to know who she was.

"She was a singer," I said. "And she was pretty wild, and she...well, she died." Assuming it was determined to be by her own hand. Assuming the impending well-known tragedy to be a part of our narratives. For slight shifts in either's veracity might have altered my response to them, these boys, not yet a third of twenty-seven, so far removed from the pains and troubles of others, just asking an innocent question.

Amy Winehouse rose and fell a few times in my life, quite briefly, the way mythical figures often do. Back to Black doesn't get regular play these days, but sometimes "Me and Mr. Jones" comes on, and I can't help but think of those three times in my life where Amy Winhouse actually meant something to me.

Sing-Along: Laura Gibson in La Grande

It was supposed to all be a big deal. Laura Gibson, a Portland-based musician released a new album. The album's name? La Grande, called so after the town in Oregon of the same name. The local Art Center happened to have connections to Laura and planned to showcase the musician and her band in a unique, CD release event.

I live in La Grande. There are few big deals that happen around here, save for the recent fiasco surrounding the dolt-ish mayor and his anti-gay comments from his Facebook page.

Slurs and pigheadedness aside, The Laura Gibson show, through its initial planning stages, was shaping up to be a big deal. Nay, it was becoming a huge deal. The Art Center has grown in popularity in recent months, with growing childrens' art class enrollments, well-attended gallery events, and the occasional fundraiser. The success of a show like this could make the Art Center into something even bigger.

But on the eve of the concert, doubts lingered. Was it going to be a big deal? The presale tickets numbered in the dozens. As in, one dozen. Laura and her bandmates were posting images of their travels on Twitter leading up to the show. Well-traveled by the time they would arrive in La Grande, any snags could potentially sour a relationship between the musician and town she came to love and eventually name an album after.

The band barely made it over the pass on the way from Pendleton. Sound check took longer than expected. Feedback from the microphones was awful. The opening band, local favorites Correspondence School, had their equipment off to the side of the stage while folks started wandering in. There wasn't enough wine. There weren't wristbands to mark of-age patrons, there weren't enough volunteers to take tickets.

With everything seemingly going wrong, with patrons arriving late, with the show starting late, with the feedback, the, well, everything going the way it was, what happened once Correspondence School took the stage was truly magical.

Outside the Art Center, the snow fell. The town stopped. By eight or so, more people stood to watch Correspondence school than had ever stood in the Art Center at one time. The feedback stopped. The wine showed up. The crowd quieted. All of the setbacks didn't matter in the face of the music.

Laura Gibson and her band took the stage a little after nine and, in a way only an acoustic ensemble can, blew the roof off the place. Her birdlike voice and welcoming banter between songs helped the crowd welcome her as an honorary La Grandian for the night. At times, the crowd grew loud amidst the quiet songs from Gibson and her band, but by the end of the night, one of those rare, transcendent moments happened that people have a hard time recollecting, but never forget.

The snow fell and the set wound down.  Laura pulled the microphone  from its stand and addressed the crowd. "We've got one more song for you," she said. "It's a sing-along song. And there aren't even any words to sing." She sang through the "oh oh oh ohhh" twice for the audience and everyone chimed in for another bar.

And the song started. There was no break, no advice when to sing that part and when to stay silent. It just happened. And with "The Rushing Dark," with everyone singing, the chatter subsiding, the eyes focused on the performers, the collective voices of much of La Grande combined to create this one artistic event that, in my humble opinion, seemed very unlike La Grande. This concert ceased to be that, a concert, and instead transformed into an event.

Laura Gibson, her band, "The Rushing Dark," and the rest of the set that night showed people what can be accomplished through true artistry, understanding, and ambition. She didn't have to name her album after our town. Many–the uninitiated, mostly–would wonder what someone from Portland would even find interesting about our quiet mountain town.

But with this show, we all figured it out. We're special. Our town is special. This music is special, like a gift that only an artist can give to a place, because it's not really a thing. Now, for those of us who were at the Art Center (yet another truly special part of our town), that gift only exists in our minds and in whatever grainy photos or videos might remain in the years to come.

