Thursday, July 27th, 2006
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2:11 am - Hopped Up on Coffee and Benzedrine
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Yes indeed, I am looking forward to this.
current music: The Green Fields of America: "Stick to the Craythur" (again)
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| Tuesday, July 11th, 2006
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12:15 pm - Crazy Diamond
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| Monday, June 26th, 2006
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11:01 am - Overview
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- Made up two compilation CDs of primarily darkwave tracks with violin parts and/or prominent female vocals, with a few Irish, Nordic, and Indian fiddle tunes thrown in to round things out a bit. Passed one off to the violinist I met at work; hung on to the other one for the time being to preview it over the weekend. Truth be, it was so I'd have something nice to listen to over the course of my drive to Essex county.
- Did in fact start out listening to said compilation CD on the drive to the cottage, but was unable to make it past track six, which was "Porphyria," one of the songs C. and I recorded last summer. It's really good. I listened to it about five times in a row. It's fun getting excited about your own music, and it's cool that it's in enough of a post-production state that it sounds really nice on a good stereo, but also still in enough of a pre-production state that I can make calls like "I'm going to remix it with this part lower, some soft echo on that bit, and I'm going to re-record this part of the vocal track." That project has already taught me a lot, and it's continuing to do so. Huzzah!
- On the production tip, before we dive into the intricacies of "Porphyria," we're going to finish off "Iris of Perception;" we're to discuss the latest round of production notes as soon as we can get in touch.
- I'm also supposed to get together with an old friend and one-time roommate to see about playing some music in a rather different vein. That's finally going to happen tonight, after two earlier cancellations. I'm looking forward to it.
- Was contacted out of the blue by a woman asking if I might be interested in making some music for her bellydancing troupe. "Yes," I said. All the more reason to buy that early Greek lute I fell a little bit in love with in Tennessee.
- Was told by the metal group that I might be playing bass with them in their upcoming show here in town. I'm still a little unsure about how to progress with that. I'm not sure whether it's right, yet, to force the issue and tell them to make a decision about me versus their old bassist. I'm enjoying playing with them, but I want the shows, too, not just the practice sessions, and I can feel my interest in the project waning, what with no incentives to hold onto it. After finding out I wasn't going to be playing in last weekend's show in Fredericksburg, I opted to not make the drive up there at all, and to instead go to the beach cottage with friends, which was a lot of fun and which I don't regret for a minute but which apparently surprised them. I like the band, I like the music, I even like their original bassist, but it's hard to be impartial about the matter when, straight up, I want the gig for myself. My intuition has been to be clear with everyone about it (which I have), and then to step back and let them work it out.
current music: Ali Hussan Kuban: From Nubia to Cairo
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| Friday, June 23rd, 2006
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4:05 pm - Auspicious
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So yesterday I had a good long talk with one of the women I work with. At one point, she said to me, "You know, there's this local alt-country band that wants me to play violin with them, but I'm not really into that. What I'd really like to play is heavy, dark gothic rock." So we're going to see what happens with that; after hearing that she wasn't familiar with groups like Miranda Sex Garden or Clan of Xymox, much less Mors Syphilitica or Rhea's Obsession, I told her I'd bring her some music to check out, and I think at some point we may see about playing and/or writing together. I'm always interested in meeting new musicians and new collaborators.
current music: Cranes: "Flute Song"
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| Tuesday, June 13th, 2006
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6:49 pm - Bonnaroo
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I'm leaving tomorrow for this year's Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival in Manchester, TN. Last year was a lot of fun, and this year's lineup is even more diverse, veering more pointedly away from the festival's early jam-band roots. That's still represented, but there's also bluegrass, country, hip-hop, metal, electronica, reggae, and more. We're breaking up the roughly ten hour drive with a stop somewhere around Boone, NC to stay with a friend, then making the rest of the trip on Thursday morning. The music starts at seven that night and continues almost without interruption for more than three days. Should be a blast. I'm even looking forward to the drive. We're bringing four ipods and a deck of cards from an interesting game called Tell It Like It Is. Plus four people, four bags, four sleeping bags, two tents, two coolers, a grill, three folding chairs, two boxes of gifts for the friend in NC, and possibly a guitar all crammed into a QX4. That will be a feat of spatial engineering to rival the three man cross-country expedition of '96.
