Podcast #37 is up and live (download and stream at OnlineRock and subscribe at iTunes):

1. Brilliant Colors: "Absolutely Everything," Introducing on Slumberland
2. Avi Buffalo: "What's It In For?," What's It In For Single on SubPop Records
3. Small Black: "Despicable Dogs," Small Black 12" on Cass Club
4. Tamaryn: "Mild Confusion," Mild Confusion 7" on True Panther Sounds
5. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart: "Higher Than the Stars," Higher Than the Stars EP on Slumberland
6. Brazos: "Day Glo," Phosphorescent Blues on Autobus Records
7. Yellow Fever: "Hellfire," Yellow Fever on Wild World
8. BOAT: "Lately," Setting the Paces on Magic Marker Records
9. Tune-Yards: "Sunlight," Bird-Brains on 4AD

Slimmer pickings than normal, but thankfully what's available is good—and in the cases of, like, the Avi Buffalo, Brazos and BOAT, very good.

A moderate month for reading. The Dennet book took me longer to read than others, for whatever reason. I've noticed that I'm trending more toward non-fiction, which is sort of odd in how I think of myself as a reader. Perhaps it's the 9 years of English study that kept me in the fiction for so long that I can't help but stray into the arms of the not-quite-so-fanciful.

* The Devil's Details: A History of Footnotes by Chuck Zerby: a quick, fun read. Playful and with plenty of footnotes, as is to be expected.
* Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel Dennett: probably the most reasoned of the recent books by the New Atheists (or Four Horsemen, as some would have them: Sam Harris, Dan Dennett, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens). Takes a look at religion from a dispassionate stance that takes its grounding in psychology, philosophy and anthropology (among other fields). It's also "addressed" to a religious reader (scare quotes since I imagine that the vast, vast majority of readers are in the atheist choir already). My favorite is still Sam Harris since I think he's both the most forthright (and not abrasive as Hitchens is and Dawkins can be) and he pulls no punches (insofar as he makes a very strong point that the very presence of religious moderates enables religious extremists)—I also like that he is able to make room for the transcendent or numinous, given his background with Buddhism and meditation. His current research in neurobiology is focusing on religion, so I'm hopeful that once he's got a bit more done that he'll publish something on the matter.
* The Nonexistent Knight by Italo Calvino: I liked this one. I'm sure I would have found it funnier were I medievalist, but it was enjoyable nevertheless (nutshell: it's about a perfect knight who is a talking suit of armor).
* The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson: picked this up after seeing the movie, since I was interested in seeing how the book squared up with it, as doogiedownunder told me that they were significantly different. There are a lot of composite characters in the movie and most of the events once the Ewan MacGregor character goes to Iraq didn't happen (and none of them happened to Ronson). The invention of the storyline and the collapsing of the characters made it easier to make a narrative film, I suppose. The real people run the gamut from being saner than their counterparts are in the movie (for example, the guy who provides the model for the Jeff Bridges character didn't literally believe in making psychic soldiers—merely that the New Age stuff could help change the way the Army went around doing its business, though there were a number of people in the Army who ended up taking the stuff literally) to being utterly batshit. An interesting read and a nice counterpart to Ronson's first book, Them: Adventures with Extremists wherein Ronson spends time with, like, a Ku Klux Klansman, an Islamist imam, people who are into David Icke and that Illuminati thing, etc.
* From Square One: A Meditation, with Digressions, on Crosswords by Dean Olsher: Another quick read. Very digressive. Hits the nail on the head about what a crossword is, though, especially for those of us who (used to) do them daily (i.e., it's an addiction and provides diminishing returns upon solution the more you do). He treats the topic lovingly, though, so don't get the wrong idea (like, Will Shortz even provides good blurb for the book, so he's not, like, badmouthing the American-style crossword). He comes out on the side of the cryptic crossword, though (like what appears in the back of Harper's [and used to be in The Atlantic Monthly until a few years ago]). I always try the cryptic crossword, but can never get more than a few entries. I started working on the one in the December Harper's, though, and so far have 10 entries done! The more you do them, the better you get at them I suppose. If you have no idea what I'm talking about when I talk about cryptic crosswords, here's an example clue and answer from this month's Harper's puzzle: "What people aim for is to get sailors around (7)." The (7) means the answer is seven letters long. The answer is TARGETS. Here's how it's derived: the actual answer part of the clue is "what people aim for." That leaves "is to get sailors around." Sailors = TARS. Then you put that "around" "GET." So TAR(GET)S. Or here's another one that's a bit simpler: "Town with non-kosher food allowed (6)" HAMLET. So, nonkosher food = HAM, allowed = LET. And town (the actual answer) = HAMLET. See? I find that the "aha!" moment in cryptics is much more enjoyable than with American-style crosswords.
* The Cloven Viscount by Italo Calvino: another novella, this one about a guy who gets split laterally by a cannon ball. Not quite as good as The Nonexistent Knight, but it was all right.

I was riding the bus home the other night and the Soft Boys song "Where Are the Prawns" came on. Save for, I didn't hear them singing about delicious sea insects.

I heard "Where Are the Pr0nz."

Oh, internet.

Before I went and read it, I always imagined "Bel and the Dragon" to be a story about a little girl named Bel and her pet dragon. Like a Biblical Pete's Dragon or Beanie and Cecil. Or maybe even a St. George and the Dragon type situation, but still with a young girl named Bel.

This is not what Bel and the Dragon is about.

An Annotated, Hyperlinked Setlist

This is an accounting of the show, a love letter to the Mountain Goats and an entreaty for you, dear reader, to see them at every opportunity you have.

[* denotes that the video linked is a live performance—I favored those from the current tour when they were available and I lucked out in stumbling across a YouTube account where a guy had recorded the full show from 11/6, so I can approximately show you what much of the show from 11/10 was like. I also leaned toward the recordings with the best stage banter from John Darnielle, since that's, like, half the fun of a Mountain Goats show, the stage banter from John.]

