Thao With the Get Down Stay Down

Yeah, heard a lot about her via the Kill Rock Stars pipeline. People kept mentioning what an amazing guitar player she was, so I avoided listening to her because I pretty much hate good guitar players.

Well, I caught half a song on the radio last night and thought I was wrong. I liked it.

Then I visited The Hype Machine today. Two songs in, I was right at the start. It's not even the guitar playing that turned me off, she just sings like Cat Power and I hate Chan Marshall's voice too. Yawn. Do we need another Cat Power?

Maybe I got the wrong song when the DJ was backannouncing?

What is important here is my fancy new Droid phone and the ability to listen to WPRB Princeton in my car in Brooklyn. That is a dream come true and makes my life more awesome, even if WPRB plays some songs I don't love.

Car Feature

Cars need a "waiting in car" feature so the damn alarm doesn't go off everytime you leave grandma in the car for a minute.

My friend wanted to take a nap because we were up way too late last night, but I had to rescue him when the alarm went off when he woke up and tried to leave. I realize this is a security feature, but I'm talking about a button when you do leave someone in the car that is good for say, one hour of escape time without setting off the alarm. Okay?

I saw an ad for Grand Theft Auto The Lost and the Damned Today on the side of a bus in Brooklyn and the junkie girl had a green jacket with a K shield on it except it said L and i can't find her picture on the internets. Seriously, either they pulled the character or NO ONE has managed to put her picture on the internet yet. She's a junkie, I think her name is Brenda. I'm going to have to go home and get my camera with a flash and sit at the bus station tonight until I get a picture.

Got it:

Buying Organic "See which of the country's largest food producers are behind your favorite organic snacks."

Geez, would this send Olympia into a tizzy or what? I'm not even going to preach about buying local...first I want EVERYONE to go get allergy tested and then decided how and what you're going to eat.

On that note, I made wheat free pizza last night and it withstood the "still yummy cold for breakfast" test. I think I overheated the milk-water the yeast was in because I couldn't get it to rise. I used Barry Farm's wheat free baking mix which smelled a little more beany than it tasted. We'll see how my tummy feels today, I am always suspect of eating too many garbanzos.

Dahlias

100_1104, originally uploaded by Courtoly.

An impulse buy at Sister's Hardware in Brooklyn. Look how pretty. Gorgeous! PINK!

So it's true eMusic is retiring my wonderful 90 downloads every 30 days for $19.99 plan and I'm only going to get 50 downloads now. Truth is, I was really only listening to 1/2 of my downloads even if I got a bunch of random stuff at the end of the month, and that's my first principle of how people start to be sucky music consumers (downloading more than one can listen to).

BUT the good news is some albums that are longer than 12 tracks are going to just be a full album download for 12 credits. I honestly think that could up my downloads to 90 a month anyway because so many albums I get are 30 tracks long and sometimes I skip the short ones to save my downloads. So that's a nice concession, depending on what albums it's available for.

gardening is so fucking expensive. despite successful crops and an abundance of small creatures (actually, Sharpie size slugs, not small) my friends have me completely paranoid about pollution. so now I've got to spend at least $135 or more having the soil tested. Which sucks because I could just go on with life, eating my vegetables and being happy...or I can spend that money and find out I don't want to eat my vegetables and have been wasting all this time. I feel like crap. I put so much work into the garden and I feel like half the people I know are totally freaked out about the soil.

Here is the most popular article I found online. Families in toxic waste scare told not to eat garden vegetables. I'd like to point out that these levels were so high some plants were dying and lots of people were getting sick. I'm way more scared about the plastic we use (I rarely microwave plastic anymore, just the coverings on tv dinners and sometimes when making squash with saran wrap).

I'm in denial, but I think it's far more important to EAT YOUR VEGETABLES. Still, I'm probably going to get the soil tested.

So, anyone know someone who got sick from pollutants in their garden? It seems like e-coli and the like are much more dangerous.

Also, this area historically was residential and full of breweries. There may have been some industrial work going on here, and there is plenty in Brooklyn to have migrated via water and air to other areas...but it's not Greenpoint sitting on a giant oil slick or anything.

Sometimes I'm just asking to be humbled. Years of saying people shouldn't order books from Amazon and should support their local bookstores and what happens? I end up with a wheat allergy and find Amazon has the BEST selection of breads and other foods for my tummy. Some stuff I can find locally, but by locally I mean "in random natural food bodegas at 1AM when I've been drinking and don't notice I just paid $7 for a frozen dinner that should be $5 if I went through Fresh Direct". So I'm really excited to have my Annie's Rice Pasta and Cheese

Zee garden looks good. I put in corn and it popped right up. The lettuce and forget me nots I have no idea. I trust the dahlias and garlic are doing their thing underground.

And the damn SF Popfest MySpace page won't load but I'll be there.

When did the Pitchfork headlines get so bland? Weren't they snarkier before? I just noticed this after the redesign, but maybe it's been a long time coming.

