you think i’m not singing about guns? watch:
coolant and saliatude, inepticity,
this britching birchtree fallen alien ailment, this illhood.
goe for the unto streams and the aching boghoods.
watch, just watch me,
you never seen a tree so immensely incredible.
awesome, xavier.
and where’d all this enmity unimmeterialize from?
hey? guys are dicklessly awful; unendowed unlike women.
[not fit to grasp your womanhand?
nor kneel at your altar?]
if i may be so coy:
artificiatude
vaingloriatingly
innuptuousness.
and now revert to “oh hell”s and “jesus shitbagging fucking apeshit”s
or as i should dare say evolutize
green green and green
see and you though i was apolitical!
(imaginary cheering ensues)
poetry entry 018
goals realized:
remember this one? when i said i’d do all those things? here’s my progress:
“i will make a friend on the train” check
“i will listen to more of john lennon’s solo stuff” check
“i will buy somebody icecream” check
“i will become a pro at thrift store shopping” check
“i will get stupidgood at guitar solos” maybe not “stupidgood” but recording with william showed me i was a lot better than i thought at it.
“i will become capable of dancing with unabashed abandon” getting there. did it when i saw kickball in eugene. did it yesterday alone when i found something i was looking for and got really fired up.
“i will be a renaissance man” poetry, songwriting, photogrophy, guitar, bass and drums? david markson, charles bukowski, darwin and pulp crime fiction? husker du, albert ayler, david grubbs and schubert? a subscription to artforum magazine? not bad for a lad of seventeen years. i’ll be there soon enough. still, i’m no will jameson . . .
summer youtube seven-inch (part two)
side a – ben e. king “stand by me”
side b – the creation “if i stay too long”
announcing the birth of
started a king shit awesome band today. we’re called stagg / the whispering wizards / nunexcrespo / sharnicity taylor / sniperjoshua / the new beat and many other names that i can’t remember right now. that’s right, our band has all these cool names and you can’t have any of them. it’s will on drums and jesse and me on guitars. hoo! shit’s gonna be good, you guys. had two really sweaty first practices today. good that kind of band where two of the people aren’t very good at all at their instruments. fun city. (jesse’s the good one).
and the recording of the certain kind album continues to go really well.
and i got a shit ton of books with my christmas powell’s gift certificates: bukowski “these days run over the hills like wild horses” borges “obra poetica” kerouac “book of dreams” and “lonesome traveler” e.e. cummings “50 poems” amira baraka “the leroi jones / amira baraka reader” ginsberg “reality sandwiches” neruda “antología esencial” jd salinger “franny and zooey” and “nine stories” italo calvino “the baron in the woods” steinbeck “tortilla flat” faulkner “intruder in the dust” hermann hesse “demian” so yeah i’m pretty damned excited. first i have to finish the four books i’m reading, though. (silmarillion, the two towers, this is not a novel and desolation angels). better get to work on that. hell yes for summer reading, right?
microfest? please believe.
yesterday i attended the fifth microfest, curated and organized and all that by the boy gorILLa crew. it was at a house place called camp rainbow and it was excellent. the lineup looked like this:
1:00 – THE MORALS
1:30 – Alan Singley + Pants Machine
2:00 – Mikah Sykes
2:30 – Autopilot
3:00 – Acres
3:30 – The Blast Majesty
4:00 – Swimming
4:30 – Evil Wikkid Warrior
5:00 – Eskimo and Sons
5:30 – The Black Black Black
6:00 – Calvin Johnson
6:30 – Kickball
7:00 – Free Range Stallions
7:30 – Droves
8:00 – Sukey Tawdry
8:30 – Typhoon
9:00 – -a (dash a )
9:30 – The Red River
10:00 – Smoke Stacks
10:30 – Starfucker
11:00 – Dirty Mittens
11:30 – Ghosties / Doubledutch
12:00 – 40 Hundred Thousand Locked up Guns
i was dubious as to how well that sort of thing would work out, all those bands all playing half hour sets right on top of eachother, but they did a damn good job. what they did is had two different “stages.” one upstairs in a living room and one in the basement. here’s what the bands were like:
white lighter: i got there at a little before two to learn that white lighter was playing instead of mikah sykes. i missed that man’s homely mug, pretty singing and impressive fingerpicking, but white lighter was good. its the guy from typhoon who drums in the black black black doing solo acoustic. he’s an energetic little man who’s pretty damn good at writing songs.
