Charlie's Spring Mix

THIS MIX IS GOOD FOR:

Doing as much as you can

Being with people

Silly-string-ing

Starting a garden

Having fun

Jogging fast (I think they call it running)

Playing in the grass

Calling up an old friend

Driving to a picnic

Cleaning

Overall Kicking Ass

It was created for you by Charlie Sanders, who you last heard ringing in the icy cold season with his excellent Falling Into Winter Mix ... and speaking of seasons, it seems that each one this year will be magically unveiled with a new mix by Charlie ... for indeed he plans on doing up a Summer one as well ... hurray for Charlie!

This Spring one is quite exciting and contains many unexpected surprises ... my favorite being a sudden crackly-good Spanish children's record! The best thing about this mix, i think, is that it refuses to stay in one solid area for too long ... It's happily a bit all over the place ... Here's Charlie himself with a few words about it:

"I'll be honest. I had a different vibe going at first, kind of a clash between heavy and happy. Pissed Jeans & The Beatles kind of a theme. Then I started adding things to it and by the middle of last weekend I had gotten lost. So I stepped away from it all week last week then just piled through it on Sunday. Also I crammed the Big Star and Sparklehorse in the mix only because I was pretty torn up over both losses. The Calypso tracks are what really pull the mix together. ;)

My summer mixes will be much easier to identify."

and now, with no further ado, HERE is Charlie's very wonderfully colorful Spring Mix.Thanks again, Charlie!!!

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Charlie mentioned Big Star and Sparklehorse in the same sentence because yet another very sad rock n roll death is upon us: musical legend Alex Chilton passed away this past Wednesday of a heart attack ... Here is fitting tribute to him, complete with songs and videos by The Box Tops, Big Star and solo Alex ... R.I.P.

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So, this Thursday night I get to go to the symphony at Alys Stephens Center for free cuz I did the art for the Alabama Symphony Orchestra production of "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon" ... I'm gonna take Nancy Tran with me ... that should interesting ...

I also ended up doing a paint-by-numbers version of one of my paintings for school kids to paint at the upcoming "ONB Breakfast" ... I'm excited about how it'll turn out ... hopefully I'll have "before and after" photos on here next week

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And now, feast yer eyes on all of these great & beautiful

(and in some cases, funny as hell!) videos ... enjoy:

Kara's Boss Man Mix

This mixtape was created for you by the amazingly talented Kara Cassidy who also provided the lovely photos after the videos down at the bottom (except for the 1st & last ones, which I took) ... It was a completely unexpected mix, and a bit of a life saver one as well ...

you see, Monday the 15th, I'm going off to Atlanta with my friend Bob to an Air concert and we'll be gone till Tuesday evening ... so I not only needed to go ahead and have this blog done early (set to automatically publish at 12AM Tues. Mar. 16th), but I was slightly worried that I wouldn't have a decent mix ready before I left ...

Well, I was sitting in Bottletree drinking coffee last (Psychic) Tuesday and in walks Kara, who turned out not only to have a mix to give me, but also revealed to me via Flickr that she & I have an incredibly similar eye when choosing our photographic subject matter ... It was in short, a very psychic Tuesday indeed! Thanks a ton, Kara!!!

HERE is her epic Boss Man Mix, which she originally made for (surprise!) her boss ... Enjoy.

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So Spring is approaching rapidly and the weather has suddenly gotten insanely wet and windy and wild ... 2 days ago, giant balls of hail started pummeling everything in sight and from inside, it sounded somehow like 1,000 tree branches were falling to the ground ... weird

I took these 2 pictures from the bottom bunk of my bed on one of those rain-tossed afternoons:

On a completely different note, I'm excited about the solo Jonsi (Sigur Ros) record "Go" coming out next month, so I was looking stuff up about him and found this cool and unique player thingy with a lot of Jonsi stuff on it ... dig:

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In video news, 1st up I found two TV show diamonds ... of Montreal did a really catchy song for the kid's show "Yo Gabba Gabba"

