connexion: the selector

These tracks are from the demo and they are kinda short and sweet, especially It Hurts To See You Dance So Well, which clocks in at just over a minute. But it�s a minute of girls at their 60s-style poppy doo-wop best. It�s perfect for when you�re working on a Saturday (like me, right now, thanks a lot Jesus!) and you need something to smile about and clap to (while no one is looking).

And live, they wear matching polka dot dresses!

A little whimsy, a little ether.

“… I have had a dream to try to combine Western and Indian music into a new form, a music which has no particular name but is melodious and touching, and which combines the most modern electronic devices with the old traditional instrument, the sitar.”�Ananda Shankar

One of my favorite movies is 2010: The Year We Make Contact.

Easy as cake.

When Maxim Brajlovsky heads out in a pod to explore the Monolith orbiting Jupiter, his last Russian words are …

hoih, let your cosmic shiva spin out like a tornado.

Back in 1992, at fifteen, I used to dream of making out with girls while this song played, fall foliage framing our heads.

Can you remember the video, with the band in a strange 4AD playground, toys strewn about the bed, a strange waltz during the bridge?

Not too long later, I did indeed make out with girls while the Pale Saints played, thinking about dreaming about making out with girls while this song played, fall foliage framing our heads.

Much, much later, I thought about all the girls I’d made out with, thinking about dreaming about making out with girls while this song played, fall foliage framing our heads.

Now?

reigning sound totally rules. these songs make me all rowdy and ready to cause trouble. “too much guitars!” is a great road trip record and of course an awesome soundtrack to a long night of pounding back beers. rock on.

Download: Reigning Sound - I’ll Cry
Buy the Album: Reigning Sound - Too Much Guitar!

On the third day, I woke up with the desire to shake my motherfuckin’ ass. And the Lord said, “This is good.”

I’m sure that what he meant by that was, “Baby got some boom up in that back room, HOLLAAAAA.”

Who can say, really?

This is how I am feeling, very perfectly put. Everything is blooming here, indoors and out. There is a lush, verdant quality to this day that I wish I could deliver personally to you; as I know I can’t, this will have to make do.

OK, I’m not really one for show tunesso much, but I heard about three seconds of this song in the background of an episode of Arrested Development and was immediately intrigued by this superhuman voice. I typed the few lyrics heard in the show into a search engine, etc. etc. Yes, there is still beauty in the internet.

Seriously, Ethel Merman (1908-1984) had one of the most booming voices ever recorded. I haven’t heard much from the rest of this 1959 Stephen Sondheim musical, but if any of it is as exciting as “Rose’s Turn,” I’ll take it. Others have taken on Rose’s character (including Tyne Daly, Angela Lansbury, and the very evil Bette Midler), but once you hear this version of this song all the other ladies seem weak and trite by comparison. It’s an over-the-top, pick-me-up, kick-some-jerk-in-the-face kind of song and only Ethel had the pipes to pull it off.

Having no real knowledge of jpop, I only found out about this after my girlfriend began playing it around the house, incessantly (She still does). But either way I couldn’t help liking this; a great song for a cool evening just this time of year, and a guitar part that reminds me (of all things) of the Jesus and Mary Chain in 1993.

As I was putting this up, I saw an enormous raccoon waddle past my window - it must be early enough in the morning that they are still running around.

But anyway, I just started listening to this a few days ago - I’ve been busy and this has been in the background. A good way to measure a song, I think, is how it makes a person feel while driving. This one, at least, passes that test.

I seem to come back to this song every time someone I know dies. I’m not sure why, but it touches the places in my heart that hurt, and also, maybe more importantly, the ones that hope. Listening to it in the car today, I knew I had to share it.

So, this is for Todd, who used to haunt Kenmore Square with me in the last days of the Ratskellar, who was mistaken for a skinhead and fell to his death in the streets of South Boston, nine slugs in his back.

This is for Courtney, who filled herself with poison junk until her body caved in, until she was just an empty shell in a hospital bed.

