A song for every year of my life #23: 1999

Aphex Twin's "Windowlicker" is one of his strongest pieces of music and my favorite music video. Besides the way the editing and physical movements of the participants and the camera's framing of those movements complement and reinforce the threateningly propulsive yet lasciviously slithery music, the video succeeds at being both hilarious and unsettling and takes mainstream R&B and hip hop videos of the period to their logical conclusion. Nice work, people.


Honorable mention: Built to Spill - "Carry the Zero"
I'm a sucker for melancholy guitar weepers that combine the post-punk and classic rock traditions, and this one does it better than most.

I think I am done learning new things about the youth

A few months ago, several friends and I were drinking in the outdoor section of a bar. A very young band was playing inside. I went inside to catch a few minutes of the set. Instrumentally, the verses sounded exactly like Pavement, the choruses exactly like My Bloody Valentine. The vocals, however, were the Cookie Monster death metal thing. Visually, the band were wearing cargo shorts, no shirts, black soccer shoes, and black socks pulled up to their knees. They all had Skrillex haircuts. There have been several moments in the last five years where I've thought to myself, "Am I too old for this, and is that a sign of conservative stasis and closed-minded death?" For the first time in my life, seeing these kids play, I thought to myself, "I don't give a fuck if this is some artistic breakthrough and I'm too stubborn to acknowledge it. I am glad I don't get this and I am glad I don't give a shit." Last week, I saw this video on television. I don't know whether this is the end of music or whether I'm looking at some kind of teenybopper morphine drip version of the Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot film. All I know is that I don't have a fucking clue why anything like this would become reality. If any of you know what the hell I'm looking at here, please keep it to yourself. I don't want to know anything about it. I have my own problems.