On this site I will rant incoherently about songs that have utterly consumed me for extended periods of time. There will be an embedded Youtube video at the bottom of each post where you can easily check out the song. This is not a review site, and I am not a musician, so let's set the bar really low, shall we? If you would like to weather the extended rationale for this wholly irrational site, it’s in the first post.
Why did we do the nice thing and let this random guy get on the lift with us? I'm positive that he's gonna fall over on me when we get off. Not to be ageist, but it's kind of a red flag when a sixty-three year old gets on the lift with a snowboard. There's four of us on the lift, and I'm alone on the outside. He's probably thinking he'd rather take out one person rather than two. The tenuous way he's balancing his board on his left leg, constantly shifting his weight back and forth. I'm screwed. I shoot my friends an eye roll, and they both laugh silently. 1...2...3...4. We get off, and he inexplicably goes right instead of left! He face-plants all over my friends, and I slide smoothly to the top of the run.
When they catch up we go down together, the cool breeze blowing against our faces. The day is perfect: just enough powder, but not too much so that your board sinks four feet under every time you stop. The runs never last long enough, but this one is perfect. It's got enough incline to get speed, and there isn't the usual congestion. Usually there's skiers leisurely traversing, without any realization of the people flying off the run to avoid taking them out. Or the psycho speed racer snowboarders who feel like they get extra points if they fly by people with the slimmest possible margin, leaving their victims physically intact but emotionally traumatized. Or the kiddie lessons, where the instructor drags seven to ten four-year-olds behind him. This is a cute scene, but when you come out of nowhere and they're spread across the entire run practicing pizza and french fries, sometimes it's a choice between Timmy and an oak tree.
But the runs today have been generally free of traffic. As I turn the last corner and the main lodge comes into sight, I'm both disappointed and relieved. It's been a great day, but my legs feel like overcooked fettucini. I can tell I'm tired because instead of picking up speed by riding mostly on my toe edge, more and more I'm easing back onto my heel and gliding down. I fantasize about chugging a cranberry grapefruit SOBE in one gulp, which somehow instantly feels like the equivalent of a Super Mario Bros. Power Up Mushroom. I see us getting back to the cabin, starting a warm fire and relaxing in front of it. I feel the feeling of ripping my pulverized feet out of my boots and taking a warm shower.
Snow season is coming up, and I'm getting excited. I'm also excited because for the first time in a long time I've found some interesting new music. Real Estate and Elite Gymnastics both have really good new albums. The Real Estate album Days is melodic, jangly guitar pop. It doesn't blow me away, but it's really good, and I love the song "It's Real." The Elite Gymnastics Ruin album is half up tempo with breakbeats and Spirited Away-ish samples, and half more ambient and down tempo. I put an example of each. It's impossible to choose a favorite song from the first half of the album, but "Omamori" is solid. "Here, in Heaven 2" might be my favorite downtempo song.
Another TV show promo I saw a lot during my 49er-game-watching last week was for 2 Broke Girls, a show about two broke twenty-something waitresses trying to make it in the big city. One a former heiress that has lost it all, and one a regular old gal that has been broke her entire life. So it's kind of the opposite of The Great Gatsby. The blonde Paris Hilton look-alike is "new broke", and the brunette is "old broke." Since in this world knowing the ins and outs of living in the "lower class" is valued, the blonde is inevitably the butt of most of the jokes. Now you might be saying, "Boy you sure do know a lot about this show for only having watched one minute long clip." Well, I watched the series preview too, I just didn't want to inflict that on you.
So this show might not end up being awful, but the biggest issue I can see is that these actresses were hired for being good-looking. It's not that funny and good-looking are mutually exclusive, but when you watch their chemistry, it all seems really stilted and awkward. Check out this clip-especially their reactions to each others' jokes at the very end:
CAUSE YOU KNOW THEY ALWAYS INVENTORY THE FURS, BITCH! [nervous giggles and awkward smiles at each other]
Obviously what this show needs is a little infusion of an old school waitress sitcom, which dealt with the actual realities of the crappy diner universe.
Are the waitresses generally good looking? NO
Do they generally make jokes that don't just beneath the surface reek of sadness and desperation? NO
Is the clientele generally well-adjusted and not at least partially hating life themselves? NO
Cue the classic TV show Alice, where the waitresses were unattractive, the star was a down-on-her-luck single mother, the other two waitresses were endearing weirdos (Flo, a Southern lady with an acid tongue and a killer catchphrase, and Vera, a bird-brained Olive Oil look-alike), the clientele was uber-creepy, and the head cook was a REAL a**h**e. Just the first minute is enough to get a general idea of the awesomeness:
I'm gonna write an episode of 2 Broke Girls where these two lilly white prima donnas get a job at Mel's Diner. Here goes:
- Max (old broke brunette) and Caroline (new broke blonde) get fired from their old waitressing job for a massive fraud scheme that involves charging $2.96 for a side order of hash browns instead of $2.95. They don't do it because they really think they can make that much money from it, but just because they a) want to see if they can get away with it, and b) both kinda want to get fired, thinking that their endless auditions for parts as extras in NYC sidewalk scenes are finally gonna start paying off in larger roles.
- The sidewalk scenes go nowhere, so they once again resort to looking for waitressing work. Word of their dishonesty has spread around to most of the city diners, so they have to get a job at a suburban joint called Mel's. There's already three waitresses there, but the head cook is a creep and wants to hire some "young blood." He doesn't really care about their shady past, because he thinks he can intimidate anyone into keeping in line.
- Their first day is packed, so all five waitresses are working. Flo immediately sees that Max is gonna need to be kept in line, so she brings the thunder with three obscure animal-related Southern putdowns-Max can only figure out that they're insults by Flo's tone and delivery and the overly boisterous laugh track-and five "KISS MY GRITS." Max immediately learns her place in the pecking order.
- Caroline and Vera immediately bond. Caroline is the only one who doesn't laugh at Vera's antics, because she's just grateful that someone has replaced her as the most clueless person on staff. Alice and Mel, on the other hand, have zero patience for Caroline's prissiness. Alice simply gives her the death stare, but Mel constantly destroys her with brutal one-liners delivered in that vicious bark he's so well known for. At the end of the episode Caroline is crouching in the corner, rocking back and forth and repeating the names of her favorite designers.