This is for Jack, whose body denied him the beauty and joy he exuded to everyone whose life he touched, taken by cancer at eighteen years too few.

And now this is for Gordon, a smart man, but not smart enough to see how loved he was. And for all of you, who I hope realize how loved you are.

And if you’re losing your high, then smoke again

Remember how you want to have babies with Mos Def?

OK, first off, I didn’t add any of the accent marks in the name of the band or the name of the song and I’m sorry about that. It’s obviously because I am deeply intolerant of other cultures and my keyboard reflects that. Anyways. I first heard this song on a comp I bought when I was starting to get into Brazilian music again and I really dig it - the guitar player plays what he calls “guitar esferografico” which is basically just a regular guitar played with the cap of a ballpoint pen. It sounds great - rich and tremelodic and it really adds to this song. I think it’s great that the baile funk and favela scenes are getting a lot of attention now, and that stuff is great and fun, but Brazil has more music than that, you know? Forro is kind of like the mariachi of Brazil - it’s fast-paced and dancey and most urban Brazilians think of it as hick music, but it seriously rules. The rest of the album is good but this cut is head and shoulders above, one of the best singles I’ve heard in years.

I have a crush on one of our ceramics instructors at school, Chris. I had hardly noticed him until last week, when I saw him working on the potter’s wheel. He was throwing these large amazing pots in a matter of minutes, slip oozing between his fingers, his whole body swaying with the turning of the wheel. I almost creamed right there.

These songs make me want to travel through time, back to the 70’s, and make out with Chris in the back of a van. GOD.

He is so good with his hands. I can’t even think about it.

When I first got into hip hop, it was through watching yo! mtv raps on friday nights with Fab Five Freddy and then every afternoon with Ed and Dre. I was before the west coast explosion happened, before east vs west at all, and it was so beautiful.

I know you know what I’m talking about, and I won’t bother to go into all the greats, because you know all the greats.

But, among my favorite of the late 80’s, early 90’s time was A Tribe Called Quest and all of the Native Tongues. Along with Public Enemy, anything by the Native Tongues gets the best reaction when stopped next to someone at a red light, windows open and music blaring.

There’s just nothing bad about it.

Leaders of the New School I learned about from “Scenario” off The Low End Theory (I would have linked a phone post of me performing that for readers of my journ, but I am on my new mac and haven’t dl’d a plugin for .ogg files, and I wasn’t going to post it without listening to it first. Anyway, it was great), but it wasn’t until many years later when, during the time of living with my brother in Martinez, he turned me onto this album. I can’t remember a specific instance, but I have to imagine that this LP was played during our many basement+40z+paint+collage-making+cigarettes marathons.

Each of these songs are the stuff, my friends, oh so quotable with hot beats. I like a lot of new hip-hop, but when I feel like putting on something quaranteed to move my butt, I always find myself reaching for these older albums, which remind me of what it felt like when hip-hop was all new to me.

You may have heard all of these before, but even so, I invite you to enjoy them again now, and shake your ass.

I don’t really have anything else to say except for

I’m sexy and I’m French! Everbody loves my accent, I am the best!

Perhaps the first 80s Sci-fi Porno Soundtrack?

Freescha went from making somewhat-adequate Boards of Canada tunes, to absolutely gorgeous Boards of Canada tunes, to this double-backed beast. Needless to say, I believe they have found their niche. Look at the cover art. The title is not a question.

This track has so many what the? moments: the shamelessly pilfered “Maniac” drum machine, the mechanistic porn sighs, the drunken vocoder scat-singing, the hand-claps, the ridiculous melodies.

Taste the foam, ladies and gentlemen, but wipe it off your chins and leave some for later.

I rediscovered the Swans recently–especially this album and Love of Life–after having listened to both of them a whole lot in 1998-9. I would have uploaded “Animus,” but it’s gigantic; if you buy the album, that song comes highly recommended. Both of them remind me of “assisted insomnia,” drives on the long, empty Colonial Parkway as it is by night, beside a sluggish part in the James river, biting my nails and drumming on the steering wheel, not in time with the song at all.

i forgot how reckless this song makes me until last night.

may your feminist testicles descend and your rock boner grow 10 inches long.

