Slovenia

Thanks Miha.

el teatro de sueños

jungle love

As much as I should post another Time video, I'm going to instead pass on some information that was no-looked off the elbow my way (oh White Chocolate, I miss your thunderous passes, rendering the finish an exercise in futility, if only you could have played with Shaq in 1996 instead of 2006).

Via the only guest poster ever, Pedro Astacio (not Pedro Martinez, rest assured), a bunch of established veteran MCs go to work over hijacked/sampled/straightjacketed Sufjan Steven's tracks.

Here it is:


hokay, download here: gimme the biz baby.

Possible Tracklist for "Tocayo/a: Whatever your name is"

-Hey Zeus!
-Creed Stone
-Este Hombre
-Fumado
-Gunga
-Run DMT
-Dumb Fun
-Old Spinster's Tale
-Breakfast in Deathbed
-He's Just a Bird
-Flying
-Free Hugs For Free People

Am I the only one gorging at the 2ND Free Crack Giveaway over at Taka's blog? I thought all white people loved Taka(note, perhaps untrue).

Dunking the basketball on a 7 foot rim, just because you can is acceptable only while playing pickup soccer on the same "court".

BLOWWWWWWWWWW

Dr. Bepper

Cool article on Deadspin

Gunga Gunga Gow

Big NEWS!

Strawberry Banana just got a sick redesign, check it out post-haste!

Old Drink

My fingers are sore from playing a steel string guitar for many hours yesterday; fuck flamenco guitars. I was fucking around with an open D tuning (DADF#AD) with a clipper lighter as a slide in between trying my best to sound impressive to the strangers and companions in the carmona complex.

I'm gonna re-plug this band, The Mean, because their music is excellent and deserves multiple listens (finally, someone will give you your money's worth).

While we're at it, why not one more album before I head off to work?

I was introduced to Gil-Scott Heron through secondary/tertiary sources; an obscure hip-hop reference, allmusic.com cross-cultural comparisons, or maybe it was my older brother Max who laid the seeds of appreciation for a true activist/musician.

Anyways, I don't have TV here in Spain, and my excessive internet usage could be categorized as addictive or compulsive, but viva la revolución!



GSH-TRWNBT

Stuff and Things

Hello world. A chance encounter in Sevilla with a Senegalese folk musician named Malik was incredibly rewarding.

There may or may not have been a man screaming/singing sevillanas in the middle of the night outside my window.

I'm up remarkably early, although I got some new chamomile delivered from granada, that is quite delicious.

So, here's the first post of the day, perhaps more to come if I don't turn in to a lazy bones.



P-SE

hey sluggo

big shoutout to one Raymond Daniel O'Brien III, who put me on to this. What a grand opportunity to maneuever within the simulacrum of power that Colbert has created for the organized, slacker youths of today.

Fucking Cool

There's no use in having pretensions these days, especially concerning places that are judged on the basis of their own perceived closed-off manners. Mooney was the first person to explain bridge and tunnel syndrome to me, well, second-hand, but that's good enough for this mannish boy. Friend of music and related things, Marisa Beltramini put me on to a very interesting music label/story of interest, that you can read here.

Oberlin alums are scattered throughout King's County, and methinks this says a lot about how I won't be able to afford an apartment anywhere but salisbury, Maryland upon my return to the old glory herself.

If Burger King sponsored a Ben Kweller concert in Brooklyn, my head might explode.

Staring At The Sea

You can scan through your brain, past the short-term memories; what you ate most recently, the source of the intermittent high-pitched noises on a local pedestrian street, the number of times you stared at that same photo (for the record, 17) longing for someone while you're supposed to be doing something else. You can get caught up in a melody or a rhythm and lose all track of time, and then as soon as you think you're getting somewhere you look around and forget everything that's just happened. The simulacrum of the internet promises nothing more than what it is, a pooling of information, while you might spy a baroque soliloquy on plateauing you could also click on the links within that article and tune out.

I recently read Tom Wolfe's "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" for the first time recently; I think I understand why it's so goddamn highly recommended by everyone, and my mom; Wolfe was never on the bus, but he understood what it meant, and that it couldn't be expressed with words, that's some shit. There is a critical moment when Kesey and co. go to Berkeley, California for a serious anti-war rally/march in to Oakland. His takeaway message for the bright-eyed left-leaning youths of yesteryear? "Fuck it." Couldn't agree more, at some point we have got to all say, "fuck it", if we're ever going to get out of this crisis mode bullshit.

As far as I can tell, repackaging is the crux of America's ascendancy and probably it's rebirth in this time of tumult.

Fill My Heart

So, why stop a good thing?

I rambled yesterday about the merits of dropping one's pretensions about the perceived coolness of music, and in that vein, attempting to embrace the randomness/emptiness of discovery.

