DJed last night and managed to overcome my lack-of-transition lag...almost everyone in the bar (all tremendous 20 of them) came up to me at some point to say they liked what was going on - played the rad $1 records i bought on the street in lew of lunch yesterday - elvis costello, the tubes, psychedelic furs, heaven 17, and the go-gos (which sounds infinitely better slowed down a bit), along with a synthy set including my new favorite song ever, the tom tom club's 'genius of love.' i hadn't realized i had two copies of it on me and when some boy asked me what it was, then remarked how much he liked the song, i gave him one. random act of kindness. i told him that whenever he spins it he has to make people either make out or dance...

have listened to nothing of value this weekend - went to see metalux/rah bras and was annoyed beyond belief at the pretentious pointlessness of those two awful girls + dirty hippie kid of metalux. low, dull thuds and piercing formless synth. why bother? rah bras ruled in a pre-recorded, super richmond badass sex bomb kind of way. everyone in the band sings well, the really put soul into the music and although it has industrial-lite inklings, i full endorse it.

totally got in THE WORST mood ever tonite listening to two guys bro down about their fucking record collections while stumbling drunkenly through queens. how sick and stupid is a life defined by ancedotes gained from listening to/buying records? baseball cards, purely baseball cards to me. the rareness/exclusivity of the LP format makes me ill, although i do buy vinyl i am not a collector, and the plurality and democracy of internet music listening makes all of it beyond irrelivant - something the asshole wfmu east coast snobs can never really get down with - in the real world, the pathetic hording of precious pressed fossil fuels is now not even a sign of higher taste, just snotty insider cave thinking. ya, cool dude, let's throw on some flipper.

listening to peng - stereolab, revelling in the utter mid-90sness of mental dispair.

formulating what i want my solo/covers project to sound like :::

stereolab - peng 'super falling star'
nico - chelsea girls
young marble giants - collossal youth
the orb - orbus terrarum - that incredible string track
smashing pumpkins - gish - rhinoceros/suffer

and thinking about songs that are sonically built on lyrical quirks/conceptions - self-referential but also providing a sound argument (ouch!) for the lyrical content -
buzzcocks - noise annoys
spiritualized - 200 bars

top songs to put on a break up mix tape to make the other person feel like a huge dickhead.

1. all i really want to do - bob dylan
2. beautiful mind - the verve
3. broken heart - spiritualized

on unrelated note, smarmy room mate published his jackass photo on www.makeoutclub.com today, entering the sea of pathetic emo boys looking for a blow job from the internet. i wrote his bio (ha, just like AMG bios i write of pathetic emo boys looking for a blow job from the audience) and was credited as 'lacrimose' which is a word that'd never passed my lips til that moment. be my thesaurus, indeed.

came home from work and my stereo was playing songs:ohia's 'ghost tropic.' i must have accidentally set the alarm long ago, because i think it goes off around seven p.m. every nite, usually to the radio in this eerie, untuned crackle of voices. today is was as if i had some utopian future home, or like my bio-smart co-intern would say, a smart house run by monitoring a microchip in my skin which measures blood sugar levels, heart-rate or the humors - my infinite sea of black bile requires this album precisely as i enter the home! (lament!)
the serbian book has made several references to 'blistering indie rock' in the 30 odd pages i've read. c'mon man. he's also the guy who wrote that history of rave culture, generation esctacy or whatever. gawd. the sentences are too short for me, the politics too senimental. he obviously does not know about or really care for the music of which he writes. uses it as a platform for which to play out the 'drama of youth against oppression.'
reminds me of a really horrific book i opened today in my role as literary intern - on music from montemarte to the mudd club, or how popular music gained cultural integrity over 100 years. written by some sociology prof. in some no name school. total fucking blather. it's how i feel about kids who take ballet lessons, or violin lessons or work extra hard at math - at some point someone should straight up tell you, 'look kid, you are never going to be a genius at this and if you really love it, go ahead, but you might just end up sucking at it forever.' more than half of my friends really need that talk soon and no one has ever given that guy the talk.
am now listening to 'don't think twice, it's all right' as part of my continued melancholic week. always return to the classics in times of crisis, i guess. can't listen to anything that smacks too much of artifice...
also, room mate spinning the chamber brothers, who seem to be everywhere around me these days. weird stuff, sort of soul, psych, a little too straighforward or not straightforward enough, depending.

