My iPod, My OCD

B - Boy Bouillabaise - The Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique - 1989

2009-10-01T13:29:00.002-04:00

I work right outside the NYC side entrance to the Holland Tunnel. Me and several of my coworkers just spent a solid 10 minutes looking at a traffic accident out our window, that caused traffic to back up for blocks. We couldn't actually see any damage to either car, we didn't hear a crash, yet several people (and one baby)were taken out of the front car in stretchers. Curious...

On another note, here is the last track on the Beastie's breakthrough and (in my opinion) still best album. They seem to be borrowing a trick from The Beatles here by releasing a suite of half completed songs as a single song...unless of course you get the new reissue which separates each segment as an individual song...much the same that the CD version of Abbey Road does to side two. In the interest of simplicity, I've only included the link for the first song in the suite.

B - Pinback - Offcell - EP

2009-09-30T17:47:00.004-04:00

B!!!! I made it to B! That's right haters, doubters, mimes and Rance, I made it to the letter B and it only took me a year and a half. Ugh.

Well, at least I'm not in the A's anymore.

Anyway, gotta love Rob Crowe's "white guy attempting to deliver a dancehall rant" on this puppy. If it weren't for that odd machine noise intro, this would be one of my favorite Pinback songs actually.

I've always assumed the title was a reference to the key the song was played in, but with these guys you just never know and my ear isn't good enough to tell you for a fact that this song is actually in B. Whatever, it definitely displays Pinback's rockier side, and for me that's their stronger side.

Awoo - The Hidden Cameras - Awoo - 2006

2009-09-30T17:26:00.003-04:00

So, I'm experimenting with adding Amazon links to my blog, should anyone wish to actually buy the songs I'm (occasionally) writing about. One of my co-workers was bored today and told me I should do this, so I figured "why not?".

Anyway, Awoo (the album) is one of those things that I downloaded after reading a good review listened to once or twice and liked well enough and then promptly never ever listened to again. It pops up on random from time to time and I find myself enjoying it just enough to not delete it...plus I seem to recall that there were a couple songs on this album that I was into...just not this one.

Not much of a recommendation, but hey...if you want to check them out, click the Amazon link.

Awkward Duet - Sons & Daughters - Love the Cup - 2004

2009-09-25T13:55:00.004-04:00

A surprisingly delicate cut from S&D, from back in the days when the guitar player used to sing too and pop sheen wasn't there foremost target. I saw these guys open up for Clinic at a CMJ show in 2003 and was thoroughly impressed with their girl/boy harmonies, ability to combine rockabilly instincts with dark noir undertones, and of course the completely unabashed Scottish accents that has since become a much more acceptable strategy (The Twilight Sad and Frightened Rabbits, I'm looking at you!).

So I went to go see Polvo in concert at The Belle House last night with some of my long time friends. The show was good, and it was nice to see 90's math rock getting it's due...but my concert experience was definitely shaded by a middle aged, totally sloshed Brit who insisted on wearing his narrow brim fedora through the whole show. Seriously dude, take off your fucking hat! Some of us would actually like to watch the show and not have our view constantly obstructed by your obnoxious affectation. I've never understood the need to display your personality through wardrobe. Why not display your personality through your words and actio...on second though, you're probably an asshole...just take the hat off during a concert so the rest of us can see the show, you limey douchebag.

Awful Bliss - Guided By Voices - Bee Thousand - 1994

2009-09-24T16:24:00.006-04:00

So I have a really awful story to go along with this song. Like a really, really embarrassing and shameful story, but frankly, it is what I think about when I hear this song and will be what I think about when I hear this song until the day I die...so I pretty much have to tell this story.

The song itself is relatively simple. One of the small handful of GBV tracks sung by reedy voiced "Classic Lineup" guitar player Tobin Sprout, it clocks in at barely over 1 minute long. It's a sad, acoustic ballad in the middle of an album of Pollard's bombastic triumphs. And it's really just one verse and a single line repeated a few times as a chorus, but epic song lengths were not GBV's forte.

So...about that story...it was the weekend before Thanksgiving of 99. I was living my last year in Cincinnati, saving money to move to NYC the following summer. My girlfriend at the time was visiting her family in Ecuador, and I decided to go grab a bite to eat with one of my friends. As there is jack-shit to do in Cincy, we ended up at the TGI Friday's in Kenwood drinking and eating Jack Daniel's Chicken Strips (Cuisine was not high on Cincy's list in the 90's...though my mother assures me it's gotten better). After a few we headed our separate ways.

Cut to Tuesday night by which point both myself and my friend have easily the worst food poisoning either of us have ever, ever had. It was so bad in fact that I couldn't drive to my family's thanksgiving celebration, because I was in the bathroom every 20 minutes AROUND THE CLOCK. And it's this around the clock thing that really brings us back to this song.

Now, I don't know if you've ever gone a few days straight sleeping only in little 15 minute bursts...but let me tell you, you start to go a little loopy. You live in a fog where the whole world is strange. It's like the worst drug you've ever EVER taken. I remember laying on my couch, Thanksgiving Day, trying to watch the Macy's Parade and drifting in and out of consciousness between trips to the toilet. (Again, I apologize for the scatological nature of this post)...and for some strange reason for that whole period, I just had that one single line "And I wouldn't dare to bring out this awful bliss" running in my head...over and over. I'm fairly certain it's what madness feels like. Like maybe Manson just kept hearing "Helter-Skelter" in his head, just like that...granted I wasn't homicidal...if anything I mostly just wanted to die...but still...

Anyway, by Friday I had to go to the ER and be rehydrated and given some anti-biotics. It took me about a week after that to get back on solid food, and I will honestly say without fear of exaggeration that nearly 10 years later...my stomach has never fully recovered...and I will never hear this song again without thinking about that just awful, awful 4 days.

Away with Murder - Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career - 2009

2009-09-23T17:16:00.005-04:00

Despite their move away from Merge records (a decision I will never support) Camera Obscura continues to do what they do and do it very well. Mopey, girl-group inflected, Scottish accented pop. Traceyanne Campbell continues to have the lowest self esteem in the world, but that, along with a wonderfully forlorn voice, is how she works. This particular song adds nice little country touches like the organ and peddle steel, all of which work well to increase the sad-sack vibe.

Away From The Numbers - The Jam - In The City - 1977

2009-09-23T15:09:00.003-04:00

And so The Jam continues it's odd stranglehold on the "A's"...with a solid rocking number from their first album, when they were still a post-punk band. Though again, the preponderance of Jam songs in the first letter of the alphabet gives the impression that I'm a bigger Jam fan than I actually am. Still this is a good song.

So, I ran into a former co-worker on the street...and it just baffles me how some people's lives are just destined for drama. Granted, I occasionally have an interesting and exciting life, I live in NYC: I go out a bit and work at a somewhat unorthodox company...but most nights I go home and watch movies with my girlfriend, watch soccer with my boys, or play video games alone...but this girl...well, granted, she's 11 years younger than me and most would consider her a looker, but the amount of crazy things that happen to her do tend to leave me shaking my head.

On this particular occasion she informed me (I hadn't seen her since April or so) that she had recently gotten married. Though I'm used to her surprises, this one definitely caught me out of the blue, as last time I saw her she was complaining about the fact that she hadn't had a date in years. Additionally she was not wearing a ring. When I mentioned this fact to her, she just laughed and pointed out that she was marrying an old family friend so that he could get his papers and that she was being very well paid for it.

Now why doesn't this shit ever happen to me? Baffling.

Award Tour - A Tribe Called Quest - Midnight Marauders - 1993

2009-09-17T17:01:00.004-04:00

And so speaking of the frustration of following things that used to be a cool little niche that are now more and more mainstream...it's actually become harder and harder for me to be an American soccer fan (A soccer fan who is American, not a fan of the generally awful MLS).

Again, like Indie Rock, it's counter-intuitive. I would have thought, 10 years ago, that living in a world in which everyone knew who Pavement and The Pixies were would be AWESOME! But instead, I find it sort of troubling and frustrating. Well, Soccer has sort of become the same way. With EPL games becoming increasingly broadcast on Fox Soccer Channel, Setanta Sports and starting this season ESPN2 I have more opportunities than I ever did to watch the sport I love...but the problem with this came up yesterday.

Arsenal played the first round of the Champions League group stages yesterday against Belgian Champions Standard Liege. The game was live at 245 and was being shown on FSC at 5 PM. I set my TiVo, stayed away from the Internet in the afternoon and prepared to go home and watch my game. As it turned out, do to some collasally stupid defending Arsenal went down two goals in the first five minutes of the game (This is exceptionally fast, for those that don't know)...and within ten minutes after that I received all sorts of messages from various friends and acquaintances that know of my strange obsessions "Dude, sorry about your team", "Are you watching this, yikes!" and "Yeah, you may not want to watch this game..."

Now fortunately, we did come back to win 2-3, but...even as little as 3 years ago, no one I knew, besides my fellow soccer fans would have had any clue that there was a game on. And certainly none of them would have been watching...but there it was.

It's hard being me.

Anyway, this Tribe song is a further result of my girlfriend's attempt to broaden my horizons. It's fun, I don't hate it...that's about all you can ask, right?

Await Lightening - Amusement Parks on Fire - Out of the Angeles - 2006

2009-09-17T16:16:00.006-04:00

I generally have a problematic and troubled relationship with Pitchfork Media, but I did think that this article was well written and brought up a lot of valid points...it's a bit of a slog, but take a look if you have the time.

http://pitchfork.com/features/articles/7704-the-decade-in-indie

Despite being a review of the decade in Indie Rock, it largely details the problems of being a fan of a genre that was a niche when you found it but has become less and less of a niche by the year.

And Amusement Parks on Fire is as good enough a place to start with this conversation as any. The Nottingham band might have sound unique and like a niche band circa 1994 when Swervedriver came out of Oxford and had the brilliant idea to couple Shoegaze's sound textures with the drive of more traditional rock. But now, in 2009...or even in 2006 when this record came out...little sounds more safe than this band. This song could be in a car commercial, it could be played at an Applebees. Don't get me wrong, I listen to this band and generally enjoy them...but...the idea that this band, by virtue of being "indie rock" is breaking any new ground, or that it's underground existence is a product of the discerning tastes of their fans and the "ignorance" of the plebes holds little sway.

And so the bigger question remains, what are you when the very category that you defined yourself by...no longer makes sense as a definition. If that's not the question for our age...I don't know what is.

Avalon - Sigur Ros - Agaetis Byrjun - 2000

2009-09-15T16:27:00.000-04:00

Instrumental.

Available - The National - Sad Songs for Dirty Lovers - 2002

2009-09-15T14:54:00.005-04:00

I keep waiting for the The National to release an album that sounds like they do on this song. Every National album has 2-3 tracks like this that prove to the world that they know how to rock. These songs are invariably the singles and the songs that produce the most excitement when played live, but a deep dive into any National album will also show you that surrounding these 2-3 songs are usually 10 other songs that drift on through a fog of red wine and the inherent disappointment of adult relationships. These songs are often quite good, and at worst are just dull...but taken in total can make an album drag and drag. Much as loved 2007's The Boxer, it could have easily cut 3-4 of it's dirges, and replaced even one of them with another rocker in this vein and they would have had a perfect album on their hands.

Instead we must make due with the little bits of adrenaline that The National deign to serve to us between bouts of melancholia. Not that this song is without its share of darkness, in fact the bitter tale the lyrics spins is one of the uglier tales in band rife with them. A familiar tale for anyone acquainted with The National's catalog or single life in NYC, it tells of the story of man consistently compelled by liquor and sex to keep coming back to the same hopeless dysfunctional relationship...punctuated by Matt Beringer's wonderful parlour trick scream.

He uses that scream twice on this album (the other time on the equally great Slipping Husband), but since has seemed reluctant to pull it out again...but the effect that occurs when Beringer goes from his deep, honeyed baritone to a throat shredding screech of frustration is jaw dropping. Coupled with the lyrics "Why do you dress me down and liquor me up?!?" it presents the picture of a man who hates this woman for using such low methods to manipulate him, and hates himself more for allowing himself to be manipulated by them. Damn near note perfect.

Autumn Sweater - Yo La Tengo - I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One - 1997

2009-09-15T14:07:00.005-04:00

So now that I've finally finished describing my Boston trip in detail...what the hell do I talk about on this thing again? Oh yeah, right...music.

In 1997 Yo La Tengo were already 11 years into their career (though in all fairness, they were only 5 years with their most recognized, and current, lineup). With the somber masterpiece Painful and the rockier, slightly less consistent Electr-O-Pura behind them, they seemed to have settled into a comfortable groove of critic friendly, Velvet Underground-ish indie rock. All bets would have been on the band putting out more of the same for the remainder of their career, but I Can Hear The Heart... found the band exploring more eclectic styles.

Sure there were the moments of familiarity: neither Sugarcube nor Deeper Into Movies would have sounded out of place on previous albums...but what was most surprising was not only the range displayed by the band, but also the inventiveness, and there is probably no better place to start than with Autumn Sweater.

The band had done organ vamps before, but usually they were a method to find a new instrument for Ira Kaplan to wail on when he bored of his guitar. But this is no noise filled scronk fest. Instead it's a chord based jazzy shuffle (complete with bongo drums) led more by Georgia's snare drum than by Ira's playing or sad sack mumble-core vocals.

I've probably heard this song half a million times in my life, and while it's no longer the playlist staple it was in 1997 (back when we called them mix tape staples) I still can't help but get a little tingle at hearing the pleasure of three long time musical compatriots locked in perfect grove while a nebbishy husband sings about the chills he got upon first meeting his wife and she keeps perfect rhythm behind him.

Autumn of the Seraphs - Pinback - Autumn of the Seraphs - 2007

2009-09-14T17:02:00.004-04:00

We left the theater bar drunk as Mickey Roarke, but we weren't about to leave until we'd gotten the most out of Boston. We attempted to go visit the north end and take some pictures, but we ended up getting confused by Court St and found ourselves right back at Boston Commons where we were accosted by an old crazy drunk Irish (actually from Ireland) dude named Paul who spoke in rhymes and had his jaw tied with a white handkerchief.

Walking by one closed bar, we saw two guys and two girls hanging out in front of the establishment smoking. One of the girls was laying on the sidewalk, blowing smoke rings up in the air. As we passed she cooed a "Hello boys" to us in a voice that I suppose was trying to be alluring. We just nodded at which point she said "You two look hammered"...it occurred to me later that the right comeback was "We aren't the ones laying in the street, honey" but at the time the best I could manage was a "We are". She then asked (as we were already walking past them) if we were English (in reference to Anand's Arsenal jersey I would assume) which seems pretty silly considering I had already spoken and I'm clearly from Indiana.

Finally, we gave up on finding any after hours action and just resigned ourselves to taking pictures of the city. But by 330, when Anand showed no signs of stopping talking in that Shakespeare accent we decided head back to the hotel.

