Michael Andrews w/ Miranda July >> It's life and it's happening

California Month continued, tremor #31:

Michael Andrews w/ Miranda July - "When I Call A Name"

(Everloving Records, 2005)

This is from the soundtrack to the movie Me And You And Everyone We Know, which Miranda July wrote, directed, and co-starred in.  The movie and its soundtrack have both already become cult classics, and Roger Ebert cited the film as the 5th best of the decade, and there's even a band named after it.  Michael Andrews is apparently from San Diego and is now in L.A., so this song made the cut for California Month, even though Miranda, a Portlander, steals the show in the song's first half.

I started hearing about Miranda in the indie music mags in '97-98, when she put out two baffling, Laurie Anderson-esque solo albums on Kill Rock Stars.  She did the voices of all the characters in her strange song pastiches.  So I was not surprised to hear her doing both the female and the male voice in "When I Call A Name," but it still cracks me up.  I also have her book of peculiarly observant short stories called No One Belongs Here More Than You.  (Yes, she likes wordy, sarcastically-motivational titles.)  Basically, she's the shit.  I know hardly anything about Michael Andrews, other than he was in a band called The Origin and now makes these lite synth-porno soundtracks.

Miranda July performing her one-person play The Swan Tool in 2001; photo by Harrell Fletcher.

I went to the Fall Garden Show at City Park yesterday and got a dwarf blueberry bush (Vaccinium darrowii), another New Zealand Tea Tree (Leptospermum scoparium), and three little cacti.  One plant that I almost got had probably the coolest name ever: Rattlesnake Master.  Then I went and shot some hoops at SUNO on the newly-redone courts.  Then I went over to McKeown's Books And Difficult Music for a very weird duo concert by an Austrian guy named Simon Berz (of the band ige*timer) and local drummer Simon Lott.  They were joined by a sound manipulator guy from Holland named Toktek in the last piece.   I brought over some beers to donate to the ice chest, since I had guzzled some free ones at previous shows here.  I also picked up a few books, of course.  Afterwards, a guy came up to me and asked if he could take a picture of my t-shirt.  "You've heard of Poem Rocket?," I asked him.  "Yeah, my old band's first-ever show was opening for them in Ohio."  I was amazed.  He took the pic and said the show was during a blizzard and not a single person came, but they played anyway.  His name is Steve, but I forgot his band's name.  Found a cool little coin medallion on the ground with a ship design on one side, while walking back to my car; may wear it as a necklace.  Saw a weird argument happening outside of Tipitina's which included a guy hurling a motorcycle helmet diagonally across the intersection while yelling at a woman in one of two cars that had apparently had a fender bender.  Just another Saturday night in New Orleans...

This was uploaded by a member of Das Racist, believe it or not:

Planets with similar climates: Laurie Anderson w/ Peter Gabriel - "Excellent Birds" (1984), Xiu Xiu - "Clowne Towne" (2003).