Out of Egypt:

(had a title(for this))

Radiohead last night was absolutely incredible. I couldn't stop analyzing their music afterward in the post-concert euphoria (and traffic), but, during the concert, I was immersed in sight, sound, and movement.

My greatest point of pride from the night was that I managed to shut up both a) the people who were (try to) clap on each beat on "Kid A," and b) a drunk college kid behind me who was trying to sing along to "Reckoner" and was vastly off-pitch. In truth, I don't think "Kid A" is in 5/4, as my comment suggested. But something about the feel of the song disguises that it is in 4/4. I think it has something to do with the accents on the phrase played by the music box.

Don't let anyone tell you otherwise: Radiohead's interpretations of their songs are better live than on the CD. Or maybe it's just listening to them now on my trebly laptop speakers that pales by comparison.

finally some indie rockers with real working-class cred

Meet Port O'Brien - a husband & wife team who spend their summers in Alaska fishing and baking.

dance party tonight in central sq.

I love spontaneously busting a groove under the spiraling lights illuminating Cambridge Town Hall.

Oh, and reading my poetry at CtK was good too :)

last fm knows all

matt brown: master of the pop hook, skillful web marketer, my friend

Question: What do you do when you run out of space to promote your music on your MySpace?

Answer: Get four MySpaces.

Matt Brown, whom I have had the pleasure of knowing for over 10 years, is working on a new album with his band Third Lobby, and I am psyched. For two reasons: 1) The production values seem better even than his last album, which was quality. 2) He's branching out and trying new things with his songs (I understand that ), and I like the direction he's going.

• Third Lobby MySpace
• Matt Brown & the Scenics (side project)
• Matt Brown/Third Lobby in Progress
• More Secret Songs (from the upcoming third album)

I love that Matt is posting his new-song mixes in order of production. It's a great way to: a) Build hype for the new album and b) Give an inside look into the band's creative process.

sweet melancholy from my morning jacket

"I needed it most, when I was eighteen.
But now that I'm older, I don't need many things.
Just someone to hold, that's what you give me."

I listen to At Dawn and I dream of the Lancaster County backroads, and the Chattanooga mountains, and all the past that is forever past.

you owe it to yourself...

to listen to Dr. Dog's "Keep a Friend." Last.fm has the full track.

Now is it just me or does this sound like mid- to late-period Beatles? Truly some of the best pop songwriting (and arranging) in a while.

amazing classical music composers poster

This timeline is comprehensive. Check it out by clicking on the ad on this article: Young Composer Fung Lam.

love the nec

Always tastefully matching contemporary composers with old favorites. It's become a highlight of my mid-week. Now if I can only find time to hear Messaien sometime this month...

last.fm has full tracks now

It's like a legal version of radio.blog.club. Now I not only get the wisdom-of-crowds bliss of their recommendations radio (see my sidebar, below, for a sample), I get to hear exactly what I want when I want. Until they make me start paying for it, at least.

discovered a new Boston radio station yesterday

Last night I tuned my car radio dial to 90.3, a station I'd previously received only intermittently. They have an interesting format - about a half-and-half mix of musiqué concréte and free jazz/fusion, at least from what I've heard so far. Clanging gongs, chiming clocks, keyboard solos.

I remember talking with someone about the station when I was at the Architecture in Helsinki show a few months back. He said it came out of Boston College, I believe, which would explain the fade in the signal. But with the kind of music (sound?) they play it doesn't really matter; the static sounds like part of the composition.

Christmas music purchases for self

Bought the new Spoon and Camera Obscura albums off iTunes last night. Highly recommended.

Leaving for PA in a few hours. Looking forward to it.

friendly marketing tip

If you want people to think your movie is hip, don't use "Bad to the Bone" in the teaser trailer soundtrack. That said, the movie looks like it might possibly be good, if it recognizes style can't replace substance.

when you think of great American composers, who comes to mind?

Aaron Copland? John Phillip Sousa? Charles Ives?

Me, I'm thinking William Billings. I've got to give Lowell Mason credit for "Joy to the World," but I can't forgive him and his peers for pushing a vital tradition of American music to the margins. (Make sure to scroll to the bottom of the page for samples of Billings' work.)

and am i born to die?

Now this is a documentary I want to see. Sacred harp may be my favorite type of religious music. It's certainly the most honest and the most impassioned.

stockhausen, ii

Say what you will about Stockhausen's music, his scores are awesome.

