Current Soundtrack: The Beautiful South - "Manchester/If Teardrops Were Silver"
Current Mood: distressed
golightly@confessions123.com * The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * The Blog Roll * "Can You Picture That?" * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon
[to leave comments, click on the time-stamp below, then scroll down on the new page] – All text (c) 2006 Jamie S. Rich
I'M A MAN WITH A MISSION IN TWO OR THREE EDITIONS
I've taken advantage of my freelance snafus and my newly halved schedule at the day job to hunker down this week and work on "Romeo may be Bleeding, but Mercutio is Dead." That's the Lance Scott story we're going to serialize on his journal this summer to promote The Everlasting.
I just finished the first draft.
Nearly 13,000 words. And I think it's pretty good, all told.
I also watched a movie today and wrote a review of it for DVDTalk, to be posted as soon as I have a chance to read it over.
I'd say I was unstoppable if I wasn't starving and exhausted.
Current Soundtrack: Joëlle's Beatnik California Travel Mix (incuding Elvis Cosello's "Everyday I Write the Book")
Current Mood: accomplished
golightly@confessions123.com * The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * The Blog Roll * "Can You Picture That?" * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon
[to leave comments, click on the time-stamp below, then scroll down on the new page] – All text (c) 2006 Jamie S. Rich
I AGAINST EYE
Little do people know that my career as a writer begain in Croatia in the mid-'90s, where I had my horror novel, Mahnitost, published.
This is not a doctored cover. It's the real thing. The title, if I recall, translates as "Frenzy." What happened was, in 1994 or '95, I was assisting on the Grendel Tales
Current Soundtrack: Suede, Coming Up
Current Mood: lazy
golightly@confessions123.com * The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * The Blog Roll * "Can You Picture That?" * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon
[to leave comments, click on the time-stamp below, then scroll down on the new page] – All text (c) 2006 Jamie S. Rich
HE KISSED ME AND IT FELT LIKE A HIT
Fans of The Office: US who have not seen the second season finale, don't read past this photo until you do.
I can't believe that a show I found morally repugnant as an idea--a cover version of a truly original series--has turned into one of my favorite programs every week. Thanks to everyone who hammered on me to tell me that it had gotten good once it had caught it's stride, because I'm never going back now.
Last night's episode was amazing. The Pam and Jim romance has been one of the sweetest things on television, and after the tension caused by last week's airing of grievances from the complaint box, it was a nice relief to see the opening sequence with the two of them getting along. Pam's wink, Jim's smile, Dwight's frustration--all was right in the cubicle.
But then, who expected Jim's confession? When Jan told him he had to tell somebody, they completely rope-a-doped us, making us think he was going to tell her about the transfer. I swear, I literally gasped and put my hand over my mouth until the scene was over. My eyes were full of tears. I could not believe what I was seeing. Did any scientific device register the collective tremor of all the nice guys and girls across the nation who finally saw one of their own do what we fear we never could?
And then the last scene, I had the same reaction. I just could not believe my eyes.
Let's just hope that this isn't the kiss of death that so often happens on sitcoms when two people who have been kept apart finally come together. If they take a cue from the UK Office, Jim may end up back in purgatory next season, with everyone knowing his very public shame. But then, wouldn't it be nice to see an actual relationship between two people we like for once?
Current Soundtrack: Johnny Boy, Johnny Boy
Current Mood: giddy
golightly@confessions123.com * The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * The Blog Roll * "Can You Picture That?" * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon
[to leave comments, click on the time-stamp below, then scroll down on the new page] – All text (c) 2006 Jamie S. Rich
PERMANENT RECORDS: I FEEL SO GOOD WHEN I LOOK AT YOU, I REFUSE TO BELIEVE THERE WAS EVER A QUESTION
Permanent Records is a year-long project. Each Friday (or thereabouts), I will post a new entry about one specific album, chosen due to its significance to myself as a fan. Though the list is numbered, a particular record's placement should not be considered a ranking. There will be 52 albums in all.