- When Max sees what Mel has done to her friend, she decides to take drastic action. Flo just so happens to be cooking a big batch of grits at the time. After Mel scolds Alex for ordering eggs over easy instead of scrambled, Alex picks up the entire vat of piping hot grits, and throws them at Mel's face, screaming in slow motion, "KIIIIISSSSSS THEEEEEEESSSEE, MUUUTTHHA***********!" Mel is left permanently disfigured, which surprisingly ends up being an improvement. Flo offs Max by turning her into a human omelette-not for what she did to Mel, which they had all been wanting to do for a while themselves-but for ripping off her catchphrase.
I admit it: I'm bored with my blog. And as I was watching the first Dolphins game on TV thus far this year (I'm waiting for you, fairy godmother Deion Sanders), I finally found my inspiration for something different to try.
The inspiration was the trailer for what looks like a truly terrible television show. Granted, it could be good (I don't mean that at all-it's just in case somebody out there watches it and has a tendency to get defensive), but I'm gonna go along with the assumption that it's crap.
So what I want to try to do is, based solely on my viewing of this really cringe-inducing promo (which unfortunately isn't online-there's plenty others, though), I'm going to write an episode of the show. I'm not going to take a lot of time to do this, because frankly, I don't think the premise deserves that much of my time. OR DOES IT?! Anyway, here is a trailer. The acting isn't quite as awful as in the one I just saw on TV, but it's still a doozy. There are just a couple of words I'd want to change in the script.
Truly amazing stuff. My thinking is that the text on the screen shouldn't say:
SIX PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES HAVE THE ABILITY TO REMEMBER EVERYTHING. ONLY ONE OF THEM IS A COP.
Instead, it should quite obviously say:
SIX PEOPLE IN THE UNITED STATES HAVE THE ABILITY TO REMEMBER EVERYTHING. ONLY ONE OF THEM IS THIS HOT.
Ok, so here goes nothing. First episode:
-At the beginning of the episode, a Chuckie Cheese employee gets drowned to death in the ball pit by approximately fifteen crazed ten-year-olds who felt shortchanged at that counter where you exchange red tickets for cheaply made trinkets and toys.
- The manager is under suspicion, because he has a record of intentionally overcooking the pizzas, watching it burn the roofs of the mouths of unsuspecting customers, and cackling like a weirdo in the corner. That's actually illegal in Wyoming.
- Detective Unforgettable Red Hair Dye Job waits until the Chuckie Cheese is closed for the night, and goes in there alone, cause who does she need? She remembers everything! She put whole units out of a job when the police department got her resume.
- The manager is innocent, but the fifteen kids are actually his kids, because while he's not guilty of murder, he is guilty of running a Branch Davidian-like compound, where he has seven wives and thirty-two children.
- While the manager had some of his children do his dirty work in the ball pit, now that the heat has been turned up, he's willing to sacrifice himself. While Detective Unf is doing her thing, the manager creeps out of the shadows in full Chuckie mouse (looks more lke a rat to me) mascot costume, wielding a pizza-cutter-upper-into-sections thingie.
- When she sees him, her mind is instantly flooded with every creepy anthropomorphized animal mascot experience she's ever had. The time she ran into Mickey Mouse's arms at Disney World, and the voice came out like a sixty-five year old homeless man on a bender. The time Donald Duck's quacking sounded more like he was yacking up his breakfast (which subsequently made her yack on her little brother when she got on the Teacups ride).
- The one thing that made her the best detective also made her the worst combatant in a woman-versus-pizza slicer competition. She ended up in twelve equal pieces, and the writers (thankfully) unintentionally wrote themselves out of a show.
It's weird what scares people. I had been sick all last week, so I seriously slacked on getting together my costume (actually I usually slack, unless it's some simple pun costume). I grabbed a clown mask at Walgreen's fifteen minutes before the party started Friday night. I expected to walk in and have to make excuses as to why I had such a boring costume on, compared to all the elaborate Chinese take-out and Chiquita Banana costumes.
Boy, was I wrong. People were cowering in corners, whimpering like six-year-olds that think they've seen a monster under their bed. Three times I was having a conversation with a person and they said, in an even tone always on the verge of cracking, "I'm sorry, but we are going to be unable to carry on this conversation with that thing on your face." So I guess in the end the costume was a hit!
I had a scary music post last year, but this one's gonna go in a slightly different direction. "Goodbye Horses" by Q Lazarus existed before the movie Silence of the Lambs, but the scene in that film turned it into one of the scariest songs ever. Every time it comes on, I get chills and need to take a cold shower. You know what I mean if you've seen it. The scene's been spoofed to death, but a million spoofs can't stop that movie from being genuinely frightening.
Brian Eno is really good at making scary music. Last year I put one of his electronic songs in the scary music post, but "Baby's on Fire" gets its scariness from the vocals, lyrics, insane Robert Fripp guitars, and general oppressively dark atmosphere. Thankfully there's a bit of tongue-in-cheek in there too, cause 70s Brian Eno actually looks a lot like Silence of the Lambs's Buffalo Bill. TOO CLOSE FOR COMFS.
The last track, Tricky's "Ponderosa," isn't really scary, but it has a dark mood, and I love it so much. The contrast between the heavy beats and Martina Topley-Bird's paper thin vocals is so sexy. Tricky was so amazing at creating atmosphere, and "different levels of the devil's company" just sounds bad ass, like that Bible passage Jules recites every time he's about to off someone in Pulp Fiction.
Intensely emotional singer-songwriters might be the genre for which I have the lowest threshold for crappiness. The second the singer seems to be going over the top without sincerity (through my slightly jaded perception, I suppose) or is lacking the vocal chops to pull off his or her grand statement, I completely tune out. If you're gonna sing about your shoes filling up with rain at a funeral, you better bring it, or I'm gonna dump the water on your overly maudlin head.
A select few can pull it off, and when it's right, it can be magical. Astral Weeks by Van Morrison defies description, so I'll describe it for you here. Apparently he went into the studio, showed the musicians the lyrics, and just told them to play it how they feel. The jazz musicians went off, and somehow it worked. Sometimes the album sounds shambolic and exuberant, and other times it sounds balanced and peaceful. If there could ever be a benevolent exorcism performed, I think Morrison's vocals on this album would be the result. Though it would interesting to do a remix of the album with Linda Blair's Lucifer-channeling voice singing these tunes instead of Van. Just to see how it would turn out. Emo-classic-horror-core.
