Doubleouble

I’m prepping for autumn, probably, feeling all in between things. Nothing’s wiggled too much between the ears besides Feels and Gaucho, but neither come as a surprise. I think I’m burning myself out on listening to music. What do you do when this happens? I suppose I’ll turn the tide back to movies or literature or something else to consume in its place; such is my tendency. I sort of listen to music all the time at work, so doing it as a free time thing has become weirdly taxing. I’ve become most happy just listening to whatever they play at the coffeeshop up the street, and even have come to like dealing with the nerd-dick record collector dude that works there. The other day, a conversation went like this:

Me: Hey, what is this?

Him: (Pause) The Minutemen.

Me: Oh yeah, I mean, I didn’t think it could be anything else, but I’ve never heard this track.

Him: Actually, it’s not the Minutemen.

Me: Really?

Him: No, it is.

//

The other night, Burns and I went over to Tonic and saw Stars Like Fleas, the best band to effortlessly combine ramshackle 90’s-era indie-Americana, Albert Ayler, pastoral Talk Talk, and freq.-bleating that I’ve heard, maybe ever. It was kind of nice to go see a show with a bunch of bands for whom I had no real expectations. Panicsville was good, like a computer gargling with loose gravel in a hailstorm for about 30 minutes. Flying was like Ben Folds Five & The Microphones One Night Only Performing: A Medley Version of the Best of Ben Folds Five and The Microphones. Very oddly straddling a Kpunk/pianoman vibe. Open call to all ramshackle indie-pop bands: make more noise, clang more, fall apart more often, be more like Flying. Mark Morgan, the guitar player from Sightings, played a breathless 15 minute set, during which he showed us about 1000 ghosts screaming to be let out of his guitar amplifier (obv. He refused to let them out, but he did let them come right up to the glass). Really captivating, though not as captivating as his dumbshit friend in the striped shirt and Bobby Briggs 'do sucking on a bottle of Stella and bleating about the bad batch of heroin circling around the city. Totally one of those guys ruined by his first experience with Big Black, a neo-grotesque fetish dude with black jeans and lots of hair gel who makes his dates watch grainy hardass shit like Tetsuo: Iron Man and likes heroin because it’s fuckin’ dirty dude, not because it’s fun.

(Update on the coffesshop: record-jerk came over and showed me a new homemade lamp they got for the shop and said “do you want me to turn it on for you? We’re gonna hang a bunch from the ceiling tomorrow morning.” Ahh, Sunday. I can be so paranoid.)