Wouldn’t you also buy the reissue of an album that you merely like from a band that you love?

I first heard The Jesus and Mary Chain‘s Darklands almost 25 years ago, in September of 1987. I got it on vinyl because it was cheaper than the CD ($6.99 versus $15.99) and I had heard bad things about it. Recorded with a drum machine. Song lengths had ballooned to five-plus minutes.

On the plus side, though, cranky Tim Yohannan of Maximumrocknroll had listed the pre-album EP of “April Skies” in his top 10 for the month. I had to cover all my bases by buying the LP and the EP (the latter had two songs not on the LP, “Kill Surf City” and a cover of Bo Diddley‘s “Who Do You Love”).

Darklands wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I was still disappointed. Psychocandy, the first album, was one of my all-time favorites (and still is). The agonized vocals and harsh feedback articulated the frustration I felt at having moved in the summer and spending my senior year in a new high school.

Darklands was mellow by comparison. No screaming. No guitars screaming, either. There was that damned drum machine, too, giving the songs the feel of demos rather than formal studio recordings. I would argue that a few songs — the title track, “Deep One Perfect Morning” and “On the Wall” — prefigured the hush rock (yes, I’m coining that term) that artists like Still Corners and Lana Del Ray practice now.

Tim was right in that the EP was consistently better. The manic energy of “Kill Surf City” wasn’t hampered with the drum machine and the menacing Bo Diddley cover was creepier than anything on Darklands.

The live show was shit. The Jesus and Mary Chain was set to play two nights at The Ritz (which is now the dreadful Webster Hall). I could only see the second night. I ran into my physics lab partner after he saw the first night. He was the only other guy on campus who wore a Jesus and Mary Chain t-shirt. I asked him how the show was. He shook his head in disgust.

“They had problems with the drum machine and had to start half their songs over,” he said. “On top of that, the guy was drunk off his ass!” That referred to the main singer, Jim Reid.

I got lucky. On the second night they only had to restart two songs. But Jim, and maybe everybody else, was drunk or high. I remember reading that they liked to get majorly fucked up for shows, but that works with manic stuff (Psychocandy) better than trudgy stuff (Darklands).

What the hell was going to happen to this band?

Everything became clear just a few months later in the spring of 1988 with the release of Barbed Wire Kisses, the compilation of B-sides and detritus that spanned the entire lifespan of the band to that point. It helped me see how the band expressed itself by exploding and then cooling off and imploding. I didn’t truly understand, though, until I was writing my second book This Is a Bust after the, ah, “explosive,” Waylaid.

The recent reissue of Darklands develops more of the story by including relevant tracks from Barbed Wire Kisses along with a whole bunch more tracks. I like the album itself more now than before, but there’s still that damned drum machine…

The right “Atmosphere” for Hair Club for Men.

Peter Hook‘s New York City show (and first date of his U.S. tour) was moved from Irving Plaza (1,200 capacity) to the smaller Gramercy Theatre, catching a number of walkups off-guard when the show sold out.

I wasn’t so hot on the t-shirts for sale. They would have been so much cooler if they didn’t say “Joy Division” and “Manchester” at the bottom. Strangely, even though Hooky was going to perform Closer in its entirety at certain stops on the tour, no Closer shirt.

No opening band, either, but the audience was “treated” to video that seemed to be about 35 minutes long. I say “treated” because it didn’t give anything new to the Joy Division fan, particularly the fan who was enthused enough to see one-fourth of the band perform its second album. I definitely didn’t need to see Ian Curtis’ spastic dances with 80s video effects interspersed with unintelligible (due to accent and volume issues) interview segments with Peter Hook. I took a seat in the back to wait it out. Every time there was some quiet, people yelled, “Just play!” I’m sure the entire audience felt that way.

Finally the screen lifted and Peter Hook, with the members of his backing band The Light, took to the stage: Hook’s son Jack Bates (bass), Nat Watson (guitar), Andy Poole (keyboards), and Paul Kehoe (drums). Why two bassists? Well, Peter can’t sing and play at the same time, so he plays the more distinctive bass intros (“Love Will Tear Us Apart,” “Isolation” and “24 Hours,” for example) and then drops out to sing. Too bad, too, because Jack does a well-enough job but isn’t able yet to fill those shoes (or provide simultaneous low- and high-frequency ear-thumping that his dad does).

