Paris can be an intimidating city when it comes to navigating independent music, especially since there’s really no other city like it in France and “electro” tends to drown everything out. Wandering into the small boutique called Balades Sonores can be like opening the door into another hidden Paris. For one of the biggest cities in the world, it offers an unmatched intimacy and not just because the place is really tiny (in the typical Parisian style of ultra-small shops and elevators). Located in the area called Pigalle in the 9th district of Paris, it’s crammed full of music and oddities like crocheted pillows that look like vinyl records and T-shirts custom made by the shop’s house designer and artist, Chicamancha.
Monday, July 14, 2014
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Sleep-Hiking Bastard Mountain
Traveling to Edinburgh for just a few days, it was hard to imagine that the namesake for the group Bastard Mountain wasn’t in fact Arthur’s Seat, the city’s highest crag with a patchwork of yellow wild flowers and spotted with bunnies darting from stone staircases, behind broken fences and into the bushes. Or to imagine that the grassy field of spirits from “Meadow Ghosts” wasn’t actually hidden around the overgrown river walkway along the banks of the Water of Leith. The music’s lingering, winding guitar parts, the rumbling, hum of the accordion and the subdued voices and harmonies are a perfect companion to the moist green city with black-stained castles and cathedrals.
Friday, October 11, 2013
THE MUSIC TAPES’ TRAVELING IMAGINARY IN REAL LIFE
Published on thebomberjacket.com
The Traveling Imaginary came to New York City for a few nights in September and for a few hours the third story of a chapel became a gateway to another world. A place somewhere in the imagination of Julian Koster and The Music Tapes crew, outside of space and reality, where time stood still. A carnival full of games and cookies and music and recordings and fantastical characters and magic tricks and stories and dreams.
Since its beginnings, the band has consistently re-imagined the concert experience, and whatever form they take, they are definitely not to be missed. And, the performances are usually free of cost. For several years they’ve been doing caroling tours at Christmas time after being invited to people’s homes for a holiday gathering. They also did a tour performing their unreleased album that was a children’s story and symphony in five movements called, “2nd Imaginary Symphony for Cloudmaking.”
Friday, August 23, 2013
Bent Shapes and the Art of Feeling Weird
Bent Shapes has strong connections to the band’s hometown of Boston and the music community there. Listening to the record almost drops you right into the streets, brick buildings everywhere and rats scurrying around corners. They’re the kids that worked behind the counter of the local thrift store, hocking treasures and oddities from lost decades. Or the kids in the coffee shop that you recognize from the basement show the night before and that you have a supremely awkward conversation with, almost as if “Fight Club” rules applied. However, they’re just the same type of socially clumsy dudes that embody the title of their debut LP, Feels Weird.
The project began with guitarist Ben Potrykus writing songs under the name of Girlfriends. The trio, including Supriya Gunda on bass and Andy Sadoway on drums, teamed up (oddly enough) through musical basements and working at thrift stores. On Feels Weird, they all share the microphone with each member singing at least one song. For a few years now, the group has been consistently releasing solid EPs and singles on cassettes and vinyl. Their debut Girlfriends cassette was a group of songs that complemented each other well, recorded in a more lo-fi style that really lent itself to the content of those particular songs. A few of their singles were released as flexible vinyl 7″ discs–translucent squares that appear as if the manufacturer forgot to pop the record out that can be flexed in half (or maybe it’s better to say it could be bent in a plethora of shapes).
Wednesday, June 05, 2013
PRIMAVERA SOUND 2013 REVIEW
Originally published on thebomberjacketcom
A lot had changed for the 13th edition of Primavera Sound, most notably that the festival was no longer “San Miguel Primavera Sound,” but “Heineken Primavera Sound.” The difference is relevant, because a lot of the local Spanish elements of the festival haven’t been as emphasized in more recent years (and the Primavera organization has been called out on it once or twice). Don’t get me wrong, Primavera Sound is an amazing music festival, but as this was my third year in attendance, it was hard not to notice (or realize) some things. Spanish groups rarely got set times later than 6 p.m., and the attendance of those sets reflected the low amount of exposure they were actually getting. Although it’s cool that additional concerts were organized for the entire month beforehand and most intensively during the festival week, it’s debatable whether or not that meant that groups were pushed out of the festival to play at a bar the week before. Primavera has become a veritable booking force in Spain–particularly in Barcelona. It organizes concerts for nationally touring bands and also for local groups, but during the time in Barcelona I had more than one band mention to me how hard it was to book a show without the Primavera stamp of approval.
