Surgeon

 St. Vincent discusses and performs "Surgeon."

I Wanna Be Adored

For many reasons 1989 was a good year, maybe the best year of my life. And I think, to top it off, I was exposed to an absurd amount of new music in 1989 and 1990. Anyway, it just so happened that one of the best albums of all time came out that year, the self-titled Stone Roses album, which had just come out in March or April or something. I have no idea where or how I heard that album first, but I do remember how it was the soundtrack to many a night. I have this distinct memory of eating chicken wings (!) with K. at some late night eatery, no doubt super drunk, watching the TV and them showing the video to "I Wanna Be Adored." Without any kind of qualification, I can say it's one of the most sublimely beautiful songs ever recorded, perfect for when you're alone or with company. And the album was just as brilliant. What songs! Anyway, turns out the Stone Roses are reforming. You know me, I'm totally against any band reforming to relive bygone glories. So I wish they hadn't. But I don't wish them ill. They will never recapture 1989 again but, you know, who would begrudge them for making the money that they originally never made. There is probably no other band in the history of pop music that burned so brightly but so briefly. They were here for one spectacular album, a series of fantastic singles and then completely and immediately burned out. The second album was a disaster. And then they split up. But what a beautiful set of songs they left behind

This Week = 10 Years in New York city

Last Sunday morning under the George Washington Bridge.

Music Ranked By Year 1969-2010

Over there at Paper Street Cinema, they did a massive list of all music from all time (well, from 1970) that's good. So I thought I'd try and one-up him and do one from 1969. It's kind of randomly done and I haven't put too much thought into it. I'm sure I'm missing super important albums. I didn't include live albums, compilations, box sets, or E.P.s.

Some preliminary observations: Paper Street Cinema (PSC) and I have some overlap. Years where we picked the exact same album as the best album: 1980 (Remain In Light/Talking Heads), 1985 (Meat Is Murder/The Smiths), 1988 (Surfer Rosa/Pixies), 1994 (The Downward Spiral/Nine Inch Nails), 1996 (Aenima/Tool), 1998 (Mezzanine/Massive Attack), 1999 (The Fragile/Nine Inch Nails), 2001 (Lateralus/Tool), 2002 (Sea Change/Beck). But beyond that, there's a lot of overlap in the "other albums that were good" category. We did diverge significantly on other stuff: I don't include much kraut rock in my list. In fact, most of my 1970s selections are fairly straight forward classic rock (including the dreaded Led Zeppelin...), the kind of thing I railed against when I was a youngster. PSC also has a fondness for Porcupine Tree and Crystal Castles whereas I have a fondness for sweeping instrumental music a la Godspeed, Mogwai, Explosions in the Sky, and Sigur Ros. I apparently like a lot of real embarrassing 1970s pop (Gerry Rafferty anyone?). And guess what, I like Madonna! On the whole I tried to list albums I liked instead of albums I was supposed to like. In other words, if it's on the list, I have heard the album a lot.

Some of the choices were difficult. Kid A (2000) is one of my favorite albums of all time but it didn't make the best album of 2000 because of Godspeed's Lift Yr Skinny Fists, partly because the latter album is embedded in my memory while I was suffering through a lonely summer in Moscow. It's just the way I associate that album.

1969

Best album: Abbey Road (The Beatles)
Other good ones: Let It Bleed (The Rolling Stones), Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin II, The Velvet Underground, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (Neil Young), The Stooges, Crosby Stills and Nash, Trout Mask Replica (Captain Beefheart), Blind Faith, Then Play On (Fleetwood Mac)

1970

Best album: Fun House (The Stooges)
Other good ones: Loaded (The Velvet Underground), After The Gold Rush (Neil Young), John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band, Deja Vu (Crosby Stills Nash and Young), Bitches Brew (Miles Davis), Abraxas (Santana), John Barleycorn Must Die (Traffic), All Things Must Pass (George Harrison)

