Not Your Kind of People, Garbage

I saw Garbage in concert last night at the Phoenix in Toronto (awesome, review to come).  I was especially looking forward to singing/shouting along to this song and then riding the cathartic it was sure to inspire, but they didn’t play it.  I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who was confused as to why they didn’t sing the title song of the album they are presently touring for. 

What the song about is pretty straight forward lyrically: discernment, people who are not your kind of people, some people’s values are a joke, these people are being called out.  I get it all except for the second bridge.  One bridge happens, which is normal, but then another totally different bridge happens immediately after and I’m not quite sure I follow the lyrical thread.  During this second bridge, the melody shifts gears and her voice becomes tinny and distant and a little distorted, like she is singing down a phone line with a tenuous connection, “You dropped by while I was sleeping / you came to see the whole commotion / And when I woke, I started laughing / the joke’s on me for not believing.”  What this means in relation to the rest of the song, I’m not sure.  Mikey thinks she is referring to seeing this person in a dream, which makes sense, but even it does refer to a dream, what does she mean by waking up and laughing and the joke being on her for not believing?  And what did she mean by “commotion”?  She makes it sound like this person, this visitor, is just standing there watching some sort of commotion but is not doing anything.  Those kind of people have entered my dreams and did nothing but watch, too, now that I think of it.  My room-mate went to see the band play an acoustic set at a radio station earlier in the day and he said he would ask Shirley Manson what she meant if he got the chance, but he didn’t get the chance.  

The song is anthemic, like the majority of Garbage songs, but mostly near the end, when a sweet girl’s choir kicks in with solidarity, an army behind her.  I wonder if those little girls will grow up and remember what they sang on that Garbage song that one time.

We are not your kind of people
speak a different language,
we see through your lies.

Nightcall, Kavinsky (ft. Lovefoxxx)

A coin is dropped into a payphone, numbers are pressed, a wolf howls, a phone rings.  Someone is making a nightcall. 

In the case of Episode 12, Season 7, ”Head Case”

Synopsis: “A man is found wandering a downtown street covered in blood but has no knowledge of what happened to him, so the CSIs attempt to unlock his memory. Their probe reveals the blood isn’t from the man but is from three other people who belong to the same family and are feared to be dead.”

Okay, the episode starts off with this creepy kid walking zombie-like against busy downtown traffic covered in blood.  He’s taken into the station/lab for questioning and they discover that the blood all over him is from other people.  He has amnesia or he acts like he has amnesia - what is the truth is the crux of the mystery, fine.  When he is being led out of the questioning room and no one can see his face but the viewer, he arranges his mouth into a malevolent smirk.

So we should watch him because he’s probably a sociopath who has done the bad thing or is a part of the bad thing and is lying as well as being amused by his own lying, right?

Nope.  Because it turns out he didn’t do it, he was the gardener or something who was just in the area and got hit on the head and blood smeared on him.  He was totally innocent. So what the eff was that malevolent “duper’s high” smirk about?  That is not clever misdirection, it is fatuous, sloppy writing. 

CSI: Miami, I’m done.

by mindazonaltal

A Song In The Night, Silverwind

There isn’t anything being released today that comes close to the windfall of heartfelt sincerity that was contemporary christian music in the 70s and 80s.  And this song by Silverwind from the album of the same name, was the best of them all. 

When I was just a young girl, I was lucky to have family and friends who loved music and who generously shared their musical taste and selections with me.  In some cases, it was merely that the music was there and I just listened to it and in other cases, people went out of their way to share their collections with me.  It doesn’t matter why, how can I not be grateful? And when it came to my own musical tastes, I think I spent almost every penny I had on music.  I was going through my iPod trying to document where I learned about what type of music and when and from whom and realized that the scope of music I was privy to, for what was actually a very short period of time during my formative years, was astonishing and marvellous. 

And I find that while I have continued to supplement and evolve my musical tastes, I have taken almost every single artist I discovered in my youth with me and they are still on active rotation in my musical collection today.  I don’t know if I ever really liked Boy George or Culture Club or if I just listened because Lisa Wise was so bossy with her cassette player (which was also an alarm clock), but that is the only artist I no longer listen to and think is just awful.