This endeavor is based on a concept started by Chris Tamarri at Crisis/Boring Change. It has since been expanded as a concept, as Neal Shaffer takes on a study of album covers over at Leftwich.
34. 808 STATE - EX:EL (1991)
Personnel: Graham Massey, Martin Price, Andrew Barker, Darren Partington, everything; Bernard Sumner, guest vocals ("Spanish Heart"); Björk Gudmundsdottir, guest vocals ("Qmart" & "Ooops")
Producer: 808 State/ Label: Tommy Boy/ZTT
It's always a bit odd to be present at a shift in the musical landscape. In general in life, when big changes happen, we aren't really aware of them. It's often more gradual than we expected, or being caught up in the makeover makes us blind to it. Not so in music, because music has to be experienced, and if it sounds different than what came before it, it's obvious. It's exciting, and it's visceral, and it can be felt.
808 State was just such a shift for me. They debuted as I graduated in high school and released their awesome second album, EX:EL, during my first year in college. I had heard electronic music before, listened to synthesizer pop, but techno wasn't really part of my vocabulary. I know house and other club sounds were developing, but I wasn't yet running out to nightclubs to dance, and it was very much an underground thing. EX:EL--largely instrumental, completely electronic--was a momentous arrival for my ears.
I was an inbetweener at this point. In so many ways. It was life-transition time. What would I become now that I was making my first stumbling steps out on my own? Would the records of my now fading youth still be enough for me? One could mark my initial progression as a music fan from 1983, when Duran Duran released the single for "New Moon on Monday," to December 1990, when I saw the Trash Can Sinatras perform at the KROQ Acoustic Christmas at the Universal Amphitheatre in Los Angeles. I was gobsmacked by their gorgeous four-song set--"Obscurity Knocks," "Thrupenny Tears," "You Made Me Feel," and "Only Tongue Can Tell"--and the fact that Frank Reader had my same haircut and the same round, mirrored sunglasses I wore. I was about to get my first CD player, and the first two discs I would buy at Something Else while I was home on break were the Smiths Peel Session
Raves and dance music were the new thing, growing up like an umbrella to protect me from the acid rain of grunge. New Order, Depeche Mode, and the like had served as a preamble to this era, but there was a darkness pervading that music and there was a definite focus on lyrics. The growing techno scene of the early '90s wasn't about either of those things. It was about big, bright hooks and a culture of collectiveness. 808 State was a weird doorway into that. They were a hold-over from baggy, and I had been hipped to them when MTV lumped them into the Madchester scene along with the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, and Inspiral Carpets. I knew they were different than those other bands, but I didn't yet know what 808 State was actually indicative of.
I bought EX:EL and loved it. It's not entirely avant garde, having gone completely off the map of recognizable song structures the way, say, an Aphex Twin album might (to cite one example). There is even a bit of a bridge between generations, with New Order's Bernard Sumner guesting on "Spanish Heart," a genial chill out track that sounds like an outtake from the first Electronic album
The Bjork tracks are more abstract. "Qmart" has a whistling synthesizer hook and slowed down acid-house piano. Bjork's performance ranges from guttural throat clearing akin to some of the tricks later employed on her own Medulla
"Ooops"
The rest of the album incorporates a ton of influences, leaving no sound unheard. The vocal sample on "Leo Leo" sounds like it was lifted off a reggae single (and indeed, there is a B-side version with Raagman on vocals), and the one on "Nephatiti" works with the ominous washes and distant beat to create something like a soundtrack to a sci-fi movie where the Egyptians rule the future (didn't Peter Milligan do a Vertigo comic book about that?). "Lift" is as much a descriptive as it is a title, an ambient dance track that goes up and up, like a ski lift heading towards the top of a snowy mountain. There are some real bangers, too, like the frenetic "In Your Face" and the relentless "Techno Bell" with its chiming breaks.
And then, of course, there is "Cubik," the song so mega it had to be on both of 808 State's first
And yet, while being dance music, EX:EL is adaptable to moods. You can party to the CD, or you can chill; play it while you work, or while you exercise. In essence, it's all-purpose, just like pop records should be.
