I don’t think there’s a video for The Pacific Age, but if there was it’d have two split screen stories so you’d have to watch the video twice to fully see it– perhaps a third time to see the slight overlap in stories. Anyways, right side would be Andy McClusky sailing on a yatch with aviator glasses on. He’s wearing a white windbreaker and a double collar shirt underneath. The sun setting to a purple sky. Eventually he docks and runs to a church. Inside the church there’ll be close-ups of him singing cut with some sort of provocative world religion images. Towards the final moments of the song he’ll run out of the church (it’s night now and raining) and he’ll turn his back to the church instead opting for the yatch.
So left-side is Humphreys, and his story arch I guess is a bit more sexual because he’s not singing here and probably needs a more complex visual emphasis. So I guess he is a tourist in a lost city and while wandering he makes eye contact with a street walker. The street walker leads him through seedy neighborhoods and buildings and up stairs and over hills and so forth. He catches up with the walker and grabs her by the wrists and they struggle before she breaks free and Humphreys is seen stumbling in the same church McClusky once was. He falls to his knees and the camera pans away from an overhead shot. Humphreys embraces religion.
Of course I’m pitching this in a 1986 kind-of world.
Was so all like “ok, don’t fuck this up.” Then was all like “didn’t.”
Not sure what to do now.
I kind of love the Dismemberment Plan. Of my late teens/early twenties, nothing was so unapologetically sentimental as a D-Plan album. And now that I’m fickle and outright dickish, Travis Morrison’s vulnerability and heart on sleeve honesty is as refreshing as ever.
My renewed interest all started on Thursday, sparked by a discussion with TJ and Lee #1 concerning purveyors of D.C. culture. They left out T-Mo, and they left out the Plan. Luckily for me, Lee #2 shares the same overwhelming enthusiasm about seminally-forgotten 90’s indie rock, and more specifically the world’s perfect closing track “Ellen and Ben.”
On Friday night, me and the Lee rode and speculated on the song’s non sequitur story breaks and contributed insight into how truly ambiguous the characters are. We made our own assumptions on how the story pans out and how the narrator plays into the conclusion. I’m not going to share our conclusions because it was way too rad totally relating with Lee #2’s point of view on the whole thing. It’s in my baby heart forever.
The following day I did some research and found this absolute gem of an interview discussing T-Mo’s perspective on the track, rationalizing everything we had come to theorize.
TM: I always think of in terms of cinematically, is this a song credits could roll over? Definitely at the end [of the song]. I could see the Panavision logo scrolling up. It was definitely written to be an album ender. The material is so open-ended that it lends itself to being bridge statements. None are start or end statements. Consciously and unconsciously, we’re moving toward making the songs fit the positions they are in.
NATN: What is your take on the way that each narrative segment works together? Is this a new approach for you, in that from section to section, you don’t know who is speaking or what is really going on?
TM: Yeah. That’s definitely true. An important part for me of the song is that there are certain things about it you can’t get your head around. There are huge unanswered questions about what’s going on in that song. That is kind of part of the song. The essential nature of Ellen and Ben, besides the fact that they’re boorishly in love, fondling each other in front of their friends, and then they vanish for awhile, is that the narrator doesn’t seem to still be friends with them. He hears about them breaking up, but then you’re wondering if they were ever really close friends. Or, did he date her? I don’t think he did. It kind of sketches out strange little details that are all based on the narrator’s perception of the couple, less than on the couple themselves. There are odd things in the first verse where it goes into omniscient mode. That is core to the song: these strange little moments strung together. At the end of the song, it leaves space for the listener to ask, “what’s going on with you?” But at that point he’s gone, and so is the record. You can’t. By the end, he’s telling someone, “you can always give me a call,” which sounds like a little bit of a guilt trip.
Dude is kind of amazing and I’m glad he’s married now.
How fucking good is this OMD song huh? And how fucking terrible would we be at covering it? Lets find out. I keep reading the title of this other song as “Wolf Club.” It’s “Wolf Cub.” But it’d be cool to be in a wolf club.
I got home late, apparently took a nap for 3 hours, then woke up somewhere around the 5ish hour and listened to the new Chicks on Speed which is kinda okay. They’ll always be way cute and kinda okay. It’s the compromise bestowed upon them. Kiki is my favorite.