Jeff Buckley blew up when I was in high school. He died very young, as did his father, so of course the talk about him focuses as much on that mythology as on the music itself. He pulled off really emotional lyrics because he had an amazing voice, and could play the gee-tar like a champ. Grace is a great album, and these are two of my favorite tracks.
PS: There are four new albums I've been looking forward to that I HAVE to listen to this week. I am convinced (or hoping desperately) that I will really like at least one of these albums. I really need some new music.
Now that the NBA is locked out and could possibly cancel the entire season, it's time to seriously reassess which sports are worth following, and which aren't. Let's get right down to it, shall we? I'll go in ascending order of interest.
- Nascar: Awful. Incomprehensibly boring. Driving in a circle for hours on end, with maybe three minutes at the end that decides the race. Maybe I don't understand the subtleties of this sport that make it so compelling, but I've got a feeling that it doesn't get much more nuanced than a case of Natty Light and staring at really loud blurs all day. I love how they're trying to introduce this professional wrestling aspect to it, with the drivers getting in each other's faces at the end of the race. Snoooooooooooze. Talk about trying to manufacture drama in a sport that provides none. This sport is getting way too popular, and being shown way too much on Sportscenter. Truly frightening trend.
MMA: Can't get into it at all. When I was a kid, boxing was fun to watch, with Tyson, Hagler, Hearns, Sugar Ray Leonard, etc. Now it's garbage, and this is just as bad. The matches last thirty seconds, and they just seem barbaric. I'm usually not squeamish, but I just feel like a bad person watching it. I feel like I should be calling the cops or something. I feel like Sylvester Stallone in Rocky IV, hopelessly watching while Apollo Creed gets his head bashed in. THROW IN THE TOWEL! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! And I'm bored at the same time, somehow.
Soccer: Fun to watch, especially when I know a bunch of players on the teams. I'm a pretty casual fan, but it is a fun sport to watch. It's almost like starting to watch the show Weeds, though. I feel like I already watch enough series/sports. If I totally threw myself down this rabbit hole, I might never resurface.
- College football: I love watching my Gators, but unless it's a huge matchup between top ten teams, or I'm vicariously rooting through a friend, I don't really have a huge amount of interest in watching other college football games. Utah vs. Nevada? I'd rather gnaw on a barbed wire fence.
Tennis: Tennis is my favorite sport to play, so of course I love watching it.
- Pro basketball: I still enjoy watching it, but there's not enough parity, and certain players almost single-handedly destroy entire teams (IE Carmelo Anthony and the Knicks). I won't really be upset if they cancel the season. More time for other things!
College Basketball: I love watching the Gators, but-unlike with football-I also fairly consistently enjoy watching other late-season top twenty-five games. The tournament is so freaking great.
- Pro football: The general obsession with fantasy football is annoying, but I still enjoy watching the games. Once again, my team blows right now, but hopefully we'll be awful enough to draft Andrew Luck.
- Baseball: I love baseball, and have since childhood. As a kid I pored over box scores, memorized statistics, and got hooked for life by the great NY Met teams. For some, though, the slow pace doesn't provide enough instant gratification and second-to-second action to appeal to them. It's somewhat similar to people's qualms with soccer. If you're really into it, and get into the subtleties of the game, it's fascinating. If you're a casual fan, it might seem boring at times. Myself, I'll never stop following baseball, no matter how disgusting and depressing the Mets get.
Once again, there's no transition to the music portion of this post. One of the guys from Primal Scream joined The Jesus and Mary Chain very early on, and lemme tell ya, he did a great job with both groups! "Just Like Honey" is from J&MC's classic debut album Psychocandy, and uses the intro to "Be My Baby" and mega-fuzzy guitars to great effect. "April Skies" is from Darklands, and while it sounds more conventional, it also absolutely destroys me. Every time the section from 1:23-2:08 comes on, I wanna jump around and pump my fists like I'm in a John Hughes movie montage.
"Slip Inside This House" is a housey old tune from the great Primal Scream album Screamadelica. Every time another element comes in, the song just keeps getting better. So flipping good.
I was born to an elderly father with a predilection for sports cars. Most of the music he played in these cars were CDs that the dealership salesman gave him to showcase the sound system in his prospective purchase. Therefore, I have many childhood memories of racing down the street in an Acura NSX at approximately five to seven miles below the speed limit, the Top Gun soundtrack blaring at a reasonable volume so as to not put unnecessary strain on the speakers. When the Early Bird special at The Chart House was winding down, sometimes we'd crank it up to sixty-eight miles per hour on the highway. Daytona Beach cops were notorious for handing out speeding tickets, but one time they pulled Dad over in a Porsche for going too slow.
The Miami Vice and Flashdance soundtracks were always in heavy rotation in Dad's car. In fact, the opening montage to the Miami Vice show might have been one of the main reasons we moved from New York to Florida. Palm trees! Beautiful women! Fast cars! Speedboats! Jai alai! Oh. Wait. No one cares about-or even knows-jai alai. Anyway. To this day, I think the Miami Vice theme song is awesome.
"Maniac" is a pretty sweet song from Flashdance, another 80s classic. Whoever made this video totally blew it when he put "Just a still town girl on a Saturday night" as the opening lyric. IT'S STEEL TOWN GIRL. That's what makes the movie so inspiring! She's a steel worker who becomes a star! It's like Zoolander in reverse!
"Nightcall" by Kavinsky is on the soundtrack of the movie Drive. The entire movie has a very eighties feel to it, right down to the florescent pink tiger print font and the spooked-out Michael Mann-ish cinematography. The synths in this song are very eighties, and the transition from the creepy machine voice to the saccharine chorus is great.
Next week is the ten year anniversary of September 11th, and already there have been plenty of news articles and videos shown on the internet "commemorating" the occasion. I get that it has to be remembered, and it's one of those moments/days/eras that will never be forgotten in American history, but I'm not really looking forward to the continued coverage. I'm sure much of it will veer from tasteful remembrance of the victims to foaming-at-the-mouth anti-Muslim diatribes, irrational war debates, and renewed conspiracy theory garbage. Here's to hoping that the focus is kept on honoring the people lost, and making the world safer for everyone moving forward.
