Grace Krilanovich on KQED's Writer's Block

Today, KQED broadcast Grace Krilanovich reading a selection from The Orange Eats Creeps on their 'Writer's Block' program. Enjoy...

This Section Involves Potheads and the Donner Party

The National Book Foundation put on a really fun, laidback party for the 5 Under 35 honorees last November. Here's an interview they did with Grace at the opening of the evening, as well as Scott Spencer's introduction to The Orange Eats Creeps, followed by Grace's reading from a section of the book that "involves potheads and the Donner Party."

Little known fact for all you fans of trivia out there: it was the only reading that night that involved potheads or the Donner Party.

This is Mail Worth Rifling Through

Pics above from Bookshop Santa Cruz, Grace Krilanovich's hometown, where the book was a staff favorite for the year. For those who missed it, Grace had a great big essay on the LA Times website yesterday, talking about her experience publishing The Orange Eats Creeps and it's path toward her being selected as one of the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35.

W Magazine took '5 Minutes' with Xiaoda Xiao to discuss his new memoir-in-stories, The Visiting Suit: Stories From My Prison Life. This is an intense, incredibly ambitious book -- tell your friends and friends' friends about it!

The Fanzine, a great site that regularly features the work of some talented writers like Kevin Sampsell, Dennis Cooper, Trinie Dalton et al, ran an excerpt from Barbara Browning's forthcoming novel, The Correspondence Artist, called 'La Rire de la Meduse.' It's a long-ish excerpt, which is the nice thing about the web and a place like The Fanzine, that they can publish longer pieces and disregard word and page counts.

So that's a truck-load of reading material that'll hopefully keep you busy for a while.

Graphic Novels

Everyone was comparing The Orange Eats Creeps to Charles Burns' Black Hole, so I finally upped and read it. I thought it was fantastic. So in the future we're going to start considering graphic novel submissions for publication.

Also, along those lines, The Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute is hosting a panel discussion on Sunday, December 5 at 2:30 on the subject of 'The Art of the Graphic Novel.' Panel participants include Lynda Barry, Hillary Chute, N.C. Christopher Couch, Ben Katchor, and Francoise Mouly.

Here's how they introduce the panel:

"The underground comics movement in the 1960s and '70s and the avant-garde RAW magazine in the '80s and '90s established comics as an important medium for storytelling and self-expression. Since then the field has opened in many new directions. Today there are cartoonists such as Joe Sacco publishing four-hundred-page works of comics journalism about Gaza, and Alison Bechdel publishing comics-form book reviews in The New York Times Book Review. An unprecedented critical and popular interest in “graphic novels,” book-length fiction in comics, has emerged in recent years. Why is there such enthusiasm about comics in our current moment, and where is the form headed? What can this intricate, double-tracked narrative form, composed of words and images, bring to journalism, or to memoir, or to the art of fiction? How are politics and aesthetics intertwined in comics, and how are popular and so-called high cultures melded in the form? This roundtable will bring together some of the foremost cartoonists, publishers, and critics in the field to explore current and future avenues for the comics form—its strengths and capacities, and where it is headed."

A Real Moustache on the Face of Depravity

We received a curious email from a community leader of a neighborhood group in Irondale, WA, interested in what is being said about them in Grace Krilanovich's novel, The Orange Eats Creeps.

I found this odd, since apart from labeling the book a novel explicitly on the front, the synopsis also refers to "a band of hobo vampire junkies." So I don't believe anyone would mistake it for anything but fiction.

There is one particularly juicy section where Irondale makes a grand entrance, that I believe accounts for some of the best, most lucid and effective prose in the book.

