Dwayne Johnson and Roll

Why Won't Vishal Go To Lucas Pasta With Me?

Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:26:00 -0400

Especially after this delightful correspondence.

cousinbeevo23 (2:13:50 PM): hey fuckhead wanna get some food?cousinbeevo23 (2:15:23 PM): you dickcousinbeevo23 (2:15:26 PM): look at your computervishal (2:15:32 PM): whatcha got in mind?cousinbeevo23 (2:15:35 PM): lucasvishal (2:15:37 PM): I just ate GS rationscousinbeevo23 (2:15:37 PM): PASTAcousinbeevo23 (2:15:40 PM): fuck that noisecousinbeevo23 (2:15:43 PM): we need sustenancecousinbeevo23 (2:15:48 PM): in the form of delicious pastavishal (2:15:55 PM): I’ll go if you can wait an hourcousinbeevo23 (2:16:03 PM): i cant, i’m famishedvishal (2:16:16 PM): understood, we were never meant to sync cousinbeevo23 (2:16:24 PM): two houses dividedcousinbeevo23 (2:16:32 PM): it’s like montagues and capulets…but for foodcousinbeevo23 (2:16:33 PM): and not gayvishal (2:16:35 PM): hahvishal (2:16:43 PM): where you living in the fall?cousinbeevo23 (2:22:51 PM): DELICIOUS. FILLING. PASTA.cousinbeevo23 (2:22:57 PM): in your belly.cousinbeevo23 (2:23:11 PM): i heard my bloody valentine loves lucas pastacousinbeevo23 (2:23:21 PM): the original name was cacophonous noise rock pastavishal (2:23:25 PM): I heard the hold steady is playing a live set there right nowvishal (2:23:27 PM): you better get therecousinbeevo23 (2:23:46 PM): pitchfork wrote about lucascousinbeevo23 (2:23:49 PM): they gave it an 8.4cousinbeevo23 (2:23:57 PM): merriweather post pavillion has better pasta apparentlyvishal (2:24:50 PM): how was europevishal (2:24:51 PM): ?cousinbeevo23 (2:24:54 PM): tiringcousinbeevo23 (2:24:54 PM): drunkcousinbeevo23 (2:24:56 PM): expensive

Rachel Getting Verbally Assaulted

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:00:20 -0400

Rachel operates the Grooveshark Artists facebook. I saw that GSartists was online, so I took to insulting her, as is my wont. Here’s the text. I lost with my inability to spell marmoset.

Jack

i hate you

you love anberlin

shut up

you want to have like 10 million of anberlin’s babies

4:52pmGrooveshark

hahahaha

you’re anberlin’s dummer

drummer

but youre dumb too

4:54pmGrooveshark

so you are their dummer

4:54pmJack

you’re not even smart enough to be in copeland

4:55pmGrooveshark

go pray to your michael stipe shrine

4:55pmJack

go suckle at the teet of your ironic jonas brothers obsession

4:55pmGrooveshark

i wouldnt touch you with a Ten Foot Pole’s version of Love Song by The Cure

4:56pmJack

you got thrown out of Foghat

miley cyrus just sneezed, shouldn’t you be blogging about it?

SO HOW IS THE CANAL THESE DAYS?!

4:57pmGrooveshark

hey wait did ryan adams just release an unreleaesed bside vinyl split demo single

are you going to go masturbate to it

i think i hear The Hold Steady

singing about something really new like beer

and sex

ph wait

oh*

4:59pmJack

i think i hear the sound of a dying marmacet—is cocorosie in town?

4:59pmGrooveshark

marmoset

4:59pmJack

shit

Henry Chinaski

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 12:25:48 -0400

So apparently this Thursday was “Evoke Charles Bukowski Day” at The Atlantic. Through the fog of Pabst Blue Ribbon, it was revealed that my erstwhile roommate and frequent quoter of Albert Camus had not read anything by Charles Bukowski. When we got home I immediately ran to my room and unearthed “Ham on Rye” and demanded that he read it by morning. Because we were both inebriated to the point of thinking that watching The E True Hollywood Story of NKOTB was a good idea, it didn’t happen. I’m still waiting patiently for his report, as it’s probably my 2nd favorite Bukowski work (behind Hot Water Music, and, no, I don’t like the band).