There were other things going on at the beginning of the twenty-first century, at least until September 10th. There were quite a few great NYC rock bands coming up, releasing albums that would actually survive past the usual six-month shelf life of many popular indie albums. Some of the bands themselves ended up flaming out after a few more albums, but surprisingly many are still making solid records ten years later.
The Walkmen are an interesting band. They have real talent, and some of their songs, including "We've Been Had," are legitimately great. I saw them play live once, though, and they were kinda boring. I feel like they're one of those bands that has to be in the right mood to play a great show. "We've Been Had" has really great quarter-life crisis lyrics, and that piano loop is perfection.
The album Is This It by The Strokes is just so great. Everyone wanted to hate them cause Julian Casablancas' dad was a record company exec, but it turned out that every damn song on that album was completely catchy and awesome. Their subsequent records haven't been as good, but this album won't ever go away.
By the time Interpol came around, the NYC rock revival scene had almost petered out. They were accused of being Joy Division rip-offs, but it was really just Banks' vocals that were responsible for that. "Untitled" is still an amazing opener.
Why am I writing about Washed Out? They're really not that great. They're pretty good, but in the high stakes world of hopelessly nerdy music dorkdom, their derivative second tier chillwave just doesn't really cut it. But here I am, posting their song for the world (or my five to seven readers) to see. Why do this? Because they served a very specific function for me this summer. When I was walking around New York City during an especially brutal heat wave, I went out of my way to listen to music that made me feel a bit cooler. Not hipster cooler, but turn the thermostat from 104 to 93 cooler. Listening to hard rock or hardcore rap probably was not going to achieve that. I needed something dreamy, effervescent, fluffy, and generally light on the ears. It didn't really matter that the song was so light on the ears that it would more than likely eventually completely disappear from my reality, it was the fact that it was there for me in my time of need that mattered.
One group that has been at least some sort of inspiration for Washed Out are The Magnetic Fields. Their album Holiday will, and has stood the test of time. "The Trouble I've Been Looking For" is posted below. If certain new bands wear their influences on their sleeves, you can at least check the sleeve and find out some other good bands to listen to!
Rock the Bells was yesterday. It's the third time I've gone, and there were a few new treats this year. They started doing some full albums last year, and continuing that trend this year with more legendary albums was exciting. Here's a chronological run-down of the performances I watched:
Souls of Mischief performing '93 Till Infinity: We got to the show about halfway through the album, but fortunately the last three songs, '93 Till Infinity, Limitations, and Anything Can Happen are my three favorite songs on the album. Good stuff.
Common performing Be: Ok. I like Common. I recognize that he's talented. There are even songs of his that I love. But watching him for over an hour, especially when there are other acts I'm more excited to see, can be rough. His lyrics sometimes make me feel like I'm watching a Dr. Phil episode with beats. I'm not saying that I'm against rap with positive lyrics, but the production often mirrors the lyrics, and sometimes there's just not a lot of bite to it. I'm posting an old song of his I do love. Sadly he didn't play it.
Black Star (Mos Def and Talib Kweli) performing Black Star: Well this proves that I'm not biased against "positive rap," cause Black Star discuss similar themes, but the lyrics are better, the production is better, and Mos Def in particular just has a very distinctive voice and flow. "Respiration" is one of my favorite songs (I actually use it to open poetry units sometimes, cause the lyrics are so good), and it sounded great.
Cypress Hill performing Black Sunday: At first I was really bummed to hear that they weren't performing their first album, because that's a better album. Black Sunday is good, but their self-titled is great. Thankfully they opened with my three favorite songs from their first album! B-Real is another MC with a very distinctive voice (DJ Muggs does too, actually), and Cypress Hill's songs came off really good live. After two consecutive hours of positivity, it was good to get grimy again. I'm posting "Real Estate," a great song with a filthy sample from their first album.
Mobb Deep performing The Infamous: Speaking of grime, this might be the ultimate grime album. Prodigy and Havoc have always been two of the best MCs, and they haven't lost it. "Survival of the Fittest" and Shook Ones, Part II" sounded especially great.
Genius/Gza performing "Liquid Swords": I've been waiting to see this album performed live for a long time, and it was great. It's not the kind of album that is gonna get people jumping around; the beats are great, but they're slightly more down-tempo than the ones on 36 Chambers and Cuban Linx. They're more of a showcase for Gza's ridiculous lyrics and flow. The stage got really packed as people started filtering over from Nas (who we skipped cause we'd seen before), and everyone was loving it.
Lauryn Hill: Meh. Forty-five minutes late at the end of a long day. We'd seen her before, so we listened to a couple of songs then beat the crowd out. She was the queen of the world for a while, but unfortunately (mostly due to her own choices, it seems) she's not anymore. Please tone down the diva. Thanks!
Summer's over, and it was back to school this past week. As a high school English teacher, the year has a necessary rhythm and cycle of regeneration. By the time the end of May comes, my brain (and body, it seems) is beat up and in need of some rest (at least from teaching). Then, towards the end of summer, after the time off and ability to consume some of the things I've been putting off ten months, I'm recharged, excited and hungry to go back to school. This past summer was especially fruitful in terms of feeding myself the things that make me excited about language, art, and life in general. For the interest of time, I'm simply gonna list some of these things:
1) The play Jerusalem
I'm quite sure people are tired of hearing me talking about this, but it was seriously one of the most amazing nights of my life watching this play. We somehow lucked into third row seats, and it was mind-blowing. I had never seen Mark Rylance act before, but from this point on I'll watch anything he's in, even if it's the Broadway version of Police Academy Five. The play was hilarious, sad, twisted, and had an ending scene that could make a person or two in the audience pass out.
2) The book A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley: Granted, Exley does not seem like a nice guy, but can he ever write! Hysterical and beautifully written.
3) The book Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides: One of those long, epic books that covers a century and multiple countries, but is so engaging and well-written that it never for a minute gets boring. Then I get sad at the end cause I can't read any more about the characters.
4) Outside Lands Music Festival: Friday night was a bit frustrating because we missed Big Boi and Erykah Badu, because Big Boi never came on and Badu's set had to be pushed back. Other than that, however, it was great fun and beautiful weather. Here's my ranking of favorite sets from the weekend. A list within a list!
