Michael Yonkers with The Blind Shake - Carbohydrates Hydrocarbons [mp3]
There is this little white orb and it bounces. It is of a plastic polycarbonate slightly perforated construction and it bounces. We in our hands, each right, each night, hold tight, we rhyme a paddle with our saddles and it bounces. Probably it is not polycarbonate but it bounces. We drink beer and it bounces. He looks across the table with a glare gleaming as I lay in wait dreaming and it bounces. A sip, we sip, another sip before he lifts into the air slightly tumbling a trembling, it nearly nears the pergola ceiling before neatly attacking the near nothing and it bounces. For a time our gaze guides little lasers into the corner without so much as a shuffle, our weight leaning back and forth before a slice recoils and it bounces. He is no grander gardener than I as he tramples the dying daffodils daring a playful prayer, it propels into the air and it bounces. Something like a scuffle with the fence, a left and a right into the wooden planks before a kick dislodges with might, we might, she might, let’s might and say we did but it bounces. “Holy shit!” and it bounces. Consecutively we flail forgetting the laws of physics, we slide a cradle under the little brittle blur bouncing leaps and bounds, it travels leaps and bounds, I leap and he bounds bullets blasted and bucked, bending and ending with a “pong” neverending and it bounces. Something like awe overcomes the contestants competing for no prize, a thirst for a sip abates with rapt attention, the ball travels together with hopes healing a long dormant rivalry recalled, he thinks, “Remember when we used to do this all the time?” and it bounces. These clicks, his clack with such power performing under pressure was never his game but it bounces. A blast for the win is caught from his knees but then an elated return, a deflated reply, the point is his and it bounces underline.
Michael Yonkers with The Blind Shake is a rhythm and blues band from Minneapolis. The featured song is from the album Carbohydrates Hydrocarbons. Purchase the music at Treehouse Records.
Bibio - Haikuesque [mp3]
She asked, “Have you been in a perpetually liminal state for a long time?”
Out the window, the dark side of the road passed slowly shifting shapes and shadows lifting up into his eyes sifting through his thoughts and inside resides, sitting upon a rocking chair without a rock the bus burling a beast bowling down the icy lanes and highways drifting drops just right of insight outside of momentum. The days December deceive and become January joining. Those nights watching the little litany weaving wisps of wherewithal, they would laugh at the convolution contorting control over a crevice of discovery, designing doubt and delight with delicate care. He wonders where it all began before, and being existence extols elaborate ideas brewing beyond. But this is all a ploy he would ponder, perfunctory remarks reveal a revolving relapse rehearsed and repeated. She felt forever that way last night and he believed because.
In clear blusters, they hold hands and recite, “Hello, I’m glad.” Walking willfully bliss, a theoretically blasé affair predicated on an airing of grievances an airing of gravity an airing of gratuitous thinking for the sake of feeling, a thought about felt and he felt he thought he feels she thinks and a circular conundrum of collected misunderstandings and interpretation imbues something like mystique mistook for an always myopic perception. This mystery of movement of massive drifting and the snow falls fleeting filament landing lashes and batting, they speak in mistakes and poorly translated traversing telling tales tallied toothlessly and perfect, performed aside alleviating an alienating ellipses until.
He answered, “Yes. But you would understand.”
Bibio is a rhythm and blues band from the UK. The featured song is from the album Ambivalence Avenue. Purchase the music at Amazon | Insound | eMusic.
Biosphere - Daphnis 26 [mp3]
We would wallow up willing
our ways and our eyes
upon a prize so wrought with
mystery and unknowable satisfaction
warring our once thought-over union
untold to untruth and
unlike another
from above
we could view in fits and trembles
a train traversing
the mirrored body of water
the mirrored body of sky
the mirrored convalescence of
our conversation consuming the counsel,
currying cries of shuttered delight
dealing blows to the reunion,
regaling tales of told miracles
murmured from that point in the atmosphere,
an almost aimless atomizing
accrued and accredited
to the nearest institution
enlisted and instilled
we still we stand
a friend a friend
they wander while and wonder
while we wonder while they wander
wiling
whereto we go
where do we go
from here
and the train
it scoots across the most picturesque
scene
sauntering
in our minds
as a backdrop to our blight.
