Break It Down for Me Sucka: Oh Those Bad Girls with the Voices of Angels {Welcome, Keren Anne. I Guess You're Just What I Needed.}

Image From The Guardian (Great Interview, Too.)

Song of the Day: "My Name is Trouble."

And Break for Lyrics

My name is trouble my first name’s a mess
No need to greet me I’m here to confess
But if you let me hold you I won’t hold my breath

My chase is endless I tend to obsess
No game lives up to my need to possess
But if you let me hold you I won’t hold my breath
And if you let me love you I will love you to death

I'm petrified of emptiness another side of loneliness
Will always tend to break me in two
If you were to come back to me, in pieces or a melody
There couldn’t be a better way through

My name is trouble my first name’s a mess
Born to deceive you brought up to redress
And if you let me hold you I won’t hold my breath

But if you make me need you I will need you less
I'm petrified of emptiness another side of loneliness
Will always tend to break me in two
If were to come back to me, in pieces or a melody
There couldn’t be a better way through

My name is Trouble my first name’s a mess
No need to greet me I’m here to confess
But if you let me hold you I won’t hold my breath
And if you let me love you I will love you to death
And if you let me hold you I won’t hold my breath
And if you let me love you I will love you to death

People Are a Mess

But isn't it nice to know you're not alone? In the vein of Fiest and St. Vincent and Karen O. and even Lana Del Rey and all those other Dorothy Parker girls who are more beautiful but just as dangerous and just as witty, this Keren Anne minx has my full, undivided attention. If you missed out like I did, I hope she does something for you.

And A Gift...A Surprise, Non?

Monday Becomes Eclectic (Late, Late Version)

{Dish It}

Summer Vegetable Curry via 101Cookbooks

{Eye Candy}

"Then you look at her and smile a smile your dissembling face will remember until the day you die. Baby, you say, baby, this is part of my novel. This is how you lose her."
Junot Diaz, This is How You Lose Her

{Don't You Stop}

The most sophisticated people I know--
inside they are all children. - Jim Henson 

{Transcend}

{Go Ahead, Laugh}

Visit Hyperbole and a Half for the Source=More Laughs

{Cats, Of Course}

Banjo or Freakout: I Choose Freakout

My friend Angela sent me this. The song is beautiful, and the video absolute perfection. It's three o'clock, I'm 15 and hanging out alone after school. Bring on the nostalgic ache.

Pop, Rock and Lock

Pink, Bunny Rabbits, and Florence.

I wrote my second piece on music ladies of 2010. This time it's about dance music and indie rock. Read it on Synconation. I'm having fun now.

The Madonna-Cyndi Lauper Theory

Read about it on Synconation, where I get to write about music again.

Synconation: Old-Fashioned Music Bloggery

Records and Players=Swoon.

WILD FLAG

I'm very excited to be a part of what our editor is calling a brand-new music blog that will make each contributor (myself included) LEGENDS. We can have audacious hope, can't we? Mainly, it's a labor of love put together by a bunch of wonderful writers who are incurable romantics when it comes to music. Diverse, funny, touching, and fun, Synconation is definitely a place you can visit to learn about great music new and old, complete with live reviews, top-5s, songs of the day, featured articles and song battles. I'm honored and excited to be a part of it. My first piece will run November 12. It's about this great new band, WILD FLAG. I'd love it if you checked it out.

Love.

More Frailer than the Flowers, These Precious Hours

Play this at my wedding. Play this at my funeral. Play this when the world feels like a shark's bite.

Dance Music.

Spent three almost three days writing about the city of San Luis Obispo.Couldn't get this song out of my head.

Dance Music from Sunset Tree, by The Mountain Goats,

All right.
I'm on Johnson Avenue
in San Luis Obispo.
I'm five years old or six
maybe.

And indications that there's
something wrong with our new house
trip down the wire twice daily.

I'm in the living room watching
the Watergate hearings while
my stepfather yells at my mother.
He throws a glass
straight at her head
and I dash upstairs to take cover...
Listen close to the little record player on the floor
So this is what  the volume knobs for.

I listen to Dance Music. Dance Music...

MaryLouLord

Some Jingle Jangle Morning. Sweet Nostalgia. Had the Best 7-Inch Version of This.

Thank You and Wow and Yes!

