I'm stumped

Just had a bit of a realization that I am going to try to work out via this blog post while Saints/Cowboys pregame is on mute.

I recently invested in a terabyte hard drive for my laptop. I had a friend show me a similar drive that contained 600 gigs of mp3s that I had to have. Everything I ever wanted was there and available for the taking. The external hard drive cost me $110 after shipping and handling. After copying the drive and figuring a subpar way of hooking my laptop to my stereo, I have been enjoying the likes of Al Green, Os Mutantes, and lots of Django thanks to copying a music mecca made into mp3.

Just now, while listening to my new top play (Vince Guaraldi's Christmas album) I had a moment of realization. I bumped into this article on the Wired blog and realized I just made a poor decision. While the hard drive is filled with great Beatles rarities and Zappa interviews, as far as the music goes, I could have subscribed to one of these music networks and gotten a far greater amount of tuneage for a much better price.

I had always swiftly scooted these subscription services aside. The idea of paying a monthly rate for such a service seemed silly. I could buy the albums I wanted to hear and stream samples of other songs on blogs. Then, when I invested an amount of money that could have garnered me a year of Rhapsody or Napster usage, I realized that music ownership is on the way out.

I'ma just riffin here, but riff with me.

By buying a harddrive with maybe 30 gigs of music I really want and 400 gigs of music I will listen to once and delete, I'm not sure I really gained as much as I once thought. Plus, I am essentially breaking laws of copyright in the process. As a musician, I don't really get upset about illegal downloading as it is a waste of energy, but I still make jokes and occasionally utilize the phenomenon as a persuasive pity point. As a broke person with a love for music, I find myself downloading albums I want to hear all the time. This thievery is a weight I would like to take off my second hand smoke filled chest.

SO- a great way to have done this could have been to sign up for Rhapsody or Napster or anyone of the other applications out there that help support the industry that has supported me for the last few years. Instead, I invested that money on a digital brick that holds all the same information and will undoubtedly break before the next real wet season.

still just riffin here:

I think my problem is that I wanted to OWN all these songs, but I'm not sure why. I essentially paid the money I could have invested in a music service (and to a lesser extent; music culture) to some silicon valley hard drive manufacturer so that I could own a bunch of music. And that is the problem... yup, in the last two sentences I think I realized that my mistake is that I didn't go with music socialism. Perhaps some sort of hard wiring in my yankee brain caused me to denounce the idea of just sharing songs online. I demand ownership of these songs, even if I have to steal to do it! It's so messed up in my brain, that I think when I read over this blog post it wont make any sense.

I'm going to think about this a bit more and report back.

Early conclusions love the idea of one giant music network that everyone shares and logs into, but it seems anti-American at the same time, which I also love. Man- I'm really quite shocked at this revelation... probably guaraldi/rum-induced.

Jackhammer: a Phil Davis joint

So, I'm just making sure that this video is everywhere I can get it to as it just makes me so happy. Phil is a great friend. He plugged away at this for months while much more pressing affairs like buying a new house and starting a new job/professorship were looming. Make sure to check out some of his other work at phildavis.net .

Love 2: Bear-Salmon Kaleidoscopic Music

An Air album is something else. No matter what album or what situation- the listener will undoubtedly be chilled out. If you just got told by your slick-haired boss to cancel your barbecue plans because he wants you to do some work he hasn’t finished over the weekend or if you were just cut off by a driver talking on their cell phone after waiting in line at a post office for thirty minutes because someone needed to complain about stamp prices or if your health insurance just denied your claim to pay for the ankle you sprained while stepping over the line at the bowling lane, thus losing the championship by 3 pins then you should probably pick up the whole Air catalog. No matter the album or the situation, you will end up lying in some grass looking up at clouds and thinking they all look like teddy bears or large breasts.

Love 2, their latest album, is no different. While writing these words, I’ve already dozed off twice and dreamed of parachuting into piles of rice pudding. I was listening to the album on my way home from the rodeo the other night and I sat, with my foot on the brake, through 3 green lights until I realized my turn signal wasn’t part of the song. The two Frenchmen have been doing this to me for eleven years now.

