They Say It's Just Like Before You Were Born, but I Think I was There - There as in Here - Back Then

 It is 2:05 am on a Thursday - or, I guess it's a Friday now. but it was a Thursday when I got here - and I am being dragged, one hand on the collar of my shirt, one on the waist of my jeans, to the door of the Hotel Vernon. I am thrown, bodily, from that red door into the gutter of Kelly Square, which was a 17-and-a-half way intersection at the time (which I would venture was the most efficient way to combine 3 one-way streets, three major urban arteries, one gas station, and one auxiliary interstate highway). I deserve this completely. For, you see, I am belligerent, a moment ago holding still and shouting at the top of my lungs, determined in all obstinacy to hold down one barstool until daylight, or Sunday evening if they'll let me. But the bars close at 2 (last call at 1:30. Puritanical fucks. Fucking assholes.). My body is brimming with pathogens unknown to science - medicine-resistant superbugs from the frosted mugs, peanut bucket, and pool table all racing to begin the self-replicating processes throughout my body to crush my immune system and ultimately destroy the human race.

It is 10:45pm on a Friday. The Vernon has been closed for nearly two full years. It is bustling respectfully, pool balls clacking, music is playing from the jukebox at a reasonable volume. The lighting is not "dim and grungy," it is "soft and atmospheric." The crowd is the same, but a little older, somehow a little wearier. The ship room isn't open yet, but the book is open - if you got a bill, you can sign up and use the room, any day they're open - Thursday through Saturday, 3PM to midnight. 

 A few weeks after its re-opening, it would change its name to "The Vernon on the Square." The men's bathroom still smells like piss, detectable from a little ways away. But the beers are still $1 for Narragansett, Rolling Rock, or PBR. 

blast from the past volume 2: Mumfords Sons (MANDALA EFFECT)

This is totally messing with my head. 

In the early 2010s (not 90s - not Blues Traveller), there was this phenomenon, I swear, of people that would play bluegrass style indie rock with crazy gang vocals. It felt real... familiar... American.

But no one I talk to seems to have any memory of this band! I think they were called Mumford's Son. They had some swagger, but they weren't like Blues Traveller, this band could write a song. I think they later would work with the Late Avicci? 

I tried asking at my local record store about this band and no one would tell me anything. I bet they get lots of guys asking about fake bands trying to fuck with the experts heads

Their big song was called "Lion King" and the lead singer (I think his name was Travis) voice would kind of quiver but he would say f*ck. It was big on pop radio, I swear to god

I tried googling it but I kept getting results for Blues Traveller

Blues Traveller arent even folk or old time

Please help?

do you remember the first time?

 

bez, shell shocked from tha e (madchester)*

*this was originally much more focused on the happy mondays. it isn't now, but i like this picture.

i went to a britpop night in sunny la. i was the youngest person there by 20 years. i met people that went to the same college as me, that were into the same music, but they were almost disheartened that we shared the same cultural objects and obsessions. one of them was a quiz kid donnie style professional game show player. he was the best one, although i was warned he was the devil (he wore seersucker and linen shirts). a woman told me she was my mother's age; we kissed during babies by pulp. she pogo'd around the room buoyantly. i didn't notice the wedding ring on her finger, until my roommate pointed it out to me over 4 am dim sum, as i tried to talk my way out of aiding sin. drinks were too much, a gin and tonic wasn't work it so we opted for jumbo vodka sodas. my roommate complained about the lack of american music (except for morrissey, who he sees as a world citizen) it was a britpop night and they played happy mondays which i guess wasn't really britpop but sort of appropriate. i wasn't complaining when fools gold came on. or be my baby. i guess such great heights is where i really started to draw the line. i like to dance, and i think people should make more rock music you can dance to. i had more fun than if i went to another club. happy mondays best band in fuckin england. i guess they were before 1993. but i have louder stereo equipment and an amphetamine salt prescription and nothing better to do. i like to dance though. it's really good music for dancing. i have no regrets, pulp has drawn tears out of me since i was 14 and i didn't really understand it. keats said the lyrical age ended at 22, i think. he died at 26. i listened intently to sixteen blue by the replacements before even reaching the titular age. nostalgia works in real time while also working on an abstract plane. i'll never be comfortable, never not want to go home, because i'll be busy thinking about when i wanted to go home in the past. i've grown. just save a pice for me, alright?

Donda 2 ALBUM PREVIEW

We shiver in the shadow of Kissinger. Nihilism walks a pace ahead of individualism, the gap closing as onlookers gather along the banks of the rivers flowing into the coffers. Whips and chains rattle in the hands of bloodied ghosts. The masses stir, the dogs are let off the leash, 14,000 are killed in the Donbass. Theft is legal when your boss does it, breaking the terms of a ceasefire is legal when NATO does it. Fireworks and champagne in the streets of Donetsk for anyone calling them Russian, the power of recognition, across the border the grasping claws of "the end of history." In the US, they offer another boorish sleight of hand, offered as a formality, a trick as old as time, if the subject won't take the bait then you can just fucking lie. YOUR money is paying the men with the guns waving their arms at 45-degree angles. Staring us in the face, we know they're lying, they know we know, what the fuck are you going to do about it. A people so beaten from a half-century of full-bore bloodletting they have no answer to another violent war at their expense, sanctions starving East and West alike, pockets thinning in the streets, yachts leased in Elysium, each lunatic writing his name in the history books, in gore or in ash. A slow choking, or a moment of sunburst; a whimper, or a bang.

And a dark wind blows.

I didn't go to the Donda 2 movie thing whatever, but my friends did, they said it sucked lol. Heard Carti dressed up as Ronald McDonald or some shit. That new Balenciaga Yeezy Gap shit looks fire tho. Is yr friend single? The one w the septum piercing. They could def get it. What was I talking about?O right the album lol fuck Sry. The CVS fucked up & gave me 10mg Addy's, not even XR fml. Anyway. AOTY incoming, Pete Davidson BTFOd.