Well: It is spring now, which is just a prelude to summer. And so I have begun listening to SUMMER MUSIC, what with it being warm and breezy and all that. Here are two of The Good Ones, in my opinion . . . and I have been listening to both a lot recently!

NUMBER GIRL is one my favorite bands. They put out four excellent albums, and then Shutoku Mukai went on and formed ZAZEN BOYS, who also rule. Though yeah, SCHOOL GIRL BYE BYE is their first album, and I reckon it’s my favorite one. It’s just honest stuff is all . . . kinda sloppy and jangly in that good way. Also it is a steady ride the whole way though. If you’re driving a car and you put this on, you’re gonna have a real good time. I’ve played this album on every Oakland to LA drive I’ve ever done, which is a lot! Though yeah: roll down the windows and let it rip!!

REMEMBER SPORTS (formally just SPORTS (which is a better name (sad face))) is another honest and unpretentious band. Their songs are usually about hangin out and being in love or falling out of love, and so on. And even when they’re singing about something kinda heavy . . . it’s still bright and beautiful and feels summery in a high school sort of way. And as far as their first album SUNCHOKES goes, there isn’t a bad song on the whole album. There are certain albums that are real Time and Place for me, and this one right here reminds me of fleeing Portland and triumphantly returning to Oakland a few years ago. It was this time of year, and the weather was so pretty in Oakland as it always is, and I drove around listening to this album probably every day for months. I love it!!

•  •  •

AND ON THE TOPIC
OF SUMMER. . . .

Yesterday I visited a small city I like. I won’t say which one, because if I do it might vanish altogether. I have been going there every other week for a month I reckon, and every time I do it feels like gazing into an episode of the TWILIGHT ZONE . . . like it’s this dreamy thing I can only observe from afar behind glass. I can’t really interact with in any meaningful way, being an outsider and all. When I visit, I just see this laidback utopia like Austin used to be for me, and I envision myself subletting a small studio apartment and buying a bicycle and just hanging out there for the summer. I would read and write all day, and take long baths, and then get spooked up and ride my bicycle around all night. Maybe I’d even have a summer fling . . . who knows!

In my mind it is an idea built out of spiderwebs. It is so delicate I’m afraid to look at it dead on. I don’t actually know if that thing exists the way I think it does, and even if it did, how could I get my hands on it? I feel like anytime I ever get a hold of something, I ruin it, or else it is ruined for me. I don’t know. But the idea of rolling into this place and having a strange stretch of months and then slipping out sounds so nice to me. And maybe this is the only point in time when I could pull something like that off. It is a strange time, after all. I knew summers like that long ago. To have one like that again would make me feel a lot better about everything. Well . . . I’m still thinking about it. The barriers are low at any angle, and there is hardly any risk, so why not. . . .

Anyway . . . I’m going to read a few chapters from this Yukio Mishima novel I got, and then I’m going to eat a bunch of flower capsules and pray I end up in a nice quadrant of my brain. Otherwise it’s another trip down to Nightmareland. Hain’t like I got a choice. What can you do, really, except go to sleep and see where you end up??

☆彡