Sex on the beach?
I’m not really sure if you’re inviting me to participate, asking if I like it, or referring to the drink. Either way, I’m going to assume the answer to all three would be yes.
March 2011
Gobbledigook
Sigur Rós
Day Twenty One: A Song That You Listen To When You’re Happy
Every time I listen to this track I’m reminded of a live performance Sigur Rós did of this song with Björk, who’s just smacking the drum in front of her like an excited child, beaming from ear to ear. It just has so much playful energy, I really don’t think I need to explain why I would listen to this when I’m in a great mood.
Haha, and thanks for the follow. ;)
Of course! I follow back most of the time.
Hah! I love your Lord of the Flies post! I think you left out the :
Piggy; Don't call me fat. It hurts my feelings.
Kids; FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT.
I assure you, if I had written it that would have been included, haha.
Oh shit. Almost forgot it was Tuesday. I could I forget to ask your TMI question, I mean, if I did forget you might have spontaneously combusted or something. And that's not cool.
So...here it is...brace yourself.
Boxers or briefs or commando?
Oooh, deep. Totally worth the wait.
I was going to “accidentally” wait until 12:05 to answer this, but I’m gonna go ahead and just say I prefer boxers.
So, we've talked about ridiculous amounts of music, but I don't think we ever talked about the Mountain Goats. So here we go. What's your favorite album? Is your favorite song on that album? And... They have really awesome lyrics, what's your favorite? Boom! Three questions.
Funny you’d ask, I just did a post about this for the thirty day thing. Tallahassee is undoubtedly my favorite of the albums I own (there are several I don’t). I know it’s not their best, but it clicks with me for some reason.
It’s impossible for me to pick just one song, so a few of my favorites include First Few Desperate Hours, Southwood Plantation Road and No Children.
My favorite line isn’t off Tallahassee at all. It’s probably from Get Lonely’s title track. “And i will get lonely and gasp for air.
and send your name up from my lips like a signal flare.”
It's TMI Tuesday.
Rather than beg you all for questions, which has proven to be an ineffective strategy, I’ve decided to threaten you instead.
For every 15 minutes that goes by without receiving a question, I will explode a random kitten with my mind powers.
Think it over. It could be your kitten.
The Amazon Cloud Player
Looks like Amazon.com is going to get the ball rolling here by introducing its own cloud drive service, which includes a player for music.
It’s going to be interesting to see if Apple follows suit, since Cloud computing is the predicted future of storage. I have a 20g drive that was included with the purchase of the new Mountain Goats album (why do I buy these off Amazon? The quality isn’t as good as getting it from the label’s site in 320. I guess it’s just cause it’s cheap, or I am). Normally the drive is 5g, but I get the additional 15 for a year long trial.
I’m not sure yet if I’m going to actually use the thing or not. Amazon hasn’t always handled downloadable content well. Their music downloads aren’t actually that bad in terms of quality and are DRM free, but I’ve purchased movies from them as well, which was kind of a mistake. There’s a unique player that has to be installed and the movies themselves are incompatible with anything else. If the cloud drive has any weird restrictions on what you can upload or how you’re allowed to access it, I’m probably just going to ignore it.
Still, Amazon is definitely taking an important step forward for the future of technology. Whether or not this prototype is a success, you can bet other companies are going to be testing this out as well. If you’re interested in taking a look, as I said, the one year 20g trial comes with, I think, any download of an album on Amazon right now. Might be worth checking out if you buy music from them already. Hell, just get the new Mountain Goats album. Fuck the drive.
Bloodstone
Amon Tobin
Day Twenty: A Song That You Listen To When You’re Angry
Well, I’m fairly pissed off right now and this is what I’m listening to. Guess that’s pretty convenient.
Lord of the Flies
By William Golding
Ultra-Condensed by David J. Parker and Samuel Stoddard
(Some BOYS crash on an ISLAND.)
Ralph
We need a fire.
(They make a fire. It goes out.)
Ralph
We need a fire.
(They make a fire. It goes out.)
Ralph
We need a fire.
Jack
Forget the fire. Let’s kill each other.
Other Boys
Yeah!
(They do.)
THE END
Woah now, kids.
I’m seeing double, and in one case, quadruple posts.
I know tumblr’s being weird but you only need to click the button once.
No Children
The Mountain Goats
Day Nineteen: A Song From Your Favorite Album
I’ve often heard that Tallahassee isn’t anywhere near the best Mountain Goats release. I don’t own the entire discography so maybe someday I’ll go buy All Hail West Texas and have my mind blown, but somehow I think Tallahassee will always be my favorite. Not just as a Mountain Goats release, but compared to any other album I own.
Tallahassee tells a story that is very small in scale. It’s about John Darnielle’s fictional Alpha Couple, a husband and wife who are always on the verge of divorce. As the album opens, the two move into a house in Tallahassee, Florida. Over the course of the story, they keep trying to convince themselves that they are still in love as they attempt to repair their marriage, but they cannot escape the bitterness and loathing they have for themselves and each other. They begin to drink themselves to death.
Over the course of its 45 minute run, Darnielle dives into the characters and reveals all of their emotional complexities, but does so in a very simple and frank manner. His lyrics are poetry about love and hate, but they stay so firmly grounded in the world the characters live in instead of relying on the abstract. The narration sounds like it could be from a real, average person, but the simple metaphors are still very effective. For instance, the house itself is representative of the the couple’s self destructive relationship. Despite being in an awful state of disrepair, the husband desperately tries to fix it up even though it sounds somewhat beyond hope. Over the course of the album, the house really seems to become a tight, claustrophobic space. The couple are locked in there together, growing sick of each other as the house deteriorates around them and the cabinets fill up with liquor. Much like his marriage, the husband is repairing the very thing that is imprisoning him, and ultimately, killing him. In addition to this ongoing theme, there are also a lot of great one liners that are both insightful and clever. A few of my favorites include “Our love is like the border between Greece and Albania” and “Our conversations are like minefields - no one’s found a safe way through one yet” (I absolutely adore that second one).
So, I’ve established that I love the story and lyrics of the album, but obviously I like the music too. To me, Tallahassee is a perfect album. When I call something a perfect album, I mean something I can put on without wanting to skip a single track. Indeed, even if not all the songs from Tallahassee are his finest work, I still enjoy every single one, so much that when I put the album on, I often will not stop until I’ve reached the ending. Now, there are actually several albums I can make this claim about, but Tallahassee is special. I can listen to it at literally any time, in any mood, and I will enjoy it equally every time. When I’m angry, it helps me put my bitterness that is often so difficult for me to articulate into simple terms. When I’m happy, I can just enjoy the songwriting, clever lyrics and the moments where the couple momentarily reconcile.
In the end, I don’t know why I love Tallahassee so much. Maybe it’s because I’ve been in a crumbling relationship before, and I’ve felt all of the conflicting feelings the Alpha Couple has felt. Like them, I was with someone that, towards the end, I harbored a very deep resentment toward, but still tried to hold onto. Maybe it was because somewhere deep down I still loved the innocent, carefree girl I met in high school. Or maybe, in the end, it boiled down to the fear and uncertainty that both myself and the characters asked ourselves at the climax of our conflicts: “What will I do when I don’t have you?”
