Pitchfork

After their successful transition to touring band this year, we were all ready to name David Berman and his Silver Jews Touring Rookies of the Year. But all good things must come to an end, even if that end was back in early September, when the Jews played their last shows of 2006.

Though we previously reported they would play a December 30 date at New York's Webster Hall and a New Year's Eve date at Pearl Street in Northampton, Massachusetts, David Berman recently posted a note on the Silver Jews' website canceling the shows, chalking the cancellations up to the band's need for "winterization."

Berman also explained that he will begin writing for a new album, which he described as "the first thing I've written where the surface tension is acting at all points of the larger composition simultaneously, much like a soap bubble. Huh."

Since he is the poet, we have copied his entire note (full of such descriptions and questionably true claims, such as the involvement of "the horn players from Cherry Poppin' Daddies AND Big Bad Voodoo Daddy" in the canceled shows) for you to read after the jump. It also contains the second mention of Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire in today's Pitchfork news. Weird.

"People,

Good news. Just in time, I realized the two shows at the end of the year must be cancelled! It was a cousin to the realization I had this time last year that I COULD play the 45 shows we played this year. I am so green, I didn't know you had to WINTERIZE the band.

This band only knows spring and summer. Those are the ONLY seasons it knows! This is not a rugged all-season traveling show! Besides, these holiday shows were ill-conceived from the start. The horn players from Cherry Poppin Daddies AND Big Bad Voodoo Daddy? The silhouette face of SE Hinton on a 20 foot dropcloth? The gold body paints and Hittite courtier costumes? I need to leave that stuff to the new breed of young stagestars.

Everything is good...... but only in it's time.
Silence is golden, but speech is silver. And that's pretty good!
Anyway it's time for me to be writing this album which is very exciting as it's the first thing I've written where the surface tension is acting at all points of the larger composition simultaneously, much like a soap bubble. huh.

Well, anyway I'm sorry for any trouble that may ensue from these mistakenly advertized-as-having-been-real shows. We've never been a "the show must go on" proposition. But that's no defense. Don't let me get away with this. I think it was the Wim Wenders movie "Wings of Desire" that turned me off to film at a young age. So, as I pause to let you know that you are welcome to send your grievances to PO box 160009 in Nashville 37216 and I will gladly give your case a reading and a response, I am reminded of Wim Wenders irritating whateveritisness, and how vulnerable we all are to being hated by strangers.

Now I know we're either open for business or we're not. That will be made completely clear in the future. Next year I won't be able to say it's all new to me.

Until then, so sorry, once again.

Love,
David"