Halleluiah

A hundred and two degrees in the New York smog. 'Halleluiah' by Leonard Cohen playing on her dime-store record player, that song Howard liked to call 'a hymn deconstructing a hymn'. Long ago Kiki had submitted to this musical part of the memory. But it was surely not true -- 'Halleluiah' had been another time, years later. But it was hard to resist the poetry of the possibility, and so she had allowed 'Halleluiah' to fall into family myth. [...] When, on their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, Jerome had played his parents an ethereal, far more beautiful version of 'Halleluiah' by a kid called Buckley, Kiki thought yes, that's right, our memories are getting more beautiful and less real every day.

Reading this in bed last night, I thought first about the time a friend of mine played me Jeff Buckley, the first time I heard him and, at first, didn't like him. Then, I thought what a pity it was that this comparison can't make the younger musician feel proud, since Buckley died almost ten years before On Beauty came out. So it can only make Leonard Cohen somewhat annoyed. But he's probably too zen for that.

Wednesday

One of my three favorite songs about Ameeeerica. The other ones are "Pretty Good Year" (also by Tori Amos) and Hugh Laurie's moving tribute.

Polska Ska from 1965

Alibabki, "Echo Ska"
from the album "W rytmach Jamaica ska" - Veriton, 1965

Those Damn Elves!

They don't exist!

I'm saying that just so we know where we stand. Back in the day, when I enjoyed role-playing games (not of the sexy kind, of the nerdy teenager kind!) and read a lot of science fiction with a tiny sprinkling of Tolkien & co., we said that elves stink. Let's keep that in mind too.

My thinking is somewhat circuitous: from this piece on Joanna Newsom, wherein the author quotes someone else's association of Newsom with Emily Dickinson, to comments on this piece, where someone mentions how Nirvana gets to signify "the grunge" while Hole is usually dismissed as Courtney Love psychodrama... although where's the difference between them, really?

The "lesson" is, I guess, that female musicians get compared to each other so much they end up spending a lot of time denying that they're not one and the same person (or one of the only two possible types). An interview answer condensed from several interviews would look like this: "No, I'm sure I'm not Kate Bush and my lyrics have really nothing to do with Emily Dickinson, I also don't steal unpublished songs from Tori Amos, nor do I surreptitiously record Björk singing in the shower."

And I guess that if you're not being asked these questions it means you're mere pop decoration or a Madonna-wannabe.

What it also means is that women artists don't really get to have mentors or idols unless those are men, since admitting to inspiration must necessarily mean that you're it and have nothing more to offer the world.

But no, really, it's all fine, we're so post-feminist it hurts.

Piosenka na skok w nowy rok / A Song for the Leap into the New Year

Listen: [Kult, "Nowe tempa"]

My sentiment exactly: I wish us all that our times slow down and catch breath.

Costume-y!

A wonderful relief from authoritarian stylists -- costume-y delight enveloped in intriguing sounds.

(I wish I could be as pithy in the book review I'm working on.)

Hey, "Kto tam? Kto jest w środku?"

Counting down to the release of the new album. It's unbelievable: Hey has never failed me. It's probably the only band I've been (more or less) faithfully listening to since the early 1990s. (End of schoolgirl confession.)

Stuck Writing

One more term paper to go, not to mention the exam I'm preparing. Online, I spend the majority of my time on google books and library pages. Awful overdose. Meanwhile, the weather outside reminds me of this song:

For May Dreaminess

Reasons to Write a Song About How You Don't Like Fridays

Manifold:

An hour's drive from here, in Binghamton, gunmen have captured the immigration services building and killed several people. I'm following the news. I have a storm in my head. There's a storm outside. It's raining heavily. I put on another pot of coffee, inevitably thinking that someone had gone to the immigration services earlier today, thinking they'd go back home after getting their business done and they might have been thinking about making more coffee.

Trivialities don't stop. Around noon I get an email from friends about a Neko Case concert later this month. It's pleasantly surprising that sometimes such things happen in this small town. Terrifying that such things are happening in this area as well. The planet keeps turning. News coverage shows that it's also raining in Binghamton. We make lunch. There are probably many people grocery shopping in Binghamton at the same moment. One thinks that grief should stop the world for at least one minute of silence but that is never true. Irony. Coincidence.

I decide I won't go to the concert. Clicking between news articles and youtube, I find this video, am amazed by the beautiful animation (not so much by the music), sad



and still sad, I click over to the news.

(The post title alludes to "I Don't Like Mondays" by the Boomtown Rats, that story, and all shootings, no matter who's behind them and whatever reasons they *pretend* they have. There never are any reasons.)

Documenting Another Attempt to Wake Up and Stop Daydreaming

and get to work.

Somehow, that's not really happening...



As Mr. G. says, well, it's really July and we're in a meadow. Lazy.
(That last detail is true for this Monday morning in February.)

Cogwheel Dogs

It could be that the world is going to the dogs. But if those dogs were made of cogwheels, the expression would be decidedly optimistic. It’s great to hear that there are still young bands who care enough to write to people about what they do and who they are. And who record in an attic. It’s obviously not the most convenient and luxurious way to work but for someone like me it flips the imagination switch. Attic, garage, and cellar are where the great musical stories begin and, really, there could not be too many songs eulogizing those places. At some point I stopped going to concerts because it seemed like no one snuck out to their attics, garages, and cellars to do music anymore. Part of the problem was my own skepticism, part of it was that truly the numbers of idealistic and hard-working beginner bands decreased sharply. That’s the wrong kind of dogs. It takes some openness and, I think, some atti(c)tude that is largely missing today to do these personal mud-stained things. That’s the right kind of dogs.
I tend to like music that is somewhat ascetic but based on a concept that unfolds in time. There must be a story behind it that can’t be written down so that music indeed is the one medium through which it can come. Hence perhaps my inability to do justice in writing to sounds.

I most definitely lack talent to give you a verbal taste of what to expect when you click over here. I’m impressed by Rebecca’s blog, the band’s website–I’m a sucker for visual wit, I’m afraid. As for the sounds: I like where these songs are going. They are going places and can take you there, which is what songs, essentially, should do. That’s a great beginning and I’d love to see where the songs go from here. I hope there’s a song about the attic somewhere along the way…


[Written and originally posted elsewhere on July 5, 2008]