8.31.2005
I went to rehab for the first time in the summer of 1999. I had been failing drug tests in state-subsidized counseling for almost a year, but when the cops brought me home from "the bowling alley" at 2am, my parents finally took a stand.So I did 50 days at a 28 day program in Yakima, Washington. The only other intake on the day I arrived was a burly Indian named Nick, from the Lummi Nation. I was a little brat who pushed my family too far. Nick was state-mandated for boosting cars that his brother chopped on the rez and sold to a fence in Seattle. We were sixteen.The rehab circuit has a certain etiquette. Somehow, always, you stick close to the kids who have your intake date. Nick and I couldn't have come from more different places, but we were like the Brothers Dot & Feather. It makes no sense, but that shared homonym cemented our friendship. My parents grew up in farm villages in the south of India. Nick was descended from a Paloos Indian, Chief Wolf Necklace. He even wore a cheap stainless-steel wolf strung with blue and green plastic beads around his neck. We shared a dorm room with four white guys from Olympia. Nick and I ended up in Group III, which meant six hours a day of heavy duty counseling together. I learned things about Nick that I know have never left that room.But we had plenty of fun too, taking the gallon challenge with a tray full of milk bottles in the cafeteria, getting the girls to flash us from their dorm across the compound, and playing every jail cell card game we could think of (or invent). And the music, man. Each room had a shitty analog clock/radio that caught one Top 40 station, and then only when the skies were clear.93.5 KOZI played "Genie in a Bottle" almost as much as they played "I Want it That Way." For the first few days we played it cool. This was bad kids in Washington state in the 90s; everybody had a babysitter who knew a girl who used to play spin-the-baby-bottle with Kurt Cobain. But a teenage boy needs tunes, and Christina sounds a lot better when you're only allowed to talk to real girls (in pairs, with a supervisor, get those hands where I can see them) for an hour a day.In our few moments of free time, we 2nd floor boys would shove Big Books in the doorjambs, flood the hall with pop radio, and ride the airwaves. One of the only times I saw Nick drop his Sitting Bull stoicism (outside of Group III) was on a blue sunny day. LaRon and I were in the hallway, working a mean harmony at the top of our lungs, when Nick popped into the doorway from nowhere. Shaking his shit like an injun Elvis, in perfect time for the chorus, he mimed "rubbing himself the right way" for the security cameras at the end of the row. We were dying. I still love that song.Nick and I graduated our 28 day program on the same day, but stayed an extra three weeks on the strong suggestion of the management. Being done with the regular program gave us special privileges. We earned pocket change doing extra chores, and along with a few other post-grad kids, got to go on weekend day trips with the staff. My last Sunday trip, I bought a $15 frisbee that we tossed in the park until the sun was almost down.I left the next morning. All the guys signed my frisbee and Big Book and ping-pong paddle, and I got to hug the girls goodbye. Nick just stood by the door, doing his silent native bit. I was walking out when he stopped me. "Hey. I'll trade you my necklace for your frisbee."
I wish I could take back the look I gave him.
"Are you kidding, man? I bought this frisbee so I could have this frisbee. Get your own."
"No," he said. "I'll trade you my necklace for your frisbee."
He looked right at me and his face didn't move. And then I understood.I wore Nick's wolf necklace every day for the next eight months. I stayed sober for five of those, then got kicked out of two houses and ran away from the third for a week to sniff crank on my girlfriend's couch. I got to boarding school on February 17th, 2000. They took the necklace away because it was a gift from an old friend, and old friends equal old habits. I made them promise to return it when I left, but faithful reader, you would see it hanging on my heart today if they ever did.
Skywave - SixteenChristina Aguilera - Genie in a Bottle
(right-click the link and press "Save Target As" to download)
Buy Echodrone from Paul Baker or John Fedowitz
Buy Xtina from Walmart, whatever.
8.30.2005
Lucy sticks it to the man.
(via largehearted boy)
Today's post is a short one, 'cause I have way too much to do. Thanks to everyone who sent me fabulous art already - you guys make me so proud! Keep those submissions coming.
In keeping with yesterday's theme, here's a song about working the corner, from a sex worker who might have never been discovered. Lady Day was arrested for prostitution at the age of fourteen, and got her first singing gig the very next year.
One day we were so hungry we could barely breathe. I started out the door. It was cold as all-hell and I walked from 145th to 133rd...going in every joint trying to find work...I stopped in the Log Cabin Club run by Jerry Preston...told him I was a dancer. He said to dance. I tried it. He said I stunk. I told him I could sing. He said sing. Over in the corner was an old guy playing the piano. He struck Trav'lin and I sang. The customers stopped drinking. They turned around and watched. The pianist...swung into Body and Soul. Jeez, you should have seen those people - all of them started crying. Preston came over, shook his head and said, "Kid, you win."
Billie Holiday - Blue Moon
(right-click and press "Save Target As" to download)
click here to buy from Amazon
8.29.2005
I pushed my flight back to Friday, and unsafe sex was the cause of it all. Reader, I need your help. I'm designing a CD for Exotic Fever Records, and need original artwork for the liner notes. The CD, entitled "This is a Care Package," is a benefit compilation for HIPS, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping sex workers in Washington, DC lead safer, healthier lives. It was supposed to be done last October.
I don't know the details of the delay, but the CD went off to mastering last week, and I just got the bands' original art in the mail. See, each band on the album gets their own page in the liner notes. Most of them submitted their own art, but three bands asked me to do it for them. I consider this a very important project, and now that the wheels are turning, I want to finish the design as quickly as I can.
I'm going to do Mates of State's art myself, because they're my hometown heroes. But I don't have time to do the other two, as well as layout, design, and the cover. I still need art for Murder by Death and Mirah. So I'm coming to you.
