Deep in the Jungle of Thought There is a Clearing: 6/15 show

Notes and comments:

I first heard the Tom Tom Club in the Talking Heads movie, Stop Making Sense, when David Byrne took a break and the rest of the band played "Genius of Love." Tina Weymouth had been in the background, playing bass, and she stepped forward to lead the band; I remember the transformation. My sister bought the album and we listened to it a lot on a trip to Montreal. A year later, she left for college in Montreal and left the tape behind, and I listened to it a lot. Even though the songs on the album have so many varied associations, I still think of Montreal when I hear them. We drove up Mont Royal one evening and looked over the lights of the city; that album was the soundtrack.

But the song "Lorelei" means other things to me, too. I didn't ever analyze the lyrics too deeply, but what it always made me think is the inner life of the mind, and the idea that you could meditate and discover this place inside of you. The metaphor of the "jungle of thought" (today's blog post title comes from the lyrics to this song) resonates with me in part because I have always loved forests. A a child in the woods up in northern Michigan or at Caratunk Wildlife Refuge in Seekonk, Mass, I spent a good deal of time wandering through the woods and finding those clearings, as well as creeks and boulders and vivid mushrooms and whatever else the woods might hold.

That's a lot of associations for one song, I suppose. But this is what music is — not all of it, but the best songs stay with us our whole lives and remind us not just of people and places, but also of ourselves: who we are, who we used to be, and who we want to be. I've had this idea of creating a mix CD of the soundtrack of my life, but I don't think there's anything really served by cataloging and collecting these songs in one place; I think I prefer to happen upon them here and there, and realize while I'm listening, "this is one of those songs."

And now, the playlist:

*: new stuff
(r): requests

Artist	Song	Album	Label
Tom Tom Club	Lorelei	Tom Tom Club	Sire
Rufus Wainwright	Do I Disappoint You?	Release the Stars	Geffen
*Chow Nasty	Hot Sticky Nikki	Super Electrical Recordings	Omeg
*Von Südenfed	Dearest Friends	Tromatic Reflexxions
Mustangs	The Time for Loving is Now	Cult Cargo: Grand Bahama Goombay	Numero Group
Haale	Morgue Sahar	Morning	Darya Records
Feist	Inside and Out	Let It Die	Polydor
Alice Smith	Love Endeavor	For Lovers, Dreamer, and Me	BBE
*Lavender Diamond	Oh No	Imagine Our Love	Matador
*Oh My God	But That's Just Me (Song for the Holidays)	Fools Want Noise	Split Red
The Cryan Shames	The Painter	Synthesis	Sundazed
*Gogol Bordello	Super Theory of Everything	Super Taranta!	Side One Dummy
X-Ray Spex	Oh Bondage Up Yours	Germ-Free Adolescents	Caroline
Nina Hagen	Smack Jack	14 Friendly Abductions: the Best of Nina Hagen	Columbia
*Battles	DDiamondD	Mirrored	WARP
*Bumps	Baby Johan	Bumps	Stone's Throw
Mavis Staples	99 and ½	We'll Never Turn Back	Anti-
(r)Boss Hog	I Idolize You	Boss Hog	Geffen
Edith Piaf	Milord	The Voice of the Sparrow: the Very Best of Edith Piaf	Capitol
*Montag	Mechanical Kids	Going Places	Carpark
Troubled Hubble	I Love My Canoe	Sun Beamed Off	Magic Spot
Romeo Void	Flashflood	Warm, in Your Coat	Columbia/Legacy
The Juan MacLean	Tito's Way	Less than Human	DFA/ Astralwerks
*Dommm	Hidden Sun	Yoloxochitl	Young Cubs
*Savath and Savalas	Faltamos Palabras	Golden Pollen	Anti-
*Miracle Fortress	Maybe Lately	Five Roses	Secret City
Fujiya and Miyagi	Photocopier	Transparent Things	Deaf Dumb + Blind Communications
Blondie	11:59	Parallel Lines	Chrysalis
The B-52's	Dance This Mess Around	The B-52's	Warner Brothers
Tinariwen	Awa Didjen	Aman Iman: Water is Life	World Village
*Pelican	Lost in the Headlights	City of Echoes	Hydra Head
Kronos Quartet and Mogwai (Clint Mansell, Composer)	Tree of Life	The Fountain	Nonesuch
Zerostars	Like the Daylights	2nd album preview	www.zerostars.com
*Meg Baird	River Song	Dear Companion	Drag City
Lena Horne	The Lady is a Tramp	Some of the Best	Laserlight
The Gossip	Standing in the Way of Control	Standing in the Way of Control	Kill Rock Stars
*Apparat	Hailin from the Edge	Walls	Shitkapult
Sage Francis	Slow Down Gandhi	A Healthy Distrust	Epitaph
(r)Prefuse73 featuring Sam Prekop	Last Light	Vocal Studies and Uprock Narratives	WARP
*Fridge	Comets	The Sun	Temporary Residence

Labels: journal, music, personal, playlists

posted by Tony at 12:02 PM | 0 comments

Strange sights

You see everything in the city. And maybe in the country too.

