Paul Simon and Integration Vs. Visitation

I've been having a hard time writing about Paul Simon's self-titled record. It's something that just snuck up on me. But not in a fast sneak, in a very slow and deliberate sneak. Where it had been nuzzled up in my lap for months and months, and I never noticed. It has slowly become one of my favorite albums. Which is an odd thing, because I'm not the hugest Paul Simon fan. I think he lost the wheel after a few albums into his solo career. I don't like Graceland, I'm willing to give it another couple of chances, I just think his songs are best when they have some space for them to move their elbows around. Graceland is just too busy and cluttered. I don't know, maybe not, I'm working on it. 

Paul Simon is a horse of a different color, though. It's relaxed, confident vibe make it perfect for just about any time. Perfect for Sunday morning's breakfast, late late late Friday night's "just this one last record", weekday afternoon's laying around. The songs are well built, the melodies inbed themselves deep in your humming veins and your whistling capillaries. There something about a song like "Peace Like A River" that is just so open to interpretation. In Simon's hands it's the sound of being content, maybe. He's still gonna be up for a while. Is that an invitation, or a threat? Spoon have recently tackled this song and made the "I'm gonna be up for a while" line sound more threatening, especially when they start pounding away at their instruments after each little part. 

As I've had some time to think about it, taking a little lunch break in the middle of writing this, my problem with Graceland might be the impression I've always had about it being a particularly egregious example of the 1980's musical colonialism. Some bands, well, one band, the Talking Heads, managed to pull this off integrating the music of other cultures into their music while maintaining their prevailing artistic themes. On Graceland Paul Simon sounds more like a musical tourist. Paul Simon songs with South African music attached.  (Some bands since have been more adept at achieving a positive balance of integration versus visitation, Sea And Cake and Vampire Weekend being two of the best examples.)

Things I'm Enjoying Now

So, it's been quite some time since I last wrote a blog post, since June, in fact. I'm sure there are reasons I could give, outside of being terribly busy getting married, working, enjoying married life etc. But the fact of the matter is that my profession allows me a good bit of free time that I've just kind of wasted. After getting married, I invested all of my alone free time into being obsessed with the election. Which was awesome. Getting married and getting Barack Obama into the White House have been two high points of my life, two of the happiest days in my life yet. All in the same year, no less. 

Somehow, I've got to get back into blogging, with the election over, there's only so much information I can get about politics now. Unlike during those feverish months before, where I would visit Talking Points Memo four or five times a day. So here is my attempt to dry out from a bad case of Election Fever. A return to blogging, or more appropriately a dip of my toe in to the blogging waters.

So to steal the entire premise of Nick Hornby's "Things I'm Reading Now", here are some things I'm enjoying now...

1. Orion (The Constellation)

Orion hangs over my house in the fall and winter. Whenever I walk my dog, Bean at night, I see a few stars that break through the light pollution that comes with living smack dab in the middle of a mid sized city. But on my way back to my house, I see Orion hanging over the house, on his side. Something is so entirely beautiful about this constellation and it's reliability, hanging over the house I've shared with my wife for almost four years (we've lived together for much longer than we've been married two months in four days). It's been the longest sustained period of happiness in my life. Which brings me to my next thing I enjoy, which should have been number one, that is, if this list was in any particular order.

2. My Wife (Amanda Given)

Being married is awesome. If only for the fact that I now get to call Amanda "my wife". And "the missus" and all other fun permutations thereafter. I can't say that things are so different from the almost four years previous. I've felt the same way about this woman since day one. My friend, Melissa recently asked me how long Amanda and I had been living together, and when I told her how Amanda and I got together in the end of February 2005, and moved in to this same house that Orion hangs over that April. She slanted her mouth and said "geez, that was a little risky," and I guess when you think about it, objectively, from the viewpoint of a passive narrator, that story sounds a little crazy. But I hadn't been so sure of anything in my life. I knew I'd spend the rest of my life with Amanda from that very moment we kissed in the empty bus station at 5 in the morning. "I had never been so sure about anything in my life," is what I told Melissa. And I meant it, and I mean it. I love my wife.

3. Popless on The Onion AV Club and by extension minor league music, and it's ability to make an imprint on your life.

At the same time I hatched the itty bitty egg that couldn't, The Red Skull, Noel Murray started Popless, an excellent column on the always excellent AV Club with a very similar, though much more devoted premise. The Red Skull was made shortly before, when I really look at it, was the catalyst for the waning of my interest in blogging, Amanda getting hit by a drunk driver. I guess maybe certain things seemed a lot less important. Also, there was the Hatchet folding as an unintended side effect of that man's drunken, reckless, harmful behavior. So, I lost some of the motivation for my writing. Anyway, entirely too personal aside over, The Red Skull was my attempt to get some of the bloggers and other writers I knew to write about the old music they enjoyed, whatever it was, as long as it wasn't new. I only got the very game, and very great Marco to join me on my mission, and he did a much better job than I, in my opinion. The superior Popless and Murray have kept up with it's premise, exposing me to some things I'd slept on or reminding me how great some things were (The Who and Pete Townsend). My favorite part of each column, though are The Stray Tracks, where he picks out songs from his ipod that he wouldn't want to comment on the artist's entire output, but just on this one, great song. Ranging from bands like Thunderclap Newman, whose "Something In The Air" has been abused in snippet form in sixties/seventies movie montages for years. Hearing the full song for the first time was a revelation! What a wonderful song, what a great band! Then there were little bits by nineties indie-rock also-rans, like Unrest and Versus. Oh, how wonderful Versus were. Little indie songs with a guitar god busting out in the middle of these little songs to lay some knowledge on the cross-armed crowds. I've threatened it before, but a nineties version of Nuggets should be compiled, and it should be called "Lint". Almost all of those garage bands on Nuggets were on independent labels, which subsided until the mid eighties, and really flowered in the nineties. It should be done!

4. "How Long Do I Have To Wait For You?" by Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings

The perfect Sharon Jones song. Back on Nov. 4 when the networks called it for Barack, the bar we were at went crazy, it turned into a dance party, and the song that kicked it off was this absolutely funky and absolutely appropriate number. This song will be played at every party I throw from here to eternity.

5. My nephew William Sergio Becom.

Sergio has just recently joined the family, shortly after I did in an official capacity. Sergio is just about the most awesome baby in the universe. And man, do I want one for our little family over here on Gordon St. He's such a well behaved baby, though. He went with the family down to SC for a wedding a few weeks ago, and was a quiet little guy almost the entire time. He was calm as could be while a band played, uncles, cousins, mothers, fathers, etc. chattered on. I'm looking forward to playing with Sergio and all the other things that come with being an uncle, like staying up till the sun rises getting drunk with him many years from now on a beach week. 

The Shape Of Bagels To Come

It's been quite a long time since I last wrote anything, period. I don't have a terribly glorious reason why, either. I spent a little more than two months of my free time with Grand Theft Auto 4. It was fantastic, an amazing video game from a series that has produced the best video games of the post-Nintendo dominance era. For the most parts, video games have fallen into this shooter/football game rut. The Grand Theft Auto games are pretty much the only ones that ever hold my interest for very long. GTA4, the 6th (or 9th, really) iteration of the series will end up for me, being one of the best entertainment experiences of the year. Up there with all the arty movies, and arty music. This being primarily a music blog, I am driven to make a parallel between GTA and the music world.


Lately, I've dusted off my well worn copy of Refused's 1998 album The Shape Of Punk To Come, one of those watershed albums in a genre (hardcore) that I find often gets mired in it's own strictures and it's desire not to mess with a formula that's worked. It's been a problem that's plagued hardcore, and punk in general since it's inception. The high points of hardcore can almost make up for the homogeny of it's ilk, The Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Black Flag, Husker Du, all produced albums that are high points not only of their genres but of their generations. But it's telling that all of those bands moved onto something else, musically. Some with success, some not so much. Minor Threat begat Fugazi, Land Speed Record begat Flip Your Wig, etc. etc.

The Shape Of Punk To Come was a grenade to the face for me in 1998. Amid the dreck that somehow teenagers I knew started calling hardcore (Korn and Limp Bizkit were called hardcore by the unknowing people I was hanging out with at the time). I saw the video for "New Noise" and my mind was blown. It's amazing to even think of a video for a song like "New Noise" even being played in 1998 let alone now, ten years later. I promptly went out and bought The Shape Of Punk To Come. This was punk? Holy shit, what had I been listening to. It was Epitaph, which was throwing all the seeds of this pop-punk emo shit, but I was totally falling for that shit while it was ramping up. And then this came along. So I started digging. I heard Husker Du, I found out what that clip of The Bad Brains that I saw a couple of years before was all about (I wrote a post about that about a year ago). The thing about The Shape Of Punk To Come, though was that it did about a million different things that it's predecessors didn't, or that they hadn't even thought was possible. Violins, vibraphones, upright bass, constantly shifting song structures, burbling techno passages interrupting songs. It's fiery, it's invigorating, it's fucking fun as hell to listen to in the car, all alone, windows down, screaming along.

And sorry to get your hopes up about any return to blogging form, I'm hopping down to Florida Thursday afternoon, I'll be back Monday, with some pictures and such things.

Also, I'd like to happily announce that I've lost 25 pounds. And not as in I was pickpocketed in London, lost 25 pounds.

Crates & Crates: Twenty-Five Miles

The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band- Twenty Five Miles

One of the first moments in my long love affair with soul music started on a trip back from visiting my grandparents in Ohio. I was sitting in the back seat of a rental car, listening to my Walkman. I'd officially exhausted the tapes that I had, and was listening to an oldies station outside of Winston Salem. I heard a song that blew me away, and I couldn't figure out who it was for years. I just remembered the parts about "feet don't fail me now" and "I gotta walk on! ah ah ah ah ah ah ah ah". On occasion I'd remember the song, and search madly for it, quizzing my friend Brian, who was (is) a walking encyclopedia of the type of soul music that would be on oldies stations, and he didn't know what I was talking about either. Years and years pass, haunted by this song, only remembering the urgency and gritty feeling of the song, and it's aforementioned lyrical tidbits.

Then one afternoon, I bring home In The Jungle, Babe by The Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band. This was right after Amanda and I moved in together, so I'd say right around three years. It was a perfect find for my fledgling vinyl collection. The 103rd Street Band is probably most popular for "Express Yourself" (which isn't on this record). There's an amateurish nature to the band's recordings, Charles Wright's voice cracks like a drunken hobo, the band plays way too fast, but all that makes their sound all the more exhilarating.

And on the second side of In The Jungle, Babe, I heard it. "Twenty Five Miles", even faster, even more urgent than I remembered it being. There it was, this moment that led me into loving soul music, this moment that I couldn't even explain to anyone, and here it was. I was so happy to finally hear this song that I'd been thinking of for years.

So, years pass, I occasionally listen to the album now and again, and get slapped in the face by the greatness of "Twenty Five Miles". Today, I decided that it'd be good to bring this song to Beneath The Underdog, inspired by my "Compared To What" post from the other day. I decided to do some similar research on the song, to find that this wasn't the version I heard on the outskirts of Winston-Salem that night so long ago. I must have heard Edwin Starr's version, which was the original. Here was the line about "feet don't fail me now" which wasn't in the 103rd Street version. I think I like 103rd Street version more than I do Starr's, not to discount Starr's, it's just that The 103rd Street band tear it to pieces.

Crates & Crates: Compared To What

Les McCann & Eddie Harris- Compared To What

Went record shopping today a few days ago, and picked up a few really great things. I found what has been a holy grail of sorts for me since I've had a record player, The Swiss Movement by Les McCann and Eddie Harris. It has what is hands down my favorite soul-jazz song, "Compared To What". I first heard a few seconds of this song in Casino. Just this short burst of Les McCann shouting "GODAMMIT! Tryin' to make it real compared to what!" to kick off some scene with Robert Deniro walking through the Casino. It's literally like five seconds before the song fades out, and I was captivated by the anger, frustration, and soul in those five seconds. I didn't hear the full song until years after once we hit the mp3 age. And damn, it's even more impressive than those first few seconds I heard. The lyrics almost read like a lost Dead Kennedys record, ranting against nearly every facet of society, even taking on Christianity, which for the time must have got them their fair share of hassles.

As I was reading over the liner notes to the record, I realized that this song was actually written by someone else beside Les McCann. I had always assumed that this song was half improvised, the anger and vitality of the song is so real that I just assumed that it came up from McCann's boiling guts. It turns out that the song was written by Eugene McDaniels. Eugene McDaniels was a lite r&b singer who soured on America somewhere in the sixties and turned deeply angry and political. He never recorded this song himself, as far as I've been able to find, though he did give it to Roberta Flack to record at around the same time as this recording. Flack's version mellows out the anger, and while good, has nothing on McCann and Harris' version.

So I decided to do some research on McDaniels, he had two albums in the late sixties and was fired by Atlantic reportedly on the say-so of Spiro Agnew. The two albums Outlaw and Headless Heroes of The Apocalypse. They're semi-funky and pretty damn good, from what I've heard of them so far. The lyrics are great, and you can easily draw lines from "Compared To What" to songs like "The Lord Is Black" and "Supermarket Blues". It's too bad that there isn't a contemporaneous version of "Compared To What" by McDaniels. Though I think it really would be hard to top McCann's.

The rest of The Swiss Movement is a great, raw soul-jazz album. McCann doesn't sing outside of "Compared To What" which is unfortunate. The album was recorded live at a jazz festival in Switzerland. McCann and Harris just got together and played without any practice, they just got together and busted out this amazing live album. McCann's piano chords chop out dramatic tension while Harris' saxophone bleats out little solos that he's making up off the top of his head. And in comes the ringer, Benny Bailey. A Cleveland expatriate living in Switzerland, who inserts these amazing trumpet lines into songs whose style he's never even played before. He was more of a "serious" musician, playing for the Swiss radio orchestra. He just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

I'm extremely happy to have finally gotten my hands on this record. I've spent years looking for it and have finally gotten my hands on what I've been looking for here. And I was not disappointed at all. And as with all good albums worth their salt, this has sent me on a new quest, to get my hands on those two Eugene McDaniels records. And probably some more McCann records with his singing.

Check back tomorrow or Monday for some stuff from this warped Bob Dylan bootleg I found for a dollar a while back.

Also bought:
Badfinger- Magic Christian Music
Paul Butterfield Band- s/t
NRBQ- At Yankee Stadium

Badfinger

So, I spent the afternoon scouring the shelves of the reputable and slightly less reputable shops in town that sell records for anything from the original Badfinger lineup. I was smacked in the face yesterday by the greatness of "No Matter What", as I documented in yesterday's post. I was bound and determined to find anything from "Magic Christian Music" to "Head On" but I came up pretty much emptyhanded. (I did see Magic Christian Music at Nice Price, but skipped it in the hopes of finding No Dice or Straight Up at Schoolkids, which I didn't so, you could say that was a mistake.)

So, I just finished downloading a handful of songs off of Soulseek, just to satisfy my curiousity about this band. To see if they're as good as that one 7" was. So far, so good. So far in my research about the band, I'm not seeing the kind of rhapsodizing about Badfinger that a band in a somewhat similar position (albeit with a lot less money behind them) Big Star. Not to discount Big Star. It's just that Badfinger are just as good if not better in some aspects, and seem completely overlooked. So, once I get my hands on one of their albums, look forward to a write-up about it over at The Red Skull.

Scientology Vs. The Beatles

Isaac Hayes- Something

(this is a twelve minute song, so it's a bigger sized file, just to warn you)

Isaac Hayes is many things, a composer, a Scientologist, a chef, a singer, the man wrote some of the best songs from the Stax label, and man, he could turn someone else's song on it's ear. Today's download is Hayes' take on George Harrison's "Something". A song that made it's rounds in the r&b world (another notable cover is by Ray Charles).

Here Hayes tacks on an extra nine minutes to the original three of The Beatles version. Female back up singers, electric violin, and big horn sections push the song into the outer reaches of soul music. Chants of "the girl has got something" are the only things to vaguely remind you of where the song started off. It all comes crashing down on itself at the end, the band reaches this euphoric state chasing after the screeching electric violin. It's as if even the band forgot where it was, until the guitarist fades out with that familiar reverbed part at the end of the original.

By the way, I'd appreciate any feedback on how this whole mp3 thing is working out. Are the downloads fast enough? Are they actually working, for that matter?

C-Sides Part Two

Badfinger- No Matter What
The Box Tops- Sweet Cream Ladies, Forward March
The Arbors- The Letter

Earlier this morning I was documenting my journey through my soon to be father in-law's stack of 45s, and I promised to return with more about what I found in there. It's a kind of weird idiosyncratic selection, though it hews towards the lite rock side of things, with a few novelty records thrown in. All together, I culled twenty songs from quite more records than that. Outside of what I've already discussed in the previous post, I was absolutely floored by Badfinger. Why have I been sleeping on this band. I've heard "No Matter What" before, but damn. Hearing it again, I'm just floored by how good this song is. It's just a flat out pure pop song, powerful and compact. Immediate research is pending, I'll probably swing by Amanda's store and pick up whatever I can find of theirs. Though I'm slightly weary because "No Matter What" is actually the b-side on this 7". The a-side is a meandering song that screams "CONCEPT ALBUM!" called "Carry On Til Tomorrow".

A b-side to The Allman Brother's "Ramblin' Man", "Pony Boy" is flat out transcendent for a band like The Allman Brothers. It's a Dickie Betts number, so it's much more country and not so jammy. It's langorious and relaxed, it just unfolds perfectly for a Sunday morning with coffee and an oatmeal themed breakfast bar.

The last one I'll mention is Tiny Tim's "Fill Your Heart" covered later by David Bowie on Hunky Dory. It's the b-side to "Tip-Toe Through The Tulips", but far less gimmicky by a mile. Tiny Tim cuts out the fluttering affectations of the latter and sings in an almost baritone. Which is much closer to his actual voice as I learned from an interview with him on Fresh Air I heard a few years ago.

I'm going to spend the rest of the afternoon putting records onto the computer. Right now I'm doing the Eccentric Soul record Belize City Boil-Up, which is a flat-out amazing compilation of funk, soul, calypso, and reggae informed music from Belize. After that is this fantastic Issac Hayes record with a twelve minute long cover of "Something". It's one of the craziest Beatles covers I've ever heard. (Look for that and more mp3 downloads coming soon!)

C-Sides

I'm spending this morning working through this stack of loose seven inches that we got from my future father in-law last year. At the time I think my stereo was out of commission, so I couldn't listen to any records. They got shelved to the side and I put off digging through them for a while. Not all of it is exactly gold, some stuff is terribly dated, or just terrible. Like, say, I can't fucking stand the Stone Poneys. Bands with poor grammar only get a pass when they're excellent. Sorry, Linda Rondstat. There has been a few pieces of gold scattered about, though. Like an excellent lite-rock cover of "The Letter" by The Arbors. They slow the song down with a latin-tinged loping acoustic folk guitar and smooth, sedate vocals. Halfway through the song, it drops everything and starts with some ELO style harmonizing then stumbles back into it's original setting.

And speaking of The Box Tops, there was an excellent late period 45 of theirs that sounded like a lost Big Star session. Until I dug into The Box Tops further than "The Letter" I couldn't make a connection between The gruff urgent man behind that song and the much smoother voice behind Big Star.

Let's see, what else is there, a condensed version of the theme for "The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly". Sam The Sham and The Pharaohs, "Wooly Bully" which I always forget how great and fun that song is. It was a disappointment to hear the b-side being such a blatant rewrite of the a-side. Either that or maybe Sam The Sham just didn't have any writing chops. I was hoping that he'd be more along the lines of Screamin' Jay Hawkins, whose discography is filled with things even more fantastic than his one hit.

Right now I'm listening to this fantastic Supremes song called "Put Yourself In My Place", which I think might have finally sold me on The Supremes. I've spent years on the fence about this group, at first, rejecting the group outright because of how smooth they were. Especially when I first got into soul music. I've always preferred the grittier soul music, Otis Redding over Marvin Gaye, etc. But man, just on a basic level of song, The Supremes' songs were built like The Colosseum, simple but huge, impressive, and enduring.

I'll post more about the songs as I listen to them, at this point, I've covered everything I've listened to this morning, so I'll return with more soon. I'm also going to try posting some of these songs online so you can download them.

I've Had This Dream Before

To further illustrate the greatness of the internet, I was randomly surfing around, saw a local news piece on the "Chapel Hill scene" from the nineties, which led me to a clip of Ian MacKaye chiding the D.C. city council, which led me to a clip of James Brown and Little Richard playing Wheel of Fortune together. Not as entertaining as it could have been, but still, it's completely worth it to get to the very end.

ENGAGED!

Yesterday was a pretty great day, people. Amanda and I woke up down in Holden Beach, walked out onto an impossibly cold beach and took a short walk, surveying the strange mud colored sand that they were using to widen the beach, the wind was refrigerating our extremities. In other words, I wanted the weather to give me a hand with what was supposed to be an idyllic place for me to propose to Amanda on our third anniversary. Well, you go to war with the army you have... I proposed as we were approaching the walk through the new, extremely soft sand (we'd sink to our ankles at certain points). I wonder if any of the workers driving the dumptrucks and backhoes saw me down on my knees.

The weather didn't necessarily improve once we got into Wilmington. But at that point it didn't matter. We got into our fantastic hotel room at The Stemmerman's Inn on Front Street. We walked the streets of downtown Wilmington for a while and then had a fantastic dinner at Deluxe. Which I highly recommend to any readers out there looking for a nice dinner in Wilmington. I had a lime and wasabi (strangely enough, wasabi is not in blogger's spell check) encrusted Mahi Mahi with scallop fried rice, winter vegetables and a chili coconut sauce, which was fantastic. We went there on our last anniversary, and will probably go there whenever we've got some money to blow on great food whenever we're down there.

Well, anyway, enjoy the pictures, and have a great day. I just want everyone to know that I'm extremely happy.

The Dopest, Most Illest Fucking Thing I've Ever Heard

One of my great Internet pleasures over the past year has been The Hood Internet, a blog from a couple of DJs who have been reviving the mash-up. Pitting indie rock tracks against contemporary hip-hop and r&b. Sometimes it's been sublime (the pairing of Broken Social Scene and R. Kelly being my favorite), sometimes not so hot (Panda Bear and Black Rob).

A few days ago, they topped themselves, and anyone else who's ever made a mash-up. (Though that pairing of "Highway To Hell" and "Sexx Laws" was pretty dope, whoever did that.) Putting David Lee Roth's vocals from "Running With The Devil" over the beat of Biggie's "Hypnotize"... damn. I just wanted to share this with y'all.

