Sunday, September 27, 2020

Isolation Report, Week #29

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]


Another two weeks, another 14 days spent marveling at how much worse “worse” can get.  The fact that none of it is even surprising—not that no police officers will be charged in the murder of Breonna Taylor, not that our president will not agree to leave office peacefully if defeated in the election, not that the Republicans are completely comfortable with their hypocrisy regarding Supreme Court appointments, not that the Democrats are toothless in their response and blustering pointlessly, not that the number of deaths from the pandemic continues to rise while the rest of the world is handling their shit and revoking our passports, not that the president knew how bad it was in Feburary and did nothing—is possibly the most depressing thing.  Literally the only thing that surprises me any more is that anyone else is surprised by any of these things.

The fact that Ruth Bader Ginsburg died was not so much surprising—this is 2020, after all—as it was a punch in the gut.  Someone that I watch (probably Stephen Colbert) said that they had been getting texts all weekend with various expressions of sadness and profanity; this was reflected perfectly in our online chat at $work where the NPR story reporting her death was followed nearly immediately by two messages: “NOOOOOOOOOOOOO” and ”FUCK!!” ... I’ll leave it to you to guess which one of those was from me.  Besides the terror at what damage Trump and the Senate Republicans (who have already pledged to confirm Trump’s nominee, without even finding out who it’s going to be) can do, it’s also worth reflecting on the fact that it’s just a massive loss for democracy.  I’ve watched several tributes to her life and legacy, but I highly recommend Trevor Noah’s, which touched me the most.

There isn’t a lot of other news to report: there’s been a bit (more) family drama, a guinea pig funeral, a colonoscopy appointment made, a broken dishwasher.  There’s a new D&D book coming out that I’m quite looking forward to.  The smallies and I finished season 2 of Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts, which is just a beautiful, funny, touching animated series; if you have both Netflix and children and you haven’t watched this yet, you really must do.  My sleep schedule is nearly completely random at this point, but $work is still going moderately well.  Well, as well as can be expected, I suppose.  The humans in the house have mostly committed to not killing each other.  At least for now.

I understand that many folks (including my own parents) are starting to go out more, even eating in restaurants.  So far we’ve held off on that.  I pointed out to my mother this weekend that she couldn’t really be wearing her mask while she was eating.  She said, no, you just wear it to the table and then you take it off to eat.  I said that was like wearing your hazmat suit to get to the radiation and then taking it off once you arrived.  Call us overabundantly cautious if you like.  We’re fine with that.

Oh, and I did actually take a COVID test recently.  I had no fever, but there was a sore throat, and just a touch of labored breathing, so I figured better safe than sorry.  There’s a drive-through place near us where they basically hand you the giant Q-tip and tell you what to do and then you give yourself the test.  Then they text you the results; they told me to give it 3 – 5 day, but I got a text within 24 hours.  Negative, if you were concerned.  Which, as I say, I figured, but one doesn’t want to mess around.  I still believe we’re all going to get it eventually, but I really want to know when I’ve got it.  I don’t think I’m in any particular danger once I get it, but of course we have the kid with the heart condition, so one has to be careful.

I think that’s all there is to report.  I hope the world gets better soon.  I’d certainly like to start having lunch with my coworkers again, and I know The Mother would just like me to leave the house, lunch or no lunch.  And my children wouldn’t mind getting back to a semi-regular field trip schedule.  But we wait, and we watch, and we hope that the election gives the country a chance at recovery.  If not, then ... then I don’t know.  Other than being able to predict that Trump and his family will be enriched by the continued deaths of the American people, I can’t guess what that dystopian future would hold.

Hopefully it doesn’t come to finding out.









Sunday, September 20, 2020

Wisty Mysteria II

"Smoke a Cigarette and Lie Some More"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.  You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]


The second volumes of any of my modern mixes are almost always the same: they consist of all the tracks that didn’t fit on the first volume, either in terms of style, or because I just plain ran out of room.  The pre-modern mixes1  are different: at the time they were developed, there was no concept of a “second volume.” I thought I was putting together the definitive statement on mood X, and that would be an end to it.  Of course, being older and wiser (and continuously discovering newer and newer music), I now know that you can never really exhaustively describe a mood.  There’s always something new to say, and some new tunes to say it for you.

