tMG Forums

HFQ Benefit- July 31st (no replies)

Soule_comme_une_chevrette — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:24:10 -0700

I was wondering if anyone had two tickets to spare to this show or knew of anyone who was looking to sell? I'm pretty desperate to go to the show and would be willing to pay more than face value for the pair.

Thanks!

October dates? (14 replies)

therainechild — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 02:09:51 -0700

Just noticed there's another show in October in Columbia, MO, so October is not only just a one-off ACL thing it seems. Thinking there will probably be more dates? Crossing my fingers for something that works out for me. Has anybody heard any murmurs of other October shows that haven't been officially posted?

So, is Farm Sanctuary soon gonna get the do-re-mi? (28 replies)

ShAkeyToo — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 05:30:04 -0700

really wish I had just donated directly. some animals could have been actually helped over these many months.

I'm just sayin'

Who likes Vietnamese food and/or funnel cake? (4 replies)

therainechild — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:41:59 -0700

I figured it was worth posting this here because I don't know many IRL friends out in LA right now and I know there's at least a handful of LA people on here.

My uncle's partner just started his food truck business (TAO Truck) in LA and he sells really nice quality Vietnamese street food (and most times, funnel cake as well--gotta have something for those without the exploratory tastebuds ;)). He's a really nice guy and a good cook and I just thought I'd share the information if any of you out in LA are into the cheap and yummy street meal thing.

He actually has already had a celeb client, Ryan Gosling, who is apparently super awesomely nice in person.

So if any of y'all are just wandering around in LA, his twitter account is updated regularly with his current location (since, y'know, it's a truck and it moves--food trucks are foreign to me as a Dallas native haha). Twitter account is HERE, and if you want to see Ryan Gosling lookin' sexy in a white tanktop in front of the truck, the website is here, hahaha.

I hope this isn't considered an inappropriate post because I know one of WC's self-promo threads got modded out apparently a bit ago. And TECHNICALLY this post is not self-promotion anyway, because it's not MY venture and I gain no monehs myself from this. I'm just trying to help out my uncle's partner and get good (cheap!) food in the bellies of good people. :P

What's Going Ahhhhn? (22 replies)

DanMcGee — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:05:35 -0700

I don't know about you guys, but all the radio silence from JD and crew - and I'm not even complaining about John's forum activity - is making me damned curious about what's being worked on.

Fingers crossed for a main page update/groundhog surfacing! I got ants in my pants and I need to dance!

More like Lovecraft In Brooklyn? (5 replies)

SPAZwazza — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 09:40:00 -0700

Hey, all. Somewhat new Mountain Goats fan here. I'd heard them on Morel Orel but didn't know who they were, then when I caught them on Colbert I was like "Oh yeah, those guys!" Tried to turn my brother onto them and found out he was already a fan, so he ended up having a bunch of songs to recommend to me, heh.

Anyway, my question is this...are there any more, I dunno, rock-y songs like Lovecraft In Brooklyn? I love the "usual" style of the songs or whatever you wanna call it, but the first time I heard Lovecraft In Brooklyn, with the electric guitar and whatnot...it was so different from the norm it blew me away for a second, but I definitely liked it. Since then I haven't come across anything like it. Anyone have a direction to point me in?

TV (30 replies)

pers0na — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 16:16:38 -0700

we used to have a thread about tv shows which i miss. i know it's tv downtime, what with it being summer and all, but what are people rewatching- any recommendations of shows to get into?

i am currently finishing off treme which i've found to be fantastic. john goodman is great, as are wendell pierce and clark peters (both from the wire). the drama is involving; moving, funny and true to life, the characters well drawn and sympathetic, and the music is ridiculously good too.

just finished party down which i was skeptical about but proved to be pretty damn funny once i gave it a chance. sucks it has just been cancelled.

rewatching undeclared- it's not nearly as great as freaks and geeks which i just finished rewatching and it seemed like the next logical step, and hell it's still pretty effective light entertainment. although the british character (played by the guy who is rather better as jax in SoA) is damned annoying. as is his accent.

i've also been told to check out fringe, southland, friday night lights and justified...any to add?
are any of these worth a watch or utter rubbish?

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (10 replies)

SaveMeASeat — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 05:42:27 -0700

Movie Site
Comics Site

Theatrical Trailer
International Trailer

TV Spot #1
TV Spot #2

Twenty three-year-old Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera) is the bass guitarist for the band Sex Bob-omb and has just met the girl of his dreams, Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Scott learns that he must battle Ramona's seven evil exes, who are coming to kill him. As Scott gets closer to Ramona, his encounters include moviestars, vegan rock stars, and identical twins. To stay with Ramona, Scott must vanquish all of them before they vanquish him.

