Beyonce and her Ladies

This girl just gets better and better with age. I love her all girl band and the dancing in Single Ladies is jaw dropping.

SY Incinerate

Still can't post the Sonic Youth vlog until their manager clears the song (or not - fingers tightly squeezed) but in the meantime, you can check out the killer pics JDK took of fans and their SY messages here.

The poster was beautifully designed and the fan's hand-written messages run the emotional roller coaster range from heartbreaking to silly. You might even see some folks you recognize.

Gotta love interactive poster art after a killer show that I am still soaking in (or maybe that is the sleep deprivation?). I think the brown poster is my favorite and I am still kicking myself for not grabbing one. IDIOT! Damn my single-purpose, video-shooting obsessed mind!

Here is Sonic Youth playing live at Bonnaroo in 2006. I am still amazed that they came to our little state and so glad to have been standing next to an amp and riding their wave of sound. I think it is time for another swim:

Pale Blue Dot

Steve in Ireland sent me his most amazing and thoughtful music video/montage (Oh, be still my heart). It blew me away and left me with the same lingering strange feeling (fear tinged with hope perhaps?) that haunted me for weeks after seeing Children of Men. Good thought provoking stuff:

Original Deadbeat Club

Man, this B-52s video brings back the memories. I want to go to their leopard-print wearing, happening hipster party! I wish Michael Stipe and the B-52s were in our club of n'er do wells...

Burning in January

To help rinse the winter blues out of your hair, please to enjoy the sad melodic stylings of The Whitest Boy Alive, a band my pal T-Lo just pointed out to me:



PS If you care to scare yourself half to death, learn more about this creepy disease, Fatal familial insomnia which will kill you in 7-36 months and has no cure. But check out the snazzy symptoms you will experience before you croak:

The disease has four stages, taking 7 to 18 months to run its course:

1. The patient suffers increasing insomnia, resulting in panic attacks and phobias. This stage lasts about four months.
2. Hallucinations and panic attacks become noticeable, continuing about five months.
3. Complete inability to sleep is followed by rapid loss of weight. This lasts about three months.
4. Dementia, turning unresponsive or mute over the course of six months. This is the final progression of the disease, and the patient will subsequently die.

Shyness is Nice

All but Death, can be Adjusted—
Dynasties repaired—
Systems—settled in their Sockets—
Citadels—dissolved—

Wastes of Lives—resown with Colors
By Succeeding Springs—
Death—unto itself—Exception—
Is exempt from Change—

- Emily Dickinson

It could be the fact that I am rehearsing the tragic play The Trojan Women or it could just be this dark time of year, but I have been thinking about death a lot lately.


And as luck would have it, my first rehearsal of the day featured a drop dead beautiful baby Zora (she'd give Shiloh Brangelina Whatshername Pitt a run for her money). Zora of the cherubic cheeks and the perfect pink lips was a lovely well-behaved baby who did not make more than the occasional friendly chirp as she rolled across the floor.

My second rehearsal (Sunday is rehearsal day!) featured a leather jacket which represented the dead corpse of a baby thrown from a cliff by the blood thirsty Greeks. Poor little baby Astyanax never had much of a chance once the drums of war began beating.


It was nice to wake up to a snowstorm this morning, but not so nice to drive to Essex on sludge-covered roads. Still, it was a good, tiring day all in all and I even had time in between rehearsals to take some snaps in the Essex Cemetery.


Still, cannot manage to shake this heavy weight on my heart. Perhaps it is time to read a trashy novel or listen to the tape that was in my car all day providing many good songs to sing out loud to. God bless Morrissey and The Smiths:

Pretty Darklands

Jesus and Mary Chain
Darklands
Sung by William

I'm going to the darklands
To talk in rhyme
With my chaotic soul
As sure as life means nothing
And all things end in nothing
And heaven I think
Is too close to hell
I want to move I want to go
I want to go
Oh something won't let me
Go to the place
Where the darklands are
And I awake from dreams
To a scary world of screams
And heaven I think
Is too close to hell
I want to move I want to go
I want to go
Take me to the dark
Oh God I get down on my knees
And I feel like I could die
By the river of disease
And I feel that I'm dying
And I'm dying
I'm down on my knees
Oh I'm down
I want to go I want to stay
I want to stay



PS Good one Scott!

