Passing time with Baseball Gregg
Princes of pop — Baseball Gregg’s Sam & Luca; photographed by Giacomo Manghi.
Time in motion, time in the imperfect tense, time in the rearview mirror, time in constructs of formidable future manifestations and all of its many effects and side effects. Developed over the course of the decade and borrowing its title from a James Joyce passage from Finnegans Wake [“Pastimes are past times.”] — Baseball Gregg have graciously blessed the whirlwind of 2022 with one of the year’s best albums with the indelible and beguiling maelstrom of holistic beauty that is Pastimes. Brought into full realization in Bologna by Italian wunderkind Luca Lovisetto and Stockton, California’s patron saint Sam Regan; the pair create a harmonious album curated by explorations of causality and the correlatives between the photo albums, diaries, picture books, old love letters, vintage social media posts and more from yesteryear and its curious relationship to the present and the premonitions that stand at the threshold of our mysterious grand tomorrow.
Pastimes begins with the glorious pop pastoral splendor of “Montese”, named after idyllic town in the Italian province of Modena. Lush fantasias unfold before the listeners’ senses, collapsing those in-between spaces between yesterday and today with baroque overtures and expressions full of heart and nostalgic longing. Pensive reflections run free like movements of thought in the restless mind on "Nevertheless" that is a gorgeous distillation of what could be described as the definite Baseball Gregg sound (if such a broad stroke of an expression could ever encapsulate the band's inherently eclectic aesthetic). "Cilantro Grass" gently rocks with sentimental strings, lavish lyrics and a vintage 80s Martin Duffy electric organ that segues sweetly into the Pavement/The Clean chic of the single "Biting My Tongue" that tackles the fancy free and faulty realm of faux pas with a humanistic glee.
The title track "Past Times" revels in the pangs of nostalgia and all the corresponding growing pains that arrive which such inward glances. "Sylvia Beach" pays homage to the iconic publisher and founder of Shakespeare and Company in a pop perfect tribute, to the carnal pursuit of the human connection on the cheekily titled "Onlyfans", before turning up the energy on the frenetic "Holobiont". Heart string strummed romanticism abounds in the acoustic balladeering of "luv 2 b", blooming into the winter warm blossom of "Olympic White", dovetailing and delving into the undercurrents of elusive understandings on "Sottovoce" as "irl" acts as a gorgeous baroque interlude that combines sparse orchestrals and field recording sounds of bird songs and other assorted choruses of the natural variety.
Notions of erasure from the mundane, temporal, to the intimate are recounted with melancholic reminiscence on "Shred", followed by a holistic hymn with "Biology", as "I Don't Wanna Wait and See" is a hyperactive ode of anxious and jangling urgency of the caffeinated kind. Testaments to days of beauty and joy are painted in sound on "Oh les beaux jours", as "Lonely Chimneys" surveys the landscapes of memories and the shapes of village rooftops, diving into the ontological depths of the unconscious on "Lake Geneva", pondering hearing loss and items of absentia on the tropicalia touched "Gone Deaf" before drawing Pastimes to a close on an anthem of hope for future harmony and more on the postlude of "Better Days". Baseball Gregg's latest record cements the artists’ status as one of today's best aesthetes, worthy of all contemporary accolades with works of art that will be discussed and referenced now for years to follow. Join us after the jump as Sam Regan pens an exclusive feature on the topics of love, grace, wonder, queerness, anger, strength, presence, compassion, care, physical wellness, sensuality and a whole lot more:
Meditations and musings by Sam Regan of Baseball Gregg
Hillside hops with Baseball Gregg’s Sam & Luca; photographed by Giacomo Manghi.
Richard Brautigan’s “All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace”
“I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms.
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.”