I am often amazed at the shear variety of human morphology.

Anyway, go read Hitched.

Labels: comic

posted by Tony at 11:59 PM | 0 comments

News Flash: Flood -or- News: Flash Flood

I was sooo on track this week. As of last night my Finn and Charlie comic was written and drawn and merely needed inking, scanning, and touching up. As of right now, nothing's changed.

Why?

RAIN. Frankly, it wasn't that bad (and it hardly rained in Skokie, where I work). However, it was enough to get maybe an inch of water over half the basement. The problem is, our basement is (was) once again covered in boxes (the previous stach of boxes having been thrown out during the last flood), and the flooding reached the carpet where it spread via the magic of capillary action. Really, it wasn't that much water. It was just enough to be annoying, and more to the point, to cancel our plans for the evening. (My plans were just the cartoon, plus I'm pretty sure we had something fancy in mind for dinner. We ordered in Thai food instead.)

(The flood did not reach the corner of the basement by the stairs, where we have just set up a new home for our cats. Somebody has taken to pooping willy-nilly around the house, and we can't have that, so it's basement living for them now. Actually, it's enormously sad. In any event, the trauma of their first day in the basement was not augmented by wet paws. It's entirely likely they didn't even know what was happening when it happened.)

Eric was exhausted when he came home, because he had to deal with flooding at the studio, too. It was much worse there. (The studio, I've recently learned, is in a part of our neighborhood that used to be a small lake, so probably there are some drainage issues.) Eric tells me that water was fairly boiling out of the drains at Lillstreet. It was much worse than here.

Still, we had to dispose of all the wet boxes (a blessing in disguise) and wet-vac the floor (and thank god we have one, even if it doesn't work real well). The boxes of books are sitting on a pallet, so there was very little real damage. The cleaning was a couple hours' work for two people. Two people who are now tired and gross-feeling.

So, while I could stay up late in ink and scan Finn and Charlie for you all, I confess I'm just not going to. I plan to shower and pass out.

Labels: journal, personal

posted by Tony at 11:13 PM | 0 comments

At a certain age...

This week's Finn and Charlie...

Labels: comic

posted by Tony at 12:13 AM | 1 comments

Your former glories and all the stories: 6/15 show

This was my pledge drive show, so I tried to play a lot of my favorite songs, and songs and artists I discovered (or learned more about) on WLUW.

I still don't know much about the Nazz (Todd Rundgren's second band), but the song "Open My Eyes" is excellent. In high school, WBRU had a weekly late-night show called "Headphones Only", which featured songs that sounded great on headphones, and generally pushed the envolope more than their typical playlist. It was through this show that I discovered two of my favorite artists, Kate Bush and Laurie Anderson. From time to time I'd tape-record the show as I drifted off to sleep listening to it, so I could listen more carefully later. I only had one 120-minute tape (60 minutes per side, enough for a whole show), and as a result now I still have two old shows recorded. Slowly I've figured out what a lot of the songs are (the DJ was not conscientious about IDing every song), and some day I hope to reconstruct these tapes in digital form. "Open My Eyes" was one of those songs.

Belle & Sebastian is a group Eric and I pretty much entirely discovered on WLUW (though certainly we heard mention of them elsewhere, and my friend Sarah J put one of their songs on a mix for us). Like the Smiths, their early albums feature songs that sound nearly identical to each other; I believe the album Dear Catastrophe Waitress is the first full-length album featuring a notably wider variety of style. The title track is a cute song about a waitress who messes everything up.

Sufjan Stevens is one of my favorite artists. I was referred to him by a webcomic I read (I don't recall which, but it was probably Jeffrey Rowland, John Allison, or R Stevens, all of whom mention music from time to time). Initially I downloaded a handful of outtakes from Sufjan Stevens' web site, and fell in love with them. The only place I've heard his music played outside the internet is on WLUW, though he's getting pretty big, and probably if I listened to other stations, I'd hear him there as well. But at WLUW we love him.

Papas Fritas broke up after their most successful album. That happens. Of course, the female singer was in grad school studying something like Social Services, so one might guess that being in a band was not her first priority. "Way You Walk" is one of those songs I hear on my iPod and then play again as soon as it's done. It's a near-perfect song. It was also featured in a Dockers commercial. (Good for them, I say! It got them some attention and some nice cash; for an indie musician, cash means freedom. Fortunately the song did not turn into — at least not for me — "that song from the pants commercial.")

