Grabbin' Grizzly Bears

The Dying Breed That Is Tangible Music: Record Store Day 2009

2011-12-09T14:25:00.001-06:00

Author's note: This piece was written for the 2nd annual National Record Store Day in 2009. It's still as relevant as ever.

There isn’t enough nitrous oxide in Stearns County to make getting off thistwelve-hundred dollar sheepskin rug worth it, I thought. After the hard stuffwore off, a giant sparkly unicorn balloon full of laughing gas at sunriseseemed like the only normal thing to do.

“How many cartridgesdo you think it would take to fill up a unicorn balloon?” Joe asked the sexstore attendant who was packing up two cases of nitrous cartridges for us. Hewas in his twenties and had been working the overnight shift.

“Uh…what do youmean?” he responded.

“You know, a silverunicorn-shaped balloon you’d give to an eleven-year-old girl for her birthday…”Joe attempted to explain, the vessels in his eyes looking like they were aboutto spray blood all over the glass display case housing hundred dollar Blue-Raypornos.

This wasn’t the timeor place to mention the words “eleven-year-old girl”, I thought.

“Umm, three?” thepoor sap guessed. He was wrong; it took seven.

That was, of course,before my lips turned a permanent shade of blue and my brain was muddled into athoughtless paste of exhaustion. It was eleven in the morning now, and sixteenconsecutive hours of reckless drug use was beginning to take its toll. I nowregretted the nitrous, and so did Joe. I’m sure he was also regretting theagreement to travel to the Electric Fetus for the second annual National RecordStore Day—an event created to shoot business and traffic into the vein of adying industry.

We walked abouttwelve blocks through St. Cloud’s central nerve, surprised by the hustle andbustle of a Saturday just before noon. Public daylight was somewhat of amystery to us on weekend mornings. Sidewalks were covered in napkins andscattered decks of playing cards and all sorts of random, drunken filth.

Our nerves were shotand social interactions were something to avoid at all costs. The public scenedidn’t want to deal with us—or rather, didn’t know how to—when suddenly, avoice shouted, “Did you guys make this mess last night?”

Awoman was leaning out a glass door of a downtown business, staring at us likeshe had been waiting all morning. I felt guilty, but I know I didn’t make themess—we were only downtown for about twenty minutes the night before, and thatwas for the drugs.

I dug into my pocket and felt a thin sheet of plastic.Pulling it out, I saw it was the ace of spades, another curious mystery fromthe night before. It was on the ground, scattered throughout the sidewalks amongfifty-one of its near-identical siblings. So, if anything, I was only guilty ofcleaning the mess from last night.

“No ma’am, this couldn’t have been us,” I said, “westayed home last night.”

“It must have been those dirty drunks,” Joe added.

“Isn’t this the only place to have fun though?” thewoman asked. I couldn’t tell if she meant it rhetorically.

“Apparently not,” I said, “turns out you can still havefun at home.” Indeed you can.

We continued on, only a block away from the Fetus. I hadno idea what to expect—whether the place would be crawling with bearded stonersand unaffected hipsters not-so-violently shoving their way to the front of thestore to be the first to buy the rare, live Pavement vinyl from Germany—or ifwe’d be the only ones in the place.

We finished our cigarettes and stepped inside, tryingour hardest to walk and look like decent, law-abiding citizens. The smell ofincense through the northwest door was suffocating. I removed my sunglasses fora brief second before I saw my reflection in display case housing pipes,causing me to finally realize sleepless nights of steady drinking and drug usemade me look like a zombie. The orange lenses on my BluBlockers gave me a falsesense of security, knowing full-well that I looked equally as ridiculouswearing sunglasses indoors—but at least the normal people couldn’t see my eyes,my undoing.

As it turned out, the Fetus was no busier than usual.Five or six shoppers browsed the “everything-made-of-hemp” clothes sectionwhile some punk gazed longingly at the obnoxious bong he and his roommates havebeen pooling their pizza delivery money towards for weeks. There was only oneshopper in the actual music side of the store—an effeminate hipster, completewith too-tight jeans and a denim jacket from hell, wearing a striped scarf anda beret. Yes, an actual fucking beret. He was in the corner, obviously lookingat jazz on vinyl

We were all a collective representation of the recordstore customer base—music junkies, regular junkies, and twenty-somethingslooking for strange kicks on Friday nights with their friends. And the recordstore itself represented its place in modern times: barren and desolate, barelykept alive by the remaining handful of people who shop there, even on its rallyday. We were it…we were Record StoreDay. But at least we all knew where to find one another.

