a coherent collection of random statements regarding God, words and tunes

Hit and Run (bonus track)

Let's start with the confessional part, which in light of I'd ask you therefore not to interpret the rest as damning with faint praise: Truthfully, I wasn’t expecting that much from this, given that it’s a solo album by neither of the two lead singer/songwriters of one of my favorite discoveries of the past year or so, The Kamikaze Hearts. Plus, it’s not even 30 minutes long (although there are 10 perfectly complete songs here). 

That said, multi-instrumentalist Matthew Loiacono has a lot to do with the sound behind the K-Hearts, as well as with getting the best-kept secret in Albany, New York out there (being at least a significant part of the brains behind their label Collar City Records). Plus, he answers his e-mails and is quite the nice guy, so I owed him a purchase for that reason alone. And that all said, it’s pretty danged good....

Matthew Loaicono – Kentucky. ...certainly good enough to keep my appetite whetted until the next K-Hearts album shows up -- and for that matter, until the next Nickel Creek and Sufjan Stevens albums show up (whenever the heck those might be) – because as opposed to the thoroughly Americana K-Hearts, Matthew isn’t shy about showing off his sonic chops in a way in which the results come out sounding like something other than The Great Lost Band and/or Son Volt Album (see again the wonderful Oneida Road – which, I’ll add, is my current wake-up/bedroom CD and works fine as both, thankyouverymuch). 

There’s plenty of mandolin here to keep us grounded – including a couple enjoyable instrumental tracks – but there’s also plenty of neat fuzz/distortion here that takes things where I, for one, wasn’t expecting. And while Matthew’s voice isn’t as distinctive as that of either Troy Pohl or Gaven Richard, he holds his own just fine (although again Chris Thile wouldn’t be out of place here -- especially obvious on the plaintive “Right Behind You.”) The lyrics, as with so many things I get into these days, are rather impressionistic yet intriguing. Case in point, from the vocally multitracked and movingly mandolined piece that is “Vaults and Crowns” : “May we call the fear of sound / so crisp then hope dissolves us down / What keeps us whole will hold us out / till time lands still devoid of doubt.”

Among the other highlights: “Infinitely Red” is probably the standout track here, as it sounds like the Seven Dwarves doing a woodblocked rhumba with our good buddy Sufjan. The perkily-if-not-frenetically repeated refrain, “We didn’t need to think hard/we didn’t need to think at all” will stick in your head long after it’s done. The melodic “Modest Birds” answers that with what sounds like a flight of optimism and the encouragement to move forward – “though we know the way they need to get to where they’re going / home they’ll stay forgetting all the worst that followed them.”

“Knee-to-Knee” takes the fuzz factor, slows it down for effect, and throws some pretty neat hairy guitar over the top of it at the end, after delivering what almost sounds like a benediction despite its draggy somberness:

There must be moments
we leave out of our dreams
when we recite them
to each other knee-to-knee
I hope your vision always lasts
I hope your peacefulness stays free
whether time will catch up to us now
or when the boughs of death will bring release
it’s all to see…

And while I don’t know who the closer “Through the Night” is about, I sure wish I did: “They held a mission in your name / and proved the theory wrong that you had been forsaken / We guessed you wouldn’t be gone long  / you left the water running, didn’t stop to take hold of your son.... / honestly, I can’t see / through the light and what you came for / the music that you killed for/ and honestly, I can’t be / what you wanted when you came for / the music that you killed for.”

You’ve bought worse. Recently. I’m quite sure of it. I certainly have, in any case. And again, these guys aren’t leaving Albany for Colorado anytime soon unless you throw them some buckage. So make it happen, a’ight?

Posted by: burninglight at 18:23 | link | comments (4)

It's My 25th Birthday. Deal With It.

And yes, I know I'm 47 in earth years. Stop reminding me. 

.

Just reflecting.... In a gas station far, far away (no, seriously... in Haskell, New Jersey, where you CAN'T pump yr own gas, and therefore...)

 

A young and often embittered gas station attendant sat, reading Crime & Punishment. He'd been wrestling with this whole Jesus thing arguably all his life, but especially in the year-plus since his 21st birthday, when he'd received a letter from his father, saying, among other things, “You’re old enough to make your own decisions now, so if you don’t want to get to know me at this point I guess there’s nothing more that I can do.” (It's a long story, but you can put some of the pieces together just from that.)

 

At this point, I had been living in an apartment above my grandmother for the last three years, having escaped an abusive stepfather (actually a few months before my mother, who was already living with him, was stupid enough to go ahead and marry him anyway — he'd only been verbally abusively to me, but apparently physically to my mother as I’d found out some years later, after he’d left her for wife #4). Astute long-time readers will also have noticed that I had been quite chemically and romantically self-abusive for quite some time already, so after a few weeks, I finally thought (whether appropriately or not, I still remember it verbatim), “All right — I’ll give him the chance nobody’s given me,” and hopped a bus to Michigan.

 

I didn’t know what to expect, let alone what to do with all the Christian stuff once I got there (try hanging out in a basement full of very demonstrative Pentecostals), but I knew that he believed it. Which led me to start thinking about it for myself. Either there really wasn’t a God or there was one and I needed to figure out what to do with that. So the next 15 months was spent trying to figure that out, although truthfully the last several months were more about me wrestling with my inability to believe what I had by then realized had to be true.