Our last bit of humor came as we were near our hotel. A woman excited an apartment building at 4AM, still wearing a cocktail dress, clearly hoping the early morning departure would mean an escape from the prying eyes that usually go with a walk of shame. She immediately stumbled on her high heels three feet from the door. Anand and I applauded and gave her a thumbs up...cause we're jerks.

Anyway, the next day was spent checking out of our hotel and driving back to NYC. We rocked Boston as hard as we could and found it somewhat lacking...try harder Boston, try harder...you have the right ingredients.

Piano is usually a bad sign for Pinback. The band is typically at its best when they rock their punk rock side out, whereas ballads tend to be dragged down by their laid back cali vibe. Beyond which, a stint at the piano means that Zach isn't on the bass, where he consistantly proves himself to be the most inventive, technically skilled bass player in Indie Rock...but this song has strengths that most of their piano efforts lack.

For starters, it's not as "dreamy" as a lot of their slower stuff can be, in fact by the time the song reaches the "It's the monster at the end of the book" climax, it stands up to their heaviest songs. Beyond that, Pinback can frequently be a band for whom lyrics are just a place holder to accompany the sounds they want to make, but this songs rather sinister lyrics also aid in lifting it out of the stoned San Diego vibe they so often get stuck in.

And for the final touch of class, there is a truly awesome vocal performance by Rob Crowe. I always admire Crowe's restraint with his vocals. He's certainly shown before that, when he wants to, he has one hell of a set of pipes on him...but most of the time he hangs back and picks his moments (Take the end of Concrete Seconds for a great example) to display his talent...but this song actually lets him show off a bit more than usual and he does so. Impressively, I might add.

Autoriche - Autechre - Incunabula - 1994

2009-09-14T14:50:00.003-04:00

We left Eastern Standard in a cab, in an effort to catch another one of the bars on our list before it closed, but of course we showed up to find the place wasn't even open on Sundays to begin with. So that left us bar-less at midnight...I made a game time decision and headed us towards Chinatown...there was a bar I had been to on one of my previous trips that I thought might stay open later. But we found something else along the way...

As we were walking down through the theater district we happened upon two Irish bars right next to each other. The first, was shut down for a private party, but the second was wide open and actually fairly busy for that late on a Sunday night. We plopped down at the bar and got ourselves a round.

Observing the unusually busy bar it quickly became evident what the deal was...in one corner was a group of ratty t-shirted burly dudes with longish manes and scruffy facial hair, in another was a group of slightly posh seeming openly gay men, at the front stood a pretty-ish woman who was less pretty the closer you got and wearing too much blush...she kept practicing a weird pose with one of the gay men where they would both stand facing into the bar, shoulder to shoulder, with her hands locked together at the fingers...we were at the wrap party for a play.

Upon sharing this observation with Anand, he immediately decided this was the funniest thing in the world and proceeded to spend the majority of the rest of the evening speaking in a bad phony Shakespearean actor accent. "Ohhhhhhhh, me lord, wouldst though parlay with the barkeep and find me another mug of ale?"

At some point I went to the bathroom and saw a bunch of guys shredding lines off the waiters tray. Later on, the only other guy in the bar who didn't seem to be with the play came up to us and asked us if we knew where he could buy weed. The actress approached me at some point with one of the gays as a wing man, she had apparently mistaken us for stage hands and was either honestly curious about the progress of the breakdown of the show, or was looking to find a bastion of heterosexuality. Either way, I just sort of mumbled something about being a tourist and having no idea what she was talking about.

2 O'clock rolled around and though last call had been...er called, no one seemed to be in a hurry to leave. Though the bar tender kept dropping hints that it was quitting time, Anand was insistent that we stay and try to figure out what sort of action was going to happen when they closed the doors...needless to say, we did not get this invitation...instead we finished our drinks and headed back out.

I have nothing to say about Autechre...their one of those groups that you have on your iPod cause bands you admire, speak in hushed and worshipful tones about them...but my actual experience of listening to them is generally a shrug and an "OK?" No different here.

Autonomy Boy - The Long Blondes - Singles - 2008

2009-09-10T16:35:00.003-04:00

Jesus...still trying to wrap up a story that took place over a month ago...anyway, after we got back from the game we all took a few minutes to get cleaned up before heading back out into the city. I exited the shower to find Skip laying in his bed, under the covers. I asked him if he intended to stay there, he stated that he'd probably just slow us down...so we headed back into Boston one man down.

The first place we went was probably the coolest bar we went to in Boston, a basement bar on Commonwealth called "The Lower Depths". The furniture was oak booths, the beer selection was impressive, and the bar tender was a friendly indie rock dude, but after a few rounds, we decided to check out another bar on our list.

The next bar was an upscale cocktail lounge called Eastern Standard where I had a fine whiskey smash. Unfortunately by this point I was also so hammered that I could not stop staring at the woman in the corner in an absurdly cleavage-y dress. Even the usually reticent Anand had to point out "Can't stop staring at those boobies, can you?" I blame the whiskey. It was abundantly clear that we had no business in a bar this classy when we were clearly hammered and under-dressed.

I tend to like Long Blondes songs when they are at their most Pretenders-esque (Weekend with out Makeup, Knife for the Girls, Christmas is Cancelled) but in reality the band is more typically a kind of Ska band, as demonstrated on this song. And I fucking hate Ska.

Autonomy - Buzzcocks - Another Music in a Different Kitchen - 1978

2009-08-31T15:35:00.004-04:00

As much as the drive to the stadium was a better experience than expected, the stadium itself was a lesson in disappointment. We paid $30 to park in a lot almost a mile from the stadium itself, in an effort to prevent being stuck in the bottle neck that escaping the stadium would be post game.

As the game we were actually there to see was a match between two Italian teams, the people we walked along with were a healthy mixture of Italians, American soccer fans, and various ex-pats just glad to be able t see some quality "footie". Even the dudes at the liquor store where we bought our tailgating supplies chatted a bit about soccer...it was encouraging to see how the game has opened up in America.

Once we actually got to the stadium itself getting to our seats involved walking up a seemingly endless series of ramps snaked along the outside of the bleachers. On the walk we watched some Italian try to race his girlfriend only to elbow her out of the way and watch as she wiped out face down on the concrete. We all stopped to make sure she was ok, giving the jerk the appropriate level of dirty looks. He seemed indifferent. After we finally got to our level, we discovered that there was only 1 ATM on the level and that it was out of order...oh and absolutely nothing accepted plastic.

We tried to get beer at a beer stand that served microbrews from New England (one of the few nice touches) only to discover that nearly everything was sold out and the few beers that they did have were foaming uncontrollably...it took the woman behind the counter nearly 10 minutes to pour out three beers causing us to miss the beginning of the game and the first goal (of only 2). We spent the rest of the game drinking margaritas (Margarita stands were a nice touch...we need those at more sporting events, particularly for summer games). Due to the lack of cash, I never ate, but the hot dog Anand had he proclaimed to be the worst hot dog he ever had. At least the view was good.

When the game (which was itself a bit lackluster, but then we weren't expecting much from a preseason exhibition match...even between two giants with a fierce rivalry) was drawing to a close, we tried to leave a few minutes early to beat the crowd. We slipped in with a couple of reporters to try and sneak down on the elevator and were understandably turned away. We then tried to go over on the (COMPLETELY EMPTY) stairs only to be told that the stairs were reserved for media only...I had to be dragged away before I attempted to shout the security guard to death. I still, an entire month later, fail to see the harm in allowing us to go down those stairs. There is little that infuriates me more than a rule followed for the sake of foolish consistency.

Ultimately we got back to our car and navigated the back roads successfully. Another pleasant drive home awaited us now with a pleasant buzz and a good tan for the non-drivers.

The Buzzcock's can always be relied upon to deliver a good jolt of punky power pop and this song is no exception. It's always amazing to think that these guys were putting out music like this in 1978.

Autobiography - Sloan - One Chord To Another - 1997

2009-08-27T14:48:00.007-04:00

With our disappointing meal in our bellies, we were reasonably impressed with the museum itself. We spent a considerable amount of time walking through the Asian exhibit, particularly a reconstructed Buddhist shrine that was given the appropriate amount of reverence...unfortunately the clock was ticking, so we didn't quite get to see everything. Though most importantly we did get to see the weird giant creepy baby heads that were on display outside the back entrance of the museum.

After we picked up the car, we did have one last bit of business to attend to before the game...As we were parting ways with Uncle Singh the night before, he had stated that his wife had made a lunch for us to eat before we went out to the game and that she would be very disappointed if we did not eat it. We were stuck between not wanting to be rude, and not wanting to have even more of our road trip eaten up with familial obligations. The compromise solution was for us to swing by on the way to the game and pick up the food in a picnic basket to take with us. This situation was further complicated by the fact that Anand had lost his phone at some point during the evening last night, and Skip didn't have anything in his phone besides Uncle Singh's house number. We made several attempts to contact them at this number and left messages...we even stopped by their house, but the couple was apparently out and about and waiting for our call on their cells. After a few minutes of knocking on their front door we took off.

The one time I was truly happy about the Singh's love for their GPS Devices was on the drive to the stadium. From the Uncle's house in Alston it took us down back roads, rather than the main highway, allowing us to enjoy the warm summer air as we drove at high speeds down green tree lined streets...rather than sitting in traffic on the gray and dismal 90.

Autobiography is one of those songs...the song you don't like on an album you otherwise love. Sloan's extremely (Self-consciously) Beatlesque One Chord To Another is one of the great loves of my early 20's, songs like the bouncy "Can't Face Up" and the horn driven "Everything You've Done Wrong" are quintessential soundtrack items for my pre-NYC, post college Midwestern boredom driving...but this song has always bored the holy hell out of me, and annoyed me with it's WAY-TOO-CLEVER pun lyrics, but I can't bring myself to delete it...cause I love the album. I know, I know...I have issues.

Auto Rock - Mogwai - Mr. Beast - 2006

2009-08-25T15:01:00.003-04:00

As expected, we spent a big part of the morning sleeping in. The soccer game we had come to attend didn't start until 5, so even with the lie in we had a bit of tourist time. We figured, we'd hike down to the Museum of Fine Arts and grab brunch somewhere along the way...and yet again, Boston seemed determined to thwart us.

As we walked each block between our hotel and the museum we were continually amazed by the lack of brunch options. There was not one neighborhood cafe or at least a pub with a big Irish fry-up...but no, nothing but chain restaurants and houses.

We finally arrived at the museum and resigned ourselves to eating at the restaurant onsite. The good news was that there were three of them, the bad news was that they were all crappy in one way or another. The downstairs was simply a cafeteria, the upstairs was a place that was going for the illusion of being upscale and offered a $35 pre-fix brunch (I wouldn't even pay that in NYC, let alone at a museum in brunch-less Boston). The place in the middle was where we settled, but none of us were overly enthused with the option. I got a bowl of seafood chowder and ate a bunch of the free bread. It would turn out to be my only meal of the day.

Ahhh Mogwai, is there anything you can't make sound ominous? Since their songs are generally wordless, the titles are usually the only place you can look for meaning and in this one it's fairly easy to see. From the plunking, Knight Rider keyboards, to the slow build of the synths and guitars swelling to an almost overwhelming level of intensity this is the sound of driving alone on a rainy night with a gnawing anger in your stomach. Having personally driven through the black Scottish night, and seeing just exactly how dark, dark can get...I feel like I know exactly what this song is about.

Authority Song - John Cougar Mellencamp - Uh-Huh - 1983

2009-08-25T14:28:00.003-04:00

The last bar actually skirted the rules a little bit and let us stay until 215. I guess this is as close as Boston gets to "after hours". Once we were finally given the boot from whatever random sports bar this was, we headed back to the hotel.

However, being who we are, we decided to walk the five miles back...at 230 in the morning. All in all it was an enjoyable time. We jumped in a sprinkler that was watering the lawn of some Boston College building (Well, at least Anand and I did, Skip looked at us like we were idiots). We took some pictures along Commonwealth Ave and enjoyed the sort of freedom that comes with walking through a city that is otherwise completely asleep.

When we got back to the hotel, Skip called it a night. His intestinal unpleasantness had subsided, but it left him a little lagging in the energy department. Anand and I decided to wander around taking some pictures of the city at night...which lead to one of our bigger disappointments of the trip. We walked all the way down up from the prudential building to city hall. We figured it's golden dome would be an awesome site all lit up and glowing in the night. We'd have no tourists in our way to obscure the picture and we'd have the commons between us to keep us entertained on the way there and back.

Upon arrival, we realized one flaw with this plan...they don't light the goddamn thing up at night. Like so many other things about this city, it was a let down. Boston could be so much cooler than it is...

Speaking of which...I'm definitely letting my white trash roots show here. There is almost no criticism one could level at "The Coug" that I wouldn't 100% agree with. Is he cheesy? Is he faux-earnest? Is he derivative? Does he need to wear those ridiculous tight jeans and add "cougar" to his name? To all of those, the answer is No, No, No and one million times NO! But then, you didn't grow up in Indiana, where the man was already considered a state treasure a few albums into his career. You've never actually driven by the Tasti-Freeze in Spencer Indiana (probably...I mean, I don't know you...maybe you have). I'd love to hate The Coug for all of the things mentioned above, for his glamorization of a small town America that never really existed, and for his really bad mullet...but at the end of the day, I'm a Hoosier, and I was born in a small town...and I fought the Authority and the Authority always wins.

Author Unknown - Jason Faulkner - Can You Still Feel? - 1999

2009-08-20T17:10:00.002-04:00

After we cleared out of The Middle East, Uncle Singh suggested we hit another nearby indie rock club called TT The Bear's, but I think we were all musiced out. At this point, I had simply accepted that this was going to be my Saturday night in Boston. It was approaching midnight, bars in this town closed early and the older Singhs showed no sign of wishing to go home. My hopes for a night of drunken debauchery and carousing had been transformed into a mildly pleasant night with a nice couple and an early call time.

We drove down to another bar in Allston (after the GPS was set, of course) to close out our night. The Sunset Tap and Grill had come highly recommended to me as the best beer selection in the city, and it seemed like it would be the type of place that we would all enjoy. Upon arrival, I was actually satisfied that I had picked the right place. An impressive beer menu and draft list was presented to us and we grabbed a quiet table in the corner to close out the night. Anand and I decided to sample the mead.

The table next to us got a plate of nachos...which I have to say was the biggest plate of nachos I've ever seen in my light. It could have fed a small village. If any of us had been even remotely hungry, we would have gotten them. As it stood, with our belly's full of fine Italian food all we could do was stare in amazement at the enormity of the plate.

After a couple of drinks last call was announced and we wrapped up our night. As we walked the older Singhs to their car, Uncle Singh asked if we wanted to come back to their apartment and drink some wine...we declined, hoping to take advantage of what little we had left of our night. We even declined a drive back to our hotel, as we wanted to walk. We put them in their car, thanked them profusely and then as soon as they were out of site, went back to the only bar on the strip open till 2.

This little power-pop nugget by Jason Faulkner manages to squeeze in the most jamming flute solo this side of Anchorman into it's late 90's instrumentation...and that's saying something.

