MOG - brickbat's Posts

destroy this.

brickbat — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 06:20:37 GMT

i moved, about a month ago, into a perfect little apartment for one, on the perfect street, in the perfect neighborhood, and i've been perfectly...losing my mind.

the thing about moving, more than anything, is the moving itself. i reveled my my new architecture, drooled over my new address, fawned lovingly over my enviable view and drop dead gorgeous windows, but then i turned around, and saw everything i owned in some state of chaos.

In my perfect apartment i saw piles of boxes, some packed just the day of the move, some packed years ago at the end of my final stint in Brooklyn and yet to be unpacked, and everything in the middle. The boxes made me nervous. Their sheer bulk unnerved me on its own, but then the realization that inside of each cardboard sarcophagus was at least one memory, four stories, a few tears, a little realization of someone i used to be and had quite frankly put away for one reason or another, that staggered me into an entirely new state of not so well being.

So I started to unpack the boxes, and as of last night, they are all unpacked, emptied, in their place, and i am far more serene than I was this time a month ago.

But the getting here has been hell.

In the middle of all this, i went away for two weekends, away for a wedding on another, and spent, honestly, a tiny fraction of my time in my perfect new apartment, avoiding the contents of the cardboard mayhem.

But eventually, I had to give in. I found myself sitting indian style on my floor pillows, digging through boxes of stationary, an entire journal filled with one single break up assailed me from beneath some innocent thank you notes, and i found myself engrossed in the emotional pitfalls of being eighteen and out of love for the first time. I hated finding the words again, connecting them to the feelings, being an entirely new part of the feelings i'd let go onto paper so very long ago.

I found, among other things, a type written (when my typewriter was god) manifesto meant to give to the only man I realized I'd ever love. It was childish, but I wished I'd given it to him, and almost mailed it, but thought better of it. Because I'm not the only one whose been doing a lot of growing up these days.

But the best finds, the best things I came across, were the records. I don't mean the vinyl, god, that's cataloged, climate controlled and safe in chronological order. And I don't mean the real cd's, they're all safe and sound, also in chronological order, in the built-in which I'm convinced was part of the reason i took the apartment in the ten minutes it took me to look at it. I will admit, i didn't even know there was a window in my bathroom until i moved in, I'd made up my mind the second i walked through the door and that was that.

No, the best things I discovered were the mixed cd's. The mix tapes. The casettes with little peices of tape designating their point of origin, their contents, their miniscule, handwritten tracklists folded carefully and tucked inside plastic coffins. The tapes were nice, and finding my casette player made it all the better, but a few earth shattering discoveries left me more crippled than the box of journals had.

First, foremost, and always, was Ryan Adam's Destroyer Sessions. Now, I don't care what you have to say about our Ryan, but I have this to say, and its important that I get it out of the way now. Shut up. He is the greatest song writer of my generation, and I will never back down from that. Better yet, Destroyer took place somewhere just before Ryan started sucking down helium to record, before he started channeling Jerry Garcia, when he was still a young, twangy, sid vicious wanna-be. You know, when i fell in love with the idea of Ryan Adams - Rockstar.

So you could've damned near knocked me over with a feather when i stuck the Destroyer Sessions into the cd player and waited for the first chord to hit. It was like I was twenty one again, and I'm not that old, but a world of time has passed, and I sat, breathless, and listened to the chords hit, the hollows resonate, and the beauty I'd i'd alltogether forgotten recreate itself around me.

The next find was a mixtape I didn't ever want to get, but was glad I did. And awkward collection of songs that I'd liked to sing along to while painting, a friend made it for me to listen to in the car (pre-ipod, ladies and gentlemen). Its not one of those carefully constructed, nearly work of art sorts of cd's, but it is something, on its own. The one song that I'd forgotten like the last name of my first grade teacher had to be "Whole Lotta Trouble" by Cracker. I find it hysterical that just this morning one of the guys i work with was talking about trying to book a recording session at Dave Lowery's Sound of Music, and its one of his little ditties that just smacked me in the mouth. I guess that's the coincidental peril of living in the same town that the band hails from. I don't know what it is about that song, its a lot like Camper's Good Guys and Bad Guys, Borderline, or maybe Cracker's The World is Mine. It sinks its teeth in, and it won't let you go. As I type this, I've got the chorus stuck in my head. I'd forgotten about it, about the Empire Records Soundtrack that we'd play ironically in our own independent record store, about all those little, funny things (yes, we played the High Fidelity soundtrack too, yes, it was better, natch).

Most of all, or maybe least of all, I fell across a mixtape I never gave. I fell into a bad habit in the beginning of time, I never give them. Not until the whole show is over, we've all packed it in, and I don't want to see your face again or care what you think anymore. That's when i hand off the mixtape. In the box with your t-shirts and your records, with the shit i didn't want left sitting on my bathroom shelves, that's when i give the mixtape. And honestly, even then, you had to mean something unbelievable to me, for me to even bother. I'll be the first to admit, I can be a pretty vicious girl. It is what it is. But this tape, it sort of hurt. Because I never gave it. I never gave him much of anything back, a few notes, some little bits, I just left. I couldn't bear to give anything back, to lose another peice of him, so i took what i had and left. I don't think I will give it to him, but it seems to have unleashed a floodgate I didn't even know existed, The tracklist, for that, is outdated and underthought, over thought and pertinent all at once. I just couldn't quite believe that one tracklist, one plastic case, one spraypainted cover, one little cd, could just end me like that.

I guess, mostly, that was what i was the most afraid of finding, that, and everything like it, like an archaeologist digging through the ruins of my own life. But i found it all, glossed over most of it, threw the majority of it into the burn bin, and packed it all up again. I'm unpacked, but the unpacking, it undid me a little. I think I'll go listen to Destroyer again.

viva

brickbat — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 02:12:39 GMT

in a time when everything and nothing seem to make sense, when i've stopped writing all but entirely, and almost abandoned my blog here, it seems sort of apt that i find myself writing this, doesn't it?

a lot of things have gone horribly wrong lately. but it doesn't mean they won't get better, or better yet, get weird and then get different, but that's not what i'm writing about.

despite the fact that i realize it is not the hipster realization of cool, i bought the new coldplay record the other day. it took me a while to listen to it after i bought it, but i've got it, and on a three hour road trip by myself, i broke it out and listened to it as a whole.

i have a few cynical things to get out of the way first.

1. tell me which song is the U2 song, because you know there is one.

2. arcade fucking fire anyone?

now that i've got that out of the way, here's what i really have to say.

damn its good. Its intoxicating, and stuck in my head, and the perfect way to roll into a town so thick with memories i had to push them out of the way just to pass them on the street.

the drums beat on my cranium, the guitar lines thump in my heart, and did i mention its catchy? it is.

its just nice to actually like something again. I know it isn't some obscure hipster bullshit, and i know i should be writing something heartbreakingly poingant about the new bonnie prince billy i'm listening to (its good, don't get me wrong), but all i really wanted was something that took no real work on my part. I don't have to disect it, but i could. I don't have to work through what the hell is going on on every track, but i could. I don't have to tell you that the second side of the record is infinitely stronger than the first side, or that some of the songs are slightly mundane and i won't lie, i'll tell you i skip over them, but i just did.

the elitist in me always wants the masses to have to work for it. i hate a radio hit as much as i hate the radio itself, but the honest to god's truth is, sometimes good is just good.

even from a band fronted by a guy who married a movie star and named his child after fruit, or a record label, if you want to give him that much credit. its still good.

maybe there still is universal appeal after all.

it doesn't mean i'm going to learn the words to kenny chesney's...anything. or that i'm going to start listening to the radio. or watching MTV. or any of that, really. but i will accept, on this go-round, that the song on the radio by the megaband that isn't old enough to be my father, is good.

maybe a little better than good.

life's a riot

brickbat — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 03:53:56 GMT

hit a real bad slump on a friday night got whiskey drunk, got into a fight

just don't know when to say no more just don't know when to say no more

well i tried to come in you said you understood anyway what do you want? gimme something that's good

just don't know when to say no more just don't know when to say no more

you said there you are man, i thought you were gone we resolved our little difference and moved on we got over the railings and into the park i had my nose in the wet grass you were looking at the stars

just don't know when to say no more just don't know when to say no more.

avenues run one way.

brickbat — Mon, 15 Oct 2007 07:11:46 GMT

a lot has changed in the past month. where i sleep. who i spend all of my time with. whether or not i write. my whole world has gone topsy turvy sideways in the last month, but some things stay the same.

his voice on the other end of the phone still makes me feel like Christmas morning and comfort. my ankles still hurt when i wake up in the morning and scream in pain in the evenings. i still work for the green monster, just in a new, slightly less professional setting.

but in a glorious turn of events, i now have something i didn't have before. a commute. I know, you're all going, what, you wanted one? and my honest answer is, well, yes.

the half hour one way up and one way back is a blissful decompression period that i'm not sure how i dealt without. its most of a short record. its all of the new arcade fire record, actually, fabulous but short as hell and over in a blink. but lately, since i miss my boyfriend and a million other things, its been whiskeytown.

its been a virtual littany of songs i could regurgitate lyrically without thinking, the whole of stranger's almanac and pneumonia over and over again. sometimes i skip a track or two. okay, to be honest, i skip avenues every single time it comes up and i wasn't entirely sure why until i forgot to push my fingertip against the little black face of my ipod.

it catches in my throat. it angles against my tear ducts. it makes me want to go home except that home isn't a place, its a person. it renders me emotionally idiotic for the duration and leaves me still recovering from my tears two songs later.

i used to listen to that song on the way home from work before, late, late, late at night, when i knew he'd be asleep, pushing the edges of the tires over cresting hills and rolling slowly past the edges of curbs and suggestions of stop signs gone past in my mid century neighborhood.

now i hear it against the chill of october air, almost two hundred miles away, and it starts to gain momentum, i start to feel the air on my face and the star begging from the side of the mountain i can only conceptualize and i wonder, maybe, if there isn't something to the pull of that neon bastard. but then i realized, in a moment of sheer, succinct, black and white thought, that if he wasn't there, my mind wouldn't be there either.

maybe its just the need to hold onto, to cherish and believe something other than myself. maybe that's what love is. maybe its just choking up when you finally let yourself hear your song. maybe its trying to figure out why you couldn't play it all those months. maybe its all of those things. maybe its nothing.

but really, it can't be nothing. it can't be an opening break chord that reminds you of the smell of a neck and the feel of a hand. the way a smile slowly, rarely happens and the way one foot moves in front of the other. the way he looks when he's sleeping. the way he is when he thinks you're not looking. so maybe its nothing. but maybe its everything.

_Know the cops here they can’t run down to your house Sometimes I’ll sit and wish I were somewhere else So let’s dim the daylights for us sweethearts that we are Sometimes I find myself still lying in your arms All the sweethearts of the world Are out dancing in the places Where me and all my friends go to hide our faces_

_Avenues run one way Streets they run the same Something in the air here Still keeps me away_

_Though the cops here they can’t take me to your house I get directions and pretend I was somewhere else All the sweethearts of the world are out littering the bars And I am still avenues from any place you are_

_You know avenues run one way The streets they run the same It’s going to take a lot of shit for me to stay away_

you ain't know me.

brickbat — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 06:11:12 GMT

1. what do you put on a mixtape for the guy who has, literally, fucking everything?