1971

Best album: Sticky Fingers (The Rolling Stones)
Other good ones: Led Zeppelin IV, Meddle (Pink Floyd), Who's Next (The Who), Hunky Dory (David Bowie), Imagine (John Lennon), Blue (Joni Mitchell), L.A. Woman (The Doors), If Only I Could Remember My Name (David Crosby), Low Spark Of High-Heeled Boys (Traffic), Machine Head (Deep Purple)

1972

Best album: The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars (David Bowie)
Other good ones: Exile On Main Street (The Rolling Stones), Harvest (Neil Young), #1 Record (Big Star), Talking Book (Stevie Wonder)

1973

Best album: The Dark Side Of The Moon (Pink Floyd)
Other good ones: Houses Of The Holy (Led Zeppelin), Time Fades Away (Neil Young), Aladdin Sane (David Bowie), Raw Power (Iggy & The Stooges), Goodbye Yellow Brick Road (Elton John), The Human Menagerie (Cockney Rebel), Inner Visions (Stevie Wonder)

1974

Best album: On The Beach (Neil Young)
Other good ones: Countdown To Ecstasy (Steely Dan), Band On The Run (Paul McCartney & Wings), Radio City (Big Star), Crime Of The Century (Supertramp)

1975

Best album: Horses (Patti Smith)
Other good ones: Blood On The Tracks (Bob Dylan), Desire (Bob Dylan), Physical Graffiti (Led Zeppelin), Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd), Zuma (Neil Young), Katy Lied (Steely Dan), The Hissing Of Summer Lawns (Joni Mitchell), Still Crazy After All These Years (Paul Simon), A Night At The Opera (Queen)

1976

Best album: The Modern Lovers
Other good ones: Station To Station (David Bowie), The Royal Scam (Steely Dan), Hejira (Joni Mitchell), Arrival (Abba), Year Of The Cat (Al Stewart), Radio Ethiopia (Patti Smith)

1977

Best album: Marquee Moon (Television)
Other good ones: Animals (Pink Floyd), The Clash, Low (David Bowie), Never Mind The Bollocks Here's The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, Rocket To Russia (The Ramones), Aja (Steely Dan), CSN (Crosby Stills and Nash), Don Juan's Reckless Daughter (Joni Mitchell), Gone To Earth (Barclay James Harvest), Moonflower (Santana), The Album (Abba)

1978

Best album: Leave Home (The Ramones)
Other good ones: Some Girls (The Rolling Stones), First Issue (Public Image Ltd.), Dire Straits, Adventure (Television), C'est Chic (Chic), City To City (Gerry Rafferty), The Modern Dance (Pere Ubu)

1979

Best album: Metal Box (Public Image Ltd.)
Other good ones: The Wall (Pink Floyd), London Calling (The Clash), Rust Never Sleeps (Neil Young), Regatta De Blanc (The Police), Tusk (Fleetwood Mac), Three Imaginary Boys (The Cure), Unknown Pleasures (Joy Division), Entertainment! (Gang Of Four), Communique (Dire Straits), Replicas (Gary Numan), The B-52s, Off The Wall (Michael Jackson), Y (The Pop Group), Cut (The Slits)

1980

Best album: Remain In Light (Talking Heads)
Other good ones: In The Flat Field (Bauhaus), Gaucho (Steely Dan), Boy (U2), The Pretenders, Seventeen Seconds (The Cure), Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables (Dead Kennedys), McCartney II, Wild Planet (B-52s), Back In Black (AC/DC), Never For Ever (Kate Bush), Underwater Moonlight (The Soft Boys)

1981

Best album: My Life In The Bush of Ghosts (David Byrne & Brian Eno)
Other good ones: Ghost In The Machine (The Police), Faith (The Cure), Damaged (Black Flag), Computer World (Kraftwerk), Tom Verlaine (Dreamtime), The Au Pairs (Playing With A Different Sex), Fela Kuti (Black President)

1982

Best album: 1999 (Prince)
Other good ones: Thriller (Michael Jackson), The Sky's Gone Out (Bauhaus), Album-Generic Flipper (Flipper), Plastic Surgery Disasters (Dead Kennedys), The Night Fly (Donald Fagen), The Dreaming (Kate Bush), Vs. (Mission Of Burma), Songs To Remember (Scritti Politti), Lou Reed (The Blue Mask), Avalon (Roxy Music)

