A guide on how to get ready in 5 minutes in the morning.

The original Sugarcubes.

Check out Anvil: The Story of Anvil. I’m not a fan of heavy metal, and the entire world that surrounds it, but using heavy metal as the central topic, this documentary has more humanity than anything you’re likely to be fed this year.

I keep running into these Doggie Heads all over town.

The top 4 Ice Creams in the (sorta) Bay Area:
Madrona Manor (Healdsburg): They make it for you right there at the table. Ice Cream Sundae, hand “churned” at your table using minus 320ºF nitrogen. Chocolate sauce, almonds, whipped cream, cherries on top. The outside seating area does feel as though you are on an episode of Fantasy Island, but it’s probably one of the best ice creams I’ve ever had.

Bi-Rite Creamery (San Francisco): They have unusual flavors (salted caramel, balsamic strawberry) that may seem contradictory, but just try it, and you’ll see why, even on colder days, this place has a 45 minute line that wraps around the corner.

Humphry Slocombe Ice Cream (San Francisco): Another parlor that serves up unusal flavors (secret breakfast, banana cinnamon hots), and makes homemade ice cream sandwiches with chocolate chip cookies.

It’s It (markets in the Bay Area): An 80yr-old staple in the Grey Area.  A scoop of ice cream, sandwiched between two old-fashioned oatmeal cookies, and dipped in dark chocolate. Fluck.

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Now, back to our regularly scheduled cleaning…….

The Gutter Twins aka Greg Dulli & Mark Lanegan – Summer’s Kiss (Live Berlin) – One of my favorite’s from Greg Dulli’s former former band, The Afghan Whigs, and off of the classic beautifully twisted Black Love album.  Lanegan, who sings on the chorus offers a grounded counterbalance to Dulli’s cliff diving pleas.

The Sugarcubes – Birthday (Jim & William Reid Christmas Eve Mix) – More of what Bjork would sound like if she was the lead singer of The Jesus & Mary Chain then a remix.

Bjork – Desired Constellation (Live) – This is a track off of the live DVD from the Voltaic compilation. I haven’t been the biggest fan of her last few releases, but this track is a highlight and live, with Bjork’s deepened voice, as with most of Bjork’s great songs, there is plenty of room left in between the music and the listener.

JPLS & Ambivalent – Frontstab – Two standout producers on the Minus label, come together to create this haunting and driving track that’s sure to please your neighbors, if you turn it all the way up to 11, and leave it on repeat for 3 hours.

Bjork – All Is Full Of Love (Guy Sigsworth Mix)

You’ll be given love
You’ll be taken care of
You’ll be given love
You have to trust it

Maybe not from the sources
You have poured yours
Maybe not from the directions
You are staring at

Twist your head around
It’s all around you
All is full of love
All around you

All is full of love
You just ain’t receiving
All is full of love
Your phone is off the hook
All is full of love
Your doors are all shut
All is full of love

All is full of love

This is my mixtape to you. It comes in at 62 minutes and 24 seconds, so you may have to get a 90 minute tape. You may even have to buy a cassette player, or just get one of these gadgets. Maybe, this is a way to convince you to go to my junior year Ring Dance, or maybe even the Senior Prom. We’ll have cases of Becks beer, Peach Schnapps and Wine Coolers for the ladies, and whatever else we need to make the night memorable. I’ll give it to you at Burger King, the place to drive to in between classes, and meet the girls from the sister school. And if I get caught for leaving campus, and get detention, it’ll be worth it. I’ll clean the toilets, tap the kegs for the jesuits, get on my knees…..to pray.

I hope you like the tape. It’s probably best if you go to a quiet place, and listen to it through your headphones. I think these things come together better when you don’t have too much time to think about it. Take a mood here, a lyric there, and you have this entirely new thing that’s made up from the smaller parts, to help to capture a feeling that may be difficult to express through words, in our adolescence. How a song can take you to a place, this mixtape will take you to all of the places, experiencing all of the unexpected, and help you to remember this small moment, in our time together.

SMS Text: Food Court MixTape (Download)

Milosh – You Make Me Feel - a simple message of how “it” can make you feel. the music has that dream-like, delirious quality, just like “it”. “you, beautiful moment in my life, a sweet wrinkle in time, so let’s stretch this thing out”

Joseph Arthur – Honey And The Moon - maybe it’s about a past love, but the melody has such optimism. “if you weren’t real, i would make you up, now”. “and right now, all your dreams are waking up”

Jeff Buckley – Morning Theft (Live) – “a heart that beats as both siphon and reservoir”

Björk – Headphones (Live) – the power of music to convey emotion. how music may be the most powerful language. “these abstract wordless movements”. “i like this resonance, it elevates me”

Sigur Rós – Med Sud I Eyrum (With A Buzz In Our Ears) – we’re traveling on a train and looking out the window into a vast open space of the future, and it doesn’t matter where we end up, it’s all about the journey and adventure to get there, together.

Hanne Hukkelberg – Ease – whimsical, yet painful. change can happen.

New Order – Every Little Counts – the laughter, for being stupid, together. not the greatest lyrics, but every little does count, like making a bed. “every second counts”.

Damien Rice – The Blower’s Daughter (Live) - “i can’t take my mind off of you”

The Cinematic Orchestra – To Build A Home (featuring Patrick Watson) – home is not necessarily a place. is it a state of mind, or another person ? “Out in the garden where we planted the seeds. There is a tree as old as me. Branches were sewn by the color of green. Ground had arose and passed it’s knees”

Daft Punk – Digital Love – so sappy, but such a great pop song about happiness and hope.

