The Frictive Story of Our Lives

“OK,” you may be thinking after you finished reading my explanation the other day.

“I get what you’re saying,” you may think further, “Life is often made worse by the little things – or by several little things snowballing into a Pretty Big Thing. Most people are at least vaguely aware of this phenomenon. But if you need to keep yourself constantly aware of the detritus that accumulates around the edges of your focus – which, I mean, by the way, seems unnecessary because this friction inherently makes itself known to you anyway – why not just leave yourself a note or a warning on your bedside table, or in the car or wherever? Why name your precious Blog after it?”

“Why celebrate the shit in life?”

I have two responses to this. First: wow, you’re as long-winded as I am.

Second: well, at first I thought the title wasn’t celebrating so much as acknowledging. Like, “I know the true name of the devil and so he has no power over me” and all that. But that’s not entirely true, is it? To name something is to give it an identity, and to acknowledge an identity is to give it some small amount of power over you.

I guess I really am celebrating the Daily Friction in our lives, but only as we might retroactively celebrate the fever that kept us home on the day of the o-chem pop quiz. I’m not about to buy friction a fucking cake or anything. What should be celebrated is not the friction itself, but the opportunity that it gives us to evaluate our surroundings.

Imagine a world where everyone and everything is permanently coated in a Super-Lard that removes any and all friction from physical activity. Smell aside, this world would seem pretty cool to inhabit at first: you could basically rollerskate everywhere on your feet, condoms would be way cheaper, and the word “chafe” would cease to exist. But remember a moment ago, I said cool “at first.” Once the shock of no-more-shocks wore off, we’d get painfully used to a world without pain pretty quickly. We’d feel little – if anything – from a swim in the pool, running barefoot through grass, or eating a crunchy oatmeal cookie. Even sex would get boring. We’d become physically numb.

Here in the real world, though, we can use these little bits of friction to appreciate texture, determine value differences, cause or receive surprise; the list goes on and on. Friction creates feeling.  Nothing makes us feel alive more than a sensation that shakes us out of complacency, whether it’s love or pain, pride or betrayal.

Humans understand this on a subconscious level, too. Friction has become a societal norm of ours to the point where some people will actually manufacture it to either fit in with others or entertain themselves. Think of the people you know who have never really had a tough life, and what “struggles” they actually deal with every day. The successful VP who hasn’t been promoted in months. The gorgeous actress who just can’t seem to make the career jump from supporting role to leading lady. The trust fund hipster who’s incensed that his cappuccino doesn’t have enough foam. Ask any of them how their lives are going, and they will explain these horrors to you in immaculate detail. You are allowed to leave at any point during the ensuing conversation.

Friction keeps us grounded. Without it, well, I can’t say that we would all become intolerable assholes – because “asshole” is a subjective term based on social norms, and if everyone walked around complaining about losing a sequin off of their Ed Hardy jackets, that would only result in a worldwide commiseration followed by a return to the store for newer, shinier jackets for all – BUT, without friction, our human need to infuse our lives with Drama and Importance would turn molehills into entire Appalachian Ranges of loathing, mid-life heart attacks and global wars based on faulty evidence.

Oh, wait.

Anyway, I guess my point is that The Daily Friction needs to be not just acknowledged, but understood. We need to appreciate that there are benefits as well as downsides. It’s an ongoing process/goal/dilemma that will not always be easy for everyone, and especially not for me. But I think that doing so is vital to life and to health. Because, at the end of the day, Friction is not going anywhere and we might as well get used to it, or else.

I mean…I almost want to say that we should be like a smiling Sisyphus, happy in our daily uphill boulder-rolling because it gives us a goal, builds our muscles and keeps us out of a stuffy office environment. Is that fair? Or too much of a pinko commie thing to say? If we can change our definition of what makes us happy, shouldn’t we? Isn’t happiness the simple goal that all of us are forever trying to achieve, and ultimately more important than any political or social dictates?

I don’t know. Maybe that’s a discussion for another time.

Welcome back, me!

I have been away from blogging for a loooong time. But now I’m back. Lucky you!

I thought this would be an appropriate time for a change; hence the shiny new name, layout and WordPress address. If you’ve faithfully followed me over here from my old Blogspot page, then god bless you for being a decent human.

I’m hoping that migrating over to WP will excite me enough to post more regularly. I also want to focus on smaller, more frequent posts; my Feeding The Sumo entries often got pretty out of control to the point where they were pretty daunting both to write and to read.

