tracing the tracer

Cargo doors of the sculpture building.

Jane Mendelsohn, American Music
Richard Swift, The Atlantic Ocean
Felt, Poem of the River
Big Star, #1 Record/Radio City
Julian Cope, Autogeddon

RIP Big Star's Andy Hummel. Here he is at the Alex Chilton tribute in Austin with the remaining Big Star Jody Stephens, my favorite female singer Susan Cowsill backed up by the Watson Twins.


Susan Cowsill, Andy Hummel, Jody Stephens, and the Watson Twins, "September Gurls"

OK but really, I listened all the way through the endlessly augmented special edition of Space Oddity all morning before I got to these albums. I have more memories of a free festival than any soul who actually attended.


David Bowie, "Memory of a Free Festival (Part 2)"

Also, child that I am, apparently eager for your validation, I report to you that that I finished American Music at lunch. I wasn't so sure it was for me - an exploded romance - but it won me over by the end. I also ate all my grapes at lunch.

As for the rest of this stuff: Richard Swift is the grandson of Randy Newman trying to be the Magnetic Fields, which doesn't sound like too bad an idea on paper; Felt is my carbonized teenage heart plucked from the ashes like Shelley's was (thanks to Jerri for that one); and Julian Cope is the last stocky football player to burst through the tattered paper banner and enter the field, indistinguishable from the others except that during the National Anthem, he can be seen staring squarely into the sodium glare of the stadium lights, tracing the tracer of every mosquito in the bug halo, becoming sightful in his temporary blindness. He will soon quit the team and grow his hair out, hole up in the library and read all lunch hour and when you try to talk to him, he'll make you a mix tape that has that one actually good Randy Newman song on it and tell you about Shelley's heart.


Julian Cope, "Autogeddon Blues"