Misty Cold ...
Somehow the curse of Pittsburgh has struck again - despite it being late April, somehow this weekend has been in the 40s with occasional snow flurries. Not cool. I attempted to take a long bike ride on Saturday, and got about 8 miles into before thunderstorms struck and sent my soaked ass scurrying home. Since then, I've been feeling like it's winter all over again. Instead of going out and doing things, I've been staying home and obsessing over things. After my slippery ride home, I've had the realization that the bike I was riding is a little too big, leading to some potential painful injuries in the groinial regions and some crappy handling compared to my properly sized bike. Now, what to do about it? Offer to swap frames with some gangly fellow? Get a new frame and sell the old one? Both are fine things to scheme about while taking a break at work, and during a recent Google spree I found a bike fabrication place near my mother-in-law's place. What makes this weird is that they live in middle of nowhere, literally. Like, in Appalachia. The nearest non-fast food restaurant is a decent drive away. Yet, somehow in the deep, chocolatey forest, some people are welding high-end custom frames. Very confusing.
Another point of obsession - Bill, of late of the New Alcindors and more recently of Minneapolis, MN, is returning to our fair town and is interested in putting together a new band with me. We've discussed many non-rock influences - afropop, baile funk, grime - and we seem to be on the same page. Still trying to figure out how we can attempt to incorporate these sounds without sounding like those hippy bands that with utter seriousness lapse into a patois accent or pull out a digeridoo or tablas. The dangers inherent in a bunch of caucasians attempting to play anything that could be lumped into the "world music" label are huge, and the standard hipster device for defusing such contextual land-mines (irony) will be more than useless here. Big challenges, but, hey, much more interesting than being in punk band #129, and the notion of playing a type of music that I would actually be into (and isn't being done to death) is pretty tempting. We will see what the future holds.
In other news, the Ruff Sqwad "Guns and Roses" mixtape is pretty excellent. Silverdollarcircle or Gutterbreakz or someone posted a track a couple months ago that were really smooth, teetering way close to the American hip-hop landfill. Pitchfork posted a good review of it, so naturally I had low hopes. However, all the other tracks I've heard have followed in the classic RS formula - nimble voicing on top of grim, grey music that wouldn't be out of place on a later Joy Division album. Totally bleak and awesome, and if I could find a way to obtain my very own copy for less that $30 I would be all over it.
Another point of obsession - Bill, of late of the New Alcindors and more recently of Minneapolis, MN, is returning to our fair town and is interested in putting together a new band with me. We've discussed many non-rock influences - afropop, baile funk, grime - and we seem to be on the same page. Still trying to figure out how we can attempt to incorporate these sounds without sounding like those hippy bands that with utter seriousness lapse into a patois accent or pull out a digeridoo or tablas. The dangers inherent in a bunch of caucasians attempting to play anything that could be lumped into the "world music" label are huge, and the standard hipster device for defusing such contextual land-mines (irony) will be more than useless here. Big challenges, but, hey, much more interesting than being in punk band #129, and the notion of playing a type of music that I would actually be into (and isn't being done to death) is pretty tempting. We will see what the future holds.
In other news, the Ruff Sqwad "Guns and Roses" mixtape is pretty excellent. Silverdollarcircle or Gutterbreakz or someone posted a track a couple months ago that were really smooth, teetering way close to the American hip-hop landfill. Pitchfork posted a good review of it, so naturally I had low hopes. However, all the other tracks I've heard have followed in the classic RS formula - nimble voicing on top of grim, grey music that wouldn't be out of place on a later Joy Division album. Totally bleak and awesome, and if I could find a way to obtain my very own copy for less that $30 I would be all over it.
posted by dmg at 8:03 PM
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