Here it is:
"Down by the creek there’s a small town by the name of Irondale, a single lane of highway tacked down right in the middle of a lush forest wilderness the likes of which would do Marty
Stouffer proud. I found the rest of my hobo buddies camped out among a few modest houses and sheds situated on a dozen acres littered with mobile home trailers and smelly Meth accoutrements, a display resplendent of the region’s claim to fame in the local papers: seedy clusters of mutant skinless stripped-bare mobile home trailers. This was one of the famous Meth squats of Irondale, a real mustache on the face of depravity. The Jefferson County Leader routinely sent out reporters to lurk behind some crap-filled bathtub, taking notes. More than one soul had been absorbed. Irondale stood as a living monument to Meth dudes who had casually reached a level of ingenuity whereby — after selling the metal siding off their trailers for scrap — they found themselves with nothing left to practice tagging on, so they put the word out, soliciting others to haul in something to fill the void. A yard full of wrecked shit fulfills many needs, doubling as shelter, jewelry, target practice, and…? Some neighbors were once baffled to see a Meth squatter hauling a boat filled with garbage on a trailer with no wheels. When the trailer couldn’t be coaxed into going any further it was unceremoniously abandoned out in the middle of the road, which even by Meth squat standards is pretty resourceful."

More Big Ups, Grace Krilanovich!

Congrats, Grace Krilanovich. She knocked it out of the park with her first novel The Orange Eats Creeps, pretty much an instant cult classic. The book, one of the National Book Foundation's '5 Under 35' selections, one of Gawker's 'most interesting fall titles', was named today one of Amazon.com's Top 10 Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Books for 2010.

There's also plenty more Grace on the way: Jonathan Bastian interviewed the author for 'Page by Page', Aspen Public Radio's book program; and Nylon Magazine has a photoshoot with the author running with an interview in their December/January issue.

But stepping back, to celebrate making the Amazon.com list, we're giving away 50 electronic Kindle versions of The Orange Eats Creeps for free this afternoon. Drop an email to twodollar[at]twodollarradio.com with the subject "OEC!" and we'll ping you back at some point soon with an attached .mobi file. We're only going to give copies away today (11/4), and no more than 50 copies -- so write soon.

The Melting Pot

Greetings.


We're headed to San Antonio over the weekend for a wedding, so what follows is a boiling hot pot of some cool happenings in our world.


Grace Krilanovich is converting skeptics. She'll be in NYC reading from The Orange Eats Creeps this Sunday night at KGB Bar @ 7pm as part of a two-night 'Indie Press Crush Fest' with featherproof books authors Lindsay Hunter (author of Daddy's), Christian Tebordo (author of The Awful Possibilities), and Amelia Gray (author of AM/PM). Night #2 will take place at Greenpoint's WORD Bookstore on Tuesday, May 26 @ 7:30pm.

All next week, October 25 - 31, Joshua Mohr will be partaking in a live chat with The Next Best Book Club. You can read the book club's blog post in which they declare Termite Parade 'the next best book'!

Bomb Magazine has posted a podcast of their 'Bomb Literary All-Star Reading' at Greenlight Books earlier this month. Barbara Browning read a selection from her forthcoming novel, The Correspondence Artist (February '11), an excerpt from which was published in Bomb's Summer issue.

Grace Krilanovich Live!

Watch live video from Two Dollar Radio on Justin.tv


Watch live video from Two Dollar Radio on Justin.tv


Watch live video from Two Dollar Radio on Justin.tv


Watch live video from Two Dollar Radio on Justin.tv


Watch live video from Two Dollar Radio on Justin.tv

Grace Krilanovich Live Reading

After getting back from this past weekend's LitQuake in San Francisco -- which I heard was a rousing success -- where she read with Joshua Mohr, Grace Krilanovich will be doing a live web-reading tonight hosted by HTML Giant at 9 Eastern.

You can also tune in through Two Dollar Radio's Justin TV channel.

It's interactive, so get your questions ready!

GRACE KRILANOVICH selected for NBF's 5 Under 35 Honor!!!

Big ups, Grace Krilanovich!

We at Two Dollar Radio are super-stoked, super-excited to announce that Grace Krilanovich has been selected for the National Book Foundation's '5 Under 35' Honor!

The honor is given annually to five writers under the age of 35 who have demonstrated excellence in fiction. Honorees are selected by previous National Book Award winners and finalists. Grace K was selected by Scott Spencer, author of Endless Love, A Ship Made of Paper, and the just-published Man in the Woods (buy his books!!!).

Grace will be honored at the 5 Under 35 Bash thrown by the National Book Foundation celebrating National Book Week, and the lead-up to the announcement of the National Book Awards. The bash is Monday, November 15, and will be hosted by Roseanne Cash and DJed by Rob Sheffield (author of Talking to Girls About Duran Duran).

