Dirty Three: Ocean Songs

Home is not a place. Home has never meant that to me. It is an idea, a fraction of myself told in bedsheets and cookware. So when the time came to leave it all behind and journey across the waters to a new life, I jumped at the chance.

The ship was tiny, cowering in the bay next to the gods and giants moored near her resting place. No matter. I wasn't looking for a luxury berth, I wanted to know the ocean like my ancestors did. I wanted, above all else, to feel the ocean in my bones and etch her songs upon my heart.It is a young man's game, I suppose, to throw oneself against the elements: to test your will against the cliff faces of reality.

A cry on board cracked across my reverie and I stowed my gear near the storehouses in the stern. For the next three months this cramped and fetid hole in the bottom of a cargo ship would be my home. Nested deep within the pile of clothes and notebooks was my most cherished possession, the icon of this journey. A violin. I had never been a rich man and this fragile piece of wood had cost me nearly every penny I had. If you want to know the core of yourself, it is best to strip off everything you drag around.

I lived and breathed salt air for endless days, hauling lines until my hands bled and eating the stale iron rations stacked high in the cargo holds next to barrels of tobacco and cotton. Each night I would secret away to my corner of the hold and coax my hands warm until I could feel my fingers playing upon the strings of my violin. It was the entire reason I found myself a thousand miles from the land of my fathers, blasted by cold waters, wracked by fevers and so tired that I could hardly sleep at night.

I sang with Poseidon, played symphonies of delight with the Sirens and conducted the winds to the call of cat gut and rosin. This was home, this was the sliver of myself that could never be found in cities or distilled from pastures overgrown with arrogance and the tyrannies of petty men. At last my home, sweet Atlantis.

I found myself at the end of my journey too soon. So that no one may forget this communion of wind and water I have recorded every note, every nuance, every endless storm of my life. May
it stand as a sign post on your journey home.

You may also try Rachel's, Godspeed You Black Emperor and Mogwai to bring you a step closer to the truth of life.

Good for: Being wholly transported to a vision of storms on the horizon and seagulls in the air.
Samples at Amazon.com

The Be Good Tanyas: Blue Horse

The trip to Canada was not my idea. My life had sunk low into a haze of depression and drinking and nothing would drag me out. Well, no amount of bitching and whining would get me out of this one. My brother had made this very clear. By the time I woke up in the back of my car we were stopped at the border station just north of New York. Hill Island. The air had changed so subtly I hardly noticed.

I was still drunk from the night before so I crawled back into the nest of coats and pillows and dipped in and out of sleep for another couple hours. The world started shaking and I snapped out of my dreams with a start. Jim was shaking me, telling me we had arrived. "Where the fuck did you take me?". "Smiths Falls, now get up. We're getting coffee" I grumbled my way out of the car and into the sunlight. Sobriety is a bitch and this cold wind and clear sun was not making it any easier.

The cafe was a good ten yards from where we parked, but the parking lot stretched into the horizon in my eyes. Damn this place, damn these smiling Canadians and damn you Jim. I slapped my hand against the door hoping I'd hit someone coming out. Damn again, no one caught the door in the face. Jim shoved me forward and into the nearest booth. "What can I get you boys?", a tall pleasant looking face said somewhere above the rim of my sunglasses. "Double Maker's Mark neat and an ashtray" I grumbled. "He'll have coffee" from the other side of the table. Damn you Jim.

The coffee arrived in a carafe, the scent burned it's way through my nose and straight into my brain. Canada has coffee game. Jim and I started the ritual of coffee, passing sugar and cream back and forth in a game as old as our brotherhood. Over my shoulder I heard the drone of tuning and the clicks and rustles of busy stage work. "What the fuck is this Jim? You drag me all the way to Canada to listen to a fucking band?". "Shut up Eriq, listen."

The Be Good Tanyas sung me into salvation that night. I was their willing captive for the entire performance. Delicate strums on acoustic guitars drove sweet spikes of remorse deep through my festering wounds. The aching arch of fiddle danced with all of my fears, putting them to bed with understanding and compassion and vocal harmonies that gave me hope for the first time in years. These girls had found the best of America and distilled it with pure Canadian glacier water. I cried the entire night, drops of my past falling into the coffee held in front of me.