So, thanks to Laura and her band for being sweet and friendly, the Art Center for its ambiance, and thanks to this town for making at least one person, Laura–an outsider, no less–come to realize what we've got. Through that, we were all able to realize it ourselves when that one person came to town to show us what it is that we've all got. And we get it every day.

Aram - 8/23/11

The Continuing Saga of the UFCK Photo Project: the Aram

With four or five or six photo shoots under my belt, the summer months of 2011 were a frenzy of logistical emails and postings. In the beginning of the year, when the project funding was announced, I made plans to travel during the early summer, around the fourth of July.

Then, I bought a house. It was a good step towards normal, adult, decorum, but that ordeal set me back several weeks, and before I knew it, the end of August, Labor Day, and the beginning of my academic year were all staring me in the face and I had to get on the road for the project.

More emails. More planning. More spreadsheets. I used maps and the Internet to try to figure out the best routes to take. I would be shipping my equipment to my parents' house in Michigan, fly out of Boise, pick up and go. By mid-August, I had a crude plan in place to follow a big loop from Michigan through Chicago, down to Tennessee, back up through the DC area to New York before heading home through Philadelphia.

Sorting through the schedules of almost two dozen people was one thing. Stepping off a plane and meeting someone you'd never met before was another. The first person on my list of subjects, and the main focus of the entire project from its inception, was Aram.

Let me tell you a little bit about Aram.

He's a character. A relatively normal character, but a character nonetheless. On ufck.org he is easily the the site's most recognizable members, both because of his appearance and his personality. His loves include the Beatles, vinyl records, the University of Michigan (and especially its Marching Band), Michigan beer, soul music, playing on a vintage baseball team, his Armenian heritage, and his academic studies, among others.

For whatever reason–most likely because Aram has been around ufck.org since its inception and the inception of its predecessors, which has resulted in a more extensive reputation than someone just joining the boards–Aram gets picked on. A lot. Oftentimes, it's in good fun, and he takes it in jest. It's schoolyard teasing among friends. Sometimes, though, it's, well, rougher than that. He's opinionated, sure, but his opinions resonate across this online community oftentimes like wildfire. He's different, and I knew that before I even met him in person. He's emotional, which rarely serves one well in an online forum as sarcastic and caustic as ufck.org can be. But his specific emotions somehow help him stay afloat and keep a level head through all of the derision and nitpicking.

His penchant for oddball comments, photogenic tendencies–which lend themselves quite well to an almost innumerable catalog of animated .gif images–and general demeanor and reputation as this sort of online forum celebrity were what initiated this project in the first place. In my eyes, he was this walking, living, breathing meme, and I had to investigate what it was that made Aram the Aram.

Because I had shipped my photographic equipment to my parents' house, it put the camera out of reach when I landed at Detroit Metro Airport. So I split my photo shoot with Aram into two parts: the first would be a sit-down visit where we talked about anything and everything pertaining to the message board. Then I would return the following day for the photo shoot once I had my gear with me.

This means that I spent the better part of a day traveling from Oregon to Detroit, picked up my luggage and my rental car, and was driving to a stranger's house to sit and chat about who-knows-what. For the first time in my photographic life, I was nervous, and it had nothing to do with standing in front of a classroom of strangers.

I had a notebook, a tape recorder, and a water bottle. No plan, no questions, no getaway plan if Aram turned homicidal and started throwing vintage 45's at me.

Aram answered the door in a Fat Possum Records t-shirt. If that doesn't say anything about what kind of guy Aram is, then this blog post–and maybe the entire photo project–is a giant waste of time.º

My conversation with Aram, and the photo shoot the next day, went almost too well to describe. He was jovial and welcoming and more than willing to talk. He had a hard time believing his life–or online life–was somehow worthy of interest from an artist, let alone photographic documentation. We met for over an hour and a half that first day, and I learned about Aram's fascination with the city of Detroit, how he managed to survive a year-long grad school program in Chicago (and what he was actually studying), and what he was doing back home in his parents' basement.

