Previously in this series: An Album from The Hold Steady Where No One Gets Wasted or Shows Questionable Judgement. "I Slept Fine Last Night Because I Know My Wife is Faithful" "Riding Trains is Preferable to Robbing Them" "A Ballad I Wrote Myself and Which Was Definitely Not Given to Me by an Inmate" "My Moral Compass is Stronger than My Fear of Losing You" "Our Relationship is Based on More than Fleeting Passion"…
So you have a closet full of these-weren’t-supposed-to-be-crop-tops and I-can-sleep-in-this-I-guess commemorative t-shirts from trips you weren’t invited on. My mom did, too. I was recruited to help her sift through clothing during a recent visit home, and we emerged with three garbage bags full of sundry goodies for the Salvation Army. As we worked, we came up with a list of songs to help us cover that crucial distance from discerning to ruthless. These are guaranteed…
mensah demary's previous Liner Notes columns can be found here. In 2000, during my first year in college, something rotated deep within my blood. I imagined it as a black rock, a piece of obsidian spinning like a planet. I didn’t have a name for it at the time. It had the weight and texture of grief, but anger was pent up inside the stone. My best friend had died in January, consumed by a…
This is a meaningless exercise; every rhyme in "Pinot Noir" is a perfect mix of the pedestrian and the sublime. Language serves Titus, he is not beholden to rules. What rhymes with pinot noir? Anything, everything.
Previously in this series: Songs from a Decemberists Album Where Nobody Gets Murdered "Your Aloof But Intriguing Friend Really Puts Herself Together Well, Maybe I Should Give Her My Number" "The $20 We Just Found Will Be Used To Pay Down Some Credit Card Debt" "Minnesota Provides An Excellent Backdrop For A Healthy, Well-Rounded Adolescence" "I Remember It All So Clearly, The Time I Courted That Girl I Spent A Long Time Getting to Know…
I looked up from busking to see a school bus full of kindergartners, their noses and chubby fingers pressed hard on the glass. I knew what they were looking at. I stopped playing, raised my bow and pointed it at them. I did not smile. They screamed, piercing little screams that I could hear from the street, and the light turned green, and the bus pulled away.
You never know what you'll find poking through the loose sheet music in an antiques store. Take this, for example: a souvenir from the days when Ivy League schools were good at football, orchestra leaders were a cultural force, and other things were not so different at all. Ladies! Gather ’round the parlor piano and tune your ukuleles to B-flat, because I’m about to teach you the new song all the college boys will…
Mercifully, The Punk Archive in Washington, DC is not the kind of multi-million-dollar so-called punk fashion show that once blighted the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the spring of 2013. It’s librarians. It’s old show posters. It’s an all caps announcement of “IF YOUR DC BAND WOULD LIKE TO PLAY PLEASE
The Original Epic: The Iliad, Greece, c. 800 B.C.E. What Happens In It?: Two nations go to war for ten years after Paris, son of Troy, captures the most beautiful woman in the world: Helen, wife to Menelaus of Sparta. The Modern Hit: Jimmy Soul, "If You Want To Be Happy" The Theme: "Never make a pretty woman your wife." The Original Epic: The Odyssey, Greece, c. 800 B.C.E. What Happens In It?: Greek warrior…
John, you'll conduct Percy, you'll be on violin what's my instrument, Papa? your instrument is listening, Mary the greatest instrument of all you don't have to point that so close to me well you keep backing away, silly how are you supposed to really hear it if you keep backing away into corners oh i manage keep playing, i'm still looking dont you mean listening sure i…
"Let's Duet" He's great, obviously. And she's great. And "you can always come in my back door" will never fail to make me laugh, because some jokes are evergreen. But once you get the song, you get it; the concept is never expanded upon. That doesn't make this a bad song, mind you. There are no bad songs in Walk Hard, only bad people watching it who don't appreciate the genius of John C. Reilly,…
A friend came over with a folk album and said, “You’ll like Judee Sill. Real badass. I think she was a bank robber or something.”
And sure, with an introduction like that it was pretty hard not to at least be intrigued by the country-voiced woman singing earnestly about Jesus and the Astral Plane. In fact, it’s basically impossible to talk about Judee Sill’s music without some mention of her twisted,
She said she thinks she remembers the film. She said she “kind of liked it”. She wasn’t expecting this. She was probably still chewing over a mouthful of popcorn when you asked her what she thought. Feels a bit like grasping at straws; Feels a bit like a movie you both kinda liked isn’t the best remedy when she ‘just doesn’t care’. Either way,
