We're all big Long Winters fans here on A to Z -- as much for John Roderick's music as his writing style and sarcastic wit. Thankfully, our sister paper the Seattle Weekly has decided to make our weeks brighter, and has convinced Roderick to blog there every week. Bookmark this page and go to it every Wednesday.
Here's an excerpt of the first entry:
I was holed up in my little home studio last Thursday working on writing some songs for the next Long Winters record when I got a text message from a friend telling me to check out the lunar eclipse. There's a window over the desk where I work, so I parted the curtains and there was the eclipse right above me, the moon a burnt red. Fortunately, I had my dad's old Navy binoculars right to hand, so I spent several minutes inspecting the lunar surface.I'd been laying down some mondo-distorto bass grooves over a grimy 808-inflected hard rock disco jam, as you will, and as I examined the moon the loop was still cranking out of the speakers two feet from my head. I gradually became aware that the music was still blaring and that I was sitting in my long johns with a bass feeding back in my lap while I studied an eclipse with binoculars, and I thought "I'm dangerously close to achieving a 'nerd singularity'". If I'd been talking on the phone about the Beatles, or playing World of Warcraft, it could have been a dangerous situation.
In any case, this next Long Winters album is going to have a lot of lunar-eclipse-influenced disco jams on it, and the Seattle Weekly asked me to blog about it because they are running out of ideas and hoping to squeeze some free content out of people. I, for one, don't mind because I'm mad about blogging! I was thinking the other day that, what with the incredible shortage of books and magazines in the world, I'd like to dedicate more of my precious reading hours to consuming the unedited journaling of as many amateur diarists as time permits! Hooray!
-- Annie Zaleski
