Photo by Carla Maldonado @carlamaldonado x @somad.studio
Hnry Flwr is Brooklyn’s musical guru guiding us towards the mystery and beauty of the infinite void. Hnry Flwr is the musical project of David Van Witt, and he has quite the origin story – his first impression of this world was living in a cult in Iowa, which he fled with his artist mother who gave psychic readings as they meditated and traveled around the world. Van Witt left home when he was 16, and after observing the divine connection music initiates in people at a punk show, has “been writing songs and practicing a sort of secular spirituality, where music is the prayer, ever since.”
Hnry Flwr’s twangy sunshine goth gospel is usually brought to life with a seven-piece band that includes Abdon Valdez III, Ronnie Lanzilotta, Dallin Stevenson and Sarah Safaie, but since quarantine began, Van Witt (who is also a producer) has been creating his own backing tracks and even started a twitch channel. The next chance you have to feel all the love the void has to offer with Hnry Flwr is tonight (5/15) via BABY.tv at 8pm est! We chatted with Hnry Flwr about inducing trance states, minimalist drone raga, and the importance of laughing with salamanders.
AF: What were your last live shows before quarantine like? What do you think your live set will transform into when we’re able to play shows in person again?
HF: Our last show in NYC before the quarantine was incredible — a sold out show at The Sultan Room. I did a trust-fall into the audience and everyone caught me. Our live set is going to include way more hugging and trust-falling and I want to include a portion of the set for people to go into a deep trance. I want to explore the void with people. We will find a way to lose ourselves together, rather than find ourselves alone.
AF: If you had control of all the radios/TVs/cell phones all over the world for 30 seconds what would you say?
HF: I would generate a mass flash trance to see if we can’t be still and quiet and hear what the void has to say.
AF: What have you been reading and listening to while in quarantine?
HF: If it’s not obvious by now, I’ve been reading a book about inducing trance states. I’ve been listening to the birds when I can. I love when they come back north. Somehow I’m still surprised by it every year. But as far as music, almost exclusively Pure Moods Volume 1.
AF: What’s your live stream gear set up like? Do you have any fun props or lighting planned?
HF: I set up my monochromatic light sculpture. It emits one very dark shade of yellow, the one from sunset right before the reds and purples. What’s special about it is it omits all other colors. These things are possible if you explore The Void with an open mind.
I make new backing tracks every week so I can feel like I’m playing with a band. So many artists are doing “stripped-down” sets, which can be really special, but for me, I try to use it as an opportunity to have whatever perfect band I can imagine backing me up every week. It’s a great time to be exercising your imagination.
AF: If you found out you were immortal what other musical projects/careers/lifestyles would explore?
HF: I would have a really loud minimalist drone raga band, and then when all my family had passed on I’d live on a mountain near a stream and I wouldn’t do anything for as long as it takes to find a silent ancient wisdom. Then I would be a painter in honor of my mother.
AF: I love your music video for “Waiting Room!” It feels like our whole reality is stuck in a waiting room right now. What do you think lies on the other side for music, politics, spirituality and humanity as whole?
HF: Thank you. We have always been in the waiting room of the great beyond. I think the future is just as unsure as it was before the pandemic. It’s always unsure. We are just forced to face that uncertainty together now. There are a lot of people who need answers about the future to feel secure in the present. I’m not sure what the future holds. My mother was giving psychic readings for most of my childhood and even if they were accurate, I am not sure that it helped anyone. It certainly did not help her or our family. This is a good time to be present, to take care of yourself and your loved ones and try not to worry about the future. In your mind, find a stream and sit next to it. Listen to it. Laugh with the salamanders.
