This crazed glove commercial from 1975. The disembodied green-screen gloves banging at a parking meter, the weirdly dispassionate narration saying "A fine gift," the library disco with horns.
80s:
A DJ on xray.fm played the Meat Puppets' "Up on the Sun" yesterday and that got it stuck in my head tonight, so I was singing it for my boy. He kind of flipped trying to figure out what it meant to sing "I turned to myself and said you are my daughter." "How is there an ocean up on the sun where the wind never blows?" he asked. Good question.
Those first three albums of theirs (bought second-hand in high school) find a way to sneak into my rotation every so often. Unlike a lot of things I've listened to a million times, they are still pretty fresh.
90s:
I found my old copy of Nice's self-titled album (well, technically I found my old iPud with a lot of old mp3s on it). This track always get me:
Incredibly, we were able to get this Australian trio out to my college in the early 90s. I remember being too prudish and poor to pick up one of their "Mobile Orgy" shirts. They had some sweet Casio bass pedals that I have never seen since. I remember not being able to figure out their interpersonal dynamics but liking their performance. Regretting not recording it on my Recording Walkman.
This Slovenly 7" from 1991-ish. (I had just unlocked access to the college radio station and spent hours there going through stuff from the Trouser Press guide. Magic.) Sometimes Steve Anderson's vocals kind of sat on top of their instrumentation, but here he digs in hard.
It is still hard to believe that I created the album Gelatin Duplicator. I listened to it on headphones and, yes, I'm the one whose mouth is moving, but it's hard to believe that I committed to that particular sound so diligently.
Speaking of which, I have this entire album I'm the One Whose Mouth Is Moving that I somehow forgot to release a decade ago. When my work gets less crazy I'll have to work on my Digital Legacy, maybe sign up for a DystroKyd account or something, and get this stuff off my hard drive and into the universe.
LISTENING:
Juana Molina's new one DOGA
Heather Leigh's eerie and singularThrone - finally bought a copy
Mostly lots of 70s stuff:
YouChoob episodes of The Midnight Special while washing the dishes - the Don Cornelius-hosted one is awesome, particularly the Whispers' "Bingo":
The Joan Baez-hosted one an episode later is just so-so, but my jaw dropped when I heard her song "Children," in which she lists the names of a bunch of her kid's friends in 1975. Amid one verse comprised solely of J names, she says "[my name] and [my brother's name]" in that order. Were my parents listening? Is this an Easter egg they left for us to uncover fifty years later?
I bought a bunch of smooth jazz/funk albums at the library used book store for a dollar each. Some are boring, but Luther Rabb's Street Angel is pretty sweet, particularly "Seattle Disco's Groovin' Tonight" which apparently also existed in a version called "Seattle Sonics Do It Tonight":
READING: Several things at once. Slowly making my way through Helen DeWitt and Ilya Gridneff's crazed Your Name Here. If you happen to have a flight coming up and an interest in extreeeem metafiction and learning to decipher Arabic characters, highest recommendation. I read it on the plane on the way home from Boston recently and was completely losing it. Apologies to my fellow passengers.
Here at Tape Mtn. HQ we have been listening to a lot of the newish Kiss Hello* album Summerdata. I got a chance to see and play with these guys on my most recent trip to LA and now the album is here in massive digital form. Take it in slowly.
Certain themes come up repeatedly - loss, love, loss of love. Lyrics pop in and out and are repurposed. "Summer" is in the title (good title), but the vibe is autumn melancholy to my ears. Holding on. A data dump about past summers more than experiencing summer in the moment. "Someone's Life Has Just Begun" explains this vibe better than I can say it.
There's some really impressive musicianship here. How-did-they-do-that moments like the prog-adjacent epic "Western/Whatever." Over-the-top guitar solos when they are called for.** Detail to get lost in. Some moments of wabi-sabi that I appreciate. It gets genuinely dark in spots.
I have some theories on album sequencing that I've been working on since I was in elementary school:
One of them is that the next-to-last track on an album needs to be the most vulnerable one, the track where you've established trust and you need to get it out and take the most risks before wrapping things up with a bow on the final track. This album does not disappoint on that front. Penultimate track "Awful Bliss" is the sound of the protagonist falling apart and melting in the rain, while
Final track "PSLGO" does wrap things up with a shiny pop bow sonically, but leaves the listener on the ostensibly unanswered question "You turned to me and asked do you love me?" Good trick.
One rule of mine that IS violated, however, is that the track "1717" is track #16. If there is a number in a track title, do what you need to do to make it work.
You may find that you enjoy certain stretches more than others. You may find that you are happier if you burn a CD with certain songs and listen to it that way. That's what I did. I treated it like Julio Cortázar's Hopscotch, with more than one acceptable path through the tracks.
Bonus points for Very Ned liner notes from Friend of Tape Mtn. Ned R.
*Obligatory conflict of interest note: I have known Friend of Tape Mtn. KH Linus for essentially his entire life
**The official Tape Mtn. Secret Blog position is that over-the-top guitar solos are a good idea
Recently whenever I've been driving people places in the Comfymobile, I always end up playing Spanish artist Lorena Álvarez's album Anónimo. Lovely, goofy, wild stuff, full of joy and ideas.
