Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Yo La Tengo Is In Five Days!!

what i'm listening to right now: "prenzlaurberg" by Beirut
My favorite band that's alive and together, Yo La Tengo, will be in Carborro in only five days!! My girlfriend, Amanda, who is the music editor for the local alternative monthly paper, The Hatchet, got us free tickets to both nights. She also got an interview with James McNew, the bassist. It's very exciting, I'll have pictures and a poorly written show review after the sixth.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Everybody Hates Chris


what i'm listening to right now: "Cherokee" by Lucky Thompson.

Last night I finished the DVD of the first season of Everybody Hates Chris. It stand right there with Curb Your Enthusiasm and Arrested Development as one of the funniest shows ever on television. As visually funny as it is smart, switching manically between fantasy scenes of someone getting the black slapped off them, to hillarious social commentary you'd expect from the show's creator, Chris Rock. The best part of the show is that the family is probably the most realistic portrayal of a family on television yet. The father's not a bumbling idiot, the mother's not cruel, there aren't any forced hugs or kids back talking their parents and getting away with it. It's real. The dad works two jobs, the mom works sometimes, and the oldest brother is left in charge. The younger brother is cooler than the older brother... It's just right.
So this gets my thumbs up.

Monday, January 29, 2007

The 19th Century Economics Of The Veternarian Trade

What I'm listening to right now: Pressed In A Book by The Shins

Took my cat, Coltrane to the vet this morning. After staying up so late trying to encapsulate my entire experience with music in one post about mixtapes, I was nodding off in the exam room. Coltrane had lost a bit of weight, but the only thing the vet found wrong was some flea problem

s. Well, I knew about that. I didn't need her to tell me that. So she bossed us into spending a whole bunch of money on overly expensive flea medicine. Someone needs to stop these pet medicine robber barons, there's no reason there shouldn't be a generic version of this stuff.

Sunday, January 28, 2007

Sesame Chicken Drycleaning And Other Hits

What I'm Listening To Right Now: Bonnie "Prince" Billy & Matt Sweeney: Superwolf
Who I've Been Obsessively Listening To: Charles Mingus

I wonder exactly how many blog entries have been written about mixtapes? And, damn, I know that making it my first entry might be.... well, really, fuck it. I've never had a blog, and have little experience with blogs, I'm naive about this. I'm just approaching this entry in a guarded fashion. Trying to declare my coolness before delving into a geeky labyrinth and tussling with a minotaur that's going to point out all my loserish tendencies to sit in front of itunes and import all my cds so I can make that perfect transition from "II B.S." by Charles Mingus into "This Ain't No Picnic" by the Minutemen. So, yeah, fuck it. Fuck being guarded and hip and fuck talking about some social significance of sharing music with others or other intellectual wankery.

Making mix cds is fun. It kinda fulfills the dream I've had of being a free-form radio DJ. Plotting out playlists where Otis Redding rubs elbows with The Feelies and movie scores. It brings me a lot of joy. Just listening to music is the most fun I can think of having. Last night, my girlfriend, Amanda and I made a mix CD for her friend Sarah. We stayed up until 5:35 am, drinking and searching for that Bonnie "Prince" Billy song where he sings "all around", we found it, it had it in the parentheses "Nomadic Revere (All Around)". It was some of the most fun we've had together in a couple of weeks.

It's been a tiring couple of weeks, we've both been working alot. I am a waiter at a small fine dining restaurant less than a half a mile from my house. Amanda's the assistant manager of a used book store up in North Raleigh. Lately we've only seen eachother at the end of our shifts, and occasionally during the times where the two of us aren't working in the morning or sleeping in. So it was really nice last night to stay up late without having to worry about working or doing something with someone or shopping for some important items.

I've been making mix cds for quite a while now. I missed the mix tape era, mainly because my cd players never had tape decks attached or my tape deck didn't have a slot for a second tape. Mainly an equipment problem. Though I was passed the occasional tape now and again, mostly lame 90's grunge whatnot, (as that was the period we're discussing). Silverchair, Bush b-sides, Stone Temple Pilots etc. were what I mostly had to deal with. What I really longed for I didn't know really existed, I caught tired glimpses of it on Alternative Nation/120 minutes when flipping through a friend's cable television late at night during sleepovers. What peaked my interest was just a roadblock in my friend's quest (and well, mine too, but that music was awesome, what was that?!) to find porn on cable, without waking their parents.

i started writing this at 2:30 in the morning, and when I returned to it twelve hours later, couldn't pick up my train of thought, so...
to be continued...