RSVP HERE for Hnry Flwr via BABY.tv 5/15 at 8pm est. $5-$50 sliding scale
More great live streams this week…
5/15-5/16 Prince 1985 Purple Rain Tour via Youtube. RSVP HERE
When Johanna Warren was twelve or thirteen, she recalls thinking that if she wanted to be a true artist, she would have to fuck up her life. Her musical idols – Elliott Smith, Kurt Cobain, Nick Drake – all died as tortured young poets. Warren hadn’t sung in front of anyone since she was a child, writing songs with her little brother as their alter egos, Horsey & Joe. Over the next several years, she’d throw herself first into musical theater, combating crippling shyness to play the parts she’d immediately regretted auditioning for, before preforming jokey songs at open mic nights about surviving apocalyptic floods by taking refuge in the Loch Ness monster’s vagina. It wasn’t until years later, in a grimy punk house basement, that someone took her seriously; even then, she felt a dark pull toward misery and misfortune. “I wanted to be a great artist, so I had to open a chaotic portal to invite in a lot of suffering because that’s where great art comes from,” Warren says. “I think it’s a really grave miscalculation that we’re encouraged to make. I can’t help but feel that there’s some kind of intentionality there, on behalf of some dark, oppressive forces that want us to dim our light and die young and never thrive.”
Fast forward about a decade, and Johanna Warren found herself recording her fourth solo album, Chaotic Good, at Elliott Smith’s New Monkey Studio. It wasn’t the only place she recorded – what started out as angry acoustic demos in her Portland garage transformed over the course of touring behind her 2018 self-released double album, Gemini, as folks she met on the road offered her free studio time from coast to coast. But New Monkey was a significant space for Warren. “Right when I was starting to look for places to record, the owner invited me to have a free day there. It’s all functional as a recording studio, but they have done a really respectful job of preserving things more or less as they were when he was there – it felt like a shrine as much as a studio,” Warren says. “That was so meaningful and that was really the beginning of feeling like alright, I’m making a record. And it felt like it had kind of [Smith’s] blessing. He’s sort of my patron saint of songwriting. I feel like he gave me permission to make a record like this, where it doesn’t have to fit into one neat little genre box, it can just be an expression of my feelings and my own inner hypocrisies and self contradictions.”
Also of particular relevance was the time she spent at the Relic Room in Manhattan, recording with her old bandmates in Sticklips, Chris St. Hilaire and Jim Bertini. Their band had fallen apart in 2012, following the death of Sticklips’ leader, Jonathan “JP” Nocera. JP was the one who, all those years ago, had sat Warren down and made her play every song she’d ever written, recognizing in her something she couldn’t yet see in herself. “He wanted us to keep going with it, but honestly he was the glue that held it all together,” Warren recalls. “I was not capable of keeping it together after he was gone because I didn’t know myself enough musically or emotionally. I wasn’t confident enough in my own ideas because the only music I had really recorded or produced was with them, and they were all slightly older men. At the time I was all too happy to let them take the reins. I was angry about it but didn’t even know that there was another way. My frustrations with that were building but I didn’t have the emotional interpersonal skills to communicate any of that so it just exploded.”
Despite the buzz around the band’s two LPs, 2009’s It Is Like a Horse. It Is Not Like Two Foxes. and 2012’s more minimally-named Zemi, Warren had decided to go it alone, and moved to the West Coast, touring with the likes of Iron & Wine and Julie Byrne. “It was definitely kind of traumatic because I felt like I’d always wanted to be in a great band – I was obsessed with The Beatles and Radiohead. Right as things started to really gel, it all fell apart. And I was so young at the time, it was really formative. I’m just now starting to open the door to collaborating with other people again, cause I’ve been licking that wound for the last decade.” Her first solo album, Fates, arrived in 2013, followed by numun (pronounced “new moon”) in 2015. After recording both Gemini records, but unable to find a label that would release them, Warren formed Spirit House Records from the ashes of a label that JP had gifted her upon his passing. Over time, it has evolved into a collective of experimental folk artists, mostly in and around the Portland scene. Later, Sadie Dupuis of Sad13 and Speedy Ortiz would re-release the Gemini records on her Carpark imprint Wax Nine, as well as put out Chaotic Good.