Brother #1 - Between the ages 13 and 16, I babysit for this brother a lot.  He had thousands of records and a separate room in the basement in which to listen to them all. I would sit there for hours listening to music while staring at the ceiling or all those wild record covers or the lyric sleeves or while reading his stack of Rolling Stone magazines and eating potato chips. Sometimes he would pull a bunch of records he thought I might like and he was often right.  He used to make me mixed tapes and I now understand that making a mixed tape for someone who truly appreciates the music you’ve chosen for them is just as satisfying, maybe even more satisfying, than being given a mixed tape yourself.  My favourite artists from that time were Supertramp and Henry Nillson.  I wish I could remember some of the more obscure stuff, but here are the artists I can remember enjoying (even if I didn’t enjoy everything they released): The Beatles, Foreigner, Journey, Boston, Aerosmith (“Dream On” only), Billy Joel, the Doors, The Police, The Pretenders, Alice Cooper, The Cars, Honeymoon Suite, the Clash, The Beach Boys, Elton John, Alan Parsons Project, Roxy Music, Led Zeppelin (“Stairway to Heaven” and “Dazed and Confused” only) Van Morrison, Jefferson Airplane, Cheap Trick, Queen, Steve Miller Band, Blue Oyster Cult, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Squeeze, Neil Young (“Harvest” album only), Harlequin, Love, Eurythmics, Gowan.

Lovebird, by Catrin Welz-Stein.

‹thurs, apr 26/12›

1.  I am standing in a wooded area in front of a short chain-linked fence.  There are a lot of other people also standing in front of this fence and we are probably looking at some sort of animal, maybe peacocks, but I never see what it is.  A bear standing at the top of the hill above this area, starts bounding downhill like a predator but also bouncing like Tigger - right for me and I know it.  He pounces on me but the pounce is not necessarily malevolent.  Cut to:  I’m still in the woods but the scene has changed.  I’m trying to stay safe from something and I am standing on a narrow glass beam beam or pillar with a young girl and her mother.  I am scared that if I move one step, I will fall off because it looks like just air and space around me and a fifty foot drop to the ground which is unsafe but I don’t know why.  A short while later, when there is more light outside, I see that there is a significant amount of glass around me on which to walk, which annoys me because it seems the young girl and the mother knew this all along but yet were standing on this tiny area of glass with me and acting like it was the only available and safe space.  I walk down a way and then am able to jump on to another area and then down onto the ground. The end.

2.  I am in Japan and am meeting a new friend.  As I’m in their home, I notice that I don’t really get along with the girl and that she is whispering about me to her sister and mother.  I stand up and get my things to leave just as they are coming back into the dining room I am sitting in.  I say that I overheard what they said and that I am going to leave, would they please tell me how to get home on the subway.  They apologize and keep insisting they want me to stay and when I don’t budge, they try insist on driving me home.  I do not allow them this and they go on and one, bowing and apologizing, for a ridiculously long time, but I know this does not make what they are saying any more true and that I must stand my ground.  They finally tell me how to get home on the subway and I leave.  The end.

This week ending April 22, 2012.

1.  Attended a two-evening lecture series entitled “Jewish Themes in Christian Art” held at Beth Tzedec synagogue.  This was my first time inside a synagogue and it felt…strange, a little lonely.  It seems that we (Christians and Jews) are really very different from each other and that surprised me very much; I had always assumed we felt the same way about half of the same things, minimum.  We don’t.  And I don’t know why it surprised me.  Especially when it comes to the Old Testament prophets who they feel we’ve appropriated for selfish, mischevious reasons, especially with regards to the story of Abraham and Isaac. I thought the great divide was between the Jews and the Palestinians, but I’m on the other side of the divide, too.  The visiting American rabbi who gave the lecture/slide show was an interesting and entertaining speaker with delicate, tasteful humour.  He was eighty-six, limber, and his voice rang strong and clear.  ”Giddy” is the best way to describe his approach to discovering Jewish-related significance in Christian churches all over the world.  A lot of the art depicted key Old Testament themes and prophets, including Moses, and I finally learned why Moses is depicted with horns on several important statues.  At one time the word, karan (to shine, which was one quality of the horn) was mistakenly translated as kaeran (a horn), and as a result, Moses was thought to have literally had horns. This is referred to as a “vulgar interpretation.”  It’s quite arresting, the horns of Moses, but I wonder how anyone educated and familiar with the Old Testament could have fallen for or allowed that assumption.  Since when has any person had actual horns on their head, either in the Bible or in any other legitimate historical text or actual modern-day life?

(While being shown the gorgeous gold panel of “Daniel and the Lion’s Den” on the door of The Duomo, a man behind me whispered to his companion, “Who’s Daniel?”)

White Horse, Jessica 6

This is a song I first discovered on the RCRD LBL website.  RCRD LBL has lots of free downloads of unusual and new artists as well as interesting remixes of songs by artists you might already know (Massive Attack, Dirty Vegas). 

For me, there is a nostalgic quality to this song, something 80s or 90s about it.  It maybe sounds like a Laura Branigan song.  I just plain love it.