While I'm recommending mp3 blogs, I'd like to send a shout-out to Soul Sides and Captain's Crate, who have been expanding my horizons with some crazy Japanese funk, the Colombian funk of Phiripos y Los Caribes (my favorite from the two sites so far), and assorted lost soul songs. Soulsides pointed me to this amazing pre-Endtroducing DJ Shadow clip where he ingeniously makes an Eddie Brickell song into the funkiest thing you've ever heard. Which unfortunately is no longer available for download on Soulsides' blog, and not for sale on Shadow's site. So... soulseek maybe? Or I could drop it on a mix CD for you. Anyone want a mix CD? I'm pretty good at making them. Anyone know how I could make an mp3 blog myself, and I can give everyone a mix CD they could download themselves? I don't know how these things work. Anyway. I'm going to try and write about a soundtrack for The Red Skull now, have a good day.

Goodbye, John Edwards.

John Edwards just announced he's leaving the race, and I'm sad to see him go. I've always been a big believer in Sen. Edwards, from the quick responses to my letters when he was in office to his fight against poverty, I've never felt that there were any false notes from him. (The Iraq vote being the one glaring mis-step, which he apologized for unlike someone else I know.)

I'm almost certain that he'll endorse Obama, either that or he'll endorse no one. I can't see him endorsing Hillary at all. Just based on watching the campaign closely since last winter.

Heart's Gone The Color of Coca-Cola

There's been a spat of activity over at the Red Skull blog lately, two new posts from Marco, one new one from me.

I've been going back and listening to some of the music from the turn of the century that I absolutely loved to see if they still stick. Four albums in particular have stayed in basic rotation for the past eight years, (in order of most played) Queens Of The Stone Age R, Mclusky Do Dallas, At The Drive-In Relationship of Command, and ...Trail Of Dead Source Tags & Codes. These four were in constant rotation in my CD walkman when they came out. The Queens album has aged the best, I think, mainly because it's a timeless album. I can see myself driving kids to the museum or the baseball fields whichever they end up choosing, listening to R and skipping over "Feel Good Hit Of The Summer". They may never again reach the heights they achieved here and on Songs For The Deaf, but as long as I have those two albums, I'll be all right.

I went on at length about Do Dallas over at The Red Skull. Relationship of Command has lost some of it's sheen to me only because of how the members of this amazing band completely dropped the ball once they split up. Sparta ended up being real boring, and The Mars Volta, well, I can only listen to one of their albums every three years. They aimed for outerspace and landed on some over the top planet where Rush fans live. The tension between the two creative forces in the band, the post-punk and the weird outerspace music is what made At The Drive-In so compelling. And listening to this album again, it's as exciting as it was listening to it in Derrick's truck as he unexpectedly drove us into a field where the Target in Wake Forest would later be, the high grass hiding the large gashes in the dirt beneath us. Putting us on two or one wheel(s) at a time.

I have a feeling that Source Tags & Codes will end up as one of the best albums of this decade, it's a perfect statement from a band whose ambitions would soon outweigh their abilities. After this album And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead collapsed under their own momentum. Poised to be a Sonic Youth for the new millennium (there's a phrase I haven't used in a while), Trail of The Dead lost the reigns. I hold out hope with every new album they put out, but I think all is lost for these guys. It's a shame, too. It's interesting listening to this album now and seeing it as the most influential album of the lot. Trail Of Dead's sweep and scope informed the Arcade Fire and numerous other bands of the moment.

While I was writing this, I noticed that each of these bands has ended up disappointing me in the long run, Era Vulgaris was a half baked attempt at regaining their fun side which QOSTA abandoned for the interesting Lullabies To Paralyze. Mclusky broke up, and I haven't heard anything from their new band Future Of The Left yet. At The Drive-In broke up and followed their respective muses to less interesting ends. And Trail Of Dead, well, they made one perfect album.

Motherfuckin' Hillary Clinton

I think I've made it pretty clear throughout my blogging history that I'm an Obama man. To me he's clearly the best candidate the Democrats have had since... well, Bill Clinton. One problem among many that I have with Hillary Clinton is that she assumes she should have the presidency based solely on her "experience" as a Clinton. I believe I posted a video a while ago where Meredith Vierra broke that "experience" story into pieces. Essentially pointing out that Hillary's "experience" as First Lady included visits to foreign countries with Sinbad.

So, it dispirits me when my blogging compatriot, Marco, is a Hillary man. As is the case with about 65% of my replies to his blog posts, this one ran a little long, so I transferred it over here.

In his post, Marco was talking about Michelle Obama (and the Obama camp in general) have reacted to The Clinton's attacks of recent.

But you know what? If Obama wins the Democratic nomination, you
can bet the Republicans will do this and much much worse. Hell, they’ve
already started bullshit rumors about Obama being some stealth terrorist or some
shit. They will probably be aided by a complacent media, always eager to
show they can take down a Democrat. So really, unclutch your pearls.
Get excited when the real mud starts to fly.

Okay, so, I'll agree with you on the whole oh "woe is me" reaction. It's working out for Obama though, the media is buying his framing of the situation, so that works for my man. I do however have a problem with the Clinton's "attacks". Some to most are unfounded bullshit. i.e. when they attack Obama for voting "present" on pro-choice bills that came up in Illinois. A little background on this and you'll see that was NARAL and Planned Parenthood's directive for these bills to vote "present" to force more moderate democratic members to vote yes.

The Rezco thing reeks of small time bull crap that the Clintons and any other person with a law degree running for office occasionally runs into. Add to that, Hillary was on the board at WalMart. So, who's worse? One slumlord or America's slumlord?

The excuse of starting baseless attacks against a fellow democrat just because someone in the other party would do it is bullshit. But then again, I guess that she used the same mindset when voting for the war in Iraq, the Patriot Act (twice), and the Kyl-Liberman act.

And this brings me back to experience. This is the experience Hillary is touting. She's been hawkish as all get-out. Now, where is this coming from? Is this being an actual war-hawk? If so, Hillary is dangerous as president. We might end up in Iran or Syria if she follows this muse for real. The other possibility for the motivations to her experience is that she's an opportunist whose rhetoric matches the direction of the wind. That's not exactly leadership material to me. Either she's steps away from running with Joe Lieberman as her VP and making Iraq the 51st state or she's flaky as all get out.

I guess the most important question is, will she actually get us out of Iraq? Or is that just something she's saying to get into office?

Bill and Hillary are playing this scorched earth game, where there's no way that anyone else could get the nomination based on the impression that they wouldn't be there to help in someone else's general election campaign. It's them or no one. It's a chicky drive with the voters and the party, and it's shameful.

We're still boys Marco, I just can't get with you on this Hillary Clinton thing, sorry.

I did read your post about Amy Winehouse though. That shit is tight, I didn't want to believe it when I first heard it. A portion of me still doesn't completely believe it. But you should check out Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings, their new-ish album 100 Days 100 Nights totally owns the Winehouse record. Here's a little taste of awesomeness.

OBAMA!

Oh, what great news we got the other night when we heard that Obama won the Iowa caucuses. Though the caucuses are total bullshit, where votes are garnered with cookies, as I'm told. Then again, I can't be sure if that's just East Coast liberal condescension for the rubes out in Iowa. "Oh, isn't it cute that in their antiquated ceremony they drag people to different sides of the room with the lure of home-made cookies!" Either way, Obama's got himself some momentum heading into New Hampshire, where he'll trounce Hillary Clinton and John Edwards.

I can't help feeling bad for Edwards, who was my choice before Obama announced. I really couldn't stick with him when the most exciting politician I've ever seen joined the race. I'm pretty sure Obama made me cry in 2004 when he gave that keynote speech at the DNC. So, sorry, John Edwards, I think you'd make a great vice president, if you're up for second banana a second time around.


Weirdly, speaking of Vice President, Mike Huckabee when he was on Jay Leno the other night (SCAB!) he said he really liked Obama and compared himself to Obama. Is Huckabee doing some kind of weird political jujitsu where he's aiming to be some whacko Andrew Johnson.

P.S. I found this clip of Hillary's "experience" being dismissed by that lady from The View. Hillary Clinton, traveling the world, breaking down barriers, getting experience with Sinbad. Pssh! Sinbad can be out-whacky-faced by the governor of California! And he calls himself a statesman!

Beneath The New Dog

This is Bruce Springbean, our dog. Bean for short. Our friend rescued him and we just had to take him in. Someone abandoned Bean, but now he has a warm and loving home. Which is very exciting for us, not so much for our cats, though. Bean is a full blooded Shih Tzu, he's two years old and unfortunately very underweight. We brought Bean home the day after Christmas, so he's been a big distraction from what I resolved would be an active time for blogging. Sorry about that, I've made plenty of declarations of this week or that week being the big comeback, very similar to my pronouncements towards the end of poker games at work, you know, ringing in a hollow fashion.

I can't really trace the reasoning behind my, well, I wouldn't call it a writer's block, but that's kinda what it is, isn't it? You know, I want to write, it's not like I have ideas and can't figure out the words for it, I just haven't had any ideas. Though I've stumbled on a few over the holiday. Some stuff that I wanna write about for The Red Skull, namely a review of The Temptations' With A Lot Of Soul. An album I've had for a long while, and whose majesty I realized once I picked up a weird contemporaneous album Temptations In A Mellow Mood where they play without their strengths stranded on an album of showtunes and standards. With A Lot Of Soul is a showcase for the greatest singer the Temptations ever had, David Ruffin. The material is solid throughout, which is a surprise compared to some other Motown albums from the same time that were top loaded with singles and filled out with schmaltzy left-overs.

I'm also going to try and write about Nuggets II, which out of the three Nuggets boxed sets is the hands down best. That'll be an undertaking for sure, though. It's a huge boxed set that I've only gotten halfway through yet. I got it for Christmas from Amanda among other great things, most notably an Xbox 360, a USB Record Player, and an amazing Eccentric Soul record, "Belize City Boil-Up". "Belize City Boil-Up" is a survey of a music that was greatly affected by a mix of Calypso, Reggae, American Funk and Soul music, and Mexican music due to it's fortuitous geographic location.

Well, I'm gonna stop this awkward writing and hope that I can get back in the swing of things. I want to mention that I was inspired to get my ass back into gear by Marco's gigantic output as of late with his best of 2007 posts over at the Midpoint. Well, I'm heading off to ring in the New Year. Unfortunately there won't be any pictures anytime soon, I kinda broke my camera, it's fixable, but that's not gonna happen quickly, unfortunately. I'll probably borrow my brother's camera for the Yo La Tengo concert on the 10th, I would have loved to take my camera to that show though, being more compact and I think it takes better pictures. His camera is no slouch by any means, my camera's just very versatile. So, happy new year, you can look forward to suffering through my resolution to get back into writing more.

Hairway To Steven

So, I'm having trouble getting my shit together to write an actual blogpost. I've been working my ass off at work, hopefully the rest of my customers have finally headed out of town for Christmas, and I can get home early and relax for the next two nights.

This video has been making the rounds, I first saw it on The Onion AV Club's Videocracy. But it's a perfect cover of Stairway To Heaven by an Australian Beatles cover band. Prepare to have your mind blown.

Christmas is soooo close.

Actual blogging coming up tomorrow, for now, I just thought I'd share this video with you.



I'm writing a piece about Christmas music tomorrow.

The 5 Most Disapointing Albums of The Year

5. Queens Of The Stone Age- Era Vulgaris.
After spending years making smart, sexy, and near perfect hard rock albums, QOSTA finally collapsed under their own weight. Lacking in charisma, hooks, and interesting ideas, Era Vulgaris is the half baked skeleton of a good album.

4. Wilco- Sky Blue Sky.
Getting tagged "The American Radiohead" has to be something you'd want to avoid. Otherwise, you wouldn't be able to make albums like Sky Blue Sky. Which isn't a bad album. A little too slick for my tastes, but an enjoyable listen. It just happens to come from a group that I've viewed as one of the greatest bands of the past twenty years. It's just all so underwhelming.

3. The Shins- Wincing The Night Away.
I saw this coming, just not so soon. The Shins rode their AM pop tendencies all the way into being a boring band.

2. The Good, The Bad, And The Queen- The Good, The Bad, And The Queen
Again, not so much of a bad album, as it doesn't measure up to it's possibilities. Paul Simonon from THE CLASH, Tony Allen who drummed on all those amazing Fela Kuti albums, and Damon Albarn, I was expecting a modern day London Calling. All I got was this downbeat reflection on working class England.

1. The Hold Steady- Boys And Girls In America.
That's right, I said it. This album BLOWS. I know this album came out in 2006, it sat perched atop many "Best Of" lists. I didn't get buy it until after it was reccomended so highly, in 2007. So, there's a bit of fudging here, but this is my chance to air this out in public. After reading the breathless reviews of this album, one could imagine The Hold Steady were riding down on golden chariots from Valhalla to single-handedly saving rock 'n' roll. Instead, what you find is the most god awful cheese guitars crashing all over sub par pub rock. These guitars aren't reminiscent of any actual rock group I could think of. It's more akin to the fictionalized sitcom rock group, Jesse And The Rippers. Boys And Girls In America is the most dreadful album I've heard, ever. And my Grandma made me listen to a late period Gloria Estefan album once.

The Voices In My Head Are Telling Me To... Use Febreze?

Well, this is it. Time to give up, the advertisers of the world have just flat out won. They've got their doomsday device, they've flipped the switch, and there's no coming back. Gawker has pointed out that A&E is using hypersonic sound beams (scroll down for product description) in their new advertising campaign. Basically, these speakers shoot sound beams that play inside of whatever surface it strikes, meaning your skull.

They're currently using this gimmick for a show about ghosts, beaming ghost voices into your head. This only being the begining of course. Soon enough, you won't be able to walk down the street without jingles rattling around insdie your dome. Then, let's say the government makes this practice illegal. You step into the district attorney's office to complain about the sounds in your head. How crazy are you going to look.

To me this sounds like horrible news.

There Is No Mention of Rod Stewart

I caught a part of this story which Marco posted about last week while Amanda and I were in Jersey Mike's. To encapsulate for those of you who haven't read Marco's post, this guy calls up 911 in Texas to report a robbery in progress. This isn't happening at his house, but at his neighbors. He tells the 911 operator that he's going over there to shoot these guys with his shotgun, and does it. The kids who worked behind the counter were laughing at the tape of this guy on the news, I think there were gun shots in the background once he walked away from the phone, but I could be inserting that memory myself. I felt chills run down my spine, and had no impulse to laugh. Is laughing wholly inappropriate here, or is it just me?

It reminds me of the scene in No Country For Old Men where Tommy Lee Jones is reading an article about some serial killing couple in California, he quotes the end of the article, "neighbors were alerted when they saw a victim escaping the house wearing only a dog collar". Tommy Lee inserts that they didn't think anything was wrong when they were burying people in the backyard, though. The deputy laughs, and tries to stifle it. Jones tells him it's okay, he had to laugh himself.

Has it gotten so bad that all we can do is laugh, and then laugh hysterically, at such a tragedy. Or am I just being to uptight, having been on the line with 911 myself so recently?

That night has affected me so deeply. It's affected both of us very deeply, and we're still dealing with it. I've had this simmering headache that keeps resurfacing, and my eyelids have these consistent little twitches. Every time Amanda is hurting, or anxious, I think that I could have pulled her more out of the way, that I could have dropped her off in front of the Jackpot, instead of her crossing the street with me.

After my initial attempts to break through Bruce Tedder's door, I lost anger towards the man who hit Amanda. I felt bad for him, thinking how this night would have changed his life forever, in a way wholly different than the way it changed Amanda's or mine. How he was probably in a part of town he didn't know too well, and didn't realize the street he was on dead ended into a parking lot. Then we found out this was going to be his third DUI, and I lost compassion toward him. We received a copy of the police report, saw his blood alcohol level was over twice the limit, and I had no more compassion for this man, none whatsoever. An arrogant bastard who didn't learn his lesson the first two times he got in trouble for drunk driving. Who didn't care, this reaches beyond his bad luck, his not knowing any better, and into hubris, where he deserves everything that happens to him now.

Then last night, Amanda and I were watching one of the most ridiculous movies we've ever seen, Dreamcatcher. In every scene, the preposterousorosity level just ratchets further and further. It operates in a bizarro universe where Tom Sizemore is the straight arrow and Morgan Freeman is the loose cannon. Aliens invade in viral form and then explode out of your ass, and that's only the begining. I'm getting off point though, early in the movie, a character crosses the street and is hit by a car. It was quick and violent, and then there was silence on the other end of the couch. I look over and tears are filling the eyes of the woman I love. And I know who's to blame for this. I know his name, I know his face, and I hate him now.

Amanda Was Hit By A Car

Last night, my girlfriend (whom most of you know) and I were standing on the corner, waiting to cross Hillsborough Street. A drunk driver came barreling towards us, I pulled Amanda out of the way in time for her to only be hit on her side, she escaped with minor injuries. Thank God. She walked out of the hospital last night, and I really haven't slept since.

In some happy news, the article on the local news channel's website says Amanda is 18. Sweet.

An Inconvenient Hoax

Yesterday while visiting my parents, my dad brought up the subject of global warming (I think he's still under the impression that Reagan was right about the cow farts). He brought up this recent study that proved Global Warming was caused by bacteria. I found this hard to believe, and told him I'd look it up the next day and figure out how to refute it. (Details about how the authors were intimidated by the politics of scientists etc. were red herrings of conservative hogwash)*.

A quick Google search of "global warming bacteria" quickly pointed me towards what I thought was the case. It was a hoax. Not only a hoax, but a prank, as the author, David Thorpe puts it, "it was meant to show that some sceptics will uncritically grab any evidence casting doubt on most scientists’ view that human activities are the main cause."

Thorpe made up the scientists who participated in his "study". A quick and easy search of the departments at The University of Arizona shows you there's no "Department of Climatology". Also, the fake authors were not employed by the University. I couldn't find a reply to this incident from UofA, though I don't necessarily blame them, I thought it'd be an interesting thing to read.

*Speaking of conservative hogwash, comedian Rush Limbaugh was fooled by this. Not a hard thing to do, no doubt, but even Rush's "scientist" later apologized for it. I couldn't see if he himself retracted the story, you need to be a member of Rush's website to even see any content, and I'm just too good for that.

Al Gore and Stephen Hawking, still smarter than Rush Limbaugh.

The Red Skull

I've started writing my CCR overview over at The Red Skull. I'm doing an album a day. Well, The Red Skull is up and running O-fish-ally. Just thought I'd let you know, now, I'm gonna go waste time in front of the Playstation with Grand Theft Auto Vice City Stories.

In Which I Outline A Plan For Getting This Blog Back Into Shape

October passed with only four blog posts, sorry about that. I'd like to say that I've been busy. That really hasn't been the case. This wasn't planned but I spent two weeks of October not working. The first week being the wonderful beach vacation that Amanda and I went on. The other week being the time spent in Ohio, then the schedule confluence where this week's days off were at the beginning of the week, compounded with the second half of last week spent in Ohio. So, no real excuse for such a small blogging output.

I've felt like I haven't had anything to write about. A feeling that I'm struggling with as I type this. (I'm hoping that somewhere in the middle of the third paragraph, I get struck with some kind of inspiration). Or maybe shortly after I typed that last period. The song that started after the aforementioned punctuation on iTunes was "The First Few Desperate Hours" by The Mountain Goats. It's hard to do anything but pay rapt attention to Mountain Goats songs, getting entwined in the mess of Darnielle's words. Where conversations and short one act plays bloom fully realized in sparkling lo-fidelity. Then I think about John Darnielle's second life as a music critic, his upcoming book about a Black Sabbath record.

This blog is in it's eleventh month, five months into my blogging, I started getting put to paper by the good people at The Raleigh Hatchet (through no shortage of nepotism, me being the music editor's live-in boyfriend). In that span, I haven't written enough formal reviews (seven pieces published in the Hatchet, three "Red Skull" reviews, and two song reviews). So I think I'm going to start reviewing random things off my record shelves, probably keeping them under the "Red Skull" heading for now. I probably don't have enough time before work to finish whatever review I decide to start once I'm done writing this post, so, expect it on Monday (we're trying to have guests for dinner tomorrow, plus football games) I doubt I'll get a chance to write before Monday afternoon. So maybe out of having a goal or mission or whatever will get me writing more than just music reviews, and I can get this blog back up to at least 20 posts a month. Lofty goal, no?

So, here is a preliminary list of things I want to review.
Tom Verlaine- Words From The Front
Mountain Goats- Tallahassee
Old Time Relijun- Catharsis In Crisis (I'm writing this one for the Hatchet for sure)
Dead Kennedys- Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables
Graham Parsons- Grevious Angel
Heatmiser- Mic City Sons
Honor Role- Album
The Who- The Who By The Numbers
Stevie Wonder- Down To Earth or Live (one of these records have one side that's pretty scratched up, making it pretty unlistenable by half, unless I can find that other half on the internet, in which case I might review both)
Creedence Clearwater Revival- s/t (their first album is a lost masterpiece, if you can call something with Susie Q and I Heard It Through The Grapevine lost... I might just do a whole Creedence overview, that's getting way ahead of myself, though)

Any suggestions as to others I should review would be appreciated. The list will obviously expand, and I'm guessing the first ones you'll see will be the Tom Verlaine and the Old Time Relijun first, unless I really get into the Creedence idea.

**Appendix**
So, as I was getting dressed for work, I got struck with this great idea that pertained to what I've touched on here. To encapsulate it quickly, so I won't be late for work, I want to get all the writers I know to help me turn this idea into a seperate blog. Where writers can write about their favorite records from a critical eye. We'd call the blog The Red Skull, unless someone can come up with a better name, which wouldn't hurt. Anyway, the blog would be dedicated to talking about the music that you're passionate about, not the music that needs promoting because it's coming out in a week, or the band is coming through on tour, which is what I feel like I'm doing sometimes. Though I'm promoting bands that I'm passionate about, still, this would be a different thing, and come from a different place. I'm very excited about it. So, let's get to work, friends.

**Double Appendectomy**
The Red Skull is launched, I'm working on the first review now.

Cuyahoga Falls On Cuyahoga Falls

Here are some pictures from my trip to Ohio last week. It was my first time back in the Akron area, where I lived for the first seven years of my life, in seven years. I went because my Grandma broke her hip, she had recently came out of surgery when we got there. It was not a good trip, I did get some good pictures, though.

I was also going to have some pictures from last night's Scout Niblett show at the Local 506, the douchebag PR guys that told us they had our names on the list didn't come through, so no press for Niblett. Though I do love her new album, and I recently fawned over her latest video, no write-ups, until these PR guys get their shit together.

The Shuffle Game. Round 3.

I was aimlessly clicking around the internet, thinking about my Grandma all laid up in the hospital, and also, how I haven't blogged in a long while. And how it would take something really good to kick me back into blogging gear. (In case you were wondering, my Grandma and Grandpa's house flooded recently when a water main broke, I guess in the basement, details are sketchy... Anyway, while they were moving stuff out of the house into the garage, she tripped and broke her hip and thigh. I'm mulling over ditching work and heading up there with my parents on Thursday).

