what to drink.

just in case you are thirsty this summer, why not try a cocktail created for us by the renowned and reclusive author daniel handler...

the chickfactor

2 parts bourbon
1/2 part green chartreuse
mix and fill with champagne
toss in lemon wedge
toss back
engage in clever conversation
repeat*
(serve in champagne flutes, natch)

(*repeat at your own risk, dearies.—editrix)

if that is not to your liking, you could try the bbc pimm's cup recipe we've been enjoying in the muggy american south of late:
- one and a half shots pimm's
- three shots sparkling lemon soda
- three shots spicy ginger beer
- stir, add vertically sliced cucumber, one strawberry halved, chopped fresh mint leaves and thin slices of lemon (all organic, of course, or rinsed very well)
- add ice
- enjoy!

chessie: the chickfactor interview.

ben and stephen chessie.

chickfactor turns 16 this summer and it's hard not to think back to the old days of the d.c. indie scene where we found inspiration for the magazine. one of the ubiquitous creatures on the scene in those days was stephen gardner, a lanky kid who played in lorelei and later went on to form chessie, first on his own and later with ben bailes. despite being hailed by the new york times as having made one of 2001's best albums, chessie remains far too unknown. you should go and get on a train with some chessie in your ears. (oh, and lorelei's matt dingee recently moved back to the D.C. area so they're on again at least until another member moves away.) we found ourselves digging the train-obsessed duo's latest recordings and decided to catch up with them....
chickfactor: I think you were the youngest member of the d.c. indiepop scene way back when. what was it like then and how did you get involved?
stephen gardner: well, I started going to shows actively when I was 11 or so, and I owe that mainly to my older twin sisters. They were in the DC punk scene and I adopted their interests in that way that younger siblings do. Luckily, they -- and my parents -- were cool enough to let me tag along with them to shows and since I was tall for my age (6'2" by 13), I passed as much older. The other factor that got me involved was that DC's laws allow venues to be all-ages and there were tons of shows at churches or other public spaces, mostly put on by other kids. I didn't realize how special this was until I spent a summer in San Francisco as a 20-year-old and realized I couldn't go to venues. I was shocked. Also, I'd be remiss if didn't give credit to Dischord records and for the punk scene of mid to late 80s in DC for making it seem totally possible to be in a band and do something that mattered on your own terms.
As for what it was like, I'm the youngest in my family, so I suppose it felt totally natural to be the youngest at shows or out with friends. Also, being tall helped me to never really feel totally out of place -- by 12, I was taller than most adults. I also was surrounded by older people in other areas too, as I started working at skate shop when I was 12 and then a record store by 14, and i was always the youngest there, so I just learned to adapt.
cf: chessie was a one-man act for a long time. why change and become a duo? tell us about ben.
stephen: Ben Bailes and I are old friends from middle school/high school. He was one of the few drummers at our school and actually briefly played with lorelei during one of many line-ups in the first 6 months of being a band. We stayed in touch over the years as he got involved in audio engineering and he liked the first chessie record. I was working on the second album, Meet, while at college and he had just moved to NY to work as an engineer and we arranged for him to come up to engineer a session. We did a couple of songs together and had a blast. Our skill sets complemented each other really well and we had a deep trust from years of friendship. Next Ben and some other friends joined me for a tour as Chessie and after that, I think it was clear that we'd be doing this as a project together, with him expanding into the songwriting from just production initially. In the end, my goal with chessie was to always create a compositional process that would lead my ideas to new places and unexpected outcomes -- it's not a pop project, like lorelei, where I'm trying to execute a perfectly defined composition. If I've already conceived the outcome of a song in full, than there's little point in proceeding. At first, I tried to reach this goal by using processes that took my ideas out of my own hands, like using unsynchronized tapes loops and other techniques that would introduce chance into the compositions. But, in Ben, I found the perfect partner to take my ideas and have them realized in profoundly different and exciting ways. Turns out another human is the best way to introduce chance into your songwriting.
cf: does being a train nerd have the same stigma in the US that it does in the UK?
stephen: I dont think so. I think most Americans don't have a clue that there are millions of "railfans" out there and I doubt they'd care much if they did. Certainly, the culture is different as well, as the US has lots of rail photographers and history buffs, but very few of the UK's trainspotters who record every passing passenger car and locomotive. US railfans are an oddity, but not particularly annoying, as they seem to be portrayed in the UK.
cf: was your musical path affected by the new york times endorsement?
stephen: Not the slightest. We been blessed with lots of critical acclaim and almost no record sales or personal attention. So, we just carry on as if none of that really exists, working in our basement studio as time permits.
cf: do you still have a turntable and if so what's on it?
stephen: Yes. The Huck-a-Bucks "chronic breakdown" 2xLP -- a classic mid-90s go-go record. Like all DC kids, I love the go-go and if you listen closely, you'll hear a go-go break or two on at least one track on every chessie record.
cf: we hear you just got married -- congrats! can you tell us a little about the bachelor party?
stephen: Ok, this is pretty nerdie. A group of friends and I rented an old railway caboose that is in use as a portable campsite on a railroad in West Virginia. They attach the caboose to the end of a train and drop the caboose deep in the woods next to a river on a side track where you can camp for a few days and then come pick you up. It was heaven.
cf: do you dream of trains?
stephen: Sometimes, yes. Mostly, I dream of everyday situations that are slightly altered. Since my day job is working with railways, they are often featured.
cf: what makes you sad about the way music has changed (formats, sounds, etc)? or is nostalgia for the baby boomers?
stephen: This list could be a long one but beyond the normal rant about the horrors of mp3s, the loss of vinyl, the end of hand-made flyers, I'm mostly just sad that music feels pretty irrelevant now amidst all of the other competing media. I know that the days when going over to a friend's to listen to records was an entertaining and exciting way to spend a few hours are over for most of America.
listen to chessie here.

