_____________
The Monkees Shorty Blackwell (1969)
The closing song of The Monkees’ least successful album Instant Replay is a real head-scratcher, an indulgent avant-guard piece of God doesn’t know what.
_____________
Bee Gees Lemons Never Forget (1968)
“Lemons Never Forget” is a forgotten track from the Bee Gees’ Horizontal which is considered the heaviest album they ever recorded.
______________
The Fall Bonkers in Phoenix (1995)
This was supposed to sound as if you were at a festival (e.g. Phoenix!) with all the sounds of the different music tents merging together.
______________
Pink Floyd Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict (1969)
The track consists of several minutes of noises resembling rodents and birds simulated by Roger Waters’ voice and other techniques, such as tapping the microphone played at different speeds, followed by Ron Geesin providing a few stanzas of spoken word in an exaggerated Scottish burr. There is a hidden message in the song at approximately 4:32. If played at half speed, Waters can be heard to say, “That was pretty avant-garde, wasn’t it?” Also, at the very end of the rant, Waters is heard to say, “Thank you.”
_____________
Lou Reed Bottoming Out (1983)
“Bottoming Out” is told from the point of view of a person an awful lot like Lou Reed at the time, but not exactly, into discipline and control but weakened and tortured by addiction and a deep hunger for redemption, a drunk by the sound of it, with a searing drama about a terrible night and a bad accident.
_____________
Nine Inch Nails This is How It All Begins (1999)
From The Fragile era, this song was on the NIN.com website. I have never found it anywhere else.
_______________
Bryan Ferry She’s Leaving Home (1976)
from the All This And World War II Soundtrack Album
_______________
Siouxsie & the Banshees Il Est Né, Le Divin Enfant (1982)
On November 26, 1982, Siouxsie and the Banshees released a double AA-side single off their album A Kiss in the Dreamhouse that included the song “Melt!” penned by bassist Steven Severin and their cover of the traditional French Christmas carol “Il Est Né, Le Divin Enfant” (English: “He Is Born, The Holy Child”) which comes from the region of Provence in France and was first published in a 1874 collection of Christmas tunes titled ‘Airs Des Noël Lorrain’ compiled by the organist of the Cathedral Saint-Die, René Grosjean.
_________________
Yoko Ono Greenfield Morning I Pushed an Empty Baby Carriage All Over the City (1970)
Using a discarded recording of Harrison on sitar and a Lennon break beat, Ono exorcises about a miscarriage through that hallmark wailing.
_____________
Iggy Pop Five Foot One (1979)
New Values was released in April 1979 by record label Arista. Although well-received critically, the album was not a commercial success, only reaching number 180 in the Billboard Top 200 album chart. Videos were made for “I’m Bored” and “Five Foot One”.
______________
Pavement Cherry Area (1997)
Rare gay panic-themed b-side from the Shady Lane EP
________________
Black Sabbath Spiral Architect (1973)
The band invited an orchestra to play on ‘Spiral Architect’ “but couldn’t cram all of the musicians and their instruments into Morgan Studios. They ended up at the nearby Pye Studio along the road, with Ozzy trying to explain what he wanted them to play like some sort of mad conductor. He had no written music to give the orchestra, he just hummed the part and they picked it up.”
_________________
Kraftwerk Heavy Metal Kids (1971)
A few years into the 21st Century, an astounding new recording arrived onto the world wide web – a lovingly remastered professional radio recording of the lost original Kraftwerk line-up. The opening track is listed as “Heavy Metal Kids” an intriguing title but one that begs the question is this just the bootlegger referencing how heavy the music sounds or were Kraftwerk referencing William Burroughs? One thing is certain, it is heavy.
___________
ABBA Tiger (1976)
The city is a nightmare, a horrible dream / Some of us will dream it forever / Look around the corner and try not to scream, it’s me.
_______________
Sonic Youth Queen Anne Chair (2001)
from the Noho Furniture sessions.
_______________
David Bowie All Saints (1976)
A gnarly squall of low-end electronic noise punctuated by sprite-like coils of treble, this track originally intended for Low more than matches the original industrialists for uncompromisingly ugly beauty and offers a stark contrast to the far less visceral instrumental pieces which made the album’s final cut.