As the band wished us well upon our way, I wiped my face dry with the remnants of the napkin and ran for the door. The night time air slapped me in the face hard enough to lose my balance. The stars and I stared at each other for hours. A cruching of snow wakes me from my communion. "Do you get it? Are you ready to go?" "Sure."

I saved this in my photo album with Langhorne Slim, Po' Girl and Uncle Earl

Listen to my journey at Amazon.com

Radiohead: In Rainbows

We're proud to announce our latest Series 7 android. Here at Radiohead Industries we have always striven to bring the greatest sense of authenticity to our flagship series of androids and the Radiohead Series 7 is our greatest achievement by far. In this series we have brought elevated the principles of techno-organic synthesis to an art form, transcending the barrier between artifice and the natural world to bring you emotions that humanity cannot describe in words.


The Emotional Cortex of the Radiohead Series 7, nicknamed "In Rainbows", is built around our proprietary recordings of your life and surroundings. We have been observing you for some time and we feel like we can describe you in greater detail than you know. As an owner of the Radiohead Series 3 (nicknamed OK Computer) you may be familiar with many of the themes this new version will play upon. Perhaps you feel alone, perhaps the cold lines of modern living leaves you feeling hollow at the end of the day and you feel as though you will never connect with another human being again.


Good news! Connection with other human beings is within your grasp once more! The "In Rainbows" progressive reconnection sequence is designed to enhance your ownership experience through the selective upload of images directly from your subconscious and transmission to pre-screened mating selections on our Reconnection Database servers. We can feel your pain and we want you to know it's alright. We love you. We here at Radiohead Industries have been studying the separation between people and the rest of the world for a long time and have found a unique solution for our customers.


Thank you for selecting this product, it will keep you sane in the endless tides of noise and confusion. Please check our website for our other offerings, British Sea Power, Broken Social Scene, Tool and Nine Inch Nails.


Good for: Contemplating your life, sitting on a wall in the middle of the street.

Picnic Time at Byrd Park

Unfortunately the rain has come and this event has been postponed, but I'll be heading to the revised picnic and I'll keep everyone up to date.

Greetings,

You are invited to the first Basket Head Productions gathering of Picnic Revolution. This first gathering will be on April 27, 2008 on the north west shore of Swan Lake south west shore of Shields Lake (along Shields Lake Court) in Byrd Park from 11am to 3pm.

Picnic Revolution is Richmond's local, sustainable, and mobile food celebration. Picnic can be defined as 'a pleasure excursion at which a meal is eaten outdoors, ideally taking place in a beautiful landscape'. The focus of Picnic Revolution is to promote and support our local food and park systems.

Who's invited? Everyone! Spread the word.

What to bring? Food- local, fresh, and ready to eat. Beverages. Flatware. Blankets. Games.

For more information stay tuned to www.basketheadproductions.com

Sincerely,

The Basket Head Staff baskethead@threemiles.com

New contributor: Allison Lott of Musical Moxie

We here at A Fresh Cup of Awesome are thrilled to bring you a new contributor to our blog, Allison Lott. Her tastes in music are different than any of ours are so expect to see a new blend of Awesome in your cup in the days to come. She runs an excellent blog over here at Musical Moxie and I'll be putting some posts up there so be sure to check in and see what's new. On that note, we're always seeking more contributors so if you're excited about your music collection, listen to it obsessivly and want to tell the world all about it, drop me a line. ellummoxo(at)gmail.com

Youngblood Brass Band: center:level:roar

Imagine a brass band let loose upon the imagination of Brooklyn. No limitations on technique, no barriers on form and a musical director with tastes that range as far as the eye can see. That is what Youngblood Brass Band has brought into the world.

This is brass as weapon and salvation, the two edged sword of judgement in the hands of disciples of the beat box. Sonic poetry that ranges from the subtle to the thunderous graces each track as I feel the ground beneath me shake. I cannot listen to this record without finding myself whistling the tunes for the next few days. It will infect your head, shake your ass and move your soul. Best listened to on an incredibly loud stereo, preferably on a sunny day in the summer time.

