Posts tagged with "music"

Present for the 27th

Eric, who used to work with me, intro­duced me to Brant Bjork, and ston­er rock in gen­er­al, about two years ago. It’s a genre that explores delight­ful rep­e­ti­tion, where vari­a­tions are sub­tle, but pow­er­ful­ly psy­che­del­ic.

[I]t is cer­tain­ly accept­ed that the effects of mar­i­jua­na and the often low or psy­che­del­ic riffs of ston­er rock com­ple­ment each oth­er.

—Wikipedia, Stoner rock

I liken the idea to Plastikman’s debut album, Sheet One. Though of a dif­fer­ent genre — trance — it fea­tures a per­fo­rat­ed album cov­er, an homage to acid tab art, for which the LSD enhances the details of every sin­gle min­i­mal­is­tic beat (so I’m told).

While I’ve enjoyed Queens of the Stone Age, who are con­sid­ered to be influ­enced by the ston­er rock move­ment (indeed, Josh Homme and Brant Bjork formed pio­neer­ing band Kyuss while in high school), the sound is a lit­tle more com­mer­cial, less dron­ing.

After I heard a few songs by Brant Bjork, I was hooked. I nev­er asso­ci­at­ed it with a mem­o­ry, which is what I do with almost all my songs, but it was good enough that I did­n’t have to.

At Thanksgiving, dur­ing one of my trips through the mall with Andrew and Alex, I resumed my search for Brant Bjork’s solo album by the name of Jalamanta. It was a big­ger city, a big­ger place…maybe I’d have a bet­ter luck. Unfortunately, every music store gave me the same answer; it was an album they did­n’t keep reg­u­lar­ly in stock.

Alex asked me what I was look­ing for, the name of the album and artist, and I did­n’t think any­thing of it.

Thumbnail: Brant Bjork

Yesterday, I found a pack­age in the mail. Fragile — CD, it said. Inside was the Brant Bjork CD I’ve been look­ing for, which they found at an inde­pen­dent music store. Along with the CD was a card made from my Pollen Junkie pho­to (which was tak­en in their gar­den), with a mes­sage writ­ten on the back.

And as great as it is to final­ly hear the songs I’ve been miss­ing, as nice as it is to have an orig­i­nal release, it’s noth­ing com­pared to the thought­ful­ness, the effort they made to find me exact­ly what I was look­ing for.

Update: Julie bought me a lucky bam­boo plant, along with a vase filled with dec­o­ra­tive rocks and a cute hand-drawn card. Very, very nice! Definitely an effort spent acquir­ing all these things, and much appre­ci­at­ed.

Hurts So Good

I’m exhaust­ed. It’s late. I should be going to bed, but I want to write. Here I am.

Vanilla chai, this time. I nev­er drink this tea, so it seemed some­what appro­pri­ate.

My limbs are sore. I’ve been prac­tic­ing my Tai Chi on a reg­u­lar basis, and my under­stand­ing has sur­passed my phys­i­cal abil­i­ty. I’m start­ing to over-exert myself. I’ve also been using my arms instead of my whole body when advanc­ing in sin­gle push hands, caus­ing my arms to work more than they should. Tonight, it got to the point where they were com­plete­ly weak. I sus­pect Elizabeth could feel this, and she switched arms before I had the good sense to do it myself.

It’s get­ting cold in the house1. The ther­mo­stat says 20, but it feels more like 18. I stood in the show­er for a good 15 min­utes, let­ting my skin burn under the hot water, to the point where I stepped out of the show­er into the cold air and start­ed to sweat.

No edit­ing. No back­track­ing. Just type, and pub­lish.

I hap­pened to come across a video today by the Grass Roots.

When I think of all the wor­ries peo­ple seem to find
And how they’re in a hur­ry to com­pli­cate their minds
By chas­ing after mon­ey and dreams that can’t come true
I’m glad that we are dif­fer­ent, we’ve bet­ter things to do
The oth­ers plan their future, I’m busy lov­ing you

One, two, three, four
Sha-la-la-la-la-la live for today.
Sha-la-la-la-la-la live for today.

And don’t wor­ry ’bout tomor­row, hey hey hey hey.

Maybe I’m just read­ing into it, like a born-again, but the lyrics struck me as very Taoist, and the idea of detach­ment in par­tic­u­lar2. Darren jokes that I’ll start preach­ing to him the next time I vis­it him because our con­ver­sa­tions always stray to Taoism.

I’ve been feel­ing decid­ed­ly dark, decid­ed­ly yin, late­ly. Not sad or upset, but in an ener­getic way. I’m boun­cy. Maybe this is the way my brain adjusts to my pre­vi­ous­ly cheer­ful upswing. The fun­ny thing is that I’m no less cheer­ful, just in a dif­fer­ent way. I feel more bal­anced. It’s as if the mind aches from some unknown force, expressed through an emo­tion­al state, yet rel­ish­es and wal­lows in this.

And I’m lov­ing every minute of it.

  1. I’m try­ing to wait as long as pos­si­ble before turn­ing the heat on [↩]
  2. Something I’ve only recent­ly been able to achieve to any rel­a­tive degree of suc­cess. [↩]

Grey And Undecided

It was grey today.

