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Feb. 9th, 2016 12:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sorcyressAnd here's the solution:
...apparently I've not told this story before? Huh. So! The story of how Kat came to s00j!
Way way way back in the godawful wilds of early 2009, musician-faerie-pirate-and all around awesome person SJ Tucker came down with some no good very bad illness. Being a ne'er-do-well musician, she didn't have health insurance (see also: fuck you united states). So her friends and loved ones threw together the "SaveOurS00j" fundraiser, to raise enough money to keep her from dying.
And lots of people did lots of nice things, because the world is magnificent and wonderful sometimes. I had no idea of any of this at the time --I had maybe heard her vaguely mentioned in passing by Magus or Mneme, but not in any great detail. And then Susan dG posts on her own personal blog, which I followed...
I tally up the comments on the post, and come out less than twelve, and so shrug and ask:
"I would not mind one as I am always on the lookout for danceable music. Sirens is probably my preference, as I am pretty sure that Magus played part of the Wendy trilogy for me last fall, and I liked it quite a bit, but who am I to argue with any sort of free thing."
And so round-about Balticon 2009, I received my first SJ Tucker album and started listening to it, and to her, and for six and a half years I simply haven't stopped. I call her a goddess and it is not that much a joke. I have written an awful gawdamn lot about how much she means to me, not all of which has wound up in this journal.
So, here's the offer: The first twelve1 people to comment on this post, and tell me which album they want, will receive a digital copy of one of s00j's albums. If you wanna go listen on Bandcamp first, you can: it's all right here. I will probably overpay a bit for the albums, that's okay. She's worth it.
All I ask for you in return is that you make some time in your life to actually listen to whatever I send you. You don't have to love her like I do --you don't have to love her at all. But I think she's amazing, and I want you to give her a chance.
"But Kat! I have no idea which album I would like, and listening is for people with time! Can't you tell me which disc to pick?"
Absolutely I can. Her current discography is:
Stolen Season Her most recent album. It's extremely bluesy --if you are that sort of dancer, you may find some new material here. I *love* "Little Bird" for its enthusiastic message of "DO THE THING!" and "Temptress" for oh-hell-yes-everything.
Wonders Favourite album? Favourite album! This one is based on Cat Valente's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making which is an excellent sort of fairy tale. It's fairly danceable --there's a hornpipe and a jig and a staccato sort of waltz-- and hits some of my sweet-spot for whispered spells just right.
And *oh*, how I love the lyrics from Not the Villain and then you have Ask Me Anything which is so so joyous, and I don't think I've been able to hear Glashtyn Shanty once without singing along.
Ember Days: Whoops, I miscounted last post--I don't own this one either. I will certainly buy it as part of all this, and listen to it, but I have nothing to say for it right now.
Witchy Ways This is not exactly a real album, but is an excellent witchy smorgasboard with samples from most everything she's done. If you quite like witches, you will probably quite like this --I have only bought it quite recently, so I only know the songs that are on other albums so far. But anything with Witchka makes me quite happy, and the Tricky Pixie version of the ballad of Tam Lin is beautiful, and I ran into someone with lyrics to Firebird's Child tattooed across her ribs and could only think "yes, this is right".
Mischief Okay, I lied earlier with Wonders, this is my favourite favourite. Because I'm buying them digitally, you'll get the super-geeky bonus track Playing DnD (you can check out the Youtube music video here, featuring members from The Dead Gentlemen!). You'll also get Witchka (mentioned above) and Neptune which is a heartbreaking and strong tearing away from a shitty relationship, and the yes-please-second-favourite-track-ever, Cheshire Kitten
(If I leave my grin behind, remind me
that we're all mad here
And it's okay.)
Mythcreants I will probably buy myself an actual copy of this, as I am a little ashamed that this is the only s00j album I own illegally --Brenton has it and swapped a download to me for Sirens. Of course, I bought Mischief twice2, so maybe that makes up for it. Anyways, Mythcreants is the first Tricky Pixie album3, that being the band what contains s00j and AJA and Betsy Tinney. All three of these people are spectacularly talented, support them!
ANYwho, Mythcreants is fairly celtic and musically exquisite. It has the excellent duology of Creature of the Wood and Daughter of the Glade (predator feels? So many predator feels!). And The Mushroom Song, which is another of those breathless chanty magic songs (and the only song I cried to, instead of danced, at NYFF) and the aforementioned ballad of Tam Lin and an excellent rendition of the tango Alligator in the House. Which is, incidentally, the best tango ever.
