Strange Pulse

I took the kids to Magic Mountain on Friday, my work had free tickets. Daniel couldn’t go, so our friend Dave came with us. He took the older kids on all the rollercoasters while I hung out with Elijah. We’re all exhausted and sore from it still.

We got a free lunch there too, in a picnic area, where there were games and an MC w/a DJ. The winners of various games got free passes to Magic Mountain. The MC had a game for the adults, and since no one was going up for it, I went up to play. All the things up till then were harmless scavenger hunts, etc. But no, this time it was a talent show contest. So we all had to think of a talent, and then everyone watching voted via applause to decide the winner.

The first person had nothing and bailed. The MC said, “Ooooh, the walk of shame,” everyone booed, and I thought, “OK, that’s not going to be me.” I was the last in the line though, so I had time to see what everyone else did first. One lady sang Twinkle Twinkle Little Star. Another told kid jokes (and all the kids in the group shouted all the punchlines before she could). One lady juggled bread, one did a Samba. But the winner was the guy who break danced. Or at least, he tried–kinda hard to do back spins on grass.

(This is kinda funny–my work got the free tickets from a sister company that had planned a work outing and ended up with extras, but only a handful of anyone from my company wanted to go, which is why I could take all the kids. It looked like no one from the sister company took any of their kids. The rest of the extra tickets were donated to a local Boys and Girls Club. So there we are, crashing someone else’s work picnic. Participating in all the games and contests.)

I couldn’t think of anything to do but one thing–so I did “You Light Up My Life” by Debbie Boone, in sign language. It wouldn’t have been so bad, except I had to sing the song as well. And I couldn’t remember some of the words. And I couldn’t remember some of the signs. (I learned it when I was in 3rd grade, or something.) But since we were actually there with a group of people I’d never met and I thought would never see again, I figured I can get into the spirit of things and make a fool out of myself! Who’s gonna know?

Well, I was wrong. The HR lady/office manager from my work who arranged the tickets for us was there and saw the whole thing. Now I get to wonder if she’s going to email the entire office on Monday to fill everyone in on me making a fool of myself. (She actually was very impressed–”I didn’t know you could do that! I would never get up there and do something like that!” But somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better.)

This is a record that came out a couple years ago. I loved it when it came out but haven’t listened to it in awhile. I just put it on again and I still love the entire thing.

It’s a side project of a guy I know online, he was in an excellent stoner/heavy band called Players Club, who apparently are now on hiatus or broken up. (I try not to dwell on that, I *love* Players Club.)

Anyway Book of Knots is very different. It’s a concept album, sort of–all the songs have maritime themes to them, anyway. They incorporate a lot of cool sounds into the music. Some songs are haunting. Some are heavy. Some are funny–a dark humor, you know, about sailors eating each other while stranded at sea.

I’ll post a couple songs to the radio.blog.

Inspired by the heatwave…

Somethin’ Hot - Afghan Whigs*
Hot Hot Hot!!! - Cure
Hot Blooded - Foreigner
Hot You’re Cool - General Public
I Want to Die in the Hot Summer - I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness
Hot Blood - Lucinda Williams
Canned Heat - Jamiroquai
Heat Seeker - Spores
Million Year Summer - Acrimony
Gold In The Air Of Summer - Kings Of Convenience
Summer’s Kiss - Afghan Whigs*
Summer - Buffalo Tom
Indian Summer - Chris Whitley
Summer Skin - Death Cab For Cutie
It’s Summertime - Flaming Lips
It Must Be Summer - Fountains Of Wayne
Summer Nights - Grease
Celebrated Summer - Husker Du
Summertime Rolls - Jane’s Addiction
Summerfling - K.D. Lang
Summertime - Sam Cooke
Someone, Somewhere in Summertime - Simple Minds
Play in the Summer - Trans Am*
Summer - Unida*
Umimaginable Zero Summer - Young Fresh Fellows

* I’ll post a few of my faves to the radio.blog.

As someone who grew up as a teen in the Seattle grunge heyday, you’d think my favorite local bands to go see would’ve been Nirvana, Mudhoney, Mother Love Bone, or even the U-Men or Skin Yard.

But no. It was, of course, Soundgarden.

But after Soundgarden, it was definitely the Young Fresh Fellows.

A lot of people don’t realize that while Seattle had the thriving grunge scene, it also had a thriving pop scene, and the Fellows were the best of it. They were goofy, funny, intelligent. They rocked.

And they were just *so* much fun live.

