The Wattled Smoky Honeyeater

WSHE Moving to Tumblr.

2009-08-26T11:03:00.001-04:00

Loyal Reader(s):

We are moving. To Tumblr.

Sorry, Blogger.

http://wattledsmokyhoneyeater.tumblr.com

Fire!

2009-08-24T15:27:00.001-04:00

TELL ME AGAIN

2009-08-21T12:18:00.005-04:00

Volcano Choir - "Island, IS"

I'm going to be one of those old men who can't remember anything. I just know it. I already have some trouble. It's bound to get worse. It's that some moments just don't find their foothold, they never tether to another - so they drift out, away from me. The first hummingbird of summer (and mom in grassy shorts, watching expectantly) is still here, slower than I've ever seen it, and each feather, each bounce of light and shadow, each small gesture large enough to see, they're still here.

OOOOOOOOO

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

(album out in September, on my birthday; thanks, Lindsey)

ooo-ooo-ooo

THE WATTLED SMOKY HONEY EATER PRESENTS: SUPER MASSIVE FUN TIME HOOTENANNY EXPLOSION WITH ROBOTS*!

2009-08-19T15:34:00.008-04:00

(image via ffffound)

Summer is almost at an end, for most university students in and around New York City. For some of us, classes begin on the last day of August, an abrupt end to a summer that was, weather-wise, too short.

This is an invitation for YOU to come CELEBRATE the END OF SUMMER with US!

We will be on the roof of 100 S. 4th Street (The Rocket Factory) in Brooklyn, NY beginning at 4:00 PM.

So come and bring an instrument, your listening ears, some food or libations, and your friends!

If you'd like to perform, bring some songs/jokes/stories/&c with you, two at a time in a round-robin style hoot!

Check the event page on Facebook.

Performers so far include:

Yours truly

Lars Johnson-Ballard (of Alaska Alaska)

Oliver Ignatius

Flotzy

You!

AND MORE!

*Robots may or may not be a figure of speech

SO IMPROPER

2009-08-17T00:03:00.003-04:00

Saint Seneca

Improper post. Real write-ups later. I'm beat, it's been a whirlwind week. But before I sleep, before you do anything else, listen to some Saint Seneca. I was fortunate enough to see these folks two nights back-to-back last week, and they were heart-warming and foot-stomping, audible "Wow"z and all, smiles everywhere. And honestly, that's what I want to see all the time. (They're also very nice, funny people. We went out to a diner and they had me covering my mouth way too much.)

Also: they have a 7" out now. BUY IT!

Clay's Top on the Top 10

2009-08-08T10:35:00.004-04:00

I like what I'm hearing on the radio this summer. Keep us living fast, reminding us what season it is (thanks again too, Dream):

1. Drake - "You Da Best"

2. Mario ft. Gucci Mane - "Break Up"

3. Fabolous ft. Drake & The-Dream - "Throw it in The Bag (Remix)"

4. Jerimih - "Birthday Sex"

5. Lil Wayne ft. Young Money - "Every Girl"

Lazarus Post

2009-08-04T23:45:00.003-04:00

I've been taking a bit of a hiatus from WSHE these summer months, shifting gears.

New pieces are in the works, and will be up soon. In the meantime:

"What You've Done to My World," by Mark Greif (N+1).

Grass Tape, July 2009

2009-07-17T13:55:00.009-04:00

Young Heel - Grass Tape #1 - July 2009 Mixtape.

New Mixtape. Fresh off the digital presses. Chilled out, summer relaxin' jams. Enjoy.

Tracklist:

1. Al Green - "No No No (Previously Unreleased)"

2. Jackson 5 - "Never Can Say Goodbye"

3. Junior Byles - "(A) Fun and Games (B) Motion Dub"

4. R. Kelly - "Relief" - mashed w/ acapella of Alliyah - "Rock the Boat"

5. Michael Jackson - "I Can't Help It"

6. Michael Franks - "One Bad Habit"

Please, Enjoy.

WE GIVE YOU MUSIC

2009-07-17T12:58:00.005-04:00

THE WATTLED SMOKY HONEYEATER PRESENTS:

BACKYARD SHOW!
POTLUCK!
HOOTENANNY!

POTLUCK begins at ONE O'CLOCK.
HOOTENANNY from ONE to FIVE.
PERFORMANCES beginning at 6 O'CLOCK!

PERFORMANCES by:

THE ACCIDENT THAT LED ME TO THE WORLD
BARNA HOWARD
FRANK HOIER
MUTINY AMONGST FRIENDS
OLD HANNAH*
VIKESH KAPOOR
WHISTLE JACKET

HOOTENANNY means ANYONE can perform -
whether it be a dance, a poem, a song, a joke -
whatever you want to do!
But the limit is TWO songs -
or poems, or jokes, or whatever -
at a time.
That way, everyone gets a chance.

So bring your instruments!
And sweet eats!
And smiling faces!
(And your friends ~ the more, the merrier!)

THE BACKYARD can be found at 11 HOLMES COURT
in DARIEN, CONNECTICUT.
The show is FREE,
but donations (for hard-travelin' musicians) encouraged. <3

*Full disclosure: this is Tyler's band.

RnB Demo Mix

2009-07-05T15:04:00.005-04:00

(image via ffffound)

"Relief on the Boat (Demo)" - Young Heel

Rough Mash up demo of R.Kelly's "Relief" and an Acapella of Aliyah's "Rock the Boat."

Keep an eye out for the upcoming July 2009 Young Heel Premiere Mixtape.

Reboot

2009-06-10T23:13:00.005-04:00

Its been a while since any one of us posted.

(Moving into a new apartment and just having internet installed after 3 weeks of bureaucratic miscommunication had something to do with it, but admittedly, it was mostly laziness)

So:

Its time to start fresh. This is the summer of music.

In the vain of Grizzly Bear's Blog and El Guincho's Blog, two personal favorites,

we involved here at the WSHE are going to start posting our own music on the site in addition to our writings and other creative musings.

We hope you enjoy...

"Palm Reader" - Young Heel

To kick things off, here is a new minimal electro style song a la The Field or m83.

2009-05-05T15:51:00.004-04:00

Grace runs up to me (this is the part of the story I don't see) and I jump a little bit in my chair when she touches me. Part of me wants to jump, hop, skip and run, most of me wants to lie down and fall asleep because I'm sick, drinking bottle after bottle after bottle of water, pilling every twelve hours and not sleeping too well at night. But Grace runs up to me and I jump a little bit in my chair when she touches me. The part after that, most of it doesn't matter, doesn't merit being put down, including these parts I'll put down now: the way she says "Do you want food?"; the bottle of Welch's I pick from her bag; the shyness she exudes when I point out how colorful she looks today. I used to write songs that froze my skin, a whisper inside my voice; I used to write songs that burned me alive, songs that need to be shouted more than sung, barefoot on tops of tables. Right now I want to write neither, I want to write something else, something that isn't about me but from me, to something that's in me: a plea, an appeal, a beg. Begging to be alive in the way I was that second where all my senses drop beneath the wonder of where and why that touch came.

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

I'll write about songs I love soon, I've been busy with less important things.

World of Echoes

2009-05-01T13:12:00.003-04:00

at 6:15, clears throat, continues humming, over drones

Mister Stage Presence

2009-04-28T12:57:00.001-04:00

With a full orchestra

Loudon Wainwright III, "I Am The Way" Live in Amsterdam, 2000.

Tallest Man On Earth - "These Days" (Nico/ Jackson Brown Cover)

2009-04-23T15:32:00.001-04:00

Tallest man on earth - These Days (Nico Cover) - A Take Away Show from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

Lemur Tickle

2009-04-22T12:33:00.001-04:00

Watch Weird Animal Gets Tickled and more funny videos on CollegeHumor

Easy Riders 2: Apocalypto

2009-04-21T14:08:00.001-04:00

Spring Mix 20000009

2009-04-16T11:25:00.008-04:00

(World's Largest Pool- Beach Resort in Chile)

Ahh, sun in the sky, love in the air, leaves on the trees and also in your hair.

Its Spring. This mix is good for BBQs, outdoor hangouts, and other Spring-like activities.

Spring Mix 20000009

Enjoy!

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

Tracklisting:

1. Boat Club - "All the Time"

2. Arthur Russell - "Arm Around You"

3. Erykah Badu - "A.D. 2000"

4. Junior Byles - "Curley Locks"

5. El Guincho - Jugadores de Juegos"

6. The Clash - "Police & Thieves"

7. Allá - "No Duermas Mas"

8. The-Dream - "Mr. Yeah"

9. King Tubby - "King of the Arena"

10. QUIET VILLAGE - "Keep on Rolling"

David Byrne "This is the Place"

2009-04-11T21:00:00.002-04:00

This is one of my favorite songs ever.

"This is the Place" performed by David Byrne on Jools Holland in 2004.

El Guincho KEXP

2009-04-06T12:57:00.004-04:00

El Guincho Live @ KEXP

One of my favorite artists for the past couple years, the sun-drenched dub/tropicalia/calypso/trance/electronic/boogie-inducing El Guincho, one dude from the Canary Islands of Spain, recently paid a visit to Seatle's KEXP to do an in studio performance. Accompanied only by one friend on percussion, electronic and analog, El Guincho continues to create an infectious and warm experience that exudes positivity and creativity. I think the second song, "Bombay," which to my knowledge is not on either of his LP releases, is going to be played at only the best celebrations of the future.

I love this guy, I think you will too.

You can also check out this Pitchfork Live performance from this past winter that is just great.

"Bombay," on Pitchfork TV:

My 25 Favs Right Now, So Far

2009-03-30T23:54:00.001-04:00

without too much thought, in no important order, as of 2009, some 25 (more or less) favorite records that had a big impact on my love for music (in a good way) in the past few years, as i can remember it:

my bloody valentine - loveless

panda bear -person pitch

el guincho - allegranza

broken social scene - feel good lost

animal collective - npr live series 9/27/07

david bowie - low

john cale - fear

compilation - johnny greenwood is the controller

bob dylan - blonde on blonde

brian eno - here come the warm jets

the field - from here we go sublime

m83 - before the dawn heals us

a tribe called quest - the low end theory

modest mouse - sad sappy sucker

radiohead - kid a

wilco - summerteeth

death from above 1979 - you're a woman i'm a machine

wolf parade -apologies to the queen mary

devendra - niño rojo

don caballero - american don

the changes - today is tonight

no knife - fire in the city of automatons

animal collective - sung tongs

van morrison - astral weeks

jeff buckley - live at sin-e

what about YOU???

I'M ON A BOAT, AND IT'S 2009, AND...

2009-03-27T15:47:00.003-04:00

I don't know that we've posted too many songs so far this year that have been released in 2009. For that I...WE apologize.

These days when I'm listening to music I'm at a friend's house listening to music I've heard before or scrolling through my iPod listening to music I've heard before. I haven't really been too much on the internet, scouring torrents and websites and things for the new jams. I've been at school, reading books.

I mean, yeah, Merriweather Post Pavilion came out and how do you follow that? Say what you will about Animal Collective, but that was a thoroughly epic album. I was a bit bothered by the absence of a guitar, but I read an interview recently in Cyclic Defrost that sort of put my frustrations to bed.

Merriweather will always be an album I love, but I still think Sung Tongs and Strawberry Jam are better records altogether, but maybe it's just because I've heard Merriweather so damn often since it came out earlier this year. (I mean, the Virgin Megastore in Union Square in New York has a big advertisement with the album cover.) It's certainly the album that will get them HUGE, but I know I'll probably turn into one of those fans who "only likes their earlier stuff".

Bon Iver's Bloodbank EP was also pretty great, but I will say it was kind of a letdown although I've been wildly obsessed with "Woods" for periods of time. (I mean, it's like my guilty pleasure music fusing with music I actually listen to...what more could you want?)

Maybe I just haven't listened to it enough, or devoted much time to actually listen to it, save this once when I was at my friend's apartment, and she'd just bought the record. I found it and demanded we listen to it. I've never listened to DeYarmouth Edison before, but I can imagine it's a lot more like what they might sound write rather than Justin on his extremely personal debut album.