1. 1 Samuel 15:23 [lyrics] [video]*
2. Letter from Belgium [lyrics] [video]
3. Isaiah 45:23 [lyrics] [video]*
4. Cotton¹ [lyrics] [video]*
5. Romans 10:9² [lyrics] [audio]
6. Love, Love, Love [lyrics] [video]
7. Orange Ball of Peace³ [lyrics] [audio]
8. Sign of the Crow (Part 2) [lyrics] [video]*
9. Woke Up New⁴ [lyrics] [video]*
10. Thank You, Mario, but Our Princess Is in Another Castle⁵ [lyrics] [video]
11. 1 John 4:16⁶ [lyrics] [video]
12. Going to Bristol ⁷[lyrics] [video]*
13. Hebrews 11:40 [lyrics] [video]*
14. Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod?⁸ [lyrics] [video]*
15. Psalms 40:2 [lyrics] [video]
16. Against Pollution⁹ [lyrics] [video]
17. This Year¹⁰ [lyrics] [video]*

Encore 1¹¹
18. Ezekiel 7 and the Permanent Efficacy of Grace [lyrics] [video]*
19. No Children¹² [lyrics] [video]*
20. The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton¹³ [lyrics] [video]*

Encore 2
21. See America Right [lyrics] [video]*

This was such a good show.

---

1. John: "You know, sometimes you find yourself in Portland, and you say to yourself, 'I'm going to get high … for about nine months. Le's see where that goes.'"

2. He started off calling this a song, but then corrected himself, saying it was more of "an extended, bitchy harangue." He thought it funny that people have found it such a hopeful song, since he was in a bad way when he wrote it—and one of the ways he deals with being sad is by writing a song with a character who is "much much worse off … and torturing him."

3. "I wasn't going to play this one, then I played the D chord and I remembered writing this one. […] Everybody has dreams, even those people whose dreams will do a great deal of damage." Also this song through "Going to Bristol" was the solo part of the show.

4. In talking about his album Get Lonely, he noted that it's now his favorite album because people apologize to him about it. Like, it was panned when it came out, but apparently he'll get people coming up to him who say they didn't like it at first, but then months or years later they were listening to it and in particular mood and all of a sudden, the album clicked for them, and they loved it. This song, though, he noted, was one that people seemed to like the most right off the bat.

5. He prefaced this song with a great monologue about playing Super Mario Bros. for the first time and not knowing really anything about the game. He described going through Level 1-4 and how there was this great big dragon who jumped and breathed fire and "he was like this big" holding apart his fingers to approximate Bowser's size, "and I'm like this big" holding apart his fingers to approximate the un-mushroomed Mario's size, "and I don't even have the hammer that I had in Donkey Kong." And then, upon beating this big dragon and expecting to see the Princess, you see instead this little guy with a hat who tells you that the princess is in another castle. It was great. I hope I can find a bootleg of this concert at some point just for this part.

6. This song through "Hebrews 11:40" he played with Owen Pallett of Final Fantasy (the band, not the game)—the opening act. He was ok. I liked Kaki King, the previous tour's opening act, better.

7. In talking about writing the song, John said that he "had discovered how to go from C to D minor [on the guitar] and [he] was going to tell the whole world about it."

8. He played this song with a ferocity I don't know that I've seen that often. Nutshell background: his step-father was abusive and this song is off the album The Sunset Tree, which chronicles his life under that abuse. It's a raw and beautiful (and I don't like using that word, but I cannot think of a better one) album. You really should listen to it. Anyhow. If you watch the video, you'll get a feel for the performance of this. He made it so that by the end of the song—which is addressed to his dead step-father, recounting at least one episode of abuse—when he sang "But one of these days / I'm gonna wriggle up on dry land," the music had swelled to climax and the release was pure triumph and joy. John's up there having the time of his life singing about one of the darker moments—like, the thing that strikes me about him, and why I love watching him perform, is how much he clearly loves and appreciates this: he's smiling throughout every performance, even in the sad songs—and this is him winning. Just watching that video I get a little choked up. This is not nearly as maudlin as I am no doubt making it seem. Let's just leave it at this: powerful performance of a powerful song.

9. And here again, he upped the energy, grabbing the microphone, stand and all like Axl Rose or Freddie Mercury, leaning into the crowd and singing with them.

10. He didn't start singing until the second or third line or so. The audience filled in, quite ably.

11. When they came back out for the first encore, John said "You are very nice to me and I appreciate it." I made sure to get that verbatim, because it struck me when he said it as yet another reason why I love this band so much. That says so much more than just "Thanks."

12. He introduced the song like this: "Kind of a love song, kind of a warning sign," and I knew what it'd be. I expected that they would play it, though. "This Year," "No Children" and "Going to Georgia" are concert staples for the tMG. What I didn't expect, however, was for this kid in his late teens or early twenties to mount up on stage left and run between the bassist and John, feign a stage dive, have second thoughts and then just hop down from the middle of the stage in front of John into an open spot on the floor. They clearly didn't expect it either. After the song, John noted that this was their first ever stage diver and that it was a particularly fitting "dive" for the sort of show it was. He then waxed nostalgic about mosh pits, and I could already sense what the next song would be when I saw John fingering a D chord.

13. I was way excited for this one. In my little notebook where I was keeping track of the setlist and jotting down notes, my writing got bigger and sloppier when I wrote down the title. And, yes, I threw up the horns and sang along: "Hail Satan. Hail Satan, tonight. Hail Satan. Hail, hail, hail, hail, hail, hail." This is the most metal I have ever been or will be.

THIS IS THE MOST AWESOME BEARD I HAVE EVER SEEN



I DO NOT KNOW HOW ANYTHING IN THE UNIVERSE COULD POSSIBLY BE ANY C0OLER. ANYTHING. UNIVERSE. YES.

(MANY THANKS TO redbaker WHO OPENED MY EYES TO HOW INSANELY AWESOME THIS IS. HOLY SHIT.)

So, I found a stranger's cell phone near the bus stop tonight and I just got off the phone with a relative of the guy's arranging how to get it back to him.

In the process of having that conversation with him, I took my own cell phone out of my pants pocket and lost it somewhere in my room. I call it and I can hear it buzzing, but my echolocation leaves something to be desired.

Edited to add extra irony: it was in my hoodie pocket and I just couldn't feel it vibrating. Wow. I'm not even 30 yet and already senility is doddering into view.

Number 36 is up live at OnlineRock and iTunes.