Since I first encountered them in high school, I have been fascinated by 20C classical scores as a new form of visual art. I would provide links to some of the scores I have loved; unfortunately, they all seem to be for sale. So I'll just say I especially like the ones with bright colors and triangular swaths of sound. Cliché as it may be to say, Stockhausen was ahead of his time. In the 21C, we all notate sounds, not just notes.

el amor nos desgarrara de nuevo

Ian Curtis's tragic beauty.

The Incomparable Max Roach

minimal movement, maximal sound

Unrelatedly, I'm wondering why YouTube even has comments.

and it did...

It was a good day. I spent most of the day at work making some changes to the new site layout, which was a refreshing change from the confusion of SEO and site promotions. I enjoy things which take complete focus and which can be completed according to a checklist.

Project management, here I come. So glad to know that I want to pursue a career in communications. Guess I can no longer say it's not my place in the 9-to-5 world.

Of course, the real highlight of my day - what kept me going for hours of Dreamweaver drudgery - was the string chamber ensemble concert at the NEC. The Conservatory's free concert series is truly one of Boston's little-known cultural treasures. I am forever indebted to my friend Dan for putting me in the know - especially since the NEC is having a Steve Reich mini-festival Nov. 28-29. I know at least one person who I can expect to see there...

Until tonight, I had never seen a string chamber ensemble perform live. It was definitely an experience for all the senses (well, maybe not smell or taste...). Seeing the full-body approach that the players took to their instruments was arresting. Some of the ways they moved - especially the violinists - looked quite intense, almost painful. It was like watching a film at several rates simultaneously. While the violinists and violists moved through some quick bowing passages, the double bassist maintaining a languid pace, hitting long sustained pizzicato notes like a metronome. The cellists, in turn, alternated between filling in the bottom and ornamenting the melody with crystalline arpeggiations.

And there was no conductor. The musicians followed each other's signals - exchanging glances, raising eyebrows. At the close of each movement, you could almost feel the ensemble take a breath.

It was refreshing to be present for such an intimate performance. During the intermission, I wandered around Jordan Hall, looking at the various posters advertising other concerts and watching the conservatory students mill about. They have a difficult life, I'm sure, but somehow its circumscribed nature appeals to me right now. At least for a season, the structure and discipline of the arts might be a pleasant contrast from the chaos of urban ministry.

for all you pop music fans out there in blog-land

Did you know you can browse the Billboard number ones in the U.S. from 1940 to the present on Wikipedia?

This is what Wikipedia really excels at - pop culture ephemera. I could spend days looking at this, not to mention buying the songs online. My childhood dreams (some of them anyway) are coming true.

join the ticketmaster live group on facebook & get 5 free songs on itunes

Ok, so I actually hate Ticketmaster. But I have to admit, 5 free songs on iTunes is a sweet deal.

Here's what I got:

1. Runaround Sue
2. Take Good Care of My Baby
3. In the Still of the Night
4. Mad World
5. Can't Take My Eyes Off You

A good deal, imo.

How much did you pay?

I paid £7.45 (counting the 45p transaction cost).

the saddest farewell

"But you said you knew, and I took your word."

response to Sarah's thesis (a tentative attempt to situate music theory within the broader context of media theory)

Interested in how the categories of "high" and "low" art interact in contemporary critical discourse? Check out Sarah's thesis on the concept of "avant rock" as exemplified in the music of the Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, and three contemporary bands: Animal Collective, the Fiery Furnaces, and the Strokes.

Though I haven't read the whole paper yet, it seems quite possible that cross-overs and mergings of genre will become increasingly prominent parts of the musical landscape, as part of the transition from modernism to postmodernism. Following McLuhan, I would want to connect this shift in dominant artistic style not simply to a shift in the philosophical framework through which people view the world, but, more fundamentally, to a shift in the "master media" of our culture.

(I follow McLuhan in believing that "media work us over completely" (Medium 26) and so, therefore, shifts in media - defined broadly as the "extensions of [humanity]" - are the driving force behind shifts in worldview. Possibly, however, it might be more accurate to say that shifts in worldview and shifts in media/technology mutually influence each other, since humans, as incarnate beings, are externally situated like animals but are also internally oriented, possessing self-consciousness. We make the world over in our image, even as our image become defined through interaction with the world. I am indebted to both Christian theology and Lakoff's thought for this account of human existence.)