The 2nd Bukowski reference came when a girl I’ve only recently met started telling me about a short story she had been writing. I went into uber-condescending dickhead mode almost immediately after she told me the plot, and I think I drunkenly mumbled something about it being a “watered down Pahlaniuk story”. I really suck sometimes when I drink exorbitantly, but I really hate Chuck Pahlaniuk when I’m sober so maybe it evens out. She then explained the story a little better and it got progressively cooler until she mentioned that it was kind of Bukowski-esque and then the story idea became infinetly more awesome.

Talking to people about writing things is really fun. It can also really suck. I once dated a girl who wrote preposterously serious fare and it made me feel unbelievably uncomfortable. Namely because she wasn’t terribly subtle about some of the poems’ actual subject ( a tall curly haired youth who has a tumblr with a bad pun involving The Rock). When I write things (very rarely now), they’re either autobiographical and self deprecating (it’s impossibly not to write a story about losing your virginity and not make jokes at your own expense) or unabashedly silly. The last thing I wrote was called “Epilogues to Disney Animated Classics” where Gaston slays the Beast, Scar and Simba join forces and take over the world, and Eric cheats on Ariel because his occupation is that of a sailor and they aren’t exactly known for their fidelity. Weird stuff.

Anyway, I don’t like writing poetry. It makes me feel like Chris Carraba, because you know that fucker has like 1200 notebooks full of poetry. I do like this poem though, probably because I didn’t write it and Charles Bukowski did.

One for The Shoeshine Man

One For The Shoeshine Man

The balance is preserved by the snails climbing theSanta Monica cliffs; the luck is in walking down Western Avenue and having the girls in a massage parlor holler at you, “Hello Sweetie!”

the miracle is having 5 women in love
with you at the age of 55,
and the goodness is that you are only able
to love one of them.
the gift is having a daughter more gentle
than you are, whose laughter is finer
than yours.
the peace comes from driving a
blue 1967 Volks through the streets like a
teenager, radio tuned to The Host Who Loves You
Most, feeling the sun, feeling the solid hum
of the rebuilt motor
as you needle through traffic.
the grace is being able to like rock music,
symphony music, jazz …
anything that contains the original energy of
joy.

and the probability that returns
is the deep blue low
yourself flat upon yourself
within the guillotine walls
angry at the sound of the phone
or anybody’s footsteps passing;
but the other probability—
the lilting high that always follows—
makes the girl at the checkstand in the
supermarket look like
Marilyn
like Jackie before they got her Harvard lover
like the girl in high school that we
all followed home.

there is that which helps you believe
in something else besides death:
somebody in a car approaching
on a street too narrow,
and he or she pulls aside to let you
by, or the old fighter Beau Jack
shining shoes
after blowing the entire bankroll
on parties
on women
on parasites,
humming, breathing on the leather,
working the rag
looking up and saying:
“what the hell, I had it for
while. that beats the
other.”

I am bitter sometimes
but the taste has often been
sweet. it’s only that I’ve
feared to say it. it’s like
when your woman says,
“tell me you love me,” and
you can’t.

if you see me grinning from
my blue Volks
running a yellow light
driving straight into the sun
I will be locked in the
arms of a
crazy life
thinking of trapeze artists
of midgets with big cigars
of a Russian winter in the early 40’s
of Chopin with his bag of Polish soil
of an old waitress bringing me an extra
cup of coffee and laughing
as she does so.

the best of you
I like more than you think.
the others don’t count
except that they have fingers and heads
and some of them eyes
and most of them legs
and all of them
good and bad dreams
and way to go.

justice is everywhere and it’s working
and the machine guns and frogs
and the hedges will tell you
so.

What I’ve been listening today. It’s a lot easier...