In the past five years, over a 1,000 local record storeshave shut down throughout the nation, sent to the glue factory by onlineretailers like Amazon and iTunes, leaving only two-thirds of the hometown shopsstanding. People don’t give a shit about CDs or vinyl anymore (sans hipstersand collectors). Why hold something real that requires moving and talking and interacting, when you can use yourcomputer to magically make The Smiths appear on a little computer box that fitsin your pocket?

But who am I to judge? I’m just as guilty as the rest ofthem, hanging stores like this by their feet and bleeding them dry. It was onlyhours before that we were listening to The Postal Service’s Give Up in its entirety a half dozentimes in the dark. It came from the little black digital music box in mypocket, too. The only difference is that I bought the actual CD from a realperson in a record store. Or was it Target? Like I said, I’m in no way part ofthe solution.

Why was itlike this though? Why was there only one person looking at actual music on this supposedly popularized national celebration inthe only local record store in aseventy-mile radius? And why the fuckdid I get off that plush, white sheepskin rug for this?

There were no motives, no incentives, for any of it. Notfor a customer base as small as the indie record store’s. To be honest, I’msurprised this place has been able to stay afloat in this awful city for thislong. iPod-toting, iTunes-downloading rubes have been destroying this town’s,and every other town in America’s sense of community to the ground. So what wassupposed to bring people in today—freepopcorn and lemonade?

Other stores nationwide had incentive, probably becausethose cities have the customer base to supplyincentive. In-store appearances from Ani DiFranco and Franz Ferdinand popped upin bigger cities while The Boss and Elvis Costello, among a whole handful ofothers released limited-edition vinyls that’ll probably be pirated online byMonday. The Electric Fetus in Minneapolis had local band, The Bad Plus, performand ex-Soundgarden frontman, Chris Cornell, for a meet and greet.

But there was nothing real to offer in St. Cloud’sstore. Nothing really worth a trip into mid-afternoon sobriety.

“It’s actually been pretty busy in here so far,” Dan,the music aficionado behind the counter told me.

Busy? Ithought. I knew him and he knew me, and I don’t know who he thought he wastrying to fool. He’s soft-spoken and excited about the day, I can tell—apassionate lover of music. If he weren’t working today, he’d be on the otherside of the cash register. That, or probably getting drunk.

“Is it supposed to get busier?” Joe asked.

“Yeah, it should be. We’re having some giveaways laterand we have a couple of rare albums on vinyl,” he said.

“Like the live Pavement album?” I said, glancing at the displaywall next to the delicate, beret-wearing hipster.

“Yeah, it’s from Germany in 1988.” Our conversationstalled. We stood in silence for what felt like thirty seconds, looking at theshelves as if they would talk. Was our level of dumbness that noticeable and painful to deal with, or was there really thatlittle the store had to offer?

They also supposedly had free food and drink, somethingour bodies were desperate for, but it was nowhere in sight. Joe and I didn’tstick around to find out if they were handing out green brownies or electricKool-Aid later on though—the lull of emptiness and overpowering weight ofgravity was killing us. We were struggling just like the record industry.

“Owning a record store is like cornering the market onslide rulers,” Joe said walking back down the street.

As much as I hate to admit it, the bastard was right.Trying to keep your head above water in a business so outdated andunder-appreciated was a lost cause. We can’t do anything without a computer infront of us now—we don’t need actual, tangiblethings to satisfy our needs anymore. We don’t talk to people with our realvoices anymore, we don’t go to stores to buy things and we don’t take the time tonotice anything. There’re computerprograms and the Internet for all of those things now. If you want a book or aposter, you buy it on Amazon and read it on your godforsaken Kindle or iPad;your music is from iTunes or pirated as a torrent; you can even go groceryshopping online. And fuck that. Honestly, fuckthat. Even talking to your ownfriends seems to be a hassle in real-life today; that’s what Facebook isfor.

