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2010-03-29T22:23:00.001-07:00

Flaming Lips and Yo La Tengo Year End Reviews

2010-01-14T16:06:00.001-08:00

I was asked to write year end reviews for two of favorite records of last year, The Flaming Lips Embryonic and Yo La Tengo's Popular Songs. You can find them here, as well as below.

Flaming Lips- Embryonic

Embryonic resets the clock for the Flaming Lips. After a decade of functioning as a studio three-piece and turning out highly orchestrated albums with Wayne’s voice and lyrics firmly in the foreground, the band has gone back to being a band again. It would be easy to imagine that a back-to-basics approach would result in an album that sounded like it could be the follow-up to 1993’sTransmissions From The Satellite Heart, but this is the Flaming Lips. They’re anything but predictable, although they probably needed to remind themselves of that after the relatively tame At War With The Mystics.

Constructing songs primarily upon a tapestry of drum and bass patterns, Embryonic is also their first so-called double album, even though it fits on a single disc and doesn’t run much longer than some of their previous records. Like the Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main Street, the record goes for a sustained mood over individual songs. Which is not to say there aren’t some gems on here. Embryonic takes you on an organic journey through a range of styles including free jazz and psychedelia, and because the vocals are pushed to the back, the themes of power and astrology only emerge over time. But on a sprawling record like this, uncovering the rewards is what it’s all about. –Todd Norem

Yo La Tengo- Popular Songs

There’s something to the title of Yo La Tengo’s 2009 album that really rings true. Popular Songs – it sounds like another joke from the same band that brought us 2005’s I’m Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass. Sure, we’ve never seen Yo La Tengo in the top 10 and probably never will. But Popular Songs is Yo La Tengo’s most accessible album in years. Longtime fans enjoyed their Condo Fucks detour into garage rock covers from earlier this year, but by genre-hopping from R&B to psychedelia to guitar-drenched epics, they’re created a better record here. “Periodically Double Or Triple,” “If It’s True,” and “Avalon Or Something Similar” may not have the catchiest titles, but the music is some of the most infectious the band has created. And just when you think they really have created a batch of single-ready material, they reward you with three epic songs to close the disc. But what really matters is that Yo La Tengo have recorded another record which lives up to the promise of I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One and And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out. By referencing their past while creating an adventurous new musical landscape, the record rewards longtime fans while providing a great entry point for wannabe converts as well. –Todd Norem

February Album Writing Month 2010

2010-01-14T15:43:00.001-08:00

Happy New Year everyone. I haven't posted much here lately, but I hope to get back into it. Please leave comments when you can. It helps big time.

February Album Writing Month is just around the corner. For those of you scratching your head, here's a little background. Since 2004 there's been a community of people who each try to write an albums worth of material (defined as 14 songs on the site) during the shortest month of the year. It started out with just a handful of people and has grown to a couple thousand worldwide.

So if you've written a song, or always thought about it, visit fawm.org. It doesn't start until February 1st, so there's still time to sign up.

This will be my 5th year doing it. I finished the challenge and wrote all 14 songs in 2005, 2008 and 2009.

Tom Waits- Glitter And Doom Live

2009-12-01T09:14:00.000-08:00

Check out my review of the new Tom Waits live album at onethirtybpm.com.

Sensitive singer songwriter. Jazzy nightclub hipster. Found instrument auteur. Growly bluesman. Circus sideshow act. You never know what you’re going to get with Tom Waits. For four decades now Tom Waits has been defying easy categorization and doing what he does best – producing music that is as big of a hodgepodge of styles as America once was. You’d think live albums would be a safe way for those new to his music to dive in. Usually second only to greatest hits albums in predictability, the live album often features little more than a disc or two of an artist’s biggest hits framed by crowd noise. But this is Tom Waits we’re talking about, and there’s nothing business-as-usual about Glitter and Doom.

A document of the 2008 tour of the same name, the Glitter and Doom Tour played only scattered U.S. and European dates and came two years after his last release. Orphans was a three-volume compilation of songs that didn’t find their place on previous records, along with a handful of new material, and his last studio album of all new material, Real Gone, was back in 2004. With nothing new to promote, the Glitter and Doom Tour promised nothing but the opportunity to see Tom Waits live, and although he performed songs from both releases, the resulting live album has more in common with his pair of theatrical releases from 2002, Alice andBlood Money.

Glitter and Doom isn’t about a live show as much as it is about a live performance. There’s nothing natural about the brute voice that Tom projects so well during the opening “Lucinda/Down To The Well,” a brilliant combination of two Orphans tracks that far surpasses what the two originals had. The album is worth checking out for this song alone, but it’s unsettling the first time you hear it. Tom Waits has used the grittier aspects of his voice quite effectively for the past 25 years, but this pushes things to the extreme and into the realm of theater. “Goin’ Out West” is a nice romp, sounding like a stripped down blues song done to the tune of T. Rex’s “Bang A Gong.” There’s a foreboding that’s absent from the Orphans version on “Fannin’ Street,” and his excellent band gets a chance to stretch out as Waits barks lyrics on “Get Behind The Mule.”

Waits sticks mostly to songs from the last decade or so, but even then his choice of material sometimes seems random and plays more like an alternative detour through the past 20 years than any sort of greatest hits live collection. “Falling Down” is a nice nod to his previous live album, 1988’s Big Time, as the song was featured on that record as the album’s lone studio song. And “Singapore” reaches back a little further to the time when he made a major break from largely acoustic guitar and piano-driven songs to a potpourri of sounds you couldn’t easily slap a label on.

The theatrical nature of the performance starts to wear a little thin by end of the first disc on songs like Real Gone’s “Circus.” And there’s plenty of this on the second disc, such as “Tom Tails,” which consists of nothing but between-song banter and jokes. It’s entertaining when you’re in the right mood, but sometimes you wish a guy with these immense talents and songs this good would play things just a little bit more straight. Of course, part of being a Waits fan is learning to enjoy the ride. Glitter and Doom rewards, even if, much like the randomness of the cities the tour played in, it comes across more like a backwoods road trip than a full-blown drive.

R.E.M. Live At The Olympia

2009-11-10T09:08:00.000-08:00

R.E.M. embrace their early albums, test out new songs, and capture it all on a new live album. Read my review at 130bpm.com.

R.E.M. released five full-length records, an EP and a b-sides collection for IRS records in the 1980’s. And even though they built their reputation as a touring band, playing small towns and major markets and just about any venue they could get a gig in, they never released an official live record for the label. Peter Buck often spoke out against it, saying that a live record should be more than just greatest hits with crowd noise and referenced The Who’s Live At Leeds as a live album that was done right. After commercial success and a major label contract, they would eventually cave somewhat and release live videos after successful tours, but it wasn’t until 2007 that they released a proper live album, 25 years into their career. But R.E.M. Live was exactly the kind of live record the band had always been against. In retrospect, it seems like an attempt to save the material from 2004’s sterile Around the Sun and prove to the world that they still mattered, at least in a live setting. But the proof wouldn’t come until the following studio album and a back-to-basics approach that began with five shows in Dublin.

In 2007, R.E.M. were at a crossroads. They had released three albums since Bill Berry left, and while some, like 1998’s Up were artistic highs, they were increasingly spending more time in the studio and getting weaker results. With the follow up to Around the Sun looming they wanted to break the mold so they booked 5 nights at the Olympia Theater in Dublin to test material in front of a live audience as recognition to the way they used to work up new songs by trying them out on tours. In order to prepare for the shows they went back to their earliest albums and looked for material that might fit in with their new direction. Most of the new material played at these concerts ended up on 2008’s Accelerate, and the double-disc Live at The Olympia contains all 39 songs played during the 5 nights, including two new songs that didn’t make the cut for Accelerate. But unlike R.E.M. Live, the only thing bloated here is the length.

Live at The Olympia is over two and a half hours long and avoids the big hits of the 90’s, as well as most of their minor hits of the 80’s and almost all of their recent work, in favor of truly a back-to-basics approach. R.E.M. mine their IRS years, playing almost the entirety of their 1982 debut EP Chronic Town along with half ofReckoning and several lesser-known songs from Fables of the Reconstruction, Lifes Rich Pageant andDocument, and a few scattered songs from the Warner Brothers years. Besides the emphasis on more rock-oriented material, the most surprising thing about Live at The Olympia is just how well this older material works with the new. It’s testament to how far they had come with the pre-Accelerate material that the one dud out of all the 39 songs is a song from Around the Sun, the very album that they were fighting against making.

Live at The Olympia might just be that rare live album that Peter Buck had always talked about. It captures a legendary band that never found a reason to quit, even after they finally succumbed to recording a truly bad album, and finds them reinventing themselves by returning to what they do best. For those only familiar with the band’s 90’s material, the plethora of great early songs like “Kohoutek,” “Feeling Gravity’s Pull” and “Letter Never Sent” will provide a killer introduction to their past while also bringing you up to date with the where they are now. And for those of us that got on board early on, it’s the closest we’re likely to get to going back. But for the band, it marks a new start and a rewinding of the clock. To borrow one of their lyrics, they have begun again. And it’s great the tape was rolling this time.

The Other Side Of The Street

2009-11-09T08:41:00.000-08:00

I woke up on the right side of the bed, yet I find myself on the opposite side of the street. It's a Monday morning in November and it's absolutely beautiful out. Just a month ago there was a bitter chill in the air. But that's long gone.

I couldn't find a spot at my regular coffee shop. I don't know if that's because of the weather or if people are just feeling especially productive on this Monday morning. Maybe there was another round of layoffs somewhere and people are looking to add a little structure to their day. I don't know. I just couldn't get a table and it was sort of baffling.

I like the people over at this place, my second choice. They really appreciate your business. So I don't feel guilty coming over here. Quite the opposite, I feel bad for staying away.

The guy gives me a detailed story about my coffee. I like that. He says that it's harvested in Ethiopia and roasted in SE Minneapolis. He warns me that it isn't a true dark roast, but instead a full city, and that they should have the dark roast available soon. In fact, they have it on the shelf. Smell this, he says as he holds out the bag of beans.

It smells strong. The kind of coffee I like. But the full city is just fine. As is the altered perspective. I'm across the street. The weather is beautiful. And it's a Monday morning in November.

Built To Spill- There Is No Enemy

2009-10-19T22:43:00.000-07:00

Review is up at onethirtybpm.com for Built To Spill's new one.

The best artists are often haunted by their past. Stick around long enough to see bands that grew up on your sound start to imitate it, or meet fans that treat your albums as gospel, able to recite every lyric and conjure up every note, and it can leave you in an impossible position. Some bands drastically change their sound, looking to grow artistically while separating themselves from an identity forged by their early material. But an even larger number of them simply break up. After 2001’s disappointing Ancient Melodies of the Future, Built to Spill took a long break.

“Make up your mind, make up your own mythology,” Doug Marsh sings on There Is No Enemy’s “Planting Seeds.” He could easily be talking about the singular vision that shaped the two albums that largely defined the band and helped shape the sound of indie rock in the previous decade, 1997’s Perfect From Now On and 1999’s Keep it Like a Secret. While 2006’s You in Reverse sounded tentative, only occasionally hinting at the brilliance that so many fans of guitar-based rock fell in love with, There Is No Enemy sounds confident. They’ve created an album that sounds less like a patchwork and works as a whole, and more importantly, they sound like a real band again.

“Hindsight” could easily fit on Keep it Like a Secret, with textbook indie-rock hooks and a concise structure, and “Pat” is Built to Spill at their most economical and aggressive, but many of the highlights of the album are the mellower moments. “Life’s A Dream” features some unexpected harmonies that provide a welcome relief from the serious nature of the lyrics, and “Things Fall Apart” could easily sit alongside the very best of the band’s songs.

There is No Enemy is far from perfect. There are some prodding moments, most noticeably during the middle section of the record, especially on “Oh Yeah,” but as a whole this is the strongest record they’ve put out in a decade and a welcome return to form. Like Dinosaur Jr, Built to Spill seem to be able to reconcile the mythology of their past with their artistic pursuits of the future. It can’t be an easy task, but it’s awfully nice to be able to go along for the ride.

CarrotMob Hardware Store Action

2009-10-14T14:03:00.000-07:00

I had an interesting moment last week when my parents were in town. I wanted to put a new thermostat in my place and asked for my Dad's help. I mentioned that there was a hardware store just a few blocks away from where I lived, but he was dismissive, saying that Home Depot would have much better prices and we should just go there. I felt pretty guilty driving by that hardware store and vowed not to do that again. You really do have to support the little guys once in a while or they won't be around anymore.

Anyway, I plan on making it up on October 24 at Guse Hardware. They're participating in a CarrotMob event and donating 100% of their revenues to making energy improvements in the store. It'll be pretty hard to drive by that.

Mason Jennings- Blood Of Man

2009-10-14T13:48:00.000-07:00

Review is up at onethirtybpm.com for the new Mason Jennings album.

For much of his career, Mason Jennings’s body of work has been the type that would often feature a handful of great songs alongside a lot of filler. His albums invariably contained one absolutely killer song, a role “The Field” fills on Blood of Man, but too often Jennings fell short in fulfilling the promise of his early work. From the opening notes of Blood of Man, it’s apparent that this is not business as usual. There’s a new sense of primal urgency and yes, electric guitars, most noticeably on “Ain’t No Friend of Mine,” which recalls the Black Keys’ Hendrix-indebted blues rock. The album’s production is more lo-fi than any of his recent releases, but more than anything there’s a sense of rebirth in the subject matter as well as the delivery. Mason’s been releasing records for well over a decade now, and if there was ever a record that served to remind us why we started listening in the first place, Blood of Man is it.

Jennings’ lyrics speak of “blood on the door” and “blood on the wall” and from the sound of this record, there’s blood on the line as well. The singer-songwriter takes full control on Blood of Man, playing all of the instruments and recording everything himself much like he did on his 1997 debut EP, but the music here is much darker, recalling Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska both in approach and in subject matter. But where that record featured acoustic guitars and stories of closed factories and dead end small town America, Blood Of Man is plugged in and addresses war, suicide, murder and drugs. Like Springsteen, Jennings knows that with a heavy dose of doom and gloom you have to sprinkle in a little optimism, and it’s here in songs like “Tourist” and the first-childhood-kiss recollection of “Sunlight,” where “Minutes freeze like popsicles and drip their seconds down our shirts.”

This return to his roots shouldn’t be surprising to longtime fans. Jennings has always put his art first, not releasing his first EP until he was truly satisfied with it, painstakingly recording each part by himself in a run down apartment, and reportedly turning down major label recording contracts early on in favor of doing things his way without compromise. Blood of Man signifies a new direction for Jennings, whether he’ll continue down this path remains to be seen, but it’s clearly a career reset from a guy who could have been perfectly content making records like his last couple. Then again, great artists are never really content are they?

PW & The Ghost Gloves Cat Wing Joy Boys

2009-10-01T14:36:00.000-07:00

I have a review up at One Thirty BPM of Paul Westerberg's new EP.

Check it out.

In 1997, between labels and growing increasingly frustrated with recording as a major label solo recording artist, Paul Westerberg took a sharp detour and released a five-song EP under the pseudonym GrandpaBoy. The songs were uncharacteristically direct, avoiding many of pitfalls of his previous recordings. The EP signaled a new direction for Westerberg, that he hadn’t forgotten that music could be fun and that sometimes a song gained power through a stripped down arrangement. But fans would have to wait until 2002’s Stereo/Mono double whammy of home recordings to see the potential truly blossom. It was on that release that a line in the sand was drawn, and with rare exception, Westerberg would release albums his way– home recorded, and in recent years, without the help of a label or a presence in CD racks.

PW & The Ghost Gloves Cat Wing Joy Boys continues in the vein of his MP3-only records, but doesn’t reach the highs of the song collage that launched those releases, last year’s 49. Paul seems to sense that’s he’s in a rut. “Finally found a pair of cowboy boots that fit/now I hang around and stare at the shine I spit.” He’s looking to someone for inspiration in “Gimme Little Joy” and threatens to blow the roof off the place if he finds it.

There’s an argument to be made that the first take is often the best, but too often the songs sound like they were being written as they were recorded. “Dangerous Boys” sounds the most inspired and rehearsed. It could easily fit on some of his more produced albums, and it’s hard not to imagine this being played live on some future tour. “Drop Them Gloves,” the most rocking song on the EP, would also sound great live, probably far better than the version featured here. Often he’s trying to re-create the sound of a band hammering it out in the basement, and sometimes it works to great effect, but on a song like this it becomes apparent that most bands are, well, bands.

When Westerberg gets melancholy the one-man band is less of an issue. “Love On The Wing,” with its plaintive piano introduction sounds like an outtake from 1999’s Suicaine Gratifaction. “Ghost On The Canvas” features acoustic guitars and pseudo-religious themes. “We dream in color/others they color their dreams.” It’s an intriguing song, certainly better than “Good As The Cat,” but maybe the feeling that he’s not being treated as well as the family feline is what drives him to the basement in the first place. And with this EP, warts and all, we are lucky for that.

It’s important to point out that this is a record. For the first time since 2004 you can purchase an honest to goodness CD of new non-soundtrack Paul Westerberg music. And it’s hard not to look at this as a sign of things to come. Its independent release on Westerberg’s Dry Wood label could easily be a test for something more substantial. Maybe he’ll find a sympathetic producer and take the lessons of the basement recordings and apply them to something better crafted and professional sounding. Or maybe not. Either way it’s nice to get a unexpected dose of rock and roll like this. A little grit in the Pro Tools.

This Is Not A Show/This Is Not A Blog Post

2009-09-30T16:27:00.000-07:00

This is not my beautiful wife...

I checked out the world premiere of the new R.E.M. live film last night. Entitled "This Is Not A Show," it is culled from 2007's working rehearsals/"experiment in terror" in which the band played new songs in front of a live audience to try to shake up the way they make records. Along with a slew of songs from the usually criminally underrepresented IRS years, the band took to the stage for 5 nights in Dublin to try out these new, sometimes half written tunes, which would become 2008's Accelerate. Vincent Moon was on hand to document the shows. And he was there last night, as was R.E.M.'s longtime manager Bertis Downs.

If you're familiar with the work that Vincent Moon has done for Arcade Fire or The National, or even R.E.M. you shouldn't expect anything drastically different here. Shot mostly in black and white, the film is noticeable more for what it obscures than what it shows. There are some gorgeous moments like "Drive" and an Accelerate outtake called "On The Fly," but too often Vincent Moon interrupts songs just as they're getting good, which is especially grating during the portions of the film devoted to the early material.

But the sound was incredible. If the forthcoming live record sounds as good as this material did during the film, then R.E.M. may have finally succeeded at getting their live sound down on tape. Which, with 39 songs made up of largely IRS material along Accelerate, would do wonders to remind people of what a vital band they once were, and for at least five nights in Dublin were again.

Drive - Live at the Olympia in Dublin

Catching up with Little Caesar's

2009-09-17T09:04:00.000-07:00

I had Little Caesar's pizza last night for the first time in 15+ years. A new one opened up in my neighborhood, and with the hot air balloons, people in costumes on the street, and coupons for $5 large pizzas and crazy bread hitting my mailbox, I finally caved. Just a couple of years ago I was convinced that pizza restaurant was no more. Was I missing anything?

Now I used to love Little Caesar's. Okay love is too strong of a word, but I sure got a kick out of their advertising of the 80's and 90's (Cliff Freeman and Partners), which at least subliminally played a part in my getting into the industry. And the pizza was good too. Hell, you got two of them. Pizza! Pizza!

Their menu is a little strange these days. It's the (non-slice) pizza version of fast food and is dominated by their "Hot-N-Ready" pizzas, which they claim to get into your hands in 30 seconds. They seem to only come in two varieties, cheese and pepperoni, so I went with the cheese and presented my coupon for the free breadsticks. On the way home I kept thinking of the economics of it. A large cheese pizza plus breadsticks for something like $5.35? Pretty crazy. You can't even get a decent frozen pizza for that.

My enthusiasm changed after the first bite. It was hot with a pretty thick crust. A little shabby on the cheese, but I thought the sauce would make up for it. Instead I could hardly taste it, and the toppings seemed as bland as the crust. This was pizza at its most unadventurous, and so bereft of flavor that I'm hard pressed to think of anything to compare it to. Maybe I'll try Dominos next week.

The breadsticks were better. Parmesan and garlic provided some much needed seasoning, and besides the rubbery interior, these weren't half bad. They could pass for bar food, which really isn't saying much. The best part was the "thank you thank you" on the inside of the box. It was a nice nod to the past. It's just too bad that's all they remember.

Fortunately for us there's You Tube:

Confusion Fog (Norem Ipsum Mixtape #1)

2009-09-16T09:16:00.000-07:00

Okay, summer is over. Or at least students and people who refuse to wear white after Labor Day will have you believe that. So it's time to get back to regular updates. But it's definitely not too late to go for a long drive with the windows down and the stereo cranked. Here's a mix I created for an online swap that's ripe for the occasion.

Comments are welcome and encouraged.

