All Summer in a Day

When I was a kid I saw a TV adaptation of a Ray Bradbury story called "All Summer in a Day" about a bunch of kids who live on Venus, where the sun only shines for one hour every seven years and it rains the rest of the time. They have to stand under sun lamps to get vitamin D, and the only one who remembers what the sun was like is a girl named Margot who was old enough to remember seeing it back on Earth. They learn about the sun in science class, "about how like a lemon it was, and how hot," and then they write about it. Margot's poem goes, "I think the sun is a flower/That blooms for just one hour."* Everyone is jealous of Margot and her poetry and her sun memories, so they lock her in a closet and she totally misses the sunshine. And then she becomes a goth. No she doesn't! Well not in the story anyway, but where else does a sun-starved and misunderstood schoolgirl poet go from there really.

At age 8 I already had some broody turned-inward tendencies, so naturally I was obsessed with this and it remains one of the saddest stories I've ever heard. As good as the adaptation was and as beautifully written as the story is, I'm still not entirely clear on the takeaway and given that it's geared toward children there must be a point. Enjoy the sun while you have it? Don't be a bully because you'll feel kind of bad about breaking someone's spirit later? If you have one great memory just hold it tight as you can in your brain and hope it will keep you warm for the next 14 years?

I guess if you read deeper, arguably much deeper than any child or at least child-me would read into things, it's a starkly drawn parable about the damaging effects of being afraid to hope for things. The part I still trip over is that the one person who did the hoping is the one who gets punished. So it's meant to elicit empathy from kids? I didn't fully develop morally until my mid-twenties, but maybe that's just me.

You can watch it here if you want, the end is happier than the in story, kiiind of.

The Temptations - Ain't No Sunshine

Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band - Sunshower

[Solid Rock is the coolest Temptations album but good luck finding it.]

[Dr. Buzzard's OSB]

*This is my final mope about what a cold summer it was, but SERIOUSLY. When are we going to reap the upside of catastrophic climate change? It's barely 50 degrees and it's not even October yet, I'm wearing a thermal, I'm looking Minnesota/feeling Minnesota. When did we move to Venus?

There's Been a Wonderful Mix-Up

One of several awesome things I have found about via @questlove's Twitter: Kutiman, a dude in Israel who makes songs by remixing other people's Youtube videos. This was inevitable, wasn't it? He's doing a really, really good job with it.

Questlove compares him to Jay Dilla but it reminds me more of the Emergency Broadcast Network (watch this video for my favorite song by them). Like any remix/mashup fan I am in love with the postmodern pastiche; I recognize all the references in a Girl Talk song and get excited by the great way they've been repurposed and I express my excitement by dancing. But Kutiman's take is more interesting than Girl Talk in a sense, since he's working with this deep well of completely obscure source material. Not obscure like Moby's obsession with the Alan Lomax recordings circa Play but like, some girl singing to her laptop camera in a basement obscure. I feel like Kutiman has really thrown down the gauntlet in terms of digging deep.

Emergency Broadcast Network - 3:7:8

Emergency Broadcast Network - Shoot the Mac-10

[buy EBN]

Tidbits

The brilliant UK-based music obsessives at Noncollective are back with a new mix, "From Brazil With Love." I love Noncollective and I love everything related to Brazil and Portuguese, so this is my favorite thing of the week so far.

This article is still well worth a read, despite the fact that Kanyegate (and all of its attendant Internet memes and other jokes) is officially a dead-and-beaten horse:

Beyonce and Taylor Swift: Sisterhood is Powerful, Especially When Male-Directed

And also, this:

"Keeping in touch with the things that help us feel alive – music, books, movies, even the theatre, if, mysteriously, you are that way inclined – becomes a battle, and one that many of us lose, as we get older; I don't think enough of our cultural pundits, people who write about that stuff for a living, fully understand this. It's one thing to have an opinion on Little Boots remixes if you earn your living hanging about in cyberspace; quite another if you're a full-time teacher with three kids."

