Something Like #34: Summer in the City w/ Bitsy Knox
Hazy freneticism, long evenings in half light, sticking your arm out your office window, rolling up your pant legs and dipping your feet in a fountain…8 July 2021

 

Summer in the city: Hazy freneticism, long evenings in half light, sticking your arm out your office window, rolling up your pant legs and dipping your feet in a fountain, eating fries at the public pool, biking through the pine forests for the last unfound spot of dappled sunlight by the lake. Sure, there’s a certain amount of envy built into watching your friends leave the dusty, hot grips of the city for calmer, greener, beachier locations, but Summer in the city is also an exercise in in super-saturation (as the poet Monica Youn writes), in monotony with a different, louder beat.

 

  • As ever, Something Like’s jingle comes courtesy of the wonderful Roger 3000
  • I read First Blues by Saundra Rose Maley, from Disappearing Act, 2015 and A Parking Lot in West Houston, by Monika Youn from Barter, 2003
  • The sounds behind my voice today were recorded from my window, which overlooks the Admirälbrücke. Please everyone, be kind to the neighbourhoods you inhabit at night!

Tracklist

Marjorie Van Haltern feat. Louis Giansante, Dead of Summer, 1982
Herbie Hancock, Watermelon Man, Head Hunters, 1973
Ron Everett, Glitter of the City (Song by Tahira), Glitter of the City, 1977 (re-issued 2021)
Joe Cocker, (Video Interlude) Summer in the City, Have a Little Faith, 1994
Oliver Sain, Bus Stop, Bus Stop, 1974
Frank Harris & Maria Marquez, Field Trips, Echoes (compilation), 2019
Earnest Hood, Night Games, Neighborhoods, 1975 (re-issued 2019)
Oum Kalthoum, Alf Leila we Leila أم كلثوم – ألف ليلة وليلة, Alf Leila we Leila, 1969
Eli Keszler, Rot Summer Smoothes, Icons, 2021
Barrington Levy, The Vibes is Right, Here I Come, 1985
The Durutti Column, Sketch for a Summer, The Return of the Durutti Column, 1980
Lion, You’ve Gotta Woman, But Do I, 1975
Pooka, Sex On, Graham Robert Wood, 1995
Quincy Jones, Summer in the City, You’ve Got it Bad Girl, 1973
San Sebastian Strings, You Even Taste Like the Summer, The Sea, 1967
Cathy Claret, Le Lundi Au Soleil, Cathy Claret, 1989
Blue Gene Tyranny, Any Fine Afternoon (1983), Degrees of Freedom Found, 2021
Sun Ra Arkestra, The Satellites are Spinning / Lights on a Satellite, Swirling, 2020
The Awakening, Glory to the Sun, Mirage, 1973
Jon Hassell, Nightsky [the living city], City: Works of Fiction, 1990 (re-issued in 2014)