open letter, ol catfish.

honey,

i have known a lot of music men.  a Lot.  i lend my gold hand around all over those streets back there and have a long long time if i do say, which normally i don't.

that said.

there is SO MUCH I WANT TO SAY.

it must be done over other wires than these.

so i will go w:  this is the first time ever in my life that i have listened to an album of a friend and been absolutely wowed.  i mean these--i know i am often a cheerleader so let me be real, real clear--these songs?  one on top of the other?  i cannot handle it.  normally w my peeps when i say wow, it is because as a whole picture, a whole piece, an album right?  it captures the essence of you that is original you and as essence and out of admiration for you, ohhh hell yea, i get it.  but THAT is NOT what we have here.

um wtf this is so the exact other of that--where the album as a whole makes me swoon because it as a whole is what it is bc of HOW INDIVIDUAL TO THE ENCHANT EACH AND EVERY SONG IS, which makes this extraordinary >>> get this?  like NOT ONLY does each song live out the very life of its own soul WHAT!?  every song on the album being fuckn epic is what makes the album so fuckn epic, the songs stand their own ground each but as a whole make the album this masterpiece, like a crazy explosion of vastly different-similiar songs.  I don't know how to say this--there is so much influence i hear in each but so much of YOU, in different flavors of you in each, too
which is what i mean to say differentiates from others music i usually first hear, which is that every song is different and therefor makes you.  most albums run a single flavor and make a nice long song separated by different titles. this is like. w  t  f??  how did you did this?

i am wowed.

thought you should know

Sammy and the boys

In my Book of Awesomeness kept meticulously in my fabulous imagination, one of the most recent gold-scripted entries is that Sammy and the boys played Falcon Ridge.

Just writing that fills me with Oregon dreams and gypsy wisdom and barefeet secrets....

But this post isn't about the guys, or at least not in total, it's also about a funny-ass blogger. Read all about Spencer in the City's report of her tender heart getting Sammed....Then go check out the Chester River Runoff, the coolest fucking guys around xoxoxo

Why haven't you heard of these guys yet?

Mike Cades: A Decade of Music

My buddy Mike and I met in college.  He's a musician. We met in college, he was one of a handful of folks whose intellectualism marvelled and intimidated me, and later, whose artistic sense inspired and provoked me.

Mike and I worked together this summer on some creative ideas that may or may not manifest in time to come. In the meantime, he started this super cool project that I think all music lovers need to check out. A Decade of Music is Mike's blog, and invitation to anyone to create(from his first blogpost)a mix of music created from 2000 - 2009 that influenced you as an artist, if you're an artist, or that you just loved the fuck out of, if you're a geologist or something awesome like that. It should be in chronological order but from your perspective (ie. If you suddenly discovered Kid A in 2008, you should place is thusly in the mix, as opposed to placing in the year it was released, whenever that was... everyone knows Radiohead is a pretty silly band without much of a future).

Totally, totally check this blog out. Especially if you're a music-lover, or even just a mildly music-interested geologist or something.

Now look, I love this. What's always cracked me up about that crew from college is how compared to them I came ass-end in to things, foraging the world a bit before college and only coming in to myself, my intellectualism and creativity, towards the end. It's my identity as an intellectual and artist that I've always struggled with, that I've spent the years of college, and after, trying to integrate. The things of the world outside always came easy to me, natural. These pals, their smarts came easy and were never questioned. It was the world that, post-college, challenged them to enlist their creativity in order to associate. So of course their music is smart, eclectic, emotional, hugely ranging.

For facebook I recently put together a list of artists that inspired and changed me through out my teens. For the better part of the 2000's I wasn't taking much new music in. Mike's blog made me realize my illiteracy in this area--the last decade of music. It delights me to see the variety on his blog, makes me realize the great accessibility of the Internet and what this era has done for art. At first I was quick to jump on board with the claim that the great milieu of info and variety out there really only made for a flood of crap, no way to find the great stuff. But I realize now that new standards are cut precisely when a playing field gets leveled.
I think people talented as Mike are the ones who will cut those new prototypes.

Decademix.blogspot.com

Pine trees and riot grrrrls (it's the little things sometimes)

Uuuuuuummmm, yea

So who I'm listening to: Forever

& how it came to be that I'm listening to them: Was perusing various blogs/sites I frequent, happened to be doing so on my work computer--yes, at work!! bc it was 9:30 pm and I still had students testing at the site furthest from my home!! (that's my second 10 hour day of all student intake all day long for whoever's counting i kno i kno cry me a river JT) And most of all I was perusing bc I couldn't dream of doing anymore paper work as the entire side of my face is/was numb with what is, I am only guessing, an ear infection. However said cauliflower of the inner ear did not a'tall disrupt the extra gushgushing of my bloodstream when, on the fine DIY site indiepages.com the most recent music review posted sent me directly to Forever, bc as the reviewer himself posted, he is "a huge fan of the '90s riot grrrl scene" and this band fits, if not the politics of that phenom than at least the sound. Which is super extra fine by me

Pine trees behind the Dunkin Donuts in Denton, where I took my break yesterday. And, where my grammy used to stop inthe middle of our regular icy-kneed drives in her air-conditioned Pontiac from Baltimore to Ocean Pines when I was a wee toehead. Cold knees and the dusty sounds of static and church music and the dusty smell of stale the whole ride. But it used to be the Tastee Freeze back then and all the blue coolant in the world couldn't keep me from ice cream under the pine trees with Gram when I was a girl.

Funny how everything comes back around...

thinkin of ya Gram

No hearts were set up....

So, how cool is this?

My buddy Dave, who really deserved a good woman, found her. I mean, these are two Good people who found one another. And turns out she's this stellar creative gogetter artist with one of those random rad stories of doing what she loved cuz it brang joy to her heart when one day she got discovered...and her own company was born. Check her out, Kristen Mallory, at Hearts Happen.

She has this lovely collection of cards made from her heart photos, and all of the images pre-existed in the natural world when she stumbled on the shot--as her slogan goes "No hearts were set up, altered or injured in the making of Hearts Happen. Have fun." She sent me home with this card, called Receipt:

Here's Kristen and Dave at the Pines last weekend. Cuute, right? So yea, I love when serendipity happens in the lives of good people...check her out.

O and holy freakin moly. What I'm listening to: kimya dawson Aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh long sigh and quiet indulgent yuuuuuuuummmmmmmmmmmmmmm....

(ok yea, "the beer" is a wee gnarly in its explicitness. but that's me, where i'm at with all my teenage flashbacks lately...a wee gnarly. so be it.)