Update/Mix Listened Log.

(in the park in Charleston at sunset [aka our future record cover/Pitchfork promo photo], a little earlier at the fountain)





...............





I am acutely aware that things are going by me and I am not "getting them down" in my mind and my life and on here, and I hate that. I am certain that some other mixes have gone by for us and for me and I have lost their appearances. Not that anyone gives a shit besides me. Such is the fate of the really overly invested, the really too interested, the innately and perpetually overdressed. Which is fine really. In the end, the blog and all of this talking, is really just for me, for my own benefit. I can accept that. All that really matters, in the end, is that you yourself are satisfied with whatever it is that you are doing/living.

Having said that, again, not that anyone out there really is reading this or cares, I've spent most of the last two weeks heavily revising all of the posts on THE WRAITH to include much, much more archival info and be much more user-friendly. Like seriously, I've lost sleep over this. I've done copious research to provide as much factual info as I can. Much more physical, historical information. The thrust being, to make that page, as was my original intention, into more of a resource. A place where people that don't know me or care about my little life and KINGS and all the rest, might end up because it serves, additionally, as a kick ass font of information and cataloging about Phil Elverum and all of his wonderful musical/aesthetic contributions to this world. A page/discography/etc... that will help to mark these moments in time and history. A tiny Wikipedia, perhaps. A "Phil Elverum" Info/Discography page that random people on the internet, searching for info and discography stuff and rare downloads might find and love. Something solely dedicated to Phil. An online encyclopedia of minutiae for the obsessed. So yeah, I've sweated it out a lot of these last nights trying to do that as best I can.

Over here, in this more personal world, I am sad to not be partaking in the PILL "Oasis vs. Blur Night". Hopefully someone (Leslie) grabbed me a CD. It has been hot as blazes here in the ATL, I mean, like, WHOA. Unstopping, unrelenting. There are few things getting me through it, these pages, the thought of all of you beautiful people out there, ice cold cans of La Croix, The X-Files (we're at the end of season 8/beginning of season 9 at this point), mixes/ing, my statue-esque wife, my good and far away friends (Fred, Andrew, Matt, Leslie, Zoe, Coree) and the ones lost to the tides of time, our cat "Weetzie Cat", "Valerie" by Steve Winwood...

Please feel free to look at the other site and spin on over to the Soundcloud page (POLTEGEIST, does everyone see/realize that over on the sidebar there are links installed that go to the other pages etc...? It's meant to be a convenience but I feel like it's being lost on people,) and, since I debated for so long over whether to post it or not, give a moment to the last recording I put up. Word. Thanks kids. Really appreciate it. I, like all the rest of us, am struggling to feel like what I do and say and care about, matters to the world. Speaking of which, I don't have the link right here to put up right now but if you haven't been following the stuff Frederick Walter Shannon is putting up on his Facebook, the links to his little directorial videos of his very talented friend playing songs, then go, right now, and check them out, because they are beautiful and the songs are beautiful.

Watched "A Single Man" the other night, and it was seriously killer and beautiful. In a nice reversal of historical president, it is actually seeming better and better to me the further I get from it. Thank you, Jennifer, for continually bringing these great cultural moments into my life, even though you think I am never into it.



all that being said, mix-listened log, ONWARD...








7/23: CHARLESTON, SC TRIP


(in the car, at the fountain in the park, in front of a door that we walked by, bathing beauties at the beach several times over or maybe a scene from The Informers..., at Holy Taco, pretty dress that didn't get to be worn as a result of the insane heat and what not... [seriously, how much more beautiful could this girl be?])


...



--261(The Hidden Stone) (7-22-10) Another in the “new school” mixes (pretty much all of which are centered around tracks from “Wind’s Poem” and “White Stag”, just as a way to make a little series of very divorced, new and different mixes). We left for our little mini-vacation/practice honeymoon to Charleston at about 10am on Friday (it’s around a five hour drive) and God bless Jenn for being a morning person, because, Lord knows, I am not. I was, in fact, up much of the night before (as usual) doing what I do and trying to finish off some new mixes for the trip (not “trip mixes” per se, just new ones with new stuff I was excited about). So, in my state of not-awake-ness, it was easy to just go to the ones I had just, hours before, completed, this being the first. This one played all the way up through the part where there Garmin we were using (thanks Andrew!) led us into this weirdo country-ass bypass for parts of the highway and we wondered aloud where the fuck we were and where we were going. In retrospect, however, it was quite lovely and country.


