| Record Store Day set list |
[Apr. 21st, 2012|03:52 pm] |
I DJed for an hour at Everyday Music today, as part of the Record Store Day festivities. All 10-inch vinyl. Here's what I played:
Bronski Beat & Marc Almond, "I Feel Love/Love To Love You Baby (Fruit mix)"
Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, "Waiting for the Man"
Telekinesis, "Meaningless" (Magnetic Fields cover)
The Nerves, "Hanging on the Telephone"
Wanda Jackson, "Mean Mean Man" (live)
Old 97s, "Stoned"
Pylon, "Cool"
Lene Lovich, "Monkey Talk" (live)
Yma Sumac, "No Es Vida"
Nouvelle Vague, "Just Can't Get Enough"
Band of Bees, "Chicken Payback (Madlib's Soul Distortion Vocal mix)
The Barry Gray Orchestra, "Stingray"
Go Home Productions, "Jacko Under Pressure"
Lemon Jelly, "'75 aka Stay With You"
The Kills, "Satellite (Warbler Ariwa mix)"
Radiohead, "Idioteque"
Moondog and his Honking Geese, "Rabbit Hop"
Arthur Russell & the Flying Hearts feat. Allen Ginsberg, "Ballad of the Lights"
Then Hans came on and played Tiny Tim's "I'm A Nut," a Latin soul cover of "Tip Toe Through The Tulips," Dodie Stevens' "Pink Shoelaces" and a killer Etta James b-side. Damn!
And now I have to go DJ the 50th anniversary party of the 1962 Worlds Fair and the Space Needle, for the family that owns the latter. Weird. Doubt there'll be much overlap between the two sets. |
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| Hunger Challenge: Day 4 |
[Mar. 22nd, 2012|03:44 pm] |
Today I had a meeting on the observation deck of the Space Needle (I'm DJing a private party for the 50th anniversary of the 1962 World's Fair there next month). And what Food Network television show just happened to be filming there today, too? Friggin' Cupcake Wars! There were thickly-frosted free cupcakes galore, but none for me: One of the rules of the Hunger Challenge is "no freebies." So instead I took this picture, and hurried home to scarf down another plate of rice & beans.
Like my co-worker Sharlese, I have mixed feelings about the "no freebies" rule. I understand that letting my friends & co-workers buy me meals would defeat the purpose of living on $7/day, but I can't imagine most people on food stamps would willingly turn down a free cupcake (or a sample at the grocery store, the example given in the rules).
Honestly, I don't know if I'm going to stick with this all the way through to Saturday night. I've been getting headaches almost every afternoon, which makes it difficult to concentrate on writing, and my body misses fresh produce something terrible. I might feel more inspired if more of my KEXP co-workers had signed on, but only four of us followed through on the initial request to participate, so I don't feel that extra boost of team spirit that might push me over the hump. |
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| Hunger Challenge: Day 1 |
[Mar. 19th, 2012|10:58 am] |
I'm taking part in the United Way of King County's "Hunger Challenge," as part of Hunger Action Week. (No, this is not a tie-in for that stupid movie, although I wonder if perhaps the United Way didn't miss an opportunity to guilt trip and/or inform a lot of adolescents this week.) The "challenge"? I have to subsist on a budget of $7/day from now until Saturday, March 24. That's the maximum amount a single individual can receive in food stamps in King County.
I went grocery shopping to lay in supplies. Here's what I got:
Old-fashioned (i.e. whole oats) oatmeal
Soy milk
Bread ("baked with" whole grains)
Red beans (dried)
Pinto beans (dried)
Brown rice
Peanut butter (crunchy, all-natural)
Vegetable oil
Vinegar
Brown sugar
Carrots (big bag)
Dried cherries *
Apples (Granny Smith, 4 total)
Bananas (one bunch)
Onions (2)
Garlic (one bulb)
1 lb can of diced tomatoes
1 box dried pasta
Green tea
Frozen collard greens
Total cost = $39.78. I made a lot of choices based on cost (i.e. tea over coffee, vegetable oil over olive or canola, cheap bread). It probably comes as no surprise that processed foods are cheaper than "whole" foods. I'm very glad that I've been eating more and more like a vegan of late.
I'm already chaffing at some of the rules (no tasting samples at the grocery store? There's nothing about foraging, though). I may resort to "stealing" condiments from the station. We have a whole drawer of abandoned mustard and soy sauce packets that I could put to good use, rules be damned. I'll probably drink coffee from the communal pot at the station, too.
