Jor Fon -BoodGye

END

Brian, I am sorry that I didn't know you as well as I'd have liked to. I remember what I knew of you very well. You were unremittingly kind and always had a very earnest, bright smile to spare for me, even when your words were quiet and few. I remember seeing your art and thinking that someday I'd probably see it hung on a wall in a gallery, or, more likely, see a photo in the newspaper depicting it hanging on a wall in a gallery. Your art tended to reflect you and gave me the impression that I knew you better than I did.

When my father died, the first friend I called was Seth, who was for his own reasons unable to respond as I needed him to. The second friend I called was Nate, and not because he was secondary to me, but because I didn't wish to give him the weight of another loss to deal with, even if it was not his loss. He had known my father. Everyone had, since my parents welcomed my friends to our house at all hours. My father liked to come and tell everyone the worst and most controversial jokes that his students had told him, to make them laugh, and if they didn't laugh loud enough, my mother would compensate by laughing louder. Sometimes my father would even subject you and my other friends to his music in the hopes of educating you, although you all and I certainly gave him plenty of our own to hear, and he took be amused or simply bemused by. Anyway, you were all welcome, and you liked my family, and we liked you.

Nate knew what to do. He came right away to the hospital and held my hand as I wept. The next day, he brought you to my house, and you asked what the two of you could do. I said, "Come with me to the funeral and sit with me and my mom. I need you all there." Brian, you came dressed like a dandy in your magenta suit and hat, with the black carnation pinned to the lapel. You were somber without wearing black. You were striking and creative even then. You hugged me, my mother, my uncle, my father's best friend, everyone. Everyone got time and words of condolence. You put your heart out there. I didn't know you well, but it meant a lot that you were the one Nate turned to to help him deal with what that must have stirred up for him. Nate is a very good judge of character, so I feel that I know you more because of his high opinion of you.

You were also the one who came to lie beside me on Nate's floor when we are were drunk on wine together, saying, "Is this being drunk, then? I've never been drunk before..." You giggled, and I smiled. You turned an innocent face to the world and always showed interest in what you didn't already know, even something so mundane as getting punchy on wine.

You had just moved to Kansas City not too long before with your girlfriend Heather when I was planning my birthday party. It had been a while since I or any of us had seen you. Brian, I am so sorry I forgot to invite you. And I wish that I had. That was the night you were killed, shot to death by a mugger when you were taking out your wallet to give it to him and he thought you were pulling a gun. I thought for so long about how me inviting you might have saved your life. I am so sorry I forgot about you when I could have changed that. But maybe I couldn't have changed that. We'll never know. I will always wonder, and I will always remember your face as you turned it to me to smile and say, "That's interesting! I hadn't known that."

Metallica

Timeless Ninny poo

Aohn Janderson

I used to work in a pizza place. In the mornings I opened the store for the lunch rush with a retired Southwestern Bell employee named Ron. He used to sing this song in the mornings - I never liked it, but he sang it exactly the way John Anderson sings it and somehow managed to sound exactly like him as well. After I quit working at the pizza place I ran into him a few times and we became friends on Facebook, but we really lost touch.

Then one day, out of the blue, he just showed up at my house. We had been grocery shopping and had just returned home and Ron pulled up in his big grey truck, smoking a cigar (he would go on long drives to hide his smoking habit from his wife). It was a random happenstance - he'd just happened to be driving by, didn't know that we lived there. But it seemed like it wasn't random, for some reason. Ron already knew the older kids, they'd met while we were working together, but he had never seen the baby. She was still a baby at the time, and Ron smiled in his exaggerated, toothy way. Then he say goodbye and drove off. A month later I heard he died. Didn't get to make it to the funeral.

Ron loved dogs. And he loved children. And he loved country music. And he loved talking to people. And he loved it when things at the lunch counter ran smoothly. He didn't really mind when they didn't (which, due to my, um, unprepared ((read: hungover)) state, was often), and I was lucky to know him.

Thank you Ron.

Love,
Jack.

Week 52 Rules

Friends: Today marks the almost one year anniversary of the birth of this blog. It also, coincidentally, marks the one year anniversary of the last full day the man that inspired this blog, Jon Ashline, drummer and vocalist for The Screamin' Mee-Mee's, was alive. I don't know if I told any of you this, but this blog was started as a tribute to his memory, and it feels like an appropriate time to end it. We have provided Mr Ashline, and his spirit if it is still out there, with almost a year worth of great music to enjoy. A new song every day of the week. I didn't know Jon well, I considered him a friend but doubt he thought of me in the same way, but I did know him well enough to know that a present like this would be something he would appreciate.

Your last assignment is to post something for a friend that has passed on. Let's define "friend" loosely - family members, acquaintances, people you hardly knew, Kurt Cobain, whatever. I don't want this to be a painful thing, instead I'd like it to be joyful, celebratory, something to help us all just kind of move on, I guess. You don't have to name the friend you're dedicating the song to, but I would like to read something about the person if you feel so inclined to write something. I think Jon would too. 

I can't thank all of you enough in helping me with this project. Even Krista, who flaked and passed out on the whole thing, thanks for at least having an interest. I love you all, even when you're late for work (Kyanimal).

Thank you.

Jack.  

Arlo's Theme

lipopolysaccharide.

levels

If you heard this song every day for a month at Thai beach bars, you'd dug it too.

Gaëtan Roussel -- "Dis-moi encore que tu m'aimes"

"Dis-moi encore que tu m'aimes" = tell me again that you love me. I'll spare you my blablabla this week because children don't read.

Saul Pimon

Week 51 Rules

Contributors:

On October 25 of this year, our friend Kyanimal, who is a good person, welcomed a new addition to his family. Kyanimal hasn't posted in a few weeks because he's been a bit, well, distracted, I suppose is the best way to describe it. 

We've all become really good at this game over the last year. Let's welcome his new baby into the world with style. 

Post something that makes you feel good. 

Only one rule: 

This is for a child - no obscenities.

PS: Our work here is almost done.  

Goo Goo Muck

You better duck when I show up.

A Response to Ms Honey Bear

@Thea: yr-l#st-post====+ ma+++de me of ths per
                                                                               for
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                       ThnkUU and ariga
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Ped Rouse Hainters

Cill Ballahan (jcakp covers for Kyanimal)

The part about the doll. The part about the doll.

The Misfits!