Not sufficiently enigmatic.

Yes, Hooky still slings the bass low and has a wide-leg stance. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with his body and does an in-place shuffle of an outlaw ready to duel in the Old West.

They kicked off with the instrumental “Incubation,” one of the b-sides to the “Komakino” flexi. It was angry and menacing, a sonic reaction to the news the previous week that New Order was reforming with all original members except for Hook, who wasn’t even asked to rejoin. A slew of interviews originally slated for this tour pried for his reactions to the reformation. I wondered if he would kick of a number saying, “See you in hell, Barney!” but Hooky didn’t address the audience directly until the encore.

In terms of Hooky’s singing, I don’t think he was trying to emulate Ian directly but there is a similarity in their vocal tone, particularly during more anguished passages in songs and most eerily in the whole of “Transmission.”

Some may ask what right the bassist has in presenting himself as the front man in a Joy Division tribute. Actually Hooky has more of a right to sing these songs than guitarist Bernard Sumner. Sumner went on to be the singer of New Order, but it was Hooky who sang backup vocals in Joy Division. A few days after the gig, I can’t imagine anybody else singing.

The first beats of “Isolation” sent scattered parts of the crowd pogoing. “Heart and Soul” also audibly roused people. After the album closer to Closer, the haunting “Decades,” Hook unhooked his bass and walked offstage for The Light to finish out the two minutes instrumental close.

“Ice Age” in the encore was a surprise and came off great but in the middle of the song Jack’s bass strap unhooked and he had to finish on his knees to keep playing. Hooky chastised him for the slipup.

Before “Atmosphere,” Hooky addressed the New Order reformation without him. “I thought I’d have the fucking week from hell,” he said, but thanked crowd for coming as it lifted his spirits.

There was some altercation in the audience during “Atmosphere” and Hooky stopped the band and refused to play until about six people were hustled out.

No other song could close the show and Hooky dedicated “Love Will Tear Us Apart” to Tom Atencio “because you know who your fucking friends are when the going gets tough.” Atencio was New Order’s North America manager for 18 years and was a producer of Joy Division, the documentary directed by Grant Gee.

During the song, Hooky ran off to both extremes of the stage, managing to topple himself halfway through “Love.” He looked like a turtle on his back and Nat Watson had to help him up.

“Don’t you bastards be putting that on YouTube, will ya?” he shouted at the end of the show before walking off.

A minute later Hooky returned to the stage bare-chested and threw his shirt out to the crowd. After it was clear that another encore wasn’t coming, a 50-year old white male leaped onstage and sing “Louie Louie” into the microphone but was swiftly escorted off.

Set List: Incubation, Dead Souls, Auto-Suggestion, From Safety to Where, Atrocity Exhibition, Isolation, Passover, Colony, Means to an End, Heart and Soul, 24 Hours, The Eternal, Decades

Encore: These Days, Ice Age, Atmosphere, Transmission, Love Will Tear Us Apart

I have an essay in Issue #8 about my time as a self-righteous asshole who happened to go to Sunday School.

One thing I’ve been getting into lately is writing short pieces, fiction and non.

When I was just starting out, finding my voice and all, short pieces were all I could do. I think I started writing pieces longer than three or four pages when I joined The Asian American Writers’ Workshop, um, 19 years ago. At the time, The AAWW was more like a writing group — 16 people or so met every week to share writing and give feedback.

I was scared and excited to be in my first real writing group. I worried all the time I wasn’t good enough. Sometimes I would work on something, go to bed thinking it was crap, and then get up again and write because I couldn’t sleep. Some decent stuff came out of it.

I can still stand by those early short pieces that were published in the APA Journal, if I am allowed to slouch slightly.

As time went on, my aesthetics changed and my preferred form grew longer. I wrote shorter essays from time to time, but abandoned short fiction altogether for a decade until the Lunar New Year marathon reading at The AAWW in 2009.

I had been planning to read a section from a book, but I figured that would be sort of weak, since the marathon reading featured new writers and new writing. Couldn’t I come up with something new, too?

I ended up writing “Chinese New Year,” which I actually like a lot, and it was eventually published in the first issue of The Asian American Literary Review. I’ve been writing short fiction since. They come in handy for readings and cool journals, including We’ll Never Have Paris and Animal Farm. (I have pieces in the latest iterations of both.)

Well, I’ll just keep it short for now and end here.