With that in mind, why not listen to some Bob Zimmerman?

John Wesley Harding was the last album Bob Dylan released before breaking his neck in a motorcycle accident that for some reason revealed the beauty of christian grace from the bleakness of his hospital bed. BOORING, but at least this is a good listen.

I just finally noticed how many songs are described in his early catalogs as dreams, fucking cool.



BD-JWH

A slight sigh of blessed relief

Hooray David Brooks.

Thrillseekers

If we all knew about all the same bands at exactly the same time, and we could all vibe on it, then there would be no need for the elitism that lays to waste so many potentially beautiful minds. That said, most people have terrible taste in music, and that is totally acceptable (most people believe that most other people have terrible taste in music).

I was particularly late on the Wilco bandwagon; I was watching THE Ohio State play for the national championship against UMiami (FL) and kicker Mike Nugent's favorite band was none other than the above mentioned. I had known of them for some time, but "A Ghost is Born" was the first album I ever actually acquired and listened to multiple times. Freshman year hallmate Marisa Beltramini was a big fan of "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot", but I only knew that from my clandestine mental photo-cataloging of her CD collection; it was sandwiched between Sufjan Steven's "Come On Feel the Illinoise" and Ben Folds Live.

So, 2007 marked the release of Sky Blue Sky, which, fittingly, I listened to for the first time today. It's pretty fucking good. I was doing dishes and lying on the couch at various points while taking it in, thinking of a lover far away; it's real good for that.





W-SBS

Four Course Meal

Awesome. The bestie bounces yet again, so now I have to keep whittling down the list of eligible euros to hang out with. Basically it's a slow road to hope, but, lord willing, I won't go insane with the slowness of Huelva (aka nuclear contamination land, seriously they just completed a serious investigative report on this toxic dump) in a non-productive manner.

I met a guy named Deshawn who listens to good music; it was the perfect antidote to Spanish pop. The shit he's in to sometimes reminds me of Make Believe, a band that Joel Handley put me on to some time ago.

The brothers Kinsella and their kinfolk/bandmates thrash with elegance, I don't know how else to put it. Their second LP, "Of Course" shows them maturing (they somewhat recently released a new LP entitled "Going To the Bone Church" which I HIGHLY recommend).



MB-OC

Kids Don't Know Shit

After a lovely weekend of traveling around southeastern Iberia with Red, friend, Rosa and co., I'm back grinding the axe of the death pit of despair we call Huelva. It's not that I have any odious thoughts so much as I am a tad disorganized, or at least perceive myself to be extremely far away from where I could be at; this type of thinking usually results in an extremely satisfactory nap.

This looks interesting, if you're in to that kind of stuff.

NYT Op-eds have a tendency of scaring the bejesus out of me, especially when coupled with the baroque e-mails I'm getting from working adults (READ: not recent college grads) about the gravity of the situation back home, that said, everybody is kind of full of it, so at some point you gotta say fuck it.



I have just discovered; some girls are bigger than others.

Uploads will continue now that there is interwebbing; the one euro tariff per session isn't so bad I suppose.

Princeton Heads Continue Making Moves

Hokay, I just creamed my jeans. This is the best new band I've heard in a long time.

All youse guys on faceboo might be interested in giving these dudes some well deserved love, here.

credit this to the OFFICIAL Nick Koenig facebook page, as well as some humble hype from keyboardist\vocalist martin raboteau.

The Hardest Thing ever I done

I have a theory that Tennessee Williams would probably like Bill Simmons; at least he might consider him a fellow writer. That said, T-Dubs would probably be appalled at the hyperbolic amount of analogies Simmons uses in comparing sports teams to marriages.

So, I know I said I wouldn't be posting any albums or writing this weekend, I was supposed to be on the road to partly sunny Lisbon, but plans change; Red's feeling under the weather and her 2 week paid vacation to Prague requires her full health. At least, if she wants to have a better time than Maurice in Albert Camus' "A Happy Death".

So, I want to talk more about Nick Koenig; who doesn't? Besides being my number one influence musically, Hot Sugar has always had the balls/confidence to understand that making beautiful/interesting/funny things will not captivate the minds of all who come across your creative work. It's good to start in 8th grade, because his star began its rapid ascent thanks to several pranks which will forever live in my head.

A group of 9th graders had started a mountain bike gang, just writing those words leads me to believe that I am a two bit hack (but you gotta fake it till you make it), that also occasionally sang unaccompanied renditions of RHCP tunes (namely, under the bridge); they all wore Hoagie Haven T-Shirts and talked shop on shocks, disc brakes and the like. Us outsiders, namely the chubby cum insecure underlings, were in awe of their brazen confidence and zen materialism. We all wanted fancy bikes too; we didn't care about the process back then, like a child in the CVS who sees the candy isle, and by that logic, in my case, didn't get the coolest bike in the world (in hindsight, I'm so fucking grateful that my dad bought me a bike, since our mini-mansion in the woods was a stones throw from some really lovely hills). I had befriended Koenig, so to speak, at a little league game at the tender age of 11; I was kind of a motherfucker on the diamond, to the extent that I was a big baby who could waddle around the bases with a cocky gracelessness. He was talking shit, and despite at first finding him unsavory, came to enjoy that someone without even a minimal knowledge of the admittedly complex rules of the game could heckle anything/anyone that he felt like.