________________
The Rolling Stones Schoolboy Blues (1967)
“Schoolboy Blues” (1970) is a parody of Dr. John’s “The Lonesome Guitar Strangler”, released on his 1969 album Babylon. It was written and played by Mick Jagger to be the Stones’ final single for Decca Records. The Stones were leaving Decca and starting their own record label, but Decca claimed they were owed one more single under their contract. So the Stones delivered this song, with its context and language chosen specifically to anger Decca executives; there are explicit references to fellatio and anal sex in the lyrics. Decca refused to issue the song on an album, although about 100 promotional 12″ singles of it were pressed in the United States.
____________
ELO Look at Me Now (1971)
The sound is unique on this recording in comparison to the more slickly produced ELO albums of the subsequent Lynne years, incorporating many wind instruments and replacing guitar parts with heavy, “sawing” cello riffs, giving this recording an experimental “Baroque-and-roll” feel.
______________
The Grateful Dead What’s Become Of The Baby (1968)
“What’s become of the Baby” only includes Jerry Garica’s vocals, and some odd back ground, wind sounding noises. The song sounds like it was recorded in a stadium. Similar to how the the national anthem sounds when sang in some kind of stadium.
_____________
Neil Young Last Dance (1973)
Eighth and final track from Neil Young’s (in)famous and unissued on CD live album Time Fades Away, taken from the HDCD test pressings made around the mid-1990s.
_______________
Leonard Cohen Queen Victoria (1972)
Recorded by Cohen alone in his Tennessee hotel room in 1972.
_______________
The Beach Boys Funky Pretty (1973)
A cosmic love song to an astrological lovely, it mounts its grit in a swirl of harmonic complications with a defiantly baroque choral signature: Vivaldi meets the Regents on a magic synthesizer built on economical and even monotonous musical premises that delight in their unreasonably complex development.
______________
Led Zeppelin Four Sticks (1971)
The title came from the fact that drummer, John Bonham, played with two sets of two drumsticks, totaling four, a result of him being very frustrated with not being able to get the track down right during recording sessions at Island Studios. After he grabbed the second pair of sticks and beat the drums as hard as he could, he recorded the perfect take and that was the one they kept.
_______________
My Bloody Valentine Forever and Again (1985)
An unfocused and derivative song of post-punk goth rock that offers no indication of the revolutionary guitar sound the group would later create.
_______________
The Cure A Boy I Never Knew (1986)
Arguably the saddest song The Cure has ever done, so sad that its not even an “official” song and lost in the catalogue.
________________
Fleetwood Mac Tell Me All the Things You Do (1969)
Kiln House is an overlooked album that marks Fleetwood Mac’s transition with the departure of Peter Green from being an acclaimed Brit-blues group to a much tighter alt-rock group. The kicker, “Tell Me All the Things You Do” is a blistering number that stands as one of the finest achievements of Fleetwood Mac!
______________
XTC Pulsing Pulsing (1979)
B-side for a single from XTC’s Drums And Wires album about blood and where it goes.
_______________
The Who Real Good Lookin’ Boy (2003)
This weird paean to Roger Daltry’s “good looks” was one of two new ‘Bonus Tracks’ The Who released on their 2004 Then And Now compilation.
___________
Sparks England (1975)
Obscure b-side of the equally obscure “I Want to Hold Your Hand” Beatles cover single and one of Sparks’ jewels of the 1970s.
_________________
Radiohead We Suck Young Blood (2003)
Like Thom Yorke fucking around on a piano while someone clapped in another room and it was accidentally recorded, but not one of Radiohead’s GOOD songs where Thom Yorke is fucking around on a piano while someone claps in another room and it was accidentally recorded.
__________________
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band Upon The My O My (1974)
The one really good if compromised song on the first of Beefheart’s two dismal commercial albums Unconditionally Guaranteed, about which Magic Band drummer Art Tripp recalled, “When the band finally got our album copies, we were horrified. As we listened, it was as though each song was worse than the one which preceded it.”
