Luxury middle age second-hand item alert

I bought two larger newer things to replace two smaller older things:

(1) We bought an electric vehicle, a Nissan Ariya. Second-hand, of course, but with very little use. Massive depreciation and the tax credit finally brought this cushy crossover into our price range. It is massive compared to my previous subcompact gas vehicles, but my kid calls it the "comfy-mobile" and is not incorrect. We're closer to weaning ourselves off fossil fuels in the household - just need to replace our gas water heater. 

(2) My old cheapo second-hand exercise bike finally started making horrendous sounds after a little over a year of frequent use, so I drove said electric vehicle up the mountain into Happy Valley to buy an open-box exercise bike off Craigslist. After much effort*, I assembled the thing, and while it, too, feels massive compared to the previous model, it is smooooooth, and I am less worried about waking the kid, who somehow slept through the incredible racket of the old one. While riding it, I've been playing Ys games (this time Memories of Celceta) and they are good cheerful low-brain action for keeping the legs moving. If you do Steam, most of them are on sale right now.

 *Said effort largely due to a Z-tier translation of the assembly instructions (naming and shaming: Xterra SB600), in which the various parts are referred to by a number of different part numbers, never consistent. My day-job mind struggles to imagine what would have led to this sort of error.

Cosmonox @ Firkin Tavern Portland 2/28/25

I'll be playing the squeaky card reader thingy plus a couple actual instruments this Friday at the Firkin Tavern in the rainy city of Portland, Oregon, USA. We open up the evening, hooray! Our musical brothers and sisters in the Vardaman Ensemble will be showing their latest evolution. (I'm not sure they've actually changed since the last time I saw them, but I think it's fair to assume.) I don't know Water Shrews yet, but they do have good taste in opening and closing bands.

Eternal Gormless Youth and Obscurity

The video for Snowy Band's "Looking Back" is very funny and a little poignant. Present-day Snowy discovers a video of himself in his tender years and copies the backgrounds and, um, choreography? I had some extreme feelings of recognition of myself in my gormless Guitar Vanity* years in my own nondescript suburban home. 

In a similar vein, I checked out Simon Hanselmann's Below Ambition from the library (yay libraries) and its depictions of self-indulgent patience-testing noise band squalor ring exceptionally true. His stuff has a strong flavor that I can't always take too much of, but I like this one.

The game Tiny Terry's Turbo Trip has been very popular with adult and youth alike in my household. It is sweetly anarchic and goofy. The writing is great. You smack everything in sight with a pipe. And importantly, it features a controller button solely devoted to having Terry make silly noises.

I plowed through Toni Tennille: A Memoir in a couple quick sittings. Not a great book necessarily, but earnest and readable. I now appreciate how much of a weirdo the Captain (RIP) was, and how difficult. The 70s were a weird time all right.

Is this a hot take? "Love Will Keep Us Together" > "Love Will Tear Us Apart." 

Also, I remember writing a blog post a couple decades ago about how it was comforting that you could always find a copy of Love Will Keep Us Together in the thrift bins, but I looked through the overpriced $3 records at my local Mormon thrift and didn't see it. The churning sea of thrift-store records does change eventually. Somehow I only seem to own a copy of the Spanish version Por Amor Viviremos.

I'm buying an Electrix Filter Factory from a friend and finally broke it out in Cosmonox Mode the other night. Holy mackerel that thing has the power. It will feature prominently at the show this Friday, hint hint, see next blog post.

* I need to put my album Eternal Youth and Obscurity up on Internet Archive

Cosmic Future Groove/Rose City Reads/Voice of Harold

Always interesting to see what sort of things the kid likes. Unexpected recent passion: Cosmic Future Groove Vol. 2. I did not expect my son to want to listen to 70s library disco over and over again, but I am not complaining. Today after the bath he mentioned that he would like to have a time machine so he could go to the 70s and listen to this music. He has been warned that the 70s also include "Muskrat Love." I think he thinks I'm joking about that being a real thing.

