Your lunacy fits neatly with my own

aka Anatomy of a Mix, one

Dear friends,

I give friends mixes for their birthdays. And because I know and love an extraordinarily large amount of Librans*, I've fallen way behind on my mixmaking. But I'm working on it, I'm working on it. Here's one that I've actually finished. This is for my beloved friend, the furry and button eyed Jared.

1. I Can't Stand It/Lou Reed (yousendit download)

While I prefer the VU original, this version has the unexpected oomph of having the girls that went "too-doo too-doo too-doo" come out of nowhere and start blastin' away on the chorus. Who are these women? I would like to be their apprentice.

2. Sparta #2/The Fall

My signature dance song.

3. Ignition (Live)/Bonnie 'Prince' Billy

I first talked up this cover here. Jared owns Trapped in the Closet or at least rented it or something. I figure while he's probably never heard the R. Kelly original, which takes itself VERY seriously despite the car metaphors, he'd still appreciate this take on it.

4. Exodus Damage/John Vanderslice

I had a weird experience with this song late one night. I couldn't sleep and as I was switching channels, I came across the video. I can't say I loved it but I couldn't let go of it. In fact, the song lingered in my head in a disquieting way for several days. Soon after whilst browsing the blogs I read about my experience on another site. Jigga huh? Apparently, they were also was up late that night and got sucked in.

Deceptively simple, almost a, b, c-ish with its non-rhyming lyrics and repetitive choruses yammering on and on about Dance, Dance Revolution; this song captures the fragilility and unease of ordinary life after unfathomable events.

5. Hesitation Blues/Dave Van Ronk

From unease to impatience. Van Ronk's interview fascinated me in the Scorsese's Dylan doc, No Direction Home. Those teeth! That voice! A great interpreter.

6. Check On It/Beyoncé feat. Slim Thug

'Cause it sounds good after the hesitation.

7. Rusted Guns of Milan/Art Brut

I love following a Beyoncé bold woman manifesto with Eddie Argos mewling about impotence.

8. Anthems for a 17 year-old Girl/Broken Social Scene

For Emily Kane.

9. Just a Thought/Gnarls Barkley

I would love this song so much more if it didn't have such sloppy loud drum samples on it. As it stands, it still resonates. I know people dismiss Cee-Lo's "I'm so ca-ca-crazy" schtick but coming from hip hop, where admitting depression is well, just plain crackers, this is a bold move. Everytime I hear him utter his chipper "but I'm fine" after talking about his suicidal urges...I feel gratified. Sure, biggie did it first. But not with that weird almost asian keyboard bit at the end.

I'd love to hear Chan Marshall cover this. Maaad slow and zombie sounding, the way she always does things.

10. Land of Lost Cars/Susu (yousendit dowload)

The first time I saw them do this live, I was spellbound by Andrea Susu's woman-as-seagull background vocals. On other Susu tracks she's got an almost baritone brusqueness, but on this song there's just this wild continual high yowling until it fans out into sky-pretty held notes. The fact that it sounds nothing like what she's doing on guitar makes it that much more satisfying to the ear.

11. Sea Song/Robert Wyatt (yousendit download)

My friend Alex, who is quite the singer, was playing this in my living room a few weeks ago. I love Wyatt (I babbled in admiration in this post) but I tend to concentrate on the sound of his voice rather than what he's saying. SO, after hearing Alex sing this song, I realized there's a whole story to it that I'd never paid attention to. Namely, a man, a lonely man, falls in love with a sea creature. A mermaid probably. Or maybe something less human looking. This is irrelevant. Man and sea beast meet at night, during the summer, get drunk a lot and form a relationship that gradually means more than he can possibly say. This romance has little to nothing to do with sex. No, it's about realizing that even when she's away, he's not alone. Because he is loved.

Listen around the 4 minute mark, when Wyatt starts to wordlessly vocalize over the mellotron. His complex, ululating wail will make anyone who is a musician feel either wonderment or deep burning shame.

