NAME: SSOL-Songs that Save Our Life

So our last post got us to thinking about songs...songs about women or relationships or situations that are so full of emotion ,be them sugary or bitter or a bit of both, songs that are definitely romantic in tone ,but have a sorta jagged male edge to them, and while listening to them may not clear up yr dilemma it sure does help maintain perspective. So we scrolled through the ipod, and thought about the songs that save our life, we came up with this list:
Neil Young-Cinnamon Girl-crazy girls rule the world, and they will forever...cause we want them to.
Oasis-Slide Away-Brutes do romantic really really well and with a lot of sunshine and crashing off too.
The Smiths- The Boy with the Thorn in his Side- Oh, who do you need to know? Only the MOZ can make plundering and murderous desire sound this innocent and wanting.
Jimi Hendrix-Castles Made of Sand- Things come, things go...so simple..well no not really.
Neil Young-Cowgirl in the Sand- It's the woman in you that makes you want to play this game...fair enough Neil, but we're playing it too so...
Belle and Sebastian- Funny Little Frog-'I don't dare to touch your hand, I don't dare to think of you in a physical way...and i don't know how you smell' Whoa Stu if its really like that yr game is worse than ours, we really appreciate that,THANK YOU.
Beatles-Girl- the description of a hard to love hard to leave girl is best felt while taking deep breathes through yr molars.
Pavement-Gold Soundz- Fuzzy disjointed summer love...we can't tell one another everything we need secrets ...remember?
Ned's Automic Dustbin-Grey Cell Green- Well when the desire has been found...and it's insider her, its kinda of a no brainer what's gotta happen next rt?
The Smiths- I Want the One I Can't Have- yeah that's about rt, i mean if you can have them ...why would you want them?
The Smiths- I Wont Share You- Yes the Perrier has gone straight to my head.
Portishead-It Could be Sweet- when trip hop was the new hot thang, it coulda been sweet,but this song about what could be if only sure is
Morrissey-Jack the Ripper- Comparing a 19th century unidentified mass murder of prostitutes to a wishy-washy-lovey type thing. Morrissey you literate bastard.
The Ocean Blue-Just Let Me Know- so sincere, so honest, would make it so simple...never ever will this happen.
Dinosaur Jr.- No Bones- Whiny voice and insecurity armed with massive, delicious feedback...gotta go with yr strengths ,rt?
Bob Dylan-Tangled Up in Blue- I'm not there...well maybe not Bob, but you sure were there to get tangled up over this life love and cross the country to get to her somehow.
Neil Young- Like a Hurricane- I am just dreamer,but you are just a dream...I wanna love you but I'm getting blown away...never has a more accurate depiction of loving a hurricane been presented...anywhere...ever
Oasis-Live Forever- A song so romantic it transcends mere sex/love... more on the level of romanticism about life, love, dreams and the realities of life.
Dinosaur Jr. -Sludgefeast- It's funny how 10th grade sentiments play so well when yr a full grown adult, and guitars that sound like kids thrashing in the mud really only drive that home even harder.
Daft Punk-Digital Love- It really sucks when its all a dream...especially when you wake up before the good parts happen.
Neil Young- Powderfinger- 22years old and left in charge of a family in crisis with oncoming intruders and wondering what to do alongside lean every note perfect guitar
Morrissey- Why Don't You Find Out for Yourself- Well basically,once again Morrisssey makes the obvious sublime...how does he do that?
Bob Dylan-Positively Fourth Street- Is it about an ex-lover? ex shitty friends? well its kinda all the same suckyness so just apply it where it fits really.
Neil Young-Cortez the Killer- A slow heavy lumbering revision of the conquest of the Aztec Empire set against the back drop of lost love and proto-grunge guitars.
Pavement- Summer Babe(winter version)- Graduate level word associations acting like a love note through lo-fi sound and slacker distortion. Intellectual masturbation can sometimes be romantic.
The Smiths-Still Ill- Entitlement issues, coupled with anti-social tendencies, questions of the mind/body divide and a bad make out session plus one of the best riffs Johnny Marr ever came up with..and he's good at those.
Keith Sweat- Make it Last Forever- Late 80s slow jam that showed you how to really get close to that special someone at the middle school dance, and Keith's croons/whines are straight cream inducing...really though.
The Smiths- This Night has Opened My Eyes- A newborn is drowned, wrapped up in a newspaper, and then left on the door step... We used to play this song when we worked with kids at a preschool cause its melancholy and kids need to learn that sometimes you're not happy and you're not sad.
Neil Young- Everybody Knows his is Nowhere- Homesick, missing love, wondering why all the running around..hippy ass Neil from the title to the finish.
A tribe Called Quest-Sucka Nigga- A very rational explanation and defense of the dreaded N-word.

NAME: well this changes things

OK, so in our spare internet time we were image googling different things and ran across the picture for the cover of the 1969 single 'Cinnamon Girl' ,by one of our style icons Neil Young. The picture has such down home fall/winter good vibes that we are officially adding it to the canon of influences that help make up our minds when we get dressed everyday, and the song 'Cinnamon Girl' is also yr archetypal one about a really RAD girl that may be a bit bad for yr mental health... but whateves cause yr a dreamer of pictures running in the night and y'all chase the moonlight together...so it's cool. Also please ...fucking please do some homework on Neil Young...he is most amazing.