Liking the music wasn't the whole shebang, however. I wouldn't fully grasp what was happening until a desire to see 808 State in a live setting accidentally lead me to my first rave.
The fact that I can say I "accidentally" ended up at my first rave is probably indicative of how out of step I was in danger of becoming. I had seen the show advertised as an 808 State concert, I didn't consider that it could be anything more. I was still dressing in all black--in my day, back when dinosaurs drove Model Ts, we called it "death rock," not "goth"--and I had a shirt I really liked that was like a rainstorm of skeletons, one bone daddy tumbling down after another. Little did I know that I was going to be entering a hall full of kids in baggy jeans, oversized T-shirts, and day-glo colors. They were emulating "baggy," a new moptop fashion. I was James Dean by way of Andrew Eldritch. Take a picture, see what does not belong.
I began to feel more and more out of place as the night wore on. The band wasn't going to play until late, so until then, we were free to wander the venue, which was like an airplane hangar turned into a convention hall. It was at the same place where the Queen Mary and the Spruce Goose were both docked, right near my college in Long Beach, California. The event was set up like a carnival, with booths hawking flower power T-shirts and big rubber houses for jumping in. I was attending the show by myself, but unfortunately, I wasn't unknown.
You see, a bunch of kids from my high school had driven the two-plus hours for the party. They were younger than me, and a couple of them had been in my creative writing class my senior year--the first creative writing class at Quartz Hill High. One of them in particular was a smarmy little kid who liked to shave his hair down to the scalp except for one handful that he grew as long as he could, letting it fall down his face and nearly touch his chest. I hated that kid. He was the kind of faker who I despised, who wrote poetry that was full of words people didn't know off-hand and that never added up to much. He was a big reason I learned not to trust the knowingly weird, the creative types whose work obfuscates its own lack of meaning so the dim will think that because they do not understand it, it equals art.
This boy and his cohorts were sitting outside the venue when I arrived, and they immediately saw me and knew me and ushered me over. I sat with them, not saying very much, mainly listening. They were making references to things that were beyond me, and this is where the real shift became most evident. I was all of eighteen years old, but the separation between myself and them was more than a long drive. I was in college, they were in high school, ergo I was an old man who no longer got it. I showed up wearing a skeleton shirt and they laughed at T-shirts urging us all to "Say NO2 Drugs." I didn't even know people were taking nitrous oxide to get a buzz!
I avoided them once inside. While the whole rave culture would eventually come to signify a coming together in most people's minds, I kept to myself. I don't even think I danced there at first. I probably just did my usual concert routine of hanging around down front hoping to be on the barricade when the show started. Still unclear of the concept, really. You come to a dance show to dance, not to slavishly worship the band down at the front. I wasn't really going to lose this stigma of the dark outsider--which may or may not have existed anywhere beyond my head--until the place went dark itself. Once 808 State took the stage, none of that mattered. Just as they were pioneers of the genre, they were early in making the music work live, with a lights show and a Jamaican-style toaster rousing up the crowd. They played multiple instruments, including the clarinet for songs like "Pacific."
But the big surprise was that Bjork had traveled to California for the gig, doing both of her EX:EL songs. There was a huge wave of excitement, people had not been expecting this turn of events. Even I lost myself in the hysteria. I was dancing now, shouting, joining in the festivities. Had I wanted, I could have been part of the community. Last week, I joined the Sigur Rós tribe by accident; in 1991, I stayed out of the 808 State by choice.
I never completely joined, not that night or any night. I always stayed out. Having never done drugs before or since, I didn't get that part of the subculture, and I was never going to accept the uniform. I always went to raves in my regular black. There was a point where I tried to make sense of it all, writing a story called "Patriot Jughead" about a boy a lot like me who went to that very show, saw some kids very much like the ones I knew in high school, and we both spotted the titular oddball making his way through the crowd. As clumsy and embarrassing as the prose is now (and you can point and laugh at the pdf of this fifteen-year-old story here), it's a pretty accurate report of what I saw and heard--minus the love triangle bit and the anguished gesture at the climax, that's all fiction. I guess I wanted to understand it as an observer so I could experience the music, but I wanted to maintain the island of one that I called me, something I would continue even into my move to Portland, which was still in the sweaty and un-deodorized grip of grunge when I moved here in 1994, around the time I re-engaged with a scene and the aforementioned emergence of Suede.
