Music Time Forgot - Neil Young’s Mirror Ball
From Wikipedia:
Mirror Ball is the twenty-third studio album by Canadian musician Neil Young, and features members of Pearl Jam. It was released on June 27, 1995 through Reprise Records. The album has been certified gold by the RIAA in the United States.
The album’s recording sessions took place in January 1995 and February 1995 at Bad Animals Studio in Seattle, Washington. The album was produced by Brendan O’Brien, who had previously worked on Pearl Jam’s 1993 album, Vs., and 1994 album, Vitalogy.Neil Young joined Pearl Jam in the studio in Seattle in January 1995, eleven days after performing with the band at an abortion-rights benefit in Washington, D.C. The album was recorded in four days’ studio time (January 26, January 27, February 7, and February 10). Young took the approach of recording the songs live in the studio. Young brought “Song X”, “Act of Love”, and five other songs into the studio to record for the first session in January. For the second session in February, he brought in two more songs. Young also wrote two new songs during the February recording sessions, and one song from the January sessions was re-recorded. Young said that all of the songs, with the exception of “Song X” and “Act of Love”, were written in the four-day time period in which the album was recorded
Young said he traveled to Seattle to record the record for a “challenge.” He said, “Recording Mirror Ball was like audio vérité, just a snapshot of what’s happening. Sometimes I didn’t know who was playing. I was just conscious of this big smouldering mass of sound.” Young called Pearl Jam drummer Jack Irons “unbelievable.” He stated that he “played his ass off on every take at every session,” and added, “I can’t say enough good things about him.”
Pearl Jam vocalist Eddie Vedder was not around much for the recording sessions. Vedder explained that he was “in the midst of a pretty intense stalker problem,” adding that “leaving the house wasn’t the easiest thing to do.” Vedder would refer to the issue in the song “Lukin” from Pearl Jam’s 1996 album, No Code.
Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard said that Mirror Ball “came at a time when we needed it, that Neil thought we were a band that would be good to make a record with. He probably felt sorry for us. He made it all right for us to be who we were. He’s not taking his career so seriously that he can’t take chances. Suddenly, our band seemed too serious.”
Music video for “Downtown”:
“I’m The Ocean” Live in Salzburg, 1995
“Song X” Live in Salzburg, 1995
“Throw Your Hatred Down” Live in Salzburg, 1995
“Throw Your Hatred Down” Live at Bridge School Benefit, 2006
The Traveler
While cleaning out some boxes in my basement, I found an old binder labelled “Oceanography.” It’d been for a class I’d taken my senior year of high school. When I opened it, I was surprised to find the inside divided into two sections. The first was my notes from class (i.e. “Fish are very colorful!”, “Researchers use computers”, “Underwater is a mysterious realm”), and the second was a variety of clippings, papers, and personal mementos. There were copies of my school’s newspaper, an invitation and guest list to my graduation party, a coupon to save $0.55 on a six-pack of Coca-Cola (that sadly expired in November 1998), and a collection of short stories. I’d written them for a creative writing class I rarely took seriously, and my output reflects this fact. One story was about how the county used child labor to build my school and paid them with shoes. Another was about a couple of bunnies staying in a cabin and being stalked by a murder. However, I did take one story semi-seriously, though it still wasn’t written that well.
“The Traveler” was written in March 1999. I wrote it the old-fashioned way with pen and paper. I have no memory of writing this, which is frustrating now given the ending. If you can think of a better way to end this, I’d love to hear your suggestions in the comments.
Justice?—You get justice in the next world, in this world you have the law.
This May Be The Most Brilliant Thing I’ve Ever Read
Lifehacker has an article posted entitled “What Do You Know Now That You Wish You Knew When You Started Your Career?”. Like most websites, they have a comment section below the article. This is quite possibly the most amazing comment I’ve ever read.
Bad Poetry - “Come Back Clean” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
This is the song for a soldier
To sing as he rides from home
To the fields afar where the battles are
Or over the ocean’s foam:
‘Whatever the dangers waiting
In the lands I have not seen,
If I do not fall—if I come back at all,
Then I will come back clean.
‘I may lie in the mud of the trenches,
I may reek with blood and mire,
But I will control, by the God in my soul,
The might of my man’s desire.
I will fight my foe in the open,
But my sword shall be sharp and keen
For the foe within who would lure me to sin,
And I will come back clean.
