SONG OF THE DAY: Real Connection

I regret to inform you I have become a “souldies” guy. Maybe it’s because I have a radio show where all I do is play 45s at 33 speed, and the vast bulk of new 45s released are from the rapidly expanding souldies scene. Bobby Oroza is a dude from Finland who dropped Get On The Otherside this year on Big Crown Records, and that shit slams. Sadly, Big Crown Records has not released “Real Connection” on 45 for me to play at 33 speed. The fun thing about souldies is it’s the strangest multicultural scene ever, that has scenes pop up in expected places (like Brooklyn and Northern California) but then Finland. Anyways, I want to start a record label now, with no money and no experience. That’s what happens when you start to listen to too many 45s.

SONG OF THE DAY: Smother Me With Your Love

A face sitter aficionado’s secret anthem, thus a degenerate classic. I think I’ve convinced my girlfriend that should I ever get old and be on my deathbed to smother me out of my misery in this manner. It’s a shame we don’t live in an actual progressive society which could respect my wishes. Instead, I’ll likely be separated from everybody I love, and kept alive against my will hooked up to a bunch of goddamned machines that will drain whatever meager coins I have saved in my pitiful life right out of the possibility of sliding into my children’s hands once I’m gone. What a disgusting world we’ve built, and I say that as somebody who began this paragraph talking about women sitting on my face, lovingly.

SONG OF THE DAY: Drip Drop

Another Cadillac spaceship banger perfect for time traveling because the audio is skewed ever so wonderfully as the 4th dimension recalibrations happen upon re-entry to earthly atmosphere. If you've never experienced it, it's like the sound of having done 17 whip-its all at once, but it doesn't hurt your head and feels like you just dove off a cliff into deep mountain spring. Pretty great, except for the realization that, "Oh fuck, here I am back to my normal base life, back to work, no more playing dominoes with 1971 Pam Grier lookalike in Dayton, Ohio, motel." Hate that shit.

M0ST MY P30PL3'S M3N P4SS3D...

most my people’s men passed 
early - tragedies waiting 
to happen from beginning 

SONG OF THE DAY: Right Place Wrong Time (kudzu'd)

The permutations of place and time are infinite, in fact an infinite number of infinities of them. Infinity can seem way smaller than it actually is because it’s such a simple word full of slender letters. But the infinite permutations of place and time go on and on, and the best you can hope for is to slice a little sliver of your minor infinity into a beautiful snapshot of feel goodness. It’s hard though, because institutions stuff every crack in our infinities with bullshit, trying to misdirect and channel us the wrong way, into some tiny boring ass corner, instead of exploring our infinite place and times of our tiny slice of conscious existence (assuming we’re conscious).

R3MN4NTS 0F TH3 R04D TR4V3LL3D...

remnants of the roads travelled 
stains cellular memories; 
new practice takes time to take 

F3LT TH3 FR4CTVR3D P3RSP3CT1V3...

felt the fractured perspective 
of illicit substance for 
sweet temporary escape 

CL1MB1NG L4DD3RS, CH4S1NG CL0VDS...

climbing ladders, chasing clouds, 
without realizing a man 
can’t ever get that far high 

4S 4 HVM4N B31NG, 1'M...

as a human being, I’m 
more akin to fresh weeds than 
abandoned mechanisms 

SONG OF THE DAY: Don Dada (Hip Hop Remix)

I went to sleep playing this 100% Dynamite! NYC dancehall meets rap compilation the other night, and when I woke up, I had transformed into wearing a light blue and white tracksuit with Polo sneakers on. It was crazy. I guess I got a fairy godfather I didn’t know about.

M4K1NG D0 B3C0M3S 34SY...

making do becomes easy 
if you ain’t got no other 
choice… well-practiced survival 

F33L M0ST BL3SS3D 1N TH3 D4RKN3SS...

feel most blessed in the darkness, 
crawling through marginal zones 
which don’t know that much newness 

0VR VNT3ND3D D1M3NS10NS...

our untended dimensions 
fall apart easy enough… 
fix what you need, fuck the rest 

SONG OF THE DAY: Computer Love Part II (kudzu'd)

A solid proof of America's deep and inherent racism is a bunch of people love Bruce Springsteen still, for some reason, but ain't nobody talking about Roger Troutman. Neoliberal bullshit. Also this song should be the internet's theme song, but we blew it. Now libertarian tech dorks own the internet and we're like ten years away from the national anthem getting changed to a pun that 13 year olds think is stupid.