1. Pants Yell!: "Cold Hands," Received Pronunciation on Slumberland
2. Bobby Birdman: "Only for a While," New Moods on Fryk Beat
3. Tape Deck Mountain: "Ghost Colony," Ghost on Lefse Records
4. Loch Lomond: "Wax&Wire," Night Bats EP on Hush Records
5. Ola Podrida: "Your Father's Basement," Belly of the Lion on Western Vinyl
6. Local Natives: "Camera Talk," Gorilla Manor on Infectious Records
7. Royal Bangs: "My Car Is Haunted," Let it Beep on Cityslang
8. Memory Tapes: "Easy Pert Mom," Graphics 7", self-released (http://weirdtapes.blogspot.com/)
9. Fredrik: "Locked in the Basement," Trilogi on The Kora Records
10. Real Estate: "Beach Comber," Real Estate on Woodsist
11. Half-Handed Cloud: "Once, Twice, Seven Times a Werewolf," Cut Me Down & Count My Rings on Asthmatic Kitty

Favorites: Local Natives (who were apparently a big hit at this year's SXSW), Fredrik and Real Estate. The Memory Tapes is nice too (and free!). I have to admit that I included Half-Handed Cloud 50% for the music and 50% for the title. A bit experimental (though it evens out as the song progresses), so I tacked it on as my closing track.

I've got a post I've been writing on The Mountain Goats show I saw last week that should be appearing sometime this week. A minor cold had me on my ass for the weekend, though, and I was a bit tired the past week in getting adjusted to my new schedule at work (10AM-7PM), so I was watching TV when I could have been writing.

http://www.mlsfinder.com/wa_nwmls/theresabastian/index.cfm?action=email_listing_detail&property_id=29143997&domain=bastianteam.yourkwagent.com

The only picture there that is ca. My Time At That House (so, roughly 1980-2002) is the overhead one, which was taken by one of those businesses who fly over your house and take pictures and then try to sell them to you later. I think. There is a giant green turtle sandbox on the deck there. That thing ate some of my G.I. Joes—I'm convinced of it.

The interior shots don't look too much like the house did when we lived there—the rooms are too clean and spare, for one, and the furniture is all too fancy. They've done some work on the inside, it looks like—new carpeting and paint in the living room. Hardwood floors in what was our den/family room, which just makes the room seem cold (which is odd, since that room opens up off the kitchen/dining nook—you'd want a warmer room for that. They've also redone the master bathroom to such an extent that I can only barely guess at the orientation of everything (just based on the placement of the windows in the picture).

I'm halfway tempted to make a fake appointment to go visit and see what they've done to the rest of the place. I'm already angry at them for taking out that large shrubby thing out in front as well as the front lawn. The front of the house used to have a driveway that curved in to a defunct garage door (it got relocated on the wall 90 degrees clockwise from it with another driveway feeding into that new door) and which led to the front door—it's where we stowed the tent-trailer and boat (when we had them) and was where I parked my old Ford Taurus in high school/college. The drive way snaked between a this nice big bushy thing (which you can see in the aerial shot) and a small front lawn with a planter (which you can see in this picture of archaeologydork and me, as we make a lovely sculpture out of snow [three guesses as to what we of all people would make out of snow]). But Stupid New Owners tore out everything that was green in front of the house (including some nice rhododendron bushes) and paved everything, so now the front of the house is just one giant driveway. Ugly.

They also made the walk up to the front door this weird pseudo-Asian thing, which I don't like. It was a cool walk up. The first story of the house was U-shaped and to get to the front door, you walked into that U. There was a pond made out of concrete with a walkway over it, and on the side, there were ferns and things. We would sometimes even have fish in the little pond (when neighborhood cats weren't eating them). And there was this big mossy rock out in front of it that had engraved on it "You must cross land and water to get to our house" or something like that. I think it was there when we got there.

It was such a strange old house (and older than the realtor is letting on—it was built in the 1950s, not 1976). There was a period of time when I was young where the area under the midway landing for the stairs (which were a very weird, open staircase where each step was anchored to the ceiling as well as the one under it by these long metal rods and it was just the flat part of the stairs too, not the vertical parts, so if you were standing under the landing, you could grab somebody's feet as they walked down) was a large planter. It also had more rooms than we knew what to do with because it was initially a one-story house with 3 bedrooms, after which the second family built a second story on top of it, where they put three more bedrooms and a rec room (one of which is the largest master bedroom I've ever seen). After we moved in, the old master became a guest room, the two old bedrooms got the wall knocked out between them and became a seldom-used playroom, the two small new bedrooms go the wall knocked out between them and became my room (that's the one with the moon on the wall) and the rec room became archaeologydork's room (the one with the girly bike). His room had this wonderfully bad, dark wood paneling in it and a really cool martini glass in the wall that was made out of bits of broken glass, mosaic style. Looks like they got rid of the paneling, and I'm sure they took out the glass too. Stupid new owners.

One of the things I liked about the house was that even when my parents did things like putting in new carpet or wallpaper, they kept some element of the awful 70s decorating that they inherited with the place, like the wonderfully bad mottled red shag carpet that they kept in my dad's study or the weird red paisley wallpaper that used to be in one of the old bedrooms, which they kept on the back wall in a closet in that room. An homage to both the horrid choices made by the former owners as well as to their own modest interior decorating sense.

The house used to look homey. Now from those pictures, it looks like an after picture from a Queer Eye episode. Overly stylized. Blech.

Hail pelting my windows and the rain is really coming down. Lightning flashes so bright it illuminates the room briefly and there's less than, like, five seconds before the thunder starts booming rather menacingly. I looked out my window and it's like the stuff's coming down sideways.

For whatever reason, even though I have my time zone set to Pacific, Livejournal seems to think it's still PDT and not PST. I'm too lazy to fix it, though.

Another good month for reading:

1. The Sirens of Titan, Kurt Vonnegut: I used to be lukewarm on Vonnegut since the first tow books that people told me to read of his, which people swore up and down were great and their favorites—Breakfast of Champions and Cat's Cradle—I absolutely *loathed*. I read Slapstick later and wasn't very impressed. existenceproof told me to read Mother Night and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, though, and those both turned my opinion of Vonnegut around. I now quite like him (especially after reading Slaughterhouse-Five). This was another good one.

