Just wanted to mention that, because of my 'research' for the last post, I knew that mayflies have two penises.
2!
And at Quizzo in West Philly last Sunday, we were asked about it! And I knew! And we got a point!
Other than that though, you could say we were 'down and out' in West Philly.
youtube got it: James' Brown - Down and Out In New York City
This is from the James Brown-scored movie soundtrack I mentioned last time. See, he's using 'movie-style' instruments here- orchestra, flutes, etc. Say which you prefer: Curtis' Junkie or James' ...Out In.. in the comments
I think somebody is rocking the oboe?
Which is of course a vaguely phallic instrument. So, if you had two of them, battling it out, dueling banjos style, or a la "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" (which is a song I like, but do not like at Oscar's, which you can no longer smoke at, at all), then it would look a little like a mayfly. Because they have
2!
Oh, and please do not ever forget that oboe players have a posse:
To celebrate Labor Day the other weekend, I did what every American was supposed to do: 1) I spent money, and 2) I worked/labored as little as possible.
Youtube link to Curtis Mayfield's "Freddie's Dead", from the Superfly Soundtrack
I got 3 CDs, 3 DVDs, 1 jacket, shoes (2 total).
Like any living mayfly, all of these were new, which is unusual for me. Well, the digital media came from FYE and some of it had been listened to in store, but that's not really used, is it now?
Obviously, one of the CDs was Curtis Mayfield's soundtrack to the blaxsploitation flick "Superfly". Probably a bit better than James Brown's entree into the world of soundtracks, itself pretty good.
I also got Jesus and the Mary Chain. Psycho Candy, evidently a German pressing, for whatever that's worth. Also, for what it's worth, I am teaching St. Augustine tomorrow. If you Google "Augustine" and "Devil", to better determine that the Devil in Augustinian theology is nothing but 'persuasion' towards sin -- that is to say, he is not a giant fucking bat that shoots lasers or something -- you will get many more sites related to fishing (in Devil's Elbow in St. Augustine, FL) than you expected.
I'm saying this hypothetically, of course: I would never use the internet as an aid to research.
I also got some random Japanese cartoon (one character is named Cat: ?!? ), "White Heat" with James Cagney, "Technique" by New Order (obv VG), and Truffaut's "Wild Child". None of them cost me more than $8.55 (w/ tax); shoes and jacket, only $10 each.
Can I pick 'em, or what?
It feels much more natural to say "'em" than it does to type it. Just so you know.
The Massive Attack album Blue Lines came up twice lately. With Neil for sure, and perhaps with our new friend MarguaX-Y-Z.
I was telling Margauz about music I listened to in high school, and told her and Neil both that a lot of so-called 'trip-hop' hasn't aged so well. Massive Attack, however, is just as great now as then: "Same As It Ever Was".
Blue Lines' cover (see above) reminds me of this:
which is called NFPA 704 (?), and more provocatively, a FIRE DIAMOND .
It sums up the dangers associated with any chemical, on a scale of 0-4 (0 = NBD, 4 = vewwy bad) : blue is health risk, red is flammability, yeller is instabilty/reactivity (think about it, they mean the same thing), and white, much like my blog readership, is 'special'.
Neil knows about Massive Attack because he is Irish. They are one of those bands, like Super Furry Animals, where you know them automatically if you are British, and probably don't know if you are an American, and still only maybe know even if you are an American Indie Nerd. "Just as great" also includes another album, Mezzanine. Maybe some other time I will tell you what I think about Mezzanine, which I like even more than the excellent Blue Lines. But today is not that day. All I will say is this little creepy American Indie Nerd gem: 'it has really good production'.
ew that's grosser than the bug picture, innit?
The song you are listening to is a cover, although for the longest time I took it to be the original. Still never heard the original (by William DeVaughn), although I now know it to be a cover. This knowledge comes to me courtesy of the American Indie Nerd band Yo La Tengo. Download their live cover of "Be Thankful for What You've Got" here Yo La Tengo do a lot of covers, because one of the nerds people in the band used to be a record clerk. So he knows a bit about old obscure business, you see. All versions of the song say "Gangster Whitewalls", which I like.
It went well and went fast, except for one bit. The compound didn't set up in part of the filling, because the light that one uses to 'cure' the compound, to get it to set, wasn't strong enough.
I thought that she had a hair-dryer in my mouth, from the way it sounded, but, turns out, it was a BLUE LIGHT LASER, which she kept calling a cure-light.
After she figured out that her cure-light was jenky, she borrowed another. This is Penn's Dental School, and so they borrow stuff all the time.
So she used Two Blue Lights.
Songs:Ohia, despite the odd spelling and the odd punctuation, are very good. You know this already, from the above YouTube video. Basically the same people as Magnolia Electric Co. Like Neil Young, if we need a little shorthand to get you to listen to more. A little more 'sad bastard music' than Ol' Neil, but, you know, he wants you to cry sometimes too.
I recently happened upon a few records by Jose Feliciano. He's blind, and plays a mean guitar. Like, for real mean. He plays a number of covers (that's what crack instrumentalists do: think about old jazz heads), like the one above. He also used to live near S'Noble in Connecticut.
CONNEXIONS, right?!?!
Oh shit! It's 2:30, and I still haven't finished my syllabus. Lordy! You guys write the rest of this, will you? Thanks. I owe a blog entry dedication to anyone who adds anything to the comments section. Well, anything except for spam comments about hookahs (see here and here).
(here's a link to its youtube page...) This is not the best song on there, but it still is very good (else it wouldn'a gone on the mix!, right?). I put it up today because I said it might be racist.
