Naughty Bunny

 

Among my favorite opening lines ever:

The little bunny didn't mean to be naughty.
But he didn't try very hard to be good.

No es tan fácil

I've always liked jangly indie-pop, and I have often tried to create it, but I've always been too much of a monster to make nice, straightforward songs that people would actually, you know, like. I always have to find some way to ruin things.

The song linked above is by Spanish band Vacaciones. They make fine, fun, breezy indie-pop, and yup, we've got four chords strummed in sequence, head-bopping 4/4 time, but then they just randomly throw in one measure in 6! Wait, what just happened? Are things going to get weird? No, we head back to 4/4. OK, bopping head again.

Second verse, same as the first - wait, there's that measure in 6 again! And then back to 4/4 like nothing ever happened. The song jangles its effervescent and totally normal way to the end (less than two minutes long - I approve).

That weird little glitchy moment makes this unassuming song so so much better. That wait-did-I-just-hear-that moment. The reason why I find myself singing the rest of it.

I try to write a song like that and I end up with the following: an intro in 4. 4. 2. 7. 3. 3. 3. 4. 3. Because I am a monster.

1969

I realized that I was mostly listening to music from 1969 during today's workday.

I've been reading a bunch of Trouser Press magazines from their delightful and invaluable archive, and that sent me down a rabbit hole that eventually ended up in me listening to my dad's old copy of the Who's Tommy. Things I noted:

• I have strong memories of being terrified of the album cover as a youth
  
• There is some schmutz in the grooves that I strongly suspect is related to some sort of decades-hardened childhood spit-up of mine 
• I have fond memories of my dad singing "It's a Boy"
• I have fond memories of Eric Matchett being inspired by the bass line in "Go to the mirror!" and turning it into "Elevator Mirror" - maximum Activity Universal A E S T H A E T I C K as the kids say, recorded live on old eMac built-in microphone in my garage
  
• That said, the album itself is kind of an overwrought mess. Basically unlistenable in spots, plus depictions of child abuse are a big turn-off if not done with maximum restraint and delicacy. I guess I'll hang onto it and listen to it again in another thirty years.
  

Great album from 1969: Gilberto Gil's self-titled album from 1969, the one with "Cérebro Eletrônico" on it. I could listen to this one over and over again. So many crazy sounds, and some tape squeaks that I wholeheartedly approve of on the last song. I need to check out more of his stuff.

Culs-de-sac

Some people are early adopters of technology. Not me. But I have always enjoyed being an early scavenger. Do you remember how you were listening to music in the mid-aughts? I recently uncovered a stash of mini-CDRs with mp3s on them:

I owned a weird little Philips CD player that only played mini-CDs (talk about dead ends!). You could burn 4 or 5 albums on a little disc, then take the weird little CD player into your mid-90s Geo Metro, plug one appendage into the power/cigreet lighter, plug another appendage into the tape deck, and presto! You could be listening to your favorite Amon Düül II albums that you acquired... somewhere.

You'll note the names of several mid-aughts Portland bands in which I played. All culs-de-sac as well (in several cases, due to my own financial/emotional inability to go on tour/commit to the R&R lifestyle). All great though.

Ever since that weird little Philips CD player disappeared, these CDRs have basically been useless, so they've just been floating around boxes in my garage, naked, getting more and more scratched up. A wiser person would have just tossed them a decade ago, but somehow I never got rid of them. So yesterday I put them in my weird CD player that I bought on OfffrrUpp - whose main virtues are (a) being cheap, and (b) not being afraid to play any CDR, no matter how cheap or damaged - and they played. Just like that. So I've been having a weird third-wave pirated-media nostalgia experience, listening to old MP3s of, say, Ege Bamyasi, which I _had_ originally taped from my college radio station back in the 90s, but which sounded totally futuristic even then, and then I reacquired that music through the wonders of sketchy late-90s early-aughts internet, and now I'm in the future feeling nostalgia for multiple backwards vestigial technologies. What a world.
 

Space Nut Master

I love anything with the words "space," "nut," or "master" in the title, and I love groovy fonts, so it stands to reason that I would want to get this:

 (picture stolen from internet auction site user abwhit19)

That said, after a lifetime of thrifting, I do not want any more avocado green plastic items in my (very small 90s-era) kitchen. And I'm sure the old plastic would crack if you even just look at it, much less apply heavy pressure to nuts. So for my nut cracking needs (we bought a bunch of hazelnuts from a local orchard - largely because I wanted to hang out with their goats), I bought a much less exciting contemporary nut cracker. 

If anyone can vouch for the Space Nut Master's efficacy at cracking nuts, please create a blog post about how great it is. Someday I will search for this item again. We'll meet on the internet.

All I Feel Is Yes Friday

Bwoondqwoomp is doing their fee-free-Friday thing, so here's another All I Feel Is Yes chestnut:

Cleared for Takeoff

I play bass. Yours for free, or throw some ducats at us for the Rosehip Medics fundraiser.

Sky Juice

Loving the names of the percussion section on the Gladiators' _Sweet So Till_

Elton Britt

OK, that Elton Britt LP is a winner. Check out the virtuosic last minute of "Maybe I'll Cry Over You". Wow.