stand back

so yes I DID go to NOTS (Night of a Thousand Stevies) on Friday, easily one of the least heteronormative nights of musical bliss I've had in a minute - plz see this photoset and this blog for insights into the weird spell under which I have been inexplicably put.* also, vids from the pre-party courtesy of Stevies/FM powerhour instigator-in-chief Holly -

alternately, you can just watch the amazing video for "Stand Back" obsessively, as I have been, and learn everything you need to know about the powerfully, glamorously wounded and witchy vibes she commands - featuring an uncredited Prince on keyboards, no doubt



I gotta admit I'm a little hesitant to post this in the middle of my TUSK-bloshery - while this fresh new wrinkle on my deepening FM/Stevie obsesh is a uniquely exhilarating escape from the increasingly depressing, disappointing shithole of my real life, I gotta acknowledge that the glamorous and, yes, I guess kind of 'campy'/cokey black and silver/gold palette of '80s disco-y solo Stevie clashes slightly with the organically schizophrenic and depressively human blues/greys of Fleetwood Mac and TUSK...

but, really, what choice do I have? can YOU get the fuck over the second verse and Stevie bending back like the willow, or the insane, hallucinatory 1:50-2:10, where the camera pans back to reveal our scorned, radiant heroine stalking a neon catwalk and sprouting lacey angel's wings? witness the intense fucking intensity of the last verse starting around 3 mins in, and in the outro around 4 mins, and tell me you don't feel the urge to share this unearthly passion with all of your internet friends

I can't tell you how psyched I am to add this and "Edge of Seventeen" to my karaoke repertoire, so glad to have an undoubtedly epic karaoke bday party approaching fast

* actually, given my teenage Dungeons & Dragons playing, my lifelong interest in diva-tastic "gay" music and love for "Stand Back," and the various "straight" romantic resonances of Fleetwood Mac's intensely hetero discography and biography in my life, I basically fall under all three of the main Stevie fan demographics! maybe it was only a matter of time? overdetermined!

storms

given the long-awaited and hoped-for shift in the weather away from the sun and towards the rain, and given Jeff & Caitlin's & Emilio & most of the living room's departure from 502land
this weekend, leaving a constant reminder of the mangled home lives that await us all, it is obviously time to get back to

STORMS

[previous installments of my blogging of highlights from Fleetwood Mac's TUSK - "Over and Over," "Save Me a Place," "Sara", "What Makes You Think You're The One," and the special feature "Sisters of the Moon - Laura Palmer and Stevie Nicks"]

fleetwood mac - storms
fleetwood mac - storms (demo)

(you should probably download both of these, tbh. everything here applies at least as much to the demo, which also includes this awesome, halfway through-the-second-verse drum entrance, Stevie's own defiant heartbeat materialized in Mick's genius arrangements)

"Storms" was already pretty much my/the TUSK anthem before all this house stuff hit, and my relationship with the song has only deepened and intensified since. if you are going to download one fucking song from this whole series, you are fucking heartless (and/or happily engaged in some kind of long-term relationship and don't want to think about this kind of dark shit), but you might as well make it this one. on an album full of songs about the complex agonies of doomed, addictive relationships and compulsively morbid heartbreak, "Storms" goes further than any in giving us an almost unbearably intimate window into the heaviest, bio-emotional micro-steps that the irreparable 'wild heart' takes to separate itself from and cauterize these wounds -

every night that goes between
I feel a little less
as you slowly go away from me
this is only another test

every night you do not come
your softness fades away
did I ever really care that much?
is there anything left to say?

no, Stevie, you're summing it up real succinct-like. and has there ever been a more straightforwardly eloquent, devastating expression of the sadness that no mere eye-tears can express, of the anguish that runneth over any corporeal cup, and of the dark, suicidal thoughts and deadly calls that naturally follow, than this quasi-chorus?

