Record Store Day – This Saturday, April 16th

                Back in 2008, to capture the vinyl junkie’s small fragile heart a couple of record store owners came together. Profits were down at their shoeboxes adjacent to a Kinko’s or FedEx. They needed to create a day which would be guaranteed to have music lovers of the vinyl persuasion come on in and purchase delectable vinyl. In order for the plan to be a success, they would need a little help from the outside. 

                Now we have been granted the day dedicated to record stores, April 16^th. It is no mistake that it isn’t far from 4/20, record store owners know their audiences. They know those kids are going to need their late 70s dub reggae records a few days before they hit the supermarket for stoner food. Besides, that audience usually is made up of those who receive subsidies from their parents as they are generally in undergrad. 

                Undergrads trying to show themselves as being sophisticated is only part I of the formula. Part II revolves around the older, vinyl-obsessed junkies. The ones who loved vinyl so much they moved out to the suburbs and had it as siding for their house. Older vinyl fans generally have the money necessary to indulge in a one-a-year splurge, whereas I’m cool with getting my music in digital form and carrying it around on a thing known as a “MP3 Player”. MP3 players give listeners the ease to carry around vast, perhaps unhealthy amounts of music without building upper body strength like vinyl record crates do. 

                Finally there are the collectors. Collectors are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of ‘limited editions’ that are on offer for this day. While you’d think collectors would be vinyl junkies, there are certain differences. Generally speaking, collectors are the ones who put this stuff up on Ebay for some unreasonable sum they know true lovers will pay. While this dark path has tempted me as it has countless music fans, I’ve resisted its siren call. Sure, it creates a steady source of income and John Fahey survived for a while selling obscure records, but it takes away the joy from the product itself. Instead, it treats music more as a commodity and less as a thing of enjoyment. 

                Perhaps the entire record store day takes the concept of commodity fetishizing to a whole new level. They reach people who normally would be immune to such blatant attempts to get more of things they may or may not need. Simply the joy of owning becomes more important than the sound. Getting that 7 of Radiohead or LCD Soundsytem or Regina Spektor (someone I’ve been told I’d like but have yet to get into) becomes a bigger goal than wondering if the music contained isn’t just a cheap ploy to get some quick money while appearing to have an alternative view on musical culture. Vinyl tends to sell best with the most popular bands anyway, as the initial production of the vinyl can get costly. So while you’d think your local great band would have vinyl, most of the time it is some dreadful band (Guns N’ Roses being one example) who sells most of the stuff. In the rare chance a great unknown band does have the funds, more power to them. But such an instance is somewhat rare. 

                I’d say this would create a conundrum for countless individuals. I’m not one of those individuals, vinyl records remain the last vestiges of musical snobbery I have not yet indulged in yet. Having so little space is a factor. Since I like to share what I listen to, I guess vinyl doesn’t really offer me the opportunity to convert others to this or that band. For that, I use an IPOD.

                Whatever your opinion, have a happy record store day! Perhaps I’ll see you at Other Music. .For I'm ambivalent about the day itself, record stores are great way to meet new people and discover new bands.

Stranger than Paradise ***Warning Spoilers***

It takes a certain amount of confidence to dedicate an entire movie to nothing. Jim Jarmusch made it happen in the culturally bare 80s. Parts of the movie feel so naked I get worried. The characters act so natural it seems like voyeurism, as if I’m spying on them from my position of privilege. 

A few things are added in that make the appeal to me a little more personal. For one, Eva’s lack of interest in nearly anything is amazing. I simply adore her deadpan delivery on everything. Perhaps I can relate to some degree, since I’ve been told that I lack emotion in how I speak (I talk to you in monotone) so kudos for that.

“I put a spell on you” has to be the strangest reoccurring joke in a movie. There’s no purpose to it, besides Eva being interested in it. Whenever she’s bored, she simply has a tape recorder right next to her to keep her entertained. I wish I had the guts to just carry around a tape recorder with me, but I don’t even travel with an IPOD, or listen to music when I’m driving (whenever that rarely happens). 