And what about album artwork? Do we really not careabout this integral part of the music: the cover? There’s something aboutbuying an album and being able to actually holdit in your hands and even display it if you want. Would you buy a Monet or aPicasso that you could only look at on your computer monitor? Absolutely not.You’d have to be a Scientologist to think that irrationally. Think about theclassic album covers throughout history: TheFreewheelin’ Bob Dylan cover of Dylan and his then-girlfriend arm in arm, walking down a street in Greenwich Village; The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road covers are as much modern art as the music itself; ifsomeone had never heard Nirvana, they’d still be able to tell you there’s anaked baby’s dick on the cover of Nevermind.Why would we want to miss out on these things? Why just disregard them as ifthey held no aesthetic value?

We were running out of steam, so we sucked down anothercigarette and walked a few blocks to The White Horse for lunch and a beer; oneof the few things you can still do without a computer screen in front of you.Everything was starting to wear off and we felt awful. The beer provided onlymild satisfaction—from its wetness—since the alcohol in it no longer served anypurpose. We forcibly choked down our sandwiches and walked back to our friends’house, where we committed all sorts of moral wrongs over the past fifteenhours. Joe’s girlfriend laid uncomfortably awaiting our return in the darkness.

There was a sense of comfort and safety in that dimliving room. Good music was still coming out of the speakers, as it was beforewe left for the Fetus. It was that music that served as the generator for our sleeplessendeavor the night before. That,illegal medicine, friends, and a rug. Hours ago, that glorious sheep rug wasoccupied by the three of us, spacing out to the sounds of expanding balloonsand then, with a couple deep breaths, thirty seconds or so of mental bliss—overand over again—to the beats of LCD Soundsystem’s 45:33.

I remember buying the album two winters ago, knowingbasically nothing about the band. I needed something new to listen to,something fresh. So I went to the Fetus and found the black-covered compactdisc case. Then at the counter, I ended up talking to Andy, the Electric Fetus’in-store, all-knowing music guru about the direction Of Montreal’s sound hasgone over the past decade for a solid half hour. He’s one of the reasons I likegetting off my ass, away from a computer and going to my local record store—hisnever-evolved high school nerd frame, little wire-rimmed glasses andbreathtaking mullet—asking him about any artist in the store, and getting somesort of meaningful and honest interaction with a Real Person. He knows me byname, and says it when I leave the store—and that can mean more to me than themusic itself. My Sony Vaio doesn’t have that effect on me.

“In some ways, the retail experience is almost asimportant as the music,” John ‘Cougar’ Mellencamp said about Record Store Day.He’s right: it is. The journey is the destination.

I can always remember going to record stores—talking topeople, holding real things and having something to show formy money. And maybe that’s why we need record stores, maybe that’s why we needto go do things. I don’t rememberanything about the last time I downloaded music from the Internet. I didn’t see anyone or talk to anybody. I didn’t have an Experience. I didn’t move.

I have experiences I remember when I go to record stores.I once saw Stephen Malkmus come out of the back room of the Electric Fetus inMinneapolis, reeking of grass—before playing a short set in front of a packedrecord store. And today, I saw nobody in my record store on Record Store Day,but at least I’ll remember being there. At least I did something.

It isn’t therecord store’s fault for struggling. It’s our fault for staying inside,shielded by a keyboard and a backlit screen—shielded from what we’ve all becometoo busy for: the people and community around us. We’ve become selfish whorerobots, always connected to the machine—whether it’s hanging out of our ear oron our laps—and I think the only ones left who really care are the people whostill go to record stores.

From the Archives...Album Reviews: of Montreal - "Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?"

2011-05-11T17:00:00.000-05:00

Psychadelic indie-poppers, of Montreal, seemingly change their sound with every album they've released since 1997's lo-fi, acoustic love song-filled debut, Cherry Peel, and have continued to great extremes with their new, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?

The electronic, disco-glam sound of Hissing Fauna was written, produced, performed and recorded almost entirely by the band's founder, frontman and brainchild, Kevin Barnes, with a sprinkle of glittery help from family and friends.

With the overwhelming presence of synthesizers, drum samples and seemingly endless vocal harmonies of the band's electro-pop sound, the album can sound like an overcooked '80s glamfest at first listen.

But with a good set of headphones or some very large speakers, the disco-fest turns into something completely different: a strange, psychadelic concept album about sex, fashion and depression.

Barnes has always been known for his quirky imagination and tales about weird, fantasy characters and events like those featured in the band's 1998 experimental storybook record, The Gay Parade, with songs about characters like Jacques Lamure, Nickee Coco and the Invisible Tree, and the Fun-Loving Nun.

