The Woods

I have to be out the door in twenty minutes to run a road race of 5,000 meters, which should be humbling because I am dealing with the aftereffects of a foot injury, and I am therefore not properly trained up. In any event, before going to bed last night, I watched this video of Sleater-Kinney performing "Entertain" on The Henry Rollins Show.

"Entertain" was a track off the band's final album, The Woods (2005). The Woods is a fin de siècle record. The nation was better off united against Bush than bamboozled by Barack. But we didn't know that at the time.

At the time I was maintaining two girlfriends simultaneously. I would often listen to The Woods on a Sony Walkman as I walked home from work, more often times than not on my way to meet one the girlfriends. The Woods is an album of great depth and a lot of ballsy noise. The ladies from the Pacific Northwest tied things off with a lot of style. It is a record worthy of study.

"Get Up"

I thought I knew The Hot Rock (1999), but it turns out I really don't. In any event, I was listening to the album this past weekend when "Get Up" came on. My goodness, what an ass-kicker. Granted, like so much that Sleater-Kinney did and did well, it owes a lot to Sonic Youth. I'm thinking here of Kim Gordon's channeling of Karen Carpenter on "Tunic (Song for Karen)."

A Portland Sonic Morning

As mentioned previously, there is something wrong with my hard drive. So every time my computer goes to sleep after a period of inactivity, rather than going into sleep mode it crashes. This creates problems in the operating system. I avoid the problem by keeping my Amazon Cloud Player up and running at all times, merely switching off my Harman Kardon speakers when I leave the apartment in the morning for work, and when I go to bed at night.

Besides the advantage of avoiding damaging crashes, keeping a large library of music constantly playing offers up the opportunity for random insight, reflection and appreciation.

This morning, for no reason in particular, I decided to stay in bed instead of getting up and reading the newspaper.

When I finally did rise for that first cup of coffee, I switched on the Harman Kardons and was greeted by Sleater-Kinney's "#1 Must Have," a song off All Hands on the Bad One (2000). Of the last three records put out by Sleater-Kinney, All Hands on the Bad One is definitely the weakest. It is not a bad album. It is just that One Beat (2002) and The Woods (2005) are so strong.

Following "#1 Must Have" came Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, "1% of One," which is probably my favorite song by the group. A nine-plus minute masterpiece, "1% of One" can be found on Pig Lib (2003). I see that Malkmus and the Jicks have a new album out, Wig Out at Jagbags (2014). I'll have to give it a listen.

Both bands hail(ed) from Portland, OR.

"Jenny"

Heard "Jenny" on the train into work today. The song is off Sleater-Kinny's Dig Me Out (1997), the first record of the band's that I really listened to back in the day. That day was Clintontime, specifically the second term low-wage full-employment years of Monica Lewinsky.

Dig Me Out is a tremendous album, a real ass-kicker. It proved that the West Coast rock'n'roll underground still had some juevos, still had a little I-5 sunshine.

"Future Crimes"

There is a Federal Detention Center not too far from the local. I discovered it walking during the noon lunch hour. It's at South 200th Street and 26th Avenue South. I found last week that walking along 26th Avenue can be pleasant. Though it parallels International Boulevard one block to the west, there's very little traffic and a lot of green space (most of which is fenced off and appears to be Port of Seattle property).

Right before coming across the Federal Detention Center I was listening to Wild Flag, a post-Sleater-Kinney Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss rock band. I checked out Wild Flag (2011) from the library last year, loaded it into my iTunes, played it a few times and never cottoned to it. But today in the sunshine of the noon hour I greatly enjoyed "Future Crimes":