Comics will be back at some point, too. I have some vague ideas, but I only start work on one when a subject really grabs me. Last thing I want to do is force out some unfunny shit every day just to keep the plates spinning. That’s the same philosophy I have with my writing, too.

Which brings me to the new title. “The Daily Friction” is more for my benefit than yours (sorry). I’m not saying I will be posting daily or that my posts will cause friction at your work or in your love life. (I mean, it’s always a possibility, but.) The Daily Friction describes all of the little shit that rises up each day to keep you from getting where you want to go. It’s the email offering 21% off that new Balkan restaurant you will never visit, and the 30 other daily emails just like it. It’s the minivan barely scratching 45MPH in front of you on the freeway. It’s the dead irregular lightbulb you have to remember to replace on the way home from the office. It might be the office in general. And it could very easily be this here blog of mine, too.

The point is that The Daily Friction is always there whether you like it or not. It can be reduced, but it cannot be eliminated. We can get angry at it, but to what end? There is nowhere rational to focus your hate (unless you believe in some deity akin to Final Destination‘s boring, underachieving cousin). The only healthy response is to learn to live with it. It’s something I’m still trying to do, myself, and I’m hoping that the more I use and discuss this blog, the more the concept will ingrain itself into my subconscious.

Look, 9 out of 10 blogs are hussied-up attempts at self-therapy, anyway. I’m just being real about it.

I hope you’ll stick around to see where this thing goes. I am pretty curious about it myself!

The latest and greatest season mix

“Almost Anything” – Spring 2011

1. Friendly Fires – Live Those Days Tonight
2. My Morning Jacket – Holdin’ on to Black Metal
3. Here We Go Magic – Hands in the Sky
4. Dodos – Good
5. Beastie Boys ft. Nas – Too Many Rappers
6. Land of Talk – Hamburg, Noon
7. Tune-Yards – Bizness
8. LCD Soundsystem – Pow Pow
9. Wild Nothing – Chinatown
10. The Mountain Goats – Estate Sale Sign
11. Junip – In Every Direction
12. TV on the Radio – Will Do
13. Peter, Bjorn and John – (Don’t Let Them) Cool Off
14. !!! – Heart of Hearts
15. Radiohead – Codex
16. Panda Bear – Afterburner
17. Fleet Foxes – Grown Ocean

Annotations:

-This was a tough one to put together because there were a LOT of close calls. I would’ve loved to include Crystal Stilts’ “Through the Floor”, Battles’ “Futura”, and Iron & Wine’s “Your Fake Name is Good Enough for Me”, but a CD’s only 80 minutes.

-Also Fleet Foxes’ “The Shrine/An Argument”, which I have the clearest memory of from seeing their concert in May. Awesome show and awesome song, but it was just too long for the mix, and “Grown Ocean” is no slouch at all (the more I think about it, the more it feels like my favorite song on the new album).

-“Pow Pow” is supposedly the last song LCD Soundsystem ever made, so it feels like a fitting representation of the season that saw the band bid us farewell. (Too bad it wasn’t actually played at their farewell show, but oh well.) Speaking of, I never got around to writing up a blog entry about the retirement of one of my all-time favorite bands – and experiencing their last show via webcast in a house full of friends – but maybe I’ll get around to that at some point.

-John Darnielle does righteous anger better than just about anyone, and I’m not saying this was an angry season for me (could’ve been, but wasn’t), but you can’t help but get swept up in his enthusiasm on songs like “Estate Sale Sign”. Darnielle sounds more alive here than he has in a good while, and the rest of All Eternals Deck is pretty great, too. Also: Pomona gets another shout out!

-Junip is the new band of Jose Gonzalez – who everyone in the world except me is already familiar with, I think. The production alone on this album, and this song especially, is just incredible. There aren’t many albums that make you feel like you’re in the room with the dudes while they’re playing, but this is one. Now I have to go out and track down Gonzalez’s other work, too.

-I dunno if it’s a happy accident or I’m just that awesome, but a lot of the transitions just KILL on here. “Good” into “Too Many Rappers” shouldn’t work nearly as well as it does, and the fade from “Codex” to “Afterburner” feels sublime to me. Overall I think this is one of my best sequencing jobs yet, so allow me to pat myself on the back.

In the great bus ride of life, there is no brake pedal

I recommend that you click the comic to read it at the widescreen jumbo-size in which it was intended to be seen! Whoa!

Frequently Avoided Answers

Yep, still doing these.