2. pandora does NOT suggest music i care to hear. i find this odd, to say the least.

3. whiskeytown is my current obsession. yes. again.

4. punk rock chicks who seem to have it all figured out don't. its what makes us seem like there's something dangerous, i suppose. the vast, uncomfortable unknown.

5. i saw this book not that long ago titled something like "the eight women you'll be before 35" which seemed like a ridiculously clunky title, but more so, seemed like total bullshit. i've been the same person for quite some time now, and even after my latest and greatest birthday, continue to be a woman who carries the principles of keith richards, betty page and elizabeth taylor in her soul. maybe its not like this for the rest of the planet. and who knows, maybe it'll change, but i doubt it.

6. coming home from work with feet that hurt horribly and not even getting to wear posh shoes sucks.

7. i do not think the new ryan adams record is brilliant. but i do think its pretty. damned. good. and i'll take solid from someone who a year ago was a little too all over the damned map for anyone's comfort.

8. i'm still listening to too much oasis and paul weller.

9. is there such a thing as too much paul weller?

10. that is all.

i know what boys like.

brickbat — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 04:06:44 GMT

funny thing, i just finished an article on the same title, placed, oh so fucking predictably, in one of those fashion magazines, with sexy new Calvin Klein and Prada adverts, such complete clarity should always be packaged in beauty. i hear pandora's box was fairly gorgeous that season too. i'm also laying the wrong way on my bed, on my stomach, listening to paul weller's carnation crack off of a mixtape made for me what seems like a hundred years ago, when i used to wear chuck taylors and my fun edged against dangerous every single night.

i didn't listen to paul weller, or his jam, before i started dating. granted, that was a while ago and none of us are getting any younger, but the point is, really, that someone introduced paul weller to me as a way to explain themselves. and someone introduced the replacements. and sonic youth. and wilco. and comets on fire. and six organs. and the hospitals. and the mekons. i listened to ryan adams because he did, because there was something to it. i never gave the bastard a chance as a solo artist until i came to Brookyln.

bands i can vividly remember finding on my own, and that i still listen to like nobody's business are rare. oasis was the first one. i bought what's the story morning glory when i was twelve, it was the first record i have a consciousness about buying. i marched my ass into the record store and bought it. and listened a whole in it. i've been through more copies of that record than i care to ever admit. as i drove home from work i found myself screaming along to "where did it all go wrong?" and really, sincerely wondering.

my morning jacket slapped me in the face one gray morning because i was bored and i thought jim james looked like the sort of guy i'd hate. turns out i was dead fucking wrong.

elliott smith got me through more than i'd care to explain, and no, i didn't find him on the good will hunting soundtrack, but rather in a small bar in brooklyn. he also finally made me sit up and see what john, paul, george and ringo were on about.

i found the rolling stones before i found the beatles. but i still listen to the stones almost every single day.

i found the faces because i wanted to be cool like record store clerk. thank god the guy behind the counter at plan nine that day had good taste. same for the 13th floor elevators and dylan. all on recommendation.

i found camper van beethoven on the most round about rock and roll trip anyone could think up. trust me there.

So where did the rest of all these records come from? Because fuck knows there are a lot of them. They came from them. All of them. I'll admit a few were more influential than others, and they know who they are, friend or former boyfriend, they all had a part. Everyone said "you've got to hear this" because something in it, some instance, some bass line, some lyric, some hook, created something to identify with. Some one, somewhere, felt the same thing once, and they wrote it, they put it to music, they had the conviction to record it and to sing it over, and over again.

We hear ourselves. What we want to be. What we wish had happened. What we needed to hear. What we were thinking and could never say. What we kept locked up a million miles away because there's no real way to say some things.

One of those bands, the few i found on my own and continue to like, is predictably a chick band. Don't even start, we all know its true. Look at the music I have listed here, it is predominantly male, for the same reason that I prefer to read predominantly male writing. I already know what goes on in my own messed up cranium, how black and blue and fucked it is in there, and i don't really need another woman telling me. Really, I don't. Sometimes I don't mind it, sometimes i welcome it. Sometimes Karen O screaming about exactly how it feels to see someone with someone new, or to have the Detroit Cobras remind me how much i just wanna hold his hand isn't a bad thing at all. And sometimes its all just fucking trite.

But I love the Yeah Yeah Yeah's. Not every day. But I know exactly what she's talking about, and it feels good to have a slightly avant garde, marginally mysterious and somewhat adventurous spokesperson for my neuroses some days.

Maps is one of those songs I'd like to sing to the guy i love, but even though i know how to play it, figured it out, and can fucking sing it, and have, in the blacked out studio to no one but some reverb, rebar and the only guy i trust with a guitar, i can't do it. Because that one is how i feel. That one is a fuck, you've got to hear this.

But the issue, the problem, the conundrum, is that I listen to so much male driven music, but i thought all this time that i identified with it, when really, i think i was identifying and looking for answers. Reading between the liner notes. Looking for a way to unlock something i didn't get otherwise. Isn't that why we make mixtapes? Because we identify with them and that's a part of our souls we want to somehow inexplicably explain to someone else? Isn't it?

Isn't it why we listen to music, buy records, and play guitars? Isn't it why we stay up until the middle of the next night working on one guitar line, wear raw blisters into our feet slamming against drum pedals and eat holes into our otherwise viable incomes?

Its sure as hell not because the records look pretty on the shelves and the hollow sounds of drums satiate some inner need. Fuck, i can get sound slamming my head against a wall.

My favorite songs are the ones that hurt. I can seriously make a list of ten favorite songs right now that I have no fucking desire to ever hear again. They're locked up and put away and that's all there is to it. Its like hairspray i can't use because it makes me think of an old relationship. The sense memory is all too much for me.

We're all just trying to figure each other, and ourselves, out in the process. Aren't we? Otherwise its just some jackass making noise.

swimmin' in my guitar shaped pool.

brickbat — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 03:59:40 GMT

Its that week of summer that I've been told other people dream of. Escaping, rather entirely.

At the moment my hair is still full of ocean water and there's a line across the apples of my cheeks from the big sunglasses, another few lines across my back and front, precise, oops i fell asleep in the sun tanlines.

I just came back in from sitting on the porch here, listening to whiskeytown and the ocean, its getting ready to rain, you can feel the breakpoint in the air here, hold it in your hands, suck it down your throat like air in a sauna.

I'm more than five hours and a few hundred miles from either place I call home these days, from the faces i see on a regular basis, from the stress and the sheer joys. I haven't done much of anything this week, write, hang out, talk to my family, read Chuck Klosterman like I'm cooler than, well, lets face it, pretty much everyone else, run the beach, walk the island, fall off a personal watercraft here or there.

And you know what I took with me? My favorite necklace, my favorite photograph (my hair is red and we're holding pbr's), my journal, my best black bra, and all my music.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not lugging a collection of 200 lp's to the beach and back, but i did bring the entire computer, ipod, and the terrabyte hard drive.

I've caught myself running the beach a million miles from home to the Jam and falling asleep at night to radiohead, my morning jacket, oasis. I didn't bring my favorite jeans, or more than two pairs of flip flops (though i was once told that flip flops are not punk rock, to that man i say, honey, whatever), but i brought a vast majority of the major cultural movement of the last half a century.

Is there really anything else we can do that with? Sure, with computers we can do anything. I could haul reproductions of Jackson Pollack and Monet paintings around, first edition Bukowski novels, but the reality of the situation is, the only medium vital enough to our society, that we have to carry around in tiny, cigarette pack sized (and smaller) packages, is our music. We've got to fucking have it. And I'm no exception.

Am I better for listening to "To Be Someone (didn't we have a nice time)" before i go to bed? Yeah, I think I am. And am I grateful that i don't have to haul the portable record player and heat sensitive vinyl to the edge of the sea in order to do so? Yeah. I definitely am.

But the reality of the situaiton is this. I would. I would break out my portable record player and my record bag with the ice pack insert just in case the days are just too hot, and I'd do it. But I don't have to.

So instead of worrying about the warp of my grooves, I can spend my time thinking about what he meant. Or didn't.

And why I'm more than five hours and a few hundred miles away from home, but when i shut my eyes at night all i miss is the smile I haven't seen much this month.

i don't know, i don't care, as long as you can take me there

brickbat — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 02:27:52 GMT

i think it takes more than we can ever understand to buy music you hate for someone you love.

i think that crunching noise in my ankles should be taped and looped and played for kids who think skateboarding is awesome. (two shattered ankles. and some badass 24 year old arthritis. oh yeah.)

i think alienating people from record stores should be punishable by worse than death. (it happened recently to someone i love, elitist fucks).

i think, having not had money, that money does actually buy happiness. that happiness comes in the form of security.

i think i'm really, really tired and i need to write more. i hate my job and everything else lately that its just shut me down entirely.

i think a change of scenery would be nice.

i'm not dead, i've been hiding a lot though, and living under a musical rock that sounds mostly like this:

i think its time to start writing again.

hopefully

brickbat — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 23:47:09 GMT

i never thought i'd say this, but i like driving without the airconditioning on. i do it when i'm by myself, with the windows down and usually with my hair pulled back. it was almost a hundred degrees today, and the minute i was alone i pulled away from the curb and fingered the buttons to let the windows down. then the sunroof open. i like the sickly sweet feeling of the heat seeping in around my long, mostly bare legs, coddling my twice broken ankle, edging in around the edges of my mended face. i love the feeling of the heat. i don't like it forever, and when i want to be cold, god i want it, but the cicadas screaming in the early evening beg for nothing more than some my morning jacket with all the windows down. sunglasses on. clothes to a bare minimum.

on days like today, when the summer is thick and the desperation is thicker, all anyone could ever want is something so perfectly beautiful. being alone. being comfortable. set against the world. with the right songs to keep company.

and one tiny thing makes it sweeter. the record was a gift. and i know how hard it must be to buy music you hate for someone you love. actually, i know exactly how hard it is, because i've done it. but that record made my day. entirely on its own. it was the high point. words. lines. music. sunlight. heat. no one talking. nothing fucked up. no one upset. bothered. disappointed. nothing.

fucking perfect.

_ I wont ask you where you're goin. I wont ask you where you been. I know after a million times you get sick of all my lines, but I just wanna see you safe again. Hopefully it occurs to me that there's one thing I cant stand. That's the thought of a single day, without your head in my hand. I know that just now I aint been showin, the kind of love you know that I can. So gimmie a little time and you'll be knowin your good lovin baby is back on top again. I always hoped you'd be showin, and now you've shown as much as you can. But after each time im still glowin with a good lovin smile that's yours until the end._

i can feel the warning signs running around my mind.

brickbat — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 04:23:47 GMT

Psst, I'm not dead. I'm just busy. and exhausted as hell. and perplexed with everything that's anything these days. I'm listening to Oasis (read: musical safety blanket) daily and i have to admit, refinding music that i haven't heard in years, and might not have even appreciated then.

