loss

rip kurt vonnegut

book recommendation: 'hello i'm special' by hal niedzviecki. ever wondered why timewarner uses the slogan "the power of you" on their ads? i have, and it always bothered me. i mean what does that mean in terms of purchasing cable television? though not directly addressed in this book, i think i now have my answer. they're just doing what everybody else is doing, selling us the dream that we are somehow unique and special even while urging us to buy a mass produced and distributed product.

do you hate paolo cohelo's "the alchemist" as much as i do? i hope so. in any case remember how the universe conspires to help you as long as you want something bad enough? i do. i also remember that at the time i was reading this book (an international bestseller in case you're from mars) i saw a story on the news about people in the philippines that live in landfills. bad enough? no, one day the mountains of trash that were surrounding them collapsed and killed hundreds. their problem you see is that they just didn't want to live somewhere else bad enough. if they did, the universe would have helped them! what does this have to do with niedzviecki's book? well in my mind cohelo in his book was just articulating the same myth of uniqueness and easy success, albeit in a new age wrap, that hal attacks so eloquently in his book. in any case wherever you stand in terms of pop culture (and hey a lot of good things have come out of pop - however you want to define it) this is a must read as far as i'm concerned. i'm sure however that being intelligent readers as you are, the irony of addressing this issue on a blog read by an average of 3 people a day is not lost on you. and by the way i do think that the book's website is a bit lame in terms of even existing.

living legend

back in ny for a week now and yesterday i caught the roy haynes quarter at the village vanguard. when mr. haynes said he was 82 i couldn't believe it. the guy has more energy on the drum set than most 30 year olds. a living legend indeed. http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=11:szp1z88ajyv3

coming to you live from san francisco!!!! where to start...nowhere. i'm on a break suckers.

if only life was more like...

new tape is here

get the new mix tape here. not quite a black and bleak tape but not quite happy go lucky either. ie grey. throw it in your itunes or burn it. this time i kept the tracks separate. a couple of notes on the songs.

1. i looove (as geoff would say) al green. i especially like this song because it's always a thrill to discover a song that's been sampled by one of your favorites
2. from pet sounds - beach boys at their pick
3. a different take on the well known ivo from the cocteau twins' bbc sessions
4. i read about daniel johnston in mojo and then i watched "the devil and daniel johnston" a sad movie about a very troubled man. just got my first cd of his and i'm sharing it with you. i recommend the movie.
5. a -european?- classic
6. a song that doesn't mean much to me. galaxie 500 is kind of cool
7. nina simone. i rest my case.
8. a rarity for you by the velvet underground
9. if push comes to shove my favorite tom waits tune. play it over and over again and feel the goose pumps
10. from a very overlooked artist a haunting song. julee cruise as you know is david lynch's music muse and he wrote the lyrics for the lp where this song is from
11. the byrds with gram parsons from the classic "sweetheart of the rodeo"
12. the magnetic fields being sweet and geoff's favorite from 69 love songs
13. to take us back down there's no one better than nico
14. a rarity for you. from the 1969 sessions of dylan with johnny cash that produced 'girl from the north country' that appeared on nashville skyline. a special treat especially if you're familiar with the original
15. more poetry from the silver jews. one of the best first lines of any song any know
16. a nod to john. one of our college years favorites. thanks john
17. another rarity for you. the tiger lillies are out of their minds, their singer sounds like a castrato and they use accordeons. what more can you want. check them out
18. a leonard cohen fairwell live and sad sad sad. but hopeful.

he says hello from greece

new tape on the works....soon to come

new york is cold cold cold. take that to mean what you will.

spector trial and where W can retire

so the phil spector trial will be televised. apparently the judge in the case thought that it's time for courts to get over their fears after the o.j. simpson saga. i don't think this is good news for phil. this by the way is the judge



and this of course the defendant


i will make no jokes


there is still one place one earth where george w. bush could happily retire and enjoy the patriotism that he enjoys. as long as he can convince these people that he's been there before...

pixies

so sometimes there are good shows on tv. about a month ago and completely by accident i came upon a documentary about the pixies on pbs. a number of high profile guests were being interviewed including david bowie and there was amazing footage from a pixies concert in 1988. i went on youtube and there it was (or at least just one song). hey enjoy!

