Is It Just The Idea I Like or Is It For Real?

I pull a moderate sized bedsheet out of a bag and place it on the grass. The weather outside is fair, with a bit of a chill but the sun seems to be somewhere in the lurking of weather's knowledge. Its grey but not a depressing gray, a slight overcast, that white-ish tone. Some close friends are gathered with me and we are of a slightly sarcastic lot, but total lovers of life and all the things that we can grasp out of life's hand. I feel like quoting literature in a completely pompous manner, but instead I smile to myself that Im having these absurd thoughts to make myself seem far more intelligent than I am. My friends would pick up on it and most indefinitely laugh.

Time to pour some tea and share in some other quips and perhaps some cheese or fruit, although Im really up for some junk food...Perhaps a pastry with some gooey sugar icing upon it.

Have I been holding this dialogue all to myself so far. Always me sitting there amongst others with a long narrative going, creating this situation that doesn't entirely exist but could, if it was a slightly different universe. If my thoughts were always actualized, then everything would seem to be in a permanent state of absurd meets decadent meets mondane meets hallucinatory.

However it doesn't change that in realizing Im still sitting there talking to myself in my head, its time to realize that others are about me and I should open my mouth and say something. I know I will open it and not be able to shut it. But it would be rude to not say anything, and its simply not my style.

We all engage in some wonderfully ridiculous dialogue about things in our lives and continue to eat in this somewhat Camus-"come"-Fellini-esque picnic. Smiles are abound and smirks of a clever word and phrase uttered here and there.

Its a nice day. Even if the sun isn't completely out. There is a nice breeze rolling in from the shores a sligh distance away. I am feeling quite relaxed in the admiration I have for those I am in conjunction with and how its a really great thing to be a complete internal blabbering fool and not a single one of my friends seems to mind.

Its also of great comfort because when I export those blubberings to the air, it is always met with a pleased smile for my personality. I am fortunate this day to have those near and dear to me sitting and exchanging words with one another. Even though when I look around me there is but a beige wall, a pillow, some mild plum colored sateen curtains hanging in front of me, and the blinds behind me are of a dour sheer fabric of "blah"....I still feel this world continuing as if you weren't so far away from me.

Its just like when I stared at the beige walls with heavy beige curtains hanging, amongst antiques and photographs of my yesteryears...I still felt them all there, with me...being visible faces...

The faces that change. The people that interchange. Some stay constant. I remain as always....thinking of that which is near and dear to me, even when its out of close reach. The picnic invitations are soon to be.....

Just find me a nice bluff...



LINK : {Would It Be Too Much To Cry?}

INCENTIVES

I remember in passing, a friend telling me I might like this band called Disco Inferno...and while procrastinating some many years ago on Epitonic, in its earlier version, I came across them. I was trying to discover new music, for I was feeling a bit hopeless to the life I had being doomed to mass adoration of bands I would never see perform, because they were all defunkt! Surely, there has to be folks out there, whom are musically inclined and love the same stuff as me and have made bands that are reminiscent of all the good things that early post punk/indie was about.

To my surprise, while listening to the track on Epitonic, Emigre, I hit that very inspiration and satisfaction. It reminded me of The Chameleons, which I recall at this time I was listening to almost every day. There was something about the nature of this track that was just right on spot. I wasn't so utterly blown away by the other track on the site, but this one, this track indeed I listened to a bunch of times that day and fell more infatuated with it.

As the pattern often goes with dear Lorelle, the extremist nature of the leo kicked in and I couldn't fathom another day not owning the album, In Debt. I popped into every music store int he general Flatiron/Gramercy/Herald Square/West Village/Bleeker area and couldn't find it. I was so pissed off. However, fortune found its way to my grubby hands a few days later while out shopping with a friend in the East Village, and BAM! It was mine. I couldn't wait to take it home and play it and be taken into what I hoped would be the restored land of indie rock.

It did just this. I called the friend who recommended them, whom did not have the album but heard a description of them and thought it seemed on par for me, and just beamed with radiant reviews. I thought this album was greater than anything released in the 15 year space that the bulk of my records created to present day. I still think this album is great. I am listening to it right now.

