Ready, steady, race

Have things been really slow in blogland these days or is it just me? Besides my own lack of rambling many of the blogs I check daily have also been pretty slow. Admittedly I've had a bit of writers block the past couple of weeks. Here in Sweden everyone is sort of bummed out about the long winter. Every time we get a hint of spring we get another immediate dose of winter. Last Sunday I was in a t-shirt working on m'sweet's bike and by Tuesday I was clad in my usual long johns and all-terrain boots. I'll use the bleak weather as a scapegoat to my inactivity here.

However, I can tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed my DJing adventure this past weekend (see setlist below). It had been probably a year since my last attempt. It was good fun and a nice change of pace for me. In a perfect world I'd get behind the decks about once a month; we shall see if that is in the stars for me here. I took a few chances (Phil Collins' 'Easy Lover') but generally kept my selections pretty safe as to not disrupt the bouncing bodies in front of me.

In other news, my strenuous search to find a bicycle of my liking that wasn't marked up 300% more than it should be finally paid off. Well, you have to figure in a little bit of a price increase to import anything overseas. Next Tuesday I'll trek down to Stockholm and lay down some coin for a brand new, fairly priced, Specialized Langster: single speed (natch) with front and back brakes (imagine that!). I'll throw a 16t cog and lockring on the fixed side of the flip flop, remove the back brake, put on the Koobi saddle I already have and my Nashbar time trial bars. But now I'm just getting dorky. We'll chat more soon, promise.

CDJ

March 24, 2006, Kalmar Nation / Pang Musik!
Uppsala, Sweden

I pushed buttons which made the following sounds:

Blizzard of '77 - Nada Surf
1995 - The Radio Dept.
Storming - Great Lakes
Forgiveness - City on Film
Higher Power - Jens Lekman
Cry for a Shadow - Beat Happening
Love is All - The Rapture
These Days - Nico
Inspiration Information - Shuggie Otis
Minha Menina - Os Mutantes
Strange Powers - Magnetic Fields
A Tourist No More - Resplendent
I Touch Roses - Book of Love
Let's Talk Turkey - IMA Robot
Love Plus One - Haircut 100
Like You - Gramme
Movin' On - Yoko Ono
New Mate - Figurine
Schrapnell - Isolee
Weekday - Walter Meego
Supersexy '67 - Coltrane Motion
Out of Zone - Marbles
La La Love You - Pixies
Yes She is My Skinhead Girl - Unrest
Summer Babe - Pavement
The Party's Crashing Us - Of Montreal
Decptacon - Le Tigre
Damaged Goods - Gang of Four
Drop the Pressure - Mylo
The Comeback (Ratatat mix) - Shout Out Louds
Easy Lover - Phil Collins and Philip Bailey
The Kids Just Wanna Have Fun - The Legends
Needy Girl - Chromeo
Let's Go - The Cars
You've Got Everything Now - The Smiths
Who Can Act - Firefox AK
Some Indulgence - The Embassy
In Between Days - The Cure
We Share Our Mother's Health - The Knife


A big huge thanks to Gustav Sundh for all of his help. We make for a fabulous pair behind the decks.

Post #128 in a series of unnumbered posts

I stepped in a small patch of mud today, first time in five months. I wiped off my shoe in soft snow. Sun brought color to my pale cheeks. I cut the corner by walking through the gas station's lot, shaved off a minute, slushing. Heard (in song) that some species of birds had returned from Africa or wherever they spend their winters. I usually don't know what time it is, don't wear a watch anymore, have thrown out calendar after calendar. I prefer a flock of those birds to land in the yard: Time to start over. Somewhere insects are swarming around a huge hive, preparing to infect and reproduce. Seasons never sneak up on me; I document their deconstruction.

Stretch the canvas across the canvas

At one point in time I was going around saying that this was my favorite piece of vinyl EVER. If you catch me in the right mood I still might say that. Today I'd say it. It's not a dusty classic that my parents turned me on to and it's not that first pressing of a Misfits record that I'm supposed to use words like "mint" with. I bought this because a band I highly enjoyed, Number One Cup, released this as a side project and peaked my interest. These are 2 of the most perfectly synth-kissed pop songs I've heard and they're really special to me. So there.

My copy of this record is, oh, about 5,000 miles away but all around good dude Eric Metronome just supplied me with the mp3s. And I pass the goodness on to you...

The Eleventh Hour 7"
Released on Wurlitzer Jukebox, 1997

The Team That Never Wins - mp3
b/w
Bulletproof - mp3
I recommend having a copy of this for yourself. Scoot over here; it appears Michael Lenzi still has some copies available for consumption.

If something gets in your way, turn

Above is an amazing image I came across the other day while scouring the internet in an attempt to reacquaint myself with the fixed gear and single-speed bike culture. Those of you who have relied on a bike to get you from point A to B can appreciate this: the determined rider, the fact that a map doesn't necessarily only belong in a car, a simple mechanism working incredibly well. Here we have the most legitimate form of transportation in my opinion. I am one less car.

If you've been following along with me in blogland you'll know that while in Chicago I prowled the city streets to and fro in all sorts of weather on a beat-up Schwinn LeTour that was converted into a fixed gear. Wait, let's have a look at her...