12. Break My Body (Live)/Hanne Hukkelberg

Since it's The Pixies, let's call him Black Francis...well, that man was obsessed with sex. But in his world sex was stripped of its simple pleasures and became something pulsating and somewhat ugly. Impossible to ignore or resist but easy to recast as an alien, stick your finger in the goo type urge. Miss Hukkelberg says fuck that and turns this Pixies classic into a perfectly reasonable observation. Something you might take her up on.

13. Jack the Ripper/colin meloy

unjustly maligned meloy, he of the specs & the grand, grand stories about orphans & high seas intrigue, is quite clearly a "type a" fan. a fan who collects b-sides & looks at every story with the excitement of dickens reader. I hear he's singing about murderous butchers nowadays. I wonder if this morrissey cover with its benevolent look at a serial killer led him down that particular cobble stoned path.

14. You Don't Have Far To Go/Candi Staton

Jared likes a horn intro. Also, he likes Staton's loathsome and popular, Young Hearts Run Free. This song is far more depressing, which is probably why I prefer it.

15. Baby C'mon/Stephen Malkmus

Bitch please. I don't need to explain myself.

16. Carbon Monoxide/Regina Spektor

I put Joanna Newsom on Jared's birthday mix last year. He was like "what the...?"

After he listens to Spektor's "walka walka walka walka" tangents he's gonna say the same thing all over again. Every mix needs such a moment.

17. I Love You/The Boyfriends

The birthday boy is a fan of Moz and The Smoking Popes. Ergo, The Boyfriends.

18. Heartbeats (Live)/José Gonzáles

I love this song, no matter who does it.

19. The Greatest/Cat Power

Using Moon River as the hook in this song was a brilliant move. Consider this Marshall's Hard Knock Life or Trans Europe Express rip.

20. Hate Then Love/The Dears

I actually do not like the way the new record sounds; all hissy and rushed. I loved, loved, loved the majestic sprawl of their previous effort, No Cities Left, so the new album has been something of a let down. Wha'appen?

At the same time, even I will admit the songs are better. And since I've heard this number live several times, I know what it feels like when Murray Lightburn shrieks about believing in love like he's got to, once again, convince himself of it.

Love, D

* We freakin' rule! Librans are lovers of beautiful things, problem solvers, horrible with money, spacy, obsessed with balance and fairness to the point of rage-inducing insanity. Eh, what's not to love?

we got garbage

dear friends,

1. favorite videos from childhood, part two

it’s a rather obvious choice, isn’t it? I’m beginning to think that maybe the reason I liked these particular videos is 'cause of their shared mini-movie feel.

smuggler's blues/glenn frye



on a side note, when the monkey & I first met we bonded over our vague memories of loving miami vice & in particular the episode where edward james olmos’ monosyllabic police chief is inexplicably revealed to be...a samurai? that’s right! a latino samurai. complete with crazy hiding from the bad guys by wedging his injured body sideways on the ceiling of a doorway. & if any of you recall that magical moment, consider yourself an official member of our gang of losers.

2. the obvious segue

speaking of gangs of losers, soundbites posted the title track from the dears upcoming album in this post. I am eagerly anticipatin’ their return as can be expected if you read the two spectacularly unsophisticated posts I wrote about them last year. unfortunately, this track, you & I are a gang of losers, while good*, is not the one I thought it was. namely the one that they played on their live show every time I saw them & have been dying to get my hands on since that has a lyric that goes something like "you’ll hate everyone until there’s no one else." I want that song! where is it?

(runs off into a corner, clutching head & mewling)

3. beg yr pardon #4

I know byp# 3 had some serious competition thanks to the five beeeeeellion quality gigs going around town that night, so I can forgive ya if you missed it. this time, however, you best be at the delancey on tuesday, july 18th because the line-up is truly de-licious, de-lightful & de-lovely. we got susu at 8, medic medic at 9, the song corporation at 10 & pink noise at 11.

behind the dj booth expect the obsessive compulsive in the earlier part of the evening & fluxblog in the latter part of the evening. I’m already polishing my dance shoes.

$5 entry (includes tinalicious brownies & cupcakes), $5 for upstairs bbq until 9PM & FREE BEER from 11:30-12:30.

love, d

PS anyone else going to broken social scene tonight at prospect park?

PPS can anyone recommend an air-conditioned establishment in park slope where I can watch the world cup final on sunday?