Blessings This is "The Pagan Album"! It's spiritual and ritualistic and powerful and when my job required us to go and sit in peaceful meditation of God and His Greatness, I popped in my headphones and listened to this instead. Both Firebird's Child and In the Name of the Dance will make you get out of your seat and fling yourself bodily around the room, if you are anything like me.
Sirens Oh this album. This sweet precious first album, the one that I owned before all the others, and love most of all.
I like The Wendy Trilogy (parts one, two, three), which answers the question of "what if Wendy Darling said yes when Captain Hook asked her to join the crew". (Answer: winds up taking the whole ship over and acquiring her own fleet of Lost Girls, obviously!!)
I like the dancing songs, the soft tragic waltz of Carosel (You were the truth in my running mascara, the moment my mask was no more) and the ridiculous, wonderful tango of Alligator in the House. (for which I've begun to note has an interesting allegorical sense to it, which perhaps I'll expand on sometime)
I like Goddess, because it's a beautiful love song. And because it's one of only two songs I know that reference Waffle House4.
I like Go Away Godboy.
No.
I love Go Away Godboy.
No.
The word is not strong enough for the need I feel for this song. Someday I will hear her sing it live and it will _destroy_ me. I look forward to the experience.
Being able to cling to a song this angry and strong was what got me through the initial realization of what my relationship with kSatyr had been. I literally owe mySelf --perhaps even my life-- to this song.
(Hail SJ, full of grace. Save me from the human race.)
Solace and Sorrow and For the Girl in the Garden These are the two I referenced last post, that I don't own. They're based on Cat Valente's "The Orphan Tales", so if those are books you enjoy, you may well enjoy these albums too.
Quartered: Songs of Palimpsest This is based on another Cat Valente book, Palimpsest, which is weird and beautiful and I read the all of it sitting in the sunshine of the Cambridge commons one summer day several years ago. It's weird and lovely --I especially like We are Shangri-La and Casimira. And Girl With The Lion's Tail is such a perfect affirmation (I'm not gonna be the girl you tamed.)
Tangles This is an older album, so musically it's a little more just girl-with-guitar. Lyrically, it's every bit as sharp and clever and wonderful as her newer stuff. It has Tori Day (which bereft of context, I must assume has to do with Amos), and a modern retelling of Baba Yaga and oh, my favourite lovesong, Weightless.
(I've already told my story about Weightless. For K˚ Wiley, yes.)
Haphazard And here we are! Chronologically backwards to her first album, all the way from 2004. It has the dark and melancholic Face Down. Mummy Medusa is a song that combines the mythos of Medusa and Rapunzel (and yes, of course this is everything I've ever needed in fairytales). And it closes out with In the House of Mama Dragon, which feels like a ballad fit for a Jaeger (or perhaps Callahan).
Boy howdy, that is like two thousand words. I am serious when I say she owns me like no other musician.
Anyways, yes, iffen you would like one of her albums please please comment! I have a very slight preference towards people who haven't heard her before, but even if you have and you just can't afford another of her albums at the moment, drop me a line.
She's worth your consideration.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: It was originally going to be ten, but I like the echo here.
2: This is true! At Balticon '12, when she was music GoH, she played Cheshire Kitten and some others from mischief and then sold out of the CDs before I could get one. Bethany was all "well, I guess I could give you the tracks..." so I went to s00j at her table and handed her a twenty and asked if it was okay to just get them from a friend like that. Last year, probably at NYFF, I bought an actual copy because damnit, sometimes you just want physical media that you can hold in your hands and play in the car.
(This means that I have all of Mischief in my email as well, meaning I have access to it virtually anywhere I have an internet or phone connection. Excellent!)
3: THEY ANNOUNCED ON TWITTER THE OTHER DAY THAT THEY'RE WORKING ON THE SECOND AND OHEMMGEE SO EXCITED!!!!!
4: Smothered and covered hashbrowns for the first person to correctly identify the other one. Let me tell you, it's just about the DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSITE song to Goddess.
...apparently I've not told this story before? Huh. So! The story of how Kat came to s00j!