every hour of fear I spent
my body tries to cry

living through each empty night
a deadly call inside

the second verse is similarly heavy, if more cryptic, other than the too-true, too-real line about "I haven't felt this way I feel / since many a year ago." skipping ahead to the third 'verse', a kind of genius half-verse that structurally reminds me of the immortal Bacharach/David/Warwick "Make It Easy On Yourself," Stevie leads us to the REAL chorus, for the first and last time. I don't know if I'm just totally under her spell or what, but I can't get over how these seemingly generically-hippie-ish lyrics are transformed into devastatingly powerful, elemental, defiant truth when sung in Nicks's quaveringly passionate tones -

so I try to say good-bye, my friend
I'd like to leave you with something warm
but never have I been a blue calm sea
I have always been a storm

always been a storm
always been a storm
I have always been a storm

yes. yes. yes.

- AND THEN the gorgeous coda, which subtly shifts us from minor-key turbulence to wistful major tones and a quietly emerging percussive undertow, courtesy of typically-understated genius Mick Fleetwood - which, intriguingly, suggest to me at least that maybe Stevie's actually managed to sail away on that blue calm sea, looking back on the tumult and heartbreak she suffered on that disappearing shore... as if! we're like a third done with this shit and it's going to get way darker, for reals, before there's any light. but - how can any human heart not be moved by this elegiac tone, the implicit, heartbroken farewell of "I loved you from the start"

we were frail...
she said every night he will break your heart
I should have known from the first,
I would be the broken hearted

I loved you from the start...

what makes you think you're the one

OK, let's try and get back to 'normal' here -

[previous installments of my blogging of highlights from Fleetwood Mac's TUSK - "Over and Over," "Save Me a Place," "Sara"]

WHAT MAKES YOU THINK YOU'RE THE ONE

fleetwood mac - what makes you think you're the one

like most of the Lindsey Buckingham-led tracks on TUSK, "What Makes You Think You're the One" starts off kind of abruptly and loudly, making it at first listen (OK, first dozen listens) kind of an unwelcome interruption between the twin Stevie Nicks-led peaks of "Sara" and "Storms." also like most of the Buckingham tracks, once you get past that initial cold water shock, there's a lot here -

first of all, though, it needs to be said - this is an absolute monster drum part and performance by Mick Fleetwood, simple quarter notes that switch between a snare and bass drum played equally relentlessly and hard as fuck. Fleetwood's brutally minimal rhythmic foundation here is the perfect wingman for Buckingham's harshness, hammering home his dream-shattering message (below) with every hit

as Alison points out in her recent comment, it's helpful for us MP3 listeners to understand this as the first song of side B of the first record of the double LP set, and consequently a pointed response to the mellow hopefulness of the Christine McVie side A opener "Over & Over," which asks, albeit cautiously, "could it be me? could it really really be?" - a hopefulness which is disavowed as soon as it's expressed, as Christine reminds herself resignedly that she's asked this question "over and over."

here, Buckingham offers the cynical rejoinder of someone who's been asked the question over and over, mocking the naivete of his partner's belief in the supernatural, mystical powers of love to transcend the inevitable pettiness and sadness of the world

what makes you think you're the one
who can laugh without cryin?
what makes you think you're the one
who can live without dying?

the chorus further demystifies, excluding the possibility of any special, unseen value created by or exclusive to their relationship. it can also be read in a kind of harsh, mocking way - the provisional and ultimately ordinary nature of their relationship is plain to see to everyone, except, implicitly, his partner

every little thing is there to see
every little bit of you and me

however, as with "save me a place," Buckingham admirably elevates all of this above the straightforward denigration of his partner's hopes by turning the camera around to capture his own inadequacies and inconstancy in the second verse:

what makes you think I'm the one
who'll be there when you're callin?
what makes you think I'm the one
who will catch you when you're fallin?

the point is hammered home further in the last verse,

what makes you think I'm the one
who will love you forever?
everything you do has been done
and it won't last forever

so true, yet so harshly, plainly put! if this is the kind of cynical, romance-weary guy Stevie and Christine have been shacking up with - and it is! - it's no wonder their wounded femininity hits back so fucking hard, as we'll see with tonight's tomorrow's post on "Storms."

sara

(for the rest of the week, the Lodge will be blogged or maybe not blogged from an undisclosed location near the Atlantic Ocean in the US south, where I will be busy working and/or celebrating the imminent marriage of all-star 502 alumni Peter and Heather and/or eating quality bbq.)

