Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles ...

These Days

Nico. I stopped in a coffee shop on Sunday after a post rainy walk and they were playing 'Chelsea Girl'. I love a lot of moments on this album. But 'These Days' is the perfect moment. Perhaps one of my favorite songs ever. Belle and Sebastian took everything they could steal from this album. This is a sad film someone made in Berlin for 'These Days', life running by too fast through a grey-lit world. But really this is the kind of song you have to close your eyes for.

Gonna use my arms...

How did I forget about Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders? Look at those bangs! Those eyes! Those goofs!

Queen Jane Approximately

Out of tune guitars, all the drums on the right channel, the organ and upright piano, song arrangement slapped together in one hour/day... I can't get enough of this song, today. Doesn't that piano at the beginning just make you feel you're going to have the time of yr life? And then the organ coming in with that voice.

Someone knows how to rock all the iMovie effects. I'm sending pix to whoever made this video and getting them to do mine.

True Affection

In my own (very minutely important) opinion, The Blow's take on the troubles and tribulations of what it's like to be a little neurotic and in love is the most honest since the hey day of the girl group era. This track of hers, called "True Affection," makes me feel sad every time I hear it. It's her treatise on what it feels like when you realize that even if you and some other person love each other very much, it doesn't mean everything is going to work out, and it's pretty spot on. "True affection floats/true affection sinks like a stone/I never felt so close/I never felt so all alone." I also love its references to how being love being like sinking underwater with someone. I wish she was still performing the songs she made with Jonas Becholt.

Homegirl

I feel like I need to make a memo to all the music listeners in the world. Or just do an old fashioned megaphone broadcast:
HEY YOU GUYS! THAT THAO RECORD? IT IS A-M-A-Z-I-N-G! YEAH, IT'S GREAT! YOU SHOULD REALLY LISTEN TO IT! I'LL MAKE YOU A COPY IF YOU WANT. JUST LET ME KNOW.
Now I just need a sandwich board to walk around in, advertising for Thao. It's weird, because this really shouldn't matter, but I feel really great that she's Vietnamese. I have some actual Viet pride. I feel like one of my homies did some right in the world and made something great.

Up From the Deep

I've been listening to so much Bruce Springsteen lately that I've been getting to hanging to some corners that I haven't been to before. Sometimes, a certain artist enters you life like a wave and then recedes. Later waves come further up yr beach revealing new benthic treasures.

With heavyweights like Dylan , Young and Springsteen there always new special songs that you never expected, or were hiding in plain sight in their vast oceanic catalogs.

Lately I've been hooked on the song 'Jackson Cage' from 'The River'. Lord, would this be fun to see live. I love the combo of dueling Wurlitzer(?) organ and piano. Funny, to me, melodically and structurally this song seems very much like something Elvis Costello would do. I can easily hear him singing it.



It must feel awesome to be on a stage buffeted by a loud organ on one side and a crisp piano on the other.