today's random moment of joy

I know I'm a curmudgeon, a misanthrope, a whiner, full of rhetorical vitriol for the slightest whim.

Doesn't mean it might not be that I'm becoming a recovering-misanthrope.

Toward that end, here then is today's random moment of joy:

Reading my favorite music magazines back inna day, watching the music of The New Pornographers and the Squirrel Nut Zippers make fans out of the writing staff of Spin, if I'm not mistaken, Toast/Cake, the Twin Cities Reader, and CMJ New Music Monthly.






...we now return you to the scheduled programming, already in progress...

two steps forward, one step back & a smack upside the head

I'd make some allusion to that subj/title line about how the nation took 2 steps forward electing Barack Obama President.

[But I'm getting tired. Long day and I dropped my 1000 words a foo different places already. Brain, let me wind down fer a while? Okay? After this post? Alright, we gotta deal. :) ]

Our one step back was the whole DOMA/homophobic laws BS. Of course the other shoe to drop on that score is that the birthers are still hawking snake oil, shuckin and jivin in blackface for all their rhetoric's difference from overt racism.


On a personal level I'd say today's two steps forward were Stan Rogers and the Jive Aces. Stan's song in question being Barrett's Privateers, a pirate chanty obviously beholden to no nation. The Jive Aces were just blowing bubbles of pure joy with a cover of a song not even their own.

Of course the internet, being the hot tempered redhead it for-sure has to be, points out that enjoying the music of The Jive Aces is some kinda implicit endorsement of Scientology. And despite my caucasoidality I wanna shout "n-gga please!"

I do possess a rancor for the corporate politics that hide behind the CoS and documented cases of what it's done to individuals. But the Catholic Church has probably done more wrong in the continuum of history than Scientology has been around long enough to accomplish. Get it through your heads.

When it's just the music - be it Beck or the Jive Aces, it doesn't automatically mean it's tainted. That's not American, to think that. It just isn't.

Granted somewhere beneath it all there may be a dicey, slippery slope I can on some level admit, but I shall not back off my enjoyment of this one song. Or any Beck song, dammit.

There are times, Anonymous, when your crusade against Scientology seems a tad fascist its ownself. I love your spunky enthusiasm, it makes me smile and honestly your existence alone elevates the level of the debate, but you're not possessed of an utterly level head. (except against Fony. full steam ahead o'er there. I got yer back!)

Your Scientology connection offers at best a 3% doubt that I'll find nothing beneath the precise musicianship of Jive Aces resembling a true and vibrant dynamic creative heart like a Johnny Cash, a Merle Haggard, Mark Olson or Ani DiFranco lurking beneath their skin.

For all the enjoyable ride, I ain't ventured further than the one track. I just discovered it today for fecksake.

Know what, America, let's have a little heart-to-heart here, shall we? We'll walk around the playground of Music Circa Now and I'll be all impolite and point for your own betterment.

See over there? That silver-painted man meditating naked is Stuart Davis, f-ing brilliant rockstar musician and bard among men. Don't spew or anything, but he's a buddhist or something-as-yet-to-be-determined. We'll walk by quick so you don't get any ON YOU...cooties! Ewww!

But ya know what? You big pussy, America?

I heard that the last name Levy might mean Jooo! Hevvinstabetsy! Abandon ship! Wait, didn't we finish a war we didn't start to save Jews? For somebody with an awful lot going for you, America, you can be pretty schizo about Jews. Admit it.

I love the Honeydogs till my dying day and it could make no diff if they were Jewish or Pakistani to this Euro-descended mutt. They are a gift you ought bear witness to, fool. Act like ya know!

I love Low. But somewhere on the scuttlebutt pond I heard whispers they're ... Mormon! Quick, everybody freakout! Oh, that's right, nobody cares...

Brother Prince is a Jehovah's Witness. Despite feeling he betrayed the nondenominational roots I heard in the song New Power Generation, I respect his wishes. btw, shouts out to Brother Isaac from my days at Charter, another JW.

Big whoop. Get your spirit on, Amen, Hallelujah, Shalom Salaam. Om mani padme umm...

Religious TOLERANCE? How about religious indifference??
Try some on, America, do ya good!

Tip of the hat to Jive Aces.

had it up to here with the likes of you ppl

now youtube, comcast, I just want to watch videos with absolute ZERO hiccups and 12-minute-loading-times-for-a-45-second-damn-clip.