In the process of recording Chaotic Good, Warren says she looked to that younger version of herself for gems of wisdom and truth that had gotten buried and forgotten over time. “That’s sort of a theme of the album – burying the dream that never came true, and the presence of death and the spirits of the dead, but then the rebirth and new life that springs from the ruins of whatever you’ve buried and grieved,” Warren explains. “This last couple years have been all about a kind of return. It has led to me stepping into my own power, and then also remembering: I have a band – I left them in New York ten years ago. I just need to hit them up and make some amends.” Warren did just that, reuniting with St. Hilaire and Bertini to add drums, synth, and bass to her demos. “It was so healing for everybody to play together again in a completely different context, and for me to be able to assert myself and hold my own. It felt so satisfying to pick up that loose thread and weave it back into the tapestry.”
It was validating, too, to be in control of that process – the band added their parts over the vocals she’d recorded in Portland, as opposed to Warren adding her parts over Sticklips tracks. Back then, Warren says, “I was like the icing on the cake – even though it had been my song that was the foundation around which all of the other instrumentation had been built, I always felt like my stuff was just an afterthought. I didn’t even have the vocabulary to say I can’t hear myself, it doesn’t sound like me, it doesn’t sound like my song anymore. So to work this way with the same people, but have my parts actually be the backbone of the whole recorded construction was really cool. It was such an amazing testament to the collective work we’ve all been doing in the last ten years around gender and power and breaking down these oppressive hierarchical structures.”
The metaphor of excavating her old selves pops up in two videos for the album’s early singles, the graceful stop-motion of “Bed of Nails” and “Only The Truth,” which posits Warren as a Druid resurrected in present-day Los Angeles, still able to find magic in a neon-lit roller rink. “It was so fun to play that character for a couple days, cause I realized, I didn’t really even have to act – this is how I’ve always felt moving through the world, especially places like LA. So much of her world has been lost and destroyed, but magic still exists in everything, and that’s kind of what the song is about too,” she says, before quoting a lyric from the song: “I see light everywhere I go, I see the love in all of you.”
Warren, for what it’s worth, has long identified as a witch “as kind of an eco-feminist fuck you to the patriarchy,” though she doesn’t rely on ritual these days as much as she once did. She practices plant medicine and reiki, and her spiritual beliefs are subtly integrated throughout the album. “What you call God, I call the mysteries of the universe/What difference does it really make after all?” she asks on “Rose Potion,” a song that hints at her experience weaning herself off of pharmaceuticals prescribed for chronic illnesses that only worsened until she was able to find natural remedies and process past trauma. Piano-driven, woodwind-embellished album closer “Bones of Abandoned Futures” describes, in essence, a binding ceremony, in which Warren releases herself from the spells of the past: “Expell from my body the putrid mess inside me and call back my magic to me,” she sings, describing the process as “killing” and “slaughtering” the darkness before she comes to the final, poignant lines, “The time has come for stillness and mindful cultivation of light/Removing the sting and the sorrows of losing by singing with all of my might.” In that way, Chaotic Good is medicine all on its own – the album sees Warren confronting abusers past and present, personal and political, and stepping into her own power and anger as a woman.
“A big part of it [was] just recognizing that I have always had anger in me, inviting that energy into the room, learning how to scream, and giving myself space to do that vocally for the first time,” says Warren, who is at her most brazen on “Twisted,” a seething send-off that sees the singer posit herself as a warrior broken by loving someone incapable of empathy or understanding. “In my previous work I tried to repress it, because I thought it was ugly and scary and bad. I’d been limiting myself to this really pretty, clean, crystalline quality that gets praised a lot. But [for] this record and this time in my life, I’ve given up on prettiness and just gotten more interested in being whole, embracing all parts of myself and not trying to cut things out cause I don’t think they’re pretty.”
Parts of Chaotic Good still rely on the haunting beauty of Warren’s voice – like hushed ballad “Hole in the Wall,” rambling confessional “Every Death,” or wistful, warm acoustic number “Thru Yr Teeth” – but juxtapose them with with the same bitter emotions. As Warren lived her nomadic lifestyle, touring behind Gemini and snatching up time to experiment with newer songs in whatever studio spaces she could, the instrumentation on Chaotic Good grew more robust than any of her previous work, drawing that bitterness out sonically on songs like “Faking Amnesia” and “Part of It,” on which she sings “This is a time for me, everything else can wait/Whatever is meant to be will be and everything else can fall away.”