I'm hoping that this will be both the first of several music festivals this summer, and the first of lots of great concerts, and the first of many travels. I'd also like to make it to Asheville, San Francisco, and a drive through New England and ultimately into central Maine over the course of the summer and early fall. Plus, they've announced the artists for this year's Nordic Roots Festival in Minneapolis, and I'm absolutely going to go back to that this year, too.
So, yeah, lots of ipods. But there's a six-disc changer up in Raheem, too. So everyone throw me some recs for six discs to start off the drive. Ready? Go.
current music: Blues in the Mississippi Night
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| Monday, May 1st, 2006
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6:21 pm - Rabbits, Rabbits, Rabbits; or, How to Fix an iPod by Abuse
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So a week or two ago K. dropped my iPod and did the little guy in. Once before it had consumed its own soul and I had to reinstall the software, but software won't take when the hard drive no longer understands that it's a hard drive. I tried about five times anyway, though, before I took notice of the clicking sound: the arm doggedly thwapping into the casing, I suppose, as it tried to read the surface of the drive a few centimeters further over than it should've been. I even had a go at pulling the cover off and peering inside before I heard that noise and realized what it meant. (And I don't recommend that.) Then I thought, well, it's a hardware issue. I can't fix that. I'll have to take it in to the shop and pay some Apple rep $250 or so to do that. And then I thought, well, I can't break it any more than it's already broken, save by crushing it or putting a spike through it or some such. And if it's out of alignment, and it got that way by being dropped, hey, maybe being dropped again will put it back in alignment. And I fixed a printer a few years ago by throwing it a good beating, so maybe I'll give that a go. So, holding the iPod by the edges, palm over the LED, I lifted it up and gave it a good slam down on the desk. Smack, it went. I turned it over on its side, lifted it up again and slammed it down on the desk on its side. Smack, again. I pushed the button and saw the little Apple come up on the screen. For the last week, the Apple would come up and then I'd get the folder with the exclamation point icon, the one that means, "'scuse me mate, but I can't find my system folder anywhere on me, and have consequently developed severe amnesia." But instead, it went straight into disk mode, and did it with no clicking. So I had a good laugh and tried the software re-install again, and lo and behold, it worked. It's back to being an iPod now, serving me up some evil Celtic metal with flutes, a good dose of deep Latin jazz, some Nordic roots, and at the moment, some crazy turntablism courtesy of four French DJs.
So let that be a lesson. If you drop an iPod, before you shell out $250, give it another drop, or throw it a little beating. Sometimes it works wonders.
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| Thursday, March 23rd, 2006
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2:31 pm - Forgetting the Details
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I've noticed an increase in what is essentially a bad habit: I'm forgetting the things I've written. In one way, it isn't so bad as it's been before — there have been times when music I've been involved in actually playing and recording has been played back for me and I've had no memory of any of it. Now, I remember having written something. I will even remember what it sounds like, more or less. But I will not remember how to play it. I have to pick it out anew like it's someone else's composition. The good news is that most of it seems to come back readily enough if I pay it enough attention; at least, that's been the most recent development. Still, though. I feel like if I compose something I should remember its every nuance for ever, particularly if it happens to be for an instrument I can play myself, and it irks me when it doesn't work out that way.
Writing a lot, in other news. I've really been enjoying open G tuning on the acoustic guitar.
current music: Gåte — Iselilja
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| Thursday, February 23rd, 2006
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5:49 pm - I Swear/Come on You Reds
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Well, this is kind of interesting: you can find out your life's theme song, apparently.
current music: Von Thronstahl: "Drei Tropfen Blutes Färben den Schnee"
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| Thursday, February 9th, 2006
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3:28 pm - Guilty Pleasures
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I was tagged. When tagged, the taggee must post 5 guilty pleasures. Then tag 5 friends who must post the rules, their 5 guilty pleasures and tag 5 more people.
1. Games, damn it. RPGs, cards, something involving a board, something involving a ball, hell, even my roughly annual video game binge (though not that one so much because mostly I like playing with other people). It's a sad fact, though, that most of my friends in this area seem to have a powerful aversion to games, or at least the leg work involved in setting them up. I want to sign them all up for Fun Lessons.
2. Old death rock, horrorcore, and sleazy glam metal. And that goes double for playing it as opposed to just listening to it.