This the first second volume of a pre-modern mix that I’ve managed to finish, and I’m pretty happy with it.  I think every track here still retains that slightly sad (wistful), slightly creepy (mysterious) vibe that I was originally going for, but it’s expanded in nearly every way.  Where the original volume was mostly stuck in a narrow band of time (1986 – 1991), this volume spans three and a half decades (1982 – 2016).  And whereas volume I hewed very close to what “alternative” meant in the late 80s and early 90s, this volume ranges far and wide, from early 80s synthpop, to the power ska of the aughts, to downtempo electroncia, and even into some alt-country territory.  Let’s dive in, shall we?

On the sadder side of the spectrum, we have strong contenders from Richmond duo House of Freaks, British phenoms the Beautiful South, and one of my favorite 80s bands, Yazoo.  House of Freaks is one of those bands you can’t believe is only two people; they exist in a musical spectrum that I have yet to describe but starts on the slow end with Toad the Wet Sprocket, continues through the Goo Goo Dolls and the Replacements, and ends up with the metal-leaning Candlebox.  House of Freaks is on the solidly folk-leaning side of the spectrum, perhaps where the Gin Blossoms hang out, but oh so much better than those Arizona gentlemen.  No stranger to writing melancholy songs about historical events,2 this one is about slave ships coming to America.  The Beautfiul South, far more popular in their native UK than they ever managed to achieve on my side of the pond, is also singing about dark times in history; in their case, it’s a condemnation of politicians who send young men off to die in wars while they stay safe at home.  Moving from the historical to the personal, Yazoo’s “Midnight” uses Alison Moyet’s powerful voice to tell a quiet story of loneliness and regret.

But the one that personally touches me the most is Chris Isaak’s “Nothing’s Changed.” A taste:

Kisses you gave me,
The vows you made me,
None of these things have changed ...
Nothing’s changed.

And yet, in the song, of course everything’s changed.  The palpable longing in this tune feels very real and raw, and Isaak’s use of dynamics and pauses really drive it home.

Switching to the other side of Wisty Mysteria’s continuum, there’s the weirdly psychedelic “We Are So Small”—weird in the sense that the Red Sea Pedestrians are far more known for klezmer-tinged Americana3that touches on “the vastness of unbounded space,” and there’s “The Shining Path,” in which Shriekback opines that “if we were different some other time, we don’t remember”: both seem to touch on all the things we don’t know about the universe.  Still, I would probably give the award to “Lost Boys and Girls Club” by LA’s own Dum Dum Girls.4  This is female-fronted shoegaze-adjacent power dreampop, similar in style to Mazzy Star or fellow Angelenos Tashaki Miyaki,5  and it’s an excellent example of their style: there are fuzzy guitar chords, and echoey vocals, and fantastic lyrics like “your eyes are black X’s of hate and of hexes.”

But, as always, most songs are in between the extremes.  For sheer isolation, it’s tough to beat the howling wind in the background of Bronski Beat’s “Memories,” which fades directly into the howling wind of the Smiths’ “Asleep.” There’s also the figurative winds of Cutting Crew’s “Sahara,” and the winds in the title of “Sarah When the Wind Blows” by emmet swimming.6  I’m not sure there are any winds in “Trophy” by Bat for Lashes, but there’s certainly desolation and defiance.  And “Gold and Rose” by Myles Cochran7 has that echoey emptiness that only country-adjacent tunes can seem to capture.

As for Keren Ann, an anti-folk artist squarely in the mold of Regina Spektor and Feist,8 she often puts out gentle, shimmery pop gems such as “Not Going Anywhere,” the title track from her 2003 album.  They’re often hopeful, as this selection is, but in this case there’s a touch of wistful sadness (mostly provided by the backing violin) which makes it fit perfectly on this mix.

For this volume’s injection of songs which seem upbeat until you actually listen to them, my favorite is certainly “Happy Birthday” by Concrete Blonde.  Actually, when I arranged the original mix, I was torn between this track and the one I eventually chose, but in the end “Little Conversations” captures that wistful feeling more than this track.  But “Happy Birthday” describes a peculiar sense of loneliness where you’re not exactly sad about it, but it certainly ain’t happy either.  And I’ve always loved the temporally contemporary Voice of the Beehive, an alternative band fronted by two sisters from California and backed by former members of Madness, who are excellent at producing midtempo or even upbeat songs that have deceptively downbeat messages.  “Sorrow Floats” provides such lyrical gems as:

You can’t drown your sorrows,
Or on you will be the joke.
Because the only thing that you will drown is yourself,
‘Cause you see my dear, sorrow floats.