Indeed, Warren herself is the centerpiece of Chaotic Good, even as springy bass and shuffling drums give the tracks more punk rock energy than the pristine folk she’d cultivated in the past. “I was the only consistent player throughout – it was just me and my guitar and my traveling hard drive flitting around the whole country and working with different people in different places,” Warren says, noting that such an usual way of working was incredibly freeing in that it allowed her to explore different elements and ideas. “It was re-enlivening to get so many pairs of fresh ears on it, a day at a time. It was such a unique way of working. I’m not in any rush to go back to doing it the other way because it gave me so much time and space to reflect and change things up with low stakes.”
“That’s part of the namesake – the chaotic nature of recording it,” she continues. “I was like some little pollinating insect flying around flower to flower and getting the nectar of each moment in time in space,” she says. “I’ve never worked like that before… I feel like it translates to me synaestehtically; when I listen to the record all my senses are flooded with this feeling of variety. I feel like I see rainbows when I listen to it because there are so many moments in time, so many places, so many people, it feels like a travelogue of the last couple years that have been so beautiful really. So chaotic, but so good.”
More than any other song on the album, “Only The Truth” encapsulates Warren’s tumultuous journey, not only as a singer- songwriter, but as human being drawn into a series of co-dependent relationships. As the track builds, she calls out her past reliance on creating songs out of personal tragedy, describing “the sacred well of pain that I’ve returned to time and time again to fill my vessels with the nectar torture poison that my thirsty muse took a liking to.”
“That is to me, an encapsulation of a big over-arching process that I’ve been really invested in personally,” Warren admits. “I’ve taken a real stance against that in myself and in the world around me. It is possible to be happy and make great art and thrive and be healthy and live to a hundred twenty. And I want to do it. I want to prove to myself that that’s possible.”
Warren is currently holed up Wales, following the postponement of a European tour in support of Chaotic Good; she’s planting a garden, foraging wild foods and setting up a recording studio in a spare room, realizing that she needs this time to heal the body she’s put through years of touring. “I feel really happy right now, and honestly, I haven’t had that burning desire to create that I did when I was a tortured 20-something, when that was my only outlet,” she says. “Now, I feel really peaceful when I just wake up and walk outside and plant my beans. I don’t feel the urgency that I did, but I feel that I am making good work that I stand behind that is serving a purpose. And I feel very invested in dismantling that programming that has been running itself out in my mind for a long time and creating and alternative.”
Follow Johanna Warren on Facebook for ongoing updates.
Heroin is not a drug you fuck around with. It is not a drug you joke about. But it is a drug you can sing about — and one that many people have sung about, in fact. From 50 Cent to the Rolling Stones, here are some songs shedding light on all the different dimensions of one of the world’s most addictive and life-consuming drugs.
“Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth” by the Dandy Warhols
This fun track is actually very morbid, leaving no doubt as to what it’s about with the opening line, “I never thought you’d be a junkie because heroin is so passe.” Apparently, it’s not, because the song topped charts when it came out in 1997. In case the lyrics aren’t macabre enough, the video features dancing needles and gravestones — an odd juxtaposition with the colorful scenery and exuberant dancing.
“Needle in the Hay” by Elliott Smith
This gorgeously haunting song seems to tell the story of Smith’s own heroin addiction, with the “needle in the hay” representing the needle he’d shoot up with. “The White Lady Loves You More,” off the same self-titled album, is also debatably about heroin and/or cocaine.
“Under the Bridge” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers
Red Hot Chili Peppers frontman Anthony Kiedis has said that this song was about a low point in his heroin addiction, when he shot up under a bridge in LA, and his desire to never be in that place again. The last verse gives away the meaning: “Under the bridge downtown / Is were I drew some blood / Under the bridge downtown / I could not get enough / Under the bridge downtown / Forgot about my love / Under the bridge downtown / I gave my life away.”
