ipod generation

i've never paid for an ipod. i've owned three of them, but i've never bought one... they're either hand me downs or i find them, but i'm still torn on the whole thing.

there was awhile when i'd walk around the city, sit on the subway and swap cds out of my discman in a very awkward way - with the influx of ipods i continue to recieve i eventually left it on the shelf in my apartment and resigned to the much simpler, more compact, way of enjoying the sweetest tunes of my record collection.

but here's the problem. first of all the sound discrepancy - not only are mp4s compressed in such a way that the low and high end frequencies are crushed but then when played through an ipod they are re-crushed to the point of distortion at any volume level. i can't tell you how much i hate that. probably as much as brandon hated dylan when he started going out with kelly.

second, i have like 700+ cds. the latest ipod only has 7 gigs on it and my computer is loaded up with files from a record i did that takes up over half of the hard drive. the problem here is that i 1, don't have the time to load 700 cds onto my computer 2, my computer doesn't have the room 3, the ipod doesn't either. some people would think to just load their favorites... that would require about 500 of them. so i'm walking around listening to a song or record, thinking of what would be perfect next - and 90% of the time that perfect selection is on a cd spindle or in a travel case in my apartment. devastating.

lastly, the problem with free ipods are the incidental damages. so the first one the battery was about shot, the second, the battery was about shot and the headphone jack stopped working, the third, yep the backlight went out. awesome. so i stumble awkwardly trying to get the right angle of the sun or lamp post continually walking at an exceptionally fast rate - because stopping would be all too convenient.

boo-urns, ipod, boo-urns

on the theme of mississippi

writing a song with a single line turn around is hard. because its easy for the song to sit stagnant, go on too long or sound campy. dylan somehow twists them so everytime the turn around comes around there is a different spin on it, though the lyrics and melody remain the same. the brilliance is in the set up.

the problem with the album love & theft is that mississippi is such a good song that the album couldn't possibly stand up to it. its like drops of jupiter on that train album* - one song almost sours the whole disc because it goes somewhere that the rest of the album can't keep up with. i'm not comparing drops of jupiter to mississippi as songs, just as what they did to their respective albums. dylan v. monahan? krinsky will probably say monahan because of his melodies, but seriously, thats like your highschool gym team teacher trying to keep pace with jordan in a 1 on 1 basketball game.



anyways, this is mississippi. if you don't love it on first listen, keep listening.

* it was really chuck levell playing on that song that made all the difference.

irish boys with mississippi soul

there is a band from the eighties called the hothouse flowers. today i listened through two of their records. the honest and raw, People, and the masterpiece, songs from the rain.

people is this interesting sort of stream of consciousness writing that seldom works well - and in this case, almost does and almost doesn't. its a bit rambly, but it is soooooo honest. and so often in music that is the very quality that is missing, and on account that they are far more gospel than they are celtic, the honesty is particularily comforting - and less rambly than a lot of stream of conciousness rants i've experienced in gospel settings. it is definitely worth the listen, and the moments of brilliance on this record are frequent and appropriately described as such.

songs from the rain is perfect. pulsing at the steady hand of jerry fehily* lays a canvas for Liam O'Maonlai to carry on as he does where he sings and plays with a sort of careless gracefulness that is not unlike jeff buckley's same quality. this is not to say that he sounds like or should be compared to buckley in any way, other than they both seem to possess a certain freedom and dominion over their musical expressions that is far beyond what any training can do.

*seriously, one of the best drummers i've ever heard... ever.

art

i've never understood letting someone you love suffer for their own benefit. or, i should say, i've never understood how in loving someone we are capable to endure observing their suffering whether for their benefit or not.

that being said, and rather contradictorily, i'm a firm believer that love and art are all about contrasts. unless there is a darkness to contrast the light, or a light to contrast the darkness, how can we know how beautiful something - or someone - is?

there have been artists, songwriters and poets that have seemingly mastered this - however, all fall terribly short of the standard set by this coming weekend. Christ crucified paired with his subsequent Resurrection is not only love in its truest form, but also the most magnificent work of art the world will ever know.

its another monday evening....

i suppose that the most interesting thing about this monday is that it is the first monday after a night of horrible nightmares that i can remember for the last 15 years or so. this makes it a day of great learning for me. for years, and to this day, when i'm asleep, truly asleep, there is nothing that can waken me. the truck in the metallica video hitting the bed in the middle of the highway? nope. the 1989 san fransisco earthquake? nope*. yet last night i learned that i have the ability to wake myself up in the middle of dream. i kept doing it, i don't know why i was having these nightmares, and i also don't know why i was laughing so hard at them, but regardless, it was funny, and wholly obscure.

anyways, here's the really interesting thing, the last dream i had, the only one i can remember, was me in some rather helpless position with a man holding a gun towards me and half way through pulling the trigger when i said to myself, "wake up, you're in your bed". i woke up. the good thing about this is that today i learned that its bad to die in your dreams.**

ok, so thats actually not the really interesting thing, but something that made the whole thing weirder was my receiving a text at noon from one of my best friends with a text that read, "dude, i totally had a dream that you died last night". I laughed pretty hard. then i thought to text another of my friends who has a good sense of humor and tell her the two parts i just told you in under 145 characters. she did think it was funny, but mostly because she had a dream she'd been robbed and shot, but lived, then escaped but while escaping had to fight laquisha.

i feel like tom cruise is about to pop out and tie the whole thing together.

* to be fair this was on tv at the time.
** tommy finds it difficult to imagine how you could have a conclusive study of that.