SARA

fleetwood mac - sara (single edit)
fleetwood mac - sara (demo)

the more I listen to FM the more I've learned to appreciate the various talents of its non-Stevie Nicks members, but I think it's fair and probably non-controversial to say that Stevie's unique voice - half coquettish California girl, half bitter old witch - is kind of the main attraction, you know?  brief internet searching reveals "Sara" to be the #2 all-time favorite Fleetwood Mac song in some online poll, and there's a lot of questions about who exactly Sara is and whatever happened to the 16-minute long demo etc.  I can't really speak to any of that stuff and while I don't necessarily not care, the importance of the historical 'facts' of the song kind of pale when compared to the indisputable vibe facts - this song is maybe the purest distillation of both the heady magic of Nicks as well as maybe the emotional heart of the Tusk experience - and made all the more thrilling b/c it's the first lead vocal for Nicks on the album and it's kind of deep into it at track #5, kicking in with that instantly compelling chord sequence immediately after the mellow warmth of 'save me a place.'

re: Stevie Nicks.  before I really understood what FM was I thought of Stevie Nicks as kind of this silly old hippie chick that wore a ridiculously lacy, quasi-mystical wardrobe, but you know what I would definitely wear really lacy clothes too if I was Stevie Nicks and got to sing the lines in this one about "undoing...  the laces...  undoing the laces."  so awesome.  back then I did not understand that Stevie Nicks actually CAN cast spells with her voice and words, channelling the elements as well as raw feminine emotional energy in a way that is both incredibly alluring and deeply terrifying 

wait a minute baby
stay with me awhile
you said you'd give me light
but you never told me 'bout the fire

one of the theories re: who is "Sara" that Holly mentioned in her Tusk post is that Sara is Stevie's aborted baby that was fathered by Don Henley (!?).  I can't be bothered to fact check this but I will say that the first couple dozen times I heard this I thought the line was "you said you'd give me life / but you never told me 'bout the fire" and I was like "holy shit, she is giving voice to her aborted daughter singing to her from fucking hell!!!"  this is an awesome way to think of it admittedly, but the more correct-seeming lyric with her getting light but then burned by the fire etc is also pure lyrics-as-total-fucking-poetry, and it reminds me of Janet Jackson on the intro to "That's the Way Love Goes" ('like a moth to a flame,' etc), which is a pretty nice fucking bonus vibe to tap into here if you ask me -

also obv note the next line for its similar vibe of elemental potency, enhanced by the incantory, spell-like circularity and repetition -

drowning in the sea of love 
where everyone would love to drown

you could maybe criticize some of the lyrics here as kind of vague and hippieish to be honest, and the song is 'just' a kind of relatively unchanging, if gorgeous and driving, backdrop to Stevie's nonlinear vocal riffs - but I get goosebumps and kind of bite my lip every fucking time she begins that verse, 

and he was just like a great dark wing
within the wings of a storm
I think I had met my match
he was singing
and undoing
the laces

RAW MAGIC!!!  the extended demo version is pretty mandatory, not just b/c it is 8 minutes long instead of just 4 minutes, not just because it has a couple of awesome lines that I sing to myself all the time lately ("I stay home at night / all the time"), but for the utterly, mind-blowingly perfect and revealing way she starts it - "I wanna be a star... I don't wanna be a cleaning lady!" that's where the trouble begins - that star is the light, that star's the fire

re: the production of "Sara" and Tusk.  basic internet research reveals that Tusk was one of the first albums to use digital mixing!  and Sara maybe more than any track really glistens in a way that sounds exactly what a state-of-the-art rock album in 1979 should sound like - still full of the humanity and darkness of the '70s but with an icy, coked-out lacquer of crisp reverb and lush delays straight out of the imminent '80s that establishes this kind of atmospheric and emotional distance between us and Stevie's cold, burning heart.  listen to the infinite-seeming space in the beginning, and how the typically relentless drums and bass suddenly pull you in closer - but not really close.  listen to that ghostly, luminescent choir rising slowly up behind her in the second verse, those shimmering, echoing little guitar filigrees falling over the chorus like Stevie's undone laces...