Nothing is as important as a likeable narrator.
Nothing holds a story together better. Ethan Canin

Thank you to all of you lovely and sweet and supportive new visitors and followers from Kelly's blog. And of course, Kelly, thank you for being you. Welcome! I am so happy to have you here, and I really do love you. As you may notice, I'm not always as serious as all that, and I love cats, and funny, and design, and home stuff, too. This last week has been my first experience of all that wonderful connection and support from all over the world right here on the internet! It feels good. Really good. Inspiring. Helpful. Now that the intention is on the virtual page to set those stories free, I must do it. It's follow-up time. Again, even I am without the words to articulate how thankful I am to you for taking the time to read and to bouy up my heart with your kind words and attention, and for having such amazing, inspiring worlds of creativity and love on your blogs, shops, sites, even in your faces! I look forward to delving into them and communicating with all of you. Yay! Tonight, I so look forward to seeing the Decemberists live in concert at The St. Augustine Ampitheatre. Never seen the Decemberists and haven't seen a show at the lovely, wood-surrounded ampitheater since I was in one more than 20 years ago. I'm bringing my mom and we're sort of dressing alike. It will be magical. We have center orchestra seats!!!!!!!! Love and Light, Light, Light...Ama Livia

{Image Sources: Freckled Girl with Butterfly Tattoo: We Heart It via Freckled Flickr; Smoking Girl by Lina Scheynius via We Heart It via Lina Scheynius Flickr; The Decemberists by Autumn DeWilde; Mom and Daughter Illustration by Little Brown Pen: We Heart It via Little Brown Pen}

Prince's seminal Purple Rain album is 25 years old. For my 10th birthday, I received a boom box, a Purple Rain cassette, and a friend-filled trip to see the movie in the theater. I have a very deep love for Prince. I am buying this issue of Spin, which commemorates the fact that Purple Rain is now an antique with a (free) eponymous collection of covers, and have almost decided to throw myself a Purple Rain themed birthday party. The End.

{Purplish Rain tracklisting: 1. "Let's Go Crazy" RIVERBOAT GAMBLERS 2. "Take Me With U" SHARON JONES & THE DAP-KINGS 3. "The Beautiful Ones" FOL CHEN 4. "Computer Blue" OF MONTREAL 5. "Darling Nikki" CHAIRLIFT 6. "When Doves Cry" THE TWILIGHT SINGERS 7. "I Would Die 4 U" MARIACHI EL BRONX 8. "Baby I'm a Star" CRAIG WEDREN 9. "Purple Rain" LAVENDER DIAMOND}

Reckoning was Re-Released Today

There is a black Memorex tape somewhere. Its label, once covered in Sharpie lines of many colors, the words, "REM reckoning" rendered in pop-art parlance, is likely fallen, like old, old paperback paper, crisp like an autumn leaf, is long fallen off that casette tape, if even the tape itself exists at all. For years, at night, in the morning, in light and in darkness, windows opened and closed, I listened to this radio-recorded album, always, always, always, for years and years, till casettes were a thing of the past, CDs took over, and college began, and we all, we all loved these songs, loved them still, loved them sweetly. I see kudzu. I feel rain on mah head. I envision old overalls covering our gorgeous bodies, the boys with their hair so long. Druggy summers. Late nights writing poetry. Early mornings sleeping still and small and so unimaginably young. The scent of jasmine coming in through the walls. The fig tree out back. The buried cat. The potluck dinners. The piles of dishes. The Cow Haus. Waterworks. Vinyl Fever. Hills. Train tracks. Ah, youth. "Something about listening to REM makes my soul do a wild dance..." those are the words of a KUT (Austin, TX) DJ introducing this album, played on the air in its entirety when it was first released in 1984. Recorded onto a cassette tape by my father...the tape stolen by his daughter...and the daughter who heard those cut-off words prior to every listen of these magical songs, over and over again, from the age of ten on. I'd say, 25 years later, I still agree. Something about early REM still makes my soul do a wild dance. Damn.

You Know. They Call Them Killer Whales.

Just So I Don't Forget

I'm planning on purchasing these records:
1.) SCORE! 20 Years of Merge Records: The Covers

2.) PJ Harvey & John Parrish: A Woman A Man Walked By3.) Airborne Toxic Event 4.) Marianne Faithfull: Songs for Music Lovers5.) Ida Maria: Fortress 'Round My Heart

Totally Gay for this Lady

If you've never heard her voice, listen here. NPR's got her full album available for an exclusive preview! Middle Cyclone comes out tomorrow. Buy it at your local record store.

