Seven Best Song of 2018 - No. 1 (Psych, It's A Tie!)

If you didn't see this coming, you're either new here or you haven't been paying much attention to our fascination with von Hausswolff.  And Lonnie Holley gave the year the protest song it deserved.

2018 is the year we all need to bow down and respect the power of Anna von Hauswolff and the righteousness of Lonnie Hollie.  How could anyone pick either one of these over the other? We surely couldn't.  So we have eight songs in our Best Seven list.

Anyway, words are stupid.  Here are the two best songs of 2018, two very different masterpieces we're certain we'll still be listening to in 2028 (should we live so long).  

From the Comics Desk

We've been off work for over a week now, enjoying a quiet holiday staycation.  The Sports Desk has demanded most of our time and attention, live-blogging almost all of the college football bowl games.  Meanwhile, the Music Desk has been posting some year-end lists and when neither the Sports Desk nor the Music Desk are busy, the Gaming Desk has been playing Fallout 76, which cast sort of eerie aura ovr the West Virginia-Syracuse football game.

But during the one slow moment, back when the Boston College-Boise State game got cancelled due to severe weather, we spent $60 and bought Marvel Unlimited, full online access to over 20,000 Marvel comic books, new and old. Let that sink in for a minute - 20,000 Marvel comic books, accessible on both our laptop and phone. Usually, this is the kind of purchase one only makes when drunk and late at night, but we did this one stone-cold sober and in mid-afternoon.

We’ve been re-reading old 1960s and 70s Fantastic Four and Spider Man comics, and naturally on the very first day we read Amazing Fantasy #5 (1962), the first Spider Man story and the Holy Grail for comic book collectors - it sells online for $18,000. 

We've also been catching up to the latest new series.  It’s pretty amazing how much the comics have progressed from our teenage memories - they’re far more complex now, with sophisticated layouts and complicated narratives. The coloring and shading are better rendered for 3D-like effects, and the days of having six panels across each page to be read left-to-right are long gone.  The illustrators seem to each be trying to top the others with splashy, full-page layouts and action extending beyond the borders of the frame and empty space is sometimes used for dramatic effect.  Frankly, they’re a lot harder to follow and demand more attention. Sometimes we have to look at a picture or a page for a few seconds to just try and figure out what it is we're looking at - it’s like solving a puzzle but like a puzzle, once you figure it out, your brain rewards you with a dose of serotonin. It takes a lot more work, but the effort is worth it.

The characters are also more diverse and far more interesting.  Instead of mostly white adolescent boys and young men, today's superheros could just as easily be female as male (the new Hulk is a woman), middle-eastern, or any shade of tan, brown, or black (the new Spiderman is a black latino named Miles Morales).  There are biracial romances and openly gay characters, and the best part is their ethnicity or orientation isn't the defining factor of their characters or the plots, and it's all dealt with very matter-of-factly.

In a recent issue of Spider Man, Miles and his best friend, a chubby Asian teen named Ganke Lee, have a very nuanced and revealing argument about who experiences more prejudice - an athletic, good-looking black teen in Brooklyn, or an overweight Korean-American. And when a girl hears them bickering and asks them if they're a couple, neither over-reacts or takes offence. "No, we've just been best friends since kindergarten," Ganke tells her.  This is far more topical and relevant than Peter Parker mooning over whether or not Mary Ellen will or won't go to the prom with him. 

But reading these comics is even more addicting than playing video games.  They all still end with cliff-hangers that just beg you to start the next issue after finishing the last, and there's lots and lots of cross-over plots from one series to another, so to understand how say, Iron Man got his power armor back, you might have to go back and read the previous Avengers book, and to understand that issue of Avengers may require you to go back several previous issues to figure out what's going on.  You can't read just one, and once we start, we find ourselves reading and browsing and researching for hours.

Just what we needed - more distractions and more alibis to avoid our ever growing list of chores.

Seven Best Songs of 2018 - No. 2

Speaking of being woke, Parquet Courts are wide awake.  Listen, they'll tell you so on their song Wide Awake from their album Wide Awake.

Some of the best music of the past 30 years, from The Talking Heads on, was made when punk rockers discover funk.  Give some punks a roomful of percussion instruments and let them explore polyrhythm, and fun just spontaneously erupts.  That's apparently what happened to Brooklyn's Parquet Courts in New Orleans, as their excellent 2018 LP Wide Awake is chock-full of second-line bounce, call-and-response lyrics, and totally woke lyrics.  "It is dishonest, nay a sin, to stand for any anthem that attempts to drown out the roar of oppression," they sing, and "Those who find discomfort in your goals of liberation will be issued no apology." And that's all from just the first song, Total Football.   

We said at the beginning of this series that 2018 was not the best year for music, but any year that produces an album like Wide Awake has nothing to be ashamed of.  Parquet Courts have been one of our favorite bands for a few years now, and Wide Awake is their best, most ambitious, and most audacious album yet.  In the past, they've offered their take on slacker/stoner rock, on hard-core punk, on country-punk ballads, and various other genres, and on Wide Awake they show that they're brave enough, smart enough, and ballsy enough to take on almost anything.  This is a Top Seven song list and the song Wide Awake takes the number two spot, but if this were a Top Seven album list, Wide Awake would easily take the Number One spot.  That and we think we've got a crush on Andrew Savage and we're not even gay.

If you need any more validation, it's a testament to the broad appeal of this song that it's reportedly Ellen Degeneres' favorite of 2018.

