Everyone Needs a Hobby
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“I pretty much decided to change my life,” says Adams. “I had been doing the self-employed thing for over seven years and I didn’t like what I was doing. I was burned out on music and I didn’t care; I didn’t buy any records or see many shows.” By June he’d landed his current full-time job. A year later he moved in with his girlfriend, Kathleen Tax (who last weekend became his wife), and limited space forced him to pitch most of the label’s stock, including all the vinyl. “It was nice to get rid of the stuff, but it definitely felt like the end of something,” he says.
Once music was no longer his livelihood, however, Adams gradually began buying records and going to shows again. His renewed interest coincided with a surge in interest in the Mountain Goats, whose The Coroner’s Gambit (Absolutely Kosher, 2000) and All Hail West Texas (Emperor Jones, 2002) have generated significant press. Two Mountain Goats rarities compilations he’d put out on Ajax, Protein Source of the Future…Now! and Bitter Melon Farm, were almost out of print, so last fall he reissued them on 3 Beads of Sweat–a sublabel of Ajax that had previously released only one seven-inch, in 1994. He also put together Ghana, a third collection of singles and stray comp tracks. Darnielle recently signed a record deal with the influential British label 4AD, which could expand the Mountain Goats’ audience and boost Adams’s business in the process; meanwhile, all three compilations have already shipped enough copies to break even.
He also criticizes the band for not hiring their own soundman, for failing to promote the show, for making public apologies about their performance, and for taking too long to finish their record in the first place. (He notes at one point that he’s spent $200,000 on the band; the new Shadows of the Waxwings is their second album for the label.) Though his tone is uniformly abusive, Salerno makes some valid points. But what pushes me off the fence is his primer on proper rock-star behavior: “Mick Jagger wouldn’t be hangin’ out in the club before HIS RECORD RELEASE show! Make a fuckin’ statement!!! Your faces should not have been seen for ONE SECOND before you took that stage! Do you think the Rolling Stones would be walkin’ around minglin’ in the crowd before their RECORD RELEASE show?? Do you think Jack White would be caught dead in the crowd before he takes the stage?? Bush leagues!!! Dean [Fertita, the band’s front man], you’re just fuckin’ hangin’ out by the fuckin’ entrance before the show, AND SOMETIMES ALONE! PATHETIC!!!”
Asif Ali Khan is a 23-year-old protege of the great Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, and his group features seven of his brothers and his 76-year-old father, Manzoor Hussain. According to the Washington Post, flight attendants reported that they were “sweating, acting nervous, and making frequent trips to the lavatory,” and they were removed from their originally scheduled flight. They were booked onto a later flight, but missed it while being questioned by the FBI. The next day they boarded another plane, but as it began to taxi, flight attendants and some passengers persuaded the pilots to return to the gate, where the musicians were once again asked to get off. According to manager Mohammed Saleem–who was not with the band on the plane–passengers applauded as they left. On April 30 the band finally made it out of D.C., traveling in smaller groups on two different flights.