Oh, right, so something good to kick me back into blogging, Marco has authored another chapter to the Shuffle Game. I think I'll just get right into it.

1.) Describe your first date. Shuffle Says: "Early Grave" by Honor Role
Hah! My first date was with this girl named Jamie. She ended up being a good friend for years afterwards, though our dates were extremely awkward. She would drive me around in her parents huge van, like the kind with felt carpeting and a boat style round window next to the back seat. A few dates in we went to a record store after sitting by the lake for a while, she came around a corner of an aisle, and was surprised to see me in the store, like "oh what are you doing here!? it's so nice to see you!" "um I came here with you, we've been hanging out all day..." Early Grave, indeed.
2.) What is your personal religion?Shuffle Says: "Weird Fishes/Appregi" by Radiohead
Damn. The new Radiohead is so fucking good. Those little fishes on the back of cars means Jesus, right?
3.) What do you think of your current hometown?Shuffle Says: "I'll Cry Instead" by The Beatles
"yes I'm gonna break em in two, I'll show you what a lovin' man will do, but 'till then, I'll cry instead" not sure if that completely sums up Raleigh, or is just an awesome line.
4.) What do you feel guilty about?Shuffle Says: "Rainy Streets" by Superchunk
I'm feeling guilty about Superchunk not having made an album in like seven years.
5.) What embarrasses you?Shuffle Says: "I Will Die 4 U" by Prince
Man, this question has such potential. Let's try another song that might answer it better. How about "Knight Rider" by Of Montreal. I'm embarrassed by my talking car. iTunes doesn't like this question. Next.
6.) What kind of restaurant would you open?Shuffle Says: "Mizu Asobi" by Asobi Seksu
The sprightly Japanese answer to My Bloody Valentine's theme song can mean only one thing "SUSHI"! I've been on a huge Sushi kick of late. I ate at this amazing sushi place in downtown Wilmington called Nina's it was the best sushi I've ever had.
7.) How do you feel about fall?Shuffle Says: "The Sky Is Falling" by Queens Of The Stone Age
Good answer, iTunes. Does that mean we're gonna get rain before the year's over? Hopefully not before the windows in the Saturn are replaced.
8.) What’s your greatest fear?Shuffle Says: "Funeral Song" by Sleater-Kinney
Yeah. That'd be it. Fucking prescient-ass shuffle algorithms.
9.) What’s your biggest weakness?Shuffle Says: "Go With The Flow" by MF Doom
Honestly, this is pretty right on. I might be too laid back about exigent circumstances
10.) What was the last lie you told?Shuffle Says: "Victoria" by The Kinks
"Victoria, was my queen, Viiiiiictorrrrrrrrria!" she never was. Sorry I lied about that.
11.) What’s the biggest thing you learned in school?Shuffle Says: "The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret" by Queens Of The Stone Age
"whatever you doooo, don't tell anyone" it's a good thing to know.
12.) What did you dream your life would be like as a child?Shuffle Says: "Living For The City" by Stevie Wonder
Getting busted as soon as I moved to the big city. What an awesome song.
13.) What was your first serious girlfriend/boyfriend like?Shuffle Says: "Foxy Brown" by The Moaners
That would have been awesome. That would have been terrific. Unfortunately my first serious girlfriend was this goth chick who kept her ex's piss in a big mason jar in her closet. Which I discovered while I was feeding her hamster.
14.) What were you doing 10 years ago?Shuffle Says: "The Heart Of Saturday Night" by Jonathon Richman (Tom Waits cover).
The Jonathon Richman version translates much better to the Saturday night of a troublesome teen than the original, which is better for the late twenties alcoholic on Saturday night.
15.) What will you be doing in 10 years?Shuffle Says: "Hock It" by The Blow
Wow, that doesn't sound like it's gonna be so awesome judging by the title. The lesbians on the prowl at night make it sound a little more interesting.
16.) What does a cry for help from you sound like?Shuffle Says: "Can I Get A Witness" by Marvin Gaye
Best sounding cry for help. ever.
17.) What do you buy at Wal-Mart?Shuffle Says: "So. Central Rain" by REM
Favorite REM song. I don't shop at Wal-Mart, either.
18.) Describe your personal political philosophy Shuffle Says: "The Freedom Rider" by Art Blakey
I'm an old school, seven minute liberal drum solo.
19.) Do You like to travel?Shuffle Says: "Pink Moon" by Nick Drake
Yes. I'm of the generation that can't separate Nick Drake and this song specifically from that fantastic VW ad, which I think is the greatest commercial ever. That commercial made me swoon. This song makes me swoon. This song makes me want to drive out to the country and find lightning bugs right now. I think I'll continue blogging, though.
20.) How do you feel about your coworkers?Shuffle Says: "Masochism World" by Husker Du
Hah! At work I recently compared myself to Michael Jordan when he came back and was on the Wizards and had to carry all those other garbage players. The sous-chef quickly shot back that I was more like Michael Jordan when he played baseball. Touche.

UPDATE: Other blogs participating in the Shuffle Game Jenny and Marco Mike(more to come?)

Random Spirit Lover

Sorry I've been gone for so long. After taking a wonderous vacation, spread over two long weekends, my weeks home were compressed and filled with working and chores and other things that I take more time to do over the course of a full week. So, here's my stab at coming back, reviewing Sunset Rubdown's Random Spirit Lover...

Random Spirit Lover brings you in with a sweet little guitar solo and a piano pounding, setting your expectations for a jaunty little sing along. Seconds pass, and things get dense, and stay that way. It's an album that's thick like a molasses and motor oil cocktail (a molatorhito?). When Sunset Rubdown started out, they (he) sounded like Sebadoh fronted by a Thanksgiving Day David Bowie balloon. All jaunty lo-fi overpowered by Spencer Krug's big emotive voice. Ever since that first album, Snake's Got A Leg, Sunset Rubdown have built intensely ornate additions on top of their foundation. Like Manhattan gargoyles on Lincoln's log cabin.

The whole affair is puddled with pools of reverb. So when all effects are dropped off, like 2/3 of the way through "Upon Your Leopard, Upon The End Of Your Feral Days", and all you hear is Krug, the drums and gentle unadorned electric guitar strum it breaks your heart. Even moreso when he accuses you of "kissing your captor's hands". "Upon Your Leopard..." is a fantastic, towering song that barrels towards and past you, barely giving you time to catch up with it. Almost instinctively you sing along with Krug's "whoah oh oh"'s. They serve almost as reminder to Krug and the band that there are people listening to this record, and it'd be nice to include them in the games they're playing.

"She said ‘My sails were flapping in the wind’, I said ‘Can I use that in a song, she said ‘I mean the end begins’, I said ‘I know, can I use that too?’" There’s something about conversations in songs that I absolutely love. It’s a trick that must be used sparingly and only by someone who knows what he’s doing. Clearly, Spencer Krug is one of those people. The previous quote is dropped in the middle of "The Taming Of The Hands That Came Back To Life", a jaunty little stomper of a song that is more of a narrative where the conversation is part of the story. Whereas "Wicked/Winged Things" is a conversation between two people who’ve seen something they can’t quite explain, like "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover" but completely different.

One thing that definitely sets this record apart from previous Sunset Rubdown albums is how this is not a solo side project anymore. Sunset Rubdown is officially a band, and they're tight and virtousic. Guitarist, Michael Doerkson's feverish solos bring to mind Television's Marquee Moon. Like that 30 year old masterpiece, Doerkson's solos weave together lattice skyscrapers atop the purposefully queasy sea of the rest of the band. Creating an island that floats with no avenues. Krug's lyrics eventually pull up, take you around town in verbal gondolas.

So, after trying to avoid mentioning Krug’s other full-time band, I find myself here mentioning Wolf Parade. Both bands have become leviathans. Muscular and imposing figures, with different compositions. Where Wolf Parade are built like a professional wrestler, Sunset Rubdown is more like one of those mountain climbers that don’t use ropes. More sinew than huge biceps and forearms. Not that one is better than the other, the mountain climber can’t pull off a convincing pile driver, and the wrestler can’t, well, climb mountains. One thing is sure though, they both could kick my ass.

The Most Beautiful Stop-Gap

Hello. Been back from the beach for a few days now, just busy. And when I wasn't busy I was getting my heart ripped out by The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Best book I've read since Middlesex. I've got a few ideas for posts, and maybe I'll get around to writing at least one of them tomorrow before I go to work. Like a post about Deadwood and it's sort of revolutionary twist on standard dramatic forms all within the framework of a Western. (And though I know that Deadwood's been off the air for a while, I just finished watching the DVDs for the first time. So just bear with me.) I also need to write a full review of the new Sunset Rubdown album (awwwesome!) And pictures from the beach. But I think I'll save that for a comprehensive collection of the two weekends at the beach. I'm just too exhausted tonight, but I though I should just pop in, establish that I didn't wash away into the sea.

Posting videos is normally just a stop gap, but tonight I'm posting a very good video. Maybe the best I've posted yet. This is a song by Scout Niblett. I was very underwhelmed by Niblett when I heard her album last year, this new shit, though. Damn. The video reminds me of the hey day of the "alternative rock" videos that MTV used to play. (It's been so long since those hey days, that it's a cliche to even point out that it's a cliche to say MTV doesn't play videos.) Where was I? Oh yeah, when a music video could come on, and unexpectedly introduce some amazing song that breaks your heart. Anyway, just watch it. It's a perfect song. Oh, and it's got Bonnie "Prince" Billy in it. Can't ever go wrong with him.

London Calling

If, at gun point, you were to force me to pick a favorite band, (outside of the Beatles, because that's too easy.) I'd have to say The Clash. Hands down. No one, outside of The Beatles played with such mastery and ferocity at the same time. (And it might sound weird to think of The Beatles as fierce, but listen to how they play, they put everything into their songs). London Calling is my second favorite album of all time (The White Album being #1). As I was walking to work today, I was humming the title track to London Calling, and when I was done with that, I started humming the next song, "Brand New Cadillac". London Calling is the perfect album. While I have more affection for the White Album, it has two weak songs on it. London Calling has none. Not a bum track in the lot.

Anyway, I was just getting all hyped up about listening to London Calling today, and before I did, I stumbled upon this preview for the upcoming Joe Strummer documentary "The Future Is Unwritten". Which made me freak out even more.

I'm going to the beach tonight, so this will probably be the end of blogging for the month of September. I'm looking forward to October.

General Betrayus Petreaus Is A Big Boy

The GALL! The nerve! The utter contempt for other human beings! How dare those commies at MoveOn.org make a bad pun on the wonderful savior of our situation in Iraq's name.

Seriously? This is a big deal? Betrayus? Is a big deal? What a Crock{er}! Oh my God, another pun on another in a long line of stuffed shirts that have periodically come to save Iraq! Wasn't the War Czar supposed to fix everything?

This is slightly old news, the whole ad in the NYT by MoveOn that so offended the fragile sensibilities of the GOP. A true outrage! A pun on some General's name. What a bunch of lilly livered knee jerk liberals conservatives. It seems so out of character for these brave men and women who threw us gallantly unprepared into this war in the first place. Calling us cheese eating surrender monkeys and french during the lead up to the war. Now they're flailing, we're calling them stupid names, and they can't take it. One thing's for sure, when Fox News anchors called us cheese eating surrender monkeys, we certainly didn't call for a CONGRESSIONAL INVESTIGATION! Seriously, what a bunch of little bitches.

I was going to make a long list of all the "mean names" that conservatives have bandied about regarding liberals, that would take too long, and I'd never fall back asleep. (Our cat, Black Sabbath woke us up an hour ago making a bunch of noise, and I haven't been able to fall back asleep yet.) So, instead of the list, I'll just direct you to Media Matters who spend all their time documenting this kind of douchebaggery. So, good night, morning, whatever.

Dead Or Not Dead

Not Dead

In case anyone caught Bush's speach the other day, in reference to the "troubles" in Iraq. Pertaining to the lack of an instant democracy. He said there would be no Nelson Mandela in Iraq, because Nelson Mandela is dead. As I type this, former President Mandela, still alive. Good one, Bushie.

Dear K-Ville, Stop Fucking Up

While the show has enormous potential, I was kind of disappointed in the reliance on old cop show formula. I was expecting more of a The Shield or The Wire type cop show. Maybe because I thought it would be impossible for someone who was aiming for any credibility, would wrap up a story line in one episode. (Let alone two plot lines that could have made an entire season.)


Now, I'm not completely against formula. If formula is done expertly. Take Law & Order for example. (The original and SVU are the only ones that do the formula thing well, Criminal Intent is straight Colombo style garbage in a better show's clothing.) Law & Order is all about formula, but a formula done so well that you could wrap yourself in it like a comforting blanket. Where The Wire and The Shield both did their best to completely shatter police procedural formats, Law & Order represents the status quo, albeit the epitome of status quo.


K-Ville has pretensions at being like The Shield, a gritty city as a main character, gritty cops with shadowy pasts... yet two chases with shooting first, two car chases, a supposed victim getting her masked pulled off to reveal she would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling police officers... I can only hope that, this being the pilot, K-Ville can still change it's direction a bit. Kill the Starsky & Hutch formula, do more with New Orleans than constantly talk about pride, and less shootouts. No one buys that anymore. And you're definitely not going to bring it back.

So, K-Ville, stop fucking up.

Hurricane Katrina and The Red Meat Grillin' Grills of Conservative Bloggers

Over at The Midpoint, Marco has been discussing his obsession with The John Locke Foundation's blog (which I won't link to, out of principle). It's hard to wrap your head around the arguments conservatives make when they take the time to write out their screeds (as opposed to the blurtings on television). Now, this might sound like I'm a biased asshole, and I am biased. But the asshole tag definitely belongs to this guy. To encapsulate, Raleigh area blogger, Confederate Yankee (somehow linked to JLF), says we shouldn't work to rebuild New Orleans because it's a waste of money. Why? Because it says so in the Good Book. And you know, science hasn't advanced much since.

To make light of such a disaster, and write off an entire city, is true douchebaggery.

So, it's only fitting that God would tease him a little bit, and throw his grill around the other day when those tornadoes passed by. Only he has the temerity to ask for donations from his readers in order to pay for that poor grill that God took from him.

But it would just go against conservative orthodoxy to give money to people living in a town destroyed by nature (or God, as the case may be), to rebuild their town. Pick yourself up by your bootstraps, and when you get ahold of said bootstraps, why don't you move your historic town, a few miles away from the water.

In related news, K-Ville is coming on tonight. I'm very interested in seeing it.

Pictures From Hatchetfest 2007

There's only one picture that I got Friday night that I actually liked (of Anne from Cantwell, Gomez & Jordan), I included two more from the concert to represent the other bands that played, but I'm not crazy about the pictures themselves. The problem with almost all of the pictures I took there was the complete lack of lighting at Hell. Not to blame Hell, they're not usually a place for shows, and they really didn't have anywhere to hang lights. The concert itself was a lot of fun, though. Scott from Monologue Bombs put on a really great show, there was this moment where he was fucking around at the begining of the show and sang the hook of "That's Amore'" and it totally lifted that song out of the ridiculous schlockiness that I've always associated it with. Scott just has an amazing voice and so much talent, I sometimes have a hard time describing how I feel about someone so talented, and this is one of those cases. It kind of reminds me of this story that Andrew Bird told before he sang "The Happy Birthday Song" the other night. He has this friend who is so musical that it's overwhelming, he can sing "Happy Birthday" and make it sound like the best thing you've ever heard. Scott's like that. Like Bart said, "Everytime I see that guy do something, he makes me a little weepy."

As an added bonus, there are pictures of other local bands playing live in the slideshow.

Judge By The Cover

Judge By The Cover is an occasional feature they do at The Hatchet, I'll be submiting some form of this for that. (I'm going to apologize to anyone who happens to be reading this while I'm writing it. I keep on publishing this post and then thinking of something else to say, adding things, publishing and adding on again. I can't guarntee that this will be the last time I edit this post.)

Witchcraft- The Alchemist
Candlelight Records

The Cover: A simple, fairly straightforward drawing of an androgynous witch with ravens and flowers. The praying hands contradicting with the band name, I'd take a guess that this is industrial/metal with "God is fraud/I hate myself and wanna die" desperation lyrics. Though I'm kind of completely thrown off by the complete lack of the color black being completely absent from this cover. So my guess, is highly laughable self serious metal made on the cheap.

The CD inside the cover: I really can't recall the last time I've been this thrown off my horse by an album we've received with out prior knowledge as to what it is. This is fantastic. It's metal, all right, but the kind of metal that hipsters and indie rock kids like myself can get down with. The band is a tight combination of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. The singer has a smooth controlled voice that wouldn't be out of place dueting with Hall or Oates that at the same time recalls Glenn Danzig. (An actual Danzig duet with Hall or Oates would be amazing think of it "oh oh here she comes!, she's a man eater!") The lyrics stick with the old metal precedents, walls of confusion, pots of gold, witches etc. all serving as metaphors for psychic unrest, drug problems, father/mother issues. The Alchemist clocks in at a spartan 45 minutes, recalling the short bursts of great Sabbath albums like Master Of Reality or Paranoid. In no way overstaying it's welcome, The Alchemist gets in and gets out. In every way this album sounds completely out of step with modern metal, without sounding too much like a nostalgia act.

This is what Judge By The Cover is all about, an album transcending biases and music snobbery in spite of it's appearances.

The Pavlovian Nature of "Take My Breath Away", A Question About Race and Kirsten Dunst Movies

This post comes out of a comment that I was writing in a post on Marco's blog that got way too long to just be a comment. The context of this as a comment, in relation to an earlier comment about Fred Thompson*, was my telling Marco that I had finally saw Rambo III based on his suggestion. (Which I covered in more detail here last month.) Marco replied that Rambo III was the ultimate 80's action movie. Though it didn't beat Commando or Red Dawn's right wing propaganda or Top Gun's overt homoeroticism.

It's funny that as a kid, my favorite non-Superman movie was Top Gun. The latent homosticity of Top Gun was completely lost on me. I only knew that whenever "Take My Breath Away" came on, it was time to fast forward until Tom Cruise was riding off on his motorcycle victoriously from fucking Kelly McGillis. This fast forwarding was downright Pavlovian, as when I watched it years and years later, when it was alright to watch a PG-13 sex scene, I fast forwarded as the cheese synthesizers coincided with the wind blowing McGillis' white curtains. To this day I actually have no idea of what really goes on in this scene. I can only assume that it is the single best PG-13 sex scene ever, though I probably will never know for sure.
I've never seen Commando or Red Dawn, as I secretly LOVE these movies, I feel sad to admit it. I was looking up Commando on imdb, and saw that Dan Hedaya** plays the the evil Latin American dictator.

(This is where it becomes ridiculously long for a comment...) It's funny to me how so many actors who clearly aren't Latin play Latin characters in movies. Scarface being the biggest, clearest, most over the top example. And it seems that Hollywood has shifted from it's early ideas on this ("get an Italian to play a Latin, I mean, Italians invented Latin!") to this newer dynamic of getting Arabs to play Latins. (an example would be the guy who plays Farik on Sleeper Cell, ((also of The Mummy)) Oded Fehr.) he's currently playing a Carlos Olivera in the upcoming Resident Evil movie. Clearly, he's not Hispanic, and clearly Olivera is not an Arab name. Is it just because he's brown? So I guess my question is... Is this trend of getting non-Latins to play Latin characters a clear case of racism or a clear case of free trade in a post-globalization world?

*The Fred Thompson comment was pertaining to how Thompson is/was the worst DA they ever had on Law & Order. Steven Hill played that role with true cranky old man virtuosity.

**Pertaining to Dan Hedaya, he was in what was one of the best comedies of the 90's, Dick. If you're unfamiliar with Dick, or maybe doubting me about Dick, I suggest you watch it (for the first time or again) and realize the genius of this movie. Hedaya plays Nixon with such ridiculous jowl shaking paranoia, it transcends parody into absolute realism. Will Ferrel and Bruce McCullouch (of Kids In The Hall fame) play Woodward & Bernstein with cartoonish contempt for eachother, Dave Foley is Haldeman (Kids In The Hall again), and Harry Shearer is G. Gordon Liddy. I could go on and on, but the casting is brilliant, aside from a few 90's comedy cliches, it's hilarious. Right up there with the brilliant and overlooked "Drop Dead Gorgeous".

In the process of getting a picture of Steven Hill as Adam Schiff, I stumbled upon the site of an artist named Brandon Bird. He does pop culture saturated paintings and t-shirts, the one with Lenny Briscoe on it will be ordered and on my person shortly. I would suggest checking out his paintings, I really enjoyed them.

The Money Will Roll Right In

what i'm listening to right now: Capital Radio 2- The Clash

After a month plus of hiatus, Amanda got back on the blogging horse. As has been the case since it's inception, quality far outweighs quantity at The Obscure Object of Desire.

To rehash a point that Amanda made in her rash of blogging yesterday, The Hatchetfest is tonight in Hell, Chapel Hill, NC. It's a complete clusterfuck. Times two, to the nth power. The bands are all Hatchet writer approved local acts, Monologue Bombs, Cantwell Gomez & Jordan, and Jews & Catholics (in the interest of some disclosure, three of the performers tonight, Cantwell, Jews, and Catholics all work for the same company that Amanda does, Ed McKay's Used Books).

In other news, my brother Dan and I spent a couple of hours last night trying to figure out how to loop samples on his new recording console, we are trying to make a song, using a sample of the drums from "Got To Have It" by Soul President and another as yet undecided drum track. On top of that, Dan is going to totally rock the fuck out on guitar, bass, and keys. Once we figure out what the hell we're doing, and finish this song, look forward to hearing it on this blog.

Wicked/Winged Things

this is the first draft of my review of the new Sunset Rubdown song, "Wicked/Winged Things" on the upcoming Random Spirit Lover. I spent a day conflicted as to whether I should download the leak of the whole album off the internet and just review that, seeing as this song was so damn amazing. I ultimately decided against it, though it essentially takes a good chunk of what I would have put in the album review and puts it to press, rendering it useless if I were to review the album proper. At any rate, this should appear in the next Hatchet after revisions and editing.

Download This Song From Jagjaguwar

Spencer Krug must be one of those crate digging/file sharing maestros, that guy you know who played that Velvet Underground demo for you and spoke rapturously about it, noting the differences in how "The Ocean" unfolds over 10 minutes in the live version, whereas the one on VU comes in at a scant 5 minutes. Krug brings this love of the process of song into his creative output. From his first Sunset Rubdown album, Snake's Got A Leg songs that months later appeared on Wolf Parade albums in full blossom were little bedroom freakout ballads. On last year's "Shut Up I Am Dreaming", Krug returned to a few songs adding virtuosic guitar players, keeping the shambolic keyboards and flexing his Wolf Parade muscles in different ways.

