My Sedimental Valentine
Mood:  suave
Now Playing: Soft Revolution - Stars
Topic: One Ring Zero
Hi, I'm Kate, the other person from whom you'll be downloading. I can feel your excitement!


For my inaugural post, I'd like first to explain the name we chose: Bebop Golems.

It's pretty simple; Trish likes the word "Bebop" (as do I), and I'm obsessed with golems.
[For those of you who are too lazy to read about them from the website: A golem is a creature from Jewish mythology. It's made out of clay or river mud by a rabbi, usually to protect or serve the maker. They cannot speak, they cannot think, and they occasionally go crazy and kill everybody. If it helps, think of them as soft robots. The bottom line is, they're really interesting.]

The sad thing about golems is that very few people write songs about them. Everyone writes about robots, but where are the songs about golems?
This is where One Ring Zero steps in. One Ring Zero is a band composed of Micheal Hearst (see photo) and Joshua Camp of New York, who play nearly every instrument under the sun, and many more that haven't seen anything more than the fluorescent light of wherever they record their music. Their sound can best be described by The Forward, which calls it, "gypsy-klezmer circus-flea-cartoon-music that you only hear in dreams." Most of their releases have been instrumental, but in 2004, they released "As Smart As We Are," an 18 track music project that combines One Ring Zero's music with the lyrics of their favorite authors.

One of the first songs I listened to when I got it was Golem by Myla Goldberg (author of Bee Season) and sung by Syd Straw because, well, it was called "Golem." I wasn't disappointed.
Because really, who hasn't wanted a "sedimental valentine," a boyfriend who is "ageless as ontology, honest as geology?"

The song for which I bought it, Radio, is also worth mentioning, as it's fun, and has a link (however tenuous) to the subject of golems, that being: It's by Daniel Handler, who once wrote a book involving a golem called Watch Your Mouth.

If I had a leisure suit
One-tenth of one percent as cute
As certain parts of aspects of your face
Every single summer day, I'd look so fucking good
You'd say, "The way I treated you was a disgrace."
Fucking good, fucking good, fucking good, fucking good
I wish I had a radio with songs about you.