Australia - The Shins - Wincing The Night Away - 2007

2009-08-13T14:27:00.002-04:00

Once dinner had finished, we all piled back into the Singh's Acura and headed towards The Middle East (after setting the GPS, of course). The Middle East is Boston's equivalent of Mercury Lounge or Bowery Ballroom (bigger than the first, smaller than the second) it's a bar with a performance space where your mid-level Indie bands play. I was under the assumption that we would be hitting the bar half of the venue, enjoying some tunes and beverages and then going our separate ways...and yet again, my assumptions would prove to be incorrect.

As soon as we got to the bar, Uncle Singh proceeded to lead us down to the performance area and buy us tickets for whatever band happened to be playing...a band that absolutely none of us knew.

The lower level stank of patchouli and BO. The band itself was some sort of sludge metal band from Athens Georgia, that was louder than even the younger of us wanted to deal with. I was decidedly older than most of the audience, so I can only imagine how the older Singhs felt. Aunt Singh was certainly doing her best to appear as if she was having a good time, though she was clearly not. All of us tried to be gracious, since they boys' uncle had purchased our cover...but clearly none of us were having much fun. Anand and I stepped outside to smoke and get out of the noise and stench and the rest of the group followed us...it was clear that we would not be going back in.

I've been listening to Wincing The Night Away a little bit lately...it's not the crushing disappointment that it seemed on first release. In the early part of the decade, The Shins released a wonderful, shimmery indie-pop debut album. Shortly after their less shimmery, but still quite good second album was released, tool bag etraordinaire Zach Braff saddled them with the unreasonable expectation of being "the band that will change your life"...suddenly they went from being a cozy little secret to the poster children for the new wave of Indie bands...and that's when they seem to have hit the wall. WTNA isn't a bad album, it just couldn't possibly live up those sort of expectations...fucking Braff.

Australia - The Kinks - Arthur (or The Decline and Fall of the British Empire) - 1969

2009-08-12T16:01:00.002-04:00

We arrived at the restaurant around 730. It was a nice modern Italian place in the ground floor of a swanky hotel in Cambridge with a patio that looked out over the Charles, but since we were late for our reservation the places on the patio were all taken. We were seated inside, only to find ourselves the ONLY customers on the inside.

Now Anand and I had discussed this on the train ride out...we figured we stick around for dinner and maybe an after dinner cocktail or two and then we wrap up around 10 and go check out some of the bars in Allston and Cambridge, flirt with some Boston girls and then head back to the hotel. Simple plan. But from the get go, Uncle Singh was talking about taking us to some of the bars after dinner, and a picture was being painted here.

Now, let me first say, that the boys' uncle and their aunt were both very sweet, kind, and generous people. They paid for our dinner and nearly all the drinks that followed...they were nothing but gracious, friendly, and charming...but spending my entire Saturday night in Boston with the Singh family wasn't exactly how I envisioned this evening going.

The waitress came around to take our order, and she was immediately told by the Uncle that he wanted to have a few cocktails first, maybe have a few appetizers, and just hang out before he ordered dinner. At that point, I was certain of what was going on. Regardless of MY vision, it was clear that he envisioned a fun night on the town with his favorite nephews. When this man was my age, the Singh's would have been teenagers...he was the cool uncle who bought them drunks and took them out to rock shows. And now he lived in Boston, a town he had just moved to 1 month ago. He and his wife were both professionals, and between their jobs and the move they hadn't been out for six months...his very sweet wife was clearly delighted to be out on the town. Obviously, I was going to be stuck with them for the long haul.

After a few rounds of dinner, we did order our dinner and dessert and more cocktails. The food was quite good, and the drinks even better. It was well after ten when we finally headed out, Uncle Singh paying the bill without us ever seeing it. He was now ready to take us to phase two of his plan...

I was at a friend's birthday last week when the wife of the birthday boy chimed in that she thought The Kinks were probably the greatest rock band ever. Several people, all of whose opinions I respected, agreed with her. I just can't hang, I guess. I love a few of their songs (Victoria is particularly awesome) but by and large they bore the holy hell out of me...I try, I really do...but I just don't see the charm. Ah well.

Aunties and Uncles - The Jam - News of the World B-Side - 1978

2009-08-12T13:55:00.002-04:00

Which brings us to the car...Now, I certainly haven't spent enough time around other Indians beyond the Singhs to know if this is some sort of Indian cultural thing...or just particular to this specific family, but my God are these fuckers useless without a GPS device. How did they drive before they were invented.

The Singhs had insisted we pay the extra $10 to rent a car with GPS, and in all fairness, it did come in quite handy the following day when we'd take back roads to get to the stadium...but on the drive up, the brothers had spent a solid ten minutes trying to program the address of the hotel into the GPS and then find a way to successfully mount it on the window or dashboard...instead of, you know, just driving to Boston, following the signs and then figuring it out.

So here we sat, wedged in the back seat of their turn-of-the-millennium luxury sedan, already late for dinner and waiting while a middle aged Indian couple programmed their GPS device. Now, what made this slightly more ridiculous was that, as the car was nearly 10 years old...it had a GPS built into the dashboard, but since this was an old and slow model, they had also purchased a newer, shinier GPS...and they were now trying to program both or either of them to tell them how to get to the restaurant. The restaurant was just on the other side of the Charles, in Cambridge...again, simply driving over there was, I guess, not an option. After 5 or so minutes of fiddling with it, they finally got one of them to work and we headed out.

Sometimes a band can put out material as a B-side that is every bit as strong as their A-Side material. The Beatles were, of course, masters of it (Daytripper, Penny Lane, Revolution). Radiohead, in their heyday certainly put out some amazing b-sides (Permenant Daylight, Trickster, Palo Alto, Pearly*), and I would say that in this instance The Jam have put out a song that stands with their best work. Solid rabble rousing, that's equal parts punk and Beatle-esque...it's everything Paul Weller does, done well.

Auf Achse - Franz Ferdinand - Franz Fredinand - 2004

2009-08-11T16:24:00.003-04:00

I knew going up to Boston that The Singh brothers needed to put in a visit with their uncle who had recently moved to Boston. So after a series of phonetags and voicemails it was finally determined that we'd be having dinner with them on Saturday night. Anand got his uncle on the phone and attempted to make arrangements to meet at the restaurant, but his uncle was insistent that he keep dinner a surprise and that we meet up with them at their place in Brighton before dinner.

We took the T out there, which was slow and painful. Once you are out of Boston Central, the train runs above ground on street level. This means that the trains must stop at stop lights...in addition to it's already scheduled stops, making for a frustrating, lurching experience that is only slightly less annoying than taking a bus through Queens.

We finally arrived at our stop on Washington St. and began our relatively short walk to the boys' uncle's house. It was then that I was informed of a situation brewing in our little party. It seems that one member of our party, who shall remain nameless, but was neither Anand nor me...had been having some stomach issues during the trip. This person had purchased some medicine at the CVS the night before to correct this particular stomach issue and had taken some in the morning. When this proved ineffective, he'd taken more in the afternoon...now, several hours later, the medicine was beginning to take hold and he was desperately in need of place to take care of the situation.

When we arrived at the door, it took Uncle Singh several moments to come downstairs, causing the afflicted party to shuffle quite a bit and to occasionally grasp the chain link fence and clinch. Eventually, we were admitted to their very nice residence and Anand and I were left to make small talk and pretend not to notice the amount of time our fallen comrade had been in the bathroom.

Finally, when all was clear, we piled in the car to head to our dinner reservations...which we were already 15 minutes late for.

Most Franz Ferdinand songs sound pretty much the same, and either you like that vibe or you don't. On their first album, I generally like that vibe.

Auditorium - Guided by Voices - Alien Lanes - 1995

2009-08-10T17:15:00.001-04:00

Following our child heavy adventure at the aquarium, we took a seat at an outdoor bar in Quincy Market to get our drink on. The day was getting hot and our walking and museum going had left us a little parched. Quincy Market is basically the same as the South Street Seaport here in NYC, designed for tourists, dominated by over-priced chains, and full of people that you are deadly certain that you are cooler than...but it still has it's seaport town charm. And you can't knock a margarita on the boardwalk on a hot day.

After we finished our drink we walked back to the hotel. Though Anand and I weren't particularly interested, Skip, the younger Singh brother was curious to see the Cheers bar (Which is actually called The Bull and the Finch) so we walked back via Commonwealth Ave. After a bit of circuitous walk we found ourselves in front of the famous sign only to find a line of people coming out the door. Both Anand and I had been to the bar on previous trips, and assured Skip that A) it was just a bar and B) the inside looked nothing like the show, and that C) there was no way we were going to wait in line to get into a bar on a Saturday afternoon.

Finally, we swung back to our hotel for a brief late afternoon respite before our evening plans would kick in...

Back in 1995 Uncle Bob Pollard wanted to record arena rock, and by God if the powers that be were not going to let him do it on their terms he'd do it on his own. Auditorium is one of the charming mid-90's lo-fi attempts at said arena rock that GBV would make a name for themselves on. Of course, 4 years later, Pollard would get a chance to record this type of music the way he wanted to and we'd all come to realize that we preferred it when he had to improvise with a cassette recorder in his garage. Just think of what a shitty movie Jaws would have been if Spielberg could have gotten that fucking shark to work.

Auditor - Britt Daniel/Brian Reitzell - Stranger Than Fiction(OST) - 2006

2009-08-04T17:04:00.003-04:00

We ate lobster rolls on the water at a place called The Chart House, which I gather was at one time John Hancock's counting house. The history nerd in me couldn't help but be amused by this fact. We sat outside, next to a family gathering of sorts. There were two older parents, with their adult son and his girlfriend/wife/fiancee and an additional man who I think was the other son, but who said very little. In fact most of them said very little, save for the daugher in law (or whatever) who did not shut up through the entire meal. Her father in law, clearly detested her and would occassionally attempt to talk to the men about the Red Sox, only for her to dominate the conversation the whole time.

The thing that always baffles me about people who talk loudly and constantly in public, is that they seem completely unaware that they are broadcasting information about themselves to everyone around them. They are giving everyone ample opportunity to judge them...and generally with this type of person, there is plenty to judge. This woman was clearly shallow and materialistic, petty and amused by awful things. She told a story about how as a child they'd take vacations where her family would drive an RV to a destination only to sleep in the hotel. It never seemed to occur to her that this might make her appear pampered and awful. She never thought of these things, all she could think of was how wonderful it was to have people listening to her, to be the center of attention...regardless of whether that attention was meritted. The arrival of her food did not stop her verbal diaherria.

Following our meal, we went to the Aquarium, standing in line for nearly 1/2 an hour to get tickets. Nearly a decade in NYC has made me forget a truth about museums of any type in American places that are not NYC, a lesson I should have remembered from my trip to DC. NYC, due to it's booming tourism industry and self appointed need to be seen as a cultural epicenter, regards its museums with a sort of European air. Museums are places where adults go to be edified about culture or educated about science. Museums in any other American city are places you take your kids so you can pretend you are doing something "educational"

The Aquarium itself was impressive, with it's central cone of water with a descending ramp wrapped around it and individual exhibits on the oppossing wall. The problem is, you couldn't get anywhere near these exhibits due to the sheer mass of children between you and what you'd want to see. Being polite, I'd stand aside and wait for a group of kids to clear...as soon as they did I'd step up and look at what I wanted to see...only for another group of kids to decide that the space between me and the glass was a place they could stand to get a better view...never mind that someone else was there first and viewing the fish. After about 45 minutes we gave up...there was just no way the kids were going to be polite, and no way that we were going to get to see what we want. With a few exceptions, it was $21 down the drain. If I had wanted to be annoyed by children, I could have just gone to Park Slope for the day.

Listening to these songs in alphabetical order means that I have heard this brief instrumental, performed by Britt Daniel of Spoon on the Stranger Than Fiction soundtrack, several times immediately following "Audience with the Pope"...the problem is that for the first few listens, I assumed that this was just an outro to the previous song. It actually works really well, in fact I think they are even in the same key and the same basic tempo. What is ultimately a coincidence of the alphabet and my particular tastes makes sure that "Audience..." well always sound a bit too brief without it's "Outro".

Audience with the Pope - Elbow - The Seldom Seen Kid - 2008

2009-08-04T16:37:00.003-04:00

After a bit of a sleep in the Singh bros and I were up and out the door before noon, and we couldn't have asked for a more beautiful day. 87 degrees, no humidity, a perfect ocean breeze and not a cloud in the sky greeted us when we walked out the hotel door. Our first activity for the day was the Aquarium, and we decided that there would be no better way to get there than to walk across town on this beautiful day.

If you didn't get a chance to read my European adventure from February, then I probably should explain again that I love to walk...and if possible would rather walk somewhere even if the distance seems greater than your average car loving American would normally go. Our hotel to the Aquarium was about 4.5 miles...no sweat.

We walked down Commonwealth Ave and across Boston Commons stopping for the occasional photograph or people watching moment. For all the negative things I could say about the city of Boston, there is absolutely no arguing with the fact that it is a really beautiful city. My very first visit to Boston was for Thanksgiving in 2002, a holiday that was accompanied by an early ice/snowstorm. While on many levels that particular trip was absolutely fucking miserable, I will always remember the beauty of the city covered in crystalline ice...and now I was here at the opposite time of year, with the city decked in green leaves and sunshine and looking just as lovely.

We took small detours, swinging by the site of the actual Boston Massacre (a rather unassuming circle on a cobblestone street) and down the market before we reached the water, to enjoy the full force of that ocean breeze and the sun reflecting off the water. Some days, it's just impossible not to love the world.

Sweet crooning from Elbow's rather impressive latter day output. Good stuff.

An Audience of One - The Swords Project - Entertainment Is Over, If You Want It - 2003

2009-08-04T14:43:00.003-04:00

We had the cab drop us off at the first stop on my list for "Southie", a place called The Blackthorn Bar only to find that it was pretty close to dead. So we walked a short distance over to another bar called The Junction which had some life to it.

As an Irish-American, I had always had a sort of morbid curiosity about South Boston. To me, the Southie's are an embarrassing cousin...with their "Yo, brah we're going out on a pissa and getting wicked retarded" lingo and attitude, they seem to have inherited absolutely none of James Joyce's DNA and an over abundance of Colin Ferrel's (only with even less class). To me, this was a bit like visiting my cousins who live in a trailer park (Which I also have)...but the experience was by and large not what I expected.

The problem you see, is that Boston is such a college town. Despite it's hallowed place in American History, it's supposed rivalry with NYC and it's abundance of my peoples, Boston primarily serves as the location of Harvard, MIT, BU, Northeastern, and BC and as such, it's bars are designed to appeal to college kids. Cheap pitchers and beer pong tables are the order of the day, waitresses in jean skirts and frizzy hair are the norm. So, I went in expecting little Dublin, and instead was treated to a Northern version of Chapel Hill.

We pulled a waitress over in The Junction to help get the lay of the land, but then were stuck with her for the night as she thought I was hitting on her. So, we put down our beers and made our way to the next location, a bar with the rather tony name of "The Playwright" only to find it largely the same vibe. It was quickly apparent that we were going to be in for an evening of college style bars, and while slightly more adult, The Farragut House was only a slight improvement.

