growing up is for babies

Blog, I’m having a hard time. I’m having a hard time embracing you and giving you the sweet, sweet loving that you need. I’m preoccupied with school, with projects that are actually happening, with filling up notebooks with story ideas and story bits and just stories, with a lot of “personal growth” type stuff and re-figuring out the person I am and what I want out of life and whom I want to be there for it (this was an extremely awkward sentence). Now more than ever, I’m listening to music, really listening to it and realizing that how I listen to music is almost as important as what it is I’m listening to, that the way I listen to an album with one person is drastically different than with someone else, and just a lot of bullshit that won’t matter when I’m dead.

Blood On the Wall - Lightning Song

The new Blood On the Wall is so good. SO GOOD. There are a lot of good things in the world.

I Miss Being 20

The Smiths - Unhappy Birthday

Recently, I turned 21. I'm not one to cry but I've been crying like an idiot for the past few days and OMG, TMI. At the bar during my birthday celebration I heard some chick chirp, "Oh my god, TMI! TMI!"

Sufjan Stevens - Happy Birthday

I also read at my first proper public venue. It ruled. This happened on the night of my birthday.

Jens Lekman - Happy Birthday, Dear Friend Lisa

I share my birthday with Jens Lekman. What a QT, OMG, 4REAL. Whom am I kidding. Everyone is hideous and I feel like shit. I have a cold, too.

Classics are totally like awesome for real.

Still cold out, still finals week, still sick. Well, not as cold, half way through, and worse. Also, rain. So much rain.

We're oh-so-serious, today! Seriously behind on an essay for Political Philosophy that was assigned three weeks ago. Or four. Or five. What, I'm a bad student, you expect me to count how long I've been procrastinating?

Buzzcocks - Everybody's Happy Nowadays
Leonard Cohen - Famous Blue Raincoat

We Believe In Silent Sound; or, What's Up, Indie Rock?

It's cold outside, it's finals week, and I'm sick. My throat hates me. My nose hates me. I hate me. Everyone hates me. Wah wah wah. Plus, I have to go outside to pick up some more yarn. Bah!

Earlimart - Cold Cold Heaven
Herman Düne - Sunny Sunny Cold Cold Day (I love the way he sings, "This one is prrrecious.")
Times New Viking - Common Cold (From the split with Psychedelic Horseshit--both of whom I'm psyched on right now.)

Better and more posts when I'm not dead or furiously knitting(!) and writing to meet deadlines. Actually, what do you care? Oh, you, the Nobody There!

Ladri di biciclette

Someone stole my bike's back wheel. My bike's back wheel was stolen. Passive voice and all, I prefer the second sentence. Puts the emphasis on the important thing, the back wheel. Never mind the subject. I am all about objects.

C'est moi et ma bicyclette
It's incredible to have my primary mode of transportation fucked with. I found it amusing and disheartening that someone would even consider my bike as something of value, enough to steal--it's rusty and gross and there was an apparent dent in the back wheel where I had kicked it the night before out of sober frustration after deciding that, as a duo, we were over. No more of me and my blue Schwinn. Great timing, Universe. Truly great. A friend told me it looks like there's been a rash of wheel theft the past day or two in the Ukrainian Village/Humboldt Park area. So, if you live in Chicago and had your bikes in those 'hoods, watch out. It's a bummer.

I punched in "bike" and "bicycle" into Itunes and came up with amazing stuff. Here ya go:

Action Patrol - Bike Cop
Deerhoof - Midnight Bicycle Mystery
The Ergs - Bike Shoppe
Lightning Bolt - Bizarro Bike
Oh No! Oh My! - The Bike, Sir
Scholastic Deth - Trust Fund aka No Bike Messengers in Russia

Action Patrol, The Ergs, Lightning Bolt, and Scholastic Deth are bands that few if any of my current friends remotely enjoy. Acquired taste, maybe. They're perennially my favorite shit and I love these tracks a lot.

