Thursday, February 5, 2009
Arpeggios, Domestic Love
Photo: Papermag
Hey, Justin, watcha think?
My Girls - Animal Collective
Daily Routine - Animal Collective
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Woe is You, Woe is Me
Photo from Songs from the Soul
So, over the last couple of days I've been fighting this cold and I'm all runny nosey and miserable. On top of that, Magic point guard Jameer Nelson might be out for the rest of the season and Orlando (as of yet) doesn't have any convincing replacement. On top of all that, the unemployment rate in NYC is hovering at 7-point-some percent and if you're a writer you may as well just kiss the thought of working at a paper goodbye forever.
Furthermore, and with all that in mind, I've been trying to work out what I'm going to do with myself. Should I make a big push to get whatever job I can or should I continue to hold out for something I actually spent three-and-a-half years of my life working towards? Should I start studying for the GREs or is grad school a big waste of time if I don't want to become a teacher?
Should I just join the French Foreign legion (as my father once joked)?
I did love Universal Soldier as a kid.
In all honesty, though, my problems aren't so bad, but with the present age ripening for all manner of escapism, I'm certainly not immune to the temptation of wallowing in my own personal jacuzzi of self-pity.
After all, taking stock of one's problems and having a good sulk is often the first step to revitalization (quoth me), and so this morning I had the idea for a post on one of popular music's most palatable whiners. As both a singer and a trumpeter, jazzman Chet Baker made a career out of mopey, boyish charm. You may know him best for his strung-out, yet classy version "My Funny Valentine," but his finest martyr ballad must be 1958's "Everything Happens to Me."
Key lyrics include the line, "I've mortgaged all my castles in the air." Nice to know that refinancing is such a timeless bane, eh? Also, it's very possible that he sang this song with his mouth wired shut, meaning that, basically, he beat Kanye to the punch by about four decades.
(14)Everything Happens to Me - Chet Baker
Party on, Chet
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
The Dream Is Dead
On the cusp of entering the national spotlight at his first NBA All-Star game , Jameer Nelson dislocated his shoulder in last night's loss against the Dallas Mavericks. After tests this morning, Nelson was found to have a torn labrum. If he opts for surgery, then he's out for the season. Considering his play-style initiates a lot of contact and punishment, I think the wisest move would be to go for surgery. Regardless, it's looking incredibly likely that he's done for the year.
The dream season for the Orlando Magic is over. It was a good run.
Monday, February 2, 2009
LOTUSFLOW3R - "This music is nasty, but it's not dirty"
Photo from here.org.uk
There's no rest for the re-reformed, especially if your name happens to be Prince.
Yes, everyone's favorite ageless androgyne is back in business with the latest in Web 2.0 total-package music delivery systems. Now, and for a limited time only, visitors to the new website LOTUSFLOW3R can stream three brand new tracks gratis, courtesy of His Purple Majesty.
According to Rolling Stone, "Fans will eventually be asked to pay a subscription fee to open up other areas of the site, with music, lyrics, animation, photographs and video (including Prince's cover of Radiohead's "Creep" at Coachella last year.)"
As it happens, the new music is also pretty good. When you access LOTUSFLOW3R, you're presented with this very spooky, very cyberpunk nighttime environment. To your left you'll see a TV that flashes intermittently, static which, when selected, unfurls a hallucinogenic swirl of the Prince "logo" and a bunch of generic graphics like lazy placeholders. Then, as you scan to your right (across all the broken asphalt), there are a couple of torn newspaper excerpts from Sign O' The Times (yup, that's All Prince, All The Time), fragments which offer some recent fan feedback on an exclusive concert the Minneapolitan singer held yesterday in his presumably jaw-dropping Beverly Hills manse (RS notes that the set included a series of diverse originals, as well as covers of the Cars, the Troggs, Tommy James and the Shondells, and Sly Stone).
The real reason you should visit this site, though, is to click on the little purple cassette tapes at the bottom right of the screen. These are the three new jamz. The first, "Colonized Mind," is unmistakable Prince, effortlessly sexy and unapologetically frozen in mid '80s synthesizer limbo. The second, "Discojellyfish" is, well...an instrumental. The best track, though, is "Another Boy," a song performed by protégé Bria Valente and (I'm assuming) produced by the Artist.
So, cheers to my man for never giving up on his dream of releasing an album as a super diva.
Seriously though, the song sounds like the '90s and kicks off with the sultry, whispered acknowledgment, "Minneapolis style."
We all know what that means, right?
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