LINDSTROM

Hello peoples.

There are many reasons why I enjoy electronic music.

It can make me dance (which I never do).
It can make me deeply introspective (which I am anyway...but more so, and to different places).
It can make me feel like a iron, figity robot (which I am as well – gangly bastard).

One of the seemingly lesser reasons I enjoy electronic music is simply how excellent it sounds blaring through my headphones/speakers (both significant monetary investments - thus elevated sonic quality). Music created on electronics blasting out like silver digital rockets through other electronics. Top notch.

One of my favorite electronic records of the past couple years is Lindstrom’s “It’s a Feedelity Affair.”

Shit kicks off so hardcore.
Dance-y and fun. Lush and smoove.

There are certain albums that convince me, despite the obvious counterpoints, that I am cool as fuck. That I can swing down the street like fucking John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever and everyone will reel around all slo-mo-like and go, “did you see that fucking guy? Holy crap. Cooler than a Creamsicle in February.”

Albums do it in different ways.

Iggy Pop & The Stooges’ “Fun House” makes me believe I can get any woman on Earth just by walking by. Best fucking rock album of all time.

Captain Beefheart’s “Safe as Milk” makes me think I could live on a algae infested houseboat in New Orleans slapping foot-stompin’ banjo while sipping Jack and Ginger’s for all-god-loving-eternity. That's quite cool...trust me.

But this Lindstrom album creates a different image for me. Walking into a club (which I never do – 5 years in NYC, 26 years in its general proximity and I NEVER went to a club), I command the attention of the entire dance floor.

Think Rusty from National Lampoon’s "Vacation," rolling into the French Disco. In this case the white leather jacket would read "Kadin" on the back. All the ladies swivel their heads.

I raise my hand slowly and a frigid tumbler of lime-spiked Stolichnaya is slid inside. I walk forward and the entire joint reacts to my movements. Ah, well, you get it. Hotness abounds.

Then the battery runs out on my iPod and i realize that I'm holding up the line at CVS when the automated check machine won't scan my shaving cream and floss.

Yea. Reality. Hmm. A bitch.

I also dig on the organic elements that drive this record. It is an electronic record, true, but it also has guitar and bass elements that mirror my own guitar tastes…even my own guitar playing. It ain’t that technically impressive but everything seems to fit in its right place.

Anyway. Here tis’. Enjoy this gemmish-gem.

http://rapidshare.com/files/140581572/Lindstrom.zip.html

if you dig, check out similar hotness in Booka Shade, Trentemoller, Prins Thomas and Pantha Du Prince (posted earlier on this very weblog)

UNEDITED JET LAG

AN ODE TO THE COLOR RED

Red. Oh so...reddish.
The color of a radish, but usually lighter in hue.

A sweaty cheek beckons your arrival with sweet clumps of salt juice.
I dab at them with mine hanker-cloth and wonder why I keep a sweat-covered rag in my pocket. Shocking that women won’t come near me…really.
Packet of tissues next time I go out in heat like this. It really is a sky-high sauna out here.

Red.

Like the center circle of the flag of Japan. Perhaps the ‘center’ modifier was unnecessary back there. There is only one circle on the flag of Japan. Simple. I like.

Like the sun. Granting us orange-y red-like warmliness on a summer’s day such as this. Prompting one to disrobe and frolic, arms agape and flailing, through a field of swaying, multicolored crepe-paper streamers wiggling up toward the blue expanse. The wind-stroked paper makes a crunching sound like that of a cornfield set ablaze by a wandering arsonist.

And the birds…

Oh! The birds!

They won’t stop swooping and squawking in my face. Diving down trying to steal my sandwich. I only have twenty minutes for lunch and really, with the heat and birds…chicken salad inside tomorrow.

The French call it La Rouge. Feminine. Like a woman or particular types of deodorant.

A symbol of love and war and blood and stop signs.

A tomato. A cherry. Cherry Tomatoes.

A red M&M.

Red.

Odorless.

Red.

The color of my old skis. What is someone supposed to do with a pair of old skis anyway? Donate to the less fortunate? Do you know how expensive lift tickets are these days? I’m surprised anyone can get out on the slopes. And forget about lunch at the lodge. Best be packing chicken salad.