hangover lounge.

in the early days of chickfactor, pam and gail used to shop at a handful of places in the new york area: pier platters, of course, and maybe kim's and rebel rebel; john fluevog shoes; and detente, which sold silly japanese kitsch and later closed to make way for air market, a place for us to stock up on extremely silly mr. friendly backpacks and such. sadly the old third avenue institution is being forced out, probably to make way for a cosi sandwich shop or some other stupid chain. and speaking of pam, indiepop vocal legend and chickfactor cofounder, she and her hubby will be DJing at london's hangover lounge this weekend. we so wish we could be there.

spencer gates, rip.

I met spencer gates when she started working as a publicist at matador records in the early '90s. I was still at spin, but she knew that chickfactor was what I was about. we spent many evenings during the clinton era gabbing and gossiping over red wine (hers with a diet coke chaser, please) and snacks (in her case, always roast chicken and potatoes). spencer was outrageously socially masterful. she had the gift. she would never say, "gail, this is jim." she would say "gail, this is jim from the amazingly awesome band the cream puffs." spencer's charm was irresistible, even to some journalists and editors, who don't easily melt when publicists come a-calling. of course, spencer was so much more than a publicist. she was a music lover. she was a social butterfly in the very best way. she was in charge. I always used to marvel at her ability to make everyone feel so damn taken care of, even when she maybe wasn't. she was generous and lovely and most of all fun. I didn't know her back when she was one of the "mystery girls" on the radio, but she spoke fondly of those days and was still friends with the gang. she helped countless musicians get more famous and she seriously loved music more than anything. she died on sunday morning after a battle with breast cancer. we miss you, lady talkalot. here is her obit in a cambridge paper and gerard put something on the matador blog here.