Thursday, March 28, 2013
UNIVERS: THERE’S NO FIRE IN SPACE, BUT THERE’S HAIL
Spiraling through atmospheric drone riffs and surf rock, Univers’ guitar melodies sound as if outer space were crashing into the ocean. The guttural vocals hold a strange Joy Division ‘80s vibe, but definitely sound like the droning omnipotence of the Universe itself. So, if you ever had one of those weird moments where it seemed like the universe was trying to communicate with you but you didn’t understand, maybe it’s because the universe speaks Catalan, like Univers. The band comes from Barcelona and their latest EP, called La Pedregada, is a nostalgic blend that perfectly conjures up the city’s dusty back rooms, beach side bars, botellones (the Spanish word for “street drinking”), and late, late nights.
Friday, December 28, 2012
TBJ’S FAVORITE RECORDS OF 2012: GODSPEED YOU!, GRIZ BEAR, MT. EERIE
Originally published on thebomberjacket.com
There really wasn’t one album from 2012 that owned my ears the same way that Destroyer’s Kaputt and Titus Andronicus’ The Monitor did the last two years. Barring a long-winded tangent about why it’s nonsense for anyone to decide what were the best sounds recorded within a twelve-month period with no criteria whatsoever, suffice it to say that those records were my favorites for two reasons. One, because I enjoyed listening to them to death, and two, because they represented something greater than a collection of ten to fifteen songs. There were a few albums from this year that had a little bit of both of those qualities, but always more of one and a little weak on the other.
- Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!
With Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend!, Godspeed You! Black Emperor captured something contemporary in a way that most people want to call “political,” but which is an inaccurate term for it. As instrumental music with few words to give clues, the record is presented as a bit of a puzzle.In an interview with The Guardian, they said, “figure it out yourself, all the clues are there.”
The biggest hint is probably the title of the first track, “Mladic.” Most reviews of the album I’ve read don’t even mention that Ratko Mladić was the “Butcher of Bosnia,” a military leader wanted for crimes against humanity and genocide. The crimes were “supposedly” committed during the Bosnian War from 1992-1995 until he was captured in 2011. His trial began in May of this year at the international tribunal in the Hauge, Netherlands, but is currently on a six month hiatus because the defense accused the prosecution of failing to disclose certain information. The rest of the puzzle perhaps is unwound in the strange charts and images in the album’s packaging, including the odd triangle that looks strangely similar to a bad early 2000s hard-rock band logo.
One of the most quotable blips from the aforementioned interview is, “Things are not OK. Music should be about things are not OK, or else shouldn’t exist at all.” While the album’s confusing commentary of modern warfare and human rights is interesting, what’s maybe more interesting is the connection of politics to culture just with the record being a piece of popular media.
It’s a similar idea to the insert for their last album, Yanqui U.X.O., which contained a diagram that connected the major record companies to arms manufacturers. The best art of our time will be the stuff that is more than just a collection of pretty songs, but that captures something more about the society and culture.
Yet, while all of this is compelling and gives the listener a lot to think about during those long instrumental expanses, I can only listen to seven minutes of helicopter bagpipes a certain number of times. One, actually. The number of times is one.
- Grizzly Bear - Shields
On the opposite end of the scale, the album I listened to the most this year was Grizzly Bear’s Shields. Yet, most of Grizzly Bear’s appeal has always been that they made “chill,” accessible music. Admittedly by the band themselves in an interview with Pitchfork, Chris Taylor said, “There were lyrics in previous albums that seemed to have no meaning whatsoever. And that always really annoyed me. We agreed it’d be really important and awesome if we could just try and make all the lyrics tell something.”
What they came out with was a personal and introspective album that seems to be a bit of a confessional about the distance between people, particularly the intentional distance. Emotional shields. “A Simple Answer” repeats a mantra that could seem like existentialism at first, with the casual ear tuning into Taylor repeating, “No wrong or right / Just do whatever you like.” Yet, the simple answer is that the mantra is a personal excuse, with one of the preceding lines being, “Move on, let’s face / that all you trust is a cynical phrase.”