Way way way back in the godawful wilds of early 2009, musician-faerie-pirate-and all around awesome person SJ Tucker came down with some no good very bad illness. Being a ne'er-do-well musician, she didn't have health insurance (see also: fuck you united states). So her friends and loved ones threw together the "SaveOurS00j" fundraiser, to raise enough money to keep her from dying.
And lots of people did lots of nice things, because the world is magnificent and wonderful sometimes. I had no idea of any of this at the time --I had maybe heard her vaguely mentioned in passing by Magus or Mneme, but not in any great detail. And then Susan dG posts on her own personal blog, which I followed...
But I've been buying extra Sooj CDs for my friends for a while now as a form of personal evangelizing. So now I'm going to do it again, to help raise money and get her some more fans: twelve more CDs. But I'm going to pay the usual full price of $16.95 for them rather than the special sale price she's offering as part of the fundraising campaign so that she gets some actual profit.
And I'm going to send them out to the first twelve people who comment on this post and ask for one.
I tally up the comments on the post, and come out less than twelve, and so shrug and ask:
"I would not mind one as I am always on the lookout for danceable music. Sirens is probably my preference, as I am pretty sure that Magus played part of the Wendy trilogy for me last fall, and I liked it quite a bit, but who am I to argue with any sort of free thing."
And so round-about Balticon 2009, I received my first SJ Tucker album and started listening to it, and to her, and for six and a half years I simply haven't stopped. I call her a goddess and it is not that much a joke. I have written an awful gawdamn lot about how much she means to me, not all of which has wound up in this journal.
So, here's the offer: The first twelve1 people to comment on this post, and tell me which album they want, will receive a digital copy of one of s00j's albums. If you wanna go listen on Bandcamp first, you can: it's all right here. I will probably overpay a bit for the albums, that's okay. She's worth it.
All I ask for you in return is that you make some time in your life to actually listen to whatever I send you. You don't have to love her like I do --you don't have to love her at all. But I think she's amazing, and I want you to give her a chance.
"But Kat! I have no idea which album I would like, and listening is for people with time! Can't you tell me which disc to pick?"
Absolutely I can. Her current discography is:
Stolen Season Her most recent album. It's extremely bluesy --if you are that sort of dancer, you may find some new material here. I *love* "Little Bird" for its enthusiastic message of "DO THE THING!" and "Temptress" for oh-hell-yes-everything.
Wonders Favourite album? Favourite album! This one is based on Cat Valente's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making which is an excellent sort of fairy tale. It's fairly danceable --there's a hornpipe and a jig and a staccato sort of waltz-- and hits some of my sweet-spot for whispered spells just right.
And *oh*, how I love the lyrics from Not the Villain and then you have Ask Me Anything which is so so joyous, and I don't think I've been able to hear Glashtyn Shanty once without singing along.
Ember Days: Whoops, I miscounted last post--I don't own this one either. I will certainly buy it as part of all this, and listen to it, but I have nothing to say for it right now.
Witchy Ways This is not exactly a real album, but is an excellent witchy smorgasboard with samples from most everything she's done. If you quite like witches, you will probably quite like this --I have only bought it quite recently, so I only know the songs that are on other albums so far. But anything with Witchka makes me quite happy, and the Tricky Pixie version of the ballad of Tam Lin is beautiful, and I ran into someone with lyrics to Firebird's Child tattooed across her ribs and could only think "yes, this is right".
Mischief Okay, I lied earlier with Wonders, this is my favourite favourite. Because I'm buying them digitally, you'll get the super-geeky bonus track Playing DnD (you can check out the Youtube music video here, featuring members from The Dead Gentlemen!). You'll also get Witchka (mentioned above) and Neptune which is a heartbreaking and strong tearing away from a shitty relationship, and the yes-please-second-favourite-track-ever, Cheshire Kitten
(If I leave my grin behind, remind me
that we're all mad here
And it's okay.)
Mythcreants I will probably buy myself an actual copy of this, as I am a little ashamed that this is the only s00j album I own illegally --Brenton has it and swapped a download to me for Sirens. Of course, I bought Mischief twice2, so maybe that makes up for it. Anyways, Mythcreants is the first Tricky Pixie album3, that being the band what contains s00j and AJA and Betsy Tinney. All three of these people are spectacularly talented, support them!
