I've always surrounded myself with music, beginning with my parents' vinyl collection. Spilling from their tattered jackets, these albums kicked off my life soundtrack, prefiguring my omnipresent iPod and my NYC record-store route. This same LP-love forms the soul of Telegraph Avenue, Michael Chabon's hot-blooded and utterly human novel, which drops today.

In the Bay Area sweet spot bordering Berkeley and Oakland, Chabon gives dap to card-collecting culture, comic books, and kung fu. But it's music that reigns supreme, underlining Chabon's prose, so I've devised a playlist inspired by Telegraph Avenue's tracks and my own personal experience in reading it. Tune in:

Jimmy Smith “Root Down (And Get It)” (Root Down Live, Verve Records, 1972)

"Good heart is eighty-five percent of everything in life." —Cochise Jones

At Telegraph Avenue's core is Brokeland Records, co-owned by childhood friends Archy (cool-headed brother) and Nat (kvetching hothead). Their spouses Gwen (very pregnant, very independent) and Aviva are the Berkeley Birth Partners, midwifing for a mostly white, well-to-do clientele. All good, right?

Miles Davis “Thinkin' One Thing and Doin' Another” (On the Corner, Columbia, 1972)

"I am building a monastery, if you like, for the practice of vinyl kung fu. And I am asking you to come be my abbot." —Gibson Goode

Then the stylus skips. Archy's got a fuckup or two in him yet, like unacknowledged teen son Titus reentering the picture and drawing the infatuation of Nat and Aviva's film-freak son, Julius (call him “Julie”). Add Archy's dad Luther and Jet-espoused entrepreneur Gibson Goode, whose planned Dogpile Megastore (think Tower Records on soul-jazz steroids) spells Brokeland's demise, and shit gets real.

Carole King “It's Too Late” (Tapestry, Ode Records, 1971)

"Swear. On the soul of your mother, who raised you to be a better man than that." —Gwen Shanks

Like in his pulpy whirlwind The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Chabon's multisensory prose plunges us into the souls of his players. Heady aromas from an Ethiopian restaurant mingle with the intoxication of a man's infidelity. Lingos befitting hotrods and honeys blend in degrees that would make Quentin Tarantino blush. Chabon knows when to pare it down, too, turning an affectionate gesture between teenaged boys into something deeper: "They hooked hands at the thumbs and bumped chests. Titus wrapped an arm around Julie. Julie felt protected in the lingering embrace, though he knew that when Titus let go of him, he was going to feel nothing but abandoned."

The Winstons “Amen, Brother” (Color Him Father, Metromedia, 1969)

"Do what you got to do, and stay fly." —Valletta Moore

Soul, in at least two senses of the word, figures into the book's most scene-stealing, goosebump-inducing cameo. While Archy pinch-hits on bass at a fundraiser, a certain former Senator from Illinois approaches Gwen, reflecting: “The lucky ones are the people like your husband there. The ones who find work that means something to them. That they can really put their heart into, however foolish it might look to other people.”

DJ Shadow “Midnight in a Perfect World” (Endtroducing....., Mo' Wax, 1996)
Crate-digging memories and dreams in my own Brokeland. [—author]

HarperCollins unveils Telegraph Avenue today with an enhanced e-book edition, featuring Chabon's own playlist, audio clips narrated by Treme'sClarke Peters (I internalized his voice while reading Archy's part), and more. Plus, for you lucky locals: Oakland's Diesel Books has become a “Brokeland Records” pop-up store through September 14, replete with requisite jazz LPs for sale. Time for that overdue trip out West.

Image: DJ Shadow Endtroducing..... via Discogs

Everybody loves a good infographic. Need to summarize a complex set of statistics (like, say, alternate band names for Pussy Riot)? Try a pie chart. When scientists have trouble understanding data, they use 3-D imaging to map the invisible patterns of airplane turbulence or visualize how a woman’s hair might rumple if she uses X Brand of shampoo, as illustrated inDiscovery Magazine.