I wore my fringe like Roger McGuinn’s!

Like everyone else I’ve been following the recovery of Edwyn Collins — erstwhile Orange Juice frontman and solo one-world-wide-hit wonder (“A Girl Like You“).

The man suffered two major cerebral hemorrhages in 2005, for a while rendering him in a condition where he could only say four things: “Yes”; “No”; “Grace Maxwell” (his wife); and “The possibilities are endless.” It seemed that the great voice of anti-masculinity was in danger of being silenced.

Collins’ roots are shambolic and twee, yet he has won back his abilities with the tenacity of an ultimate fighter. He has since completed two solo albums, Home Again and Losing Sleep, which was released in the UK in 2010, but wasn’t released in the U.S. until March 22, more than a week after his recent show at the Rock Shop in Brooklyn.

I missed the opening act, solo guitarist/singer James Walbourne, who is in the latest incarnation of The Pretenders and the also bassist for Collins’ band. Walbourne wasn’t listed on the site as an opening act and had I known about it, I would have caught it. I’m enough of a live-music enthusiast that I have to see every act. Oh, I’ve seen some pretty mediocre acts over the years but I’ve also been blown away by seeing amazing live bands I’d never heard of such as Sunny Day Real Estate (opening for Velocity Girl at CBGBs) and The BellRays (opening for The Damned at Irving Plaza).

Second opening act The Kinbeats are a foursome (three brothers and a cousin on drums) who said they left their native Germany to come to the U.K. to look for Edwyn Collins. Guess they found him! But their sound also owes a large debt to the other Orange Juice singer/guitarist, James Kirk, known for writing and singing slower, softer songs. (It’s telling that Kirk’s Orange Juice-era composition “Felicity” was sang by Collins in an upbeat nearly bombastic fashion but Kirk reshaped the song into a mid-tempo, low-key melody on his 2003 solo album You Can Make It If You Boogie.)

Dave Ruffy, despite his name, is rather smooth.

Patrick Ralla, a Kinbeats guitarist, resumed the stage with the rest of Collins’ band on this tour: Tom Edwards on blonde-hair guitar; Walbourne on bass; Dave Ruffy on drums; and Sean Read on sax and keyboards. Ruffy, a punk legend for his time in The Ruts, replaces for this tour Collins’ other punk-legend drummer, Paul Cook.

Collins stepped up to the stage with the assistance of a cane and Grace Maxwell. After he was seated on an unused amplifier beside a music stand holding lyrics sheets, he greeted New York quickly and launched into the title track from the new album, “Losing Sleep.” No longer able to play guitar due to the loss of use of his right arm, Collins didn’t elect for an easy set in the comfort zone. The big hits and favorites were played but he took a huge risk by playing seven out of the new album’s 12 tracks (keep in mind that American audiences weren’t familiar with any of the new album) yet they sat well with his back-catalog and even complemented the hallowed Orange Juice tracks.

Collins expressed minor irritation early on when there was some delay getting the second song started. “Dying Day! C’mon, now!”

It should be noted that while Collins doesn’t have complete facility of his unmistakable baritone voice, he has a great deal of it. His voices sounds as if he has a mild head cold. Mind you, Edwyn Collins with a head cold is still miles above most bands on their best days! As one ponders the mysteries of the brain, one could observe that Collins seems to have difficulty speaking words (such as song titles) that he is able to sing with ease.

I think my favorite part of the show was in “Consolation Prize” right before the guitar break when Collins held anticipation by saying, “Wait!” There were many other highlights. Ralla and Edwards on twin-guitar attack raised a great funk gnash during “Falling and Laughing” (introduced by Collins with “From 30 years ago, imagine that!”). Collins only did one song (“Wheel of Love”) from his excellent first solo album, Hope and Despair, but it is definitely a keeper for the set.

“Don’t Shilly Shally,” his first solo single and one of my favorite songs period, stretched out as Collins rose to his feet and tried to adjust the microphone stand. Thankfully a crew member raised the mike so Collins could sing “A Girl Like You” standing.

Are these the real Collins Kids?

For the encore, Collins called for a harmonica for “Searching for the Truth” in order “to do it justice” and pulled off a crisp solo. Collins’ son William stepped up to sing the chorus in “See It in Your Eyes,” at first expressing reluctance (“Let’s get this done with quick,” he muttered) but more than acquitted himself. In fact, he probably got the loudest applause of the night. A raucous “Blue Boy” closed the night as Collins gave a wave and a smile and thankfully didn’t say goodbye.