laid in bed in a funk tonite listening to the new lambchop album, sounds like a depressed meatloaf with neil young on guitar. apparent humor in the statement 'lambchop sounds like meatloaf.' not in a laughing mood. also, the singer from the swedish band 'club 8''s solo record, pretty good (wish i had listened to it bfr the indie pop comp, oh well, i'll have another chance) - a few radiohead meets her space elliot smith very 'now' jams, the first one catching me with offhand 'you don't need to tell me i don't need you anymore' lyrics.

finished the spitz book and on to a nation book about punk radio stations in bosnia - looks really good and helpful to my czech music/culture book. i worry that the gleam of the cz is so far gone that a mere mention to publishers will be laughed at. gotta kick up research and context, why it is so important now?

finishing the epic spiritualized article, seven pages in quotes and framing...can't wait to turn it in and have the editor shit that it isn't a slapped up q and a. i flutuate btwn the jason pierce love and hate, mostly bc my interview with the old bassist sean cook revealed the other side of the story, one i'd never bothered with. of course, they were fired in 99, the midst of the great disappearance. not much on the minds. funny how that works, how people forget about bands who take more than eight months between records and then suddenly "Oh ya!" there's this weird hype surrounded by dread that it will be reguritation or worse, some dolled-up tacky crap canning sounds of the top o the college charts. that's why bands like radiohead (ha ha and the pumpkins) were smart in recording way too much in the studio, using the offtracks or wacked out, late night stuff for an audience already primed - amazing to think of the band as so much business that you record what you've had, and in studio write where you want to go - for the pacifier. projecting.

"all those animals on the extinction list - they obviously didn't deserve to make it."

ahh, the decline of western civilization one. coupled with spitz's 'we got the neutron bomb' giving me the l.a. take. hard to believe darby crash thought he was a revolutionary during the same year gang of four put out their best work. the nyc spark carried to england, carried through media to the west coast - both the birth and the realization moved on, the copy continued on. all that i think of as crappy, nihilistic and unartful in punk originates in these hollywood babies - without context, senseless and squat. strange to me that i know someone who got a black flag tattoo on their 23rd birthday.

listening to mars, another cd burned for me by my friend of infinite good taste. psychedelic post punk. if i could have a visual of that factory beat - the canned, reverby garbage behind all that stuff - that's what i'd get a tattoo of. maybe this is the unknown pleasure jd cover? dunno.

'tired of waiting' a beautiful, non-blues kinks song. one of the best of all time?

eric burdon is one of the best singers of all time - the animals singularly informed my freshman year of college, linking me to my parents who played 'we gotta get out of this place' out their dorm room windows in the late '60s. always so deperate, so strained and i simply couldn't imagine them giving a lackluster show.

thinking of doing a covers project - just me reinterpreting things like 'noise annoys' by the buzzcocks and doing some lame wanna be nico style stuff. i'm pulled both ways - wanting to be badass and demure in my vocals. oh, the life.

i can't possible think of a more annoying thing than a mainstream revival of rockabilly. that said, the world needs more of the cramps.

done with my first mix cd -i'm pretty disappointed with it bc my songs were so long and therefore not many on the cd - astro-brite, cornelius, june panic, the mountain goats, amanset, pram, felix the housecat, and the annoying electro re-interpretations of the strokes 'the diff'rent strokes.' this girl is going to freak out cause it's all shameless cheesy electonic pop music. arrgh.

last nite jim and jenny at pete's candy story - one time great bluegrass band weighed down to tutorial style performance by godforesaken 'brother where art...' yuppie scum crowd. more attention to spiritually oriented songs and less enthusiam. i guess i'm used to going with my drunken, caterwauling friends who'd scream requests halfway through each song. probably not going to see them again.

am burning my first mix cd for the indie pop list. makes me feel incredibly old. the girl who sent me one made the most lovely little package, all the music really just fits in the waxy beige envelope. now i'm forced to realize people really listen to masters of the hemisphere and things like that - that given a mix of it, i may enjoy it myself. i like the idea of mixtapes from strangers although it is a bit frightening. i am sending a bit of my diary out to another home, another stereo, two ears that love sound as much as i do.

what else? just reviewed black cat music -super west coast doors blues drunk grain alcohol goodness - on Lookout!?! but so much more ballsy, badass though slightly over sincere. weird, 80s metal production and this great background double-tracking of the gruff lead singer ala Richard Ashcroft in the Verve. very decent.

also, Pram's "Gash." severly underlooked band? very subtle, like Hood, vaguely retro psych leanings - interesting that AMG calls them an electronic band. hmm. their singer's voice is a little thin, unlike the lushness they try to cop from MBV, rather sucessfully. a friend of mine sent me a burn of it - he is a Pram freak, which seems a bit impossible.

