Troika Music Festival -- Durham

Mashey Mash

Dudes. This is BLOWING my mind. It's really good.
T Pain + Rosebuds + Lil Wayne.

LISTEN HERE
DOWNLOAD HERE
Courtesy The Hood Internet

New Parents

This is Zeno Gill assembling the crib:



Zeno recorded the Unwind EP for us and being in the studio with him is, well, it's kind of a therapeutic experience. He's so nurturing and excited about experimentation--he generates creativity. He lets us come in and bang on his piano, sing and yell, lay in the yard, try drum parts that seem like they're going nowhere (and years later they end up being "Hello Darlin") and just basically whatever doesn't make sense, he's okay with trying. And that's what we need. A lot. So, I knew when he and Christine decided to adopt a child they would be amazing parents and I started day dreaming right away about being a little kid in this musical and creative household. Christine is a bad-ass designer and the smartest woman you know who has already done everything so anything you want to talk about happens to be her area of special expertise. She lived a hundred fast and exciting lives in New York as a designer, she saw every band, she walked around the park in sharp black boots with hot chocolate, she found a house in Durham and decided to get all involved in the town's renaissance, she sat in two inches of dirty water--hand-chipping the nasty 50s flooring off her home's future-beautiful hard woods, she took old Rosebuds by the hand and showed us how design is a part of everything the band is, she has parties where she puts creative types in the same room with other creative types and watches them strike it up, she has had 7 backbones, she usually goes in all black, she has great jewelry, secret rooms of clothing racks from when "oh, yeah, I used to have a store" --no big deal just a kick-ass boutique which was one of many lives, she's started magazines and movements, always teaching us about good design and good living and now, NOW!, she's a mommy too.



They're parents y'all. Wow. We've been waiting so long for this and now it's finally happening!


Here is their adoption story:
www.gilladoption.blogspot.com

Words

Much is said of what is spiritual, and of spirituality, in this, that, or the other--in objects, expressions.--For me, I see no object, no expression, no animal, no tree, no art, no book, but I see, from morning to night, and from night to morning, the spiritual.--Bodies are all spiritual.--All words are spiritual--nothing is more spiritual than words.--Whence are they? along how many thousands and tens of thousands of years have they come? those eluding, fluid, beautiful, fleshless, realities, Mother, Father, Water, Earth, Me, This, Soul, Tongue, House, Fire.

--Walt Whitman
from The Neglected Walt Whitman: Vital Texts
Ed. Sam Abrams

I'll walk out there with you.

Filmmaker Tim Kiernan made this great one-shot video of a family/friend pig pickin' we played in Raleigh.

The Rosebuds - Get Up Get Out (live) from tk on Vimeo.

Hold Hands and Fight

This chick is brave. And she has stolen my heart. Not because of how I'm self-involved and how these are my lyrics and they're like, pretty much all over her body and wow it's crazy to have a fan like that. That's not it at all. Not even it.

She wrote that she and her partner got these together. And THAT... I totally understood. If anybody knows the feeling of what it's like to live the lyrics of this song, it's me. So, I understand everything. These lyrics do mean a lot to me--more than other songs--and I relate to this choice. The tattoo is the badge, which is only a signifier, but the need... THIS is what it's like to be a human in an absurd world.
One which makes outrageous claims on us. And yet we still have our ability to create partnerships. NEED them.

Jasmine

Push It from Kelly Rosebud on Vimeo.

I found this today and it made me so happy to see. Jasmine the Amazing Dog records a cover of "Push It."
There are mp3s of this cover floating around if you want it on yer tape thing radio, but I'm too lazy to find it right now. Soon though.

SPIN

Listen up y'all. Just because we are Spin.com's Artist of the Day doesn't mean we have changed. We still put our Raleigh Denim Jeans on one leg at a time, only now I bedazzle them with real gems. No, not mostly diamonds--I'm not an asshole. Some rubies but yeah, okay, mostly diamonds. But everything else is the same. Except we get written about in Spin (most people don't, just saying). That, and I'm half way to Rio as I write this. But, everything else...

SPIN ARTICLE HERE

p.s. Rio still the place fancy people go?

