2008 has passed unromantically into 2009.
We are now three years closer to imminent doom, if you ask my wife or the Mayans or Nostradamus or any of those other crackpots. I stopped worrying about the 'bolt from the blue' when I was 8 years old and read Marvel Secret Wars.
( -- for those not hip to this Jim Shooter masterpiece/action figure tie-in, all the Marvel superheros and super villains (like The Wrecker?) are scuttled off to some patchwork planet to fight an epic battle to amuse this godlike entity known as the Beyonder. The winner of the battle will be given anything they desire... so of course, super baddest dude of all, Dr. Doom, decides that rather than fighting the same heroes that had been kicking his ass for the last 30 years - he would try to usurp the power directly from the Beyonder. Well, the crazy shit worked, kinda, and rather than just disintegrating the heroes into dust, he gets all dramatic and tosses a powerful energy blast into their HQ to shred them to pieces. 
Of course, because the power of the Beyonder is so great, Doom cannot contain it all within his mortal mind and it runs astray and his paranoia begins to bring back the dead superheroes until they are all back in action and kick Doom's ass... again. It's a damn good story for being written simply to sell a toy line. )
Anyway, I always feel like I have to rummage thru every top ten or top fifty or top whatever list that comes out this time of year.... whether about music or movies or books, I really give these lists a shot. I guess because I just want to find something new that someone else found merit in... so I am ecure I wont be completely busted.
From the always hit-or-miss Pitchfork Best Albums of 2008, I found this posthumous gem from 
Arthur Russell... the LP Love Is Overtaking Me. Boy... I cannot stop listening to this collection of very emotionally charged 'folk' compositions. Russell's ability to paint a story over his faint but powerful acoustic guitar is as compelling as it is subdued. Russell seemed to travel in quite luminary circles during his all too brief time on the Earth - Allen Ginsberg, Philip Glass, David Byrne. Those relationships make sense when you hear the literary quality of his lyricism and the classical, maybe even minimalist, arrangement of his compositions.
Hey, for once, Pitchfork got it right and stopped worrying about BPM and more about authentic song crafting and human storytelling thru the folk that isn't folk.
Love Is Overtaking Me was digitally restored by Chris Taylor of Grizzly Bear. Culled from the many tapes Russell recorded during his final 10 - 20 years before passing from AIDS in 1991. Released on the Audika label, I don't think it will be the last posthumous collection we see from Arthur Russell... at least I hope not.
<click here for download>
8.1.09
Calendar years and I am supposed to do what...?
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2 comments:
Well I have to double back to my source of this disinformation. He is not someone I would think that would tell distruths about subjects this close to my heart.
Marevl came out with a new What If? that was What if Dr. Doom kept the Beyonder's power. It was kind of cool in that he put everyone under Doom's rule on the planet, but created a Utopian society.
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