ShortWaveRockin

Luddite? Shit no! Not anymore.

This is what its front of me———> it’s called an iMac

…and it’s scaring the shit out of me.  It’s so damn big.  Why is everything so easy to use?  And that’s not even the large looming question.  Here it is: why did it take so long?   I guess I can say money, but I should have just robbed and shot someone for theirs.  Peter’s got a nice little white macbook about 10 feet from me.  He’d have been an easy target.

Enough of that.

I’ve got one and I’m learning.  And it’s harder than you think.  Where’s my Start Menu?  I’m finding it hard to do simple things like listen to music or use common shortcuts.  What the fuck is this command key?  Command C, Command V???  I like it, but it’s one inch to the left of the control.  HUGE PROBLEM!  I’ve been on PCs since I was 7.  Since the first Gateway Family Home PC that filled up half our living room, and that was just the monitor.  We had the tower in the kitchen, we ate breakfast off it, all 5 of us.  I made a treefort out of the black and white cow box and it lasted 3 years!  Computers have really come a long way, and I’ve been ridin along with PCs the whole time.  It took practice, but I got to be damn good at PCs.  I knew the ins and outs.  I knew how to configure it for Internet, because I believe PCs weren’t made for internet until 2004, even though we had Prodigy in 1994.  Look at me.  I’m talking about PCs in the past tense.  Well, I guess now I’m part of this gestapo now.  I think I have to start wearing a scarf and listening to the Arcade Fire.  One step at a time.

First step is cancelling my brand new subscription to Rhapsody.  Shit.  Apparently you can’t have a mac and be part of that.

Back to the transition.  What does this have to do with music?  I’ll tell you.

This whole switch I’m making from PCs to apple is a lot like those bands that you know exist and you know are probably pretty damn good, but you don’t listen to them.  You refuse, and it takes work, deliberately avoiding contact with this “evil” you have created.  This has happened a few times to me.  Radiohead was my first.  I didn’t want any part of that laptopfakebullshit mmmcha music, then I heard in OK computer, 10 years after it came out!  The Grateful Dead are one for me.  I remember having a Grateful Dead shirt in the 5th grade to impress a girl, but I had never heard one song.  It never happened with the girl, so I always had a distaste for them, without ever listening.  My first full album was American Beauty only about 3 or 4 years ago and I listened to it all that week, 12 hours a day.

My point is go fuck yourself.  I really have no point.  I think I have changed over the years, but I still refuse bands over petty things like how they look, how their singles sound and who I know that listens to them and tells me about them.  There isn’t time to listen to them all, but sometimes you gotta give it a chance.  I wonder: How much else am I missing out on because I’m too much of a bastard to give in and try it?  Eh, its probably just cocaine and Wilco.

So merry Christmas and happy holidays to all. It has been an exciting few days, no? Those of you who have had family functions to go to over the last few days know what I am talking about. The holidays bring out the best in people, it is true, but for every moment that people are the best that they can be, there is a moment of equal time where they are the worst that they can be. So yes, the holidays are fun times but they can also be trying and aggravating times, I know. It’s to be expected though, we all lose our heads around the holidays because we expect people to be as understanding and nice as we are trying to be and if that good cheer and jolliness is not reciprocated then you bet your ass some ones head will be rolling across the floor. But enough! Because there is always music to bring the mood to a new level, however low or high that may be based on your current standing. In my last post I wrote about how I had stopped listening to music and how weird it had been. I am happy to say that is over and I have begun listening to music again, not a lot of it and I have been taking frequent breaks in between, but hey it’s a start. Baby steps to get myself back into it. I was driving with my dad over to my uncle’s house to help him set up for Christmas eve when my dad said the magical words "If it’s the week between Christmas and New Years that means it’s the Bach Fest" and immediately tuned the radio to 89.9. I’m not very big into classical music, I do enjoy a lot of newer minimalist and avant garde classical, but listening to Bach is always an experience. It was like a cleansing, thrown into the middle of a Glenn Gould performance with no where to go and nothing to do except accept it and let it over take, fully emerge myself into the sounds of wonder that were coming out of the radio. I’m not going to pretend like I had heard the performance before or even know what it was I was listening to. If asked to tell you what it sounded like I could only express to you what I felt at the time and if you played it for me I probably wouldn’t be able to recognize the piece again. It didn’t matter, all I knew what that I needed to go home and put on Daniel Johnston’s Chord Organ Blues, that was the next song I needed to listen to, the next noise and sound that had to ring through my head. When the car stopped I jumped out and swiftly made my way to my room and proceeded. The song wasn’t hard to find and nothing happened when I listened to it, but it was just what I needed, my next step in my musical cleansing to let my head roam free from my norm and allow all of the brilliant music I have just sitting in my room. Sometimes I become so caught up in finding everything that I lose sense and forget to listen, and what’s more important than that? Since then I’ve been listening exclusively to Hi How Are You (oddly enough not Yip Jump Music) and I ordered one of the Jeremiah the Innocent statues that are being sold now. The green statue is still available online at toytokyo.com. The web site address was mistyped on the official Daniel Johnston site (visit @ www.hihowareyou.com because if you have the time to read my posts then you have the time for Daniel!), and the green statue is sold out on the official store but there is still hope for us now! Or course there is no signed box when you order from toytokyo, but hopefully that can be remedied at the Outsider Art Fair (January 9th – 11th).

