Archive for the ‘Tunes’ Category

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It’s a mixed up masquerade, penniless arcade.

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Swan Lake – Petersburg, Liberty Theater, 1914

“The worst artists look only to the self: people who write down their dreams and relate their drug trips and describe, as close to truth as their side allows, their painful break-ups. The second worst artist looks only at the external: didactic faux-revolutionaries, critical theory poseurs, Foucault fucks, nature writers. The best artists find the point where the self co-mingles with the external. The self and the state. You and your partner. Fathers and Sons. It’s really really hard to sit on this point and it shifts, which accounts for the varying quality of work in a person’s career–this balance is constantly in flux.”

—Carey Mercer, MBV

[“We sow the songs, the Earth bears our wrong, our pales wrongs all along!” moaned the Beast to the archangel and the pitied woman.]

May McDonough – Gone With The Snake

If you go to see Maia, remember: eldest of the seven daughters; a feminine vessel fertile in demeanor with black eyes lively by the fire. From where she sits, only women come courting but these women seek only words and a twist of the wrist, nothing else. And Maia’s left arm is adorned with pearl-white bangles that fasten at her hand. She brings this hand before her courters and speaks in aphorisms: “Romance is mostly being lied to,” she offers.

And, if you’re going with the Snake: remember that it wraps its nubile belly around the grand piano pedal before you pound on the keys.

[Don’t cry over Spilt Milk, even though you’ll want to.]

Posted on June 26, 2010 - Tunes - 4 Comments » Share

We are adventuring, we are adventurers!

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be your own PET – Adventure

In Spain, my chest, then free from the spoil of creeping hair, slowly sizzled under a mesmeric sun. That night I read Animal Farm twice as cubes of ice melted upon my chest.

In Turkey, I first experienced how persuasive emanating Mosque calls could be. How truly beautiful they could be. The mornings after I witnessed how moving, too.

In England, I travelled in the back of a van with twelve others, in heat reaching forty degrees Celsius, watching faces sweat in air free air, Irish faces flushed with heat and exhaustion, and then the emerging fresh, white teeth, weak to the trigger muscle of smile. My [extended] family on our way to a humble car boot sale. The time lived since is insulted by my inability to be as happy as then.

In Amsterdam, I left the bus from the airport. Within eighty close seconds I was almost knocked down by a car, closely avoided the first tram to have entered my life, had clashed with two bicycles carrying yellow flowers in front baskets, and experienced my first – and what remains my only – offering of drugs. The remaining time spent was not near so insultingly stereotypical.

To adventuring! And the hope of better tales to tell!

[Don’t doubt the fun. Dig in.]

Posted on June 25, 2010 - Tunes - 3 Comments » Share

Toughen up, but keep hold of tenderness…

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Wreckless Eric – (I’d Go The) Whole Wide World

We had defeated the Japanese and he kissed me. I didn’t know him, this boy or man, but I was walking against a stream of people and he caught me and then he kissed me.

In my uniform of pure white.

His lips were thin and what little of them I could feel was broke; prickly leafs of skin itching the fall underneath my bottom lip, the thicker of the two. And he was cigarette air, I swear, something I didn’t much appreciate as I despised men who smoked, much like I despised the Japanese – although I had never met a Japanese man and maybe they didn’t smoke – but I must be kind, it was fresh smoke and certainly not of the stale variety. Fresh smoke I could embrace. Fresh smoke reminded me of my very own father and the stands we would sit on for home run filled baseball games. Men and me and air of new smoke and one of few times my own father would smile. Other girls would gather at the bottom of the stand and play with the dolls that our mothers had packed along with the sandwiches that were never eaten, but I sat and watched him smile. I saw Joe DiMaggio during the time of his hitting streak. Later it proved that he liked blonds, which didn’t much bother me as I never fully liked the look of that boy anyway.

When he ended, relieving his clasp on my stomach, he stood me upright and left, turned back once a few yards of distance had birthed between us and smiled for a moment, somewhat flickering, overbite and all, put his hand to his mouth and turned away again. I suppose I should have been upset that he kissed me, upset that he took me in the way he did. I wasn’t his and he most certainly was not mine, but he fought for me, didn’t he? “Thank you, darlin’,” he had whispered. What’s a kiss when he fought for me? What was his name? He did smile. He did fight.

[Rest in peace, Edith Shain, who may be one half of such an iconic image, but shines the brightest. And the sound? Buy the Greatest Stiffs and take it all in.]

Posted on June 23, 2010 - Tunes - 1 Comment » Share

I would like you for my own.

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[via switchphotography.co.uk]

She & Him – Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?

Sometimes, you just see a pretty girl. You just see a pretty girl, maybe you’re on the tram to work or waiting for your friend – your friend that’s always late – to show up for drinks or maybe you’re just sitting at the park thinking about things you think you should think about, and you say under your breath, “Goddam, she’s pretty.”