autopilot: a duo that featured copious accordion use. having a strong aversion to that vibe (circus-y, affectatious decemberists type thing) i decided to step outside. fortunately, camp rainbow’s book collection featured the keruoac book i happen to be reading right now (desolation angels) so i found a corner of the yard and availed myself.
acres: a very pretty young man singing along with incredibly upbeat, preprogrammed electronic pop music. at first i laughed, but quickly got into it. it was heartbreakingly uplifting, and the man was obviously very earnest. the music was well-arranged and reminded me of that katamari damacy type vibe. plus: the dude’s from eugene, so you gotta give it up, ya know?
the blast majesty: a eugene band. these guys made me realize that, right now, eugene bands have the glorious tendency of being loud, energetic, careless and sloppy in the best way. they might have been the toughest band there. i don’t know what they’re trying to be, but what they are is great. like a punk rock captain beefheart. made me proud of being a sunbrowned eugene rocker, rather than one of those frail portland types. ended up hanging out with drummer dallas and guitar player chad for the remainder of the festival. very nice guys. dallas looks like a prettier version of me (allthough he claims it’s the other way around. he’s jus being nice.)
swimming: they were really really quiet and i couldn’t see them through the crowd. read some more kerouac.
evil wikked warrior: has six members- two drummers, a keyboardist who mostly just stood around, a ten year old girl (or around that age) singing and two rats chilling in a cage. they were so fucking great. the singing was schoolyard chant style, and the drumming was absolutely facepounding and complex.
eskimo and sons: ok, so i really like these guys. really. but i think they ended up going right after the black black black. or some tough band. anyway, i couldn’t really see them and they struck me as an indie rock boz scaggs, and seemed “into it” in a really disgusting, jack johnson kind of way that i see way to much of here in eugene (smiling, bobbing head white boy groove shit). [plus, i like the singer's singing more in tom and morgen. guess that was just a one-off or something? i shore do like that stuff, though.] anyway, sorry, eskimos. the right band at the wrong time. i’ll give them another shot on the 24th at stonehenge, if i’m in town. ended up reading more kerouac.
the black black black: rocked. they’re going in a really good direction, bringing more noise guitar and mathiness. they’re like 2007’s answer to unwound. [weirdly: the two times i saw them, one of the guitar players kept doing this little riff between songs that sounded really familiar. i thought it was a song from unwound's "challenge for a civilized society" album. i asked one the guitar player's if he'd heard unwound, said he hadn't. now i'm wracking my brains trying to remember what song that is. early fugazi?] i’m excited to see what becomes of them. also: the drumming is really great.
calvin johnson: played a set similar to the one i saw a few weeks ago. at least, most of the same songs. he has this one, it’s like a calvin johnson rock opera, really long and sparse, with changes that remind me of some of fahey’s longer songs. his combination of spare guitar and all consuming voice-as-instrument type vibe works really well.
kickball: damn what a great band. very much together, probably in no small part due to their just coming off a tour. that’ll do it. they brought it. j’slike the last time i saw them, everyone was diggin the hell out of it, singing and all that. wish that a: the set had been longer and b: i wasn’t running on only a few hour’s sleep and could’ve rocked out a little more. but hey, those are some good complaints, right? it’s totally that kind of thing where i feel lucky to have seen such a good band. twice, no less and hopefully many times more.
free range stallions: a decent noise band. nice! after rocking out to kickball, i was tired and it was nice to indulge in a good soundbath.
droves: missed em. think i was getting an ear of corn or something . . .
sukey tawdry: gross name, right? they were pretty good, but something wasn’t right. “it’s not you, sukey tawdry. it’s me.” they actually sounded better from outside, coming through the livingroom window. so i read out there and talked with the blast majesty guys.
typhoon: boom! love these guys. epic, and that’s not a word i bandy about the way most people do. they were really well mixed and arranged for a band with so many members. for me, the standout was the bass: huge and thunderous in the most incredible way. at risk of sounding a bit cheesy: their sound was like ocean waves. really. i thought that at the time, being swept around by this crushing force of nature. a damn good band to see live.