1983

Best album: Murmur (R.E.M.)
Other good ones: Hootenanny (The Replacements), The Final Cut (Pink Floyd), War (U2), Synchronicity (The Police), Learning To Crawl (The Pretenders), Soul Mining (The The), Speaking In Tongues (Talking Heads), Infidels (Bob Dylan), Violent Femmes

1984

Best album: Let It Be (The Replacements)
Other good ones: The Smiths, The Unforgettable Fire (U2), Purple Rain (Prince), 'Pop' (Tones On Tail), Reckoning (R.E.M.), It'll End In Tears (This Mortal Coil), Double Nickels On The Dime (The Minutemen), Like A Virgin (Madonna), The Waking Hour (Dalis Car), Meat Puppets II

1985

Best album: Meat Is Murder (The Smiths)
Other good ones: Time (The Replacements), The Head On The Door (The Cure), Psychocandy (The Jesus and Mary Chain), The Seventh Dream Of Teenage Heaven (Love and Rockets), This Is The Sea (The Waterboys), Songs From The Big Chair (Tears For Fears), Low-Life (New Order), This Is Big Audio Dynamite, Hounds Of Love (Kate Bush)

1986

Best album: The Queen Is Dead (The Smiths)
Other good ones: EVOL (Sonic Youth), Throwing Muses, Infected (The The), Candy Apple Grey (Husker Du), Lifes Rich Pageant (R.E.M.), Gun Shy (The Screaming Blue Messiahs), Big World (Joe Jackson), True Blue (Madonna), Filigree and Shadow (This Mortal Coil), Skylarking (XTC), Black Celebration (Depeche Mode)

1987

Best album: Pleased To Meet Me (The Replacements)
Other good ones: Strangeways Here We Come (The Smiths), Within The Realm Of A Dying Sun (Dead Can Dance), Sister (Sonic Youth), The Joshua Tree (U2), Children Of God (Swans), Sign O'The Times (Prince), The Ideal Copy (Wire), Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me (The Cure), Floodland (The Sisters Of Mercy), Darklands (The Jesus and Mary Chain), The Lion & The Cobra (Sinead O'Connor), Crowded House, Document (R.E.M.), Bikini Red (The Screaming Blue Messiahs), Atomizer (big Black), If'n (Firehose), Solitude Standing (Suzanne Vega)

1988

Best album: Surfer Rosa (The Pixies)
Other good ones: The Serpent's Egg (Dead Can Dance), Daydream Nation (Sonic Youth), The Burning World (Swans), A Bell Is A Cup Until It Is Struck (Wire), Nothing's Shocking (Jane's Addiction), Naked (Talking Heads), Earth Sun Moon (Love and Rockets), Fisherman's Blues (The Waterboys), Starfish (The Church), Songs About Fucking (Big Black), Viva Hate (Morrissey), Bringing Home The Ashes (The Wild Swans)

1989

Best album: The Stone Roses
Other good ones: Doolittle (The Pixies), Disintegration (The Cure), Spine Of God (Monster Magnet), Mind Bomb (The The), 3 Feet High And Rising (De La Soul), Neil Young (Freedom), Don't Tell A Soul (The Replacements)

1990

Best album: In A Priest-Driven Ambulance (The Flaming Lips)
Other good ones: Pretty Hate Machine (Nine Inch Nails), Goo (Sonic Youth), Bossanova (The Pixies), Ritual de lo Habitual (Jane's Addiction), The Vision Thing (The Sisters Of Mercy), I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got (Sinead O'Connor), God Ween Satan (Ween), Bloodletting (Concrete Blonde), Ragged Glory (Neil Young), The Replacements (All Shook Down), Pod (The Breeders)