Simply stated I think that Disco Inferno is a great band, with an albeit, horrible name, but I think there is a sense of humor to it all that I know is deliberate, and I can always appreciate sarcasm. Its completely a worthwhile listen and an enjoyable one...to me this album is the right way that a band can be inspired by the "right" post punk outfits, and make music in the current day...for I do feel that what has spiraled out of control these days, is relative to the decade that launched the influences..."This is what happens when the right things go wrong, very wrong!"

Im not saying that there has been nothing since the post punk decade, for shoegaze was a billsful affair of mine too, but there had to be something else in the 90s that made great indie dark tunes!

LINK : {I TRY TRY TRY}

BABY...

Baby by The Comsat Angels is one of the best penned songs ever written, and its not that lyrically I think it is beyond the many I have heard, although Mr Bacon writes a mean tune, but musically this song has such a nostalgic place for me. I remember the first time listening to it as it rolled off the lp one evening at night, and thinking, "OH MY GOD THIS IS SOOOOOO GOOD!"

Its the kind of song that you are so excited to have that you want to call everyone up and start repeating that phrase above, "The Comsat Angels track Baby, is soooo good! Oh gosh I have to copy this for you. You have to have it!" You want to dub it on tape and get it to everyone of your friends immediately. You also want your friend who turned you on to them to give you a ribbon for congratulating you on buying it. "Yes now I know why you own this and why you had to
put it on my tape and get me insanely hooked to them. I must own everything now!!!!"

As for Independence Day, its all about the 1:36 marker...that rip down the bass neck is so stomach clutching its a sigh of "FUCK YAH" every time. 1:36 is Independence Day, its all about 1:36.

I just had a hankering for this album and I only have it at home on lp so I cannot listen to it during the day at work, but fortunately LOST-In-TYME had it on their blog so I grabbed it to reminisce, and I had to blog my response, because once again its just that kind of an album. Its so good you have to rant about it.

The post punk era of The Comsat's wasn't familiar to me until about 1999, and while that makes it past the newness of its release, I still felt like I had stumbled upon one of the greatest new things. To me all these records I own that are some 20 to 30 years past their point of issuance, all were new to me and I considered them novelties.

This is a band that has truly carved its way past the others in my collection that I will always go back to when I want to listen to something really good that fits my mood. This album is that "I'm just a bit moody enough to not be taken over and put into a rut but if I feel like going there, this is the only thing I want to hear as I fall into it." Unless of course you truly want to go there, in which case, just go to Postcard, which is well, gut wrenching! If ever there is a desperation of animosity track written, by jove this is it.

There are times that I want to make a movie just to use some songs in it and create the best soundtrack that any movie has ever seen. On the Beach is a total credits song for this movie...can you think about that, you are just at the beginning of a movie experience you sit down and this starts?! Shit, you almost want to fall out of your chair....this film is going to be beyond intense...and as it settles at its end you can see the storyline just starting in some character of a disgruntled nature...ITS SOOO GOOD! I can't help it!

In closing on moments from this album I would be a fool to not comment on Real Story...this is probably my second favorite track on this album. The bass line and the bass drum seem to be in such a perfect harmony with each other that your gut once again feels all kinds of wonderful punches in it that you want to scoop up with a shovel and say, once more "FUCK YAH!" Feels good, feels damn! damn!! DAMN!!! GOOD!




Oh this album, this album is just to good to ever keep hidden as a treasure of your own, it must be shared. I want everyone to own it, I want to share it with everyone...If you can get on a plane and come to Oakland, I will have a celebrate the Comsat's night and we can all sit in my room and listen to their first three albums and just feel too lucky to know about it!


LINK : I THINK I'LL TELL YOU AGAIN

Are you made of stone?

I am seriously unable to bring myself out of this obsession Ive had for the past 2 days. Every part of me just wants it to be 1990 and to be 16 and be living in the UK and going to Stone Roses shows every day.



