Tonight I was called selfish by a good friend. I guess I am.

Maybe this is why I write these things here or post things to twitter.

I’m selfish for thinking I am alone in the world. I’m selfish for thinking that no one will love me. I am selfish for thinking that I am unlovable. I am selfish for loving my new iMac. I am selfish for thinking while I write this that the new Pet Shop Boys B-sides collection will drop on iTunes in 2.5 hours and I can’t wait to download it. I am selfish for thinking people who walk slower than me are ignorant.

I am selfish for thinking anyone will read this and absolve me.

About a year ago, I stumbled onto Nile Rodgers’ Twitter account. Yes, that Nile Rodgers. I can’t remember how it happened. I remember him talking about how he was recently struck with cancer. He was in treatment, after surgery, and spoke about his doctor-prescribed daily walking therapy. The part that interested me is the way he narrated his daily walks. They were spotted with “we did this here” and “that was recorded there”. Of course, these references were always about some of my favorite soundtrack-to-your-life artists.

Of course I knew of Chic, Nile’s band along with Bernard Edwards and Tony Thompson and the ladies. I remembered roller skating to them on Friday nights and dancing to them in my room as a young teenager. I knew of Nile’s far-reaching producing efforts (Madonna, Duran Duran, Diana Ross, David Bowie, Sister Sledge) and of course Bernard and Tony’s crucial contributions in Power Station but it wasn’t until reading his daily blog, and seeing wonderful vintage photos, that I realized how extensive Nile’s musical reach was into the fabric of the soundtrack of my life.

Last year when I was going to spend a long weekend in New York I thought “How wonderful would it be to run into Mr. Rodgers on one of his daily walks?” We had batted a tweet back and forth, about what I can’t remember, but he did start following me and I always appreciated that. The accidental meet up never occurred, unfortunately. Probably because I was way downtown in Chelsea and not waking up until the afternoon and I think Nile is up on the Upper East Side somewhere. And judging by the pictures he took of him bundled up from the cold on his daily walk, it seemed he started pretty early in the morning. No worries.

Tonight, I saw Nile post a tweet to Miss Jody Watley (swoon) about loving to play on her new album. I noticed he accidentally made a typo (@ jodywatley instead of @jodywatley) and I realized she wouldn’t get the message. I retweeted his tweet, correcting it so it would show up in her feed. This is what he sent back to me:

What a helluva guy. Maybe one of these days I’ll be in New York and accidentally run into Mr. Nile Rodgers and I would love to shake his hand. Shake his hand and say “Thank you, sir”, thank for all the wonderful music you have given to me.

You can read Nile’s Planet C blog here and his homepage here. You can also purchase his autobiography, Le Freak, (which I haven’t started reading yet) here.

Be well.

I’ve missed a couple of days of blog posting in my 2012 Initiative. I work. I’m tired. Sometimes I sit on the couch for a few hours when I get home. I can’t be in front of this computer all the time.

Here is a list of some tweets that, for some reason, didn’t get sent:

Why does my neighborhood look and feel abandoned?
010212

Sweetie it’s fucking McDonald’s. Stop doing special orders for your five children. #holdinguptheline
122211

Loawd give me 2x patience today!
122211

I’ve dribbled on myself. #vietnamesefood
122111

Looks like I should start hanging out at this bus stop more often. #mayor http://moby.to/d5d1kq
121811

Next up in the shuffle: Grace Jones, Erasure, Housemartins, Lightning Seeds, MJ, Beloved, Kylie, Matt Alber, Interpol, ABC, Fischerspooner.
120711

Picked up my new iMac!
121611

Street preachers are funny. #andscary
111111

Every song on this playlist at Noodles & Co is a prime example of what is wrong with pop music today.
110911

Today may be a Saturday to the rest of the world but it’s no weekend for me. For the last 20 months, Saturday’s have been Day Two of the Doubleshifts.

On the train home people are definitely out for their Saturday Nights. Loud, subtly obnoxious, mildly drunk already and it’s only 11:00. I’m exhausted after working for twelve hours and I’ve got a full day of work ahead of me.

Walking home, Everything But The Girl’s 25th December comes on and that, on top of watching everyone going out to have their fun, immediately depresses me.

