And we’ve come to crying. Anyone here unable to admit to crying from time to time? More than time to time? In some reverse macho way I love crying – it’s one of the reasons I always keep a handful of albums by The Cure on hand. Crying is such a visceral, cathartic experience, it’s like nothing else, except maybe sneezing (which I used to overlook until I read Anton Lavey’s article about sneezing where he refers to it as ‘little death’).
Drinking, Fighting, F*&king, and Crying
Drinking, Fighting, F*&king, and Crying
If there was ever a musical group who specialized in laying down sounds smooth and sultry enough to coax people out of their garments and into one another’s arms, it is British band Sade.
Sade is both the name of the band and the stage name of Helen Adu, and it is the combination of both her voice and the smooth – and I mean smooooth – musical accompaniment of her band that, legendarily, can set a mood that inspires coitus like no other act.
And it works.
Drinking, Fighting, F*&king, and Crying
Circa 1998 – This is another Schlitz Family Robinson story. It’s too perfect for the “Fighting” category not to use it.
Sonny, Brown, Grez and I finished practice on a Saturday about 8:00 PM. Three fourths the members of Celestial Crumb had come over earlier that night, to hang out and hear our new material. Mike from their group rolled a massive joint from which everyone partook and the practice veered into rather experimental territory after that. Pretty sure we culled more new material from that session but I can’t say for sure. One thing about smoking when you’re playing music – for me, if I smoke first, then it’ll probably be a shit session. but if I do it after I’m warmed up and in sync with the other musicians, especially ones I am as comfortable with as I was at the time with these guys (and probably still would be if we played), the session usually transforms into something spiritual.
The Joup Friday Album: David Bowie – Black Tie White Noise
This month it’s been two years since David Bowie left this Earth for parts unknown, and in honor I wanted to step in and cover Sonny on the Friday Album for a week so I could commemorate one of my favorite human being’s passing with ‘a very special edition of The Joup Friday Album. Sonny will be back next week, in the meantime let’s slide into the weekend together with an oft-neglected, sometimes maligned entry in Mr. Bowie’s catalogue. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the Joup Friday Album: David Bowie’s Black Tie White Noise!
Drinking, Fighting, F*&king, and Crying
This is the first of a new, ongoing column I’m going to try and churn out once a week, here on Joup. My involvement with this wonderful website has waxed and waned over the last two years or so; work takes up more and more of my time – and conversely so does the commute to and fro – as well as the fact that I have ramped up work on several different prose projects. Here in the first quarter of 2018 I stand poised to release several of those projects and as both a kind of celebratory undertaking as well as one of camaraderie with constant contributor Thomas, I’d been trying to think of a column I could contribute on a weekly basis that didn’t command hours of writing and editing time. In other words the exact opposite of the column I tried to launch and failed several years ago, Beautiful Brutality. Thomas has a really great thing going with his Endless Loop column; he can choose how involved each week’s edition is based on how he’s feeling at the time. So in narrowing down literally dozens of ideas I came up with for a new column, this is the one that won:
The Joup Friday Album: Fever Ray
It’s been a bit. A lot of us at the Joup staff took a bit off around the Holidays, something I don’t normally do, however my holiday spirit has miraculously been rekindled over the previous two months. All that’s come and gone now though; I ended up spending the somersault into 2018 in Chicago, called home for a funeral. I haven’t been back for a winter since I moved, going on twelve years ago, and it was a bit of an eye-opener to walk into 0, -1 and -2 degree temperatures, bolstered by a windchill factor that was often double digits below zero; as if the passing of my wonderful Uncle Phil wasn’t terrible enough. Something about all of it hit me in a strangely creative way, and I returned to a rainy LaLaLand with a hankering for dark, brooding electronic music.
Shawn’s Favorite Albums of 2017
2017 – not a bad year when compared to the virtual pop Armageddon of 2016. Still, as with any year, 2017 had a lot of ups and downs, most of which can be traced to the further deterioration of the civil fabric of our society, which in turn is largely due to A) the continued proliferation of narcissism and the selfishness it breeds and B) wacko celebrities in charge of big, important idea masses, like say entire countries. So while I’ve taken the irresponsible course of ignoring world events as much as possible, my inner space thrived in 2017. I’ll be publishing some stuff next year, and I had the long-awaited return of my most beloved of stories. And it did not disappoint. Accordingly, the list of my ten favorite albums of 2017 represents the albums that shaped me while writing, while watching and while working.
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