Giddy Gideon

Song: "Gideon"
Artist: My Morning Jacket
Album: Z
From: Louisville, Kentucky
Year: 2005

It really took me by surprise that I could dig a band from Kentucky without a jug of whiskey and a banjo in my hand. It took me even more by surprise when I listened to My Morning Jacket play nearly a four hour set at Bonnaroo. So hopefully I will take you by surprise when I admit my love for this track even after I have found out what it means.

What is a Gideon? By golly it's not "what" but a "who". A Gideon is a religious symbol personified as a person in the bible. This symbol is a judge appearing in the Book of Judges. Now, I had to look that up myself seeing that I would have never equated Gideon to something god-related. I'm just not wired that way. I thought a Gideon was some sort of comet or big star lurking far away threatening our solar system with rays only the government is allowed access to. Oh well.

Whole song:
"Gideon.
What have you told us at all?
Make a sound, come down off the wall.
Religion, should appeal to the hearts of the young.
Who are you? What have you become?
You animal.
Come on.
What does this remind you of?
Truly.
Truly we have become.
Hated and feared for something we don't want.
Listen.
Listen.
Most of us believe that this is wrong.
You animal.
Come on.
What does this remind you of?
Animal.
Come on.
What does this remind you of?
Animal.
Come on"


Irregardless of it's connotations, I am taking this song for musical value and the purity which transfixes my ears. Word vomit. Instead of trying or researching (or proving my research) of what a gideonic judge would look like, I pixalate Zeus getting mad at wife number six. What's up hoodie/sweater/Patagonia men? My Morning Jacket, are you questioning the skies and resenting Gideon's duties? Are they making a statement about youth culture amidst haste, waste, and Internet? Are you even religious? I do appreciate the rhyme schematics of "Gideon" and "Come On". Those words contrast each other brilliantly in context, like power v. present. Heaven v. Earth in the battle of realities. This song should be playing in the background of The Real World's promotional commercial; long enough so people will ask "Who is that cool band?!" but not long enough for people to figure out why it's placed in that time, scene and space.

Crack What's Crooked.

Song: "Luisa's Bones"
Artist: Crooked Fingers
Album: Forfeit / Fortune
From:Seattle, Washington
Year: 2008

Two seconds in and your head will be bopping like bippity boppity boo actually worked! Somehow the lyrics describe a lazy river with a speedy pace successfully alongside Mexican horns and guitar rhythms. I feel like I should buy a beer at a taco stand, maybe in downtown L.A., like they do in Crazy/Beautiful. "Luisa's Bones" is a little story that would fit an indie/adventure seekers fairytale scene. Cool water, hot sun, lost bones, open flannel shirts, the leaving behind of something. I see a western river looping around mountains as swift as the best Texans lasso.

This song makes me get in the mood...for what I'm still trying to figure out. Maybe right after I fill a tank of gas on the open road and mentally prepare myself for nine hours of spontaneous thoughts and bright sun shadows. Maybe it's what I'll listen to after a visit to a rock stars graveyard in France. Crooked Fingers is entirely crooked in their musical style, but it works. They are cracking their knuckles of restraint and classifications, and just going/working with how they feel at that moment in recording. This song could've been recorded on a Shepard's property in Wyoming and it would fit the vibes shimmering from the independent label. Modern life is searched for in mines and woods, but is it found? The song leaves us with an unknown answer, but tells us the adventure will continue until some answer is found. It's a band of traveling gypsies, "we"'s tell us the band has climbed a lot of hills; and though they are still drifting towards salvation, they have gained and put a few steep climbs behind them.