The track titles for Hissing Fauna trend on this theme, but with a twist, like "Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse" and "Faberge Falls for Shuggie". But aside from whatever was going on in Barnes' tortured head when he came up with the song titles, the lyrical content is personal and major shift from previous of Montreal albums that dealt with imagined conversations, fictional characters, ironic takes on loneliness and death, and corny love songs.

Barnes said Hissing Fauna tells the story of his transformation from Kevin Barnes -- taking place during the near-12 minute epic, "The Past is a Grotesque Animal" -- into his new alter-ego: the glitter-wearing, spandex-donning, black glam god, Georgie Fruit.

The first half of the album -- the Barnes half -- features the personal, emotional side of Barnes' struggle for himself, seen in "A Sentence of Sorts in Kongsvinger," dealing with his seclusion and depression: "I spent the winter on the verge of a total breakdown while living in Norway/I felt the darkness of the black metal bands/But being such a fawn of a man I didn't burn down any old churches/Just slept way too much, just slept."

In "Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse" Barnes asks his wife for help while escaping the grasp of his clinical depression: "Nina Twin is trying to help and I really hope that she suceeds/Though I picked the thorny path myself I'm afraid, afraid of where it leads/Chemicals don't strangle my pen/Chemicals don't make me sick again."

The album's opening track and most radio-friendly tune "Suffer for Fasion" is a catchy, poppy little tune, chalk-full of keyboards and Barnes' multiple harmonies that have given of Montreal its distinguished sound over recent years. Lyrically, Barnes is commenting on how overly concerned we are about fashion, about how, when we're all running frantically through the streets at the end of the world, we'll still be "checking our compact mirrors to make sure our lipstick isn't smeared and our hair is right."

After Barnes' glamformation at the album's purported "turning point", the remaining five songs start to sound less like of Montreal and a little more like a juiced-up version of Prince.

The following track, where Barnes finishes the rest of the album out as Georgie Fruit, "Bunny Ain't No Kind of Rider" is a lyrical shift from personal struggle to all things flamboyantly homoerotic -- art, drugs, makeup, fashion and sex -- seen in the first verse: "Saw her at Go kissing girls/What a shock I said you must be an artist/She muttered her reply/I was judging her friend as the DJ played a dead jam/No one wants to dance/They're outside smoking cigarettes."

Even Barnes' new live performance attitude is on the album -- wearing glitter and makeup, cross-dressing onstage -- seen in "Faberge Falls for Shuggie": "Those with the golden X have tried to tell me/That the sex in my walk was cotton soft but that's never, never, never."

"Labrynthian Pomp" is an instant attention-grabber dripping with Purple Rain. From Barnes' well-replicated Prince falsetto heard throughout the verses, right up until the song takes acid and becomes overwhelmingly psychadelic and eerie until it ends.

From start to finish, Hissing Fauna is drenched in sexuality, but a type of sexuality that has no gender and certainly no boundries. Barnes' unstable emotional cocoon opens up to a sex-crazed, cross-dressing, sparkly butterfly, and at no point is there a definition of how or why. It's as if it was meant to be.

But as odd and scary, or happy and gay of Montreal can sound, Kevin Barnes' band has managed to stay unpredictable and stay creative for 10 years.

And whether Barnes is himself or a split-personality fashionista, he and the rest of the Athens, Ga., group continue to evolve their style just enough to keep sounding new.

From University Chronicle, 1/25/07

Terrorists 1 - America 0

2010-04-28T01:04:00.002-05:00

The voice of reason—the single most significant purveyor of social clarity and political sanity—were basically told to shut the hell up last week and it really rubs me the wrong way. The show that makes you stop, scratch your head and say, “You know, they're right. We're really handling things the wrong way,” was censored in the worst way last Wednesday night.

South Park, possibly the best TV show ever conceived by humans, was given the proverbial shaft last week when it attempted to depict animated images of some supposed prophet who probably didn't even exist from a religion that literally throws rocks at women for not being virgins when they wed. That's right, after the long-awaited, dramatic 200^th episode of the animated Comedy Central classic that rehashed a multitude of jokes, appearances, characters, innuendos and plots from the previous 199 chapters, the network decided to play it safe. They threw in 'bleeps' and black censor bars on the climactic conclusion to episode “201” whenever Mohammad (actually concealed in a bear mascot costume and later revealed to not even be Mohammad at all but rather Santa Claus) was on-screen or even when his name was mentioned.