1. Tune-Yards: I loved watching her sample and loop her vocals and drums at the beginning of songs to construct the foundation, and her voice and the beats sounded great as she sang over them. Also, she just looked like she was having so much fun, and was genuinely appreciative of the large crowd that gathered for her early set.
2. Toro Y Moi: He gets pigeonholed by that corny genre term "chillwave," but his songs are also influenced by funk and R & B. He was really fun live, and I can't wait to hear his next record.
3. The Arcade Fire: They're always great live, but even though their new record is pretty good, seeing them perform again just reinforces that they've never been able to replicate the greatness of their first album. That's no crime: Funeral is so good, it's practically impossible to follow. They'll always be a solid live band, though.
4. The Fresh and Onlys: This a local San Francisco band that has been blowing up a bit along with some other San Francisco bands. They had really solid, hooky rock songs, and I'm glad they played on a smaller stage. I'm definitely gonna check out their stuff.
5. The Black Keys: They are definitely a great band, but for me they are not built to play on a huge main stage at a festival. I saw them at The Warfield and they kicked ass. The Arcade Fire and U2 play songs that are made for large venues-The Black Keys need to pummel you in a small club.
6. Tamaryn: I wasn't sure if her shoegazey rock would work well in an outdoor venue, but I enjoyed her set. The vocals weren't drowned in the mix, and the hooks came through.
7. Ty Seagall: Another local San Francisco rock band, but heavier than The Fresh and Onlys. Solid set.
One of the best things about the festival is always just being in Golden Gate Park for the weekend, and being reminded of what a beautiful city we all live in. A perfect send off for the summer.
5) I bought my first piece of art!: My friend Max is an amazing artist ( http://maxehrman.carbonmade.com/ ), and I bought something from him for my apartment. Nothing huge or overly expensive, but I miss living with art, so a little piece here and there makes my apartment feel like home.
6) The book Just Kids by Patti Smith: I've loved her music for a long time now, but it was really inspiring to hear how completely dedicated she and Mapplethorpe were to art and each other. All the crazy stories about artists, musicians, and writers at The Chelsea Hotel ( :( http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2028125/Hotel-Chelsea-New-York-closes-Where-Dylan-Thomas-drank-death.html ) and CBGB were also fascinating to read about. I almost lost it when I read about her hearing "Marquee Moon" by Television for the first time at CBGB.
Listen to her vocals! She is THE BEST. "AND THE NIGHTMARES! G-L-O-R-AYE-AYE-AYE-AYE-AYE-GLORIA! GLOOOOOOOOOOORIA!"
7) The Gertrude Stein Collection at SFMOMA, Kandinsky at the Bauhaus at The Guggenheim, and Lyonel Feininger at The Whitney. Had a Bauhaus day in New York City, then went and saw some amazing paintings by Picasso, Matisse, Cezanne, etc. here in SF. It was also interesting to hear about the Steins' lives as collectors and patrons.
8) Writing: I got to do more of my own writing this summer, which always gets me more excited to teach once the year comes back around. It's hard to sustain a lengthy project, but the more determined i am in keeping at it, the more I find out about myself as a writer.
9) The Who's Harry Nilsson? And Why is Everybody Talkin' About Him? documentary: Harry Nilsson rules, and this documentary was a great window into his creative process, his sometimes self-destructive behavior, and just how much the greatest musicians on the planet love his music. One of the best parts is when he describes writing the song "One." He was listening to a phone's busy signal when he came up with the repeated piano note (and probably the theme of the song itself).
I have to add one of his songs that's sung by Shelley Duvall. He wrote it for Popeye, but Paul Thomas Anderson also used it to great effect in Punch Drunk Love. I love it so much.
The section at 1:25 is just so perfect.
No one ever asked before, before, because they never needed me
"But I do"
But he does!
Maybe it's because he's so alone
Maybe it's because he's never had a home
He needs me
NOTE: If you wanna get into Nilsson, you should probably start with the album Nilsson Schmillson. It's amazing.
I could go on, but this post is already way too long. All of the above things make me feel giddy and happy to be alive. And now that I'm rested and renewed, it's great to be back at school! So it goes...
The most succinct definition of hipster I found on urbandictionary.com reads as follows:
"One who possesses tastes, social attitudes, and opinions deemed cool by the cool. (Note: it is no longer recommended that one use the term "cool"; a Hipster would instead say "deck.") The Hipster walks among the masses in daily life but is not a part of them and shuns or reduces to kitsch anything held dear by the mainstream. A Hipster ideally possesses no more than 2% body fat."
Uh, what the hell is "deck"? Oh well. I don't think I ever had a hipster card to lose in the first place. Anyway, I would add that oftentimes hipster culture involves incorporating certain trends that originated in the past, often in the 70s or 80s. There's even a funny site called Dads Are the Original Hipsters that takes hipsters to task for appropriating trends that their dads made cool.
Music of course is always a huge part of these scenes, and there are some bands whose music could easily end up on that site. I would argue, however, that you can tell when a band is simply aping the sound of the 70s and 80s for no real reason, as the song beneath the nostalgic facade is usually garbage. But when there's a solid foundation, and the production simply serves the song, then it can be successful.
"Chinatown" by Destroyer and "One Evening" by Feist both do a solid job of incorporating smooth 80s sounds into their song, but there's also a good song there, so it works. They also both have solid, diverse catalogues, so their albums transcend any 80s revival gimmicks. Both "Arthur's Theme" by Christopher Cross and "Self Control" by Laura Branigan are great 80s hits, and pay special attention to the amazing Branigan video. There's a man making love to a cello at 2:47, and the scene at 3:24 with the hands desperately grabbing at a terrified Branigan is a crushing metaphor for something, but I'm still trying to figure it out. Feel free to leave a comment if you can decipher it.
