This isn’t a single to blast loudly. This isn’t a song for the outdoors. It’s one to play on an overcast fall day, much like today. In a place like here, a small town in NW Washington where the wind blows heavy and rain streams down icy and cold. It’s solitary, isolated. Alone.
These connections we make can be easy in today’s world (especially if you land more on the middle-ground ambivert end of introversion, as I do), but knowing and understanding ourselves may very well be the greatest challenge of all.
Gardiner’s style of writing is sometimes witty, filled with a wondrous humor, a lonely sadness, a fond goodbye. Creative and astute, unabashed at the blatantness of failure, of broken dreams, at one moment there’s an inside joke about an oddball frequent customer (Anacortes is filled with them) followed by a painful memory of crying in desperation in an empty, vacant shop.
It was the beginning of a self-inflicted dive down a rabbit hole of self-exploration and personal analysis. End goal: greater self-awareness. Never have I had such a potently powerful musical experience!
To say that 2018 has been somewhat of a tumultuous year would be an understatement. It’s been erratic and transformative for sure, filled with chaos and excitement and monumental, life changing catalysts. Upheaval, though, doesn’t have to be a bad thing. But even good, it requires periods of adjustment, rejuvenation, and contemplation–especially for a classic… Continue reading Falling Man: A Mixtape for a Tumultuous Year
They say the strongest human emotion is fear. In fact, it tops Robert Plutchik’s list of eight basic emotions. Love does not find its way into Plutchik’s theory on emotions, but it does find its way (if just barely) into Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Fear, and Love. Two intense emotions; and both of them come into play… Continue reading Falling Hard: Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats Releases “Wasteland”
Quick caveat: As of the publishing of this post, I am still reading Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. In fact, I have yet to break past the first hundred pages. Earlier this month I drove down to SeaTac for a one-day business trip to Scottsdale, AZ. At the airport, I reconnected… Continue reading Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk
The turning of the clock. Another year gone. I’m now rooted in middle-age. Mikey’s all growns up, as Vince Vaughan’s character would shout in the 1996 film Swingers. Today is 2017. Tomorrow is 2018. The change from one year to the next always evokes a clashing sense of poignancy and hope. People create lists of… Continue reading Jukebox Rebellion: An Entirely Disruptive Year Gone
It’s been a while since I’ve written about a new band and a new release. Of late, my sights have been in the opposite direction: the past. Over the past several years, my collection has expanded greatly, but additions have predominantly had release dates anywhere from 5 to 50 years back. Case in point: if… Continue reading Does Last Leaves’ New LP Pick Up Where The Lucksmiths Left Off?
Alright, so there’s really no one way to do pretty much anything under the sun. That includes “How to Shop on Discogs” — there really is no RIGHT way. But this post is about how I shop and how I recommend shopping on the music marketplace platform. It’s also about how this method led me… Continue reading How to Shop on Discogs (or, How I Discovered a Side Project of The Brian Jonestown Massacre)