Hands 2 Hold U Down

This song has given me the chills every time I've listened to it. For your perusal, here are the lyrics, which appear to be written by a clinically depressed, lovestruck 20-something who thinks most things are "amazing" when she is not crying and listening to the soundtrack to "Purple Rain:"

"2 HANDS 2 HOLD U DOWN )) yrs + mine )) life is amazin )) yr amazin

2 HANDS )) ive got U now )) dont u ever die )) life is amazin )) yr amazin

werent we sad from tha start?

black earth runs inside my heart

runs deep inside U

run in2 tha flame"

This song is scary because it evokes what I feel when I am starting to fall in love with someone; that feeling of hope that you will be happy, of desire for someone whose flaws you can't see, that fear of fucking everything up and losing someone whom you'd never want to lose, and of losing your hopes and joy and desire along with them. I know that the song is sexy and provocative, but I can't help but feel its coldness, too. I think that the songwriters very deliberately juxtaposed rather romantic, sexy lyrics, with alienating, alienated music -- fuzzed-out synths, distorted bass and vocals, and a vocal track that sounds so distant from the rest of the song -- to create tension and discomfort. However, I wonder if it isn't true that a lot of other love songs deal in fear, anxiety, and desperation anyway, even ones that aren't trying to create an uncomfortable ambiance. I am thinking of Motown songs in particular, for some reason. "Baby, I need your loving. Got to have all your loving." "Stop, in the name of love, before you break my heart." "Why do you build me up, buttercup, just to let me down?" Love is a place where we make ourselves fragile, where the vulnerability of even the most brutish individual is revealed. Love is a mental and emotional mode of joy and reassurance, but it is also often one that invites rampant insecurity. Love is scary.

I am pretty easily scared, though, to be fair. Those of you who know me know that I've had severe problems with depression and anxiety since I was a child. I was diagnosed with bipolar illness at age 13, but I'm not lucky enough to be someone who gets hypomania or mania. I have had five manic episodes in my life and countless depressions. These days, I am not depressed much anymore, except for when it's dark outside a lot (thanks, Seasonal Affective Disorder. SAD, ha ha!) or I have things in my life making me sad, like losses, because I take medications, exercise, and go to therapy. But I am afraid that I was not always an easy person to know, especially in my teens. While I am not as prone to depression as I was then, or as anxious, I can still get very anxious around certain types of new challenges.  Those of you who don't know me can imagine what it must be like to know someone who has these problems, who is always a bit more nervous and jumpy than other people over something simple like taking an exam, driving to a new place for the first time, or going to a party and meeting new people. Or someone who sometimes looks physically weighed down with concerns, or whose blank face makes them stand out of a room of people with dynamic, laughing smiles and animated, sparkling eyes, a person who cries if a certain song comes on the radio. You can imagine that this complicates love for people like me at least as much as it complicates simpler things.

As song this song shows, falling in love (or just a good day) can let you sort of forget or conceal your disposition toward nervousness; life can be amazing. People like me don't always show the world how nervous we are. We disguise our nervousness in normalcy, just as this song disguises it with the format of a song about love and sex. We smile brightly and tell jokes to compensate, tell everyone what we're happy about, insist that we never should have had that last cup of coffee. However, what you don't get to see is the worst of our anxiety, because when it's at its worst, we are hiding and not showing anything of ourselves to anyone else. Avoidant behavior characterizes anxiety as much as feeling worried does. Isolating yourself, not talking to friends and other people who love you, procrastinating, and leaving places when you're uncomfortable are the most common "negative symptoms" that characterize anxiety disorder. (In the lingo of psychiatry, negative symptoms represent the stuff that people with psychiatric disorders stop doing. These are usually things that most healthy and functional people do to have a relatively normal life, such as eating, sleeping, working, going out, bathing, etc. Positive symptoms are things like feeling worried, feeling depressed, auditory hallucinations, delusions, feeling the urge to do, then doing compulsive behaviors like checking or counting, etc.) 

Perhaps you think it's weird that I think this song is about anxiety and you didn't notice that on first listen. However, for me, the negative symptoms of my anxiety are always the ones that I believe go unnoticed, because they are an absence of action rather than me doing something weird that will be noticed. Believing that no one sees my anguish both comforts me, because it allows me to think I'm passing as a normal person, yet it also alienates me, because I think that my invisible unhappiness can never be acknowledged and understood by another person. I do the same thing with my depression. I will hide it from everyone if I can, because I am ashamed that I can't just shake it and be free of its affliction. For me, the people I love are sometimes the ones from whom I most wish to conceal my anxiety and depression, because I don't wish to burden them or make them worry about me. However, I usually end up telling them, because I trust them and don't want to hide anything from them. I try to allow myself to be vulnerable.

This song's vulnerability is arresting. The gauzy, somewhat hollow-sounding, half-whispered words "you're amazing" are like what you'd say while half-asleep in your lover's arms. "Don't you ever die" is a plea for the ephemeral, formless feeling of perfect love to reify itself and become something substantial that we can keep in our grasp. It is a wistful wish for a moment to crystallize, arrest itself, become an insect trapped in a drop of solidifying amber, a gem to slip into our pocket. The vocals in the background, slowed down to an unearthly timbre and drawl, sound like a woman crying; they repeat the plea like La Llorona, a weeping ghost calling a soul back to life and love rather than to the realm of death. Please, don't make me lose you. Please, don't let me fuck this up. I'm still sad sometimes, but I've got you, and you're amazing. You are helping me forget how sad I am, and I'm so nervous and scared that you will leave me because I did something wrong, and then I'll be sad because you're gone, and because I'm alone again. This song is confrontational, in a way, because it allows fear and anxiety to enter the conversation, but not to suck all the air from the room and extinguish the flame. It is not an avoidant song, even though it deals with anxiety in its bleak, brittle soundscape and by pleading "don't you ever die."