this is the emotional core of Tusk - beautiful moments preserved like flies in aspic, perfect and inaccessible, dead and ready to be pulled apart

over & over

they call the first song on Fleetwood Mac's stunning and utterly obsessable 1979 album TUSK "Over & Over" because it reminds you that you have been listening to the album over and over and over for the past week and a half

really almost nothing else, as my possibly-suffering housemates will attest. thanks again to Holly for passing this on, it's clearly the Twin Peaks/Julee Cruise of my late winter/early spring 2008, and possibly the greatest album since the "Singles" soundtrack - as such, it will also receive the one-track-at-a-time, close-read treatment that it richly deserves. I'm not going to do every track, but I am going to do all the ones that really matter to me right now, which should cover the next couple weeks of posting for serious

OVER & OVER

fleetwood mac - over & over

I gotta admit, "Over & Over" didn't really register my first few times through TUSK, I kept getting derailed listening to "Sara" and "Storms" on repeat for hours at a time etc. with Christine McVie's typically mellow vocals, the easy-going melody, lazy tempo, etc it is kind of an 'odd' but in retrospect ODDviously perfect way to open an album full of so much darkness and emotional tumult.

this is an album about flawed yet inescapable relationships - as noted in Holly's useful introductory notes, pretty much everyone in the band was sleeping with each other and doing a lot of drugs and dealing with the catastrophic success of "rumours" and writing songs about each other, etc. the songs are full of multiple, often conflicting voices and desires, unanswered questions, naive hopes mixed with heartbroken cynicism, spun in unbreakable circles. and "Over & Over" lays it all out, in McVie's verses and their pleading questions

"could you ever need me? and would you know how? don't waste our time, tell me now"

"don't turn me away, and don't let me down - what can I do to keep you around?"

etc - that so quickly slide into the hopefully rising chorus:

"could it be me? could it really really be?"

before she suddenly, exasperatedly realizes that she's been here before, and had these same hopes dashed, "over and over" ("and over and over and over and over")

- yet the whole song, in its relative warmth and mellowness, kind of conveys that cautious, yet desperately-wanting-to-believe optimism of the "could it be me?", when you kind of know better but still think that maybe this time will be different, which makes it such an appropriate start to the album, a quick taste of the sweetness with clear forboding of the bitterness and sourness to come

ftr, thanks should probably be given to Alison in Sweden PhDista for encouraging me to give this song a closer look in the first place, it wasn't originally going to be blogged but, as usual, she's got a sharp eye for high-quality emotional details, esp when it comes to the Mac. credit also goes to Alison for popping my FM cherry way back on her summer of '01 mixtape, featuring "Silver Springs," which kind of blew me away (and then bitterly haunted me for months after our appropriately intense breakup, thanks!)

lost iv

so fucking pumped for more LOST tonight, last week's was nuts!! this show is really working on all possible levels of satisfaction right now, wowowowowow. for in-depth and on point analysis to get your juices flowing, try this recap and this analysis on darkufo, via the continually on point Alexis

laura

as far as I'm concerned sheryl lee's performance as laura palmer in fire walk with me is w/o a doubt the best performance by any actor or actress in movie history, it is fucking insane that she wasn't nominated for a million oscars. you should probably not bother watching this if you aren't already familiar, but for those that are - the ending, with laura in the red room with agent cooper, is just devastatingly powerful, this seriously makes me bawl my fucking brains out when I'm in the 'right' mood, as I am this cloudy sunday -

it's her reaction when the angel appears that really fucking slays me, that heartbreaking mix of absolute joy and shocked disbelief - the intense, laughing/crying revelation that, despite all the evil clouding her life, and despite the darkness and self-destruction in her own heart, she is still redeemed

