Dickens of a Blog – The third iteration of Doug Bolden's various thoughts and musings.

To counter yesterdays’ [somewhat ironic] song about coming of age, let’s continue Durry week with a song about being stuck in between:

This song is in between their two albums and shows some degrees of transition between those two moments. Surburban Legend grew out of a few years of singles and shifts. By contrast, This Movie Sucks was a year of a much more concentrated effort.

And, again, in the middle, is a song about feeling like you are supposed to still be a kid when you are also expected to be an adult:

I love dungeons and dragons
In the basement with my friends
Everybody’s got commitments
It’s getting hard to plan

And everyday I’m playing dress up
Go to work and play pretend
That I grew out of it
But I can’t

We’ll be
Teenagers forever
But not forever young
Always on the cusp of growing up
But it’s never quite enough

Absolutely wonderful stuff.

By the way, don’t think I mentioned this yet, but Durry has a Bandcamp page.

My Music Video Picks [MVP] is a series of posts highlighting various music and dance videos from Youtube. No particular schedule (sometimes lots, sometimes little) though it started as “daily”. It might not even all be music or dance videos. Absolutely picked by me, though. Usually I have to like both the song and the video, but we’ll see.

You can see at least the most recent songs here: [Doug’s] Music Video Picks [Youtube Playlist]. Size of that list will change as the mood strikes. Playlist might contain spoilers for unpublished posts. Just enjoy.

7thVega Lyrics added to a new shared folder…

By Doug Bolden

On 2026-08-19

In Music

A couple of weeks ago, Youtube decided I really, really needed to be listening to 7thVega.¹ And while I am glad it did, I can’t really remember the ‘Tube pushing multiple videos and shorts by a band to which I had not listened before.

After a few songs, though, I was really digging their neo-Tokyo-City-Pop vibe mixed with a few harder tracks and regularly laced with a bit of sexy/romantic imagery and I bought their album, Princess, and a few singles. Since I was right in the middle of kicking off my still-massive lyrics project, I figured they would make a good guinea pig. Only, for whatever reason, their lyrics were not consistently in any database I searched.

And that’s the story of how I spent four hours building from disparate sources original Japanese lyrics, syncing the lyrics (I only found three or four previously synced and not necessarily greatly so), and then translating a decent chunk of 7thVega’s music.

Not all, mind you. I am definitely missing some.

The above screenshot, taken from “Sparking” (きらきら), is there because after I got done I was thinking about sharing a blog post along the lines of “TFW you spend four hours building up a personal lyric database for 7thVega”.

Only I meant it in the vibe of the video — where she is smoking in the Ben-Affleck-meme mood — and realized that precise screenshot with “Your eyes are sparkling” and that picture might come across as…out of context.

I also realized it might be nice to share the lyrics in some way where I take no ownership of the lyrics but just have some LRC files for those who might also want them synced. WITH my translations for now.

So here is a side project: Doug Shares LRC Files He Worked On. Once I figure out how that actually works rather than just guessing what its like to share a consistently updating folder of files, I’ll maybe expand it or add it to the blog or something.

Keep in mind that “my translating” is actually about half done by the band itself and comes from subtitles on their videos blended in with a bit of Doug. Other sources largely include broad Google Translate, a couple of other sides that had some other songs [including one where I had to go into the danged developer’s console to even snag], and breaking down sentences word by word myself and then working backwards to “solve” a few sentences.

I just left the file names to match the iTunes/Apple store naming. Feel free to change them to whatever you like.

If you find this and want to upload it to a broader LRC database I simply ask that you strip out the questionable quality translation first.

I also have gone through and synced Paloma Morphy’s album, the most recent EP by 171, and a few other songs here or there. Will be syncing Sam Vasquez’s new album either today or tomorrow. I’ll add a bit at a time and share as I do.

This might be a sign that someone on 7thVega’s marketing team decided to spend promotional dollars to push out to a marketing demographic that I was somehow part of…for sure. ↩︎

Durry’s “Coming of Age” [MVP #20]

By Doug Bolden

On 2026-08-18

In Doug's Daily Music Video Pick, Music, Music Video

Whoo, 2o+1 of these things.