CONFUSION FOG ( <--- click here)

Please preserve this song order for maximum effect:

Rebels- Drive By Truckers

National Side- Romantica

Chinatown- Luna

Behind That Locked Door- Yim Yames

The Old Main Drag- The Pogues

Memphis Egypt- The Mekons

Magnet's Coil- Sebadoh

That Look You Gave That Guy- Eels

Motoraway- Guided By Voices

Confusion Fog- Meat Puppets

Black Sheep Boy- Scott Walker

Tally Ho- The Clean

I Wanna Destroy You- The Soft Boys

How You Like Me Now- The Heavy

Oh My Pregnant Head- The Flaming Lips

Dark Hand Of Contagion- The Minus Five

Big Day Coming- Yo La Tengo

Notes about the songs:

1. Rebels- Drive By Truckers

This was going to be a mellow autumn kind of mix, but I couldn't axe this version of Tom Petty's "Rebels" from it, and it ended up coloring the whole thing. I also wanted to include something from Patterson Hood's excellent new solo album, but you don't argue with songs that rock this hard. And I have a one song per artist/band rule too, which I don't usually bend.

2. National Side- Romantica

The Current, the Minneapolis/St Paul musical arm of public radio, likes to play this song a lot. Or they did. Great song by a local band. I saw them last winter at the Red Stag Supper Club and they were pretty damn good.

3. Chinatown- Luna

I make excuses to include Luna songs on compilations. They have some great albums, but for me it's the singles that matter most.

4. Behind That Locked Door- Yim Yames

I loved early My Morning Jacket, and I suppose this is the closest we're going to get to that sound. Recorded right after George Harrison died in 2001, this song is true to the original while featuring that classic My Morning Jacket sound, even if it's quite stripped down here.

5. The Old Main Drag- The Pogues

Maybe it was that picture of Shane McGowan's new teeth that got me curious about The Pogues again. Or maybe it's just because Rum, Sodomy and The Lash is one of those albums that needs to be pulled out of the closet once in a while, and particularly this song.

6. Memphis Egypt- The Mekons

Rock and Roll. I'll take this one over Led Zeppelin's at this point. Crank this one up. Great band with a wide range of records, but "Rock and Roll" remains my favorite.

7. Magnet's Coil- Sebadoh

Dinosaur Jr are great and everything, but worth putting Sebadoh on hold except for the occasional nostalgic tour? I think not.

8. That Look You Gave That Guy- Eels

Jesus, who hasn't felt this? And it always seems to happen right after you've broken up with your girl.

9. Motoraway- Guided By Voices

Rock and roll doesn't get much better than these guys at their peak. And for me, this is the song that started it all. Heard the song on a CMJ sampler on a Saturday morning when it came in the mail, bought the album that afternoon, and saw the band at the Uptown in Minneapolis that same evening. Just a day before I hadn't heard a note.

10. Confusion Fog- Meat Puppets

I saw these guys do a set at the Electric Fetus this summer, and rather than play 2-3 songs off of their new album and an oldie or two, they pretty much treated us to almost an hours worth of music. This was one of them. And it's been stuck in my head ever since.

11. Black Sheep Boy- I watched an excellent documentary on Scott Walker (30th Century Boy) a couple months ago, and since then his albums have opened up for me in ways they didn't before. This song is one of my favorites from Scott 2.

12. Tally Ho- The Clean

I saw them open up for Yo La Tengo a few years back. They were great. Fantastic rock band from New Zealand that's never really gone away. Their two-disc anthology is worth checking out if you like this early single that put them on the map.

13. I Wanna Destroy You- The Soft Boys

I've always loved the shit out of Robyn Hitchcock. One of the ideas I had for this music exchange was a 80's alternative underground mix called "12 for the Gipper," and this song was going to kick it off. Supposedly written about Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

14. How You Like Me Now- The Heavy

A late addition. I heard this on The Current a few days ago and knew I had to squeeze this in somewhere on my mix.

15. Oh, My Pregnant Head- The Flaming Lips

I pulled out Transmission From The Satellite Heart last week and it pretty much blew me away. I've always loved that album, but sometimes I forget to play it. Every song on there is great, but "labia in the sunlight" just felt good to hear while driving around on a late summer's day.

16. Dark Hand Of Contagion- The Minus Five

I met Scott McCaughey when he was in town with Robyn Hitchcock and the Venus 3. I asked him about the Minus Five and he told me about a really mellow record of theirs that was coming out this summer and almost seemed to apologize for it. "I like mellow," I said. "I do too" he replied. Then we had a good cry while fellow Venus 3 member Peter Buck broke out his acoustic guitar and played "Everybody Hurts." The record is still sinking its hooks in, but I liked this song right away.

17. Big Day Coming- Yo La Tengo

I should really have included a song from their excellent new album, Popular Songs, which is the best Yo La Tengo album in some time. But you don't argue with "Big Day Coming" when it rears its head to be considered for a closing song.

If you are the copyright holder to any of these songs and object to their use here, please contact me and they will be removed immediately.

CNN: now available in S, M, L, XL, and XXL

2009-07-02T10:37:00.000-07:00

Rat rides on cat riding on dog.

"Very excitable virgins" dominate town.

Denied exit, child uses lunch box as toilet.

Stephen King, bikinis help heat Maine.

These are actual CNN headlines.

And now you can get CNN headlines made into a t-shirt.

Maybe writing headlines for CNN is the way to go. It's probably easier getting hired there than The Onion.

Wilco (An Album)

2009-06-22T10:36:00.001-07:00

Wilco are a band you love to love. They've released some of the best music of the last twenty years. And they tour constantly, winning over fans as they visit major markets and small ones, much like the punk/alternative scene in the early 80's which inspired them. They also seem like regular people. Jeff Tweedy's a modern day Huck Finn, born not that far from Twain and singing songs that are uniquely American. And he's finally found a band that he truly enjoys playing with.

This new incarnation of Wilco only has two studio albums under their belt. 2007's Sky Blue Sky and this year's Wilco (The Album), a record that has yet to be officially released but is streaming from the band's website and available as a download if you employ a little Google action. The band is excellent on the road, as documented by 2005's Kicking Television and by anyone who has been lucky enough to buy a ticket to one of their shows. But getting it right in the studio and delivering it live are two different animals.

One could argue that Wilco spends too much time on the road, leaving Jeff Tweedy too little time to write. It's not that the songs on Wilco (The Album) are bad. Some of them just feel a little undercooked and slight compared to the rest of the material, especially "I'll Fight" and "Everlasting," two songs that come towards the end of the record. "I'll Fight" uses cliche religious imagery and "Everlasting" is slight enough that no amount of strings and studio trickery are going to save it.

It might have to do with the absence of a sparring partner. Jay Bennett is long gone. And Jim O'Rourke isn't anywhere to be found on this record.

But let's not be too picky. This is Wilco. And like a lot of their albums, you need to listen to it quite a bit before fully digesting it. Originally aired on an episode of the Colbert Show, the album opener "Wilco (The Song)" seems drastically improved. Sure, it's a simple song, and much like the album cover, seems designed to lower expectations. While it originally sounds exactly like the sort of song the band would want to play once on a comedy show and then discard to the rarities, once you let the hooks in and listen to it in the context of the rest of the record, it really works. It's Wilco having fun. And on a larger philosophical level, it speaks to the kind of salvation people seek at rock shows.

The highlight of the album is "Bull Black Nova." It's a song that builds off of the subject matter of "Via Chicago" and the sound of "Spiders (Kidsmoke)," but is unique enough to stand on its own, and also as the album's best song. The narrator has done something terrible. Likely murder. He sings of blood in his hair and blood in the sing before repeatedly screaming "wake up." Wilco songs, and thought provoking rock and roll songs in general, don't get much better than this.

There are some great songs of introspection. "Solitude" could easily be a solo Tweedy song. "Deeper Down" uses boxing imagery to describe somebody being knocked out before delivering the unexpected line "he felt the insult of a kiss" and then, as the verses built, "he felt the comfort of a kiss." "You and I" is a duet with Feist that never quite catches fire. And "One Wing" seems designed to grow in live venues.

George Harrison is an obvious reference – some would say a little too obvious – in "You Never Know." To these ears it's a pleasant song. If you're going to rip somebody off, you could do a lot worse than this, both is who you borrow from and how you deliver it.

Jeff Tweedy called the album a "Whitman's Sampler" recently. It's hard to argue with that. The album doesn't have a distinct feel like their best records, but instead takes elements of those records and builds a really good collection of songs that will only grow in appreciation with repeat listens. A better title might have been Wilco (An Album). But it's nice to hear the band have fun and maybe lower expectations a bit. And with a band that tours as much as they do, the songs will only grow on the road.

The Singer/The Folk Singer

2009-05-28T13:55:00.000-07:00

Nick Cave has quite the back catalog. I first got into him around Let Love In, but didn't really come to appreciate him until No More Shall We Part. He's been quite prolific lately, releasing a double cd a few years back, the full length Grinderman side project in 2007, and 2008's excellent Dig, Lazurus, Dig. So the recent years have kept me pretty busy, but the recent reissues of his first four albums provide an excellent reason to start exploring those early albums again.

It's a pleasure to hear 1986's Kicking Against The Pricks in remastered form, especially "The Singer." Originally known as "The Folk Singer" and written by Johnny Cash, the song is strangely absent from almost all of Johnny Cash's numerous box sets and greatest hits albums. It's a forgotten jem. And today, while listening to Kicking Against The Pricks, I finally was able to listen to the original. It's a great take on what it means to be an entertainer, and sounds great coming from Cave, as well as Cash. Both are pretty sublime.

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Nick Cave's version from 1986's Kicking Against The Pricks:

Johnny Cash's version from 1968, the B-side to "Folsom Prison Blues:"

Remembering Jay Bennett

2009-05-27T14:27:00.000-07:00

Jay Bennett died over the weekend in his sleep at the age of 45. It's sad news. Not just because he was an extremely talented musician and member of Wilco during their most inventive years, but because he was only 45. His recent MySpace journal entries spoke of upcoming hip surgery to repair a painful injury he sustained years earlier when he jumped off a stage. His tone was upbeat. He had a new album in the works. Things were looking good.

So many nice things have been said about Jay over the last couple of days. Shame he couldn't have heard them himself. A lot of interesting clips have surfaced that really show his talent. Here are a few.

Bob Dylan's Together Through Life

2009-05-13T13:35:00.000-07:00

He's Bob Dylan. A living legend. The Shakespeare of our time. He infused serious lyrics into rock. Before him the Beatles were singing "Love Me Do." The Stones were doing blues covers. Lawrence Welk was at the top of the charts.

Okay, so let's not get into a discussion of the current state of popular music. Or maybe we should. Together Through Life did debut at number one. Not bad for a 67 year old that many a critic wrote off in the 80's as a has been.

This is album number three of new studio albums since Bob Dylan reset the clock with 1997's Time Out Of Mind. Since then he released 2001's Love and Theft and 2006's Modern Times. With his latest release, Dylan trimmed the 4-5 year gap to under three years. And this doesn't even count last year's excellent Tell Tale Signs, Volume 8 in the Bootleg Series.

Together Through Life is the most accessible Dylan record since Desire or maybe Slow Train Coming. Once you get used to the accordion and pre-rock sound, as well as Dylan's "blood of the land" voice, the songs draw you into their burned out 21st century by way of a 1950's Mexican small town landscape and flow by effortlessly. It's good road tripping music. Of the 10+ times I've listened to it, the time I enjoyed it most was on a late night drive.

"This Dream Of You," "I Feel A Change Comin' On" and "It's All Good" are the clear highlights, providing some of the lyrical depth we've come to expect of him. But they fit in nicely among the rest of the album. There's humor in "My Wife's Home Town," especially towards the end when Dylan gives us a demonic laugh. And "Jolene" and "Shake Shake Mama" are fun little bluesy rockers. Love is the theme, both the longing for new relationships and the ashes of those that burned out.

This is Dylan light, especially coming after Modern Times. And it's not up there with Time Out Of Mind or Love and Theft as later day classics, but it's a fun ride once you get used to the landscape.

The cup less full

2009-04-21T12:41:00.001-07:00

I try to be flexible. I don't keep my schedule so busy that I can't adapt at the last minute to meet a friend out for a drink or go for an impromptu walk around the lake. I'm almost always game for grabbing a bite to eat and getting out of the house. And I seldom send things back or complain in a restaurant. I'll roll with the punches.

But one thing I just don't have much patience for is being shortchanged on my coffee. I know, I sound like Wilfred Brimley talking about his oatmeal here, and you're probably waiting for me to start bitching about how I remember when coffee was twenty five cents and the only way you altered it was with cream and sugar. But no, I'm not about to do that. When brewed correctly and served at the right temperature, the french roast coffee I get from my local coffee shop is worth every penny of the $2 price tag.

But for those of us who still order regular coffee and not a latte or mocha or americano or anything of that sort, cream has been cutting into our coffee. In a sit down restaurant they usually ask if you'd like some, meaning that they'll bring it to you. So that's okay. And at a fast food place, you have the individual creamers. But at a lot of coffee shops they've taken to asking you if you want room for cream. As if you're going to add so much cream to it that you won't be able to find any space for it if they forget to ask.

And too often they error on the side of leaving room. I'm constantly getting coffees that are closer to 3/4 of a cup than a full one. And it's not just at one shop. Maybe it's the economy. I don't know. I just want a full cup of coffee without having to send it back to be filled up all the way. I'm looking forward to old man moments when I'm 80 and can constantly bitch about shit and send things back and say how different things were back in my day. But c'mon, I don't really want to go there yet.

Cds, downloads, vinyl records, mp3 players...

2009-04-15T14:09:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting outside on a gorgeous afternoon and things seem pretty okay. I got my taxes done and made out alright. Nothing owed anyway, which is quite a relief when you wait until the last minute like I did. And as much as I hate that whole "free money" thing that the vast amount of Americas believe their tax returns to be, I can't help but want to buy something. Stimulate the economy. Reward myself for being a good citizen and doing my part to keep the roads paved and our children in schools.

The first thing that really comes to mind for me is stereo equipment. Or audio equipment. But do you really call it stereo equipment if it's not going to go anywhere near your stereo? I was thinking about getting the 160 gig iPod, which was discontinued and is getting hard to find, and finally putting ALL of my music on one tiny little device I could keep in my pocket. It would be great for road trips, and as a friend of mine pointed out, backup in case of a flood.

Then I talked to another friend of mine about vinyl records. They're making a bit of a comeback. Bands are increasingly offering a free download of the album with the purchase of a record. So you can add the title to your mp3 player, yet still have something tangible, and some would argue highly superior, to play. I do have a record player, but it's not that high quality of one. For me to really get into vinyl again I would need to update.

For the few years leading up to Napster and the widespread use of mp3s, I frequented used record stores to stock up on various albums that caught my eye. It was a great way to complete my collection without going broke at $15.99 a title. And I liked the warm sound too. Especially with albums that came out in the vinyl era. That was how they were supposed to sound.

It's been about 10 years since I've bought a vinyl record, and all but a few of my records are still boxed up from a move I made in 2002. Recently I helped a friend sell all of her cds. 1500+ titles. It felt like product to her, and I suppose it's starting to feel that way to me too. I guess I am at the crossroads a bit. Do I keep buying cds only to rip them immediately to iTunes and hardly ever pull them out again? Do I go completely digital? Switch to vinyl only? Or keep doing what I'm doing?

Right now I think I'll keep doing what I'm doing. The path of least resistance. Buying less cds each year and downloading more, but still careful to get as close to that audiophile sound as I can on a budget for the artists I care for most.

But I still don't know if I want to buy that iPod or not.

Haiku From A Restaurant

2009-04-02T21:17:00.000-07:00

Hennepin late night
Drink food walk home shelter sleep
In that order please

I'll be your IKEA songwriter

2009-04-01T08:07:00.000-07:00

So I think I wrote a advertising jingle without really thinking about it, which is kind of cool. I'm a copywriter after all. But I've never had the opportunity to write a jingle.

They just don't seem that common these days. Sometimes you see them as tag lines like McDonald's "I'm Lovin' It" or introductions like Budweiser's "Real Men of Genius." But usually when a song is used in a commercial it exists beforehand and is licensed from the artist. An exception is the twist Of Montreal gave to one of their songs to make it "Let's Go Outback Tonight." But the only full-length recent songs/jingles I can think of are the FreeCreditReport.com ads:

Mid-way through the month of February I was desperately trying to stay on track in order to get to the 14 song goal for February Album Writing Month. I was growing tired of the acoustic-based songs I was cranking out, and wanted to do something different. So I thought I would plug it in a bit and crank out some noise. Write something upbeat. Once I got the idea I ran with it, lacking the patience for conventional song components like verses, bridges and length, deciding to leave the song as is.

Now, the more I listen to this, the more I think it's a jingle. Swap out my voice for a more commercial sounding male voice. Something closer to Hanson than Jonas Brothers. Show them putting together furniture for lovely Swedish lasses. Then have the Swedish girls sing the names of the furniture in the chorus. And presto, a cutesy IKEA ad?

Eggo Butter Pecan Syrup and me

2009-03-30T09:29:00.000-07:00

The Eggo Butter Pecan syrup is finally gone. I bought it several months back at a Super Target. It was cheap, and I was pinching pennies. We seemed like the perfect match.

Except we weren't. Almost immediately I realized the error of my ways. True, I had saved money– Eggo Butter Pecan syrup was only a couple dollars for a family size bottle, but unless I planned on entertaining an army of hungry breakfasters for hotcakes on a Sunday morning, chances are I'd be eating all that sticky syrup by my lonesome. But the issue was much greater than that.

It's easy to blame it on refrigeration. Had Eggo Butter Pecan syrup been made of more natural ingredients the package would have dictated that it be kept below a certain temperature in order to avoid spoilage, and I would have had to find room in my refrigerator for it. An easy enough task. But the real problem for any food purchase that requires cold for its survival is maintaining face time once that item is placed in the refrigerator. In the recesses of my Darby fridge lies an assortment of condiments that weren't good enough to be consistently moved forward. Mustards. Barbecue sauces. Light cream cheeses. They linger in condiment obscurity, far from the forefront of my mind. So, when I'm in the grocery store with bagels and cream cheese on my mind, changes are I won't remember the one hiding out in the Darby.

But this is not the case with Eggo Butter Pecan syrup. Because it doesn't require refrigeration for its survival it is designated to the cupboard, where space is limited and snack items are in constant rotation. So it's given considerable placement, and therefore is top of mind when it comes to making breakfast selections. When I'm at the store I start to think that I shouldn't really buy cereal and yogurt because I have Eggo Butter Pecan syrup, so waffles would make a better choice.

I like butter pecan. Love it even. It's good stuff. And I think it was the "butter pecan" part of Eggo Butter Pecan syrup that really captured my imagination. I thought it sounded mighty delicious. But instead it was this sickly tasting ultra sweet concoction of high fructose corn syrup and artificial flavors. And I had 20 some servings of it left.

Waffles. Pancakes. A squirt in the oatmeal and cream of wheat. I decided to use it whenever I could and tough it out. True, I used pretty liberal amounts of it when it came to the pancakes and waffles, leaving most of it on the side of my plate to be washed down the drain when it came time to do dishes. But I gave it a good effort. Swallowed my pride. Put on my game face.

Well, the charade finally came to an end on Friday. It was the last squirt for Eggo Butter Pecan syrup. And I don't know if I've ever been so happy to throw a food item in the trash. From now on I was going to enjoy real maple syrup like never before. I'd use it sparingly and savor every little drop of it, thinking of Native Americans and Vermont and old time traditions of gathering sap.

But as Eggo Butter Pecan syrup fell from my hand to the heaping kitchen trash container I realized that like so much of my relationship with it, our separation wasn't going to be easy either. I would have to recycle it. Which means it will have another life someday. Or at least that's the hope, although hopefully as a more worthy product. I would find it highly depressing to know that it was going to spend eternity in a landfill. Because if I knew that its fate would consist of this I would have left it half full to say to the future citizens of the earth that back in the early 21st century not everyone was so fond of high fructose corn syrup and artificial flavorings on their pancakes. That some of us longed for real foods. But, with all the preservatives and half the bottle left, the future citizens of planet earth could try it out for themselves. I just hope it wouldn't taste nostalgic to them and remind them of the good old days. Back when high fructose corn syrup was still cheap and affordable and used in just about every mass produced food product known to man.

Netflix, I've learned to love you again and it feels like the first time

2009-03-26T11:46:00.000-07:00

I was smitten in the beginning, and I was never fond of the video store. I remember Blockbuster sending me a notice. "For your convenience your credit card has been charged for your most recent rental and late fees." Gee, thanks Blockbuster. Convenience? There was nothing convenient about anything to do with that store. Movies were constantly checked out. Even finding DVDs in 2002/2003 was difficult. Like they thought VHS would never go away. Long live the tape. Netflix? Oh, that's just a fad.

Netflix treated its customers right from day one. No late fees. Pick the number of discs you want out at a time and pay a certain amount each month. They used to let you tell them when you sent back your movie and they would credit your account and send the next one. I always thought that was incredibly cool. You could make up for the mail delay and have a steady stream of movies being sent to you. But people must have abused that policy. Now Netflix has to physically receive a movie in order to release the next one in your queue. I don't blame them, but it took away part of the charm to get rid of that feature.

I've been a Netflix subscriber for about 10 years, although I took a year or two break somewhere in there. For the most part I've been very happy with the service. They almost always have what I'm looking for, and they're really good at getting a replacement disc out in the rare case a disc is unplayable, and they'll trust you if there's a disc lost in the mail, which has happened to me a couple of times. Although they usually end up showing up eventually.