& Joanna Newsom played the whole 6 minute "Soft As Chalk"on Jimmy Fallon ... she makes the best faces while singing, too:

The rest is a collection of funny, bizarre and/or classic clips ... In this one, the band Real Estate play at an actual real estate agency's Christmas party:

And this video by Eric Copeland (of Black Dice) is simply bizarre and wonderful, as is all of his music:



Here's an old and quite spooky one by electronic pioneers, Kraftwerk:

And finally, to bring the TV show theme full circle, we have this strange one by Pink Floyd in 1968 from some French show ... the band doesn't seem remotely interested in miming the vocals or playing their instruments, for that matter ... they do however seem to be rather enjoying themselves ... haha:

Steva's Winter Dancedrums Mix

This mixtape was created for you by the very awesome Steva Casey and it's incredibly different from her last Psychic Tuesday mix, the oh so rockin' Summer '09 Mix ... this one is delightfully danceable, for one thing ... Steva told me she made it as a cure for the "winter doldrums", and there are so many times that I really need such a cure ... cuz even though the 1st day of Spring seems close, we still have 2 whole weeks to wait ... and a lot of times these last cold winter days can really make me lethargic and anxious and well, a bit on the down side ...

Even with that aside, whatever time of year you listen to this particular Steva mix, it really is just insanely alive and kicking ...

so twist that volume knob to 11 and get ready to start shakin that butt, cuz HERE it is! Thanks, again Steva!!!

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Speaking of winter sadness, here's some terrible news ... Mark Linkous, the man behind the band Sparklehorse died via suicide this past weekend ... R.I.P.

Here's 2 Sparklehorse videos to honor him and his music:

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I've been admittedly a bit of a hermit this past week ... Just ain't feeling social, aside from Bearons practice and coffee mornings ... I did go out to see Kate Merritt Davis' art opening and the early Man Or Astroman reunion show at Bottletree this weekend, which was quite entertaining ... Walker's band opened up and I was surprised by how suddenly punk his sound has become ... Here here, Walker!

On a personal note, I've also been attempting slowly to try & teach myself how to lucid dream ... it seems that I tend to remember my dreams more in the winter, maybe because I don't move around in the bed as much ... I have no idea why, really ... but this particular winter I've been remembering dreams left & right!

I decided that if I am to really take my dreams more seriously and try to have the same sort of awareness in a dream that I have in this reality, then in a way I should also try to treat this reality more like it was a dream and try to do a bit more unpredictable and slightly nonsense things while I'm awake ... to balance it out

Anyway, in light of that, I found a drawer that I originally was going to just smash apart and turn the wood into small paintings, but instead I painted it gold and called it a "wonder box" ... my aim is to very slowly fill it up with random things I've bought that I actually don't even care for ... who knows, maybe I'll end up needing the things later! It's actually a really hard task, "shopping" for things that you don't want or need! ... so far, the box contains only a small net-type bag of chocolate gold coins and some pink gel-filled eye goggles ... haha

the Wonder Box

oh yeah, Laura recently turned me on to the music of Drew Price's Bermuda Triangle, a new Birmingham act that is startlingly fresh and sonically invigorating ... Check out this video to their song "See Through"...

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Speaking of videos, I found a slew this week, ranging from funny to to strange to just plain old beautiful!

1st up is this "cute" (a word I usually hate using but you'll see) video that Enon did for Yo Gabba Gabba that I'd never seen before:

Speaking of Enon ... way back in the early 2000s, I used to run Enon's website ... during this time, I also directed 5 videos for them ( "Cruel", "Come Into", "Carbonation", "Murder Sounds" & "Paperweights" ) all of which they have conveniently posted on their myspace page if you wanna take a look

This next one (by The Fresh & Onlys) visually makes me think of the 80's band Cabaret Voltaire ... I dig all the mask action:

Next we have two refreshingly surreal videos ...