If you have heard of Durry, you have probably heard of “Who’s Laughing Now?“, their most viral hit, so I am not going to share that one. Instead, I am going to share…

“Who’s Laughing Now?” was a hit in our household, no doubt. I’m almost positive it was the first Durry video I saw and it was a case of instant love. The argument about whether or not to get a face tattoo lives, as the kids say, rent free in my head…at least some days:

However, it was “Loser’s Club” [yesterday’s pick] and “Coming of Age” that were my Durry-songs-of-choice. I played them both a whole lot. I still play them both a whole lot. I have designed entire music videos about “Coming of Age” in my head.

I also like the idea of having two different songs about coming of age stories on this blog.

A lot of what I enjoyed about this one was the subversion of the traditional “coming of age” from a teen to third-life crisis. A resonance, if you will, with the feelings a lot of us were going through post-COVID-19’s initial blast when we were returning to normal and realizing that the normal didn’t have to be precisely the normal and maybe “normal” was a code-word for “abusive relationship with society”…

Back to the rat race run in place. I just spin my wheel till my my next lunch break. And hope it gets better with a five cent raise.

But I can’t stop until I get paid.

I don’t know which is worse, the commute or the hearse. I don’t think that it’s worth it anymore. Sick of living for the paycheck. Blow it on the weekend. I’m giving up and loading up the briefcase.

I should have known better than to think that this could change.

I should have seen the pattern, how disconnected I became.

Climbing that corporate ladder.

If you need somebody to take the blame: you can call me a quitter.

But I’m calling it a coming of age.

Even as a person who was happy with his job — and I would be shocked and awed if most people wouldn’t essentially agree, disdain requires something of a minority condition to sustain¹ — the fun of a certain type of punk attitude is fist-in-the-air, beer in hand, and shouting “FUCK IT” to everything for a full four-minute song.

That kind of joyful rebellion is rampant in Durry and I love them for it.

In the same way that if the shortcut was easy it would just be the way, true disdain requires it to be much more trouble to fix than to let it roll. ↩︎

Ik heb kniepijn

By Doug Bolden

On 2026-08-17

In Daily Life, Health

In a perhaps gentle but unpleasant reminder that I’m a 49-year-old man with the body of a bruised 59-year-old, today my right knee popped out a bit while I was simply walking, slowly, across my kitchen. Hell, at the time I might have been standing still.

Time flies into a blur when you are wincing in pain.

For those checking records, this is not the knee that had surgery. This is my emotional support leg that had to do heavy lifting for four years while I relearned walking and has suffered quite a bit for it.

Joy.

Image Credit: https://unsplash.com/photos/patch-for-the-wound-father-wearing-a-red-watch-on-his-hand-preparing-the-patch-for-the-wounded-knee-X5WMtzlJn44

The Second Performer of the Week’s performer is… Durry. Let’s start with “Loser’s Club” [MVP #19]

By Doug Bolden

On 2026-08-17

In Uncategorized

Couple of notes about the series:

Despite my initial plan, most likely going to skip the “performer of the week” thing for at least one week after this one just so I can get more backlog out.
The link I copy and pasted for the all posts up until now were slightly malformed in that they came from Youtube but somehow I copy and pasted them wrong. Depending on the browser, and Youtube’s mood, it might work or might not work. Those should all be fixed now with the corrected link that shows up with this one.

It had to happen eventually but there was going to be music added to this that is not Japanese in origin. The honor goes to Durry with their 2021 song, “Loser’s Club”:

Look, I listen to a lot of Japanese Alternative Rock and Shoegaze but it’s less that it is the Japanese (though I appreciate that, as well) and more that I like a particular type of music. This morning, unrelated to this, I was trying to think up a way to describe it and this is what I came up with:

I like alternative rock music where the voice is another type of guitar and the lyrics are the right amount of ironic. Where I can listen to the lyrics closely and really enjoy them but I can also tune them out and treat the track like a instrumental with an almost subliminal sense of introspection. My favorite music is the bit where both truths are true at the same time.

