first question

1. You say you will submit a bill every day congress is in session with language to repeal the health care bill, even though you admit that it wont pass the senate or make signature. Is this a valuable use of limited time? Is it sustainable to the electorate?

blisters in the sun

the violent femmes said that.

today i woke up and it felt like 2006. I'm excited. These last two years have been especially foreign to me, as I was put in a position where to accept and support optimism was the best thing to do, for myself and society, such that it is. This is not to say i did not believe in policy, but rather that I realized the avenue towards policy change being utilized was through collective optimism. It was my skepticism in the ability of the nation's collective optimism to remain well, collectively optimistic that many of my fears laid. And seemingly for worse, it faded...

I'd refer you back to my posts in the days leading up to and following election night 2008 for more detail on that, but the reader can find those on their own, and not rely on me. that brings me to my next point- The role of optimist and policy champion was too foreign to me, and indeed it was too foreign to the youth that made 2008 possible. We were too fickle in the face of angry and disillusioned middle aged white men.

We also know that i am passively optimistic, at best. And even that may be generous.

As i told my roomate today, sarcastically (but still astutely)-

'you know, they (tea partiers) keep going back to our founding documents, and in spite of the fact that they are misreading both the spirit and fundementals of those texts, they have gotten something right-- They are returning us to the time when only white, middle aged landowners had a stake in government.'

etc..

I mean that in all seriousness.

But the caveat is this-- its only because we let them (retake power). it is on us and no one but us. such is the reality of democracy. (or such is the reality of the illusion of democracy).

Maybe if we let their experiment have two years, at which point it will end in abject failure, we can take this back. If we do our jobs.

This begs the question, maybe an electoral majority is not where the democrats are strongest (a la clinton 1994)? We are going to find out, for sure.

But as J. Judis pointed out in TNR today, the cyclical recessions post WWII (read: early 1990s) are VASTLY different than the one of 2007-. Today's is much more in common with the late 1800s and the great depression. As we did from 2008-2010, looking to Keynes and Japan is not only rational, its prudent. But we don't need another lesson on depression economics by me (or maybe we do, and thats why we are sitting here today).

Dropped the ball.

So all of you guys, who are like me, and would rather be wonkish outsiders (those of us who realize that term is not a paradox). lets put ourselves back in business. Let's talk about the hegelian dialectic of the tea party and what that reveals about them. We can liken the emerging political actors to the characters in nazi literature in the americas, (be prepared for this one, its a certainty). There will be poetry. There will be economics. We are going to catch people with their pants down again (literally and figuratively, there will be lots of this, I'm quite sure). We are going to call bluffs and take people to task. We, don't have a narrow agenda.

Realize that this is not the low water mark that was Katrina. There is no Enron here. Or even shadowy politiking through the office of Faith Based and Community Initiatives. Its better now than it ever was then. So lets not let those aspects of 'then' repeat themselves. Let's only be better watchdogs and better thinkers like we had been.

Thats all I've got for now-

so here we are.

I'm back.

ideas

in listening to burial's 'untrue', which i of course do a lot, im always struck by the first words on the album, the 'inland empire' sample. makes me see think of something in the 'city of ember' sense, more post though and certainly darker. main character who's only job is to sell light. id like to write that story.

pre bob

the last time i wrote something good on here was a while ago, i think. today is a day, as good as any, to change that. dylan is in town today, and thats a good thing. was talking with a good friend the other night and we reached a conclusion about him. he's the only poet that we could think of who has been able to defy, or maybe transcend genre labels. he's not a beat poet, a romantic, or a modernist. whatever. thats a cool thing. go bob. but of course any conclusions about dylan are subject to well, not be conclusions any longer.

i like my internship, granted its but 4 hours old. its a good fit. i love stories and storytellers. and old stuff. and new stuff.

burke

sol burke just died. thats a bummer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCTJeT2i9QU&feature=related

eeeeeeeeeeeee

http://pitchfork.com/news/40235-watch-belle-and-sebastian-perform-on-jimmy-fallon-with-uestlove-from-the-roots/

d

i dont need much money. id be fine below minimum wage. maybe i need to go to south east asia and work in a sweatshop there.

characters

sickness looming, but thats being taken care of.

just remembered this character.

http://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/issues/98may/updike.htm

fun read. spend some time on it.

reminds me of a dream i once had where 1965 dylan walked in my open room as i was reading and said 'money's no object, kid,' and burst out laughing. walked out and shut the door behind him.

i think dylan's biggest er, most lasting gift to us, independent of recordings, so in the philosophical sense, is permission to be young and cynical. not sure we had that before him. ill gladly carry the torch.

learned something

via larry mcmurtry. a lot really, but how about this. urban scatter and urban sprawl, or the differences between them. i-85 corridor=urban scatter. charleston=urban sprawl.

twists

really interesting story on the news tonight. this man's brick house had blown up, literally, after a fire spread to his propane tanks. the house looked Sarajevo circa 94. gets fascinating with his interview, went something like 'we have to take humor from these events, i survived the marine corps, and cancer twice, and ill get through this.'

east hastings

Mogwai - Mogwai Fear Satan from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.

seeing mogwai live is like driving eleven hundred miles alone on a night that never ends. its not futile. the meaning is in the event-not the direction, or the destination. and the best part of that is when you realize that the last light you saw in the west seems further away than however many of those miles you have left to drive.

thoughts

always will be the best cd of 2002 for me. what a great year that was.

just finished reading an interview between ron rash and somebody. rash said this: 'why is it that the south has produced so few philosophers, yet so many novelists?' such a clear answer. rhetorical like.

just read an article in tnr that seemed to allege that to be post-sophisticate is heroic. i find the author to be a little too wrapped up in himself. not to be ad hominem or whatever but sometimes that just happens to be accurate. got to get paid i guess.

tonight is one of those nights where i'll stay up thinking.

fringe benefits

today i spent 2 hours at the pickens county employment security office. the name is of course a significant misnomer, everybody knows it as the unemployment office. i should say that i was not there to file for unemployment, though that thought inevitably crossed my mind dozens of times as i sat there. conclusions-

1-i love the upstate, and its people, god bless them. not only are they salt of the earth, in the welty or o'connor tradition, they are profoundly interesting, in the rash way, and of course too as real people.