Biosphere is a rhythm and blues band from Norway. The featured song is from the album Dropsonde. Purchase the music at Amazon | Insound | eMusic.
Cluster - Gissander [mp3]
Dave had just finished smoking his cigarette when I came out.
“Ah hell. I guess I’ll have to smoke another.”
“Yeah, if you want. We could discuss things over a cigarette.”
Dave lit his cigarette and mine too with a struck match. I had my hands in my coat pockets looking for a lighter and instead I found a piece of paper with the words “Actually, it’s a John Hancock jumper long sleeve shirt” written in sloppy cursive. I handed the paper to Dave and he said that she must have been cute.
The porch is attached to the back of our second story apartment. Below us is a parking lot for the convenience store found in the first floor. We stood smoking in silence for a moment, staring ahead at whatever objects filled our vision. I was looking at a squirrel when a familiar car pulled into the parking lot. It sat dead, the engine hissing slightly in the cold, it’s sparkly silver glistening in a way that concealed the possibility of sentience. The door burst open and a man hopped out, all nerves and withdrawal.
“There he is,” says Dave. I just nod. The man paces the length of his luxury sport utility vehicle, looking left and right as he nears the street. Once he determines that the parking lot is secure, a lit cigarette materializes and the man begins to smoke feverishly. Dave takes an audible drag on his cigarette, sucking the smoke deep into his lungs and blowing it out with above average force. He observes, “This is the fourth time I’ve seen him out there smoking in the last two days.” The man’s glance darts left and right and for a second I wonder if he might finally notice us up above, watching his every movement. I say to Dave, “How does he not ever notice us? We’ve been watching him smoke cigarettes in this parking lot for the last week and somehow he never notices.” Dave thinks maybe since he’s so distracted by the notion that someone (who?) might catch him smoking street level that it never occurs to him that someone above him is fully aware of his strange habit of rapidly smoking cigarettes in the parking lot of Lulu’s Deli.
“I’m gonna go down to talk to him.” I tell Dave. I stub out my cigarette and Dave raises his eyebrows. “I am going to tell him we know. I’m curious how he will respond.” I go downstairs to meet the man in the parking lot. He jumps into his vehicle and quickly rolls the windows up at the sight of me, his cigarette disappearing as neatly as it always appears. He doesn’t start the engine though. I knock on the driver’s side window and make a motion that he should roll down his window.
Above Dave is watching with interest and he holds his breath to hear our interaction. It’s all mumbles though and he starts to wonder what we are saying. He guesses that I am telling him about our perch above and that we know he smokes. He guesses that the man is excusing our perception that he is a secret smoker and maybe the man is suggesting that from our perch it is difficult to understand the world below. Dave wonders for a moment if maybe the man is right, maybe looking down on the parking lot from a porch one story above ground does cause a misunderstanding of the world below and then he finishes his cigarette.
Dave goes back inside before I finish talking to the man. We have been talking about Colombia and the man has just invited me to his villa down there and Dave too. I tell him that’s not what I came down to talk about but he just shrugs and turns the key. I take a step back and watch him drive off. Back upstairs Dave asks me how things went. I say, “We talked about his villa in Colombia.” Dave kind of laughs and then he selects a book from the shelf standing next to the desk where he is seated. He hands it to me and says, “Sometimes we don’t see things that are there. Sometimes our eyes play tricks on our head.”
Cluster is a rhythm and blues band from Berlin. The featured song is from the album Qua. Purchase the music at Amazon | Insound | eMusic.
The Band - The Weight [mp3]
A home is a hard place to find, an easy place to keep, and a place that combats secrets and fears with the cool sounds of an ever-changing yet un-moving river as it floats across saturated June air. A home is a place where frozen off-brand pizza tastes good, where apple juice tastes like champagne and computer speakers put concert hall quality sound to shame.
“Where might one find such a place?” someone asked.