-a: this one came out of no where. a guy with a guitar and a couple other people sitting off to the side. i think: okay, some guitar singing. nope. he ended up unleashing some of the most beautiful ambient music i’ve heard. man, that was good. wasn’t none of that “oh hey it’s ambient so that means we can just sort of throw pretty drony sounds together” type shit. guy had his shit together, did it right. he was friendly, too. offered me some green tea. seemed kinda surprised i dug his set. whatever. that kind of stuff isn’t hard to listen to once you realize it’s just sounds, just a diffren kind of thinking. it’s not like it’s stuck up professor smart guy music, all that free jazz and noise and ambient style stuff, like people think it is. shit, cap the rant. anyway his set went overtime, but i don’t think anyone who was digging it noticed.
the red river: after zoning out to -a, it was nice to walk down into the basement for some old fashioned pop, in the basement sense. i gotta get one these guy’s albums. just damn good pop music.
smokestacks: most awkward band ever. drum/guitar duo. it was painful because they were good in ways: the songs were long and had a lot of parts and the guitar playing was really good: like arthur era kinks with a post punk style precision. but the drummer was slightly offtime and they bothe looked very uncomfortable. i was totally rooting for them, but it was hard to watch. “come on, guys! if you just take a hint from theblast majesty and loosen up you’d be unstoppable!” nothing is more painful than an awkward band that fails to get into it and just looks uncomfortably warm . . .
starfucker: reminded me of seeing ratatat. just a drummer with accompanying electronic music. unstoppable fucking beats. so good. had the place bumpin and shit. also did intermittent noise guitar. yeah, i enjoyed that one. plus i really like the band name.
dirty mittens: uh. can barely remember them. a really disgusting looking keyboard player. think i sat that one out.
ghosties: played two songs and were good. i really like the recorded stuff. by this point my lack of sleep/proper nourishment caught up with me in a “hey what’s up this is your body and you’ve ignored me for too damn long” kind of way and i had to split and go eat and sleep.
but yeah, it was damn good day. made me wish ogami were together: seeing the bands just made me think of how good our new shit was when we broke up, and how much we would’ve rocked that show. ah well, there’ll always be new bands to form.
poetry entry 017
do the drift
helpsome appled enullment, arkily.
roland the awkward dwarf.
pleviatory levity.
escriptural idioms of scriptless genius
of
the loggeries and shacklike shapes
the casting of shackles
arteries, idioms . . .
illegal, egalite
awesome rainbows, sets of twenty
when numbers are words are they still numbers no.
is a still life still alive?
i’d hoped the heartsack wouldn’t leap
potatoes, beets, leeks, carrots—
please, john. you’re distracting me.
but honestly . . .
cardiff mockery, absolute shoredom
boringhood, glovery
domicilic, insectile innocence. noculate. innocturnal.
the things we do for a saturday night.
this IS religion
this IS astronomy
this IS cosmotology
this IS science
this IS the inflammated consummation of a bloated bout of humanity.
duh.
so this weblog site has a feature that lets you see what people have google-searched to get to your weblog. this, to me, is fascinating. yesterday’s search terms were:
“logo, heart,wing”
“the warmers alec”
“rash around organs”
and last but not least, ladies and gentlemens:
“sonfucking her mom”
glad to know the kind of crowd i’m pulling in, here. i won’t even comment on that last one, but there’s quite a bit to say. wonder what that mystery oedipist thought about the terrainus shogunate?
two search terms i get a lot are: “kickball everything is a miracle nothing is a miracle everything is” (or some permutation thereof) and “cassidy rios kane.” i’m intrigued to know who would be searching for me by name . . .
summer youtube weblog 7″
here it is, the two songs that epitomize summer for me right now. if they had these two back to back on 7-inch, i’d shell the hell out for that shit.
side a – underground kings / outkast – “interntl player’s anthem (i choose you)”
side b – baby boy da prince – “way i live”
a word on chavez
sorry, i’m not talking the mixed-socialist venezuelan president. nor am i talking the californian migrant labor hero.
i’m talking the rock band from the nineties, in all their incredible freaking glory. they seem a bit . . . overlooked maybe. for me, they are very, very important.
first off they rock in the classic sense. energetic. the drumming is responsible for this in a large sense: sort of rolling in that mitch mitchell way, but more like if mitchell could hit as hard as buddy miles.
sweeney’s singing is the greatest. totally sort of pretty and whispery, over this blowout freaking rock, huge drums, droning bass, noisy guitars. they do that particular style of nineties indie rock better than most.
to those reading this who maybe are not so familiar with this chavez: both of their albums are great. you couldn’t go wrong, really. gone glimmering is less complete feeling than ride the fader, but still has almost nothing but great songs.
just thought i’d pay a little homoage
