take a listen. order info at bandcamp link. cassette or digital download.
i love this album cover color
Rich Baiocco
WRITING Published Elsewhereplace
BOOT N' RALLY zine Issue #1
DADDY ISSUES & DRONE NOISE essay :: 'What A Beautiful Face' Neutral Milk Hotel zine
The Dropbeatles :: Everyday Genius
Kentucky Backworld Conduits :: The Smoking Poet(scroll down)
Are You Decent :: Blog San Diego
Posts tagged music
May9
May8
i didn’t realize this was one of my favorite songs till it hurt me so good
Pat Ruthensmear - Golden Boys
darby crash and pat smear, but not recorded by the germs. a lot of bands cover this song in a shitty so-cal pop punk way, but the original is the best as is usual.
May1
here’s my may day
(Source: Spotify)
Apr30
mammal: lk shaw — can you imagine→
whoa fk :: lk shaw
enjoy this space
Apr6
First show in San Francisco i’m seeing at the Independent tonite
Mar15
is everybody streaming the shit out of this new Phosphorescent record today? well shouldn’t you be? by the time you get to the track The Quotidian Beast you’ll be rollin’ in holy shit
thanks to b.s. for the tip-off
Coming to The Independent in San Francisco April 6th
Feb22
Rifled Through Treasure, Busy Friday Afternoons
Just got back from Florida and Panama. Been there most of February. Incredible time. My 2 biggest scores while there were these: The Time of the Assassins : a study of RImbaud by Henry Miller, and this Bob Dylan special issue of Rolling Stone containing all the interviews the magazine every did with Dylan. Tons of gems in this rag. For one, at some point in the late 70s//early 80s when Dylan claimed he was falling out of touch with all the contemporary music that was going on around him (new wave?) he said the only record that got it right was So Alone by Johnny Thunders, which features one of my favorite tunes ‘You Can’t Throw Your Arms Around A Memory’. Check it out if you get a chance. Warm killer of a tune.
There’s also this gem that one of the interviewers (Jonathan Cott) gives Dylan. Highlighted are my favorites
I wanted to read to you 2 Hasidic texts that somehow remind me of your work. The first says that in the service of God, one can learn 3 things from a child and 7 from a thief.
From a child: 1) always to be happy
2) never to sit idle
3) to cry for everything one wants.
From a thief: 1) to work at night
2) if one cannot gain what one wants in one night to try again the next night.
3) to love one’s co-workers just as thieves love each other
4) to be willing to risk one’s life even for a little thing
5) not to attach to much value to things even though one has risked one’s life for them
6) to withstand all kinds of beatings and tortures but to remain what you are
7) to believe that your work is worthwhile and not be willing to change it.
Jan25
Satellite’s gone up to the sky. // Things like that drive me out of my mind. // I watched it for a little while, I like to watch things on tv. // Satellite of love. // Satellite of love.
Lou Reed
Jan23
COOL! Review of our Neutral Milk Hotel zine along with SCAM 9!Edited by K. Johnson, the contributions range from the essayistic (Johnson’s own musings on the band and their legacy) to the more impressionistic (Adam Gnade’s short fiction inspired and informed by the band’s music.) And as someone who was old enough to see Neutral Milk Hotel live but never actually did (much to my chagrin), the multiple perspectives here rang true. The authors range from writers in their thirties to those not yet of legal drinking age, first encountering Jeff Mangum’s music in a solo setting. (via The Zinophile: Black Flag and Neutral Milk Hotel in Half-Size Form | Vol. 1 Brooklyn)
Vol 1 Brooklyn gives a nice review of the NMH fanzine What A Beautiful Face that Punch Drunk put out through Microcosm Distro. Good for it. & good for the recent Jeff Magnum shows - i’ve heard they were stellar. Autocorrect tried to change ‘fanzine’ to ‘fozzie’ haha ehhh
(via wearepioneerspress)
Jan6
If you’re gonna write a song, put the name of a city in it. I mean, if it meant something real to you -a city - then please write that song. Let it be known that place exists because that song is sung. Marty Robbins sang about ‘El Paso’ and El Paso means something to me, but I’ve never been there. I know all about the trains leaving Cheyenne, and I did terrible in school, in geography, ya know? I’ve barely been outside of my own state, but i can name a song for every city that’s been written about. You keep going on and complaining how small America is, how every town is the same, has the same stores, same-looking movie theaters, the same burgers. But I think of every town or city that I can name a song for - I think of every song and America is immense.
