At first I was the kind of worried that you get when you purchase a new microwave and are unsure of its heating capacity. So you decide baked beans would make for a good test run and set the time to oh, I don’t know, four minutes forty three seconds because you think four minutes fifty seconds would just be overkill. But now I’m the kind of worried that makes you wake up every five minutes for a full hour before your alarm is set to go off.

Kyle† is missing. Gone.

†(Kyle is my roommate and best friend. Best friend seems a bit drab insofar as there should be a special word or phrase for “best friend.” Obviously BFF is out of the question. Another friend that was not Kyle and therefore not my best friend referred to her best friends as “besties,” I like that. However, I’m not quite sure I could pull it off so I’m forced to continue to call him my best friend even if it just doesn’t have the proper amount of attitude/joy permeating through its essence.)

Now after telling you all that he’s my best friend, and I feel horrible for saying this, but I’m not sure how long he’s been gone for. I’m pretty sure I saw him just the other day. Then again days could easily mean weeks and weeks months or decades or eons – I just cannot be sure. One may call me a horrible person for forgetting how long your bestie (Yup, I was right…that will be the first and last time I use ‘bestie.’ It had such promise, dang.) has been missing. But when your friend is gone its tough to keep track of it – it’s not like a bowel movement’s departure which is impossible not to keep track of. No, this is different and I just can’t be sure if I saw him Tuesday or last Tuesday or the Tuesday before the last Tuesday before that. At least I’m genuinely worried, right?

And now his notes assuring my of his safety have ceased to arrive (his last note being the best, of course) and I have begun to question whether prior notes were even genuine. Or, were they just elaborate hoaxes created by his kidnappers to make his loving friend unaware and docile to the fact he was being imprisoned against his will only to be heinously slaughtered, his kidneys sold on the black market but his liver discarded after they discover how much fun we’ve had.

So now he’s gone (or in Washington DC for a few days) and I am left in solitude (or left to hang out with some other besties).

Girls – Solitude

Download audio file (girls_solitude)

Album is out September 22nd on True Panther.

What is that you ask? I will tell you. Ok. Ready?

The sacred art of music journalism hinges on two things. The first concerns being able to finish the phrase “this song reminds me of” in a manner that is not unforgivably boring or absolutely trite. This of course necessitates actually knowing something that is not unforgivably boring or absolutely trite. Personally, I go out of my way to saturate my articles with hyperlinks like this one and this one so as to enrich the reader’s experience with often dangerous and exciting information. You know that feeling you just got when you went to those sites? Well, that feeling is the essence of the second aspect of music journalism. Let’s call it vitality. An overabundance of vitality is the key to great music journalism even though it usually ends in suicide or accidental death. Vitality expresses itself in music journalism when the music journalist is where they are supposed to be for the simply reason that they wanted to be there, for better or worse.

With all that said, how weird is this song?

Ove-naxx – “Ovekeyashiki”

Coolidge Theatre is like my middle school girlfriends. I go over to see her, we sit in the dark for a couple hours watching a flick and by the end my legs and arms are sore and tired because I was too nervous to invade her personal space.

Coolidge Theatre is not like my middle school girlfriends because they never brought Béla Fleck over to answer my questions and play music for me. Granted in middle school I didn’t know who Béla Fleck was, but that doesn’t excuse them for not thinking of my future interests.

In order to make ammends for my middle school girlfriends I am (with the help of the generous folks at Coolidge) offering up two pairs of totally free tickets to see Béla Fleck’s recent documentary Throw Down Your Heart. Béla Fleck will be there to introduce the film, answer questions and perform!

The screening is on July 9th at 7pm.

HOW TO WIN:

1. Leave your name and email address in the comments below and I’ll pick two lucky winners who will each get a pair of tickets.
2. Contest ends Wednesday July 7th at 11:59pm (in order to make the whole affair more dramatic).
3. Simple right? Here’s an example to make sure there is no confusion whatsoever.: aaron enoughcowbell at gmail dot com.

More on the proceedings follows, courtesy of Coolidge Theatre:

THROW DOWN YOUR HEART

Film Preview at the Coolidge Corner Theatre
with introduction, Q&A and performance by banjo pioneer Béla Fleck
Thurs, July 9 at 7 pm

THROW DOWN YOUR HEART follows American banjo great Béla Fleck on his journey through Africa to explore the roots of the banjo and record an album. Fleck’s boundary-breaking musical adventure takes him to Uganda, Tanzania, The Gambia and Mali, and provides a glimpse of the beauty and complexity of Africa and the richness and diversity of its musical traditions. During his travels, Fleck works with an array of musicians – from local villagers who play a twelve-foot xylophone, to a family that makes and plays the akonting (thought by many to be the original banjo), to international superstars such as the Malian diva Oumou Sangare. Using his banjo, Fleck transcends barriers of language and culture, finding common ground with musicians from very different backgrounds.

