All The Things That Go To Make Heaven and Earth - The New Pornographers - Challengers - 2007

...And this is an example of a song from Challengers that has tons of energy but no actual melody.

Meh.

All The Same To Me - Golden Smog - Weird Tales - 1998

My roommate and I watched Die Hard II (Die Harder) last night...and I have to say that, even counting Live Free or Die Hard, this is easily the worst Die Hard movie. There are those that will say Die Hard with a Vengence, but personally, even if it's ludicrous, I still enjoy watching Willis and Sam Jackson driving around NYC yelling at each other. Frankly, I'd watch a movie of just that, even without the ass kicking.

But here are my reasons for voting Die Harder as the worst:
1) There is absolutely no character development in this film (okay, I know...no one watches Die Hard for the character development but still...) it's just a series of badly choreographed gun fights, McClane killing people in convuluted ways and snappy one-liners that are niether snappy nor one funny.
2) Reny Harlin. I have a long standing theory that the Dutch just shouldn't be allowed to direct films. Verhooven gets a pass for a few of his films, but then has also made a few that he should be flogged for. But Reny Fucking Harlin...Cutthroat Island, all I'm saying.
3) No one should ever be forced to see William Sadler naked...ever.
4) Sipowitz is in this film and all he does is yell.
5) The General (played by Italian Franco Nero) can't seem to decide if he is Russian or South American. This may be the director's fault though.
6) There are many ways that you can tell that this film is made in 1990...McClane's pager, the giant cell phones, smoking in the airport, the awe with which people regard the fax machine, but none is so aggregious as the casting of angular mid-thirties women in the minor roles. Granted, we've tipped the scale far too far in the other direction, if we made this movie today the Airport Girl, Stewardess, and the Junior Reporter would all be played by the female cast of Gossip Girl...but come on...even the airport customer service girl that hits on McClane is unattractive. Throw us a bone, you Dutch fuck.
7) Did I mention William Sadler was naked?
8) Fred Thompson has a major part in this film...about airline terrorism...and he negotiated with the terrorist...and that douchebag ran for president and then did absolutely nothing.

Anyway, this probably the least interesting/energetic song on an album I really love. One of Tweedy's cast offs from Wilco gets recycled with about as much enthusaism as that statement merits.

All The Right Friends - R.E.M. - ...And I Feel Fine - 2003

It's one of the great mysteries of music how All The Right Friends never made a proper R.E.M. release. The song had been floating around since their early days as an Athens college bar band, and definitely shows the band at their most charming with Buck's chimey guitars, and a great harmony part for Mike Mills.



I used to date a girl who was an R.E.M. fanatic. She had a shoe box full of old bootlegs from those Athens bar days, and this song was certainly one of the highlights...hearing the band in 1979...4 years before Murmur and Rolling Stone's canonizing them as the greatest rock band in America...8 years before Document and the beginning of the arena rock days...10 before Losing My Religion...before the bloat and so on. Just seeing (hearing) them as young southern boys playing a unique brand of rock n roll in a time when bands still played original music in bars was refreshing and gave me a whole new perspective on a group that I thought there was nothing left to know.

All The Old Showstoppers - The New Pornographers - Challengers - 2007

As I think I mentioned previously, I am not a big fan of the most recent NP album, despite being fairly bullish about their previous records. This song however is one of the standouts. It actually has the dynamics and energy of the Twin Cinema without the weird inertia that takes over so much of Challengers.

I'm also the kind of guy who can spend hours staring into the Rorschach blot that are Carl Newman's lyrics. Unlike other abstract lyricist Newman doesn't really throw Dada at the wall (Like Pollard) or deal in ominous insinuations (Like Yorke)...his songs seem to actually mean something...or at least have the semblance of meaning something...if only you had the appropriate Rosetta Stone.

This song for instance may or may not have a fantastic pun in it...I just don't know. It's possible that this song is actually about the book of Revelations and the references to John and Gabriel and the numbers could all be read at face value. Perhaps the song is about someone who believes the word is ending...or about the falacy of believing the world is going to end in a biblical apocalypse (as oppossed to the rather mundane drowning polar bear apocalypse we seem to be approaching).