The black and white looks glorious. Devoid of color, you get to focus on the truly crummy details of their surroundings. Willie’s apartment looks like total trash. Cleveland doesn’t appear to be much different. Everywhere is the same indeed, Eddie even states so himself. 

Bored with stealing from other people (something that lets Willie and Eva bond) they go to Florida for no real reason. Nothing happens. They look cool in sunglasses. Willie and Eddie gamble while Eva is left lonesome. Annoyed at being left alone, she steals a hat (as she usually does, she’s a kleptomaniac) and gets mistaken for a drug dealer. Given a huge amount of money by Rammellzee (Far Rockaway represent!), she leaves some for the two of them and goes to the airport.

What’s funny is how unwilling she is to go back to her home country. Apparently that’s the only flight she can still make, and she finds that very annoying. I guess she takes up their advice that it is the same all over, and waits for the flight the next day. Willie boards the Budapest bound flight to look for her and leaves. 

 The Cleveland parts are the best. Parts of the dialogue read like how I speak with people, which freaked me out. How they act as they intrude on her boring date and steal his popcorn. How they mock her geeky boyfriend. All of it works for reasons that aren’t easily explained. 

Casual films bore me most of the time, but this one did it for me. There’s something more underneath all that monotonous landscape, a real honestly and heart that you don’t find in movies very often. 

Start Watching: Here

The Road **Warning: Spoilers** **Warning: Sucks Hard**

Usually for movies, I have one of two options:

1.       Mock it by re-writing the summary. Usually this means I either haven’t seen, or am familiar enough with it to ruin the actual movie’s premise. 

2.       I thoroughly enjoyed it and want you to see it as well.

I’m not much of a movie person though, so if you ask me if I’ve seen a certain movie, my answer tends to be “No”. Not sure why this is, I attribute it to the general blandness of movies. They either possess the same qualities they always have solved in roughly the same manner. Rarely is there a movie so uniformly terrible that I have to warn you.

“The Road” is such a movie. Adapted from a book that reeks of pop-culture awfulness, the movie only expands on this weary cliché of survival following the apocalypse. Generally I’m a big fan of the end of the world, and zombies in general, enjoying their campy nature. Nothing in the movie is remotely like that; it is an absolute bore of a movie.

                After the end of the world, a father and son trudge through the wrecked hell scape of this world, searching for meaning. Somehow they turn a story about the end of the world and cannibals into a father-son bonding film. The dialogue revolts me, it is so inauthentic. Constantly he refers to his father as “Papa”. Obviously these two are from Italy in the 19^th century, because people rarely, if ever, speak this way. 

                Maybe I’m just nit-picking, but when there’s so little dialogue in the movie, you’d expect the little that’s actually there to be good. Sadly, that’s not the case, and if the dialogue wasn’t bad enough, you get to hear the father’s internal thoughts, which are uninteresting as well. What makes this almost forgivable is the beautiful, gray, bleakness that the landscape achieves. It is so devoid of life, it is excellent. Shame it is just the background to this miserable bonding movie disguised as ruminations on the end of the world.

                Honestly, I saw this with friends who read the book. They told me the book is better. I doubt them. Upon saying how much they enjoyed the book, they told me it helped them get over losing their IPOD while they traveled in Italy. If you need to think about the end of the world in order to realize that the loss of an IPOD isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things, you have serious problems. 

                Everything in the movie is so annoying wimpy. Yeah, I know, it’s a bonding film, but there’s so little to enjoy. It is as if he took the two genres I like (end of world and zombie) and bled them dry, leaving a dried out carcass. Maybe some of Cormac McCarthy’s other stuff is better but this story doesn’t convince me of that. Or, more likely, the director completely butchered the shit out of the book, kind of like what the cannibals do in the movie. 

                Below are some various screenshots from the movie. I’ve added Tao Lin’s trademark phrase ‘Seems Bleak’ in an attempt to lighten what is otherwise a fairly worthless movie. Hopefully the powerful picture coupled with the distant phrase will make you think about the light-hearted goofy nature of a burned-out shell of society, like Detroit. 

Effing Twenty Something: A True Story

                  I thought it would be different. Society glorified your twenties as some remarkable, un-reproducible piece of your life, something you’d look back on with fondness. 