This censorship, of course, didn't come from angry parents or the Christian Coalition or the far-right like it has in the past. No, it came from a group of radical Muslims, threatening what else but violence and death to the show's creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker. The radicals even listed information about where Matt and Trey live on the website, right about where they posted a gruesome photo of murdered Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh.

There are so many things that make me angry about this entire ordeal, I don't even know how to lay it out. First, the episode's moral message/realization at the end of the episode (which was censored) was all about not giving into fear and intimidation over something so silly as a death threat over a cartoon. Oh, the irony.

And what about the July 4, 2001 episode of South Park titled, “Super Best Friends” which is referenced in the “200”? The season five episode depicted a comical superhero-like group of the world's great religious figures, including: Jesus Christ of Christianity, Moses of Judaism, Joseph Smith of Mormonism, Buddha of Buddhism, Lao Tzu of Taoism, Krishna of Hinduism, Sea Man and—guess who—Mohammad of Islam!

The network had no problem before September 11, 2001 showing a cartoon superhero version of Mohammad, and they had no problem airing reruns on syndicates or streamed versions online. That was, until the death threats came in from a bunch of religious zealot assholes with no sense of humor or even any consideration for the Constitution of the United States of America, the country who so kindly allows their barbaric, 12^th century, douchiness to express their First Amendment right of free speech. Here's how John Stewart so eloquently put it the following night:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

South Park Death Threats

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

A certain touchiness has been seen in the past, with the late Isaac Hayes quitting the show after the 2006 episode exposed the ridiculousness of Scientology, who had voiced the character “Chef” since the show began in 1997. But this is a new brand of touchiness, the kind that threatens to kill a couple of guys who make a brilliant cartoon; a couple of guys who make jokes about everybody and every religion; a couple of guys who took acid, dressed in women's clothing at the Academy Awards. What fucking era are we living in? Last time I checked, in America you can't threaten to kill someone because they make a cartoon depiction (not even a demeaning one) of a guy with the religious relativity of Jesus.

And now, you can't watch the 201^st episode online or even the “Super Best Friends” episode, which was available to stream at South Park Studios up until at least April 20. All because of some whiny crybabies with nothing better to do than threaten violence because they're too big of pussies to actually fight against something legally. But no, this way terrorism wins. Its a big win for fear and intimidation and a hard, ugly loss for free speech, comedy and America as a whole. Good for you South Park, shame on you Comedy Central, and fuck you Revolution Muslim (who made the threats). This just opens the door for more violent threats from dipshits who don't understand comedy or America (we're basically founded on the freedom of expression, speech, religion, etc.). I say this all at the risk of coming off like an intolerant American redneck, but that's a risk I'm willing to take.

By the way, the images posted here are of the Prophet Mohammad ala South Park, which I found doing a simple Google search. So if the theme is to persist, I recommend Google and everybody who works for Google to be careful of radical religious cuckoos.

I think all religions are stupid and unnecessary and I don't dislike Islam any more than I dislike Christianity or Judaism. But radical Muslims, you really are a bunch of assholes and I hope the 72 virgins waiting for you in heaven are all fat and ugly. Or big, hairy Jewish-American men. That would really be a kick in the nuts, wouldn't it? Of course heaven isn't real, so they'll be disappointed regardless.

And out of respect for South Park, here he is in all of his cartoon glory...Ladies and gentlemen, the Prophet Mohammad!:

Shocking, I know.

Need a New Time Machine?

2010-04-01T22:10:00.006-05:00

Do you ever wish you could just hop in a time machine and travel “back to the future”? Does that time machine have stainless steel paneling, upward opening gull-wing doors and a flux capacitor that will plunge you into the depths of time when the speedometer reaches 88 mph?

Well, dream on because that's mostly science fiction. In fact, until recently, it was completely science fiction.

The car made famous by Marty McFly and Doc Brown in “Back to the Future” was lost in time since the DeLorean Motor Company folded in 1982. But the forgotten DeLorean DMC-12 has reemerged—in the present.