3. Quality absinthe, venerable bourbon, and unusual gins.
4. Staying up all night long for the sake of a good conversation.
5. Completely and totally blowing off work for the afternoon to go play outside.
I'll give you another one, too: spending arguably too much money on music.
You know what, though? All that's inaccurate, really, because in truth I don't feel a damn bit guilty about any of that.
O, and as usual in lieu of calling people out, if you want to do it, you know what to do.
current music: Bun B — King of the Trill
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| Sunday, December 11th, 2005
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7:33 pm - Words
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I don't know at what point I decided that it would be a good idea to stow a sheaf of already-old lyrics inside the notebook/sketchbook that I kept over two visits to Portugal, or at what point, fairly soon after that I'm sure, that I forgot entirely about having put them there. Earlier this evening was an interesting trip down the proverbial memory lane, for sure.
There are fragments of melody that have been running around inside me for years and years that have yet to find their way into a whole composition or a proper song. But they stay with me, sometimes for long years, until they have an outlet. Other than a brief period in early college when I decided it was no longer fashionable to write in common time and thus in rapid succession produced a lot of musically regrettable studies in 5:4 and 7:8 and such, there isn't a lot of music that I've written, whether it's been fully realized and finished or not, that I don't have at least a little appreciation and affection for. The same is not all true insofar as lyrics go. Never has been, really.
To be blunt, there was some stuff in that notebook that made me blanch. I tossed them in the recycle bin, without compunction. There were a few bits, in contrast, that I set aside. They went right back into that notebook, the idea being that I'll come back to them at some point. And there were a lot more, sometimes whole songs, sometimes single lines written on shreds of napkin, that simply didn't move me one way or the other. Those, too, went out with the rest. My take is, I want to be able to resonate with what I'm singing. I want to believe it. If I can't, I'm going to find it damn near impossible to put any part of myself into the song. And one thing I've noticed about myself over the years since I've been composing music and writing songs is that there are some songs that I write and sing a few times and then I'm done with them. Or perhaps I'll cannibalize the music if I like a melody or chord progression particularly well and can't bear to have it relegated to a song I won't sing anymore. That's still true. Funny how that works, really.
There were bits in that notebook that I don't remember the stories behind, bits whose context in my life I've forgotten, and a few things I didn't remember having written at all. Notes that I could tell I'd written with my left hand. A more-or-less complete set of lyrics that I spent an evening setting to music with my old friend Gus. One set on bright pink paper, for some reason. The first handwritten draft of the lyrics to a song I recorded with my college band. Bits written in Spanish and in Portuguese. A ska song. Yep, ska. That one never saw the light of day, which, given the lyrics, is no great loss. And there were pages and pages of notes and brainstorms written with my old band OBX.
I've talked about my experiences with OBX a goodly number of times over the years since I've been keeping this journal. I'm sure I've mentioned that the times we got together and just played, free improvisation or nearly so (riffing off a brief idea or simple repeating pattern), were among the most fruitful and synergistic experiences I've ever had, musically speaking. We also tried to do that with lyrics, once, over a weekend-long practice session at the river house. It didn't work as well, but then again, none of the three of us had very much experience in writing lyrics with anyone else.
Here's another truism: I'm very, very picky about lyrics, especially the lyrics I write myself. I suspect that I tend to be overly critical, and I vacillate wildly between making them starkly personal because I think they're better that way, and attempting to back off and make them less personal or even less relevant because I occasionally think they're better that way. I'm a hard one to please, in that regard. I suspect that this is the reason that at the moment I'm finding myself a bit blocked, lyrically. At alternate times I've found myself in the equally maddening positions of feeling that I'm not saying precisely what I mean to say, or hitting brief points where I succumb to frustration and don't care to say anything at all.
Here's another truism: even though I begrudge this fact, even though I don't understand it and often don't like it very much, I'll nonetheless acknowledge that two things are continually helpful when this happens: the first is writing something funny or tongue-in-cheek that I don't feel the need to have taken particularly seriously. The second is writing with some form of a prompt. A few years ago, I posted a whole series of songs that had all been born in response to prompts — exercises a friend had written for me.