“Pool Shark” by Sublime
In this incredibly depressing song, Sublime’s frontman Bradley Nowell sings, “Now I’ve got the needle / And I can’t bleed, but I can’t breathe / Take it away and I want more and more.” The last line — “one day I’m gonna lose the war” — eerily foreshadows Nowell’s 1996 death from a heroin overdose.
“A Baltimore Love Thing” by 50 Cent
50 Cent sings about struggling to detox from heroin here, personifying the drug as if it were an on-and-off lover. “Let’s make a date, promise you’ll come to see me / Even if it means you have to sell ya mama’s TV,” he raps. Formerly a drug dealer, 50 Cent has said that he has managed to become drug-free.
“Heroin Girl” by Everclear
“I can hear them talking in the real world / But they don’t understand that I’m losing myself / In a white-trash hell / Lost inside a heroin girl,” declares Everclear’s lead singer Art Alexakis. Like most songs on this list, this one ends morbidly: “They found her out in the fields / About a mile from home / Her face was warm from the sun / But her body was cold / I heard a policeman say / Just another overdose.”
“I’m Waiting For The Man” by The Velvet Underground
“The man” in this song is ostensibly a heroin dealer, who’s “got the works, gives you sweet taste / Ah then you gotta split because you got no time to waste.” Lou Reed later told Rolling Stone that “everything about that song holds true, except the price” — $26, in case you’re wondering.
When you think of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, cocaine is probably at least one of the drugs you think of. Celebrities, musicians included, have a reputation for snorting coke at their Hollywood parties, as well as in their daily lives — and they’re not afraid to sing about it. Here are some of the most notable cocaine references in music, both obscured and obvious.
“Can’t Feel My Face” by The Weeknd
This one falls into the “obvious” category. If you’ve ever done coke, you probably don’t need me to explain the meaning of this song. It’s right in the title: The Weeknd has ingested so much cocaine that he has lost sensation in his face. Indeed, the drug’s numbing properties are so significant, medical professionals have used it as an anesthetic. Still, “Can’t Feel My Face” can also be interpreted as a love song about numbing yourself to the pain of heartbreak, with lyrics like, “And I know she’ll be the death of me, at least we’ll both be numb.” Perhaps he is literally using cocaine to forget about the pain this relationship has caused him, because it numbs him emotionally as well. Deep stuff here.
“Casey Jones” by The Grateful Dead
This song describes famous railroad engineer Casey Jones “driving that train high on cocaine,” although there’s no evidence that he actually used cocaine during his fatal crash. Nevertheless, cocaine was a major influence behind the music. “I always thought it’s a pretty good musical picture of what cocaine is like,” Jerry Garcia said of the song in an interview for the book Garcia: A Signpost to New Space. “A little bit evil. And hard-edged. And also that sing-songy thing, because that’s what it is, a sing-songy thing, a little melody that gets in your head.”
“The White Lady Loves You More” by Elliott Smith
With lyrics about a loved one ditching the narrator for cocaine, this track is as depressing as you’d expect from Elliott Smith. Some have speculated that the “white lady” is actually heroin, as Smith’s addiction to heroin is extensively documented. Either way, it gives a raw and emotional account of what it’s like to be in a relationship with someone addicted to drugs.
“The Girl You Lost to Cocaine” by Sia
Sia shows the other side of being in a relationship with a coke addict by singing about leaving a partner who can’t get their shit together as the drug takes over their life. Gigwise called it a “strong, confident, infectiously melodic and immensely hummable romp through the highs and lows of Sia’s unique character and upbeat independence.”
“This Cocaine Makes Me Feel Like I’m On This Song” by System of a Down
This song doesn’t actually mention cocaine, though it implies it in lines like “we’re crying for our next fix,” interspersed between nonsense lyrics like “Gonorrhea gorgonzola” — perhaps the way one would talk on coke, with their thoughts racing haphazardly from word to word? The title reverses a common narrative about music making you feel like you’re on drugs, potentially conveying how high the band gets off music itself.