So you watch this pretty girl in her sunflower dress and her casual stroll and her folded umbrella as she’s making her way across the road or crossing her legs as she waits for the bus and you unravel the bare threads of string that make up your brain and think: Well, she’s pretty, yeah. She’s pretty and her neck is porcelain in shade and so slender and inviting and her cheeks seem to suspend her lips by the lines on the corners of her mouth and you’re hoping the wind comes whistling to rattle those swinging lips and break a smile. Yeah, you’re watching her hands and how considerate her grip is, how she holds that umbrella and twirls it absent-mindedly with the abandon of a puppy caught chasing a mouse through the bushes of an underpass overgrown with moss and lilacs.

And you think to yourself, man, what I would give to jack off on her face.

[Go buy Volume Two. The above song isn’t on it… but if you wanted Volume One, you would have it already. So you know.]

Oh, hey, yo! Yes, you! You and your strange friends! Follow us – like a cult – on Twitter or ‘like’ us on Facebook. It’s mostly just Dylan Moran and oboes, but still.

Posted on June 21, 2010 - Tunes - 6 Comments » Share

Ice water for blood.

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The Smiths – Wonderful Woman

She was twenty-three, still bonded to youth, and suspicious of those with confidence, “How can anyone like themselves in this age of mirrors?” She’d choose to coyly pose at any bar’s back entrance, to move only for the sweetest of forays, that of a conga train with a man of vein wrapped ankles. She’d ask him home and in the morning he’d clear his throat and begin with that planned speech he said he’d deliver when surely sober. Something about thanks and fun and ‘gotta run’. Her morning spent binning evidence and without friends to induce a whimper.

[Amazon have the Sound of the Smiths on sale for £4.49; so that’s less than 10p per song (45 tracks available, too, as it’s the deluxe edition) – including the song above.]

Posted on June 20, 2010 - Tunes - 3 Comments » Share

Strongarm vs. Gladhand III

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The National – Mistaken For Strangers

I was like in the middle of that real tricky math question Mr. Foster gave us that number sixteen did you figure it out yet I never got it can I copy your answer before class? OKcool. Right so I was like all concentrating real hard and all of the sudden the phone rings, and oh yeah I was baby sitting that kid again so it was like tough enough to concentrate already and the phone rings and I’m all like WAHHHTTT?!?! Who has landlines anymore amirite? But I like totally pick up anyways and I’m like trying to talk and figure out the question at the same time or whatever and it was like a pervert I swear.

“Hi. Can I talk to Robert please?”

Uhhh . . . Robert OBVIOUSLY isn’t there because, uh duh, I am. What a creeper, right?

“I can’t hear what you’re saying, all I hear is lip smacking. Are you chewing bubble gum?”

Uh, duh.

“Oh, well I suppose Karen is with him as well. May I speak to Oliver then?”

And I’m all like ‘Who is this?’ you know before I put the kid on the phone with some pedophile or whatever.

“This is his uncle Ryan. Tell him Uncle Ryan wants to talk to him.”

So I’m like Ugh, whatever and I go to the other room where Oli’s watching TV or whatever, like I care with what they pay me, and I’m all ‘Your Uncle Ryan’s on the phone, do you want to talk to him or what?’ And the kid just keeps watching TV, so I’m all like ‘Hey kid do you have an uncle or what?’ and the kid goes, “No. I like Aunt Julie. She’s nice. She gave me a jolly rancher. Do you like Blues Clues?”

So I tell the pervert, right, I’m all ‘Hey pervert this kid doesn’t have an uncle, go molest someone else’ right?

“You fucking bitch, don’t talk to me like that. I’m his Uncle Ryan, I fucking raised that kid, now let me talk to him, you goddam cunt.”

And I was all, ‘Dude, you need to see a psychologist you fucking perv’ and I hung up just like that or something. But that Robert better loosen up and start paying me decent if I’m going to be protecting his son from like pedophiles or whatever, right?

Anyways, can I copy number sixteen before class or what?

[Buy Boxer, one of my favorite albums of all time.]

Posted on June 19, 2010 - Tunes - 4 Comments » Share

Strongarm vs. Gladhand II

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Mountain Goats – No Children

The first time it happened, it scared Ryan shitless. He was sitting on the leather couch, bare-chested because of the Phoenix heat and lack of air conditioning, with a burp rag thrown over his shoulder and the baby cradled on his torso. To make sure Oliver’s head didn’t roll around awkwardly, he palmed it in his hand and was running his fingers softly over the scalp where the skull hadn’t quite melded together yet.

Some shitty 90s MTV video was playing mutely on the television, and that’s when Ryan had the worst thought of his life. He found himself daydreaming about crushing the tender skull under the hard sole of his boot. He wondered if the brains would squirt out, and, if so, where? Would the top part cave first, or maybe they’d just squirt out the nose before that?

Shuddering, Ryan snapped himself back to reality, his physical shudder waking Oli and leading to more crying. Ryan stood and bounced Oli up and down in his arms again, cooing and whispering melodically until the baby drifted off, sucking a thumb.

Soon, this became a frequent occurrence. While pumping Oli’s legs to fart him, Oli giggling the whole time, Ryan would find himself wondering if he had the brute strength to snap one of Oli’s legs. Could he pull the baby in half after wiping shit out of his asscrack? What would happen if he bent a finger back as far as he could? His physical superiority frightened him.

