Mah-Skall-Ick

 

http://www.mixcloud.com/jamesmaskalyk/xoxmas2012fromdoctorjames/

could be both.

as is my habit, i made a mix from some songs i heard this year that seemed to fit together. most, if not all, were released in 2012. notable in their absence are kendrick lamar’s record, killer mike’s, clinic, many others. kept it on the rock’n’roll side. xoxmas

***
cold specks – send your youth- love this woman. saw her twice in three days, the second time at massey, and though some of the magic was the company, at least part of it was a voice that sent straight shots to the soul, kindling a kind of graceful explosion. she sang her last song acapella, and filled the hall.

walkmen – beautiful music on a great record from one of my favorite bands. they’re playing jan 16, danforth music hall. bring earplugs.

alabama shakes – boys & girls – saw these guys at lees. they’re, like, 20. i met them on my way in, as they were shivering in the doorway. we talked. they rocked. i like the line ” ‘why’ is an awful lot of questions”.

lee fields and the explosions – moonlight mile – surprised i haven’t seen this as one of the records of the year on any lists. what more do you want? on this cut, the horns let lee fields (who’s been doing this for 40 years) walk that line between beauty and melancholy. plus i love songs about listening to the radio. i don’t know why.

(rest of tracklist after le jump)

 

april 29, 2011 – Dagahaley refugee camp, Dadaab, Kenya.

insomnia’s found me again, brittle, circling thing. 

today, after lunch, as is my habit, i lied down in my warm room and let the fans breeze play through my mosquito net.   sometimes i’lll fall asleep for a few minutes, other days i just my close my eyes, and let the scenes behind them flash like dreams.

today, my pillow coiled over my head, i remembered a day, when as a boy, i shot a robin.  it was early in the morning, and the grass was still wet with dew.  i had my little gun, and some bright copper BBs.  with them, i was allowed to shoot only two things: targets, and varmints.   i lived in the country, and there was little to do that interested me but walking through fields and woods looking for both.  my little brother was three years younger, and when you’re ten, and he’s seven, you can only sigh at the complexities of a world that you’ve been able to understand in those interceding three years, and pout when your mom makes you take him along on patrol.  “fine.  but you can’t shoot.”

the varmints fell into two main categories, gophers whose holes could break a horse’s leg, and magpies who strewed the garbage from our burning barrels across the backyard and terrorized songbirds.   moles were also varmints, because they ate our garden, but these i trapped as they blindly burrowed through their tunnels.  they were also the only ones i got paid for: a dollar each. 

its possible that i never actually got permission from my parents to shoot the magpies, and lumped them into the varmint category on my own.  no matter.  i only shot at them anyway.  they were too smart, and our barrels were in such a wide open space, that even with all my sneaking, i could not get close enough. if i did hit them from far away, the BB would bounce off their thick wings, and they would fly to the trees and laugh at me until i walked away, which is one of the most humiliating things that can happen to a frontier varmint sheriff.  with gophers, however, i was much more able to discharge the responsibility given to me to make the field a safer place to graze.   

as varmints became fewer, in exactly equal proportions, targets expanded.  this is a partial list: telephone pole, telephone wire, telephone wire box, golf ball, the surface of a far away pond, flying seagulls, a hanging rope, my little brother (i shot him in the eye, but i mostly didn’t mean to, and anyway, i made him not tell or i would never let him shoot), raspberries, ears of corn, bugs, bees, mushrooms.  and, one day, in the morning, the grass slick with dew, a robin.

i was on my way to the spruce tree, closest to the burning barrels to do my morning magpie sweep, and saw it hopping along, looking for worms that had stayed too late.  it wasn’t a varmint, that was clear, but it did look suspiciously like a target, and anyway there was no way i was going to hit it, not from this distance. 

i pumped the air into the gun carefully, so the lever wouldn’t clack against the barrel.  once, twice, three slow times, drew a BB into the chamber, raised the little gun, and put the bevel of the site on the bouncing bird’s red breast. 

pop.

the bird stopped.  with him, my heart.  

no no, hop.

he turned his head, and fell.

the world rushed in to see what i’d done.  i looked behind, to the house,  towards my neighbour’s, for a witness to my evil, then ran towards the dead bird.

he lay there, in the soft grass, a bloom of even redder blood on his red chest.  i looked around again, then picked him up by a wing.  it  was warm, and wet from the dew.  his eyes were shut by tiny gray lids.  

i laid the gun down, held his body against my stomach, and ran towards the thick stand of willows at the bottom of the hill.  i arrived, breathless, blood on my hands, my shirt.  i dragged the heel of my shoe into the ground until i’d made a robin sized hole, then placed him in there, and with my heart still pounding and no benediction, covered him with loam.

i wiped my hands in the grass, walked back up the hill, found my gun, dried it off, put it back in the garage. my mom saw me coming out.