But how do you portray invisible occurrences that are not data-driven? What are my options if I want to visualize the emotional ups and downs of my new favorite song, or understand the subjective history of a public space? Can I get an infographic of some feelings over here?

Here are five artists who are making the invisible easier for us to see.

Music: Andrew Kuo

Andrew Kuo makes infographics based on unreliable information. His minimal, brightly colored graphs chart the unchartable, with a particular focus on music: he might rank the emotions of Kanye West’s “Robo Cop” in comparison to other "great" break-up songs, or plot his reaction to a new 9-minute Joanna Newsom single. If music really is just another kind of math, I want Kuo to be my trigonometry teacher. 

Motion: STREB
Choreographer Elizabeth Streb approaches dance like a scientific experiment. In performance and at her Williamsburg "lab," STREB dancers test the invisible laws of motion by throwing their bodies against them. Like, literally. Want to know what gravity looks like? Watch the dancers fly off scaffolding and land hard on their bellies, or balance impossibly on giant spinning hamster wheels. Seeking a spectacle that demonstrates the principle of inertia? Streb's got you covered: dancers run into walls at full speed, duet with lethal projectiles like steel beams, and generally stomp all over the limits of time, space, and muscle.

Cities: Rebecca Solnit
With 13 books under her belt, nonfiction writer Rebecca Solnit has made a career out of exposing subtle truths. (Full disclosure: I once worked for her.) Her 2010 book, Infinite City, visualizes the layered history of San Francisco through maps of seemingly unrelated sites: "Monarchs and Queens" overlays the natural history of the monarch butterfly with queer civil rights history. The result is an atlas of previously unseen connections, a shifting paper record of a living city. A New Orleans version, Unfathomable City, is due out in 2013.

Institutions: Anna Schuleit

There’s the invisible, and then there’s theinvisible — the people pushed beneath the narrative because, as Ralph Ellison’sInvisible Man put it, we refuse to see them. When the Massachusetts Mental Health Center closed in 2003 after 90 years of operation, artist Anna Schuleit was commissioned to create a work memorializing the building. Her stunning installation, BLOOM, filled the decommissioned mental institution with 28,000 living flowers paying tribute to the lives that passed through the space.

Media: Teju Cole’s Twitter feed
There’s invisible, there’s invisible, and then there’s dead. Novelist Teju Cole, author of Open City, tweets about the news — specifically, newspaper notices of death and crime from 1912 New York. He calls the project “Small Fates." Taken as a whole, Cole's timeline is a chorus of funny/sad ghosts. These are the long-forgotten voices of regular folk — criminals, victims, and reporters — a quotidian citizenry of the city, distilled into poetry.

Did I miss any? By all means list your favorite visible/invisible artworks in the comments. Granted, the question of whether what we see is truly "real" is always open to dorm-room-stoner interpretation. But I'm thinking that art has science beat on this one.
 

Images: BOMB Magazine, Andrew Kuo, Anna Schuleit

Of course we all have to acknowledge how incredibly sad it is that the beloved brainchild of the brain, Jonah Lehrer, has gone down. Not only has he packed up his New Yorker blog, but his publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, has pulled his top-selling book, Imagine: How Creativity Works. All because he self-plagiarized and made up some Bob Dylan quotes.

First, can we acknowledge, in addition to the incredible sadness, how morbidly funny this situation is? I mean, really. Imagine? How Creativity Works? Well, it works by making stuff up. Plus, creativity helps to take original ideas out of context or combine disparate ideas that had nothing to do with one another. That’s fucking imagination. Second, can we imagine, just for a moment, the lengths to which Lehrer’s own personal imagination must have gone in order to even desire pulling off such a ridiculous (and probably unnecessary) deception?

I don’t have a degree in neuroscience, so I can’t begin to explain whatever logical or evolutionary brain systems were responsible for Lehrer’s many missteps. But I do have a healthy imagination, so I’d like to propose a few made-up justifications for Lehrer’s choices. (For a rundown of those choices, check out this article in Tablet.)

