Darkyr Sooner: Notes

What you see here: an actor's professional headshot of me, as I looked during the recording of Darkyr Sooner in 1999. In Manhattan, I had leave to go blonde (for a while), get a nose ring and a tattoo, and fall back down to 120 lbs., on a steady diet of Tostitos, Mike and Ikes, and black and white cookies. My diet, during my Manhattan sojourn, also included other things, of a more (shall we say) euphoric nature. Just like the song goes, I often found myself waitin' for my man, in Washington Square Park (or elsewhere). This is why, as I explained on Soundclick, so much of the Darkyr Sooner experience is in a personal blind spot or dead zone for me. During the months of the recording, I was sleeping on someone's couch in Alphabet City. I would take the subway up to Midtown, where Buttons Sound was (45th and 5th), with my guitar, in no shape to do anything but record.

The actor's professional headshot is no accident: I did some acting in Manhattan. I briefly joined 13th Street Rep, famous for Israel Horowitz and his piece Line, bounced around trying to get my plays produced, by Pure Pop, La Mama, and others, with little success. Paul Levin, who had some music biz cache as Tony Levin's nephew (Paul played bass too), was a godsend, and extended an extremely generous hand to me, making Buttons Sound for me a home away from home. The Darkyr Sooner sessions, beyond what's on the EP, also produced a second version of Riding the Waves, worth hearing. It's more spacy and less sharp than the single. 

The single, it turns out, was done in the fall of '99, when I was commuting to Manhattan from Philly, where I was already ensconced in Logan Square. The recordings which comprised Darkyr Sooner waited until, through Gair Marking of dev79, I could upload them to mp3.com, which at that point was also a surrogate or would-be label. The first pressing was done in 2000. That year, Paul Levin several times commuted to Philly from NYC to play bass for me at shows, at the Khyber and elsewhere. He also met many folks who were to be key participants in the Philly Free School, like Matt Stevenson, Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum, and Gaetan Spurgin. Mary H. he met later.

Mary and Abby liked Darkyr Sooner. Yet the entire point of the title, with the inhering Nick Drake pun, is that the collection would have to wait for any generalized success. We've seen some of that now. Really, the EP is a testament to Paul's generosity to me, as an artist he had no obligation to assist or patronize. Paul saw that I had some good material, so he decided to help me put it down on tape. All the niggling contingent factors, the months I spent starving and couch surfing, don't matter much now. What we're left with is a document in pop music, of the Nineties transitioning, moving towards something else. That's how I see the Darkyr Sooner muse we channeled: the sound of transition.   

Darkyr Sooner: Indie!

Between Love Me, Blame Me, Riding the Waves, Sara Starr, and Deflating Raft, Darkyr Sooner now boasts four entries (#4, #3, #4 and #4, respectively) into the Soundclick Indie Top 5. Perfect for the spirit in which the EP was made. Cheers! 

A Purple Feat or Pas de Deux (Jazz/Alternative)

 As of 10-28-22, 10-29, 11-3, 11-4, 11-5, and 11-6 the Adam Fieled/P.F.S. Soundclick account has a Top 20 song ranking in both the Jazz Overall and the Alternative Overall chart, simultaneously (A Clangorous Din, Love Me, Blame Me, #18-#20, #16-#15, #18-#15, #16-#16, #18-#18, #20-#18). Cheers. 

P.S. As of 10-30, 10-31, 11-1, and 11-2 this repeated with two Top 30s (#24-#20, #22-#19, #30-#16, and #24-#16, respectively). More A Clangorous Din biz.

P.S.S. Two Top 30s, Jazz/Alternative, recurred with A Clangorous Din and another Darkyr Sooner track, Sara Starr, on 11-14 (#17-#28), 11-15 (#27-#20), 11-19 (#30-#19), 11-20 (#29-#23), and 11-21 (#25-#29).

Three Top 20s recurred, with A Clangorous Din and Sara Starr, on 11-16 (#19-#19), 11-18 (#19-#15), and 11-22 (#19-#20). 

