test this thing

[Tim Wilson]

Test this thing

[Dirk de Jong]

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[Tim Wilson]

You’re a funny man, Dirk!

It also happens that I LOVE The Rapture in general, and House of Jealous Lovers is my very favorite track of theirs! I was working at Boris when the single came out (March 2002), and I bought it on a DFA comp before it was available standalone. Did we talk about this at the time?

In any case, thanks for a much need bounce through the early aughts!

[Dirk de Jong]

I didn’t know for a fact that you liked that music but I suspected… I was reminded of The Rapture yesterday when viewing the trailer for a documentary about the record store Other Music [ http://www.othermusicdocumentary.com ] which reminded me of that Rapture music video so I hunted it down online… I suspect you (like me) can also recall an even earlier time when the “posters” / fliers promoting an “indie” band’s live shows were photocopies of somewhat crude handmade scissors and glue based collages stapled to cork bulletin boards and telephone poles – which I think that music video does a good job of capturing the feeling of… I also think the video has a good rhythm and cinematic storytelling sense… They call on their superhero to defeat the evil kitten burning duck but that superhero fails… so they get the evil duck hooked on loaves of bread and then feed it a loaf of bread with a bundle of dynamite (and a lit fuse). I’m addicted to motion pictures that flicker that way… it’s like a punk version of this kind of thing (done by someone who overlapped with me in my time in the Bard college film department) ;

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[Tim Wilson]

Thanks for the tip on the Other Music doc! I had no idea! Other Music was one of my homes away from home when I visited New York! I grabbed a t shirt just before they closed, and you’ve inspired me to do something I rarely do — post a selfie! Here’s me wearing that shirt just now!

(Since this is public, I should note that Kylee Peña was kind enough to scoop this up for me when she visited at my recommendation. It was only luck that she landed there the week before they closed.)

If we’re talking about ducks in alternative dance music, then my mind races to MC Honky’s Like A Duck, which also came out when we were at Boris together, MC Honky being the alter ego of Mark Oliver Everett (Eels). Great song (and album), and pretty nifty video.

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[Dirk de Jong]

Did you know that for awhile there was an Other Music location in Harvard Square (Cambridge MA) ?

I visited both the NY and Harvard locations several times and they were each unique but one thing they shared was some employees (both male and female) who were willing to promote a record by playing it through a good hifi system and dancing to it right there in the store (they would talk about the music too if you wanted to but I often found the dance told me all I needed to know ! : )

[Tim Wilson]

[Dirk de Jong] “Did you know that for awhile there was an Other Music location in Harvard Square (Cambridge MA) ?”

Yes! In fact, I found that location first! Visiting the store in New York after that, it was abundantly obvious which was the original, though. ☺

One thing I liked about the Harvard Square store is that it was less crowded, so you could take the time to read all the notes posted on the wall by employees. Both stores shared a complete lack of cynicism and arrogance stereotypical of hyper-intense shops — and these were both off-the-charts intense. I’ve never been around more passionate music lovers who were so excited to share, without belittling anyone who hadn’t heard every disk in the store’s intentionally offbeat inventory.

Interesting article about the closing in the Harvard student paper, The Crimson. Not shocking to discover that it had never been a profitable location, but it was the NY store closing for three weeks in September 2001 that was the last straw for the Cambridge store. Without NY to supply inventory and cash infusions, they had to fold in early 2002.

I do love this quote, though, which sums up a significant part of the experience: Alexis C. Madrigal ’04 said that although he would often walk into the store and not recognize a single song title or band name, he could always leave the store with a CD that he liked.

That’s the thing. I definitely remember when I’d hung out there long enough that I recognized most of the artists in the bins. LOL But my experience was just like Alexis — I never left empty handed, and the artists that I found there tended to become some all-time favorites.

Now that I think about it, Other Music is where I bought the DFA comp (“Compilation #1”) that had The Rapture before their album came out. I’d already bought the LCD Soundsystem record at Newbury Comics, but Other Music was the only place in town that had the comp.