Really, though, I've been drifting lately. Oliver Ignatius' album, Demos for Secund was just put on iTunes. If you haven't checked him out already, please do. I don't care if you've flipped the bird to pop music forever, but you might want to go back and listen to him. I've posted a few songs before, just click his tag.

Other than that, this has been more of a year of literature and comedy for me so far. I've been reading a hell of a lot, so I'd be more suited to suggest books rather than songs:

The Crying of Lot 49 by Thomas Pynchon
A Handf ul of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire

But I don't really want to do that.

Anyways, if you have anything to suggest, let me know, I don't want to be reduced to posting nonsense like that last post...

The Hipster, The Hipster, and That

2009-03-19T21:45:00.006-04:00

"The Beat Generation, that was a vision that we had, John Clellon Holmes and I, and Allen Ginsberg in an even wilder way, in the late forties, of a generation of crazy, illuminated hipsters suddenly rising and roaming America, serious, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere, ragged, beatific, beautiful in an ugly graceful new way--a vision gleaned from the way we had heard the word 'beat' spoken on streetcorners on Times Square and in the Village, in other cities in the downtown city night of postwar America--beat, meaning down and out but full of intense conviction--We'd even heard old 1910 Daddy Hipsters of the streets speak the word that way, with a melancholy sneer--It never meant juvenile delinquents, it meant characters of a special spirituality who didn't gang up but were solitary Bartlebies staring out the dead wall window of our civilization--the subterraneans heroes who'd finally turned from the 'freedom' machine of the West and were taking drugs, digging bop, having flashes of insight, experiencing the 'derangement of the senses,' talking strange, being poor and glad, prophesying a new style for American culture, a new style (we thought), a new incantation--The same thing was almost going on in the postwar France of Sartre and Genet and more we knew about it--But as to the actual existence of a Beat Generation, chances are it was really just an idea in our minds--We'd stay up 24 hours drinking cup after cup of black coffee, playing record after record ofWardell Gray, Lester Young, Dexter Gordon, Willie Jackson,Lennie Tristano and all the rest, talking madly about that holy new feeling out there in the streets- -We'd write stories about some strange beatific Negro hepcat saint with goatee hitchhiking across Iowa with taped up horn bringing the secret message of blowing to other coasts, other cities, like a veritable Walter the Penniless leading an invisible First Crusade- -We had our mystic heroes and what's wrote, nay sung novels about them, erected long poems celebrating the new 'angels' of the American underground--In actuality there was only a handful of real hip swinging cats and what there was vanished mightily swiftly during the Korean War when (and after) a sinister new kind of efficiency appeared in America, maybe it was the result of the universalization of Television and nothing else (the Polite Total Police Control of Dragnet's 'peace' officers) but the beat characters after 1950 vanished into jails and madhouses, or were shamed into silent conformity, the generation itself was shortlived and small in number." -Kerouac

Now we wear expensive jeans, cheap t-shirts, dabble in music, drugs, life. no one takes things too seriously. we try to represent a culture- or the future of our culture, for that matter- it is too dangerous to dedicate oneself to anyone thing because nothing is perfect enough. our tastes and ideas have been gentrified. we pout when we play music. the things bought for us are the best because we don't have to analyze their value long enough to devaluate it as a worthwhile belonging or statement. spiritualism is a struggle for a minority of the hidden psuedo-free-spirited.

hedonism has overcome mental expansion. we take drugs to relate to the finite not the infinite. the "hipster" thinks he's someone else. self-worth is no longer internalized (self-appreciation too, for that matter); self-worth is determined by how others judge you and you judge them. we judge others and ourselves, nothing is sacred except that intangible critique.

this mentality is internalized in us when we are growing up in that cliché privileged and bigoted suburban coming-of-age. we get educated. by a system. we learn to think outside the system (as much as it allows us).

to the bottom line. (a bonfire of the vanities? a bonfire of vain persons?)

what this generation lacks is sincerity, honesty, first-hand experience, internalized experience, a sense of gentle humor, compassion, introspection, calls for change...

The real hipsters were "jailed and sent to mad houses." But what is so wrong with searching? Have things really changed that much where we can be free to think and do what we want to do, not hurting anyone, just being kind as much as possible? I think things haven't changed that much, and thats why our generation is the way it is. because we know deep inside what is actually out there and we are up against the walls in the last fortress of what we know: ourselves and the culture we dip our feet into once and a while, and our impulses too. we are limited to those, how they shape us.

we need to look into crystals and forget what's not important. who cares? I want to create. Let the critics be who they will, those who are afraid to create. To the bottom line. Is it enough? Is that enough?

Impending Doom

2009-03-19T20:41:00.003-04:00

If you aren't so angry your head is about to explode, you haven't been paying well enough attention.

If you aren't laughing so hard your head is about to explode, you don't have a very good sense of humor.

More words on different subjects later. Life is overwhelming and very exciting.

Consciousness/ Feelings

2009-03-02T16:47:00.008-05:00

No matter what the words may say no matter what the day no matter what they say no matter what they compose or do no matter what the drugs will do or the songs may do what people may do or what machines may do to you... you still have...

Post-Post-Post-Modernist Folk Tales

2009-02-16T12:14:00.009-05:00

Illustration by Amber Albrecht

I think the best folk tales we have in our generation are the lies our parents told us when we were children.

Every night before bed when I was younger, my father would come into our rooms and tuck us in, lie down and make up a story to tell us. I'm speculating, but, I'm pretty sure they were generally fabricated on the spot.

The ones he told me were usually incongruous and catered to my interests, which, as a pre-adolescent growing up in the nineties, dealt largely with cartoons and comic books, video games and violent television shows. I really can't say I remember any one of those stories in particular, but I do remember a brief series on The Ninja Turtles, as my mother forbade me from watching the cartoon for some reason.

The stories he told my younger sister, Maggie, were much more interesting to hear back then, But I find them even more interesting to think about now.

Usually, these stories centered around a young girl named Melissa-Ann and her various adventures, which were strangely similar to events in Maggie's daily life.

Melissa-Ann scores a goal in the soccer game, Melissa-Ann sings in the holiday concert, Melissa-Ann and the bullies on the playground, and so on...

Maggie ate those stories up, and every night begged to be told a new one before bed until she was much too old to be told bedtime stories. Even I sat in on a few and remember them fairly well.

Eventually, the life of Melissa-Ann turned into utterly fantastic legend, involving space travel, dinosaurs, pirates--even the tooth fairy and Santa Claus made cameos. There might have even been one where Melissa-Ann celebrated Passover and Elijah appeared at the dinner table, but I might be making it up.

Years later, after my father's funeral, my mother, sisters, and I were forced to stand in a line at a reception in an events room below the church sanctuary. After the painstaking hour of pre-rehearsed "sorry for your loss"es, and "if there's anything I can do..."s from people I barely knew, a twelve year-old Maggie turned to me and asked,

"Where was Melissa-Ann?"

The Hipster, The Hipster, and That

2009-02-09T23:13:00.009-05:00

"The Beat Generation, that was a vision that we had, John Clellon Holmes and I, and Allen Ginsberg in an even wilder way, in the late forties, of a generation of crazy, illuminated hipsters suddenly rising and roaming America, serious, bumming and hitchhiking everywhere, ragged, beatific, beautiful in an ugly graceful new way--a vision gleaned from the way we had heard the word 'beat' spoken on streetcorners on Times Square and in the Village, in other cities in the downtown city night of postwar America--beat, meaning down and out but full of intense conviction--We'd even heard old 1910 Daddy Hipsters of the streets speak the word that way, with a melancholy sneer--It never meant juvenile delinquents, it meant characters of a special spirituality who didn't gang up but were solitary Bartlebies staring out the dead wall window of our civilization--the subterraneans heroes who'd finally turned from the 'freedom' machine of the West and were taking drugs, digging bop, having flashes of insight, experiencing the 'derangement of the senses,' talking strange, being poor and glad, prophesying a new style for American culture, a new style (we thought), a new incantation--The same thing was almost going on in the postwar France of Sartre and Genet and more we knew about it--But as to the actual existence of a Beat Generation, chances are it was really just an idea in our minds--We'd stay up 24 hours drinking cup after cup of black coffee, playing record after record ofWardell Gray, Lester Young, Dexter Gordon, Willie Jackson, Lennie Tristano and all the rest, talking madly about that holy new feeling out there in the streets- -We'd write stories about some strange beatific Negro hepcat saint with goatee hitchhiking across Iowa with taped up horn bringing the secret message of blowing to other coasts, other cities, like a veritable Walter the Penniless leading an invisible First Crusade- -We had our mystic heroes and what's wrote, nay sung novels about them, erected long poems celebrating the new 'angels' of the American underground--In actuality there was only a handful of real hip swinging cats and what there was vanished mightily swiftly during the Korean War when (and after) a sinister new kind of efficiency appeared in America, maybe it was the result of the universalization of Television and nothing else (the Polite Total Police Control of Dragnet's 'peace' officers) but the beat characters after 1950 vanished into jails and madhouses, or were shamed into silent conformity, the generation itself was shortlived and small in number." -Kerouac

Now we wear skinny expensive jeans, cheap t-shirts, dabble in music, drugs, life. no one takes things too seriously. we try represent our culture- or the future of our culture, for that matter- it is too dangerous to dedicate oneself to anyone thing because nothing is perfect enough. our tastes and ideas have been gentrified. the things bought for us are the best because we don't have to analyze their value long enough to devaluate it as a worthwhile belonging or statement. spiritualism is struggling in a minority of the hidden free spirited.

hedonism has overcome mental expansion. we take drugs to relate to the finite not the infinite. the "hipster" thinks he's someone else. self-worth is no longer internalized (self-worth or self-appreciation for that matter); self-worth is determined by how others judge you and you judge them. we judge others and ourselves, nothing is sacred.

to the bottom line.

what this generation lacks, is sincerity, honesty, first-hand experience, internalized experience, a sense of gentle humor, compassion, introspection, calls for change...

we need to look into crystals and forget what's not important. who cares? I want no part of it. I want to create. Let the critics be who they will, those who are afraid to create. To the bottom line. Is that enough?

Reflections #2

2009-02-09T22:10:00.005-05:00

(from The Big Picture)

When someone shouts/hollers/yells/whoops in public alone, people might think they're crazy.

While if someone does the same in a group, people might think they have a great story.

The problem is that everyone has some kind of good story.

AM I, DON?

2009-02-08T01:37:00.003-05:00

This guy blows me away. I feel like a paperweight next to his boulder.

The G-O-D

2009-01-28T10:36:00.007-05:00

"The Swordsman" - GZA

I'm running cutting down trees with fucking swords. I do this at night, not because I think I will get caught, but because I like being hidden. That's an important distinction. I have at least two swords at a time. And I sell drugs. I do it to prove a point. The point is people call me the antihero.

I wear a black sweat suit and ski mask, black air forces. I hear black keys on the piano, whispering in the trees, rustling; the only sound outside of my speed, agility, my nasty racing through the woods.

I steal from people. Sometimes they don't know it, sometimes I let them know it. I am like a human air force, a human strike team, guerilla, covert, a rambo-type motherfucker, except I'm fast. And I choose who hears me talk.

The trees are only a byproduct of my one path: the swords are meant for people. They are vampires and all fang. Some may call me a cog in this system of dark survival- I AM the system.

This nighttime-creeping that I live in, these acts that I do, this cutting that I rain down most heavily on the cityfolk, is hegemonic. I know that. I LIKE slashing. Most deserve it. They don't know anything about it. That's not an important distinction.

But I've already told you too much... The swords are vampires and all fang. The Swords are the P-R-O-P-H-E-T. The night is the G-O-D.

BETTER LATE THAN NEVER. THIS IS LAST YEAR.

2009-01-24T16:27:00.006-05:00

Matthew Herbert Big Band - "The Story"

How did I miss this in 2008? I kept scrolling through my iTunes ignoring things I have yet to hear until today, I found There's Me and There's You, done by the Matthew Herbert Big Band. The album's genre was the number eight, so I had to see for myself what this was.

I'd never heard of Matthew Herbert or his Big Band before, so I did some research. Apparently this album is about an abuse of power, and the British avant-garde, electronic musician, &c. recorded most of the Big Band's samples for the album in the British House of Parliament. Side question: Now that we got Obama, when is Girl Talk or Madlib going to do the same in The Capitol?