OMG, we just rewatched this video the day after posting it, and noticed that's harpist Mary Lattimore, who we just saw opening for and performing with Lonnie Holley, in the background.

A lot of people have a lot of interpretations of what Jesus of Nazareth said during his life, despite the fact that he spoke in Aramaic, that no one transcribed his sermons and talks while he was alive, that the Gospels weren't written until at least 100 years after his death, and that archeological findings such as the Dead Sea scrolls show that in the first several centuries after Jesus had lived there were wildly different versions of "Christianity" being practiced, the word in quotations as many versions would be totally unrecognizable to practicing Christians today. In some of the traditions, Jesus wasn't even the central figure and other disciples, even including Judas, were the messiahs.  Eventually, one version become predominant, got adopted by Rome, and the other competing versions were declared "heresy" and wiped out.

But no one really knows what Jesus actually taught. 

I can't pretend that I believe the Gospel of Judas was his actual, true teaching, but I can't prove that it wasn't or that the currently accepted Gospels were.  But when I hear so-called "alternative" teachings of the Christ, teachings that more accord with what I believe to be true, I tend to think, "Yeah, that's probably what he said."

Case in point - somewhere in the writings,. the Gospels report that Jesus claimed, "I and the Father are one."  But he didn't follow that claim by saying "and you aren't," and I've read some New Age writers argue that Jesus' true message was that we are all one with the Father.  We're all the Son of God.  "Yeah," I think, "That could be what he said," because it's close to what I otherwise believe (although I would word it differently). It's not dissimilar to what the Buddha (who had his own actual transcription problems) was reported to have said upon his enlightenment - "How marvelous!  I and all sentient beings have come to awakening together," meaning that since the Buddha became enlightened to the unity of all beings, all beings, including you and I, also became enlightened.  

But just because I agree with a notion philosophically and spiritually doesn't mean that the version is any more legitimate or any less speculative than any other version. But I'm prone to believe it because it accords with other things in which I believe.

Half the battle is realizing this about oneself.  The hard part is recognizing the legitimacy of other people's beliefs, and refraining from telling others, "but the Bible doesn't actually say that" even when they claim that, say, Jesus hated homosexuals or that it's a sin to accept welfare.  That version of an alternative Gospel, as absurd as it sounds to me, jibes with their values and beliefs and sounds as natural and likely to them as Jesus acknowledging that we are all one with the Father does to me. 

We're all predisposed to accept what fits with our a priori understanding of things, and to reject things that upset our understanding.  We need to, I need to, not consider other people's beliefs as "wrong" and try to correct them, just as I appreciate it when they let mine be.

Seven Best Songs of 2018 - No. 3

Norwegian artist and musician Jenny Hval claims our No. 3 spot for the year.  We've enjoyed Hval for a few years now, but it wasn't until we saw her perform at this year's Big Ears Festival that we really came to appreciate her.

Hval so openly and intimately communicates with her audience that it's almost disorienting.  We expect some distance between our performers and ourselves and even take some comfort in that distance.  We expect musicians to sing lyrics about events in their own, separate lives or to communicate big ideas about abstract issues or current events.  We're used to them hiding behind instrumentation, clever wordplay, and carefully constructed personae.  We expect them to stay on stage, or at least of the opposite side of the speakers.

Hval has no use for this.  What's the point of saying something if you're not communicating, and what's the point of communicating if it's not real and intimate?  What barriers are there left to be overcome between the artist and the observer?  She closes out her 2018 EP The Long Sleep by noting, among other things, "There should be something I could tell you, there should be something I could do to reach you directly, but there is nothing useful in the way we define 'you' or 'me' in this context."

In some respects, Hval's approach reminds me of the American poet Walt Whitman, who in his Carol of Words, asks the reader, "Were you thinking that those were the words—those upright lines? Those curves, angles, dots?  No, those are not the words—the substantial words are in the ground and sea. They are in the air—they are in you."

As Hval puts it, "It’s not in the words. It’s not in the rhythm. It’s not in the message. It’s not in the product. It’s not in the algorithms. It's not in the streaming. It’s not something you decided. It’s not something they decided for you."

Whitman:  "Were you thinking that those were the words—those delicious sounds out of your friends’ mouths? No, the real words are more delicious than they."

Hval: "Maybe that's what I'm trying here, something else than lyrics or melody."

But you have to hear her to believe her sincerity.  Give I Want To Tell You Something 1 minute and 21 seconds of your time.  It could change your life, and there's few songs you can say that about.  If we programmed the widget above correctly, you can stream other songs from The Long Sleep EP after hearing I Want To Tell  You Something, and trust us, you'll want to.

Live, Hval was weird (in a good way), whip-smart, and funny.  Hers was one of the more unique performances at Big Ears, a festival with no small number of unique performers.

So Jenny Hval comes in at No. 3 in our Best Seven list.  That's five songs down and two left to go.  Are you still with us?

Jenny Hval (center) making music with iPhones at Big Ears 2018

Santa Dog

In memory of the late, great Hardy Fox, who passed away this year, the Music Desk initiates a new Holiday tradition.

Hardy Fox was the artist behind the enigmatic band The Residents.  Since at least the mid-1970s, The Residents have been producing inscrutable records of purposefully weird music, and always kept their identity a closely held secret.  The members were never identified on the albums and whey always wore costumes, usually head-sized eyeball masks, whenever they performed live. No one knew who they were, although over the decades, it became increasingly apparent that The Residents were most likely just one person, and based on the deep Louisiana drawl that became increasingly predominant on their records, that the one person was someone from far outside the music industry (actually, the songs themselves made the "outsider" part pretty obvious).