2. Things the Grandchildren Should Know, Mark Oliver Everett: autobiography of E, the guy behind the band Eels (one of my favorite contemporary groups). A lot of his music is autobiographical as well, and the broad strokes of his life are fairly well known—this just fills in some gaps. Quite well written for a rock musician. The blurb from Rolling Stone printed on the front calls him the "Kurt Vonnegut of the rock world" and I'm inclined to agree. He's had a very sad life, but makes it through without being maudlin or too navel-gazey.

3. Be Here Now, Ram Dass: what can I say? I like illuminated books (e.g., William Blake, Kenneth Patchen). I picked it up a few months ago at Half Price Books just because of its status as a (counter-)cultural artifact. Very hippie-dippy.

4. Quirky Qwerty: The Story of the Keyboard @ Your Fingertips, Torbjörn Lundmark: a quick read about typography. Mostly about the characters. I would have liked more about the evolution of keyboards. Interesting enough stuff, though.

5. Welcome to the Monkey House, Kurt Vonnegut: so I'm working my way through his stuff chronologically, filling in the gaps where I've skipped around in the past. This one surprised me. A lot of people really like it, but it's probably one of the least Vonnegutesque books I've read of his. I mean, once you take out the title story and "Harrison Bergeron" and a few other sci-fi/speculative fiction stories, you're left with pretty standard 1950s-1960s era popular magazine short stories (like, even a handful that were in The Ladies Home Journal). The one highlight for me was "The Euphio Question," which is a clear precursor to Infinite Jest.

6. Anti-Oedipus, by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guatarri: I tried, I really did. But this book ended up being, for me, 90% sound and fury, signifying nothing. I found some small points here and there where I saw what they were saying, but on the whole, it was a mass of impenetrable thought. I've got A Thousand Plateaus queued up to be read in the coming months because I hear it's easier to understand (and is the ideas of A-O in praxis). We'll see.

7. Wampeters, Foma & Granfalloons, by Kurt Vonnegut: wasn't meaning to read this, but wanted some light bedtime reading and pulled it off the shelf. Good stuff (essays, mostly, and a few speeches and a long interview with Playboy at the end), especially "Biafra: A People Betrayed" and "In a Manner that Must Shame God Himself," since KV is at his best when he's looking at how we're so horrible to one another.

8. Tape for the Turn of the Year, by A.R. Ammons: this is a poem that Ammons typed out on a piece of adding machine tape, so it's (by his own admission) hit and miss. But he's almost always a terrific poet and one of the reasons I like him is for stuff like this, where he's letting you into the process (he talks about writing the poem and how it's spooling off into a garbage can and how frustrated he's getting with it from time to time, as well as telling you about doing things between bits of writing or meals he's had or how cold his balls feel at one point). And though he likes to take flights of fancy from time to time, he always remains grounded at heart. This bit got double brackets from me:

poetry has
one subject, impermanence,
which it presents
with as much permanence as
possible

Classic Ammons. Not one of his more well-known works (like, say, Garbage), but definitely one of his more charming.

Just finished it and it's uploading now, so it'll be available tomorrow sometime. Many of you are probably already asleep, though, so this is a moot point, since by the time you read this, it'll be up.

I'm tired, so I'm not going to get too descriptive here, but the music is good. Trust me.

1. Stricken City: "Pull the House Down," Songs About People I Know on The Kora Records
2. Frankie Rose: "Thee Only One," Thee Only One Single on Slumberland
3. Lymbyc Systym: "Ghost Clock," Shutter Release/ on Mush Records
4. Molina and Johnson: "Twenty Cycles to the Ground," Molina and Johnson on Secretly Canadian
5. Glass Ghost: "The Same," Idol Omen on Western Vinyl
6. Yeasayer: "Ambling Alp," Ambling Alp 12" on Secretly Canadian
7. Holopaw: "The Art Teacher and the Little Stallion," Oh, Glory. Oh, Wilderness. on Bakery Outlet
8. On Fillmore: "Master Moon," Extended Vacation on Dead Oceans
9. Timber Timbre: "Lay Down in the Tall Grass," Timber Timbre on Arts&Crafts Records
10. Jookabox: "You Cried Me," Dead Zone Boys on Asthmatic Kitty Records
11. Systems Officer: "Shape Shifter," Underslept on Temporary Residence

Stream or download from OnlineRock and subscribe via iTunes.

You should go watch this video of Rick Astley singing "Never Gonna Give You Up".

We see if I can get a good night's sleep for the first time since Saturday.

* Saturday evening, as a result of overexcitement about my new French press and bad timing, I drank coffee in the evening and then just couldn't get to sleep until 4AM. I slept maybe 5 hours.

* Sunday I got the bad news about my uncle. I didn't sleep well that night either. Fits and starts. No more than 3 or 4 hours at a time, waking up constantly toward the morning.

* Monday night I was on the hide-a-bed in the suite my parents had hastily booked in Baltimore. Super uncomfortable. Slept only 3 or 4 hours, maybe.

* Tuesday, I was tired all day. By early evening, I was falling asleep sitting up on a couch at the wake. Tuesday night, given how uncomfortable the hide-a-bed was and given that I'm short, I tried just sleeping on the couch as a couch. While this was easier on my back, it was a rather narrow couch and just short enough that it was still mildly uncomfortable that way. Only got maybe 3 hours of sleep on it, but more likely 2.

* And that was because my dad and I had to wake up at 5:15AM so we could hit the road by 6AM to make a 9AM flight back home out of Reagan (while we were staying near BWI, it was cheaper to go through Reagan on Alaska). Mind you, by this time, I've been in Eastern time for all of 36 hours, so my internal clock is at best confused and at worst, still thinking at 5:15AM EDT is 2:15AM PDT. While I tried to stay awake on the plane, I spent roughly the period from Black Sea through Mummer alternately dozing and waking, but never truly sleeping (I started my iPod on Drums and Wires and made it nearly all the way through The Big Express by the time we landed in Sea-Tac [and if none of this makes sense to you, I'm listing XTC albums in chronological order of release].

I took a 3 hour or so nap this afternoon. I'm just happy to be in a more comfortable bed finally (as my own bed is super-comfortable, as remarked by several independent parties who have slept in it). I'm just hoping I can sleep through the night without waking up too much.

SPLENDOR of ended day floating and filling me,
Hour prophetic, hour resuming the past,
Inflating my throat, you divine average,
You earth and life till the last ray gleams I sing.

