Saturday, February 26, 2011


To the Harbormaster


I wanted to be sure to reach you;
though my ship was on the way it got caught
in some moorings. I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. In storms and
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide
around my fathomless arms, I am unable
to understand the forms of my vanity
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder
in my hand and the sun sinking. To
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks, it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you.

- Frank O'Hara

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

Zoe 2 [December 2006]


This is by far the oldest mix I've posted so far. It's also one of my favourites. Like my friend Jesse (whose Jesse 5 mix I posted a while back), Zoe is the other person I make birthday mix CDs for instead of giving actual gifts. Not that I think either of them mind. In fact, mix CDs aside, I can be a pretty mediocre gift-giver, so it's really a win-win for everyone involved.

That being said, if you want to be added to the birthday-mix-in-lieu-of-real-present list, just let me know. I'm more than happy to accommodate.

What I actually remember most about this mix is that, not long after I gave it to her, she requested another copy. Why? Because she lent it to a friend who, the story goes, loved it so much that she refused to return it. Which, despite being kind of a shitty thing to do friend-wise, was a pretty nice compliment for me.

Listening to it now, I'm mostly happy with it, though I'm not certain why I thought putting a "Love Will Tear Us Apart" cover on there was good idea (even one performed by a decent band like Calexico). Note to aspiring mix-masters: covers are cool (the weirder/rarer the better), covers of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" (and, while we're on it, "Hallelujah") are, well... considerably less cool.

Also: remember Peter, Bjorn and John? Me neither. But they were pretty popular for about a minute there. I actually saw them open for Depeche Mode a few years ago (how I ended up there is a story for another blog-post).

One final note: I have never heard any other songs by Bound Stems but I think "Western Biographic" is pretty damn sweet.

Here's the track-list:

01. Swan Lake - "The Freedom"
02. TV on the Radio - "Snakes and Martyrs"
03. Band of Horses - "The Funeral"
04. Spoon - "Don't Let It Get You Down"
05. Joanna Newsom - "Peach, Plum, Pear"
06. Califone - "Our Kitten Sees Ghosts"
07. Bound Stems - "Western Biographic"
08. Modest Mouse - "Black Cadillacs"
09. Calexico - "Love Will Tear Us Apart"
10. Herman Dune- "When the Water Gets Cold & Freezes on the Lake"
11. The Hold Steady - "You Can Make Him Like You"
12. Sleater-Kinney - "Entertain"
13. The Thermals - "I Hold the Sound"
14. Sunset Rubdown - "The Empty Threats of Little Lord"
15. Peter, Bjorn and John - "Objects of My Affection"

And here's the download link:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=U26PIO47

Enjoy (and share).

Friday, February 11, 2011

People Fall Off Buildings Presents: An Introduction to... Silver Jews


"On the last day of your life / Don't forget to die."

"There is a house in New Orleans / Not the one you've heard about / I'm talking about another house."

"O Dallas you shine with an evil light / Don't you know that God stays up all night?"

"Boy wants a car from his Dad / Dad says, first you gotta cut that hair / Boy says, hey Dad Jesus had long hair / And Dad says / That's right son but Jesus walked everywhere."

"All houses dream in blueprints / Our houses dream so hard / Outside you can see my shoeprints / I've been dreaming in your yard."

"So if you don't want me / I promise not to linger / But before I go I gotta ask you dear about the tan line on your ring finger."

"I've got two tickets to a midnight execution / We'll hitchhike our way from Odessa to Houston / And when they turn on the chair / Something's added to the air / When they turn on the chair / Something's added to the air / Forever."

"Sometimes I feel like I'm watching the world / And the world isn't watching me back / But when I see you, I know I'm in it too / The waves come in and the waves go back / The kids in the corner all covered in dirt / Caught trespassing under the moon / My father came in from wherever he'd been / And kicked my shit all over the room."

"Grass grows in the icebox / The year ends in the next room / It is autumn and my camouflage is dying / Instead of time there will be lateness / And let forever be delayed."

"And if we're like plug-in reindeer / Whose cords can't stretch far enough to fly."

"He bought a little land with the money from the settlement / And he even bought the truck that had hit him that day / He touched the part where the metal was bent / And if you were there you would hear him say."

"You know Louisville is death / We've got to up and move / Because the dead do not improve."

"When I was summoned to the phone / I knew in my bones that you had died alone."

"I'm gonna change the pattern of the stars / I'd like to horsewhip all these VCRs / Screw the soft rock and the salad bars / Let's turn our backs on all the movie stars."

"So you wanna build an altar on a summer night / You wanna smoke the gel off a fentanyl patch / Aincha heard the news / Adam and Eve were Jews / And I always loved you to the max."

"I've been working at the airport bar / It's like Christmas in a submarine."

"I saw God's shadow on this world"

"You got Tennessee tendencies / And chemical dependencies / You make the same old jokes and malaprops on cue."

Here's the track-list:

01. Advice to the Graduate
02. New Orleans
03. Dallas
04. The Frontier Index
05. Pretty Eyes
06. Random Rules
07. Smith & Jones Forever
08. Blue Arrangements
09. The Wild Kindness
10. Room Games & Diamond Rain
11. I Remember Me
12. Tennessee
13. Death of an Heir of Sorrows
14. Long Long Gone
15. Punks in the Beerlight
16. I'm Getting Back into Getting Back into You
17. There Is a Place
18. Suffering Jukebox

And here's the download link:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TMLQKWAU


Enjoy (and share).