I always wanted to get this track onto a mix somewhere, and this was the obvious place for it.



Wisty Mysteria II
[ Smoke a Cigarette and Lie Some More ]


“Option” by Naomi, off Pappelallee
“Gold and rose” by Myles Cochran, off Marginal Street
“Big Empty” by Stone Temple Pilots, off Purple
“Nothing's Changed” by Chris Isaak, off Heart Shaped World
“Sahara” by Cutting Crew, off Broadcast
“State of Mind” by Mad Caddies, off Keep It Going
“Sarah When the Wind Blows” by emmet swimming, off Big Night Without You
“Sorrow Floats” by Voice of the Beehive, off Let It Bee
“Bottom of the Ocean” by House of Freaks, off Monkey on a Chain Gang
“Happy Birthday” by Concrete Blonde, off Free
“Not Going Anywhere” by Keren Ann, off Not Going Anywhere
“We Are So Small” by The Red Sea Pedestrians, off See Through the Eyes of Osiris!
“Trophy” by Bat for Lashes, off Fur and Gold
“Lost Boys and Girls Club” by Dum Dum Girls, off Too True
“The Shining Path” by Shriekback, off Big Night Music
“Have You Ever Been Away” by The Beautiful South, off Welcome to the Beautiful South
“Memories” by Bronski Beat, off The Age of Consent
“Asleep” by The Smiths, off Louder Than Bombs [Compilation]
“Midnight” by Yazoo, off Upstairs at Eric's
“Crescent Moon” by KT Tunstall, off Invisible Empire // Crescent Moon
Total:  20 tracks,  79:49



I’m not sure there are any truly surprising choices here, but perhaps the Mad Caddies qualify.  The power ska group from just up the California coast from me is more known for upbeat tunes such as you might find on Salsatic Vibrato.9  But “State of Mind,” while not exactly downbeat, is certainly really happy-making either.  The bridge proclaims “I feel the weight of the world sometimes, hanging on my head, ... look for the light at the end of this tunnel once again,” and that sums it up nicely: the singer wants to find some hope, but isn’t really succeeding.

Which only leaves us with our opener, closer, and volume namer.  The last of which may also be a surprising choice: grunge masters Stone Temple Pilots at first seem an odd pick for a volume of reflective tunes, but “Big Empty” is just that.  Full of surreal imagery (such as “her dizzy head is conscience-laden”), it’s another example of using dynamics to build an amazing song structure.  There are the quiet moments when Scott Weiland says he’s done “too much walking; shoes worn thin” as well as “too much tripping and my soul’s worn thin” (which, as thinly veiled drug references in rock anthems go, is one of the better ones), then the song bursts into guitars and drums and Scott wails that it’s “time to take her home.” It’s always been one of my favorites, even though I generally prefer Core to Purple.

As for the opener, it’s another appearance from one of my favorite obscure bands, Naomi, who were so instrumental in forging the first two volumes of Smokelit Flashback.  Given my definition of “obscure band,” many bands are obscure when I first write about them, but become far better known in the years afterwards.  But, considering that the Berlin masters of downtempo released their first album in 2002, it’s somewhat amazing to me that AllMusic barely acknowledges them, with a discography but no biograpy, and Wikipedia continues to be blissfully unaware that they exist at all.  But exist they do, and they are amazingly versatile, as you might guess from the dizzying number of mixes they’ve appeared on.10  This track, from their sophomore album Pappelallee,11 is tinged with just enough regret to make it slot beautifully here:

I can’t say “no,” and I can’t say “yes,”
Just another way of saying “no,” I guess ...
When you can’t say “no,” and you can’t say “yes,”
You leave a mess.

Given that I’d discovered this song about 15 years too late for it to make onto the first volume, it was actually one of the earliest tracks I slotted for this follow-up, and it was nearly always in the anchor slot.