The biggest problem I've had with Netflix has always been with the wait. It doesn't take that long, two or three days at most, but in that time my mood can change quite a bit. The documentary that sounded so good on a Sunday afternoon might end up seeming overly academic and about as attractive as Sunday's leftovers by Tuesday night. In the last couple of years Netflix solved this by introducing their Instant Viewing service. The problem was it only worked if you had a pc, and I'm a mac guy. In all the years of enjoying Netflix it was the only time that I actively looked for their customer service info to complain. Lots of people did. Eventually they introduced the Roku player, which for $99 you could hook up directly to your TV. Then a few months ago they finally introduced the streaming service to macs. Problem is you have to have a newer Intel mac. The service is not backwards compatible. Soon after they partnered with a couple different manufacturers to provide Blu Ray players that worked with the Instant Viewing service. Eventually I caved and bought one.

The best thing about Instant Viewing is that it solves the wait problem. Currently I have 200+ titles in my queue that I can browse through on my TV. Click on a title and you see a brief description and a rating (up to 5 stars). Sometimes there are really recent films on there, but often it's the stuff that's been out for a few years. But still, the selection is amazing and it far surpasses any kind of cable on demand movie service.

Sure, I still wish I could get Netflix on my laptop, but the times when I'd actually use it are very few and far between. Lying in bed, maybe. More often it would be on a trip. But that's what books are for.

Netflix has the model for the future, and it won't be long before we're able to stream everything. Movies. TV. Even music. (Well, if they ever pull their heads out of their collective asses, but that's another story...)

Whenever I talk to someone who rents movies but doesn't have Netflix I'm surprised and ask always ask why. It seems like such a no-brainer. Super affordable. Convenient. Good selection. And now you can stream it anywhere you have an Internet connection. Well, as long as you don't have an older mac.

Just today I got an email from Netflix. Subject line was Arriving Later. That perked my interest. Then I opened it up to read that my next selection had to be sent from a different distribution center and would take longer than normal. 3-5 days instead of 2-3. They went on to say that they sent my next selection for me, so that I could enjoy another movie while I waited. I liked that. It's made me happy. And happy is an emotion I seldom feel when dealing with cable companies or video stores.

House Cat

2009-03-19T10:00:00.000-07:00

I have a friend who has a cat and always brings her cat along with her on any extended trip she takes. She puts her in a carrier and tucks her under the seat in front of her. No sedation. Nothing. And apparently the cat is quiet and hasn't sparked any air rage incidents yet.

I'm not about to take a flight anywhere, but I am getting the urge to take a roadtrip. Somewhere. Anywhere. Maybe nowhere. Just go. Get in the car and go. Everything I need to do what I've been doing lately is right at my fingertips. Laptop. Cell phone. Internet access as long as I'm in a somewhat populated area. Of course it could get kind of expensive traveling across the US. But I did stay in a hostel in New York once and it wasn't that bad. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't accept cats though.

Dogs seem to require a lot more responsibility than cats. You constantly need to check on them. People I know who have dogs have to go straight home from work to let the thing out. And they can't stay out too late either. Forget about spending the night. But you add in a family to the mix and the problem is solved. Maybe not completely, but it's a lot easier. Yet, with all of this responsibility, dogs are a lot easier when it comes to road trips. Who can resist the image of a dog sticking it's head out the window as you speed down the highway on a gorgeous summer day? They like riding in cars. You ask them if they want to go for a ride and it's like they've won the doggy lottery.

The same can't be said for cats. Or can it? I'm starting to wish I had taken my cat for a ride as a kitten and gotten her used to it. I wonder if I could still do it. Would it be too late to get my cat accustomed to riding in my car? Or would it be a torturous experience for both of us? Howling down the highway. Black fur everywhere. Jumps out the window at toll booths.

Then there's the litter box. You can tuck it away in a remote closet at home, but it's more difficult to hide in a compact car, which in a way makes a good argument for an SUV. Sure you may only get 14 miles per gallon, but is that too steep of a price to pay for the distance between your sensitive nose and the box of shit you're packing for your road trip? I think not.

But I'm not about to get an SUV. And the idea of doing a test run to say, the outer limits of Anoka County with my feline friend doesn't seem that appealing either. Maybe they're known as house cats because with rare exception, that's exactly where they plan on being. I mean, you never really hear of a house dog, do you?

Confessions of an record club addict

2009-03-17T10:21:00.001-07:00

BMG Music Service is no more. They announced that they will stopping the service effective June 30, 2009. The news of their closing follows Columbia House, which folded a couple years ago.

I'm showing my age here, but I remember when BMG Music Service was RCA Music Club. RCA was always was less intimidating than Columbia. With RCA you got six or seven free albums and then had to buy one. Columbia offered 12 albums, but then you had to buy six or seven. With shipping and handling charges of a couple bucks per album, and "regular club prices" of $10.98 or $11.98 for a album or cassette, by the time you did the math you really weren't coming out ahead with Columbia. But RCA/BMG was almost always a much better deal.

I remember how excited I was the first time I cut out the form from the Columbia House ad featured on the back of a Parade Magazine in the Sunday newspaper. I'd carefully fill out the form, double checking the numbers to make sure I copied them down correctly and wasn't ordering Culture Club instead of Motley Crue. Finally I'd drop the card in the mail and anxiously await for my box of albums to arrive. I'd run home from school everyday to check, and it wasn't too long before it arrived. My first shipment consisted of the following records, and I do mean records- albums, vinyl, 12 inch:

Ratt- Out of the Cellar
Billy Squier- Signs of Life
Motley Crue- Shout at the Devil
Dio- The Last in Line
Huey Lewis and the News- Sports
Masters of Metal compilation
Twisted Sister- You Can't Stop Rock and Roll
ZZ Top- Eliminator
The Cars- Heartbreak City
Sammy Hagar- VOA

There had to be a couple more, but those are all I can come up with. It amazes me that they're so memorable, but really why should it? I've been into music my whole life, and this was certainly a way to dive headfirst into the deep end. It was like Christmas, except that I can't remember ever waking up to find 12 albums under the tree. I remember my dad picking up Dio's The Last in Line and saying, "This looks like hell...," so I can't really picture my mom picking out Shout at the Devil or Out of the Cellar for a stocking stuffer.

I remember my dad frowning on the idea of me joining a record club, but at the same time he was aware that I hadn't entered into any legal contract and was a minor. They weren't going to come after me if I didn't hold my end of the bargain, which I don't think I ever did with Columbia House.

Was anybody seriously interested in the "selection of the month?" I remember their language quite clearly. "If you would like to purchase the selection of the month do nothing. It will be sent to you automatically." I had checked "hard rock" as my category, which included everything from Motley Crue and Twisted Sister to Bob Seger and Bruce Springsteen. You had to be quick with the reply cards in order to stop the selection of the month from being mailed to you. And when you're a kid finding a stamp is a pain, especially when you're trying to hide from your parents that you're still in a record club. Or worse yet, you've joined another one.

It didn't take me long to discover a fool proof way to get out of the record clubs, even if that wasn't my intention. Having missed the deadline on my "I do not want the selection of the month. Send nothing" response card, I inevitably ended up receiving a few selections of the month in my hard rock category. Rather than keep John Cougar Mellencamp's Scarecrow and pay $11.98 + $2.00 shipping and handling, I soon found an easier way to solve my problem. You take a sharpie and you write "Refused. Return to Sender" on the package and you drop it in a big blue mailbox. Problem solved.

Of course the record companies hated this. They certainly didn't appreciate the fact that they were getting charged twice for each shipment. A couple letters eventually came before they terminated my membership. No final bills. Just silence. "No more selections of the month for you kid." But I didn't have to purchase my 5-6 records at "regular club prices' either.

RCA was so much more manageable. Even as a kid I could see myself holding up my end of that agreement. Get six free. Buy one. Get two more free. That was part of it. There was an enticement. Buy one and we'll send you two more. They're catalog wasn't as good, and sometimes with all the free albums coming my way I had a hard time figuring out what I wanted. Still it allowed me to complete my catalogs of U2 and Van Halen albums and explore 80's pop drivel like, well, Phil Collins and the Thompson Twins with little investment. Half of my cassettes probably came from RCA. Buy your one album? Get two more free. Sign up a friend? Four free. It was never ending. Then, after buying your one album you were free to quit and sign up all over again. Use your initials instead of your first name. Deliberately misspell your last name. Every little trick seemed to work. I had friends who claimed that they used neighbors addresses and fake names to get their shipments. I was never that brazen, but hey, there's a reason my full name isn't on this site. Wouldn't want BMG coming after me after all this time.

I've always been into an album's packaging. Sitting down with an album and getting lost in the cover and lyrics was an important part of the listening experience. Because the record companies manufactured their own titles, the packaging often got the shaft. It was most noticeable on cassettes. With their minimal real estate for packaging, the clubs would cut it down the images on tapes even further. Gone would be the fold out inserts. The album cover reduced to white with a tiny reproduction of the album cover and huge block type with the name and the artist. Eventually I learned that if you ordered RCA titles, the actual albums on their label, not the one's that were licensed to them, you got the real product. Actual artwork. Everything. These title didn't have the "Manufactured under contract by RCA Music Service" stamp on them either, so you could "return" them to Musicland and pick out something else, claiming it was a gift from your Uncle. This worked a couple times.

Eventually I got sick of the clubs. I had fast food dough and didn't want to wait six months for a new album to show up with a hatchet job of packaging. I had discovered good record stores. I could ride my bike and buy a new cassette for $7.99 the day it came out.

I revisited RCA, which was by then known as BMG, in college. Cds were dominating the market and I needed to catch up. I remember my shipment contained Van Morrison's Astral Weeks and Concrete Blonde's Bloodletting. Beyond that I'm drawing a blank. I think I bought my one disc, got a couple more free and got out. And I'm sure I returned at least one selection of the month by refusing it and returning it to the sender via the big blue mailbox.

A couple years ago I flirted with the record club yet again. Now known at yourmusic.com, BMG offered cds at $5.99 a title. You had to buy one each month, but there was no obligation. Cancel anytime. And you could buy as many as you wanted. The only catch was that if you didn't have something lined up in your purchase queue you'd be charged $5.99 a month regardless. It was great for boxsets. I bought the Dylan remasters...14 or 15 of them all in a box for $5.99 a disc. I think it's now $6.99 a title and apparently is not closing down. I got out of it though. I couldn't find enough that interested me that I didn't already have.

I wonder if a similar model would work for today's kids. It seems like it would be a fool proof model for digital music. Make signing up contingent on a credit card number. But really, what fun would that be? They'd be missing out on the best part: ripping open that box, tearing off the cellophane, opening up the gatefold sleeve of all of those albums and thinking it's the greatest day ever.

5 Coffee Shops in 5 Days: Bob's Java Hut

2009-03-13T13:08:00.000-07:00

Sunlight. What a difference you make. Warming our lonely northern region of the world with your seductive charms. Melting old man winter's latest dump and turning it into vital vitamins and minerals that will water the dormant brown grass and cause it to grow green again. And charming the pants and sweaters off young woman everywhere in exchange for more revealing clothing.

I love you Mr. Sunshine. You can pour in on me all day. That's why I'm sitting at the front window table at Bob's Java Hut. Calling it a window isn't very accurate. It's a garage door that pens up when the weather is nice and dogs walk in and out. Bikes are everywhere. The motorized kind. But today I don't see any motorcycles or dogs. It feels like a greenhouse, except it's devoid of any plant life. The only green is the color on the walls. And it's a mixed bag of people. Not the biker kind though. A younger crowd, Tattoos still covered up by winter clothing. A fair amount of them nicotine addicts who take their smoke breaks with a hearty dose of 39 degree weather instead of smoking inside like they could in years past.

It's supposed to be nice this weekend, and next week, and fingers crossed, maybe from now on? Okay, that's a tall order. But this winter has been an absolute bitch and really, don't we deserve some decent weather? I want to turn off the heat. That's what I want. To turn off the heat. Because right now I'm thoroughly enjoying the natural heat coming from our favorite distant star and it makes me feel glad to be alive.

It also makes me think of They Might Be Giants.

Bob's Java Hut
27th and Lyndale, Minneapolis

5 Coffee Shops in 5 Days: Kopplin's

2009-03-12T10:07:00.000-07:00

It's nice when you walk into a place and it feels like a continuation of the music/vibe you have going in your car. I was listening to the new Neko Case album, Middle Cyclone, on the drive over to the Hamline University area of St Paul to visit a place called Kopplins, and when I walked in the door they too were playing Neko Case. It gave me something to talk about right away and dovetailed nicely into a discussion of today's coffee selections.

Kopplin's takes their coffee very seriously. They have 5 daily offerings, but they don't brew it by the pot. No, no, this stuff is too good for that. At Kopplin's each coffee is featured in a framed description on the wall. They read like fine wines. You can buy a sample, two different cup sizes, a carafe or get it by the pound to take home and brew.

The barista helped me select a Columbia blend. I was fascinated by the process as she selected a small amount of beans (maybe 10 or so), grounded them up and brewed a tiny amount into a cup for me. To be perfectly honest here, I wasn't that crazy about the coffee. It tasted incredibly bitter and didn't have that depth that I like. I was instantly reminded of the Gevalia coffee I sent away for several years ago, when as an ad student I was assigned the brand to do ads for. This coffee tasted exactly like that. Maybe that Gevalia really was some fancy pants coffee and I just didn't realize it. But at $3.75 for barely 8 ounces of the stuff, I can't say I'll be ordering it again soon at Kopplin's. Not the Columbia coffee anyway.

I've been here twice before, but both times were later in the day and I had already had my coffee intake. One time I had hot chocolate and it was amazing. Real chocolate. Thick, dark, bitter. The other time I had a latte and it was pretty damn good as well. Presentation on both was amazing.

I like this place. I love people that are passionate about what they do, and the owner of this shop is really into his coffee. The energy is contagious.

The place itself is small and cozy. Red vinyl chairs are comfortable, and so are the booth seat that lines the wall. The music is great. Neko Case, Calexico, Yo La Tengo. Headphones are unnecessary.

Places to plug in the laptop? Ummm...not so good. I don't see this as a place to get serious work done, but it's a great place to have a cup of coffee (better blend next time) and check the email. And I'd like to come here at night sometime. There's a certain coziness and romantic air to it that I would imagine would be amplified by darkness.

Kopplin's
Hamline Avenue, St Paul

Looking Back: Bob Dylan's Empire Burlesque

2009-03-11T11:59:00.000-07:00

I think I'm missing two Bob Dylan studio albums. Saved, his ultra religious born again album of the early 80's and Down In The Groove from 1986, which by most accounts is among his very worst. The news of a brand new Dylan record on the heals of a career renaissance consisting of two excellent studio albums (1997's Time Out Of Mind and 2001's Love and Theft), a recent above average album (2006's Modern Times) and an amazing collection of unreleased recordings from the last 20 years (last year's Tell Tale Signs) is incredibly exciting. And it's prompted me to look back at a Dylan album I may have overlooked.

1985's Empire Burlesque gets some occasional high marks from some Dylan fanatics who frequent message boards. The album is the follow up to 1983's Infidels, which along with 1989's Oh Mercy seem to get all the high praise for being worthwhile Dylan albums of the 1980's. But Allmusic gives Empire Burlesque a 4 star review, and the original Rolling Stone review by Kurt Loder is quite positive. I have a copy of it on vinyl that I only listened to once all the way through, if that, and at least ten years have passed. I thought about digging for it, but it's just as easy to download a copy as it is to weed through the vinyl buried somewhere in the deep recesses of my closet.

The production is hard to get past. This is 1980's modern production techniques at its worst. Female background singers in the foreground. Synth drums. Processed guitars and vocals. It seems like everything that is vital about the recordings are pushed to the background, with all of the inorganic touches and flourishes brought to the forefront. "When The Night Comes Falling From the Sky" sounds like it could have been recorded for Miami Vice.

The album feels upbeat by Dylan standards, and he's singing in his high register, which is something he's rarely done on his three comeback albums. There isn't much weight to the lyrics. He seems concerned with vague personal issues, which is a far cry from the politics of the previous record. But his voice works well within the disco beats and snappy trumpets on songs like "Seeing The Real You At Last." The opening song, "Tight Connection To My Heart" is catchy and memorable, but ultimately empty. The background vocals seem to devour the song and strip it off any power it might have. "Clean Cut Kid" hints at some lyrical brilliance and provides a solid rock song that might have had some real staying power had the recording not been so cluttered. But it's nice to hear Dylan cutting loose.

The slower songs work better here. "I'll Remember You" and "Emotionally Yours" are straight forward songs, and it's hard to not to read too much into Dylan's lyrics and think about the biographical object of his affections. Still, there's something so pedestrian about the songs. Like Dylan owed his record label an album went to work to write songs the way any mortal would, and it's a far cry from any of his classic albums, or even Infidels, the album that preceded it. The rhymes are predictable. The lyrics are simplistic. And a sound that is so unlike Dylan. Yet there is something quite likable about it.

Apparently these tracks were originally produced by Dylan. It's hard to fathom him adding all of the studio glitz, and if some of the demo tracks that surfaced on The Bootleg Series are any indication, the blame can be put solely on the producer, Arthur Baker. Ron Wood played on a couple tracks and has said that Dylan seemed removed from the recording process. What makes the record so fascinating is what makes any Dylan album fascinating. That it came from the same guy who brought us all of those amazing records. This time it's as if the producer thought he could get Bob Dylan on top 40 radio. As for Bob, Ron Wood seems to say that he walked away after recording the basic tracks. It sure sounds like it.

There is one song on here that really does Dylan justice. Featuring little effects, just Dylan, his guitar and harmonica, with his voice dead center, "Dark Eyes" is the clear standout on the record, and makes the album worth discovering.

The very last song on the album, it instantly reminds me of other Dylan classics that close out his albums. "Highlands" comes to mind because that song strips away the Daniel Lanios' production (although way less intrusive) of Time Out Of Mind the same way this one strips away Arthur Baker's and leaves us with unadorned Dylan at his best. The fact that it comes at the end of such an overproduced record makes it stand out even more.

It works as a nice fan-created (but abridged) tribute to George Harrison too.

5 Coffee Shops in 5 Days: Dunn Bros.

2009-03-11T10:56:00.000-07:00

Spring forward/Fall back. That's how it's supposed to go. Every Spring we set our clocks forward an hour to allow for more daylight so our inner farmers can get out there and harvest whatever it is we feel the need to harvest. Then in the Fall we set our clocks back as much out of tradition as the desire to send our proverbial kids off to wait for the bus in the daylight instead of darkness.

No act of former, and I do love saying former, President George W. Bush was without controversy, but his extension of Daylight Savings Time just may be his greatest (only?) accomplishment. It's certainly the only time he really "enlightened" any intelligent minds out there. Bush and light, by any definition, hardly go together.

I'm starting to think that there isn't any realm of the physical world that is immune from being Bush-whacked. What if by setting our clocks forward an hour last Sunday morning we confused the hell out of Mother Nature and now she doesn't know what to do. So she throws us back a month weather wise. You thought you could tame Mother Nature by prescribing time and order to everything under the sun. Well take this. Single temps. Snowy weather. Across the region well organized girls reach back into their closets to get out their winter wear once again.

I finally bought a new battery for my laptop, and it's paying off today. A three block walk in 2 degree Minneapolis temps (with wind chills far below that) just begs for some time next to a fire, and Dunn Bros. never disappoints with their gas fireplace and the well worn, but comfortable stuffed chairs that surround it. I usually have to shy away from sitting here in search of a power outlet. But not today. I can type on my lap while my feet get toasty warm. Around me is a sea of laptops, mostly Macs but a few Dells and HPs are out there too. Across from me a guy has his laptop open and his cell phone lies next to it, but he's ignoring both, putting technology momentarily aside so he can focus instead on his knitting.

It's really hard to find a better cup of coffee than Dunn Bros. They roast it right on the spot daily. It's robust. Strong. Full of flavor, like a fine wine. While I've heard some people compare the smell of their roasting process to that of a dirty diaper, I rather like it. If this is what baby poo smells like then maybe I ought to get busy raising some children.

I like the community of faces here. The employees are cool, and I got the guy who fills my cup to the brim when I pass on the cream, which always starts me off right. I haven't talked to many people, but I do recognize several, although I'm here a couple hours later than I normally am. I blame Daylight Savings Time for that too.

This year, this season, this month, this week, we have sprung forward, but also fallen back. And in the pursuit of finding a new coffee shop to shake up the surroundings a little bit, I'm back at my old standby. And you really can't beat it. Great coffee. Warm fireplace. On a busy street which provides some great people watching. Across the street from a casual restaurant. A few blocks from home and apparently smelling like poopy diapers. Ah, the comforts of a home away from home.

Dunn Bros.
Bryant Avenue and Lake Street, Minneapolis

5 Coffee Shops in 5 Days: Java Jack's

2009-03-10T12:32:00.000-07:00

It stopped snowing outside, but I kind of wish it would turn into a blizzard. It feels like that kind of day, and I want to sit back and look out at crawling cars crunching down on fresh snow and be glad I'm not out in it. Not that I wish to inconvenience people with long commutes. I just want it to feel like a snow day.

I swear I've been here before, and I'm pretty sure it was called Java Jack's when I was. But that was a long time ago. 10 years probably. And if this is the same place the look and feel of it has changed drastically. The place has been gutted. Gone is the cozy feel of dark rooms and heavy drapes.

The front of the building now consists of two garage doors framed by brick. In the summer they must open up and provide a really nice open air environment. Dogs are welcome. There's even a sign on the wall that says that unattended children will be given a puppy and a cookie. It's another neighborhood type place. People from all ages hanging out. Very few laptops. They serve food too. Subs and sweets, but also pasta dishes from a business that shares the space with them.