I hate the new Wilco record. They're one of my top five bands of all time and I hate the new record. I declined reviewing it for this explicit reason, and I really don't know what to tell ya, kiddies. I'm sure the Bonnaroo / widespread / trey lovin' crowd will dig it though. Please hand in your indie cred on the way out the door, guys.

the new spoon, on the other hand, is effing brilliant. and eventually it'll even come out.

girl talk is the new reason to have a fucking party. nightripper is orgasmic. fuck. off. orgasmic.

as for me, i've spent the day listening to The Masterplan, one of those records you had to settle into weeks, months, before the idea of it even hits you in the face, and i don't quite know what to do with it, but lyrics like "here i am, scratchin' around in the same old hole", and "life is automatic but i don't mind being on my own" are things i should hear these days, so tired i can't focus my eyes or mind in one place at one time and forgoing the things that i'll miss when i'm older for the things i'm convinced i shouldn't be missing.

i think that's the idea, anyway.

i found myself tonight trying to talk music to a breed i'm not entirely familiar with. the over 30, successful, no tattoos, no former bandmates or wives to terrorize him or his bank account, reasonably normal male. by the way, i have no idea what to do with this guy. i don't know how to talk to him, he makes me feel a little nervous and a lot unbalanced in my chuck taylors and no make-up smile. but he knew who oasis was. i had to plow through five or six bands before i got the traditional lit up face look of recognition, before i shot him my i'm more of a rockstar than you'll ever be smile and thought about it for a split second. how does the audiophilic rockstar dreamer deal with the "not us"?

i still have no idea.

theres always been us and them. us and them. people who know what tuesday really is, and that the best way to buy tom waits tickets is to sit up all night with your mouse poised on the right button, mailing information already typed in. those of us who know the addresses of clubs a hundred miles in every direction from their houses and some in cities they might never go to, but damn if they didn't think about it. we are obsessed, to a degree. we have the ongoing tape / vinyl / cd / mp4 argument and we know what, exactly, the second b-side on the japanese import is. we get excited about orange 180 vinyl. we're weird, to them.

because for as long as i can remember, music has been the thread. the heart string. the albatross. its what pulls us together, pushes us apart, says the things we wanted to say but were never articulate enough to emote. right? like the bielanko boys said, "i ain't too good at saying things, but i could tape you certain songs".

but then, Hornby told us pretty unequivocally, and ripped all the art house hipsters out of dream land by their too long and unkept hair, shoving the "you can't live your life by lyrics" line up in our faces like a dog's face in shit.

but did he even believe it? i doubt it. because we're all doing it, one way or another. writing them or living them or letting our tears rationalize against them. we're emotional assholes that way. and don't even tell me we're not.

about that....

brickbat — Fri, 18 May 2007 04:23:10 GMT

i'm hiatus-ing, i swear it.

(you know i write every single day anyway)

but ya'll need to listen to this band.

heevahava lives in my town. they don't know why either, so don't sweat that, but they're fucking amazing. i've been listening to live cuts constantly for, oh, two weeks straight. nevermind that the records are badass, and the guys live are the only thing better.

heevahava refers to the farmhand given the job of holding the bull's penis during the collection of semen, its a Pennsylvania dutch thing. the guys have a badass sense of humor, what can i say?

there's a player on the bottom of the website, and they do allow downloads.

their first record was recorded by steve albini, fer chrissake.

just...listen.

heevahava

(okay, i'm headed back under my rock now)

over.

brickbat — Mon, 14 May 2007 05:30:29 GMT

i took him his shit tonight. i put it in a box and i took it. i left it on the doorstep. and i never want to see it again. none of it.

i left with a weight lifted. i'm so tired of this convoluted messy relationship which i've been reminded isn't really a relationship (it so is) and that i'm not what he ever wanted.

and somehow, despite that, i feel amazing.

all of my whiskeytown, ryan adams, wilco, camper van beethoven and pretty much everything that makes me think of him (except marah, that's mine) records are up for sale. just sayin'.

i'm taking a hiatus for a few days, maybe a week, probably two. i'm straightening out the rest of my life. i love how i make it sound like it'll only take a week. riiiight.

get the wheel, let's go for a ride.

brickbat — Sat, 12 May 2007 00:31:58 GMT

today, i got a promotion and a raise.

today was a badass day. and its not over yet.

its friday night. tear out the high heels and throw on the garage rock, rock the fuck out, its a good night, and saturday and sunday are just begging to get torn the fuck up.

go listen to the song. fuck, the record. its gonna be that kind of weekend. over and out.

i made a lot of mistakes, in my mind.

brickbat — Fri, 11 May 2007 05:15:28 GMT

its too late to be sitting up writing and i know i have to be at work by 10 tomorrow. and i'm not really worth much before noon. rock and roll only has one eight o'clock.

i went out tonight to take out the trash for the store, well, honestly, i tore out the back door rapt with the frustration of being in a position that isn't anything near where i thought i'd be at 23 years old and almost just kept walking.

the best feeling i've had all week was just not being there. it makes me wonder what would happen if i just stopped showing up for everything. i might be the most freeing feeling of my life.

i took out the trash, heavy, soggy plasticine bags of stinky, smelly trash, the end remains of five dollar drinks and inconsiderate trash, and it started to smell like rain.

that metallic, wanderlust scent, when the air gets heavy and your blood gets a little cold, anticipating rain that's already falling from so very high up in the clouds.

_falling out of love, dear it hurt much worse when you gave up_

in my head, for three days, i've heard uncle tupelo playing, playing, playing, i can hear it when i sleep, when i breathe, when i walk away from him as he pulls off at the curb, when he walks into my house. i'm purposely avoiding really playing it, because its one of those dense, heavy things.

_my heart, it was a gun, its unloaded now, so don't bother_

i heard it, in my head, in the way my fingers moved against my thigh, pressing out the chords into the edges of my short dickies skirt, i could feel it in the grating edges of my right knee, the one with less cartilage and more bone, the one humming hot searing stupidity at me right now.

_fallin' up the ladder, breakin' my shin, on the very first rung_

and as i looked across the horizon, the rain started to fall on the hot asphalt, and it came up as it came down, steam rising to meet cold rain, running down my face, pulling at the corners of my mascara and my eyes, trickling down the lace edge of my black tank top and easing its way down my cleavage.

_and they don't tell me which way I oughta run or what good I could do anyone_

i got soaked, and it was alright, the end of the night, twenty five things to do, just not giving a shit.

_crawling back to you now I sold my guitar to the girl next door she asked me if I knew how I told her I don't think so anymore_

its funny how the ugliest moments can get beautiful if you just cock your head the right direction. and things can get really clear without any real influence one way or another. like who you should be spending your time with, and what really matters in the long run.

don't ask me no questions

brickbat — Thu, 10 May 2007 17:20:42 GMT

don't tell me no lies.

yeah, i'm well aware i've perverted the Lynyrd Skynyrd line for the benefit of the post, i just don't really care.

i don't know where he is. i'll assume he's where he's supposed to be, but i haven't heard from him since 8am yesterday. and i'm not really sure i want to know anymore.

i'm almost as annoyed by that as i am by the guitar string that broke in the night and i just noticed. i have no other strings for this guitar in the house. this means i'll have to go to the freakin' music store (which i hate because they treat me like...a girl...despite the fact that i play out more than any one of their asses) and get more. maybe i'll send boyfriend instead.

why is it going to the music shop, now, is like going to the record store when i was fifteen? i was so fuckoff intimidated by the guys behind the counter at plan nine. and now i'm intimidated by the guys who sell me guitar strings. how very unrockstar of this rockstar.

last night i went out with work friends and was reminded, once again, that this is not a town i fit into, whatsoever. because the girl with the red lipstick and black patent leather baby doll heels is not what you'd expect at good ol' boy karaoke. funny. but true.

and then it was 2 in the morning and i was sitting on a bar stool at the texas tavern, waiting for my two with and a bowl with, and, comically or not, i fit right on in there. hank was on the radio. i was not the only woman in the building wearing red lipstick. there are always places to feel comfortable, and get comfort food. maybe i'm just a tattooed throwback. i should have existed in another era.

i woke up to the sex pistols at 8am and promptly turned them off, grating against my sensibilities and my soul, i wasn't quite ready for it. i broke my big toenail somewhere along the line this week and it keeps scratching the sheets, its driving me insane. my heels are sitting like a trophy in the middle of my dresser, perched, as if though they did something right last night. i used to go dancing in those shoes.

and now i live in a town where dancing is a pipe dream or something you do when everyone at a party is too drunk to make fun of someone's new record. i realize, fully, that everywhere is what you make it. so i'd like a nice rockabilly friendly club where we can listen to our damned music and i don't have to endure the lecherous tactics of one more whitehat. i want to dance to the stones and shake it to the replacements. i never thought dennis leary's idea for a bar was a bad one. we only play the stones. we only serve jack. that is all. i'd frequent that bar.

everything grates on me lately. the way my boyfriend behaves (or doesn't). the way people pronounce words. the way i live my life. perceptions. interactions. i am very unhappy right now, and i'll be the first one to admit that. its awfully hard to keep putting bandaids on a broken bone and expect it to heal.

i think i'm moving at the end of the summer, maybe sooner, maybe closer to july, and i think its time. i've moved so many times before, but i've done it because i run, because i fall out of love or get rejected or something along those lines. and i think that's part of this. i think its all starting to fall into place and its ushering me out the door and on to something better.

loud, fast, hard.

brickbat — Tue, 08 May 2007 05:29:22 GMT

if i were in any band right now, i'd want to be in the black rebel motorcycle club. and no, not to pick peter hayes' brain about joel gion, but because this new record may be the only thing keeping me sane this week. i like my rock and roll dirty and a little mean, just a little sweetness thrown in. i want to be able to shut my eyes and know that no matter whether i'm leaving work in my monotone black or i'm standing calves tensed in front of the washer spray and washing his boxers, i can imagine what it would feel like to stand in four inch platform heels with my hair done just right and the perfect skirt on, smiling and shining.

this one does that, ladies and gents. i've been listening to the single nonstop since i got it a few weeks ago, weapon of choice is fairly brilliant, but then there are lines in this record that'll fuck you and throw you to the ground. Seriously.

i think, perhaps, part of my affinity for this kind of music comes straight from my core musical loves. without the stones, these guys wouldn't exist. Without the Jesus and Mary Chain, Love, and more recently, and even more recently influential, Oasis, we wouldn't have this, err, 'folk garage rock' (ever feel like categorizing music is like trying to find someone out there who's really normal?).

BRMC's first record felt like it was a search for a sound, it ambled a little too much, a lanky teenager looking for a place to fit in. I'm not saying BRMC was a bad record, because it wasn't, it was fuckin' good, showed promise, felt sort of sexy. and Take Them On, On Your Own was similiar in texture, it felt like a damned good record still trying to find its feet. But i bought them both, and all the singles, because i'm a sucker, and because i've always found potential sexy. And then Howl came out. And knocked me down with a feather. I didn't see it coming, and I was pretty amazed by the ability of the trio to find their footing. And then this came out. And they've arrived. If nowhere else, then in my heart.

