Prunella Vulgaris's compendium, or: A companion for the ingenious of either sex. The newest experiments in japanning, to imitate the Indian way, plain and in speckles, rockwork, figures, &c. The art of persuming and beautifying. Divers receipts in physick and surgery, with many other useful things. To make enamel of divers colours for gold, silver, or other metals. To which are added, many curiosities, and rare secrets, known to few, but very profitable and pleasant.
Showing posts with label radio free clevelandia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label radio free clevelandia. Show all posts
Ever since the last couple weeks of sportsball season, it's been an angry 80's party in my car. Thras, punk, hardcore. My mood's been more surly. I have argued with family members and friends over Palestine, Ferguson, Kurdistan, Cleveland.
The current events of slaughter abroad and overreach at home don't help. The anger is helpless and pathetic like most sentiments. I am as unsurprised by the massacres of fellow believers in other parts of the world as I am another young kid now dead but the wrongness still rattles me. I have nothing to say that hasn't been said except I think of all of my friends who've got skin a few shades darker than me and the additional pressures and frustrations that they experience.
I played rock and roll on the radio the other night, brought something a little more ballsy to the rock rotation, including the tunes below. People seemed to like it okay I guess. Sometimes this is the only therapy I have.
People complain about the rain but I think of all those places where the rain doesn't fall, and how there are little green shoots coming up all over the garden, and a bag of potting soil on my back porch that's now waterlogged and simply too heavy to haul up the stairs.
And I think about how now the rain is warm, and I walked last night to the coffeeshop to study for a final for a class where I could completely flunk the last test and still pass, and came home and piled up music for this morning's show which bounced a little bit all over the place but not as much as it could have and are below in no particular order.
I went to sleep early last night, passed out on the couch, not bothering to cook dinner, maybe it was the rain, who knows, and it was too cloudy to see any awesome astronomic phenomena.
I played music this morning though, and this time it veered a little more heavy, but I make the listeners happy, which is always good.
It's D. Boon's birthday today so I played a good hour's worth of Minutemen this morning, something I haven't delved into since the college years and occasionally during the regular radio slot and I forget just how amazing this band was and how little they sounded like anyone else.
My first exposure to them was on a really quite good K-Tel of all things compilation of 80's indie rock that was the first inkling to my suburban warmed-over grunge self that there was this whole other world of music just waiting to be discovered, and it was my first introduction to Black Flag and the Melvins and the Chills and Squirrel Bait and Husker Du and other bands that had their heyday while I was somewhere between in utero and starting kindergarten.
so I played two hours of X, solo material, and such. I got requests for "Blue Spark," "The Once Over Twice" and "Country at War." I sometimes forget just how good this band is.
My first call this morning was from a listener who wanted to know where some hot dance clubs were that play the kind of music I play on my show, which is evidently "intelligent for a change" whatever that means. While I would love to go out somewhere and hear this kind of tuneage instead of autotuned ringtone rap or earnest tweesters, I was at as loss as to where to send him, besides the local goth club which might have a little overlap. The second caller was enthused at the chance to listen to Jesu on the radio while driving in a snowstorm. I'm always amused by what people respond to enough that they call in.
It's HR's birthday today so I played a bunch of Bad Brains and realized there's a whole lot of overlap between the first tape and the Ric Ocasek-produced Rock for Light and that later output just isn't quite the same lightning-in-a-bottle swank. Anyways, the station library had quite a bit in the way of live bootlegs to flesh out two hours of the jazz-fusionists-turned-Rasta-hardcore-punkers, and I pretty much played every song on the iconic albums, skirting the solo records since I hadn't had the chance to see if they were good.
I saw him play at the punk bar up the street a few years ago but only stayed for three songs when it was clear that it was an off night for him. His struggles with mental illness have been well-documented and I knew this going in, and fended off drunk aging punks with claims that I was only here for the reggae, knowing that the last time he was this charismatic, I was probably a newborn.
Part of my love of this band stems from driving around Parmastan with hardcore kids, pogoing around someone's living room to these albums at 2am when everyone else was passed out except for formerly-straightedge-me and someone's drunk girlfriend, playing softball on summer afternoons with the Clevelandian punkers, wearing their t-shirt in DC and random people on the street wanting to be my friend in a land of J. Crew and politricksians, and how these records have gotten me through every hard time in my life. That combination of righteous fury, apocalyptic screeds, the frustration with the wrong and the focus on the right, the skepticism about human nature and the thirst for the divine. Not much music does that for me, but they do.
the unexpected plans are sometimes the most beautiful and darkthroning in the woods segues into low-key new years' eve revelry. Peoplewatching at a west side liquor store on New Year's Eve is an experience in itself, the television wasn't on too loud, the company was small, two other couples and some kids, and I felt like I'd known everyone for years.
Downtown, there was partying by the bright young things and the nannystatism that ruled out participation by the elderly and the kids, but ours was homemade Cambodian food, some shots of honeyed whiskey, and just hanging out, getting shy when his friend says "oh isn't she the most awesome girl ever you're so lucky" when we're not together in that way, but we hug at midnight while the other couples kiss, and that's how 2014 started, driving around listening to X and basking in the glow.