“A home is not a place and it never has been, either,” she told the person. “It is not a where; it is not a when; it is not a what.”
“Then what is it?” they cried. “What is a home?”
“A home for me is not the same as a home for you,” she replied. “A home is a who—a home is a you and a me, a she and a he and a we.”
“What do I do when I find it?” they asked.
“Find it first,” she said. “And then you’ll know.”
“What do I do if I’ve already found it?” they asked again.
“What are you waiting for!?” she cried. “Take a seat, have a bite, jump in.”
The Band is a rhythm and blues band from North America. The featured song is from the album Music from Big Pink. Purchase the music at Amazon | Insound | eMusic.
Jesus Lizard - Gladiator [mp3]
A man walks into the bar without hesitation, glancing with confidence at the patrons seated on stools bathed in the afternoon sunlight shafting through the open door. He approaches the jukebox and deposits $20 into the machine, bringing Jesus Lizard all around the room for the old men watching football to hear. A woman at the pool table makes a comment about the loud music, calling it “crap.” The other woman in the room is behind the bar serving drinks. The man selects a few more songs, leaving 22 selections on the jukebox before seating himself at the bar for a beverage. He tells the bartender that she may select songs from the jukebox at her leisure and that he would like a Greyhound.
Several Greyhounds later and 14 songs remain. The man has ordered three shots of Vodka; one for the friend who has just joined him, one for the friend who had just left him and one for himself. The shots remained untouched though, sitting in front of their Greyhounds. He turns to his friend and asks him how his Greyhound tastes and he tells him that the Vodka they are drinking is “top shelf.” The Vodka is Stolichnaya, belying the Greyhound moniker and his friend says the drink is good. It is the first time his friend has had such a drink and the man is enjoying life so he wants to be sure his friend is also. But then he remembers what it is that brought them here today, to this bar on the strip in the middle of the afternoon and he looks at his friend’s somber expression nearing tears and he orders another Greyhound.
There are 13 songs remaining when the man rises for a cigarette. His friend doesn’t smoke so he tells him to pick a song from the jukebox. Standing just outside of the bar, the man lights up a cigarette when suddenly that first Jesus Lizard song comes on again. He can already hear the woman at the pool table calling it “crap” and he thinks to himself, “This song is exactly right for the occasion.” There are 12 songs left when the man tells his friend that he picked the same Jesus Lizard song. The man asks why he selected that song and his friend says through a strained facial expression, the sort of strain that constrains stray tears, he says, “He liked that song.” They order another Greyhound and the man tells his friend about the bartender.
“Last week I was in here about this time. The sun was just the same shining through those little windows and the open door right across the top of the bar and Debbie was in here serving booze to the regulars. I was telling this man sitting next to me that Debbie, she’s got a fine set of tits and a beautiful smile. I don’t know if Debbie heard me but my shots of Beam were double shots from that point on.” Song 10 was just expiring when Debbie called back across the bar, “It wasn’t your comment about my tits that got you the double shots. It was your money.” The man just smiled and his friend smiled a bit too.
With 9 songs remaining, the jukebox went silent. Debbie asked the man and his friend what they were going to do with the three shots. The man told Debbie that he and his friend would drink their shots and that the third should be poured onto the ground somewhere in the vicinity. His friend explained to Debbie that their friend had performed in this bar once and that he liked Jesus Lizard and that is why it kept playing and that he had smoked cigarettes in front of this bar at one time and that all of those places seemed an appropriate place to pour the shot. The man selected that Jesus Lizard song one last time and told Debbie to forget the pouring, that the shot should be split between him and his friend and so it went.
The man and his friend left with spirits in their stomach and 8 songs left on the jukebox. A week later, the man learned that Debbie had played that same Jesus Lizard song with all 8 of those plays to drive out the woman at the pool table who was “a fucking bitch who tipped too little.” And the man, he just had to laugh.
Jesus Lizard is a rhythm and blues band from Austin/Chicago. The featured song is from the album Liar. Purchase the music at Amazon | Insound | eMusic.