cf interview: travis elborough, vinyl fetishist and author

travis elborough is famous for a few things: dressing snappily, writing very funny and entertaining text and being able to talk about pretty much anything. his 2005 book, the bus we loved, about london's routemaster buses (the kind you could jump out the back of), did phenomenally well. people still hate the bendy buses that replaced them, or the airless double deckers that you cannot exit in terrible traffic unless you have a sympathetic driver. his brand-new book, the long-player goodbye, pays tribute to our most treasured musical format. the book will be available for purchase in the united kingdom on july 10, while soft skull will publish it in the U.S. in 2009. bob stanley recently mentioned it in the london times in an article about vinyl fetishists. we caught up with our man travis via email. of course, if I were still living in london, I would be able to ask him these things in person...
chickfactor: what ebay find are you most proud of?
travis elborough: Too many to list but a phrenology head, an olive green olivetti typewriter and a signed photograph of Jo, one of the Doctor Who assistants from the 1970s, posing in the nude with a dalek would have to be up there somewhere.
what shopping experience do you miss the most?
As I am sure you remember, there used to be a fantastic, if admittedly rather overpriced, vintage clothing shop in Covent Garden in London called Cenci. It closed down probably five years ago now. It was chock full of old Italian deadstock suits from the 1950s and 1960s, and similarly period ski jumpers and golfing caps, none of which were ever in my size. Even the hats seemed to have been crafted for a special race of human beings, very possibly rendered extinct since by substantial changes in diet, whose heads were either vast or tiny. But while I bought very little from there (one of those striped yachting jumpers and a single suit, at the most, I think) I loved visiting it simply to witness its manager, Massimo, in action. He didn't so much practise the hardsell, as look heartbroken if you chose not to purchase whatever garment he was convinced you should buy. 'It's a tad on the snug size', you might say, while struggling to do up the buttons on a pea coat whose arms were a foot shorter than your own. 'Nonsense, it fits you like a glove, feel the weave. You don't get that kind of quality today', he'd reply, shaking his head in a motion intended to convey a certain dispair with the modern world, and you in particular. 'Well, I was really looking for a slightly narrow cut of trouser', you could venture, having found yourself in a pair of strides that could easily have provided the sails for the Mayflower. 'Honestly', Massimo would respond, clutching, demonstratively, the leg of his own -- and infinitely narrower -- trousers, 'once you get used to them, you'll never wear anything else.'

describe a typical day of you researching this book.
I suppose, the most typical day consisted of hitting the British Library, and then idling away about seven hours flicking through ancient issues of Gramophone, Billboard, High Fidelity, Downbeat, Disc and the NME, and raiding their excellent sound archives. I spent some days, some weeks, actually, just listening to albums. And I did buy a small battery-operated turntable specifically to perch on the corner of the desk in my office so that I could spin discs while tapping away.
any tragic loss of an LP that's still breaking your heart?
For purely sentimental reasons, I mourn the loss of, what was most likely a terrible, sound-not-alike Beach Boys LP, I had as a child. It was one of those session musician jobs that were sold in wire racks in Woolworths and local newsagents, something like The Surf Men Pay Tribute to the Beach Boys By Playing Their Hits Quite Badly. I think I bought it with a voucher I'd received for my sixth birthday. It had "California Girls," "Good Vibrations," etc. on it and, from what I can only dimly recall, an image of a suitably sun-drenched beach on the cover. The LP vanished years ago, and the original versions of the songs, which I didn't know then, have long since supplanted any real memory of it but I seem to miss it all the same. And, as I have no idea what it was really called, ebay, Gemm and so on are no use. Which might be just as well.
will there be a turntable at the launch?
Oh yes. Two I think. And prizes for the most amazing, interesting and awful album anyone brings along.
your last book, the bus we loved, turned you into the "bus man" at parties. you got really sick of talking about those damn phased-out routemasters. any chance you'll ever tire of LP chatter? are you already?
I am still talking about the Routemaster, it's the Bela Lugosi of buses -- blood red and undead! The LP book, came in a way, out of responses to The Bus We Loved. I did genuinely love the Routemaster. For anyone who doesn't know, they were the last London buses to be built with open platform at the back and were staffed by a conductor as well as a driver and were taken off the streets after nearly fifty years in December 2005. I used to catch them every day, and when I first moved to London and was living in bus-bound Dalston, their routes really shaped my impressions of the city as a resident. I liked them enormously, aesthetically, and when I learned they were being phased out, I just started taking photographs of them with my Lomo camera and I gradually began to dig into their history. The book grew out of that. I wasn't a bus fan as such, I was a writer who happened to be fond of this particular bus. While I was researching the book, I did, however, meet people who were absolutely fanatical about the Routemaster and buses in general. These people tend to get a raw deal, they are mocked as anoraks and the like. But I have to say, though some were a touch odd, I thought there was something rather admirable about their enthusiasm. Meeting them made me wonder, why it was that certain hobbies, bus-spotting for example, are deemed less socially acceptable than others, record collecting, say. Which in turn, led me to think about all the hours I'd personally wasted in record shops... and you can see where this is heading... Will I tire of talking about LPs? I hope not. But ask me again in six months...
are there any movie scenes featuring vinyl fetishists like the likes of our gang?
Well, I am excited about a new documentary by Emma Pettit about independent record shops. I think it's still in production at the moment, but Emma's also edited an accompanying book just out called Old Rare New, that has some great pieces by Byron Coley and Bob Stanley and interviews with Billy Childish, Rob Da Bank, Simon Reynolds and Joe Boyd, that's magnificent so... buy that and look out for the film in due course.
is there any real evidence that it will come back?
There is some. Wandering about shops in central London, I do find myself thinking, God I can remember when all of this was CDs. Certainly shops like Mister CD have gone. And last October even Amazon.com began selling LPs and a range of players. So sales of vinyl are up, but they still represent a small percentage -- and it tends to be a niche interest. Singles have taken off again among the hip and young, apparently. Hayes, the plant in Middlesex immortalised on the Beatles sleeves and mothballed by EMI in 2000, and now in private hands, currently turns out something like 20,000 records a week. A far cry from the 250,000 a day it produced in the early 1970s, but not bad for a format supposedly consigned to the dustbin by its digital successors over a quarter of a century ago.
click here to buy the book