When I first heard about this movie, I don't think I quite got what it was about or what was going on. But once I saw the first few spots and trailers, I was hooked. Life of a twentysomething as an epic superhero/adventure video game? I'm 100% IN! With all the times in my life I've thought of something in video game terms (not that I'm alone in that, but still) this just makes me smile and it looks epically fun. I like the humor they have about it, too, like having a "Pee Bar" appear and empty as he goes in one of the spots. Who else is excited about the movie? Have people read the books that this is based on? I hadn't really heard of them before the movie started, and I'm wondering if it would be better to wait until after the movie to read them so I'm not sitting in the theater comparing them in my head rather than just being sucked in and enjoying it.

Those that have read the books, what are your thoughts on them? Do you think the movie looks like it's going to hold up its end of the bargain to them? Exceed them, even? And what would you recommend for those of us finding this stuff for the first time: movie or books first?

Don't Take the Dogs Away (4 replies)

thunderbird — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 09:25:42 -0700

I was just wondering who played the flute on Don't Take the Dogs Away and the piano on Move (Chicago 196x). If anyone can provide any information on this, that'd be great.

Franklin Bruno on KSPC radio at 3pm. (19 replies)

Mr Glass — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 22:39:29 -0700

6pm EST. That's today, wednesday. Solo set to prepare for the Shrimper fest, available online. I've got my alarm set to listen in.

Just a heads up for anyone else who wants to do the same.
[www.kspc.org]

up the cgi wolves (8 replies)

gnarmageddon — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 11:18:47 -0700

[www.youtube.com]

Groove Guide- NZ interview (8 replies)

iatethelotus — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:43:40 -0700

So, this is old now (April 6), but it probably hasn't been seen by many people because, as far as I can tell, it hasn't made it online. It's from an article entitled "Alpha Goat", in a free weekly gig guide booklet thing that you just pick up from store counters. I just thought that because the magazine is free anyway that it probably wouldn't matter too much if I reproduced a bit of it. Let me know if that's still not cool. I wouldn't normally bother typing it out, and I'm going to skip the usual "lo-fi/now 4AD/best non hip-hop" paragraph, but I think there's some very interesting material in there. It's kinda weird, almost like the interview was done seven years ago and just never published. Also some odd turns of phrase that are most definitely the poorly-edited magazine's, and not mine. Hmm. Anyway:

"Alastair Galbraith and Mr Peter Jefferies came to Clairmont, where I lived, and played a show. One or both of them were staying at Dennis Callaci's house, from Shrimper Records, a big early '90s lo-fi concern, and Alastair and I wound up passing the guitar back and forth. I had opened the show for them, and we ended up spening the evening trading songs, and in the end I asked him if he wanted to collaborate. I had some stuff on cassette transferred to reel-to-reel and posted it to him in Taieri Mouth, with some empty tracks on it. I'll never forget, a month later, being so excited hearing what he had done with it, and that was the beginning of a long and fruitful relationship where we ended up touring the US together twice." John Darnielle remembers. "I would do anything to play with him again. I would come down just to introduce a show by Alastair, he's one of my heroes and a beautiful human being."

The Mountain Goats catalogue is one that rewards close inspection, due in no small part to Darnielle's affection for the motif, whether it's jibing Don DeLillo, geographical escapism or the depressing day-to-day of down home deadbeats.

"Usually the song comes out of nowhere to begin with. It's amorphous and grows like cell division, starting with one little idea, then two ideas, and at some point in the middle of things, usually by the chorus, I can say, 'Oh, this fits into the schemata I'm working on, or not', but it usually takes four or five songs before I stop and say 'Look, you're repeating yourself.' Not exactly repeating myself, but these feel like multiple examples of asking the same bigger question, and then the series will sorta announce itself. But I can't sit down and tell myself to write a song in a particular series because that would feel sterile to me."

But then, as a vivid exception to prove his own rule, sometimes he does just that. In 2002, Darnielle opened his account with the 4AD catalogue with an album-long treatment of struggling working classes and poetic drunkards, centered around his long suffering Alpha Couple, who fall finally in the abyss of self-destruction long threatened in their earlier appearances.

"It was a never-ending thing, and then I just stopped, and then I had a moment where I decided to really examine these characters, and put some flesh on their bones, so I recorded Tallahassee, a whole album about them. When we had finished 'Alpha Rat's Nest', the last song on that record, I felt like that was the end of them; the song has a lot of fire in it, like two people going up in flames. But I have to be honest, about six months ago, I had a good chord progression and a phrase or two and I ended up writing an epilogue song which was interesting, not that I ever expect anyone will ever hear it, but that's the tragedy of writing really - nothing really dies."