I will never care less if you are loading at resolution of 12trillion x 12trillion p - load in the immediate infinite NOW or do not ever, there is NO TRY. You will not be warned again!

I know you two don’t play nice together, and if I let you sit next to each other all you’re gonna do is bicker, fuss and fight.

I honestly don’t care what you like, I’m gonna load every one of these videos I have any interest in - each to its own tab so it can load completely before it gets an iota of my attention.

And if you don’t like it, I don’t think I wanna play with you anymore.
You can just not be my friends, okay? Is this really too much to ask?

stopped in my tracks: "There Goes The Fear" & MIA: Kid Galahad?

No Depression remains a center of like-minded wide-mouthed voracious music consumers. The print magazine was inspiring for a long time. Their transition to the internet thankfully hasn't diluted the magic.

There's a thread in the forum where there's a discussion beginning about "what songs have stopped you in your tracks?"

I remember hearing "World Crashes Down" by Kid Galahad on Brian Oake's Freedom Rock show on Cities 97. I caught perhaps the last 90 seconds but that remained stuck in my head for a week until I heard him play it again and recorded the whole thing. I don't think it took very long for me to import the CD direct from the band's website. It remains a striking, original, energetic album of enjoyable music.

Unfortunately the internet has little further information to offer of what happened to the band since. I ripped my well-preserved CD into itunes in ALAC to give it a fresh whirl after all this time. With the massive influx of new music I've blogged about elsewhere I confess it had slid to the background somehow.

Further on the No Depression forum topic, I remember the first time I heard the Doves song "There Goes The Fear" being an electric experience. I had played their first album a ton of times, appreciating the guitar and vocals and melodies.

When I heard There Goes The Fear I felt like I'd been stripped out of the physical plane and left floating in space like an obelisk from 2001 or something, the music was such a game-changing step-up and wild juggernaut of forward momentum.

Pure joyful spirit of so many bands at their best, distilled into homage and originality at once. Now remember to breathe...

I think I still have a well-worn piece of vinyl from my single-digit-aged days wherein Big Bird sings "Turn over the record turn over the record turn over the record turn over the record turn over the record turn over the record...RIGHT NOW!"

That was my instinct after hearing There Goes The Fear. AGAIN! AGAIN! Like I was possessed with essence of Teletubby.

I remember being sick enough I had no voice and aches and pains all over my body from flu. I had a great job at the time, loved my cow-orkers and what I was doing. I still called in sick and slept till after 3pm. But then I got up, damn the flu, and drove to Let It Be Records.

Nicollet Mall. 3397439. Or apologies to whomever has that # now, but I still have treasured memories of Kevin Cole doing loving spots for them at the end of his Rock And Roll Wingding show, over the soothing tones of Santo & Johnny's Sleepwalk.

I fetched the 10 inch single for There Goes The Fear. I played it on the way and the way back in my car from a tape I'd recorded off the radio. Then when I got home I played the wax with a ear-to-ear grin on my face, drumming in the air. Then I gave back in to the flu and slept till I got up to go back to work the next day.

But this was the story of a song that meant that much to me. Thanks Doves. Thanks Let It Be, even though you're not there anymore. Thanks No Depression for bringing the story out of me. dare my agnostic self say Thank God for music? yep!

divergent associations

So what does it say about a person if his usual haunts, places he actually logs in, even if only to lurk most of the time, are still wildly divergent?

I frequent AllThingsWeezer, 8BitCollective and NoDepression.com forums. Fifteen years ago I was somewhere between hip-to-shoulder-deep in ReallyDeepThoughts, MagicalArmchair, PrinceMailingList and SCUG.

Just reflecting.

Thank you for helping us help you help us all.

echoes and mojo thump through the brain

I've been trying to ignite the creative flow. I had mostly stopped writing as I once did and sputtered out a bunch of blog posts over the years. It's hard to know if that was due to working a lot, adjusting to being a married person, or any other in a series of challenges thrown in the path of my life.

The only real stories I'd come up with in the time I lived in Rochester MN were few and far between, shared with few if anyone, and served as wild imaginary playgrounds like Robert Heinlein had with the magnificent character Jubal Harshaw.