I’ve never been able to listen to trance music, but nonetheless, I like to be entranced. So when a pop band can figure out a way to divert the repetitive and robotic nature of the genre, I will dance from the knees down while seated. I will enjoy endlessly this music I call, for lack of inventiveness, trance-pop -or for over-inventiveness, cherry-flavored hypno-gravy. Love 2 is like a kaleidoscope, but instead of looking at little pieces of colored cellophane when you peer through the little hole you are looking at lots of bears standing atop waterfalls catching salmon in their mouths as they leap out of the rushing water. Air is bear-salmon kaleidoscopic music.

I just drank a fourth serving of coffee and I feel like I need more. I went to bed at 9:30 last night despite Monday Night Football excitingly being on mute while I ate spicy thai food. I started taking bubble baths instead of showers in the morning. I’m thinking about seeing a Sandra Bullock movie. My mile split-times on jogs are around 47 minutes. I keep being tranquilized and the only real reason I can think of is that I keep listening to Love 2. It’s great. I would recommend this album to everyone I know, but productivity would drop world wide and next thing you know, the government would be issuing some sort of trance-pop bailout and Americans would be blaming the French for something else. “Your music is so dang chilled out! How can we be expected to sell stuff with this cherry-flavored hypno-gravy clogging our blood vessels!?” It might even escalate into war, except everyone would be so relaxed from listening to Air that they would just lay down in some grass and look up at the clouds.

I may be exaggerating the effect of the album a little bit. I may even be lying. However, that’s what makes music such a blissful bubble-bath inducing beauty. People use words to describe it, when really they should be using dance moves- and everyone speaks their own language when they speak in dance-move. I personally described Love 2 with a wavy, tight-lipped head nod move while my friend described it with a one-shouldered shrug-like move and my crazy neighbor used a fingers-are-snakes, full-bodied, closed-eyed falling off a cliff move. We were all saying the same thing, but didn’t really know what each other was saying.

Check out this video to Sing Sang Sung:

WATCH:: Air - "Sing Sang Sung" - Watch more Videos at Vodpod.

Songs for Sticky Heads

We played a few shows with a fine Asheville band known as Floating Action. Ever since listening to them groove their way towards tomorrow I have had this song stuck in my dome piece:

MonsaaaaaaaaantoooooooooOOOOOooooo

45 minutes ago we returned from Food Inc.

I realized the desire to eat a hamburger is a mistake. Someone in a company planted that desire inside my head with a machine that was originally modeled to fill Twinkies and, in the future, will build T-1000s.

I realized that my dreams are going to be more frightening tonight than when I watched Alien at age 10 or when I was visited by a man with a cane and a top hat.

I realized that, according to Michael Pollan, my whole lifestyle is funding the dark side and it tears me up inside like a Tyson chicken breast.

However, perhaps the most shocking thing I saw on screen was this monstrous company stalking soybean farmers called Monsanto. Little is known of the mysterious company, but it is all around us. It owns us... it is us!

Monsanto has the craziest wikipedia history, so crazy, I wouldn't be surprised if it was made up by a crazy vegan computer-science student.

I'll offer a quick Monsanto recap:

founded in St. Louis in 1901 dabbling in artificial sweeteners, caffeine and something called vanillan.
The company starts making all kinds of crazy shit: in the 40s was plastics then came herbicides including DDT and Agent Orange. Monsanto became a top 10 chemical company all the while making things such as NutraSweet and food flavoring. Then, in the 80s, Monsanto goes from being a huge chemical company to a huge bio-tech company when it realizes it can patent a soybean seed that is immune to Round Up (a Monsanto product). Monsanto then sells these beans to farmers and disallows them to reseed the beans they buy and sues farmers for patent infringement.

That is the main story Food Inc. runs with. The film shows a few farmers being bankrupt by the shrewd Monsanto, while others (forced to mask their identities) are blacklisted from purchasing any Monsanto products.

The company seemed so villainous I thought maybe the films tactics were over-dramatizing the situation. Then I read a bit more of the wikipedia... Perhaps the most baffling fact is one more frightening than getting caught in a mutant spiderweb. Monsanto owns the patent for a product called The Terminator Seed. It is a seed that, when planted, the plant will produce sterile seeds, so the farmer is forced to re-buy seeds the following year. The main fear is that these sterile genes will spread to wild plants through pollination terminating all plantlife.