“Coke Babies” by Radiohead
These lyrics are so cryptic, it’s hard to say if the song is really about coke: “Easy living, easy hold / Easy teething, easy fold / Easy listening, easy love / Easy answers to easy questions / Easy tumble, easy doll / Easy rumble, easy fall / I get up on easy love / I get up on easy questions.” That’s it. For all we know, it’s about Coca-Cola. Reddit seems to agree that the meaning is a mystery, but it’s nevertheless one of the band’s most haunting and underrated songs, released as a b-side to the 1993 Pablo Honey single “Anyone Can Play Guitar.”
“Master of Puppets” by Metallica
This brutal depiction of drug addiction seems to be written from the perspective of the coke itself, with lyrics like “Taste me you will see / More is all you need” and “I’m pulling your strings / Twisting your mind and smashing your dreams.” It could be any addictive drug, though lines like “chop your breakfast on a mirror” suggest that it is, in fact, about cocaine.
When you’re a teenager, you start to realize that a lot of the songs you liked as a kid were about sex. Then, when you reach your 20s, you start to realize many of them were actually about drugs. A lot of drug terminology can fly right over your head if you’re not a user and don’t know any users. But becoming familiar with a drug culture is sort of like learning a new word – suddenly, it’s everywhere.
“Sex, drugs, and rock and roll” famously go together, so it’s not surprising that many songs either are about drugs, were inspired by drugs, or mention drugs. Here are a few songs you listened to (and quite possibly sang along to) as a kid without ever realizing they contain drug references.
“Semi-Charmed Life” by Third Eye Blind
I remember humming along to the “do do do dos” in this song, not realizing that the rest of it included not only overt sexual references like “she comes over and she goes down on me” but also lyrics like “Doing crystal meth will lift you up until you break” and “then I bumped up, I took the hit I was given, then I bumped again.” Yup, this song is definitely about meth.
“There She Goes” by The La’s
Ever since I heard this song in The Parent Trap while Lindsay Lohan gets to know her long-lost mother, I thought it was a sweet tribute to some woman the songwriter loves. But said woman might actually be heroin. “She” is “racing through my vein” because the narrator has literally injected “her” into their vein, according to some interpretations. The band’s singer-songwriter Lee Mavers was rumored to have a heroin addiction, so you do the math.
“Burn One Down” by Ben Harper
You had to be pretty oblivious to miss this, but I was. I thought that what is now clearly a stoner anthem was just a song extolling a “live and let live” ethos and wanting other people to let you live, too. Which it is. But it’s also about the desire to “burn one from end to end.”
“Needle in the Hay” by Elliott Smith
You don’t need to understand the lyrics to know this song is depressing as hell. But once you do know that “6th and Powell” is an intersection in San Francisco where drug addicts hang out and “taking the cure” is a phrase used to describe heroin rehab in William S. Burroughs’ Junkie, it becomes even more sad. So let’s move on to something a little more light-hearted.
“Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” by The Flaming Lips
“Those evil-natured robots / They’re programmed to destroy us / She’s gotta be strong to fight them / So she’s taking lots of vitamins.” What fun imagery! Also, it’s highly likely that Wayne Coyne was on acid when he wrote this (or at least came up with the idea). He’s a fan of the drug, and the cover art for the song’s eponymous album features a girl (presumably Yoshimi) casting a bird’s shadow, as well as the number 25, potentially referencing the drug’s lab name LDS-25.
“Pepper” by The Butthole Surfers
Some have speculated that the lines “They were all in love with dying / They were drinkin’ from a fountain /That was pouring like an avalanche coming down the mountain” reference heroin. What we do know is that lead singer Gibby Haynes struggled for some time with a heroin addiction. Another fun fact: The band members “sprinkled LSD on their cornflakes every morning,” Mark Kramer, a former touring member of The Butthole Surfers, told Noisey.
“Loser” by Beck
In this social outcast anthem, Beck slips in lyrics like “Butane in my veins so I’m out to cut the junkie” and “One’s got on the pole shove the other in a bag with the rerun shows and the cocaine nose job.” Other lyrics like “With the plastic eyeballs / Spray paint the vegetables / Dog food stalls with the beefcake pantyhose” make you wonder if he was on drugs when he wrote it, but he’s actually anti-drug.
