Joanna Newsom - On A Good Day

Still bummed about the hockey game. I know this is like three posts from this album in two weeks but whatever.



This one slays me every time.

Gene Kelly & Donald O'Connor - Moses

Today was our first day of filming for that thing I won't shut up about. For your viewing discomfort, I made a little video of every shot we took today, in the order that we filmed them (out of order for the final product). I then scanned my iTunes for songs of the same length as the video, and ideally ones that would fit, thematically. So here's Moses, from Singin' in the Rain. If you want to watch the original, from the movie, I high recommend it, and it's here. It's a very exciting dance sequence, and my thing, as all dailies are, is boring. But I think it moves to the realm of the hypnotizing. Anyway, whatever, here it is. I'm excited about what I've done today.

R.E.M. - Radio Song

I could do my last Black History Month post about this berserk clip of the Godfather at the Zaire 74 concert (the Rumble in the Jungle festival.) But that seems cliche. So I'll celebrate with the world's weirdest, most incongruous (and, yes, sucky) rap cameo. I'm perfectly happy being the R.E.M. apologist of the group, and I think that even this song has some salvageable elements but when you put it all together....no. Just no.

Radio Song

Captain Beefheart - Grow Fins

There are blues songs about wanting to leave town, or leave the country... there's a tradition of artists who want to go back to the land, or back to the womb ... tortured figures who want to escape society and even history. Beefheart actually wants to go back to the sea...

“Grow Fins” (which you can find here, click on the small orange play button) is like a sequel to “I Wish I Was A Mole in the Ground”:

“It is the awesome, impenetrable fatalism that drives the timeless ballads first recorded in the twenties; songs like Buell Kazee's "East Virginia," Clarence Ashley's "Coo Coo Bird," Dock Boggs' "Country Blues" -- or a song called "I Wish I Was A Mole In The Ground," put down by Bascom Lamar Lunsford in 1928. "I wish I was a mole in the ground -- like a mole in the ground I would root that mountain down -- And I wish I was a mole in the ground."

Now, what the singer wants is obvious, and almost impossible to really comprehend. He wants to be delivered from his like, and to be changed into a creature insignificant and despised; like a mole in the ground, he wants to see nothing and to be seen by no one; he wants to destroy the world, and to survive it.”

Greil Marcus – Liner Notes to Bob Dylan & The Band's The Basement Tapes (1975)

Here in “Grow Fins” Beefheart wants to negate the results of millennia of evolution and slip back into the depths of. He wants to abandon the burden of land, the burden of humanity, even the burden of sentience. He wants to destroy the self, and to survive it.

Tell me he doesn’t sound serious. That beat doesn’t sound real to you? That howl sound light? Seen the guy around recently? Heard any albums from him in the last three decades? I think he was serious. I think he’s left this life for something lesser and simpler and better. They say he’s retired to become an artist, but I think he’s fooled us all. I think he’s grown fins.

Joanna Newsom - Baby Birch

Joanna Newsom's "Have One On Me," a staggering triple-disc affair, was released yesterday, and it is an album that rewards patience. Each of the three discs is comprised of six songs over 35-45 minutes, and while there are a few 3- or 4-minute tracks, the bulk of it is folk songs of the 7-10 minute variety. Listening to it as the backdrop for women's curling this weekend, I got nothing more out of it than decent background music. But I gave it my full attention on Monday and again Tuesday, and it knocked me flat out.

The music is what you would expect: Newsom's feathery vocals backed by harp, strings and/or piano, plus a few surprises along the way. All very meticulously and beautifully arranged, but without much interest to chorus, bridge, or what we otherwise know as song structure. There are no pop songs here, but a few of the tracks fall into the more accessible 3-5 minute range. This is not one of those songs.



I had originally upped this song to post, but came back to this one, which is becoming my runaway favorite. But if you like this one, you might try the other.

(Incidentally, when did Joanna Newsom become an incomparable, unparalleled indie goddess? I picked up the album on vinyl today, after getting a demo version from a friend this past week, and I wish I could show you the photos on the liner notes. But I mean, goddamn, you guys. I want to go to there.)

And the work-ups begin...

So I'm engaged now. Yay.

Furthermore, every single plan I had for this entire part of the year was wrecked when I found out the dates for all the at-sea exercises we have between now and the actual float. And since I've had to hear this song every time some new join realized how MEUs deploy, you guys really shouldn't have the option of avoiding this, either. I regret nothing.



By the time this is posted, I actually will be on a boat. The mother. fucking. USS. Peleliu. Again. Fifty bucks says the heads still don't work.

Ella Fitzgerald- Azure

I don't know. It's on the Malcolm X soundtrack, I guess, so, um...almost sort of quasi-relevant. But, whatever.