Words and the Song of the Summer

First of all, this is the song of the summer:

Holger Czukay - Cool In The Pool - Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

Do with that information what you will. Hopefully whatever you do, it will be hot, naughty and/or erotic. And then you will write to me about it. Ohhhhhhhh yeahhhhhhhh.....

Second of all, I am as surprised as you are, hypothetical reader, that I'm making a new post. But someone (probably me) begged me to make a new post so I am. And the focus is on words.

Word fact #1: This is a word
Word fact #2: This is not a word BUT IT IS.

Mind blown? I know mine is. I also know that MINE IS A WORD ALSO!!!!!!!!


Sorry.


Word fact #3: Saudade is a word in Portugeese is UNTRANSLATABLE except for if you translate it INTO MUSIC. Which is what the Portugays did. After they stopped mattering as a people.

Word fact #3a: Different languages have different words for the same thing. This is because Daniel cut Samson's hair after Jezebel ate Moses' apple in space. Also, dinosaurs were eating melons at this time, I don't know if I mentioned that...

Word fact #3b: Different languages have different words for different things. This is because DOYE.

Word fact #4: Some nerds think that we have a natural capacity for language. They call this Universal Studios Grammar. It 's where parents take their kids instead of Disneyland Grammar as punishment.

Word fact #5: God speaks Arabic. This is pretty obvious.

Word fact #6: A pun is a play on words, which not as fun as a play on wheels.Nor is it as illegal as playing with a child DOWN THERE, which reminds me of a joke I heard:

A man walks into a bar and says, "I am a pedophile." He is promptly arrested and thrown into prison. It turned out, however, that he wasn't the one who was a pedophile; in fact no one in the bar was. It was a (democrat) duck who had foolishly walked into the bar earlier that evening and had returned, seeking vengeance for his earlier injury. The duck used his skill at ventriloquism so that the poor, innocent, white American male would be slandered by the socialist press. After a beneficent judge (NOT AN ACTIVIST ONE WHO WOULD HAVE LOVED IT IF THE DUCK HAD MARRIED A CHILD IN FACT) threw out his conviction, the man granted one interview to the media who had besmirched his good name. Through his tears he admits, "The American justice system is the best in the world. My time in prison was even better than my time in community college." And then he farted.


Word fact #7: Lists of facts are composed of words. They are also boring. FIN.

PS: So this post isn't completely useless, here is a download link to a mix I made. Below is the playlist:

Neil Young "Walk On"
Alhaji K. Frimpong "Kyenkyen Bi Adi Mawu"
Scotty "Believe in Love"
Touty & Absa Cora Group "Palestine"
Omar Souleyman "La Sidounak Sayyada"
Althea & Dorothy "If You Don't Love Jah"
Lifetones "Good Side"
Cabaret Voltaire "Silent Command"
Pylon "Cool"
Throbbing Gristle "Hot on the Heels of Love"

The Birthday Party "The Friend Catcher"
Dum Dum Girls "Catholicked"
Nerve City "Living Wage"
Savage Republic "Film Noir"
Snatch "All I Want"
The Incredible String Band "Blues for the Muse"
Current 93 "Oh Coal Black Smith"
Zola Jesus "Last Day"
Tappa Zukie "Tappa Zukie in Dub"
Tolerance "Voyage au bout de la nuit"

I suggest you think about it as having a Side A and a Side B (divided as shown above). That way it makes it seem like I intentionally broke the flow midway through...

PSS- I hate talking babies.

Animal Videos and Another Useless List

So.....

...


.....

What's up?



Not much here either I guess...

Well.

Guess I should talk about something now...

Hrm...

I've been listening to Mi Ami's newest album. It's pretty good. Y'know, Black Eyes is one of those bands that I feel didn't/don't get the attention they deserve/d. But, it's nice to have something related to that band out and new and nice and all. I bet it will be a pretty nice show when they come here.

What else?

I've gotten over my Fear of Books (bibliophobia?) and have been reading a bunch of stuff I shoulda read a long time ago. Like Journey to the End of the Night. I gotta agree with M. Jim Morrison (rest in pieces!) on this one. Misanthropy is fun!

I made a version of my favorite albums of all time last night. I guess I'll just post that:

The Fall- Hex Enduction Hour
My Bloody Valentine- Loveless
Public Enemy- It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back
The Congos- The Heart of the Congos
Jesus and Mary Chain- Psychocandy
Royal Trux- Twin Infinitives
Rolling Stones- Let It Bleed or Exile on Main Street (couldn't make up my mind...)
Flipper- Album: Generic
Horace Andy- Dance Hall Style
Big Black- Songs About Fucking
NEU! (the first one, although I guess I like 'em all)
Sonny Sharrock- Black Woman
Husker Du- Zen Arcade
Kraftwerk- Trans-Europe Express
Terry Riley- Rainbow in Curved Air
The Slits- Cut
Black Flag- Damaged
Yoko Ono- Plastic Ono Band
Ornette Coleman- Skies of Ameirca or Science Fiction (See what I wrote about the Stones)
Islaja- Palaa Aurikoon
Magik Markers- I Trust My Guitar, Etc.
v/a I Belong to This Band
Nico- Marble Index
David Bowie- Low
The Clash- London Calling
Miles Davis- On the Corner
Pere Ubu- Dub Housing
Gilberto Gil- S/t (the one from 1968)
Sonic Youth- Evol
Amalia Rodrigues- The Art of Amalia Rodrigues
Wolf Eyes- Burned Mind (I would like to insert an apology here to the band for the one time they played here and I just really wanted to touch that gong...)