If storytelling has taught me anything, these guys are bad, and will eventually destroy us all when they discover a way to patent air molecules and sue marathon runners for using more of their product than they paid for. Then, once there are no more marathon runners to sue, they'll sue airplane companies for abusing their product, then bakers because they own the bread if it is baked using Monsanto patented air molecules. Then, when they stop supplying air, and people can only live in renegade underwater bubble cities supplied by soot spurring volcanic faults on the ocean floor, and everyone is constantly covered in volcanic ash and chronically coughing from the stubborn volcano air, a grandfather will tell his granddaughter about lost days of sunshine and free fresh air and soybeans that you could pick and plant without a lawyer handing you a paper and taking away your farm... But his granddaughter will be asleep dreaming of being allowed to marry a dolphin and raise a dolphin family.

A new Dawn

So here I am sitting on the sofa getting ready to head to bed when one of those internet flash floods occurs where you find one thing, then that leads to another thing in which you dive into a few new sites and a neat photograph or song ends up sending you on another tangent and then you realize that you want to share these findings with someone, but no one is around, so all that is left is for you to add your own link to the lengthy chain by posting your own page about what has kept you from reading the book you are trying to finish, in anticipation of someone else digging a different hole to stumble upon such things. We are all weaving a web, and I would like to share a few cool covers done well:









Who is this Dawn Landes and how has she suddenly taken over my evening?

Help

http://www.parkthevan.com/help/

After reading this, I thought I should pass it along. The folks at Park The Van are truly great friends and some of the most wonderful music fans I've been able to meet. Its frustrating to imagine a world where these folks aren't putting out albums with a feverish passion hitherto unknown to me and my dancing shoes.

They are offering a sweet Summer Sampler for download on the site to wet your whistle. You will undoubtedly barbecue to it.
---

We’re in this for the long haul. It’s times like these where we take stock in what we’re proud of and of why we do this. We’ve had some incredible new records come out in 2009 already, and some more incredible ones set to come still. The times we’ve had here in New Orleans to see our bands play live and stop through town have been some of our best events to date. Not to mention all of the reports from festivals to dive bars all over the country, the current generation of Park The Van artists out there are making incredible records and playing all over the country like crazy. We can’t begin to explain how lucky we are to be surrounded by the artists and fans we've met since we started putting the orange cone up.

Unfortunately though, we’re living in the same economy as everyone else. And it’s really really hard to sell the amount of stuff it takes to keep our business up and running the way we need to in order to keep putting out records and keep supporting our bands. So, we’re looking for your help to pay our bills through some really rough patches right now. We’re not begging for donations here. We hope that you see that we’re offering some great value to you in exchange for some of your hard earned dough to get us through the roughness. We’re assembling super limited edition handmade items, packages to help you dig deep into discovering all sorts of PTV classics, and prices that we hope you see as generous and ultimately worth it.

It’s tough to put ourselves out there like this and ask for your “help” in running our business. We know that everyone has their own sets of problems, and we get that. But the feedback we get from you is that you love what we’re doing here, and that people can see the vision we share for creating label that is based on support and family and more importantly these wonderful artists the important records that make us feel alive. So, here we are and we’re asking for your help. It never gets old getting to work for your favorite bands and artists. Sometimes you just have to try new things.

Thanks for anything you can do to give us a hand here, and hopefully you like the stuff we’re offering! If you feel like it, please help spread the word. This won’t work if we don’t have a hand from you in letting people know that this is available. And, there’s always the idea of doing this as a gift too! Please let us know if your order is a gift for someone!

Thanks for supporting this thing.

Chris, Zach, Kevin, Matt, Corey, Jeff & the entire PTV team.

HOAGIEFEST 2009

http://www.hoagiefest.com/music.php?user=theswims&music_id=54


This is a link to a song about hoagies.... Wawa hoagies.

It is also a competition that I would love to have my dear friends the Swims champion. Then they can throw a party catered by wawa hoagies and we can all dance with the wawa mascot and eat shortis for a year.

It makes sense, because the Hoagiefest artwork is pretty much from the brain of Brian Langan.


get out the vote!

