BILMS playlist entry #5

The Spinanes: “Noel, Jonah and Me”

One of the comments on this video is that Rebecca Gates looks a lot like Scully from the X-Files. As it happens, I’ve been thinking a lot about Scully these days—and only partially because of the new X-Files movie. I’ve decided that my obsession with Scully in the 90s was a particular form of the diva-worship that gays throughout the ages have practiced. I propose that Scully was the ideal diva for nerdy gays.

Just to clarify what I mean by diva-worship: I have in mind the old-school gays and their endless references to the bitchy grand dames from movies I’ve never heard of and the young gays with their disposable, interchangeable dance-pop divas. During the height of my Scully obsession I used to literally dream I was her: one of my recurring dream motifs was that I was agent Scully running around dark hallways in pursuit of aliens. Isn’t dreaming you are a particular woman diva-worship taken to its logical extreme (at least on the subconscious level)?

Who is my pick for the current diva of the nerdy gays? Juliet from Lost, totally. Just like Scully, she is a scientist. Just like Scully, she is a little wiser than the men around her. And Juliet is even more of a bad-ass than Scully! I can’t get enough of her beating up the whinny, flip-flopping Kate. And she is way to good for Jack and all his controlling, secretive crap. She might have ended the season still stuck on the island, but at least she was treated to a shirtless Sawyer washing up on the beach just in time to share her bottle of Dharma-brand rum.

BILMS playlist entry #4

Boards of Canada: "Dayvan Cowboy"



It has been a trying couple days for me, so I want to keep it simple this week. If you don’t bother to watch the YouTube videos that go along with these blogs, make an exception this time. Admittedly, most of these indie music videos are just equal parts shaggy haired boys and girls, nostalgia, and moody performance clips. This video is an exception, one of the most beautiful videos you’ll probably ever see.

BILMS playlist entry #3

Railroad Jerk: “Clean Shirt”

“Clean Shirt,” comes from Railroad Jerk’s final album, 1996’s The Third Rail. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any videos on YouTube for this song. As an alternative, I’m posting the live footage of the band playing “Gun Problem,” the opening track from 1995’s One Track Mind.

From 1995, when I moved back to Los Angeles from Davis, until 1998, when I moved to Santa Barbara, one of my obsessions was Tricia Halloran’s show, Brave New World, on KCRW. Since it broadcast between ten and midnight and I often didn’t get home from work until after it had begun, I would set my stereo to record the show and then listen to it in my car the next day. I got so obsessive about Brave New World that I would record my favorite songs from these tapes to a second set of tapes to keep and replay. I believe that I labeled this second set of tapes the “Stuff Taped off the Radio” series and that they are still sitting in a drawer at my mom’s house.

I have Tricia Halloran to thank for many of the CDs in my collection, and she introduced me to many of the artists in this playlist, Railroad Jerk included. Most significantly, I heard Yo La Tengo for the first time on her show. I still consider them one of my favorite bands, and two of their songs show up on this playlist.

Let me say here that I have a love/hate relationship with KCRW. (Reason to love them: Michael Silverblatt’s Bookworm; reason to hate them: they fired Sandra Tsing Loh. I could go on.) Most of all, I’ve never forgiven KCRW for taking Tricia Halloran off her Monday to Friday spot. Last year, they let her go from the station entirely. On her My Space page, Halloran says she is “at peace with it.” Good for her…but I’m still angry with the station’s music programming.

Her bio is still posted on the KCRW website. She is a computer programmer by training, which I never knew at the time I listened to her show, but makes me like her even more in retrospect. This quote from her on the KCRW page also caught my attention:

“Alternative music can be world, punk, acoustic, country, dance, or rap. It can be on a major record label, an independent label, or even a self-produced CD. Alternative music always captures the moment, the feel of the world, or one person's world, right NOW. It's about substance over style, and following your heart."

I am drawn to her non-idealistic approach. Basically, if it is good, it qualifies as alternative. I like to think I have the same approach to literature: If it speaks to me, regardless of the category, I’ll take it.