Yet, for the most part, the album is just a wonderfully textured piece of music. Part of what can make an album one of your favorites isn’t just pretty music, but the way that the music reaches out into the world and into your life to create situations and memories with people that you care about that you wouldn’t trade for anything. I had the chance to cross seeing Grizzly Bear off of my bucket list at the Pitchfork music festival in Paris, which is one of the things that helped make Shields something more for me. Either way, it’s great to see the band thinking beyond just playing instruments well and it would be even better to see them go deeper.
Mount Eerie - Clear Moon
Mount Eerie - Ocean Roar
One band that had a pretty solid balance of meaningful music that’s also pleasing to listen to was Mount Eerie. It was part of the odd coincidence verging on would-be conspiracy as one of the many artists to release two albums in 2012. Yet, what makes Mount Eerie distinct is the two album are related, one not complete without the other.
The most famous work by songwriter Phil Elverum was under another pseudonym, being The Microphones. The material released during his “Mount Eerie period” has been more abstract and less poppy than the spontaneous, diverse, and catchy albums with The Microphones and have seemingly been more focused on nature.
With Clear Moon, Elverum very bluntly examined and addressed his output and the response to it.In “Through the Trees, Part II,” he sings, “I meant all of my songs not as a picture of the woods, but just to remind myself that I briefly live.” Even the multi-layered guitar riff and the “part II” in the title are call backs to earlier Elverum days. Yet, it’s not returning to techniques that made a cult following for fans of the album The Glow, Part II, that makes Clear Moon and Ocean Roar great sister albums, but how he uses it to construct a greater theme. Clarity vs. obfuscation, the moon vs. the ocean, bright light vs. white noise, accessibility vs. reclusiveness, understanding vs. confusion. It’s a multi-faceted theme that is pondered in a lot of Elverum’s songs, but never so directly and deeply as with these two albums. The conflict is not only dealt with in regards to understanding the universe, but also as a recording artist, trying to balance audience expectations and abstract artistic compulsions. It’s also something that I talked to Elverum about a bit in our interview earlier this year, which can be read here.
*
Originally published on thebomberjacket.com
Tuesday, December 04, 2012
Barcelona Record Label Showcase
Especially for Barcelona where the music and art scenes can be elusive, it always helps to check out record labels in order to discover new bands and to find interesting places and venues to go to. Barcelona has numerous independent record labels that also manage international artists, as well as some collective labels managed by musicians, or just smaller-run operations. Spain doesn’t really have a massive national indie label, because there isn’t much of an audience for it in the country, but what you will find are groups of cool, like-minded people who are trying to make something happen. THE BOMBER JACKET has been lucky enough to meet and talk to many of these folks this year.
Read More on thebomberjacket.com
Read More on thebomberjacket.com
Bcore Disc
Bcore has been around since 1990 and they claim the title of one of the most influential labels in Spain. They have a variety of different types of bands such as the sludgy ’90s rock of Betunitzer, the melodic folk of Maria Rodés, the yelping and astral guitar of Margarita, the piano storytelling of Fanny Roz, or the astrological acoustic and tape project of Aries. The label grew out of hardcore punk at the end of the ‘80s, passing around handmade records, t-shirts and posters, and the D.I.Y. mentality is still with them. It’s also one of the few in Spain that still have a physical location. In Gràcia, carrer Montamy 25 houses the record shop, full of new and old records and CDs for purchase. The collection is also available online.
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Haunting Simon Joyner
Read More on thebomberjacket.com
Simon Joyner’s thirteenth studio album is Ghosts (or sixteenth or so if you count the early tapes) and it’s release marks 20 years that Joyner has been making music. He funded the project with a Kickstarter campaign, in which he outlined some big ambitions for the double album that he called “experimental and sprawling, featuring some avant/psych/noise damage and songs wrestling with the ghosts of Alex Chilton, Skip Spence, and Jackson C. Frank, among other persistent influences.” The entire recording process was analog, with no digital technology used at all and it was released on Joyner’s own revived record label, Sing, Eunuchs! The result is a collection of songs that are filled with flavors, decorations, and experimentations that are unique to Joyner’s catalog, while still capturing the same old Joyner spirit.
Simon Joyner’s thirteenth studio album is Ghosts (or sixteenth or so if you count the early tapes) and it’s release marks 20 years that Joyner has been making music. He funded the project with a Kickstarter campaign, in which he outlined some big ambitions for the double album that he called “experimental and sprawling, featuring some avant/psych/noise damage and songs wrestling with the ghosts of Alex Chilton, Skip Spence, and Jackson C. Frank, among other persistent influences.” The entire recording process was analog, with no digital technology used at all and it was released on Joyner’s own revived record label, Sing, Eunuchs! The result is a collection of songs that are filled with flavors, decorations, and experimentations that are unique to Joyner’s catalog, while still capturing the same old Joyner spirit.