“All Best Guesses” – Winter 2010/2011

1. Grouplove – Don’t Say Oh Well
2. !!! – All My Heroes are Weirdos
3. Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros – Home
4. Circulatory System – Overjoyed
5. Cut Copy – Where I’m Going
6. Peter, Bjorn & John – Second Chance
7. Kanye West – All of the Lights
8. The Chemical Brothers – Swoon
9. Wolf Parade – Cave-O-Sapien
10. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Round and Round
11. Smith Westerns – Weekend
12. Vampire Weekend – Holiday
13. Iron & Wine – Rabbit Will Run
14. The Go! Team – Buy Nothing Day
15. Deerhunter – Fountain Stairs
16. Donovan – Season of the Witch
17. Sufjan Stevens – I Want to Be Well
18. Oh No Oh My – Summerdays

(Who knows how long any of these links will last, so listen early, listen often)

 

The End of the Neon Meate Dream

Whatever you may think about SPIN Magazine, a little over a decade ago it was solely responsible for introducing me to Captain Beefheart.

Back when most websites had MIDI soundtracks and ugly wallpaper best viewed with Netscape Navigator, the blog culture hadn’t yet developed and magazines were basically the best way to keep up with the culture of music. Or at least, they were the best way for young turks like me, voracious readers and anxious learners just discovering the world of music beyond the mainstream.

One month, nestled between articles on the new exploits of Christina Aguilera and the Beastie Boys and whoever else was a curious piece on a man who hadn’t released a record in nearly twenty years. His name was Captain Beefheart. He looked nothing like anyone else in the magazine, and the article went to great lengths to explain how his music sounded like nobody else’s, either. It explored the early years of his career, his spark of popularity, and then his retreat into the California desert, severing all ties with the music industry. Though he had spent nearly two decades as a recluse and many of his albums were difficult to find, his wildly experimental concoction of blues, folk and rock continued to inspire artists to that day. And the album widely regraded to be his masterpiece, Trout Mask Replica, had just been re-released.

For a culturally suffocated midwestern teenager like me, looking for anything at all to help separate myself from the Abercrombie-clad high school herd, desperately if need be, this was like discovering the holy grail. I found a copy of Replica and purchased it sight unseen (no small feat for me; in those poor days, I would heavily vet every album at Streetside Records’ listening station before purchase). I took it home and put it on, listening with a half-frown because parts of it were so jarring, but also with a half-smile because I was prepared. This was an album I knew I would not love on first listen; it would require some effort from me, but it would be worth it in the end. I reminded myself that, according to the article, this was the all-time favorite album of Matt Groening, of all people.

I listened to it over and over again. I played it for my friends, and I even played it for my parents. I wrote a five-star review of the album in my high-school newspaper. I don’t remember specifically how I described his sound, but I’m pretty sure I quoted “Fast and bulbous!” somewhere in there. And I took immense pleasure in playing the album for the rest of the newspaper staff, a grin both wicked and smug plastered to my face when my fellow teenagers cringed or yelled “turn it off!” or “this is terrible!” or just left the room.

I rarely made it all the way to the end of the album. 28 tracks of Captain Beefheart was a little much even for me, but that didn’t really matter. I considered picking up other albums like Safe as Milk, but still being a neophyte (and, frankly, an idiot kid) when it came to music, I had figured everything else could only be a diluted form of Replica, so I passed. At that time, though, those were only details. I had found a brash badge of individuality and I did not hesitate to show it off. And I was beginning to realize, too, that you could appreciate music without always wanting to listen to it: this music, so intensely honest and unflinchingly enthusiastic, most definitely had its time and place.

I was also really proud when one of my friends purchased The Spotlight Kid of his own volition. To me, still, there are few better things in life than knowing you’ve helped someone discover a new favorite artist.

I went off to college and began working as a DJ at the radio station, quickly finding myself surrounded by like-minded individuals who were far more versed in indie rock than I. And anyone can tell you that a group of liberal art school hipsters can get pretty insufferable: their codes of necessary knowledge and aloofness are as strict as anything they loudly rebel against. So while I came in not knowing Merge from Matador or Ian Curtis from Ian MacKaye, I did possess one unshakable piece of indie capital in the form of Mr. Beefheart. Our fiercely underground library included most of his albums – all on vinyl, of course – so I played him on my show whenever I could.

