At Least That's What You Said - Wilco - Kicking Television - 2005

I am currently DVRing the Champions League Semi-final between Arsenal and Man U...the two great rivals of the EPL (circa 1996-2005) meet in the European cup for the first time ever and it should be a great game...assuming that I can avoid any spoilers.

The DVR is really the double edged sword of the soccer fan these days. Since our games are played on a continent 5 to 6 hours ahead of us, the games are usually played during the day...so unless I want to take a day off work (or have a "doctor's appointment") then I have to set the DVR and wait till I get home. THe plus side to this is that, if I can pull it off, I can still have the majority of the excitement of watching a game live (but you know, there's still a little something missing knowing that it's not). I can watch it at my leisure. If I'm home a little late, I don't miss anything.

But, I have certainly had big games spoiled by the internet. When Liverpool made their amazing comeback against AC Milan in 2005...it was a a big enough story to make the AP newswire, even here in the states. Earlier in the year, when Arsenal was playing Roma in a tightly contested game...I stayed late at work so I could head straight to Rance's to watch the game. I avoided anything sports related. And then some kid in Cincinnait, that I was his camp counselor a billion years ago, updates his facebook profile to say "I can't believe Arsenal won on penalties!!!" My evening plan was shot.

So now I sit here, avoiding sports AND facebook and waiting for the day to end. Hopefully, I'll make it through and hopefully Arsenal will pull the victory off.

This is a live version of the previous song. It sticks pretty close to the text, which is fine since it's a great song...but doesn't really require much additional comment.

At Least That's What You Said - Wilco - A Ghost Is Born - 2004

This remains one of the few songs on A Ghost is Born that has any value to me. After the tidal wave of hysteria that followed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, AGIB was bound to disappoint most fans. Couple that with Tweedy's decent into vicodan addiction and the relentless touring and media coverage that followed the surprising success of YHF and it's companion film I Am Trying to Break Your Heart and you have an album that was destined to be "difficult" long before it ever went to press.

Even so, it started out perfectly...this song practically creaks under the weight of exhaustion and frustration. Tweedy's broken voice conveys the tone of a man who just can't take it any more and the moment the guitars kick in is the sound of a long brewing breakdown bubbling to the surface despite every attempt to stiffle it.

If only the rest of the album could have maintained this mood instead of veering off into melody deficient jaunts and krautrock experiments...

At Least For Now - The Posies - Failure - 1989

I've spent a lot of time on this blog writing about nostalgia...both wallowing in my own nostalgia, or waxing philosophical about the way that music can bring a certain time and place to mind in a few short notes...but this song brings up a phenomenon that I don't think I've covered before.

I purchased the Posies 3rd album (Frosting on the Beater) with the money I got for my high school graduation. I had read a favorable review of them and wanted to check it out, despite having never actually heard the band. While I was initially disappointed in the album, I eventually fell in love with it. For a long while it was "my favorite album" (I already have tickets to see them perform it in it's entirity at The Bell House in June)...as such I went out and purchased both of the previous Posies albums during my freshman year in college.

This song, one of the less juvenille tracks from their self-produced first album, is fairly indicative of the band in it's early stages: Annoyingly, self-consciously literate lyrics, Smiths-y instrumentation, Big Star Melodies and pitch perfect harmonies. It's good without being noteworthy...except one thing.

But what I find most interesting is that the nostalgia that this song summons up is NOT for summer of 94, when I purchased this album...but rather for 1989 when the song was actually recorded. Now in 1989, I was still 4 years and all of high school away from ever hearing The Posies...and yet, that is exactly what this song makes me think of...of painfully awkward 8th grade dances, of getting into fights with my Sunday school teachers that would ultimately lead to me quitting the church, of being just mind-bogglingly, blisteringly horny and yet having no idea what to say to girls, of finally being tall of eating so much that my parents nearly went broke...all of those things that are from years before I ever heard that song.

But why? Is there something about this sound...a sound that I wasn't even listening to in 1989 (I was a million times more into GnR than The Smiths)...but do recorded sounds just take a piece of the time that they were recorded in with them? Is it just a mental trick my brain plays, knowing that the song was recorded in 89? Is it something about the specific combination of instruments and recording techniques that label it as an artifact from 1989? As always, I have no answers, only more questions.

