Revenant/Fossor.

two lights in the nighttime

2006-09-06T05:38:00.000-07:00

I just sent Todd a Seconds piece.

On Evanescence.

Something Wild (1986)

2006-06-28T16:45:00.000-07:00

Here's a Fine Young Cannibals music video, for "Ever Fallen in Love?" He's gonna cry. Dig that!

the Raymond Chandler quote was acceptably self-effacing

2006-04-13T12:01:00.000-07:00

I'm wholly delighted by the George Mason Patriots' recent jag up the NCAA ramp of respectability, and their philosophy of departmental growth is root-worthy, but Joel Garreau writes his e-mails in all-lowercase, and that's obnoxious. Then again, he wrote Edge City, and I'm reading Baseball in the Lone Star State: The Texas League's Greatest Hits, so a point to the ruddy-bearded gentleman.

can you say 'triangle offense'

2006-03-30T10:47:00.000-08:00

Fishscale = Vik Vaughn with a purpose

2006-03-29T18:11:00.000-08:00

GOTH ORGY: beg me to post part 2!!!!

2006-03-29T09:32:00.000-08:00

New deal at the Empire, now that the boom's been lowered on my finances (budgets = grown & sexy) and I've been casting about for thrills. One new album a week, groups or artists I don't know (the septi-annual Jandek won't count, say), all stuff from the back wall of Waterloo, by the help desk. Or, on any wall at End of an Ear. F'r instance. It's an experiment in experimental. And no reading fucking Wire. McKeating and Berge still count.

I'm hoping for more Hala Strana and less LSD-march.

UK/45

2006-03-28T12:20:00.000-08:00

Oh, and April 6 sees Subhumans UK (this revenant's favorite of the second-wave British punkers) and Clit 45 (astoundingly legitimate California hardcore) in concert at Emo's. Anyone else in Austin who wants to make a prole feel less lonely, drop me a line. Otherwise, I'll be ducking shoes and raising fingers all night.

we will be back here

2006-03-28T12:13:00.000-08:00

There was something wonderful in Mr. J. Greene's review of the Dave Chappelle's Block Party soundtrack. Even though it pulls the infamous bait-and-switch (the review of the album is essentially the letter grade), he's laid out a reasoned defense of the backpacker movement, calling out Breihan in the process. Wise move? I don't know, but between that and the Art Brut OST, I wonder where the tides are.

the song might have been by LCD Soundsystem

2006-03-28T09:29:00.000-08:00

1. Harper's is beginning to serialize an essay on hipsterism/mobthink by senior editor Bill Wasik. Interview is here.

1. (a) Texas A&M's flash mob was, predictably, a year past the proper time. At a specific and meaning-defying time the mob gathered in front of - ah fuck, the story's right here. Suffice to say, we had fun, and likely naught but Kyle Hale connected the event to the idea of scene-as-art.

2. What else. Yes. We had a horse-drawn carriage for sale at the TSHA auction, and Clayton Williams bought it. Apparently he told our development director that he plans to have it installed in his office.

With monkeys sitting in it.

Monkeys - one male and one female - that he shot in Africa.

Not gorillas, because it's a challenge to pick monkeys out of a tree. Like birds, I assume.

And one of the monkeys poses a problem because his genitals are showing.

Someone in the office asked if I would blog this; I took that to mean I could, and there you have it.

3. Oh, and I caught Herbie Hancock's Miles Davis induction speech. Poignant, insightful, pithy. And before he could give it, he had to enter to fucking "Rockit". Idiots.

which sore your eyes

2006-03-22T22:12:00.000-08:00

Being Southbound, I decided I ought to buy some Faulkner. Reading it will be another matter, but for now there's a copy of Light in August, whose protagonist - Joe Christmas - shares a name with a stray compilation band of my youth.

What I've been doing is listening to The The's Dusk on cassette. The car I'm borrowing has no CD player; you wouldn't believe how much Libertarian doctrine I've been absorbing from Radio Free Austin. I'm typing with one hand, scraping the fluoride from my armskin with the other.

See Blondie's Frank Infante whoring himself out on the dais? That briefest of kisses from Debbie, a concession designed to shut his lungs. It was a downer, no doubt, but take comfort! They will both be dead in ten years.

Dusk. Sorry... like, Dusk is an Old Pantheon choice for me, even after I read me some Baudelaire and bought a Serge Gainsbourg record. Serge can coo low, but Matt Johnson can feel you up and convince you he hates himself for it. I bought this thing at a Half Price Books years ago based on the cover art and dollar tag; blah blah blah sparse rock record with a basement view. I'm a fool for those "sum-up" songs, the ones that try to sketch a bound for everyone in 20 similarly-structured lines. Pink Floyd's "Eclipse," Hope For Agoldensummer*'s "Laying Down the Gun," the Adverts' "Cast of Thousands". "Lonely Planet" (you have to ignore some of thee titles) is exactly what dips me: self-doubt. Fuck, I love self-doubt. "All the people I have loved/All the people I have lost/All the people I have known/All the feelings I've never shown" - I better stop, because it gets more banal, and it is precisely not so once heard. Johnny Marr welds steel braces on the track. A synth like a collar to an alley wind. Muscular, prowling, faultless. I know we're at the point of the cycle where cheerful jabberwocky and determined raunch carry the day, but when the wave crests, it will bring the dogs of lust. Also, listeners on iTunes are most likely to have also bought In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, high praise if there ever was.

Oh, and I bought four - four! - Popol Vuh records and four more - four more! - Rahsaan Roland Kirk albums. And Glenn Branca's Lesson No. 1 (less fascist than Ascension, as the fossor might say). I'm really working on that period from 1968-1982, guys.

*possibly the only band that will ship lye soap?

!!!

2006-03-21T12:45:00.000-08:00

20.
www.stylusmagazine.com
Best for: the best new music writing on the web

Present company excepted, much of the finest music writing these days is to be found on the internet, and American webzine Stylus is particularly good. As well as reviews, interviews and think-pieces, it boasts quirky articles like a collection of rockcrit haikus (hilarious and freakily accurate). Then there's regular column On Second Thought, which savages or salvages the reputation of albums depending on whether they're canonical or undervalued.
SR
See also: www.pitchforkmedia.com

This is the greatest record cover I've ever seen.

2006-03-16T09:01:00.000-08:00

http://www.7inchpunk.com/?p=296

rusting on the vine

2006-03-15T00:02:00.000-08:00

Hey so it looks like Jeph Jacques finally updated his Recommended Listening page.

OH SNAP

What the hell have I been doing? Where is my musical 2006? I heard this fantastic song on La Ley, but the only words I can remember are "fueron sin perder," and I might've messed even those up.

Now that I've a way to buy records at cost, I may check the new Sparks out. We are not quite irrelevent yet, but we approach. I totally e-mailed Swygart for this week's Singles Jukebox. Giggles!

Oh, and I slipped twenty dollars into the recess of Mary's truckdoor. She'll find it in a few days. The Lord works the second shift.

kiki cuyler

2006-03-13T20:57:00.000-08:00

I was tucked safely in Ralf and Florian's backseat; we were driving through the Midwest and for an hour, I thought maybe the sunrise wasn't coming.

I was on my way to College Station when the gas pedal started giving out. I coasted into an empty truck stop (it was 11 PM). Figured it was the oil, cos there was some smoke. Then Mary E---- showed up with a new Ford Ranger and a Chihuahua lashed to the gearshift. She was something else. Incessant in every way - talked a torrent, drove me to the Wal-Mart and insisted on waiting, expressed slight amazement that her mother would live 1) near a cemetery and 2) near "the black people". I tried to beg off once I got a flashlight and four quarts in the engine, but first, she had clippings to show me. She keeps a laminate pouch of her two sons' graduation notices and armed forces portraits. She showed me, also, a photo of her parents. Her father, she said, died of cancer eight years ago. After much refusal on my part, she wrote down her number in case I had any more car trouble. This in addition to her muffler shop's business card (she cleans floors there two hours a day, seven bucks an hour).

And the car died on I-35 two days later. Looks like I threw a rod. I know, I know: how can something that sounds so sexy be so bad? Either they rebuild the engine or I buy a new one, and since we're talking about a 1992 Camry, neither is an option. Baby's in the market for a used car.

why theory

2006-03-08T10:40:00.000-08:00

http://www.pbs.org/30secondcandidate/timeline/years/1964b_l1.html

lexicon devil

2006-03-08T07:27:00.000-08:00

Some news down the wire, as it were: American Hardcore is coming to a Shriner hall near you. Or wherever it is that documentaries about hardcore punk are shown. I just got to the book, published in '01, last year, and it was a riveting little history, full of sniping, reverence, and illuminated corners. Steven Blush injected the tome with a bit too much forced perspective, but hey, he wrote about the Dicks. Hopefully the movie's interviews will add (Laura Albert, formerly JT LeRoy, provides the street urchin's take); but archival footage will be enough. Finally, a punk history that ignores Sonic Youth.

I unearthed my Germs discography; it still holds power at office volume. Oh, and I've been reunited with my girlfriend.

5155 Honoraria

2006-03-07T09:45:00.000-08:00

Elsewhere at the Vanity Fair party, worlds collided when novelist Salman Rushdie hung out with Three 6 Mafia, who won gold for "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp." "That's the song I was really rooting for," said Rushdie. "I really liked 'Hustle and Flow.'"

Rapper Juicy Jay was not as familiar with Rushdie's "Satanic Verses," but he did like the poetry of Rushdie's wife, Padma Lakshmi, as the model and actress shook to the music on top of an ottoman. "Oooh," said Juicy.

although you couldn't kiss me at all

2006-03-07T08:29:00.000-08:00

Our interim director just gave me the news: I'm becoming permanent with a modest pay increase.

Which means I'm reaching for the Gary Glitter disc. I got his Rhino greatest-hits package this past weekend, and I am marveling. His best digs deep, rousing cortex shots with Spartan gang-glee and those disembodied riffs. "Hello! Hello! I'm Back Again," "Rock and Roll Part One," "Doing Alright With the Boys," "Always Yours," "Baby Please Don't Go," "Do You Wanna Touch Me? (Oh Yeah!)"; even the heavenly disco of "You Belong to Me" hits hard.

I mean, yes, it is a set of big-bite jokes, but then again, there are guitar parts that have a certain emotionally ambiguous force - you know, the kind I have no ability to fucking describe. But - this is all I got - there's a cinematic grandiosity at the tail end of a lot of his singles, not just a glam-wink. It's like after two minutes or so, Glitter invariably begins worshipping his own altar, and it's pretty heady stuff.

At this instant, Mr. Gadd might be taking a Vietnamese mineral bath before finding out he's no longer the leader of the gang, he am. Hope he gets out all right, hope he gets help.

just got a little easier

2006-03-05T21:53:00.000-08:00

ACADEMY AWARD WINNERS THREE 6 MAFIA

fuel for the EP

2006-03-05T13:58:00.000-08:00

Police battle punk fans in California

I had pubes when I was eleven

2006-03-03T17:06:00.000-08:00

I hate you Stylus. Brad Shoup in this article admits to being fourteen years old in 1996, and to listening almost exclusively to Christian rock until 2000. His article about Nevermind should really be titled, "Thoughts on an album I was too young to understand at the time." This asshole was 12 when Cobain killed himself so excuse me if I don't really take him seriously when tries to explain what Nevermind meant when it was released. Holding Nirvana responsible for the sins of Creed is fair, I suppose, but if you want to travel down that road than the only good rock music was made by a bunch black guys down south that never recorded a record and who history has passed by. You want to write about the music Brad Shoup, that's fine by me, but next time Stylus wants to talk about the historical significance of an album try to find a guy to write about it who at least had pubes when the thing came out.

-Jonathan Smith, a 28-year-old lawyerish guy

It's one for the list, anyway:

~~23. Called an asshole on the interweb~~

the best 27 seconds of her life

2006-03-02T20:58:00.000-08:00

1. My mental stability is a point of pride for me. Most folks I know take pains in declaiming their craziness; as long as the check comes every two weeks, it doesn't wash. Yet I have been away from my normal means of communication - e-mail, Blogger, last.fm, Stylus messageboard (ok, the new new people on Stylus weary me) - largely because I still haven't mailed a nice Duke grad student a mix CD. Afraid of an e-mail informing me of her failure to receive it, I stayed away from my main e-mail account. For some reason, my fear of that deadline also caused me to lob Stylus articles like spitballs from another room. Todd had to call me to add an intro paragraph to my power ballads piece. Unprofessional of Brad.

2. Why don't I just send the CD to her now?

3. Uh.

4. The job's great. I racked up eighty bucks in travel reimbursements my first month, and so far USPS's kept down every bit of postage I've fed 'em.

5. Our director of development - who reads Stylus, mostly for the year-end articles - has copied my Separation Sunday, Mecca and the Soul Brother, and Ramones to his office computer.

6. Rahsaan Roland Kirk sounds like NPR transition music at proper office volume. It fucking sucks, but now I wonder: does every dentist I've ever been to actually have great taste in music?

7. My only taste of Stiv Bators for years was the single version "The Last Year," as heard on a Hallowe'en years ago on some college radio tribute to the dead. But, uh, it really should've been "Make Up Your Mind". Swoon.

8. Someone from Minty Fresh e-mailed me to say she cried after reading my NMH piece. A lovely thing to read, even if I wasn't going for the tear ducts at all. As of today, I'm not real happy with that piece. Mike got me to clean it up, and that helped a lot, but there's too much being-cute in there.

9. My Nirvana piece really turned out well. Shout-out to Cam MacDonald.

10. My pieces go well if the guy named for Crime and Punishment doesn't make some vague pronouncement about the end of everything.

11. The Four Tops! "I Got a Feeling!" Listen for three Tops to sing "take me, take me". Swoon.

12. TheKate knows the true pronunciation of "Moog".

13. Tangerine Dream's Phaedra may be the only album I need of theirs question mark.

14. I've got this On First Listen to write about Kraftwerk. The thing is, they sound exactly as I've imagined. I downed a two-disc comp while sitting on a washing machine last month (skipping the English-language dupes). Can't say I shook my robot ass, but it was very enjoyable. Much fewer synth washes than expected.

15. People finally doin' stuff on Questionable Content (and the indie rock shtick seems to be firmly lodged in the back of the jawline, hurrah), Bill and Erik finally updating, the lovable jampot of A Lesson Is Learned, I finally ran across those existential Garfields. Truly a great week not to be watching men in videos do awful things to women and occasionally milkcows.