Which suggests that perhaps the only Jughead was me: a witness to history, not a participant. I said earlier it wasn't just about liking the tunes, but I made sure that's how it was for me. So, despite its musical merits, I may have doomed EX:EL to a slot in my permanent records marked for my own stubbornness.
Even so, put on "Cubik," and I'm going to dance. Every single time. Wink at me the right way and ply me with enough champagne, and you never know, I may just dance along with you. What can I say? I've softened. But don't get cute, because it's not by much.
NOTABLE B-SIDE: Not so much a B-side, as a lost A-side, possibly a white label. Around this time, Los Angeles got a new radio station called MARS FM. It was the greatest radio station I've ever heard. They played everything, and well ahead of everyone else. I heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on there at least two months before the "World Famous" KROQ, it was the first place I heard Moby's "Go," and I recall them hosting Paul Weller for five nights in a row when his first solo album came out. It was on one of their mix shows that I heard the 808 State remix of "Owner of a Lonely Heart" by Yes. It's an execrable song in its original form, but 808 State took the best route available by obliterating any recognizable reference to the Yes version and crafting something new out of the tiniest of building blocks. It was bold and daring, and that's probably why it never officially got released the way their much safer revamp of Bowie's "Sound + Vision"
#52 #51 #50 #49 #48 #47 #46 #45 #44 #43 #42 #41 #40 #39 #38 #37 #36 #35
Reminder: You know, I don't see any of my Permanent Records entries showing up in my referrals account at Amazon. For shame! Once again, a lot of this 808 State music I am linking to, including EX:EL, is available super cheap, less than a buck before postage. Wju not try it? This post is full of links to Amazon. Click on any one of them when shopping, and Amazon will shave a few pennies off their take to give to me. So, if my reviews make you all hot and bothered and you just have to own one of the things I'm talking about, use my link and contribute to buying me more stuff to review. (Those reading a Live Journal feed will likely have to click to the actual blog page first before heading over to Amazon, though.) Either way, thanks for reading.
Current Soundtrack: PM Dawn, Jesus Wept
Current Mood: indifferent 
golightly@confessions123.com * The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * The Blog Roll * "Can You Picture That?" * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon
[to leave comments, click on the time-stamp below, then scroll down on the new page] – All text (c) 2006 Jamie S. Rich
WE SHOULD SAIL ON FOREVER, A PROMISE
I finally got to see The Promise today. I really like Chen Kaige's work, and I was curious to see how his skills adapted to the wuxia genre. In the past, other directors have taken on this genre, despite being known for more personal work, most notably Wong Kar-Wai, Zhang Yimou, and Ang Lee, and generally, they have had good success. The Kaige films I have known have been huge historical epics like Farewell My Concubine
Though I liked The Promise overall, Kaige may have went for it a little too intensenly. The style is audacious and he is committed to it, but the story suffers sometimes from plot convolutions. To me, it played out like a superhero comic book, and I was only partially joking afterward when I compared it to Chris Claremont's work on X-Men. There are plot turns around every corner, and the build-up of action and romance causes characters to flip their motivations constantly. This made it a little hard to get into at first, but once I was along for the ride, it became a lot of fun. I was into the rush of it, to its relentless foward momentum. (Given that the U.S. cut is over 20 minutes shorter than the Chinese cut, I have to wonder if some of the story convolutions are a fault of a Hollywood butchering. A short--and albeit half-hearted--scan of the internet reveals not very much, though apparently I may be alone in liking it. The group I was with was mixed.)