The dirt on this record is thick. The nicotine film isn't kidding, its all there. Its hard to believe sometimes that music so gritty, scraped off the bottom of a hundred beer soaked club floors, can hold such beautiful lyrics. Because fronting the heady guitars and calculated pummeling drums (and even some piano) are lines like, "love is not a game / but it works while it hurts / and nothing kills the pain". (okay, and it all sounds better set to lyrics. Its all tied up in the dissonance. There's a chemical balance between feedback and perfect love lines that's rare. That makes us fall in love with certain kinds of music.

Its the first record i've fallen head over heels for in a long time. Its the first anything I've fallen head over heels for in a long time. Need I say more?

pssst: not dead, just lots of shit going on...if you really care... killing a southern belle

i'll write you a story.

brickbat — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 04:10:21 GMT

i'll answer your mail. i'll clean the kitchen. i'll go to the grocery store. i'll call the insurance company. i'll trust you. i'll tell you a lie.

tomorrow.

right now, all i want to do is lay in the middle of my bed and hear this, over and over again. its been that kind of a day.

(no, i can't get the song to upload...but i did find this somewhat amusing vid on youtube set to it. just shut your eyes. its what i'm doing. works well, too.)

you don't really care for music, do ya?

brickbat — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 05:54:22 GMT

i don't have a lot of time for music anymore. its sort of bullshit, that statement, because my apartment is nothing short of a shrine to hipster culture, framed records, band poster screen prints, rock mags. i fall asleep in a room with a framed lou reed (transformer tour) t-shirt on the wall and a cross section of everything that's right with music staring me in the face. but i don't have a whole lot of time for it anymore.

bullshit. i know.

i was laying in the bathtub tonight, after my boyfriend got drunk with his band and forgot to call me back, you know, again, listening to the ipod on shuffle, just listening. staring at the way the paint is peeling off of the ceiling in the shape of something i haven't quite dreamt yet, drinking brooklyn pennant '55 out of the bottle and floating in the claw footed tub. so many songs make me want to write a story, make me want to make out in the middle of a crowded room, make me want to dance with my legs set wide and my eyes closed, make me want to scream along and just fucking leave this shit.

i laid in the bathtub until my fingers went all wrinkled like white raisins and my head started to hurt a little more than usual (though that could have been the beer). the last two things that came on were a cover of Leonard Cohen's _hallelujah_ by someone i really miss and the twilight singer's cover of massive attack's _live with me_.

Hallelujah is one of those songs i could hear a million times and not get tired of. Honestly. It'd be on a desert island mixtape, easy. I love the Rufus Wainright cover of the song, and while its not my first choice, the Buckley version isn't horrible either.

That song has sent me into a million deep, muddied miles of trying to figure out what the hell i'm doing with my life, music-wise, relationship-wise, life-wise. it got me to pick up a guitar the other day, record some shit, even. it got me to think about someone 600 miles away who i'd sworn to shut off and leave along. it got me to wonder if music can really make or break us. me.

_By the way, i miss mixtapes. i miss the actual, plastic, this is going to fall apart in ten years and i'll have to tape it back together painstakingly with cellotape and there will be a slight bump in the sound but i will will know why fragility of them. and the way they were so fucking perfectly thought out. i will marry the next man to make me a real, quality, well thought out cassette. seriously._

And as for Live With Me. fuck. Have i mentioned, ever, my affinity for the Dulli? For the Afghan Whigs? The Twilight Singers? Dulli solo? Head over feet for his entirely charcoally, deep, lost and found aesthetic. The man is just so revoltingly cool. And it never hurt that Mark freakin' Lanegan has been hanging out on that side of things for a while as i love him equally. Live with Me is a cover, like so much of Dulli's catalog, which seems to almost be covered in ash, grit, something heady, and Dulli rubs the dirt off of one small part of the storefront window and lets the light shine through, just barely, but just perfectly.

I dunno. i know i'm sitting here, shaved legs and clean hair, listening to vinyl on my headphones, listening to my copy of westerberg's suicaine gratification beause god its so fuckoff good, and thinking about maybe going to bed. maybe. maybe i'll fall asleep with my headphones on (did anyone read that slightly disturbing headphone fetish post? i had no idea, pervs). maybe i'll go for a walk. maybe i'll just put on another record and look for answers between the grooves.

as an aside, because i love feedback, and hell, i adore a good many of the people who read me, my non-music blog is now located here: killing a southern belle (yes, with a very music referenced title, c'mon now, its me) check it out.

punk rock how to.

brickbat — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 05:01:32 GMT

If anything, i feel like part of the reason i love mog so much is that there's music, oh yeah, there's music, but there's also music writing. you can't escape it. its every page, every post, every idea, every explanation, every comment. Bangs would shit himself.

So i have a question, i suppose, for the community that i hold so dear. how do i turn this into something i get paid for? how do i go to a publisher, editor, etc, and say "i've got some shit to show you". i promise to use fewer expletives, and i swear, just because i'm fond of them doesn't mean i have a meager vocabulary. how do i make this work? does someone need a freelance rock writer? can i review that record in print somewhere? its the only thing i'm good at that I like doing, and its time to make something hardcore out of it.

i'm going insane slinging coffee. i'm losing my mind because all i've wanted since i figured out what i wanted was to write and own my own record store, and trust me, the tips aren't good enough and i feel like i'm resolving to spin my wheels, getting nowhere.

answers? guidance? ideas? anything? hit me. i need it all.

95 in a 60, sideways.

brickbat — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 06:49:48 GMT

So, most of the time i throw stuff up on here that hurts a little, stings in the way an unexpected left cross or a stubbed toe might. Not tonight. I'm in a bad mood and I want a good laugh. More than that, i just came home from an hour and a half with one of my favorite people at the waffle house, smoking cigarettes, drinking cooked coffee, cheesy eggs and toast, talking music and scheming wildly. its one of my favorite things to do.

some people have photographic memories, they remember exactly how something looked, where it was on a page. and some people remember what they had on, others just know sort of what happened, and still some, the us, we remember what was playing. there, in the back ground, because for us its as essential as, oh, the color of the car or whether or not the assailant wore glasses.

about two years ago i was having the most fun i've ever had in a relationship. its not to say i haven't had fun since then, or before then, but this one wins the prize for most fun per capita, and i was dating an off the hook, eccentric, music obsessed, tattooed aging hipster. entirely my type. and we went to dc to see a show. a good show, too, the hospitals and burmese, actually, it was a fucking amazing show. and then we drove home the next morning.

we flew across 66, and down 81, him driving, me riding, windows down on the barely a month old volvo, cigarettes burning, vinyl from a record store splurge in baltimore, right before the burritos, right after the parking garage experience from hell, belted in the back seat behind him, protected like i'd protect a toddler. and on the other side, Pepe. Pepe, for the record, is a garden gnome, his hat is red, his pants are green, that said exboyfriend got as a gift once. Pepe was also the bringer of Alejandro Escovedo tickets once. Pepe is sort of sacred, really. He'd been living at a friend's house, and we'd picked him up earlier in the week, at a party, its another long story.

We're both wearing sunglasses, shit sleep on a good friend's floor (punk rock excuse: "at least we were together" what the fuck ever. i don't sleep on floors anymore) and honestly, we looked, err, less than reputable. in a bright red volvo with a turbonegro sticker on the back window, in band t-shirts sucking down coffee. Oh, and he's eating powdered Dunkin' Donuts. The man loves them. Don't ask. They were the white powdered kind, cake in the middle.

The Rough Trade Post Punk comp was in the cd player. I can tell you this, without a doubt, because its the sounds of Gang of Four that bring up this story, no fail, every single time. Because Gang of Four, for better or worse, built our relationship. Because those fuckers went and lied and said they were playing their last show ever. Because...well, i guess that's another story too.

So there were are, flying down the interstate, nicotine and caffiened up, records and Pepe in the back seat, crazy hair, tattoos and powdered donuts, when i see the police car. Its that moment, before the lights go on, when your stomach drops into a pit and you know, you know its going to happen, and you decide whether to slow down or speed up, run or pull over. You see it. You hope its not happening. And then it fucking happens anyway.

So he pulls us over, 95 in a 60, and here we are, like a scene out of fucking Fear and Loathing, but its real, and there's no cocaine, and what does boyfriend do? He left the music on. Not loud, mind you, but i could hear the high pitched tones of that comp whining across the entire interaction, the looking for the license, the insurance, the talking to, and then, then the cop pointing out to boyfriend that he had white powder all over his face (and the fucker did) and then boyfriend offering said cop a donut.

which he took.

fuck me. he fucking took it.

he also wrote him a much kinder ticket, speeding, but not reckless, and sent us on our merry way, garden gmome, records, and tattoos in tact. I fully expected to be searched and destroyed, but instead, i got away with a good story, and something that makse me giggle every time somoeone goes "hey, we could listen to entertainment!". Sure we can, but let me tell you a story about that shit...

busted in dreamland.

brickbat — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 04:13:14 GMT

four inch patent leather pumps start to ache and i'll drink a little more to block out the impending blisters. its friday night in richmond and i'm drinking with the hipsters, betty page haircut and the brightest eye shadow i could find, that night it was purple. and pink. and purple. a slightly less than cold pbr draft in my hand and a nine mile smile on my face, the motherfucking replacements on the overhead.

there are very few things that can make nights like that better. finding out my boyfriend got asked to manage one of the best bands in town was one of them. paully letting me use my own music for the soundtrack was another. so after the mats flipped off, i listened for a second, heard the riff, and settled into it.

hot sweating nights of hearing this song played over and over, feedback and acid slammed up against concrete slabs and opening my eyes six hours later in a different house, at a different party, kissing the same boy but only by the grace of god. one of my best friends, in the world, is a guy currently going by J. Weatherman. He's a fucking genius. In a way that very, very few people are. In a way that'll make a bar full of dirty southern hipsters play his song three times in a row before we move onto something else. He's been writing the same record for ten years, and needless to say, he's writing one of the best records i've ever heard, and not just because i've got my blood, sweat, tears and massive missing chunks of my life invested in every single note at this point.

I'd love it if it was the first time i'd ever heard it. I'd stop in a record store and wait for time to start again, at the end of the song. I'd turn it up in the car, I'd turn it up anywhere. I'd go see them in some dive bar on the shitty side of the shitty side of Boston. I'd fall in love with the lead singer for the same reasons I'm head over feet for Thurston Moore and Paul Westerberg, for the same reasons i fell in love with van stuard.

So, there, in my grungy richmond bar, with neon in the walls and vinyl dinette sets randomly placed along the walls, i danced with my eyes shut, grinding my painfully shod feet against the floor as i felt the muscles in my legs beat in time with the bassline of my best friend's music and i danced with a guy who i haven't seen since my own heavy rockstar days, and my sister laughed and smiled across the room at me, just before her new boyfriend dipped her in the middle of the smallest dancefloor known to man, I heard this song.

