#every time he did that particular country twang thing with his voice i got that Wish I Could Stay song stuck in my head

[grinchwrapsupreme]

Hate to say it, but I think seeing the musical episode of Buffy multiple times before I ever saw Repo! had an impact

#repo the genetic opera #rtgo #Buffy The Vampire Slayer #btvs #rupert giles #nathan something idk #anthony stewart head #every time he did that particular country twang thing with his voice i got that Wish I Could Stay song stuck in my head #also watching yonderland had an effect #what that effect was i don't know but thats generally the mood with yonderland

[princessdevy03]

Tumblr Exclusive!!!!

Author’s Note: Happy birthday to @anybodihearme! I know it’s late but it’s done. Don’t fight me! I’ll fight you, damnit! 

Birthday Surprise

Kevin leaned his head back and sighed.

The city whipped by outside the window of the Uber Eddy ordered as quickly as the thoughts in his head.

“Rolf has the dogs and Nazz is holding my present from mom...”

“Ed is gonna cut the grass Saturday…”

“Sarah’s gonna make sure the guys at the shop are on schedule…”

“Johnny’s got the shop…”

As the city gave way to the countryside, he closed his eyes to lock away the blue of the sky that reminded him of a certain set of the eyes he hadn’t seen in far too long.

Edd was stuck across the country at his dream job as a director of a biomedical lab in the Pacific Northwest. His and Kevin’s relationship started there because Kevin was stationed at a nearby US Navy base as a Marine, but when Kevin’s dad passed away, he came back home to West Virginia to take over the family auto body shop as his contract was up and decent mechanics jobs were hard to come by without moving down the coast to even more expensive locales.

Edd said they’d make it work, but Kevin was wary.

His career in the Marines took him to Hawaii, Germany, Japan, Korea, Texas, and England.

Every duty station led to new heartbreak as every other guy or girl just couldn’t handle being in a long distant relationship.

Edd was the first who seemed to understand, but he was also the first person that got Kevin to think about life after he couldn’t handle being in the Marine Corps anymore.

The stress of dealing with his PTSD and trying to juggle being a good son, good friend, and a good Marine was tough.

And when romance was involved, his being all in could be the most stressful thing of all.

Edd had always been a bit high strung when it came to how he liked his home to look, how he applied himself to school and work, but his love for his family and friends was easily given as breathing.

So while Kevin would be there with gifts, surprise dates, and mushy compliments, Edd was more likely to suggest getting coffee before spending the day running errands and grabbing a quick bite to eat before Kevin had to be back at the barracks.

But the sudden cross country shift had them rethinking about how to keep the love flowing.

Kevin would send flowers everyday and Edd would call him every night.

Up until about a month ago.

The texts were short, but he’d still get a good morning text and he started sending GrubHub to the shop every Friday with donuts and a box of coffee from Dunkin’.

Kevin would be lying, though, if he said that Edd ignoring his Duo calls didn’t have him feeling some kinda way.

But Edd did suggest that Kevin head up to the dude ranch in the mountains for his birthday to get away from work and his lingering issues with closing his father’s estate.

“I’ll call you when you guys have dinner, and I’ll make something with you and it’ll be like having dinner together,” Edd had said when Kevin finally got a hold of him two weeks ago.

Edd was dressed in his lab coat that looked like it was losing a fight with the chemicals in the lab and he needed a haircut and some sleep if the bags under his eyes were any indication of what he was feeling like at the moment.

Kevin felt a tinge bad that he had a snarky attitude in the texts he had been sending, and Lort his voicemail messages…

Edd’s work was desperately needed in the middle of the current global health crisis they were living in, so he hadn’t been purposely ignoring his man, but he could make time, right?

But with the world being on a tight lockdown, dinner via video call would have to do.

When he got to the ranch, the fresh air had him feeling a bit better.

And the horses…

Growing up, he’d spend at least a week every summer with his whole extended family at the family ranch in Wyoming, so riding horses was second nature to his bike and motorcycle.

When Edd suggested going riding in the Cascades one long weekend, Kevin started falling in love.

Having a long weekend to himself on the beautiful creatures would be just what the doctor ordered.

Eddy knew about this particular ranch from his leadership networking conferences and got Kevin a deal, and let him use his Uber Black membership to get a ride there and back provided Kevin didn’t steal any of the horses.

Once he laid eyes on the black stallion with blue eyes in the field behind his cabin, he knew he was gonna have a hell of a time keeping his promise to keep things on the ranch…

When he walked in the cabin, he was pleasantly surprised to see a shoebox on the bed of his favorite brand of riding boots.

“I wonder what color he got this time,” he chuckled to himself.

For the last five years, Edd would get him a new color of boots for his birthday.

“I think they’re green,” a voice coming from the bathroom said. “I don’t think I’ve gotten you green ones yet.”

Kevin doesn’t remember screaming but it took a good ten minutes for him to stop shaking after he scooped Edd in his arms and tossed him on the bed.

Once his heart beat returned to something resembling normal, he looked into sky blue eyes and frowned.

“You’re here.”

“Yes,” Edd chuckled and Kevin rolled his eyes as he sat up and asked, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“And ruin the surprise?!” Edd laughed. “Nah.”

“What about work?”

Kevin knew Edd’s work was leading the charge to get the United States out of a pandemic it hadn’t seen the likes of in a good century. He just didn’t like the idea of Edd blowing it off, even if it was his birthday weekend.

“I can’t really do anything about it now,” Edd sighed, feeling a bit guilty about the slightly white lie. “It’s back to the lab techs to sort through the latest findings, so I can take a few days.”

“But just a few?”

“I’m sorry, Kevin,” Edd said softly as he rubbed his arm. “But we’ll make the most of it. I’ll even make dinner.”

Kevin’s stomach growling echoed around the quiet room in response to this as the dinner bell rang.

Dinner on the ranch was simple, you could take a picnic basket back to your cabin or have dinner in the open field off the side of the main house’s commercial kitchen. If you opted for the latter, there was a story time with one of the permanent ranch hands, embellishing the history of the ranch, as everyone ate at the huge picnic tables that circled a large fire pit.

Once the sun went down, the fire pit was lit, small brown paper bags filled with blocks of chocolate, marshmallows, and graham crackers were passed around, and more than a few ghost stories told.

But not a single twang of a banjo was heard, just the soft strumming of a six string guitar dueting with a low harmonica. And the low moo of a cow or two.

Kevin and Edd opted for dinner in the field as Kevin was eager to see the temperament of the horses before trying to pick which one to make his own over the long weekend, after which they fed a snack or two to the horses before they went to the barn for the night. Then it was s’mores and ghost stories with a lil stargazing and a nice, long leisurely stroll back to the cabin.

Kevin honestly didn’t want the night to end, even if his body was nearly begging him to sleep.

Edd’s wasn’t, though.

As soon as they walked in the door, Edd had him pinned against it, deftly locking the deadbolt with one hand, the other undoing Kevin’s pants.

And the breeze blowing through the valley gave Kevin his second wind.

Edd’s beanie was gone as fast as their shoes, they walked out of their pants as Kevin walked them backwards to the bed.

“God, why do you have to over dress so much?” Kevin whined as he undid the buttons on Edd’s shirt, thankful he hadn’t worn a tie.

“You look good, you feel good,” Edd huffed as he undid his cuffs and then batted Kevin’s hands away so he could pull his shirt over his head.

Kevin always thought he looked good, but he looked even better now with his dick in his mouth.

His hands ached as he grasped silky strands as dark as the night sky. The few silver highlights looked like stars, but Edd rather he see color bars.

Kevin squeezed his eyes tight, flashes of technicolor sparking with every jerk of his hips as he fucked his boyfriend’s face.

It seemed cruel, Edd grabbing his ass to take him all the way in, like he didn’t care that Kevin’s yearning and frustrations were aching his jaw, but he loved the man so much that it felt good to do this.

Right until Kevin tore himself away.

Edd sputtered but Kevin grinned.

“Stop your whining, Dork. I brought my chaps and my good sweats.”

“You are not riding in sweats and chaps,” Edd laughed as he shoved him on the bed and went to get his lube out of the bathroom.

“I do what I want!” Kevin protested. “It’s my birthday and I do what I want!”

“Your birthday isn’t until tomorrow and committing crimes against fashion shouldn’t be a birthday wish!” Edd cackled as he leaned against the door and juggled the silicone lube in his hands

“Well, riding your dick is, so get over here!”

Edd couldn’t argue because he really wanted Kevin to ride his dick. If he hadn’t been so shell shocked that he had shown up or so hungry or so eager to see the horses, he’d told him to hop on sooner.

But watching him finally relax and put the stress of work out of his mind was worth it.

Especially since what he had planned would knock him out for the rest of the night.

A ride would mean Edd would have to be on his back, at least to start, so while Kevin flipped their positions, Edd guided him to his side and told him to get his horse ready.

Kevin shrugged his shoulders and went to put his head between his legs, but he nearly choked when Edd started to work a finger in his ass. Edd nearly stopped, but Kevin popped his ass out and Edd’s finger went deeper as Kevin took as much of him in as he could.

“Fuck,” he softly moaned when Kevin spread his leg a bit more, gently massaging the joint where hip met thigh with one hand, using the other as an extension of his mouth.

It was hard to focus in a moment like this but Edd had plans.

And so did Kevin.

When he dropped the lube so he could add another finger in, Kevin snatched it up.

Edd figured he was gonna use it to slick him up and get the show on the road, as it were, but he cried out like a whore when Kevin put his mouth to the tip of his dick, spread his lower cheeks with his greased up hand and whispered, “Get to work.”

“Yes, Daddy.”

His mind was tearing apart at the seams while Kevin sucked him off and played with his ass. He held on by fingering him as fast and hard as he could.

Kevin liked it rough and it was his birthday weekend. The present from Edd’s strong right hand was AMAZING. The left one gently playing in his hair was sending goosebumps all over and when the A/C kicked on, Kevin nearly exploded as the added sensation of cool air on his hot body was absolutely enrapturing.

Edd must have been feeling the same way because he pushed Kevin’s head away from his cock with one hand, but the other grabbed his waist to make him come sit in his lap.

“C’mere.”

Then the room spun.

Well, Kevin thought it did til he realized Edd had spun him around to sit in his lap, but facing away from him and towards the mirror.

And Kevin had never seen Edd’s hands move so fast before.

He gripped the sheets as Edd lifted him up, spread his cheeks, and slowly but firmly pulled him full into his lap, filling him up with everything he had.

The stack of pillows on the bed gave him enough of a cushion to sit up, spread Kevin’s legs, and give the order.

“Ride. Me.”

The visual was mind blowing.

Kevin was flushed, glistening with sweat, his dick throbbing against his hard abs, and Edd wanted a show.

He moved against the fullness in him slowly, enjoying the electrifying numbness that spread all over his body. His fingertips reached for Edd’s hands that were caressing his chest, and that gapped tooth mouth sunk into his shoulder on a whine as he gently kissed his knuckles and started to ride him.

Hands were everywhere, in his hair, turning his face to kiss him senseless, gripping strong arms to hold onto some sense of reality, pawing at his abs, squeezing his chest, playing with his nipples to get him to moan like a slut so in touch with themselves that you can’t help but touch them like they want you to.

But they never broke their gaze in the mirror.

As Kevin lost control, his dick leaking with cum, Edd held on...to his dick.

“Fuck, yes Baby! Just like that!” Kevin screamed as he rode him harder, his movements putting porn stars to shame.

“You gonna cum for me?” Edd whispered and Kevin whined as he nodded, his hand reaching around to grab Edd’s hips to make him fuck him hard and senseless.

“Harder. Faster. Edd…,” his words came out disjointed, but he had to say something! “Dear God, pleeeeeease.”

The bed creaked as Edd pulled him close with one arm, stroked him off with his free hand, and jerked his hips as fast and hard as he could.

