Weblog | I don't like the word blog, it's ugly. Anyway, new content happens here. (Swedish dito)

About me and the site | Twenty-something male who likes text. Obsessed with things such as books, reality, communication, and one or two tv-shows.

Archives | Things written here since... well, 2001. Some of it is good, some is utter shait.

Books | Books read, not books written. So far I've struggled to maintain unpublished.

Photo | I like my camera and it likes me.

Links | Outwards, away, flee.

e-mail | J. Nicklas Andersson

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More music from T&S

Yay, yay, yay! Tegan and Sara are in the midst of making a new album.

Silence!

SILENCE! Silence of the Lambs: The Musical is kind of wrong on quite a lot of levels. The mere thought of Dr Lecter dancing around in that mask of his singing is at the same time immensely funny. And how will they solve the pit?

“She takes the lotion out of the basket...” All it lacks is a big-boned kid.

Best reunion since ever

It seems I will attend my first Hultsfredsfestival this year. The Pixies will play.

Dancing the Manta Ray:

Do the manta ray {4X}

Your head can go real screw
With saucers chasing you

Dance the manta ray {5X}

Your head can go real screw
With saucers chasing you

This don’t swim -
- this fly
Fly
C’mon

Your head can go real screw
With saucers chasing you

Firefly sing-a-long

I have the house all to myself today, or at least that’s how it seems. All other beings are away. So, I’ve whipped out the guitar from under my bead and tried, sad sad fanboy that I am, to play the Firefly Theme song. I know. Pathetic much? However, judging from the Firefly commentary tracks, Nathan Fillion is possessed by the theme so I guess I’m not worst off. The only problem is that I have to ignore the bluesy bits, because no one has bothered to tab them down and I’m not good at that myself. (Who am I kidding? Even if they were, I probably wouldn’t be able to play them.)

(taken from some Firefly messageboard)
Firefly Theme
written by Joss Whedon
sung by Sonny Rhodes
tabbed/chorded by Joe Dizzy


Intro:
D----------0--3p0---0-
A-----0h3---------3----
E-----------------------


[D]Take my love
[C]Take my land
[G]Take me where I [F]cannot [C]stand


(bluesy western thing)


[F]I don’t care
[C]I’m still free
[G]You can’t take the [D]sky from me


(bluesy western thing)


Take me out
To the black
Tell ‘em I ain’t coming back


(bluesy western thing)


Burn the land
And boil the sea
You can’t take the sky from me


(bluesy western solo)


Have no place
I can be
Since I found Serenity


(bluesy western thing)


But [F]you can’t take the [C]sky from me


(bluesy western end thing)

Perhaps I should mutilate the Jayne-song as well? It’s longer and more folky so it should be easier. Note the should.

Scarlet's Walk and Other Musical Interludes

If you’re going to buy at least one record album that can be sorted under female-with-piano, you can do a whole lot worse than choosing Tori Amos’ Scarlet’s Walk. You could for instance by mistake pick up Norah “your body will perform euthanasia out of boredom” Jones. You could, but I hope it’s unlikely. If you do, I guess you listen to the Strokes as well and then my friend, it’s time to quote that song by the Doors. But anyway. Scarlet’s Walk. Better music.

The song A Sorta Fairytale is the best thing I’ve heard since I bought Curve’s Come Clean. And that says a lot I think. Well, Tommy does. It is a complete different genre, but just as the Curve record, it gives me these images in my head. Like a showcase by Dave McKean. Curve gives dark visions, blood and metal soaked in fire, and bizarre things from nightmares. Tori Amos is much lighter in tone, warm colours, and more organic all around I guess, but still as bizarre. Both is haunting though. They refuse to let go.

Interesting things happen to my mind when both artists are played back to back, but I won’t give away what. Not yet.

Nothing I missed, thankfully

Thanks to David Pettersons — as we all know as månhusspekulanten in Mötet — linkbar to the right, I find out that Emm Gryner has been in Sweden. At first I was a bit worried that she had actually played here, but no. Thankfully just recording an albom or somesuch. This means that this entry isn’t another one of those “damnit, why didn’t anybody tell me about this before” — so. Move along.

Non-label music for sale

While surfing around on CD-wow — they might be cheap but it’s expensive in the long run for me — and came across the unsigned category. It’s a brilliant idea. A net-retailer who sells CDs with smaller bands not on any label is a good thing in my book. It demands a bit more of the quality than your average local band’s demo. It is a step in the right direction, but as usual there are some smaller (and bigger) flaws of course — only payable by cheque being one of them. Still, neat idea.

The Adam Westies Strikes Back

There is not much just yet, but there will be. I’m talking about the Adam West Fanclub Experience website. Mostly, it is text, but if you go all the way down to the end you’ll find... gasp... a song. But just one?! Out of all the recording sessions? (There have been as many as seven by now.) Yes. Because we need to record them again. Better this time. The reason being that the songs turned out to be rather short and in some cases they were sung by a really crappy singer — that would be me. But at least now we actually exists.