While Tallahassee isn't strictly autobiographical, the world of the Alpha Couple is still seeped in his working class roots, but there is an apparent disconnect between the subject of his writing and and the style in which he writes about them. The Mountain Goats' songs are poetic, often highly referential, and the inherent intellectualism that comes with this feels at odds with the boozing, brawling, grease-stained everyman at the centre of it all. You can blame Charles Bukowski, perhaps, but as Darnielle points out, half the drunks you know consider themselves worthy of poetry's great canon.

"I write about working class people, because that has been my reality since I was a child. The circumstances of the people I am writing about tend to be my own - houses where the plumbing breaks and you have to go a month with crappy plumbing - but I don't really think about it. The food they're eating is food that I would eat. If they're drinking cheap booze, it's because I drink cheap booze. But as far as whether their socio-economic status is related to their intellectual status, I hadn't really thought about that. I think of those people as being theoretically literate people. They have other things on their mind, namely drinking and destroying each other, but if they were in better emotional circumstances, I would think of them as leaders. I hadn't thought of them as anti-intellectual people, but as fairly literate people who lack the ability to make good decisions for themselves."

I sucks by the way!!!! (2 replies)

thug4lyfe — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 21:02:51 -0700

By the way guys, the truth about thug4lyfe is that he really sucks!!!! Infact he is pretty sucks compared to all of yous!!!! So yeah, if you feel like calling someone sucks please e-mail me at brucezhou1240@gmail.com

:p :P

daytrotter (5 replies)

blackliner — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 03:08:06 -0700

daytrotter just reposted the "archive of the day."

it's the tMG one with "pinklon" and "babylon" etc. complete!

ETA: don't know how temporary this is, so if you're new and haven't heard this, go listen/download. (the "bb" cover is usually not included in the archive, that's why i'm posting this)

Prop 19 (34 replies)

thunderbird — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 16:08:59 -0700

This proposition will allow adults in California over 21 years old to possess up to one ounce of marijuana.
So, is anyone voting yes on it? What are your thoughts about it?

tMGs' storytelling- old vs new (16 replies)

iatethelotus — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 02:29:10 -0700

I thought about this in the Going to Bridlington thread, but thought it could probably do with its own. To my mind, the biggest difference in songwriting (not counting delivery or recording quality or whatever) between the old material and the 4AD stuff (as a very rough divide- I think a lot of All Hail West Texas could fit in here) is that there seems to be a more clearly defined sense now of what is actually going on in the songs. It's really hard to look at the old songs and be like, "oh yeah, fingers are dripping kerosene, she's obviously
gonna set the narrator on fire/
been out burning rubbish/
living in the 1800s and just come in from inspecting the hurricane's damage in the dark/
Amish and accidentally knocked over the bottle whilst lighting a lamp"

It seems to place a lot of responsibility onto the listener to be figuring stuff out. You don't know where the characters are, what relationship they have to each other, what's really going on, why there's a monkey in the basement etc. It's often a very small and insignificant event surrounding a whole lot of bigger things that we have to assume if we want to be able to understand the song better. It's almost like we're listening in on the characters' conversations and damned if they're going to make that any easier for us. Basically the Going to Bridlington thread.

Anyway, nowadays, there's still a lot of ambiguity, but the narrative seems to be more focussed on the listener's understanding of the text. The titles are less obscure, the characters more clearly defined. We still don't know why Mr LovecraftinBrooklyn is so paranoid, but we get a broader sense of his actions and headspace. We're actually allowed into characters' heads instead of having to assume based on their speech and actions in one moment.

This isn't new, I'm not trying to lecture or be brainy, I just got carried away. What I really wanted to talk about was, (if you agree with it), which do you think works better? I think JD's songwriting is much better now in terms of craftsmanship, but I like both styles. The old skool makes often makes me feel like an intruder, because it's so very caught in the moment. With the new stylez though, I'm very fond of the clearer sense of story and more insight into characters' minds.

the go-betweens... (14 replies)

pers0na — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 21:34:18 -0700

..are awesome.
i read this interview with robert forster today and was psyched to hear about the bridge being named after them.
are there any fans on here? don't recall them being mentioned. fav albums? songs?

i've gotta go with 16, lovers lane as it's what got me into them.

Justin Beiber (9 replies)

allthatfollowed — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 20:23:03 -0700

I'm not sure who made this page I recently stumbled upon, But it made my day.
[themountaingoatswillcureyourbieberfever.com]

Wild Creature (5 replies)

brokenbeat — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 23:40:21 -0700

Hey, resurfacing to ask if you are still in SF? I am presently overlooking Bush Street Downtown :)

Superchunk - Digging For Something (3 replies)

SlowWestVulture — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:19:59 -0700

Suprised this hasn't been mentioned.