16. Red McCombs is supposed to show at our annual meeting. Hopefully I can ask him how glad he is to've dusted the Vikes off his sandals.

17. This meeting's running me ragged. It'll be overtime and tuxedos this weekend; I had to miss the regional finals of the Air Guitar Championship. Honestly, I feel like I've been granted a reprieve. Going from the graveyard shift to sun-lovers' hours, getting my own computer, shirts that stay tucked in. All this little white collar shit is improving my morale majorly. And for some reason, all I can think of is ramping up my Stylus schedule.

18. The Stycast. Dammit.

19. I beat my neighbors in Scrabble last night, then drank the last Pabst. Every time I visit, I bring a 12-pack.

20. Darryl "DMC" McDaniels and Sarah McLachlan. Want worse? And Harry Chapin. "Cat's in the Cradle" is mephitically bad, a perfect storm of pity and wonder. Who called whom? Where's Rhymefest?

21. I missed the best New Singles Jukebox yet. So in summary, Clarkson's = 10, and the new BEP has a chorus straight outta Canada. I'm thinking PGMG or New Pornographers. It's uncanny, that "turn it up" part.

22. Someone on my floor has a solid-gold iTunes playlist. 94 classic ska, reggae, and rhythm 'n' blues cuts. And some Faces/solo Rod work. It's labeled "mako's music," and I can only access it for an hour or so at a time before it disappears. This happens at least once a day. I'm thinking of leaving sign on the lavatories, but if it's a lady it'd be one of those meet-cute nightmares, so maybe we'll consider it a hauntological playlist.

23. Started reading Augustine while I'm waiting for registrants to appear. So far, so good. In Confessions he argues convincingly against appealingly bathetic entertainment. Why gain catharsis through staging et cetera, and I start thinking about all my precious albums.

24. Anatomy of Hell sucked. So does the LSD-march album on Last Visible Dog. What a piece of half-assed Krautkrap. Big ups to Prince's "Starfish and Coffee". Best line: "Cynthia had a happy face, just like the one she’d draw/On every wall, in every school/But it’s all right, it’s 4 a worthy cause." I guess you have to hear it. Which is great news!

25. In case it isn't clear, I've spent the last couple days in the basement of a hotel, directing elderly Texans to Ballroom B and the book exhibitors' displays in the Rio Grande room.

26. One friend of the Association is donating 400 prints from four famed Texan illustrators. He had the auction catalog printed and bound, adding comments on and anecdotes for the items where appropriate. He promised a limited print run of 100, made 25 over, and he told me in the elevator that once any damaged copies are replaced, every extra book will be destroyed. His wife had a prairie-woman handshake, hearty and unassuming. I left their hotel room, having temporarily retired the over-100 copies there, and walked back to the registration tables. The hotel is basically a 15-story atrium with spectacular, four-wall indoor views. As I walked along the fourth floor hallway, a mariachi band was holding forth down by the lobby bar. The reverb was majestic.

27. Be back soon; I've got trust to regain.

my shotgun talk with a lecture hall scripture

2006-02-13T21:15:00.000-08:00

This would also provide a credible pretext for the vice president to claim that he "did not quite catch that question," daring the questioner to expose his head and ask it again.

distaff cutbacks

2006-02-12T00:12:00.000-08:00

Nine days is an epoch, yeah, but just in case you haven't shed tears of joy in a while (Inoue and Baldwin's heartlifting throw triple axel notwithstanding), please, intake.

Ray Manzarek with the dune buggy: top ten continued, finished

2006-02-11T20:17:00.000-08:00

"But you got his number."
"Yeah. I said I knew a guy that looked like him."
I cocked my head & waited for the payoff.
"Well, I said I wanted to compare voices."
Man, I laughed. So did the guy next to me in line.

5. Lee Hazlewood and Nancy Sinatra, "Big Red Balloon" - Remember that nearly every time you see Jess Simpson's contract-clad azz on the TV, Lee Hazlewood's making bank. I still think it's benevolent design that allowed the Swedish cowboy to play personal architect to Frank Sinatra's kid, you know? This track is a driving, poignant delight. Lee and Nancy as loveless old couple; he wants to leave in that balloon, she knows he won't. And she's wrong. Every other line has its ultimate word (usually gerunds) sung by a passel of keening fellows. Fitted to one of those classic "I'm Your Captain/Closer to Home" string arrangements (along with the decline in pop backing vocals, the misuse of strings in chart music is greatly lamentable), and we have a bottomless drop into empathy.

4. Elvis Presley, "Blue Moon (Alternate Take 1)" - Ohhhhh, ladies, this is it. That falsetto-in-the-graveyard! Ghostly right there. Elvis, bass guitar, and a couple of coconuts. Plus you can hear someone shifting in his seat. One of the more beautiful works of man. To be played on me next Stycast.

3. Tony Yayo with G-Unit, "I Know You Don't Love Me" - And we all know Yayo's a clown, but really: "My bitches train like robots". Question mark? I had this list going of all songs that reference other artists. I still have it on my hard drive somewhere - hip-hop alone was killing me, but the German in me demands order and fascist thoroughness. Anyway, 50's chorus is a classic, surely to fill up a Word file if I didn't already have honest work these days. "I know you don't love me, I know you don't love me/You scream and holler when Slim Thug's in town." At least we know Slim doesn't have a ghostwriter - his stuff's garbage. Yayo, pay Rhymefest better.

2. Cat Power, "Dreams" - I was surprised how many porn sites my predecessor had accrued on the mail room computer. His Google Search history reveals that at one point, he ran a search for "NOT gay porn". Was he being funny?

1. Nirvana, "On a Plain" - I'll be terribly honest with you. I hope it all hits with the Nevermind piece. Don't know what that'll look like. The Waterloo Records guys at the party (about half the attendees work at the record store, the video store, or the Ice House [not related]) didn't know what Stylus was, but they knew that honoring Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis is an awesome idea. I hope they're right. Joe doesn't like Steely Dan, but Bobby does, and Bobby's Bonnie Across the Ocean is the Beatles' butcher cover, which was bought underneath his nose by a customer for 80 bucks. Guys, when I bring beer to a party, I'm happy to drink it all, but I never plan on it. Let's work together next time. And Metropolis is a wonderful movie to play in the background.

And I can't stop playing this track; it's the best thing on the album.

let's pretend we don't excyst: top ten part one

2006-02-09T19:05:00.000-08:00

In the last three days, I've exchanged a blue collar for a black tie.

Yes, as of Thursday morning, I am become the mail clerk for the Texas State Historical Association. Five days a week, reg'lar people hours. Now I won't just see Whataburger employees and the homeless after I get off work. There's a ton of driving involved (reimbursed), which means time for CDs. I also have my own office. It is called the "mail room". Computer, wastebasket, postage meter: every amenity is provided. Also, there is a working c. 1960s Westinghouse refrigerator in the break room.

Just feeling the sun after I get off work is trippy.

The black tie is for next month's TSHA fundraiser, referred to - with typical Texan circumscription - as "Gala & Texana Auction of the Century". Outside chance I'll get close enough to Roger Clemens to shake his forearm, Roman stylee. And ask Laura what she thinks about George's "fishing trips" to Bohemian Grove. Jack Nasty, that's what I say.

In other news, I realized the glass casing over the bathroom lightbulb isn't nailed in. Actually, there are three screws with paint daubed over the screw drive. So instead of forgetting my brother's candles until they burn to the base, I've substituted legitimate light. Evidently the toilet needs cleaning!

What I'm here for:

10. Steely Dan, "Aja" - From the never-say-die lechery of Katy Lied to Aja's proto-yuppie cakeface. "Aja" has the relatively rare Backer/Fagen ploy of lyrics that are very stupid on their face, as the Dan pull grins to pledge allegiance to "Chinese music" and dude ranches "by the sea". My best guess? General darts at globe-sampling privilege.

But yet, but yet, there's a section from about the 2:20(?) to the 4 minute mark that is some of the most in-love that music's ever been. A brand-new theme emerges on a brand-new instrument (xylophone), as two guitars wend slack grace. When the police whistle enters, it's unbearable. I will never be cool.

9. Daniel Johnston, "Keep Punching Joe" - I still like the hauntology deal, still wondering if it's reductionist/foolhardy to find ghosts in records. I'm still working out the concept of absence during presence, too; it turns out that Stylus writers, generally and with the exception of myself, have some experience with philosphy. I believe Ayo Jegede can lay down a critique of Anselm's premises in the later version of his ontological argument that will cut your knees from beneath you.

Inserting yourself into a big band record = auditory equivalent of that photo in The Shining. AWESOME.

8. Brainwarmer, "Elliott Smith's Guitar" - Recorded more or less on the fly, in Portland, using the late musician's guitar. I found it on iTunes; the lyrics are childish, the energy twee, any sentiment likely self-imputed. I can't stop playing this song. The perfect sideways tribute to the man himself.

7. Frankie Lymon and the Teenagers, "Portable on My Shoulder" - The kid could work a word; so well, in fact, that Gordy erected Motown on Lymon's vocal glides. Dead at 26, preternaturally skilled but without a genuine artistic legacy.

6. George Jones, "These Days (I Barely Get By)" - Most. Depressing. Song. Ever. The first half of the second verse finds No-Show Jones fronting a ghostly female choir. For me, apparently, discorporate vocals in a pop song are enough to cry "hauntology"! See also: "They Reminisce Over You," "Wonderful! Wonderful!" and... number five from my next post. Scour the earth for sustenance.

pshoupsgroom: but...your Mom and I have been praying daily for God to provide another job for you that would enjoy
pshoupsgroom: Guess we pray well...
pshoupsgroom: :-)
Brad Shoup: I guess so... praying in tandem is a nice touch
pshoupsgroom: Do your best (as you always do) and work hard and just let the chips fall where they may. Oh yeah, get me Roger Clemen's (former Texas Longhorn) autograph and ask him what happened against the White Sox (after you get the autograph that is)
Brad Shoup: haha
Brad Shoup: sure thing. as long as there's no throwable objects in sight
pshoupsgroom: Born, raised and proud of being a Shoup wise guy
Brad Shoup: natch

"Gaining on the Last Supper"

2006-02-08T19:24:00.000-08:00

I received a very nice comment and open invitation from the adMinister of Church of Brunch today. There's a service next Sunday, my Austin friends; I may not be able to attend, but you'll have fun.

Beatles and Jay-Z = someone owes Brian Burton a check

2006-02-08T19:19:00.000-08:00

Whoa whoa HEY did Jay-Z just tell Paul McCartney and Davy Linkin to "take it up top"?

he's a cyberpunk now

2006-02-08T19:07:00.000-08:00

Whoa whoa WHOA what happened to Sly Stone?

Per Ian's request, I found this:

it's cool; I'm just picking up Todd's Kraftwerk comp

2006-02-08T00:38:00.000-08:00

The box swayed

on the scale

soft knocks

from show birds

We all smiled

at the clerk waiting

til the chickens calmed

for the reading

I hope they last

in a box marked

"No sun, heat

or rain".

last plane to cowtown

2006-02-07T23:54:00.000-08:00

So I'm leaning on the bar-rail, ready to pay everyone's tab, and this girl slots next to me. "Hey, cowboy." Naturally, I needed three beats to realize the cowboy was I. I was wearing the blue Western shirt everyone likes, the one bought out of a catalog by an ex-girlfriend's resident advisor's mother. Oh, the tales. Purple pearl snaps, encased like fantastical evening pools, domed over.

Anyway.

She asks me if I'm a real cowboy. As I am notorious in regional literary/primitive Baptism circles for my subscription to the second formulation of Kant's categorical imperative, I sheepishly replied that I was not, but I have aspirations. She asked if I was the boss. Again, I had to reply that I was not, at least not tonight; I was leaving against my vote.

What's your name?
Brad.
Hi, Brad.
Yours?
Brenna.

Brenna was a rancher's daughter. Was she alone? No. She was with girlfriends. Where was I headed? I don't know; I'm not the boss, remember. Maybe the Dry Bean Saloon. Maybe the Corner.

She reiterated her upbringing on a ranch. Was I scared of her? I took this as my opportunity to scan. Verified blond, pair of beaming greens twinned to the skirt. Tipsy (obviously: haven't gotten non-homosocial barplay since I gave that DeLillo book to sweet Emily). No. No I wasn't. Should I be?

Well, on the ranch I learned how to rope and castrate.
Dip of her head. Can two eyes wink?
Oh. Damn.

I tried handing the yellow receipt back to the bartender. Brenna noticed.

You wanna get out of here, don'tcha? Then: well, give me a hug. Then: But you gotta mean it.

I can't. That's my girlfriend over there.

Oh!

The night I could've been a cowboy. I don't have to write about anything interesting; I'm smokeless.

fun with white girls

2006-02-07T01:46:00.000-08:00

So not only do we have the classic argument that illicit drug use aggravates the agonies of the harvesters/mules/crossfired innocents in other lands, we have another reason why we Americans have no business making cocaine a fashion accessory (until the glorious Libertarian revolution, anyway).

I saw this piece in News of the Weird, but NOTW neglected this delicious detail: "[A]ccording to Lt. Jeff Clark who heads the MPD's Project Safe Neighborhoods, Booth even made up a rap song about the murder."

I'm on the lookout.

oh and i whooped up on some darts last night i was lagging behind but bam bam bam all these triples kept dropping so i showed up that weedy student government guy who was a total courtesan in loss.

teh controversorz

2006-02-07T01:08:00.000-08:00

Ephemera gets chopped and bagged again; were you there to see it? Secret blood feud enclosed.

I was surprised none of the other commenters for the Kubb track cracked erection jokes. Ian had the snappiest putdown, regarding Billy Currington: "The only way I could hate this song more was if I was actually a woman, because then Billy would be singing to me." Sad to admit: too much ska this week.

I don't know when the piece'll up, so let me leave you with a premise:

Nevermind: not that good.

Let me rephrase: not that good.

And you thought I just knew how to work the italics tag. The over/under is 20 comments. Not here, on Stylus.

varia miscellanea

2006-02-06T13:56:00.000-08:00

It would be hells of awesome if Mr. Jacques read my pre-weekend post and decided to obliquely dump on what he perceives to be my kind, but I'm betting that's not the case. Anyway, I'm down with the Liars, but I haven't yet gone on record saying such, so I think he's culling the messageboards for inspiration.