finally - thinking about "We've Got the Neutron Bomb" the Spin editor Spitz's reactionary take on LA punk...all of that era now etched in snappy pull quotes? was 'please kill me' the singular expression because it was so nihilistic and childish? the more i read abt the LA scene, all the name-giving and worship of the English sound, the more I think it was a huge shame. One good thing that came out of it - the Screamers. bought their demos 78-79 record today and it just rules. must incorporate the abrasive keyboards into our little stage set up.

played my first show in a year last night - very strange. probably over 100 people, most of whom i half-knew. after five years in nyc that's still a big deal. adrenaline rush like i haven't had in a while, my hands powerful but not my own - the songs playing themselves. during 'insignificant other' i had a mysterious loss of power in my legs, i had to keep changing rock stances just not to fall. i wasn't nervous so much as unsure - i didn't really care one way or the other if people liked us, i just didn't really want to hear about it. in previous bands i'd be really excited if people came up and complimented us, especially if it involved my singing, because it gave me confidence - but now i feel just as critical as those in the audience, know what they'll say and am annoyed at the paternal sentiment expressed therein 'i just think you really need an honest critique.' really? i just think we need to write better songs. ha ha. a rock critic with no time for her critics.
played with the boxes, an all girl hard rock type band with a man killer on lead. very straightforward structures and either a following or massive, drunken groupies.

sucks that the second i quit my paying job i become interested in music again and just want to buy things...great czech bands - lvmen, here, and iva bittova...the more hardcore i listen to, the more i get into bands like lvmen - dark and brooding rock songs with endless energy. damn me for getting into angel hair so late in life. www.tamizdat.org...

thinking about liquid liquid...cavern has to be one of the best, underappreciated dance songs. why do all artists either turn to attempting great dance songs or attempt to write sincere love songs? can't imagine being an industry 'song-writer' living in stockholm, conjuring up teenage sentiments in convienient end rhyme. i really feel like both creating those things and spending too much time listening to them is detrimental to my facilities as an intelligent adult. it's corrupting.
regardless, dance music. ha ha, paula adbul must have the worst non-video camera presence ever, but seriously the stuff of modern one-hit wonders? no, that dance music has always had its own seperate, always undervalued sub-genres written off as that of simpletons because it allows people to toss their feet down and hands up - from jazz to two-step and trance...but electronic has obscurist tendencies, like indie music, and tends to be forward looking at a cost. too many people, conversely, just want to be aphex twin, even james himself.

man, billboard magazine really is for industry choads. this isn't surprising so much for readership but in that they actually hype the revival of cracker as interesting and vital. publishing companies take out full page spreads thanking destiny's child for staying quiet and subservient enough to be the most uninteresting, toppest selling artists of the year. again. no wonder millions of dollars are wasted on redundant and unimportant crap.
thus said, starsailor. ha ha ha. who doesn't understand this to be 1)storm in heaven era Verve with those undeniable Beta Band beats (how bad are the BB? watching High Fidelity the other day I remember how silly that whole thing was, and i went for it whole heartedly) and 2)completely revisionist brit pop agitation. 3) the collective conspiracy of the drone on and blisscent mailing lists. the organ is overstated and reminds me for some reason of that Jacob Dylan headlight song. This is not a good thing.

blessed streaming media - keeps me feeling like i know what's going on if not in the world than at least in the minds of epitonic, insound, and other. suspiciously not recieving other music updates these days. conspiracy theories abound. have decided among my constantly piling new year's resolutions (i've kept them all thus far!) that i will include the final, conclusive study of distopian literature and film. it's a bit regressive but fitting of these rather dark times. am about to interview this guy who runs a club in atlanta for a mag. crazy that i don't really know anything about lighting/sound tech but am totally fascinated by this culture. smart lights. wall textures. infinite possibilities of patterns. clubs are more innovative than art galleries.

brian eno. 'a year with swollen appendices' making me question when one starts practicing and just does. is the mark of a true master that of alleviated self-doubt? total confidence...there's a difference truly between that and ego. he's a genius not just for music but in total living. collaboration is a by-gone idea in high art? save for commercial hip hop albums? ludacris is a jingle merchant. i love him still.
other things...the shins. are they senimental drivel? 'when you notice the stripes' is fantastic with it's slow decending '40s style female vocals. if it weren't for the fact that i hate the word 'haunting,' i'd call it that.