angelo badalamenti - the voice of love

(also, LOSTies may note the, ahhh, extremely direct similarities between this piece and that recurring (though recently rare), stirringly romantic musical theme from LOST)

half heart

oh yeah, why not - I was rewatching Fire Walk With Me last week, and finally figured out (maybe figuring out is too strong a word here) what scene this song is from -

angelo badalamenti and david lynch - half heart

- it's from the scene early in the Twin Peaks High part of the movie where Laura meets James in that locker room or wherever and they make out and have that distractingly retarded dialogue about how turkeys are really stupid and she is too or whatever. a little disappointing tbh (though also tbh you also see her boobs for the first time, which is kind of intense - like, not only do we finally get to see the fabled Laura Palmer alive and in action but it's R-rated action! on the whole the beginning of the Twin Peaks section of the movie esp is so fucking satisfying, as Tim so accurately put it) but it's still such a beautiful, schmaltzy, richly melancholic, and endlessly relistenable song, reposted in honor of your val-day, whether it's annoying, pointless, frustrating, terrifying, sad, lonely, aimlessly bummed out, or even just happy - or maybe totally unremarkable and in need of a nice, soprano sax-enhanced vibe, as in your humble author's case -

postscript: OK, why not, I'm watching Fire Walk With Me again, I didn't finish it last time! - the "Half Heart"-scored locker room scene is like this, and typically for Lynch I guess, it seems to get less stupid and more weirdly compelling the third time through:

laura: just kiss me
james: it does matter we're in love
laura: james you don't know what you're talking about, quit trying to hold on so tight... I'm gone, long gone... like a turkey through the corn
james: you're not a turkey... the turkey's one of the dumbest birds on earth
laura: [tearing] ... gobble, gobble... [tremble] gobble
james: laura don't ever leave - I will never leave you
laura: [boobs]

postscript update: jesus wtf why the fuck did I fucking decide to start watching Fire Walk With Me at 2 in the morning this movie is fucking terrifying, that first Bob scene just fucked me up bad and this is only gonna get worse, Leland is PISSED about the cleanliness of Laura's hands

postscript update etc: oh right this is why


full circle: for the record 'Half Heart' appears again towards the end of the movie, at Laura and James's last meeting

why don't you come over to my house... please

since apparently all this snow is turning to shitty rain in like 7 hours, and who knows if these are the best snowy vibes we'll get all year?, I would also like to take this opportunity to demand that you take advantage of the opportunity to really fucking deeply feel Julee Cruise's "Floating into the Night" album, amazingly available for free track by track here. without a doubt my #1 obsession of the winter, and an utterly perfect soundtrack for a snowy evening. these first two especially, seriously seriously mandatory:

julee cruise - floating
julee cruise - falling

bonus chiasm flashback!
"a beautiful, tranquilized hybrid of new age textures and vaguely '50sish pop melodies stretched out into ethereal sighs, lyrics by David Lynch, music by Angelo Badalamenti, and otherwordly singing by Ms. Cruise... it's kind of like an enigmatic, melancholy, xanaxed-out Hal David/Burt Bacharach/Dionne Warwick situation, three amazing talents complementing each other perfectly to create a TOTAL VIBE "

10 high quality steely dan bootlegs for download

right here, it is exactly what the subject says it is, that is to say truly glorious. I saw an awes vid of Fagen in the early 80s playing a keytar wearing a cutoff t-shirt and sunglasses (obv) at a show, it just gets deeper

anyway these links also include a fucking 4GB of video direct from the jumbotron or whatever feed from a show from their summer 2006 tour, which I have such fond memories of seeing more or less TOTALLY SOBER with matt andrea mike nate steve phil lis chris jenna rajiv hank... who am I forgetting? what a great show. I will work on downloading this over the next couple of days and try and have a screening here sometime soon!

