Please stand by as we sort through some behind-the-scenes tommyrot and technical rigmarole. We pray this will only be a temporary inconvenience. In the meantime, please to enjoy some Jarvis.

CLERK
Can I help the next person in line?

ELEANOR FRIEDBERGER
(approaches, hands clerk a document)
I’m plowing through a stir fry like it’s the last one ever
Tied to my porch with chicken wire and clever
When Vargas dips his fingers into my sticky rice
And up floats a letter from the DMV, very nice
I’d better run down and get my license renewed
Or my cargo line of plastic dolls from Beaconsville is screwed

CLERK
OK, let’s take a look. (pause) Um, is this gentleman with you?

ELEANOR
My brother Matt had my shoes in the cab of his blue truck
He drove out to the bad side of the bluffs with Tony, just my luck
I used the old Fiesta from the parade float to track him down
But some pirates stole the gas so Matt drove me into town
He wouldn’t give my shoes back til I told him my plans
That’s why we’re both here in line getting fluorescent tans

CLERK
Oh.

Read the whole thing here. I laughed, anyway.

I’ve already let my nerd flag fly high when I trumpeted the announcement of the upcoming Fiery Furnaces record, but what I didn’t tell you at the time (because it wasn’t announced until the following week) was that the siblings Friedberger were asking their fans to submit “deaf descriptions” of the new album. That is, they want you to review the album without having listened to it first. They will then take the deaf descriptions and somehow turn them into a “‘complete’ fan-made, word-only, entirely-unrelated, alternate version of I’m Going Away,” which also be released the same day as the actual album, July 21. Best of all, they don’t even have to be in English!

You know me, I couldn’t resist. What I submitted is copied below — it’s a blend of divinely prophesized predictions and blind wish-fulfillment fantasies. You can submit your deaf descriptions to thefieryfurnacesemail [at] gmail [dot] com.

———————–

Delirious doesn’t even begin to describe it. For a group already well known for their staggering gumption and spitfire hubris, the Fiery Furnaces have attempted on their latest studio album I’m Going Away to recreate the entirety of American popular music, from Dixie land brass bands to Lady Gaga, in an epic experiment just shy of 80 minutes. But this isn’t simply a linear retelling of the story, where Robert Johnson walks up to the crossroads and takes a left; instead, in the Friedbergers’ vision, all possible paths are explored at the same time. The result is a complete alternate history, in which salty sea shanties are sung in the dusty plains of Texas, carousel waltzes are regular staples in underground hardcore shows, and Burl and Charles Ives share not only a surname, but a bunk bed and a four-track.

The album starts with a sputtering drum machine and dueling barroom pianos. The title track, a traditional folk tune about disappointment and longing, serves as a departure point for the westward bound story arc of the album takes. In it, Eleanor sings of a man who stole all her money, which she didn’t find very funny, as her justification for going away. The album progresses on “Driving to Dallas,” where the railroad rhythm of the title track picks up steam until it’s moving at the speed of light-rail, nailed down with an industrious one-chord hammer-on rock’n’roll riff and whirring flashes of pedal steel and celeste. Spitting sibilance and Teutonic tongue-twisters, Eleanor begins to unveil some of the specific characters who crop up in this loosely themed album, which ultimately involves vivid tales of encounters with mischievous fur trappers, reluctant oil barons, theosophist lumberjacks, virgin soldiers, and depressive swim instructors.

One of the more memorable characters is Ray Bouvier, who first appears on the ballad “Ray Bouvier.” It’s an unusual story about an introverted carpenter whose arranged marriage is threatened by his increasing obsession with Willard Van Orman Quine’s theory of semantic holism. Perhaps not unintentionally, the song is complemented with a jarring guitar solo that echoes the work of Quine’s punk rock nephew, Robert.

