the path

the publisher recommends getting nicely toasted before enjoying this cd on a quality stereo at a relatively high volume, slightly heavy on the base. like for real - no ghetto-blasters or desktop pc speakers - you wont hear the whole range of sound of the tunes and they'll sound like crap.

1. Hello

this is where you hear the sound of my voice.

2. Hawrań - Hop Dana, Dana

about the tune: i like this fusion of the traditional polish highlander music and the admixture of the dance beat. the base barely comes thru on my pc's soundcard, but sounded good on my car stereo. i like the shift from the single female vocalist to the female chorus, which, to me, has an unpolished (no pun intended), "real" , young, beautiful sound. wish they had a younger sounding guy though.

pertinence to the path: i was born in poland.


3. Hallucinogen – Wacko

the tune: this is i believe the 3rd discernible track out of a live set Hallucinogen (simon posford) played at the DNA Lounge in San Francisco on December 7th, 2001. most of Hallucinogen's music is meant to be listened to at high quality rather than just loud. i love the pumping base, the old school techno sounds, the fast left-right panning of some of the sounds, the cool, seamlessly blended samples, the lot of finely doctored sounds, the richness and fullness of the whole thing, its sci-fi, psychedelic feel. i've said it before and i'll say it again: friggin' simon posford rules.

the path: things were pretty crazy there.

4. Logic Bomb – Lodjik

the tune: same genre as the previous tune, plus wickedly modulated awesome samples. i love it.

the path: logically, many people were leaving.

5. Lisa Gerrard – Sacrifice

the tune: i've only heard this on the paul oakenfold album "Another World" which i bought in 2000. until i was collecting info for this cd swap, i'd thought this must have been a man singing in persian or something. turns out its an australian woman idioglossing. in this video this woman makes me think of a friggin' female version of the creepy, nosferatu-like "Strangers" of the movie "Dark City", which detracts from the song in my eyes, or ears, as the case may be. i liked how oakenfold used this track, contrasting it against a much faster tune, and i used it the same way.

the path: given the opportunity to leave the craziness, my parents viewed leaving poland for "the west" at least partly as a sacrifice, believing that they themselves might not reap much benefit from the move, but that at least their children can expect a better life.

6. Morcheeba – Public Displays of Affection

the tune: i was gonna use the unbelievably sensuous "Undress Me Now" - the best tune that i know by Morcheeba, but when i heard phx was thinking of using it too, i decided to use their song i like 2nd best. bittersweet, sung by the interesting, smooth, funky-accented voice of Morcheeba's original singer - Skye Edwards, this song always brings to my mind the images of couples in new, blossoming love, kissing just anywhere, slowly, sensuously, the girls' eyes half-shut, drunk with hormones, their faces glowing... every time i see these couples i melt. it's a beautiful sight. though the guys dont seem to have that drunk look about them.

the path: i've fallen in love once or twice, but i've also been the one who'd join in the fun if i had someone.

7. Superchick – One Girl Revolution

the tune: my little guilty pleasure - a christian rock tune. but i love the message. there's too many insecure young girls putting themselves thru too much shit. wish they got some of this song's attitude. and i like the beat of this tune. and the funkiness of it. and the singer's voice. the guitar sounds too much like christian rock though, but apparently the band is getting better.

the path: i've met a couple girls that could have used some brainwashing from this song.

8. Josh Abrahams – Totally Addicted to Bass

the tune: phx loves this tune. i love the vocals, the way they're distorted, too, and the beat. too bad there actually isnt that much of that bass they're all talking about in there. unless its deeper than my hardware can do. maybe some of you can juice their subs in their trunks and lemme know if there's something there that i'm missing.

the path: i got addicted to base.

9. Basement Jaxx – Rendez-Vu

the tune: awesome beat, love the guitar bits, nice base, cool vocals, overall sound.

the path: i got introduced to this tune cruising along a small highway packed with other tourists cruising to the same little summer party town - sunshine, nice looking car, windows rolled down, the couple inside decked out for clubbing, bopping to this tune blasting out, stuck on repeat :)

10. Kid Koala – Third World Lover

the tune: a smoothly developing, bollywood sample-based wicked driving tune by local born turntablist kid koala. for me it really kicks in around the 2.5 minute mark, when the jingly bells come in for good, and then the drum beat takes off.

the path: third world lover - c'est moi. also, this tune has etched paths in my brain during countless blazed 50 km drives home from work.

