The Smudge

I want to start a band called The Smudge. It makes a good movie title too, but I don't like art house flicks as much as some people. I think The Smudge has a good ring to it. I can see it now - it's a foursome of mixups who just barely get along. One has spiky hair, one has a minor facial tic, they would all be pretty pretty if they'd just smile more. Their armory includes a 7-string bass, assorted horns, jazz drums, theremin, lots of kazoos. They play a mix between klezmer-punk and downbeat post-club (heavy on the bass effects there), with the occasional third-wave ska break throne in for shiggles. They're so different, an early critic writes:

It isn't the manic energy that makes The Smudge stand out; not the way they tip closer and closer to disaster and then pull back with a grin; it isn't the moment they switch out of a long, banging, bowel-shaking paean to some ancient devil and into a rapid-fire celebratory horn solo that makes you wonder where you've been all this time, although that's closer - it's that they're just having too much fun, and they know that you know that we're all right there with them.

I'm ready to get this show on the road. In my fantasies The Smudge starts in the basement of the doxy lounge, practicing once or twice a month. It starts to take off when friends of the smudgelings keep coming to practice uninvited. leli p monster quits his day job and ditches his farming plans in favor of equipment, publicity, a van. These semi-humble beginning become part of the The Smudge's origin myth, later to become a rock-group biopic (think Stone). Reviews on the movie are mixed.

Eventually the group breaks up, moves on. They never sign a major record deal - they don't need to. Rather than rely on 10% of the profits off of millions of people, they run everything themselves, living off of shows and handmade merch and cds sold to thousands of trufans across the country. Later they sign with two different indie labels and tour Europe, but the ethic remains. About their strange brand of success one critic writes:

They were never a household name. Then again, the naughts and tens were the end of the era of household names. Sure, they had their adoring masses, but I'd say the best way to measure the success of The Smudge is in their influence. One out of every three people who saw The Smudge in those early days ended up a free thinker and a fool, in the best sense of the word.

I've been thinking about fools a lot, ever since a great conversation with teemz in the doxy kitchen. I hope that when I get invited to speak at some (hopefully worthwhile) event because of Smudge-related fame, I stand up and talk about what it means to be a fool in the modern age. Tmo said: "The fool stares into the void and laughs".

Goings on at the bao!

Hallo,

yes it's been a whhililileileiellele since forever, but here we is, still baoing. I have three experiences to share.

1) Iron & Wine played a free mill park show for all of the lovely people of chicago. Yes, all of them - there were so many, the city stopped letting people into the show. So I climbed up a girder and sat on top, behind the park ampitheater thing, to listen to Sam what'shisfaceBeanorsomething croon. Here's some pictures:

2) The garden continues to grow. I can hardly believe it. I find myself very attentive to the weather each day - has it rained recently? Is it going to be way too sunny all day? Sometimes we water twice in a day, sometimes we water twice in a week. that's chicago, anyway. but soon, yes soon, there will even be some veggies to eat. We've been talking about preparing the veggies of our labor and taking them for a picnic to that weird abandoned park building just southeast of the bao, next to the 57th street tunnel under lakeshow.

Anyway, here's some pictures of greenery:

aaaand #3) last night Mark the neighbor came by and juggled balls of fire on the roof. He pulled back his hair so it wouldn't light on fire, and it made him look like a sailor.

till next time!

lelz

Seizure Music

For one month, starting last wednesday the 26th, I am not drinking alcohol. I'll be hitting the blog up with an update once in a while on how that's going.
For starters, last night was a friday night, and we had a pretty standard-sized party here. Differences from usual parties for me included: not drinking.
for serious tho, I didn't buy any booze, and somehow there was enough for everyone anyway, which means that although there's usually a lot more than we had, I usually manage to take care of it all on my own.
I had a lot more energy than I thought I would. ya know how quitting smokers get an energy boost ~30 days after? Well I thought it would take that long. But I was still going strong at 2 or 3am. Not that I'm not usually going strong then. But I was going stronger.
Also, I ate more food. Turns out there's a lot of caloric content in alcohol. If you don't eat more to keep up with it, you'll feel like you're missing something (and you are).
Also, I had to pee less.

