Dale
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Oh, the joy of being the parent of a teenager.
Our oldest son came home from school today, and almost immediately thereafter went after our middle som in a vicious attack because he supposedly ate some of HIS precious Skittles, that he was hoarding in his room. After about five minutes of this, my wife reached the end of her tether and laid into him good, then proceeded to enter his room and take out everything he had been hoarding. We found all kinds of things we had been seeking: our working flashlight, matches, the vacuum attachment, and the food stash. Tempers flared, things were said, and he stormed off to Grandma's while we cleaned up the mess.
This was the straw that broke the camel's back for us; we had long grown tired of his prideful hoarding MINE MINE MINE ways. After some consulting with Grandma, we did something pretty drastic. We moved his things into the room the middle and youngest child share, and gave the middle child (who gives us little trouble so far) the room to himself.
When our oldest came home and found out, he was really mad, as can be expected, but when we explained why, he begrudgingly accepted. He's not a really bad kid, just a teenage boy. They just seem hard-wired to explode. Ugh.
This connects to music, I promise.
It gave me a chance to think of my room when I was a hotheaded teenager. The house was tiny, the room extra-small, but I spent a lot of time there, and I loved it. Since I'm a guy, there wasn't a lot of decoration, a few posters, an award or two from my wrestling career. The hole in the closet door where I punched it in a fit of rage after my mom had chewed me out for something. My collection of Corona bottles (hey, wasn't always LDS), and of course my music.
Until my senior year, my only music source (aside from the clock radio) was a tape recorder, on which I would play my cassettes. It was mono, so it sucked, but it was better than nothing. Many a lonely night was spent with that tape recorder, listening to Soem Great Reward and lip-synching along.
For my 17th birthday, my mom bit the bullet and finally bought me a stereo. Remember the Yorx brand? Geez, they were cheap, but you'd better believe I was happy to have it. For the first time, I could copy my vinyl albums to cassette for later listening. It didn't have a CD player (this was 1986, CD's were still considered outrageously expensive items), but it did have radio, vinyl, and a dual-cassette system. I thought I was in heaven. That same stereo made it with me to college, and later into married life. In fact, I'm not sure how we lost it, because I don't think it ever broke.
Wow, late night posting leads to much rambling. Ah well.
Wow, it's been ages since I've posted. What's up with that? Well, work has been killing me recently, and I've been job-hunting in my spare time. Yup, the time I would normally spend writing posts has been spent polishing my resume and posting on Monster, Dice, and CareerBuilder. Not good times, bad times.
I was listening to this album though, and this song tickled my ears so much that, even though I know that I have loads of yard work and such and really should be asleep, I knew this had to be posted.
Somewhere there's a place where this song dominated the pop charts when it was released in 2003. Listen to Kate Hinote's lovely soaring vocals; the cooing at the end is especially yummy. William King drives the song forth with his shuffling rhythm, and the guitars from Tony Hamera grind along in perfect early-90's style. It may not be the most original thing going, but it's extremely well-done.
From what I've gleaned from a few minutes research, Ether Aura grew from the ashes of Detroit band Caelum Bliss, who moved from standard goth to shoegaze to Garbage-esque electro-pop. They broke up in 1999, but shortly thereafter reformed as deathgirl.com, releasing one album of trashy fun electro-pop.
Sometime around 2001, deathgirl.com broke up, and nothing nore appeared until 2004, when Tony and William got back together, recruited Kate and bassist Brad Haupt, and formed Ether Aura. The song in the red button is from their debut Crash, released 2005. They have since released second album Before We Could Sing, which hits the same high notes as Crash.
From what I've gathered, this is a band loaded with songwriting talent, that has experienced more than their fair share pf problems. I'm hoping, for once, that they keep playing in this incarnation.
In the interest of filling in this gap as much as possible, here's the vidoe for Crash:
Comments
DOOD
GOOD LUCK on yo job search
shoegaze Saturdays?
OH HELL NAH
I HAVE BEEN GONE TOO LONG
haven't given the shoes a good look down in a while....maybe i'll join ya, got a song in mind
Dale, about darn time for a Shoegaze Saturday post from you. thanks for the 'gazer pop - YUM! i miss your posts and good luck on the job hunt. (No! Don't abandon the PC! ;D)
I found this yesterday on a music blog, and felt a need to share:
This is debut single "Amplify from New York band The Kiss Off, who(in my research) were just named FILTER magazine's Best Unsigned Band. I can certainly see why. In fact, everything from the sound to the video's production gives off a strong smell of vintage New Order.
For compare/contrast, here's the video that brought New Order into my life for the first time, The Perfect Kiss.
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Wow..........it has been a long time since hearing a song has made me feel the way that video did. You are so right about the New Order look to it, I am just blown away by how good that sounded. To think I just did an anti 80's post..........
If you liked that, five of the six songs on their EP Brace are available here. And here's some more info on the Kiss Off:
With singer Sam Tyndall’s mannered, Ian McCullough-esque vocals riding over the rest of the band’s stylized songcraft, the band is no run-of-the-mill 80s throwback. The Kiss- Off take their sonic cues from a broad swath of late 70s/early 80s Brits, including Brian Eno, David Bowie, and, of course, Echo and the Bunnymen. The band isn’t just aping the 80s, though. You can hear the modern NYC grit beneath all the retro sheen, and you can hear a band that is rapidly expanding its sonic reach.
The Kiss-Off was formed in 2007 by guitarist Adam De Rosa, bassist Nathan Lithgow and keyboardist/ button pusher Oliver Edsforth. This line-up was later joined by drummer Michael Resnick and singer Sam Tyndall. The Kiss-Off will release their debut six song EP “Brace in the Spring of 2008. Lucky New Yorkers can hit the EP release party tonight (5/12) at the Mercury Lounge; the rest of us will just have to wait for the band’s Myspace page to update with a link to buy the EP:
Fortunately, the whole of the EP is currently streaming on the band’s Myspace page, so check that out ASAP.
Comments
My first cassette deck was a Norelco, thought the only made shavers didn't you, back in '70 or '71 maybe, recorded bootleg vinyl GD albums onto cassette with it, I still have the tapes but the deck is loooong gone and the vinyl was borrowed from a friend I didn't stay in touch with.
Good luck with the horder D, I come from a long line of New England packrats and hoarding can eventually develop into a real closet problem ;)
I bet if you look under the bed or in the back corner of the shelf in the closet in your eldest son's ex-room, you'll find that stereo.
I got a Yorx stereo when I was a teen, it didn't last that long though.