#CD East High

[eddieshellscape]

I don't talk about my personal life on here, really at all, mainly for my privacy, but I need to share a personal story.

Justin Johnson, a 16 year old sophomore at Central Dauphin High School was killed on friday. He had a medical condition. He was chased by his fellow students as they yelled racially discriminatory words at him. He died of cardiac arrest after his dad found him passed out in their home after the chase. One of his peers from school was interviewed, they said that he was often ostracized, especially because of his language barrier. He had just recently moved from Jamaica and the student alleges that he was often at the end of jokes, not understanding what they meant.

Central Dauphin East High School, their sister school and my high school, organized a peaceful walk out during the last period of the day tomorrow (Friday May 3rd) over to the administration building, which is just across the parking lot. The admin shut it down. They told us that we couldn't peacefully protest and demand action. Bullying has been a growing issue in our district, i have seen it happen to others very close to me and now i see that someone has died from it. We have scheduled a sit-in at our office lobby for the same time and date, but we have to spread the word by mouth lest the people we protest shut us down again.

This is very personal to me, because this kid was in the same grade as my best friend was when he tragically passed away of brain cancer. This kids death didn't need to happen. My friend was horribly taken by a disease he could do nothing against, while Justin was harassed and killed, simply for the entertainment and enjoyment of his white, privileged peers.

This is a horrible situation, and our district has been crumbling. We are meant to sit by silently while kids die and do nothing about it. This story should not jsut stay in our community. This needs to be seen by the world. Bullying has gone to the extreme, and now kids die. Nex Benedict was murdered for being trans. Justin Johnson was killed by bullying and harassment for being black.

Justice for Justin,

and peace to all those victim to bullying and harassment.

[wewontbesleeping]

hey boy! don’t you wish you could have been a good boy? try to find another girl like me, boy! feel me when I tell you I am fine and it’s time for me to draw the line!

[ranchstoryblog]

PRESS RELEASE: Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma’s Bold Reimagining of a Beloved Franchise is Revealed During Nintendo Direct

Marvelous USA Announces Spring 2025 Release Window for Fresh Take on Fan-Favorite Action RPG/Life-simulation Franchise; PAX West Presence Confirmed

TORRANCE, Calif. — Aug. 27, 2024 — Marvelous USA today revealed Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma for the Nintendo Switch™ system and Windows PC via Steam, debuting the first official trailer on today’s Nintendo Direct livestream and announcing a Spring 2025 release window. This next-level offering is the latest entry in the popular action-RPG and life-simulation series, and introduces players to the lands of the east for the first time in franchise history with Japanese-inspired visuals and new twists on familiar themes and gameplay elements. Attendees at PAX West, taking place Aug. 30-Sept. 2, will be able to participate in a Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma booth activity showcasing Earth Dancer abilities and have the chance to earn exclusive, themed merchandise in the Marvelous USA booth, #809. 

Ravaged by the effects of the Celestial Collapse and the cessation of power provided by the runes, the eastern lands of Azuma are a shadow of their prosperous past. Weakened by corruptive forces, the gods of nature retreated from the world, leaving mountains to crumble and fields to wither. The people of Azuma seek aid against a blight that has swept these once-bountiful lands. One young hero enters into a contract with a dragon and sets out on a journey. “Accept the might of the Earth Dancer. Use this power to save the land.”

Guardians of Azuma takes players on an all-new adventure in the never-before-seen country of Azuma. Here, players will assume the role of an Earth Dancer destined to return hope—and life—to the once-thriving land. Choose from one of two protagonists whose fates are closely tied together, and experience reimagined and expanded Rune Factory gameplay; as Earth Dancer, players will farm with grace, restore and build entire villages, and fight with new weapons like the Bow and Talisman. Azuma is a vast world to explore with majestic villages to uncover, each taking inspiration from Japanese culture and each with a seasonal theme. In addition to exploration, combat, and village-building, players will also cultivate relationships with the locals, recruiting them to your side in battle or to help manage the villages. Wield sacred treasures of the gods and the Earth Dancer’s power of dance to purify the land and return Azuma to its former glory. The adventure of a new world awaits.

Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma Key Features:

Bold New Abilities and Weapons: As an Earth Dancer, use the power of dance, sacred treasures, and fresh weapons like the Bow and Talisman to purify the land, farm, and undo the Blight’s damage.

It Takes a Village: Don’t just mind the farm—rebuild entire villages! Construct and place buildings strategically to entice people to return to the villages and contribute. Revive the gods to bring vitality and valuable resources back to the plagued lands.

Your Fantasy Japanese Life: Experience beautiful Japanese-inspired character designs and aesthetics—from festivals to events to monsters. Explore Azuma’s natural landscapes and its seasonal-themed locales steeped in tradition.

Classic Romance and Relationships: Choose between male and female protagonists, then befriend or romance any of the eligible candidates—god and mortal alike—in fully voiced scenarios. Recruit these new friends to aid in dynamic battles, too!

Pre-orders for the Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma “Earth Dancer Edition” will be available soon via the Marvelous USA store and at participating retailers for an MSRP of $99.99. This stunning collection comes in a custom outer box featuring awe-inspiring art of a battle high above Azuma, and includes a physical copy of the game, an original soundtrack CD, an art book, an Azuma-inspired folding fan, the “Seasons of Love” DLC bundle, additional DLC costumes for your protagonists and their divine sidekick Woolby, and a plush Woolby keychain. The standard edition of the game will also be available to pre-order for an MSRP of $59.99. Details on digital editions and pricing will be announced later.

Developed by Marvelous and published in the Americas by Marvelous USA, Rune Factory: Guardians of Azuma is scheduled for release on the Nintendo Switch™ and Windows PC via Steam in Spring 2025. The title will be published in Japan by Marvelous Inc. and in Europe by Marvelous Europe. More information can be found on the official website, https://na.runefactory.com/azuma/, and on X @RuneFactory. This title has not yet been rated by the ESRB.

Information about Marvelous USA’s products can be found at www.marvelous-usa.com. Fans can also check out the latest videos from the Marvelous family of titles on YouTube and get updates by following on Facebook, X, Instagram, and Threads.

[scotianostra]

The actor Ian Charleson was born on August 11th 1949 in Edinburgh.

Best known for his portrayal as Eric Liddell, the Presbyterian missionary who refused to compete on the Sabbath, in Hugh Hudson’s Oscar-winning “Chariots of Fire” . Although he only appeared in a handful of films, he starred in many successful stage shows.

He was the son of a printer and sang soprano as a boy. Raised in Edinburgh, he attended the Royal High School and Edinburgh University, both on scholarship. He was a member of the Edinburgh University Drama Society as an actor, singer, and director, and even worked with costumes. Next, he went to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art . Odd jobs included singing at the restaurant, “Food for Thought”, and waiting tables at the “Hard Rock Cafe”. He left LAMDA early and was a member of the “Young Vic Company” in London for two years. His first West End role was in Simon Gray’s “Otherwise Engaged”.

He performed at the National Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company from 1977 to 1989. Ian did appear in a number of TV shows, the pick of them, in my opinion, are Reilly: Ace of Spies, Master of The Game and Codename: Kyril.

Had a lovely tenor voice as an adult; the Royal Shakespeare Company released a CD of his singing in 1982.He also won the annual Edinburgh Evening News Talent Contest 2 years running singing My Love is Like a Red, Red, Rose.

Sadly Ian Charleson passed away from an Aids related illness at the young age of forty. This was the first celebrity death in the United Kingdom openly attributed to AIDS, and the announcement helped to promote awareness and acceptance of the disease.

The Ian Charleson Day Centre is a leading HIV clinic in London ia named in his memory and The Ian Charleson Awards are theatrical awards that reward the best classical stage performances in Britain by actors under age 30 also remember him.