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:30:36 -0400

What I’ve been listening today. It’s a lot easier to listen to music on Grooveshark than it is to just constantly listen to the one cd that has been floating around the cavernous abyss of my car for the past two weeks. I love MGMT, but if I hear “Time to Pretend” one more time then people are gonna die. Not just from my porous driving, but from delightfully snarky synth pop overload.

I hate synthesizers though.

I wish Simba’s Pride was actually called The Lion King 2: Scar’s Ressurection.

GOD: I own you like I own the caves.THE OCEAN: Not a chance. No comparison.GOD: I made you. I could...

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 19:57:50 -0400

GOD: I own you like I own the caves.
THE OCEAN: Not a chance. No comparison.
GOD: I made you. I could tame you.
THE OCEAN: At one time, maybe. But not now.
GOD: I will come to you, freeze you, break you.
THE OCEAN: I will spread myself like wings. I am a billion tiny feathers. You have no idea what’s happened to me.

I got the handshake under my tongue

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:23:41 -0500

Great lyric from MGMT about how signing a record deal is a lot like being a mental patient putting pills under your tongue. Pretty much exactly how I feel right now. Except I can’t play an instrument and I’m prone to making weak analogies.

Selling things makes me feel dirty.

Meg Conversating

Mon, 02 Feb 2009 12:19:37 -0500

Jack

nerd.

12:16pmMeg

poop

12:16pmJack

marmacet!

12:17pmMeg

lap dance

12:17pmJack

stinkbug

12:17pmMeg

polly pocket

12:17pmJack

David Hasselhoff

12:17pmMeg

filter bag

12:17pmJack

chalupa!

12:17pmMeg

yo quero

12:18pmJack

ok. have a good day meg

12:18pmMeg

you can’t do that!

12:18pmJack

but it would have been such a great way to end the conversation!

we’re not going anywhere but down after this point

Diamonds and Sandwiches

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 17:44:08 -0500

Because I not so secretly miss filling out surveys on myspace bulletins and I very much not so secretly enjoy discussing my life. Here’s 23 random fact type things I don’t think a lot of people know. Unless you’re Devonda. Because she’s probably done her research.

1. I didn’t have any alcohol at all until I was 19.

2. I’ve never been to church ever.

3. Almost every conversation I have that appears spontaneous is completely calculated and the odds are good I’ve been agonizing over it for hours.

4. I’ve never missed a question on the Friends Scene It Game.

5. I make sure people know that I love sports as much as the arts partly out of a fear of not wanting to appear one dimensional, partly because it’s a little more masculine than discussing R.E.M. b-sides, and also because college football is fucking awesome.

6. I once had a cd with 17 different versions of “Thunder Road” on it.

7. I shaved off the hair on one half of my head when I was 11.

8. I had a dog between the ages of 1-2 named Megan. She ran away. I made “Lost Dog” signs and posted them until I was 12.

9. I once snuck into a Gator football game with my friend Devin by sleeping inside the stadium the night before.

10. My top 3 fears include: painted nails (sometimes generally cosmetics), inferiority, and going to parties without people I know.

11. I really, really wish I could play an instrument.

12. Malls make me have debilitating panic attacks.

13. I have to be wearing something blue at all times (I think all but one pair of boxers I own are blue)

14. I vastly prefer sleeping on couches than beds.

15. I haven’t cried from physical pain since I was 4 years old.

16. My mom and my grandmother are my heroes.

17. I once cracked a bone in my leg jumping off a bench at the Gainesville mall.

18. I’m pretty sure that I really want to move out of Gainesville but know that I’ll immediately hate whatever city I choose to live in regardless.

19. I fucking hate to dance.

20. I’m really supersticious. I don’t step on cracks at all because I don’t want to be responsible for my mother’s potential spinal trauma.

21. I think my current occupation will probably be the only form of employment I ever enjoy.

22. Every time I get a new record that I really want to hear I get in my car and drive down one specific road just to listen to it.