Its been following me around ever since, too. Its been playing in the car, its been humming in my mind as i sat in the diner at 4am and plotted the theft of the new neon sparrows in the front window of the avalon, its been buzzing in the back of my brain as it gets me through another utterly hellish night at the corporate coffee monster who i'd like to leave in a fucking heartbeat.

its been the soundtrack to the fucking fight i'd rather not be having with the man that i love. its not really a fight if you're not speaking, though is it? its just a ridiculously tension filled moment in time where no one can communicate because we're both too proud and stupid. i've turned my phone off, and all i've got keeping me company is the records. thank god for them.

if you're into that sort of thing, there's a myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/jweathermantheprairiefire

its just such a good goddamned song. check it out:

nightingale in the hangar

brickbat — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 04:13:03 GMT

i find myself, more often than not, slipping in between the spaces of songs, riding out soaring guitar riffs and sliding against the staccato breaks of a miked acoustic guitar.

once upon a time, not all that long ago, a lifetime ago, i cut my hair and he stopped loving me. its a much longer story than all that, but, well, its easier to tell it this way.

my hair is much longer now. and as it turns out, he still loves me. but god the convoluted route it took to get here.

i was thinking about it today, while i was sitting on the porch, looking up at the sky, wrapped in some sort of waning fever and trying to talk myself out of a certain sinus infection affliction, about the songs that made me think of him, even when he wasn't with me. the ones that would come on the radio, in the car or in the house, when i'd look over and fully expect the profile to be his, the sweet smile and the way his eyes soften a little more than he'd admit when he looks at me, and instead, there was someone else, more angular, less comfortable, less connected.

one of those, one specifically, was Teenage Fanclub's Mellow Doubt. because, you see, i never thought i'd get him back. and i thought, or at least had myself convinced into thinking, that i didn't need him back. the truth is, that line of thinking was just lying, to myself, and every crevice of every moment held some shard of memory that made me want to dull moments, hours, days and weeks with whatever i could find, distance and pills and money and distraction, until i had myself convinced that i'd removed him like nasty mildew from the tile of my mind, when really, he was the fucking grout and i was starting to come apart with out him.

(he'll be torqued to be grout, by the way, but he was once written about like a jellyfish, not by me, and that annoyed him more than grout ever could)

i listened to this song so much this summer, with so much pain wrapped up in it, convincing myself that i could own this song, realizing it meant something entirely different to me than it does to him, coming to terms with the fact that we don't see each other in exactly the same way, and that very few couples could ever say, "yes, i completely understand your vision of me", fuck, there are things, to this day, he refuses to tell me that he loves about me because he knows, the second he pins it down, it'll disappear. trust me. this is how it happens, with us.

this song pitches open and stumbles down a sort of hill, wandering down to that slight tempo, admitting so many things about the lost and found of love. i'm not really sure what its about, but i can find my own meaning in the painting, the words, the way 'sharing a moment in the perfect place' brings back moments of rain soaked, tear stained, leaning against our cars outside the studio, hearing the bass slam through the concrete floors and feeling his hand on the small of my back.

the way i know exactly what he means when he says 'nothing is greater, than to be with you'. how i always crack like a voice in the dark when i hear that line.

last summer, when i was expending all efforts at distraction from loss, when i was walking the beach with my new ipod and avoiding my fiance by walking the beach in front of the house for hours, i listened to this song on repeat for, oh, an hour or two. striding the beach in my bare feet, letting the wet sand squish up in between my feet, seeing families sun bathing and tiny children smacking their palms against the wet sand, i just walked away. the problem is, of course, that the fucking island ends and it was too far to swim back home to him. it doesn't mean i didn't think about it, though. i realized, standing there, where the sand became reef and my limitations became realizations, that i know even less than i ever thought i did, but that there are a few things i do know, for certain.

one of them was, simply, i'm a fucking dumbass for walking more than a mile on hard, wet sand in my bare feet. more profoundly, was the one where i realized, all in one slamming, crushing, angels crying from the wings and fuck i want to have babies with that asshole moment, that i'm never going to love anyone the way i love him.

and there i was, barefoot, in a swimsuit, yoga pants and a tank top, with no one but my ipod, listening to this song, looking out over the ocean toward home, watching the sun fall out of the sky so quickly it looked late for dinner, without a fucking clue about what i was going to do about it, or how. or if i could handle getting hurt like i had, ever again. i just knew if i shut my eyes and just stood there, i could remember the way his hand feels in mine, and the way it sends shock waves to my toes every time he kisses me. and i knew . the way you know. or don't.

the kicker, by the way, was that i wouldn't have the song if he hadn't put it on my computer, and my itunes hadn't automatically uploaded it with all the other things he'd put on the computer. i wouldn't have it, the song, the memory, the moment, if it wasn't for something he'd done, oh, six months earlier. i haven't told him that. i guess i'll let him read it here.

_It gives me pain, when I think of you And the things together that we'll never do At first it's cold, and then it's hot Tried to be someone that I know I'm not_

_I'm in trouble, and I know it How I'm feeling, I can't show it But these feelings, don't go away_

_I remember you, lines on your face. Sharing a moment in the perfect place. I'm deep in your eyes, and inside your head. And I try to reach you, when I'm in my bed._

_I'm in trouble, and I know it How I'm feeling, I can't show it But these feelings, don't go away_

_There is no choice, in what I must do. Nothing is greater than to be with you._

_I'm in trouble, and I know it How I'm feeling, I can't show it But these feelings, don't go away_

you don't believe your own hype.

brickbat — Fri, 06 Apr 2007 04:03:41 GMT

side note to a side note: though i am a writer, before most everything else, i’m not a speller. because i’ve grown and learned in an age when my little seven pound laptop can correct even the most hellacious spellings. believe is one of those words i used to always spell wrong, until i met him. and then he said to me, one brilliant day, sitting on the floor of the record store together, hiding behind the painted red wooden counter on that rubber mat that was supposed to keep our backs happy and our feet supple but really just turned our bare feet black and did nothing for posture, that ‘there is no believe without a lie’. and i think there’s more truth to that than just a spelling lesson. just saying. its amazing to me that i can’t even think of a word, one i use daily, hourly, without thinking of him. that means something, right?

so, anyway, its late and i’m tired and my hair is dirty and the avocados i bought at the store tonight at 11:00 were disappointing to say the least, but what the hell am i to expect at 11 on a wednesday night. i expect nothing, and i’m sitting on the good couch (we have a bad one too, it really didn’t do anything wrong, my legs are just long and i like to sit up a little higher), and i’m watching Iconoclasts on Sundance, which, honestly, i haven’t been all that enthralled with through out the last few episodes, but i don’t watch much television and care about even less, so i guess i’m not the best judge in the world, but this one isn’t bad. Mario Batali interviewing Michael Stipe.

Okay, so maybe interviewing is a liberal fucking term for hanging out and talking to about life and everything else. but whatever. I love REM . Not in that, hey, i have all your records, but in that, hey i remember hearing Losing My Religion in the sun, with the windows down, riding shotgun, hair in my face, the sweet smell of summer thick in my nose. Sitting in my senior seminar class in a restaurant, sipping vodka neat with V. and hearing Leaving New York over the stereo. Learning all the words to Murmur and Green in high school. Knowing all the words to Its the End of the World and not even thinking about it, just hearing Document, in full, over my college radio, because i was the one to burn it and drop it into the cd changer months before.

That sort of shit. Its familiar, jeans and a t-shirt familiar. You already know the words.

But its even more than that. Its like spelling believe. The essence of it feels like someone. The feeling, the way it grazes my skin, pushes my hair in different directions, the reddish outline of my lips when i catch myself in the mirror. Ninety miles an hour and never looking at the road. Its being in it.

I remember on days like these why music matters to me, i went to work today ready to quit. Scream. Fuckit. But somewhere along the line things got better, and I remembered that i got to go home, and sit cross legged on my bed, headphones, and listen to what ever the hell i want. Anything. let the vinyl spin, shut my eyes, and be entirely in control. fuck work drama and the interpersonal bullshit of people i barely care about, this is mine. I get to sit here and think about the things I give a shit about, about my life, and my love, and my experiences, edited and believed.

And now, i’m going to listen to the Leaving New York single and let Jet Lag play in the background (by the way, watch that movie, its french, its subtitled (french title decalage horaire) the craft of language is painfully beautiful in that film). Because it makes me think of him. And its the only worthwhile song on the whole record. Which is why i bought the single.

_You might have laughed if I told you (it's pulling me apart) You might have hidden a frown (change) You might have succeeded in changing me (it's pulling me apart) I might have been turned around (change)_

_It's easier to leave than to be left behind (it's pulling me apart) Leaving was never my proud (change) Leaving New York, never easy (it's pulling me apart) I saw the light fading out You find it in your heart, it's pulling me apart You find it in your heart, change..._

_I told you, forever I love you, forever I told you, I love you I love you, forever I told you, forever You never, you never You told me forever_

from the floor boards up.

brickbat — Sat, 31 Mar 2007 06:44:28 GMT

i found myself on my hands and knees in the middle of a cracked linoleum hell, rag in one hand, spray bottle in the other, ten hours into my only day off this week, cleaning the floor.

there was a time in my life when "how the hell did i get here?" was a typical, every day conversation of self. because i drank a lot. and i took everything i could find. and...i woke up a lot on floors that i may or may not have seen before. to say the least.

but these days, that sort of question is the kind that i actually have the answer to, to follow back against the logged memory of moments past that all lead up to one, complete, sulfuric moment of what the fuck.

the cd player was fully loaded, jesse malin's _fine art of self destruction_, westerberg's _folker_, marah's _kids in philly_ and _let's cut the crap and hook up later tonight_ and paul weller's _as is now_ spun, over and over again, while i sat there with my knees folded up on my long legs and my hair pulled back out of my face, trying to figure this one out.

trying to figure out if the surroundings matched the soul. if its such a mess in there too. just scared that the answer was yes.

i don't sleep enough lately and i should listen to more music, but the truth is there are go to standards and when you're only awake and on your own time for the blink of an eye, you don't want to spend it trying to decide whether or not you like something. you want something familiar, something comfortable. Something you already know fucking fits. And I'd like to say that concept only applies to music, but we all know it doesn't. Of course it doesn't.

If it did, people wouldn't get comfortable in relationships or have favorite shirts, would they?