At Last The Night - Amusement Parks on Fire - Out of the Angeles - 2006

So there is a restaurant/bar not too far from my office called Edward's. Edward's is apparently owned by a former Cincinnati sports figure and as such has a monthly event called so creatively "Cincinnati Night" wherein they fly in food from 4 different Cincy eateries that do not have NYC locations. They fly in Montgommery Inn ribs (which are good, but I don't crave them), Greater's Ice Cream (Which is good, but it's just ice cream) and La Rossa's Pizza (Which I've never understood the fuss over) I go for one reason and one reason only, it's the only place in this town to get Cincinnati style chili.

For those of you that don't know what that is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cincinnati_chili

If you have ever met anyone who is from Cincinnati or spent time there, in all likelihood, they are obsessed with this food. It's more addictive than crack and only slightly less bad for you.

For years I have been considering going and always had other things going on, or it simply slipped me mind...I was going to go in February, but the date was when I was in Europe. Then I tried to go in March, only to discover a line out the door and that only customers with reservations were being seated (Reservations! For Cincy Chili!!! Amazing).

So this month I did it right, I made reservations and showed up on time, and the chili was definitely worth it. Oh sure there were little things off, the spaghetti was too thick, as was the grated cheddar. The hot dog on my cheese coney was a little too thin and red...but the chili itself was a wonderful bit of happiness and I fully intend to go back next month.

At Last The Night is an instrumental...and is really only noteworthy in that it is one of the few Amusement Parks On Fire songs to not sound exactly like every other Amusement Parks on Fire songs.

At Last Is All - I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness - Fear is on Our Side - 2006

Well, I've already told this story to basically everyone I know, so that's pretty much the readership of this blog but...I want to write it down, just so I'll have it for posterity.

On Wednesday April 15th, a few events took place. One of them was that Arsenal Football Club played the second leg of their Champions League Quarter Final against Villarreal, the second was that it was Tax Day, the third was that a bunch of short sited morons decided to have a protest of paying taxes to a liberal administration and dubbed their protest with the unfortunate name of "Teabagging" allegedly in honor of the Boston Tea Party.

So, as the game was live at 245 and I had to be at work, I had set my Tivo and divorced myself from the Internet at approximately 244 (I had been screwed by the Internet too many times in attempting to watch non-live games...including one rather unfortunate event with a friend's facebook status post). But before I signed off I remember seeing the coverage of the Teabagging parties on CNN and thinking "My God, CNN has been hacked"...but no, this shit was for real.

Anand and I had planned to meet at a local watering hole called The Patriot. The Patriot is one of those faux country dive bars that exist in NYC, clearly created by people who have never been to a country dive bar but have seen a lot of movies that had them in it. A lot of Toby Keith is played in this bar, the beer is all flat, the place reeks of vomit and the waitresses are uniformly skanky.

So I walk in to meet Anand, and on a Wednesday night the place is absolutely packed. Like I can't even make it to the bar or the bathroom. It's then that I notice that all of the other attendees are wearing the same T-shirt (Except one guy who, I shit you not, was wearing a revolutionary war town crier outfit). The T-shirt says on the front "Obama-Reid-Pelosi" above the presidential seal and "Wrong for America" below it. On the back it says "Liberals are Freaking Faggots".

I quickly realize that this is not a bar I wish to be in and beat a hasty retreat. Running into Anand on the way, we popped into a second bar only to see that that bar is showing a replay of the Arsneal match that is already 15 minutes into the game. I see us scoring our first goal, though I managed to get Anand out of there before he saw it...so at least one of us would be going into the game fresh.

The thing is...I won't go too much into covering the ludicrousness of the Teabaggers agenda (or their name)...it's been covered by funnier people than me. But seriously, it's amazing how quickly they lose their prudery when the shoe is on the other foot. They gladly trash a president they don't like when they accused us of being traitors for questioning the one that my side didn't like. They call us "Faggots" (yet still down grade the F-word to "freaking"???) all to protest what? Not the loss of human life, not the allowing of robber barons to run roughshod over our economy, nor a government that simply sat back and watched our country fall apart...they are pissed that the government is actually trying to DO SOMETHING. They want inaction at a time when our country is falling apart and it is simply staggering to me.

