your favorite of the mark kozelek canon

a girl i know loves red house painters. shes a total party girl as well, its sort of incongruous in a way

Where is the love for Old Ramon!?!

Cruiser!!!

Right here. It's all right here. By far the best RHP album. I believe this so deeply, that I can barely listen to anything that came before despite my insane love for his entire output.

Right here. It's all right here. By far the best RHP album.

I really don't understand this at all! it's so disappointing.

To be honest, my favorites are Katysong and Strawberry Hill but people should also take a listen to some of the more obscure stuff. There are a lot of gems there.

listened to "Drop" but couldnt get into it - liked the guitar part at the end a lot and his voice does sound good. havne't listened to Michael yet.

I think the bridge album is the worst. The only decent track is the new version of New Jersey (which stomps all over the rollercoaster version and then puts out back with the trash). But other than that -- dud.

Michael is a great song.

However, judged as a whole, I still stand by my prior statement.

Uncle Joe
Smokey (demo version from the Shanti project disc, NOT the version on Old Ramon)
Ruth Marie
Up To My Neck In You (ac dc cover)

Michael and Katy Song are definitely my favourites.

"I buried my first victim when I was nineteen
Went through her bedroom and the pockets of her jeans
Found her letters that said so many things that really hurt me bad
I'll never breath her name again", etc.

Or do I just have a demented imagination? (apologies on any lyrics I've misheard...of course, that might be the whole problem...)

"Cassius Clay was hated more than Sonny Liston
Some like KK Downing more than Glenn Tipton
Some like Jim Nabors, some Bobby Vinton
I like 'em all"

He's comparing Downing to Tipton, and both were guitarists for Judas Priest. So I assume that's the only Tipton he's referring to in the song. I also read that the Eleanor in the song is an old friend of his.

The pinnacle is still "Medicine Bottle" to me, though "Cruiser" comes very close.

1. The song takes its name from the Priest guitarist, but is not narrated by him

2. The "serial killer" verse is as ambiguous as his relationship with the girl in question. "Buried" and "victim" can be read as metaphors for the ways early romantic love goes wrong, or they could be quite literal. IMHO it's that tension, and the light it casts on the ways of love etc that makes this verse interesting.

Kind of like the tension in "Carry Me Ohio" - can't count all the lovers I've burned through/so why do I still burn for you? vs. sorry that I could never love you back...

Amazing live. go for it.
-- Chris 'Crusty' V (thebing...), May 21st, 2005.

He is amazing live, and it's worth going. But do be prepared to mostly stand around swaying and nodding your head while squinting a bit with that "listening intently" look.

Roll he does; r0x0r he does not.

Go see him! "Mistress" was unbelievable.

My fave individual track is probably still "Katy Song", but I do like the Sun Kil Moon record a lot.

Pretty stoked to see Kozelek in Chicago tonight - but I bet my buddies at the Archers of Loaf reunion show are gonna have more fun!

I saw him do a live solo gig circa 2005 in a pub and he was completely sullen and disengaged,

Hah, I saw him do the same in the fall of 1998 - just bitching about the mix, then his life, so he was pulling this shit for years.

Still adore the first Sun Kil Moon and recently got into "Perils".

ultimately the revelations about him and the way they align with his current music to the point where there's no distance between the shitty personality and the shitty music at all have made me sort of believe that all of the rhp and early skm stuff is a mask that he put on to make people like him or make people think he was profound, and even that stuff contains lyrics like

Won't you whisper in my ear?
You look so good against my mirror
And you're my baby full of joy
You're my erotic brown eyed toy
You're my exotic black haired toy

so fuck him

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEf_Wfqou3I

He just seemed to resent us for being there or something

hasn't he written songs about how he resents that his hardcore fans who have been most of his audience for the past two decades are nearly all men instead of the attractive young women who used to make up some of the audience for rhp in the early days

