a website by jenn colby: fortuitous_goddess@excite.com
Off my church's message board:
Lift heads to Heaven and pray. God Bless the United States.

I've been looking for good Mountain Goats pages online lately and there aren't many. Of course, there's always the comprehensive mountaingoats.net, but I want...more. I want...my own tMG site. Here it is! I guess I should warn you all that I am almost frighteningly thorough when it comes to learning about things that interest me. With that out of the way...prepare for a website so thorough that it borders on spooky. Eventually :). I just started this today (july 3rd) so it'll be a while. Check the whole site for updates as i'm still pretty disorganized and keep forgetting to mention stuff. I did post on the list when i left it that i was shutting down this site. so what, i changed my mind *smile*. diversity makes the world go 'round.

cartoon of john from Science Geek

First project: an extensive archive of john darnielle on the web. There are a lot of articles and interviews out there basically untapped by other sites. This web page plans on being the home to a comprehensive index of these articles/interviews/whatevers. Let me know if any of these links are broken, because every time I find a file I save it to my home computer. So, therefore, if someone was inconsiderate enough to remove a tMG-related page, I'll just post it on my own. I do have some small standards, namely: NO boring, general articles that tell people things they've known for months (if not years). I want interviews and articles that REALLY discuss the band. I am, of course, not gonna be lazy and steal links from nall's page. So if you find an article that I don't have that he doesn't have either, TELL ME (i am...Daria564@excite.com, at least in my more lucid moments).

Articles
Pitchfork review of Protein Source of the Future...NOW!.
Another Pitchfork review! This one's for The Coroner's Gambit. Man, they really are pushing tMG! They did an interview too.
Iowa State Daily: Rocky Mountain Guy. A pretty cool, very john-is-right-there-speaking-to-you kind of article. Interesting information.
SF Weekly Online: a 1996 interview. Although it's a bit dated now, it's one of the best articles i've found. Fun, and the author appears to have done his homework. This actually has some stuff in it you might not know, such as the sausage-related origins of Bi-Fi. Of course, if you've listened to the band for years, you may know even the esoteric stuff, but this is as much fun to reread as it was to read in the first place. Although i did just notice that they misquoted "alpha incipiens", and that makes me mad. But still, pretty smooth article.
What the Hell Are You Looking At?: features a picture of John and Rachel (i know i heard some people wondering what she looked like) and some seriously awesome quotes. I love reading this just for the quotes.
If you go to Iowa State Daily and search the archives, you'll find (at present) four articles. God only knows what they're about. (hey, maybe JOHN knows! oh lord, i must be tired) i swear i'll put better definitions/explanations next to these things later.

Someone absolutely wonderful has sent me "Nothing for Juice" and "Hot Garden Stomp" from Germany, plus "Chile de Arbol"! Hurrah! And, in a development that sounds totally disconnected but actually does involve development #1, namely the arrival of my tape, i learned how to record stuff onto my computer. Therefore, I can now make CDs out of tapes. and since i hate worrying about tapes wearing out this totally rocks my world. if any of you out there would like to send me copies of tapes and have me send you back CDs i would be happy to. and if any of you would like to tape trade with me on the basis of the fact that i now have "hot garden stomp" - i would looooooooove to hear a whole tMG live show, esp. the one with "shower" in it.

A question: i've seen 2 different covers for Sweden, one with "sweden" on it and one without. i think both were for CDs but i'm not sure. can anyone tell me anything about this?

The songlist is now updated with more albums (thanks stephen!)

Here's a note I got in the mail from stephen, who got to go see john play at yoyoagogo (which i did NOT get to do, grr): "john said he's signed to 4AD so, he can put out more albums!" more diversification - more albums - great! also added 1 more song, "faultlines", to my alphabetized songlist. wheeee. does anyone know of any tMG songs that start with v, x, or z? every other letter in the alphabet is represented. if there aren't any songs that start with those letters, john should write some, just because - how many artists can say they've written songs starting with all 26 letters of the alphabet (and some numbers, besides)?

