William Blake–The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1793)

SOUNDTRACK: ULVER-Themes from William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (1998). Suffice it to say, if it were not for this album I wouldn’t have read this piece by Blake.  I have been aware of it through the “doors of perception” quote that created the band name The Doors, but I never had any compelling reason [...]

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Junot Díaz–The Sun The Moon, The Stars” (New Yorker, Februray 2, 1998)

SOUNDTRACK: ULVER-Metamorphosis EP (1999). After Ulver’s first CD, they jumped around in genres (their second was a kind of folk CD and their third CD was more black metal–I have not heard either one).  Their 4th CD was the William Blake CD of crazed experimental music.  And then they released this EP.  And I can’t think of [...]

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Jeff Kinney–Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever (2011)

SOUNDTRACK: NEIL YOUNG AND THE INTERNATIONAL HARVESTERS-A Treasure [NY Archives 09] (2011). Continuing with the randomly numbered Archive releases, Neil Young has released A Treasure, the sixth release (which is labelled #09) in the Performance Series.  This is with the Neil Young band called the International Harvesters. I had never even heard of this iteration [...]

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Jennifer L. Holm & Matthew Holm–Babymouse: Monster Mash [#9] (2005)

SOUNDTRACK: “WEIRD AL” YANKOVIC–Alpocalypse Bonus DVD (2011). Included with the new “Weird Al” disc is a DVD of videos from the disc.  Only one of them is a video proper in that Al himself is in it.  The rest are animated.  Although of the animated ones, the one for “CNR” is, I believe, an “offical” video [...]

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Carol Steen–”Visions Shared: A Firsthand Look into Synesthesia and Art (Leonardo, Vol 34, No 3, 2001)

SOUNDTRACK: VAMPIRE WEEKEND: AUSTIN CITY LIMITS FESTIVAL 2010 (on Palladia TV 2011). Like The Flaming Lips, Vampire Weekend only got two songs in this airing (this makes sense as they only had two albums out at the time).  The two songs were “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa” and “Oxford Comma” (Palladia faded out the “fuck” in “Oxford [...]

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Llewellynn Jewitt, F.S.A., & c.–”The Mermaid of Legend and Art” (The Art Journal, New Series, Vol. 6, 1880)

SOUNDTRACK: THE FLAMING LIPS: AUSTIN CITY LIMITS FESTIVAL 2010 (on Palladia TV 2011). It must be tough to take a festival like Austin City Limits and truncate it into 2 hours.  It must also be tough to be a pretty much headling band like The Flaming Lips and to be playing in the middle of [...]

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D.B.S. Maxwell–”Beer Cans: A Guide for the Archaeologist” (Historical Archaeologist, Vol 27, No. 1 1993)

SOUNDTRACK: AUSTIN CITY LIMITS FESTIVAL 2010 (on Palladia TV 2011). Recently Palladia broadcast some highlights from the Austin City Limits Festival in 2010.  The bands they showed were Phish, The Flaming Lips, Vampire Weekend, Muse, LCD Soundsystem, Sonic Youth, Spoon and Slightly Stoopid. There were so many good bands at this festival (why is Richard Thompson [...]

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Sam Lipsyte–”The Climber Room” (New Yorker, November 21, 2011)

SOUNDTRACK: GRINDERMAN-Grinderman 2 (2010). The first Grinderman album was a sleazy delight.  And this Grinderman is much of the same sleazy heavy rock, although it’s slightly different.  It opens with “Mickey Mouse and the Goodbye Man” which lets you know that Grinderman are still dirty and sleazy.  The song just rocks.  Screaming blistering rock. Now, fans of old [...]

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Junot Díaz–”Apocalypse: What Disasters Reveal” (Boston Review, May/June 2011)

SOUNDTRACK: ULVER-Bergtatt (1994). Ulver has some music in the soundtrack to Until the Light Takes Us and my friend Lar pointed me to a location where you could download a bunch of their music (this was before Spotify of course).  So I grabbed a few of their albums expecting to hear some brutal death metal.  [...]

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Eric Idle*–”Who Wrote Shakespeare” (New Yorker, November, 21, 2011)

SOUNDTRACK: DAVE BIDINI-”The List” (2007). This song appears as a bonus track on the Bidiniband album.  But I’ve been aware of it since 2007 when he played it on his solo tours.  It is essentially a list of 4 Canadians who are “killing us, killing us now.”  The list includes Tim Horton’s (purveyor of delicious donuts), [...]

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