I also barked at my roommate when I got home. Although I feel a bit terrible about it, he never asks how I’m doing. That aggravates me. Like a decade plus of knowing each other and he can’t ask me how it goes? Is that weird? Am I being a baby? Lord baby. I mean I was doing pretty good, but it would’ve been pleasant to have him ask how being drunk is, right? Am I right or am I right?
Retro Modern is also having its estate sale today. 50% off and I still can’t afford anything. This record label will be the Estelle Getty of me.
This song feels like life inside the slums of a unicorn’s innards.
Zion I (feat. Devin the Dude)- Country Baked Yams
At the age of 16 I broke into a discarded and abandoned window factory with the intent to revive it with a skateboard. It was not my idea, but one I latched onto with experience as the motivator. I wanted to feel the pressure of being somewhere I wasn’t meant to, supposed to, or perhaps even wanted to be. Not in an attempt to destroy my 16 year old self– I don’t think so. I don’t think I was self-aware enough. I didn’t possess the ingenuity to want to do something wrong at 16. I simply wanted to be impure at that moment.
We skated for about a half hour before a kid from another time and place took the opportunity to kick through a clamped slab of glass in an attempt to grandstand for the only girl involved in the day. I saw his leg taken by it. The glass, and the girl. It was bloody, but not gory. I didn’t care about the kid, so I didn’t hesitate to flee when someone called for an ambulance.
I spent the remainder of the day in my neighbor’s pool wondering if she’d narc us out; not whether the boy was alright. I never cared for an instance, because I was not a part of that moment with him. I was bystander to his faulting. I was desperately indifferent about that kid losing his leg. And he totally lost it. I saw him lose his leg. Not a weird metaphor or some shit. They totally amputated his leg.
This song reminds me of swimming in that pool that day.
Atari Teenage Riot Kids Are United!
“Will I do more good in a soup kitchen, or doing what I do best?” Stefan directed this towards an intern today. I’m really good at eating soup, so it meant nothing to me. But he’s a clever man with thoughtful, meaningful things to say. He muttered these things as The Field projected over him, which made it slightly more prophetic. Yesterday and Today is startling– an absolute revelation of an album. Human and sterile simultaneously and all the valleys have been accounted for. Nothing is extraneous or heavy handed as it occasionally seemed to be over the duration of From Here We Go Sublime. Worth mentioning that The Field bears resemblance to Jeffrey Jones– the love to hate Ed Rooney from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off who now battles for his future in an unjust child pornography accusation. He just looks guilty.
I gave that record a lot of attention last night, as I regretfully did the latest Bardo Pond effort. I say regretfully, but I don’t mean it like you think I mean it. It’s really rad and all psyched out and heroin-y and shit, but it’s not the soundtrack to pre-sleep/post-psychological trauma. I’ve yet to pinpoint the appropriate setting for this. Balls high? It might be balls high. It made me uneasy though. A pretty paramount reaction to music that I don’t think I’m eager to repeat.
My walloping head can be seen in this video, so I insist on posting it. And check the drummer… dude is about ready to die from mescaline.
I found WarpVision for $5.50 at Book Nook this afternoon. So excited to do nothing some night soon and lose my pussy to this.
I’m not sure how frequently these kinds of things happen. It goes without saying they don’t happen to me a lot. I’m not there often. My logic stands at John Denver’s take at being a situationist: you must refrain from the high’s in order to effectively avoid the low’s; seems deliberate enough. It’s a push-pull, give-take way of life. It’s neither something to strive for, or is it something that effortlessly ensues. It is occupied by foresight and similarly restraint. See it coming, and watch it go by. External forces motivating you more than self-galvanizing. To that regard, it is more a challenge to allow existance to happen and the actions of existing to drive your life, than letting a personal doctrine in your head guide you.
Opportunity is then confusing. Agreeing to go along for a ride is confusing. It’s accepting the idea that you will experience a novel feeling, a new thought, a dormant idea, a hidden trait– if and only if you’re willing to take a stab at the unknown. People try things often solely based on the fantasy of expanding their pleasure field. Skydive and maybe you’ll love it? Play the piano and maybe you’re good at it? Open door B and perhaps there’s a pot of gold? Rarely is that the case. The odds are totally against you, but you kind of have to, right? You have to live it, right?
Wrong faggot. Don’t ever do anything.
