KINGS PARK

This was a post that was meant to be put up years and years ago, like pre-moving to LA years ago. It was meant to just be an update on the then-current living state of KINGS as I was biking every day in the 100 degree heat around Atlanta, listening to mix --043, biking around Piedmont Park, going to my favorite gas station buying 6 pack bottles of Bud Light Lime (then a new and funny/ironic thing) and going to my favorite local parks to drink and look homeless-ish. At the time I was far from being married, far from moving to Los Angeles and galaxies from the life I live now and the man I've become. I hadn't been away from Boston for that long and i was struggling, as I do, to make KINGS a living breathing entity, something that would go on and on and continue to be a constant part of our lives. I felt I was failing. It was around this time that I began this blog as well as THE WRAITH. It was around this time that I started actually ever buying records, something that's funny now because I'm a full on collector now. But back the I wasn't at all. I basically never spent any money on music, downloading it all and taking no interest in the physical artifacts beyond those I'd already accrued in my life. It was KINGS and PHIL that led me back in. I decided sometime around then that I would start THE WRAITH and THE SEANCE and create an online live forever presence for KINGS nd our experience with it as well as a resource for information about Phil's releases that I wanted to see but was then and still is lacking out there in the internet world. It was a desire, like all of KINGS itself, to keep something that wanted to die or move on or blow away, alive, forever. Forever reliving and ritualizing and recreating and revisiting the thing. I was sad and alone and far away from all my friends and all the most important things in my life. Everything felt evaporated and unsubstantial and as always happens for me in those times I had a blood lust for something concrete, real, physical, a tactile presence, a hold-able talisman that would keep all of the ideas and shared aspirations and history alive. This is what led me to make these blogs and what led me to start buying "records". I decided around that time to try to collect all of the actual physical releases of the material on the "Song Islands" CD. It felt like a way for me to connect to you KINGS and to that place and time. A sort of KINGS spin off. Something to make the ideas physical and real in the absence of being able to hang out with you or be at The Castle or play KINGS etc... I thought well if I can get these real actual physical tactile archeological things and have them as a power source in my home and write about them I could make my silly things still live for you.

This is the story and the tragedy of my life.

My life had been filled with these moments, these projects. Things that are giant, gargantuan, long-winded, ridiculous, indigestible, not-understandable or relate-able. Outward expressions of a complex and endless inner world/BLACK HOLE/ rabbit hole. Things that I have always wanted others to share the same interest and enthusiasm for, going all the way back to being a kid, elementary school, complex and weird and complicated things I wanted others to be part of and failing to find. These things would and do continue to show up in my life again and again like an albatross. Things that I cannot "move past" or "give up". Things I refuse to give up the ghost on and live in day in day out belief that I can, by force of will, make real and reborn. Spiders, my band, is among them, many friendships and relationships are among them, and most importantly, KINGS was one of the first of them that actually took, that actually worked and picked up speed and momentum and partners, life long blood lines. I cannot thank you enough for that.

However, around this time it didn't feel that way for me, or for any of us maybe. It felt like I was moving away and we were all drifting from one another or had and that it was one of those times when it's time to give up and move on Brian. Be realistic. I was sad. I was very sad. But I was also inspired. And I felt that my inspiration would be enough, again, for us all, to will this thing by sheer force and excitement into immortality. I longed for ways to connect with you guys, I spent hours fantasizing about long-distance KINGS and how we could make it all work. There were many frustrating failed attempts. This was around the time I tried and failed at the first KINGS SUB PROJECT. The sole archives of which are a run of five kings mixes in the 200s. This was around the time I started pitching for you to send me iPods to put all the mixes on. This was around the time we had a few fleeting and failing attempts at fledgling online meetings or mix exchanges or whole mix catalog dumps. There were also a couple of very embarrassingly un-thrilled reactions to some of my mix material and I get it, I was in a different place and time and experience. I was striving for all these things to live and breathe and it just wasn't the right time or place or format or technology or time in our lives. But it was hard for me. I never accepted it but I had to be resigned, as I always do, to accept further set back and/or defeat and accept that, like so many of the most important parts of my life, that it would only ever again matter to just me and me alone.

So I started buying Phil records and writing THE WRAITH and THE SEANCE and trying to make it exciting and interesting and engaging and something that would keep the audience committed. And failing. And that's ok.

The point of all this is that, for a time after that, I felt down and defeated and went into a fallow period. I spent a long, long, long time away from KINGS and from the hopes of it surviving. I spent a lot of time on other music and other endeavors, I started some DJ nights, etc etc etc... But something drew me back in and I don't know what. I would say that it was the basic basics of KINGS. The thing itself. As it always does, it performed its primary intended function: life got hard, life got scary, I felt weird, sad, lost, alone, afraid and I needed help, I needed shelter, I needed to feel safe. And that was how I found my way back to KINGS. I rediscovered the point of the thing itself. To provide an endlessly unrolling safe space, safe feeling, memory or promise of friends and happier times, or, at least, shelter and co-suffering and foxhole like hunkering for survival in desperate times and places. I remembered what KINGS was in the first place, a platform to provide happiness and safe feeling for people I loved and myself in the darkest of all times.

