Welcome to the U-Town Links Page
(last updated: october 7, 2000)

Hejira
My favorite web site:
a great on-line journal, featuring wonderful images and heartfelt writing by Bethany Rusen
(formerly The Sky Cathedral)

say hello to bobofett!
dana's journal page is my daily dose of wild humor, good writing, monkey pictures and stirrup pants

A Dent in the Tori Amos Net Universe
(The Ultimate Tori Fan Site)

The Schramms

Kate Jacobs

Kitty Hawk

Olive Juice Music

Bionic Finger

Life in a Blender

Film Forum
(New York City's mecca for serious movie lovers)

Mikewhy (Michael Whitehead) is a god among Toriphiles. No matter how often I visit the Dent (as his site is familiarly known), I always find there are whole areas I've never seen before. I can only imagine how much work it takes to maintain the site, and all the information is always up-to-date (up to the minute, it seems). When I saw Tori at Madison Square Garden last year, I debated whether I should write down the set list as she was performing. I always go back and forth about that, I like to have it as a souvenir, but it can distract from enjoying the show. I needn't have worried, though, the set list was posted on the Dent within days.

You want to know how essential the Dent is? When it went down for a while last fall (because of a problem with Mike's ISP), Tori spotted him (at a meet-and-greet, I believe) and went over to ask him what was up with the Dent. She probably checks it to find out what she's supposed to be doing next.

The Schramms, who started as Walking Wounded more years ago than even I can remember, may never make it to the top of the charts, but I will bet that in 20 years people will still be listening to their CDs and talking about their live shows. It's difficult to know what to compare them to, but the best I can come up with is Richard Thompson (if he was an American with a lifelong passion for the Rolling Stones). In recent months Dave Schramm has been playing a lot of acoustic shows, supporting his excellent solo album, Hammer and Nails, but I hear that the whole band may start to gig again in November.

Once, twenty years ago, when I was in a band my guitar was in the shop and I borrowed Dave Schramm's Strat for a gig at Max's Kansas City. After the gig, he said that he liked the way I'd played his guitar. That remains the most treasured compliment I ever received as a musician.

The home of Major Matt Mason USA and Schwervon, among others. Major Matt writes terrific songs that he delivers in a wry monotone. Schwervon (which is composed of Major Matt Mason and Nan from Bionic Finger) makes wonderful songs out of the most common daily events. Major Matt has a great CD out, called, "Me Me Me," and Schwervon's CD is coming soon.

Kate Jacobs sneaks up on you. The first time I saw her, I thought, "Okay, nice songs, good band, good voice," but then I started to listen more carefully to those songs and I realized how powerful they are. She draws extensively on the history of her family. "Honeybees," for example, sounds like it's going to be a simple, little song about the bees which live in the walls of her family's house. However, it ends up telling the story of two hundred years of her family's history as well, all in three minutes.

Her rather breathy voice and simple-sounding songs can make her seem almost too benevolent, but when she does decide to stick the needle in, it's as surgically precise as Bob Dylan or Kurt Cobain.

Kittyhawk, who are currently in the middle of a whirlwind tour of lower Manhattan, seem to have finally found a line-up which will last. This is good, because for a while every gig seemed to feature a different bass player and sometimes a different drummer as well. But now the lineup is solid, and their CD ("Kill Devil Hills") was recently released at a rockin' New York City loft party, and they have a new all-Flash website, www.kittyhawknyc.com.

The band is built around Jen Zablocki, a wonderful singer and songwriter. My theory is that she's the secret love child of the Indigo Girls, because both in her singing and in her songs she really covers the full musical and emotional range of both Emily and Amy, from the tenderness of "Carrie" to the cutting "Didn't Want to Know," from the guarded concern of "Richard" to the raw vulnerability of "Touch."

(Remember, if this theory is ever revealed to be true, you read it here first!)

You can order their CD from their website, or you can download a variety of studio and live MP3s.

Four first-rate singers, four excellent (and very different) songwriters, four guitarists, three bass players and two drummers. What more could you possibly want from a band, especially one with only four members? There's no possible excuse that I haven't listed their website here before now, but since I'm doing it now, I can mention that their first CD, Inner Bimbo, is out. Buy it immediately, if not sooner.

Plus, their website is blocked by the company I work for, classified as "Sex 2" and inconsistent with the company's principles. I bet they'd be so proud.

You never know what you're going to see when you go see Life in a Blender, but I guarantee it'll be fun. Songs, stories, puppets, slide shows, violins, cellos, trombones, plus a rockin' band and various other antics. I would say they feature everything but the kitchen sink, but I might just have missed the show where they used it.

I saw 31 movies in 1998, six of them at Film Forum, but those six included the two best movies I saw all year ("Fireworks" and "Touch of Evil"). I've seen twenty-eight movies so far this year, and seven of them have been at Film Forum. They show new movies which nobody else in New York shows, and they're about the only place in New York City where you can see brand new 35mm prints of older movies, plus all this year they're showing Hitchcock films in honor of his centennial. (And they're very polite about answering questions from amateur web movie reviewers.)