Ryan became so comfortable with these thoughts, he accidentally brought them up at dinner once. “Sometimes, don’t you just wonder how far you could dropkick Oli? I bet I’d double your distance, Karen.” Karen choked on a gasp. Robert stared at his plate and took a very deliberate bite. Oli chirped and flung the ingredients on his plate across the table, then laughed.

Soon after that, Ryan moved out and found a place in Seattle. He grew a mustache and started wearing cowboy boots. A couple years later, he sent $100 cash and a tacky birthday card stuffed into an envelope. It was three months before Oli’s next birthday.

[Buy Tallahassee.]

Posted on June 18, 2010 - Tunes - 3 Comments » Share

Who threw my toys away and gave me coffee?

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Adam Green – Down On The Street

Jarrod’s red rash irritates him daily. Spreads across the broken skin on his neck. He scratches at it with the hook-clip of his tie by nodding – pushing his head forward and back helps. It keeps spreading, cantankerous, and he keeps nodding faster and faster. His colleagues mistake his grimace for a grin, and smile back. He nods faster and faster. He tucks in his elbows, his shoulders tense, and picks up his stride to get his mind off the spreading red rash climbing down his chest, nodding along. And his boss promotes him and his colleagues detest him and his head falls off from all the nodding. The End.

[It’s toe-tapping alcoholism. Go buy Gemstones. I am aware that he recently released Minor Love (an album which, by the way, Green penned the press release for himself – including this tidbit “… He often contends that nothing lasts…that there is nothing to look forward to…and that “we are all living in a butcher shop” which Leonard Cohen told him while at a Bar-B-Que at Lou Reed’s house…”) Go buy that too, you rich bastard.]

[This video has an alternate ending. Fire Escape releases July 12.]

Posted on June 17, 2010 - Tunes - 3 Comments » Share

They trained in A-V-A

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The Strokes – The Modern Age

Up on a hill…

Is where I’ll begin.

Ten years ago, I first heard this majestic piece of work while in the sun, sun having fun. While it was the first song to catch and captivate the ears of many by The Strokes, it was not my first reveling in them. By then, I had obtained a copy, courtesy of my older brother, of the, now, renowned revelation that is Is This It. It was the inducting album of The Strokes that illuminated so many insolvent and destitute fans of music with actual merit in the midst of a popodessy. But then, suddenly, with an opening riff that could strike a jolt in anyone and the impeccability of these exuberant banging drums that implores a free spirit, the world is enthralled and comforted. Rock and roll is not dead. It has been revived and repositioned. The Modern Age is an applicable anthem to anyone bearing or, even, pining for youth.

Being catchy is one matter but aural orchestrator, Julian Casablancas, never fails to engender lyrics that stirs. In the course of my first listening to The Modern Age, not until the chorus lyrics spoke to me did my ears sharpen as sensations sparked. The resonance of his voice has a vibe of a suppressed, wayward laughter. He reiterates a story, but then the woes of reality kick in and we hear an absolving Julian. Work hard and say it’s easy. Do it just to please. Tomorrow will be different. So I’ll pretend I’m leaving. What generic misapprehended soul, departed from the rest of society, can’t be stolen by that? But hold on tight and regenerate, your breath is going to go again. Following, is the concentrated, blazing guitar solo from a, then, fresh but soulful Nick Valensi.

The musical luminosity that is Valensi’s solo is one of the most imperative, endeared solos to many fans. It’s well-nigh the reason as to why this piece of music is brilliance and not just goodness. Perhaps, it is the whimsical, rapturous ride it takes you for. Perhaps, it’s the experience of Valensi making love to his guitar thereupon sheer genius is the child. Tangling with the sprightly pulsations of a tempo prompted by Fabrizio Moretti (I dare you to resist from tapping your feet.), it amplifies the song to a different magnitude. Along with the firm reinforcing rhythm guitar of Albert Hammond, Jr. and sweeping with the tactful trims of the bass provided by the gracious Nikolai Fraiture, the song is layered and laced with delight. Moreover, accentuating that this is an ensemble of five. Every member is vital to the magic and no one is sitting pretty.

You can steer off into tangents of their backgrounds. You can interrogate the quiescent years. The consistent melodic splendors they conceive, howbeit, speak for themselves. The thought provoking lyrics will entice and intrigue any audience. If you were insipid enough to be unimpressed with The Strokes before hearing this song, trust this is the track that will prove to be cogent enough to bind your heart to this band. You’ll be ripping your earphones off bellowing My vision’s clearer now, but I am unafraid. Ten years after adorning the earth, ten years after enduring skepticism, The Modern Age is still timeless and still effervescent. [Is This It… without [a] question [mark].]

Posted on June 15, 2010 - Tunes - 8 Comments » Share

I wish you’d change the station

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Steve Miller Band – Song For Our Ancestors

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined – just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around;
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.

Young Hodge the Drummer never knew –
Fresh from his Wessex home –
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.

Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge forever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellation reign
His stars eternally.
— Thomas Hardy

[Sail the seas as a Sailor.]

Posted on June 14, 2010 - Tunes - No Comments » Share

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