72-Hour Watch

This week I’m taking a deep dive into the world of mental health facilities. I’m doing this by placing myself under an involuntary 72-hour watch at a psychiatric center. Or at least that’s what my Mom said was happening when she dropped me off. Lately I’ve been pondering the power of positive thinking. It’s good to think positively, partially because its beneficial to your mental well-being. But mostly it’s good because when Elon Musk finally plants a chip into your skull and meta-invades your brain, you can sell those positive thoughts for lucrative ad space. For instance, having thoughts about harming yourself or others? Here’s a commercial about a golden retriever drinking a bud light firing directly out of your synapses so that you can’t look away. To skip the ad, please stop screaming and say, “Good boy.� Please do not think about the fact that you’re going to die before the last Star Wars movie comes out. There’s no tension in a story when you know the character is going to survive. There’s also no tension when you know the franchise is going to outlive you. When I die, please only bury me five feet deep rather than six. Even in death, I’d like to be able to stream Netflix on my brain implant, but the dirt and coffin insulation are known to disrupt the signal. How am I supposed to spend eternity down here if my rotting corpse can’t even watch “The Office� reruns in my “man-cave?� This playlist is available on Spotify. Search “Long Distance Listening Party� or my username, Mileserickson-354. New songs will be added every two weeks. Long Distance Listening Party Vol. 3 And I Love Her—Kurt Cobain The Chauffeur—Deftones Goodbye Horses—Venus Infers If I Had A Gun—Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds Red Right Hand—Arctic Monkeys Baby’s On Fire—Brian Eno Not If You Were The Last Junkie On Earth—The Dandy Warhols Brave as a Noun—AJJ She Used to Love Me A lot—Johnny Cash And I Love Her is a Kurt Cobain cover of a song originally performed by the Beatles. The song was discovered as part of Cobain’s personal belongings and released posthumously more than twenty years after his death. It was released as part of the 2015 documentary Montage of Heck, when a compilation album of the same name was also released. Overall, the compilation was poorly reviewed as distasteful and exploitive. That being said, And I Love Her is widely considered the standout from both the album and documentary and is held in higher regard than the greater compilation it’s part of. To call this cover “transformative� is an understatement. The non-existent production value pairs with Cobain’s famously jaded cadence and flat vocal inflection to create something pained, haunting, and sorrowful. Baby’s on Fire is a song whose only intention is to sound good on the ears. Amongst music enthusiasts there’s a school of thought that suggests there are two kinds of vocalists: those who use their voice as an instrument, and those who use their voice as a method of delivering poetry (someone like Bob Dylan or Lou Reed). Eno’s singing on Baby’s On Fire and on Here Come The Warm Jets as a whole is a perfect marriage of the two styles. Also, this weeks hot take is that Here Come The Warm Jets is by far Eno’s best album. If I Had A Gun is probably Noel Ghallagher’s best known work outside of Oasis, Other than In The Heat Of The Moment, which is a song I dislike even more than Noel Gallagher dislikes Liam Gallagher. If you think Kanye West is the most childish man in modern music, then you clearly are unaware of the fact that the Ghallagher brothers turned down $100,000,000 to reunite solely to spite each other. Red Right Hand is an Arctic Monkey’s cover of a Nick Cave song. Cave’s original version of the song has a sort of epic quality to it; it sounds like something Ennio Morricone would write as the backdrop to a nameless cowboy riding into a crime-ridden Old West town. This cover takes those qualities and adds a fast pace and heavy rhythm while still remaining cool and heavy on the mystique. “Long Distance Listening Party� is a bi-weekly column by Miles Erickson. Its vague intention is to discuss topics framed in the context of what he’s currently listening to. Erickson is a recent graduate of CalArts, a published author, and currently enrolled in a prestigious, four-year student loan repayment program. Spotify (Mileserickson-354)