Ian is buried in Portobello Cemetery on the South east of Edinburgh.

[herrlindemann]

Sonic Seducer, December 2015

Thanks to ramjohn for the scans!

What's 32 cm high, weighs 3.5 kilos and contains 14 discs? Rammstein fans probably already know the answer: it's “XXI - The Vinyl Box Set”, a big box set that will enable the Berlin band to look back over their 20-year career in early December. Even if the band's website recently announced a meaningful "It goes on” [“Es geht weite”], the fact that all the sextet's works will soon be available in record form for your personal collection comes just at the right moment: "XXI - The Vinyl Box Set" contains all the studio albums on double vinyl, from "Herzeleid" to "Liebe Ist Für Alle Da", and adds two LPs with previously unreleased tracks and versions as well as "Raritäten". So it's interesting to review the career of Germany's most internationally popular band since Kraftwerk, from their early days as a band with a martial R roll, to their export successes filling arenas and stadiums around the world.

Of course, no one was expecting such resounding success when Rammstein was formed in Berlin at the end of 1993, from members of East German bands The Inchtabokatables and Feeling B, among others. The first album from 1995, “Herzeleid”, was a bombshell: some drew parallels with the sound and image of over-identification and pseudo-fascist totalitarianism of Slovenia's Laibach. Others suspected Rammstein were the counterpart to Die Krupps, the electro-metal band that was enjoying huge success at the time. The first sign of life from their Motor Music label was the promotional CD of the song “Du riechst so gut”, the mix of thick synthetic groove, brutal industrial metal and powerful male vocals was immediately on everyone's lips and in everyone's ears. “Herzeleid" barely cracked the top 100 album charts when it was released, but a growing audience began to take an interest in these Berliners when they opened for Project Pitchfork, among others. Even cult director David Lynch took notice and chose the songs "Rammstein" and "Heirate mich" for the soundtrack to his film "Lost Highway" — in the US too, Rammstein made an early name for themselves, soon to become a fixture on the international (industrial) metal circuit. "Herzeleid" laid an impressive cornerstone in this respect.

“Herzeleid” (1995)

The first album opens with a song that quickly became a crowd favourite: "Wollt ihr bas Bett in Flammen sehen" introduces massive guitar punches and a bubbling electronic base. What's more, Till Lindemann repeats the band's name so often that no-one can ignore who's playing. The album already shows the extent of the Berliners' palette: the opener and hits like “Du Riechst So Gut” and “Asche Zu Asche” are set against “Seemann”, a ballad that proves Rammstein can slow down the pace without losing any of their intensity. But “Herzeleid” is most legendary for its brutality — admittedly, there's nothing on the album, musically speaking, that Oomph! hasn't mastered, but the gigantic staging of itself and the overflowing pathos give Rammstein its own signature right from the start.

"I find the 'Herzeleid' cover so bad that I can't watch it anymore.” — Richard Kruspe (1999)

Rammstein made a big impression on metal, industrial and electro fans with just one record, as demonstrated by the single "Engel", which stormed the charts before the release of their second album "Sehnsucht". After “Herzeleid” frightened uninformed listeners with songs about scandalous subjects such as necrophilia, sexual violence and plane crashes, the “Engel” music video turned out to be a more or less explicit homage to “From Dusk Till Dawn”. But the controversy was over the cover of “Sehnsucht”, by Austrian extreme artist Gottfried Helnwein, who fitted the members' faces with surgical instruments — so the similarities with the artwork for Scorpions' 1982 album “Blackout”, also by Helnwein, were not coincidental. The second single, "Du Hast", also made it into the German top 10, and Rammstein took the top spot in the album chart with "Sehnsucht". Abroad, particularly in the United States, a similar success was beginning to be felt: "Sehnsucht" won a golden record there and continued to sell well, going platinum record at a later date. A year later, Rammstein were represented with their cover of Depeche Mode's "Stripped" on the tribute compilation "For The Masses" — alongside international acts such as The Smashing Pumpkins, The Cure and Deftones. The fact that the Berliners used scenes from Leni Riefenstahl films in the video not only earned them accusations of right-wing extremism, but could also be seen as a clever provocation. Rammstein denied any fascist tendencies, however, and soon after went on a "Family Values" tour across the United States with Korn, Limp Bizkit, Orgy and Ice Cube. By then they had become stars.

“Sehnsucht” (1997)

With “Engel” and “Du hast”, Rammstein had already scored hits before the release of their second album, and this one did not disappoint. So it's hardly surprising that the song “Tier” was so clearly inspired by Die Krupps' “The Dawning Of Doom” that Jürgen Engler received the copyright after the fact. In terms of content, the band also goes all the way: incest and the resulting parricide, sado-masochistic sexual practices and female genitalia craving cunnilingus are all hot topics — and with “Klavier”, we also find a legitimate successor to “Seemann”. Sales of "Sehnsucht" have long since topped the 2 million mark.

Rammstein in Mexico 1999

Needless to say, Rammstein have not given up in the face of this phenomenal success: ever since the band toured Central and South America with Kiss and Soulfy in 1999, the qualities of these men with showmanship skills have been known there too. With the first retrospective of their work "Live aus Berlin", the first phase of their creative process came to an end shortly before the turn of the millennium, and after a concert at the Fuji Rock Festival in faraway Japan, Rammstein tackled their third album. And, of course, the band didn't think to get rid of its provocative habit, even though singer Till and keyboardist Flake Lorenz had been arrested two years earlier in Massachusetts for simulating anal sex on stage and spraying themselves with artificial sperm on the song "Bück dich". Instead of being sexually explicit, the 'Mutter' album polarised attention with its cover illustration of an allegedly dead foetus. Nevertheless, Flake shakes his head about his arrest and the allegedly evil band Rammstein in an interview with Der Spiegel magazine: "What are they blaming us for? That we dare to use words like 'ficken' and 'Fotze'? That's what every hip-hopper does these days". Especially since “Mutter”, with the song “Links 2 3 4”, effectively distanced the band from the accusations of fascism that the worried media were constantly calling for. An important album for this reason too.

"Mutter" (2001)

Could this be the reason why Rammstein tribute band Die Bestien were originally called “Mama ist die Bestie”? In any case, the pleasure of listening to bestiality is once again guaranteed on "Mutter", as the opening track "Mein herz brennt" already indicates, with its thunderous orchestral guitar. The Swedish director Lukas Moodysson featured this piece prominently in his tragic drama film "Lilya 4-Ever". What's more, with the right-turn rejection of “Links 2 3 4”, the electronically infiltrated mass delirium of “Ich will”, the suggested cloning insult of the title track and “Rein raus”, which calls for abdominal activity, there's enough to cause a stir, if not outrage. Not at all revolting: “Mutter” also topped the charts — like every Rammstein album since “Sehnsucht”.

In the meantime, Rammstein had reached the centre of metal society, as evidenced by the award for "Best International Live Act" at the Kerrang! Awards 2002. While the band were working on their fourth album, the three-hour DVD “Lichtspielhaus” kept the audience on their toes: it contained all the video clips shot so far, plus a few making-of and various concert highlights, recorded at shows in Sydney and Rock am Ring among others. A deep breath before the next album, “Reise Reise”, whose cover depicts a flight recorder. If you rewind the CD before the first track, you hear the last radio messages from a Japanese airliner that crashed, killing over 500 people. Other provocations were not long in coming: the theme of the single "Mein teil" was the criminal case of Armin Meiwes, who had gained dubious notoriety as the cannibal of Rothenburg, and for some uninformed listeners, lines like "Weiche teile und auch harte / Stehen auf der Speisekarte" were already too much. Keyboardist Flake couldn't understand the excitement on this track either: "Doing a song about something that's really happened, I think that's the most normal thing in the world! Nobody complains to the presenter of the 'Tagesschau' about the alarming news he reads either!" For Rammstein, on the other hand, the attention paid to the unsavoury anthropophagy affair was anything but normal, given that at the time the war in Iraq had just been approved without the national media being overly concerned. A context in which the hateful praise of “Amerika” took on a whole new meaning.

