NAILED SONGS OF THE WEEK #48
“What kind of music would robotic dogs from the future like the least?”
#SOTW: SAN FRANCISCO EDITION
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Guest Editor: Brian S. Ellis, Poet and Author (most recently of Often Go Awry, 2015)
“Live at the Lab” – Horaflora
In the Disney Animated Film, Wreck It Ralph, characters from beloved arcade games come to life and go on various adventures. But what if, not the game’s characters, but the video cabinets themselves came to life? What would their voices sound like? If whales could play instruments, would they go brass, or would they go percussion because they can already kinda’ make those sounds? What kind of music would robotic dogs from the future like the least? Horaflora, the longtime musical project of insta-composer Raub Roy, answers some of these questions. The best way to see Horaflora is live, but video and recordings can bring us close to the textural experience that Horaflora builds. Raub is a member of the Oakland-based Life Changing Ministries, a venue and collective. His recordings can be found online and elsewhere through his label Weird Ear Records.
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Matty Byloos, Publisher and Contributing Editor of NAILED:
“Real Life” – Dick Stusso
It’s probably after 9 in the morning when you finally make the decision, finally get the courage. You found one of those bars that opens at 6am after having closed down at 2am, earlier that same morning. All the things that could happen to a person in four hours. Hell, all the things that could happen in four minutes. You’ve been on a bar stool for three hours and change, still drunk from last night, when it hits you. Time to move on, from out of the dark.
Open the door of the bar onto the world outside and the light is all golden, the way you remember the pictures of your family from the 80s. What was the reason for getting drunk this time? Who even knows anymore. But it blurs memories into something you can almost believe really happened. And doesn’t that just make it all a little bit better when it hurts.
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Carrie Seitzinger, Editor-in-Chief of NAILED:
“Never Going Home” – Hazel English
So this is what underground pop music is now? Young wanderlust in cascading refrains of graceful treble and rolling weight-of-the-moment instrumental? Makes me feel a little better about the technological overload personal broadcasting of complete crap world we live in. Thank you, Hazel English.
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Shenyah Webb, Arts Editor of NAILED:
“In Every Heart” – Nightshuttle
This song summons visuals of how I imagined my adult life would look, how it would feel, how 10 year old me imagined myself now. (But now being in the 80s.)
1987 Detroit, Michigan suburbs.
It got dark early in the autumn months, the air was always crisp, the street lights glowed amber – the perfect time of year.
My mom drove a gold Mercury LN7 with the hatchback permanently down. Not driving shotgun was preferred, at least at night. The full skylight pinstriped the city sky with the little black lines running through the window. My reflection appearing and then disappearing with each street light. Laying in piles of fresh laundry, our night journeys were guided by the baritone voice and music selection of DJ Alan Almond’s Pillow Talk – Love song selections that seemed especially chosen for my mom and her dating life, and future me. Years in the future, it would be me driving at night, listening to music that seemed picked just for me, my eyes would be blue with heavy eye-shadow, I too would go to the laundromat at night, eat raspberries and yogurt whenever I wanted… This is what women did. This is what I would be doing then, in the 80s.
it’s the night, it’s the constant obligation
it’s a dream bearing infinite magnitude
take a note, take a letter, it’s an aberration
on the street where it all came back to you
in every heart
there is a nest
for every swallow
in every chest
in every heart
Nightshuttle’s “The City is Perfect Right Now” carries this at-once “then and now” theme through and through. It’s a nostalgic treasure. An album worth repeating. And this song, better with each listen. One that magically makes its way to your distant memories, like it was there all along.
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Check out Songs of the Week #47 for even more great music from the editors and contributors behind NAILED.