Monday, September 10, 2012
A Night on the Town in Barcelona: The Best Places to See Live Music
Read more at thebomberjacket.com
Spain can be an unusual location of curation for live music. The most prevalent trends are discotheques based around popular music (mostly American), hippie and rasta jam bands, or death metal. Anything else can be hard to come across unless you know where you’re looking. Even for a cosmopolitan contemporary cultural center like Barcelona, such places are pretty small, but there are indeed lesser-known pockets where similar musicians and friends gather.Part of the reason why independent music isn’t flourishing in the city like one would think and why there aren’t a lot of live indie rock venues has to do with laws and police. Getting licenses is very difficult and expensive for small business owners already contending with the crisis. Because Barcelona is so thickly settled, noise complaints and violations become an issue, which can also end up being expensive. The difficulties associated with the live music scene have resulted in the closing of venues, and bands being forced to actually pay to play, which means that a lot of bands don’t ever end up playing live. There also aren’t ever any apartment shows for the same thickly settled reasons that cause venues problems.
Saturday, September 08, 2012
The Music Tapes’ Imaginary Voices and Circuses
Read more on thebomberjacket.com
The last time I saw Julian Koster, the main man behind The Music Tapes, we were sitting in a field in Cambridge, MA near Harvard with a circle of other people. He told us about how the animated feature film he planned to make with DreamWorks about a story he wrote called “Second Imaginary Symphony for Cloudmaking” got derailed. He also mentioned that the special and extremely personal tours that he does around the U.S. can take three different forms. The third form that he mentioned, he talked about wistfully, explaining in his slow, little boy voice that it was like a traveling carnival, complete with amusements and games. It sounded like something that could never happen. However, it seems that it is actually happening this fall in support of his new record, Mary’s Voice, and it’s called “The Traveling Imaginary.”
Wednesday, September 05, 2012
Rejected Concept for Mature Themes Music Video by Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti
FADE IN:
INT. ARIEL PINK’S APARTMENT - NIGHT
Ariel Pink sits at a round, wooden kitchen table, beneath a colored stained glass chandelier. He wears big, pink-tinted sunglasses and a shirt that has large, random sections replaced with black lace. He looks too much like Kurt Cobain. He's playing Battle Ship against a typical thin, hip music video model with a new-wave hairdo, by the name of ROSE (20s). She is his girlfriend and she looks annoyed. We know Ariel has just said something stupid.
ROSE
You're so immature.
ARIEL
But, I really want to talk about mature things.
ROSE
Ariel, we need to talk.
ARIEL
No, look. There’s double agents in Athens. Polymonogamasturbators
running for president. Driftwood in the oil wells and shemales on meth.
There’s a lot of problems with the world right now.
Tuesday, September 04, 2012
"There is No Nature" Part III, Mount Eerie Sinking into the Ocean Roar
The car sped down
the highway with an intensity of some impending unknown cataclysm
until it
wasn’t clear if there was still a road underneath the wheels or just falling
into the vast
roaring
ocean. The foam was blue and iridescent carrying the colors from the dusk into
my windshield
or the rain
from falling clouds and it was a marimba or a glockenspiel or an organ or
something, I
don’t know.
On the dock there were pale lights glowing from across the water from houses or
people or
lanterns. I heard a voice and called, “Who is there?” but the small yelp on the
wind
grew louder
until I realized that it was the voice of the water, being carried by waves
into a mass
of static
fuzz. There was clapping in the clouds turning into the sound of a stream
running that
turned into a
passing car or an oxygen ventilator. Rain fell into the slapping waves so that
water was
everywhere, in the
air, the earth, the vessel for the ocean, in me, in the car, in the light
trying to shoot
its way through the
drops of sound. It washed over noise of children laughing and playing with a
piano and a lovely
girl humming. There was a constant beating that made my shoulders tense,
yet at the same time
sounds so lulling that they blew the billowy sky over the distance
between me and the
island and the mountain. I was there, or I was in the car, or I was off
somewhere making
love or dying. There was barely even any rhythm to it. In dreams the ground
drifted off beneath
our feet and all the water that was contained underneath seeped up through the
grass. It spoke of
ancient questions, sometimes in German. We were sure that the water kept on
going and that swaming
it, the distance between the waves and the molecules of the night sun
split before the
pixelating mountain. OBFUSCATION.