Dear Emusic,
Thank you for your successful marketing strategies. I wanted to own Guided by Voices album Propeller, so I figured I might be able to find some free mp3s online. Instead, when I Googled propeller mp3s (not even mentioning the band), the first link was to Emusic.

As prolific as Bob is, it's not hard to get a grasp on GBV. In fact, tonight I was just filling in gaps into the eight or so albums I already own.

Even I don't have enough credits to get Hardcore UFOs, and I'm not sure I need it right now at the rate I'm going.

I started last weekend by putting the 1995 box set "box" on my computer. Then I set my Facebook status to "Guided by Voices or Sonic Youth? Discuss." and found my friends were, as I suspected, actually 50/50 on the subject, if they cared enough to weigh in.

Between getting distracted refiling records (a Runaways album signed by Kitty? Juicy by the Notorious B.I.G.?) and double checking my Emusic downloads (hmm, somehow Robert Pollard's Silverfish Trivia was downloaded once but it's not on this computer, and Slumber Party's Musik) it's like I've got a record store here where I'm always coming across new treasures.

I feel terribly terribly guilty that I am not someone who remembers song titles or lyrics, or even what albums are in her collection. Sometimes it's all a big blur, which makes GBV constantly amazing and amusing, and yet allows me to have big stretches of not listening to them because the many songs sound the same. Brilliant, but lacking in distinction.

Enough about GBV, except I rilly rilly want to take a pilgrimage to Dayton OH now. Especially since Athens Popfest isn't happening.

****

Nother reason I love the internet/Emusic:

Sometimes it really helps when I'm on a band's mailing list. For instance, I tried to download the My Teenage Stride January single when it came out but I had a computer fail. Thanks to their reminder, I got March's (but they offered no explanation as to what happened to February) and successfully redownloaded January (the very excellent "Cast Your Own Shadow"). MTS will be playing Cake Shop on Saturday with Knight School and Human Hearts (Franklin Bruno's new project).

I owe Mr. Bruno whiskey.

And speaking of friendly reminders, maybe you would like to read Jenny Jenkin's tour diary and go see her play in your town:

"Hi friends and family! You know I'm on tour right? It's going good. We
left on Feb 19th, we should be back around May 12th or so. Tour is
crazy, sometimes hard, but often amazing! So, my friend David, who I
am on tour with, is doing a blog of the tour. Thought you might want
to know the address:

www.jjdd09tour.blogspot.com

It's very nice and technological of him to do it - I am way too busy
still booking stuff you know? There's pictures and stuff. And you can
share it with others of my friends and family if you want. Hope you
like it!

And you know if you want you can also keep track of where I am
supposed to be by looking at my myspace page, at least when I manage
to update it. The address for that of course is:

myspace.com/jennyjenkinsrockstar

I love you and I miss you, but don't worry too much. Wish us luck!
Thanks! (And thanks to all the amazing friends and family who are
helping us on the road especially!)

Love, Jenny"

1. I finally put my GBV Box on iTunes. I'm quite satisfied with myself that I bought it when it came out, in 1995, meaning I was sixteen.

2. In the living room, only the Daydream Nation box set is in rotation

3. I'm reading Rip It Up And Start Again and realized I still hadn't listened to the Desperate Bicycles. Luckily someone put up their complete discography so I'm trying to make up for lost time

4. I made it out to the Yoo Doo Faire at Cake Shop but there weren't enough records. Right when I'm reading a book that will clue me into dozens of bands that will look impressive on my record shelf. Seriously. When someone comes over, what do I want to show off?

5. My birthday houseguests embarrassed me when I realized Murray Street was the only SY album I had on vinyl. Hence the Daydream Nation box set purchase. I'm not sure how far I want to take this. The truth is all my early Sonic Youth albums were on cassette and I never upgraded or downloaded replacements.

6. Also reading Perfect from Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life. While he complains in a footnote about girls liking bands for being cute, it really has me wanting to write my personal history of indie rock.

7. Some of the characters: Bikini Kill, Calvin Johnson, Rose Melberg, Lois Maffeo, Al Larsen, Kimya Dawson, Tullycraft, Kindercore, K, Kill Rock Stars, Magic Marker Records, Elliott Smith, Belle and Sebastian, Huggy Bear, Sleater-Kinney. Except his book is all about falling in love with albums (so far, I think the Guided By Voices bit is gonna get ugly) and mine is about having this wonderful twisted fan/musician/friend thing that makes my memories go something like "I was so crushed out on Carrie Brownstein that whenever I saw her I'd get dizzy, but somehow when I saw her on campus I asked her to sign the petition for something that was important enough for me to be collecting signatures for my freshman year. Afterward, I retreated to my dorm room and put more glitter on her shrine."

8. I'm doing the blip.fm thing now as agentramona. Add me.

Blah. There are barely any good shows coming up in NYC. I noticed Matt and Kim and the Black Kids are touring together. What is that? The overrated, isn't everyone over them tour?