This could be me projecting my own tendency to become anxious about fucking up good things when I've got them, of course. We all bring our own subjectivity to every task, including interpreting music and texts. This song is vulnerable, but is it as scared/scary as it sounds to me? I am perfectly aware that I have fucked up good things in the past, and that this song could have been sung to me, and it scares me that I was so inwardly focused and selfish in my depression and anxiety that my friends, lovers, and family members would think to me, "Don't die. Please, don't die." I left my half-conscious body for my parents to find after overdosing on medicines. I tried this two weeks before my best friend and I were going to see Sepultura, but mainly thought better of it because it would suck to die without seeing Sepultura with my best friend, so I claimed I'd made a mistake so I could be sent home. We went to the concert, then a week later, I did it again. I didn't think of how upsetting this would have been for my best friend, or my parents, or for other friends and family, or for the school nurse who had to help me call 911 the first time. I didn't imagine how my father, who found his father's body after his suicide in 1971, might have been anguished by my inability to hang on to my life in the face of depression, anxiety, severe bullying at school, and the other, more usual problems of being an immature teenager (keep in mind that I was skipped two years in school, and so was a 12-year-old child facing the older-kid drama of high school during my freshman year).

I couldn't have told you that life was amazing when I was 15. I never made a real and consistent secret of my suicidal depression and paralyzing anxiety to the people closest to me, blithely unaware of how this probably terrified them because they knew I had not been afraid to try to end my life before. It scares and saddens me that I was so blind as a teenager not to understand how I was not only hurting myself. It scares me to think I simply tried to avoid my life without understanding what losing me would mean to the people I loved, to know how they'd have tried to hang on to my hand and beg me not to die, if I'd not hidden myself and my agony from them, afraid to burden them, until I couldn't handle it by myself anymore.

Yes, I'm not suicidal anymore. Life is pretty amazing. I deal with my sadness in part with music, by letting others sing my terror out for me, and by writing about what's on my mind rather than stuffing it down. I haven't made a suicide attempt or been in a psychiatric hospital since I was 17. But I'm still sad and nervous. I'm also afraid that anyone who knows that, who knows what I did, will automatically not love me. To me, the most terrifying part of love is not only allowing myself to be vulnerable and to trust a new person, but to "run into the flame" -- to put aside my fears, and go ahead and try to love and be loved. I doubt sometimes that I am good enough to love and be loved. After all, my awareness of every mistake I ever made in previous relationships haunts me. The egregious things I did as a suicidally depressed teenager, acting as though not even the purest love from the kindest and most devoted people could retain me from exiting my then-miserable existence... well, those things appall me now if I think about them for a while. 

I worry that even if "I've got (someone) now," I am really just still the person who made those mistakes, even if I don't make the same kind of mistakes, or on the same scale. It scares me to think that no matter how much I love someone, I am going to make some kind of mistake, because people do that. I will be too involved with my work. I will forget something he asks me to do. I will be too nervous and that will be off-putting. People tend to make mistakes from time to time, but I fear that I will make a more serious mistake that will hurt someone or disgust someone. I fear that they will not forgive me, and that they will disappear. I am scared to simply trust that someone who loves me will forgive me, and I'm scared to run into the flame holding their hand. I have been sad from the start and now I have to believe that someone could forgive me for my sadness and tendency to be human. That is easier said than done. This song makes it sound easy if you just look at the words, but the way it sounds sad and cold betrays insecurity and the fear of letting go and trusting.

Well, sorry, everyone. I hope that everyone I hurt before has forgiven me by now. I'm really not that scary these days, anyway. However, this song reminds me that the kernel of terror nestled in the black earth of my heart, that germ of unquiet doubt longing to push out a stem toward the sun, still lives within me. It reminds me that to be happy, I must somehow acknowledge it while not letting it beleaguer me with its incessant whirl of anxiety. I must not allow myself to avoid my chance to be happy. This song calls forth my greatest fears, actually. I'm scared of fucking up good things that make me happy. But generally, I am happy. I just can hear the unhappiness and happiness within this song because I feel both. That duality is also scary. 

I really hope that you aren't as scared by this song as I am. I think that White Ring made a masterful album, but I hope they are happier people than their music would lead you to believe.

Uh... Happy Halloween! Boo! Etc.

Slliot Emith

The image of the sailor and the boy in the first verse has always freaked me out.

Week 50 Rules

Contributors: Same as last week. Scary shit.

Shadow Crypt

Demented are Go - a personal favorite.

The Misfits

Like I'd pick anyone else 

Chronic Schizophrenia

What could possibly be more terrifying than losing control of your mind, and knowing you had... and know that you couldn't ever get it back? From all accounts, Wesley Willis was a friendly and genteel soul who relied extensively on music -- creating it, listening to it, talking about, writing songs about other bands and songs -- to ease his often-derailed, aggravated mind. My friend Galen attests that Wesley, who enjoyed pancakes a lot, was the nicest guy you could imagine. My meeting with Wesley involved him refusing to let me buy him a soda until I'd said "rock," then "roll," then headbutted him. This happened nine times. Do you see that bump in his forehead? It feels like the stone inside of a peach. Imagine a peach pit crushing itself into your forehead with great force, your skull grinding against another human's. This hurts a lot. But this was a pretty rock 'n' roll salutation, and I endured this for Wesley, who ended up getting frustrated near the end of his set, leading to him swearing and yelling at his audience. There was no visible provocation for his outburst, but it is pretty clear that what was going on inside his head was tormenting him all evening. He seemed a bit dour even when greeting me, his brief smile flashing through the cast of worry and fear making his face at the moment I told him that I hoped he'd play some of my favorite songs. I named each of them. His grin widened, then fell, and then he mustered, gravely, "Say 'rock.' Now say 'roll.' Now head-butt me. Do it again."

Wesley's songs are known for their outlandish storytelling -- whupping Batman's ass, breaking out strangers' windshields, being best friends with musicians he's never met -- but can also tell very sincerely heartrending stories about life with a chronic mental illness. This song lays it bare: he can't escape the voices, they mock him and call him names, and he "start(s) raving" in public places, embarrassing himself, unable to hear his music above the chattering calumnious din of abusive voices in his own mind. This song and "Outburst" offer a painful glimpse into the life of a man not only ill, but pained by his symptoms and his awareness of how he seems to others. I have to wonder how it was for him to have smirking hipsters come up to him at shows, giggling about his songs. Say what you will about Wesley Willis's musical talent, but every song was him putting a piece of himself into the world, opening a window into his life for us to peer through. Some of us laugh at what we observe, but he was quite courageous for letting us see. My friends, what I see in these sadder songs scares me quite a bit. I can't imagine what he must have gone through, even with his matter-of-face recounting of his symptoms. This is, I suppose, because he eliminates any description of his emotions around knowing that he was ill. Perhaps those would have been too painful for him to make into art, even if he could have done so. Maybe he did write songs about how he felt about his illness, but chose not to share them with the world. I feel, though, that an empathetic listener can easily imagine the fear, hurt, and alienation he must have experienced during his most lucid moments. Imagining how that must have felt, dear reader, is more terrifying to me than imagining anything like vampires or zombies, possibly because I think those things cannot happen, but this could happen to any of us.