Yeah

Sunshine in Chicago makes me feel pretty sad
My band played here a lot in the nineties when we had
Lots of female fans and fuck, they all were cute
Now, I just sign posters for guys in tennis shoes

Oops

Sunshine in Chicago makes me feel pretty sad
My band played here a lot in the nineties when we had
Lots of female fans and fuck, they all were cute
Now, I just sign posters for guys in tennis shoes

preferred the first post tbh

that is a funny verse TBF. And that verse from Old Ramon is fucking awful; I remember when that finally came out how much those lyrics bugged me. Anyway: RHP were never a great live band, in case anyone is wondering. I saw them probably a dozen times, and I remember one really good show. Their last show, which was after Old Ramon was finally released, was such a slog I left early.

I might have written that here already but when I saw him during the Benji tour he explained the reason he cancelled the previous Montreal show a few years prior was that he hooked-up with this gorgeous Torontonian and after having sex all night he lost his voice and couldn't possibly sing the next show.

hate it when i fuck my voice out

thank god I have posting on ilx as an outlet

More grist for the Toronto vs. Montreal feud.

I remember checking out the rollercoaster s/t in the early 00s and feeling immensely disappointed because it was nowhere near as depressing as the critics made it out to be, so I never explored the rest of his output.

Sometimes I worry, Pom.

Haha, that was almost twenty years ago. Almost everything had to achieve the same degree of anguish as the fifth movement of Schnittke's 4th String Quartet or I wasn't interested.

I feel like Pomenitul would have been my friend 20 years ago. If I'd had friends.

I've made some progress in the interim, but I can still be your trve miserablist friend.

I feel like I'm reading a eulogy thread

rollercoaster is one of my favorite albums, and i love depressing music, but I don't think it's really 'depressing'. it's melancholy.

(XP)
Poll: Is Mark Kozelek dead to you?
- Yes
- No

OK in conclusion I will pretend Young Love was the actual final song on AFP, he quits music, then a few years later the material from Among The Leaves comes out but as part of a SKM b-sides and rarities comp. I'll just assume that's how it went down.

'Pristine' by Snail Mail sounds like 'San Geronimo' sped up. That was driving me crazy.

https://pitchfork.com/news/sun-kil-moon-mark-kozelek-accused-of-sexual-misconduct-by-seven-more-women/

real real bleak stuff

He's a predator with a practiced regimen of luring and raping women less than half his age in city after city all over the world. There are surely more of these stories.

What a repulsive excuse for a human being.

I feel like I need to take a shower after reading about this scumbag.

you can hear the rot from the start on rollercoaster; from grace cathedral park:

Tell me why are you like this? Are you the same with anyone?
Save me from my sickness and tell me why do you treat me like this?
Tell me why are you like this? Are you the same with anyone?
Save me from my sickness and tell me why are you like this?

i think i know the answers to those questions!!

i never want to hear his music again

I've been there for a few years (ever since that weird unilateral feud with War on Drugs), but this really reinforces it x1000.

nels cline 1, koz 0

This I guess is the AITA thread referenced in the Pitchfork article, although the original seems to be gone now.

AITA for feeling weird about my girlfriend talking on the phone with her celebrity hero? https://t.co/rmCeysvTCP pic.twitter.com/UmsxJjldcS

— Am I the Asshole? (@AITA_reddit) October 16, 2019

I happened to hear You Missed My Heart for the first time recently and was briefly thinking what a great (if dark) song it is, and then I remembered again what happened and why I had stopped listening to him. It makes me a little bit sad to lose a good artist in that way, sort of how I felt about Woody Allen -- not only can I not support the person, but the person I can't support bleeds into their art too much for me to ever see it the same way again - in fact, it seems to be the same force that makes them a shitty person that makes the art seem strong. It's sort of hard to accept, but maybe a decent person just isn't going to write a song like that.

you can just listen to the Phoebe Bridgers cover of that song instead