Well it’s been almost three months, only a hand full of concerts and not a single post to talk about it. Well I AM SORRY! Adam is way better at keeping up than I am, but if you read my latest post on the bedroom I am going to try and get my shit together to post constantly. It’s the idea of writing that I like more than anything, I need to work on constantly writing. I find myself falling into slups, and these slumps are very very comfortable; they include such things as cable TV, xbox and demonoid. But at the end of the day I could very easily incorporate writing every day and still do all the things that I found while swimming around in my post millenium white bread suburbia slump that I find myself in. It’s also known as being lazy and selfish, but hey I’ve got a now job that is killing me with hours, so I can’t hide behind laziness anymore.

Anyway, there’s a whole other post about where I’ve been, where I am now? I’m at work, typing away on my laptop that I’ve brought in specially so that I can continue to work on writing whilst working on working. So here I sit, watching my back wodnering if my boss will happen to sneak up on me and surprise me, only for him to find his hardworking employee riding the wave and letting everyone know he’s still alive.

And not listening to music.

For those of you who know me and see me around I am usually seen with my headphones on, whether I’m walking down the block, sitting at my desk at work, on the train, sleeping, reading, writing, breathing, during every moment of my life I like to have my own personal soundtrack to keep me going, but recently I’ve found myself taking the headphones off and just walking around. I don’t know what happened. It’s been a recent development. Saturday, actually, I was headed over to Adam’s place to listen to Sing No Evil by Half Japanese for a proposal he is writing. I’ll let him tell you more about that whenever he likes, but on the way there I had a killer headache. It had been brewing from a few hours prior and it was one of those that gets behind your eyes and the only thing that can make you feel better is closing them. I jump in my car and just start driving. I am trying to manage driving by resting one eye while the other is attent, and then switching. Sometimes this doesn’t work either and I just need the few seconds of relief, those are the sacry bits, elongaed blinks. I arrive at Adam’s not listening to music, I hadn’t even taken my music player out of my pocket yet.

Now to be fair I don’t always have my headphones on but I do like to be constantly listening to music, so this has been quite a departure for me. It was the idea of having to put the earphones into my ears and then be overtaken with the sounds that I just couldn’t do, Usually when I have one of these headaches, they are cronic headaches, I try to power through it, close my eyes put somethign soft on to listen to and just keep going about my business but on saturday I just couldn’t do it. That wasn’t going to stop me from listening to Half Japanese with Adam though, so as I arrive we hang out for a few while he finishs up dinner with Evelyn with Home Alone on the TV and I just sit down on the couch and don’t vibrate casting the headache into a dormant state, still there but not enough for it to really aggrivate me. Then Adam puts on Sing No Evil. Headache immediatly cured. Honestly. The pure noise of the album was just so cathartic, there was so much to listen to and so much to just enjoy. There isn’t a dull second from beginning to finish on the album and there was no way that a headache could even be found within walls of a Half Japanese listening party. I’m sure someone would debate me on that, but START YOUR OWN BLOG FOR THAT! Just kidding. Well…you can start one if you want, it would be awesome.

Since then I haven’t listened to music at all. No headphones, no computer speakers, no sound system. I guess you can count comercial jingles as music, and I’ve listened to Halfway Home by TV on the Radio a bunch of times, but just that one song. I haven’t had another headache or anything to stop me from listening it has just been a conscience decision on my part. I don’t know what I’m hoping to accomplish from this but I don’t think I have to accomplish anything. I just haven’t been in the mood for anything since Sing No Evil, except for maybe some more Jad.

I’ve been on the trian every day since which is usually my big listening time but I’ve settled on the sounds of the train and the people around me for enjoyment. I don’t know how enjoyable it has been since I was threatened by a bum for putting on my red hat on the 5 train at 14th street. He keept cursing at me and screaming at me. Then three guys beat the shit out of him. It was nuts. What were we talking about? Oh yeah, get your own damn ice cream!!!!

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I’ve spent the last 2 weeks catching up with all the releases of this past year. The plan was to write a one sentence album review for all the albums I listened to. I did some of them. They aren’t good. I like to ramble too much for the art of simplicity. As I compiled my list, I started to put them in 2 categories: albums that will survive in my life in 2009 and albums that are dead (I do believe in zombies, remember). The list was lopsided. Of the albums I took seriously- it was 4 alive, 25 dead and one dead unborn baby in limbo.

The living:

-Jay Reatard’s Matador singles collection

-BORIS- SMiLE

-King Khan and the Shrines- the Supreme Genius of King Khan and the Shrines (a greatest hits, are you kidding, adam!?)

-Witch- Paralyzed

The dead:

Alejandro Escovedo, Breeders, Duke Spirit, Frank Black, Eagles of Death Metal, Black Keys, REM, Mudhoney, Dillinger Four, TV on the Radio, Neil Young, Deerhunter, Islands, Pink, Vampire Weekend, Mariah Carey and so many more….

Purgatory:

The Vivian Girls

And the shows were great. I saw a lot of awesome shows this year. Monotonix, King Khan & BBQ, King Khan and the Shrines, the Black Lips, Vaselines, BORIS, Radiohead, and Daniel Johnston!!! I’ve got nothing much else to say, except that 2009 looks good. (They always look good from December) My basis for this prediction is what I am about to proclaim as the best single of 2008: “Psychopathy Red” by Slayer. In my search I realized this is the best release of 2008 and its a leak not due on an album til next summer. 2 minutes 31 seconds and its better than any album I listened to this year. (Half Japanese live at SXSW was great, too- though just a bootleg- 2nd place!).

Here’s the link:

THE BEST RELEASE OF 2008: “Psychopathy Red”