Hot Christ, this song makes me hot in the pants.

I used to get so much action to this song. It makes me think of tearing open jeans.

This song makes me pelvic thrust.

With feeling.

Ada has a voice like carmelized sugar dripping into the spiral of your choclea.
This song is just beautiful electronic heaven from the first fuzzy beat to the last.
I desire that it turn into some tangible form so I can make love to it.

i fell in the shit with these songs tonight while tredding myself across kansas city, mending a broken heart with pedestrian traffic and chinese movies with the tracks in my headphones. several people rounding corners got a face full of song as i serenaded the drunk yuppie public with ‘come on home to me.’

the songs come from a tribute to lee hazelwood album i bought accidentally.

thank the lord god jesus for human fallibility, right?

This is the first piece I ever heard by Joe Frank.

Within two minutes, I was hooked. I spent days listening to his radio show online.

There was always a point in nearly each show that I heard that I would find myself curled up in the fetal position, turned around and on the end of my bed, just listening and breathing and squeezing my eyes shut tight.

I relate to this piece so much, still.

His voice has so much darkness and so much beauty.

I want to thank Howard for introducing Joe Frank to me.

I try and make a mixed CD every month based on music on my computer. I don’t know why, but I do. Last night I made April. It takes a bit of a jarring left turn at Stephen Malkmus, but I still am OK with it. It also doesn’t work very well between Camera Obscura and Franz Ferdinand, and I actually can’t understand why I would have put the latter on there, but it was really late, OK?

-Feist “Mushaboom”
-Lou Reed “Perfect Day”
-Neko Case “Andy”
-Superwolf “Lift Us Up”
-The Weakerthans “Left and Leaving”
-Kathleen Edwards “Mercury”
-PJ Harvey “Horses in my Dreams”
-Stephen Malkmus “Post-Paint Boy”
-Okkervil River “For Real”
-The Beatles “Dear Prudence”
-The Decemberists “Los Angeles, I’m Yours”
-Camera Obscura “Keep it Clean”
-Franz Ferdinand “Take me Out”
-Bloc Party “Banquet”
-Gang of Four “Damaged Goods”
-The Organ “Sinking Hearts”
-Morrissey “Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me” (live)
-The Decemberists “The Infanta”

As the name suggests, this song really evokes the feeling of being apart from someone you’re in love with. Just like the minor chords, you’re feeling a little bit sad. But as soon as you think of the moment when you will meet again, strings sprinkle sunshine in your mind, the butterflies start dancing and your lips can’t help but put on a little smile.

Um, OK, I’ve seen Leslie Feist in a shitty band or two in my time (ie. By Divine Right), and she’s had some sort of affiliation with Broken Social Scene, but apparently now this Calgarian is living in Paris. It’s nice to think of how absolutely lovely it would be to be in Paris right now.

I had myself convinced I would hate this, but then I saw Feist play at the Junos (Canada’s shitty Grammys) and she was entirely endearing and earnest and real and I loved it. I think this record comes out very soon in the USA.

You know how sometimes you hear a song and you’re just like, “That’s my motherfucking jam” because it sums up everything you want to say about your life today in one three minute and something something span? This Bobby Conn song is my motherfucking jam. As I was uploading it I got a call from another somebody trying to give me another shitty job (for a law firm for God’s sakes) and there’s times when I just want to holler that I ain’t gonna suck dick no more. Fuck all that tying yourself up just so you can buy a bunch of bullshit that you think you need. I’m sick of it already and I ain’t even thirty. This song fucking rules. Dig the disco strings.

Dear Bianca,

As you are aware, these days, because of my abduction into the clutches of Unidentified Floating Ambience, my tastes lie along the “spooky ambient tuba music” and “random collections of sounds” spectrums, but I am writing this letter to prove that I still have a little kernel in my heart for twee 80s indie rock. It is, after all, the music that we both enjoyed when younger, and traded stories of when we were older, and look back on with warm, harmless nostalgia now that we are older than that.