The following day we continued the conversation while shooting and over lunch. Aram recounted, as best he could remember, his hilarious and eventful night at his first State Champion concert, why he wanted to take a trip to Israel, and what the deal is with his giant beard.

It turns out that Aram is a normal guy like he insists all the time online. The difference between him and many of the other people who post at ufck.org is that he rarely holds back. He's truthful to his ideals in a way that sets off a lot of people. Hence, the poking fun, the comments.

Aram is probably the person that is most comfortable being himself when he's online. And it's strange, since this whole project started with him and how we're all different–we have to be, right?–online compared to our real lives. For Aram, there isn't really a line between those two worlds for him. He's a bit younger, he's been posting online since he was in high school. (I, for instance,  didn't discover the world of online message boards until I was a junior in college.)

While the story about Aram and our visit could go on and on (and will; see the footnote below), the fact that it was my first stop on a long photographic journey was, in retrospect, one of the best things about the entire project. Everyone who agreed to be photographed was more than cordial and welcoming, sure, but there was something about Aram's demeanorª–and the fact of knowing there are people like him out there–that makes me realize that this project has merit, whether or not the in-depth stories of the characters involved ever get told.

º Aram is by no means an indie music expert, but the fact that he was wearing a Fat Possum Records shirt–celebrating the small record label operating out of Water Valley (Oxford), Mississippi says loads about his personality.

ª He would be the first to comment: tl;dr

Sunday Art #4

I'm back of the regularly scheduled art schnide with this piece I did for good friend and La Grande-ite Gregory Rawlins. He approached me a few weeks ago to do a poster for his upcoming concert at Union's LG Brewskis pub.

Lots of pen and ink on paper I found in a stack near the west wall of the studio. If you'd like a high quality version for printing, please let me know. I'm sure Greg would love extra hands hanging them around town.

Strangers Pick the Best of 2011

Each December, the users of the online forum ufck.org submit their votes for the best albums of the previous year. All of the submitted lists are tallied by some dear soul who has the time to assign point values to each record.

My relationship with the UFCK folks has changed quite a bit over the last year. The UFCK Photo Project was a big step for me integrating myself into the community and becoming a regular. In the past, the only claim to fame I had was the occasional animated .gif I would throw together in Photoshop.

I submitted a list of albums this year for the first time. By no means a music expert, I scrolled through iTunes in the hopes I had listened to some new music during 2011. I had. Nothing extensive, to be sure, but there was enough variety that I culled together my favorites from among the critically acclaimed to the less-so.

Several things happened during this year's UFCK top 25 voting. State Champion, a relatively unknown (save for UFCK.org) rock band from Louisville, took top prize. I met frontman Ryan Davis during my photo trip, and photographed him for the project, despite his never having been a member of the message board. (Though the band has been fodder for many a fantastic board experience.) Enough nice things cannot be said about him, especially considering I met up with him at his place at 9am, while he and his girlfriend were getting ready to head up to Kings Island for the day.

To access the list of UFCK's top 25 albums of 2011, go here. What you'll find is a mix of eclectic and fantastic music. With each entry on the list you'll also find a custom blurb written by a member of the forum. Sometimes the blurbs are ironic, sometimes they are clever. Other times, they are simply a litany of inside jokes that any outsider (or boarder with fewer than 50,000 posts) would fail to understand. The blurbs are usually more descriptive of the person who wrote them than of the record they're describing.

Take a look and you'll learn about UFCK, some new music, and the lives of people who take their music very, very seriously*.

And you'll also have a chance to download, print, and enjoy your very own State Champion Activity Book. Happy coloring!

* This blog does not endorse Dave's Rawk Blog, its opinions, or any of its absurdity. It is worth experiencing at least once, though.