What sets The Promise apart from many the films by the big directors referenced above is it is unabashadely set in the world of myth and fairy tale. There are goddesses, magic cloaks, even time travel. It's gorgeous colors and costumes actually reminded me some of Jacques Demy's work, particularly Donkey Skin
Some of the fight sequences are amazing. The opening battle where we meet Kunlun in the midst of stampede is both exciting and hilarious, and the showdown between Wuhuan and Snow Wolf in a room with spinning partitions had a couple of startling moments. The best part for me, though, was the doomed romance, the deceptions and the curses that separated our characters from their hearts. Was it a tragic ending or did they all somehow live happily after? It's up to the individual to decide. I like to think time flowed backward, snow fell in the spring, and the dead rose--but I'm like that. I thought that was what the movie was really about, and perhaps audiences who are more disappointed are having a problem because they were sold on a kung-fu film that isn't there. This is a story of a princess and the choices she makes, and how it affects the world around her, how it breaks hearts, and in the end, how insurmountable the task of bringing two people together can seem--not kicks and punches and the like.
All in all, The Promise is a flawed film, but I thought it had enough going for it, even if just in the eye candy department, that I will likely visit it again.
Current Soundtrack: 808 State, EX:EL
Current Mood: bitchy 
golightly@confessions123.com * The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * The Blog Roll * "Can You Picture That?" * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon
[to leave comments, click on the time-stamp below, then scroll down on the new page] – All text (c) 2006 Jamie S. Rich
PRO-INTERNET POLITICAL ACTION
More on the issue through the movement's MySpace page.
Alyssa Milano, of all people, has a really excellent post on the topic on her blog. Read the entry from April 25 entitled "Internet Freedom." (I can't find a permalink.)
If nothing else, sign the MoveOn petition.
CURRENT SOUNDTRACK: Martin Gore, Counterfeit EP
AT LAST I AM BORN
The Everlasting is on the march! The press release is out. Newsarama is one place that has it, read the whole thing here, and pay particular attention to this part:
"With my comics work, it's easy to give people a quick taste of the book. You can toss out a handful of pages and they work like a movie trailer and people get interested. It's a little harder with prose to extract particular sections and have them stand alone. These stories provide you with a self-contained entertainment experiences that also give you an idea of what THE EVERLASTING is like in style and content. They're a little something extra."
Deleted scene "Toys for Boys" will be available at www.comicbookresources.com beginning May 22, 2006. Two weeks later, on June 5, www.comicon.com/pulse will feature Moon on Your Pyjamas. July brings the inaugural issue of Bottle Rocket Magazine (Red Hot Moon Books), which will feature original short story "Chevelu" with illustrations by Chynna Clugston and an interview with Rich featuring illustrations by Joelle Jones. "Romeo May Be Bleeding, But Mercutio is Dead," an all-new Lance Scott serial set six years after THE EVERLASTING, will run on http://lancescott.livejournal.com beginning July 31. A complete listing of where and when these extras can be found is available at www.onipress.com.
It's all quel exciting. And note that Amazon has it for preorder for $12.97.
Special thanks to Confessor Jing for introducing me to today's soundtrack selection.
Current Soundtrack: The Marshmallow Kisses, I Wonder Why My Favorite Boy Leaves Me An Ep
Current Mood: hyper 
golightly@confessions123.com * The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * The Blog Roll * "Can You Picture That?" * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon
[to leave comments, click on the time-stamp below, then scroll down on the new page] – All text (c) 2006 Jamie S. Rich
NOW MY HEART IS FULL
I am incredibly tired. There's just been too much going on. Thankfully, that will all settle soon. I will be cutting my hours at the day job in half after this week, and hopefully the manga work will stabilize. I turned in two of the four scripts I had on deck already; the other two, I can't start, because on one I never received the translation and am waiting for my editor to get back in town, and on the other I am waiting for the actual Japanese book to come in the mail. So, I am working on the Lance "Mercutio" story, mainly typing up what I had scribbled in my moleskin journal.
And yet, despite the aches and yawns, I have been uncommonly happy for the last several days. I catch myself smiling as if I have the answer to a private riddle. "And I just can't explain so I won't even try to."