We Dance Here

Song: "Manhattan"
Artist: Kings of Leon
Album: Only By the Night
From: Tennessee, USA
Year: 2008

I have been lucky enough to see this band live, most recently at the All Points West music festival, in Jersey City, NJ. At the time Only By the Night wasn't released, but the band jammed "Sex on Fire". Twas sexy. A family of good genes, King of Leon has come a long way. After fighting for the right to party in the US (what I'm referring to is their fan base), they have finally succeeded, and in a loud way. Their recent recording has gotten a lot of national and international attention. Strained and drunk as Followill might sound through you're bass speakers, he sounds like he's striving for his best. If I pulled my vocal chords like he does I would be hoarse the next day.

I think the best part of "Manhattan" is the bass line. It leads and follows and side winds, and I can't help but listen more to the bassist, Jared, than any of the other instruments. OK so we have a beat. Now, we'll take that beat and think of Manhattan...it fosh works. Manhattan is the beat of the nation, the leader everyone follows. Not everyone aims for or to be in Manhattan, but one cannot ignore it's urban beauty. The streets are full of life and races, they remind me of the last piece of the global puzzle. New York City is a melting pot; you'll probably learn more here in one day than you will in a month someplace else in the continental US. This album is said to follow under the influence of greats like Radiohead and My Morning Jacket...ah ha! No wonder.

Listen:
"I say who are you
No matter who you are
So you dance all night
And you dance all day"

Manhattan is the place to dance. Dance down the street, in the subway, in the office, in the shops, in the club, in the apartments. The sky is the limit. Literally, it really is. The buildings here reach clouds we only see from Airplanes. I recently read an article in Spin, and Caleb said something to the affect that he wasn't going to let his voice fuck up this album. We'll I'll just say, Caleb, you sound fucking phenomenal. On the track, Caleb moans, "I'm on a hunt to kill". Is he hunting in the big city, like a bear in it's natural habitat? Teeth bared and gleaming he's taking everyone down with him, including other musicians on the charts. "It's gonna keep on keep on keep on/ and then forever run". So I take this literally in my analysis, and because I love New York (hate the shirts proclaiming the latter). The city will keep on keep on keep on, and no terrorist or state or politician will stop us. Bright lights are made for dancing, go groove.

Oh and can I just add, Manhattan is like the dance capital of the nation. Go dancers! We'll hip and hop and roll and throb and we'll love it because Manhattan loves us.


Above is the view of the skyline from my side, and I see this when I see I hear this song. It was my mac background for years, and I would just gaze into the screen when homesick. Almost as if if I stared long enough I could apparate onto Mulberry Street and grab a cup at Balducci's.

Floating Fire

Song: "If There's a Rocket Tie Me to It"
Artist: Snow Patrol
Album: A Hundred Million Suns (Deluxe Version)
Year: 2008
From: Dundee, Ireland

The beginning of this song puts me in some sort of beautiful trance. Like the end of an intense yoga session and you rise like you've just awakened for life. Or as if you're seeing space for the first time, floating next to stars. Gary Lightbody's slight obsession with space and time travel may have something to do with this peaceful opener, which builds like the sun rises. It's mysterious like a little alien but as welcoming as a southern mother. A GREAT album opener.

Two years after Eyes Open, Snow Patrol hasn't changed their tone or tune, and that's why I love them. Eyes Open was an entire album full of goodies. Love songs and travel songs and songs I could listen to twenty times and never get bored. It was a stellar album to listen to on dark roads, formfitting to the convenient lyrics: "headlights on dark roads". Waving hand outside of the glass VW window (thanks, Trudy) against the wind; part of me was flying. Eyes Open climaxed almost as good as Kid A, and that's saying a lot. The songs were best one after another, instead of lingering singles. The radio decided to ignore this, of course, and played "Chasing Cars" so much I wanted to barf. On their new album consistent melodies and rhythms thread to the past, such as, "Lifeboats", and "Please Just Take These Photos from Me".

"If There's a Rocket Tie Me to It" begins: "Two weeks like a surplus reprieve/ I found a hair the length of yours on my sleeve/ I wound it round and round my fingers so tight/ it turned to purple and our pulse formed inside/ and I knew the beat 'cause it matched your beat/ I still remember it from our chest to chest and feet to feet."