It wasn't until Fox passed away this year that it was revealed that he was the man behind The Residents.  No one know who Hardy Fox was, and all the obits and news articles had to explain, "Hardy Fox, the Man Who Performed as The Residents, Has Died."

The Residents was an act of performance art that Fox kept going for over 50 years.  Part of that act was frequent re-recording of the bizarre holiday song Fire, from one of their very first, early 70s records, but which everyone knew as Santa Dog based on the opening lines "Santa Dog's a Jesus fetus." 

Here's arguably our favorite version of Santa Dog, from 1992.  Our new holiday tradition will be to post a different version of Santa Dog every Christmas.

Don't think we have the perseverance to pull it off?  We're somewhat insulted that you underestimate us and we remind the reader that we've been keeping this blog going for 15 years now, but if you doubt us, come back here this time next year to see the next installment.

Here are the lyrics for those of you who might want to try singing along at home, or caroling this song through the neighborhood:

Santa Dog's a Jesus Fetus
Has no presence
...In the future

A fleeting and a sleeting scene of snowness and of sleeves

A fleeting and a sleeting scene of snowness severed sleeves
A fleeting and a greeting scene of effervescent eves
A greeting and a meeting team of hoarse and frosty words
A greeting and a cheating team and other noxious herbs

A fleeting and a sleeting scene of snowness and of sleeves

Santa Dog's a Jesus Fetus
Has no presents
In the Future!

Merry Christmas?

This is most decidedly not a Christmas Eve post, but I've been meaning to say this for several days now although for one reason or another something else always needed to be said first and I didn't get around to it.  So it's not profound and it offers no great insight, but I wanted to say that I'm actually coming around to enjoying Fallout 76.

The game got terrible reviews upon release, and rightfully so - it was full of bugs and problems, and it has only the merest of trace of a storyline to it. I called it the worst game of the Fallout series, but full disclosure - I've only played New Vegas and Fallout 4.  But I'm sure Fallouts 1 through 3 were better than 76.

But lack of a story line isn't necessarily a vice - some of the most popular games (Fortnite, Minecraft) don't have story lines, and like those games and like No Man's Sky, Fallout 76 is a survival game, not a fantasy game.  The object is simply not to get killed in a post-nuclear West Virginia, a terrain full of vicious animals, mutated beasts, blood-thirsty ghouls, green super mutants, and worse.   And as an extra measure of realism, you have to eat, you have to find clean water, and you have to build a shelter. On top of that, food spoils with time, weapons wear out and break, and sometimes life or death hinges on whether or not you can find a handful of screws with which to put your armor back together (I spend an inordinate amount of time searching mason jars in old garages and machine shops looking for loose screws). 

The developer, Bethesda, has released a bunch of patches to fix some of the bugs in the game, but I'm not saying that there aren't still problems - the servers still crash and abruptly end the game during mid-play.  One day, my power-armor repair station didn't recognize that it was my power armor being repaired and wouldn't give it back to me, stating that "Someone else is using this station" when that "someone else" was me. Frustrating, and inexcusable.  I finally had to reboot and end the game to get my own stuff back.

But those very real criticisms aside, after playing for a couple weeks, I've actually gotten to enjoy the simplicity of the central quest (not dying).  I've gotten used to the way the massive multiplayer game operates, and I've enjoyed interacting with other players on line - the one aspect of the game I thought I would like the least. Despite what you  might have heard about adolescent gamers, the vast majority of players I've encountered were decidedly not assholes, and several players have shown me outstanding generosity and support, something I've tried to do for others in turn.

I started the game just before Thanksgiving and my goal, my hope, was that the game would keep me entertained through to the end of the year.  We had a rough week or so getting started and more than once during that first week I decided that I made a terrible mistake with my purchase, but as time went by, I've actually found myself looking forward to firing up the game.  

It grew on me, sort of like one of those mutated appendages you get in the game after too much exposure to radiation, and looking back, I'm glad I stuck with it and didn't just quit during the initial frustrations.    If you're curious about the game, don't let all those bad reviews hold you back from trying it.

Adventures in Condo Management

Apparently, it's time to roll up our sleeves and once again take on the Unsellable Condo In Vinings.

New readers here may not recall the UCV, as we've successfully managed, if not to sell it, at least lease it for the past 10 years.  But after a full decade, our cherished tenant has finally decided to move on and once again we are forced to have to deal with it.

Even deeper back story: Way back in 2000, we bought a condominium just outside of the chic Vinings community in Atlanta.  It was our first real estate purchase, and nearly everything went wrong from the get-go - the closing was delayed multiple times and after we finally did get to move in, the developer made multiple alterations to the property that improved his value for the other unsold units, but at the expense of the quality of our unit.  On top of that, we were completely incompatible with the Cobb-County, young-Republican, yuppie residents and they with us, and it never really felt like "home," just a place to sleep and for which to pay condo fees.  After a few years, we took a job on the other side of town and wound up buying a more appropriately located house, the home we're still living in now, lo these 14 years later.

We couldn't sell the condo due to those developer alterations and to the fact that after we purchased, that part of the city got flooded with new pre-Great Recession condominium construction.  It was hard to compete with all the billboards advertising "New!" and "Build To Suit!" and "Financing Available," and then the real-estate and financial collapse of 2008 occurred.  We had the UCV on the market for literally years, and finally even our real-estate agent conceded that it was time to throw in the towel.