"Reise, Reise" (2004)

This record definitely propelled Rammstein to the top of the list of most successful German bands abroad — it was ranked in the top 10 in nearly 20 countries, and number one in five of them. The “Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien” (Federal Office for the Supervision of Media Harmful to Young Persons) could do nothing better with "Mein Teil" than ban the video clip, which is not very tactful in night-time rotation — a half-hearted sanction which Rammstein accepted with a shrug of the shoulders. Surprisingly, the band not only responded with musical crudeness, but also with dark, romantic, sometimes bluesy songs like “Los” and “Ohne dich”, and also with some ferocious and bizarre visual humour: in the video for “Keine lust”, the members appear extremely overweight and take the song about lack of energy and saturation to the extreme. But the truth is, Rammstein are far from fed up.

As benefits a band that subsequently sells out four concerts in a row at the Parkbühne in Berlin's Wuhlheide. And this time, it didn't take Rammstein long to recharge : so many songs remained from the “Reise, Reise” recording session that the sextet quickly returned to the studio to finish “Reise Reise Vol. 2”. But as the band doesn't like the idea of a musical residue, the new opus is finally called “Rosenrot” and not only continues the sound of its predecessor, but also takes new directions : The relatively tender experimental ballad "Stirb nicht vor mir" ("Don't Die Before I Do") features Texas singer Sharleen Spiteri in a duet with Till Lindemann, and "Feuer und Wasser" refers to Friedrich Schiller's poem "Der Taucher". Drummer Christoph Schneider sums it up : "We knew we'd recorded too many quiet songs for “Reise Reise”. That's why we were aware, when writing "Rosenrot", that we needed to compose some slightly harder material to round it all off". "Rosenrot" was not, however, completed by a tour, and performances in the United States, Mexico and Asia fell through due to the long-term illness of keyboardist Flake.

"We had no desire at all to produce this theoretical music on the computer. In contrast to "Mutter", this album is very hand-played." — Flake Lorenz

"Rosenrot" (2005)

The direct successor to “Reise Reise” is certainly not the most surprising album in Rammstein's discography — the punchy but familiar introductory single “Benzin” proves that right from the start. "Mann gegen mann" also rocks straight ahead and is once again only genuine with a video clip that was belatedly banished to the night hours, for which "Spun" director Jonas Akerlund has staged the band naked and had equally undressed men jostling each other. But on “Rosenrot”, Rammstein can also do things differently, orchestrating the Spanish song “Te Quiero Puta” with mariachi brass and ending the album with the modest title “Ein lied” — dedicated to all Rammstein fans. It's likely that some of them felt concerned. 

"A situation that was completely new to us until then : writing songs from the nights in a very short time. There were many doubts within the band as to whether we could produce good quality songs in such a short time." — Oliver Riedel about "Rosenrot"

The breaks between albums became longer : apart from the live DVD "Völkerball", which was released in 2006, Rammstein disappeared from the scene for a while after "Rosenrot". But as usual, the band came back with a bang in 2009. But this was without taking into account the suspicions of the Bundesprüfstelle für jugendgefährdende Medien (Federal Office for the Control of Media Harmful to Young Person), which quickly placed the fifth album, “Liebe Ist Für Alle Da”, on the blacklist. What had happened ? Well, the song “Ich tu dir weh” appealed to sadomasochistic fantasies, which is hardly surprising in the Rammstein context, but was enough to warrant a blacklisting. The band expressed their dismay at the censorship, and much of the press sided with the band and against the authorities. "Spiegel" even imagined a fictitious and absurd round table discussion on the subject between the Minister for the Family, the band members and popular music star Florian Silbereisen. But you'd have thought the problem lay elsewhere, because the single “Pussy”, which pokes fun at German sex tourists abroad, lent itself much better to controversy. In the video, shot once again by Jonas Akerlund, the members of the band appeared without hesitation as hardcore pornographic actors — the fact that they were dubbed in the end did nothing to detract from the scandalous nature of the clip. According to guitarist Richard Kruspe, the initial impetus for this sultry little film came from the director, who sent an e-mail to the band with the words "Let's make a revolution! Let's shoot a porn!" And that's just the way it is : policing morals has never had any effect on the big boys of Rammstein.

"Liebe Ist Für Alle Da" (2009)

"Das Warten hat ein Ende / Leigt euer Ohr einer Legende" — the opening words of Rammstein's sixth album, which has once again lost none of its metallic power, textual provocation or musical versatility. As well as the catchy, almost cheeky "Pussy" and the hyperactive mosher "Ich Tu Dir Weh", the band pay tribute to Edit Piaf's "Non, Je ne regrette rien" on "Frühling in Paris" and draw heavily on the "Moritat von Mackie Messer" from Bertolt Brecht's "Dreigroschenoper" for "Haifisch". Admittedly, due to the aforementioned blacklisting, the song could only be sold to major customers for a short time, but a watered-down version of the offending track followed. Needless to say, by this time “Liebe Ist Für Alle Da” had already climbed the charts and Rammstein were still the most popular German band — both at home and abroad.

Rammstein 2014 in der Volksbühne

A lot has happened since the release of "Liebe Ist Für Alle Da": Rammstein were invited to the Wacken Open Air for the first time in 2013 — and didn't miss out on performing the song "Sonne" with Heino, who had covered it on his "Mit freundlichen Grüßen" covers album. Richard Kruspe lives again in Berlin and in 2014 presented his second Emigrate album "Silent So Long" with a lot of noise and the participation of Marilyn Manson and Jonathan Davis of Korn. Till Lindemann made common cause with Swedish metalhead Peter Tägtgren under the name Lindemann on the "Skills in Pills" album. And the announcement at the beginning of the article, "It goes on !", gives us hope that album number seven won't be too long in coming. In the meantime, let's listen to Rammstein's discography in detail once again — with "XXI - The Vinyl Box Set", of course, a luxurious package of power that Santa Claus will have trouble transporting. "If we had put more emphasis on the live structure, then some things could have been a bit better, harder, more beautiful! And yet I'm simply happy that we've succeeded in making this record!" - Richard Kruspe about "Liebe Ist Für Alle Da"

[mused-amused]

Jeff Buckley: Knowing Not Knowing

From Inside the Music: Conversations with Contemporary Musicians about Spirituality, Creativity, and Consciousness

©️ 1997 Dmitri Ehrlich

Early in the spring of 1997, singer and songwriter Jeff Buckley headed down to Memphis to begin pre-production on what would have been his second full-length album. A few weeks after Buckley arrived, his bandmates flew in from New York to join him. He was in high spirits: the songwriting was going well, and he was reunited with his group. The same night his band arrived Buckley went out for a late-night stroll to a Memphis harbor and waded into the river. He had always admired Led Zeppelin, and was singing "Whole Lotta Love" when a boat passed in front of him. He lost his footing, perhaps dragged into the water by the boat's wake, and was never seen alive again.

He was thirty years old, two years older than his father, the folksinger Tim Buckley, had been when he died of a drug overdose.

I first met Jeff Buckley and saw him perform about two years before he passed away. It was near midnight and Buckley was sitting in the back office of a Tower Records store in lower Manhattan. Buckley had become a scion of the Lower East Side antifolk scene, and was preparing for an in-store performance in support of his album Grace.