Reason #1

He’s actually into psychology and wants neuroscience, as a hip intellectual phenomenon, to fail

In the raging battle fought between sciences for popularity—a vicious, cutthroat, and often violent battle—accuracy and peer-reviewed precision are daggers the scientists use to kill each other’s dreams of maybe being read one day. For Lehrer to so blatantly flout the basic tenets of science changes the conversation from science to feelings. Shame, doubt, disappointment...the interest now is not how fun our brains are but how messed up and totally incomprehensible they are.

Reason #2:

He believed himself to be beyond reproach

In other words, he’s got gigantic, delusional balls. Of the gazillion people who are huge fans of Bob Dylan, approximately half have devoted their lives to studying and memorizing everything the man has ever said. How could Lehrer think no one would notice discrepancies? Also, and this is just a hunch, as I haven’t had the chance to read Imagine, but were the fabricated quotes even necessary to prove his arguments? I sincerely doubt the neuroscience of creativity lives or dies based on the lyrics to "Like a Rolling Stone." I'd also like to thank the New York Times for pointing out that Dylan himself likes to keep his facts slippery. Which either means A) Lehrer's mirroring Dylan but just didn't know how to explain the joke to the rest of us, or B) see "delusional balls."

Reason #3:

He secretly hates Bob Dylan

...and is ragingly jealous that, even with his mind-blowingly hot career, he will still never be as cool as Dylan. Let’s say little Lehrer is at the kitchen table working studiously on some homework while mom has Blonde on Blonde playing in the background. Lehrer tries to show her how his genius kid mind just did something awesome but she’s a little busy singing along to “Absolutely Sweet Marie.” Lehrer launches further into his studies in hopes of one day gaining recognition and becomes super famous neuroscience man, not only succeeding academically but making neuroscience fucking hip. But who will always be hipper than neuroscientists? Rock stars. And as much as Lehrer has utilized science to show us some awesome and true things about humanity, Dylan kinda also already showed us a shit-ton of awesome and true things about humanity. And Dylan didn’t need a degree or science or anything else to do it.

I do think there's an opportunity here for us to acknowledge the fallibility of human beings and get all warm and fuzzy about how all of us fuck up all the time. But what I'd prefer to take away from the whole affair is this: artists are better than scientists, both ethically and as conduits of truth. Bob Dylan uses storytelling and fabrication in order to reach certain truths that never relied on the facts of the matter, but which ring true in people's hearts anyway. Lehrer's entire body of work relies on facts building on top of one another to establish a particular reassurance of truth. Artists work at bringing about new truths from what never existed before. Scientists have a different kind of task, one that must reveal the truth of that which already exists.

The great tragedy, I think (among the many small tragedies here), is that Lehrer could've probably come up with much better untrue things to say.

image: bobdylan.com

I'm on self-imposed True Blood exile. Return readers might already know that I much prefer this vampire world. But the Deep South bloodsuckers just threw me a major hook: Iggy Pop and Best Coast's Bethany Cosentino teamed up for a song to be featured on True Blood's July 8 episode.

Punk's gnarliest godfather crooning it out with a tattooed surfer chick nearly four decades his junior? Music to my ears. Cosentino banishes much of her freshman haze for bluesy lyricism on Best Coast's latest album, The Only Place, while ol' Iggy balances his Stooges standards with French jazz (Préliminaires). His softer side and her robust vox could equal an awesome jam. I'm tuning in.

Historical evidence supports such cross-generational crossovers. Consider Loretta Lynn's award-winning comeback Van Lear Rose, produced and co-written by Jack White. Taking it back further: Nat King Cole's “Unforgettable,” remixed as an imagined—destined, really—duet with daughter Natalie, which won multiple Grammies.