Yes I cannot save myself from wishing that I was miles and miles and away and in another time dimension. When you listen to certain songs it just makes you want to be a part of the everything. It's like you feel so utterly left out of something that stirs you so much to just get loaded and jump around to such greatness and be amongst a masses of adoring fans who are 1000% mad for it.



Oh, why is it that it always seems that the fan level of hurrah seems so much better in GB than here? I feel completely wrapped in nostalgia and yet Ive never had the opportunity to see the Roses live, and yet I watch it all and feel like Im there with a best friend and I can recall from memory how super fantastic this was.

I have had moments with friends dancing around to these songs as if soaked in the grace of these concerts, and ven cars late at night blasting these songs and feeling like I was there, as the lights above stream fast passing and you are lost in the lyrics just singing away as if your adolescence is the most precious and outrightly eternal thing in this world.



So for now I sit here at my desk at work bobbing my head side to side and pretending to be in a greater place than I am. COupled with the sense of sadness of knowing that this beautiful moment died for so many when the Roses split...and my last passing memories of all of this was in 95, reading all the issues of NME and Melody Maker making jokes about them playing to support their non existant careers, and how Mr Squire was out and about playing his guitar for food. It was just so sad...

Watching it all just makes me sad and anxious and filled with so many things about the joys of youth and nostalgia and how its all gone. That great tapped sense of lost youth. Sad.

But, shit, enough of that reverie, lets dance!

Les Jouets

I bet you didnt know that Echo and The Bunnymen had one 7" in french? Its true and its sitting under the guise of a band called Little Nemo, and the song is called Les Jouets.

Heavens to Betsy, if they weren't listening to those first two Echo albums when they recorded this, talk about a Les Pattinson bassline, gosh! But its a great track! But you will be expecting Mr McCulloch's voice through the whole thing!

So, you wanted more Little Nemo demo's and you got 'em! Here is the sought after Froide sessions... I enjoy these even more because they include some pretty poppy dance tracks, and that means a great listen while you work.

Yup, while you work on those happy designs as you learn about behaviors in Dreamweaver CS3, and you stare at the clock and wonder when you will get to leave...you have to get home, so you can exercise.

Oh how you wish your gym played the music you listened to so you wouldnt need headphones all the time... That'll be the next thing of hipster culture, a dj at a gym... I'm sure somewhere this exists...and if not, then who ever does it now, has ripped me off...

Yes, Little Nemo is great! :)

LINK : Bed in Summer, Bed in Summer
[its so darn dancy! the lost track from Japanese Whispers, ha!]

Future Is Now...

Demos! Demos! Demos!

A follow up to the previous Little Nemo post, this week I'm going to add as much Little Nemo as I have, since I am greatly indebted to the nice and generous sir of Phoenix Hairpins, whom has musically aided me this week!
{thanks a bunch!}

I prefer the demos to the album versions because I really do enjoy the earlier versions of songs. There is something about the raw quality of a song that touches me more than many album versions, save for bands like Cocteau Twins that I prefer to listen to after Mr. Guthrie has flushed it out with all the acoustics and wall of chorus...its simply better that way!

That aside, please enjoy these if you don't have them already!

LINK : {Be Seeing You}

Impressionable Youth

Is there any reason that children born prior to the start of MTV were taken in by goth culture? For crying out loud look how many videos were all steeped in cathedral like phenomenon. Granted the Bonnie Tyler makes the biggest joke of most of it, but how is it that every director sought for the cathedral...all of these could have in essence been filmed at the same place...

You want a hit? Make the video with a cathedral in it! Oh the joys of the early 80s and MTV!

But what do they all share as well, that perfect crap quality lighting...this is what I want to recapture in video again, I love that blown out detail. Here are the other two greatest videos of that time for lighting.
(dont laugh, you know you love it too! Especially the smacking face and floor drum!)





And to be cool you must dance very angular and make gestures to every lyric. An absolute neccessity....hmmm, anyone else that does this.... hmmmmm.



I tell you Richard and Cy should go head to head!

This concludes my regression down memory lane when I was young five year old engrossed with the introduction of MTV to the world.