Under his coat they say there are Wings

OK, let's talk about music.


Time to give Tom Waits a true listen.

I want to growl and still make music. That seems like fun. It's going to take me a long time to truly understand Tom, as I can tell already by listening to just the first two songs of Bone Machine. I'll get back to you.

October
It's supposed to be getting colder outside, and even though it isn't doing so yet, it's still time to bid goodbye to summer music for a while. This doesn't mean not listening to this music for 6 months, it just means that this music probably won't pop up in my head as good mood music in the middle of winter.

The Pixies
The Pixies were first recommended to me by my freshman-year suitemates while I was visiting them in their hometown of Wilmington, NC. I had heard of The Pixies and later discovered that I had heard a lot of their music already, but I didn't own an album. On Greg Anderson's recommendation I bought Surfer Rosa at the first record shop that we entered in downtown Wilmington. He said that it was a great album to listen to on the way to beach (and since he is from Wilmington I figured his opinion on this matter was trustworthy). Instead I listened to it on the way back from the beach, but the effect was the same. To say that I loved it right away would be useless because most of my first listening experience was spent realizing that I had heard most of it before. That being said, I loved it. Listening to Surfer Rosa is like listening to the distorted wet dream of every punk-ish group ever. Beautiful shouting, beautiful crashing. Overall, just beautiful noise. Not the way in which Yo La Tengo is beautiful noise, but an entirely different kind of organized loudness that you can turn way up and enjoy with the windows open on the highway. The songs sound like they are ten minutes old; as if the band waited for the moment when the song was ripe, snatched it off the vine and recorded it before it turned to mush. When I got back I mentioned the album to the person I consider to be my own personal music service, Will Halman. He said something along the lines of "Fuck yeah, The Pixies man!" After a moment of discussion I believe he said something along the lines of "You should listen to Doolittle. It's different, but just as satisfying if not more." He burned it for me and my summer long love affair with The Pixies was underway.

I'm listening to Tom while I'm writing all of this, and it's making me seasick.

The Flaming Lips
I can't seem to remember the exact moment when I was introduced to The Flaming Lips. If any of you would like to claim credit for introducing me to them, please feel free. Regardless, I know that there was a moment when Will Halman and Ben Sweezy and I were sitting around somewhere and they mentioned the Flaming Lips. I said I hadn't heard them and there was an outcry.

haha "Some say he once killed a man with a guitar string." nice Tom Waits.

What I do remember is that I listened to Yoshimi battles the Pink Robots before I listened to Soft Bulletin. I remember this because when I actually talked to Will and Ben about this they said that Soft Bulletin was a better album...but I couldn't see how it could get better than Yoshimi. The Flaming Lips seem to do a balancing act (probably unintentionally) between accessibility and inaccessibility. For example, if you turned on Yoshimi at a party, you probably wouldn't get through the first few tracks without someone saying, "What the hell is this?" Then there would be the inevitable request for you to "turn it down a little" during the second part of Yoshimi's battle (when bass becomes robot growling and treble becomes screaming dissonance). You probably wouldn't get as far as "Do You Realize?" This is unfortunate because "Do You Realize" is the most accessible song on the album and contains one of the moments when The Flaming Lips dive deep into your consciousness and start dancing around. "Instead of saying all of your goodbyes/ let them know you realize that life goes fast/ it's hard to make the good things last/ you realize the sun doesn't go down/ it's just an illusion caused by the world spinning 'round." KEY CHANGEEEE!!!! DOO YOUUU REALIIIIIIZE aaaaahhhhAAAHHHHHahhhhhh Fabulous. After hearing that I didn't believe that Soft Bulletin could be better. Buuuuuuut it is. In Will's words, it's a "boggling masterpiece." To a sound engineer (which I am not by any stretch), it is a stupendous adventure. To the civilian, it is dynamic, sweeping and luminous. There is a wild and twisting entrance of three-part harmony at the beginning of "Buggin'-(Remix)" that made me smile like a fool on the bus the first time I heard it.

..........

Tom is finished. I don't know all of what he's saying yet, so I can only really react on a gut level. Listening to this album I have a constant image of a bottle of hard liquor almost empty and discolored with tobacco backwash next to an ashtray full of wet cigarette butts. The lights are dim, not for atmosphere but because the darkness is less judgemental. The table is marked with aged scrawling from pocket knives and burns from the lighters of bored patrons waiting for Tom to growl them all into a stupor. Splendidly morose.

Time for class!