Barry Bonds remains one of the most fearsome sluggers on the planet.
By: Hank Kalet
This is depressing.
Some thoughts on Barry Bonds:
First, he is probably the greatest everyday player I’ve seen. I didn’t catch Willie Mays or Hank Aaron in their prime, but Bonds has done everything: six MVP awards, 700-plus homeruns, 500-plus steals and a slew of Gold Gloves.
Second, he is surly and unlikable, to be sure, but why should I care. I have no plans to invite him to my house for dinner.
Three, the steroid cloud hangs over him now, but I will reserve judgment and given that the cloud hangs over a lot of players, I won’t balk when he walks through the doors of Cooperstown in a few years until someone actually proves something.
Here is a story from John Harper on Bonds in today’s Daily News that is worth reading. Bonds remains, even at his advanced baseball age (he couldn’t bend yesterday to pick up a ball in the outfield), a marvel at the plate.
And here is a couple of stories from Dave Zirins’ Edge of Sports, one on Bonds and race and another on the league’s role in the steroid scandal.
Here is the review of last week’s Wilco that should run shortly in Pop Matters:
Few rock ‘n’ roll bands have had as many expectations attached to them as Jeff Tweedy’s Wilco.
The band has, across its decade-plus existence, managed to build a fan base, alienate it, rebuild it, alienate it again and rebuild it.
There have been the somewhat celebrated firings of band members, the public battles with anxiety and pills, and so on.
But over the years, Tweedy has managed to steer Wilco through the thicket of all this, to craft a particular and personal vision of rock music, an amalgam of the country-rock, alt.country, lush pop, blues, feedback, electronica and whatever else his creative mind could grab hold of. The result is a body of work striking for its variety, originality and energy.
This especially has been true on the band’s last two studio albums Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost is Born. YHF took the convoluted pop formula the band seemed to perfect on Summerteeth and broke it open, turning Summerteeth‘s swirling, almost giddy sound on its head. A Ghost is Born went a step further, exploring the modulations of electronic noise, pushing the textures that had been latent in the music to the surface, stretching them to their breaking point.
As powerful as those records were, however, there was something missing: the heat of a live band pushing the envelope. The release last year of Kicking Television rectified that. The disc, recorded during a series of 2005 shows in Chicago, fleshed out the band’s music, gave it muscle, turned up the temperature.
Kicking Television was so good, in fact, that it had the effect of raising expectations. When I walked into the Starland Ballroom in Sayreville, N.J., to catch the band live for the first time, I was expecting greatness. Wilco didn’t disappoint.
After a strange but affecting set by Marricone Youth – essentially a mix of remade Spaghetti Western themes and sinister-sounding surf-punk – Wilco hit the stage with a set heavy on tunes from A Ghost is Born which I’d expected. Tweedy, dressed in a corduroy jacket and wearing a hat that he later said he doffed in honor of The Boss (he was on Springsteen’s home turf, after all and Bruce did have that floppy knit cap on his head in the recently released live Hammersmith Odeon London 1975 DVD that was part of the Born to Run box set), led the band through a two-hour jam session.
It was not a perfect set which made it all the more effective. He flubbed the opening to "Forget the Flowers," the first of several songs from Being There that he played, but laughed it off and then went on, picking out the guitar chords to enthusiastic applause. And there was the running discussion between Tweedy and a drunken fan, a humorous but unnecessary exchange (Tweedy warned him that he was heading down the path to expulsion and then later told him to drink plenty of water to prevent a hangover).
Throughout the two-hour set (20 songs in all, including a new song listed in various places as "Walken" and "I’m Talking to Myself About You" The Star-Ledger said it "sounded as if Little Feat stumbled into a mind-altered jam with ‘Get Back’-era Beatles"), the strands of influences would crystallize. There were elements of The Beatles especially when a trio of horn players came out for torrid versions of "I’m the Man Who Loves You" and "Monday," melding the feel of "Got to Get You Into My Life" with Blue Mask-era Lou Reed. On "Hell is Chrome" and a blues-funk version of"Kingpin," you could hear loud whispers of The Band.
The current six-piece line-up Tweedy, guitarist Nels Cline, bassist John Stirratt, drummer Glenn Kotchke and keyboardists Mikael Jorgensen and Pat Sansone has an obvious connection, working both with and against each other, bouncing sounds off of each other and into the ether. The rhythm section of Kotchke and Stirratt keep the whole thing grounded, while the keyboards, computers and guitars alternately sing and shout.
Cline, in particular, has helped stretch out the band’s sound with guitar lines that alternate between angular, Television-like runs and feedback-drenched explosions. His avant-jazz feel is perfectly in tune with the experimental turn that Tweedy – no slouch on the guitar, either has taken the band.
For me, the live set not only exceeded my expectations, but has succeeded in raising the stakes. The swirling mix of electronic noise and Americana that Tweedy has created already places the band outside the standard record company categories, which is where the best bands ultimately find themselves.
What kind of wondrous noise might Wilco create next? I can’t wait to find out the answer.
Read today’s Dispatches on hunger.