Red.

Like the grapes in my chicken salad…which I will omit from the recipe next time. Their sweetness overbears the salt of the chicken and mayonnaise. It’s an art, really, making a good chicken salad. I thought I had it mastered, but once again, just like at the DMV yesterday, I was so desperately wrong. Bastards. 40 minutes I waited. For what?

The DMV’s logo is red.

Red.

Like my heart.
And I assume most other normal, non-alien people’s hearts.
Beating for, on average, 72 years or something until I croak and it stops and turns brown.

SHANGHAI 5

I've just returned from an excellent trip.

I spent 10 days in the world Bugs Bunny discovered when he dug deep into the Earth and popped out the other side bewildered and upside-down.

Fortunately and unlike Bugs, I arrived on my feet. Well, enough so to take some photographs. Here they are. Enjoy them like you would a frosty beverage.

Shanghai Photomiton

CHINA, MY CHINA

comin' home today...

FUZZ ON MY TAIL

PIMPIN' AIN'T EASY

LUNCH?

HOT CHIX FOR LIFE

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080807/ap_on_re_us/ice_cream_killer

THE GOOT

Watch out NYC ladies...

O Pointy Birds,
Pointy Pointy.
Anoint my head,
Anointy-noity.

SEEING THINGS THROUGH A NEW LENS...

Just picked me up a spankin' Canon G9.

will be adding more photos to this zone in the near future.

Hungry for fun?

Going out in style!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/picturegalleries/howaboutthat/2439745/Guinea-pig-festival-in-Peru.html

Underwater Moonlight-ing...

There’s a simple something. An implanted wink that instinctually involves you in music, literature, anything. The composer, author, whomever decides to create something that, if enough attention is paid, allows you to join them for the ride. The ride that caused them to create in the first place.

The wink laced throughout Underwater Moonlight is more like a punch in the gut for me. A punch in the gut I so desperately long for. The snarling humor, snark, frothing wit, whatever you want to call it threaded through this compilation of songs is so smart, so real and so able to be interacted with that almost anyone can take a sliver of a smile away upon their very first listen. Robyn Hitchcock’s lyrical intelligence is something that extends atmospheres outside the realm of songwriting and into a space where anyone who creates anything can take a nugget of witticism out and say, “hey, these fucking guys are smart. And they write fucking incredibly catchy songs! Fuck.”

This album is a punch by punch, knock you on your ass songwriting masterpiece.

Aside: There’s that whole theory that those who were nerds in high school end up being the cool kids in life and the cool kids from high school are doomed to never leave the town in which they were “reared.” Theories are theories because they can’t consistently be proven true but I can see some of that idea in this music. The Soft Boys came about after they realized that after years of rejection, they’d become the cool kids. They are conscious of this fact and hang it over the head of those they've left behind, taking great joy in breathing a hearty, "fuck you." Their intelligent rebellion manifested itself in musical form dealing with rejection, anger and frustration, the resulting experimentation with psychedelics and the remarkably up-front and good-natured humor that surrounds it all. They know they've beat the high school kids, but why not taunt them just smidge more with their tight rhythm section.

This album stands out as one not part a movement. It stands out because it stands alone. It is timeless and gets me every time. Makes me want to jump around the room and destroy the joint with joy. Highlights include “Insanely Jealous,” “Kingdom of Love,” “I Want to Destroy You,” “Tonight,” “Underwater Moonlight,” and “You’ll have to go sidways.”

Hope you enjoy as much as I do….bitches.
This one’s a top 10-er.

http://rapidshare.com/files/131750677/Underwater_Moonlight.zip.html

Feewings...Nothing more

There’s been a delay.

Apologies for all you wearing out the edge of your seat.

I’ll ease back in gently with a single, yet ultimately important piece of music.

From Brian Eno’s foundation-laying epic, “Another Green World.”

The track is called, “The Big Ship”

Now I can’t say exactly why, but this piece of music has a greater effect on me than any other in my possession.

No words. Repetitive. Rocking up and down like a creaky wooden ship at night. So airy and thick. Something's ending...or beginning...Or both.

