2009 Was The Sort of Year That Passed In One Month Increments

Music For Infants: My preliminary field notes indicate that babies, by and large, don’t give a shit about music. However, there are two exceptions in Vashti Bunyan and David Tibet, particularly Sleep Has His House. Weirds me the hell out, it does. Not because Sleep is a bad album, or because it is rightfully considered one of Current 93‘s finest works and this indicates supernatural prescience, but because it’s about a dead father, sung by his living son.

But it soothes the savage beast, and so I worry not.

This past year was one of preparation and rediscovery. Health and Death and yet another triumphant Boredoms experience. Throbbing Gristle, set in motion during my own infancy, played “Discipline” in an old Masonic Temple and drew a circle around what I imagined my youth to be. Will Oldham demonstrated extreme American exceptionalism while millions inexplicably mourned a dead pedophile; Antony showed an overwhelming capacity for international superstardom, hemmed in only by being a beautiful woman who doesn’t look like one.

Akron Family – Love is Simple

If their debut album was a small boat floating down a creek on a humid summer night, and their second album was a slightly corny campfire sing-along, then Love is Simple is Akron Family running a riverboat that only allows you to gamble on frog races.

Now, does that make any damn sense? No, it does not. But it’s true.

“Ed is a Portal” – ok? There are something like seven musical styles in this song, and over those six minutes you get drum machines and synths, the campground vocal harmonies they love so much, twangy geetars, and some other stuff too. I mean, it basically comes down to this – do you like good things? Yes?

Then you shall like this.

Akron Family @ Tonic (1st Set) – September 24, 2006

I normally don’t say anything to hecklers at shows, especially when they’re drunk. But after the third or fourth outburst from this Scott Baio looking douchebag – he must have spent all week thinking up “how about less poise, more noise!?!” – even the band was gently insulting him. For whatever reason, on this night, I asked “how about a little shut the fuck up?” In retrospect, shushing would have been more appropriate, for what followed was silly and somewhat pointless. But I did the right thing (hitting tiny drunks is literally and figuratively beneath me) and so enjoyed the rest of the evening.