Or alternately, the song could be about music. The John of the first line could be bass player/producer John Collins (though this gives no answer to who Gabriel is) and the "numbers" are sales figures. And maybe that line in the chorus is NOT "The Princess of the Paupers" but "The Princess of the Poppers"...which is actually really funny...if that's what he means...but I clearly have no idea.

I'm going to shut up now.

All The Negatives Have Been Destroyed - Spoon - Telephono - 1996

So this new ice cream place opened up on my block this weekend. Okay, you're thinking...ice cream memorial day weekend, nice weather, ice cream...what could be better? But the issue is a touch more complicated than all that. My once predominately west indian block is facing the ever present Brooklynite threat of "Gentrification"...and to make matters worse, the ice cream shop was marketed explicitly to children, including providing a "play space" for children in the back room. All day long on Saturday (literally all day long...) there were lines of strollers coming out the store.

For those that haven't followed such items as this:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/18/fashion/18slope.html?ex=1368676800&en=2d86b649d544b327&ei=5124&partner=facebook&exprod=facebook
...the stroller is something of a symbol for everything a certain contingent of us do not want to see Brooklyn become. So seeing this line of strollers, all day long, ignoring the countless chicken wing-bones and broken glass on the sidewalk...just to access a glorified McDonald land park did not sit well with me.

I do have to say though...the ice cream was pretty decent.

Anyway, this is from Spoon's first album, before they had really figured out their own identity and were still trying to be a Texan Pixies clone. This is one of the better songs off of Telephono though.

All The Nations Airports - Archers of Loaf - All The Nations Airports - 1996

If Iwere to chart a progression in my musical tastes then this album would hold a fairly signifigant place. Not that I loved it that much at the time, or love it that much now, or even listen to it much these days...but Archers of Loaf is the point at which I stepped out from the shadows of Alternative Nation and started actually following "Indie Rock" rather than a corporate idea of what that concept was supposed to be.

I sometimes take some shit/feel self-concious that I wasn't one of those guys you meet who were into the Pixies in 7th grade, that never had bad taste, that were seemingly born cool. But then I think about the circumstances, I had no older brother, there were no college stations in Kokomo Indiana, and no cable tv in the Geary household (I lived with my grandparents in High School, long story). All things considered the path from GnR to U2/REM to Led Zeppelin to Nirvana to Pearl Jam to real indie rock isn't so bad. At least I was never in a Garth Brooks phase. And besides, those people that were always cool...they are generally assholes.

All the Madmen - David Bowie - Man Who Sold The World - 1970

Man this is just first class, grade A, batshit-crazy early Bowie. This is the genesis of Labyrinth Bowie. Okay, lets tick off the items to support my thesis:
* - Strummed acoustic beginning a la Space Oddity - check
* - Distopyian lyrics ("The thin men stalk the streets/while the sane stay underground...the far side of town/where it's pointless to be high/cause it's such a long way down...day after day/they take my brain away/then ask me how I feel) - check
* - Searing Mick Ronson guitar solo that comes in after the first verse - check
* - Flute part that would clearly have been done on a synth if this album was created 3-4 years later. - Check
* - Spoken word bit...let me repeat that SPOKEN WORD BIT - check
* - Prog rock synth riffs - check
* - Hand claps - check

Really you just can't pay for this kind of wackiness...

...All The Go Betweens - Silversun Pickups - Pikul - 2005

I got a haircut yesterday (fascinating, I know, but bear with me). As it's summer and my hair tends to grow fast, I went short. My roommate got in a bit later in the evening and as I went out to say hello he greated me with "What's up, Corporal Hicks?"

This brings me to my larger point: why, exactly, did things not work out for Michael Biehn? Seriously, this guy was held a major role in several important entries in the "Dude" movie canon. Not just Aliens, but the original Terminator, and of course as the only badass to give Val Kilmer a run for his money in Tombstone. The guy might not have been a superstar, but he had his charm and a sense of intelligence. He was stunt cast in things like The Rock and more recently Planet Terror...but why exactly did he end up more Mark Hammil than Harrison Ford? A question for the ages.