Also, Grace will be reading/doing a live interview Monday, October 11 at 9EST/6PST on Two Dollar Radio's new video channel. The reading/interview will be hosted by the always-sweet HTML Giant.

Congrats, Grace! Pretty cool.

Here's the official press release:

5 UNDER 35
FIFTH ANNUAL CELEBRATION OF YOUNG FICTION WRITERS
SELECTED BY NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNERS AND FINALISTS

NATIONAL BOOK FOUNDATION ALSO LOOKS BACK ON “25 UNDER 35,”
ALL THE HONOREES OF THE PAST FIVE YEARS

HOSTED BY ROSANNE CASH
ROB SHEFFIELD TO DJ

2010 marks the fifth year of the National Book Foundation’s 5 Under 35 selections, recognizing five young fiction writers chosen by National Book Award Winners and Finalists. Last year’s reading and party at powerHouse Arena in DUMBO, Brooklyn prompted The Huffington Post to publish a piece called “How to Throw a Party for Books: The NBA’s 5 Under 35 Event.” This year’s celebration will again be held at powerHouse Arena at the start of National Book Awards Week on Monday, November 15, hosted by musician and author Rosanne Cash with music journalist Rob Sheffield as DJ.

Leslie Shipman, Director of Programs at the National Book Foundation, comments, “In the five years of 5 Under 35, we’ve been thrilled to see many of our honorees go on to receive great acclaim. We’re delighted that 5 Under 35 provides us with an opportunity to recognize these young writers early in their careers, with the help of past National Book Award Winners and Finalists.”

The 2010 5 Under 35 Honorees are:

Sarah Braunstein, The Sweet Relief of Missing Children (W.W. Norton & Co., 2011)
Selected by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, National Book Award Fiction Finalist for
Madeleine Is Sleeping, 2004

Grace Krilanovich, The Orange Eats Creeps (Two Dollar Radio, 2010)
Selected by Scott Spencer, Fiction Finalist for A Ship Made of Paper, 2003; Fiction Finalist for Endless Love, 1980 and 1981

Téa Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife (Random House, 2011)
Selected by Colum McCann, Fiction Winner for Let the Great World Spin, 2009

Tiphanie Yanique, How to Escape from a Leper Colony (Graywolf, 2010)
Selected by Jayne Anne Phillips, Fiction Finalist for Lark and Termite, 2009

Paul Yoon, Once the Shore (Sarabande, 2009)
Selected by Kate Walbert, Fiction Finalist for Our Kind, 2004

(Biographies for 5 Under 35 honorees and National Book Award authors at end of release.)

With its fifth year of 5 Under 35 selections, the National Book Foundation now honors 25 writers under 35, including Ceridwen Dovey, Samantha Hunt, Bret Anthony Johnston, Nam Le, Dinaw Mengestu, ZZ Packer, Anya Ulinich, Josh Weil, and Charles Yu, selected by past National Book Award Winners and Finalists such as Jennifer Egan, Jonathan Franzen, Mary Gaitskill, Charles Johnson, and Christine Schutt.

The 2010 list of books reflects a range of publishers from Two Dollar Radio to Random House. Among the 2010 5 Under 35 honorees’ early accomplishments, Tiphanie Yanique is a 2010 Rona Jaffe Foundation Award Winner, an award which Sarah Braunstein won in 2007; Grace Krilanovich was a finalist for the Starcherone Prize; Paul Yoon’s Once the Shore was a New York Times Notable Book; and Téa Obreht was named one of The New Yorker’s 2010 “20 Under 40.” Sarah Shun-lien Bynum, the National Book Award Finalist who selected Sarah Braunstein for 5 Under 35, was also on the “20 Under 40” list.

At this year’s 5 Under 35 party, the young writers will be introduced by the National Book Award Winners and Finalists who selected them and will each give a brief reading. Author Amanda Stern, host of the first 5 Under 35 event in 2006, will interview the honorees and Winners and Finalists during the party. Party guests will be invited to pose for portraits by The Photo Booth Party. Food will again be provided by the Red Hook Food Vendors and wine by Brooklyn Oenology. The Foundation will continue its tradition of having a musician/author, Rosanne Cash, host the event and an author with a musical slant, Rob Sheffield, provide the soundtrack for the evening.