A while ago I read this great short essay called "Never Do That To A Book" by Anne Fadiman. It was part of a collection of writings that all dealt with the love of books. This one divided readers into two kinds: courtly and carnal. Courtly readers are very formal with their books-they use bookmarks, they never write in them or fold the top corners. Carnal readers, on the other hand, sort of lovingly manhandle their books. They fold them, write all over them, use them as doorstops, hold the place by splaying them upside down at the current page (!), etc. She made carnal readers sound so... I don't know, hot? Haha. I instinctively got almost defensive, because I'd always been a courtly reader. I loved the look and feel of new books, and never wanted to sully them with folds, scribbles, and warped covers. But there was something in the piece that made me reconsider my stance:
During the next thirty years I came to realize that just as there is more than one way to love a person, so is there more than one way to love a book. The chambermaid believed in courtly love. A book's physical self was sacrosanct to her, its form inseparable from its content; her duty as a lover was Platonic adoration, a noble but doomed attempt to conserve forever the state of perfect chastity in which it had left the bookseller. The Fadiman family believed in carnal love. To us, a book's words were holy, but the paper, cloth, cardboard, glue, thread and ink that contained them were a mere vessel, and it was no sacrilege to treat them as wantonly as desire and pragmatism dictated. Hard use was a sign not of disrespect but of intimacy.
Needless to say, she won me over to the carnal side. Since then I've been treating my books like Madonna treats Willem Defoe in Body of Evidence. Actually, no, not quite that, I just wanted to use Body of Evidence in a post. Remember how awful that movie was? Anyways, my most recent tryst has been with the book A Fan's Notes, and I've been folding it up more than an origamist with Tourette's Syndrome (wait, did I just write that? [and does it make any sense?]) So many excerpts just kill me. Here's one I love:
Now I see in that laughter a good deal of desperation and sadness. About to leave the haven of our separate universities and be thrown out onto the brutal free-spinning of the world, as we walked arm in arm through the snow, we carried with us, if only unconsciously, the knowledge that it would be our last holiday together; and we drank and laughed and sneered with the resolute sadness of men who knew that tomorrow we'd be trying to free our own mortgaged Buicks from our own snowlocked drives. That is what most of us ended up doing. I didn't; but I don't question that my friends were right and I wrong, that they were happy and I not, that theirs was the hard and mine the easy way. What always saddened me on confronting them was the surety that had I been foolish enough to bring up "old times," none would have allowed himself a memory of sticking his finger into the vaporous and flaky air and shouting, "Shovel, you f*cking dummies!" A self-destructively romantic man, I accepted our jeering defiance as a pact; forever.
One of the great things about music is sometimes profound emotions can be conveyed without the use of words, or at least words spoken in a language that can be understood. Ten years I ago I heard the album Agaetis Byrjun by Sigur Ros for the first time, and I loved it. It's almost audaciously beautiful, and makes me think in one instant, "What gave these guys the b*lls to think they could pull this record off?" and in the next instant think, "Well, cause they did." The lyrics are half in Icelandic, and half in some language they just made up, but it doesn't matter. When Jonsi sings, "Eee chee oooo oooo eeeeeeeeeh," I'm like, "YES! YES! EEE CHEEE OOOO OOOO EEEEEEEHHHH."
The song I posted is "Viorar Vel Til Loftarasa." When I saw Sigur Ros live and they played this song, my head almost exploded. Listen to the whole thing.
I loved Digable Planets when I was a kid. I'm posting "Rebirth of Slick" from their debut album because it was their big hit (and it's great), but there's practically no filler on the entire thing. One of my favorite verses is from the second track, "Pacifics":
Wake up, prayin' that the game's on Maybe it's the Runnin' Rebs, maybe it's the Knicks maybe it's a rerun of an old tv show like hawaii 5-0 or karate flicks maybe if the phone rings butterfly will take wings speakin on some cool things frontin like i cope born under flat ground now i'm chillin shaky ground reachin for pacific heights sunday is my rope - dig it Sunday's to relax, Sunday's to relax Some Sunday morning drama is callin up my mama The hot line is in I guess the ? knew the deal Vibin off the jams of the crews on Sugarhill Lay around and think ain't nothin to do Checkin out some frommes, some satre, camus Mingus's Ah Um, damn Roach can drum The DP's are life there they go here they come It's time to grab some loot put on the timber boots Checking out some dollies/dali's like tasha and kamali NY is a museum with its posters and graffiti If you're in the city on Sunday come check me, get with me
I was always kinda bummed that they fell out of sight after their second album, Blowout Comb, which was also really good. "9th Wonder (Blackitolism)" is probably my favorite track from that record. I was stunned when I heard that Shabbaz Palaces was Butterfly's (the main rapper from DP) new project. I'm really digging the new album Black Up so far. The first two youtubes below (with impossibly long titles) are from that album.
Usually I post about songs and albums that I am very familiar and obsessed with, but this new Bon Iver album is THE HOT THING right now, so I felt like I would be remiss in not checking it out. I also made a concerted effort to listen to the entire thing from front to back, which is quite a feat for me. I was in the laundromat, and I read A Fan's Notes by Frederick Exley (which you should all read because it's amazing) during the wash cycle, and threw on Bon Iver while the dryer was doing its business.
It generally takes me at least a few listens through an album to really figure out what I feel about it, but on first listen Bon Iver was very nice. Though the songs didn't all sound the same, there was a very definite mood running throughout them. I had the feeling of sitting peacefully in a thatched hut with four to six faceless but benevolent souls. And then the last song came on. All of a sudden Peter Cetera, doing a flying ninja kick, crashed through the roof of the hut and sh*t "Glory of Love" on all of our heads. We were jolted out of our reverie, with flashbacks of law of diminishing return Karate Kid sequels splattering the fragile walls of our collective psyche. I don't even know if I'll end up liking this song, but the clash with the rest of the album on first listen was startling.
I've posted "Calgary," which, while halfway through becomes the most uptempo track, feels very similar in mood to the rest of the album, as well as "Peter Cetera" 2011 and Peter Cetera 1986. To be clear, I'm not hating on Peter Cetera, but let's also be clear that there is only one Peter Cetera, and nowhere in his vast real estate collection are there any thatched huts to be found.
Summer is a time for experimentation. And no, I don't mean chugging a bottle of Drano while wearing a coat made entirely of live ferrets. I mean writing a book, taking a trip, or growing a beard! Yes, for the first time in my suddenly not that short life, I am growing a beard. And it's fun! It's like I'm building an entirely new face. And there are surprises along the way. Oh yes. I figured the beard would simply grow in brown, like my hair. But no. Oh no. The base color is a reddish-brown (Crayola term), and there are quite a few gray hairs joining the party.