_______________
The Kinks He’s Evil (1977)
From Preservation Act 2, a 1974 concept album, and The Kinks’ twelfth studio album. It was not well received by critics and sold poorly (peaking on the Billboard 200 at #114).
________________
Fugazi Ex Spectator (2001)
“Ex-Spectator,” the first time you hear it, appears to do nothing. But the more you listen to it, suddenly all the disparate bits (double drums, loud smashing chords at intro, busy-as-hell breaks) make sense as a unified whole. That’s smart songwriting – refusing to rely on overused riffs, intensity for the sake of intensity and song constructions that do what the audience expects them to.
________________
Alice Cooper Refrigerator Heaven (1970)
None of Easy Action’s songs have ever been performed live by Cooper since the 1971 tour in support of their third album Love It to Death.
______________
Tom Petty I Don’t Belong (1998)
Tom and the Heartbreakers do a rare unreleased song from the 90s that I found on a rare bootleg.
________________
The Byrds Tribal Gathering (1968)
It’s so hard to place, it’s such a strange track. What were they on when they wrote it? How do you get a time signature like that? They were such a strong writing force, individually and collectively, and there was always something explorative about what they were doing as a unit.
________________
Blink 182 I Wanna Fuck A Dog In The Ass (2001)
Though many people do not know it, all of Blink 182’s songs are about oral and anal sex except for two which are about suicide and one which is about divorce.
______________
Bob Dylan Seven Curses (1963)
What makes “Seven Curses” work as a song by Dylan, is that apart from being a haunting and moving story sung well to an exquisite tune, there is no bile and no vindictive feeling coming from the singer, for he is still singing the same song in the same way with the same accompaniment – the emptiness is endless. But instead the repeating of “him” is like the hammer blow. It seems quite extraordinary that this was not released as part of Freewheelin.
_______________
Throbbing Gristle Zyklon B Zombie (1978)
B-side of the 1978 single “United”, “Zyklon B Zombie”, has been seen as a parody of punk rock music.
_______________
Paul McCartney Kreen-Akrore (1970)
The last track on McCartney’s solo debut is a four-minute instrumental garnished with some guitars, bird calls, and a splash of vocal harmony, but it’s mostly McCartney playing the drums.
*
p.s. Hey. This weekend, a kind, sort of semi-stranger to the blog has commandeered the space to give you a gig full of lesser known oddball musical instances by largely well known musical artists from mostly the past and often distant. It’s fun. It’s low-key enlightening. So find out what Jamie Fitzroy has unearthed over the next two days’ course, thank you. And thank you for thinking of all of us, Jamie! ** Bill, Hi, B. I read them out of order too. It was fine to do so as far as I could tell. Gigs there, right, and excellent! Envy about the tough choices. Let me know what the Vaginal Davis show is like. I hope/trust they’ll show some of her brilliant early videos. ** Steeqhen, So, sexy maybe for masochists. A MES leftover, that makes sense. Great about the Ssnake event, and no surprise, and … great! It’s a superb book. She’s really great in general. Why were/are the Irish discriminated against in Scotland? Weird. Probably too long a story. I should know my history better. I guess try to productively take in the depth charges from the state of feeling off as that can be instructive. ** jay, Cool. It’s terrific, she’s great. Haha, that’s amazing that the Kirk thing got your friends to read ‘Pale Fire’. Wow. Water into wine and all of that. Gotta play that game. Gotta get off my ass and do that. Or at least cue it up. Have a thoroughly splendid weekend, mister. ** Dominik, Hi!!! You’re most welcome. Countdown to SCAB! No, I don’t know the interviewer. I’m definitely going to go into the interview less open and cheerful than I normally do. But, anyway, the film got a great review today in a much more populated context, so fuck them, haha. Love about to employ GPS to try to find the closest Office Depot, G. ** Steve, So often the case. Early Swans with more electronics sounds promising naturally. ‘The Long Walk’, don’t know it. I’ll see if it’s around here. More of a weekend of errand running than physical packing, but, in a word, yes. We’re having a hard time getting a NYC screening, so I don’t know when I’ll have news about that. Immediate news is that RT will screen in Baltimore at a really cool festival at the beginning of October. So we’re edging closer, at least. Everyone, Steve has two reviews for you to peruse this weekend: … of Dag Johan Hauguerud’s DREAMS (SEX LOVE) here, and of Oliver Hermanus’ THE HISTORY OF SOUND here. ** Carsten, Hey, pal. The bureaucracy here in France is thick as thieves, but there does always seem to be English speakers at end of the hours-long waiting on hold. You are living the life, man. What a great turn