VAGUE SPACE

Foot Update

For those who have asked or haven't asked or those who wondered whether the long national nightmare that has been my foot problem is over, I have an update for you today.  Short answer:  No, not over.  Longer answer:  It's been just about a year now and no, not over.  Even longer answer:  Yeah it sucks.  So anyway, my foot got "hurt" at my friends' wedding, which took place almost a year ago now.  Initial diagnosis was possibly gout and we all had a big laugh about that (and some of my friends still do) even though I was in tremendous pain AND had to stop drinking but OK, it wasn't gout.  Then I was treated for a stress fracture perhaps and put in a boot for the month of July (good times!) and that actually kind of made things worse but then drugs and an insert for my shoe to take the pressure off my 2nd toe -- which was where all the pain was coming from, even though all x-rays and MRIs and 8000 other tests came up negative -- allowed me to function for the rest of the year.  But one of the 8000 tests showed that the problem was in my big toe, not the 2nd toe, and that the bone spurs and arthritis and major deformities in my big toe going back decades had put so much pressure on my 2nd toe -- especially with all my running -- that it was the cause of all the pain.  So last December, I had bone fusion surgery on the big toe along with a shortening of the 2nd toe bone and after "4-6 weeks" I would be able to drive and function again and after "3 months" I could go back to full activity and not long after that, return to running again, which I hadn't done since the wedding.  Of course, I put those figures in quotes because it's now May and the surgery was in December and I am actually worse off than before the surgery ever happened.  So that sucks just a bit.

As It Is When It Was

Song:  "As It Is When It Was"
Artist:  New Order
Album:  Brotherhood
Year:  1986

Heard this song on my iPhone on random play the other day, bringing back memories of my first year at college, when I discovered all kinds of new music, primarily from the two girls who lived down the hall from me, Anna and Kate -- I remember Anna because she had a crush on my roommate Alec and I don't remember if they ever hooked up or not, but her roommate, she was the one with the cool music collection, a box of cassette tapes -- hell yeah we listened to cassette tapes in 1990, bitches! -- and I don't remember her exact collection and what great music she introduced me to, but I did know New Order before I met her (although only the "True Faith" and "Bizarre Love Triangle" songs that were played on even mainstream radio in the '80s), but I didn't realize what incredible music they made throughout the entire decade until I met her, and met the real quality of music out there beyond the Top 40 jammed down my immature throat.  We went to a couple concerts together -- The Replacements played at Rutgers the following year! -- and I do owe some of my lifelong obsession with quality underground music to her.  Short brown hair and an "F the world" attitude, I was too shy to ever do more than listen to music with her, but this song brings back memories of my freshman year, beginning a life of beginning new things and learning about the wonders of music and the world that still inspire me today.  I don't know whatever happened to you, Kate, or Anna, and I don't remember your last names.  But I hope all is well in your lives.  As it is when it was.

• Download New Order - "As It Is When It Was".mp3 

I've kept my head against the wall
I've been this way for so long now
You weren't exactly falling over yourself
When last I saw you
Well I always thought
We'd get along like a house on fire
Until you told me that I'd have to go
How can someone like you work that slow

Whatever you think of me
You listen hard and I will make you see
Whatever you think of me
You listen hard and I will make you see

I don't feel anything no more
This state of grace is consuming me
I'm not grown up and I am not a boy
I feel no pain and I feel no joy
Well I always thought
We'd get along like a house on fire
In those days when the sun was warm
I ran in the street where I was born

Whatever you think of me
You listen hard and I will make you see
Whatever you think of me
You listen hard and I will make you see

The streets are so empty at this time of night
I'd rather walk on my own than fight
In a world where I'd forgotten you
I found myself forgotten, too
That's the danger of believing books
And all the lies of those thieves and crooks
We sing intellectual songs of love
From a stolen pen to a velvet glove.
---

Desaparecidos Reunite!

Back in 2002, when I was just discovering this young talent named Conor Oberst and his amazing work as Bright Eyes, Conor was off with some friends producing a raging punk protest album under the moniker Desaparecidos, with a scorching series of songs called Read Music - Speak Spanish.  As the years passed, Bright Eyes joined Modest Mouse as my favorite bands in the world by 2005, when both artists' work began to drop off for various reasons, and while I still admire and exult all of the early work of Modest Mouse, time has not been as kind to Mr. Oberst.  By the end of the decade he "left" Bright Eyes for a couple folk-country albums under his given name, and an attempt at re-invigorating the Bright Eyes name last year with The People's Key fell about as flat as could be.  Now, admittedly, my interest in the slow, singer-songwriter music style that I fell for hard a decade ago has all but disappeared -- I don't really listen to much Sufjan Stevens or Death Cab anymore, even their old "good" material -- so perhaps it's me that's changed more than Conor.  At some point in the past decade, though, I discovered his one-off explosion of screaming music with Desaparecidos and fell in love.  And I still admire it today, almost as much as the best of Bright Eyes catalog and definitely more than anything Conor has released since 2005 or so.  Perhaps it's because I've spent now a full year suffering from some degree of foot pain, but the raging venom of songs like those on Read Music - Speak Spanish really speak to me today.  Or perhaps it's the content of the lyrics, all of them speaking truth to power of an American world at the start of the Bush years, presaging pretty much all the hell our economy and culture and world has suffered through in the hands of conservative rule for the better part of a decade.  This music is wonderful rage, powerfully told, and it was with some elation that I read the news that Conor and his old mates reunited recently in a secret show in their hometown of Omaha, Nebraska.  The video from the show is of a new song called "Left is Right" and the quality is admittedly very poor but the screaming... yeah, it's real.  And more than ever, right here, right now, we need a little screaming rage.  Fuck yeah, Conor, glad to see you still have it in you.  The only question is... will another musical masterpiece follow?