The 135-hp V6 time machine was only in production from 1981-82, with only around 9,000 cars manufactured out of DMC's factory in Northern Ireland. At a base price of around $25,000 (approximately $55,000 in today's dollars), the DMC-12 was on the steep side for John DeLorean's pride and joy. The cars came in one color: unpainted stainless steel. This little piece of history was short lived and—without the help of Universal Studios—would be forgotten.

That was another period in time, though. In 1997, a private buyer from Texas purchased the company and factory stock with plans to reproduce the lost relic. As of 2008, DMC Houston began selling a limited quantity of freshly manufactured (using 80% original materials) DMC-12's.

The “future” models, or rather the newly built cars of the present, still have the same look and feel of the original (yes, the gull-wing doors are still there) but with a few “futuristic” add-ons. Inside you won't find a flux capacitor, but you can fork over some extra dough to get your DMC-12 modernized with XM satellite radio, GPS, backup camera, heated seats and a built-in iPod interface; a handful of things “Doc” never thought to install when he was cruising into the year 2015.

And don't forget the engine upgrade. The original DMC-12 didn't quite satisfy sports car enthusiasts with it's piddly 135-hp engine (about the same as a new Toyota Corolla), and that was the early '80s. With a $5,750 upgrade package, DMC will replace the original engine with a high performance 197-hp engine. But you might as well call it $6,000 with the 140 mph speedometer option.

The DMC site will let you custom-build your DMC-12 to make it your dream car. My custom DeLorean (5-speed manual transmission with the engine upgrade, speedometer, iPod interface, and a stainless steel “DMC” shift knob) comes out to $63,733 before tax and fees. This leaves you with the ultimate question: is buying a new DMC-12 worth dipping deep into your bank account of the future?

When you break it down and make a few comparisons to other new cars in the same price range, it makes you wonder if you should just wait five years for a hoverboard. Keeping in that $64,000 price range, let's see what our other options are:

You could buy two brand new 2010 Dodge Challenger R/Ts with 250-hp V6 engines and still have about six grand left over...

Another route would be a 2010 Porsche Cayman S with 265-hp and all the bells and whistles you could imagine (minus that flux capacitor, of course). So before you go buy those Nikes, the denim jacket and the orange vest, think again.

But who's to say you have to buy a (mostly) brand new DMC-12 for Porsche prices when you can buy a refurbished or used model for anywhere between $10,000-30,000? Just don't let a new model run into a past version of itself when traveling back in time, or else...

Okay, now you can go buy your Marty McFly attire.

R.I.P. Mark Linkous

2010-03-12T02:07:00.005-06:00

This past Saturday, the world and the music business lost another gem. Following in close friend Vic Chesnutt's fatal footsteps, brainchild and leader of the band Sparklehorse, Mark Linkous, killed himself in a Knoxville, Tennessee alleyway.

Sparklehorse's music was melancholy and sad, at times honest and delicate, and even loud and cynical. Linkous' voice was soft and gentle, almost a whimper rather than a whisper. Much of his sonic kindness can be attributed to the southern gentleman attitude that comes with growing up in rural Virginia, where he was born and spent most of his life--even recording his first two albums in his small house hidden away in the forest.

Linkous was depressed for the better part of the past two decades, which his music often reflected--either metaphorically or obviously. Yet at first glance, one reading select lyrics might picture Linkous to be the joyous type; filled with love and a passion for all earthly delights. As here, from the song "Don't Take My Sunshine Away":

"Your face is like the sun sinking into the ocean
Your face is like watching flowers growing in fast motion
All your kisses are swallowed, like the morning's hollows
All vines and tree nuts will come unwound
baby you are my sunshine, my sunshine,
please don't take my sunshine away"

Sadly, Linkous' sunshine was taken away...years ago. He suffered a debilitating accident stemming from a drug overdose that left him wheelchair-bound for the following six months in 1996. At the time, Sparklehorse was touring with Radiohead.