1991

Best album: Loveless (My Bloody Valentine)
Other good ones: Nevermind (Nirvana), White Light From The Mouth Of Infinity (Swans), Yerself Is Steam (Mercury Rev), Lazer Guided Melodies (Spiritualized), Wings Of Joy (Cranes), Gish (Smashing Pumpkins), Blood (This Mortal Coil), The Drill (Wire), Screamadelica (Primal Scream)

1992

Best album: Television
Other good ones: Dirty (Sonic Youth), Harvest Moon (Neil Young), Slanted And Enchanted (Pavement), Psalm 69 (Ministry), Dry (P.J. Harvey), Erotica (Madonna)

1993

Best album: In Utero (Nirvana)
Other good ones: Undertow (Tool), Zooropa (U2), Superjudge (Monster Magnet), Orbital II, Rid Of Me (P.J. Harvey), A Storm In Heaven (The Verve), Forever (Cranes), 14 Songs (Paul Westerberg), Quique (Seefeel), Exile In Guyville (Liz Phair), Suspiria (Miranda Sex Garden), Souvlaki (Slowdive), Saturation (Urge Overkill), Transient Random-Noise Bursts With Announcements (Stereolab), Where You Been (Dinosaur Jr.)

1994

Best album: The Downward Spiral (Nine Inch Nails)
Other good ones: To Bring You My Love (P.J. Harvey), Selected Ambient Works Vol 2 (Aphex Twin), Dopes To Infinity (Monster Magnet), Crappin' You Negative (Grifters), Live Through This (Hole), Ungod (Stabbing Westward), Superunknown (Soundgarden), Dummy (Portishead), Hips And Makers (Kristen Hersh)

1995

Best album: The Bends (Radiohead)
Other good ones: A Northern Soul (The Verve), Paralyzed Mind Of The Archangel Void (Harmony Rockets), Maxinquaye (Tricky), Exit Planet Dust (The Chemical Brothers), To Bring You My Love (P.J. Harvey), Elastica, Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness (The Smashing Pumpkins), Washing Machine (Sonic Youth), Garbage

1996

Best album: Aenima (Tool)

Other good ones: In Sides (Orbital), As Good As Dead (Local H), Millions Living Will Never Die (Tortoise), Entroducing ... DJ Shadow, Different Class (Pulp)

1997

Best album: Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space (Spiritualized)

Other good ones: OK Computer (Radiohead), Urban Hymns (The Verve), Sounds Of The Satellites (Laika), Dead Elvis (Death In Vegas), Either/Or (Elliott Smith), I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One (Yo La Tengo), Mogwai Young Team, Dig Your Own Hole (Chemical Brothers), Time Out Of Mind (Bob Dylan)

1998

Best album: Mezzanine (Massive Attack)

Other good ones: Lift (Love And Rockets), Music Has The Right To Children (Boards Of Canada), Moon Safari (Air), Introducing ... The Asteroid No. Four, (The Asteroid No. Four),  Is This Desire? (P.J. Harvey), Deserters' Songs (Mercury Rev), XO (Elliott Smith), Good Morning Spider (Sparklehorse), Psyence Fiction (U.N.K.L.E.), Ray Of Light (Madonna)

1999

Best album: The Fragile (Nine Inch Nails)

Other good ones: The Soft Bulletin (The Flaming Lips), Afterglow (Dot Allison), Into The Pink (Verbena), Stereo Type A (Cibbo Matto), Midnite Vultures (Beck), Central Reservation (Beth Orton)

2000

Best album: Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven (Godspeed You Black Emperor!)

Other good ones: Kid A (Radiohead), Mer de Noms (A Perfect Circle), Two Against Nature (Steely Dan), XTRMNTR (Primal Scream), Stories From The City Stories From The Sea (P.J. Harvey), And Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out (Yo La Tengo), Supreme Beings Of Leisure, The Mirror Conspiracy (The Thievery Corporation), The Hour Of The Bewilderbeast (Badly Drawn Boy)

2001

Best album: Lateralus (Tool)

Other good ones: Amnesiac (Radiohead), Simple Things (Zero 7), Get Ready (New Order), Is This It (The Strokes), I (Buffalo Daughter), Melody A.M. (Royksopp), One Day I'll Be On Time (The Album Leaf), White Blood Cells (The White Stripes)

