A short documentary on Mark Linkous, done for Dutch television in 1998. He talks about his 1968 Dodge Charger, motorcycles, and injured animals he finds in the country. He occasionally mentions his music.  I came across this while doing some research for the Dark Night of the Soul compilation I reviewed last May.

Linkous took his own life this weekend, which makes too much tragic sense.  Like his collaborator Vic Chesnutt, there’s only so much pain a body and mind can endure in one lifetime.  But much of Linkous’ pain was self-inflicted; the above clip was filmed two years after the first time he died, of a drug overdose while on tour opening for Radiohead, in 1996.   He was found unconscious and alone, with his legs pinned beneath him.  The shock that occurred when doctors straightened out his legs caused his heart to stop for several minutes.

He recovered, and his subsequent music, as infrequent as it came, was haunted by the specter of his own death.  But miraculously, it was never sad.  Linkous was so valuable to so many (including myself), because he never wallowed.  He wondered, he was dazzled, he loved intensely.  He was a redneck who lived in the sticks.  He made music that celebrated very, very simple things, in transcendent tones.  “Gold Day,” from It’s a Wonderful Life, still moves me to tears, in a way that none of his spaced-out contemporaries (Flaming Lips, Grandaddy, Mercury Rev) were ever been able to do.  Sometimes it can weigh a ton.

Wordpress pinged me and told me that someone didn’t like a Pitchfork review I’d written, and had also linked to my blog in doing so.  Which is all fair game, of course.  You write for Pitchfork, you answer to a pretty big audience.  But there are two unique things here that made me want to respond to his, er, response: first, this guy appears to devote a fair amount of time to this sort of freelance indie ombudsmanship.  Second, he does it in a sorta Matt Drudge kind of way.  He Googles me, finds the “about” section of this here blog, discovers I’m a grad student, and then sets about disabusing me of my ostensible ignorance as to my own career path.  It’s more or less Jay Leno-quality material, and he over-qualifies his own arguments enough that I have no desire to go Conan or Letterman on this guy.  Besides, he seems okay enough, and what does the world need with more drama?  What he has done is trigger me to start blogging again, and allow me to perform a very minor public service.  His understanding of grad school is pretty underinformed, and maybe other people think the same way he does.  And maybe I can help by explaining what the hell it is me and my colleagues do.  Sorry to some people: it won’t be shitty or catty or snarky.  So.  (Continued)

Atalanta scores an exclusive (and I mean exclusive) interview with Stevie Wonder:

stevie wonder: the atlanta interview (which, for legal purposes, i should disclose has taken place entirely in my head)

a: have you really been to saturn?

sw: i just got back, actually. it’s my favorite place to fly helicopters.

a: okay, so… is “have a talk with god” at all sarcastic? are you sort of mocking how weak people lean on religion? because if not… well, i just find it so hard to believe that having faith in god could make life so easy. it’s such an insanely beautiful sentiment that i almost just want to sell off everything i own and work on that kibbutz, or make that baby, and just accept that everything will work out. i mean, do you really think it’s okay to accept your own weaknesses?

sw. no.

a: wait, “no” to which question?

NB: Atalanta is Mike Powell’s new blog.  A laundry bin for his dirty thoughts, as it were.  At this point it comprises two posts.  Here is the other post, in which you can learn who Mike Powell is, and what else he has written.  Shortcuts: recently.  Even more recently.

So Maura (for Sound of the City) interviews a stripper named Bubbles Burujas, who turns out to have a lot to say (perhaps unsurprisingly) about the music she dances to:

BB: When I have to come up with rock sets and I can’t stomach, well, that chart you showed me, I go with the White Stripes, Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age. Stuff I don’t really listen to, but don’t find objectionable.
BB: Where are these people who still listen to broadcast rock radio? I feel so out of touch.
SOTC: I have no idea! I wonder that a lot.
BB: I guess what this comes down to is that RAWK has been the music of the titty bar for 30 years, and someone is going to keep making it. It’s the music of good times! and bar fights! And male bonding through the homerotic experience of the stripper–proxy lapdancing for your friend!

Tom Ewing on “a couple of regrettable tendencies in Pitchforkwatching,” or “conspiracy theories from people who think they’ve ‘cracked the code’”:

1. The ever-creeping-upwards margin of what seems to constitute a “bad Pitchfork score”. Bloggers are twisting their knickers over a 7.6??? (Ed. note: This link is from me, not Tom)

2. The use of figures to “illuminate” the editorial process at Pitchfork as if it was some kind of mystical black box and only the use of statistics can crack the code. Seriously, go to ILM, find Scott’s username, search for posts by him – he is enormously open about Pitchfork’s decision-making. Of course you can still act conspiratorial about it and assume that ratings get changed all the time and the year end polls are rigged, but in that case stats won’t reveal the truth either.

The boring truth is that there are ‘inconsistencies’ between BNM and Pitchfork marks and end of year lists because they are the results of separate decision making processes:

Ratings are decided by the reviewer – conversations with the editors may or may not take place.

BNM is entirely an editorial mandate. My understanding – and that’s all it is, I’ve never reviewed or even pitched to review one – is that the idea of a BNM is that the site’s typical reader can buy this record secure in the knowledge they’re going to find it worthwhile, which explains why exceptional but inaccessible albums in (to P4K) fringe genres might get the mark but not the award.

Year end polls are, er, polls, which means they’re the collective decision of a bunch of people.

For DECADE end polls the “inconsistency” is absolutely a feature not a bug, since Pitchfork’s writing team includes several people who came to the attention of the zine precisely because they complained eloquently about things like 3.8s for Basement Jaxx.

With every song (or band) we have a relationship (some we have yet to meet), and with the best there is romance. Mystery is the driving force for romance. You trade a little mystery for every sweet tidbit of insight you gain. Yet some of those insights lead to deeper mysteries. And therein lies the magic of music. I cannot wait to get to the deeper mysteries of this song — which has dominated my headspace for the past month — Donnie & Joe Emerson’s “Baby“. It’s another gem I know very little about. Apparently (according to Aunt Google, at least) it’s a song that few people know much of anything about. It’s driving me (that great kinda) crazy and acts to reinforce my lifelong Quikrete-like embrace with arrested development. It makes me feel A-OK about living my life almost entirely saturated with music.

I hope you’ve hit play by now.  (Continued)

For me, editing narration tracks for documentaries used to involve a tedious process, toward the end of post-production, of eliminating everything that comes out of the narrators’ mouths, and leaving just the words themselves.  Really good voiceover pros know how to do it on the fly, but for most, it’s the editor’s job to remove the ers, the ums, the stray breaths, the nasty saliva smacks.

If you saved that cut stuff from any conversation, though–what we do when we’re communicating, but not saying words–and played it all in a row…well, that’s what Language Removal Services does. Most of these samples sound like what these celebrities might sound like having sex.  SFW, though. (via Ubuweb)

(Something here about unknown acts who play a marginalized style of music gaining credibility and/or irony points by entering the wider public discourse via a novelty cover)

I really shouldn’t like this–lord knows I don’t care much (or know much, tbh) about the source material or these guys–but there’s something in the sincerity of their performance here that gets me.* It’s not that I need modern R&B to be “authenticated,” it’s actually usually the opposite (I think Led Zeppelin made Willie Dixon awesome), but it’s…something (to be continued maybe).  Watch the whole thing; when she goes off at the end, it’s worth the wait. (via)

*Though I have no idea what all those plates are in the background.  So many plates!

Revealed: the cause of the series of calamities befalling the residents of Dillon, Texas, c. Thanksgiving 2009.