Those Middle Aged [now they were really onto something]

so we’re in our quarter life and we’re done castigating our parents’ generation.  that is like, so 2009 [along with anything 8-bit].  passe.  yesterday’s jam is today’s jam.  shacking up with a middle-aged man has, oddly enough, expanded my already rather wide musical musings.  here’s a list of musicians and tracks that i have somehow jumped the shark, value-wise.

1] NOT THE BEATLES.

let’s set one thing straight.  if we’re talking about giving value where value is due – here’s one example of a band who has been grossly over-valued.  after sifting through their vast collection of repetitious albums, there is no one single stand out track, not a single solid compilation.  enough of the beatles.  they are neither cute nor talented, and most definitely not ‘ground-breaking’.  if you start your career in a swath of screaming teenage females, you don’t really get to play the unconventional card.  oh you have songs about drugs and the devil?  WOW.  rewind 20, 30 years and listen to robert johnson.  thanks.  now go and acquire your own taste in music and stop rehashing the same tripe over and over.  thanks.

2] Neil Young

now that we’ve set the record straight, we’re off with The Original Wild Man.

i’m aware that mr young dislikes the sharing of his music without recompense, but he said so himself :: ROCK AND ROLL WILL NEVER DIE.  while we’re on the topic of compensation, we might as well bring up Farm Aid [as a newly enrolled devotee of the homesteaders unlimited guild [?]].  it’s nice to know that there’s a fellow canadian who not only understands but supports my desire for ducks, my goat lust, my bee envy.
the role of the storyteller has been greatly perpetuated by neil young’s gift for song crafting.  growing up, i had always love love loved ‘cortez the killer’ [liberal artist and history buff shining through].  not to harp on the original, but built to spill’s cover and 20-minute guitar solo has really taken it to ‘the next level’.  listening to him on the local rock station – CHOM 97.7 – he was one of the first of a line of ‘oh, adults like that kind of music so i guess i should too’, without ever having really paid any real attention to them.

3] Dire Straits

in a similar vein of #2, i had only ever known dire straits for their big hits – money for nothing, sultans of swing – without exploring their technical and storytelling mastery.  scores of generations of bards are bowing.  let’s go down to the waterline.

4] Russian Classical and Modernist [Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, Stravinsky…]

 

when i hear people say ‘i don’t like opera’, they are making a statement that is not unlike saying ‘i don’t like pop music’.  it’s a rather broad statement that comes from being narrow-minded.  operatic productions cannot, and should not, be lumped into one group, as styles and artists vary greatly from one artistic movement to another.  i’ve gone out on a limb and put sergei and igor together with pyotr and modest because on the whole, i’ve come to prefer russian composers over, say, spanish or italian.  perhaps it’s the structure, perhaps it’s the chill of perseverance.  lately i’ve been on a bit of a baroque kick, but the flow and jarring of history and story always brings me back to russia.  back to the stigma of opera, it’s popularity during the height of its composition as a form of entertainment is the modern equivalent to going to the bell centre to watch madonna shake her tits on stage.  it would make as much sense but move you just as deeply to experience it IRL, even if the viewer were absolutely clueless as to what the singers were trying to convey.  i’m not saying ‘like opera’.  just try and find the kind of pop music you like.

just don’t sell out and try to convince me the beatles were the greatest band ever.

Bog People, Bog People

a rather tragic amount of time has passed since my last real entry – mostly because i was incredibly uninspired, tired of school, and just tired in general.  but as i was sitting on the ‘gin couch’ watching josie and the pussycats yesterday, i felt the urge to reach out and pick mbls again.

i’ve finally felt some redundant relevance here in the bog [since the xx post i have graduated university, written and published 4 zines, collaborated on 2 more, joined a yarnbombing collective and proceeded to move out of montreal! phew!], this relevance due mostly to my diabolically theological leanings and intrinsically synchretic lifestyle.

the creative process is a ficklefuck of a pickle, but i’ve finally reached a point where i can map out my methods on a solar and lunar calendar.  those who know me know what i’m talking about when i say ‘holy shit sponge mode’.  the most recent sponge has been combining my many sources of herbal, planetary, and colour correspondences into one mostly gender and intention neutral volume.  FUN !  but i love my lore and superstitions and symbols and they deserve to be all together.