Watching the man in his lap jerk once, then twice as he came in his hand was so fucking sexy; jaw dropped, eyes wide in elated shock, legs kicking, both hands around Edd’s one that was stroking him into oblivion.

They had never done it like this before and Kevin wasn’t too sure he’d live til his actual birthday the next day if they kept it up. But he didn’t care. Seeing himself in the mirror like that, as the object of all of Edd’s desires was enough.

That orgasm, tho!

Edd checked his smartwatch then giggled.

“Happy birthday, Kevin.”

Kevin gave him a weak thumbs up as thanks while his thoughts slipped away.

He awoke the next morning, dressed in clean boxers, still slightly embarrassed Edd had to drag him to the bathroom and back again, but no shirt, hearing Edd whisper into his phone.

“Yes, Megan,” Edd said, “I got it all right in front of me. I’m going to see about making some moves later this week but I don’t see why I can’t do it from here.”

“Do what?” Kevin whispered confused and feeling nosy.

Edd squeaked when he noticed he was awake and then said, “I gotta go. I’ll call you Monday with my final answer.”

“Wha? Why are you working?! It’s my birthday!” Kevin pouted. “And that’s my shirt!”

Edd looked down at the shirt he was wearing.

It was an old Marine Corps PT t-shirt Kevin used to wear around Edd’s apartment out west. Actually, the red head left several of these t-shirts in Edd’s apartment when he moved back East and Edd would sleep in them often because it was his way of keeping Kevin close after he left.

“You left it in my house, so it’s mine now,” Edd grinned and Kevin’s ready to fight!

“Stupid dork with his stupid smile,” Kevin thought to himself knowing good and damn well that Edd was right.

“So!? It’s still my birthday,” he half pouted trying to figure out a way to get back at Edd for...working?

“It is,” Edd nodded as he got up to join him in the bed. “What would you like to do today?”

“For you to stop working,” Kevin snarked and Edd laughed.

“I am off til Monday,” he shrugged and Kevin honestly frowned, not that he wanted to talk about it but he did need to know.

“Do you have a ride to the airport?”

“More like,” Edd sighed and then let the words tumble out all at once as he stared holes into his hands, “Iwaswonderingifyouwantedaroommate.”

“Wha?”

“Well, I said-”

“I know what you said, Edd.”

Edd finally looked up at him and he doesn’t remember seeing Kevin ever looking this happy.

“Well, it’s just that, in order for things to keep progressing smoothly, they need a new lab director out here because Dr Stavian is retiring.”

“And they want you to come out and do it?” Kevin asked as he pulled him into his lap.

“Well, yes, but only as an interim because I don’t have my doctorate degree.”

“Yet.”

“Kevin.”

“It’s been like four years, Edd!”

Edd made a face because when he had run into Kevin again after so many years away, he was a year done with his masters program and didn’t have any desire to go back to school. He was just too burnt out.

Kevin figured he just needed a break because he had been in school the entire time he had known him. He couldn’t imagine him stopping forever.

“Listen,” Kevin told him as he gripped his twitching hands still, “You said that Justin said that they’d pay for it when you’re ready and apparently you don’t have much of a choice if you move back this way.”

“But I don’t want to lose you!” Edd protested and Kevin looked at him like he had two heads.

“HOW?!”

“School is an all consuming thing,” Edd sighed. “I can’t really focus on us if I have to go to class, then the lab, then work everyday for the next four years, at minimum.”

“You can if we live together.”

“Wait a min -”

Kevin laughed as he saw the wheels turn in Edd’s head and said, “You just asked if you could move in Mr DoYouNeedARoommate, like I’m gonna let my boyfriend just be my damn roommate. So how hard would it be if you went to school and we lived together?”

“You might have to move actually, because the commute from your place to the lab is like 45 minutes. Add in the campus and you’re looking at a good hour and a half.”

Edd thought he had him til Kevin shrugged and said, “So we move. Be closer to Ma that way anyways.”

“What about the shop?!”

“The further away I am from that place, the better,” Kevin laughed. “It’s one of the joys of being the boss. Besides, Johnny lives upstairs so he keeps the place in line. I just do paperwork.”

“Oh.”

Kevin smirked as all of Edd’s arguments died away.

They could make it work.

“We can do this, Edd,” Kevin said softly as he gave him Eskimo kisses. “Just go back to school and let me worry about the rest.”

“Especially since we ain’t paying for it!” Edd laughed and Kevin snorted.

“Damn straight.”

“I thought you were bi.”

“I’m about to bite that ass,” Kevin grinned but the breakfast bell rang and the smell of fresh bacon had to be indulged.

They took a picnic basket back to the cabin for lunch after their morning ride and used Kevin’s hotspot to look for apartments and houses to rent closer to the labs and university as the ranch’s free wifi was sketchy. A quiet neighborhood not too far from Kevin’s mother’s retirement community seemed the perfect place to start and Edd sent out a few online applications while Kevin made arrangements for dinner.

They rode the black stallion together to a grove of apple trees for a picnic at dusk and discussed the plans they made.

And make out like teenagers.

But the first mosquito bite had them racing back to the cabin as neither wanted to have any more awkward scratches in public than necessary after this trip.

They led the stallion back to his barn and walked slowly back to the cabin, Edd taking note of the constellations overhead.

They collapsed into the bed in a tight cuddle, worn out from their excursions for the day.

“You know, tomorrow is Saturday,” Edd said as they laid in the content silence.

If Edd was mentioning Saturday…

He didn’t know where Kevin got the birthday hat from, but it was a much better outfit than the sweats with chaps.

Especially when one needs to be ready for a day in bed with your homieloverfriend.

#kevedd #reg!kevedd #reg!kev #reg!edd #kevin barr #eddward vincent #for anybodihear me #happy birthday #birthday present #birthday fic

[brokenbuttonsmusic]

Eleni Mandell: L.A. Singer-Songwriter with Smoky Chrissie Hynde Vocals and a flair for Tom Waits’ Influenced Experimentation

This post is a near- transcript of the Broken Buttons: Buried Treasure Music podcast (episode 5, side A). Here you’ll find the narration from the segment featuring the L.A. singer-songwriter, Eleni Mandell, along with links, videos, photos and references for the episode.

Listen to the full episode on Spotify, Apple, Anchor or Mixcloud.

Have you ever bought the wrong record? Like, you intended to buy something that sounded like one thing and you accidentally grab something that sounds very different. 

I don’t know if this happens anymore, but I believe it was quite common years ago. Imagine hearing an artist on the radio and being blown away. You go to the record store, find the plastic divider with the name of whom you’re looking for, but you can’t remember the name of the album, or even the song. Remember, you don’t have a tiny computer in your pocket. You’re too nervous to ask the store clerk for fear of looking stupid. So you roll the dice. 

“I know it was someone called Neil Young, but there are a thousand Neil Young records here.”

“Hey, this pink one looks cool.”

That exact scenario didn’t happen to me, but that album, Neil Young’s Everybody’s Rockin’, happened to be the most played Neil Young album in my house growing up, so for years I thought Neil Young was a rockabilly revival act. In reality, that was one of several oddball records Young released during a tumultuous period with his record label to fulfill his contract demands. I still love that record. 

Eleni Mandell did live out the scenario of buying the wrong record though. She shared the story during a segment of the show Bullseye with Jessie Thorn, where she describes seeing Tom Waits on MTV late at night—back when MTV still cared about music. It was either 120 minutes or IRS’ The Cutting Edge. This would have been around 1984 or 1985, so right around the time of Wait’s masterpiece Rain Dogs. When she went to the record store though, she picked up the 1976 Tom Waits’ Asylum release, Small Change instead. Now Small Change is still a great Tom Waits album, but it sounds nothing like the drastically reimagined sound and musical approach he had begun to employ starting with 1983’s Swordfishtrombones. Something Tom Waits called his “junkyard orchestral deviation.” The spare, off-kilter percussion. Moaning trombones and muted trumpets. Marimba. Plenty of marimba. Experimental instruments mixed in everywhere. Megaphones and CB radios. Trash can lids. 

This is the sound Eleni was looking for. 

Instead she got lush strings. Delicate piano. Cinematic swells and a melancholy wail. 

She got this.

Still awesome, but not the same. She credits the experience with changing her life. She grew to love both sides of the Tom Waits coin. The jazzy piano man in the smoky, whiskey-drenched nightclub and the eclectic, experimental carnival barker that she had her first encounter with on late night MTV. 

You can hear that deep appreciation and influence for the full Tom Waits spectrum injected and swirling through Eleni Mandell’s own spectacular catalog that spans more than 20 years now. 

She’s got plenty of experimental Waits, especially in her early catalog. 

And quite a bit of the jazzy nightclub vibe.

There’s also plenty of folk-y Eleni mixed in, and even some country.

You’ll notice that Eleni’s voice doesn’t sound like Tom Waits though. Did you notice that? It’s less of a deep, gravelly howl and more of rich Chrissie Hynde croon. Spin compared her to Chrissie Hynde and PJ Harvey. Rolling Stone compared her captivating melodies and witty lyricism to early Elvis Costello. 

While she doesn’t have the Tom Waits’ wail, she does specialize in his particular brand of character song-study. Like this first song we’re going to hear. The first track off of Eleni Mandell’s second album Thrill. Released in the year 2000. This is Pauline. 

Pauline, from Eleni Mandell’s second record, Thrill. So how did this remarkably unique singer-songwriter get her start and pull together so many interesting influences to create the sound we just heard.

Eleni grew up in the Sherman Oaks region of the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles. She started playing music when she was just 5, beginning with the violin and then piano. Eleni didn’t love playing either, but continued to take lessons until she was thirteen. She remembers wanting to learn to write songs early on, but didn’t have the first idea of how to approach it, especially on violin. She jumped from violin and piano to guitar as a teenager. Her parents exposed her to a variety of musical styles. Her mom would take her to musicals and her dad, a serious record collector, played her Hoagy Carmichael and plenty of jazz standards. She loved the Beatles and remembers Diana Ross making an early impression. 

Another early life changing moment came when she discovered the Los Angeles punk band X.

X were huge in LA, and their first album (called Los Angeles) was the first record Eleni ever owned. Or maybe the first she asked to own. The first record she was ever given was Shaun Cassidy’s greatest hits for her 4th birthday. The first she ever purchased with her own money was X’s third release, Under the Big Black Sun. She tells a story of when she was out record shopping at a place called Aron’s Records, located on Melrose, and to her utter befuddlement came face to face with John Doe, lead singer of X. He was shopping for records too. She quickly snapped up a copy of the band’s third album and asked John to sign it. He did. She still has the signed album, which reads “Yours” complete with a big X “-John Doe.” That was the last autograph she ever asked for. It was not, however, the last time her path would cross with that of the band X. 

When she was a little bit older, she met Chuck E. Weiss, songwriter, rock n’ roller, beat poet and peculiar Tom Waits associate. Also the subject of the song, Chuck E.’s in Love.

Yes, that Chuck E. Weiss. Waits was in a relationship with Rickie Lee Jones. Waits, Jones and Weiss all lived at the seedy Tropicana Motel in Los Angeles. One day Weiss up and left out of nowhere. Some time later Chuck E. called the apartment where Jones and Waits were living. He explained to Waits that he had moved to Denver because he had fallen in love with a cousin there. Waits hung up the phone and announced to Jones, “Check E.’s in love. Rickie Lee Jones liked that so much that she it turned it into the song we just heard. 

Who is this episode about again? Oh, right. Eleni Mandell. Anyway, Eleni Mandell met THAT Chuck E. Weiss when she was not yet 21. Still, she had a friend who was able to get her into The Central, a Sunset Strip club that would later become The Viper Room. This would’ve been around 1990. Weiss was playing there every Monday. 

Here’s how the write up on Eleni’s original website describes her first encounter with Weiss.

“The first time she ever saw Chuck E. Weiss perform, he walked right up to her and smiled like a cross between The Cheshire Cat and an escaped mental patient. She met him a month later at Musso and Frank’s.”