So we began leasing the unit out to at least break even on the mortgage payments and condo fees. After a few sketchy tenants, we finally found a nice couple - she was a schoolteacher and he was a cop - and they settled in and made it their home for 10 years.  No drama.

They're gone now. They moved out on Sunday the 16th but it wasn't until last Friday that I finally got the keys and remotes (it's a gated community, don't you know) from them and got to inspect the premises.

What a mess!  They literally left piles of garbage on the floor, and odd bits of furniture and other things they apparently didn't want anymore were left in place.  The carpet, almost 20 years old now and admittedly overdue for a replacement anyway, was completely soiled and shot.  On top of that, they had two large dogs that clawed and gouged woodwork all over the house.  And that's what we could see.

The worse part - and we hadn't thought of this - was that they had the electricity turned off when they moved out and we couldn't see very well and certainly couldn't begin a proper cleaning or evaluation, much less get any contractors in.  We called the power company Friday to get the juice turned back on, but it was probably the worst day of the year to request new service - they don't reconnect on weekends, and this coming Monday (tomorrow) and Tuesday are apparently some sort of big holiday. The lights won't come back on again until sometime Wednesday.

Which is fine - we didn't really want to spend our Christmas holiday cleaning out a filthy condo anyway.  And there's actually good news, light at the end of the tunnel - we've already found a new tenant.  Word-of-mouth spread quickly, and the manager of a nearby restaurant where our tenants used to eat emailed us to ask about renting the unit.  We're doing the credit-check thing now.

And there's more.  We had brunch with Britney this morning, and she told us that a friend of hers runs a cleaning company that specializes in turning over apartments for leasing companies.  She doesn't do carpets or painting, but knows a lot of good contractors who do and can help out.  As we're not very good at that sort of thing anyway and as the costs would be deductible expenses from our rental income, it wouldn't make sense not to hire her for help. 

So no big point here - just a slice-of-life story and update for those of you curious about the condo.  If there is a moral, a lesson that we're taking from all this, it's that we shouldn't dwell on the negative, down-side of adversity - more often than not, things have a way of working themselves out, and a little patience and some optimism are better than frustration, rage, and despair.

Seven Best Songs of 2018 - No. 4

If we keep introducing these songs by saying "This isn't necessarily their best" it might lead you to wonder why we put so many also-rans into our Top Seven list and dismiss the whole list altogether. But in the case of Father John Misty and Courtney Barnett, the selected songs were perfect encapsulations of one aspect or another of the respective artist's work.

Then we've got London's Goat Girl.  Their debut, self-titled album is one of our favorites of the year, but which song to pick for our year-end list?  All the songs are great but no two sound alike, even though they're all clearly identifiable as Goat Girl songs, and picking anyone of them, the one where they do "that," leaves out another song where they do "the other thing."  The Man is as good a pick as any off the album, but the whole LP really needs to be heard to be appreciated.

To be quite honest, the whole album is one big, chaotic, lo-fi mess, but that's what makes it so great. Goat Girl are apparently four barely-twenty-somethings (they were signed two years ago as teenagers).  They play slacker, who-gives-a-fuck, punk rock and yet somehow it seems they hit the nail on the head with every song. It's just that you didn't know there were nails there, or that it felt so good to hit them.  How'd they do that? Some songs are straight-up punk ravers, others have a definite country twang, and some sound like some sort of demented swamp-boogie stomp.  There's 19 songs on their debut album and they all sound different, and I honestly think they came up with that many ideas by not thinking too hard about any of it and not taking a lick of it seriously - did we mention the album is also frequently hilarious?

Goat Girl is probably as good a reason why our list in Top Seven and not a more traditional Top 5 - five of our Top 5 are pretty predictable and safe bets (come on, is anybody surprised to see Father John Misty and Courtney Barnett in a year-end, Best Of list?), but there's no way we're going to make a list that leaves out Marc Ribot and Goat Girl.

Fuck it, words are pointless.  Here's two more Goat Girl songs to illustrate why they're on our Best Of list.  You can pick whichever one you want, or any other Goat Girl song for that matter, for the No. 4 spot. I don't care.

  

Dreaming of the Masters

Believe it or not, incredibly, this song is actually by Sun Ra, although it's almost totally unrecognizable as a Sun Ra song.  Those well versed on Sun Ra and the Solar Myth lore, however, will surely recognize some clues (Easter eggs) on the label, spare as it is.  But really, honestly, this is Sun Ra, 1960.

We here at WDW have never much liked Christmas music and once any musician puts out a record of Christmas songs, we generally consider that a sure sign that their career is over.  Only Sun Ra could pull this one off - only Sun Ra could make us not only listen to but actually enjoy this song. 

To even things out a little bit, to slap a little yin on the yang above, here's some more Sun Ra the way most of us remember the Arkesta.   

The Angel of Death

The metaphorical angel of death descended on our neighborhood last night and took my next-door neighbor, an elderly gentleman, leaving his wife an elderly widow.

He was the neighbor who owned the tree that started leaning precipitously over my house a couple years ago, and with whom we split the cost to have it taken down.  He was the neighbor who a few years before that had a huge tree fall on and demolish his home, fortunately while he and his wife were away for the weekend. I had to call them and spoil their vacation by telling them they needed to come back to what was left of their house and take care of things.