So yeah, there i was, starting to cry, so sure of where i was for the first time in a long time, washing the floor, square by square. thinking of the last time i saw something so raunch, when, in what seems like a former life, we bought the loft in china town and he literally shoveled dead rats into the handy renovating chute attached, badly at that, to the window on the side of the building. I washed the floors with ammonia and the walls with straight bleach. I scrubbed so hard that water damage and shit and piss and blood and whatever else was there just came away, and i looked down in amazement at the sealed concrete in some places and wide planks of oak in others. I spent days, on drugs, but still, listening to westerberg and the 'mats, to wilco, to the sex pistols and the clash, cleaning those floors, while he did whatever the hell it was that he did, and i did what i did.

as women, i feel like we're almost to this point with feminism that we shouldn't admit (if we like cleaning) that we like to clean. fuck that. i fucking like it. i don't want to do it every day, but the fact of the matter is i'm a little obsessive compulsive (dvd's by alpha, criterion by #; my hanging clothes are organized by type and color, my records are a neurotic neurosis i cannot explain, i am a fan of the right angle) and i fucking like it. but its got to be right.

there used to be a running joke in my record store that if i was cleaning, CCR's chronicle would be playing, and if i was hungover, there would be noise. its funny how different types of music facilitate, well, fuck, let's face it, everything from cleaning up the shittiest of messes to fucking on the floor.

i don't think i'd have gotten through it without the music, though. and its just one of a million things i wouldn't have lasted ten seconds into without the right soundtrack. breakups, breakdowns, the beginnings, middles and ends of, pretty much everything, have a soundtrack. have a tune. have a bass line and a drum beat and a melody. have a auditory memory.

i'll never hear that paul weller record again and not think of that day, the way i sang along down the hall and let the dog look at me like i'd lost my bleeding mind. the way my back and legs ached like i'd had the best sex of my life, despite the fact that it was the furthest thing from the truth. the way i wanted to curl up with him and read dorothy parker with my head on his arm. how far i am from where i used to be on so many different levels. realizing it for the first and 500th time.

when the bible is a bottle

brickbat — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 00:20:29 GMT

i had to work today. at 7am. i'm so tired lately that everything is a blur and the only things that make it better are the shape of his face and the deep edge of a little espresso under the table, the always cold other side of the pillow and funny sunlit conversations on the most unlikely of days.

there are some records we listen to so hard that we can't hear them anymore. they get thick with meaning and moments, dense with images and ideas that weren't there before we started. _still feel gone_ is one of those records. and as i left work today, half an hour after i was supposed to, a little pent up and tired and every cell of my being desperate to just be closer to him, (desperation, what a dangerous term), i got in the car like i always do, in my skintight black leggings and my black on black chuck taylors, covered in steamed and dried milk, mocha powder, whatever the fuck else i and everyone else managed to drop on and around my feet for the last week, i looked in the rear view mirror, in the sunglasses i bought yesterday to soothe what can only be described as loathing dissatisfaction with just about everything within those four walls and then some, i needed to go somewhere.

now, this edgy need to run away is normal. i live with it every day. i want to run, screaming, in the other direction, at most moments. but i've also learned that when i get to where i was running, i'd like to start running again. so, i've found ways to run while standing still, to keep it in the same state, hell, the same zip code, and still satiate the need. today, i needed to go, and i needed to look at something i hadn't seen in a while, something wide open, full throttle, gorgeous. something entirely different from the way i looked, the way i felt.

i threw the volvo in gear, thumbed across the ipod, and landed on a place i haven't been in a very, very long time.

i fucking love uncle tupelo. i love wilco. i love son volt. i am the rare breed of woman who, a. knows who all three of those bands are, and b. hasn't picked a side in that argument. but hey, jeff and jay are off of drugs, and so am i, so can't we all just get along? I refuse to pick a side in the wilco / son volt argument that always happens, because i love _red-eyed and blue_ just as much as i dream of _windfall_ and there's just no picking in between. there is however, the eternal amalgam, the uncle tupelo.

i had a momentary brush, and by momentary brush i mean full slam on i bought every single one of that bands records in a week, with listening to uncle tupelo somewhere near the beginning of college, when the boyfriend was older and a pilar of the alt-country movement, when it was important to me to know what absolutely everyone was talking about, and more so, it was paramount to understand the basis of the things that i listened to and was surrounded by. I fell in love with uncle tupelo but quickly forgot my momentary obsession for things further along in the progression, son volt records and wilco moments filled my cd shelves and i knew the tupelo was there, but i wasn't listening.

it wasn't long before relationships got a little too serious and far too dangerous and mind altering movements were introduced in staggering doses and life got a little too violent. i found myself a few too many hundred miles north of home listening to my uncle tupelo records, sitting in the edge of a window above parkslope, pushing my swollen cheek against the cold slab of glass, listening to the sounds of home as brooklyn got a little smaller and life got jarred a little further out of focus every day. i can remember being laid out in the middle of the loft floor, staring at the ceiling and the hooks that he'd hung from the rafters for my art work, the air dense with spray paint fumes and loathing, every piece of furniture, clothing, jewelry, waiting to see what we'd do next, listening to Jeff Tweedy, "your heaven looks just like my hell".

and when it was over, because things like that can never last, because someone gets broken or fed up or just plain gives up and gives in, and that's how it has to be, so no one dies. because desperate, disparate, uncomfortable, soul sucking lives are not the lives we should live, i put the records away and i didn't listen to them. the singles moved to seattle with him and i let him take the, i let him take them all, and i stopped buying vinyl, i stopped having to worry about the temperature in the apartment and i didn't even own a record player. i gave it up, because i had myself convinced that it was some sick extension of him, when in all reality i came into that deal with vinyl, with the record player, with a junkie's need to hear billy bragg at least once a week and a sincere disrespect for strictly-radio-top-40 listeners. i was already the audiophile, i just had a bad taste in my mouth. something about blood and metal will put you off from just about anything.

so i moved. i got better, i got worse, i got different, i got unbent. i started buying the records again, i started laying in the sun and watching the vinyl glint in the grooves and swearing that analog still sounds better than digital (and it does). i remembered that i was one of them, and i'd date the hipsters who got my obscure pavement references and liked to lay on the roof with me and listen to tom waits. i got a job at a record store. i met him.

and all of a sudden the tupelo was back. and it was fucking back to stay. it was months after months of _march 16-20_ because _wait up_ makes me think of him on every spin, it was every moment of heart break in every fight and every moment of misunderstanding in the waiting. no fail, if i play a guitar for more than twenty minutes, _moonshiner_ or something else from the catalog will get covered, and its never lost in a set list. its hearing _still be around_ five hundred different ways, like a spent daisy, he loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not. it came up differently each and every time, half a petal here, half a heart there.

when i hear that song i'm careening down the side of a mountain with tears streaming down my face, death grip on the shifter, trying to decide what to say, what to do, whether or not to care. i'm pulling up behind his car in the middle of the night and i'm leaning against his leg while i sit on the floor of our record store, looking up at him as i hide from everyone else. i'm in a borrowed bed with my hand in his, staring the future in the face and getting nothing more than a muted, misunderstood reflection. its dense and uncomfortable, like seeing the wrong ex for the first time in years. its a moment of oh fuck muscle memory and three fucking years of walking the line upside down.

today i took the same route, down 220, through the mountains, up the edges and over the sides, kicking back over the parkway in high gear, the sun pressing against my tender skin and the treble nudging against my eardrums. it was fucking beautiful, the sun, the sky, the way the mountains seem to stretch their backs toward the sun and the south seems to go a little technicolor in warmer weather. and i listened to still feel gone from beginning to end, snatches of memory plucking at my soul from a distance, the happiness of seconds tempering the empty hopelessness of others. three years wrapped up in two voices and guitars. weighty, misunderstood history bleeding past every single note.

i always swore if i met him i'd still be around. and i knew when i met him. i don't even think i knew, in that shit fuck what the hell is this new sticky suffocating god he's close i want to see those eyes every single day moment. i may still not really know. but its there, and i've stopped looking for it in places i know i won't find it. its there in the lyrics, in the melody, in the facial expressions and especially the silences.

_I don't see you through the windshield I don't see you in faces looking back at me alcohol doesn't have much that matters to say can't imagine where you and time to kill will stay_

_when the bible is a bottle and the hardwood floor is home when morning comes twice a day or not at all if I break in two will you put me back together when this puzzle's figured out will you still be around to say you've just been there walking the line upside down_

_walked and breathed many a cancerous mile where the bat of an eye is too slow to beat the coffin they won't tell it on the TV they can't say it on the radio they pay to move it off the shelf and into our minds until you can't tell the truth when it's right in front of your eyes_

aww jeez

brickbat — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 05:45:57 GMT

i know, usually i wax poetic on things on my brain, but as i myspace drift tonight at 1:36, i fell upon a friend's brother's page, where he has, in a move that gives me great respect for the man, four non blondes' what's up as the song that plays on his page.

and it hits me.

fuck me i love that song.

i'm not going to apologize for it any more than i'll apologize for the fact that i was once guilty of the same skirt /boot combo that they showcase in the first few seconds of the video. but its one of those fucking under your skin i know all the goddamned words and i have no clue why sort of songs.

i'd also forgotten about the playground bullshit, the goggles and the bizarre way she holds her guitar. C'mon now. I've fronted bands and never, and i mean never, stood that way holding a guitar....

the love of my life once accused me of having nothing but the bangles playing inside my brain. and in moments like this, i think he might be right. but then, he's got nothing but son volt and replacements reverb. so we're even.

for your enjoyment:

coffee and napalm

brickbat — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 07:30:25 GMT

one a.m. and no sleep in sight, put on some shoes and pop, click, poof, light the cigarette, feet on the steps, feet on the concrete, in the car, windows down, rain waiting to fall.

the night sits like a drunk waiting to pass out, just on the edge of something tragic and stunning, on weather, on rain, on humidity and cold air just on the other side of the mountain.

push the car harder, faster, up the mountain, fifty feet in front of the star, ride it hard, settle into the seat and throw your thumb against the stereo knob, turn it up, up, up, let it rock the very frame, jitter against the speakers, visit the fillings in your teeth, let you forget who you were, are, will be.

i drove home from work today, all four windows down, sunroof open, hair pulled back, so tired i'd hit the mental wall four hours beforehand and i was concentrating less on the traffic and more on the way a tendril of hair teased against that place below my ear where my neck becomes my shoulder and the way the right music can just fucking make it.

the star was on during the day today. i don't know why, and i think i'm the only one that noticed. I drove up there tonight, another scene from another movie i think i've lived through five hundred times, 23 and alone, driving up the side of a mountain in his whiskeytown t-shirt because i feel like hell but i'm not quite ready to go home and put my head down with no one to settle their hand into my hair as i sleep and slip their leg in between mine. just not quite there.

so westerberg and i went for a little drive, and i listened to We May Be the Ones a few too many times and thought that maybe he's right, but then again, i've learned not to put my life in the hands of any rock and roll band, they'll throw it all away, and I'm more enthralled these days with the heady white amber glow of the street lights and the way a railroad town doesn't look as dirty as it does when i was a kid, and how we all seem to have decided that the world should just sort of come to a screeching southern halt at night, when my brain is clicking and i'd rather go somewhere that isn't the waffle house or the goddamned walmart and the way my stomach won't quite settle this week and i have no idea why, but it reminds me slightly of being pregnant, which i'm not, but i don't really need to think about.

all that from a fucking lyric and a streetlight. from the yellow lines and the way the black pavement goes a little blue beneath my headlights and i could have sworn the police car that passed me was weaving like a drunk driver and i miss my best boston friend so desperately because i just need to play these songs myself instead of hearing them for the first time all over again by someone else and i'm a little lost in being found and i'm a little happy by my sadness.

i'm a little destroyed and i'm still trying to make plans, and its not a sign of weakness that i really need someone to just help me hold all of my pieces together lately, a little emotional duct tape and some hand holding go a million miles an hour in the right direction and i don't have anything to be torn up about except a million memories gone wrong and a place i love entirely destroyed.

i always walk around waiting for the bottom to fall out. braced for the next hit. fully expecting someone, somewhere to blindside me.

except when i'm moving. when i'm in motion, bombarded, windows down, ninety miles an hour, entirely in control, sound up, voice screaming, sensory overload from every single fucking direction. that, and when i fall asleep with his face in my neck, his arm underneath my head and the other hand resting against the edge of my pelvic bone. then. then i'm not waiting for anything. i'm already there.