Fiolent Vemmes

I have two daughters now. Gordon Gano should have done a day or two in jail for writing this song.

Week 49 Rules

Contributors: Halloween is coming up. I trust we're all big fans around here.

Please post a scary song for me.

"Monster Mash" does not count. I don't care who is covering it.

Also, this is a two week celebration, so same rules for next week.

Coconut!

Had to jump on it...glad no one went there yet. ;)

This is not the same as the Nina Simone song! The metaphor of strange fruit can be twisted in many different ways...

Bamper Can Veethoven

wEEK 48 bANNANAS1!!12 (SockmOnkey socks jackllsls)

Post a song that has something to do with fruit.

Peaches Featuring Iggy Pop

This is a real gem, makes me want to destroy things in the most sexual way. Good video too.

AAHHHHAHAHAHAHA

                                                   TOOOOO FUNNY!

Helmet/House of Pain

I considered Public Enemy/Antrax but it lost points for single-handedly inventing rap metal.  I also considered Dylan/Cash, but Bob Dylan is Jack's lane.  90's one-hit-wonders are more my thing.  On that logic, what can be better than a collaboration between two 90's one-hit-wonder artists?  Plus, these were very well respected one-hit wonder bands. This is not a collaboration between Len and Marcy Playground (though if such a song existed, I would certainly dig it). This was the first song on a soundtrack that everybody owned to a movie that nobody saw.  Awesome.

Huinya

I have a truly soft spot for this collaboration between the Tiger Lillies and Leningrad. This is the title track off of the album, which consists of many Tiger Lillies songs translated into Russian and performed in a ribald and burlesque fashion by Leningrad (which is typical for Leningrad, of course), with the overseeing influence of the Tiger Lillies, except for two songs which are the reverse. While I like the Tiger Lillies, there is something about listening to them for long periods of time that makes me a bit nuts... this is probably due to Martyn Jacques' shrill voice, rather than anything about the music itself. I do like how bitter and hateful their lyrics are, though, and this song (which is "Crap" in English) echoes my own sentiments about popular media fairly well:

"there's crap on the records, there's crap on CD,
it's got to be crap, it's an industry.
this crap makes me angry, this crap makes me sad,
cause this crap, yes this crap, yes this crap is so bad.

yes, this crap, this crap, crap, crap... (etc.)

crap on the television, crap on TV,
it's got to be crap, it's an industry.
well this crap is a sickness, this crap's a disease,
this crap rots our brains and brings us to our knees."

Something about changing the linguistic code to Russian but not changing the lyrics substantially is pretty delightful, too. Russian pop music has always been pretty far behind Western music; in much of Eastern Europe, the pop music of the 90's and even the 80's is still much beloved. Russian rock music, developed in isolation from Western music for so long, is actually a pretty interested proposition, as it tends to include lyrics themes and even music motifs that are typically Russian, a sort of in-joke that outsiders might not enjoy without further study and decoding. Leningrad is a great example of rock music that is a pastiche of East and West, and includes many jokes and strong language that Russians, and maybe not many other people, would understand. (Actually, they aren't always understood at home; the group has been banned from plaing in several cities before, including their hometown of St. Petersburg.) However, Russian pop music and TV are both pretty godawful, and tend toward pretty blatant sexism and objectification of women, political extremism, banality, and other things that aren't enjoyable to many consumers. 

This song has always struck me as a great consumer's complaint; now that Russia has joined the capitalist world, they are well overdue for their own chance to find the product offered to them unsatisfactory, though doing it using a cultural idiom borrowed from Western culture is both strangely inappropriate (not that satirical songs haven't existed in Russian history, but actually translating and covering a British band's song directly?? This seems a little bit "foreign," still) yet perfectly appropriate in a historical sense (using the Western band's song and medium of choice for critiquing their own media, a media whose influences also come from the West; Russian media is now, of course, a privatized product, using the production, editing and semiotics of the West, etc.) Again, a great intersection of East and West can be found in Russian popular music, but this song makes that intersection a little more blatant in several ways.

Lou Costello and Elvis Reed

There's nothing odd about this collaboration. But Lou Reed... Wow... Just...

Week 47 Rules

Contributors: It is collaboration week.

Please post your favorite odd collaboration by two artists.

Bing Crosby and David Bowie doing "The Little Drummer Boy" does not count.

Joe Maneri - Paniots Nine

Mushroom Jazz

Rigby

cool.

Thrash Jazz Assassin

You asked for it. I don't know a lot about John Zorn, other than that 1) he rules, 2) he is quite prolific, and 3) he does albums of Judaica (of his own special brand, sometimes, but yes), and that I laughed at a friend who hails from a distant land once because he exclaimed incredulously, "John Zorn is JEWISH?!?!?!?" (Granted, this was the same friend who had somehow given me a similar spit-take with "Leonard Cohen is JEWISH???" not long before, so please forgive my rudeness.) The John Zorn incident led to me verbally making a list of awesome musicians who are Jewish (Chuck Schuldiner was near the top) while laughing uproariously. Anyway, I am having a terrible week, so I appreciate this assignment... it has led me to believe that my miserable heart may be soothed by a balm of Naked City albums. Eh, it's worth a shot.

Mharles Cingus

Week 46 Rules

Contributors: 

Please don't hate me for this. The rule for this week is to post your favorite piece of music that is in some way classified as "jazz". 

Louie Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" does not count.

Neither does anything from Miles Davis' Kind of Blue. 

No "My Favorite Things" by Coltrane.

You'll be a Woman

Classic, I think Uma was dancing around or something.

It's magic!

O.K. in a nut shell. The false prince, who is actually really a horny lil street bum, all done up in his facadism and heads off to see the princess. He gets shot down and thrown out of the ladies room. As he is thrown out by his would be date and pulls his last card and reveals "the chic magnet". In truth it doesn't matter how arrogant you may be, if you have one of these, you can easily go from being thrown out for being a douche bag to greatest person in the universe in approximately less than 30 seconds, as the master of picking up women demonstrates in this how to video. Now with her attention on seeing the world he can now take the lovely local princess on a date across the vast expanse of the world, Noting that the everywhere they go it is still night. From what looks like rome or greece all the way to china. This little date entails a thrilling time out on the world of the ages in which there is unbelievable sights, indescribable feelings, soaring, tumbling, freewheeling through an endless diamond sky. All that will most definitely get you laid in real life, but NO this is a P.G. movie! I chose this song mainly because who wouldn't want a flying carpet. According to disney they can get you anywhere within minutes, No baggage fee's and no waiting on tarmac's. Also no matter who you are you can date hot chic's!