ANYwho, Mythcreants is fairly celtic and musically exquisite. It has the excellent duology of Creature of the Wood and Daughter of the Glade (predator feels? So many predator feels!). And The Mushroom Song, which is another of those breathless chanty magic songs (and the only song I cried to, instead of danced, at NYFF) and the aforementioned ballad of Tam Lin and an excellent rendition of the tango Alligator in the House. Which is, incidentally, the best tango ever.
Blessings This is "The Pagan Album"! It's spiritual and ritualistic and powerful and when my job required us to go and sit in peaceful meditation of God and His Greatness, I popped in my headphones and listened to this instead. Both Firebird's Child and In the Name of the Dance will make you get out of your seat and fling yourself bodily around the room, if you are anything like me.
Sirens Oh this album. This sweet precious first album, the one that I owned before all the others, and love most of all.
I like The Wendy Trilogy (parts one, two, three), which answers the question of "what if Wendy Darling said yes when Captain Hook asked her to join the crew". (Answer: winds up taking the whole ship over and acquiring her own fleet of Lost Girls, obviously!!)
I like the dancing songs, the soft tragic waltz of Carosel (You were the truth in my running mascara, the moment my mask was no more) and the ridiculous, wonderful tango of Alligator in the House. (for which I've begun to note has an interesting allegorical sense to it, which perhaps I'll expand on sometime)
I like Goddess, because it's a beautiful love song. And because it's one of only two songs I know that reference Waffle House4.
I like Go Away Godboy.
No.
I love Go Away Godboy.
No.
The word is not strong enough for the need I feel for this song. Someday I will hear her sing it live and it will _destroy_ me. I look forward to the experience.
Being able to cling to a song this angry and strong was what got me through the initial realization of what my relationship with kSatyr had been. I literally owe mySelf --perhaps even my life-- to this song.
(Hail SJ, full of grace. Save me from the human race.)
Solace and Sorrow and For the Girl in the Garden These are the two I referenced last post, that I don't own. They're based on Cat Valente's "The Orphan Tales", so if those are books you enjoy, you may well enjoy these albums too.
Quartered: Songs of Palimpsest This is based on another Cat Valente book, Palimpsest, which is weird and beautiful and I read the all of it sitting in the sunshine of the Cambridge commons one summer day several years ago. It's weird and lovely --I especially like We are Shangri-La and Casimira. And Girl With The Lion's Tail is such a perfect affirmation (I'm not gonna be the girl you tamed.)
Tangles This is an older album, so musically it's a little more just girl-with-guitar. Lyrically, it's every bit as sharp and clever and wonderful as her newer stuff. It has Tori Day (which bereft of context, I must assume has to do with Amos), and a modern retelling of Baba Yaga and oh, my favourite lovesong, Weightless.
(I've already told my story about Weightless. For K˚ Wiley, yes.)
Haphazard And here we are! Chronologically backwards to her first album, all the way from 2004. It has the dark and melancholic Face Down. Mummy Medusa is a song that combines the mythos of Medusa and Rapunzel (and yes, of course this is everything I've ever needed in fairytales). And it closes out with In the House of Mama Dragon, which feels like a ballad fit for a Jaeger (or perhaps Callahan).
Boy howdy, that is like two thousand words. I am serious when I say she owns me like no other musician.
Anyways, yes, iffen you would like one of her albums please please comment! I have a very slight preference towards people who haven't heard her before, but even if you have and you just can't afford another of her albums at the moment, drop me a line.
She's worth your consideration.
~Sor
MOOP!
1: It was originally going to be ten, but I like the echo here.
2: This is true! At Balticon '12, when she was music GoH, she played Cheshire Kitten and some others from mischief and then sold out of the CDs before I could get one. Bethany was all "well, I guess I could give you the tracks..." so I went to s00j at her table and handed her a twenty and asked if it was okay to just get them from a friend like that. Last year, probably at NYFF, I bought an actual copy because damnit, sometimes you just want physical media that you can hold in your hands and play in the car.
(This means that I have all of Mischief in my email as well, meaning I have access to it virtually anywhere I have an internet or phone connection. Excellent!)
3: THEY ANNOUNCED ON TWITTER THE OTHER DAY THAT THEY'RE WORKING ON THE SECOND AND OHEMMGEE SO EXCITED!!!!!
4: Smothered and covered hashbrowns for the first person to correctly identify the other one. Let me tell you, it's just about the DIAMETRICALLY OPPOSITE song to Goddess.