SUPERCHUNK

JOHN DARNIELLE

[stereogum.com]

Going to Bridlington interpretations (41 replies)

swampcreature — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 22:09:56 -0700

Previous thread of the same name is mainly shout-outs about how awesome this song is, but I'm curious to hear people's interpretations of the lyrics.

The imagery is really vivid when I listen to it, as with most tMG songs, but I have no idea what's actually supposed to be going on (which is part of what makes it amazing). Why is there blood all over her hands? Is it purely a metaphor? Or is it a murder scene? Suicide attempt? Did she have an accident when cutting the cake she'd promised to the narrator? Bad period? (Sorry, sorry. You know it occurred to you at least once, though.)

DOMA & hope? maybe? (2 replies)

number 9 — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 12:00:25 -0700

[www.nytimes.com]

this gives me hope, for california and all other states that are attempting to marginalize the homosexual community and "save" marriage.

Terminally Ambivalent (14 replies)

johnnyonthespot — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 10:19:28 -0700

The home for people without any real emotions. Or those incapable of committing to one feeling at a time.

I have my first interview today.

tour de france (18 replies)

pers0na — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 03:00:18 -0700

not that i know a damned thing about cycling but...
ANDY SCHLECK FTW!!!!!

[www.guardian.co.uk]

August 28th- Durham, NC (6 replies)

nathanRomano — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:11:45 -0700

Music For Fences Benefit show.

Lucky us won't have to wait a month to see good ol' JD again!

What should they ask Paul the Psychic Octopus next? (16 replies)

Salty — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 20:08:53 -0700

Given his 100% success rate, what should they ask Paul now that the World Cup is over?

CUB - les chansons sont super-rock! (8 replies)

DanMcGee — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 12:14:11 -0700

I've been on kind of a major cub kick these days - early 90's Vancouver punk/garage-rock girlz, often attributed with being the forerunners of the "cuddlecore" movement - and I have a feeling that this stuff might resonate with a few of you on here, so here is my official recommendation!

Dig around!

Go Fish

New York City

Nicolas Bragg

Freaky

clip from a live show

[/quote]

Give their album "Betti-Cola" (with cover art by Archie Comics' Dan Decarlo!) a shot and see if you like 'em!

Two Satans (27 replies)

natelyswhore — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 20:09:37 -0700

I'm looking for a live recording that I must have deleted* - I'm trying to make a cheering playlist for a friend, and I want to include the recording of The Best Ever Death Metal Band where before playing, John says something like, "I hold with the Gnostics, who believe that there are two Satans, one who can't help you and is bad, and another who stands with you against those who persecute you ... and that is who we will now worship," and then proceeds to totally rock the song and so of course when he and the singing crowd-presence get to to HAIL SATAN HAIL SATAN TONIGHT you're all goosebumps and shit and it's great. I just think that anyone would feel better listening to that, except now I have no idea what venue or date or whatever that particular iteration of The Best Ever Death Metal Band was played, and I just figured if anyone else was as struck by it as I was, they'd be on this forum.

???

(Her dog has cancer and her boyfriend's moving away.)

*I binge-download and delete the live recordings because I feel shame and guilt about not paying for them. Lawrence Kohlberg says I have an obedience and punishment orientation

New Mountain Goat fan, quick question? Need some high energy. (28 replies)

Redlandsman87 — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 20:32:45 -0700

Over the past year or so, I've discovered John's music through the likes of Youtube, google searches, and his appearance on shows such as the Colbert Report. I own about three albums of his since my discovery.

Now, I LOVE the softer, more subtle sign of John. Love Love Love? Brilliant song. Cotton? Top stuff.

But above all else, I love John's crazier side. His slightly insane, desperate side. The how and why I grew to appreciate this man came from performances of songs such as See America Right (which I've been covering as of late, learned it from Ships and Dips), Going to Georgia, and Psalms 40:2. I LOVE the energy brimming from those songs! The way his strumming strikes the strings, the way his eyes bulge with their performances, the way his voices cracks and rises into something high, high enough to crash against my mind in a brimming explosion of emotion.

Since I am somewhat new to him, and his discography, could anyone recommend similar songs of his? I plan of course to buy all his albums if I can (and I'm not going to bootleg them, not that kinda fan) so eventually I'd probably run into whatever I desired in my own course of time. But in the meantime, doesn't mean I couldn't youtube a few crashing songs of his, eh?

Thanks very much everyone, it's much appreciated! :)

Job 39:1 (5 replies)

SlowWestVulture — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 05:14:49 -0700

Why wasn't this turned into a song for The Life Of The World To Come?