photographs: travis elborough, london, 2005; and some vinyl in a paris shop window, 2004; both by gail o'hara.

33 1/3.

three fine music writers -- all of whom have written for chickfactor and timeout ny -- will read from their respective titles from Continuum's 33 1/3 series about particular LPs. The St Mark's Bookshop Reading Series at Solas presents LD Beghtol (the Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs); Franklin Bruno (Elvis Costello's Armed Forces); Elisabeth Vincentelli (Abba's Abba Gold) at Solas Bar, 232 E. 9th Street (Right around the corner from the Bookshop, between 2nd and 3rd Aves.) June 26th at 7:30pm and it's free.

catskills fest 08.

last month I ran into my pal eric, who is not only a ship captain (he used to co-own the antique lightship the frying pan, and these days he is working on a tugboat) but has been tour manager for iggy, dinosaur jr, mercury rev and my bloody valentine, among others I'm sure. he was looking for someone to drive MBV's gear across country later this year, and boy was I tempted. except for the fact that I'm still half-deaf from the time I saw them play in 1992, and what if there was nothing to do in all these towns they're playing apart from watch the show! I'm too old, not rock and roll enough for the job (I am wondering if the band members are these days -- anyone?). did I mention I hate summer too? ah well. eric also told me about the fabulous catskills atp that MBV are part curating starring such luminaries as (atp signature acts) mogwai and shellac and tortoise, low, lilys, mercury rev (natch), MBV, dino jr, yo la tengo and built to spill, all trying to out-volume each other. I would say I can't wait, but as a jobless student I'm not sure I can scrape together nearly $400 for just a ticket. (unless someone wants to put me on the guest list?)

the other e.c.

forgive my blogging absence, friends and readers -- trust me, I have some very legit personal reasons for not tapping away. (I also wonder if any of you saw the sex blog girl's article in the guardian or the emily gould from gawker cover story on the NY times magazine? while I hate to mention their over-publicized names, it's so funny how they have to write huge high-profile articles proclaiming the end of their blogging careers. oh wait, the sex blog girl will continue doing it; so new york gents who care to date her should consider this a warning.) sorry for the long aside, just my way of saying sometimes overexposure can be very unattractive. on to the news....
1 we wish we were in london (all summer, every summer for the rest of our lives, at least on those cool gray days) for the june 16 edwyn collins tribute benefit thing at the social we believe our man harvey williams is somehow responsible for.
2 indiepop titan edwyn collins of course suffered a stroke a few years ago, so it's not only exciting that he is still making music, but check out the glorious record sleeves that were lovingly created for his new single, which is out (only in the UK dammit) june 23 so someone please get me one okay?