Dodge, My Old Kentucky

My Old Kentucky Blog... You rule the hardest. You love the band, and for that I'm thankful, but you are a good man too and smart and fun to hang out with. I loved the sirius radio session we did and the Hot Freaks party and the Indy show, and hanging out with you and the little lady downstairs, and just can't wait to go again! But really, with all the new Life Like news happening, you might be surprised that it was THIS article that made me smile. You're funny.

Life Like

Go HERE to listen to or buy Life Like from Merge Records in any format you like including mp3, FLAC, 180-gram vinyl, and CD.

Independent

We are on the cover of the Independent! That really feels like such a big honor. I mean, it IS a big honor but it feels, I don't know... validating? It's our home paper! That's a big deal to us.
Check out the article HERE

Rocky Baby

So, I'm almost all the way into living in New York--manicuring myself to astonish the comedy world, in a good way this time--and I like Greenpoint. As a neighborhood to live in. There's a little records and coffe shop (2 in 1) and there's a couple friends from Raleigh just down the way, and now there's this guy. He is Rocky. His owner is a leathery old man who has three gold chains, all three with different kinds of chunky little eagle pendants. He said, "That's Rocky. But call him Rocky Baby. He's the neighborhood mascot."
So I have composed the following poem for him:
Rocky Baby you live in Greenpoint and have for two years but I didn't know you then until I needed to get coffee and a cup of tomato soup and found you and said I know why I bought this one kind of phone with the camera now because I love you to pieces you are the cutest baby and I've SEEN boxers I have an old boxer Jasmine in NC and she's got long-suffering eyes and a white face because she's 14 and i did have two others and one time that skinny little one we stole/liberated from a dog fight guy in Charleston who went to live with zealots who called him Ezekial but its none of my business and then still another boxer at my grandma's neighbor's who belonged to Nelson's granddaughter and he lives in a tiny fence cage situation which is, I assure you, no good and but you, YOU, are the prettiest, handsomest guy of all and you remind me of Jasmine whom I didn't name since she was a rescue kinda too but who really is a Jasmine now that I know how delicate she is and I miss her believe me but you... You have a square face and didn't you know you are a bull dog and its in your nature to fight bulls I guess but I can't imagine you would though you never know a person all the way since everybody has their compulsions like what if you saw a bull right now on this street you might want to fight him or like get to know him and pretend to be best friends with him the way young girls do their boyfriend's other female friends maybe but you're not a tricky guy that way I can tell you are just a cute guy who likes girls or anybody probably but you seem to really like me which is working out since I am all crush now, like deep deep crush.

David Foster Wallace

David Foster Wallace dead at 46.

If the smartest man alive hangs himself, what chance do the rest of us have?

I am heartbroken.

Letter to Frank Black #4

Dear Frank Black,

How are things with you? Don't tell me. I am interested mainly in what I imagine is up with you. Someone told me where you live and I was all, "I don't want to know! Don't tell me anything else!" He said Portland, not, like, your actual address or anything. But now I have to know you live in Portland. Just don't tell me anything else. It's messing everything up for my letters to you I think. What would be the word for when you've made someone a figment of your own imagined self. Figmentized?

I am leaving North Carolina for a month to live in New York and be a different kind of person you know like actaully start something else again. Like all the comedy I've been doing but I don't want to tell you about all that. Not that I think you'll show up at one of my shows (but just so you know, that can't happen okay?) but because I have so many plans and some of them are quite naive. But I can't think about how I'll remember the plans if I fast forward to writing you in 15 years because who knows how they'll shake out. But I think I know how I want them to. So they are plans.

What are you a Pisces? I bet you are. I'm Gemini. Ruler of the Earth. Not of dirt, but, of the planet Earth. Can you believe that? You are ruler of the ocean. So, technically, you're of my world but we're different. See? You rule something that is a part of me, right, the primordial part, but not the rest of it. So, there's probably a lot you couldn't know about me. And I can't understand how you swim all the time, or float, your feet not ever on anything. You can surely touch the ground, and live within the earth, but only as a part of your own insulation. And you are all muse, according to the books. I don't even know what that means.

Love,
Kelly

Good Guy

At a rest stop, Matt held the door for a man coming out and the man said, "Thanks man, you're a... good guy."