                “You’ll have so much fun” the television blared in front of me “All that awkwardness will be eliminated, to present to you the prime time of your life” various advertisements tell me on the internet, radio, newspapers, magazines, songs, movies, etc. 

                All of it was wrong. None of it told the actual truth, of what it is like to be a twenty something. Perhaps my parents warned me of this, of their problems which make mine seem miniscule. They fought in wars; they watched the USSR’s rise and fall. Plenty of horrible stuff occurred during their time growing up, yet somehow it felt better. Reasons, evidence existed that things would get better. Where’d that evidence go? 

                Why the lying? I don’t get it. Who felt there was a need to create this great illusion, this false reality I could believe in? I got promised so much, and received so little. Sure, I’m fortunate enough to have this computer, this roof over my head, this car, this money, this job, but it isn’t exactly what I hoped for. 

                Now as I try to explain to people what’s happening to me, they tell me “Oh, it gets better in your thirties.” When I was in my teens, these same people told me it gets better in your twenties. What is the waiting time before things get better, more interesting, more exciting? Do I have a time line for this, or will my satisfaction constantly get pushed further and further into the future so by the time I get to that terminal endpoint I’m given a sticker that says “Relax” in big bold letters. By the time I realize that things don’t get better, that the entire universe moves in a constant state of entropy, of moving from high to low energy, those liars will be long gone, passed onto another realm. 

                Everything I was supposed to do I did. That 401K got set up. At work I maintain a perky, cheerful attitude that brightens up the office. My tastes would be considered ‘cool’ or ‘hip’. I take care of other people, have empathy for others. Yet after I do all this careful planning, all these things that are supposed to make me better, I don’t feel better.

                Trying to complain, I’m told I can’t. Venting is apparently wrong. Whenever I have problems I try to tell other people, they tell me to think about all the people who have it worse than me. I don’t understand who the fuck installed this fascist bubbly optimism regime, but I hate it. 

                Instead I jump up and down on my bed as my music plays. Lately it seems that technology has become the new opiate of the masses. No matter what bad thing happens, if I get lost, get delayed on a train for 8 hours, so long as I have an IPOD, I can tolerate it. Every time I scroll through the meticulously well-picked songs I got for myself, it reminds me that someone I’ve never met cares.

                Is this what being in your twenties is supposed to be like? All this disconnection can’t be good for me. Occasionally I wonder whether or not I’ll ever be able to find that other voice in the dark, shouting, longing for someone to understand. The more I speak with my friends; I realize they have the same issues. 

                By society’s standards, I’m a loser. Yet I’ve traveled to multiple continents, have helped people in the direst of situations, and have been there in general for countless numbers of people I may never meet. Somehow that doesn’t even count, I haven’t created my own company like the smug asshole Mark Zuckerberg, I haven’t gotten my book published, I haven’t accomplished as much as people tell me I should’ve gotten done. While I’m being told of everything I need, am supposed to do, I’m told I ought to be having fun. Maybe if everyone stopped talking at me and began listening, I might not feel so sad, so trapped, and so small. 

                How can this be the prime time of my life? I know there’s that silly saying of “No pain, no gain” but I at least thought I’d have some company in this twenty something misery.

My Headphones: A Love Story

Some people never forget their first time. That time that you first caressed someone you really cared about. That time you hit your first home run. But what struck me was the first time I had real headphones, something I could really immerse myself in. For the first time, I could hear sound clearly, complete with bass, clarity, and actual fidelity, as opposed to those cheap, waxy ear buds.

We met at J and R music center at 23 Park Row. It was a beautiful, cool summer day in 2009. I had just finished being an extra in a movie filmed on Governor’s Island called “Isle of the Dead” a zombie art film about a group of the undead obsessed with nostalgic art movements of the 1960s. Together we say “summer of 69” in zombie voices for the delightful art collective Bruce High Quality Foundation (very much worth exploring their weird, Dadaist take on the art world).

 Anyway, I walked into J and R records with zombie makeup still on and eating multi-grain Cheerios out of a large box. Had my friends not accompanied me, I might have been escorted out for looking ‘too insane’.

