HOLY GRAILS

It all begins at the beginning.

A good place to start…or begin, rather.

Aural punishment in the form of a slow metallic drone.

Om.

The band’s name being a peephole into their sound-apartment, the place looks like your weed dealer’s room in college.

But more metal, less Marley. An amplified and evil Raga, intent on hypnosis through a dredging, methodical bass dirge.

But this text is not about Om. It just begins here. Remember?

Om’s new drummer is a member of the Portland, OR band, Grails.

I saw Om play recently and was reminded of Grails's tumble into one of my mind’s many chasms. So I dug the sucker out and what did I find?

A delicious bit of musical wonder.

[And we’ve arrived at this text’s subject. Welcome to it.]

Grails are one of those 14,000 bands that come tumbleweeding across my daily mindspace that I simply forget to follow-up on.

But then, Om.

A band whose album, or rather two song mediation, Conference Of The Birds, causes me capture within a plodding parade of mystical lemmings through the sands of time. Yea.

Om was the string tied round my finger reminding me to investigate Grails.

If Iggy Pop wrote repetition into Fun House as a response to Detroit’s automotive assembly lines, Om wrote repetition into Conference Of The Birds as a manifestation of our brain waves during dreamstate - slow, repeating, beautifully frightening, echoing throughout.

Where Om limits itself to one stream of consciousness, Grails incorporates collective width including: Popul Vuh, Zeppelin, Hawkwind, Melvins, Gong, Ali Akbar Khan, Ash Ra Temple, Acid Mother’s Temple.

Sounds like it could be an introspective nightmare…but what separates Grails from lesser-awesome groups is their ability to break from the conventions of meditative music up toward a much more, for lack of a better word, rocking zone.

They take the groundwork laid in place by the groups mentioned above, and instead of regurgitation, they fuse and push. Building the meditations into loud, forward-moving celebrations around bonfires with tribal intoxicants made from local frog’s pancreas.

This is psychedelic celebration music.

The inorganic builds of Mogwai and Pelican aren’t found here, but instead the growth comes as a band improvising. These songs aren’t composed. They are planted, tended to and grow as the sun hits the leaf. This is organic psychedelic.

But it’s too well-versed to be hippie music. This is musician’s scripture. Music produced by the lovers of great music (that great music being produced by lovers of great music before them)

So.

If you made it through that…here’s Grails - Burning Off The Impurities. Enjoy Friend-O.

http://rapidshare.com/files/158190150/Grails-Burning_Off_The_Impurities-2007.zip

WHERE YOU GO I GO TOO

The burning red sun peeks its fiery strands up from below the Miami horizon.

Traffic begins to bustle.

A man listens to marshmallow-sized headphones while roller skating down the boardwalk.

Bums. Bums bum.

A girl in a skimpy bikini and cut-off t-shirt looks over her shoulder. She winks.

You think, “is she winking at me? Or that Baywatch film crew behind me? Ah whatever, where’s the churro cart?”

Neon, everywhere.

A West Highland White Terrier rides a hover board through rising pavement steam whilst smoking a clove cigarette and quoting Raymond Carver.

Thus begins Lindstrom’s new album, “Where You Go I Go Too”.

(I figure…I reviewed the old album, might as well discern and divvy the new)

It’s a blistering smoke machine, this thing. Filled with Vangelis flourishes, unmoving Pink Floydian bass lines, Hans Zimmer/Steve Reich synth vibes, and enough Italo-disco pastabilities to choke Mario, Luigi and that loser Toad.

No one likes you, Toad.

With the out-of-nowhere critical success of his first album, Lindstrom returns with middle finger a-flipping toward all who challenge his mastery of the medium.

(Activate stern Norwegian accent)

“You wanna listen to this record? You think you can handle it? Well see if you can get through the first monster jam. Oh? What’s that you say? It’s a half hour long? 30 minutes? No. it couldn’t be.”

He continues…

“Yes. It is! Does that frighten you? Do I frighten you? Well maybe you shouldn’t be so invested in the 5 minute, 10 song album structure you’ve gotten so damn comfortable with. Tell your mom you’re ready to throw out your safety blanket then plug these 12 inches into your ear tubes. I think you just might enjoy the commitment.”

I love it.

…coming back with an album that challenges you to sit down for a half hour and actually listen to something. To do lists on PDAs, blackberrys, speaking engagements, trips to the mall, trips to the bank, crocheting, Myspace, all the things that take up our time on earth, and Hans Peter says, “no. If you like my music, sit down, or rather, stand the fuck up and jump around to it for a half hour or more. You might learn something about yourself.”

Balls out. Take it or leave it.

This record rips and makes me psyched to be aurally sound - My Bloody Valentine almost put an end to that at the All Tomorrow’s Party festival this past weekend.

