Thursday, April 17, 2008

Smile and Evil Thoughts




I had a super long entry about group meetings and projects and this album being a wonderful cathartic release, and while it is, there's no amount of explanation that can put this into a proper context.

Listen to this Boris album. It will pound your skull so hard, but you'll keep coming back for more.

Smile

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

It's 3AM. Do you know where your children are? (MUXTAPE #2)



MUXTAPE

MUXTAPE #2: Summer Shimmer Pop
Summer is upon us! Let's run in the streets and stay out late! The street lights don't go on until 8! We can swim in the ocean, ride seafoam green tandem bikes and get wild!

There's something so great about the stereotypical "American" guitar tone. The only way I've ever been able to describe it is as "shimmery." Fender amps with single coil pickups, high on the mids; all of those things sound like summer to me. I haven't been sleeping all that well lately; the heat, along with the typical "end of the school year everything crisis" mentality has kept me up far too late the last week. All I can say is that I'm going to listen to this muxtape a ton until summer is here.

1. Jeff Enzor - "Filtered Disfunctions (Our Broken Floors)"
Doesn't particularly fit in with the theme in terms of sound, but in philosophy, this works perfectly. This song should be on modern rock radio. No exaggeration there. And, for the record Jennifer, this is not your Jeff song. It should be for everyone. The world will know of this song soon enough.

2. Julie Ocean - "Ten Lonely Words (Long Gone and Nearly There)"
Dischord and DC indie pop vets team up to write one of 2008's best boldfaced power pop albums. There is nothing more summer than power pop.

3. Bruce Springsteen - "For You (Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ)"
I've been so stoked on this album over the last month or so. Subconsciously I can feel summer coming and this album has stood for everything I want my summers to be; it is also the blueprint for all great summer albums in one way or another.

4. Rhett Miller - "Hover (The Instigator)"
Rhett Miller is not only one of the most handsome men in rock and roll, but he's also one of the better songwriters. The Instigator was written mostly by Miller, but was produced (and obviously handled) by Jon Brion. There's so much of the witty Brion charm on this album, it's nearly irresistible.

5. Limbeck - "Yeah, Totally (Hi, Everything's Great vinyl first pressing)"
One of the things that's always been most disappointing to me about Limbeck is the fact that they've decided to relegate some of their best songs to b-sides, tour EPs and compilations. This is a good example of that. It bridges the gap between their power pop incarnation and their current alt.country identity perfectly. I've always loved Limbeck's perspective on music and life, which basically boils down to "life is awesome, let's have fun!"

6. Jason Anderson - "Watch Your Step (The Hopeful and the Unafraid)"
The "life is awesome" school of thought carries over here. I know this song is on Justin Conway's muxtape, but I couldn't leave this one off, because it's just too perfect. It's a beautifully worded love song that has a priceless sense of humor, without losing its seriousness: "Every other day or so/I google image search your name/but there's only one picture/and it's always the same/I had to memorize the lyrics/I downloaded this mp3/I printed out the bass tab/spent my way around the key/I'm working on a version now/to jog your memory/maybe a jog seems ambitious/maybe we should try".

7. The Hold Steady - "You Can Make Him Like You (Boys and Girls in America)"
Though this album came out too late in the year to be a summer album, I think it should be added to the summer album canon because of its unabashed stadium spirit. The thought of hearing Craig Finn screaming out "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" at a Mets (or Twins) game is just too good.

8. Stone Temple Pilots - "Plush (Core)"
Originally, this was a perfect 8 song playlist, but I have the obsessive need to be consistent with stupid things like muxtape, so I added this piece of flair. All of STP's singles were pretty good. The idea here is great and the hook is good, but the song is way too long.

9. Paul Westerberg - "Stain Yer Blood (Friends OST)"
What's with those Westerberg songs on the Friends Sountrack? I don't know, but I love them to death. It sounds like the late 90s to me, and God knows I love that. This song actually sticks out to me because it just sounds like the Midwest in the mid-to-late 90s. It actually sounds a lot like a Get Up Kids song, which is weird considering the fact that there would be no Get Up Kids without the Replacements, but whatever.

