My First Rodeo

Ryan H. Walsh: writer/musician. Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 (Penguin Press), Hallelujah The Hills (the band). Broadcasting live from Boston, MA, this is literally my first rodeo.

[ryanhamiltonwalsh]

Seeing the great, always puzzling (I mean that in the best way), long dormant Fiery Furnaces tomorrow night. Just checked; last time I saw 'em was 17 (!) years ago when we opened for them. Here's my playlist of favs.

[ryanhamiltonwalsh]

This is what a healthy, evolving, post-romantic relationship looks like: a decade after u break up, one of you starts to dress up in drag like the other one, mocking them to their face; you go on tour, performing nostalgia-porn, recreating yr old romance in song on stage, nightly. Everyone is happy.

[ryanhamiltonwalsh]

New shows announced! We cover a GBV song on the day it comes out! Things I'm reading! We're in the World Cup!

[ryanhamiltonwalsh]

The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music

WOW

"The Anthology of UnAmerican Folk Music is a collection of nearly one thousand songs culled from the private record collection of the late Harry Smith."

[ryanhamiltonwalsh]

Today’s laff: when Bob Dylan did his first post-motorcycle-accident interview, he lied to the journalist, saying when he came back to the public his face and head would be covered in scars. Journalist prints it. Weeks later Grossman tells Gleason, “no no don’t worry, he’s just lying like always.”

[ryanhamiltonwalsh]

Muriel Spark, the Double Agent

A new biography of the Scottish novelist casts doubt on the peculiar life events that inspired some of her work, while asserting that, for S

Twins, doubles, anagrams, propaganda, the lie that reveals a truth

[ryanhamiltonwalsh]

Stitches in time: the artist chronicling the DRC’s blood-soaked history in embroidery

Using handmade needles and thread, Lucie Kamusekera has recorded the decades of conflict she has lived through in the Congo

“I imagine a world in which social media and the internet are gone,” she says, “but the stories will remain on the tapestries and can be shared.”

[ryanhamiltonwalsh]

Given this a lot of thought and this is where I land on this matter

[ryanhamiltonwalsh]

Today on the Patreon we try our hand at "Prisencolinensinainciusol" by Italian cultural icon Adriano Celentano. This song, a novelty hit in the early 70's in Europe, found Celentano improvising nonsense vocals to approximate what American rock n roll singing sounded like to him. One of the tougher vocal recordings I've had to do for the cover song project. Hear the whole thing and hundreds more covers at HillsDeck.com

[ryanhamiltonwalsh]

Everything Joyce Said About Ulysses

I came upon this page which compiles everything James Joyce said about Ulysses to others in letters and otherwise. I was stunned to find this fairly straight forward structure of the novel broken down like this:

‘It is my epic of two races and at the same time the cycle of the human body as well as a little story of a day (life). The character of Ulysses always fascinated me - even when a boy. Imagine, fifteen years ago I started writing it as a short story for Dubliners! For seven years I have been working on this book - blast it! It is also a sort of encyclopaedia. My intention is to transpose the myth [146] sub specie temporis nostri. Each adventure (that is, every hour, every organ, every art being interconnected and interrelated in the structural scheme of the whole) should not only condition but even create its own technique. Each adventure is so to say one person although it is composed of persons - as Aquinas says of the angelic hosts. [...]’ (Letter to Carlo Linati, 21 Sept. 1920; Letters, I, p.146-47.)

[ryanhamiltonwalsh]

Someone made this page that turns any music audio subReddit into a streaming radio site. Love it.

[ryanhamiltonwalsh]

Why are industrial control rooms so often seafoam green?

"In the fall of 1919, Faber Birren entered the Art Institute at the University of Chicago, only to drop out in the spring of 1921 to commit himself to self-education in color, as such a program didn’t exist. He spent his days interviewing psychologists and physicists and conducted his own color studies, which were considered unconventional at the time. He painted his bedroom walls red vermillion to test if it would make him go mad."

"Birren and DuPont created a master color safety code for the industrial plant industry, with the aim of reducing accidents and increasing efficiency within plants. These color codes were approved by the National Safety Council in 1944 and are now internationally recognized, having been mandatory practice since 1948."

Why So Many Control Rooms Were Seafoam Green

The Color Theory Behind Industrial Seafoam Green

[ryanhamiltonwalsh]

Whenever I am reminded that Joe Rogan's show no longer features dumb-fuck discussions w/ comedians, bow hunters, & Big Foot experts, I think of that time on The Simpsons that we learn that Krusty the Clown also hosted a serious, dry talk show where he interviewed heads of state and industry leaders.

[ryanhamiltonwalsh]

[ryanhamiltonwalsh]

10 years ago today, we released our 5th album, A Band is Something to Figure Out. For a limited time, get it on vinyl for only $10 (!) to celebrate.

What does the band want? The band doesn't know what they want.

This album represented a hard reset for the Hills. As the opening track declares, "Say goodbye to home / We're out here all alone / We're starting over, it's year zero / where the nights go on and on."

It is the only Hills album without any trumpet on it, with Brian pivoting to only synthesizer for all of these songs. The idea was to pare down the arrangements to their bones and put together the kind of songs an old folkie would make if they were transported to the present day and forced to front a post-punk guitar/synth outfit. Originally titled Deluxer Mandatory, it was changed to A Band is Something to Figure Out after two of the Hills saw Built to Spill live while experiencing the effects of Psilocybin and, looking around the room—at the band and its audience—the title appeared in their consciousness and would not depart.

The album was recorded 1809 Studios in Macedon, NY with the great Dave Drago returning as engineer/co-producer after helming 2014's Have You Ever Done Something Evil?. UK novelist Jonathan Lee traveled to the U.S. to watch the band make the record with plans to write a book about the process and the band in general. The book is still unreleased to this day.

The record, in the end, was full of deeply distorted power-pop, unregulated earworms, and lyrics chock full of anxiety about the immediate future—both personal and national. The anxiety turned out to be well founded. As the penultimate track says, "the truth surrounded me like the rings inside a tree / at least the early visions were kind."

We're still trying to figure it out. Hope you are too.

<3

[ryanhamiltonwalsh]

Even this NYT homepage headline today, covering the most insane thing he's ever said, sanewashes it for him. No reference that the threat was to murder the entire civilization, or even death in an abstract sense. The word "threaten" doesn't report on this accurately. This is journalistic failure.

This should be all caps, big font, top of page, extending all the way from the left to the right. And then, if Trump just extends the deadline or backs off, the intensity of the headline would be all the more embarrassing for him. This kind of coverage as it stands now enables this behavior.

[ryanhamiltonwalsh]

Hallelujah the Hills’ ‘DECK’ Ranked

2025’s most incredible musical achievement was Hallelujah the Hills somehow finishing a 54 song record. I try to rank them from ‘Less Great’

We made it. They ranked it. BEHOLD this wild ride through DECK's 54 songs as heard and ranked by one listener. What came in at #1? The answer may SHOCK you.

"They’d never done anything close to as ambitious as ‘DECK’ before though. Few artists have…54 full, complete, artistically viable and absolutely distinct songs of remarkable quality. Obviously, I owe it to the world professionally to rank them."