23. If I mispronounced a word when I was 8 and I hear it today I still feel really embarassed.

cousinbeevo23 (1:24:07 PM): the words awesome and tim and terry’s should not be used together...

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 13:25:35 -0500

cousinbeevo23 (1:24:07 PM): the words awesome and tim and terry’s should not be used together unless describing how awesome it is to leave there and not get bombarded by some neohippie douchebags playing sublime songs on a mandolin

I hate Elizabeth Wurtzel, but I love Bruce Springsteen. It...

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 20:16:00 -0500

I hate Elizabeth Wurtzel, but I love Bruce Springsteen. It tends to even out. She wrote this though and I’ve always enjoyed reading it. Pulled it off my myspace from like 4 years ago…

When I was twelve, and living alone with my mother and her lower-middle-class income and upper-middle-class values on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, and was depressed and suicidal and playing with razor blades the way other girls were tossing a ball and jacks, the only thing that mattered to me was Bruce Springsteen. Huge, superpadded 1979 headphones and Darkness on the Edge of Town on the tape deck, with all the sound concentrated directly into my ears like an intravenous drug, and somehow I wasn’t so lonely. Going down to Philadelphia and Baltimore and even (eek!) Passaic, New Jersey, to see Bruce in concert was as romantically entrancing as visiting a long-distance lover and became as necessary as any other fix. I was this private-school girl, a punked-out urban kid with the kind of pallor you get only from brooding while lying on shag carpet, and here I was, just nuts for blue-collar, suburban-New Jersey Bruce. Sometimes I would beg my mother to move us down to the shore, to settle us in Red Bank or Sea Bright or even the As-bury Park of such wistful Springsteen allusion. I’d ask her if maybe she could get a job as a waitress in a diner or as a typist in a storefront insurance office, if we could be rumpled and beleaguered and no longer part of the aspiring bourgeoisie. I’d want her to do anything so that my uninspired, embarrassing white-girl blues could be like the fire and energy and rage that made Bruce run.

I wasn’t even in the same league as the preppy stoner kids, the rich fuckups who listened to the Grateful Dead and Bob Marley and other music that worshiped at the same marijuana shrine that they did. Pothead brats tended to dismiss Bruce as mall music, the kind of thing they liked, oh, on Long Island. They thought that Bruce’s songs were actually about driving in cars with girls. They also thought that Moby Dick was just a big, dumb book about a whale, And Easy Rider was about motorcycles. For me, “Stolen Car,” a song that I listened to obsessively while crying profusely, captured the essence of depression with perhaps even more precision than all of Sylvia Plath’s poems combined. “I’m driving a stolen car on a pitch-black night/And I’m telling myself I’m gonna be all right / But I ride by night / And I travel in fear / That in this darkness I will disappear,” That’s how it was — I’d listen to Bruce, and if I sat there calm and quiet long enough, I’d stop feeling myself disappear. Murderers on Nebraska, torn lovers on Tunnel of Love, migrant workers on the recent Ghost of Tom Joad — they are all just fighting against the way they seem to be slipping away. It’s emotional, not automotive.

And even now that I’m twenty-eight and Bruce lives in the mansion on the hill (a few of them, actually) and gets his hair cut at John Sahag, just like a supermodel, my awe for him grows only stronger and wilder. I’ve gotta love a guy who left his bouncing, blond actress/model wife for a backup singer from Jersey with a bumpy nose — a move that can be equated with leaving his secretary for his wife. Even today, on the miserably downbound ballads of The Ghost of Tom Joad, Bruce pulls off the difficult feat of singing about how the same system that exploits Mexican mi- grant workers in California is also laying off no-longer-needed coal miners in Ohio. Bruce is a rare thing in this day and age: a man able to be politically correct without seeming like a wimp. He ought to run for president.

