Show Notes
'Dawn of Individuation' launches Season 3 of Drifter's Sympathy by grappling with the etymology of nostalgia as an 'acute form of homesickness'. Its a mellow opening that digs into the initial chance you get to invent yourself at age 13, the mating rituals of junior high school and the vanity that drives one to flip a penny into a water fountain and pray to god earnestly for popularity and affirmation. Turning more serious at the end, we address the moment you become truly molded as a teenager and the initial set of decisions one makes that will damn them towards their future self forever. Hearing Dinosaur Jr.'s first record begins to change Emil’s mind completely by confronting him with the idea that art 'might actually be about what your really going through, rather than what you want people to think'. This is the moment we perceive the power of art as it radicalizes the child mind that was previously being trained to manipulate their appearance for other's affirmation. By the end, Dawn of Individuation becomes a love letter to the power and beauty of what skateboarding and underground music can present to a kid by positing the idea of total independence to their mind. Like the previous seasons of Drifter's Sympathy, the first episodes roll back the clock to early life and then crawl up closer to current times, winding thru the stories of Emil's 3 guru's and the various upsets that were alchemically turned into pieces of the puzzle of his huge body of artwork over the last few decades. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
More from Emil Amos' Drifter's Sympathy
The British prog greats "T2" are a legendary footnote in the record collecting world... a tragedy-tinged, kind of 'what-if' band that still commands a small cult of fans. But lesser known are the various offshoots of their leader, Peter Dunton. This is a very special man with an odd, gnome-ish voice who created a uniquely holy atmosphere in his work. And while he's technically a "footnote" entity for most diggers, he remains an island of greatness with his own blueprint that seems to stand calmly within the storm of the 60's alone.
In a throwback to the very first Drifters season's atmosphere, this episode travels back to HIGHSCHOOL to unravel our subcultural origin story and sift through the clues of what made us the way we are. While recently on a sabbatical in Chicago to make the new Holy Sons record, Emil met up with his best friend from 1993, Jacob Ciocci, who's now become a professor of Computer Art and who'd initially drawn all of Emil's first solo show flyers back when they were kids.
This episode of Loner Legends is one of the most important casts in this series because we get to bring a true punk god back from the dead, honor his complexities and raise him up to his rightful place in history. Adrian Borland sat side by side with Robert Smith in the mission to refine and define the landscape of post-punk... but one boy ended up changing the world and the other was locked away in a madhouse.
The third installment of the MOVING TO PORTLAND Trilogy bares the accidental creation of the band GRAILS, their first show and first recording... but the task of it brings some seedy characters into the mix. Emil begins recording a record called "I Want to Live a Peaceful Life" with his new friend Pat and things wobble forward into a very emotionally opaque horizon.
Drifter's Sympathy returns with the first episode of SEASON SEVEN called 'Lords of Selfish Music'!