thanks for all your help, daphne!!!

there's nothing more sinister to me than getting the subject message from a publicist when i write a good review of a record - it makes me feel like maybe i've done something wrong, or that christgau's cynical take on pop consumerism is creeping into my bones.

here's some weird instant voyeur intake for you, if you're in the kylie kind of mood.

here's my venus article if you're not down with the mag or whatever. there's a whole slew of provi scene stuff flying around right now, from a report in MMR to the RISD loft scene stuff in Nest, an interview with Ben Load in Dazed and Confused and that weird, sort of frustrating piece in Art Forum, about bands as art, art as bands. Other than Forcefield (and Black Dice by extension) it isn't explicity Provi, but there's just this weird vibe abt it, like there's going to be a backlash, if there isn't already.

Otherwise you'll be like the guys who ran the music industry

the target marketing of the future, tv style. i'm so far removed from tv culture at this point that it's hard to understand how and why people would allow themselves to be subjected to such techniques, and hasn't the internet proved that banner ad/click thru rates are pathetically low?

saw xiu xiu on friday at the zeigheist gallery in boston. man, if you're reading this and you're from boston CHILL THE FUCK OUT!!! those people up there are just too intense and wound up for my tastes. there was some serious emo-bating going on at the show, tho mr. crazy jamie just ignored it and did his neko-meets-talk talk thing w/ love. the last time i saw such wrapt attention, heard shhshing and all that was low, and i think it's great that that kind of temporary awe can be transferred to something more avant/weird w/o there being a misplaced thought that he's a genius.

only old folks wear jammies

finished Bing! last night, in spite of myself and have to say this is prolly the first piece i've ever written that is truly not really even about the subject, but more totally focused on the representation of the subject in history. bing! is an interesting fellow, but covered in every way so i had to get creative. we'll see what the sound collectors think of it.

just bought the cee-lo album from the local friendly indie record shop - they look at me equally strange when i ask, ' do you have the new cee lo? how about deathprod, on the norwegian rune grammofon label? no, hmm...well, do you have the new luomo? no, but he just played in boston last night. Oh, okay...fine, I guess I did want this new Olivia Tremor Control reissue.'

IN OTHER NEWS

If you haven't read this ridiculous MBV article, then you must not be trying too hard. Oh, I was listening to Pagoda, btw, which is a project with my dear friend Scott from Shortstack's lead guitarist, Adrian, and it is some lovely dream pop crafting. I would like it even if I didn't think Adrian was a genius, a haunted spirit and an all around swell guy (in spite of the fact that there are fleas living in his couch).

And finally, in the Favorite drink of the year = Water catagory:

THE 4TH ANNUAL JAMMY AWARDS: THE WINNERS ARE...

Live Album: Gov't Mule- Deepest End

Studio Album: moe.- Wormwood

Song of the Year: Allman Brothers Band- "Old Before My Time"

Archival Live Album: Grateful Dead- Closing of Winterland: December 31,
1978

Live Performance: Gov't Mule with Les Claypool, Bela Fleck, Sonny Landreth

George Porter Jr., Dave Schools, Victor Wooten and more- 5/3/03, Saenger
Theatre, New Orleans, LA

Tour of the Year: Phish- Summer

DVD: Dave Matthews Band - Central Park Concert

Album Cover: String Cheese Incident- Untying The Not (art by Alex Grey)

New Groove: Psychedelic Breakfast

Grammy Jammy (Industry Award for Support of Jam Scene): Don Strasburg, Fox
Theater, Boulder, CO

Mimi Fishman Memorial Award (Community Service): Conscious Alliance

Luckily for this fan base, the terms 'played out' 'stayed' and 'totally fucking obvious' have net positive connotations

better book early before your children grow up!!!

