Nina Simone - "Gimme Some (Mike Mangini Remix)"
The drums in this song, in this version of this song, drop the ballast off the sides and the song floats up and hovers right around the place where you hear music come in your ears. In case you've forgotten, you don't actually experience music any other way, but this song reminds you of that, that you have ears. Or it doesn't, and I'm reminding you, but in any case, we're there now, so let's talk about it. "Dan, I can see dancing with my eyes," says one of you, "and I can feel vibrations with my hand, I'm deaf," says another, "and I'm reading your damn prose," says a third. All true, but listen to Nina Simone; she's asking you to "gimme some". She "can't stand it no longer". If "some" were "music", do you think she'd be content with mere vibrations or MTV on mute? No, she wouldn't. She wouldn't at all. And in conclusion, it's clear: Nina Simone is a raging ablist. [Buy]
Cassetteboy - "Brackish Water"
Cassetteboy is completely insane. His 80-minute album Carry On Breathing has 87 tracks, and they're all made of soundbites. From TV, radio, field recording, some of it famous, almost all of it British, but the point is: it's incessant. I went to a "mixtape party" once, the idea was that you bring a mixtape (or cd) and you put it in a bin, and then pick another one out and you get to bring home a little treasure from someone. I decided to make an experimental mix that featured 99 of the shortest tracks in my music collection that were a minute or shorter. It was organized from longest to shortest, and dated back to when I first started collecting music on my computer; like, the Napster days. So there were really stupid Simpsons quotes mixed in with 30-second punk songs, sound effects tracks, and those really short Pavement songs from Westing by Musket and Sextant. Anyway, it amounted to a downward spiral of insanity that was essentially unlistenable. This is kind of what Carry On Breathing is like, but Cassetteboy's project is handmade, crafted, designed. And this, "Brackish Water", is one of the few things that kind of works. It's nice to feel these different bits come from different days, so you pass like a third of a year in one song, to imagine it sequentially, each of those days having meant something to someone, including you. [Buy, if you dare.]
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Women Contest: (FINISHED! WINNER CHOSEN!) I have a copy of the Women album to give away. Write the best sentence you can using the word "women" (keep it clean, this is a family blog) and leave it in the comments on this post. I will judge the winner by the next time I post, which won't be before Tuesday next week, and I will award the album then. The winner gets to choose either vinyl or CD.
Have a nice weekend!
Posted by Dan at June 27, 2008 12:57 PMwomen!
Posted by jonas at June 27, 2008 2:13 PMWomen walk west on wet water.
Posted by karpe at June 27, 2008 3:59 PMI will trade you 12 fine oxen for all the women in this village.
Posted by MikeH at June 27, 2008 4:11 PMwomen are what you get when you water girls and feed them with a good mixed mulch of cosmopolitan magazine and trouser suits.
Posted by Bethan at June 27, 2008 4:11 PMI've got ninety-nine women and not a problem with one.
Posted by Stephen at June 27, 2008 5:20 PMWomen swimmin'.
Posted by Nina Feinberg at June 27, 2008 8:42 PMMy voice breaks when I say I love you, and it is like sending out my words as little boys and having them return, not as men, but as women, sadly not as robust as I might have intended, but, having lost none of their youthful fragility, they sing out stronger in the quiet.
(where the frack did THAT come from?)
Posted by Camille at June 28, 2008 12:53 AMIt was more than he could bear, more than most young men could, really; the shiny raspberry lips, the crooked smile, the gentle flip of the hair as she turned to leave, and the vapor trail of perfume or shampoo or what, left him too dizzy, growing a crooked smile of his own, unable to process a single thought other than this: Women.
Posted by Stan at June 28, 2008 5:10 AM(absurd quote from a customer i was working with last week:) "computers are like women - useless."
Posted by alissa at June 29, 2008 6:19 PMWomen: the evergreen strobili clustered closely above men's deciduous hearts.
Posted by Shane Trevor Yeager at June 29, 2008 8:54 PMWomen are enough.