I guess this'll be where i store the updates for now. sorry for the dearth of them thus far: my grandmother is sick and i had to go out of state with family to see to her. plus i'm writing a paper about tip o'neill. plus i'm just plain lazy :) anyway, i'm gonna rename the site soon, to "fortuitous", my absolute favorite word on god's green earth. owning a site called "john darnielle is god" is wreakin' havoc on my methodist conscience. for now, i have this update: for those of you familiar with the unreleased "jack and faye" 7", which should be all of you if I know about it, i found out there's an adair, iowa. it was in the biography of my creative writing teacher. how's that for fortuitous? and here's something not fortuitous at all: after i spent $19.20 all in all for a used copy of "beautiful rat sunset", the thing's at CDNOW for $9.98!!! Nanikuso. but it's good for those of you who don't have it yet. also: one last thing: i am dying for a copy of "nothing for juice". i know it'll be re-released in 2002 or whatever, but i need a copy now :) be it a tape or a cd or a whatever. i'm absolutely in love with "going to reykjavik". if anyone could help me out i'd really appreciate it. amazon says they have it on limited availability, but all that means is that it's not in stock. amazon's generally pretty worthless for tMG when compared with insound or cdnow. for a while they were even claiming not to have the coroner's gambit. dur. anyway, that's the news for today. coming up later this week, on the 30, which technically isn't later this week, but to hell with it: i turn seventeen (even though i've been saying i'm 17 for weeks now). whoo-ah.

I need to make an updates section!! And get an organizational theme goin'. But i did make a banner! haHA. Anyway, here's the alphabetized songlist that i posted to the list about. I'd appreciate assistance on getting it more complete. I'm missing most songs from Sweden, Zopilote Machine, Nothing for Juice...and the list goes on :) it's amazing how much music tMG produce. and, thanks to that guy who sent me information on that eric and yoonie interview. it was nice to see something positive in my inbox so quickly. I really appreciate your writing and i'll post your email soon. I'm guessing since you sent it to me you don't mind sharing the wealth?

So here's what i'm doing today, july 5th: going through the link-list i compiled by wading through google on the 3rd and giving you better notation for each site. I think i'll leave the list-archives alone until i see whether anyone else cares that i'm quoting them. i am currently trying to make a map of "going to..." song locations (locations mentioned in other songs but not "going to..."s will also be marked...god only knows how *smile* we'll see), and i also want to put up a timeline of calcutta-n history in the '30s, because of the picture on the cover of "The Coroner's Gambit".

"I don't wanna play in your yard
if you won't be good to me.
Honey, it was downright creepy."
(who knows what song this is from?)
(stephen knows. it's from "faithless bacchant song" thanks, stephen. *smile*)

Interviews
Splendid's interview with John, Coroner's Gambit era.
Erik Farseth and Yoonie interview. I just found this and it's COOL! Who are these guys who interviewed him?
Sermon on the Mount: the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle Composes Himself: interviewed by Cory Brown, who is if I am not mistaken the guy who runs Absolutely Kosher? Cool interview. I liiiiiike.
The above-mentionedPitchfork interview.

Stuff by John
Of course I have to link to the Last Plane to Jakarta site.
On Emerson, Whitman, and the Bi-Fi Revolution
Here's a lovely list of stuff John's done for the New Times Los Angeles. They look like music reviews; I'm checkin' 'em out right now.
Something called InsiderOne.net is claiming john as a collaborator. I am a search-engine machine right now; I'll look for more on this page when i'm done at Google.com.

Coolness. Warning: this section is deliberately disorganized. (whereas above, it's just my own laziness and will presumably be fixed soon)
Some press clippings, and thearticle that goes with them. The article is mostly the usual newbie info. The press clippings are kinda cool.
the Liner Note Preservation Society has the liner notes for the record of Full Force Galesburg up. Very cool.
This is clever: reviews of bands that have stayed at your house, including a brief tMG mention.
Are those haikus????? I think they are. god, i love tMG. This is the other half of bands that stayed at your house - reviews of houses you stayed at. Look for john's part...
I Think I Was in Wckr Sgpt talks a little bit about john's involvement with that band and briefly mentions other projects.
MP3 of a John Vanderslice song with lyrics written by john. note that the mp3 is an instrumental. it says that there are lyrics on this page, but try as i might, i could not find them. do you know where they are?
A scan of a ticket stub and a review for the tMG appearance at Bottom of the Hill in SF, 11/19/99. WARNING! do NOT get curious and use the little "close this window" option. all it does is destroy the google search you've been working for like three hours.
john wrote the liner notes for Roky Erickson's album, "Never Say Goodbye".
A short intro to tMG and john, from a Winnipeg performance with other people.
Beulah's cover of "Alpha Incipiens".
Here's a link to Postcard to the Mountain Goats, a tribute tape.
John Darnielle's WFMU recording-thing can be found here in RealAudio. I HATE realaudio because my computer won't play it. Dave says: "the mountain goats doesn't start until 2 hours into this realaudio clip." Thanks. I would never have been able to tell; i can't watch it on this sucky computer which doesn't like RA software. :) but that's a heads-up for those of you whose computers live in the 21st century (or is it 22nd, now?)
what's this, now? this is very bizarre. someone talking about john darnielle working somewhere they stayed. read it, and if you know anything about it (i suspect it's fiction but if not how fortuitous!) please email me, because i am sooooo curious.
more covered music stuff: a number one cup cover of a tMG song. not the cover itself - just info and comments. very brief, but interesting.

