anika is kicking my ass. right now.
radio loways – september 2014
01. sympathy for the strawberry – sonic youth
02. watch that grandad go – bauhaus
03. 122 hours of fear – the screamers
04. un uomo da rispettare (titoli) – ennio morricone
05. the autumn wind is a pirate – cheer accident
06. sombre reptiles – brian eno
07. more than a feeling – sleater kinney
08. side b – aluk todolo
the songs that took my attention in september of 2014. listen, won’t you?
unhelpful notes –
sympathy for the strawberry – yeah, that’s a sonic youth song two months in a row. i love this one. mellow noise constraint action. and i think my absolute favorite part of the song is lee ranaldo’s organ bit. i love that.
watch that grandad go – i first heard bauhaus on a tape that i found in one of the art rooms in high school. perfect, right? i think it was the sky’s gone out on one side and burning from the inside on the other side. i was curious and listened to it and eventually it grew on me. then i didn’t listen to them for like ten years and it wasn’t until the last five years or so that i’ve been really listening to bauhaus. i like most of their output – but i really like when they get kinda dubbed out and danceish. so this track is actually one of my favorite songs of theirs.
122 hours of fear – you’ll have to turn this one up, cuz it’s quiet. and it should be loud. i’m so fascinated by singers/front people who so completely believe in their part and can put on this amazing entertaining show. it’s so not how i am. i can play guitar in a band and just kinda be the guitar player in a band in the background. but i can’t conceive of being the focal point of the show. and yet there are all these people who can do it. who can emote and act and embody characters and have a particular persona on stage. aside from being an awesome band – the screamer’s singer is definitely one of those front people types.
the autumn wind is a pirate – for years i had been trying to figure out which song it was that i loved so much by cheer accident. ever since i saw them play at the hideout on the occasion of dylan posa’s last show with them. they had a horn section. and all these insane tech-prog parts. and yet they were goofing around and doing silly dances and laughing and making faces and laughing. very un-prog. or maybe very chicago prog or something. but anyways. they played this song and i loved it. completely. and in that fade part where the guitar gets quieter and quieter and then it’s gone – when they did that live they got completely quiet and all you could hear was the sound of people talking through the doors at the bar. and yet the musicians kept moving and playing their parts just so quietly you couldn’t hear them. and then they brought it all back. it was a brilliant set. brilliant song. i’m gonna say it’s one of my all time favorite songs of all time.
more than a feeling – not my favorite sleater kinney, but i’d never heard this before until i stumbled across it a couple weeks ago. i hate the original version of this song. mostly cuz it’s such a fucking earworm. it’s always in my head. always. always when i’m doing dishes. or cooking. or walking home from work. or at work. i’m always – more than a feeling, that i’m feeling for you! bah bah – bahm bahm – bahm bahm bahm bahm bahm – bah bah. just like that. annoying.
side b – i seem to like french metal. it’s interesting. and yeah – that’s aluk todolo up on top.
and yeah – that’s the screamers down below.
lungfish wormhole
i’ve been sucked in by one of my all time favorite bands of all time!
here’s a video of an audio documentary that was done for public radio – it mercifully removes the npr sounding npr announcer introducing the doc. it is essentially a twenty minute long daniel higgs spiel – i think the interviewer edited himself out.
and a feature/profile of them. (apparently joan jett is a fan. i didn’t know that.)
also – dig these three interviews. they are long and informative! yes!
daniel higgs: here
I listen to the music and see if I can try to recognize which music is calling for which lyrics, both in the rhythm and the phrase and the feeling of the music, you know, if it suits it. You know, Asa generally initiates the melody, and then it’s um… everybody for themselves, you know? No one… we help guide each other, you know, but everybody has to sort of respond to… generally the songs sort of start in very rudimentary form, you know. It’s not until the whole band starts approaching it that it turns into a Lungfish song, you know, that we’d play in front of strangers and record.