--262(Hunting) (7/23/10) See all of the above notes and apply here. This one continued on the country-ass shortcut and led right up to our lunch break at some Wendy’s in SC. It was crowded and hot and a little underwhelming.


--196/231++(Sunglassez*/........) (11-29-09 "and also really years ago 3 maybe") (4) After two straight mixes, as usual on car trips, I was starting to have that sort of full-ear feeling, that sort of music-bloatedness thing and Jenn suggested that I pick the next number. I like having her pick the number of the mix because it is a truly blind pick and we have no idea what we’re getting into. When I pick I clearly have some notion of what is where and that takes a lot of the fun out of it. It also put me very on-the-hook for whatever is on that mix. After some struggle I picked this one, one of the newer mixes, a Jimi Sharp mix (one of the very experimental 2nd half-half Jimi Sharp mixes, the first half served as a break from traditional old-school mixing, this 2nd half serves as a break from all that came before, a chance to explore tangents and clear the catalogs of ideas and perversions, more on this when we actually get to them all in the course of the blog…), which, by it’s nature, is going to be experimental and non-traditional. More discussion on this one when we get to it. Suffice to say it played up through our arrival in Charleston and then on Saturday (7/24) when we drove out to Folly Beach we continued with and concluded this one. As usual with this one there were some remarks about how much Janet Jackson appears on it. Folly beach was actually really grand. We laid on the sand, played in the water, which was bathwater warm, Jenn looked like the consumate “bathing beauty” and then we got the most perfect parking space in front of TACOBOY where we ate like taco kings. The trip to SC was a smashing success. Charleston smells like urine, everywhere, and that sucks, but otherwise we had a great time. It’s like watching the X-files, even when the plot of the episode sucks severely, it’s still enjoyable watching Mulder and Scully and their interaction, and that was us. Charleston loves societies and tourism big time. Lots of historic sites and fountains and tours and tourists. They also have palm trees and that’s cool, and lots of folks that are like, hardcore Charleston, stickers, tattoos, etc… The best parts of the trip were being there with Jenn, just walking around and having nothing to do and all that. We walked a lot, got crazy hot, then went back to our room which had seriously kicking AC and watched, like, hours of The Food Network and The Travel Channel, so much "Chopped" and "Man vs. Food", so good. One night a high school friend of hers came by and we all hung out and drank various Sweetwater beers. It was cool. Thank you, to her, for coming over and being such a genuinely awesome human being. That was a lot of fun. We walked down to a fountain and long pier one night, in the collecting dusk and night. The fountain was full of screaming kids but the pier was cool and dark and long as fuck and lovely. Charleston is very flat and very grid-like, and thus, has not air flow, and this is very fucking hot. But when you break through out to the shore of the two rivers it borders it is breezy and nice, otherworldly. The full Moon was coming, came and left while we were there. All the while, walking around, I felt like I was playing Zelda on Nintendo. It was like, pretty much a grid, and we had a sort of rudimentary map and we were just walking around, exploring, trying to find shade and water and home and other things and, for the most part, the streets felt sort of weirdly deserted and then you would randomly come across a person or two people, like in Zelda, when you randomly come upon these screens with like townspeople walking around that talk to you and give you advice or like, a screen with two or three monsters just walking aimlessly back and forth. It was like that, a lot. The first night we were there I had the most awful nightmares I can recall in recent memory, though I cannot recall them now. But when I woke from them momentarily in the middle of the night I was convinced that Charleston was haunted and our room was haunted and that we really needed to check out early before the spirits made us want to kill ourselves ala Stephen King’s “1408”. But, I persevered, and all was OK. We really took advantage of the basic cable and I really enjoyed being able to just lay around and watch The Food Network and The Travel Channel with my wife. We both agree that we wish we could get some kind of cable hookup that would just have those two networks and maybe a couple others and we’d be totally all set. The night that her friend stopped by we spent some time trying to find a grocery store (Charleston has really remarkably few grocery stores, gas stations and other things of the like) and when we found one we walked over to get something to snack on and some beer. Alas, when we got home, we realized that I had bought food that required a fork and I had none. And also, beer that required an opener, and we had none. Thus, I ate my food out of the microwave with my fingers and struggled to open the beer by banging it on the edge of the mini fridge or prying it off with my keychain. Note to self, travel with some utensils in your glove box and put one of the bottle openers you have laying around on your damn key-ring.

