i've moved

Hey all! I know it's been forever since I posted here, but seeing how its the 31st and seeing how each year I always make a new year's resolution to be a better blogger, I thought I'd let you know that I've moved my blog over to WordPress and that I hope the new set up will inspire me to be more garrulous. Or would that be blogulous? Anyhoo, click here to see the new blog, and bookmark it or blogroll it, if you feel so inclined. There's not much there that's new right now, but I have created pages to house my playlists, which should keep the clutter down, and I'm looking forward to seeing what else I can do with WordPress. Eventually I'd love to get my own domain, but, first: baby steps. Baby blogging steps.

Happy New Year, folks, and I look forward to reading your blogs and/or reading your comments on mine in 2010!

playlist, jun. 16, 2009

Elvis Costello & The Attractions - "Radio Radio"
Viva Voce - "Die a Little"
Crystal Stilts - "Love Is a Wave"
The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - "Young Adult Friction
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - "Zero"
Otis Redding - "Respect"
Hidden Cameras - "Lollipop"
Cut Off Your Hands - "Happy as Can Be"
Comet Gain - "Love Without Lies"
Metric - "Sick Muse"
Leonard Cohen - "So Long, Marianne"
Grizzly Bear - "Two Weeks"
St. Vincent - "The Party"
My Brightest Diamond - "Tainted Love"
Sonic Youth - "Sacred Trickster"
Pavement - "Stereo"
The Beatles - "For You Blue"
Akron/Family - ""Everyone Is Guilty"
Rademacher - "They Are Always Into That"
Blake Jones - "Music to Change Clothes By"
Poplord - "Change in Time for Monday"
The Sleepover Disaster - "Friend"
Wheels of Fortune - "A Firefly Never Forgets"
Y La Bamba - "Fasting in S.F."
Ian McGlynn - "Mistaken for Strangers"
Breathe Owl Breathe - "Boat"
Papercuts - "Future Primitive"
The Breeders - "Do You Love Me Now?"
Fever Ray - "I'm not Done"
Moderat - "Sick with It"
NASA - "Watchadoin?"
Bola Johnson & His Easy Life Top Beats - "Ezuku Buzo"
Animal Collective - "Lion in a Coma"
The Lettermen - "Love"
The Raconteurs - "Salute Your Solution" [Live]
Crooked Fingers - "New Drink for the Old Drunk"
Peter Murphy - "Deep Ocean Vast Sea"
Interpol - "Obstacle 1"
The Go! Team - "Bottle Rocket"
Dirty Projectors & David Byrne - "Knotty Pine
Circlesquare - "Stop Taking (So Many)"
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone - "Traveling Salesman's Young Wife Home Alone on Christmas in Montpelier, VT"

selling my seeds for free

Rachid - “Sweet Charity”

If you’re like me, you just love songs about sperm donation. And I think you’ll agree with me that Rachid’s “Sweet Charity,” from 1998’s Prototype, is the best of the bunch. The song features flawlessly produced R&B grooves replete with vocoder, achey falsetto and just the right amount of melisma. But it’s the lyrics that really stand out here. The singer is in a waiting room preparing to…give freely of himself, but he thrills at being able to do so without the aid of “girly magazines.” All he has to do is think of his beloved, and—presto!

“I really must admit

It’s so lovely when you spit

When I think about it

I can make my deposit.”

Now who wouldn’t melt at having that whispered in your ear? “You’ve always inspired me,” Rachid croons, “to give to strangers in need.”

Consider this my gift to you. Enjoy.

♬

4 yr ears and 4 yr eyes

Rainbow Arabia - "Omar K"



Breathe Owl Breathe - "Boat"

i be in it like a preacher in a pulpit

The-Dream - “Mr. Yeah”

I’m a sucker for art that parodies itself, whether it does so wittingly or not. The-Dream’s “Yeah” is a syrupy bit of horny braggadocio that owes a lot to the up-in-da-club bravado of Usher’s “Yeah” and to Kanye West vocoderized come-ons. The lyrics may be silly when they’re going for sexy (“Cupid ain’t got shit on me / I’m harder than Superman, / I bounce back like a rubber band”), but there’s a really lovely melodic line here, and I love how the staccato synthesized chords counterpoint with a noise that sounds like a contented baby alien after a satisfying breastfeeding.

♫

oh, but we go out at night!

Born Ruffians - "I Need a Life" (Four Tet Remix)

After listening to this remix umpteen times, I’ve decided that Four Tet should remix every song I like—or every song I don’t like, for that matter. The remix minces and reassembles the rough-hewn singing in Born Ruffians’ “I Need a Life,” creating an achey-breakey assemblage of boy vocals that swirl over pools of blips and bleeps. By the time the chorus breaks in and we hear the Ruffians chanting “Oh, but we go out at night!” the track has built up to such a crescendo that the otherwise forgettable phrase becomes a sublime assertion. At 6:50 the moving plea

I need a life
I’ve never had
I need so much more good, Lord
And much less bad

closes the track and turns what might otherwise have sounded like a frat-boy chant into a heartfelt prayer.

♪

st albans

Shane and Joyce and I took a short day trip to the market town of St Albans on Saturday, Jan. 24. At one end of the market is a clock tower, which also marks the site at which the funeral procession of Queen Eleanor, wife of Edward I, rested on its sojourn to London in 1290. At each spot where the funeral procession rested, Edward raised a cross (one of these is the site of Charing Cross in London). The cross at St Albans no longer exists, but the clock tower is handsome in its own right, no?

A group of American Indians were dancing and singing at its base. Why not?

Word has it that St Albans boasts one of the highest concentrations of pubs of any village in England. That was enough motivation for Shane and Joyce and I to find ourselves in one. I ordered sausages and mash, and the pub people misforgot my order. So they gave me my lunch for free. Score!

After our lunch and ales, we sought out St Albans Cathedral. Here are Shane and Joyce playing "find the cathedral."


The cathedral is an interesting blend of styles dating from before the eleventh century to the late nineteenth.


See?

The interior was particularly beautiful, and, while inside, we joined a guided tour which informed us about various of the cathedral's features.




I can't quite remember what the tour guide said, but these pictures should give you some sense of what's in there.

After enjoying another beer, we headed back to London. That night, I took this picture from the window of my room in Vincent House.