2-the guy, with lost eyes telling the receptionist he couldn't wait any longer, because he had to take a friend to a court date.

3-the guy with 'redemption' tattooed across his arm, who spent his time gazing at everyone sitting in the room, as if looking for something within us.

4-the receptionist, who surprisingly, to me, seemed to genuinely love his job. where was he before?

5-the woman mumbling to herself outside, who upon her name being called, the caseworkers said to each other 'she's outside again isn't she?,' with smiles on their faces with meanings i couldnt quite place.

6-the latinos, who eagerly respond 'yes' when asked every question.

7-the man who stood next to his wife and said 'im here to sign up for unemployment' with the most overwhelming and true feeling of regret and failure hanging heavy in his words.

i'll let you be in my dreams, if i can be in your's

the authoritative list of the top 10 of bob dylan's albums, in a sort-of particular order, though not a rank and file list. and i certainly won't talk about every song on every album, cause that would just be too much.

not authoritative, but spontaneous.

not 10, but 5

order isnt particular, so far as i can tell

the basement tapes-the first time i heard the heart-sunk depression and longing of dylan in 'goin' to acapulco' put in me a feeling i never knew existed before then. the overwhelming dread and loss he puts in you is terrifying. but at the same time it makes you incredibly glad for what you've got. it couldnt have been written any other place than in the big pink. 'tears of rage' the elegy that asks what are bonds?/what is family? and that certain unspoken blame for whatever it is, that we all carry. intense.

highway 61 revisited-my top album of all time. has to be. i don't need to say why, because everybody else already has. the most perfectly produced album ever made, except for maybe 'pet sounds' but i hate 'pet sounds'. so much to listen to here. the music just snarls, as if the record wasn't perfectly flat and perfectly round. fascinating.

the freewheelin' bob dylan-every english language writer that has amounted to anything since the mid 1960s, and in fact probably all western writers, owe their craft to this album. poesis 101 is taught here, not in 'the republic'.

self portrait-because nobody has a clue of what it is meant to be, and that is incredibly unique and quintessentially 'dylan'. in short, its a terrible album.

john wesley harding- a very literary album. distinct stories, images and storytellers. its not brazen or bold, it's simple and it's effective.

pbs

last night my roommate and i watched nature on pbs, as i do, usually, ideally. sunday started a two week series on the domestic dog. week one talked about origins and week two will talk about i dont know. prevailing, and past thought says the domesticated dog originated when man 15,000 years ago took grey wolf pups from the mother and raised them in close contact with humans, traits were developed through selective breeding, etc. essentially, wild pups were raised, then bred for traits. that thinking is being overturned though, based on the fact that no modern human, even under the best conditions, has successfully raised a pup starting a few days after its birth, ever.

the emerging theory then is this: as man formed its first large communities 15,000 years ago, we began to create centralized trash dumps. wolves scavenged these, but not just any wolves. the first thing to know about wolves is that they have a very far 'flight distance,' that is to say humans scare wolves off even from a far distance, something like over a half of a mile. in order to stick around the dumps long enough to scavenge, wolves would have to eliminate this fear. those animals with a shorter flight distance became the most successful members of packs, because they could feed and loiter longer at the dumps, so their beneficial traits became the most desirable, and they were passed down to the next generation because of the sex. this continued, and over time, an incredibly short period of time they believe, (contemporary studies were able to generate a very domesticated fox after just 2 generations removed from the wild) we started getting dogs that could help us out.
--
seems that man didnt nurture the dog into existence, but rather they came about as a product of our waste. fascinating thought.






--

on roads

when you're reading more than one book simultaneously, connections appear between them, and that relationship heightens our gain from the text three and four fold. Its amazing how much affect currency has on our perceptions, both on literature and reality, (the two i would argue are intrinsically connected). the permutations of text * text (* text) and their shared derived meaning is incredibly fascinating. for instance, im reading larry mcmurtry's 'roads,' which is a collection of refections by mcmurtry on american interstate highways. absent are the discussions of a lost america, the america of the us 1's and route 66's. mcmurtry says that that perception is inaccurate- a particularized, regionalized america still very much exists even with the swollen arteries of eisenhower's system. the people are still the same, just their way of going has changed. i'll have more to say when i finish the book, id hate to be too premature.

another book im reading is 'the war that made america', about the french and indian war. now, here is where the multiplier effect comes in. in reading this, im not interested in the structure of the treaties, the leaders, the events. im really only interested in the rivers. to focus on this feature is not surprising, given the various similarities between today's interstates and the rivers then. the navigable rivers of the north were the only effective means to move goods before plank roads, railroads, canals. forts were on rivers, because of their strategic importance. it all goes without saying, facts arent what im writing about.

rather, i have no doubt in my mind that if i were reading this book in conjunction with say, jefferson's letters or a much less substantive forsyth novel, id be more concerned with the political content of the book, but im not now. maccarthy and mcmurtry, and all i'd be able to focus on would be light and dark. conrad and the french-indian book, and id be drawn in by the incredible mystery of the conflict, and of course the rivers would continue to stand out, but differently. i could think of endless combinations, each with a predictable result. you know.

sometimes its alright to be human.

umm

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/06/business/media/06tune.html?_r=1&hp

snacks on snacks

stories on stories. concept albums whatever. never properly listened to ben nichols' 'last pale light of the west,' the lucero frontman's album based on his readings of cormac's 'blood meridian' its the album i want to write. its actually the album i probably could write. makes me want to go to the horizon, and fast. hopefully i can fit that in next week.

also, i hope they let him do the soundtrack for the film. i really hope so. its just perfect.

elvis only had three tvs

but he watched them all at once. of course three was a lot for then, and three is a lot for now. but still, he was elvis.

good start of fall tune.

hi

its a nice day, but i still want the dark. bring it, dark.

brought.

flylo

http://vimeo.com/14117595

the indelible impressions of repetitions, or maybe 'why it happens the same way'

these humans are for sure creatures of habit. when we get ideas and then write them down, we remember them. they make sense when we do that, and then the ideas might grow into something useful, or they might not. when we get ideas and dont write them down, we rarely remember them. and then they are useless. its either one or the other, for me it is at least. and for the last few weeks it's been one and now it'll be the other. the flip happened.