Silversun Pickups doing their Gish era-Smashing Pumpkins act...which is fine by me.

All Sparks - Editors - The Backroom - 2005

...and then by 2 years later that very same dream pop sound would be dull and commodified.

I guess there is something kind of...serpent eating it's tail about this band though. Editors are a British band aping an American band (Interpol) that was already shamelessly aping two British bands (Joy Division, and The Cure)...however by the time it trickles down to Editors, you're left with a pretty thin soup.

All Sewn Up - Longwave - The Strangest Thing - 2003

If you ever need a primer on the role of a producer in record production, listen to any Longwave album besides this one. On any other album they sound like bad Strokes clones: Chimey guitars, low-rent Lou Reed vocals, and the standard issue four on the floor back beat. But on this one album, they were actually kinda interesting...and that is entirely due to the production work of the esteemable Dave Fridmann.

Fridmann used all the tricks at his disposal to make this band interesting; the heavily flanged drums he pioneered with The Flaming Lips, the wall of shoegazer sound he borrowed from Nigel Godrich, and the melodic sensibilities he honed with his own band. All of these things combined to make a dreampop album that was exactly what everyone was crazy for in 2003...well at least everyone in my little circle. But good God was their follow-up boring....sub Strokes songs, with forgettable melodies. Should have stuck with what you knew gentlemen.

All Saints - David Bowie - Low - 1977

Ok this little bit of Bowie weirdness isn't much fun to listen to more than once, but if nothing else, you really should just marvel at how far ahead of their time Bowie and Eno were at crafting soundscapes. When the track first hit my headphones, I honesty thought it was going to be turn of the millenium turntable stuff, only to check the pod and determine that it was actually late 70's Bowie. Amazing sounds, even if there isn't much to the actual song.

All Over The World - Pixies - Bossanova - 1990

For many years I held the contrarian opinion that Bossanova was the best Pixies album, and while I still like it quite a bit, it turns out I was just sick of Doolittle.

All Over The Shop - Maximo Shop - A Certain Trigger - 2005

So my company was recently acquired by a larger company. Part of the reason the company decided to purchase us was due to the fact that we have a large half empty office in lower Manhattan. So now they are starting to move in, bit by bit, into our vacant spaces. Needless to say, this has not proceeded without incident. First of all, they have put up a giant poster of Prince...no disrespect intended, but I don't want a giant Prince watching me all day. Second of all, they have blasted the new Madonna album TWICE today. Thank god I wear headphones.

Anyway, this is Maximo Park doing their poppy variation of Gang of Four. Not my favorite song on this album, but solid enough.

All or Nothing At All - John Coltrane - Ballads - 1962

And still more Jazz

All of You (Alternate Take) - Miles Davis and John Coltrane - The Complete Columbia Recordings - 1958

Yup, still Jazz

All of You - Miles Davis and John Coltrane - The Complete Columbia Recordings - 1958

Jazz

All Night Home - Sparklehorse - Good Morning, Spider -1998

Wow, so after an ill advised bender with my co-workers, I was dragging my ass into work this morning (worst part about an office drink up, if you call in sick the next day, everyone will know why) on the subway. At my second stop, an entire class of 4th grade girls got on the subway car. Now, needless to say this did not do my head any good...I realize that this makes me a terrible old crumudgeon, but I desperately wanted to tell all of these kids to "shut the fuck up". I mean seriously, couldn't they have waited until after peoples morning commutes to take whatever assinine field trip they were going on? In the mornings, most of us working slobs want as close to a quiet peaceful trip on the train, and the last thing we want is 30 chatty cathy's ruining my perfectly good hangover.

So this is Sparklehorse doing their usual "old-timey sounding song, fucked with in the studio" trick. Not bad, but they have better.

All Night - Figurines - Skeleton - 2005

Figurines are one of those bands that are ideally suited for the iPod. The spikey, hyper active style favored by these Danes is entertaining on a song by song basis, but sitting and listening to a whole album of it is both exhausting and tedious.