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Liveblogging the Straight Edge Documentary and Final Thoughts



7:08 PM - Arrived home late to find that the documentary already in progress, on commercial
7:12 PM - A sociologist wearing a "POSI" shirt? mega-lawlz.
7:15 PM - FSU. Loving violence. Awesome. This is the death of the middle class. I love that the guy that started FSU moved to Hollywood away from violence.
7:22 PM - Going into the second commercial break, it seems apparent that the only thing Thurston's going to be talking about is people dying, extremism and Salt Lake City. I really don't know what I was expecting, considering the fact that they couldn't get anyone "from the inside" to narrate the documentary. I don't quite understand the connection between Sonic Youth and Straight Edge.
7:27 PM - THERE'S A BATTLE IN SALT LAKE CITY GOING ON BETWEEN INSANE CLOWN POSSE JUGGALOS AND STRAIGHT EDGE GANGS! OMFG! I LOVE CITIES LIKE THAT!
7:30 PM - Straight Edge gangs kill 15 year old with a springbilly?
7:32 PM - YES POSI-SOCIOLOGIST! KEEP IT POSI! DEFEND THOSE KIDS!
7:37 PM - I love that Reno is the focus.
7:43 PM - I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE LIVEBLOGGING.
7:46 PM - "White Suburban Terrorists"! And since when is Nevada the most dangerous state? I mean, four years, but seriously? How is it not California? It must be calculated per capita or something.
7:51 PM - The problem here is that this is a documentary maker's idea of "non-biased," however every single straight edge comment on the blog has to do with "the way the movement has been mischaracterized" or whatever. The thing about an issue like this is that there has to be a bias when portraying it. It's impossible to tackle such a huge issue in 43 minutes and not present some sort of bias; something will always be left out an someone will always be dissatisfied.
7:57 PM - EIGHTH GRADERS?



As someone who used to claim edge, I didn't find the documentary to be overly offensive. More often than not, I feel awkward in social situations where my beliefs are discussed. I still abstain from drugs, alcohol, smoking, etc., however I don't claim edge anymore, which is strange to me. I lived through some of my most formative years thinking that resisting was the only way, that it was us versus them. Today, I follow the school of thought perpetuated by the Revolution Summer crowd, the idea that change is inevitable and we should only work together for something loftier than what's right in front of us, be it drugs, gangs, self-interest, whatever. If it so happens that, like in my case, this involves living a clean lifestyle, then so be it, but this is not the contingent part. In the end, as everyone else says, it's about personal choice. What most straight edgers don't talk about is the fact that personal choice to follow isn't quite as "personal" as it should be.

ps. The image is sort of funny. I used to have this picture of Morrissey laying down in front of the Capital Building with a SSDecontrol 12", but I lost it. I tried to look for it on google image search, but I found that instead, which is an egregious misappropriation of "How Soon is Now?"

Monday, April 7, 2008

And now Jeff Enzor goes on the list.



MUXTAPE

This will be updated periodically; I will post the tracklistings here when I change it. Each muxtape will have nine songs and will be around 30 minutes long, just like one side of a real mixtape.

EDIT: the tracks are now backwards.

MUXTAPE #1
1. Paul Westerberg - "Sunshine (Friends OST)"
WHO WROTE THIS SONG? +10 if you get it.
Anyways, a great version nonetheless; the best part is the bit of canned laughter at the very beginning, probably from a bit of dialogue from the show.

2. Guided by Voices - "Glad Girls (Isolation Drills)"
Possibly the best quote of the year: "wtf 'hey black girls i want ot get you high'"

3. Jason Anderson - "July 4, 2004 (The Hopeful and the Unafraid)"
I think that this should be the second song on every album Jason Anderson ever writes. This version is a very succinct version of the one that ended up on Tonight; I like that both versions exist.

4. Elvis Costello - "Alison (My Aim is True)"
Did you know that Huey Lewis was in Elvis Costello's band during the recording of My Aim is True? He didn't record on this song, but a lot of the 80s make more sense because of this.

5. Paul Simon - "Graceland (Graceland)"
Jeff Enzor goes on the list, not only for introducing me to muxtape, but also for introducing me to Paul Simon.

6. Bruce Springsteen - "Blinded by the Light (Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ)"
Anthony Bourdain was in New Jersey for an episode of No Reservations a few years back and when he went to Asbury Park, he started to talk about this album. This is absolutely the best way to start off a first album.

7. Wilco - "Magazine Called Sunset (demo)"
This is from the leaked engineer's demos. There isn't much more to this version and I actually like the Bridge EP version better, just because the intro is a little different, but I could only find this version to upload.

8. Ryan Adams - "My Winding Wheel (Heartbreaker)"
Something about the way the organ enters the song mimics every other organ moment I love in Americana, but it gets me every time.

9. Whiskeytown - "Indian Gown (Stranger's Almanac reissue)"
One of the hundreds of previously unreleased Whiskeytown demos. Ryan Adams just has too many damn albums, demos, etc. but I love him anyways.

Sunday, April 6, 2008

LOL of the day.



DUDE.
SERIOUSLY?
SINCE WHEN?

Beat It