your move turned out to be, as you knew it would be. I’m too busy and pre-trip stressed as per usual, but I’m looking forward to the cities and the screenings and the people who show up. ** HaRpEr //, She’s great, seriously worth reading. People always seem to say that about Damon Albarn. I haven’t really paid attention to him after Blur’s heyday. I’ll check out the Frost Children newbie. Right, I never think of McCourt or Firbank, say, as qualifying as purple prose writers, but I guess they are, relatively speaking. I’m not sure how to describe their kind of writing. Dense, extremely detail oriented, presentationally extroverted, but … ? I don’t know. Robbe-Grillet’s description is spot-on, of course. Unpredictable, exactly! ** Uday, Listen to your gut and get that picaresque book out of limbo. Seems like. It’s true that writers get to be young for a long time. Maybe because people’s immediate idea of a writer is a wise old sage? Which is odd in and of itself. But, hey, lucky us. Well, I’m post-young now, but it did take a long time before I became, whatever, a veteran. ** Hugo, Sometimes pop stars try. I think Miley Cyrus is trying? I remember when Sean Cassidy tried to go New Wave progressive, and that was the end of him. Thanks for sharing your friend’s ‘Closer’ thoughts. Interesting. You can tell her I wasn’t making any kind of broader statement about anything. Broad statements are for the birds. Peace be with you. ** darbz 🐻, The fish only gussied the place up. And now the bear has something to eat. You can send 5 pages, no problem, but it’s going to take me a while to get to it given my upcoming trip where I will be unlikely to have any time to pleasure myself with reading things. Fellow commenter Carsten is very knowledgeable about Native American wisdom and practices. I will watch the video and try to learn something. You have a great weekend too. I just have a lot of things I need to get finished before I’m largely incommunicado for, whatever, 10 days. So just making a list and checking it twice and that kind of stuff. But, yeah, make the most of yours. ** horatio, Hey! Hm, I haven’t thought about Simon & Garfunkel in ages. What did I used to think … Um, I think I kind of liked how adventurous they got as they went along. My main S&G thing is that when I was 15 I helped organise a concert by them that they did as a benefit for this leftie Presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy that I was a campaign volunteer for. I met them briefly, and they were sort of nice. Why, are you interested in them? Yay, thanks for coming to the screening. I have to remember to hit Quimby’s while I’m there for sure. Crazy day big time there. I’m good, thank you, and you be good and have a really swell weekend. ** Nicholas., Oh, yeah, I remember that era. That was an exciting point. Maximalists are highly needed, so … good! You sound really fiery. Excellent! Here’s to staying power. ** Okay. You already know what you’re in for or were in for this weekend. Please do your utmost. See you on Monday.
Now available in North America 
Hey Dennis,
The history is interesting as Scotland seems to have a very mixed history on Ireland: there’s a lot of similarities and shared history, and I’m not that educated on the millennia of history, but at the same time I imagine that Ireland always being viewed as savage lands of lesser beings by the British didn’t help. I think because Glasgow has Celtic Football Club, there’s a large Irish population, but at the same time that probably draws a lot of negative attention. Near my friend’s accom was spray paint saying UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force which without getting into the whole complex intricacies of Ireland and the 20th century, is like the reverse IRA that hated Catholics and wanted to be considered British, not Irish) as well as KAT which stands for Kill All Taigs which is another slogan that basically means Kill All Irish. The latter is most likely football hooliganism, and I’m not afraid or actually worried that I’m gonna be picked up by a white van and killed, just interesting to have all this history connected to my identity that is basically forgotten or not known about outside of Ireland and the UK (and even then, most people in the UK aren’t taught anything about Irish history and probably just assume we were dumb poor savages). The fact that the cultures of the UK and Ireland are very similar makes the differences here really stand out, like when you’re dreaming and then suddenly you realize that this person you dated as an adult didn’t go to your primary school, and you realize you’re not where you thought you were…
I feel ashamed to not know many of these, especially for artists like The Cure who I love. I did know the Radiohead song, though I’m not really a fan of that song nor the album it was on. I should try and give a lot of these a listen whilst waiting in the airport or the trainride home…
Anyway have a good weekend, and I will try to have one too!