*: new stuff
(r): requests

Artist	Song	Album	Label
Siouxsie and the Banshees	Cities in Dust	Best of	Polydor UK
David Byrne	Glas, Concrete, and Stone	Grown Backwards	Nonesuch
*The Veils	Advice for Mothers to Be	Nux Vomica	Rough Trade
*The Long Blondes	Giddy Stratospheres	Someone to Drive You Home	Rough Trade
The Smiths	Still Ill	The Smiths	Rough Trade
Flosstradamus	Egyptian Love	Myspace Tracks
*Wilco	Walken	Sky Blue Sky	Nonesuch
Neko Case	Soulful Shade of Blue	The Tigers Have Spoken	Anti-
*Jana Hunter	Palms	There's No Home	Gnomonsong
Seu Jorge	Tive Razão: Voltaire Mix	Cru	Wrasse Records
Cesaria Evora	Angola: Bateau Ivre rework by Pepe Bradock	Club Sodade	Bluebird
The Aerovons	Everything's Alright	Resurrection	RPM
*The Jai-Alai Savant	Sugar Free	Flight of the Bass Delegate	Gold Standard Laboratories
Belle and Sebastian	Dear Catastrophe Waitress	Dear Catastrophe Waitress	Rough Trade
Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti	Good Kids Make Bad Grownups	The Doldrums	Paw Tracks
The B-52's	Give Me Back My Man	Nude on the Beach: Anthology	Rhino
*Electrelane	To the East	No Shouts, No Calls	Too Pure
Nina Simone	Black Is the Color of My True Love's Hair	Anthology	BMG
Kate Bush	Saxophone Song	The Kick Inside	EMI
*The Effigies	Scarecrow	Reside	Criminal IQ
Martha Carson	Now Stop	Get Hot or Go Home: Vintage RCA Rockabilly '56-'59	Country Music Foundation
eX-Girl	Venus vs. Gas Onna	Endangered Species	Alternative Tentacles
*Her Space Holiday	I Luv the Valley OH!	Xiu Xiu: Covered and Remixed
Sufjan Stevens	All Good Naysayers Speak Up or Forever Hold Your Peace	Michigan	Asthmatic Kitty
Beulah	A good Man is Hard to Kill	The Coast is Never Clear	Velocette
The Nazz	Open My Eyes	Open Our Eyes: The Nazz Anthology	Sanctuary Records
*Lavender Diamond	Open Your Heart	Imagine Our Love	Matador
The Aluminum Group	Tiny Decision	Happyness	Wishing Tree
Zerostars	Dad's Dress	The Good Can't Escape	self-released
*David Vandervelde	Nothin' No	Nothin' No EP	Secretly Canadian
Meryn Cadell	Flight Attendant	Angel Food for Thought	Bongo Beat
*Matthew Dear	Midnight Lovers	Asa Breed	Ghostly International
Papas Fritas	Way You Walk	Buildings & Grounds	Minty Fresh
*Art Brut	Pump Up the Volume	It's a Bit Complicated	Downtown

Labels: music, playlists

posted by Tony at 9:08 AM | 2 comments

More gross fun with pets

Wheee, it's Finn and Charlie time again!

Labels: comic

posted by Tony at 11:18 AM | 1 comments

Seen from behind...

How often do you see yourself from behind and above? This is the worst angle at which to see your head. This is how waiters see you. It's enough to make you stand up everywhere forever.

This week's Finn and Charlie

Labels: comic

posted by Tony at 10:41 PM | 0 comments

Facts continue to change their shape: 6/1 show

Lazy me... or maybe just too much work, or something. I'm posting this very late, though as usual I'm backdating it to the date of the show. Sorry for anyone who was waiting around for it.

A few things I played were CDs I bought while in France.

Camille is someone my friend Graziella told me about in 2005, when her album came out. I didn't buy it at the time, but the name stayed in my head, and I heard her mentioned from time to time (most recently by Lester, an artist at Lillstreet who's gotten into French pop). This time, Graziella played me a song from her iPod and I decided to get the CD. It's good. After listening to it over and over again in the car as we drove around Périgord with only 5 CDs, it struck me that the sound is heavily influenced by Afropop, which is maybe a little unexpected. It reminds me of the Afro-Belgian group Zap Mama (or at least, their early work – the band is still around but I don't know what they sound like). The contrast is that Camille has the sort of high-pitched girlish vocal style that seems common among French femail singers. Anyway, the song I played is the one Graziella played for me on her iPod, and it's one of the strongest on the album. It's almost acapella, but with the addition of electric base, and the vocal sounds include squeals and raspberries, which makes me think of Björk. (I've been wondering to myself – did my friend Lynn also recommend Camille to me? Or am I getting mixed up because her middle name is Camille? Not sure...)