These new songs from his new upcoming album, Random Spirit Lover are all a continuation of this process. Where fanboys inherit the earth. The new single, "Wicked/Winged Things" saw release earlier this year as an mp3 on daytrotter.com in a different, slightly more subdued version. Sunset Rubdown sound even tighter than before, rivaling the towering majesty of Krug's other full time band, Wolf Parade. Every new thing from these Canadian boys makes me terribly nervous before I hear them. How can they keep it up? How can they release three solo albums between the two lead singers, and at least two more where Krug was a contributing member. When is the shark going to jump the pool full of motorcycles? When will they run out of juice. As these songs from Random Spirit Lover, and last month's Wolf Parade show (which was heavy with new songs) at the Cat's Cradle can attest; it hasn't happened yet.

"Wicked/Winged Things" slowly creeps in on the listener. Soap opera synths whisper the song into life as blissfully reverberated guitars tremble like the handheld harps of cloud bound angels. Krug asks whether these angels are angels, white as the Shroud of Turin, or are they just smoke? If these angels are more than just "the white air of Poseidon", they're not perfect. Here is where Krug knocks me flat. As the band pounds out a backdrop for volcanic lead guitar, he draws a straight line through the "chaotic and blind" flight pattern, as chaos is luck, luck is love, and love is blind. Not as much of a straight line as a circle. Is it a snake eating itself? Isn't that just what a circle is? In the end, as the chaos built around the song begins to fade, Krug puts the matter to rest, "oh I say I've seen them, it's just smoke".

Where the poet, Billy Collins wondered what angels do when not dancing on the head of a pin, Krug's is content to question only if they're there.

Glenwood Like A Promethean Curse

I know in my last post I had alluded to some magic bullet of a post that would snap me back into a blogging fury, and as with most things like that, I got distracted from it and don't even remember what that post was supposed to be about. So, sorry about that.

The distraction in question is new songs from Sunset Rubdown's upcoming album Random Spirit Lover, which I'm writing a review of for next month's Hatchet. This one song in particular is just flooring me, "Wicked/Winged Things"

your pattern of flight is chaotic and blind
but it's right 'cause chaos is
yours and it's mine
and chaos is luck
and luck love and love blind
your pattern of flight is chaotic and blind but it's right 'cause is yours
and it's mine mine mine and chaos is blind and they say love is blind

So, I'm really looking forward to finishing that, and getting the proper album for review, (hopefully before the deadline for the song review, so I can build the album review around the song review).

In other news, I'm kinda disappointed in this upcoming Bob Dylan boxed set, which for the first time in the fairly storied history of his non album releases brings up a serious case of redundancy. As far as I can tell from the tracklist, there is nothing new. No unreleased tracks, no alternate takes, just a repackaged greatest hits, given the capital B boxed set treatment. Which of course has already happened. Biograph, being one of the better (and first major) boxed sets ever made. Where "Dylan" fails and Biograph succeeded was a wealth of unreleased songs and songs only available as singles, that put the "greatest hits" songs in a different light. Without the benefit of throwing in any "lost" songs, "Dylan" sits like a question, "didn't you already buy this stuff?" As an introduction to Bob Dylan, this set is too heavy on later period stuff to really impress the point of why he's so revered, this set has no real appeal to the rabid fan. And that's pretty much it, there is the rabid fan, and the neophyte. The casual fans are few and far between. Those new to Bob Dylan are better served by buying an actual album or Biograph.

As a rabid fan, I'm kind of relieved that this set doesn't have any "lost" songs on it. Because I would spend money on it. As I have on every release in the "Bootleg Series", which is the best handling of an artist's rarities collections ever. Though Bob Dylan is a special case in the prolificacy that wasn't shared by other big names from the time like The Beatles or Rolling Stones.

(This is something that most people know about me, that I haven't relayed yet in Beneath The Underdog, I'm a HUGE Bob Dylan fan, I have everything outside of the post-finding Jesus period, which I am not afraid to say have no redeeming qualities whatsoever, post-post-Jesus Bob is tolerable, though I don't give it the breathless praise that it's given in the press.)

The boxed set, which if you've ever had a conversation about Bob Dylan with me, you might recognize how the name of it boils my grits, it's called "Dylan". I'm not a fan of calling Bob Dylan "Dylan", like he's either a dead poet/philosopher, or in a disdainful contemptuous dismissal, "Dylan". One is too rapturous, one is just plain silly. I have a hard time dismissing a musician because of an unconventional voice. (And not to be a total asshole to some of these dismissers, over the past twenty years plus Bob Dylan's done no favors to anyone by dragging his words out like cats to the vet). To take these transgressions and dismiss what was essentially the best fifteen year hot streak that any musician ever went on. Shit, Lou Reed only had four years (albeit four of the most important years in the evolution of punk, indie rock, et al).

To promote this new boxed set, though, a remix of "Most Likely You'll Go Your Way (And I'll Go Mine)" by Mark Ronson (Amy Winehouse producer). Which is essentially the Dap-Kings (of Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings fame, also Amy Winehouse's backing band), playing over the original song, with only Bob's singing remaining. Not bad at all, a few Motown string flourishes would have put it over the top, but it's an interesting re-imagining of one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs. Here's the video for the remix, which is kinda lame, in a VH1 Classic kind of way.

The Rosebuds

Went to see The Rosebuds Saturday night at "The Downtown Event Center". God bless whoever it was that decided to talk the third owners of this spot to try live music again, but I think it's just a bad spot. The Rosebuds put on a great show though, it's been a while since we've seen them.

A note to all my readers, I know I've let you down as of late, what with the light posting. I have an idea for an actual, substantial post that I'll write either tommorow or the day after, so look forward to that. Until then, have a glorious Labor Day, remember all the workers who had their heads caved in so you can have today, and weekends in general, off.

Clean Machine

I have had nothing to blog about lately. I've avoided it at all costs for the past couple of days. I cleaned 70% of the apartment today, just to avoid blogging. Alas, Amanda's late getting home, and rather than clean, I'll blog.

Damn. I can't think of anything to blog about. I listened to a bunch of music today. I listened to the first Clap Your Hands Say Yeah album, forgetting how fantastic it is.

Well, I've got nothing, so, have a looksee at this.

The Daily Show

The Daily Show has been very on point this past week. I don't have cable, but I do watch the show through Comedy Central's website. This clip in particular struck me as great.



And this was pretty interesting, but it made me feel a little weird. It's probably the best PR move I've seen the army do in... ever. Pretty shrewd if you ask me. I doubt they'll get any recruits out of this, though, I'm pretty sure I like the brass in charge more than I ever have before.

Del Scorcho and The Spaghetti on My Lawn

Two nights ago I went to see Wolf Parade with my friend, Brian. It was an awesome show. The opening band we saw was kind of bullshit. Unlike the first time I saw Wolf Parade when Holy Fuck opened and blew everyone's minds. Wolf Parade were on fire, though. And drunk. They took to calling themselves Del Scorcho (because of the Tecate they were drinking in large sums). Sums? Amounts, more likely. They played a bunch of new songs that were great, but the best parts were the old songs. Only because they were so tight on those songs. I spent the time after the show contemplating if this was a better show than Parts & Labor which up until that night was the best show I've seen this year.

When I actually think about it, this has been one of the best years for shows in a long time. Two nights of Yo La Tengo, TV on The Radio, The Rosebuds' last show at Kings (with the indescribable greatness that was Monotonix), the last night of Kings itself, Parts & Labor, and now Wolf Parade. There were even more shows that I missed out on, and a few biggies on the horizon. Like next month's Andrew Bird show at The Carolina Theatre.

I would have posted this yesterday, and it probably would have been fresher with more anecdotes about the actual show, if it weren't for my neighbors. I've complained about them here before, and I'm going to do it again. Yesterday in between my shifts, as I walked home, I saw a crazy stir of flies right by the walkway to the house. Oh god, could this be Tabitha, I thought? (Tabitha is their declawed house cat that they make live outdoors). No, it wasn't as awful as that, instead, it was a pile of spaghetti with meat sauce. Nowhere near the trash can that was sitting fifteen feet away on the curb (which wasn't even picked up, I'm starting to get mad at the trash men too, but I'll leave that for later). This complete disregard for well, everything is infuriating. There's also the room sized rug they've had on the curb for more than a month, the trash bags they leave on the ground to rot when one of our two cans are full.... FUCK! When I go outside this afternoon, if I see a pile of spaghetti still, I'm gonna lose my shit. It's clearly not our spaghetti. We haven't had spaghetti in weeks.

I did make an amazing dinner last night, though. Pan seared rainbow trout with whipped sweet potatoes, roasted marshmallows, and finished with a pecan shallot brown butter. It was the best thing I've ever made.

Time Machine

Today I visited the two previous websites I've made. They were more geared towards art, which I've regretably just kind of stopped doing. I just feel kind of weird about doing anything like that anymore. Well, in case you are interested in seeing what I was up to in high school, drawing pictures and writing poorly... feel free to visit these sites.

I'll warn you, they're anglefire pages, so they're pretty slow. There are a ton of pictures, and I can't link to any of them directly off the pages because of the limited bandwidth of angelfire.

A Message Left On The Forehead Of God (immediately after high school)

&

The Toothpaste Jones Experience (during high school)

Left Hand/Right Hand

Last night while we were waiting for our sushi to arrive at Sushi Thai, I made an assertion that I wasn't completely sure was true. That I could still write with my left hand, since I was forced to for quite a long time when I broke my arm in kindergarten and there were some complications with the screws they put in my arm. I'm not sure why I said this, and was afraid when I picked up the sushi ordering pencil, that I'd reveal myself as a unidextrous fraud, and Amanda would leave me in search of a truly ambidextrous lover.

Luckily, handwriting is like riding a bike. Well, sorta. It's kind of slanted and I can't fit it in the lines yet, but, you know, better than I thought it'd be.

Well, fuck. I just spent a long time writing the rest of this piece. From here I was transitioning into how under appreciated the Who are, then the internet ate it as I was "publishing" it. And I'm actually not too upset about it. I'm upset in that I spent a long time writing something and it just disappeared. But not upset in that I lost something good. I ended up doubting the merits of my position, and finished the post by saying as much. The Who are/were awesome, but when measured against the greatness of their nearest competitors, The Stones and The Beatles, they are in their right place.

The one valid point that I think I made was that The Who sat in this strange spot in the mainstream where now only a small number of their songs fit into the formula of either radio station format that they belong in. Too weird or r&b inspired for classic rock, too loud for oldies stations.

At any rate, this is my 100th post, the fourth and final permutation of it (barring another internet accident). It went from describing this wonderful little bit of getting lost between our house and the sushi place, to complaining about my lawyer fucking things up for me, to my frustrated and ultimately defeated piece on The Who.

Here is where I would like to hand out thank yous and what nots. First, thanks to everyone for reading my blog. Thanks to other bloggers, like Marco, Jenny, and Mike. Thanks to Parts & Labor for letting us into your show even though you weren't quite sure who we were, and thought we wrote for a different paper. Thanks to my brothers Dan and Tyler for going on photo adventures with me. And finally, thanks to my loving girlfriend, Amanda from whom I stole the idea of writing a blog in the first place. So here's to at least another 100 posts, if not 200.

And fuck The Who for making me write one of the worst things I've ever written, and thanks to the internet for eating that post.

The Dynamite Brothers @ Slim's Last Night

My brother, Dan and I went to Kings Slim's last night to see one of favorite local bands, The Dynamite Brothers. I brought my camera along, but didn't feel like taking too many pictures. I got three good ones, and these are they. The second opening band was pretty good, though I didn't catch their name, and didn't have enough cash on me to buy a CD. I woulda if I coulda. I'll probably do some research and send them an email saying the Hatchet would like to review their album. They were from NYC, that was about all I caught. Dan got some good pictures of them, and I'll see if he'll let me put them up.

As I'm reading over this post, and I notice that I'm not writing very well. Hopefully that means that I'm saving all my writing powers for that extra paragraph I want to add to the Creeping Weeds review. Maybe I should go watch some Rome Season II before writing mortis sets in.

Dan in the parking deck last night.

Creeping Weeds- We Are All Part Of A Dream You're Having

here is my review of Creeping Weeds' We're All Part Of A Dream You're Having. it will appear in the next issue of The Raleigh Hatchet. (I added a paragraph, and Amanda fixed an awkward sentence to the original draft)



Like waking up to find Patrick Duffy in the shower, or when Lisa Simpson grew a world from her baby tooth in a bowl of Coca Cola. Philadelphia’s Creeping Weeds are impossible characters singing songs from deep inside of dream sequences. The music is shambolic, yet carefully layered thus recalling obvious influence Modest Mouse. Yet Creeping Weeds aren’t trying to be Modest Mouse, thankfully. No one’s yelping or trying to wrap their head around the entirety of existence in this band. Not that that’s a bad thing, but you know, things like that are best left to the professionals. The press release that accompanied this CD told me to read it if I liked The Beatles, Modest Mouse, or Neil Young. Read if I like the Beatles?! Read if I like cake on my birthday?

The stand out song of the album is the seven-minute "Derelict", tick-tocking it’s way into a twisted, ass-less funk riff. Xylophones and sitars pop up unexpectedly in the slow build of the song, echoing surf guitar leads the bass into the final minutes, where that funk riff finally gets an ass and starts shakin’ it. Then it starts slowing down, sounding like the last sputters of that perpetual motion machine that you were sure would work when you dreamed it up last night. I’m not sure why I keep coming back to the idea of dreams when I listen to this album. Is it the suggestion of the title, is it a concept album that I’m not listening intently enough to? Is there brilliance in a concept album that floats in the ether? That doesn’t announce itself? Or is this just a regular, dreamy style album, and I’m reading too much into it?

We Are All Part of A Dream You’re Having sounds like the second album that Clap Your Hands Say Yeah wanted to make. It’s more rounded out than the unbalanced experiments of Some Loud Thunder. The shifts from serpentine epics to lilting country numbers isn’t jarring, it’s smooth and considered. Even inside that lilting country number, "Our Country Home", moves made here seem natural, that, in other hands, would seem like hammy parlor tricks. At one point in "Our Country Home" they abandon the back porch for the angular rocking of the rest of the album, only to drop back into the countryside for thirty seconds at the end of the song. Creeping Weeds move about the album like it’s a perfect mix tape. That one where you got that perfect transition from "Get On The Good Foot" to "Swordfish Trombones".


Creeping Weeds have made a strong debut that stands above other entry-level indie rockers. There’s a sense of ease in their playing, even at their most wound-up. The musicians play together like a relaxed conversation between old friends. This album hints at the bigger things that they are capable of, not unlike the hints of that first Modest Mouse album, with a similarly long title.

You Follow Me, Tabitha

I've spent the afternoon digging through the piles of promo CDs that Amanda's gotten in for the Hatchet, and I just found a doozy. Nina Nastasia & Jim White's new album "You Follow Me" is leaving me gobsmacked. You know what, I don't like that word. It's not only insufficient, it's an ugly looking word. I'd rather say... I'm floored? But that doesn't even work either. The idea has been implied by now, I guess.
The record is just guitar/drums/vocals. It's a bit folksy, or singer songwriterly, but then again, not. Maybe I'm just having a terrible time trying to describe this. It's just very good, especially surprising for something I know nothing about. It's a pretty tight record, no throwaways, like the ideal of a great Cat Power record. One where she miraculously avoids making a dirge about suicide.

A very pretty cat came up to our back door last night. Her name was Tabitha. We couldn't get a hold of her owner, so we assumed by her declawed paws that she was a housecat who got out and got lost. She was a tabby that was half gold and half brown/black. Half of her face was gold, the other half the standard tabby color configuration. There were gold patches that popped up in unexpected places, with little white boots for feet. We brought her in for the night, which upset Coltrane and Black Sabbath, but we assumed that this cat was lost, and that it definitely shouldn't be outdoors without claws. This morning her owner called and it was one of the girls who just moved in next door. She's out of town, and she just left her cat out in this shitty heat. That's awful. When she gets back we're gonna give her a good talking to about caring for your cat. You shouldn't let a declawed cat live outside, she can't defend herself. Especially against the fairly mean white and black cat that swats at our window when Coltrane or Sabbath are watching birds from the inside. I just went out back and saw that the food bowls she had set up for Tabitha on her back stoop are empty! It's a shame. So, Tabitha, if you've somehow surpassed standard cat knowledge and learned how to read, and happened upon this post while you were Googling yourself, you're welcome to come over and stay the night whenever you'd like.

Guilt By Association

Fun little video from a contest to make a video for this Guilt By Association compilation that's coming out soon. There's going to be a release party at the West End Wine Bar on Franklin St (Chapel Hill) on the fifth of next month. It's got some great looking tracks on it, like the above Petra Haden song, as well as Superchunk covering Destiny's Child and Will Oldham covering Mariah Carrey.

This Time Tomorrow

We had a great time at the beach this past weekend. Here's some photographic evidence.

Rambo, Karl Rove, The Gallant People of Afghanistan

I have a friend who swears by "First Blood" the first Rambo movie. He's a smart guy, and I normally respect his opinion, I don't know about this one though. I haven't actually seen any Rambo movie ever, until this afternoon. Today, I watched Rambo III, at the recommendation of Marco. A movie dedicated to "the gallant people of Afghanistan". It was hilariously over the top, even biting the idea of an inappropriately under aged sidekick from Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom. Rambo fights alongside the mujaheddin in Afghanistan, saving his friend so the Americans can continue to supply rockets to the founders of the Taliban and al queda. After a ridiculous battle scene where, I shit you not, a tank crashes into a helicopter, head on.

I think that Stallone spent all of his time and money thinking that one scene up. The rest of the movie is just hodgepodged madness. The Afghani version of Short Round wasn't the only trick stolen from another, better movie. In the last hand to hand combat scene, where Rambo fights a very large Zangief-like Russian. While held in an inescapable bear hug by Zangief, Rambo notices the grenade on his nemesis' vest, pulls the key on the grenade, and boom. Completely stolen from the end of Raising Arizona.

The best part was when, in the fiery aftermath of the battle, his sidekick who looks a lot like the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, asks him if he'll stay and fight. To which Rambo replies, "Maybe next time". Oh, I laughed so hard as Rambo and his buddy ride off to the Pakistan border in a bombed out Russian Jeep. It's so funny to see how the jingoism machine swings from side to side so quickly. I've got to give props to Stallone for not going back to fight his former friends in the new Rambo movie that they're making. He's saving Christian missionaries in Burma or something ridiculous like that. It'll still suck, though.

I was pretty much isolated during the trip to the beach, so I wasn't prepared for the fantastic and vexing news of Karl Rove's resignation, when I heard about it late last night. And I'm not sure what to make of it still. Admittedly, the time that I would normally have spent reading articles about this was spent watching Rambo III. (I thought that it would have served as a good frame for this post, or maybe I just wanted to lay down after a long lunch today). Either way, I suspect that Karl Rove's resignation might be part of some complicated political deal between the Democrats and Bush. This does sound a little out there, and maybe I'm thinking this way because I've seen every episode of The West Wing, but the timing doesn't make sense. Not in a "I'm resigning because there's nothing left for me to do with such a short amount of time left in this administration" way, because, there's plenty of time for him to continue tramping all over the Constitution. And it doesn't make sense in a "there's a lot of political pressure for me to resign" way, because the Plame case would have been a much better time for that kind of resignation. No, I think this is a move in a game of brinkmanship between the President and the Congress.

Okay, so here's what I think. I was completely flabbergasted by the Dem's vote to give Alberto Gonzalez more power of the warrantless wiretapping. It just could not be explained in a satisfactory manner to me. So, maybe the Dems gave Bush what he wanted for Karl Rove to resign. But where does that leave both parties? What do the Dems actually gain from the resignation of Karl Rove. Well, more leverage to get him and any other advisors to testify, would be one thing. Is there anything that the Dems can get out of what they gave Bush? Are they doing this with the thought that they'll indict Gonzalez for perjury and Rove for masterminding the whole AG firings, anyway? I hope so. I'm holding out with optimism. I've been let down by the politicians in Washington again and again and again. And I'm not sure what kind of optimism mine is, the optimism for a constitutional showdown between two branches of the federal government, is that actually optimism? Am I just the guy in the lunchroom that goes from table to table, looking for anyone who's arguing and starts chanting "fight! fight!"?

Buckets Of Rain

So, here's hoping that the rain stops, or at least isn't happening at the beach, I'm heading out there in a matter of hours.



I had this really wierd dream, where I was going around Carborro with Amanda, only I was a sort of pariah in the town and I was Bart Simpson. No one wanted me inside of their stores/bars/restaurants. So I had to sit outside and wait. A dog chased me away from Orange County Social Club, so I started walking aimlessly around town. I ran into my friend Melissa, and we hung out on the streets, giving fake shortcuts to all the people riding their bikes. Eventually a bike enforcement agent came by, and started hasslin' us. He told us to throw all of our ice into the ice recycling machine. It was a long chute in the middle of a sidewalk, a slow moving metal conveyer belt inside the chute. As I'm dumping the ice down the chute, I knock a few plastic food containers below the chute. I look up and now Melissa's the bike enforcement agent, and she's writing me a series of tickets. "I'm writing you up for littering!" Which seems silly to me, I have this idea that I'm more environmentally aware than she is, so I feel that I have some leeway in knocking some plastic under a large moving metal device. No such luck, I stick my arm down the hole and pull up pounds and pounds of plastic food containers, she throws out the ticket. We walk into the back of a restaurant, and it's staffed by the kitchen staff of my restaurant. Jair, the lunch cook in our regular universe, hands me a cheap plastic acoustic guitar. I quickly bang out a really loud White Stripes song, "Screwdriver". I add the lyrics from their song "Cannon", the part about John The Revelator.

Thursday Catblogging

Lots of shit goin' down. I won't bother you with the details and legal mumbo-jumbo. Suffice it to say, I'm chomping at the bit to be getting on my way to the beach this weekend. In place of a tale of car troubles, the man keeping me down, and the slowest week ever at work, here are some pictures of cats, and a bonus me being bored and playing with Photoshop picture. Have a great day, probably weekend. Ah, I can't wait for grouper sandwiches

Gotta Get It On

Went to a party last night at some stranger's house. Whose name I can't remember. Sorry, stranger, I'm no good with names. I'm also going to apologize, stranger, I broke your plastic chair while I was horseplaying, trying to kick Jenny and remain seated. So, now might not be the greatest of times to ask you, stranger, but I remember you taking pictures of Marco and I dueting "Let's Get It On" karaoke style, if you could email them to me...

It was one of the few instances where I didn't bring my trusty camera with me, and we bring the house down with some earth shattering soul stylings.