There are a bunch of artists I love that didn't have one particular album I liked enough to include here (I'm looking at you Black Dice/The Carter Family). Also there are a bunch of comps I was too lazy to go back and add once I remembered them. The list was mostly based on whether I'd liked the album for a super long time and still enjoy listening to it/it changed the way I listened to music. It's also a highly arbitrary list with no real order except the first couple are definite favorites and the last few were sorta tacked on.

Also, I've been watching a lot of YouTube clips of animals playing the piano. Here are my faves:

Reissues (Again) and An Apology

So, um, sorry to be constantly talking about reissues and what have you lately, but I just saw that Drag City is reissuing the first two Royal Trux albums on vinyl. While this might not mean that much to many people out there, Twin Infinitives is one of my top ten favorite albums of all time ever (a list I've thought about making recently for once), and I've been dreaming of owning it on vinyl a lot (when I'm not dreaming of somehow transforming it into a woman who would love me forever and always amen). Alas, I am poor, sadly. However, after January 20, I will definitely be about $36 (+S&H) poorer. Unless someone buys it for me? Please? Maybe I could set up a webcam and people could watch me for ca$h. Oh, who am I kidding; the world's servers would crash from the increased internet traffic that webcam would cause and I would never make any money.

Here's a video of Royal Trux doing what they do best (being strung-out and awesome):



Also, I am finally watching The Wire like the sad white person I am. It does make me sorta want to move to Baltimore though? Although, to be fair, every time I watch a movie/tv show about a certain city I think "Hm, that place looks pretty all right; I wonder what it's like to live there? I bet it would actually be pretty sweet!" After that, I generally read the Wikipedia article on the city and then try to memorize all the neighborhoods and the crime rates and the demographic figures (Baltimore's population has increased 2% since 2000! I was surprised...) and what have you and then cry because this is what I am doing with my college education. Actually there are a few places I never have this feeling for:
1.Detroit
Thinking of this city reminds me of how I felt when I was a kid watching Sesame Street and Big Bird would do something really dumb and fail and everyone would be really mean to him and I would cry because I too was oversized and misunderstood and wont to make mistakes. Just like Detroit.
2. Africa
Probably due to the racist media, I am afraid of all the murder and tropical heat. Also, under the same criteria, I would place Houston, although not too many movies are set there. I mean, I know Africa isn't a city (it's a country obviously, har har) but every African city I've seen portrayed, from Johannesburg, to Cairo, from Casablanca (fuckin' Nazis everywhere...) to Nairobi, etc. seems pretty terrible.
3. Sydney, Australia
Ever notice that Australians are like the world's version of rednecks but with more hilarious accents and funnier hats? Essentially, they are hillbillies that drink more beer and do less meth. Ergo, it should seem like Sydney should at least be an amusing place. But once the laughter stops, what's left beyond that Opera House thing and a bunch of animals that can kill you in less than 10 minutes? Also, what's the deal with those gigantic eagles they got down there?
4. That city in River's Edge
I guess this applies to most representations of small towns in movies. They remind me of where I grew up, and I don't often need a reminder of that.
5. Every city in China
Except for Hong Kong, doye.
6. Every square inch of the state of Florida
Nothing could ever make me want to move there.


Also, sorry the pictures have gotten lazy lately.

Crosses (Sorta) and Punk

Sorry to be on a long-term tangent about this sorta stuff (i.e. 80's hardcore-ish musesicks), but to follow up on the Flipper post earlier, I found a Die Kreuzen interview with all these performances on YouTube so I figured I'd post some of the choice ones. Die Kreuzen, for some reason, hasn't really earned as much posthumous praise as bunch of their contemporaries (probably because they got pretty shitty after their first couple of releases...), but I'm glad to have found this evidence to point out the injustice of this willful collective ignorance. (Also, notice how the Kreuzen boys lie about not being violent! PUNK IS VIOLENCE! At least that's what I read somewhere. In a book. Or something).








Also, here's a video of Siege wherein THE LEAD SINGER IS TOO INTENSE FOR THE SOUND SYSTEM TO HANDLE! SO HIS VOCALS JUST SOUND LIKE GROWLY STATIC*! Oh... I understand now... (if only....)



*NB: I know Siege is not technically grindcore, but they're sorta proto-maybe-innovators maybe? Please?

New Years and Bloom

Well this was certainly unexpected, but greatly appreciated. I do wonder how exactly this interview came to happen? It certainly isn't a coupling I would ever have imagined, but it's a surprisingly interesting interview, although one wonders if Bloom actually knew the context (i.e. Vice) in which he would be presented.

There is something overly reverential in the mode of presentation and questioning here (especially for Vice), but that's probably the only way to get Harold Bloom to talk this candidly and openly (is it just me, or does he seem a little paranoid about his standing in academia?). I have a sort of ambivalent relationship with Bloom anyway: I greatly admire his scholarship, and during that brief era of time people thought of him as part of the Yale School or whatever, his writings were up there with some of the best theorists and critics of all time (along with his colleagues, though I suppose we aren't supposed to like that dirty Nazi Paul de Man anymore, eh?#). But, as his writings increasingly addressed a wider audience (especially The Western Canon etc.) he seems to have diluted a lot of his previous work to a position of the ornery contrarian. And yet, those books are still a good read and very informative in their own way, so there you go. I just never thought I'd see an interview with him in Vice? Rereading it though, it makes more sense, as there is an attempt to present him as some sort of "rebel" (which Vice loves) but Bloom's too loquacious and quick to let the interviewer to present him as such. Oh well, interesting read, even after one gets over the incongruity in its placement.
Also, Happy New Year. Please give me a job.
# I suppose this is the kind of thinking which Bloom opposes in the interview. Kudos me! Also, I think it's about time we started reading de Man again. For serious.