He was one of the original residents of this neighborhood, raising his children here.  Those children are now in their 50s and 60s.  I've been next door to him for over 14 years now, but I'm sure he still considered me the "New Neighbor" next door.

Anyway, leaving the house this morning on my way to work, I saw that several cars were parked in front of his house, including a police car with its lights still flashing.  I knew then that something bad was up, and as it turns out - small world - my neighbors are the aunt and uncle of my boss' wife, so I asked him to have his wife check things out, and she confirmed that, yes, Uncle Brooks had died early this morning.

When summoned
I will say farewell:
My house beneath the moon.
- Takuchi (d. 1846)

Lonnie Holley and Mary Lattimore at The Bakery, Atlanta - December 17, 2018

Last Monday night, we actually motivated our fat lazy asses to get out of the house on a Monday night and drive down to Atlanta art center The Bakery for a show by Lonnie Holley and Mary Lattimore.  And why wouldn't we?  The Bakery is an ultra-cool DIY visual and performing arts gallery and teaching center, and Holley and Lattimore are the current creme de la creme of unclassifiable improvisational music.

We've seen Mary Lattimore perform before.  Back in 2014, she played an improvised set with electric guitarist Thurston Moore, formerly of the band Sonic Youth, during the Hopscotch music festival in Raleigh, North Carolina, and in  2016, she opened for Julianna Barwick at the Mammal Gallery.  We were impressed by her approach to the harp, which included electronic manipulation of the tone and pitch of her instrument, as well as use of a loop repeater to build layers of sound. 

She brought much the same approach to her set Monday night at The Bakery, and no small part of the enjoyment of her music was the variety of approaches to music and song structure throughout her set - every song was markedly different from the others, not what you might have expected from a set of all-instrumental solo harp.  

Lonney Holly's set started with a way-too-long (seriously, like well over 10 minutes) introduction by promoter Matt Arnett. Note to Matt: If you're in a roomful of people who came out on a Monday night in December to hear Holley play at an obscure venue in an odd part of town, chances are good that we all already know who he is and what he does, and you don't need to go over his life story, critical reception, and explanation of his art - we're obviously fans.  Just shut up already and let him play already.  

Seriously, we don't think we've yet seen Holley perform without Matt first feeding his own ego onstage with long, rambling introductions.  He did it when we saw Holley as a headliner at Eddie's Attic) and as an opener for Animal Collective at Symphony Hall.  And he did it a third time on Monday night.  

After we finally got past that, the set by Lonnie Holley was probably the most unique of all the shows we've seen so far, both due to the intimate setting of The Bakery and the unusual backing of Holley's vocals and keyboards by guitarist Lee Bains II of the band Lee Bains III & The Glory Fire ("Real Alabama Rock & Roll") and, after the second or third song, by Mary Lattimore on harp.

Based on their stage banter, Holley has apparently known Bains for a long time, possibly since Bains' childhood. I believe this was Lattimore and Holley's first meeting, though.  The entire set - songs, lyrics, melodies and all - was completely improvised, a stream-of-consciousness conglomeration by three very intuitive and sensitive artists.  It was truly sublime.

Here's a small and very unrepresentative sample of the set that doesn't nearly do justice to the evening or the range of emotions and sounds produced.  It's like providing a few leaves from a salad at a massive smorgasbord as a representation of the entire feast.  But a little bit's better than nothing, we guess, so here you go.

Doesn't do justice, but it's not like we're going to record it and post in on YouTube and not include it here, amirite?  

Lonnie Holley has a film debuting at Sundance next year called I Snuck Off the Slave Ship and an album out called Mith.  We strongly recommend the latter and although we haven't yet seen the former, we're looking forward to it.

Seven Best Songs of 2018 - No. 5

How could you do a "Best Of'" list in almost any year without including Courtney Barnett?  Okay, she's only been recording since 2013 and amazingly has only released two full LPs, so that might limit the number of years we can provide year-end tributes, but it feels like we've known her for much longer than that and, with her confessional songwriting, the initimite lyrics, and the handful of EPs and collabs that filled the time before and between those two LPs, it feels like we've not only known her longer but even better than we actually do.  It's fitting, then, that Need A Little Time opens with the words, "I don’t know a lot about you but you seem to know a lot about me."

Like the Father John Misty song at No.6, this song isn't included in this list because it's necessarily her best track ever, but because it so perfectly encapsulates Barnett's charming oeuvre.  It's a great summation of the essence of her craft - the deadpan lyrics, the Australian accent, the song structure that veers from Beatle-esque to near-Nirvana, and the candor and openness that Barnett infuses into so much of her work. 

It's been interesting watching Barnett progress and grow as an artist these past five years or so.  Live, she still thrashes and rocks as hard as ever with an intensity only hinted at in her most recent recordings, which only makes the thrashing and rocking that much more exciting to behold.  She's a great artist with a great collection of songs and all kinds of potential.  We can't wait to hear what she comes up with next.

Bonus round - Here's Barnett performing a seemingly spontaneous set in Atlanta's Piedmont Park. Not a concert mind you, just her and her band.  We have no idea how they pulled this off - at first we guessed it must have been very early in the morning, but then we noticed that the shadows indicate that the sun is nearly directly overhead.  Anyway, the song is Charity and our favorite part ("Mediation just makes you more strung out") is at the 1:50 mark. If you leave the video playing, you can catch a live version of Take A Little Time and the rest of her set as the band moves on to a dock on the park's Lake Clara Meer.