(Love and Grace)
Brautigan was the first author that ever made me feel like I loved reading. I was a sophomore in high school, the perfect age for an author who can often be sophomoric. He’s an author that occupies a weird space in popular culture; simultaneously relatively unknown and pervasive. My favorite novel of his was (I’ll speak in past tense since it’s been years since I’ve read it) In Watermelon Sugar, which served as inspiration for the hugely popular Harry Styles song. His “Beautiful Poem” makes a completely un-cited appearance in the Harmony Korine film “The Beach Bum,” where authorship is attributed to Moondog (played by Matthew McConaughey.) Then, just a few weeks ago I was inspired to reread the poem “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace” after listening to an NTS program of the same name. Written in 1967, 8 years before Foucault would publish Discipline and Punish and make famous the concept of the panopticon, Brautigan imagines a utopian world in which we are all watched over by machines of loving grace, freed from our labors, in harmony with technology, in a balanced, cybernetic ecology. It’s beautiful, moving, inspiring; it sounds like a techno utopian Steve Jobs speech from the early day of Apple, or like you’re talking to some dipshit San Francisco coke head programmer who just got back from burning man and who thinks we can fix any problem in the world with an app and a blockchain. We are all watched over by machines, whats missing is the love and the grace; what I like to think of (right now please) is a world with more love and grace.
The Kentucky Meat Shower
Meat sample, via Journal of the Bizarre.
(Wonder)
There are a handful of Wikipedia pages that I really like. A notable one is about some guy during a historic flood of the Mississippi River who sabotaged a flood wall made of sandbags and flooded an entire town, doing tons of damage and even killing some people so that he could cheat on his wife without worrying that she would be able to cross the bridge and find him. But my all time favorite Wikipedia article is the Kentucky meat shower of March 3rd 1876 when, over a period of several minutes, 2”x2” chunks of raw meat rained down into a yard in Bath county, Kentucky. Nobody really knows for certain what happened. I like that nobody knows what happened. Reality (if that even exists, the recent Nobel prize in physics seems to state that reality does not have definite fixed properties) is infinitely more complex than our meager 6 senses and the instruments we have cobbled together can perceive. The world of unknown unknowns is vast, and therein lies the truth behind the Kentucky meat shower.
A pastoral stroll with Baseball Gregg’s Sam & Luca; photographed by Giacomo Manghi.
Goose fashion show
(Queerness)
Don’t really have much to say except that these badass geese are destroying traditional gender roles. Watching this is a visceral experience, means to be felt not thought about and analyzed. These geese would look so good wearing the dress from Wong Kar-Wai’s “In the Mood for Love.” I also really love the song “Love is In the Air”
TAYA vs AYAKO for Reina de Reinas
(Anger, Strength)
I recently read the book The Myth of Normal by Gabor Maté, and he clarified a suspicion I’ve had for a while; healthy anger is necessary for humans. Aversion to anger and commitment to pleasantness feels deeply embedded in our culture. I’ve been trying to reclaim anger and during that process of reclamation I’ve noticed that anger can be messy. This fight gets super messy, full of blood and piss. There is an intensity and strength to this performance that I’ve seen in little other media. I know very little about wrestling, and I sincerely hope these women are ok because some of this seems like it should really hurt and do damage to their bodies.
The joie de vivre of Baseball Gregg; photographed by Giacomo Manghi.
Vasily Grossman’s Life and Fate
Vasily Grossman, via Flickr.
(Presence, Compassion, Truth (and the lack thereof))
Of all the books I read this year, this one is the most impressive. It examines a historical moment, the Battle of Stalingrad, from the perspective of a wide swath of USSR citizens and some Nazis. Many of the characters are blood relatives, yet the true thread that ties their lives together is their existence within a time and place, and how politics of that space define their reality. This thread breaks the fourth wall and connects the characters to the author, Grossman and to the novel itself, which was confiscated by the KGB and was only published in 1980 after a secret copy was smuggled out of the USSR on microfilm.
The characters are torn between their true needs and the ideological needs of the state. They ache for and yet shy away from the truth; The truth of their world is too dangerous. I felt a lot of compassion seeing their stifled humanity as they live within the confines of their reality.
Foam back rollers
Foam roller, via Yoga Accessories.
(Physical wellness, sensuality)
It’s important to take care of your back, it will help you to feel better, and feeling better will help you to spread well being beyond the confines of your self. Try to exercise regularly, feel into your body and roll out on one of those foam rollers while listening to some ambient music. It’s one of the best ways to relax and you deserve that.