Thrown repeated into the Wall. Of. Sound. 132 dB. Whoa.

pictures here: http://flickr.com/photos/andykadin/sets/72157607462298637/

Anyway…dig in friendly friends.

http://rapidshare.com/files/147879131/lindstrom_-_where_you_go_i_go_too.zip.html

ANYONE LOOKING FOR A BOX SPRING?

I told my roommate i could get rid of it (using the power of words)...

http://boston.craigslist.org/gbs/fuo/842467465.html

FULL SIZE BOX SPRING - READY TO BLOW YOUR MIND - $50 (Kendall Square)

---

Reply to: sale-842467465@craigslist.org ^[?]
Date: 2008-09-15, 11:52PM EDT


Hello.

I have the most kick ass box spring on earth ready to join you in your home.

It is a FULL size box spring as produced by Sealy Posturepedic and is in damn near perfect condition. It can serve a number of purposes:

1. a box spring (under a full-size mattress)
2. a stage for small dogs (or cats) performing in a show
3. a training device for a low-budget, local football squad trying to make it in the big leagues.
4. a temporary wall.
5. one of a series of mattresses and box springs used in a giant toppling domino display.
6. to use as a gauge for distance after a sweet bike jump.
7. a replacement bumper for your Mack truck.
8. to stay afloat at sea...for a few minutes.
9. a perfect item for reserving parking spaces.
10. kindling.

These are just a few of the many ways you (and your friends and family) can celebrate with this incredible FULL-size box spring. If you want it, you gots to come pick it up.

This is the cowbell for dinner, (if you want this mattress) come and get it.

Alright. It's been fun talking.

hit me up if you want this thing. 50 bones, OBO.

A POEM OF LOVE

So in my ever-loving search for the perfect burger...really...i frequent the burg-centric (and fantastic) blog ahamburgertoday.com.

Recently they had a competition to see who could write the best hamburger related acrostic poem. And in my ever-developing patheticness, I submitted a poem.

and won.

a book.

about burgers.

here's the acrostic.

Holy crap.
Amazing.
My
Burger
Understands me. Gets me.
Really caters to my most crucial of needs!
Great. Now I have to
Eat it. Goodbye
Rare friend.

http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2008/08/burger-book-giveaway-the-hamburger-a-history.html

FLIGHT FRIGHT

So look.

I promised myself when I started this weblog (way back in ’74) that it wouldn’t be about me. This guy. What the crap do I have to offer you, dear reader, other than perhaps a glimpse into the music world I so dearly treasure. Thus, the mainly musical offerings so far.

That aside, this next album connects to my being in a very particular way.

Stand by - soul doors opening…

I have an unqualified, illogical fear of flight.

Airplanes.

Yes. Airplanes scare me shitless.

I understand the physics – drag, lift, etc. – but for some odd reason I can’t get by the fact that we are fucking floating on invisible fucking nothingness 30,000 ft. above a violent range of fucking snowcapped fucking mountains! What? How can this be? I’m looking out the window across some bald guy drooling on himself and wonder when he’s going to stand up in a fit of unwarranted rage and yank the HUGE lever (why does it have to be so damn big? Do crazies need a fucking invite like that?) on the emergency exit door thus sucking me and my unsuspecting coach jockeys out into the wild blue fucking yonder!

Whoa.

Clearly I have a slight problem. Good thing I picked a career that only flies me around the world 400 times a year or so. Once again…nice work self-defeating moron.

Despite the above, there has been some headway. And, as most respite arrives in my life, it comes in the form of music.

For some odd reason, combined with a blatant disregard for both FAA regulations and repeated flight attendant flogging, I must take off while listening to music.

One song specifically – Laila, Pt. 2 by Agitation Free.

I develop rules that, however illogical, when proven to work once, must be instituted as a universal. This is now a rule. I haven’t crashed yet, and the past 6 flights – some over 15 hours long – have all started with Laila, Pt. 2.

There is something within this song. Something intrinsically laced within its consistently upward bouncing bassline, its flittering guitar solos doused in celebration, and the popping progress of the snare. When it kicks in at a about 1:30 I am temporarily free of fear. Flight is now something straight out of the 60s...a yellowy party in the sky with cold beverages, luxurious meals and sexy stewardesses.

It is no longer the moments before a life-changing disaster, but instead the birth of an adventure whose memory will rival any of those life long.

This song does that. Quite a radical shift from my fears detailed above, wouldn't you say?

Mechanical failure.
Terrorism.
Pilot error.
Suicidal flight attendant.
Psycho drooling bald man.

They melt into introspective delight.

AH!
Song’s ending!
Quick - Restart it!

Anyway…here is the album within which the song that makes flight possible resides.

First Communication also kicks ass.

Enjoy.

http://rapidshare.com/files/142189799/2nd.zip.html

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