‹wed, apr 25/12› 

1.  I have just been fired from my job.  My front bike tire had a flat and I am walking around the King St. and Parliament area with a brother.  He asks if there is a bike store nearby and I think about it and realize there are lots of bike stores in the two block radius we are in (there aren’t), like six to ten bike stores.  I can’t think of which one to go to and I am scrolling through all the bike shop fronts in my mind and try to pinpoint which one to go to.  My brother then says he wants to go to Staples, which is one block over.  I think that’s where we go.  The end.  ‹I woke up.›

2.  ‹I fall back asleep and the dream continues.  My brother is gone but I have still just been fired.› Quick one-off scene of a co-worker name Philip snorting cocaine on his desk, as if it is something I’d seen and am only just remembering.  I leave the office and am walking to a store with some (now ex) co-workers and my daughter, a chinese girl, who is approx 5 yrs-old.  Someone tells me that this one store has children winter jackets and boots on super sale today and so we go there.  I am helping my daughter try on jackets and boots and we choose which ones to get.  At the cash register, a past co-worker who I liked very much, has come to join us and is standing in line.  He is talking fervently and kindly about the Roman Catholic Church to a few of us.  I make a quick offhand joke which has something to do with losing one’s viginity to the band Enigma, which no one gets.  When I am at the cash register, I have more than just the child’s jacket and boots, I have some scented erasers and four placemats that look homemade - pictures cut out of magazines or photocopied from books or magazines and glued on, paper lace around the edges, pressed flowers, everything covered with macktack.  Two of the placemats have Greek themes - photos of Greece and something said in Greek.  They are quite ugly. The total comes to $80.72.  The cashier gets really excited and tells me I get a discount.  She’s acting like I “won” a discount and I’m not sure what’s going on.  The cash register screen starts flashing and the total starts rolling like pictures on a slot machine.  At one point the total is $125 and I’m quite alarmed.  It finally sets on $75.72.  I didn’t think the discount deserved such a fuss and since I’m expected to be grateful, I say “great” flatly.  There is a long line of people waiting to pay and this is taking quite some time.  I pay for the purchase but I don’t have enough money in my bank account and I can’t figure that out, so I tell the cashier that I’m not going to buy it after all and we leave.  The end.

3.  I am living in my old apartment on Bute St., The Beaconsfield.  My roommate and I are talking again about how much we’d like to have the apartment next door to us, which has a balcony and a nicer kitchen. I phone Bos, the landlord, and ask him if it’s available or if it will soon be available and he says it isn’t but that he’ll let me know when it is.  A short while later, he calls me to tell me it is available.  I’m excited and say “thank-you” to Bos for letting me know.  The end.

Sleeping Beauty’s Dream, by Catrin Welz-Stein.

The Captain Of Her Heart, Double

This was my favourite song from A.M. radio when I was young and is still one of my favourite songs today.  I used to babysit for people in my church a lot and one very strong memory is babysitting for this one couple, I don’t even remember their names, except they never paid on time and sometimes they forgot entirely, and they later moved back to Holland because the father couldn’t find a good job in Canada.  I don’t know why I loved babysitting at their house so much.  Maybe because the mother wasn’t like the other mothers that went to my church.  Maybe because they were always going to the movies rather than to bible study, their house was always messy and I liked cleaning it for them, and the mom often had Sara Lee cakes in the fridge for me.  I loved to turn all the lights off and listen to the radio and watch the cars pass by on this busy street, Old Yale Road.  I actually started one story in my head that I thought about every time I was there and it got quite fancy - um, it involved Jason Bateman and a yacht.  When Arrested Development came out a few years ago, I couldn’t watch Jason Bateman without having that story come rushing back at me.  

Anyway, I remember hearing this song the most and I loved it - it’s quite sad, though.  Melancholic.  When I wasn’t listening to the radio, I was watching Miami Vice and Moonlighting or reading Judy Blume and Sweet Valley High books.  I think I babysat for them more than anyone else because I didn’t care if they forgot to pay, I just wanted to watch cable tv and listen to music and not be home.  

If you listen to A.M. radio today, a lot of the same songs I heard as a kid are still playing: ”Me And You And A Dog Named Boo” (Lobo); “I’m On Fire” (Bruce Springsteen); “Piano Man” (Billy Joel), “Somewhere Down The Crazy River” (Robbie Robertson); “Alone” (Heart).  I never, ever tire of those songs. 

Figure of Moses (with horns) displayed in the Church of St. Peter in Rome.

More Love (ft. KING), Robert Glasper Experiment

This song is seriously sexy in a ”we are one, let’s enjoy the ride” kind of way.  I also hear a few enthralling bars from the “Hart to Hart” theme song tucked in there.  Brilliant.