But first he needed to do something: he insisted on listening to a crackly old recording of "The Man That Got Away" by Judy Garland, on the pretext that he wanted the store manager, who had given the CD to Buckley, to un derstand how magnificent a gift it was. Buckley needed to demonstrate the album's beauty. He had also picked up gratis CD reissues of vintage Aretha Franklin and Nina Simone records, and two albums by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, who had a major influence on Buckley's singing. While Buckley could occasionally summon the same kind of ecstatic vocal power that was Khan's trademark, his singing had more in common with Garland's delicate, vulnerable warble.

Buckley was an unglamorous star. That night he was wearing a wretched pair of weathered combat boots-the sort you occasionally see homeless men selling-a frumpy gray cardigan sweater, and jeans that hadn't been washed in a long time. Ditto his hair. In an oddly white-trash bit of accessorizing, Buckley's wallet was attached to his belt by a chain, in the style favored by motorcyde gangs. Three days of beard growth rounded out his anti-coif, but his sex appeal remained intact: a nervous girl approached to ask if, as she suspected, he was a Scorpio. Another pressed a poem she had written for him into his hand. He folded it carefully and put it in his pocket, as though he would cherish it forever. Maybe he did.

Buckley was at an odd moment in his career when he died. Having moved to New York several years before from California, where he was raised by his mother, he crawled his way up through the ranks of the insular lower Manhattan music scene. He had become a mini-star in that highly circumscribed microcosm, perched on the cusp of national and international success. That night at Tower Records the line between Lower East Side local hero and international stardom seemed pretty thin. On one hand, his debut album sold several hundred thousand copies (al-though more in Europe than in America), and there was & throng of photographers and autograph-seekers pressing around him. On the other hand, he wasn't above hauling his own gear onstage, more or less indistinguishable from the half dozen stringy-haired sound men and roadies who were putting the sound system in place.

Buckley had no video in heavy rotation on MTV, largely because he insisted that people judge the music on the way it sounded before supplying them with an accompanying image. For the same reason, he refused to even suggest a single to radio deejays. "What I'd love," Buckley said, "is if a deejay had a lineup of songs, and he'd just use one of my songs as part of a really nice evening. But that's the way I would deejay, not the way they do it. They usually have playlists."

For a guy with folksinging in his blood, Buckley had assembled an arsenal of prog-rock guitar effects you'd expect at an Emerson, Lake, and Palmer show and had set his amp at cat-spaying volume. (In fact, he had been raised on Led Zeppelin and Kiss.) Several dozen more stringy-haired people with assorted rings in their lips and noses (his fans) materialized. As he stepped onto the makeshift stage, a grumpy security guard began clearing some fans from a stairway, but Buckley interjected: "Wait! Those are my friends! Can they stay there? I give them special permission." What started as dispensation for four friends ended up being extended to anybody who wanted to stay.

The set began with a ghostly wail from Buckley, and a mildly Middle Eastern guitar line. He sang with a vibrato that quivered like the tongue of a snake. It was so atmospheric that you hardly realized his bandmates were rocking their tits off. That was the tension: Buckley ululating in sensual falsetto, the band churning out mid-seventies Led Zep knockoffs. He seemed a strangely ethereal cherub in the midst of all that visceral thrash.

After the show, Buckley signed autographs, taking several minutes with the thirty or so fans who lined up for an audience with the tousle-haired singer. Rather than just scribbling an autograph, he wrote a personal note to each person. Everything he did seemed to place poetry before commerce, but I couldn't help wondering if it was all an elaborate ruse, a crafty stance aimed at those disenchanted wich the slickness of pop posturing. Didn't Buckley, after all, want to make a lot of money and sell records?

"If it happens it'd be great," he said later that night, over omelettes and wine at an all-night eatery, "but we just play to express. I want to live my life playing music, so that we can be immersed in it. In order to learn how deep it goes, you have to be in it."

As to why he took so much time with each of the fans who asked for an autograph, Buckley articulated his basic anti-rock-star stance: "The way I experience a performance is that there's an exchange going on. It's not just my ego being fed. It's thoughts and feelings. Raw expression has its own knowledge and wisdom." He trailed off, as though humbled by the mere thought of his audience wanting to hear him play, or asking him for an autograph.

"I’ve been in their position before and all I wanted was to show my appreciation to the performer. So I feel like it's kind of generous of them to even be asking me for an auto-graph.

"It's true that there's also the people who want a piece of you," he conceded. "But it's pretty hard to keep feeling protective all the time, because there's really nothing to protect yourself against. Sometimes people shout at me on the street, and they feel they know me through my music. But that doesn't substitute for a real personal rela-tionship. I don't feel like people know me, I just think we share a love for music in common, and for some reason they key into the way I play. I feel appreciative when people come up to me, and I feel good when we connect. Usually, it serves as a nice comedown after a performance. Any other conduct would bust the groove, because I'm buzzing when I get offstage, and I'm consciously protecting that connection because that's what got me through the performance in the first place. It's an invocation and worship of this certain feeling, this direct line to your heart, and somehow music does that more powerfully than anything else. It's like a total, immediate elixir."

By all appearances Buckley conformed to the stereotype of the poetic artist: largely lacking the practical, thick-skinned psychic barrier that separates most of us from the harsh realities of life. With a rabbit-like nervous disposition and a hypersensitive vulnerability that bordered on tragicomic, he looked like he was about to burst into tears at any moment. His face was contorted and slightly tortured-looking during most of the interview, though I got the impression that it wasn't so much the experience of being interviewed that was torturing him but the pain of grappling with his own thoughts and the world around him.

Relationships were at the heart of Buckley's world.

Although he was marketed as a solo artist, the attitude he had toward his listeners mirrored the relationship he formed with his three-piece backing band. "Playing with a band is all about accepting a bond, accepting everything the way it is. It takes a lot of patience and a lot of taking chances with each other. It takes seeing each other in weak and strong lights, and accepting both, and utilizing the high and low points of your relationship."

It wasn't only interpersonal relationships that Buck-Ley held sacred - he was aware of making his music in relation to all the sounds around him. The environment was Buckley's co-composer: to his ears, no melody or rhythm was separate from the sounds going on in the background.

“It’s not like music begins or ends. All kinds of sounds are working into each other. Sometimes I'll just stop on the street because there's a sequence of sirens going on; it's like a melody I'll never hear again. In performance, things can be meaningful or frivolous, but either way the musical experience is totally spontaneous, and new life comes out of it, meaning if you're open to hearing the way music interacts with ambient sound, performance never feels like a rote experience. It's pretty special sometimes, the way a song affects a room, the way you're in complete rhythm with the song. When you're emotionally overcome, and there's no filter between what you say and what you mean, your language becomes guttural, simple, emotional, and full of pictures and clarity. Were you to transcribe it, it might not make sense, but music is a totally different language."

"People talk all day in a practical way, but real language that penetrates and affects people and carries wisdom is something different. Maybe it's the middle of the afternoon and you see a child's moon up in the sky, and you feel like it's such a simple, pure, wonderful thing to look at. It just hits you in a certain way, and you point it out to a stranger, and he looks at you like you're weird and walks away. To speak that way, to point out a child's moon to a stranger, is original language, it's the way you originate yourself. And the cool thing is, if you catch people in the right moment, it's totally clear. Without knowing why, it's simply clear. That sort of connection is very empirical.

It comes from the part of you that just understands imme-diately. All these types of things are gold, and yet they are dishonored or not paid attention to because that kind of tender communication is so alien in our culture, except in performance. There's a wall up between people all day long, but performance transcends that convention. If pop music were really seen as a fine art or if fine art were popu-lar, I don't know what the hell would happen this wouldn't be the same country, because if the masses of people began to respect and really open to fine art, it would bring about a huge shift in consciousness.