Quote of the Day

"It's sort of an invisible shade of blue."

The Morning After

The Sports Desk had us up last night until well past 1:00 a.m. live blogging the five college football bowl games played yesterday, so we're a little tired out and not up to much posting here today. Coffee helped, and we're glad we had a Sunday to recuperate before going back to work tomorrow.

Normal posting will resume anon.

Seven Best Songs of 2018 - No. 6

Father John Misty (Josh Tillman) deserves some sort of award - possibly the Nobel Prize for Literature that Bob Dylan was so reluctant to accept, or maybe a MacArthur genius grant - for his string of LPs from Fear Fun in 2012  up to this year's God's Favorite Customer.  He has carved out a unique space in pop culture for himself and his music - simultaneously an indie-rock crooner, a sardonic pop star, and a manic-depressive sex symbol. The albums have been consistently inconsistent - some great songs on every one as well as some okay-that's-not-quite-filler-but-c'mon on each.  But you can always count on something thoughtful, something profound, and something self-effacing and sarcastic.  Hangout At the Gallows isn't Father John's best song, or even necessarily the best on God's Favorite Customer, but it's the perfect opening cut for a Misty LP, featuring a great hook that pulls you in and virtually compels you to listen to the whole rest of the album.

Anyway, whatever, it's Number 6 on our Seven Best list for 2018, and if you're still not convinced about FJM, check this out from last year:

Dreaming of the Masters

Hora Decubitus ("At Bedtime") is basically a reworking of Charles Mingus' previous E's Flat Ah's Flat Too and can function as a basic primer on Mingus' music.  The song features his driving bass lines, his carefully orchestrated, almost-Ellingtonesque compositions, and the freedom that he regularly gave his sidemen to improvise. My favorite passage is probably Eric Dolphy jumping in at the 2:08 mark.

But the essence of Mingus' best performances is how he regularly pushed the band outside of their comfort zone to make them jam that much harder, and then, just when it sounded like all hell was about to break loose, he gets them to all suddenly snap back into place.  Listen to how Moanin', as posthumously recorded by the Mingus Big Band, contains alternating passages of tight ensemble playing and near anarchy.

That bad-ass baritone sax solo at the opening is by Ronnie Cuber. 

No doubt, Mingus drove the band hard. Not to speak badly of the departed, but he was reportedly moody and temperamental, and regularly terrorized his band with his demanding intensity.  We've hard stories that at least one sideman was so terrified of him, he would pack a handgun to practice sessions.  Live,  Mingus was probably the first musician to ever drop the mic on stage and the first to smash a piano with an axe live on stage because it sounded so bad. Once, in the middle of an interview in his home, he pulled out a shotgun, aimed it at the ceiling, and fired it indoors. Mingus was the OG. Here's a way-too-short clip from a live, late-70s performance that hints at his ferocity.

Our Week In Lunches

Our lunches over the past five work days:

Wednesday - Panang Curry (Thai)
Tuesday - Jambalaya and Po' Boy (Creole)
Monday - Dim Sum (Chinese)
Friday - Chicken Pho (Vietnamese)
Thursday - Chicken Burrito (Mexican)

Enjoying the culinary potential of the new office location.  Eatin' good in the 'hood!

Seven Best Songs of 2018 - No. 7

We'll leave it up to you - is the fact that we have seven best songs for 2018 a reflection that the year has been so flat that we couldn't find 10 songs for a year-end list, or was it so good that we couldn't contain ourselves to 5?

The truth, at least to us, is actually both.  Let's face it, 2018 isn't going to be remembered as one of the great years for rock or other music.  The indie renaissance of 2005-2015 is over, and rock music actually fell by the wayside this year as both pop music and hip-hop have ascended to the top of the charts.  No "Best Of" list we've seen so far has convinced us yet that this year produced ten, or even five, albums we'll fondly remember 10 years from now.  

Having said that, if your ears were wide open, it was still possible to find a lot of good music, just like it always has been and probably always will be.  All music, without exception, is a direct expression of the buddha-dharma.  You just had to dig a little deeper in 2018 than you did in, say, 2008, to reach that nirvana.

So, starting our list, here's our Number 7 for 2018.  We'll venture to say that not too many people have been following Marc Ribot's Ceramic Dog, or that many were aware that they released an album early in 2018 called YRU Still Here, or that a second album was released last September called Songs of Resistance 1942-2018 featuring Tom Waits, Steve Earle, Tift Merritt, Sam Amidon, Syd Straw and Meshell Ndegeoeocello.

To be honest, we knew Ribot from his '80's work with Tom Waits (Swordfish Trombone, Frank's Wild Years, etc.) but sort of lost track of him after that until we ran into him at this year's Big Ears Festival. His Muslim Jewish Resistance is exactly the unapologetic protest song we needed in 2018, and he electrified the Big Ears audience both with that performance and with a syncopated rant in the middle of his set.  

  

Ribot is clearly what the mainstream missed this year (and other years, too, to be sure) and exemplifies what can be found when one looks a little deeper than the surface.

We'll periodically post the rest of our Top Seven (or so) list over the remainder of the year. 

Black Ice Warning

Notice issued by: National Weather Service, Atlanta - GA, US

...ICY SPOTS AND BLACK ICE EXPECTED TONIGHT AND TUESDAY MORNING...

Is the term "black ice" racist?  Why do they have to call something "black" in order for it to sound scary?  "Black plague."  "Black listed."  "Black ice."  It looks pretty white to me.