As my friends searched for various audio jacks, I found it. My headphones hung there, hanging on the protruding pole like a two-bit whore, awaiting any taker. Looking at the price, I realized I could afford this, but might want it cheaper online.

The Sony MDR-XB500 felt like little pillows wrapped around my head. I gave them to my friends, who nodded with approval. My heart started beating rapidly; I had found the headphones which could complete me and my IPOD. Frequencies long ignored by me, like bass, could be felt, rather than imagined. Immediately Dub Reggae made sense to me on a physical rather than simply abstract level.

Online I got them for about $35 from Amazon. Putting them with my IPOD, it looked at home.  For the first few weeks of receiving them, I had to get used to the volume controls. And since they were noise canceling, I ended up being a bit limited in where I could bring them, since I wanted to avoid being that guy who wore them around his neck like some douche bag DJ.

At work my coworkers didn’t understand. They mocked me, saying that I had just completed my shift at JFK directly air traffic. During lunch I would put them on as I found a quiet place to eat. So upon my arrival back into the office I’d put on something deliberately triumphant, in order to make it feel like all those perfectly arranged office lights were there for a reason. And the taunts didn’t bother me; it is not as if you need excellent audio quality to listen to Nickelback or Linkin Park. 

It has been over a full year since I got them. Sure, I might have been able to afford something more expensive, but these feel like home to me. I hope someday everyone will be able to toss away those little waxy IPOD headphones and find something that suits them. In other words, find your own sound. 

Mika Vainio – Vandals EP 7.7

This EP is truly a celebration for those who took down the Roman Empire. The Vandals are fully represented here, with each track representing another Germanic tribe as well (Teutons, Barbarians, and the popular Goths).

If any of those tribes had IPODs, they might have been blasting these ultra-aggressive tracks. Each one comes between a mix of power electronics and Suicide. Respect is due to those wonderful people at Raster Noton who released this intense, beat-driven music.

While Mika is also a part of Pan Sonic, his solo stuff tends to be slightly more abstract. Abstraction is not present at all here. This is pure beat joy. “Barbarians” is the biggest shock of them all. Here it is a 4/4 beat, probably the first one Mika’s ever used. Oh, and just because the beat is so simple, he can focus on making it as overwhelming as possible. Panning disorients the listener as it zooms by.

Really, releases like this make me appreciate the collapse of the Roman Empire even more. Also, Mika should lay to rest the false accusation that the Finns are wimps.

BeachSloths@Gmail.com - Contact Me!

Alright, so I’ve been doing a fairly good job of remaining mostly anonymous on this blog. Right now that’s going to change. For the purposes purely of this blog, a gmail account has been born. It is what you see above, but in case you missed it, here it is again:

beachsloths@gmail.com

Originally this project started out as a way of filtering through huge amounts of music, figuring out what I was interested in and what could be removed from my IPOD. Currently I have an overflowing IPOD, so the ratings system serves as a way of adding and removing tracks according to my tastes at that time. Right now I’m trying to get some sort of “autumn mix” down.

But at some point the comments (minimal though they have been, mostly by design) proved to be interesting enough to merit an email. Feel free to email me with literally anything, I’m really all ears. Or if you want to help me “sellout” and have some advertisements on here, that’d be swell too. Some of the things I’d be happy to promote:

Kombucha (I figure with the huge amount of Mac users browsing this site that there must be some Kombucha drinkers. It’s kind of a thing now, isn’t it?)

Microwavable Dinners (Hot Pockets, Stouffers) I should note I'm a poor cook.

Gold (seems like a popular topic right about now. Look how much Glenn Beck earns from it. Plus, it has lasting power past the end of the world in 2012)

Various Mac products (goes hand in hand with my interests, along with me being unable to afford most of them)

Huge stacks of American currency (the US dollar needs to stem its decline against other currencies).

As nice as it would be to get advertising, I’m more interested in what you have to say. Since there are people who have written books almost exclusively off of G-chat (I’m looking at you Tao Lin) I can’t see this being a bad idea. Having mini-conversations with posters in the comments section is kind of messy anyway.

So this is a public announcement sort of deal. Connect whenever you feel like it. I am an actual human being.