But, seeing as we are a blog that likes talking about our feelings, I'm going to get into how the first track made me feel, rather than talk about who Matthew Herbert is. (But I'd suggest checking him out, read the link.)

"The Story", the opening track, literally goes in with a bang. The following series of crescendos; electric spider beats, echo, drum, voices, bass, and fazed out guitar announce the beginning, which is the arrival of something potentially epic. I was a little disappointed when the final lift reached its climax and petered out,

until the horns chimed in, replacing heavenly layers of chaotic melody with smooth, funky soul. I felt suspended, for a brief moment in this transition, unaware of what would come next, wishing the introduction had been longer, or at least more thematic of the song itself, until the singer finally began.

Her voice so sexy and suave, she'd swoon as though she were moving her hips wherever she was when she sang it. I imagined her, hands gripping oversized headphones, pop-filter shielding her microphone from her face, eyes closed, mouth swaying and shimmying as she harmonized, moving and grooving.

But there was also a tinge of jagged lemon as her song vigorously tore away from the flow of the horn section. They say John Lennon was the lemon juice to Paul McCartney's olive oil, but the singer, whoever she is, seems to have both, moving between or somehow mixing the two.

After the opening track, the introduction, I find the album is incredibly diverse. Herbert mixes samples of many different types of these "nu-jazz" songs. Some are showtunes! SHOWTUNES! and I actually thought it was good?

Wow.

As Promised

2009-01-22T00:56:00.004-05:00

Recently, we have had some new feedback. As promised, if the feedback could be expounded upon, shall we say, more precisely, I promised to post it. here it is. please give us more feedback. we love constructive criticism in all forms...

---

when i read this tyler dudes shit, it sounds like hes bringing more attention to how dope he can write and how big his vocab is rather than what hes actually writin about. ya feel me? that pisses me off

why write more and say less when u can write less and say more? tell me, what sounds more real

"i bulls-eyed the song's heart, i plotted each fanfare, each cry"

or

"i truly FELT the pain in that song"

in my opinion, when u leave it at that (or whatever) its like ur inviting whoevas readin into feelin it too without giving away too much. u let them experience it fo themselves

i dunno man, r my ramblins gonna stop u fools from writing like a buncha intellectuals who look down at fools like me and go "oh he must listen to t-pain, he must be uncultured"? probably not. ye i listen to hip-hop, maybe u guys should too... and not just the hiphop that pitchfork recommends. yall ever heard smif-n-wessun? bump some of "dah shinin" its a straight classic

dont assume i listen to t-pain. that fools got dolla signz in his eyez.

i try not to overanalyze what i read and what i hear. thats what bitches do, which is why they neva know what the fuck they want in life. don't be a bitch... keep it simple boyz

---

A quick response...

We appreciate comments. We don't appreciate insults. First off, This is a creative writing blog, not a file sharing blog, or a US weekly, etc... In defense of Tyler, he never claimed that you/ the reader liked T-Pain (although we hope you do), he claimed HE liked T-Pain. As do I- and NOT ironically. Sincerity is something truly lacking in today's pop culture. That is what we appreciate about your comments. Respect, though, that we are also being sincere, expressing ourselves to our friends and those interested. That is what art is. That is why this blog exists- the whole meaning IS feeling. So it seems kind of pointless to say, this song made me feel something. That would get repetitive and dull.

So, just for you, Levelle (and of course myself, which is why I started this blog in the first place), look out for some posts on hip hop very soon. But don't expect me to post it and say "I like this." This is a creative writing blog. Keep that in mind. Don't like it, don't read it.

Thanks,

-Clay

YOU CAN FIND ME IN A CAVE

2009-01-12T21:17:00.012-05:00

Bon Iver - "Woods" (this is for sampling purposes)

Last week I was invited to a friend's home for dinner. I was not the only guest, and then there was her family, there were maybe eight or nine of us altogether so we had to collect chairs. I took an office chair, spent most of the meal rolling back and forth between the dining table and a computer, playing DJ. I played the new Bon Iver EP in its entirety and I couldn't contain my excitement for "Woods", which meant I blabbed all about the song, what it is, what it's built out of. I played it loud and I smiled BIG, BIG, BIG. One of my friends laughed and kept laughing; vocoders crack her up, auto-tune cracks her up. Her husband (an incredible musician, a thoughtful man) was struggling not to. He told me that, to him, the use of vocoder and/or auto-tune auto-matically "makes the song so urban." I felt compelled to recite the lyrics to them --

I'm up in the woods, I'm down on my mind.
I'm building a still to slow down the time.

It was a coat-of-arms, a panoply, not like prayer but like worship -- ostentatious, but beautiful. I listened through the table sounds. I thought if I told everyone to keep going with me, to wait until the end, then they'd listen too and they'd get it. I told them it was like Prince and I was mostly kidding. I told them it was like T-Pain and I was flat-out lying. I couldn't imagine how anyone could hear this music, really hear it, and hear urban, which to me suggests at a minimum that people run rampant, that the heat you feel comes from living bodies. The landscape knows your secrets. "Woods" is the landscape. It's dead, celestial and full. It could never be alone, it's too free.

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

[photograph by {the excellent} Derek Vincent]

Clay's Self-Reflections #1

2009-01-08T13:19:00.005-05:00

Once and a while I will take some time to think about myself, my thoughts, my opinions, how things affect me and those around me and try to remember them or write them down.

I found a few in a notebook of mine recently...

Nirvana gives me a semi.

---

Thirteen going on kickass.

---

Do strippers have unions?

---

Found this yesterday:

Knocked Up (Kings of Leon Cover/Mashup)- Lykke Li

---

MY LIFESTYLE DETERMINES MY DEATHSTYLE

2009-01-06T23:43:00.007-05:00

Hearts of Darknesses

Walked a few blocks too far. They said it was 915, but somehow we'd managed to walk to 1080. Fuck. It was how many blocks past the subway?

Found the place, seven bucks at the door. Snuck in some 40s and drank them in the most clandestine way we could think: in the bag. put 'em at your feet when you're not.

Some girl from NYU kept hitting on me.

And somewhere between awkward conversations, Snakes Say Hiss, and some nonplussing hindie Brooklyn rock and roll, Hearts of Darknesses ripped apart the room, kniving through the audience: christ-like, subterranean group of twentysomethings and college students with the synth line in "Vibes".

I was just standing there; paralyzed, St. Ides in hand, staring straight ahead, but inside I was dancing, repeating a phrase in my head over and over. It was one that's been stuck in my head for months now.

"Clementine, Everything is falling apart."

A few weeks later, I'm sitting in the ruins, smiling out from where the walls once were.

THE END

2008-12-31T01:19:00.004-05:00

I'm lazy and it's late and all I want to say now to finish what was kind of a weak year-in-review:

- get Lykke Li's debut, it's the best happy-sad music in the world; great when you're lonely and even better when you're not
- get Sun Kil Moon's new album, even though it's no Ghosts of the Great Highway
- Damien Jurado inspires me, confounds me, mesmerizes me, I hope he does the same for you and frankly I wouldn't be one bit surprized
- it's tasking to post mp3s when yr laptop is broken, but I'm working on it
- I can't wait for the new J. Tillman record
- music is good for living things

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

It was a good year, a lot changed for me. I'm hoping the wheels keep turning. Good night. See you next year.

2K8 In Review

2008-12-28T14:21:00.000-05:00

Why did so many people care about Amy Winehouse?

PART III of Tyler's YEAR-IN-REVIEW!

2008-12-19T18:56:00.010-05:00

4. FLEET FOXES.

At first, I was infatuated, bowled-over, stupefied with glee as though deep-down I'd been waiting for a band just like this -- chamber music, hymns and west-coast blissed-out prettiness and bits and pieces of American folk music and artrock, these are all things I like quite a bit from time to time and it's all there.

So why am I so indifferent to this band now?

And why -- I mean, REALLY? WHY? -- is their self-titled record so many people's favorite album of the year?

I don't have answers for the second question, and only a scattershot guessing mess of reasons for the first one.

Maybe I got bored of the record; I listened to it a lot, and while everything is very neatly arranged, it's not deep, not the kind of record where you notice something new every time. It's not filled with subtleties. It just is what it is. It's also terribly monotonous; when I first discovered them early in the year, I noticed on their Myspace that they'd made it a point to describe themselves as "not a rock band" and while at first I thought that slightly misleading, it turns out to be true in an unfortunate way: they are hardly exciting. (Anyone else notice that the bassist always and I mean always looks bored?) They are content to make pretty music with pretty harmonies, and too rarely do they push the decibel meter. It makes all the very-hushed parts in their songs feel cheaper for the lack of dynamic. (Quiet is the new loud? Again?)

Most of all, I get tired of wading through songs with uninspired segments. Off the top of my head, there's moments in "Ragged Wood", "Quiet Houses" and "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song" that actually annoy me, passages that seem to try too hard to be melodic or weird, instead of just sounding good, instead of really waiting for inspiration -- and these are three of my favorite songs on the record, in spite of their flaws, which only makes it more maddening. The album is absolutely thick with ideas, most of its songs have more ideas than some whole albums, and most of the melodicism is highly sophisticated. Yet it gets too melodic, as if they don't know anything else, as if they think music can only be carefully composed, as if chance doesn't belong.

I think it was Clay who said that the album almost sounds like an assignment. I wish that didn't sound right, but it does.

With all of that said, the fact of the matter is that Robin Pecknold is oftentimes very inspired -- take "Blue Ridge Mountains", "White Winter Hymnal", "Oliver James", all of which are vivid and warm, melodic and ageless. And it's a mightily impressive debut record, despite its flaws (again). I think the main reason I've fallen out of touch with Fleet Foxes partly has to do with what I thought they were when I first heard them. Nowadays, I hear The Beach Boys, sun-baked and immaculate, and brilliant. Before, I heard The Band in all their early glory, in their strange still-unmatched way of singing through and above and past one another. Back then -- think Music From Big Pink -- The Band was both crazy-loose and crazy-tight. While I like The Beach Boys, I hardly ever listen to them -- mostly I admire and respect what they could do, but really enjoying it, or more importantly loving it? Not-so-much. The Band is a different story. (Go on YouTube, check out Fleet Foxes' video for "He Doesn't Know Why". See the resemblance?)

I've got a prediction. Whether or not Fleet Foxes trims the fat and comes up with something truly great next time around, a lot of folks will at some point in the next few years re-scan their best-of-2008 lists and wonder, When was the last time I listened to this album?

AMALGAMATION. ASSIMILATION. ACCUMULATION.

2008-12-17T00:42:00.013-05:00

"eyes glueup sittin in dark sun peekup" - Oliver Ignatius

Can you make out what those ethereal, hints of whispers you can't be sure you hear in the early morning are saying? They echo silently before the rain lets up and the sun rises, leaving no trace they were ever there.

Every morning, the witching hours fall slave to the sun, and every night the sun sinks in tiresome defeat. The Aztecs, at the height of civilization, were never quite sure if the sun would rise again once it had set. Blood offerings were made to assure existence would continue as normal.

Can you imagine? Every day could very well be everybody's last? Everyone believes this? And you're all OKAY with that?

The lonely distortion at the very beginning of everything begins to tell me my fortune until it's drowned out by the brief stints of rain. It appears again and again, but suddenly the rain stops. Predictions of my unclear future reverberate in my head.

The guitar continues to sing cryptic messages. A tarot spread, a crystal ball. A cell phone rings somewhere.

Over and over, I can hear you talking in your sleep. "And we called it lightning," you seem to say between even breaths. To dream of something so powerful!

I envy the world you find in your reveries.

I don't care if this song is just a demo: it's beautiful in it's imperfections. I hear T. Rex behind the veil, and hints of John Lennon's soulful swagger in the delicate melody.

Oliver has continued to create. I've failed to post.

-________________________________-

on another note:
Did you know the term "bling bling" apparently originates from this song?

"Bling Bling" - Juvenile & Lil Wayne

PART II OF TYLER'S YEAR-IN-REVIEW

2008-12-11T19:14:00.019-05:00

3. AUTO-TUNE.

I don't really know where it began in earnest. Of course it's been going on for a long time, but I don't know when it really took off, when people started to take notice -- I remember reading about it a few months ago in The New Yorker, and before that in a profile of T-Pain.