A cold night where I felt warm and welcomed and stayed up too late, stayed up too late too many days in a row, which coupled with a couple snow days due to the weather, and a couple sick days in between with a nasty headcold in which I dosed myself with Nyquil and slept a lot, I realized it's been awhile since I've been on here.
Maybe it's that everyone's breaking their new year's resolutions within 24 hours or that my sister just got out of rehab but I get frustrated that so much of our culture's sense of fun is wrapped up in how much you drink, and I find myself trying to refrain from saying too much because people make their own decisions, it's their own bodies and their own choices but it hurts me to watch the continual struggle and to feel complicit even if it's not my fault. people ask how I get by on so little and it's because my main vice is so cheap, because caffeine costs less than booze and it leaves me less prone to make bad decisions. I look at what my broke friends spend at the bar and don't know how they do it and this is all around me.
Maybe it's the one thing that numbs the frustration of getting older in a dying city and finding that things aren't quite working out. Maybe it's that while I get depressed here, I'm really not that upset with where I'm at. Maybe I just get drunk on religion instead even though I feel like I still sometimes wake up with a hangover of occasional existential crisis and unanswered questions.
And there are other things happening too. Part of me feels like life's been on hold since it began snowing and I was clearing 3-foot drifts from my driveway and hoping the pipes wouldn't freeze upstairs and getting cranky on the neighborhood association facebook page because I get sick of all the paranoia about The Other, namely anyone who might be a minority or smoking a cigarette and oh noes a pawnshop is moving in next to the martini bar and that's so not family friendly even though this same drag is home to a pole dancing studio, a massage parlor of dubious provenance, and other establishments that would be an anathema to nimbys elsewhere.
Me and the neighbor walked down to the water and marveled at the glorious turbulence of wind and ice. An old friend from the Kent days when I hung out with a bunch of punkers is putting together a new band where I might end up playing bass in something 70'sish. We both have an affinity for punk and classic rock, being children from the suburbs of a certain generation and the last time we played together was some late-night jamming on cheap Japanese guitars to Alice Cooper records in a crummy apartment. The other project on half-hiatus is going again, and we've resumed our routine of dinner and playing guitar and random adventures. It feels like going everywhere and nowhere at once.
oh and I played cold weather songs yesterday, because despite not working, I believe in maintaining the sounds of college radio against all odds, here's a few.
Our station's doing its radiothon this week, and it's Neil Young's birthday, and had I planned better and grabbed my copy of "Live Rust" from home and not sold my copy of "The Bridge" for grocery money in college, I may have had a slightly smoother show. Still, people called in and were happy and pledged money, so yay.
Guy Picciotto is 47 today, and therefore it gave me a good excuse to do a Fugazi/Rites of Spring/One Last Wish set of two hours of swank. Some people called in for "Smallpox Champion" and "Waiting Room" and another friend of mine tried to prank me but didn't realize we have caller ID, but it was a fun show.
I'm surprised at how many longtime Fugazi fans didn't know the previous projects existed, and maybe it was just having a friend in high school who was obsessive and my own need to be encyclopedic, but I'm glad at least I got to let people know this exists so they can track it down themselves.
Sometimes I wish I could tell other people they're being myopic when they harp on their pet issue and don't see the larger picture of ye olde shite being messed up muchly. But that's a fool's errand, and therefore I get the catharsis out in big riffs and taut punk rage.
echobelly - scream
REM - crush with eyeliner
the verve - so it goes
radiohead - lucky ride - howard hughes
lush - superblast
wire - mannequin
mission of burma- progress stiff little fingers - suspect device the pagans - street where nobody lives
the wipers - D-7
the gits - beauty of the rose the clash - I'm so bored with the USA X- the phone's off the hook (but you're not) soft boys - I wanna destroy you
the ruts - dope for guns the undertones set - you've got my number (why don't you use it), teenage kicks, family entertainment, hypnotised
billy bragg - to have and to have not / help save the youth of america the adverts - no time to be 21
sleater kinney - turn it on discount - sleeping motor boy tomahawk - waratorium torche - in pieces
50 foot wave - long painting nirvana - lounge act fugazi - burning/give me the cure jawbox - lil shaver
god machine - tremolo song
quicksand - how soon is now? screaming trees - witness
I had a depressive week, and promptly forgot about homework until right now, and I'm still procrastinating. Me and College Radio Homie went out to the east side to see Floor and Thrones, and while he dug all four bands, I only liked the last two, but I've realized I'm just getting set in my ways and dramatic no-waveness just isn't my thing. Still, the low sludgy end of things was fabulous, the crowd was refreshingly clown-free, and there were others of us up there to hang out with. I still like Torche better but it was a great show.
I realized how out of shape and profoundly unathletic I am at the softball field, having a profound inability to calculate where popups will drop, feeling my bones ache every time my bat made contact with a ball. Is it supposed to hurt like that? I say and our captain just looks at me. But it feels so good to be outside in just a hoodie and comfortable and I take a walk afterwards on the beach, which would have been perfect if there weren't hundreds of dead fish washed up in various stages of decomposition and from there I head to the radio station to provide the masses of Clevelandia with the evening's riffs of stoner/doom/grungy swankness
