quasify

Mediafriend’s new album ‘I Don’t Feel Like This Is Happening’ is online for streaming purposes. Were I the type to express strong preferences I’d recommend ‘Flight Risk’ where Chris spins out a slow Pinback-like beat & verbal declining modulation before crunching into a dissonant conclusion. Or if by chance you’re an echoplanar fan you might like to hear the full versions of ‘Love, An Art’ and ‘In Green’, from which parts were excised for use in It’s OK to Be Afraid. I also appropriated the second version of Fragrant Skies for my own self-indulgent purposes a while back, prompting a surprising number of unrelated people to remark to me about what a terribly sad song this is. The Nuno Albuquerque version of this track goes to a calmer, chiller, less emotive place. All in all, worth checking out - a more productive use of your time at work than actual work.

Tomorrow is the first day of the spring we’ve all been waiting on - for this I am grateful. It was late spring seven years ago when I came from Athens to Boston, an act more random than conscious, fleeing a broken graduate program and a breaking relationship to the only city with which I was familiar (by proxy). The seven years prior to that unfocused & spontaneous choice I managed to spend aimlessly (by any objective estimation) in three different universities, failing all the while to acquire any appreciable employment skills or practical idea of what to do with life.

Since I’ve been in Boston I’ve scored a master’s degree, worked more or less contiguous chunks of time at three of the best hospitals in the country, made and lost some great friends and shot more than my fair share of fantastic bands. My entire family has relocated here, grown, and grown, and grown again. Life, overall, has been kinder to me than I probably deserve. While I’m counter-intuitively a little proud that I can’t claim to be savvy in the way of career trajectory, I don’t want to be consciously dense when an opportunity arises. To that end, I’ll post without further comment a couple of photographs that have been looking at as a result of an interesting phone call this morning that’s got me thinking about the next seven years.

*Slow Numbers from Morphine -

The number four means nothing to me but the number four means death to Chinese.
Number seven is lucky in Japan. Here we don’t give a damn.

Actually that bit I said yesterday about not having any new Pipeline footage wasn’t entirely true. Here’s Paper Thin Stages from my last Tuesday off. This is all part of echoplanar’s continuing series of local live music videos from WMBR’s Pipeline. Later tonight Baker will be on (88.1 locally or streaming).

A second track from two bands that will be on our upcoming WMBR compilation. We haven’t settled on exactly which tracks to include though it likely won’t be either of these - you could these guys quasify exclusives if they weren’t already on the youtube channel thing.

Let’s see, before I posted Lee Torsee from The Self Righteous Brothers - the new one is a little more mellow, Alan Watts.

Also, a second track from Magic People - I don’t have the slightest ideas what their songs are titled (About the Dutch?)- by a more literal band this one would be called either Bossman or Dudes on Parade. Magic People probably call it something completely different like This Cuckold Fortune Is Fraught With Peril.

This is video from Drug Rug is the latest in our ongoing series of live sets from WMBR’s Pipeline. Jeff recently wrote a profile of these guys.

If you’ll forgive a bit of promotion - The Winterpills are playing tomorrow at the MFA, with Erin McKeown.  These guys are fantastic, please check this show out.  A while back we shot their live show at WMBR’s Pipeline (two of the videos can be found on Echoplanar), and it occurred to me as I saw this announcement that I promised to mail them the DVD of this some time ago yet completely forgot.  Tomorrow, everything gets mailed: a box of random crap to Kristin in Vanuatu (inset), tape of Escape From Wrentham to Jeff for the Best Of Open Screen coming September 6th, and a stack of DVDs to the Winterpills. If you want, you can listen to an audio stream of their full set on Pipeline. To the postal service!

The second in our occasional series of WMBR Pipeline bands is up. The band is Reports (from Somerville/Providence).

Here’s the first clip.

We’re shooting a third entry tonight (Big Blood) who will bring a considerably different vibe.