Ah, T-Pain. Maybe I don't know exactly what it is I love so much about you, maybe I never will. Yr music conjures drinks and dancefloors and the nighttime-as-the-righttime and excess and indulgence and fun -- little to none of the hazards, and when things go wrong it's funny, like "that'll be sixty bucks" and the one-drink-too-many. I think when I first heard you I must have thought This is so not me and at the same time I love this to death, what the fuck? In some crucial ways it is me because -- how do I say this -- I like being taken out of my element, I want to be bewildered once in a while.*

And "Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)" is absolutely bewildering because it never lets up and yes it has hooks but it's more than that, it bleeds you to death before you even hit the bridge (which is AWESOME) and it's like everything I loved about that Basement Jaxx record Kish Kash condensed into one perfect pop song (almost?), a song that if it doesn't get you going it makes you feel helpless because what else could possibly get you going if not this? The first time I heard it was after they made fun of it on Saturday Night Live and all I could focus on was the dancing and how they looked like weird mechanized bird-humans running around in circles and WOW THIS RHYTHM IS HYPED UP and it was all very funny to me but now I hear this song on the radio and it feels like exploding non-stop for three-and-a-half too-short minutes. And when the hooks pile on at the end it's like Beyoncé is telling you this weird secret, unraveling this mystery: It's fabulously easy, you just need to sing all the best notes in the best way.

And then Kanye West comes in and he's melancholic and he's the biggest pop star in the world (right?) but he's a hip-hop star, I thought; and he's making a record about death and break-ups and fame and disappointment but none of that matters so much as the example he's setting as a pop star. And it's a good example: make what you want, what you're feeling. Get away from yr bread-and-butter, pivot toward yr milk-and-honey. West's first three albums are genius and he's always made it look easy, but this is more than just great music, this is his Sgt. Pepper, his Bringing it All Back Home, his middle finger to Nashville, his true colors in other words; and maybe the best part is the irrational distaste so many people are going to have for it and how he knew that and did it anyway. (Unbridled emotion and simplicity don't sit too well with the in-crowd. Or the critics. All the better.) This is what "psychedelic" should mean because it's an out-sized, out-of-body, larger-than-life thing that's going on and forget about wishing that Kanye was more humble or down to earth -- shine on, you crazy diamond.

*Addendum: On second glance that sounds like a shallow appreciation, and the last thing I want to suggest about this music is that it's somehow shallow, or that I think it's shallow. So let me clarify: I think it's GRAND, particularly because it does so completely what all my favorite music does, it transports you into a not-real-until-right-now place, and in T-Pain's case it's the club-circus, the bar-sitcom. Like a dreamy Alice-in-Wonderland vision of the best party ever. That's what it does for me. Down the rabbit hole...

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

More later this week! Finished with finals today, so I'll have more time.

Sleepy Sun Bear

2008-12-09T21:02:00.001-05:00

Long After an Accident Outside Rio Gallegos: A Haiku

2008-12-08T16:25:00.003-05:00

Smashed truck by God-crushed,

Huge Sky, Sun-side, His target

Poor Driver, life-road.

Ushuaia

2008-12-08T16:11:00.005-05:00

We landed running at the end of the world

It was too cold to camp at the end of the world

so I stayed in a hostel at the end of the world

I met familiar faces at the end of the world

The sun set late and rose very early at the end of the world

I climbed a glacier at the end of the world

and ate snow at the top of that glacier at the end of the world

I ate king crab and drank beer at the end of the world

Mountains towered over us at the end of the world

I met two Basque brothers at the end of the world

Who spoke strongly about their struggle for independence, at the end of the world

I found an apocalyptic safe haven at the end of the world

People live in the wilderness at the end of the world

(whatever that means) at the end of the world

Shipwrecks, stray dogs, and abandoned outposts at the end of the world

The water frothed under us,

Clouds moved in and out and passed over us,

Then I, too, passed over the end of the world.

THE GOALS WE NEVER MEET

2008-12-07T19:56:00.004-05:00

I found this "Life plan" I wrote for myself on October 27, 2006.

Let's see what I've accomplished in two years.

1. Learn Carpentry
2. Graduate College
i. Learn Spanish
3. Go into the Peace Corps
4. Record Songs, Make Music for fun.
5. Direct a film I've been writing. If it succeeds, become a film maker. If it flops, do something else.
6. Possibly get married (i suppose that depends on the circumstances)
7. Open a photography business- either become a freelance or journalisitic photographer, hopefully for National Geographic. Possibly a photography firm. Shoot and sell fine art prints.
8. If photography and film making fail, become a carpenter
9. Travel and create.
10. Retire. Travel more. Create more. Die.

Nothing.

Now, let's look at the revised one.

1. Graduate College by May 2011
i. Learn Spanish.
2. Learn some kind of trade. Carpentry? Teach Yoga maybe?
3. Grad school, Montreal, Fine Arts.
4. Find some way to pay back my student loans.
5. ???
6. Die.

SO I AM NOT A HUGE FAN OF THIS SONG BUT WATCH THE VIDEO

2008-12-06T23:19:00.003-05:00

Maybe on mute.

The Year, Sorta Discussed

2008-12-03T15:12:00.019-05:00

(Subtitle: Favorite albums of 2008?!)

THE PROBLEM: Digitalageayedeeachedee. Trends galore. Broken laptop. Singles-prominence. Googlepediatube. Autotune/T-Pain.

THE SOLUTION: Listen to the radio. Leave the house. Buy music MAKE MUSIC. Unplug the stereo when you're not using it. Autotune/T-Pain.

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

I couldn't even begin to give you an honest Top-5 or Top-10 or Top-Multipleof10 list this year. I just didn't listen to that many albums. Maybe I'm losing patience like everyone else, or maybe it was just that kind of year; music and I fall in and out of love. (Sometimes, for months at a time, it's nuthin but lust.) But I could really only name you six or seven albums I even listened to the whole way through, and while they're all worthy, I bet that if I'd been more adventurous, if I'd soaked up more content (digital sponge) those 6-or-7 would be in considerably hotter water.

So instead, I'm just going to list, in no particular order, new music that I loved, whether it be an album, a show, a song, or a video. What-fucking-ev-fucking-er. While I am utterly ambivalent about the structure this list takes, all the music is earnestly and passionately loved from the bottom of my heart, music I savored and learned inside and out and will keep listening to for -- well, let's be honest, at least months to come. (But probably more.)

Today is PART I. As you'll see, each entry is a little long, so I'm going to space this out over the next week or two. As of now, I don't know exactly where this list will go or who/what it will include -- you'll know when it's over around the same time as I do.

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

1. BON IVER.

I went to two "shows" this year -- quotations meaning I'm not counting shows I played or shows my friends played; only two shows where I went to see a band whose record I liked. The first one was Bon Iver, back in February. (Here's what I wrote about it.)

For Emma, Forever Ago has nothing if not staying power: these are songs that have real emotional depth, by which I mean the more you listen to them, really listen to them, the more they reveal their insides, hurts and joys, hopes and wants, scars and mistakes. Musically it seems innovative and forward-thinking, but what it boils down to is that even if you stripped away the words, the stories you've heard about the album's maker -- its sound is startlingly, intensely personal -- and therefore unique. It's an album that gets better, which is really another way of saying it gets truer.

Justin Vernon self-released For Emma in 2007, but the record didn't see official release until February, through Jagjaguwar; anyone who has been paying attention since then already knows that it's been a huge year for Vernon. Bon Iver is now a band, and an exciting one at that: at this point, Mike and Sean are inextricable, as much a part of these songs as Justin -- I forget at times they're not on the album. Bon Iver was my first show this year, and they'll be my third in a week and a half -- and just to witness the journey this music has taken, to see its growths, has my head swelling with excitement.

Then again, that has a lot to do with who'll be opening for Bon Iver...

2. THE TALLEST MAN ON EARTH. (Previously on TWSH.)

The day I heard Kris for the first time, I'd spent some time teaching myself one of my favorite folk songs: "I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground". I stumbled on TTMOE the way I usually stumble on new music -- through browsing music blogs -- and these were the first words I heard: "If I ever see the morning / just like a lizard in the spring."

Now, I'm typically a rapt listener, I don't make up my mind about a song within the first few bars and turn it off if I don't like it. Songs hold and keep my interest, even bad ones, and unless it's physically hurting me I'm not going to reject it that quickly. With that said, I can't remember ever feeling so immediately attached to a piece of music as I was to "I Won't Be Found" that evening. It may have been the connection to "Mole in the Ground" in the lyrics, which admittedly made me feel what I guess you might call a fast kinship with Kris, like when the pretty girl on the bench has "over a cardboard sea" written on her shoes.

But in contrast with that feeling of closeness was the sense that this was something foreign, something unlike any folk music I'd ever heard. The singing has a lot to do with it: Kris doesn't sound distinctly Swedish or distinctly American, and his lyrics have (for me) no obvious lineage, though they are as rich and poetic as any I've heard. There's an air about him, a gulp of syrup and a handful of myth in that voice.

His debut album, Shallow Graves, might as well be legendary, considering how flabbergastingly great it is. It's the album I listened to most this year, at least in part because it's the most elliptical, the toughest egg to crack. It made me wonder: where are these songs coming from? How is he doing this, goddamnit?! Every melody so instantly infectious, not in the way pop music is, but the way it feels when you create something -- the way it feels in the exact moment something rises out of you, and then when you fall in love with what you (little strange unknowable you) made. Maybe that makes sense, maybe it doesn't, but that's what listening to these songs feels like for me now -- I'd probably hate Kris if I didn't love his music so much, because he's done exactly what I wish I could. In that way, it's strangely the most personal record of the year for me, for all its otherworldly strangeness. (Obviously, I'm especially excited to see him perform next Monday night.)

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

MORE LATER THIS WEEK. Or next week. Expect words about Fleet Foxes, Lykke Li, Damien Jurado, Kanye, Sun Kil Moon . . . and . . . yes . . . T-Pain.

A SADDENING DISCOVERY

2008-12-02T21:51:00.001-05:00

so THIS is what I can expect to become in the next few years?

2008-12-02T17:06:00.002-05:00

Croissant with eggs, croissant with coffee, croissant with soup, croissant on pizza.

I was brought up bourgeois, and God damnit, to hell with me if i forget my roots.

Second day in a row in a cafe in the West Village where a friend works but isn't here, I'm sipping on black coffee and my new staple: a flaky, warm croissant with some jam. Jazz emanates from the walls, the dimly light room lets me think straight or get things done.

Actually, my procrastination is more productive. I'm crossing things off of the other to-do list; the things that don't deal with homework, time, or paying bills. The to-do list for the right-brain.

I suppose New York might be where you go if you want to get confronted with all your existential crises at once. December here will only be more frenzied than the last few months.

This cafe is my quiet hideaway.

2008-11-25T01:04:00.001-05:00

lately I'm trying to write songs, so maybe that covers why writing about songs took a backseat. and I'm not going to write about songs for you tonight, just writing to stop the rumours of my death or whatever. I'll post again soon, I swear it.

Water Treatment

2008-11-14T13:41:00.002-05:00

An Experiment.

Question: How many times can I reuse a water bottle before the residue displaced from the inside of the bottle due to heat starts to hurt my stomach?

Result: 5

Masculine/ Femenine, Earlier than the Train

2008-11-14T13:37:00.004-05:00

The Climate, the Weather

The PLAnes

The SystEm

The ProbLem.

---

Like the purple fall of dusk,

Lifting the heat

off of

The city's corners

Changing the color of the graffiti.

HAIKUS FOR A TIRED NEW YORKER

2008-11-12T09:39:00.002-05:00

overslept this morn,
gotta be catchin' myself.
don't you rain on me

back and forth, L train.
twelve more stops 'till class begins
i did no homework.

early i'm awake,
New York City, let me sleep
work at eight ain't great.

busy busy bee,
up and down a train called V
sleep did forget me

sick as your old dog
mumbling 'till i can't no more
leave me to my self.

sometimes hear you say,
it don't smell like love to me.
i can't smell at all.

glass-bottle blues, babe.
stumblin' down this busy road,
hiccups a-plenty.

once the brown guitar
let me know not to forget
we're all folk singers.