It seems like Linkous had a true grasp and understanding of the beauty of nature and the possibilities of kindness and truth in people, but only as a metaphor. Speaking from lyrical interpretation alone, Linkous seemed to have trouble dealing with the fact that nothing lasts forever; beauty fades, the sun sets, and the opposite of light is an endless abyss of black. From "Someday I Will Treat You Good":

"everything that's made is made to decay
well I'm shrinking bones in the sun
won't you tell me why that
the beautiful ones are always crazy"

At times, maybe Linkous saw himself as the ugly stain on a masterpiece landscape. Almost as if the world were perfect except for him. In the song, "It's a Wonderful Life" (an ironic middle-finger to journalists) his careful, precious falsetto claims:

"I'm a bog of poisoned frogs"

And then:

"I'm the dog that ate your birthday cake"

Throughout the near two-decade run of Sparklehorse, you can almost hear Linkous sink further and further into depression. The general tone of his albums speak volumes about his deterioration. The 1995 debut LP, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot, is lo-fi and angry at times--almost frustrated at the unchangeable--and drenched in loud guitars and distorted vocals. But within all the noise are precious gems of folky, melodic alt gems, like "Hammering the Cramps".

After Sparklehorse's debut and Linkous' momentary death (the 1996 overdose stopped his heart for a few minutes) came 1998's Good Morning Spider. Although Linkous says most of the album was recorded prior to the overdose, one new song was written in honor of the care he received at London's St. Mary's Hospital. "Saint Mary" is an honest plea for his nurses to hurry him back to his woody home in Virginia where he could "taste the clean dirt in his lungs and the moss on [his] back" and all he needs "is water, a gun and rabbits". Tracks like "Sick of Goodbyes" have the warmth and tempo of something upbeat and potentially promosing, but the lyrics remain consistently unable to deal with the tragedy of life:

"the night comes crawling in
on all fours
sucking up my dreams
through the floor"

About the "incident" in which he temporarily died, Linkous said, "It scared the hell out of me at the time. When you're in a really desperate situation and you really think you're going to die, it makes you realize how quickly things can be over."

Countless lyrics and quotes here and there make his suicide seem like some sort of expected event, as if it were just a matter of when and where. But in recent years, one could look at his musical output and hope for a happier ending.

In 2001, Linkous decided he was looking for artistic growth, so instead of handling all of the production and instrumentation he'd done on the first two records, he decided to open up his doors and get help from a slew of talents, including Flaming Lips production guru David Fridmann, longtime idol Tom Waits, and friends PJ Harvey, Nina Persson and the late Vic Chesnutt. The result was the beautiful and tragically somber It's A Wonderful Life.

But of course, the tone of depression prevailed. In the ominous "Eyepennies", it's clear that Linkous wasn't really thinking of life as something he enjoyed. His lyrics would get darker and more dismal. From "Eyepennies":

"Blood suckers hide beneath my bed
And black fumes of skin so gently bled
I slept with a cat on my breast
Slowing my heart stealing my breath"

After It's A Wonderful Life, Linkous recorded songs for the next Sparklehorse album, but the depression overwhelmed him. The end result was a mix of previously released, re-recorded and a few new tracks, ushered in with the help of producer genius Danger Mouse. The bipolar 2006 release Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain would be the last Sparklehorse record. Although a well-produced, technically different album, it was obvious that Linkous was losing his will. About the album, he said:

"Well, I'd quit working for a while and it started to get really difficult to live and pay the rent. So it was really getting down to the wire where I had to turn a record in. I had some stuff written that I didn't put on the last album, because they were just really pop songs. They felt like anachronisms on the last record. So I saved all these little pop songs."

The best thing to come out of the 2006 album was the collaboration with Danger Mouse that led to the yet-to-be-officially released Dark Night of the Soul project that brought together former contributers like Vic Chesnutt and Nina Persson, and other big names like James Mercer of The Shins, Frank Black/Black Francis of the Pixies, Iggy Pop, Julian Casablancas of The Strokes and The Flaming Lips, among others. The album along with a 200-page photo book by David Lynch is expected to be released sometime this year after a legal battle with Danger Mouse's label, EMI.

Then on March 6, for whatever reason, Mark Linkous went into an alleyway near a friend's house in Knoxville, Tennessee with a rifle, sat down, and shot himself in the heart, ending his painful, tragic life. To most it wasn't any big surprise, but that didn't make it hurt any less. A southern gentleman with a soft voice and an honest heart who simply couldn't cope with the how and why of life and death.

Listening to Sparklehorse, I've always had the mental image of driving in a car late at night in the rain on a dark, wooded road. Linkous' quiet whisper almost beckons you into the darkness--somewhere where the rising sun and time can't do you harm.

For you, Mr. Linkous, from your own tongue:

"Its time for you to rise
And evaporate in the sun
Sometimes it can weigh
a ton"

Stem Cell Research Good, Religious Nuts Bad

2009-03-31T16:46:00.003-05:00

The ongoing debate in Republican and Christian circles over the use of embryonic stem cells in research for otherwise incurable diseases is puzzling and hypocritical.