Envelopes

At a good friend's recommendation, I purchased a book by Harriet Russel online the other day. It was shipped and turned out to be the Baltimore County Public Library's copy of Envelopes. While, someday, I may return the book- for now I am going to enjoy Russel's challenges served up to the British Royal Mail.


The envelopes featured in the book challenge the postal service to complete a maze, solve a crossword puzzle or decode a pictogram in order to decipher the destination. It is great. I'm starting to wonder if when a man told me he once mailed a slice of pizza to a friend in California, he was telling the truth. Postmen love these sorts of things. This summer, I am going to keep my eyes open and try and find a few things to mail afar. See some of my favorite envelopes below:

Great Video

Just discovered this video. It's great. Directed by the fella who brought us Yacht Rock (which definitely deserves a night of your life.) Starring some of the nicest guys to be hitting the clubs playing one of the catchiest songs to be hitting my ears.

Miniature Tigers: Cannibal Queen



They are on tour now, so check their myspace to see if they come your way.

A Few Words on Camera Obscura's My Maudlin Career

It is an important part of any young boy’s life to listen to Camera Obscura. Before they can tie a Windsor knot or carve a ham or put their arm around a young lady at the movie theatre they should go out and pick up a copy of My Maudlin Career. It is a sensible step towards the stout system of manhood. It is rightfully recommended that the young boy first listen to the album in a safe secure environment. At some point during the course of these 11 songs, the resulting emotions may teleport him into the Eisenhower-era where he will want to kiss his mother on the cheek and borrow his father’s Chevy to escort the neighbor’s daughter to the homecoming dance. If this happens, do not jostle the young boy too violently. Only jostle him rhythmically and keep in mind, he is young. This is sound advice. If you are a father or a mother thinking of raising a young boy to become an all-star third baseman- keep this in mind.

As for my first listen of My Maudlin Career, it happened in a van driving north alongside the west coast. This is also a recommended listening environment. The album chirped from the stereo speakers and I inhaled it through my ears like a bumble-bee landing on a daffodil pedal outside my window. We stopped to get gas and the songs still spilled from the not on/not off setting your van ignition can have where the stereo still works. I was so hypnotized I almost entered the gas station’s mens room with no shoes on. If you add Camera Obscura to the west coast to a few days of not showering or shaving you may get a similar result. I think I was also hypnotized into buying a Golden Gate snow globe.

Since that first listen, I have heard the album while jogging in warm weather, while hanging out with girls who danced along reminding me of Uma Thurman, and while reading an article about how The Cleveland Cavaliers will most likely win an NBA championship. In each instance I felt as though, just maybe, Camera Obscura has built a time machine. In efforts to elaborate on that thought, I have had difficulty.

The album, the band, and the effects they cause have left me wishing hitchhiking was still safe. They have left me feeling as though it is better to walk barefoot and towards a swimming pool than any other way. They have left me with a feeling of contentment that the world is so large that, with a little help and handiwork, you can find something enjoyable and that maybe someone somewhere else will never enjoy what you are enjoying, but their enjoyment is out there in the oh so large world too and that is as important to them as Camera Obscura can be to young boys or to Uma Thurman or to me and you.

Check the myspace

The Coolest Coatrack around

I had forgotten about this coat rack. I was filing through some old video footage and felt a worthwhile blog post was abound in Weiki Somers's installment in Rotterdam's Museum Boijmans van Beuningen.

Does anyone else feel as though art is a bit cooler if it has some sort of interactivity?

I love to get involved with someone's creation rather than being separated by a velvet rope. When you walk into Museum Boijmans in Rotterdam it is like a Please Touch Museum for adults.

Does anyone else feel as though art is a bit cooler when it is functional?

Not only is the art interactive, its super useful. I feel as though this carousel of coat hangers in the ceiling rescues some square footage from cloak room status in the museum and frees it up for the fine artwork of a deserving artist.

There is a better video and some more photos (I pasted my favorites below) on Somers's charming website.














Here is a photo of the front courtyard and entrance to the museum which is also pretty great... The photo doesn't quite capture the feel, but I thought it was worth sharing.

it came! it came!