Thirteen years later she's put out one album and some EPs in multiple different directions, and now we are here in 2025 after a lot of everything and she has a new album called El poder sobre una misma. The trademark exuberance is still there in wonderful songs like "Increíble" and "Los pensamientos" but this one has a lot more contemplative moments. Not necessarily background listening for trips across Portland in an automobile or for doing office work, but there's a lot of introspective joy to be had. And the title track, a dorky polka about the joys of hitting rock bottom and finding a way out, is delightful, particularly when the million multitracked vocals hit at the end.
In the video for "Increíble," she gets to roll in tall grass, pretend to fly a helicopter, hang out with chickens and goats, drink a beer with her name on it, and climb a mountain. I guess I've done three of these things? I like it as an aspirational lifestyle video:
I can't seem to find a single way to legally obtain this album in the US. Montgrí won't ship to our backwards country thanks to our trade situation. Oh well, streaming it is.
Back in the 90s I would spend time at the Cypress Swap Meet and there was a booth where someone was selling tube socks. This vendor was always playing these outlandish synthesizer versions of old hit songs from another country. Maybe Korea? Memory can be weird like that when you are trying to remember nostalgic retrofuturistic versions of old songs being played by tube sock vendors in a parking lot thirty years ago. I do remember taking in that music while eating a swap-meet churro and thinking that it was a good moment.
Good old Madrotter posted a recent album that Madrotter has dubbed Oscar Young and that YouChoob Music has credited to 奥斯卡音乐. Through the magic of the algorithm I found out that this artist has approximately a trillion albums of outlandish synthesizer easy listening covers. Some of the songs I recognize, some I don't, but mostly I want to imagine being in a doctor's office in 1976 nodding my head to this stuff.
Over Labor Day weekend I flew down to Southern California - Mike L was having a wine party and we were going to record music and play games. After getting spousal permission I bought tickets. Good call.
I biked to the Portland airport, took a nonstop to Burbank and then took trains down to Long Beach. Travel hack in Southern California: take the train, even if everyone thinks you are crazy to do so. I get to Mike and Michelle's charming new place and drink wine.
The details are a little fuzzy at this point, but the next day we drive up to record Kanq Qixarth music in Linus's studio, aka a garage in a morning-glory-strewn back yard:
I've played music with these guys for three decades!!! Mike's son Linus and his super talented bandmates join in. Someone gets the bright idea to write a song based on a Rick James song:
Give it to me baby Give me that sweet funky stuff
but with the opposites of everything. Being the walking thesaurus of the party I come up with a lot of the words:
Take that from you daddy Return that sour orthodox ether
Needless to say it ends up being a super noisy 20-minute funk song. Ridiculous. Now I want to hear it.
Wine party later in the back yard. Everyone is talking about everything. Endless wine and endless talk about wine. The mosquitoes get one whiff of my blood and tell all their friends. I hold grandbaby Charlie and my old baby-holding reflexes kick in instantly, and we are fast friends. Conversations about digital activism, kids in college, babies, music of course, graduate school. I forget. It's a lot.
I play a show in the garage and it is surprisingly good. Previous wine party shows of mine have been legendary in the disaster sense, but this time I play good songs somewhat competently (!), including a cover of this one after introducing everyone to it at breakfast that morning:
Linus's band Kiss Hello plays afterwards, complex and rich sophistipop, almost prog, Matt somehow live-triggering my beloved old drum machine the Boss DR-110. Positive words about their album Summerdata to follow soon enough. The night ends at some point, I guess?!
The next day Mike says he's never going to do one of those parties again. I've heard that before. We play Agricola and jam surprisingly quietly in the front room.
L. takes me up to someplace near Pasadena or something to catch a train to my Erbenb in North Hollywood. I'm not sure it saves me any time, but it's a good ride and it's good to catch up. I take the train, and when I get out of the subway the sun is going down over Lankershim Blvd. I walk and walk in the dimming light and dodge cars and walk. Eventually I get to a room with bright lights and a television. I drop my bag and head out to try to catch the pupusa truck before they close. It drives away as I approach. Some sleep happens.
I wake up super early to walk to the airport. 100% would recommend walking several miles to the Burbank airport at 4:30 a.m. after not sleeping. A gas station playing "Take My Breath Away." Ladies setting up roadside desayuno carts, bacon smells in with the night eucalyptus and traffic smells. Transmission towers tingling in the night. The sun just starting to rise over the airport.
Back in Portland. My bike is still there. I ride it home. The next day my kid starts third grade. We are back in the world.
I sequenced all the bass lines and a lot of other things and used general computer wizardry to make a pop album. Mostly. Features songs about watching Password Plus while washing the dishes, finding kitchen accoutrements on the side of the road, inventing new alphabets during Lutheran confirmation, missing Verlaines shows and falling asleep on the train home, electric pencil sharpeners, and riding a cargo bike in 105 degree heat.
What happens if I decide to make an album where every track has prominent ring modulator? This is it. Songs about buying orange drink from a vending machine, falling asleep on the highway, falling asleep to Maya Deren films, buying expired produce, and ancient printing technology melting during the heat dome.
If you would like physical CD copies printed on an Apple //c-ImageWriter II combo and an IBM Wheelwriter 5 respectively, drop me a line. I'm done selling things (well, aside from charging $1 on Bandqlamp) but we can work something out.