Posted by Ronnie at June 29, 2008 9:07 PMafter Bill Callahan/Smog
Women need men or women to be women
"Begone, pandar, here are no women for coining."
Posted by Dante at June 29, 2008 9:32 PMOh, Women.
Posted by matthew at June 29, 2008 9:43 PMI shuddered violently at the sound of those women in me, who sing for hours loudly from under my ribs
Posted by Harrison at June 29, 2008 10:07 PMWith their words of wisdom and swaddling wombs, women are the wardens to the world.
Posted by melissa at June 29, 2008 10:51 PMSkip town today for country livin',
But back tonight for whiskey and women.
My sister and I are women.
Posted by Cookie at June 30, 2008 12:03 AMThe women of the court wept at the news - pearl brooches of unfathomable preciousness sent skittering across the floor; every single gold-laced dress, wet from tears, torn apart like tissue paper - yet, according to the surviving accounts of those few bewildered onlookers, the combined effect of the sound bore more resemblance to laughter than grief.
Posted by andrew at June 30, 2008 1:43 AMAt least I reminded you of one the simplest things in life: women are like castanets; only Spaniards can hold them, but they still make you dance.
Posted by Maks at June 30, 2008 5:59 AMOf all the pretty women passing through town it is the one who fills the streets with her own melody as her heels click against the foot path she walks along that I want to come knocking at my front door asking for directions to where she is going.
Posted by Dan at June 30, 2008 6:38 AMI’m a sucker for women with short hair, especially hers because it’s messy but still neat, like she spent all morning trying to get it to curl just right so it mimics someone mussing it up with their fingers without actually having to do it, but, if called upon, I’d do it.
Posted by Brian at June 30, 2008 7:56 AMMen are looking like women and women like men so it's hard tellin' who I am today.
Posted by mds at June 30, 2008 10:15 AMThey spun in the rain for hours, remembering those hot sticky days of popsicles and pools, when frogs were friends, when girls could be boys or girls and no one was there to scold, "WOMEN!" and force them to remember their place.
Posted by molly at June 30, 2008 11:54 AMHis father had once told him (in a rambling, uncomfortable conversation that was indicative of their relationship) that he could not count himself a man of any standing until he had learned to understand this: the breaking of the heart itself is encapsulated within the laughter of women.
Posted by Kate at June 30, 2008 12:44 PMAmbushed on the futon watching television -- Women's Entertainment network -- the kidnappers with ugly scarves and tailored suits pristine and intimidating, hoisting guns up angled either at me or through me, not that it makes a difference.
Posted by will at June 30, 2008 12:56 PMWhenever the women would wander in the wood, the men would wait with baited breath for when women would return.
Posted by Eric C. Deines at June 30, 2008 1:50 PMI think women are pretty neat.
Posted by Brent at June 30, 2008 3:46 PMFrom the highest widow's walk in the village, the women hummed lullabies to their sailors and dreamed of other aphrodisiacs.
Posted by Carolyn at June 30, 2008 4:06 PMFrom the highest widow's walk in the village, the women hummed lullabies for their sailors and dreamed of other aphrodisiacs.
Posted by Carolyn at June 30, 2008 4:09 PMOut of all the aforementioned contenders, it is apparent that women breathe the deepest.
Posted by Kevin Chesser at June 30, 2008 5:10 PMPut these words together: bearcub, women, nonsense, pirates, roller disco. Now go.
Posted by alyssa at June 30, 2008 7:28 PM"our conversation last night reminded me, once again, that I am a women."
Posted by (me) at June 30, 2008 9:13 PMWhen it rains here, the women go out onto rooftops to take clothes off lines, while the men - who were squatting in empty lots below - move their fires under trees.
Posted by tom at June 30, 2008 9:54 PMWomen poisoned the city aquarium.
Posted by Chris at June 30, 2008 10:05 PMO men, we women can hear your hearts.
Posted by alex at June 30, 2008 10:59 PMWomen inspire art.
Posted by Craig at July 1, 2008 1:15 AMI thumb their plums in the corner like Jack Horner!
What a good girl am .
I thumb their plums in the corner like Jack Horner!
What a good girl am I.