May 2011
9 posts
6 tags
people (he's been before)
Elliott Smith lives in an attic off Elm now, surrounded by broken bottles and jokerless poker decks. He whines about the rain more than any one living near the Cascades should. He writes R&B songs for up-and-coming divas, now, under the pen name Quincy Spectre. His greatest enjoyment is not writing the songs, it is his seeing his clever pen name on the inside ring of each forty-five. He never...
8 tags
It doesn't matter what you say
The Cure sending letters to Elise, Counting Crows hoping for a better year, REM nightswimming through countless college year crushes. Earliest “real” relationship, defined by sad bastard music. A young man in college can create an entire mythos around an absent love. There’s just so much time to wallow in the shit. Mix tapes sent, a few received. Hot, memorable clothingfumble...
3 tags
giddap
When your song says “on a mountain,” you are saying something specific, and that thing is “I am a folk. I am a folksy person. I am in touch with couuuuntry,” where the syllable coun is drawn out, guttural, located at the bottom of your throat. You might bring in your listener with this mountain-centered thinking; you might kill his mood completely. Whatever you do, though,...
4 tags
the king of carrot flowers
You can hear the need in his voice, not just the weed. Some might say his voice is reedy, which is a cultured critic’s way of saying that his singing is nasal and hard to take, unless you’re cultured enough to call it reedy. But you can hear, totally hear, the conviction in his singing. Conviction in the sense of convinced, a person convinced that the song he plays and way he sings and...
7 tags
Used to you then
Feel this as an exhale brought by birds. Cause yourself to slow down enough to hear, really hear. Those people are incorrect, hearing and listening aren’t different in the way that they tell you it is. Hearing can sometimes be superior, don’t believe the hype. Church of forest dwellers celebrating the celebration. Clear voices cutting through all the noise, all signal. All signals,...
6 tags
But I Can't Wait Another Minute
We had an old International Harvester, and I actually learned how to drive it. I can’t remember which letter the model we had was, but I loved the fact that there was a system of identification that simply was composed of letters. The sickle mower was a long, bladed, crazy thing that attached to the back and stuck out to the right, and we, well, I would drive back and forth and back and...
3 tags
sayings
Let this one fly he says. Lost on your merry way he says. I wonder why Grandaddy wants to get back home. I wonder if this exploration of existing phrases meant something. I wonder if they just needed some words. or some more time that they didn’t get to write them.
6 tags
Poster Children are a band that lasted for a long time and maybe that’s the good thing about being in a band with your brother and wife (or sister-in-law whatever the case may be). Just listen to “Drug I Need” and tell me that it’s not amazing. Tell me that it’s not the song that you wished you had written. It’s kinda perfect, not with a capital P, but just in...
3 tags
i can't sleep anymore
The big showdown of the day was between a young kid and his nearly elderly uncle. Both had moves but the kid lost his concentration for good after losing his patience and temper a bit into the second match. If you cannot keep composure, you might not keep anything for long. If the mark of a good human being is the ability to imagine someone else’s situation, why do so many people think that...