So, I'm opening things up for some friendly debate/discourse/idea tossing. It's been pretty quiet around here, frankly; I don't write anywhere near as often as I used to, and I really haven't got a clue who reads this, these days. I suspect a lot of folks who used to be regular readers have faded away, and I know that a lot of the folks who are local friends of mine who keep/kept their own journals on this site either don't live around here anymore or simply don't make use of their own journals, and thus don't really keep up with friends' journals either. I suspect, too, that there are any number of people that read and don't ever really dive in with anything to say; in fact, I know of several. And none of that's any big deal, even though (say it with me) THERE'S NOTHING AS SERIOUS AS THE INTERNET. Word. But in any case, here's a new meme. If you want to take it and put it in your own little online milieu, go right ahead. If you're not a songwriter and don't care to have a crack at it, you can substitute "poem" for "song" or have people ask you questions or some such. But here it goes: if you're reading this, whether or not you know the first thing about music or writing or anything else, whether I know you or not, whether you're reading this moments or years after I write it, throw me a prompt for a song. A prompt is something along the lines of "write a song about apples," or "write a song that tells a story" or "write a song in the style of Fatty Arbuckle." For the record, I'm not going to write any of those songs. Fatty Arbuckle was never a lyricist, as far as I know, the second prompt is too vague and the first is too silly. There's no guarantee that I'll follow any given prompt, in fact, but I promise I'll read 'em and think about 'em all, and unless they're obviously silly, I might even think seriously about 'em. I might even write 'em. That's the idea, right? I might even post 'em once they're finished. Note that there's no time limit on this, for the record.
So. Any takers?
current music: Tiny Tim: "Santa Claus Has Got the AIDS This Year"
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| Friday, December 2nd, 2005
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4:54 pm - Five Minutes of Fun
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So I just read about Pandora, a part of the Music Genome Project. It's a very cool idea, really: these cats are trying to group music by, well, what it sounds like, and Pandora is, I guess, their way to simultaneously offer up what they've come up with so far, and to tweak their results a bit. Basically, you type in the name of an artist you like, and the site creates a radio station for you based, initially, only around that artist's supposed perceived sound. You can give it feedback from there, and add more artists, at which point it supposedly either looks for other artists who are similar to either the first OR the second artist, or, possibly, and more interestingly (I can't tell, as it isn't very clear), for artists that have something in common with both. Cool idea, ja?
So, I entered in the name of perennial favorite Kevin Coyne. Nope, nothin'. It'd never heard of him, apparently. Yagya? Ditto. OK, Hedningarna, then. Still nothing. Indian Ocean? It thought I meant a song by The Field Mice. At least it'd heard of The Field Mice; that's something. So, October Faction. Once again, no results. At that point I decided to throw the thing a bone and feed it something easy. How about Doc Watson? Hey, it knows who Doc Watson is! Great! So it announces that it's going to play me music very similar to Doc Watson, and opens up with a track by, yes, Doc Watson.
I tried again with the metal. Heard of Karma to Burn? No? OK, another easy one, then. Fela Kuti. O, the artist Fela Kuti? it asked. Yep, that's the one. So it added Fela. I gave it Jackmove, a local-ish ska group I'm getting into these days. Nothin' doin'. That one was admittedly a shot in the dark, though.
How about some jazz? Know who Roswell Rudd is, Pandora? Yes? Super! So, you'll play me artists that have something in common with Doc Watson, Fela Kuti, and Roswell Rudd, huh? This should be fun.
Here's the playlist, after the initial Doc Watson track: Anthony Braxton, Archie Shepp, Albert Ayler, Roswell Rudd, Good for Cows, and William Parker with Hamid Drake. Well, the thing knows some decent jazz, anyway. But that's all it's playing for me now. So I mix it up a little bit.
Kleenex? Some girl pop? No? Fine. Surely you've heard of Mudhoney, Pandora? O, sure, I know them, she says. So after the Parker/Drake track, it's Mudhoney. Then Black Lab. Sure, I can see that. Then Dead Low Tide. Alright. So, now it's all fuzzed-out rock instead of quality jazz. No more old-timey music, and never any African fare in sight. Do you like any hip-hop, Pandora? How about Big L? Never heard of him, huh? He did a track with Jay-Z, you know, and dude's a pretty good freestyler, too. How about some Texas trill? Slim Thug? Wow, Pandora, you've heard of Slim Thug. And you're going to play me one of his tracks after that Dead Low Tide one, eh? Fair enough. But I can't skip it? Too many skips this hour, huh? Something about licensing? Sounds pretty lame, Pandora, but I'll stick around for one more minute. I'm betting it's going to be nothing but hip-hop of a pretty similar vein from this point forward. Hey, I was right! Paul Wall's from Texas, too.