i've never been able to particularly identify what initiates my bouts with writer's block, well damn i suppose ive had bouts of a lot of things. in fact, as human do, projecting our lives forward, i cant help but predict many more bouts with various things in the future. some good some bad. but i digress, severely. i have ideas, just as we all do im sure. and in case you forgot, im talking about writing. but the 'hows and whys' arent really important to me, because i love very little more than that feeling just before i get that spark to write. its worth it to not write for a while in order to feel like this. thats what im trying to say.

given im in the smithing mood, then what to say? well thats not really a question. not one that ever merits answering directly anyway. but we do it anyway.

dylan is on the mind. dylan started it. this time and maybe the time before that, certainly he starts it most times. i hear dylan and i feel aware, motivated to do something, anything. whatever it is would be great and meaningful. i notice what doesnt make sense. i think about what my room looked like before i lived here, and what it might look like afterward, then i see this place decrepit. and then i think about what itd be like if i lived here when it was in such a state. i hover on that thought. then i move on because i think 'who gives a shit about that.'

i think about that day in 1966 that i wasnt alive. one of those days you most wish you had been though, in any capacity. good thing they made a recording of it.

it wasnt after the intermission that the paradigm shift of dylan non electric/electric occured. its not like the journos try to say it is. but it has to be made easy, or else people forget it.

the discussion of that event, or newport, or 65-66 in general inevitably begs the question for a listener casual or dedicated,' which are you for, electric or acoustic.' to answer by ignoring the obvious absurdity and apathetic simplicity of the question i'll answer it with what will probably be perceived as more absurdity and even more apathetic simplicity. id say id prefer the dylan of the intermission between the two sets. there was the dylan who knew that it was not he who was fixing to change his own figurative hat, but that it was in fact the audience and those around him who were, the ones actually in control of the framing of his image. here was the dylan who was not one or the other, but both, which is really neither at all. to the audience he no longer existed and so he could only be himself. with everybody knowing that he'd walk onstage in a few minutes and be immediately framed as a different person, as a traitor and not a champion. its fascinating to think about such transformations in such a pejorative context. to think about that is to wonder what change really is. and i dont know what it is. not sure we can know. not tonight anyway.

makes me wish i had a scrapbook of ephemera from my life. or really just concert tickets. but perhaps its better that my concert tickets are scattered around, in different boxes, pockets and whatever else. itll make that occasional finding of them meaningful, and gloss over the perpetual re-losing of them. because thats just what seems to happen.

decided to read blood meridian again. this happens from time to time. so incredible when the best western ever written is a categorical denouncing of manifest destiny. i'd sure like to rewind history on that one. im going to do so right quick.

horace greeley says 'go west, young man.' hello american exceptionalism.
creepy way to claim the presence of divine intervention. not sure it worked out so well here, unless you were a white guy.
ratzel comes to the usa, sees what he sees, goes back to germany saying 'lebensraum' and then we get the nazis.

anyway. might talk tomorrow about the bison economy. thats a fun one. good one for pissing people off.

tarkovsky

i like him. didn't know he took pictures too, thought it makes sense that he did. fun stuff for a gloomy saturday.

http://riowang.blogspot.com/2010/06/tarkovskys-polaroids.html

oh and this

http://thegreenhorns.wordpress.com/essays/essay-in-distrust-of-movements-by-wendell-berry/

music-fela, and afro-celt

oh my

dropped the ball on arcade fire, thats a shame. but really how i described it last week is probably good enough, so i'll leave it there.

i really like where i live now. its fun and i like how it smells. do not like how gq magazines smell.

us kids know

crimony, its been two days and i havent talked about the event yet. if i wait any longer ill have to start making up stuff that happened, or rather didnt happen. unfortunately, its 600, bright and hot, so im not creative. ill have something tonight. maybe.

i will mention though, running to my seats, running, with spoon playing 'the ghost of you lingers' was incredible. spoon live, with their distortion and woo tube effects reverberating in general, but eulogized by the metal roof of the amphitheater was incredible, and especially so for that song, when i wasnt giving them the gaze. haunting. and that was just the start of it.

good stuff

gonna go back into the vault tonight..... not too deep though. and ill try to steer clear of stax and chess records and those usual suspects for this sort of thing.

jimmy mcgriff. funk. hammond b3. good shit.

bukka white. one man wrecking machine. played the national like this, but also slapped pretty well too, see 'aberdeen mississippi blues'. straight up beast. good shit.

baby face willette. made just a few records on blue note, then died. so emotive. good shit.

mississippi fred. the first generation of the north mississippi guys and maybe the most captivating, the second gen being rl burnside and junior kimbrough. who ive already expounded enough upon, i think. wish my right index finger worked like that. good shit.

eric dolpy. died young and weirdly, read his bio. mostly known as a sideman for coltrane, mingus, coleman, hamilton, nelson, et al, but as a band leader he was actually pretty big and influential for jimi hendrix, and you can hear it. good shit.

all i got

mash up

this


and this

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXlaOsNBDkk

skreams new one is out today, this is on it. not as good as his remix of in for the kill. which was just on entourage. show has been good the last two weeks.

in defense of, part XII

set design.

full disclosure- ive had like 5 mojitos. so where two days ago i was not tom bissell and colson whitehead, today maybe i am. though, id like to think this is more like nick hornby, who certainly had a drink or two whilst writing. maybe perhaps though, irvine welsh-sans heroin.

set design is very big for me, from plays-which i love (still need to see rothko and fela). but musically (though fela is) from radiohead (obviously on the in rainbows tour, it was the best ever, the must anti bush, most traumatic, whatever, set design ever.) my god, the lights, the lights. etc. to bat for lashes, to hell i dunno im fascinated by every show i go to, so after radiohead this is a moot point. that being said, i havent yet watched any youtube videos for the arcade fire tour that ill be an active participant on for wednesday. i use for here in the glaswegian sense. and spoon. spoon is actually a band i like more than arcade fire, but unfortunately im locked in the paradigm that the headliner is the most important band.

this did not use to be the case.