Set List: Losing Sleep / Dying Day / What Presence!? / Make Me Feel Again / Consolation Prize / It Dawns on Me / Wheel of Love / Home Again / Humble / What Is My Role? / Rip It Up / Falling and Laughing / Do It Again / Don’t Shilly Shally / A Girl Like You

Encore: Searching for the Truth / See It in Your Eyes / Blue Boy

You can’t have this little book, but you can hear me read it.

Shucks, here’s me reading a new short story, “Dave.” The original was in these little books I made and they are long gone.

But you can totally listen to me read it in character(s)!  Listen now, or download and take me along for your jog! Recorded at White Rabbit, a bar in New York City, in January 2011.

http://www.edlinforpresident.com/downloads/Dave.mp3

#1 Lesson: Never pay cash when you can use credit.

I saw Guided by Voices play on Dec. 30 and Dec. 31 and wanted to blog about it, but a phone call changed all that.

It was from the company that handles my 401(k) retirement account.  A woman informed me that I now qualified for a new level of service — a “premium” level, in fact. She wanted to assign me a personal account executive right away.

Immediately suspicious, I said I had to go and that she should send me information in the mail about the premium services.  I work in financial journalism. I don’t trust anything not in writing, and even then I remain vigilant. The Wall Street Journal regularly publishes round-ups of securities violations among nearly every brokerage. The most common violation seems to be generating extra trading in a client’s account to drum up more commissions — in other words, the brokers were making money by moving it around instead of growing a client’s account.  Those caught pay a fine and “neither admit nor deny” guilt.

Well, when I did receive a pamphlet in the mail, it was as bad as I had thought, and it didn’t even come with any of the extras I would have expected.  (How about a free cup of coffee in the mornings from the branch offices?)

On the first page, I was notified that I was eligible for “complimentary guidance consultations from a Premium Services Account Executive, who’ll take the time to understand your needs and help you make financial decisions you can feel confident about.”

Free financial advice! Great, right?

Wrongo.

The footnote (number two out of a total of 15) told me that, “Although consultations are one on one, guidance provided by [XX]* is educational in nature, is not individualized, and is not intended to serve as the primary or sole basis for your investment or tax-planning decisions.”

In other words, this premium level of service entitles me to one-on-one sessions of high-pressure sales pitches. Why, this so-called account executive doesn’t even care who I am because everybody getting these premium services gets the same pitch. And even though the footnote implies the need for additional financial advice, the entire pamphlet doesn’t suggest that your account executive is deficient in any way.

The pamphlet also notes that your account executive can help you, “Potentially reduce estate and estate-related taxes.” As a premium-services client I can “Learn how you may control the distribution of your wealth with our estate planning basics.”

Yet, astoundingly, that last statement is footnoted as “Tax and estate planning information provided is general in nature, is for informational purposes only, and should not be construed as legal or tax advice. [XX]* does not provide legal or tax advice.” The seller of this rinky-dink fortune-telling miracle fish also has the disclaimer that such fortunes are for informational purposes only.

Again, no mention of free coffee!

As you can imagine, the rest of the pamphlet details all the great things this account executive can do, including investment and tax-planning decisions rife with conflicts of interest!

This annoys me to a great degree. For people flustered with making investment decisions, this free service may seem like a lifeline, but like most things in the world (and especially in the world of finance), when someone seems to be throwing you a line, they are really trying to feed you one.

In fifth grade I had a teacher who had a few rental properties but his tenants were incompetent and often filled out their rent checks incorrectly, rendering them uncashable. As a favor to our future landlords, he made us spend a week or two writing out checks and spelling out legibly the dollar and cent amounts. That was the full extent of personal finance that I learned in public school. College, too.

Personal finance is something that one has to pursue on one’s own. You don’t learn it in law school or medical school. Which is why a lot of smart lawyers and doctors get scammed by these account executives who are busy making trades in their accounts. One does break a sweat every now and then from buying and selling. If the lawyer or doctor asks about something, the account executive has some language ready to basically ask them, “What are you, stupid?” That usually ends it because lawyers and doctors certainly don’t fancy themselves as stupid, and the account executive goes back to making trades.