The fourth-panel payoff was pretty nice, no doubt, although it's a bit of biting the feeding hand (see Mr. Jess Harvell's similar criticism on a different topic somewhere in the Status Ain't Hood comment section).

I recognize that my Kraftwerk article is hostage to the delivery practices of the United States Postal Service, but that shouldn't stop me from getting two other things in tonight. So much (good) new writers and content washing in; my overlong Stycast just got posted today. One notable expert has tagged it the "drunkest Stycast yet"; I ended it with J. Lo's "Get Right" (so good. so good!) and included 12 songs, so there's probably something to that. I see friendly challenges in drinking and writing ahead.

japander

2006-02-02T00:55:00.000-08:00

This is where all the scenester idiots start bitching about how my comic "used to be cool, before every poseur who reads Pitchfork knew about it." Now all I have to do is get someone over at Tiny Mix Tapes to yell about my comic on the front page and I will have achieved INDIE ROCK UBIQUITY.

Jeph, baby, I've been wondering when it would be time for the talk.

With your love of white boys making busy, the torporific rearrangement of calcified musical motifs, the same three jokes about Bob Pollard drinking or Sigur Ros sounding feminine, you are the poseur who reads Pitchfork, sugar. Plus, there's your inability to describe a metal album without using the words "totally" or "*lame-ass borecore group* meets a metal band"... Come to think of it, honey, the only metal you've ever really pushed is all PF-approved: Mastodon, Isis, Opeth, and Pelican.

It's still better than Mitch Clem's nagging inferiority complex. I'd take a naive 'indie' enthusiasm o'er naive pop-punk enthusiasm coupled with a chip on the shoulder. Seriously, if you're a 25-ish man writing strips about Hot Topic, cut back on the coffee. His newspost stock-in-trade is straw men, whether they be Christians, Pitchfork readers, Against Me!, or kids who don't rock out in the pit. God love him and Jeph both, though, as cartoonists, even if the former can't keep on one project too long and the latter's reliance on sexual dialogue makes even a swampmind such as mine shut down from monotony.

I mean, if you're gonna tag yrself 'indie,' listen to subway fiddlers and Pennsylvanian shape-note choirs. Not rock bands with $15.99 CDs who make videos, use iTunes, and sell babydoll tees. Although, just like the snark's been dialed back on the 'fork, Jeph's been dropping less of the indie-humor science. Sex is easier, I suppose.

Ryan North and Tiny Mix Tapes, though, we're down with. They're not kidding themselves. And they totally rock like the Johnny Burnette Trio meets a metal band.

EDIT AFTER READING THE COMMENTS: Just like Ian, I still read QC. Every update. I can't front. He's got a point about naivete; just like the music quips are sweetly inclusionary, he doesn't want to accept that readers can't just form deep emotional connections with his creations and not find them physically attractive in any way. It's c00t. And I have no opinion on Get Him Eat Him.

big sister complains all the time/she's hooked on barbs and wine

2006-02-01T03:51:00.000-08:00

I still haven't acclimated to these new, daylight hours. But I knew the Myspace note was a scam when the initial e-mail offered me pictures if I e-mailed her and didn't respond to the profile what left the note. And her website branched off of candyhearthost.com. I'm hard up but payment is just unnecessary, baby.

I'm still awake at 6 AM, listening to The Boogie Woogie Resurrection Hour Stycast (I'm not sure what the MLA says about podcast formatting) and typing an essay on parent pop. I'm sure somebody will be reading a rough draft at some point. Right now - as research - I'm revisiting Austin's own Millions of Dead Cops, of "John Wayne Was a Nazi" fame. College radio memories.

Of course, this does nothing for my priapic rage. Neither does the intra-Democratic abortion debate. Time for street prowler music.

CUE STREET PROWLER MUSIC

Jesus sings Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now

2006-01-31T19:05:00.000-08:00

The crowd will be joined by Bez - the entertainer famous for shaking his maracas on stage with the Happy Mondays. He will be accompanied by former Stone Roses frontman Ian Brown and Black Grape saxophonist Martin Slattery.

The event will end with the resurrected Jesus singing an as yet undisclosed song from the top of Manchester's town hall.

You Ain’t Going Nowhere (trad. arr.)

2006-01-31T01:01:00.000-08:00

Part 1: Church of Brunch!

Last Sunday was a landmark day for a new sect. As the screenwriter for 24 Hour Party People noted, there were but 13 people at the Last Supper. So for the First Breakfast at the Church of Brunch, four people and a vegan coffeecake in North Austin are nothing to pooh-pooh.

For their first meeting, the two attending couples sang that hoariest of hippie-pop hits, the Doobie Brothers' "Joy to the World". The aforementioned coffeecake was circular. To represent unity. There was some conversation, a reading from a Warhol biography. Was this the incipience of a cheeky new creed? My paper needed to justify an above-the-fold treatment in the Metro section, so half the article was devoted to various sectarian heads grappling with that very question. The rabbi said that the absence of dogma is itself dogma, but that's a suckermaker's way out.

But the article, read while waiting for my Honey BBQ Chicken Strip Sandwich, put me to work. I pulled out a couple CDs and dialed down my bullshit detector.

Part 2: Skilled Small Voice

"All the good religions are improvisational." I wrote that; I was so proud! But then I put the needlepoint away. Of course they are; what in nature isn't? Children learning how hard to try their elders' patience. Microevolution across an archipelago. Sitting in counseling with my girlfriend, sizing each other up on a raised stage. The thin line between polyphony and discord. I don't know any better.

Intonomancy, by the No-Neck Blues Band. On the whole, a pleasantly leaden album. I've heard they've done much better, been much wilder, before they ever truly committed to the studio. From what I can tell, they come by their improvisation honestly; guerilla shows set up, the public courted. There's the usual amount of Conjured Mystery, but also a genuine belief that this is the music ancestral.

Intonomancy. Greek tonos, as in "to stretch," and -mancy, "divination by". Pretty basic idea of improvisation, right there. "Play Your Play" is getting the most play around here. It begins with drums passed and panned until you hear a canyon's heartbeat. A geriatric oboe (or something) falls in, as do half-time stabs of thumbtack piano. A dubby guitar begins rooting out the rear, projecting half-familiar, half-dreadful tableaux on the backdrop. A snare begins rapping with the drum-echoes, propelling the track into skittery paranoia as the reeds and strings trade wailing tips. We're only halfway there.

Free is never free; not in music, and not for me. Chaos had best coalesce. Order must at least haunt the slackened orbit of this faith-playing, if only to remind me that the hints of Heaven are all around. I'm not being symbolic here. It's never just about the music, you see. Otherwise, I'd deliberately let the drums alone & be the freest jazz player around.

And eventually the woven bits of "Play Your Play" are peeled and reformed, the bass-throb and wahs and wails become a slow campfire tornado, left ashen in the woods. I bought this record expecting alien religion, but this is closer to a meditative brunch with the atheists than anything else. But isn't that why they play for the al fresco set? Does not contemplation occur on the plains?

My salvation is a string of chords, a chromatic score. I'm allowed the leeway to be incredible and not profane.

Part 3: Motor City Madness (We wish to congratulate Mr. Martinez on hitting 4% of his career homeruns off of Jose Canseco's head.)

I used to check that every professional baseball player was still older than me. It was a weird comfort. Somehow, having never gotten past teeball, I relaxed in the fact that there was still time for... what? The feeling lasted until September 15, 2003, when Milwaukee's Rickie Weeks, three days younger than I was, made his debut.

But once I reconciled myself to never playing pro ball, I was freed to imagine living it. Mostly, I dreamed about exclusivity, the fraternity that develops between soldiers and play-laborers tracked by 100,000 eyes each night. Hell, I'd have to create an occasion to spray champagne on my friends, and then I could only afford a couple bottles of the pink shit; the White Sox cracked the crate three times in one month.

I imagine improvisation offers similar rewards. AMM can rest well, knowing that their 1968 performance of "Like a Cloud Hanging in the Sky?" drops me with a bad case of pleurisy every time. The album is The Crypt, and for good reason: nothing escapes. The blitz of scrapes, shrieks, and rattles unnerve like moans from the cellar. No ghosts here, only zombies &c. Over the course of 45 minutes, the architecture alters under pain of cello and piano, but they only manage to rearrange the already-cloudy funhouse mirrors. It's not a assault in the way that Twilight is, all fatalistic hang and doomy sturm. "Like a Cloud" is locust music. It's ugly music. It's a contact mic making love to a missile silo during a nuclear blizzard. It is attractive only for speaking what is posssible.

The cover of The Crypt comes from one of AMM's gig posters. Designed by Keith Rowe, it's an electronic box (bearing only a knob and the group name, it could be anything) with an empty, Pop Art speech balloon pointing at it. But what goes inside? Is it blank for the listener's imputation? Or is this a dispatch from the Wasteland? I already told you, my lungs are gone. I get the feeling (it's partly the liner notes) that any appreciation is stunted by lack of visuals, unable as I am to picture five young Englishmen trawling a cavern for every last noise-ridge . When critics compare your band to trees and metal, you get the sense that dimension and palpability factor large. I'm still in awe, regardless.

Part 4: The Gondola Man

Nearly every improvisational session features some limits (again, if not, I'd buy a saxophone only to discard it). No shit, right? Well, we can lump "channeling" under the improv banner, if "Elliott Smith's Guitar" is to be believed.

Brainwarmer is a defunct (as of last year) Portland outfit that's stained its thumbs in sundry pies: Southern Gothic, noise, twee pop. I'll let Tiffany Lee Brown tell the rest:

I'd like it to be known that our absurd little song "Elliott Smith's Guitar" was in no way ever meant to be a pisstake. Larold and I had met up with Gail at Larry Crane's Jackpot! Studios in Portland, to which Elliott was connected. Gail pointed out his old Rickenbacker in the corner, and I of course couldn't resist plugging it in. The song immediately poured out of me, with Larold happily improvising drums. We recorded it right away; Gail proclaimed it a "brainworm" of a song; and that's how we got our name. And even though I felt cheesy about being star-struck, I was honoured to be playing Elliott Smith's guitar and improvising on the piano he had played.

So there you go. Woman picks up dead man's guitar, composes impossibly pure, two-chord ode about composing an ode to said guitar, bandmates pick up the signal, name themselves after their impulses and I'm getting the pleurisy again. It's 4 AM, everyone's asleep, and I'm crying my first tears ever for my poor slain Elliott while cradling my overheating laptop. I guess something has to keep me honest.

I played Elliott Smith's guitar
I played Elliott Smith's guitar
It made me sad
I wish I had
Elliott Smith's guitar

It was a rainy day in Oregon
Everything was looking sort of miserable so
We closed it up behind the slot machine
And then we counted off 1...2...1 2 3 4!

I love Elliott Smith's guitar
I love Elliott Smith's guitar
It's a Rickenbacker
I'd go in hock for
Elliott Smith's guitar

It was a stupid day in Oregon
We were writing such lovely songs (oh yeah)
Made the sounds of crashing submarines
We hit the jackpot and we rocked out loud!

I love Elliott Smith's guitar
I love Elliott Smith's guitar
It makes me crazy
Wanna have its baby
Elliott Smith's guitar
Elliott Smith's guitar
Elliott Smith's guitar

I didn't even get to spew bullshit about Drinking Horns and Gramophones, but I've hit my bullshit limit for the day. Bye!

these things are usually false alarms

2006-01-30T22:22:00.000-08:00

Sir or Madam:

We have received your application for the position of Ethics Analyst-060000EE and are currently reviewing your experience and qualifications.

If you would like to review your candidate file,click here.

If your profile corresponds to our requirements, a member of our Global Talent Acquisition Team will contact you soon.

We thank you for your interest in Dell.

Best regards,
Talent Acquisition

nothing would be solved

2006-01-30T16:32:00.000-08:00

stuff what just dawned on me:

1. Butthole Surfers' "Pepper" is a ripoff of Jim Carroll's "People Who Died".

2. Chubby Checker's "The Twist" is sung from the perspective of a seductive girl.

3. Kraftwerk didn't invent glitch-pop a year before the compact disc debuted; the crack in my compilation CD begins towards the end of "Pocket Calculator".

Whataburger's got that damn sandwich with the chicken strips, the cheese, and the barbeque sauce. So that's where I'm at.

oh hell/punk rods

2006-01-28T12:36:00.000-08:00

But then I read the Music Thing post about Punk Rods. Man those things are ugly. They have two strings.

I got properly silly last night. I was served dinner by a Rollergirl (Rollerwoman, more like). And I consumed no beer in the course of my two-bar jaunt, which is a new state record.

band of gold

2006-01-27T15:51:00.000-08:00

That seems about right. I have one of those notions again. I'm tiring of finding myself drunk riding the hills; or in an IHOP at 4 AM, reading the newspaper while some kingpins are bragging about the right to tip less. Every weekend is "Small Town Saturday Night" for me, in a metro area of one million. One million. Being single's one thing, if you see your friends - any of them - more than every two months; so is having a girlfriend, or even a fuckbuddy (a lamentable term I wish my writer friend would quit using). But I seem to have loosed or let loose all ties to everything. I don't know how it happened, other than I bristle at my friends' attempts to improve me and I passively mack on every female that responds to me. Juvenile, yeah? Everyone's been real patient with me, but I don't really have much to show for myself. No book, no chances for hospitality, no life-changing advice. Not even presence, and I love presence. Nobody in my life knows what to do with me other than "It'll be all right". I'm not breaking down like Zigaboo; I don't have so much love to give, I just want to get whiny for a post and make opaque declarations. Get blurry in some waveform sea. Hang out with people. That sort of thing. Ghosts? I'm a wisp. I'm the woman in "Honey Hush".

Tonight I get a haircut, I shave, I drink my self-pity shit into a little mote of haunthood, and tomorrow I start looking at apartments and jobs. In other cities. Maybe I'll get a Myspace page haha lolz.

Oh, and here's a killer b-side from some of the Midwest's finest. So we can keep things on track.

But everyone have a safe weekend. Be back on Monday.

this is a great album cover

2006-01-27T14:21:00.000-08:00

MPs condemn communist-era crimes

2006-01-26T11:01:00.001-08:00

Goran Lindblad, an MP of the conservative Swedish Moderate Party and leading voice behind the resolution, told the BBC that "the purpose is to give moral restitution to those victims who suffered under communist regimes".