however, in outdoor amphitheatre shows its my experience that the opening act never gets the credit they deserve, even though over spoon's 20 year history they are musically more (dont hate me) significant than arcade fire in terms of the influence they have on genres in general. socially they provide a certain steady outlet too, which is nice. while arcade fire, well musically nobody is really ripping them off, and socially the mainstream perception of them is well theyre left wing, so we like them and they have a haitian girl, so thats topical. in a slightly more lucid state (though i feel quite lucid enough, thank you very much, just not willing to spend time elaborating) id well, elaborate more. for lack of better words. fact of the matter is, and heres the point im trying to make, is that people take arcade fire at face value, though they really shouldnt. i mean to be honest, most people, in fact not most people, but only really like 10 people in the world listen to arcade fire through through the lens of habermas, et al, etc. habermas because of deliberative democracy, but others for other things.

anyway thats more or less what ive got on that. i started this meaning to say i havent seen the set design for arcade fire so im ready to be surprised. and i always wanted to see spoon first in austin so maybe this is a bit bittersweet for me, and im willing to demphasize losing my spoon virginity to ugly hotlanta. thats really what i meant.

anyway, im in the mood for new jersey

gone

this is the one where im supposed to talk about all that college has meant to me, etc. ideally, it should sound like colson whitehead or jonathan lethem has written it. someone like that. but for me, those guys arent very good. so i dont really know what that leaves me with. anyway. feels good right? anticlimactic, though i suppose thats the norm for me with these sorts of things. meta- this will not be.

as i write this, im actually more preoccupied thinking of what song/video or whatever to put at the end.

i actually got a pretty good idea for it, just now, but hold on.

i dont really know how to frame this. lessons learned? stuff i was supposed to do but didnt. still havent read the statue, nor been in fort hill. the latter because i hate calhoun, that could be the reason. what i go back and do it over? which part? hard to say, itd be a bit dull wouldnt it, all those same classes over, half of which i pretty much already had in hs. thad be like doign it over 3 times then wouldnt it? certainly thats the case for the first two years. also, my liver probably couldnt handle the do over. also, predictably tuition would increase and my scholarships wouldnt, so id have to pay them money. probably wouldnt be too thrilled about that. so no, i probably wouldnt do it again, but at the same time i certainly wouldnt do it any differently. maybe ill eat those words in a dozen years, or less. or more.

its funny, for someone as fascinated by origins, endings and paradigm shifts as myself, i really don't acknowledge what should be perceived to be my own. well because, quite frankly, i dont really think tehy are. i mean what is college supposed to be? vocational training? you give diplomas to dogs when they graduate obedience school. the similarities between that and this are striking. for me seeing radiohead the first time was more significant, hearing burial the first time, seeing horsefeathers, crossing from germany into the czech rep., and really about 100 other things were too. maybe it was that time when i saw a noble laureate and no more than 50 others came. but hey, we have a football team. and frats.

what book was i reading when i came to campus freshman year? lets think, cause this might actually be the only way for me to effectively bookend this thing, and perhaps maybe cause this post to take on the order of something less than than the most obnoxious case of exceptionalism since well, i just thought of a million things. i was reading at least two things. the first was extremely loud and incredibly close by js foer. its fitting that im reading his latest at the moment. circle of life and all that. it be perfect for inarritu to write that into the movie he hasnt yet made, but certainly will, after i meet him at sundance. anyway, its a notable book. and very important in the sense that through it, i was able to realize most people at clemson would not be reading the books that i read. its because that novel makes you look around at people. also it throws a little trauma at the reader but that wasnt important to me at the time, later it would be though. i was also reading the fall by camus. thats a very good book for kids to be reading the first week of their freshman year. because when faced with what we are told are limitless opportunties, all you really are in fact living in is isolation, imprisonment, and these are the realities of existence, collegiate.

wish this was more prosaic, call this a rough draft.

i want to end this on a quote, but instead of somebody elses, ill do my own. i think ill get it right, though ill be corrected if it isnt.

dammit i cant quite remember how it went....

"college-something white people above a certain income level have to do"

not poetic, hardly accurate. but at its core, there is a bit of something to that statement.

rite of passage? for me when i think i rite of passage i think of vikings or stravinsky, both really. and when i think of college i dont htink of vikings, or stravinsky. this is bad bad logic, but im sticking with it.

so, what gets the privilege of being the last song selected by me as an undergraduate? probably something deserving, but winner of the title it is-what was i listening to first day freshman year?

i actually assumed my own existence extends until tomorrow, and with camus being a central part of htis post, well, apparently i havent learned anything. im just tired, ok.

not going to lie, probably was this

or/also

and other stuff. but this is good.

yeah

john you son of a bitch stop writing

whatever i dont care. im in the mood and i aint always. this is fun. keep the fun up. narrate your life. who said that? no clue but i like it. as long as you arent pretentious or derivitave or both. which i may be. i cant judge. can i not judge myself? whatever i dont feel like dealing with those questions. im sober.

newayz big radiohead binge tonight, so much so that i might play it on through sunrise, and cue no surprises as the sun comes up. in fact, that sounds like a damn good idea. i cant wait to stay up into the middle of the night again with people. that junk is fun.

i want to draw a picture of burial's 'ghost hardware' of how the samples ascend and descend. especially the christina aguilera one. thatd be an incredible painting i think, at least what im visualizing. like a curvalinear rothko. thats blowing my mind right now. which i didnt recognize until like a week ago, after listening to this album more than any other over the last two years. at least at night. i make a distinction. what i listen to at night i rarely listen to during the day. same goes for film and art and that. at night i want ot be like straight out of a dystopian semi-future. during the day i want to build a house and read books. its not that simple, but thats the gist.


gonna rate some urban stuff now. cause i wanna.


dont know whether to hate or respect. its funny. dubstep doesnt have to be serious right? its just better when it is. always.


ok like i completely hate rusko. hes bringing the four on the floor beat into dubstep and calling it dubstep. which totally makes it not dubstep. makes it more like grime or DnB, but my god its impossible to know nowadays. anyway, this has amber coffman of dirty proj's on sampled. and its not a bad track, good to dance to efficiently, which is usually impossible in dubstep. but dont call this dubstep for my sake. its just not dubstep. its rusko being good at merging a few styles and making it sound his own. diplo produced this, and diplo makes clubs good (look at hsi remixes and remember hes solely responsible for the masses knowing about M.I.A., for which we should be thankful) but listen to/watch this one...