But thoughtful musical match-ups need not rely on interactive technology or sexy vampires. Here's several I think would rock out:

Marilyn Manson and Zola Jesus

Anybody remember 1997's Spawn soundtrack, a well-intended if obtuse blend of popular rockers and trendy electronica? Its sole single found the goth demigod dominating trip-hoppers Sneaker Pimps. Pair Manson with pint-sized Zola, though, and she'll unleash the operatic angels of heaven, hell, wherever onto the Antichrist Superstar's pallid ass.

Björk and tUnE-yArDs' Merrill Garbus

Uh, obvs? Even if we overlook the vocal elasticities of these two, consider Björk's instrumental minimalism on Vespertine and Medúlla, plus Volta's added horn flava. Pair with Garbus' looped percussion and Whokill's sax riffs, and we just made some serious “Bizness” up in here.

D'Angelo and Frank Ocean

The swaggering Soulquarian D'Angelo ends his sabbatical with a long GQ interview—his first since 2000—a Bonnaroo SuperJam with ?uestlove, and more to come. Meanwhile, R&B wunderkind Frank Ocean readies his major-label debut Channel Orange, more a soul-music tutorial than typical pop drivel. If D'Angelo channelled quiet-stormer Smokey Robinson on “Cruisin',” then young Ocean, who has written for John Legend and Beyoncé, is more than ready to make his own neo-soul waves.

Lou Reed and Lana del Rey

Within Reed's lauded back catalogue, I particularly dig his circa-Velvet Underground rasp against Nico's torchy croon. Enter del Rey, the “self-styled gangsta Nancy Sinatra” (quotes The Guardian), woozy balm to Reed's yowl. For the del Rey naysayers: consider Madeline Follin, the hippie-chic songbird of NYC noise-poppers Cults. Follin's self-lacerating delivery more than matches Reed's solo work. She could do wonders covering The Bells.

Massive Attack and Jessie Ware

The trip-hop progenitors bear a nonpareil CV of guest vocalists for their somber soundscapes, including Shara Nelson (“Unfinished Sympathy”), Tracey Thorn (“Protection”), Elizabeth Fraser (“Teardrop”), and Sinéad O'Connor (“Special Cases”). I recommend adding English singer-songwriter phenom Jessie Ware to that lineup. Her sometimes-slinking, sometimes-searing delivery echoes Martina Topley-Bird (precocious veteran of the Bristol scene, singing with Tricky when she was still a teen). I've got my ears attuned to August 20, when Ware's debut Devotion drops.

Images: Iggy Pop + Best Coast: Pitchfork (slightly photo-chopped by author); Jack White and Loretta Lynn: Buzznet; Marilyn Manson:Devangelical + Zola Jesus: Facebook; Björk: Rubyfruit Radio + tUne-yArDs:The Oedipus Project; D'Angelo: GQ + Frank Ocean: Consequence of Sound; Lana del Rey: Berlin Hair Baby + Lou Reed: ROKPOOL + Madeline Follin: Impose Magazine; Massive Attack: Greenobles + Jessie Ware:Pitchfork

On my recent trip to Tokyo, I saw three indie bands with slightly funny-sounding names over three consecutive nights. J-Pop megagroups likeAKB48 (and their “warring” sister factions SKE48 and badass Kansai-basedNMB48) may blanket airwaves and adverts, but the indie scene is a-boomin'. I learn something new each time I attend a Tokyo indie-rock show. Considering these three were back-to-back, I learned a lot. Here's some of that!

* Who the Bitch: everyone gets to mosh, if you want to! Two riot-grrrls and a dude resembling an extra from Nagasaki jet-rockers Guitar Wolf playing punchy pop-punk. The crowd had been circle-pitting nonstop when the band launched into riff-heavy 「ベクトル」 (uh: “Vector”?), guitarist Ehi crooning “come back to me in my bed” (in English!). Want some of the action? The big crowd-control dude moshing along will see to it you get your moment of stage-diving fame. Don't want to? Cross your arms NYC-style, and even the wildest kids will politely avoid crashing into you.

