Bedroom Muses

During a summer in the early 90s I worked as a journalist intern for my hometown newspaper. One of my mentors, for all her daytime professionalism and reserve, could not completely suppress what she was in her off hours -- a Good Time Girl*. She seemed to recognize I was one in the making. She slipped me a cassette. It was Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville.

None of the tape covers in the collection I owned were like this. Liz Phair, draped in a dark cape, her mouth open in a forceful "O", had paired her intimately revealing lyrics with a cover that gave peek at the upper tip of her left areola. The tape cover sat at the very back of my sock drawer -- musical contraband.

I credit Liz Phair with the truce my naiveté feverishly made that summer with my heretofore dormant irreverence and inclination toward highbrow snark. A Catholic education had previously curbed but not quashed the inevitable. Liz Phair used the word "Fuck" all the time and repudiated anything demure or - gag me - princess-y. I unabashedly sang her words in my car with the windows down -- as long as my parents weren't around.

I found out later that Liz Phair wrote and recorded Exile in Guyville in her bedroom. She had taken her destiny into her own arms and completed the ultimate DIY project: a still to this day critically hailed debut.

I have a special place in my heart for musicians who don't wait for recording contracts, but charge up their Macs, ask for donations, sling espressos, walk dogs, and employ Web 2.0 strategies so they can put their music out into the ether, and preferably in your ears. These are the artists who are a pleasure to support because they are bypassing traditional means of mass producing and marketing their music. (So when one in particular makes your eyes go wide with delight, be sure you tell the world about it.)

Merrill Garbus is the one-woman show behind tUnE-YaRdS. She classifies herself as "experimental", and describes her music thusly:

Your mom when she gets really mad but instead of whoopin' yo' ass she starts making crazy-ass beats with the pots and pans AND yo' ass.

This makes me want to get my Mom really mad -- around some strategically placed kitchen gadgetry.

Fiya - Tune-Yards

*Good Time Girl: A member of the female species inclined toward activities one would confidently term as "fun", or "a good time"; a member of a group engaging in goodhearted, if slightly irreverent -- fuck, who are we kidding? -- completely irreverent dialogue that may or may not involve a round or four of spirits, uninhibited dancing, and potentially watching the sun illuminate the dark, giving rise to a brand new fun, er, day.

The Recordings Of The Middle East

When you've got a good thing going, sometimes a second chance is really a blessing wrapped up in shiny, celestial paper, with a big rapturous bow on top. I'd opine The Middle East would agree with me.

I admit to confusion when I first came across the album The Recordings of the Middle East, thinking it was a compilation by Western artists providing their musical viewpoints on the group of nation-states first identified in the Eisenhower Doctrine, in the part about the Suez Canal.

The Middle East is not actually from the Middle East, but from the smallest continent on the planet -- Australia. At first I thought that naming themselves after a complex and violent geographical hot spot was mystifying. Now I think, whatever. I think this mostly because the music is superb; it's ethereal and atmospheric -- but not all the way through. Each song has blood and guts and marrow.

The band broke up a year ago and - thankfully for the rest of us - band members came to their senses, re-recognized that good thing they had going, and reunited. The band released an abridged version of their earlier work a couple weeks ago. If the musical blogosphere has anything to do with it, the album will catch fire like a desiccated Christmas tree and tingle the ears of the alternative set before the calendar year reaches its coup de grâce.

The Recordings of the Middle East is one of the finest etherealesque albums I've had the pleasure of listening to in this Year of our Lord 2009. For me, "Blood" is the standout track, and the album cover is a visual dagger through the chest, but in the best possible sense that can be said.

After staring at the cover for the better part of a minute I wanted to hug someone, but not a dainty squeeze. I felt the desire to participate in an embrace with the kind of vigor and adoration that engages every last chamber of the heart for a moment of true physical connection -- a tactile time out powerful enough to briefly still this fleeting life and demonstrate the sentiments not so easily uttered -- much like the album does in the architecture of each song, and each visceral lyric.