So, I present to you, with affection, this track by Orange Juice. I like orange juice, though my doctor says to drink less of it now because it has so much sugar, even though it’s high in vitamin C. And you know I like that song by Edwyn Collins (the singer of Orange Juice�oh, yes, I knew you knew that, I was just testing you) that appeared in a movie, the song where he kind of does a Tom Jones/Burt Bacharach thing. I always thought his voice was so cocksure in that song, with dancing girls frugging on either side as he swayed, gentle, on ball-bearing assisted hips, just like my favorite Welsh singer of yesteryear.

Yes, I think even my father�whose Tom Jones collection had a milding affect on my own nascent tastes, listening to old soundtrack LPs and sound effect recordings borrowed from the Charles Lindbergh school library�would have enjoyed that Edwyn Collins song. There is a mohair suit somewhere in the back of my brain, Bianca. I know, I know, you’ve seen it.

Orange Juice. This song is from their first CD. I cribbed it off the internet, and I think you know why, because these days I am more comfortable purchasing forgotten Krautrock and forgotten electronic, and never-known-in-the-first-place ambient, than I am old indie “hits”�as if my record collection has something to prove. You know all of this. Did I tell you I moved the Chills and XTC to the drawer. Oh, yes, it’s just to make room for more droning, I’m afraid. I still play them.

But I thought this track sounded like Felt, even though the singer has that Morrissey lilt to his voice that makes you think “Is he gay?” even though when I was a teenager, I had no idea Morrissey was, though even my father knew, and said it all the time, weight-lifting with a thin wall between himself and the 55th playing of Louder than Bombs that week. You know all this, too.

But the guitar here is so chiming and jangling, just like Maurice Deebank, he of Felt, the band you once proclaimed accurately as my version of “cock rock.” It is like the missing link between the Go-Betweens and Felt, two of my cock rock favorites, and there’s a touch of Smiths there too, to justify and regale my inner gaywad.

Wow. The cover of that album features dolphins. Next, I’ll be back to buying Orange Cake Mix records and hanging out in the bedroom all day, with a hang-dog expression on my face, unseen behind the door.

No, no, no, I assure you I did not listen to this song at all this week, or the Split Enz tracks I downloaded on Limewire, it was :Zoviet*France: (YES, you must put the colons and asterisk!) and Troum and Loscil all the way. And John Adams. Okay fine, and The Sea and Cake.

I just uploaded it here to the Selector because I think that you will like it. And you can put it on your own iPod (it is not on mine, I swear it) and listen to it.

It’s all for you, you know.

With much love and affection,

Mister Eden

I will readily admit that the album you really want by Digital Underground is Sex Packets, but this is probably my favorite Digital Underground song of all the same.

One of my favorite things about my brother is he used to go to sleep every night listening to that album.

I don’t know why this has always pleased me so much, but it has.

I used to have this song on cassingle.

Cassingle.

These songs remind me of Lauren falling in love with a man half-way across the country and following him there.

Even though we don’t talk anymore, and this is something I am overwhelming thankful for, these songs still remind me of the idea of falling in love, because they are a lot of what I listened to when I was convincing myself to fall in love with the idea of moving to Iowa.

It’s something we all want so badly, to be consumed with desire for a person, ideal or goal.

These songs also remind me of driving through the Mojave Desert in a thunder and lightning storm.

You know loving me is not enough, and I know future is as future is as future does.

I didn’t post a track last week, so I’ll do two this week.

All the “young people” I talked to in college acted as if Kraftwerk never existed prior to Autobahn. I recall lending a dumb raver kid my copy of Kraftwerk 2, which he proceeded to proclaim as “not like techno at all!” What a numbskull.