the guy is an idiot. a totally mongoloid. 1-like 80% of a dj is how you look. so that means 80% of anything rusko does is ridiculous before he even drops his first beat. and seriously thats wayyyy too much cocaine. and if this is dubstep? well how can it be? this is probably more 1990s chicago house at times, that then jumps into early 2000s uk garage. it sounds ok. just not dubstep by any stretch. i mean dont get me wrong, i love hearing this stuff in a club.




fly lo is great. hes also american, which is rare for thi stuff. honoring the late hip hop pioneer/awesome guy j dilla.

benga is pretty cool. i like him. makes stuff thats pretty honest dubstep that you can still dance to. 26 basslines isnt actually false advertising, theyre all there. it doesnt feel like too many either. i hate when everybody thinks they have to do those 8 bit noises to establish i high end. dont do it. this isnt crystal castles.


the bug. jungle+dubstep. i eat it up. its obnoxious, invasive, parasitic and freaking great. saw kevin martin doing another project in ldn last year.



this one in fact. effing great stuff.


the guys that started it all. this song should have been at the top of this blog. because at :28 when the bass drops youre like. holy shit. then when spaceape comes in at 1:30 its just sewer bliss. its like seeing the beginning of the universe. seriously. or doctor who doing somethign epique. freaking great. more than that. sonic genius, kode 9. makes me want to be on the south bank every waking moment.


this was just great. not a fan of danger mouse, he does a few things ok. but cee lo's voice is just great. and hes a funny looking man.


the fade on this is what makes it. zombie march.



grimeee. love this man. anthemic.


so i havent talked about skream. i like skream. especially remixes. this man can make a dubstep remix of any song in about a minute it seems like. seriously he does everything. hundreds. he does his own stuff too but its shite. this one is so good.




listening to something from 15 years ago and having it sound like something that hasnt yet happened is an incredible feeling. beth gibbons happens to be cool as all get out. dragging while singing this is increible. geoff barrow's stack and rig is probably worth over $50,000, conservative estimate. theres something great about an acoustic guitar and honesty. theres also something cool about a rig like that and what it can do. this would be a great place to end this. but i dont want to stop.


sun ra is a good not stopping place. fascinating guy, but i cant let myself start on a jazz track, otherwise this will last three days or 8 minutes in this case. sun ra is great. makes you feel music. not just hear it or think it or whatever. he ups the relevance. ill leave it there.


yeah ok. its just interesting. i dont like all the hooks. and the structure of the song. too much pop. but the performance art she does is so detailed and thought out i gotta respect that. and lets face it, shes better than britney and them ever were in like every way. and as my friend always points out, shes got a damn rilke quote on her arm. so shes got to be on my side.



alright last one. pinnacle of hip hop. screams ambition.

best line in fiction-prose

what is? i dunno. gonna have to think about that. and i feel so bad because i probably wont be able to think of what is exactly my favorite. but heres a shot at it.

candidates:

no country for old men-"You think when you wake up in the mornin' yesterday don't count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothin else."

extremely loud and incredibly close-"Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living"

serena-"It’s ever been the way of the man of science or philosophy. Most folks stay in the dark and then complain they can’t see nothing.”

heart of darkness-"The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much."

everything wendell berry has ever written.-this is a cop out. so-"Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy." cant remember where this came from.

huck finn-"You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth."

the myth of sisyphus-"there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn."

the savage detectives-"Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragicomedy." love this full quote, where he talks about how he'd be under various dictators. but this is the kicker.

hitch hikers guide to the galaxy-"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons."

the idea of nathan zuckerman sorry thats not a quote.

saturday-"When there are no consequences, being wrong is simply a diversion."

this is not going to end.

grapes of wrath- "It don't take no nerve to do somepin when there ain't nothin' else you can do."

faulkner-somewhere, he said hed rather choose pain than nothing. so wherever that appeared.

arg but there are so many obvious things not on here. hmm.

good country people- "Her voice when she spoke hand an almost pleading sound. 'Aren't you,' she murmured, 'aren't you just good country people?'...'Yeah,' he said, curling his lip slightly, 'but it ain't held me back none. I'm as good as you any day in the week.'"

the corrections-"The human species was given dominion over the earth and took the opportunity to exterminate other species and warm the atmosphere and generally ruin things in its own image, but it paid this price for its privileges: that the finite and specific animal body of this species contained a brain capable of conceiving the infinite and wishing to be infinite itself."

reckon ill leave it here. whats the best? hmm. what does that mean? most relevant to me? none are any more than another. concise? cogent? whatever. i dunno. what sounds the best right now, how about that? no i dont like that. what hits my chest like a freight train but draws me in?

first is probably huck finn, second savage detectives, third no country for old men. but these arent my favorite books, necessarily. and that huck finn quote isnt the most meaningful, but it sets that tone and setting that is so definitively american, you are made to read the novel in that voice. its great.

the bolano one. hard to isolate anything he wrote in a quote, because its just so wordy. but that bit makes a good job of it. what does it mean? its like bolano, you have no idea what hes saying, but you actually do. its not that its personal or anything like that, or even that its cryptic or esoteric. but actually its all three of those things. cant explain it. it just is.

no country for old men-the past, it matters.

that was fun.

musak

i know i know

i post this song like once a month, btu really its one of the greatest.



the drive by truckers, proving to the world that not all southerners are right wing, lost cause, racist, homophobes. its so great to hear.

right so

fall for greenville line up is ace this year. the only year id pay money to go to a free festival. so ill be there. everyday, for the entire time. its almost as if every band that paste magazine is obsessed with is coming. +2 ramseur records bands, 1 of which being half of the everybodyfields. im ecstatic. deer tick, jason isbell, etc etc etc. 4 FREE



how i feel right now^ best recording of this ive found. an idea just popped into my mind. i want to go play guitar in the wal mart parking lot. this is insane. but i feel like i need to do this.

peaches in the summertime, apples in the fall.

I had a dream last night that involved the english comedian, David Mitchell, methamphetamine, and myself, all at a house party. interestingly i didnt do meth nor talk to mitchell. in fact i cant quite remember what it was that i did do. probably just watched people do meth and talk to david mitchell. now its been a while since ive read freud and i havent yet seen inception so i dont really want to talk about dreams. so ive got nothing more on that.

also, i used to tell my dad that beer tastes like green beans. he didnt believe me. and recently i havent thought so either. however. as i have just eaten a plate full of green beans and am now drinking a beer, i once again think the tastes are close.

