letting the random happen...

Volunteered/got paid overtime at Ingenuity Fest. Didn't have a whole lot of cash on me, but I got to walk around for free and people-watch. A lot of the exhibits weren't really my thing, but I did get a decent falafel sandwich, hang out time with a good friend, and the chance to watch the uncanny xela perform and Mifune kick out the jams with Poetic Republic.



Took my "Great Toledo Roadtrip" the past couple days for a work conference thing. ended up learning some good stuff, hanging out with my lovely coworkers and meeting new people and fellow Clevelanders.

Monday night, three of us drove up to Detroit to sight-see and see what would happen. I had never been there before so I was looking forward to seeing a new city and it's not every day that I get outside the borders of my fair state. We talked in passing about trying to find Motown, and ended up doing so almost completely by accident.

We drove through downtown, past the casinos, stadiums, and auto company headquarters, and then further out. It reminded me of Cleveland in the sense that you could see what it once was, and now wasn't.

But this is where it got interesting. We stopped at a Burger King to use the restroom, and while there were some interesting characters hanging out in front, the thing that really raised the red flag was that there wasn't really a counter, just a window covered in incredibly thick and tinted bulletproof glass. I have never seen that before in my life, and was more stunned than scared, and despite having some familiarity with some of the more dicey neighborhoods in Cleveland, definitely did not feel tough enough for Detroit.

Realizing that this wasn't a good thing, we got out of there as fast as we could, turned down a sidestreet and suddenly we're on Berry Gordy Jr Boulevard and we see the sign for Motown to our left. They were closing up for the night, but the guys there talked to us a little bit and told us about the golden years, and I took pictures of us before we continued on. I have to say, I got shivers actually seeing the place itself for the very first time.



We kept driving and further down we saw this building that was painted all over and covered with bits of mirror that made it glitter in the sun. When I stopped to take pictures, we saw two guys outside doing the same kind of art to an old house and stopped to see what the story was. The one building is home to an African bead shop and when the roof gets fixed, they'll be opening a museum of African art and such. The other is just a giant art installation taking a vacant building and making something amazing.



he was talking about how he wanted to bring back a sense of pride into the community and had started this by having classes on african history and festivals in the summer. there was one guy who did most of the art and this guy does a lot of this after he gets off of work for the postal service. when we were driving back toward downtown, we were talking about how it's too bad that no one isn't doing anything like this in cleveland.



The sidewalks in front were painted with the scripts of different african languages and then there was an area in the back with all these sculptures and found objects and a stage used for when they have festivals. I was just soaking in the experience of it all and shooting pictures of everything in sight... signage and soul food restaurants and graffiti and murals.



We got chicago-style pizza in Greektown, watched the Indians beat the Tigers, and drove back to Toledo. For some reason since that night, I've had crazy adrenaline and haven't been able to sleep since.

And I want to go back.

every year of my life: the 90s and today

so this one was pretty tough because anyone who knows me knows that i love 90s rock the way that certain relatives of mine still think that journey is the greatest thing to ever happen to music.

i know i'll be one of those geriatric types who gripes about how they just don't make 'em as good as pearl jam anymore. i'm already feeling that way, really. it's kind of embarrassing

anyways:

1990 - fugazi - repeater

a friend of mine loaned me this in high school and i fell in love with the vocal interplay between ian and guy, the jazzy drumming, dub basslines, and squalling guitars. even though the band doesn't have merchandise, i have a bootleg sticker with their band name on the back of the Sexy Saturn that i found at a lakewood headshop a few years ago. i will always associate this record with driving aimlessly in parma and somehow getting stuck in the liberty ford parking lot looking for a shortcut and not being able to find our way out.

1991 - smashing pumpkins - gish

which one to pick from this year? it's hard to pick a favorite when you have gish, achtung baby, bloodsugarsexmagik, nevermind, loveless, spiderland? a friend of mine says he thinks the chili peppers were more the voice of a generation than kurt cobain and he might have a point. more people are into sex than angst and the chili peppers seem to have some kind of weird universal appeal across all sorts of lines. though i think i'll have to go with "gish" on this one for "rhinoceros" alone.


1992 - love battery - dayglo

my friend frank loaned this to me when we were at tri-c and for a long time i had it on a cassette tape that finally fell apart. love battery was one of those bands that should have done better because their psyched-out take on the seattle sound was just too good.

1993 - the breeders - last splash

i once made a diehard pixies fan very angry when i said that i liked kim deal better than frank black. cannonball is a great song, and the rest of the record is good and fizzy. this reminds me of hanging out with josh, carving pumpkins, and throwing smoke bombs into them.