Eleni says she was at the famous Hollywood restaurant and recognized Weiss. She worked up the courage to approach him and told him how much she loved his show. He asked if she wanted to accompany him to meet up with a friend at Canter’s Deli. She agreed. When they settled into one of the landmark eaterys iconic red, vinyl booths in walked her hero. Tom Waits. What a night. Tom asked Chuck how he and Eleni had met. 

“Hebrew school,” he declared. 

Here’s a tune from Eleni’s debut album, Wishbone, released in 1999. This is Sylvia. 

From Eleni Mandell’s first album, Wishbone, that was Sylvia. 

Under Chuck E. Weiss’ mentorship, produced by Jon Brion and self-financed by Mandell, Wishbone, as well as her next several records, received strong reviews and drew comparisons to Waits and PJ Harvey in style. 

Before Weiss mentored Mandell, he hired her as a door person at his club. She said he would test her to see how tough a door person she was by trying to grab money out of her hand. Weiss would continue to mentor Eleni over the years and they’re still friends to this day. 

For her fourth album, Mandell shook things up by diving into traditional country. A mix of covers and originals, 2003’s Country For True Lovers is an exciting update to her sound. And one of her life changing moments came full circle. Weiss introduced her to former X guitarist Tony Gilkyson, who produced the project. She also stacked the sessions with all star players, including Nels Cline from Wilco, and another X hero, drummer D.J. Bonebreak. 

Eleni continued to mix and mesh genres on her next release, 2004’s Afternoon. 

From the No Depression review of that album:

“Last years Country For True Lovers found Los Angeles chanteuse Eleni Mandell turning her sights on twang rather than her previous more PJ Harvey-oriented material, and she received plenty of critical acclaim in the process, sharing the LA Weekly 2003 songwriter of the year award with the late Elliot Smith.”

“On Afternoon, her fifth album, Mandell combines her love of various genres, including country, pop, jazz and rock, to stunning effect. Produced by Joshua Grange, who also lends his considerable talents on guitar, pedal steel, Hammond organ and piano, Afternoon mostly takes the slow and sexy approach. I’ve Been Fooled and Can’t You See Im Soulful give Mandell the chance to show off her breathy but passionate alto, which can devastate in a heartbeat.”

“Mandell does rock out from time to time, as on Easy On Your Way Out, which has a grungy Elvis Costello-gets-on-with-Liz Phair feel to it. I wanna be your afternoon/I want you coming back for more, Mandell sings on the sorta fun/sorta sad title song.”

She can also write catchy singles. Like this song from Afternoon, “Let’s Drive Away.”

That was Let’s Drive Away from Eleni Mandell’s fifth album, Afternoon, released in 2004. That song was also featured on the TV show, Weeds.

And here comes the challenging part of covering an artist like Eleni Mandell, who’s put out consistently solid albums for over two decades. There’s not enough time to feature all the good stuff she’s produced, but trust me, over her eleven albums, she always delivers. From the diverse shifting sounds of Artificial Fire [play clip] to the smooth and breezy Dark Lights Up [play clip], Eleni whirls a magical combination of jazz, folk, pop, country and rock, with just enough experimental twists to keep everything fresh. 

She’s also branched out from her solo artist gig to release two albums with her band The Grabs. The Grabs allows her to exercise more of her pop side and features Eleni on vocals, Blondie bassist Nigel Harrison, and Silversun Pickups’ drummer Elvira Gonzalez. 

And, she’s also released records with the Andrews Sisters inspired supergroup, The Living Sisters, with Inara George, Alex Lilly and Becky Stark.

I’d recommend checking out all of this. 

So now that we’ve established that the Eleni Mandell road is paved with the goods, let’s skip ahead to focus on her most recent album: 2019’s Wake Up Again.

Here’s what Eleni and her website have to say about the latest release: 

“For two years or thereabouts,” Mandell says, “I taught songwriting at two colleges and a women’s prison.”

The prison gig came about via Jail Guitar Doors, the organization founded by Wayne Kramer, guitarist of the vaunted Detroit band MC5, in partnership with English musician Billy Bragg. “I don’t know why exactly I was drawn to that work,” Mandell says. “But I had a family member who had been in prison in the 1940s. He wasn’t around when I was growing up, but that sort of fascinated me and I was always curious about what kind of person disappears and what kind of person commits crimes — what are they thinking?”

Working with the inmates also provided many epiphanies for her as a person, and proved fertile for her as an artist, as captured in the 11 songs on this album, her 11th studio release. In many ways it’s the culmination and fulfillment of all the strengths as a writer and performer going back to her start under the tutelage of Chuck E. Weiss, Tom Waits and other top chroniclers of people in the shadows.

“I really enjoyed it,” she says. “I was inspired by the stories, and surprised by the laughter I heard there. And I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I was, by how many different kinds of people were there: teachers, lawyers, nurses, and also people who grew up in poverty.”

Here’s a song about one of the woman she met during those songwriting classes she taught. This is Evelyn.

Evelyn from Eleni Mandell’s most recent album, Wake Up Again. Another great addition to her expansive, impressive catalog. The album is filled with rich character studies and deeply personal self-examinations.

Her early Tom Waits inspiration continues to ignite and propel her, even after 11 albums. Only now she can call Tom a longtime friend. 

And she went from obsessive punk rock X fan to counting a member of X as a member of her own band. What a cool, thrilling ride she’s had so far. Eleni Mandell. 

References and other stuff:

Eleni interview with Luxury Wagers

Eleni interview with Mr. Bonzai

Eleni interview with Tyler Pollard on Timeline

The bio from Eleni’s current website has a great write up on her most recent album and I quote from it in the episode.

No Depression review of Afternoon that I quote in the episode

Here is the original bio from Eleni’s old website that is now archived. I also quote from this

Eleni has been featured on NPR segments over the years. I did not use anything directly from these, but they are good and informative

Pop Matter review of Dark Lights Up

Good L.A. Times article about Eleni teaching songwriting to female inmates and her latest album

#Broken Buttons #music podcast #music history #Eleni Mandell #indie #folk #country #punk #X #Tom Waits #Chuck E. Weiss #Chrissie Hynde #Pretenders #Living Sisters #The Grabs #P.J. Harvey #experimental #vinyl #podcast #podcaster #podcast community #now playing #now spinning #music blog

[mystery-deer]

Affection

Raymond didn’t understand at all why people thought he and his boyfriend were cold and unfeeling towards each other. He felt some days that he did nothing BUT feel for Kevin. Stumbling down the street in a lovedrunk haze made stronger by the fact that they were finally living together. Finally occupying the same space, their shared presence always there even when their physical counterparts weren’t. It felt like being together all the time and it was intoxicating, he was sure it showed plainly, that he reeked of it.

Kevin told him when Raymond asked, exasperated, (because he and Raymond had been to a party and Raymond, after rebuffing the advances of a man by saying he had a partner was given a look of pure confusion. "Who?" He'd asked, even though Kevin had been standing next to him the entire night.) that people thought so because they were not affectionate in public. When Raymond asked what that meant (surely it was plain to anyone that they were in love? Surely it was written all over their faces, all over their bodies and in the margins of every word they said to each other?)

“When people speak of affection they usually categorize it as physical affection. Holding hands, embracing, kissing. Though I’ve had a friend who found it odd that we don’t call each other pet names.”

He balched at this. “They expect me to call you pet names in front of other people?”

“Yes.” Kevin said in a tone that indicated he was as perturbed by this notion as his boyfriend. There was a meaningful pause as the information set in. “Please don’t take this conversation as a hint of some sort.” He cautioned.

“I will not, thank you for enlightening me.” “It was no trouble.”

He thought about it. He thought about holding Kevin’s hand while walking down the street, wrapping their arms around each other and kissing, calling each other by their pet names when they saw each other.

He began to notice other people as well. Girls walking arm in arm, couples waiting in line at the grocery store giggling and kissing quietly, their friends who called out to partners with a wave and a “Honey! Honey over here!”

He could not imagine doing so. Then again, he had never been accused of being affectionate.

He hardly ever hugged his sister, would stand there and accept her arms around him (one of his earliest memories was of detangling himself and her toddler face, shocked and then crying. It broke his heart.) but he built her fortresses and sang the songs he loved to her, delighted when she laughed. When she smiled.

She knew how much he loved her. She knew so surely that she teased him about it, that even his denials could not shake her.

So why?

Why had his first boyfriend broken up with him, red-faced and growling that “I don’t think you actually like me so why don’t we just stop this now?”

Why had his fourth stopped responding to his texts when he refused to kiss him after they had seen a movie (popcorn breathe, germs, the crowds were noisy and overwhelming). "Why didn't you want to kiss him?" Asked every friend he told the story to and even though they called him a jerk and a moron, said he should have just talked to Raymond, they placed that small bit of blame on him and he didn't know how to explain. He didn't know how to say that he would gladly kiss him, he would have loved to kiss him after they'd gotten home and comfortable. Why was it so imperative that they kiss right then? Why was it something worth severing over?

Why did people playfully (painfully) ask if he and Kevin were really dating? “You certainly don’t act like it!”

Was he not doing it right? Was it not enough? He remembered his uncle singing in the kitchen, "Thin love ain't no love at all" He'd croon, voice adopting a country twang. "No, thin love ain't no love at all." Was his love thin?  Then why was he drowning in it? Why did the words catch in his throat, his heart skip beats, his lips quirk into a smile without his knowledge if what he felt for Kevin, for his friends, for his sister and mother and the entire damn world sometimes was not enough to hold everything together?

After weeks of thinking in circles he had wrapped his arms around Kevin in the comfort of their own home and asked him if he was satisfied with their relationship.

“I’m more than satisfied. I couldn’t be happier. Is something bothering you?” He was always good at cajoling him. And so everything came pouring out into the air around them and Kevin with his handsome, precise fingers plucked out the parts that mattered and addressed them in the way he did. There was something about it that was so particular to Kevin Cozner and no one else in the world could replicate it. If he were a more romantic minded man he would dedicate pages of prose to uncovering this quality but as such the mystery was charming.

Kevin spoke like a poet, even if he was not aware of it.

“Raymond, do you remember Constance’s birthday party?” “Yes.” Constance was a woman Raymond worked with. She was the mailroom technician and they often complained about their colleagues' sexism and racism respectively. They also talked a great deal about birdwatching.

“You got her a gift, a stapler. Because you often heard her struggling with the one at her desk. She never mentioned it but nonetheless you recognized the need.”

Raymond snorted. “Well that was just considerate gift giving. Constance is a dear friend.”

“Yes, but most people don’t know their friends enough to give them things like that. Things they really need and want.”

Raymond could not imagine this being the case. If you were friends with someone how could you not know?

“You changed which side of the bed you sleep on for me.” “I did?” “Yes, you did. When we began living together you changed because you knew I didn’t like to be closed in on the side with the wall. I fell in love with you then and I keep falling in love with you because of all the small unconscious deeply considerate things you do every day.”

Kevin leaned back and kissed his boyfriend’s cheek. “I love you, Raymond.”

“I love you as well.” Raymond said, dizzy with feeling.

Kevin told him later on when they were both in bed, that there was nothing wrong with Raymond. "I thought you might be berating yourself for or worrying over something." He correctly deduced. "And today it became clear that it was about showing affection." "I don't know that I will ever be able to hold you Kevin." He admitted, preparing for the worst. Preparing for the moment that Kevin realized that Raymond was Raymond and he was not going to change, not going to become a man who would kiss him on the street after movies. "That I will ever be able to kiss you in front of the golden gate bridge."

Kevin did not understand why his boyfriend had chosen the golden gate bridge as the pinnacle of romance but he wrapped his arms around him, rested his head against his. "You're holding me now." "Kevin..." "And I am holding you. Today we have kissed numerous times, held hands under the table during lunch and you've told me you loved me on eight occasions since I woke up this morning." "But not in front of people." "I don't care about other people." Kevin declared in a way that reminded Raymond of a swashbuckler. "Damn them." When Raymond laughed he repeated the sentiment with more feeling. "Damn them all!"