If you would like your name and art to be on a pretty sweet CD, representing a good cause and some kick-ass bands, get it to me by this Thursday (Sept. 1st) morning. Mail it to 818B Caroline Street, Fredericksburg VA, 22401. IM it to proposition86. E-mail it to ryanoceros@gmail.com. Whatever. The only requirements are these: if you are emailing me a file, it needs to be at least 5x5 inches at 300dpi, CMYK color, in .pdf, .psd, or .tif (Mac LZW Compression) format. The image needs to be uncluttered enough to leave room for a few sentences describing the band, song, and other information in the liner notes.
I can't bust our collective nut too soon by giving you any tracks from the comp, but rest assured it will rock yr condom off. Here's a sexually (in)appropriate Mirah song, and an old Yeah Yeah Yeah's track that has nothing to do with this comp, but says "art" in the title. Save a ho from extinction. Send me your stuff.
Mirah - La Familia
The Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Art Star
(right-click and press "save target as" to download)
click here to buy Mirah from Amazon
click here to buy the YYYs from Amazon
8.28.2005
I'm flying back to California tomorrow to be split down the middle. 2,890 miles and a lifestyle left from the only place I've remained longer than two years. Go ahead and laugh; I always said this town was killing me and I couldn't wait to get gone, but now I just don't know what to do. I feel like my life lacks forward momentum, you know? I don't want to work in restaurants anymore and my days are increasingly aimless. Here are the options I see thus far:
Stay in Fred - I'm going to be around anyway, while I settle my affairs and look for someone to take over my half of the lease. All my friends are here, and my sister Ann is a day's drive north in Boston. I've gotten used to a small town, and will miss the intimacy and sense of community somewhere else. But I've always been a city mouse, and I need better reasons than "it feels good" to stick around here.
Go Home - San Francisco is hands-down my favorite city in the country. Stanford, where my parents live, is 30 miles down the peninsula. I would be able to spend time with my mother, who has been battling endometrial cancer for the last 742 days. She has asked me to do what I want, regardless of her situation, which spurs a whole different conversation about guilt & duty that I'd rather not get into here. Living with my parents, I could save up towards moving to SF, the #1 most expensive city in the country. On the other hand, living at home is living at home, and we all know how quickly that gets old. I haven't lived there since 1999; all my old friends are gone, and I have no connections outside of my family.
Roam - Though maybe not the smartest move, this is what I do best. Pick a town, pack it up, and go go go. I love starting over, and these post-grad blues are the perfect soundtrack. My cousin Janu offered me her efficiency in New York (2nd & Houston, $1300/m), which would rule. I still think DC kind of sucks, but I could be happy there with all the city-stuff to do, and being close to Fredericksburg. Then there's Philly, Seattle, Barcelona, Bangalore...I want it all and I can have it. Survival is my specialty.
So that's my damage. I promise not to let my hot & heavy infatuation with the west sway me too far, even though she is the prettiest girl in the world. If I'm not back on the 7th, I probably eloped with Strawberry Hill and am raising our hippie love child in a cardboard lean-to on Ocean Beach.
Here's two songs about California that might help to illustrate the way(s) I feel. Gillian Welch is possibly my favorite living female vocalist. And this Biggie song samples the track I posted yesterday, with additional vocals from Zapp. So in fact, does "California Love" by 2Pac and Dre. Everything's coming full circle.
The Notorious B.I.G. - Going Back to Cali
Gillian Welch - Revelator
(right-click the link and press "Save Target As" to download)
click here to buy Biggie from Amazon
click here to buy Gillian from Amazon
8.27.2005
Before I was born, my older siblings used to clear out the living room and throw dance parties for all their friends. I'm talking 1977 - 1981, when Ann and Paul were in high school. I'm talking some of the best funk & soul ever made. They'd push all the furniture into my parents' room and get down while my mom read in bed and my dad did math problems on the butcher block in the bathroom. I missed all of this, so growing up I'd spend hours poring over boxes of dusty vinyl in the garage and imagining my family young & hip. This album caught my eye, and the first song was disco magic. Of all the badass funk jams the 80s turned out, I was convinced this was The One. The soundtrack to everything cool. The song that made sexy things happen. Paul had the 12" single and beat my ass when he came home and caught me trying to scratch it on my unscratchable turntable. Can we please have a Studio54 party? Frza, where you at?
Zapp & Roger - More Bounce to the Ounce
(right-click the link and press "save target as" to download)
click here to buy it from Amazon
Music criticism is a crock of shit. Like I told my arch-nemesis at CMJ last year, I have a low tolerance for anyone writing about music. Art, literature, theater, movies - these are all worthy subjects. While obviously open to interpretation, the symbols these arts contain hold a semblance of objective meaning. Words and pictures are necessarily representations, of ideas and objects. A picture of a girl can be a million different things to a million different people, but it's still a picture of a girl. Go ahead and have an opinion; write about the girl, what she's doing, the way she looks and makes you feel. But please, leave my music alone.
Because it is my music, and no one else's. Every note I hear belongs to me, to the way I hear it, that specific soundtrack for roadtrips and dancing and the first time I kissed her. Music is wholly subjective. It does not represent or stand for anything else; music simply is. There is no loss, no gap between the representation and the thing itself. As Walter Pater famously said, "All art aspires to the condition of music."That being said, this is not a music blog. I'm not going to review tracks or spoonfeed anyone my "enlightened opinions" a la Pitchfork. I'm going to write about the people and things I love, and give you free music that I can't live without. You've probably heard these songs before, and that's one reason we're friends. But if you haven't, you really should.
And that's why I'm here.