M4NVF4CTVR3D PVRP0S3 C4STS...

manufactured purpose casts 
long shadows in our culture, 
but I ain’t got to do shit 

L0ST BVT F0VND PR0PH3C13S 4R3...

 

lost but still found prophecies are 
never profitable… find 
joy in my own foolishness 

SP34K1NG P03MS T0 G14NT...

speaking poems to giant 
hulks of metal, hovering 
all ‘round my one-man cipher 

SONG OF THE DAY: La Risada (rebajada)

Slowed music is a lifestyle choice. Slow living prevents slow death, and around the clock digital clockfaces got too many of y'all thinking some RIGHT NOW shit is more urgent than it really is.

B1NG3 W4TCH1NG CL0VDS, STR3TCH3D 0VT 1N...

binge watching clouds, stretched out in 
the dirt of America’s 
rapidly-declined margins 

M41NT41N1NG 1MM4CVL4T3...

maintaining immaculate 
castles made of sand becomes 
difficult work… we’re lazy 

TH3 BRVT4L 4RCH1T3CTVR3...

the brutal architecture 
of displacing natural 
thought with chasing a clock’s face 

SONG OF THE DAY: Soul Heart Transplant (kudzu'd)

[Been out of practice of writing blurbs for songs, so just whipped out a freestyle sonnet for today...] 

The ebbs and flows of brain and heart... Information 

consumed often containing poisons, polluting 

thinking with fear or hate, raw manipulation 

of reactionary types quick to be shooting 

off "just asking questions" digressions of discourse. 

Meanwhile, natural rights and wrongs known (or divined) 

at heart level from birth, which manmade laws enforce 

according to our mythology; but you'll find 

aberrations from heartfelt path, men using math 

chasing pyramids of numbers rather than shared 

goodness of existence, before bloodletting bath 

between divisions. Mind is where the two are paired - 

brain and heart - coming together, and back apart. 

I always hope that spirited thought's seen as smart. 

4SS1GN1NG 0VRS3LV3S PVRP0S3...

assigning ourselves purpose 
where none needed to exist… 
fuck it, I’ll be in the woods 

VN1V3RS4L D3TR1TVS...

universal detritus… 
us human beings born from 
wild stardust (allegedly) 

4B4ND0N1NG D3ST1NY...

abandoning destiny 
to indulge in nothingness… 
if Sisyphus had just quit 

4T TH1S P01NT TH3 CR4CKS D3F1N3...

at this point, the cracks define 
the system as much as all 
the alleged safety nets 

H4LF-F3R4L M4RG1NS PR0V1D3...

half-feral margins provide 
the comfort of shadows for 
those hiding from too much light 

SONG OF THE DAY: Pull My String (kudzu'd)

This is a perfect example of how a song I’d barely noticed in my lifetime suddenly becomes amazing when slowed down. I have a hard time not playing “Ring My Bell” by Anita Ward followed by this all the time on my radio show.

SONG OF THE DAY: Butt In The Meantime (kudzu'd)

Way back in the day when I was buying up all the new tapes and making dual tape deck mixtapes for anybody who gave a fuck, I absolutely loved to start the B-side of a tape with “The Bridge is Over” by Boogie Down Productions with this song second. The two beats are very complementary. Hadn’t found the 7” 45 of “The Bridge is Over” yet at an affordable to me price to recreate that magic on the “45 era Raven” turntables at a slower speed, but we’re halfway there.

CH1LDR3N 1NH3R1T1NG 0VR...

children inheriting our 
destructive psychologies, 
nature and nurture the same 

M0D3RN L1V1NG G1RDL3S VS...

modern living girdles us 
to productive consumption 
(and consumptive production) 

SONG OF THE DAY: I Don't Want Your Love

I mostly listen to soul oldies now, and also wear tracksuits more than I used to. I had to promise my man DJ Brilliant though that I wasn’t gonna start using beard oil (outside of natural ones resulting from giving oral sex).

