The House that Jack Built

by Brian Howard

A few notes before digging out the car. Again.

This week's cover story by A.D. Amorosi on Jack Rose, the 38-year-old Philly guitar great who, in December, passed suddenly of a heart attack, has me thinking about the first time I saw Rose perform. It was July 2000 at the Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, N.C., at the third Transmissions festival, an erstwhile weekend-long celebration of out-jazz, experimental noise, laptop-composition, experiential performance art and anything else that purported to expand the boundaries of the sonic experience.

My memory's a little fuzzy on this (that's what three days of listening to people dither on their laptops will do), but Transmissions 003 concluded with a performance by Rose's band, Pelt, who were joined on stage by California drone titans rhBand. After the previous 72 hours of feedback, distortion and prolonged bleeping, blooping and clicking, Pelt took the stage with Tibetan prayer bowls, drawing out layered tones and drones for a performance which would be a stretch to call soothing, but which certainly took the edge off the long weekend of sonic daredevilry. The fest's highlight was a performance by American finger-picking godhead John Fahey — who would pass just seven months later — to whose music Rose's later-career efforts would be so often compared.

I regret that it had been a while since I'd seen Rose play, and after reading Amorosi's moving tribute, I regret it more. Amorosi surveys the extent of Rose's influence, beyond Philadelphia, beyond friend/admirer Thurston Moore, beyond America and Europe, and discovers that quiet Jack Rose, all "humble and grumble," had a reach that outstripped the muted tones of his rare, delicate acoustic guitars.

The Pew Charitable Trusts' Philadelphia Research Initiative just released a new public opinion poll, its third since January 2009, which reveals that, among other things, Mayor Nutter's approval rating among all Philadelphians, which had taken a significant dip in Pew's April 2009 poll, is rebounding, though not back to its high levels of a year ago. News editor Jeffrey Billman's got a more detailed analysis on CP's staff blog, The Clog, category: The Mayor, but the quick take-away, as Billman writes, seems to be this: "With a broad brush, I'd say Nutter weathered the storm. ... To be honest, any tax hike that breaks even in these polls is a rare thing; people always hate tax hikes, even when they want more services. And given the economic shitstorm of the last year, the fact that he's close to even on any budget-related matters has to be a win."

You can download the poll's full results at tr.im/pew_poll. It's an honestly fascinating look at how the city perceives its government — and what else are you gonna do while you're snowed in?

(bhoward@citypaper.net)