Great Twos

2008-11-10T18:07:00.008-05:00

Two Men that I think

show bravado, classical man-ness, and a redefined cool:

- Clint Eastwood

- Sam Cooke

Two Companies I think show

innovation, success, and are also cool:

-Jet Blue

-Apple

Two Toppings I think show superior food-altering capabilities:

- Franks Red Hot Hot Sauce (not necessarily cool)

- Peanut Butter

Any additions (examples or categories)?

CECI N'EST PAS UNE THEORY

2008-11-06T15:05:00.005-05:00

Prisoners are those who have offended the state (and usually some third party) in some punishable way (and been caught).

Within the Western Art world, we no longer (necessarily) consider the art we produce to be "good" for its beauty, composition, style, or form, but based on who it offends and how:

Art that is offensive for the sake of being offensive is not what I would call "good" art.

But art that is honest, art that raises important societal questions offends society in a way that aims to move it forward.

I find artists and criminals share this connection: both groups, if we can separate them, offend us: prisoners through negative action (rape, murder, theft) while artists (for the most part) through a more positive medium.

There are a lot of parenthetical comments and holes in this idea, yeah, but what's absolute or politically correct these days?

DO YOU AGREE?

IT'S AMAZING WHAT YOU FIND DUMPSTER DIVING

2008-10-30T18:58:00.001-04:00

That (c)hat is ridiculous.

DAMN YOU, THIEVES.

2008-10-28T14:28:00.000-04:00

The universe must not want me to be in possession of a laptop.

I've bitten off more than I can chew.
I need a vacation.
I'm counting down the days until Thanksgiving.

Can anyone say bad timing?

The Friars of Our Era

2008-10-22T23:36:00.000-04:00

"Skyscrapers" - Detachment Kit

This Latin American metropolis is just like that North American metropolis, which is just like that Great Britain metropolis, which is just like an Ancient Roman metropolis.

As I walk in the morning past old faculty buildings and museums, people travel daily from residence to business. It is an age old routine. Wares and livelihood, family and household.

---

Pigeons scuttle along their routes on the sidewalks, courtyards and windowsills. They are modern day's gregorian monks, diminished in size, and in sound and color's tone. They hobble, chanting early morning in a language everyday folk have trouble understanding.

So I saw you playing on SNL

2008-10-20T01:05:00.000-04:00

Now I see you're on Youtube too and you've got your songvoice and your acoustic bass and your British accent.

"Bad Ideas" In Contrast

2008-10-15T17:55:00.000-04:00

"McCain's 10 Worst Ideas"

and

"Obama's 10 Worst Ideas"

(according to Foreign Policy Magazine)

Pay homage to the God of Educated Opinion.

The Decline of the American Empire? - Part 1

2008-10-01T16:58:00.000-04:00

BBC - American Superpower Status is Shaken

NY Times - Wall Street, RIP

I've been glued to news websites the past couple weeks, especially opinion sections. The current (whatNOUNbestdescribesmyparanoia?) in the US is unprecedented in my lifetime. As an International Affairs major living abroad in Buenos Aires, I find the foreign reaction to the recent events in the United States intriguing and also almost unanimously in favor of the promised democratic party nominee's "Change." But there is also a fear, almost unspoken, of this American economic crisis' extreme influence over the rest of the world's economies.

But is this really that surprising? Its definitely nothing new; the US has had unarguable influence over the rest of the world in many aspects for centuries. The global community is quick to criticize American Policy, whether it be social, economic, foreign, or domestic, but when a true threat of economic collapse appears as the wall streeters' pockets start coughing up moths there is almost a pleading sense in the foreign- at least argentine- sentiment of interest in not only our current economic crisis but also in the election coming up.

And with the whole world depending on us to set our own problems right (who would've ever thought that a failure, a fissure, an abyss, would develop out of a system of borrowing money that doesn't always exist?- I say this as an abstraction), I am perplexed, no intrigued, no amazed, no wait, that isn't quite right either, I am horrified that Americans are still considering a VP who famously bases her foreign policy experience on Alaska's proximity to Russia. How can we hope to bail out our economies (emphasis on plural) if the GOP Presidential candidate stated he "doesn't really understand economics," and the VP candidate in question can only name one supreme court case?

(To Be Continued)

YES, I'M TALKING TO YOU

2008-09-26T20:40:00.000-04:00

I'm sitting at Table 7 at the library, reading about music and thinking about music and the people who write about it. And there's just one thing I got to know.

Do you like what we're doing here?

I'm looking for ways to mix it up over here at the Honeyeater, ways we can make it better, more interesting, more adventurous, more creative, more fun. I attribute part of the problem to simply not having time and energy for it, and more specifically the fact that I'm just not as musically knowledgeable as a writer-about-music should be -- most of my friends have a much stronger handle on contemporary stuff, and as for my awareness of older music, well, I was going to use the word "grasp" in place of "awareness" but that sounded too strong, you dig?

One thing I think might help: SEND US SONGS. We will write about the things we love. Please and thanks! I think that right there takes care of the interesting-adventurous-and-fun parts; I guess you'll still have to trust us with the creative part. (And all I can give you there is a maybe. Have a little faith, though.)

If you'd like to send me anything, I'll always -- ALWAYS -- listen to it. My e-mail is:
tyler.bussey@gmail.com

I'll leave it up to Will and Clay to provide theirs.

And also, please, flood this post with comments -- constructive, derisive, knock-knock, anarchic, whatever. (In other words, the only way I'll know if this is working fine, or if it might be time to retreat, is from hearing your thoughts, dear reader.)

So. HOLLER BACK --------------------

UPDATE: Yo, ANYBODY?!

BREAK A SWEAT, THAT'S WHAT IT TAKES

2008-09-24T04:01:00.000-04:00

The Tallest Man on Earth - "The Gardner"

This song is about things we all share, even things we'd not-so-much admit to sharing. It's the lift and the ache of knowing that being just who we are makes even one someone want to try harder. It's the thrill, the glee of a good old-fashioned killing spree. (Figuratively, of course.) It's unbridled absurdity (love), it's separating the wheat from the chaff, it's casting yourself in a winnowing sliver of light. (Borrowed that one.) It's about everything we can't quite put our fingers on. We can't because we can only be in it: you can't be on music, on air, on her eyes. Even on time. (A river is not a line.) We're in this together, when we sing together it's the same time, the same air, we're seeing with the same swirls of twilight. "There is no need for suspicion / There ain't no frog kissing your hand / I won't be lying when I tell you / That I'm a gardner, I'm a man / In your eyes, babe."

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

I don't know how Katy Horan would feel about me using her artwork for this post, but it's just SO PERFECT for the song; I'm almost surprised one didn't inspire the other. Though I'd assert it stands alone just fine, more than fine -- lately I'm just plum enamored with her work. Please give it a look. The piece I jacked is from her new solo exhibition (!) -- please check it out here.

If you haven't yet, check out Soirée à emporter n°2. All the videos are worth your time -- I'm partial to The Dodos and Fleet Foxes, of course, and Essie Jain was a welcome discovery -- but the real gem, the really real gem, is hidden in the really real sounds and smiles and stomps and clomps and shaking excitement of Vandaveer's all-too-brief performance. It's given me chills, welled up tears, made me miss my family. It's that good.

I wrote the man an e-mail, asking when and where a studio version of "A Mighty Leviathan of Old" might, um, surface, and here's what he said: "We actually have recorded that very tune for the next record, but we haven't set a release date yet ... most likely will be in early '09 ... but we may post it on Myspace or some other place before then to whet the collective whistle." WhoooooooOOOOooooo!

MUTO by Blu

2008-09-23T21:53:00.000-04:00

A video of a local Buenos Aires graffiti Artist, Blu's work. Made with Stop- motion photography and a ton of murals around the city. Awesome.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Welcome to the best thing I've seen in the past week.

2008-09-22T19:30:00.001-04:00

yep.

clay and tyler, you owe me a post.

I was catatonic the entire time.

2008-09-15T19:08:00.000-04:00

Manjushri - Namasangiti

(item no. 65391)

1000 - 1099 Northern India

Buddhist Lineage, Stone

Collection of Rubin Museum of Art

(courtesy of himalayanart.org)

"Fill That World" - Oliver Ignatius

"Talkin' Rajasthan Blues" - Oliver Ignatius
"Hop Skip and a Jump" - Oliver Ignatius

We got to talking amidst a brief break from class. Music, of course, was one of the first things we discussed.

"Do you write?" He asked.

"Kind of. Nothing I do really takes off... all really stays the same the whole time," I said between sips of lukewarm coffee.

"Sometimes, that's all you need."

I posed the same question back to Oliver, who had apparently just finished recording his second album. He'd done it all himself, he said, from recording the various harmonies and melodies, to instruments, to mixing and mastering.

About forty minutes later, after class, I asked him if he had anything he could show me.

"Sure," he said, "I guess you could call it the 'hit single' if anything." He proceeded to show me "Hop Skip and a Jump".

Decent, truly independent stuff is hard to find. Open-mic nights have lately bored me; almost as though nothing I've heard since the Summertime Potluck Hootennanies Tyler and I put on really excited me. By now you've probably heard us rant about Nicholas Beaven, Bruhder, Vikesh Kapoor, Whistle Jacket, and others. But if I may present to you all Oliver Ignatius. Someone I'll probably be ranting about often from here on out.

You can download the rest of his album, Demos for Secund here.

Mac users get unrarx to download the songs. It's free and worth it.

On an unrelated note, if you haven't heard the Fleet Foxes BBC Radio 2 Session FM on Aquarium Drunkard, I suggest you do so now.

The Brooklyn Social Scene, Part 1.

2008-09-10T19:55:00.000-04:00

I was changing my sheets the other evening, which is not something I do on a regular basis. Since moving to Brooklyn, my closet-sized bedroom has succumbed to my messy ways; most of my life has yet to be unpacked. It was once shoved inside the back of a U-Haul, (clothes, couch, and all) and driven every-which-way around New York (Don't use Map Quest if you're driving a truck) until I finally landed in Bushwick, somewhere off the L or the M train.

It would have been easier if most of the roads I'd been advised to take hadn't been for "passenger cars only".

Now, I find myself waking up every morning to redundant proclaimations of mediocre rappers, motorcycles, car horns, drug deals, skateboards, stick ball, arguments, and the occasional fly on my face...

Back to the other evening.

Cleaning my room, changing my sheets, putting clean clothes away and the dirty ones in a hamper; making it nice and nice for any guests that might wander in some kind of drunken haze into my bedroom (and of course the inexplicable male expectation of some lady-friend), I couldn't help hearing random beeps, rhymes, and computer-generated keyboard sounds coming from Euna's (ooh-na's) room.

Twenty minutes later, Jacob (one of my other room mates) and Euna, henceforth to be known as Cucci (pronounced like the coarse slang word for vagina) & Coco (pronounced...well, i think you get it) showed me their finished product. It goes something like this...

Cucci & Coco - "Lemur (Uffie Remix)"

I think it's just absolutely hilarious, to sum it up in a word.

please remix this song if you'd like and send it back. I'll post my favorites.

ELEVATOR MUSIC

2008-09-10T16:03:00.002-04:00

Ella Fitzgerald - "Stairway to the Stars"

You shouldn't destroy what you can't rebuild,

like the earth, or the stars,

a stairway from here to there.

(Maybe we could rebuild the stairway but personally I wouldn't risk it.

Because HEY!

That's where heaven is.

On rungs, on beams,

on hands and feet!

Perilous! Off-balance! Lovely, lovely!)

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

It would be heaven to climb to heaven

with you.

Up there.

Up there there's a darkness so bright,

there's violence but it's not scary,

it's so blue, and it's just beginning.

And that moon (the same one, not the same as before)

and that driftdriftdrift, oh my -

and the rim of that hill, oh yes -

and the crest of that thrill, oh to be...

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

I hear your o-so-slow,

seductive "let's" -

for heaven's sake, LET US! but you play it cool -

and good heavens the sound of your voice:

that's heaven

to you, heaven to me.

