The weekly babbling brook of consciousness — music, videos, writings, projects, and people — that keep the lads at TUS tapping out tunes of their own.

This week, Jesse’s picks….

Dismantling Detroit

This is a visually stunning portrait of urban decay in the middle of America. Is it just cause I grew up in these kinds of midwestern rust belt towns and cities that this doesn’t actually strike me as purely depressing? There’s grim humor, industriousness, a re-using of the physical and psychological environments. I dunno – maybe I just love Detroit and all the amazing people and music a place like this creates.

Adam Acuragi, Like a Fire That Consumes All Before It…

Adam Arcuragi’s one of the best songwriters out there. Singer, too. Pure and raw, tupelo honey. He did this album with Duane Lundy at Shangri-La in Lexington, where we just finished our next album, too. He’s out touring around right now – look him up – their live show takes it to a whole next level.

FIRST LISTEN ON NPR

The weekly babbling brook of consciousness — music, videos, writings, projects, and people — that keep the lads at TUS tapping out tunes of their own.

This week, Justin shares Parts I and II of his series on guilty pleasures (and why

you shouldn’t feel guilty at all about them).

“Sweet Surrender” by Sarah McLachlan

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2JWJYLNUq4]

Sounds like:

“I’m Not In Love” by 10CC

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rgepWg4rzw]

Sounds like:

The weekly babbling brook of consciousness — music, videos, writings, projects, and people — that keep the lads at TUS tapping out tunes of their own.

This week, J. Tom Hnatow on childhood and nostalgia…

King Creosote & Jon Hopkins: Diamond Mine

During Captain Cook’s first voyage to the Pacific, it was written that the sailors, months at sea, “were now pretty far gone with the longing for home which the physicians have gone so far as to esteem a disease under the name of Nostalgia.”

With our interconnected, internet lives, the concept of “home” has become even more vague. Few of us live in the towns we are “from”. We rent, rather than own. Our friends live half a world away. We form our own little communities and tribes – and so, sometimes, we have a need for our own Nostalgia. A longing for a place and a time that never existed.

This record, created as a “soundtrack to a romanticized version of a life” could be the sound of this modern Nostalgia. Almost painfully beautiful, it feels like an imaginary childhood scrapbook – images of memories half-remembered, glimpsed through windows and screen doors, faded with time.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-Lr0igwLIY]

The Peanuts Theme is something so identifiable with childhood. The really beautiful slowed down music, barely moving,  sort of slows down time and makes you listen over the entire (long) 23 minutes. It reminds me of the Silvia Plath quote below.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibi5ci_8hew]

So it all moves in the pageant toward the ending, it’s own ending. Everywhere, imperceptibly or otherwise, things are passing, ending, going. And there will be other summers, other band concerts, but never this one, never again, never as now. Next year I will not be the self of this year now. And that is why I laugh at the transient, the ephemeral; laugh, while clutching, holding, tenderly, like a fool his toy, cracked glass, water through fingers. – Sylvia Plath

The weekly babbling brook of consciousness — music, videos, writings, projects, and people — that keep the lads at TUS tapping out tunes of their own.

This week, Jesse, on Moving Art & Community Supported Music…

‘Moving Art – Gratitude’ video

Pictures may say a thousand times more than a word, but even they just don’t quite do justice to the real live universe. most times. Moving Art, this HD video project by filmmaker Louis Schwartsberg, found a way to really make em count, tho. this video, which is really not much more than a second slow-motion glimpse of the world that surrounds us every day, is transcendent. reality television. magical realism. not even sure what to call it…

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nj2ofrX7jAk]

Community Supported Music by the band Run On Sentence

Dustin Hamman’s been leading his musical project Run On Sentence for I-don’t-know-HOW-many tours and albums and lakes and mountains and rivers. maybe a hundred thousand? at least that many

miles. his tunes are uplifting, hilarious, clever, true, random, mind-bending – usually all within about 3 lines. and now he’s got a great idea for how a wandering troubadour might make a livelihood by giving the world all that beauty: Community Supported Music. fresh to yr electronic doorstep every month!…

Hey you. We got you something for Christmahanukwanzakkah. It’s just a little something from us to you.

These United States

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