I'm paranoid that I can't write something about ole' Bing for Sound Collector - what's more to say? - and was trying to research Jonzo, the label tirelessly putting down on CD every sound the man made on tape. In searching online I found http://www.jonzo.co.uk/, which you would be tempted to believe this the home of this psychotic collectors' label, but no. it isn't...it's something much more evil.

the sounds of joyous village songs interrupted by mic noise

i've been protooling all these old sound files from my euro tripping days and just wanting to kick my self for having such a horrible shitty mono mic. i've got wonderful market sounds w/ jajouka flutes and all that midnight train kinda stuff, but thrrp! crrrkp..snup snup...noise is where it ought not be. weird that at the time i thought 'i can just get rid of that noise later' as if the images i was taking were three dimensional - 100% controllable. maybe a product of my digital reproduction oriented brain?

i lifted this link for funny conquest disco from ilx. today, btw, i registered - meaning that i'll be annoying folks in upcoming weeks. luckily with all the REAL critics gone at Winter and SXSW, i'll be able to win an argument for a little while.

In my ears: Patrick Wolf - i'm a sucker for the cover of the french clown looking boy with a hula hoop and a violin. ever wonder what bjork would sound like if she were a boy? this might be what happens when a good classical musician does too many psychedelics, sells his brazilwood bow for a drum machine and loops his hobo stick around pop just before going over the edge. it's affected for sure, but it still bubbles over...even if the flourishes come right out of Bach primers.

poison apples for the music lover's soul

just when ya have a good idea, some new age quasi xtian babblers go and make mush of it. blah blah, reception theory can be for the strong too.

turntabled

i just got interviewed about the music issue for my music theory tutor's class in ethnomusicology. argh blarg, talk about reversal of fortunes. he gently led me into chit chat about riot grrrl, which always makes me feel weird cause i was never really into RG music as much as politics/zine culture. i mean, i grew up in ohio ferchrissakes - i was lucky to get BunnyGrunt mini zines and most of my trading partners were girls just like me in other silly mid-sized American towns...I have all these fantasies that I'm going to meet these girls, who were my best friends because they confessed things to me that other people won't dare in speech, as an adult and have this blissful moment of reunion for a friendship that never met.

in related news, read the bizarre piece in rolling stone, about the NYU kid who threw himself off the 10th floor of Bobst. i really like the idea of the piece - that suicide leaves unanswered questions and that people deal with the grief in sometimes terrible, trite or embarrassed ways - but i thought the article was written poorly and didn't really develop the contributing factors well enough. Perhaps this is bc of those Good Charlotte "Hold On" copycats who feel a moral responsibility to educate - whomever doesn't already know that being a teenager is hard and that parents don't know their kids - abt how to catch the 'warning signs,' which the article badly points out don't exist. and ya, it weirds me out a little bit that i went to nyu and people used to joke around about throwing themselves off the balcony all the time, then some shroomed out kid who could have easily been a friend of mine went and did it.

spring = dusting off indie rock records

today demanded that i open the windows, let the cat dabble in the spring air, and put on some red transparent double album indie goodness, aka three mile pilot. as paul j gets further in to his hoaky funeral march, it's good to revisit the slightly less-pretentious bombast of the early '90s. actually, was reviewing the "in the fishtank" CD, and had both Black Heart and Three Mile on at the same time, a more coherent mash of chords than Zaireeka, at least.

also, been grooving to the mahi mahi CD, which is the kind of out, post-industrial provi black humor drums and keys thing i've been writing about. like the bolt or early-dice, more fun live but still great in a way that makes ya wonder why Mute signs nerds like the Liars instead of Mahix2.

theron casts no shadow

ahh, the oscars. like my current reading (for a narsty anthro class) about textiles, i find that i can truly enjoy it because i have no personal involvement in the medium. film, as the surrealists said nearly 100 years ago, is the bravest and best medium. me, i can't deal w/ the sensory overload - music alone makes me crazy, and everything else is like overkill. still the oscars are great because i can just indulge in that weird american royalty that is hollywood - where the men can joke about anything but the anorexic on their arm, and the women all vie to have the most fabulous up-do - not unlike my high school prom back in ohio. very odd, still, that theron was so paris hilton like, no?