My Own Biggest Fan

A few days ago I was visiting friends in Toronto. We were hanging out in their apartment and it looked and sounded like there might be a lightening storm rolling in, so we walked down the three flights of stairs to sit on their front stoop — 227 style — to watch the storm. As we sat, the four of us noted that it really wasn’t raining, and the lightening was pretty far away, and this was a pretty lame storm to be sitting out and watching.

As we sat for a moment, wondering silently who would be the first to pipe up and say “let’s go play Mario Party”, a singular, beautiful moment occured. Off in the distance, about a half a block away, a voice rang out.

“TITS!

ASSCRACK!

BAAAAALLLS!

(huhuhuhuh)”

This became our greeting for the next two days. It was our “semper fi”. — Tits. Asscrack. Balls. and then laughter. Each separated by 1.5 seconds of pure zen silence. We hoped for one thing, but got something else that was even better. Like a Precious Moment that is impossible to immortalize in slipcast ceramic.

So I’m the friend mentioned in the blog post found here. I suggest you read that before you continue with this. Trust me, Tyler is a better writer than I am and he has similar opinions to mine regarding the whole analogue v. digital debate.

Ok, so let me set the record straight on a couple of points. (pun mostly intended) First off, these records will not be melted down. Not only is it my intention to keep the records intact during the production of the furniture I’d like to create, but also consider that melting a record down is tantamount to burning a book — in my opinion. In fact, if you considered the amount of time I’ve spent listening to music and more so, TALKING about listening to music vs. reading, it would be fair to say melting down a record may be even more evil in my eyes. Yes, even UK hardhouse (progressive house? this old house?) 12″ singles, or whatever subgenre it was that Tyler spun when he was a vinyl DJ. The fact is, that no matter how you cut it, 300LB of vinyl is a valuable resource, whatever’s on it.

Secondly, I’m a vinyl lover. I’d be willing to say that ¾ of the music I listen to lately is from vinyl. If whatever musical itch I’m feeling can be satisfied by a record, I’ll go to it before anything. The reasons for this I could write hundreds of words on. I’ll spare you at the moment and just say I’m a huge fan of listening to records.

You may ask, “Well then, what do you have planned if you aren’t melting it down?” That’s for another blog entry, probably after I’ve tried, failed, tried again and hopefully, finally succeeded at creating something out of these records that both preserves their dignity and transfers their usefulness from medium to raw material. I just wanted it on record what was going on here. NOT a wholesale discard of music, just a re-appropriation of the material it was on — temporarily, at that.

So, if you are curious, stay tuned. Both to Lo-Fi Hi-Fi Me, and here. I’m hoping the results will be at least worth a glance. I gotta say, I’m feeling the pressure because my original plan wasn’t very impressive. I’m hoping that I can take it up a notch to make the whole thing worth keeping tabs on. Like I said, stay tuned.

Odd chord choices, lo-fi recording, abstract noise washes. These are the ingredients to the kind of music most of my art school friends were listening to in the mid-late 90s. I liked some of it, but much of it just sounded boring to me. I inherited this record when one of these art school friends moved to New York a couple years ago. The Sonora Pine is from 1996, and it sounds like it, but that’s not to say it doesn’t sound great. I doubt I would have liked it then, but my tastes have developed a little in the past 14 years. There is enough of a hook to these songs that you actually can find yourself swaying to them or tapping your foot. That’s the sort of connection I wasn’t able to make back then. Thanks, Angela, for leaving this record with me. Glad I finally got a chance to listen to it. Perfect music for lounging on the couch when you are stuck in the house on a snow day in the middle of the afternoon, which is lucky, because that’s exactly what today has been like.

ALSO: I’m not sure I’ve been clear, but my plan for The Month Of New Music is that I’m listening to 31 records from my vinyl collection that I haven’t heard yet. I listen to vinyl very differently than I do mp3s — which is my other main source of music. (I turn my CDs into mp3s when I want to listen to them) I don’t often listen to whole albums off the computer or iPod, but you really have no choice but to with vinyl. So, while I might gush over an album when I listen to it on one medium, I might totally ignore it in another. I also don’t often buy music I’ve never heard before on vinyl, unless it’s flea-market price. So, considering these factors, me listening to a month of new vinyl is a very interesting experiment, at least personally. It’s a hard thing to explain. I hope I’ve done at least a mediocre job of doing so.