After that, we took a walk down by the water to work off some of the beer wait. The last stop on the list was a place called Murphy's Law, which I had been told was a must check out. We approached the bar at 10 minutes till 1 and heard the roar of a crowd. A trio of people, 2 women and a man walked a few yards behind us and had been behind us for several blocks. As we neared the door, the bouncer stuck his head out and told us the bar was closed...only to allow the 3 behind us right in. The Singhs were convinced this was racism, which might be true, but I was more on the side of it being about getting more women in. Either way, our night in Southie was done...with very little Irish culture absorbed and very little to write home about.

The Swords Project is currently a band called simply Swords. I heard their second album (First with that name) a few years back and had a brief infatuation with it, and decided to check out the first album. Much like their moniker, their songs used to be much longer (This one clocks in at over 10 minutes), and while I still enjoy the sounds they produce, I must say I drastically prefer the shorter more refined songs on the Swords album. Even with their whiny Indie-boy voice singer given a more prominent role, the shorter songs have a stronger since of melody and use the atmospherics to greater effect.

Auctioneer (Another Engine) - REM - Fables of the Reconstruction - 1985

2009-07-31T14:08:00.003-04:00

The final bar we hit in Jamaica Plain was a place called Brendan Behan Pub, which turned out to be something of a gem...though not really what we were looking for at the moment. It was a smallish bar that was clearly a bit old. The wooden walls and benches were all a bit warped, giving the bar an odd angular look that us NYC-ers would refer to as "Character".

The crowd was mostly neighborhood types and most interestingly enough, dogs. Now, not dogs in an 80's slang, ugly chicks kinda way...I mean actual canines. There were easily 4-5 dogs in there with their owners, just randomly wandering the bar and socializing. As I am a dog person, this was a plus. I'm sure if I lived in JP, I'd find myself in this bar quite often. We were, however, looking for a bit more excitement than that and the pub was not providing it...so we were out after one drink.

We made a quick stop in the CVS, as I had forgotten a toothbrush and deodorant (Prompting Anand to snipe "you use those?") and then it was a cab to "Southie" for the remainder of the night.

Fables of the Reconstruction, the band's 3rd album, has always been my least favorite of the "Golden Age of R.E.M." albums. Sure, I'd listen to it 20 times in a row before I'd listen to Reveal or Around the Sun even one more time...but compared to the stunning debut album and the autumnal majesty of Reckoning, this album has always been a bit of a let down. Not quite sure whether to recapture the murky haze of the early work, or to head towards the arena rock they'd move towards on Life's Rich Pageant and perfect on Document...Fables seems stuck in two places at once, neither one thing nor the other.

Beyond this, it always seemed an odd decision for a band so steeped in Americana (Despite it's artier tendencies) to produce an album explicitly dedicated to a sort of modern American folk lore in London. The band wouldn't record out of The States again until the execrable Reveal. Stripped of all of their baggage, R.E.M. are, at the end of the day, an American rock band and they are at their best when they remember that fact.

Auctioneer - REM - Live Rockplast Oct 2nd 1985 - 1985

2009-07-30T14:45:00.002-04:00

As we stumbled East on South St., now fairly lubricated, we came across a bar that hadn't been on our list (Even on vacation, I project manage...I had put together a spreadsheet of 40 bars and restaurants, spread around different neighborhoods, for us to check out). The bar was called Alchemy and was a bit more of a lounge type place, complete with low lighting, a cocktail menu and a fair assortment of Boston skanks in nice-ish dresses.

It was approaching 7 o'clock and the fact that we hadn't eaten anything but a small order of chicken wings and 1 bagel (both split 2 ways) all day long was beginning to take it's toll on our drinking. Additionally, we were beginning to rethink our plan. Clearly JP was too residential to get much of a happy hour scene, and most of the bars we'd been in were drastically under populated. If there was a good time to be had in this city we hadn't found it yet. We debated pulling the plug on this hood and heading over to Southie (our night time plan), but as we only had one JP bar left on the list, Anand insisted (in the insistent way that he does when he is drunk) that we finish the job and visit the last bar.

This is R.E.M., back when they were still a rock band playing in Amsterdam in 1985, complete with some unfinished spoken word nonsense from Stipe to kick off the song. This has never particularly been my favorite song but it is impressive to hear the band kicking in their prime.

Auctioneer - The Broken West - Now or Heaven - 2008

2009-07-30T14:20:00.002-04:00

My friend Shani had hooked us up with a discount rate at the Marriot in Copley Square, which is located inside the Prudential building. Our spacious and accommodating room was on the 17th floor with a great view across the Charles. The building had a gym and pool facilities, 2 bars, and a very friendly concierge service. If nothing else, we couldn't really complain about the lodgings.

Once we were settled in and had had our pre-game cocktail, we hit the subway to go check out Jamaica Plain. I'd been to JP a few times to stay with a previous girlfriend's sister and her husband and found it a nice enough neighborhood. It's clearly Boston's best swing at having a Brooklyn style area, with neighborhood pubs, little cafe's and craft stores. It would do the trick on a sunny Friday afternoon.

After dealing with Boston's almost useless subway system, we got off and found our first bar with the Jeanie Johnston Pub, which was easily the least interesting bar we were in that night. We kicked off the festivities with a beer and a shot and some small talk, before heading out...so far we were unimpressed.

After that we hit James's Gate, a totally cool Irish Pub in the center of the hood. The problem with this place was that it's a winter bar. Old world style dark wood fixtures, steaming bowls of clam chowder, and thick pints of stout are all great on a chilly November night, but on a hot July day...we ended up in the back yard watching the girls walk down the sidewalk, downing a few pints and a some chicken wings. The younger Singh had a salad, for which we gave him no end of shit. Then we settled up and headed back to our explorations.

The Broken West does non-threatening power pop with a fair bit of melody. What it lacks in risk, it makes up for in sunny accessibility. They aren't going to change your life or anything, but this song is a fine example of the way that a simple sing-song melody can be stuck in your head for days.

Auburn and Ivory - Beach House - Beach House - 2006

2009-07-29T14:48:00.003-04:00

AC Milan and Inter Milan (2 of the best teams in Italian football, and as such, 2 of probably the 10 best teams in the world) were playing a "Friendly" pre-season exhibition match in Boston this weekend. As such, me and the Singh brothers decided to head out to Beantown for a long weekend and see what the city had in store for 3 strapping adventuresome men.

Friday morning, I took the PATH out to Hoboken. The car rental was cheaper to pick up in Jersey and there was no sense back tracking into Brooklyn if we didn't need to. The Singh's picked me up, and we were on the road before 11...a good start.

The ride up North was relatively cut and dry, we hit some traffic in some of the larger cities (Stamford, Bridgeport, New Haven, Hartford) but these were rarely more than 10 minute stops. We marvelled at how, despite it's image as the "Who's the Boss" wealthy suburb state, Connecticut is largely blue collar, grungy, and depressing. It does however possess beautifully landscaped rest areas.

We arrived in Boston a little before 4, and tried to find street parking, but this was considerably trickier than we thought. Parking in NYC, is rather famously, a bitch, but if you are willing to take the effort, you can usually find street parking after a few swings through some residential blocks. Boston has residential blocks, but all of these require resident passes to park. Eventually we gave up and just begrudgingly sucked up the $30 a day parking fees available at the local garages. This town was already showing it's downside.

It's a good day here for Beach House...their name is deceptive. Rather than the sunkissed Beach Boys record you might expect from such a band, they play the kind of music that you'd associate with being stuck in the rain all week on vacation. Sad, morose and lethargic. It's pouring rain here to the point that my coworkers just stated that it was a hurricane, and it feels like Beach House weather.

Attention - Gentlemen Jesse and His Men - Introducing Gentlemen Jesse - 2008

2009-07-22T15:38:00.004-04:00

So ever since I was 15, my left eye has been noticeably worse off than my right. I wear glasses from time to time, and for a while wore them most of the time. Last summer I lost my glasses and since then have basically been going without. As a Brooklyn resident, I rarely drive and it's such a gigantic hassle to go to a movie in NYC...so I rarely need to pull out one of my old pairs. Most of the time I just make do with the good right eye.

The problem with this is that I've developed a head lean to favor the good eye. Additionally, I am noticeably aware of my left eye going lazy. This has lead me to try a few experiments, which if nothing else, makes me acutely aware of the way my brain process visual information.

Perhaps the one that is the most entertaining involves me blindfolding the right eye to force the left eye to get some exercise. I'll usually blindfold it for about half an hour and then do something that requires some visual work...play a video game, read a book or webpage, walk around the apartment swiftly. After about 20 minutes, when I remove the blindfold, a weird thing happens. There is a few seconds in which I am aware of my brain switching. At first the flood of information coming into the right eye is overwhelming. Then, I can feel my brain realizing that the information is more valuable than that coming in through my left...and in response, the left returns to it's "lazy" state.

This all happens in like 2 seconds, but it's a cool 2 seconds.

Anyway, Gentlemen Jesse sounds more or less exactly like The Exploding Hearts, only with less quality, less exuberance, and fewer dead members.

Attack on Love - Yo La Tengo - Electr-o-pura - 1995

2009-07-13T15:12:00.002-04:00

Barring an amazing late career resurgence, the span between 1993's Painful and 2000's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out will probably be regarded as YLT's heyday. But it is important to remember that even during this period, Hoboken's finest could still turn out some total crap.

YLT are at their best when the tension between Ira Kaplan's undeniably explosive talent is tempered by the unbelievable discipline of his wife Georgia and bass player James McNew. Together Hubley and McNew are probably the tightest, most versatile, rhythm section in all of indie rock...and without them Ira is just a middle aged Jew masturbating on a guitar or organ.

Case in point, Attack on Love.

Attack of the Killer Bees - Archers of Loaf - All The Nations Airports - 1996

2009-07-13T15:07:00.002-04:00

Instrumental...though it is impressive that Bachman could make his guitar sound like a killer bee.

Atoms for Peace - Thom Yorke - Eraser - 2006

2009-07-13T14:22:00.005-04:00

Saturday evening I took a trip up to Cityfield for the annual visit of the Cincinnati Mets. I met up with my friends around the Penn Station area for some pre-gaming before the first pitch. The problem with this plan is that the Penn Station area ("The Fashion District") is not really a friendly place for my type of bar. The whole zone is covered with tourist traps, fratty sports bars, and faux-Irish pubs that are usually filled with the spill over of Tourists and fratty sports fans. So, it seemed like a totally great idea to go to Deno's Party House and Bikini Bar.

The logic was, ok we amuse ourselves by going into a shitty dive bar where the bar tenders are all FOB russian girls in bikinis...sounds like a win-win situation, right? The problem here is this...we aren't usually the kind of guys to go these bars. Now I don't mean that in a "We're too classy to go here" kind of way, but rather...single men go to bars to meet women, attached men go to bars to NOT HAVE TO TALK TO WOMEN. If we wanted to talk to women, we'd stay home, where we get plenty of that.

We sat at the mostly empty bar (it was only 5 in the evening on a Saturday) and ordered our beers only to have our every attempt at having a conversation interrupted by one of the two (or both) bartenders attempting to "flirt" with us. We tried to make it clear that we really just wanted to drink and talk amongst ourselves, but that didn't really work. At one point, the smarter of the two asked us our names and my buddy introduced himself as "Terd Fergeson" (classy as always, Anand)...this resulted in me laughing uncontrollably. Unfortunately our bikini clad bartender took this as me laughing at my friend's odd name and tried to console him and tell him that it was a very manly name...which resulted in me laughing further. Finally we just had to put down our beers and head for another bar.

Atoms for peace is one of the more underwhelming songs on Yorke's underwhelming solo album. Like much of the album, it's not bad...but, so what?

Atomic Power - Uncle Tupelo - March 16th - 20th, 1992 - 1992

2009-07-10T14:43:00.002-04:00

If Uncle Tupelo was the godfather of the Y'alternative movement, then March 16th-20th, 1992 probablys marks the subgenre's first official album. No Depression was a gritty, punky rock album with occassional country larks...the country influence was more pronounced on the follow up Still Feel Gone, but it was really this (largely acoustic) album on which the band let it's country folk flow. Peter Buck was even brought in for some feedback noise, giving tribute to the heavy work done by "Don't Go Back to Rockville" in the creation of country-punk ethos.

I still stand by Anodyne as the band's best album, but for purity of focus it's hard to beat March, and a track like the Oh Brother, Where Art Thou-esque "Atomic Power" is as good a place to hear that as any.

Atomic - Blondie - Eat to the Beat - 1979

2009-07-10T10:53:00.003-04:00

So the other night I was out with my buddy Anand and we ended up in some wine bar on the outskirts of Soho/Tribecca. In our quest to find new bars, we had intended to close out our evening at City Winery on Varrick, only to discover that there was some sort of show going on that you had to have tickets for to even come into the bar. Having decided to close out the evening with wine, we ended up going into this hole in the wall place.

It was quiet and tasteful seeming, with oak book shelves and a jazz tro playing in the corner. The forty something, librarian-ish hostess spotted us and took an almost immediate dislike to us. It's probable that she assumed that we were wasted (correctly) and that we might cause a scene. Little did she know that we were trained professional drunks with ninja-like skills at keeping it together. She was condescending from the get go, trying to usher us into a back corner.

Once we were seated, we ordered a couple of glasses of wine and a meat and cheese plate and got on the business of planning our next adventure. A youngish waitress brought out our glasses of wine, and promptly proceeded to dump both glasses on me. Now I wasn't dressed terribly well, and it was Rose, so it wasn't really a big deal...but still...

Anand and I both looked at each other to confirm that niether one of our drunk assess had been responsible for the accident. The condescending hostess zoomed over to wipe down the table and move us to another one, her condescention now tempered by the knowledge that her staff had fucked up...but still present. Our wine, was of course on the house. The waitress who had spilled on me refused to look at either us, or her boss for the rest of the night...spending the following half an hour furiously scrubbing the espresso machine.

As we wrapped up, the hostess came around to give us our check and asked what had made us come into her place. Anand told her that we liked to wander from neighborhood to neighborhood and check out different bars.

You could see the lightbulb go off in her head...she thought we were restaurant reviewers...and she realized that her waitress had probably shot the review in the foot. It was totally amazing the speed with which that condescention turned to obsequeisness. Our remaining five minutes in the bar were filled with ass kissing on a level I've rarely experienced. We quietly left, tipping well, and letting her stew in the fear that she'd shot her business in the foot.

I'm just barely old enough to remember the time when Heart of Glass was a hit. To me, Blondie were always that band. It was only as I got older that I discovered that there was a much more interesting band behind the hits. Atomic, with it's Spaghetti Western Guitar, disco drums and typically haunting vocals show a band with much more going for it than you'd think.

