my chuck taylors weigh a ton.

we don't go for that flip-in, flip-out gimmicky crap.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

yet another place holder

the girly-girl (yeah, i'm still deeply in love with her) is painting the bathrooms. so the whole house smells like poison.

of course, being her, she chose the least toxic paint available, which is nice, but still... paint fumes.

which makes me want to listen to big star, boards of canada, lee dorsey, kongas, fug, maurice fulton, the fugs (or anything by ed sanders), horace silver, nitedog the dj, the novi singers, one dove, elastica, eric dolphy, sonny clark, and shitloads of other music that sounds... well. good when you're high.

carry on. that's what's been played here today. oh, and steely dan.

Monday, January 11, 2010

wow, it's been well over a year.

indeed. what's a disco boy to do?

now that i remember the password to this account... post more, apparently.

sigh. currently loving records by OM, popul vuh, krokodil, grant green, horace silver, deerhunter, black flag, freddie hubbard, eric dolphy, they came from the stars i saw them, lindstrom & prins thomas, paul hardcastle, the monochrome set, kongas, the last poets, tropea, joni mitchell, elvin jones, flora purim, jadell, roy harper, sandy denny, undisputed truth, don blackman, clan of xymox, vivian vee, emmylou harris, the smiths, two lone swordsmen, joe henderson, cheap trick, can, husker du, sex vid, hercules and love affair, steve winwood, boards of canada, and just about anything i go and see which is performed live.

support live music, folks, it's fun for you and them.

Friday, November 21, 2008

honesty is the best policy

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

don't get excited, this is yet another place filler

sheeeit, it's been so long since i've checked my own blog... i only looked at it to see if satan himself was linkable... he is, but i don't have time for it, and i'll likely revisit the subject. anyhoo, this is yet another placeholder.

so what's new with disco boy? well, i'm back in the dj game again, albeit reluctantly and in a rather tenuous-to-the-industry sort of way. i play records two nights a week at a hotel that's at the edge of the water in seattle, and boy howdy is it boring. but, they are going to pay someone money, so it might as well be me. i own records. i know how to play them. put the money right here, in my hand. and why don't i love it? well, for one thing, i'm totally unnecessary. any crappy ipod could do what i do. no dancefloor, the music is so quiet that nobody pays attention. i still have a day job that requires me up and at em' at the wee small hours, so one night a week i get squat for sleep. hotel guests are largely uninterested in me. hotel employees have heard the rumors about my nightly wage, and are pissed that they have to walk around and talk to people and bathe and pretend to care, and i sit in the corner, farting about, and earning slightly more money than they do. well i'm FUCKING SORRY. i'm just the lucky dork with a semi-skill that seems to earn a wage, now and again.

and what else? well, in a form, i unearthed on the internet. see, i've always tried to lay low, keep the government name hidden, dance... unda-neeth the ray-dah... and then, just as a test, i put my real name on my facebook account. and goddamn, so many schoolmates and folks of that nature hunted me down. and it's been... well... it's been... enlightening. the first thing i learned is that more girls like me than guys, and i'm pretty much cool with that. as a heterosexual, isn't that what we hope for? i also found out that everyone i grew up with has kids. everyone. no exceptions. kids, all over the fucking place. some are even named after me (which isn't true, my first name exploded in popularity over the last few years, i'm in the fine company as scads of anklebiters named madison, price, aidan, dakota, trevor and so on). i also found out that everyone is married. once again, i'm out of sorts. furthermore, everyone has better jobs then me. but that's no surprise.

if my day job was better, i wouldn't feel like i needed a night job. but the day job, while mildly entertaining, is having it's soul sucked from it's butthole by venture capitalists and consultants. i shouldn't be surprised, but i'm still rather unimpressed. i survived the first round of layoffs, but i'm sure after the new year, my necks on the chopping block. and i'll be fine, but just for once, just one fuckin' time in my life, i'd love to play for the winning team. i'd love to be involved in an industry or company or what-have-ya that's on the rise, and not treading water or in decline. just once! what's a guy gotta do?

oh, and i'm getting fat. most people wouldn't have expected that, but this sit down all goddamn day is fucking with my metabolism.

but as always, good music makes me feel better. i'm constantly lookin' out for kickass records, and i'm frequently finding, or even re-discovering them. so what's working for me? well, good christ, i had no idea that aimee mann was such a clever songwriter. "the forgotten arm" is a solid, solid concept record. alain toussant has been thrilling me with raw vibes and slippery grooves. john-in-th'-morning played primal scream's "movin' on up" the morning after obama's victory, and i shed a tear in the dark drive on the way to work, fucking inspiring, i had forgotten how good of a record "screamadelica" was. i'm feeling' old sonny rollins records, along with grant green and thelonious monk, on the jazz angle. the quiet village LP, while mostly re-edits, is really good. the fleet foxes... lordy, what a great show not too long ago, and that album could be my record of the year. the chromatics are great. i've been listening to old sparks records, and it's a shame that we don't revere them the same way that we do, say... roxy music. maybe humor doesn't belong in music. maybe that's why was not was ended up, essentially, a one-hit wonder.

so with that, i guess i'll go play some records in that hotel bar. just call me murph, the murph-tones are off tonight.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

these words fill space

post. post post post. i haven't died. well, parts of me have, but now's not the time.

this is just to keep this blog active. it's been over a year since i said anything, and way, way longer than that since i've said anything worth listening to... in so far as this blog's concerned.

i will be back. soon.