1st there's Shearwater's tale of a feathery eyelashed vagabond & his dog:

And then we have Owen Pallet's ultra strange "What in holy fuck's going on in this?" low budget apartment soap collector thriller:



Last of all is some sheer time lapse beauty by the band On Fillmore ... dig:

Ian's Shuckhuckster Mix

I decided that this year, each month I'm going to feature a "classic mixtape" ... i.e. an actual cassette mixtape that a friend made for me "back in the day" ...

being the sentimental pack rat that I am, I never got rid of any of the many many mixes that my friends made me throughout the years ... in fact, I have them all in one giant suitcase ... at least the cassette ones are ... haha

I really love mixtapes ... making them AND receiving them ... you can capture a mood, a feeling, a thought, even a bit of an era with one ... they are a bit like musical time capsules ... small personal treasures ...

This particular one was given to me by my great and wonderful friend, Ian Frearson who now lives in Seattle, WA ... I think the tape dates back to the year 1996 and most of my memories associated with it involve riding my bike all over Orr Park in Montevallo ... It also makes me remember the job I had back then at a vegetable market called Fresh Market and my funny boss, Ronnie who had a bit of a lisp and always had a big pot of peanuts boiling in the back room ... and he never called me Paul, he always called me John (the name of the guy I replaced) ... haha

It also makes me think of Ian himself, of his personality, his musical tastes, memories of things we experienced together, etc ... Listening to it these days (as opposed to back in '96) some of the songs are rather dated (The Beastie Boys, Nirvana & Luscious Jackson ones for example) while others are pretty unique and timeless (Joe Jackson, Richard Davies and Thee Headcoats) in their own special way ... and still others just make me laugh and fill me with amazement at their strange addictive playability (Air Miami, Noise Addict, Nick Drake) ... I recall in particular the Wire song ("Outdoor Miner") blowing my mind and listening to it over and over again ... It felt a bit Life-altering, really

Anyway, HERE it is in all of it's tape-hiss & big-spaces-between-each-song magical glory! I hope you enjoy it as much as I have. And after all these years, thanks Ian!

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This past week I did many things, and one of them was finishing this huge painting of a bunny lady I did ... Here's a sort of "3 photo time lapse" deal:

Also, as I mentioned last week, Bad News Bearons have started practicing again ... and amazingly the weather these past 2 Sundays has been miraculously Springish ... Here's a silly video that Eileen made during the last practice ... In it, I hit the ball & run, but Colm & Rachel are too quick for me:

This past Friday, Laura & Nancy invited me to go to J&J Junk, this epic thrift store way out in Chelsea ... It was a ton of fun, too and I ended up with lots of Christmas lights, some clothesline, 2 rolls of old wallpaper and this ugly 70's dress I'll use in some sort of future short film project ... Thanks for the good times, Laura & Nancy! ... Below is some very smiley photographic evidence of the trip:

Nancy & her apple

Laura & Nancy

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In video news, the word ridiculous could be the uniting theme for all four of the following videos that I came across this week ... I'll post them in order of least to most ridiculous ...

okay, this 1st one is actually pretty great ... especially the album that it comes from, plus it features vocals by Noah Lennox from Animal Collective ... it's just the "tree man" (or whatever he is) that strikes me as silly ... see for yourself:

this one is hands down pure ridiculous, along with just plain old terrible music it's laugh-out-loud hilarious to think that the band is actually serious about what they're doing ... Brian Teasley sent me the link ... He loves stuff like this:



I heard the song for this next one at Bottletree the other day and it suddenly made me want to look up the video, since it was stuck in my head ... Watching it makes me realize just how ridiculous pretty much all the videos from the 80's were:

finally, speaking of the 80's we have this one, which is not only ridiculous, but kind of frightening in a way, seeing Paul Reubens playing Pee Wee at the age he is now ... if anyone thought he was creepy then, he's waaay creepy now! I do, however enjoy the fact that he ends up using the iPad for a drink tray in the end ... nice one, Pee Wee ... haha: