Category: Arts

The music things I got from Past Scott and am now enjoying

Updated 4 Oct 2018

I had two large shelves of CDs that were gathered beginning with the one My Brother gave me when I was in college before I even had (or maybe when I first got?) a CD player when they were rare-ish and my and others’ primary means of music w/r/t listening was The Turntable. It was Elvis Costello’s King of America.

First and last songs open with the same melody.

Fun fact: after the obtainment or maybe before, I went to a Costello concert following said album/CD’s release with bro and his then girlfriend at The Fox. It was neat. Also fun fact: I got into EC in HS when I dug through My Brother’s albums and decided to listen to Imperial Bedroom. It was a revelation.

CDs were kept; CDs were moved from college apts to post college apts to shared apt (hey Lisa!) to condo (hey Wife!!) and sat for years on shelves and were looked at like Ulysses the book we want to read but don’t. Still, they had memories. I resisted getting rid of them and appreciate that. Getting them in digital form was more than overdue. I still have everything that I’ve ever burned to digital on local, RAIDed, 4x2TB (~5 TB total) drives backed up to the cloud, but I see that as an old person habit that is irrelevant-ish. Google Play allows 50,000 songs and all purchases are download-able w/o copy-protection. Although I think copy protection may be an old person’s concept also.

So now those shelved CDs are less visible but more easily accessible. And the act of reviewing what got burned reëmphasizes what was valuable.

Stereolab

I got “into” them when I had a subscription to IIRC CMJ. They were a magazine I subscribed to that contained a CD of a dozen or so new artist that, Pitchfork-like, predicted possessed coolness. I discovered so much from them. And one was Stereolab. If I dug through the CD tracts I would remember the exact song but it doesn’t matter.

Years ago and years after the discovery I went to a concert with Wife and Robert and Shelby at Variety Playhouse. They don’t disappoint. I wonder if they still tour.

Sonic Youth

This is the one.

I discovered them one weekend during college when friends and I came in from Carrollton to L5P to dig through what Wax n’ Facts had to offer. I had heard of Sonic Youth, for how long I don’t know, and that, via Rolling Stone of-all-places, Daydream Nation was a masterpiece (same publication that called Imperial Bedroom a masterpiece). It was like discovering Dark Side of the Moon. The double album provided the right amount of prog framing with noise-rock experimentation. I had been informed by Glenn Branca et al. from high school and so I easily absorbed the rock band consisting of the musicians of Branca’s symphonies.

Played this for my college music theory teacher and he was… intrigued? Hey, Dr. Dan Bakos!
Found on the internet. Ah, memories.

This I had on cassette from … ROIR! (Google search). Obtained from mailings I would get with alt noise rock and no-wave. Sonic Youth’s first album was also offered in their catalogues but they were very Branca at the time and less Sonic Youth.

Shudder to Think

I had found these guys via an early internet radio station that was more like a pirate AM station than anything else. Two Austin (?) guys who just played the shit they liked and were as much talk as music but it was great. Besides StT I learned about math rock and the math rock bands Durian (which for no specific reason did not make the cut to be burned to MP3) and Faraquet (same, no reason?). StT I revisited as I re-listened and found that they were a bands’ band and of the Pearl Jam time milieu indie. Respected and influential.

Thingy

These guys were the weird ones in a field of weird. They are math rock via Sunny Day Real Estate (maybe?) via The Minutemen (short song, yet pop not punk). I cannot recommend them enough as forgotten missed potential. I really have no idea where I found them (see May 2004). There was random internet radio, RIOR, Wax n’ Facts, CMJ, a brother? Probably something else.

Now, the musicians from Thingy did as musical theatre a piece based on G. Stein’s poem (see Jul 2006) called The World is Round. I only had access to short clipes but goddammit I loved that music. A few videos were available the time, but research for this blog post brought up the rarity of a complete performance.

I had two large shelves of CDs

Updated 4 Oct 2018

Nice coincidence: Sonic Youth is celebrating the 30th anniversary (1988!) of Daydream Nation at an event in Portland, OR. Included will be documentaries of their performance from 2007 along with archival footage. Gordon Withers just released cello versions of two Sonic Youth songs including “Youth Against Fascism” which rails against Clarence Thomas (today I’ve been glued to the Kavanaugh news). Days after the Daydream Nation screenings, Steve Shelley will be performing a fundraiser for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Nice coincidence.

