Sunshine on a Cloudy Day, More on VietNam

Happy Monday!

First, here are a couple VietNam tracks I alluded to back on Turkey Day. "Step on Inside" is another OHWNT-approved opening track. Way to go, boys! You really know how to open up an album.

"Step on Inside"
"Welcome to My Room"

Both tunes be purchased as part of the same great album, VietNam. And if you like these two songs, don't go buy their older album, because I guess they're totally different. Which is strange: I swear to jah they're channeling all sorts of Vietnam-era bands on this new album; if I'm not wrong, then what the hell could they have been sounding like if nothing Vietnam-related?

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Ok, I gotta do a little more on VietNam. And as much as I don't particularly care for the way they throw that capital N in there, I never didn't write out CYHSY!'s or TG!T's or ON!OM!'s or TAN!'s or P!atD's YSP!WSD!'s !s, [or !!!'s chks, for that matter] so why should I not respect their capitalization creativity? Besides, I do it all the time.


Anyway, if you thought I was full of shit before, when I was talking about them sounding all 60s/70s-ish, hopefully you've listened now and can believe me at least a little. If you see the picture to the left [it is to the left, right?], where they were featured on last month's Fader, they even look like they're stuck in Vietnam era. Fucking hippies. But they're from Brooklyn! What kind of posers are these guys? Are they trying to be ironic? I don't know. Their neighbors Yeasayer are more close to them sonically than any other Brooklyn hipsters that I know of, but the interview-elusive and semi-mysterious Yeasayer at least seem like they're hip. Maybe it's just their neoretro promo image [don't be fooled, they photoshopped that arm so that it's wearing a pink shirt. And crudely, I might add] or the album cover slash promo shot with the cool tat-like YSR initials.. which aren't even initials.

Anyway, Yeasayer seem like they're naturally cool or they're trying to be cool. Either way, it's working. VietNam seem like they're just being themselves. I've never met them. I haven't even read too many interviews. But if you allow something like Fader to depict you as a bunch of long-haired stoner hippies who are just happy to be in the sun and still have all their hair, you're either Tommy Chong or you just don't give a shit [not that Tommy Chong gives a shit. Obviously]. Seriously, that Fader pic coulda just been an Allman Brothers photo from forty years ago. See?

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Alright, on with the cloud-forgetting. I don't even know what I want to listen to when it's cloudy and miserable, so I sure as hell don't know what does it for you. So.. I'm giving a bit of a mixed bag. Get 'em all or feel free to direct yourself straight to your own pigeonhole/stereotype.

Bedroom-Dancefloor junkies: Klanguage - "This is Me" [Yuksek Remix], TBReleased

Head-nodders: Pharoahe Monch feat Showtime - "Desire", from Desire

Tight-jeaned hipsters: Deerhoof - "+81", from Friend Opportunity

Couch-lying book-readers: Great Lake Swimmers - "Your Rocky Spine", from Ongiara

Cool Like Me [this is the one that's currently working for me, thanks to a Lovechild]: MGMT - "Kids", from Oracular Spectacular

Hopefully one of those does the trick.

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Turkeys, VietNam

Well, there are turkeys in Albert Lea, Minnesota, the little town five minutes from my parents' wonderful home, the house at which I went through puberty. These turkeys sold my parents some sort of satellite broadband internet crap which is barely working. Or maybe my parents are the turkeys for buying it. But you can't blame them-- after going twelve years using dial-up internet, first at 14.4 baud and then for the last ten years at 56kbps [umm, compare that to the 5mbps or ~28'000kbps a lot of us with cable have]. Although when I lived here, the McCormick place never saw a download speed reach higher than 1 twpm [one topless woman per minute]. That made the whole post-puberty thing that much rougher.

But now, whether it's the recent snow or the morons who installed the satellite [probable] or the non-expert [me] who installed the wi-fi [highly unlikely], the internets are at a crawl.

So because of this, I can't be bothered to give [m]any updates. That's why yesterday saw my first post-less day since starting this thing! And I could hear your collective wail-- it sounded like those three little mice on the Babe movies.

Alrighty.. now I'm gonna go lie down on the carpet while the tryptophan and Guinness and pecan pie and rutabaga and champagne and crappy merlot all duke it inside my bloated little tummy. And hope that my niece and nephew don't come and jump on my bloatedness.

Happy Turkey Day, everybody.

Good music to come soon..

..I promise.

Oh ok, you can have one tip right now. If you haven't heard these guys already, go check out VietNam. Just Tuesday, for the first time, I put on their latest album and was diggin on it on the drive to my parents' turkey farm. These guys didn't just pull their name from their stoned asses; this album sounds as if it's been in a vault for thirty-five years. Enjoy.

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