YOGURT

This is the tape Matty Luv gave Karoline and me as a wedding gift (hard to decide whether to post this today or on our anniversary which was yesterday).  He was kinda sheepish when he handed it to us, as if it weren't really all that special, but "special' doesn't even begin to describe these songs, these two volumes of bedroom 4 track genius were the best thing anyone could have given us. It's the only recording I've ever heard of HICKEY's live SABBATH covers set (trust me, it was incredible). It's Matty prank calling the cops looking for his armless girlfriend named Naugahyde. It's melancholy songs about life and death. It's Matty taking a tape he found in the house featuring my relatively estranged (and relatively strange) ex-girlfriend drunkenly mumbling into a microphone, and turning it into one of the most innocently beautiful songs I've ever heard. It's walls of sounds sewn together in the middle of the night two doors down and across the hall from where I lived, recorded by a man with the capacity to make you feel truly special, more so than any person I have ever met.  There are a lot of songs here, split into two volumes, each volume taking up one side of the cassette.  There are, however, no song titles, because Matty didn't give them to us.  A great many of these songs are floating around elsewhere, mostly on Cosmic Hearse, and I tried piecing it together through the Cosmic Hearse post, but there were so damned many different versions and different song orders and so many different, unknown and unidentifiable songs, that I gave up and you will just have to enjoy these tracks by number.  Give it a listen, this is probably the single most important tape I/we have.

The Good Ol' Dayz is mostly instrumental and mostly quintessential 4 track stuff. This is what happens when, in the often abused combination of man+multi track recorder+bedroom, the "man" in the equation is a fucking genius.

YOGURT vol. 3

VOL # IV opens with "the Wedding March" (appropriate for a wedding tape, isn't it?  Matty was, no matter how scattered, at least thoughtful).  What follows are 29 more songs that will take you to a totally new place, spliced and cut together with squinted eyes and 40 ounce bottles.  The live HICKEY version of "War Pigs" as a surf instrumental (recorded at The Chameleon for Tania's birthday) is on this volume, layered guitar effects frequently share the tape with answering machine messages, and "Until My Dying Day" is among the saddest songs I've ever heard, but it is somehow contented as well, which sums up an awful lot of things.  I'm not sure what your plans were for Monday, but I assure you that these songs and a nice pair of headphones will be the best thing you do all day.

YOGURT VOL #IV

Matty died seven years ago today, making midnight on the evening of our anniversary seem rather reflective, instead of purely celebratory.  One of the most important people I have ever encountered, who possessed an uncanny ability to make you feel as if you were the same to him.

(pictured here with Aesop and the case he made for this cassette.  why a rubber ducky candle? fuck man, your guess is as good as mine.)