..aah, memories. She sleeps in my parent's basement. This bike got me where I needed to be when I needed to be there. Flat tire, fixed it on S. Michigan Ave, made it to work on time. Back wheel loosened up a bit causing the chain to lose tension, flipped the bike over are retightened on the corner of Division and Ashland, made it home in time to catch the first pitch on WGN. If it broke I fixed it, usually without the help of anyone but little old me, all part of the beauty. This relationship I forged was put on hold when I packed up and moved abroad. I don't like to admit it but I've been a bus rider for the past 3 months. I don't like it. I don't like it one bit.

Last week something in me snapped. It seriously only took the temperature to slightly increase and one minute of peeking around Fixed Gear Gallery for me to decide that I'm back in the game. No, I don't have a bike here yet but I'm back into it. I'm planning and plotting moves. The cranks in my head are turning, not coasting, continuously spinning. I'm sweating again. I'm out of breath again. I'm leaving the house early just to have extra time to ride and take in a beautiful morning. I feel this.

The place is roaring

I've conjured a romantic vision of a man who walked around San Francisco (he walked around everywhere) in the 1950s fresh from coming down off Desolation Ridge. Three months up on a mountain all in preparation for a night out on the town? As I sit on the bus I read 'Desolation Angels' and my head spins: fifteen words I've never heard before on that page, who's that, where they gonna go now? Sentences swirl around and bump into others and they form one long sentence, nevermind the punctuation. I've romantcized all this; those big typewriters and their drunk fingers. "I'm gonna read him or that next (no more Beat)." And then a box arrives from N. America and it's 30 pounds of clothes and paper and electronics and I open it and out jumps a brown book all battered and I'm back where I started, in love with and heart beating to it again...

From 'Desolation Angels'
Jack Kerouac - The Beat Generation - mp3

Whether this sums up the essence of what Kerouac and his gang were all about or not or it's just a voice that I somehow trust to tell me some sort of truth, here it/he is/was.

On bass, to know him is to love him, Neil Rhodes

There's two exact reasons why today has been a good day (cue Ice Cube, wait, no, cue Sleep Out)...

1. In the mail, came my very own advance copy of Sleep Out's 'I Was Your Shroud'. Thank You Quinn. I've been really anticipating this. Now I just got it today and haven't had a whole lot of time to sit down with it but from what I've heard it's totally solid. I'd suggest a visit to this one website where you can preview some tunes for yourself. I dig 'Old Mare'.

2. Mostly every day, after I get home from class, I sit down and eat some lunch in front of the ol' teevee. About a month ago I realized that a channel was playing an hour of The Wonder Years every day. Sure, it's one of my favorite shows from the past and it's nice to take in some Kevin, Winnie and Paul while I'm stuffing my face but there's one real reason to tune in...and that is to hopefully catch that magical episode where Kevin joins a rock n' roll band called The Electric Shoes. Classic television. Today they played it, I got really happy, and I watched it along side a bowl of half-assed tortellini. The last time I saw it I was in Rick Valentin's living room while Wolfie was recording our first album (or maybe it was our first 7", don't exactly remember the occasion, but it was a while back). Some people remember where they were when JFK was shot; I remember where I was when I saw Kevin Arnold meet Larry Beeman.

Anyways, that was today.

And wouldn't you know tomorrow something might happen too? Or maybe the next day. Hard to say.

A fiver on a Friday

+ My pal Eric Metronome has taken on the extremely prolific challenge of recording and posting a cover song every week this year. I've been tuning in for the past few weeks and have yet to be disappointed. And I wouldn't expect to be, he's got great taste...who else is covering "A Hit" by Smog?

+ In the fast-paced world of daily blogging who's got the time to actually visit each and every site that they regularly read just to see if it's been updated? Well, RSS solved that problem. But now it's starting to look like people don't even have enough time for RSS! If this sounds like you, and if you're really into MP3 blogs, then go ahead and check out this free OS X app Mr. Kempa created: iSuckMP3Blogs. Smart or lazy, you decide.

+ I know a little about baseball. I like to think I know something about soccer (eventhough it's called football) and I rambled on about my previous obsession with ice hockey (scroll down) earlier this week. But basketball! This is a sport I was never any good at and therefore happened to not pay too much attention to. But back in the day you had to watch the good ol' slamdunk competition. Spud Webb! A friend of mine had the 1986 dunk competition on VHS and we'd watch it over and over, mainly to laugh at a no-name guy do the most boring dunk ever. Thanks to AJ for the link.

+ The Like Young's upcoming album 'Last Secrets' is going to blow the doors off of anyone who is into moody, rockin', lyrically-driven music. Joe and Amanda recorded this on their own and they got it exactly right. The guitars sound so crunchy and perfect. It's coming out on Polyvinyl in May but you can go peep some MP3s on their site right this very second.

+ In my Swedish class today we played Pictionary. We had to quickly think of a team name. The first team blurted "pannkaka" and my team followed suit and said, "semla". Confused? I was too. In English this translates to pancake vs. a traditional Swedish pastry. Whatever happened to Wildcats vs. Vikings? Oh, we won easily.