hi dennis!
i’ve never heard of renee gladman or ‘event factory’ they both sound super interesting so now i wanna check them both out!
seeing dj sprinkles/terre thaemlitz mentioned was a treat! basically every dj sprinkles/terre thaemlitz song is like that. her music is famously full of ‘audio footnotes’ as she calls them. thanks for steve and you mentioning the new mix tho cuz i wasn’t aware of it! terre thaemlitz/dj sprinkles is my favourite musician!
thanks for your advice about trying different forms. i really appreciate them and it helped me think about it better. at the very least it’ll help me feel less frustrated.
@Carsten
thanks for the recommendation! ethnopoetics sound super interesting! do you have a starting point you’d recommend?
Hi!!
Oh wow. I’ve never heard most of these! Thank you, Jamie – a very fun weekend treat!
Countdown to SCAB indeed! Literally just a couple of days!
Well, yeah, that’s absolutely understandable. I guess they’re lucky you didn’t call the whole thing off. How did it go? Congratulations on the positive review, though! Fuck everything else.
Did love find a (hopefully nearby) Office Depot?
Love coming across a post that compares Yungblud to Ville Valo in his late ‘90s/early 2000s era and not seeing the resemblance, Od.
@ Jamie, congratulations on this! Would seem to be a very worthwhile selection and I look forward to perusing its wares.
This very morning I sprung for this new record by my friend and fellow Dundee Fine Art graduate Cara Tolmie in collaboration with the mighty Rian Treanor. Their album is on the Planet Mu label and in my opinion is really good. Cara is now living in Stockholm and as a performance artist is doing very well for herself by all accounts.
A cute pic of Cara and I here back in the day.
Thanks for sharing Jamie. All of these are very unique – that ABBA one is particularly “huh?”-inducing. I’m not a huge fan of their music, but their early phonetically-taught stuff before they could speak English is truly bizarre. I’m a bit resistant to stuff that’s delibarately horrible with fun music, but the accidentally strange ABBA stuff is incredible. “I am behind you/I always find you/I am the tiger”… words to live by. If I could add one thing, I’d probably choose “Black Eyed Dog” by Nick Drake, but that song may be too famous to include.
Yeah, it’s really great, the Kirk/Pale Fire thing I mean. I’ve accidentally let Nabokov obsession creep up on me for the past few months, so I’m really in the mood to read more of his stuff – I managed to find a cheap “collected short stories” thing by him in a charity shop recently, which has definitely been excellent. I’m glad you also like his writing, I’ve always thought he’s about as good as unemotional writing can get.
Haha, I would maybe advise against “Limbus Company”, it’s in a particular Korean genre of game that’s designed to be as frustrating as possible in order to draw money out of consumers by offering tolls for easier paths through the thicket. I don’t believe it’s on the Switch either… but who knows. Best to you, hope your weekend is extremely spectacular too.
I’ve heard of most of these bands and know some well, but funny enough have only heard the Throbbing Gristle song.
That’s a great story about your Simon & Garfunckel/Eugene McCarthy experience. I was last at Quimby’s 2-3 years ago, still great. I picked up Dr Doom dog poop bags for my dog owner friends.
I enjoyed the Vaginal Davis show (at Martin–Gropius-Bau). They showed The White to be Angry, which I’ve heard of a lot but somehow have managed to miss all these years. Also a lot of band footage, and her odd little sculptures and paintings which I’ve never seen.
Bill
Hi Dennis!