2002

Best album: Sea Change (Beck)

Other good ones: Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots (The Flaming Lips), Geogaddi (Boards Of Canada), Stereo/Mono (Paul Westerberg), () (Sigur Ros), Murray Street (Sonic Youth), Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (Wilco), Turn On The Bright Lights (Interpol), Yanqui U.X.O. (Godspeed! You Black Emperor

2003

Best album: The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place (Explosions In The Sky)

Other good ones: Phantom Power (Super Furry Animals), Berlinette (Ellen Allien), A Strangely Isolated Place (Ulrich Schnauss), 100th Window (Massive Attack), Elephant (The White Stripes), Happy Songs For Happy People (Mogwai), Rounds (Four Tet), Chutes Too Narrow (The Shins), The Lemon Of Pink (The Books), Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (Outkast), Fever To Tell (The Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Up In Flames (Caribou), Hail To The Thief (Radiohead)

2004

Best album: Funeral (The Arcade Fire)

Other good ones: Good News For People Who Love Bad News (Modest Mouse), Summer At Abbadon (Pinback), Now Here is Nowhere (The Simple Machines), Fabulous Muscles (Xiu Xiu), Florida (Diplo), Homesongs (Adem), Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts (M83), Tekitoi (Rachid Taha)

2005

Best album: The Woods (Sleater-Kinney)

Other good ones: The Campfire Headphase (Boards of Canada), Silent Alarm (Bloc Party), Feathers (Dead Meadow), LCD Soundsystem, '64-'95 (LemonJelly), Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti, Arular (M.I.A.)

2006

Best album: Silent Shout (The Knife)

Other good ones: Return To Cookie Mountain (TV on the Radio), Rather Ripped (Sonic Youth), Orchestra Of Bubbles (Ellen Allien and Apparat), Transparent Things (Fujiya and Miyagi), I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass (Yo La Tengo), The Eraser (Thom Yorke)

2007

Best album:  In Rainbows (Radiohead)

Other good ones: The Sound Of Silver (LCD Soundsystem), Untrue (Burial), Aman Iman (Tinariwen), Year Zero (Nine Inch Nails), Alpinisms (School of Seven Bells), Kala (M.I.A.), Boxer (The National), Mirrored (Battles), Here We Go Sublime (The Field)

2008

Best album: Microcastle (Deerhunter)

Other good ones: Ghosts I-IV (Nine Inch Nails), Saturdays = Youth (M83), The Slip (Nine Inch Nails), Dear Science (TV on the Radio), Vampire Weekend, Third (Portishead), Dig! Lazarus Dig! (Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds), Furr (Blitzen Trapper)

2009

Best album: The xx

Other good ones: Logos (Atlas Sound), Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (Phoenix), It's Blitz! (Yeah Yeah Yeahs), Veckatimest (Grizzly Bear), Embryonic (The Flaming Lips), Actor (St. Vincent), Glasvegas

2010

Best album: Halcyon Digest (Deerhunter)

Other good ones: The Suburbs (The Arcade Fire), My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky (Swans), Plastic Beach (Gorillaz) Cerulean (Baths), This Is Happening (LCD Soundsystem), Body Talk (Robyn), Cosmogramma (Flying Lotus), Write About Love (Belle And Sebastian)

Poolside - Harvest Moon

Is it wimpy of me to like -- nay, love -- this version? It almost beats the original.

And here is the gorgeously beautiful original. Does anyone bring more beauty into this world than this dude?



Stolen from a post by Simon Reynolds.

My R.E.M. Story

Here's a short excerpt from Chapter 8 of my "rock'n'roll book" which I have been writing for 82 years now. The writing is sophomoric, communicating very precisely the self-indulgence of adolescence:

___ had these hippie friends and I fucking hated them. The types who would wear strings tied around their wrists, not flush the toilet to save water, whose idea of a good time was to plan going to Alaska for the summer to make “a ton of easy cash,” and who believed that smoking pot and talking about Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick was the coolest thing that ever happened to them. One time, in November, we went to see Pink Floyd at the Summit in Houston with those kids, and once we got on the road, they cranked up the stereo with “Magic Carpet Ride” by Steppenwolf. Yes, "Magic Carpet Ride" by Steppenwolf. I just about jumped out of car and let it run over me. Please kill me right now. The concert was horrible. Pink Floyd was just patently horrible--if sucking itself could suck, a kind of a auto-sucking, that would describe the show.

