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Friday, May 20, 2005
this is not greenday
"004: Neutral Milk Hotel
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
[Merge; 1998]
There are very few albums that resist categorization quite so effortlessly as In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. For forty staggering minutes, Jeff Mangum short-circuits all conventional modes of expression, forging a private language that is endlessly intriguing and haunting in the truest sense of the word. Mangum sings as if possessed, painfully conveying fractured and moving tales with the imagistic skill of a brilliant novelist. He gnashes his teeth at the fabric of time, then wraps himself in it like a blanket, channeling the violence of his personal past through a claustrophobic frustration with his dejected present. His band, whose contributions to Aeroplane remain criminally underappreciated, elevate Mangum's songs from chilling sketches into vibrant opuses, fully realizing the antique otherworldliness of Mangum's storytelling.
Opening with the achingly gorgeous nostalgia of "The King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1", Aeroplane immediately plays upon a potent conflation of cultural and personal past. The world of Aeroplane is haunted by Anne Frank-- the specter of childhood's unimpeachable innocence amidst the unfathomable horror of the holocaust. In the feverish "Oh Comely", Mangum longs to save her in "some sort of time machine." By "Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2", the album's indelible and heartbreaking closing track, he seems to have resigned himself to loving a ghost, singing with a thoroughly unnerving blend of heartbreak and exhaustion: "In my dreams you're alive, and you're crying/ As your mouth moves in mine, soft and sweet." The way people have been affected by Aeroplane is ample proof of its power and uniqueness. Like all classic art, it is widely misunderstood; yet to some, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea has become a riddle the likes of The Wasteland-- an impossibly rich text that begs to be deciphered, yet continually evades any singular interpretation. --Matt LeMay"
Thursday, May 19, 2005
that torrs it
**Bob Dylan - Going Going Guam (The "Complete" Rolling Thunder 1976 Rehearsals)
**Cream 1967-10-15 Grande Ballroom - Detroit, MI (SBD)
**The Carpenters Clean-Living Millionaires Live In Japan 1972
**Arlo Guthrie's Gerde's Folk City1966 SB
**The Shins 2005-05-15 Portland, OR
**Bloc Party, 2005-05-16 , Pinkpop
**Elvis Costello 2005-03-09 Nashville with Emmylou Harris
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
man of the times
"People think nothing of ordering a $25 martini at the hotel bar -- but pay fifty bucks for archived material at the Times? Oh my God!"
Monday, May 16, 2005
zone din
"Alderson presented charts and actual game footage to make his point. Nobody was surprised by his assertion that the top of the strike zone was being called about waist high. The rulebook calls for the top of the zone to be at the letters. This would raise the zone by at least 10 inches, and everyone knew that a change of that magnitude was outrageous. So, the mandate was to call it roughly halfway between the waist and the letters, or from another perspective, just above the belly button. As a former pitcher, this sounded reasonable to me."
indestructably beat
The Kinks - Act Nice And Gentle
Sly and The Family Stone - Chicken
Gotan Project - The Man (el hombre remix)
Grateful Dead - The Only Time Is Now
Wali and the Afro Caravan - Hail the King
Budo - Miles Davis
Margie Joseph - What You Gonna Do?
The Faces - Pool Hall Richard
Edith Piaf - C'est Un Monsieur Trés Distinguè
Winston Francis - A Little Today, A Little Tommorow
Saturday, May 14, 2005
take me to the bridge
this here link has a frightening amount of music blog links. something fo everyone.
Thursday, May 12, 2005
flash card
GRANDMASTER FLASH & THE FURIOUS FIVE - live @ Auto Bonn (Audubon) Ballroom, New York City, NY December 23rd 1978 - soundboard recording
mushed ass...heee....oooh'd
"According to a shock claim by Larry Flynt and Hustler magazine, trumpeted on the Raw Story site, Bolton was a paid visitor to Plato’s Retreat, which in the seventies brought together many people of differing viewpoints, penis and bra-cup sizes, much as the United Nations has done since its founding. Perhaps Bolton went (if he indeed went—we must preserve the benefit of doubt) for the excellent buffet, of which the owners of Plato’s Retreat always expressed pride. I understand the conversations in the buffet line could get quite racy. ("Hey, this salad dressing tastes funny...") Or perhaps it was the aromatic atmosphere he couldn’t resist as he padded around in a white towel and flipflops. According to one former enthusiast, "One of the things I'll never never never forget -I think it was Plato's Retreat - it was walking in and having a waft of red energy, but it had no thorns in it, everyone was there consenting to be there. Everyone was there for the same purpose. It was so hot and so heavy.""
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
toodayessaday
the herbaliser - 8 stong men
they might be giants - dr worm
built to spill - shameful dread
miles davis - concerto de aranjuez
ray charles - wichita lineman
eddie floyd - knock on wood
astrud gilberto - wish me a rainbow
pretty things - i see you
polysics - im a worker
johnny cash - there you go
kleptocrats unite!
"King Abdullah of Jordan has agreed to pardon Ahmed Chalabi, the controversial Iraqi political leader, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison for fraud after his bank collapsed with $300m (£160m) in missing deposits in 1989."