He said: "It's also very important to have an awareness campaign, so people will never repeat this mistake.

"If you go to a regular school in my country, for example, and ask the children, they don't know anything about the Berlin Wall."

Tougher proposals calling for official government condemnations of communist crimes and fresh investigations into such crimes failed to win enough support.

--------

In other news, I'm considering a fictional blog to serve as a corollary to this one. But I have no idea where to begin. I'm pleased, though, with the concept. I stole it from my brother.

Take Aim for Explosive Earnings!!

2006-01-26T11:01:00.000-08:00

I could do my laundry at my apartment complex, but the washers have small stomachs and the unit itself's got no heating. Lame.

So I go to the SpinCycle, a washatería (not pictured) across the way from the Popeye's. $4.50 for a five-basket wash, and there's a couple TVs embedded in the folding stations. Plus they've got pinball.

Terminator II pinball. The first pinball machine with a user-activated cannon. Plus, you get to cram orbs into Robert Patrick's metallurgic maw. A triumph all around.

There was a period where I couldn't get through three or four games without the pinballs getting jammed in the T1000 skull, refusing to emerge. Every 30 seconds or so, a large THOK would emerge from the machine, and I'd have to step away in shame. Whoever's been maintaining it, though, has given it the opposite problem: now it drops balls like John Connor's puberty. I swear, I run two ramps nowadays and the fake-Arnold gleefully intones multiball and I feel like Tommy except I'm still at 300,000.

I dunno. It's for the kids, anyway. Every time I play, at least one child's standing on the Cruisin' USA seat and leaning over to catch the collisions. Sometimes it's a couple niños, and they're pushing on my left flipper hand. On Monday, it was a three-year-old girl who'd decided I ain't mean enough, so she's gotta take a button. While her brothers were content to fog the cabinet glass, she moved me aside, first to the left, and finally away completely, until this little girl looks Christlike, trying intently to hug the hell out of that machine. I had to stop and laugh. After a few seconds of this (and I wasn't too worried about losses, since I always bring too many laundry quarters, plus I'd mystically just been awarded a multiball) she moved on to the plunger (designed like a gun, which means every game in the laundromat except Cruisin' involves the simulation of live ammunition - this is why I don't play Cruisin'). I was then free to stand awkwardly and flip stuff around until her mom corraled the whole gang back toward the dryers.

Anyway, it's either that or the Noche de Película on Univision. I try watching, I really do, but the only thing that really piqued my interest was a movie that (maybe) starred Los Tigres, but their girls kept spurning them and taking them back in efficient sequence, so I pretended I was reading a Brecht introduction instead.

An amusing Joke.

2006-01-25T19:50:00.000-08:00

"You probably wouldn't think to seek a hip-hop education from a member of Interpol, but you'd be smart if you did."

photo: Tricia Romano

"This is 2 Live Crew," said [Paul] Banks, whose all-time fave is Slick Rick, and helpfully pointed out Wu-Tang and Trick Daddy records. (Yes, I am really that bad.) Moreno cheerily added, "This is the only night where you won't hear Franz Ferdinand at this bar!" Later he played songs that can only be described as Junior High School Dance Soundtrack, 1991: Salt-N-Pepa's "Push It," Bell Biv Devoe's "Poison," and Naughty by Nature's "O.P.P."

Meanwhile, I'm headed to College Station for a couple errands, maybe find a cure for my sa·ty·ri·a·sis. Or get some professor references.

text, criticism, and notes (daedology)

2006-01-25T18:54:00.000-08:00

Lessing, said Stephen, should not have taken a group of statues to write of. The art, being inferior, does not present the forms I spoke of distinguished clearly from one another. Even in literature, the highest and most spiritual art, the forms are often confused. The lyrical form is in fact the simplest verbal vesture of an instant of emotion, a rhythmical cry such as ages ago cheered on the man who pulled at the oar or dragged stones up a slope. He who utters it is more conscious of the instant of emotion that of himself as feeling emotion. The simplest epical form is seen emerging out of lyrical literature when the artist prolongs and broods upon himself as the centre of an epical event and this form progresses till the centre of emotional gravity is equidistant from the artist and from others. The narrative is no longer purely personal. The personality of the artist passes into the narration itself, flowing round and round the persons and the action like a vital sea.

...

The dramatic form is reached when the vitality which has flowed and eddied round each person fills every person with such vital force that he or she assumes a proper and intangible esthetic life. The personality of the artist, at first a cry or a cadence or a mood and then a fluent and lambent narrative, finally refines itself out of existence, impersonalises itself, so to speak.

...

The artist, like the God of the creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.

-Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

what does "almost exclusively" mean

2006-01-24T06:09:00.000-08:00

Each Ghostface Killah doll includes:

* Real 14 karat gold chain
* Real GFK Robe
* Gold Chalice with Swarovski crystals
* Each doll will include a Ghostface Killah Doll mixtape dy a world-famous DJ tba
* Real 14 karat gold avenging eagle accessory (extra)
* Each collector will have a 1 in 500 chance to spend a day with Ghostface Killah himself
* Each Doll will come in a limited edition gold sealed box
* Ghostface Killah is fully involved in all aspects of the project from manufacturing to promotion
* Each Doll speaks original recordings of Ghostface Killah catch-phrases

I. Want. It.

the styyyyyycaaaa-KRAKOW

2006-01-24T03:17:00.000-08:00

Dom Passantino's giv'n his blessing to Anna Nalick's "Breathe (2 AM)"! Fuck, I can't wait 'til I get my own radio station. What a good damn song. If you don't know, now you know.

I just finished Stycast No. 5, and here's the tracklist:

Baby Huey and the Babysitters, "Mighty Mighty"
Masters of Soul, "I Hate You"
Hal Ketchum, "Small Town Saturday Night"
Ricochet, "Seven Bridges' Road"
Alabama, "High Cotton"
Bob Brozman and Papua New Guinea Stringbands, "Town Kavieng"
Toots and the Maytals, "Bla-Bla-Bla"
Slimm Calhoun with Andre 3000, "It's OK"
Garnet Mimms, "Tell Me Baby"
The Falcons, "I Found a Love"
The Ronettes, "You Came, You Saw, You Conquered"
Jennifer Lopez, "Get Right"

As a principle, I hate people who say what I'm about to, but I think I've got sufficiently eclectic taste, in that I'll take you to Thailand for some sloppy derivative death metal and I'll bring you back to Brooklyn, where the ghost(writer) of Jenny Lopez pays the tab and calls the shots. I love me the deep soul, but I can't deny the breadbasket nourishment of Alabama.

I'll stop now. It was a beer and bourbon night. You have no idea how long it really took to type this post.

A Piece of Wood, Sort Of.

2006-01-23T22:55:00.000-08:00

http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2006/01/24/liner_notes/

Also, a fascinating article in the San Francisco Chronicle about underground restaurants. If I could cook, I would totally host an illegal restaurant. I'd probably have to de-ash the balcony.

In six months, Kevin and Jeff & Matt are moving to a new condo and apartment, repectively. This has nothing to do with death-fear or hauntology or narrative reliability, but everything to do with shelter and sustenance.

I gotta do a Stycast tonight. I love you all, in my own megalomaniacal way.

The Thang (Part 2)

2006-01-23T17:02:00.000-08:00

You can't be a ghost with an obvious motive, can you?

I know I post a lot; it's what makes me great.

it's a'ight girl, it's ok

2006-01-23T16:51:00.000-08:00

Tell 'em 'bout what this girl told me...

She said I love my man-man-man-man
We got our ups and downs and I'll get lonely and-and-and-and
Wanna go-go to someone who might understand-stand-stand-stand
How to make a girl feel like Alice in Wonderland-Wonderland-Wonderland-
Wonderin' if she can't come home with guilt on her mind
Really, all she truly wants to know is that she still fine
As the day he met 'er, pet 'er, tell 'er for another feller
Pet her kitten, sit-sittin', chit-chittin', spit-spittin'

believing in yourself and following your dream

2006-01-23T15:10:00.000-08:00

There's a new Singles Jukebox, although most of the people who read this blog are probably contributors. Do I have to record my a capella songs on cassette while I drive to and from work, then lace them and degrade them until they have the must of circular history?

Do I?

a tragedy, a plea for mix CDs....

2006-01-23T15:00:00.000-08:00

Who wants to help her? I just sent my e-mail.

they reminisce over K.O.B.E.

2006-01-23T14:31:00.000-08:00

The recentest Pop77 mix is typically high-qual, but I saved it just so I could hear Gomez' "ZYX" again. The song's like a mentor. Let me get weird: an old friend.

let's wear it on our face

2006-01-21T12:19:00.000-08:00

And she was all "hey i went to Wal-Mart last night and smelled his deodorant just for the memories it triggers" and i'm like hey i'm trying to be a pirate a pirate.

shoup advertises for traveling companions

2006-01-21T03:48:00.000-08:00

I'll try to clear this out in this post.

Rascal Flatts, "Fast Cars and Freedom"

I'm planning a Pop Playground article - with no set date for completion - titled "In Defense of Banality". In it, I'm going to argue that I'm twenty years ahead of my time. Alternately, that songs like this deserve acknowledgement despite their limitations, because of their artful fulfillment of a service. I've not yet found the right, beguiling text yet, but here's my gist: one's life isn't all abstract thought or postrock coitus or debutante balls in the k-hole. There's a need for everyday shit rendered artfully; barring that, then gracefully.

The opposite of ecstasy is not despair; both are (melioratively) self-centered. Ecstasy's true antipode is, I think, banality. Rascal Flatts recorded one of the best singles of 2005, all devoted to how beautiful the narrator's wife is, how her essence is undimmed by time. The song itself is servicable modern country; all the stretch and ache is in the chord changes, the glossy lead guitar, the ride cymbal. "I see a dust trail following an old red Nova/Baby blue eyes, your head on my shoulder/Wait, baby, don't move! Right there it is/A t-shirt hanging off a dogwood branch/The river was cold but we gave love a chance..."

Back up. Those lines, again, are "A t-shirt hanging off a dogwood branch/The river was cold but we gave love a chance." Here, in the much-maligned heart of corporate country, is a perfect songwriter's couplet: evocative without syrup, resonant and suggestive. Did you see the words "dance" or "romance" anywhere? No, you didn't. And they top themselves: "You don't look a day over fast cars and freedom/That sunset, riverbank, first-time feeling." The use of near-rhyme in this song is an oasis. It's a beefed-up "Maybe I'm Amazed," and it's a necessary balance to too many perfect sounds forever. It's a perfect fucking single, yawning, expansive, and piercing.

Will, I'm sorry I never called you again.

Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Natural Black Inventions: Roots Strata/The Inflated Tear/I Talk With the Spirits

I wouldn't say I'm starting to 'get' jazz, although I wish I could. I am, however and after years of owning only A Love Supreme and Kind of Blue, starting to take to it. Mr. Kirk could play three reed instruments at once, delivering a conversation in the process. The brand of jazz on these records is gently resolute, the best kind of human. Roots Strata is a set of sketches reflecting Kirk's exploration of his African heritage. I Talk with the Spirits is an engaging and earthy spirituality, snatching the flute back from the wastes of sentimentality. The Inflated Tear pairs the versatility and confidence of Ch. Mingus with the insouciance of a little boy flexing a bicep. Does this sound stupid or vague? I'm working on it. 2006 is gonna be awesome.

Höömii and Urtin Duu (The Folk Music Traditions 1)

Released on JVC Japan in 1992, it's a chronicle of traditional Mongolian music. The real show is the airy, transcendant singing. Both men and women front these songs, and the style lends itself equally well to each gender. There's a little bit of throat singing, I believe, for the curious, but any fan of desert transcendentalism may want to hear this.

Coven, "McDonaldland Massacre"/Blind Alfred Reed, "Why Do You Bob Your Hair, Girls?"

Jose burned me a copy of Coven's Blessed in the Black, which held this, the funniest song ever. A close second may be Mr. Reed's anti-flapper screed, if only because it's suddenly relevant these days.

Robert Johnson, "From Four Till Late"/Stiv Bators, "The Last Year"

Michael, our campus station emgineer, was quite taken by the BBC's 'The Power of Nightmares,' going so far as including a link on the station's homepage telling us where to download it. One of the central premises of this program - I loved it because I thought I was watching a Don DeLillo novel - is that modern neoconservatism arose out of powerful Americans' dismay that in a liberal, postwar society, the nation lacked a uniting myth around which disparate groups of citizens could rally. Thus, the 'good vs. evil' brinksmanship theory was born.

Similarly, music is always in need of a good myth. Thus the rise of renaissance crack slingers; the backcountry charm of the folkies; and the current vogue for collectives, which coalesce, shed members, and add them, seemingly without a First Cause. It's more fun to think of Animal Collective as, well, just that: a ragged troupe mystically attuned to the pangs and seasons of nature (and, these days, adolescence). But the rise of DIY culture meant that, for the first time since the dawn of grooved shellac, anyone could make music; there was no great origin story or tale of discovery required. Yet the myths lived on: Daniel Johnston (church kid savant writing twisted Beatles songs in the basement), Fugazi (socialist collective, lives without running water), Jandek (yeah). M.I.A would fit into this.

Of course, there's nothing really wrong about that; Daniel Johnston's childhood is very relevant to the music he makes; even if you want to divorce it from context, it's "indie," so all the quirks beg you back to the creator. We love stories; we love mysticism; we want to see ghosts, if only to read their lips. I apparently love semicolons.

But still, where are the good myths these days? Have we finally choked out biography with a glut of exchanged blog posts and press releases? If I were told that Shaun Ryder made a pact with Satan in the Mancunian midnight, I'd chalk it up to misguided PR. But there's a part of me that will wonderwhat Robert Johnson was up to in Clarksdale, Mississippi. We place so much emotional and spiritual truck in our music, and it follows that we'd transfer some of it to its creators. Blues as good as "From Four Till Late" had to've been channeled, right?

According to legend, Stiv Bators couldn't feel pain as the rest of us do, and thus shook himself off after being struck by that Parisian car. He died in his sleep of internal bleeding; 1990 isn't a very mythical year, but there it is. I've always wanted to write a novel in which one of the principals can't feel pain. I think it's been done, but Stiv deserves the treatment all the same. He died without a doctor; on Robert Johnson's death certificate, his cause of death is listed, simply, as "No Doctor," from which I believe a certain Chicago rock combo got its name. Anyway, "The Last Year" would function well under this mythos. It was the lead-off single from 1980's Disconnected - the reissue of which I picked up last year - and he boldly and brightly predicted his impending death. He was off by a decade. But we'll let the power of legend sort that out.

