Category: Uncategorized

Kathleen Edwards

Since everybody seems to be coming up with their best of lists, I just thought I’d add my two cents worth about some of the best music from last year that i enjoyed. Maybe this will foster discussion, debate, and/or world peace.
10. Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Fever to Tell, this whole post-punk garage rock resurgence thing is really hit or miss and sometimes i wish it would go away like ashton kutcher and the trucker hat, but i’m a sucker for dirty chicks that rock (see below) and karen o rocks.
9. The Kills: Keep on Your Mean Side (see above) VV, dirty chick that rocks.
8. The White Stripes: Elephant, this album gets better with every listen. at first i thought it was too derivative, sounded more like copy than homage, but really they’re just plain awesome and the cover photo to the album is enough to put it in the top ten.
7. The Strokes: Room on Fire, say what you want about this sophomore effort but sounding like the next 11 songs off “is this it” is not a bad thing at all. bravo.
6. Youth and Young Manhood: Kings of Leon, this is just good, drinking, hanging out in the yard, grilling meat, driving around in trucks, smoking cigarettes, and gettin’ toad up music. we’ll see how long they stick around.
5. Damien Jurado: Where Shall You Take Me, just plain awesome, saw him at schubas singing his songs about murder and matinee movies, fantastic! “first came the screams then the blood on the floor,” “matinee, why go late? cause the movies are better during the day.”
4. Gillian Welch: Soul Journey, saw her at the vic theater with her cohort david rawlings. held everybody captive with her floral dress, shiny boots, and mesmerizing voice, great performance for a great album.
3. My Morning Jacket: It Still Moves, indescribable mystical 8 minute songs packed with enchanting reverb and just enough twang to make you think, “hey, are they from kentucky?”
2. Radiohead: Hail to the Thief, combines the best of post “ok computer” work with the rock of “the bends.” saw them out at some amphitheater in wisconsin this past summer, hands down one of the best rock shows i’ve ever seen, won’t hesitate to see them again, please go when they tour again.
1. Failer: Kathleen Edwards, got this at the beginning of last year and i thought it probably wouldn’t stay at the top spot for 12 months but it’s no doubt the best album i heard all year, top to bottom, lyrically, musically, emotionally, spiritually, mathematically. all there, real deal. best thing to come from canada since brian adams.
So there you go, hopefully you have you’re own favorites. There are obviously some things missing but it’s cause i just couldn’t hear everything. Other notables that other reliable sources liked but i haven’t heard yet: silver lake: vic chesnutt, o, damien rice, you are free, cat power, stumble into grace, emylou, speakerboxxx/the love below, outkast
Here’s to a musically enriched ’04!
Look to the right (if you are reading this on the homepage) to find links for purchasing each of the fine albums mentioned above.

Only a fool would buy an extended warrantee. Everyone knows TVs last for at least ten years and then, if it craps out on you, you just buy a new one. I’ve got a portable TV that’s nearly a decade old and nothing has ever gone wrong with it. It’s indestructible.
If you have an ounce of common sense you’ll know that retailers make a mint from selling useless extended warrantees to gullible consumers – it’s the ultimate in fear-consumption. Nothing ever goes wrong with modern TVs. You might be forgiven for purchasing cover for a new washing machine – they have moving parts, anything can go wrong. You’ll be a grandparent before your television breaks down.
Every time you buy a new TV, DVD, VCR, PC, Hi-Fi, Washer, Dryer, whatever it is, you are faced with the hard-sell sales assistant on 10% commission trying to tell you that the top-quality comsumer durable he’s just spent 20 minutes convincing you to buy is going to go tits up the day after the standard one-year guarrantee runs out. Fear; consume; live.
I bought a new 28″ widescreen TV 13 months ago; I didn’t get an extended cover plan with it – no fool me! The colour’s all fucked up now.

I hate Paris – arrogant and syphilitic arsehole of Europe. Its pavement cafes and broad shopping streets will one day crumble, the Seine will run dry and Notre Dame will burn. The witty young artists in paint-spattered garrets will all reach for their sleeping pills and whisky at the same pathetic moment, and the chain-smoking fashion models will cough up their lungs, but not before the politician slips on the shit-streaked pavement, breaking his neck. I cannot wait.
I hate Paris, but that is where she sleeps tonight. And maybe an unborn child.

Freud… Dude!

Last night I dreamt I watched my parents drown my naked brother in a bath of cold water. It is four hours later and I still feel disturbed – at last I have my normal life back.

Jumping someone else’s dream.