NAME: interview Au Revoir Simone

Sometimes we're just at the right place at the right time. Add a little bit of the old in yr face action the media was once known for and you can cobble together a pretty nice thing. That was the case when we went to See Au Revoir Simone play a show a few weeks back. As we stood there kinda mesmerized by the sounds they were making we thought we really need to get these ladies to submit to a NAME: interview, so we pretty much bum rushed them before they got back on stage for their encore and asked really politely aka begged them to talk to us for a bit. Ever the nice ladies they referred us to the their manger and we decided since they are so busy( they're on tour with AIR rt now) we could do an interview email styles and that's just what we did. Au Revoir Simone is a band from Brooklyn that plays keyboard driven melodic music. If you don't know them you should especially if you're into Sunday mornings, harmonies, and mad scientist antics. So we asked the questions and Erika and Heather answered.
1.How long has yr tour been and how's it
going?

Erika: We have been touring a lot since last October...so almost a year! It has been amazing. Its funny that in a year we have made a transition from living in NY to feeling at home travelling in a van through cities all over the world.

Heather: its been such a once in a lifetime kind of opportunity...i cant even believe how lucky we are. i just try to stay grateful everyday, even when I'm tired and cranky from not sleeping and overworking.

2. Are y'all partying like rockstars or is a bit more
subdued?

E: well, it depends on the night i suppose. We like to have fun but we also care a lot about health and nutrition.
H: we all really love to dance

3. How'd y'all get hooked up with Air?

E: They like our music and asked us to tour with them.

4. What influences yr sound?

E: Everything from the sounds of our instruments, our
memories,
friends, eachother, nature...

5. You all seem to have a bit of a literary vibe, What
do you read? What was the last good book you've read?

E: Joan Didion, The White Album
H: I tend to read a lot of non-fiction, but the last amazing fiction novel that i read was Murakami's 'The Wind Up Bird Chronicle'

6. How do you manage to ride the line between mad
scientist keyboard driven group and adorable girl
band?

E: Don't really think about it.

H: wow, mad scientist keyboard group? i like that. I'd like to lean more towards that than adorable.

7. How'd the concept of fishing for yr keyboards come
up for the "Fallen Snow" video?
E: Actually the video directors came up with it. we had planned to build a treehouse but there was too much involved in that.


8. Y'all are relatively new, how are things

like myspace, file sharing and

fans legally downloading yr output affecting what you
do or how you present it?

E: Myspace has been great. i really like feeling so
connected to
people around the world.

9. Did you grow up thinking yeah we wanna be rockstars?

E: No, I wanted to be a movie actress or a journalist.

H: No, I wanted to be an astronaut! I did want to do something with stars, rockstars however, are almost close but not quite.

10. So you're big fans of Pee Wee Herman, right?

H: truly.

NAME: Our Style Icons

At NAME we understand that we do not live in a vacuum. The World has it's influence on us and we in turn try to at least interact if not necessarily influence the world. That being said after we saw the GQ list of the Fifty Most Stylish Men of the Last Fifty Years it got us to thinking how we wanted to share our style icons so here is a partial list.

Vintage Dad(this is our ground zero, when we think of stylish men...we always start here)

Malcolm X( Clean, dignified, a man)

Bob Dylan( Hipster archetype)

Neil Young( The only hippie punks ever liked)

G.I. JOE(uniforms are tricky, on one hand they can be boring,but the JOE team always rocked the best color combos and they were fighting terrorists)

Han Solo(not as new age jedi as say Luke, more space cowboy from a long time ago and a galaxy far far away.)

Ralph Lauren( so this guy pretty much invented the concept of lifestyle dressing, and he looked good doing it too.)

Bob Marley( spiritual man, community man, rastaman, stylish man)

Steve McQueen(when tough guys and action heroes were also really smart about their sartorial choices)

James Bond 007 ( I mean really though...debonair, smart, and as at home in the seat of a spy class Aston Martin, a Monte Carlo poker table, thwarting a megalomaniac's plans for world domination or straight kickin it to the most enticing women on earth.)
Morrissey(If you know us then you know why the MOZ gets 2pictures, if you don't... well check the man's style and sound for the past 25years.)

NAME: Vampires

(SHARK NIGGAS by JENONE acrylic on wood panel 9inx12in 2005)

With so many people and so many ideas floating around through so many filters like the internet, imagined nostalgia, and retro-culture; questions about who started what trend or whose ideas are whose get debated in fashion, music and even among friends. You know like when your friend got a dope pair of wingtips and you wanted to get some just like them or when you started to voice your new found appreciation for a particular aesthetic and now all of sudden your friends are into that same aesthetic. On the streets this phenomena is known as biting, or copping someone else's style. It's pretty common, those Retro kids even got a write in up in the New York Times for doing it. Its often very hard to say with totally accuracy who came up with what, everyone is a product of their influences and there is not a new idea under the sun. So it makes sense to build on things you appreciate and like tweaking odds and ends to make it more personal. One could even argue that this is one of the most dominant forces in the evolution of fashion and music. What we are saying, yes this is a bit of a P.S.A./ us saying what we want cause this is our damn blog, if you will, is that its OK to appreciate what has come before... to sweat it even, but it's not OK to not give credit where credit is due. When you do this you become a VAMPIRE, Jenone actually came up with that term, see how easy it is to give credit. VAMPIRES just suck the life out things for their own rejuvenation, not concerned about anything else. DON'T repeat DON'T be a VAMPIRE, be a connoisseur, be appreciative, bring something to the table. Raekwon and Ghostface said it best in "Shark Niggas" from "Only Built 4 Cuban Linx":
Man keep it real, get your own shit man, and be original
Word up
That's all man
And you'll be a better man
And you gonna come out on your own
Word up
Whatever how you gonna take it man, fuck it
Word up