waxbanks

writer/dad/bald. strange far fields fertilized by dust from dark stars.

Blog: https://waxbanks.wordpress.com/about/

Last Notes

2025-01-14 16:29:00 UTC

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the phrase “urban folk“ is in my head a little, I’m not sure what I mean by it, and I’m picturing Paul Simon
Sometimes I think of one of the failure modes of folk music as delivering an anthropological report set to acoustic guitar music
I think my initial encounter with her early music gave me a little of that impression. But listening to this mid 70s stuff, I’m doubting the generosity of my initial reaction

2025-01-14 16:24:08 UTC

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i’ve just reached the hissing of summer lawns, and I am flabbergasted. No folk music left in this one. She sounds like a tourist/appreciator at times put the music is so rich that I can’t hold it against her. Just amazing stuff

2025-01-11 16:52:39 UTC

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this morning i listened to COURT AND SPARK for the first time, while walking to the pharmacy, and i kept stopping to gasp theatrically at the lyrics being awesome. but her melodic conception is a lot to deal with. this weird ongoing (wagnerian) experiment in maximally beautiful, affecting vocal lines that almost *aren’t conventional melodies* at all, where the verse is 100% in charge…
it’s like ornette coleman and wagner setting anne sexton’s poetry to music. very weird and cool

2025-01-11 16:19:58 UTC

musical self-teaching course continues: after sprinting through most of Bowie’s discography, i’m on to Joni—the Wagner of folk music (no, don’t ask me to explain what i mean by that)

2024-12-12 17:26:22 UTC

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if it ultimately comes down to ‘wally doesn’t have access anymore to the part of himself that used to like breakup songs,’ i can live with that. i just wish these screaming millions were buying better breakup songs—maybe i just wish irony and mystery and paradox were still considered virtues

2024-12-12 17:07:03 UTC

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that resonance is just what i’m trying to understand—specifically, why it’s so important to so many people to hear 100 versions of ‘this is how my first couple of breakups sucked so bad’ plus assorted way-too-wordy dancepop songs
if i only ever heard ‘we are never ever getting back together’ i’d say some genius child had written a great novelty song—i’ve belted that one out alone in the house!
but michael jackson, prince, madonna: *oddballs*
she’s so…beige! why the *obsession*??

2024-12-12 14:49:40 UTC

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the problem with being sent down a taylor swift rabbit-hole is this: whatever you dis/like about her music, it isn’t *deep*—there’s no mystery to any of her stuff, no ambivalence or lingering strangeness, only ambiguity. there’s this looming mountain of public information about her, from box office to biographical details, but rob sheffield’s description of her as ‘weird’ **could not be less correct.** what’s weird is to encounter such a large quantity of expensive ordinariness.

2024-12-12 14:43:08 UTC

‘I mean, I’m sure you’ve thought about this up and down, but I mean, is there a way to monetize these in a way that you thought would still feel authentic but make them into a multibillion dollar company?’ (Taylor Swift to Kanye West, 2016)

2024-12-11 00:04:04 UTC

if you like horror stories and #ttrpg then you have to read ken hite’s #GURPS HORROR, an extraordinary work of ludocriticism—it’s both a practical guide to horrific roleplay *and* a characteristically thoughtful and detailed dissection of the narrative genre. caveat lector/emptor: HORROR 4e has hite’s latest textual revisions (and priceless bibliography) but 3e has christopher shy’s nightmarish artwork (which also graces the wonderfully atmospheric WILD TALENTS books)

2024-11-30 02:41:58 UTC

passed that groovy ‘had to mute a maybe-buffoon-maybe-lunatic’ milestone today.
at last i’ve become a real boy! or mastodon has.

2024-10-29 22:57:32 UTC

if teenagers are more anxious now than in (say) 1970, then yes it might actually be the fucking iphones and what the teenagers (mis)use them for
(it’s obviously the fucking iphones in no small part)
anxiety isn’t fear or uncertainty, it’s how you *fail to deal with* fear and uncertainty