or maybe sooner than you thought, sultan! maybe i’m back in this blogging game for keeps! blogging! blogging!

i think i want to sit around and not do anything today. i’m out of money and coffee and it’s so warm in here and the weather is shite. so i’ll just hang out with arthur the bird and blog my knife away.

arthur the bird is a dove that jordan and i found by the river and are taking care of (he’s not hurt, don’t worry) until we call the humane society. which maybe i should do today.

2. no country for bill murray’s jaw

bill murray as hunter thompson is amazing, like if robert altman’s MASH had been a drug movie instead and wasn’t set in the korean war and bla bla bla my point is, murray is in the canon for me of the ilk of donald sutherland and of course, everybody’s favorite mug

e l l i o t g o u l d

it’s that seventies style of acting that i maybe can’t describe so well, but that i love nonetheless.

and bill murray’s hunter thompson has this strange quality of tenderness to it, as though he is but a child playing a game. hrm! excellent! (the bird just knocked something over).

i always thought johnny depp’s h.s.t. was a little heavy handed with the affectations. but, fear and loathing in las vegas is a very well made movie.

3. illegal ghost bikes

take a gander at this one, sucker! comic buke dude’s like dada. i think this is the best one he’s done in a while, and he’s been doin some pretty good ones.

[oh shit, why's the dove rustling like that. can't get out of bed. i hope he's eating.]

joanfrc is kicking my ass right now, here in my new apartment. i’ve got the computer hooked up to the stereo, with nine of their albums on shuffle. it’s some shit, sons.

it’s nice, living behind the wow hall with friend and bandmate jordan thompson. he’s a fool, been taking guitar lessons from a certain luminary for years, now. so that means he has a nice amp. (and sunglasses, but he can’t find those; he’s bald, now).

looking forward to wednesday, playing rock in my rock band at andrew‘s birthday. ‘sgonna be some fun, gonna be good.

saw the squids last night, which was of course excellent. missed some of the set, though, not knowing about dan’s 7:00 rock policy.  the addition of the keys dude. the trains also have keys, now. fashion virtuoso and ex last trains bass player garrett brown is back in the band, holding it down from on electric piano, now. it’s good. real good. can’t wait to see’em on wed.

hey, guess what? remember that old punk band, face eater? i’ve been notified that we’re to reunite for a bit, to rerecord some old songs and maybe even do a show. shit! i’ve been feeling the old hardcore vibes again, these days. was thinking even of tryn to start a punk band. now i don’t have to! great! that should be . . . well, we’ll see, i guess. i mean, everyone know that reunions are, as a rule, the greatest. hmm.

ok, shitdogs. i guess that’s it for now. see you in four months!

singles

cheap trick: “oh boy” bw “if you want my love”. both are demo versions. both are outstanding. esp the b side. o man. who can deny cheap trick? looks good, feels good, tastes good. sure as hell SMELLS good, too.

make up: “r u a believer”. love the make up. haven’t cracked open this particular dub narcotic disco plate yet, but i’m sure they won’t let me down.

v/a: “railroad songs”. took a chance on this one. looking forward.

unwound: “totality” bw “mkultra”. whoo. my unwound 45s collection is gettn pretty damn formidable. that’ll help me get the ladies: “hey lady, i’ve got a pretty big unwound 45 collection back at home” yknow?

love of everything/joan of arc/owen/make believe: “association of utopian hologram swallowers”. love the joanfrc family so farking mach.

shellac: “the guy who invented fire” / “rambler song” / “billiard player”. yes. yes i did get this.

mecca normal: “forlorn” bw “he didn’t say”. one of my favorrite punk bands. no kidding. jean smith is the female equivalent of hr to me.

tortoise: “gooseneck” bw “mosquito”. can’t lose with this band. there’s no such thing as a tortoise defeat.

circus lupus: “pop man” bw “let’s talk about luck”. whoo man. borrowed this from someone for awhile then gave it back. thought i’d never hear “pop man” again. such a great song. these dudes were an early nineties dischord band, after the fashion of the crownhate ruin. thing’s probly wrth some money . . .