Occasionally, the slapdash hybridization of styles the Furnaces experiment with turn out beautifully. Case in point: “The End is Near,” which is essentially an 8-bit blues jam with a wicked electric banjo breakdown. The modest incorporation of autotune during the second bridge assures this song’s success as the album’s lead single. At other times, the experiment is less successful. The ragtime/afro-funk fusion of “Charmaine Champagne,” for instance, is a series of syncopated snafus that is only salvaged from complete humiliation thanks to Jason Loewenstein’s dexterous handling of a vintage Theremin throughout the chorus.

There’s a lot to wrap your head around on this record. From the phantasmagoric “Lost at Sea,” which features two distinct mixes of polytonal power chords shredding simultaneously through each speaker channel, to the paisley pop of “Cups and Punches,” which features Matthew Friedberger rapping – yes, rapping – throughout the verses, I’m Going Away is easily the Fiery Furnaces’ most ambitious and least focused album to date. Perhaps we could have asked for a little less sousaphone and a little more wah-pedalled organ, but as far as summer albums are concerned, this one’s a blockbuster.

——————–

Further Fiery Furnaces Fan Fiction:

I’m Going Away: New Fiery Furnaces album gets me all sorts of excited

A Close Encounter with the Fiery Furnaces, 10/29/07, Blueberry Hill, St. Louis

Matthew Friedberger – Winter Women (Summer Version)

Matthew Friedberger – Holy Ghost Language School

Now, I’m not trying to impress upon you the magnificent scope and scale of my personal music collection; clearly, any nerd with an internet connection, a Western Digital external hard drive, and the fortitude to do so could easily dwarf my collection in one Dewmocracy Voltage-fueled weekend. No, the problem isn’t in acquiring new music, the problem is in actually finding the time to listen to and appreciate new music. Lately I’ve taken to creating month-by-month playlists in iTunes just to keep track of all the random mp3s I download over time. That, combined with overanalyzing my last.fm charts, has been one semi-useful method for reminding myself of my more recent mp3 hauls, but sometimes that isn’t even enough to maintain structure and so I resign myself to whatever my iPod wants to randomly play in shuffle mode.

Thankfully, it turns out I’m not the only one obsessively-compulsively bemoaning an overindulgent digital download diet. Last month, the Chicago Reader published an interesting article about music critic Michaelangelo Matos and the “Slow Listening Movement.” (To be honest, I don’t know if it technically counts as a “movement” if it only really consists of one man and his blog; however, both the article and the blog archives are well worth your time to read.) Long story short, “slow listening” is not meant to be confused with “deep listening” — it isn’t about how you listen to music, it’s about managing your consumption of music. The general rule proposed by Matos is that for every song or album you download, try listening to it all the way through at least once before moving onto something else. It’s about pacing and restraint. The older I get the more I come to realize the futility of amassing a large collection, since it’ll never be complete. Being a music fan should be more about enjoying the music you have, rather than trying to own all the music you might one day enjoy. For me, at least. I’m giving it a shot to see how it works, and to be honest, it’s harder than it sounds. All I’ve picked up this week, for instance, are the new Grace Basement record and Sebadoh III.

If you’re looking for a good blog that perhaps unintentionally embodies the slow listening spirit, I’d recommend checking out Scott Tennent’s amazingly organized Pretty Goes With Pretty, where he breaks down his weekly and hourly listening habits and discusses which records stood out and why. It’s actually more interesting than I make it sound. Scott also runs the music tumblr Do You Compute, which hosted a remarkably thoughtful weeklong review of the complete Low discography last week, which I suppose counts as slow listening of a different sort.

“Hazards of Love (The Prettiest Whistles Won’t Wrestle the Thistles Undone)” from Hazards of Love. (buy)

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a review of the Decemberists’ new album Hazards of Love in versified form for Detour. It appears among other excellent reviews, but I thought I’d let it stand alone for you, our dear readers.

From Portland sprang a band whose name won Indie music fame.
The Decemberists won boundless fans and Meloy an idol became,
With tales of orphans and aerialists,
Bagmen, ankles, and deadly trysts,
And, oh, Valerie Plame.