I have done a couple sprints now, as I've felt they represented for me personally, in the form of two NaNoWriMos. I find that just referring back to having completed the challenge more than once makes me look forward to it again. But I can't do that without wondering, pondering, imagining the future of either of those stacks of paper.

One would aptly describe the concept as Meta. Trying to imagine where a fully formed idea and manuscript has to go, to grow toward, to grow into. To become.

I find that I've been attempting to draw myself out of my shell. There are comforts to be had in hiding, but if I keep doing it all the time, I must entertain the notion that I could die while hidden and never be known. There are still stories to tell. I must find the fire inside to tell them. And it's always been there, it just has a will of its own, as anyone blessed/cursed with their own inner flame can surely attest.

Considering counseling or any help of a psychiatric/psychological kind is a wonderful metaphor. Lucy did it so well in the Charlie Brown/Peanuts strips. (Why it was called Peanuts tho, always bothered me. It had literally NOTHING to do with nuts. Why not call it Socks or Bolts or Feathers?)

Going beyond just thinking about crawling up on some shrink's couch, one can attempt to locate and gain perspective on whatever their issues are. And then surmise what the suggestions of any professional might be. Of course this comes easy for someone who was always psychoanalyzing their friends in high school. Turning that lens of introspection on yourself is certainly one path to madness.

Inspiration has struck from various corners of the world this month. I discovered an incredible ragtime musician named Tom Brier playing music from Yoshi's Island and it blew sparks into my soul. I beat the first Portal game after some struggles that only made me feel stupid for a little while. I then came to fall in love with the song Still Alive from the game. I'm now getting to know Portal 2.

So with the inspirations funneling in and the trend toward crawling out of my shell, I've taken the steps I would imagine suggested to me. I just wrote a brief scene of banter back and forth between two faceless, nameless characters that could well fit into either of my NaNoWriMo-vels inspired by equal parts Kevin Smith dialogue and the general wiseassery of my friends at the breakfast table before hi skool everyday.

You know what tho? This time I didn't consign those words, that back-n-forth between two distinct voices in me head while I stood waiting for my coffee to heat up in the microwave...I didn't drop them in a text file never to be heard from again.

Instead, I posted it straightaway to my deviantArt page, tweeted it, and of course that tweet went to my wordpress and my facebook like ka-pow-zap! So this is me poking my head out of my shell. If there are no ill consequences of these developments, I pledge to continue in that direction.

untweetable EP

oh delete button, what horrors have we kept from unleashing on the world?

knowing how many times I press the delete key, it should probably be the size of the space bar.

how often do insecure people let imaginary criticism keep them from creating anything? the world may never know.

music was invented to give writers a skill to look up to.

untweetable

Mr. President, show us you've learned how to negotiate. Don't give up everything worth fighting for before you sit down at the table. Please.

a brief statement of now-ness

I find the springtime bug has bit. I am cleaning and rearranging, reorganizing the nest. I've applied for work, hopeful that I might gain employment. Some might say I've suffered another birthday, but it actually wasn't all that bad, a pretty decent day itself.

Knowing my ancestry I could've done an entire blog devoted to my personal wellbeing and details of my health (or lack thereof.) But since I've outgrown the urge toward such milquetoast subject matter, I'll instead opine on what's transgressed recentlike.

I've dusted off the craigslist bargain I found last summer, the M-Audio Keystudio USB keyboard. I plug it into the usb hub and fire up garageband and it plays. But my hard drive needs replacing with a larger one. I can't keep any decent amount of music AND the overbearingly large libraries GB wants on my widdle stock HDD.

It's a constant game of pick-n-choose what I want to remain on that little shoehorn of a hard drive, and it's by-design that apple screwed me out of the proper amount of space to run their bloatware. So whenever the loot allows, I'll snatch up nothing less than a 250gb 2.5in sata laptop drive, perhaps up to 500gb, and drop it in there with my own two hands (and toolbox, of course.)

Till the loot allows such an admittedly minimal purchase, I've taken to training myself to mimic the earworm melody of the ending of Super Mario Bros. 2. The first video game in that series I actually beat by myself.

Among the dozens of useful sources of help at youtube, I found this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58NBfxeSFEM and began training my typist's fingers to learn to step over each other on a different kind of keyboard.

More on these developments as time permits. If I might be permitted a slight Stephen-King-ism, even if it is a throwback to writers of a previous century...I think often of thee, dear reader. I will not be away for long...