From the monthly archives: May 2012
Paul Westerberg – AAA: From a collection of free live MP3s available from Paul’s website once upon a time (and possibly still; can’t say I’ve looked in a while). Not my favorite era of the ex-Mat’s front man, but a catchy, speedy tune nevertheless.
Grant Hart – Narcissus, Narcissus: Is this solo artist from Minnesota band morning?
Carter USM – Spoilsports Personality Of The Year: Ever exciting Carter tune.
Pigface – Kiss King (High High High): Sitar rock!
Diamanda Galas – Keigome Keigome: The number of songs with repetitive words (or letters, in one case) in the titles for the Random Eight today is very, very interesting…interesting.
Peter Holsapple and Chris Stamey – Long Time Coming: From there recent (or, at least, not too long ago) poppy release after a nearly two decades lull. No matter how corny their songs get, I’m sure I’ll keep listening.
Quasi – White Devil’s Dream: Another catchy little indie-ish tune.
Regenerator – Don’t Fear The Reaper: With little research, one finds this is a very common song for gothy / industrial bands to cover.
Dreadnots – Dream Time One: Short Robotic Hands of God track.
R.E.M. – Walter’s Theme: One of the catchy, silly tunes from the Dead Letter Office outtakes collection.
Black Dice – Lazy TV: Where as mine is…well, lazy too.
Serena Maneesh – Drain Cosmetics: This is a fun release that I don’t often give much attention to. As I’ve said before, this is one of the few bands that succeeds in trying to capture the My Bloody Valentine Loveless sound.
Rasputina – High on Life: Consistently fun.
The Kinks – Prince of the Punks: Once again, the Random Eight finds the Kinks songs that I seem to never otherwise play.
Love Spit Love – Sweet Thing: Angry Furs.
Roger Miller – Float #517: One of many interesting piano tracks from the MOB guitarist’s solo album, The Benevolent Disruptive Ray.
The House Mouse is doing fine.
Doing a minimal amount of research, I learned that the average lifespan of a mouse is about 4 months, and often much less. It seems cartoon housewives and aren’t the only creatures that don’t care for the critters, and it appears only cartoon cats are the only predators who can’t capture and kill the poor things. There are even some insects that can take out a mouse, which certainly would give my allegiance pause if I ever had to choose between the two in battle.
According to the same awful looking website that could only be developed by a scientist, the longest known lifespan of a mouse, in captivity and generally free from harm, is four years. But still, the average is about 12 months at best.
I don’t remember the exact date we captured our guy, but I’d guess he has been in our custody just under a year now. Certainly, getting all chubby on cashews, I wouldn’t be surprised if health issues related to obesity might kick in eventually. But on the whole, he seems healthy, if not for need of running on one of his exercise wheels a bit more often.
A crazy person might think he chewed a heart in his TP tube for us. Good thing nobody is crazy in this house.
Tool – Intension: Low, plodding, and slow, not quite building up to the level of mania one might expect from Tool.
The dB’s – Moving In Your Sleep: In other news, the dB’s have a new album soon to be released!
The Crystal Method – Wild, Sweet and Cool: Bouncing up the morning.
Merzbow – Paradoxa Paradoxa Pt. 2 : 25 minutes of random noise from an early live recording.
Kinks – Superman: I fear if it weren’t for the Random Eight, I’d never hear the host of Kinks songs I have on the iPod.
Smart Went Crazy – Love Goes Blank: A bit manic, and a bit quiet.
Sonic Youth – NYC Ghosts & Flowers: A Ranaldo poem-to-music-to-crazed-feedbacky-guitar-stuff tune.
Talking Heads – What A Day That Was: Probably the most normal tune of the morning.
Otters weren’t the only animals being silly at the zoo last week.
Clint Mansell & Kronos Quartet – Tense: Short tune from the great Requiem For A Dream soundtrack.
The Replacements – Darlin’ One: Fading days from the best band ever, but I still dig every song.
Beequeen – On The Road to Everywhere: Fun five minutes of strange.
Venetian Snares – Aaperture: Slightly more mellow than the typical heavy drum beats this fellow produces.
Cursive – I Couldn’t Love You: But I’m not asking him too.
Bob Geldof – Silly Pretty Thing: Still doing silly pop after all these years.
DJ Shadow – Walkie Talkie: Fun tune, very fast beats.
Ministry – Psalm 69: Ending the Random Eight loud and angry.
And this was around 8 in the morning.
On a trip to the Zoo this morning, a very kind caretaker informed me that the newly acquired Otters were going to be on display for about one hour to begin their acclimation to their new habitat. A small handful of those in the know, including me, waited patiently for the critters to arrive.
And arrive they did.
When asked if the otters ever slow down, the caretaker said they have two speeds: stop and fast. And fast they were. It didn’t take long to realize I needed to have a very fast shutter speed if I wanted something more than a furry blur for each shot.
When young, the otters travel in packs almost exclusively, even to the point of walking over each other. It was beyond comical watching the parade of even otters race all over the habitat.
For as goofy as the otters look in the shots, the pictures really don’t capture how crazy they were. Everything broke loose when they hit the water.
The Soft Boys – I Wanna Destroy You: Classic Hitchcock tune.
Gaudi + Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan – Bethe Bethe Kese Kese: Very dub with Nusrat’s vocals meshing in well.
David Holmes – No Man’s Land: From the Pi soundtrack, a moody track from one of my favorite movies.
Archers of Loaf – Backwash: Yeah Archers!
Robert Jan De Neeve – A.F.: Short collection of beeps and boops from the anthology of Dutch Electronic Tape Music.
Talking Heads – Found A Job: Good for him.
The Fiery Furnaces – 1917: Back to the weird.
The Beta Band – The House Song: Bouncy house.
Contemplating Silent Wishes
Contemplating Silent Wishes, the second release from Fertanish, presents minimalist, experimental rhythms and sounds that patiently travel through a complicated and mesmerizing composition.
Zero Zero Three
Stray