30 min break in between ^ that and this v

right, so. bonnie 'prince' billy, will oldham, palace, palace brothers. whatever you want to call him. or rather, more like whatever he wants to call himself. his lyrics are just shocking. normal/normal/normal/disturbing. i like them. he makes everyone else seem normal/normal/normal/normal. same goes for death to everyone. for me this is basically a route course in the light/dark, overworld/underworld binary present in existentialism, for better or for worse. the irony of that question-'im actually living, are you?' because to the protag, living is decadent and to not be living is to not be decadent. does it make sense? yeah, kinda. theres certainly some grandeur in the decadence, especially in art. i mean what good writer/artist/musician wasnt dealing with a complete addiction to opiates for at least part of their productive lives (and usually their most prolific)? probably most are/were. for a while its positively correlated, then its, well, not. and to be clear and transparent, i certainly wouldnt want to be on opiates. nor would i want the people that build bridges and run our lives through wall street on them either (though i definitely think, especially in the case of wall street, that they are). but i digress, this song is not about heroin, it just sounds like it is.

that repetition of 'im stuck here, but here is where life is, where you are you are just pretending to live.' we've read it lots of times, but we rarely hear it, especially in a folk/antifolk context. thats what makes will oldham great. sure i love folk, more than most, but oftentimes its treatment of death in the city is maybe too, well, faulknerian and less rothian. or probably to be more accurate delilloian or reedian (as in lou). why do we, the read always have to add -ians and -isms? probably because its easier, and thats why im fine with it. and its like a nerd inside joke that isnt math or sci fi related. we have to cherish those. anyway.

i want to talk about the chorus, or one of the choruses. 'and it makes hosing/much more fun.' what is hosing? too be honest im not really sure but i ahve some guesses. oldham definitely builds a lot of songs around misuse of words, or by structuring new contexts around old words to create new meanings. i think here that 'hosing' certainly refers to the life he lives. whores and murder, maybe, but probably. more heavy than the whores than the murder i would bet, this isnt death metal. alas, both viable meanings of the term. this life is what he calls living, but by the Other is considered to be nonliving, or living in the underworld or disassociated from reality. the key subtlety here is that he acknowledges that his life is 'hosing.' by doing so is he subtely implicating himself as 'nonliving' then? the rebuttal being, 'life is hosing at its core, etc.' oftentimes thats what any similar discussion of existentialism falls back on, and thats why sartre ended up looking dumb and camus, by acknowledging absurdity looked substantially less so, but to many still pretty dumb. in short. in too short. but thats what im getting at. basically this guy knows hes fucked up, but is trying to justify his own existence. thats the key take away here. and we all do it every day.

woo

http://cnn.com/video/?/video/politics/2010/08/01/sotu.graham.favorite.sc.cnn


hahahahhaha lindsey....

feeling kind of mod

this is why shteyngart is awesome. love my nyc jewish friends. hahah james franco. no he actually isnt that russian. cant wait to pick this up.



always fun to hear musicians, especially avant garde ones, talk about artists, especially avant garde ones.

mark

new mark ronson. its ok. he always makes something derivative feel a little different, which is respectable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzE5dS6fnFk

the back of beyond

the back of beyond. horace kephart said that. i like to think about it.

been a while since ive done something good on here. how many times have i said that, quite i few i think.

had one of those parting thoughts last night before i fell asleep. i think it was about the civil war but i cant be sure. it was pretty good i think, cause i remember thinking about turning on the computer to blog about it right quick, but i didnt. oh well.

anyway, finished my last term paper today. turned out alright, i really like tracing stakeholder positions, especially when they are rooted in the 1930s. love my title too. If you build it will they come? discussions on cemeteries, the environment and economic development in the great smoky mountains national park.

right so i really like the be good tanyas. frazey ford is one of them.


very moogy and oscillating. which i like. robert moog had the perfect name for what he does.

cool read

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/song/gwelch.html

yeah, you right

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2010/07/listen-up-is-it-wicked-not-to-care.html

i like finding things

check out these guys



This fits well into some film soundtrack, somewhere.

The film adaptation about a novel bolano never wrote about africa. damn thatd be good. will anyone ever be able to adapt a bolano? i can see oliver stone ruining it. one of the nolans distracting it from its inherent reality. spielberg making it sappy. etc etc. the only people i think who can do it are inarritu and arriaga, but theyll ahve to start talking to each other again. but it has to happen.

great

i like stories

i

hiya

always loved this song

benin 1970

to her last birth to be broken up

what songs do i think of when i look at turners.

good question.

ill try to stick to the same paintings i talked about back around march, might add a few more.

im going to actually do hyperlinks, maybe ill learn their value.

self portrait- the grid-phillip glass. is he coming forth or going hence? probably coming forh

The fighting Temeraire- neighborhood #3 (power's out)-arcade fire- because the violin arrangement is being dragged along behind the rhythm and battery. industry vs enlightenment.

Snow storm: Hannibal and his army cross the Alps- crystal visions-the big pink- psychedalic, but what wasnt psychadelic about all those guys coming over the alps with elephants, looking like fools? talk about the meeting of hubris and frustration. hannibal is portrayed as comically tiny. the chorus is perfect. do you know the way to the silver covered road/by the city thats run dry/to the secret covered horse/and they're waiting for us to arrive.

Slavers Throwing overboard the Dead and Dying—Typhoon coming on- de natura Sonoris no. 2-penderecki- it just sounds like a shark attack from the perspective of someone watching from a boat. even has some ship's bell sort of effects thrown in. heat of the day too.

Modern Rome, Campo Vacino- 1901-Phoenix- i got to see this painting last summer (well i guess i saw all of these last summer) at the scottish national gallery with a big Turner in Italy exhibit they had running. it was good, cause to be honest down south in london they kind of want you to think that all turner ever did was english historical landscape watercolors. turns out thats wrong. so yeah, 1901. youre sitting on this hill, which to me is kind of like this hill, which is where i spent a good part of a month reading roberto bolano, kafka, jan neruda and kundera. you show up on the hill, hit play, and 15 seconds later the song really starts. that gap makes what youre seeing seem broad.

Rain, Steam and Speed- i've seen it all-bjork- a great train song. the rhythm in the song is the sound of a train along a track. not so limited in scope, as the strings and bjork lift the song a lot higher than a heavy train bound to rails.