You lost, wing nuts. Suck it.

Anyway, it seems appropriate to end this with a song by I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness. Fear has always been on their side, and that hasn't changed much. Wouldn't it be nice if we ran our country on hope rather than fear?

At Last - Neko Case - Fox Confessor Brings the Flood - 2006

Oh Neko...despite the general "Country Chanteause" label that usual gets thrown at Miss Case, there is little in her music that is familar. Sure, you can find your traces of the usual touchstones, Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, Dolly Parton, even Stevie Nicks in her music. But the albums she actually produces sounds less like anything we call "Country" and more like the music being played at the country bar in Twin Peaks. In a little over a minute and a half here, miss Case manages to weave a spell using only guitars and her voice.

God bless her perpertually broken Virginian/Canadian/Ukranian heart.

AT 12 to 6 - Mazarin - We're Already There - 2005

So, on my brother's last night in town I made a rather dangerous discovery. Joe had met me after work and we (along with Anand) had gone for a couple beers at a west village bar and then to the Belgian place on West 4th. After a few we started thinking about places to eat.

I had asked Joe, being as it was his last night in town, if there was any particular request he had for his last night in town. Getting an opinion on plans from my brother is one of the trickier tasks in the universe, so of course his answer was "I don't know dude, whatever you want". So I racked my brain for something kind of interesting and fun that would be good to eat on a rainy Monday after a few beers when a good answer hit me: Hill Country.

For those that have never experienced the wonder that is Hill Country, it is a Texas themed BBQ restaurant on 26th St between Broadway and 6th Ave. Rather than being locked into certain entrees or whatever, the service is cafeteria style with meat ordered by the pound (Me personally, I usually get 2 pork ribs and a 1/4 or 1/2 pound of moist brisket...depending on my appetite). The also have extremely good and trashy sides like gooey mac n cheese or green bean casserole and of course tasty beverages.

As we were walking in the guy who usually hands you your meal card stopped me and asked "Do you want pay by the pound or are you here for the All You Can Eat."

Without thinking I said "the pay by the pound...wait, wait, talk to me about this All You Can Eat".

Turns out on Monday nights you can get all you can eat for $25 per person (Which is a great deal, as I usually spend at least $25 there anyway). This is a dangerous thing for me to know. Joe and I ate ribs and moist brisket until we rolled ourselves out into a cab.

Now that I'm at an age where I only have time to fall in love with about 5-6 albums a year as oppossed to 20, it is especially sad that a band that put out an album I really love had to stop making records right afterwards. After putting out two middling albums with a couple of decent songs under the name Mazarin, Philly's Quinten Stoltzfus finally got one right with "We're Already There". And then he got caught in a lengthy dispute about the name rights for the band and has seemed to have retreated to the world of studio work for the time being. Here's hoping he comes back out swinging with another good record of his style of melencholy power pop.

AT and T - Pavement - Wowee Zowee - 1995

Can't use an & in a title I guess.

So I had to go pick up a package at the post office this morning. I got to the door at 845 only to discover that my PO had changed their hours and wouldn't be opening until 9...so I got a cup of coffee and waited for it to open. There were a couple of people in front of me, and shortly a line formed behind me.

When 9 rolled around I was walking in the door and I saw an older man with a cane waiting to go in. I stood back, held the door and offered him to go first. Then I got pushed in the back. The guy behind me starts giving me shit for letting the old man go first. "Come on man, I don't have time for this, I got places to go!"

What the fuck is wrong with people...if I had blown by him they would have yelled at me for being an entitled white dude and not respecting the older generation. I hold the door for him and I'm wasting people's time. It just doesn't pay to be kind, I guess.

Anyway, I used to think of Wowee Zowee as a bad misstep from Pavement...but in later years I find it to be their most enjoyable, most fun album. I've never held them in the reverance that so many do. But I like them well enough, and this song brings enough rock and very little of the hippy tendencies that tend to infuriate me about the band.