Current Soundtrack: My Little Airport, Because I Was Too Nervous At That Time
Current Mood: coy 
golightly@confessions123.com * The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * The Blog Roll * "Can You Picture That?" * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon
[to leave comments, click on the time-stamp below, then scroll down on the new page] – All text (c) 2006 Jamie S. Rich
I'M LAYING MY CARDS ON THE TABLE
Several things in my internet life:
* My latest DVD Talk review is up: Naked City - Set 3.
* Greg McElhatton has aided me in updating Confessions123. The lists of my various work are up to date, "Walk Like a Panther" and its new ending has been added to my short story section, and the prologue of The Everlasting found on the Current Projects page is now the text from the final draft.
* Previous Permanent Records guest columnist Christopher McQuain has posted an awesome review of Morrissey's Ringleader of the Tormentors. Great insight, as well as an excellent eye for seeing how it fits in the culture at large. The comparison to Katharine Hepburn and Summertime alone earns him big points with me.
Current Soundtrack: Northern Soul's Classiest Rarities
Current Mood: flirty 
golightly@confessions123.com * The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * The Blog Roll * "Can You Picture That?" * DVDTalk reviews * My Books On Amazon
[to leave comments, click on the time-stamp below, then scroll down on the new page] – All text (c) 2006 Jamie S. Rich
PERMANENT RECORDS: HOPELANDIC
Permanent Records is a year-long project. Each Friday (or thereabouts), I will post a new entry about one specific album, chosen due to its significance to myself as a fan. Though the list is numbered, a particular record's placement should not be considered a ranking. There will be 52 albums in all.
This endeavor is based on a concept started by Chris Tamarri at Crisis/Boring Change. It has since been expanded as a concept, as Neal Shaffer takes on a study of album covers over at Leftwich.
35. SIGUR RÓS - TAKK... (2005)
Personnel: Jón Þór (Jónsi) Birgisson, vocals & guitars; Kjartan (Kjarri) Sveinsson, keyboards; Orri Páll Dýrason; drums; Georg (Goggi) Holm, bass
Producer: Sigur Rós & Ken Thomas/ Label: Geffen
Writing about Sigur Rós is a strange task. I'm at a loss for how exactly to approach it. Sure, I have my hook. I'm starting this now on a Thursday afternoon, a few hours before the band is due to play the Arlene Schnitzer here in Portland, OR, and I know that I will finish this up sometime tomorrow, with the idea of seeing how Takk... may have transformed itself in my mind once I've witnessed the Sigur Rós concert experience.
But how do I write about the music itself?
It can't really be song-based. While Sigur Rós does write songs, I can't tell you the name of a single one of them. There are no hit singles, and with all the lyrics sung in Icelandic, there is no poetic content for me to analyze. In reality, Takk... is the first of their albums to even be in a language other humans speak. Much of their previous records also featured their made-up language, Hopelandic--but to my self-absorbed western ears, it's all the same.
Every track is also the same to those ears. Well, not exactly the same, as I can tell the music has shifted, as it just has in my playback in the background, going from the wail and strum of the first track on the disc to the piano marching of the second, the high-pitched voice giving over to a deeper, breathier voice. It's that the songs flow so seamlessly one to the next that I don't sliver them up in my brain, I listen to the album as if it were all water in the same ocean, one wave just a recurrence of that which has gone before. They rise and crest and crash in different places, but it's one ocean, relaxing in its rhythm, enveloping the individual with its seemingly endless expanse, and as I swallow and drown, the gulp that first splashes into my lungs might as well be the exact same liquid that stifles my final breath.
And other dramatic metaphors like that.
For that reason, I find that Sigur Rós is not a band I put on lightly. I don't have them playing when I do dishes, nor when I sit down to write. If done for the latter, the CD is usually over before I even really had a chance to acknowledge that it's on, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, because that means I hopefully lost myself in whatever fictional world I was trying to explore; yet, when I write, I also like my brain to engage with outside stimuli. Believe it or not, I like the influence of what is going on around me. Perhaps Sigur Rós does that in their own way--no perhaps, they most assuredly do--but it's not my preferred way.
My most common times for choosing to play Takk..., which would win out lately because it's the most recent, are either when I am going to bed or when I am wandering through the city at night.