TH3 VRG3 T0 RVN R3M41NS STR0NG...

the urge to run remains strong, 
but we convince ourselves to 
ignore heart’s desperate pleas 

D0M3ST1C4T3D 0VRS3LV3S...

domesticated ourselves 
as much as the world around 
us, pretending it’s progress 

L0V3 TR3SP4SS1NG 4FT3R D4RK...

love trespassing after dark 
in glare of security 
lights and hidden cameras 

S0M3T1M3S 4LL TH3S3 RVL3S W3 G1V3...

sometimes, all these rules we give 
ourselves lose original 
intent, and stifle living 

T3MP0R4RY 3SC4P3S FR0M...

temporary escapes from 
my own over-practicing 
of tasks (which become habits) 

SONG OF THE DAY: EVERYWHEREIGO

Just a great song, nothing to write here, other than this, which is actually nothing, but I feel like words are supposed to go here. Do people still do music blogs anymore? Why am I here? What is the purpose of this?

F33L L1K3 1'M F4D1NG 4W4Y...

feel like I’m fading away 
many days, my daily ways 
running round downward spirals 

H34RT 0F G0LD M3T4PH0RS M1SS...

“heart of gold” metaphors miss 
the mark, but brains are poisoned 
with relentless lust for wealth 

SONG OF THE DAY: Alive Ain't Always Living

I follow the Islamic calendar for a couple art projects, and prayer times as well, because it helps me be in tune with the natural cycles of the universe, and I can better place myself in the context of that universe keeping in mind the new and full moons. When I scribble on trains, I follow the tradition set before with monikers of including a date reference/time stamp, but I’ve always done the Islamic year. When 1444 came around a few months back, I got excited to switch from 1443s to 1444s, and the first Sunday after the new year, I was up before sunrise to hit a couple of my favorite nearby yards that required that type of early morning stealth. I like day time in yards better than night, but day is when workers are there, and workers don’t like people fucking up their jobsite with their presence, especially not in train yards. So it’s gotta be the right day of the week at the right time, and Sundays at sunrise are just about perfect (and always have been, my whole life). I was bumping Quelle Chris’s latest album, especially “Alive Ain’t Always Living”, so I ended up writing that a bunch of times on hoppers in the yards that day. Scribbling on trains is sort of like writing little prayer poems, and the combination of phrase/year definitely creates ties for me to where I was, both physically but spiritually/emotionally. “Alive Ain’t Always Living” was also a perfect meditation to scribble onto giant industrial hunks as a reminder/manifestation for the new year, signed with the 1444 to make it real for the whole ride around the sun. That song, and sentiment, is completely wrapped up with this whole rest of the new year in my heart, which doesn’t match the Gregorian calendar that’s more commonly known and accepted as the norm. The whole thing is esoteric, strange, but completely obvious, and not weird at all. It’s just doing things to make life more magic and less fucked feeling. That’s all prayer is, or poetry, or being alive to be honest.

Y3ST3RD4Y'S G0LD3N GL1MM3R...

yesterday’s golden glimmer 
fades into tomorrow’s rust - 
natural character arc 

SONG OF THE DAY: The Way You Look Tonight

A lot of record collectors are way too precious about their shit, acting like their living room Ikea shelf is a museum archive. I take care of my records, but also beyond the actual record, I don’t stress it. One of my great joys in getting old 45s is the label and sleeve ephemera – people writing notes or names or weird codes or who the fuck knows what it means. Because of this, I’ve been practicing scribbling little notes or words on the sleeves and labels, especially when I use a 45 for my radio show. I’m not permanent, nor is my collection, and it’s gonna scatter like my own ashes at some point, so having a Conway Twitty 45 with “dirtgod theme” written on the label is most likely gonna be some interesting shit to somebody somewhere down the road.

F34RFVL SH4D0WS 0F GR0VPTH1NK...

fearful shadows of groupthink 
cast an ominous pall 
over otherwise blue skies