_We may well be the ones To set this world on its ear We may well be the ones If not then why are we here Why the hell then are we here_

_I wanna know I wanna know_

its like an itch you can't scratch.

brickbat — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 00:08:48 GMT

disclaimer. this might piss you off. if so, i'm sorry, but i still feel the same way

i woke up today in a pretty rotten mood, if you must know. but its a day off from slinging corporate coffee and i'm happy to have it. records have been hung, listened to, caressed, reordered, and listened to again. and i've been thinking, what the fuck am i going to write about today? And the truth was, sitting in the middle of my bed, reading other mogger's posts, specifically poor dave lowery's post about sound of music's unfortunate soaking, listening to comets on fire, all i could really think about were the eccentricities that my music taste has. And more specifically, the shit i fucking hate. Because even though I've got a massive music collection, obsessions with bands that never got radio play and will never be on the covers of any mainstream magazines, I've probably got a longer list of music i can't stand, never want to hear, and, ultimately, falls under the deal-breaker catagory.

I'll give an example, because, well, its funny as hell and it'll help to see a little further into my world. I used to date a guy obsessed with traditional garage culture. The stones were god, garage music was secondary only to Actuel Jazz records and the most obscure of the obscure noise. We had a lot in common. What can i say? He also, I came to find out, not only owned a single Grateful Dead record, but a box set, which he kept hidden from me in a closet I'd never bother to look in. Needless to say, it never worked out. And I could blame the Grateful Dead (talk about a fucking scapegoat), but really, its the fact that I dated a guy who would lie to me about loving the Grateful Dead, even though he knew i refuse to be in the same room with people who have those stickers on their cars. I refuse to justify it. I just fucking hate it. And all of the shite that goes with it. I'll never understand dirty hippies or sleeping in fields, I'll never understand what is really nothing more than stoned country with a little acid thrown in. Then again, I know most of them will never appreciate Sightings. So, trust me, we're even.

Other things that painfully offend, because, of course, there are others:

- the doors will headline my hell. seriously. and to make matters worse, that place, where i sling the coffee, has company radio pumped in. Needless to say, the Doors play once a week. Which is once a week too much. Sincerely, their music is for people who don't like music. so many other sincerely good things came out of that movement. like, fuck, Iggy Fucking Pop. He was smart enough to desert Jim Morrison, shouldn't we be? And don't even get me started on the 'poetry'.

- i utterly fail to understand how we live in a world that only came to understand Johnny Cash through a film interpretation of what sort of but not really happened in his early recording career but will eat up the shittiest, most heinously ridiculous lyrics in the form of top 40 country music. Really.

- rappers who cannot spell their own names. I have a sincere respect for all things good Hip Hop and R&B, and there are more brilliant artists in both of those fields than I can even begin to name. But I've got very, very little respect for anyone in a musical field that is 75% wordplay and can't spell their own name, cough, cough, Fabolous.

- Donald Fagen. Nuff Said.

- I hate Paul McCartney. On levels. Plural. Yes, I feel badly for the man, he's going through some psychotic divorce, yeah yeah yeah, but at the same time, Wings was his fucking fault. And for all of you who will now defend him because you're beatles fans first, let me remind you, its his fault they broke up. It was PAUL who arrived at the Apple offices with the legal power to end the band (via Linda's father), and then did so, so that he ( and linda) could spend more time with the family that they just couldn't seem to stop having (they had a beautiful marriage and I fully respect them both for that, and I'm not trying to slag on linda. but if you're going to point fingers, it shouldn't be at Yoko. She was just busy shagging John).

- Yoko Ono, though I've just disproven her culpability for destroying what half of you probably believe to be the best band ever, still bugs the piss out of me.

- Federline and that ilk. I mean, fuck, are you KIDDING me?

- I think, and you do too, that its time for Axl to go do something else. And while we're on it, dude has NOT aged well.

- ICP. its not music. its not a lifestyle. its what the rest of us lovingly like to call a bad fucking idea. now wash that dumbass paint off of your face and hope, hope like hell no one ever finds out you even thought about getting a tattoo.

- the jack johnson / donovan frankenritter camp. shut up already. i get it, i get that you can play guitar. please use your powers for good and not radio ready evil.

- i do not trust people who do not like the rolling stones.

- ryan adams every other moment. the other moment, i'm completely in love with the asshole. but really. three subpar records in a year, or, oh, i dunno, condensing it all down to one of the best records ever? honestly, i just want another Heartbreaker. And I'll never get it.

- all those lame bands on myspace that list wilco as their main influence, but then go on to embody everything that Wilco was trying to hard not to be.

- actually, just most of those lame bands on MySpace.

- bands (and labels) that reissue the reissue. which I'll have to buy because it has one more track i don't have anywhere else. i won't name names, but you know who you are.

- and. you knew it was coming....Sting. He's an asshole. Seriously. I didn't want to go to Bonarroo before it was announced that he'd play, and now I really don't fucking want to go. And more than that, I never wanted to know about his tantric issues and I never needed to know or hear another word out of the man post 'Roxanne'.

- there are a million other things like this, and i could list forever, but I'd really rather hear what it is that pisses everyone else off instead. cheers.

to all the kids in philly

brickbat — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 00:26:16 GMT

go to this. don't ask questions, just ante up your ten dollars and thank god you're alright.

Sun 3/18 @ 4pm $10 COME TOGETHER Benefit for Berthony Baptiste

Marah Malone and McWilliams Tom Hampton The Fractals Surgeon Bloodline (Marah side project) Wild Dog Daze McRad Smiles Project Brian s/jay Hansen Hezekiah Jones Cowmuddy

Berthony Baptiste is a Hatian immigrant and father of three who was recently shot and robbed on his way home from work. Lacking medical coverage, Berthony's health and finances were destroyed by the assault. The Fire will be hosting a benefit concert for Berthony to help cover his medical expenses, with all proceeds from the event going to Berthony and his family.

origin of the species.

brickbat — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 22:35:52 GMT

so, if you didn't know by now, billy bragg is one of my all time, favorite things, ever. but its not just because he writes amazing, powerful, run me over like a mac truck every time i hear them songs, its because he's there every time something happens.

Like Westerberg, Tweedy, Adams and the Beilanko brothers, Braggie seems to be one of those guys who's ther for all the big moments. The embodiment of that High Fidelity exchange between Rob and The Boss. You either know, or you don't. And if you thought the movie was better, you don't.

As i drove back from Richmond last night, opting out of the interstate for 460, i had one of those 'my life is a movie and this is the perfect soundtrack' moments, running through songs on the ipod 'til i hit the right things for the right moments, listening to ryan adams and Marah, to Jose Gonzalez and the new Hold Steady. And then, of course, as these long drives always dictate, I broke out the Billy Bragg. I listened to Worker's Playtime and wandered through Back to Basics, and ended up listening, but of course, to William Bloke. And then Brickbat came on.

Brickbat, technically, is defined, according to the American Heritage Dictionary, as the following: _1. A piece, especially of brick, used as a weapon or missile. 2. An unfavorable remark; a criticism_ With that move from a high school english paper out of the way, I guess I'll get on with it. I coopted the name after I'd finally looked it up, realized what it meant, realized what a backhanded moment of a perfect love song it really was. It seemed, well, painfully appropriate.

I didn't know what it meant the first, oh, hundred times i heard the song. I finally looked it up two or three years ago, and got the answer that i've copied and pasted up above, but for the longest time I just didn't want to know. I didn't. It was like a feeling undefined, something, that if i just put my finger on it, would disappear. Because sometimes leaving it alone is really, fucking honestly, the best thing.

And I know I'd heard that song a hundred times if I'd heard it once before this time last year. I mean, fuck, I knew the words. But one afternoon, when it had finally started to get warm and I'd spent the day barefoot in my record store, sitting against a bin while I priced vinyl and let the sun hit my neck, feeling my back arch against the heat, and he'd spent the day with my car, and his kids, and my cd's. So when i got back in the car, where he'd left it parked for me in the lot, close to the store so i didn't have to walk too far in the dark, with a full tank of gas, the heat from the middle of the day still heavy in the leather seats and her car seat still in the back seat, it was this thick, undefinable, recognizable moment of knowing, just knowing, that something i loved had been there. Of course it had.

And as the car powered on, and my hand hit the gear shift, the cd in the player started to spin, and brickbat started to play. And it all fucking hit me like nothing else before. I heard a song I've known inside and out for years for the first time. I heard every word. Every moment. Every feeling. The fucking essence of the callouses on Billy Bragg's fingers against guitar strings and the heartbreaking idea of stealing kisses in the grocery store were all there, inside that red swedish box, and I didn't. fucking. know. what. to. do.

And driving in the rain, in the dark, back toward him last night, I heard that song the same way, all over again. Thick and sticky, hard to swallow and so fucking dear, so close to the edges of everything that makes up this disconnected and honestly lucky to be alive soul.

_I ought to leave enough hot water For your morning bath, but Id not thought I hate to hear you talk that way But I cant bring myself to say I'm sorry_

_The past is always knocking incessant Trying to break through into the present We have to work to keep it out But I wont be the first to say its over_

_I used to want to plant bombs at the last night of the proms But now youll find me with the baby, in the bathroom, With that big shell, listening for the sound of the sea_

_I steal a kiss from you in the supermarket I walk you down the aisle, you fill my basket And through it all, the stick I take is worth it for the love we make_

_I used to want to plant bombs at the last night of the proms But now you'll find me with the baby, in the bathroom, With that big shell, listening for the sound of the sea, The baby and me_

_I stayed in bed, alone, uncertain Then I met you, you drew the curtain The sun came up, the trees began to sing The light shone in on everything. I love you._

_The sun came up, the trees began to sing The light shone in on everything. I love you._

Thurstacular.

brickbat — Fri, 16 Mar 2007 21:44:23 GMT

Okay then, who's coming with us? Because i just bought our tickets. Uh huh.

