David Yow: Collapsed Lung in Brooklyn

Vice has posted that beloved Qui / Jesus Lizard frontman David Yow has been hospitalized with a collapsed lung after a show with Miracle Condition in Brooklyn last night. Cross your fingers that all he’s gonna need is a chest incision, bicycle pump and local anaesthetic to recover. Get well David!

EDIT: (2/4) Word is that Mr. Yow has for the moment recovered and has had to travel home to Los Angeles on a train on doctor’s orders – no cabin pressurization allowed. David is not the only guy in Qui facing a challenge – Guitarist Matt Cronk is under the weather as well with huge medical bills looming. Los Angelinos take note of an event this evening:

**MONDAY NIGHT ( 2/4/08 )BENEFIT FOR MATT**

Ever been rocked off your ass by QUI? Well… Matt’s been in the hospital, and now
sprung, but diagnosed for cardio myopothy, meaning he has an enlarged heart… which is gonna take some time to recover from — especially since his heart’s made of gold.

The medical bills are HARDCORE.
So if you love Matt and his badass band…

COME TO THE CHA CHA LOUNGE on MONDAY NIGHT. Glendale Blvd/Sliverlake.

Paul The Guy will be hosting Matt’s usual Karaoke night, and there wll be special drinks in which
ALL THE PROCEEDS WILL GO TO MATT’S BILLS.

They will also be passing around BUCKETS FOR DONATIONS.

So stuff your pockets and bras with cash, and head on down to the Cha Cha.

HELP MATT KICK HIS MEDICAL BILLS’ ASS,
SO HE CAN RESUME KICKING OUR ASSES ASAP

While the question of where to donate toward David’s recovery remains unanswered, it’s probably best at this point to simply order another round and dedicate it to him.

Zut Alors! Camus, Debord, and Kezdy Get A Metra Pass

So a couple of weeks ago, I heard for the first time the Effigies’ first new record in 400 years, Reside. (It came out in ’07, so I’m late — sue me. Wait, on second thought, please don’t sue me.)

Even though the shimmering tones and arabic modes of original guitarist Earl Lettiq are missed, Bob McNaughton does a fine job. Add to this the rhythmic litigation excellence of the firm of Economou and Zamost and Reside signifies as a pretty remarkable piece of work all the way through. What has me scratching my head is the burial of the album’s best track “Haz-Mat” at the end of the record.

In these lyrics, singer and lyricist John Kezdy brilliantly redevelops Guy Debord and Albert Camus as a synthesized commuter-train passenger persona who regards the billboards, banal mass obsessions and landmarks of the media wasteland as these whip by at ninety miles an hour. Criticism of spectacle isn’t supposed to rock, but Kezdy and company pull it off:

Morning sheets / unfold on the train

Turn from the glass / stare at the page

…

Review of a billboard / a familiar score

no one is sure / they haven’t seen it before

…

Spectactles by day and night / Haz-mat pulsing blood of life

…

Then at night / they fornicate

Camus’ old quote “A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the papers.” might or might not have been an inspiration here, but it hardly matters. The Effigies are now and have always been a band of modern men who shoulder that particular burden with clear eye and steady hand. I’ve admired their work since I first saw them as a pup in 1982 and I appreciate that they didn’t stop at a single sentence — or 7″.

Hello SIRS, So Long Suzanne

While it’s a shame that veteran actress Suzanne Pleshette and SIRS can’t share the planet, look at it this way: finally, another rock band!

SIRS greets the world with a poor attitude, demo recordings and a full international dance card. We’re going to have an excellent reason to have a low audience.

Brother Theodore Doesn’t Understand Music

A disoriented Paul Shaeffer is playfully batted at by Theodore in this (maybe ’88-’89) clip. Includes a pretty good oyster joke.  It must have been humid that day: Theodore’s got a major case of the frizzies.

Dieter Rams: Bitten By Apple?

(Top: 1960s Braun products, designer Dieter Rams.  Bottom: contemporary Apple products, Apple employee Johnathan Ive)

In a case of serial, uh, inspiration, the 1960s work of Dieter Rams, lead designer for German industrial giant Braun bears a more-than-passing resemblance to the current products of a certain Cupertino computer company. Enjoy the comparison of Rams’ designs against the modern iPod, G5, and iMac. Given Steve Jobs’ penchant for expensive German eyewear, perhaps there are bigger surprises than this…

(lifted from That’s Right blog)