As a general rule, I hate hippies. They’re dirty, they have bad taste in music and they are often vegetarians. A hippie can talk for hours about the cosmic earth mother and the collective need for universal love without saying a single thing of substance. And god forbid you get a hippie talking about their hemp pants or their hand-blown glass bong. Not even a 2nd grader stuck inside on a rain day is that excited about arts and crafts.
To be fair, I should differentiate between the different kinds of hippies. The ones that I’m talking about - the ones I can’t stand - are the least genuine. They are the kind that come from upper class families in Southern California, who go to the University of Oregon where they subsequently stop bathing and develop an unhealthy affinity for jam bands. They are the kind of hippie that hangs out on Haight Street, asking me for spare change to buy some granola for their dog. They are the kind of hippie that preaches peace and love and then tries to cut me in line at the farmer’s market.
Any hippie falling into or near the above mentioned categories is fully deserving of all my derision. This is because they are all pathetic fakers; uncreative people who have borrowed an entire cultural movement wholesale because they are too lazy to start their own. And they picked the easiest one. To me this just says that you are not only lazy, but that you love armpit hair and the dirty crotch smell of patchouli.
That said, it’s hard for me to really hate on the original hippies. After all, they were rebelling against the square attitudes of the 50s, and they are largely responsible for a lot of the relaxed moral standards we enjoy today. And I can’t lie - the first time I took mushrooms and went to a Grateful Dead show it was pretty cool. Of course, I was 16 and just being out of the house and high on anything was pretty cool to me at the time. But still. I can at least see what the hippies from back in the day were getting out of it.
Fast forward to right now and you’ll find a group of hippies that I actually respect. These are not the skunky gutter punks hanging out in the park and they are not the hacky sack playing douche bags you find at Dave Mathews concerts. These are modern day freaks, stoned on life and happy to let their freak flag fly. It might be more astute to say that these are people who couldn’t be any other way. They are simply wildly creative non-conformists who grow their hair long and like to howl at the moon.
These so-called hippies have loosely cohered around the freak folk movement, but most of them are more freaky than folk. Brightblack Morning Light, Devendra Banhart - these are acts that appeal not just to groovy hippie chicks and aging surfers. They cast a much wider net because what they are doing is genuinely creative and 100% sincere. They can’t be anything else but themselves. I mean, have you ever heard Devendra Banhart talk? That guy couldn’t hold an office job if his life depended on it.
Another group that should be added to this good hippie honor roll is Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros. This rag tag posse of Los Angeles based troubadours has a care-free, yet highly musical vibe that rests somewhere between The Band and Arcade Fire. Their songs reel back and forth between camp fire sing-a-longs and full gospel revival. In between they get weird, they get funky and they get loose. It’s the kind of sound that makes me want to grow out my hair and jump on the free love express. It makes me want to share my wine and bang on a drum all day - which is probably exactly what Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros expect of their audience.
Well, I’m not going to stop showering or anything, but I can get down with that.
When I moved from New York City back to San Francisco, I was determined to try and make Bay Area public transportation work as well as the subway does in Manhattan. I had a car, but I left it parked out in front of my apartment. Instead of driving, I walked to the BART station and took the train to work. Both my apartment and the TC offices were really close to BART stations, so it was actually pretty easy.
Yes, I know that BART trains only come every 14 minutes or so and the fares are prohibitively expensive. And the routes and schedules are more geared toward suburban commuters than city kids trying to get from one end of town to the other. And they’re also crowded and unreliable and some times the seats smell like a hobo’s sleeping bag. Still, I wasn’t sitting in traffic every day and I could be self-righteous about helping the environment, which means the pros outweighed the cons.
I also got myself a bike so I would be able to ride to all the places BART doesn’t go (i.e. any neighborhood west of Market Street, most places in Oakland, and anywhere after midnight). Right off the bat my brother said, “So you’re one of those guys who takes his bike on BART now…” like he was describing a leper or a person who’s way too into Burning Man. But I don’t care. I like the bike. It’s faster than walking, so you can actually use it as a viable form of transportation. At the same time, on a bike you also move slow enough to take everything in: sunlight reflecting off the tall buildings, the beautiful girls in the crosswalks downtown, the weird things people watch on their in-dash DVD players - all rolling past you at just under 15 mph. It’s kind of like a surreal music video custom made just for you.