The Cows, "One O'Clock High"

Sometimes the Cows would fuck up and write a perfect song. "One O'Clock High" is a tightly-wound cowpunk tale about a tightly-wound guy who's about to pick up his stripper girlfriend. He hates what she does, but gets a weird pride from seeing her at work, breaking the hearts of other deadbeats. It's better than that, actually, particularly when Shannon drawls, "She makes my asshole pucker, she makes my collar waaaaaurhm..."

The Incredible String Band, "First Girl I Ever Loved"

Mike (still reading? I'm sorry), this is largely why I prefer 5000 Spirits to The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter. I love this pussy, non-magickal song about a ramblin' man and his settled redhead ex. It's wistful, wise, and were it not for the folk pedigree, would reside firmly in the category of Wonderful Banality.

------------------

You don't need to hear any more. I forgot to mention that the last time I was in Waterloo, a woman was buying Iron Maiden vinyl for her son. He had been seriously injured in a car accident, and she was hoping to coax him from his coma with some of his favorite music, including (I peeked while she was talking to the cashier) Powerslave and Live After Death.

Don't Let the Green Grass Fool You

2006-01-20T05:19:00.000-08:00

Oh hell. And salute to Wilson Pickett, y'all; he never really found the song that suited him, but that voice was beyond studios and crossover formats. And now Mr. Pickett is too.

a highway lay with none of the lip

2006-01-20T03:16:00.000-08:00

I'm not declaring a formal "discovered/rediscovered" series yet; no one's asking, and I want to talk about my last day temping. I get all subdued in the face of the simplest things. Antonio Davis striding through a crowd to check on his wife almost made me cry. I've got a bath coming up. That's pretty cool.

Tonight was all about shaking hands and admitting failure. A few co-workers organized a Chinese buffet lunch trip; the good news was I didn't pay for myself (thanks, Jabe). The bad - or, rather, lightly perplexing - news was I paid both for Naree and Lawrence, who couldn't make it due to family errands but asked for a to-go order. So I scooped some lo mein, beef, kung pao, and a couple egg rolls into a styrofoam container. He had about five minutes to eat, and I don't think he realized I had to pay for a whole 'nother buffet.

Work was interminable; I only stayed because Lawrence promised me a toast. On my way out Naree asked for my cell number (how do the deaf conduct phone conversations? I honestly don't know, but it looks like I'll find out soon) and Nate (ponytail, insane metabolism coupled with insaner hunger, potential Norwegian internet girlfriend, and a swordmaking business on weekends) said it was "an honor and a privilege" working with me, and that I'd taught him a lot of things. Our handshake revealed how large his hands really were.

We all filed through the metal detector, and I found Lawrence and Jabe in the parking lot. Lawrence was cradling a bottle of Hennessy and a bottle of Coke. "You didn't bring a cup?" he chided. I fished an old movie theater cup from my backseat (it really was a Coca-Cola summer, come to think of it) and he filled it. He drank his mixed with the soda. I gave Jabe a draught (Lawrence gave me like three shots - this is what he does), and we shot shit for a short while. Jabe left for his ride, and Lawrence broke down some drunk driving/shot-buying stories for me. I'll sum them for you: the boyfriend was totally cool, and the sidewalk was double-wide, so he thought it was a road.

But yeah, it ended up just me and Lawrence, pulling sips of 'yac and ragging on each other 'til the parking lot was empty. Perfect ending. I drove tipsy with the radio (the real radio, the Destiny's Child/Gavin DeGraw shit, none of that CD nonsense), got a 4 AM vegetarian dinner (read the book of Daniel), and accidentally kicked my waitress in the shin as I got up to leave. Juicy J would not approve. Thank God she'd already seen the tip.

So that was my night. Saturday's still gonna be an all-time crusher, but hopefully I can get out of town Friday and/or Sunday and occupy my mind. Spoon had it right: everything hits at once, but I can barely feel any of it. I get megalomaniacal when I'm solo drunk or solo content, and Lawrence's gift of the former threaded seamlessly into the latter. I may be solo for a loooooong fuckin' time; I promise I'll get the spotlight on the songs next post.

now for scraps:

Pity the poor bassline on "Love to Love You Baby". Who remembers you? I didn't. I swear this song opens up just like Glenn Branca's "The Spectacular Commodity". It could be, of course, a mimicry of last night's surprise. It's just as well; I've got the Batman bubble bath and Alma Mater Plus on iTunes*.

*I was all set to rip on Floetry's taste based on a scan of their guest iTunes** playlist, but Steely Dan's "Deacon Blues" reminds Marsha of her family. She says she cries when she hears the intro.

**It's too much work taking the laptop to the edge of the bathroom, and water tends to seep into the carpeting. I think it'll be an Otis Redding bath for me. You're welcome, by the way, for the specificity.

shoup drags down the family crest

2006-01-19T03:15:00.000-08:00

Everyone at work who sees my class ring asks me why I'm here, toting boxes in a warehouse. And after tomorrow, I no longer have to denigrate the earning power of an English degree. Well. Maybe I will, but to a new cast. I'm now earnestly in the hunt for stable work. But I will miss everyone, and I will miss leaving work at night's apogee. No one on either of two possible highways home. I usually drive through downtown, depending on the disc at hand. I also eat too much fast food (the Wendy's by my place is open 'til 4).

So my thoughts turn to the future, of course. To a Saturday conversation I'm getting ill about, in preparation, and to dental benefits and a bunch of people my age in a sports bar, eating nuts and shitting each other not. Something like that. Last week I drove Naree to CiCi's (she bought lunch as repayment). On the ride back to work, I finally decided to turn up the stereo, as she's deaf. For some reason, it felt rude to do it earlier, but she asked me why the faceplate was removed (hint: one time, a guy's car got stolen from the Dell lot and it was found later ON FIRE), so I slotted an old mix.

So here I am, listening to Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come," and it's uncomfortably silent for me, and she's looking out her window, and I start singing. Like, softly and warbly first, then gradually with a bit more confidence. I have no idea what she made of it. Perhaps she thinks I sing in front of everyone. I don't know if she saw it. Because she's my first deaf acquaintance, I wondered if the repetitive vibrations of pop annoyed her. Should I have brought Congotronics? And so forth. O! my ignorance. We're going for one final lunch tomorrow. I've decided I'm buying.

Now ignore those three paragraphs; due to Swygart, I am going to talk about the recent past. The music I discovered or rediscovered this year, which, unfortunately, cannot be sorted into weightable lists. If you've already bailed out, or wish I'd just zipped a mix, you can leeeeeeeave...

The Big Boys

Something disgusting was involved here, as I found both halves of the Touch and Go retrrospective Skinny Elvis/Fat Elvis a week before frontman Randy "Biscuit" Turner passed away in his Austin home. I knew of the Boys, and had heard enough music to validate some of the outlaw-musician glow with which we in Austin love to drape upon ourselves. The comps, though, fleshed everything out.

In a hardcore scene alternately defined by East Coast asceticism and West Coast ruffneckery, Austin (and, by synedochal extension, Texas) was a city of refuge. The Dicks and Big Boys both called my hometown home (as did gleeful provocateurs Millions of Dead Cops, but that's something else); both bands had openly gay members, producing music known for its clenchfist macho vibe. "Punk" indeed. To that, Big Boys added funk, which looks awful in print; really, though, it just involves swinging basslines, a backbeat, and a pre-Svenonian tendency toward crowd invocation. "Spit" starts off with uptight funk, then falls into a handclap-pinned breakdown in which Biscuit upbraids club owners for using bands to sell weak liquor to patrons. Big Boys were probably the only punks covering "Hollywood Swinging" in the Eighties. Still may be.

Hank Williams, "Kaw-Liga"/The Carter Family, "Answer to Weeping Willow"

This wasn't the year I delved into this genre, or downloaded the complete discography of that vocal group. No, as always, I thought scattershot. I got a Hank Williams greatest hits comp in a gas station, shortly before moving back to Austin. Of all the fearsome tunes he's penned (and heavens, he was a Tin Pan Monster), the one I found irresistable was a vocative penned to a cigar-store Indian. The guitar and bass creep while Ol' Hank sings in a minor way about Kaw-Liga and his inability to woo a comely maiden. It's a neat metaphor for the silent-man archetype; Hank refuses to pick sides, blaming the chief both because of his nature (a heart "made of knotty pine") and his stubbornness. The chorus is an abrupt shift the major; Hank's licking his chops, teasing the Red Man who "never got a kiss".

The Carter Family; well, knowing that to ignore them is to let large portions of the American musical tree fall rotted, I got a stopgap comp. "Answer to Weeping Willow" got me nearly all the way home from my girlfriend's one day. I swear I listened to it twenty times in a row. Just a rueful lament from an unfaithful lover. From the first, each verse grabs like a supplicant. "God, shall I ever get forgiveness/For the deeds that I have done?/And meet up yonder her sweet charming/For I know she bids me come." Who writes like this anymore? Oldham? When the Carter ladies join for the chorus, it's dread magic, as A.P. leads everyone in wishing for a land beyond the sea. What's odd is I can't summon ghosts from this; it's undeniably of a different era (one in which a few thousand people would buy a record about dead lovers and their guilt-wracked survivors), and while the narrative has a quaint, Protestant spark to it, the whole is too stark for me to consider relegation. This is music for me. To my great shame, I was unable, in 2005, to slake my love for the human voice.

Also, this song draws psychic parallels to one of my favorite childhood hymns: "For Those Tears I Died (Come to the Water)," written by the self-dubbed Mother of Contemporary Christian Music, a lesbian minister with a questionable conversion narrative.

Glenn Branca, The Ascension

Forget what I just said about the human voice. Sometimes the human asshole can speak just as loud.

I'm referring, of course, to NYC's favorite glammongers, Sonic Youth, whose Lee Ranaldo contributed untinctable guitar assault to The Ascension, as well as you-had-to-be-there-but-guess-what-you-weren't liners to the '03 reissue. But like everything SY does, from coattailing the avant garde hype machine to Murray Street power ballads to Kim Gordon's not looking at me while signing my copy of Bad Moon Rising at an in-store, they're always at least half right.

It helps that Glenn Branca loves him some urban terror. If The Ascension were to soundtrack a film scene, it would be the Ronin of zombie escapes. Every zombie, by the way, would be costumed Mike Powell-terrifying. Four guitars, tuned to Unknown Pleasures, hacking their dread way through the 'me' and 'we' of punk rock; in fact, avoiding objects near-entirely in favor of viscera. Although there are nods, and there is daybreak: "Light Field (In Consonance)" adopts the gallop of Romanticism. At the nine minute mark of "The Spectacular Commodity," all the malice thus earned drops into a sea of genuine uplift, as Television drops by to co-write the 2016 Olympic anthem. The closing title track eschews riffs for guitar sear, all contrails circling a dark Earth. It'd be ambient if 1) it didn't gut you so much and 2) the band didn't commence a landstrike midway through.

All this reminds me how much I hate Explosions in the Sky, and how ambivalent I am toward Sonic Youth, a genuinely good band whose name graces the t-shirt I am typing in. To be fair, though, I was wearing a tie as a belt today, too.

There is more, but I'm delaying bedtime and I need sleep to be judicious in my writing.

this venue gives me migraines

2006-01-18T05:26:00.000-08:00

Lie Bot, what is the saddest thing?

mighty mighty

2006-01-17T05:24:00.000-08:00

The best sentences in English start with "As a multi-ethnic woman of color..."

And what once was

is now

and soon I'll be wearing a t-shirt. This is America!!!!!!!

It seems to me that the Australian charts are as barren as the hearth of Fair Matilda herself. Humiliated after getting my junk in a day late for the US/UK exchange, I made amends this go-round. I think I got a bit "ia ia Chthulu fhtagn" with the Veronicas, ah well. The Will Young song was a corker - I gave it an 8 or 9 - and the video (to which the link decamps you) is quite great, in a fascist manner. I didn't care for "Switch It On". I usually end up falling for the ballads. What do you want from me? Maybe we can trade?

ask me about my close call tomorrow

2006-01-16T05:39:00.000-08:00

I am still waiting.

grand canyon

2006-01-16T03:15:00.000-08:00

EHRLICHMAN: Hot pants.

NIXON: Jesus Christ.

Haha, we're bouncing back from who I didn't touch and what I didn't eat (or is it the other way around?) and instead, I bring you the fucking abyss.

In 11th grade, I ran with the Weezer nerds. Whereas I was only in AP Comp Sci I for the skills credit, Oliver, Minix, and Chad were cracking passwords in III. Those guys were absolute sweeties, unflinchingly loyal and goofy as hell. We all skipped school (just a period or two each. like I said: nerds, all of us) the last week to buy the Green Album. I drove around Spicewood Springs, blasting fresh processed slabs of Tin Pan Alley-derived plasticene. I may have gotten pancakes. The days were that good.

Three days later, my mousetrap car partner swept Mr. Balmer's physics classroom for an A on the project. We could do distance. We could do speed. The third car was, if I recall, a fixed-distance affair, and we finally succumbed to the co-effiecients and variables involved. My partner told me a week after school about his impromptu extra credit. I still beat him in the final ranking by a spot. I wasn't supposed to care about such things. Is what I told myself.

Anyway! I still have, in my immediate possession, a CD recorded by these friends and released (for a fee) by Mp3.com. They dubbed themselves "Nine Inch Nose Hairs". "This is," Matt intoned, "The Song of the Jungle". Everyone screamed for thirty seconds. One song involved a mic trodden by a New Balance for a full minute. We read a lot of Penny Arcade and watched Clerks: The Animated Series. I listened to Gomez and Ben Folds Five and Brainwash Projects and dreamed of that one dance with Sara Manning (another dumb little story, another night).

Mike Macharyas sings a celebrity's name over and over into his computer, and according to iTunes, his fans buy Ultramarine and FSOL albums. "Katie Holmes" gets the dread-organ treatment, "Brian Eno" is, puzzlingly enough, closer to the Transformers soundtrack. "Usher" happened when KMFDM took bad acid at a screening of Nosferatu. Don't give him your money; preview the songs on iTunes and ask yourself if a little more meritocracy couldn't hurt music. For every Partch, there's an Erin Smogor.