Alright. Clear intimacy. But I don't feel like I'm invading. Gary loved it so much he is inviting us to hear his heart beat-enter drummer. His orgasm is on fire; primitive and volatile, wild in nature and space. Can you be wild in space? I don't know, I think you would just float, but maybe past pluto it's possible.

Gary seems to only remember "a pulse, a pulse", must have been some intense one on one sessions. Both bed and studio. I want to know how my pulse differs from someone elses. They all feel the same, but what is the attraction to a specific pulse? It's the love behind the blood. The face behind the veins.

Jump to: 3:11 on the track. "Whoa whoa whoa" the band repeats. Something as surprised them. Something is happening. The trees move, the pulse is all around them. I wonder if they took any drugs while recording? It's as if their senses are heightened and everything is glorified. The lights seem brighter, the trains seem faster. Snow Patrol is hungry for the pulse of life/nature/humans. Have you ever seen things pulse? Besides a wrist or neck. How about grass or pillows or colors? How about a page in a book, fluttering like eagle wings? Have you seen fire come to life? Everything pulsing comes to life like Grimm stories, guiding your own pulse by your immediate surroundings. Everything is one, organic, and flowing with the pulse of energy glowing in the world like Sigur Ros' orbs. My favorite lyrics, "I break you don't, I was always set to self destruct though ". His sacrifice, his submission and admittance. It's like silk against rock, water running along marble. The structure will never be worn thin, his voice carries too far to be intimidated or pushed away. You can't shrug or sway to this song, you have to smile. I would die to see this song live. This is one of my "favorite bands" I've never seen live. Hello Santa, it's Ash.



Someone in this band wants to fly out of the solar system.

Skinny Bitch

Song: "Ballad of a Thin Man"

Artist: Bob Dylan

Album: Highway 61 Revisited

Year: 1965

From: Duluth, Minnesota

Highway 61 Revisited made a seismic crack in the continent of folk music, decoded routes of unwilling fans and initiated parkways of electric usage.  Initial brooding chords remind me of a carnival freak show: "You walk into the room"- immediately unleashes a loner.  A person who's being stared at and staring.  I see ferris wheels and tents in black and white, wavering with southern heat.  A secret is hiding in the mind of Mr. Jones.  Dylan partners "lepers and crooks" in the same line.  Two scarred souls are family to one another; though in the everyday scheme they are people unwanted, hated, feared, unsteady.  A "one-eyed midget" welcomes hitchhikers and family strays stinky as dogs to the tent where all oddities become one.

Can Dylan justify these unfair qualities into some translatable mood? The answer is, well yes. He portrays these characters not within a story line, but like puppets on a stage of mean machinery. One for each string. The geek is a freak. Dylan may be associating his self as one of those puppets, trying to pull the string of record tyrants off his back- ultimately he becomes the freak who stands out, musically. We like this freak. This song has always reminded me of Something Wicked This Way Comes. Dylan has a "sword swallower" and so does the book of traveling outsiders. Dylan is alone on the desert plains, spinning Mr. Jones with his windmill of questions. Desolate sunsets and dark alleys loop brilliantly morphing shadowy rhythms with words, creating patterns of fear. Should we be scared?  You decide.  Think about it, have you ever been willing to enter the freak tent at a carnival, knowing you would be the freak because you're the only "normal" person standing and staring?  Staring is rude, you know.  Or maybe you weren't scared to enter the tent because you retorted you're own fear to fake abnormalities.  Shunning the possibility of a fifth limb or mermaids tail, not being able to admit they or it might actually be real.  I think it would be pretty cool if evolution slickly fooled us.  Quiet on the nomad horizon, hush your judgements.