And think of all the songs I haven’t discovered yet. And think of all the other countries out there that have their own songs with their little towns in them, towns that meant something to somebody in words I can’t decipher. Maybe melodies I can hum.
John-Vincent Greco on What Is Country, What Is Folk?
Dec30
✯I wanna feel it I cant find it ☆I wanna find it I cant feel it ✮I wanna feel it I cant find it ☆ I wanna find it I cant feel it ★ I wanna feel it i cant find it ☆ I wanna find it I cant feel it ★I wanna feel it I cant find it !! WKKND MUSIC VOL. 13
I Can’t Find It by Love
When you need to feel, there’s nothing like Arthur Lee and LOVE. That feeling that something is not quite right, that something is slipping away, that the self is fleeing, threatened, flailing…he OWNS it until that space, that space of self we are all owed, natural birthright of every human being, is full and vibrant and at least brimming with vitality again, solid as a rock, and ready to take on the taking on.
~rjb
Dec16
⇏LiSTEN TO YrSELF ∞DoNT TALK ∞DoNT ARGUE ∞DoNT BLAME ∞DoNT POiNT FiNGERS…JUST LiSTEN ⇍ Wkknd MUSIC VOL. 12
Dec9
✖✖HungovER ALL DaY !! ◉CoMiNG ALiVE FiNALLY NoW (wow!) @ 3:57PM !!◎WhAT An amaZING YESterDAY !! ✖✖ Wkknd MUSIC VOL. 11
Great time at the East Bay Alternative Book Fair yesterday. Thanks to Tomas Moniz and Rocks Paper Scissors Collective for putting it together - I couldn’t believe how many people turned up to poke on some zines. Thanks to everyone who stopped at the Shwardo table. Made my day. More good things coming in 2013
~rjb
(Source: Spotify)
Dec2
➹SONiC! ➷SoNICKS!! ➚sonIX!!! ➴KiLLFNGR!!! ⇱WkkND MUSIC VOL. X ⇲
One of my alltime favorite voices. Gets inside of you and loosens you up, shakes out your hangups - like, that’s the point of the voice, to be an instrument more than just a wordpusher. Wish poets had more distinctive voices at readings, most are shitty and boring. Not connecting with the audience. Surface. Stuck inside themselves, but not inside of the words. Can’t deliver certain words that work in a poem you write, but not in a conversation - that’s the worst. Turnoff. Nobody speaks in complicated metaphor. Nobody speaks in multiple adjectives. Should people write in multiple adjectives anyway? Most if not all poetry readings are unsatisfying. Met Ben Mirov last week at The Squat and he was talking about ‘poet’s voice,’ and how terrible that gets. Later he read in this computerized voice, like early voice-recognition software, that was at least different. His poems were about the void. At least he was going for something, performance-wise. Taking a chance. Stuck in my mind. This guy Charlie at Mission and 16th screams his poems like a madman out on the corner, jumping up and down as he excites himself. If you catch it in the right wind, it’s pretty spectacular.
But I’ll mostly prefer a Sonics song and read your poetry to myself - that’s my favorite way to take it. Of course there are other Sonics songs too. ‘Some folks like water, some folks like wine, but i like the taste of straight strychnine’
~rjb
Dec1
THIS IS OUT NOW
I have two short (fiction) stories based around Neutral Milk Hotel songs in the What a Beautiful Face zine. Pretty excited to hold this pup in my hands. Rich’s essay and Megan McIsaac’s photography are particularly good. It was great to pay tribute to my favorite band.
PUNCH DRUNK! This just came out today. I’ve got an essay in here about hearing loss, On Avery Island, and fathers n sons sharing secrets. I can’t wait to read all the other stuff
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