Open mouth of my soul uttering gladness,
Eyes of my soul seeing perfection,
Natural life of me faithfully praising things,
Corroborating forever the triumph of things.

Illustrious every one!
Illustrious what we name space, sphere of unnumber'd spirits,
Illustrious the mystery of motion in all beings, even the tiniest
         insect,
Illustrious the attribute of speech, the senses, the body,
Illustrious the passing light—illustrious the pale reflection on the
         new moon in the western sky,
Illustrious whatever I see or hear or touch, to the last.

Good in all,
In the satisfaction and aplomb of animals,
In the annual return of the seasons,
In the hilarity of youth,
In the strength and flush of manhood,
In the grandeur and exquisiteness of old age,
In the superb vistas of death.

Wonderful to depart!
Wonderful to be here!
The heart, to jet the all-alike and innocent blood!
To breathe the air, how delicious!
To speak—to walk—to seize something by the hand!
To prepare for sleep, for bed, to look on my rose-color'd flesh!
To be conscious of my body, so satisfied, so large!
To be this incredible God I am!
To have gone forth among other Gods, these men and women I
         love.

Wonderful how I celebrate you and myself!
How my thoughts play subtly at the spectacles around!
How the clouds pass silently overhead!
How the earth darts on and on! and how the sun, moon, stars,
         dart on and on!
How the water sports and sings! (surely it is alive!)
How the trees rise and stand up, with strong trunks, with branches
         and leaves!
(Surely there is something more in each of the trees, some living
         soul.)

O amazement of things—even the least particle!
O spirituality of things!
O strain musical flowing through ages and continents, now reaching
         me and America!
I take your strong chords, intersperse them, and cheerfully pass
         them forward.

I too carol the sun, usher'd or at noon, or as now, setting,
I too throb to the brain and beauty of the earth and of all the
         growths of the earth,
I too have felt the resistless call of myself.

As I steam'd down the Mississippi,
As I wander'd over the prairies,
As I have lived, as I have look'd through my windows my eyes,
As I went forth in the morning, as I beheld the light breaking in
         the east,
As I bathed on the beach of the Eastern Sea, and again on the
         beach of the Western Sea,
As I roam'd the streets of inland Chicago, whatever streets I have
         roam'd,
Or cities or silent woods, or even amid the sights of war,
Wherever I have been I have charged myself with contentment
         and triumph.

I sing to the last the equalities modern or old,
I sing the endless finalés of things,
I say Nature continues, glory continues,
I praise with electric voice,
For I do not see one imperfection in the universe,
And I do not see one cause or result lamentable at last in the
         universe.

O setting sun! though the time has come,
I still warble under you, if none else does, unmitigated adoration.

OF him I love day and night I dream'd I heard he was dead,
And I dream'd I went where they had buried him I love, but he
         was not in that place,
And I dream'd I wander'd searching among burial-places to find
         him,
And I found that every place was a burial-place;
The houses full of life were equally full of death, (this house is
         now,)
The streets, the shipping, the places of amusement, the Chicago,
         Boston, Philadelphia, the Mannahatta, were as full of the
         dead as of the living,
And fuller, O vastly fuller of the dead than of the living;
And what I dream'd I will henceforth tell to every person and age,
And I stand henceforth bound to what I dream'd,
And now I am willing to disregard burial-places and dispense
         with them,
And if the memorials of the dead were put up indifferently every-
         where, even in the room where I eat or sleep, I should be
         satisfied,
And if the corpse of any one I love, or if my own corpse, be
         duly render'd to powder and pour'd in the sea, I shall be
         satisfied,
Or if it be distributed to the winds I shall be satisfied.

New podcast! Just finished mixing it down and as I type this, it's still exporting from the raw audio to an mp3, and then I have to upload it, but I figured I'd kill the time waiting for that by writing up my obligatory bloggypost.

Another baker's dozen of tracks for you. Now! With artists you've heard of before!

1. James Husband: "A Grave in the Gravel," A Parallax I on Polyvinyl
2. Imaad Wasif: "The Priestess," The Voidist on Tee Pee
3. Richard Youngs: "Broke Up By Night," Under Stellar Stream on Jagjaguwar
4. Grooms: "Dreamsucker," Rejoicer on Death by Audio
5. Gentle Friendly: "Clean Breaker," Ride Slow on Upset the Rhythm
6. Atlas Sound: "Walkabout" (feat. Noah Lennox of Panda Bear), Logos on 4AD
7. The Middle East: "The Darkest Side," Recordings of the Middle East on ThinkIndie
8. Thao with the Get Down Stay Down: "Know Better Learn Faster," Know Better Learn Faster on Kill Rock Stars
9. Neon Indian: "Terminally Chill," Psychic Chasms on Lefse Records
10. Flight of the Conchords: "Sugalumps," I Told You I Was Freaky on SubPop
11. Spiral Stairs: "Maltese Terrier," The Real Feel on Matador
12. Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson: "The Sound," Summer of Fear on Saddle Creek
13. Sufjan Stevens: "Movement IV—Isorhythmic Night Dance with Interchanges," The BQE on Asthmatic Kitty Records

And aside from the stuff that's familiar to you already (Sufjan Stevens, Flight of the Conchords, maybe Thao with The Get Down Stay Down), you also know (but maybe don't know that you know) Spiral Stairs (as it's Scott Kannberg of Pavement [and Preston School of Industry, but you know him from Pavement])—or maybe you knew that. And you might also know James Husband (solo project of James Huggins of Great Lakes and of Montreal fame) and Atlas Sound (solo project of Bradford James Cox of Deerhunter).

Needless to say, good music here. My particular favorites are the Richard Youngs, Neon Indian, Middle East and Miles Benjamin Anthony Robinson. The Conchords song is pretty great too. You know you want their sugalumps, too. Sorry I'm not more talkative. It's been a long, grueling week at work and I'm just about to go to bed. Friday evening can't get here soon enough. The music is good, though. Well worth an hour of your time as you listen to it while driving or walking or doing the dishes or your homework or whatever.

As always, the podcast is going to be up for download and streaming at OnlineRock.com and you can subscribe to the whole thing through the iTunes Music Store for free!

Though I cannot find the commercial online (it was about a navigation system in a car that could find local gas prices for you, I think from Ford), I just saw a commercial featuring "The Hott Chord Is Struck" by Still Flyin':



I included this song in my April 1 podcast.