Ideas for other good Yo La Tengo T-shirts:

"Laid Back Fucking Dude"
"Gemini, I Knew It"
"Movement Artist, More Than a Dancer"

Little Kitten

Yesterday we heard a little kitten crying and just yelling--like he was hurt or scared. So we found him in a shed all alone. He saw Ivan and jumped and ran to the woods. Then he came back and started hanging out in a flower pot under the back steps. And he cried and cried all night. He's so wild though. He looks like Rusty from Squidbillies.
We called friends to try to figure out what the right thing to do would be and but nobody wanted to get involved because as soon as you have a plan, you're the one in charge and next thing you know, you own a kitten.
And we definitely do not want a cat. We tour and there's just...
Then early this morning he started crying and crying under my window and so we went out and he jumped and ran under the house. Then he started crying from under there. So I meowed back to him and he stuck his head out like, "What was that!?" and then...

Low five. We have a cat.

Reading Update: Infinite Jest

I just started reading this 10-year anniversary copy of Infinite Jest (with a foreword by Dave Eggers) and instead of doing a post-read entry, let's try an experiment... If you have read this or if you want to read this with me this summer then go HERE and let's make bets on who will finish this insane monster. Have you seen this thing?!
I recommend it if you liked Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius or Confederacy of Dunces... Shit like that.

Tim Lytvinenko

This is Tim Lytvinenko.

Tim is an amazing photographer but I'll get into that in a bit. To describe him is an exercise in deep thinking. To know him is so easy because he's a fun and lovable guy, but to understand him is wonderfully just out of reach. He's complex as shit! And smarter than everyone else too, which is why I like having him around. Not to figure things out for us (which he does a lot) but mostly because it's fun for me trying to keep up with him. He's way ahead. But in the direction you weren't even looking. And there are a ton of weird little surprises like, for example, he can solve a Rubic's cube in less than 3 minutes. Every time.
But his photography...
I don't know. It teaches you things about yourself. Usually when I look at photos of myself, I think, "Oh, that's good, I look pretty in that one. Oh, that's no good, I don't look pretty in that one." Last year he travelled with us and shot the tour and then, later, he presented me with a book he'd handmade of photos he thought I should have. And I was casually flipping through and came upon one in particular that totally arrested me. I stopped moving and breathing for a second. I needed all my energy to understand it.
I won't say what the content was because it's so personal, but when I saw it, I understood so many many things. So many things about myself but also about how things work. And it wasn't conceptual. It was just real. And then I was a different person.
And so Tim's photos mean so much to me. And there's more to understand than I can see so I go back to them all the time and get new stories. And I think, it's so easy to know Tim but the understanding... Here it is on paper--proof of complex thought and a reality normal people like me can't see. He has to show you.

This is his blog:
TimLyt.blogspot.com

You'll see that he's got other eyes.

Montreal

We are drunk on romance language and good coffee.
I saw a four-year-old girl in a soft blue dress and button-down sweater carrying a tiny baby doll wrapped in a blanket and tucked inside her sweater and she was chatting away to the baby in French and I almost died.
photo by TimLytvinenko

Cat's Cradle 2008

This here video is something I found while innocently YouTubeing myself.
It's of a bunch of crazy people, obviously. It gets really good around 2:30 (2 min. 30 sec.) and I remember this--there were so many people on stage I couldn't hear Matt anymore. Hell yes!

on the road: HOT FUDGE CAKE!

Ivan loves hot fudge cake from Shoney's. He really loves it so much. At the end of our first US tour, he was talking to his parents and telling them all about the cities we went to and how the shows were. His dad said, "Did you get to go to a Shoney's?" Sure did. "Did you get the hot fudge cake?" You know we did.
I realized the hot fudge cake was a whole thing. For the whole family.
On our second tour, Ivan asked our drummer, "Do you like hot fudge cakes?" He said, "Naw man. I don't like fudge." It got really quiet in the van for a while. A solid three minutes went by and Ivan sheepishly said, "You don't like any kind of fudge?"

The sun never sets on the BSP!!!

This tour is going so well so far and you know how it is just getting to know people--think if this were a new office job... it could take months! But with touring musicians, it takes a few days to KNOW know each others' whole fucking deal.
Tonight, during our first song, I saw a worried Phil next to the stage on my side. His face. Next he was gone. I knew something was up. Later I learned that my keys were not in the house speakers and that the British Sea Power totally sprang into action--Phil came to me, which I knew meant something, then he and Scott went to the sound man as Mike, their own soundman, made split-second plans for a new amp. Emergency band reinforcements!
The sun never sets on the British Sea Power.
All of the east coast is about to blossom as we head into DC, moving north, toward the first days of spring in every town.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

One day home

Day 5: Tornado Warning

We are on our way through Arkansas, heading to Oxford, MS, through multiple tornado warnings in all counties we are about to cross. We are racing tornadoes at this point. Ivan said, "well, the warning will be over in a few minutes." Just then the announcer said, "with another cell just behind it."