You want to talk banal, baby? What's your favorite 69 Love Songs disc? Disc 2. What's the best Neutral Milk Hotel song? "Ghost". The best sellout ever? Shostakovich. Biggest major-label soul mindmelt? Isaac Hayes' "Walk On By".

Next week we'll talk No Neck Blues Band and Gandalf the Grey.

ctrl+t (if i'm in luck, i might get picked up)

2006-01-15T19:06:00.000-08:00

When you're in Austin, out of state guests, I'll take you to End of an Ear. It's cute. Went there tonight and snagged NNCK's Intonomacy while admitting my ignorance to the clerk. He didn't care, he just loves that band. Good guy.

Sixty percent became one hundred last night. Went to the "Soul Happening" Waxploitation deal at the Continental Club. The DJs were uniformly excellent. Had you taken out the chairs, it might've been redolent of a middle-class Northern Soul shindig. Lots of deep soul, funk with a minimum of flutes. About 5 percent black. I'm being generous there, by lumping in the El Michels Affair bass player and this one Asian dude. The Affair itself (half Daptones and half Antibalas) was merely decent, shuffling through a bunch of funkstrumentals with the benefit of neither vocalist nor hypeman. No matter, I got my superfecta: Jager, beer, and four mixed drinks of two types.

I put myself in a bad situation by showing up, though, and I probably won't be making that mistake again. Got home at 2 and decided to rent a movie. Instead, I drove halfway to San Antonio armed with a mix I'd burned five minutes before. I got back around five, half-ate a meal at Star Seeds just because I didn't want to go home, and finally surrendered to sleep.

On the plus side, my room looks comparatively wonderful. I, though, am an ass, and over the last two weekends I've drunk some shit and learned a lot more. I'm going deep into some records tonight.

2006-01-14T23:50:00.000-08:00

At the dark end of the street:
that's where we always meet
Hiding in shadows where we don't belong
Living in darkness, to hide our wrong

You and me, at the dark end of the street
You and me

I know time is gonna take its toll
We have to pay for the love we stole
It's a sin and we know it's wrong
Oh, but our love keeps going on strong

Steal away to the dark end of the street

They gonna find us, they gonna find us
They gonna find us, o!, someday

You and me, at the dark end of the street
You and me

And when the daylight hour comes around
And by chance we're both downtown
If we should meet, just walk on by
Oh, darling, please don't cry

Tonight we'll meet at the dark end of the street

dinner mirrors

2006-01-14T02:24:00.000-08:00

Tom, take a good look at the links at right of your article. More than half are Pitchfork staffers and superfans like Stylus and Chris Nelson. Who let you all into the Village Voice? I find myself asking, "Could this once-relevant bastion of literate music criticism matter less in 2005/6?" It's a shocking and disheartening thing, seeing scenester flakes play with its reputation, writing about the reaction to Pitchforkmedia.com's ridiculous "Top 50."

It may pain you to consider it, but the fact is many literate people consider bullsh*t like Clipse to be embarrassing and false. And while they may not be expressing this in terms florid enough for your approval, the dope, guns and f***ing in the streets arm of hip-hop reeks of the worst unsubstantiated bravado and meaningless "rebel" cool, things only a thirteen year-old could find intimidating or impressive.

[And Tom, what are even saying in that penultimate paragraph? "If you don't have anything overeducated to say, don't say anything at all?" You don't have to take "simple" criticism seriously? Wake up from the liberal-arts dream, dude. This is New York City. And your list sucks.]

That you and your gaggle of well-fed pals are so incapable of calling a duck a duck is only evidence of a sad, totally unexamined (and frankly racist) effort to prop up laughable hip-hop loudmouths as poets, to transitively transcend your sheltered insecurity by basking in their (completely phony) overconfidence and "hard" image. Cocaine! Holy s***!

You can't king-make a jester like Jeezy. Yours and so many of your peers' fantasies of and condescension toward nonsense like "trap-hop" absolutely jumps from the page. And apparently you don't even know it, can't see it, and will continue to make fools of yourselves, a la Nick Sylvester's increasingly-used and outrageously racist Amos n' Andy voice (see Pitchfork singles list entry #16).

Posted by: Chris Ott at December 29, 2005 10:36 AM

Here's some premises, Southall-stylee:

1) Pitchfork caught some flak for its inclusion of certain hip-hop albums in its year-end top 50, most notably Cam'ron at number 9.

2) Stylus got some comments for comparable choices.

3) Mostly, though, it was the girlpop that pissed people off.

4) Tom Breihan says, "Here's the thing: pop music, as it exists in 2005, is basically black music, and it has been for some time."

5) I think if Tom Breihan heard Tim McGraw's "Back When", he'd rightly freak out.

6) The kids who trek to Pitchfork, or Stylus, or what have you, by and large have little use for Top 40 radio.

7) These kids have also heard a lot of Top 40 radio.

8) 85% of Top 40 Radio is baseless and void of excitement, and that other 15% is not exclusively rap's domain.

9) These kids then make certain assumptions about pop, assumptions reinforced through years of passive listening and observation of a culture of disposability.

10) Why don't record labels spend more money digging up gems from the vaults and repackaging them? They've probably got the publishing; why not land some Eugene McDaniels on a couple soundtracks and see if he jigsaws into a few new canons? How about a Columbia Records Northern Soul-type comp? What of all those hoary folk singers? You don't think Shirley Collins could appeal to a few new people?

11) Rap = hip-hop = pop to these kids, and Stylus knows what can happen when pop is praised.

12) Metal and drone, now, the kids may not've heard that, but the general feeling is that these are Artists making serious Works (too serious, if you asked most). They give that kind of stuff a pass, at most swiping at it with an "it's too intense/abrasive/minimal/bombastic/Satanist for me".

13) The only way KC and the Sunshine Band's "Sound Your Funky Horn" could sound any more brilliant is if you heard a guy getting shot in the back of the studio.

14) Tom Breihan admits that "I certainly often have trouble dealing with the relentless misogyny/violence/acquisitiveness" of much commercial hip-hop.

15) Tom Breihan really likes hip-hop.

16) He goes on to bemoan the lack of "thoughtful debate on the relative merits and demerits of rap as it exists now. It's all outright dismissal."

17) He was referring to the comments in a blog.

18) He was referring to the comments in a blog.

19) Yeah.

20) Also, no one seems to have given a fuck that Beanie Sigel made the Pitchfork list.

21) Beanie Sigel doesn't hit the Top 40 unless Jay's got a spare sixteen.

22) Dipset has released some dumb-ass pop singles. People have heard them. They make Cam'ron look bad.

23) Cam'ron also looked bad when he said "old man, go on'n tell 'em" about fucking Otis Redding.

24) Daryl Hall released an album produced by Robert Fripp, and no one cares.

25) Stylus was somewhat lambasted for "Since U Been Gone" being our number 1 single of 2005. Three 6 Mafia, at number 2, got off pretty damn easily.

26) Lists of albums and songs cannot have haters. They can have semi-anonymous snipers.

27) When your average self-identifying "indie kid" sees a commercial hip-hop record, he associates it with pop. He associates it with misogyny, homophobia, and illicit narcotics. Not the white recreational kind. He reads prose about trapping, and wannabe criminals bringing the same recycled, dreary reality to stark sonic life, and notes an artificial familiarity between (largely) white, privileged writers and subjects who're in another motivational/referential world. Mostly, though, he sees pop. And pop, he knows, is supposed to be bad. There may be just as many murders on a Nick Cave album, but he's gonna get the benefit of the doubt, the mercy of irony and roleplay. Why doesn't the more dealer-centric hip-hop get that kind of love? Probably because it comes across as unabashedly sincere and deathly serious. Also, it's pop. Critical theory doesn't apply. Is what you'll hear, mind you.

28) Next year, try slapping a Girls Aloud record at number 7 and see if the comment boxes erupt with rational discourse on the fourth wave of feminism and the dissolution of narrative reliability.

from CityPages

2006-01-14T00:49:00.000-08:00

This week's poll!
The new season of American Idol starts January 17. Why will you watch?

O Gets me two credits in my music criticism class at MusicTech
O Listening to barrage of insults delivered in a British accent reminds me of my days doing Benny Hill's laundry
O Spoiler Alert: On-camera suicide in episode four
O To see if I looked as stupid as Simon made me feel
O Because someone duct-taped me to a chair and fastened my eyelids open
O SEACREST!!!!

Ballet Deviare

2006-01-14T00:24:00.000-08:00

There be ballet set to metal. Well-written article; you can visualize the guy squirming as the theater lights dim ("Ballerinas and death vox, should I have worn a suit?"). Don't make me choose a position on this.

Ballet Deviare

sorry about the short story

2006-01-13T15:08:00.000-08:00

Mystikal gets year on tax charges. This, on top of the six years for sexual battery. When he gets out, his flow is gonna be unintelligible.

There's a sixty percent chance I'll be at the Continental Club tomorrow to check out some Waxploitation DJs and the El Michaels Affair. A night of deep soul, funk, and other music to which I have no business trying to dance. But I'll do it anyway! I'll do it by myself if I have to, I suppose. The South isn't as Dirty as you've been led to believe, y'all.

I don't know why, but the last three months or so have been a Black-inspired affair. There was a day when I found myself walking out of a record store with three jazz records and a Pete Rock/CL Smooth CD. And I was unconscious of this the whole time I was in the store. I walked out and said, "Hey, post-bop and the men who sampled them!" I don't know if this is my lateral step into adulthood, some forsaking of indie (foreign words get italics) for musics that possess poise and/or sophistication. I'm dancing more, but that's not for you to truly know.

But as I tick off the records I've bought, I'm starting to wonder if I'm heading toward some new approach toward music appreciation. And I'm wondering if I'm fetishizing the past. I tend to shrug off current music with intermittent exceptions, but without Soulseek and a steady stream of promos (o! college radio), maybe that's just the standard pose. Toots and the Maytals, Rufus Thomas, Miles Davis, Big Joe Turner, Sun Ra, Budos Band, Jimmy James, 70s Texas funk, Mamie Smith, the Soul Children, Desmond Dekker, Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Maybe the past (Budos excepted) is just easier to purchase. At some point, I may need to reconcile myself to the fact that the past already has a large backlog of words, and my pursuit of musicology as a combination of death-terror and emotional distention will need an infusion of new tones.

Also, I know nothing about techno.

Jimmy James + Vagabonds

2006-01-12T03:11:00.000-08:00

"God, look at her."
"Wait. Wait."
"She's not looking now."
"OK."
"See, this is why it's good to be attached. I'd be killing myself over her otherwise."
"Her, or, like, some sea-mother archetype?"
"No girls stock groceries. Not overnight, anyways."
And he was right. She was setting toasters on a shelf. I swabbed my eyes with a thumb and middle finger.
"Is it the belt? Are you hot for the belt?"
"Fuck you." Then, "It's the jeans."
"It's Texas. Everyone wears jeans."
But he was right again. If anything - and as queer as this sounds - the jeans were wearing her. She herself was an adroit accesory, as tacit as the streaks and the bowling shoes. She didn't need him. I didn't know he got off on that. Lust is best unshared.

We dicked around the Nature's Harvest aisles, marveling at the cost of organic soap. I got reminded yet again of his goal to chalk up one meat-free month. "To clear out my system," he said, but God knows he'll play it up like he's buffing a new hipster facet. Holding a fucking gin and tonic at some party, swapping lasagna recipes with the stockgirl while that Michigan funk comp uncoils like some TV plan. Anyway, he wouldn't have considered it if I hadn't reminded him why shit smells so bad: it's rotting meat pushed through a greenhouse for four hours.

We came for lightbulbs, but soon conscripted some cornflakes and pipe cleaners for good measure.

"I want a soul wedding."
"Fuck you, you don't."
"Serious. All vinyl, Aretha for the recessional, Jimmy James for the ceremony, Northern shit for the dancefloor. You think she'll go for that?"
I looked for which aisle. 12. Housewares. Voice down.
"Who? Toaster stockgirl?"
"Maybe. Girlfriend."
"No one you know will make any sense of that wedding. Except me, and I'll make it a life goal to break that shit up."
"I could get a new set of friends. Detroit friends."
"Life goal. It's one word now: lifegoal." Pause. "You will not hold us hostage to your doubts."

Big pause until after we paid. It wasn't her in 12 at that point; some ponytailed Taylor'd burnout was building the Whitman's Valentine display, but only I had checked. As we hit the concrete, we jagged a sec. The stockgirl was sitting on a tipped newspaper vending machine. Her elbows, sheathed with an undershirt's three-quarter sleeves, dug into the upper part of her legs, parted wearily. She was on a smoke break.

Seeing our jag, she looked up. And spoke. "I am imprecise and multitudinous. I have no need for emotional relations, and I fuck for my own amusement. My habits have passed even beyond the realm of lifestyle; I am complete without apology" - and here she twirled her cigarette for emphasis, like a TV detective or something - "nor do I presume that anyone would note me enough to expect an apology. I am neither mystic nor mother, I will not affix my outsider's seal to your chosen ruts of pretense.

"And I'd go for brass canzonas. But that's me."

Right there, in front of her and the violet-glow bug zapper and all the bungeed shopping carts blocking the entrance doors, I poked him. He pulled a five out of his wallet - "mierda!" - and handed it to me. We went home and changed three lightbulbs.

> stuffed with butter tarts and Jolt Cola > LEN

2006-01-11T12:35:00.000-08:00

Actually, this is what the democratic public wants to know:

"His music tastes tend toward Beethoven and Bruce Springsteen but 'I force him to listen to Scarlatti and Bach,' Mrs. Alito said in a Washington Post interview published Monday. He once attended a ska festival -- that's rock music, with a touch of reggae and horns."

Well, close enough. The SKA FAQ holds forth like so:

"Musically, ska is a fusion of Jamaican mento rhythm with R&B, with the drum coming in on the 2nd and 4th beats, and the guitar emphasizing the up of the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th beats. The drum therefore is carrying the blues and swing beats of the American music, and the guitar expressing the mento sound... the Skatalites frequently used a G-Em-C-D guitar progression, while most modern ska uses a straight 1-4-5 progression (A-D-E C-F-G), although A-D-E9-A is another possible progression."