“jimmy, come here, i need you to bring this to your dad….wait.  what happened?” she said, looking at the blood tracked onto my rugby pants. 

“i shot a robin.”

“why?”

“i don’t know.”

“you can’t do that.”

“i know.”

“go tell your dad.”

“ok.”

i did.  he took the gun away.  my brother was smug.  but i don’t think he could have known, back then, that is a sin i would still pay for, dozens of years later, thousands of miles away, in a refugee camp, tossing and turning in a hot bed, twenty minutes before the car leaves to a hospital full of the sick and starving, but i do and i’m not sure if atonement for our transgressions that drives us here, or if is the realization that suffering is contagious and can infect our dreams and the same is true of peace and that is why we stay. 

i am writing this in kensington, watching drops dimple the concrete behind my building.

it is a new year, hours in.  so far, it seems very hangover-y. despite this, my hopes are high.  not only am i confident that the headache prevalence will diminish, i am anticipating other truths to declare themselves.  people are getting it, i think, more and more each day.  school children understand that the world is an ecosystem in a way that my zoology professors struggled to explain, that all things are connected.   soon, economic news that we aren’t buying as much as before won’t be seen as the end of civilization, but its beginnig. the occupy movement won’t be seen as a failure because it lacked message, but important because of the inclusivity of its process, and its peacefulness.  “post-modernism” wil be replaced by “post-secularism”, and we will meditate more, discovering that if we are not our thoughts, then we can only be the universe effervescing, and the charred skeletons of children burnt black in drone attacks will be as unacceptable as if it were a block away.   we will realize that the opposite of happiness is not sadness, but fear, and as it fades with the understanding of our agency, we will want less, work less, party more  and have better sex.  the real obama will come out of hiding, and risk his life to start telling the truth of how the military corporations are running the world, because we can handle this truth and work to end their dominion.  other politicians will follow or be toppled.  a robot will be invented that can unpack my suitcases, because i really don’t like doing that.  packing seems fine. it’s the un-.

last year i did a lot of packing.  and un. from asia, to europe, africa, the nevada desert. i spent the first part of this year in the world’s largest refugee camp, dadaab, working with somali’s fleeing the violence in their country amidst a great drought.  people were starving and many died.  two of my colleagues got kidnapped after i left, two others were recently killed in mogadishu.  2011 has been a big, bad year.

i was lucky enough to work with many somalis.  the cultural rift was large, but they were generous of spirit.  we learned with and about each other.  once i asked a man why music, for many of his countrymen, was forbidden. “because it distracts one from god”.  puzzled, i answered, “but music IS god”.

so, from me to you, from 2011 to 2012, music to god, god to music, may both move us through these brand new days, and when we doubt the brightness of a human spirit may its everpresent effervsecence dance us.  the past is for ghosts.

all of these songs came out on records released this year, though a couple of tracks were released previously.  each of them have been stuck in my head for months, and the albums worth buying.  i hope you like them.

they are not mixed, but they are loosely ordered to make sense played in sequence.  here is the link to a youtube playlist.  a couple of tracks aren’t there, and if you really need the links (or even the tracks) i can sort you.  hit me on here.

1. Bobby – Youth Lagoon – Probably listened to this record, the suuns, and tuneyards more than any other this year.  kid from san diego.  haunting melodies. saw him at the garrison after a seven day silent mediation retreat.  could see the music.  it looked beautiful.

2. Lord Can You Hear Me – Spacemen 3 – old band on a new record.  one of the best albums of the year might be a mixtape, done by MGMT for “late night tales”.   buy it. what’s old becomes new.