Of course, it’s up to you to provide the soundtrack. If you’re brave enough to put on some headphones and tune out all those drivers who are secretly trying to run you over, then I suggest you listen to Soulo’s third and newest album, Sun Valley. The whole album plays like one long, hazy dreamscape. Sweet melodies and vocal refrains drift in and out of the ether. Listening to it, you can’t help but picture a slow, graceful ride down the sunny side of the street. Whether or not you end up at a warm, gleaming ocean or the edge of a black abyss is a mystery. There’s enough tension buried in the static to keep you guessing.
Come to think of it, this could work on the train as well. When I’m crammed into a crowded commuter car at the end of a long day I often take refuge in my headphones. It’s nice to know that even when I am pressed up against a pile of sad and defeated looking office workers, I can still close my eyes, turn on some music and imagine that I’m somewhere else: on a beach, on the moon or even just on my bike.
* 7/14/09 @ Le Poisson Rouge - NYC (w/ Beautiful Small Machines)
* 7/18/09 @ The Note - West Chester, PA (w/ Jealousy Curve and Fooling April)
* 9/09/09 @ DC 9 - Washington, D.C.
* 9/11/09 @ The Bottleneck - Lawrence, KS
* 9/13/09 @ Monolith Festival - Morrison, CO (w/ Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Of Montreal, Passion Pit)
* 9/16/09 @ The Casbah - San Diego, CA
* 9/17/09 @ 330 Ritch St. - San Francisco, CA (POPSCENE)
* 9/21/09 @ Spaceland - Los Angeles, CA (w/ Saint Motel)
* 9/24/09 @ Kilby Court - Salt Lake City, UT
* 9/27/09 @ Larimer Lounge - Denver, CO
* 9/29/09 @ The Frequency - Madison, WI
* 10/1/09 @ Abbey Pub - Chicago, IL
* 10/2/09 @ Sneaky Dee’s - Toronto, ONT (Canada)
4th of July is one of my favorite holidays, for much the same reasons I really like Halloween and New Year’s Eve. It’s mostly a party for the sake of having a party. While the 4th is ostensibly a day to honor our nation’s independence, it has long since turned into a celebration of beer, grilled meat and fireworks. There are no religious or cultural affiliations that might keep some people from participating. It’s just a day off at the beginning of summer to do summer things.
Which is why I think it’s kind of cool that we generally call it 4th of July instead of Independence Day. Of course, one refers directly to the other, but still. Just naming the date by the date is, I believe, a subtle way way of calling attention to the good parts while soft-shoeing the whole patriotic aspect - which can get messy if it goes unchecked. Conversely, it’s fun to declare your American pride in an over-zealous, Homer Simpson kind of way. Seriously. Try chanting “USA! USA!” while your dad flips burgers on the 4th. It makes the act of grilling beef patties over an open flame even better.
Obviously I’m one of those people that takes the 4th of July seriously. Like the kooky grandma who starts wearing her Christmas sweaters in October or the school girl who makes Valentines for everyone in her class, I like to go a little overboard for 4th of July. I make sure there are at least three animals on the grill. I buy enough beer to float everybody’s liver and I try to make sure I do something quintessentially American. Usually that has something to do with fireworks and gambling, but this year it’s fishing.
Of course, this means a long drive up to the river with my fellow patriots, which also means we will need a mixtape for the car. And of course, I am in charge of the mixtape. For the record, I am always in charge of the mixtape. Also for the record, I am probably the only person who cares whether or not there is a mixtape.
Since I burn through music at an ungodly rate, I was looking around for some new stuff to put on my “driving up to the river to catch a big ass fish” mix. I threw on some new Handsome Furs, a track by Sleepy Sun and a couple from Vetiver and Sean Bones. Having covered the rock category, I went looking for some hip hop. I found a new track by Drake, some awesome remixes from Dave Wrangler, and then I hit the jack pot.
“I sold my album out and all the haters stared hard/you put your record out for free on fail blog”
That’s jut half a line from a freestyle by Tanya Morgan, which is not a person, but three man rap group hailing from the fictional utopia of Brooklynati. Apparently these guys have already spent some time freaking out rap aficionados around the internet. No doubt this has something to do with their crazy fresh beats, sick flow, and all around hip hop mastery. Their third EP, cleverly entitled “Brooklynati” came out last month and it fucking kills.
Needless to say, this shit is going on the mixtape. It will be played in the car, at the grill and down by the river. I’m not sure what Tanya Morgan think or feel about America or 4th of July, but either way they will be the soundtrack to this year’s tribute to our independence.
God bless the USA and all the fish who taste my steel.
![[del.icio.us]](http://images.del.icio.us/static/img/delicious.small.gif){kind=small}