Accordions and zithers, how the band does compliment
This prolix lyrics paragon, his erudite intent.
To greater eccentricity resigned
To a major label they signed
And then, oh, The Hazards of Love.
You’ll learn soon enough,
Unless you’re fanatic this rock operatic confounds.

Poor Margaret, our heroine, her tale of ruin told.
A forest queen, shape-shifting beast, a rake profanely bold,
Evoked with vibrant verbs and nouns.
And at the end Marge drowns.
Oh, the hazards of love!

“The Rake’s Song” is a highlight, with its triumphant “alright”s!
And “Annan Water”’s driving strums buoys a lover’s river flight
In “Margaret in Captivity”
Our heroine survives
Even though the intro sounds
Like “Wanted Dead or Alive.”
Hmm. The Hazards of Love.

With all of its ambitious pluck no new fans will Hazards win.
But we the vassals of this lord of rhyme still widely grin.
With stars or numbers I will not bore.
The Post-Rockist doesn’t rate or score.
Oh, The Hazards of Love,
You’ll learn soon enough,
There’s plenty of killer (and killers) but filler redounds.

Download audio file (Tomorrow.mp3)
The Kinks – “This Time Tomorrow”
(from Lola vs. Powerman and the Money-Go-Round, pt. 1)

This time tomorrow, where will we be? On a spaceship somewhere, sailing across an empty sea? Well, in a manner of speaking, yes. The Post-Rockist is going on vacation! Scotter’s trucking out to D.C. to spend some time with his kindred ilk on K Street, and I’m jetting over to Sweden to stuff my face with pickled herring and reindeer heart. And what an appropriate way to end the month, too, since this really has been the November of No Updates over here in Post-Rockistland. But since we haven’t been doing our job lately, we’re going to turn the ball over to you and ask you to write something for us.

Class, this is your assignment:

Write an essay on the thematic impulses in the 1970 Kinks album Lola vs. Powerman and the Money-Go-Round, Part 1. In particular, focus on the conflicting narratives Ray Davies draws between that of the naive country boy hoping to attain socioeconomic success in the commercial metropolis and that of the jaded urbanite yearning for an idyllic return to a Rousseauian state of nature found in “Apeman,” and hypothesize what, if any, resolution is provided in either scenario. In your response, remember to avoid the intellectual trappings of Manichean dichotomies of Good vs. Evil as you analyze the epic struggle between Lola and Powerman, and ask yourself whether Mr. Davies is being sincere in his dimple-cheeked pronouncements of “freedom” in this twisted tale of power, corruption, and complicity. Be sure to discuss the importance of sexual anxiety as it is presented in the song “Lola” vis a vis the capitalist structure of the recording industry that has so clearly embroiled the Kinks at this stage of their career. Did Davies have the prescience to know that “Lola” would be a huge hit and therefore cunningly couch the track between the scathing “Top of the Pops” and “Get Back in Line,” or does the character Lola actually serve a larger symbolic purpose in Davies’ ironic drama? In addition, an appendix diagramming the logic of the “Moneygoround” system is mandatory.

Your paper should be 10 pages, double-spaced using standard size 12 Times New Roman font with no funny business in the margins, and you should cite at least eight references to support your claims. And since we know that all content on the internet is produced by mouth-breathing perverts, please only use trusted academic sources in your research.

Please note: any references to The Darjeeling Limited will be grounds for immediate disqualification, unless your paper can also weave together a broader meta-narrative on Davies’ critique of postcolonial culture found within the Kinks’ 1969 magnum opus Arthur, or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire. Easy, right?

Your responses are due Monday.

The author of the strongest paper will be invited to join the Post-Rockist editorial board for our annual S’Mores Christmastime Extravaganza in Frankenmuth. Believe me, this will be even more fun than you can imagine. Now get crackin’ on that essay because we’re anticipating thousands of submissions.

Our first album is Pleasure Mountain by Detroit’s Champions of Breakfast. The album can be purchased via the band’s MySpace page.