Shhh - that's heaven

and I'm clean-break fresh-out of waiting.

La Bomba Del Tiempo

2008-09-09T13:56:00.000-04:00

I went to a drum show last night. There were about 15-20 drummers playing traditional folk percussive instruments, including plastic, corrugated horns, a mass of shells, lots of bass-y, big drums hit with sticks, congas, shakers, metal, wood, and pelt drums. All with a conductor in front guiding everyone.

It is improvised in a giant community center of a warehouse, complete with bar outside chilling area. This week they had a West African guitarist who looked like BB King 25 years ago- he even played the same guitar! Beer is cheap, even for Argentine standards, and everyone dan and ces, more and more as the music builds and people get into the rhythm. I saw a friend from school there who was on vacation in Buenos Aires (we had not been able to get in touch all weekend). We were so happy to see eachother one last time before he transfers to another school in a couple weeks.

We vowed to get this whole thing started in US eventually. We were convinced it would take off back home. Songs last for half and hour; everyone sings and claps. We all dance.

There is a pterodactyl guy who climbs up pillars and flaps his wings, always clothing covering his eyes (right).

Everyone moves uniquely in sync. I'm going back every week.

This is the way everyone should dance. Everyone should do this.

Safety in Numbers

2008-09-09T13:17:00.000-04:00

My study abroad program has recently provided us (the students) with a "Risk Matrix" based on country, with the categories, "Crime," "Terrorism," "Political," "Kidnap," "Infrastructure," and "Overall," on a frightening familiar spectrum of green, yellow, red, and black.

Argentina, the country I am currently in, ranks HIGH, with red levels of "crime" and "kidnap."

Egypt, a country two friends are studying in, also ranks HIGH, with only "terrorism" reaching the dangerous red level.

Is it really necessary to base a country's supposed security on our perception of how dangerous it is to us? Granted, common sense and knowledge of safety is important- don't walk down an unlit street in the slums of Sudan (ranked extremely dangerous overall). But nations are way too complex to say the threat of being kidnapped here is a yellow amount of dangerous to you.

I have learnt in the past month or so, that travel is about risk-taking and being unsure. You have to leave your comfort zone if you want to learn anything at all. You need to drop the guidebook; ask the locals. Walk down a road, just remember your way back.

Of course you want to be smart, but a risk wouldn't be a risk if it wasn't a risk!

Travel safety isn't about compiling data. It's about being prepared to roll with whatever comes your way. Expectations are meant to be torn to shreds (in a great way or a horrifying way) for every moment a traveller is exploring... More later.

(Unfortunately, the link to the matrix I am describing requires you to be a member of the program in order to be safe...)

Projections from Montevideo

2008-09-02T20:47:00.000-04:00

"Pacific Rhythm" - Quiet Village

I was sitting across from Andrea who was cutting the vegetables we picked up at a market hours earlier as the sun set and the air debased itself even colder, the ocean breathing onto the mouth of the river, slowly overwhelming all and introducing a new sense of life, like the time it breathed on Will and I, shins given much attention, mists in our faces, looking out across a Forever shadowed by the same cold orange light from that same time of day, half way around the world in Old Orchard Beach.

Andrea finished cutting the red bell peppers and started the spinach whic

h she insisted we get, her favorite and "it makes you strong." Keith, Andrea, Andrea's friend, and I took a trip over a long weekend to Uruguay, first to Colonia del Sacremento, then hopped a bus to Montevideo. Colonia is a sleepy town on the coast of the Rio del Plata, less colonial than foretold in the guidebooks, more reliant on the port connected to Buenos Aires and the modest Bus depot that sent customers to untold locations around the country and the continent and the world, one can only hypothesize half afraid, half in awe.

Keith entered the kitchen, his mate gourd and thermos in-hand, borrowed from the funky, collective-feeling hostel we were staying in. He broke out a book I had read in high school and ended up borrowing later to reread. I resigned myself to our vino tinto and some parmesan-impersonating cheese called semi-duro. The kitchen was the warmest part of the hostel and we enjoyed spending downtime in there. I think it was agreed we all felt like strangers in Montevideo; we didn't really plan any part of the trip besides the hostels and we were cold, un-showered, in dirty clothes, poorly planned, and dumb about anything to do or see in the city.

I still feel very stressed back here in Buenos Aires. Everyday I have to actively get excited about being abroad. I need to speak more Spanish, I need to stop going to school and home the same way each day. I need to get involved in the local music/art scene, maybe get a job off craigslist for efectivo (under the table cash). I need to make local friends. I need to exercise regularly, eat healthier, meditate more, smoke less. But in a way, I am feeling more comfortable than I was when I got here, already over a month ago.

There is so much for me to do. Despite all the people who try to pickpocket me on the subte, the Great Wall of a language barrier I am slowly digging through Shawshank Redemption-style, I still have my instinctual urge to learn more and to explore more. I'm going to some shows this weekend. I'm going to try to strike up conversation with locals. I'm also going to try to keep an actual travel journal with more journey and less introspection because while I'm doing all this talking and reflecting, the world, Buenos Aires, is continuing perpetually in each moment. I need to keep jumping in, no matter how wet I get.

"Keep on Rolling" - Quiet Village

So sorry

2008-09-02T12:30:00.000-04:00

"Isis" - Bob Dylan

Riding the L train to a class you've already missed can be disconcerting, overwhelming; anxiety-inducing. There are few things today that I could say have gone right, but then again, I haven't really counted.

It's the first day of classes for most Universities in New York City.

"Jet Pilot" - Bob Dylan

Finally out of Connecticut, I've spent the past two weeks in Brooklyn in a drunken haze, waking in the early afternoons, many nights without power. Meeting women, yelling at kids throwing bottles off my roof.

I'm unemployed, somehow attempting to pay my way through college.

HOW THINGS CHANGE, THEY CHANGE US

2008-08-27T15:55:00.000-04:00

Sun Kil Moon - "Glenn Tipton"

Mark Kozelek sings I CAPitalized, an upright word, a word that matters - matters because I meant something to someone, now she's gone and "place ain't the same" and he's back in memory, he's singing for intimates past and (therefore) present - donut shops, cops at the table; the fighters, the guitar-flashers; the unsent letters & the heart-soft hours of the night. And these scenes just pass by, the hurts and the mends all know their time is coming and really, what can you do, what are love and sorrow anyway but lights and shadows, colors off the leaves, never remaining for long. Refusing to just repeat. The foggy-eyed awe of what next together, hand-in-hand, with the delirious stillness of what was.

Bowerbirds - "Bur Oak"

Remember those kids in grade school and the nicknames we came up with? Nick drank Sunkist, we called him Orange. Alex was a rascal, we called him Spanky. (Nobody remembers how Zack became Stella.) But we all know that these kids are grown, that they are trying to grow now - next time you see them, call them by the names we gave 'em. Maybe they'll say "no one's called me that in years" and maybe also swell a little and maybe, but only just barely-maybe, pine too for that shared impulse we had when we didn't need to search to impress or amaze: that stupid sudden spark that sticks and sticks and sticks.

Language Rice

2008-08-13T14:42:00.000-04:00

In my six or so years of studying the Spanish Language, this is my first time being immersed in a Spanish, or rather, Catelán-speaking country (I am spending the next four months in Argentina as a student). Saying that there is much about the language for me to learn is a vast understatement. Cooking came up in a conversation with a friend the other day. We talked about what the first things we learned to cook were. Mine was fried rice. We talked about the soothing qualities of cooking and the importance smell had in developing a sense of calm.

I decided to treat my learning of a language like fried rice.

First the rice is cooked separately from the other ingredients. The vegetables are fried in another pan while the rice cooks. When the rice is ready, it is integrated into the pan that the vegetables are in along with different spices that add subtleties to the food. Once the flavors permeate each other, mix and beautifully contaminate each grain of rice and each pea or carrot slice, the rice and vegetables are moved away from the middle creating an exposed area in the center of the pan. This is the moment of opportunity and possibility. This is when the egg is introduced. The shells is cracked and the contents are poured into the center. As it cooks, the egg is slowly integrated into the rice and vegetables. The fried rice reclaims the middle of the pan, and cooks for a bit longer before its ready to eat.

Well, I just cracked my egg and damn am I hungry.

Kids, Graffiti, and French Design

2008-08-13T14:31:00.000-04:00

Watermelons and Acoustic Guitars.

2008-07-24T17:43:00.000-04:00

Whistle Jacket - "Say Hello"

Whistle Jacket - "Knife Fight"

Tyler and I recently put together two potluck hootenannies in which we had touring bands, including a man named Michael from a band called Whistle Jacket.

Michael showed up at my house with a friend, an acoustic guitar, and the biggest watermelon I'd ever seen. We cut it up and savored its succulent flavor while he played, accompanied only by his acoustic guitar, in a sole photographer's spotlight I used to light up my backyard.

The abrasive positivity of his music truly shows Michael is a "whimsical ambassador of good cheer."

Select Images from my Travels To Date

2008-07-23T15:52:00.000-04:00

Bay on Southeast side of Mount Desert Island, Maine, US - Summer 2008

Ascending Mount Cadillac, Mount Desert Island, Maine, US - Spring 2008

The Beehive, Mount Desert Island, Maine, US - Spring 2008

Kayaking Break, Bald Porcupine Island, Maine, US - Summer 2008

Stinson Beach, California, US - Spring 2008

The Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco, California - Spring 2008

San Francisco Bay from a Hill, California, US - Spring 2008

Los Angeles Seen from Hollywood Movie Theater Roof, California, US - Spring 2008

Mount Tamalpais, Marin County, California, US - Spring 2008

Redwoods, Mount Tamalpais, Marin County, California, US - Spring 2008

Two Birds of Prey, Stinson Beach, California, US - Spring 2008

Florence (East View from Bell Tower), Italy - Spring 2007

An Exemplary Meal at Restaurant in Florence, Italy - Spring 2007

The Duomo Looking South, Florence, Italy - Spring 2007

Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, US - Spring 2008

How Am I Supposed to Know that You're High?

2008-07-11T15:26:00.000-04:00

"Chips Ahoy!" - The Hold Steady

So I realize that The Hold Steady has a new album out, and that this is at least two years old.

I also realize that I don't really like The Hold Steady- not a big fan of the deeper voices- thats another post though.

This song is a pop powerhouse. It's reminiscent of a decade ago. It's like wearing flannel, drinking beer and pretending to be into baseball. It's all a great frenzy and the nights just starting.

Can't Shut 'Em

2008-07-01T14:37:00.000-04:00

"I Can't Go to Sleep" - Wu-Tang Clan

This song is mysterious. The beat is totally unchanged from its original sample. It never has a chorus, just half a line "I Can't go to Sleep!" repeated in certain parts. The song changes unexpectedly. It has to be brought back, and done over, but its because of Ghostface and RZA's anxiety, not because of a mistake. They can't take a song straight through.

You're never allowed to get attached to a refrain or verse, replicating the inability to destress through the comfort of sleep.

Hip hop artists so rarely actually emphasize emotions other than bragging, but, especially in Ghostface's verse, you hear sincere distress, a proclamation, a demand for a release. Issaac Hayes's voice, warped and tectonically low, is the only comfort we hear telling us like a world-weary grandfather we admire, sitting on the stoop, telling us to just be a man. To get that jelly out of our spines, to keep growing, and take control of our lives and the world around us. We try.

Purgatory

2008-06-30T23:45:00.000-04:00

"Waiting Room" - Fugazi (Peel Session)

This song is probably about nothing.

This song probably won't move you in many ways,

but that's not really the point.

I recently perused Aquarium Drunkard for some music while I neglect going to RadioShack or something to find a missing cable for my external hard drive (which has most of my music), and came across a post about Fugazi's Peel Sessions, which were recorded on December 11, 1988.

I think "Waiting Room" might have been the first Fugazi song I ever heard, and was instantly hooked on the band. Ian Mackaye has done things for punk rock we probably will never know.

This song here represents the past few months, really. Just waiting, waiting, waiting in my hometown, at my mother's house to hear back from schools, friends, girlfriends, etc. Now I'm not longer waiting. Now I'm in, out...I've got my answer, I've been served. No more places in line, the doctor's called, and I'm cured.

