RIFF MARKET

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Each contributor to the 12 DAYS OF SPIDERRIFFMAS was told: OK I'll let you jump on a record, but listen Kite Runner! You got 35 minutes max. Because I do not want no Bonfire of the Vanitas like last year. So the only rule was: Thou shalt not write more than 35 minutes--capito? Also if anybody knows what happened to my man Don Pollyanna get at me! Also if anybody knows a good dentist-- FANG.

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YEAR IN RIFFS: SEAN BOYLAND
The Song Belongs To Everyone Now

A caveat: Prior to riffing, I conducted research to find out what happened this year in music, since I did not, for the most part, notice. An obvious exception is Person Pitch, which was good. Did you know that? More information on the topic can be found on the Internet. I deleted my first and dull effort, preserving in the following two key points - my clumsy efforts to connect to today's youth, and the apparent continuing existence of The Pipettes. I added a charming personal anecdote, and the eschatological woes which consumed many of my idle moments in 2007.

Neon Bible was bad, but 8 Diagrams and In Rainbows were not.

A while ago, I decided that I should familiarize myself with popular American culture, and watch High School Musical or its sequel or listen to My Chemical Romance or Rihanna or etc, but I did not. At Thanksgiving, my cousins and I had to explain what High School Musical and Hannah Montana were to our various parents. Then my older cousins and I had to try to discuss the Hudgens nude pictures and other High School Musical related scandals without letting Anna, who is younger, know what we were talking talking about. It was hilarious.

I have not yet found the kind of skeptical-yet-forgiving mood that would compel me to watch I'm Not There, so add that to your list of things I did not do in 2007. Another entry is "care about Walk Hard." I saw Rock the Bells, which was great.

Western civilization is going to collapse. Climate change, AIDS, super-resistant bacteria, and impoverished former SSR's with nuclear arsenals have been with us for a while. It's just that now they're all going to happen. Did you know that Russia has more nuclear warheads than the rest of the world combined? I hope that everything is going well over there! I bet it is! I just bring up all this doom and gloom stuff for fun because there is going to be a global economic depression imminently.

The Pipettes (they still exist!) seem like the musical equivalent of the magic jelly-beans in Harry Potter that taste like earwax. Clearly not the sort of jelly-bean anyone should put in their mouths, yet look at all the children, grinning like monkeys and holding bags of the things. Go figure! Except I think part of the Pipettes' appeal is sex appeal, so imagine the children also have pornography. Fetish pornography, for people who get turned on by giant eyeglasses and women dressed in the kind of clothes our grandmothers wore. I imagine there's a really juicy spread in the middle of the magazine with a woman talking on a bakelite phone while using a canister vacuum and rationing meat. Are you ready to have sex yet, reader? Did you know that the Pipettes don't even write their own music? That's right: sweater-wearing greasy-haired nerds are now a lucrative enough demographic that someone manufactured a Menudo/Vengaboys style fake music group just to cater to them. Who is your favorite Pipette? Mine's the ugly one!

I never thought I would say this, but I became somewhat fond of a song by the Incredible String Band, "Swift As the Wind." For the benefit of younger readers, Incredible String Band is similar to and almost as awful as The Decembrists (sp?).

Song of the year - honorable mentions to Nurse & Soldier for that song I liked, "Goin' Against Your Mind" which I listened to more this year than last, "Wolves" of course, next year's "Three Way" from the Magnetic Fields, "Hey Muscles I Love You," Liz Pappademas, Aqueduct, The Little Ones, "Violent Past," oh, all kinds of great songs. And the winner is: "Five Years" by David Bowie. Enjoy it while you can, because next year it will be comically inaccurate. Because next year it will only be four years until the apocalypse. And zero years until the global economic depression.

The best album of 2007 was Spiderman of the Rings by Dan Deacon.

But, reader! I actually did join in on part of contemporary culture this year. I learned how to crank dat Soulja Boy. In totally 2007 fashion, I loaded up "Soulja Boy Tellem - How to Crank That - INSTRUCTIONAL VIDEO!" on my Wii's Opera, cleared my coffee table to the side, and obeyed patiently. I am one of the over twenty one million views of Soulja Boy's instructional video on how to crank dat. In fact, I'm several, maybe a couple dozen. I don't crank dat well; I don't crank dat suitably for public exhibition, but if pressed, I can crank dat. Yes, note my repeated use of "dat" where Soulja Boy himself at times says "that." Look, jerks, the song belongs to everyone now, that's the whole point. It doesn't matter. I did it because I liked the song. Because I liked the way the people on YouTube danced, all the teens in their uniformly nice suburban houses, with the same undecorated beige walls from the YouTube videos of teens playing songs on electric piano from Final Fantasy IV or Regina Spektor or what have you and the same as all YouTube videos - you know, AMERICA, where I resent teens for being upper middle class, but sympathize with them for their mundane parents' dull beige homes, but also envy their abilities to play the electric piano/dance. I did it because I generally mean to dance more, in my private moments, to get better at dancing and to exercise, although I rarely remember. Because it's fun to have projects. Because I really do want to connect somehow with America's youth. The whole process was super earnest, readers! Suck it!

If I had money, I guess I would probably convert my cash and other financial assets into hard goods, mainly bullets and some canned foods. If, if, if! I know it sucks to be a war profiteer, but it also sucks to not be a war profiteer in a world where only war profiteers have fun. Anyways, we only have so many years of uncivilized chaos before climate change and epidemics kill everyone, so may as well live it up trading bullets for cigarettes, right?

I'd like to live in a cave in Nunavut for a while, cook on the fire, hunt for food and talk to my dog. I'd like to loot the occasional condo complex. I'd like to steal a book from the library about how to plant things, compile my own sort of Junior Woodchuck's Guidebook/Tobin's Spirit Guide/American Boy's Handy Book. Folks, I think I'm going to like the latest of many arrivals of the eternal hun! Until we all die from heat stroke and lack of potable water.

Some Loud Thunder - **** of *****. Did that come out in 2007 or 2006?

97 S'FANGS

Labels: year-in-riffs-2007