Considered by many to be the world’s premiere banjo player, Béla Fleck is a powerfully creative force in bluegrass, jazz, pop, rock, classical, and world music. The multiple Grammy winner has virtually reinvented the image and the sound of the banjo in a performing and recording career that has taken him all over the musical and geographic map. He is best known at the helm of the groundbreaking group Béla Fleck and the Flecktones.

Tickets to the July 9 preview available in advance online at www.coolidge.org/showtimes or at the Coolidge Corner Theatre box office, located at 290 Harvard Street in Brookline. The Coolidge will present additional screenings of THROW DOWN YOUR HEART beginning July 10. For more information, visit www.coolidge.org or call 617/734-2500.

Official THROW DOWN YOUR HEART site:  http://www.throwdownyourheart.com/.

Critical Buzz:

“An exhilarating feast of sight and sound.”
LA Times

“You don’t need to know the language to be gripped by the force…”
New York Times

“Vibrant and spontaneous…”
Film Threat

“A heartfelt personal journey…refreshing”
Village Voice

“Both the documentary and the disc of Throw Down Your Heart justify their existence independently—and rather beautifully.”
Time Out New York

“Demonstrates that no other language is needed when two people sit down with their instruments and make them sing.”
San Francisco Chronicle

Peter Sellers died on July 24th 1980.

* * *

I met Pete Sellers last week. His hair, what was left of it, was unkempt. Strands darted in every direction, but the majority lunged forward trying to jump ship. He was a lot thinner than I remembered from the movies. His clavicles, shoulders and neck formed a clothes hanger that propped up his head and hung his clothes loosely over his frail body. The glasses he wore were purely perfunctory as he could no longer see.

I asked, “How are you?”

He responded with “What?” while he cupped his hand against his ear.

I raised my voice and asked again.

He responded in the exact same fashion.

At this point I leaned in closely and began to shout my questions at him. “HOW ARE YOU?”

“What?”

“HOW! ARE! YOU!?”

“Okay.”

Emil and Friends – Downed Economy (Mr Vega Stimulus Remix)

Download audio file (emilandfriends_downedeconomy(mrvegaremix))

Downed Economy 7″ (Downed Economy/Josephine) is out July 27th. Pre-order. Be-friend.

* * *

Love On An Oil Rig is out in September. Be-friend.

* * *

Epilogue:

Before I met Peter he had unsuccessfully tried to convince his female caretaker to help him do things with himself. His hands no longer functioned well enough to do it on his own. She was not pleased by this. Neither was he.

Well, he was Okay.

* * *

The preceeding was a true story. The bands featured however, are imaginary.

Similarly, this type of thinking goes for those forward-thinking (or “degenerate” if we ask Žižek) souls who call themselves environmentalists. The Brooklyn group Das Racist’s single “Chicken and Meat” is about food in some regard. As the latest to emerge in the free-association-bilingual-rhyming synth-music genre (Lil’ Wayne being the Abraham in this Genesis: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hh69LBrB48U), the bespectacled and bearded Victor accompanies Hima to compose the entirety of the group. The video for the aforementioned single chronicles this duo eating chicken in three symbolically fecund locations: the forest, the F train in NYC and what is presumably their kitchen.  While there is scant room for a full exegesis, it seems as though this group has decided to confront the nebulous galaxy of food orientations through tracing the movement of “food” from its origins as macrobiotic life to its consumption and conclusion as human shit. While we could fault them for their anthropocentric bias (the origin of what human’s eat is clearly not the harvest field and its conclusion is obviously not human feces) the video works and the message is well received. As an added bonus the savvy duo subtly gestures towards, if i can borrow a phrase from Renata Adler, a “radical middle” with Debord’s Society of the Spectacle popping up as well as homages to Evil Dead in the forest scenes. In sum the final analysis for Das Racist  echoes what was agreed upon by the Tenenbaum family at Royal’s funeral, that is to say they are “most satisfactory.”

* * *

You can only live this hard for so long.

* * *

I’m breathing guts. A stray rib is pressing against my cheek as my hair mops up innards, which happen to be surprisingly fresh given the circumstances. This person’s insides still have a hint of warmth but they’ve clearly cooled from the temperature they once were. Even though my head rests uncomfortably in an open chest cavity I don’t dare turn my head to survey my surroundings. Being situated in an insides is not ideal, but finding out what all your other parts are lying is not appealing either. Eventually I look up and see the lips of a frosted pit, whoever was once standing there is now gone, although present company probably won’t be moving on particularly soon.

The easy question to ask in situations such as this is, “how did you come to find yourself in a pit such as this?” (Doesn’t it always have to do getting mixed up with the “wrong crowd?”) The more difficult question, partially because it forfeits one’s ability to ask the first question, is “what are you doing after?” The answer?: Getting a cup of hot coffee.

