sometimes a great notion.: Archive

Old Crow Medicine Show, “Wagon Wheel”

This is one of my favorite songs.

In high school, when I was NOT a huge dork despite what my sister claims quite publicly on her Tumblr, my friends and I would ride in the back of trucks, always with systems, always with lifts, always with 30” tires, always listening to stuff like this. We would squeal and hold on for dear life after we all decided to take a break from video games— the girls watching, the boys playing (we were far, far too patient for these boys who never kissed us anyway, who always ended up asking younger girls to prom and sitting next to us on porch swings with our love letters in their hands and staring out at the clouds with nothing constructive or generous to offer us back)— and we would sing, yell, really, this song, which was maybe one of the best songs we had ever heard, and something we could all agree on as we slid through the mud of abandoned properties and empty fields, spinning and screaming and squeezing each others palms excitedly when we yelled, JOHNSON CITY, TENNESSEE! because that was where we would go camping every summer, with me the least likely of tagalongs, each of the girls’ best friend but sometimes the boys’ worst enemy, always squeaking to “Wait up!” while we hiked and crawled around in caves, my feet dragging like the cliche that I was, arguing with them, with my liberal politics (there is maybe no pretension so thrilling as that of a 17-year-old) and unabashed talk of tampons and boobs and how far away to college I’d go and how I was still in love with someone in Louisiana and isn’t James Joyce the best writer EVER and I am totally going to set aside the center spread of the next issue of our school paper about this one funny thing that happened to me (what has changed? nothing!) and IF I DIE IN RALEIGH AT LEAST I WILL DIE FREE.

One of those friends got married recently— in fact all of those friends are married now, who am I kidding?— and she played this at her reception and we held hands in a circle just the way we would have at a school dance back then and we screamed the words and we were older this time but “caught a trucker out of Philly / had a nice long toke,” still gave us all a thrill and we laughed and I cried and oh, this song!

I love songs like this, and writing like this.

Aug 31, 200961 notes

Reblog with your first job and age you started working.

robot-heart:

enjoli:bumblevision:mercurypdx:biteofpythias:

Cashier and deli girl at the local grocery store, 16

Unofficially = washing cars at a Honda car lot, ten hours per week for about two months in the summer, 15 years old.

Officially = Baskin-Robbins, ice cream scooper (back in the days when you had to wear a pastel PINK shirt and hat), 16.

“The Concept” - Teenage Fanclub
POP GOES YOUR MONDAY, #2
…says she don’t do drugs, but she does the pill…

It seemed only right, after kicking off this series last week with Big Star, to follow-up with their Scottish power-pop grandkids, Teenage Fanclub. While the two groups have no direct relationship, it’s surely not hard to imagine a Power Pop Family Reunion with both bands included, related, if not by blood, then by a love of simple melodies, tight harmonies, and a good old fashioned major chord change. “The Concept”, off the band’s glorious Bandwagonesque record, came out in the early 90’s and, briefly, allowed Teenage Fanclub a modicum of exposure in America (including that You Have Made It at Least for Now moment: an appearance on SNL). However, for a whole lot of people, that’s the last they ever heard of this fantastic group, despite a string of equally catchy and worth-hearing records. Don’t be one of those people who aren’t aware of Teenage Fanclub: listen to this song, remember how you loved it way back when, and then go exploring the rest of their poptastic catalogue (and, though it’s technically probably cheating, Four Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty Six Seconds: a shortcut to Teenage Fanclub, a greatest hits type of record, is as good a place to start as any for the uninitiated).

MOYERS: I don’t think the problem is the Republicans … .The problem is the Democratic Party. This is a party that has told its progressives — who are the most outspoken champions of health care reform — to sit down and shut up. That’s what Rahm Emanuel, the Chief of Staff at the White House, in effect told progressives who stood up as a unit in Congress and said: “no public insurance option, no health care reform.”

And I think the reason for that is — in the time since I was there, 40 years ago, the Democratic Part has become like the Republican Party, deeply influenced by corporate money. I think Rahm Emanuel, who is a clever politician, understands that the money for Obama’s re-election will come from the health care industry, from the drug industry, from Wall Street. And so he’s a corporate Democrat who is determined that there won’t be something in this legislation that will turn off these interests… .

Money in politics — you’ve had in the last 30 years, money has flooded politics . .. the Supreme Court saying “money is free speech.” It goes back to the efforts in the 19th Century to give corporations the right of personhood — so if you as a citizen have the right to donate to campaigns, then so do corporations. Money has flowed in such a flood into both parties that the Democratic Party gets a lot of its support from the very interests that — when the Republicans are in power — financially support the Republicans.

You really have essentially — except for the progressives on the left of the Democratic Party – you really have two corporate parties who in their own way and their own time are serving the interests of basically a narrow set of economic interests in the country — who, as Glenn Greenwald, who is a great analyst and journalist, wrote just this week: these narrow interests seem to win, determine the outcomes, no matter how many Democrats are elected, no matter who has their hands on the levers of powers, these narrow interests determine the outcomes in Washington, even when they have to run roughshod over the interests of ordinary Americans. I’m sad to say that has happened to the Democratic Party.