Wreckers Coast of Northumberland- Venus in Furs-the velvet underground-I'm ceaselessly fascinated by the wreckers, whether they be on the cornish, scottish or northumbrian coasts. basically these were people who would take over lighthouses, cut their lights, and instead set up decoy lights designed to confuse the navigators of ships out at sea to the point where they would become lost and crash their ships onto rocks near the beach. the wreckers would then go out and plunder the ships. id love to write a novel on the topic.

thats good for now

damn you, pitchfork

pitchfork isnt much different than some orwellian-huxleyian hybrid of a music blog. it suits all of our musical needs and music is all of our needs. something like that. anyway. we know that there are better resources out there to get our music fix, ie the quietus, stereogum, drownedinsound, boomkat, etc. but we always turn to pitchfork.

alors. they had this new group up today. sort of a four tet/flylo mix on this track, with that 'flashing lights' sort of LA-ness to it. it exudes the 'look at me' confidence/narcissim that is uniquely LA. some of the others go a bit into dubstep, so thats good. anyway, keep your ears on them, they could be the second half of 2010's floating points.

and while were on the topic of huxley and orwell. listen to these guys.

http://boomkat.com/vinyl/319833-on-sylvain-chauveau-steven-hess-something-that-has-form-and-something-that-does-not

talking about dead white men

nothing peeves me more then when i hear the so called religious right, a group i believe to be grossly out of touch with the majority of americans, and certainly something totally unmainstream, talk about how we're a 'Christian nation' and the like, and then cite the founding fathers, that routine, that the constitution says we are (it doesnt), etc etc. i always wondered about that debate but never really looked at the roots of it, which i think is a necessary condition, especially when were talkin' constitution. sure i had an opinion on the separation of church and state, but it was one founded on the climate i live in and some scattered readings of jefferson, and not much in between. so today i wanted to look deeper into that debate and see what i could find.

heres it in brief. well sort of in brief. as brief as i could make it.

before we were a nation, we were a conglomeration of 13 colonies, with no central government (bar that of the crown) with very few legal and formal linkages between colonies. some colonies were private economic enterprises, some were set up by religious separatists seeking freedom, then georgia was a penal colony. we werent a nation in the political science or social definition (or really any other) nor were we trying to become one, in the beginning. after the first few generations of americans, or rather pre declaration of independence americans, curiously many political figures, and especailly those who would go on to found the country, maintained the an adherence to what would be considered anything but Christianity.

Sure we can look at our founding fathers and say most were in fact Christian. on the surface. Jefferson became a deist at william and mary and in his writings rejected the Trinity and that Jesus was the Messiah. he also claimed that the disciples were a"band of dupes and impostors." In what has become known as the Jefferson Bible, he trumpeted Jesus's moral philosophy, ommiting anything resembling a miracle (telling Adams that separating what he perceived to be fact from fiction was like 'picking diamonds out of dunghills'), citing his own research which supported the conclusion that miracles were later papal additions to the story, and that Paul created a corrupt institution. He also said that he believed the stories surrounding Jesus's birth would one day be viewed the same as Minerva's emergence from Jupiter's brain. Later in life, he considered himself a unitarian, then accepted as a branch of Christianity, just as that movement was beginning. he never joined a unitarian congregation, because there were none in virginia, and he died within a few years of that movements establishment. unitarians would go on to view jefferson as an important figure in their movement.

So far that addresses just his personal beliefs, which are important, in viewing the much wider implications of his legacy on public policy. Jefferson was a staunch advocate of the separation of church and state. Jefferson wrote his own epitaph, on it were only three things: author of the decl. of independence, the statute of virginia for religious freedom, and the founder of the university of virginia. prior to writing of the statute for religious freedom, office holders in virginia had to swear allegiance to Christianity. The episcopal church was also funded by state level taxes. in the law, it was stated that there could be no interference by virginia in the personal religious beliefs of individuals, and that it could not affect their civic standing. We can't talk about jefferson's interpretation of religion via the dec. of independence, because, and many people fail to realize this, religion was never discussed. Words that are said: Nature's God (the way deists describe the creator), Creator (every religion has one of these), Divine Providence and Supreme Judge (simply appeals to a higher being).

Later, jefferson would vigourously defend the separation of church and state as it was in the 1st amendment, referring to it as 'the wall of separation'. he did not see a place for state religion in government, nor government in religion. he even defended the morality of the atheists, a pretty hot button issue, then and now. read some of his letters on the topic, all are illuminating, but at the same time are too many words to put on here.

i guess the logical progression would be to go to john adams next. starting with his core beliefs. adams was a self described unitarian. initially a congregationalist, he became unitarian when the congregationalist movement formed/evolved/whatevered into unitarianism. Adams too rejected the Trinity. he was perhaps the second most important founding father (a lot will say the most) but didn't add much to the religious side of the debates. pretty straightforward guy there.

we're not really going to talk about washington, because he wasnt really a founding father. but its worth mentioning that he was another of those episcopal turned deists who still retained a christian morality. he never took communion after becoming an adult.

ben franklin. one of the more complex ones, because like everything else he did in life, he went back and forth. Adams described him as a 'man which people saw their own religion'. for all intents and purposes another deist who rejected the Trinity. perhaps hes best described as a 'generalist' who believed primarily in virtue and not in perceived dogma. also an early proponent of separation of church and state, believing that a good church is one that can support itself. when it cant, and God can't, then its a bad one. <-his words in brief.

paine. the one that got the whole things started, but now the one that nobody gives a crap about. tragic the way history is. anyway. he wrote 'the age of reason' which basically got him killed when he went back to england, the country of his birth. it advocated deism, highlighted perceived inconsistencies in the Bible which he called 'fabulous mythology' and not the true word of God or that the Gospels were even written by the disciples, and advocated the free thinking ideals of the enlightenment, that reason should triumph over revelation. believed church and state needed to be separated through radical means, or else they would become corrupt. his creed:
I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life.
I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavouring to make our fellow-creatures happy.
But, lest it should be supposed that I believe many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them.
I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish Church, by the Roman Church, by the Greek Church, by the Turkish Church, by the Protestant Church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church.
All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.
I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe
so that was basically him.