Astronaut - Beach House - Devotion - 2008

I can hardly think of a better song for a dark and rainy Monday than this little gem. Beach House has an oddly appropriate name. Rather than sounding like the music you hear at the beach though, they sound like the feeling of being stuck in a beach house on a cold and rainy day, of looking out at the ocean and wishing you could swim in it. Droney organ, super slow girl group harmonies, and lead singer Victoria Legrand's lethargic angel vocals all work to add a great soundtrack to this gloomy 4/20.

This is my brother's last night in town, so I'm gearing up my liver for one more night of drinking...then Shani shows up. One of these days I'll get some rest, honest...

Astral Weeks - Van Morrison - Astral Weeks - 1968

Man, now that I am done writing about my epic drinking adventure across Europe, I have no idea what I'm supposed to write about on this thing...

I mean, I suppose I could actually talk about...you know, the music, but Jesus, Van Morrison is a bitch of a place to jump back in. I mean, sure...Van's the man and all, but there is so much godwill lost on the number of times you've heard Brown Eyed Girl at your local theme park. Granted Astral Weeks is about as far from that Van as you can get, but still...

I suppose I could talk about the fact that spring seems to have sprung, the sun is out the temperature is up and breasts and legs are back on the menu...but you've heard all that before.

I could mention that my parents and my brother are in town and that we went to Peter Luger's last night for my dad's birthday where we gorged on meat and my mom lost a tooth. Or the plan for the evening to get my brother drunk and laid tonight with the hipster skanks in Williamsburg.

But fuck it, it's a sunny friday and my brain is already out the door and my ass will soon follow. Semi-regular service to commence later.

Astral - Calla - Televise - 2002

Jesus...Televise, much like Half Smiles of the Decomposed seems to be like 90% composed of songs beginning with "A". Didn't I just write about Calla? It's like they did it on purpose. Anyway, more of the usual sluggish churn of Calla, though this one is a little better than most.

Anyway, this will be my last post on the now nearly two months old vacation...so, I hope you've enjoyed it all. I tried to make it as entertaining as the experience was.

After our adventures in Lord Nelson, we stopped in a deli to pick up some truly awful prepackaged sandwiches and then headed back to the hotel. Since I hadn't slept at all in the car, I was out shortly thereafter. I'd like to thank Anand and Rance for not drawing a fake moustache on me and taking compromising pictures of me.

The alarm clock went off at 700AM and I was not a happy camper. A week of partying had pretty much owed me a hangover, and here it was loud and screaming clear at 7AM. And I had to get to Heathrow for a 1030 flight.

Fortunately, the theory that you must get to the airport 2 hours before an international flight doesn't really hold that true on a winter Wednesday. I was through customs in a matter of minutes and had nearly two hours to kill with a raging hang over and about 5 pounds. I bought a bottle of water and some Internet time, but mostly I just sat in a corner and moaned.

My flight was largely uneventful. I sat next to an older British couple that I tried to be as inoffensive to as possible. I wanted to do my best to stay awake to avoid jetlag, so I only slept for maybe an hour and a half.

I watched quite possibly the worst movie I've ever seen. In The Name of the King. I mean, I'm all for a good D&D movie, but Jesus Christ...anytime you are involving Burt Reynolds in a fantasy movie...and don't even get me started on Ray Liotta. Or why everyone had a different accent. Not even LeeLee Sobieski's (sadly fully clothed) breasts could save this movie. Wow...just unbelievably bad. Now I understand why people were willing to box Ule Bowe. I chased it with the slightly saccerine but at least totally competant Walk the Line just to clense my pallate. Though it was remarkably hard to take seriously having seen "Walk Hard", but that's no fault of the movie itself.

And then I was home and that was it. I ate lots of fresh veggies that night and saw my girl, happy to be home, but sorry that it was over.

Asterick - M83 - Before the Dawn Heals Us - 2005

Once the game had wrapped up, Anand and I headed back to the team gift store to buy my birthday present (a new jersey). I assured him that after the massive depression that not seeing the game brought on us, that this was really not neccesary...but he was insistant that he get SOMETHING right. I thought this was a bit harsh, but hey, if a dude wants to buy me jersey, who am I to stop him.

