Our latest Summer Soundtrack Contest playlist, Erich Pelletier's "A Hazy-Hot Letter to the Hipsters," is, rather brilliantly, playlist as hyperlinked prose-poem -- near incomprehensible prose-poem at first, the Michael Jackson reference notwithstanding, but written with flair, and it really hits its stride in that third paragraph.
"A Hazy-Hot Letter to the Hipsters"
Caught somewhere in the hazy no man's land of June, we sit. We wait for the merciless Sun to deliver us to terror, to ecstasy, to that playful Summer of childish myth. The Trial of the Century has ended and he was found not guilty (though maybe not quite innocent) on all 10 counts. All of this together brings us a mild melancholy ... moody enough to commit Idecide? Perhaps. Whatever that is.
And still we wait, expectantly cowering, for the heat to really set, to firm and become touchable ... and I, for one, I Do Dream You lovely scruffy music types could be there fanning me with feathers while those ubiquitous Anorexic Freaks frolic around us on the beachy sand. But we love those freaks, because If You Can't Say Love, one is truly mute in this world. Saying love brings Balance to us, to the Sun, to the Summer and the sand. Shimmery keyboard guitar voice notes filter ringing high and reedy through waves of heat across the city's concrete and Blah Blah Blah... whatever ...
But when the real heat does arrive, even though the Sun sometimes makes us grumpy and we act like Shitty Bums, please don't send your vengeful Missile of hipster retribution down on our sweaty bunker, our shelter of fun from the Sun. Don't cast your mystical Dutch Hex on our summery parade ... Just don't, OK? Because we know how those hexes work -- they call the Ghost Riders in to Attack us and drink All the Wine all of our beautifully chilled sweaty-glass wine that is our final defense against the tenderest mercies of the heat. Please, only love us instead, thou literate and beautiful children of fashion and taste. Let go of your cynicism and dance. Summer is a happy time, though a difficult one. Quiet and love (and luck) will help us all through these trying times until crispy Fall. Until then, when we are lucky, we may lie in the grass and gaze up at leaves overhead and drift off into a long, slow Diamond Sea of hazy reverie.
1. "The Trial of the Century," the French Kicks
2. "Idecide," What Made Milwaukee Famous
3. "I Do Dream You," Jennifer Gentle
4. "Anorexic Freaks," Kinky
5. "If You Can't Say Love," Visionaries
6. "Balance," Crown City Rockers
7. "Blah Blah Blah...," Cartel de Santa
8. "Shitty Bum," C-Mon and Kypski
9. "Missile," Blonde Redhead
10. "Dutch Hex Manhattan Version," Professor Murder
11. "Attack of the Ghost Riders," the Raveonettes
12. "All the Wine," the National
13."The Diamond Sea," Sonic Youth (go here, and follow the "The Diamond Sea" pulldown link (bottom left) to "the diamond sea alt. end mp3").
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