Quote of the night... "How long does it take after you see a tiger tied to a lampost while you're jogging, for you accept Jesus as your personal savior?"


Technical Notes:

1. I fixed the link for Marco's blog in the link bar.
2. This is my 91st post.
3. Today, I continue my Raleigh Taqueria tour 2007

Seriously?

fuck.

Our old pals at FEMA continue to impress with their vigorous fucking up of everything they touch. The Associated Press reports that those infamous "FEMA trailers" might just be poisonous. FEMA has suspended any donating or selling of the trailers while a study is being conducted into whether they are the cause of fomeldahyde poisoning. This is one in the extremely long parade of disasters post Katrina.

In my opinion, Katrina wouldn't have been nearly as deadly if Conservatives didn't exist. If they were a fringe group like Michigan militias. The corner cutting, the shrinking the size of the government until you can drown it in a bathtub philosophy of modern conservatism can be directly blamed for fuckups like these. The chintzing on the materials and quality of the levies, the poor response time, the backup of trailers being handed out in the first place, American citizens being actual refugees in their own country, in one of the nation's largest cities... you can trace each of these problems beyond apathy and into private contractors doing work the government should be doing. Why did Roosevelt big government work and post-Nixon big government not? The conservatives slowly worked to hollow out the carcass of the beast they killed, and when something heavy landed on it, it crumbled to dust. Bodies floating, bloated and face down, convience stores serving as the banks of the deadly river... I've been more ashamed of being an American in the past six years... And what's being done? The Senate caves in to Bush and EXPANDS his warantless wiretap program? Only after Bush nixes the actions of his own director of National Intelegince's deal with the congress. And the Senate passes it by a large majority. Why are they so spineless? They have the power to just vote it down. They have a majority in numbers, why would they cave to the worst president ever? He's not even popular anymore, what threat does he pose to them?

Fuck it. I could go on about this for hours. But I'm done for now.

Things That Make Me Feel Warm Inside, This Trailer For The New Wes Anderson Movie, Bourbon, "Muzzle Of Bees" by Wilco...

I can't wait! I absolutely cannot wait for this movie to come out. I just can't. Jesus it looks good. I've always been a huge fan of Wes Anderson, as is evidenced by the top of the blog, Life Aquatic is my favorite movie of all time. I try to throw in little references to it whenever I can, especially the leeches part from the Lightning Strike on Ping Island scene. Sigh. September can't come quick enough.

Though, I was secretely hoping that the movie what we caught a glimpse of in Wes Anderson's American Express commercial.

The Alaskan Peninsula And My Friend's Physiological Changes Serve As A Metaphor For The Diversity Of My Friends

It's one big peninsula. Last night we finally got around to watching Grizzly Man. It was more confounding than it was compelling for the most part. The two things that'll stick with us will be Amanda's desire for a pet fox, and my determination that Alaskans are weird. The weird moments with Alaskan bureaucrats like the coroner and the guy who had the watch of the guy who got ate by a bear in his filing cabinet... wait that reads weird. a bear didn't eat him in his filing cabinet. he has the dead guys watch in the filing cabinet. Maybe this weirdness comes from being so disconnected with the country proper. Maybe that's what makes their politicians get away with such graft and corruption. Talking Points Memo has more about corrupt Sens. Stevens and Murkowski (both Republicans! imagine that!). These Alaskans in the movie all had a certain bug eyedness about them. Staring directly into the camera, speaking at weird clips, or in a completely detached tone, like the helicopter pilot who airlifted the remains.

So, speaking of weird, after my last post, I met myself halfway on my plan to walk to Whole Foods and get some pluots. Instead I walked up to Third Place to get some coffee, read, and listen to the ipod. Once I got there I ran into my old friend, Casey. I've known Casey since the first day of high school. Intermittent periods of not seeing each other filling in lots of gaps over the past nine years, months to years at a time. What's nice is that whenever we see each other, we pick up the conversation where it was left off. We were fairly close in high school, before I lost my shit, and she probably lost her shit too, I reckon. What was weird about seeing her today though, was she had changed physically. I should mention that Casey is a lesbian. She's always looked manish in her own way, mostly through the clothes she wore, haircuts etc. Butch would be the operative word. It's been a couple of months since I've seen her, and since then, the distinctly female characteristics of her have all but disappeared. There's hair on her legs, her jaw line is sharp, her voice is deeper than ever, and her chest is flat where it wasn't before. It didn't come up in conversation, probably because the porch at Third Place wasn't the right place to talk about it. I think she's probably taking hormones, though. Which, I mean, good for her. It's just weird to see someone you've known for such a long time make such a drastic transition in the period of a few months. It would probably have been less noticeable if I had seen her regularly, but it's a pretty drastic change. The difference is what strikes me more than the action.

As I walked home studying the pings of Joanna Newsom's harp on "Emily", I got to thinking about how drastically my group of friends has changed since that time in high school. My friends were (outside of the scattered punks and stoners) mostly black or homosexual. The latter moreso at the first high school I went to, Wake Forest-Rolesville. Which always struck me as strange, WFR was much less tolerant and much more rednecky than my second school, Wakefield. Now my friends are almost all white, I have no black friends. I miss that diversity in my group of friends. It has a lot to do with where I work. For the most part, my friends come from my surroundings. School at first, then workplaces. Glenwood Grill is the first place I've worked without any black or homosexual coworkers. Not that it's all white, we've got Colombians and Mexicans. It's just different, and I never really thought about it until tonight.

Hello To All The Cities

Oh, hey, I just wanted to say hello and thank you to all of my readers, thanks for sticking it out with this blog, heading into it's eighth month. Which is crazy to me. I specifically wanted to thank whomever is reading my blog in Kirkland, Washington. I hope that doesn't seem creepy, like my reader(s) in Kirkland are like "how the fuck..." I keep track of traffic on this site through Google Analytics. I'd be interested in getting to know the reader(s) from Kirkland. Send an email or leave a comment. And that goes to all of my readers, though. I know of at least 5 or 6 people total who read my blog. Hello, Jenny, Marco, Mike, Steven, Amanda, Dan... Everyone else who does, hello, why don't you drop a line my way?


Where does the title of this post come from... god it's familiar... oh, shit, it's a part of that ridiculous "Lizard King" suite by the Doors. Well, it's a pretty sweet title for what it is.

Pluots, Spoons, Cartoons, and High Crimes

what i'm listening to right now: "Amoeba" by The Adolescents
I'm off work this afternoon and the whole of tomorrow, so there is the possibility of some heavy blogging or absolutely nothing at all

My plans of taking a walk down to Whole Foods for some pluots* seems to be disappearing as I'm sitting around waiting for songs to download off of Soulseek. So far, I've downloaded the first Adolescents album, which I got turned on to by a collection of Brian Walsby's cartoons. He's a Raleigh guy since way back in the late 80s hardcore heyday, when The Brewery wasn't a hessian headquarters. I'm loving his cartoons, parts in love with music and snidely making fun of everything about music.

I've been listening to the new Spoon album pretty much non stop. The one thing that I love about them is how everything they do sounds so effortless. How it seems so natural for them to be making the best Supremes or Billy Joel songs you never heard. The ideal of what people who appreciate Billy Joel... what it sounds like to them, we're hearing the same thing when we hear "Big Shot", but one of us hates it. And yet, "The Underdog" on Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga sounds like a Billy Joel song, just perfect in every way instead of the trickle down rock economics of Billy Joel, the president of soft rock in the 80s.

*Oh, so I wanted to explain the pluot to the uninitiated. It's a crossbreeding of the plum and the apricot. The pluot tastes like the idea of a plum before you eat it. Sweeter and less watery. The one perk of working at Whole Foods two years ago was the free produce I got to graze during my shifts. That and I could listen to my CDs while I was in the back cutting up fruit trays.

I've been following this whole Attorney General farce very closely, and it's getting SO exciting! So many other things are coming up out of this investigation. The best part of this is that the administration is just getting itself in deeper trouble. Really, if Alberto Gonzalez went out and said that he fired these US District Attorneys, because he could, and he had the power, given to himself by himself when he snuck something into the Patriot Act part II, to replace those people he fired and not get them cleared by the Senate. I'm sure this would be less of a problem for them. And yet, (gleefully for me), AG is a dissembling fool, or plays very well at it. He's catching himself in all these lies, and now, the Senate is getting themselves a Special Prosecutor to look into Gonzalez's perjuring himself to Congress. Which is as much as a crime as perjury in a court. The kind of perjury that Republicans swore the impeachment of Clinton was about.
THEN there's Bush telling his aides to ignore the subpoenas of Congress. Not showing up to testify when subpoenaed is a crime. But not as big of a crime as telling someone not to appear. That's a felony. And, who's committing a felony?! Bush!!! Oh!! This is soooo hilarious! Of course there's the seething anger. Of course, Bush is trampling all over the Constitution. But it just makes me so happy that he's doing it so clearly! There's no amount of "is is"ing that can diffuse this. Bush has clearly committed a felony. Gonzalez has clearly perjured himself. There's going to be a court battle over both of these things. Outside of Bush escorting his aides down to Congress to testify under oath with a transcript, this is going to go to court, probably all the way to the Supreme Court. I've been spending a good amount of time at Talking Points Memo and all of it's satellite sites, and it's done the best job of comprehensively reporting this. (In fact it was the site that broke the whole AG firing escapade to begin with).

In Which Kanye Makes The Best Video Ever

Link

Click the link, it'll take you to Kanye West's new video for "Can't Tell Me Nothing" starring Zak Galifinakis, Will (Bonnie Prince Billy) Oldham, and pre-teen Swedish line dancers. Best. Video. Ever.

Republicans, Please, Please Send This Douchebag Against The Democrats!

ammunition:

via Talking Points Memo

Giuliani gets all worked up, cusses, later he incites a police riot. Thousands of off duty police officers damage cars and shout racial epithets. Awesome. I expect more about this whole thing to come out soon, below is a contemporary article from the NY Times shedding a bit more light on the subject.

NY Times Story

Face To Face With Disapointment

So, it took a while to let the whole reality of the Slint show to sink in. It wasn't good. On many levels. To begin with, I've never really been a huge fan of Spiderland. I think it's overrated as an album. Add to that, I think it's boring music. But I'm told that it's an important album. And I can understand it's importance. I went into the concert believing that I would finally figure out what all the hullabaloo about this band was, that in a live setting, maybe I'd figure it out. They played the whole album note for note. Reality set in. I don't like this.

The concert is part of this Don't Look Back series from the people behind the All Tomorow's Parties festivals. Bands go back and play their penultimate albums, Sonic Youth plays Daydream Nation, Slint- Spiderland, and GZA does Liquid Swords. I thought I'd be in love with this idea, it sounds like something right up my alley. I LOVE Daydream Nation and Liquid Swords. I've had plenty of conversations with music nerds about how I'd love to see this or that band back when they were making this or that album. And it would have been amazing to see Sonic Youth closing out a set, in the end of the eighties, with the Trilogy. It would have been amazing to be in a youth hall when Fugazi were working out the songs on 13 Songs, or Black Sabbath in an abandoned Birmingham movie theatre, playing stuff from their first album. These bands revisiting those great things now, I'm not sure how great that is. (Though, I've given this a lot of thought, GZA doing Liquid Swords would just be great, no matter what, even if he played a tape of ODB on "Duel Of The Iron Mic"...) I'd love to hear Sonic Youth kick into "Cross The Breeze" in the middle of a contemporary set... I guess what I'm getting at is that this idea turns these albums into museum pieces. To play the album without any context of the ensuing years since the album... it's the closest indie rock gets to playing the $5 BBQ Fest concert with Glenn Fry at the ampitheatre. It's a nostalgia trip with an ironic title.

Okay, dinner's ready. I'll stop there, but one thing quickly that's related. On the deluxe reissue of Daydream Nation, there's a cover of the Beatles' "Within You Without You". It's amazing. I was expecting b-side wankery, I was gladly proven wrong. Okay, enchilada time.

XKCD etc.

the comic that I really wanted to put on the blog didn't fit in the template of the page, so I encourage you to click here and see the one that I like better than this one

So, as a lot of things that I end up writing about on the blog, I stumbled upon this through Marco's blog. Which is actually at a new site and name, The Midpoint. His blog linked to these pictures of people playing chess on roller coasters. Damn! Which reminds me that I'm not going to be able to take this great trip to Busch Gardens and then a night on the town in Richmond because of the crap with my car, which is explained later in the post. So, I'm in love with these little stick figure comic strips at XKCD. They're amazing, they're smart, and oh so fantastic. I've found myself getting back into comic books for the first time since I was a little dorky kid. I'm not reading the X-Men et al anymore, I'm really enamored with these "indie" comics. Which is a term that I find myself feeling weird saying/writing. Anyway, I got into these indie comics when Amanda bought the whole run of the Optic Nerve series one day last year. Since then I've been really blown away by some graphic novels I've read, most notably, Fun Home (about a girl discovering she was a lesbian growing up in a funeral home with her dad who had a secret gay life) by Alison Bechdel, Black Hole (about a STD that mutates teens in 1970's Seattle) by Charles Burns and Persepolis (about being a young girl in Iran during the Islamic Revolution) by Marjane Satrapi. Has there always been this quality of material in underground comics? I'd always thought that it was like R. Crumb semi-porn ripoffs. I know about Harvey Pekar, but have never actually read any of his comics... (wait, no I read a small thing by him in The Best American Comics 2006).

In other news, my car is a piece of the devil's shit. It needs a new wheel bearing, and a new steering column. These aren't as immediately dire as they sound, the steering column is to fix my broken blinker switch, right now, I'm just sticking my hand inside the steering column if I wanna use my blinker switch. The wheel bearing, well, that's a little more immediate, but we're taking care of that this weekend. Then there was the 300+ spent on the disintegrated back brakes and everything that goes with that. I was thinking that maybe, maybe once all of these things are taken care of, I won't curse my car as much. I won't dread driving it places. I still want to get rid of it, though. I want to drive a car with better mileage, that's for sure.

I'm going to see Slint and Strange at Cat's Cradle tonight, look for pictures posted up tomorrow afternoon. If you're interested, you can see my pictures before I post them on the blog and all the ones I didn't post on the blog on my Picasa Web Album. (It's even more user friendly than Flikr and it's through Google instead of Yahoo, and I guess I just have loyalties.)

Parts & Labor Review and Pictures

update: This is my final draft that I'm turning in to be edited by Amanda and published in The Hatchet. text is below the pictures, scroll down. enjoy... hopefully.

Last night I went to see a band that I’m madly in love with. Parts & Labor. I struggle with myself when writing about this band, trying to resist the temptation of comparing them with a small race of Supermen who’ve come to lead us out of the musical woods. Of course, in a live setting, Parts & Labor did little to dissuade me from such hyperbole. It would have been so much easier if they humanized themselves, not being able to replicate the sounds of their album or expound upon those themes. They also could have been terrible jerks, pretentious noise rockers with little time for fan boy record reviewers. But they weren’t. If I could marry a band… okay, maybe that’s taking it too far.
Mapmaker opens with what has been getting plenty of nominations for song of the year, "Fractured Skies". Christopher Weingarten's drums come charging through the gate while little robots made out of VCRs lie in their wake, letting out their death cries. Weingarten freaks out and plays even harder until the horns come in. Oh, those horns! Horns that bring to mind Steve McQueen, jumping over a fence on a motorcycle. It's a shame that Weingarten is leaving the band after their show at the 506. He completely makes this song.
"New Crimes" builds up some kind of Celtic drive reminiscent of last year's "The Great Divide" and it’s bagpipes. Singer Dan Friel told me that he was trying to get the guy that plays bagpipes with them in New York to go on tour with them. While "Ghosts Will Burn" is an impossibly danceable number with death metal bass trampling over the twisted debris of a wrecked 18-wheeler carrying nothing but Casio keyboards. Like a Decepticon dance party. My favorite song on this album, though is their cover of one of my favorite bands of all time, The Minutemen. "King Of The Hill" has been on repeat for me more than any song I've listened to for years. I've kind of gotten away from the whole teenage phenomena of listening to a song over and over again, and yet, this one does it. It's a fairly faithful cover, Parts & Labor's twisted, exploded keyboard sounds replacing the guitar and trumpet of the original, collapsing under it’s own momentum with the sound of disintegrating flutes. The idealism, wit, and instrumental acumen of The Minutemen are the perfect parallel of Parts & Labor, down to the proletariat band name and the egalitarian boutique label they run out of their van. Their cynical take on indie-fame, "Camera Shy" recalls The Minutemen, a mere 68 seconds before on the record. Blasting by in a minute-eight, replacing the customary punk sneer with a laugh at the ridiculous tropes of the world.
When I listen to Mapmaker, I think, how can anyone not be floored by this band? How are Parts & Labor not as big if not bigger than other indie heavyweights, like Arcade Fire or the New Pornographers? I think I stumbled upon the answer looking at the turnout at Local 506 that night, Parts & Labor are of a scene that’s never been the most popular on a wide range. When I mention noise rock, formless sounds, strung together with verbal diarrhetics come to mind. Such has been the devolution of noise since it hit it’s zenith with Daydream Nation. Parts & Labor sound recalls the bands that formed or survived the aftermath of hardcore, the beginning of noise. Husker Du, The Minutemen, and Sonic Youth are all easy touchstones in describing the sound of Parts & Labor. The nuts and bolts of their sound are what set them apart. Using toy synths and keyboards, they add modern noise affectations to the classic formula.

And In The Eyes Of A Jackal I Say Ka-BOOM!

I'm really perplexed today. I just finished watching this new Smashing Pumpkins video for "Tarantula". The video itself is awful, which is disappointing, considering their previous penchant for beautiful videos in the past. It looks like one of those Eye Toy PlayStation 2 games, where a video camera puts you in a cheap video game. With a bunch of people who aren't in Smashing Pumpkins playing instruments behind Billy Corgan dressed like a referee at a Klan game of touch football. The song, except for the cartoon of a guitar solo at the end, was pretty good. If I were to hear this from another band, I'd probably say it was "awesome". But I should hate this, right? Billy Corgan is a HUGE douche, he fell off his game a long, long time ago, right? There's nothing different about this Smashing Pumpkins and the one that made the Machinas right? Billy didn't let D'arcy or James Iha actually play anything on the records, (you can totally believe that if you ever heard the Iha solo album... whooo). Then there was Zwan and the superbad solo album. A decade or more since this guy had "it". An Ozzy for the alternative generation, Corgan has been riding some inexplicable memory train to the bank.

I read the reviews, read what the new Smashing Pumpkins album was all about, and without hearing a second of it, dismissed it out of hand. How could this sound good? And wasn't I totally done with Corgan's annoying, whiny schtick? If I were to hear a band today, chanting "despite all my rage, I'm still just a rat in a cage", I would roll my eyes, right? And yet, I immediately went to the other room and grabbed some old Pumpkins records. And this shit is not bad. Dammit. So, have I been denying myself something great for the past handful of years that I've dismissed this band? What I love(d) about the Pumpkins in their prime was their eclectic nature, shifting effortlessly between some caustic faux-metal and what was my favorite ballad of the nineties, "1979". Though it doesn't really sound like a song about being a twelve year old, Corgan's age in 1979. I also hate Bryan Adams for that shit with "The Summer of '69" (he would have been 10).

I was really into the Smashing Pumpkins in middle school and the beginning of high school. I bought that box set of the Mellon Collie singles, I listened to them all the time until I became aware of Sonic Youth and Fugazi. That was the last time I actively listened to Smashing Pumpkins. I have to say that this is refreshingly not as bad as critical hindsight makes it out to be. The new album sounds like it could be a different story. If the whole album is like "Tarantula", I don't think I'll be able to hang with it. I can only take Corgan's hard rock singing for a short span of time, it needs to be interrupted, there needs to be things happening in the song besides rocking out as hard as you can, to prove you can still do it. There are about ten seconds at the end of "Tarantula" where things get spacey, only to be interrupted by that god awful guitar solo.

Just for a trip down memory lane, here are some of those great Pumpkins videos from (cliche alert) when MTV actually played videos...

Lost In Translation

Back over at Marco's blog, he pointed out a video on YouTube of a Bollywood version of Superman. Superman is flying around with Spiderwoman, who apparently, and for no discernible reason, can also fly. I mean c'mon!! She's a spider, not a... hawk, or a creature from a dead planet, whose powers are caused by the yellow sun! A little bit of realism here, people! I then went to a Turkish Superman video, much more along the lines of an actual Superman, (no dancing.)


From there, I came upon what must be the greatest thing that I've ever seen on YouTube, Turkish Rambo, Korkuzus. Watch, we'll discuss once it's over.

So, this is crazy, right? He's certainly not carrying all those rockets around with him. So, apparently, rockets are like so many dandelions in the Turkish grass. Hopefully, you aren't reading this before the video's over, because I'm about to ruin the surprise of the inexplicable scene where Korkuzus is about to bludgeon the implied bad guy boss with the business end of his rocket launcher, when a homely woman with blow dried hair starts talking to him from heaven/the Psychic Friends Network Studios/Glamour Shots. A moment of hesitation, then BAM! Bad guy dies from a couple of scrapes on his face.

So what is it about these poor translations of American entertainment? Why are we laughing at the fact that a toy with a cape on is held in front of a movie screen to imply flying? Is it because it's honestly funny? Or are we're just being imperial douchebags, laughing at the misguided foreigners who don't even have computer graphics? Or, is this thinking inherently douchebaggy to begin with? I think it's the latter.

I recently read a book by Chuck Klosterman where the entire second half of the book was like this. Hypothetical and aloof, not taking sides in the most passive aggressive "I'm writing this book to secretly judge you" way imaginable. Never before have I been so infuriated with an author that I like so much. Oh wait, Chuck Palahniuk. Dude's lost his game. Completely. Lullabye sucked, Haunted really sucked, I couldn't get through the first two chapters of Rant. The ratio of good Palahniuk books to bad is almost even, if not tipping towards bad. That's really too bad. I've been reading a lot lately. Right now I'm reading three books. (And I know that I'm completely leaving the boundaries of the original premise of this post, but I don't feel like starting another one, and this won't be long, I swear. Then again, aren't I making it long when I put more than one sentence inside of parentheses explaining how something won't be long?) I recently picked back up The Adventures of Kavelier and Klay, which for some inexplicable reason, I put down for a couple of months. Oh, wait, I know why, I started it after I finished Middlesex, and it's documented as impossible to enjoy the next book you pick up after you finish Middlesex. You won't enjoy it because it's not Middlesex. And nothing ever will be ever again. So, yeah, I'm reading Kavelier and Klay, and it's amazing, Chabon's just completely conjuring this visual world of comic books with his words, so fucking descriptive. That, and I'm reading The Land That Never Was, which is a nonfiction book about this guy, Sir Gregor McGregor, who was a Scottish Knight who made up a country in Central America in the early 1800's and sold land and perpetrated this enormous hoax that had all these people leaving behind their lives in Europe and move to what was really an uninhabitable swamp. There are about three other books that I'm taking turns at reading also right now, but I'm not going to go into them. (Thankfully.)