Atom Eyes - Guided By Voices - Under the Bushes Under the Sky - 1996

2009-07-09T14:18:00.003-04:00

Tobin Sprout's songs on the Guided by Voices albums that came out during the reign of the "classic" line-up are always a bit of an enigma. It seems inconceivable that an ego as outsized as Bob Pollard's could allow another songwriter, even a minor one, to have his moment in the spot light. Beyond that, Sprout's songs, while rarely bad (And this, along with Alien Lanes' "Little Whirl" is probably one of the two best), are generally pretty mundane affairs. Typically the fall into the niche of sub-REM mid-90's indie rock. Eschewing the arena rock gestures that always elevated GBV's lo fi days, Tobin's songs were...nice, and little more. And by and large they were interchangable, offering little sonic variation.

So again, the question is...how did they make it onto GBV albums that were already overflowing with tracks? I have no good answer...there is a temptation to say that Bob put them on the record to showcase how much they were inferior to his work...but that is hardly being fair to Uncle Bob. Also arguable is that Bob, always the coneisseur of the classic rock move, decided he needed a George Harrison to his Lennon/McCartney, a Spiral Stairs to his Malkmus...which isn't outside the realms of possiblility. Or perhaps Bob just liked Tobin's songs...we don't have an answer...instead, they just stand as interesting side alleys on albums already full of experiments, both succesful and less so.

Atmosphere - Joy Division - Substance - 1995

2009-07-08T15:42:00.004-04:00

Of all of my relatives, the one that I am probably most like is my maternal grandfather. I may have gotten my alcohol tolerance, blarney, and sense of humor from my biological fathers side, my intellect from my mother, and my professional sense from my (step)Dad...but my grandfather is the person I see myself in most.

Born in 1930, he was certainly raised with Depression era ethics. He was too young for WWII and his service was concluded before Korea. He worked most of his early adulthood as a shoe salesman before opening up his army surplus store in Kokomo, IN. He was 2 pack a day smoker until he had a heart attack at the alarmingly young age of 38...at which point he decided to go on mission to Puerto Rico to help build a church.

Always an incorrigible flirt and a man who loved to stir the pot, he was a son of a bitch in the best possible sense. I lived with him for a few years in high school due to some family difficulties and he was my first employer, putting me to work at the shop and at the gun shows he'd attend on weekends to sell his wares.

I went to go visit him this weekend for the 4th, as my family has recently had to put him in a home. He is wheel chairbound, and at nearly 80 has survived 6 heart attacks, many strokes and recently been diagnosed with bowel cancer. It's heart rending to see a man of such limitless spirit stuck in a place that he clearly sees as a waiting room for death...though it is encouraging to see that he has made many girlfriends among both the nurses and the other inhabitants.

I've survived 34 years without losing a family member...and for that I should be thankful, but it is never easy to watch someone you love fade away.

Was this an appropriate post for Joy Division...maybe? They are certainly a band for whom death (though not aging) is usually associated. The best I can say is that at least I gave tribute to my grandpa on a great song as oppossed to one of the filler tracks.

Atlas - Battles - Mirrored - 2007

2009-06-24T15:32:00.002-04:00

Not to ride in on the coat tails of Pitchfork too much, but this probably was the best song of 2007. The rest of the Battles album has it's charms, but this was the clear winner with it's absolutely propulsive drum beats, piston engine guitars and nonsense vocorder singing that somehow doesn't get annoying after 7 minutes.

As usual, it's always harder to write about a song I really like than one I totally hate. This song rocks, and it's great for driving in the summer or taking the subway home at night. Cheers!

Atlantis to Interzone - Klaxons - Xan Valleys EP - 2006

2009-06-19T16:18:00.002-04:00

So I guess I've strung you guys along long enough with the tale of the third guy who broke his hand punching me in the face...incidentally, this was also the last time I was punched in the face.

As I've probably mentioned on this blog before (I'm too lazy to check) I worked as a summer camp counselor for several summers in my late teens/early twenties. My second summer there, I was twenty and was generally having a pretty great time. For those that have never worked at a summer camp, you are basically locked into a 24 hour a day, 6 day a week microcosm with a lot of hormonally overdriven other teenagers and given the responsibility to care for children. You get nearly no sleep and even less pay, but on the plus side you spend a lot of time with hot and sweaty college girls.

One of the girls at the camp was a crazy Irish girl who drove most of the boys mad. She was a mess of curly hair and long freakled legs and evil manipulations, she knew all the boys wanted her and that she could get whatever she wanted without giving much in return...and mostly what she wanted was attention.

So one day, her non-camp employed boyfriend came tearing into camp on a motorcycle, convinced (not unreasonably) that his girl was not being entirely faithful to him. Much drama ensued and at the end of the fight, the guy swore that if she didn't follow him out, he was going to kill himself. When she refused to acqueise, he tore off on his motorcycle, making a rather sad show of ditching it in the gravel to give some authenticity to his "suicide" attempt.

Now this is where it gets complicated...for insurance reasons, because he had made a suicide attempt on city property, the camp was not allowed to let him leave the premises until the paramedics arrived to examine him, but because he had tried to commit suicide on 2 prior occassions (Probably each time with the same level of seriousness) one more reported attempt meant that he would have to stay at an inpatient pysch facility for 2 weeks for evaluation. For this reason, he certainly did not want to be detained for long enough for the authorities to arrive.

To prevent his leaving, the camp director gathered the 4 biggest guys in the camp...of which I was one (ok, I was the smallest of the 4, but I still made the list) and had us surround him to keep him from getting back on his bike. Now keep in mind that 3 of the 4 of us had some kind of history with the crazy girl...so we weren't exactly viewing this douchebag as a guy to be respected. Seeing that he was surrounded, he decided to try to fight his way out...and the way to go was through the smallest of the 4 guys. Unfortunately for him, his punch landed right on the point of my chin breaking three fingers in the process. The pretty much put an end to the fight.

Incidentally, I ended up running into the crazy Irish girl years later in NYC. Not much had changed. We had a 6 month spell of quasi-dating/sexually charged friendship that ended in a bar fight...but that's a story for another time.

I enjoy the energy of Klaxons...you definitely don't want to listen to them before you've had your first cup of coffee...but they'll get you going.

Atlantic City - The Hold Steady - War Child: Heroes Vol I - 2009

2009-06-19T16:10:00.002-04:00

The Hold Steady try an interesting approach to covering a song that, if you read my previous entry you'll know, I find near impossible to improve upon. They take what The Boss did with a guitar, harmonica and one hell of a killer hook...and perform it as if the song had been on Born In The USA with the full E-Street Band backing it up. There's the tinkling piano, the harmonic squelling guitar solo, the Jersey Shore sax that may very well be played by the Big Man, the female background singer to hammer home that hook, and synchopated stop to a chanted chorus before a big kick back in.

I may have my issues with The Hold Steady, and I certainly don't prefer this version, but I have to give them credit for turning what sounded dull on paper into a solid reinterpretation. Well played boys, well played.

Atlantic City - Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska - 1982

2009-06-12T10:51:00.003-04:00

Well, I'm going to take a small detour before giving you all the third punched in the face story, mostly because I need to talk about this song...

Springsteen, when he is at his best (Which he unquestionably is in this song), captures the frustration of being stuck in a working class life while tormented by bigger ambitions. He's most remembered for his moments of triumphant catharsis through escape ("Tramps like us, baby we were born to run!" "This town's full of losers, and I'm pulling out of here to win!") but the real drama comes from the sense that those escapes are false hopes and dead ends. His characters are doomed Calvinist, already damned from birth and the protagonist of this song is no different.

If anything his plight is worse, he holds no false hope of redemption. He knows the choice he makes when says "last night I met this guy and I'm going to do a little favor for him" will bring no redemption, only temporary relief before a greater hell.

Springsteen was always a great admirer of Dylan, and the entirety of the Nebraska is an attempt to wed the sonic sensibilities of a pre-electric Dylan to the Jersey Shore narratives (along with a healthy dose of Charlie Starkweather) for which the Boss was already quite famous by 82. The strategy doesn't always work, some of the songs can seem overly sparse, and other meandering...but when it does work, it is amazing...

The Athelete - Erland Oye - Unrest - 2003

2009-06-09T14:15:00.004-04:00

The thing is, I had considered fighting Aaron before...but there's just no winning a fight with a tiny dude. You beat the crap out of him, and you look like a bully...he beats the crap out of you, and you look like a pansy. So my strategy was essientially to avoid contact with him.

This is why his hit and run while I was on a date was particularly annoying...but once he'd thrown the punch, I knew he was going to have to engage. The punch hadn't particularly hurt so much as jarred me, but it had stalled me long enough that every girl in school had surrounded "poor little Aaron" and gotten him as far from me as possible.

So a couple of interesting things happened in the aftermath. The punch hadn't really done much damage to me. Catching me right on the top of the cheek bone (Remember he jumped up to punch me and threw the punch downwards), I had little more than a little red dot on my cheek to show for the excitement. Aaron on the other hand had broken his first two fingers, his wrist and his arm to the elbow.

This had all happened on a Friday night.

Monday, for reasons that were honestly completely unrelated to the incident, I had foolishly decided to play hooky on the Monday afterwards. Not yet familiar with the intricacies of the high school rumor mill, I was shocked to discover that the word on the street was that he had shattered my eye socket and walked around the school all day on Monday, at long last the bad ass that he wished he could be. Needless to say, he was not happy to see me back and relatively unscathed on Tuesday.

We shared a class, 6th Period Spanish. The teacher, in what I am 100% certain was an effort to look up more plaid skirts of my female classmates, had arranged the desks in the class into two banks of three rows that faced each other and as luck would have it, he sat directly across the aisle from me. So I had to look at him all day. And in his misguided attempt to make himself seem tougher would spend the bulk of spanish class bashing himself in the skull with the cast on his arm...which he would follow up with a "manly" grunt and "fierce" eyes.

It must be really hard to be a short guy...fortunately I wouldn't know.

Kings of Convenience's Quiet is the New Loud is one of my all time favorite hangover albums. Having said that, I don't know that I ever need to have another album by the Norwegian folkies. There is only so much that sound can do. One of the members of Kings, Erland Oye attracted my interest when I heard his stuff was more electronica based...however it is still just as soft and delicate. The skill with melody is still there, but the acoustic guitars have simply been replaced by the bleeps and bloops of Scandanavian Electro-pop. It's nice enough, but a bit of a snooze fest.

Ate It Twice - Boston Spaceships - Brown Submarine - 2008

2009-06-08T17:26:00.003-04:00

So, the second time a guy broke his hand on my face, I was 15, and if time #3 is the better story...then time #2 is the stranger one.

I was a freshman in highschool and was just starting to get comfortable with this notion of having a friend who was a girl (as comfortable as any man ever can be with it) and I had a friend named Jen. She was a shy, bookish girl who would later go on to become a doctor and we had a sort of low key lunch table friendship that was helped by the fact that she wasn't particularly my type. Now the problem was this kid named Aaron.

Aaron was a very particular midwest type...short, scrawny and even whiter than me Aaron adopted the pose of the "Bad Ass". He kept his head shaved and wore combat boots every single day and was convinced that he could kick the shit out of anyone who got in his way. He ran with a dopey flunky, who's name I can no longer remember (though we called him Wing Nut). Anyway, Aaron and his flunky would frequently make stops at my lunch table to toss game at Jen.

Now at the time, I found the notion of him and Jen together ridiculous. As I said, she was studiuos and shy and in my mind was so far above that little twirp that she shouldn't have even given him the time of day...I was too inexperienced to realize that women will often date men wildly beneath them. So I spent the entirity of Aaron's visits belittling him while he was trying to get his groove on. And I was a smartass, so my belittling was probably fairly brutal...but even then I was six inches taller and probably 40 pounds heavier than the kid. This started a sort of mini-cold war between me and Aaron, with me constantly ripping on him while he seethed and postured. This goes on for a few weeks.

So one Friday night, I'm on a date...one that was already disastoriously bad BEFORE the violence erupted. My friend Bryan, who was immune to shame and as such always had dates lined up, had fixed me up with the friend of whoever his current girl was. And as usual in this arrangement it was a terribly bad match, because the friend was always a shy quiet girl...so we'd both sit in awkward silence while Bryan pawed his girl.

That particular night we'd also chosen a particularly bad venue for our date...the school play. Now granted, there isn't a ton of stuff you can do on a high school date in the Midwest, and even less before you can drive...but still, the school production of Little Shop of Horrors was probably a bad call. And it was an even worse call for me, because the sole reason I was attending was because I had a massive ungodly brutal crush on the senior who was the lead in the play...my date was so little the object of my attention at that play that I even forgot her name (Incidentally, it was also Jennifer, a fact that I'll never forget NOW).

So anyway, the play lets out, my date is going horribly and I'm standing on the corner with my friend and the girl's waiting for Bryan's mom to pick us up. I feel a tap on my shoulder and turn around. At that point, Aaron grabs a hold of my shoulder and uses this to leverage himself to jump up and punch me in the face.

To Be Continued...

Bob Pollard's Boston Spaceships seems to be the closest thing we'll get to a "return to form" from Uncle Bob. Stripped of his prog rock leanings that he's cultivated over his past few solo albums (and the last few GBV albums), he returns to straight ahead guitar rock and by and large it serves him well. I haven't enjoyed a Pollard Release this much since...well at least since Half Smiles of the Decomposed.

At What Point Did You Stop Believing In Me - Bound Stems - Appreciation Night - 2006

2009-06-08T16:59:00.003-04:00

As I was hanging out with my friends the other night, I off-handedly mentioned that I have had 3 different people break their hand while punching me in the face. Like most of the details of ones own life it didn't occur to me that this was odd until after I thought about it (For instance I have a friend who has been shot 5 times and probably doesn't think about it much). In telling what I thought were just the routine stories from my youth (all 3 incidents happened to me in my teens...the last one occurring when i was 20) I realized that it probably was a bit unusual.

The first time was easily the least interesting...when I was 13 I reached a point where I began walking the 2.5 miles home from school rather than taking the bus. This actually started a trend that would carry over through most of my life...I'd far rather just walk than wait on inefficient public transportation to ferry me home. Anyway, I was walking along when several slightly older kids from a neighboring rougher school jumped me for my pocket money. I was in my catholic school uniform, so I'm sure I was clearly an easy mark. A kid on my left started yelling stuff at me to distract me...when I turned back around, my right cheek was met with a fist punching me three times in quick succession.

At the time I was wearing braces, so the punches tore up the inside of my cheek and caused me to have a mouth full of blood which I spit at my assailant...but amusingly enough he was in a lot more trouble than me. He lay on the ground clutching his hand and crying. Despite my opponents prone state, I quickly ran away and got myself home. My mother of course freaked the fuck out and called the police, but other than a sore jaw, I was relatively fine...and I had learned a valueable lesson. Never hit anyone with a closed fist...you'll break your hand.

Bound Stems is something of a hybrid between Pavement and Modest Mouse, combining the latters vocal style with the more lackadasical musical approach of the former. The album never really grabs me, but I generally enjoy it while it's on. The waving synths and the lady background singer both make this song a little more interesting than it would be otherwise.