I CANNOT BELIEVE THIS FORTUNE

2008-06-30T01:27:00.000-04:00

some things about me worth knowing:

- I hate receiving compliments because I generally disagree with them
- I am wrapped up in my own state of mind to the point that imagining someone else's perspective is harder than Chinese algebra
- I am genuinely surprised whenever good things happen
- I usually expect the worst

so when good fortune comes my way it gives me a lot of pause. the feeling produced is a mix of trepidation (expecting the worst) and at least a little bit of shock, not enough to bring it all to a halt but enough to slow me down some.

context: through a strange and bewildering chain of events I have organized two free potluck hootenannies scheduled to occur here, in Darien, the first on July 10th and the second on the 19th. strange and bewildering because of the bands scheduled to play these hoots.

on July 10th:

WHISTLE JACKET
THE BOSSETTES
MILO GREENE
MONSTERY

on July 19th:

HISTORY OF LOVERS
VIKESH KAPOOR
NICHOLAS BEAVEN
BRUHDER

and I keep wondering: how did something this great chance?!

last semester I created a myspace page for my music. (seems weird to plug it here, so I won't.) over the course of a few months, I corresponded with several of these people - in many cases, the bands initiated the contact, leaving me a comment or sending a message. it would be overlong to go into how I came across each of these performers, but let's just say that with the exception of History of Lovers (very old friends) everyone was either met randomly in person (at a party, for instance) or met randomly through the web. (I heard Whistle Jacket on Said the Gramophone, but my relationship with them began when Michael sent me a complimentary message, setting off a chain of back-and-forth messages. we won't meet in person until the hoot.) what this all amounts to: serendipity, and more flattery than I like to keep track of.

so I cannot believe this fortune. "whatever can go wrong, will" - some band will have to cancel, some equipment will break. that's the conventional wisdom, or my gut feeling, but fuck it - this is going to be spectacular. just listen to the music and you'll know. even though the shows are in the future, and the line of fortuitous events is far from reaching its eventual conclusion, already so much good has happened that I can't help but feel grateful.

like I said, the hoots are taking place in Darien, at 11 Holmes Court, in Will's backyard. and it's gonna be something else. flyers coming soon!

"overnight indie stardom"

2008-06-24T01:17:00.000-04:00

I was just over at Small Town Outside of Boston, reading the post about Pitchfork. Some thoughts:

- Colin's right about the effect of the "Best New Music" tag (he calls it "a coronation and an instant catalyst to overnight indie stardom", which is pretty hilarious). But it's not just that achieving "Best New Music" status is the equivalent to fast-lane hipster acceptance/reverance; that alone wouldn't bother me so much. The problem is that EVERY Pitchfork review counts, and not just the totally negative reviews, a la the new Weezer, but especially the middle-of-the-road ratings. If a band gets a 7.3, it seems as though that's an obstacle, not an advantage: you can only get so far with a score like that. I think it's because the rating system itself is totally fucking ARBITRARY and that the words themselves don't really count; I've read plenty of reviews that were very flattering and positive that haven't even made it into the "Recommended" column. So regardless of how flattering the written review itself might be, it all comes down to a stupid, arbitrary (at best) scoring contest.

Instead of giving musicians exposure, anything less than BNM status does zilch for most indie acts, because the majority of Pitchfork's viewers - which I imagine is a substantial portion of the indie scene - won't even read the review unless it's either no-holds-barred scathing or lavishly approbatory. (And why should they have to? It wasn't listed under "Best New Music"! And for the record, I'm certainly guilty of this.)

- Pitchfork is contributing to the inceasing homogeneity of the entire indie scene, or, you might say if you were being more blunt, its increasing BORINGNESS, by which I mean its increasing resemblance to the mainstream. It's not the music that makes this happen - the music's as great as it's ever been - but the attitudes and the cliques that cluster around the music. Unfortunately, you see Pitchfork syndrome wherever you go nowadays - the rigid, self-imposed (but culturally endorsed) confines of liking only the right music, only the right styles, knowing and saying only the right things. Didn't we worry about that enough in high school?

I guess this isn't so much about Pitchfork as the indie scene in general, but I was drawn to underground or "indie" music at least in part by the overall sense of inclusiveness. Now it seems more exclusive and status-driven than ever before, and worst of all, I don't think we really appreciate what we're losing.

- Have you ever actually READ most of their reviews? Maybe it's that there's too much to write too often (I think they should cut down to three reviews a day or less), and at least part of it is because writing about music is pretty fucking hard, you know, but nine times out of ten I can't even skim that shit.

- Since I don't want to be a negative nancy, I'll end on this note: they're doing a ton of cool shit with the whole Pitchfork TV thing so far, and the Forkcast feature is generally pretty great.

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

What do y'all think?

Byrne and the Building

2008-06-18T14:29:00.000-04:00

David Byrne is still at it with a new installation in NYC involving an old piano that has keys controlling sounds found in the building. really cool stuff.

David Byrne - "Playing the Building (via Pitchfork Media)"

2008-06-15T17:24:00.000-04:00

The ever-lovely Katherine Stoeffel has gone public.

Broadcasting live from Eagles' Mere, PA, Milwaukee, WI, and Providence, RI.

Katherinestoeffel.com. enjoy.

Black Cab Sessions with My Morning Jacket, Bon Iver

2008-06-14T10:17:00.001-04:00

Yeah.

Bon Iver

My Morning Jacket

I have another post later coming up. In preparation; think about the first song you can remember hearing. Does that song act as the basis for all your music tastes, regardless of if it's your favorite song or not?

Just something I've been thinking about. More on that later.

Snippets of Colbert Wisdom.

2008-06-09T23:42:00.001-04:00

I would support the robbery of Paris Hilton. this is why:
make the most of robbing Paris Hilton.
HE WAS A NEGRO.
plant a pointing hand in the face of the United States.
Minnesota would be proud.
a river ran through that cold city, regressed, repressed, digressed, and far away from the east coast and far from the west coast, cold and blue-lit by the moon.
wings lit up by pill-bottle lights, orange, blue, cold, plastic.
he deserves it. little toy lights on the ground. hidden between paper hills.
Paris Hilton. he should see it. I bet her blinds are down when she flies.

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cities are not waiting for us, we're waiting for them.

Why Not you Trie Sunshine Heirdryer

2008-06-08T00:21:00.000-04:00

YET! and oh yet. Wave Cleanse, Half Pretzel twist hairMAN oldmaN

Horseshoes and the French eyeBAll. HULk HuKl HuLK ThE HULK

- the AND the WAlrus Man BeVested and Detesting.

Memorial Day

2008-05-26T17:20:00.000-04:00

Sometimes it's hard to choose between blogging and going outside. It's easier when the weather's this nice ... and you don't have a computer.

Emily Gould, are you reading this?

L'été, verano, summer

2008-05-11T14:08:00.000-04:00

Soundtracks for the seasons, eh? Well last summer was an interesting mix of reggae, Devendra Banhart, Kings of Leon, Iron & Wine, and various Trey Anastasio songs my friend tried to get me into on a drive from Colorado to Connecticut.

For the record, I strongly dislike Phish and anything musically involving Mr. Anastasio. (no offense, Phil.)

This summer is going to be a little different. The staples of summer will resume, of course, along with a recent finding of the Big Chill soundtrack on vinyl at a thrift store (Motown is most appropriate in warm weather).

I'm planning on late night listening sessions, my turntable running until it can't run anymore, iPod in the car, blasting Desmond Dekker, Derrick Harriott, driving downtown, too fast on highways, to and from work, etc.

As summer soundtracks are always the most memorable, feel free to comment with your favorite summer songs and I'll be sure to check them out.

Just a few from summers past:
Dereck Trucks Band - "Sahib Teri Bandi"
Wilco - "Sunken Treasure"
Cody ChesnuTT - "When I Find Time"
Derrick Harriott - "Let Me Down Easy"

I'm gonna start putting the main subjects in bold. that way you'll know what it's about...

2008-05-08T00:05:00.000-04:00

thanks, Rob.

The Beatles played, well, not really The Beatles, but they did play their hits. Heck, they could have been BIGGER than The Beatles, read the sign behind them.

I was on West 21st, at the SVA art studios between 5th and 6th aves., in to see a friend's art show. People were smoking at every open window, in the middle of the studio, and in every secluded space.

"It's just part of the installations" they told me.

I was introduced to a group of girls, Alison, Jane, and Olivia, while they were attempting to gulp down what may have been the hardest tasting wine I've ever sampled. They too were there to see the same friend, among others.

We spoke of people we both knew, of schools, of New York, Connecticut, and the summer to come. When I asked her plans for the summer, the girl named Olivia was more than happy to tell me about the traveling art collective in which she was participating, known as The Patchwork Caravan.

Loud so as to be heard over the live music that had encompassed the live performances that followed the reception,

"Do you have anything to write on?" She asked.

I handed her a matchbook.

Patchwork Caravan

and their Myspace

strangely enough, they're already filed under "links".

ohmygod.

2008-05-07T01:00:00.001-04:00

ohmygod. it's summer.

let's go to some shows.

ASH TO ASH

2008-05-02T12:13:00.000-04:00

J. Tillman - "Steel on Steel"

Your shirt as a pillow, the skin of your back touching the floor of the boat. A sky full of lion-clouds and a sun, our brightest star, in fact. You compare the different shades of red, eyes close and the sunglasses come off, then back on, things are darker again and this whole time, you haven't once noticed your breathing - the waves and the bobbing of the boat being more insistent, they tempt your interest. But you are neither here nor there. These strange things just pass right through you.

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Fleet Foxes - "Oliver James"

Here, Robin Pecknold doesn't need his bandmates - at 1:10, when his fingerpicking brings out a harmony above his vocal melody, and suddenly the hills come alive and the town is bustling with spirits. This, my friends, is a song: taking you through its own full day, like a mother would her child, singing to you until you're awake, singing you back to slumber.

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It was announced today that J. Tillman is the newest member of Fleet Foxes. What happens when one of your favorite songwriters for years teams up with one of your favorite new bands? (And by new, I mean to me.) The most gorgeous harmonies this side of CSN&Y / The Band / The Beach Boys / "Because"? I'm all excitement today.

Also - goddamnit if the tunes on Tillman's Myspace page aren't some of the best I've heard in a long, long time. I hope this Vacilando Territory Blues of his gets finished, released, whatever, and soon. So fucking great. In Robin's words, prepare to have yr mind blown -

INDIE'S NOT DEAD, IT JUST DESERVES TO DIE

2008-04-30T22:08:00.000-04:00

Great post at Moistworks today. ESPECIALLY the comments. READ 'EM.

My two cents (and I realize that I'm horribly undermatched, compared to all those professionals): Stephen Malkmus made an interesting distinction in a recent interview, something about the difference between Pavement-style indie and what he called (to paraphrase) the "Rilo Kiley, Myspace-era indie". (He called it that elsewhere, I think. Don't remember the source. I'll look for it later.)

Mostly, I just think this whole discussion shows that what "indie" has turned into, as a signifier, is mostly comical in nature. Like someone in the comments said, the only anti-mainstream thing about indie anymore is that the anti-mainstream stance itself is a method of induction, it's a cultural signpost, a badge of authenticity. But isn't the idea of an annual "indie"-themed FESTIVAL, like Pitchfork's, for instance, kind of in direct opposition to the values "indie" originally held? I think it goes without saying that "indie" has by and large shedded both its initial values and aesthetics, but the reasons still don't seem clear. Maybe it's not so much about the mainstream stealing "indie"; maybe it's "indie" trying to steal the mainstream. That would better explain the monumental changes to both the economical and aesthetic traits "indie" started with.

We Are Tired of Your Abuse

2008-04-29T15:16:00.000-04:00

The Dirty Projectors - Rise Above

I never listened to the Dirty Projectors before. I don't know any other music they've written or (more accurately) performed. I wish I had and I plan on changing that.

They recorded an album last year covering songs from the Black Flag album, "Damaged" (1981).

As a second qualifying (or disqualifying) statement, I never had the seminal punk phase. I never listened to Black Flag.

The Dirty Projectors performed this song in a hot stuffy apartment in Park Slope last July.