Pleasure Mountain is a rip-roaring mock-epic thru vast tracks of electro-pop and pop-culture nostalgia. It’s a sexed-up celebration as horny as anything by Prince or Beck’s Midnite Vultures period. The band’s raucous live show consists of live vocals with the music played as backtracking. The band, consisting of members Val Hundreds and Moses Jackson, play makeshift instruments made of 2x4s and cardboard, designed to look like guitars or Moog keyboards.

To discuss this album, The Post-Rockist has assembled the following expert panel:

Anthony DeRogatis is an author and distinguished music critic who writes regularly for The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Spin, Paste, The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker, Vogue, Vanity Fair, Time, Sport Illustrated, and Monster Trucks. He is the author and editor of several books on popular music, including Rolling Stone’s Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, The Rolling Stone Album Guide, and Rolling Stone’s 100,000,000,000 Greatest Albums of Rock n’ Roll.

Kwame Kilpatrick is the embattled mayor of Detroit, currently being charged on 8 felony counts, including perjury, misconduct in office, and conspiracy, after the Detroit Free Press obtained a transcript of text messages between Kilpatrick and his former aide which revealed a saucy affair about which the two are accused of lying under oath at a trial that cost the citizens of Detroit millions of dollars.

Link is the hero and main protagonist of the popular Nintendo Adventures of Zelda video game series. He is among the best-known video game heroes of all time, and is name-dropped in the Champions of Breakfast song “WHNTR (Can U Smell the Phantasy?).”

_________________________________________________________________

The Post-Rockist (P-R): Thank you all for joining us in this panel discussion of Champions of Breakfast’s Pleasure Mountain. I’d like to start first with you, Anthony DeRogatis, and ask about this interesting form of music, electro-pop with all of these fantasy, sci-fi, and video game references, and the fact that Champions of Breakfast (CoB, for short) don’t actually play real instruments on stage.

Anthony DeRogatis: Quite simply, Champions of Breakfast are challenging the Romantic (with a capital “R,” mind you) ideal of music. Beethoven would be very aghast, would “roll over in his grave,” as the song goes, to hear CoB. But this is the next movement, the explosion of the cultural and creative modes that music used to stand by. Everything has been so manufactured by the culture industry so as to make most new music disingenuous–manufactured–and legitimate only in its state of manufacturedness. In many ways, Top 40 hits and new country music are far more destructive to Romantic conceptions of music than anything the CoB have done. If anything, CoB self-consciously challenge the themes of pop music–the fake instruments just call out the now infamous lip sync incident with Ashlee Simpson. Truly, Champions of Breakfast are post-modern music, using play, irony, and lunacy and passing it off as a serious art form of music, which indeed it is in our post-modern, post-industrial, post-humanist, post-deconstructionist, post-literary, post-rockist (if I might use the title of your so-called, somewhat mis-leading, and trite blog) world.

P-R: Um, thanks? Well what do you think of the opening track, “Gravedigger”?

Anthony DeRogatis: “Gravedigger” starts with a mist of electric sound and a thumping that simulates a heartbeat. “We can dance all night.” “We can rock all night.” All of the standard shout-outs and dance-party calling cards are there. Zombies, the undead, “everybody up” from the grave. You can almost see the video, a parody, of course, of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” with all of the spirits rising from the ground, a bit disordered at first, then suddenly finding themselves in line for a coordinated dance up and down the graveyard, led by swaying and skipping Moses Jackson and Val Hundreds. “Let’s get down together…and break dance.”

The fascination with fantasy characters, particularly those associated with the undead, can very much be explained through the post-911 and current Iraqi war milieu as a form of escapism from impending or possible death. Mummies and zombies rising from the grave to dance. In a sense, the undead are invisible, will never die, and can party all they want. They don’t have jobs and don’t need them. They just need physical contact with a living being, and in these fantasies there’s a lot of that contact, often sexual, which gets kind of messed up if you think about it, but there it is.

Do you mean to tell me that you didn’t obviously read this into the song?

