NEUROTIC DISPATCH FROM MAINE
Since I’ve been up in Maine for most of this summer without an internet connection I’m even more out of touch than usual with how what is hip is inching along. Therefore, I will not be writing about the new NutCruntsch album or the excellent B-Side off of Wolf Panties limited edition 45, or the recently leaked Friendsome orgy tapes. Instead, I’m going to write this: A couple of weeks ago I was visiting New York City, and I ended up going to my first Williamsburg bar gathering. A group of my friends from high school got together to celebrate Michael’s 22nd birthday (“Imma make out with a girl tonight!”). When I used to go to bars with a fake ID, I felt like I could be anyone at all, could talk to whomever about god knows what – I had already fabricated my identity once, might as well roll with it, right? But, this time was different. Having just turned 21, it was one of my first times being legitimately allowed in a bar full of American twenty-somethings. I spent thirty dollars on drinks and only made eye contact with the bartender and people who had seen me with braces. At one point, sitting alone at our table, people-watching while waiting for friends to return with drinks or from bathroom breaks, I realized that unlike my experience with grungy gutter punks and old dudes in Portland, Maine a week before, none of these sexy androgynous yuppie urbanites would approach me unless they wanted to fuck me, and none of them wanted to fuck me. So, I watched some Wesclectic alums laughing or something at a table across the rooftop. It was an interesting five minute solo.
At some hazy point later it was time to call it a night, and we all parted ways. On the platform waiting for the L Train some drunk guy, who I’d later learn was named Brandon, accused me of being a fake hipster because I was standing on the Manhattan-bound side. After being herded away by his girlfriend, he approached a new crew of fake hipsters rolling with Mikael ’15. Some girls told him to listen to the girlfriend, and to shut up. We sat down next to each other on the train back, and talked for a while – the only stranger I spoke to that whole night.
Brandon had a point. Wes has taught me a bunch over the past few years, much of which has made me really good at being a fake eco-hipster: some basic shit about Marx and Nietzsche, Paul Ehrlich and John Cage; to always have the hair on top shorter than on the sides; what permaculture is; to quietly note the names of bands that Cal and Chelsie mention; how to get involved with film shoots. But, I’ve always felt a step behind. Hell, I write for this site and I listened to Mount Kimbie for the first time today!
This is all to say that I’m not cut out to write about music for a website like Aural Wes. My basic understanding of music journalism is that you need to have a handle on a specific set of jargon, a cross-referential knowledge of the current music scene, and the belief that people respect your music taste enough to want to listen to what you’re listening to – none of which I really have. Actually, what I'm trying to say is, contact someone on Aural Wes if you want to write for us.
Anyhow, if you’ve made it this far, then you probably are interested in hearing my opinions on music or something. So here’s a list of things that I’m listening to, or that I’m thinking about:
Groovy: Nigeria 70, Lagos Jump – an amazing compilation of Afro-Psychadelic protest music from post colonial Nigeria. Count Basie and Dizzy Gillespie, The Gifted Ones – Oh shit, so fucking good, a primer on how to play the blues from the masters. John Scofield, That’s What I Say (the music of Ray Charles) – jam-blues-jazz from Sco Thundercat, Apocalypse
Rock and Roll: Tame Impala, Tame Impala – I really like Tame Impala, and I listen to them a lot. Maybe it makes me uncool to say that here since they’ve been on Rolling Stone’s top college radio list forever, but whatever, man, they’re the shit. Howlin’ Wolf, Moanin in the Moonlight Booker T and the MG’s, Melting Pot Julian Lynch – Mare
Classical/Jazz: Geza Anda plays The Mozart Piano Concertos Tomas Luis de Victoria Django Reinhardt, In Solitaire Charles Mingus, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady
Thoughts: Excited to read brother's book Carnival of Dissent: The Voices of Occupy from Zuccoti to Athens for senior year, to go to West Virginia. Scared about overpopulation, loss of plankton in the arctic, graduating, NSA.