The Recordings of The Middle E...

You're A Bone Machine

I had to turn down a ticket to see The Pixies at the newly beautiful (renovated) Fox Theater in Oakland earlier this week. Saying no to the ticket was like stabbing myself through the heart with a dirty, dusty, blade that causes profound pain but is most assuredly non-fatal.

I have a string of epithets, italicized and bolded, to follow that thought, but I am going to save their incendiary intent for my post on Carrie Prejean.

In the meantime I leave you with what is possibly my most cherished Pixies tune: "You're A Bone Machine".

WARNING:
Much like one might pair a romantic interlude with champagne and strawberries (actually, I'm not sure if anyone does that; champagne is never a cliche without or without the berries), or match the time-tested favorite of peanut butter and jelly on wheat (no crust), "You're A Bone Machine" does not translate well, as in you cannot truly experience the transcendent atomic energy it will unfold in you, if you listen to it on a tepid volume. Some songs require an appropriate amplification that truly rattles double-paned windows. This is one such song.

So do yourself a favor: Go thermonuclear. Turn the dial up on this tune. Your neighbors might be sorry, but you won't be. Such is the fission of The Pixies, and such is the frisson of jettisoning momentary proprietary and embracing your inner, feral, wild child. Allow yourself to scream with Frank Black, to splay your demons, stresses, and cheerful profundities in a musical tantrum that doesn't require you to be the ringleader -- just a member of the crowd. One who sings a long.

Bone Machine - The Pixies

You Made A Bad Choice. Now I'll Take A Testicle.

I hate reading stories about bad things happening to defenseless people: little kids, the elderly, harmless animals, but I especially hate coming across stories about gang rape.

I've never wanted to be a vampire, or a superhero, or possess abilities that would allow me to rise above being an average mortal with too many pairs of shoes. But when a glaring act of injustice occurs -- when someone elects to harm another with the kind of viciousness that makes me hope there is a hell, my first thought is not compassion. Maybe it should be. My first white hot thought involves getting in the perpetrator's grill, ripping the grill out, and then hacking out every tooth with a soiled pair of pliers -- one by one.

A recent gang rape in the Bay Area jarringly put into focus how a collection of ugly factors can explode into the kind of appalling brutality that was inflicted on a fifteen-year-old girl as she left a homecoming dance. The violence enacted on this girl is a result of - a fucking horrible symptom of - a societal gangrene we're all exposed to whether we want it or not.

The gangrene's many elements involve an entrenched and violent inner city culture; young, impressionable, and stupid high school students and dropouts; troubled men who have aged out of continuation school and juvenile hall with their tarnished and malfunctioning moral compasses in tow. Mix in generous heaps of drugs, alcohol abuse, and boredom and you've got one hell of a potent molotov cocktail that once hurled exploded a toxic chemistry that burned, charred, and seared not just the victim, but all of us.

My anger is not just limited to the perpetrators. I want to expose and humiliate the subhumans who stood by and watched as events unfolded. They took pictures and they took video. I want them all to explain what they were thinking. Then, I want to rip out each of their eyelashes, one by one. And then I want to slowly cauterize a "V" (for voyeur) into their foreheads with a blowtorch. Everything has a price of admission.

I have no doubt that those arrested will be incarcerated for a very long time. I know I should feel some compassion for the guilty (most entered the world with major disadvantages), but we all come to pivotal crossroads and have to make choices, and they made theirs. And now I want one testicle -- each. Their karmic burden is not my business. But, it's time for them to sacrifice a profound part of themselves. I'll take their testicles.

Summertime Clothes on a Summer Day in November

It is November 2, 2009, and on this day the sun perched itself showily in a new November sky free of clouds and smoke (the Santa Cruz mountains keep birthing forest fires) and radiated a warmth we don't often feel in the middle of summer -- much less an autumn stretching itself into California's version of winter.