Thankfully, those artless bootleggers at Germanofon allowed us to purchase what Ralf & Florian don’t want us to hear. (They also got us the Neu! CDs before it was cool to like them, too.) “Ruckzuck” roughly translates to twitching jerkily, undoubtedly presaging the legions of dopey white people “dancing” to Trans-Europe Express a few short years later. Nevertheless, timeless music, despite popular trends.

Any other science geeks out there remember “Newton’s Apple”?

In the morning, a cup of jasmine tea and a bowl of oatmeal, not believing I am up so early.

And then running running running until lunch time, where I hide in the breakroom no one goes to, for a chance to rest and rub the back of my neck and arms, telling myself the day is halfway over.

More running until I think I might drop, but not letting on until I come home and find the softest music I can find, something gentle to ease my mind.

This song is daydreams out of office windows, pretending you’re in the park, laying in the sun, and there’s nothing at all you need to do.

Sometimes, at work, I go into a little something like a trance. Conversations seem distant and disconnected; I respond automatically, sometimes grunts, “yes,” “no,” “whatever you think is best,” “I’ll be happy to,” often an invisible glance that says, “Please stay away from me.”

After these sorts of days, I might drift on down the quick path of 32nd street, a jaunt to the safety of a speeding train mainlining directly toward the suburbs, the eden, and Oz, weatherbeaten Oz. The sun is generally bright at those times, and a curious lightness pervades within me, as if from the core of me.

Sometimes I think it is too difficult, or it is impossible. I see a dirty, flattened glove on the street and think, “It would be impossible to pick that up, clean it, and somehow find its mate.”

But the lightness, oh, lightness in the core of me�it is the lamp by which I see; the invisible cord that pulls me forward, upward to heaven; the slow exhalation of rich carbon dioxide; the slow inhalation of the “common air that bathes the globe.” By the time the red door opens, and the rich woods and fresh paint odors sift within, I am again, reborn every day, circa 5:30 PM.

Today I played a little game. I let iTunes choose ten songs at random from my music library and then selected five of those. This is what I ended up with. The last track is from a Swedish childrens record me and my sister used to drive mom and dad crazy with. It’s called “The Animals’ Mailbox” and the songs are mostly about animals and their whereabouts. “Jag är en liten mört” (I’m a little roach) is a story about a fish named Kurt who is lost. Kurt is also the name of one of my uncles, a fact me and my sister found hilarious when we were playing this.

[EDIT 1: I finally managed to figure out the name of the Don’t Speak remix, the track is available in all its glory below.]

[EDIT 2: The Shitlickers were part of the Swedish punk/hardcore scene in the early ’80s, together with legendary bands like Anti Cimex and Mob 47.]

The last few nights I have been staying up entirely too late.

I have been drinking wine and feeling soft and writing things and planning paintings in my head.

I have been daydreaming of traveling to places I have never been and also trying to figure out how to talk to strangers.

Now the cherry blossoms are gone and the nights are warming up, and the new spring leaves on the tree outside are pushing themselves against the window screens.

Spring’s just come, and I’m feeling soft, gentle.

I’m already dreaming about Summer.

For a while there it looked like the Beatnik Filmstars were going to be something like the next Fall. Their first few singles and EPs were good to great, a band discovering their sound, and then their third domestic LP, “Astronaut House,” hit raw with this incredibly ear-scraping single. Listen to the way the guitar wheels wildly out of control during the breakdowns - like rubberbands and sheets of glass. Listen to the anger in the voice on the chorus. Listen to this song over and over. I did. After this? A decline into wibbly Swell-Mapsish dissembling, experimental tweeness, each record getting worse until I stopped buying them altogether. The weird thing is, most of their fans hate this record - they want their britishers weak and harmless, not routing great sheets of noise. Fuck them, fuck them, fuck them.

Thanks to Daniel and Sara for the birthday songs! You guys are very sweet.

As this Stylus Magazine article says, given that we’re all on the internet I’m probably not breaking any new ground here by posting this M.I.A. song, but holy shit I love this song.