I would read a Nick Hornby essay on how he selects jelly at the supermarket.

What Makes a Motherfucka So Damn Fresh

I meant to write about Chrissy Murderbot after meeting him this summer and getting into his weekly mixtape project, My Year of Mixtapes (I'm so in love with this week's hardstep mix, which I'm forwarding to all my mid-90s raver cohorts). In the month or so since I completely slept on doing that post, he's pretty much blown up.

Which is as it should be, because Chrissy's mixes and music reveal a love of/depth of knowledge about dance music's past that I really don't hear in most of the mixes that land in my inbox, and I definitely don't read in many dance music blogs I look at. That could be largely due to the Hype Machine culture's obsession with newness —which I don't see as inherently negative, by the way — and there's also the obvious fact that most of these kids were in elementary school the first time it happened. I never ever want to be one of those over-30 year olds who thinks my scene was more authentic and legitimate because we did it earlier than the people who were born later than us. Hell, if anything I WISH I thought what's coming out today is garbage so I wouldn't find myself at the Crookers show scolding yuppie assholes for shoving teenagers on ecstasy out of their walking path like I'm some twisted mama bear. Maybe I wouldn't still get so irate when people say "it's music for people on drugs" or laugh like I should be embarrassed about the fact that I spent 1995-1999 in cartoonishly large Liquid Sky jeans, doing some very stupid things like all teenagers do. But no, instead I just explain that I'm still good friends with many of the people I met sitting outside the club or holding court in the bathroom for hours. I tell them that I had more fun in just that time period than some people have in their entire life. It more amuses than unsettles me to walk by NYU's Palladium Dorm on 14th St and remember the time I lost Rich and Doug for two hours in the club that used to stand there, just wandering and letting it all blow my tiny mind all those years ago.

I'm not a neuroscientist; I have no idea if my experiences did in fact rewire how I hear music resulting in this lifelong addiction — one that I honestly wish I could kick as I head towards advanced-stage "I'm too old for this shit" Danny Glover Disease. It could be that hearing the Hype remix of "Blue Flowers" just excites me because it's ringing some Pavlovian nostalgia bell. What I do know for sure is that beyond the shallowness, hedonism, and aural A.D.D. that does admittedly present itself in club culture, there's also a rich history of incredible, endlessly self-referential music and there's always something new and old to be excited about. I can hear in Murderbot's work that he really gets that aspect of it. I like that.

DJ Ayres - Push It Higher (Josh Wink vs Salt and Pepa)

[DJ Ayres]

Deee Lite - Good Beat

Utah Saints - Something Good

Orbital - Impact (The Earth is Burning)

Combating a Case of the Tuesdays

After hearing several good remixes of this song I'm actually starting to enjoy Ezra Koenig's voice, as opposed to my usual "meh" feelings on it/Vampire Weekend.

The Very Best - Warm Heart of Africa (Alan Wilkis rmx)

Tomorrow: A look back at the summer playlist.

my day just got a little more Joe Francis.

[The setting: A parking lot on Milwaukee Avenue. Trudging home and kicking the dust after receiving some disappointing news on the career front, I remember that I need paper towels. I mean, just because you underperform on the hardest edit test ever written doesn't mean the world stops making countertop messes for you to sop up. As I walk to the drug store I can't help but notice the giant pink bus out front, so I stop and gawk. Within seconds a white pickup truck pulls up next to me; inside are two boys not older than 22 wearing safety-orange vests.]

Boy 1: Do you want to go inside?

Me: What! Just...you do this right here? In the CVS parking lot?

Boy 2: Yeah. Well, we'll also be at the club later on tonight [gestures over his shoulder to a club that often has a line of chubby women teetering on heels after 10]. Sure you don't want to come in?

Me: Ha! Uh. No thank you! I'm too...wow. [starting to walk away]

Boy 2: You have what it takes!*

Curtain.

Duran Duran - Girls on Film

*What it takes: big boobs, the rank stench of vulnerability and failure