In Rolling Stone issue 937, it's says "[Ballad of a Thin Man] delivered the definitive sixties comment on the splintering hip/straight fault line: 'Something is happening here, but you don't what it is/ Do you, Mr. Jones?' ".  Dylan could be referring to the "Joneses", a prototypical American family.  He's might be questioning average American standards, values, cores, and traditions.  This, in retrospect, would be living up to his counterculture attitude that all 1960s musicians carried like a chip on their shoulders.  It has been said "Mr. Jones" could also reference various journalists who could not or refused to understand Dylan's songs and ideas.  In this song, Mr. Jones doesn't know what's happening "here", can't make sense of the situation he's seeing/hearing/feeling.  He's lost, a panoramic aloofness but somehow has to procure results because it's his job.  Tough life.  

It's hard to tell because Dylan was so frustratingly obscure when it came to his music, yet responded with simple banter, pushing the machinery away unsuccessfully because he was only answering annoying questions with annoyed fragmented bullet points.  "Ballad of a Thin Man" has been covered over twenty times, and most recently appeared in the epic film I'm Not There, covered by Stephen Malkmus.  So in these modern times, who's more of a freak show?  Britney The Tasmanian Spears- blonde, toned, a Jones?  Or Robert Zimmerman, tortured rock god who just notes what he sees?

Like A Stamp

Song: "Blue and Gold Print"

Artist: Mates of State

Album: Re-Arrange us

Year: 2008

From: Lawrence, Kansas (originally)

Husband and wife team, who's treating who right?  I suppose they mean each other, although they're "just a little bit lost", "just a little unkept".  Piano piano intros trum la lum.  Obviously, some sort of toxic love is enabling a childish love.  Is it one of the same?  Yes, maturity and responsibility can be lost in the pitter patter of an organ.  Grace transforms into an angelic child.  An innocence only a five year old can truly exchange as brutal honesty.  I swear I will love you...gaga feed me something warm.  These mates sing about their first meeting, and subsequently became the "greatest day of his life".  Is this one sided?  

Do they have kids, cause this dynamic duo is awaiting what happens after "the kids are all grown"?  Not too sure, but they aren't intimidated by the passing of seconds and how that influences their love.  What is a first love?  A person who you can never forget, that's for sure.  Someone who can creep into your thoughts like a cat on nip.  A mindless love, as they describe.  Someone who doesn't make sense, but still exists in memory.  Not for relishing, at times for annoyance, but mostly for growth, well hopefully.  When MOS sing, "I know he's treating me right".  Is this in compared to the prior "he", or just generally?  Clearly- if they're discussing an old lover- he successfully creeped his way into this song.  

The layers of vocal chorus's and piano chords create a beautiful overlapping of emotions.  A sadness and a victory co-exist.  Past and present combust in harmonies too pretty for the cover art.  A picture frame, or rather this song's picture frame shouldn't be so brooding.  Instead, I think it should resemble "Little House on the Prairie", sans prairie plus flatland. Like Iowa on it's most beautiful day, which I assume would be sometime in October.  A Little house of filled with dark wood and tiny silver frames, sitting on the outskirts of some dirty turnpike.

Listen for the love, and I'm wondering, do you see Kansas, California, Green Gables, or a random hotel room?

Balancing The Spin

Song: "Spinning Plates"
Artist: Radiohead
Album:Amnesiac & I Might be Wrong: Live Recordings
Year: 2001 (Amnesiac)
From: UK

Radiohead. Dear dear Radiohead. This has to be one of my favorite songs by them. Amnesiac is an album to conquer no matter how you look at the equation of lyrics and Jonny's guitar and Yorke's desolate voice, bound for some sort of video game hell. "Spinning Plates" originates from the reversed backing track of "I Will". Yorke learned the lyrics backwards, and then sang the reversed lyrics backwards. His droning claims clouds too high for airplanes, clouds only glimpsed by lucky astronauts and turquoise carebears.