It sounds nothing like Black Flag, or what I think they sound like- loud, raw, abrasive, upset- yet in some ways I feel like I know Black Flag when I listen to this. I understand what kind of struggle they are threading through us, like a needle being forced through the cloth we hid behind.

I don't think it takes a background in DIY or FSU to feel the longing for change in this song. The power of this clip, I think, flows from the sincerity thrown into every melody. It's amazing the diversity in emotion you can find within the same sentiment: of needing social change and wanting it now. That Black Flag could be so upset and unconvinced and that The Dirty Projectors could be so optimistic and adulating.

It reminds me of the type of change old Reggae artists asked for. They knew what they were asking for would alter their lives dramatically. And they went beyond accepting this, they worshiped this.

It's so beautiful to them, and they take it as a fact of life that some people, fellow members of life, will not realize the need for change, the need for questioning, and above all the need to really live and not just live. To not just be dirt suspended in the stream flowing wherever (nowhere great), but to rise above the sediment, to swim to the top, to control your destiny and act and rise above and ACT.

The Wizard's Guild

2008-04-28T23:26:00.000-04:00

It has been reported that the Wizards Guild is to host some sort of secretive end of the Semester séance to commune with past Guild members who have passed onto the "Outer Realm," what the Guild members apparently believe to be the afterlife for the chosen few. It has further been reported that these elite members often consume vast amounts of a "Special Wine" modeled after the ancient Greek eleusinian potions, which apparently helps them achieve even more frenzied states of mind the night of the séance.

Other details are still shrouded vaguely in dark purple satin mystery...

A BASTARD IN DEATH, YEAH

2008-04-28T15:18:00.000-04:00

Long time no write, eh?

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Death Cab on Daytrotter (thanks again, Daytrotter)

For me, a fascinating listen - to hear how Ben's voice has changed, grown older, less stoic, but always textured. Notice how markedly different "A Movie Script Ending" and "Styrofoam Plates" sound, for starters; the arrangements are almost a little too perfect, like the guitar rock of The Photo Album is pure patty-cake compared to what the new tunes tend to require. (And personally, I prefer the bitterness and angry kineticism of "Styrofoam Plates" to the creepiness of "I Will Possess Your Heart". I think Ben is stretching out as a songwriter, which is only natural, but he might be getting into territory less suited to his skills.) DCFC is a totally different band today, this session gives the definitive proof, case closed.

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Of course, nothing beats the Frog Eyes session. I'll leave you to find that one.

The Endless Link

2008-04-25T16:47:00.000-04:00

The Field cancelled his opening act at my school yesterday. The show is today.

I let pitchfork media know. Now we must link. Endlessly. Looping over and over. Back and Forth.

New entry soon...

I'm not much for celebrity gossip, but...

2008-04-18T18:51:00.000-04:00

Devendra Banhart - "Shabop Shalom"

Apparently it seems, Devendra Banhart and Natalie Portman are what some people like to call an "item". Normally this wouldn't really catch my eye, let alone be considered "blog-worthy", but I was thinking today at work (trust me, I have too much time to think at work), I wonder what it was that hooked her? Guys like me have been hoping to catch Natalie's eye for...years, and I'm not gonna lie, most of us went nuts when she got, what was it, kind of naked in Wes Anderson's Hotel Chevalier (2007), the wonderfully done prelude to The Darjeeling Limited.

By now I'm sure you've all heard Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon and have formulated your various opinions on his latest work. I'm not going to Pitchfork you with my out-of-ten rating system, but it's definitely high up there. I just thought I'd post a song that, in light of this "OMG YES"-type couple, may be in poor taste. Either way, I don't care.

O, Devendra! You sly devil, you.

for more, check out The Brooklyn Vegan

NOW IS THE TIME FOR YOUR TEARS

2008-04-08T22:31:00.000-04:00

(Occasionally, I’ll write more of a long-form song analysis/interpretation. Today’s my first. Hope you enjoy - questions and comments welcome, as always. Feel free to be harsh, ‘cause this is nowhere near complete.)

But you who philosophize disgrace
And criticize all fears,
Bury the rag deep in your face,
‘Cause now is the time for your tears.
This has always been a perplexing lyric for me; has a reputation for being one of Dylan’s most confounding, last I checked.

To say I came late to this song would be putting it too nicely. In fact, my earliest exposure to the tune came after hearing Billy Bragg’s “The Lonesome Death of Rachel Corrie” - same chords, same melody, same chorus, different verses, and separated by something like forty years.

Bragg’s version deals, naturally, with Rachel Corrie, a young woman whose death also sparked some controversy, although in a decidedly different set of ways. The death of Hattie Carroll, and the subsequent trial of William Zantzinger*, is a story of a different sort.

Listening to Bragg’s update of “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll”, I was immediately struck by the lyrics to that chorus. That was all I needed for inspiration to seek out the Dylan original.

And once I found it, I listened. And listened and listened and listened.

Back then, I thought maybe Dylan was singing about, I don’t know, fake empathy, false compassion. My sense was that “disgrace” and “fear” are not things one ought to “philosophize” and “criticize” on about – perhaps, I thought, Dylan is classifying that kind of behavior as cold, detached.

The “now ain’t the time for your tears” – which ultimately turns to “now is the time for your tears” – seemed almost like saying: “you know you’re not supposed to cry until the song is over.” For a long time, I took that as a critique of contrived emotion. But I missed the point.

Now, there are things I’m noticing about the song, about what Dylan is singing, and I see it a hell of a lot more clearly.

For starters, something I want to mention. A big reason why the song is so effective is that nowhere in the lyric does Dylan refer to Zanzinger as white, or Carroll as black. When the song reaches its conclusion, with Zanzinger receiving only a six-month sentence, we’re meant to take that as a grave injustice, and we do – but our feeling that way has nothing to do with his whiteness or her blackness, but rather, more significantly: that “she never done nothing to William Zanzinger”. And while the song makes the point of Zanzinger’s privileges – he “owns a tobacco farm of six hundred acres / with rich wealthy parents who provide and protect him / and high office relations in the politics of Maryland” – it never makes a correlation between privilege and race.

Dylan’s treatment of Hattie Carroll is similarly relatable: “a maid of the kitchen,” “who carried the dishes and took out the garbage / and never sat once at the head of the table / and didn’t even talk to the people at the table / who just cleaned up all the food from the table / and emptied the ashtrays on a whole other level”. Certainly anyone who looks at the true-life story of Hattie Carroll and William Zantzinger will notice their categorical differences – race, class, gender, age – but Dylan does something more difficult: he humanizes them.

Hattie Carroll was a maid of the kitchen
She was fifty-one years old and gave birth to ten children
Who carried the dishes and took out the garbage
And never sat once at the head of the table
And didn’t even talk to the people at the table
Who just cleaned up all the food from the table
And emptied the ashtrays on a whole other level.

That last line there, too, is among Dylan’s most elusive. For a clue, I’m inspired to look at some of the verbs our characters get throughout the song (since, y’know, actions speak louder). Zanzinger gets killed, twirled, owns, “reacted…with a shrug”, snearing, snarling, walking (I take walking the way I think Dylan meant it, as a harsh reminder: a murderer’s on the loose); Carroll gets gave birth, carried, took out (the garbage), (never) sat (no, not once), (didn’t even) talk, cleaned, emptied, (she never) done (nothing). While Zanzinger is something of a monster, Carroll is portrayed as a remarkble, humble, gentle woman (remembering Zanzinger’s cane, “determined to destroy all the gentle”). Perhaps that’s the “whole other level” she was on: the sheer extent of her decency; which makes her murder all the more awful, all the more pointless.

But the injustices keep piling up.

In the final verse, Zanzinger stands trial – trial for a malicious crime, a crime he committed for no reason, he “just happened to be feelin’ that way without warnin’”.

Then, finally, the sentence is delivered, and it packs a wallop in the worst way: six months?!

Dylan leads us up to this revelation by singing about the whole justice system: the “courtroom of honor”, where “all’s equal” and “the courts are on the level”, where “even the nobles get properly handled” (referring back to Zanzinger’s privilege).

There’s an irony and a cruel joke in the description of the judge as he delivers the sentence: “he spoke through his cloak, most deep and distinguished / and handed out strongly, for penalty and repentance / William Zanzinger with a six-month sentence”.

It was all a lie: the courts are not on the level, all is not equal, and no, the nobles will not be properly handled. Of course the “ladder of law” has a top and a bottom – and we know exactly where Zanzinger and Carroll fit into that. And it’s a cold truth.

Then, once more, the chorus – but it’s changed. (Everything has changed.) And it seems clear now: the reason Dylan sings that “now is the time for your tears” is because he was saving the greatest injustice, the real reason we ought to be crying, for that final verse.

The real coup de grâce, the ultimate revelation, is not merely that these injustices were done, no; it’s that the whole system is corrupted. Justice itself cannot claim to be just. Therein lies the tragedy.

Yet I still find myself perplexed by “you who philosophize disgrace and criticize all fears”. It’s not about false compassion, at least not in the way I was saying before – not about contrived feeling, not about emotion when you’re “supposed” to feel it.

But maybe it’s false in another way. As lonesome as Hattie’s death is, as terrible as Zanzinger is, and as unjust his meager sentence is, they all pale in comparison to that greater injustice, the problem that no one is adequately addressing: the world we’ve made for ourselves, a world which allows such horrific things to happen in the first place.

*Here, I spell his name correctly, since I’m referring to the real Zantzinger. When I call him “Zanzinger”, I spell it like Dylan did – referring to the character in Dylan’s song. Me, I consider the real Zantzinger and the character to be different enough to make a distinction, if only because I can’t claim expertise when it comes to either the factual human being or the factual events this song is based on. And frankly, that’s not what this post is concerned with, anyway. The song tells a story; it doesn’t give a history lesson. So, for the purposes of this post, that’s how I’ve considered Zanzinger and Carroll: as characters in Dylan’s story.

(For more information regarding the song and its basis in fact, I suggest reading this story.)

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Today’s post is an older piece. I didn’t really want to post this, but...in the interest of full disclosure: this week, my laptop broke, so I’m doing all my writing in computer labs when I have the time, and usually that means I have time to do schoolwork and not much else. So, this will have to do until I get the damn thing fixed.

And sorry I can’t post the song; but if you don’t already have The Times They Are A-Changin’ you should really get on that, kid.

OCEANS AND GHOSTS

2008-04-03T00:40:00.000-04:00

Sun Kil Moon - “Lost Verses”

When a song nails the trick silence loves to pull: nothing but a dark calm, the kind you can swim, dive beneath the waves or float on your back with the sun, the clouds crossing the sky like a ritual -

I wish the ocean really was that way, like I always imagine it, moving through the air, above my ears, and I have Kitty Pryde’s superpower, Mark Kozelek’s guitars, and those voices to listen to.

What if your breath could be that steady? Does love swallow you up the way it swallows me, does it rescue you from doubt, from trouble, from fate? Or does love deliver you, and all that you carry, right back to what you ran from, whispering: Find that calm; where the stillness of the moon turns the silent tide, floating lightly to the song, into the sea.

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I haven’t heard the new REM album yet, but their Take Away Show is fucking great; so, you know, if that’s any indication.

Watching Norah Jones right now on Letterman, she looks and sounds divine. Think I’ll write about her next time.

2008-03-31T23:19:00.001-04:00

Yo La Tengo - "Green Arrow"

Against the side of my house, underneath the drainpipe.

That's where I stood, listening to the last drizzle of March drumming on the roof, counting off that natural 4/4. It was beautiful, that rain falling from bright night skies.

It was then I realized the tree frogs had returned to Old Maid's Pond. Every spring they chirp their nightly calls, chanting that off-beat sound I've grown so accustomed to. Every autumn they fade out, slowly quieting, dying down in a drawn-out diminuendo that finally ends when the first leaf falls.

They sing memories I do not yet have, of people I have yet to meet, and places I have yet to see.

Of laughter, of cold beer, of barbecues, fires, acoustic guitars, and in-depth conversations.

As winter slowly boils down into spring, that froggy din penetrates my windows and my ears as I lie awake, staring out my skylight, reflecting on journeys past.

The distant calls both calm and excite me. They let me know that everything is going to be okay.

I'll try to be more apparent.