I got my hands on Comedown Machine. There was a time when I
was convinced I would like absolutely anything the Strokes came up with but now
I’m not so sure. I’m giving the album a listen by picking a random song and
playing it continuously but I’m not really feeling it. I remember listening to
Is This It in the eleventh grade while sulking in my tent because someone on
tumblr had recommended it and I was already convinced had to like it because of
these favourable reviews so I just sat there listening to it thrice in row and
then I found myself listening to it for two years nonstop.
I want to listen to a new album which grabs you and just
doesn’t let you go and smothers you because it’s that incredible or just makes
you feel like a better human being because you’re listening to something that
great. I don’t know if I’m making sense on this one. I just want a new album to
love.
Sometimes I think the inside of my head is a combination of
the Cults (tracks would include Most Wanted or Go Outside) and the Shangri-las
and Hunx and his Punx and Smith Westerns.
My feelings are stupid. They're often of the "I am hungry" or "I am sad" or "Does he like me?" or "I am feeling shy" variety. I appreciate lyrical masterpieces as much as the next person but at the end of the day, I love songsthat has simple lyrics but still captures your feelings perfectly. Some may argue that the Smith Westerns's lyrics borderline dumb, but not me! These guys manage to tap my exact emotion(s)! Thar's been enough to keep me listening for three years straight.
Dye It Blonde is a super polished successor to Smith Westerns, their debut album- which is a gem in it's own right, not doubt. However, Dye It Blonde takes me feelings and amplifies them and makes them so beautiful and simple. What you have is ten tracks of pure simplicity and ~teenage~ emotions. I listened to this album every weekend in the twelfth grade because it captured my emotions perfectly. It's all about longing and love and wanting to have fun and just emotional debauchery in general. It doesn't matter if you're falling in love or falling out of it because Dye It Blonde will work for you either way (teenage ups and downs woohoo). Or even if you're alone in your room on a Saturday night- this is perfect music, you guys! It's a fun combination of glam rock and garage rock and pop and it touches my soul like nobody's business. Probably the most important album ever!
And I've been listening to their new track "Varsity" from their new album and it's so incredibly good.
The French word frisson actually means "a brief intense reaction, usually a feeling of excitement, recognition, or terror". A sudden passing sensation of excitement, a shudder of emotion while you're reeling from an epic moment. Scientifically, it is a "pleasant tingling feeling, association with the flexing of hair follicles resulting in piloerection (goosebumps you guys!), accompanied by a cold sensation, and sometimes producing a shudder or shiver". We've all felt it; an emotional response when you're deeply affected by things like music, speech, art, or memories.
This is one of my favourite poems ever. You can listen to Gwendolyn Brooks reading it here.
I Think I Am In Friend-Love With You by Yumi Sakugawa in Sadie Magazine
Unsolicited Advice To Adolescent Girls With Crooked Teeth And Pink Hair
When your mother hits you, do not strike back. When the boys call asking your cup size, say A, hang up. When he says you gave him blue balls, say you’re welcome. When a girl with thick black curls who smells like bubble gum stops you in a stairwell to ask if you’re a boy, explain that you keep your hair short so she won’t have anything to grab when you head-butt her. Then head-butt her. When a guidance counselor teases you for handed-down jeans, do not turn red. When you have sex for the second time and there is no condom, do not convince yourself that screwing between layers of underwear will soak up the semen. When your geometry teacher posts a banner reading: “Learn math or go home and learn how to be a Momma,” do not take your first feminist stand by leaving the classroom. When the boy you have a crush on is sent to detention, go home. When your mother hits you, do not strike back. When the boy with the blue mohawk swallows your heart and opens his wrists, hide the knives, bleach the bathtub, pour out the vodka. Every time. When the skinhead girls jump you in a bathroom stall, swing, curse, kick, do not turn red. When a boy you think you love delivers the first black eye, use a screw driver, a beer bottle, your two good hands. When your father locks the door, break the window. When a college professor writes you poetry and whispers about your tight little ass, do not take it as a compliment, do not wait, call the Dean, call his wife. When a boy with good manners and a thirst for Budweiser proposes, say no. When your mother hits you, do not strike back. When the boys tell you how good you smell, do not doubt them, do not turn red. When your brother tells you he is gay, pretend you already know. When the girl on the subway curses you because your tee shirt reads: “I fucked your boyfriend,” assure her that it is not true. When your dog pees the rug, kiss her,
apologize for being late. When he refuses to stay the night because you live in Jersey City, do not move. When he refuses to stay the night because you live in Harlem, do not move. When he refuses to stay the night because your air conditioner is broken, leave him. When he refuses to keep a toothbrush at your apartment, leave him. When you find the toothbrush you keep at his apartment hidden in the closet, leave him. Do not regret this. Do not turn red. When your mother hits you, do not strike back.