* * *

One can never be sure how cocaine comes to half cover a mug as if it had been a candy apple haphazardly rolled in confectioner sugar. One can be even less sure how such a mug would be handed to you at a roadside diner. Regardless, one can imagine how it might be rude to ask for another and one can most certainly rest easy on the fact that before you finish that coffee a police officer will sit at the stool next to you.

* * *

Deerhunter – Circulation

Download audio file (deerhunter_circulation)

Rainwater Cassette Exchange EP

Originally composed by Hungarian pianist Rezső Seress in 1933 with the lyrics taken from the  László Jávor poem “Szomorú vasárnap” in which the poet morns the untimely death of a lover and contemplates suicide, the song was banned by both the BBC and a number of radio stations in the US for purportedly being the cause, the inspiration if you will, for a wave of suicides (Seress himself committed suicide in 1968). Originally performed in 1935 by Pal Kalmar, the song has been covered by innumerable artists including Bjork, Lou Rawls, Ray Charles, Elvis Costello, Peter Wolf, Sinéad O’Connor, The Dead Milkmen, Sarah McLachlan, Serge Gainsbourg, The Unbending Trees, Billie Holiday, he Associates (the lead singer of which committed suicide) and even the famed Theistic-Satanist Anton LaVey.  Its haunting presence was also featured at the start of the film Schindler’s List as well as being mentioned as “Blue Monday” in the work of Kurt Vonnegut (see “Breakfast of Champions: Goodbye Blue Monday”) and Charles Bukowski (see “Notes of a Dirty Old Man”). Scarily enough there is even an Occultist/Discordian/Chaos group in Boston that listen to a record of Billie Holiday’s recording during some of their rituals. In my opinion it is one of rabbit hole leitmotifs of negative epistemology that is best left alone. For if Nu-Japanese horror or the second Ghost-Busters movie has taught me anything it is that once we acknowledge the power of a suicide song, let alone the reality of fiction (or fiction of reality) there is no telling how far or quickly the real, or reality rather, will turn into a nightmare.

Gloomy Sunday (Suicide Song)

PS A Japanese film about this song has recently come to my attention. It is called “Denten Uta” which roughly translates to “Suicide Song.”

Kyle Henricksen – A Taste Of Karma

Download audio file (kylehenricksen_atasteofkarma)

Riding through Allston Kyle happened upon a pink Motorolla Razr phone. A short while after picking it up he received a phone call. Kyle said, “Hello?” and the man on the other end of the line said, “Hello?” To which Kyle responded “Did you lose a phone?” And the man said, “Yeah, it’s my wife’s phone.”

As it turned out the man on the other line was Darren from Coolidge Corner Wine & Spirits, an establishment we frequent quite often for their wonderful tastings. Kyle returned the phone to Darren and in return gave he gave Kyle the bottle featured in the video above.

This is what it tasted like.

(Kyle records a song every day now and now you know.)

There is one Anarchist infoshop in all of Tokyo. It is run by one of the most generous men I met in Japan when I lived there a few years back. His name was Keisuke Narita and the place was called Irregular Rhythm Asylum. The tea he served (always green with ice) was fresh and everything in the store he occupied and owned was hand picked by him. Sitting on the futon in that shop is where I first heard Ghost Mice, it was also the first time I heard of CrimeThInc too. There were a lot of firsts in those days, no, I should clarify and say that there were a lot of firsts for me in those times, and it seemed as though that sort of thing was common in Kei’s shop. In Marxist literature, the eureka moment, the experience of the essential “first,” is called awakening into class consciousness, it can be a profound conversion experience, think of Paul on the side of the road  or the first time you wished someone would die and meant it. Some people’s awakening dissipates like exhaled smoke but for others it can last a lifetime. For Kei it had lasted at least until I met him and from what I hear he is going stronger than ever. (It is especially hard to imagine what it is like to be the only Anarchist in Tokyo). I will say this though, Kei was a very busy man and he had that look many of the kids in cram school had; he was dedicated, determined, but most of all, under a lot of strain. The only difference was that Kei could laugh more deeply for he knew what he was doing was satisfying and above all right, plus he had a lot of friends to drink with.

Kei had a large bed-sheet with the words “Down with Alarm Clocks” on his wall, it was funny and that made it seem a little out of place there.  Now I get it. It is that awakening into class consciousness is done without an alarm, it comes as the end of a evil, hopeless dream; it is silent and peaceful, it feels natural, reassuring. And like awakening from a dream, it changes a lot of things. On Kei’s suggestion I read Days of War and Nights of Love and Bookchin, soon after that I had Ghost Mice on the stereo at work and I began doing graffiti in Kabukicho, painting and making zines. Kei saved my life. Anarchism saved my life.

*
A few years have past since then. Yet, things are steadily progressing.