The biography of the Canadian progressive rock band Klaatu on Pandora spoke mostly of a rumor that the band was actually the Beatles, started by suggestions in a college newspaper. The rumor provided Klaatu with numbers beyond what a sci-fi boogie band would generally garner, and with that rumor's dissolution went their sales. I wondered how anyone could have fallen for such a flimsy scam; Klaatu are obviously too awesome to have been the Beatles. The Beatles may be many things, but alien orgone rockers they are not. What greater revolution could you say you want than a low-slung orbit?
(Paul McCartney as a Vulcan courtesy of the iPhone Face Melter)
Simon Reynolds, Elizabeth Fraser, Robyn Guthrie & Harold Budd - The Moon & The Melodies Marion Brown Quartet - Why Not? (listen) Man is the Bastard - Thoughtless...(listen)
I would have never guessed the unmitigated progression of filigree confection from the 80's to loft jazz from the 60's to basement grindcore, or "powerviolence" as I was informed this is, would make any sense, but shockingly, it did!
It's not the dearly departed acid reflux factory that was Silver Moon, but The Den down Highland from LSU near Washington is a reasonable substitute. And I emphasize reasonable because entrees at Silver Moon were more of a challenge than a meal practically served in mixing bowls under strata of grease. Not that I didn't love it, mind you; it's just that one was rendered functionless for at least seven hours after eating there.
$6.99 at The Den will get you a formidable plate of smothered chicken stewed to the limit of qualifying as a solid over rice and gravy with homemade mac & cheese and mustard greens and cornbread. The lunch specials rotate throughout the week. I gaze into my soul food afterglow and see chicken fried steak in my near future.
The chicken is rich and savory, falling off the bone, and I will laud any new reliable source of greens in my life, but truth be told, the mac was the star; tangy, clumpy, held together well - the absence of a little line of burnt crust was the only flaw keeping it from being the higher Platonic form of mac & cheese.
2003 was around the last time I was enamored with My Morning Jacket, but then I thought they were The THING, the what-I've-been-looking-for. I know this record by muscle memory, the way I know Steve Miller's "Fly Like an Eagle" or my phone number from when I was a kid. There's not a lot of records after this that I know in that same manner. I thought it might be the last, but research reveals Iron & Wine's Our Endless Summer Days came out a year after, and Wilco's A Ghost is Born the year after that. And during Hurricane Gustav I played the shit out of Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III but that was more the affections of desperation than love.
This morning. a phrase-adroit friend parenthetically posited "(if desperation can ever be idle)" and maybe in the reversal lies the truth. Idleness is invariably desperate, while love is entrenched and constantly active. I look at my phone full of recent albums introduced to me by desperate publicists, and while there are things to love to be found in some of these, I don't feel entrenched with these records as I do with the one playing now. Some of them I think are even better records, in one slippery quality or another, but I'm not taking a bullet for any of them like I might for the corny, obvious, riotous traps and tropes of the opening of "One Big Holiday." or the way Jim Jones croons "Cali FORN ya."
I do, however, hit "next" a lot through those new records like I always have done with "I Will Sing You Songs" which follows "One Big Holiday" like a sad puppy. When we are in the trenches, we can gloss over the obvious. (listen)
Now that I think of it, I've never listened to the whole album Fly Like an Eagle outside of the singles. (listen) In the Village Voice review, Robert Christgau sighs "But in the end his borrowed hooks and woozy vocal charm are an irresistible formula." Which is how I exactly how I feel about My Morning Jacket now.
When we drove up, a young woman was laying out on a beach towel in the dog park, surrounded by dog shit and panting dogs as disinterested in her presence as their self-obsessed owners. A kid just got yanked off the steps to the slide. "You just eat that damn chicken strip in your hand!" The loudmouth old man just bellowed "Where is that kid with the binoculars?" He retrieved them from Chicken Strip's brother, saying they are too expensive to be climbing around with. Maya is playing Amelia Earhart and her friend compromised "OK, but iCarly is her niece."
The beauty of Julian Cope is that his genius is tainted with numbskullery and vice-versa. Brain Donor sits mainly in the low-cognition part of Cope's sonic spectrum, riffs roughly molded from the True Mud of Man into the shapes of heads, plopped on the sacrificial stone for hardening by the cruel fire in the sky. To give you a sense of things, this EP is entitled Drain'd Boner. Enjoy! (listen)
Drawing Restraint 9 is the Bjork soundtrack for the massive art film of the same name by partner Matthew Barney. I'm not sure how I feel about Barney's work never having witnessed it in full big screen glory, nor am I about Bjork's which I have listened to more times than I can count. I think they are both onto something though If after all these years I still feel (or not feel) this way. (listen)