The White Stripes- We're Going To Be Friends
\
Johnny Cash- Hurt
I
Well God is love so love me
God is love so love me God
is love so love me well
II Love the sun comes up in
the morning and in
the evening zippy zappy it goes
III We watched a red rooster with
two hens back of the museum
at St. Croix flap his
wings zippy zappy and crow - "Calypsos" by William Carlos Williams
Skins' Tony is cool as a cucumber. Glacier cool. Ice cold. Technically speaking, Tony isn't a nice guy. He's probably a sociopath. He isn't somebody anyone should aspire to be. However, I really admire crafty people and Tony is the king of craftiness. He's a master strategist- he can manipulate any situation to work for him. Those are important life skills! He gets what he wants and uses twisted methods to get them. It helps that he's super smart and incredibly good-looking. Not for everyday situations but you sometimes just need to channel Tony.
The first season of Veronica Mars has enough advice that should last you well through school- and college. Veronica is one cool chick. What I really like is that she doesn't let her problems get to her. She channels all her attention and energy to become a modern day Nancy Drew. She's snarky, smart, resourceful and kicks serious ass. She pursues things with a single-minded determination. Important life advice: do not let high school (or for that matter, any) drama get to you. Ostracized by not only your former friends but the entire community? Suck it up and pursue extracurricular interests like tracking down your best friend's killer and/or solve mysteries for your classmates but do not forget to charge (be economical). Have contacts- cops, hackers, motorcycle gangs, the likes. You never know whose help you'll need. Sleep in class but be smart enough to answer any question being thrown at you. You have time to pursue relationships- healthy or not. Be helpful. And most of all, your relationship with your dad is important.
I just finished watching Dazed and Confused again and I know I've blogged about it before but it's really the best movie ever. I'm all for beautiful and artistic movies that would probably go down in cinema history but I can't think of many movies like this gem which are filled with so much ~soul~.
2013 marks the twentieth anniversary of Dazed and Confused and Esquire has some pretty interesting pieces about the film and the general nostalgia- be it about youth or the seventies in general. I especially love this part:
It's a film about the confounding mixture of longing and regret that the memory of youth always has. All the kids in Dazed and Confused want nothing but to be out of high school. All the people watching Dazed and Confused want nothing more than to be back in high school. Everybody wants the times they're going to have or the times they once had. There's no solution to that ache. Maybe McConaughey's character, the one who refuses to grow up, gets it right: "You gotta just keep livin, man. L-I-V-I-N.
My favourite part of Dazed and Confused is about how simple it is. Everybody's hanging around with everybody and cliques seamlessly blend into each other. That's exactly how I remembered school. Everybody was somebody else's friend and the concept of clique-ishness which is pretty much done to death in every other movie/TV show didn't really exist.
The drama is so low-key in Dazed. I don’t remember teenage being that dramatic. I remember just trying to go with the flow, socialize, fit in and be cool. The stakes were really low. To get Aerosmith tickets or not? That’s a big thing. It was really rare when the star-crossed lovers from the opposite side of the tracks and the girl gets pregnant and there’s a car crash and somebody dies. That didn’t really happen much. But riding around and trying to look for something to do with the music cranked up, now that happened a lot!
Beautifully summed up by Richard Linklater. What really gets me is the fact that Dazed is about driving around a small town late at night which is probably the most boring thing ever (I don't have any experience with that but I do know the feeling of having nothing to do late at night and walking around) but it makes you want to call your buds and grab a few beers and do exactly that. It captures the most mundane things with amazing clarity and it gets the smallest things and the end result is this strange vibe of a combination of weed and beer and suburbs and bell bottoms and boredom.
All of Linklater's movies are heavily dependent on dialogue and that's what I love. Every single character fits in with the whole story so beautifully with dialogues that just... blend in so nicely. I
I just want to listen to Sweet Emotion all summer long now.
Made another mix. Summer jams for hot days that include picnics and cycling (okay no) and staying up and feeling hot and being with friends and feeling the heat.
Regina Spektor- Folding Chair
Canned Heat- Going Up The Country (perfect cycling song. You know that scene in the Notebook when they're riding cycles through the woods? This should be the song. Okay it's not romantic enough. Into The Wild has the perfect usage of this song)
The Weepies- I Was Made For Sunny Days
Dire Straits- Twisting by the Pool
All Girl Summer Fun Band- Down South, 10 Hours
Tennis- Marathon
Led Zeppelin- D'yer Mak'er
The Young Rascals- Groovin'
Weezer- Island in the Sun
The White Stripes- Your Southern Can Is Mine
MGMT- Time to Pretend
Little Joy- Brand New Start
ELO- Mr. Blue Sky
The Strokes- The Modern Age
John Travolta and Olivia Newton John- Summer Nights
Koko Beware- I Miss You
Joni Mitchell- California
The Rolling Stones- Laugh, I Nearly Died
Arcade Fire- The Suburbs
Atlas Strategic- Smooth Nights
Backstreet Goodbye- Summer Drive Song
The Vaccines- Wreckin' Bar (Ra Ra)
Black Lips- Bad Kids
Blitzen Trapper- Summer Town
Gold Motel- Safe in LA
Jonathan Richman- That Summer Feeling
Phosporescent- It's Hard To Be Humble (When You're From Alabama)