Of course, you don’t need to be a lawyer or a doctor to be scammed. Shoot, I’m a writer and a journalist. I don’t have a whole lot of money in my 401(k), but after working and contributing for 18 years, I now qualify for premium services.

But not free coffee. (Why do I keep asking? I want some freaking free coffee, and I’m willing to tune out a short sales pitch for a good cup!)

Learning how to manage your personal finances is, well, a personal matter. Only you can determine how much risk you’re comfortable with. Only you know what causes you care about (investments in “vices” such as alcohol, or China, or companies that oppose same-sex marriage, for example). Only you know what fee structures you want to pay.

You may say, “Hey, Ed Lin! I’m busy as hell, and I don’t want to deal with money stuff! I want to leave it to the pros!”

A lot of other people felt that same way when they had Bernie Madoff ** manage their assets.

We have arrived at a time and place when an individual can read and become very savvy. One is capable of trading options and other derivatives easily.

Yet for many people — including very smart people — the world of finance remains murky and seems best left unexplored.

If this is you, you may get a phone call soon — from your new account executive offering free premium services.

How can you counter this? There are a number of fine publications, including Barrons.com,*** that you may choose to read on a regular basis. The Wall Street Journal Guide to Understanding Money and Investing is an excellent place to start and you can buy it for 1 cent plus shipping and handling. Understanding Wall Street by Jeffrey Little is also great for starters. I’m sure others have their own favorites.

But this is not a sales pitch, and I am not your account executive.

*Overlay your 401(k) administrator here.

**It is true that it is unfair to paint all asset managers with the Madoff brush. Yes, some people do want help from an objective personal-finance adviser. If this is you, then you need to go to a “fee-only” adviser. These advisers derive their fees from a percentage of your assets. They are motivated to make your assets grow because it means more commission for them. Avoid “fee-based” advisers — on top of getting a percentage of your assets, they also are paid by fund companies when they steer your money into their funds. If you don’t understand everything, and your adviser can’t or won’t explain fully, get another adviser.

*** I work at Barrons.com, which is owned by News Corp., a company that also owns The Wall Street Journal.

Amberly Young is so awesome! (Did you draw a heart because you love me?)

Santa Cruz is a beautiful place and University of California, Santa Cruz, has the best-looking campus I’ve ever seen.  It seems hidden within a forest of giant redwoods.  A guy who took me around campus told me that new students often become lost on the trails that connect the campuses.

I was intrigued by the Mima Mounds — Kyle, you rock for bringing me on the long and perilous hike (we had to climb a barbed-wire fence) to them.

Why was I there?  Well, the incredible Karen Tei Yamashita (recently robbed of the National Book Award for I-Hotel) brought me out there!  Things got off to a bang right away when Karen and her husband Ronaldo picked me up at the San Jose airport (Santa Cruz doesn’t have a commercial airport, though that doesn’t stop people from getting high) and we went straight to awesome Sesshu Foster‘s class, “Introduction to Reading Fiction” (or something like that).

Now, I was fresh off of nearly seven hours of airport/airplane bullshit (NYC -> LA -> SJO).  I didn’t know what the hell I was going to say, but I was going to be as enthusiastic as possible! Helpfully, Sesshu had compiled questions from his 200+ students and I answered them in a funny and frivolous 35-minute lightning round.  I finished by reading “Chinese New Year,” a short story about a lunar new year party in the 80s that I first read at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop for a marathon reading in January 2009.

That night I got to see for the second time the magical spectacle that is Karen Tei Yamashita reading I-Hotel in front of an auditorium crowd.  After they took me to my hotel, right next to the shore, I was too jazzed to sleep.  I walked down the lonely streets until I got to a CVS, bought some dental floss, protein bars and vitamin C drops.  Hey, you never know.

The next morning, I went to Karen’s class, an Asian American history class, I think.  I read “Chinese New Year” again, because you can never get too much of a good thing and also answered questions about This Is a Bust, which the students had read (um, were assigned to read) a few weeks earlier.  One of the TAs mentioned that a student had said the ending was a bit too neat.

In mock furor, I looked over the class.  “Who the fuck said that!” I demanded to know.  One guy jokingly raised his hand.  He’s my favorite guy ever.

Then we had lunch at the Santa Cruz indie version of Au Bon Pain.  It was pretty good and the sun totally baked us.  I met some interesting people from Brazil and got to talk to some grad students, one of whom was working on a thing about hapa authors.  Great!