You know, the Prof. Gates thing is dying down, Conrad and I disputing about it notwithstanding. Beer either calms or inflames. Seemingly, with Gates/Obama/Crowley, it calmed; with Conrad and I, it inflamed.
Hopefully, the song, along with this blog post, will reinvigorate the debate. Really get America discussing race. Or, race-baiting will garner me a few more hitz. I'd be really psyched either way.
Why (might) it be racist? Minstrel show type stuff. Guy goes to jungle, nearly gets cannibalized. Jungle chants, etc. You know, 'that sort'.
Another Mix! This is 'Lost- Pirate Radio 2'! I posted another mix based upon the TV show a ways back (here). Since I have never seen the show, I had to do a lot of research. This 'research' consisted of thinking about sunny weather, daydreaming that I was a pirate, and swimming some. Arduous. Out of that came these two great mixes: highly appropriate for sitting around drinking margaritas, dancing in living rooms, wearing thongs/flip-flops.
You'll enjoy this, I promise. Download 'Lost- Pirate Radio 2' with just one lil' clicky.
And what do we have on such a mix? A song sung like a boy, like a girl, like a frog. We might hear this song sometime at Bouffant Bangout.
A song about being protected on the subway by the Guardian Angels. This is a finger-snappin', clap-happy disco tune. This group is a sort of vigilante city patrol, and they mocked it in Sunny.
More sunny day, happy time, mellow Calypso. Island music.
A song about being stranded in the Jungle, that, if it weren't potentially racist (cannibals in the jungle?!...), you also might hear at BB-out. Is it racist, or not? You'll have to listen to it and see!
One of those new-wave, dance-punk-before-the-fact, snotty girl song. It says: 'Can I have a taste of your ice cream? Can I interfere in your crisis?' 'No! Mind your own business!'
A sort of pseudo-cover of a Misfits song, but by Miss Kittin and the Hacker- you can dance to this one, despite the fact that it's lyrics are all like thus: "Mommy, Daddy, can I go out and kill tonight?".
Mind Your Own Business--- Delta 5 Rippin Kittin (Glove Radio Mix) ---Golden Boy With Miss Kittin Rock Lobster ---B-52s Ten Speed (Of God's Blood And Burial) ---Coheed & Cambria Standed in The Jungle --- the Cadets The Guardian Angel Is Watching Over Us--- Golden Flamingo Orchestra Featuring Margo Williams New Hollywood Babylon ---Don Cavalli Water--- The Esso Steel Band & Lloyd Simmons Anna ---Brute Force Steel Band Cool running ---Champaign Ain't got not home --- Clarence 'Frogman' Henry Sunny side of the street --- Big Shell Steel Band Camilla ---George Symonette
A local journalist died recently, and was lovingly yakked about in the local press. He was Steven Wells, and we wrote loud, short-but-they-feel-longer pieces, about music and general goings-on (like knitting, and how much he despised it).
Sounds like my blog, correct?: but he was, admittedly, better. In part, because he was British, so when he swore (often), it was with words like "SLAG!".
[[[ I'm putting a YouTube clip below, because you can maybe only listen to 30 seconds of the above, correct? If you don't have an Imeem.com account at least, correct? Be Honest: has anyone actually got one? (...comments plz...)I do, obv, but do you guys? Or are you all just hearing mini-tiny-itty-bitty clipz? ]]]
So, this qualifies the 'local' aspect, but he'd been here a while and made a life for himself. In fact, he must have deliberately chosen Philly, because he used to be mad famous in England, writing for NME and such. One day he picked up and came here, quite making his mark.
Anyhow, he was famous enough (and impassioned enough, and liked enough) that Billy Bragg wrote about him upon his death.
Now I love Billy Bragg; when I still had a list under the MUSIC section on my Myspace page, he was on there. You understand the relative significance of this, yeah?
(Above is the YouTube version to listen to -IF- you've never heard the song before; if you've heard it a bit, listen to the one at the bottom. It better shows his camaraderie with his audience [funny, because he's a Socialist, get it, Comrade?], his folk and punk roots when he makes them singalong, and how he's funny/charming. These would all be reasons why he and Steven Wells were on friendly terms...)
I won't launch into a grand description of him here, for these reasons:
1) Dude's pretty big- and you are a big girl/boy- so you can figure it out on your own
2) I may write more about him later, maybe vis a vis my "Slept On" series, where I discuss 'really-favorite' music that I never hear my friends talk about
Dig?
Here are some lyrics from that song:
"I was twenty one years when I wrote this song
I'm twenty two now, but I won't be for long
People ask when will you grow up to be a man
But all the girls I loved at school are already pushing prams
I loved you then as I love you still
Tho I put you on a pedestal
They put you on the pill...
I don't want to change the world
I'm not looking for a new England
I'm just looking for another girl
I loved the words you wrote to me
But that was bloody yesterday
I can't survive on what you send
Every time you need a friend
I saw two shooting stars last night
I wished on them but they were only satellites
Is it wrong to wish on space hardware
I wish, I wish, I wish you'd care"
Music; musing; must-haves.
The curatorial agenda. Sealing up a void whose vacuity was a source of distress to no one. The seed I am most likely to sow is a certain jargon. Built on tilt. The center of a new universe of counterfeit. Increasingly random and increasingly increasing.
THE SIDEBAR PODCAST: REBOOTED
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15 years ago, I started my own, personal podcast: The Sidebar. This was my
attempt to explore podcasting as a medium, having been very much inspired
by the...
Hotel Bar Sessions, Ep 31: Whose History?
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The HBS hosts sit down with Dr. Charles McKinney, Jr. to talk about whose
history is (and isn't) being taught.
Following on the heels of a recent and ...