All New Friends - Dirty On Purpose - Sleep Late for a Better Tomorrow - 2004

I saw Dirty on Purpose back in the winter of 04-05 as an opener for Rogue Wave...I came away thinking that Dirty on Purpose was the much better band. (that show was actually the end of the my enjoyment of Rogue Wave...I had no idea they'd be so fucking California) so I picked up this EP.



At the time of the show my then-girlfriend and I noted the sort of Linda McCartney quality of the keyboard player. She didn't really seem to do much and almost certainly was someone's girlfriend...by the time of their LP she was removed from the band. But if nothing else, she did contribute one good song to the LP...or at least sang on it.

All Neon Like - Bjork - Homogenic - 1997

How many fucking Bjork songs start with "A"? Did she have a theme? And what the hell does it mean to "halo all over you". That just sounds wrong.

So, I was all excited cause they opened a new wine bar in my previously sketchy neighborhood. I had my ladyfriend meet me there last night for a glass or two. We sit down and wait a bit for the waiter, but sure it's a new place, been open less than 2 weeks, they probably don't have the service down. Fine. Finally the dude brings us our menus, I peruse mine and realize that it only lists food. So I go ask the bar tender for the wine list. He informs me that they don't get their liquor license until the 28th...when they will have their grand opening. First of all, you appear to be open, second of all why in the world would you open a wine bar before you could serve wine? What the hell is wrong with people?

All My Little Words - The Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs - 1999

Probably the gayest song on all three 69LS albums, and considering the source...that's pretty gay. I really only keep it on the iPod cause I'm a completionist. But seriously, I am a complete social libertarian I think that what goes on in a bedroom, or who you choose to love is no one's business but the two (or more) consenting adults involved...however this does not mean that I particularly want to hear a fey song with the word "unboyfriendable" in it.

That's not even a word, dammit!

All My Kin - Chisel - Set You Free - 1997

Even though it does have a horn section and a quasi-childrens choir, two things that I am ordinarily pretty oppossed to, I can't help but love this song. Mostly because I completely releate to the subject matter. For some reason whenever I go to visit my family in Indiana, someone invariably wants to engage me in a political convesation that they seem to know will infuriate me and make me think "how in the hell can I be related to these dimwits". Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs to church, Barrack Obama wants your kids to pray to Allah while learning about gay sex, Hillary Clinton is the anti-christ (I don't even like Hill, yet they seem to cast me in the roll of her biggest fan), gun control would not have stopped the Virginia Tech massacre, etc, etc, etc.

Ugh...but at the end of the day they are my family, and it is good to see them. Even if they are bonkers. Mr. Leo understands, though I can't imagine Jersey ignorance holds a candle to Indiana ignorance.

All My Hammocks Are Dying - Chin Up Chin Up - We Should Have Never Lived Like We Were Skyscrapers - 2004

Like most Chin Up Chin Up songs the title is better than the song. Still, the song ain't bad. Nice use of banjo.

All My Friends - LCD Sound System - Sound of Silver - 2007

I'm not sure I am going to have anything new to say about this song. So, I'll basicaly cover the same ground Pitchfork did when they voted it best song of 2007 (I don't know that I neccesarily agree with that, but it's a pretty great song) only I'll make the general, personal.

Next month I will have lived in NYC for 8 years. The majority of long time friends that are here still hold on to some of their artistic aspirations (those that ever had any)...most of us still drink more than we probably should. I few of us still do drugs we should have outgrown. We still stay up late, and go to parties, and show, and art openings, and events. We still have meet ups in bars, and act like "rockstars" even into our thirties. It's just the way our generation has handled the "new 30"...our prolonged adolescence that the judgemental Boomers love to belittle us with.

We are all pioneers finding our way in the uncharted future...er, or something like that. It's just nice to be celebrated as such.

All Mod Cons - The Jam - All Mod Cons - 1978

I was riding the LIRR back from Shea Stadium on Sunday when I encountered one of my biggest frustrations with the city of NYC. So, my ladyfriend and I had just missed the train to Penn Station and had to wait 20 minutes to for the next one...not the end of the world. We stood our time on the platform and talked. The platform gradually filled up.