Robert Tepper

Greatest 4 minutes in cinematic history, that's why.

Warhead

This song is featured in the film "This is England," symbolizing a moment where a right-wing extremist group  misunderstands the clarion call of punk and takes up literal banners to foment discontent and promote racist ideals. I felt that this choice of song was an interesting one for several reasons, given how many times punk of that era, and the UK Subs in particular, have managed to be misunderstood. I was recently reading some histories of the UK Subs and Crass where a story of a misunderstanding between two bands was told from each perspective. The UK Subs "The Early Years" page, at http://www.newredarchives.com/bands/uksubs/chapter03.html, explains: "At the ‘White Lion’ show, Crass had an argument with Charlie (Harper, the band's vocalist -- ed.) over a Subs song “All I Wanna Know” during the set, claiming it was sexist. Some members of Crass pulled Charlie from the stage. But later, after going through the lyrics with them and explaining the context in which the song was written, things were resolved and we decided to do a double headline show way out in a residential area of Northeast London." While Crass were known as an overtly leftist, anarchist political ensemble, the UK Subs were certainly not of that brand of punk, so the idea of the two bands having an ideological dispute over the lyrics of the less political (apolitical?) group is kind of amusing. 

Perhaps Crass's intention was to work to politicize their fellow punks; perhaps it was a more reactionary, less measured critique, but either way, it makes something clear to modern listeners and enthusiasts of the early punk rock of the late 70's: it was, and is, music that desperately requires context to be understood. Poor Siouxsie Sioux is still plagued with questions from interviewers asking why she donned swastika armbands in the late 70's, even though she has explained a number of times that it was essentially an ill-advised tactic to provoke and shock audiences (and indeed to alienate people of her parents' generation). This clumsy provocation translates to a palpable, visual translation of the generation gap between jobless, aimless youth ready to shake things up, and complacent, conservative adults looking toward England's past, a division characteristic of the era in which she started performing and recording. This dissatisfaction and protest were, of course, at the roots of UK punk. Without an understanding of this context, you get music journalists (who really should know better by now, if they've done their reading) asking the same questions of an artist who has recanted her youthful mistake, apologized, and even written a song about Israel to show where her sympathies truly lay. Siouxsie provides a good example of how early punk needed context to be understood properly as an artistic expression, but she is far from the only artist of her era and movement who has had to explain herself and her youthful foibles on several occasions. However, she tends to be unique in that she will storm out of interviews if the point is pressed, rather than defending herself. I believe that she last did this a few years ago during an interview with Q, but she did make it up to the magazine later with a follow-up discussion and a very good performance at their awards show in 2011. (Honestly, I also feel that the interviewer had been baiting her throughout their discussion, trying to get her to talk about increasingly more sensationalist topics such as past drug use, the dissolution of her relationship with Steve Severin and then Budgie, her troubled working relationship with various other musicians, and then this. I can kind of understand why she was not willing to tolerate more goading about old times and old decisions.)

Like Siouxsie, like the Pistols, like most punks of that era, the Subs managed to be understood more than once, and are still not completely understood by fans. To this day, comments on their YouTube videos show that fans still weren't sure who really sang on which version of some of their more popular songs, or who was playing guitar, given the changes to their personnel that meant some rapid-fire shifts, then shifts back, in who did what on a few different albums. There is the great divide about whether or not it was a good idea for them to cover "She's Not There" by the Zombies, and whether or not it was a good cover (I prefer some of the live versions to the studio version myself). Charlie Harper began gigging as a singer in the R & B scene earlier in the 70's, and therefore had an identity as a performer that predated punk rock. Therefore, his band's sometimes less-than-p.c. treatments of women and cover versions of older songs, including "She's Not There," which is not precisely a song praises the goodness and merit of women, can be understood as hearkening back to older pop music traditions.As much as punk musicians liked to position 1976 as this sort of year zero of culture at the time, many notable artists have spoken about their affection for other, earlier pop music movements; Steve Ignorant turned the phrase that I just used and mentioned his involvement in glam rock prior to discovering Dial House and meeting the other members of what would be come Crass, whereas the rest of Crass were mostly hippies and art school students. John Lydon/Rotten's storied affection for progressive rock, reggae, and Hawkwind eventually left its imprint on his work with Public Image Limited. Many artists understood as part of the first rumblings of punk in the UK, such as Eddie and the Hot Rods, were in all actuality pub rock artists. Noted sex offender Jimmy Pursey from Sham 69, the father of all street punk and Oi!, actually got his start performing by miming Bay City Rollers and Rolling Stones songs at local discos, so didn't even get a start in performing rock, exactly, so much as just performing visually and kinetically to pop music.Then, in the US, the Ramones were fronted by a former hippie who had once dubbed himself Jeff Starship, whereas the rest of "punk" in the US made in the mid-70's was essentially art-damaged pop/rock, also made by art school students. The notion that punk sprung fully formed from a vacuum, played by fledgling artists who had only recently picked up a guitar or other instrument for the first time, is part of a mythos and misunderstanding that has plagued the subculture since its origins.

Back to the Subs and misunderstanding them in particular, though. They are commonly understood as the originators of "street punk," a sub-subgenre known not for being apolitical, but for its simplified political content, including a very populist discourse on being an everyday, working man, with simple pleasures like beer and girls, who just wants to make an honest living and live a good life in an often unfair, oppressive world. In this world, violence is a sad part of life, reflecting systemic corruption, poverty, social divisions, etc. Street punk was birthed from Oi!, which was always meant to be understood as a "working-class protest," yet somehow managed to split into two diametrically opposed branches, one of extreme right-wing ideology that claims "outsiders" as the scourge of working-class happiness, and another that just took the "working-class" idea and saw it as "proletarian," and ran with it allllll the way to the left, some groups even adopting Communist rhetoric and creating the "redskin" movement. Street punk, though, is music that is often easy to misunderstand because it is vague. It's political in that it discusses problems, but rarely proposes many specific solutions geared toward policy, voting, organizing, activism, etc. in the music, preferring to suggest instead, if it suggests any solution, things like unity, jobs, and telling people like Margaret Thatcher that they are "cunts." (Well, that's what the Exploited tended to do, anyway.)  The Subs maybe had a few more good-time party songs about girls, &c., than the Exploited, and talked less about necrophilia and prostitutes than G.B.H., and tended less toward shout-along choruses than Sham 69, but they were still pretty good exemplars of early street punk, in that they also managed to have a few more or less vague political songs along with pieces like "Stranglehold."