Since you probably know all about her and the album already I’ll just ask you to check out the song and shake your ass for me, because it’s my birthday.

Also, expect maybe a thousand more posts within the next 24 hrs. I’m not promising anything, but it feels like it’s going to be one of those days.

I just can’t get enough p-funk. I swear, some day I will throw a MAJOR p-funk party. However, today I want these songs to celebrate someone else. I haven’t known our awesome and fearless leader for a very long time, but I’ve seen nothing but completely sweet goodness coming from her. So here’s to you dear Jessica! Happy birthday! Now, SHAKE!

Today is Jessica’s birthday, and thus, I wanted to post something awesome for her, but it took me hours to figure out what. As you can clearly see, I finally did.

One night Jessica and I discovered that we each have a Route 101 on our respective sides of the country.

I don’t even know if I feel like posting this song. Eh.
I was talking to my friend Goose and he mentioned The Birthday Party and I was like, “ooh!” but now I’m like, “eh.”

Eh eh eh.

Dark and beautiful.

A voice like sandpaper covered in honey.

These songs are like a sex-charged nightmare,

All hands and mouths and blindness.

I want you to hear this whole album.

I want you to come over, right now, and sit at my little table in my little apartment in Brooklyn and just kick it:

You, me, and Cannibal Ox.

You know, there are places in this world.. and i don’t know why.. maybe it has something to do with magnetic fields.. maybe it has something to do with an indelible mark that years and years of history have carved into the environment.. but there are places where you can almost physically feel the pulse of life. And it isn’t necessarily pleasant.

I cried the first time I saw my heart beating on a monitor in the doctor’s office. Suddenly you’re made achingly
aware of what it means to be living. You see yourself reflected in the success and failures of everyone around you.
It’s overwhelming.

Terrifying to know that you are responsible for something like life.

Tomorrow’s my birthday.

This means there’ll probably be a lot of me posting whatever the hell I want this week.

More than usual, I mean.

This is the soundtrack to me, a bunch of friends, crowbars, chainsaws, sledge hammers, and a fancy apartment.

Let’s dance!

Tonight I was lucky enough to have one of those amazing marathon conversations with one of my closest friends, The Nebula King. He’s the kind of friend that you have complete bullshit-free exchanges with. He doesn’t know how to be anything but honest with me, so as you can imagine, I cherish his friendship above most others.

We have been kicking around the same ideas for the last few weeks, ideas about the seat of personality, consciousness, the possibility of an afterlife (to which he is considerably more open [and therefore more intellectually honest] than I am) and tonight, somehow, the conversation turned to love.

Ah, love. What is it in us that wants to believe that it’s more than a neuro-chemical reaction, something more than a simple addiction to the certain snapping of synapses that another person causes within us? Where does this construct that makes us all crazy come from? Was it those damned 19th century poets that did this to us? When did this notion of needing someone else, in this maddeningly specific way, take hold of us so strongly?

We went round and round, until we were both tired, and eventually the conversation turned to other places, less exhausting places.

But hours later, I haven’t been able to get these questions out of my head. Try as I might, this is something I simply can’t intellectualize to my satisfaction.

And the reason is Otis Redding.

Otis Redding is the one artist that brings that pain to my chest, that nameless longing for a nameless person that I do everything in my power to believe, against reason, is out there. I don’t believe it’s one person, but all I need to find is one, right?

When I listen to Otis, my whole inside empties out and then fills up again with aching that is something more than loneliness, and something more than romance. I don’t know what the name of it is, but I have dedicated more middle-of-the-nights to his voice than I care to admit because of the beauty of it.

It’s dangerous, frightening and paralyzing, what his voice does to me. I can’t think of someone I am even only marginally interested in when I listen to Otis because by the end of the record I have somehow convinced myself that I am stupid for that person. So ridiculous.

So it is with this warning that I offer to you my three favorite Otis Redding songs, “You Don’t Miss Your Water”, “Cigarettes and Coffee” and “Just One More Day (Live)”. I saved my favorite track for last, but I figured it would have been too much to present it alone, that perhaps it would be better to ease you into it with a couple of other tracks to let you know where you were headed.