* 住所不定無職: ease back on taking photos and just have fun! These vintage clothing-coordinated indie-pop girls met at the unemployment office, hence the translation of their name: “no job nor fixed address”. I was up front and right-of-center to photograph cutie Yoko, co-vocalist and player of a glittering double-neck bass/guitar—but I held off. I alluded in my previous Tokyo indie-rock post that photography is generally verboten. How refreshing to just experience their upbeat, singalong anthems without studying an iPhone screen!

(speaking of Guitar Wolf: they headlined this show, and I've never seen so many white people at a Tokyo indie show before. Guess how many were taking photos!)

* Plastic Girl in Closet: Japanese shoegaze rules! J-Pop may rule, but the Japanese do some mighty fine—and ferociously loud—shoegaze. The adorable four-piece Plastic Girl in Closet celebrated their third LP ekubo(“dimple”, a nod to their twee-ness) with their first-ever “one-man show”, ripping through their back catalogue for nearly two hours of sonic bliss. That the long-delayed My Bloody Valentine reissues coincided with this show felt particularly auspicious. For beyond the guitar squalls and ethereal vox, it was Ayako's muscular basslines that really shined, up there with MBV's Debbie Googe.

* reserving tickets: perhaps it's thanks to these bands' indie-ness, but each offers to reserve advance tickets, so long as you email them. You still have to pay, but at least you've secured a spot in one of Tokyo's “cozy” 100-person capacity live-houses.

Image collage: (clockwise from top) courtesy 住所不定無職, Plastic Girl in Closet, Who the Bitch

If you, like me, grew up in the '90s, you're probably familiar with the dilemma of blocking out parts of that decade whilst embracing others. For every instance of President Clinton ripping into a sax solo on The Arsenio Hall Show, there is smooth-jazz circular breather Kenny G butchering the damn instrument. Another case in point: the Awl's profile on Dustin Mikulski, known to the world as the Dancing Baby from Ally McBeal. The fact that this man, once a cha-cha-ing child whose birth coincided with that of viral video, can still draw a crowd, proves our enduring love/hate relationship with that schizophrenic decade.

Whatever. Dancing Baby can oogachaka his animated ass outta here. It's one facet of the '90s I wish would disappear, like JNCOs and Beanie Babies. Now '90s music...that's a complicated one, encompassing both Kurt Cobain's suicide and 2Pac's murder. Then again, with 'Pac's hologram sharing the stage with Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre at Coachella, the '90s have never felt so close. Below are a few songs that, to me, define the decade and its transitions between Kurt and that demonic dancing baby—but I'll be damned if I include Aqua.

1994: Nirvana, “Drain You” (live on French TV). Recorded just two months prior to Cobain's suicide, and his chill-eliciting scream still hits me hard. I was just a kid but Nirvana meant the world.

Late 1994: The Prodigy, “Voodoo People.” Charred breakbeats collide with a sampled punk guitar riff. If America could only predict dance music's ubiquity in the following years: just look at the damn commercials, like Mr. Oizo's "Flat Beat" advertising Levi's or that Mitsubishi honey popping to Dirty Vegas' "Days Go By."

Late 1994: Lush, “Hypocrite.” I fell I love with a girl, and she was the Kool-Aid-coiffed frontwoman for Lush, Miki Berenyi. They and (London) Suede were sharp answers to the Britpop.

1995: Massive Attack, “Karmacoma.” The Bristol sound: suffocating sonics and sinister soul. Plus, Tricky (who released his superlative debutMaxinquaye that same year) shares the mic.

Late 1995: 2Pac, “California Love” (feat. Dr. Dre). Pac's comeback track was a sunny exhale of West Coast love, but it was shadowed by his untimely death less than a year later.

1996: Smashing Pumpkins, “1979.” Emo wasn't a widespread term in Texas back in '96, but this guitar-glistening anthem provided the emotional background music to my formative days.