P-R: Well, um, not quite, but…

Anthony DeRogatis: Ah, well, I guess you’re just a blog, right? You probably didn’t even see the relation between “Power of Glove” and Huey Lewis’s “Power of Love.” God! Such amateurs!

P-R: Yes, well, Link. First, thanks for joining us.

Link: Hey, no problemo, dude.

P-R: As a famous Nintendo hero, what do you think of “Power of Glove”?

Link: I’ll tell you one thing, that god-damned thing did no good for me, so god bless ‘em for findin’ somethin’ better to do with that piece ‘a shit.

P-R: Well, if you feel so strongly about it, I suppose we could move on to another song. What do you think of the fourth track, “Vanilla Always Gets It Raw”?

Anthony DeRogatis: I’ll answer this one. It’s absolutely obvious that the line “I will be your ice cream man” is a nod to Master P’s album Ice Cream Man, as well as the Van Halen and Jonathan Richman songs titled “Ice Cream Man.” Here, the Champions condition their place in pop music as the electro-pop practitioners of Ice Cream Mannery, since Richman’s folky pop, Van Halen’s classic rock, and Master P’s rap have already positioned themselves among this pantheon. Also, it attempts to overturn the idea that bland white males (the vanilla’d ones) are not as great lovers or sexual beings as others. You have to admit that white males have not exactly been stereotyped lately as vivacious lovers in popular culture. I mean, Justin Timberlake is h-o-t-t and all, but his glib self-characterizations and generally wussiness leaves him as our bad best example of Caucasian viral sexuality.

P-R: Mayor Kilpatrick, do you agree with our critic’s interpretation?

Mayor: LOL LOL! No question.

P-R: Link, what do you think?

Link: Shit. Lemme tell you somethin’. Just you try to save the world from evil or from monsters and shit. Get it bro? Fightin’ with broadswords is serious shit, ya know? Especially when you’re just a reg’ler guy from Hyrule. That’s some serious shit! And how the hell does that royal dame keep gettin’ kidnapped anywho? Every coupla years I gotta get off my keister and save that dame and what do I get? The satisfaction of savin’ the world again from evil and that’s it. It gets old after awhile, man.

Mayor: Damn that.

Link: Fuck yeah, Ya know, you’re not so bad, Kwame!

Mayor: LOL!

Unicorn Bible
Download audio file (Unicorn.mp3)

P-R: Um, let’s move on. The song “Unicorn Bible” is a standout, and it was the song that really got me interested in the band. I thought it should be the theme song to a really sexy Renaissance Festival fantasy. I really enjoy the track. What do you think?

Anthony DeRogatis: Well if you know anything about music, it’s pretty obvious where the Champions of Breakfast got this from. Everybody’s wrong when they say it’s based on Dungeons & Dragons. Instead, it’s obviously a reference to the 1969 Tyrannosaurus Rex album (later to be known as T. Rex, for you neophytes) entitled Unicorn. On the back cover of the LP, Marc Bolan and Steve Took are surrounded by literary influences, such as books by Blake and Shakespeare and, of course, The Bible. On that album, there’s a song called “She Was Born to Be My Unicorn,” that includes the following lyrics:

“Giant of Inca hill
Loosed his boar to gorely kill
The dancing one horned waife
In doublet of puffin-bill.

The beast in feast of sound
Kittened lamb on God’s ground
Ridden by the born of horn
Jigged like a muse on life’s lawn.”

So there. Don’t you get it? It’s obvious.

P-R: Link?

Link: I kinda thought that song was about fucking.

P-R: How so?

Link: A night under the dragon’s flame always leads to fucking.

P-R: Alright. Well, let’s move on to the next track, “Bacchanalian Rock.” Link, do you have any thoughts?

Link: Yeah, you know, I can really relate to the line “When we grow tired of battles and defeats” part, except for the defeats part, you know, because I always end up saving Zelda and shit, but, you know, you kinda want to get it on with some elfin’ babe afterward as a kind of reward. Seriously, dude, there’s no better bait for ladies than coming back from some kick-ass battle all horny and shit and ready for a night of gettin’ it on, you know, so I kind of think that song is about me.

