* Providing the A's to the 5 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED Q's today is JPW — a creator out of the Sonoran Desert who recently dropped the excellent Something Happening / Always Happening on Fort Lowell Records, the first pressing of which has already sold out, but you can now get in on the 2nd-pressing on yellow vinyl (and you can catch the track ‘Wealth of the Canyon’ on the HI54 Mix CD ‘420 ALL DAY’) // JPW photo by Sam Means
#1 - WHAT IS THE ONE ALBUM (OR EP OR SONG) THAT YOU THINK SHOULD BE THE VERY NEXT MUSICAL THING THAT EVERYONE PRESSES PLAY ON THE NEXT TIME THEY FIND THEMSELVES THINKING “WHAT SHOULD I LISTEN TO NOW”?
As a lifelong Star Trek fan, I was chuffed when psychedelic instrumentalist Frank Maston included a Trek song, “Beyond Antares,” in his recent Aquarium Drunkard Lagniappe Session.
Written by Wilbur Hatch and featuring lyrics written by Trek’s “other Gene,” showrunner Gene Coon—whose progressive beliefs majorly influenced the franchise—Maston takes the “23rd century love song” in a library music direction, evoking the synthed out sound of vintage Italian films. Here’s hoping he does a whole album of Trek tunes, I’d be way into it.
#2 - WHAT IS THE ONE MOVIE OR TV SHOW THAT YOU THINK SHOULD BE NEXT IN EVERYBODY’S NETFLIX QUEUE (OK, DOESN’T HAVE TO BE NETFLIX, WE’RE ALL INTERNET ADULTS HERE AND KNOW HOW TO FIND ANYTHING ONLINE, ONE WAY OR ANOTHER)?
Gone way before its time after only two fantastic seasons, Lodge 49 was a great show about the persistence of magic and meaning set against a backdrop of Southern California mundanity.
Part hermetic/alchemical rabbit hole, part The Big Lebowski, part Office Space, it’s ultimately a show about the power of community and the sacred nature of connectedness. It’s deeply funny but also touching, grounded in blue collar realites but given over to magical realism, and the cast is fantastic. Its golden hour vibe and surf and psych-pop soundtrack was a major influence on Something Happening/Always Happening.
#3. I (AND BY “I” I MEAN “THE PERSON THAT IS READING THIS”) AM GOING TO THE LOCAL BOOK STORE (OK, MAYBE THE LOCAL LIBRARY FIRST) TO FIND THE VERY NEXT BOOK THAT I WILL BE PUTTING SOME EXTREMELY VALUABLE ‘ME-TIME' ASIDE FOR. WHICH BOOK WOULD YOU GET, IF YOU WERE ME (AND, I SUPPOSE, YOU HADN’T ALREADY READ WHAT YOU’RE ABOUT TO SUGGEST)?
A Manual for Cleaning Women, Lucia Berlin. This collection of short stories is tough and terse, which makes the sporadic bursts of tenderness that much more moving. Berlin’s sentences are usually short. She leaves plenty unsaid, which allows more space to wander into these semi-autobiographical tales from the deserts of Mexico, the southwestern US, and Chile.
She’s got one story included in here, “My Jockey,” about tending to a wounded jockey in an emergency room, that only takes one and a half pages to paint the most vivid, human scene.
#4 - WHAT IS THE ONE WEBSITE (OR JUST ANY OLD INTERNET THING: APP, GIF, SERVICE, WHATEVER) THAT YOU WOULD GET REALLY DOWN IN THE DUMPS ABOUT IF IT WERE TO SUDDENLY GO AWAY?
I probably laugh at something @DRIL posts on Twitter once a day. I guess you can find out who @DRIL actually is if you look, but I’ve never had any interest in knowing the IRL person behind the account. I prefer to only engage with the disembodied prophetic and puerile digital cypher who appears in my feed.
Rather than screenshot a favorite, here’s a picture of my copy of Dril Official “Mr. Ten Years” Anniversary Collection, which is both 1) the only physical book collection of tweets that has ever needed to exist and 2) going to come in handy if the servers really do melt away someday.
#5 - AND FINALLY… PLEASE GIVE ONE COMPLETELY UNAIDED RECOMMENDATION THAT YOU THINK EVERYONE SHOULD START DOING / USING / WATCHING / EATING / THINKING / QUITTING / ETC-ING TO MAKE THEIR LIVES A LITTLE BIT MORE BETTER AND/OR BEARABLE.
I’ve been playing around with that weird state right before I wake up in the morning, when I start stirring and coming out of deep sleep. I’ll focus on feelings of universal wholeness or “imagine” the sensation of a enveloping cosmic love. These moments feel gentle and comforting in general, just kind of nice zones to float through and exist in, but a few have taken on an ecstatic quality. It makes for a nice way to begin a day.
Of course, there are lots of mornings where I hit snooze two or three times too, which can be very nice too.