I also love Deerhoof. One of my Favorites of All Time Ever. I can always listen to Deerhoof.

I'm not big on Oh No! Oh My! but I don't mind this track. It's short, it's cute, it's total kitsch indie pop music and that's nice, too.

So, I'm retiring my bike. What's left of it. RIP Blue Bicycle. <3

The Babelfish Babbled Bubbles

Must I really share my thoughts on the new Jay-Z album that everyone seems to be gushing and gushing and gushing over? I guess I should, as I promised I would.

Look, I didn't like the Kanye West album. I, however, was listening to it out of context. I forgot that Mr. West is in the realm of the Top 40 and not the indie underground that I oh-so-very-much cherish because I am l337. After subjecting myself to both the new 50 Cent and the new Jay-Z, I have learned to appreciate him and his latest release. Sure, he's kind of a pompous dolt but he loved his Mom (what a bummer*) and his music is always catchy. I'm going to take back what I said: dude tries. Really, he does. He takes a stab at art.

I can't say the same about the Jay-Z album. It's like dude rolled out of bed, spat some gibberish and called it a Grammy. The album makes even less sense than I do.

Yes, I concede that "American Gangster" is a concept album but it's a hastily made, incredibly boring one. If you're going to make a concept album, MAKE IT. Make something worthwhile and doesn't sound so poorly cobbled together. It's over-rated and lacks that gut feeling of authenticity. Reeks of marketing ploys. And I'm totally not supporting any of my claims because, come on, just listen to the album. It's about as bad as the new Saul Williams. I have a huge freakin' crush on Saul Williams and his work but I'm honest enough to say that I thought Niggytardust is mediocre so...you get it. Right? Yeah, I'm sure you do.

*I think, however, that the biggest bummer is that Donda West's death out-shined, er, over-shadowed Norman Mailer's. NORMAN FUCKING MAILER DIED. Why is it that only Terry Gross cares?

What happened?

Someone please explain to me what happened to all of the time.

I feel like I am always sitting in front of my computer doing something other than updating this blog: typing up journal entries for my Critical Reading and Writing class, looking up pictures of dead babies for my upcoming speech (in mere hours; I am sooo not ready and will be lucky to pull off a B) in Public Speaking, er, I mean Oral Expression and just SCHOOL SCHOOL (and in between, watching Heroes, Ugly Betty, Pushing Daisies, The Office, and Project Runway) SCHOOL WORK WORK WORK SCHOOL SCHOOL DEATH. Scholastic Deth! I love that band! See, music related stuff in a music blog!

I have even more stuff to write in here about. Once tomorrow (today, technically) is over, I'm going to clean my room really well and I'm going to post a bunch of stuff that I've been meaning to and some new stuff. So, this entry is a filler entry just to keep me on track. Things to expect in the next few days:

- My take on Jay-Z's "American Gangster" and why Kanye West is my fave and my least fave mainstream MC
- Vinyl rips! Yeah. For real. Out of print, C86-ish stuff. You'll love it because I love it.
- More vinyl rips! Remember all of those singles I mentioned I had before? Well, I have some on my 'puter now, and I love to share. Because sharing is caring. Yes. That's it.

Gosh. I really need to get some sleep. I have a ridiculously busy day tomorrow and a weekend of catching up on my internet life as well as my school life (who needs a social life?!). Let's hope I hear my alarm clock and don't sleep through the only conference I have this semester. Urgh.

Quick, Speedy, Fast

Three Things:

1) Using my iPod's standard earphones is a pain. I bought headphones imported from Japan. I probably shouldn't've.
2) The past week or two, I listened to Cap 'n Jazz when I walked to and from work. Why?
3) I'm listening to Orchid right now. Yes! I played them a few times during my short venture into radio during high school. Weird. I was a lot happier in high school.