I don't know. Part of the reason for visiting five different coffee shops is to find a new place to work. This isn't cutting it though. At least not during the winter months. People are too loud and it's incredibly drafty in here. I suppose the big glass garage doors don't help much. Nice environment for a summer night though. That could be the crux of the problem. All I can think about is summer and it's not doing much for my winter disposition. I'll have to file it away for that. But to get what I've come here to get done on a snowy March day? Not really cutting it.

Java Jack's
46th and Bryant Avenue, Minneapolis

5 Coffee Shops in 5 Days: Cafe Tempo

2009-03-09T12:27:00.000-07:00

It's stuck in the middle of a neighborhood I'd love to live in. I see a couple duplexes and my mind starts to wander. The sleepy bedrooms. Inner lives hidden behind brick exteriors. And smoke coming from a chimney reminding me that it's still winter. As I look around the coffee shop I wonder if any of the six other people drove here. My guess is they took a short walk from one of these houses to work on something or read the newspaper. Or just to get out of the house.

This could be the rare coffee shop where the people without laptops out number those that have them. And there's only two people with macs if I count myself, which is a far cry from most of the places I frequent. Two 90's era bulky monitors offer Internet service for those who don't bring a laptop. A middle aged guy is standing at one of them.

I wish I hadn't eaten lunch, as the prices are only slightly higher than the groceries I fixed for myself. Sandwiches and soup at the prices you feel they should be. Turkey sandwiches for $4.95. Grilled Cheese for $3.95. It's like they bought the computer monitors in 1996 at the same time they wrote their menu on the blackboard and haven't updated either since.

The coffee is strong, but flat. There's no character to it. Certain coffee roasts will instantly remind me why I drink the black stuff and put up with the occasional sleeplessness it provokes. But this just feeds the need.

Power outlets and strips are abundant near the tables. I'm sitting by the front window, directly below the "Open" sign. I know I should wrap up this post and get to writing my piece for my writing group, but I want to stall. I'm not feeling that open yet myself. Not ready to catch that inspiration wave and ride it. The art on the walls isn't helping. It's frilly and girlish. The type of stuff people dabble with in college but abandon soon after.

The music is equally uninspiring. But it's not obtrusive either. It's flat like the coffee. Norah Jones light. Cities 97 with every last remaining rough edge sanded down. The walls are nice though. Sky blue with an earthy green back room to accent them. And there's space here. It's sort of the ideal neighborhood coffee shop. Not sure it's a destination or not, but with food this affordable, I'm certain I'll be back.

As for a place to work, I suppose it's time I give that a try.

Cafe Tempo

42nd and Grand, Minneapolis

Norem Ipsum remembers the VCR

2009-02-25T08:39:00.001-08:00

When I was 16 years old my Aunt called to ask me if I'd be willing to go over to her house and teach her how to use her VCR. She treated it seriously. Like she was hiring a babysitter, providing a set time and payment. She said she had tried to figure it out herself, and so had my uncle. But they just couldn't get the hang of it.

A whole generation of people could never figure out how to program their VCRs. For me, it really wasn't any different than programming an alarm clock, yet people seemed to be able to get out of bed in the morning. Maybe it was the end time that threw them. You program an alarm clock and you're not telling it to wake you up at a given time and then stop after an hour. Although the snooze function might do that. And if you ignore it all together it will shut off eventually. Or at least mine does.

My aunt had a onscreen programmable VCR, so it was a breeze to me to explain to her how to record her favorite shows. The first one my family had consisted of these tiny buttons and a green digital display. It was also in mono.

After onscreen displays, the VCR+ was introduced. Now, the ads claimed, you didn't have to know how to program a VCR, all you had to do was enter a code. Open up your TV Guide, find the listing for the show you want, and enter the seven digit code and you were good to go. I had a VCR+ and it always seemed easier just to program the damn thing. Besides I liked to have my timer start a little earlier and go a little later to be sure that I wouldn't miss anything.

Today's DVRs really aren't that much different that the VCR+. The programming is on screen, only instead of pulling out a TV Guide and putting in the number, the name of the show is already onscreen for you. It saves you a step. But you still have to do some manual tweaking. Set 60 Minutes to record during football season if you don't believe me.

The other day a friend asked if I remembered when video stores used to rent VCRs. It was in the early 80s when not everybody had one, and it wasn't that uncommon for someone to rent a VCR and a few movies, in much the same way that someone might rent a video game system and some titles today. But here's the catch. Almost everybody who records television is renting a machine today. It's digital, but it's still a video recorder. Whether you have cable, DirecTV, Dish or pretty much any other service, you are renting a DVR. Was it the ease of programming that got people to forget that they were pretty much getting the same thing with their VCRs? Or was it the ability to record and rewind live TV?

Recently I started shopping for a stand alone DVR. Sure there's Tivo, but you need a subscription service to use that. And really, why do I need to pay someone so I can record my shows? I don't need to be able to do it from my computer or cell phone. I just want to be able to record the beautiful signal I get through the air with my HD antenna.

They're not that common, but I did find a couple models. It seems like most will record directly to a DVD or DVD-RW, which would answer another complaint I have about modern video recorders, in that they don't make it easy to archive stuff. The cable and satellite company's DVR set up to record and erase after viewing. The DVD burning models are relatively cheap. But if you want a DVR with a hard drive get ready to spend some serious cash. And I never could find one that had a hard drive and a DVD burner.

So here I am, wondering how we got here. How we went from having $99 VCRs to endlessly renting DVRs through our cable/satellite companies or paying for a Tivo subscription service. I know I can do it on my own. But because everybody is following this model, it makes it really difficult and expensive to get that new improved VCR.

characters in a coffee shop

2009-02-20T10:58:00.001-08:00

Things I have observed at my coffee shop in the last week:

A guy that looks incredibly similar to my friend Jon. I almost want to wave him to my table, before realizing that the guy has at least 10 years on Jon and looks like he spent some time with Ted Kaczynski and is only retreating from isolation temporarily to have coffee with some of his old army buddies. And Jon lives in Chicago. What's really surreal about it is that he keeps looking at me like he knows me too, which made me wonder what kind of character I represented to him.

Then there's the old man with a voice like Tom Waits. He's saying filthy things to a woman, and even though I can't see her, occasionally I'll hear her voice. She tells him to be quiet. To calm down, which is polite considering all the raunchy things he keeps saying he's going to do to her. Eventually one of the employees comes over to tell him that he is going to have to leave if he can't settle down. He's quick to apologize and begins to gather up his stuff. I thought my friend had a better suggestion. She told me I should go over to him and whisper in his ear that he's a very naughty monkey. I missed my chance on that one. But once he left I leaned forward to try to get a look at the woman who was sitting across from him, and there was nobody there. I stop laughing.

Yesterday I saw a short, pudgy lesbian version of my friend Pat. She had his clothes on, and wore glasses like his. Even her hair was similar. But Pat would never carry around a book titled "I'm A Man."

Then there's today. I see the dog first, which can't be helped. You don't normally see dogs in coffee shops, or at least not the one I frequent. It was a nice looking golden retriever, and when I took a closer look it became pretty obvious that it was a seeing eye dog. Then I noticed the guy next to the dog, who was wearing sunglasses and in a wheelchair. I get back to my work and don't pay that much attention to him. After a while I look up and see the writing intern I recently worked with heading my way, which was right by the door. I called out to her to say hi and I asked what she was up to. She was in a big hurry and nudged towards the guy in the wheelchair and told me that she was working as his photography assistant and had to get going. I took a closer look and verified the sunglasses and the seeing eye dog, but I also noticed a camera around his neck. So the writer I used to work with is now a photographer's assistant for a blind guy.

It takes some strong coffee.

Last night I had Ben and Jerry's and didn't eat the whole pint.

2009-02-13T13:02:00.000-08:00

Last night I walked to the convenience store on the corner, bought a pint of Ben and Jerry's and didn't eat the whole thing. Usually this is impossible. I'll take a spoon and carefully skim the top of the ice cream and try to get equal portions of goodness in each bite. I'll marvel at how much better rich chocolaty ice cream is over its frozen yogurt counterpart, and eventually when at least a quarter of the pint has been consumed, and...err...57% of my recommended intake of fat, I'll put the pint away. But no matter how far back in the freezer I put it, I can't bury it from my mind. I know it's there because it tastes damn good. And this is where the games come in. Maybe I'll take my spoon and just have one more bite. Because it's only one, and really, having another taste isn't so bad because if I look at the pint it still looks like I have a quarter of it left. Okay, maybe a third. But it's at least a third. By this time it's started to thaw, making it more difficult to shave a tiny portion off the top. This is where the heaps of chocolate and peanut butter and caramel goodness really start to show their character in large tablespoon amounts. And I start to think about how I really don't do this that often and that maybe it's not so bad. I'll hit the gym tomorrow.

Okay, let me say this again. Last night I had Ben and Jerry's and didn't eat the whole pint. Does this mean I'm getting more responsible about my health? Have I finally comprehended the 2,000 calorie a day diet? Am I trimming back the excesses of yesterday and embracing the mantra of "less is more?"

Or maybe I make the mistake of picking up Everything But The... instead of Chunky Monkey.

Classical, you are not a good writing soundtrack

2009-02-10T10:31:00.000-08:00

I'm not adverse to classical music. I'm really not. I enjoy the masters of classical music. Or at least I respect them. But I'm not about to go home and put on a little Mozart or Bach. It's just not going to happen. At least not more than a couple times a decade.

I seems like classical music must have been some sort of compromise at my favorite coffee shop. Every morning for the past few weeks I've heard nothing else. It doesn't seem like the baristas are choosing their classical carefully either. I'd imagine it's required no more thought than selecting a channel from a subscription service.

On the days that I've forgotten my earbuds I don't stick around long. The music makes me tense. Like it's the soundtrack to some action that should be happening among all the people typing quietly at their laptops. Guy with cookie jumps up and steals the laptop from soy latte girl and bolts for the door, weaving his way through oncoming traffic and bouncing off a beer delivery truck parked across the street. Enter Jack Bauer who repels down from the video store building in an attempt to get the contents of the laptop's hard drive. Now that would be more like it.

There's no such action today, but the soundtrack has changed. We're on a light rock and soul channel. Most of the songs sound only vaguely familiar, but I like it. I'm at ease. I can think.

Again, nothing against classical music. If I lived 300 years ago and had the means, I'm sure I would have dug it as I dipped my quill in my ink. Oh wait, that's right. There was no prerecorded music back then. No wonder it doesn't work.

The future is now. You are here.

2009-02-04T10:35:00.000-08:00

Google has a new product that it is rolling out to mobile devices today, as well as personal computers in the near future. They call it Latitude, and it will give you the ability to google people in ways straight out of a science fiction novel.

The technology has been out there for a while. iPhone users were quick to discover apps like Loopt, which essentially does the same thing as Google's new application. Loopt worked on a small scale though, allowing you to see other iPhone user's physical map location as long as they gave you permission. But with Google involved the difference is in scope. Soon this won't be a novelty app, but will be something very real. Your friends and family can track you, sure. But what happens when your employer has you sign an agreement to be tracked as a condition of employment? And when this gets in the hands of a jealous lover?

It's all about control. The future is here, and to a large extent you can decide how much you want to participate in it. But people become conditioned. They post things to the internet for all to see that might have previously found its home only in a well-hidden diary. Is a location finder going to be any different?

Sure, this could be a lot of fun. Exploring a new city with a group and friends that all have their location finder turned on could provide a sense of security, as well as autonomy. You could feel free to do your own thing, but know precisely where a friend is if you need to find them. Bar hopping, wedding receptions, vacations, etc would be a blast. It would also be great if you were going on a long road trip. I drove from Minneapolis to Bowling Green, Kentucky recently and would have gladly turned this on so the people I was visiting could see where I was at and adjust their schedules. Sure, using a cell phone to call and say that you're an hour or two away really that hard to do, but this type of tracking could be provide an added sense of security. You go missing and your friends can see where you're at.

I don't know. I have over 100 friends on Facebook and have probably talked to less than 10 of them in the last month outside of Facebook. With this, I can't imagine I'd ever leave it on for long. But then, I'm sure I'll be conditioned by society like everyone else. "Todd is at the corner of West Lake Street and South Bryant Avenue. Here's a map."

Is now a good time to go off the grid? Ha. Could you do that even if you wanted to?

Soup Kitchen 2009

2009-02-04T09:36:00.001-08:00

It seemed like a good idea. Free breakfast for everyone in America. Just stop by Denny's between 6am and 2pm. Immediately I texted two friends that I usually have breakfast with. My schedule was fairly open on Tuesday and the promise of the Grand Slam breakfast sounded appetising, even though I hadn't been to a Denny's in at least seven years. I thought I'd stop by around 10am, but as soon as I hung up the phone with my friend on Tuesday morning I started to worry. East Lake Street. Free breakfast. Would there be lines? And why are we both driving separately?

Turns out we didn't really have to worry about parking. When people expect free, they expect free, and there were plenty of parking meters available in directly in front of Denny's. The line was another story and I couldn't help but have flashbacks to seeing Obama in February of last year and waiting in line for hours in the freezing cold. But that was to see the future president. This was for the Glam Slam breakfast.

I'd guess that there were about 50 people waiting. If temps hadn't been in the single-digits and we had dressed more appropriately I think we would have stuck it out. As it was I couldn't really imagine that once we were done shivering in the cold we'd be greeted with the relaxing breakfast we had begun to crave. One with eggs and pancakes, yes, but also with high doses of wi-fi and time killing. In the end we went to one of our normal breakfast haunts. And looking around, I'd have to guess we weren't the only ones to arrive via Denny's.

The news media is reporting positive things about Denny's free breakfast. Apparently they served over 2 million people yesterday and averaged 130 Glam Slams an hour. But will people think of Denny's next time they're hungry for breakfast and come back to pay full price for it? Or is just a sad reflection of the desperate times we live in?

Vic Chesnutt and Elf Power, 400 Bar 1/31/09

2009-02-02T09:24:00.000-08:00

Vic Chesnutt remains one of my favorite singer songwriters. His first four albums for the Texas Hotel label in the early 90's are nothing short of incredible. Little, West Of Rome, Drunk and Is The Actor Happy? stack up there among the greats. Twisted lyrics. Brilliant revealing songs. Interesting character studies. And a song called Lucinda Williams that served as an introduction to her for many of Vic's fans, including myself. There are worlds to discover in Vic's music. Especially on those early records.

Shortly before Vic released his Capital records debut, About To Choke, he became the subject of the Sweet Relief charity album which works to provide health insurance benefits to uninsured musicians. It gave him short term exposure to the alternative rock scene. But is was brief. It's hard to put a label on Vic, and he's not exactly radio friendly. He's occasionally alt-country, but I cringe at calling him that. Sometimes he's acoustic, but not always. Really, what do you call a man who is known to play trumpet with his mouth with no trumpet in sight? Eclectic? For sure. But if we're talking music labels, singer-songwriter is the only one that really fits.

After About To Choke, Vic came out with The Salesman And Bernadette, an album he recorded with Lambchop, and which to this day remains one his most underrated albums. Promos came out on Capital, but the actual record was postponed and eventually released on Capricorn. Since that time Vic has released several albums on various independent labels with a vast array of collaborators and producers. Van Dyke Parks. Bill Friswell. And now Elf Power.

I didn't expect much from Dark Developments. My expectations for new Vic albums has been tempered a bit. It's not that North Star Deserter, Ghetto Bells and Silver Lake aren't good albums. They're probably great, and I really need to go back and listen to them. They just don't sound much like those classic first four albums I've come to appreciate. Neither does Dark Developements, but this album is quite good, and is sounding even better to me after the show I saw at the 400 Bar. Elf Power were the perfect band to be backing him up at the show, providing a muscular foundation to allow Vic strum his guitar frantically and wail like and old bluesman. But the best part of the show came during the encore. Two songs from Little. A song from The Salesman and Bernadette and a new dig at George W. Bush called "Legacy."

Catch him on this tour.

Setlist:

Mystery
Little Fucker
And How
Teddy Bear
We Are Mean
Stop the Horse
Bilocating Dog
The Mad Passion of the Stoic
Phil the Fiddler
Old Hotel
Independence Day
Rabbit Box
Legacy

Right before your naked steaming laptop eyes...

2009-01-29T11:16:00.000-08:00

I'm not much for video games. Never have been. But I was a true Van Halen freak back in the day, and I suppose there will always be a little VH in me that all those Sammy Hagar fronted albums and endless reunions will never be able to destroy. So I get a kick out of this flash game where you get to shoot "assteroids" out of David Lee Roth, who is in permanent jump position. Of course I suck at it, but I do manage to pretty much destroy Sammy Hagar every time he opens up his mouth and screams "55." Give it a try.

Also make sure you check out Diamond Dave singing "Running with the Devil" with all the instruments removed from the track.

Judge this one by the cover: Bruce Springsteen's Working On A Dream

2009-01-28T08:48:00.001-08:00

This is Bruce Springsteen, so a little respect is in order. And maybe some repeated listens. But first we have to downplay our expectations, which isn't easy to do. Long the perfectionist, Springsteen is known for taking years between albums, obsessively pouring over track listings and details, and leaving entire albums worth of material for the archives. The quick turn around of this album, which follows Magic by just over year, was surprising. Not since 1992's Human Touch and Lucky Town have we had such a burst of activity.

Unfortunately Working On A Dream sounds as creatively stagnant as Human Touch, with only a handful of songs reaching the quality of the slightly better Lucky Town. But that's where the comparisons to those two records should end. The problem with Working On A Dream lies more in its ambitions. Following the larger than life tour for Born In The USA, Springsteen put the E Street Band on hold and spent the next decade plus trying to reinvent himself. Stumbling on records like Human Touch, but succeeding on Tunnel of Love and 1995's misunderstood The Ghost Of Tom Joad, which seemed to give him a new identity that he could use for years to come. But as Springsteen began to look back with 1998's Tracks, rumors of an E Street Reunion were inevitable, and it happened the following year. For a while it seemed like Springsteen was balancing out the occasional E Street Band record with interesting detours like 2005's Devils And Dust or 2006's The Seeger Sessions, but now we have two back to back records that seem to be aiming for the music for the masses pop domination of Born In The USA. While the bombastic nature of Born In The USA obscured many of the songs messages, that record at least had several very good songs. Which is a lot more than can be said for Working On A Dream.

Springsteen has always been a little over the top, but the pedestrian lyrics of so many of these songs are quite surprising, and you don't have to look any further than "Queen Of the Supermarket" for a good example. "I'm in love with the queen of the supermarket/as the evening sky turns blue/a dream awaits in aisle number two." And that's about as good as it gets. "Outlaw Pete" is one of the better songs on the album, but even it begins with "At six months old he'd done three months in jail/
he robbed a bank in his diapers and his little bare baby feet/all he said was folks my name is Outlaw Pete." This is not "A Boy Named Sue," and these are not novelty songs. They're serious ones, which makes the lazy and sometimes downright embarrassing lyrics all the more puzzling.

Musically the album goes straight for the center of the road, and Brendan O'Brien's production is partly to blame, but so is Springsteen's recording style. Gone are the days of the E Street Band banging out endless tracks in a studio with the hope that some of them will see the light of day. Instead this record and its predecessor were largely recorded with a smaller band within the E Street Band and used the full band as overdubs. The result is a sterile flat sounding record that lacks any urgency. Bruce is in good voice, and the record sounds good as background music, but we expect more from him.

There are some highlights. "Lucky Day" is an uplifting pop song that you'd be hard pressed to get out of your head, and "The Last Carnival" seems like a good way to wind down the record, but so much of the album is almost immediately forgettable, even after several listens. "Working on a Dream" is an okay pop song, but it seems to lack any substance. If a fluff piece, which should resonate with a large percentage of his audience. Namely the folks that still don't know what "Born in the USA" is about.

Tacked on to the end of the record as a bonus cut is one of Springsteen's strongest songs in recent memory. "The Wrestler" was key to making the Mickey Rourke movie work, especially in the preview, and it's also the record's highlight. After listening to the album it's hard not to listen to the song from Springsteen's point of view. "Have you ever seen a one-legged man trying to dance his way free/if you've ever seen a one-legged man then you've seen me."

Hopefully he doesn't see himself that trapped, and the next detour from blandland is just around the corner.

You Read A Book (I'm Writing An Album)

2009-01-27T11:14:00.000-08:00

The holidays are long over, winter has worn out its welcome, and it's time again for February Album Writing Month. The idea is to write an album worth of songs, 14 of them, over the course of the shortest month of the year. It started out in Madison, WI in 2004 and now has participants from all over the country, as well as different corners of the world.

For me February has always seemed like the ideal month to do something like this. Fight or flight kicks in around this time of year with the incessant winter weather of Minneapolis, and FAWM is the perfect distraction. Of course winter tends to work its way into the lyrics. 2005 was the first year that I participated and my lasting song from that year is called "Snow From A Window." Write what you know, I guess.

I've always written songs in batches, sometimes with long periods of inactivity between those creative spurts. I still get those moments of inspiration throughout the year, but I seldom finish a song during those times. Instead I grab a tape recorder and try to get as much of the idea down as possible, knowing that come February I'll probably finish it up. Or at least get it to the demo stage. Sometimes I have a large collection of song fragments, like in 2005, when after neglecting songwriting for much of the previous 3-4 years, I was finally able to take those "song starters" and finish them up. 2006 I wasn't so lucky. I had very few song fragments and had a very busy February. Only one song got finished and it isn't one of my best. 2007 I skipped completely. But 2008 I was very productive. Maybe because I had a couple years worth of song fragments again, although most of the songs that I recorded that year were written from scratch.

