Eric Alexandrakis is one of my favorite music-journalist stories.
I reviewed his I.V. Catatonia, an album about the rigors of chemotherapy, waaaaay back in 2002, when I was still a journalism student at WSU and harbored dreams of someday working for Spin (at this point I was also much more innocent; it was before I became Editor in Chief at WSU’s school paper and went through HELL with no advisor).
I.V. Catatonia was an out-of-nowhere surprise just weird enough to catch my fickle attention, as I wasn’t really into listening to anything I hadn’t heard of back then — which is funny because now all I want to listen to is stuff I’ve never heard of.
Alexandrakis helped me realize how important it is to keep at least a finger on the pulse of the deep, deep underground because a lot of the groups that are huge — or getting there — in the indie-rock scene, whether they know it or not, take direct cues from I.V. Catatonia.
Musicians like Avey Tare from Animal Collective, Emperor X, Dosh (not to mention several other weird-rock Anticon artists), Au and several others, while far from carbon-copying Alexandrakis’
schizophrenic sound, seem to find ways to carry it on.
Now, A-Drakis has given me another reason with the great “Stealing Christmas,” an instrumental mash-up of sorts that contains a lot of familiar elements and just as much original intrigue. I could spend all day trying to pin this shit down but I’ll just let you check it out yrself.
Ho-Ho-Ho!!!
