Archive for the ‘Good Rock’ Category
In which The Gay Recluse becomes increasingly obsessed with the George Washington Bridge. Actually, this was yesterday. (We were so much younger then, we’re older than that now.) I, too, have an obsession with the George Washington Bridge. However, mine involves a nagging compulsion to complete a football pass from the deck of the bridge […]
Filed under: Addiction, Architecture, Bad Rock, Good Rock, GWB Project, Infrastructure, Memory, New York City, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights, Weather | Leave a Comment
Tags: August, Football, Reverse Bob Dylan, The George Washington Bridge
In which The Gay Recluse becomes increasingly obsessed with Corsican mint. We were worried that our Corsican mint wouldn’t come back this year. So we bought some more! But then it did come back, just as we were told it would. Some obsessions are obviously more benign than others. Of all the groundcovers we introduced […]
Filed under: Gay, Good Rock, GWB Project, Obsession, The Gay Recluse, The Summer Garden | Leave a Comment
Tags: Corsican Mint, Groundcovers, Mentha requienii
In which The Gay Recluse resigns himself to the inevitable. When Modern Love first launched in The Times however many years ago, we were initially intrigued by the premise of the column, which like some of the best reality television seemed to offer the potential to break down the stereotypes that are the currency of […]
Filed under: Animals, Disease, Dissonance, Gay, Good Rock, Ruins, Sickness, Stereotypes, Technology, Television, The Gay Recluse, The Times | Leave a Comment
Tags: Gawker, Gay Modern Love, Modern Love, Morrissey, Retirement, The New York Times, The Smiths
In which The Gay Recluse becomes increasingly obsessed with the George Washington Bridge. Date of Photographs: June 15, afternoon. We’d like to introduce you to George Washington Bridge, our longtime companion. Yes, it’s our husband. It’s our wife and it’s our life. “I, too am obsessed with the George Washington Bridge, and have been ever […]
Filed under: Architecture, Good Rock, GWB Project, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Heroine, The George Washington Bridge, The Velvet Underground
In which The Gay Recluse relives his past as an indie rocker. Hey everyone, Saturnine is the WMBR “Breakfast of Champions” band of the week, which means you should tune into the legendary MIT station and rock out to some classic Saturnine! For more info: http://wmbr.org/shows/boc/BotW.php
Filed under: Good Rock, Infrastructure, Memory, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: MIT, Saturnine, WMBR
In which The Gay Recluse hears a song from another life. Yesterday we turned on the stereo in our basement. We hadn’t played it in years. Miraculously, it worked! The receiver and speakers are from ninth grade. Hey computers! Sometimes bigger analog speakers still sound better! More miraculous was that a CD was already in […]
Filed under: Capitalism, Decay, Dream, Good Rock, Memory, Obsession, Photography, The Gay Recluse, Weather | Leave a Comment
Tags: Compilation, Hamish Kilgour, Rent Control, Rocks, Sky, Soho, The Clean, West Broadway
In which The Gay Recluse compares the Richard Wagner opera Tristan and Isolde (first performed in Munich in 1865; financed by King Ludwig II of Bavaria and now running at The Metropolitan Opera) with Loveless, the final record by My Bloody Valentine (Creation, 1991). While the music is dissonant, it’s never abrasive; it’s just another […]
Filed under: Dissonance, Good Rock, Longing, Memory, Opera, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Bavaria, Creation Records, Gesasmtkunstwerk, King Ludwig II, Loveless, Munich, My Bloody Valenting, Richard Wagner, Tristan and Isolde
In which The Gay Recluse pays tribute to his friends in Inwood. Of all the kind words and comments we received in response to our Gay Modern Love piece, we must acknowledge our friend Sayd in Inwood, who wrote this on Manhattan’s Peak: Oh, TGR. your story on gawker today was absolutely perfect. if i […]
Filed under: Gay, Gentrification, Good Rock, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: A Garden in Riotous Bloom, Big Boobs, Gawker, Gay Modern Love, Inwood, Manhattan's Peak, Mutual Admiration Societies, Skorakopock Rock
Back at work this morning we find our blood still coursing with the slow, oscillating melodies of last night’s third act of Die Walküre at the Met. By the end (and really, by the middle of the first act) it was sublime and transcendent, so that all of our quibbling about the final dress seemed […]
Filed under: Good Rock, Opera, Pessimism, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Die Walküre, Jim Morris, Richard Wagner, Stephanie Blythe, The Metropolitan Opera, The United States
Each morning we turn the corner onto Broadway and are newly amazed by the cataclysmic arrangements of trash and debris on the streets and sidewalks. Plastic bags and dead leaves circle south in violent little eddies, while chicken bones, boxes, mannequin torsos and car batteries can be found heaped up on the curb. A barren, […]
Filed under: Decay, Gay, Good Rock, New York City, Resignation, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Broadway, Dead Leaves, Litter, Parking Meters, Plastic Bags, Saturnine, Washington Heights
Music courtesy of Saturnine from the album Remembrance of Things Past (VictoriaLandRecords 2007); released under a Creative Commons license here.
Filed under: Dream, Good Rock, Longing, Memory, The Gay Recluse, The Russian Blue | Leave a Comment
Tags: Indie Rock, Life, Proust, Saturnine, Shadows, Zephyr
On a Piano Behind Closed Doors
Please wait while we stop for a second to listen to this piano and watch the reflection of the city street in the glass. In fact, since you asked, nothing could be more important: it’s more than just memories we hear through this door, but scenes from a past unlike any we have every known.
Filed under: Film, Good Rock, History, Memory, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Door, Mozart, Piano, Street
With our old headphones broken and new ones en route, we were not able as hoped to sequester ourselves in the aural safe harbor that is our “portable media player” but instead had to brave the sound system at the gym. You ask: exactly how barren is this sonic wasteland? We will tell you! Today’s […]
Filed under: Bad Rock, Capitalism, Gay, Good Rock, Government, Memory, Nostalgia, Sickness | Leave a Comment
Tags: Alienation, Bob Seger, Conformity, Geddy Lee, George Harrison, Grand Funk Railroad, iPod, Journey, Morrissey, Neil Peart, Pittsburgh, Rush, Suburbs, The Eagles, The Gym, The Smiths, WDVE
On Beatrice
When the russet hues of the setting sun stream through our western window, as happened today, it is quite possible to imagine Beatrice in the distorted, filtered light, contemplative and hovering as if she were still there, peering into the distance, longing for something to take her away. The first time we saw her, however, […]
Filed under: Drag Queens, Dream, Drivel, Good Rock, Memory, Orchids, Resignation, Sickness, The Russian Blue, The Times, Writers-French | Leave a Comment
Tags: 9/11, Animal Medical Center, Baudelaire, Beatrice, Candy Darling, Cannanes, Cats, Dante, Daphne Merkin, Death, Lipidosis, Love, Robert Moses, Russian Blue
On Cardinal
Each day at our midtown gym we brave the sonic assault of soulless dance music and sadly dated AOR rock that reminds us of the FM radio we grew up listening to in Pittsburgh. But as soon as we get changed and put on our headphones, we turn our attention to Cardinal, the eponymous 1994 […]
Filed under: Good Rock, Memory, Obsession | Leave a Comment
Tags: Bee Gees, Cardinal, Donovan, Eric Matthews, Flydaddy, Independent Rock, Love, Richard Davies, The Moles
The Gay Recluse 