40 (not just a sexy bbc miniseries)

brickbat — Wed, 14 Mar 2007 05:33:21 GMT

1. my morning jacket - butch cassidy 2. the doves - catch the sun 3. the flaming lips - the wizard turns on 4. same cooke - sugar dumpling 5. green day - holiday 6. the books - smells like content 7. lou reed - hangin' round 8. nick cave and the black seeds - black betty 9. the magnetic fields - strange eyes 10. islands - volcanoes 11. camper van beethoven - interlude 12. ray lamontagne - empty 13. jens lekman - firecracker (on our way to a new years party) 14. ryan adams - carolina rain 15. yeah yeah yeahs - cold light 16. the clash - lover's rock 17. candi staton - someone you use 18. the books - it never changes to stop 19. sleater-kinney - wilderness 20. marah - its only money, tyrone 21. caitlin cary - shallow heart, shallow water 22. mission of burma - laugh the world away 23. david bowie - ziggy stardust 24. eddie izzard - six million dollar queen 25. nick cave and the bad seeds - grief came riding 26. antony & the johnsons - what can i do? 27. isobel campbell - poor butterfly 28. rogue wave - march 29. pete yorn - pass me by 30. morrissey - interesting drug 31. boris - feedbacker part 4 32. acid house kings - sadly, i'm never loved 33. the english beat - two swords 34. brightblack morning light - everybody daylight 35. billy bragg - she's got a new spell 36. the pony's - chemical imbalance. 37. gram parsons - return of the grievous angel 38. the magnetic fields - punk love 39. the kooks - if only 40. hayden - i'll tell him tonight

1. Which song do you prefer, 1 or 40? my morning jacket almost always wins. this is another one of those cases.

2. Have you ever listened to 12 continuously on repeat? nope.

3.What album is 26 from? i am a bird now. [such a good fucking record]

4. What do you think about the artist who did 15? i think they should do an about face and head back toward their initial efforts. gold lion did very little if nothing at all for me, compared to fever to tell.

5. Is 19 one of your favorite songs? not lately, but it had a phase, right after that record came out i rather loved it.

6. Who does 38 remind you of? van stuard.

7. Does 20 have better lyrics or music? both are stellar.

8. Do any of your friends like 3? eh, we were lukewarm on that record. and continue to be.

9. Is 33 from a movie soundtrack? were the english beat ever on a soundtrack? probably, but not that i know of.

10. Is 18 overplayed on the radio? i'm going to look and see what 18 is after i write this, because fuckall in my library is played on the radio...[the song was the books - it never changes to stop]

11. What does 21 remind you of? the guy i got it from. yeah. him again.

12. Which song do you prefer, 5 or 22? 22. burma is fucking awesome.

13. What album is 17 from? the s/t retrospective.

14. When did you first hear 38? in the basement of plan 9, wearing my high school uniform skirt and my minor rock star boyfriend's jacket while leaning against an old record bin watching him record shop. comically, or not, it doesn't remind me of him in the initial realization.

15. When did you first hear 7? high school. i fell in love with lou reed a long time ago, upon the urging of fabulous record store clerks.

16. What genre is 8? nick cave and the bad seeds. the man has his own little section of genre. but, according to the computer, it is alternative & punk. interesting.

17. Do any of your friends like 14? most of them do. some of them are completely down with the ryan adams, and, well, if the fucker would stop putting out 4 subpar records per year, i'd pretend i didn't understand.

18. What color does 4 remind you of? blue. oh sam cooke.

19. Have you ever blasted 11 on your stereo? yeah. i'm a dork.

20. What genre is 37? alt-country, the early fuckin years.

21. Can you play 13 on any instrument? yeah. guitar. but not excessively well.

22. What is your favorite lyric from 30? 'Interesting drug The one that you took tell the truth - it really helped you'

23. What is your favorite lyric from 23? 'Making love with his ego Ziggy sucked up into his mind Like a leper messiah'

24. Would you recommend 24 to your friends? its eddie izzard. i love him. i don't expect everyone to get it though.

25. Is 2 a good song to dance to? the doves always have a groove.

26. Do you ever hear 16 on the radio? i might have. once. maybe.

27. Is 32 more of a nighttime or daytime song? twilight.

28. Does 36 have any special meaning to you? absolutely.

29. Do any of your friends like 31? one. the majority of the people in my life fucking hate noise. i've come to terms with this. japanese metal noise is not one of those things i'd expect most people to get, either.

30. Is 25 a fast or slow song? its slow. it wanders.

31. Is 35 a happy or sad song? its a happy sad song, maybe.

32. What is one of your favorite lyrics from 9? i love every single word of that song. but. if i have to pick... "made by God to destroy fools two pearls of inf'nite cost two paradises lost They swallow me in all my dreams Oh God I'm still in love with you"

33. Is 34 better to listen to alone or with friends? Alone.

34. When did you first hear 27? years ago.

35. Name 3 other songs by the artist who did 29. burrito, strange condition, closet.

36. Do you know all the words to 6? i don't think so, but i'd like to.

37.Does 28 have better lyrics or music? lyrics.

38. What album is 10 from? i dunno, mine's from a live show at philly's first unitarian church. also remembered as the site of jens lekman's hotpants show.

summer in the southeast.

brickbat — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 19:44:01 GMT

its that sort of a day here in the south, the kind that just barely kisses your skin and the wind wanders off against the mountains and slopes gently back against your face. a windows down, sunroof open sort of a middle ground, the sun still getting ready for the oppressive summer just around the corner, but for now, a warm, delicate awakening.

its coming, and i can feel it, almost summer and all the things that it seems to be able to dredge up against my soul. i don't remember weather like this when i was a child, the precious, temperate kind that's perfect for long, pointless walks and listening to records on the porch with the windows open. i just don't remember it at all.

this is the weather of perfection and disappointment, of mix tapes that you never give back and never play again, of sitting on picnic tables in the middle of the afternoon smoking cigarettes and not remembering to be anywhere because you don't fucking want to move.

its open windows when you sleep and leaving the cover on the record player up, over and over and over again, its full, clear, warm weather music time.

i fell on a mixtape i'll probably never play again a few days ago, when the weather was getting ready to happen, and at the very end i remembered a song that i'd only realized was there after we'd broken up, and after i'd moved out. after i'd found my own place. you know, after the aftermath. at the very end of a pile of music that he knew would get me into bed sooner rather than later, were two will oldham songs. 'let's start a family' and 'a whorehouse is any house', which are wandering, tempered, beautiful blue songs that you expect to hear when the weather is unsure of itself and gorgeous, when even bedsheets feel more interesting and having the sunroof open is one step closer to zen. i could exist in this sort of climate every single day, so long as i had music like this to soundtrack it.

when i found it, of course, with the ryan adams' import tracks and the pixies covering warren zevon, i realized how well he'd understood me, musically, at least, and he'd thrown in other things, a swearing at motorists live show (on belgian radio, no less) and other bits, and it struck me just how intrinsically you can know another person between the grooves, in the three second gaps between songs. how every song is the breath of a moment that might have never even happened, and we're left with three minutes or so of an inescapable memory, because no matter what, in that sonic landscape, its still there, and the only way to avoid it is to pretend it never happened. To leave the cassette in its case, the record in its sleeve, the mp3 unopened.

But it doesn't work that way does it? Because somewhere, you'll hear a bass line, a single chord, the way a door opens or someone's laugh, and there, in the back of your head, left of a memory of the best sex ever and behind remembering how he left you, is that song, and what happened when it was on, and who you were kissing and who you were thinking about and how dense the disconnect can really be, if you just think on it for a blinding, painful second.

And how inescapable even the tiniest of moments, of memories, of music, can be.

Apotheosis.

brickbat — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 23:42:42 GMT

I'm not even going to write about this. Because sometimes noel gallagher and paul weller, together, singing talk tonight, is all you fucking need to swallow an entire feeling up and set all down again. enjoy.

_Sittin on my own Chewin on a bone A thousand million Miles from home When something hit me Somewhere right between the eyes_

_Sleepin on a plane You know you cant complain You took your last chance Once again I landed, stranded Hardly even knew your name_

_I wanna talk tonight Until the mornin light bout how you saved my life You and me see how we are You and me see how we are_

_All your dreams are made Of strawberry lemonade And you make sure I eat today You take me walking To where you played When you were young_

_Ill never say that i Wont ever make you cry And this Ill say I dont know why I know Im leavin But Ill be back another day_

_I wanna talk tonight Until the mornin light bout how you saved my life (you saved my life) I wanna talk tonight (I wanna talk tonight) bout how you saved my life_

cotton candy and a rotten mouth.

brickbat — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 13:25:49 GMT

its raining in the people's republic of beer, walking down a side street deep in the fan, three story houses slammed up against one another and opening up to a grey blue comfortably distant sky, the color i've seen his eyes a hundred times if i've seen them once.

its amazing how much of a person can bleed out of a place that you've never been in at the same time. amazing.

ipod in my ears, blood red chucks on my feet, ryan adams in my brain, tears on my face. Hot in the middle of winter, carrying my hoodie and unconsciously freezing in my too thin t-shirt. walking for miles. one side street, another, turn just before the bad block, make your way to the river, make your way to the bottom, to the hill, to maymont. i made myself sick that day. when i showed up in boston it was tears and a cold and the rain from richmond carried in my soul. the pressure in the plane hurt my sinuses and my soul and i figured i deserved the pain, taking it, letting it wear me down a little both ways.

so close and so far away. waiting for a plane, of course, to carry me away, to take me a million miles away and easily pretend that nothing just happened when really, really, everything that could have happened did.

flailed out failure in fishnets and green eye shadow watched her heart walk out the door and slip into someone else's arms. funny how it works out in the end.

standing six hundred miles away aching legs on the concourse and the side of my face still sore from a midnight blackout god knows what happened but i woke up with that disconnected left cross to the jaw emotionally gone and not coming back anytime soon.

i've been hit in the face more than once.

I settled in against the wet concrete steps that trail off halfway down the edge of the hill into some sort of archaeological mistake, step off, fall for miles, fall into a water filled locomotive, 4 dead, no explanations from a hundred years ago, and look over old tobacco warehouses and places i've fallen, face first, into a thousand different moments, for better or worse, face the angry river careening toward the buildings with a breakneck pace we'd all pay for in a few days, the things that we thought would keep us safe biting us in the ass.

its days like those you don't wear makeup and you don't expect a goddamned thing to be pretty, for a day to match a mood is so rare and perfect, falling into it is the only thing left to do, and there, on the edge of the concrete steps to nowhere, on the edge of the overgrown church hill, in kudzu and ivy and a dead tree, on the hill where so many things happened once, ryan and i decided, we wished you were there after all.

_Cotton candy and a rotten mouth You know you're so fucked up You know I couldn't help but have it for you_

_And everybody knows the way I walk And knows the way I talk And knows the way I feel about you It's all a bunch of shit And there's nothing to do around here It's totally fucked up I'm totally fucked up Wish you were here_

_And streets that only turn to boulevards And houses with back yards and it's raining like hell on the cars And everybody knows the way I walk And knows the way I talk Knows the way I feel about you It's all a bunch of shit And there's nothing to do around here It's totally fucked I'm totally fucked Wish you were here_

_And if I could have my way We'd take some drugs And we'd smile We'd smile We'd smile But not tonight, my dear Wish you were here Wish you were here Wish you were here Wish you were here_