So I started making mixes again, with a massive amount of renewed vigor and inspiration. There was even a massive and exciting new Mount Eerie record coming out right then, in a moment of UNIVERSE I KNOW YOU perfectness (Wind's Poem). I started mixing again, in earnest, a lot and drafted what would become, for me at least, a bunch of new very very canonical touchstone mixes that would serve as formats or styles. Mixes that, singularly, were so important and talismanic to me that have gone on to make mixes in the spirit of them to recreate the time place and feeling (--261 and --277 spring to mind immediately as game changers and tattoo level milemarkers). This was a time of great inspiration, this was when I did the "Mirror facing Mirror" mixes and the "REIMAGINED" series.

And it was around this time that I found my way, randomly one day, to a very life changing experience on my bike with a random early mix, --043. I don't remember at all what led me to that mix on that day. I'm guessing I had "Walking on the Sun" in my head and went looking for what mix it was on. As the best of KINGS experiences go. And what followed was an indelible carving. I recently got a postcard from my longtime friend Hope. She was writing about a place in NOLA that she goes and reads and has coffee and her history with it. What she says is "Setting aside a special place marks and event".  And that really is one of the most major stories of my life/landmarks of my psychology. Something that I live with as a character trait and work into the ritualized and ceremonial nature of so many things. But then, you guys obviously already know that. I just had never heard it put so simply and succinctly. But I guess that idea is the basis for so much of my life, in general and day to day. KINGS PARK is a good example. On that day whenever it was I did something random, listened to something random and it made such an impact on me that I decided I wanted to live it again and again and again, as many times as I could and still do, whether it be on trips to Atlanta or recreated in new ways in new places (ala GBV Park, here in Nash.) And this is just the latest in a long line of these things as you're aware. I mean literally every time I come back to Boston I'm setting aside days and nights to recreate the walks I most liked and would take all the time and are the things in my life that I most lust for, long for, miss and live by. Hell just this past week I sort of stumbled into a current life/Nash. ad-hoc stand-in version of my PILL night ritual/walk, different and with an end unlike those but still the same in feeling in spirit (ritual, ceremony, mixes, certain songs, certain drinks, dressing up, hanging out with myself, lots of charged anticipation of preparation and lead up, but without really any apocalyptic pay off, which is good, instead I just hang out with myself here in my button down and tie and drink and write and work on projects).

So, once upon a time, long along ago, in Atlanta, I was feeling sad and far and wanting to mkae KINGS real and wanting to find a way to do, essential what we're finally doing now, on the group text, on here and online and TRAVELING!!! I've said all this already but, when I think and talk about this era and KINGS PARK, know that what I wanted and fantasized about then, we are doing now. This time, this thing that you've allowed into your lives and honored me by caring about is what I wanted back then and was trying to make happen. We have finally found a way to make all that Brian-centric inner-world complicated fantasy a reality, and I cannot ever stop thanking you enough. That we are moments from you coming here again to keep it going, that we text all the time ongoing every day, that we have an ongoing online group meet up hangout mix party, this is all ive been after since leaving and it's changed my life. It's changed my life, so thank you.

I would go to KINGS PARK and listen to mix -043 and call or text you guys and just wish and wish and wish for what we have now. Little did I know back then. That it exists now and that we're doing this and that you're willing and able and enthusiastic, I cannot say thank you enough. I literally am unable to express to you both how much it means to me, day in and day out. All I can do is keep posting posts and sending texts and making mixes and trying to make you the most beautiful, meaningful, inclusive and inspiring things I'm capable of.

So this post then, is long over due. I meant to have it up back then when it was currently happening. But perhaps it matters much more now. This was just meant to be a bunch of pics I'd taken on various KINGS PARK outings, listening to that mix. As I've said, we have to always remain fluid and adaptable and be ready to redefine and recreate our most special and precious rituals, I eventually, as I've told, got worried that the upper upper middle class people of the neighborhood had called the PO on me as a vagrant drinking in the park and had to come up with a new permutation. KINGS PARK later became JANE'S ADDICTION FIELD TRIP, drinking to different music in a different pattern in a different same part of the city and that of course later became many other things, the latest of which, of course, is my current almost literally everyday event GBV PARK.

