What We Are Listening To: Monster Children NYC #11
Hello, my name is Naz Kawakami. I’m the new Editor in Chief of Monster Children based in New York City. Did you know that for a number of years, I was a radio DJ? You probably did because I never shut the fuck up about it. My show was called Night Drive, every Thursday from midnight to 3AM. Those were good times. A lot of sex, drugs, and partying were done in that little Honolulu radio studio. None of it done by me, but it’s still cool to think about.
Anyway, since taking this Editor job, I spend most of my day the way I spent my days as a DJ: listening to music. Some good, some bad. Some old, some new. Every Friday, I compile the week’s worth of music into a playlist. Songs we’ve been enjoying, songs we’ve just (re)discovered, and songs that offer a preview into what features we have coming out soon. Not the newest, not the rarest, just good music. The mood of the week over at the MC New York City office for you to judge and enjoy.
This week has been pretty fucking strange, and it is reflected in this week’s playlist, our least-cohesive set of songs yet. This week, I’ve been eating a lot of Pop-Tarts in subway stations far from home and very early morning. Why have I been doing this? Because, much like the central plot device in Jim Carrey / Zooey D rom-com, Yes Man, I am practicing a policy of saying yes to things, and then being less of a dick about those things, which has kept me out very late at night. It has also led me to reassess this job and how I ought to be approaching content. How does this tie in to the playlist? The track listing’s lack of cohesiveness but components all being of high quality reflect the scattered yet beautiful condition of my life at the moment, or that’s what I’d say if I were a good writer.
This week’s playlist opens with what I consider to be the most daring, punk rock, anti-social song of the last thirty years, ‘Tired of Sex’ by Weezer off of their immaculate, fully-memed 1996 sophomore album, Pinkerton. Exclaiming that one is tired of having sex goes completely against everything human, societal, biblical, and biological. Everything from our bodies to our religions to our popular culture implores us to not only have sex, but put it on a pedestal above food and dignity. To reject sex - or even more snidely suggest boredom with it - is more punk rock than Sid or Joey could ever have hoped to be and rails against notions of traditional masculinity, a sentiment decades ahead of what would be its contemporary reconsideration.
If only Catholic schools and various college-dropout-now-sex-ed-teachers would have thought to turn celibacy into rebellion like I’m insisting Rivers did back in ‘96, they’d have had better luck with their campaigns. Thank god they didn’t, though. It is also important for me to acknowledge that Rivers’ sentiment within the song about being tired of sex has little or nothing to do with the points that I am making, and that any societal rebellion is an afterthought if not a negligible byproduct of what his actual motivations and emotions were in that song (and to be fair, throughout the now-acclaimed, once-rejected record wherein he often battles with his insecurity, recoiling at his own masculinity and sexual nature, and so on). I acknowledge, but choose to consciously ignore those truer sentiments in favor of fitting those sentiments to my being contrarian against anything considered ‘cool’ like shitty emotional Playdough. I could write a thesis on this song. I could spend my life writing a book on the blue album and Pinkerton. I get a bit obsessive, I reckon, which is good news for a publisher because I am happy to spend 10 hours a day writing things on a laptop that make me laugh, but bad for me because I am happy to spend 10 hours a day writing things on a laptop that make me laugh.
There are a lot more tracks on here to discuss - for example, Harry Nilsson writing a song for Shelley Duval to sing in the live-action Popeye adaptation and having that song turn out to be one of the most churning, delicate, romantic songs of the 1970’s - and I would adamantly and passionately discuss each and every one, but I’ve hit word count. Have a good weekend.
Questions, complaints, feedback, propositions, discussions, hate mail, love letters, confessions, hit me.