As I argued in my undergrad thesis, the "master media" of our time is hypertext, which contrasts in its collage-style rhetoric (a rhetoric of expanding spaces and tentative relationships) to the linear-argument rhetoric of print media. McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy, though it predates the advent of hypertext, exemplifies this collage style, as it attempts to present an argument through juxtaposition of key texts, historical figures, and incidents, rather than through strict deductive logic. McLuhan's text is more allusive than the conventional monograph - cool communication vs. hot communication. The work of making meaning is shifted over, in greater measure, to the reader.

A parallel could be made to the alternative reading of music history which John Cage offers (cf. pp. 25-28 of Sarah's thesis). In The Gutenberg Galaxy, McLuhan sets himself a paradoxical task: to present the development of media as a dialectical progression by juxtaposing key moments in media history rather than by giving a chronological account. In this way, he hopes to reveal similarities between oral and electronic culture - the two media cultures which bookend his account - that might otherwise go unnoticed. Similarly, John Cage's reading of music history relies upon simultaneity and contrast of seemingly antithetical elements/styles in order to escape the Enlightenment narrative of progress, in which each composer built upon the work of predecessors.

Atonality, as practiced by Schoenberg and Webern, represented the end of that road. The Modernist composers created serialism as a means to overcome the hegemony of common practice Western harmony, which had already been pushed to the breaking point by composers such as Wagner. Following that, there was nothing new than could be done short of overcoming the opposition between the sound of "art music" and sound in general. Thus, Cage and his avant-garde contemporaries engaged in a process of breaking down boundaries, variously making use of chance elements and borrowings from popular or jazz music in their compositions.

In McLuhan's terms, this artistic approach is characteristic of oral culture, or, at the least, manuscript culture, rather than the typographic culture in which common-practice Western music flourished. Aleatoric music could be compared to the process of textual transmission in manuscript culture, insofar as "the reader [(performer)] [is] literally involved as producer" (McLuhan Galaxy 120). Genre hybridization, on the other hand, is more characteristic of oral culture, "a small world of...total interdependence, and superimposed co-existence" (44) in which artists are involved in a perpetual process of re-visioning, simultaneously interacting with the totality of the tradition in which they were enculturated as well as with the community of their peers.

The constantly hybridizing space of electronic culture is different from oral culture in two key respects, however. First, artists in electronic culture, as they draw their influences, are not limited by place or traditional cultural loyalties. If there is a village, it is a global village. Tradition is ecumenical, rather than narrowly familial or tribal.

Second, the new orality is an orality informed by and mediated through writing. Hypertext and other forms of electronic communication are not text in the same way that printed texts are. They occupy a kind of "middle space" between pure speech and conventional writing, since they are occasional and transitory - more conversational in tone, more easily revised, more easily placed in relation to other texts. As has often been said, hypertext is postmodern theory (a la Saussure and the semiotic web, Derrida and "free play") made visible. Sarah's thesis leads me to believe contemporary music shows much of the same dynamic.

Now I believe it would be fascinating to extend Sarah's thesis into the realm of popular music's borrowings from non-Western music, making the argument that much of contemporary music strives not only to transcend the high art/low art opposition but the native/foreign opposition. Both dynamics can be seen in the work of Animal Collective, for example. In fact, the latter dynamic comes across to me even more strikingly, as I am more familiar with "world music" than I am with the "avant garde."

All that to say - an excellent paper. I have learned a lot from it, and I want to learn more.

"Sunshine, Love Everlasting"

So some of you may not be familiar with Sun Ra yet. Well, he's amazingly eclectic, having recorded with his Arkestra since the '50s, I believe, all the way until his death in the early '90s. This song below sounds little like the Sun Ra record I have, being more "spacey" and electronic, and lacking the free ensemble soloing which I associate with the Arkestra. Still, it's an introduction, thanks to the free streaming site Sarah found.

And if you liked that, you'll love this: (or at least you will if you have tastes like me)

Here's a song by one of my favorite bands of late high school: (not the song I wanted to link, but it was the best one they had)

And here's a song by one of my favorite bands that my friend Matt introduced me to: (again, not the one I wanted, but it was their big single)

Finally, here's a few more for the road: (wish these were more convenient to link)

Sun Ra Arkestra

(minus its deceased leader, sadly)

at the Philadelphia Ethical Society, New Year's Eve. I'm excited.

Well, here's the description from Philadelphia Weekly. The $45 price tag is a little steep but the fact that it's supposed to go for 5 hours piques my interest.

Sun Ra Arkestra The Sun Ra Arkestra presents a night of eclectic, outrageous, mystifying and powerful jazz under the direction of Marshall Allen. 8pm-1am. $45. Philadelphia Ethical Society, 1906 S. Rittenhouse Sq. 215.735.3456

your own personal dj

Pandora.com. Its recommendations seem good so far. Link from Slashdot.