Now who the Christian right really needs to be citing is patrick henry. although he never signed the declaration or the constitution. he was like basically the only prominent political (ie non church) figure in that crowd to advocate for state Christianity. there are like a million letters between him and the other guys where they yell at each other. he strongly belived in state sponsored religion, and tried to pass a bill giving taxes to churches, but that individuals could earmark and decide to which church their tax went. non deist episcopalians supported it, everybody else shut it down. the act that passed in its place was jeffersons statute on religious freedom.

Madison. father of the constitution. atheist? probably. born an episcopalian, pretty much like the rest of them. he kept his views pretty private, but in his day as well as today, its thought he was an atheist. this is informed in part from correspondences and statements, and also for his vigorous defence of the separation of church and state at the state and national levels, though that defence cant make him an atheist. he certainly didnt practice anything in particular, that much is known, but much of the rest is inference. God, or anything Christian was never mentioned in teh constitution until the bill of rights was passed, a couple of years later. the two clauses in the first amendment that deal with religion, the establishment and the free exercise clause, say congress can't make a law establishing a state religion, nor can they pass laws preventing the free exercise of a religion.

monroe-never really said anything on the topic. they think he was another one of the deist by way of episcopalian though.

hamilton-became religious and more Christian-er later in life, but at the time of the constitutional conventions he made jokes about God. one often cited one is that he was asked why the word God doesnt appear in the Constitution and replied 'We forgot it.' one might question the context of this statement, but hamilton was a notorious sarcastic so its accepted that this was in jest.

i guess thats about all of the big ones right.

its interesting really when you think about it, that conventional wisdom has lumped the puritans in with the founding fathers, when tehy couldnt be more different. the founding fathers, barring henry and a few lesser signers, were all philosophically borne out of enlightment tradition and not christian theo-social paradigms. The american revolution, and americas foundation as a country were not triumphs of Christian ideals, that religious victory occured with the formation of the colonies that made the later formation of the country possible, it does in fact appear to be the other way around.

The ultimate irony, which is comedic to a point, is that by promoting state sponsored religion as an american ideal, proponents are aiming for the same policy that was a primary input for america to be formed to begin with. it was the rebellion by minority religions and sects against the crown's state episcopalianism that sent so many across the atlantic to begin with. so for a country who, in its formative years in the late 1700s united behind principles of religious tolerance and freedom, to promote this ideal goes totally against the spirit and the word of our founding fathers and documents. luckily though, even guys like john roberts have read the constitution. so yeah, religious right, take back the country and take it to.....george's 18th century England? good riddance.

i have to admit, i learned a lot from this. i thought t jeff and madison were the ones going against the grain, i didnt realize that they actually represented the majority.

i thought it went like this-christian guys get together and write down some stuff saying that we're free to practice whatever religion we want, but that the spirit of the writing indicates that it damn well better be christian.

i didnt realize that it was more like-guys who would be considered heretics today (seems like itd be hard for people to call obama a 'half breed muslin' today if they knew about our founders, wouldnt it?), but were mainstream with their beliefs then, got together and wrote some stuff that pretty much did actually mean, in spirit and in words, that in the eyes of the state, we're free to practice what we want.

its really astonishing me to think that we as Christians have let this Christian nation paradigm permeate, which many argue is born out of the cold war differentiation complex, and did not exist any earlier than that. the Godded americans vs the Godless soviets. i mean we always forget that in the pledge of allegiance they didnt add the 'one nation under God' until 1954, when things were starting to kick off between us and them. Certainly this notion solidified under reagan for the same reason, hell ill even agree with them and say that the nationalistic hoopla in the 80s let us beat the commies once and for all. consequence though-it was a whole hell of a lot easier to fight them than it is the organs without bodies that we face today. or is it rather the organs with bodies, taht we refuse/fail to understand. but thats a different direction and question entirely.

full of it tonight

whoever said writing comes in waves was probably an author. no shit. anyway, im on one of those. been listening to the new transatlantic sessions disc, which is actually the original but remastered.

probably what i would call my best thing ive written so far would be what i did for ib music senior year, tying the musical traditions of the southern appalachians with those of scotland and ireland. it was a no brainer in a lot of ways, but its kind of the cornerstone for everythign that i have written since. big point with it was connections and linkages arent singular. for any two things theres more than one link between them. same goes for that. makes looking at the world a little different. also for good economics.

music, words, thinking, talking, all of it.

cant embed. heres some good stuff though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urB_EuOb2rY&feature=related

aint it good

to see these two singing together. there is hope yet for the those left lost by the everybodyfields.

May 2010 from Jill Andrews on Vimeo.

odd shaped objects

when interpol emerged in 2002ish, from presumably an s&m club in some f-ed up alleyway in hells kitchen, nyc, everybody paid attention. given their origins as nyu students i totally believe it. (both being privileged and depraved)

for a while they made it fashionable to mix cocaine, cigarettes, books, and the words of 'the wasteland.' and weirdly shaped objects, as witnessed in nearly every one of their videos. most often through furniture and bjorkesque/neogeisha/matrix chique girls doing odd things on top of said furniture, interpol and their music video directors created a sort of stylistic ethic around the band to rival radiohead before them arcade fire after, at least for the 'mainstream indie' consciousness (the words not as contradictory as they may appear). it was effective, it translated to great live shows as i can attest having seen them, and the music wasnt half bad either. now though, it all just feels pedestrian. the first two albums are gold, and are going to hold up to time pretty well. but for anything new, that scene is just dead and gone, especially when carlos d, the most vividly terrifying member. all in all though, not bad for a band who took from joy division and ts eliot and didnt contribute much themselves.

live they were just cool, especially in the swampy feeling tabernacle in atlanta. spartan set design, wearing all black, hardly any stage lights, most light coming from the member's cigarettes during the show. plenty loud too.

heres the newest, which looks like the oldest. but sounds much worse. time for me to go listen through 'turn on the bright lights' and think about 2002, which for all intents and purposes was four thigns for me. this album, 'amnesiac,' 'is this it' and 'rush of blood to the head.' that was a good year. a year id do again. its amazing how new those albums felt. they all come together so well in the context of that year. theyre all of course defined by 9-11. amnesiac predicted it, rush of blood thought less of it, turn on the bright lights found something else despite it, and is this it said fuck it.