Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1378
Six Organs of Admittance, the kids are all right, where one does their best thinking, a new idea to work on, California needs to fix its vote counting, lets wait on the quarterbacking.
Hey there! Morning! Don’t have a lot of time this morning, I have the third of my “hail mary” tennis elbow treatments in an hour or so. Two and a half years, going strong. Actually it does seem a bit improved. I think the hail mary treatment might be working I sure hope so I don’t want to wear a sling for a month.
Getting the hang of Buttondown. Sorry about that double-header thing yesterday, I didn’t quite grasp how that functionality worked, and I accidentally hit some “generate subhead” button that endeavored to summarize GMHHAY for me. Which is, I have learned, impossible for AI! Friend told me that Apple’s summary feature can’t handle it. And of course it makes sense, cuz the summary is either a) a list of topics, which they hate, or b) a reflective statement on the type of writing like “this writer talks about a lot of different topics in this newsletter, most but not all are of stunningly low consequence.” Not their strong suit with their whole word-matching thing.
Oh also did you hear that recently scientists proved Monkeys could never writer Shakespeare? I remember hearing that theory when I was, like, 12 and thinking “that’s dumb and obviously impossible’ and 40 years later I am proven right I am such a genius.
I haven’t sent out the last, final Substack email yet, maybe today maybe monday, and some of you are not getting these because they are going to your spam still. We’ll get there. We’ll get there. BUT I did learn — thank you Tim in assisting with this — that you can still reply to these and they will come directly to me. Thank god. That would have been a disqualifier for Buttondown and I forgot to check for it. But it’s fine.
Oh and it turns out that Buttondown is pretty good with Spotify embeds and very good with Threads embeds (aside from their previews) so I stand corrected.
Finished that “listen to the first 18 Rolling Stones albums” project yesterday and thank god. It was not a wise thing to do. Thinking about who to do it with next, though it’ll be a couple months before I do another deep dive.
Listening to Sky Cries Mary, This Timeless Turning this morning. Mentioned it last week, sent me into a nostalgia K hole for mid 90’s non-electronica goth. Also I discovered that Plex makes a dedicated music streaming app, so I have been listening to a lot of rarities from my collection that aren’t on streaming. This morning on the dive to drop off Jane I listened to Big Hat, and my god that took me back. used to be so obsessed with them. Wrote them fan mail.
There are new Claire Rousay and Primal Screams albums today. They are in the queue.
Went to Cat’s Cradle American Institution so see Six Organs of Admittance in the back room with 50 or so other people and it ruled. First time I’d seen him/them in (checks archive) eighteen years. Ben Chasny “came to the East Coast without any instruments,” borrowed an electric guitar for the show and played solo, which longtime readers know is my absolute least favorite band configuration: solo dude with electric guitar. Solo women, specifically Midwive and oh god what’s her name that woman who does cool looping stuff. Not Tash Sultana or Elise Truow, Google Kagi, though they are both awesome and c’mon man Elise plays way more than guitar. Noveller that is her name. She is awesome too. Actually I guess all women are exempted from this dislike of mine.
(I just learned that there is no Strikethrough in the WYSIWYG formatting bar on Buttondown and I almost had a panic attack but instead I realized I could still use markdown even in the WYSIYG editor. A keyboard. How quaint.)
Anyway, Ben circumvented my dislike of solo men with electric guitars by mocking himself for it: “Sorry the music sounds like prog now without the band,” he said “except everyone knows you can’t have single instrument Prog so its even worse I guess.”
Ben was great, his opener was great — a man of indeterminate ethnicity in all black playing acoustic guitar and electronic gizmos, droning a lot and doing some folk freak. Extremely up my alley.
Chapel Hill has a great little scene. I think there were one or two other solo weirdos like me. I swear. As I walked into the show, I felt sorta like a Junkie or a John making my way alone to this weird back alley in the middle of the night, and I guess I kinda am, in a way. I like bands where, in major metropolitain areas of the US, maybe 50 people show up. I like bands that exactly 166 people own their latest record, in the entire world, on Discogs.
I do my best thinking alone at shows, on walks, or in the shower. And shows have a slight edge because even though it’s uncouth, I can take my phone out and take notes…
…(I have long dreamt of a “walking and thinking” app but mostly I get by on walks these days with transcribed notes emailed to myself from my watch. I could do this in the shower now, but I still don’t take my phone or watch into the shower so, I dunno. I have thought a lot about this: some sort of note-taking appliance for the shower. Still workshopping.)
Anyway in my clear thinking during the majestic psychadelic guitar noodlings of Ben Chasny, I came up with a pretty good idea to… save the music industry? Well, to save musicians. I am pretty into it. It needs a spreadsheet before I get any further, and then it needs a few chats with some trusted friends, but, I mean, even if it goes nowhere, working on that is a lot better than the other things I’ve been doing in the last few days to stave off the existential horror.
People been texting and getting motivated and starting to ask things of me again in this post-election world, people who are a lot quicker than I about recovering. I am not quite there yet. Slow to answer, flailing a bit. Trying to not armchair quarterback even as the votes are still being counted. Can’t stand all the people on Twitter Threads Bluesky who are doing this. Drives me crazy. Wait. Ponder. Chill. California has, thus far, counted fifty-nine percent of its vote. This is a national crime and I am sick of their shit, they need to fix it. We could still, in theory, take the popular vote? The house is still uncalled. We probably won’t make it, but my god is it going to be close. I am, as ever, grasping at strands of hope, but you know what? Fuck it. I am going to continue to grasp at strands of hope. It ain’t over till its over.
Saw a friend and his kids last night for an impromptu burger dinner. The kids are all right, as you say. Jane and her friends were yelling about Trump rump and whatnot while I nervously hoped the new gestapo wasn’t listening and also felt mildly chagrinned that we had, despite not trying, indocrtrinated her so much, though also proud of it of course.
Their trauma over the whole thing lasted a day. Ours will last a lifetime.
Plus it was one of those nights where she wouldn’t brush her teeth so I had to do it and my god I hate those.
Justa mix for you this morning. New stuff mostly, except Joni Mitchell, cuz I am giving her another chance at bestie behest. It is not working I don’t know what it is. Not my bag. Super into julie (thank you Jon Whitney), cautiously optimistic about new LCD, like this new David J thing don’t know who these other people are, gonna have to investigate. Love the new Cure, of course, love the new Mount Erie. Oh! The new Fucked Up! They are cranking out albums and I have not gotten to them all yet but this one is awesome. And I love the new Sheila Divine, and obsessed with this new discovery Julie Christmas. The end.
I am sorry that this doctor’s appointment is fucking up your weekly Walmart update. You’re just going to have to go a week without it. Unless I have a really boring weekend and I’m totally grasping at straws for content on Monday. Not inconceivable.
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Thanks for reading.
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Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.