P-R: What about “WHNTR (Can U Smell the Phantasy?),” where you get name-dropped by the band? That’s got to be quite an honor.

Link: Look, they call me the “sexy little guy from the Zelda game.” It’s no name drop, you know what I mean? I mean, how about a song called “Link is the fucking Hero of Time.” I mean, come on! I’m not a little guy, as any Hyrulian babe will tell ya. Ha ha ha.

Mayor: LOL!

P-R: So Mayor Kilpatrick, Pleasure Mountain is a dancy, electro-pop circus of sorts. I heard the album for the first time at a perfect moment: in the car, driving to a party. It’s fun. Where did you first hear the album?

Mayor: At Benz Chili Bowl.

P-R: Really? You know, I was at a Champions of Breakfast show at the Garden Bowl in Detroit where they dedicated the song “Nasty Bunz” to you. Did you hear that they had dedicated that song to you.

Mayor: Damn. I just got out of the shower and looked at my two way. Next time, just tell me to sit down, shut up and do your thing! I’m fucked up now!

P-R: Really? Having the song dedicated to you messed you up pretty bad? Those guys actually gave a shout out to our website once. It was pretty cool.

Mayor: I really feel you.

P-R: The bonus track on the album is called “Rosalie is One Hell of a Party,” and contains the lyrics “O Rosalie you’re gonna turn 18 / before you know it girl. / Then we can finally do it legally. / Won’t that be cool?” This song seems a little illicit to me, depending upon the age of the singer/lover that’s delivering these lines. Mayor Kilpatrick, what do you interpret these lyrics as meaning?

Mayor: In this important and somewhat confusing time in your life, please know with all our hearts and soul that I love you. And you will never, never be alone.

P-R: That’s quite a touching, albeit safe interpretation of seemingly sexual lyrics, Mayor.

Mayor: Damn! Thank you!

P-R: Don’t take offense if I say so, Mayor, but I think you’re being a bit coy. The situation seems a bit like an affair between a younger, pre-18 girl and an older man. What is your real interpretation?

Mayor: Everything is cool. Did you get busted? You were kind of wet last night, inside and out. LOL.

P-R: I think you might be right, Mayor.

Mayor: The ‘might’ is on you!

P-R: Mayor Kilpatrick, are you willing to stand by this statement, on the record?

Mayor: Hell no! Don’t start none. Won’t be none…LOL.

When Trolls Roam the Earth
Download audio file (Trolls.mp3)

P-R: Moving on, then. One of my favorite songs on the album is “When Trolls Roam the Earth.”

Anthony DeRogatis: A masterpiece of comic form. Ambivalence is key here. The lyrics turn positive statement into negative statement to the point of stagnation. Monty Python should’ve come up with this. And, of course, it calls to mind the Bush Administrations policies in Iraq, and has a lot to do with the current predicament with China, as well as the work of Jim Henson.

Link: Fuck that. I guarantee you that trolls got no time to write no songs and make no fuckin’ food. Those fuckers got spears and arrows and shit. No good to me.

P-R: But Link, many non-Nintendo gamers who have a very basic knowledge of you sometimes think that you yourself are a troll of some sort. What is your response to these allegations?

Link: FUCK THAT! You tell me who those fuckers are an’ I’ll broadsword their asses!

P-R: Well, I think that CoB put a pretty good spin on the positives that trolls could bring society.

Link: Yeah, I can see that, kinda. But you don’t get no Triforce of Courage or get to be no Hero of Time for nuthin’. You got to grab that bull by the god damn horns, you know? Look, when you get a Master Sword to throw around at those sons a’ bitches, it’s no play time, you know what I mean? They fuckin’ bite, man. Sharks are cool, but when they start biting, you kill those fuckers.

P-R: Well, on that note, I think we’ll wrap things up. I’d like to thank my guests for this first ever Inter-Review and hope we can do this again soon. Any last thoughts about the album?