Eventually I realized that my show needed a name, and I settled on “Captain Beefheart Rides Again”. That meant (to me, a least) that I had to play at least one Beefheart song per show. It was a shtick, but one I was more than happy to repeat. Usually I played songs I knew from Replica, but I would branch out every now and then, too. One day I finally dug out the vinyl copy of Ice Cream for Crow, Beefheart’s final studio album, and played the title track. It was my virgin listen, and I was as curious and confused by it as the first time I had heard any other Beefheart song. It was ramshackle crazy, its blind enthusiasm unspooling at speeds almost impossible to conceive. Even his voice sounded more surreal than usual. But this is what I should have expected from the man, I thought: the unexpected. Always.

Then the phone rang. I picked it up; it was a listener.

“Slow it down, man!” He bellowed.

“Uh, what?” I thought for a moment that this was his way of saying I was playing so much great music that he could barely handle it.

“The record, man!” He said. “You’re playing it too fast!”

I looked at the record player: it was at 45 RPM. I switched it to 33 RPM, and the hyper jamming slowed to a dirty, bluesy stomp, Beefheart’s signature howl now as deep as I remembered it.

“Oh shit,” I said, and thanked the listener.

But I regretted fixing the RPM in the middle of the song. In some ways, it felt like it would have been more appropriate to let it run at the same crazy speed. For Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, there almost seemed to be no one right way to play a song, or sing, or even maintain a rhythm. Theirs was the sound of ultimate musical freedom, with all the highs and lows and rushes of inspiration and quagmires of confusion that come with it.

After college, I listened to Captain Beefheart less and less frequently, and eventually stopped altogether. Too much time spent keeping up with the music culture and its symbiotic relationship with the blogosphere. SPIN magazine continues to this day, though I haven’t read it in years. I can only imagine how difficult it must have been to get an editor to sign off on a Captain Beefheart article back in the late 90s, but I hope they’re continuing to take those risks. It’s one of the only articles I still remember from that era.

Captain Beefheart’s real name was Don Van Vliet. He passed away yesterday, at the age of 69.

The more I think back on my minor obsession with the man’s music, the more I realize I didn’t really understand much of it at all. But that’s partly the point, I think. With that unique authorial voice, that singular outlook which inspired such a daring and unforgettable body of work, any of us would be hard-pressed to say that we truly understood a man who began his career with Frank Zappa and ended it in the desolation of the Mojave.

My familiarity with his work didn’t end up being as encyclopedic or everlasting as I thought it would, but Van Vliet still had an undeniable effect on my musical tastes, strengthened my appetite for experimental art, and helped show me the endless possibilities that creativity can offer beyond the measured pleasures and well-trod roads of most other artists.

If I had ever been able to meet the man, I would have liked to thank him for that.

This Fall (but without The Fall)

“I’ll Sleep When I’m Rich” – Fall 2010

1. Pavement – Box Elder
2. Crystal Stilts – Shake the Shackles
3. Kanye West – Power
4. Shit Robot – Take ’em Up
5. Of Montreal – Enemy Gene
6. Sufjan Stevens – Get Real Get Right
7. Sleigh Bells – Straight A’s
8. Hot Chip – Hand Me Down Your Love
9. LCD Soundsystem – Dance Yrself Clean
10. Klaxons – Echoes
11. No Age – Glitter
12. Tokyo Police Club – Bambi
13. Caribou (Manitoba technically) – Skunks
14. Land of Talk – Goaltime Exposure
15. Les Savy Fav – Yawn, Yawn, Yawn
16. The New Pornographers – Sweet Talk, Sweet Talk
17. Los Campesinos! – You’ll Need Those Fingers for Crossing
18. Arcade Fire – Suburban War

For lack of time and interest in discussing every single song, select annotations below!

-A few years back, I would have killed to see Pavement in concert. And now I’ve seen them twice in one year, which feels weird, in retrospect. Partly because I was a little underwhelmed the first time I saw them, and kind of apathetic about the second show. Not that they sounded bad; just very ramshackle and lo-fi, which is really how they should sound live, I guess. Both venues I saw them at (Coachella main stage and, worse, the Hollywood Bowl) were way too big for their “just a bunch of dudes” charm – something like the Henry Fonda or (yeah, right) The Echoplex would have been perfect. But I end up feeling like that about most indie rock acts I see at the Bowl, so…who knows. At any rate, “Box Elder” was not a song they played, but is one that I really hoped they would play, so here it is.

-Again on the concert train, I have an Of Montreal song up partially for the Halloween show I attended (and partially because its themes are similar to a script I’m working on right now), but just realized I forgot to include a Janelle Monae song, too. Whoops. Maybe that’ll go on the deluxe re-issue 10 years from now. At least this one half-counts.