For more information on this year’s 5 Under 35 honorees and past 5 Under 35 celebrations, please visit http://www.nationalbook.org/5under35.html.

This event is by invitation only. Press interested in attending should contact Sherrie Young at syoung@nationalbook.org.

5 Under 35 Honorees

Sarah Braunstein is the recipient of the Rona Jaffe Writers' Award. She received her MFA from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and lives in Portland, Maine. Her novel, The Sweet Relief of Missing Children, will be published by W.W. Norton in 2011.

Grace Krilanovich has been a MacDowell Colony Fellow and a finalist for the Starcherone Prize. Her first book, The Orange Eats Creeps, is the only novel to be excerpted twice in the literary magazine Black Clock.

Téa Obreht was born in 1985 in the former Yugoslavia, and spent her childhood in Cyprus and Egypt before eventually immigrating to the United States in 1997. After graduating from the University of Southern California, Téa received her MFA in Fiction from the Creative Writing Program at Cornell University in 2009. Her first novel, The Tiger's Wife, will be published by Random House in 2011. Her fiction debut—an excerpt of The Tiger's Wife in The New Yorker—was selected for the The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2010. Her second publication, the short story The Laugh, was published in the summer 2009 fiction issue of The Atlantic, and will be anthologized in The Best American Short Stories 2010. Téa currently lives in Ithaca, New York.

Tiphanie Yanique is from the Hospital Ground neighborhood of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. She is an assistant professor of Creative Writing and Caribbean Literature at Drew University and an associate editor with Post-No-Ills. Her first book, How to Escape from a Leper Colony, was published by Graywolf in 2010. She lives between Brooklyn, New York and St. Thomas.

Paul Yoon was born in New York City. His first book, Once the Shore, was a New York Times Notable Book; a Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Publishers Weekly, and Minneapolis Star Tribune Best Book of the Year; and selected as a Best Debut of the Year by National Public Radio. He is the recipient of an O. Henry Award, the John C. Zacharis First Book Award from Ploughshares, and his work has appeared in One Story, American Short Fiction, Glimmer Train, and The Best American Short Stories. He currently resides in Baltimore with the fiction writer Laura van den Berg.

National Book Award Authors

Sarah Shun-lien Bynum is the author of two novels, Ms. Hempel Chronicles, a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award, and Madeleine Is Sleeping, a Finalist for the 2004 National Book Award and winner of the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. Her fiction has appeared in several magazines and anthologies, including The New Yorker, Tin House, The Georgia Review, and The Best American Short Stories 2004 and 2009. The recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award and an NEA Fellowship, she directs the MFA program in writing at the University of California, San Diego. She lives in Los Angeles and was recently named one of “20 Under 40” fiction writers by The New Yorker.

Colum McCann's newest novel, Let the Great World Spin, won the 2009 National Book Award and is a New York Times bestseller. He is the author of two collections of short stories and five novels, including This Side of Brightness, Dancer, and Zoli, all of which were international bestsellers. His fiction has been published in 30 languages and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, The Paris Review, Bomb, and other places. He has written for numerous publications, including The Irish Times, Die Zeit, La Repubblica, Paris Match, The New York Times, the Guardian, and The Independent. In 2003 Colum was named Esquire magazine's "Writer of the Year." Other awards and honors include a Pushcart Prize, the Rooney Prize, a French Chevalier des arts et lettres, and the Hennessy Award for Irish Literature. Colum was born in Dublin in 1965 and began his career as a journalist at The Irish Press. Colum teaches at Hunter College in New York, in the Creative Writing program, with fellow novelists Peter Carey and Nathan Englander.

Jayne Anne Phillips was born in Buckhannon, West Virginia. She is the author of four novels, MotherKind (2000), Shelter (1994), Machine Dreams (1984), and Lark and Termite (2009), and two collections of widely anthologized stories, Fast Lanes (1987) and Black Tickets (1979). She is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and a Bunting Fellowship. She has been awarded the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction (1980) and an Academy Award in Literature (1997) by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Her work has been translated into twelve languages, and has appeared in Granta, Harper’s, DoubleTake, and The Norton Anthology of Contemporary Fiction. She is currently Professor of English and Director of the MFA Program at Rutgers-Newark, the State University of New Jersey. Her most recent novel, Lark and Termite, was a National Book Award Finalist in 2009.

