A personal weblog written by Robert. Mere Christian, aspiring minimalist, inveterate notetaker, budget audiophile and paper airplane mechanic.
Terry Godier might be a certain kind of genius, as evidenced by his masterfully crafted RSS reader, Current, and the ideas behind it. So when I saw he had created a short documentary about music formats, one of my favorite subjects, I had high expectations.
Godier hits upon a lot of the problems intrinsic to streaming media in the video. When he discusses the limitations of physical media, he’s able to make them sound like desirable features.
Some good news came this week in the form of more Velocity Girl remastering. This time it’s a compilation of non-album tracks from various places being released by Slumberland Records. The collection is called 1989–1992 and the contents are precisely what it says on the tin.
I’ve been on a post-punk x new wave kind of kick the last several days, after I learned Black Marble (who I blogged about last year) are going to be playing nearby in September. The algorithm overlords recommended Castlebeat to me after the end of a listening sesh of “Bigger Than Life.” I hadn’t listened to Castlebeat in a few years, but remembered them from this fan video using footage from the best movie ever to take place in a big box store: Career Opportunities.
I recently hit my 20th anniversary (!!!) at the company where I work. Instead of a gold watch, I got what amounts to about $400 in a foreign currency they call “Spotlight points.” Thought I didn’t pull the trigger right away, my immediate thought was to blow the lot on a pair of Sennheiser HD 650 headphones. I’ve been researching these cans for some time now, but even at a consistent 38% off, a price point of nearly 400 bones meant I wouldn’t just impulse buy these things.
A few weeks ago, I saw Mark Robinson from Unrest/Air Miami/Flin Flon open for the Wedding Present at the Motorco Music Hall in Durham. Although the bill clearly stated that Robinson would be playing Unrest songs, imagining him doing those songs without the two other band members, Phil Krauth and Bridget Cross was challenging. Whatever images I could conjure didn’t match the actual show.
Olly, the developer of the Pagecord blogging software, just published a post on something I was thinking about with regards to music. I'm not buying a lot of physical media these days, but when I do, it's usually CDs. I just went to a new record store called Hunky Dory that just opened downtown near me, but they weren’t celebrating Record Store Day. I wasn’t sure about going because I didn’t think I would buy anything. So I can relate to Olly.
Everyone has been posting about the Aadam Jacobs collection. Since I love indie music from the 90’s, I’m certainly going to spend some time with the massive 10,000 live recordings collection. I went to the page on the Internet Archive and one of the first recordings I saw was Rachel’s at Lounge Ax. I bought The Lounge Ax Defense and Relocation compilation created to save the venerable Chicago club when it released. I’ve spun that disc hundreds of times. The song Rachel’s contributed to the comp, “Those Pearls,” is probably my favorite by the band.
Immediate download. Let’s get this exploration started.
I just signed up for access to Attie, a new AI-based app from Bluesky, which allows you to shape your feed on the social network using plain language. To be honest, I wasn’t that excited about the app when it was first announced. It can be hard these days to sift through the AI hype to locate the value in some of these propositions.
Then I came across an old quote I had saved about blogging. Henrik Karlsson wrote in 2022 that a blog post “is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox.” Karlsson was sparked to this realization after writing an essay about Ivan Illich and systems thinking, and being introduced to it by many who wanted to discuss the topic.
The conclusion Karlsson eventually came to is that you shouldn’t necessarily write for the masses, but with specificity to people who might find the appeal in your most unique fascinations. He uses an anecdote to illustrate his point.
It is like the time someone told the composer Morton Feldman he should write for “the man in the street”. Feldman went over and looked out the window, and who did he see? Jackson Pollock.
Write for Jackson Pollock.
In this way, you will hopefully connect with people with whom you would want to engage in deep conversation.
But the internet is vast. It takes skill or dumb luck to find your people and foster mutual interests. A tool like Attie can potentially help with that search. Despite the current skepticism about the proliferation of AI apps, it seems this one may be valuable in actually fostering human relationships.
Every time I finish a novel in which I have invested a lot of time and emotion, I feel a bit unmoored. What other worlds are out there now that this one is gone? It’s like the characters in that world died and will be grieved. Some even after entering a new story.
After I wrapped up reading Demon Copperhead last weekend, I had these feelings. I almost shed tears at the end of the book. There are no novels piling up in a stack for me to read, so I was bereft. I was almost present in Lee County, that little corner of Appalachia where most of the book takes place, for some period. My own trip to Appalachia recently only reinforced that feeling.
I won’t deny that Barbara Kingsolver’s latest was a tough read. When the drug use started getting heavy, I had to put it down for a bit. My mom showed interest in reading it, and I steered her away. The extended time it took me to get through the proceedings somehow only integrated it more into my mind’s eye.
I’ve never lived in Appalachia, and certainly never had the foster care experience, but I do know someone in both those categories. My dad grew up in rural Eastern, NC, and would remind me of how he had to pick tobacco or shovel chicken sh*t if he ever thought I was trying to get out of doing work. In my lifetime, I saw a degradation in the neighborhood where my grandparents used to live. The last time we visited the area (after their passing), it was scary to walk down the street. This past week, 3 people were shot on that same street.