It is also worth noting that DMX was HUGE amongst suburban boys and girls at this point; and that I paid out the ass for Capital Punishment and It's Dark and Hell is Hot second hand, thanks Zac Anglin.

One sunny spring morning, while the masses are gathered out on the northeastern entrance of John Witherspoon Middle School, the one that leads to the parking lot/cafeteria/basketball courts, a faint signal grew stronger and stronger. As, we all stood and waited, it became abundantly clear that it was "Party (up in here)". Slowly, but surely, Koenig arrives, flanked by two now anonymous counterparts blasting the music out of a shitty CD/Radio player that he has fastened to his handlebars. Noone could deny him, and rightly nobody did; I made some snide remarks, but the truth is that he had won everybody over with his winning confidence/remarkable lack of awkwardness.

Basically, pay this motherfucker.

Oh, and he put me on to this triumphant work of guitar great Ryland Cooder. Enjoy.



RC-BS

quick comment

I hope the music uploaded this week will tide you over for the weekend (which in my case is friday-sunday). I'll be running around the western coast of Iberia with Red & co.

If not, then oh well, but either way don't feel disappointed that I am lazy and selfish.

Inevitability

One of the links on the right side of the blog will no longer be providing new posts. Yes, that's right Katharine Mooney has hung up her golden gloves of caffeine induced web log posting to pursue a career in fine dining/writing/living away from the unhealthy glow of a macbook screen. So, what's a guy to do? I suppose you could skim the archives. Or, you could do the only thing that seems to make sense on a cold, blustery March afternoon and put up a special post to serve as the death knell to an occasionally fantastic read.

So, it's only right to offer some context first; Mooney often spoke highly of The Band, mistakenly referring to them as a quartet, but an aficionada nonetheless. Enough so to change the name of her blog's final incarnation to "Moondog Matinee"; late in the game, The Hawks released an album with the same name. For those in the know, The Band were a quintet composed of Levon Helm on drums/mandolin/vocals/guitar, Richard Manuel on Piano/Vocals/Drums/chugging Gran Marnier (wikipedia says around 6 bottles a day before cirrhosis won out), Rick Danko on bass/vocals/fiddle, J.R. "Robbie" Robertson on guitar/vocals (it's worth noting that the only song he sang lead on in their entire studio discography is "Till Kingdom Come" (obligatory pontification of the relation to Jay-Z/Coldplay and this song begins and ends NOW!) and Garth Hudson on Organ/Saxophone/Accordion/Piano (he plays that signature line on "The Weight"). Some serious fans consider producer/tuba player John Simon the "6th" member of the group; you can't deny his playing on "Rag Mama Rag" among other standout tracks. I forgot to mention that every single member took a turn on playing various auxiliary horns among other things, leading to a distinct sound (the breakdown in "Chest Fever" springs to mind most immediately).

In honor of the passing of a blog, and the broke as a joke nature of basically everyone I know (save the rich jews, I'm not kidding), I'm doing double time in posting a second album today. Also, I think Mooney eye fucked my older brother at commencement.

It's also worth noting that this album is composed entirely of cover songs; an odd juxtaposition to a group that produced some of the best original music of their time.



TB-MM

Vincent Gallo approved

RJD2 seems pretty universally adored by those who are fans of various genres of music; hip-hop heads call him one of their own, progressive rock fans are likewise enamored with how he wears his influences on his sleeve, college students who aren't too hip still come out in droves to angrily demand a return to the turntables (hello Cleveland!) and aspiring producers who utilize samples can do themselves a big favor by seeing the thin line between Moby and the guy who made Deadringer.

One group that the dude really seems to lean on as an influence is King Crimson. One of the more well known, and, furthermore, respected names in the progressive rock game. More on these fellows in a moment; until then, let's watch this clip.



As a quick tangential statement; the ploy by youtube/big music companies to end the embedding of music videos that contain copyrighted material is alright with me, in fact it is only fair.

Anyways, King Crimson get love from both sides of the rock pond fanbase; yeah their flights of fancy are indulgent and a tad ridiculous, but at the core of everything they rocked and grooved (something that few bands can do with taste).



I don't even want to write anymore about this fucking shit, I just think that one might have time to listen, if they have time to browse my incoherent ramblings.

KC-ITCOKC