Awful Bliss - Guided By Voices - Bee Thousand - 1994

So I have a really awful story to go along with this song. Like a really, really embarrassing and shameful story, but frankly, it is what I think about when I hear this song and will be what I think about when I hear this song until the day I die...so I pretty much have to tell this story.

The song itself is relatively simple. One of the small handful of GBV tracks sung by reedy voiced "Classic Lineup" guitar player Tobin Sprout, it clocks in at barely over 1 minute long. It's a sad, acoustic ballad in the middle of an album of Pollard's bombastic triumphs. And it's really just one verse and a single line repeated a few times as a chorus, but epic song lengths were not GBV's forte.

So...about that story...it was the weekend before Thanksgiving of 99. I was living my last year in Cincinnati, saving money to move to NYC the following summer. My girlfriend at the time was visiting her family in Ecuador, and I decided to go grab a bite to eat with one of my friends. As there is jack-shit to do in Cincy, we ended up at the TGI Friday's in Kenwood drinking and eating Jack Daniel's Chicken Strips (Cuisine was not high on Cincy's list in the 90's...though my mother assures me it's gotten better). After a few we headed our separate ways.

Cut to Tuesday night by which point both myself and my friend have easily the worst food poisoning either of us have ever, ever had. It was so bad in fact that I couldn't drive to my family's thanksgiving celebration, because I was in the bathroom every 20 minutes AROUND THE CLOCK. And it's this around the clock thing that really brings us back to this song.

Now, I don't know if you've ever gone a few days straight sleeping only in little 15 minute bursts...but let me tell you, you start to go a little loopy. You live in a fog where the whole world is strange. It's like the worst drug you've ever EVER taken. I remember laying on my couch, Thanksgiving Day, trying to watch the Macy's Parade and drifting in and out of consciousness between trips to the toilet. (Again, I apologize for the scatological nature of this post)...and for some strange reason for that whole period, I just had that one single line "And I wouldn't dare to bring out this awful bliss" running in my head...over and over. I'm fairly certain it's what madness feels like. Like maybe Manson just kept hearing "Helter-Skelter" in his head, just like that...granted I wasn't homicidal...if anything I mostly just wanted to die...but still...

Anyway, by Friday I had to go to the ER and be rehydrated and given some anti-biotics. It took me about a week after that to get back on solid food, and I will honestly say without fear of exaggeration that nearly 10 years later...my stomach has never fully recovered...and I will never hear this song again without thinking about that just awful, awful 4 days.

Autoriche - Autechre - Incunabula - 1994

We left Eastern Standard in a cab, in an effort to catch another one of the bars on our list before it closed, but of course we showed up to find the place wasn't even open on Sundays to begin with. So that left us bar-less at midnight...I made a game time decision and headed us towards Chinatown...there was a bar I had been to on one of my previous trips that I thought might stay open later. But we found something else along the way...

As we were walking down through the theater district we happened upon two Irish bars right next to each other. The first, was shut down for a private party, but the second was wide open and actually fairly busy for that late on a Sunday night. We plopped down at the bar and got ourselves a round.

Observing the unusually busy bar it quickly became evident what the deal was...in one corner was a group of ratty t-shirted burly dudes with longish manes and scruffy facial hair, in another was a group of slightly posh seeming openly gay men, at the front stood a pretty-ish woman who was less pretty the closer you got and wearing too much blush...she kept practicing a weird pose with one of the gay men where they would both stand facing into the bar, shoulder to shoulder, with her hands locked together at the fingers...we were at the wrap party for a play.

Upon sharing this observation with Anand, he immediately decided this was the funniest thing in the world and proceeded to spend the majority of the rest of the evening speaking in a bad phony Shakespearean actor accent. "Ohhhhhhhh, me lord, wouldst though parlay with the barkeep and find me another mug of ale?"

At some point I went to the bathroom and saw a bunch of guys shredding lines off the waiters tray. Later on, the only other guy in the bar who didn't seem to be with the play came up to us and asked us if we knew where he could buy weed. The actress approached me at some point with one of the gays as a wing man, she had apparently mistaken us for stage hands and was either honestly curious about the progress of the breakdown of the show, or was looking to find a bastion of heterosexuality. Either way, I just sort of mumbled something about being a tourist and having no idea what she was talking about.

2 O'clock rolled around and though last call had been...er called, no one seemed to be in a hurry to leave. Though the bar tender kept dropping hints that it was quitting time, Anand was insistent that we stay and try to figure out what sort of action was going to happen when they closed the doors...needless to say, we did not get this invitation...instead we finished our drinks and headed back out.


I have nothing to say about Autechre...their one of those groups that you have on your iPod cause bands you admire, speak in hushed and worshipful tones about them...but my actual experience of listening to them is generally a shrug and an "OK?" No different here.

Across The Avenue - Freedy Johnson - This Perfect World - 1994

When I was in my early twenties, I lived in Cincinnati and hated my life. Like many people my basic age I had caught Noah Baumbach's Kicking and Screaming on cable (not to be confused with the more recent Will Ferrell soccer movie which inexplicably featured Robert Duvall) and on the basis of its use on the soundtrack decided to pick up this Freedy Johnson album.

At the time, having never actually been to NYC, I assumed that these songs were little capsules of what a cool life in the city must be like. Now it all seems a bit trite and naive. Still, I keep this shit around to remind myself of the kid I used to be. There are better songs on this album, though...songs that make me cringe about "90's Josh" less. Serviceable