TEMPERATURES TONIGHT WILL DROP INTO THE UPPER 20S TO LOWER 30S ACROSS NORTH AND PORTIONS OF CENTRAL GEORGIA. THE COLDER TEMPERATURES COMBINED WITH MOISTURE LEFT ON SURFACES FROM RECENT PRECIPITATION WILL LEADS TO SLICK OR ICY SPOTS ON ROADS AS WELL AS OTHER SURFACES SUCH AS PORCHES, DECKS, AND SIDEWALKS TUESDAY MORNING.

It's nice to know the government is watching out for our porches and decks.

THE MOST LIKELY LOCATIONS FOR BLACK ICE ON ROADWAYS WILL BE SECONDARY OR UNTREATED ROADS AS WELL AS BRIDGES AND OVERPASSES.

I hate to break it to the National Weather Service, but down here in Georgia, all the roads are "untreated."  

THE THREATS FOR BLACK ICE AND SLICK SPOTS WILL DIMINISH THROUGH THE MORNING HOURS AS TEMPERATURES ARE EXPECTED TO WARM THROUGH TUESDAY AFTERNOON TO WELL ABOVE THE FREEZING MARK. USE CAUTION AND ALLOW EXTRA TIME TO REACH YOUR DESTINATION IF TRAVELING LATE TONIGHT AND TUESDAY MORNING.

In other words, it will be cold and icy in the morning, but will warm up during the day.  Businesses and government offices are already announcing late starts tomorrow morning, and on the plus side, my office won't open until 10:00 a.m. so we get to sleep in a little bit.  

Time Is Too Short To Miss So Many Sights

". . . Was told yesterday I had not won the National Book Award.  I felt some relief as I have no equipment for prize-winning - no small talk, no time for idle graciousness and required public show, no clothes either or desire for front.  I realized I have no yen for any experience (even a triumph) that blocks observation, when I am the observed instead of the observer.  Time is too short to miss so many sights." - Dawn Powell, 1963 

And with those simple words, novelist Dawn Powell defines the difference between an artist and a celebrity.

beak>

The band Beak〉formed in 2009 but this is their WDW debut, a new instrumental track Allé Sauvage, featuring a live performance collaboration with video artist John Minton (Portishead, Savages).

All the desks here at WDW are in agreement that this is pretty impressive.

Dreaming of the Masters

 Live in Stockholm, 1963.  Any further words are unnecessary.

In other news, Georgia filmmaker Tyler Perry just gave a Christmas present back to the community by going to two Atlanta-area Walmart stores and paying off the balances of every lay-away account there, effectively bankrolling their Christmas dreams.  It reportedly cost over $400,000 but Perry just said that he was just thankful that he was in a position that he could afford to do that. 

Compare his actions to the so-called "multi-millionaire" currently occupying the Oval Office.  Do you think he would ever donate $400,000 to the community just as a way of saying "thank you" for their support?  Do you think he ever performed a thankless act of gratitude in his life?

Tyler Perry for President!  And Mariah Parker for V.P.!

Good Morning!

We've been playing Fallout 76 for two weeks now and can confirm that the game is every bit as bad as all the reviews have been saying.  And by "bad" we don't mean "good" bad, or "bad-ass" bad, we mean buggy and boring and unrelentingly banal bad.

But having said that, we can also confidently report that we'll probably be playing  at least another two weeks, probably through the end of the year.  After two weeks, we're only up to Level 24, and we've met other players on line up to Level 70 and even Level 181, and the later told us he's seen players up above Level 200.  We don't know how long or how many hours they had to have been playing to get over Level 100 and that's not necessarily our goal, but it does show that at least someone somewhere has stuck with this frustrating mess of a game long enough to rack up some serious points.

Frustrating mess - the game keeps crashing on us, not because our computer can't keep up with it but because Bethesda's servers can't keep up with the on-line game.  Frustrating mess - the developers obviously haven't thought through the dynamics of day-to-day playing or what the actual experience would feel like, as they placed such ridiculously low limits on the amount of stuff you can store and carry that you constantly have to scrounge around to find food, water, ammo, and the all-important duct tape.  You can't store it - at least much of it - and food goes bad and weapons fall into disrepair with time.  Bethesda finally released a patch yesterday that increases your storage capacity by 50%, but it's still at least 50% too low and why even have a cap at all - in Fallout 4 there was no limit on storage capacity.

Many nights we find it difficult to motivate ourselves to even start playing, but once we're in, we get so caught up in the endless cycle of mundane tasks needed to survive (collect some water, find wood for the campfire to boil the water, boil the water, drink it, then start looking for more water and wood, etc., ad nauseum) that we can't stop playing.  We've all but given up on the so-called quests, most of which are just "go to some random location and then kill or collect something," and at this point we're just randomly wandering around now, killing and collecting things without participating in quests just to do the same thing.

Will the game get better at higher levels?  Will Bethesda release more patches and improve the game experience?  It's hard to say, but meanwhile we're playing the game like we live in real life - trapped in a virtual reality from which we can't escape, going through the motions of survival merely because we can't face the notion of what things are like outside of that reality.

Update:  Despite our obvious ambivalence, we just logged on to play Fallout 76 and got an error message that the servers are down for maintenance.  How long will this go on?  Minutes? Hours? Days?  Weeks?  They didn't say, just "You can't play now."  Nice.

