You Rach You Lose

gabrielkahane:

[Gabriel’s Guide] shifts neatly from the sound-worlds of the vernacular to the avant-garde. Punchy “Motor Tours” transition between sections and recall the bustling postminimalism of John Adams. Mr. Kahane labels interludes “Knee Plays,” after Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s “Einstein on the Beach.”
Will Robin was nice enough to preview Gabriel’s Guide to the 48 States in The New York Times last week.
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and I will be performing the piece at Carnegie Hall this Saturday.
Get your Tickets!

I’m going to this! Are you going to this?? Music and history nerds, spread the word!

[Gabriel’s Guide] shifts neatly from the sound-worlds of the vernacular to the avant-garde. Punchy “Motor Tours” transition between sections and recall the bustling postminimalism of John Adams. Mr. Kahane labels interludes “Knee Plays,” after Philip Glass and Robert Wilson’s “Einstein on the Beach.”

Will Robin was nice enough to preview Gabriel’s Guide to the 48 States in The New York Times last week.

Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and I will be performing the piece at Carnegie Hall this Saturday.

Get your Tickets!

I’m going to this! Are you going to this?? Music and history nerds, spread the word!

kevinclarkcomposer:

So Victoria made this awesome awesome poster. And Choc O Pain (The newest and awesomest bakery in Jersey City. I’m addicted. It’s a problem.) is sponsoring bread to go with the delectables we’re making to sell at the show!

More to the point, that image is a public domain piece by Arthur Rackham. It’s about Midsummer, and it’s for a fairy playing a double bass, and another one playing percussion. Not quite marimba and cello but HOLY CRAP HOW DID I NOT FIND OUT ABOUT THIS THING YEARS AGO!

I saw a version of this when it was at Brooklyn Public Library because I am extremely predictable. It’s beautiful. Go to this one, even though it’s not at a library.

"I make a little bit of a big deal about this because more people than me need to get paid for the stuff I do to happen. There’s been a lot of talk in recent years about labels and publishers as if they were hurdles to be cleared, obstacles to be circumnavigated. I can’t speak for anybody else’s experiences, though stories of label skullduggery abound, and shame on such labels. But my personal experience in independent music is that the people releasing Mountain Goats records aren’t “The Label.” They’re my friends, and they’re also almost all musicians themselves. They are people who share exactly equivalent praise or blame for the music I make, because you wouldn’t have heard it without them, by which I mean without their support and nurturing and faith I would never have made the music in the first place. So while I’m, again, grateful that people think of my well-being, it’s my opinion that the people who make the music available - especially independent labels, especially independent stores - deserve your patronage, and it’s 100% ok if I have to sell a few more records at retail to make as much as I’d make selling them at shows. I don’t do what I do in a vacuum. Without the labels that put out my stuff and the stores that stocked it and the people working in the stores who told people browsing to maybe check out the Mountain Goats, I would almost doubtless not even own a guitar right now."

— JD, publishing philosopher, appreciator of the handsell

I will have this song in my head all day even more than usual, because HAPPY BOOK BIRTHDAY FIONA MAAZEL!

(Source: Spotify)

johndarnielle:

the sleeve that held the boarding pass from my flight from Des Moines through Kansas City to Atlanta on August 2, 2001 - if this is what I think it is, I was going to Athens to play at Team Clermont’s Blue Ribbon Ball. All summer I’d been working on new songs for an album I’d be recording in October for 4AD. The album was about these characters I’d dreamed up a long time ago; their broader story involved an alcohol-soaked trek from California through Nevada and then bottom-crawling across the country until they wound up in northern Florida.

I narrowed the focus of the action as the summer progressed, but this shows that as of August 2001 I was still playing with the “they leave California” part of the story, which was and kinda still is my favorite part. Up top it says “Bottom Feeders,” which I remember at that point as both a potential song and album title, and the lyric reads: “if you don’t give a rat a pellet/he’s not going to push the lever/take one last look at the west coast/say goodbye forever”

I saved the rat for the title of “Alpha Rats Nest,” I wrote the lyric to “No Children” in the motel when I got to Athens, a lot of time passed and then I ran across this while digging through old notebooks last night and here we all are

This is your periodic reminder than John Darnielle is really good at Tumblr.

kevinclarkcomposer:

This is a film of a setting of a poem inspired by a tweet by a robot. I love the internet. Jason Buckwalter and Kimberly Christie are thoroughly charming, and John Belkot did a great job directing this little film. Victoria Nece did the title sequence and color treatment that makes the ‘train platform’ complete. I love strange, little poems. When you’re writing a ‘song cycle’ or piece of ‘chamber music’ per se, you often have to take ten minutes with this sort of text. Or when you write a song you have at least three. But part of the beauty of these poems is their size, and the quiet space they create around themselves. One of my favorite things about the internet, filled as it is with brevity and low budget film, is the chance to do a piece of this scale and have it feel at home. This is how I read poetry, and how I love poetry, and for all that it’s hard to fit ‘being a composer’ into ‘the internet’, this works. So thanks, Erin, Jason, Kimberly, John, and Victoria, for making this possible. I’m very grateful. (via No Experiences No. 2 | Kevin Clark)

A musical film of a poem of a tweet by Horse E-books! YOU GUYS!

atriabooks:

It was written in 1984 but only became a hit in the digital age. The amazing story of “the most perfect song in the world.” (via 25 Things You Might Not Know About “Hallelujah”)

Team Alan Light 4Evah And Evah.

And, the rest of the conversation…

In which John Darnielle responds to my question about why he called his own song Going To Georgia “misogynist garbage” at a recent show.

Update: A little more.

rebloggiftguide:

What’s on your wishlist? What do you want for your nearest and dearest? What’s your favorite book, movie, album, game, cocktail, or best-loved anything?

Tumblr wants you! We’ve seen lots of great recommendations this holiday season, but we’d like to add one small innovation: Instead of a few contributors, we’ll have millions. And who knows the greatest stuff in art and design, fashion and food, gadgets and tech, or TV and literature better than the Tumblr community? Join us in creating the world’s largest gift guide.

This Wednesday, all day long, post your favorite things and tag them #tumblrgiftguide. We’ll reblog some standouts onto a special blog. Follow us here, or just track the tag to see every fantastic idea to give and get this December. Happy Holidays!

A fun little project for those of you with books, albums, designs, foods, toys, gadgets, etc to plug or beg for…