Another warning coming through now.

I don't mean to make light of this because I know this storm has killed people today, but we are having alternating bouts of fear cracked up by laughter since there is one announcer who keeps referring to a nearby county called "Cooter County." He said, "And it IS getting hotter down in Cooter. We are seeing some moisture down there now." I mean, !!!

Another warning. Funnel cloud just west of us, moving to the east.


We are trying to pick our shelter now. Here comes the rain...
I thought a Target would be a good place to stop but I also thought about the possible fatal irony of picking an enormous building with an actual, prominently displayed target.

I don't want my life to have been reduced to that easy of a joke.
Oh damn, we are approaching Cooter now.
I also don't want to die in Cooter. The weather spotter is saying he is looking at two separate funnel clouds. I can't see one.

Here's a rest stop.
---
Matt just said, "Hey Kelly, go stand over next to that funnel cloud and let me get a picture." See here, we are funny ALL the time.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

day 3: indianapolis

These people! They were so fun! We'd never been to Indy before and didn't know if anybody would like us but they totally did and it was a blast.

photo by tim lytvinenko
http://www.timlytvinenko.com

day 2

Lexington to Chicago.
we stopped at five rest stops, not including gas stations.

five...

posted by dusty s.

Found my Boat

Boom. Done.

This here remix record is free at the MergeRecords.com online store so go on down and get it. Go on. Old Justin Vernon of Bon Iver has done a whale of a job reconstructing "Get up Get out" and laid open the sadness and beauty in the lyrics all the experts hadn't noticed. Roger O'Donnell put all these pitsicata/pizzacado/pizzicato/how do you say it? strings on "I Better Run" and when I first heard it I said, "Holy F! It was ROGER who made "Disintegration" what it is to me! It was ROGER who is responsible for my dark side after all! And now it is ROGER who has deconstructed it and shown it to me AGAIN!"
The Portastatic remix is the summer beach jam of jams! Mac surprised us with this remix when we were on tour and I remember listening to it on my laptop speakers in a moldy smelling 2-star and I thought, "I can't do this here. Not here!" But somehow it ended up only enhancing the beach feel.
For optimum results you'll need to lay in some supplies first--some sunburn creme and pina coladas.
The Fire Hazard remix is terrifying.
The JYU remix is electrifying.
The Luke Warm remix is strobifying.
The Radical 9 remix is Euro-dance-blast-erizing.
The El Venado remix is tent-revival-testifying.
And the Wes Phillips remix is possibly genius.

Sweet Beats, Troubled Sleep (Furies Remixed!)

Sunday Morning--Let it be Known

I heard on NPR that scientists are trying to build a black hole and that there is a group of people who are trying to sue them to stop them. The scientists admitted that there is a chance their black hole could swallow everything, destroying Earth and everything else, but that it's unlikely.
I was writing in my diary about this and how I feel about it and had one particularly cantankerous thought which I will copy here:

"And I wonder about my little diary. You! Floating through space or another dimension, the only surviving artifact of our shitty little planet, carrying with you the seeds of corruption and beauty--an ugly little fruit just traveling through unknown and unintended fabrics of other time, sometimes scraping the fragments of other traveling minutiae, becoming striated, telling the story of your journey with these little injuries. Or maybe you never find a being to tell; maybe you just travel through and through, having infinite near-misses with meaning."

See, in this scenario, I have imagined that my diary is the only thing that survives annihilation. Naturally. Also, I've imagined that my diary is brimming with "seeds of corruption and beauty." When, in fact, it is merely a series of smallish scandals--at best. But it is positively festooned with self-aggrandizements. Just in case it does become the only surviving artifact of our existence. I do NOT want to be the evidence of a boring society. God sakes!
Do you know what it takes to be this narcissistic and self-obsessed? Man, a lot.

Jasmine

This dog is spoiled. Now, since her starring role in "Push It" and other, unreleased films, she cannot be told anything.