This post then is meant to be a long overdue love letter to that thing and to you both. Much as the new KINGS sub package we'll be exploring pre-trip is meant to be a massive love letter to you both and KINGS, this post is meant to accompany. The sub package has much much to go along with the new mix which itself, as i'll talk about, I hope to make a seamless follow up to the last one, from a damn year ago. This post is meant to be the accompaniment to the archive mix, -043. It's the only mix that felt important and appropriate and summery enough to go along and the only thing I could think to do to buttress that is to finally do this long overdue KINGS PARK photo essay. This post is just meant to further the feeling and meaning of the included archive mix in our newest KINGS SUB package.

I love you both more than I'm able to express. Thank you so much for coming on this complicated inner journey with me. Thank you for making me feel that the super specific personal to me things I live and breathe MATTER, at all, or in the world or to other people. Thank you for coming here last year and again, next week. Thank you for keeping this alive with me all this time and forever. Thank you for changing my life and showing me that there is still ALWAYS, LIFE and CHANGE, and life to be change and change to be had and life to be lived and lugged around, not as an albatross but as a massive complicated and inspiring inner light.



I'm here. I'm in.

Forever.


Thank you for reciprocating.





It is 4:23 am.
This is the seance.


































xx

L.A. VAMPIRE ON TITUS

This is Bob's house. Thank S. for some amazing COMS work and GBV minutiae scouring on the fly for finding out which one it was. This is the house where he lived and recorded I think basically everything up through Alien Lanes. He's since moved and some unknowing family lives here now. We wondered if we were the only indie rock pilgrims that came skulking around or if it's somewhat common for GBV nerds to cruise by and gawk. As S. pointed out, you can see the basement where it all happened from the street. Almost eerie in its surrealism.

Raising the official beer of late period GBV in toast to all that it is, in the car, parked just off Titus Ave.

 Please refer to the GBV live post for a better synopsis but, when we saw them he played some songs from the Bob solo album "The Crawling Distance". He explained the title with a story about back when he was married to his first wife, "Back when I was the VAMPIRE ON TITUS" and he said there was a bar down the street from his house he'd drink at all the time. He said there was a bridge between the bar and his house and he knew that if could make it as far as the bridge that he could crawl the rest of the way home. Hence the name "The Crawling Distance". So we decided to go searching for this bar. Based on his geographical clues and some map work and driving around our best guess is that this abandoned and boarded up storefront was the best candidate. It looks very much like it was once a neighborhood bar, it's close to his house, it's the only thing that even looks like a bar in proximity and it's just over the bridge that we're guessing he had to be talking about. As it turns out the bridge is actually right outside of this bar and still about a half mile or mile from his doorstep. Which led me to the reaction "That's impossible, no one can crawl that far". I mean it's just right there on a a main drag. The notion of someone crawling almost a mile down a main street, at night, I mean, it would take hours and surely someone would stop him or he'd be stopped by the police or something. But hey, who am I to doubt.

 Of note is this, which is the cross street to that former bar.

 As well as this auto-detailing shop, passed on the way there...

The exit to Titus Ave. as featured in "Watch Me Jumpstart" and which is also the name of Bob's publishing, "Needmore Songs".

 ...and now we're on our way up to Vandalia "which I call EVIL Vandalia..."























It is 2:34 a.m.
This is the seance




















xx

THE LAST NIGHT OF THE YEAR

It is the last night of the year.
This is the seance.
















xx

ECHOS

Had one more in the coffers from that magical show that magical night to share, kings.

I miss you guys and I miss a slightly simpler, happier time.

I'm out here, we're out here. Let's keep going, however we can. we have to just keep rowing
and rowing.







It is 12:01 am
this is the seance.

















xx

A "MORE-SICKA" MC...

I set out today, Jay-Z's b-day, to write one of my favorite kind of posts. One where we take a look at a classic KINGS canonical album which we've exhausted, used every song from across the miles of mixes. There are lots of records by lots of artists that fall in this category and today seemed like a nice time to honor Jay in said manner.

But it's one of those odd KINGS facts we come across sometimes this far down the road. Believe it or not there is only one actual, official Jay-Z album which we've used up. No not "The Blueprint". No not "The Black Album". Both still have 3 outlier songs this far down the line. As it turns out, and I guess it's actually quite fitting, the only J album applicable for this type of benchmark post is...

KINGDOM COME!

The for-no-good-reason much maligned comeback record that we all know and love and holds such a special and marked place in KINGS history. As it turns out, even more UNIVERSE-y, this record, like KINGS itself, has JUST HAD it's ten year anniversary. It was released originally, November 21st, 2006! UNIVERSE, I know you.

To be fair there was actually a little handful of extra songs on a "bonus" disc that I don't even have but we aren't going to count those. These posts are meant to commemorate only the actual album, as originally released and was meant to be heard and experienced. No reissue extras, no iTunes only add-ons, no anniversary set second CDs of unreleased material etc... Only what originally and first appeared on any given album, as released at the time of first issue.

