Lost to AIDS, but Still Friended →
Modest by the standards of memorial Web sites like Tributes.com — a for-profit company that amasses 80 million obituaries — Mr. Bartlett’s site, gayhistory.wikispaces.com, is far from the first AIDS commemoration. But its appearance now links it to a resurgence of attempts to reclaim the memories of thousands who died during a calamitous era, when H.I.V. was still a death sentence. It connects the dead to one another, to a larger community and to groups of potential new “friends” using technology that most of those it commemorates did not live to experience.
“Everyone knows AIDS is a big issue, but for people 25 and under, it’s not really a topic of discussion,” said Evan Urbania, a 29-year-old marketer who regularly visits the Gay History Wiki. “I’m a social media guy, and the importance of involving the stories of people who have passed on, particularly as a gay man whose development was influenced by people who are 20 or 30 years older, is very powerful to me.”
Online stories told by men of an earlier generation motivated Mr. Urbania to take up volunteer work in the AIDS-care community. “One guy told stories of smuggling AZT from Mexico to the U.S., when it was unavailable,” he said, referring to an early AIDS drug. “He was going over the border to bring it back. It becomes a huge problem for us as a generation if we forget these experiences that shaped and guided what it is to be gay today”
“She’s known for pushing the boundaries on what people expect of a popstar, but this time Lady Gaga may have gone too far … The 23-year-old shocked attendees by lighting up a cigarette and inhaling deeply - despite the fact smoking indoors is illegal in British Columbia.”
hahahaha a) “too far” and b) “inhaling deeply”
Punk bitch.
I’m kind of loving the Fuck Yeah Lady Gaga reader submissions, so I’m indulging my inner teenager.
Update: Fame monster.
The masters at work. Anyone that thinks that this type of music is easier to make than a traditional guitar-based band format is an uninformed idiot.
The Witchfinder. Psychedelia at its best.
The new Amorphous Androgynous sound.
In early March 2008, the band released a new online album as Amorphous Androgynous entitled ”The Peppermint Tree and Seeds of Superconsciousness”, which they claim is “A collection of psychedelic relics from The Amorphous Androgynous, 1967-2007”. The release retains the sound of their last two psychedelic albums, while expanding on the element of funk first introduced on 2005’s ”Alice in Ultraland”.
Slider, from ISDN
ISDN is a music album by experimental electronica artists The Future Sound of London which was released in two different versions in 1994 and 1995. The music on the album is edited together from various live broadcasts that the band had broadcast to radio stations all over the world using ISDN, which at the time was a relatively new technology.
The rhythm at the beginning consists of samples of women beating water with their hands while they wash clothes in a river.
“Lifeforms” followed in 1994 to critical acclaim. The album featured unconventional use of percussion interspersed with cyclopean ambient segments. The eponymous single from the album featured Elizabeth Fraser of the Cocteau Twins on vocals. The album itself featured epic, ambient soundscapes, with each track flowing from one to the next with no pauses in between. Throughout the record, familiar motifs and samples repeated themselves, sitting alongside tropical birdsong, rainfall, wind and an array of other exotic sounds, lending the album a natural, organic feel, backed up by the environmental landscapes that filled the artwork booklet.
Why is it, everybody, from the fucking fish and chip shop to a magazine ends up selling itself, getting the millions and retiring. Why don’t people keep going with it, why can’t they change it so that it keeps being important to them. Why didn’t Anita Roddick keep going with Body Shop, why did it get so alien to her that she had to sell it, why? Surely she’s making so many millions she can get the right people that she loves to keep going with the ethos; there’s something dangerous there.
— Garry Cobain, FSOL
FSOL Digital Warehouse →
This is for the hardcore collector, but I would start with their major releases. Stay tuned…
The Future Sound of London — We Have Explosive
FSOL is by far my favorite band of all time. Dead Cities is a dystopic nightmare of gorgeous soundscapes, and while this breakout track kicks ass, the rest of the album is even better.
Interestingly, their sound took a completely unexpected turn toward psychedelic Indian-infused pop/rock for their last several albums, and once you get past the jarring paradigm shift you begin to hear the absolute genius behind it.
Prepare for more fangirl FSOL posting….
Full disclosure: I have an unhealthy obsession with the song “I’ll Be Home For Christmas.”
I have eleven versions of it in a playlist for this time of year, by legends like Dolly Parton, The Carpenters, Bette Midler, and Diana Krall. Pretty much every great artist has covered this masterpiece of holiday warmth/sadness.
My favorite treatment, and the one that got me hooked on this fixation, is by Sarah McLachlan (above). She gives it that minor key magic that she does so well, and almost brings me to tears every time I listen.
I will most likely not be going home to VA for Christmas. Jeff will either be in the hospital still or unable to travel, and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else but here with him. So these lyrics will have deeper resonance as I spend my first year ever away from my family for the holiday. Of course my real home is with Jeff and our dog Rocco now, but that doesn’t mean I won’t be curling up with a bottle of Maker’s Mark with this playlist in the background at some point.
Christmas Eve will find meWhere the love light beams
I’ll be home for Christmas
If only in my dreams