I discovered your work this year, and this is my first time commenting! Just wanted to say The Sluts has quickly and easily become my favorite mystery story of the 21st century, and the George Miles cycle has been profoundly affecting to me thus far. I began with Try (Ziggy and Calhoun’s friendship will stay with me a long time), and am about halfway through Closer. Last night I dreamt that a Frenchman kept following me around and plead with me to come to his home and let him eat my shit, and I rarely dream about books I read, so it must have had a pretty profound effect on me, haha.
Anyway, thank you for the new obsession and for the occasional nightmare. I really regret not being able to make it to your upcoming showing of Room Temperature in Chicago. I’m in Fargo, and it would be pretty amazing if Room Temp could make it into the 2026 Fargo Film Fest we hold here each year.
Best wishes!
Hey Dennis
I told my friend what you said, and she just said “well, I guess I’m a bird then.” She was very happy to hear about what you thought. She used to have a boyfriend who was obsessed with you and the slave posts on here in particular. A very masochistic and quite abusive guy, though my friend is away from him now.
I met another writer this weekend BTW. There was a talk near my place and I went along since my mum wanted to see it. Though the whole thing was I’m english I ended up gravitating to the only guy who didn’t have any of his books in English. His name is Philippe Marczewki and we discussed Blanchot and Sebald afterwards. I know you don’t read french, but I’ve been finding his work to be quite interesting, so if he does end up in English I recommend checking him out. Helps that he’s a nice enough guy. Anyway, I had a mild crisis of doubt after talking to him, I feel like I’m unsuited to the language given to me, and whenever I type I notice how dry and unmoving I can sound. I guess I just feel trapped by my own expressions. I think you can understand…I dunno.
Peace, have a good one.
@lotuseatermachine: Sorry I didn’t see your reply to my comment yesterday. Well I’ll just brazenly say that a good intro to ethnopoetics is my intro, haha: https://denniscooperblog.com/carsten-presents-ethnopoetics-day/
That’ll give you a taste & if you like what you see I say run don’t walk toward Jerome Rothenberg’s “Technicians of the Sacred”, the greatest poetry anthology ever compiled—in my (& Nick Cave’s) opinion.
@DC: Yeah it’s really everything I wanted out here. I’m so deeply reliant & attuned to gut feeling that I knew I’d feel good here. All the elements that I find important in life come together in one place & I really couldn’t ask for more. Today I drove up to this whitewashed hillside town called Frigiliana & had lunch at a Polish restaurant. My family’s originally from there, & so’s the owner, so I had a taste of my childhood combined with another chat among expats. He’s been here for 17 years, his kids were born here & there’s not an ounce of homesickness in him.
Well I hope your US trip turns out great & that the screenings are a success. This time you’ll be going from place to place quite a bit, no? Chicago, Toronto, where else?
You could make a whole list like this just of Paul McCartney stuff, honestly.
I recently relistened to that 2+ hour album Miley Cyrus did a decade ago that has Wayne Coyne, Ariel Pink, etc. It’s actually very cool in places but it’s too long and it does have the more obnoxious tendencies of those collaborators’ late work. Probably more their fault than hers.
Dennis, hello! You were so supportive of my debut novel (MEDUSA OF THE ROSES), and I don’t know if you ever saw my messages of gratitude. Your blurb really set in motion the life around my novel. Hope our paths can overlap soon
Hey, I love that ABBA song! Weird considering that has to be one of their bestselling albums. I guess most people only know the hits. Sometimes I listen to ABBA and say to myself ‘it is not possible to get any better than this’. I love how cold they seem but they spin out these irresistible melodies, like they’re part of one of those cults that releases music intended for mind control. I naturally also know that Sparks song and the Bowie song. That Pavement song is a curious little thing too, probably from my favourite era, and the Nicene Credence Ed. extra tracks are killer. There’s that Fall cover and the Echo and the Bunnymen cover too.
Really strange weekend, over 100,000 fascists went on a drunken rampage through the city and unfortunately the counter protest couldn’t equal their numbers. It’s seriously ridiculous when you see that these slobbering red faced alcoholics pissing at the side of the street have the audacity to claim that they are the master race and are arbiters of the cultural goods. Give me a break. Most of them weren’t even Londoners and had this idea that they were going to reclaim the city and turn it into whatever hole they crawled out of. This whole week has been some weird political puppet show.
