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Letters
Slate has published a list of all the words late author David Foster Wallace (left) circled in his American Heritage Dictionary. In addition to words such as "trephine" (A surgical instrument having circular, sawlike edges, used to cut out disks of bone, usually from the skull), and "uxorial" (Of a wife; regarded as befitting a wife), one might be surprised to note that he also circled the words "tennis" and "bisque."
Posted by karges on April 15, 2010 ---> Comments (0)
Wilkommen Helga
A week ago, we adopted a miniature dachshund from BARC, an animal shelter here in Brooklyn. Although we'd been talking sort of casually about bringing a pooch into the family, we'd never really made the decision to do it. Alas, all it took was for us to meet Helga and any indecision, any hesitation was gone. By all outward indications, she seemed like a nice dog. But after a week of hanging out with her, it's undeniable: This Dog is the Bomb.
Here are some observations about her behavior so far:
Posted by karges on February 5, 2010 ---> Comments (5)
Old News is News to Me
My own musical tastes remain a mystery to me. I have a habit of reacting with distaste or outright revulsion to new music that a few years later I end up loving and wanting to spread the gospel about. Part of the reason may be that I like to reserve judgment on bands who attract a lot of 20-something Kool-Aid drinkers who's own tastes change with the tide. By the time I get around to loving a given band, in this case the defunct California group Grandaddy, they're already a thing of the past and nobody talks about them any more. Maybe this is a good thing.
I remember hearing Grandaddy preached about about 5-6 years ago, and I remember listening to a few mp3's and being turned off and even a little irritated. Why I can listen to the same songs now and have the opposite reaction, I don't know. There's a lot of music I haven't changed my opinion about one way or the other. But most of the bands I really love I hated at first encounter. Weird, ain't it?
I recommend Grandaddy's first studio album, "Under The Western Freeway." Their two subsequent records "The Sophtware Slump" and "Sumday" got a lot more attention, but I like this first one the best. These guys were together from around 1992 to 2006. Front man Jason Lytle released a solo album called "Yours Truly, the Commuter" this year that I'm checking out as we speak. It's good.
Posted by karges on December 25, 2009 ---> Comments (0)
Gerhardt Fuchs, RIP
I woke up to the news that Gerhardt (Jerry) Fuchs, drummer for Maserati among other bands, fell to his death in an elevator shaft in a building on Berry Street in Williamsburg late Saturday night. I did not know Jerry but I will miss him badly. I am only one of a legion of drummers who are in awe of his skills behind the kit. A huge loss.
Posted by karges on November 9, 2009 ---> Comments (0)
Demystified Again
There are those things that terrified you when you were a child and that still give you chills when you think about them, all these years later. For me, these terrifying things are mostly half-remembered images from TV or the movies, usually of 1970s vintage. All you have to do is say THE CAR and I can immediately access all the excitement and terror that my first encounter with horror movies provided me. I was literally addicted to being scared as a kid and though I grew out of it, it's a bit disheartening to discover all these years later that the scary, terrifying things aren't really scary or terrifying at all, they're just lame.
The internet, in particular You Tube, has been responsible for gradually neutralizing the effect of these nightmares. Case in point: The Steve Austin vs. Sasquatch episodes of The Six Million Dollar Man (see below). For some reason, this was so scary to me as a kid I could barely watch it. How old was I? I don't know, does it matter? After reading some of the clip's comments, I'm happy to report that apparently I'm not alone. Maybe I need to go back and watch it in context somehow. All I can tell from watching the clips available online is that Sasquatch was an android and may or may not have been in league with some aliens. I certainly never realized how complex and sophisticated this show was.
Posted by karges on October 9, 2009 ---> Comments (0)
Tagged
After months and months, we are still apartment searching. Whatever happened to the financial crisis and falling rents? Granted we haven't been searching THAT hard and our move-in price is pretty low and we don't want to give up stuff we have in our current situation, so... I'm not really complaining, but I did think apts would be cheaper and better by now since we're living in the post-whatever future.
Motico has finished recording and we're now moving on to the mastering stage. We've still got to pick out an engineer, so if you have any recommendations please speak up. Big thanks go to Justin, who saw us all the way through the process and dealt with all of our hemming and hawing and deliberating. I look forward to sharing the result soon. Still have to figure out what format(s) we'll be releasing the recordings on, but I'm hoping that vinyl will be involved. More on that later.
This site is now equipped with a 21st century tagging system! I'm still working out the kinks but it seems to work pretty well. So what are you waiting for - go navigate!
Posted by karges on September 24, 2009 ---> Comments (0)
Outsider Music
I've been vaguely aware of the reclusive musician known as Jandek for several years, but I just recently took the plunge and checked out his music. I even watched a documentary about him from 2003, called Jandek on Corwood. The bare bones story is that he's a guy named Sterling Smith who lives outside of Houston somewhere and at some point worked a day job as a machinist. He's intensely private, wears cufflinks, and records and distributes his own self-produced music. His first album came out in 1978 and he's produced and average of 2 per year since then. You can read more about him here.
The music he plays is very hard to describe and it's simulaneously terrible and offensive to the ear and mysterious and intriguing. It's very easy to dismiss it instantly and I think many listeners do. His guitar is tuned to some strange tuning that he adjusts from song to song, but that doesn't conform to any standard scale. His voice is ethereal and strange and the production is very simple. Here's a fan produced music video I think is really cool:
I find the music very easy to get lost in. It's kind of seductive, if you give it a chance. I like to imagine that he's someone from the future who's never heard blues music trying to learn it from a warbly old record playing at half speed. It's very solitary music and doesn't seem to belong to any genre or tradition, but maybe that's what makes it interesting.
Posted by karges on August 31, 2009 ---> Comments (0)