The Postal Service Says It Sleeps Alone Tonight

How much history and charm can you cram into two American city blocks? Washington, D.C. can probably do it better than you, and with twice the finesse and personality you can ever muster in a lifetime. The streets are peppered with points of more historical significance than my head can wrap around, and the people we’ve encountered during this trip had more personality than you can shake a stick at.

Take, for instance, the people we shared a ten-bed hostel room with: travelers, whether traveling solo or in little bands of two, flit in and out of residency. From the conversations I have held with some (and eavesdropped through the night with others), I’ve encountered a French couple, a gaggle of Germans, a Brazilian, a South Korean, a Japanese, a Dutchman, and another fellow whose nationality I’ve yet to discern because the only thing we shared was a fleeting “hi.”

On a taxi ride to Chinatown, the driver asks how things are going in our home towns. How’s Nepal, with blackouts and unhappy denizens marching the streets? Complicated. How’s Cyprus, who crave independence but are in the middle of a tug-of-war between Turkey and Greece? Complicated. How’s Mexico, facing American antagonism in the north and a dodgy government in the centre? Complicated. How’s Indonesia, with surges of radical Islamism and random demands for secession? Complicated.

“That’s just like life, isn’t it?” the driver muses. “If it ain’t complicated then it ain’t life. Now all we need is an Israeli.”

The taxi driver embodied the American that, once upon a time, some of the world came to love: friendly, laid-back, and not gagged by political correctness. Another affable American we encountered was Banjer Dan, a fellow who is as passionate about his music as he is good at performing it. In addition to being a first-rate human being and an A-grade performer, the man has some mad banjo skills. His charisma and plucking on the five-stringed banjo has confirmed my suspicions: that there is nothing wrong with country music, bar the crap on the radio and television that they are passing for country music.

What a charming, charming little town. Everything about the world’s most powerful nation is condensed into this tiny district, a district where the frightfully rich brush shoulders with those plagued by poverty, where the steps of an ancient building of justice are home to someone without a home. So how much history and charm can you cram into two American city blocks? More than you can possibly handle in five days, if you are in Washington, D.C.

Undercover Of The Night

When a fresh-faced band or singer performs a cover version of a much-loved hit from a bygone era, people either join the camp that appreciates the new interpretation or join the scowling horde of listeners who take great offense at the idea of trying to re-interpret something that was perfect when it first came out. The following is a list of covers that should not invoke the wrath of music purists, as well as a suggestion of a song that could use a revival over the airwaves (or fibre-optic cables, or whatever crazy contraption it is we use to promote music through nowadays).

a) In 1968, five-piece British band The Zombies released an album called Odessey and Oracle. It had pretty psychedelic cover art, a misspelling of the word “odyssey,” and a catchy little ditty called This Will Be Our Year.

In 2004, McSweeney’s—a publishing company that caters to the lo-fi listening, sweater-wearing, painfully hip hipster population the world over—published The Future Dictionary of America. Every copy of this witty book was accompanied by a CD called The Future Soundtrack of America, a compilation album spearheaded by an OK Go cover of This Will Be Our Year.

Featuring more bass drum and less crash cymbal, the OK Go take on the single challenges the universal versatility of Coldplay’s Clocks: from the tearful goodbyes of a mother who sees her son off to war, to the bittersweet sentiment of college graduation, to the slow, deliberate paces of smitten teenagers walking into the sunset, this is more than just the soundtrack of America, or of the future, or of the future of America for that matter.

b) In 1981, Soft Cell released two versions of music videos to accompany their hugely popular dance anthem Tainted Love. Thankfully for us, the eighties were a very strange time in human history, and out of this strangeness came strange music videos. Look out for random comets that defy the laws of astrophysics, and generous servings of anachronisms.

In 2006, Bajan darling of pop radio Rihanna sampled the bassline of Tainted Love in what would become another dance floor filler, SOS. Like her disco-going predecessors, she released two music videos for the same song, but unlike them, her videos are not very entertaining. She looked fabulous in them, this I do not deny, but there was a desperate shortage of renegade blue comets and Victorian-era ladies having tea with Roman emperors.

c) Do you remember Freiheit? Two people I have asked this question to do not, and neither do they remember the track that made them the kings of inspirational music. Solang’ man Träume noch leben kann is better known to the world as Keeping The Dream Alive, and has humbly served countless times as backdrop to montages of the photo and video variety that show people suffering for their art form of choice (e.g. athlete collapses in the middle of race, but stands back up and limps to the finish line last despite the obvious pain in his leg as a testament to his inner strength and commitment).

A quick mental check tells me this single has yet been covered by any contemporary songbirds, and as much as a part of me worries the tear-jerker value of this song will be dissolved when transposed onto a formula for a Top 40 hit, wouldn’t it be interesting to see how things turn out should painfully hip folks like Portishead or Sondre Lerche decide to resuscitate its popularity?

On Phenomena And Diplomacy

This did not come to me until today, but I’ve noticed that when I sit down in front of one of the school’s desktop PCs, the fingers on my left hand fall onto the Shift, A, W, D keys and spacebar, as if instinctively primed for fy_india. This phenomenon does not happen on Apples, and I wonder if it is indicative of my Counter-Strike deprivation.

The next few days will showcase my academic mettle. If things go as planned, I should lose one pound by the end of the week.

Also, how does one say “Back down, you smug bastard” without actually saying it?

Far From Dead

Antiguit encourages your visiting deadmediafm, a neat little niche on the web that exposes the Indonesian indie music scene. If you can get past the Indonesian text on the webpages and banter at the podcasts, you will be treated to a treasure trove of fantastic twee pop. Bands featured on the website offer the combination of wonderful ditties and cheesy tongue-in-cheek humor, first made officially cool across the archipelago by Mocca. Am especially enjoying White Shoes & The Couples Company and The Monophones. Fab!

Notes To Folks 001

Dear Caleb Leung,

If a Wookiee and a Klingon were put together in a cage to battle it out in a fight to the death, who would win?

Thy Mother Mated With A Scorpion

Dear Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago theme tunes:

GET OUT OF MY HEAD. I cannot concentrate on my work.