In short: Pandora's fun, but we're totally not going out again.
current music: Paul Wall: People's Champ (Screwed and Chopped)
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| Monday, November 28th, 2005
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8:43 pm - Daddy, Is Santa Really 6' 4"?
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It's been insanely busy, but I'm taking steps to get a lot of that knocked out over the course of the week. I finished round one of the production for one of the songs on our forthcoming demo and put that in the mail. I'm plugging away on the forty hour gig. Over the rest of the week, I need to knock out the logos for some big statewide group that commissioned me about a month ago, and follow it up with a few hand-drawn drafts of a logo for my Gaelic group.
Thanksgiving was awesome. So was the recent trip to the mountains.
It's a little early for this, but I'm throwing two recs your way for the coming holiday season. More will follow later, probably, but for now, dig on these, and track 'em down if you can.
1) The American Song-Poem Christmas: Daddy, Is Santa Really Six Feet Four?
Song-Poems, for those who don't know, are the result of a few companies who essentially lured everyday folks into shelling out hundreds of dollars to have their own lyrics set to music (often poorly played and oft-repeated stock song structures) and "published," which meant that they got a recording sent to them in the mail (and, years later, ASPMA selectively uploaded to the web). For those of you who like song poems and like chrimmastime, this is the record for you. Features the title cut as well as gems like "Randy the Lil' Elf" and "Santa Came on a Nuclear Missile," because no compilation of song-poems would be complete without references to nuclear arms, communism, or the Lord. And if you don't know, now you know.
2) A John Waters Christmas
A slew of kooky nontraditional tunes, including the Chipmunks (Waters is supposedly "has the hots" for them) and the frightening Little Cindy singing the Christian guilt classic "Happy Birthday Jesus."
current music: Trasna — "Siul a Ruin"
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| Friday, November 4th, 2005
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8:13 pm - Here, Have a Link
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| Sunday, September 18th, 2005
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11:33 pm - I'm Not the Only One
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| Sunday, September 4th, 2005
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9:33 pm - "The Almighty must've smiled upon you for a reason."
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There's been a lot of bullsh!t going on in New Orleans over the last week that has pissed me off far more than being sent to prison there did. But this little tidbit is pretty near the top of the list even though it would never make the news. Some people lost everything. On the other hand, some people evidently need to lose a little more.
Scroll down to the last few paragraphs before the comments start. Be forewarned, though: it's going to piss you off.
current music: Tom Waits: "Chocolate Jesus"
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8:12 pm - Ie, Côcorôco
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Last night was fantastic. I went to what was at the same time one of the best parties and the best rodas I've ever been to.
I got up at six o'clock on a Saturday to drive over the river and have breakfast with about twelve to fifteen holistic-minded folks, most of them healing touch practitioners, a few massage therapists, several capoeiristas, and some folks like myself who were some or all of the above. We talked for a few hours about everything from acupressure and "acu-yoga" (that was a new one for me) to capoeira to hardcore physics to what makes food good food. A few hours later, all of us capoeiristas were back on the northside, playing in a pretty well-attended and active roda; three folks who are at contra-mestre level were there, as well as a bunch of students and an atabaque player.
We took a break for about two hours and went our separate ways, and by five o'clock that afternoon, most of us were back on the southside, at the house of one of the contra-mestres and his wife. The next nine or ten hours were phenomenal. There were three rooms full of capoeiristas, talking and cracking jokes and cooking and watching videos of the afternoon's roda and of a huge batizado in Brazil. Just before dinner, almost all of us ended up out on the deck. One of the capoeiristas had brought along her husband and an older friend of theirs who turned out to be a professional musician from Brazil. Her husband broke out a cavaquinho and the older fellow broke out a caxixi and various drums, and for the next hour or two they sang some of the most soulful, glad-hearted music I've heard in a long time: it was like Brasilia unplugged. Acoustic, that is, but lacking none of the zeal and zest that characterizes that Brasilia sound. The rest of us danced the samba and sang loudly and occasionally took a turn on one of the drums. There were so many of us out there doing the samba that the wine was sloshing about in people's glasses; hell, the whole deck was sloshing about on its foundations.