Yesterday was an exciting day for a few reasons. One of those reasons was the arrival of a letter I had sent to Nogeeshik from Berlin a few months ago (March 4th t be exact). Well, I guess it wasn't a letter in the conventional sense as it was a stick that I found on a street and wrote a message on. I superglued the postage stamps to secure them and even placed an extra 1 euro worth of postage in hopes that the postman, or Briefträger, would treat it with care. Despite being courteous and a bit enthused by my abnormal request, they couldn't accept the stick at the post office due to its irregular dimensions, so I addressed it, stamped it, and dropped it in the post box on our way out of town hoping it would find its way across the globe.

Upon returning to the states, other postcards and letters I sent arrived, but no stick. In the past I have mailed sugar cubes and winter gourds through the post and they all arrived safely, so I had told Nogeeshik to keep an eye out for something unique coming in the mail. She could not handle the suspense. Over the past few months she has continually asked me what it was that I sent from Berlin. "It's never going to come... just tell me what it was!" I nearly cracked the other week and told her, but I felt maybe the stick was still on its journey. Sure enough, yesterday the driftwood showed up on our doorstep further inspiring my respect of the postal service.


I was thinking for a future mailing project it may be fun to mail 5 letters all the same shape and weight, but put different amounts of postage on each and perhaps different envelope styles as well. One letter could be really fancy with an extra dollar worth of postage, one letter could be a conventional letter and one letter could be wrapped in newswrap and be a few cents short on the required postage (Perhaps try all sorts of different combinations of postage and fanciness.) Then mail all the letters from the same town, or neighboring towns and then see if they all arrive at the same time, or if some are quicker and others never arrive at all. Next time I am in a faraway town without much to do, I may give this a shot.

Play it Loud

So the April CD from the Mix of the month club came today from my broham Thomas. It kicked off so powerfully that I decided to resurrect the Ol' web journal to mention one heck of a mix CD starter.

Track 1 was by New Orleans's The Generationals. A band that I have seen and heard here and there but never taken the time to absorb. Do you know what I mean? Like sometimes you read a tshirt slogan and don't really take it in because the main reason you were reading the slogan was to avoid eye contact and the clever play on words just goes in one eye and out the other as you prepare for a deep stare into someone's spectacled oculars. Such instances in life happen daily, and only when you get to sit down with the tshirt and soak in the slogan do you truly appreciate its humor.

Such was the case with The Generationals... I saw them in Austin, I've heard them coming from the speakers of Jenkins, the spintovan, and have been juiced by their Park the Van signing. But here I am on the interweb now saying that this song is making every step I take a little brighter:

The Generationals: When They Fight They Fight

Man, that's too much for Girl Scout cookies

On the way in to the grocery store yesterday I saw a scene we all know: A card table with a green table cloth and mounds of cookie boxes surrounded by adorable 12 year olds learning some tips in the world of commerce, and raising funds while they sell sell sell those cookies.

I smiled, realizing full well that I would be roped in by those smiling pixies and buy the cookies on my way out for twice the price similar products are sold for in the grocery store...

This had me thinking, and Nogeeshik and I started talking about the fund raising campaign that pops up so often by the girl scouts. One point that really perked me up was that these youngsters are thrown into the fire of consumerism that brings along pressures that they may not be equipped for. Anyone that has worked in retail knows that the one way to sell a product is by guilting people, and perhaps the Girl Scouts of America are using these young girls a bit too much. I know, it seems a bit outlandish at first, but the more I thought of these girls and their early start to a life of wheelin' and dealin' scared me. Luckily, the thought left my mind as we reached the salad dressing aisle, I needed to find some elusive Almond Accents.

Finally we reached the checkout aisle. Since it was a fine sunny day, and Nogeeshik was picking up the grocery bill, I decided to spend a few of my dollars on a scratch lotto card. It's a bit of a guilty pleasure for me and today was a good day for guilty pleasure. We picked up our grocery bags and exited the store.