Anthony DeRogatis: Well what kind of scale are we judging on?

P-R: What?

Anthony DeRogatis: Do you want a one-to-five scale? A-thru-F? How many stars can I give the album?

P-R: Well, I’d rather you just say what you think.

Anthony DeRogatis: Your site sucks. I’m giving it four stars.

P-R: Link?

Link: Well, I think it’s kinda unrealistic, you know? Dragons aren’t that awesome when you gotta fight ‘em, and that whole thing about the god damned trolls! Although they did hit the hammer on the nail on that thing about Mummy’s eatin’ brains and shit. But, you know, good fuckin’ tunes, so yeah.

P-R: Mayor Kilpatrick, what do you think about Pleasure Mountain, and Val Hundreds and Moses Jackson, overall?

Mayor: I enjoy that. I might be there stepdad one day.

P-R: Wow. Well, thanks so much for joining us.

Mayor: Love you too. I realize more everyday how much. You look real good, by the way. See you tomorrow.

P-R: What?

Mayor: Hell yeah! Walk in.

P-R: Ok, well thanks for reading, folks.

Mayor: Love you.

Here’s a recent video of Champions of Breakfast at PJ’s Lager House, courtesy of Motor City Blog:

Looks like we beat Pitchfork to the punch yet again. Through friends of friends of friends of friends of friends of friends of friends of the band, The Post-Rockist has acquired a complete track listing to of Montreal’s next full-length album, entitled Skeletal Lamping, due out on Polyvinyl in October 2008. Reportedly, the album will more closely resemble of Montreal’s early albums like The Gay Parade and Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies in that it will be composed of several shorter vignettes.

Pagan Wanderlust
Stealing the Metamorphosis En Route to Gothenburg
Mortician’s Studio Hopscotch
Pwning God
Feminine Effects
Grover Cleveland’s Been Schemin’
Mingusings
Our Last Summer of Independence
The la Rochefoucauld Palindrome
Tran-Sister Radio
The Parade of Pompous Paramours
The Enduring Appendage on the Doctor from Eckernförde
We Can Do it Softcore if You Want
Billy Goat Stomp
Part-Time Doughboys and Predisposed Dissidents
A Requiem for Judy
Rhapsody in Rouge (Parts I – III)
Exquisite Confessions
Rhapsody in Rouge (Part IV)

So it should come as no surprise that when the Post-Rockist Senior Market Trend Spotter (abbrevieted P-R Sr. MTS) spotted the burgeoning internet trend of tumbling, that we jumped on that electronic bandwagon with a gusto you have not yet seen in these here interwebs. After all, we concluded after several hours of international teleconferencing and millions spent on new media market research, most “popular” music-based web logs are just content providers regurgitating headlines about new videos, album release dates, tours, incriminating photographs and the like, coupled with a paragraph or two of unnecessary gobbledy-gook. If we just cut out the gobbledy-gook and go straight for the meat, we could provide regular music news and clips to the hordes of post-rockists who most certainly aren’t getting a daily music fix from this site. So, without further hullabaloo, we present to you: the prockist. (Market research indicated that eliminating letters from words is a swell way to build ‘net credibility.)

So the next time your browsing begins to idle, sneak on over to the prockist. We’ll try and make it interesting for you; fill it with things we think are neat. And don’t fret, we’ll still update the tried and true Post-Rockist for those who still like words and complete sentences.

Yours truly,

The Executive Post-Rockist Marketing-Communications Director

Nervous Tick Motion of the Head to the Left
Andrew Bird
The Mysterious Production of Eggs

A fading wave of unconsciousness leaves you.

Overperscribed, soberly and acoustically, under the mister [A cattle farmer from Homerville, OH, has installed misters in his fields so that the cows can continue to graze in the otherwise dangerous heat] we had survived to turn on the History Channel and ask our esteemed panel [yes, do] why are we alive? and here’s what they replied: You’re what happens when two substances collide and on all accounts you really should have died [The doctrine of probabilities dates to the correspondence of Pierre de Fermat and Blaise Pascal (1654).][A basic idea of chaos theory is the butterfly effect: "The phrase refers to the idea that a butterfly's wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that ultimately cause a tornado to appear (or, for that matter, prevent a tornado from appearing). The flapping wing represents a small change which causes a chain of events leading to large-scale phenomena. Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different."]