At The Party - M83 - M83 - 2001

2009-06-03T17:22:00.001-04:00

Instrumental...and a short boring one at that.

At The Feast - The Congos - Heart of the Congos - 1977

2009-06-03T17:02:00.002-04:00

Antartica, the bar that has the distinction of being about ten feet from my office has a curious phenomenon they call "name night". At the begining of every month they publish a calendar with a name assigned to every day of the week (except Sundays when they are closed). If you enter the bar on the night corresponding to your name you can drink that night until 11 free of charge. Granted, there are restrictions on what you can have...but still, it's free booze...and free booze served by very attractive and friendly ladies...so you can hardly turn that down.

So, I'm sure you've gathered by now that last night was Josh night, and honestly I have to say that I pulled it off with some aplomb. 3 Pints of Vodka and Soda, 1 Pint Rum and Coke, 2 vodka shots and 2 Stellas....all in all a good showing and with very little day after nastiness. Other than a powerful thirst, I was in good shape this morning. My friend Josh also came out to take advantage of the free booze, and lost his hat...literally, but hey...in war there are always casualties.

I've never been a huge reggea person...I tend to find it monotonous, but occassionally I try. My friend Corey put the Congos on my iPod...I keep them there for historical purposes.

At My Window Sad and Lonely - Billy Bragg and Wilco - Mermaid Avenue - 1998

2009-05-06T11:23:00.003-04:00

Back in 1998, Wilco was relatively small potatoes when they were asked to feature with noted British punk/folkie Billy Bragg on an album of unrecorded Woody Guthrie songs. At the time the were the band led by the less respected member of the Uncle Tupelo. They had had a minor "Y'alternative" hit with Box Full of Letters and then faded into the background with a solid but low selling follow up and a third album that relied more on Beach Boys-esque pop than Hank Williams Sr.

But then with Mermaid Avenue, their rise to the thrown of Starbuck's Comp/Dad-Rock icons was on it's way. The Guthrie estate had a set of lyrics that Guthrie had written but never set music too...they hand picked Wilco and Bragg to make an album with these lyrics and the results were solidly succesful...take this song for instance.

At My Most Beautiful - REM - Up - 1998

2009-05-05T04:00:00.002-04:00

Well, sorry again for a bit of a lengthy gap between entries, but I took a few couple of days off of work to make a little road trip down to DC and then I had a fair amount of catching up on both work and sleep when I returned.

So anyway, since I've sort of gotten the hang of this whole travel blog thing recently I'll probably be writing a bit about DC...but I actually have a few things to say about this song, so the DC stories can wait for the next entry.

In 1998 I was working night shifts at a hospital's computer help desk in Cincinnati. I worked completely by myself for most of the night, and unless a system was down I rarely got many calls. As such had plenty of time to work on projects, catch up on reading, listen to music, etc. And one of the things I was doing was starting an internet romance with a girl I had known for a few years. She was obsessive about REM and had seriously recommended this album to me.

Now I, like many people, had sort of assumed that Bill Berry's departure after New Adventures in Hi Fi meant the end of REM as a creative force...and by and large I was correct, however they still had one last good album in them (Unless they seriously surprise me in their middle aged incarnation). And that album was Up.

The departure of Berry left the band free to experiment a bit. Their tour with young upstarts Radiohead as openers had left them with a taste for a bit more unusual textures and much of the album shows this influence. At My Most Beautiful however is one of the few songs on the album that looks backwards...it is admittedly a band trying to sound like the Beach Boys and they do a stirling immitation. Michael Stipe has long admitted his boredom with the icons of classic rock, but in doing his band mates a "Favor" and doing this song in the Pet Sounds style actually allowed the song to open up and breathe rather than stagnating in imitation. The sleigh bells, the baritone horns, the perfect pitched harmonies all work to show the delicacy of the song in both lyrical content and structure. It's really a lovely song and makes me wish even further that they had simply hung up their hats after this album.

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

2009-04-29T15:57:00.003-04:00

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

2009-04-28T17:43:00.002-04:00

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

2009-04-28T17:23:00.002-04:00

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

2009-04-28T16:28:00.003-04:00

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

2009-04-27T16:00:00.003-04:00

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

2009-04-22T16:31:00.002-04:00

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

2009-04-22T14:35:00.003-04:00

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

2009-04-21T10:47:00.004-04:00

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

2009-04-20T14:39:00.003-04:00

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

2009-04-17T15:08:00.003-04:00

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

2009-04-15T15:43:00.003-04:00

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

2009-04-09T16:46:00.003-04:00

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

2009-04-08T17:31:00.002-04:00

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

2009-04-08T15:50:00.002-04:00

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

2009-04-02T17:29:00.002-04:00

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

2009-04-02T16:41:00.002-04:00

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.

Asphalt (Interlude) - Amusement Parks on Fire - Amusement Parks on Fire - 2004

2009-03-30T17:11:00.003-04:00

After Anand had cleared his stomach of the offending peach whiskey liquor, (and all of his dinner unfortunately) we realized it was nearly 11 o'clock on a monday and that the odds of us finding a hopping bar on the west side were dwindling, so we started to make our way back to the general direction of the hotel.

Seeing as we had a 7 hour drive back to London the next day and then a soccer game to watch, I was fine with heading back to the Hotel, but the guys were insistant that we squeeze as much life out of Glasgow as we could...so back to the college bars on Sauchaugh St. we went.

Possibly because it was still (kinda) my birthday, the young crowd at the bar we ended up at made me feel desperately old and out of place. An absolutely hammered guy bummed a pound off Rance to buy a beer with and then spent the rest of the evening either thanking us profusely or apologizing for being so drunk. Couple made out desperately on couches while drinking liquors in combinations that only inexperience would allow (Cider with a shot of Jaggermeister in it, followed by White Russians?????). We watched one couple and placed bets on which one of them would throw up first...and whether or not it would actually be WHILE they were making out...sadly, we left before it happened, calling it a night and preparing for our long trip back to London.

All of Amusement Parks on Fire's songs sound exactly the same, like a band covering Swervedriver...the only difference is that this one is an instrumental.

Asobi Masho - Asobi Seksu - Asobi Seksu - 2004

2009-03-30T15:09:00.003-04:00

The trip was definitely beginning to take it's toll. None of use were kids anymore and 5 days of drinking, traveling, and eating fried foods was wearing us down...so we came home for a late afternoon nap.

After a brief rest, we were back up again and looking for an evening plan. We decided to check out the north west part of town and see how that went. We stopped into a bar called Leibowski's, which amusingly enough had a complete "White Russian Menu". I'm not entirely sure how one makes a variation on the White Russian, but they had a full menu. The bar itself was fairly cool, and I would have liked to have seen it on a night that wasn't Monday. It seemed like the kind of bar that wouldn't be out of place in the less stroller-centric parts of Park Slope. I got some kind of Scotch that had a name that was something about monkeys. I love monkeys. Anand got suckered into doing a shot of Southern Comfort, as the earlier bet finally came around to haunt him...as this decision would also do.

Anyway, we went to a more traditional pub to watch most of the Tottenham v Hull game, to cheer less for Hull than against Tottenham. Sadly Tottenham won with last minute goal. The bar was filled with what we'd pretty much come to consider the standard issue Glasgow bar crowd (again, we were there on a Sunday and Monday, so we were probably not entirely fair on the city) - drunk old men and drunk teenagers. The bar tender however was lovely. I'm fairly sure I announced my intention to marry her.

By the time the game was over it was nearly 10 and our dreams of steak dinner had long since been given up on. We'd all reached our breaking point and were desperately seeking vegetables. We found an Indian restaurant and headed...they were closing in 20 minutes but that wouldn't be a problem as we were not the linger at the table type. We wolfed down our (quite tasty) vegetables quickly and were back out into the night air relatively quickly.

But we were all too full and to drink anymore and Anand was starting to feel queasy from the shot of SoCo on his stomach. You see Anand and I have very different ideas about vomiting. Me, I fight it off tooth and nail...I hate doing and will keep down absurd amounts of booze and spend hours waiting for the spins to stop so I can go to sleep. If I toss, my night is over. I won't drink again, sometimes for days....once for months. Anand on the other hand, will simply say "I'm going over here for a minute", throw up, and be ready to keep going.

It baffles me considerably that he considers throwing a cigarette butt out on the street is littering, but vomiting all over the sidewalk, totally fine.

Asobi Seksu is something of a bipolar band...they're NYC and Tokyo, they're My Bloody Valentine and Shonnen Knife, they're trendy with a hot Japanesse girl for a front woman, they're arty with a disdain for those that would come to see their hot lead singer, and yet they call their band the Japanesse phrase for great sex...I enjoy them when they are My Bloody Valentine, and less so when they are not. This song is one in which they are not.

Ask for Janice - The Beastie Boys - Paul's Boutique - 1989

2009-03-27T15:37:00.003-04:00

I don't really have to write a post for "Ask for Janice", do I?

Ask About Me - Girl Talk - Night Ripper - 2006

2009-03-27T15:03:00.003-04:00

Following our Twin Peaks, Scotland lunch experience we went to a pub around the corner to try to drink away the weirdness...this was only to be replaced by more weirdness.

It was 430 in the afternoon and the bar was full of old men (As I said, most of Scotland was either drinking with old men or teenagers). There was a large main room and a smaller back room. The back room was full of old men singing Kareoke. The volume on the PA was so loud that the sound filled the whole larger room of the bar and the cracking and popping of an overdriven speaker could be heard.

We quietly stood in a corner, sipping our beers and watching the soccer news. If nothing else it was a nice treat to be able to watch soccer news on TV with the rest of the evening news...the same way we'd see sports highlights here...which of course is fairly obvious, but when you are used to having to use methods somewhat more obscure to find your soccer news, it's a refreshing change of pace.

Anyway, after we finished up our drinks, we decided we wanted to go see the Stadium were Celtic (A Scottish soccer team) play, even though there were no games currently going on. We asked a man sitting at a bus stop where it was. The man was clearly hammered and had easily the worst teeth I saw on my entire trip. He pointed us in a direction (away from our hotel) and told us it would be about a twenty minute walk, so we decided to brave it.

After walking for about 10 minutes, with absolutely no indication that we were walking towards the stadium, we stopped and asked another guy who told us the first guy had been drastically underestimating and that it would be easily another 45 minutes walking. We decided to scrap this plan and head back to the hotel, the sun was setting rapidly and soon we'd be ready for the evening portion.

This is Girl Talk doing their collage of nostalgia thing. It's fun and occasionally clever, but I still think wildly overpraised.

Ask - The Smiths - Louder Than Bombs - 1986

2009-03-26T15:52:00.004-04:00

So uh, where was I? Oh right...so we went down to the Trongate area to check out our lunch options...by this point it was around 330 in the afternoon, and our plan currently involved us having a steak dinner that evening as a result of a bet I won. It was then that we hit the wall of bad Scottish food.

Our options were twofold, have either another meal of fried and breaded food, or go to a "healthier" looking option and get a wrap. Now we may have all wanted the wrap, but none of us were going to make the call in front of the others...wraps are unmanly. So we all stood there looking at both restaurants and wondering what to do. Finally, they threw it back on me with the "It's your birthday, dude" excuse and I caved to cult of American masculinity and decided that we all needed more fish and chips.

While the food itself sucked, the experience was more than worthwhile. The place was a little dinner, staffed by an older man and woman (possibly a couple). When we arrived, we were the only customers, but that did not last. A crowd of about 7-8 or older Scots came rolling in. The senior most of them, everyone kept referring to as "Elvis". Aside of his wardrobe, he did not bear much PHYSICAL resemblance to Elvis, but he did seem to be dressing (and doing his hair) for the part. Through out dinner he continued to occasionally croon out the random Elvis tune, in between attempts to talk to us.

He tried to get Anand to let him travel back to America with him in his briefcase...on top of this being an odd request, Anand had no idea what he was saying in his thick Glaswegian accent. He just smiled politely and went back to eating his grilled cheese sandwich...which they had conveniently forgotten to put cheese on.

And speaking of crooners with a pompadour, we have The Smiths. When I was younger and more naive, it was easy to conceive of Morrissey as a misunderstood youth, too sensitive to the world...certainly not GAY, just someone with feelings, just someone who didn't fit the mold of the above mentioned cult of masculinity. But now that I'm older and it's pretty clear that Morrissey just is gay...and that elicits a complicated response.

First of all, there is the now obligatory Seinfeldian retort of "Not that there's anything wrong with that". And there isn't. I respect a human being's right to individuality, and firmly and vehemently believe that the sexual conduct of two consenting adults is no one's business but those adults. But we are talking about music here...and music, pop music in particular, is about being able to relate...and that's the tricky thing. I now look at a song like "Ask" and can clearly see the subtext...should that bother me? Perhaps not...but do I relate to it less? Almost certainly. It's a tricky question...

Asia Minor - Guided By Voices - Half Smiles of the Decomposed - 2005

2009-03-20T11:47:00.004-04:00

So we continue our glut of GBV songs with a slower, though not slow, little pop number. Like many of the songs on Half Smiles...it is more a case of "hey that's not so bad!" rather than a "This is F-ing awesome!" But after the catastrophe of blandness that was Earthquake Glue, it was better to see GBV go out with half way decent album than an almost totally forgettable one.

After we finished the tour of the Necropolis we made our way back down the hill and into town. We were walking down (and South) towards the Trongate area to see what was going on down there. Along the way we happened to find the oldest bar in Glasgow.

Unlike a city like Dublin, which prides itself on having several still functioning Medieval bars, Glasgow's bars were all more modern. The oldest they could come up with was The Olde Carriage House which dated from the mid-19th century and had many pictures of the original patrons to prove it. While it lacked the "bar from a Dungeons and Dragons Game" charm of say The Brazen Head in Dublin, it was quite interesting to see the pictures of the bar and to get a sense of what life may have been like in 19th century Glasgow.

As for the bar in modern day Glasgow, at 3 in the afternoon on a Monday...well, it was slow, as expected, and more than a bit surly. Four or five old men milled around the bar, and one middle aged dude with a pony tail and a distinctly Alan Moore vibe. We grabbed a pint each and sat quietly in the corner. The TV was playing a creaky World War II film from the fifties called The Frog Men...Richard Widmark was the only remotely familiar actor in the whole thing...but we got a considerable amount of pleasure quietly heckling the film with the Alan Moore dude. We finished up our pints and headed out looking for lunch.

Ashes to Ashes - David Bowie - Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps) - 1980

2009-03-19T14:22:00.005-04:00

For the record, my own St. Patrick's Day celebration went quite swimmingly and I woke up relatively hang over free...though I was hungry as a mofo.

So anyway, to get back to the trip (I can't believe this shit has taken me nearly a month to write, but hey...I got other things going on too...and I'm almost finished...and honestly, the end is the best part, so stick with me...if you're still here). We woke up the next day fairly late, as this was one of the few days that we didn't have to travel. By the time we were all cleaned up and ready to roll it was nearly 1PM.

