A touch of Pixie dust

It's amazing how all it takes is that iconic guitar riff and a Kim Deal oo-ooh to win me over to a song that wouldn't otherwise be my style.

Every once in a while I'm floored all over again by just how impossibly good the early Pixies were. Today this thought took the form of wondering at just how many wicked good bands had come out of the city of Boston, Massachusetts. Thinking there were likely others I hadn't discovered, I googled bands from boston just to see what would come up. One unfamiliar name that caught my eye was Birdsongs of the Mesozoic. I looked them up.

If that vintage woodcut-style drawing of a toothy black pterosaur looks familiar, you might be thinking of my 2020 post "A Pterodactlyus and a globe of light."

Although I wrote that post in October, the experiences it recounts took place in February, and I specifically mention St. Valentine's Day. The first track on the Birdsongs of the Mesozoic EP is called "Sound Valentine." One of the other tracks (out of only five total) is called "The Orange Ocean." In my September 29 post "The death of Nelson," I wrote this:

Note Wyllie's unusual choice, in this painting depicting the death of Nelson, to portray the sea as yellowish-orange in color. A similar choice was made by Pixie Smith (1878-1951) in her design of the Three of Wands card for the classic Rider-Waite Tarot deck.

In all other posts about the Three of Wands, I have described the sea simply as "yellow," but for whatever reason I decided to be more specific in that post. I typically attribute Rider-Waite design choices to Waite, but in that post I decided instead to credit the artist, Pamela Colman Smith, and to call her by her nickname, Pixie. As I've just explained above, it was musing about the Pixies that led me to discover "The Orange Ocean."

(Unfortunately, "The Orange Ocean" appears to be sufficiently obscure that it has not been uploaded to YouTube.)

Also note that Birdsongs of the Mesozoic was released by Ace of Hearts Records. This is a tiny indie label that "recorded and released Boston area post-punk and garage rock bands in the early 1980s," only a handful of those bands being sufficiently well known to have a Wikipedia article. The Ace of Hearts has been an important sync theme around here for some time.

Less than an hour after making the above discoveries, I stopped at a convenience store to pick up a package for my wife. The guy in front of me in line was wearing this T-shirt:

Running into any reference to Boston in Taiwan would be unusual, but the fact that it was in connection with a music festival makes it a stronger sync.

Apparently, this music festival was just called Music Festival. Probably a great place to meet fellow kids.

Speaking of music labels, just a week ago I posted "Elektra and Beatles vs. Stones," mentioning Elektra Records and noting the "unusual spelling" with a k rather than a c. Last night I ran across this in an English reading comprehension test:

Question 11 refers to record label conglomerate Warner-Elektra-Atlantic (now Warner Music Group) but misspells Elektra with a c.