the new issue of spin is fucking hilarious. true to rumor - big, horrifically ugly photographs and two of my shinnier fingers high of text. about six record reviews. andy greenwald is the worst music journalist i've read in a long time, all his metaphors trip on each other's feet. you'd think only the strokes and dashboard confessional mattered in the world. which actually may be true, but pah!
richard hell - time - charming song called 'going going gone' which reminds me in title of that song on the reality bites soundtrack (discussion of 'so alternative' songs last night when 4 non-blondes came on the radio). in the midst of roir crappy tape hiss sounding live concerts, this song remarkably torch-like, simple and even a little countrified-Stones sounding. Hell has a great singing accent - part Dylan, part Jagger, with a sneer McLaren could never steal.
Guilty as charged - learned the Shin's "New Slang" on guitar (actually my room mate taught me). Rumors that the song sells fast food - that M2 has a video of it. Too sincere for success?
Magnetic Fields "69 Love Songs" this weekend at Lincoln Center - a glowing audience, very dinner theater. LD wore a smoking jacket, Stephin in his trademark mismatched stripes. He should never speak - only sing. His and Claudia's banter is like watching Harvard undergrads make eyes at one another in intro to philosophy - makes my stomach turn with its smug in-ness. Didn't know all the tracks - am warmed mostly when the strict 4/4 full-band is not in effect, when Claudia isn't singing (her voice is amateur at best, you'd think after 10 years of performing that she'd work on it). Actually, the most cloyingly fey, theatrical or crooning songs hit me most - even when the ever-debate over Merritt's ability to ever mean what he says reaches fever pitch. The near-betrayal is the most heart-breaking.
Has kicked me, unsurprisingly, into a wave of lyric writing. Probably enough material for half the record I've been writing since I got my acoustic back - with my jazzboy room mate showing me the ropes, i'm ruling all over the guitar these days. or not.
am bummed to hear that black cat music, a band i reviewed quite favorably, was terrible live this past friday. borderline couldn't even pull off their songs. who tours at that level of terrible?