"Music is so many things. It's not just the perfor-mer. It's the audience and the architecture of the song, and each builds off the other. Music is a setting for poi-gnancy, anger, destruction, total disaster, total wrongness, and then—like a little speck of gold in the middle of it-excitement, but excitement in a way that matters. Excitement that is not just aesthetically pleasing but shoots some sort of understanding into you."

Buckley's songs were composed with made-up chords, bright harmonic clusters that seem too obvious not to have been written before, yet they rarely feel formulaic. There's a lot of open strumming, suggesting that the songs were written largely for the sheer physical pleasure of playing them. He and his band modified the arrangements during each performance, playing with an elasticity and openness typical of Buckley's personality. "Hearing a song is like meeting somebody. A song is something that took time to grow and once it's there, it's on its own. Every time you perform it, it's different. It has its own structure, and you have to flow through it, and it has to come through you."

Buckley's entire career reflected his outsider's approach to the music business. When he arrived in New York, rather than recording a demo or finding an agent, he simply began to perform for free. He played at a small café on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and before long, crowds were lined up out the door. As a result, representatives of record companies sought out Buckley, rather than the other way around. "There is a distinct separation of sensibility between art as commerce and art as a way of life. If you buy into one too heavily it eats up the other. If instead of having songs happen as your life happens, you're getting a song together because you need a certain number of songs on a release to be sold, the juice is sucked out immediately. That approach kills it."

Still, it took a strong belief in one's art to sit in a small café and trust that the world's record companies would come calling. Buckley played down his seemingly effortless approach to career as though it were common-sense. "I just wanted to learn certain things. I wanted to just explore, like a kid with crayons. It took a while for me to get a record contract, but it also took a tremendous amount of time for me to feel comfortable playing, and that's all I was concerned with. And I'm still concerned with that, mainly.”

"I don't think about my responsibility as a musician in terms of any kind of religious significance. I don't have any allegiance to organized religion; I have an allegiance to the gifts that I find for myself in those religions.

They seem to be saying the same thing, they just have different mythologies and expressions, but the dogma of religions and the way they're misused is all too much of a trap. I'd rather be nondenominational, except for music. I prefer to learn everything through music. If you want divinity, the music in every human being and their love for music is pretty much it. It's the big indication of their spirituality and their ability to love and make love, or feel pain or joy, and really manifest it, really be real. But I don't believe in a big guy with a beard on a throne, telling us that we're bad; I certainly don't believe in original sin. I believe in the opposite of that: you have an Eden immediately from the time you are born, but as you are conditioned by your caretakers and your surroundings, you may lose that origi nal thing. Your task is to get back to it, so you can dam responsibility for your own perfection."

Buckley considered the development of awareness to be the main goal of his life. "I think of it as trying to get more aligned with the feeling of purity in music, however it sounds. I think music is prayer. Sometimes people make up prayers and they don't even know it. They just make up a song that has rhyme and meter, and once it's made, it can carry on a life of its own. It can have a lot of juice to it and a lot of meaning: there's no end to the different individual flavors that people can bring to the musical form.

"In order to make the music actual, you have to enable it to be. And that takes facing some things inside you that constrict you, your own impurity and mistakes and blockages. As you open up yourself, the music opens up in different directions that lead you in yet other directions." Asking most pop musicians if they're satisfied with record sales is like asking models about the aging process: they say they don't care, but it's hard to believe. For commercial recording artists, sales are the only objective indicator of whether they're doing things right—that fans are sincerely motivated to walk into record stores by the tens or by the millions, pull out their wallets, and pay for the music. But with his quiet, unaffected voice nearly a whis-per, Buckley steadfastly maintained that he really didn't want to sell a million records and it was strangely believ-able. When he talked about multiplatinum-selling bands who felt "disappointed" by a mere five million copies sold, the disgust he felt for commercialism was palpable. "The only valuable thing about selling records, the only thing that matters, is that people connect and that you keep on growing. You do make choices based on how many people you reach, meaning, now that I have a relationship with stangers worldwide, I have to try not to let it become too much of a factor and just accept it. The limited success we've had in the past is definitely a factor, it's just there. It justis. The whole thing is such a crapshoot, you can't really control what your appeal is gonna be. My music ain't gonna make it into the malls, but it doesn't matter. I don't really care to make it into the malls.

"Whether I sell a lot of records or not isn't up to me. You can sell a lot of records, but that's just a number sold-that's not understood, or loved, or cherished.”

"Take someone like Michael Jackson. Early on he sacrificed himself to his need to be loved by all. His talent and his power were so great that he got what he wanted but he also got a direct, negative result, which is that he's not able to grow into an adult human being. And that's why his music sounds sort of empty and weird.”

"Being the kind of person I am, fame is really over-whelming. First of all, just being faced with the questions that everybody faces: Do I matter? Should I go on? Why am I here? Is this really that important? All that low self-esteem shit. You're constantly trying to make sure that your sense of self-worth doesn't depend on the writings or opinions of other people. You have to wean yourself off acclaim as the object of your work, by learning to depend on your own judgment and knowing what it is that you enjoy. You have to realize what the difference is between being adored and being loved and understood. Big difference.”

“I don’t really have super pointed answers to the big questions. I’m in the middle of a mystery myself. I’m not even that developed at having a real psycho-religious epistemology about what I feel. All I can tell you is that I feel. It's just the same old fight to constantly be aware. It's an ongoing thing. It'll never be a static perfect thing or a static mediocre thing, it just has its rise and fall."

Pics from the book. Amazing that Jeff is in the same section as Allen Ginsberg and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. He would have been so honored.

[lola-la-cava]

May The Best Bass Player Win

gif not mine !

Bass Player Reader x Kyle Scheible

Warning: Smoking and Language

_________ ׂׂૢ་༘࿐

“But we already have a set list!” Stevie exclaimed as I stood back, tired of their shit.

It had been weeks of arguing over the set list, the outfits and the tuning of the instruments. Honestly who could blame them? It was the Battle of the Bands.

Your average person from Sacramento wouldn’t give two shits about it, but to the kids who would collect Classic Rock records and CDs, taught themselves how to play the keyboard or guitar, and snuck out to watch local bands play at bars? It was everything.

I was one of those kids. Well, I am.

The battle of the bands was an opportunity to be seen, to be heard particularly by a big shot producer. We’d been working towards it since we formed the band. A lot of hours, blood, sweat and tears had been put into practicing, getting gigs, writing, revising, you name it.

And now we were here. It hadn’t even been five minutes and Ziggy and Stevie were already at each other’s throats. If you asked my opinion, I would rather they stuck their tongues down each other’s throats. It was crystal fucking clear this wasn’t about the setlist.

“Look, if we want to impress the judges and a producer that is bound to be in the audience we should sing Annotated Book” Ziggy said as he rubbed his forehead out of frustration. “It isn’t ready yet! How many times do I have to fucking tell you!” She fought. At this point, everyone backstage was staring at us. Well, them.

I sighed, “You know what, you guys figure this out. I need a smoke break”. “Really? Again?” Layla, our drummer, whined. ‘Don’t leave me here with them’ she mouthed as I pushed the heavy backdoors.

The exit lead out to a seedy alley where there were puddles from the rain and the pipes (and other mysterious liquids) and heaps of garbage bags thrown carelessly against the wall which stunk to high heavens. This will have to do for now.

My calloused fingers reached for the lighter and loose cigarette in my pocket. Automatically lighting with ease as I have done before.

“Nice coat”

“Thanks. I was really going for that Penny Lane vibe”, I chuckled. The figure got closer to me as they hummed. I felt their side touch mine, “You got anymore of that?”. “Mhm.”, I nodded reaching into my pocket again.