This was obviously a massive time in KINGS history and has a lot of crossover in our lives as a group and individuals, as well as other landmark albums from this window. It's a ship long since sailed but I mean, come on, this record fucking rules, right? Fucking BEACH CHAIR???

So here we go. The format for these, going forward on THE SEANCE will be a rundown of the actual running order/track list of whatever album and then after each song the mix and K number that corresponds to it's appearance. So, to reiterate, the songs will appear as they do were you to listen to the album, and then the KINGS mix appearances appended. After that list I'll relist it all but I'll list it in chronological mix order to give an overview of what order the songs were utilized and some indication of the time span over which it took to use them all up. Make sense? 

For aesthetic/column inch reasons I'll be listing only the "bullet point" name of whatever mix, not the full-length version.

for example: --085(No Inside, No out)

as opposed to: --085(No Inside, No Out [Live At Copenhagen Huset, Denmark, 06-03-05])

I think it just reads easier and makes this more user friendly to do it like that. I can't really ee a situation right now where it would be a real necessity to have the full, proper name of whatever mix listed here.

In the case of more than one song from an album appearing on the same mix they'll be listed in the order they appear on the mix. In the end this will all only give us a partial insight into how the songs were deployed since, historically, many mixes are being worked on at the same time and sometimes later numbers are finished before earlier ones and thus songs selection may seem strange as earlier, favored choices, show up on later mixes or vice versa. But hey, all we can do is look at the best data we can compile this far down the line. I may change or refine this format as we go. You'll note, as I did, if you care to, that this is slightly more involved and different than previous attempts at same (ala "August & Everything After" from year ago). Any comments on how to make this more fun or user-friendly are greatly appreciated, KINGS. 3UNIT.

Ok. Enjoy.



01. The Prelude --082(The Pull)  K4
02. Oh My God --082(The Pull)  K4
03. Kingdom Come --085(No Inside, No Out)  K4
04. Show Me What You Got --058(Who?)  K4
05. Lost Ones --088(The Dead Of Night)  K4
06. Do U Wanna Ride --089(How?)  K4
07. 30 Something --084(Tests [Young Girl Version])  K4
08. I Made It --097(Summer Electricity)  K4
09. Anything --086(In The Bat's Mouth)  K4
10. Hollywood --096(The Breeze)  K4
11. Trouble --086(In The Bat's Mouth)  K4
12. Dig A Hole --087(Voice In Headphones)  K4
13. Minority Report --098(Samurai Sword)  K4
14. Beach Chair --092(O Little Heart)  K4


K4  --058(Who?) 04. Show Me What You Got
K4  --082(The Pull) 01. The Prelude
K4  --082(The Pull) 02. Oh My God
K4  --084(Tests) 07. 30 Something 
K4  --085(No Inside, No Out) 03. Kingdom Come
K4  --086(In The Bat's Mouth) 11. Trouble
K4  --086(In The Bat's Mouth) 09. Anything
K4  --087(Voice In Headphones)12. Dig A Hole
K4  --088(The Dead Of Night) 05. Lost Ones
K4  --089(How?) 06. Do U Wanna Ride 
K4  --092(O Little Heart) 14. Beach Chair
K4  --096(The Breeze) 10. Hollywood
K4  --097(Summer Electricity) 08. I Made It
K4  --098(Samurai Sword) 13. Minority Report




So yeah, there we have it. A little analysis of one of our most beloved "exhausted" albums on this, the day that gifted us HOVI baby. Interesting and apropos that this first stab at this would feature an album so clearly deployed mostly all in one concentrated spate, as I'm thinking many of the classics of KINGS have been. This compression of appearances makes me really wish I knew the actual span of time during which these mixes were written. Was this a couple weeks of banging them out, was this a couple months? Looking over the other tracks on these mixes this is clearly a killer fucking moment in KINGS history. I'm thinking it sits in close relation to that one Christmas trip home to Atlanta which I fondly think of as "Buzz Bin Xmas". Shortly after discovering Coco was cool with DMB and indeed all 90's hits. Coco might remember this time as the "Homework" era as well. Any and all recollections and memories, thoughts, theories about time-line and life-line placement would be much appreciated.

I know there are a few odd instances where a song or two has been abandoned or orphaned and never returned to, much like the other Jay albums. So in some instances we'll see some very disparate usage dates. In the case of this album, this spread makes total sense to me, though I'm guessing, for reasons lost to history that that first track appearing on --058 was some oddity. Perhaps just an early adopter or perhaps something retconned onto that mix when that was still a thing I did. The world may never know.



OH

MY

GOD

ZOE








It is 10:00 PM
This is the seance.

















xx

CLASS CLOWN SPOTS VAMPIRE ON TITUS

HALLOWEEN, 2016
Happy birthday Bob, Happy birthday me.
I can't express how much this means to me. Thank you to all the most loved ones in my life.

Let's go forward.











It is 1:51 p.m.
This is the seance.


























xx