on the genius of a series of sneaks

this is to be the first of what will probably be 89034823894 discussions on this blog about a band called spoon.


buying this album: best decision of my life, except maybe buying kill the moonlight. do it now. just close your eyes and do it. THIS IS THE BEST ADVICE I CAN GIVE YOU.

LAFFITTE, DON'T FAIL ME NOW --- SPOON.
this song is about hating a guy for screwing you over. i have this on right now turned up so loudly that i can hear static in the background like someone on itunes ripped this baby off vinyl, which is awesome. i miss my dad's old record player. he's probably reading this so: dad, please fix the record player.

ROAD TRIPPIN

me, genevieve, on the left, with the scarf, melissa, on the right, with the headband. we went on a road trip today, although this picture is from last friday in central park. we just decided to drive to connecticut and see what happened because we had a great deal of time to kill. we got lost around here among all the huge houses and construction to make them bigger, driving around in her mom's old subaru. she drove and i picked music, so i got to thinking about road trip songs.

good road trip songs are ones that are about destinations, places to go and things to see and the feelings and things that propel you there.
the classic is ROADRUNNER --- MODERN LOVERS which is the most glorious and awesome thing ever. i once wrote an essay about this for my english class (A/A+ 97% if you're curious).
CHICAGO --- SUFJAN STEVENS. this might be today's roadrunner, though, because everyone just wants to yell out the window "i made a lot of mistakes!!!"

it's also good to drive to songs that are about the PILGRIMAGE, the EXODUS!
GRACELAND --- PAUL SIMON. obviously.
WALCOTT --- VAMPIRE WEEKEND. EPIC VOLUME on round hill road. my boss's wrath is sharp as knives. i was tremendously late to work. we changed the lyrics: "don't you want to get out of connecticut?"
MILES FROM NOWHERE --- CAT STEVENS. oh man, cat! harold and maude and etc! this song will be played at my funeral.

but road trip music needs to have a driving beat and a pulsating rhythm. it needs to drive you forward. it needs to propel you to the future. i hope everyone understands my diction in those sentences. IT WAS PURPOSEFUL.
STAY DON'T GO --- SPOON. beatboxing / sexy falsetto, tapping one hand on the side of the door, shaking your head a little, sweat, sunlight.
ONE WEEK OF DANGER --- THE VIRGINS. at a stoplight with this blaring i tell melissa to rev the engine at the guy in the pickup next to us. it didn't happen but it should have.
BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE --- TALKING HEADS. i was raised on this song so the energy it holds for me is understandable. THE ENERGY OF LIFE. THE UNIVERSE AND ETC.

some road trip songs the location makes appropriate. driving past the most manicured lawn i had ever seen in my young life, i said "i think some kwassa kwassa might be necessary."
CAPE COD KWASSA KWASSA --- VAMPIRE WEEKEND.
past a whole bunch of construction workers melissa and i are yelling "is your bed made?" like my mom this morning.

take me in your car with you and we can drive up the taconic and rock out. i love the taconic. i have to get on that soon.


M12 IS REAL
genevieve

if you solve it, you will remember all of it.

i saw islands on saturday at webster hall in what brooklyn vegan says was their biggest new york show to date. the first single from their newest album came into my possession in march; it's called the arm and it's awesome, with all these divisions and distinct sections, pretty badass. i bought the tickets for saturday night because of that song, because i could tell from listening to it that live it was going to sound ridiculous. and it did, which was nice.

there are no good pictures on the internet from this show that i could find because it was a saturday night show on memorial day weekend. so i am going to paint a picture for you with words.

nick diamonds goes by nick thorburn now but i will always think of him with the last name diamonds, and he is very thin and came out on stage with white paint on his face wearing a wifebeater splattered with fake blood. the internet in its infinite wisdom speculates that their latest album, arms way, is a concept album about a narrator involved in a car crash who winds up in a coma, and nick as the singer is in this circumstance the personification of his album's narrator - by pretending to be grievously wounded and deathly pale he acts out the tragedy his album is based on. or maybe he's just trying to be kevin barnes and is too skinny to wear a corset.

that said let's talk about creeper which is my favorite track on the album and the song from whence the title of this post comes. this is a song about dying. this is not a song about the inevitability of death, nor the possibility of death, nor how much dying would suck, this is a song about the physical act of not existing anymore. "right from the start i was stabbed in the heart." there is no time to think or reconcile. dying and not knowing you're dying. the febrile energy of this song is captivating. you, in listening to this song, have witnessed a death - albeit fictional, still powerful. here it is recorded in philadelphia on the 23rd.

also incredible live is one of my favorites, where there's a will there's a whalebone. here's a recording, from sxsw. i can only sum up the greatness of this with youtube videos.

they closed with vertigo, then swans, then to a bond (two encores!) although nick told us that we should be booing his old songs - "out with the old and in with the new" - everyone still kept yelling for rough gem, which they finally played second-to-last. rough gem is a song that will never get old, or boring, or uninteresting: "you can scoop out my brain, shape it into an ear and then tell me your pain." when return to the sea came out i was fifteen and wanted to tell that to many people. everyone on that shaking and buckling floor yelled in perfect and exact unison: "can you cut!? i can cut, because i'm a rough gem."


M12 IS REAL
genevieve.

hi, i'm genevieve.

i've always wanted to have a blog called majestic 12.
i'm going to write for you about music, which is my favorite thing in the world, and i want to write about it for my whole life.

with that said i'm going to give you my favorite song of all time:
architecture in helsinki -- the same old innocence
and my favorite song of the moment:
i zimbra (live somewhere) -- talking heads