And so the world was damned. All but two and in the vast void left over by the absence of everyone else they built. They built castles and archways and stone paths and ornate paintings and songs and ancient relics and towns and cities and oceans. Everything, everything made by love. https://archiveofourown.org/works/21411298/chapters/51011797 (link included bc there’s a chapter two)

#b99 #this is about their affection #Raymond in this fic would be surprised at himself if he was told he would one day hold Kevin's hand in the middle of the precinct!! #this fic doesn't focus heavily on homophobia but lets just say nature is not the only thing that makes Raymond reluctant towards PDA #though nature is a part of it...they are both not overly demonstrative people #sometimes your nature is shaped by society #idk this is a lot of tags but I worry ppl will misunderstand what I'm trying to say #my fanfiction #my writing #b99 fanfic #b99 fanfiction #kevin cozner/raymond holt

[terracottasunrise]

My Life’s Playlist

Alright so this is a weird one. I’m going to break form for a minute and do something sorta fun (yup only 20% misery here a new low). Granted this is coming around because I created a playlist and then suddenly felt the urge to defend every song on it to the person it was made for. Then like most things said fuck it no one reads this anyway and this is easier than sending a massive text of “this is why I picked this, and this is why I picked this” ect. So yeah this is less for the world and more for the one person this was made for. However I’m an open book so fuck it may as well let the world see this soul expressed in music, at least in the year of 2021. No particular order by the way, just going to hit play and write as songs pop up and explain what they mean to me.

It’s Alright by Mother Mother-

It was between this and “Bottom is a Rock”. But I got to be honest “It’s Alright” is such a good representation of what I need to hear when I’m going through mental spiral. Cause when I spiral it’s a rough thing, a problem with writing everything I feel is I remember it so much more vividly after putting it on paper. So when I start getting into that mindset I basically go through a mental slideshow of my failures bringing up every reason why I wasn’t good enough a lot of times reaching back years to find ammunition against myself. This song eases that a bit. Just that helpful reminder “You’re alright, you’re ok.”

Dear McCracken by Bug Hunter-

This is one of those awkward love songs that I love so much. A guy looking for love watching someone else losing it. The thing resonates with me on a personal level is I have 100% been that person sitting in an airport or on a plane/train writing trying to craft a way to express something. I can only think of how many people read some truly depressing shit over my shoulder without me knowing. The line “There’s a heart balanced on how her words are perceived.” Gets me every time. Because that’s my medium and that for sure is the truth.

Mr. Loverman by Ricky Montgomery-

This song. This song serves as a perfect reflection of the months leading after a heartbreak. It’s every relationship ending, every hopeful romance lost, every failure. But it’s real, and there is that twang in the music that is sad but bouncy at the same time. It makes me think of every time I’ve had a relationship end and that anxiety of being alone and desire to just drown it. It’s looking at the past and future at one point or another, love lost or love found and lost.

Peanut Butter Waffles by Ryan Caraveo-

I’ll be honest this is the only song I know from Ryan Caraveo. But it reflects my place in life almost perfectly. A guy who takes too much about how he feels, a guy who tries not to disappoint anyone. Someone who revels in verbal admiration because he’s not used to it. A guy that had to grow up way too fast and is unable to figure out how to cope with the world and is just finally trying to find some of that childhood joy. A few lines in this song hit me in the feels“I can hear my thoughts clear”  just makes me think, I never don’t have something going. I can’t handle silence, as soon as I do I start thinking and overthinking I need that left brain distraction to keep me happy.  It feels like in the last 10 years I have never had time to relax, and then when I did I was literally “Making life decisions in the time it took to brush my teeth” yeah this is me. A guy trying to find his home, a place to belong and someone to belong to.

Would That I by Hozier-

When I first heard this song I listened to it on repeat. I want to say for days but let’s be honest it was hours but it gave me everything I ever wanted for the melancholy mood I was in. It reminds me of probably my biggest heartbreak and how I stopped letting it define me and judging everyone off that one person. For years I was hung up and miserable and convinced that I was never going to find someone and wouldn’t let myself. Now god forbid if someone is good to me because her kindness will consume my wooden heart like a flame to tinder. It’s the idea that for me infatuation is a fire that will consume me and I need to embrace that side of myself. I stopped looking back because “That’s not tonight”

Typical Story by Hobo Johnson-

I hated this song when I first heard. But something about the beat just works to get me riled up and fired up. I think the main reason I came around was because the lyrics just make me think of myself and that little voice I’m at war with that constantly tells me to bail and give up but the song gets me mad at myself for thinking that way. I will not be the Typical Story.

Hell and You by Amigo and the Devil-

This is one of those songs that I like but I flip it every time I hear it because it makes me think a bit too much about who I am when I am deep in a relationship. It’s a song about utter loyalty, especially that line “I’d crawl in bed with you, even on someone else’s blood, on top of someone else’s love” saying that no matter who else falls in love with him, or sacrifices themselves for him, he will always fall asleep alongside his lover. That feeling, of caring so much nothing else matters besides the one you care for, is a terribly wonderful feeling.

Blood in the Cut by K.Flay-

I’ve always liked this song, even before I was living the gender swapped version of it. Almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy. But it’s that self-deprecation and really the need for noise that gets me singing it. I don’t like the quiet. I need some form of simulation something that distracts my left brain and lets the right brain run rampart. If I can’t distract myself I start freaking out and over analyzing, which is a character flaw to be sure but it’s real. Even when I go to sleep I run something to keep my brain distracted otherwise I lay in bed overthinking everything. Guess the teachers were right when they said I had an over-active imagination.

Fast Talk by Dawn Golden, Houses-

I grew up in the country, just let’s get that straight real quick. But this song, it reminds me of another on this list. Especially when I go home. Things are just simpler. This is probably one of the more well-known  songs on this list but it’s about appreciating the simple things. Seeing the threads of fate in the little things that could have worked out so much worse. I can think of many times where I should have gotten in more trouble than I did and this song reminds me of that. No many how many breaks I don’t catch, I’ve caught a few.

  Firebreather by Macklemore-

Most famous person on this list for sure but this song is not as well known. I love this song. This is my pump up song. The song that makes me feel invincible. Had to throw it on here because it would be a lie to not mention that before big things, this song gets played. With that said the, the chorus and that beat are really what gin me up. The buildup gets me ramped up and ready to tackle whatever gets thrown at me.

No Home by New Vega-

This is the mentality. “you are always alone and you want to go home” This past year this whole pandemic life has made me just alone. All the time. Just living out of a hotel, no one checking up on me no one caring about how I am, just me fighting to find purpose. Trying to find some sort of relatable person. That’s why I got a cat. That little shit is a pain in the ass but the most comforting provider of serotonin I’ve had in years. Love ya Cataban

Cannonball By Watsky-

Watsky gets two, but this is a great song…. Not really a song more of a word jam that captures that feeling of starting to fall in in a kind of love that you know heals something in you a little bit. Late love, when you get past the heart happy bullshit and hit the real shit and are just still somehow happy because you have each other. It’s that idea of forgiving yourself and your situation because you are with someone that makes all the nonsense worth it.

Sloppy seconds by Watsky-

This is so real to me. In a world of music and stories where everyone is perfect and wonderful this song celebrates the perfection of imperfection. Nothing exquisite has been born out of anything but tragedy. I’ve made the mistake of dating someone that never had a day of adversity in her life and let me tell you, not my kinda person. I fall for people that have some baggage. You have to. If you don’t it means you haven’t done anything.

Disaster Hearts by I Fight Dragons-

Definitely was one of those songs that I just sat down and said yeah, at this age we all have disaster hearts. We all figure shit out and say we won’t be hurt again and then guess what it happens again. That calloused muscle that has been rebuilt to survive nuclear fallout is completely susceptible to the infatuation of one person. No construction of wall or barrier will stop it. But disaster is necessary it molds you.

The Mask by Matt Maeson-

This is one hits me close to my heart every time I hear it. It’s something we all do to an extent, blocking out the emotions that hurt so much and just crafting a mask that make everyone think things are going alright. Crafting that mask of mirth and nonchalance that makes everyone think you are ok. In my case my mask is my writing. I write things out and never look back. “I settle my grievance by crafting a mask”

 Oh My Dear Lord by The Unlikely Candidates

Life in the fast lane. Man this was me for years. “I was a good guy, but I was the worst type/ Give me an inch man, and I’ll take a mile” That was me. Fuck still is me. It’s a self-destructive advancement I can’t get away from. I found myself in the last few years not even climbing the ladder, just getting recognized and successfully driving my life forward, and it’s like getting whiplash finding that all that success is not at all what I wanted. I’m over my head.

Castle on the hill by Ed Sherran-

Well sorry Macklemore, Ed Sherran might be the most famous, even more than Fast Talk this reminds me of home. Every time I drive home this is the song that plays in my head. The images of a bunch of children with a thirty of beer sitting on a hill watching fireworks on the 4th of july. Damn there was such an innocence back then. That bit on the tail end where he lists what happens to everyone, that’s almost a one for one snapshot of my childhood friends. I don’t know how I was the one to make it out. But I did. Kicking and clawing but here I am.

Tubthumping by Chumbawumba-

Very little to be said but in any soul discussing playlist Tubthumping needs to be involved. Every conflict in my life. Don’t know how I pull it off but I stand up every time.

Wait for it-by Leslie Odom Jr. Hamilton

I had to pick something from Hamilton. This song… It’s the bad guy. It’s Burr. The play paints him as such a relatable character. And the line that fucking line. “Love doesn’t discriminate, it takes and it takes and it takes” Yup. I wish I could choose who I fall for. I would be such a happier person. But I can’t I fall for the complicated, the unreturning the ambivalent. That’s who I will love. It’s a sick disease the likes I would never wish on a single person.

As the Rush Comes by Motorcycle-

Chills, every time I hear this song. It’s hard to capture the feeling this invokes. It’s the wanderer, the scoundrel, the Romani in me. Drifting through life loving and moving through life as if I was water diffusing through gravel. It’s a song that illicit highs and lows in my body and I would love to just lay next to a bass speaker listening to it on repeat.

[dasebasstian]

Years ago I was asked to interview one of the most unique and talented musicians around- The Reverend Horton Heat. Unfortunately the interview got lost in the editorial shuffle and never saw the light of day. Below is that lost interview.

Setting The Record Straight With The Reverend Horton Heat

Interviewed by D.A. Sebasstian

Jim “Reverend Horton Heat “ Heath has been tearin’ it up for over two decades now, with eleven albums, dozens of compilation appearances, songs in major motion pictures and even video games and cartoons! You might expect a man with that kind of success to slow down...just a little. Well sir- not on your life! The latest incarnation of Jim Heath’s band including The Reverend on guitar and vocals, Jimbo Wallace on upright bass and Paul Simmons on drums, is arguably one of the tightest and hardest working bands on the road today. I got the chance to talk with the Reverend by phone while they were in the midst of their 2009 tour...somewhere in the beautiful state of Colorado.

From what I’ve read on the internet you had it pretty rough as a teen growing up hustling the pool halls for cash- 

You read the wrong bio (laughs). Lemme tell you what happened. We had just signed to Sub Pop Records back in the ‘90’s and I get this call waking me up early in the morning. It was some girl from Sub Pop wanting to ask me all these questions. She had this monotone voice with questions like (speaking like a robot )  “Where did you grown up?” “What do you like to do?”  “What cigarettes do you smoke?” etc. So I told her that I was adopted, like to play pool and I smoke Merit Cigarettes. Later on Sub Pop gets this information and turns it into, “Reverend Horton Heat was an orphan who became a pool shark and smokes Lucky Strike Cigarettes.” (laughs). Complete B.S. I have hung out in pool halls, but growing up,I had a wonderful middle class family, a great extended family with cousins, aunts and uncles. You know Sub Pop had a history of that kind of thing. 