As for “Crescent Moon,” it has a bit of a strange tale.  I first discovered KT Tunstall via one of those “if you like that, you’ll like this!” music discovery services.  I’ve no doubt that the “that” in this case was Liz Phair; if you like Liz Phair, I find it difficult to believe that you could possibly fail to like KT Tunstall.  So I knew I wanted to check her music out, but where to start?  AllMusic convinced me that Invisible Empire // Crescent Moonnot exactly a double album, but one with two very distinct halves12was her best, so I tried it.  And didn’t immediately take to it.  Not willing to give up, I went back and tried Tiger Suit and fell in love.  Most of what we’ve heard from Tunstall (on Sirenexiv Cola and Porchwell Firetime) has been from Tiger Suit, which I still feel is her best.  But Invisble Empire // Crescent Moon has its own charms; it’s far more delicate and ethereal than the upbeat, peppy Tiger Suit, so it takes a few more listens to fully appreciate.  I did use one track (“How You Kill Me” on Smooth as Whispercats) from the Invisible Empire half, but that’s been it so far.  However, when I first put this volume together, it originally ended with “Midnight,” and it just didn’t feel right as as closer.  Oh, it’s a brilliant song, sure, but not exactly the right note to go out on.  I wanted something quieter, softer, that faded into a not-uncomfortable silence.  And I rediscovered “Crescent Moon,” which is all that, and more.  With some beautfiul strings in the mix and some great lyrics sung from the point of view of the moon itself, such as “pulling all your oceans up around my body” and “never found a refuge up there in the sky,” this is a darkly pretty, beautifully poignant note to close out the volume.


Next time, we’ll drift into more surreal terroritory.  Again.





__________

1 Easiest to just read volume I‘s post for what that means, if you don’t know yet.

2 We last saw them singing about the development of the atomic bomb on Rose-Coloured Brainpan II.

3 Such as their amazing cover of “Sugar in My Coffin” that we saw on Porchwell Firetime.

4 Introduced to me by a former coworker, who knew or had met one of the members.  Or former members.  I don’t recall exactly.

5 Who we’ve seen in this series many times: twice in Paradoxically Sized World (volumes III and IV) and once for the inaugural Darkling Embrace.

6 I’ve talked about my discovery of and connections to emmet swimming on Salsatic Vibrato I and Tenderhearted Nightshade I.

7 Who we first saw on Rose-Coloured Brainpan, where I mentioned that he’s another Magnatune discovery.

8 And in fact the place we’ve seen her before is right where you’d expect: Sirenexiv Cola.

9 And you will find them there, on volumes III and IV.

10 To wit: Smokelit Flashback I, Smokelit Flashback II, Shadowfall Equinox V, Bleeding Salvador I, Rose-Coloured Brainpan I, and Cantosphere Eversion I.

11 Which, the Internet just informed me, is apparently German for “Poplar Avenue.” Go figure.

12 Much like the two halves of Concrete Blonde’s Free are commonly marked “Day Side” and “Night Side.”











Sunday, September 13, 2020

Isolation Report, Week #27

[You could also read the most recent report, or even start at the beginning.]

Well, it’s been a few more weeks, and the world doesn’t seem to be getting any better.  Police officers keep killing innocent black people, Trump continues to do whatever the fuck he wants, and the only people who claim to have any chance at a vaccine any time soon are so unreliable as to make the prospect of taking a vaccine even scarier than not having one at all.

The only plus side whatsoever about the political situation is that Trump is apparently too stupid to stop doing skeevy shit for even a few days, so there are constant reminders about his unfitness for the presidency.  Of course, a majority of people voting against Trump is by no means a guarantee that he won’t win, as we all know from painful experience.  Nonetheless, it’s probably the best shot we have.

On the personal front, our guinea pig died a little over a week ago, despite an emergency trip to the vet, antibiotics, and feeding a liquid diet twice a day for several days.  The kids went to their first birthday party in months, although it was understandably small (i.e. attended by only the 3 families in our “social bubble”).  The PS/4 is still on the fritz, so it’s difficult to watch DVDs.  Work is going well, I suppose ... I mean, as well as one can expect given the prolonged lack of contact with my coworkers.  On the plus side, our work hired a comedian to do a Zoom show for us.  It ain’t the same as going out to a club with the folks from work, but it’s certainly better than nothing.  (And Adam was pretty funny, I thought.)

But we’re hanging in there, and certainly it could be worse.  And, you know ... only 3½ more months till this horrible, fucked up mess of a year is finally over.

Sunday, September 6, 2020

Perl blog post #61

Recently, I discovered what “literate programming” was, so I wrote a post about it.  Obviously, I posted that on my Other Blog.