There is this positive energy that flows out of this band, like they've tapped into the source code of the universe and found the spirit form of Stevie Wonder. If this album doesn't get you wide open, then you're a corpse. They spin destruction and resurrection in a spell of interweaving melody and complex harmony, a complete phase of life in a song. When I die and my jazz funeral is under way, these are the guys I want to boom bap me into the next life. We're on a train from New Orleans to New York with The Roots. They're covering the Duke Ellington songbook and picking up every funky motherfucker with a horn from the South on up.

Good for: Blowing the doors off of your car with a horn section the size of Mount Olympus.

Check them out on Last.fm!

Yann Tiersen: Amelie: Original Soundtrack Recording

The fog parts just long enough for me to see the street lights flicker off as the wan sunlight peeks through the haze. I've been walking through the alleys and behind the buildings of this city since sundown the night before, looking for fragments of human life left fermenting in the secret parts of this vibrant, pulsing entity known as civilization.

The ache in my feet matches the tone of my mood, worn and thin, searching with desperation for meaning in the endless brick and mortar night scape. As the sun burns the night into dust a waft of accordion and violin passes by my face, just out of reach, just out of hearing. I follow the Sirens call down a flight of cobblestone stairs towards a golden glow crawling out of a doorway to greet the sun.

A cafe, brimming with energy. Two women waltzing through the crowd escorting coffee and pastry salvation to sleepy eyed patrons. I stumble through the entrance and find the closest seat. The noise and rush threaten to dispel the illusion that the night has so carefully wrought upon my senses and I careen around the smells and brightness of it all, clinging desperately to my last cigarette.

The crescendo of this morning peaks and just when I think that all is lost, I see the man in the corner with his accordion. Tall and thin, he coaxes the stillness back into my world, bringing this long and strange night to it's perfect culmination. I relax and listen as the piano player joins in, entrancing the very walls of the cafe into a moment of utmost pleasure at living, loving and losing. I head back out towards the endless sidewalks of my city and join Brad Mehldau, Bill Evans and Nobuo Uematsu on their journey between worlds of sorrow and joy.



Good for: People watching from the corner cafe, chain smoking and writing.

Suburban Kids With Biblical Names: #3

There is a secret world between your childhood dreams and your adult disillusionment and this is the native tongue of the creatures that live there. It is a language we learn in the free floating space between birth and knowing the world and we tend to let it slip past us the older we get. You and I, we need a guide. Someone who lives there still, dancing under a digital sun with an acoustic guitar who can see marvel in every part of life and still keep one foot planted in the things we've learned.

Suburban Kids With Biblical Names are here to show you the way back to yourself. It's OK, we all need to relax and have some fun at a certain point. They treat music like it's fun, which it is! It takes so much of the burden of complex meaning and obsessive craft of so many musical styles and turns it into a joke that somehow comes out sounding more real than all of the things they make fun of.

So grab some headphones and a portable music thingy and come with me down to the park on Saturday, leave all your mortgages, cars and way too complicated relationships at home. We can play some Frisbee golf and feed the ducks. While we're there we can eat a picnic lunch with Kimya Dawson, They Might Be Giants and the Aquabats.

Good for: Remembering why you started listening to music in the first place.

Iron and Wine: Tonight at the National

Iron and Wine is playing at the National on Broad tonight, 'round 8:00. Who wants to go? I'll be there.

1:00 4-17-08 Good lord. That was a fantastic show.

Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions: Bavarian Fruit Bread

The blinds are shut against the setting sun and the dust floating around the room is dancing it's seductive dance against your eyes. Every curl of smoke drifting up from the bed is a testament to flesh, a poem written in the air. Angels sing the song of lovers and beg you to stay here, stay in this perfect crystallized Sunday moment. Each breath you take is a photograph of seduction, passion and the empty bottle of wine rolling softly across the wooden floor. Why should you leave?

Hope Sandoval is telling you not to. This record transcends sexiness into something closer to divinity, the perfected art of early morning lovemaking, a gentle caress of an album that doesn't want you to leave for work.