I did what any sane person would do: I marveled at this unexpected gift of 80 degrees on this 306th day of the year, and played hooky from editing assignments to take myself for a walk -- a glorious walk. Today was a day for pool parties, barbecues, shorts, and contemplating one's naval or election choices (tomorrow's Election Day) outside.

As I walked through the streets I felt an exuberance return with which I had parted ways months ago. The sun whisked away remnant cerebral cobwebs, and my situation - one in the midst of yet another career change - tilted in a direction, if only by perception, that was decidedly positive.

Naturally, I had trouble easing my way back indoors. There is no WiFi on the patch of grass in the backyard, alas, which a job search grudgingly requires. Luckily, a melodic encapsulation of this November summer day crossed my path (or ear canals rather) in a most synchronous manner, allowing me to relive the warmth and all-around sweetness of this short-sleeved day once the sun had made its farewell, and as a theatrical and thoroughly rotund harvest moon hoisted itself into position.

Rip off your sleeves and I'll ditch my socks
We'll dance to the songs from the cars as they pass...
Walking around in our summertime clothes...
And I want to walk around with you
And I want to walk around with you

Indeed.

Summertime Clothes - Animal Co...

Harlem Shakes Makes Me Shake (in a good way)

My guess is that the members of Harlem Shakes, an indie band from New York, were birthed in the 1980s, making them definitive cardholders of Generation Y. So, I was immediately suspicious when the lyrics to their cheery latest, "Natural Man", referenced Morrissey.

I'm not going to get up in their collective grill, though, just because they were probably making the transition away from sippy cups and getting their second molars around the time Morrissey released his first solo effort in '88. And, because I was a second-grader when The Smiths broke up, and I still went through the requisite Smiths infatuation my first year of college, flirting with vegetarianism, and the idea of shunning leather shoes because Morrissey did.

It makes sense that as Harlem Shakes trudged through Yale they learned to roll a proper spliff along with bathing their psyches with the kind of skinny tie music madness Morrissey and Johnny Marr perfected -- especially the kind inspired by soul-whipping UK cold and thick-as-duck-down cloud cover that was likely a contributing factor in Henry the VIII's decision to behead a couple of wives. (BTW, I would totally be into singing about my boyfriend in a coma if lack of Vitamin D malnourished me from epidermis to organs to woe-as-woebegone diary entries).

Harlem Shakes didn't squander its Morrissey reference in "Natural Man". If ever there were a cleverly crafted auditory circus masking as a simple 4:38 song that could easily transport one back to the days when anything, anything, anything was possible because youthful invincibility said so, and Zima was a truly viable alternative to cheap frat party beer, this tune is it.

"Zima saturday sunsets, watching the world
See how sad the real fun gets with the morrissey girls"

Nicely done, Harlem Shakes.

Natural Man - Harlem Shakes

I'm back from the dead; follow me on Twitter!

Imagine a continuum. Imagine on one end there is an existence not unlike that of a sloth. Plenty of sleep, little urgency unless one must use the facilities or one is out of low-fat Chips Ahoy. On the other end of this ephemeral continuum is a workaholic existence fueled by a cortisone level that causes heart attacks in the old and weak-hearted.

I had the privilege of making my way from slothdom to becoming one with my BlackBerry in unhealthy co-dependency in the span of a few short weeks. Instead of rolling out of bed at noon, I had long lists of action items that gave me paralysis and cut off my air supply until I found myself gulping air. I neglected friends, returning non-work-related phone calls, abandoned laundry and cleaning, healthy eating, and gained five pounds [fuck!].

My project, the one that made me cranky and lie awake nights for fear of stark and bitter failure, ended last Friday with a whimper and a lot of wine. I still have a lot of work to do, but there's more yin to go along with my yang now. And more time to record insights, observations, and stupid inanities. I've got a lot to say before the end of the year. Rolling up my sleeves now...

And don't forget to follow me on Twitter!