This year will be a bit of a challenge. I have a couple of uncertain things going on in my life, so the time issue could be impacted. And I don't have that many fragments this time, but I probably have a clearer idea of what I want to do. Of the starters I think I have 2-3, but I'm sure I'll find more as I go digging. That's part of the fun. And of course I can always go way back and try rewriting old forgotten songs. 14 is the goal, but last year I almost quit after 10 because I felt like for me, I had done what I set out to accomplish, which was to write a body of songs. This year I'll certainly try for 14, but if I was to write 8-10 songs that I was happy with it would probably be enough for me.

Check out my FAWM progress or register yourself at www.fawm.org.

1999- MULE VARIATIONS

2007-01-19T11:02:00.000-08:00

Tom Waits records are events. Or at least they were when Mule Variations came out in 1999. It had been 7 years since his last real record. 1993's The Black Rider was more of an exercise in theater than a proper record. But even if you count that one, it had been a long wait. 1992, Bone Machine, I'm living at home while I take some time off from college. By 1999 I'd grown up a bit. For better or worse, Tom's characters were a little more real to me. And he always had some interesting things to say.

Got to get behind the mule, every morning and plow

I had a cat I hated. A kitten actually. A kitten with a rotten personality. I was feeling really down that winter and thought I'd go to the humane society and get a furry companion. A few minutes in the little room and I had bonded with him. "A Siamese," the lady at the counter said, "oh, you're going to have your hands full." I wasn't sure I liked the sound of that.

Niko was a waste of a good name. He liked to climb me like he was a monkey climbing a tree. And he never avoided my face either. I had to close my eyes and hope that he wasn't easily startled as he made his journey towards the top of my head. He liked to sit up there. Right on top of my head. I'd pull him off and put him on my lap or the floor, and then he'd run up my body and do it all over again. And more often than not, he'd jump from my head onto my papers. The little bastard had no respect for me working out of my home.

Mr. Curt lived across the hall. His first name was Curt, but I liked to add the Mr. because he was a very fastidious man. He didn't like me to do laundry after 9pm, for example, because he thought the noise would keep him up- even though the washers and dryers were in the basement and we were on the second floor. And if I had a girl over, no matter what hour she came over or left, he was sure to notice. But he was a good guy. We had our own little Kramer-Jerry Seinfeld relationship going on. The doors were usually wide open, and it wasn't long before he took quite a liking to little Niko.

I don't recall Niko ever making the journey to the top of Mr. Curt's head, so maybe that explains why Mr. Curt liked him so much. Then again, who doesn't like a kitten? His nose had likely never been clawed either, and therefore wasn't hindered in anyway in its sensitivity to smell. "Is little Niko liter trained?" Well, yeah. Or at least I thought so. I mean the stuff in the box was all covered up. I had my suspicions that maybe he was having accidents though. When this happens your nose kind of goes crazy and you think you smell it everywhere. So Mr. Curt was sort of my validation that maybe there was something wrong. I had stockpiled a huge stack of envelopes from the newspaper clipping service I used for sales leads, and I had a sneaking suspicion that he was doing his business back behind my couch where the bulk of those clippings were stored.

Presidents Day. I have the day off and decide to go record shopping. But I don't quite trust Niko. I'd had him about a month, and my apartment was starting to get a little funky smelling. Nothing I could pinpoint though. So I put Niko in my bathroom and closed the door. At least that way I could keep track of him.

So I come back to my funky smelling apartment. Mr. Curt is gone. He didn't have the work perks that I had, and didn't have the day off. I open the door to check on Niko and see him on top of the sink, ready to pounce on me. All around him, on all of the white porcelain are little tiny brown specs. It didn't take me long to connect the dots and trace them back to Niko.

Bye bye Niko. I didn't like him anyway. And he was kitten enough that I didn't feel too guilty. "It just wasn't working out" isn't an excuse that would keep him from getting adopted.

Mr. Curt on the other hand wasn't too happy. I guess looking back it was sort of like his cat too. I did tell him where he could find Niko though, and he didn't seem like he was in any hurry to go there and adopt him.

You don't meet nice girls in coffee shops

You don't. You meet them in rock clubs when your three sheets to the wind after seeing another band perform at another club a few hours earlier. The key was in my car door, but the night was beautiful. The perfect summer night. I didn't know who was playing at the 7th Street Entry, or even if I'd know anybody there, but I was set on making the most of the night.

Margaret liked rock and roll. And she went to shows by herself. If there's a weakness I have for women, that's it. You go to a rock show by yourself, you're pretty cool in my book.

We dated for close to a year and saw a lot of rock shows. Then we broke up. Right after having breakfast in a very coffee shop like place. To the sounds of Joy Division. To this day I can't think of a more miserable band to break up to. Awful.

When you share my bed, you share my name

I always thought this was a real bad ass thing to say, and I love Tom for saying it.

When the weather gets rough, and it's whiskey in the shade, it's best to wrap your savior up in cellophane

I'm not a church going man. I wasn't in 1999, and I'm not now. Some of my favorite songs in the whole world deal with spiritual rebirth or the longing for personal salvation though. Chocolate Jesus, however, is not one of those songs.

It does sort of present an interesting idea though. I mean, maybe taking a little time out on Sunday to enjoy a little Chocolate Jesus wouldn't be such a bad thing. If it's dark chocolate it's going to be rich in anti-oxidants, which is good for you. And there's a sort of zen-like quality that comes from taking a few moments out of your day to really focus on something. Even if it's something you eat. After all, people focus when they're taking communion. The way I see it, you're just consolidating things.

Come down from the cross, we could use the wood

Ouch. This one could really put someone in their place. You probably want to be careful who you say this to. I can think of a couple relatives that almost got this verbage from me, but I came to my senses before actually saying it. Again, pretty bad ass.

She's my black market baby, she's a diamond that wants to stay coal

I can't stand it when people ask why other people are still single. Hate it. I mean, right now, I wouldn't mind being married. Does that mean that the next person I go out with is THE ONE? No. Not at all.

It's also weird when people ask what "type" you're looking for. Usually I want to say "someone not like you", because usually the people who ask are so not my type. But I think I'm going to start saying that I want a diamond who wants to stay coal. Seriously. That's my line (well, actually Tom's) and I'm sticking with it.

fell in love with a gadget

2007-01-10T08:42:00.000-08:00

I knew Apple was going to announce something yesterday. My hopes were that they'd finally reveal an iPod that either had satellite radio capabilities or at least a built in FM tuner. I've held off buying a new iPod for this reason, and thought of all of the new iPods received over the holiday season and how those people would be bummed that Apple one-upped them in much the same way that I was when I bought my Powerbook only to have the Intel version launched just a couple months later. This didn't happen.

Instead they came up with the kind of gadget everybody's been dreaming of since the invention of the cell phone. Finally, it appears as if one small device will be capable of everything we need for life on the go. Phone. Basic computer. MP3 Player. Camera.

Currently I bring my laptop, a cell phone and an ipod to work with me on most days. Sometimes I even bring a digital camera. Of these devices, my cell phone is the one I'm most attached to. I have an office computer I can use, and there's an office stereo and stacks of cds and other people's iPods around to fuel the soundtrack to my work day. But if I forget my cell phone it's like I'm running around naked all day. I can hardly remember what occupied the space in my front left pocket before the cell phone. Sure, I can call in and check my messages from my office phone, but it just isn't the same. I mean, someone could call. Or I might need to call someone. Or there could be an emergency. It's my lifeline to the world basically, even though I would hardly consider myself a heavy user.

With Apple's new iPhone, I would probably leave my laptop and iPod at home. I wouldn't get rid of either. I mean, surely the iPod would still be great for roadtrips, exercising or just about any other occasion when you need to have your musical library with you. And a large screen computer isn't going to go away anytime soon. But for everyday on the go use, I can't think of a better gadget than the iPhone.

I might have to be an early adapter for this one. It comes out in June, which means I guess I better start saving now. This thing is not cheap, at around $499 for the 4 gig model. And I'm sure there will be some bugs in it. But I know as soon as I see one I'm going to have to have it.

Brilliant invention.

1998- IN THE AEROPLANE OVER THE SEA

2006-10-31T15:21:00.000-08:00

In the days when entire cd collections couldn't fit in the palm of your hand, you had to be careful about choosing the right handful of cds to take on a trip. A flight to another city to train for a new job meant a lot of time alone in a hotel. I wanted a cd to be more like a novel. Something I could really sink my teeth into. Something I could start on the plane and really get into by the time I had to head back.

I had just accepted a job. A big job. Not in a criminal sense, but a job where college was finally going to pay off. I'd go from having a supervisor time my potty breaks to a boss who would phone me once a week to see how things were going. Laptop. Company car. Four state territory. Life was looking up.

Then I got seated in first class. Nice. I'd yet to meet these people that offered me a crucial step in career advancement. I'd charmed the HR person with my cover letter, and gotten through a couple phone interviews. Now I had to fly to Atlanta for training. A couple questions went through my head. Most notably, how did they know I'm not some really freaky looking dude? After all, I was in sales. Image is supposed to be everything. Well, and an ability to schmooze.

First class was great though. I almost didn't want to put my headphones on because I was afraid they'd offer me something and I wouldn't be able to accept it. But I also had a really intriguing album in my bag.

I'd stopped by the Fetus before my trip. I knew exactly what I wanted from a review I read in City Pages. When the guy at the Fetus couldn't find it I was a little surprised. Right before I left another worker overheard him and found a box.

In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel. It doesn't exactly roll of the tongue. But I had it in my bag. All I had to do was pull out my Sony Discman, slap on my headphones, and keep an eye on the flight attendant while I slipped what was to become one of my favorite albums of all time into my cd player.

But there were other issues to attend too. The seat next to me was open, which meant I could either remain in my aisle seat, or I could move next to the window and look out at the night sky.

Then there was the issue of beverages. Wine sounded good to me, but I would have to decide which red I'd want to go with. I thought I'd make sure that whatever I selected went well with my dinner, but I knew there'd be a few more cocktails before that happened. I'd like to say I picked out a fine Pinot Noir, but I think I was all about the box wine back then.

Somewhere around 35,000 feet I finally played the album. From the first track I was smitten. "When you were young you were the king of carrot flowers." I had no idea what that meant, but by the time Mom was stabbing Dad with the fork as he threw the garbage on the floor and the narrator was busy hanging out with his girl and discovering what each others bodies were for, I knew I was hearing something profoundly unique.

Then the song cycle explodes. Jeff Mangum screams "I love you Jesus Christ", only this time religion in music doesn't bother me. It seems so sincere it makes me blush.

Death is part of life in some endless cycle. Anne Frank. World War II. Birth. Mutation. Sex. Reincarnation.

It's all too much. I know from this first listen that it'll take me weeks beyond my stay in Atlanta to find all the treasures in this album. Years even. But I knew that a rock record was moving me in ways in which very few did after the 500th or so purchase.

"I'll take the Seafood Primavera."

"And another glass of wine...Merlot. Thanks."

The Hold Steady- Boys And Girls In America

2006-10-13T13:22:00.000-07:00

Enough with this bar band shit. Seriously. This band sounds nothing like the type of band you’re likely to encounter if you hit just about any bar in any city. If bar bands sounded like this Top 40 radio would be a beautiful thing, American Idol wouldn’t exist, and we may have even spared ourselves from W (sorry I can’t even type his name anymore without feeling sick).

Can you imagine what it would look like? Every small town would be a ripe scene waiting to explode. It’d be like having a 1959 Liverpool, 1967 San Francisco, 1977 London and 1989 Seattle everyday in every small town. “Good to see you’re back in a bar band, baby.” Yeah, maybe at the type of joint you’d find in Minneapolis in 1984.

The Replacements, Husker Du, and the Minneapolis scene of the early 1980’s feature prominently in the Hold Steady’s approach. Like Westerberg, Craig Finn wouldn’t be in a band if he had nothing to say. Fortunately for us, he’s got plenty to say, but he’s abandoned the unfocused jazz approach the got him so many comparisons to early pre-Born To Run Springsteen albums.

Boys And Girls In America is all about economy. Lead Singer/Lecturer Craig Finn sounds like he’s part of the band instead of competing with them. Gone are the long narratives found on 2004’s Almost Killed Me and especially last years concept heavy Separation Sunday, and in their place are concise rock songs. Most feature pronounced piano and restrained guitar. Some of which Craig Finn even manages to sing on.

The album kicks off with “Stuck Between Stations” and tells an interesting story about the poet John Berryman, Minneapolis and drinking. “He was drunk and exhausted but he was critically acclaimed and respected/He loved the golden gophers but he hated all the drawn out winters”. Alcohol gets the best of him (“he likes the warm feeling but he’s tired of all the dehydration”) before he leaps to his death and drowns in the Mississippi river. Hard lesson. You have to wonder if there isn’t a little band commentary in there.

The album’s other highlights include “Chips Ahoy”, “Massive Nights” and the very Cheap Trickish “Southtown Girls”. Boys And Girls In America’s greatest strengths come with its biggest detours. “Citrus” is a lovely ode to romance and inebriation, and oftentimes the romance of inebriation. Religion creeps its way in as well “I feel Jesus in the tenderness of honest nervous lovers/I feel Judas in the pistols and the pagers that come with all the powders.”

The real highlight is “First Night”. The song is where Craig Finn’s storytelling comes full circle as he resurrects Holly from Separation Sunday. Piano driven with layers of strings and guitars underneath, this song is The Hold Steady as probably nobody could have imagined them just a few years earlier. Indeed, if bar bands sounded like this, it would only be a matter of time before this song would penetrate a prom or two somewhere along the way.

Boys And Girls In America does have a few missteps, most notably “Same Kooks”. Guitarist Tad Kubler is wonderfully restrained on most of the album, but when he lets loose here the song can’t really support it. Elsewhere “You Can Make Him Like You” seems a little pedestrian, and “Chillout Tent” suffers a bit from the guest appearances even if the subject matter and song itself are pretty strong.

But none of that really matters. What really counts here is how brilliant the storytelling and lyrics are on the bulk of the record. Nobody comes close to Craig Finn at his most focused. And there’s plenty of focus here, lyrically and musically. Oh, and it rocks. If only all bar bands were this way.

1997- OK COMPUTER

2006-10-10T13:43:00.000-07:00

You look so tired, unhappy

I was dating a flight attendant. Or, a flight attendant wanna-be, anyway. She certainly looked the part. Tall, blonde, well endowed. She was a friend of my roommate’s friend, and we hit it off when the two of them came to visit.

She was living in Chicago while she was in training, and we’d get together at Red Lobsters and TGI Fridays out in the suburbs when I’d come to visit. Our visits were brief, and I’d have to have her back by 1:00 on Sunday afternoons. There would be hell to pay if she was late.

I’d heard the Flight Attendant School horror stories. Makeup that wasn’t put on right, an imperfect walk down the aisle, leaning too close to the “passengers” on the mock jet while serving them drinks, a.k.a. being too fat. These were all reasons for disqualification. And if you were too fat and you showed up late, well, then forget about it.

She wasn’t fat, but she was miserable. She thought she would love taking off and landing all day long and serving drinks, but the pressure was enormous and she was beginning to have her doubts. With almost nothing in common, it was probably the job dissatisfaction that kept us together.

A job that slowly kills you

I worked in the technical service department of a medical products company. Whenever my phone rang I had to diagnose what was wrong with the blood glucose meters that nurses in hospitals across the country were using. There wasn’t a lot of detective work involved. It would come as a complete shock if the call was anything other than the meter showing an “error 1” or an “error 4”. The answer was always the same. We’d send a new meter out, and include a postage label for them to send the old one back.

So I was on autopilot most of the time. For a while the internet saved my brain from turning to mush. Then they blocked it. Which was kind of cool for a while. It gave me a far more engaging challenge. I’d have to find ways to get outside their “intranet”. Once I got to yahoo, I was usually home free. Eventually they caught on and tightened things up further.

Before going to work I started to do a quick surf of my favorite sights, copying and pasting articles I thought might interest me later in the day and then sending them to my work email address. Usually by mid-morning I had exhausted these resources and needed more. Joe came to the rescue.

I’d send him emails with subject lines like “a job that slowly kills you” and describe the torturous environment I spent 8 hours of my day at in which to pay the rent. Whether it was getting too much information about the sex life of my overweight bearing coworker or getting crap from the scientists who worked there for not being scientific like them and earning a better paycheck, Joe was a sympathetic ear.

Bruises that won’t heal

To every “a job that slowly kills you” email I’d send, Joe had a “bruises that won’t heal” response. He had taken a job through a temp service, but the owner of the company sat down with Joe on day one to chat. That had a brief talk where Joe told him that we was “pretty into vinyl” and the guy got excited thinking that Joe knew a thing or two about vinyl siding. Telling Bossman that he had a vintage copy of Ray Charles’ Modern Sounds In Country And Western Music was not the way to ingratiate himself.

Still, Bossman told Joe he didn’t like working with temp services, and that he wanted Joe to be his employee. But Bossman made it clear that he had to pay off the temp service to free Joe of the contract, and he threw the dollar amount in Joe’s face every time he didn’t like what he did, claiming that Joe would owe him that money if he quit or got let go. He told Joe he was grooming him to be a professional and maybe “run the company some day”. He used this excuse to remind Joe to tuck in his shirt like a real man. Or in one case, zip up his zipper.

When Bossman would leave to attend to his other businesses, Joe would do the only thing he could think of to preserve his sanity. He surfed the internet, and often times he’d cut and paste articles he thought might interest me and send them. Music reviews, interviews, political stories, News Of The Weird. Anything was better than my “error 1, error 4” existence.

Phew, for a minute there I lost myself

Joe had a habit of putting the word “the” in front of bands. Wilco became “The Wilco”. Radiohead, “The Radiohead”. It was probably the “The-ing” of Radiohead that kept me from going to see them play at the State Theater with Joe soon after Ok Computer came out. Going to see The Radiohead just didn’t sound all that appealing. That, and the CD had yet to penetrate my every thought and become my soundtrack for a year or two.

My infatuation with Ok Computer began on a Sunday afternoon after the flight attendant girlfriend left to go back to Chicago. Joe was out of town. I sat in my music room where I’d recently demoed some songs and listened to my dubbed copy of Ok Computer over and over again with the afternoon sun shining in on me and a nice breeze blowing through the room. Joe had bought Ok Computer, but I’d made sure to make a copy before he left. With a little alone time to really listen to it, everything clicked. It would be one of the my most played albums. It spoke to me in every sense of the cliche.

Still, I regret not going to that show. I’ve been able to catch some of my favorite bands within a few weeks of getting into them, but this would not be the case with Radiohead. I’d have to wait until the summer of 2001. But when I finally did see them in Chicago’s Grant Park after pretty much giving up on large outdoor shows, it was incredible. Probably the best show on that kind of scale that I’d seen in my life.

1996- BEING THERE

2006-10-04T16:48:00.000-07:00

Joe was usually up first. He'd put on a cup of coffee and start playing video games. It was always pretty quiet too. The stereo speakers were routed back to my room where you could switch the sound to play in my bedroom, the living room, or both. So he usually waited until I was up to put any music on.

One time I scared the hell out of him and his cat by turning up my stereo and playing "Hey" by The Pixies. Not the whole song, but just the part where Black Francis shouts "HEY" with no music accompanying him. Joe was like "what the hell". I waited a little while, laughing my ass off, and did it again before he noticed it was me. I felt bad later when he mentioned the scratch marks from his cat.

Joe was pretty good at making coffee. He knew just how to ground the beans and add just the right amount of water to make a pretty mean cup. Cleaning up wasn't as easy for him. Powdered cheese and butter on the counter meant mac and cheese. Red stains on the counter and an open pasta box on the edge of the stove meant spaghetti night. I assisted in the coffee making process by putting the coffee beans and grinder away and wiping the coffee grinds off the counter when I got up an hour or so later.

Joe and I were both really into music, and those late morning weekend hours were crucial times to play records. Plenty of thought would go into what to play. Tom Waits was common. So was The Velvet Underground. We'd sit and drink coffee and chat about how bad our hangovers were or whether or not we were going to go record shopping that day, and if Joe hadn't already made some foul smelling corned beef and hash, we'd talk about getting breakfast.

I was friends with a girl who worked at The Electric Fetus, and she'd given me a promo double vinyl copy of the new Wilco record. I'd seen Wilco open for Pavement the previous year and didn't really notice anything that unique or exciting about them. Most of my time was spent behind the noise barrier at First Avenue talking with friends. Since then "Passenger Side" and "Box Full Of Letters" were getting quite a bit of radio play on REV 105 though, and I'd warmed up to them a little bit. But mostly I was just really intrigued by the Being There album cover.

Featuring a close up shot of someone fretting a chord on the neck of a guitar, it looked vaguely country, and it was a double album. I was always a sucker for the double album.

I think Joe suggested it. He'd probably picked up the record and had the same thoughts. One cold fall morning after Joe cooked up his corned beef and hash and I whipped up an omelet, we put it on.

It began with a slow rumble before quieting down to a strummed guitar. "When you're back in your old neighborhood, cigarettes taste so good, but you're so misunderstood. So misunderstood". I understood the sentiment perfectly. Later Jeff Tweedy mentions a party "we all ought to go to" if you still love rock and roll. If you STILL love rock and roll.