It’s hard to believe that?s artists like Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, and Bob Dylan have gotten hipster credibility from alternative types (the Nirvana set, Spin “subscribers), Bruce is still viewed, in some places, as a New Jersey sap, a guy for the stone washed-jeans crowd, for people with big hair and no cool. I think the real reason Bruce turns people off has more to do with his desire, in spite of suffering with the kind of angst and alienation and anger that could make Kurt Cobain look like Mr. Rogers (if you don’t believe me, listen to Darkness again), to reach out to an audience, to always try to stay connected. He dares to be heroic and write about what really matters to him, and by extension, what really touches other people, in complete defiance of the fuck-off attitude that drives rock today.

Bruce is the end of the line, the last rock singer who is likely to make music that feels significant. Particularly in recent years, as alternative rock has become alienated and deliberately pointless, it’s clear that someone like Springsteen who, after all is said and done, really is all heart, all blood-and-guts ought to be cherished. He’s all we’ve got left. There will be no Apocalypse Now or Nashville in our future. There won’t be American writers producing novels that dare to go for Pynchon or Proust: And nobody is likely to give the world another Blonde on Blonde, another Layla, another Blue, or, for that matter, another Born to Run. You’d laugh at anyone foolhardy enough to try, to go for that kind of sincerity, to produce something that grooves and spins with effort and inner sweat. Everything has gotten trivial and small and ironic and cynical, and that’s that. Here we are now, entertain us.

Something Bigger

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 11:38:27 -0400

Because my covers posts were pretty much run out of Grooveshark blog town on a rail, I’ve moved them over here. My motivation extends to nothing other than spite. These posts did fairly well traffic wise, but I think the amount of time required for their construction left a few people underwhelmed. I understand. Kind of. I like covers though, and I’ve recently found a bunch that are super excellent. Before we delve into the onslaught of faithful renditions of classic songs, here are some things that I have enjoyed or considered recently.

Books

Downtown Owl by Chuck Klostermann

A book of fiction from pop culture’s most unfairly maligned/beloved writer. I was surprised at how enthralling it was. The ending is completely unexpected, and you’ll find yourself scanning the previous text in hopes of finding foreshadowing. It’s not there.

All Over But The Shouting: An Oral History of The Replacements

It’s a book about the ‘Mats, so of course I’m going to love it. I think my favorite part is when Westerberg is slow to leave the tour van and beckons the band’s manager into the back to quietly tell him that he’d just written the best lyric of his life. That lyric would be “I could live without your touch if I could die within your reach”.

Pulp by Charles Bukowski

This book was written in 1993 and it’s pretty obvious that Chinaski is nearing the end of his rope. He really just sounds tired, but there’s still a glimmer of the old genius.

Movies

The Sweet Hereafter

Watch this if you’re in the mood for gorgeous landscapes, impeccable dialogue, and an urge to stick your head in an oven.

Records

The Avett Brothers-The Second Gleam

Fleet Foxes-Fleet Foxes

Paul Westerberg-Suicaine Gratification

Fuck it, I’ll add the covers later. You’ll probably hate them anyway.

Grooveshark Lite - Listen to Music Online

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 13:02:20 -0400

Grooveshark Lite - Listen to Music Online:

(via jeffjewiss)

Toy Soldiers and Red Dawn

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 21:44:45 -0400

These movies made me want terrorists to invade my school so Devin and I could run roughshod on their sorry asses. They are possibly why I give sideways glances to people of Columbian and Russian descent.

Wolverines!!!

Teenage Dirtbag? Pssshaw

Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:08:21 -0500

3 or 4 years ago I was working at a local record store in Gainesville. My somewhat monotonous duties entailed cataloguing over 140,000 cds and making sure that bums didn’t steal Jimmy Buffet vinyl. It was a hard knock life indeed.

So one day I was working in the back room when I overheard an inquisitive young man asking about a local venue called Common Grounds. I knew the venue well, so I stepped out of my dark, dank, dust filled lair and asked what he wanted to know. The conversation went as follows…

Guy: So, what is Common Grounds like?

Me: Well, it’s your typical college venue. Skimpy on the AC but enjoyable.

Guy: Any good shows coming up?