asa osborne: here
It’s weird to think that anything you do has any kind of influence or sway over people. I mean, me personally, the things that have affected me, but I know that things that affect you are just bits and pieces, you know, certain people respond to cult-like dogmas you know, where they take everything literally and start to do that or emulate what’s said, but I think most people, things affect them, they absorb it, they may not totally agree with things that they find compelling or moving, or that’s just one tiny aspect of their life might be affected by it. If our music affects people, I can imagine the kind of effect it might have on people, and it’s like… it’s not flattering, it’s not frightening, it’s like just natural that things can affect you. It might be a part of someone’s life, and it might not be a part of someone else’s life. It’s something that is personal to you, you know. A book moves you, or speaks to you, a record, even though other people have heard it, but it’s yours in that way that you can’t talk about, and that’s one of the problems of this whole process of doing an interview or something, it’s just that… we make music, we’re not good at trying to find the meanings behind.
mitchell feldestein: here
Generally saying it’s the three of us, Nathan’s the fourth, but we’ve been together for 10 years, you know, we all understand our role, whether it’s tacit or implied, or overt, we know what we need to do to stay together, and I think you know it’s a matter of not talking about what we need to do all the time. I don’t believe in all those therapeutic moments and shit, you know. It’s not like you have to know people, it sorta happens.
lungfish
long life love
listen and sing/read along. this is so, so, so very good. one of my favorite stereolab songs and that’s saying a lot. i’m usually whatever about song lyrics. most are just part of the music, more instrumentation. but some stick out. and this is one of them. it feels kind of like an ursula k le guin story to me. prog folk/fairy tales.
long life love
The skeletal ghost twirling in the sea
For having been disobeyed to people
The father had drowned his daughter’s body
No one could remember why exactly
A lost fisherman thought he’d caught big fish
The hanging bones were instead nightmarishHe rushed back home with her caught in his line
Lit a fire which appeased his panic
Kind ladies untangled her from her cling
To keep her warm covered with furs and hides
Starting to soften in the warm silence
Fell asleep untempted by her presenceHe was dreaming, a tear formed in his eyes
She saw it shine, suddenly felt thirsty
Unfurled her bones, brought her mouth to the tears
She drank and drank, it felt like a river
Plunged her hand in and gently pulled his heart
Harp and full drum that would follow her prayerThey woke up all entwined breath against breath
Got up to live by the sea where they were fed
By the oceanNo they are not afraid death has its place
In order to create, in order to liveShe’d beat the drum and would sing for new flesh
Sing for hair, eyes, chubby hands, legs, and breasts
All that are warm and needs wood and surface
She sang some more to bear the sleeping child
Slipped in back with him new skin against skin
Returned the harp and magnificent drum
radio loways – august 2014
01. 90s music – kimbra
02. ambitious people – negative scanner
03. everytime you touch me (1995 nyc jungle mix) – moby
04. balada de la trompeta – raphael
05. deo – amon tobin
06. jazz – mick jenkins
07. jams run free – sonic youth
08. voodoo ray – a guy called gerald
09. lodge freeway – eddie “flashin” fowlkes
10. wear clean draws – the coup
11. push it – the chalice
the songs that took my attention in august of 2014. listen, won’t you?
unhelpful notes –
90s music. i am straight up out of my mind full on fucking obsessed with this song. the whole album is good, but this song is fiercely good. i have such a small window of tolerance for pop music that very few things sneak in, but when they do, they do. and this did. i wish more pop music was musically interesting, but maybe that’s what makes interesting pop good and interesting in the first place – that it exists within and against a backdrop of boring standardness. and the interesting is made interesting by playing against that standardness. maybe if it was all like this, i wouldn’t be into it anyways. who knows. what i do know, is that i like this song. way to go kimbra.
ambitious people. negative scanner is from chicago. they have a good sound. they have a good chicago sound. garagey, post-punk-ish, rough, stripped down. also – i like the shout singy thing that’s going on.
everytime you touch me (1995 nyc jungle mix). speaking of 90’s music. i used to be so into moby. specifically his output from like 1991 to 1997. i was way into techno and electronic music and his happy vibes were always welcome. i also finally figured out what constituted jungle and drum and bass from this particular version of (1995 nyc jungle mix). and i realized that i loved jungle. it was something that i had read about and was fascinated by even though i hadn’t heard anything. and then, once i heard this, i had a point of entry. access. and i began to explore it – feverishly tracking down comps and solo works of jungle/drum and bass artists. the beats and rhythms sounded so random and crazy at the time. i couldn’t figure them out and couldn’t imagine how anyone could dance to it. after almost twenty years of hearing the rhythm and hearing the evolution of the beat patterns, it doesn’t sound quite so insane, but i still love it. and i have a massive place in my heart for the breakbeats of the early nineties.