3. God is taking care of me – Reverend Deacon Williams – ignore what i wrote above about old songs on new records, and MGMT’s being the best.   This May Be My Last Time Singing: Raw African-American Gospel On 45rpm 1957-1982 triple CD set will remove any distinction between music and god.

4.  Powa – Tuneyards – all kindsa could not stop listening to this record.  this and youth lagoon on repeatrepeat.  saw her twice, once in barcelona, one in trono.  looping her voice, banging on a drum, face smeared with electric neon paint, shouting about love and gangsters.

5. The Wolves – Ben Howard – i think i like this song so much because i watched Danny Macaskill’s trials video a million times.  still, howard is from the UK, a young guitar virtuouso, who just released his first record.  but it is macaskill who is le shit. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShbC5yVqOdI

6. Ritual Union – Little Dragon – awesome.  saw them at the Hoxton.  i still have their drumsticks on my kitchen counter.  when they were finished, brenalynn was, to the drummer: “buddy.  drumsticks.”  he walked down and handed her one, and she was, like, “what the fuck good is one drumstick” and pointed him back to his kit.  i have them both.

7. Separator – Radiohead – i sometimes start my shift by asking my students who the best band in the world is, and if they don’t say radiohead i fail them, because how could their medicine be trusted if their judgement is so poor?  lotsa people hate on this record, but they are also wrong.  hate on the remixes.  radiohead does it best.  except modeselektors  does bang the SHIT out of Miss Magpie.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B74uDKMMoPE

8. Opus – Strangeboys – what can you say about these guys. garage punk record followed by something much more mature. surprising but still cool.  i will buy every record they do, and go watch their lazy awesome shows when they come through.  i wish i was seeing this band right now and drinking whiskey.

9. Doom Wop – Mr. Heavenly – these guys are included because they seem to give a fuck, but also not really, and if “doom wop” doesn’t become a musical genre, i will recant all my optimism about humanity’s future.  doom wop?  the record is much more poppy than this cut.  and one of the guys is from modest mouse.  what else do you need?  more doom wop, that’s what.

10. Serve the People – Handsome Furs – sure, i’m fond of the album cover, and i know people can hate on the obviousness of the refrain, but its best not to consider haters.  husband/wife team from montreal, wide travellers through music scenes around the world, from asia to eastern europe, and, really, if you say you serve the people and instead swerve the people, you’ll soon be over.  truth.  the smartest people i know are working on that.

11. Black and White – Generationals – aren’t you glad I included your new favorite song?

12. North Star – The Rural Alberta Advantage – i’ve been living off my RAA from the beginning, and though i know that even if there’s no end in sight it’ll come anyway, and when it does, if im there, tracing the big dipper’s front lip to the north star, i’ll be happy. there is space in these songs like the RA sky that is this mixtape’s album cover.

13. The Life – Gary Clark Jr. – Whoever Gary Clark Sr. is, dude must be proud.  This album is tiight.  More black keys than the black keys when needs be, then an uptempto newsoul joint like this that hits, particularly so, having got home at 4 in the morning.  they tell me it’s the life.

14. The OtherSide – The Roots – Shit. I won’t comment on how they played Fishbone’s “Lying Ass Bitch” when a notorious climate denying antigay republican guested on Jimmy Fallon, nor that I haven’t heard such urgent, tight rhymes from black thought since ever.  I will say that, one time, I was in the BK and ?uestlove was djing at the brooklyn bowl, and i ran into him at the door, said thanks, and he went in for the knuckles and i gave him magic fingers and he was bedazzled.  i will also say that any year that has roots/radiohead/tom waits = not a complete catastophe.

15. 3 heures – Angelo Spencer – sure, he’s from brittany, and he’s appropriated malian music like it was his own, but who cares if it sounds so sweet. on a tous besoin amour ici.

16. New Year’s Eve – Tom Waits – i also fail residents if they don’t answer that Tom Waits is one of three people, living or dead, they could share dinner with.  you probably wouldn’t eat much, likely leave the table at different times, and find yourself sitting on a porch with jesus watching a car burn wishing that you still smoked, but if bet if you didn’t say too much, tom might come to your new year’s eve party one year and play this song.

may many many deep deep blessings dimple your days. love. j.