The next day, my roommate and I went to see R.E.M. at G. Rollie White, our little basketball stadium on campus. R.E.M., touring in support of Document, were brilliant. This was the most stark display of the old vs. the new. The ‘60s were dead. Live and breathe now or die. R.E.M. played with scalpel-sharp precision, alternating between the heaviness of their Wire cover (“Strange”) and the implosive beauty of “So. Central Rain.” The singer came on wearing an oversize suit and a hat, all of which he gradually disrobed before ending the show bare above the waist, wearing baggy pants, huge combat boots, and a shaved head with a strand of long thick black ponytail hair sticking up from the top of his head. He also had thick black marks that underlined his eyes. He looked like a shaved raccoon. I thought that was cool as shit. In “Disturbance at the Heron House” from the new album, the singer repeatedly raised his arm in time and in salute to the beautiful, ascending notes of the intro:

Disturbance at the heron house

Stampede at the monument

To liberty and honor under the honor roll

And something about monkeys too:

They're numbering the monkeys

The monkeys and the monkeys

The followers of chaos out of control.

Lots of monkeys, I see. I had no idea what a heron was. Still don’t. To a mute audience, the singer described the band Suicide as one of his favorite defunct bands. “Go out and buy their record,” he said. I didn’t, but they sure sounded cool. For the show, my roommate and I put hairspray on our hairs, wore a bunch of earrings, piercings, and bangles, and got super-dressed up in black (pants, shirt, combat boots, chains). There was a small-scale intensity about the show, all things that I took for granted over the years: the fact that I was pretty much standing right in front of the band, that there was no laser show, no dry ice, just four misfits totally rocking out. It was the first concert I ever went to where I sensed I belonged. Fuck Pink Floyd.

REMRIP

Saved

1990 was a weird year for me. It was transitional for sure. I shared an apartment with, umm, someone on Wellborn Road somewhere between Bryan and College Station, Texas. There were train tracks next to our apartment complex and everything would shake when they passed by. Those trains lasted an eternity when they passed by. A whole cigarette = one train. I had long hair, I'm embarrassed to admit, very long black hair. I wore black all the time. Not good looking or anything, but kind of nondescript. Average. I had a car that barely ran, some sort of a Chevy type thing, also very average.

Bill Sparks, our resident anarchist/nihilist, walked by me one day on campus, and mumbled something, like he was reading a poem to me or something. He was always acting like he was reading a poem that he'd just written, when in fact, he was just simply talking to you. He mentioned the Swans. "You gotta hear this shit." What did I know of them? Nothing, really. The year before, they had released an album, The Burning World. It seemed that everyone was talking about it. I went out and got it. It seemed vaguely folkish to me, not the kind of music I was listening to a lot at the time (Big Black, early Sonic Youth, Screaming Blue Messiahs, White Light/White Heat). Ironically, later, I learned that Swans themselves had emerged from that crazy nihilistic machinery-of-violence no-wave aesthetic. This album, The Burning World, was but a small false clue, a peace offering, a folk music pause from all the horrible noise that Swans inflicted upon the world. Let me put it this way: there was probably NO band on Earth in the 1980s that sounder louder and more deranged and skull-poundingly heavy as the Swans. (My favorite lyric: "The sex in your soul will damn you to hell!!!" repeated ad nauseam in ALL CAPS for 10 minutes while music that sounds like four thousand Terminator robots marching into your brain screams out of the speakers).