* though my favorite leak thus far is definitely the biting whites only party which works nicely as the theme song to my general indie rock show experience.

...things in life start through my dreams (or how I learned to stop worrying & love the dears, part two)

dear friends,

when last I left you, I was about to go see the dears at bowery but I realize I need to backtrack & talk about their album, no cities left. tellingly, after my first few deep listens, front to back, don't answer the phone I'm BUSY, I dreamt of zeppelins in the afternoon sky, then a pirate ship crossing in front of an enormous full moon. this was not a "nice" picture but ominously unsettling, like a paper cut-out where the image is not what it seems or like kara walker's slave swamp terror silhouettes. as the dream/dawn came, I looked out of an apartment situated over a massive body of water & saw mushroom clouds in the distance. I turned towards my boy & said where do we go? he grabbed my hand calmly & said "to the basement"; he was clearly prepared for such an event. we went down there & sure enough, there was an entire world under the earth. & we were fine.

from the first hushed moments of we can have it with its description of a bad dream that could very well just be the realization that relationships are limited by our ideas of what "ideal" should be to the stern acoustic admonishments of who are you, defenders of the universe? (a sharp dialogue between two nations or two lovers & is there any difference?), I was captured. even a song like the second part which at first listen seems dull, is put together for maximum brain burrowing. melodica solo, followed by sax doing the same solo, followed by two guitars harmonizing a la brian may? wha...? like a fan-kid's childishly enthusiastic idea of what every good song must & should have, there's all sorts of amusements & lovely bearded ladies. the dears take full advantage of their carnival of sounds & they all get a chance to do their own wall of death moment. martin pelland's hypnotic bass line in the shape-shifting funk jam of postcard from purgatory. george donoso III's uncannily precise, almost machine-like drumming, such as the dance beat that unexpectedly enters 1:59 into we can have it. the female harmonies courtesy of keyboardists natalia yanchak & brigitte mayes coming in like a sugar rush on never destroy us (highly appealing to my inner scamp who likes to imagine lightburn commanding "keyboard bitches, sing!" & then, they do. yes. I'm very childish & fanciful, you should know this about me right up front). & of course, there's murray lightburns' parlor trick of coming in gentle, unspooling little curlicues of feyness, then fully unleashing a strong, almost operatic higher range such as on pinned together, falling apart. not a bad trick, as far as tricks go, but he doesn't depend on that entirely to prove his point as a singer. on the romantic musings of warm & sunny days, murray highwires jauntily around a lyric about getting older & not having a partner like some sort of insane boulevardier. he swoons about his sadness with a smile in his voice, right down to the repetition of the word "stars" against the music's common-sensical progression. head in the clouds indeed. somehow I imagine a guitar rolling it's eyes.

that's not to say that there aren't slips into full-on silly. anyone that moans "I don't have a raincoat of my own" is asking for gimlet eyed stare of derision. but all in all, I found that the personal & yes, at times, seriously over-dramatic declarations of hurt & intent were beautifully rendered; the rise of strings or brass or intricately arranged vocalizations swirling around the words.

ultimately, there's more at play here than some lyrics from the school of waah interlaced with a cluttered attic's worth of instrumentational flourish. I suspect that the album's detractors' big complaint would be "all these lyrics about the sad, boo freakin' hoo? who cares?". to which I reply, I know it's over & it never really began, so bite me. I know I may have had some doubts about what it said about my maturity to still like this type o' pity party rock. BUT. I. JUST. DON'T. CARE. I love the doom/gloom wistfulness because it confirms that the reason this type of pop expression remains potent is that those feelings, no matter how callowly expressed, are genuine & if the feelings are genuine, then I'm glad someone has some balls to be that open. especially with guitars around. & DEFINITELY if the feelings expressed are almost comical in their pathos & the people behind it are aware of that. people forget that even st. morrissey is a witty bastard & that most of the crop of american aggro-angsters are emphatically NOT. therein lies the difference?

is there a concept behind no cities left? yes. underneath all the end-of-the-world talk & love lost & found, there is a message or rather, questions that reverberate. & that is: when it all goes down, will you be there with me? can you be there with me? please be there? not so unimaginable a desire...