It was great being around so many native Portuguese speakers; it gave me a chance to practice, and let me tweak my pronunciations, which still default to Portugal-Portuguese (what I'm more used to) instead of Brazil-Portuguese. The pronunciations are completely different in a lot of cases.
Dinner was fantastic. It was the first time I've had an authentically-prepared frango in years. Brazilian food is right up there with Italian and Ethiopian in terms of the world's most sensuous cuisines.
After dinner had settled, we pushed all the furniture out of one room and crowded around the walls to make a tight roda. As we had earlier in the morning, we started out playing angola. But even with angola's slower pace, the jogo had all the intensity and raw energy of a street roda; everyone was in street clothes, there were at least two berimbau going at all times, plus an atabaque and an agogo. Best of all, everyone was singing and was singing loud, smiling and harmonizing and moving with the rhythm. The music really makes the roda, and if there's axé in the music, there's going to be axé in the jogo. And there was a lot. The loud and powerfully enthusiastic music coupled with the fact that so many of us were excited to begin with from all the earlier music and dancing (and capoeira vids, and laughter, and caipirinhas, and camaraderie, and well-wishing for a teacher and good friend who was leaving town) riled up a lot of energy, and the fact that so many of us were huddled into a small room practically shoulder to shoulder and made a roda only about twelve feet in diameter contained it and kept it building. The berimbaus changed over to regional within fifteen or twenty minutes, and we kept up the pace from then on. We played for a long time, and people were pretty quick to buy the game and jump in.
When we finally closed the roda, everyone went outside again to enjoy the breeze that had blown in and to talk some more. Best line of the night, delivered in a sleepy but crisp Rio accent: "You know, I see these videos, and I see all these people, and I just think, 'capoeira is good.'"
I've said for a long, long time that I wished that my friends would sing with me, and would sing loud and sing often. I don't care if folks bray like a mushmouthed lisping jackass and are tone-deaf to boot — just put some feeling into it and sing out loud. So when I come together with a group of people who not only sing, but sing joyously and freely and loudly and also play capoeira and dance the samba, I count myself in great company. Quick kicks, quick wit, strong voices and strong hugs when we part at three in the morning makes a beautiful night in my book.
current music: Wolfstone: "Granny Hogg's Enormous Wallet"
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| Wednesday, August 31st, 2005
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12:51 pm - Change Clothes
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Damn, there are more Black Album remixes than I'd ever imagined, and this cat's put together a page of five to seven thousand of 'em. Well, not that many, but a lot.
I went looking after I heard Jay-Z talk about "The Purple Album" in an interview; and that is, you guessed it, his Black Album crossed with Prince's Purple Rain. Among the other remixes on that page are "The Latin Album," and mash-ups with the Grateful Dead, assorted twentieth century classical composers, and Black Sabbath, plus at least twenty that don't describe what the musical content consists of at all.
The ones that I've heard so far have been a mixed bag. DJ DangerMouse's "The Grey Album" (Jay-Z vs. The Beatles) is overall very good and definitely worth hearing. DJ N-Wee's "The Slack Album" (Jay-Z vs. Pavement) has a lot of bright spots on it; as mentioned below, I particularly dug the track "Zurich Your Shoulder." Jay-Zeezer's "The Black and Blue Album" (Jay-Z vs. Weezer) is wildly uneven; parts of it are interesting musically in terms of the cut-ups this guy did, but there's something about the way it's mixed that makes it seem like Hove's voice is just sitting on top of the music, like he's rapping over a stereo in the background. Then again, this is from the same DJ who remixed Usher's "Yeah" (featuring Ludacris and Lil' Jon) with Weezer's "Island in the Sun" and made a track that's way stronger and way more catchy than either one on their own.
I'm curious to hear some of these. I'm not a huge fan of Jay-Z (although I just heard a seven-minute freestyle he recorded with Big L that was really tight), but making an a cappella mix of The Black Album available was not only a genius marketing ploy, but it's also let a lot of DJs do some pretty innovative things. Plus, it's just cool to hear hip-hop with real drums again. I wonder how much the work that some of these underground DJS are doing will shape any of the hip-hop that sees a major label release and any airplay beyond hipster college stations? It'd be a shame if the answer turns out to be "jack."
current music: Rosie Mae Moore: "School Girl Blues" (great guitar playing!)