I really do have the musical sensibilities of an ad-man.

In the course of my hour-long lunch today, Ned's Atomic Dustbin came up on my iPod three times (this is a band who put out three albums, an EP and a number of singles and this is on an iPod that contains just under 10,000 songs) and it all made me think of the early nineties. Here's some of the Neds for you:









Oh, grebo. Whatever happened to you?

Exhibit A: My podcast from May 15, 2009 wherein I feature "1901" by French band, Phoenix, from their recent Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix album. And according to my backups, it looks like I found this song in my search for music for the 4/1/09 podcast (so toward the tail end of March).



Exhibit B: This Cadillac commercial that debuted September 9, 2009:



So I'm ahead of the curve and I have the musical sensibilities of an ad-man. I'm not sure how I should feel about this.

Suffice it to say, if you've been holding out on listening to my podcast because you don't recognize any of the artists I play, this is at least evidence that I have an ear for music that has some wider appeal. At least in one case.

I just saw another Whitman-based Levi's commercial where they actually use WALT WHITMAN'S ACTUAL VOICE (or a recording that is at least thought to be Whitman—and given that this is the theory under which they're operating, whether or not this is the actual historical Whitman's voice becomes a bit of a moot point).

The other commercial, where an actor was reading "Pioneers! O, Pioneers!" rubbed me the wrong way.

This one pisses me off.

You just don't do that.

Fuck you, Levi's.

De gustibus and all that and I really don't feel like arguing with the internet (and am hoping that other tMG fans go after the dicks over in colbert_report), following are even yet more reasons to love The Mountain Goats. For serious, John Darnielle is the true inheritor of Dylan's crown.

( Lots of songs. Lots and lots of them. Good songs. Treat yourself if you're not yet converted. I would not steer you wrong. )

I could have included more songs, but it's time to watch TCR.

I want to slap the people over in colbert_report who are talking shit about The Mountain Goats. Tone-deaf? Bad singer? Like *LIVE*?! How dare they. How. Dare. They.

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAXpJSvW5mA for those seeing this imported on Facebook)

I saw this commercial tonight and did a double-take. If you don't recognize the narration, it's a part of Walt Whitman's "Pioneers! O Pioneers!", and not even a very interesting part of the poem.

I'm of two minds about this. Like, if this exposes more people to America's greatest poet, that's a good thing. But I'm always slightly uncomfortable when he's used to sell things like blue jeans or Robin Williams's dramatic career.

So I'm still trying to figure out exactly when I'll be where and when. My tentative plans would be to be in the Boston area from, like, 12/17-12/25ish and then NYC 12/25ish-1/3. I could, though, always fly into NYC, spend a few days there, then go to Boston (and come back as per above).

So what I need to know, then, is if there's anyone who will be in NYC more toward the middle of the month but will not be in town between Christmas and New Years.

Lots of fun stuff this time around, which should be up online at Onlinerock and available to download at iTunes later tonight.

1. Mission of Burma: "1, 2, 3, Partyy!," The Sound the Speed of Light on Matador
2. LAKE: "Don't Give Up," Let's Build a Roof on K Records
3. Califone: "Funeral Singers," All My Friends Are Funeral Singers on Dead Oceans
4. A Sunny Day in Glasgow: "Ashes Grammar Ashes Maths," Ashes Grammar on Mis Ojos Discos
5. The Shaky Hands: "Allison and the Ancient Eyes," Let It Die on Kill Rock Stars
6. Kurt Vile: "Overnite Religion," Childish Prodigy on Matador
7. The Fresh & Onlys: "Dude's Got a Tender Heart," Grey-Eyed Girls on Woodsist
8. Le Loup: "Forgive Me," Family on Hardly Art
9. Headlights: "Get Going," Wildlife on Polyvinyl
10. The Raveonettes: "Suicide," In and Out of Control on Vice Records
11. The Dutchess & the Duke: "Hands," Sunset/Sunrise on Hardly Art
12. Au: "Ida Walked Away," Versions EP on Aagoo Records
13. Music Go Music: "Warm in the Shadows," Expressions on Secretly Canadian

Mission of Burma sounds as great as ever and the Raveonettes sound like they always have, as some sort of Danish Phil Spector tribute duo (which is to say, great). The Shaky Hands and Headlights are awesome as well. Music Go Music is fun too, though there's a good reason I stuck it at the end—I can imagine not everyone is going to want to sit through nearly 10-minutes of synthy neo-disco with a woman vaguely reminiscent of Debbie Harry.

As always, if you like good music, you'll like what I play. Since I only play good music. Promise.

It was a big month for books! And reading them!

1) Paterson, William Carlos Williams -- eh, it was all right. Not sure what all the hub-bub is about. There were parts I really liked, and I thought Book III was the best part (I think that's the part about libraries and language). Leaves of Grass it ain't, but what ever could be? I've got the two-volume collected poems, so I should probably crack it open and give it a read. Any suggestions, those of you who do more 20th c. stuff? (Or better yet, why I should have liked Paterson better?)
2) Fragments, Heraclitus (trans. Brooks Haxton) -- I've read the fragments before, but this was a different translation with the Greek on the verso pages (a touch I liked, even if the best I can do with Greek is sound things out phonetically and recognize proper names and cognates). That said, though, I wasn't terribly enamored with Haxton's more figurative approach in translation where he would suppress the textual history of some of the fragments (i.e., where we don't have a direct quotation for something Heraclitus said or wrote, but rather have a secondhand account of it in some other person's book where he says "Heraclitus said X" -- Haxton just leaves all that stuff out and manufactures a fragment based on the gist of the quotation and set to fit with the other fragments into a more cohesive whole). I got clued into this by looking at the Greek and seeing Heraclitus's name, indicating he's being spoken about in the third person, for a fragment that looks like a direct quotation. Classicists, what's the best translation of the fragments?
3) The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins -- had this on my shelf for a few months and I'd already read Harris's and Hitchens' books (started Dennett's though I haven't finished it). It's all preaching to the choir, but I don't mind. Dawkins is a lovely writer (especially for a scientist) and sometimes choir-preaching is relaxing.
4) What the Buddha Taught, Walpola Rahula -- hadn't read this for about 15 years. I think I understand more of it now.
5) Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization, Nicholson Baker -- an interesting read: a chronology of the years leading up to WWII, going through Dec. 31 1941 (before, Baker notes, the majority of the people who would die in WWII died), highlighting both the pacifist movement and the atrocities on both sides of the war. Told through small vignettes he gathered from journals, letters, newspapers, and the like. Probably inappropriate for it to have bathroom reading for me, but because of its short passages, that's what it ended up being. Sorry, people who died!
6) Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do, Tom Vanderbilt -- interesting read: I always enjoy reading books like this, that take a close look at things that we use or see every day but don't think much of.
7) The Back Country, Gary Snyder -- I liked it a bit more than Myths & Texts. Still not totally on the Snyder-boat though. The books are short enough, however, that I can read each in a day or two, so I'll probably keep reading through what I have, since the trending up is promising.
8) This Book Will Change Your Life, Benrik (Ben Carey and Henrik Delehag) -- a silly book, good for a few laughs. BOOK READ: LIFE NOT CHANGED.