* This is not something I'd normally buy. But they were marked way, way down, priced to move, and much cheaper than anything else in the way of dried fruits or nuts. I figured they'd add some variety to meals if used creatively. |
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| Today in New Wave ephemera |
[Mar. 10th, 2012|04:40 pm] |
Sometimes I have to buy a used 45 for the sleeve alone. I barely remember this song (I remember it being a hit, but when I fired up the track on Spotify just now I only kinda-sorta recognized the music) and never saw the video, but I shelled out 99 cents for this German pressing just so I can add this atrocious picture to my archives. It's like Spider-Man meets David Bowie's "Blue Jean" look. |
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| 2011 Top Ten |
[Nov. 27th, 2011|12:02 pm] |
My cruel overlords at KEXP are demanding our year-end Top Ten lists for 2011 by Monday at noon, so I sat down with my notes and cobbled together ten titles. As always, I feel vaguely unsatisfied with the outcome. As a professional music scribe, I've been making these lists for 20+ years, and they longer I do it, the more conflicted I feel, the person I truly I am at odds with the critic I'm supposed to be. Now that my job at MSN Music demands that I review every new title of note, that tension is heightened. My critical brain "knows" full-well that Adele and Drake (to name just two) made stellar records in 2011, records that deserve the acclaim showered on them. But did I listen to them in my free time? No. And I try to weight my choices towards records that I returned to again and again. I give the mouth-breathing fan boy veto power over the critic, albeit only after heated debate and hand-wringing. And I'll always make room for an underdog, if it means more exposure for someone who might be otherwise overlooked.
Um, I just realized Tom Waits didn't make my list. That's the other problem: You always leave out something crucial. I definitely listened to Tom Waits more than James Blake. But Blake is breaking new ground...
*sigh*
DJ El Toro's Top Ten 2011
1. Fleet Foxes, Helplessness Blues (Sub Pop)
2. Zola Jesus, Conatus (Sacred Bones)
3. St. Vincent, Strange Mercy (4AD)
4. Dum Dum Girls, Only In Dreams (Sub Pop)
5. Shabazz Palaces, Black Up (Sub Pop)
6. The Horrors, Skying (XL)
7. Kate Bush, 50 Words for Snow (Anti-)
8. Gillian Welch, The Harrow and the Harvest (Acony)
9. Thousands, The Sound of Everything (Bella Union)
10. James Blake, James Blake (Atlas)
Wait, Destroyer. I forgot Destroyer, too. Goddamn it!
Does this list make me look old? |
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| Halloween 2011 KEXP Playlist |
[Oct. 31st, 2011|06:32 pm] |
Screamin' Jay Hawkins, "Frenzy"
Sonny Richard's Panics w/ Cindy and Misty, "The Voo Doo Walk"
Björk, "Play Dead"
M83, "Graveyard Girl"
Ladytron, "Ghosts"
Book of Love, "Tubular Bells"
Sisters of Mercy, "Gimme Shelter"
The Head and the Heart, "Ghost"
Neko Case, "Things That Scare Me"
Johnny Cash, "Delia's Gone"
The Louvin Brothers, "Knoxville Girl"
Mogwai, "How To Be A Werewolf"
Warren Zevon, "Werewolves of London"
John Wesley Harding, "Goth Girl"
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, "Up Jumped the Devil"
The Decemberists, "Shankill Butches"
Johnny Dowd, "Murder"
Robert Johnson, "Hell Hound on My Trail"
Devo, "Peek-A-Boo"
Virgin Prunes, "Baby Turns Blue"
Replicants, "Destination Unknown"
Marc Almond & The Willing Sinners, "The House Is Haunted"
Austra, "Spellwork"
Craft Spells, "Your Tomb"
The Cure, "The Funeral Party"
The Soft Moon, "Total Decay"
Bush Tetras, "Things That Go Boom in the Night"
Kid Congo & The Pink Monkey Birds, "Rare As The Yeti"
The Sonics, "The Witch"
David Bowie, "Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)"
R. Dean Taylor, "There's A Ghost in My House"
Dusty Springfield, "Haunted"
Ben E. King, "Supernatural Thing, Pt. 1"
Otis Redding, "Trick Or Treat"
The Psychedelic Furs, "The Ghost in You"
Human League, "Darkness"
Broadcast, "Black Cat,"
Antony & The Johnsons, "Ghost"
Kate Bush, "Hammer Horror"
The Five Blobs, "The Blob"
Allan Sherman, "My Son, the Vampire"
Stephin Merritt, "Scream (Till You Make the Scene)"
Quiet Village, "Circus of Horror"
Gil Scott-Heron, "Me and the Devil"
The Damned, "Grimly Fiendish"
Spell, "Stone Is Very, Very Cold"
The Poppy Family, "There's No Blood in Bone"
Public Image Ltd., "Death Disco"
Anika, "No One's There"
Tom Waits, "What's He Building?"
