So, not really a post, although I do want to write about some of these songs I have selected for this years GoM over at songfight.
My favorite metal song. Really takes you on a journey, and there is a lot to re-interpret in terms of atmosphere and structure.
Butthole Surfers - Pittsburgh to Lebanon:
My favorite band of all time. One of the most disgustingly slimy and unsettling deconstructions of the classic blues riff conceived by man. And Gibby's gleefully twisted vocals seal the deal.
Darkthrone - Skald Av Satans Sol
Not my favorite black metal band, but probably the easiest to re-interpret. The riff on this track is bombastic as fuck.
Townes van Zandt - Waitin' Round to Die:
Perhaps the definitive Townes track. Heartbreaking in every way.
Picked up Pig Destroyer's new album yesterday. This is the one that people will be recommending to you in 15 years, saying things like "Oh man, like every band out there now is just copying these guys." Total brutality, this surpasses not only everything else in Pig Destroyer's already solid catalogue, but most of what is going on in metal right now. It is essential listening. Here is a taste:
The most depressing literature on my shelves, even trumping The World According to Garp by John Irving. So many memories of people I knew were happy in a time in which I refused to be. And yet the most depressing part is that it was easier to be happy then than it is now.
Man, this Deerhunter shit is one of the best records I've heard in a fuckin' while. Classic Kraut-inflected 80s avant-guitar workouts, mixed up with shimmering, thick ambient workouts, balanced out with a second side of exuberant, noisy pop bliss. Could this begin a resurgence of Georgian geniuses?
Parents out of town for a week+some, then another week housesitting at
the Cretcher's giant mountain mansion. Should be a sweet half of a
month, hanging out and enjoying the solitude, climbing and bouldering
around Cretcher Canyon, and hopefully playing some noisy, abrasive shit
I couldn't otherwise get away with. It's just what I need right now,
really.
I'm really into music theory since we've gotten past just enharmonic chords, into cool shit like secondary chords, augmented sixths, borrowed chords and the mythical Neapolitan. Too bad I still don't have the willpower or (moreso) the self-confidence to ever finish anything I start to write. If I genuinely want to be a composer I should probably start doing that.
I want a long vacation, skiing and bouldering, relaxing with some beers
and playing some music and having a good time. Of course, now that I
have some money to actually do that, I'm busy working all the time and
can't really get out. O, the eternal paradox.
Been re-reading Get In The Van by Rollins lately. That shit is fucking intense, in a far different way than the man's fictional work. The world sure seems a lot more fucked up through the eyes of those journals.
It's nice to have money. I started climbing at the gym again, three
out of the last four days.
It's wearing me out in the best way I could hope for. My strength and
stamina are way better than I expected them to be after what was, with
the exception of a few isolated days, a 2 month layoff from climbing.
And even after just three trips, I've noticed huge improvements in my
route-solving skills and overall body positioning and movement. I'm
sending V1s after just a couple of tries, way better than I could do a
few months back, and I'm pretty close to ticking a couple of V2s. Plus,
I've met a few
cool people there, including an English guy named Pete, out for his
first day of climbing ever, who had visited Spain, Portugal, France and
Mexico before coming to Tucson to stay for a month. Sorry man, I don't
know if we can match any of those places. Not unless you like drugs,
depression and shitty old west gift shops. This town's a fucking
tourist trap draped in a meth haze.
I spend too much time on the internet. I think I might quit it for a while.
Fuckin' Meat Puppets, what a great band. At least SOMETHING good came out of Arizona.
Lately I feel like shit - my head is cluttered, my body feels sluggish and my spirit seems to be just plain missing. I think it's from a compounding of starting to eat meat again, sacrificing (deliberately, involuntarily or through neglect) many of my closest and longest-held activities and interests, and an almost total lack of direction or invective in life. Thus I have resolved to eat better (meaning less processed food and less meat, or no meat at all), to resume climbing (an activity involuntarily disrupted by unemployment and thus lack of money), and (WITHIN ONE MONTH) to get myself accepted to a fucking real college that will be exciting and challenging unlike this Pima CC "spoonfed education" bullshit. I'm sick of being surrounded by morons. Finding a better job than Jamba Juice (seriously, FUCK that place) would be great too.
Luke, I hate to say it but I realized lately that some of DIPLOMACHT's riffs really rip off Melvins. Not necessarily a bad thing.
Nick Cave
Seamus Heaney
TH White
Ennio Morricone
Dylan Carlson
Paul Selig
Louis Pasteur
Bryan Singer
Kurosawa
Jon Brion
Jasper Johns
Edvard Munch
Werner Herzog
Frank Zappa
David Lynch
Isaac Henley
Benjamin Inouye
Andrew Ryder
I am not on this (incomplete) list, and it wasn't until tonight that I realized I never would be.
The track to the left is my latest obsession, an unclassifiable Dylan Carlson riff(FFFFFFFFF)-fest that pretty accurately suits my frame of mind lately. I feel like I'm living on geologic time - weeks, months, years, decades mean nothing, as every day is just a fraction of a larger motion, a microscopic sliver of a grander scenario. I am progressing so slowly that my developmental movement is impossible to chart. Shit just piles up, a couple inches a year, until a thousand years off the growth is enough to notice, if you attempt to look hard enough. Such is the feeling of living in a desert.
I realized today that I'm a passive activist and an active pacifist. What wonderfully witty wordplay.
So kudos to Tim Green, Fucking Champs bandleader, Nation of Ulysses guitarist, AND friend and sometimes producer of Ben Chasny and his Six Organs of Admittance project! Three strikes, you're awesome!
I'm kind of dreading going back to school and have this terrible feeling that this semester will be as bad as the first one (pretty bad). But anyway. I found a mix CD from an old friend of mine and it's put me in this whole mood that really makes me hate nostalgia. It's a fucking great mix, too.
That said, TRAGEDIES. I stayed up till 6am watching Kenneth Branagh's Frankenstein adaptation last night and I must read the book, because it's easily one of the best tragedies of all time.
Branagh is amazing, as an actor and director. This movie seemed to rush at first, but it became completely dizzying and just delirious and epic. And HORRIFIC. I had no idea just how deep and dark the story went. Frankenstein's monster isn't some superhuman vegetable like he's popularly portrayed now: he's a deep thinker, he is focused and eloquent. And he is about 500 kinds of tortured. That DeNiro could play this all so well as a giant limping corpse just blew me away. Anyway, I also obviously was unfamiliar with the original story of Frankenstein, which I deeply regret now. I'll borrow it from Wren I guess.
In addition! I finally got some clean recordings of Bedemon - side project of
members of Pentagram. This shit is incredible.