let's see if this works. this is james randi by the way, one of my heroes. this is a classic psychology experiment that he's showing here but i guess i just want to see if i can make this work.

i don't care how cynical you are, this is the cutest thing on the planet

hmmm it looks like a....

what the hell is it? is it the something out of Lost? is it the new club down the road? have the aliens finally come? all i can say is that it involves norway (gotta love them up there, seriously!) and seeds. click here for more...

my latest music obsession (of the week). this is one of those times when allmusic gets it wrong. 3 star review? really? come on guy give it what it deserves...

carnegie hall

went to carnegie hall yesterday to see a combination of people presented by david byrne. this included Adem, Devendra Banhart, Vashti Bunyan, Vetiver and a couple of others. i was only aware of denendra and vashti but vetiver was a very pleasant surprise, sending nods to gram parsons and early byrds with his folky sound. i'll be sure to check out some of his records. vashti was angelic and more engaging than her records which for me can get a little repetitive and devendra was funny and electric for the most part, clearly the head of this gang in his ruby velvet suit. there was a lot of posing and 'hipper than hip' attitude that sort of made me think that a bunch of my brown classmates were playing carnegie hall but that is to be expected. the crowd, at least up where we were, was mostly young and 'hip' but from the balcony you could see all the balding men and their wives grooving out below. near us was also a guy with a red beard and hat that looked like he just arrived from grozny but he was feeling the music and grooving with the rest of us. all in all it was interesting and fun experience where weirdness meets the mainstream and discovers it's really part of the same big thing we call life...so poetic.

head of the pact?


she's cool

subway troubles

the troubled man tunes his guitar on the subway on 53rd street. he starts a song. he stops. he is after all a troubled man. he bangs his hand on the wall. he looks like one of those ugly thin manly women you see sometimes in the shadows of new york city. he is a man though. his voice confirms it once he starts signing. it's a good song, one i've never heard before. i wonder if he wrote it. the train is approaching and the troubled man starts singing louder. louder. the train covers all sound with its scritching and wailing. the troubled man stops trying and i get on the train.

sad...

the beautiful south break up. sad but then again they'll reunite probably around 2012.

almost 2007

almost 2007 and here are the things running through my mind:

saddam is dead and though i oppose the death penalty on principle, i can't say i'm saddened exactly. freaking psychopathic murderer, good riddance.

do i have an obligation to answer individually all the emails i have received for best wishes as part of someone's list of friends? do i create my own list and send out massive emails as well? i replied individually this year but no so sure i'll be doing so next year. where is the savoir vivre for the web generation? how will my niece grow up without such rules?

just bought and listening to "the specials". great fun



greek drivers are dangerous. i called the cops on this one guy the other day. he almost destroyed 4 cars, including me, for no reason. hope the fucker broke a leg or something on xmas day.

you can't right click "save image location" on explorer. yet another reason why i use mozzila 99% of the time.

in terms of last year's decisions, i did manage to learn some poker, not sure that was a great idea and thanks to john's last visit some things about the guitar that seemed mythically complicated have become a lot simpler though i still need to work on more guitar playing. my goal for the first 2 months of 2007 to learn to play every song on this:


the annual litwack gift is here and it freaking rocks!!!! quality quality quality people, that's what the litwack way is all about...thanks geoff!

merry xmas and bye bye JB

merry xmas everybody and happy anything else to the non believers that will roast in hell. we still love you though :-) back in freezing athens, yes it's freezing here, recovering from the food debauchery of the days past and looking fwd to more of the same in the days to come. still working on a final (for god's sake) for my motivation class, how ironic...

so the Man has died. what a shock and what a great exit monopolizing xmas. who's bigger than jesus now john lennon? nothing i can say that hasn't been said except that as most of you know he was in my top 5 favorite musicians of all time and it's as sad as losing johnny cash a little while back. so put on that vinyl, cd or mp3 and enjoy the groove, because the groove is forever...

rip

CNN the world news leader: you better believe it bitch

30 minutes and counting is cnn's coverage of the fate of tara, ie miss usa, and her drinking and the donald trump's response. the cnn "journalist" just informed us before the break that "we got a lot more of this story coming". exactly how long can this go on for? what a sad state of "world's news leader". a small town girl that made mistakes and is now going to rehab. sob. maybe she can hang out with mel gibson. poor girl. you go donald, a second chance is what we all want. what a great xmas story.

update: the cnn journalist just told us "it may have been the mother of all press conferences". no comment.

eat your heart out



and



this is what dominates the news RIGHT NOW!

ahhhh, a much better story...