As the train pulled into the station, a trio of old women were standing next to us waiting as well. Like a good midwestern boy, I let them on the train first. There were two open benches at the the end of the car, a 3 person seater and a two person seater. Perfect, the women could take the three person seat and me and the lady could take the two person seat...No! Of course not, the old women proceed to sit 2 on the big bench and 1 on the little.

This is what infuriates me, one basic act of community minded courtesy is repaid with total selfishness. I had this string of thoughts quite a bit when I lived in Greenpoint (The closest that I think I come to out and out racism is the total scorched-earth hatred I have for the community of Greenpoint). Old women know that, due to the social contract I will not act aggressively towards them...like say, throwing them on the subway track. Basic decency and the fact that no court in the land (both legal and of public opinion) would acquit me for acting in such a manner ensure that I will be gracious. But seriously, if my generosity will be constantly repaid be utter thoughtless self-centeredness, then what's the point in not simply shoving Hazel into the path of an onrushing train and decreasing the surplus population?

Anyway, this is a minute and a half of the Jam doing there thing. Much like the Beatles, I find some of the Jam's rock n' roll credibility shot by their clear reliance on British Barrell Hall music. Underneath the purpulsive drumming, crunching guitars, and social message they still feel the need to do that pansy harmonzing (and I like harmony) at the end of the song. Why not just cover When I'm 64?

All Is Full of Love - Bjork - Homogenic - 1997

So the other night I went back to the local beer gardens to celebrate our new neighborhood option for outdoor drinking. One of the girls that lives in my building came out and decided to throw out the "I can drink you under the table" challange. Now not to seem overly chauvanistic, or like a giant asshole...but there was just no way this was possible. This girl 11 years my junior, and from suburban philly was just not going to take me. Two shots of Wild Turkey and she was out of the game. This did however result in a fair amount of comedy. I tried to wrestle a bassett hound, despite not being a regular smoker I had 4 cigarettes, and then I paid our skinny-hipster-in granny glasses waitress $10 to rap for us. This is on a wednesday night mind you.

The sad thing is, this sort of thing happens to me frequently...I'm not sure why women want to try to outdrink me...and why I can't say no to the challange. Clearly I have issues.

More Bjork, being Bjork

All In A Day - Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros - Streetcore - 2003

Sign It's Spring #1 - I saw two apartment supers spraying off the sidewalk this morning as I was walking to the train. At a certain point, one of them jokingly sprayed some water at the other one and I thought to myself "Yes, it is the season to spray people with garden hoses and run through sprinklers" Good stuff.

Joe Strummer's solo stuff tends to be not that interesting, and occassionally down right banal...but this song actually has decent energy and a hook. Worth a listen at least.

All I Need - Radiohead - Radiohead at the BBC - 2008

One of the joys of being a Radiohead fanatic (at least for me) lies in listening to the way they recreate their dense studio atmospherics in a live setting. If you download this or whatever, be sure to notice the cool rumbling distortion underlying most of the song.

All I Need - Radiohead - In Rainbows - 2007

My office is right outside of the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, so I just got to witness one of the protest to the Sean Bell verdict. A throng of protestors stood and blocked the entrance preventing commuters from getting to Jersey...if I wanted to be especially snarky, I would ask "exactly how is this a bad thing?" But more to the point...we are a nation founded on violent protest. The American Revolution was essientially a 6 year protest against unjust laws (and those were mostly just TAX laws) but we've become increasingly intolerant of protests in our modern country. Anti-war demonstrations are written off as "dumb hippies" and these kind of protests are written off as a "racial issue". The response to this protest today, was a lot of honked horns, and a bunch of people being shoved into police vans. My co-workers response "Damn, it would suck to have to go into the tunnel today". If actual change through beauracracy is rendered impossible and protest is rendered a pointless act of futility, what recourse do the wronged have?

Anyway, I'm sure Thom Yorke would agree. Odd that they re-used the intro from "Where I End and You Begin" again...but otherwise this is another lovely song on the surprisingly tender In Rainbows.