1994 - soundgarden - superunknown

this is another tough one, but i'll have to go with superunknown here. i've always considered this one of those zeppelin-level albums where every song is fantastic and lots of sonic territory is covered without sacrificing a distinct sound and the band is just beyond good on every level. this was my favorite album when i was 15. found this on clear green vinyl at a record exchange in canton one night when cutting class.

runners up: alice in chains - jar of flies, meat puppets - too high to die, jawbox - for your own special sweetheart, kyuss - welcome to sky valley,

1995 - elastica

shamelessly ripping off their class of '77 heroes, elastica put together a solid and catchy punk record that sounds timeless and completely classic.

1996 - soul coughing - irresistible bliss
how this ever got played on the radio is beyond me. sweet upright bass action and quirky lyrics. m. doughty still writes good poetry and puts on a great live show.

1997 - the verve - urban hymns

bittersweet symphony was nice but the rest of the disc is even better. i tend to prefer the psychedelic side of the Verve to the more acoustic ballads that they're known for.

1998 - massive attack - mezzanine

fantastic stuff to paint to. in my noisier years, i loved the slow burn and buildup of 'angel,' but the rest of this has grown on me as well. i don't know why i don't actually own a hard copy of this. because i grew up in parma, this was about as close to hip-hop that i got in the first two decades of my life.

1999 - joe strummer and the mescaleros - rock art & x-ray style

joe strummer returns older and wiser and with an entirely different sound. it's more mellow and less angry than the clash but the lyrics are pure poetry and the social conscience is still there.

2000 - idlewild - 100 broken windows

noisy and literate melodic punk that disses gertrude stein and wasn't indie enough for the indie kids and too smart for the pop-punk kids when this came out. my favorite album when i was 17 and finally abandoning the pervasive nu-metal that permeated my existence. wore my copy of this cd and their next one out completely.

common's excellent "like water for chocolate" deserves props here too but that came later on.

2001 - john frusciante - to record only water for 10 days

beautiful 4-track recordings with a guitar, drum machine, and occasional synth from the guitarist in the chili peppers that are more listenable than the heroin albums he made in the 90s but still too weird for your average chili peppers fan. if this guy wasn't in the band he's in, he'd be one of those indie cult heroes like daniel johnston.

2002 - rival schools - united by fate

one of those one-off alt-rock albums that was all good solid songs from start to finish. another one of those senior-year summer soundtrack albums that evokes memories of ping-pong in the garage and hardcore youth crew jokes.

2003 - amadou & mariam - dimanche a bamako
african pop at its finest, beautiful exuberant guitar lines, sung in french, produced by manu chao. this is summer driving around music.

2004- diplo - florida

trippy and organic, big beats, guitar feedback, guest vocals from martina topley-bird, violins. also excellent late night music to paint to.

2005 - the dirtbombs - if you don't already, have a look

compiles two discs' worth of singles and covers by the amazing detroit band, including an ode to cedar point. mick collins' voice is just too good.

2006- art brut - bang bang rock and roll

eddie argos "can't stand the sound of the velvet underground" either and when my coworker tegan loaned me this cd her boyfriend mailed her from england and played it for me, i couldn't stop laughing and played it for everyone else. snarky punk tracks about modern art, robbing banks in italy, forming bands, and brand new girlfriends that were refreshingly unjaded.

2007 - soulsavers - it's not how far you fall, it's the way you land

my favorite record of last year. haunting and apocalyptic uk electronica that owes as much to nine inch nails as it does to johnny cash. once again, mark lanegan's voice does it for me all the time.

2008 - the gutter twins - saturnalia

i love greg dulli even if he doesn't seem to like himself, and i love pretty much anything mark lanegan shows up on. i've been playing this disc a lot on my show and haven't gotten tired of it. sounds like what you'd expect if you're familiar with the afghan whigs, twilight singers, and lanegan's solo material, but the way their voices go together is something special.

to be honest, i haven't really been listening to a whole lot of new stuff. and i'm ok with that.

relief

drove out to the beautiful cain park for the annual inlet dance company's free show. i went last year and enjoyed it, but this year was even more special because i knew some of the people involved and saw some of the work in progress, between the music that paul had remixed, the completely beautiful dance that rebecca choreographed. seeing the finished product, the music pulsing through the soundsystem, everyone in unison doing the gestures she was working out the last time i saw her, it was really beautiful and i felt so proud of everyone involved when the stage went dark and the applause was deafening.

the roommate situation is working out wonderfully. jocelyn will be moving in mid-april and things will continue to shift and change...

every year of my life: the 80's

randal has it way easier having grown up in that polyester era known as the 70s as far as coming up with favorite albums from every year of his life. i found this slightly harder, considering that i don't listen to as much metal or new wave.

my dad once told me that the 80's were so bad he started listening to country and while my peers remember michael jackson in his heyday, i associate this era with bluegrass records and michael stipe.