One would think that these gray hairs would immediately send me into a panic, gazing into the mirror to see my own mortality staring back at me in the form of twelve to seventeen wispy strands of existential angst. Nah. I think they look cool! I feel like this look will lend my bad puns a certain gravitas they've been previously lacking. And the possibilities of beard art are seemingly endless. Perhaps I will rotate dying the beard different colors, like Michael Cera's girlfriend does with her hair in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Perhaps I will turn the mustache into a Rollie Fingers style handlebar, or a Fu Manchu.
Will I probably end up doing any of these things? No. But has my face been transformed from a static, lifeless cardboard facade to a dynamic palate ready to be embellished in any way I see fit? No, not really that either. But yeah, I got a beard!
Speaking of experimentation, DJ Shadow and Flying Lotus are two of the best experimental "dj/producer/IDM/EDM/people who create sound" artists of recent memory. DJ Shadow's a bit past his prime, but Endtroducing still stands up as an amazing album. "The Number Song" mixes a sample of the Metallica instrumental "Orion" with crazy drum samples. "Do the Astral Plane" by Flying Lotus has everything but a sample of the kitchen sink. Groooooooan. See that bad pun goes over better with the beard. Really.
There have only been a few times in my life when I've thought to myself, "Have I ever been this happy before?" One of those times was at Iguazu Falls in Argentina. My friend and I walked the trails for a few hours, and everywhere we went there was a spectacular new perspective. Looking from the edge of the rail and watching the water plunge downward, or craning our necks to see the water crash down towards us. The sound of the falls was both powerful and peaceful, like a thousand hummingbirds on steroids. Rainbows might seem a bit cliche in conversation, but when they spread across a clear blue sky speckled with the foam from countless waterfalls, it's an amazing sight. And this place had more rainbows than a Lucky Charms commercial.
Maybe the best part was when we took a little speedboat into the actual falls. The driver took us right by one of the biggest ones and said, "Are you ready to go in?!" We all yelled affirmations like schoolgirls at a Taylor Swift concert, and he gunned it straight into the fall. The fall seemed to get exponentially taller as we approached it, and my friend and I clutched each other to brace for impact. Our giddy yelps were blotted out by the crashing water, and when we re-emerged into the daylight we all screamed at the driver to go again. He obliged, and we did another circle. Between the beauty of the scenery, the peaceful grandeur of the waterfalls, and the excitement and comradery our group felt in experiencing this together, it immediately jumped into the top five on my list of "Top 10 Best Days Ever." It's currently sandwiched somewhere between the time my first record went platinum and the time I knocked out Apollo Creed.
When I can't travel for one reason or another, I like to listen to a little Joni Mitchell. Most of her songs deal with love, some exotic, exciting place, or a combination of both. The way her love songs rise above generic is that she really bears her soul. Reading her lyrics is like dissecting a frog in fifth grade science class. It's all there to see, and sometimes it ain't pretty. Thankfully, she can write, so her lyrics don't come across awkwardly emo so much as exposed, vulnerable, and honest. The lighter songs often deal with exciting places, and in transporting me to Paris, Africa, or wherever, it's both a vicarious journey and an inspiration to go there myself.
My two favorite Joni records are Blue and Court and Spark. "Carey" is a really light-hearted, fun song on a pretty intense album. "This Flight Tonight" is magical. It sounds like she's playing the acoustic right next to the speaker, and her vocals sound so good. I also love the acoustic sound on "People's Parties," and the lyrics are incredible. Here's a couple of stanzas:
All the people at this party They've got a lot of style They've got stamps of many countries They've got passport smiles Some are friendly Some are cutting Some are watching it from the wings Some are standing in the centre Giving to get something
Photo Beauty gets attention Then her eye paint's running down She's got a rose in her teeth And a lampshade crown One minute she's so happy Then she's crying on someone's knee Saying laughing and crying You know it's the same release
The transition from "People's Parties" into "Same Situation" is perfect, but I can't replicate it through youtube, and three youtubes is enough, dammit!
I have jury duty tomorrow. San Francisco never fails to send a jury duty summons on a yearly basis. I always postpone it to the summer, and so here I am. Doing my duty as a citizen of the United States of America. It won't be that bad if I'm chosen, as long as it's not some boring trial about zoning restrictions or a fender bender. If I'm gonna get chosen for a trial, I want it to be for something juicy, like a dog mauling case involving a rabid chihuahua, or a billionaire heiress accused of shoplifting two hundred boxes of Fruit Roll Ups.
It would be interesting to observe the entire process of a jury trial, though I'm sure it wouldn't conform to all the cliches that movies and TV shows have hammered into my head through the years. There will probably be no star witness called to the stand, and no cross-examination showdown culminating in the witness lunging at the defense attorney screaming, "YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT JUSTICE! MY BROTHER DIED FOR HIS SINS, AND YOU'LL DIE FOR YOURS!!!!!!!"
The thing that appeals to me about trials is the intellectual showdown aspect. It's like that Gladiatior movie, but instead of Russell Crowe and some random villain with undefined muscular tone and a creepy steel mask, it's two brains staring each other down in the center of the ring. It's like the Wrestlemania of the mind. Actually, it'd be pretty sweet if each attorney had a finishing move. At the end of his closing argument, if he knows the trial is really in the bag, he can get the other lawyer in a figure four leglock, finish him off with a suplex, or do a body slam from the turnbuckle.
I definitely had a wrestling phase when I was a kid. Some of my favorites were The Iron Sheik, Andre the Giant, Jake "The Snake" Roberts, Bret "The Hitman" Hart, and of course Randy "Macho Man" Savage. Obviously wrestling is fake, and obviously it's totally corny, but the man was freaking hilarious. "Macho Man" passed away recently, and beneath the songs I'm posting a classic clip of him with Mean Gene Okerlund, who was an amazing straight man for all the weirdo wrestlers. The end of the clip is gold. "Can I ask a question, Macho Man?" "NO MORE QUESTIONS!" "I'm sorry about that." :D
To get me in an ideological lather before the possible trial, I've been listening to some Gang of Four lately. They have great lyrics and killer buzzsaw guitars, but above all else the rhythm section in this band is incredible. "Damaged Goods" is perhaps their "hookiest" song, "At Home He's a Tourist" shows how great they are live, and their kickass rhythm section owns "Natural's Not In It." I had no idea that "Natural's Not In It" was used in the Marie Antoinette soundtrack. Whatever. JUST FUELING MY IDEOLOGICAL FIRE.