“Walkin’ on the Sun” by Smash Mouth
This sounded to my seven-year-old self like a fun song about space exploration, but it’s actually about the 1992 Los Angeles Riots, spurred by police brutality toward black taxi driver Rodney King, the band’s guitarist Greg Camp told Songfacts. “I’d like to buy the world a toke,” frontman Steve Harwell sings in reference to the chaos of the time; though he sees marijuana as a peace-maker, he warns about the perils of harder drugs with a prescriptive in the last verse: “Put away the crack before the crack put you away.”
“Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba
PSA: Alcohol is a drug. Once you understand that, it becomes clear that this is the most drugged-up song on the list. The British version of the album booklet reads, “‘Tubthumping’ is Shouting to Change The World (then having a drink to celebrate). It’s stumbling home from your local bar, when the world is ready to be PUT RIGHT…'” It then quotes Charles Baudelaire as saying, “It is essential to be drunk all the time” — or, as the band might put it, “pissing the night away” (nope, they’re not saying “kissing,” though Americans unfamiliar with the British slang phrase might have thought otherwise). Now that we’re older, hopefully we’ve learned that mixing whiskey drinks, vodka drinks, lager drinks and cider drinks is less a recipe for revolution than it is for a brutal hangover.
Think about the last party you threw. Think about the beer bought and balloons inflated. Remember the quiche you labored over, only to realize no one wants to eat quiche at a party. Now consider the playlist you made. Don’t deny it – we all know you spent three lunch breaks compiling a shindig score entitled “Fiesta Mix.”
Now tell me – was your party (despite irrelevant quiche) a hit? Did “Fiesta Mix” incite a collective boogie? Did hips swing and booties shake, rattling the room with merriment? Well congratulations, my friend; you have accomplished something far beyond my abilities. You’re allowed to pick the music for the party.
“But, don’t you write about music…for a living?“ you ask.
I know. It doesn’t make any sense. You might assume that all these years of music fanaticism, self-dedicated mixtapes, and belabored op-eds would prime me for the simple task of DJing a party – and somehow, the opposite is true.
Proof of such failure lies in every birthday party I’ve thrown since 2012. Each year I, like you, spend hours crafting a party soundtrack featuring all of my favorite “happy” songs. As you can imagine, this is a fairly difficult task for someone whose self-described musical tastes are that of a 45-year-old divorced man. Nevertheless, I press on – crafting my little playlist for my little party with utmost care.
And yet each year like clockwork, usually smack in the middle of “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick” by Ian Dury and The Blockheads, someone pulls the plug on my tunes. Someone (usually my roommate) decides that a grubby punk with polio shouting “Two fat persons, click, click, click/Hit me, hit me, hit me!” is not party-worthy. I beg to differ, but that does no good. Within minutes my entire playlist is cast aside like an empty PBR can, and the bump n’ buzz of Top 40 hits crashes my b-day bash. I’ve gotten used to it, as well as the badge of honor I’ve earned in recent years: World’s Worst Party DJ. If I only had a sash embroidered with the accolade.
Fine then. If I can’t play my music at my own birthday party, I might as well take my talents to other soirees – clearing them out with the most un-danceable sounds. Embrace your strengths, am I right? Sure it takes some skill and intuition to boost the party the mood with music – but what about killing the mood? Doesn’t that take a certain aptitude for emotional sensitivity, too?
If you can’t join ‘em, beat ‘em. Trying to break up a party? Want to ruin a perfectly good game of beer pong? Looking to cock block Steve? Here are some tracks that will ensure record-scratching fun-terruption.
“Rhesus Negative” by Blanck Mass
Nine minutes of unrelenting, furious noise. Employ when the new Justin Bieber hit has begun its rotation, and everyone is dancing in unison. The room should begin to vacate around minute 4:35, when Blanck Mass’s Benjamin John Power starts screaming like a demon.