He hummed once more. I chuckled, “What’s so funny?”. “You know you should really start rolling your own. It’s better that way”. I looked up at him. For the first time. My breath hitched.

Wow.

He looked like he came straight out of a painting. His curly hair was covering his face, but the moonlight cast down on him; making his jawline and cheekbone seen. The boy looked like he was carved carefully by the gods, they sure took their time with this one.

“I-I’ll keep that in mind next time” I said as I continued to stare at him. He’s probably been stared at his whole life. Hell, he probably thinks staring is looking.

“My name’s Kyle” he said. Oh my god, his voice. I stretched out my hand, “Y/N”. Kyle seemed surprised, “You shake hands, huh?”. I shook my head in embarassment and let out a giggle. “Apparently, I do.”

As the night ran longer and the crowd inside bigger, we talked about bands, recommending some, shit talking others, and the works. He went on about this book he’d been reading called “A People’s History of The United States”. I continued to admire him. Observe him. I observed the way he talks about things he loves so nonchalantly, but there would be that glint in his eyes or smirk on his face that shows how passionate he really is. I observed his hand fidgeting with the bottom of his jacket while his other hands hold the cigarette in between his index and middle fingers. I observed the way his unkempt hair bounces as he turns to look at me.

“So, where are you from”, I asked him; hoping he’ll get the hint. Kyle chuckled and said “I’m from East”. “Well, Kyle from East Sacramento, it just so happens I’m from there too.”, leaning in to his side slowly. What the fuck was I doing? Flirting with him like that? I’ve never done that before.

I mean, in walks this guy practically carved like a statue from the Louvre. I suddenly muster the courage to talk like that, which for the record, I haven’t been able to do with other guys I was infatuated with if that wasn’t already clear. I would hate to have ruined this perfect opportunity. This was the right decision, right? Right.

“Oh really? No shit. Well-“ “Kyle we need you back here!” Someone yelled from the entrance interrupting him.

Well? Well, what?! What was he gonna say?!

“Look, I gotta run. Maybe I’ll catch up with you later?” The curly haired boy said as he put out the cigarette. He looked at me, expecting an answer. “Y-yeah definitely!” I squeaked out.

My thoughts ran wild as I was left in the alley. “Is he really going to talk to me later?” “Was he just being polite?” “God, what I would give to touch those curls of his” “Will I have to make the next move?”

“Y/N, we’re going on in 5! Get your ass in here!”

Shit.

_________ ׂׂૢ་༘࿐

As nerve-wracking the preparation went for the battle of the bands were, the actual thing wasn’t that bad. It went as our average band practices and gigs went. Except for the audience being around 500 people instead of the usual two drunks.

“Are you sure you tuned your bass properly, Y/N? You seemed pretty flat in some parts” Ziggy complained, chasing after me backstage. “You too, Stevie, but that’s a whole ‘nother conversation” he added with a smirk. It was obvious he was only trying to get a rise out of her, but maybe not to the band’s lead singer. My god, just make out already! “I swear to fucking god, I will gut you!” She answered back. I looked back at Layla, giggling.

Luckily, I managed to turn to the front before bumping into another person. But not just any other ordinary one.

“If it isn’t Y/N from East Sacramento” well if it isn’t the same curly haired boy i was drooling over from the alley 30 mins. ago. “Nice to see you again, Kyle” before he could even comprehend, I picked up his hand from his side and gave it a firm shake similar to the one I did before.

“You didn’t tell me you were in a band”, he gestured to the stage. I hummed and then answered “And you didn’t tell me you worked backstage”. “Not actually backstage. I’m here with my band and we’re going on next” Kyle lifted up his bass. “Ain’t that something? I play bass too” I lifted my instrument up putting it side by side with his.

I sighed, “Well, I gotta go tune this before we head back up there. Good luck with your set!”. Getting ready to walk away, he quips “Yeah you should go and do that. I thought I heard something off when you guys went up”.

I didn’t even know what I was doing. I got closer to him as we breathed in each other’s air. My head tilting to the side, next to his ear. “May the best bass player win”. Before pulling away, I made sure to brush my lip against the side of his neck. He sucked in a breath.

That’ll give him something to think about.

And that it did, when he entered late on the first verse of L’Enfance Nue’s set.

[burlveneer-music]

VA - J Jazz Vol. 4: Deep Modern Jazz from Japan - Nippon Columbia 1968 -1981 - a new entry in BBE Music's excellent comp series

With J Jazz volume 4, the BBE J Jazz Bullet Train continues its journey traversing the expansive landscape of modern Japanese jazz. Volume 4 is the latest in the universally praised compilation series exploring the best, rarest and most innovative jazz to emerge from the Far East. Please take your seats for a first-class ticket to J Jazz central. This latest station stop off is with the famed Nippon Columbia label, one of the biggest labels in Japan, whose jazz output embraces every possible style imaginable. Focussing on the key years 1968-1981, J Jazz volume 4 sees compilers Tony Higgins and Mike Peden dig even deeper into their record collections and pull-out tracks that span styles ranging from solo to big band, jazz classical interpretations and heavy jazz rock, to febrile post-bop, white hot samba fusion, and modal psychedelic wig-outs. J Jazz volume 4 features icons such as drum master Takeo Moriyama, keyboard magi Hiromasa Suzuki, Fumio Itabashi, and Masahiko Satoh, and guitar wizards Kazumi Watanabe and Kiyoshi Sugimoto, alongside big band maestros and innovators Nobuo Hara and his Sharps and Flats, and Toshiyuki Miyama’s New Herd. Thunderous basslines nestle alongside glistening runs of electric piano, bubbling synths and air-tight drumming as the heavy psychedelic modal blues of Jiro Inagaki flows with the infectious samba grooves of Takashi Mizuhashi featuring Herbie Hancock; Shigeharu Mukai’s fusion funk epics take the music to another level and Mikio Masuda’s driving keyboard rhythms brings the heat to an incendiary dancefloor zone. With 7,000 words of extensive sleeve notes, J Jazz vol 4 comes in a triple 180g vinyl set inside a deluxe gatefold sleeve with obi strip plus a 4 page insert. The double CD features two bonus tracks not on the vinyl edition. Mastered at the Grammy-nominated Carvery Studio by Frank Merritt, this latest collection is a worthy successor to the preceding three volumes that have set the bar so high. J Jazz is curated for BBE Music by Tony Higgins and Mike Peden. 

[saulweissberg]

availability / @bloodbuzzfm setting / bubbe edna's house (and saul's childhood home), bridgeport, connecticut. timeline / saturday, august 10th, 2024 at 4:35 pm before the annual country club end-of-season soirée.

he hadn’t given micah much of a choice. not really. saul hadn’t threatened his son or demanded that he come along to his grandmother’s house, but he made it nearly impossible for micah to refuse. saul bought a plane ticket in advance, set to fly out a few days after saul himself would be returning to the east coast, so micah couldn’t say he didn’t have the money to buy a ticket (as if saul would ever tell him about a family event and then not offer to pay for fucking anything!). then, he heaped on lots of guilt. he reminded micah that he hadn’t seen his cousins in months and his bubbe was almost eighty—which horrified saul to think about after losing his father so young and edna would’ve protested, proclaiming that she felt like she was in her prime and didn’t need anyone to fuss over her—so he better get in as much time with her as he could before the inevitable happened. 