Dick Van Dyke One Man Band Machine: Ofo & The Black Company

The Dick Van Dyke One Man Band Machine is a very irregular feature on this blog, where I write about a song that I have on repeat and can't stop listening to. I had this one all planned out, I was going to write about the song that up until an hour ago, I had been listening to on repeat, "King Of The Hill" by Parts & Labor. But then that got completely blown out of the water. Today, I watched The Last King Of Scotland, until somewhere towards the end, the DVD got stuck at one point, and wouldn't go on. Rather than fuck with it, I got up and started downloading some songs from the movie that were blowing me away. The most amazing one of these downloads was "Love Is You" by Ofo & The Black Company. It's amazing. I haven't been able to find any substantial information on them. I don't know what country they come from, I have a general idea of their time line. The only tidbits I could find on them were that they were on a compilation called "World Psychedelic Classics Volume 3- Love's A Real Thing" that Luaka Bop put out, which sounds like the most amazing record I have never heard. West African psychedelic rock... holy shit. And that they had a seven inch on London Records, that's selling on Ebay right now, and I don't have any fucking money. Bastards!

Oh. So what does this song sound like? What am I losing my shit over? Imagine The Stooges, Fela Kuti, Cream, James Brown, Funkadelic, and every dream of some great song that you've never heard before. This song hits you full force from the first second, a thin distorted guitar puts it's foot on your throat, like the first seconds of "I Wanna Be Your Dog". Grunts and shout outs to Africa, and then that initial squall hits that perfect riff, the locomotion of a Fela Kuti album is distilled into three minutes. Then the song gets harder, a thick slab of rhythm guitar and organs... it's rhaspsodous, it's the Stooges, in Africa. It's everything I ever wanted in a song that's new to me. It's invigorating and different, unlike anything I've heard before with these touchstones to the music I love. It's the perfect song.

The Last King of Scotland is a hugely flawed movie. A movie about Idi Amin would have been more interesting if it were about Idi Amin, and not about some fictional white guy who gets thrown into the mix. I wonder if when this movie was proposed, did some executive say, "sounds good, Oscar-worthy for whomever we pick to play Amin, but we need to have a white guy. good looking, and have him come in and fuck some of his wives, and then, we'll have a movie on our hands". All that aside, though, I have to thank this movie for giving me this awesome song. Now, I just gotta go digging for everything else that Ofo & The Black Company ever did.

That Sir... Is A Nickle.

what i'm listening to right now: Three Little Babies- Joanna Newsom

One of the benefits of when I fall asleep way before Amanda does is when she hits her blog with her drunken late night verbosity. As is evidenced by her account of our trip to Ohio/Indiana. Pretty much rendering anything that I was planning to write about the trip dwarfish in comparison. We had an amazing time, drunkenly connecting on deep levels with her uncles, aunts, and cousins. I was planning on writing an introductory apology, about how this is probably not interesting. Then I thought that maybe I do that too much, and if I continue to do that, then maybe you won't read this blog anymore. So, here, read on, I'm not apologizing. This is my blog, and I'll do as I please.

We set out on the trip at 11:30 pm on Thursday. Arriving at 8:30 am on Friday. I did most of the driving, seeing the sun come up behind the clouds on a country road in West Virginia. It was beautiful, farm fields framed by mountain ranges on either side, a pink-grey sky dissipating the early morning fog. Antonymic to the wide open fields of Indiana, with it's bright blue skies that went on forever.

We ended up getting pretty punchy around 4, just outside of Charleston, after the last stop on the West Virginia Turnpike. We encountered an extremely gregarious Toll Booth Willy. When we handed him the cash, it was off by twenty cents. "Whoa, whoa! That sir... is a nickle." WE gave him the correct change, and went along on our way. A good fifteen minutes of silence went on from there, the new Spoon album bubbling in the background, when I repeated "That sir... is a nickle." Amanda and I laughed for ten minutes straight. We woke up her brother, Chris, who was asleep in the back seat. The laughing would end only to be restarted by a little snort or chuckle at the ridiculousness, either of that huge pause between "sir" and "is" or at the joy of unhinged laughter. How I was able to get another four and half hours of driving accomplished without any Fear And Loathing in Ohio hallucinating was amazing.

After a really long and fairly silent breakfast at Denny's in Dayton, we decided to go to our hotel. If they wouldn't let us check in, maybe we'd just sleep in the lobby. It was too much. The thought of waiting around Dayton, Ohio for another four hours until the standard check in time, was repulsive. Luckily for them, they let us in our rooms extra early, which was great. I was asleep within minutes, on what was the most luxurious bed I have ever slept on. This was an incredibly nice hotel room. The nicest I've ever stayed in, and relatively cheap. Considering it was Dayton, and not, say New York City, we could swing this room. It was on the top floor on the corner, with a fantastic view.

Shortly after waking up, drunkenness ensued, and really didn't take too much of a break. Outside of a walk around the Oregon District, which was the kind of place that a town that's in the dumps like Dayton gives over to the creative types, in hopes that it'll become "hot" and they can flatten it all and make it into overexpensive condos. Is that a little backhanded anger at Raleigh for condo-izing the cool parts of town? Maybe. Anyway, that was cool, had a great sandwich at this weird deli there. The cashier lady wouldn't take the money out of my hand or put my change back in it. That was weird. I'm about to eat, lady, you think my hands are dirty? Or maybe she had TB. If that was the case, I'm glad she didn't touch my hands.

So for the period after the sandwich, we can sum it up in a fragmentary sense. Drink, drink, cousins, aunts, uncles, judges, strangers, drink, drink, bad food, drink, drink, drink, drink, sleep, wedding, drink, driiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiink, dance, drink, "modern politics is about fear" (as if it was ever about anything else), drink, drink, sing-along, White Stripes, sing-along, 9 card, drink, pass out. To expound on the couple of subjects that weren't "drink, drink", I had a great talk with Janey, who is Amanda's cousin Little Joe's girlfriend. We talked about politics, and fear, and well, those would be the two subjects from that talk I remember the most. Janey's really great, we've had a lot of fun together the past (and only) two times we've hung out. (Both at weddings, the two of them are coming up to Raleigh sometime soon.) Then there was the sing along. Back at the hotel, after a mad search for a surprise birthday cake for Anna, that took us out of Dayton and into Kettering, Steven and I returned in time for their Cousin Tony to pull out his guitar and lead all of us in song, doing everything from Tom Petty to Flaming Lips to White Stripes. Which was incredibly fun. Tony and I rhapsodized about the glory of Jack White, and I tried to sell him on the Rosebuds. Shortly thereafter, the crowd thinned out and I did the same. Amanda soldiered on with a couple of strangers and Steven 'till 5:30, (Steven went the distance, watching the sun come up, calling to change his 10 o'clock flight at 6 am).

Amanda really summed up the Indiana part of the trip, so I'll stop here. I had a great time. One of the undercurrents of conversation at the wedding was which of the three couples will get married next, Tony and Auleen, Joe and Janey, or Amanda and myself? We came in a distant third in the consensus, but I'm pretty sure that we'll slip in early, the dark horses, like George Mason if they didn't go out once they got in the Final Four.

Thoughts On The Fourth Of July

It's been a while since I've blogged, so hopefully, I can hit this with all the verbosity that I want to. I've been pretty busy for the past two weeks. Which goes a bit of the distance in explaining why I only had seven posts last month, and here it is, four days into a new month, and this is my first post. It's the Fourth of July, of course, the big American holiday. Yet, here I am, in my underwear at two in the afternoon, and what's so special about today? Have the Bushies and their twisting of patriotism soured mine? We're thinking of eagles soaring, and fireworks, and cookouts, which are all great. Yet, shouldn't we be spending today, reflecting on how kickass Thomas Jefferson was? We don't hear much talk about him this time of the year. He's been relegated him to the two dollar bill. Hamilton's on the ten? And he wasn't even a president, let alone from this country! But Jefferson, the main man in the story of the Fourth, is relegated to the side, always. Maybe because his ideas are too dangerous. When you talk about actual freedom, instead of the politics of freedom, it's too much. It's why they beep out "fuck", and yet show dry humping on television.

The Fourth isn't about a military victory, it's not about the end of the Revolution. It's about this paper that T.J. wrote. There was a whole movement behind this paper, but they knew of only one man who could write it. But he's on the two, his memorial, off the mall. It's a damn shame. So, let's hear it for Thomas Jefferson, as he's rolling in his grave.

OH eye oh

what i'm listening to right now: The Colony Room by Sea And Cake

Tommorow night, I'll be on the road to Buckeye State. Amanda's cousin, Nan is getting married up there in Dayton. We'll be hopping into a rented car and driving through the night. Sunday we're gonna head over to Indiana, it'll be another of Amanda's cousin's birthday party (she has 30 first cousins...) So, good times. Well, I don't have too much information to share otherwise. Pictures and probably a bunch of other material once I get back. It's the restaurant's vacation week once I get back from vacation, so I'll be sitting around doin' a whole lot of nothing.

Late Night Addendum

what i'm listening to right now: Peek-A-Boo by Daniel Johnston

It's another one of those nights where my body and my mind are disagreeing on bed time. My body's been tucked in, but my mind is restless, staring at the open refrigerator. I'm going to go ahead right here and say this pretty scattershot, and it might get some revising in the morning. So, there are a few things that I just wanted to touch on in addition to the subjects covered today in my blog.

So, this whole Hillary/Celine Dion thing... still, not cool with me. If I had seen this video that she put out in anticipation of the announcement of the song, I would have given her points for the first time in a long time. Well, scratch that, I did give her points for yelling at Wolf Blitzer for the ridiculous nature of the whole "raise your hands if..." hypothetical questioning. But points for putting Wolf Blitzer in his place at this point is like points for getting upset with the tour guide at Monticello for breezing over the whole sex with slaves thing.

So, here's the video in question...


All in all, it's a funny video, pretty brilliant, and nowhere near as bad as the "funny" video that the Edwards campaign put out


But again, Hillary loses any cool points that she could have gained through this great video that her people put together. Any cool points she even got for getting Johnny Sac to make an appearance, any cool points for making Bill Clinton walk like Tony Soprano, all gone. Because she picked a Celine Dion song that was written for an airline commercial.

I will say that she's not all bad. There are issues in which I have HUGE differences with her, and reasons that I can't bring myself to support her. I guess if push were to come to shove, and she got the nomination, I'd have to support her, it's not like I could vote for Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney. Giuliani would probably divorce his Vice President, and Romney would just be biding his time 'till the Angel Moroni came down and filled the Dream Mine with gold and jewels*. He'd probably quit on us after that happened. Oh, I also wouldn't vote for them because they're Republicans. That'd be more of a reason than the other ones.

*Here's an aside about Mormons. They're crazy. They believe stuff like
this. They believe that Jesus came over and hung out with the Sioux and
Cherokee. They think Eden was in Wisconsin. These are things that mainstream
Mormons think about every day while they're riding around on bicycles wearing
white shirts and black ties. Mitt Romney is one of these crazies. Also, they
won't drink caffeine. How productive can these people be if they can't drink
coffee? "I'm sorry, President Putin, we can't get President Romney on the phone,
he's too tired... I'd get him some coffee, but, you know... yeah, I know, it's
this weird made up religion that is like Christianity with even crazier bullshit
tacked on at the end." Imagine that. The end of the world. Because Mitt Romney
wouldn't have a cup of coffee.

So, here's another point I wanted to cover. Over at Amanda's blog, she's seriously bothered by the appearance of our favorite book, Middlesex by Jeffrey Ugenidies on Oprah's book club list. The book is an amazing epic of incest, hermaphrodites, love, life, family and history. It sprawls over the wars between the Greeks and the Turks, immigration to Detroit and the city's growth and decline, the weird sexuality of San Francisco at it's seediest. Essentially, it's a book about America. But, I'm afraid that it would just straight up blow the minds of the average Oprah Book Club reader. The thing that upsets Amanda is that this book that's been so important to her, this book that emotionally devastated her, this book that changed her life, is being commodified by Oprah. She likes Oprah, but not as much as this book.

This brings me to a conversation that we had just yesterday, Sonic Youth are going to release a compilation of their songs as picked out by various celebrities and musicians. The surprising thing about this is that it's going to be released exclusively through Starbucks. Another iconoclastic bastion of something outside of what could still be called the "mainstream". (I kind of feel like going on another tangent here about how mainstream almost doesn't apply anymore. The mainstream has been so diverted by the internet, DVDs, the easy availability of new technologies etc. But that'd take a lot longer than the time I've allotted myself here before I want to try and go back to bed. But it's a good idea for another post.) But these things, Sonic Youth and Middlesex are things that have been personal, in this way that it's not part of this huge consumer culture. At least not to a degree. Sonic Youth are fairly popular to an extent within the constraints of "indie rock" and "alternative" but if I were to ask my mother what she knew about them... But the point is that these things by their nature seem more important to their adoring fans because of the need to go looking for these things. The lack of universality of a thing makes it's personal importance more intense. And when something like this book and this music gets on the shelf of universality, it seems like it's being taken away.

But doesn't this seem a little selfish. Keeping all these great things to ourselves. Wouldn't it be great for some kid to pick up this Sonic Youth comp at Starbucks and have their whole world opened up, like mine was when I first heard Washing Machine when I was a teenager? Wouldn't it be great if all these people read Middlesex and they get so moved, and maybe become a little more tolerant to other cultures, to other lifestyles?

And what's so bad about Starbucks or Oprah. Starbucks treats their employees pretty well. Much better than most corporations I can think of. Sure they put coffee houses out of business. But those are usually the not so good coffee houses. Just look to Hillsborough Street and see how Cup A Joe put that Starbucks out of business. See how Third Place thrives surrounded by at least three (probably more) Starbucks at a mile to two miles away. And Oprah, she's kind of an egomaniac, but she does a lot of stuff that's really great.

I guess an argument could be made that both Starbucks and Oprah are signifiers of the middle of the road. Most Oprah Book Club books are mediocre drivel with inspirational hoo ha. And a lot of the music at Starbucks is mediocre, ranging from Paul McCartney to ad infinitum seasonal compilations with mumbly singer songwriters. Is this the middle of the road trying to co-opt the intellectual, the noise, exceptional? Are we not so dangerous anymore? Is there some band that puts microphones inside of industrial machinery that should be blowing my mind, and I'm just completely missing out on this? Have I lost touch. Or is Oprah getting some touch herself?

Something Of Mine That'll Be In The Hatchet Next Month

Real quickly, I'm just going to go ahead and publish this little piece I wrote for the Hatchet for next month's issue. It's for their "Shows To Watch For" section, about the upcoming Parts & Labor show, which I cannot wait for, and I tried to tone down my fanboy enthusiasm for this band. I ended up editing out a lot of profuse hyperbole, like how they're the band that this century's been waiting for. How they were giants who crush other bands in their distorted Casiotone stride, et al.

Parts & Labor
Cantwell, Gomez & Jordan
July 15th
Local 506
On July 15th, three guys from Brooklyn will be in town, doing their business. Professional face melters, Parts & Labor will be at The Local 506, with local face melting veterans, Cantwell Gomez & Jordan, opening. This will be the loudest show of the year. Parts & Labor were recently guests on the NPR rock critic talk show, Sound Opinions. The day before they showed up at the radio station to record some songs live for the show, a memo was passed around the offices there, warning of the extreme volume of the next day’s recording session.
Parts & Labor's new album Mapmaker on Jagjaguwar is the antithesis of indie rock's late fascination with lush soundscapes and string sections. Mapmaker brings to mind the SST hardcore bands that created indie rock, the likes of Husker Du & The Minutemen. Singer Dan Friel sounds like Husker frontman, Bob Mould, and the band covers Minutemen’s "King Of The Hill" at the end of their new album. It's a huge record, huge in the sense of Daydream Nation or Zen Arcade, bringing melodies under their distorted Casio keyboards and guitars. Parts & Labor remember what made the best noise rock so great, the anthems that howled under the buzz of the feedback and screwdrivers in the guitar strings.

Steven, This Is Further Proof Of My Being Correct On This Subject!

what i'm listening to right now: everybody's down by no-age

***there's an update to this story at the bottom***

So, Hillary just threw out any chance that she had at becoming President of the United States Of America. Her campaign song, you know, the one that she got all of her supporters involved in picking out? Here it is, click the link, I dare you. I dare you to listen to a Celine Dion song, and think "presidential". What a joke. Not that anyone else's official campaign song is gold, far from it, cliched late period U2 songs, John Mellencamp et al. But damn, Celine Dion. I can't remember exactly how many times I heard "It's A Beautiful Day" at that Kerry/Edwards rally I went to in 2004, but it was more than five at least. Imagine the Canadian Skeletor warbling ad infinitum at Hillary rallies. Jesus.

Completely. Out. Of. Touch.

update: via Talking Points Memo

Apparently, this Celine Dion song started out as a song played in the background of an Air Canada commercial. More details here.

And here's the commercial in question:

Speechless.

There's little I can say about this. This is Mike Gravel. You wouldn't know it from looking at him, but he's running for president in 2008. Known mostly for screaming at Obama and other actual contenders for the office, here, Gravel is just... confounding.



Gravel for President of Twin Peaks, 2008.

Onion Rings. It All Ended With Onion Rings.

Last night was the end of the Sopranos. If you haven't seen the final episode and don't want to find out how it ended, I'd stop reading.... now. Okay, great, so now that everyone else is out of the picture, let's talk about what happened, and how it was a brilliant ending. That'd be a point of contention, right there. Last night I was alone with that opinion. Everyone else in the room threw up their hands, and felt that they'd been had. Immediate comparisons to the end of Seinfeld were brought up. Coincidentally, I think the end of Seinfeld was equally brilliant. The point being that there is no finality. No one goes on to anything, no big marriage, no new president, no extensive death of everyone montage, no hugs, just the best onion rings in New Jersey. It carried out the what to me, was the best part of The Sopranos, the reality of it. Through the whole series, there wasn't a hip new song, Tony's ringer was the Monday Night Football dunh dunh dunh duhh.



It was life as normal, as normal as it could be while resolving a hit that's been put on you by the New York families, as normal as it could be while blowing out the brains of Phil Leotardo, and then having his SUV pop his head into bits after his dead body fell into the track of the tire of the car in neutral. It was as normal as it's always been.


This season was about being confronted with reality. The reality of relationships, the reality of the family and when it falls short of your expectations. Meadow leaving med school for law school, A.J.'s depression, Paulie Walnuts' lack of ambition, Bobby's not wanting to hear about his wife's weird past, Christopher's addiction... When confronted with concrete evidence of their impossibility as parents, Tony and Carmella just give A.J. something to shut him up for a while, caving in to his whining. When confronted with the fact that psychoanalysts aren't saints, Dr. Melfi turns inwards and lashes out at Tony.


The general consensus of EVERYONE I talked to was that Tony was going to die last night. I wonder what their underlying motivation was for this. Was it national morbidity? Was it the feeling that he deserved it? He had killed Christopher with his bare hands, he'd blown his cousin's face off. Tony was a douchebag. Was that it? Or was it fatigue? The Sopranos had been on forever. Six and half seasons, with a couple of years of hiatuses. Was it just time for him to die?


The ending of course flew in the face of everyone's predictions. Maybe in spite of them? Maybe in the theory that a Sopranos movie or mini-series in the future would be viable? Meadow as a mob lawyer, A.J. spiraling out of control on drugs and directing pornos? Tony, stricken with diabetes and bed-ridden, a figurehead with the family both the true one and the figurative one destroying itself. Or maybe, as I feel, just a brilliant ending, like the end of Seinfeld. An ending in the tradition of the show, no spectaculars, no 3-D glasses.


The Seinfeld ending was one of the most reviled endings of all time. I'm not sure what people were expecting. What show were they watching? There wasn't any momentum towards anything, it was a show about nothing, and everyone loved it for that, why would they expect anything short of what happened? The four main characters got called out for what self centered people they could be, and ended up in jail for it. Maybe everyone hated it so much because it reflected on them. That they'd laughed or related to everything that Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine did, and when it was turned around and seen as what they did TO people, it was showing the mirror to the guy who woke up out of his car wreck coma. Or, maybe, it was just another episode about nothing. Seinfeld was certainly a popular television show, but it was also subversive, and the final episode it's most subversive. I think the ending will get more traction for it's greatness in the post Curb Your Enthusiasm landscape of television. I see the last episode of Seinfeld as a lost episode of Curb.


For The Sopranos, it all ended with onion rings, with lots of tension, like a cat pawing at mouse caught in the corner, there's that guy at the counter over there, why is Meadow having so much trouble with parking her stupid car? Shit! There's only a minute left! They wouldn't kill him in front of his family! No, they wouldn't. But, damn, those are some good onion rings.

I Needed A Nail In My Foot Like I Needed A Nail In My Head

So, I've been distracted from writing that big piece for the Hatchet I was talking about in my last post. Birthdays, working, slacking, slacking, taking pictures in demolition areas, stabbing myself in the foot with a rusty nail...

So, yesterday, Dan, Tyler, and myself went to the future sight of North Hills Mall's expansion, a former apartment complex on the other side of Six Forks Rd. We took pictures in the rather smelly, half abandoned remaining rooms of the one and a quarter structures left standing. It was a mix of creepy, "I bet homeless guys have been sleeping here" dread and just plain ol' sadness, like the doll in the wreckage, or the couch that was left behind on the third floor.

At the end of our little trip there, I stepped on a rusty nail. Thankfully, I had a tetanus shot a couple of years ago, so I'm golden, but damn, this shit hurts. I'm pretty sure if I was wearing a different pair of shoes, the nail would have gone all the way through my foot. So, here's some pictures, and a link to the web album with the rest of the pictures.

Here are the rest of the pictures on my Picasa web album

Death Of A Clown

Just thought I'd drop a quick line to any regular readers here, I'm probably going to not be posting anything for the next couple of days, which really, I guess isn't news, seeing as this month has had the fewest posts by me to date. It's not like I'm not working on something though, I'm not just sitting around and watching episodes of Police Squad! on dvd. Well, yeah, probably that. BUT, I'm working on a long piece about music criticsm that Amanda comissioned me to write for the Hatchet. Of course, it'll appear here first.