Oh, and since we don’t do covers, we don’t do requests. Sorry.

Happiness is...

Happiness. Let us define it, shall we?

It is when you come home, the feet feels like sponges because they’ve been in the shoes all day long. For now, and forever, we’ll just skip the smelly socks part. It’s better that way. It’s late, you’re a bit hungry as it was several hours since you had something to eat. The right eye is a bit irritated because of some crap on the glasses. And you don’t care because in the mail, you just got Tegan and Sara: This Business of Art. Or do you think this is a bit too specific? No. I don’t think so either. Tegan and Sara can brighten up any day, no matter how failed it might be. (But to be fair, today wasn’t failed. I’m just a bit tired.)

Happiness is not: losing a meatball. It fell to the floor and bounced of my foot. I can’t find it, and it was my last one. It can be anywhere, except in the computer or on a shelf.

Pavlov's Bell

I’m going to hell. There is little I can do about it now. First I did a recording on Star of the County Down, for which I probably recieved the title destroyer of all things sacred from some. Now, I ruined a Aimee Mann song as well. You don’t have to listen to this, you can listen to the original instead. The original is much better, I promise you.

Beside the whole can’t-change-note ordeal, I’ve noticed something else as well. I sound sort of nasal when I sing — which is weird. If it gets more nasal I think there is a law that says I must move to Brooklyn.

This could be better

In the mp3-folder right now: bad rendations of Irish folk music. Well, no all Irish folk music, that would require more free time and free discspace than I have available. It is just one song, but oh boy, my voice is even worse than I thought. And the idea to both sing and play at the same time is... Let me put it this way: it worked in theory.

Feel free to suggest other genres to destroy.

XEROX'D

This song will probably need a lot of fine tuning.
---------
[A,D,A,E,D,E,A ]

Hey!

[G,D,C,D]

[D] hiding our souls
[E] lunarian dreams
[D] mytacistic howls
[E] lost in schemes

[A] All I see, merely [Asus] introjections
[A] nothing new, [E] always broken
[A] All I feel, only [Asus] desparations
[A] nothing new, [E] always stolen

[A,G,C,G,C]

[D] speak in digraphs
[E] henotic chants
[D] stifled laughs
[E] idiosyncratic rants

[A] All I see, merely [Asus] introjections
[A] nothing new, [E] always broken
[A] All I feel, only [Asus] desparations
[A] nothing new, [E] always stolen

[D,E,A,D]

[D] hiding our souls
[E] lunarian dreams
[D] mytacistic howls
[E] lost in schemes

[D,E,A,D]

(words and music by me, and no, I can’t play it very well either.)

The chord system

I bought a guitar and, if I may say so, I’ve made a considerable progress since Thursday. There is a fundamental flaw in this statement but that’s just nitpicking.

(I’ve actually played guitar once before, in school. We were forced to learn how to play various instruments during a year (or was it two) and I was terrible at it. I had no motivation at all. I also remember pain in my fingers afterwards so I suspect that the guitars we used back then had strings of steel. Anything to supress ideas of grandur and talent I reckon.)

This means that right now I’ve progressed far longer than I ever did before. I even remember the chords without looking in handouts on the floor. In a moment of clarity and sudden insight I decided not to learn the Swedish note and chord system, mainly because it confuses when I learn how to play songs from the Internet.

The booklet thing

As much as I love Curve, the booklet to Gift (European version) was a huge letdown compared to the one that accompanied Come Clean. Tres boring. I’m not even fond of the colours. What was wrong with the white background that the US apparently had? [Image]

However, the booklet to Tegan and Sara‘s If it was you (yes, they’re that good, but I’ll shut up and stop bringing them up in everyday conversation for a little while anyway) is just as tremendously wonderful as the contents of the cd. The paper. Dear God, the paper... And the handwritten lyrics — I’m a bit jealous, because I too want to be able to write that straight in freehand). Gosh. No pictures, just the words in their simplicity and I can’t find a fault anywhere. [Image]

My point with this being: why don’t they spend more time with the booklet instead of claptrap such as copyprotections? Lyrics, small anecdotes, photos, small essays, it’s really simple to add value to a normal music cd. Hell, I can even write stuff for the majority of them myself...

Alcohol was involved

Believe it or not, we had drunk a few beers, we had watched Henry Rollins spoken word and we somewhere along the line our self-critical mindset stopped working. These are just a few of all the crappy things we recorded. (Warning! These mp3s contain low humour and are sung with crappy voices!)

Five mp3s
1) Hello
2) We hope Mexico can forgive us
3) James Brown sings Bobby Brown
4) A story about a Kung Fu-wannabe
5) the closest we ever came to a love song

logically it should be much shorter

I’m having serious problems with this. This being the fact that The Ramones did a cover on a Tom Waits-piece entitled I don’t wanna grow up (read lyrics) and somehow — don’t ask me how — managed to make it both longer and less rebellious. Yes, The Ramones, go figure. Perhaps the less rebellious bit is that Joey Ramone never sung with a really raspy voice. Waits can probably grind down solid steel if he just feels like it.