One afternoon we took a really nice walk and laughed at the people and the tourists in Charleston and walked through a park and took a bunch of really nice pics of one another (see above...). It was a really nice trip and I’m glad to be home and also wish it was not over. On Saturday, on the way to the beach, we stopped at this coffee place Jenn had read about that was right on the border of the ghetto that was set up in a house, basically. They purported to have food but did not but it wasn’t a big deal since we weren’t all that hungry. They did, however, employ an enchanting young lady whom we both immediately felt a bond with. We stopped in there on our way home the next day and she was there and remarked “you’re back” and complimented Jenn on her hair and a brief discussion of our vacation and where we were from ensued. As we walked back to the car Jenn confessed to me that she thought if we lived there they would be best friends and I said that that was exactly what I was thinking too. As we drove home, a couple times, we hashed over the weird tragedy of us meeting her. It was one of those moments in life that really seemed preordained. I was glad I had felt it too because Jenn had really, really felt it. I was glad I could confirm her sentiment and support her. I suggested that it wouldn’t be all that weird to find the phone number of the place and call and say “hey, me and my husband were there a couple days ago and just really felt like we were supposed to be friends or something” Jenn responded that maybe that was too weird and she would start by checking to see if they had a Facebook page and going from there. Turns out they do, indeed have one, but it's sort of one of those unmanned, not-directly-related pages.

In retrospect I think that she reminded me a little bit of Phil Elverum’s wife, Genevieve, as illustrated in these pictures:


It's a hard thing to express in words but in some weird, dreamy/reality way I wish that this fairy tale could be real and Jenn could become BFF's with this coffee chick. It seems so right, and she really deserves it. (And, to be honest, there is this part of my brain/heart that really honestly believes that this/things like this, are meant to be and real and thus there is nothing at all weird in trying to implement them. I think, with all my heart that, for what ever reason, this little bond is just so meant to be and will be, with a little help and nurturing.)

Charleston, you are the last place I would ever want to live but I did really, really enjoy our trip.




7/25:


--092(O Little Heart [Live At The Tokyo Rose, VA, 23/9/4]) This one went over well “except for the Beastie Boys song” which made me really happy, alas…


--101(The Sun) …it was followed by this mix, which I was not at all thinking about the contents of as it was picked, and had I, I might have suggested skipping it, for the time being. Alas, it was what it was. In the midst of the frustrating part of a drive, a frustrating mix. On the upside Jenn joked that it was nice to start off a mix with some Michael Buble’, on the downside, she was not in the mindset for a mix comprised, 2/3, with very, very long tracks. Sorry baby.


--135b(What I Actually Am) That was followed by this mix, which I thought was going pretty well, but, alas, right around the start of it, about an hour and half from home, the AC in the car decided to stop working and it got increasingly hotter and hotter and HOTTER in the car, nearing the seemingly never-arriving end of an annoying drive. So, yeah, it started out OK but, I think, it ended up being a little annoying. In particular, near the end are a few longer tracks which I think, coming off of --101 were a little ( /very) patience-testing. Sigh. Oh, this life… Sorry baby. I understand.

7/26:

(It is worth noting that, living it up on our day-off back home before returning to work, going to see INCEPTION again and doing various other things, mixes were chosen):

--172/236(Radio Beach*/...........) (11-03-09)


--173/230(Pain Runnin*/...........) (12-1-09) (3)


(however, for obvious reasons [Radio Beach is a double album of all “spoken word” tracks of various types, Pain Runnin’ is double album of all “noise” bands], and, even more so, in light of the recent annoyances of the trip home, these were vetoed by me, for everyone’s sanity. But they should be logged here as having come up and almost listened to. These are both definitely mixes mixed deep, deep, deep into the 2nd wave Jimi Sharp experimental “let’s get these done in some weird way” period which I would not expect anyone to sit through, KINGS, myself or otherwise.) We ended up just listening to both Glorytellers albums and that was nice too.

7/27:


--083(The Gleam) I was driving us somewhere, the store maybe? Yeah I think that’s it because we were planning on making dinner (a delicious pasta dish). And so Jenn was in the navigator’s chair and picked this number based on I’m not sure what. Then when we got home we kept it playing in the kitchen while the cooking happened. I forgot about the theme on this one until it started happening. This one really takes a tour through the X-Files/Frank Black/Pixies/SoCal/Aliens/New Mexico feeling/bridge, quite successfully, if I do say so. Jenn was a fan of this one.






and not that I have people banging on my door for this dumb shit but if any of the few of you out there involved in all this and the history of it would like to take part in living these mixes/memories, in archiving it all and making it breathe and live, please let me know and I will, in some way, get copies of these mixes to you to be put on, on computers, and let play in the backgrounds as you and others drink and drink and drink and get really so magically wasted...
























it is 3:53 AM,
this is the seance.






















xo.