Crack, crackle, crack: jangly thunder claps then fades.

A sound similar to when a door would open in the main deck of the Enterprise in classic 60s Star Trek. Drawing figure 8s with a pencil in 3rd grade on a hot May day. Breath pushed through pursed lips. A finger tip lightly circling the brim of a glass half-full-half-empty with water.

Tick-ta. Tick-ta. Tick-ta. Tick.

Stretched out on the tarmac, six miles south of North Platte [Glenn Miller lived in North Platte, NE, for many years as a child. Later in life, he died in an airplane crash. "Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different."]

He can’t stand to look back [Martin Scorcese directed a documentary on Bob Dylan called "Don't Look Back." It ends in 1967 when Dylan was thrown from his bike and nearly killed. "Had the butterfly not flapped its wings..."]Sixteen tons of Hazmat[HAZMAT is short for hazardous materials and is defined as any solid, liquid, or gas that can harm people, other living organisms, or the environment. From the North Platte Telegraph, 01/22/2005: "The train accident in Granitville, S.C., is just a small example of what kind of disaster could happen in North Platte. On Jan. 6, a tanker car ruptured after a Columbia-bound freight train struck a parked train near Avondale Mills plant. A dangerous gas cloud formed quickly, forcing more than 5,000 residents to evacuate. The chemical spill of chlorine gas killed five people."]

It’s what goes undelivered.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

It’s a nervous tick motion of the head to the left
[Autism is often marked by nervous ticks of the head]
Tick-ta. Tick-ta. Tick-ta. Tick.
It’s a nervous tick motion of the head to the left
Tick-ta. Tick-ta. Tick-ta. Tick.
Of the what, of the head to the left
[Tik is a street name for methamphetamine]
So exercise yourself to your bereft.
Tick-ta. Tick-ta. Tick-ta. Tick.
Cause it’s a nervous tic motion of the head to the left of the, of the, to the
Tick-ta. Tick-ta. Tick-ta. Tick.
[Ticks are second only to mosquitoes as vectors of human disease, both infectious and toxic. Hazmat may be radioactive, flammable, explosive, toxic, corrosive, biohazardous, an oxidizer, an asphyxiant, an allerger.]

The Enterprise door
Tick-ta. Tick-ta. Tick-ta. Tick.
Figure eights
Tick-ta. Tick-ta. Tick-ta. Tick.
Circular motion makes sound.

Splayed out on the bathmat,
[The bathroom is the best acoustic space in most houses and apartments]
Six miles north of South Platte
[Circular motion makes sound]
He just wants his life back
[Don't look back?]
What’s in that paper nap sack
[Tik is a street name for methamphetamine]
It’s what goes undelivered
[boom boom]
Undelivered

boom boom boom boom [HAZMAT]

It’s a nervous tic motion of the head to the left
A nervous tick-ta tic tick-ta motion of the head
Head to the tick-ta left
It’s a nervous tic motion of tick-ta the, of tick-ta the, to the tick-ta ta-the
Left

It’s a nervous tic motion of the head to tick-ta the, of tick-ta the, of the tick-ta head of the head to the

Cracks jangly thunder

Over imbibed Under the mister [Homerville, Oh]
Barely alive we cover the blisters in flannel
[Dr. Scholl's® Molefoam® Padding: Extra-soft, smooth cotton flannel padding]
Though the words we speak are banal
[huh]
Not one of them’s a lie
[No]
Not one of them’s a lie
[Yes]
You’re what happens when two substances collide
["Had the butterfly not flapped its wings..."]
And by all accounts you really should have died
[...the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different.]

[and now, we sigh]

–Posted by Scotter