11. Squirrel Nut Zippers – Put a Lid On It

the tune + path: i was pleasantly shocked when i heard this tune first, on much music - the canadian version of mtv. people playing this kind of music nowadays??? awesome!!! until checking things out for this here blurb i'd thought this band was canadian, what with the whacky name and exposure on canadian tv and seemingly nowhere else. alas, they're from north carolina.

12. The Seatbelts – Tank!

the tune: this iconic opening song for the episodes of the anime series "Cowboy Bebop" rocks ass - the loose string guitar sound, the trumpets, the energy, down to the extended saxophone reef at the end - fucking awesome.

the path: i was exposed to cowboy bebop during my short stint in toronto, and it knocked me on my ass. a large part of the appeal of the series is the brilliant sound track - composed by Yoko Kanno. phx and I also got TanK(ed) in Spain once upon a time...

13. The Avalanches – Frontier Psychiatrist

the tune: australian group's hilarious sample-mania. among other gems in this tune, i love the little kid's answers to the woman's questions at the end.

the path: this boy needs therapy

14. Compay Segundo – Pobre Corazon

the tune: i'd written about my odyssey to find this tune in this post.

the path: ... my poor heart was lonely.

15. Il Était Une Fois – Mescalino (English ver.)

the tune: sung by a 70's french group whose name means "Once upon a time...", i like this english version of the song better than the french one, even though the english is awkward. i'm not crazy about the twangy guitar throughout the tune, especially for the long stretch at the beginning. but i like the somewhat rough-around-the-edges voice of the main vocalist, even his lisp, and the backup female vocals are really cool. apparently normally their main vocalist was this very mixed heritage, multi-talented woman, who tragically died of a pulmonary edema at age 29, a few years after the group broke up.

the path: during an extended emotional hemorrhage period after the break-up with my "stupid bitch" ex, i came up with the idea that such suffering is basically withdrawal symptoms from a drug - the drug called love, consisting of whatever hormones, pheromones, endorphins or whatever it was that we stopped getting.

16. Estopa – Tu Calorro

the tune: i have a love/hate relationship with the somewhat badass sound/attitude of the vocalist, but i do like this slightly traditional spanish sound that totally takes off at about the 1 minute mark when the female flamenco singer joins in. the lyrics are pretty cool, too, especially the chorus:
"your perfume is the venom
that contaminates the air which your hair cuts
that even cuts my speech and understanding
because it's the drug that turns my head crazy.
later i fall asleep in a bed hard as a rock
dreaming that you havent gone yet
dreaming that you're still touching me..."

the path: the band is from Barcelona, which phx and i found to be a pretty cool city, quite different from the rest of spain. we'd like to go back and spend some decent time there.

17. Jimi Hendrix – Manic Depression

the tune: that reiterating, unrelenting drum sequence, with that heavy base guitar - this is a shockingly underrepresented song of Jimi's. it didnt hit me until only a few years ago that the jimi hendrix experience had a really good drummer.

the path: i give jimi hendrix' music a good chunk of the credit for helping me get my nose above the surface of the sea of teenage depression i was drowning in when listening to metallica and nirvana.

18. Kottonmouth Kings – Proud to Be a Stoner

the tune: this is a rap tune, i guess, but i like the guitar, and having a melody to a rap tune does wonders for me, my general dislike of crap music.

the path: umm, so, what is my current relationship with pot..? i dont know if i'm proud - no more than being proud of being a beer drinker. but i dont feel i should hide it from everyone. (maybe just my parents, for now - i think that'd be too much of a blow for them: first their firstborn becomes a friggin' heathen, and now he's doing drugs.) and i dont consider myself a stoner. more like a smot poking aficionado, a one hit wonder, someone who likes to get high rather than stoned. funny how pot smokers often get a sensibility for nature. i did start smoking at the age of 18. and i am proud of my daughter and my son :)

19. Cheech & Chong – Santa Claus and His Old Lady

this comedy bit is thematically appropriate for this swap, as well as effen hilarious! one of the things that got me the most was when the dude said he doesnt know who santa claus is because he's from pittsburg so he doesnt know too many local dudes...

so without knowing it, i ended up doing what shenry used to, with the defining of the playlist first, influenced only partly by the theme, and then justifying the songs' pertinence to said theme later. still, it's all true and will provide insight into me and my path for those who might be curious.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night! :)

its been such a long time...

