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Hi! Over the past decade I've "had" a lot of "jobs" β mailroom clerk, boba barista, call center operator, the night editor of Cosmopolitan dot com (dark lol!), summer camp teacher, young adult fiction author (this is the part where I very politely ask you to buy my book BEATING HEART BABY from a local bookseller or to borrow it from your local library), flower hauler, and "more." But all of those jobs are/were second or third jobs on top of thee thing that got me into writing: music! journalism!
Many of you have bore witness to my downward spirals about particular songs, albums, and artists (don't talk to me about Utada Hikaru unless you've got Time), in feverish IRL rants or equally feverish URL missives. Like many of you, I use music as currency, as love letter, as mantra. I've devoted my life to enriching its altar, or something like that. Because my artistic practice in total, which has become the mutant backbone-foundation of my life, grew from the seed of music.
I still like to write about music, but I no longer possess/can sustain the media careerism lust that drove my health into the ground even during my spry 20s, ha ha. After conferring with a few folks, I'm reviving the newsletter as a place to cultivate my own musical garden. I plan to "grow" the following "crops":
weekly-ish mixes aka CSA: Cultivated Seasonal Audio
regular-ish roundups of cool shows/festivals in the broader Bay Area; if you'd like to plug anything, drop a flyer or some other media in a reply and I'll "put it up"
show reviews if I'm moved by something :^)
album/song reviews that aren't bound by linear time (get ready for 10,000 words on the "A Sea of Honey" back half of Kate Bush's 2005 album Aerial) (this probably won't be an exaggeration) (if you were a fan of my Catapult [RIP] column "Formation Jukebox," this should ride the same groove)
"blogs" about specific music-related miscellany that I just can't stop thinking about (i.e. the love affair between Linkin Park and 2000s era shonen AMVs, anime openings that live rent-free in my head [it won't all be anime stuff... promise...], Charli XCX's obsession with vehicular manslaughter, the TIME PASSED needed to accrue emotional potential for a needle drop [The Bear is killing it on this front and has gotten me thinking about what makes a song excavation sticky and "oof"]) and pretty much whatever else catches my ear
I'll send out an email about it soon but the first CSA is live now because Tuesday is the 4th and my spiritual radio station will be dialed in solely to this frequency:
β¦
FLYERS
π I've got another show that night, otherwise I'd be going to Slow Pulp @ the Chapel (October 16).
πΆοΈ I will be at Sky Ferreira @ the Regency (July 6)... saw her way back in August of 2015, where she debuted the lead single from Masochism which... Skyheads shall not want!
π©Έ The new Olivia Rodrigo song gave me chills when I first listened to it but my god that piano... Ben Folds Five should ask for the Paramore treatment. But! I kept thinking, "This reminds me of something," and that something is "Bully" by Lissie, off of her album Catching the Tiger, which I highly highly recommend, god "In Sleep" is SLEPT ON.
π My best friend turned me onto Vaundy's "θΈγε (Odoriko)"... great driving song. Will eventually slip it into a CSA but it's a loosie for now:
Big love to all of you who have cats or dogs or other critters who get scared during this time of year. Thanks for "listening." Stay tuned...!
πΆ xoxo Lio
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