This was the end credit music for the most recent episode of Mad Men (which had, perhaps, the most awesome product placement of a John Deere mower ever). I really like this song. Probably the best one from his first album.

But then I went to bobdylan.com and I saw that he has A CHRISTMAS ALBUM AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER and I said "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Yes, OUT LOUD. EVEN THOUGH I AM SITTING HERE BY MYSELF.

OH MY GOD. NO. NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO. NO.

I went to Amazon and saw the blurbs about it: "Christmas In The Heart is Bob Dylan’s 47th album. All of his U.S. royalties from sales of these recordings will be donated to Feeding America, guaranteeing that more than four million meals will be provided to more than 1.4 million people in need in this country during the 2009 holiday season. Bob Dylan is also donating all of his future U.S. royalties from this album to Feeding America in perpetuity."

Ok, ok, that's nice and all, but "Songs performed by Dylan on this new album include, 'Here Comes Santa Claus,' 'Winter Wonderland,' 'Little Drummer Boy' and 'Must Be Santa.'" WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!?!?!

DO. NOT. WANT.

So I live in a basement apartment in a house. The two other stories are their own apartments. A woman in, like, her 40s lives in the top story and apparently now a young couple in their 20s (ish) live on the first floor. Prior to this, it was, like, one or two women (I never knew them [her?] well, so I don't know -- just the sort of "Say-hi-as-you-pass-one-another-with-your-groceries" kind of neighborliness and I don't recall if there were one or two faces). This couple moved in a few weeks ago (or perhaps it was just the woman, but she has a boyfriend and he's over now, if he doesn't live here all the time), so I'm still getting used to the way they walk around on my ceiling.

Trying to go to sleep tonight, I heard voices arguing and followed them to near my front door where I found they were having an argument outside just around the corner from me. I couldn't really gather what it was about, save for that there was some indecision earlier as to who would drive either to or from the bar, this led to some "scene" that the woman ("Ally" or "Ali" is what he kept calling her) put on at the bar in front of the guy's friends, and that somehow this led to the argument I was now sitting at my door listening to.

It was initially amusing, because it was just the sort of non-event argument that you see all the time on, like, The Real World. She was snidely apologizing for being "the worst girlfriend" and swearing a lot and he was angrily telling her that he accepted her apology and swearing a lot and she was questioning the sincerity of his acceptance and swearing a lot and he was getting pissed at her questioning and swearing a lot.

Then she locked him out of the house and left him standing on the porch outside my kitchen window (I had to move to hear better) and he spent a few minutes yelling at her and mocking her and demanding that she open the door. I contemplated calling the police if he started to get violent, but she relented and let him in and it sounds like things have cooled since I can't hear voices anymore.

I think I'm going to have to keep my ears open on this one.

I got off late because I had to help a few people with a few things, but that was all right, since it kept me up on the sixth floor long enough for the sun to set behind the Olympics:



In a month or two once it starts getting like this about an hour early, I'll bring my real camera to work to try to get some better shots. Maybe go out on the roof. It's pretty nice up there.

I've got the stereo version of Pet Sounds¹ playing through my Sennheisers. Holy fuck.

"You Still Believe in Me" is amazing, especially the last minute or so where the Beach Boys go all choral. Probably one of my favorite moments on the album, especially when this huge contrapuntal choral piece is broken up by a bike horn.

"Let's Go Away for Awhile" turned from being a good instrumental to nearly transcendent. For the first time I heard a harmon-muted trumpet in the right channel toward the end of the song.

Oh lordy ... "God Only Knows" is coming up next (which, aside from being one of the finest love songs of the twentieth century, is one of the finest songs of the twentieth century, hands down). I'm nearly giddy with excitement.

GOOD CHRIST IT'S BETTER THAN BACH. Jesus, that's one of the most perfect and beautiful songs ever written and if you don't agree, you are wrong. There is no room for debate here. I LOVE YOU, BRIAN WILSON.

Oh, hello, little piano in "Here Today." I never heard you before! Oh! And there's a bass clarinet doubling the flute part in "I Just Wasn't Made for These Times!" Hello saxophones in "Pet Sounds" -- I can hear you so much more clearly now! Ha! And I found an acoustic guitar hiding in the left channel during the bass breakdown toward the end of the song. Wow, this is so cool.

Where did your long hair go-o-o?
Where is the girl I used to know?
How could you lose that happy glow?
Oh, Caroline, no.

*sigh* What a great song. OH! There's the train, and the doggies!

The way Pet Sounds makes me feel is the quality that makes music art and not just noises we make to amuse one another. I didn't like the Beach Boys much until I listened to Pet Sounds. It was a revelation. Treat yourself if you're not familiar.

On a not-Beach-Boys-centric note here, I'll say this for my new headphones: they make me feel like a kid again, insofar as I do that whole "c'mooooooooooooooon ... just FIVE MORE MINUTES and THEN I'll go to bed" sort of thing that we would all do when we were young and trying to watch just a little more TV before being sent to bed by our parents, save for I'm wheedling me and not my parents.

---

1. Yes, I am aware that this is sacrilege since Brian Wilson recorded and mastered Pet Sounds in mono (since he's deaf in one ear thanks to Murry [Goddamned Motherfucker] Wilson hitting Brian on the head with a 2x4), but I prefer the feeling of a large recording like Pet Sounds in stereo so the music surrounds me more than seeming like everyone is standing directly in front of me when I'm wearing headphones. There's more depth and it's less of a full-frontal assault. The stereo version comes courtesy of my 2001 CD rerelease that has both the mono AND stereo (which is just awesome, since you get to listen to the album TWICE whenever you put the CD in).

