Life During Tea Time

(pic via)

We've always needed assumptions and projections and fantasies to survive.  We've always needed to sort events into predisposed options and progressions.  We need easily understood reasons, we need easy-to-follow storylines.  Either/Or, Three Acts, Fiscal Quarters.

One of the failings of human beings in the 21st Century is that, in our desperation to process massive fuckwads of information, the nature of these options hasn't spread so much as solidified.  Oh, we lingo like pioneers.  Paradigm shifts, the way we live now, outside of the box.  We can pretend that Millennial self-ratification and instant gratification is a new thing.  We have shiny new iShit!  But anyone old enough to know better knows better.  Everyone trying to gleam some tiny bit of identity from a different square nanometer on the long tail's still chasing the same pathetic consumption-based beast.  People around the very edges - that's not you, btw, don't flatter yourself - might stretch at different stuff, but the center still needs to believe in The Good College and The Stock Market and Justice.

The Song Corporation - We Found a Map (mp3) (buy)

The Rogers Sisters - I Dig a Hole (mp3) (buy)

So, yeah, these songs sound a smidge similar, both are held fast by their four titular syllabic bolts.  They're both fun/desperate/unhinged.  In the end, they both wind up the same place.  But then we all do.

The Rogers Sisters (myspace) track is from their 2002 CD Purely Evil.  The Song Corporation (myspace) just released their first record, Pirates! - there was a listening party Tuesday night at the Delancey, sorry, I'm slow - but "Map" has been kicking around for a while (Fluxblog made note of it back in 2006).  When TSC first sent me this mp3, about a year ago, something had just blown up somewhere; it's too easy to bury "Hole" under 9-11 yadda yadda.  Unrelated.  But we're programmed to want to put everything together as if it makes sense.

Deceptively flippant, "Map" has been drawn up to take you in circles, make you dizzy.  Map as art, art as clues - all random fun and games (scenic phonetic topography of "pesto on pasta," the sonic Burma Shave spacing of "handy. pneumonic. device.") until someone imposes the hopeless urgency of a bomb.  The only tool you have has admitted its inadequacy.  "I may have drawn it wrong."  Already having taken over your life, it consumes your body; map reader becomes mapmaker, skin becomes story, but you're gone without ever knowing the destination.

That map is why you got up this morning, what you had for breakfast, what you're reading right now.

I know nothing about The Song Corporation (I could ask, but that might ruin everything).   This particular song was written by Mike Barthel of clapclap.org; on an old site, he described TSC as a band that no longer exists.  This week they released a record.  The other songs I've heard - you can stream some here, download a couple here - don't sound anything like this one.  But trying to figure out what makes them all part of one thing made me listen and enjoy the other parts more than I might have otherwise.  Perhaps that's all part of the plan.

Going down, nothing for something.  I love The Sisters' "Hole" for completely different reasons.  I love how inarticulate it is, I love how it sounds like it will never stop digging.  Of course it's repetitive, he is convincing himself that he is doing something that needs doing.  Something used to be there, something should be there, now there will be, a hole, so there.  Miyuki Furtado's vocal ticks are cracks in the foundation of his thinking.  "Waah waah waah waah waah waah waah?"  "Wow wow wow wow wow wow wow?"

The Rogers Sisters' last album, 2006's The Invisible Deck, was fuzzier and louder and makes for a darned fine listen.

The Rogers Sisters - You Undecided (mp3) (buy)

The Rogers Sisters - Sooner or Later (mp3) (buy)

Unfortunately, that was the band's last album, they confirmed as much on their myspace page a few weeks ago.  A shame.  They were probably just as good as your favorite band, they could bring some real stuff on stage.  Furtado's got two other gigs going; no clue as to what the actual sisters Rodgers are up to.  There's no reason given for the break-up.  Who knows with these things.  Who needs reasons?

Maybe they weren't ever going to change the world, but face it you don't want your world changed, at least not much, do you.

tags: rogers sisters  song corporation  

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