by some sort of miracle, it had worked! micah had joined the weissbergs for the annual country club party that edna perlmutter weissberg insisted on her children attending since she was made the chairwoman over forty years ago. though she had officially retired ten years ago, it was clear to all members of the club that edna still had influence on the board, and she’d be damned if the biggest party of the season—a farewell celebration of summer!—would be missed by her children. or her grandchildren. there were of course many other events and parties that the club held, but summer had been his father’s favorite season, so this annual holiday for his immediate family had become a tradition shortly after the elder gideon died. saul was ecstatic to have his son join them, not only because he, as much as terry and micah thought he didn’t, valued all the time he could get with him, but it was also a relief not to hear edna and levi give him shit for not bringing micah along with him all weekend.

it was just a few hours before they were all supposed to head out to the club. edna was in the kitchen, attempting to help her personal chef finish up her famous lemon bars that she brought to every club party since reagan was in office, and the sounds of meatloaf’s bat out of hell album floated up the stairs and followed saul down the hallway to his old bedroom. levi had been sent out on a errand to pick up some last minute items for the party, while eliana had joined her grandmother in the kitchen, evidently singing along to the cd playing (because edna refused to use some new fangled app on her cellular device when she had a perfectly good cd collection!) from what saul could hear as he moved further down the hall. young gideon had taken his laptop to the backyard and forbid anyone from bothering him as he ‘pondered his sophomore novel and where the story would take him’ which was really code for he didn’t have a second idea for a book and his agent was getting increasingly frustrated with him. that just left micah.

whenever he came back to his mother’s house, the very house in which saul and levi had grown up in, he always insisted on sleeping in the guest room. his childhood bedroom held too many memories for him to comfortably sleep, much too easy for him to fall deep into his memories of his father or get distracted by a box full of mementoes from high school that would keep him reminiscing until the early hours of the morning. saul and levi had shared a room until they were twelve, insisting on sleeping in the same room until suddenly it was imperative that they have their own spaces and they would absolutely just die if they were forced to share a room any longer. even then, the twins often spent all their time together, only parting at bedtime… unless they were locked into some petty fight over a girl or who ate the last bag of pizzarias chips, but their arguments barely lasted a whole day and they were back to being best friends by morning. after saul left for college, though, he had trouble staying in his childhood bedroom without some eerie sense of malaise overwhelming him. like it was a reminder that he would never be a kid again, and he had done a mighty job of fucking up the kid he did go on to have.

a kid he fucked up in a room that made him feel like a kid. the closer he got to his bedroom door, the more his heart started to thud within. the moment he approached the door, he felt faint, forcing himself to bring his fist up to knock on the door. “mikey?” saul called, voice shakier than he wanted. he pushed the door open and stuck his head into the gap between it and the frame.

his childhood room was revealed to him the more he pushed the door open; edna frequently redecorated other areas in the house, but when it came to her sons' respective bedrooms, she hadn't touched a thing since they both left for college. it was a shrine to saul's long ago youth. the pixies poster he bought at a basement pub concert in boston during junior year of high school still hung over his bed; a promotional picture of tom cruise in risky business cut out of a magazine was still taped to the mirror above his dresser; framed pictures of the young saul with various family members and friends were placed about the room; even his star war figurines that he hadn't touched since he was in middle school were lined up on a bookcase in the far corner. he would never be a child again and this room was just mocking him, rubbing salt into the wound of aging.

saul gulped before speaking. “are you going to be ready in a bit? the party doesn’t start until six but bubbe insists on being there early. make sure it’s all set up to standard.” and by that, he meant edna’s standards. g-d forbid they pass out philly cheesesteak potato skins like last year!

[luckylolabug]

Alright hear me out, HEAR ME OUT. I know everyone has opinions on what musical they'd do for spring after season 4, but I have a very very niche recommendation under the cut.

SO, when I was in High School growing up in Salt Lake, my school put on a performance of Children of Eden (the musical about the first part of the bible, essentially, but honestly the songs are bangers). BUT the fun part was the absolutely bizarre decision to cast a semi-famous adjacent guy who was REALLY popular with Mormons as God. Thus entered Dallin Bayles (you can google him if you want, I'm convinced this guy was literally only famous in small Mormon circles because I sure as shit didn't know who he was when he was hired) taking the role as God (basically the LEAD) away from another student. SO....I suggest something similar. East High puts on Children of Eden and hires on some Utah-famous guy to play God (not literally Dallin Bayles in this case because that would be too weird, gotta get a fictional stand-in) and then they have to deal with working with someone in their performance. They already sort of have experience with fame after the documentary and filming HSM 4 there, but its different when you're working on an actual HS production with a guy thats way too old to be there. I also think it would be fun with that headcanon I have that Seb's from a Mormon family because he probably knows the guy because his mom listens to his CDs every Christmas or something and Carlos has NO clue who it is, he's just some haughty asshole who keeps questioning all of his choreography etc. But Seb doesnt want to get into it because he knows his mom loves him so he's sort of stuck in the middle of it all.

[alliluyevas]

I’m sure BYU was ahead of the curve with correspondence courses given how many students get married and have babies before completing their degrees. And Mormons aren’t ubiquitous in Northern CA like they are in Utah/Idaho, but there were a handful in the (generally liberal) suburb I grew up in.

That’s why it was so wild to read that school counselors at a school in (what I know to be) an even more liberal suburb were recommending their online classes 15+ years later, when online courses are so common. Maybe BYU is still the cheapest option? Or all the guidance counselors at east bay high schools are Mormon, lol.

BYU is really cheap for church members because they have tithing-subsidized tuition but idk about for non-LDS students. It might have just been a set price to get the CD-ROMs back in the day as well, who knows. A mystery!

[looselipssinkships-x]

what's your favorite fob album actually?

hi this is going to be a long answer because i could not decide on just one <3

pre-hiatus: infinity on high - folie ily but me and ioh have history. this is the first fob album that really sunk its teeth into me, even though i knew next to nothing about the band or much else of their music. i had a cd id burned and played it on repeat the summer i got my first real apartment. (this was also the year i really came out to myself. it was rough. but screaming along to ginasfs helped). also vincent van gogh was my hyperfixation before fob and id love to talk to mr joe trohman about it. This album is that first taste of freedom, that sense of coming into your own despite the cost. It's blaring thrillers intro as you peel out of your parents' place and head back into the city. It's realizing you're in love with your best friend and you thought love was supposed to feel warm and happy but not this kind of love (this new knowledge about yourself feels like a dirty secret you share with your shitty little car and the empty roads of the farmland around you). Infinity on high is an old friend you can always come home to, pick up right where you left off, they see all your new scars, your battle wounds, the ways you've grown and changed, and they tuck a dandelion behind your ear and love you just the same.

post-hiatus: so much (for) stardust - smfs is for the orchestra kids and you can pry that from my cold dead hands. Even though I'd casually listened to fob for years, this is the first album where i got to experience it from the first teases through the releases through everything that was and is tourdust. *tw* i initially made this tumblr when i was relapsing into some disordered eating habits, but smfs brought me over to foblr instead, and brought me to friends (looking at you @pluggedintosaverockandroll and @katrois ilysm). I listened to love from the other side a lot on my february trip to nyc, really thinking i was gonna end up there for good by september. It felt like hope. The first time i listened to the album all the way through was skating to work along the charles river. I think i played it on repeat until i started applying to jobs in Vermont and noah kahan got brought into the mix. Seeing them on tour healed a little something in me, i think. Especially with ginasfs as an 8ball song. That scared kid with a burned cd never would've believed we made it out of indiana, that we lived in a big city on the east coast, and that we get to have a body that feels closer to home more days than not, that we don't have to be scared of who we love anymore. Getting to see the band put together this album and go on tour and have fun gives me hope, because right now i'm in a folie stage of life. I have to believe someday i can heal too.

