Gin & iTunes
By Blake Butler
I am drinking gin & wrote about 11 songs as they came up on random in my itunes while they played until they ended
“Break-In” by Fugazi
Guy on the old Fugazi albums sounds like he’s literally on fire during the recording. I don’t know if they are masking the mic weird or if he’s like troubled in general, but when Ian comes in now I get this big Jock Jamz type feel especially in comparison to Guy. This band was my favorite band for four years until one day they weren’t anymore.
“Chaos Engine” by Pinback
I hated this album for a long time when I heard it because it reminded me of white people on the beach with their clothes on. I guess I liked it more then for a while after that though listening to it now after a while it seems like a soundtrack for a videogame that should have been deleted. Why do white people like harmonies over keyboards all the time. This song right now is reminding me of working at Media Play, which I don’t know if you had a Media Play in your state, but it was a shitty store who tried to sell books and DVDs and music and candy and whatever else. The DVDs were always in these big fat plastic cases I guess so people wouldn’t try to steal them. We were always told to watch out for scammers but I always helped scammers. One time I let a guy buy a full length CD for the price of a single because he’d taken the price tag off the single and stuck it to the CD, which we’d been warned about. When I still let him because why not he gave shook my hand over the counter and said if I ever needed anything, let him know. I guess I thought he meant drugs or fighting help or something but now I know he just meant I’ll never see you again.
“Stone Age” by De La Soul
This is one of those songs I’ve had on my iTunes forever and still it has no plays, even though I know I’ve listened to this album at least several times when I had it on CD. I miss CDs. I miss playing an album over and over because I didn’t feel like taking it out of the player. I think losing that feeling is why I don’t really give a crap about music anymore beyond holding it as wallpaper in my mind while I drive the car I hate in traffic. Biz Markie is on this one. Seems like I heard recently that he’s dead but it also seems like I’m making that up in a way that feels like I believe it. How does that happen. I hope he’s not dead. The bassline on this song makes me want to go to the airport and walk on the automatic sidewalk until I get to a wall. He mentioned grits and now I’m hungry for grits. I’d like to sit back and just watch grits boiling in a kettle with the heat so hot until they are just paste and then I’d eat the paste. Seems like there should be a new disease that happens to people soon. I want to play a bass right now but not hear any notes on the real air. I miss the feel of music before I overcame it.
“Warsaw” by Joy Division
I feel like I want to walk around in a field that has a plate of metal underneath it holding something else out. I don’t know what the something else should be but I like the threat of the idea. Seems like there are “gang vocals” on this song, which is not something I remember associating with Joy Division. Dude hung himself in his apartment or whatever. I wonder if anyone has ever hung themselves outside from like a lightpost or a gazebo in the bigger air. I’m sure they have but I can’t think of anyone.
“Che Strano” by Ennio Morricone
There’s this small trebly tone like someone erasing words in the song next to the voice of a lady singing but not saying any words. I don’t understand the practice of singing without singing words, like “singing out” they call it maybe, or maybe that’s when people really start singing big in a song, but that always seems to be when they aren’t singing real words but just making sounds or going ooh. I guess people like to hear those sounds because they are emotional in a way that transcends a word or something or they sound like affected versions of what sounds you make when you have sex or are just thinking but really I think words mean more than that. I think words take a bad rap as supposedly being inefficient for expression when really it’s the person typing that is inefficient. I imagine there will be a comment in the comments that says I am inefficient here in this typing but I think I am saying exactly what I feel which sometimes is the point, and so is not the point. There’s nothing to say so why not say it any way like this right now. This song is about to end.
“Captain Caveman” by Lightning Bolt
It’s been a while since I saw these guys. The first time I saw them they were playing with this band Orchid and they set up in the back of the room while everyone was watching Orchid and they suddenly the dude from Orchid screamed and pointed at the back of the room for us to turn around and we did and Lightning Bolt was there and they started ripping at the same time. That’s one of the best moments I remember from seeing music. Seems like it was twenty years ago but it had to be more like 10 or 8. Seems like I can’t understand how people keep playing music for that long, like how they go around in the world looking for places to show people music, but they would probably think some similar thing about the things I do about what I do and me in my days. I guess it’s weird that anyone does anything. I think I’d give my right arm to be able to play the drums but then I wouldn’t be able to play the drums, which is maybe how it works. I want a burrito and I have to pee.
“I Wish I Was In New Orleans” by Tom Waits
I always used to talk so much crap about how much I hated Tom Waits and his voice and his swagger and his face and how anyone who claimed to like Tom Waits must be lying to themselves and to the world. I remember banging the table specifically in a T.G.I. Friday’s at the high tables in the bar area before we could drink yelling at my friend Bo that it didn’t make any sense to like this crap. Then one day I understood. One day I just heard a song that Tom Waits was singing and I understood the song and then I understood Tom Waits and soon after that I became obsessed with him. I think that a lot of the thing I have liked a lot in my life have been things I hated and seethed against a long time first. Now I think I might have give up some of that again because this song seems really annoying in a way like I remember feeling annoyed by before I stopped being annoyed by it. Like why does Tom Waits think crooked hats and alcohol worship mumbling a little is so good for music. Maybe it is. I am sitting on a black leather sofa for god’s sake. It’s cold here tonight but not so cold I need the heat.
“Sugar Hiccup” by Cocteau Twins
Another band I hated for years before I liked them. This song makes me want to get my haircut now. It makes remember driving past the mall I always went to when I was growing up but doing the driving years after I had stopped going to that mall almost ever. I want to lay down in a six lane street right now hearing this song coming out of the sun or something and not get hit by cars but just feel them go past and the hot asphalt leaving weird sticky spots on my face skin and my arms. I wonder if this Liz singer lady has ever been into a WalMart. Seems like she would have had to by now but I can’t see her even parking in the parking lot. Seems like she doesn’t have a body below the head. I think if I could put someone’s disembodied but still alive and speaking head somewhere in my apartment I would put it near the door underneath the light I turn on when I come in at night. So it could yell at me while I am leaving to pick it up and take it too, and be there at my feet when I get back still yelling for whatever it needs by then.
“The Champ” by R. Kelly
Feel like I should go to a football game soon. Feels like I’m missing something really great by never going to see any sports even though I don’t like sports really at all, except college basketball. I don’t understand them mostly. I would like to watch R. Kelly shoot three pointers all day in a white suit while I wear the same white suit but don’t get up from the bleachers. Maybe he’d make a little joke every now and we’d laugh about it and it’d feel good to be alive.
“Forward to Death” by Dead Kennedys
Would be fun to lay down on the grill at a Waffle House next to big pile of chopped onions. Seems like Jello Biafra is so bright red you couldn’t see him if he stood next to a barn. Guitars are evil.
“Lives Ruined Through Sex (For Anita)” by Agoraphobic Nosebleed
This song makes me want to gain so much weight I can’t ever move again. I want to buy a chainsaw and put it on the ground running until the gas runs out. I wonder if this guy likes to eat waffles. I want a waffle. Just wondered if I am actually dead. Just thought, “In closing…”