In order to explain to you why I think the song works really great in the film, I will give those of you who haven't seen it a quick synopsis. "This Is England" is the story of a young teenage boy who is picked on by bullies in his neighborhood for being poor and fatherless until some older teenagers, a ragtag group of skins and punks, offer him first protection, then camaraderie. The protagonist and his clutch of friends drink, listen to various kinds of punk music with alternately vaguely political and apolitical, good-time themes, and generally have a happy time until some crazy right-wingers come in and start complaining about the economy and have a simple, yet elegantly foolish solution: it's those damn minorities and we need to get them out! These guys are initially welcomed into the the house of the gang's unofficial ringleader, because they were mates before the right-wing guy was sent to prison for his rowdy violence, but when it becomes clear that being in prison radicalized him in a rather unsavory way, he and his friends are quickly made to know that their sort of views are not shared or tolerated by many members of the group... except for those members who DO agree, of course, and join these neo-Nazis in their political meetings and protest, leading to some scathing portrayals of bogus extreme right-wing rhetoric and meetings where people hesitantly and inaccurately repeat ideas that they heard from someone they know who knew a guy who knew a guy who once read part of Mein Kampf. We also see the concerned-ish, yet half-hearted intervention of the protagonist's mother, who somehow manages not to stop her 12-year-old soon from hanging out with a gang of older teenagers and adults that are mixed up in fascist politics. The chilling catharsis of racist violence and murder leads to a sad and painful realization for the young protagonist, as well as the end of the internecine war between the apolitical punks/skins and right-wing extremists, as the members of the group of friends dabbling in fascism come back to their senses. This leads us to some slightly heavy-handed, but very effective symbolism in the very last scene, as the disillusioned, sobered young protagonist tosses a Union Jack given to him by the leader of the fascist splinter group into the ocean. Overall, I really enjoyed the movie, but I kind of found myself a little bothered when the protagonist, even though he was clearly supposed to be a naïve little kid, takes up with the fascists. Like, why would he be so easily swayed? Shit, when I was his age, I spray-painted "Fuck Social Darwinism" on my bedroom wall. Kids are capable of understanding politics!

The more I've thought about it, the more I've thought that the ambiguity of political messages in street punk and most classic punk (here, I am excepting anything like Discharge and any d-beat following in their wake, crust punk, or political hardcore, for obvious reasons... it was of the same era, but was thematically quite different, of course!) is kind of what allows for this slippage of meaning and misunderstanding. Punk has always been understood as a cultural movement of bricolage (see: Dick Hebdige), and, accordingly, draws from many disparate elements: R & B and classic rock 'n' roll songs about cars and women; Situationist revolutionary politics and critiques of capitalism, advertising, war, etc.; a reaction against "normal" society and a desire to subvert, or often simply invert, its morals and values; art-school theoretical folderol that most people like to play with, but don't understand perfectly; the ever-lingering presence of hippies and DIY movements, psychedelic rock and art, and the idea of dropping out of society; populism; etc. All of these movements bring with them an entirely different set of cultural baggage and political messages, often ones that clash entirely. Like, "respect women's autonomy and sexual freedom, but they're all lying heartbreaking bitches." "Fuck society and our scheming, untrustworthy politicians, but we need them to give jobs for everyone and fix this economy before we get disillusioned and drop out again." These discordant messages are definitely confusing, and any artists that wished to perpetuate a punk aesthetic had a bit of cobbling together of ideas to do before they could write and perform songs.

Certainly the gamut of themes in the UK Subs' songs makes this sort of cut-&-paste aesthetic pretty apparent; their basic, sped-up 60's rock guitar riffs and 4/4 beats, which are present in most of their songs, offer a unifying thread to their assorted different thematic elements. All of their songs sound like punk rock generally sounds, which helps make their image and aesthetic easy to pin down. However, "Warhead" was always a bit different from their other songs, and even though the group were not conventionally understood as being super leftist or even very political, I have always thought the lyrics to this song were pretty insightful, although still simple enough for most people to understand. First of all, the song is still a 4/4 punk song, but slower and perhaps more ominous-sounding than many of their songs, with a simple, repetitive guitar riff, no soloing, no exuberance, and thudding, lumbering drums with the low end mixed pretty high up in the mix: it sounds like marching, or like a heart beating, or both. The lyrics to "Warhead," if I understand them correctly, provide a jarring contrast to a scene of neo-Nazis carrying signs and banners and marching to a political meeting about how to oppress minorities, in that they are actually a critique of wars fought by the "little people" and orchestrated by history's "great men" who watch from a distance. The Subs actually seem to suggest that "Soldiers of Islam... loading their guns,"  "Russian tanks... mowing them down," and "Children in Africa loading tommy guns" are actually reacting to Western cultural imperialism and xenophobic, violence toward "Others" in distant lands (and well, also within their own countries, as is evidenced by the film's story and just reading the news and histories of that era, or today, or basically anytime within the last 150 years or so): 

"There's a burning sun

And it sets in the western world
But it rises in the east
And pretty soon
It's gonna burn your temples down

While the heads of state are having their fun
Are they ready?
We're looking at the world through the barrel of a gun
Are we ready?
And you stand there beating on your little war drum
Are you ready?
And it won't be long before your time has come
Are you ready?"