UPDATE: CNN is REPLAYING the press conference. we are at 45' and counting. no other news have been interjected even for a moment. excuse me while i vomit. and the pathetic attempts of the tools of cnn to actually downplay it even though they have elevated to the #1 news story of the day make me even sicker.

craigslist and money

it must have been interesting to be there. here is a short article about craigslist meeting capitalism. i personally wasn't helped by the site when i was looking for a place in ny but i know a lot of people have. i also personally would be out to make a buck together with providing a service but still you gotta hand it to these guys. problem is, you look like a worse sell out when you do sell out. and chances are, you will. sell. out.

it's been very busy here at the rotten apple and i haven't had many opportunities to update. however here are some things that have happened:

me and luis are writing a bunch of songs together. we have about one song already, albeit it's really two half songs

had a great walk / food day at the lower east side / east village today see pictures left and below


i baked an apple pie awhile ago and here is the evidence















i bought an external hard drive and saved all my ipod music as well as a shit load of files from my pc. it's exciting!

bought some wine glasses, cups and bowls today from c&b.

other than that all is well...

so ok, this site has some of the coolest shit i have ever seen in relation to rock 'n' roll. not only that but our old friend J.M. (who is probably cool with being identified by name but you never know) is the new art director there and responsible for this kick-ass website, among other things.

check out wolfgang's vault NOW!!!

time is precious and updates are few, i know. faithful reader these are hard times of rejection and soul searching but i guess that's the whole point of this stupid adventure we call life. so let's cheer up and listen to some good music. this post's recommendation for your pleasure:

Bat for Lashes - fur and gold

US based readers may find this hard to find through traditional means but please give it a shot. lo-fi , folky, dark and haunted this is a great record.

bat for lashes brains and feathers:

NEW TAPE

on a rare 3 hour break from my life me and luis made this tape for all of you. Just click here to get it and look at the bottom of the page. Enjoy and tell your friends. The tape is saved as one long song, perfect for ipods and all mixed. Track list included in the rar file.

hope you like it.

so guess what? Dish responded!! Wait don't get so excited:



Dear Sir or Madam,

Thank you for your email. We have updated your account to have your information removed from our predictive caller list. Please understand that independent retailers are making telemarketing calls as well. If you receive further calls, you will need to notify the telemarketer that you wish to be removed from the retailers individual call list. All independent retailers of DISH Network are separate business entities and are not under our direct control.

Your business is greatly appreciated and we thank you for allowing us to be of assistance to you. If you have any further questions or concerns, please refer to www.dishnetwork.com or reply to this email.

Sincerely,
Dish Network e-care

mmmm what a warm fuzzy feeling i'm getting. did you notice there was no apology? so let me get this straight...someone else called me - a middleman - which sells their products so of course this takes away all their responsibility, ok ok that makes sense. so all i have to do is get a list of all their providers and locate the responsible one. so if someone calls you and tells you he's calling from X company, let's say dishnetwork your first thought should be that they're really from somewhere else. yeah that makes so much sense. I DON'T GIVE A FUCK. if you're letting these independent businesses use your name you have a responsibility towards their (your) customers. and of course the best part is that though they didn't call (possibly, not that anyone cares to look into it) somehow my number is removed from their database. how interesting. and then companies are wondering what the hell is wrong with revenues. what a spineless, gutless response. not that i expected better and neither should you.

yes, this is what i do in my spare time and believe it's limited these days. just sent this.

Dear Dish Network,

1. I'm on the no call list so your reps calling me alone is illegal.

2. If you think that training your reps to hang up on prospective clients is the right strategy to get them to switch to your service, then good luck. I was very polite to your rep who called me twice and as soon as I politely said "thank you sir I am not interested" he hang up on me. Nice.

3. If this is the profile your company is building you probably don't even care but fyi I will never, after this, get your product and I will do my best to spread this story and dissuade others from buying your product as well.

4. If you care one bit, an apology would be nice, but please do it via email and don't be mad that I don't give out my number (which you're using illegaly anyway).

