I HAD TOO MUCH TO DREAM LAST NIGHT (LOVE ROLLERCOASTER EDITION)

I am going to a conference at a resort, and at one point I have to take a rollercoaster to get there. I am traveling with my dog Bonbon and a young woman hired to help look after Bonbon while I’m in meetings. I’m a little wary of taking Bonbon on the rollercoaster, so I tell the woman, “It’s her first rollercoaster ride.” Luckily the rollercoaster has no loops, just lots of ups and downs and banked curves. The cars of the coaster are small, so I put my arm around the woman and hold her close. She doesn’t mind and snuggles against me. Bonbon, meanwhile, seems to be enjoying herself.

Eventually the rollercoaster comes down to the road and stops at a traffic light. A van is waiting there – it’s been rented out by the company the woman works for to take her the rest of the way to the resort. The implication is that it’s there for her, not me, so I’m not sure if I’m supposed to take the van as well. But I figure why not, we’re going to the same place. So I get in the van. Inside is a former co-worker of mine, who is wearing a bikini. She hugs me hello, and explains they are on their way back to the resort from a nice beach nearby.

We arrive at the resort and somehow I get passively roped into the company’s activities so that I’m sitting in on strategy meetings. No one seems to mind that I’m a journalist and hearing all this.

A tall Rubenesque woman wearing a short skirt greets me by name, embraces me and kisses me deeply – she’s a PR person I’ve supposedly met before, but I honestly don’t remember her, or least why it justifies that level of kissing. But I go with it and slip my hands under her skirt, because wouldn’t you?

And then I woke up.

Business and pleasure,

This is dF

LISTEN TO IT #46: FUNERAL FULL OF BLUES

Mark Lanegan is one of those people I have a lot of respect for, but don’t listen to much. I liked Screaming Trees but wasn’t a huge fan, and I haven’t paid much attention to Lanegan’s solo work. In fact, I’ve only really taken notice of him via the various side projects he gets involved in (The Gutter Twins, Soulsavers, Isobel Campbell duets, etc), and let’s admit – if you need a voice that sounds convincingly worn down enough by drugs and jail time to sound like the dark thing hiding under yr bed, Lanegan is yr man.

Still.

So when his new solo album Blues Funeral came out, I hadn’t planned to follow up on it. But then I was in a music store in Barcelona where it was playing over the PA, and that got my attention.

I’m told Blues Funeral is way more influenced by Krautrock than Lanegan’s previous stuff. It certainly sounds like it, though of course it’s got the kind of heaviness that you’d expect on a Lanegan project. And it works much of the time. Not for an entire album, maybe. But it’s where the Krautrock/electronica influence dominates the proceedings that it sounds the most interesting.

I don’t know how I’ll feel about the album by the end of the year, but for now, some of these songs bear repeat listening.

The opening track, for example.

Honest it’s true,

This is dF

THIS IS A SOUNDCHECK

With guitar.

Carry on.

– Team Def Sound Laboratories