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.- - - -And it's amazing to me how, years and years later, I've got so many memories—both good and sad—attached to these songs. Funny how this stuff works.- - - -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.- - - -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.- - - -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.- - - -Gonna buy both the CD and Record of the upcoming Sun Kil Moon record. Heck yes.