I’m not entirely unfamiliar with youth drug culture, either. The high school I went to has a crazy story about an LSD ring you can read about on Wikipedia. I talked with the guy who, while high on LSD and dancing naked in a field, shot a police officer with his own gun just a week before the incident while skateboarding at an outdoor mall.
Kingsolver was masterful in crafting the voice of the protagonist of Demon Copperhead, Damon. Even if I had no experience with the challenges represented in the book, I still would have felt myself traveling in that world, painted so effortlessly as it was by the narrative voice of Damon.
If you can stomach a tough read, I strongly recommend Demon Copperhead. What’s next?
Charlotte Cornfield is the latest musician to put out something via Durham, NC’s Merge Records. Hurts Like Hell is also the first long player by the Canadian singer/songwriter since becoming a mother. The title track, “Hurts Like Hell,” wallows in a remembered sentimentality with the advantage of looking at difficulty in the rearview mirror. We all know what it’s like to try to gain perspective when in the midst of a tough situation.
The video immediately endeared itself to me because its protagonist is wearing a sweater just like one I purchased a couple of weeks ago. The guy looks like he’s kin to Ben Gibbard and plays a sympathetic character who appears to ingest some psychoactive substance along with a confection delivered from an anonymous sender. His enthusiasm for playing the video’s song at high volumes (with bass boost!) outside is a nuisance to his neighbors.
Charlotte Cornfield - Hurts Like Hell (YouTube)
This week’s Saturday Night Video is a bit different than the usual fare. It’s technically more of a skate video than a music video (but it does feature music). Powell Peralta-sponsored skateboard pro Andy Anderson and I have very different styles, but I enjoy his skating and his good nature. He’s as unconventional a skateboarder as they come, fitting decidedly old-school tricks alongside new ones, finding endless creativity with whatever objects he comes across.
The Shape of Paris is as much an intimate look at the streets of Paris as a skate video. Its videographer, Brett Novak, is one of the best in the skateboarding films business and brings a variety of shots that showcase the city’s charms. I’ve only been to Paris once, but I wish my memories of it looked the way it appears in this video.
https://youtu.be/4q8wZ15ALz4?si=CKhiOMoc9jupzvHN
via Neatorama
My wife and I have long been devoted to music from the band Stars. It’s hard to pick a favorite album, but I especially treasure a few of the songs on No One Is Lost. The 2014 album was recorded in a studio the band built above a gay discotheque and seems to have absorbed some of the dance vibes, if not the sexuality, through the floorboards. Stars doesn't spring the title track on their listeners until the very end of the album, but it’s a massive banger to bring things to a close.
It’s hard to find danceable songs with such a sober sense of the finite nature of our mortal existence. As singer Torquil Campbell repeats “Put your hands up ‘cause everybody dies,” one gets the sense that this is an expression of momento mori and the modern equivalent of the ancient Roman practice of having someone follow your victory chariot exhorting you to “remember your death.” If this sounds too morbid, Campbell and co-vocalist Amy Milan also repeat, “Until then, that will listen, no one is lost.”
If I didn’t know any better, I’d almost think this was akin to the Christian belief that until the end, one always has a chance to repent.
I finally got around to watching Wim Wenders Perfect Days, in which it must be said that the city of Tokyo is as much a character as any of the actors. The beautiful, future-forward and unusual toilets which protagonist Hirayama has to clean for his meager living make many appearances. They set the stage for Hirayama to live his days, which illustrate a ordinary life and the events which conspire to disrupt the pleasant monotony. Hirayama conveys a wide range of emotions without saying much of anything.
https://youtu.be/QzZBbX5A1FA?si=kQqdOmi9CiwRCVhu
Perfect Days is currently streaming on Hulu.
My youngest is on his way towards finishing from middle school. He’s weathered it pretty well, with a core group of friends and good grades. Middle school was a culture shock for me. I started the process in North Carolina, where I was suprised to come in contact with professed satanists and kids who were doing things I had never experienced before, even though I went to an inner-city elementary school. We moved to Virginia shortly after middle school started and I ended up in elementary school for one more year, which was a much better fit for me.
When I transitioned to junior high the following year, I was again confronted with a different culture. I remember everyone going over their favorite album as a way to introduce ourselves. Mine was Fore by Huey Lewis. 98% of the other kids named Appetite For Destruction by Guns N’ Roses. I didn’t have MTV at the time, so GNR wasn’t really on my radar. Imagine my surprise to find out this was album of rampant misogyny with a rape scene on the inner cover.
When in Rome, though. Within a year, I had adapted to not only listening to similar bands, but getting really into their music. I even had a Winger t-shirt like the kid everyone made fun of in Beavis & Butthead.1I always felt the need to tell people that I didn’t like the bands themselves (they were reprehensible), but I liked the music. It was a blessing to find music that was closer to my values after my passage through junior high/middle school.
Grunge of course obliterated hair metal when it captured the collective consciousness. Like Mo Diggs writes, “Grunge without the context of hair metal that it rebelled against is just brainy Black Sabbath.” When you had the context, though, it landed.