Scott Spencer is the author of ten novels, including Man in the Woods, A Ship Made of Paper, Waking the Dead, and the international bestseller Endless Love. He has written for Rolling Stone, The New York Times, The New Yorker, GQ, and Harper's, and has taught writing at Columbia University, the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, Williams College, and the Bard Prison Initiative. He lives in Rhinebeck, New York.

Kate Walbert is the author of the novels A Short History of Women, named one of The New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of 2009, Our Kind, a Finalist for the National Book Award in 2004, and The Gardens of Kyoto, winner of the Connecticut Book Award for best fiction in 2002, as well as the New York Times Notable story collection, Where She Went. Her short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Best American Short Stories, Prize Stories: The O. Henry Awards, The Pushcart Prize Stories, and numerous other publications. She has been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts as well as the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, and taught fiction writing at Yale for many years. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughters.

The 5 Under 35 Celebration’s Host
Rosanne Cash has recorded fourteen albums charting twenty-one Top 40 country singles, 11 of which made it to # 1, and two gold records. She has received ten Grammy nominations—winning in 1985—and was nominated this year for “Sea of Heartbreak,” a duet with Bruce Springsteen on her current CD, The List. Cash achieved the highest chart position of her career with the debut of The List. The album, which Vanity Fair called “superb,” debuted in the Top 5 on the Country Chart, and entered The Billboard 200 at No. 22. Cash is the author of Bodies of Water and the children’s book Penelope Jane: A Fairy’s Tale. Her essays and fiction have been published in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, and New York magazine. Her memoir, Composed, was published by Viking in 2010. She lives in New York City with her husband and children.

The 5 Under 35 Celebration’s Featured DJ
Rob Sheffield has been a music journalist for more than twenty years. He is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, where he writes about music, TV, and pop culture, and regularly appears on MTV and VH1. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Love Is a Mix Tape, which has been translated into French, German, Italian, Swedish, Japanese, Russian, and other languages he cannot read. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

The Mission of the National Book Foundation is to celebrate the best of American literature, to expand its audience, and to enhance the cultural value of good writing in America.

About the National Book Awards:
The nation’s most prestigious literary prize, the National Book Award has a stellar record of identifying and rewarding quality writing. In 1950, William Carlos Williams was the first winner in Poetry, the following year William Faulkner was honored in Fiction, and so on through the years. Many previous Winners of a National Book Award are now firmly established in the canon of American literature. On November 17th, the National Book Awards will be presented in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, and Young People’s Literature.

For further reading:

The Orange Eats Creeps link roundup:

OEC book trailer
Largehearted Boy Book Notes
Vol. 1 Brooklyn review
HTMLGIANT love
TDR Noise Q&A
Skylight Books launch party with Joshua Mohr, 9/9
Two Dollar Radio/Featherproof "night of hand-holding" at KGB, 10/24
Grace on Twitter

