Tuesday, July 26, 2011

July Playlist: SMOGGY SUMMER


         http://www.timmcmahan.com/smog.htm

For some reason, summer always feels like the right time for obsessions. Perhaps the free time from school, the days of sun. Middle school was swimming and skateboarding, and before that building forts in the woods based on the American Boys Handbook. Or maybe it’s the things you do to get out of heat, the indoor hobbies – Legos from age 4 to 8, after that comic books, baseball cards, rocks, hieroglyphics (??), playing drums and going to DMB and Weezer shows in high school, Budweisers in 12th through 18th grade. This is the summer of Smog. Not the air pollution derived from vehicular emission from internal combustion engines and industrial fumes that react in the atmosphere with sunlight to form secondary pollutants. I mean the band/man, otherwise known as Bill Callahan. Never heard of Smog? Neither had I until a couple months ago during a feverish Wikipedia surfing session. Since then, I shit you not, I have listened to literally nothing besides this band (except for bar tunes and Chucky the Greek’s housewarming party). This has had an undeniably detrimental effect on my mental and physical wellbeing. My writing has been at its most unproductive in probably the last five years, I have become even more of a recluse, if that’s possible, seldom, if ever leaving the confines of my cave-like ground floor apartment and even cave-ier bedroom. Women have not entered the equation in what has now become an inordinate number of months. Ironically, or perhaps naturally, Smog’s themes of alienation, deconstructed relationships and an unrequited solipsism has gelled with the hermit ethos, and has prolonged it in a way that I am certainly not complaining about. Smog – in one sentence: If Leonard Cohen and Willie Nelson adopted Beck and Jandek’s illegitimate lust-spawn and taught him to self-produce in a slightly less insane and more self-awareu version of Daniel Johnston’s basement. That’s what’s up. Pseudo-country grooves, introspective minor-chord guitar jaunts, out-of-tune experimental crunch-fests,  a vocal poetry equal parts Plath, Ginsberg and Joshua Beckman. The band started as a one-guy operation in the early 90s. Bill recorded his first albums on shit-beat instruments in his basement before moving to indie studios, where the tunes were luckily still shit-beat. The star-fucking ramble can only take one so far in the way of appreciation. The playlist tracks are there for their sonic diversity (lots of choices with 12 albums to cover), but the core of the operation is the same: “Tonight I’m swimming / to my favorite island / and I don’t want to see you / swimming behind”.

2.       “Chosen One”
3.       “The Hard Road”    
5.       “I Break Horses”  
6.       “Your Wedding”
7.       “Held”
11.    “Strayed”

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

shortness is cleanliness

Got a super short (6 word) poem up at Twenty20. The issue required contributors to submit stuff in a particular form -- but no haiku allowed. Mine is a reverse hay(na)ku, which, if I remember right, means three words in the first line, two in the second, one in the third. Not sure if there are any other stipulations. Anyway, it's a cool issue (and site) and perfect if you're into the whole brevity thing. I didn't even write a bio.