I’d rather see Barack Obama go down fighting for vigorous strong principled public insurance, than to lose with a [corporate-dominated] bill … . the insurers are winning. Everyone already knows the White House has made a deal with the drug industry — promising not to import cheaper drugs from Canada and Europe – promising not to use the government to negotiate for better prices — that deal has been cut …

There’s this fear that Barack Obama will become the Grover Cleveland of this era – Grover Cleveland was a good man, but he became a conservative Democratic President because he didn’t fight the powerful interests – people say Obama should be FDR – I’d much rather see him be Theodore Roosevelt —– Teddy Roosevelt loved to fight – … I think if Obama fought instead of really finessed it so much … I think it would change the atmosphere.

Aug 31, 200910 notes

Withnail & I (1987)

Elizabeth makes her debut on Filmosophy - taking on the cult classic, Withnail & I…

filmosophy:

by Elizabeth Wilcox

There’s a certain comfort in watching other peoples’ distress. Hence the ubiquity of America’s Funniest Home Videos, the popularity of The Office, the genesis of all of Michael Cera’s acting roles, and the joy of watching Simon Cowell eviscerate naive contestants on American Idol. But go overboard on the humiliation factor, and a potentially humorous situation turns uncomfortable, distressing — even downright disturbing.

Withnail and I (dir. Bruce Robinson) strides purposefully into disturbing territory without even a cursory glance back. Watching it is sort of like getting on that terrifying Willy Wonka boat (you know which one I mean) — thrillingly fun at first, then sort of weird and bothersome, then get-me-off-I-don’t-want-to-ride-anymore fucked up.

Withnail (Richard E. Grant) and Marwood (Paul McGann)—the “I” of the title—are struggling young actors in London, navigating the wasteland of unemployment with the aid of alcohol, drugs, anxiety, and cake. A holiday in the country seems to be in order, but that too devolves in a dark mess of mud, horny bulls, angry poachers, drunken posturing, and unwelcome homosexual advances by Withnail’s uncle (Richard Griffiths) which ends in a near-rape.

And yes, it’s a comedy. Though what sort of comedy? I’m still on the fence. (Apparently, one of the producers, Denis O’Brien, was also unsure whether its brand of humor would be marketable … he nearly shut production down after only three days of filming, concerned that there were no “discernible jokes”). In one of the film’s many gloriously inadvisable drunk driving montages, Withnail notices a street sign warning drivers about pedestrian accidents. He sticks his head out the window and yells buoyantly, “These aren’t accidents! They’re THROWING themselves into the road gladly! THROWING themselves into the road to escape all this hideousness! Throw yourself into the road, darling! You haven’t got a chance!” Watching this scene, I find myself without a chance of avoiding both laughter and a sudden strong urge to surrender to Withnail’s joyfully seductive call.

And there must be some sort of psychological seduction going on here, because why else would so many people take to obsessively watching and re-watching Withnail and Marwood’s horrifying experience? Perhaps Withnail and I is sort of like that half-naked guy at the party with whom you spend a while talking in an attempt to figure out whether he’s wasted or high or just weird, and you end up walking away from him having no idea but feeling sort of dirty and just wanting another drink, or maybe just some chips with a really spicy salsa. But then he’s getting some chips too, and even though you really don’t ever want to talk to him again you end up getting into a second conversation, and it’s even weirder than the first, but suddenly you feel some sort of inexplicable tie to this guy, even though he has bad breath.

I guess that’s why I re-watch this movie nearly every year. And I’m not a chronic movie re-watcher. In fact, I’m much more likely to re-read a book than to watch a movie for a second time, if that tells you anything. But there’s something about the darkness of Withnail and I that has become reassuring and certain and necessary to me. Even as it’s laughing, it pokes at you with tiny little needles: the prick of futility, the way roads draw blood when they turn out to lead to some blank space, the vaccination that can’t quite protect you against the dreams doing beautiful backflips off the diving board only to remember in the instant before they touch the water that they can’t swim.

What a piece of work is a man, as Hamlet would say. Withnail delivers the great Dane’s most misanthropic (and, I think, poetic) speech in a staggeringly beautiful and hopeless and, well, human final scene. Sure, man delights not me — nor woman neither. But this film always will, even as — or perhaps, because — it disturbs.

Elizabeth Wilcox is a writer and graduate student living in Los Angeles, CA. She tumbls here.

Aug 31, 200918 notes

Aug 31, 20097 notes

Listen

Northern Sky - Nick Drake

Aug 31, 20097 notes

Listen

eceu:

Grand Mal - Elliott Smith

Another “new” Elliott track surfaced late last week over at the Sweet Addy boards (which, sadly, are closing down in October). This one, entitled “Grand Mal”, is believed to be from the XO-era, mostly because Elliott was planning to call the record itself Grand Mal for quite a while. It’s not a big or important song, perhaps, but it’s certainly worth hearing; Elliott doing what Elliott did best: acoustic guitar and double-tracked vocals, two minutes of quiet heartbreak.

So, again, thank you Elliott. Here’s to hoping another hundred songs show up.

Aug 30, 200913 notes

Listen

Love Buzz - Nirvana (live at Reading Festival, 1992)

Aug 30, 20093 notes

Aug 30, 2009133 notes

Anybody still up?

youmightfindyourself:

Pulp And Circumstance: Tarantino Rewrites History (Editor’s note: I listened to this interview on the way home last night. It was wildly entertaining. I don’t love all his films but he is a genius or at least plays one on radio.)

Aug 28, 20099 notes

Aug 28, 20092 notes

sometimes a great notion.

September 2009

August 2009