I loved this question <3 tysm for asking ily <33

[bihansthot]

TikTok just now discovering Malice Mizer is my new favorite thing, it’s such a nostalgia bomb. I was a HUGE fan back in high school, I still have so much merch CDs, VHSs, Posters, Magazines, Photo books you name it, I sadly have no demo tapes though. I have other bands demo tapes but none from MM, they’re quite hard to track down. It makes me want to dig out my VCR to watch all the tapes I have. Maybe this weekend I’ll hook it up and have a mini marathon? I mostly have VHSs from their late era because I was in Japan for vacation for my 18th bday which was right after they disbanded. I managed to find their entire discography including Kami’s Memorial Box second hand there though and just filled a suitcase with MM and Visual Kei stuff. Ahhhh good times, I got to meet a Visual Kei band Smoky Flavor and got invited to see their live, I got to go to bands at Big Cat in Osaka and went to see a variety of indies bands at the legendary live house in Shibuya, On Air East now know as Spotify O-East. I even saw Miyavi getting chased by a mob of fan girls in harajuku, I know it sounds made up but it’s totally true. He made it to the corner I was on he looked at me and assumed I was a normal tourist but just as I was blurting out his name he winked at me went ‘shh’ and took off running. It was a great trip. I very much want to go back to Japan but unfortunately I don’t have the money I had growing up as an adult. One day I’ll get back and fill another suitcase full of Vkei merch. ❤️

[kylo-wrecked]

What is an alternative life path your OC might have gone down? How different would their life be if they'd made those decisions? Ex-con!Ben

{ 🫀 You broke and bought: Ex-con!Ben }

Hard to say.

Not like he came from a place where the future had any kind of trajectory. Trajectory was a big word for 'North' Wetyin (* ‘North’ to distinguish it from its fairer sister cities South and East Wetyin. *)

Wetyin wasn't a place of roads pointing all ways, it was a small town hanging off a ledge in the woods, footpaths brambled over. Nothing ever happened there. Nothing exceptional, anyway. All the kids went to schools in other towns. Some parents drove up to two hours just to put their kids' behind on a desk chair. His father was that parent when he felt like it.

Ben didn't finish high school. And if he had? Do what and do it where? Slap price stickers on camel hair paintbrushes and holographic CDs in East Wetyin? Work the Christmas season chopping trees in Shelton and summers processing frozen fruit in Lynden? Drive trucks through Pasco? Spokane?

Maybe. Maybe that wouldn't have been so bad. Maybe it would’ve led somewhere.

@southern-belle-outcasts

[heroicintention]

Carl - 3. Describe your muse’s ideal holiday. 6. What is your muse’s earliest memory? 11. Is your muse good or bad at learning new things? 12. What type of music does your muse enjoy listening to?

TIDBITS HEADCANON PROMPT (accepting)

3. Describe your muse’s ideal holiday.

The beach. Carl has considered, more than once, cutting out of Alexandria and just heading towards the coast. He isn't sure why exactly. He was terrified of the ocean when he was a kid and wouldn't go near the water the one time that he remembers going to the coast of Georgia. Now, though, he feels like it's calling to him. Unfortunately... there's too much to fucking do and look after and gas is too damn valuable to waste it on a two day trip east and back.

6. What is your muse’s earliest memory?

Carl's memory isn't particularly early... he would estimate he was three or four, waking up to his dad lifting him out of bed. Keep a straight face, kiddo, momma made pancakes again. It felt so high up back then, and it was almost like magic being carried from bed to be delivered into his chair at the kitchen table. He wishes he could remember his mom in the memory better...

11. Is your muse good or bad at learning new things?

Good... if he deems said things worth while. He was a pretty shitty farmer, but he picked up skills with knots and knives and guns quickly. Now, he's learned the art of bartering, haggling, and persuasion... and when he isn't too pissed to give a shit, he is pretty damn good at it.

12. What type of music does your muse enjoy listening to?

Rock, mostly, but country tends to crop up when it comes to the small CD collection he's started. A lot of older shit that his parents liked when they were younger.

[allsassnoclass]

what are your thoughts on 5sos5 in terms of album order and like cohesiveness as a body of work? pls be as elaborate as you like xoxo bella

@clumsyclifford mmmmmm what a question! let's see if i can answer it.

i think this is their most cohesive album. part of that could be that this album has the most distinct sound when compared to their other ones, but sonically there's a lot of cohesion in the main 14 tracks. part of this is definitely because the album was mostly written and produced by them, rather than being a patchwork of different producers and co-writers adding their own touches of sound here and there. for the most part, the songs are defined with a big, expansive sound, a touch of synth, background harmonies, and lots of high notes (whether done in falsetto or belted). a lot of songs also have a nice build to them (take my hand, bad omens, easy for you to say, carousel specifically) which then opens up to this really big, transcendent musical moment.  we have moments of echos and moments where their rock edge sneaks in, just a little. for the most part, these songs feel like they fit together.

that being said, I wonder if the reason that our 5 bonus tracks are technically bonus tracks instead of on the standard album is because they don't all fit neatly into the album from a sound perspective. emotions, for example, sounds nothing like the rest of the album.  that’s one of those acoustic pop punk ballads that every 2000s band fit into the middle of the cd.  moodswings also has a unique sound compared to the rest of the album, as does tears!  they’re great songs, so obviously they would want to include them, but i wonder if their sonic uniqueness compared to the rest of the album is partially why they’re bonus tracks.

lyrically, i think this is one of their most cohesive albums as well! it’s very introspective.  this is very much an “I” album (they don’t do a lot of those. sgfg was a “we” album, and youngblood and calm were both “you” albums in my opinion), and each of the songs is very emotionally self-aware.  while there are messy emotions involved in the songs, the narrator is aware of just how messy these are, and can also be somewhat objective on the situation.  there’s also a prevalent theme of searching for something and a constant motion forward that appears in a lot of the songs, like we’re on a journey towards something better with the narrator. bad omens mentions the “you” character being a runaway and has the narrator constantly chasing after that person, carousel talks a lot about keeping the journey going, caramel starts with “run to the east, gotta leave, i need a way out” and we end with red line, which is a train song and makes references to journeying without a destination.  some of the songs are moving towards something, and some are moving away, but for the most part there’s a sense of motion, and if there isn’t, then that in of itself is a significant part of the song (moodswings, for example, has the narrator frustrated that they keep pushing the “you” character away and feeling like that person is slipping away from them while they are stuck in a rut.  you don’t go to parties also has the person acknowledging that they’re stuck in the past and can’t move forward: “last five years running out my mouth” and “always stay too late i should kick me out,” plus the concept of looking for someone who used to frequent parties because you miss them, even if you know full well that they won’t be there because that’s not who they are anymore).

the lyrics in general have evolved in the same way, too. their metaphors have gotten better and more specific, their literal phrases pack a bigger punch, and while there’s a difference in the lyrics for songs like take my hand and you don’t go to parties and emotions, which each had different members leading the lyrics, it still all combines to sound like 5sos for the most part.

as for album order... this part is difficult to fully comment on, because I think i’d have to digest the album a bit more, but i don’t think their opener/closer combination is as strong as it has been on other albums.  for me personally, red line doesn’t feel like an overly strong song, so for that one to close out the standard album is an interesting choice, although i understand what they were going for, especially with sound of the train leaving at the end.  it feels like a strange song to end on when the rest of the album feels relatively hopeful.  the same can be said for tears!, although i’m not sure where else tears! would be able to go.  i also understand why complete mess is the opener, as it was the opening of the era for them from a writing perspective, but personally i’d be interested to hear an album that starts with take my hand and ends with bad omens or carousel.  i definitely think that a narrative through line is easier to see in the earlier songs, and i would’ve loved to see that carry all the way to the end via placement of the songs.

after two days of having the album, my thoughts on this subject are best summarized as follows: cohesive, but i’m not sure about the song order.  hope this ramble makes sense!