Leonard Cohen Afterworld

I've been in a Leonard Cohen mood this morning. He's going on tour. Must. See. Him. Hear that voice live from his golden lungs to my dirty, deaf old ears. Maybe it will stir something alive in me and I'll live in the kind of one foot in the heavens life Mr. Cohen's songs evoke. Lyrics from my one of my favorite Leonard Cohen songs of the moment... "I lit a thin green candle/to make you jealous of me/The room just filled up with mosquitos/They heard that my body was free." and "Take this longing from my tongue/And all of the things I've done wrong..." and "The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor/And there's a mighty judgement coming/But I may be wrong." A poet who sings. What else is better? Tell me.

Redemption Song + Happy Birthday Bob Marley

I have a very clear memory of listening to this song in my girlfriend Barbara's orange VW bus. We were rastabouting, then got quiet, turned the volume all the way up and solemnly sang every word to this great song, sunlight pouring in on our glowing skin, all of us staring straight ahead (lovingly looking from one to another at various moments), and Barbara Joy just driving on, up A1A, salt water air rolling over our heads and into our lungs. Today is Barb Marley's birthday. Praise Jah for a soul (and a voice) such as his.

Redemption Song, Bob Marly, circa 1979

Old pirates, yes, they rob I;
Sold I to the merchant ships,
Minutes after they took I
From the bottomless pit.
But my hand was made strong
By the hand of the Almighty.
We forward in this generation
Triumphantly.
Won't you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
'Cause all I ever have:
Redemption songs,
Redemption songs.

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our minds.
Have no fear for atomic energy,
'Cause none of them can stop the time.
How long shall they kill our prophets,
While we stand aside and look? Ooh!
Some say it's just a part of it:
We've got to fulfill the Book.

Won't you help to sing
These songs of freedom?
'Cause all I ever have:
Redemption songs,
Redemption songs,
Redemption songs.
---
/Guitar break/
---
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our mind.
Wo! Have no fear for atomic energy,
'Cause none of them-a can-a stop-a the time.
How long shall they kill our prophets,
While we stand aside and look?
Yes, some say it's just a part of it:
We've got to fulfill the book.
Won't you have to sing
These songs of freedom? -
'Cause all I ever had:
Redemption songs -
All I ever had:
Redemption songs:
These songs of freedom,
Songs of freedom.

One love,
Ama

Happy Friday! Hello Nostalgic Distraction

That's great, it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, an aeroplane -
Lenny Bruce is not afraid. Eye of a hurricane, listen to yourself churn -
world serves its own needs, regardless of your own needs. Feed it up a knock,
speed, grunt no, strength no. Ladder structure clatter with fear of height,
down height. Wire in a fire, represent the seven games in a government for
hire and a combat site. Left her, wasn't coming in a hurry with the furies
breathing down your neck. Team by team reporters baffled, trump, tethered
crop. Look at that low plane! Fine then. Uh oh, overflow, population,
common group, but it'll do. Save yourself, serve yourself. World serves its
own needs, listen to your heart bleed. Tell me with the rapture and the
reverent in the right - right. You vitriolic, patriotic, slam, fight, bright
light, feeling pretty psyched.

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

Six o'clock - TV hour. Don't get caught in foreign tower. Slash and burn,
return, listen to yourself churn. Lock him in uniform and book burning,
blood letting. Every motive escalate. Automotive incinerate. Light a candle,
light a motive. Step down, step down. Watch a heel crush, crush. Uh oh,
this means no fear - cavalier. Renegade and steer clear! A tournament,
a tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives
and I decline.

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.

The other night I tripped a nice continental drift divide. Mount St. Edelite.
Leonard Bernstein. Leonid Breshnev, Lenny Bruce and Lester Bangs.
Birthday party, cheesecake, jelly bean, boom! You symbiotic, patriotic,
slam, but neck, right? Right.

It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it.
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine...fine...

(It's time I had some time alone)

Holy Effing Hell! In St. Augustine?

The National, Devotchka, Broken Social Scene, Bad Brains, Lucero, Ra Ra Riot, Dave Dondero, and that's just the stuff I can read. Also for a good cause. Harvest of Hope Music Festival. In St. Augustine? Hell Yes!