One can be eaten while trying to find banana slugs!

Then I went to Karen’s creative writing class and had sort of an out-of-the-body experience as a group of six students read passages from Waylaid and then added their own writing written as if an outtake from the book.  One dude, playing the Vincent role to the hilt, showed up bare-chested and dressed only in shorts and flip-flops.  While speaking to them, I was amazed to find that no one was from Jersey.  What?  I answered a bunch of questions — as honestly as possible.  I told them all to set up 401(k) accounts.  To understand what money is.  If there is not a whole lot of money coming in, they’ll be well prepared.  If there is a whole lot of money coming in, they’ll be prepared.  D’oh!  I forgot to tell them to read 78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published and 14 Reasons Why It Just Might.  I recommend it to anyone who asks who wants a frank assessment of the biz.

My ego is too big to fit on this screen, so they put my bio up instead.

After that there was a window of a few hours and Kyle was cool enough to take me to the Mima Mounds.  We had walked so far we had to take a campus bus back to make it to my main event in time: The Living Writer Series reading.  I read from all three of my books and, of course, “Chinese New Year” to kick it all off.  An hour and a half whizzed by!  And Amberly Young presented me with her amazing fan art.  I broke with the terms of my probation and hugged her.

Later, Karen took me and a group to Santa Cruz’s best (only?) Chinese restaurant.  Forgot the name, but it was awesome hearing ghost stories from the crew and also meeting Vicki Nam, editor of the supa fly dope Yell-Oh Girls anthology.

They took me back to the hotel later that night.  I had to get up early to catch the 6 am Greyhound to San Francisco for an incredible adventure.  But too many people blog about San Francisco, already.  You don’t need to hear my story.

And Stuart said, “Let there be light.”  And there was light.

I can’t remember for certain the last time I’ve been to a show that I knew every song performed, apart from the artist’s yet-to-be-released album.  Maybe Grant Hart?  And now I was seeing Belle & Sebastian, a band whose songs I really love.  I know the words, man!

Along with punk and metal, I do enjoy a lot of twee.  Hell, I love the stuff Orange Juice did for Postcard (collected on Ostrich Churchyard and The Heather’s on Fire) along with the Pastels, the Vaselines and Camera Obscura.

But, man, B&S songs have worked their way in deep into me. I think they would show up in my hair roots.  Hell, I’ll stop slobbering over the band and just review the show from this point on.

Remember that big monsoon that was going to drown New York City with a foot of rain and 60-mile-per-hour wind?  It was supposed to happen Thursday, Sept. 30 — the same night that Belle & Sebastian were going to play the outdoor stage at the Williamsburg Waterfront.

Suffice to say it didn’t happen.  In fact after that afternoon not a drop of rain fell until the next morning.  The wind had kicked up some, but not enough to take off a slightly muggy feel the the evening.

The members came out under the cover of pulsing blue light and kicked into “I Didn’t See it Coming,” the first song on the new album, Write About Love, set for Oct. 12 release. “Oh, what a great job,” singer Stuart Murdoch sighed at the end.  His witty remarks — never as deadly dragged out as Robyn Hitchcock — are entertaining segues  of the show.  They need them because Bobby Kildea, Mick Cooke and Stevie Jackson switch around from guitar, bass and trumpet.  At another point, Murdoch pointed out the hugeness of the stage, noting that it “looks like the set of a sitcom.”  About the supposed monsoon, he quipped “We have good luck with weather.  We have God on our side.”  Then he immediately withdrew the comment.  “I should never have said that,” he said sheepishly.  “I’m tempting fate.”

Stevie Jackson took lead vocals for “I’m Not Living in the Real World” but not before instructing the crowd how to “Woo ooh ooh ooh” for the chorus.  It’s a fine song that fits in with the 60s-feel typical of a Stevie Jackson song.

“I Want the World to Stop,” another new song, fit in well with the wide-ranging set list.  After it, Murdoch threw out some signed toy footballs for the kids in the audience.  “It gets a bit boring when you’re a kid,” he said about 12-and-unders being dragged to the show by parents who are fans.  “Even if the kid doesn’t get it, give it to the kid,” he admonished grown-up souvenir-seekers.

And Stuart said, “Let there be strings.”  And there were strings.