1997: Roni Size/Reprazent, “Brown Paper Bag.” So technically this live clip is not from '97, but this Bristol-based drum-n-bass ensemble won the 1997Mercury Music Prize for their jazz-inflected tracks (beating out Radiohead'sOK Computer and Spice Girls' Spice, just to keep the whole thing in perspective). All you dubstep heads: this is how you bring the bass.

1998: Usher, “Nice & Slow.” Check it: 1998 is the year Dancing Baby debuted on Ally McBeal. It's also the year R&B phenom Usher dropped this breathy single. Just think what this track meant for a sensitive young high-schooler with a learner's permit. As Usher croons: "now here we are, drivin' 'round town. Contemplating where I'm gonna lay you down." Poetry, man. Grunge felt a decade away.

Long live the '90s, I say!

Image: Memesgroupproject (Dancing Baby) and Wikipedia (Tupac Shakur), slightly photo-chopped by the author

Few record stores match a serious selection of wax with proper in-store performances—and that addictive indie spirit—like London's Rough Trade East. Now BrooklynVegan announces that Rough Trade is coming to Williamsburg this autumn. To a live-music lover and vinyl junkie, this just sounds sweet.

There is little to go on beyond Rough Trade's press release, which uses the term “saturnalia” (noun: unrestrained revelry; orgy) in the second sentence. Oh yeah, and the somewhat divisive news that they've partnered with Bowery Presents for live shows. Look: I whine about Bowery Presents ticket prices less now after acclimatizing to the expense of seeing live music in Tokyo. If it's dope, I'll pay.

In the spirit of April's "What If?" theme at Black Balloon, I've come up with a wishlist for Rough Trade NYC's first in-store shows, cherry-picked from the legendary Rough Trade label.

 

 

The Strokes. A no-brainer. These rakish lads—erm, Yanks—still personify New York cool. Performing: Is This It, start-to-finish without pausing. Julian will be howling “Take It or Leave It” and we'll beg for more. But that's it.

Chris & Cosey. aka Chris Carter and Cosey Fanni Tutti, or Carter Tutti—one half of industrial pioneers Throbbing Gristle and among the most seductively sinister soundscape duos today. Performing: '85 darkwave classic Technø Primitiv.

Super Furry Animals. Golden-voxed Gruff Rhys and his Cardiff mates released two slabs of psychedelia on Rough Trade (2007's Hey Venus! and 2009's Dark Days/Light Years) plus Rhys' eclectic Candylion. Performing: A selection from their back catalogue (including wobbly-edged burner “Juxtapozed with U”) plus some Welsh a capella would entice quite nicely.

A Cabaret Voltaire reunion. Hey, this is my wishlist, dammit! The Sheffield-based post-punk avant-guardians, as danceable as Joy Division but thrice as dour—if you can wrap your head around that one. Performing: Red Mecca, a startlingly salient comment on Islamic and Christian fundamentalism...recorded over 30 years ago.

Mazzy Star: Hope Sandoval (gossamer crooner) and David Roback (über-musican) with band tour Europe this summer and have a new LP—their first in 15 years—on the way. Performing: Hell, they could do nothing but Bieber covers and I'd be happy.

Before visiting a new city, I make a prioritized shortlist, and “best record shop” falls just after “best dive bar.” I usually eschew Austin's renowned Waterloo  for its quirkier southside kindred, End of an Ear. I get hyphy within Haight-Ashbury's mega Amoeba, and while in Tokyo I alternate between Disk Union's punk-postered walls and Spiral's exquisite audiophilia. NYC claims top for noise (subterranean Hospital Productions) and electronic (DUMBO's designer-y Halcyon).

Rough Trade NYC's imminent arrival is probably making Other Music a little nervous (watch this immediately), not to mention the longstanding Williamsburg stores Sound Fix and Earwax. May the spirit of saturnalia unite us all.

Image: BrooklynVegan