Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me (RIP blogs)

http://ladyofspiders.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/wgart_-art-d-domenich-unicorn.jpg

this thread is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long. rap it up, folks.

Philips records not exactly specializing in editions of 500, ksh

― Lee Dorrian Gray (J0hn D.)

Yeah, you're right. No idea why I thought Diamond Day was a small run thing initially.

it wasn't a limited run, but nobody bought it because there were a million other great albums released that year that were better.

What someone should do is print up 500 copies of some weird folk record they made, sneak a few into stores around the world.

Does this happen?

Does this happen?

no because if anybody sells 500 copies of anything they immediately repress

of course I have that 30 copy run of unavailable-elsewhere cassettes I just gave to two Croatian distributors in '98 but fortunately nobody's gotten wind of that yet

no because if anybody sells 500 copies of anything they immediately repress

― Lee Dorrian Gray (J0hn D.), Wednesday, March 3, 2010 9:39 PM

As a child who worked in sweat shops, I can say J0hn is right.

The following year, having no idea how to approach professional record companies and being convinced they would be uninterested, Fahey decided to issue his first album himself, using some cash saved from his gas station attendant job and some borrowed from an Episcopal priest. So Takoma Records was born, named in honor of his hometown.[5] One hundred copies of this first album were pressed [6]. On one side of the album sleeve was the name "John Fahey" and on the other, "Blind Joe Death"—this latter was a humorous nickname given to him by his fellow blues fans. He attempted to sell these albums himself. Some he gave away, some he sneaked into thrift stores and blues sections of local record shops, and some he sent to folk music scholars, a few of whom were fooled into thinking that there really was a living old blues singer called Blind Joe Death. It took three years for Fahey to sell the remainder.

well yes but

Following a 1994 entry on Fahey in Spin magazine's spin-off Alternative Record Guide publication, Fahey learned that he now had a whole new audience, which included alternative US bands Sonic Youth and Cul de Sac, British comedian and writer Stewart Lee and the avant-garde musician Jim O'Rourke. Byron Coley published a large article called "The Persecutions and Resurrections of Blind Joe Death" (also in Spin magazine) and at the same time a two-cd retrospective called The Return of the Repressed all combined to kick-start Fahey's career. Suddenly new releases started to appear in rapid succession, in parallel to the reissue of all the early Takoma releases by Fantasy Records.[4]

How does that take away from Mr. Que's bit?

SORRY ITS NOT 20 YEARS JOHN ONLY 3

THREAD RUINED

Didn't Bill Drummond claim/write in "45" that he used to press up fake-band singles and mail them to the NME or whatever from random countries, trying to inspire trend stories of a "Greenland scene" and stuff like that?

Hobbies...

Anyway, what this thread needs at this point is less talk about unicorns and more talk about unifauns!

"Said the unifaun to his true love's eyes..." Here Peter gets especially sad and tragic (and it's only the beginning of the song!). 'Unifaun' is supposed to be a pun, a cross between 'uniform' and 'faun' - the 'faun' brings in the mythological element, while the 'uniform' brings in certain military associations. Patriotic lament over the fate of one's country? Whatever it might be, the subject of the song is evident from the beginning line: a tragic statement of Britain's current state, a lamentation over the enormous, unbridgeable gap between the romantic past and the corrupt present...

impressions of disc 1: i moderately dig this.

impressions of disc 2: "in california" / "jackrabbits" / "go long" = a++ fantastic sequence

btw which of her older songs does jackrabbits sound *identical* to melodically at bits? at around 0:35 or so (I believe, I can't check)

Clam Crab Cockle Cowrie?

disc two is the least dense with hooks, i think? (though the second half of disc three is the nearest to hard work - i don't know. i haven't had a chance to listen to this outside of work, and that is the one i play least. "sweet appraising eye of the dog / blink once if god / blink twice if no god" is a little too far for me to feel comfortable forcing on other people.) but yeah i'm surprised how much of it i remember on later playthroughs.

i am loving how plinky-plonk a lot of the piano is.

can anyone point out the kate bush song that 'easy' actually sounds like around the 'there is a life in the river / there is a river filled with light' bit?

i'm at the point with a lot of songs where a lot of the deliberately skewed bits are starting to register for themselves rather than as disruptions. eg.

'who asked you if you wanted to be
lo-o-~ved by me
who died and made you
in charge of who gets to love who'

(or whatever; n.b. 'loved' is like seventeen syllables long for this to scan, which it still barely does)

-- moments like this are starting to register on their own merits, and not as 'oh. she just did a thing'

love how much mileage she gets out of "godawful lawlessness / law! less! ness!" on 'soft as chalk'. (love that something called 'soft as chalk' kinda stomps.)

realise lots of ppl will not find any of these moments appealing

I have not read this yet, but -- NYTimes Magazine huge article time

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/07/magazine/07Newsom-t.html?ref=magazine&pagewanted=all

Best piece about her I've ever read.

Excellent, excellent piece. Totally worth reading, and one of the best on Newsom out there.