While the song doesn't come right out and say "War is bad and this is why people in Africa and the Middle East are upset with us," certain textual elements spring out to demean and belittle the military campaigns, and show that not everyone is taking them seriously enough given the consequences: "LITTLE war drum," heads of state having their FUN." The lyrics do note that the Western world needs to look toward the day of reckoning when the rest of the world fights back and "burns our temples down," equating the Western world with the sinful Babylon, whose temples were destroyed by fire in the Bible (since early punk and reggae were bedfellows, it is easy to find a lot of punk songs that talk about the Western world as Babylon), and asking us if we are really ready, for our time, the time to confront our culpability, shall come. This is one reason I appreciate the film, even though sometimes its story takes a couple of turns where I am just like, "WHY DID THEY LET THAT HAPPEN??" (to move the plot along, duh, but still!) -- the juxtaposition of a song critiquing war between the West and the rest of the world, with a scene in a film depicting some people who don't get how punk is also a protest against that, and not just a call for jobs or whatever, is great. This is why I chose this song -- I feel that its use in the film is masterful, in that it evokes the marching militancy of this extremist group being portrayed, provides a period-accurate soundtrack, and is a damn good song... AND it embeds a critique of the fallacies in the group's understanding (or misunderstanding) of punk politics and the workings of the world within the scene at the same time. Well, or it does for those who listen to the lyrics of the song and consider the ways in which punk can be understood and misunderstood.

Dob Bylan - Batural Korn Nillers

It's from the part where Mickey escapes from the chain gang as the tornado approaches.

Week 45 Rules

Contributors: The rules are late this week because I have a hangover. 

Please post your favorite song from a soundtrack. Please explain the scene in the movie where the song occurs.

Zero One

Von Solt

Estrella

This song never fails to evoke visions of the swirling cosmos in which we are all but tiny specks, but all still have an integral part ("estrella" is Spanish for "star"). Something about the two different layers of gauzy, ambient keyboards makes me imagine a picture of the Milky Way with its spiral of small suns, gaseous orbs, dust in the universe. The lead keyboard, the one that sounds like a piano, keeps the song from going all the way into the ambient zone, and grounds it, sort of like I would be grounded when I look up at the sky to view the stars and imagine where I fit into the whole business of existence. The distant, slow-tempo drum machine throbs distantly like a slow pulse, a pulsing star...

I'm also pretty sure that this is supposed to be a love song, based on the lyrics, but it's so abstract that it could be any kind of love, from romantic love, to the love of a parent for his or her child, to the love between close friends, to God's love for humanity (which I wonder about, since Tara Vanflower from Lycia uses Christian imagery and is pretty vocal about her Christianity in interviews. Lycia is pretty much the only "Christian" music I tolerate, let alone enjoy, because it's always abstract, somewhat mystical, and never overt or overbearing). The message of love, "forever my darling am I with you," is pretty damn comforting to me. Obviously Tara's vocals are foregrounded, and are fairly easy to understand if you are listening for meaning, but the murmured, muted, spoken background vocals have always made me listen more closely to hear what is being said.... without success. In a way, this is also evocative of looking up at the sky to see the stars... the light of the stars can be muted through clouds or a haze of pollution (I live in LA now, remember), or light pollution could be overwhelming their distant glow, making it hard to see them and know where they are and what their features are.

The thing about shoegazing music is that the sound of the vocals and any distinguishable lyrics is always more important than their meaning, and most bands don't strictly adhere to the songwriting activity of creating concrete images through words. For that reason, shoegaze of its various flavors always sets me at peace. When I understand the lyrics, they never offend me, but rather tantalize my mind with abstract, sometimes lush and beautiful images and meanings... but if I don't understand them, that's fine. So, I don't always work very hard to understand what is being said, and can just let my mind go and immerse myself in the sensory experience of listening. That is something that is hard for me to do, because lyrics are normally VERY important to me. When I manage to do it, it's nearly as good as meditating. This is also why I listen to music in languages that I don't understand, or listen to black metal with unintelligibly, hoarsely screamed vocals, or mostly-vocal music without lyrics. For some reason, most instrumental music just makes me drowsy, not peaceful, so when I need peace AND wish to stay awake, I have a few specific categories of music that do the trick. I recommend putting this song on, closing your eyes, and thinking about stars on a clear night while you overlook the city of your choice from a high hill. Breathe deeply, and remember that the universe has a place for every speck and every atom, including you.

Bets to Jrazil

This one goes out to the Chicago kids that hit on my wife at the thrift store after I bought them burritos. Peace be with you.

Baker Street

In case you are keeping track, this is my second Jerry Rafferty post. 

Week 44 Rules

Contributors:

Last week was fun, yes? 

Let's call a cease fire.

Play me a song that sets you at peace.

This could make any Nation go nuts.

Yeah...he raps.

NO FUN!

                            After researching a bit under age demographics of the middle east. I found that in the greater parts of middle east there appears to be a very sizable amount of youths compared to the older residents. Even in the other countries more towards the middle are also having projections of their youths growing in number. Projections are kind of staggering and worrisome for the people discussing the topic. I will say at this point its safe to assume that my target would be a rebellious youths.
Now by looking into what types music that has influenced the peoples of the mid east I found there is a plethora of types ranging in everything from strings to percussion and onto winds like chimes and woodwinds and shit. Dance music and the modern dance style appear to go hand in hand in this part of the world. I quote "  Before the influence of Islam, music in the Arabian Peninsula was associated with prostitution and drunken entertainment. Under the wide rule of Islam, vulgar lyrics and suggestive dancing by women became illegal. Much post-Islamic music is used in ceremonial dance and recreation. Meditation, trance, and self-flagellation are often used while listening to music to bring one to a higher sense of God" WOW! so prolly playing something like benni benassi is out of the question. There was also a huge part of influence from religion but we wont go there.
Pop culture seems to be mostly based around dance, rap, rock and punk. Which seems to be taking off in these lands as of recent.  I did find a wonderful little bit of music I will share at the end. I did more digging and once again here I find more about how the british were an annoyance to this part of world as other parts the that they had been poking and prodding through out the histories. I couldnt help but think of the sex pistols. I could listen to the sex pistols all day all night. Just because of the gritty disgusting nature of the sound they play. Simply make a bunch of noise and sing with no sense of rhythm in a drunken stupor. Yeah gotta love it. Most people, through my experiences,of today that didnt grow up with the sex pistols or in that particular culture have been quite disgusted with it. I will assume for this post it would prolly work in this case too.


Industrial? I would say this is a form of industrial! I flippin love it!

The Hoff

This is going on the make them smoke the whole carton in one sitting method.

Those poor East Asians!... Taake

Hey guys, sorry to post a day late. My internet was out of service yesterday and I can't post from my phone.