I'm listening to music; I'm in my world now

Earbuds sprout over the campus like dandelions. I wave at someone; she passes, oblivious. Music, through iPod's mediation, is her world.

Linnea nails this trend. The other day Emily Belz referenced one of my favorite parts of Pascal's Pensees, which I find quite relevant. The Pensees were never finally ordered, so I can't find the exact part that I want, but this seems to be the general sense of it:

139. When I have occasionally set myself to consider the different distractions of men, the pains and perils to which they expose themselves at court or in war, whence arise so many quarrels, passions, bold and often bad ventures, etc., I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber. A man who has enough to live on, if he knew how to stay with pleasure at home, would not leave it to go to sea or to besiege a town. A commission in the army would not be bought so dearly, but that it is found insufferable not to budge from the town; and men only seek conversation and entering games, because they cannot remain with pleasure at home.

Walker Percy, if I've understood The Last Self-Help Book correctly, would say this is because we, when faced with the essential nullity of our being, the vacuole of self, that nullity whose depth we cannot comprehended, we are astounded and dismayed. And so we seek diversion from ourselves by whatever means we can. I, a man of words blowing in the wind, as I wrote of myself in a recent poem, seek it through blogging and other ways in which I can clothe my non-self in the trappings of thought. Others, more easily and simply, seek it through music. I, too, at times find myself absorbed in song. And sometimes I feel as if that were a form of praise. But when is it me singing and when am I simply lost?

A revelation!

So I was listening to Billy Bragg and Wilco's "Mermaid Avenue" (Vols. 1 & 2) an hour or so ago. Wow. Woody Guthrie is a better lyricist than I could've imagined. I may even like him better than Dylan - we'll see. Metaphorical at times yet able to punch you in the gut with his directness and political indignation.

Matt Brown and J. Tingle are writing a new song. I think it might one of his best yet. Mellow.

Anyway, back to the philosophy website that ate my life....

(btw, this has been my leap-year entry - we're up to 366, baby!)

testimonial

OK, so I've been listening to the Quiet Ones' most recent album, and I confess: I'm a believer. "Isabel" has one of the most "inspiring" hooks I've heard recently. It's almost as good recorded as it is live.

One critical comment, though: the vocals seemed turned up too high, or the singer was strained, or both. Production seems rushed except for a few songs.

More critical/appreciative thoughts later, if one of the Tottens happens upon this and cares to hear them.

Consumed by love

Quote (paraphrased) from Linnea, after the Folk Festival: "I saw you sitting over on the trashcan. The way some people look during worship music, that was how you looked just then."

Yeah, music does that to me. Music, memory, and reading others' recorded thoughts. I'm sitting down here in the Cave (Bagpipe office), wishing I had more to do, thinking about people I know and used to know and wishing that I could hit the road tonight instead of Saturday, just go off down that thin strip of interstate into the stars.

Elliott Smith depresses some people. Strangely, he does the opposite to me. Just as "NYC" by Interpol will always remind me of the Bowery trip last fall break (in ways which I should someday write about), "Bled White" from XO reminds me of Chicago from the Wheaton Philosophy Conference. Alanna, if you're reading this, I remember when you photographed me and David Katzman rolling on the beach at the edge of the Great Lake (whichever one that is, I'm terrible at geography).

I sit here, rocking back and forth. Time is passing away, as is care.

What do you think of the Blade Runner soundtrack?

You know, the one by Vangelis...?

Bright Eyes and their ilk

...for wallpapering my mind with pleasant melancholy when I feel the sexual tension of youth. Is it indulgent? Probably. Counterproductive? Hence my Lenten pledge - to listen to Machaut's Messe de Notre Dame, etc. and learn to find that place of perfect unity, where I rest with Christ in whom "all sweetness is and no bitterness" ("I Praise Thee Who My Sure Redeemer Art").

Musicology can be fun!

When it's Alan Pollack's Notes on the Beatles. Ridiculously comprehensive.

300^th Entry: One of my favorite sacred harp songs is...

"While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks" - no, not the one you sing in church. This is the rough and ready, fast-paced fuging tune. I wish I had a sample for you, but to hear a (extremely raw) version of it, get "White Spirituals from the Sacred Harp," recorded by Alan Lomax.