this is straying widely from my original intention, but my notes are pretty scattered tbh especially since i am now listening to traditional appalachian music so i’m never really ~here~, i have always been and always will be a bizarre oddity smattering the fringe theories of life, the universe and everything and like to think i have a slight grasp on the nature of pop culture and the relationships held in this circle.

for most of modernity’s mythologies now take place in light boxes which make one believe one is socializing while physically remaining in solitude.  there’s a story about a person, taking the role of the ‘hero’, who attempts to play the role of the outsider.  gains status of the inner circle, becomes disillusioned, and flees, or rather reverts to their former state.  one is either in or out.  happy mediums don’t exist in entertainment, but somehow the weirdo will prevail in all this.  the weirdo wins in cinematic experience, but something is lost in translation. 

our lives are not walking commercials no matter how often we might be told this.  while many creative people do have to market themselves as a brand in order to reach their own level of success [infinite variable], it is considered ‘dirty’ because art must be noble and perfect and float about the material world while offering the world material objects.  i am stuck on this point.  i have become more sensitive and aware to the placement and role of advertisements now that i watch most of my beloved reality tv on the computer, where i can close any popups and not have my daisy of love interrupted by 3 minutes of wonkwonkwonk for every 5 minutes of showtime.  these things are important to me – the changing  role of hero worship dependent on progressive technologies should not i repeat not be spoiled.  i will be a better person by observing psychologically behaviour in realtime, not by spending $10 on the most technologically advanced oral health system.

so why is it so effective?  teenagers are surely not as empty and vapid as Big Money wants them to be.  they are the last bastion of rebellion.  if i can connect with a group of 13 year old boys when i’m ‘bombing, and they can see the value in my work [as valueless as it really is, these kinds of groups are my target audience] then i know i have succeeded in someway.  there’s no subliminal messaging, there’s no fooling these monsters.  we’ve lived every minute of our lives having been forced perfect life images upon us and yet no one lives this way.  there’s a realization that no one knows what they’re doing AND ITS OKAY. 

what’s not ok is having a place of constant one way dialogue.  when defacing advertisements in public places, the defense is always for the ad.  here we have a culture where pieces of paper and plastic have more rights and are valued more than the citizens who habit it! 

so.  what do we do?  these bogs aren’t big enough for us all.  the conversation is old, but there’s no resolution readily available, other than ‘know thyself’.  stop victimizing yourself and take a risk on a homemade venture.  i’ll pick up the ‘like art, god is a verb’ some other time.  how do i still miss america after all this?

THIS JUST IN

EVERY DAY IS SATANIC SATURDAY !

ode to street hassle

‘like post-apocalyptic ash falling softly from the night sky’

bless you, olly.  bless you, lou reed.

Viscera Sky Highs

 

i hear it’s spring break / reading week / etc

 

• 4 cards / day
• finish HIVE MIND
• polish up GO
• find a way to make TTFB look good and not fall apart
• finish the quilt you started 4 years ago
• finish the quilt you started yesterday
• research paper
• write paper

 

AND THE MARS VOLTA IN PROCESS OF FINISHING ALBUM.  GET IT DONE, BOYS, THE CERPIN SKIN BELIEVES IN YOU.

Accordion Solo

it really is no secret that accordion music makes me feel a great many gooey things inside.  here are some recent favourites,

Attempt

november is always a fuck of a month.  a grey descending into frost.  a lack of colour or warmth – in our impossible climate and the citizens who are ______ enough to call this place home.  NO JUDGMENT BEING PASSED i just do not get you at all at all at all.

november :: wherein our hero dabbles in memes, combines them in order to make a list of things that she is not loathe to draw.

01 :: me! drawing, me! blue hair not included. the real right hand is my signature style. it’s drawn in a mirror. i am left handed. you be the judge.

02 :: some one you ‘like’
i do indeed like my breakfast partner / fellow cat toucher. we drink coffee and young blood.

03 :: a / some / all friends
i chose an absent friend. i think about them a lot. i hope they’re okay.

strangely enough

as i am getting pretty sick of this town, i seem to be more and more interested in the local acts.  before it was sacrilegious to live here and say you did not like the arcade fire.  now there is a chanting in my skull ONE OF US ONE OF US. but their newest release ‘the suburbs’ is pretty catchy.  good for walking to work those early saturday mornings.  a definitive soundtrack to a deserted boulevard st laurent.

valleys is a local act i wish i had $5 to spare to go and see [yes! i am indeed that broke!].  they opened for xiu xiu all those weeks ago and i’ve been haunting their myspace ever since, which is kind of useless considering i am not getting the same interrupted spiritual agreement i had initially.  this is where recordings fail in some respects.  a seance is not sonic.

one of my favourite things about the beginnings of a doomed relationship is musical sharing.  they brought a silver mount zion to my attention – quite possibly the ultimate soundtrack to an oncoming winter.  pair it with grouper’s ‘dragging a dead deer up a hill’ and the coasts collide.

echo.

reverb.

renoun.