Don’t blame him for stealing me, you let him.
And where your love stopped, he went a little bit farther.
You changed so much, I was more at ease with a stranger.
But it wasn’t hard, our love was already in danger.

When I bought this album, I assumed by the slick design and the fact that Sammi Smith looked African American (she is not, as you can see by this Google images search) on the cover, that I was buying a soul album. I was in fact buying a little known album by one of the few women welcome in the “outlaw country” genre. I am not the biggest country fan, but I LOVE Cash, Nelson, Kristofferson, Jennings, Cline, Jones, etc. Being surprised with this type of country is not unwelcome.

I don’t know who’s writing the songs on this album. From what I can figure, she is most well known as the voice for Kris Kristofferson’s Help Me Make It Through The Night. (which I’ve never heard — probably) If she is writing these songs, all the better, if she is delivering songs she did not write, any songwriter would be hard pressed to find a more perfect vehicle. If you are not a fan of outlaw country, then you will find nothing here to make you a fan… maybe. (I’d be tickled to find someone who was given a new appreciation for this music after hearing this album) But!… (and PLEASE don’t think that I’m being derisive when I say this) there is much here for those that dissect feminist poetry. In Why Do You Do Me Like You Do she describes a tragic domestic violence situation, and makes it so real and emotional within a three minute country song it’s hard to take. In Foxy Dan, she is the vivacious young minx (or at least that’s how I imagine this character), seduced by a dangerous, charismatic gangster. There are themes within each tune that can resonate for young women and seduce young men or even break the heart of either sex — over and over.

My only real fault with the album is that twice Ring Of Fire is evoked as an embarassingly obvious melodic influence on the songs (and once I heard something uncomfortably close to the beginning of Harper Valley PTA). At the time, there were probably much more blatant lifting of melodies, so I guess I can forgive this transgression. Truly, the good deeds outweigh the sins in this case.

Verdict: Recommended for fans of the genre. No numerical rating because if this intrigues you at all, you should just seek it out and make up your own mind. That’s what this music is all about.

I was first introduced to The Cocteau Twins in 1992, when I bought the compilation album Never Mind the Mainstream Vol. 1. It was my first compilation album that wasn’t a soundtrack or a christmas gift. It was my first music that I could say was mine to discover, because almost all of it was NEW (to me). The reality was that I meant to buy Vol. 2, on the merits it had Depeche Mode and Ministry on it, and it was probably MUCH COOLER. But the fact is I hemmed and hawed over both for an hour. do I want older music that is more of a risk and therefore more exciting, or do I want a compilation that I’m guaranteed to like half of? life is so haaaard I THOUGHT I put Vol 2 on the counter at the K-Mart in Billings, Montana, where we were vacationing for the long weekend in The States, and didn’t realize my mistake until I got back to our camper-van which we kept parked in the mall parking lot. Regardless, the compilation brings a dozen stories to mind, and you aren’t interested in any of them. You, reader are asking, “What about that fucking album you are holding in that picture up there?”

It’s fucking great. At least on first listen — to someone who is in a pretty melancholy mood. It suits what’s going on in here, and it suits what’s going on up here. It also makes me a little sad for the reasons I didn’t expect. I was assuming it’d be gloomsville because these guys aren’t really a party band. They can be a pick me up, or light listening, but mostly they are a warm bath to steep your gloomy in. But the unexpected sad comes because I don’t understand why I didn’t fall in love with this band when I was 16. It wasn’t like I wasn’t open to it, I must have listened to Carolyn’s Fingers a thousand times since I bought that compilation. (I actually traded it in for some unmemorable cd while I was in art school, and subsequently re-bought it off eBay 4 years ago) I’ve aways been a fan of the over produced ethereal sound with all the digital reverb and droning guitars. At the time I was even into the “college rock” jangle of bands like XTC, which I had found lacking in 90′s grunge and industrial, but comes in spades here.

Whatever the case, I’m happy I own this record now, and I’m glad I found it at the “all you can carry” sale at Inner Sleeve. It’s helped me kick off the Month of New Music on a bit of a personal, sentimental even, sappy probably, verbose definitely, note. ALSO: sorry I’m having a hard time keeping this train on it’s tracks tonight, maybe tomorrow will be better?