Does personal experience fuel your song writing? 

Yeah- personal experience definitely fuels my song writing...but then again sometimes you gotta stretch out beyond personal experience and use your imagination. You know, get a little phantasmagorical. 

Besides Jerry Lee Lewis, who are your biggest musical influences? 

I really love the Sun Records stuff like early Elvis and Carl Perkins. Non-Sun bands like Johnny Burnette and the Rock & Roll Trio, Gene Vincent and the Blue Cats, but ya know man...I really like music from the mid-twentieth century era. I really love Henry Mancini as well as the Blues, a lot of the Chess records stuff like Howlin’ Wolf, Buddy Guy and Muddy Waters. Its had a big influence on me. Then of course the Country Music of that era was just great too. 

As a band you guys are extremely tight live do you guys rehearse or just set and play out?

The only time we rehearse is during sound check. The way we really keep it going is that we play so much...we play so many gigs. We’ve cut it back from what we used to do- but we’re still one of the hardest working bands out there as far as our  tour schedule. I wish we could rehearse more but our new Drummer Paul lives in Nashville, so to schedule a rehearsal involves airline flights and motel rooms (laughs). It’s kinda crazy now. We got the new songs for the new album and we’re going to be getting together to actually rehearse it in Dallas in March. That’s really the only reason we need to rehearse, if we’re working up some new songs or going to rehash some older ones that fell by the wayside. 

I love your song Galaxie 500. Are you a Ford guy?

Well I like the design of Fords, I mean I think Fords design, you know alot of people get mad at me for this, but a I just think the way their cars look have always had something just a little bit better. I think Chevy came back into the picture with the ‘55 Chevy- and honestly I have a great appreciation for all American cars. A long time ago people were like “Ford Sucks” and “Chevy Sucks” but what's funny now is like- “What abut Toyota?”  “What about Hyundai?” All the sudden all that snobbery between Ford and Chevy people is out the window. It has to be or else we’re all gonna be driving Toyotas. We need to all stick together on this 

You are considered by many to be the King of Psychobilly is that a crown you would wanna wear?

No no man...the Kings of Psychobilly are European bands man. The Meteors, Guana Batz, Demented Are Go, Necromantix...those types of bands  We have a song called Psychobilly Freakout and when it came out alot of writers in the States didn’t really know what rockabilly was all about. So they heard the song title and were all “What is Psychobilly?” So that label got put on me. But in all honesty we do things that “Psychobilly Bands” don’t do. We’ll do a slow country song, we’ll do a slow blues song...ya know? Some of our stuff definitely fits in the Psychobilly mold but alot of it  really doesn’t.

How long have you been playing Gretch and what is your guitar rig live and in the studio?

Well I really haven’t played Gretch my whole career. I had an old Guild back in the mid-80’s with a Bigsby Tremolo that eventually led me to a Gibson  ES-175 with the 1954 P90 pickups. But with all the modern lights, dimmer packs and crazy electrical stuff they put in buildings for these light shows, those P90 pick ups would buzz so loud, almost as loud as the tone coming out of my amplifier. I dealt with it, I made it work, but once when I was on tour the 1/4 inch jake just broke into the guitar and at that time we were really at it- doing 275 shows a year. It was around the same time Gretch started doing their reissues.  I went into a Guitar Center, saw the Gretch and noticed it was about the same thickness as  the Gibson and had the Bigsby Tremolo. To me it had less of the older Gretch “nasal “ sound and more of a  Telecaster vibe. That was something that i really liked and that the Gibson definitely couldn’t get. Gibson's are great for Jazz and some Rockabilly, but they just don’t have that Tele Twang . The Gretch had all that plus the Telecaster  vibe, so I said, “That ‘s cool man.”  Not to mention it was functional (laughs), so I ran with it. Since then I’ve acquired a lot of nice old Gretch guitars, but I don’t take ‘em on the road with me. I do sometimes play  them in the studio along with my old Gibson 175 . Gretch started making the “Reverb Horton Heat”  model so I play that as well. 

What about Amplifiers?

I like the Silver Face Fender Super Reverb, I’ve got several mid seventies Silver Faces, but I have this one in particular that is unreal...it’s just the perfect amplifier. And so I’ve used that on every album I’ve ever done and in fact I’m gonna use it tonight. I spent more money keeping that amp in good repair...I mean it’s the most expensive amp in the world (laughs). We put one mic on that Silver Face and we’re good to go. It’s kinda funny I’m into my amps almost more than my guitars. 

Your last album was the brilliant Christmas record Three Kings? Why a Christmas album?

Well for one thing our record label wanted it and for the other alot of my heroes did Christmas albums. They all did them. It was almost like part of their contract. Three Kings was a fun project.  What was really interesting is I’ve got alot of record collector friends and as soon s they found out  I was doing a Christmas album they all started mailing me their favorite CDs of the weirdest, craziest, most obscure and obscene  Christmas Songs... like who put the Dick On Snowman. All this nasty, over the top, blue Christmas music. So at that point I was thinking, I am going to do a Christmas album and all the kids in my family...ya know I started thinking Christmas is for kids. Maybe I’ll do a Christmas album like that someday but in the mean time I’m just gonna do a straight up Frosty and Rudolph traditional album. 

I’m a big rivet head so I gotta ask- what was it like working with Al Jourgenson of Ministry on the Liquor in the Front album?

Well..that was a crazy trip into an area  I’d never really gone before. It was scary as hell. I mean I would leave the studio after being in there for eleven hours,  working on one song,  just bleary eyed and tired of working and I’d look over there and Al was about to die, the guy almost killed himself...several times. Not purposefully but  you know what I mean? Al's a trip man...Al's a real trip. I mean Al and I got a little cross ways on that album but he brought a lot of good stuff to the table and alot of interesting ideas. You know that album sold more than any of our other albums so I really can’t knock him too much...but man he’s pretty out there. It’s funny though one thing about him is he knows alot about country music and obscure rockabilly stuff . He’s not just an industrial guy.

How about working with Gibby Haynes of The Butthole Surfers?

Now doin’ the sessions with Gibby, we ate so much Barbecue it was crazy...I mean every night it was BBQ. In fact  we were going to this really famous place called Jim Neely's Interstate Bar-B-Que. We were buying so much every day...they had  this shopping cart that they used when they would cater events and they just let us have the shopping cart full of Barbecue to use. We’d just take it to the studio, lift it out of the back of the van and roll it inside. Everyday we were buying a gallon of Barbecue Sauce...it was crazy! Gibby made his own drinks and was mixing Vodka and BBQ Sauce ...it was really nasty (laughs).

What bands do you like touring with?

Well we like touring with Nashville Pussy they’re alot of fun, then there's the Legendary Sack Shakers and Throw Rag...we’ve done alot of great tours with them. Some of my favorite tours were goin’ out with great guitar players that were so over the top good it’s kinda scary you know.  Like Jr. Brown.  I didn’t get to talk to him much on tour, he keeps to himself,  but man what a great guitar player. I got to see him play every night. Deke Dickerson who's a monster player and Big Sandy and the Flyright Boys were always super inspiring because they are such great players and have such a great style.

Any new albums in the works?

Yeah it’s gonna be with Yep Roc, were gonna try to bang it out here as quickly as possible. Kinda on the cheap. We’re not gonna make too big a deal about it. Probably get Tim Alexander  to help us do a little production and musical arrangement as well as some piano and accordion on a coupla things. The plan is were gonna go in a   really old little studio in Dallas where Willie Nelson recorded “Red Headed Stranger” and “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain.”  I’ll give you a scoop- though I haven’t talked about too much, our new album is gonna be country...

Really?

And its not like “Well we’re goin’ country now,” because I actually have a lotta great rockin songs in the works too, but this upcoming album is just leaning heavily on country stuff. A lot of our fans that like us and are not Country fans seem to really enjoy our country type songs. We’re one of the only bands that they listen to that do anything like country music. So the guys who might normally hate country might still might like our country stuff. Many of my country songs and most of this new album have a humorous thing goin’ on with it.  

I’ve always thought of your music reaching across genre borders- I have friends with record collections full of punk or metal or lounge music but they also have some Reverend Horton Heat CD’s in there too.

That was kinda the intention from the very beginning. At the time it was almost like shooting apples in a barrel. Back when we first started  there really we not that many Rockabilly bands in existence. You had the Stray Cats, Rockats and Paladins playin’ upright bass and then The Blasters. Without getting into listing all the bands that were around at the time, it was pretty weird. There just wasn’t that big of a Rockabilly scene. So here we come in, doin’ original music that was Rockabilly, but a little more amped up. It really was like shooting apples in a barrel. People were like- “Whoa this band is really different!”  “We never heard anything like this before!” (laughs) 

Yeah but you have to be good too- I mean you could be different but if your not good your not gonna get the fans. There's a real power with what you guys do.

Well thank you. Anything you do at some point it’s gotta be entertaining 

So you guys are writing the new album on the road? Yeah I’m writing as I go- yeah I’m gonna go in there and work on a new song today. So we're trying to get songs ready as we play on this tour,  because we aren’t together. You know? When we’re off tour Paul goes back to Nashville. This is our time together so we get to annoy all the opening bands and crew people by turning our sound check into a rehearsal (laughs) 

Do you believe in UFOs?

That's a cool question...and the answer is...no (laughter).  I love to watch the shows about UFOs on TV. Its very entertaining to think about but I don't believe in UFOs. I’m one of these very skeptical persons- so until I see it myself I won’t believe it. I’ve got this thing about  Government- I mean people get all bent out of shape that our Government keeps secrets from us. The simple fact of the matter is that they have too keep secrets from us or we would all die. I don’t think their keeping UFOs a secret.  I think what they keep secret is the military stuff that if it came out that we had it then eventually  our enemies would use it against us. 

 If you could rewrite the soundtrack to any older movie (say pre 1977) what film would it be?

Probably Thunder Road with Robert Mitchim. I’d keep the title song, “Thunder Road,” but that’d be a fun movie to do. When I was a kid, my Dad would take me to the car shows and the drag races and  then he’d set me down and say, “You got to watch this movie Thunder Road.”  After I saw it I was like, “Hey Dad what does that mean- all hopped up?” (laughs).

#IFTTT #Blogger

[rowanstories-blog]

Roll of the Die

People rarely think about life until something reminds them it's not a guaranteed and permanent thing. In this moment, Daniel was thinking quite hard about mortality after a reminder in the form of a speeding SUV. As it entered every degree of his personal space and collided with his person, Daniel jolted from the thoughts of video game strategies and potential online play insults after a very physical jolt sent him flying over the hood of the car. He wanted to shout at the driver, to stop them from speeding away, but found that his body refused to respond. The only thing that still seemed to be in his control were his eyes, which he chose to close in order to avoid seeing any of his blood seeping onto the road and into the cracks and crevices around him.

He felt no pain, which was both nice and terrifying. If he felt nothing, something was very seriously wrong, but on the other hand, he quite hated the feeling of pain. He couldn't decide whether he was lucky or unlucky to be hit by a car painlessly. He decided to be glad he didn't have to lie on the road unable to move and also in pain; just one of those was bad enough.

In that moment Daniel realized he was well and truly fucked. The back-roads of his town barely saw activity; the fact that both he and an SUV occupied the same road, let alone the same point on that road, was the epitome of poor luck. By the time another person came by, he would be-

"Would you like to keep going?"

-dead! He'd be dead. He'd died quite a few times in games, but never really thought about it in real life. Why would he? He still had so much left to do, and had expected a good sixty or seventy years to get it all done. He was getting around to it, albeit slowly. So he had-

"Would you like to keep going?"