Me: Well, I think Wheatus is playing there tonight. They had that really shitty “Teenage Dirtbag” song a couple of years ago.

Bass Player for Wheatus: I’m the bass player for Wheatus. I wrote that song.

(Shotgun blast reverberates about the record store. I lie dead of embarrasment).

calculust: I just posted a killer interview with Girl Talk.

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 21:32:04 -0500

calculust:

I just posted a killer interview with Girl Talk.

A Groundbreaking Idea for a Video Game Spin Off

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 11:24:43 -0500

One of the most succesful video games of the last few years has been the wildly popular GuitarHero. I’ll abstain from summarizing what it is, because unless you’ve been living as a hermit for the last 4 years you probably know what it is.

My idea is to market a video game for these hermits. Hippies don’t really have a video game exclusive to them. My idea appeals to them and a more international crowd.

Should I get an edorsement from Ravi Shankar, I don’t see why SitarHero wouldn’t take off. Even the controller/joystick/thing would look cooler than Guitar Heros. It could emit colorful kinds of smoke and randoming quote the Maharishi. Think you can play “Tomorrow Never Knows” on GuitarHero? Psssh! Pick up your copy of Sitar Hero and you’ll be able to play all those weird, hippie George Harrison penned Beatles songs you know and love.

Just a thought.

Last Words on the Subject: Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:49:32 -0500

I feel the need to offer a disclaimer before anyone should read this. I’m listening to Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers self titled debut album and then comparing it to Tom Petty’s newest solo album Highway Companion. It is making me angry. As a result, I’m fairly sure this post will digress into a vitriolic, obscenity filled diatribe. You have been warned.

Between the ages of 12-16 I listened to Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers exclusively. My dad used to cover them for the Gainesville Sun and would always return from the band’s live shows with incredible stories. I would go to bed at 10pm(I was kind of a nerd) and stay up till 2 in the morning playing Long After Dark, Damn The Torpedoes, and Hard Promises until I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore.

I once went on vacation to Wyoming for 13 days and only brought Pack Up The Plantation to listen to. Long car rides and television free nights were filled with that incredible version of “The Waiting” and the brilliant cover of “So You Wanna Be a Rock and Roll Star”.

Of course, thanks to Springsteen, I grew out of it. With that being said, I still hold those first albums in pretty high regard. There’s still nothing like driving a thousand miles per hour with Pack Up The Plantation pounding out of your speakers. I’ve gotten more than one traffic ticket at the expense of that album.

My one complaint was that I never got to see the band play live. They never seemed to play Gainesville when I was old enough to go see them. That changed when they played a much publicised “reunion show” in Gainesville on my birthday last year. Unfortunately, I had tickets to see Sufjan Stevens in Atlanta at the time so I couldn’t attend. My (now ex) girlfriend at the time weaseled her way into a ticket and promised me that she’d give me enough details after the show so that I could live vicariously through her. I could kind of live with that.

After the breathtaking Sufjan show in Atlanta, I called her for the full report. I found her credibility suspect when she said the Strokes “sucked because they were too loud”. The Petty set was “unimaginably awesome”, and he even beckoned everyone’s favorite bleeting sheep Stevie Nicks on stage with him. I was officially jealous when she told me they played “Insider”, one of my all time favorite songs.

Fastforward to last week. Because Gainesville’s incarnation of PBS suckles from the Tom Petty teet with a creepy amount of regularity, they played the “Homecoming Show” I couldn’t attend in its entirety. I had plans to go out, but I immediately cancelled them in hopes I could reconnect with the music I had loved so much in my youth.

It did not work out that way.

After completion of the show, I concluded that nothing could have made me want to advocate record burning the way that show did. I felt embarrassed for ever liking the band’s music and immediately regretted anytime I put a song of Petty’s on a mix cd for a friend. How they must hate me now.