someone left the cake out in the rain

via WFMU via PTW, this video of Three Degrees' mesmerizing, beautifully shot, intensely performed, well choreographed (check out the awesome 'whirlpool' move around 6:45 as they transition from the vaguely silly but vaguely sick instrumental break into the epic and sublime coda, camera tracking their hands arching up etc) and wardrobed (sweet green icing dresses) etc big band version of "MacArthur Park" is fucking blowing my mind, as is the song, which I haven't thought about inna minute -



the lyrics are so fucking incredible, I guess they are easy to kind of make fun of etc but come on who has ever combined the totally fucking heartbreaking (the cake is their relationship, a rare and hard to make recipe that baked something beautiful but is suddenly all melty and kind of gross, so poetic and true) with the totally fucking tripped out (wait seriously, what??) like this? it's like the Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner' of pre-Jim Steinman pop disco epics!! highly highly recommended, plz remind me to bust this one out at an appropriately vibed (??) karaoke sesh one day -

spring was never waiting for us, boy
it ran one step ahead
as we followed in the dance
between the parted pages and were pressed
in love's hot, fevered iron
like a striped pair of pants

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
all the sweet, green icing flowing down
someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
cos it took so long to bake it
and I'll never have that recipe again

I recall the yellow cotton dress
foaming like a wave
on the ground around my knees
the birds, like tender babies in my hands
and the old men playing checkers by the trees etccc

8 long months are

over tonight - so fucking psyched for this, it felt like this day would never come! I don't know how I made it this long.* this 8 minute and 15 second recap is absolutely mandatory viewing, literally everything you need to know about the major events of the first 3 seasons, so fucking focused, thorough, etc!


* actually, I do know, I became totally obsessed with Twin Peaks for like the last 3 months, duh

maybe one day I'll have what I want

I'm a little meh on the band name/song title/lyrics but man do I love this song! appealingly scruffy but appropriately mellow two-chord DIY drum machine power ballad (vaguely reminiscent, like so many other great things, of a vibe from urge overkill's 1993 masterpiece saturation, in this case the track 'dropout' specifically) with these really.fucking.awesome vocals on top!!! really raunchily nostalgic, desperately soulful, just barely hinged - imagine a cross between jack black and joe somar? recommend!

update: actually I just realized it's kind of a cross between two songs on 'saturation' - 'dropout' most obviously in terms of the beat and arrangement but also kind of the majestic, yearning melodic qualities and beachside vibes (well, more like poolside vibes in the case of urge overkill, obv) of 'heaven 90210', possibly the greatest alt-rock power ballad of the 90s. I guess there's a major element of Beefheart on the vox too, no? sorry to play 'name the similar vibe' I hope it doesn't dimish their accomplishment here I'm just riffin obv

damn good coffee

one of the less obvious byproducts of my twin peaks obsesh has been the reintroduction of coffee into my daily life in a major way. I haven't really had tea in months, and the daily coffee ritual(s) are becoming increasingly reverent. not to mention Jeff found a motherfucking working coffee grinder lurking in one of our disused kitchen cabinets last night! just smell those freshly ground beans!

and, today - a U of Nevada, Reno chemist has patented a process for converting used coffee grounds into biodiesel! Starbucks could apparently churn out 3m gallons a year from all of its waste, which tbh seems like kind of a shockingly small amount considering how much waste we're taking about (200m pounds!)? I'm a fan of the niche biofuels news story genre but this is kind of disappointing. that said I bet my coffee waste from the work week could at least get me to Williamsburg or whatever on the weekend? tbd

time

oh man, via wayne, please watch and worship with me this vintage live vid of a Miles Davis rendition of "Time After Time" from the mid-80s, which sr. wax had previously posted an mp3 of on his blog (I think it's the same version anyway...?) some months/years (who knows anymore??) ago. I loved it then but the vid adds some extremely heavy layers!

