If I ever feel better
Remind me to spend some good time with you
You can give me your number
When it's all over I'll let you know
This song is a perfect description of my week. Rough time for me, rough time for my friends, rough time in class, and for all of us Portlanders, it's been a rough start of summer. I was thinking today that I should just take a vacation, a long one.
This blog will go nowhere but down if I sit here any longer. So I am going to go hiking now. I need to move some energy and get it out.
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It's the next day. It's 10:46 p.m. and I feel like I should call this "ramblings of a struggling tired girl". I have Sigur Ros turned up as loud as it can go on this stereo. I wonder if people would call the cops because "Agaetis Byrjun" is bothering them. Doubtful.
What have I been up to, you ask. I have received 3 emails from 3 of you wondering where the hell the blog entry was yesterday. It's flattering and disturbing. I am flattered that some of you are religiously reading this which makes me feel like these are not just ramblings worthy of cyberspace and disturbing because people are checking on me, which means I guess I can't hide for long. I guess that means disturbing in the best possible way. I have been attending "meetings" where they teach me about HALT - Hunger, Anger, Loneliness, and Tired. Reasons why we become self-destructive. It's strange. While in my meeting today though, all I could think about was how the White Stripes titled their last album Under Great White Northern Lights and how much I like that title and how that then made me think about Iceland hence why I have been dying to rest my weary head to the sounds of my beloved Sigur Ros.
But good things were happening today. Yes, big things indeed - like shopping for a new place to live! I have fallen in love for the 187th time with the City of Roses in a whole new way the last six months I have been here. I explored the foot of the West Hills for hours today. It was a quiet time, an introspective time, a clenched fist, breathe deep time. The quiet in my head was a little too loud for me. I immediately remedied this with The Pretenders and Chris Isaak. They both sang very different anthems for West Portland. It was a good day.
Tonight it is Lisa Gerrard and Sigur Ros. I don't have much to say right now. And all of this makes sense seeing as both Lisa Gerrard and Jonsi sing in tongues - made up languages of their own. Maybe I'm channeling that. All I think is music.
Two nights ago, Tim Robbins graced us with his presence at the Alberta Rose Theatre. I make it sound like I went. Of course I didn't go. I bet it would've been fun though. This weekend is off the hook. Tomorrow TV on the Radio is playing and Saturday, the Fleet Foxes will be performing. This is all at Edgefield. Holy s. I just got a message on FB from my friend Jose saying that he has an extra ticket for me to see TV on the Radio tomorrow. Uh....looks like I might have something musically exciting to report tomorrow :-) We'll see!
Tunde Adebimpe is an incredible musician and seems like a remarkable man. Actually, I only have one quote that graces my refrigerator and that quote is from Tunde. He talks about his wife and why he knew he should marry her. It's a beautiful thing. He sees that he has fallen in love with her and her creativity and HER life and feels just fortunate to witness it. He says his job (and of course this is all paraphrased to the max) is to keep obstacles out of her way of getting to where she wants to be. Solid. I also loved him in Rachel Getting Married. TV on the Radio has an interesting history. The band released their first album OK Calculator in reference to Radiohead's OK Computer and involved only Adebimpe and David Sitek at the time. The band has expanded since 2001 in Brooklyn, New York, to then include Kyp Malone, and Gerard Smith as official members. Gerard Smith, their bassist and keyboardist, developed lung cancer and quickly perished leaving us on the morning of April 20, 2011. He was a tremendous asset to the band and has been a blow to the other three founding players. They have been known to have some big name contributors to their sound including David Bowie for vocals, Nick Zinner from The Yeah Yeah Yeahs for guitar, Kazu Makino of Blonde Redhead for vocals, Martin Perna of Antibalas, and Katrina Ford of Celebration. They are known as a post-punk, funky jazzy (I'm starting to sound like "US3") electro soul band to the indie rock community. We love them.
They released an EP in 2003 to critical acclaim and then featured their second full-length album Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes which earned the band the 2004 Shortlist Music Prize. They then released ANOTHER EP and then followed that with their third album, Return to Cookie Mountain which was named Best Album of the Year by Spin magazine in 2006. This is the album that features all the greats and was of course widely recognized as an edgy fun unique one-of-a-kind album and quickly bled into mainstream media with the appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman. Then get this: They start their US tour to promote this album and play with some pretty rad rockin rockers such as Bauhaus' Peter Murphy and Nine Inch Nails legend Trent Reznor. Oh and we're not done. They come out with yet another album, their fourth album titled Dear Science and was named Best Album of the Year in 2008 by Rolling Stone magazine. BUT we're not done there. Not only did Rolling Stone give this album the honorary award but many others followed suit namely The Guardian, Spin magazine, The Onion AV Club, MTV, Entertainment Weekly, as well as a slew of rock polls taken all over the country. Then in 2009, Tunde announces the band will be taking a year off and then everyone comes out with solo projects and releases albums within that same year! They then say OK we're back and come out with another album called Nine Types of Light. This resume' doesn't really get much better. And hey, they love Prince and call "Purple Rain" a classic. They look up to Brian Eno and the Pixies. I think this is all enough for me to say yes to the concert. Pretty sure.
It's an exciting time for music, folks. It always is though. It always has been. I heard a song today by The Noisettes and am looking forward to catching a show of theirs sometime in the future. I hear they're pretty rad live. And if you can afford it, Chris Isaak is playing at the Oregon Zoo this summer. If I could, I would. I'm sure it will be incredible.
Seeing as I promised you all that you would fall in love with Phoenix by the end of the week, I will leave you with this: An awesome cover of colossal proportion.
It is no easy feat to cover Bob Dylan. Believe me, I have tried.
I have a bunch of thoughts still moving right along and most of them are ideas of things to write about because I can talk about this stuff all day. I want to touch on videos, covers, songs of our youth, MTV, Remote Control, the Singles soundtrack, classic sounds, eclectic beats, funky rhythms, and the Cold War Kids.
Until then, remember you are at your best when rested.
Sleeping is no mean art: for its sake one must stay awake all day. ~Friedrich Nietzsche
Goodnight.
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