Durry I think fits this. I love a lot of Durry lyrics. I love the Durry siblings’ singing. I also just like the song as a whole, as a vibe.

They have done some creative marketing and video design but for the start I thought it was good to go back five years ago to a brother-and-sister duo on a merry-go-round in what I assume is their local park. In what must of have been the waning days of COVID lockdowns and that broad hope folks were feeling in the 2021 summer. In that light, lyrics like this just resonate, you know?

I said this time last year
that we’d be gone but we’re still here
Just waiting for our turn to go
but no one seems to notice
We’re still swimming upstream with the best of us
Another summer passes by
like water through our fingers
Crow’s feet creep a little deeper,
creasing like a piece of paper
But origami never seemed so beautiful

NOTE: the “swimming upstream” line which is a bit awkwardly given in the video (and the original version of the song) does not actually feature in the album version of the song. I think it was the only cut line but honestly I have not fully double checked.

It is a shockingly simple video to make but both of them are so damned gorgeous and seem to be having so much fun.

Fun which does not forget to inject a bit of irony…

What’s the point of living
if you never strive for more?
But I’m not keeping score

This will be a bit of spoilers for the tracks I will pick but some videos that I won’t be featuring this week that tap into the “just a couple of siblings having fun” vibe if you want more of that include:

My Music Video Picks [MVP] is a series of posts highlighting various music and dance videos from Youtube. No particular schedule (sometimes lots, sometimes little). It might not even all be music or dance videos. Absolutely picked by me, though. Usually I have to like both the song and the video, but we’ll see.

You can see the most recent songs here: [Doug’s] Music Video Picks [Youtube Playlist]. Size of that list will change as the mood strikes. Playlist might contain spoilers for unpublished posts. Just enjoy.

Turkey asks you please leave his toe-beans alone…

By Doug Bolden

On 2026-08-17

In Daily Life

This is Turkey…

He is asking you…begging you… please do not play with his toe beans.

But then this is the temptation…

Sleepy boo…

200 Days Later…

By Doug Bolden

On 2026-08-15

In Reading

I apparently skipped the 700 Day mark so the previous 600 Day post would be my last check in. I feel like the subsequent 200 days have involved a lot more books than the previous 100 days.

I feel well-read for 2026 at this point.

Summer heat this past month has slowed me down a fair bit but the itch to ramp back up has been brewing again.

Tonight, though, I am going to watching horror movies and then read some more of the Tales from the Gas Station series.

A perhaps bright(er) future? Brandy Senki’s “No More” [MVP #18]

By Doug Bolden

On 2026-08-14

In Doug's Daily Music Video Pick, Music, Music Video

It is dumb hot in Belgium today and I’m ready to sit down with an iced tea in front of a fan and watch TV with Kaz so I’ll keep this pretty quick. The final entry in the Brandy Senki week of MVP is “No More!“:

I’ve been pretty sure I was going to end with this one from the beginning but as I went through each of the other posts I realized it was increasingly fitting. We’ve seen the heartbreak of goodbye with “Last Live,” the fear of growing up with “Coming of Age Story,” and multiple takes on toxic love but “No More!” stands out as a video where the band says, well, no more.

Now, how well the “won’t look back” of the lyrics will actually stick…

…we’ll see whenever they get around to writing a second album or new EP but for now I want to choose to believe it.

For at least this moment, Brandy Senki is taking full control of their destiny and hopefully are having fun doing it.

You also get an entire Instagram Reel of photos flashing by a light speed. You can slow it down if you want to see them but sometimes its fun to just let your brain pick things out over a few watches.

Next week will be another Band Week and yes I know which one, but let’s see which one it is next Monday.

My Music Video Picks [MVP] is a series of posts highlighting various music and dance videos from Youtube (usually). No particular schedule (sometimes lots, sometimes little). It might not even all be music or dance videos. Absolutely picked by me, though. Usually I have to like both the song and the video, but we’ll see.

