trying to fool the public

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Been a longer time than the Infinite Remix of the "Keep A-Knockin'" Intro, I know. For those who are reading via the Wanna Aggregator: no MP3 this time, almost certainly none until I return sun-baked the second week of September. Life and work are intervening. Nothing to hear, move along.

Short version is:

1) I have now held the book in my very own hands, although I don't think it's out for real until October. Believe me, you'll know when it is.

1a) Typing "wolk apollo" into the Amazon search engine yields my book, followed by a book I loathed, a book I have owned for 8 years but haven't read, a book I really want, two books I think I also have lying around, a real Bible and a fake Bible. Odd.

2) I went to Norway, and then I came back. Writing about it for Matos, and that will probably include all the good stories. It was a seriously work-oriented trip, aside from a couple of lovely ferry rides to beaches and an hour or two taking Polaroids of inappropriately placed lemons and limes at the Vigelandspark. Might go back and add more notes here, if things don't fit in the article.

3) So wait, what exactly was less ass-sucky about rock lyrics up to 15 years ago? Franklin's got a solid list of counterexamples, and the discussion's getting lively and is staying mostly pretty civil... but there seems to be the unquestioned assumption in there of a Golden Age of rock lyrics from before hip-hop swooped in and slammed its flag into the "good lyrics" territory. Was it that there were more good rock lyricists operating? That a greater percentage of rock hits had good lyrics? etc. What happened, exactly? What was different in those days?

3a) My favorite lyric to a rock song, today, specifically, is the sentence by Angela Carter that Dog Faced Hermans turned into the words of their song "Virginia Fur" with minimal nip-and-tuck to make it songier (e.g. "as soft as soft/as pink as pink"):

She came from a community where women ruled the roost, imparted effortlessly a sense of my sex's ascendancy in the scheme of things, and every word and gesture of hers displayed a natural dominance, a native savagery and I am very grateful for all that now although the core of steel was a bit inconvenient when I was looking for boyfriends in the South in the 1950's when girls were supposed to be as soft and pink as a nursuree.

4) Semi-relatedly: Seeing the words of "Tears of a Clown" spelled out on the monitor at karaoke the other night with Amy and Dabble-Rouser was useful. But not as much fun as Amy's "Dancing in the Dark" or D.-R.'s elaborately choreographed "Control." I attempted with limited success to jitterbug throughout my rendition of "Goody Two Shoes."

5) I am, as Tom Hazelmyer sang in Halo of Flies' 1987 "Headburn" (a solid two years before rock lyrics went to hell), on the goddamn road I'm a vagabond. Oslo was followed by four full days back home in PDX; now I'm in Queens, typing this on my kitchen floor (the only place I can get wireless signal here), and attempting to work out the remaining organizational details of "Sound Sun Pleasure". On Sunday, Lisa & I go upstate to visit my parents for a day or two; then I come back here, do a quick interview, write a million pieces, fly to Portland for two days, then head off to the desert to install "SSP." Once I return from the playa, if things go down as they're looking like they're going to, I spend 3 days at home, fly back to New York to do an interview for an article, return to Oregon for K8/Dan and Sarah/Mary's respective weddings, turn right back around and zoom off to NYC for eMusic's party, then return to the Pacific Northwest for a solid week (possibly nipping up to Seattle to see some incarnation of the Shock Exchange play) before Lisa and I head off to Washington, DC for SPX... so what I'm saying is that service, whatever kind of service you're expecting, my beloved ones, may be intermittent. And yes, I have discovered the joy of Frequent Flyer programs. And am praising Heaven every day for making me capable of reading on planes, especially since I'm taking on Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle for a review. Like everyone else, I love entertainment.

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Unlike some, I know when to admit I've started the wrong fite. (A productive discussion, I'm sure, but premised on a false skrimish.) I should have stopped at "'lit-hop' already exists and it's called hip-hop," because that's all I... Read More

2 Comments

John said:

I know how you feel - I didn't believe I was gonna have an album out on 4ad until I'd actually seen it reviewed with a reference to the label in parenthesis after the album title - but do your best to digest & feel & experience your accomplishment - you've earned it! Meanwhile I will remain crazy jealous that 33 & 1/3 didn't call me up to wax lyrical on the Stockholm Monsters or Swans' "Raping A Slave" EP. Which, I guess, was a 45.

Amy said:

It should also be noted, for historical purposes, that Douglas also performed a pitch-perfect rendition of Prince's "Kiss" at karaoke. Yes, the falsetto and everything. People came rushing in from the next room, thinking the Purple One himself had dropped by. Much to their surprise, they were greeted by a bespectacled white guy wearing a Bloodhag t-shirt.

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This page contains a single entry by Douglas published on August 20, 2004 8:24 PM.

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