The Foxglove Hunt is noteworthy for several reasons. First, that’s one of the best band names I’ve heard in awhile, sounding like, as someone over at Vagrant Cafe pointed out, a Victorian sexual innuendo. Second, it’s the new collaboration between Ronnie Martin (Joy Electric) and Rob Withem (Fine China). And finally, both the Pet Shop Boys and Frankie Goes To Hollywood are listed as influences. Such honesty and artistic integrity deserves admiration.
I think this book—chronicling the rise and fall of late, great satirical magazine Spy—just shot to the top of my “must read” list. I loved Spy back in high school, and I’ve still got several issues packed away somewhere, including a couple of their brilliant “Year’s Worst” issues. A couple classic articles are floating around the Interweb, including Mark Ebner’s (in)famous article on Scientology.
Last night, while walking home from work after a particularly long day, I happened to turn around and see my first batch of Christmas decorations. They weren’t anything special, nothing like the overdone decorations that can transform entire neighborhoods into amusement parks and use as much electricity as some small third world countries. These decorations were paltry, to say the least—really nothing more than a small, leafless tree covered in pink lights that was so pathetic, it made Charlie Brown’s tree look magnificent. But even so, it filled me with a small sense of comfort.
It’s been a long, tiring, and frankly, rather scary past few weeks, and here was this little pink tree, completely stark and naked, standing out like a little benediction, a harbinger of sorts against the cold October sky. Christmas seems to come earlier and earlier every year, regardless of whether or not winter is even in the air or not. Which typically means that the season’s crass materialism just gets here sooner than we’d like. But last night, staring at that little tree doing it’s best to shine light into the early night, I didn’t mind so much.
After all, isn’t that what Christmas is really about? That a great light finally blazed forth into this dark, bruised, fallen world of ours, a light in the form of an infant surrounded, not by kings and angels, but by shepherds, astrologers, and friendly beasts? The final and ultimate Gift that all of our gift-giving, regardless of consumerism, materialism, or any other “isms”, refers back to whether we realize it or not.
A tiny leafless tree, adorned with lights and barely holding its ground against the brittle October wind, seems like just the sort of mundane-yet-sublime image that one Mr. Sufjan Stevens would compose a song about—preferably an 8-minute epic replete with choir and 21-piece orchestra. In fact, I wouldn’t at all be surprised to hear one on his upcoming Songs For Christmas collection. Which, incidentally, the kind folks at Asthmatic Kitty is streaming in its entirety (requires QuickTime). Talk about starting the season off on the right foot. They’re even accepting pre-orders, which means you’ll be able to put it under your tree a few weeks early.
(Of course, listening to these lovely little songs here on Halloween will probably serve only to make the wait even more unbearable, so maybe those Asthmatic Kitty folks aren’t so kind after all.)
On a somewhat-related note, this being Halloween and all, Sufjan has posted a list of a his favorite horror(ible) movies, and there are a couple of, um, interesting choices.
Rick Ellis is on a roll. It’s only been a month and a half, but his Code Igniter framework for PHP is already up to version 1.5.0 (the change log has a comprehensive list of updates). I’ve been using CI for some personal projects, and it’s a great little tool. I wish I could use it everytime I need to do some PHP development.
Hammock (featuring former Common Children member Marc Byrd) has just signed to Darla and will be releasing their latest album, Raising Your Voice… Trying to Stop An Echo in November (click here for an MP3 clip). As was the case with their previous albums, expect a multitude of shimmering, cascading guitars and towering-yet-earnest melodies.
Jason Corder, aka Off The Sky, has just put the finishing touches on two new collaborative releases. The Present Day is a project with Italian artist Opium and has been released on Practising Nature. We All Fall Down is a collaboration with The Circular Ruins and has been released on Databloem. MP3 clips are available from both releases for your listening pleasure.
So, you want to be part of that whole social-networking trend, but you sort of shudder everytime you hear “MySpace”? Six Apart (the folks behind Movable Type) have just launched Vox, their new social-networking tool. I don’t know how much I’ll be using my account—one site is plenty enough for me, thank you very much—but I will say this: it’s certainly nowhere near the abysmal eyesore that MySpace is.
Many thanks to Aaron for this wonderful thing. The Palm School Choir—made up of kids from grades 3-5—recorded a tribute to the Flaming Lips some time ago and posted the whole thing on-line. After a rather long couple of weeks full of death and doubt, a bunch of kids singing “Race For The Prize” and “The Spark That Bled” is just what the spirit needed.
I wrote about The Brothers Martin—the long-awaited reunion of Ronnie and Jason Martin (Joy Electric and Starflyer 59, respectively)—back in August. A new track from their forthcoming album (January 23, 2007—mark your calendars) has been posted to their MySpace page. As good as it might be, my fave track still has to be “Fears To Remember”.
I originally described it as resembling a “lighter, fluffier Lansing-Dreiden”, but I think that might have sold the track a bit short. The sounds of the track—those buoyant, joyful synthesizer lines, the melancholy melodies, Ronnie’s wispy voice—take me back to all of those sweaty, exhausting nights spent in the Cornerstone Dance Tent.
It’s the sort of track that would’ve had Nolan (my fellow Opus cohort back in the day) and I screaming at the top of our lungs as soon the first notes came across the speakers, as we danced late into the night with all of our friends, most of whom we’d only met that week.
Hanging on the wall of my office is a gift that Nolan gave me years ago, perhaps one of the finest gifts I’ve ever received, and one of the simplest—a glass-and-wood frame with four pictures chronicling our various exploits. The two bottom photos are from Cornerstone, the very bottom one taken after a night of whooping it up at the dance tent with our friends. We’re unkempt, dirty, and wearing sweaty clothes covered in red electric tape (we were celebrating the release of a new Joy Electric album that night).
Those were wonderful times, almost painfully so, and I know that even if I were to return to Cornerstone, as I keep meaning to do every year, it will never be like that ever again. Indeed, it never can be.
But ah well, that’s what the music is for, what it’s always for. Listening to “Fears To Remember” puts me right smack dab in the middle of those glorious wee hours of the morning, hours spent dancing in what seemed like an endless worship service. I remember all of the faces and names (and, being Cornerstone, the smells), the sheer exhiliration of pushing ourselves past the borders of sleep, delerious and yet absolutely, perfectly happy.
Opus is a website masquerading as a blog masquerading as a webzine. It’s where I (Jason Morehead) write about music, movies, art, web design, religion and whatever else interests me at the time (Read More).
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