Incidentally, it was also my birthday...despite my protestations that the trip itself was my birthday party and that as my birthday was on a Monday, no special treatment was required, the guys had already started throwing shots at me the night before. They insisted on "celebrating" my birthday from midnight Scotland time through to midnight of the following day NYC time...so I essentially had 29 hours of birthday shots. Ugh.

We took the day to do some touristy site seeing. We started off by heading up Buchannan St. which appears to be their mini-version of NYC's Broadway, or Grafton St. in Dublin...basically just a long street with lots of clothing stores and restaurants. We were there for coffee.

After getting appropriately caffeinated we headed over to Glasgow Cathedral and The Necropolis. As I stated earlier, I'm a history nerd and love old shit. The Cathedral was especially interesting for being a Roman Catholic church that had survived the pretty thorough reformation of Scotland. As such the basement level had at one point actually been converted into two protestant church until the late 19th century, leading to a large cathedral with two small churches in the basement.

The Necropolis was the real site though, a giant old cemetery built spiraling upwards on a tall hill. The highest grave at the top of the hill was reserved for the monument to the man who had brought the reformation to Scotland. From that high point you could see most of the city before you. It was one of the most touching sites I saw on the whole trip, and probably my favorite thing I saw that was not in Berlin.

Scary Monsters and Super Creeps more less marks the rather radical change between late 1970's ultra-arty, Berlin and Eno-loving Bowie and the white suited pop dork we all know and love from the "Dancing in the Streets" video. I will always have the utmost respect for Bowie, and I like the way he's managed to retain some dignity with age that his "Dancing in the Streets" co-star has not...but the 80's pretty much end my interest in his music.

Ashes of an American Flag - Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot - 2002

2009-03-17T16:16:00.002-04:00

I'm going to take a quick break from talking about my trip, so that I can talk about St. Patrick's Day...there is probably no day on the planet that I am more conflicted about than the day we celebrate my heritage.

On Saturday I was in Central Bar watching Arsenal give a tremendous 4-0 whipping to Blackburn...the match wrapped up about 1 and I went to go grab some food, only to find that the streets of the East Village were flooded with NYU students in green t-shirts and ridiculous plastic hats. They jammed every bar with their obnoxious behavior and loud boisterous ignorance. I realize I'm shaking my fist like an old man (which I am) at the kids these days...it just seems as if...

Ok first of all, St. Patrick's Day was on Tuesday not Saturday. If you are going to celebrate, celebrate on the actual day. You're college student's for fuck's sake...I'm an adult with a job and I still went out and drank on a Tuesday night. What excuse do you have? Second of all, again, you're college students...why do you need an excuse to get hammered? Just go out and get drunk, you don't have to do it in asinine green costumes that make you look like an asshole and makes my people look like drunken fuck-wits. It's exactly like my argument against Halloween, if you want to dress like an idiot or a whore...just dress like and idiot or a whore, why do you need a holiday for it?

But on the flipside, I must acknowledge that it is a nice thing to have a day celebrating Irish heritage...even aside of my own since of cultural aggrandizement, the Irish have played a significant part in the building of this nation. We've worked in it's police departments and firehouses, we've acted in films and plays, we've sang in bars and concert halls alike, we've built skyscrapers and railroads, and we've even had one of our own become one of the greatest president's this nation has seen. It's just a shame that our holiday is also mingled with so many idiots and amateurs who just want an excuse for public urination.

It is both oddly appropriate and wildly ridiculous that I'm attaching this rant to Ashes of an American Flag. Wilco's celebration/lament for modern American culture has also become one of the touch stones of liberal reaction to the Bush years...and to this day it's haunting atmospherics, oblique lyrics, and world weary tone still ring true. We may have a new found hope, but we are still digging out from the ashes of the past, and no hurdles are encountered everyday...AIG for instance. It's a tough old world, but the only place to go is up...right?

The Ash Gray Proclamation - Robert Pollard - Not In My Airforce - 1996

2009-03-12T16:47:00.001-04:00

Glasgow on a chilly February Sunday late night is not the most hoping place place in the world. We made our way up the street, trying to follow the bad directions the well intentioned woman at the desk had given us. The first place we found that was open was an old man bar on an empty block called The Avalon.

The old Scots still in attendance were nice enough and the beer was certainly tasty after spending all day in the car. We decided to sample the house scotch, which was on sale for 2 Pounds, but for some reason the scotch tasted like tequila. At first we thought that perhaps the glasses hadn't been well washed, but ultimately we determined that this scotch just finished like tequila...and I fucking hate tequila.

We struck up a conversation with a couple of older scots about bars in the neighborhood and where we could find a place that would serve drinks late. They pointed us in the direction of Sauchehaugh street (which is where our geographically challenged receptionist had been trying to send us in the first place) and gave us some tips about the city. In typical Scottish fashion, the tips were fairly doom laden.

Old Scot - "Can't see why you'd want to spend a vacation here, this is town's a shit hole. But you can go to some of the bars on Sauchhaugh St. They're open late, and they're safe?"

Us - "Are there not safe bars?"

Old Scot - Nods solemnly

So, we made our way down Sauchhaugh St. which is basically just a row of college bars like you'd find in any American city. The primary difference being that the drinking age is 18 rather than 21, so the population of the bar is even younger...or at least less in need of a good fake ID.

We found a booth in the back, and tried not to feel helplessly old as we watched Scottish kids get drunk and make out. We stayed out till nearly 3 before throwing in the towel, happy that we still managed to squeeze some life into our a day that had been mostly spent in transit.

Pollard shows his softer side on this one. A nice acoustic song, of the sort he'd try more and more as the years wore on. Not the best thing on Not In My Airforce, but certainly not the worst.

As We Go Up, We Go Down - Guided By Voices - Alien Lanes - 1995

2009-03-12T14:33:00.004-04:00

The drive through England was not exactly what we planned. The sun set 2 hour into the drive, meaning the site of the English Country would have to wait until the return journey. Rance got car sick about 1/2 an hour in, and all three of us were hung over and tired.

Anand and Rance both napped when they weren't driving...as the non-driver, I stayed awake through both shifts. I've never been very good at sleeping in cars, and I felt like somebody needed to keep the driver company. Driving on right is odd for several reasons...the American driver tends to want to hug the left side. As such the car was constanly drifting left, sometimes into the lane or traffic that was over there. If you are in the passenger seat, you have the odd sensation that you should be driving. I can't tell you the number of times that Rance or Anand started to drift into the car to the left of them, only for me to reach for a wheel that wasn't there, or press down on non-existant pedals. It just feels wrong to be on the left hand front of a car and not be driving.

We drove through Birmingham, which is not that different than driving through St. Louis. Due to the lateness of the hour we debated spending the night in Manchester and finishing the drive to Glasgow in the morning, but we had no Intel on Manchester, no idea where we should stay or where we should go looking for a good time on a Sunday night. Ultimately, we decided to just tough out the drive and at least have one day in which we did not have to travel.

Incidentally, we made this decision in a Burger King rest stop thing about halfway between Manchester and Liverpool...I also had Burger King on my last trip to Europe, during a moment of desperation upon realizing that all the restaurants in Dublin were closed and I was starving. This means I've had Burger King TWICE in the UK within two years...which is less than the number of times I've had Burger King in the United States in the same time period. Very odd. Also, they don't put ice in their fountain cokes over there...which is just plain wrong!

The drive north of Manchester was increasingly dark, as the sun had well and truly set. No street lights or lights from cities were there to be seen either, and the low hanging clouds obscured any moon or starlight. It might have been the closest to total darkness I've ever seen in the out of doors. As our Saab barreled down the highway into the blackness, it was almost like driving through outer space. For some reason we played "Wanted Dead or Alive" on the iPod and it became the running joke for the remainder of the trip.

We finally arrived in Glasgow a little before 11 and checked into the sweet room at the Marriot that my buddy Shani had hooked us up with. The people at the desk were wonderfully friendly and let us know where we could expect to find a drink at that hour on a sunday and with that we were back off into the night.

As I'm fairly sure I've pointed out before, Robert Pollard, at his mid 90's best was all about crystalizing the great moment in a song. Why bother to have a 5 minute song that leads up to (or has in the middle of it) a great moment, when you can write a 1:37 song that uses that great moment and then gets out before you have a chance to get bored? In this case "I speak in monotone, leave my fucking life alone" will do just fine for a great moment.

As Ugly As I Seem - The White Stripes - Get Behind Me Satan - 2005

2009-03-11T16:08:00.003-04:00

It had been our plan to wake up around 9ish and get on the road by 1030. We knew that it would take us about an hour and half to get out to Heathrow to pick up the rental car and then 7 hours to get to Glasgow, so we wanted to try to get there with enough time to have some of the evening left.

I was woken up by the sound of the cleaning people coming in at 1120 and realized that our plan was going to be a little off. We finally got ourselves up and packed and checked out by about 1230. We hustled our way to the subway station drinking the useless warm brown water that Londoners claim to be coffee and eating greasy and heavy sausage and cheese rolls from a kiosk.

It was nearly 3 by the time we got to Heathrow and we were already way behind schedule when we discovered that we had hit another hitch in our plan. Apparently, renting a car from the airport in London is not quite the same as here in the states. In the states (and in Mexico for that matter) they have a centralized area for all of the car rental shops. You land, you take the train to your car rental and you go. At Heathrow, all the car rental places were attatched to the airport hotels...this meant waiting for and taking yet another bus.

By the time we got to the hotel/rental car place and had filled out all of the paper work it was nearly 4 and we were all accepting that Sunday was pretty much going to be a wash...

The rare slow and gentle song from Jack White, though with his usual self depricating lyrical bent. Not bad.

As The Terror Dances Your Way - The Capitol Years - Dance Away The Terror - 2006

2009-03-11T15:06:00.003-04:00

From there, things started to get ugly. After leaving the underground bar we went to a pub that was caticorner from where we parted ways with Matt. More drinks were had and that's when we told Rance about our adventures with SoCo in Berlin, and Rance had a bad, bad idea.

You see, Rance and I were both heading back to the states on Wed...but Anand was continuing on his trip until Saturday. He'd be heading to Belgium for a few days. Rance suggested that if he would personally pay for every single shot of SoCo that Anand did while abroad. Anand considered it, but ultimately decided that the benefit of drinking for the rest of the trip on Rance was outweighed by the thought of having to drink all of that SoCo.

It just got worse from there...it was 1230 by this time and most bars were closing. For a nation of boozers, the bars in London close absurdly early. I guess they just start at 5 and are passed out by midnight, but still...it's Saturday. We knew that there were a few after hours clubs that we could go to that would stay open till 2, so we went around trying to find these...but none of us really had a clue what we were doing. At one point we walked into a place called the White Horse Tavern. I realized that it was a strip club, but I don't think the other two did. We got about 2 feet into the door before the bouncer turned us back around as they were looking to close for the night. My quick glance towards the stage revealed sad, pale british flesh...I was not sad to see the back of this place.

We then tried to find our way back to the underground bar, but had no clue where it was anymore. We finally ended up in a TERRIBLE bar packed to the rafters with college aged kids drunkenly making out. We stayed there till last call, drunkenly talking about god knows what.

On the way back to the hotel, we all realized none of us had eaten since the terrible pies in The White Swan...we popped into a local convenience store and bought the sort of snacks that only drunk tourists would be at 2 in the morning in London...Oreos, Pringles (2 different kinds), Slim Jims...Rance made the odd decision of buying Gouda and crackers.

The rest of the evening was spent in the hotel eating junk food and taking ridiculous pictures. Rance was still adjusting to jet lag so he crashed first.

This is another one of those albums I downloaded and listened to once or twice and liked well enough before it disappeared into the ethos of my iPod. It's a decent song on a decent album, but I just have so much mid-tempo pleasant enough Indie-Rock. I want something with some energy, some fire dammit!

As Quick As It Comes/Carrera - Calla - Televise - 2002

2009-03-10T16:21:00.004-04:00

We stayed at The White Swan for a couple of hours, eating the shitty British pub food and drinking beers. Our perspective was changed somewhat by the fact that Arsenal drew the match 0-0. On one hand, we didn't miss much by not going to the match or seeing it on TV...on the other hand, our team did not win.

We then headed back to the hotel to meet up with my friend Matt C. Matt, though originally from Yorkshire had spent a year in NYC on a work study program with a financial firm. When his program ended he looked high and low for ways to stay in the USA, but without luck. I felt bad for Matty, but on the flipside, it was nice to have a friend to show us around some of the cooler parts of London.

We started out at fancy cocktail place in Shoreditch called Lover's Lounge. Anand and I made the mistake of ordering martini's forgetting that the Europeans actually consider vermouth to be an ingrediant in a martini and not just a faint flavor. They were pretty nasty. Rance got a mint julep, which as a Kentuckian he approved of, though he was tempted to give the bar tender mixing tips.

From there we went to a standard issue British pub and had a few pints, before Matt took us to a rather cool (For London) underground bar where I had whiskey and discussed the failings of British women. To venture into sexist territory for a bit, with the rare exception (Kate Winslet) White British women are not attractive. It's really depressing going from the cornacopia of women that is NYC to the total dead end of London. The one thing they have going for them is their total willingness to make up for their short comings by totally slutting out in the wardrobe department. Doesn't matter the weather, low cut blouses and high skirts are always in abundance. But at the end of the day, it's still a bad toothed, bad skinned, bland and flat British girl in all the slut-wear.

When we finished up our drinks, Matt pointed us in a few directions for more bars and headed off to party of his own, leaving us with a few more hours to kill in London.

Calla...Calla is one of those bands that I want to like more than I do. There is just something so lethargic about this band that I can't quite get past. Every once in a while they'll play a song that has some real energy to it though...this is not one of those songs.

As Night Is Falling - The Clientele - Suburban Light - 2000

2009-03-10T14:42:00.003-04:00

After catching up with Rance and getting settled in our room, we knew we needed to head over to Islington fast, kick off was a little less than an hour away. We determined there was no way we could get to the stadium in time to scalp tickets, so we were just going to try to watch the game at a bar in the area. We figured it would be not unlike going to the bar next to Yankee's stadium: jam packed full of rowdy and drunk fans.

We grabbed a cab and headed over to the Arsenal bar right outside of the Islington station. The bar has the unfortunate name of The Famous Cock, and is also possess the most disgusting bathroom I encountered in my entire trip, BUT...it's an Arsenal bar. When we arrived the place was mysteriously quiet and subdued.

We were informed by the Polish barmaid that the game was not on TV, but we could try a few of the other bars in the neighborhood and see if they were showing it.

Incidentally, the Polish in London seem to be a lot like the Mexicans in NYC. They work all the jobs nobody else wants. The men drive buses and cabs and do consturction and maintenance jobs, the women tend bar in tight tops.

After poking around in a few bars we soon learned that the game was simply not going to be seen on TV. We ended up in a bar called The White Swan where we grabbed a late lunch and grumbled. It was baffling that a soccer match we could have easily watched 4000 miles away was unviewable when we were less than a mile from where it was actually being played. I had been to London once before and hated it...and my opinion was not improving on this trip.