Boom- we didn't make it two steps out of Acme without a tiny little blonde girl scout recruiting us to their cookie fort. I smiled and told her I would love a box of cookies. Then, for some reason, I thought a lesson could be taught. It was a bad idea in hindsight, but I never really expected it to lift off the ground. I picked up the purple box of cookies and instead of pulling $3 out of my pocket, I pulled out the scratch card I had just bought. I harnessed my inner-Howie Mandel and said to the girls, "I could give you three dollars, or you could take this two dollar scratch card and potentially make three thousand dollars." It was cruel, manipulative, and all around wrong, but in my mind I thought it would be a lesson learned for these girls, and isn't that what girl scouts is all about? Learning valuable lessons? Before I could even reach back in my pocket to actually pay the girls, they accepted with giggles and clenched hands in the air. They were giddy. I was already embarrassed. I was corrupting these girls and stealing their cookies all at once. Somehow, no parents were around to slap me, but the girls were already trying to decide who should scratch the card. I put the cookies down and decided it would be best to just walk away and leave the scratch card for the girls. The idea of a lesson had been completely shot out of my ear and I was now looking around for a state police officer to cuff me and throw me in a cell next to some bookie checking his pager.

Then, as I turned to walk away, in dramatic fashion, the girls started shouting and screaming and running laps around the table in excitement. One yelled "Fifty.... fifty... fifty!!!" I knew then that I had just given away a winning scratch card, which anyone who buys scratch cards knows, is a rare commodity.

I decided maybe I should take the purple box of cookies after all, and I ate the shit out of those cookies.

The Seoulian Sipper

For most of my adult life I have tried to avoid buying bottled water. I think I heard my dad mention once that it is silly to be charged 2 dollars for the world's most abundant resource, and I agreed. I have preached his words in front of many a gas station beverage fridge while the band is on tour or at a restaurant that, upon receiving the bill, I see we have been charged for water. Occasionally, I even punish my thirst, teeth, and diet by buying a Pepsi or a Gatorade rather than paying the same amount for a bottle of water.

So, you can probably imagine how excited I was to read that there is a South Korean who preaches similar water consumption philosophies on a much larger scale. In fact, this man is the mayor of Seoul and he makes it his mission to end the city's dependence on bottled water. Oh Se-hoon will only drink the city tap water and advocates others do the same. He has gone so far as to set up festivities to celebrate the city's tap system in which citizens partake in blind taste tests between tap, filtered tap, and bottled water.

All in all, I think this is a great cause for a politician to get behind. I would love to see one of my local politicians refusing to drink anything but local water. Way to go Oh!

Even the Ridiculous Real Estate Market is Crashing

Above is a replication of a building that is supposed to be built in Dubai. David Fisher's rotating skyscraper had broken ground when the real estate crash stretched its wings all the way to Dubai. If you weren't already upset over the casualties of the current dis-economy, you will be sobbing diamond shaped tears after you hear about this hit to the luxurious Dubai skyline.

The tower really does rotate. You can buy an apartment (for $30 mil) that gets a 360 degree view of the surrounding city. If that isn't amazing enough, the whole tower is powered by solar cells and wind turbines that are placed between each rotating story and has a drive-in elevator, so you can park your car 20 stories up.

I first heard about this structure in National Geographic, who says it is still underway, and a few news articles I skimmed suggest that it will be starting construction in the next few months after a few non-economical hurdles are cleared. My jaw dropped. This is real? We aren't in that part of Final Fantasy where you enter the huge domed future city and battle the trash can robots with fireballs? Goodness gracious. I never thought a building could be arrogant, then I watched this video:

Would I get along with T. Boone Pickens?

Today I read a magazine interview with Texas oil tycoon T. Boone Pickens. It was in one of the magazines I receive but rarely read called Details. I didn't really know much about Pickens prior to this with the exception that he is a Texas boy who made his fortune in oil and is now promoting alternative energy through wind generators. Anyway, after reading the interview with the aged Texas tycoon I wonder if he and I would get along. You can follow the link above to read the full interview, but I've pasted the questions that I liked below:

Q: When doing business, do you think it’s important to wear clothes that convey a sense of power, affluence, or style?
A: I have nothing to say about that. I just wear a regular suit, and if I need to make a speech I put on an orange tie. I have a pair of penny loafers that I bought in 1957, and I still wear them.

Q: I take it you’re not much for splurging.
A: I’m not a shopper. I buy four or five suits at once, every four or five years. I shop for five hours and don’t go back.

