Dear readers,

Last year, 2007, was an eventful one. A relationship ended. A job ended. The life of a unique and wonderful dog I had "rescued" a few years earlier ended. Then, after 22 years in Seattle, I moved to Olympia, a distance that for me has proved psychologically much greater than the physical one.

Through all of that this blog became a kind of lifeline for me. It let me return to better times under the guise of sharing, however brief and ultimately illusory that return was. I know I haven't always (or even often) provided the kinds of bitrates and file formats that some of my visitors would have liked to see. Those people were quite clear about that. But for me, of course, the most important thing I was sharing was not the downloads.

Now, as with so many bloggers of every stripe before me, I think my work may be done here. I'm not 100% sure about that -- never say never and all that, plus I still have a big list of albums, artists, song collection concepts, and books that I intended to touch on -- but just as I drifted into this, I can see that now I seem to be drifting back out again.

Thanks to everyone who has visited, pointed to me, left comments, and downloaded some of my favorite music in the world. Thanks even to the complainers and the trolls, I guess. Wait a minute. What am I saying?

I may be back. But if not -- happy trails to all of you.

Doolittle (1989)

"Monkey Gone to Heaven" This is where I got well and truly on board with the Pixies' grand experiment in sound and rhythm. In retrospect, I think the friction between Black Francis and Mrs. John Murphy, here on the verge of boiling over into caustic and permanent damage to the band, probably made them better – certainly their ensuing solo and elsewise wandering afield careers show that the Pixies are vastly more than the sum of their parts, and it's a shame that everything after this was inferior to what came before. (Although, n.b., everything with the Pixies name attached is worthwhile and then some.) This is my favorite, and to put a point on it, I think "Monkey Gone to Heaven" is where everything comes together in a glorious and eternal 2:56 that stands up to repeated play and endless analysis, stoned or otherwise. Consider the deceptively nonsense lyrics of the final verse and chorus (aka "searing climax"): "if man is 5 (3x) / then the devil is 6 (5x) / then god is 7 (3x) / this monkey's gone to heaven." You can't overthink this, it just keeps deepening and deepening into itself, with man represented by the digits of one hand, the devil by the ancient lore of the number 6 (particularly when 3x, of course, but here presented 5x, effectively echoing the number of man), god by the same, viz., the number 7 (rhymes with heaven), in symmetrical relation 3x to man, underlined by a host of unholy shrieking. Then the monkey appears. The strings throughout are very nice too. This is amazing stuff.

Surfer Rosa (1988)

"Bone Machine" Enter Steve Albini, neither here nor there I suppose, but whose trademark brittle/sludgy mix with the drumkit persistently pushed to dominate all proceedings happened to make a neat fit with the Pixies, slipping into itself just as if it, the band, always belonged there, here, in this wild and gorgeous place. Because it did. The Pixies came from nowhere. Eventually they would hurtle back there. In between time, they made world-beating music like few others in or out of their time. They take it all the way down to a throbbing bass string and kick drum and Kim Deal's quavery vocal and all the way up to a wall of sound that tears apart your world and down again to Black Francis mumbling this or that ("where is my mind? where is my mind? where is my mind?") with a sour fuzzy guitar twang tracing him and then back up again to him shrieking and shrieking against the dense, pulsing, penetrable concretion. And the ghosts, haunting it all, the dogs barking and howling. The whole thing is practically organic. It worked in the studio, it worked on stage. It just plain worked. This is a first album? Enjoy it while you can because it's not going to last forever.

Come On Pilgrim (1987)

"Isla de Encanta" Damn fine debut EP from a band, the Pixies, that single-handedly refined and redirected "alternative" rock, doing everything but ridding of it the stupid label. Here's what we know: Black Francis (aka Frank Black, Charles Thompson IV) teams with Mrs. John Murphy (aka Kim Deal) to form a 2 guitars-bass-drums outfit. Most of their songs are short and feature a lot of caterwauling from the two principles, some of it in Spanish. The verses are often quiet, the choruses loud. When I say loud, I mean LOUD. As in deafening. The tunes are pretty good. The lyrics don't make much sense. The band is what's known as tight. Stand by for the next chapter in rock 'n' roll history.

Remembering Satan (1994)

Fascinating true crime case from New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright – one of those vaguely creepy miscarriages of justice along the lines of what's seen in the documentary, Capturing the Friedmans, where it gets hard figuring out the good guys from the bad, and there's an undertowing urge to wish you'd never heard about any of it. In this book, Wright details the story of Olympia, Washington, sheriff's deputy and fundamentalist Christian Paul Ingram, whose teen daughters, on the basis of so-called recovered memories, accused him in 1988 of involvement with a Satanic cult, which physically and sexually abused them in ritual fashion. Their stories are unbelievably horrific – dismembered babies, gallons of blood, revolting sex, lots of chanting and finger cymbals. Not surprisingly, almost no physical or corroborative evidence supports their claims. Bizarrely, upon being arrested Ingram furrows his brow and starts recovering memories of his own. Near or shortly after the trial he finally came to his senses (as I read it) and recanted all. But too late. In the end he went to prison for well over a decade. The daughters have evidently never wavered. Those choosing to believe them over the father account for the lack of evidence Napoleon Dynamite style: "IDIOT! It's Satan. Of course he's going to get rid of the evidence." There's a cautionary tale in here somewhere.

In case it's not at the library. Also more information here.