I have a special relationship with my sleepytime records. The act of going to sleep is actually somewhat akin to writing for me: I have to check out of one reality and enter another. Perhaps that's why I have a knack for being able to fall asleep anywhere, just like how words pour out of me when sitting in a coffee shop and a bar. My surroundings drop away, and I become disengaged, just as I become re-engaged with something else. If I lay in bed in silence, my brain will create noise for me. I'll worry about money or what someone said to me earlier or think about what I will be writing or was just writing. If I play music in the background, I start to listen to that, stop thinking, and drift. Usually, the choices are quieter affairs, things that are easy to listen to. More ambient works can be favored, things like Moby's Underwater or a Brian Eno CD. These blankets of sound, these ocean waves, they bury me, smother me, in slumber.
In those late-night listening sessions, Takk... relaxes me as it dismantles life. It removes everything else and becomes my only sensation. In the other listening category, in my sessions with the outside world, it does the opposite: it imbues the landscape around me with a new sense of vitality.
Back when I wrote about One Dove in the very first entry of this series, I compared their music to walking around at 3 a.m., a metaphor that I did not disclose had come to me under those exact circumstances, so limited is my imagination at times. I love to wander the streets with my headphones in, the volume jacked up as high as it can go, and separate myself from the world, viewing it from an almost dream-like state, floating through my city as if some specter. One of my favorite Pulp lyrics is from "Monday Morning"
Sigur Rós' music is ideal for this kind of activity. Their songs have a lot of forward momentum, starting someplace small and building, hitting multiple crescendos across each track. As the cacophony of drums and piano and the otherworldly whistle of voice come to their full climax, I feel that everything around me is going to shake and shatter and fall to the ground, opening up my vision of the sky so that when it drops back down again, to the quiet tickling of noise, I will see nothing but stars and space and the universe beyond.
In simple terms, listening to Sigur Rós is a personal experience. It's me alone with me. So, what happens when I leave my head and rejoin the rest of humanity?
First, there are preconceived notions. To start, I expect a lot of people on stage. It's hard for me to believe that four people on their own can do all of this. I was expecting this to be like a Godspeed You Black Emperor! show where special arrangements would have to be made to fit everyone onstage. Godspeed seems like an apt band to compare Sigur Rós to when it comes down to expectations, because Godspeed deals in a similar kind of ambient noise, another case where I wasn't sure how it would translate live. When I saw them, however, it was in a club that wasn't very full--I forget who, but some other hipster band was in town that night that somehow trumped the Black Emperor!--and I actually lay down on the floor and closed my eyes and it was almost like I was back home and in bed for the duration.
There was no chance of being in a similar situation at the Schnitz, a seated venue that also hosts symphonies when rock bands aren't in need of a theatre their size. It is, however, a fancy place, with chandeliers and walls decorated with sculpted boxes from grander days. My friends and I had pretty decent seats on the floor, though slightly cramped and a little hot. During the opening band's set, I was particularly worried about how much movement would be going on around me. Other people shuffling in and out of their seats can be an awful distraction.
These fears started to fade as Sigur Rós took the stage. Appearing behind a veil of gauze, they performed their first song from that same area of abstraction as private listening. There was distance between us, they weren't yet made flesh--they were instead silhouettes on a screen, enlarged shadows on a wall. As the song ended and the veil lifted, the symbolism was complete. The listeners were now being let into the music, its inner parts would be exposed. It was that opening up again, exposing the sky, but this time more through external than internal means.
Just as I suspected, in the live arena, Sigur Rós do expand with a string section, but the bulk of the music is made very conventionally: guitar, drums, bass, piano. Birgisson is the most surprising element. I would have never guessed that such alien sounds would come out of such a skinny little man. All the while, he almost absent-mindedly draws a bow back and forth across his guitar strings, whipping up the wind that will be the tornado.