Q: Are there any things you wish you owned?
A: I never was the kind of person who wanted a lot of things. I’ve never been into cars, and big houses hold very little interest for me—though I do enjoy my ranch. There is no question that I like to make money. But I’m generous—I give a lot away.

Today's Sunrise

I hadn't caught a sunrise in a while, so I thought I would go for a walk this morning and set up the camera. There was fresh snow on the ground and it was a fine crisp morning. My first vantage point was held by a deer hunter, so I moved to what I thought would be a lovely point framed by two trees. It was a great spot, and I left the camera for an hour and went to cook some bacon back home. Unfortunately, when I watched the footage, the camera was pointed about 15 degrees to far south and I missed the whole sunrise. The video still has some nice cloud and color, so I'm posting it anyway:

David Byrne & Brian Eno- Everything that Happens will Happen Today

How exciting! The re-teaming of two of my musical appetite’s most splendid suppers has landed upon my eardrums. Even better, the liner notes mention that they are actually friends and have occasional dinners together, and just stop by to see what’s going on at each other’s pads. This news changes everything… I am suddenly believing that a few of those cosmic forces mentioned in song may be more than just a plot synopsis for a new Drew Barrymore script. Could this album be destiny? I would have to wait to find out.

I went to pick up a copy of Byrne/Eno’s Everything That Happens will Happen Today when I first heard of its release while the lead single, Strange Overtones, was playing on a local radio station. I figured such a song as this serenading my dinner preparation from the kitchen stereo would undoubtedly make the dishes dry faster. Unfortunately for me, however, there was a bit of 21st century music biz bull-squat standing in my way. It seems as though our minstrels were only released digitally. I suppose it makes sense. With most music being purchased/taken digitally nowadays, and albums leaking on the web before their release, it would make sense for an artist to release their music for sale as quickly as possible, as most artists are doing, and as the albums are pressed, fans could purchase the tunes. All that is old news though with the conclusion being I would have to wait to get my hands on this album. I thought of downloading the album when I returned home, then the collector in me started thinking; “maybe if I wait, I can hold this puppy in my hands and keep it on a shelf and when my ipod battery dies and my computer breaks, and I need something to dance to in my bomb shelter, I will still own it… it’ll be out physically in a week or two anyway.” A fine thought for the most part, but then I ended up having to wait 3 months to land the physical version of this album. This is fine by me. There was plenty of music filling my eardrums and dimming the anticipation and the thought of the two musicians releasing the album themselves was a proper kick in the ass to a record industry that must have a sore ass by now. I suppose the only real downside, is this review is now a bit tardy for most.

So all the waiting and crying behind us, let’s discuss the true demeanor of this disc. Byrne and Eno split the duties in creating Everything That Happens… with Byrne writing words for Eno’s music. What results is an ethereal electro-gospel intended to blast from the top of a church tower at 12 noon every day in a faraway village built of terracotta bricks and techno-tickytac. The album is not ambient and the album doesn’t seem to contain an abundance of curse words, so there are two irrelevant checkmarks marked off.

The marriage of the two minds seems as though it was an experiment between friends.

“Let’s give this a shot… see what happens.” “we can play it by ear.” “who knows?”

The experiment seems as though it not only took shape, but paved a road straight to Candyland. When Byrne and Eno finally arrive at Candyland (on a bike built for two) they are immediately granted the key to the city and blessed with a flurry of dancing Jolly Ranchers. Hopefully, they will get a wing of the art museum named in their honor.

Everything That Happens Will Happen Today could break free of Candyland though. It could hover through windows left open by a nightclub DJ in Williamsburg or a pie-baker in Williamston. It does what my oh most favorite albums do- climbs over type-casting and just becomes pleasant sounding 4 minute molecular collisions. I like to get those molecules to collide all over, so I turn it up loud and right as the album starts to sound too much like a David Byrne album or too much like a Brian Eno album, it slaps you in the face and tells you to listen to this next bit and you realize that this is in fact a union of gleaming musical minds trying new things in new manors while sticking to their guns at the same time and, hopefully, doing what they love to do.


Let’s create a rating system for this album. Let’s give it 8 scale tippers and a smiley stamp, and following suit of my friend Scott, a “Go Bananas” sticker.