... thats gonna be on my next year's cd swap :)
so the cd's are in the mail as of last night. damn you shenry - this took sooooo effen long, dude. but i wanted it to be good. ppl who dont know me say i'm a bit of a perfectionist.

it's been so long since my last post. one thing that stands out hazily in my memory that i wanted to blog about, was that i attended a cheech & chong show recently. i told a friend of mine and he didnt know who they were. that was shocking. turns out not everybody in BC smokes pot.
apparently cheech and chong actually met in vancouver back in the day - cheech was on the run from the draft, delivering carpets, trying his hand at comedy. chong was on the run from calgary (just over the hill from here), having been kicked out of the town by the mayor for having an inordinately raukous show with his band, as well as wrestling with the problems of converting his brother's strip joint into a comedy club.
they met, and magic happened. but things went sour between them, and they werent talking for decades at a time. like two and a half. then chong's wife decided to meddle with their affairs and wrote an email or 2 in tommy's name, and got the ball rolling for another tour, which has been in the works about as long as the latest G'n'R album and tour. i thought that the tickets were way too steep, but as the show date neared, and i found the tickets werent actually "that" expensive, i started to wanna go. then actually trying to buy tickets online from goddam ticketmaster proved impossible. but the boss came thru and bought them at a ticketmaster outlet like 2 days before the show. just before the show i found out that the ticket was gonna be a little christmas present for me, so that was cool. he was sure there was gonna be an intermission when ppl are gonna flock onto the balconies and have a quick j, or maybe even smoke during the show, and we both thought ppl would smoke right before. i didnt think anybody would actually smoke during the show. i wondered what they were gonna be like - stupid stoner humour, or were they just gonna be talking about their history together..? i saw 2 blurbs online about the other shows (this was a tour) - one was quite positive, but the other was seriously disappointed and thought it was sad to see those 2 old men telling the same old jokes. well, they surpassed my lowered expectations, thats for sure. first of all - they did mostly skits, so that was cool, and some of them these 2 old guys were doing some funky shit, crawling around on all fours, pretending they were dogs, and then chong's wife crawled in, so then chong-dog started doggie-humping her, and then cheech-dog started humping him, it was funny. but there was some stand-up too - the opener was tommy chong's wife with a forgettable name doing some stand-up, setting the bar waaaay low - she was just embarassing herself. but at least some of it was fact based, so i got some details on how tommy's bust and court case went. overall, i thought the show was good, with some re-hashed greatest hit material, and some awrite new stuff, and they made it entertaining. people did smoke in front of the theater, and then as soon as the show started inside. first i thought they were gonna get told to leave by the ushers, then i feared they'd set off the smoke alarms and that was gonna be the end of the show. but apparently this must have been thought of and the appropriate policy set beforehand, because i didnt see anybody being hassled, and no fire alarm went off. soon the crowd had a smoke cloud emanating from it pretty evenly the whole time. and the boss' brother brought some pre-rolled j's, and started lighting those and passing them to us. but i was a responsible comedy show goer and made sure i didnt get stoned out of my tree, because i didnt wanna miss any of the jokes, etc. i just got nicely roasted :)
and towards the end we had a little sing-along - it was "up in smoke", karaoke style, with the lyrics on the screen and everything. i've sung this song lots of times, so it was such a treat to be able to sing it with the godfathers of stoner culture, and a theatre-full of heads. it was community :) and then a shitload of ppl lit their lighters and held them high, like a cool concert. one thing about a show like this, is there's no shortage of lighters :)

it was funny - when cheech first showed up on stage, doing a skit as he was walking on, he got a standing ovation right away. later, when tommy was walking on, he got a slightly longer standing ovation.
towards the end, people were throwing j's on stage, and cheech and tommy and his wife were dutifully picking them up, and as they were exiting after the last skit, somebody threw a big bag - like a few ounces, it was bigger than some women's purses, i mean, i've seen pillows on planes half that size! cheech took a double take, promptly came back for it, said thank you very much.

i'm really happy about having gone.

ok - playlist maybe next post.