Regards,

George

rude company

career change

i've always been fascinated by people who change careers, especially those who leave highly 'succesful' and profitable careers in order to raise horses or become those guys in orange that fish (?) oysters. why and how come? here is an example of a man that was a drummer and became a chiropractor. a failed drummer you're thinking? not quite. terry chimes was the clash's first drummer. i blame it on the yoga. read all about it.

this is the 6th picture that comes up when you googleimage (a new verb) 'the clash'. shape up google

so much has been happening but it feels like so little as time passes and passes...

i found this while looking for a new desktop image. hr giger ipod skins...Cooool

sick and music

i'm sick mother fuckers and that means staying home and being first hot and then cold. i am 1 cd away from importing all my us-based music into my new 80gb ipod which i love. now to be honest, this being my first ipod, i have to say that there are a lot of obvious improvements that it could use. a way to delete files without having to connect to the computer is the first one that comes to mind. in any case though this is really the future in a lot of ways even for a cd-vinyl junkie. to my surprise though getting the ipod has actually strengthened my resolve to keep buying at least some of my music, especially what i consider essential.

saw the mountain goats live the other day, a week after catching the lips. what a contrast! the goats are basically 1 guy, john darnielle, with 1 understated but good bassist that at times plays the base like a guitar and a guy on keys. some lights changed but there was no confettin or santa clauses or aliens but it was still great. john is a very likeable tormented soul with a lot of dry humour and very engaging. not being a huge fan and having discovered them only a few months ago - from the weeds series soundtrack - i enjoyed discovering some of the songs i didn't know. a canadian singer called christing fellows opened and she was good enough for me to buy her cd on the way out.

discover them, they're great

Oh my gawd…that was fucking great!!!

So I’ve been toying with the idea of abandoning this blog completely, I’m too bus these days and so are all of you. A lot has happened since the last post, I know work two part time jobs and study and still try to have a good time here. In this spirit there have been a lot of concerts lately. We say Jose Gonzales with Zero 7 last week and it was really good. Gonzales’ best songs were covers – heartbeats (the Knife), love will tear us apart and teardrop (Massive), but that may be because as humans we tend to like familiarity. At any rate he played a great set and though we got the tickets for him initially, Zero 7 didn’t disappoint at all. A mix between Air and Stereolab they were bouncing and dancing and fun and I recommend the experience.

The day after that we say Tortoise (the notekillers opened and ‘killed it’ though there is some controversy as to what that mean see luis’ blog). Tortoise was good but too loud and fast at times and somehow the show wasn’t entirely satisfying. Both me and luis silently agreed to leave at the end but before the encore.

And now we come the inspiration of today’s post, last night’s Flaming Lips concert at Hammerstein Ballroom. Now for a little bit of history, I had come close to seeing the Flaming Lips live before, in Boston ca 2000 and then we got there too late for some reason and walked in as they were playing their last song to find Wayne covered in fake blood and a general pandemonium and it was crushing to have missed it, wasn’t it John? Now the Lips are much bigger and well known and everyone has seen footage of their concerts, I even caught them on Letterman the other day, so the initial element of surprise was, I thought, lost.

How wrong can one man be? Very wrong. Following a very good set be Deerhoof the Lips came on with Wayne in a giant bubble that went on top of the audience and we carried him on our hands and then sent him back on stage.



Before the concert Flash Gordon gave everybody a laser pointer to be used later in the show. It was! We used it to point at a mirror that Wayne has holding and he reflected the beams back to us with all the light off and it was magical.



There were unscripted moments too. Part of the opening involved about 100 balloons to be thrown on the audience and then a few songs later we were asked to pop them all.. One suvived and when Wayne noticed that everybody was pointing the lasers on it he stopped talking and asked for all lights to be turned off and we all sat there watching a giant glowing ballon as it jumped around and it was truly beautiful.