Plus the word's fun to say repeatedly. The progression goes like this:

New Orleans R&B > copied oddly by Jamaican musicians > ska > slowed down and chunked up > reggae > spiritualized, spaced out, the island's own ambient house to ska's 'ardkore > dub > pumped live with a toaster and a breathtaking sound system, imported by DJ Kool Herc to NYC > hip-hop

That's approximate. Anyway, Springsteen rules.

rude bwoy Samuel Alito

2006-01-11T05:23:00.000-08:00

I confess: I only do Stycasts so's I can hear how Todd Burns mixes two or three songs of my choosing. The other songs that bookend these mini-mixes... well, I usually download them at random, often upon the recommendation of failed session musicians and Dave Marsh.

Seriously, I love the Stycast thing. I gain strength, I get nasal, I lay the soul down for fake union. You'd do the same thing if you were going nuts down South.

Songs of the Volcano: Includes DVD.

2006-01-11T04:48:00.000-08:00

Listening to the new Bob Brozman album. For this jaunt, the genial guitarist swapped ideas with Papuan stringbands. And it is an OK album, certainly not a Putumayo affair at all. Apparently, Papua New Guinea is one of Earth's last lands not graced with the guitar. One of the hallmarks of the aforementioned stringbands, who're usually confined to/associated with their hometown, is untrammeled optimism. Which boosts the record up a mark; one can only imagine what the exchange rate for honky tonk is in Oceania. Another mark added for titling a tune "Youth Development Song". Bob love the kids.

I will let people know when they start writing songs about cocaine and/or lesbian pop stars.

ALSO: Mr. Ian Mathers, who absolutely knows what he likes and dislikes, and can skywrite you a message either way, has told me about butter tarts. Canada, I am coming. One day.

Seven days left in the warehouse; they have my résumé now, and God guide them to use it well. It's been fun putting my hand on the clock radio so "Stay Fly" gets conducted in my boxy warehouse at proper volume, but the carnival's gotta leave town sometime. Brad aches for a desk.

---------------------------

Posted 01/10/2006 - 11:21:29 PM by Hone_Heke:
Dubidet: As an interested-in-many-genres-except-metal fan, I`m a possible convertee. I`m horribly interested in this distinction debate between Thrash & Death regarding Reign In Blood, and I ask you this serious question. Are you able to delineate more concisely for me the *structural language of speed metal* in technical terms?

Posted 01/10/2006 - 11:31:43 PM by dubidet:
ha

Posted 01/10/2006 - 11:47:27 PM by brennschluss:
Dubidet: Metal as an intellectual exercise is wholly unknowable, hence the difficulty in explaining and elucidating exactly what Heavy Metal is. Take death metal for example: It's an arbitrary delineation based as much on personal taste as on objective criteria (the same could be said for all the various metal subgenres). This makes death metal understood as a series of singularities: Obituary is death metal, Carcass is death metal, Morbid Angel is death metal; but it doesn't work to take the sounds/qualities of said bands and extrapolate outward to find other death metal bands. Which is why Arkhon Infaustus is black metal, Zao is Christian metalcore, Behemoth is black metal, Napalm Death is grindcore. I proffer my opinion to prove my point: Writing about heavy metal does nothing to help people understand heavy metal; it's too visceral to every be captured with the written word.

Posted 01/11/2006 - 12:22:21 AM by Hone_Heke:
I see, so what you`re saying is that you`re not a musician, but a writer dealing only in terms that metaphoricise what you hear, and have read elsewhere that the structural languages of death & thrash are not the same. But what I was really offering you was the chance to knowledgably explain G 7th bridge A# bflat D to G to Gflat to E 1st within the Schon-Elix flat bass pattern that dominates the North European chapters of Death. And how Urman`s counterpoint to thrash is to up-fret some of the G changes against an A flat progression, in theory at least, although it depends partly on the feedback amps to convey some of the lower end dissonance. Got it.

Did you get it, fair readers? Wasn't that nefarious? Hone_Heke misrepresents (let's just guess) himself as an indie kid, then asks Stew to concisely present the structural points of speed metal? Stew, knowing that no comments section will hold the right combination of text, sound samples, and .jpegs of frets, kindly laughs him off.

And - and! - Heke deploys his master gambit: he reveals himself not as a metal fan, but as a guy who likes to make shit up. Every word he says in that post has no credible relation to any other word! Instead, it's a po'-faced grenade labeled Dancing About Architecture, and Hone's just sitting on it like the plan's... almost... locking... into... place! He didn't even bother to use the word "speed" in his response! This racism is killing me inside!

WE REPORT YOU DECIPHER

2006-01-11T01:46:00.000-08:00

top ten power ballads

2006-01-08T21:40:00.000-08:00

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/01/08/elvis.auction.ap/index.html

Let's hear it for Lou Rawls y'all

2006-01-06T13:39:00.000-08:00

Real Life Rip-Off Top Ten: 1/5/06 through the bye week

2006-01-06T03:07:00.000-08:00

"Y'all gotta excuse us, we can't bounce as much as we want to cos if we bounce too much the record'll jump"

Texas is the home of the players and pimps. I thought y'all knew. I was born in San Jose, and I did extensive time in Florida, but we jumped during the space between songs and now here I am! Stycast next week! Featuring none of the following songs, but the one after that? In-Vince-Able!

10. Sleepy Brown, "Me, My Baby, My Cadillac" (2005) - Technically the Purple Ribbon All-Stars, but fuck that. He's not a great soul singer, and the background is wholesale 70s cribbing with just a couple weak chops, but that's classic mixtape trickery, and it's a hot sample. Hip-hop: more pop sitar, more flute. Sleepy Brown: it's just a car.

9. Cold Crush Brothers, "Heartbreakers (Mega Mix)" (1984) - "We're what the women demand/And also what they can't stand!" Ah, to have six fly brothers on the mic again. It's an electro-hop monument, "American Pie" for the Detroit rollerskating set. Seven minutes of gleeful, general girl-fuckery. The dais is passed around, there's a couple fevered chants, the intro sample is indefinably funny (Shattered woman: "How could they do this to us?" Sobbing friend: "They can't just keep doing this to us." "I know, but it's so hard to just walk away." Old man: "Hey baby, did somebody break ya heart?"). The Crew gets backhanded props for being a sick live act, but man. "Heartbreakers"!

8. LEN, "Steal My Sunshine" (1999) - Was it really seven years ago I was experiencing lust-pangs at the cheeky sight of a pregnant belly in the "Steal My Sunshine" video? There's so many things right about this song.

a. The spoken intro/interlude. Nothing critically sound here, it's just funny to hear Canucks say things like "Well, does he like butter tarts?" And when dude says "Sharon! I love you!", well... somehow, that's high school to me. Beginnings of self-deprecation, sincerity and gossip.

b. If you've heard "More More More," you know how little that sample appears in the original track. Props for isolating the funkiest two bars.

c. The cowbell rings like sonar.

7. Cassidy, Lil' Wayne, and Fabolous, "6 Minutes" (2005) - Everyone's a little slow, but who'd be impressed with a track called "4 Minutes"? Fab nets the OR closing with shit like "Jessica Alba, Kirsten Dunst/And still make a mil' on the first of months/These dudes be the first to front/'Til they family and friends is in limos, they in hearse in front/I'm in the top position, I can make you a proposition/I'm in the hard top waiting on the drop edition/To hell with the patience/I'ma send a nigga down under like Australia vacations". Word on the street is Lil' Wayne's at the U. of Houston on a poli sci major. Apparently, he's a real nice cat, quite smart, but what rapper not named Webbie isn't?

6. Peter Tosh with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, "Walk and Don't Look Back" (1978) - After the Green Bay massacre, The One Peter Tosh cold rocked the One Love Peace Concert. Suspicious of proffered peace, his set was the toughest of all and, since Mick was behind the curtain that night, earned him a roster spot on the new Rolling Stones label. Of course, I've been listening to his Temptations cover. A collabo with the fugging Glimmers themselves.

Anyway, I'm trying to pinpoint when backing vocals started to suck. Sometime before Stock, Aitken and Waterman. Maybe disco and its earless aim. But somehow the classic back-of-the-room wails lost all charm. Once in a while, I'll hear something like Ricochet's "Seven Bridges Road," or Lee Ann Womack's "I Hope You Dance" - a male counterpoint, just like "Someday We'll Be Together," perhaps the acme of backing vox - and I think about Holland/Dozier days.

Indie pop's gotten pretty good at it, I suppose. "Vittorio E."

5. Rufus Thomas, "Funky Robot" (1973) - I haven't wrestled professionally in about nine years, but even in my decline, I was toasted for my entry music: the first sixty seconds of Rufus Thomas' "Funkiest Man Alive". The best part. Anyway, sometimes I make well-received cameos at RAW events, usually smashing my farewell plaque over a McMahon flunky or something. I yell about my legacy and give my signature handsign: Sign of the Elders, brought parabolic from left shoulder to right.

4. Betty Harris, "There's a Break in the Road" (1969) - This would be number one, except that I'm plugging this shit in randomly. And I'm testing your loyalty. This song will raise your dead, but you'll be circling the turntable like a zombie anyway. No harm, no foul. Quick, name three soul songs that incorporate feedback as a motif. Name one. I can't either. Deep soul that drains to an evil hole. Courtesy of theKate, who's quickly turning into a sweatless svengali of this kind of stuff.

3. Anton Maiden, "Powerslave" (1999) - I don't get it. Iron Maiden MIDIs fronted by a slavish Swede, now dead. Too earnest to be hilarious. Anyway, listening to Ariel Pink before this preps me for accepting bald MIDI composition as legit. Here's a tribute site if you need it. Now, this I don't get, but in a wonderful way.

Also, the career of Ariel Pink is a tragic misfire.

2. Q-Unit, "Under Pressure All the Time" (2005) - I hate 50 Cent, but sometimes his choruses make my panties moist. What else to say? Silence Xperiment make up for their awful name with a decent-to-sick set of Fiddy/Freddy mashes. The cover is worth staring at for a bit.

1. Toots and the Maytals, "Bla Bla Bla" (1968) - I'm so over the moon for the human voice that the Maytals can sing a I-IV-V "bla bla bla" over and over and I get all Pentacostal. You know how the best verse of "Israelites" is "My wife and my kids they pack up an'a leave me/'Darling,' she said, "I was yours to recieve'"? It's that, but in Perfect Pop Format 1A. Toots - best male voice since Caruso! - gives Christmas presents to his family, but they tip over the table and his dad tears up the card.

I'm not talking in symbols. That's what happens. Toots can sing something like "I called my baby to the breakfast table," riddle it with pregnant pauses, and fashion it into soul murder.

Les Demures

2006-01-02T13:42:00.000-08:00

There is entirely too much nudity, or at least the wrong types of it. Something must be done, but by whom?

My post-war years were profligated in the company of dissipated lecturers. You know the genus. Those men who paint the blush back into their childlike fixations. "Oh no," they said, eating the bait and laying more, "you look wonderful. I love larger women; they're so vibrant and unafraid of convention." Four nights of romance, safely lodged in the woman's quarters (shut up), and they steal away in stately Packards, their ravenous sensibilities never to be seen again, except in times of great hunger. Devotees of the Socratic method (later Ginsburgian) of questionable student relations, wild amphetamine rolls in the jazz clubs, all knowledge turned inward, erecting the ego clear through the ceiling of self.

That Gavin Bryars record is rubbish, and I don't care what the boy has to say in its defense.

surprisingly high: Kurupt

2006-01-01T10:22:00.000-08:00

On top of the world, baby, on top of the woooooorld!

shout it out loud

2005-12-29T13:49:00.000-08:00

Last night, reading Reynolds' Generation Ecstasy, unable to refrain from wondering how many amateur musicologists had touched the same pages in the last couple years, had already dog-eared and digested and recombinated pieces into fresh pearadiggums. On the balcony, cos I had to burn through the Red 72s. The girls across the way made a show of opening and closing their blinds, saying hi, complimenting me on my brothers' forward friends.

I'm at the part where Gerald Simpson strikes out on his own when a boyfriend steps out to pour out his beer. No, the final pour: Angel Falls from a nub nestled in a cotton fly. I looked just the one time, to be polite.

Confidential to Marissa: no, those guys were wrong. You are not mean. You are nice. You asked me my name.

I bought two Kiss albums and a Straitjacket Fits album today. Kiss stays.

internal affairs/flippin' Hollywood Squares

2005-12-28T02:03:00.000-08:00

The Man Behind ODB. Perhaps indicative of this article's desire for an engrossing arc is its refusal to call Ol' Dirty by his government name. While I doubt Mr. Jones' penchant for eternal self-christening stopped before Dirt McGirt, the story of him and his ladder-scrambling preppie lackey is something else.

Wouldna' found it but for Mike's link to the baladas prohibidas article. Just saying. The other article was all right. Kind of gonzo, but that's ok. Every weekend brings another trailer to Club Carnaval, just down the road from my apartment. This weekend was Los Terribles Del Norte (see photo below). New week, new grupo, and if they have an apellation, it's "Del Norte". Why? Probably because all the good drugs are up there, ebbing and surging in a most unromantic web of tunnels and chainlink holes.

Brad, what was 2005 to you?

In late October, the consolidation department still had our radio. Naree, who is deaf and a supreme warehouse utility player, was watching Dylan - ex-dealer, rail-thin white leaner - bob his head furiously. By way of explanation, he put on a big beam and gestured at the stereo. So there she is, a young mother of four, splitting her days between jobs at Dell and the IRS, always laughing, the most graceful worker we have. She's put her ear right by the radio, and she's straining to catch any of the vibrations that Lil' Jon and the Eastside Boyz' "What U Gon' Do" is spilling.

That was my year. Fuck a Brad Shoup.

from the fucking internet

2005-12-27T03:30:00.000-08:00

This is the one that no one could have seen coming—five guys from Brooklyn releasing a record by themselves and having said record ignite the indie-college circuit simply by word-of-mouth and myspace.com.

(italics mine)

8,5 that's my number

2005-12-25T22:29:00.000-08:00

Jess Popper just jogged my memory... the first line of Gavin DeGraw's "I Don't Wanna Be," for those of you who were entranced by songs that maintain a certain standard from stem to stern, is

"I don't have to be anything other/Than a prison guard's son."

And that was the best opening to a song this year.

what's left in your arms/when the static clears

2005-12-25T21:01:00.000-08:00

Stylus' Top 50 albums is final, and my own top 20... well, I'm not too thrilled with it. After about 12 discs, it's discs I liked, not loved. And by next year, I'll have re-slotted the final 8, and then some.

