Kulture Korner: bored meditations

Young Marble Giants: Best Band That Never Realized How Awesome They Truly Were (Cos They Would've Put Out More Albums If They Had); or Simply The Best Band Ever? Maybe they are more awesome for only putting out one very magical album? Here is a picture of them in a boat.

Colossal Youth keeps my morning coffee warm. I am trying to figure out a song upon which to bestow "best song" status. Right now it is a toss up between "Searching for Mr. Right," "Eating Noddemix," "Constantly Changing," "N.I.T.A.," "Choci Loni," "Wurlitzer Jukebox," "Salad Days," "Credit in the Straight World," "Brand - New - Life," "Wind in the Rigging," "Cakewalking," and "Ode to Booker T." (That list was really pointless.) I give you 5 stars in my iTunes rating system, Giants. You guys rule(d). I am feeling you so hard. You are like the inverse of my other love, Steely Dan: completely undressed, almost painfully literal, no attempt at singing, an almost faulty emphasis on simplicity. Here are some lyrics.

Yesterday we were always laughing
Always good for a laugh in passing
Stepping outside of the rules for asking

Misery passes and so does crying
Just look around
when you feel like dying
Stepping outside of the rules
when trying

Hopeless cases will drag you under
Fiery lovers will make you blunder
Tearing all the rules asunder

Trying to cakewalk but it's too boring
Coming to life at four in the morning
You think you're alive
But then you're just yawning

I don't completely relate to those lyrics, cos I go to bed at like midnight, TOPS, unless I am drinking bourbon, but that is OK, I totally dig what you are getting at. Elsewhere you told me, in a very beautiful way, that maybe I don't need to really know what you are on about to be totally rapt by what you are saying: "This doesn't mean that I possessed you / You're haunting me because I let you." And I think those two lines kinda sum up perfectly my relationship with this record? I am not sure how. But I think they do. Also, you have serious zings. Here is one: "I don't need you to love me / I don't need you to care / Take your body from by me / Be yourself over there." Crucial. That is like the kind of zing that makes my jaw hit the floor because it is so tight! So economic! So complete! Devastating. Please don't anyone ever say that to me directly. I think maybe this is kinda like what Kate Bush is getting at in "Running Up that Hill," except she's way more ambivalent about the whole thing, she kinda wants mindmeld, but she also kinda wants this d-bag to leave her, that's why she is taunting her addressee with rhetorical questions and stuff about bullets at the same that her most affecting couplet is on some serious death-drive type shit: "So much hate for the ones we love / Tell me we both matter, don't we?" But Allison Stratton is much more sure-minded, much more interested in singularity than cosmic and quasi-religious empathy. It's just a shame that I could never rock you (or for that matter find you) at karaoke. Kate Bush does have that going for her.

Kulture Korner: Science & Steely Dan

iTunes source names "God" and "abe lincoln money shot" have, despite obviously different taste in names, very similar taste in music: lots of Guster, Ben Folds Five, Gin Blossoms, and Black Eyed Peas; a couple Beatles, Aerosmith, and assorted classic rock best-ofs (that end up having very similar tracklists); and a handful of arbitrary Tupac, Dr. Dre, and Biggie tracks. As the day progresses, research proves that those of completely different naming sensibilities nonetheless share at least one significant feature; this researcher, for one, never fails to be impressed by the collective shittiness of NYU's musical sensibilities.

As for me, when I get stressed out, exhausted, or in need of inspiration, I put on my headphones and listen to "Peg" several times in a row, lean over my computer and close my eyes so that nothing distracts from the aural rays of sex that Donald Fagen, Walter Becker, and (especially) Michael McDonald send into to the center of my head.

Here is a pertinent conversation:

Melody Nelson: ps - i think "kid charlemagne" might be more utterly un-fuck-withable than classic... but that's me. "DID YOU FEEL LIKE JESUS? / DID YOU REALIZE / THAT YOU WERE A CHAMPION IN THEIR EYES?"
[...]
Eagles: DID YOU FEEL LIKE JESUS!!!!
yes!
[...]
E: IS THERE GAS IN TYHE CARRRR
IS THERE GASSS INNNN THHHEEE CCARRRRR?
[...]
E: crossed a diamond with a pearl?
lsd.
ITS THE END OF SIXTIES IDEALISM.
YET AGAIN>
MN: AND THE ENTRANCE OF COCAINE
E: once again.
good you had no idea what a state i was in last night with the live record.
give it you.
you cry.
its so good.
MN: TELL ME: WHERE ARE YOU DRIVING / MIDNIGHT CRUSIER?
THIS IS THE BEST LISTENING EXPERIENCE OF MY LIFE FUCK
E: FINALS
its like that.
where is your bounty of fortune and fame?\
i am another gentleman loser
drive me to harlem or somehwere the same.....
MN: yeah, i think finals make me especially emotionally sensitive to lyrics about the end of sixties idealism and the start of cocaine
E: i think its all the caffiene.
MN: no, i think it is steely dan
simply
E: touche.
walter becker get your balls out of my ears.

If You Wanna Kiss the Sky

You guys, is this the best song ever? I feel so confused.

kulture korner: records that i will buy tomorrow

It is worth noting that roughly 1 minute and 20 seconds into "The Electrician" off of the new Sightings record (OMFG), they start to sound like Brian Eno ca. Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), except from the bottom of a shark tank, and except that Robert Fripp is trying to frippertronic away from a giant shark, but he is covered in fresh meat and he knows that all he can do is carry on with his Frippery self. YEEEEEEEEAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!1!!!1!

kulture vulture: songs that time should forget already, damn!

hot 97, do me this one favor: the next time i turn on the shower radio in my apartment, give me something other to wash my hair to than kanye west's "big brother." it can be anything really. i strongly encourage more ne-yo, which you are often willing to give me, although you are guaranteed to bookend it with "big brother." you could even do a freestyle weekend that riffs or puns off of the relationship one might have to a "big brother," songs such as "two to make it right," "together forever," or two of hearts," and i would even allow a strictly verbal shout out to kanye west's "big brother" as the definite inspiration for such a fine block of radio programming. but this is the thing about "big brother" that y'all at hot 97 must not realize: that song is not good; it never was; its infinite playing does not make it better; in fact, it makes it worse. i cannot sud up to this any longer. i don't know how i ever did.