Grey from morn­ing to night. Grey inside and out.

I strolled home from work amid the rain­fall, with Sara Melson and her sac­cha­rine lyrics in my ear­phones. Words sung unre­strained, clichéd almost, like any oth­er love song, but with an expe­ri­enced matu­ri­ty nonethe­less.

Now my hands are worn, my clothes are torn
A few of my dreams have been met with scorn
And I don’t have too much time left to bor­row
But still I’m gonna love you like I’ve nev­er been hurt before

Drawn to her voice more than her face, sug­ary sweet mixed with a hint of strength. Guilty plea­sure? Maybe. Not that I mind any­more.

But it was still grey today, and I was still unde­cid­ed.

An Evening with Krista and Shane

Thumbnail: Krista Muir and Shane Watt perform together wide

As pre­dict­ed, I left my house feel­ing ner­vous and excit­ed, and put on my Top Rated playlist to dis­tract myself. The music of Lederhosen Lucil has nev­er touched me on a deeply inti­mate lev­el, the way, say, a Leonard Cohen or Thrice song does, but it’s still remained very per­son­al. I dis­cov­ered L.L. at a time when I was feel­ing rather jad­ed from life. The music was sil­ly, fun, and con­fi­dent, so I embraced it with delight­ful hedo­nism. It lift­ed me when I was in a strange state of numb­ness and lim­bo.

Thumbnail: Krista Muir and Shane Watt get ready to perform 
Thumbnail: Shane's North Korean guitar 
Thumbnail: Lederhosen Lucil swag 

I got there at what turned out to be an hour and a half ear­ly (though it was due to a mis­take on the venue web­site), so I wan­dered the store until the show start­ed, feel­ing like a fish out of water in a tiny room filled with hand­made wom­en’s cloth­ing and jew­el­ery. Though beau­ti­ful and impres­sive­ly unique, they would­n’t let me take pic­tures of any­thing1.

As soon as I saw Krista alone, I began to hyper­ven­ti­late, which was rather unex­pect­ed (I’m still get­ting over how hilar­i­ous­ly embar­rass­ing this was). I approached her and man­aged to spit out “Hi” in a whis­per. I did­n’t know what to say, so I just asked her to sign my CD (still whis­per­ing, unable to con­trol the vol­ume of my voice). I’m sure I’ll appre­ci­ate such a reac­tion in a cou­ple years, as not many peo­ple can cause me to be so flus­tered2.

Continue read­ing “An Evening with Krista and Shane”…

  1. I’m guess­ing to pro­tect the designs of the artists [↩]
  2. Perhaps it was the strange feel­ing that Krista, who was now sud­den­ly in front of me, had so unwit­ting­ly affect­ed me, with­out ever even being aware of my exis­tence. Or per­haps I was intim­i­dat­ed. I like to con­sid­er myself a cre­ative per­son, but by no means a pro­fes­sion­al, earn­ing a liv­ing off my cre­ativ­i­ty. Krista is, how­ev­er, a born enter­tain­er. [↩]

Lederhosen Lucil is Coming to Town

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

I just found out that Krista Muir, who’s alter-ego Lederhosen Lucil I fell in love with two years ago, is play­ing in a small stu­dio in town on Friday. Entrance dona­tion is $5. As much as I want to go to hear her new album (released today, fea­tur­ing ukule­les over Yamaha syn­the­siz­ers), my main rea­son would be to get some pic­tures of her. I nev­er get a chance to do con­cert pho­tog­ra­phy, and she has a play­ful per­son­al­i­ty with the cos­tumes she wears.

I’ll prob­a­bly bring my 15mm and 24–70mm lens­es, and be shoot­ing at f/2.8 and 1600 ISO the whole time. I would con­sid­er my 50mm f/1.8 prime just for that extra stop of light, but I lent it to Pat and primes are much less ver­sa­tile in such sit­u­a­tions.

Two years ago, I missed her only stop of her tour in this city, when I had to “coach” my team in lad­der match­es at the table ten­nis league. That made me a sad pan­da.

Just think­ing about going is mak­ing my stom­ach flut­ter. I may go to movies by myself, but I nev­er go to con­certs alone. The noise and crowds of con­certs make me espe­cial­ly uncom­fort­able (and over­stim­u­lat­ed), but a friend always helps me get over it. Unfortunately, no one else I know enjoys her music (which I would describe as fair­ly eso­teric), and I would­n’t put some­one through music they did­n’t enjoy. Added to this, I’ll be tak­ing pic­tures, which always makes me feel very self-con­scious.

Normally, I take a few weeks to men­tal­ly pre­pare myself for some­thing like this, but since it’s such short notice and the oppor­tu­ni­ty does­n’t come around often, I’m forc­ing myself to go.

I’m scared, and ner­vous, and excit­ed all at once.

Edit: I just noticed that my “sim­i­lar terms” cus­tom field, which auto­mat­i­cal­ly enters key­words from the entry to match words in the data­base and pull “relat­ed entries” on the left, includes the word “eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee”. Hilarity.