"All Ages Show at Club Knuckle Sandwich," cont'd

The band _____________________ (name of deep sea creature) ___________________ (b-movie title or type of drug) took the stage, boasting a stack of _____ (number) watt amps, a new bass player from _____________________ (country) and a drummer wearing a __________ (adj) dress and _________________ (hairstyle). The guitar player _______________________ (adverb) tuned up against the backdrop of __________________ (song title), which was shorting out the PA speakers. The singer, ____________________ (snack food) ___________________ (proper last name) had just gotten out of jail for ___________________ (adj) assault with a deadly ___________________ (noun). S/he gripped the ___________________ (noun), singing into it with a voice reminiscent of ____________________ (celebrity) on __________________________ (food/drink/drug). Two freaky cheerleaders flanked the band, named ________________ (noun) and _____________ (noun that rhymes with prev. noun), who, on this tour, also happened to double as _____________ (adj) roadies, ___________________ (make of car) driver and merch _________________ (plural noun). “__________________,” (exclamation) “this PA sucks! Hi, we’re ____________________________ (deep sea creature from above) ______________________________ (b movie title or type of drug from above) and we’re from _____________________ (city). The ______________________ (adj) promoter from this ________________________ (adj) club has already told us were getting paid __________ (dollar amount) so _____________________ (insult). They launched into their first song, a cover of ______________________ (song title) done in the style of ___________________________ (music genre). Instantly, the ____________________ (adj) crowd split into two factions: half rushing the stage, half heading for the exit. ____________________ (plural noun) and ________________________ (plural noun) came flying out of nowhere, hitting the singer in the chest. “____________________,” (exclamation) “Who threw that? Look, we’re gonna stop the show if you can’t be nice. Don’t throw shit, cuz we’ll be gone.” The song ground to a halt. Then suddenly the promoter rushed the stage, __________________ (adverb) waving a cassette tape, screaming “This is not the band I booked! Where’s _____________________ (brand of detergent) _____________________ (type of weather)? Get ‘em on stage. You’re done. You guys suck. And you’re con artists. This ______________________ (undesirable substance) sounds nothing like your ___________________ (adj) demo tape. The band shrugged, peeling off their respective instruments, throwing them to the floor. At the load-in door a ___________ (adj) record label A & R man was waiting with a ___________ (adj) contract. Turns out __________________ (celebrity) wanted to produce their debut album and the budget was _____________ (dollar amount). “_____________________” (catch-phrase) the band collectively exclaimed. “Perfect album title!” the A & R man said. As it happens, the next _________________ (adj) band took _________ (number) minutes to set up, but by then the audience had bailed. THE END

Watch those elbows

Hmm... I wonder why girls stopped going to punk shows when punk became "hardcore"?

"All Ages Show at Club Knuckle Sandwich"

Top half. Print it out, fill it in. I'll post the story it belongs to tomorrow.

_____________________ (name of a deep sea creature)

___________________ (b-movie title or type of drug)

_____ (number)

_____________________ (country)

__________ (adj)

_________________ (hairstyle)

_______________________ (adverb)

__________________ (song title)

____________________ (snack food)

___________________ (proper last name)

___________________ (adj)

___________________ (noun)

___________________ (noun)

____________________ (celebrity)

__________________________ (food/drink/drug)

________________ (noun)

_____________ (noun that rhymes with prev. noun)

_____________ (adj)

___________________ (make of car)

_________________ (plural noun)

__________________ (exclamation)

_______________________ (deep sea creature from above)

_______________________ (b-movie title or type of drug from above)

_____________________ (city)

______________________ (adj)

______________________ (adj)

__________ (dollar amount)

_____________________ (insult)

______________________ (song title)

___________________________ (music genre)

____________________ (adj)

____________________ (plural noun)

________________________ (plural noun)

____________________ (exclamation)

__________________ (adverb)

_____________________ (brand of detergent)

_____________________ (type of weather)

______________________ (undesirable substance)

___________________ (adj)

___________ (adj)

___________ (adj)

__________________ (celebrity)

_____________ (dollar amount)

_____________________ (catch-phrase)

_________________ (adj)

_________ (number)

My Librarian

Do you see it? There is something indescribable lurking in the shadows where his eyes should be.

Bass Players: An Appreciation

Our planet is held together by bass players. Guileless, a little bit mysterious, endearingly dorky; if they know what’s best for them they’ll be lurking in the shadows next to the drummer. Variations include the singing bass player, the wild art freak bass player, the unshakable wall bass player, the phantom bass player (the Doors), the lone psycho (Joe Preston/Thrones), the spazz (Tim Bogert), the prolific session player (Carol Kaye) and the gentleman-ham (Iron Maiden’s Steve Harris).

Perhaps it’s the bass’ all-encompassing nature – the grey fuzzy forcefield that lays down a constant and reassuring foundation, “holding it down” cosmically for our freaky trebly ways -- that feels so jarring when it steps out into the spotlight. Don’t you know you’re supposed to be a subliminal, looming presence? A flashy bass player admits too much the truth that s/he is running the show. To be too good is to be a shameless wonder. But if you have the skills you can get away with anything – except sweating, of course.