All Heart, No Eyes - The Mendoza Line - We're All In This Alone - 2000

If you ever want to do a comprehensive study of low feminine self-esteem I would highly recommend you cull Shannon McArdle's songs from all the Mendoza Line albums. Hopefully, I will actually stick with this long enough to make it to the "I's" just so I can talk about "I'm That" but for the moment I'll make do with this one.

Essientially, any one of her songs work like this: She has a crush on a guy who is willing to use her for sex. She does not feel as if she is cool/pretty/smart/"good" enough for this person. She does not feel as if she deserves his love. She knows that he is using her, but would rather be used than be alone. And all of this is pinned to the Mendoza Line's slightly lazy alt-country twang.

Just brutal, brutal stuff.

All Hands on the Bad One - Sleater-Kinney - All Hands on the Bad One - 2000

And speaking of railing against traditional gender roles...uh yeah.

Around 2000 the ladies of Sleater-Kinney realized they could actually write a good pop song. They, at this point, became a vastly more interesting band.

All Hands Against His Own - The Black Keys - Rubber Factory - 2004

As I mentioned in my previous post about The Black Keys, I loved the blues as a teenager, but rejected it in the my 20's only to relatively recently re-embrace it. During the heat of the early mid-90's indie rock movement (which pretty much corresponds with the end of my high school/beginning of my college career) there was sort of a notion that we needed to abandon anything that had to do with the corporate beheometh that modern rock music had become. The blues was sort of a part of that. The blues had been co-opted by ageing boomer Eric Clapton, and was the underpinning for all of that flaccid and slick cock-rock that pop metal had become. It was the denizen of classic rock dinosaurs like Zeppelin and God help us all The Doors, or cheesey clothed revisionists like Stevie Ray Vaughn. It was what your middle aged uncle listened to while still insisting he was "cool".

But there is one thing that the blues gets that 95% of mid-nineties indie rock did not, and that is SEX. Put on any Pavement album, any Superchunk or Built To Spill album, and you will find very few songs about fucking. So much overt sexuality had been forced into the music in the 80's and the rise of MTV...combine this with the stringent PC attitude towards traditional gender roles and a generation of kids raised with the belief that the AIDS crisis would turn the future USA into something sort of like Children of Men and you get the almost prudish music of the Alternative Nation era.

I think this is one of the reasons rock lost so many fans to hip-hop during this time. Kids didn't want to hear about how mad we were at corporate oligarchy, or how low our self esteem was cause we weren't cool in high school. They wanted to hear about bumping uglies.

And that's part of why I've re-discovered the blues...thanks in no small part to bands like The Black Keys who can be smart and original in their sound while still working in a style that is now well over a century old...and they don't shy away from the fact that this is music about the things we do late at night with the lights out, or in the back of your grandfather's van in a K-mart parking lot. Really, it's okay to be a little dirty...it's how we all got here...aside of you test tube freaks.

All Good Naysayers, Speak Up! Or Forever Hold Your Peace! - Sufjan Stevens - Greetings From Michigan: The Great Lakes State - 2003

It has been frequently pointed out to me that at the rate at which I write these things I will never actually get to the end of the alphabet. This is probably valid. However, I will point out...at the rate at which Sufjan puts out albums, he'll never actually make an album for all 50 states. It's about the journey, not the destination people...

All God's Creatures - Jason Faulkner - Can You Still Feel - 1999

My roommate, at age 32, just got his first pair of contacts. I came home last night to find him in the bathroom screaming at his eye as he was unable to remove them. My lady friend had to give him a physical demonstration of the removal technique. Woke up this morning to a half an hour of watching the poor bastard try to get the second one in.

You haven't truly lived until you've seen a grown-ass man in a towel screaming at his finger at 8 in the morning.

More guitar pop from Jason Faulkner. Not much else to say about it.

All For Swinging You Around - The New Pornographers - The Electric Version - 2003

While I'd still take it over Challengers, The Electric Version is probably the most confused TNP album. Slightly baffled by the success of his wacky side project with his drinking buddies, Carl Newman threw himself full time into the band...but wasn't entirely sure what to do with it. Most of the album sounds like Newman's old band Zumpano with better production values/musicians or like an attempt to recapture the ramshakle charm of the first album.