-dropped out of college, so what? He couldn't help that the finance board messed up his loans so he couldn't continue. And so he spent all his time gaming, so what He couldn't help that there weren't any good jobs around him at the moment. He'd fix those things later, he had time. Well, he was supposed to, anyway. He needed 100 years, not 25. It wasn't his fault he didn't get around to-

Daniel felt a sudden pain that felt remarkably like a kick to the face. When he opened his eyes, he found that he had, indeed, been kicked in the face. The offender stared down at him, eyes hidden in the shadows from a cadet hat's brim, an open button-down waving in the wind as though it were a cloak.

"I'm not asking again. Would you like to keep going?" The figure tilted its head, awaiting a response.

Daniel tried to open his mouth, to respond with something, anything, but it refused. His eyes darted around the figure, trying to figure out who had found him so quickly on such an abandoned path.

"Oh, wait, you can't talk, can you? Then blink twice if you want to keep going."

Were they messing with him? What kind of messed-up person would make a dying man ask for help in order to not die? A sudden gust of wind blew some dirt from the road into his eyes, and he reflexively blinked.

"Excellent. Let's go."

---

Daniel opened his eyes, but the darkness remained. He tried closing and opening his eyes again, but still he saw nothing. He rubbed his eyes with his hands, as if to wipe the darkness away. He then realized that his hands were moving and notably not sprawled out on pavement. After a quick check, he learned that all of his body parts regained function, and he currently stood.. somewhere. Somewhere dark, with a hard floor.

Did he die? Was this death? "Seriously?" he asked aloud to no one in particular, pleasantly surprised that he could speak at all.

His emotions quickly went through many options, ranging from fear to relief and back again, and after a few rotations settled on his personal favorite: anger. How dare that douchebag SUV driver hit him, and then just run off. And how dare that douchebag figure mock him as he was dying! What kind of monster just watches someone die? That thought brought with it a brief memory of him binging videos from the Watch People Die forums, but he quickly concluded that videos and reality were totally different things, so what he did was fine, and the figure was unquestionably a massive dick.

He threw an arm out in frustration. It collided with an unseen wall, making him swear in pain. After a minute of wandering in the darkness, he determined that he was probably in the middle of a thin hallway. Daniel, taking control of his circumstances, followed the corridor with a hand running along the wall, walking in a direction chosen entirely at random.

The darkness in front of him vanished all at once, revealing a large dome-shaped room. Looking back, he saw what appeared to be extremely dark clouds, as if they were made of shadows themselves, lingering in the doorway he just passed through. He didn't like thinking that he spent so long wandering in that air, whatever it was filled with.

His eyes wandered around the room, taking in all he could. Abstractly-formed glass structures hung from the ceiling, lit with an array of blue and violet lights above. The walls were covered in what appeared to be mirrors, but the reflections showed people wandering around the room and interacting with each other, and Daniel saw nothing like that around him. Directly in front of him he found a small bar, with bottles of various kinds on a shelf behind it, glowing a pale white from a lit platform beneath them.

"Hello?" he called out before immediately regretting it, feeling like a horror movie protagonist calling out into the clearly haunted basement.

"Hello!"

Daniel jumped back as someone popped up from behind the bar. Not just any someone- that someone, the figure who he saw on the streets.

"Good, you've made it. I get tired waiting, ya know? Now sit down, sit down!"

Daniel's anger returned as he looked at the person in front of him. He had no doubt this person was the one from before, with the stupid voice and the stupid hat and the stupid maybe-shirt-maybe-cloak style they were going for. And what was with the symbols stitched all over their clothes? It looked like something Hot Topic would come up with to try and look mysterious and edgy to preteens. Despite his anger, he had a strong feeling he should listen to the only other person in the area, and one familiar with it at that. Reluctantly, he sat.

The figure smiled a grin that, for a moment, looked too big for their face. "Nice to meet-"

"What the fuck." Daniel stared at the shadowed area where the figure's eyes would be, noticing the darkness flowing like a plume of smoke stuck to one place.

The figure tilted their head, the darkness making whisps of shadow as it moved with them.

Daniel gestured around him, repeating his previous statement in physical form.

"Well there's no need to be rude," the figure said with a heavy breath and a deep drink from a glass beside them. "Here, I'll do it. Nice to meet you, I'm-" The figure's mouth moved, but what came out was a strange garbled mess that Daniel couldn't hope to remember, let alone repeat. "And you're David Thorne, our latest applicant, and you think it's nice to meet me. Would you like a drink? Yes you would, thank me very much! Would you prefer metal or jazz?" The figure turned, looking at the bottles behind the bar. "I've also got some country," they added, clearly disgusted with the idea.

Daniel wanted to repeat his previous question again, but he had a very strong feeling that it wouldn't lead anywhere, and would only make stupid Gibberish-name make less sense. Maybe this was a dying dream, he thought. Games and movies loved that gimmick. "Surprise me," he said, choosing to play along.

The figure clapped with a grin. "Ooh, I like your style," they said as they pulled a bottle out from the lineup and poured a metalic blue liquid into a stump crystal glass in front of him. "Alternative rock it is. Vocal or instrumental?"

Daniel mentally flipped a coin in his head. "Vocal," he shrugged.

The figure pulled a drawer out from beneath the bar and, with a pair of tongs, dropped three round gray objects into the glass. "Cheers," they said as they held up their own glass.

Daniel hit his glass against theirs, intentionally hitting a little too hard to try and get theirs to spill. It didn't work, but the attempt still satisfied him. Without thinking, he took a deep sip from the glass.

As soon as the drink went down his throat, he felt his heart thump to a drum beat as his bones twanged with guitar riffs. The bass pulsed through his veins, and the vocal track rang in his throat and up to his teeth. He felt the music ring through every part of his body, and though he didn't hear any sound outside of him, his insides roared with what he could only define as alternative rock. The intensity of the feelings went down quickly, but the buzz of the track continued inside of him, almost at a murmur.

The figure slammed its glass down, neon green drink splashing with the impact. "Damn, I love EDM. I prefer instrumental though, the vocals are too repetitive for my tastes. Gets on my nerves."

"The fuck is all of this," Daniel managed to say once the feeling of the vocals in his throat reduced.

The figure tilted its head. "You don't know? Well, there's no need to be a cranky asshole about it."

Daniel opened his mouth to protest, but his throat tingled with a particularly strong vocal section of a song.

"This is the-" the figure spoke a long series of words that made absolutely no sense. "You said you wanted to try again, right?"

Daniel nodded. He didn't exactly mean to indicate that earlier, but he wasn't about to look a gift figure in the mouth.

"Well, here's your chance. If you pass, you'll get another go. Easy enough, right?"

"What is it, a way to judge people?" Daniel's Catholic upbringing immediately sprang to mind.

"Something like that," the figure said as they wiped down a part of the bar. "You'll be tested against the strongest force in the world, and if you pass, you live again. Get it?"

Daniel thought for a second. The strongest force in the world? He thought about what he knew of religions. Temptation was a clear choice; the Bible made note of the temptation to sin in man as being a powerful force, beaten only by a faith in God. "So I'm fighting against my temptation, the sins in my life? Does that make this Purgatory?"

The figure shrugged, taking another sip of the neon green drink.

He sighed in relief. He didn't praise the Lord each day or anything like that, but he had lived a decent life. No sex before marriage, or sex at all for that matter. No stealing, since obviously piracy didn't count. He took the Lord's name in vain basically every night in his online games, but hey, no one's perfect. He didn't expect to make it to sainthood or anything, but he felt ahead of the bell curve in terms of basic human decency.

"So if this is Purgatory," Daniel thought out loud, "then people who would go to Heaven actually are reincarnated, and people who go to Hell.. what?"

The figure drank again. "Quit mumbling, kid, you'll ruin the bass drop."

"Am I being judged now? How do I know when I've passed or not?"

The figure jerked suddenly, hitting the glass and sending it tumbling off of the bar. "Damn it, I just said not to ruin it with talking," they shouted through gritted teeth.

"Then give me answers," Daniel demanded, slamming both hands on the bar and pulling himself up so he and the figure stood at around the same height.

In that moment, the lights on the ceiling changed colors, changing the the glass structures beneath them from a pale blue to a vibrant purple-red. A whooshing noise came from somewhere else in the room, but Daniel couldn't tell where.

The figure sighed. "We could have had a nice time waiting here. Why must you applicants always be so aggressive?" Their hand hovered over Daniel's drink. "Are you gonna finish this?"

Daniel shook his head.

"Cool," the figure said as they downed the drink. A shiver ran through their body. "Damn, that did not go together as nicely as I thought," they mumbled as they tossed the glass behind the bar. "Alright, it's go-time, part one. You ready?"

Daniel, completely not ready, nodded.

---

Daniel followed the figure through a series of confusing hallways. As they moved, the clouds of darkness behind them crept closer, but the darkness in front of them pushed away, keeping them in a constant visible space. They turned left, then went forward for a while, then left again, and another left..

"Are we just going in circles?"

The figure grumbled something about a ruined bass drop, completely ignoring the question.

After several more minutes of walking, the darkness again rushed away from in front of them, revealing a new, larger room. The darkness lingered on top of the room, clinging to the ceiling and blocking Daniel's view of anything above a dozen or so feet. From his limited perspective, the room appeared to have six columns holding it up, formed in a semi-circle along the other side of the circular room. As they got closer, a bright white circle of lights lit up in front of the columns.

"That's your cue," the figure said, prodding Daniel with their elbow. "Knock 'em dead. Or, you know, whatever."

Daniel swallowed hard, feeling the lingering effect of his earlier drink in his saliva, and stepped forward.

"Daniel Thorne?" a voice boomed from above the shadow clouds.

Daniel jumped from the volume of the voice. "Yes, that's me," he replied after regaining his composure.

"Welcome to-" the gibberish went on for a while. Daniel struggled to keep a straight face for the entire duration. "-We will ask you a series of questions about your life. Answer them honestly. Are you ready for your questions?"

An interrogation on his life. Of course an afterlife test would be about sinning. That would be the perfect way to investigate his sin-laden temptations. "Yes," he said. He focused on remembering his upbringing, reassuring himself that he hadn't sinned badly enough to warrant a trip to Hell.

"Question one. Have you ever held two carrots at once?"

Daniel paused. Carrots? The Bible didn't say anything about carrots, did it? "I think... yes?"

Suddenly, he heard intense murmuring between multiple voices in the darkness above, and a sharp inhale from the figure behind him. Before he could ask anything, the voice from above continued.

"Have you ever used blue ink on gray parchment?"

"I... don't... think so?" Daniel said, honestly unsure.

A gasp slipped out from the clouds above before the next question was hurriedly asked. "An apple is to heights like an orange is to what?"

"Is that some kind of joke?" Daniel snapped, feeling his anger returning.

He felt a hand grab onto his arm. The figure pulled him backwards, making him stumble out of the circle. "We'd like to take a recess," the figure yelled up to the shadowy clouds. Not waiting for a response, they dragged Daniel out of the room and into the hallway, surrounding them both with the hall's dark fog.

"What are you thinking," the figure hissed, "insulting them like that? Do you want to fail the test?"

Daniel pulled his arm out of the figure's strangely weak grasp. "That can't seriously be the test. There's no religion that cares about carrots or pens! And what is that comparison supposed to be? There's no way I'd know that, it's not fair at all! It's-" He trailed off mid-sentence, interrupted by a sudden bout of laughter from the figure. "What?" he shouted over their uproar.

The figure took some deep breaths to gain control of their laughter. "Hoo boy, sorry, you were just so funny with all that 'it's not fair' whining."

"You said I'd be up against temptation! How is any of this related to temptation, or sinning, or any of it?"

"Temptation?" The figure began laughing again. "I said you'd be up against the strongest force in the world! Where did 'temptation' come from?"

"The Bible says that's the greatest force against the faith in God."

The figure cocked their head. "I don't know anyone named Bible, but they're dead wrong about all that. The actual force you're up against-" the figure leaned in uncomfortably close, the dark whisps under their cap brim still hiding their eyes- "is luck."

"Luck?" Daniel repeated, rage flaring. "How can you have such a big test based only on luck? That's not fair at all!"