It is the whispered word at the end of a long night out with friends, a more comfortable place to relax and be alone together, a chance to peer deep into the mysteries of sunrise from the other side of night. This is a world full of warm guitar tones, gentle harmonica trails and the light touch of drums and organ all coming together to get through your pants and into your heart.

There is a leather bound book I keep in my room full of loves lost and found, of dreams and hopes that never came to be and the yellowing notes from lovers past. I keep this album there with Keren Ann, Jose Gonzalez, Mazzy Star and Damien Rice.

Good for: Playing songs on the skin of your lover, treating every touch like a chord.

Manuel Barrueco: Nylon and Steel

Dark clouds gather on the horizon, trading secrets of quiet rumbling and flashes of insight. Soon the storm is fully formed and racing across the plains towards you, words of sonic titans falling down from the sky. But then it is no more, a clear sky, the sunlight bathing you in warmth and love. This album has summer storm moods, fresh and alarming folding gently into clear skies and pure guitar tones.

Every note of this album is exactly where it needs to be and it doesn't feel like it was programmed to be there. A great number of classical performances come off too stiff and mechanical for my tastes and this is not one of them.

It reminds me that the term "classical" is like any other genre tag, an approximation at its best and a limitation at it's worst. This is the bridge for two purists to meet in the middle of, enjoy an album together and expand their musical horizons with storm clouds of emotion and form. It takes people by the hand into new lands with Manu Chao, Run DMC, Daft Punk and Norah Jones.

Good for: Breaking down the walls between emotion and logic, between structure and intention and the wall between you and me.

Leonard Cohen: Death Of A Ladies' Man

There is this heavy air in the hotel lobby. All of the dreams of afternoon lovers are pooling here at the entrance and threatening to choke off your air. Lost in a haze of emotion and unsure of each footstep you stumble further through the red and gold wallpapered pathways of midnight hell towards the record player casting shadows out of a doorway.

There are memories tied to every note, remorse on every staff line of this ode to the moment you're in. Vision blurred, stumbling towards the song floating into the room you fall into the bed in slow motion. Leonard Cohen can seduce you in ways you never thought were possible. He has forgotten more about being spiritually and physically naked than most of us have ever known.

This is definitely not music for listening to at work, in the car or any time you're not able to grab a bottle of wine and take off your clothes. If you have someone to share this album with, you're in the place he wants you to be. Leonard Cohen is a poet of the highest order, sparing with his words and generous with emotion. But don't listen to me, listen to him. I lock this album up in my liquor cabinet with Nick Drake, Ani Difranco and Joe Henry.



Good for: Melting the clothes off of your lover with poetry.

Built To Spill: Keep It Like A Secret

Built to Spill loves you. They want you to have a good time and think about how you're living all at the same time. Imagine if punk rock wasn't screaming in your face about your TV habits, more sidling up next to you at the bar to have a nice long talk about it all. There is social critique here, but it slides past your defenses and makes you think you're listening to pop music.

Mind you, it's not too cute, Keep It Like A Secret has an edge of sorts, but I think they keep it in their back pocket folded up. This collection of songs is the score for people watching in the suburbs, the endless milling of the masses around shiny new things. Here the food court anthem, there the trendy store sonata.

Some songs are human, beating the point home with driving beats and thick bass lines, others floating above you like seagulls in the parking lot outside. It is full of hope and a chance for living outside of the rules we pretend to obey. This album is trying to help you down the road with Modest Mouse, The Get Up Kids and Jets To Brazil.

Good for: Wondering what the hell post-punk is, staring longingly at open fields though plate glass windows.


Listen to samples at Last.fm!

Awesome things tonight!

Come out and celebrate RVA Magazine and Gallery 5's 3rd birthday tonight! The festivities will begin around 7 o'clock. Tonight is First Friday as well, so there's many other wonderful happenings in the area as well.