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| Tuesday, August 30th, 2005
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7:51 pm - 12 Songs I'd Like to Hear Jandek Cover:
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"Runes and Men" — Death in June
"Shoes and Dress That Alice Wore" — Tom T. Hall
"Hell Awaits" — Slayer
"Be Thankful for What You've Got" — William DeVaughan
"The Man with the Child in His Eyes" — Kate Bush
"Oh Coal Black Smith" — Current 93
"Sweet William" — (Trad.)
"I'm Into Your Game" — Kevin Coyne
"Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out" — Jimmy Cox (Bessie Smith sings a great version of this one.)
"Going Up Home to Live in Green Pastures" — I'm pretty sure Ralph Stanley wrote this one, but maybe it's another old traditional.
"Want Fi Gho Rave" — Linton Kwesi Johnson
"Black Fuzzy" — Tara VanFlower
Seriously, though, I'm looking forward to the trip a lot, and I'd be glad just to hear some old faves like "Naked in the Afternoon" or "Green and Yellow."
current music: The Swan Silvertones: My Rock/Love Lifted Me
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| Sunday, August 28th, 2005
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9:23 pm - Fire
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This song has one of the best ambient effects I've heard in a while. The sound of a crackling fire begins the track and carries on for the whole song, always under the music in the background and providing more of an ambient effect than a distraction. It's very well mixed, and that's not always easy to pull off, whether you're adding in natural sounds (like weather ambience for example) or background noise like a crowd or a noisy pub. I can't tell if this is a loop or not; if so, that's well done, too. (If someone tells me this is a synth, that's going to be a little disappointing.)
The music is good, too. It reminds me a lot of Death in June or Apatheia. Or Strength Through Joy. (Wow, Death in June has almost as many flatterers as The Sisters do, huh?) The only rough spot is that the music's fade-out could stand to be a little longer. As it is, its exit is a little choppy and pushes the sound of the fire back into the foreground kind of suddenly. Don't let that stop you, though. Everyone should check this one out, especially any of you D&D types.
current music: Of the Wand and the Moon: "In a Robe of Fire"
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| Thursday, August 25th, 2005
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4:27 pm - Concerts and People Moving
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This should be a fun trip: a few weeks ago, I scored two tickets (out of what? 200, maybe?) to Jandek's performance at the Anthology Film Archives in New York.
Today, I bought the rest of my tickets. So: early that morning, I'll be taking the Apex bus, AKA the Chinatown bus, from here to the city. Hopefully I'll sleep most of the way up. Then I'll have a day in New York, meet up with P. for the show, and then catch a bus back again as far as DC.
It's kind of funny: in regards to a lot of my friends, college and otherwise, the same phenomenon has befallen New York as befell Bennington itself. That sentence is grammatically lamentable, but I stand by its veracity. What I mean is, after college, there were a lot of folks that I had become friends with who either a) stayed near Bennington for one reason or another, or b) moved to New York. But within a few years, most of them had left the Bennington area. So now, when I pass through Vermont, it's more about visiting the place as opposed to visiting any people I'm close to, since most of them have left. And now, I see the same thing happening in New York: most of my friends that lived there for a time aren't there anymore, and I've drifted apart from the few who are still there in one of the boroughs. It's odd to think that I'll be in New York and will have no one to visit (P., who I'm meeting up with for the show, lives well to the north, and is coming down for the occasion).
In any case, the idea is to sleep on the overnight from NYC to DC, too. I'll have a day in DC, and then see Carbon Leaf play a show that night. I'm looking into catching a ride back with random internet folks: I figure I can't be the only person from Richmond going up to see Carbon Leaf, so I'm trying to angle a ride back that way via a Carbon Leaf message board I found. So far, no one's bellying up. If that trend prevails, no worries; it'll be back on the Chinatown bus.
I'm also seriously considering springing for some tickets to get me into the Nordic Roots festival in Minneapolis in early October. There, too, I don't know anyone in the area, and I doubt very seriously whether anyone else in this area could be talked into making the trip, so that's also going to be more about visiting a place and seeing good music while I'm there than hanging out with anyone. That's alright, though. There are times when we all have to be our own road dog.
current music: Fushitsusha: Eien No Ho Ga Saki Ni Te O Dashita No Sa
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absintheur's journal