"You really think life is fair?" The figure shook their head. "Everyone's lives are based entirely on luck. Some folks are lucky enough to be born into loving families, or at least rich ones. They're lucky to have the opportunities they use to succeed. And some people, they just aren't lucky at all. They're born into terrible circumstances, or simply don't have a way to achieve what they desire in life. Maybe they want to be a gymnast but have a spine defect, or they're a natural genius in a country with no schools. No amount of natural ability or training will change the limits that luck sets for them." The figure held back a snicker. "No matter how hard you try, or train, or prepare, or plan, you can't beat luck. That's why it's the most powerful force in the world."

Daniel leaned against the wall as the figure spoke, taking their words in, trying not to let his anger take control of him. He felt his veins throbbing in his skull.

"And that," the figure continued, "is why we test for it here. You can be an incredible scientist, or the strongest weightlifter, or whatever you want, but if you don't have luck, it'll all be for nothing. Why would we waste our resources on the unlucky, on those who can never reach true success?"

"So," Daniel said, taking deep breaths, "those questions, they're just to figure out luck?"

"Certainly. Only a very lucky person would answer in a way They like."

"And if I fail?"

The figure's uncomfortably wide grin returned as they snickered to themself.

From the figure's ramble on luck, Daniel knew he wasn't in any Catholic version of the afterlife, but visions of Hell sprang to mind all the same. He couldn't go back into the question room; he didn't get off to a good start, and the test was too random for him to have any faith in a rebound.

"Okay," the figure sighed, as if reading Daniel's thoughts. "You don't like the question system, I get it. It's a bit too long winded for my tastes, too. How about we speed things up?" Before Daniel could respond, the figure pulled a twenty-sided die from their pocket, the numbers wavering and flickering on the smooth dark faces like swaying stars. "Roll above 10, you win. Below 10, you lose. Easy, right? Gets right to the point."

Daniel paused, staring at the die. "You want me to bet my life on a die roll?"

"Basically," the figure shrugged. "Doesn't really seem like it's worth the whole song and dance, don't you think? I mean, you were what, 25, with nothing going for you? Giving your unlucky self a chance at all is pretty generous if you ask me."

A surge of adrenaline washed through Daniel's veins, mixing with his pent up rage and jump-starting his drive for action. His muscles screamed for a response, and he obeyed without hesitation by sending a tight fist straight into the figure's face.

The collision caused the figure to fall backwards, sending their cap flying and the die in their hand to tumble onto the ground. Daniel's eyes followed the motion, seeing how the darkness rushed away from the hat as it landed next to the die, the rolled 1 glowing brightly on the topmost face. Daniel's adrenaline-soaked mind quickly connected the hat to the movement of the dark clouds in the hallway, and made a choice that could only be described as the 'flight' response in fight or flight: he grabbed it and ran.

"You-" The figure screamed a series of English obscenities mixed with sounds of screeching static and gibberish that clearly had some obscene meaning. "They're gonna fail you now, y!"

Daniel kept running, the darkness rushing out of his way as he navigated the series of hallways. He remembered from their way to the testing room that they only took left turns, so if he only took right, maybe that would bring him back someplace he knew.

He breathed a huge sigh of relief as the darkness dispersed and revealed the bar room where he met the figure previously. His legs vibrated, still feeling the impact of each step during his run. He could feel in his muscles that they didn't have much running left in them; he probably ran more in the past minutes than he had in the entirety of his life combined. Before he could calm his racing heart, he heard the voice of the figure from behind him, shouting in the garbled language that grated on every nerve of his body. He felt a sinking feeling in his chest as he realized that the figure, a native to wherever he was, would catch him sooner or later.

"Well," Daniel said under his breath, anger burning from the figure's comments on his life, "before they get me, I can give that dick hell." The motivation of self-preservation paled in comparison to a newfound motivator: petty revenge.

Daniel used the last of his energy to run to the bar, swinging his arm and sending each and every bottle on the lit stand tumbling to the floor. He grabbed the buckets on the shelves and tossed them across the room, scattering the gray spheres all over the floor. The images of people in the mirrors turned around to look at him, as if judging his movements, so he threw some of the bar tools at them to break the glass. He found some extra bottles and threw them too, for good measure. If he was going to go out, he would make things as unpleasant as possible for the figure.

The figure rushed in before Daniel threw the final bottle, howling in rage.

"What- did you break it all? You idiot, don't you know that'll-"

Daniel did not, in fact, know what the destruction of the bar would do. As the liquids seeped into the floor below, the foundation felt the effects of the music playing in every crevice of its surface. The tiles below bounced with each pound of bass, the concrete cracked with the impacts of drums, and the voices of the melting vocal cubes screamed over each other to create a symphony of howls to accompany the destruction. As all the instruments from each bottle took effect in the flooring, it cracked and jolted, pounding it to pieces and sending those pieces into a void of nothingness below.

The instinct to survive returned to Daniel. The doorway he just came from still had the figure in it, shrouded with the fog of darkness creeping in from the hallway. Directly in front of the bar, he saw another doorway, the one he had first appeared in after his death. With each passing second, the floor broke and fell, leaving expanding holes between him and the hall. If he ran, he'd probably fall. If he stayed, he'd fall for sure. The irony of relying on luck after getting into these circumstances escaping a test of luck wasn't lost on him, but he decided to be angry about that later.

With a deep and possibly final breath, Daniel ran. He felt his legs screaming at him as the voices all around him screamed their distorted tune, but he ignored them all and kept going. His hands gripped harder than they ever had, one to the darkness-repelling hat of the figure, and the other to the sole remaining bottle of musical liquid, in case he needed a final weapon. He ran into the darkness of the hallway, the sounds behind him fading away. The darkness in front of him rushed in whisps around him as he kept going forward. With each step, the clouds of darkness in front of him seemed to lighten, getting lighter and lighter, until he found himself surrounded by a white so bright he couldn't help but close his eyes.

---

"Daniel? Daniel! Ma, I think he's coming to!"

Daniel opened his eyes slowly, letting them adapt to the bright white lights. The fluorescent bulbs above him flickered against the white ceiling almost painfully. As his eyes adjusted, he looked around to find himself in a hospital bed, with tubes and wires hooked up all along his arms and chest.

"Daniel," a familiar voice said. His eyes moved to the side, making eye contact with his sister, then his mother. His mom ran her fingers along the side of his face. "My sweet Daniel, it's going to be okay. You... they hit you pretty hard, and you were out for a while, but they say you're gonna be okay."

"Yeah," his little sister said, tapping her hands on the side of the hospital bed, "the doctor said you're lucky someone found you!"

"Found... me?" Daniel managed to wheeze out, his throat painfully dry.

"They found you and called the hospital. They even left you a gift, for when you get well." She gestured to the other side of the bed.

Daniel's eyes moved, then froze. On the bedside table to his right, there was a deep black cadet cap, a bottle of liquid, and a note.

'Perhaps you're not so unlucky after all.'

#short story #horror #tw: death #anthology #writing

[deadcactuswalking]

REVIEWING THE CHARTS: 15th September 2019

This is a pretty damn busy week all things considered, especially in comparison to the last few weeks which have been incredibly dry, by that I mean “No new arrivals” dry, so without further ado, let’s review the charts.

Top 10

Now I’m puzzled, why hasn’t “Take Me Back to London” by Ed Sheeran featuring Stormzy, remixed by Sir Spyro with additional verses from Jaykae and Aitch (Yes, I’m saying that whole thing every time) been dethroned yet? It’s its third week at #1, and I understand that it’s Ed Sheeran making watered-down white-washed grime music which follows somewhat of a UK hip hop trend with pop sensibilities and riding off the waves of a late 2000s grime/UK garage nostalgia phase, it’s essentially the perfect #1 for late Summer-early Autumn 2019 in Britain, but come on, this isn’t a great song and it’s been so close to stepping down from this spot in the past three weeks, in fact...

Aitch may as well have dethroned himself by technicality this week, since the release of his AitcH20 mixtape (I don’t like the dude’s music but I respect the pun) has propelled his lead single “Taste (Make it Shake)” up a spot to number-two, which is a new peak but not the #1 spot as I very much expected, and dreaded, this week.

Potential #1 “Higher Love” by Kygo and the late Whitney Houston is down a spot to number-three thanks to Aitch’s impact, which fortunately, isn’t notable enough for an Album Bomb feature; neither is Post Malone’s Hollywood’s Bleeding but we will see some of that later on.

“Ladbroke Grove” by AJ Tracey is staying still at number-four.

Meanwhile, we have a humorous blunder on the BBC’s part, who said that Post Malone’s “Circles”, at number-five this week, is “down 6”, implying that Post Malone reached the impossible: A #0 spot on the UK Singles Chart. Pretty impressive. This song has grown on me, especially in album context, but I’m not bothered about it all too much still and I do think “Goodbyes” with Young Thug is miles better.

Joel Corry’s “Love Island anthem”, “Sorry” featuring uncredited vocals from Hayley May, is at number-six this week, which isn’t a change at all from last chart.

Unfortunately missing its chance of #1 now is “3 Nights” by Dominic Fike, down two spots to number-seven. I predict Fike’ll be a one-hit wonder because of his general apathy for promotion and performing live, especially since none of his other singles seem to have matched the success of his breakout song, but that debut album will be what decides it, I suppose.

Lil Tecca is down one space to number-eight with “RAN$OM”, which still isn’t plummeting fast enough – I did a UK Top 40 ranking on my Twitter @cactusinthebank and this just barely missed the bottom of that list, so if you wanted any insight on how I feel about that track, there you go.

Young T & Bugsey ride off the Aitch feature as “Strike a Pose” is up another chart position to number-nine.

Finally, we have a gain I’m ecstatic about, as “Goodbyes” by Post Malone featuring Young Thug gains a second wind, up four spaces to #10 thanks to the album release. More on that later, but I’m glad this returned to the top 10, it is a near-perfect pop song.

Climbers

I’m ecstatic about this gain too as Regard’s Jay Sean remix, “Ride It”, is up 10 spaces (or “down 10” – thanks, BBC) off the debut to #15, becoming Regard’s first ever UK Top 20. Congratulations, but man, who cares? Jay Sean has another hit. It’s his ninth UK Top 20 hit overall and first ever since 2010, I hope this guy makes a comeback. Speaking of people getting their first UK Top 20 hits, “Dance Monkey” by Tones and I had an unexpected boost 12 spaces up to #19, becoming her first ever as well. There are no other climbers but there are a ton of fallers, so...

Fallers

I think I need for the first time in months to separate these fallers by genre, so...

In reverse order of how high up these songs are on the chart unless noted, and starting with pop, EDM and rock(?), “bad guy” by Billie Eilish (Featuring Justin Bieber, kind of) is down six spaces to #37 as this one’s definitely on its way out. Skipping two songs for the sake of the writing to flow, “Ritual” by Tiesto, Jonas Blue and Rita Ora is down four to #28, “Someone You Love” by Lewis Capaldi is down six to #27, “Castles” by Freya Ridings is down six as well to #26, “Beautiful People” by Ed Sheeran featuring Khalid is down five to #24 and “boyfriend” by Social House featuring Ariana Grande is down five to #22.

Our second genre is Taylor Swift, as “You Need to Calm Down” has an end to its second wind thanks to the Lover album release, down eight spots to #36 (It’ll be out pretty soon), and the title track (That’s “Lover”) is down nine positions to #31.

Our third and final genre category worth noting is hip hop and R&B, starting with MIST and Fredo dropping a whopping 26 spaces to #35 with “So High”, just as I start to actually like this song, thanks to what are probably streaming cuts... and that’s actually all for that genre. Huh. Maybe I shouldn’t have split this in the first place.