This wasn't a concept album, or worse yet, a "rock opera", but it did have a theme running through it. Unlike AM, which was largely written on the road, and came quickly following the breakup of Uncle Tupelo, Being There was the record where the band's breakup and the bigger questions about living a life on the road in pursuit of rock and roll came into focus. Married with a kid, and a broken up band, Being There is the search for answers to big questions: Does rock and roll mean anything after you get to a certain age? Is it a youthful pursuit? Do family obligations and growing up replace it?

With "Red Eyed And Blue" he's distracted. Drugs, alcohol, recording, missing his girl back home, fatigue. "When we came here today, we all felt something true, but now I'm red eyed and blue."

Later on "Sunken Treasure" he's "maimed by rock and roll", got his "name from rock and roll", and is ultimately "saved by rock and roll."

We sat paralyzed by the record. When we had to switch sides or move to the second disc, it was done swiftly with anticipation. At the end of every side, we wandered how they could maintain what we had just heard.

Somewhere around side three Joe announced that was ready to make the switch from coffee to beer. It was a weekend ritual for him that usually began around noon. Sitting in his rocking chair, stroking his cat and drinking an Old Milwaukee, he nodded his head as the last note of the last song rang out. "Wow." Then I joined him in a beer and we started to talk about it.

A month or so later, Wilco came to town. This time they weren't opening for Pavement though. And I doubt anybody was standing behind the noise barricade talking. It was a cold October night. Jeff Tweedy came out in his pajamas, and the band fed off each other as if their survival depended on it, which they were to eventually find out it did.

Maybe Wilco felt like they really had something to prove by playing multiple versions of "Passenger Side" or The Replacements' "Color Me Impressed". Jay Farrar was probably on his mind as well with the vicious way he sang "Somebody Else's Song". But it was a night where everything worked. A night when you felt like you were part of something bigger. Nobody forgets shows like that.

The band also formed a special bond with Minneapolis. Over the next few years they played First Avenue multiple times, and almost always in October or November. With colder weather came Wilco.

Being There taugh us that rock and roll could mean something. And it was something you didn't outgrow, and it could remain fresh no matter how many shows you'd seen. Which I guess is kind of the point of the album. With Being There, Jeff Tweedy and Wilco gave us a new band to follow, and made us believers again.

1995- ALIEN LANES

2006-09-21T13:56:00.000-07:00

April 8, 1995, Saturday morning. I wake up and put on a CMJ music compilation cd with two tracks from a band I'm starting to hear a lot about. The first song I instantly like. It's a 2 minute pop gem called "Motoraway" off their new album, Alien Lanes. The second song is far less likeable, but intriguing just the same. And it set a standard of expectations I’d come to expect from Guided By Voices. For every album of new material there's always a side project or additional ep released within months. In this case it was a boxset of their first four albums and a fifth disc of rarities. True to a lot of their output, the song from the main release was killer. The other, not so bad.

I end up meeting my friend Laura for breakfast. I had the veggie tex mex omelet and it's delicious. The perfect amount of eggs, salsa, sour cream and cheese. The coffee was glorious too. So good in fact, that I decide to get a cup to go so I can sip it as we peruse the aisles of a used book store. I look around for a Martin Amis book a friend recommended, but I can't find it. Besides I'm distracted. "Motoraway" is stuck in my head, and while flipping through City Pages at breakfast I learn that Guided By Voices are playing at the Uptown that night. I want to get to a record store.

I manage to convince Laura to head to Cheapo with me, even though she knows this is likely to be a painfully long experience of watching me endlessly debate which records to get. I tell her it'll be different this time. That I know just what I want. Besides, I think Morrissey has a new album she might be interested in. This does it. She's game.

And there it is. I recognize the art work form the CMJ magazine. It looks great at full size though. I'm especially intrigued by the band photo on the back. They look unified, like they could be living together. Sacrificing a life of women and children for the pursuit of rock and roll.

I loved the title. And 30 some songs. Then a boxset to devour when I was done, as well as a little record called Bee Thousand. Wow. I always loved it when I got into a band that had a whole back catalog to discover. The problem is, as you get more and more into music, the slew of rock and roll bands with a deep catalog you haven’t already pined gets smaller and smaller. Guided By Voices were fertile ground.

Laura and I sit on her front steps and drink the remains of our coffee. "This band is playing tonight," I say as I check out the album artwork, "if I really like this album, I'm going to go see them."

Back at my apartment I'm pleased that my roommate is gone. This is not unusual though. He went out all the time, and I often had the huge plush couch, vintage lamps, funky tables and 50's kitsch all to myself. The only time he was really around was when Star Trek–The Next Generation was on. He watched that intently and then usually went out. It was great having a gay roommate.

Disarm the settlers
The new drunk drivers
Have hoisted the flag
We are with you in your anger
Proud brothers
Do not fret, the bus will get you there yet
To carry us to the lake
The club is open
Yeah, The club is open
Hey, the club is open
A-come on, come on, the club is open
C'mon, c'mon, the club is open
C'mon, c'mon, c'mon, the club is open...

Oh, dear God. Let me in the club. Let me in. Let me in. Let me in. What is this? Some long lost Kinks or Who album from the 60’s? How many vocalists are there? Why does it sound so lo-fi? What’s in the water in Dayton, Ohio?

One song after another I’m bombarded by fragments that blend into a whole and perfect little pop tunes that lack any trace of studio wankery and endless noodling. The average song length is about a minute and a half. And it’s fucking perfect.

Nothing was going to stop me from seeing that show. I made a few calls and tried to recruit some friends to go, with no luck. No problem, I had just heard one of the best rock albums I’d heard in ages. I’d jump over the bouncer if I had to. Or sneak in through the kitchen door. Whatever it took.

But Guided By Voices just weren’t that big then. I got there halfway through the opening band and had no problem getting in. Positioning myself in front of the stage, about 5 rows back, I awaited for my future rock gods to emerge.

The singer introduced his props right away. Budweiser in one hand, cigarette in the other. A cooler of refreshments never far from reach. Animated and full of facial tics, and microphone jabs and twirls, this was like seeing Roger Daltrey and the Who back when they were just The Who. Lean and mean, but without all the opera. One of Guided By Voices bootlegs was called The Who Went Home and Cried. I was beginning to understand why.

“You’re all good kids….you kids wanna hear another one?” It’s not everyday a singer talks of teaching fourth graders and affectionately calls you kids. Not just kids, but “good kids”.

It was all part of the mystique, but it wasn’t crafted by the marketing department of their record label. A bunch of 30-somethings from a small town had been playing rock and roll in their basements and issuing home recordings for years. Now they’d quit their full time jobs to embrace rock and roll. No pretty boy haircuts and designer clothes. This was real rock with real stories behind it. Shoe gazer rock died upon impact.

I knew it that night. I’d see this band every single time they came to any city I happened to be living in. Over the next several years I saw them countless times, often on the same tour. They’d bombard you with the new material (“you’ll be screaming for this shit later this year”) and then get to the classics. Guided By Voices shows became an event. Rock and roll had rarely been this consistently good, and this much fun.

Unlike some other Guided By Voices records, the songs from Alien Lanes don’t sound as good when they’re taken out of context from the record. It’s those little 45 second fragments and weird interludes that make the record. I’m not sure I want to hear “A Salty Salute” without “Evil Speakers” following it. Or “Motorway” separated from “Auditorium”.

It’s hard to imagine rock and roll without Guided By Voices. They lived out the fantasy that many of us hold on to long after our early 20’s pass us by. Through endless writing and recording, they eventually stepped out of the basement and gave us all something to believe in. It’s usually “I Am A Scientist” from Bee Thousand that gets the most applause when done live:

I am a lost soul
I shoot myself with rock & roll
The hole I dig is bottomless
But nothing else can set me free

Robert Pollard speaks the truth. And he’s probably sitting at his kitchen table, or maybe his rock and roll toilet somewhere scrawling the next rock and roll epic for his “good kids”. More likely, he finished one before breakfast and is at work on the followup. We wouldn’t want it any other way from Uncle Bob.

1994- CROOKED RAIN, CROOKED RAIN

2006-09-13T19:41:00.000-07:00

Pavement could have been huge. They made mistakes. They were either too eclectic (Wowee Zowee) or they went too soft and got a little boring (Brighten The Corners). But on 1994's Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, they made about as perfect of a rock and roll album as you could find.

I always meant to pick up Slanted and Enchanted. The Spins and Rolling Stones were calling it one of the best indie albums, but I never got around to picking it up. I don't even know if I heard a note. But the buzz had been created. My ears were wide open when their second record started to get some airplay.

Not that I can remember hearing it on the radio, although Rev 105 was around then, so it was a distinct possibility. I do remember seeing "Cut Your Hair" on MTV and thinking it was about the coolest song I'd ever heard.

What I wasn't prepared for was what a cohesive whole the album was. From "Silence Kit" to "Filmore Jive', this was a complete album. Full of weird interludes and detours, the album featured some of the best pop songs you'd ever want to hear. But unlike Slanted and Enchanted, this wasn't four track first take kind of stuff. This album sounded good. Like they meant it. "Gold Sounds" and "Range Life", with the Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots jabs were perfect slices of pop nirvana.

And of course we couldn't forget Nirvana. It was sort of an all consuming thing in 1994. Kurt Cobain was dead. A lot of us identified with him. He seemed to have everything any of us would ever want (except Courtney Love), and now he was dead. Yeah, those were some heavy times.

But Pavement had none of that heaviness, and I think that's what made them so attractive. Malkmus was the ultimate slacker. He didn't give a shit about talking about childhood abandonment issues or eating fish because they don't have any feelings. No, he sang silly little songs about range rovin' with the cinema stars and hoping that his girl wouldn't go and get her hair chopped off.

But those silly songs were so fucking great. It becomes even more apparent how great the album is when you listen to early takes of the songs. As essential as Slanted and Enchanted- Luxe and Reduxe was to any serious Pavement fan for its inclusion of tracks previously found only on hard to find eps and singles, the 2004 reissue of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain isn't quite as rewarding. Once you hear the early versions of the songs that ended up on Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain you realize that these guys aren't just a bunch of slackers who got lucky in the studio. This album took a great deal of craft. And they captured it on these 12 tracks. The reissue is interesting, but we don't need 37 additional tracks to remind us how great Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain is.

Wowee Zowee took care of that.

Ok, I can't end there. Wowee Zowee isn't a bad album. It's just not a Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, Then again, few albums are.

1993- TRANSMISSIONS FROM THE SATELLITE HEART

2006-09-07T14:38:00.000-07:00

In 1993 Bill Clinton took office. He was the first president I voted for, and since I was too young to really remember Jimmy Carter, he was the first Democratic president for me. My memories consisted of Reagan and Bush. Clinton was a voice of change. It felt like things could happen now–like the youth had spoken to an extent and I was part of it.

I was living at home. I decided to take a semester off from school, and I pretty much vowed that I wouldn't go back to Whitewater. I'd had my fill. It was time for a change, but I wasn't ready to take any radical steps.

I listened to a lot of Tom Waits. Bone Machine was in my cd player for most of the year. My room was below the living room and my mom would ask me who the guy with gravely voice was, and I'd tell her. "I kind of like him," she'd say, "that I don't wanna grow up song should be your theme song."

I'll never forget my Dad's reaction when I brought home The Black Rider. It was one of the rare times when I asked my parents if they minded if I put something on. The Black Rider begins with this circus noise and Tom coming in with a megaphone screaming "ladies and gentleman under the big top tonight, we have...". My Dad puts down his paper and looks at me and says "I don't know how you can listen to this. You call this music?" Sure, I'd long given up the Metallicas and Iron Maidens, and I choose this album to play in front of him? Of all albums, of all of Tom's albums, The Black Rider? It was too perfect.

I worked at this factory that made playground equipment for kids. Plastic slides and swings that came with plans to build a structure to attach them to. You had to look busy all the time. You could sweep the floor ten times and the employees would still get nervous and the supervisor would tell us to look busy. Everyday the temp service would send in new people and the boss guy would go around and fire people who looked lazy. If you weren't moving when he came around, you were a goner. Apparently the temp service owned the factory.

You couldn't smoke there either. If they caught you smoking, even in your car on the way out of the parking lot, you were fired. Punching in was a problem too. If you punched in a minute or two late, they weren't too happy. But if you punched in too early you'd also hear about it. So there was a huge line of people waiting to punch in at exactly six am. And if you were slow, the guy behind you would give you crap. It was a cold dark winter. I wanted to take a Sharpie and write the words "help me" on one of the slides. I'd imagine this perfect scene of a suburbanite dad putting together a swing set for his kids and seeing my unexpected plea.

After helping to fund the city of Whitewater with the finest in police vehicles, SWAT teams and ammo, I finally turned 21. No more hiding in dryers and refrigerator boxes. No more sucking on a penny and praying that it would work this time. No more visits to a lawyer's office in an attempt to be the one guy who would finally stand up to the injustice of not being able to drink a beer at the age of 20. No more of any of that. But at 21 I hardly cared. I was burned out and sick of it. All it really meant for me was that I could finally serve alcohol without supervision at the bar I was working at.

Hotheaded owner aside, the bar job was pretty cool, and it didn't take long before I was bar manager and was pretty much running the place. It brought a sense of freedom and built my confidence up, even though I couldn't use it on any of the customers. Nobody under 40 ever set foot in there, and if they did, it wasn't to sit at the bar.

Mary used to come in and order gin martinis every afternoon around three o'clock. I'd pour her one and she'd nurse it down. I'd hand her another one and reach for ice cube remains of her old glass and she'd slap my hand. "I'm not done with that." I'd watch her suck those ice cubes past her false teeth and suck each one of them dry and spit it back in her highball. Sometimes she did it twice before letting me take the glass.

Then there was this guy named Chuck. He sold real estate, and he was the sleaziest old guy I'd ever met. Every other word that came out of his mouth was "pussy". It wasn't the word itself, but how he said it. He made it sound like the vilest thing on earth. I didn't like the way he ate his ruebens either.

Maureen and Dave were a cute couple. At 70-something years old, they'd been coming to the bar since it opened. Everyday. Without fail. She had a several glasses of White Zin after an initial martini. He loved his manhattans. I never thought about cutting them off even though they had four or five of them. They were like grandparents. They probably drove like grandparents too, only loaded. I tried not to think about that.

The summer was winding down and I remembered something. I had been accepted at the University of Minnesota. I'd applied almost a year earlier, but I was good to go if it was something I wanted to do. I knew I was never going back to Whitewater, and I feared if I didn't make a change I'd be stuck in Janesville. I was really curious about Minneapolis too, ever since I got into Prince and The Replacements. I thought the city would be purple.

I moved to Minneapolis in the fall. For a couple weeks I don't think I talked to a soul. School hadn't started. I was alone if my one room apartment. Or at least I thought I was alone. Wake up in the middle of the night and turn on the light, and the roaches told a different story.

One day the cable guy knocked on my door. It was so nice to interact with a fellow human being, so I let him talk me into one of his special introductory packages. This was the Paragon cable days. Back before all of the cable mergers happened. I ended up getting all the basic cable channels plus a DMX music tuner with over 100 cable music channels. The remote would list each artist, song title, album and label the song could be found on. I set it to the alternative/college rock channel.

This song came on that I had never heard. I instantly loved it. It was so poppy. So positive. It made me forget about the creepy guy down the hall who I thought was chasing me up the stairs one night. It made me ignore the roaches and not think too much about the Murphy bed and everybody who slept on it and the bathroom I shared with the guy next to me and how I had to knock to see if he was in there. It made the 100-degree room seem tolerable and the showers I'd rig up in the bathtub and the hose that would usually explode when I had shampoo in my hair and soap all over my body not seem so bad. It gave me hope that maybe this was a just a temporary funk and that school would be starting soon and I'd meet new people and would look back on this time as a defining moment in my life.

Flaming Lips
"Turn It On"
Transmissions From The Satellite Heart
Warner Brothers Records

1992- AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE

2006-08-31T15:04:00.000-07:00

I can't listen to Automatic For The People with other people around. I don't like to hear it on the radio. And it's the most popular, and therefore most overplayed, record of one of my favorite bands.

Yet I love this record.

It came to me at a very dark time. I was halfway through college, directionless, and searching for some answers. I may not have found the answers I was looking for, but Stipe was at least asking some of the same questions.

Lacking the choppiness of either of its major label predecessors, 1988's Green or 1991's Out Of Time, Automatic For The People fulfilled the promise first heard on early I.R.S. albums like Reckoning and Fables Of The Reconstruction. Intense, personal, organic, mellow. This was the 'little band from Athens that could' operating on the world stage, but not sounding like they knew that's where they were.

I caught my first glimpse of the album cover on the back of Billboard magazine in my college library. The unassuming album cover seemed a sharp contrast from the brash Our Of Time cover. In small print at the bottom of the ad were three words: Still no tour.

At the height of their popularity R.E.M. did what few bands had done since the Beatles. They said goodbye to the road. And it's a good thing they did. Coming just a year and a half after Out Of Time, Automatic might never have happened if R.E.M. had undergone a world tour. The last single off of Out Of Time had barely left the charts at the time of Automatic's release.

I was eagerly anticipating this record, but knew very little about it other than the single, "Drive". I had a friend who was working at the campus radio station. He knew what a big fan I was and brought over the only copy of the CD in the city to my apartment three days before it came out. I listened to it and was blown away by the time I got to the second song. R.E.M. had produced a classic. A masterpiece. A record that could stand along side the works of the masters.

I haven't listened to Automatic For The People in a couple years. Maybe even three or four. It remains an intensely personal album for me, and I know a time will come when I'll need something from it, and I'll find it. Some albums are like that. It may not be the most played R.E.M. album for me, or even my favorite, but it occupies a space that very few albums fill. A timeless place. A place I don't want obscured by over familiarity or too much repetition.

*Automatic For The People is best served in the dark. Alone. With a bottle of wine. On a cold autumn night.

Bob Dylan's Modern Times

2006-08-29T13:14:00.000-07:00

Bob Dylan has a new album and it's quite good. Much more in the vein of "Love and Theft" than Time Out Of Mind, this seems, as Dylan explained to Jonathan Lethem in his recent Rolling Stone interview, more like the 2nd part of a trilogy that started with "Love and Theft" than the final installment. The only thing the Modern Times really seems to share with Time Out Of Mind is the quality of the material.

Modern Times arrives at a time when Dylan's public and critical esteem is at a high not seen since the mid-seventies, and if the album suffers at all, it is because of this. We've come to expect a masterpiece instead of being pleasantly surprised when he delivers a listenable album. The 80's were not so kind to Dylan. For every Infidels and Oh Mercy, there was a Knocked Out Loaded or Down In The Groove. Inconsistency became the rule. A career renaissance began in the early 90's with his back to back folk albums, but he wasn't fully thrust back into the public limelight when his near-fatal heart problem became public. His recovery came in every sense of the word later that year with Time Out Of Mind.

With five or six years between albums, Dylan's not the most prolific artist these days. Although it's not because he hasn't been busy. Between "Love and Theft" and Modern Times he wrote a book, starred in Masked And Anonymous and contributed interviews to No Direction Home, and hosted a weekly radio show. His never-ending tour is still going.

Modern Times has a gently easy going vibe to it. Some of these songs wouldn't sound out of place on early 70's albums like New Morning or Planet Waves, or maybe even Street Legal. Modern Times has some of the longest songs Dylan has ever put out. With just 10 songs, the album clocks in at over 62 minutes. Brevity is not one of his common traits, and while the songs may initially seem to drag on for a bit, repeated listens warrant the extra verses. Lyrics jump out. Guitar parts leap from the speaker. Carefully produced by the bard himself, Modern Times sounds sublime.

His voice is rough in spots and drops off in others. "Thunder On The Mountain" contains several lyrics where Dylan's voice sounds like an engine being reved up at the end of the lines. "Spirit On The Water" almost requires a volume adjustment to catch what he's saying at certain points. Beyond this, his voice is quite good. Smoother than it's been in ages, and stripped of the production that dominated Time Out Of Mind, Dylan sounds like he's in the room with us, the audience. The band is playing quietly. The drummer uses brushes. Dylan's voice is front and center.

Like most classic Bob Dylan records, the more you listen to them the more the lyrics come out. Dylan seems to have a lot on his mind even if he is sometimes characteristic's vague. "Some lazy slut has charmed away my brains", he sings on "Rollin' And Tumblin' and he wants some woman to do just what he says in "Thunder On The Mountain", yet "When The Deal Goes Down", "Spirit On The Water" and "Beyond The Horizon" rank up there with Dylan's most sincere love songs.

Dark times are on his mind as well. Dylan takes on social issues in "Workingman Blues #2", and there's more than a hint of Katrina in "The Levee's Gonna Break", but his most profound statements come with the album's closing song, "Ain't Talkin".

In the human heart an evil spirit can dwell/ I am tryin' to love my neighbor and do good unto others/ But oh, mother, things ain't going well

His "heart is burning. He's "still yearning" as he walks "through the cities of the plague." The song echoes "Desolation Row" from Highway 61 Revisited. Just comparing a song from the 65 year old's new album to one of his classics would be plenty of praise. But this album stands on its own. Like "Love and Theft" and Time Out Of Mind, Modern Times ranks up there with his some of his finest recordings. And even though the album often sounds like it's from 1945 or 1952, Dylan brings it all home to the 21st century, a new album for modern times.