The Jaguar Shark

what i'm listening to right now: Home- Eric Bachmann

Okay, so I was writing a really angry post about all these pointy headed fools driving their impractical cars and filling them up with gas that's at impractical prices. It makes me fairly angry, I'll admit. It's a little ridiculous, I'm raging against a societal problem that's endemic, it's like railing against what I think is the worst atrocity that television has ever planned to commit against the American citizenry, Pirate Master. A "reality" show that is a contest set on a "pirate" boat. I'm just offended at the very idea of the idea. It's staggering. But, it's gonna continue to happen. And people are probably gonna lap this shit up. Therein lies the pointlessness of my getting upset about this. Not to get all fucking elitist asshole about this, but if you see someone eating shit, and you tell them they're eating shit... they're gonna get upset at you, because they've been eating shit their whole life, and they're gonna get upset with you for telling they're eating shit, they've been told that this is award winning so and so, and who am I to come along and tell them it's shit? It's all liberal media.

Damn. If I could come off as more of an asshole elitist, I'd have to slap a Nicholas Sparks book out of the hands of a paraplegic. Sorry.

So, I really tried to just drain my self righteous anger out of this post twice, and that's the best I could do. So, umm, hey, how's it going? It's a beautiful day outside, isn't it? I walked to the bank and to get some coffee this morning. Yeah, you know, don't want to pollute and line the pockets of oil barons... fuck, there I go again, I was trying to be civil, and once again... asshole.

Oh, I know! Yesterday, Amanda and I got our present for each other in the mail. A refurbished 80G video ipod. Very exciting. Our old ipod had been filled to it's brim. So it was time for a new one. Getting a refurbished one was a pretty good idea. It's recycling, which is always good. And it come out good as new, with the same warranty as a new one. I was really surprised how good of a shape it was in. I was expecting a few scratches here and there, maybe it would have lost some of it's shine or something, but this thing was shiny as hell. Just really nice. I am very happy with it. I was very eager to test out the video capabilities of the ipod, so I downloaded the only free video on iTunes that interested me at all, an episode of the guiltiest of all guilty pleasures, Pimp My Ride. Which, in the process of looking for a good picture from the show, I found out that they made a video game out of the show. Which could have been awesome, but you know, following my thread from earlier in this post, which, I'm only going to allude to, in the interest of keeping my blood pressure down, isn't so awesome. You know, the show, though, that's a good time. I almost always find myself arguing with what the over the top mechanics are doing, "who needs that many televisions next to the oil pan?" "why would you paint a picture of your mother on a stranger's car?" I ultimately am drawn in, and can't turn away. I haven't had cable for well over a year. It seems, though, every time I turn on a tv with cable, it's in the middle of a Pimp My Ride marathon. Which I usually watch for hours on end. In latching onto the mental pacifier of Pimp My Ride, am I not, myself, eating shit? Of course I am. We all eat shit, just different flavors, and we're certain that whoever isn't eating our flavor, is eating the real, non-metaphorical shit. So, every thing's shit? Am I a self-loathing elitist? Is that what a populist is?

* so, the original intent from the beginning of this post was that I was looking for a good synonym for idiot. idiot's a great word, it's just kind of plain, so I went to thesaurus.com, which is kind of a cop-out, I could have just sat there and thought about it for a minute, but, you know, that's the beauty of this Internet flavored shit that we eat. anyway, I ended up with pointy headed. which is fantastic, in the process though, I found out what you could file in "learn something new everyday" an idiot is a stupid person with a mental age below three years, while a moron is a stupid person with a mental age of between seven to twelve years an idiot is a stupid person with a mental age below three years, while a moron is a stupid person with a mental age of between seven to twelve years... how interesting is that? is that scientific? it's surely not nice.

I'm Trying My Best To Get This Out Of Me Before I Fall Back Asleep

what i'm listening to right now: Off This Century by Unwound

So, I've decided to edit my post that transcribed my hellacious anxiety dream from this morning. After re-reading it this afternoon, I saw too much potential in the post to just leave it as a jumble of run on sentences and extraneous letters. I also am filling in some details I either left out in my rush to type or that I remembered in discussing the dream after I typed it out. I'll also try and give some context to characters in the dream that were only named and not explained in my original post. You can read the original, unedited piece on my myspace blog. I don't know how interesting that would be. But it's there for posterity's sake at least.

I dreamt of a banquet. Huge, sprawling. The outlay of the tables, I could see formed a snake shape. It was on a grassy hillside at dusk. I saw this in a kind of sweeping in shot from a movie. This was the only part of the dream that was outside of myself. A staggering Filet Mignon dish is the appetizer course. You have to travel throughout this serpentine dining area to piece the dish together, though. Steaks here, potatoes there, hollandaise sauce far, far away. There were vegetables and shellfish, the dish was more of a bowl than a plate. Shaped like an oyster shell, it's porcelain.


At each of these tables are people that I’ve known in one way or another throughout my life. Not like major players in my biography, just people I’ve seen or met. When I go to sit down and eat my dish with Amanda, Jim Lovelace tells me that I can’t sit down to eat without the proper attire. I worked for Jim at the now defunct Restaurant Savannah. Everyone who worked there essentially went through all the cliche's of a poorly run restaurant. We waited for four months from the original opening date to actually serve our first customer. The owner of the restaurant had a big coke problem, threw plates at people, fired chefs at will, fired managers with whimsy. In my 9 months there, we had like five or six different managers (two at a time), and five different head chefs. Jim now is at Bogart's, bless his heart.


Despite knowing the brass at this party, I have to leave and buy a proper black suit. So, Amanda and I head off to this suit store, where Lisa is working part time. Though, she's not there at the time. (Lisa is a coworker of mine at Glenwood Grill). The owner knows my dad, which is somehow greasing the wheels for me getting a suit here. The owner of the store has two sons, one my age and one younger, maybe Tyler’s (my youngest brother) age (17). They have a kind of comedic routine. They reenact the scene with the robot tailors in Spaceballs. I buy the suit, but it’s put on dad’s credit card. As we’re leaving out onto this front porch that's two stories from the ground, I see one of the sons getting out of a Ford car that has a special license plate that says it’s one of a kind. Like someone at Ford made this car, which is black and looks like a mix of an old BMW convertible and a Porsche, just a Ford, which seems silly to me. To go through all that spending just to get a Ford, when he could have gotten something nice like either car that this one sorta looks like. The weird part is that this younger son was just in front of me. Then he’s getting out of his car in the parking lot. Oh, before this, the dad leaves for a second in a black car that looks like a Bentley drives off for thirty seconds and then returns.


As we’re leaving, we run into Jay Winfrey. (Jay is a good friend of the two of us, we haven't had the opportunity to hang out with him much lately, due to his working all the time at like seven jobs.) But some thing's wrong with him. He’s quick to tell me he had a brain tumor, and that he’s just recently survived a dangerous surgery. Jay seems weird. His features are changing, but the thing that’s really wrong is that he’s shorter than me. Jay is a very tall guy in real life. So this bothers me. I keep trying to find out about why he's changed so much physiologically, but I'm afraid to ask him directly, I allude to it, talking about how he lost all that weight when he found out he had diabetes. He goes on to tell me about how he’s always been worried that he would get brain cancer, it bothered him for 18 years, that he always knew it would happen to him. As he's leaving, I finally gather up the courage to ask him why he’s lost his height. "It’s because of the surgery" up until this point, Amanda hadn’t noticed Jay. She freaks out, and goes out for a drink with him to find out more and console him. I can’t bear to be around him anymore, it’s too sad. So I recuse myself and go on my own way.


Too depressed to go back to the dinner party, I head home. There’s a bed in the computer room, with a small tv, and a vcr, with a bunch of unfamiliar tapes. I rifle through them, put something about the history of flight on, and fall asleep. I get phone calls from my dad and Tyler, which I answer in my sleep. Then, I hear a sound that’s been recurring in my dreams lately. The sound of an airplane landing, but the sound has always been occurring within earshot of the house. This sound has always been a source of nervousness and dread every time I’ve heard it in my dreams, not knowing until the very end of the sound if it’s from a crashing or landing plane. Up until this dream, it’s been all landing, tonight, it was a crash. Before I have time to turn the tv on to the news to see if it really was a crash, and what I should do with this information, Amanda calls me. At least that’s what the cell phone says. Her voice is weird, it’s like she’s talking like a high pitched impersonation of herself, like a little kid is posing as her. She’s asking me to pick her up at the Target, quick. Which is making me more uneasy, because she was nowhere near the Target when I went home. And this doesn’t sound like her. It sounds like a setup. But I can’t not go there. What if it is her, and she’s just drunk out of her mind, speaking in a weird voice? But what if it is someone who’s done her harm, took her phone and called me. To do me harm.* I’m scared. I’m imagining Stringer Bell* has had someone impersonate Amanda, and he’s going to kill me and her when I get to Target. I wake up. I couldn’t think of going back to sleep with the prospect of returning to this dream. So I got up and typed this out. Hopefully, when I get back in bed, I won’t dream this storyline again. Though writing about it is probably going to make this only more prominent in my head..

*So I just figured out what may be the root of the whole Stringer Bell/little kid thing at the end of my dream. I'm reading What Is The What by Dave Eggers. It's the story of a refugee named Valentino, from Sudan, his life on the run in Africa and the trials of his life in America. The story starts out with his house being broken into by a woman and a man while he's there. In my head, I imagined the man as Stringer Bell. After the theft, the couple ties up Valentino, and leaves a little boy to watch over him and the house until the thieves return. So, I think that's where that comes from.


*Oh, who's Stringer Bell? He's a character on The Wire. He's a coldblooded, murderous, motherfucker. Though he doesn't kill anyone himself. He gets others to do the deed. Using most notably in two of his commissioned killings, teenagers. Ohh, The Wire is so good. (Stringer Bell is the one closest to the window in this advertisement for The Wire).

Stricken!

Absolutely striken! I can't seem to get past this writers block that is just sitting on my chest like a listless gorilla. There's plenty that I could write about. We recently got back from the mountains of Virginia. It was amazing. It was stunningly beautiful. It was much more than I expected it to be. I was expecting the kind of run downess of other rural mountain areas I've been to before.

Maybe I could write about the Eccentric Soul CD I got as a late birthday present, which is fantastic, it's like an alternate lost Sistine Chapel of soul music. But I just can't seem to break this block. It's hard enough to even describe my struggle with block, let alone how great this music is.

I could write about the akwardness of staying in a bed & breakfast in Virginia. I could write about the little pizza place down the mountain from where we stayed, or the dog at the little gallery in Floyd. But I'm fuckin' blocked. I can't seem to get out of it. Maybe tommorow will yield better results. But I just don't think I could go another day without writing anything at all. Well, hopefully, I'll just wake up and be unblocked, type with a fecundity unseen for weeks.

As it stands, I direct you to Amanda's blog, which has suffered from no such blockage. Fecund indeed. Amanda's been very prolific of late, writing late into the night, which sucks for me in the sleeping alone, while she's up writing until 4am, but is of benefit to the rest of y'all, with some fantastic writing.

Greatness Wallpaper

So, on my break in between shifts today, I've been listening to old podcasts of Sound Opinions. The one that I just finished listening to was the one where they interviewed Johnny Greenwood and Thom Yorke from Radiohead. Jesus.

You know those moments in your life where there have been things that you've been crazy about, and then after just gorging yourself on whatever this might be, you start doing/listening to something else. You kinda take their greatness for granted. Like a Picasso painting, it just becomes part of this greatness wallpaper. Then, you see one in person, and you see the brush strokes, you smell the oils. The same situation happened today with Radiohead. I was listening to this Radiohead interview, and it hit me like brick, man. Thom Yorke was playing this song a grand piano, and it just sent chills down my spine. The hairs on my neck, my arms, just standing on end. It's amazing, it's, it's, damn, I'm just lost for words.

Birthday Party!!!!

Saturday was my birthday. We threw a party at our house, and it was great. I'd like to thank everyone that came out and partied with us. And more thanks to the people who gave me some great presents. And extra extra thanks to Amanda for making my birthday so special. So, the photographic evidence... (note, there's a lot of pictures here, if you're here to read, just go ahead and scroll down)
me and my birthday hat

amanda and marvin

becca in the living room

dan on the back porch

angelita, steven, and chris, sleepwalking
becca and steven in the kitchen

What Makes Man Start Fires?

what i'm listening to right now: The Roar Of The Masses Could Be Farts by Minutemen

So, I've been listening to the single greatest album ever, Double Nickles On A Dime by The Minutemen. I came upon their autobiography in 172 seconds, "History Lesson Pt. II". D. Boon lovingly recalls the entire history of the band and hits you with what might be the most sentimental punk song ever. But it dodges schmaltz by a mile with a mix of greatness and sincerity. This is the song that can connect any one to The Minutemen for the rest of their lives, D. Boon singing that "our band can be your life". By this point, a point that has been addressed by many writers before me. It's the perfect line. It's to the Minutemen what Eno's quote about The Velvet Underground is to that band, it's the sound of a hundred bands starting.

So I'm thinking about this song, and Amanda's interview last night with the Annuals comes to mind. The interview went bad. To catch up anyone who's not aware of the Annuals, they're a band from Raleigh that has blown up on the internet. Fawning reviews in Pitchfork and the likes. Appearances on the Conan O'Brien show. Etc. The thing is the Annuals never took the time to blow up in Raleigh. That's not their fault, the internet is to be blamed for that. The Annuals, though, aren't that bright.
Amanda is an excellent interviewer, she comes up with great, intelligent questions that challenge her interviewees. Not that she's confrontational, she just tries to get to the intellectual nature of the musician. After her interview with Eric Bachman (of Crooked Fingers and Archers Of Loaf fame), his roadie said that he overheard the interview and said it was the best one he'd heard in a long time. So, I'm kind of belaboring the point that she's very good at her job.
Her questions flew over the head of the Annuals, they either weren't paying attention, or were just kinda dull. Which is so upsetting, because they're music isn't dumb. They play music that sounds like there's an intelligence behind it. It's perfectly acceptable for someone in a hard rock band to be dull. They're just kids, but, you know, damn.
So anyway, the point, why did I think of this while listening to the Minutemen? One of the members of the Annuals said that they were first band to make music the way that they do. A bold, bold statement. Essentially, "Our Band Can't Be Your Life". What a crock, huh? I mean, really.

The Red Skull Pt. Three (Guitar Funeral)

So, this is part three of the ongoing feature here on this blog, The Red Skull. Which is basically just me reviewing albums that I stumble upon, or old favorites, or whatever. Whatever I want, I run this blog. I can do whatever I want. I am the boss, of me. Anyway, today I'm reviewing 13 by Blur. The last great guitar album. As of yet, at least. I'd really appreciate the return of the guitar album. Anyway, I'm of the opinion that this piece needs a lot of editing, and I'd appreciate if my best editor, Amanda would edit this for me. Amanda, if you're reading, go ahead and start taking notes.

The guitar album is dead. It's been dead for a while. I can take you to it's grave, where it got the proper British funeral that it so richly deserved. It's strange to think of Blur among their many facets, as a great guitar band. Graham Coxon really only got to stretch out and make his guitar float in defiance of gravity only on the last two albums he was on with the band. Now, rumor has it that Coxon is rejoining the band, and in honor of that, I thought I'd revisit one of my favorite albums of the late nineties, Blur's 13.

13 starts out with a prayer. That prayer turns into a hymn, then a revival. And so it goes, the blueprint for the rest of 13 is laid out in the gospel rock of the opening song, "Tender". Notably, this album's superhero, Graham Coxon takes the lead vocal on this song. Instead of sending his guitar into space, as he'll do in the rest of the album, he gently reveals a choir, urging him to "c'mon, get through it". There are parts of this album that feel like they may have touched the hem of the garment of other important British bands at the time, "Tender" drinks the water that is not from the well with Spiritualized. At times, Coxon's guitar heroics might sound like they're inspired by Radiohead, but inspired would be where it stops, and then it leaves on it's own path. Radiohead would go on to abandon the guitar, and Spiritualized would go on to beat that gospel horse into sand.

The "hit" of sorts from 13 was "Coffee & TV", which, I'll probably play at my wedding. It's an ode to simple domestic bliss, escaping the music biz and settling down, like a lost Kinks song. Coxon sings lead on this song as well. The song starts off with upbeat acoustic strumming, which leads into the closest to soloing that Coxon manages on this album. The melody never leaves the song, though. And a pretty little keyboard line straight out of "Something Else By The Kinks" buoys the guitar madness. The song's video features a little lost milk carton that makes it's way through the city. Until it meets the milk carton of it's dreams (who meets a tragic end).

When I say guitar album. What do I mean? Am I talking about killer solos? Nawh, not really. So if that's what you were thinking, that's probably why you were kinda put off by the whole last guitar album thing. You can hear people doing 20 minute solos with violin bows for the rest of your life. I'm talking guitar album in the vein of "Daydream Nation" or "Loveless" or "Band Of Gypsys" or Creedence's first self titled album. Where the guitar is doing something it shouldn't. The guitar is floating, the guitar is making eggs, the guitar is making you mix tapes. Somewhere on "Battle", I'm sure Coxon probably isn't even touching his guitar. But it's making a sound that's unnatural. It's floating, it's backwards, it's ephemeral, it's, it's beautiful.

The counterpoint of "Battle", and the counterpoint of rest of the album, really, is producer, William Orbit. Which seemed like an odd choice. Orbit was at the time, (and so far), famous for producing the reinvention of Madonna #6. The one where she got all gothic and techno. You know, the one with the birds. Orbit gives the album a slight techno/dub feel. Really messing with the drum sounds, echoing them straight into outerspace. This actually works out very well. I remember at the time, when this album was about to come out, and I read that Orbit was working on it. I was kinda flabbergasted. I was (and am) a gigantic fan of their previous self titled album. 13 towers over their previous work, though. It's a little cold, there's nothing you could dance to, or play in a hockey arena on 13. But that doesn't really matter does it? You can't dance to or play "Silver Rocket" in a hockey arena. Well, they should play "Silver Rocket" in a hockey arena. And yet we all love "Daydream Nation". Now, I know. I'm comparing the greatest album of the last 30 years to a Blur album, but, you know, so what. It's no worse than NME saying The Arctic Monkeys have one of the best British albums ever, in the league with Revolver and Let It Bleed and London Calling. But I digress.

Damon Albarn, lead singer, Gorilla, and general genre jumping miscreant, was depressed when this album came out. He'd just ended a long relationship, so I'm guessing that's how he allowed his oversized personality to get overshadowed by Coxon's guitar. His depression really hits on the final song of the album, "No Distance Left To Run". It's the saddest song in the Blur oeuvre. It's being totally crushed, and giving in. It's admiting defeat, and saying "I hope you're with someone who makes you feel safe in your sleep, tonight". It's like Issac Hayes singing "Walk On By" but, without the ability to even make that awesome "wahmp-wahmp" hook. Just utterly beat and downtrodden.

Then Gorillaz happened. After that, Albarn got his confidence back, and wanted more control, wanted Blur to be a dance rock band. So much so, that he hired Fatboy Slim to produce their next album. Coxon was as appalled by this decision as you and I are, and left the band. (Fatboy Slim only ended up producing 2 or 3 songs on Think Tank.) Now, rumors are abound that Coxon's rejoining Blur. What will that sound like? Good. That's what I'm banking on. Good.

Fecundity

what i'm listening to right now: Last Time Around by The Del-Vetts
Okay, last post for the day, I swear.

I recently signed up for Google Analytics. It allows me to see the traffic that my blog takes in. I'm very excited, because lately I've been getting some international readers. So international, that on my little map of where my visitors are coming from, there was one person from Dubai! Hello, person from Dubai, if you happen to revisit this blog, thank you, and I uhh extend an olive branch? I really think your government should work on reducing the amount of energy it uses. It's kinda over-the top. Indoor skiing? In the Persian Gulf? It's a little much. Anyway, The United Arab Emirates isn't the only foreign country checking out Beneath The Underdog. Argentina, Canada, Brazil, Germany, Poland, Italy, Australia, Great Britain, Sweden...

Ah, the interweb. It's allowing all these people to click on my page, and then hit the back button. Speaking the universal language, and saying "ehh, this wasn't what I was looking for".

And I Reiterate Myself. Shouting Fire. In A Burning Theatre.

what i'm listening to right now: I've Got My Mind Set On You by George Harrison

I haven't posted anything political in a while. Not sure as to the exact reason, but I'm back at it again. This is an ad from John Edwards. I'm an Obama man still, but Edwards is no slouch. Plus, Obama kinda dropped the ball with that whole Myspace thing. If you haven't caught wind of this yet, this guy ran an Obama myspace page for two years. It was an unofficial site, and had gathered almost 160 thousand "friends". Getting that many supporters is huge. So, some people from the Obama campaign approach this guy about getting the rights to the myspace domain. He wanted like, $50,000. A paltry sum. Especially over two years. Getting 160 thousand supporters from say, a media consultant, making commercials, hosting expensive dinners, etc. That would run into the hundreds of thousands if not more. Well, Obama's people balked, and forced him out of the domain. Telling myspace that he was posing as Barack Obama, and that the real Barack Obama wanted his domain for himself. This is politics as old muscling in on the politics of the future. It's bad publicity, and something like this, if not resolved, could lose Obama the support of the netroots. Which, in turn, could cost him the nomination. Let's hope this gets straightened out, this guy gets compensated, or better yet, hired by the Obama campaign.

But where did I start out? Oh! The commercial. Really great stuff. Edwards has some really good people working for him. He's definitely a second choice for me, but not one that I'd be uncomfortable with at all. He smart, got his head on his shoulders, stands for something... Richardson wouldn't be that bad, either. He seems that he's a part of the Clinton political machine though. Not that I hate on Bill. I love Bill. Best president in my lifetime. Granted, that counts for all of four people, but, still, pretty damn good. NAFTA, I didn't like so much. Oh, but anyway, I was saying that Richardson seems to be a piece of the Clinton house. He was certainly a player in Clinton's administration. And I wouldn't be surprised if there were backroom things going on where if Hillary didn't get the nomination, Bill's hedging his other bets towards Richardson. I don't know. I'm not even sure where I'm going with this. So I'll stop. I just want the war to be over. That's the most important thing to me. I want the war to end.

Not Mentioned In This Post: Alabama, Oranges, Grapes, Powerbars, Warm Dr. Pepper

what i'm listening to right now: Am I A Good Man by Them Two

I've been spending most of my sick day today downloading music off Soulseek. Is that an admission of illegally downloading music? I guess it is. Maybe I should scratch that. I really wanted to hear "Something Else By The Kinks" without getting up and going to the record player, so I downloaded that, and some songs by The Toadies. I was approaching this with trepidation as much as you are kinda recoiling from the thought of '90s post grunge/major label cash grab/teenage angst flashbacks. But I was kinda convinced through a mix of nostalgia and an excellent review of it I found while going through the Cokemachineglow archives. (There's also a positive review of Blind Melon's Soup that vindicated it's inclusion on my Top Ten High School Albums.) And I'm glad I was convinced. It's great. Damn. I'm really surprised by how well this has held up in the ensuing thirteen years. It's all pile driver rocking that bands today don't seem to have a handle on anymore. The last Strokes album did something similar, but to a weird conclusion. It didn't seem like they were supposed to be doing that stuff, the whole way through, it was like "Really, you're rocking this hard? Are you in the right place?" Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Then, I found what I'm going to be spending the majority of my disposable income on. The Numero Group has been releasing this series of compilations under the moniker of Eccentric Soul. They're compilations of long lost soul recordings, all the rewards of crate digging for obscure records without all the dust and actual crate digging. I've downloaded a few samples, and I've been completely blown away. It's some fantastic stuff, I'm particularly smitten with the first track off the Deep City Label disc by Them Two. It's smoky soul, like if Marvin Gaye stepped in for either Sam or Dave, and put some string drenching Philly soul behind it. The few tracks I've heard off the Twinight album are even more impressive. A sort of Chicago answer to Motown, with an amazing house band and a stable of soulful singers.


