June 15, 2004

we think you'll be amused by its insouciance

More house-hunting today--mostly in the Northeast. We looked at one house that seemed like a good deal for its specifications: an enormous old Victorian with a zillion bedrooms and a price tag considerably smaller than one might expect. It had been converted into a duplex at some point, and then re-converted into a single-family building; it had gotten some citations in the past few years for having too many people living there, and for having an open garage. The garage was gone now--ripped off its foundation, rather crudely (there were still parts of a few beams clinging to it). And the house seemed at first like the kind of place where Mountain Goats songs happen, and (once I looked a little closer) like the kind of place where Hold Steady songs happen. Lots of peculiar little rooms with truly alarming carpeting. The attic's walls had been written on; so had some of the upstairs floor's doors. (One had had a semi-obscene message scrawled on it in Magic Marker, which had then been altered to make it slightly more househunter-friendly--"asshole" had been corrected to "asshotel," for instance.) Ordinarily, it'd be the sort of place I'd be excited about: something Lisa & I could fix up/remodel/turn into something weird and personal. But something felt wildly uncertain about the whole building: I just had a bone-marrow feeling that its structure was not to be trusted.

Today's MP3 is a neat little multiple-sax instrumental: Bob Starker's "Thug Parade" (removed), from a self-titled seven-track EP, recorded while he was "between bands," he says. The disc has a bunch of fun, very nicely executed stuff--multi-tracked solo recordings, made with what the liner notes describe as "one beaten & abused '81 Selmer tenor sax (stolen in May '93, good riddance)." Thanks to Bob for permission to post it.

Posted by Douglas at June 15, 2004 12:18 AM | TrackBack
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