Insane In the Membrane, Part Whatever

We've been working in offices like this one since the early mid-80s, and Monday we got a new one - the one above.  The company we work for relocated (translation: we were unsuccessful negotiating a new lease with our old landlord) so we moved about five miles over to a new location.  It's a much easier commute for us even though it's still outside the protective membrane (Highway I-285).  It's a direct, pretty-much straight-line drive through fewer traffic choke points, so our commuting time is significantly reduced. Here in Atlanta, commuting time is a major quality-of-life issue. Also, for extra added bonus points, it's near a concentrated cluster of ethnic Asian (Vietnamese, Cantonese and Thai) restaurants, so we can look forward to a lot of new culinary adventures.

The football pool was mailed out today.  If you didn't get a copy, it's probably because we're not related by blood or marriage.  Sorry . . .

Speaking of offices, though, rest in peace George H.W. Bush.  We suspect that regardless of what the medical records say, you died because you were so appalled at the butt monkey now occupying your old office. Also, while on the subject, we talked with a gentleman of color the other day, who unironically told us that his favorite U.S. President was, wait for it, Ronald Reagan.  So, yeah, diversity, man.

Baby Snakes

Because babies are good, and babies are strong, and babies are the best of everything. - Hardy Fox

The first snake of December on my driveway yesterday afternoon.  Here in Georgia, early December is the peak of foliage season and of leaf-raking, and we found this little critter under some leaves on our driveway.

Another sign of the season - the football pool comes out tomorrow!  We're almost done with it but we want to check on a few things and see how it looks to us tomorrow before we send it out.

December 2018 - who ever thought we'd travel so far into the future?  The best part of it is that we're now almost halfway through the Pumpernickel Presidency. Actually, we doubt that Pumpernickel will make it the full four years, so it's probably more accurate to say halfway through the Pumpernickel-Spice regime.

Happy/Sad

Happy:  Late last week, the City of Atlanta finally removed one of the last remaining legacies of the unpleasantries of the 19th Century, and changed the name of Confederate Avenue to "United Avenue."  The flag was corrected back in the 90s and most of the Civil War statues are now gone (although there are still a few of former segregationist Governors around the Capitol).  And then there's Stone Mountain, but that's a State Park and there's nothing the City can do about it (ditto the Capitol).  So Atlanta now has a Jimmy Carter Presidential Library, the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Site, and monuments tributing Rep. John Lewis and Nelson Mandela, and no longer has a Confederate Avenue.  Progress . . . 

Sad:  As you know, Georgia lost the SEC Championship Game.  We're still recovering.  Georgia was supposed to lose by two touchdowns according to the odds-makers and no one really gave them a chance.  Alabama won all their games this season by more than 20 points and in fact have trailed during games only once all season and only for a few minutes at that before regaining the lead.   But the Bulldogs played great most of the game, leading by as many as 14 points until late in the 4th.  Alabama played better only briefly, but enough to win the game by a single touchdown, which made the loss that much more bitter.  We came SO close.  We could gripe about questionable officiating that reversed a Georgia touchback to an Alabama touchdown, and an even more questionable coaching decision to fake a punt in a situation where it wasn't really called for and the Alabama defense clearly knew it was a fake, but that wouldn't make any difference.  The real question now is do we cheer for the SEC's Alabama in the Playoff game, or swallow our pride and forget the lessons learned in the past and cheer for Chokelahoma? 

From the Geology Desk

Yesterday, a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck north of Anchorage, Alaska at 8:29 a.m. local time. The earthquake was caused by the tectonic motion of the Pacific Plate slipping beneath the North American Plate along the Aleutian arc.

The Aleutian arc extends approximately 3,000 km from the Gulf of Alaska in the east to Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula in the west and marks the region where the Pacific plate sinks into the mantle beneath the North America plate. This process, subduction, created the Aleutian Islands and the deep, offshore Aleutian Trench. The region exhibits intense volcanic activity and has a history of megathrust earthquakes.

Most of the seismicity along the Aleutian arc results from the thrust faulting that occurs at the interface between the Pacific and North America plates. Slippage along this interface generates the devastating megathrust earthquakes. Normal faulting occur in the outer rise region of the Aleutian arc due to bending of the oceanic Pacific plate as it enters the Aleutian trench. Additionally, deformation of the overriding North America plate generates shallow crustal earthquakes.

The March 28, 1964 Prince William Sound earthquake is still the second largest earthquake (magnitude 9.2) ever recorded in the world. The event resulted in a rupture extending from Prince William Sound to the southern end of Kodiak Island. Extensive damage was recorded in Kenai, Moose Pass, and Kodiak, but significant shaking was felt over a large region of Alaska, parts of western Yukon Territory, and British Columbia.  Property damage was the largest in Anchorage, as a result of both shaking from the main shock and from the ensuing landslides. This megathrust earthquake also triggered a devastating tsunami that caused damage along the Gulf of Alaska, the West Coast of the United States, and Hawaii.

Amazingly and most fortunately, so far no deaths have been reported from the earthquake.  It appears that after the events of 1964, Alaskans have been prepared for these events and building codes require magnitude 9.0 standards.  See the good things that happen when you listen to the scientists, climate change deniers?   Also, no tsunamis were generated by the quake.  Possibly most amazingly of all, that white pitcher never fell off the table in the Anchorage Courthouse.

We're glad there wasn't more tragedy associated with the massive earthquake.  Now we can focus for the rest of the day on the truly important matter: Georgia versus Alabama in the SEC Championship Game!