When the song was recorded the Ramones had already lost their ticket to ride the train of the experimental rebels. Had they only made this song in the old days before they became a part of the canon: who can say what would have happened? But then again, this is not a song from the old Tom Waits but from the more recent where he is in tune with his inner child in a frightening way.

But the other thing, the length is wrong on several levels and it gives me this headache thing just by trying to grasp it. The weird part is that they actually played and sung the song faster than Mr Waits did - or perhaps still do at live-shows. You know, the usual three-chords-and-we’re-done type of thing that they always used. So how the fuck could it become longer? They didn’t add words. Longer pauses between the verses perhaps but considering that they did everything faster, where does those extra fifteen seconds come from? Thin air? Stolen from another album?

I want some answers here.

31 pieces of music

Thelonious Monk: The Columbia Years ‘62-’68
Three wonderous cds and a 60 page booklet. Eveything drapped in stylish design, it even uses a neat variation of digipack that I hadn’t seen previously. Although I might seem like a heretic to some, this is a really good box.

Boxed life

Why does cd-boxes cost so much? The simple answer is of course that there are a lot of work behind them, with designers, compilers and whonots that actually write in the booklets. But still. A good box can be cheap, as long as they can back it up in sales. Look at Motown, who can sell your grandmother to an encylcopedia-salesman. But how many of the lowlifes scumbuckets have even heard of Blue Note or Prestige Records?

It’s a conspiracy I tell you. But if it is, why am I telling you and not Oliver “I killed JFK” Stone? I don’t know. I don’t think he would care really. Even less than you.

Like the Ramones?!

My brother called Bob Dylan for proto-punk, “kind of like the Ramones.” My brother is — as you might understand — insane and possibly even quite mad.

Tin-foil I tell you, tin-foil

I figured out what’s wrong with the new Garbage record. Well, appart that Androgyny makes me feel as if I was chewing on tin-foil — really, I’m not kidding here although I wish I were. It has no unity, and tries to be everything at once. Most songs are okay, but they just don’t fit together. Which is sad, sad, sad.

On other musical notes, R.E.M.s early records are great. The dark tones on Reconstruction of the Fables are haunting me. It’s eerie and I have a little theory about that record. It is the same record as Automatic for the People, only made earlier in their career. It has the same atmosphere and kind of crawls under the skin. Which is good, good, good.

Typical, now they stock it...

There is no excuse anymore. While I can understand that some people don’t like paying extra for a cheque like I did, the option of not order it no longer stands. Amazon.com now has both the Flash Girls cds, so what are you waiting for? Run there as fast as those packets can take you and order both Play Each Morning Wild Queen and Maurice and I. Tomorrow they might be sold out for christ sake.

A chant for a troubled mind

During the day, which was as nice as they come with rain and a bit chilly, I’ve had this tune stuck in my head. It happens sometimes and the last time was fairly recent, so I thought it would take a while before it happened again. I guess this proves me wrong. But most often it’s because I’ve heard the song in question recently, and now, this is not the case.

This time I wasn’t even graced with hearing and quietly singing along to the full song, just the background chant of Bad Religions “American Jesus”. Going over and over inside the head. The weird part is that that part is very religious when taken from it’s context — here I had no context what so ever — and I am as much theologically handicapped as person can get. Apart from my heretic worship of my obsessions, I have no belief. I am interested in theology though, but I just can’t believe it. So I am handicapped.

(I’m an apathist. I don’t care if there is or isn’t a God/Gods/A man in sombrero and slippers. Sorry.)

But back to the song. I managed to expel it by looping Grand Theft Audios “Death To The Infidels” and then just let it beat the chant out piece by piece, note by note, harmony by harmony. It worked like a charm and I’m once again fully capable to function — more or less, probably more less than usual though — in society.

That damn song

In facts from the weird side #far-to-low, I’ve learnt that it is possible to actually affect people with tv-commercials. J.C. — a clothes chain store — have had a growth on 14% since they started using a commercial with a rather annoying tune. The song in question is Japanese pop, which does account for the “annoying” bits. Even worse, it’s probably a fake and not really from the land that gave us Akira Kurosawa.

Now, as someone said on Usenet — the name escapes me for the moment, so expect a correction later Chad Orzel and none other — “No matter how bad it is, Japanese Pop are worse.” I do tend to agree most of the time; Japanese Noise is Really Good though.

However, it does look kind of neat. Especially the one where they do a silly dance in the kitchen, but I don’t see how this can make people leap up from their favourite chair and run of to buy some clothes. The clothes are totally uninspired and look like the cotton-wear you’ll find most everywhere, just a tad more expensive. I honestly didn’t think the pr-men had that kind of access to the hive-mind.