There were 2 encores and 2 people that fainted and there was dancing and lights and sooo much confetti and it was fucking ridiculous. Yes, I will say it. It was the best concert of my life.




pictures not from yesterday but it was just like this only unspeakably better

pandora's box

i was introduced recently by a crazy scientist to the site called Pandora. it's basically a piece of software that creates playlists "radio stations" for its users based on bands and / or songs they identify as favorites. you can have more than one of these so you can have like me an 80s station and a folk station etc. this is a good idea especially for people who either don't know much about music and want to learn or for those who know a lot and want to know more or for those who don't have a lot of music or for those times when changing the music is annoying. in any case, check it out. it's worth it. while you're at it learn more about this:

this warrants a post since there is no way i'll be able to sleep. it's 5:50 am, i woke up at 3:20 to watch the US - Greece semi final for the world championship and though we started trailing 12 points we turned it around and won in the end 101-95. god this sounds so tame, i'm so amped right now, i've been screaming and kicking with the tv and the greek radio over the internet on, if i don't get kicked out of my building i'll be lucky. sportfm.gr keeps playing the last 10'' with alphaville's "big in japan" playing in the background (in case you live on mars the championship is taking place in japan). so now what does one do after talking on the phone with family and friends, does one go to astoria? no, one sits down and writes a ranting post in order to burn some of this adrenaline. WRGGJEGERGJKEG GOGERGJETJEGK EG EGJEG :GEGEGJEG EGJE ER:F G EKEGKLLLLLLL .

better.

from espn coverage:
"The U.S. seemed in control after Joe Johnson's 3-pointer gave the Americans a 33-21 lead with about 61/2 minutes left in the second quarter. It was around then that James told his teammates on the bench': 'They don't know what to do.'

Well, they figured it out in a hurry."

better luck next time

back?

is it time to come back on this blog? is there a point? hmmm...for now i think i have to just go do the dishes. this is were i've mostly been all this time.

it's here!

ok loyal readers here it is: my first mix tape to be offered online to YOU. 45' of jamaican music mixed for your pleasure. it's in mp3 for all you ipod people out there and it's also one long track because as geoff says one should keep it old school. it's also one track so there are no gaps between the songs for ipod people and also as chuck klosterman says old mix tapes forced people to listen to the whole thing and that's what i want you to do. there is a track list and for more info on some of these artists go to my reggae post somewhere in the archives.

get DJAthan Jamaican music 1 for your summer pleasure this link will work for seven days, tell your friends.

sit back and enjoy...

ps. i'm leaving for home today so updates may be sporadic.

reggae or more accurately jamaican music tape coming very soon on this very page...definitely by the end of the week and if not, well then it's going to have be september.

subway singer

A short round white man was singing in the subway car this morning. He didn’t do it for money, at least he never seemed to ask for any and he wasn’t a great singer either. He sang “This land is my land” and the US national anthem among others. He did all this with a mild to strong “Spanish” accent. I was semi forced to abandon my music, stopping my cd player from spinning my cd but I kept the earphones on, to insulate me from the pressure of giving him money if he asked for it. By the time I was ready to get off I was ready to go up to him and volunteer money. I didn’t. As far as I know he sang himself to his stop, deep in Brooklyn. As I was getting off the Asian woman sitting directly across from him gave me a desperate look. I didn’t reciprocate the despair even though I empathized. I guess the worst part was that it was sad and enjoyable at the same time to hear this man sing. I walked away confused and I remain just that.

PS. After finishing writing this, it came to my attention that for better or most likely for worse, this is my 100th post. Whatever that means.

news that is worthwhile:

harry potter is an animal lover. really. disturbing.

so glad to see the leader of the free world work so hard for television. he understands what matters. good job sir!

why am i not including anything about the middle east? well, i did say "news" right?

finally mystery solved. it was about getting some. who would have thought.

so you want to know about a couple of records you might not have heard of? no? well you will anyway. we are starting a new section here at sweet nothing that will run with predictable irregularity every 3rd week on a Monday (today will be the exception) unless that week i'm having a particularly lousy week in which case it will run every 4.5 weeks on a Thursday unless I'm too depressed in which case it may never run again, so stay tuned! we will call this section: "records to impress your friends with if they are the sort that cares and if you are the sort that cares".
these feature presentations will not necessarily be of hard to find or know records but it will veer towards the slightly unusual in a non-hipster kind of way. (expect phil collins all you belle & sebastianites). for full reviews with which you may or may not agree go to your local allmusic.com

our first feature record of the day is:



a folk mini-piece with a backing choir that works like a charm. think silver jews meets the supremes and then forget about that and go out and buy it. i was actually introduced to howie gelb through this:



a much more solitary affair and also worth getting.

our second album is this:

an apparent classic from 1973 (i wasn't aware of it till recently but maybe you are). in any case, it's british folk meets some weird noises that could have come from 1998 and i highly recommended it.

enjoy your loneliness.