I wake in good time for work. I have slept well, untroubled by the demons that usually plague my nights, but my days are filled with a throat-crushing fear. My heart constantly pumps 10 bpms above average, my hands tremble; there is a buzz, a hum running through my every fibre. I feel like I’m living over a subway tunnel.
It could be because I’ve cut down on the drinking, but the withdrawal effects would have subsided long ago. Anyway, I never drank that much. Maybe it’s work, yet I’ve coped with worse situations and not felt this way. A friend of mine said it was because I didn’t wank often enough. How often are you supposed to do it?
Everything sets me on edge. My parents stress me out, crowds in town stress me out, idiots on TV stress me out. I can’t have a simple conversation without something the other person says, some small thing, an example of which I can’t even remember, scraping down the outside of my brain like fingernails on a blackboard. But I keep it all inside and that could be the problem, I’ll grant you – but I don’t think it is.
I’m thinking about seeing my doctor, I should see my doctor. But I know he won’t be able to do anything for me, that there is no drug he can proscribe to rid me of these symptoms. You see, I think I know what’s causing this: as I said, the dreams have stopped

She has the biggest smile.
Bigger than any woman I have ever known,
except one.
She broke my heart.
I may have broken her heart,
but I’m not sure.
I like a big smile.
A big smile says warmth,
and gentleness,
and trust.
But it doesn’t say welcome.
Not always.
It never fails to make me happy,
her big smile.
She never fails to make me happy,
except when she does.
Except when she leaves the room.
But when she comes back,
with her big smile,
so does mine.

My creativity seems to go in cycles. Those who don’t know, I design web sites by day and play music and write by night. If you have missed me writing by absurdities here lately, it’s because the writerly muse has at least partially vacated me. However, music has been a little easier as of late. Here’s a new song, not finished, just the first crack… but I thought I would put out here anyway. Hopefully I will continue to work on it and you guys can watch the evolution. feel free to comment or send licks as you see fit.
Here’s the link:
Charlotte (MP3, 3.4MB)
Cheers,
Bryan

Our best effort at a photo of the pink lady.

Take a walk through this honied city, meander down its crooked alleyways and passages, languish in the smoky crepuscule of its ancient hostelries, and you will begin to know its heart.
I saw the Pink Lady a couple of weeks ago. She was stood on the High Street shouting at passers-by, body pitched forward, finger pointing in admonition. Slaver sprayed from her turgid, fish-like lips as she turned on a cyclist: “You’re going to fucking die.” He sped by too rapt in thoughts of getting home to realise he was the damned one. I could hear her ranting still as I passed over Magdalen Bridge. But she was right: he is going to die – we all are.
A few days later I saw the Envelope Man carrying his plastic shopping bag full of dog-eared letters. He wasn’t on the bus or walking down Cornmarket Street where I usually spot him – he was in W.H.Smith’s, enquiring about filing systems. The assistant was being very polite and taking his potential custom quite seriously, even though he must have known that a man with long greasy hair, a tangled beard, filthy anorak and Jesus sandals who has lugged this same bundle of mail around town for the past ten years, to my knowledge, is unlike to have undergone a road-to-Damascus experience and decided to invest in a set of lavender box files. I left clutching a birthday card for my brother.
Then yesterday I saw Beaver Man. Beaver Man could be homeless, an alcoholic or just a bit of a hippy. He does not argue with street furniture or rifle through litter bins; he doesn’t wear a wedding dress when visiting the cinema or run through the city streets half naked with a crazed and hungry look in his eye. No, his distinguishing feature is his hair: although he is white, he has the most amazing and shocking dreadlocks. They hang down to his shoulders all around his head, that is, except at the rear, where a vile-looking wad shaped like the tail of a beaver hangs to the middle of his back. That’s Beaver Man.

She is usually in her thirties with a string of long-term but essentially unfulfilling relationships with men who work in the public sector. You should be alerted to her tendencies when one of her first questions enquires about either: a) Your birth sign; or, b) The name and number of your aromatherapist. This woman is to be avoided at all costs.
Early on in the relationship – which she will only persue if your auras are compatible – she will insist on a number of incomprehensible tarot card readings which will later increase in frequency to eventually (within two years) replace sexual contact. At some point in the first three months you are likely to return home to find her weeping uncontrolably in the kitchen. When pressed she will admit to having visited a medium who contacted her late and extremely alcoholic father. Even though the experience has clearly disturbed her she will claim it has exorcised several “ghosts of the past”.
It is certain that she will shun conventional medicine in favour of various quack practices to cure even the most treatable of everday complaints and ailments. So, expect to find blood on your bed sheets when she is treating her cystitis with crystals.
Every freak and fundamentalist is a certified evangelist. Be wary as she will try to convert you by a combination of lacing your food with various unsavoury potions and covert hypnotic suggestion. The best way to protect yourself is to tell her that everthing she believes in is a pile of horse-shit and throw the witch out into the street. Be sure to paint a pentangle (preferably in goats blood) on your door to prevent her gaining re-entry.

She met this guy at a bar in Austin, Texas. She’ d graduated from UT about six months earlier and was drinking hard and taking drugs when she wasn’t waiting tables for minimum wage. He was originally from St. Louis but was in town to see his grandparents before he headed off for the Army. They got talking and at some point – she never made the time-scale clear – they decided to get married.

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