Cat Stevens – The Wind – when you least expect it, your soul will guide you in the right direction, or to the food court at the mall.

Iron & Wine – The Trapeze Swinger – a song about purgatory which I have often felt that I was trapped in as well. all of the beautiful haunting imagery in one of the most beautiful songs ever recorded. it has that sort-of sad optimism feeling to it. happy sad.

Bloc Party – Tulips (Original Version) – “this could be an opportunity”. the drumming helps to convey the mood of urgency, and trying to convince someone that this is special, that this is real……

Radiohead – Go Slowly - i love how his voice flows through, and acts out the lyrics, “come slowly to me”, “patiently”.

There’s a great site, Song Meanings which lists lyrics as well as user interpretations of each song, and it helped with the lyrics stated above.

I understand for one’s progression in life, one should reflect back on the past, but to actually relive it is a different hallucinatory experience altogether. I know that with this blog I am constantly preaching the aspects of music that makes it so personal for the individual, especially me, without divulging too much personal information myself, but a series of strange coincidences that I did not tie together until this morning have left me feeling as if I have been somehow transported back in time, some 20 years. Where to start ?

I am currently studying for a standardized exam which is in 2 weeks. An exam similar to the required regurgitation of worthless information that one usually takes in the high school era of their life. Similar to any of my schooling years, I have tried to do everything to procrastinate from this inevitable brain drain of information, like write this blog entry. Do I truly need to know that “potable” means drinkable, or that Community Property Laws are based on Spanish law shaped by the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ? I mean, thanks for that Scrabble word and that tour of history, but how is that information going to help me to become the Thumb Wrestling World Champion. Besides the schooling aspect of my mysterious time travels, my social life has reverted back to that transitional 80′s to 90′s period as well.

The mall. A place of undeniable fluorescent beauty that became the new town center of any suburban oasis. Apart from Skateland, this is where teenage relationships formed and dissolved, sometimes both, in a matter of hours. Vans, Jams, OP shorts, Parachute pants, Z cavarichi’s, Girbaud Jeans and Rolling up your jeans were just some of mistaken forms of identity during this era. The family wood paneled wagon was there to transport you to this neatly packaged digestable form of culture. The center of any mall was, and still is the food court. So, a few weeks back I went to a mall in the outskirts of San Francisco, as parking would be easier, to purchase a black tie for a wedding. I figure I needed a black tie anyway, and considering the fine line between a wedding and a funeral, the function fell in nicely with the form.

At the mall, after purchasing my symbol of life and death, I went into the Apple store which is another strange coincidence for other reasons, but also the fact that Apple, for me brings me back to my teenage years, because it’s always been the main computer of use in my life, even before email and the internet. At the Apple store, I met someone and after a brief tutorial on the Mac for the both of us, we had lunch in the food court. Maybe I should elaborate on how I got this person to actually have lunch with me, a stranger, but I can’t divulge everything, and it’s always up to the female to decide, for whatever reason. Maybe I just said the two magic words, “food court” and her eyes lit up like a newly plugged-in Lite-Brite. I don’t think she was as concerned for the fact that we live in SF and that we were having a meal in the food court, at the mall, but I just couldn’t get over it. Unfortunately, there was no Sbarro Pizza, or TCBY Frozen Yogurt, but I guess it just proves that you meet people in the most unlikely of places. What impact does this person hold in my life could make this story even stranger, but for now, I kind of do feel as if I was a rejuvenated senior in high school with all of the anticipation and energy to explore the many possibilities of life, and the world.

Here are two songs from that so-called critical period of my life and two songs from my period of life, now.

Bjork – Sun In My Mouth (Recomposed by Ensemble) – from an E.E. Cummings poem, on her, in my opinion, best album. subtle, delicate and full of incredibly textured emotional songs.

Sigur Ros – Med Sud I Eyrum (With A Buzz In Our Ears) – this song has that sweeping soundscape Sigur Ros is known for, but with that tribal quality. One of the best albums I have heard in quite a long time.

The Replacements – Within Your Reach – the Mats’ Pleased To Meet Me was a fixture in my car radio senior year in high school. There was something ironic about driving my parent’s car, dressed in jacket and tie, going to a Jesuit prep school and blaring music that had just become part of a big corporatation, but was still somewhat rooted in ethos of punk rock. This song was on a previous release, but I had found it on the Say Anything… soundtrack, which is another seminal high school movie for me.

The Cure – Closedown – this song has a close rhythmic pattern to the Sigur Ros song above. Another moody piece from another album full of sweeping sounds from the late 80′s.

On this episode of music that don’t jive on the radio, we have a percussionist. Miss Evelyn Glennie, featured in the outstanding Touch The Sound documentary. This Scottish being of sound goes around the globe in search of rhythm, the part of music that can be physically felt. She explores the existence of sound and how unique sounds that we take for granted make up the music in our day to day life. Oh yeah, did i mention that she is deaf.

Fred Frith & Evelyn Glennie – Scuttlebutt (Abstract) – this collaboration was featured in the Touch the Sound documentary.

Björk & Evelyn Glennie – Oxygen (Classical) – Glennie collaborated with Bjork on 2 tracks. The other one being My Spine which was featured on Bjork’s Telegram release.