Transgressions: a bass that is too big, unwieldy, unusual (headless), too many strings, too expensive, futuristic, superfluous. We seem to be uncomfortable with too much attention being drawn to the bass itself. Flashy guitars are merely sight gags. Flashy basses are a threat to the hierarchy of the rock band, where each thing has its rank, sonically (its place in the mix) and visually (to avoid visual overload or confusing the audience, everything must be sorted and prioritized). Has there ever been a naked bass player? No. Slap bass: a '70s delicacy, so easily abused. Slap bass, as a noise, calls attention to noise-making itself... noises like crumbs trapped in your bra.

Taste is an issue with bass, more than other instruments. More seems to be at stake, so what is considered “good taste” for a bass is narrow: John Entwistle, Jack Bruce, Jack Casady, Lemmy, Tiran Porter, Toody, Cliff Burton, Flea, Kim Gordon, Tom Petersson, Bootsy Collins, Mike Watt, Noel Redding, Suzi Quattro, Dusty Hill, John Doe, Kira, Steve MacDonald, Phil Lynott… We know what we don’t like: the Seinfeld theme: slap crawling up your back like a demon.

Through it all there is the mystery of bass, the invitation to righteousness, a dainty flicker of a razor in the candlelight, the plunge into wrongness, a breath away.

A Valentine to Dos

Dos as in “two,” a band of two basses consisting of Mike Watt (Minutemen) and Kira Roessler (Black Flag): two punk legends, former lovebirds, now just good friends. Bass friends. It’s a small music, origins stained with grief, and maybe a kind of romance too. Their “Intense Song for Madonna” will haunt you, crawl into the space behind your neck and hunker down there, panting softly.

End of 1985, Kira, trying to lure a despondent Watt out of his grief over friend and bandmate D. Boon’s death, suggested they simply play their basses. Just play, that’s all. Create some 4-track demos out of the loss. The first two releases, both on New Alliance records – 1986’s self-titled LP and 1989’s EP Numero Dos -- were nestled in the midst of Watt’s tenure with fIREHOSE. A second full-length, Justamente Tres (Kill Rock Stars), came later, in 1996. On each there are covers, instrumentals, ultra-minimal sketches and some fleshed out songs (a few later adapted for the full drum/bass/guitar/vox treatment by fIREHOSE). Ever wistful, evocative in its limited scope, Dos revisits a lonely terrain, lodged in a sentimental dream (a “Dream of San Pedro”). Kira brings the bounce and some buoyant, nearly over-enunciated vocal stylings. Watt brings the gravity. Always alluring apart, their two approaches mesh irresistibly.

The first time I saw Dos it was one of the first gigs after a long absence (Watt has several other bands all going at the same time). Kira was wearing a sarong with sea turtles on it. Since then I’ve seen them about 10 or 12 times, all in the Los Angeles area. You begin to learn the drill. Watt takes approx. 4 minutes to set up. He can be gruff if approached. Kira’s husband waits in the car with her little Bichon Frise after the gig. She often wraps her plucking hand to ease the lingering effects of an old injury from the Black Flag days, where -- not wanting to appear like a weakling (girl) sidelined by a torn tendon -- she played through it, sustaining permanent damage.

The more I see this band, in bars, Foreign Legion halls, clubs, coffee houses and dining establishments (they’re too low key to be anything but an opener), the more hypnotic their sound becomes. The simplicity of two basses in their unusual arrangements lures you into its thrall. Dos is more like a craft object than a band. A hand-stitched keepsake made of felt. Soft, you can pet it and it’s small enough to be yours alone.

Interview with Murph

In which we are given a rare opportunity to speak directly to one of the Slutty Teenage Hobo Vampire Junkies!

We tracked him down, sitting crosslegged on a grass median next to some cops who were going to arrest him for walking up to a Taco Bell drive thru window. He managed to answer a couple questions about the new book he’s in, that he wasn’t actually aware of till I mentioned it and flashed a copy in front of his handcuffed little self. Here are his responses -- what little I could manage to pry loose in the few moments before the cops released him and he ran off into the night.

G: So what do you think of being immortalized in print?

M: Oh I’ve been immortalized already, it’s nothing. I wish I could read but my mind wanders. That’s why I prefer magazines, or Merit Bronze 100s.