Now, I know Tom Petty is getting old. I know Tom Petty has done a lot of drugs. THIS DOES NOT GIVE HIM AN EXCUSE FOR BEING A WATERED DOWN VERSION OF JIMMY BUFFET WITH A BETTER BACKING BAND!!!!! The show’s setlist wasn’t bad, but the delivery was so contrived and terrible that I wanted to scream, cry, or punch someone in the face. Petty is a consumate showman, but he seems to have come to the conclusion that his fanbase now consists of 45+ people who have one night of the year to let their hair down and cut loose. Apparently they do that at a Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers show.

Their music used to be dangerous, vaguely sinister, raw, passionate, gritty, and insert any other adjective you want that describes an amazing ROCK band. Rock is the operative word, because now the band is like AOR Lite. It’s like a fucking Chicago reunion tour…uneccesary and terrible.

Petty made GRATUITOUS references to marijuana and his hometown throughout the show. This shameless pandering couldn’t have been neccesary in 1978 when the band was blowing the doors off of some club with “Strangered in the Night”. The fact is that Petty can’t sing anymore, and has used his stoner hippie charm to create a “mellow vibe” for the old people who want to feel like they rocked out without hearing loud music. THIS MUSIC SHOULD NOT BE FUCKING MELLOW.

Don’t get me started on Stevie Nicks. She flailed about like an epileptic…I just wanted her to stop singing so I could give her a fucking EKG.

It was possibly the most disturbing thing I have ever seen. “Learning to Fly”, a decent song on a shit record was vomit-inducing, Petty’s halfhearted attempt to sing on American Girl was embarassing, and Steve Ferrone is possibly the most boring drummer on the planet. I’m sure he doesn’t have the permission to improvise, but still…

BEING AN ICON DOESN’T GIVE YOU LICENSE TO SUCK.

Another Unnecessary Homage to Springsteen

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 16:41:00 -0500

Interlachen, Florida will never be described as a booming, cultural metropolis. Truth be told, it’s generally regarded as a fine place to stop for a bathroom break on the way to the beach. The rancid smell of septic tanks permeating around the town seems oddly fitting.

While Interlachen is not terribly exciting on paper, it will permanently hold a place in my heart for two reasons. The first, which may strike people as slightly irrelevant is that I hit the only homerun of my high school baseball career there. It was after my heroic, towering blast that my 2nd favorite Interlachen memory occured. I was regailing my dad with slightly exagerated tails of my baseball supremacy as we barreled through the darkness of rural Florida when he subtly put on the Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band album Live 1975-1985. There are few things in the world that can stop me from touting my own accomplishments once I get going, but the snarling brilliance of The E Street Band tearing through “Adam Raised a Cain” is one of them.

The roads from Interlachen to Gainesville are especially condusive to listening to Springsteen while you drive. There is very little light and even less traffic, so the urge to drive 110 while singing “Badlands” at the top of your lungs is damn near unavoidable. Listening to all of those songs for the first time, and even the slightly cheesy(yet lovable) stories behind them I couldn’t help but think that I somehow knew every word.

Springsteen is like that for me now. I can listen to versions of songs I’ve never heard and instinctively know when he’s going to yell or change the arrangements. A lot of people find that a little unnerving to the point of creepy, which it might be but I don’t really care. Try listening to “Thunder Road” or “Growin’ Up” from the box set and you’ll get it.

I’m also incredibly excited about the upcoming film “There Will Be Blood”. Completely irrelevant, but still worth mentioning.

In regards to moonlighting as The Stills 3rd guitarist...

Tue, 18 Dec 2007 16:00:26 -0500

I feel the need to preface this by saying I have absolutely no musical talent whatsoever. Ben and I tried recording some demos of our original songs (“My Zombie Suicide Note”…featuring the classic line “Don’t Eat My Brains Like Ray Liotta”), and my shocking inability to play instuments ranging from harmonica to “Phoenix Suns Notebook” rendered our studio time useless.

With that being said, last month I was *KIND OF* in the band The Stills. By “in The Stills” I mean I bamboozled an unsuspecting group of concert goers.