I will not repeat this weakness next year.

I've slagged Chicago jump blues in the past, but for Christmas my brother got me a couple CDs, among them Big Joe Turner's Rocks in My Bed, a collection of forties sides. And it's not all shoeshine and sidewalk shuffle; I hope to get "I'm Still in the Dark" on my next Stycast. Red Saunders' band backs him - in particular, Porter Kilbert and Leon Washington double up on saxes for the last verse and it's entertainment in powder form and with exclamation points. The session was tracked in Gotham, but the band's as Illinois as Lincoln's gay ass.

In other news, I'm listening to Donald Fagen's Kamakiriad. Which is to say, there is no other news at all. So smooth.

men will melt

2005-12-23T02:33:00.000-08:00

While taking Hell's Bells down, in the scheme of subcultural touchstones, isn't exactly cracking the laser grid, it was good to see in these anti-Roman feastdays. I remember Hell's Bells, even though I saw it years later than most looming Xian rockers and was shown it in a spirit of "that could've been us, taking this seriously". But for the grace of God, I'm hoping. The author certainly thinks so.

The Beyonce/Slim Thug track ain't so bad.

Girlfriend's in town.

well?

2005-12-22T06:13:00.000-08:00

Oh and I just bought Sword Heaven's Horsing on a Bryan Berge-initiated whim. Is this how I wanted to lose my cassette-only virginity? On four hours of sleep, via Paypal?

There I go toward the sleeping bag...

KlausFraktal stylee

2005-12-22T06:01:00.000-08:00

To study

FATHER AND I ARE DISAPPOINTED IN THE CHOICES YOU MAKE

2005-12-22T04:44:00.000-08:00

Shotgun aimed for the tornado. Ah well, they can't all be... hits? Ian Mathers liked it, so screw all.

Ha ha! The Budos Band's got it. Their home base, Daptone Records, 's got a thing for copping the gilt of another age. Their logo's a stone classic, something outta Wattstax, and they forge 45 covers wherever space allows. Just reading "b/w" gives me staid thrills. They also make deep soul that rests snugly in the velvet pocket.

The Budos Band are after-school veterans, signed on the spot (or so the liners go, maybe Daptone's got the chummy rhetoric set on impromptu - it reads great, nonetheless) and fresh off a s/t with some wicked ensemble funk. Soaked in authenticity and begging for a party. I dunno. I liked it. Gave my friend a headache whilst comprehending extending listenings. Also: best album cover all year.

The rental company gave Stacey a PT Cruiser! It's nuts, given that she's waiting for an estimate on her 1993 Buick Regal. Here's my suggested playlist for her temporary nerdmobile:

Bob Marley, Legend
Weezer, "Buddy Holly"
Fatboy Slim (any)
Los Lonely Boys
Modest Wolf Fire

You get my point. Every other PTC she's seen is helmed by someone 30 or older, and she hates me for pointing this out to her. I still want a ride. What will the make-outs taste like?

I bought this on eBay, and I'm pretty stoked. I got "Ain't No Big Thing" after keying in "northern soul" on Soulseek, and it's a lovely cosmopolitan strut with a kiss-off croon. Less than seven bucks for a comp? A'ight.

Here's a review from Amazon:

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

Come to me softly, January 20, 2000
Reviewer: Bobby Walters (Florida,U.S.A.) - See all my reviews

Sad,very sad,I happen to be a part of jimmy's early recording days, with Lindon Pottinger when we recorded the song 'Come to me softly' WHERE DID THIS VERSION COME FROM ! THIS IS A AGAIN A SAD DAY IN JAMAICA'S MUSIC HISTORY.

the last superhero died

2005-12-22T01:49:00.000-08:00

They said the man was alive when he was run over by a car, creating a probable although unenviable record for alcohol consumption in hard-drinking Latvia.

I love Chad Johnson.&Wilt had 69 after three&Shave those sideburns

2005-12-21T02:58:00.000-08:00

"On the highway, I hit a deer," Johnson said Tuesday, insisting he was serious and that the animal wasn't hurt. "I kept him. He's at home in the garage. I'm going to use him for the celebration this weekend. He's a prop. They might suspend me for the last game, but I think this one is worth it."

"This is going to be the greatest celebration of all time, man," he said. "I actually use an animal."

ALSO

Headline of the day on ESPN.com: "Kobe held to 62 points vs. Mavs"

ALSO

Look for Bill Simmons' suicide note on Yard Work.

sway in this is my porno vol. 2

2005-12-21T02:37:00.000-08:00

Posted 12/20/2005 - 04:02:59 PM by keag76:
wow i think paul just popped a blood vessel. i am sure banks reads enough ezines to give him enough “indie cred” with all the ladies. note to self- hate bloc party because they are repetitive, username should be lead singer from a band critically acclaimed w/ some radio play. all that being said, for all of the average music put out this year stylus should put kicking television on this list. p.s.- fuck it new username jtweed76

Posted 12/20/2005 - 04:14:06 PM by pabanks46:
Just FYI, but my name is Paul Banks, and I use pabanks46 so I can log into Hotmail & Stylus with the same user info. My middle initial stands for Anthony. Hence, P A BANKS. And I will pop a blood vessel if you don't start making smart quips.

Posted 12/20/2005 - 04:31:43 PM by theokcomputer:
I don't think Southall would let Bloc Party get cut from this list, and in fact I think it will place quite highly, as it should. Is this Paul Banks character on here THE Paul Banks of INTERPOL fame? Do tell.

Posted 12/20/2005 - 04:36:42 PM by pabanks46:
No. The Paul Banks of Omaha origin. THAT Paul Banks came here, to St. Louis, and after the show went to a local, post-show hangout (Pin-Up Bowl) just down the street from the venue (The Pageant). Sad thing was, one of my law school classmates, who didn't own any of the records or know the songs, was like "I'm gonna make out with him," and, sure enough, Carlos D & his stupid vest/gun holster schtick sauntered in w/ Paul and started to play pool. Sure enough, Paul started making out with this chick. b/c this fucking episode, people for a week hearing it thought I had been cheating on my wife with this chick (side note: ewww). So, no, fuck Paul Banks & Carlos D (what kinda name is that?!!).

-------------------------------------

My top 20 albums list - to be revealed on Friday with everyone else's - may omit albums due to a lack of cohesion, or slavish imitation, or because I simply didn't hear them, but there's nothing personal involved in what I left out.

Except for M.I.A. and Bloc Party. Can't stand them, and I own both albums. Maybe in a year's time, I'll find some osrt of toehold that makes these records sound invigorating, rather than five energy fields without a planet about which to revolve. Like the Shins, Electric Version, and most of the Exploding Hearts record. Passion + pop structure - hooks = you gots to repeat the course.

Look, I'm awaiting next year with a fierceness. Keep writing articles, learn how to write reviews that aren't overcooked wedding vows (omg guys i actually like metal!!!!1!!), churn out the Stycasts, and read everything I get my hands on. You guys know. The usual. '05 was hors d'oeuvres. '06 will be the feast of the bridegroom.

Steely Dan reference most likely to make the '73 studio version of the group smile: a porn compilation tape titled Hey Nineteen. It's out there. I promise you. Not out there: Countdown to Ecstasy, Can't Bi a Thrill, Katy Laid.

where's your slip mat-at-at?

2005-12-20T02:59:00.000-08:00

Stabs become sassy kisses, strings that sluiced like Craig Conroy are now the soundtrack to Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. A cautiously manic chorus is now in your neighbor's yard, begging you through the crack in your car window to hold on to your highly accountable life. THIS IS WHAT AWAITS YOU IF YOU HEAR THE CHOPPED AND SCREWED VERSION OF "STAY FLY".

And Katy Lied is still, like, the 13th-best release of all time. Smooth as Vaseline, and twice as tasty.

fun with Listerine

2005-12-16T18:28:00.000-08:00

There's more to President Bush's disuse of the veto than a simple chart, and much has been made of the tendency; but it's worth seeing, all the same. Who was the last president to go the distance without vetoing a single bill? James Garfield. Who was the Big Boss of the Howse, the Slim Thug of his time? William McKinley: 42 vetos, none overridden.

Some have pointed out that since both the White House and Congress are Republican, this may explain Bush's reluctance to pocket his pen: he likes what's come his way. But with this ballsy move by the Senate (motivated/enabled by the Times' pieces on non-judicially authorized eavesdropping?) we may yet see a showdown. Some evidence of a disconnect within the Republican party, of the value of debate, of some small tip toward disclosure as an aspect of our opaque, brobdingnagian government.

Philly's getting killed. Samuel Dalembert's resorting to clapping at Shaq.

dook dook dook

2005-12-15T17:55:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I helped my manager clean up two 100-word essays for this leadership program to which he's applying. "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" were his words - yeah, people do still say that - and since he's got four kids, I'm guessing there's no sex on the corporate ladder in my future. Near future, anyway. He seemed really appreciative, and I got to flex my compositional muscle a little bit. At lunch today (free BBQ for a meal pitched between Thanksgiving and Saturnalia), he and a PA (I know what they do, but I don't know what that stands for) told me to get my resume in as soon as my temp contract is up, and he'd personally take it to our building manager with a strong recommendation. And not that warehouse kind of shit, neither. A job involving words, communiques, and furtive white-collar emotional intrigue. Oh, and one of the truck drivers said I deserved to be hired because I worked hard.

Thanks, Josh.

Chairman Burns needed Stycasts, and I delivered one more time. I like the unity better, even though in the interludes I've clearly lost my mind. Tomorrow I buy many beers and a few CDs, maybe throw together one more 'cast for the holidays, and enjoy a solo night of sodden revelry. Or my co-worker Lawrence will take me out to shoot pool and consume LITs (his idea). Thank God we're not going to a strip bar; fortunately, he's burned through all his gentleman-entertainment cash. Heavens.

separation sunday

2005-12-15T05:45:00.000-08:00

Brad suddenly wants out of his state

2005-12-14T05:40:00.000-08:00

ALSO I MUST SPEAK OF LOVED ONES, STYLUS WRITERS, AND THE WORDS "ABSOLUTELY ONE OF MY FAVORITES" LESS ON MY STYCASTS*

Don't be ashamed of your age.
Don't let the years get you down.
That old gang you knew
They still think of you
As a rounder in your old hometown.

Don't mind the grey in your hair.
Just think of all the fun you've had
Puttin' it there.
As for that old book of time
You've never skipped a page
So don't be ashamed of your age, brother.
Don't be ashamed of your age.

Listen, Mr. Smith, Mr. Brown,
Don't let your age get you down.
Life ain't begun
Until you're 40, son.
That's when you really start to go to town.

Don't wish that you were a lad.
Why, boy, you've lost more gals
than they've ever had
And, listen, you've graduated
From that ol' sucker stage,
So don't be ashamed of your age, brother.
Don't be ashamed of your age.

*Applies to Death to Flying Things 004 and subsequent numbers. JOHN DARNIELLE AND NINA SIMONE REFERENCES OKAY

keep the Kings blazin' like Bonzi Wells

2005-12-14T02:20:00.000-08:00

Need to backload my musical jukebox, really. I wasn't thinking that when I bought Shostakovich's Symphony No. 5, Op. 47, but it's nice to frame my purchases within a matrix of forethought and intent. My musical vocabulary is always in need of jolts, but let's just say that I'm enjoying this piece tremendously. And what I know about 20th century composition could fill a hatbox. Did the 12-tone thing kill music? I don't remember. Which means I'm primed for another crack at A Year From Monday.

'If he listens to the radio every Saturday and if he can afford to buy
every week's No. 1 record he will end up with the record collection of
the Other, that is to say, the collection of no-one ... Ultimately, the
record collection which is no one's becomes everyone's collection -
though without ceasing to be no one's.'

Jean-Paul Sartre recoiled at our charts. I think he comments on Stylus now.

where have you gone, C.J. Carpenter?

2005-12-13T05:03:00.000-08:00

My modest quire of Stycasts welcomes another leaf into the fold! I may burn it to disc and cheer myself in the balmy winter air? I shall always remember sending it to Todd, sitting on my balcony, wondering where my toes went!

If you listen to the whole thing except for the talking you may enjoy a respite from the limpid, rural pace of life of which we all tire.

Also: 100 million for two pitchers, and we're instantly and pre-emptively third-placed by Josh Beckett becoming a Red Sock. How long for Overbay and Burnett to realize they're being paid in Canadian money?

two puffs + Five Stairsteps

2005-12-12T02:18:00.000-08:00

Hey, Kyle Orton, it's evidently not a good-luck beard. Shave it.

Apples are filled with razor blades
But fools and innocents believe
That love and faith and truth and beauty
Can make a garden of this human factory

Tracy Chapman's "3000 Miles" is one of the best 2005 tracks I've heard so far, but it wasn't a single, so I didn't push it toward that end. A marvelous song that I happened to hear on one of those "Rest of the Record" programs on our rock radio station.

This isn't your brother's Chapman, even if your brother's named Jamie. The song commences strung on snow-dusted powerlines of guitar-plucked chords, tabla, and what sounds like someone lightly palming her kneecap. Then, one of the more killer opening stanzas:

Good girls walk fast
In groups of three
Fast girls walk slow
On side streets
Sometimes the girls who walk alone
Aren´t found for days or weeks

My brother (he of the third-wave ska and Tom Waits et al) swears by one Tracy Chapman song: "Fast Car". And while it's nice to see the similarities between him and Mr. Stewart grow weekly, I've never heard what he has. On the radio, she's overwhelmed in her own chorus; "subdued" would describe what I've heard of her output. But here, she begins in a murmur and softly pushes against the building instrumentation. A second guitar, burbling organ, one crucially-placed background vocal (wordless, guileless), a slow sting of a solo. And still, Chapman pushes against that increasingly queasy chorus.

& there's a nice trick, too; she skips the expected beat between verse and chorus, falling from futile laments ("dogs hang from the trees") into an uneasy helpless embrace ("I'm 3,000 miles away"). She's implicating herself - everyone, really, so far from this checklist of common brutalities, relieved to be out of hell's way and slitting herself for it.

This is desperation without maudlinness, graceful & not diaphonous, blunt without sensationalism. It's been a masterpiece for two months now.

Oh, and the newest Xiu Xiu is the best yet. Not top 50, but top 20. Yeah? Soon.