1983 - U2 - war

U2 is one of those bands i got a lot of grief for liking in my younger days when the people i was hanging out with preferred black flag and crass. sure, henry rollins hates them, bono's talk about saving the whole world gets a little ridiculous, but these guys are one of the biggest bands in the world for a reason.
most political music from this era starts sounding a bit dated considering that ronald reagan is now deceased, but the first lp side of this album, with 'sunday bloody sunday,' 'seconds' and 'new year's day' does it for me every time.

1984 - minutemen - double nickels on the dime

short, jazzy, funny songs, and there's a lot of them. do you want new wave or do you want the truth?

1985 - camper van beethoven - telephone free landslide victory

because subcultural humor and taking the skinheads bowling never gets old. and driving around in the summer with this concoction of ska, eastern european folk instrumentals, stoner humor, and subcultural in-jokes. what it would sound like if the grateful dead and the dead milkmen had a baby. fantastic zappa-esque song titles too. as they would have said back then, "gnarly."

1986 - rem - life's rich pageant

my dad has been listening to REM for as long as i can remember, and this one gets the nod due to the inclusion of "fall on me" as one of the most beautiful songs ever written.

runner up - bad brains - i against i

1987 - U2 - joshua tree

a lot of this got overplayed, but this really is that good that U2 makes it on here twice. the overlooked second half with "in God's country" and the intense "exit" are just so good and i wish they'd play them live.

runner up: husker du - warehouse songs and stories,

1988 - jane's addiction - nothing's shocking

the album cover is tacky and perry/navarro are freaky, but this record is pretty darn epic. summertime rolls? beautiful.

1989 - de la soul 3 ft high and rising

de la soul just makes me smile, period. i probably would have started listening to hip-hop earlier if i was exposed to this instead of what the radio was churning out during my formative years.

the pixies - doolittle, the cure - disintegration

holy toledo

thanks to my most excellent place of employment, i have a most-expenses paid trip to toledo this weekend with several of my very awesome coworkers. here's hoping for a dose of divine intervention that the Sexy Saturn gets there and back in one piece.

i don't remember much about toledo except that the art museum and the zoo looked cool and that the rest of it kind of looked like youngstown if it was on a lake. that's probably not completely fair.

the last time i was there was my first year of school when i was an art student and we were going to see this van gogh exhibition. between that and the handmade books by the likes of matisse, i was in heaven.

we were driving from there to cleveland to volunteer at this church when shawn's car broke down in huron and sprint roadside assistance wouldn't pick up me or the other girl with him. we somehow got the car going and on one sparkplug we somehow made it to the outskirts of cuyahoga county where a guy i knew replaced the plugs and the car promptly began to stall out at every single red light we hit as we got continually lost and ended up jumping a freeway median to get back on the side of the road we were supposed to be on. what was supposed to take an hour and a half ended up taking seven.

here's hoping that doesn't happen this time around...

irie/erie

perfect summer night.

we both had some free time and it was too beautiful outside to go back to stuffy apartment buildings so we went to the funwall, got pizza at a drive-through on east 30th, drove down to the east 9th pier to sit by the lake, watch the sunset and heat lightning, talk randomness, and share a tall can of arizona tea.

i could have stayed out all night, but it started raining and i had to drop my car off to get fixed anyway and both of us have work in the early morning.

what i'm so grateful for was that this week could have been so crazy and stressful and it's interludes like these that have made it beautiful and chill.

children of the grunge

the brake light is on in my car. i just got my brakes fixed, or so i thought. i'm supposed to be driving to toledo this weekend and have no clue when i'll find time to get these worked on. i feel like i'm in a bad position with all things car-related because i know next to nothing.

though...
having access to the music library of a college radio station with a high-end cd burner is fantastic. i'm now in the possession of this out of print love battery album that i couldn't find anywhere.

and though i was all stressed out last night, spending the rest of the evening at edgewater with paul people-watching and sunset watching made up for a lot of that.

anyways, here's the morning setlist. somehow ended up being heavier on the fuzzed-out late 80's/early 90's sound this time.

digable planets - black ego
U2 - acrobat
echo and the bunnymen - rescue
squirrel bait - sun god
stone roses - begging you
jawbox - mirrorful
marvin gaye - inner city blues
ride - leave them all behind (live)
eleventh dream day - testify
meat puppets - things
eric b & rakim - paid in full (coldcut mix)
faithless - bluegrass
flunk - morning star
starflyer 59 - night music
funkadelic - i got a thing
the bellrays - everyday i think of you
love - a house is not a motel
herbie mann - cajun moon
wilson pickett - engine #9
neil young - i'm the ocean
twilight singers - underneath
screaming trees - gospel plow
the jam - that's entertainment