We saw them live more than any other Seattle band. Couldn’t tell you how many times. I saw them open for the Replacements. Within a couple weeks I also saw them open for the Hoodoo Gurus. Two of my favorite shows, ever. Perfect line ups. The Hoodoo Gurus show is the only show I’ve ever been to where I knew the words to every song that was played, by both opening band and headliner. (Except for one song the HG’s did that I think was a Kiss cover—but it doesn’t really count, since the only lyric was the word “yeah!”)

Once I saw the Young Fresh Fellows play at Green River Community College, my husband (then just my brother’s friend) was also there. He jumped on stage and sang along in the singer’s mic to “Where is Groovy Town?”

I wish there was someplace we could go where
We could do anything that we wanted to
Nobody to put us down
Nobody to push us around and not hear
I don’t like what you do, or what you think, or what you say
Hey hey hey

Another time we saw them play at the mural amphitheater at the Seattle Center—an outdoor venue, just a stage with a sloping lawn. Probably saw them multiple times there, but this one time in particular, some guys from the Smithereens where there, and one of them sat in on drums for a song. They played the Smithereens’ one hit, “Blood and Roses,” but the singer of the Fellows changed it to “Bloody Noses.”

A lot of people were taking pictures down front, and I was off to the side with someone else’s camera. Daniel came up and asked me if I wanted a really up-close shot. I said ok. He stood nose-to-nose with me and told me to focus the camera on him. I started to explain that that wasn’t right when he grabbed it from me, handed it to my friend Colin and had him do it. Then Daniel jumped on stage, got right in the singer’s face, and snapped a shot. It was really funny.

Unfortunately it wasn’t my camera, and I never got to see if the shot turned out or not.

The Fellows used to do a song called “Hank, Karen and Elvis,” which of course is about Hank Williams, Karen Carpenter, and Elvis Presley. They also used to do a version of the Carpenter’s “Close to You.” The drummer would put on a bad wig and sing, “Why do fish swim in the sea, when they could be in a can of tuna?”

You how when we were kids we’d have flagpoles on the back of our bikes, made out of flexible fiberglass, and it’d flap around in the wind when you rode really fast? The drummer used to have a cymbal on one of those poles and whenever he’d hit it, it’d go flying all over the place. So when he needed to hit it again, it was always a challenge to aim at it just right, since it was bobbing back and forth.

They also used to do this tribute to disco in the middle of the song “Amy Grant,” which included having the audience all get down on their knees to pay homage. So awesome.

I’ve always loved the lyrics to Amy Grant:

When she first met Jesus, didn’t know what to say
But he gave her a guitar and he told her what to play
He said, Amy don’t you play no modern jazz, don’t you play none of that hard rock
What the people want to hear is pure, unadulterated schlock

This pics were taken just before Daniel and I got married (he was 19, I was 18):

I’ll post some of my favorite Fellows songs on the radio.blog.

I just posted another “Name these tunes” thing over at Kulturblog, this time the theme is falsetto vocals. I’m not that great at recognizing falsetto vs regular singing range, so I may have included some that aren’t actually falsetto. Who are some awesome falsetto singers? Everyone says Stevie Wonder, but I had a hard time recognizing any song bits that were in falsetto.

They’re one of the “third generation” stoner rock bands, like Wolfmother, the Sword, Pearls & Brass, Early Man. Seems like this current crop of stoner bands are generating some buzz, which makes me happy. Also makes me wonder why they’re getting so much attention when bands have been making this music for years, but I always figured eventually this scene would start to catch on.

I’m not sure though that the people who’ve “caught on” are really catching on, or if they just find it amusing in low doses. For me, this music is the stuff that makes life worth living.

I remember when I first discovered stoner rock, in about 1999 or 2000, when someone on an email list for Hoodoo Gurus fans said he thought the only good music made in the 90’s was by bands like Kyuss, Fu Manchu and Queens of the Stone Age. This was back in the Napster days, so I immediately logged on and downloaded enough songs to burn a mix, and as my boss was out that day, I could listen to it on headphones all day long. It was bliss.

I went home and asked my husband if he’d ever heard of any of those bands. He said, “Queens of the Stone Age? That’s hessian rock.” I said, “YES! Hessian rock!”

I finally felt like I had a place in the world. A world full of stoner music.

Anyway, I’m impressed with Priestess. (Alliteration unintentional.) Their album, Hello Master, is really good. It’s nice to hear a stoner band with a good vocalist. They’ve got a real energetic vibe, too–now I’m really bummed I missed their show when they came through LA awhile back (with Early Man and the Sword!). I bet they’d be really fun live.

I’ll post a couple Priestess songs to the radio.blog—right now “The Shakes” is my favorite, but I could’ve gone with any songs on the album—it’s that solid.

Looking for suggestions of good stuff. I’ve mainly been reading music blogs lately, and so many of them post about the same stuff all the time. (Syd Barrett’s dead! New album releases! New Yeah Yeah Yeah’s video! etc.)