Anyway, after that trip we went to a pub called Lord Nelson's were we were supposed to meet Rance. He showed up about 15 minutes after us. He felt appropriately awful when we told him what had happened to us at the game, but at least our team had won and the liquor was flowing. It was our last night of the trip and we weren't going to let that douchebag limey cocksucker cop ruin our time. In the morning, Rance and I would be on sepearte planes back to NYC (Rance was actually leaving super early and going straight into work from the airport), and Anand would be heading of for some solo traveling in Belgium. So we sat about our mission to squeze the last little bit of life we could from this trip.

Shots and beers seemed to be pretty flowing. Anand ended up getting into a 45 minute discussion about US Foreign Policy with some of the smokers outside the pub, while Rance and I talked soccer. Eventually, the boys decided to sic a fat and horny british girl in an Arsenal jersey on me, a fact that I was in no way thankful for...though it did somehow end up with me demonstrating that I could moonwalk in the bar. Mostly she just walked by me a bunch of times, running her hand on my arm or chest saying things like "oy, we like...we like a lot"

We sweet talked the kindly Irish bartender into letting us stay for an hour past closing with talk of how as NYCers we were used to later nights in the bar, how we had been shut out of the game by a dickish cop, and how it was the last night of the trip. I made my typically snide comment that the nicest person we met in London was an Irishman. Finally, at 2...he had to give us the boot. We hoped in a cab and headed back to the hotel for a few hours of sleep before we'd finish The Great Escape.

M83 do their thing very well...xtra big Gaulic synthesizers and squelling guitars give this song the impression of a space launch circa 1986. That's a compliment.

Assisted Living - The Mendoza Line - We're All In This Alone - 2000

Anand and I made our way back to the first bar in the area, swimming our way against the stream of fans with appropriate tickets happily walking their way to the stadium. We came to the first bar, which had a sign that said "Home" supporters only. I flashed my Arsenal Jersey under my hoodie to prove that I came to support the good guys.

We actually told the bouncer at the door about what had happened with us and the cop, which actually won us the respect of the bar. The first round was on the house. And fortunately we got to watch an Arsenal victory, with Robin Van Persie converting a penalty to give us the lead.

We drank a lot...I mean, A. LOT. It was the only way to dull the pain of the experience.

The Mendoza Line continue their run of low-self esteem, mumblecore, alt-country/westerburg-esque rock here. You don't listen to this band expecting surprises, just a tasty kind of dissapointment.

Assessment - The Beta Band - Heroes to Zeros - 2004

So there we stood at our own temple of football, about to go in. Since Rance was a late addition to the trip, he hadn't gotten tickets with Anand and I. He had actually pulled some strings at work to get into one of the press boxes for the game. We shook hands and wished him luck, feeling bad for him that he'd have to spend the evening relatively sober with work people while we'd enjoy the game from our seats...

Now you have to understand the way it works...games at The Emirates are sold out, pretty much in perpetuity. The unused tickets are announced by the club 2 weeks before the game and then sold back to the populace at face value...but that would mean waiting two weeks before the trip to actually confirm your tickets. The other option, is to go through a website to buy someones season ticket for that game only at extremely marked up prices...which is what we did.

We walked around the stadium looking for our entrance, which was near the away section. The particular game was against Roma...an Italian team. Now as much stick as the stereotypical Brit soccer fan gets for being a hooligan, that's pretty much a passe image...particularly in London. Since the Hillsborough disaster in 89, British soccer games have been pretty tightly controlled. Beyond that, the game has simply become too expensive...working class fans can't afford the tickets anymore and in general this is the population that has nothing to lose by cracking a few heads at a match. Italian fans are another matter all together.

Italian games saw 7 fatal stabbings last year...with Roma being one of the worst offenders. A line of police blocked the entrance to make sure the Italian fans were well behaved...the problem was, we had to walk through this line of police with our illegally purchased tickets.

We were through and in the clear when he saw us. The one cop in the whole world who thought a couple of American tourists with scalped tickets were the biggest threat to security. He closed down on us fast, walking a good 15 feet away from his line of bobbies and stopping us cold and asking to see our tickets.