 

And so anyway, while reading the aforementioned Crime & Punishment between breaks pumping gas at a Citgo station in Haskell, New Jersey on Sunday, October 23, 1983, it finally hit me…. He’s real. He’s REAL. That’s when it all began. I couldn’t tell you which part of the book triggered it, or if it was something in the book at all. I know I was maybe halfway in when all this start welling up uncontrollably within me. And it’s worth noting that the final page of the book (which I did NOT know the ending to) tells us this about Raskolnikov: "He knew he was born again."

 

And so did I. (And needless to say, I finished the book and came across those words later that evening.)

 

There's a question in my next group lesson tomorrow, which also kinda happens to be my "a-ha" question for any new employees, Christians, pastors, etc., I come across: "What's the one thing God has shown you that you wish everyone else knew?" And I stopped to reflect on that for myself tonight.

 

And tonight, anyway, it's this seeming no-brainer, that I keep having to learn over and over: My relationship with Jesus has to always come first. Not my plans. Not people. Jesus. Because if I try to put those other good things first, I will invariably f*** them up.

 

But there's the thing. God doesn't want to screw up my plans or my relationships -- he's not the damn enemy -- he wants to transform those flesh-and-blood things into something better than what they already are. And I just have to trust him yet again. And again. And again. "Dying daily" is, frankly, a pain in the ass. And an incredible joy. ONCE I do it.

 

Anyway, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. For a quarter-century and counting.

 

Next time: More music by some obscure musician you haven't heard of but should, because I say so.

 

Posted by: burninglight at 01:19 | link | comments (36)

One Small Step for Man, One Giant Leap for the Fat Guy Who’s Actually Now Physically Capable of Leaping....
(or, Beardless in Cyberspace)

Perhaps trivial to everyone but me, but still....

A brief (for me, at least) history:

On my marriage day in 1985 I was 199. And danged sick. Byrnes and Neblung, who were two of my groomsmen, will testify to all of this despite their “wassled-ness.” But that’s a couple different pathetically funny stories for another time.

Anyway, by the fall of 1994 I was up to 298, and while I’m 6’3” one can only hide it so well. I’m pretty sure it was the moment someone mistook me for the brother of the rather slovenly overweight publisher of the newspaper I was working for at the time that I said, “OK, that does it....”

And yes, that was 14 years ago. It gets better, and worse, and better, and worse, and better, and worse, and so on, before it gets better (hopefully for good). Anyway, the first of many diets began.

And yet by fall 1996 I was back to 298. Which I think is when I went low-carb for the first time. Got down below 240 by late Spring of ’97, and since that was a “threshold” weight that allowed me more freedom, soon discovered I couldn’t handle said freedom. Ballooned back up to 270 or so before making another valiant attempt in 2000-2001. Got below 240 again. Same thing.

And so by Thanksgiving 2004 I was at 298. AGAIN. And yeah, a tad pissed. But as God as my witness, I’d never be po’(rky) again. Well, at least by that much anyway.

Got serious. Got down below 240. And kept going. By the time I moved to Colorado I was down to 229. And with no family out here for seven weeks, took it down to 222. And needless to say it was a LONG time since I’d seen that (probably ’91). Then I got the family, struggled to stay disciplined, but kept it in the 230s, even with going back-and-forth to Jersey the following year to deal with my mom’s estate. And then my brother-in-law moved in with us, my meal options got lousier, and I stopped trying again, even after he’d found his own place several months later. And so by July ’07 I was back to 264. Aaargh.

And so, once more into the breach. Only this time I 1) made a point of exercising very regularly and pushing it, and 2) making the increase in carbs more incremental and less dramatic (so I had time to figure out what I really could handle and make more sensible choices). Also, I swore that if I ever DID get down to 199 (the aforementioned marriage weight), I’d shave this danged beard off that I’ve had for the last 8 or so years. (Jessica says I grew it when she was 12, so I’ll take her word for it.)

In short: Today, it is accomplished, and a baby-faced 47-year-old types before you. Marion says she feels like a “cougar” (look it up if y’r not up on yr pop slang), but honestly, that works for me, too. 

In any case, I’m finally and officially un-overweight. I’d still like to drop another 10 or so pounds. I’ve been as low as 170 – once during the high/lowpoint of my Tension Envelopes speedfreak period, and again when I met Marion, that time enhanced by a week-long hospital stay after my first round of gastroenteritis (I haven’t had it since our honeymoon, though). Not quite Byrnesian in my elongated twigginess, but nonetheless pretty damned skinny. I don’t need to go THAT far. High 180s would be nice, though, especially with this extra skin I’d like to minimize (sorry for the graphic, but when y’r overweight for nearly 25 years – let alone by as much as 100 pounds –  it happens). Being in Colorado now, where the outdoors are actually enjoyable, will certainly help.

And who knows whether I'll keep the beard off? That's up to "the cougar."  Right now, I'm basking in the symbolism.

So for now: Congratulate me, boys (since as far as I know, that's all that visits here these days)....

Posted by: burninglight at 13:21 | link | comments (22)