One Top 20 recurred, with A Clangorous Din and Deflating Raft, on 12-9 (#20-#20).

P.S. 2023 chart details for Clang-Din.

One for Mary Evelyn

 A song which could only have been written about Mary Evelyn Harju; and brilliant R & B.

Love Me, Blame Me

Love Me, Blame Me from Darkyr Sooner is now out and in the Soundclick Alternative Top 100. As of 10-29, we stand at Alternative Overall #15, Indie (sub-generic) #4. 

I wrote this one co-terminous (roughly) with She Disowned My Life. Two models were sitting there in my mind— as of autumn '95, Billy Corgan boom-time to be sure, but Oasis were finally breaking big in the States, so they were around. Looming even larger, for this one, was The Loner, from Neil Young's first, eponymous solo album. By the time I got around to recording it in NYC in '99, I worked out an arrangement which put an emphasis on some modal guitar-playing flourishes, which could take a standard rock song and exoticize it, or Spanish-ify it, what have you. 

Back to State College: most of this one worked out in Leete basement, North Halls, even though I lived in Holmes. The rock crew in Leete: Norm Fetter, Jen Stitz, Carmen Martella, were big for me at the time. Norm was Rick Wakeman's stunt-double, from Pottstown, no less, as Jen was from Doylestown. Cheers. 

What #8 might mean for the Aughts

As of this July, when the Feel (I saw) remix from Acid Dropping hit #8 on the Soundclick Electronic Overall chart, it proved something crucial: Aughts Philadelphia sells in the world. It had, also, a few ways of proving this: Zenboy1955's brilliant fusion of jazz and electronic music employed Feel (specifically, the Eris Temple '06 recording of Feel, just as Speck employed the Eris Temple recording of Opera Bufa) organically, in the sense that CC Mixter were not bought out by anyone to use the Fieled poetry. CC Mixter chose to use us, and it's hard not to take that as an ensign that Aughts Philly appeals to, and is creatively stimulating to, a wide number of artists (CC Mixter=Cali). Then there's the chart ranking itself, which takes and transcendentalizes the Feel (I saw) remix as something which, including us in a collaborative context, works in the world as a commodity or commercial entity. The last level is about the Zeitgeist, both of the 20s and Aughts, and as a beacon showing any potential audience the possible way. The 20s is proving to be fertile ground for the Aughts to develop in. That's where the spiel ends, though, because I still don't know why. I'll be excited to find out.  

 

Highwire at the Gates of Dawn

Beyond being a Smiths fanatic, there was a smattering of other rock music Jeremy liked, like The Beautiful South. Words, however, cannot describe Jeremy's befuddlement when Mike and I would stick this on to initiate Philly Free School proceedings at the Highwire Gallery in the mid-Aughts. I give you, folks, my uncle Syd; and the whole idea of Philly Free School as a multi-media enterprise was influenced heavily by early Floyd shenanigans (check: the London Free School).  

Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum

I've been discussing Jeremy Eric Tenenbaum in the Nineties elsewhere. Impossible to tell Jeremy's story, from Manayunk-Villanova to 'd' magazine to P.F.S., without mentioning his fanatical devotion to both the Smiths, shown here, and Morrissey. Jeremy not only knew everything there was to know about Morrissey and the Smiths, the entire city of Philadelphia followed Jeremy's lead and made the Smiths stars in the early Aughts. Jeremy himself started with the Smiths while still in high school in South Jersey. So, for anyone who for any reason wants a soundtrack to/for Jeremy, you must turn on something like this. And also understand that for me, because of Jeremy's obsession, all memories of Manayunk tend to re-route themselves towards hearing the Smiths' nuggets in my head. Jeremy more than colonized them; he built into his personality a solid wall of Morrissey-ism to push people back. It did. 

Stone the Devil on hearthis.at

Stone the Devil made a top 5 (#4) placement in the hearthis.at Electronica chart for the week ending October 9, 2022. Cheers!