1991- NEVERMIND

2006-08-27T14:34:00.000-07:00

1991. The Year Punk Broke. Or, more appropriately, The Year Assholes Started Listening To Better Music and Neil Young Became Fashionable. From all of the media coverage then and now, you'd think that 1991 was akin to 1968 or 1977. You'd think that there was this massive youth movement that everyone felt part of. Boy meets girl in their flannel shirts and move towards a grunge utopia where we'd elect a new President a year later put an end to conservative politics and Bush administrations for good. Yeah right.

I bought Nevermind in the fall of 1991. A friend of mine had played Bleach a few times and was talking about how great this upcoming album was going to be. I respected his opinion, and picked it up soon after it came out.

I bought Pearl Jam's Ten right around the same time. That one didn't last long at all. In fact I think I might have sold it back to buy Nevermind. I didn't really start to like the band until I saw them on Lollapalooza in 1992, but even then, my fandom was short lived. There weren't enough pearls in the jam.

But Nevermind. I remember liking some songs, but I couldn't understand why it had such a glossy polish on it. Kurt Cobain later said it was mastered wrong and ended up sounding like a Motley Crue record. I knew exactly what he meant and it was my main stumbling block with the record. It was probably the main reason why I shelved the record so soon after I purchased it.

This is how "grunge” arrived for me: One day I come home from class and the guy down the hall stops playing Def Leppard in mid-song. Cuts it right off. I don’t think too much about it, because I'm pretty sure that some metal meal ala "Cherry Pie" or a Van Halen "Poundcake" is about to be served. But there’s a moment of silence. Probably just long enough to take the cellophane off the CD. Then a familiar riff, big drums, and then everything gets quiet for a mumbled verse. Nirvana. "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Not the album, but just that song. Exclusively. Over and over again. The new Def Leppard had arrived.

So I shut my door and put on some Dinosaur Jr.

Truth be told, I spent a lot more time listening to and dissecting Achtung Baby than Nevermind that year. Lots more time. I’d always had a love/hate relationship with U2. They put out an album and I'd listen to it religiously, but by the time they went on tour their non-stop opinionating on everything imaginable, including religion, would drive me nuts. Too much Bono in the media. It's the reason I never saw them live.

Achtung Baby was a fascinating record though, and it more than made up for Rattle and Hum. It redefined U2 in a way nobody probably thought would be imaginable. It made them dark, somewhat dangerous, and definitely more of a rock band. Gone were the photo shoots of Irish castles, Joshua Trees and a stately looking rock band. This U2 had balls, and as overplayed as that record would become, I could still put it on and enjoy it today.

But Nevermind? It was everywhere, and it all seemed kind of silly. This wasn't a revolution as much as a progression. Kurt Cobain would dye his hair fuchsia and smash his guitar on Saturday Night Live, but anybody with a sense of rock history had seen those moves before.

Nevermind didn't do much for me at the time. Incesticide sparked new interest in them for me because it had a rawness and seemed like punk rock instead of this media phenomenon. But I wouldn't really get into Nevermind until In Utero came out. That was the Nirvana album that really won me over. Angry. Passionate. Haunting. Raw. It was everything that Nevermind was supposed to be.

Every rock-obsessed teenage kid has a band that kicks things wide open for them. For millions of kids it was Nirvana, but they were only the latest in a long line of inspiring bands. Big record labels had signed underground bands long before Nirvana. Husker Du, The Replacement, Sonic Youth and Soul Asylum all had major label contracts going back as far as 1985. College radio had existed for years. Labels like "alternative rock”, "independent rock” and "alternative" had been around for eons as well. Nirvana helped define a new market and give birth to a slew of imitators. They gave us "Grunge". Whatever that means.

And most of their listeners had no idea what Kurt was talking about. Nevermind was popular on the same level that made "Every Breath You Take” and "The One I Love” love songs for 80's proms and "Born In The USA" a re-election campaign song for Ronald Reagan.

Revolution doesn't come easy.

1990- ALL SHOOK DOWN

2006-08-20T19:23:00.000-07:00

It's 1990. I'm 18 years old. I finished up high school and headed into college that fall. Much of the year was spent listening to Jane's Addiction and eagerly anticipating their Ritual De Lo Habitual album. I obsessed over that thing. When the single came out I had one of the most perfect listening experiences of my life. The American flag is coming down in a violent rainstorm. Through the rear view mirror of my car I can see a Perkin's employee trying to hoist the flag up as the tension mounted in the song and Perry Farrell screamed "erotic Jesus!". Yeah, that kind of shit is pretty bad ass when you're 18.

It's kind of hard to look back at Jane's Addiction now through the same lens. Perry's pretty much turned into a clown, and don't even get me started on that reunion record. But in 1990. Wow. Unstoppable. Rock and roll hadn't seen such a provocative frontman since Mick Jagger.

The full length record came out in the middle of my psychedelic summer. I was trying my best to "turn the 90's on their head" and recreate the 60's. Those words are Wavy Gravy's, but I got them off the Ben and Jerry's ice cream flavor.

Candles. Incense. Confused kids and drugs. That's what I remember about Ritual De Lo Habitual. Madison, WI. State Street. We all bought the album at midnight and then listened to it all night long. We thought we could find the inner workings of the universe through that record. "Been Caught Stealing" sort of interrupted that process.

I can't remember the last time I listened to that record. I doubt it's aged too well. Although I can envision a time in the near future when I'll light the candles and incense and get to know Viola, Casey and the erotic Jesus all over again.

A far more enduring album for me from 1990 is The Replacement's All Shook Down. The perfect college band kick started my college life with that record. I'd checked out Please To Meet Me from the library when I was in high school, and I'd seen the video for "I'll Be You" on MTV and loved it, and I borrowed a cassette copy of "Don't Tell A Soul", but as a freshman in college in 1990, I'd yet to actually purchase a Replacements album.

It was the single that got me. "Merry Go Round" is just such a perfect song, and a great way to kick of the album. "A hush is the first word you were taught..." Paul Westerberg sucks you in and immediately lets you know that this isn't going to be a party record. This isn't going to be another batch of songs about drinking red wine and Tommy getting his tonsils out and Gary popping a boner, as if any Replacement's record was really that simple. No, this is the flipside to all of that. It's the next day. You're an alcoholic. Your personal relationships are shattered and your band is breaking up. "Now is nothing like when it began".

Images are so profound on that album. Even on the sleeve itself. "Have you seen lucky?" it says on the back of the record. Some flyer stapled to a telephone pole. Inside there are pictures of empty bars, full ashtrays and abandoned beer glasses. And of course, Paul. He's disheveled and lost in thought. On the front of the album we see two wet dogs, looking sad and hungry and facing opposite directions. Nothing is working anymore.

Lyrically the album is a feast. "Popcorn for dinner last night it was cheesecake, a little sleepy-time tea spiked with another heartache." "Still in love with nobody, and I won't tell nobody." "Well you got your father's hair and you got your father's nose but you got my soul."

The previous album, Don't Tell A Soul, was a glossy attempt at commercial radio. It had some good songs, but a lot of it was a mess. All Shook Down was sort of a back to basics record, even if the band was hardly involved. Considered by some to be Westerberg's first solo album ,the record's liner notes even suggest this. "The musicians who played on this recorded thing include:" Among the 15 names are John Cale, Johnette Napolitano and Benmont Tench, right alongside the names of Tommy Stinson, Chris Mars and Slim Dunlap.

You get the sense that Paul just wanted to get it right this time. It's a sad record with it's share of flaws. "My Little Problem" would be the only song I'd yank, but it provides such a sharp transition to "The Last" that its inclusion is necessary.

"You been swearing to God, now maybe if you'd ask, that this one be your last". It was the last. No more Replacements albums came after this one. And for a long time, no more drinks for Westerberg. But it was the beginning of a long relationship with the band for me. Within weeks of buying All Shook Down I found like-minded fans in the dorms. One of the best uses of a Maxell XLII 100 minute tape was my Let It Be/Tim/Stink Replacements compilaton. I wore that thing out. Loved it. Still do, though I play the records individually now.

14 Songs was a shock for me when it came out in 1993. I could sum it up in one line, "I miss the hurt." All Shook Down was full of it. And some fans didn't care for it. But it was real. 10 years on the road had taken their toll, and Paul Westerberg had documented it. The party was over.

soundtrack of my life- 1990's

2006-08-20T09:54:00.000-07:00

Pitchfork recently made a list of the 200 best songs of the sixties. A monumental task, I'm sure. I can't imagine undertaking it. I didn't grow up in the sixties, and I would certainly forget a bunch of important songs. Still, it is great to read a list like that. I just wish it came with a giant downloadable file of all the songs.

I was at the Bottle Rockets show last night at the 400 Bar. Midway through the set I started compiling my own list in my head. Not of sixties songs, but of nineties albums. Maybe it was the beer or the company I was with. Or maybe it was my 1993 pick I listened to on the way, but I was able to focus there for about a half hour and figure out what my list will look like. Now all I have to do is write it down.

The journey begins sixteen years ago. But I'm not getting started on it until this hangover recedes.

Hotter Than Hell

2006-08-10T13:02:00.000-07:00

So I'm getting ready to go out of town. And it's hot. I mean it's beyond hot. Wear black outside for five minutes and it really does feel like you could catch fire. Or that fireballs will come raining from the sky at any moment. Maybe that would be a good thing. It would be pretty hard to argue against global warming if fireballs poured out of the sky.

I go the dry cleaners to see if they'll do some emergency cleaning for me. I have some nice shirts that I'd like to wear on my trip to Chicago. Problem is, they've been lying in a dry cleaning bag since at least last summer. Too lazy and cheap to clean them I guess. Or I've had such casual jobs I've gotten by with just a tshirt over the last couple summers. Anyway, I was determined to look my best so I thought I'd get these shirts cleaned.

The place across the street from my place says they have to ship everything out, and there's no way they can deliver them the same day. I figured as much. Very few dry cleaning places are going to deliver on the same day. Buy hey, worth a shot. And it turns out it's not a completely wasted venture. She tells me to try the place down the street. They do all of their dry cleaning on site and may be able to turn it around the same day.

I procrastinate. I sit in my air conditioning. I surf the internet. I make some lunch. A few hours later I get in my car and go to the other dry cleaning place. Upon walking in the door I feel like I'm going to die. It must be 120 degrees in there. A fan is on the floor and it's blowing behind me. It's hotter than hell. It's as if Gene Simmons is lapping at my legs with that long tongue of his and breathing his fire breath on me. Unbearable. I step out of the way of the fan. It's making things worse. I want to bolt.

An Indian woman comes out with the full headdress and gown on. She's dripping with sweat. I ask her if there's any way she can turn around an order for a couple shirts on the same day and she says no. Or more accurately she says "it's hot." When I ask her when she could get them done she repeats "It's hot." Then she says that she sent the guy that does the irons home. "Tomorrow...hot too.'

I feel like a jerk. This lady could die trying to get my shirts done for me. And if she did them for me I'd probably want them ironed too. Oh, I'm a bastard. So I leave and tell her to try to stay cool, and I head for Target. Maybe Dryell will do the trick. So what if it really doesn't do jack for stains. At least nobody dies.

Excuse me, but you owe me 3/10 of a cent!

2006-08-09T09:52:00.000-07:00

I'm not one to bitch about gas prices, even when they get pretty high. When I'm on a road trip people often ask about gas prices in different cities I've passed through. Until recently I seldom paid attention. I have to use gas, and it's pretty much regulated, so what's the point in using mental energy to keep track of a couple cents difference.

$40 is a big chunk of change to fill up my sedan. Nobody's humping my hummer. My car is fairly eco-friendly. At least by US standards. But when I cross that $40 mark I start to pay a little attention. On a recent trip to Chicago it the lowest I saw was $3.09 in Minneapolis and Wisconsin and the highest I saw was $3.39 in downtown Chicago. But I'm neglecting something when I mention these prices and that is the .9 that's attached to each of them.

How is it that we allow the oil industry to attach an extra .9 to every gallon of gas we buy? Maybe this extra little perk explains some of those record profits. They've had us conditioned to look the other way every time we go to the pump. Was it the original Superman where some huge corporation was stealing a penny from everybody's paycheck? I wish I could add $.00.9 to every hour of my goods and services.

People are talking about how we should get rid of the penny because it costs more to produce it than what it's worth. I say we abolish the tenth of a penny. Or at least start going into gas stations and ask for the remaining 10ths of a cent that's owed to you. Hey, gas is expensive. You have to keep your eye on these things.

library of thoughts

2006-07-21T10:15:00.000-07:00

Minneapolis has a new library and I could not be more impressed. I'm not even a library kind of guy. I check out a book and I only return it three years later when I move and it's under my bed hiding place is discovered. But I vow to make things different this time.

Well, amazing how fast things change. I type that sentence while I'm sitting in comfy leather chair in the Dunn Bros portion of the library. Let It Be by The Beatles was playing. Now it's Air Supply. Or at least I think it's Air Supply. "Here I am, the one that you love...asking for another day...understand the one that you love loves you in so many ways..." Jesus. Terrible.

But I'm not going to let that cloud my judgment of the new library. I can't. The place is just too cool. And very forgiving. My county library books that I just returned after having for two years didn't show up on their system. Lucky break. Instead I owed $16 for assorted fines. They let me pay just one dollar to get me below the $15 limit and scanned my book and sent me on my way.

I got the book I wanted to get too. I'd mention the book but I don't want Farmer Drew to fling poo at it before I get through the first chapter. There's something really reassuring about getting just the book you want. Half the time I leave the library with a stack of books that never get read. The reasons often that there was never a pressing need to get the book in the first place. Not the case with this one.

Oh and this place has a pretty good selection of cds and dvds too. I've been watching too much tv and swapping an absurd amount of music. So I really don't need that kind of media right now.

It's some light pop station. Now there's a commercial for discounted pet prescriptions.

I should probably mention the architecture of this building. Pretty sharp building. It's about 5 stories tall and very open. There's a huge open space running from the front of the building to the back, and lots of natural light shines through. You can enter on Hennepin and exit on Nicollet. It also has plenty of rooms to rent for group meetings. As I write I'm looking out 30 foot tall windows to a brick patio with metal tables and chairs. It's nice. It's hip. Too bad the music sucks. I guess that's what the ipod is for.

Okay...there's another problem I'm having with this place. But maybe it's a good one for the kids. I just tried searching for an image of this lovely library and my search was blocked. I guess image searches are strictly forbidden. I just hope the banning of content doesn't extend to the shelves.

But hey, free wi-fi at a library. Big, comfy chairs. Great coffee. Several bars on the cell phone. Not bad for a virtual office.

And now they're playing "Daydream Believer". Ahhh...I kind oflike this song. Sort of makes me smile.

(wow I can't even use spell check in here. Are they afraid kids are going to look up the definitions of cuss words???)

2006-07-19T09:48:00.000-07:00

Let it rain. Let it rain. Let it rain. Seriously, I don't care if it rains like this for seven days straight. It's such a nice change of pace. There's something about endless summer weather that really starts to get to me. Especially when you have to run the air conditioning incessantly and keep the blinds closed to keep the sun from heating the place up. I'll take a good thunderstorm any day.

Then there's the cabin-like feeling of turning on warm lights on a dark day. It makes me want to read a novel or write a song. Maybe start my own book-in-progress. Creativity flows. It's not stagnated by shorts and t-shirts. Wearing long pants seems to do wonders for ideas.

I took an umbrella on my morning appointment today. It's been a long time since I've done that. It was nice. It made me feel important. I'm protecting my head from the skies because, at least today, it is full of ideas. We're operating on all cylinders baby.

shine on you crazy diamond

2006-07-11T09:29:00.000-07:00

Roger "Syd" Barrett is dead. Any hopes of the biggest comeback in rock and roll history have now been extinguished. There will be no Pink Floyd reunion or Rolling Stone interview with the famous recluse. All we have is grainy You Tube videos and tributes like Wish You Were Here. Oh, and of course, some amazing recordings of Syd: Pink Floyd's Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and Syd's solo albums, The Madcap Laughs and Barrett.

People like to talk about the age of 27. Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and then later, Kurt Cobain all died at that age. It's sad that those careers ended so early, but Syd's case is more heartbreaking. Imagine seeing the band that you started turn into one of the most successful bands in rock and roll history while you stay at your mother's flat and lose contact with the world. Too far gone to fit into society. Robyn Hitcock said it better in his song "1974":

Syd Barrett's last session, he can't sing anymore
He's gonna have to be Roger now for the rest of his life

Painting and classical music became his thing. But one of his nieces was interviewed several years back and said that she remembered Syd picking up the guitar occasionally. Maybe the best we can hope for is some basement tapes from the man. Some long lost recordings that verify that maybe he was alright. That he got better and chose to stay away. That maybe he had some choice in the matter.

I wonder what he painted?

Goodbye Syd.

Think Globaly, Drink Locally?

2006-07-06T09:36:00.000-07:00

Al Gore wouldn't like Hennepin Lake Liquors, and I don't like it either. First off, they don't take credit cards. It's 2006, and they act like it's 1969. Checks are okay. Of course. Like I carry those around.

Secondly, they close at 8pm on weekdays. The laws changed recently to allow liquor stores to stay open until 10pm, so why doesn't this liquor store stay open for a couple more hours? You'd think they'd increase their profits. I went to the door yesterday at 8:10, looked inside, and practically got scolded by the cashier for even attempting to try the door.

Which brings me to Al Gore. I'm not going to go on and on about why everyone should see An Inconvenient Truth, but surely people can relate to the absurdity of having to get in your car and burn precious fossil fuels to get a six pack of beer when you live right in the heart of your city. Nightclubs are pumping. 20-something's are everywhere. But I can't take home some beer. It's absurd. It's the equivalent of restaurants closing at 7pm. Sorry folks, you didn't hear the dinner bell at 5:30, I guess you don't get to eat. Or, well I guess you can eat here, but don't even think about taking that food home.

I hate liquor laws to begin with, but this is ridiculous. I've left 6-packs of 3.2 beer at convenience store counters when I suddenly realize where I live and what laws we're dealing with. And it's not like I'm an alcoholic. We're talking one beer, but damn it, I wanted that beer. And I wanted it at home, at full strength, and not sitting in some bar. I can't pet my cat and read a book at a bar. It just doesn't work like that.

Well, goodbye Hennepin Lake. I guess I'll just have to add liquor stores to my big grocery/Target shopping trips. Those days when fossil fuels burn aplenty in the name of focused consumerism, and my patience isn't tested by some backwards liquor store refusing to sell me my Negra Modelo on a hot summer night when man and womankind should be entitled to beer by birth alone. Much less by turning that magical, but otherwise meaningless age of 21.

A special shout out goes to my good friends at Hums. We'll be seeing more of each other. See, they get it. And now they're getting me. And I'm getting my Negra Modelo. With a lime. You can't beat on a hot summer night around 9 o'clock. Trust me, it's worth fighting for.

The Home Office

2006-06-22T13:52:00.000-07:00

So I'm hanging out at a coffee shop today minding my own business. I'm keeping a low profile, surfing the internet, and occasionally trying to get some real work done. The place is air conditioned and filled with people who seem to be doing the same exact thing. For some it seems like this place is an actual office. It's a sea of laptops. The Mac to PC ratio is especially high too. Most people are alone, but there are a few people who are sitting at a table together. I tend to think they're doing the same type of work I'm doing, but they look so stern. I try not to think of my work as being THAT serious.

IT guy is next to me. His cell phone startles him every twenty minutes with it's obnoxious ring and he digs for it in his dancing pants. He's far more flamboyant than any IT guy I've seen before. Mutton chops too. It's a real treat. And I'm listening to Morrissey. I swear you can't plan these coincidences.

No new emails yet. I have my gmail placed just underneath this page so I can see any developments that may occur in the inbox. In case I miss the action there, I have my gmail notifier at the top of my display. It's a sealed envelope right now, which is kind of a weird icon to have when you have no new mail. Maybe the empty mailbox is patented by AOL in every conceivable way.

It's a weird existence when you don't have to talk to someone everyday. You clear your throat to make sure you're capable of talking if the need shall arise. I get my practice with the counter girls too. "Just that?" they say, and I get my opportunity to answer back. "yeah, that'll be it. For now." I like that "for now" part. It means I'm not going anywhere.

I had another excuse to talk soon after I got here. I was rocking out and trying to write (yeah, this was before Morrissey) and this guy stands right in front of me. I ignore him. But he doesn't go away. He sort of motions for me to take off my earphones, and I'm thinking this guy really has balls if he's just going to ask me for money or something. I mean, I'm in a groove. Or at least as big of a groove as I'm able to get into this universal home office away from home. So I take off my earphones and what does he say? What are these words he exchanges with a guy who's had very few words with anyone all day long?

"Were you the one I was talking to about anxiety issues yesterday?"

Nope, that wasn't me. At least not yet.

Dylan in Modern Times

2006-06-22T13:43:00.000-07:00

Bob Dylan is full of surprises. An XM radio show where he seems right at home spinning the songs that inspired him. A new album out in August called Modern Times. And hopefully the next installment of Chronicles before too long. This Letterman performance is pretty amazing too. Who knew he had such energy and confidence back in 1984? I guess this band only played for the Letterman shows and never toured. This Letterman performance (one of three songs he did that night) along with his albums Infidels, Oh Mercy and Time Out Of Mind have been dominating my stereo lately. I'll blog about that later.

