2018: May 3rd 6:28 AM

It is my opinion that Alice in Chains never had a bad album until The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here. Now, I like pretty much all the songs on this record, however, I find it difficult to listen to as an album, top to bottom. Maybe their time has run out, however the absolute Shock of finding that I really dug When Black Gives Way To Blue earned them a lot of respect in my eyes. In high school, pre-grunge, Anthrax was my band. After the influx of new material with the post-Nirvana wave, Alice was. Dirt made an ENORMOUS impression on me; I mean, there is no way to overestimate the effect that record had on me. And pretty much still does, although time and life experience has obviously diluted that experience. When Layne Staley died I felt what people felt when Cobain did. I followed Jerry Cantrell's two solo records and liked them to varying degrees, but something was, obviously, missing. A lot of time passed and then James Duval came in to the picture and I felt divided; I figured Cantrell was at least 50% of the band to begin with (at least), and his name did not have the 'branding' that AlC did, so why begrudge the guy? The test came down to the music, and I have to say, I dug Blue a lot. It's never been in regular rotation, but then again most Alice binges are sporadic events at this point and they usually center around the original albums. Recently I dug Dinosaurs back out and listened to it and found I really like it. The title track is especially haunting musically, and here's a video I'd never knew existed! The one thing that diminishes the track for me just a skosh is the slightly awkward rhyming couplet in the chorus, with "Jesus don't like a queer" working but only just - 'like' seems like a weak verb there. But that's nitpicking, which is okay when something is this good.

Playlist from 5/02:

Trust Obey - Fear and Bullets
Prince - Sign O' The Times
Kings of Leon - Because of the Times
The Raveonettes - Ghost single
The Raveonettes - 2016 Atomized
Alice in Chains - The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here

Card of the day:

What is it with this card? Actually, now I know what all the recurrences of this one were warning me about - I'm not putting it down here, but suffice it to say it's something I have to solve and when I do, I will have a tiny influx of $$$.

2018: May 2nd 6:32 AM

So, obviously the consistency on these posts has begun to suffer a bit. My output here is still great, in my own obnoxious opinion, but it has wavered. This doesn't mean I'm losing gumption, or the new idea that held me in its thrall has gotten old, it just means shit has been hectic. So first, something a little less hectic:



Sign O' The Times is probably my favorite album by Prince, and one that holds me perpetually in its thrall; just hearing the opening notes of The Ballad of Dorothy Parker, with its odd, wobbly sustained keyboard note in the background and overly gated beat means I'll be immediately strapping this one in on the iPod at work in a few. From opening title track to the sexual juxtaposition of the two closers (Hot Thing is a one-night-stand sex romp, followed immediately by Forever in my Life which is something of an ode to settling down), Sign O' The Times IS 1987 to me, start to finish, in tone, themes and presentation, even if I probably only heard the title track at the time. Goes to show how every on the radio after its release was probably taking from it.

Anyway, I don't know if things have been more hectic or I'm just more scattered - well, #2 is definitely true - but I haven't been able to get a lot of work done on the T12 project. It's been a parade of responsibilities at work, even though I often don't feel like I'm doing much and the days are dragging, something that usually never happens to me. Friends say I'm just suffering from starting over in a new place, all my old protocols and procedures suddenly out the window. That must be it.

Playlist from yesterday:

The Ocean - Anthropocentric
Prince - Sign O' The Times
Prince & 3RDEYEGIRL - PLECTRUMELECTRUM
Boy Harsher - Country Girl E.P.
Trust Obey - Fear and Bullets
Black Queen - Fever Daydream
Kings of Leon - Only By The Night

Card for the day:

And there you go. I just interpreted this card as the ruins of an old paradigm for my good friend Missi yesterday - she also does a daily pull - and just like that, I'm taking a few paragraphs ago about the growing pains of an all-new situation and I pull the Ten of Swords to further emphasize that, yeah, rebuild dude.

2018: April 30th 1:19 PM

Sinking heavily back into Chasms debut album from two years ago, On The Legs of Love Purified. Such an amazing piece of music. Keller and I ran into Sky from the band at the recent Soft Moon show and she related that they were in the process of recording a new album. I could not be more excited.

The move is done. Nearly drove me mad, but it's done.

Playlist from yesterday:

Twilight Singers - Blackberry Belle
The Veils - Total Depravity

Short list, eh?

