but they came, and when they'd finally made it here

I'm not completely sure how I feel about this article, but it is worth the read. I'm in no rush to hang out with Darnielle, but I will admit I tend to go for days only listening to the mountain goats. He writes incredible depictions of almost any type of situation - the bible, history, relationships, etc...... That's about all I am going to say. His story is also fascinating.

By the time Darnielle graduated from high school, he was using heroin and later crystal meth. Eventually, a therapist told him he might find a salve for his own pain in helping others. He started taking classes to become a psychiatric-nurse technician and found work at Metropolitan State Hospital in Norwalk, California. “It’s not that complicated,” Darnielle says. “My favorite movies are gory horror films. I love Faulkner. I wanted to see the most painful things possible. Maybe it was to see people worse off than me, but a lot of it was just to see how many bullets I could eat.”

Revised 3/3/09 - I think this raises some important points. I'll leave it at that. For now.

The Mysterious Mixer

I realize this wasn't intended to be a music blog, but I discovered bitorrent this weekend and have been in heaven. Before the Animal Collective show last week, they were playing some pretty incredible dub that I didn't recognize and Shazam really let me down. In what can only be described as divine intervention, the Village Voice actually mentioned the song in the review. How that happened, I don't know. But anyway, I now know who Bullwackie (aka Lloyd Barnes, The Mysterious Mixer, etc...) is. I'm having trouble finding stuff and I haven't figured out how to upload my own, so enjoy these.

Take a Walk Out in the Light Drizzle

I recently caught (insert hyperbole here) Animal Collective at the Bowery Ballroom, the day after the release of their 9th and most "accessible" album, Merriweather Post Pavilion. Enough has been written and said about it - it's great. And the show was great, although I couldn't help but feel that a lot of the chaos from their old shows was missing. I used to walk away from an AC show somewhat disappointed that I didn't recognize more of the material, but only because the performances were even more amazing than the albums. I also couldn't help thinking that the crowd loving My Girls wouldn't be as thrilled during We Tigers. This is a great version of the later from the Malta Festival in 2007.

Going to Gambier

I'm kind of excited about these shows. As much as I love recent Mountain Goats tours, nothing beats the solo shows.

From John:

We're going to stand alone onstage and play our guitars and sing old songs & new, and then we'll probably play together. We are going to sit side by side with our acoustic guitars like two out of the five guys on the Five Man Acoustical Jam album, only with fewer Tesla songs. Because the whole point of playing an acoustic guitar is not to unplug. It's to get raw and draw blood.

Although this isn't a music blog (I'll leave that to the professionals), it is named after a tMG song, which I'll probably write more about later. I won't be going to Gambier, but I will be attending the NYC show, part of the Wordless Music Series.