so much to say here... I liked the 'original' song OK before but this is really some other level of emotional reality than that cyndi lauper bullshit (sorry I love cyndi lauper obv). obv wardrobe = fucking amazing, miles's blood red trumpet (!) and intensely sequined black smoking jacket (!!) with the Japanese characters and a fucking dragon on the back (!!!), powerful sunglasses, Miles himself looking hunched over, balding, sweaty and busted as shit, his tone corroded but still fucking expressive as shit, every judiciously chosen note really fucking sings, and it's just devastatingly... yearningly... achingly... bitter? am I imagining this? or otherwise being overly influenced by the unbelievably intense vibes of the man and the outfit and the staging and the lighting and the vintage 80s filmstock? does it even make sense to talk about being 'overly' influenced by a vibe? plz check out the quietly heartwrenching bit about 6:20 in or so when he starts walking off to the side of the stage, away from the band, slowly gliding between the chairs and video cameras and the spotlights etc, so fucking alone in this thing... seriously, some of these close-up shots of him all by himself up there, glittering faintly in the night just like the dying star he basically was, are just so fucking epic, watching this makes me feel like I am learning some great secret about life and living and dying and eternity etc -

on a more comical note, check out the amazing guitar face during the solo at 5:30, it seriously helps me 'get' the solo to see how he is so fucking into it that he can hardly bear to touch these notes etc! do like serious jazz/miles davis fans find this period like depressing or bad or whatever? I don't know anything about this stuff but am really fillin it

nico

nico = wayne's baby lady's name, also nico = the fab nico muhly, composer, philip glass/bjork accomplice, etc extraordinaire, whose choral Agnus Dei I linked to awhile back and don't have time to find any info on but despite this is a perfectly spacious, emotionally complex, spiritually stirring accompaniment to the inspiringly heavy rains and thunder/lightning here in the NYC - conveniently uploaded to zshare for obsessive repeated listening -

unidentified choir singing a piece by nico muhly - agnus dei

half heart

still feeling a very special vibe here, iTunes says I've listened to this for a total of almost 10 hours this week -

david lynch and angelo badalamenti - half heart

'remind me' to write something sometime about my almost inescapably positive feelings re saxophone solos, recently enhanced in an unfamiliar and dramatic way by Lost Highway, but seriously is this soprano sax solo not a little slice of fucking heaven -

se telefonando

Nate's aforementioned masterful, achronological and idiosyncratic Best of 2007 is inspiring in its words and general attitude as well as its sounds, and I was hoping to do a quick rundown of all the things I really obsessed over musically and otherwise this year, regardless of when it was released etc -

not sure if that's ever really going to happen, but really the only really really really important one I really wanted to bring up again is Mina Mazzini's "Se Telefonando," which I was introduced to by the SIPAtastic Kyla W earlier this year and am periodically (indeed, just days ago) reminded of in all of its utterly mind-blowing perfection when I hear it being played upstairs by fellow 502 head Caitlin KM. I have probably watched it on Youtube well over 100 times this year, and my obsession with this towering achievement of human artistry has scarcely waned. the song, which I've just learned (or maybe learned before and forgot?) was written by Ennio Morricone, is pure, bittersweet, triumphant/sad, emotionally sophisticated yet melodramatic bliss, and written in a devastatingly focused verse chorus chorus chorus chorus (keychange) chorus chorus chorus (keychange) chorus chorus chorus etc form that makes your average verse-chorus-verse torch song look like so much splashing around in the shallow end of the pool

and the performance, holy fucking what the fuck is this ever the rosetta fucking stone and the fucking sphinx of human emotionality rolled into one monument of the unbounded artistic sublime or fucking what?? the constant, subtle morphing of her vibe, from coolness to anticipation to pride to regret to melancholy to ecstasy to determined to knowing to demure to flirty to defiant to pleading to wistful to bitter to coy to these totally ambiguous mona lisa-type expressions and back, she is seriously giving you the entire fucking story of life and love and triumph and tragedy while reveling in that glorious, don't stop now don't ever stop no seriously just change the key and keep it going chorus. enigmatic, heartbreaking, and unspeakably beautiful, this clip and all that Julee Cruise stuff (which I'll also prob revisit soon) really tapped some new and richly ambiguous emotional veins for me this year - ok, just watch it -

first

thanks for coming by. it's a typically emotionally complex New Year's Day and I've been listening to this on repeat for the past 4 hours or so -

david lynch and angelo badalamenti - half heart