‘I may not leave for my children
Brave medals that I have worn,
But the blood in my veins shall leave no stains
On bride or on babes unborn;
And the scars that my body may carry
Shall not be from deeds obscene,
For my will shall say to the beast, OBEY!
And I will come back clean.
Oh, not on the fields of slaughter
And not in the prison-cell,
Or in hunger and cold is the story told
By war, of its darkest hell.
But the old, old sin of the senses
Can tell what that word may mean
To the soldiers’ wives and to innocent lives,
And I will come back clean.
Amazon.com Review Of “The Best Of Vanilla Ice”
Here is what the reviewer thought of this compilation:
If you decide to buy this CD, wait patiently by the mail box till it arives. Upon arrival, quickly open the box, then pull the security take from the jewel case. Open the jewel case and place the CD in one hand. Break the CD in half, then slit your wrists with the remaining shards. As you begin to die look at your reflection in the mirror-like surfice of the broken CD, and ask your self what you were thinking when you ordered this CD!
Why do I find this so funny?
One of my favorite clips from “The Simpsons”.
Bad Poetry - “Pretty Girl” by J. Gordon Coogler
On her face there are smiles of grace
That linger in beauty serene,
And there are no pimples encircling her dimples,
As ever, as yet, I have seen.
Music Time Forgot - Should
Should is a band you’ve likely never heard of. That certainly helps it fall under the category “Music Time Forgot”, but I’m not including them in this series for that reason.
Hailing from Austin, Texas, and consisting of siblings Marc & Eric Ostermeir with Tanya Maus, Should released their proper debut album Feed Like Fishes in late 1998 to no fanfare and limited live shows. Their sound was melancholy, experimental, fuzzy, simple, and methodical — all genres that typically don’t get mainstream attention and have been done better by My Bloody Valentine. In a way, Should was a typical college town band that appeared suddenly and then fizzled into obscurity. So why should we care?
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the past. Ten years ago this month, I packed my bags, stumbled onto a Delta flight bound for The Netherlands, and spent the first half of my junior year of college living in an international student house. I was supposed to be studying European history & politics, but instead I spent most of my time reading, traveling, drinking too much, and goofing off.
While I was the only American in the house, I was far from alone. I made friends with people from all over the world — China, Indonesia, Italy, France, Poland, Spain, Columbia — and, best of all, we were all housemates. I was living a five month episode of The Real World but couldn’t clearly understand anybody else’s English.
The three Indonesian guys and I listened to a lot of music. Radiohead had released Amnesiac only a few months prior. Sitting in their bedroom, that got about two spins per day. I bought a copy of Beatles’ Revolver. That got at least a spin per day as well. Many other albums came and went into rotation — Bjork’s Vespertine, Karate’s The Bed Is In The Ocean, Neil Young’s Decade, Doves’ Lost Souls, and so on. But even though they were from half a world away, they knew all of these obscure bands from the UK and the states. That’s when Should came up. Budi, the Indonesian guy I was closest to, spoke as if I should have known who they were. After all, he did. He’d been able to buy the CD somewhere around Jakarta. What was my excuse?
I remember the first time I heard the opening track “Fish Fourteen”. I was hooked, but there was no reason why. The song is a bunch of squeaky guitars mixed in with some loud keyboard-like tones. The next track was more of the same but included some minimal drum beats. Nothing was really captivating about it, and minimal pop songs have been done before. But unlike most records, this grabbed me like Kid A (an album I was listening to at least three times a day on top of the music with the Indonesians).
Flash forward to today. I’m happily married, I have a job I enjoy, and I am trying to pay down our mortgage (only 29 more years to go!). All that’s left of my foreign study trip is a bunch of crazy stories, a vague understanding of the EU, a scrapbook of photos and notes, and Should’s Feed Like Fishes. It took me well into senior year to finally find that album. I stumbled across it on some backwoods Internet retail site. Now whenever I search for it, I find it most everywhere. It’s of course on iTunes, and the band’s record label Words On Music sells physical copies, too. It’s a great memento to have from an event that helped define and shape me. And even though Should can reform in Baltimore and finally release a follow-up album 13 years after their debut, they’re a gentle reminder that while you can’t relive the past, you can always remember.
Here’s “Spangle”, my favorite track from Feed Like Fishes. This was originally recorded by The Wedding Present:
Should - Spangle from john doe on Vimeo.
Groningen
It’s been ten years since I did my foreign study trip to The Netherlands. I have a ton of photos but not a whole lot scanned. Anyway, here’s one (I’m the young guy in the blue shirt).