"Easy" when she sings that word sounds a bit like Kate Bush "Breathing".

She performed "Soft As Chalk" on Jimmy Fallon last night. You can watch the episode on nbc.com.

http://i49.tinypic.com/igcjed.jpg

Mike Myers' clapping for Newsom made me lol

here's the URL for the video, btw: http://www.latenightwithjimmyfallon.com/video/episodes/#vid=1206946

just fast forward toward the end. thanks to Moodles for the heads up.

Way, WAY better than the studio version.

Jody Rosen's NY Times piece is exceedingly kind in describing her voice

Jody Rosen's NYT Magazine piece today is okay.

that NBC link doesn't load for me. here it is on youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZV0PfHemuvs

I kinda want to ask every musician now, when I interview them, what their "spirit animal" is.

so hers is a domesticated wolf kept by a property owner

So, that NY Times piece is excellent, and anyone who's interested in Newsom's music should read it. In it, she recalls a really awesome story, which has been told partially in Erik Davis's Arthur piece on Ys and partially in her song "Cosmia," about an important moment from when she was younger. When I was reading her account of this story in the NY Times piece, I had the ilx unicorn crew's voices in the back of my head, and I couldn't stop myself from laughing. So, yeah, great story, but impossible not to laugh after you've read this thread. Here's an excerpt for the benefit of Que, J0hn D., et. al:

She also had a spiritual streak, which her parents likewise indulged. When she was 18, in the middle of her senior year of high school, she decided that she needed “some sort of ritual marker of the end of childhood.” Her plan was to camp in the open air for three days and nights, eating little, seeing no one, communing with the great outdoors. Newsom’s mother sanctioned her missing school and helped her daughter scout out a place by the Yuba, in the middle of 35 wild acres owned by family friends.

“I hesitate to speak about it because it sounds so corny, but one of my goals out there was to find a spirit-animal,” Newsom told me. “On the third day, I was kind of delirious. I’d only eaten a little rice. I’d just slept and looked at a river for three days. I was prepared to be visited by my spirit animal — I was just sitting there, saying some sort of prayer, inviting that presence into my life. And then I saw three white wolves charging down at me. I thought maybe I was hallucinating; but I was also prepared to die. But the wolves ran up and started licking my face. Then I remembered that the daughter of the woman who owned the property kept domesticated wolves.” A few hours later, Newsom hiked out of the woods and went home. Her mother had organized a celebratory dance party for Newsom and her girlfriends. She strung up lights and served four kinds of cake.

Pertinent lyrics from "Cosmia":

and all those lonely nights down by the river
brought me bread and water (water, in)
but though I tried so hard my little darling
I couldn't keep the night from coming in

and all those lonely nights down by the river
I was brought my bread and water by the kith and the kin
now in the quiet hour when I am sleepin'
I cannot keep the night from comin' in

For the non-unicorn people who care, here's the excerpt from Erik Davis's profile I refer to two posts above:

Rough stuff. But Newsom’s relationship with the Yuba goes deeper than such idylls. Towards the end of high school, when she was eighteen, Newsom went down alone to a wild spot along the river. After asking their assistance, she arranged some stones into a circle, and then sat down within the ring. She stayed in the circle for three days, fasting, facing the river. Her best friend and some pals camped a few miles away, bringing her water and small portions of rice while she slept. She had assigned herself things to do but abandoned them all. She just sat there and watched the river, and, even more, she listened to it.

“I was a completely different person before I went to the river, and a completely different person after,” Newsom says. When she first got back the girl was a total wreck. She would start crying when she woke up and not quit until she slept. She stopped going to school. She’d pick up the local paper, and read a headline like “Man Dies in Car Crash,” and then the crash would be in her mind, and the man’s bloody crumbled body, and his pain and dread and fearful exit from this world. “None of the calluses or borders or walls we put up to protect ourselves from going absolutely insane while experiencing life – none of those stood anymore. They had been worn completely away. I was like infantile and dysfunctional, a weepy, drunk mess.”

Weird. It's like instead of her liminal moment inaugurating her into adulthood, it had the opposite function. Maybe this is what happens sometimes when people invent their own liminal rituals based on cartoons they've seen and that one Carlos Castaneda book they've read and not on personal, communal, familial traditions.

the NY Times piece was pretty meh, but the magazine sucks these days anyway.

^ A++

glad you at least gave it a chance, tbf

not sure what was A+ about my comment. it was either read that article or the one about "can we teach teachers to teach better," or better yet the article last week "clinical depression might actually be good for us"

gotta say that excerpt appears to be grade-A evidence for the case against going on a vision quest

yup

hahaha, the A+ was just because a lukewarm comment from you on Newsom was in character. no big thing. but i'm glad you gave it a chance, really

i feel like my childhood is meaningless after reading that. i threw a history text book into a river once but that's it

my comment was on the article not Newsom.

http://www.google.com/search?q=reading+comprehension&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

no wolves tbf