Anyone who enjoys musicology or enthnomusicology or anthropology must surely be aware of the fact that different cultures have not only different aesthetic preferences, but sometimes a completely different idea of what sounds like music, looks like art or clothing, tastes like food, etc. The divide between Western and non-Western music truly does exist, despite the cultural erasure of globalization in media (everyone listens to American and European top 40 music, everywhere in the world!) and the increasing popularity of hybridized East-West musical genres (see: k-pop, j-rock, Western 60's rock music using sitars, gongs, and chimes alongside Western instrumentation like guitars, orientalism in classical compositions -- composers such as Rameau, Saint-Saens, even Beethoven and Mozart used Near Eastern motifs in their compositions, French punk rock that employs Southeast Asian motifs such as Bérurier Noir's "La Fille du Delta" or "Vietnam Laos Cambodge").

A friend of mine once told me a good story about Ravi Shankar in which the legendary Indian composer and sitar player attended a concert of classical music in the US. When asked afterward what piece he had liked the best, Shankar responded that he liked the first song the best. The person asking hummed the first composition that had been played, and Shankar said, no, it sounded like this, and hummed an entirely unfamiliar piece of music. The hosts asking the question were puzzled by this and asked Shankar more questions about what it sounded like, what instruments it used, etc. Shankar said it was the best piece because it sounded the most like music to him, and kept describing it. Finally, everyone figured out that what Shankar liked, what sounded like music to him, was the sounds of the orchestra warming up their instruments together. The rest of it really didn't sound like music to Eastern ears, or at least not like the music that Shankar preferred himself. It is likely that Shankar would not have enjoyed more than an occasional bit of exposure to this non-musical-sounding music. Although I love music from around the world, I have to admit that Indian traditional music, like music from farther east, including Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, etc.) traditional music, and even these culture's pre-globalized pop music, is something I like only in small doses because it sounds so different to my ears. The experience of hearing it is intense, hard to deal with, and sometimes even unpleasant if I have to hear a lot of it.

Therefore, one can assume that what would truly perturb and torture East Asians would be Western music, and the more it diverged from Eastern musicality, the harder it would be to hear. The tones and scales used in Chinese and Japanese traditional musics are distinctive and sound "Eastern" to the Western ear, right? So one can imagine that Western music "sounds Western" and would be suitable as an instrument of aggression if it were used to accompany military and cultural aggression, as, in this instance, it surely would be. It would remind the people forced to hear it that their entire cultural system, including their aesthetic one, was imperiled, disregarded, and endangered. This Western aesthetic, applied by force, would be quite a powerful assault.

I chose Taake because this kind of extreme black metal is VERY distinctively Western, and also in a way that many Westerners don't appreciate. The harsh, snarled, screamed vocals (in Norwegian!) at the beginning of the song, coupled with the driving guitars and blastbeat of the drums, are certainly very aggressive and not pleasant to the ears of the uninitiated. The song's motif then switches to a slower, more folkloric and lilting melody, with non-distorted guitars, but continued use of picking. However, Western folkloric music is still very foreign to Eastern ears, and juxtaposing it with Hoest's raw, sometimes squawking, usually screaming, tortured howls, er, vocals, and the gloomy ambiance, plus the echoing, lo-fi production, seems to be at odds with the lightness and sweetness of the folkloric melody, threatening to make it sink like a soufflé with the miserable weightiness that much of Norwegian BM creates so well. Then a slower motif comes in, which is even gloomier, before a more driving reworking of the intro riff comes in, speeds up the song, and gives the transition to a very cathartic-sounding howl from Hoest, then another fast-tempo, pulsating build-up recreates the tension... before the folkloric motif, now a leitmotif, reasserts itself.

The movement between folklore and contemporary motifs and instrumentation is a VERY Western tradition, and a modern one at that. It is not something that occurs in any culture's traditional music, and is still a fairly unpopular style in Eastern popular composition. That kind of Westernness would surely alienate the Eastern ear, as well as being FORCED to hear it. The song closes with the folkloric motif being played over the quintessentially black metal, driving blastbeat and tremolo-picking, distorted, manically sped-up riffs of the guitars. The music then builds to another crescendo, more unearthly howls and screams, and a finish on the folkloric letimotif, in which the drums and distorted guitars fade to the background, while an angelic, mixed male and female chorus vocal reminiscent of traditional Norwegian vocal music comes in to close the song and the album.

I think it's a beautiful song, but I am also a Westerner long habituated to extreme music and the hybridization of genres. I think most Westerners don't like this music, and most Easterners would HATE it and find it very, very, very unpleasant to be subjected to it. Frankly, the control and manipulation of sensory environments is something that many people, myself included, are very susceptible to. I feel panic and paralysis if I am forced to listen to a Top 40 song that I don't like while in a public place. That music hurts my ears and soul because it is so contrary to my aesthetic sensibilities and preferences, and I feel this sense of being powerless and small when I am subjected to it against my will. It makes me angry and profoundly anxious.

To convey the power of torture through music, I will tell you a story of my own. I recall once when I was 8 and at summer camp (ironically, at a camp for diabetic children) and my fellow campers played a nearly constant rotation of the song "Pour Some Sugar on Me" by Def Leppard, which was very popular that summer. It was a song for which I had no particular affection to begin with, finding it somehow both sleazy and banal, and hard to buy as a come-on with its dumb, vague metaphors and big, dumb, overproduced guitars, but hearing it repeatedly was making me CRAZY with panic and anger. I begged the girls in my cabin to stop playing it, trying to explain to them why being forced to hear a song I didn't like hurt me, but their only response was to laugh and play it several more times, even louder. I went to the counselor in tears and she told me to just ignore it because it wasn't a big deal. I thought I would seriously lose my shit. Then, a more sympathetic, younger, hipper counselor gave me her Walkman with headphones and a Sinéad O'Connor album. That young woman saved my sanity. I really hated the other girls in my cabin for their act of aggression. They were bullies and rude and unfriendly to me, but I simply could not understand why they had been so cruel and done THIS, even when I explained to them why I needed them to stop playing the song.

I think that the incident when detainees at Guantanamo were tortured with Metallica and other shitty rock and pop music on repeat was really disgraceful. Not just because late-period Metallica sucks, but because I think it is really an unspeakably cruel torture to violate someone's comfort by creating a sensory environment that violates not only their tastes, but their cultural habits and their morals. For that reason, while I think I have an argument for Taake being some of the worst/most effective music for this exercise, it sort of makes my skin crawl to do the exercise. Fascinating assignment, though!