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Draplin Design Co., North America
January 09, 2008
Grace Cathedral Park
Posted at 03:51 AM

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Been on a real Red House Painters kick the last couple days. Sentimental. I grabbed my stack of discs and burnt all of it into the machine once and for all. It’s been awhile since I listened to this stuff.

So I’m flipping through the liner notes of Bridge, and out falls a receipt from 1994, from a record store in Bend called, “Boomtown.” October of 1994.

Thank god for my old Michigan pal Steve Brydges. He turned me on to these guys in what would have been the summer of 1994. I remember him buying the vinyl copy of the Rollercoaster album and how beautiful it was. I bought the disc. What’s important here is how this music changed me. Suddenly, so many of the bands I loved seem so, uh, “loud: or something. It changed the way I sought out new bands, on some level.

This was some of the most beautiful stuff I have ever heard. And I would never look at a gray day in San Francisco the same way, ever. Perfect tunes for a cold bay day. In my humble opinion.

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And it’s amazing to me how, years and years later, I’ve got so many memoriesā€”both good and sadā€”attached to these songs. Funny how this stuff works.

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Ocean Beach just might be my favorite. The opening glee of “Cabezon” will always feel so foreign to me, considering my love at the time for the loudness of Dinosaur Jr and the atmosphere of Mercury Rev and the all-out joy of the goddamn Flaming Lips.

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And they weren’t the same live.

I took a gal to see them at LaLuna in the fall of 1996. A date. With a girl. I was up from Bend and she lived in the city. The show very intimate. It was upstrairs, above the bar. There couldn’t have been more than 40 people there, sitting at little tables with candles and drinks. I remember her falling asleep to the slow drone of the show. This was right after Songs for a Blue Guitar came out and they played a bunch of stuff off the album, but, it just didn’t feel right all loud and screeching and exposed.

It was better to keep them kind of mysterious or something.

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I bought tickets for an upcoming Mark Kozelek show at the Aladdin. Leigh will be out here, and it’s gonna be great to take a lady to see him. So good. His solo stuff has been high on my lists for just as long. I appreciate his guitar playing more and more as I try and fail to learn these songs. So hard.

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Gonna buy both the CD and Record of the upcoming Sun Kil Moon record. Heck yes.


There Are 6 Comments

After reading all of your recent music musings, I was wondering if you’ve ever tried pandora.com? I listen to it all the time at work, and it’s really great for finding new bands in genres that you already know you love. The database is remarkably large, and you can make a custom radio station based on almost any artist or song (with some notable exceptions if the band is/was on a really tiny label). Anyway….thought you might like to give it a shot.

Posted by: Matt Travaille on 01/09/08 at 7:44 AM

If you haven’t seen Shopgirl you should check it out, Mark Kozelek is in it.

Posted by: beth on 01/09/08 at 10:31 AM

If I had a dollar for every ounce of love I have for Red House Painters, I’d have at least 4 bucks.

thanks for the post. great work too. keep on keeping on.

Posted by: Justin on 01/09/08 at 11:22 AM

SKM’s tiny cities album is great, it’s all modest mouse covers. years ago Mark did an entire album of AC/DC covers but I don’t know if it ever got released.

Posted by: hubs on 01/09/08 at 2:20 PM

i saw the red house painters at the double door back in 2001, i believe. mark and the gang rocked it for 3+ hours for a packed audience in the dead of summer. damn it was hot in there. but oh so good. thanks for bringing back some memories for me as well, aaron.

Posted by: jen on 01/09/08 at 5:30 PM

We miss you!

Posted by: Noah and Naomi on 01/09/08 at 10:04 PM
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