Anyways, the title of this post shall be the name of my next imaginary band.

some windward tidbits

a day of brief brushes in seattlelands,
wandering eyes and hello's to burst open scarf-covered tunnelvisions.

here's two gems from windward, so you can see my world a bit...
farm life confessions from windward...filmed by ethan
windwardian farm life, music video edition (steve's the one playing the guitar)

you can break my face but you won't change

listened to this song while walking Ozball today and thought of z. I know you guys were taking more of a generally east-west route, but try not to get confused and kill a horse/nun.

starring z, j, and me

this song infiltrated the Roost, let it gently worm its way into your ears! I worked furiously on this video for half the merry month of May, then took a couple months to convince my bandmate that we would never rerecord the vocals and he should just let me put it on your tubes already. here you go.

new song

oh shit! i just did something i've been meaning to do for months:
Hungryforblood.mp3
hopefully you can download the above mp3 of my new song, called "hungry for blood". let me know if it doesn't work.
love,
radiodjleli

leli-pie

it's a pale morning in the bao. the cats are having a tiff - gabe makes a hissing mew, and vlad makes a mewing hiss. i shit you not. 1 huge cup of coffee brewed strong, and reach for the oatmeal - empty. so instead i defrost a wholewheat pita and microwave it with almond butter, apple chutney, and an egg. i shit you knot.
the acid jazz streams out over my speakers like a cold front over boston before it collides with the rap from the radio in daryl's room - when i stand next to the bathroom in the hall i find myself in a neutral zone where the relative strength and distance cancels out, and i get hip-hop jazz, or acid rap, like in the eye of a storm.
my head perks up a bit as caffeine floods my veins, and i open the physics problem set. about ten seconds later, someone standing within 50 meters of the baohaus would have heard a dire curse, a string of consonants and glottal stops unknown to the present age, and the snap of a textbook slamming shut. it can wait till tomorrow.
so now it's 11:30 which means about 12 hours until the party tonight which means about 5 "solids" if you use leli's system of time management which takes into account not only the solid chunk of time needed to accomplish some difficult task or set of tasks but also the extra framing time needed to reconfigure brain function for each new setting. it's kind of like the kuiper belt, it's kind of like vomit streaming down my face at 2 in the horse's ass, it's kind of like reconnecting with a memory so old and essential that in retrospect you realize it was there all along, pulling on your hair and scratching your nether regions, only you didn't know it cuz you thought it was a wedgie but really it's just a thing, and an outdated thing at that. anyways the pale morning sez: you can't spell "transcendence" without "dance" and you can't buy you love without money, but you can definnately make leli-pie without oats.

more on the birth of the internet, sweet sweet baby internet

this strip:
http://hijinksensue.com/2010/01/06/once-opened-may-never-be-closed/
is funny (for nerds) and made me think a bit more about the birth of the lovely human-machine hybrid we disgustingly call "the internet".
i've gotten completely off pandora. to hell with pandora. i'll choose my own music, thankyouvermuch, and i'll do it without any "meta"help. i'm getting really good at it too - i snag rips of 12" dubstep eps hot off the lines from cheery england. i spin em up on my newly built, beautifully deep cabinets in my room - the great thing about putting ten-inch car subwoofers in your room is that then, when you press the "bounce" button built into your bed, the whole thing shakes up and down like 80s LA all over again.
the whole thing? the whole bed? no - the whole room! and i've gotten into the habit of impromptu homework-break dance-breaks, to breakbeat and dub and harcore, with the lights off so that no one on the street can spy on any of my ridiculous posturings through my ginormous plasticolored windows - they wouldn't understand!
but i know you would, fellow squids, which is why as soon as i get my recording studio set up (which with help from deklen should be soon) i'll start to stream live video of said dance-breaks to the blog. ultimately, the goal is to convince little baby internet that dancing is a human skill worth saving, if only ultimately for its own occasional amusement, post-singularity.

anti-globalization + conditions of possibility

from across the world, or something, here's what i'm listening to...check it out. (listened to in reverse order, ideally with lots of instruments around)

(all available on youtube.)

kala - ali farka toure and toumani diabate - in the heart of the moon
mouse on mars - diskdusk
uske orchestra - mouse on mars remix
aphex twin - rubber johnny - (with movie by chris cunningham)
von sudenfed - fledermaus can't get it - (movie by chris cunningham)
aphex twin - windowlicker
aphex twin - come to daddy
christian zehnder - wat i no
concerto for violin, mvmt 1 - debussy
mr. ozlo - flat beat
stimmhorn
micheal herges (guitar)
summertime - sarah vaughn (sp?)

add 1 bottle of wine per person, or substitute.

love,
elz