The fog was rolling in from that rocky pile
out west to get
tossed in the waves. In the middle of it all, far out enough that the land shrinks
into a tiny dot, it
becomes an alien planet orbiting some distant sun that has a name that no human
tongue can
pronounce, because it was so heavy and churned like some great wooden mechanism
were
below it. A giant
wheel turning and keeping everything moving. So vast and empty that it becomes
a
desert. The place
that is the absence of water is the same as the place that is the absence of
land.
Sinking; light doesn’t
sink it water. It tries to reach into the deep, but turns into a mess of
rippling expanse. The
storm had stopped. My shirt was wet and my pants were dry. I walked
the road back to the
town with beads of water sweating off of strands of my hair. The town was
empty. Everyone didn’t
even have time to pack up their things before abandoning the place. The world
had stopped moving.
I wasn’t even there. Someone was snapping. A final breath of the storm wafted
around in
the street before being swallowed by a storm drain. I saw Phil walk out of the
studio,
the keys in
his hands. He dropped them. He’s standing there dropping them over and over
again, a skipping
image of burning film. Over that wild westward expanse there was so much
nothing, but
in nothing there was some kind of peace. An easier type of piece. I was trying
to reach
for something
to hold, but it was something that I couldn’t hold; something dissolving my
hands in the
wind. I lay
down in bed, with a night cap on that drifted past my waist and had a poofy
ball on the
end. I pulled
the covers up to my chin and I could still hear the ocean. In this place where
he
lived, there
was a constant roaring, constant noise all the time. From my bed, I heard it
swell and
lengthen. A
wailing solo, saying something, but nothing. Roar like an animal. Hungry
and adoring.
***
***
Friday, August 31, 2012
Berghain Shrines and Purity Rings
The following is a prose poetry narrative inspired by both Purity Ring‘s debut album, Shrines, and a trip I took to Berlin’s infamous electronic music nightclub, Berghain.
It seemed apt for Berlin that Berghain was more or less in the middle of the city, yet in the middle of nowhere. The labyrinth of residential streets and parking lots were occasionally splattered with graffiti, as if indicating the way. Spotted by the likes of the silently laughing Mein Lieber Prost face or a number from Mr. Six or the serendipitously appropriate Escape white rabbit outlined in thick bubbled red; art that would glow for the right eyes, reaffirming that, no, I was not lost. The buildings and paved streets faded away so that grass and dirt and puddles and trees could sprout into a junkyard wasteland. Stumpy and towering forms of either garbage or art sprung out of the ground, not asking the passerby to decide which was which.
Thursday, August 30, 2012
Barcelona’s Famèlic Family
Read the whole post on thebomberjacket.com
Exploring live music in Barcelona led to overhearing every once in a while about a group of crazy dudes from a place called Vic. I first heard about a collective called Famèlic when speaking with the Barcelona band Mujeres. The name Els Famèlics is Catalan Spanish that actually means “the hungry” rather than the false friend, “the family.” It seemed like an elusive group of kids playing music and doing things their own way, similar to a lot of D.I.Y. collectives in the U.S., which is something rare to find in Spain. The members live in Barcelona, but have shows in a suburb called Vic, because it’s much harder to book venues in the city. They also operate an independent record label and have releases from the bands L’Hereu Escampa, Mates Mates,Ohios, Regalim, and they work with Vic Goddard & the Subway Set. In addition to these groups, they’re also working with some of the best bands in the country. Eduard Vila and Aleix Vila are two members of Furguson, a band that THE BOMBER JACKET recently interviewed, and are also co-founders of the collective. TBJ spoke with Sergi Egea, the third co-founder who manages a lot of Famèlic’s ventures, about the group and music in the Barcelona area in general.
Sunday, August 26, 2012
Maragitas for Eskimos on the Atoll
Photo By Marian Campoy
Album Cover for Explota El Cuerpo
Read the whole post on thebomberjacket.com
After the drums kick in at the beginning of the album Explota El Cuerpo (Blow Up the Body) by the Madrid-based band Margarita, the guitar melody shoots out quickly over a dark night sky with prismatic colors streaming down to Earth from its tail. Stray notes twinkle here and there, passing through stars’ phosphorescence as the shooting song splits into alternate dimensions of inverted colors where Eskimos build sand igloos volcano-side. All the way through to the last track, every single tune is laced with whooping non-verbal melodies that crescendo and dive into quick, pleasantly chaotic succession.
