baking cakes for johnny ramone, september 04

yeah, it's late. whatever.

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old phrenologies here

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Satellite - TV on the Radio, Young Liars EP
Jacked up writing JUAREZ pt. 5. You know what happens, you just—you just can’t see it. Waiting for whatever satellite you get your ideas from to beam shit into your head. Waiting for a signal or a sound.

P.S. You Rock My World - The Eels, Electro-shock Blues
Hector and Renee open a three-woman show with Maiko, Tim’s old roommate Steph, and Tati Arocha. Maiko’s stuff looks like the notes she takes in meetings, a map of how she thinks. Steph has apparently lost her mind. And seeing Tati’s work free of a VH-1 bug in the corner is just great. Downstairs, Shaun has his first show in the Old Post Office. Molly’s stuff. You and Kel buy one and can’t believe it hasn’t sold yet. The lines run through your head all night: Sittin down on the steps/ of the old post office/ the flags were flyin’ at half mast/ and I was thinkin’‘bout how everyone was dying/maybe it’s time to live.

Okay, that’s not actually Molly’s website.

Follow Me Around - Radiohead - Meeting People is Easy
Just in your head one morning. You’ve gone meta with the Phrenologies, as if writing in this jackass second person wasn’t enough: staring into the bathroom mirror, motorbrush in your mouth, and Follow Me Around in your head for no goddamn reason you think oh, fuck, what am I gonna write about this? It’s just there. And now that’s what you think of. You think of trying to think of what you’re going to say you thought of. You thought of nothing.

Old Fashioned Morphine - Jolie Holland, Escondida
Another one of those amazing Cypress Ave. finds. Talking to X. about the Madeline Peyroux record and that leads to this. You heard it months and months before this and it’s been kicking around your head ever since.

The Peryoux you hear in a bookstore and while admittedly not the ideal listening situation, it’s not so great. Not as great as Between The Bars, anyway.

Mistra Know It All - Stevie Wonder, Innervisions
Quick, asks X., aside from Ohio and Mistra Know It All, what are some other songs written about Nixon?

Masters of War is about all that comes to mind.

EDIT TO ADD: according to X. it was Randy Newman's Mr. President, Have Pity on the Working Man. I guess Ohio came later.

Destination Venus - Man… or Astro-Man?, Live Transmissions from Uranus
Xeni went to the moon. Okay, not really, but Xeni rode in a vomit-comet, low-earth orbit zero-G joyride that’s running commercially and you told her about the Space Camp chair. It’s pronounced zhen-EE, but you didn’t know that for a while and it’s still hard to not see the word and want to say “ZEEN-ee.” Zeen-ee sounds like Venus, Destination Venus, space travel, gravity, all that shit.

And yeah, it’s the Astro-Man? version. You’re not hardcore enough to have any Revillos.

Crickets In Your Sleeve - Craig Moorhead, Craig Moorhead’s The Problem With Troubles
Summer’s on its last legs. Your time smoking is, too. You try and make every smoke count, especially at night. Sit on the porch and listen to the cricket bows. There’s one, then ten, and then thousands.

I Want You Around - The Ramones, Road to Ruin
Johnny Ramone dies. Make a cake.

The Ed Stasium version from those Ramones reissues you picked up at Amoeba with Peter is the one that’s in your head, by the way, and not the plebian album version.

Cowboys - Portishead, Portishead
One of those records that always reminds you of your first year in KC. This record came out right around the same time.

Live and Stop - The Kleptones, A Night at the Hiphopera
You have a weird relationship with mash-up records. The first time you listen to them, you’re convinced that they’re brilliant, clever jams and you’re mildly intoxicated by the forbidden-ness of it all, like you’re plugging into the future of pirate radio. Then, on second listen, you think, well, okay, maybe it’s not SUCH a good jam so much as just clever, which is okay in its own way. It’s audacious, you know? That’s what you respect. Then you listen a third time and the flaws leap out at you and it seems like a dumb joke not taken far enough. Like, why didn’t Danger Mouse drop the Piggies riff into the second chunk of 99 Problems? Shit like that.

Anyway. So you grab the new Kleptones thinking, well, if nothing else, it’s Queen and that should at least be funny the first few listens. But it’s good. It’s really good, you think. So, you know, remember this shit always suckerpunches you. Listen again. No—no, this might actually be really good. Listen one more time. And another, and another. Days go by where you’re listening to throughout. It’s good. It’s really, really good. And not just because the Brian May guitar-iffs used as breakbeats.

Here, prove me wrong.

Trompe Le Monde – Pixies, Trompe Le Monde
Friday Night, October 1st, Uptown Theater. It doesn’t hit you until the night before that it’s actually happening, that you’re gonna get to see them again. And it’s not Debaser, it’s not River Euphrates or Is She Weird or Levitate Me or any of the other of bazillions of Pixies songs you adore that starts running through you’re head, it’s Trompe. Go little record go.