fumbling toward nextacy.

I've been trying to post something here, but everything I've been up to lately is too complicated to post about quickly. So I'll just say this:

Worst Live Band Ever? Helium. No contest, hands down, etc. I've seen them 5 times and watched them suck powerfully and incessantly 5 times. This was tragic for me b/c Pirate Prude and The Dirt of Luck were two of my absolute favorite discs of 1994-5, and while some of my other favorite artists were just up and actually, literally dying left and right without my having seen them live, Helium just couldn't get excited enough about their gigs to do anything other than scowl and pout and just unabashedly befoul the stage with their energysucking absence of goodness (sorry Ash, I don't mean you), for me most memorably at Atlanta's now-gone-I-think Cotton Club, where Blonde Redhead just mopped the floor with Helium's frowny-faced shrug of a set.

Really, it's not like I've been obsessing about this for 11 years or anything, honest. It's just that I had a summer of unusually nostalgic listening because all of Matador, Touch and Go, and Merge Records' back catalogs are now available on eMusic, so I downloaded all the old favorites that I accidentally sold when we had our CD shop (I didn't realize that some of them were out of print)...I was happiest to find the boys from Chavez, Polvo, and Archers of Loaf out there...and of course Helium, which started all of this. "Baby's Going Underground" is still a great song.

Still no Bonsai Superstar though, 'cause it was released on Grass. I had a prolonged fantasy about releasing it myself last night, but thankfully it seems to have passed.

Something about food will show up here eventually. Until then, go listen to some Camille. Her Le Fil disc is, IMHO, everything that Bjork's Medulla should've been but wasn't. It's playful, passionate, experimental, occasionally awkward, and interesting while still being pop-song-predictable enough to play for normal people. And there's none of that over-emotive full-throttle yell that the Swan Lady indulges herself in. Additionally, there aren't 36 distracting guest stars. I also don't understand a word of the Camille stuff, and I'm sure that helps immensely.

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