Candy Claws Glacier Prey. Bicycle music. It seems that a dog in Australia has tested positive for the Hendra virus. I remember feeling the most desperate heartache when I read a pro-med post concerning a young veterinarian that died from the Hendra virus for no other reason than his love of animals. Fear the flying fox seeking figs! Or fido. I mention heartache and I recently, well this evening, had dinner with someone who had an infection of the pericardium and nearly died. if he had gone to sleep one evening he would not have awoken the next morning. Frightening. He was wearing a purple fitted shirt and cowboy boots this evening, if the virus had been active I am not sure that is the ensemble to be seen dead in. I was wearing something far less fashionable. Not a headband. Candy Claws have been seen all over town with their beaded headbands and vaguely arranged musical thoughts. I could wear a headband now, my hair is unseasonably unkempt. I live now, only, for the ride home with both windows down and my hair dashed haphazardly by the turbulence of life in the fast lane. Cue Urban Dance Squad. First track here, 670,000,000, 670,000,000 insights into my soul. Or a reference to their favorite year BC. It was noise, it was nice, it was vague. Second track, less disorienting, gentle keyboard triggered samples, her gentle voice(inaudible). They are children of the blooms, flower power, raised on corn and fueled by raw milk. Are they aghast by the recent Morrissey comments? Possibly only because he made them in public but the silly equating of animal life and human life is what leads to things like genocides and totalitarianism and a role in life similar to a worker in a hive programmed only for the collective good and in this case not just humanity but for Gaia's sake. Snow Bear River Fire. Why is this not an official release? it is available for free download from their website. It isn't as accomplished as the two official records. The lyrics, inaudible, although my ears have been made even more suspect by the humidity and the accompanying air conditioning in Chicago. I spent the past four days in Chicago. Interesting in that the buildings are so beautiful and the people are not. i was on the most exclusive avenue in Chicago and surrounded by the unglamorous set, Midwestern, overweight, incurious stares affixed to their faces. I will admit to staring up and staring down, I like to watch people and when they wend through a chasm created by remarkable architecture and when they take the stares down to a subterranean street beneath the glitz and glamour it is interesting to see the relief. I spent a fair amount of time inside of taverns and pubs and a delightful Piano bar but always the walk home was spent with my head craned, watching the reflection of the unspectacular night on the panes of glass. Third track, very Procedure Club, see dull. This sounds like a demo, this sounds the germinate, this sounds like gentle whirrs of the air conditioning reflecting off of the glass inside of the elevated train. In the future there will not be air conditioning, because the ice had disappeared from the Arctic air conditioning will be banned except for inside Air Force One and inside Margaret's ice cream factory. Fourth track, softer, more glacial. Twinkles. Are they still in Fort Collins or have they moved to the big city? They should move to Chicago. They could busk near the Marilyn Monroe statue and excoriate the cretins assembled there while the greened Nathan Hale statue only one half of a block away keeps lonely vigil in front of the Chicago Tribune. I suppose Marilyn Monroe had a larger impact on culture than Nathan Hale, at least in the conscious culture, but Nathan Hale helped to create the unmentionable character of America, the unspoken, inherent, soon to be withered away and decayed spirit of freedom. Fifth track. But the Marilyn Monroe statue makes a better photograph. I know. i do not take photographs, it is a better exercise to sit in reminiscence and try to recreate the image in your mind. Post your photos online, we are having a wonderful time. This is a vague pop song, a vague croon, a slow march in the dappled sunshine beneath the ubiquitous honey locust of South Chicago. I walked inside of the exclusive retail centers and did not feel at home. I am no socialist agitator, it did not anger me to see such ostentation on display, but it didn't seem to be jolly or warm. I would imagine were I so flush I might be cheerful all of the time. Like the fifth avenue charlatan hippy children in our rather posh hotel in town to watch Lollapalooza. There to see Electric Touch I am sure. This is an Ace of Base cover, sounds like a Candy Claws song, the recognizable keyboard snippet follows shortly after the recognizable chorus. Ho hum. But how are the tattoo'd masses that consume their socialism through a straw where enmeshed in the fruits of their parents capitalistic pursuits able to sleep in such accommodations. When I travel I travel in hostels. My parents were mostly working class while I grew up but still I am steeped in the hopes of Lysander Spooner and Wilfred Trotter. Next track, after the cover, nice Wall of sound-ish experimentation, a sketch for the next record, a hint of things to come for the Firebreather record? Possibly. It is nearly over. But drinking on a business trip is so commonplace. I am on vacation now. I am staying at home and I am not going to drink or eat but I am going to run every day. I am going to run through the neighborhood and learn more of my neighborhood. Perhaps I will become a social agitator and assemble my neighbors for a march on the town hall. We will demand that they stop painting on streets notes in bright white spray paint indicating that because the inhabitant of the home adjacent has not paid his sewer bill(12 dollars a month, hardly onerous) they are going to be forcibly disconnected from the public sanitation system. Apparently this operation with a back hoe is expensed to the homeowner that can't afford the 12$ per month for sewage service at a rate of $8000. Currently we are listening to a dream. Kaleidoscopic. On the airplane I read in the newspaper that Kaleidoscopes are from Scotland originally. It was invented by David Brewster. later it was mass produced by an American and it is a fascinating thing to realise how the angle of reflection of the enclosed mirror has such an effect on the resulting projection. Is there a statue to David Brewster in Scotland? Would he rank higher in cultural importance than Marilyn Monroe? Unlikely. Another sketch of a song, Hiding, reflections of notes and notes and shimmers and shine. it has a subtitle, "sound idea". It was very humid in Chicago. Music travels less well in humidity. But I was conscious to not wear my headphones while walking around the city. When I passed lovely young women with their earbuds inserted they all stood erect, passionless, determined, fearful of the squalor that surrounded them among the spires ascending from Nordstroms and the like. The harsh reality of the commonness of Midwestern living. But apart from the tourists, who infested the area I was in, there were the locals and they bread a true culture much unlike the sterile conditions here in Denver. Perhaps I romanticise the existence of local dialects and culture but the homogenization of human existence is a scourge that would be well defeated if people knew the existence of the beauty of everyday life rather than the imagined excesses of some far off utopia that should be benevolently spread beyond its borders into our mundane lives. Another slow instrumental track. it sounds as they are swaying back and forth out of existence, leaning forward and casting a reflection and then pulling back into the rip caused in the space time continuum by the mass of humanity preventing an elevator from leaving the ground floor. All of these tracks sound familiar. Are these ideas that have already come to fruition? My friends the pop songs, my only friends. My friends, the readers, my only friends. This entry is as vague as the music on offer, The Blue Octavo Notebooks. Each succeeding song recorded on smaller film stock to reflect the intimacy the idea has with its genesis, the lack of remove, the sound hasn't disassociated from the expansion of the mind kept for true disassociation by their beaded headbands. Headbands are a difficult look. It is difficult not to look like a member of Khan's entourage while wearing headband, especially if you do not know all of the words to Xanadu. I have finished the first movement of Dance to the Music of Time and am in love. And because my heart is very small and mainly vestigial it makes me weary and unable to use it to further conquests of hope and time and human interaction.