Yesterday M.Belanger mentioned over on birbsite putting together a 2022 GenX rage mixtape, which got me thinking along the same lines. Even though due to a number of factors, to be perfectly honest with everyone, I don't enjoy music anymore and haven't for a couple of years, that doesn't mean that I've bulk erased everything about music from my long-term memory. So, here's my "I grew up GenX, was told that the world was going to end when World War III happened, every promise was broken" mixtape. Every song was one I used to rock out to.
This blog post best read while listening to this playlist.
I keep trying to figure out how to start this blog post. I've started, stopped, pondered, and taken a shower while thinking about it off and on ever since my last post went live back in February. Unfortunately, life in the twenty-first century is.. well, being life in the twenty-first century. The laundry list of things that have taken up most of my time is unfortunately way too long: Java and log4j have cost me more nights of sleep and almost-but-not-quite migraines in the last month or so than I …
I'm sitting in yet another coffee shop as I write this. Once again it's my birthday and I'm trying to figure out what I'm doing with my life and where I'm going. I've just turned 42 which, as Douglas Adams would have it means I now have the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Or I am the answer. Or something like that. I don't even know what I'm having for dinner tonight, let alone know what life is or is for so I'm probably not the best person to ask.
I've mentioned in the past that I've been bumping around on the edges of the synthwave community for a couple of years now in various ways. A couple of weeks ago I got a ping on Twitter from an artist performing under the handle Vampire Step-Dad. During the course of conversation he mentioned that he'd put together an EP called A Night In the Life of..., and would I be interested in giving it a listen?
I'm always down for some new music, and said that I'd write a review of his work from a synaesthete's perspective.
I'm still alive. No, I didn't party too much on my birthday. Just about all of last week consisted of twelve hour days of nothing but meetings with several times the number of people I'm accustomed to handling simultaneously. Additionally, I was working on a music review for Vampire Step-Dad, which required a pair of studio grade noise-cancelling headphones and listening to tracks repeatedly. I seem to have given myself a case of sensory overload, because now I feel numb all over... I also attended Pantheacon last weekend, which did a number on me. I realize that I could (and …
That sounds like a flippant answer, but it's quite the truth. I can't remember a time when I didn't experience sounds (music, in particular) in a deep, visceral way that involved more than just my sense of hearing. For the longest time I thought everybody's experience of life was like mine. I thought everybody cried when they heard violin music. I thought everybody felt waves of cold and prickles when they heard sounds made up of square waves (yeah, I'm dating myself, aren't I?) Didn't everybody shiver and see starbursts of pink and purple …
JWZ bought the space that is now the DNA roughly 17 years ago and during that time it's become one of the premiere hotspots of SF nightlife. Just about any kind of event you can imagine has been thrown …