Card for the day:

The watery aspect of air, so the Queen of Swords is the emotional aspect of intellect, so it's kind of pointing to a mixture of book smart and street smart (kinda - that's pretty loose as interpretations go). In my exhaustion, I'm unable to pinpoint how this applies.

2018: April 29th 8:07 AM

This song f*&kin' Rocks!



I've loved this song since I was a kid, and for some reason despite its heavy use of what is now very 80s synth patches and reversed drum sound, this one never felt old or dated to me. Of course, now, because of groups like M83 and Cut Copy, those 80s sounds have been re-contextualized and don't sound quite so dated anymore. Lots of radio yesterday - which is rare - but we shuffled back and forth in K's car to prep her Mom's place for the move today and Jack FM was on for most of that time, and what's more, they played a lot of really good songs. This song was one of those.

Playlist yesterday:

Radio
Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine - White People and the Damage Done
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats - Blood Lust

Card for today:

2018: April 28th 11:34 AM - More New Zeal & Ardor!

While this one is considerably more Black Metal, there's something about the atmospherics behind the main music that reminds me of Zen Guerrilla's Positronic Raygun - a little bit, but its there. 

Most anticipated read coming up? My friend Anthony just leant me these and I am stoked to dig in:

Playlist yesterday:

Arctic Monkeys - AM

Guns N' Roses - Appetite for Destruction

Afghan Whigs - Black Love

Soul Coughing - El Oso

Mr. Bungle - California

Windhand - Grief's Infernal Flower

Iwan Rebroff - Singt Weisen von Wodka und Wein

Swans - Glowing Man (Disc 2)

Card for the day:

Good. It's going to take ALL of my Will to make it through moving K's Mom this weekend. I take this card as a very good sign.

Listen Now: Junior Jr.

I've been meaning to post this one for a while. My friend Duf is a great example of someone taking charge of his life. A few years ago he opened a comic shop in Elizabeth City, NC. Here's their FB page. Next, recently Duf took his love of music and parlayed it into a band. They played their first show last month, and although the footage doesn't quite do them justice, here's a taste; I'm super excited to hear the album Junior Jr. makes - I think it will be outstanding based on the songs we're hearing now.



That solo at 3:12!



Duf has confided in me there's a video coming for their song Guns A' Blazin - I'll break 'premiering' that here the MOMENT it goes up.

2018: April 27th 9:21 AM

My obsession with the Arctic Monkey's 2013 album AM has been slowly growing over the last year or two. The radio at work - which I usually drown out with my headphones - bled lead single Do I Wanna Know? constantly from the time of its release until... well, I'm not sure when. In that time, when I would hear it I loved it, and I already loved the band's 2006 debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not, but I'd lost track of the band after that and when I attempted to catch up, I can't say I took to Favorite Worst Nightmare or Humbug as much. Part of that may very well just have been me checking back in too late and finding they hadn't remade the first record - not that I would have consciously wanted that, but sometimes I hold exceptional albums against the rest of a band's career. At any rate, I grabbed A.M. two years ago or so and haven't let up since. The last few days though, it sealed the deal and it's been the record I most look forward to playing when I wake up. I don't always indulge that urge, but when I do, those 12 songs fill my blood with joy. Here's the one I woke up wanting to hear today:



No post yesterday in all my running around but I'm playing hooky today, my cousin and his wife are in and will be attending Drinking with Comics tonight, where one of the books I'll be talking about is most assuredly Ales Kot and Danijel Zezelj's Days of Hate, which I can't stop telling people about. 9 PM, streaming live on the Drinking with Comics' FB Page.

Playlist from Thursday, 4/26:

Afghan Whigs - In Spades

Arctic Monkeys - AM

Queens of the Stone Age - Villains

Dead Cross - Eponymous

Drab Majesty - The Demonstration

Afghan Whigs - Black Love

Card of the day: 

More Hod; also, note the Hebrew letter Shin at the Child Horus' feet - in further Kabbahlistic terms, this connects the card to the Shin Path on the Tree of Life. Shin is the Left Hand Path, which is associated with imbalance, hence the stigma on 'The Left Hand Path', or dark magick. Can't say that totally hits home with me at the moment, but I've been known to express interest (see my Nameless annotations), so perhaps this is a warning to avoid the urge to explore these systems if the inclination recurs, which honestly, I guess since the move, it has - putting hands on my collection of odd and arcane books culled from various places and people over the years makes me want to open them again. Plus, Scrying keeps coming up again. That's not inherently bad, but it can lead to some bad things if you're not careful.