At times it can sound like someone stripped the vocals from Sung Tongs, translated them into Spanish, and layered them over The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place after boosting the tempo. THE BOMBER JACKET spoke with vocalist and guitarist Hugo Sierra and he says, “we weren’t trying to sound like Animal Collective, which is a very cool band, but we tried to go further with our vocal harmonies in our own way. We started with ideas from Parque Mágico (their first record) and went deeper into the melodies to find an outer-space feeling.” The two albums are distinct, becauseParque Mágico is a lot heavier in comparison to the playful Explota El Cuerpo. In response to the latter Explosions in the Sky reference, the band shot back, “No way! Are you kidding? We don’t like that band at all.” They prefer psychedelic bands from the ‘60s, saying, “We wanted to have a sparkle going on all the time, full of colors and with spaces for listeners to fill themselves.”
Friday, August 24, 2012
Cloud Nothings: Original and Never Getting Old, or Memory vs. Slightly Older Memory
Read the whole post on thebomberjacket.com
Throwbacks to styles of music from previous decades and generations have been toyed with a lot in the past decade within this thing we’re going to call “indie” music. Whereas it can be fun to relive (or live for the first time) something from another time period, emulating a retro style just for the sake of fun or nostalgia usually has its way of captivating me.
There are only a few cases where it has been brilliantly employed to thematically enhance an album, such as last year’s Kaputt from Destroyer. There, a defeated artist used ‘80s style jazz and synth to create something almost like a porno soundtrack to highlight what a lot of hard working musicians are eventually reduced to. In doing so, it makes a personal statement into a more widespread cultural one, especially because so many bands are hopping on the ‘80s synth fun train these days.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
"There Is No Nature," Mount Eerie Under the Clear Moon, Part II:: The Interview
Below is the transcript of my conversations with Phil Elverum that inspired "There Is No Nature," Part I, found here.
I had brought a tape recorder with me just in case and switched it on before ever time I went out, so luckily I was able to capture our discussions. Read them below.
MANGO NEBULA: Do you think there’s a difference between Phil in the music and in real life?
Phil Elverum: When I make records, they’re not about me. They kind of are by default just because I write in the first person and there aren’t very many other people in my songs. They’re not songs about interpersonal relationships or anything. At least, usually not. Not lately. Not for the last ten years or something. Yeah, in my mind it’s not about “Phil” necessarily, but I think culturally, outside of the albums themselves, just as part of the mechanisms of making records and being a public figure and playing shows, this character of who I am, “Phil Elverum,” like playing shows, Mount Eerie guy that person is different from who I am when I’m at home living my life. Which I think, you know, everyone has multiple versions of themselves. I’m giving a really complicated answer, but it’s a really complicated question.
Saturday, July 14, 2012
"There Is No Nature," Mount Eerie under the Clear Moon
Read the transcript from the interview with Phil Elverum in Part II: here.
Mount Eerie loomed in white with curtains of mist surrounding it that were too low to be clouds and too high to be just fog. Water hung in the air, constantly threatening to condense into rain, but it hadn’t yet. The mountain appeared to be ever-changing and darkening, continually obscuring the peak. I had come to the mountain following a bright Clear Moon, or what I thought was the moon. That shield of grey made it hard to tell when day ended and night began without a watch.
I was looking to commune with nature. I had packed granola and trail mix with chocolate candies in it. I was looking for a story I had heard. Stories that had been floating around the country for more than a decade about a man living in the woods of Anacortes, Washington. Some said he was the spirit who guarded the mountain. Some said that he was just a guy who liked camping.
Friday, July 13, 2012
Wanderlust: The Vision Quest:: A Traveling Mix
I’ve lived in Spain for two years now, in both the “la españa de verdad” (the “real” small town Spain of Albacete) and in a metropolitan cultural center (Barcelona). This June, I’ll be filling a backpack with as much underwear as I can and backpacking from Budapest, Hungary to Berlin, Germany. Music has been my constant companion on my trips across Europe and I’ve had my share of trips but this will be my longest by far. For me, traveling seems to ring truest in the form of a folk song. Not a regurgitated ’60s culture anthem, but more of the idea or concept of a folk song.
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