Getting home, the upstairs neighbors have their tv up sonfucking loud that I can basically watch with the sound down. They’re so fucking rude. I was hoping when one of them moved out (which happened a week ago) that the new neighbor would change things up a bit but it appears he’s taking his cue from the existing roommate.

I bought this CD at Record Rack on my first return visit to Houston, back in 1996 or so. Bruce, the owner, recommended it to me and it laid the groundwork for much of my musical influences of the late 90s. This CD single-handedly pointed my musical tastes towards electronic and drum & bass and away from ambient and Britpop.

It introduced me to Fluke, Future Sound of London, Photek, Chemical Brothers, Underworld and Daft Punk. Daft Punk’s Musique was the first I had ever heard from (or of) them and it would be a full two years before their debut album dropped. And another nine years before they would become the darling of the middle school set with Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger. Fluke’s Atom Bomb was featured and introduced me to their following (and fourth album) Risotto with its beautiful track Kitten Moon.

Sadly, none of these tracks ever made it into my iTunes library until today.

1. We Have Explosive The Future Sound of London 6:14
2. Atom Bomb Fluke 7:57
3. Loops of Fury The Chemical Brothers 4:41
4. Tin There Underworld 5:00
5. The Third Sequence Photek 4:48
6. Leave Home (Underworld Mix 1) The Chemical Brothers 5:14
7. We Have Explosive (Herd Killing) The Future Sound of London 5:42
8. Firestarter (Instrumental) The Prodigy 4:39
9. V Six Fluke 5:19
10. Musique Daft Punk 6:51
11. 2097 Source Direct 5:35
12. Titan Photek 5:58
13. P.E.T.R.O.L. Orbital 5:49
14. Afro Ride Leftfield 4:24

iTunes Match matched tracks 1, 3, 8 & 10; the others were uploaded.

Fantastic sleeve design printed in what appears to be a 6/6 print run (CMYK + 2 Metallic spot) by The Designers Republic.

It’s actually a Tuesday. But I have the next two days off so it’s my Friday. Hello Weekend!

So what do I plan to do with my weekend? Nothing exciting. I’m hopefully going to finally get unpacked from my move-in four months ago. There are still some boxes lying around that I haven’t even opened yet, and some furniture needs to have some placement decisions made. Plus coffee and laundry, of course.

The Andy Warhol Diaries are available in epub for free at this link. Better hurry and grab it, this link may be taken down. I remember barreling through this massive book (850 pp) back in the early nineties. It was awesome. I remember keeping an index of whenever any member of DD was mentioned. Sample:

Saturday, October 10, 1981
I wanted to see Duran Duran at the Savoy because their videotape was so good, it’s called “Girls on Film.” When I got there the first band was still on. Duran Duran are good-looking kids like Maxwell Caulfield. And then afterwards they wanted to meet me so we went backstage and I told them how great they were. They all wore lots of makeup but they had their girlfriends with them from England, pretty girls, so I guess they’re all straight, but it was hard to believe. We went to Studio 54 in their white limo and Steve Rubell was really nice to them. He took them to the booth and gave them drinks. Ran into old friends, met a bunch of new kids and got home at 5:00 (cab $5).

I’m finding that owning a new iMac means a lot of time spent in front it, playing around and investigating around. I guess these are things that I hadn’t done too much of recently maybe because it was a chore or things just weren’t as zippy (read: fun) with a six-year-old computer. RIP Elroy II, you will be sorely missed. But now that things are zippier and whoosh and wow I’m spending some time here instead of pinchin’ & swipin’ & zoomin’ on my iPad. It’s all good.

Right now I’m blasting Kylie’s “Fever” album in its entirety from my iTunes. Partly because I’m sitting here (as stated earlier) and partly because I’m trying to give the inconsiderate neighbors a taste of their own medicine. As I’m listening, I’m realizing I haven’t listed to this album in a long time because of the boyfriend that I (sadly) associated this music with. All the songs had a certain meaning at that time and now it’s nice to listen to them in a new light. And Cathy Dennis’ production in this album is totally top notch. It’s nice to hear her influences in here. Maybe next on the decks will be a little Miss Dennis? I’ll have to check and see which songs of hers made it into my iTunes library, as I have yet to unpack all of my boxes which contain mostly CDs. #sigh

Update: “Why” and “Touch Me” were the only holdovers.