This Is Not What I Want to Write About

Kanye West, you are killing me. Serious. I am quite behind in the world of music (and blogs, too--months, maybe years) and recently heard the new Kanye West single, "Stronger". It's pretty much the Daft Punk track, "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger", with West rapping over it. Well no. Borrowing heavily from. Or samples. I mean samples, right? I feel like a sample shouldn't be so blatant but what should I know (there are, of course, exceptions, i.e. Girl Talk's spastic samples are earth-shatteringly obvious yet deceptive and brilliant that it's a work to behold). Anyway, I disliked it when Busta Rhymes sampled Daft Punk's "Technologic" for his single, "Touch It", last year. Same French duo, different song, different artist, and I still dislike it. The a cappella version floating around on the internet last year is more interesting than West's take. It feels more sincere. Dudes actually try and appear to care.



I'm not quite sure how I define sincerity, but I don't hear it often. Music or anything. It's the sort of thing one recognizes when it's there, and if it's not present, everything seems shallow and pointless. "For fun" is not a good enough excuse to make crap.

With that said, I find the track with West rapping over Peter, Bjorn, and John's "Young Folks" to be lackluster. No pop for a pop song. And let's not delve into the mess that is Lupe Fiasco, Pharrell (an aside: I have a cousin who is the spitting image of this dude), and West sampling Thom Yorke's "The Eraser". Ick. Granted, I find it the best of the three latest tunes. But that's not saying much, is it?

I really want to like Kanye West. Really, I do. I liked that first album that made him ridiculously famous. I even somewhat liked the one that came after--Jon Brion did work on it and Brion is a darling in my musically-illiterate universe. Hearing these recent tracks, however, I have a feeling that the drop out from my school is going to do like most Columbia (or any college) alums--he's going to get boring and coast.

...

I have a lot of posi stuff to write about. Swears! It's just taking some time to collect my thoughts. Or pretend to. I don't really collect anything.

An Office Job To Do

I loved it when RJD2 decided to speak up, um, I mean sing in "Making Days Longer" off of Since We Last Spoke. Yeah, that's right. I didn't mind his sing-speak. I liked it. I loved it. If I were in a band, I would sing-speak. I also loved the idea of him departing from his norm and doing a more pop-oriented album (though, if this were a Serious blog, I would contend to say that everything he's done is Pop. Alas, I am not Serious nor is this blog and it's not like I thought that out before I started typing).

There's the problem: the idea is great. Full of promise. The actual manifestation of it is really not what I hoped he would accomplish. Accomplish is not the word. "Come up with". Listening to it straight-through the three times that I have so far in the past month or so, I feel like Rjd2 could've pushed and then pushed some more to get something not necessarily more polished, but something that's much more focused, more of what we all know he's capable of.

If the breeziness of "Making Days Longer" carried over into The Third Hand, I wouldn't've disliked the album so much. Yes, I disliked it and no one is surprised. Good job at trying, but it just didn't work out. If you're going to sing-speak, do it right. Make it the focus. Make the lyrics, the vocals punchier. Sure, stay restrained but let something peek out. Anything. I bought the album out of sheer curiosity. I listened because I wanted to hear him. But where did he go?

I wholeheartedly believe that one can be timid and present at the same time. He showed us with one breathtaking track and it's there, you know, inside of all of the crud, there's a breathtaking album. The Third Hand feels like a collection of afterthoughts or maybe a rough draft for something that Rjd2 is trying to develop. I'm not sure if the album is, in the grand scheme of his career, a step backward or forward. Maybe it's not a step at all. Maybe it's an extended jump straight up into the air but so far up that the world continued rotating and the poor guy just landed in the middle of the ocean.

...

No mp3 but the randomly found YouTube video is magnificent. Beautiful and minimal. Much like the song, I thought to myself, "I can't believe I actually like this." You could also watch the related videos where Rjd2 performs the song. With a band. And an acoustic guitar. I'm sorry. Really. I apologize. I just can't seem to dig that because I'm a close-minded asshat.