Dropouts & Returning Entries

Our drop outs seem to all be songs from the last stretch of the charts, in fact all of last week’s #36-#40 have been replaced this week, mostly some songs barely holding onto the UK Top 40, specifically in the realm of hip-hop seemingly, with “I Spy” by Krept & Konan, K-Trap and Headie One dropping out from #39 and “Location” by Dave featuring Burna Boy out from #40, as well as “Wish You Well” by Sigala featuring Becky Hill from #38, while some recent debuts are also out of the chart. “The Man” by Taylor Swift is out from #36 but won’t be back and is probably the result of a combination of a busy week and Lover hype dying off, while “Lalala” by Y2K and bbno$ is out from #37 off of the debut, but will re-enter next week at even possibly a higher position actually. It’s just because it’s a busy week and it happened to break in late, it’s not losing in performance.

There are no returning entries so let’s get into the most EPIC part of the show:

NEW ARRIVALS

#40 – “Slide Away” – Miley Cyrus

Produced by Andrew Wyatt and Mike WiLL Made-It – Peaked at #11 in Slovakia and #47 in the US

You’d be hard-pressed to find a Miley Cyrus song I enjoy, even in eras people seem to praise like Bangerz and... well, just Bangerz. I don’t think I’ll ever be a fan of Cyrus to be honest, I’m definitely not a fan of the slight country twang she has in her voice and I never think her production is any good or even worthwhile, usually provided by Mike WiLL. It’s either completely misguided and cringeworthy like SHE IS COMING or to an even worse extent, Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz, or generic, country-influenced pop slush like her Disney efforts and once again to an even worse extent, Younger Now. I did see a lot of buzz about this track in particular that seemed pretty positive, and I’ve got to say, it took her 16 UK Top 40 hits and a music video being released recently, but she’s finally got a charting song that I like, in fact, I might love this. Those slick guitar riffs that start the song off as well as soulful pitch-shifted vocals set a really sombre atmosphere, propelled by the trap percussion with 808s that really dig into the centre of the mix, and an odd scatting and incoherent vocal sample, which is actually an interesting addition and probably Mike WiLL’s contribution. The chorus here is insanely powerful, with Cyrus’ country twang being more subtle and overall, her performance here is a lot more bearable than normal. The swell the airy synths have here especially in the hook is less non-descript than most modern pop and doesn’t present any grandiosity like you’d expect, especially backed by the strings. It sounds more like acceptance, which is incredibly fitting for the subject matter, which as a result from Cyrus’ split with one of the Hemsworths, is focused on how she wants to safely move on rather than focusing on the past as it’s pretty unhealthy especially as she’s now a grown woman (Which she points out in the pre-chorus), with the fully instrumental and surprisingly lengthy outro (Really love the subtle touches there as well, as the vocal sample comes back briefly as well) full of vocodered synth brass and strings flailing out and going nowhere... much like her marriage. Was that on purpose? Probably not, actually, I doubt Mike WiLL really cares, he was probably there to programme some trap drums that sounded a tad sombre and then move on to giving Rae Sremmurd a reason to be making music. Yeah, this is pretty great, although I’d prefer the writing to be a little less undercooked, with a variation on the verse rather than a simple reprise, but I’m not complaining about how it is now really, considering this is a massive improvement on... pretty much everything else. Check it out if you haven’t already.

#38 – “Liar” – Camila Cabello

Produced by watt, The Monsters and the Strangerz and Jon Bellion – Peaked at #13 in Singapore and #56 in the US

I love how history repeats itself. In 2017, Camila Cabello released a double A-side single of sorts, with a trendy pop song following what was popular at the time and a slightly left-field Latin-tinged R&B cut. The trendy pop song, “OMG” with Quavo, underperformed, although the Latin-tinged R&B cut with the incoherent Young Thug guest verse was “Havana”, a #1 hit and one of the most popular songs of the decade, later ending up on the album. Similarly, the “dark pop” Billie Eilish rip-off that is “Shameless” was given the obvious label push but fans seem to really prefer the Latin one, “Liar”, which shows they should probably stop marketing Cabello as a pop star, but we’ll see how that goes in a few months when the album releases. For now, however, we’ve got “Liar”... wait, why the hell does Lionel Richie have a writing credit?

Okay, so I’ve covered 1994’s Year-End list for a Top 5 Best and Worst Hit Songs feature, and I’ve listened to the 1984 list as well for a Top 10 Best Hit Songs feature for that one, and as I guess is a gift of fate, one of the best songs from the 1994 list and one of the worst from the 1984 list are both sampled and/or interpolated in this Camila Cabello song, and trust me, once you hear both of them, you can’t un-hear them, and I heard them immediately. It’s not subtle, but it doesn’t necessarily need to be, the song can still be a catchy pop ditty with the blatant sample... but no amount of Melodyne and vocal manipulation can help Cabello from her rubbery and squeaky, slightly off-key(?) falsetto cooing. It’s not sensual or “Broken”, it just sounds awful. Oh, yeah, and the ska beat is mediocre, with hilariously plastic horns, especially in comparison with “Havana”... Honestly, replacing Pharrell with Jon Bellion and removing Young Thug entirely is probably the worst decision the label made. Nothing here is enticing except an admittedly tight bassline, but what’s the point? Just listen to “All That She Wants” by Ace of Base, download some extra FL Studio saxophone sound effects (Even though the cheap horns in the original are dated, they sound a lot better than the recreation here), and you’ve got a somewhat better version of this song. It’s a weak effort, but my expectations weren’t high in the first place. Still better than “All Night Long (All Night)” though, but that’s a pretty difficult feat.

#21 – “Buss Down” – Aitch featuring ZieZie

Produced by Mojam

Remember ZieZie? I wrote paragraphs on paragraphs about that “Fine Girl” song he had but it really was an enigma to me at the time and still kind of is. Anyway, this is the instant grat single and breakout song from Aitch’s second mixtape, AitcH20 (There are layers to that pun and I respect it). I don’t care about Aitch all that much, he just seems to be a safer alternative and pretty accessible guest rapper, like your grandmother’s favourite British trap artist. This is his fifth UK Top 40 single and ZieZie’s second (I never thought I’d say those two words in my life)... but first of all, I commented on this when I talked about “Fine Girl” but the dude’s released more singles so it’s even more jarring now – why is his pre-fame single “Low Life” still listed on Spotify as “ZieZie- “Low Life”” in both the album and track title? He’s signed to a major label, he’s on one of the biggest UK rappers’ promo single, how has no-one fixed this? Sigh, well, the song’s okay. It’s very much not a trap cut, it takes some influence from the Afroswing that people like MoStack make, especially with the piano riff that’s used as the main synth melody, as well as some cute 808s and an admittedly great hook from ZieZie... but the beat doesn’t change and Aitch is existent. The chorus is four lines, all of which sung twice in one chorus, which happens four times in the song. It’s mostly Aitch with corny lyrics and a really sloppy flow on the verses, with a third verse from ZieZie that is absolutely dreadful, pushes this song to mediocre for me. Not only is it incoherent enough for there to be some [?]s on Genius still, but it’s about taking your girl... but letting ZieZie’s friend have sex with your girl, although apparently your girl likes it when her and ZieZie have rough sex, even though your girl is having sex with ZieZie’s friend instead and your girl loves how caring ZieZie is... Huh?

#20 – “Sounds of the Skeng” – Stormzy

Produced by Sir Spyro

Now, THIS is some good British hip hop. This is Stormzy’s 17th UK Top 40 hit and tenth UK Top 20 single, and it’s pretty great. I understand why it didn’t have a Top 5 debut like the sweet gospel-pop number “Crown” or addictive bop that is “Vossi Bop”, because this is just straight-up grime. It’s not UK garage, there aren’t any pop beats or Jorja Smith vocal samples, it doesn’t go soft, it goes hard. It’s produced by Sir Spyro, it has three rapidly-flowing verses, and it’s an absolute banger. You can barely even hear Stormzy under the dramatic synths and bursts of brass, but you can tell he’s just going and going and going. The only sense of melody we get in this bass-rattling single really, other than the synths and smooth jazz horns in the left channel, is the producer tag that plays briefly in the chorus and never again. There are several moments here I just love, not even necessarily lyrical moments although those are usually on point here, but Stormzy’s wild inflections throughout. Most verses start with a simple, Westernised modern flow and then go into a more speedy and aggressive delivery that barely doesn’t clip in the mix. The first verse is comparatively relaxed, with a pretty lazy cadence, making a pretty obscure Kendrick Lamar reference for whatever reason, with the “Perfect!” sample from Street Fighter perfectly implemented. I like how the first verse seems more like a threat while the second verse and third verse are right into the action, as he asks “old Mike” not to resurface, and in the chorus, even mentions old persona Wicked Skengman or Mr. Skeng. The title of the song has a lot of thought into it as well, being a reference to The Sound of Music juxtaposed with grimey London slang term “Skeng” and the Sir Spyro producer tag, “Sounds of the Sir”. Stormzy starts dissing British rappers who use too much Americanised slang and beat selection in the second verse, with lazy, dismissive ad-libs almost mocking trap-rappers overseas like Migos, and then he reaches the peak of the song. The second verse, personally my favourite, is where he has a machine gun flow enraged outburst, and it is insane, mentioning his two BRIT Award wins while also keeping an impressive delivery that is pretty much just really quick yelling, it’s really intense, but he sounds focused and determined. The third verse is the cooldown, paying tribute to So Solid Crew and their flow and ad-libs, as well as some pretty clever wordplay regarding other rappers Flipz and MIST, as well as Giggs, whose song “Whippin’ Excursion” is rhymed with a brag about how tall he is. He’s 6’5’’, which is towering above me. All three verses here have their own unique flow and cadence, as well as theme seemingly, but that’s not all that clear right now. I’m excited for this one in album context, but this is great already. Check it out.

#11 – “Hollywood’s Bleeding” – Post Malone

Produced by Louis Bell and Brian Lee

Really? The title track? I mean, understandable, it’s the first song on the album and it’s not a bad song at all, but there are so many better and more interesting songs on the album that you’d figue would debut high. “Saint-Tropez”, the “Wow.”-type banger? “Enemies” with DaBaby? The awesome alt-rock banger “Allergic”? Kanye West-produced “Internet”? Future and Halsey pretty much saving the ballad “Die for Me”? Hell, I figured the record-breaking “Take What You Want” with Travis Scott and the legendary Ozzy Osbourne of Black Sabbath would be the obvious choice to chart in the UK, it has Ozzy on it for goodness’ sake! Thanks to UK chart rules, this is the only track from the #1 album allowed though, and it’s not a bad song at all, far from it. It’s just a good more than half of the album, which admittedly is pretty great especially for a Post Malone album, is better than it, most by far. Regardless, it’s Post’s twelth UK Top 40 hit and 11th UK Top 20 hit, and it’s a pretty good introductory song. I should note though, that Post’s last album, beerbongs & Bentleys, also had its non-single intro track with no features, “Paranoid”, also co-produced by Louis Bell, debut and peak at #11, just more than a year ago. What a coincidence. Anyway, the song (And album may I add) starts with some sombre vocals from Post complaining about Hollywood and he sounds pretty great, with less strained vocals than usual and a slight warble which I’m actually a fan of, which is well integrated into the chorus, but when that trap beat hits, it knocks. It’s a great drop. Otherwise, eh, I love Post’s performance here, with a lot of flow shifts throughout both verses, but it’s a pretty standard beat until that one note Post holds into a beat switch, with a very glitchy rock beat with oddly mixed 808s, and it sounds pretty great... until it’s gone in like less than 10 seconds. Good song, but nowhere close to his best.

Conclusion

All things considered, this is a pretty great week. I’d probably give Best of the Week to Stormzy for “Sounds of the Skeng” with tied Honourable Mention going to Miley Cyrus and Post Malone for “Slide Away” and “Hollywood’s Bleeding”. Worst of the Week is going to Camila Cabello for just plain mediocrity in “Liar”, so Aitch is scot-free (Although ZieZie is both the best and worst part of that song). Follow me on Twitter @cactusinthebank for, to be honest, SpongeBob memes and very infrequent musical commentary and ramblings, and I’ll see you next week!