Groovyjim

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One of the greatest paradigm shifts to credit to the Internet is turning the tables on who provides the content. Way back when, there were only three network television stations, four if you could wiggle your rabbit ears the right way, and they would push out whatever they were pushing at the time. If you wanted some alternative, you were left to look at your cat or watch your family doing psychologically confusing things. Whatever the limits of imagination or corporate profit motives were, the gatekeepers defined what you discovered. Without jumping to the Wikipedia article or making up facts, let’s skip ahead to raw, unfiltered blogs and streaming audio, with the brilliant possibilities of no gatekeepers. This author appreciates the irony of discussing blogs that lack in fine editorial craft. Continue reading →

Daft Funk

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Last year, about the time of Superb Owl XLVII, there was high anticipation – no, yearning – for a new Daft Punk record. Somehow, after just enough time to process the jarring, mechanical monotony of Human After All, we really missed the connection of their style. There was a teaser for Get Lucky at Coachella in April, and it was surreal to witness not only evidence of new material, but also Nile Rogers and Pharrell Williams grooving next to robots. The album Random Accesss Memories was released in May, and Get Lucky broke out immediately as a sly jingle for condoms. Continue reading →

I Used To Be A Bad Girl

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Ceylon coconut milk curry goes down easy, but it leaps like a fiery tiger at the back of your throat. I met a Sri Lankan family, likely applying for political asylum, as I was working the projects in rural West Germany. Dinner with them was surprisingly perilous; I was attacked by a sleeper cell of capsaicin. In recent history, Sri Lanka was like a Northern Ireland to the mainland of India, with the defiant Tamil Tigers behaving badly. The artist known as MIA is not shy about her Tamil heritage. “I got the bombs to make you blow.” Part of the 2009 Coachella broadcast was MIA’s trashy but mesmerizing rhythm with droning vuvuzelas, but when I read up on her background I worried just for hitting Wikipedia I was flagged on a terrorist watchlist. Continue reading →

If There’s No Music Up In Heaven

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…Then what’s it for? I have imagined what life will be like after death. My nightmare is that it will be infinite church meetings, with an infinite playlist of traditional church hymns listed out on the wall with the black and white plastic number placards. I was trying to spend some time outside the house today, a sunny Sunday morning, and I rolled out of bed and dragged myself to a coffee shop. Not being a morning person I was relying on a subdued sanctuary where I could humanely nurture my nerves to some level of public presentation, sipping down one delicious Red Eye. I soon noticed that one person was actually sitting next to another and speaking. Soon followed by another, then another, then another, and so on. (Ironically, it was an ex-mormon recovery group.) What we had was ultimately a boisterous congregation building to a fossil fuel drilling operation in the tender wildlife preserve of my morning. That’s when I assembled my personal sound system and ignited my copy of the Arcade Fire “Reflektor” record – and where I got the idea for the title of this post. Continue reading →

Wake Up and Salute

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This last weekend I woke up 25 years in the past. I was a Mormon missionary in Northern Germany and I tripped into some kind of sinkhole wondering what the fuck I was doing selling complete strangers on a megalomaniac modern-day messiah. I was breaking the mission rules by indulging in a contraband CD player, hanging out at record stores, and feeling like a lie. As a missionary there were rules of morality to which I was obliged to adhere, such as zero personal music, especially not popular wordly music. I came onto the missionary scene with a great deal of my own favorite indulgences already, and music proved to tip the balance for me off of righteousness and god. Small g. Continue reading →