Thursday, November 29, 2007

Drinking Wine In The Cold/Getting Back

Something Short
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Well before I had to give up the blog and the podcast to concentrate on completing PhD. applications and research into western vigilantism in the twentieth century, I had been working on a thing about the Wedding Present’s Seamonsters record. That is still not complete, but I have gotten a few messages—a few meaning two, but it still warms me—to continue posting. And though it was not my intention to take this long of a break, I thought I’d bullshit about what I have been listening to, and when I get my microphone back, I will do a podcast. I do have tickets to see Jonathan Richman soon and I plan to write a thing or two about his show.

“Dare,” The Wedding Present, Seamonsters, 1991-I used to listen to this album continuously when I was living for a summer in this really crummy, boxy, mostly depressing apartment in Rohnert Park. Although I never intended to have happen what happened—It happened. If you’ve ever heard this song, you’ll understand how these type things happen; the way things turn confusing and morally ambiguous when you’re lonely during the hot and sweaty summer months. It’s all very nerve wracking. But thankfully it’s all over and those times are long gone.

“Once Upon a Time,” Sonny Sharrock, Ask the Ages, 1991-The closing track on an album that featured both Pharoah Sanders and Elvin Jones—probably one of the best two or three drummers ever—and though I don’t intend to write about jazz, which I know very little about, Sharrock was a guitar player and this album bleeds into the kind of theatrical atmospherics propagated by groups like Mogwai believe it or not. And while I won’t get dopey about guitar playing, Sharrock is well nigh brilliant while restrained or overblown.

“The Lady Came From Baltimore,” Scott Walker, Scott, 1967-This was originally a Tim Hardin song, and while Joan Baez, John Stewart (not the comedian, who’d rather be called Jon), Johnny Cash—who did a funny arrangement with obtrusive Hammond organ plonking—Bobby Darin, Ronnie Hawkins, and Rick Nelson all took a shot at it, Walker’s is the most fab; if only because it appears like a leather cowboy on the arch-Baroque Scott album, which sounds like the kind of thing which would have been produced by the team of Frank Sinatra/Nelson Riddle and Nick Cave.

“Face Like Summer,” Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci, The Blue Trees, 2000-I remember being obsessively drunk, sloppy, wandering around in the dark and the like…when I finally got myself in doors I listened to this song, and then kept pushing the needle back listening to it over and over. When I’m in the right mood, I don’t think I have ever heard a better band making music after the year of my birth—if I’m in that rustic mood mind you, which isn’t always.

More soon, I promise...

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