Murdoch also took a stand for Obama and said the U.K. would take him if we didn’t like him because he’s “great.”  “Anyway, I’m preaching to the converted,” he said in response to the applause and introduced “Sookie in the Graveyward” as “a song about an apolitical hussy.”

Belle & Sebastian even had the guts to pull out a B-side to the Jonathan David single, “The Loneliness of a Middle Distance Runner,” which of course is collected in the Push Barman to Open Old Wounds compilation album.

Murdoch brought up several audience members to clap along to “There’s Too Much Love” and “The Boy With the Arab Strap.”  He bestowed medals on the clappers but ran out, so the tall lanky guy got only a hug and a promise that one would be mailed to him.

There really is too much love. And haze.

Murdoch screwed up the acoustic guitar intro to “Judy and the Dream of Horses,” and gave a grimacing look to an amused Jackson.

For the encore, Murdoch introduced each member as they began playing “Me and the Major.”  Apart from Kildea, Jackson and Cooke, there were big cheers for drummer Richard Colburn, violinist and vocalist Sarah Martin, keyboardist and Powerbookist Chris Geddes and celloist Sarah Wilson (a new official member?).

For the end of the show, Murdoch encouraged the audience to help sing “Get Me Away From Here I’m Dying,” because “I usually mess up the words pretty bad.”  Just one encore but there were no grumbles in the crowd as the show tipped near the two-hour mark.  There was nothing else Belle & Sebastian could have possibly done to make it a better show.

Set list: I Didn’t See It Coming/I’m a Cuckoo/Step Into My Office, Baby/Like Dylan in the Movies/I’m Not Living in the Real World/Piazza, New York Catcher/I Want the World to Stop/Lord Anthony/Sookie in the Graveyard/We Rule the School/Another Sunny Day/The Loneliness of a Middle Distance Runner/Write About Love/There’s Too Much Love/The Boy With the Arab Strap/If You Find Yourself Caught in Love/Judy and the Dream of Horses/Sleep the Clock Around

Encore: Me and the Major/Get Me Away From Here I’m Dying

He was silent all through “Charlie’s Angels,” but Crispin has a lot to say in person.

I recently saw Crispin Hellion Glover at the IFC Center in Manhattan.  He was in town promoting his films “What is it?” and “It Is Fine, EVERYTHING IS FINE” with readings from eight (!) of his books in something called a “Big Slide Show,” which preceded whatever film was being shown that night. I went both nights to see both films.

Glover’s books are essentially antique texts reformed into new work with added writing and pictures, creating an often amusing and unsettling effect.  During the slideshow, Glover reads through slides of pages of the book, dramatizing the words and interacting with graphics.

Then there are the films.  A lot has been said about them and I really can’t add anything more, apart from how they made me feel.  They both pushed me into unfamiliar territory and I felt uncomfortable, which is sort of thrilling for me, since I’m incredibly jaded about many things (yes, Asians love jade).

After each film, Glover launched into an exhaustive 70 minutes-plus Q&A/talkback.  One question could launch a 15-20 minute reply.  Glover was well aware of how much he was talking, saying that he’d read online about how people felt that he “rambled” during the Q&As; yet, by doing so, he was answering a lot of other unasked questions.  True enough, as the night went on, there was a sense that all potential queries were addressed.

One of the most important things I had to hear was that when he was younger (playing the father-in-the-past in “Back to the Future”), Glover said that he would turn down work because the characters and the stories wouldn’t fit the psychology that reflected his interests.  Later, though, he realized that he could take roles that would help his acting career, make more money and pour it into films that he really wanted to make, hence “What is it?” and “It Is Fine, EVERYTHING IS FINE.”  Those movies were basically funded with the role he took in the Charlie’s Angels films.  Once he was in that mindset, he discovered he could actually have fun acting in movies he didn’t necessarily find fulfilling to his personal artistic sense.

On the second night, I picked up the three books offered for sale (Oak-Mot, Rat Catching and Concrete Inspection) not so much because I enjoyed his slideshow presentation of the books, but really as souvenirs for one (two?) of the most strange, compelling and generous live performances I’ve ever seen.  Also, Glover is still recouping for the films with the shows.  He says he can tour at a more leisurely pace now, with the success of Alice in Wonderland.  These tours take a lot out of him.  It’s easy to see why.  He did the equivalent of two solo shows each night.

I salute you heavily, Crispin Hellion Glover, as a man who approaches his art whole-heartedly!