Monday, May 14, 2007

dilbert jokes still aren't funny.

so tired. so very, very tired.

and really, for no good reason at all. ok, so i did start the new job. yeah, i finally broke free of the stupidity and downhill trajectory of the record store. i'm ashamed to admit how long i spend sailing along in simplicity, not challenging myself, not giving myself a moment of opportunity, finding myself uninspired and generally bummed... well, i'll tell you anyway. it went on for a good 7 years. and i should have left... well, six years ago. pathetic.

but that's how it goes, especially if you're me. so i popped me head out from up me own arse, and applied for a few jobs. and wouldn'tcha know it, like that i found myself working for someone else. everything was looking up. there was promise and hope, if i only had 10 minutes to kind of sit down and think about it.

my life is a constant running around, pissing on the fire that's directly in front of me. i think about long-term strategy for about three minutes before i fall asleep, and usually while having some strange lucid dream of eating sidewalk-vendor falafel and tripping over small lizards, spazzing myself awake in an instant, just before i konk out and saw logs.

so like i said, i said yes to this job, without even really paying attention to what it was, where it was, and what kind of life i was trading up for. when i was i kid, i played a video game called "berserk" that had a cool feature; you could hit a button called hyperspace or some such shit, and it randomly put you in different places on the board. if you got yourself in a bad enough situation, you'd hit that, and sometimes you'd end up in safety, and sometimes you'd end up right next to the bad guy with the electrowhomper gun, and so, it was a crapshoot. well, i hit that buttton. i'd call it a lateral move.

my new job pays better, but it's a long ways away. my new job is for a company that's moving upward, but it's in a department in which unless i prove myself as brilliant, i could languish forever. my new job is for a cool pro audio manufacturer, but it's staffed by mullets and ponytails and guys who still believe in guitar solos and the power of a fully operational pair of cargo jeans. my new job doesn't have near the dimwits and mouth-breathers as customers and co-workers, but it does require staring at a computer inside a cubicle. all in all, it feels like a lateral move.

and nobody there knows a damn thing about disco.

i did meet a good guy who i carpool with, and so that makes it better, he's coached me through a lot off the stink and foolishness, and i do get to play with some cool toys. and yes, it pays better, but most of that will go to my new car and so on. my exposure to customers/co-workers on meth has dropped considerably. i still can wear this ugly ass ol sweatshirt to work, and no one blinks an eye.

but, i gots to get up sooper early in the morn. and just like that, i'm so goddam tired i can't function anymore.

pretend i said something funny to wrap all this up.

Monday, April 16, 2007

more fun with guns!

whoa-kay. who heard about the ugly shit that went down over at virginia tech this morning?

so far, thirty three dead. that's a little outta fucking control.

go ahead, look up. i bet you can't see thirty-three people in front of you. i'll bet you can't walk out onto the sidewalk and see thirty-three people out there. i've been awake for seven hours, and on capitol hill for five, i'll bet that if i shot at every person i've seen so far today, i couldn't have killed thirty-three people with my rookie aim.

thirty-three. not only is that dedication, that's efficiency. it's also a sort of record, for things here in the US.

so, how many d'ya spose have to fall in an incident before the NRA members/gun-luvahs/useless death apologists say... OK. this is gone beyond reason. double today's count? triple? the century mark?

it's true. you can't put the poop back in the horse. you can't unlearn people on how to make a gun (or a bomb, or a crossbow, or a... or a...), you can't bring back the innocent bystanders, and sadly... especially in this country where any affront to [insert random thing that you love so damn much you are blinded by it's uselessness] is an affront to your freedom, you can't make an argument strong enough that guns are fucked up, and there are too many of them out there, and they are too easy to get.

i fear my government. i have a legitimate worry that martial law will be declared near the election... i've got enough belief in conspiracy to almost expect some sort of "terrorist catastrophe" near election time, especially if the current administration doesn't like the way the wind is blowing. boy howdy, we've seen some strange things in the last number of years, and i wouldn't put anything past them. and dammit, if the tanks start rolling through the streets to quell the "insurgents", then yeah, i'd rather have a gun than no gun. but i don't have a gun. and i certainly don't have a gun big enough to defend myself against the national guard. and if i did... well, it's a certainty that i'd be dead in less time then it would take to load said weapon. so... what's the point anyway?

in other words, the right to keep and bear arms is basically useless. handguns are especially useless. unless you find yourself defending the rights of psychos to go and shoot up fucking high school and college campuses, town diners, post offices, and afterparty crash-shacks, you honestly gotta concede that while, yeah, it's a pie-in-the-sky dream, this country would be way better off if they had never figured out a way to make a gun that was any shorter than your arm. and doubly better off if the only way to kill someone was with a blunt object, a sharp object, or a clever ruse on getting them to jump off something really, really high up.

sorry. i do this everytime some poor sap gets gunned down for no fucking reason at all. carry on.