so yes, the show at bowery ballroom. I nabbed my skeptical, but game, monkey & went down to the gig. I was pleased & surprised that, in person, murray lightburn, who resembles a sad mastiff, albeit one in a snug leather jacket, downplays the mozzerisms. or should I say, that I was surprised that I was pleased that this was so? not only can he sing a line beautifully (the stand alone repeated refrain of "it won't ever be what we want" from we can have it which shivered in the air) but he has a palpable sense of belief in what he sings. he knew whereof he sang & he meant it, man! in the best punk rock way. counting off, switching from acoustic & electric & back again, wailing on melodica, hitting the mini korg with look of single minded intensity, this was a man on fire! when he grabbed the tambourine & held it out in front of him over the crowd shouting "you are not alone" I would've considered moving to his jonestown. lightburnsville?

oh yeah, & like blondie, the dears are a BAND. donoso was an inventive little son of a gun. I loved the sound of the unexpected beat that comes in a couple of minutes into we can have it that much MORE live. it made the zombie nyc crowd move despite itself. pelland was a groove machine. he got down with himself during the moody neo-noir jam opener postcard from purgatory & I caught him smiling in glee at donoso when he started mixing things up. of the two ladies behind keyboards on stage, yanchak stood out by virtue of looking like one of those girls who sat behind me sometime in high school: cardigan clad, pale, with huge brown eyes & lank brown hair. she kept her head down, didn't smile, & played figures that made you look around for the third guitarist. later in the night, when murray & yanchak busted into their own personal musical theater duet 22: the death of all romance, she opened her mouth so wide & her eyes were so huge as she sang the insidiously catchy "I can't believe the things you say/tell me the lies" refrain, I couldn't tell if it was passion or sheer terror that was driving her to such ecstatic heights. valerie jodoin-keaton (brigitte mayes' replacement) brought it too, especially in the coda to postcards from purgatory when she added bright splashes with her flute. the guitarist (can't find the poor man's name) appeared to still be trying to find his stage legs but locked into it sometime around the queenalicious guitarmonies of the second part; him & lightburn faced each other in a classic rock stance of who's bad? it was cheesy as all get out but enjoyable, because people having fun on stage is kinda the freakin' point, eh? perhaps my favorite number was a new one (SOMEONE? ANYONE? TELL ME WHAT THIS IS CALLED? PRETTY PLEASE?) which sounds like a lost britpop classic. in it, murray sings pointedly of someone "& you'll hate everyone 'til there's no one else" & yet still manages to sound forgiving in his resignation. I left the show in a thrilled school kid state. happy to be so validated. even the monkey was won over!

for now, mozzer can rest easy about the steez theft. my imaginary friend murray clearly has his own path to follow. someone had to get him going, that's all. I will curiously observe that rock strewn path that his band takes & will be there when the dears return to the bowery ballroom on june 11. because hey, it spoke to me & how could it not? I was re-assured. I was not alone.

love, d

album to seek: no cities left/the dears

Last night all the horrible... (or how I learned to stop worrying & love the dears, part one)

The Smiths have a song called Panic, which features one of the most quoted lines in Smithdom, the simple and direct "Hang the DJ!." My argument has always been that something in the line that follows is much more important and that is, "(The music they constantly play...) it says nothing to me about my life". What could be truer than that? I can say I still cling to those lines when someone's trying to sell me on something that for whatever reason, isn't flipping the reptile switch. There's no words to love, no voice to care about, no musicianship to champion and failing all these things, NO PERSONALITY THERE TO INTRIGUE.

Horribly personal confession number #12. I am a lousy music fan. I have a complex yet completely nonsensical inner method of rating musical acts. The most important requirements are a) the sound is great to ME, b) the personalities behind the music are interesting to ME and c) does it say something to ME about my life? Basically, it's all about ME and I only need 2 of the 3. Does that make me an untrustworthy source? Perhaps. But really when it comes down to it, if I listened to everything based on sounds alone, I wouldn't be able to hold down a job. It's bad enough as it is. I need some qualifiers.