Olivia Ruiz was another French artist recommended by Graziella, though she didn't specify an album, so I got an earlier one that was cheaper. (New French CDs are shockingly expensive, but the store we go to also has used CDs, and we buy those when we can.) Olivia Ruiz's album is not 100% successful, but it has a number of very good songs. She too has that sort of high-pitched girlish vocal style, but much less of an Afropop influence. Instead, Ruiz plays with a number of styles, including traditional French music, American 50's pop, and musicals. Some songs veer too close to that French pop sound of the 80's that was so terrible, but in general I like the album. The song I played, J'Aime Pas L'Amour, has a touch of the tango to it, but breaks into guitars in the middle.

Uztaglote was my own find. The store we went to, Gilbert Joseph, had a number of CDs set up in listening stations, and Uztaglote was one of them. Near as I can tell, they are an independent release; I can't quite identify the label, though. (By which I mean, I actually can't find the name on the CD.) They hew more closely to traditional French café music, but they are a bit tongue-in-cheek at the same time. I haven't fully decyphered the lyrics of the song I played, except that it has to do with wanting a doll. It sounds a bit like café music and a bit like new wave.

*: new stuff
(r): requests

Artist	Song	Album	Label
The Talking Heads	Crosseyed and Painless	Remain in Light	Sire
Kate Bush	Eat the Music	The Red Shoes	Columbia
*Slavic Soul Party	Šiško's Blues	Technochek Collision	Barbes
*Montag	No One Else	Going Places	Carpark
Andrew Bird	Measuring Cups	The Mysterious Production of Eggs	Righteous Babe
Os Mutantes	Panis et Circensis	Tropicália: ou Panis et Circensis	Universal
*Mary Timony Band	Sharpshooter	The Shapes We Make	Kill Rock Stars
Camille	Ta douleur	Le fil	SCPP/Virgin
Deee-Lite	What Is Love?	World Clique	Elektra
*Electrelane	Tram 21	No Shouts, No Calls	Too Pure
*Battles	Race: In	Mirrored	WARP
Quasar Wut-Wut	Enola Gay	Taro Sound	Glorious Noise
The Judybats	Scarlett	Pain Makes You Beautiful	Sire
Puffy Ami Yumi	Boogie Woogie No. 5	Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi soundtrack	Epic
Ted Leo + the Pharmacists	Me and Mia	Shake the Sheets	Lookout
Eurythmics	This is the House	Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)	RCA
Olivia Ruiz	J'aime pas l'amour	J'aime pas l'amour	Polydor
*Wilco	Either Way	Sky Blue Sky	Nonesuch
(r)The Decemberists	Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)	The Crane Wife
*Jana Hunter	Vultures	There's No Home	Gnomonsong
Bobby Conn	Anybody	King for a Day	Thrill Jockey
Har Mar Superstar	Body Request	The Handler	Thrill Jockey
*Watchers	Mercenary Birds	Vampire Driver	Gem Blandsten
*Fennesz Sakamoto	Cendre	Cendre	Touch
Aretha Franklin	All Night Long	Sweet Bitter Love	Columbia
*Elliott Smith	New Disaster	New Moon	Kill Rock Stars
Canasta	Sympathetic Vibrations	We Were Set Up	Broken Middle C
The Futureheads	Decent Days and Nights	The Futureheads	Sire
Each Other	Soft Cuffs	Each Other	Birds Go South
*Rufus Wainwright	Tiergarten	Release the Stars	Geffen
Sean Lennon	Queue	Into the Sun	Grand Royal
Sister Vanilla	K to Be Lost	Little Pop Rock	Chemikal Underground
*Uztaglote	La Poupée	La Liberation des Corps	R
Jens Lekman	The Wrong Hands	Oh You're So Silent, Jens	Secretly Canadian
*Black Moth Super Rainbow	Sun Lips	Dandelion Gum	Graveface
*Parts and Labor	Vision of Repair	Mapmaker	Jagjaguwar/Brah
The Scissor Girls	EvrxbdxLvsaGdMxstrx	To: The Imaginary Layer on Skeletons	Quinnah
*Frog Eyes	Evil Energy, the ill twin of...	Tears of the Valedictorian	Absolutely Kosher
The Shangri-La's	Trains from Kansas City	The Myrmidons of Melodrama	RPM
The Headlights	Century	The Enemies	Polyvinyl
Adam and the Ants	Killer in the Home	Kings of the Wild Frontier	Columbia
*The Race	Walls	Ice Station	Flameshovel
Brian Wilson	Roll Plymouth Rock	Smile	Nonesuch
They Might Be Giants	Particle Man	Flood

Labels: music, playlists

posted by Tony at 6:25 PM | 0 comments