Ben and I had somehow weaseled our way onto the side of the stage after The Stills played and before Spoon’s set. As a result, legions of girls who were only just arriving saw our “indie rock garb” and assumed we were in The Stills waiting for Spoon to take the stage. Because indie rock girls are extremely sycophantic by nature, they made it a point to tell me how much they loved my “set”. Initially I felt the need to set the record straight which had the undesired effect of said girls rapidly losing interest in my witty banter. It tends to happen.

However, when the 5th person in 10 minutes lauded my musical virtuosity I just decided to run with it. Anyone that complimented me was greeted with a 10 minute longglorified mission statement about how being in a rock band wasn’t as easy as it seemed. My shpeel went something like this…

Faceless Music Fan: Hey man, you guys were great. I really loved that set, especially the last one.

Me: Well, you know, we’ve been doing this for several years now. I sincerely appreciate the compliment…we put in a lot of time to make sure we really hone in on the sound playing in our heads. A lot of people assume that being in a touring rock band is just one long stream of booze filled nights of debaucherous glory, but it really takes its toll. I mean, our bus is kind of a ramschackle piece of machinery that we’ve affectionately named “Gloria”…ha ha ha…but you learn to hate it. It’s just really taxing after a while, but when people like you respond so passionately it really makes it all worthwhile. (Dramatic Pause)…So buy our record.

Towards the end of the night people were coming up to me and handing me notes to give to Spoon frontman Britt Daniel. I told them I’d oblige them if I could find the time.

In summary, I’m an asshole.

Higher Spite

Wed, 12 Dec 2007 18:51:51 -0500

My coworker Ben and I were assigned to cover the AntiPop festival in Orlando last month. It was one of those assignments that we probably would have paid Grooveshark to let us participate in. Before we arrived in Orlando we assumed that the 4 days would consist of us chain smoking cigarettes with a litany of really cool bands while we discussed important topics like why Joy Division was and is a vastly overrated band.

It happened a lot differently. While we did smoke what can only be described as “all of the tobacco in North Carolina”, there was nary an opportunity for Joy Division-bashing. Instead, there was a lot of waiting around like nerds and having 5 minute discussions with bands about why we should buy their record. Listening to an emo band sell their record by saying “it’s just really honest” is one of those situations that confirms why the music industry is in a state of flux.

One of these bands was a Las Vegas based collective known as The Higher. Because Ben and I had never really interviewed anyone in person before, we were unsure how we would secure said interviews. Enter The Higher.

As we were wandering aimlessly down an Orlando street we saw a band unloading all of their gear outside of one of the festival’s many venues. After discreetly(and quite cleverly might I add) stealing a glance at one of their t-shirts in the back of their van we deduced that the band was called The Higher. After quickly consulting Ben’s iphone we hurriedly scribbled down a list of about 8 questions to ask these emotive lads.

Now, the 15 seconds it takes to ask a random musician to sit down and speak with you is maybe the most agonizing period of time in the world. I am always really cognizant that for the most part they’re doing me a favor, and I really don’t want to wince everytime I hear their song on the radio because they declined my request. Luckily, we ascertained that the likelihood of hearing a song by The Higher on the radio was pretty minimal so we just abandoned our insecurities and asked them.

They agreed wholeheartedly with the request and promised that they’d oblige just as soon as they “parked their van”. At this point we were just happy that we wouldnt return to the office without any interviews, so we agreed to wait “5 minutes” for them to return. Visions of epic, sprawling pieces of prose about the life changing power of The Higher danced in our heads. We were drunk on the knowledge that we could probably sell all of our readers that the Higher did not, in fact, royally suck.

The Higher royally suck. We waited for something like half an hour in the unforgiving Orlando cold and they never even showed up. We had to withstand the condescending glares of the emo concertgoers and spent the majority of our time muttering obscenities in their direction.

Our first interview had failed miserably and panic set in almost immediately. Luckily our fears were unfounded as bands like The Stills, Straylight Run, Jim Fairchild and David Bazan were more than willing to talk to us.