2000-08-25 - 0:39

Some velvet morning when I'm straight

So here's my bi-daily sickness update, formerly known as a journal. I'm still coughing, but I'm getting better. Waah, waah, waah. That covers it.

I had CDs arrive yesterday and today. Yesterday I picked up a Gun Club disc from the post office, as well as the Massive Attack singles box set. That box freaked me out at first, because it's heat sensitive. The dark grey box developed a white handprint from where I was holding it on the walk home. "What the?! . . . ooooh, cool."

The singles box is overkill: all 11 singles that Massive Attack has released from their 3 albums. I'm a huge fan of their music. Blue Lines really takes me back to last summer, when I first got into the band. I associate certain times very strongly with that CD.

The shipment that arrived today contained another Gun Club disc, two Bad Brains CDs, and two by Lydia Lunch. It's cool that the Lydia Lunch discs arrived now; because I was just listening to Die Haut's Head On CD on Monday; and I concluded that Lydia steals the show on that album.

Die Haut is a band with no set singer and Head On features a steallar line-up of guest vocalists: Kim Gordon, Alan Vega, Cristina, Debbie Harry, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Kid Congo Powers, Anita Lane, Blixa Bargeld, and Lydia Lunch. What draws me so much to Lydia is that she has the best angry delivery of any female vocalist I know. The song "Doggin'" is so invigorating in the way that it revels in its anger; I can't help but feel good listening to that track.

Head On is an excellent contrast of singers. Lydia Lunch's voice, threatening with all that it is to kick your ass, is juxtaposed with Anita Lane's fragile, tender voice, that speaks to the threat of breaking your heart. I should sit down sometime and try to figure out which of the two draws me in more often or more strongly . . . maybe there's some analysis to make there.

Today, it was all about Lydia, as I listened to her double-disc Widowspeak compilation. Very, very impressive. She has written some captivating songs and she has also hooked up with some cool, talented musicians over the years. Lydia moved from the shrill unlistenabilty of her earliest output on to some amazing, interesting collaborations.

The other thing that struck me with that disc was the liner notes. It's great to read a view on something that you enjoy and gain a greater understanding from the words. The brief biography of Lydia and her music gave me something additional to think about and listen for in her songs.

At heart, I think that there is a part of me that would very much love to be a writer, to develop an insight of the world around me, to convey those ideas through words. At the very least, I can say that I fully understood every idea in the section of Nick Cave's lecture, "The Secret Life of the Love Song," that discussed erotic graphomania. (This is somewhat of a reference to an older post that I did.)

Hmm . . . I was going to go elsewhere with tonight's entry--the upcoming Moby concert, friends who are about to leave town--but I guess that those topics can wait for daylight.

J.