Sketches Of Eddie

2006-06-06T09:07:00.000-07:00

According to Tom Chase, a new age Christian writer who has used astrology and the bible to calculate when the antichrist will emerge, that date is today. 6/6/06. His emergence will be followed by an asteroid collision and a two year battle of Armageddon. The name of the antichrist? He says it's Vladimir Putin. Sort of reminds me of Star Wars and Emperor Palpatine, or whatever his name was.

Back in 1982, a different beastly event was unleashed on the world. It was the release of Iron Maiden's The Number of the Beast. By widening Iron Maiden's audience and helping to bring their brand of British metal to the US, it inspired a generation of metal fans to take up art.

Sure I'd drawn a Van Halen or Twisted Sister sign in sunday school or during a boring math lesson, but the intricate work involved in sketching Iron Maiden's mascot, Eddie, separated the novices from the die hards. I'd invent band names, album titles, tracklistings, and even complete bios and career trajectories of bands, but the cover art was always very rudimentary if it existed at all. Just like the Kiss logo before it, I knew that you had to use the right fonts when you wrote down a bands name, but actually drawing Eddie was far too complex for me.

I keep thinking of some of those metal kids. Long hair hanging over their faces and blocking their books in study hall so they could keep their head low and nobody can see what they were doing. Sometimes one of them would lift their head up at the end of the period and show you what they sketched. It was pretty amazing, if not a little disturbing. Eddie yielding an ax with Margaret Thatcher clutching at his leg. Eddie coming out of a grave and tearing off his clothes and howling at the stormy sky. Eddie with a chain around his neck, shackled to a prison wall.

They were nice kids. Just a little misunderstood, but weren't we all. They had a certain bond. They were united by metal and they showed it proudly with torn and frayed blue jeans, a black metal shirt with their favorite band on it, and a jean jacket to top it off. Sometimes they kept it simple with pins of their favorite bands on the front. Other times they went all out and put a huge patch of Metallica or Iron Maiden on the back of the jacket. It was a statement. It said "I do not like fake metal. In fact I hate it. Fuck Poison and Bon Jovi". It felt permanent, or as permanent as black metal got in suburbia. Tattoo parlors had yet to find their niche.

Eddie fed the imagination and illustrated Iron Maiden's music in much the same way that Stanley & Tchock's packaging colors Radiohead's music today. And it gave them an identity. As easy as it is to picture some of those kids in one of VH1's Fanatic shows with thousands of pictures of Eddie covering their walls and life size models of Eddie rising from coffins in their living room, the reality is they're probably just like you and me. Accountants, lawyers, dentists, truck drivers and cube occupants.

Although I'd like to think that at least a few of them took up art. I'd like to think that those long hours of sketching Eddie paid off in some way. Maybe I'll have to probe a little bit and ask the next graphic designer I meet what they were listening to when they grew up. If they could navigate through the hair bands in the 80's and find something with substance, they're probably doing it in their careers as well.

Or maybe if the fundamentalists are right about 6/6/06, we'll all be drawing pictures of Vladimir Putin come tomorrow.

The Salad Garden (Remnants of VH)

2006-05-31T12:19:00.000-07:00

I always associate the Van Halen split with sliced roast beef. If I tune into a classic rock station and hear “Why Can’t This Be Love” or “Best of Both Worlds” or David Lee Roth’s “Yankee Rose” I instantly smell my Rax Roast Beef uniform. Sweat, roast beef and the remnants of my once favorite band on the stereo. It was summer, 1986.

I was too young to use the slicer. That was okay though. I was too young to earn minimum wage as well, and I guess you really should be making at least the minimum your employer can possibly pay you if your limbs are at stake. I was willing to smell like a roast beef and cheddar to finance my tape collection, but I didn’t want to sacrifice my fingers before I even get to my sophomore year of high school. Besides, I just started smoking and was quite fond of the way a cigarette fit between my index and middle fingers.

My responsibilities included busing the tables and stocking the salad bar. Instead of having large receptacles labeled TRASH with a little shelf on top where you could put your tray when you were done with it, Rax thought it would enhance the dining experience if they hid them. Only the bus boys knew where they were. So after years of being conditioned to dispose of their own food wrappers, our customers would stand at the door with trays in hand completely dumbfounded. “Oh, let me take that,” I’d have to say and quickly dispose of their hideous messes of catsup stained French fries and half eaten sandwich buns.

High class dining extended to the care of the salad garden as well. We didn’t want people to think of it as a salad bar. No, that was far too Mickey D’s. We wanted people to think of this as a garden. You start out with iceberg lettuce and you pick some frozen peas and cauliflower and top it off with some bacon bits and a little dressing we brought in from the ranch. Rather than exposing the garden for what it was, we covered up the ice that was packed around the containers with tough plastic lettuce. Or something that sort of looked like lettuce. It was actually a real plant. Kale. Years later when I found out it was edible, I was horrified.

We stored it in 5-gallon pickle buckets filled with bleach and water. Everyday I’d ring the solution out of that stinky weed and put it out on the salad bar. As the days and weeks went on the stuff started to look less and less green. It was soggy, slimy and its stench started to smell more and more like rotten trash. But a job’s a job, and they wanted their salad bar to be a garden.

One day I’m sitting in the break room, flicking my Marlboro Light into an aluminum foil ashtray and nursing a Mr. Pibb. Jason, the fry guy is bitching about his new Triumph album. Apparently there was some slip up at the manufacturing plant and even though the cassette was labeled correctly, when Jason put it his car’s deck it played the previous Triumph album. So much for the magic power. I guess even the band realized their better days were behind them.

So anyway, I’m back there enjoying the final moments of my smoke break when the assistant manager tells me to come out to the garden. Apparently there was something wrong with the salad bar. I get out there and see this older lady wrinkling up her face and holding her nose. Her plate is pushed to the far edge of her table and she’s looking back at the garden in horror. Her husband looks at me and says, “that’s the stinkiest salad bar I’ve ever seen”. I wanted to correct him and tell him that it was actually a garden and that sometimes gardens didn’t smell so good, but I resisted.

I look back at the assistant manager and he’s got a bucket. Only this one doesn’t have bleach in it. He starts grabbing the kale and frantically pulling the weed from the garden. I go around to the other side to help out. I grab the slimy stuff and start to throw it in the bucket and in a few minutes we’re done.

He runs in the back looking for fresh kale and I try to look busy by collecting all the miscellaneous pieces of lettuce, egg and cottage cheese that had managed to slip under the guard of the kale. When I looked over at the old woman she instantly shoots me another look. That’s when I took a whiff and knew that the kale had spewed its nasty stench far beyond its bleach stained exterior. The ice, the containers and even the food were all victims of its fowl menace.

The assistant manager comes back empty handed. He’s sweating profusely. His uniform is now wet under the pits and he’s adjusting his visor to keep his hair out of his face. He must’ve ripped open every box of produce we had looking for the kale only to find out it’d been months since someone had thought to order it. He tells me to get more ice and make it look nice. I keep thinking of the older lady though. But I don’t need to tell him. He gets close and realizes the whole garden has been compromised. He starts to dismantle the thing and tells me to tell the cashier that the salad bar is closed.

I get in a little scuffle with the cashier. I try to quietly tell her that the garden is closed but she keeps shouting at me that she has customers. When I get a little louder she doesn’t believe me and starts to shout for the assistant manager. He’s furious and looks over at me and shakes his head. Slamming a German potato salad down on the garden’s counter he shouts, “the salad garden is closed”.

As I walk back from the register I see the older lady again. She’s standing where she thinks the trash bin should be. I walk over to her and say “let me take your tray ma’am.” It was the least I could do. We were a classy joint.

How I learned to love Frank

2006-05-25T09:05:00.000-07:00

The Pixies were one of the best bands of the last twenty years. Nirvana may have broke things wide open, but the Pixies pretty much invented that loud chorus/quiet versus thing.

Between 1987 and 1991, they released four amazing albums and an ep. One a year. They became a soundtrack for my late high school and early college years. When I decided to switch over to cds and could only afford one, I bought Doolittle. Everything was so perfect about it that I didn't really care about buying anything else for quiet a while.

Drunken dorm room sing alongs to Allison were just the beginning. Trompe La Monde came out my sophomore year of college, and my roommate and I dissected that thing as if it would lead to the path we should lead our lives down.

We saw them live on that tour. You could tell there were tensions within the band. Every time Black Francis said something, Kim Deal would roll her eyes. Of course the rest of the time I though she was looking right at me with a big grin on her face.

I was in love with the Pixies. Sure, I liked Kim. I followed her Breeders side project, and I loved her background vocals. Joey Santiago and David Lovering were pretty amazing too. But Black Francis was what it was all about for me. What an amazing character. Songs about slicing up eyeballs, incest, being alone on thanksgiving "here I am with my ham", wanting to be a singer like lou reed because he likes lou reed, and of course the girl with the tattooed tit that said number 13.

The tour tshirts said "Death to the Pixies". But nobody believed it or wanted them to end. In early 1993 when they called it quits I was sad. I went to a party that night and felt like I lost a friend.

"Just look at it this way", a friend of mine said, "now we'll have the Breeders AND Black Francis solo albums." He was only partially right.

Black Francis was killed off. Frank Black absorbed him into his ever-widening torso in early 1993.

The first couple Frank Black albums were okay. "Los Angeles" and "Headache" were great singles, but the albums lacked that something special that the Pixies had. Namely Kim Deal and Black Francis. The newly christened Frank Black was a totally different animal. Much tamer and more professional.

By the time The Cult of Ray came out, I'd lost interest. Frank Black annoyed me. On occasion I'd read positive reviews and pick up an album of his. I even saw him live on the first Frank Black and the Catholics tour. He played 2-3 early Pixies songs and shocked everyone that he still had those chops, then he bullied us with every Frank Black rarity and b-side he could dig up. And he has a lot of them. The boy is productive.

Flash forward to 2004 and the Pixies reunite. If ever there was a band that it seemed would never get back together, it was the Pixies. They had more bad blood than Pink Floyd. Their reunion, as well as the brief reformation of Pink Floyd, proves that bands never really break up anymore. They just go on hiatus.

The Pixies reunion was thrilling. At least when viewed from afar. The warm up show was here, but it would have been more accessible had it been in Africa. Tickets were impossible to get. The tapes sounded great though. It could have been 1989 again. Frank Black as Black Francis was back.

By the time I saw them on their regular tour stop here in Minneapolis, a lot of the excitement had died out. It was cool, but it sort of seemed like they were just going through the motions. Just one new song too.

About a year after I saw them live a peculiar thing happened. Instead of being annoyed that Frank Black put out a solo album while he continued to tour as a Pixie and deny us new band material, I started to like what I heard. Sure, I held out. At least six months. But eventually I checked out Honeycomb and was pretty impressed.

I'd like to say that I was blown away by Frank's latest. But Honeycomb isn't the type of record that blows you away. It's as familiar as a back porch on a rainy day, and it take a while for its sound to slowly envelop you. I didn't really notice the songs so much when I played the album straight through, as I did when I had my itunes on shuffle. Wait...what's this.

Apparently Frank had been in therapy. His marriage had ended, and he was searching for meaning. Not only did this result in the Pixies reunion, but it also provided the background for a much more serious singer-songwriter album.

Honeycomb was initially going to be called Black on Blonde, as a tribute to Dylan's Blonde and Blonde and the Nashville musicians who accompanied both Dylan and Black. The songs are loose, but not careless. And they're a million miles from the Pixies. Maybe it took this amount of distance for me to respect Frank Black and not curse him for abandoning Black Francis. Or maybe it was seeing the Pixies reunion and realizing it verged on becoming an oldies act.

Either way, I'm now a Frank Black fan. From 2004 on, anyway. He's set to pull a bit of a Red Hot Chili Peppers or Smashing Pumpkins by releasing a double cd in June called Faster Man/Raider Man. It may be a wealth of material, but I know that even if I can't digest it in one sitting, it'll always sound good when it comes up in a shuffle.

And I've stopped caring so much about the current Pixies too. If I want to listen to a little Black Francis, I'll pull out Surfer Rosa. But if I want to hear Frank Black I'll put on Honeycomb. I've even started filling my Frank Black section away from my Pixies section in my cd case. He deserves to stand on his own, and anyway, Frank Black was never in the original Pixies.

the long player, our old friend 33 1/3

2006-05-16T09:31:00.000-07:00

Double Album in 1966: 71 minutes and 40 seconds

Single Album in 2001: 72 minutes and 50 seconds

Both are classics. This is rare. Most artists don't have an album as good as either one of these in their entire career, yet just about everybody today is putting out double albums. At least by vinyl standards.

Vinyl records had limits. Rules. Formats you had to stick to. Roughly 22 1/2 minutes per side. Rarely would you find a record over 50 minutes. The extra songs were used as b-sides, or they found their way into the band's vault. And I doubt most bands were forward thinking enough to envision the 5 CD box set.

The Ramones first album was 28 minutes and 53 seconds. Nobody called it an ep. The Fiery Furnaces put out an ep last year which was 40 minutes and 54 minutes long. Its title? EP.

Now, with 80 minute CDs artists can pretty much fill up the thing. Maybe they want to take a stab at a reggae song. Or the drummer wants a chance to write. Or they want to play jam band on a track or two. Many band arguments are probably solved by maxing out CDs.

We're constantly being told that we increasingly work longer hours and have less leisure time. So maybe it's good that you don't have to flip over the cd like you did a record. It saves a little time.

But do we really have the attention span for 70+ minutes of music on a single CD? I'm pretty into My Morning Jacket, but I end up buying their new albums before I've fully digested the older ones. They're just too long. And don't even get me started on The Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie or that new Red Hot Chili Peppers double CD? 2 hours of music with people as grating as Billy Corgan and Anthony Keidus? That's equal to almost four records in vinyl terms. Fuck. Even Bob Dylan couldn't pull that off.

Songs in the key of life: Neil Young's Living With War

2006-05-12T08:34:00.000-07:00

Neil Young has the touch again. For a while there was this theory that at the end of every decade he had a creative rebirth. Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere in 1969, Rust Never Sleeps in 1979 and Freedom in 1989. I'm not sure whether or not Silver and Gold from 2000 counts or not. It was a year late, and six years later it's really not that memorable.

The other theory around Neil Young is that his best work follows periods of intense personal conflict. The "doomsday" or "ditch" trilogy of Time Fades Away/On The Beach/Tonight's The Night, followed the deaths of his guitar player and roadie. And now following a near-fatal health scare and a corrupt US administration, we have 2005's Prairie Wind and this year's Living With War.

If Prairie Wind sounds like the redheaded stepchild of Harvest Moon's bastard son of Harvest, it's understandable. At least initially. It seems slightly hokey with odes to his guitar, Elvis Presley and of course the wind which blows across his prairie childhood home in Canada. But once you marry the songs with moving pictures, you'll never hear the album the same way again. Heart Of Gold, the Jonathan Demme concert film of Neil's performance of Prairie Wind and other acoustic-Neil classics, does that job, and it's a masterpiece. Watch the film and you really understand how important Neil is, and how close we came to losing him. Prairie Wind was written and recorded in a brief period of time after Neil was diagnosed with a brain tumor and told he had to have surgery. The album is reflective and conceptual, and it's the sound of old friends coming together to record new music under what could be dire circumstances.

Now, with Heart Of Gold still generating plenty of press and not even out on DVD yet, and a mere 7 months after Prairie Wind was released, Neil Young has a new album out. Living With War was written and recorded in late March and early April, it is truly amazing that this album is already on record store shelves. Credit should be given to Warner/Reprise for rush releasing this album instead of riding out the Heart Of Gold marketing plan and setting a release date for Living With War six months from now. But what's even more amazing is how good this record is.

It's easy for people to attack Neil for this record. It's anti-Bush. It has a song called "Let's Impeach The President". It has over the top lyrics and song titles like "Shock and Awe" and "Looking for a Leader" And Neil's from Canada, in case you didn't know. Never mind that he's lived in California for decades and raised his kids here. But what is truly amazing about this record isn't the press surrounding it.

Easily his best since Sleeps With Angels or Mirrorball, this album is the sound of Neil fired up and pissed off, as well as passionate and hopeful, despite the current political situation. While many artists have released political songs in the past five years, most of them are buried under metaphors and preach to the choir. Living With War is in your face, and doesn't know what subtlety means.

Recorded with a spare backing band, a trumpet player and a 100 piece choir, Neil confronts the Bush administration head on. He's living with war in his heart every day and damnit, he's going to say something about it. He's not going to rock out like Crazy Horse either. There are no extended solos here or any sort of jams. The songs are short and build off of each other. It's the sound of an artist writing a batch of related songs. There aren't any hanger on's from previous sessions. Everything is fresh and timely in a way few records are capable of today. It's simple dirty rock and roll. The type of music that would fit in well in the "ditch" trilogy. Or maybe "doomsday" was the better word after all.

Neil is back though. And whether it's his own mortality or that of a soldier's fighting a questionable war, Neil's found the perfect vehicles for delivery.

Pearl Jam- A Failed Democracy

2006-04-26T12:42:00.000-07:00

Okay. I've only listened to the new record once. So let me admit that from the start. But you can tell a lot about a Pearl Jam record from it's initial spin. Mainly that you don't want to spin it again.

The record comes out soon. Next Tuesday, I think. But it's leaking all over the web. Jamming up the iPods of music lovers everywhere who hail the band as a survivor. A band that's been around for a long time. As if this they should be honored for this feat alone. I'm sorry, but it's pretty easy to stick around when you've got a ton of money. This isn't the Ramones touring around in a stinky bus, as much as Vedder wishes they were.

I liked Pearl Jam, and I suppose I still like Eddie Vedder. It was obvious right from the start that he possessed a pretty unique talent. "He understands women", a friend of mine said when I couldn't understand how she could get THAT into Ten. And it's true. There are several songs that really have a tenderness for women and their issues, without speaking out on "Women's Issues". He's also pretty good looking. And when you look at the singers of most of the hair bands that were dominating the day, it's pretty easy to see his appeal to women, as well as men. "Black", "Jeremy", "Alive"- these all have substance lyrically. It's a far cry from "Cherry Pie" and the Nelson twins.

They put on a good show too. Eddie Vedder would climb the rafters and you'd have that fear that maybe this time he'd hurt himself. But that got old quickly. The best part of seeing them live at Lollapalooza 1992 wasn't the Pearl Jam set. It was a 20 minute set that Eddie Vedder did with Chris Cornell on the sidestage. Without the internet to tell everybody about it ahead of time, this improptu show was played to just a handful of people. They sang "Hunger Strike" and a couple other acoustic songs and sounded amazing. Vedder was the highlight of course, and he sounded great.

Here's what happened. Vedder dominates the band for the first four albums. The slower more introspective songs, some of which were written pre-Pearl Jam, tend to be the best cuts. Not coincidentally they're almost always written solely by Vedder. Around the time of No Code the band must've had it with him. The world beat edge. The Dead Man Walking soundtrack. Maybe we can blame it on that Neil Young record that they played on. On Mirrorball, the band stood up and people noticed. Or at least Eddie did.

Since then they've had countless writing credits in the band. Everybody gets their shot. Even one of the drummers wrote a song. I'm sorry, but this band is not the Beatles. They love to be compared to the Who. So here it is: Townshend would never let Daltrey write the songs. So why did Vedder relent? Especially with the lyrics. C'mon!

With each Pearl Jam release we get less and less of the "Elderly Women" and "Wishlist" kind of songs and more and more of the ROCK songs. The type of song Pearl Jam was never that good at anyway. He slurs through the lyrics and gets excited about stuff, but half the time you can't understand him. Give me "Yellow Leadbetter" any day. I can't understand what the hell he's saying, but I feel something. And that's way more than I can say about the last few Pearl Jam records.

A Blessing And A Curse

2006-04-24T08:50:00.000-07:00

Some things take a while to reveal themselves. When I heard "Feb 14" back in January I thought it sounded okay, but it was a fairly average rock song, and it seemed to lack the storytelling aspect that's at the core of the best Drive By Truckers songs. It sounds like the Replacements, sure, but I don't necessarily want the Truckers to sound like the 'Mats.

This album doesn't really sound like the same band that made Decoration Day or The Dirty South either. Of course, that's kind of a foolish thing to say. If any band has a unique identity these days that they can really call their own, it's the Drive By Truckers. But the storytelling/conceptual edge of the last three records is missing from A Blessing and A Curse, and it can be a little unsettling.

This is Patterson Hood's album. The last couple records best moments often belonged to Jason Isbell, but on this record the DBT founder seems re-energized. "Remember it ain't too late to take a deep breath and throw yourself into everything you got" he sings on "A World of Hurt" and it's as if he's done just that. It must be a hell of an inspiration to have Isbell and Cooley to compete with for song inclusion, and with this record Patterson proves he's up for the challenge. He even managed to write the best Stones song in years with "Aftermath USA".

It's Mike Cooley who has the finest moment on the disc though. "Gravity Gone" is the lyrical high of the album, and may be the best song Cooley has had on a Truckers album. He sees the trappings of fame and phrases it in only a way a Trucker could. "Between the champagne, hand jobs and the kissing ass by everyone involved/Cocaine comes quick and that's why the small dicks have it all."

So the sound is there. And the stories are there too, even if they aren't as unified as previous records. The Drive By Truckers know how to give the whole package too. It's pretty easy to download songs these days and make a snap judgment and move on to the next thing. In a beautiful gatefold cd which recalls the 70's double vinyl days, the Drive By Truckers invite you to sit down and absorb the whole experience. Look at Wes Freed's artwork. Read the lyrics. Get the stories. Then slap it on your ipod and make it part of your life.