The entire Colors album by Ken Nordine
Nothing could be less conducive to partying than this 1966 spoken word jazz album by the eccentric Ken Nordine. Each song is dedicated to a color, to the point that it is supposed to sound like the color. Favorite cuts include, “Olive,” “Mauve” and “Fuchsia,” the latter of which contains the line, “we don’t wanna lose ya, Fuchsia.” It will derail any and all sexiness.
“Between The Bars” by Elliott Smith
If angry and awkward approaches don’t work, go with depressing. Who better to aid your mope attack than Mr. Misery himself, Elliott Smith? It will definitely kill the party vibe, but at least that guy slouching alone in the corner will appreciate it.
“Dear God, I Hate Myself” by Xiu Xiu
Pro tip: project the band’s music video (which is three minutes of Angela Seo making herself vomit while Jamie Stewart eats a chocolate bar) onto a nearby wall. Party over.
“Imagining My Man” by Aldous Harding
What says “party” more than a woeful folk singer? Just about anything. Funnily enough, this track comes from Harding’s most recent record, which is entitled Party.
“Japanese Banana” by Alvin & The Chipmunks
Think of this one as a little party favor – something to stick with the fleeing guests. There’s a reason my friend refers to this cut as “mind herpes;” it will be remembered long after it has ruined the festivities.
Pretty much anything by Tom Waits.
I personally like “What’s He Building In There” or “God’s Away On Business,” but let’s face it – no one’s going to be happy with gravelly voiced, vaudeville-inspired rock and if anyone is, marry that person immediately.
“Waking The Witch” by Kate Bush
From the dark side of Hounds Of Love, this number features chopper-like percussion and male vocals that literally sound like Satan. It’s impossible to dance to and sure to terrify everyone.
Whale Songs (various whales)
Any whale will do.
“Leave the Party” by Happyness
If all of your subtle sonic hints to GET THE FUCK OUT are for naught, perhaps a bit of direct lyric-messaging will do the trick. Happyness’ drowsy pop number literally says, “Leave the party, head right home” in the chorus. If guests refuse to hear that, then maybe the words, “kill everyone at the party” will be more audible.
The 10th anniversary of Elliott Smith’s death earlier this week triggered everything from remembrance essays and “top 10” roundups to tribute shows and a newly published biography. In the span of a decade, the indie singer-songwriter has risen to not only cult favorite but also downright legendary status. Today, even Madonna is performing covers of Smith’s songs, and his work continues to influence and inspire a generation of musicians and listeners, like myself, who hadn’t even reached their teens at the time of Smith’s passing.
His work, drug addictions, and gruesome death have established a reputation for him as an extremely tormented and lonely guy, so it’s easy to overlook his actual life before its tragic end. To celebrate his life on this anniversary, here’s a look back at Elliott Smith through this short documentary by Steve Hanft, Strange Parallel, released in 1998.
The film offers some insight into Smith’s personality through interviews with friends and bartenders at his regular spots, who mostly describe him as “quiet” and comment on how elusive he is, but what makes this a real gem are the trippy sequences depicting a dream Smith had about a “robot hand.” The storyline begins with Smith watching a commercial in Spanish selling a “mano roboto” (at 9:23 in the first video below). Later, Smith receives a flyer that simply reads “Robot hand is the future” (11:24). Eventually, he “surgically” replaces his own right hand with the bulky robot hand, primarily because it’ll supposedly enhance his guitar playing. The whole concept funny and bizarre and sheds some light both on Elliott’s playful side and on his apparent fears about the pressures of becoming a big-time musician.
Other highlights of the movie include Elliott commenting that he thinks, “The music business will eventually crush me, but I’m ready,” and, later, a drill sergeant yelling at Elliott in a bar, saying, “You have to admit that your future is uncertain!” If nothing else, Strange Parallel is a weirdly intriguing attempt to capture some part of who Elliott Smith was, but by the end, the director admits that, “Even though we worked on the film for a few months, Elliott was still a mystery to us.” More than a decade later, that still hasn’t changed.