So in 1989, The Burning World was a surprise, because it was so ... lush. Lead Swans architect Michael Gira [pronounced "Jeera"] has since disavowed the whole album as a mistake, and quickly returned to a less "commercial" sounding aesthetic in a series of albums in the early nineties. These subsequent albums had the same repetitive, monolithic drones of earlier Swans but without the noise. Kind of like folk drones. You could find kernels of beauty among the minimalism. (The best of the latter period was White Light From the Mouth of Infinity. For my previous concert review of Gira, see here.)

But that summer, in 1990, I listened to The Burning World a lot. It wasn't their best album (which was and still is undoubtedly 1987's Children Of God). But the songs seemed to mirror my anxieties about things. There was one song, in particular, that I gravitated to a lot, called "Saved." It still seems amazing that Gira would allow himself to sing a song so tender as this, so full of longing and regret rather than his usual hatred and disgust. I always keep coming back to this one lyric:

When sunlight falls on your shoulder
You look like a creature from heaven
You're holy, when you open your eyes
And look up, inside that sheltering sky

And you're an angel, I'll never betray you
But I'll always be ... an only child

It's a powerful moment. You know what he means.

In January 1991, we moved to another apartment closer to campus, at Las Casitas, probably the shittiest apartment complex in College Station (or the world, actually). These pictures here might actually be the exact apartment we lived in in that spring of 1991. Oh My Jesus God. By that time, you know, things were kinda falling apart. But I tell you this, there were a lot of parties that spring and summer. I met a whole lotta people and did a whole lot of dubious things. I've forgotten the names of almost all of the people I met. Except Ted. Ted Townshend? He was an MD student. He was good looking, he kinda looked like a Nordic God with long hair. Ted, where are you these days? But more important, I wrote some damn good songs that year. Damn good songs.

Anyway, tonight I have to admit, "Saved" is a good song to play. That it is.

Japandroids

"We used to dream / But now we worry about dyin'
We used to dream / But now we worry about dyin'
But I don't wanna worry about dyin'
I just wanna worry about those sunshine girls....."

There's something in that small couplet that captures completely and ineffably the cusp, the point between (invincible) youth and (damaged) adulthood. The Japandroids are a couple of children in their early/mid-20s from Vancouver who make this music. Some of their music reminds me of that old forgotten band, Eddie & The Hotrods, a precursor to British punk who had a major hit in 1977 with "Do Anything You Wanna Do." (And I'm so fucking old, I actually remember how much I loved that song as a child). I don't know much of the Japandroids' discography but the songs I've heard so far are about this precise turning point between being young and being old, suffused with a dollop of nostalgia, an unfortunate awareness what they're experiencing is totally fleeting, it's here and it's gone, and then all that's left is nothing.

I heard this song "Young Hearts Spark Fire" (from their album Post-Nothing) a million times in 2009. I would jog with it all the time, blasting it through my headphones. This is a live-in-the-studio version of "Young Hearts Spark Fire." Incredibly, the actual recorded version rocks much harder.



Here is a subsequent Japandroids single from 2010, a little bit like 1980s power pop a la the Replacements. A song predictably called "Younger Us":

"Gimme that naked new skin rush / Gimme younger us
Gimme that you and me to the grave trust / Give me younger us
Gimme that girls love running wild and free / Give me younger us
Gimme that boys out swimming through the streets / Give me younger us
Gimme that night you were already in bed
Said 'fuck it' got up to drink with me instead."

Immersia

Sitting around doing nothing, waiting for the flight back. Days are going by. Eating. Sleeping. Doing nothing. I watched the entire first season of True Blood. I'm still living in 2008 apparently. I loved it -- who'd have thought white trash vampires would be this funny? Speaking of trashy but good: I can't wait to see the Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

Then I tweaked my syllabi. I don't listen to that much music. I eat a lot. I do nothing. This is called ennui. Or as I like to call it: immersia.

The Baths album Cerulean was on my top 10 list for the year 2010. I'm too lazy to say much about it. Yeah, it's an acquired taste. Yeah, you have to listen to it with headphones on. And yeah, the bass and the beats are the shit. Here's the standout track "Lovely Bloodflow." Dedicated to you, out there in the New York heat.



When will I get back to New York? Not soon enough.