I was listening to Jane’s the other day, and my husband asked me that question. I couldn’t think of a single band they sound like. If you go to allmusic.com and look at who they list as Jane’s influences, it lists a bunch of new wave/goth stuff, like Siouxsie, Bauhaus, Cure, Jesus and Mary Chain, plus old classic rock like the Doors and Led Zep. I can see that. But I don’t think they sound like any of those bands really.

I hadn’t thought about them being so unique before.

I know someone who hates Perry Farrell (ok, more than one person), and I can’t really blame them—he can be annoying. One guy I know (Josh for my brother Dan) once started ridiculing their lyrics. But they have some lines I absolutely love:

“The biggest gang I know they call the government
And a gang is a weapon
That you trade your mind in for”

—

“Poked a hole right into myself
And inside I found someone
Who said I was O.K.
Still I don’t feel easy”

—

“If there’s a pole planted in your back
Then you’re a fixture, you ain’t a man”

—

“You know that man you hate?
You look more like him everyday”

—

“I was made with a heart of stone
To be broken with one hard blow”

—

“Well, she sings a song and I listen to what it says:
If you want a friend, feed any animal…”

—

“I love them whores they never judge you
What can you say when you’re a whore?”

—

Can anyone identify the songs?

That title should get some interesting google hits on this blog.

Some things that bother me about California:

• You can be innocently sitting at an intersection waiting for the light to change, when before your eyes appears an 80-year-old man riding a bicycle through the crosswalk. In shorts. In very, very SHORT shorts. (My eyes! My eyes!) And the scariest thing—his legs are so tan, you know he’s always wearing them.
• The garbage. It’s everywhere. I realize there are a lot of people here, and they generate a lot of trash. But come on. Is it necessary to leave your big gulp cup on a bush rather than holding on to it until you come across a trash can? (Saw a teenager do this yesterday.) Most of that trash ends up in the ocean, you know.
• The cigarette butts. What makes smokers think tossing a cigarette butt on the ground is ok? I see them do it on the freeway. In my apartment complex. Outside clubs. Do they think the butts just disintegrate in the rain eventually? Do you know how often it rains here? About once a year! Most of that stuff ends up in the ocean, you know. (When it does rain.)

Some things I like about California:

• Cell phone towers. But not just any cell phone towers. They disguise them here. Or at least, a lot of them. They make them look like trees. Palms or pines. It’s craziness. You don’t notice them at all, can drive past one everyday and never pick up on it, until someone points it out. Then suddenly you can’t believe that you’ve never noticed this entirely FAKE tree that you’ve been past a billion times. If I ever have tons of time on my hands, I’m going to drive around and take pictures of a bunch. Here’s an example of one in Garden Grove. (I didn’t take that picture)
• Small-town feel. There are so many people packed into such a small space here that you can go to the grocery store, a fast food place, a nice restaurant, the bank, whatever—and see someone you know. Everyone in the neighborhood just goes to the same places. My daughter came grocery shopping with me last week and saw four different people that she knew there. It’s funny.

Oh, and this:

…Wasn’t even music-related.

If you’ve ever been to the Off-Ramp/Graceland/it’s got some other name now in Seattle, you know it’s a small venue with a low ceiling. People on stage can touch the ceiling with their hands easily. (It’s also got posts or poles right in a couple of the worst possible spots on stage, but that belongs in a post about why this venue sucks–which it does.)

I went to see a band play there once on a Thursday night, Witch Mountain. They were a doom band from Portland I’d never heard before, but I knew a couple of the members via a web forum, so I went to support and check them out. There was literally maybe one or two other people there that night. Except for the members of the other bands on the bill.

Ever been to a show where the only people in the audience are the other bands, and they all just take turns playing? It was one of those shows. I’ve been to a few.

I think it was a first show for one of the opening bands, because the singer was shy–he kept his back turned to the audience (if you could call us that) almost the entire time.

So how could a show like this be one where I saw one of the coolest things ever? It was a guy in another opening band. He hocked a big loogie.

But it wasn’t just any loogie. And it wasn’t just any hocking, either.

He hocked it onto the ceiling above his head.

And proceed to play, and sing, and play, and sing, while the loogie slowly, slowly, started giving way to gravity. It dangled an inch. It dangled two. It grew and grew. Until I swear that thing was dangling a good 4 inches off the ceiling. Would it fall on him? his hair? his face? Would he see it coming? Would he catch it in his mouth? Now *that* would’ve been the coolest thing, ever, show or no show.

But no. He just happened to move out of the way when it finally fell. I wish I’d clocked it. That thing dangled forever.

And that’s entertainment.