Anand assuming there was nothing out of the ordinary showed him the ticket...he immediately confiscated it and stated that he was under orders to do so with all scalped season passes. He asked me for mine as well, and I turned it over, while trying to reason with him...but he clearly had a giant stick up his ass. Two stadium attendants and a second cop all came over to him and asked him to just let us in...but he shock his head "I am under orders to confiscate these, I am going to report this to the club and the persons who sold these tickets will have their season passes revoked as well"

Every person who tried to help us was shot down and left shaking their head that anyone could be such a cock. Finally the cop relented enough to give us the two ID numbers so we could try to at least purchase these seats legally. He then gave us a patronizing lecture that began with "Now you two seem like intelligent gentlemen"

We went to the ticket stand and were told that the game was sold out. When I pointed out that we knew for a fact that there were two empty seats, the ticket seller simply said "The club has no comment on that". The fight was over...we were not going to see the game...except fucking last minute Rance. Anand slumped to the ground and it took me a good amount of convincing just to get him to go to a bar so we could at least SEE the game. Our prize at the end of the rainbow had been ripped from us by one gigantic asshole cop...we were pissed.

The Beta Band got most of it's acclaim after "Dry the Rain" made a stellar cameo in High Fidelity. Sadly, the Scots never did much past that...though there subsequent albums weren't bad. This song is actually pretty good...it just sounds like a faster Dry the Rain.

Assassination on X-Mas Eve - Archers of Loaf - All The Nations Airports - 1996

After dropping off the car, we had a fair bit of spare time, thanks to Anand's action star driving. We got back into London and into the hotel. After that, it was back to North London on the above-ground transit train to get ready for the game. At this point it was reality...we were going to see Arsenal play a Champions League match...live! At Emirates Stadium! It was no longer the prize at the end of our trip, it was now the reality of our evening and we were going to enjoy the hell out of it.

After briefly considering a few of the other restaurants we ended up back at The Famous Cock. We figured one more night of British Pub food wouldn't kill us. As Rance pointed out, the food in that country was like someone left a 12 year old in charge of the entire cuisine.

"What do you want for dinner little Allister?"

"I want sausages and mashed potatoes, all covered in gravy!!! I want everything in a pot pie. And I want french fries at every meal!"

After 3 beers and a shot, it was time to make our way to the stadium. We walked down the street with the throngs of people all feeling the same excitement as us. The big game was coming and we were going to be there.

All the Nation's Aiports is the only Archer's album that I owned during the life of the band, I came around to the rest of their catalog after their demise. Sadly, I never got to see them live...though I've seen Crooked Fingers many times and Bachman solo once, I will always feel as if I missed one of the great bands of my generation by not seeing these guys. This song rocks.

Asphyxiated Circle - Guided By Voices - Half Smiles of the Decomposed - 2004

Jesus, is every song on Half Smiles...in the A's? Such a glut of GBV. This is one of those mid-tempo rockers that crowded most of the later GBV albums, giving them the appearance of being more "even" but in reality they just replaced the weird tracks with boring, if competant tracks...I'm not sure that's a step up.

So we woke up early on the final morning in Scotland. Kick off was at 8PM and we wanted to make sure we could make it back to London with plenty of time to drop off the car, check into the hotel, pick up our tickets, and hopefully get some pregaming in before we had to be to the stadium. We were actually on the road by shortly before 9, which should have put us back at the car rental place by 4...

We cruised our way out of Glasgow, listening to Brits bitch on Talk Radio about how they were considering privitizing the royal mail, callers were calling in irate! Irate I tell you, that the government was considering taking away their rights as British Citizens. Now I'm all for greater government socialism in our country, but really, seriously...how gives a fuck about the mail? When was the last time anyone mailed anything? Privatize it, who cares?

Anyway, as soon as we were clear of Glasgow two things became apparent. The first was that Rance was going to sleep through most of the car ride in the front seat. The second was that Anand was going to drive like Batman. I sat in the back seat taking pictures of the Scottish/English country side and trying to pretend that I wasn't certain that we were going to die in a blaze of twisted metal.

The 7 hour drive from Glasgow to London was done in slightly less than 5 hours. I'm still not sure if Anand ever got a mountain of speeding tickets from the electric cameras, but he certainly broke every traffic law in Great Britain...but on the flipside, we got to London by 2PM.