a lot of musical things

"i love [bob] dylan's words, but even more than that, i love the fact that he loves words. /elliott smith
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smith was also a huge t.s. eliot fan.

elliott smith on songwriting



i first watched this as a junior in high school, when i was first falling in love with playing guitar. his openness about teaching people on the other side of a camera how to write songs like him, as impossible that is (unless you're earlimart or conor oberst or emily haines), was so inspiring to me. looking at chords as shapes instead of letters and numbers, absorbing compelling music regardless of the genre, and writing what pleases yourself are all concepts i first attained from elliott smith.

smith performing alameda live



performed may 3, 1997 in arizona, a healthy six and a half years before his suicide when he was likely abusing copious quantities of hard drugs and partaking in fucked up relationships with women, bandmates, and friends. wayne coyne, in an article mourning smith's death, said he saw smith as "a guy who had lost control of himself. he was needy, he was grumpy, he was everything you wouldn't want in a person. it's not like when you think of keith richards being pleasantly blissed out in the corner."

if i were to compile a soundtrack to my life, it might only be about a dozen songs in length, and each one would speak of a notion or issue in life that i've been contemplating or battling with for years. alameda's chorus, "nobody broke your heart / you broke your own 'cause you can't finish what you start," has eeked its way into my blood and become the backdrop for a lot of relationships in my life. i'm still trying to figure out whether the sentiment applies more to me or other people, or if the distinction matters at all.

an interview with smith and janeane garofolo



one of the few times i've ever seen him laugh or smile on film.
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mike einziger [of incubus] on songwriting



one of the earlier videos i used to teach meself guitar. this dude is an awesome guitarist and knows way more theory than is necessary to be a successful rock musician, but i suppose that's (one of many reasons) why he's excelled in life. i remember watching his spindly little fingers manhandle the strings of that old, heavily-strung instrument, and i worried moment by moment about what would happen should he get into a snowboarding accident or a surfing accident or a large dog accident and permanently injure his fingers. when a person's livelihood is manifested through his fingertips, the body becomes a precarious temple, indeed.

there's a part in this video when einziger is talking about a music class he took as a kid where he learned to recognize pitch intervals just by listening and integrating sonic frequencies into his permanent memory, essentially acquiring absolute pitch to the best of his ability. he notes that it was the most valuable thing he ever learned in a music class. why isn't music a central tenet of public school systems? why is it presumed that future generations will be benefitted only by mathematics, science, and literature? what of the personal insight into others to be gained by training the ear to listen for variances in dynamics and tonalities in speech? why aren't children taught to play instruments early on to strengthen their hand-eye coordination and reinforce their learning potential for other subjects? plenty of books have been written about this kind of thing. i hope obama has read one of them.
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who's in charge here? is a website whose purpose is to determine a band's leader by analyzing a publicity photo. after sufficient discussion has taken place, a verdict can then be passed based on a majority vote.





learn more about acrassicauda in the superb documentary, heavy metal in baghdad:


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brian cox used to be a musician who toured with jimmy page and europe, but now he's professing physics at manchester university and working on the large hadron collider with cern. watch him explain shit:




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the finale of this post is animal collective's music video for "my girls," which, according to me, is the best video they've ever slapped against a song ever. their weird videos like peacebone and water curses are telling enough of their generally inaccessable style, but they've never really been very appropriate for the subject matter of the song, let alone the sheer sonic ecstacy that each one pumps through the airwaves. even the video for who could win a rabbit, though exquisitely edited and filmed by the same guy who did the my girls video, ends with the dudes sitting around in the wooded darkness eating what i can only assume is human flesh. not so much for my girls. tom whalen at no rip cord poignantly notes that "animal collective dropped most of their serious shtick when they stopped wearing masks." indeed, as one who wishes synesthesia were available to all people at all times for the express purpose of enjoying animal collective on multiple planes of existence, i am totally satisfied with this video. it's complete with swaths of color spread out over multifarious textures and heavily edited laser beams radiating from the center of pink-mouthed bodies, and watching compelling music is amazing, regardless of the medium.



whalen also recognizes that "at points the singing style, the full mouthed annunciation, seems to invite this kind of alternate hearing, this accidental multi-valence," whereas mark richardson at pitchfork (who is a huge ac fan in his own right) expressed his doubt at the vocalists' abilities to purge words curiously:

Animal Collective don't tell stories, and their music rarely has characters; there's little clever wordplay and fewer money lines you'll repeat later on. Rather, the words reinforce the sense of vulnerability that cuts through the music, and wind up being an essential component on an album that oozes confidence from every pore.

i interpret that as a massive cop-out for someone who can't find for himself the stories and characters and ubiquitous clever wordsmithery throughout ac's metier as verbal and aural mashers. furthermore, it seems to me that a lack of clever wordplay and strong characters would preclude an album beaming with confidence, especially when it comes to animal collective. panda bear's "youth prayer" was filled with warbly, wobbly, flaccid yelps and nailboard scratch whimpers, but it fit as his musical response to his father's death. it is decidedly lacking confidence. but panda bear has fully grown past that, and avey tare has opened himself up by transitioning from shorter vocal segments draped in reverb and chorus and shimmering with harmony to lengthier verses that i might only describe as winding stories that weave their way through proverbial wisdom and in between extended moments of climactic bliss. i read a fan review for banshee beat that said the song "peaks like a fine orgasm," and it's a simile i could apply to numerous ac songs.

i do, however, appreciate richardson's raving review of the album, which echoes what i've heard from most ac fans in that merriweather post pavilion is really the culmination of everything geologist, avey tare, and panda bear have been striving to convey since they started making music. they've got the electronics down, their vocal styles convalesce more after each live show, and it's all been manifested in their latest album. it fucking rules.

the blood in the dark will attract the sharks who are not violent--we've all got hungry bellies.