-Sufjan Stevens is an interesting case. I wasn’t really a fan of his, I guess, “singery-songwritery pleasantness” on previous albums (whether that was true or just my perception of him), but his new work, at least since his Dark Was the Night offering “You Are the Blood”, has gotten pretty nuts, and “Get Real Get Right” is a pretty perfect example, overstuffed with nervous strings, impending-doom horns and dizzying vocal acrobatics that grab you by the ears and demand your attention. I also realized after maybe a dozen listens that the song has a Christian overtone that’s pretty blatant once it’s uncovered, but – I can relate to the idea of needing to get your shit together for whatever reason, religious or otherwise. So, many reasons to include it here.

-The Sleigh Bells/Hot Chip/LCD progression is a pretty blatant chronological snapshot of their awesome Hollywood Bowl show a few months back – one of my favorite concerts in recent memory (and maybe of all time). “Straight A’s” as a song is about as loud and brief an encapsulation of Sleigh Bells’ set as possible, and “Hand Me Down Your Love” is, well, one of the few Hot Chip songs I haven’t put on a mix yet. “Dance Yrself Clean” was the first song LCD played, and it immediately knocked me for a loop: I never expected them to play that song, and it signaled the beginning of a show full of awesome surprises, focusing on the best parts of This is Happening with some welcome throwbacks to the band’s first singles. And unlike bands I mentioned earlier, LCD is completely wired to play gigantic venues; they play with such force and enthusiasm that they can’t help but envelop even the sprawling Hollywood Bowl. Did I mention I was in the fourth row? Yeah, it was a great concert.

-I’ve been listening to a lot of Caribou lately, but honestly had no clear frontrunner to symbolize this. I feel like a lot of his music works better in album form than individual tracks – I’ve had Swim on heavy rotation for months, but I’d be hard-pressed to list my three favorite tracks from it. But I’ve really appreciated “Skunks” for a long time, all the way back to 2003 when Caribou was Manitoba, so it felt as appropriate as anything else.

-Another one of my favorite albums from this year, still, is Romance is Boring, but the Los Campesinos! track this season is from 2008’s We Are Beautiful, We Are Doomed, a strange 2008 release following the band’s smash debut album earlier that year. It really is LC!’s Amnesiac, overall not as strong as the album released months prior, but it does feature some of the band’s best tracks, from “Ways to Make it Through the Wall” to the title track to the one on this very mix, “You’ll Need Those Fingers for Crossing”. One of the few LC! songs that’s a definite grower, this one is less about Gareth’s tragicomic character sketches and sugary mixed-gender shoutalongs than it is about the band’s secret weapon, multi-instrumentalist Tom Campesinos!, whose melodies keep the songs together when all else seems seconds from bursting at the seams. Even if the song wavers into melodrama occasionally, it’s an easy flaw to forgive every time that soaring guitar chorus washes everything else away.

-The Arcade Fire track here was very nearly “We Used to Wait” – and it’s tough, when I’m considering a track that got really big and popular and possibly over-played during that season. The hipster part of me says “fuck it, dude, you missed the boat, now it’s cliche and you won’t even want to hear it again for a long time”, while the realist part says “fuck you, dude, you can’t pretend you don’t sometimes discover a song at the same time as everyone else.” And then they fight for a while, until a third part of me shows up and says “uh, dude, it’s all about what the song says to you, not anyone else.” And this third part is always right. So, whether I missed the boat on “We Used to Wait” or not, here’s “Suburban War”, another in a long line of Arcade Fire tracks that seems permanently relevant to me and, I’m sure, to a lot of you.

Based on a true story.

At least the music never stops.

Been way too long since I’ve posted anything…since I’ve written anything. That’s something I need to rectify. In the meantime, here’s my summer mix, finished early but titled late.

“Too Many One-Way Streets”: Summer 2010

1. White Rabbits – Percussion Gun
2. Arcade Fire – Month of May
3. The New Pornographers – Crash Years
4. Sleigh Bells – Infinity Guitars
5. School of Seven Bells – Babelonia
6. Janelle Monae – Tightrope
7. The National – Conversation 16
8. Band of Horses – NW Apt.
9. Midlake – Rulers, Ruling All Things
10. Four Tet – And then Patterns
11. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists – Bottled in Cork
12. Wolf Parade – What Did My Lover Say? (It Always Had to Go this Way)
13. Vampire Weekend – Taxi Cab
14. Big Boi – You Ain’t No DJ
15. Caribou – Hannibal
16. Broken Bells – Mongrel Heart
17. Tokyo Police Club – Not Sick
18. LCD Soundsystem – Home