• Download Desaparecidos - "The Happiest Place on Earth".mp3

 

Ha-ha (in Nelson's voice)

Seen at the end of "The Simpsons" episode marking its 25 years on television:

 

The Ten Greatest Okkervil River Songs About Murder, Rape, and Other Human Depravity

So there's this band called Okkervil River which features the songs of Will Sheff, and many or most of his earlier songs (and some of his later ones) have sinister narratives and evil characters but they are sung in such an appealingly awesome way that you can't help but sing along despite the horrific nature of the stories in the songs themselves.  Sing along with my favorites.

1.  Westfall

Key Line:  And when I killed her, it was so easy, that I wanted to kill her again.

Basic Plot:  Man hooks up with high school friend Colin Kincaid, who invites out a couple girls Colin knew from Kenwood Christian -- one was name Laurie, that's what the story said next week in The Guardian.  Because, you know, he killed her -- the narrator, not Colin.  And it was awesome.  The narrator's take, not mine.  I don't know how Colin reacted.

Extra Stuff:  The song starts slow with a country twang but revs up to 100 in an instant with the key line above, so when you hear it live -- and it is completely unbelievable live -- there is relative silence until the crowd sings along to the song at the exact point it gets morbid.  And when I killed her, it was so easy, that I wanted to kill her again!!!!  I got down on both of my knees and, she ain't coming back again.  She ain't coming back again... La la la la la la la la la la la la la.

Crazy cool.

• Download Okkervil River - "Westfall".mp3 

Explosions in the Sky at Coachella 2012

The full setlist (but this is sadly just a clip):

01. The Only Moment We Were Alone
02. Catastrophe and the Cure
03. Human Qualities
04. Let Me Back In
05. The Birth and Death of the Day

M83 at Coachella

You as You Were

The video for what could likely be the Vague Space song of the year.  Shearwater's on tour now in Europe but coming to the U.S. soon.  Buy the brilliant album Animal Joy here.

 

The Buffett Rule

April 16, 2012

Senate Republicans on Monday blocked legislation to make millionaires pay at least the same tax rate as middle-class families. "It is absurd that at a time when our country has a $15.6 trillion national debt and enormous unmet needs, the wealthiest people in this country have an effective tax rate that is lower than many middle-class people. It makes no sense that the richest people in America pay an effective tax rate lower than small businessmen, nurses, teachers, police officers and others," said Sen. Bernie Sanders. He cosponsored the measure named after billionaire investor Warren Buffett, who says it is unfair that he pays a lower effective tax rate than his secretary. "Nobody should be talking about cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and education, as many of my Republicans colleagues would like to do, while maintaining huge tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires. Today, the top 1 percent earns over 20 percent of all income in this country which is more than the bottom 50 percent.  In terms of the distribution of wealth, as hard as it may be to believe, the richest 400 Americans own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans. The richest people and largest corporations are doing phenomenally well, while the middle class is collapsing and poverty increases.  This is not what democracy looks like.  This is what oligarchy and plutocracy look like."

That's from the website of the Senate's only avowed socialist, independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont, hero to the 99% of us who still give a shit about our country.  Oh, and "socialism", at least of this modest stripe, is pretty damn popular according to a CNN poll from over the weekend, especially when the effective income tax rate of millionaires is around 15% right now.

Would you favor or oppose a proposal to change the federal income tax rates so that people who make more than one million dollars a year will pay at least 30 percent of their income in taxes?

Favor 72%
Oppose 27%
No opinion 1%

One Republican senator voted for the Buffett rule on Monday (Susan Collins of Maine).  44 voted against.  51 Democratic senators voted for the rule, 1 voted against.  The motion did not pass due to Republican filibuster.  Go democracy!  Oh wait...

(by the way, please vote these fucktards on the GOP side out of office in November... please!)

 

The Passage

Rice professor Justin Cronin's best-selling postapocalyptic novel The Passage is close to 800 pages, is apparently the first in a trilogy (which I didn't learn until I was almost finished), and incorporates so many loosely connected characters that at times it's maddening, but it was so damned compelling that I couldn't stop reading, plowing through a story I didn't want to start and didn't think I'd finished and now, sadly, I can't wait for the sequel The Twelve to come out in the fall.  It's not terribly well-written, at least not compared to the literary style I perhaps prefer, it's too damn long-winded -- going on and on about minor characters or settings or the intracacies of certain scenes that don't require more than a mere mention let alone a dozen pages, and this motherfucking bastard could have easily trimmed a third with some prudent editing, but fuck if I didn't read it every night, devouring the pages like the nightmare vampires inside devour the world.  It's a genre story -- part horror, part sci-fi, part Mad Max-esque end of the world stuff, part western -- and I don't like genre stories, or I haven't, not since I was in college and devoured Stephen King like a madman but I'd outgrown those stories and outgrown that sort of fiction and if it weren't for a compelling interview with Mr. Cronin in a literary magazine that I read named Slice, I never would have picked it up.  And again, I didn't know it was 800 freaking pages.  But I couldn't put it down. So yeah, I guess in the end, I highly recommend.