Heavy-hearted in the Midwest since 2011
I took last Friday off from work. Felt I needed a day away from that place and its mild mania. Felt I needed a day to myself at home listening to music, working on something creative, shampooing the carpets…anything but being at work. These last 9, almost 10 weeks of nonstop motion and movement at […]
Read More A Very Loud, Quiet HouseI started drawing and painting in earnest a little over a year ago. It started with a picture I painted in watercolors on a postcard made from watercolor paper. Then a birthday card for my son where I drew Trent Reznor singing a special birthday version of “Head Like A Hole”. It was a last […]
Read More Fine, Art.I’ve been at my current employer now for almost 24 years. My first day was September 27, 1999. It started in the HR office where I sat and learned about company policy; attendance, vacation time, sick leave, and just general history of the company. Those in that room were myself, the HR specialist, and one […]
Read More I Think I’ve Become ‘Bad John’Depeche Mode, after 40 years as a band, have earned the title of Elder Statesmen of Synth Pop. The UK alternative rock band has built a musical dynasty, starting in 1981 with their debut album Speak & Spell. With each successive album the band honed their sound and their style to a fine doomed romantic […]
Read More Depeche Mode : Memento MoriLive albums have been a staple of late night spins since the dawn of the bean bag chair. Basements across the globe set up with decent hi-fi stereos, Hendrix wall tapestries, and a mellow haze in the air have welcomed sleepy-eyed listeners in their warm yet dank embrace. Cheap Trick’s Live At Budokon, KISS’ Alive, […]
Read More Edena Gardens : Live MomentumI’ve always been a bit perplexed when it came to the pro-life movement. Growing up in the Midwest(aka, the Corn Belt) I’ve had a firsthand view of its insidious sincerity. Sure, saving the unborn children; making human walls of screaming, shrieking Christians in front of Planned Parenthoods, medical clinics, and OBGYNs calling cowering, scared women […]
Read More Sermons By The Devil : Pro-LifeYves Tumor was one of those names I’d heard in passing over the last few years, but truth be told never made it to my ears. I thought maybe it was the name of a rapper, or some strange avante garde pop artist like Arca. Turns out I was wrong and sort of in the […]
Read More Yves Tumor : Praise a Lord Who Chews but Which Does Not Consume; (Or Simply, Hot Between Worlds)Ruban Nielson arrived on the indie music scene back in 2010 with his Unknown Mortal Orchestra project in an air of mystery. This lo-fi project made songs that sounded as if they’d been locked in a storage locker for 40 years; musty, muffled tracks that were equally built for grooving and for dropping out. Garage […]
Read More Unknown Mortal Orchestra : VThe signs were there earlier in the week. I had a low-grade fever of 99.3 last Sunday and felt pretty run down, but the fever went away by late afternoon. Then on Wednesday I started having body aches, chills, and my head felt like it was on fire. I took some pain reliever, laid on […]
Read More Intermittently Awful…Marginally TerribleOli Heffernan, aka Ivan The Tolerable, makes the kind of drone-heavy psychedelic jams that would be just at home playing in your ears on one hell of an acid trip as they would soundtracking a post-apocalyptic road trip. The songs hang in the air like fog over daybreak waters, or wavering smoke rising off burning […]
Read More Ivan The Tolerable Quartet’s ‘Toft House Session’ Out 3/31; Zone Out To “Mothra II”