Archives : all posts by Dan

Freddie Mercury - "Isolated Vox" (let it play)

Although we do not know what the world's hero looked like, we can make plenty of inferences from his clothes and personal effects. An oversized comb and loose hat, perhaps he had an enormous head, bigger than any of us have seen. Long pants with a widened flare, he clearly had vastly swollen ankles, from much running and climbing. A pill bottle, he took his daily medicines as we all. Empty money clip, poor until the end. Shirt made of silk, pretended to be rich, but how ubiquitous is silk to us now. Rings, many wives, chains, many slaves, shoes, uncomfortable on purpose, perhaps a type of religious self-punishment. Holy, holy chrome spear, held tenderly and three-pronged, wielded electrically, used to shock his voice into notes so high and pure that no one will ever hear. [ Listen to "lost retake" of "Keep Yourself Alive"]

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Alana Johnston - "Say Yes"

I used to be a bad kid. I used to fight and scratch, I used to smoke. I used to run races and cheat, put sugar in people's eggs, put kool-aid in their gas tanks, flip birds the bird. Y'know? A real shit kid. But now I found the thing that makes me happy and all the shitty stuff just stopped. Poof. Like a disappearing act.

Alana Johnston is an enormous personality, squeezed into an album of 30-second songs. Hyper-condensed, concentrated, spastic, funny, the Self-Esteem Party is mixtape gold.

Ted Hawkins - "Sorry You're Sick"

This song is a man. If it is anything, this song is a man. It wants to solve problems, invented or real. It wants to work, to be useful, to try and be tried. It is a full man and not young. It is through with the lies of youth, the games that youth play. It is tired of praying, for God is umpteen times useless. It lives heavily, with heavy joy, and with a sincere and earnest approach. It works every day and hard for a love that lives inside it the way a woman carries a child. This song is not a woman and cannot carry both a child and love, it is a man and can carry only love. It toils each day in the closeness where love is born. It works through the din of the world, the voices and eyes of the choices unmade. It smiles in the face of sickness, time, and death. This song is a real and honest man, it makes mistakes, does wrong, and asks forgiveness. I want to be this song. One day I will. [Buy]

(thanks, PJC)
(photo of Ted Hawkins by Dave Peabody)

Charles Bradley - "Why Is It So Hard"

This city is leaning on the kill switch. There's heavy brown water in every open crack, in every place to breathe. Dark brown water. It's not a flood but it's definitely a drowning. Everybody's about to throw up. This city's a wretch. A wet, lurching wretch. I don't give change to homeless people anymore, I only give bills. Red alert has never been redder-cheeked. Buses and cars and trolleys and subways, they're just stirrin' shit up. Just stop moving. Turn off the Internet. Cancel all phones and friendships and phonies, cancel all fucking and flirting and flying off the handle. Just take a break from tryin' to get a break. 'Cause if this doesn't stop pressing on my chest, if the heaviness doesn't let up, if gravity doesn't give, if walkin' stays just as hard, then I'm gonna lose it and I'm not gonna get it back. Please, city, swallow the dark brown water, take that on for all of us, one last time and we'll make it better somehow. [Buy from Daptone Records]

Death - "Politicians In My Eyes"

"THIS IS FOR YOUR SAFETY." [Buy from Drag City]

Jeff the Brotherhood - "Bummer"

He's watching me in the mirror, while he brushes his teeth. He's wearing a polo shirt, same old olive polo, and just his underwear. He's talking (what else, right?) but his voice is muffled by the toothpaste. "I don't want fucking McFloffle again at night." I giggle a bit and rub my feet on the sheets. "What did you say?" He doesn't hear me, "What?" I giggle again. "What's so funny?" "Nothing. You." He rubs his hand on his stomach, I like the way he looks without his glasses, it's like I get to know a whole different man than anyone else does. He spits and rinses and turns to look at me directly. He's coming at me, with a little devilish smile. "How funny am I?" he says and climbs back into bed with me. We make out for twenty minutes and then he rolls over and checks the time. "Oh, snot, I better go." I want us to go further, he's always so frisky when he's doing a tour. And that helps me too, I'm more productive. "Do you have to?" He sighs and rubs his stomach "Yeah, I'd better." I turn on the TV, it's What Not to Wear, and I've got those ghost hands on my body, the ones you get when someone was holding you just right. I look over and all I can see is his butt through the open bathroom door, "Honey, have you seen my glasses?" [temporarily sold out]

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[Chris Hedges is one of the most convincing doom-and-gloom cultural critics I've ever read. His world seems to be populated only by corporate zombies, the idle criminality of everyday people, pure-evil greed gods, and the ineffectual but necessary acts of civil disobedience by the truly integral. I'm not opposing his views, he's horrifyingly convincing, I just wanted to imagine that he has some joy in his life.]

Alicia Bridges - "I Love the Nightlife"

Never a more genuine, more endearing, more true pronunciation of "action". [her site]

Baby Teeth - "You're Not the Boss of Me"

Part Lonely Island, part Ghetto Boys, but has its own cleverness too. Baby Teeth have created a little concept EP called BOSS, and it's not without its pleasures. It takes different perspectives on bosses, from the more realistic "Secretary's Day" where it tells you, the boss, how to treat your secretary, to this cartoonish sociopathic insanity you're listening to now. You will agree it is worth it, when they get to this line: Asshole to ashes and putz to dust. [site]

Cousin Dud - "South Dakota pt. II: Chicago & Minnesota"

Nothing about this song wants a neologism like insongniac, but it is, for better or worse, its type. It's surly and hefty and drunk late tired watching Slice until 7am. It has two personalities, the happy social drinker, and the sad lonely drunk. As you can hear, the song has two distinct halves, each representing one of these personalities. The first is easy, swaying, accessible. It's a night with old friends, it's cards, it's beer. The second half is violent, it's a mind racing from whiskey and doubt. What if I can't keep going the way I'm going? What if I don't have what it takes? What if I've forgotten how to love without fear? What if I get found out?
It does not seem like there are any answers, it doesn't even seem like there's a morning.

[Buy from bandcamp]

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