Arto Lindsay is a dirty pervert. As my good friend, Tiznit, reflects: He is the Terry Richardson of song.

So totally true.

Let it be recorded in the great book: This album is fucking sexy. Guaranteed, if you slip this in when you’re getting your hey player on, you will get into panties. It’s the combination of his small voice with the lyrics that will do it. Truth. Witness the way he says “look me in the eye” on the title track, “Noon Chill”.

Oh my goodness.

I have to say I have much love for the twee-pop. I have found it makes an especially great soundtrack to this wintry spring (or spring-y winter) we�ve been having (at least here in NYC). A little bit dark, a little bit cheerful, something like that.

So this track has been a constant in my playlist. Some say it�s part Housemartins, part B&S, and part C-86. I just think it�s pretty poptastic.

When I posted Mr. Flagio someone asked me if I had this song and I said, “yes, I do, IM me and I’ll send it your way,” but they never did. Lazy!
Well, here it is for the rest of you to enjoy.
And you should enjoy it. It’s a dance classic, bitches.

You Guys!!!!

OMG!

I was the recipient of the FIRST EVER FLAME ON THE SELECTOR!!!!

Oh sweet holy holy, so awesome. Like any flame that comes out of nowhere, it caught me off guard and I was at first unsure how to respond, if at all. I have to admit, my style is to generally to ignore any kind of flame, because you know, whatever. People are awesome.

[NB: This is a general rule, of course, that doesn’t apply in certain inter-situations, but in those places, flaming is the law of the land, so to speak.]

But this, friends, since it’s the first one, I couldn’t help myself.

Now, don’t be scared, even though the rules do state that if people start flaming that there will be nothing but Tori Amos posts for days on end, I decided that this is entirely unnecessary. The Selector is all about the Love, yo, no need to get all LOTR up in this bitch because someone said I have awful taste in music.

Instead, I have decided to turn the other cheek and bring the Love with my man, R. Kelly. There is nothing but Love that could possibly come from a man who has an album titled Chocolate Factory and a song called “I Love the Crotch on You”.

No no, nothing but Love.

So I give to you, in an act of faithful compassion and otherwise complete awesomeosity, my two favorite R. Kelly songs, “Feelin’ on Yo Booty (Remix)” and “Ignition (Remix)”.

So I’m in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, sometime in the fall of 2001, and I’m traveling around and meeting people, and the guy I’m staying with there, this guy Matt Marengo, he gives me this CD by a local band, the Beauty Shop. And I don’t have a CD player with me because I rock straight tapes but I say thanks and it goes in the bag, and then when I get back to NYC it goes into storage with the rest of my CDs and stays there for about a year and then I finally move into my own place and after a while I decide to listen to it. And, no surprise, it’s great - minimal, low-life country about drinking and mourning and regretting. This song’s one of my favorites. I hope it doesn’t take you a year to hear it.

When I was a kid, one of my very favorite movies was Valley Girl. No shit.

I have watched that movie maybe a kazillion times. I watched it so much when I was a kid that I like totally talked like a val, fer sure. I was headed that way anyway, from growing up in so cal, but jesus when that movie came out it was all over.

I think from the time I was 8 to 9, my parents had no idea what I was saying, ever. That’s probably when I developed my deep deep love of slang.

Anyhow, this is probably my favorite song from the movie, Sparks’ “Eaten by the Monster of Love”. In the movie it’s playing during a pretty hot sex scene, which starts in a shower. THERE’S A BOOBIE IN THAT SCENE, YO. To my 8 yr old eyes, that’s all I needed: I WAS HOT IN THE (little) PANTS. Shit, doggers, I still get hot when I think of that scene. Truth.

Plus, it has Nicolas Cage before he started losing his hair and I think it was his first big role, if you want to call it that.

I am so tired and delirious right now I can’t remember what made me think of that song or movie, but here it is.

Boobies, yo.