It’s very much Autumn where I am, cold and wet and sort of tranquil. I really am right when I say that I go insane every summer because I’m still dealing with all of the same problems but I’m more relaxed now that I can breathe.
Since I’m in my childhood bedroom and am writing something that revolves around a teenager’s bedroom, I was wondering if it’s better to be close or separated to something when writing about it. I know a lot of people say you need to be away from something to balance the good and bad things in your mind but I still don’t know. Anyway, I wondered if you had an opinion there? I know you were working on some of the cycle in Amsterdam.
Awesome list! Love the “Tiger” by ABBA inclusion, was introduced to it by a friend who just reaaallly likes tigers but I love ABBA in general. Super stoked about the secret The Cure song, they’re probably my favorite band aside from Big Black. Speaking of which… if I were to include a song on this list it would probably be Big Black’s cover of “In My House” by The Mary Jane Girls. It’s the cutest.
That’s so cool about S&G Dennis, yeah I am a pretty big fan of them. I was listening to them while reading your blog so I thought I’d ask what you think hahaha. This morning I was telling Jay about how messy things got between them, and how great the album “Bridge Over Troubled Water” captures that. It’s definitely my go-to album during a break up or falling out.
Yeah, you should totally check out quimbys! If I recall correctly they’re selling one of the books on your best of 2025 list, along with a ton of other niche & interesting stuff.
I’m at a weird al concert right now & should go before intermission ends hehe. Hope your weekend was wonderful!
Started rewriting the picaresque book on your advice. Hopefully this gets somewhere. The protagonist had a very similar name to a friend I made recently and, with his permission, I changed it to his name. I’ve decided to start with the scene that made me pause writing it. The protagonist is this boy whose existence sort of demands care from everybody around him and in this scene he’s injured so his professor fantasises about nursing him back to health, eventually deciding that she should either breastfeed him or give him food the way birds do with their babies. Again, it’s been a long time since I worked on it and I doubt I can use any of the material as it is. Very good post courtesy of Jamie Fitzroy today. Tiger by ABBA is an old favourite, as is Bowie’s All Saints but many of the others are totally new to me. And the order really works. Did you ever hear the time Burroughs did Kurt Weill? It’s not super great, but as a long term Weill fan it’s an interesting listen.
I’ve had a generally good weekend, with some going out and some hanging out and a lot of good old fashioned work but I fell into a deep sadness this evening thinking about the failure of the Internationals. It’s hard not to look back at all the work that’s been done and despair that it wasn’t enough to save the world.
For some reason my reply was posted under Eric.C. sorry eric
This site is wack
Hi. Hope your weekend was good! Get up to anything?
Finished Mumbo Jumbo. Amazing. The store I went to today didn’t have Freelance Pallbearers, otherwise I would have jumped on it. Sigh. Have you read Ge Fei? I got into him recently, starting with The Invisibility Cloak, which is one of the best things I’ve read in a while. I just like the vibe, I guess, really enjoying him. I’m doing a detour into Michael Kohlhaas though. Which actually also has good vibes, despite the revenge angle.
Do you like Christopher Nolan? They put Inception and Dark Knight on at a theater near me and I went to see them both because I get free tickets (moviepass type deal.) I liked both a lot, which I didn’t actually really expect due to me not liking any of his newer ones. When I was a kid everyone said his movies were “hard to understand”, but I think it’s more like they’re “tonally dissonant”. I’m not really a movie person, at least in the sense that I don’t really know any obscure movies or watch good ones that often.
Hello oh I have a shift from 6:45pm to 3am tonight and I haven’t slept yet last night so I’m going into this very groggily unprepared but there’s nothing a line can’t fix for these emergencies. Although I will say it’s not very comfortable being sleep deprived( the insomnia) because I’m used to getting up early and I don’t want to take a nap because it feels lazy haha so I’m just pushing through till tonight. 8 hour shift. I feel like I’m starting to become a little more in touch and grounded than I was the beginning of the week. I wish my very languorous legal guardian who I’m still waiting for the results of my competency test for, would hurry up and get me signed up for DBT therapy.