There were attempts to bring the music to life visually, through lights and rear projection. Thankfully, it wasn't overdone, as it wasn't totally necessary. My favorite effect was a set of three small lights that were tuned to the xylophone, rising and falling in brightness with the sound of the keys. Truthfully, though, the best effects were the unintentional ones, like when I looked to me left and saw Birgisson's shadow cast over the wall, taking on the shape of the ornaments there, distorted to heights normally achieved by mythological giants.
Was I lost in the music, though? Not if I was looking at light bulbs and shadows and Sveinsson smiling and stamping his feet. Not if I was noticing technicians sneaking around the stage and adjusting hidden objects and if I was waiting to see if a band member would leave his or her post and go to another instrument I couldn't identify to make a sound I'd never heard. My thoughts weren't ebbing away, but shooting around my brain and finding new elements to obsess on. "Will that check come tomorrow?" "When will I be able to finish my reviews?" "I wonder if I can work in a grocery trip?" My God! It was just like trying to fall asleep without music!
I closed my eyes and let myself float and found it was easier to submerge than I would have guessed, the theatre was almost completely dark. My thoughts dropped back, and it was just the music. It was loud and large and as lovely as I knew it to be, but it was more open, the ceiling had come off, I was traveling down a highway standing up in a convertible and feeling the wind. It wasn't as intimate, but it was more sensory. I could feel the thud of the drums in my chest, I could open my eyes and catch a glimpse of it being made, like coming up for air, taking a quick breath before going back down into the metaphor soup. It was more work, sure, I had to build the walls to be lulled, but it was worth it, because when the crash and cacophony came, it was huge, the tornado Birgisson was swirling was knocking me around.
I'll admit, I couldn't tell you what songs off of Takk... were actually played, if any. Like on record, it didn't matter where the pauses were. You start at one place and you keep traveling until you get to another. In this case, there was a three song encore, and for once, an encore was something spectacular, the best saved for last. Here Sigur Rós was at their most thunderous, as if invoking something, to raise something up. Us, perhaps?
Cued by a big guitar sound, the veil was lowered again, Sigur Rós returned to their abstract images to play out the final song, the distance created again. I was expelled. I was sent back to my private experience, discovering that I had been part of a community as we all reacted as one and stood, applauded, and cheered. Different, but the same--both listeners and listening. We were together all along.
Was my thinking about Takk... changed? To a degree. Listening to it now, I see pictures in my head of last night. I see the projection of a drummer attacking his skins. I see lights. I feel the rush. I still have no greater revelations about Sigur Rós. I can't explain to you how the songs are put together, I can't talk of orchestral movements or structure, I still don't understand the lyrics. Yet, maybe I do understand more about it's transformative power, that it's as mercurial as I need it to be, that it can bend to the situation, and can be both private and public--though always mine. In that final moment, when myself and rest of the audience spontaneously realized we were there in the same pool together, maybe it was an object lesson that the music connects us whether we know it or not. When I am alone with my headphones and I think I am lost to the rest of the world, maybe I am really jacked in, the music being the common thread that goes from me to you to him to her and on and on. Like a Sigur Rós album, each song rolling into the next, the names unimportant, each person another wave on the same continuous ocean.
Sure, chances are I won't believe this tomorrow when the warm fuzzy glow of the experience and the last vestiges of the post-concert whisky work their way out of system, but that's for tomorrow to sort out, isn't it?
#52 #51 #50 #49 #48 #47 #46 #45 #44 #43 #42 #41 #40 #39 #38 #37 #36
Reminder: As always, this post is full of links to Amazon. Click on any one of them when shopping, and Amazon will shave a few pennies off their take to give to me. So, if my reviews make you all hot and bothered and you just have to own one of the things I'm talking about, use my link and contribute to buying me more stuff to review. (Those reading a Live Journal feed will likely have to click to the actual blog page first before heading over to Amazon, though.) Either way, thanks for reading.
Current Soundtrack: Sigur Rós, Von
Current Mood: cheerful 
golightly@confessions123.com * The Website * Live Journal Syndication * My Corporate-Owned Space * The Blog Roll * "Can You Picture That?" * My Books On Amazon
[to leave comments, click on the time-stamp below, then scroll down on the new page] – All text (c) 2006 Jamie S. Rich