Case in point, this blatant (if charming) attempt to write another "Letter From An Occupant"

All Fires - Swan Lake - Beast Moans - 2006

While Frog Eyes has always been a little too "Quirky" for my tastes, I am a pretty big fan of both Destroyer and Wolf Parade...so I was intrigued to hear how the combined talents of the three most idiosyncratic voices in Canadian Indie Rock would pan out. The result...mostly "meh". It's not bad...just a little dull.

All Fired Up - Interpol - Our Love To Admire - 2007

A couple of my guy friends and I had a bit of a marathon pub crawl on Friday night. Both the guys I was with were married so they were looking for a night of "Guy Time" and I am always down for an adventure...plus it was the one day of the year I like G.W. Bush...Economic Stimulus Package Day!!! So in my effort to stimulate the economy, there were whiskeys (and single malt scotches), there were dirty vodka martini's at the crazy Egyptian/Norwegian/Sushi place on Lafayette, there were many pitchers of beer at the new German beer hall in Williamsburg, there were quarters wasted on Rolling Thunder at Barcade, and late night hi life's at Enid's. And shockingly, I awoke hangover free. So don't say I'm not patriotic, dammit, I stimulated the economy like a Thai hooker with a wiffle ball bat and a set of jumper cables.

Anyway Interpol...It's amazing that a band can so succesfully avoid the sophomore slump, only to crash and burn in their junior effort. It's not a bad album really...and this is actually one of the better songs. They just seem to have not only failed to evolve, but to have actually regressed. Their lyrics have gone from evocatively opaque (on TOTBL) to dippy (Antics) to apparently written by a horny 15 year old with 80's rock star fantasies (do rock bands even HAVE groupies anymore?) and the music is still the same old, same old. With three years between albums, you'd think these guys could put a little effort into the creative part of their enterprise.

All Down Here From Here - Jim O'Rourke - Insignifigance - 2001

September 18th, 2001...so I worked downtown back then and our office had been forcibly closed for the previous week. We came back to work with a lot of trepidation...not really fear that something else would happen...just the general sense of dismay we'd all had. Our boss told us the company may not be able to survive the tough financial times that were sure to follow. None of us were quite sure why our work mattered. We were surrounded by armed guards, and the smell of burning metal and flesh. One guy in my office had volunteered to take a week off of work to help the firemen collect body parts. It was a seriously fucked up time.

Anyway, my friend Rance and I decided to take an especially long lunch (cause who really cared?) and walk up to Other Music and buy some CD's. I bought Superchunk's Here's To Shutting Up and Rance bought this album. Listening to any song from this album will always make me think of that strange dark time...

All Down The Line - The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street - 1972

What the hell was up with the 1970's fascination with truck drivers? BJ and The Bear, Smokey and the Bandit, Sam Peckinpah's Convoy, Sorcerer, and this little nugget from The Stones. It's actually a pretty good song (there isn't a bad song on Exile) if you can get past the inheriently ridiculous notion of Mick Jagger as a hard driving truck driver trying to get back to his baby.

All Di Gal Com - Stereotyp - My Sound - 2002

This is what is great about project managing an IT group...the hard drive on which I store the back up for my iPod went belly up. In addition to my music collection (among other collections) there is also a fair amount of my personal writing stored on this thing. The idea of losing all of this did not appeal to me.

I'm telling my team about this and they suggest I bring in the drive and they'll take a look. They realize that they cannot open the case...I assume that this will be the end of the story...but no, my guys decide that this marks a challange. Soon specific tools are being sought to open the case. It might have taken them a couple of days of doing this inbetween real work, but they did finally get it open.

So the moral of the story, it's good to have tech nerds on your side...just never take them anywhere where they might meet women.

My buddy Corey is much more electronica/dance music savy than I. This was his attempt to broaden my horizons. I don't mind the music, I just can't quite take myself seriously listening to it.