What feels like spinning plates? What is this thing or feeling or event or drug that makes Yorke sound so uneasy about his whereabouts? The song begins as if the band's on an uneasy precipice, like they're about to jump off Mount Everest or something so daunting they can't bear but to chatter the words again again and again. The rusty flipping sounds like records being tossed through hands of evil DJ's, but in a good way, for the sound. You follow me?

It's like Radiohead took the sound of spinning, the vibrations of a birds wings or the noise of a propeller, and made it somehow perfectly fit their perplexing mood. Did they record in a cave? If I was recording this song I might need to be in a darkened hole with no mirrors so as to avoid pictures of my own warped mouth, voice, and eyebrows.

Spinning plates make me nervous.

When you see an acrobat or talented street artists toying with glass that's not meant for anything else than gluttony...I mean it gets you riled. I'm thinking 'don't drop them!' or 'If you drop them it'll be funny but sad because you can't maintain the pressure of a perfect circle'. The inordinate balance of degree is relayed in this song. Radiohead is sublime in every way possible. I bow down.

Bixby's Geography

First attempt.

Song: "Bixby Canyon Bridge"

Artist: Death Cab For Cutie

Album: Narrow Stairs

Year: 2008

From: Bellingham, Washington

"Until I eventually arrived at the place where you soul had died.  

Barefoot in the shallow creek, I grabbed some stones from underneath, 

and waited for you to speak to me.  

And the silence it became so very clear that you had long ago disappeared. 

I cursed myself at being surprised that this didn't play like it did in my mind." 

What do I get from this?

I see Gibbard underneath the bridge, at a ridge or in the middle of a creek or standing on a dirt hills, like the ones bums sleep under sometimes, fighting against starvation and heat exhaustion.  Gibbard is surprised his imagination didn't fit the reality of the situation- with a loved one, with the scenery?  Right place, wrong time?  What happens if he keeps imagining wrong?  He doesn't like incorrect imagining (see last line quoted lyrics).  Was he there with someone else, or reaching out to someone that has let this world, like a spirit of ghost?  Is this dead person a personal lover, or someone rather famous?  

To me it looks like this person has been gone for quite some time.  Gibbard might find solace in the place underneath this iconic bridge.  Maybe he left on bad terms with this person, or maybe his grief cannot let this spirit go.  Clearly the silence fails to appease his mind.  He wants some sort of response, a sign in verbal form, or a nature sign, or a wave of abrupt emotion.   

Why Bixby Canyon?  

Bixby Canyon is a bridge Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac (to name a few) referenced in a lot of their stories- whether fragmented, hinted, hidden, or explosively obvious.  Part of the beatnik's beat.  A bridge connecting two lands with gorgeous scenery overlooking the pacific ocean. Was Gibbard somewhere near this bridge in California when this song was written?  Or did he go there, leave, and was then inspired to write this song?  Ginsberg wrote about the bridge in the fall, for his piece titled "Bixby Canyon".  He said, "...bouquet of old seaweed/ on a striped blanket, kelp tentacle spread/ round the prayer place."  Ginsberg references Neal Cassidy in the poem, referring to others writers of the beat generation.  Maybe he was there with Cassidy at one point, or Cassidy there by himself, wandering the ferns, picking the grass, or making sand castles.

Favorite climax:

2:39- BCB picks up like hurricane winds, becoming blurrier and blurrier by the second, taking a dream-like quality.  The buzzing undertone of selected instruments wind together creating a climatic mix- like different flavors of cotton candy being blended together.  This bridge, probably intended to echo the song's title, is the literal transition from Gibbard's mind to paper to record.  He says "dream" enough for us to get he may have been dreaming under the Bixby Canyon Bridge.  He may have been dreaming of the bridge.  He may have been dreaming of someone else on the bridge, or riding across it at one point on tour.  I see colors of the sunlight, moonlight, afternoon light, the Pacific's natural beauty.  Something pure, waves of colors and emotions.  A place fighting pollution and destruction, forcing dreams which can't ignore the location they spawned from.  A subconscious significance.  

Listen.

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