PPS That big FAT full moon is keeping the badlands at bay for the evening!

What a Wonderful World

"I hear babies cry, I watch them grow.
They'll learn much more than I'll ever know."

When they sing it, I sort of almost believe it:



PS Thanks for finding this Scott!

Hot Hot Hot Jett

This song makes it all better:

Xmas Dreams

This video comes courtesy of a sexy Spanish girl's blog, Dadanoias, which came courtesy of this hot guy Jan's blog, Jahsonic. Jan has an interesting take on both high and low culture as well as an impressive blogroll and says of Dadanoias:

• Since about six months I’ve been reading Dadanoias, a young woman from Barcelona whose interests are sex and music. She has very good tastes in both, but her forte is the first.

YES! If only I could read Spanish! Below is a mix mash of Cinderella and the Cranberries - a romantic poppy montage after my own heart. A must see for foot fetishists the world over!

Happy Christmas Your Arse

It was Christmas Eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won't see another one
And then he sang a song
The Rare Old Mountain Dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you

Got on a lucky one
Came in eighteen to one
I've got a feeling This year's for me and you
So happy Christmas
I love you baby I can see a better time
When all our dreams come true

When I think of my favorite Christmas songs, The Pogues Fairytale of New York is at the top of my list. It is the sort of bittersweet song that properly captures the Christmas spirit in all its shades of gray.

Says wonderful Wikipedia, "The song features two Irish immigrants, lovers or ex-lovers, their youthful hopes all but crushed by alcoholism and drug addiction, reminiscing and bickering on Christmas Eve in New York City. MacColl's melodious singing contrasts with the harsh sound of MacGowan's voice and the lyrics which are sometimes bittersweet, sometimes plain bitter":

You're a bum
You're a punk
You're an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God it's our last

Yes, yes, I know that this does not sound like much of a Christmas song but "real" Christmas songs make me want to hurl. This song has all the pain, suffering and cussing that the holidays inspire in those of us sick to death of sickly sweet cornball Christmas mush. And underneath the waves of heartbreak and crushed dreams, there is a glimmer of hope which seems impossible to snuff out completely:

I could have been someone
Well so could anyone
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can't make it all alone
I've built my dreams around you

Embedded below is a live version of the song from 1988, complete with fake snow. You can also check out the music video here.

You gotta love Shane in all his toothless, piss drunk glory, especially since he still manages to hit every note and snarl with pitch-perfect perfection. Kirsty seems a bit wooden and nervous but that is part of her charm.

Sadly, Kirsty was killed by a motorboat in 2000 while pushing her son to safety. She will be sorely missed. Said former Pogues vocalist and guitarist Phil Chevron about Kirsty:

"Ummistakably, the tour bus was a classier joint with her on board," Chevron writes. "She shared our insatiable musical curiosity and our appetite for hair-brained schemes. A folk-punk opera, or an all-Pogue recording of West Side Story."

So in Kirsty's honor, let's all drunkenly sing along to, The Fairytale of New York:

Chunky Pam's XMas

This video will make you hungry:

Sonic Youth Get Old

From Sonic Old to A Bull in the Heather...just try to keep your head from bopping, I dare you!

Pretty Love Song

I had never heard of Regina Spektor until tonight when I noticed her on the YouTube Director's sidebar (thanks YouTube for all the good you bring to me!). Apparently, Regina is a YouTube sensation and her video Fidelity (below) is one of the greatest YouTube success stories for an artist in recent history.

This song is a hauntingly beautiful tale about the fear many of us face when falling in love (fear of losing ourselves, fear of being hurt, fear of being trapped) and the amazing feeling of breaking down the walls and overcoming this fear in order to experience a real human connection in technicolor:

I never love nobody fully
Always one foot on the ground
And by protecting my heart truly
I got lost
In the sounds
I hear in my mind
All these voices
I hear in my mind all these words
I hear in my mind
All this music
And it breaks my heart
It breaks my heart
Breaks my
Heart
Breaks my heart

And here is 19 yr old peterparker1986 and his take on this song. Gotta give him props for listening to chick music and living to tell the tale.