So I'm gonna go and buy these albums, unlike the Toadies or the Kinks album that I downloaded today, both of which I own in a different format (vinyl and cassette respectively, though I couldn't tell you where that cassette might be, if I in fact still have it). See, RIAA, I use downloading as a road map to what I'm going to buy. If you would just go into my living room and see all of the stuff I've bought, and measure that against what I've illegally downloaded, I think you wouldn't mind it so much. At any rate, I don't think the labels I try to support are even involved in the RIAA anyway, so maybe they're just mad that I won't buy they're ten thousandth Elton John greatest hits collection, or maybe something from that emo band that stole their name from Milhouse's superhero movie sidekick persona.

Sound Opinions

what i'm listening to right now: 86 second blowout by Yo La Tengo
Recently our local NPR afilliate picked up my favorite new radio show, Sound Opinons. It's the only rock criticism radio show, so naturally, I totally geek out and enjoy the hell out of it most of the time. The rest of the time, I scoff at some of their opinions, their strikingly mediocre "Mix Tapes of 2006" show. Fergie? Seriously? Nitpicking aside, the show is great, it's hosted by Jim Derogatis and Greg Kot. I'm not that familiar with Kot, but I've been reading DeRogatis' stuff for a while, like his excellent biography of Lester Bangs, Let It Blurt.

All of their shows are available for download, free, on iTunes. The handful of which I downloaded onto my ipod gave me a nice respite from the audiobook parade of the drive up to Michigan.

allright. I'm still pretty out of it, so I'm gonna end it here, with a great quote from Sound Opinion's Jim DeRogatis... "Since the British Invasion, America's had the last laugh" (in reference to the dearth of success that British bands have had in America, from The Smiths to the Arctic Monkeys).

Vertigo

Here's where I apologize for the scattershot post. It's all over the place. I'm feeling pretty sick. So. See if you can make any sense out of it. I'm sure it does. It's just... This preamble is pretty useless anyways... I'm going to bed.

So, I'm listening to the new El-P album right now, thank you very much Amanda for getting that for me. A nice little present for doing nothing, quite nice indeed. I love getting presents for nothing. Maybe I did do something, and I just don't know what that might be. I do plenty of good deeds throughout my everyday life. That's a little egotistical isn't it? Scratch that. Rewind and forget that I just wrote that. Oh, Amanda's had some great blog activity lately, I highly suggest that you go over there and read something much better than where I'm going with this. Anyway, the point of the post... Oh. Yeah. I'm feeling pretty crappy. I think I might have an ear infection, or something. Something with the ear. It's hurting. But what's worse, is this diziness. Earlier today, I blew my nose, and I got dizzy for a minute and half. Like full blown, spinning around in circles like a five year old, dizzy. But it wouldn't stop. Now I'm just off balance, hours and hours later. So, this El-P album is really disorienting. It'd make me dizzy if I wasn't dizzy already. But damn, it's so good. El just comes around every five years or whatever, and turns hip-hop on it's ear (damn pun, couldn't avoid it) and then completely decimates every rapper/producer/b-boy/white person who enjoys the chorus of a Snoop Dogg song. (That's probably not a pun).

So, yeah. Dizzy. We had a great time in Michigan. We saw Bill Clinton speak at the big comencment for all of the Michigan students. Chris and Angelita were graduating from grad school, so they weren't involved in that one. So that made three graduation ceremonies in two days. It was a good vacation. No real down time, no sitting around watching tv. Which is something that I really don't like on vacations. The exception to that rule is when Amanda and I go down to the beach by ourselves. While not at the beach or a restaurant, we're in the beach house watching DVDs. It's good times. But vacations where we're visiting people, or with other people, watching tv is boring. A distraction. I'm getting off track. Steven couldn't come. Which was dissapointing, Steven makes everything much more fun. Not that we didn't have fun, mind you, but it would have been extra fun with Steven there. So, Chris and Ang are moving back down here. Which is really exciting and great. They've been up in Michigan pretty much since a couple of months since Amanda and I first started going out. Now we'll really get to know eachother, and it'll be great.


Once again, I'm going to apologize for the fractured nature of this post. I'm having a problem with focusing. I'm just doing this until the Nyquil puts me to sleep.

Goin' To Michigan.

what i'm listening to right now: Catch A Bad One by Del Tha Funky Homosapien

i'll be with these two, that large building in the back won't be there, though.

Tomorrow morning at 6, we're on our way to Ann Arbor, Michigan. We'll be seeing Amanda's brother and his wife graduate from the University of Michigan. A nice little escape from town. So, obviously, no posts until at least Monday.

Oak City Music Festival

what i'm listening to right now: Only Shallow by My Bloody Valentine

Okay, so I got this great idea. This is an idea and pretty much nothing else, since I don't have the resources to execute the idea. But, I thought I'd put it out there and maybe one day someone could pick up that idea and do something with it. Here in Raleigh, we'll be losing our public mental institution, Dorthea Dix, soon. The state will be closing it down in favor of privatized mental health care. This is an awful idea. Due to the phasing out of the hospital, the mental health of the city's homeless has been taking a serious hit. The homeless not being able to pay for consistent care from private mental hospitals. Which we don't even have in the capital city, the second largest city in the state.

So, being the types that turn bad governing into lemonade, the people of Raleigh are trying to make the Dix campus into a giant public park. Something we don't have here and would honestly be great. This brings me to the point of this post. Dix Park, if approved, would make a fantastic spot for a music festival. The park is a half mile from downtown, easy access to the hotels that the city is spending so much money subsidizing. A related event could even be held at the future convention center, that again, the city is spending so much fucking money on. This could bring attention to the area's indie music scene. Not just on a national scale, but on a local scale. Outside of the same people that you see whenever you go to a concert, there's a general feeling that most people in the city have no idea about the great music that's being made in their backyard.

Merge Records is right down the road in Durham, and they could use some of their significant pull to attract not only their bands (Arcade Fire, Spoon, Rosebuds, Superchunk/Portastatic, etc.), but other indie bands. If Merge could get Arcade Fire down here for a festival, I think plenty of other bands would jump at the chance to play with them. Indie festivals seem to be popping up all over the place, and indie music is even overtaking jam band festivals. Look at the lineup for recent Bonaroo festivals and see how much they've been leaning towards bands of the indie persuasion.

Holding the festival at Dix Park would generate revenue for the city. More so than holding it at say, Walnut Creek. Where there would be all sorts of user fees and other headaches that would just take money out of everyone's pockets.

Of course, this is all contingent upon whether the city council listens to the will of the majority of the citizens, or to their friends, the developers. The developers want to turn Dix into a condo/upscale shopping/office park. How much more upscale shopping and condos can we have in Raleigh. Where are the people working in the upscale stores and cleaning the condos gonna live? That's another post.

Then, someone has to take this ball and run with it. I have no experience or expertise with anything like this. I think there are enough people in this city that could pull this off, though. So talk to your friends about this idea. Maybe one of those friends will talk to one of their friends, and maybe, someone who knows what they're doing will get wind of it. And maybe, just maybe, it'll happen. I'll have some little sense of satisfaction if it does.

This Should Lift Everyone's Spirits

How can it not?

Damn.

I just found out that a great and frequent customer of mine just died. I am extremely sad. Richard Miller had Parkinson's. Yet, he was always coming in, drinking wine, eating sashimi tuna and fish or pork. By the time I met Mr. Miller, he'd already had Parkinsons, which had taken it's toll on him. He was 68 but looked 15 years older than that. He could barely talk. And wore a neck brace toward the end. The worst part of the night would be running his credit card with his picture on it, taken before the disease ravaged him. A handsome man with blond hair.
Damn.

The Return Of The Shuffle Game

So, I was going through Marco's blog, and found that he had created some more questions for "The Shuffle Game", which I played along with a couple of months ago. As I'm feeling like posting stuff more than I have recently, I'm gonna go with it while the fecundity is still here.

1)What was your greatest accomplishment?Shuffle Says: "Attitude" by Bad Brains. Being punk as fuck? Well, at least I'm cool. This song ended before I wrote this.
2)What would you say to Jesus if you met him?Shuffle Says: "Beeswax" by Nirvana. I got my diddly straaaaang! That's all I could say. He'd probably see into my heart or something like that. I might as well say "I got my diddly string".
3)What is your favorite thing to wear?Shuffle Says: "Ankh" by Sun Ra. from wikipedia- The precise origin of the symbol remains a mystery to Egyptologists, and no single hypothesis has been widely accepted. Scholars such as Howard Carter speculate that it is derived from a primitive representation of human genitalia (with the upper circle representing the vulva and lower 'T' shape representing the penis and testicles), and variations on this theme are common. Similar assertions are that the symbol is a representation of the pharaoh's penis sheath or that it is a stylized pubic triangle. So, birthday suit, I reckon.
4)How does your financial future look?Shuffle Says: "Boyscout'n" by Menomena. Whistling. Baritone Sax. Somewhere between those two things, is where my money's gonna be. In other words, I'm gonna hit that scratch off jackpot, son! Double Doubler!
5)What is your ideal vacation?Shuffle Says: "Part Time Lover" by Stevie Wonder. A sexcation. In the eighties.
6)What does an apology from you involve?Shuffle Says: "Her Majesty" by The Beatles. It takes the Queen herself to get me to admit I'm wrong.
7)What kind of food are you in the mood to eat?Shuffle Says: "Little Red Corvette" by Prince. Damn, shuffle, this is the second time I've played this game, and this song has showed up both times. In a very suggestive question. Damn, Prince, you are beating that horse/condom/sexual partner metaphor to death in this song.
8)What is your worst habit?Shuffle Says: "Margarete vs. Pauline" by Neko Case. I'll admit, I'm pretty bad about pitting girls against eachother. Damn. This song takes my breath away. Neko Case takes my breath away, really.
9)If you were a boxer, what music would they play as you entered the ring?Shuffle Says: "Love To Fight" by Sebadoh. Seriously. Not shitting you. I didn't rig this. I clicked "skip", and the perfect song for this question came up.
10)What is your most prized possession?Shuffle Says: "Vietnamese Baby" by New York Dolls. I bought this baby, cash!
11)Describe your creative side.Shuffle Says: "Search And Destroy" by The Stooges. I am, in fact, a streetwalkin' cheetah with a heart full of napalm.
12)What advice would you give a younger version of yourself?Shuffle Says: "Jackson Cannery" by Ben Folds Five. Enough's enough, I'm leaving this factory. Jeff, leave the factory. cuz all you need, yeah, it's free, cuz you're a factory. wait, that doesn't make any sense.
13)What is one thing you would change about yourself if you could?Shuffle Says: "Bullet The Blue Sky" by U2. 100, 200! Damn. Sometimes, you forget how awesome U2 are/were. So, I guess I'd change... well, this song really doesn't apply to me.
14)What song will play over the credits in the movie about your life?Shuffle Says: "Don't Mess With Cupid" by Otis Redding. Yeah, sure. That works. This song is pretty awesome. I guess the movie could focus on my secret life as a vengeful match maker.
15)What will cause your downfall?Shuffle Says: "That's Not Me" by The Beach Boys. Moving out of my parents house will cause my downfall. Geez. I'm fucked. There's a whole long life after that, right? Right?!?
16)Where did you leave your keys when you lost them?Shuffle Says: "Somebody To Love" by Queen. Oh. That's where I left them? Ugh. I can wait till they come out on their own.
17)How do you feel about the Bush Administration?Shuffle Says: "Full Disclosure" by Fugazi. If it were opposite day? Yes.
18)What's you best pickup line?Shuffle Says: "Don't Believe The Hype" by Public Enemy. Yeah, girl, don't believe the hype! I don't got no diseases! Don't believe the hype! I'm not homeless, and I ain't gonna steal your prescriptions when I ask to use your bafroom!
19)What was your biggest mistake?Shuffle Says: "Pattern Against User" by At The Drive-In. "Hypodermic people pokin' fun at the livin'." Yeah, I was a real asshole for doing that. Sorry. I apologize for myself and all of my hypodermic people.
20)What superpower do you want?Shuffle Says: "The Narrator" by Apples In Stereo. I am the omniscient narrator of the world. Or at the very least, an Apples In Stereo record.

On Jamming

what i'm listening to right now: Instant Pleasures by Simply Saucer

This post started out as a response to Michael in the comments to his post about Phish vs. The Grateful Dead. I ended up getting a little long winded for just a comment. Then I started talking about how Neil Young makes me feel like a loser. So I moved it over here.

By the way, this is my 50th post on this blog. A milestone has turned, or something like that.

So, jam bands. Or jamming to be more specific. There's nothing wrong with that. Michael's right, it gets a bad name, when it can be very adventurous musically. It can really change your perception of the music. (Most) every musician that I respect does it. It's kinda like masturbation. You don't talk about it with your friends that much, unless that's all your friends talk about (hippies). Shit, The Velvet Underground did it. Ever listen to any of the live albums? "Sister Ray" is a kinda-jam.

Just like any genre, or more specifically, just like any musical apparatus, jamming has it's transcendent moments, and it's large pool of pretenders. Unlike Mike, can I call him Mike? I'm sure I can. Unlike Mike, I would put Phish in that pretender pool. Phish, while technically proficient, has that one string that they pull. The jam, and that's it. The jam has to have some root in a song. A jam is a device in a toolbox, not the box itself.

The Grateful Dead on the other hand, and Mike argued this same point, so I'm just reiterating here, always had a song to return to. If they went off for thirty minutes, they always had the choice to return to a great melody and for the most part, some fairly great lyrics.

My personal favorite jamming, though is the jamming of Jimi Hendrix. In the last decade a shit ton of posthumous live albums have come out. Some better than others, but the one theme that runs through all of them is "holy shit, I'm listening to the greatest musician ever". The same kind of feeling when you listen to John Coltrane completely freak out on his saxophone. Jimi's jamming is more like Coltrane than Garcia. It's much more about unconscious musical ability. There's more emotion than there is "this would sound cool if I did this..." The difference between these two musicians and the rest of the world is their need to do this, in an instinctual sense. Like you can't imagine anyone else taking the triteness of "My Favorite Things" and turning it into a towering monster that scrapes the bottom of heaven. Like you can't imagine anyone else making their guitar sound like a machine gun for twelve minutes, and actually, sincerely mean it.

I might throw Neil Young into this group. Less graceful than either two, but there is real emotion behind his ragged playing. Neil Young really makes me feel like the underachiever that I am. By the time he was 24, he had been in a band with Rick James, Buffalo Springfield, made Everybody Knows This is Nowhere, After The Goldrush, AND Harvest. Damn. I can't really compare with that. How great is "Down By The River"? It's one riff, and like eight words.

While I was looking for a picture of Neil Young & Crazy Horse, I happened upon the picture above. I always forget about the Crazy Horse on a mountainside thing, and everytime I stumble upon it again, I'm once again blown away.

Greetings From Ys-burry Park.

Ooh Ooh Ooh! The other day we got the new Joanna Newsom ep. A couple of weeks before it comes out. Oh the benefits of having a girlfriend who's a music editor for a local magazine.

So, it's fantastic. Having been lucky enough to see Newsom live on her recent tour, I was floored by her full band arrangements of songs from Ys. At the time of the concert, I hadn't bought the album yet. So, the show kinda colored how I approached the album after I got it. (Directly after the show). As amazing as Ys is, the full band arrangements were something else entirely. The Ys Street Band, as she refers to them, make the songs sound even more Renaissance Fair-y, but that doesn't really faze me. I could see how this could disarm someone not willing to go along with the whole Sword In The Stone vibe of this ep. The thing that gets me is Newsom herself. She's amazing. Her lyrics are labyrinths that are very easy to get lost in, beautiful labyrinths, with all the amenities of home. A labyrinth that I don't mind settling down in, making a pot of coffee, letting the exit come to me.

I miss that show, there are certain bands whose shows reach this level that you don't ever want them to end. You want to live at these shows, you want to become familiar with the corners and hallways of the shows. Using the settling in metaphor again, I guess. It's where you want to be. Not like a Dead or Phish concert thing, where you just go, get fucked up, and appreciate the music much more while you're tripping and making grilled cheese sandwiches in the parking lot. No, more like following Joanna Newsom to watch this house that she's building get windows, a roof. Later on, couches, cats, and microwaves.

And that brings me to how much I already miss Kings. It was a place where you could watch a band do that. We were really lucky to have a couple of beyond fantastic bands that built a house in Kings. The Rosebuds were starting to put pictures of children (The Bowerbirds) on the walls of their house. Amanda and I were talking the other day, and we realized that we've seen the Rosebuds more than we've seen any band in our life. Probably a half dozen drummers, a stand up bass player once, now a full band. We've all been lucky in this town, able to watch this little band grow up into this big thing that they are now. I don't know how many people get to do that. Watch a good band become great, in front of you, three or four miles down the road.

Purple Monkey Dishwasher, Pass It On.

A number of blogs of people I know, or Amanda knows have been doing a list of their top ten high school albums. It's spread from Marco to Jenny (whom I also stole the "Shuffle" post from, which she took from Marco), to Michael. Now I'm doing it. The three of them are a few years older than I am, so my list should be significantly different. Here it is.



10. Jimi Hendrix- Band of Gypsys. Of course, this didn't come out while I was in high school. A good percentage of what I'll write about didn't. I was into older stuff in high school. I listened to this album incessantly. It's amazing. It's heavy jazz/funk. Not rock at all. My brother, Dan spent a year learning every second of this album on his guitar. We bought a bootleg video of the concert, a CD of a guy telling you which nobs to turn to get the guitar tone. It was an obsession.
9. Pixies- Surfer Rosa. Holy shit. I'd never heard anything so unhinged before. I bought it, only to take it home and find the disc was broken inside the case. It took another week for it to come into the store again, and when it did. This was one of the albums that I spent a lot of time listening to pushing carts in the Target parking lot. Ah, Walkmans. How inconvenient was that huge circle that I carried around.

8. The White Album- In middle school, I dabbled with the idea of enjoying heavy metal. I tried, oh, how I tried to enjoy a Marilyn Manson album, or a Sepultura album. I really tried. Of course, I couldn't stand the shit. During this time, I got in a little trouble at school. You draw one pentagram on your algebra notebook... So, my teacher feverishly calls my dad, tells him I'm on the path to hell. He forces me to cut my long hair, takes all my tapes and CDs and goes through the lyrics to each one. Anything objectionable, gone. Metallica, Nine Inch Nails, Pearl Jam, Nirvana (for not having lyrics, so they must be doing something subliminal). I talk him into letting me sell them to the record store. I get enough credit for two CDs, The White Album and something I don't remember. I don't think I've listened to any album as much as I have The White Album. It's perfect. If I had to choose one album to keep out of the thousand plus we own, that'd be the one.
7. The Velvet Underground & Nico. The fondest memory I have of this album is driving down 401 in my dad's truck, the windows down, the volume all the way up. "The Black Angel Death Song" is blowing my mind, and then what I thought for a moment was a second drum part, turned out to be my tire going flat. Also, playing this on the CD player in second period art class. Jessica Davis was loving "Sunday Morning", and then she joined everyone else in hating the Velvet Underground and me.
6.Ben Folds Five- s/t. Another carryover from middle school. I listened to the tape of this so much that it eventually broke the tape player in my mom's Ford Contour (which I would later crash.)
5.Blind Melon- Soup. Probably the least cool album on this list. I have a soft spot for this band, and I'm not ashamed to say it. I bought it in a huge record store in Akron when we were visiting there one year. I remember playing it a lot in my grandma's basement while Dan and I were avoiding my uncle Wayne.
4.Fugazi- Repeater. I've written about this before, so I'll keep it short. I listened to this pushing carts at Target. A lot. It made me a mini communist and I quit my job. Before I could quit my job, I was driving that Ford Contour and crashed it while a Fugazi song was on 88.1. I should clarify that I didn't crash the car through my negligence, someone hit me over on Martin Street by Moore Square.
3.Modest Mouse- This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About. I listened to a burned copy of this over and over for pretty much all of high school. I can't attribute any specific memories to it, though. Probably a couple of long drives, though.
2.Aesop Rock- Labor Days. We listened to this a lot senior year. My friend Derrick would take us to eat at Bojangles at lunch, and then do something crazy with his truck. Usually, he'd drive it into this field that is now a Target. He had 4 wheel drive, and just didn't give a fuck. The grass was really high in that field, and there were a lot of big holes in it. I'm not sure how we didn't get injured while he was doing that. He did wreck it shortly afterwards, along with at least one more car before we graduated. Might have been more than one, actually. Derrick's since joined the Marines. A completely unbelievable thing.
1.The Cherry Valence- s/t. The first time I went to Kings was to see Nebula and The Cherry Valence. Nebula was neither here nor there. They didn't leave an impression on me because they went on after the best band in town. I saw Cherry Valence every time they played in town. They routinely blew my mind. It was like if James Brown replaced whatshisname in AC/DC.


honorable mentions.
Ghostface Killah- Supreme Clientele. Listened to this plenty of times playing video games over at Lamont's.
The Doors- Morrison Hotel. I really liked the Doors in high school. A little too much.
Coldplay- Parachutes. Are Coldplay pussies? Yes. Am I? Probably best to leave that unanswered.

TV On The Radio- It's All Fart Jokes From Here On

I've tried, and I just can't write much about this show. It was just amazing. TV on The Radio were earth shattering. They were The Colossus of Rhodes, standing astride all of indie rock, looking down at all the little bands in their little boats. They played a frenzied set that didn't relent. What passes for a ballad for them was a tent revival where the Bad Brains were the house band. Where jazz was the teacher, and funk was the preacher. Where I run out of metaphors and just give up on trying to explain this show.

I can explain that I wasn't fond of the opening band, The Noisettes. I was hoping from the sound of their band name that they'd sound like the Sonic Youth album that Phil Spector never got to produce. If they did sound like that, I'd probably like them more than Sonic Youth. That wasn't the case. They sounded like a punky version of Thin Lizzy without the charm and hooks of Thin Lizzy. Nothing impressive.