Should old acquaintance blah blah blah
Download: TRAD GRAS OCH STENAR “Light of Your Day” (live, full)
Happy New Year and stuff. Here’s a song that was edited for length in order to cram as much as possible onto the YETI #1 CD –- here ‘tis in its unedited, un-EQ’ed/ un-mastered rawness. It is a previously unreleased and rather intense live number from 1971 by the great Swedish folk-prog-rock-trance act Träd Gräs och Stenar (which translates as Trees, Grass & Stones so you know on which side of the hippie divide they sat), who (nicely, coincidentally) not long after their appearance in YETI had their old LPs all reissued very excellently and then toured and recorded new material to well-deserved acclaim. I still don’t have many of the reissues myself, preferring to listen to the burned CDs of Harvester, Int’l Harvester and TGOS records that their drummer made from the vinyl itself for me. I'm a sentimental sucker. I'm also not rich, and import CDs can just kill you (so if anyone wants to buy me this for late x-mas that would rule; my Soulseek copy is not cutting it and yes I'd prefer the vinyl)!
But New Years -- this day has always seemed so arbitrary to me, and just a poor excuse for people to get fucked up and drive around killing up folks (one of my favorite ever people lost her Mom on this day to a drunk driver and my nuclear family was in a really bad wreck with a high and drunk dude one New Years Day in the early ‘80s). But, as Hallmark-y and clichéd as it is, it’s always hard for me not to use this as a chance to reflect on things, which is never bad anyway, and I kind of can’t wait for ’05.
2004 really sucked, with YETI 3 still somehow not out yet, gnarly health/ financial problems (pretty OK now, don’t worry), I couldn't get it together to date anyone for more than a month at a time or to find anyone cool who didn't live in another country (yessss, I have issues), and of course the election and a series of dreadful events that just seem to be the start of the apocalypse on a general, what do you call it, global, level. But when I step back, I realize hey, I did curate two art shows that were pretty successful (especially this one), I got a few really good solid writing gigs (the success of digital downloads led to a second wave of ecommerce content with music -- i.e., thank God for eMusic), I’m in a city that I love very much right now, I had two cover stories in the Seattle Weekly (thanks Matos – I was particularly glad to say everything I wanted to in the Sun City Girls thing) and many groovy events are about to transpire on the “professional” front. All I need is continued discipline and to just not be afraid of shit so much.
So, I’m sorry for slipping into such maudlin first person – this is not supposed to be another boring personal egoblog, it’s supposed to be about the songs, the music, and with very minimal rockcrit bleating or ridiculously link-heavy 'graphs or sky-is-falling-woe-is-me’ing or gee-look-at-all-my-lists-of-stuff’ing!!! Okay. I'll try to do that.
Happy New Year and stuff. Here’s a song that was edited for length in order to cram as much as possible onto the YETI #1 CD –- here ‘tis in its unedited, un-EQ’ed/ un-mastered rawness. It is a previously unreleased and rather intense live number from 1971 by the great Swedish folk-prog-rock-trance act Träd Gräs och Stenar (which translates as Trees, Grass & Stones so you know on which side of the hippie divide they sat), who (nicely, coincidentally) not long after their appearance in YETI had their old LPs all reissued very excellently and then toured and recorded new material to well-deserved acclaim. I still don’t have many of the reissues myself, preferring to listen to the burned CDs of Harvester, Int’l Harvester and TGOS records that their drummer made from the vinyl itself for me. I'm a sentimental sucker. I'm also not rich, and import CDs can just kill you (so if anyone wants to buy me this for late x-mas that would rule; my Soulseek copy is not cutting it and yes I'd prefer the vinyl)!
But New Years -- this day has always seemed so arbitrary to me, and just a poor excuse for people to get fucked up and drive around killing up folks (one of my favorite ever people lost her Mom on this day to a drunk driver and my nuclear family was in a really bad wreck with a high and drunk dude one New Years Day in the early ‘80s). But, as Hallmark-y and clichéd as it is, it’s always hard for me not to use this as a chance to reflect on things, which is never bad anyway, and I kind of can’t wait for ’05.
2004 really sucked, with YETI 3 still somehow not out yet, gnarly health/ financial problems (pretty OK now, don’t worry), I couldn't get it together to date anyone for more than a month at a time or to find anyone cool who didn't live in another country (yessss, I have issues), and of course the election and a series of dreadful events that just seem to be the start of the apocalypse on a general, what do you call it, global, level. But when I step back, I realize hey, I did curate two art shows that were pretty successful (especially this one), I got a few really good solid writing gigs (the success of digital downloads led to a second wave of ecommerce content with music -- i.e., thank God for eMusic), I’m in a city that I love very much right now, I had two cover stories in the Seattle Weekly (thanks Matos – I was particularly glad to say everything I wanted to in the Sun City Girls thing) and many groovy events are about to transpire on the “professional” front. All I need is continued discipline and to just not be afraid of shit so much.
So, I’m sorry for slipping into such maudlin first person – this is not supposed to be another boring personal egoblog, it’s supposed to be about the songs, the music, and with very minimal rockcrit bleating or ridiculously link-heavy 'graphs or sky-is-falling-woe-is-me’ing or gee-look-at-all-my-lists-of-stuff’ing!!! Okay. I'll try to do that.
posted by Mike McGonigal at 11:25 AM
2 Comments:
great stuff here.
thanks.
Yo
I ate pizza with you after the Nuggets show. An all around good time. Too bad Big cat is no more. Let me Know how I can get copies of yeti.
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