Caught in the Carousel

Letter from the Editor - April 2008

By Alex Green

"That was the best thing about little stores. If you were a nobody like me, and didn't know anything, you could go into one of them and find things out. People would talk to you, not because you were going to buy something, but because they loved the stuff they had to sell. The guy in the Billabong Surf Shop, I can assure you, wants to talk about his boards. Even if you want to buy one, right now, he still wants to talk about them, will talk you out into the street, you with the board under your arm, if he is a true child of the high water."
—Dave Hickey
"Unbreak My Heart, An Overture"

They're closing the bookstore down the street. It's a bummer for me because this bookstore was an early and ardent supporter of my work, inviting me, a scrappy unknown poet with a stack of papers under my bed that I kept referring to as my "book," to headline several poetry readings. In fact, it was at one of those readings where, after reading a batch of bad, but energetic poems about the night and California and wandering around the west coast with knife wounds, that the waitress from the restaurant next door gave me her phone number and said, "Seriously, call me, okay?"

So I did call and a few days later I met her at midnight after her shift ended and we walked up and down the street talking about how much we liked vampires and New Zealand pop bands and Discovery Channel documentaries about sharks. It was warm, she was holding my hand and it smelled like deep summer—vaguely aquatic, the air thick and filled with a scent from a flower whose name I still don't know.

But the bookstore: so we were making our tenth pass around the block when we noticed that a light was on in the bookstore. Inside was the manager, a gangly guy from England named Kula who would always chat with me about Chekov or Kafka or The Clash or whatever happened to the actor who played Vivian on The Young Ones. He saw us and waved us in and when we asked him why he was there at two in the morning, he told us that he couldn't sleep and had decided to just come down and catch up on some work. I looked where he was sitting and saw the new issue of Mojo, a six-pack of Dutch beer, a pack of cigarettes and a box of donuts. I decided then that I wanted the kind of job that had that kind of work to catch up on. (I teach college. You decide on that one.)

And so we hung out for a few hours and Kula told us stories about all the times he'd seen The Stone Roses in Manchester and how he had once met Paul Weller in a café in Bristol and it was the happiest I'd been in a long time. To find Kula like that made me feel like I really was part of the night league, that diffuse group of folks who find each other in the darkness and swap stories about the things they like. I'm not talking about going to Outback Steakhouse and talking about the Game—I'm talking about after hours stuff, those moments when you drift into people that are in the process of drifting themselves, so you team up for the night. They're always out there.

I could go on about this, but my point here is that you can walk by Barnes and Noble at two in the morning until you're dizzy and zombied up and all you're going to see are 800 copies of the new Ann Coulter book in the window, her cadaverous face on the cover the kind of ghoulish smuggery that's the exact opposite of what you're looking for. Used bookstores have more than a thousand charms—old editions, that strange familiar smell in between the pages, treasures you never knew about, a grumpy Goth guy working the register—but the most important thing, the thing you never think about it is that you're just glad it's there.

And now it's gone.
The rumor is the Cheescake Factory will be taking over.
I've heard their food takes longer to digest than Bubble Yum.

I remember years ago when Michael Jordan scored 87% of his team's points and that's exactly what's happened to the Carousel this month.

**Our Editor-at-Large, the brilliant and indefatigable David Porter, handles this month's Consummate Top Ten with Irish superstar soul singer Paddy Casey. Mr. Casey was kind enough to give us several Top Ten lists and annotate them with entertaining directions and asides. And David's loving description of Mr. Casey's career and his stirring body of work is alive with sophistication and poetry.

**David got a chance to see the XYZ Affair play live in New York (those photos are CITC exclusives straight from his camera) and then sit down with the young band and get them to fill out our Scouting Report questionnaire.

**We've got album reviews! 12 of them, in fact. Our Massachusetts scribe Christine Fort tackles the new Mountain Goats with erudition and scholarship; Yvonne Prinz, author of the Clare series for young adults (www.stillthereclare.com) takes a look at the new Ann Wilson album and our staff pitches in with reviews of new albums by Colin Stetson, Finest Dearest, and Colin Meloy, to name a few.

**Our good friend Tom DiCillo, the magnificent film director (Delirious, Living In Oblivion, Box of Moonlight) has given CITC one of his songs called "16 Tons." Teaming up with the talented guitarist Will Crewdson (who also co-arranged the track), "16 Tons" is a dark and bluesy number that showcases DiCillo's deep and resonant voice and Crewdson's inventive instrumentation. Traces of Leonard Cohen and Nick Cave here—I've told Tom he should record a full album. I'll keep pushing. (www.tomdicillo.com)

**More exclusives: Our buddy Timothy Monger from Great Lakes Myth Society dropped me a line last week to tell me that he's given CITC two brand new tracks for your illicit downloading pleasure: "She Comes Home To Steal Her Rainbows" and "Brablec Farms"—We love this band and are proud to have them aboard and thank them for thinking of us first. They're on the road now and you should try to see them. (www.myspace.com/greatlakesmythsociety)

**Scouting Report subject and future pop king of the world Julian Pitt, lead singer of pastoral pop wonders Armstrong, has given CITC an exclusive track called "Picture of the Bay" which was taken from the Under Blue Skies sessions. Julian also just informed me that he's been invited by Radio Manchester to come and do a few songs. Visit Julian at: www.myspace.com/armstrongwales

**One last thing about downloads: We've got 25 new ones this month, including songs by Justin Townes Earle, The Waco Brothers, Flat Duo Jets, Health, Barry Adamson, Del The Funky Homosapien, Dizzee Rascal, the Deadstring Brothers and The Gutter Twins. Get on our MP3 page and start downloading!

**And finally, one last thing: Carousel reader Jacob, when he heard Xzibit is going to be in the new "X Files" movie said, "I don't need anyone to pimp my 'X-Files'."

It's the best thing I've heard all month.

Love and Rockets,
Alex Green
Editor, Caught In The Carousel
Alex670@earthlink.net