Altered Images, "Insects"
Jerry Dallman & the Knightcaps, "The Bug"
Blondie, "Attack of the Giant Ants"
The Muppets, "There's A New Sound"
Tegan & Sara, "Walking With a Ghost"
Fred Schneider & The Shake Society, "Monster"
Noddy, "Demon Skull"
Future Bible Heroes, "I'm A Vampire"
Tullycraft, "If You Take Away the Make-up (Then the Vampires They Will Die)"
Oingo Boingo, "Weird Science"
Lou Reed, "Halloween Parade" |
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| As seen while crossing the Aurora Bridge |
[Sep. 17th, 2011|05:53 pm] |
"Heavy," by Mary Oliver
That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying
I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had his hand in this,
as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,
was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel,
(brave even among lions),
"It's not the weight you carry
but how you carry it -
books, bricks, grief -
it's all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it
when you cannot, and would not,
put it down."
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?
Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?
How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe
also troubled -
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply? |
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| Public Listening |
[Sep. 7th, 2011|07:29 am] |
Mark and I watched this film last night, and I'm still reeling from it. I read Metropolitan Life and Social Studies when I was a freshman or sophomore in high school, and have treasured their many pearls of wit and wisdom every since. One I recall rather fondly was a recommendation that young people not only think before they speak, but read before they speak, therefore ensuring they have thought about something prior to opening their mouths. (I'm not putting as fine a point on it as Fran, and I apologize.)
The film underscores some salient points that the half-dozen readers of this LJ probably already know, but which bear repeating, such as:
A) The AIDS epidemic not only had a devastating impact on the level of artistry in our nation, but also the level of connoisseurship exhibited by audiences. There is a direct correlation between the generation lost to AIDS and the "dumbing down" of the arts in America.
B) There is too much democracy in culture, and not enough democracy in society. Culture is supposed to be a hierarchy, dictated by talent and skill. Which brings me to...
C) Young people are raised with too much self esteem. Consequently, they feel their every thought, word and idea needs to not only be documented, but shouted from the rooftops and plastered all over the Internet.
D) It seems a bit ludicrous that gay rights has become all about freedom to marry and joining the military, two of the most restrictive institutions imaginable.
E) Our obsession with fame can be traced directly to the work of Andy Warhol. Of course, Andy was joking when he anointed speed freak heiresses and drag queens "superstars," but like most good jokes, this one slid off the plate and now everyone assumes they deserve to be famous.
There's a hell of a lot more to the film than that, and you should watch it. It is a great way to reboot your consciousness. And despite what my summary might imply, you can glean a lot of hope from her observations. Like myself, she's still seeking out new artists who genuinely change up the game and create new culture, and just the prospect of stumbling over such individuals always gets my heart thumping a little faster.
Fran doesn't have a cell phone, BlackBerry, microwave oven or computer, and dismisses them all as more-or-less the same thing: Gadgets that prevent us from being present in the moment and observing what's happening around us. I don't know where personal listening devices fit into Fran's universe, if at all. I don't remember her writing much about music over the years, although I know she greatly admired Pablo Casals in her youth and wanted to be a cellist (she wasn't good enough, which she freely admits in the film). Many of us think of our iPod/Walkman as a way of curating a personal soundtrack. But here's my thought: If I'm always going out in public with earphones and preselected music, I'm already severely curtailing my experience of the world. So how can I be responsibly providing a "soundtrack" to the "movie of my life." I haven't actually seen and experienced it yet. Mind you, I have no intention of attempting 40 minutes of cardio while simply observing my surroundings, but maybe I don't need to spend quite so much time fretting over the music I listen to during the seven minute walk to the gym.
Fran also reminded me that great writers, such as Dorothy Parker, created lots of little critical doodads for magazines that have stood the test of time much better than the subject matter. Prior to watching this documentary, I was dreading spending a couple hours today writing about the new albums by The Drums and Lady Antebellum, both of which are rather mediocre. Now I'm rather looking forward to the task.
Also: Read more James Thurber. |
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