balada de la trompeta. holy shit is raphael dramatic. i love dramatic crooners. he seems to be kind of like a spanish jacques brel chanson interpreter. as with most dramatic crooners his output is all over the place and a lot of it isn’t to my liking. a lot of it veers into schmaltz, corn and cheese. but some of it is right on perfection. and this is one of them.
deo. i told you i like breakbeats.
jazz. i’m always happy to discover truly awesome hip hop that comes from chicago. and mick jenkins seems to be onto something. this song is truly awesome. when i first heard this one i had to listen to it five times in a row cuz it was so good.
jams run free. if you’ve known me for a long time, you already know that i’ve loved sonic youth since i was fourteen. and while i was sad that they broke up, i realize it was prolly for the best artistically cuz this second to last album of theirs was something of a stinker by their standards – or my standards for their output. very safe and npr edgy. yawn. but this track has a great sound. i do like this one.
voodoo ray and lodge freeway. did i already mention that i like acid house/techno? i do. so here’s two more.
wear clean draws. here’s some corniness – i always liked this song cuz of the positive dad to daughter words, but then after my partner and i had our son, it resonated even more and now i get a little emotional every time i hear this one. i can’t help it.
push it . i like the chalice, i played them on here before. i don’t have too much to say about them right now, but i wanted to write something since i did for all the other tracks. word.
ps – that’s mick jenkins up there. you can download the mixtape that includes jazz here.
lawnmowing
this is an outtake from flotation device 12. it just never fit in anywhere once i started putting everything in order. i wrote it in the summer of 2007.
The smell of gasoline through the windows the other day. Sun bright glaring and someone mowing the little lawn next door. It had such a huge sound like the mower that we had when I was a kid. The big green beast that I had to use all of my twelve year old body to push and maneuver sweating grass stuck all around my shins and ankles. Shoes stained green gasoline filling my nose wishing I were done the sun baking me. Why did I wait til the afternoon to do this? All the other subdivision houses with their uniform manicured lawns constant water and upkeep. Energy and effort. Squandered resources. The trees behind our house the big old trees that had been there for so long before all of our houses. Pushing the mower up one way and then back down slowly cutting away at the week long grass. Thinking that it would be awesome to have a yard that had super tall grass. Prairie grass. A little nature preserve with paths to walk through the bright sun glaring off the cul de sac in the front. The neighborhood kids playing hockey in the street or tag or basketball or wiffleball or riding bikes or running around or through sprinkler or anything other than mowing the lawn and me wishing that I were doing anything else.
Growing up moving the lawn summer after summer. Mowing other people’s lawns for ten bucks an hour. Eventually rocking a walkman with mix tapes cranking in my ears over the roar of the engine and the grass blowing all over and swaths being cut row after row and it was great music that made me feel so cool and so good and so energized and amazed that music could be so good.
And the sun tanning my arms and my face. I used to not wear a shirt and imitate my dad mowing the lawn but i grew up and started thinking about girls and got shy and I put my shirt back on thinking about the girls I had developed crushes on during the school year and tuning out the lawnmower daydreaming about girls and being anywhere other than mowing the lawn in the ninety degree afternoon sun.
Always looking for an excuse not to do it.
It all came back to me the other morning when i was making breakfast – a bagel some cereal some water – in the kitchen. The roar of the engine the raw gasoline smell and all I could think of was the sun shining through the branches and leaves of the trees overhead while I mowed the lawn. Will kids still mow the lawn? Do they now? Will we mow our lawns when there’s no more gas? No more power? Will kids still daydream while doing menial household tasks staining their socks green with fresh cut grass?
list
here’s a list of subtitles for an aborted zine. or the one that became flotation device 12.
1/23/05
My year of false starts.
My year of waiting.
My year of minor revolutionary changes.
My year of not calling my friends.
My year of thumbs.
My year of throwing up in parking lots.
My year of unanswered emails.
My year of unreturned phone calls.
My year of 2nd first shows.
My year of undeclared war.
My year of declaring war.
30 cents to ride the bus in Guadalajara.
Countless trips to the corner to get milk and eggs. Tortillas. Beans.