Verdict: Recommended. ☹ ☹ ☹ ☹ / 5

Linotype has made their formerly free software, the wonderful FontExplorer X, unfree. I have no problem with people asking for money for software, I have no problem with the trial version model, and I even have no problem with most companies changing something from free to pay. When FontExplorer X was first released, they essentially said “Look at what we did, we made something great, and we did it for FREEEEEE! Aren’t we the greatest?” and we all replied “Yes you are!” It was marvelous. They even supplied plugins to work with current versions of Adobe Creative Suite so that it could make our font experience as painless as possible.

Now, though, they’ve switched to a pay model, just at the time most places are upgrading to CS4. They’ve cancelled their support for the old version (although you can still get it from the website, which is a good thing) I know I’m not locked in, and I know they don’t owe me anything, but the whole business seems shady and it makes me angry. I don’t often feel a sense of entitlement for things that are free, but when the original “selling” point of the software was that it’s free, it makes it seem like we were using a “trial” version without knowing it.

I wrote a letter to the FontExplorer X people, and submitted it to their Support page.

My problem is that you create a piece of software which you shout about how great it is (rightfully), give it away for free, and then as soon as people are dependent on it, halt support for it. Now that we have to upgrade to CS4, and you are not making plugins for the free version to interact with it, you expect us to pay for it.

Shove it, you “bait and switch” jerks.

Incendiary? Yeah. A little aggressive? Totally. Somewhat warranted? You might not think so, I believe it is.

Recently I’ve fallen in love with the website Grooveshark. Essentially it’s the worlds biggest shared iTunes library. If you just go to the website you can pretty much listen to any song you might want. If you make an account, you can create playlists and mark songs as ♥ed.

I asked people on Twitter,

“If you had to make me listen to one song, what would it be? I’m making a #grooveshark playlist.”

I was pretty dogmatic about only letting one song per person in, I didn’t want any one person to influence it more than another. The resulting playlist which is, unfortunately, a little shorter than I’d hoped, actually turned out quite listenable.

So not a lot has been going on here since the little redesign. I am working with my hosting company to get Opentape up and running so I can share with you the playlist I made for a “Mixtape” party where I won “Best mix to make love to”. Very different from “Best mix to fuck to” which was won by a very dirty, DIRTY mix, created by the hostess, natch. Mine is more of a slow jam collection. Opentape is pretty easy to set up, it’s just server-side tech BS that’s giving us problems.

Also, I bought a synth the other day, the infamous microKorg. Used by brazillions and zillions of bands, it’s a super affordable faux-analogue deal which sounds great. At last year’s Sled Island, about two thirds of the bands had one on stage, both local and international acts. Super versatile. I got mine for about half of retail price at a pawnshop near my place.

Lastly, if you are actually interested in my well-being, I’ve been home sick from work yesterday and today, which has involved drinking lots of tea, watching a lot of The IT Crowd, The Daily Show and Colbert Report, and noodling around on previously mentioned synth. So far I spent about two hours creating the perfect west coast g-funk Dre bass fart sound.

While I’m not one for overly saccharine sentiments, I’m wishing all of you a Happy New Year. 2008 was a mixed bag of highs and lows and I’m glad to see it go. I’ve made new friends who I hope will continue to remain so for a long time, and I had friends both old and new depart, both gradually and suddenly.

My favourite thing about 2008 was a personal realization that I can do the work that I’ve always wanted to do, enjoy it, get paid for it, and learn more about it. I might have started late in life, at least in a professional sense, but I’m doing it.

My least favourite thing was learning about how easily I can break my own heart, and how complicated we can make our relationships with the ones we supposedly care the most about. I won’t explain further. Those that need to know can guess what I’m talking about, and those that don’t — you can take that however you want.

To 2009.
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I have begun taking pictures once again with my medium format film camera. I’ve taken a few pics in black and white, but I’ve finally gotten around to colour shots. While looking for images and inspiration I came across this set by Flickr user Oscar*. Beautiful. This is everything I loved about living in Japan, and everything I love about high quality film photography. I hope to go back soon.

I took my Mamiya when I lived there but I failed to use it even once. There are so many regrets associated with that time that I can’t even begin to relate them. Despite the difficulties I faced when I lived there almost two years ago, (I can hardly believe it’s been that long. I can transport myself back within seconds.) It gave me so much in return for what I had to put into it. Because of this, I have a deep love for the country.

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