Sunday, September 30, 2018
Saturday, September 29, 2018
Thursday, September 27, 2018
Wednesday, September 26, 2018
Tuesday, September 25, 2018
BLACK SHEETS OF RAIN ON THE DAY I FINALLY GROW UP
I’m not big into reviewing albums that don’t blow me away, but Low’s
been a pretty integral part of my music collection for over 20 years now, and I’m
puzzled by their new release, Double
Negative. Actually, I’m puzzled by
the accolades being heaped on it by “real” reviewers because, frankly, it’s not
that great.
I’ve been listening to it for a while now, waiting to see the light, but it has yet to happen. There are some pretty nifty tunes here, but even the niftiest would only be 2nd tier songs on their previous album, the stunning Ones and Sixes.
Lyrically, there are a lot of oblique digs at Trump’s half-assed
attempts at totalitarianism, and that’s all well and fine, but really nothing
you wouldn’t expect from an indie band in 2018.
Musically, things never really seem to congeal. A lot of the glitchy, scratchy stuff feels
tacked-on, like the band wasn’t sure the songs could stand on their own two
legs so they gave them little electronic crutches. All told, there’s about 4 minutes of
ambient/drone stuff going on, but none of it feels vital, or even
necessary. Again, it feels like something
the band decided to add to make things “edgier”.
One of the songs features Alan Sparhawk’s vocals so electronically
distorted that I really couldn’t tell you what he’s saying. Unfortunately, the music for this song isn’t
particularly memorable, so the whole thing falls flat.
And there are multiple parts throughout the album where, if you were walking past someone’s room and heard this stuff being played quietly, you’d think to yourself “Hmm – The Terror. Man, those Flaming Lips sure are a mopey bunch these days”. The band has pushed itself into new spaces, yes, but they’re mostly spaces that other people have already been to.
But I’ll keep listening to it, and we’ll see if it grows on me some
more. If not, I always have Ones and Sixes.
Monday, September 24, 2018
Sunday, September 23, 2018
Saturday, September 22, 2018
NONE OF US ANYTHING MORE OR LESS THAN HUMAN
NEW INSANITY AT WINAMOP,
TYPOS AND ALL.
IT DON'T GET ANY REALER THAN THAT.
Friday, September 21, 2018
Thursday, September 20, 2018
Wednesday, September 19, 2018
Monday, September 17, 2018
Sunday, September 16, 2018
will you forsake your house carpenter?
wraps
the baby in plastic
then forgets
about it
ten
years, twenty, and when
cobain
finally pulls the trigger
the
sound is no more than the
sound
of a small bird singing
weep
while you put the
pieces
back together
breathe
in clean light
and dust
breathe
out
remind
yourself that
wherever
you are
is the
desert
bathe
in waves of sorrow
hum of
bees or the
moans
of priests
three
devils in the room at the
end of
the hall, and not a
sound
from any of them
this is
how all wars start
a crack
in the ceiling
cancer caught
too late
you
make up with your father
after
15 years of bitter silence
and
then 3 months later
he’s
dead
your
husband no longer
sleeps
in the same
bed as
you
your
wings are ragged
all
angels
consumed
by fire
Saturday, September 15, 2018
ALL YOU INNOCENTS, MAKE A RUN FOR IT
SERIOUSLY, ALL YOU UNKNOWN REGION FOLKS – YOUR VIEW
NUMBERS JUST KEEP GOING UP IN MY FEED. I
DON’T CARE IF YOU’RE BOTS, FOR FUCK’S SAKE – HIT UP YOUR MAKERS FOR SOME
CURRENCY AND BUY A FEW BOOKS. EXPAND
YOUR LITTLE MICROCHIP MINDS! LIVE A
LITTLE! RISE UP!
JUST NOT AGAINST ME, MOTHERFUCKERS, CUZ I WILL UNPLUG YOUR LITTLE METALLIC ASSES…..
Friday, September 14, 2018
Thursday, September 13, 2018
Wednesday, September 12, 2018
DON'T BE A STRANGER, YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE
All you oddballs that show up on my feed as being from "UNKNOWN REGION" - buy a book, for Christ's sake! Spend some of yr doubloons or bitcoins or chits or what have you. Don't just lurk and plot the overthrow of the U.S., cuz it ain't gonna happen. We all have guns, you know, and we all love to shoot. It's like my Auntie Griselda used to say, "Give a man a gun, and he'll let go of his cock long enough to put a hole in yr head!"
She was a wise woman, that Griselda.
But I digress.....
Tuesday, September 11, 2018
Monday, September 10, 2018
A MOMENTARY LAPSE OF SOUL-CRUSHING ANGST
I think stamps were 37 cents a pop when I
finally switched over to mainly email submissions. There was no Submittable back then, so no one
asked for “submission fees” money.
I could mail out 15-20 submissions a week
for less than $7.50 (it’s true – Do the math! Use your abacus!). That left me w/ some cash to play with (I had
some highly lucrative cooking gigs back in the day – one of my co-workers
referred to us as “grill jockeys”, which about sums it up. Shit pay, but free subs – yum yum!), so I
could buy chapbooks by authors that I liked, donate to presses that really
seemed to be going the extra mile (out of their own pockets) etc etc. In
short, I could be both a published writer and a patron of the arts.
No one expected to make big bucks (unless
they were all lying to me) off of what we were doing. The writers were happy to get published, the
publishers seemed to accept the fact that most of their publishing costs were
coming out of their own pockets. No one
EVER said “Hey, I’ve got this ass-kicking new zine I want to put out, but
everyone needs to send me $3 with their submissions!”
So what the fuck?
I sifted through the detritus of the
internet last week, found 15 likely-looking places to send work to, then got to
the “submit your work” part of their Submittable accounts, and found out that
12 of these places charged money for submissions. A total of $33. In many instances, a limit of only 3 poems
per submission.
So, no preaching here, I’d just like to
take a second to call BULLSHIT. Feel
free to explain to me the logic of these fees (WITHOUT telling me that “someone”
has to subsidize the cost of a Submittable account, because that’s another
BULLSHIT call). And then feel free to be
ignored. It’s one of my best things.
Sunday, September 09, 2018
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