Is there any point at which it stops making 95% of its screentime cuts every <3 (i.e., "less than three," not "heart") seconds? Like, I've tried watching it twice now and it annoys me and makes me vaguely motion sick. Is it even worth watching? I mean, from what I can gather it's pop culture references + annoying cinematography + absinthe + tragic love story + tuberculosis. Does it have any redeeming features?

Woot. Up and live and HUGE. No kidding. YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOGE. Like, I broke an hour with this one, kids.

1. Christmas Island: "Bed Island," Blackout Summer on In the Red Records
2. Princeton: "Calypso Gold," Cocoon of Love on Kanine
3. J. Tillman: "Earthly Bodies," Year in the Kingdom on Western Vinyl
4. Or, The Whale: "Datura," Or the Whale on Seany Records
5. Early Day Miners: "So Slowly," The Treatment on Secretly Canadian
6. The Almighty Defenders: "Cone of Light," The Almighty Defenders on Vice Records
7. Volcano Choir: "Island, IS," Unmap on Jagjaguwar
8. Times New Viking: "No Time, No Hope," Born Again Revisited on Matador
9. Lake Heartbeat: "Mystery," Trust in Numbers on Service
10. Devon Williams: "Sufferer," Sufferer 7" on Slumberland
11. Owen: "Good Friends, Bad Habits," New Leaves on Polyvinyl
12. Port O'Brien: Sour Milk / Salt Water, Threadbare on Cityslang
13. Why?: "This Blackest Purse," Eskimo Snow on Anticon
14. Fool's Gold: "Surprise Hotel," Fool's Gold on IAMSOUND

And not a clunker among 'em (trust me: I listen to at least twice as many songs as I end up including in each podcast—the reason for this one's hugeness is that I've already got songs lined up through the Nov. 15th podcast and these are all coming out between Sept. 15–Sept. 30, so I didn't want to bump any forward, since I should have more than enough in the coming months already).

Particular favorites this time: J. Tillman is great (a Seattle mainstay and currently the drummer for Fleet Foxes, so if you like them, you'll like him), Or, The Whale (of course I had to include this, given what their name is in reference to, but they make great music nevertheless), The Almighty Defenders (side project of King Khan and The Black Lips—Khan brings his trademark neo-soul thing to it—lots of fun), Lake Heartbeat, Devon Williams, Why? (normally a hip-hop group—this is probably my favorite songs of this podcast), and Fool's Gold (sure, maybe they're taking a hint from Vampire Weekend in their sound, but they sound even closer to African pop music than VW do—so much so, that I thought they might actually be from Africa [they're from L.A.]).

As always, you can stream or download the podcast from OnlineRock or subscribe to it via iTunes.

Enjoy.

Ugh. Still here. Have broken my resolution to post once a day. Oh well. Not much has been going on (not least of which I'm rocking some sort of cold or flu that's had me house-bound the past several days).

Just finished my longest podcast. I'll post the tracklist once it's live. 14 tracks this time. Yowza.

Also, I bought myself a present: a pair of Sennheiser HD280 Pro headphones since I was tired of doing my amateur audio work with a $20 pair of headphones I bought at a drugstore years ago. And while those of you who know me well may know that I already have a pair of Etymotic ER6is, those aren't the best thing to do audio work with, since I like to be able to remove the headphones from my ears every once in a while and be nominally aware of what's going on around me (and the Etymotics make me virtually deaf to the outside world, whereas I can at least hear things like my phone or traffic over the Sennheisers—the latter fact making them a safer pair of headphones to take with me outside).

Wow.

While there certainly are headphones that are more expensive, for their price, these are great. Noticeably different from everything else I have (even the Etymotics, which were one of my first forays into my burgeoning audiophilia). Very clean, clear tones and I'm hearing things in songs I'd never heard before. They're advertised as being good for monitoring (e.g. running a soundboard or doing DJ work—if I recall correctly, these are the very same [or perhaps very similar] headphones I used when I was a DJ on the UW's radio station) and this seems to be the case: they're nice and neutral, which I like, since I'm not one for futzing with the equalizer, preferring to hear songs as they were meant to be heard.

I have been spending much more time listening to music these past five or so days.

Honestly, if you want to hear a big improvement in the sound of your music but not have to shell out thousands for all of the components in an audiophile system, invest in a solid pair of headphones.

(only louder)

OH MY GOD THIS IS TOO MUCH FUN. ESPECIALLY WHEN I PLUG "RETARDICORN" IN.

Ok, so I was able to schedule a whole bunch of vacation time that is giving me, essentially, Dec. 17–Jan. 3 off. I'm still in the nascent stages of making plans, but the current thought is that I would make the Boston/Providence area my homebase as this is where wtfulikethecure, pensivewombat, moneypenny, iris4700, and many others reside (with, depending on who will be in the area at the time, a journey over to NY/NJ).

So, let me know if and when you're going to be in the MA/RI/CT/NY/NJ area and I can start making some sort of schedule.

[And to redbaker and draconella, what I think I'm planning on doing for a trip to AA would be more likely to take a few days of vacation time early next year and make, like, a 5 day-weekend sort of thing out of MLK day or President's day.]

So apparently I'm not the only one who likes to go see movies several weeks after they've been out so I can enjoy a mostly-empty theater. After watching Inglourious Basterds and waiting in the lobby as doogiedownunder drained the weasel, I saw Jon Auer also waiting in the lobby. (And yes, I know by default that he was seeing the same movie as we were at the Cinerama, which only has one screen.) Strange coincidence, I suppose, is that the only other local music celebrity I've seen where I was able to go mentally "Oh, hey! That's _____!" was Scott McCaughey at a show where Jon Auer was opening (I think for They Might Be Giants, but I can't remember). There are probably countless others I've seen and not been able to ID, but these two are fairly major players in the Seattle music scene. Nice to see them still hanging around.

Also, afterward, doogiedownunder and I went out for breakfast-for-dinner at Beth's and I was able to try Bacon Salt for the first time. Bacony.