The National Association for the Advancement of Preborn Children recently accused President Obama of violating constitutional rights of a frozen embryo and "enslaving" it like the Nazis did Jews during the Holocaust.

Their lawsuit suggests that "government funding of human embryo stem cell research and experimentation is what led to the Nazi experimentation on concentration camp prisoners during World War II."

These religious nuts are not only completely ridiculous and scientifically ignorant, but they're apparently also anti-Semitic.

The fact of the matter is that embryonic stem cells have real potential to reverse the painful, crippling effects of increasingly common diseases like Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and diabetes.

This would in turn give people who are already alive and capable of feeling pain and suffering a second chance at living their life. But these anti-stem cell groups call it murder of "human life." The embryos used for medical research consist of 50 to 100 individual cells, which the last time I checked is far less than a living human.

These groups are adamantly against this type of "murder" but are also completely willing to send young, 100 trillion-celled human life to war, knowing full well there will be real-life casualties.

But don't worry, these religious circles who hate potentially curing dreadful diseases can justify the death of soldiers and civilians in war by praying for their safety.

Instead of praying for the soldiers they know are likely going to die, how about praying for the Alzheimer's or Parkinson's sufferers who are being denied a likely cure to their miseries.

Well, that would just be a nose dive further into hypocrisy. You can't pray for them to get better when you're already praying for federal judges to basically kill them.

And if "enslaving" embryos is just like Jews being enslaved during the Holocaust, what about those being actually enslaved by degenerative neurological diseases? They probably wouldn't stoop to a comparison like that.

What ever happened to helping the meek?

When Will We Learn to Legalize?

2009-03-27T15:44:00.003-05:00

I'm no economist, but I know in order for a product to sell, there has to be a market for it.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also knows this, which is why she said Wednesday, "[The U.S.'s] insatiable demand for illegal drugs fuels the drug trade."

Well hot damn. This shouldn't be news to anyone. We're a nation of stark-raving mad drug fiends. Whether legal or not, Americans, like anyone else, enjoy the escape and relaxation their normal, anxiety-laden lives don't naturally have.

That's why we have a Starbucks or Caribou Coffee on every street corner in America; we need the fix.

Cigarette laws take away the personal accountability we once had, turning us now into whiny, thumb-sucking babies. But you can still smoke and get cancer and there is no violence over beating weeds.

America loves alcohol as much as any other nation; in 2007, we drank enough for every person in the country to guzzle seven bottles of liquor, 12 bottles of wine and 230 cans of beer. That's a lot, even considering that one third of the population doesn't drink.

All of these things are drugs, the most used and abused of our great nation. But can you imagine if they were illegal? Prohibition of caffeine; a coffee bean war with the Colombians. A nation of addicted smokers chucking grenades in the streets over a pack of Newports? Can you imagine what banning these substances would do to the remaining thread holding our economy up?

And could you imagine something as wild as the prohibition of alcohol? Good God, the madness.

But wait - didn't that already happen? From 1919 to 1933, the U.S. had a different war on drugs. Instead of battling Mexican drug cartels attempting to satisfy their loyal customers with the relaxing effects of marijuana, we were doing the same thing to gangsters and rumrunners trying to satisfy the country with booze.

Any idea what happened there? The late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson said in a 1997 interview about the legalization of drugs: "Look at Prohibition: all it did was make a lot of criminals rich."

That it did. And it also resulted in a whole lot of gunfire, murder and definitely didn't help the slumping economy of the times.

And look where we're at today. A third of the country doesn't drink.

How does this not make sense? Marijuana is illegal because it has been grandfathered down as a bad thing. Well guess what, it's medicine in 13 states.

Now Washington is planning on upping border security with a $184 billion program to take and destroy billions of dollars in potential product. Along with drugs, they hope to get a hold of the military-style weaponry the drug cartels are using - but they wouldn't be stealing those, they'd be taking back what was theirs, since 90 percent of the weapons and equipment come from the U.S.

New flash, kids. You won't have a problem with guns, drugs or the economy if you legalized marijuana.

Instead of spending billions on prosecuting, protecting, fighting, incarcerating and burying bodies every year, why not make billions by selling it?