Because I cannot refuse a good segue: I had a chance to stop by the Friends of the Library's new book store Rose City Reads the other day. I picked up Toni Tennille: A Memoir because I had to. Will report back. Anyway: While the cheapskate in me misses the low low prices and beat-up library discards of the former Title Wave, the joy of discovery is still there, and a lot closer to me no less.

Sick boy. Lots of library Bluey DVDs. Sometimes things that are popular are good.

We've been reading old Childcraft stories at bedtime. One must tread carefully around some of the dated racial attitudes etc., including "The Five Chinese Brothers," yikes, but in any case that got the R.E.M. song of a similar name stuck in my head, quickly to be supplanted by the far superior "Voice of Harold," and my thanks go to rschreck for syncing up the song with its source material, the liner notes from the Revelaires' The Joy of Knowing Jesus:

Little stereos

At a Happy Valley yard sale last summer*, I picked up a very cute little vintage Realistic/Radio Shack stereo amplifier. I wasn't sure if I would have a USE for it, but it was only a couple bucks and it had the best aluminum knobs.** So I picked it up and found a place for it in my bike bags among my other finds.

Today I realized I wanted to give it a shot. Turns out it works super well (once I worked out all the dust from the potentiometers by sweeping them back and forth), and it looks pretty good. I picked up some super cheap speakers from the Mormon thrift store down the street, and for the price of a Costco pizza***, I'm in business.

I have set up so so many stereos over the years. Always a new apartment, always a new garage sale receiver, always fiddling with the speaker wires. Wires all over, my perpetual condition. Today I got out my wire strippers and triumphantly did some wire stripping. It is so satisfying. I could never be an electrician, but stripping speaker wire feels pretty good.

*Of course I went to a gazillion garage sales in this beautiful and bland suburb by e-bike, it was great, see my write-up from 2023
**I know, I'm a pervert for liking knobs and buttons so much
***RIP gluten, I miss you

Lines and rhymes 12/30/24

Lines that I've enjoyed in songs that are likewise great:

Aselefech Ashine and Getenesh Kebret "Meche Neow":
"Eager to see you return
I sleep facing in the direction you might be"
(just recently got this album from Mississippi Records, had known this song for nearly three decades ever since getting Ethiopian Groove: The Golden Seventies on tape from Merkato in LA before some G*ng W*z*rd show or other)

Cootie Catcher "Friend of a Friend":
"And you know that I could pick out your ears in a crowd"
(super catchy song, great video also, particularly with its awesome glitched-out closed-captioning):

I don't know any lyrics from this great post from Madrotter Treasure Hunt, but the second song is called "Badminton," and I'm trying to imagine what the lyrics might be about (great cover):

Trout Mask Replica Replica

The internet failed to alert me that someone had completed a song-for-song a capella cover of Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica. Like, note-for-note. Even if it's not something I'd return to for multiple listens, I have to admire the crazed dedication that went into it. Olympic levels of dedication. Like gymnasts. Five years in the making. What sort of madman. 

I can't not think of that remake of Psycho. Or Goat-Boy's dad recording endless Rush covers on his four-track over and over again. Or people making umpteen thousands of origami cranes. Or reading the OED from cover to cover. Playing "Vexations" for 24 hours straight. Or arcade games for 48 hours straight on a single quarter.

I will admit I'm not 100% sold on the aesthetics of the project. Dude(s) had previously done note-for-note covers of Negativland and the Residents, both bands that I wish I could like but don't actually enjoy, and there's some of that self-consciously creepy/woozy/offputting vibe throughout, particularly in the companion videos. I don't feel like Captain Beefheart was aiming to be self-consciously offputting. Challenging, sure. But of course his aesthetic vision, at least at this point in his career, was offputting to pretty much all of straight America.

But once again I reiterate: note-for-note cover of Trout Mask Replica. Every song. The songs that were originally solo a capella get new and lurid harmonies. The skits get redone. Every tic and stammer mimicked to the microsecond. What a world.