Back from an early summer holiday. Detroit, Dublin, and Paris in short succession. Wedding season, full swing. Highly recommend traveling with the remarkable and brilliant Becky Bartkowski. Towering emerald cliffs, skull-lined catacombs, a French comic shop, dive bars, museums, the pharmacy. I’ll go anywhere with her anytime. Plus, wonderful hangs with friends new and old alike. Thanks to everyone who passed along recommendations.
Lots of time to listen and read on planes, too. Tore through Warren Zanes’ Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, which was thrilling and inventive, Chris Blackwell’s The Islander, and John Higgs’ Stranger Than We Can Imagine: Making Sense of the Twentieth Century—the latter is clattering around a lot in my head.
Vacation listening hits differently, doesn’t it? Some songs in constant rotation:
David Axelrod, “The Human Abstract”
Earth, Wind & Fire, “See the Light”
Jeffrey Silverstein, “No Rain”
Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer, and Shahzad Ismaily, “Sajni”
Califone, “Halloween”
Natural Information Society, “Is”
Brokeback, “Another Routine Day Breaks”
Lana Del Rey, “Peppers” (featuring Tommy Genesis)
Sexmob, “Fletcher Henderson”
“Novels we might read twice, generally once. Movies we might see a few times. Our favorite recordings? We listen hundreds, even thousands of times. They go through our systems in a very different way. A great recording, listened to hundreds and hundreds of times over a period of years, even decades, can suddenly open onto a new vista or back alley.“—Warren Zanes, Deliver Me From Nowhere
CLICK VORTEX: BUOYS AND BRONNER’S
Jesus People Music Volume 2: The Reckoning
"The selections gathered here are culled mostly from the early ‘70s, and from outside of the music industry proper, from an era before Christian music became a commercial sub-genre. As such, these recordings represent a homespun era and idiosyncratic approaches. That’s not to say these songs don’t share sonic and spiritual commonalities—like most Jesus People music, the songs are united by ardent evangelistic lyricism, often driven by apocalyptic zeal. But they also stand as individual expressions of individual relationships with God, the primacy of a one-on-one connection to the divine being, just one of the elements of the Jesus People Movement that was subsumed into the mainline church as decades wore on."
So proud of Aquarium Drunkard and ORG Music’s Jesus People Music Volume 2: The Reckoning. Thanks to Doug Cooper and Josh Swartwood for their vision and care. And it's been a trip to reunite with Chris Estey on a project—a longtime mentor and a genuine freak soul I love dearly.
Catch Up on Aquarium Drunkard Transmissions
Recent episodes include the brilliant and funny Alex Pappademas and Joan LaMay on Steely Dan, Allyson McCabe on the price Sinéad O'Connor paid for listening to the Holy Spirit, and metaphysical poet Janaka Stucky. This Wednesday: ambient country trio Suss. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts or just go press play at Aquarium Drunkard.
Watching:
Painting With John, season three
Night Movies (1975)
Basic Instinct (1992)