I’ve never had a song evoke more imagery and feeling than this simple, dense three minutes and three seconds. Who's to say what infinitesimal compilation of personal experiences have led to this intense reaction, but man, it gets me. Chokes me up, sends shivers down my spine, all that. Not afraid to admit it. Not one bit.

I’m putting it out there. Laying my feelings in the open for you, dear reader, to mock, agree with, trample upon, or sear with your laser beam goggles and neon-spewing devil dartboards.

Do as you will. But be sure to listen loud and drink it in first.

Out.

http://rapidshare.com/files/120546688/05_The_Big_Ship.mp3.html

MIGHT JUST BE THE BEST THING I'VE EVER SEEN

http://www.blublu.org/sito/video/muto.htm

seriously.

Starless and Bible Black Sabbath

People.

PEOPLE.

Folkmaster Flex himself, Mike Roberts, is back in the U-nited States and going ripshit on his guitar. He posted an absolutely spectacular cover of Nico’s (Jackson Browne’s) “These Days” upon his return and somewhat 12-gauged my mind. Kid is so damn talented it makes me want to vomit…PRAISE!

So. In response to Mike’s open call for cover suggestions, I thought I’d be the smart ass I tend to be and suggest a seemingly un-coverable song (and one of my all-time favorites), “Starless” by King Crimson. It’s a 12-minute song with strange/difficult chord changes, a killer build and a monumental guitar solo that makes you want destroy everything non-living within a 10 to 20 foot radius.

Anyway. Of course. Mike killed it. Slayed that fucking thing and made it his bitch. One thing (of many things) I can say about Mike is that the guy just knows how to make good music. He’s by far the most talented musician I know and seriously and simply knows what sounds good. So he took “starless” and made it his own - Mike’s folk-on-top-of-its-head, down-n-dirty, yellowed beer-drinking awesome sandwich.

For the love of god, check out the song on mike’s blog and divvy the props accordingly.

Kudos.

woodendinosaur.blogspot.com

Mo' Music....

They say first is the worst, second is the best and third…well, third’s got that derned hairy chest.

Last night was round two of DJ action at River Gods here in boston and it was, well, the best. The crowd was frothing for heat and you know damn well I gave it to them. So much so that bar stools and the standard River Gods’s thrones became unnecessary. Everyone got elevated. They floated around the room like those stoned punks in Half Baked - choking on the smoldering musicjuice being blasted through their brains.

Yea. I’m confident. So what? If I weren’t so damn pumped by the tunes I spin/click then why the hell would I offer them up to you, oh treasured blog reader? I seek to spread the ashes of my charred rock unto your fertile sponge brains so that a leafy soulpsych insanity bush sprouts from within. And the same shivers my own brainshrub passes through me may one day rattle your spine with gale-force-winds of musical glee. Best take out insurance before your brain tree smashes your brain Honda.

Nuffothat.

Hopefully they’ll let me DJ again so that I can get some short/curlies on this David Chokachi-esque barefront chest-o-mine.

River Gods - 5/8 - 1
River Gods - 5/8 - 2

The Spanish Imposition

Once again, the force feeding.

For those of you who live in places other than Boston, here are the four hours of digital music I played at River Gods Bar Tuesday night.

I DJ’ed.

I controlled the lubricated minds of a lucky group of about 30 people from 8pm – 1am for a single night of their lives. I saw tears welling, smiles breaking, dollars dropping and coins collected.

I can only hope that the scattered songs I spun slipped secretly into the soul of some who witnessed with satisfaction. Seriously.

So here’s the musak. It was a pain in the nuts to get it all up on rapidshare – took up my whole goddamn day - so just deal with the fact that there ain’t no track listings.
If anyone actually reads this “blog,” downloads this music, listens to it and really, desperately needs to know what a particular track is, you can email me. But don’t expect an expedient response or anything. I could care less about you and your pathetic fanboy/girl requirements of me. I am of course kidding with you about the pathetic thing. Please inquire. I will respond with great zigor and vest.

River Gods 1
River Gods 2
River Gods 3
River Gods 4

I'm big on the pig

Piggly Wiggly. They get it.