Photography books became more of a luxury item than ever in 2009, but Dan Winters’ Periodical Photographs is the one I coveted most. Despite being taken in 1998, this portrait of Fred Rogers is probably the best celebrity portrait I saw this year, and the rest of the book follows suit; for many of Winter’s subjects, it’s a welcome reprieve from vanity to nonentity. More samples from the book are here, courtesy of the New Yorker.

• MP3 | Jon Foreman “Instead of a Show” Limbs and Branches
• MP3 | Pedro the Lion “Rapture” Control

In my mind, Switchfoot was always like a less-cool Pedro the Lion — where we silently agreed to let David Bazan get away with the whole Jesus thing because he was on Jade Tree. Of course, Bazan was always forthright with his faith, and for that, we respected it. The comfort levels with a band like Switchfoot, however, get tenuous — if only because they refuse to spell out the obvious. With his 2006 book, Body Piercing Saved My Life: Inside the Phenomenon of Christian Rock, Andrew Beaujon tried to get somewhat closer to the truth. But singer Jon Foreman wouldn’t allow it:

Immediately, I sensed this interview wasn’t going to go well. Foreman was anything but hostile, but he was maddeningly vague about his relationship with the [Cornerstone] festival and Christian music.… I asked if this was the only Christian event Switchfoot played.

He lowered his eyes.

“You have to be — the thing is, when you’re talking about Switchfoot, you’re talking about music that we’ve fought really hard to keep out of boxes,” he said.

I had to wonder how Foreman could play his cards so close to his chest and still achieve the connection he repeatedly told me he longed for with his audience.

That’s a solvent point: The unembarrassing fact is that, technically, I think Switchfoot is an enjoyable band, but I’ve always been distracted by the haziness. They’re like a Christian take on the Morrissey formula in which he endlessly alludes to but never exposits the fact that he’s gay — as if he is getting one over on us, as if there is a serious Morrissey fan that exists who would deny his homosexuality. This never sat well with me, either.

I don’t believe in transparency in art, but there is a value in self-criticism and vulnerability that makes Bazan’s Christianity more intellectually accessible than Foreman’s. I never felt Pedro the Lion was on a stealth mission to convince me of anything; with Switchfoot, you just don’t know. (To be fair, this might just mean that Bazan is more sophisticated in his surreptitiousness.) So it surprised me to discover that Jon Foreman is on a different kind of stealth mission, and it’s not the one I suspected: On Limbs and Branches — a solo record being distributed solely on the gospel circuit — Foreman wags his finger at the Christian community with a language that is hardly vague:

Your eyes are closed when you’re praying
You sing right along with the band
You shine up your shoes for services
There’s blood on your hands
You turned your back on the homeless
And the ones that don’t fit in your plan
Quit playing religion games
There’s blood on your hands

Instead let there be a flood of justice
Instead of a show
I hate all your show

There’s something refreshingly concrete about a plain-spoken sentiment, and it is for this reason that I can fully appreciate an album that begins with the lyric “Heavenly Father, you always amaze me” with the clear conscience of a nonbeliever. As that old marketing wisdom suggests, whenever you try to create something that appeals to everyone, you ultimately satisfy no one.

Photo: Timmmip

• DOWNLOAD | Trentemøller “Prana” The Last Resort (Expanded Edition)

Jeremiah Moss over at Vanishing New York has a little write-up this morning about Gus Van Sant’s upcoming movie, Howl, which is being filmed here in New York as we speak. After admitting that he once kissed Allen Ginsberg — “a wet, full-lipped, slightly scruffy kiss” — Moss expresses his displeasure over James Franco being cast in the role: “He just doesn’t say ‘queer, balding, Jewish nerd’ to me. He’s James Dean, only skinnier.” Agreed.

But the part of his story that took me down memory lane came towards the end, when Moss takes inventory of Ginsberg’s East Village haunts:

I guess I just miss Allen. I used to run into him at Prana Foods on First Avenue, rummaging through the bins of bruised vegetables. You might have seen him in one of the Polish and Ukrainian joints, in Kiev or the B&H. You never knew where, but he was around.

This is true. A little over ten years ago, I wrote about Allen Ginsberg for a column in Punk Planet, in which I mulled over the year I met him. It was 1993, and while I knew “who Allen Ginsberg was,” I didn’t know what Allen Ginsberg looked like. The following is an edited excerpt from that column.

¶

When I was 19 years old, I managed a small health food store in the East Village called Prana Foods. Saturday mornings were always my favorite day in the store, most likely because I was left alone. New York City’s health food elite generally eat organic to compensate for all the drugs and alcohol; these people don’t usually do their shopping until well after noon.

Of the few people who regularly came in, I remember only two: One was a short, older lady who dressed in rags. She always tried turning her food stamps into cash by purchasing a half a carrot every hour: if the carrot was 35 cents, I would have to give her 65 cents in change. I could have kicked her out, but it was a good scheme and I appreciated her creativity. The other customer was an older man who kept a beard and always appeared elegantly disheveled. He had a wry sense of humor — the kind where you could only identify the punchline if he smirked. That was my cue to laugh, and I did.

The first time we spoke, he commented on the Hare Krishna neckbeads I used to wear. He told me that he’d been to India, and that he’d met “the Swami.” A lot of people in the East Village have that story. If you lived here in the sixties, you were probably the kind of person who wanted to hang out barefoot on the muddy banks of a river with a dreadlocked Sivaite. I never thought to ask for the man’s name, but I recognized him and we continued our conversation for months after that.

One day, he came in while Alison was working. Alison was in charge of produce, but she generally didn’t need to be in the store until noon. The old man usually strolled in at 9 A.M., but on this day, he showed up much later than that. We carried on for a bit, like we usually did, before I finally rung him up. Occasionally, when older people came into the shop, I’d run them discounts or let certain, more expensive items go. He always noticed my gesture and thanked me enthusiastically before walking out.

As he left, Alison walked up to the register with her left eye cocked.

“You’re friends with Allen Ginsberg?”

I had no idea.

Ginsberg never seemed to revel in his celebrity. He bought his oatmeal, paid in cash, and actually showed less of a sense of entitlement than most of our customers. I like to think that he talked to me because he knew something that I didn’t — that is, remarkably, who he was.

Even now, I’m still not sure of that. What I do know about Allen Ginsberg, I like: In 1956, during a poetry reading, one heckler shouted, “What do you mean, nakedness?” — to which Allen responded by shedding his clothes. In 1974 a pair of muggers attacked him in front of his East 10th Street apartment. Ginsberg, a practicing Buddhist since the early ’70s, began incessantly chanting the Sanskrit mantra “Om” until the muggers screamed, “Shut up or we’ll kill you!” — apparently while running away. (This still works, trust me.) And best of all, when Ginsberg realized that his work was producing more income than he had ever thought possible, he legally turned himself into a non-profit organization, giving away countless dollars to people that, he felt, needed it.

The problem with all of this, I guess, is the fact that I barely knew any of it when I stood within inches of the man. I’d almost feel cheated if I didn’t like the little man with the beard who met “the Swami” so damn much. I’m sure Allen Ginsberg was great, but this man was special.

Photo: Pierodemarchis