You can’t depend on anyone even a fucking legal guardian who helps dependants(but to her credit im sure she has so many clients). Im probably going to call them myself because ive been really struggling and the self harm is only getting worse, but on a more positive outlook
OH btw thanks for introducing me to the Carston, when I get time maybe I’ll ask about their knowledge on that re: spirituality, that’s kind of a good goal to have since small conversation with people on the internet is hard (You probably wouldn’t believe that)
(later around 8pmish)
Dude I wrote a sentence very insightful about those Swedish sisters with Folie a deux but I think the internet is gaslighting me because I came back now and its GONE literally the best stuff I said. I’lll try again tommorow. I would recreate it but unfortunately something happened thirty minutes ago. I was planning to finish the rest of this comment on my lunch break at 12am but something happened and im still processing it.
So I was sent home im still not sure if its my fault or not, it hurt so bad. I was doing the inventory in the back and my manager (not the goth manager, she’s the cool one I think) but the other one, I asked her a question, and I always paraphrase my questions so awkwardly because retail makes no sense and it doesn’t help that she seems to always look annoyed by my attempts to articulate myself. Well anyways, im asking her a question and it was one of those dumb ones that led to her pointing out something dumb I was doing. She was trying to demonstrate how to put the sticker on and it was so fucking easy I dont know why I cant do basic things but then she said “If you cant do this right Then I dont want you doing it at all” and that just felt like a knife thrusted into my heart the pain it generated inside I couldn’t control. It just seemed like it was so direct, if I cant do anything right in life so why try at all. What did she want with that comment? Its not like I could say” OK then I’ll just go home.” Im not asking you, specifically, anything btw. To listen is all that matters, if that isn’t too burdensome.
Well long story short I was crying for a bit and and she said are you ok and I said I need a minute so she walked off. I tried so fucking hard to suppress my cries and the wave of gender dysphoria because no boy cries as much as I do and then….I got through it!! It was embarrassing but at least my other coworkers had their earphones on (I know this because I attempted conversation and they didn’t hear me ) so later I go into the break room because my eyes are very red and then I grab two napkins and rub my eyes and sniffle and then I pull them down and she’s standing before me. Keep in mind, im calmed down, im just cleaning myself up, retouching my damaged spirit and I know what im doing now that I dont have someone making me feel stupid. Its pretty easy and therapeutic actually, doing inventory.
but all my hope is shattered when she says like . “you know what just go home, and then she did that weird stutter thing like “I cant with this” and I dont even know what that meant but she seemed very annoyed by me.
My mom had to pick me up since I didn’t have a car, I told her what happened and she said that it wasnt right because of my disability but I dont know anymore, I feel most people would be annoyed by me. Maybe that’s why I didn’t have any friends as a kid.
Sorry to start the Monday with a somber thing. The positive is that it can only get better! I dont have to go to work tommorow or for a bit. I might get fired who knows. There are actually alot of cool things I loo forward to mentioning if I have time before the blog goes on hiatus. I hope the weekend dissolved your stress into a banana split ice cream.
I really am sincerely sorry for how long this comment is. I wonder if there is any websites out their that have built in word constraint boxes that I could use to limit myself when I speak here…..Oh I found one! this is going to be super helpful for you and me in the future.
Also feel very free to tell me if this question is Not It, but what happened to The Has-Been? I remember reading about it in an interview a few years back and just remembered it today when a friend used the phrase.
Been listening to Bottoming Out a lot recently. A really great song from an otherwise pretty mediocre Lou Reed album, at least in my opinion. I’m surprised that I’d never heard of All Saints as a Bowie superfan. Trump has officially scrapped his plans to deploy the National Guard in Chicago, which is a relief but also still so upsetting that it was ever a real threat. I’m very excited to see Room Temperature and get to meet you on Wednesday!!
hi dennis! i went to 7-eleven and the sun made a guy look weirdly angelic. i wanted to show you. i hope you had a good weekend!
https://www.tumblr.com/loreleitrix/794704058425458688