You can see the most recent songs here: [Doug’s] Music Video Picks [Youtube Playlist]. Size of that list will change as the mood strikes. Playlist might contain spoilers for unpublished posts. Just enjoy.

Love as a nightmare… Brandy Senki’s “27:00” [MVP #17]

By Doug Bolden

On 2026-08-13

In Doug's Daily Music Video Pick, Music, Music Video

It was a pretty tight toss-up between this one and “The End of the F***ing World” but ultimately the penultimate video for this week is Brandy Senki’s “27:00”:

Fun fact, this might have been the first video of theirs I put into any sort of playlist. It’s the only one in the “old” music playlist, I think, before sorting it out this year to be more like an archive with an more active “current music video playlist” on top.

Moving on, this one beat out “End of F***ing World” — which is good, too — because the “ooo ee oo oo aa ee aa aa” hook is damned infectious and because it has a bat puppet and bat puppets always win.

While both videos are snippets from dark urban tales (one retro to the early 90s/00s, the other more the diner era), both songs talk about relationships as a kind of nightmare. Not necessarily one from which you want to escape, but ones that definitely haunt you. On good days, in good ways. On others, maybe most days, maybe not so much.

In both, there is a fragility in strength in the central voice. She declares she will be strong enough to withstand a terrible relationship and perhaps strong enough to leave.

As an older man from a part of the world where terrible relationships are the norm, I vote leave.

Funnily enough, there is another song, “Nightmare-ish“, which by title and by lyrics fits right along with the vibe of these two. In fact, the lyrics more directly reference horror themes. The video, however, is absolutely chill.

One more video. Three (maybe four) strong candidates. Which one will make it to round out Brandy Senki week? Which band is next!?

TUNE IN!

My Music Video Picks [MVP] is a series of posts highlighting various music and dance videos from Youtube (usually). No particular schedule (sometimes lots, sometimes little). It might not even all be music or dance videos. Absolutely picked by me, though. Usually I have to like both the song and the video, but we’ll see.

You can see the most recent songs here: [Doug’s] Music Video Picks [Youtube Playlist]. Size of that list will change as the mood strikes. Playlist might contain spoilers for unpublished posts. Just enjoy.

Past the half way mark already? Dang! Anyhow, Brandy Senki’s “Box of Stockholm” [MVP #16]

By Doug Bolden

On 2026-08-12

In Doug's Daily Music Video Pick, Music, Music Video

I’m already on day 3 (of 5, no way I’ll wrap this up sooner for this band) and could almost stretch this out for every video in their catalog but will lock down just a bit. So, for today, let’s do “Box of Stockholm“:

For a couple of reasons. 1: It is perhaps the most aesthetically different of their videos. 2: It comes pretty close to telling a cohesive story. The video and the song.

You do get a bit of storytelling with “Tears Falling into Red Wine” but knowing as I do what the final pick will be, this one hits a little more roughly and shows just a bit of immaturity in the structure in which I mean as a compliment. Some songs are better when they stray.

With lyrics like… (translated)

He gives me bread
I confirm his love
Hostage negotiator
Don’t interfere now

…the mind starts to wonder if this is just a playful punk song about being held hostage and undergoing Stockholm Syndrome? Or is it about a relationship in general?

Or, with lines like…

Let me play the victim
Sincerity is an impurity
The tragic heroine in a novel
I’m sure she’s pretty
I want to die for art

…is it maybe a tongue in cheek discussion of being a tragic artist in general, starving for your art?

It’s fun, depressing, and slightly frayed. With what I think is the only shootout in a Brandy Senki video.

My Music Video Picks [MVP] is a series of posts highlighting various music and dance videos from Youtube (usually). No particular schedule (sometimes lots, sometimes little). It might not even all be music or dance videos. Absolutely picked by me, though. Usually I have to like both the song and the video, but we’ll see.

You can see the most recent songs here: [Doug’s] Music Video Picks [Youtube Playlist]. Size of that list will change as the mood strikes. Playlist might contain spoilers for unpublished posts. Just enjoy.