I'm a hyper person. This manifests itself in a few ways. I'll be driving to school early in the morning, and instead of slowly easing into the morning with some NPR or a laid back Miles Davis record, I'll choose to taser my cranium with glitched out Aphex Twin tracks, or pummel my eardrums with a really heavy Sonic Youth record. Every once in a while I'll have to consciously stop myself and put on something a little more chilled out. This idea may or may not occur to me, depending on my mood.
Sometimes tending towards the hyper side can come in useful. I bat leadoff for my softball team, and it's not because I'm the best hitter. I generally hit singles, but I hit them pretty regularly, and once I'm on my base my spastic energy usually works to my advantage. When I'm in the outfield, I might back up the left fielder while playing right center, just because I'm bored and feel like running. This doesn't always help anybody, but it's fun!
There is, of course, a down side to being hyper, even on the softball field. I lost my spikes a couple months ago, and I've been playing Russian Roulette and going without since then. Last night I hit a single to an outfield playing unnecessarily deep (apparently their team is deficient in the scouting department). I ran to second, and then thought that the mediocre throw might allow me to make it to third. It didn't, and I had to throw on the brakes and quickly get back to second. Well, I busted @#*. For some reason I also like wearing basketball shorts while playing softball, so my exposed legs ended up looking like the filling for strawberry rhubarb pie. Being the indomitable warrior that I am, I toughed it out and scored, but my legs are still looking pretty rugged today.
It reminded me of the last time I skinned up my legs this badly. I was at summer "gifted camp" (nerd alert!), and I was running back to my Western Carolina University dorm as fast as I could. I was about to execute a trade of some old Batman comic book for a copy of Metallica's Ride The Lightning, and boy was I pumped. I was running faster than lightning, if you catch my drift. I ran around the corner, and while I excitedly saw the dorm coming into view, I completely failed to notice that the sidewalk suddenly ended. It was only about a two foot drop, but when I landed on the concrete my legs suddenly knew pain like they had never known before. After nervously glancing around to ensure that no one had witnessed this Wiley Coyote-falling-off-the-cliff moment, I proceeded to drag my tattered carcass the rest of the way to the dorm. The only thing that kept me going was the promise of rubbing alcohol and speed metal. In the end, however, perhaps my ordeal allowed me to relate more easily to James Hetfield's tortured cries and Kurt Hammett's furious shredding.
Metallica has become the poster band of lame in the last decade or so, with Lars Ulrich's Napster whining, their bloated symphonic versions of old songs, and that silly documentary filled with band bickering and art buying. Back in the day, however, they were pretty awesome. I worshipped Ride The Lightning, Master of Puppets, and ...And Justice For All, and the following songs were my favorites from each album. Master of Puppets was the album I loved most, but the video for "One" immediately caught my attention. A KID GETS EVERYTHING BLOWN OFF IN WAR AND IS FORCED TO CONTINUE LIVING?!?! THAT'S SO MESSED UP, AND SOOOO... METAL.
When I heard about the Rock the Bells lineup this summer, I almost lost it. Gza performing Liquid Swords, Raekwon & Ghostface performing Only Built for Cuban Linx, Nas performing Illmatic, Black Star performing their self-titled album, Mobb Deep performing The Infamous, Lauryn Hill performing The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, etc. So many absolutely classic, legendary albums from the 90s performed front to back!
But it also frustrated me that there aren't many new hip hop acts that I'm really excited about. Granted, I don't exactly listen to (new) rap quite as much as I used to, but it's still pretty obvious that the overall quality has gone down. Recently, however, the group Odd Future has been making an impression. They're really just a bunch of kids (one of them, Earl the Sweatshirt, is actually supposedly in juvie right now), and they're very polarizing. Their production is often great, with dark synths and grimy beats. They can all flow, and Tyler's gravelly voice fits the production really well, especially when juxtaposed with Earl's more youthful-sounding voice. But there's just one problem, and it might be the problem that keeps them from blowing up.
They're offensive. Like not just throw a curse word in here or there offensive, but almost every ________ophobic type of offensive you could think of. I don't know, I've long since stopped writing off music because I disagree with the things people say in it. Do I listen to this music to learn moral lessons, or because I want to model myself after the artist, or because I'm voting for them for some kind of office? I think you could extend this type of thinking to almost any sort of art. If you read Lolita, does that make you a paedophile? If you watch Texas Chainsaw Massacre, does that make you a serial killer? If you listen to Mobb Deep, does that make you a gang banger?
Tyler actually says, "It's f*cking fiction," in one of his songs, and that's how I look at it. Some of the artists that people lionize were actually total jerks, such as John Lennon (deadbeat father to son Julian), Bob Dylan (wielded his intelligence like a machete), the Rolling Stones (misogynists who obliterated Marianne Faithful, among others), etc. I'd rather completely separate the artist from the art, and take from the music only what I want to. And I do see glimmers of meaning poking through the uber-aggressive lyrics, when he raps about the rejection he feels from being abandoned by his father, or being a confused, hyper nineteen year old with the world suddenly watching and judging his every move.
The most compelling thing I've ever seen by this group is the video for "Yonkers" (which I'm not gonna post, cause this is a family site!), and while there's some pretty disturbing images in it, I watched it with my jaw on the ground for the entire time. Isn't that what "art" is supposed to do? Now, I'm not putting these guys in a post with these legends to compare them with Mobb Deep or Black Star. About half their stuff is good, and half of it is meh. But at least they're doing something different! I look forward to seeing where they go from here. I'm posting Tyler the Creator and Hodgy Beats on Jimmy Fallon. Great performance (listen to the beat kick back in as Hodgy Beats starts the second verse), and there's Mos Def at the end of the video. IF HE LIKES IT, IT MUST BE GOOD.
Why did we do the nice thing and let this random guy get on the lift with us? I'm positive that he's gonna fall over on me when we get off. Not to be ageist, but it's kind of a red flag when a sixty-three year old gets on the lift with a snowboard. There's four of us on the lift, and I'm alone on the outside. He's probably thinking he'd rather take out one person rather than two. The tenuous way he's balancing his board on his left leg, constantly shifting his weight back and forth. I'm screwed. I shoot my friends an eye roll, and they both laugh silently. 1...2...3...4. We get off, and he inexplicably goes right instead of left! He face-plants all over my friends, and I slide smoothly to the top of the run. 
