Denmark. Home of danish pastry. Kind of. The Danish, one of the States’ most treasured pastries, might easily have been labeled the Austrian but for the Great Danish Pastry Strike of 1850. Seems like the strikers told the bakeries to take a flying suck at a rolling donut (or Danish, if you prefer), so the bakeries imported artisans from Austria. Now that, sports fans, is interesting. If you like Danishes, anyway. Or Denmark.
Yep. Denmark’s Alcoholic Faith Mission is releasing a new album, their first in three years, and it’s a beaut. This column, in fact, originally started as a tribute to the band and its run but, as usual, life got in the way (my brain stopped functioning) and I promise a future column will go into the band’s history as well as numerous videos they have produced over the years.
Shari Ulrich, in her latest blog, talks about the future from a perspective of the past, her point being that she had not even an inkling of what was to happen while it was even happening. To live in the present is, in essence, to live in the future because time has no on and off buttons. Every second we live is another second into the future and another second away from the past. We experience it on an ongoing basis, the seconds ticking away into minutes and then hours and then days and then weeks until we are at a point we stop (though it never really stops) and look back, wiping our brows and wondering, where did it all go? And wish that we had maybe paid more attention.
I sit here, a pool of phlegm and what would be blood if the body would allow enough into the mix, feeling like six buckets of shit. My right eye is a stream of tears and swells each night. In the morning, the eyelid is a peacock feather dried to perfection against cheek, awaiting its morning ablutions necessary for it to even be and eyelid. I don’t know how it happens because with all of the coughing racking what is left of my body, there shouldn’t be enough time for the tears to dry. It certainly doesn’t feel like it, sleep coming in short and shorter bursts, the phlegm either stopping life-giving breaths on a fairly regular schedule or spewing itself in massive quantities on pillowcase or wall (both, when a sneeze takes control). Here’s the thing: I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t stop coughing. I feel like those six buckets multiplied by ten and would sell my soul to the devil but there never seems to be one around when you need one.
Whaaa-a-a-at, you say? 2012 ain’t over yet? You’re right. It ain’t. But if the Mayans have it right, it will soon be all over so if you don’t mind the indulgence I’ve decided to do what I do every year— post my list of albums which have floated to the top a month early. I do it for a couple of reasons. One, I hate for my list to get mixed in with the rest of those end-of-the-year lists which swarm late December and early January. The timing is all too predictable and if there is anything I don’t like, it’s predictability (which is why I don’t go gaga every time Keith Richards adds another day to his fossilized remains or Mick Jagger farts).
While I won’t apologize for this column (which reads more like a review), I do want people to know that I am aware that columns are not a place for reviews. This didn’t start out this way in my head, but the words came out a review of sorts anyway, and I can only make an exception for artists like Tom House and albums like Winding Down the Road. This is a special album, an album which I have no doubt will gain cult status within a very short period of time. You know what cult status is, don’t you? Respect given to music way outside the accepted— music for which you have a profound appreciation and a personal attachment. Welcome to the personal:
I remember the first time I ever walked into the Peaches record store in Seattle. It was a big as the Tower Records store on Sunset in Hollywood and, for myself, more impressive. You needed binoculars to see the records in the back corner of the store, it was so expansive, and every bit of the space was filled with bins of albums (real vinyl ones, kiddies), so many that the storage space beneath the bins were packed solid with albums as well. Someone told me that there was over a million dollars worth of vinyl, wholesale, in the store, an unbelievable number considering the fact that albums retailed for about $3.98 at the time.
I’m sitting here piecing together the albums I think are the best of the year so far and ready to sing the praises of Sydney Wayser and her magic kingdom, Bell Choir Coast, when the Craig Elkins train t-bones me and scatters what could have been an easy column to the winds. Who am I kidding? It is never easy to write this column, especially when I’m comparing apples to oranges which is pretty much what any “Best Of” or “Greatest” list is. The Truth is, there is no greatest or best of because music is so intensely personal and of the moment that what anyone chooses today they might not choose tomorrow (or even one side) later.
Alcoholic Faith Mission. I put the name first because I want you to remember it, not to be cute with words. They have renewed my faith in music and, by default, the music business. I know. It’s a shade of its former self. I hear it and read it all the time. Statistics here, comments there. It is dying. It is dead. The only thing that matters anymore is format. Kids don’t hear it. Bieber, Perry, Jack White, Richard Waters, Springsteen, Minaj, LMFAO. This is cool, that’s not.
A toast to my two most loyal readers Heather and Alex. They have not missed an episode, comment privately on most, and surprised me with a bottle of “A to Z – Oregon Pinot Gris” on the occasion of getting through the alphabet. If this column gets a bit sloppy, blame Oregon.
Bullseye Records of Canada
Segarini: Don't Believe a Word I Say 