G: How many cigarettes do you smoke in a day?

M: What do you mean by ‘day’? Like when the sun is up, or from when I wake up to when I go to sleep? These are hard things to tell. 8? 15? 20? 62? Do half cigs count? A lot I throw away when they go out ‘cause I flick them so hard in my fingers. Look at that one there, [points chin to the pavement in front of him] most people would light that thing right up again, but not me. The smell of wet cigs make me homesick like I’m gonna barf.

G: Did you get to eat your Chalupas? Did the cops take your bag away?

M: Naw man, I didn’t even get my frickin food! I don’t have a car. What are us jerks supposed to do when it’s late and the front part of the Taco Bell is closed?

G: Here’s some water. They told me to give it to you.

M: My shins hurt.

G: Murphee, let’s talk books. What’s the best thing you read recently?

M: Like, this year?

G: Sure.

M: That Natas spread in Thrasher is awesome. It’s from 1986, but it still seems new to me ‘cause I’ve never forgotten it. He’s an artiste. A shredder of the highest order. I read from the stack of MaximumRock'nRolls at the Free Clinic, but that’s just for my own personal amusement. I take a pen and cross out words till their reviews make sense. I laugh and laugh! Pieces of work. S.F. sucks.

[Nearby, a dog breaks its leash free from its owners grip and charges at Murph.]

M: Hey whoa whoa!

[He goes pale and tries to wriggle away. I try to block it with my leg as the owner runs up and yanks it back.]

G: Got it?

M: Jeez. [after a pause] I hate you!

G: What’s wrong with dogs?

M: I hate lack of boundaries! They’re still just animals! [turning to me, wild-eyed] So what else do you want to know? What kind of cars I like to sleep in? ‘Cause the answer is Fleetwood, Roadmaster, Cutlass. In that order.

G: How about that girl?

M: What girl?

G: The one you were with. The one with the shirtwaist dress and zip-up sweatshirt on under her apron?

M: Who? No clue man no clue.

[Murph stares at me, his eyebrows raised expectantly. I realize after a moment he’s working his hands around and around behind him in their shackles – watching for the cop who’ll walk up behind me to come unlock him.]

Best Creepies

Greetings. Welcome to a week of exciting developments, wild possibilities, and new beginnings. The Orange Eats Creeps is out and I couldn’t be happier with the end product. I’ve never seen a cuter book (and I’ve seen some cute books). Hats off to Eric and Eliza for their hard work and dedication to the cause!

This week we’ll be taking a journey through some of the thematic deer trails winding their way through the novel, expanding on some of the music/band motifs therein, raising a few questions, initiating a conversation with the cosmic bass player that resides within us all. Also, an OEC MadLib, and an exclusive interview with one of the Slutty Teenage Hobo Vampire Junkies! Stay tuned.

Be Excited, Be Be Excited

Whenever I hear someone say "be excited" I get a mental-image of the Christopher McDonald infomericals from Requiem for a Dream.

Excitement is definitely building toward the release of Grace Krilanovich's debut novel, The Orange Eats Creeps.

Michael Berger at The Rumpus: "Needless to say I'm looking forward to reading The Orange Eats Creeps."

Blake Butler at HTML Giant: "Really excited for [The Orange Eats Creeps]. I kind of want to marry it for its description alone."

Michael Schaub at Bookslut: "I've had Grace Krilanovich's The Orange Eats Creeps on my to-be-read pile for a while now, but this interview with the young author just moved it to the top."

And Nicole Rudick at Comics Comics Magazine: "The book already sounded intriguing, but one that uses [Mat] Brinkman’s art—I’m sold."

Tobias Carroll at Vol. 1 Brooklyn reviewed the book yesterday: "[Krilanovich's] novel shares a disorienting quality with . . . Brian Evenson's The Open Curtain. And in the end, the most resonant pit-of-your-stomach dread doesn't come from a roadside killer or fangs poised above a neck. Instead, its a much simpler scene, something rooted in mundane indifference that brings this novel to its unexpectedly domestic and achingly painful conclusion."

This is just a friendly reminder that your opportunity to order the book in our August pre-sale for $10 is closing -- sale ends Tuesday, August 31.