Sometimes I really wish I could just live on my own in nature. I want to move out into the middle of a prairie or forest and be able to live on my own for an extended period of time. I feel there is so much I could learn from that experience-- maybe I will be able to experience that one of these summers. In the mean time, I wrote another poem yesterday -- actually I wrote seven, but this one I actually really like. I hope you enjoy it as well.
That day was beautiful As the snow glided down from the clouds Like a leaf meanders to the ground.
It built up until the clouds ran dry, And a new coating replaced the cement and the grass. Daydreaming into the olden days, To an uninhabited region Where everything is of nature And everything can change your perspective, Your mood, Your soul.
And everything is all your need, Because all you need is to remember.
Die Kinder sind sehr gut Weihnachtsmann besucht Weihnachtsmann ist sehr hungrig Und isst meinen Kekse Mein Milch ist leer Und Weihnachtsmann tret mich met den Schuhen ein Ich bin Traurig Und gibt Weihnachtsmann in einen Kafig.
***
The kids are very good Santa visits Santa is very hungry And eats my cookies My milk is empty And Santa kicks me with his shoes I am sad And put Santa in a cage
EDIT **Also: There is a show at the Co-op on Wednesday night (at 9 (or 9:30)) that you should attend! Yeah!
The Annuals have been lying around in the depths of my music library for some time. A friend finally spun some tracks for me the other day and I was damn impressed. The Annuals, hailing from North Carolina, dropped a new EP as a follow up to their Be He Me LP titled Big Zeus in the UK only. I was able to get my paws on a copy, which contains some solid songs.
If you’re a fan of Beirut’s style then you should be very pleased with the Alaska in Winter’s debut Dance Party in the Balkans. Zach Condon of Beirut lends his skills to Alaska’s rep. with horns and ukulele. This overlooked cd has been out for quite a while, and yes, Pitchfork just so happened to recently review the record a couple of days back. Anyways, the cd is a hit among my circle of friends so with no further ado here are some of the highlight tracks.
On the frontier of party music madness remixer Sta is making a big splash on the dance floor. The Toronto based dj cuts up pop and dance hits with chopped vocals and fiery base/synth that are each a treat to hear. You can also check them out at http://www.myspace.com/stafree. Here are three of my favorites if you’re in the mood to get down.
I found a silhouette cut out of my Grandmother in a photo album after her funeral this past weekend. This is my best attempt of recreating it with a really neat background. (although the silhouette is on a transparency in this pic)
Sunday, December 2, 2007
Just a new logo I made, should be a T soon once I redraw it. I've also recently realized how popular Pomegranates are becoming, which is pretty darn cool.
I'm beginning to fall in love with Portland. Last night was the big KLC Show, with a fat line-up of 5 LC bands. First off was Laps I Swim, a noise-folk duo (or rather, trio?) consisting of a drummer/percussionist, singer/percussionist, and a karaoke machine with pre-taped guitar/keys. With the bare-bones set up of a few drums, a few glockenspiels, a tambourine and various liquor bottles to hit, these guys had to work pretty hard to keep it interesting -- and they did. Their myspace says they're a blend of Jaymee Martin (upon further investigation I found nothing about Jaymee Martin--is this the singer?), Microphones and Pavement, which sounds like an excellent mix to me. Their shambling liquor-bottle gamelan orchestra proved to be more than a gimmick, and something I recommend seeing if you have the chance.
After a blue-grass-ish trio that I didnt catch much of, Cream-of-Wheatasaurus Rex (nee Bloom) came on, the recently-birthed project of Pomegranate friends Owen, Wyatt and Ben. With two guitars, drums and no bassist, they simply turned the distortion up real loud, creating a wall of sound with layered melodies and impressive texture. And then they played "Pizza Day, Fuck Yeah!". Hopefully they'll take this project past its infancy into something full-borne, I'd pay to see them.
The last band I saw, Booze Howl was something special. Before the show, I had heard rumblings of the name around campus, but nothing really substantial, and nothing hinting on what I was about to see. When they took the stage (space? there wasn't really a stage, just an area where the band played) they let the guitars feedback, filling the room with a single ominous tone, only an inkling of what was next. Then, the lights went out, and they proceeded to gouge the room with the most piercing noise of any live band I have ever seen. It was majestic, pure unabashed fucking sound, consuming the body and working its way past your ears into your head. On stage they had guitars in their hands and they were projecting their voices, but these weren't the sounds that we were hearing. They twisted and fucked their six-strings through an array of pedals, making sounds you couldn't imagine and wouldn't want to. The sound was violent, cathartic, and the best part was, they got the crowd moving. They truly were howling into the microphones, translating their physical energy into noise. It was amazing to see such an atonal, harsh, ugly sound move the people in the audience so much.
After further inquiry, I couldn't find any recordings of actual Booze Howl online, but there is Ghosts & Mysteries on myspace, the side project of the second, noisier guitarist. He creates poppish psychedelia more reminiscent of 60's bands warped through effects pedals, barely hinting at the spectacle that was Booze Howl.
Although the guitarist for Booze Howl said if I didn't stay for Snake Plissken, I'd die, but I could only hear one song and I'm just fine right now. Owen stayed for more and he ended up bleeding from the head, if that's any indication of how good they were.
Here's songs from Ghosts and Laps, if you guys are too lazy to go over to their myspaces and check them out.
The Thermals and YACHT played a free show at Backspace last night. With effort and courage I forced my way into the previously-at-capacity show and proceeded to see one of the better shows of my time. I didn't get in time to see all of YACHT, but Jonas Bechtolt had a bumping set while I was in there. He had some odd multimedia set-up with a projector that he controlled with a little Apple remote control. While I've never really dug the Blow, Jonas on his own knows how to play. His cut-up and reworked hand-drums and guitars work well in the live setting, although he didn't do much more than just play over recorded versions of the songs. After YACHT left, a dance-freak-out started on the stage, and the crowd didn't even notice the Thermals had taken the stage until Hutch asked kids nicely to get off. What followed was a rush of power-chords and one-two drum beats, their raw power translating perfectly from the record. Without a second guitarist, some of the solos proved a little thin, but their breakneck momentum made up for it. There was little time between songs, and the songs were short and plenty -- they often only played half a song to maintain their speed and squeeze as many hooks into their time.
Shouting along about a future fascist-Christian America gone wrong was never so fun.