Anyway, as you probably know, the first verse is:

While shepherds watched their flocks by night All seated on the ground The angel of the Lord came down And glory shone around

Well, I wrote a second verse, not remembering that in the "normal" version of it, there already is one. Anyway, I kind of like mine better. Here it is:

They said, "To men goodwill And on the earth be peace From nature's King glad tidings bring Begin and never cease."

So, yes, I went to sacred harp tonight

And it was sweet. There are some really friendly people on Sand Mtn., despite the bad rap that it's gotten, with racism and snake handling and all.

Really powerful singing. Raw beauty - I wish people felt their singing like that in our Reformed churches.

It just gets better and better

Reading journal entries on the instability of texts in postmodern literary theory (Eco) while listening to the eminently stable, yet ever-regenerating "text" of Bach's Goldberg Variations, with the lights off - academia doesn't get much better than this...

I wish my blog could be read as the counterpunctual voices of "persons who conversed together as in a select company."

This link is for me: Cyberspace, Hypertext, and Critical Theory Web, but you can go there too.

Guess who had CHAM today?

Once again, I say, Guillaume de Machaut is the man.

And MIDIs are weird. Although I used to have a program that turned them into musical scores. That was cool...until I accidentally deleted it.

Room cleanup 2004: the soundtrack

A bit random, but it was what I wanted to hear at the time (and what was easily accessible on ITunes).

• The Beatles, "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?"
• Bob Dylan, "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right
• Some DJ Shadow song
• Johnny Cash: "The Man Comes Around," "Hurt," "Bridge over Troubled Water," the "damn your eyes" song, "We'll Meet Again"
• The Decembrists, 5 Songs EP
• Neutral Milk Hotel, "In the Aeroplane over the Sea"
• The first half of Belle and Sebastian's Dear Catastrophe Waitress
• The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper's
• The Beatles, "I'm Looking Through You"
• Cat Stevens, "Father & Son" and some songs from Teaser and the Firecat
• Creedence Clearwater Revival: "Susie Q," "Bad Moon Rising," "Green River," "Commotion," "Down on the Corner"

Don't ask me how I can remember all that. And don't ask me why Led Zeppelin didn't make it in there for at least one song - "The Ocean" has to be one of my favorite songs ever. Elliott Smith would've made it in but he's a little too low-key for serious cleaning.

Music, running, and the pleasure of pain

(or "Why Am I Happiest in a Minor Key?")

For some reason, "How to Disappear Completely" - with its exquisite longing, denial of existence - is irrevocably associated in my mind with a cross-country meet my junior year. The album had only recently come out. It was a frigid day and we were set to run against Manheim Township. The bus was warm as I settled into my musical cocoon, bare Lancaster County farms greyflying past. Then into the chill, the starting line, engagement of the race - around, around, numbing limbs, shortness of breath. Worst race of my life. And yet somehow made pleasurable by the music to which it had been set. The pleasure of pain.

That is the counterweight to the statement I made earlier in the poem "Why I Dance." Requisite to the pleasure of this desire (which is what brings me delight in music) is that it be unfulfilled. C.S. Lewis talked about sehnsucht but I think this is something different which doesn't fit so neatly into Christian apologetics. It is a desire for this world, not another. It is a desire for alienation, a desire that the world be broken...in order that it might be a fit subject for art. Sometimes that's better than beauty. There's never a plot without a conflict, and good is often known only in absence. (Absence can be presence, can't it?)

That's why Wallace Stevens' question still haunts me. "Will ripe fruit hang forever from the vine?" In this world, death is the mother of beauty. Eternality is terrifying if it means the absence of change. And change, to us, is inconceivable apart from insufficiency, limitation, imperfection.

life, good and bad

I like earplugs; they're like a personal pocket-sized EQ.

I don't like people who don't know to shut up when bands are playing at a show. Even if it were Joey James and the Vomit Patrol, I still wouldn't have a conversation over them. Unless it was a coffeeshop and the people came with the intention of being background music. Which I never understood.

I really don't like the idea of writing a 7-page Contemporary Lit paper entirely on Monday (well, into Tuesday morning technically). Hopefully this won't be an all-nighter, but that seems likely. 3 this semester - that would definitely be record. (This isn't a sign of greater difficulty in my classes, I think - just greater irresponsibility on my part.) And finals are still weeks away. Over Thanksgiving, I shall get my act together. I have a funny feeling it all starts with laundry...

Song lyric that characterizes my life: "I've been making those to-do lists, but nothing gets crossed out." - Bright Eyes

an appeal to matt serfass

Listen to Brother Danielson and enter the world of obscure Christian indie rock. I think you'll like it.

Mmm

The Shins...defining romance.