From RVAmag.com:

WHAT: Gallery5/RVA Mag 3 Year Anniversary Benefit Party!!!
WHEN: 7PM - 2AM
WHERE: Gallery5
DETAILS: First Friday, April 47PM - 2AM $5Gallery5 turns 3 years old April 4th! Come join us as we celebrate three years of hard work, frustration and sleepless nights.On April's First Friday we do battle with our crib-mates RVA Magazine (also turning 3) in a mural competition. Artistic gladiators include your local favorites Jim Callahan, Oura, Adam Juresko, Bizhan Khodabandeh, Ross Trimmer and a secret special guest. Great live music from Fight the Big Bull, Prabir and the Substitutes and cabaret sister act, Vermillion Lies. The high energy antics of G5 Fire Performers will be outside spinning, spitting, twirling, and breathing the hot stuff. Late night brings DJ sets from the Party Liberation Front starring DJ Reinhold and Discotizer on the second floor and local unstoppable sonic sensations, SoulPower downstairs. As if that were not enough, Sailor Jerry Rum, Level Vodka and Richbrau Brewery will relieve you of your inhibitions.Take part in our Silent Auction with entries from Firehouse Theatre Project, TheatreVCU, Henry, Rumors, Ian Graham, Ken Howard, Revolve, Chop Suey, Tagur Shoes, Sticky Rice, Taboo, OPUS and others.Raffle Tickets will be available for purchase. 3 Lucky winners will receive tickets to EVERY Gallery5 and RVA Magazine event for a full year!!
URL: http://www.gallery5arts.org

See you there!

Angelo Badalamenti: Twin Peaks Season One OST

Twin Peaks was a romp through the dark and twisted paths that follow David Lynch wherever he goes and the score reflects that. It is a ghost of a score, touching down for only a moment in your mind and then floating off on a breeze. I'm pulling into a parking lot just this side of the state border. 6 am, no one here but I need gas and more smokes.

Where the hell am I? The interstate signs said there'd be a rest stop and store somewhere around here, but I can't see a damn thing. I feel the sunlight whisper through the branches of this autumn day as I start walking towards the abandoned roller coaster just on the other side of this run down building, I think it's a restaurant.

Flashes of something following me down into a stream bed and staying just out of my sight. Son of a bitch! I head back to the car, watching the edges of my vision and cram the keys into the door as fast as I can. I point the nose back towards the interstate entrance and stuff my toes into the floorboard.

Fuck! Weird little place, no wonder it wasn't on this map I picked up. No one ever comes back. I wonder how these places come to be...... I keep a close watch on this album while it plots with Chet Baker, Akira Yamaoka, and The Black Heart Procession.

Good for: Setting up detective fiction in your local coffee shop, making everyone suspicious as hell.

Listen to Nightingale on Last.fm!

Panthalassa - The Remixes: Miles Davis

We start this evening in a downtown lounge, sipping a drink and listening to the traffic roll by in it's muted thunder. The glasses on the bar start to shake along with the rhythm of the train passing overhead. Mystery surrounds you in an ever growing shroud, each tendril of brass an invitation to slip further into the embrace of endless dusk.

Soon, the scene drops you to street level, harsh lights passing overhead one after the other, the frenzied pace of a Saturday night. Every man and woman trying to get as much pleasure out of these brief moments that life allows them, wrenching out emotions strained under the weight of their own self doubt. Now this narrow beer soaked road spreads out into a broad street and the sheer size of the night becomes apparent to you. It is immense, and we are very small.

Miles Davis was relentlessly experimental in his musical career and this remix sounds to me like what the man would be doing if he were still around. He would be moving forward with the force of a typhoon and leaving most of the world confused in his wake. This album has beats the size of skyscrapers laced on top of some of the slickest tunes ever to grace my ears. Imagine a secret meeting between Bjork and DJ Shadow on top of a building in the dead of winter, exchanging vinyl like secret agents. I keep this one stacked in my secret vault of Forbidden Beats with Saul Williams, DJ Krush, Yuki Kajiura and a bag of instrumentals from MF Doom.

Good for: Plotting the getaway plan, smoking a cigarette in the moonlight from the veranda of your penthouse.

Man, this took some looking. Check out samples at Amazon.com (you'll need the Realplayer plugin to listen.)