joan of arc: “many times i’ve mistaken” bw “eventuall, all at once”. this one’s an ultimate act of indulgence on my part: i already own the album these cuts’re from. it’s worth having it on the seventh inch, tho.

ted leo / fiery furnaces: “i’m looking through you” bw “norweigian wood”. it’s awesome. rubber soul cubbers.

elton john: “goodbye yellowbrick road” backed with “young man’s blues”. oh, elton!

wreckless eric: “take the cash” bw “let’s go to the pictures”. this was the find of the day, i think. found it in an ootherwise hopeless looking one dollar bin. it’s really good. from the stiff rcrds days.

ok and then here’s the long players i got:

th guess who: “wild one”

don caballero: “what burns never returns”. havnt hurd much “don cab” but this double elpy was only eight bux, so i decided to go with it. funny, this is the most i spent on a record today. good shit, no?

songs ohia: s/t. havent heard this alby yet, but i love me some molinage. “it’s really good” says my buddy blast wagon, “sounds like he’s sixteen”. awesome.

ronny james dio: “holy diver”. hell. fucking. yes.

buck owens: “open up your heart”

stones: “some girls”. needed a copy of this on vinyl.

ahmad jemal trio: “but not for me”.

total dollars spent? sixty eight. not too shabby, huh?

CASSIDY: “See this? You’re at a disparate junction with reality.”
CASSIDY: “I know, I might climb off the tracks”

- excerpted from an interview with the poet, 1.17.08

let me try the christ grasp.
my penis is meaningless.
words are dead.
let me grasp at christ like a slaughterhouse kid in the birchlight of a cold morning.
or an empty morning.

death, i don’t care about death.
words are dead and i know we’re all nothing but words in the first place so
this must be Afterlife.
this must be fucking heaven.
heaven, i mean. right?

we’re born at dawn;
as the sun rises, we crumple in on ourselves,
we wither and hollows appear two at a time
and after the sun sets we deny death with a ferocity that only the dead can display,
we exude timeless dissonance, and speak as though saying it for the first time.
as though there’s anything unsaid.
as though nobody is born.

but i know all things
i know all these things
these things are simple, embedded in ancestral memory
remember?

i mean, if life forms came to us from the womb of space
from the folds of the universe
from the tea tables of the stars
what would their music sound like?
because, after all, Real Music isn’t aural
isn’t physical or spiritual
it doesn’t lie down to time like some withering bitch
and sure as shit it isn’t words. (because words are dead, remember?)

i really can’t identify with that all the nation seems to be flipping a cold bitch about this bunk ass juno foolishness. for me, she was a sub par movie. the plot exposition, there was something wrong there. as if it moved to fast. or they tried to put too much in there alongside all the precious one liners. whatever it was, it just failed to make me give a damn about it, that plot. and the main character pissed me off. and i don’t like kimya dawson (sorry guys). and all the named dropping of bands i like made me feel kindv dirty. one thing i can’t deny, though, is the charm of micheal cera. can somebody who’s seen him in more than a couple movies tell me whether he’s capable of playing any character other than the one he plays in juno and superbad? i’m pop culture illiterate, here, and kindv want to know whether he’s a one trick pony’r not.

bladd runner kicked all the ass. won’t even get into it. i just love that movie since the beginning of time and til the time when time ends.

my buddy william’s getting back real soon. he just made this album, she’s called “lowlands” and i’ve been loving it. heavy rotation on my tapedeck, it gets. we’re gonna do it up right, put it out as a tape only release, with onea the new ck albs on the flipped side (90 minutes, dogg). and then you’re going to buy it and it’s going to taste GREAT.

speaking of tapes, i’ve been doing a lot of mixtapes recently. but all of them are essentially the same group of songs in different orders. it’s shameful. somethe stuff that’s been mad present on em:

“virginia plain” by roxy music
“we get along” by pajo
“needle in the camel’s eye” by eno
“spanish harlem incident” “dead air” “yr web” and others by silkworm
a buncha unreleased gbv stuff
“so long marianne” by leonard cohen
“man in me” by bob dilban
“walk your way” by the isley’s
“rock and roll with me” by donovan
“barstool blues” by neil young / crayzee horse
“german love” by starfucker
“orion” by kickball
“these days” by the nico-face
“headphones” and “ricochet” by nem lastr trainses

and a buncha other foolesh bully crap. it’s great. i need to start listening to new music, and bad.

instead, i’m listening to old, old music. a gift, it was, for me. a late arriving christmas gift. man oh man this thing is great. it’s really been kicking my ass. with it’s greatness. it’s funny, all my friends who like music in even a slightly-more-than-pedestrian manner, no matter how much they may differ in their tastes, all seem to love american music from the first couple decades of the 20th century. maybe it’s cuz that’s where we come from. maybe it’s the magic of listening to something that was recorded in 1909. who knows. alls i know is i love me some old timey music.

ah jesus. i’ve had the word “pejorative” stuck in my head for the past few days running. maybe it’s time to stop reading artforum magazine. other bits of nonsense from the cavities of my brain: fake person name “jossy clover” and fake band name “puppy shop boys.”

ok so the new magnolia box is awesome. they’re such a great band.

also i’ve been listening to the bob dilban “biograph” box and it’s super swell.

so anyways. there are THREE certain kind albums coming up. that’s right. THREE.

PRIDE OF THE VALLEY: is one i just finished. it’s the rock one, mainly just a three piece configuration. it has something like ten or nine or eleven songs. it’s meant to be like the live incarnation of the band. that one all i have to do is master it.

CLASSY CLASSY: you can read about two posts below.

HIGH LIFE: not sure if this one’ll be a certain kind album, per se, but it will have a lot of my songs and singing an stuff. it’s a collaboration between myself and the many-talented nick hawley-gamer, with both of us writing nd playing. it’s going real well so far.

and in addition, we’re close to releasing the certain kind/anna cordis “tender bird” ep.

so there is much certain kind heading your way, world. be excited.

BWHAHAHAHA!

hells of yes my friends. it is five in the am and i am doing a classic undersix session, just like the old days.

on a whim, at around eleven, i decided it would be a good idea for me to sit down to write and record an album in one sitting, super lofi styl. AND IT WORKED. the album is called “classy classy”. it features such instant classics as “Party II”, “don’t want to eat pulparindo”, “sleepy boy” and “i’m starting to forget what it’s like to have a girlfriend”. all in all the sucker is twenty songs. i ended up throwing on there one that i recorded the other day, so it was only a nineteen song burst, really.

dinosaur – freak scene

the highlights? blast majesty bringing their rock straight to the heart, in that meatpuppets one fashion which we’ve all come to love them for. last trains bringing it straight to the heart with their truly great songs. i know those are the only two bands i ever talk about, but it’s true that they were the standout acts.  in a long lineup of other really good ones. watta show.

it was also largely a personal victory, because our set went really well. i made mistakes, but i feel like this band is the kind where playing well isn’t necessarily the point. cop out or the truth? you decide. but anyway, the basemunt was pretty fulled up, and people were loving it, so it was a good thing. especially because it has been for a long time a dream of mine to front a band, and for that band to inspire thunderous applause in the shady pines basement. also good because, having realized that goal, i’ve seen that it’s not the point, and that the real actual point is a beautiful one: that this eugene basement scene is a great thing full of wonderful people and bands that i love.

ok. sentimental cheese beams off.

plus, the certain kind set featured a version of stand by with lucas gunn on duet vocal guest appearance. how can one go wrong starting a set with that.

SHIT YEAH I’M GETTING REALLY PUMPED THINKING ABOUT THIS. it’s just sinkin in. how pathetic am i, where i wake up at like ten in the morning all like “i know, i’ll blog about last night’s events”. pathetic. shameful. watch this.

oh crap, which brings me to something else. chad dug up in patrick’s sevin inch collection a bonnie billy ep that is incredible and beautiful and the only thing i’ve been listening to.

ok. don’t act stupidly or get a disease.