Why was Halloween tonight? Isn't it Oct. 30?

My favorite Halloween images stem from Donnie Darko.

Sun Ra...what I forgot to mention

Oh, I forgot to say: when I was in New York, I was staying on Bowery St., 3 blocks from CBGB's and Joey Ramone Place. If I had done anything touristy like take pictures, it would've been of that. Anyway, while I was there I fulfilled one of my life's ambitions: I picked up a Sun Ra record for $8 at a little record store a few blocks from the Mission. Sure, side B is the only side that plays, but come on, it's Sun Ra: it doesn't matter. And maybe I can get the crap off side A somehow. Does anyone know how to clean records?

So this is an open invitation: anyone who wants to hear my record, come talk to me and we'll head up to the Five Pts. commons sometime. At least until First Belz gets a record player. Because we're going to. Because despite what they say, we've got soul.

McKay Finds? or Failures?

I put some new things on the ITunes today: first, the Swingle Singers' Anyone for Mozart, Bach, Handel, Vivaldi (one of my more expensive McKay purchases at $8.95) and second, a John Coltrane disk called Immortal Concerts: Juan Les Pins Jazz Festival which, for a mere $4.95, includes A Love Supreme, Impressions, and Naima.

I'm listening to the second right now. At first, I was surprised by how faithful it seemed to the original performance of ALS, but now that I'm in the solo section, I recognize a good bit more atonality. (Some truly atrocious and unnecessary wailing.) McCoy Tyner doesn't seem to be in top form either - he's a little more sedate and less creative in his chord choices than he was on the studio recording. And Elvin Jones' drum solo: what was he thinking? I guess this is why the album ended up at McKay.

But try out the Swingles' album. It's one of the highlights of the Bach crossover craze that rocked the 60s. Although the novelty of hearing acapella (or nearly so - bass and drums accompany) jazz renditions of classical tunes can wear off, as the du-du-du's become saccharine sweet, it's at least worth your browsing. (Whether it was worth my buying is another matter, I suppose.)

Still for me to find: Sun Ra, which is what I really had gone in search of. And Martin Denny's Exotic Moog.

Footnote: Writing this entry has been quite difficult simply because this version of ALS is so jarring. The meditative quality of the original performance just isn't there, I'd say.

Electronic Music, Anyone?

Dagen forgot to mention the most important thing about Ishkur's ridiculously comprehensive guide to electronic music. It has samples.

If you don't recognize any of the songs on his list, then you've been deaf for the last 20 years.

After spending about an hour at the site and only hearing about 1/4 of the samples, I decided I'd like to know what everyone's favorite genre is. As for me, I'm torn between what he calls "turntablism," dub, or just straight-up synthpop.

Feel the Power of Rock and Roll

All right, so I'm sharing on ITunes now. Name: Donovan's Discoveries. And why do I choose to start sharing now? Two words: Wesley Willis.

Who was Wesley Willis, you ask? Well, the short answer would be "a 350-pound paranoid schizophrenic who wrote and sung songs such as Rock and Roll McDonald's, Cut the Mullet, and I Whupped Batman's Ass." For the long answer, I direct you to the following: Alternative Tentacles (one of the many labels which have released his stuff), Wesley Willis Obituary.

Oh, and you can find that Shaggs song on there, too.

Next on my list of artists to locate online: Sun Ra and Martin Denny. Those in the know know who I mean.

Outsider Music

If anyone wants to hear is arguably one of the worst songs ever written, head down to Founders room 116 sometime. I don't think I've ever gotten a hangover from music before - wow. It's like whisky for the soul.

In the Interest of Randomness

G. Love and Special Sauce really kicks out the jams. I remember a few years back chillin' in my biker friend's basement watching a video of Taj Michelech doing the longest wheelie I've ever seen. And in the background, "I like cool beverages...stick it in the fridge, stick it in the fridge." Now, thanks to ITunes, I can relive that momemt.

Also, reading this interview made me feel smarter. I wish I could be that articulate on the fly.

A Musical Taxonomy

Once again, my friend Matt impresses me with the startling similarity in our taste in music, as he divides music he likes into the following categories: Ridiculously Affecting I (words/music), Ridiculously Affecting II (music), Get Up and Boogie, Wisdom I (subtlety), and Wisdom II (wit). I never would've thought of it that way, but I agree.

A nomination for the Ridiculously Affecting I category, "Waltz #2" by Elliot Smith.

Am I the only person to whom Radiohead's OK Computer is comforting as an fuzzy blanket on a foggy night?