I Know The Passing Of Time

while we’re all anxiously anticipating the arrival of New Love,

here’s a photo from Givenchy’s SS11 Hommes collection

Heart, Attack

i’ll do graffiti if you sing to me in french

 

 

‘let you heart guide you’

‘your heart will skip a beat’

or 2 or 8

when picking hi-tempo tracks, it is easy to catch too easy onto hi-hat and snare beats that honestly send my heart onto some lunatic pattern.  how do you write a song like this?

circa 2004 the scene witnessed an influx of bands pouring beats out not unlike 200mg of amphetamines.  fade out bands like maxïmo park, bloc party, franz ferdinand, and panic! at the disco.  emo didn’t have to be ‘depressing’ in the traditional sense if it leaned towards the hardcore scene.  but then again, no one really cares about emo let alone emos.

except for the theatricality the genre adopted.  when intensely confessional, it may be seen as ‘easier’ to deploy heart attacks/ heart breaks when in costume and marrying all types of strings together.  it is kind of useless to source non-traditionally rock instruments in your video unless the band actually plays them.  in the song.  i don’t even hear a HINT of accordion in this track.

i have a weakness for this song because the singer has an exceptionally wide mouth and seems to have mastered selective warbling.

the cabaret theme is delectable in that is successfully distracts the viewer away from…the actually song.  narrative but not very corresponding.  dresden dolls took the cabaret / persona thread for far too long and has not been very popular since.

except

for the [un]fortunately [i can never tell ‘good’ from ‘bad’ here.  i’m going with un- here because they reeeeally deserve more recognition] underground The Dead Science with their album Villainaire.  more specifically the track Make Mine Marvel here we still have high tempo, a string section, and cabaret smoke rings but for some reason i don’t feel….dirty.  while Submariner had a strictly lounge feel to it, villainaire came and conquered cross crowns and remains a work of fiction?.without staying totalitarianistically true to the upbeat confessionals, they’ve managed to slip in silky interludes [as in Holliston and The Ghost Integrity] which is almost ‘experi/mental’

essentially bizarro and warbly and all i want to do is smoke cigarettes and drink gin and oh my god sam mickens is a dead ringer for my ex boyfriend.

the only other band that has successfully thrown me out of myself is my bloody valentine.

what sort of music makes you feel less like yourself than normal?

We Tremulants

are you peaking in the red?
perforated at the neck
what of this mongrel architect
a broken arm of sewers set
past present and future tense

this is a mars volta post, spanning many years.
in celebration of 24 years of weird life, and 5 years of ear bleeding progressions
the imminence of permanence

since i first bought ‘de-loused in the comatorium’ in late late 2005, i have been entranced.  my first opinion of them in 2003 had been wrongfully instilled by someone of insipid musical taste.  trusting them stupidly, i went along for years unknowing.  during a brief stint with a boy holding the name of a poet [but was far from such], he played de-loused and i was questioning, curious.
biting the bullet, i bought my own copy [from the eternally evil HMV, for cd esoterik had just closed and i was frantic] and opened the case and saw

.

i was not yet a visual artist at this point but i appreciated the connection of the illustrations, the music, and the concept.  my definition of music and idea of storytelling changed dramatically after this [i had not known of xiu xiu at this time, but they followed suit soonly].
and proceeded to collect every scrap of the careers of omar and cedric.
keeping visually inspiring imagery and moving house are often conflicting, and somewhere between then and now there was a 6 month period where i could not for the life of me find that illustration.  it had been a staple on my wall as a mini poster since it came into my possession and severe panic ensued.  i found it, of course.

but to vow i will never be without clasped arms and the water’s surface, i went and drilled it into my body.  just to be really sure.

you get the idea.  i am chair dancing, but to the smiths.  only because it is autumn.
so there you have it – the strangest story of Cerpin Taxt, featuring torment, opiates, submarines, a coma, and eventual suicide – on my arm.

the itching.  behold it.