Back again

Over the past few weeks I’ve started playing piano again.

A few years back I started getting weird deficiencies in my right hand. Descending arpeggios started becoming odd then difficult when my 3rd finger would cross over. Degeneration increased over several months, carpal tunnel surgery was performed and completely ineffective, physical therapy was attempted, but here we are. My PT therapist did fascinating research and came up with focal hand dystonia:

in focal hand dystonia, the fingers either curl into the palm or extend outward without control

That about sums it up.

It’s depressing if I think about it so I usually don’t. I’m pretty much unable to play any of the songs I’ve written except for the more basic ones, and I never got my last rock opera in my hands at all. That’s probably the most regretful.

I got itchy recently and so picked up Shostakovich’s Prelude #5 from opus 87. It’s a nice little piece in D major-ish and distributes the themes across both hands. I’m at speed now with not too many stumbles with my 3rd and 4th fingers. Working on memory. I just started Bach’s 7th fugue in E-flat from The Well-Tempered Clavier edition that I received after donating to the Musescore Kickstarter project. Difficult (for me) four note descending arpeggios that kind of tax a very weak fourth finger. Getting stronger though. I’m still surprised with the difference in competence between the two hands.

It feels very good to get back. I hate that I’m not composing and playing my own stuff but am still enjoying and hopeful.

More on the Karnstein myth, Jess Franco, horror, and softcore porn

A month or so ago I got a subscription to the horror movie channel Shudder. We saved money by Cutting the Cable Cord, but now are approaching the same budget by a-la-carting so many other streaming providers (“The tragedy of your times my young friends is that you may get exactly what you want.”). I subscribed to Shudder out of genuine interest in horror and indie horror, and the fact that it was only $5/month made me more pliable. Streaming services take note: $10/month seems to be the standard price so $5/month is an irresistible target. Go for the long tail.

So far on Shudder I’ve watched Frontier(s) (2007), It Stains the Sands Red (2017), and Daughter of Dracula (1972) (not Dracula’s Daughter from 1936, fwiw).

From Female Vampire: Lina Romay as Countess Irina Karlstein

I dove into a few Jess Franco films back in November 2015 and I still value them for their inventive variety (he’s done ~160 films!): the three films I watched were of such wildly different styles that they were effectively from different directors. His film Female Vampire introduced me to the pre-Bram Stoker vampire story Carmilla (1871) and all of it’s variations since then. Daughter of Dracula is connected to that literary lineage, also known as the Karnstein/Karlstein vampire myth, and includes the Franco films along with Hammer films and an LGBT web series (see also this wonderful THE KARNSTEIN TIMELINE collection of all media Karnstein-related). They are all part of a larger style of lesbian vampire stories.

Although Daughter of Dracula was filmed in Lisbon (cf. Female Vampire filmed in moody and beautiful Madeira), I did not recognize the city that we had visited. Living in Midtown Atlanta I should know the radical differences that 40 years can impose on a city.

From Daughter of Dracula: Franco, Anne Libert, and Carmen Yazalde as Luisa Karlstein

Daughter of Dracula has the softcore porn aspect of many of Franco’s films. The opening scene includes a woman, full frontal preparing for a bath, and the camera more than lingers. Other scenes I-kid-you-not dramatically zoom in to 1970s-era unshaven et ceteras. Whether this was titillating back then I’m not sure but it is incredibly non-sexual today. During one “lesbian” scene there was such an invasive soundtrack referencing show tunes, comedic, and dance styles, that the extended breast licking was completely unbelievable. And, yes, I typed “extended.”

Daughter of Dracula differed from the previous vampire film of his that I watched, Female Vampire. That one was more static and moody, expressing the lead’s curse more with lingering camera shots and frequent foggy, daytime scenes. Daughter of Dracula felt more conventional. Said daughter learns about her heritage as the local police attempt to solve a series of recent murders. Both films are worth a watch and would be good as a double-feature. Are you listening, Plaza Theatre?