I have been known to stop caring about a band if I see them out in public acting like great big tits. Or talking un-ironically about all the models they're banging in various magazine interviews. Conversely, I will grudgingly accept a band/musician if I think their story is winning enough. I'm serious. If I hear somebody or other was cleaning toilets at gas stations to support their one-legged father, all while struggling to record a demo, then no matter how lame it is, I'll have this very forgiving attitude of ah, well, they seem nice. Will I listen to it devotedly? No. but I'll be interested to hear what it sounds like and then be tolerant of its mediocrity in a way that I wouldn't extend to better bands with a happier background story involving ski vacations and ponies. Shallow? Petty? Sentimental? It's true and I won't hide my prejudices. I can't separate the stories from the musos, which is why lately I have been trying not to remember too much about musicians I like. To be fairer, I suppose.

I was not a carefree adolescent. I was a short, bespectacled immigrant. I was not blonde or popular and I dressed funny* to boot. I was a poor kid in a school full of children that lived in houses affectionately nicknamed "home sweet MOMA". I felt a complete disconnect from my surroundings in a way that led me to buy import music magazines every month and dream of moving to England, the only! Place! Where! Music! Mattered! (As evidenced by my then-recent discovery of The Cure, Joy Division/New Order, etc...) THEN I found The Smiths. When I first heard Morrissey, singing about his arrogance, loneliness and spectacular lack of sexual nerve with his trademark florid, operatic self-absorption, I said that's me, mom! I too, am an emotional wallflower and wreck! That says everything to me about my life! I am totally arrogant yet completely insecure too! Yipee!

Time passes, people grow up. Some of us graduate from listening to the solipsistic angst music of our formative years to the more acceptable global angst ditties of today. NEVERTHELESS, people don't change all that much. When I heard last year that there was some weirdo Canuck named Murray (Murray, feh chrissakes!) Lightburn who has been leading a band with a revolving lineup around the Montreal scene for the past 10 years and oh, he's got a serious Steven P. Morrissey obsession and eh, sounds a bit like him, NATURALLY, I was won over without having heard a note. Already, I was best pals with this Murray. In a "meet ya for a drink, then go watch Withnail & I for, like, the 5 billionth time, argue about The Severed Alliance over pints or tea cups, depending on the time" musician fantasy sorta way. I looked at his picture, a scowling, older guy in a group of attractive youngsters. My buddy Murray. I haven't heard his band yet but I'm sure they must be great, I chirped to my co-worker. she looked disinterested.

Let me backtrack, my "drink buddy" fantasy only goes so far. For example, take Pavement, I LOVE me some Pavement. The fact that I can recall most of those Malkmusian lyrics is a testament to their powerful hold on me considering my memory has been the first thing to go. Now, would I ever have drinks with Stephen Malkmus? Of course not. That man is the epitome of ski break. I'd get this feeling that he would be trying to place me, maybe I cleaned his parent's house? Worked in the university lunchroom? In a hair net? Something like that. Does this stop me from listening to Pavement? No, because "here we go, she's on a hidden tableau, just a 2 for 1, and the 2 for 1 is right" is enough for me. Same goes for Morrissey even, I still love him, but drinks are out of the question. I eat meat. Lots of it. 'Nuff said.

Anywho, back to the topic at hand, eventually I heard my new friend Murray's band, The Dears' new single. I found Lost in the Plot on one of those NME samplers I'm guilty of buying because it's like my CRACK, see, and I immediately loved-ded-ded it. I laughed at the slavish Moz-ness, not just the peculiarly prissy turns of phrase but the unusual emphasis in a lyric, the way a word like "anymore" couldn't just end but has to be drawn out in a rococo moan of "anymoooooaawoaoaore, aaaw-oore, aaaw-ore, aaaaoooore, ooooore..." as the song inches to a close... Fantastic! I remember telling Jared about it and him saying sneeringly** that he wasn't down with that shit. But really, why be a hatah? What's wrong with sounding like the most reassuring voice of my youth? To me, this is lullaby city. But I realize that my sentimental attachments are another man's derivative, so what can you do?

You go see them live.

To be continued...


* Still true, actually

** Jared claims he "did not sneer", to which I say, yes, he did.

Dears at Bowery Ballroom

The Dears... fucking amazing.