Other People's Sites (I include everything! haHA!)
theMountainGoats.net. This is more of an obligatory link than anything; anyone into tMG has already found this website.
The Mountain Goats.Some foreign language and very little else.
i keep forgetting to link to sarah margaret's site. i swear i'm not ignoring it. it's an awesome site, great design. i'll get to it eventually. i forgot the URL :)

tMG Record Labels

3 Beads of Sweat. The Ajax releases are moving onto this label to be rereleased in a couple of years. (less! less!)

Absolutely Kosher.
Little Mafia. This website says it still has copies of Tropical Depression for $3.

Buy! Buy!
What's on eBay? This link ought to show you.
Insound is my favorite place to buy tMG stuff; they usually have a compilation or two hanging around, as well as articles and albums.
Absolutely Kosher sells not just Coroner's Gambit, but a few other tMG-related things too.
CDNow has Sweden, Full Force Galesburg (in vinyl, still, too), Coroner's Gambit, Nine Black Poppies, and Beautiful Rat Sunset right now.
Bet you didn't think of looking at Barnes&Noble, did you? Neither did i, at first. They have three albums (I forget which ones, but nothing too hard-to-find) as well as, and here's the fun part, a YoYo a GoGo live compilation from '97 with "Raid on Entebbe" and Shrimper's "Abridged Perversion" comp which includes "Window Song". "Window Song" is also on Protein Source of the Future...Now!, which you can still buy @ the Absolutely Kosher page, i think.

Gleaned from the List-Archives.
I'm on the tMG Yahoo Groups list, but I'm new to it, so I've been reading the archives. I thought I'd grab all the interesting tMG factoids for you, since there's a huge bulk of stuff there, and I believe in making things easy :) The post-er that I got the info from is indicated by name. If you are the post-er and I am misreading what you said, please let me know (Daria564@excite.com) and I will correct myself.

Erin McWilliams: "Going to Bridlington" was originally written as "Going to Burlington", as in "Vermont". I only found this out when my request for the former was played as the latter in Chicago and I tried to correct John afterwards. It turns out that it was switched to its metric/British version during an obsession with writing songs about England, or something.

Jonathan Maier: his essay, "Lo-fi: in search of an honest aesthetic", is available here if anyone's interested. (i was - i thought maybe other people would be, too)

Message #148 has some pretty good instructions on playing guitar chords and using notation. I never got past classical fingerstyle in my guitar lessons (i played mostly spanish/beethovan/et cetera music, no chords at all like tMG do) and so i can't fully understand this message in five seconds :) but it looks useful and easy to understand.

and there ought to be something here...lyrics for the live version of shower I want to put up, i think :) here they are:

[john, spoken] okay you're all gonna have to be incredibly quiet because i don't have a pickup. yeah, and i've had two and a half beers which is two and a half beers more than i've had since december so i'm not afraid to come out there and pick fights with any one of you, or all of you at once if need be...my name is john. we are the mountain goats. i am getting married day after tomorrow [cheering]. so the deal is, the more stress i'm under, the uglier the things my narrators to do one other is. consequentally all these new songs i'm playing tonight are gonna make you think i'm not the kinda guy who has the right to get married. you're probably gonna think, well, maybe he ought to get sterilized now. that's not true. this song is called shower.
the blackest storm i ever saw
was coming in from omaha
and the latest news from tokyo was a lot of ugly numbers
i was checkin' pay phones for forgotten coins
as the clouds came over west des moines
got into the house
got the curtains drawn
got into the the shower with all my clothes on
hey! hey! let the water come down!
hey! hey! let the water come down!

by noon it was clear that winter'd come
and i just let[?] the water run
and i got sop suds in my eyes
and it stung like iodine
the phone started ringing like a fire alarm
and the voice on the machine was brutally calm
new numbers coming down the wire
got into the shower with my eyes on fire
hey! hey! let it fall on me,
let it all come down relentlessly!
you swore that you would stick around
when days like this started coming down!
break out the crystal!
get out the good champagne!
we're going down.... in flames.

sooon, something happier :)

I left off at message #163 in the list archives and on page #12 of a google search for john darnielle "the mountain goats". post #157, 160