I have been listening to the Clientele quite a bit recently. They started off as a good band to listen to with a hangover, or when putting the moves on an indie-rock loving lady...but more and more I find their music speaking to my moods. This song from their hit and sorta-miss singles collection is one of the better tunes on the disc. It's mournful and heartfelt tone combine with the crisp, sad music to get the Scottish gloomy vibe that these guys are the masters of.

As I Rise - The Decemberist - Her Majesty The Decemberists - 2003

2009-03-10T11:19:00.002-04:00

6:45 AM came very early that Saturday in Berlin. I groggily answered the wake up call and then threw myself in the shower. Didn't want to drink coffee as I hoped to catch at least a little bit of sleep on the plane. I knew that if I didn't get at least a little bit more, I was going to be useless for the evening in London.

We got ourselves to the airport without too much incident, though both of us felt awful. Our flight was via EasyJet.

If you aren't familiar with EasyJet, it is a low cost ZERO frills airline that flies to locations within Europe for ridiculously low prices (I think I paid 40 Euros for this flight). The downside, as I mentioned, is the zero frills part. You pay for your baggage, you don't get an assigned seat or beverage service. It didn't matter to me, I just wanted to sleep.

We were, of course, to the airport way too early and had to sit and wait for the flight to board. I was afraid to let myself sleep as I was certain I'd sleep right through boarding. When I finally got to a seat on the plane, I put my hood up and was out like a light...not waking up till I was on the ground in England.

"London" Luton airport is only in London by the most generous of definitions. It's about 45 minutes north east of the city and requires a bus ride to get into town. As such I decided to take care of some business at the airport (TMI, I know, but it becomes relevant). So, I'm in the bathroom and I can tell that there are a bunch of British Teenagers in the bathroom with me. All of the sudden, and hand darts underneath my stall and tries to snatch the strap of my shoulder bag. The bag moved quick, but fortunately I was quicker and grabbed the strap and yanked back. I had the mild thrill of hearing my would be bag snatcher smack his body against the stall. And that was the last I heard of that.

I grabbed a cup of coffee and was fortunately feeling a bit more stable than I had been in Germany. We got on the bus and finally headed into the city to meet up with Rance, but our trip would still not be that easy. As I mentioned it was about 45 mintues outside the city, and the trip ended up taking closer to an hour and a half because the door of the bus would not stay closed. Every 5 minutes or so, the driver would pull over to the shoulder to try to fix the problem only for the door to open up again a few minutes into driving. Eventually he just gave up and drove like that.

After missing our stop and taking the underground back, we finally arrived at the hotel ready for the next portion of our adventure to begin. Rance was sitting in the lobby working on his laptop, and our room was ready in a few minutes.

When people think of The Decemberists, they probably think of this album. The ridiculous period pieces, the homoerotic subtexts, the wry commentary in obsolete dialouge, the stories told from the point of view of antiquated genre characters were all solidified on this album rather than their somewhat more restrained debut, or their more ambitious later albums. Having said that, this is probably the least Decemberist-esque song on the album. A simple porch-swing anthem carries the day all the way through with nary a Harlequin nor Brick-bat to be seen.

Artists Only - Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food - 1978

2009-03-09T16:18:00.003-04:00

I could niether tell you the name of the bar we were in, nor the exact location but it was pretty much what we were looking for. Despite our belief that we really owed it to ourselves to go to a Minimal House/Techno show while in the land of that sort of music, we both also realized that it wasn't really our scene and we'd have no idea where to even look.

The bar we did end up was all neighborhoody, with dark wood fixtures, low light and cheap beer. We settled in with a couple of tall ones and took in our surroundings.

Over the course of our trip, even starting as early as the airport, Anand had been talking about how he used to drink Southern Comfort all the time back in college and couldn't believe that he used to drink that shit. I agreed, though I had my own brief affair with SoCo all those years ago too. SoCo was running a Mardi Gras themed campaign over in Europe and we kept passing signs for it. As we sat down at our table, Anand looked over and pointed at a sign with prophetic certainty. It was an old metal sign for Soco...not even the promotion, but one that was clearly a fixture in the bar. This would lead to a series of Soco shots that would find their way in front of me everytime I came back from using the bathroom. Probably 4 in total. I was not pleased.

As the night turned into the early morning a young-ish German man came up to us and struck up a conversation with us. He said that he had taken his parents out to this, his neighborhood bar (keep in mind, it's 3 in the morning) and that he had been listening to our conversation for the past few hours and thought that we were really very interesting people. He told us his name was Patrick, which...as an Irish American with a German name, I was sort of amused by. Now the thing is, I wasn't sure if he was refering to conversations like our discussion of China's role in the global economic meltdown, the need for a greater embrace of government by the American people, or our mutual agreement that anal sex was over-rated. So I wasn't sure if he thought we were intellectual Americans, dirty Americans, or both...but whatever it was, he liked it.

To make matters more odd, he decided to introduce us to his non-English speaking and very drunk parents (again, 3 AM). Now, we had had several beers and at least 4 shots of whiskey, but by this point our livers were on vacation mode and we were able to make something of a decent impression of our country. At one point, Patrick's father tossled my hair. I'm 34 (Okay, at that point I was about 3 days shy of being 34, but still...) I thought I'd long since outgrown the moment when an old man tossled my hair...but then there it was.

Finally Patrick and his parents shuffled out the door, as the bar was closing shop. We settled up our stunningly small bill and headed for the hotel. A 645 wake up call and a flight to London was only a few hours away...

Some late 70's weirdness from David Byrne and company. Not their best work, but it's The Talking Heads, what else can you say?

Artificial Light - Robert Pollard - Waved Out - 1998

2009-03-09T15:37:00.002-04:00

We found exactly what we were looking for on Schonhauser Allee. Curry Wurst places in Berlin are about like Pizza places in NYC. They are usually just small, brightly lit diners, they usually have a somewhat shady looking dude behind the counter, and they all claim to be the best in the city.

For the uninitiated, Curry Wurst is not actually curry flavored sausage, but a German bratwurst with curry sauce poured all over the top of it and generally served with fries. We ordered ours (Complete with over sized beer) and made our way to the back.

One of the more interesting things we observed both in the city in general, and in this establishment as a whole, was the popularity and legality of Texas Hold-Em poker. The restaurant advertised that it was a poker establishment, but all this really meant was that you were allowed to play in there and that they would provide you with the chips. So behind us was a a table of 5-6 German dudes, eating curry wurst, drinking giant beers, smoking and playing poker. It was sort of awesome.

It was definitely one of those moments where I wished the US didn't have such a giant stick up it's ass...and it seems as we head deeper into our economic mess, more and more states are relaxing their gambling guidelines. Though I do occasionally enjoy some poker, I'm not even much of a gambler. Never had the money to do it with any seriousness. But I'm generally against any puritanical law, and that one fits the bill.

Anyway, we finished up our meal and headed around town. We didn't have much luck locating the bars that had been suggested to us, and it was rapidly approaching midnight on our last night in Berlin. We decided to just find the first serviceable bar and grab a beverage. We found a quiet place off the beaten path and headed in...

Pollard's second solo album was much more consistent than his first, but of course the trade off came in terms of peaks. Not In My Airforce has too many tracks and many of them bad, but a few of them are amazing. Waved Out has few bad tracks (though Showbiz Opera Walrus might be the worst song he's ever done...and he's done a lot of bad songs)...but it is solid. But on the flipside, only Subspace Biographies (and to a lesser degree Whiskey Ships and the title track) manage to generate much excitement. This track doesn't display any of the embarrassing Pollard ticks, but again, it doesn't do much to thrill either.

Arthur - The Kinks - Arthur (or Decline and Fall of the British Empire) - 1969

2009-03-06T14:41:00.002-05:00

So where was I...oh yeah, the West Side of Berlin. After we left the bar we headed on for the Charlottenburg palace. As a history buff, I'm always happy to see old stuff, so this was quite enjoyable. We arrived a few minutes after 7 so the gates had already been shut, but even still the view was quite exquisite, again highlighted by the snow. The size of the palace was also impressive, a few of the wings were used as individual museums, and I was almost sorry that I wasn't able to check them out.

By this point the day was turning into evening and we needed to head back to the hotel to change out of our "walking across the city in the snow" clothes and into our "going out on a friday night clothes". We found the nearest Subway stop (Richard Wagner-platz actually) and hopped back to our room for some pregaming. It was the first time we'd really sat down all day.

After a brief stop at the hotel to change clothes and have a couple vodka sodas, we headed out to the northeast side of town to find some more of the bars my friends had recommended, but first we needed some curry wurst in a bad way...

The Kinks are always a bit of an odd figure among the pantheon of classic rock. They obviously aren't the Beatles. They lack the menace of The Stones, or the alienated weirdness of The Who. The hits that have remained in the pop culture consciousness (Lola, You Really Got Me, All Day And All of the Night, Come Dancing) don't really sound like what the band sounded like in it's artistic heyday, but much like the aphorism regarding The Velvet Underground ("Only 20 people heard them, but those 20 people all started bands") The Kinks, during this period, created music that others would popularize. And you can see those trademarks here, from the bouncy, almost country-ish guitar lick, to the hand-clapping, group sing-a-long of the chorus. Good stuff.

Art Star - The Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs - Mini Album - 2003

2009-03-05T16:05:00.002-05:00

So I have now had two seperate people tell me that my color scheme made their heads hurt, so in lieu of driving away loyal readership, I've updated the look of the olde blog here. Tried to give it a somewhat "iPod-y" look. Hope this one suits people better.

Once Anand and I emerged from the park we realized that we had gone several hours in Berlin without a beer and this needed to be corrected. We resolved to step into the first bar we saw. We walked the way towards Charlottenburg palace, taking in the sites of the west side. The differences were pretty obvious.

Firstly the archetecture was more varied, more western looking, as oppossed to the boxy buildings of the previously soviet east side. Beyond that it was clear that this side was more affluent and family oriented, but also a bit less friendly (though still nowhere near as grouchy as my beloved NYC). As promised, we went into the first bar we found.

Old man bars are the same the world over. They have the same basic layout, the narrow bar with an open back room. They always have dart boards and whatever form of cheap electronic gambling is legal in that area (in Berlin it was an actual slot machine). There are always a couple of women, one a good natured wife with a ridiculously outdated hair style, the other a raging alcoholic who can barely lift her head off the table. The bar tender will always be gruff but polite, irritated by intruders into his closed world, but not enough to turn away business. The German variant had the bar tender giving us an exceptionally slow pour, actually taking some pride in the beer he served. The alcoholic woman clung to the wall, face pressed against like Spiderman to make her way to the bathroom. Another older gentlemen (at least 60's) incongruously bobbed his head to "Sexyback" (The music is always American).

We finished our beer and our shot uneventfully, enjoying some time off of our feet after the 6-7 mile walk. This clearly was not the bar to make conversation at.

Karen O has three basic singing modes, her Cobain-like scream, her "Maps" hipster croon, and her Pat Benetar snear...she exercises all three on this song while succesfully lampooning the Williamsburg art scene that she so clearly comes from. Biting the hand that feeds you is the best way to make in an inroad with that crowd. They love to be reminded that they are viscious shallow assholes, cause at least those people are cool. Right?

Art School - The Jam - In the City - 1977

2009-03-05T14:02:00.002-05:00

With our bellies full of schnitzel, we walked from Alexanderplatz back to Museum Island, enjoying (and photographing) of the city as we walked. By the time we reached the museums it was nearly 4PM and we realized that we only had so many hours of daylight left in Berlin and that we were rather enjoying walking around the city more than we'd enjoy spending the time inside of a building viewing old art. As such we made the decision to just do some walking.

Anand wanted to get a chance to photograph the Brandenburg gate during the daytime. Additionally it had occurred to me that we'd spent all of our time on the east side of Berlin without seeing the West at all. So off we went.

In the middle of Berlin there is a rather large park shaped like a sideways oval, The Brandenburg Gate/Reichstadt/Museum Island forms it's eastern border while the West Berlin neighborhood of Charlottenberg is the western border. As there is a palace from the time of Fredrich the Great in Charlottenberg this seemed like a good way to both check out some of West Berlin and to get in a good walk.

The park itself was really beautiful, and it was interesting to see Berliners in there day to day life. It probably took us 2 hours to walk the width of the park, during which time we saw the locals doing what they would do on a cold and snowy late afternoon Friday. Some were walking dogs, others jogging, a few young couples strode by holding gloved hands. As with everything in the city, there were tons of statues, monuments, sculptures, and bridges to beautify the already beautiful natural landscape. During the times in which we were in the woods to the point where we could not see the city, it was easy to imagine these woods in Roman times. Centurions marching through to put down the Germanic tribes, the first step towards a German national identity. The history dork in me smiled.

Finally, we emerged on the other side, with the last bit of sun setting in front of us and a new neighborhood to explore.

As I've stated before, The Jam is one of those bands that I find easier to admire than to enjoy. This song has abundant energy and attitude, and maybe even a little more melody than usual...but considering this is from their first album, it's hard not to view this as a simple Ramones copy cat song.

The Art of Building Walls - Villains - Don't Let The Blood Get You Down - 2007

2009-03-05T13:17:00.003-05:00

Between the jetlag and the late night, we allowed ourselves to sleep in a bit on Friday morning. By the time we rolled out of the hotel it was already 1230. We wanted to check out a German restaurant and grab some food, so we asked our hotel clerk for a recommendation in the area and she pointed us in the right direction.

The restaurant itself was basically just a tavern and most of the lunch crowd appeared to just be locals who worked in the neighborhood. There was one guy at another table who was eating alone, and was also from New York...but we weren't particularly interested in talking to him and he got the point. The serving wenches were uniformly lovely and took great amusement at our mangled attempts to pronounce the names of their beers.

I had a very fine schnitzel with a side of fried potatoes and something they call bacon beans. Bacon beans are green beans cut into 1/2 inch long chunks and then cooked with an almost equal amount of bits of bacon. So essentially you are eating bacon with some green beans in it. It was damn fine, but considering I still had the UK in front of me, I could tell that I was going to start craving fresh green veggies at some point.

We also had two large steins of beer with our lunch, including Kostritzer Schwarzbier which is a black lager. It looks like a stout, but in flavor it is much lighter than you'd expect. I'd had it here a couple times in the states and it was really no different in Berlin, but it's still a damn fine drink.

After that we were ready to start our museum hop...

This is actually my friend Rance (who actually met us for the UK portion of this trip) and his musical side project. Rance is quite handy with incorporating laptop soundscapes and rhythms into his dreamy guitar pop and this instrumental is a good example of that.

Art Decade - David Bowie - Low - 1977

2009-03-04T16:25:00.003-05:00

Ahhh, very appropriate, a bit of Bowie's Berlin period to go along with my tale of debauchery in Berlin. Arty, instrumental, and super cool...it is the Bowie/Eno combo at it's best/worst.

After we managed to ditch the Icelanders and took a moment to compose ourselves we tried to find another bar on my itinerary. Two separate people had recommended this bar to me. You simply entered, paid 1 euro to "rent" a glass and then drank as much as wine as you wanted. At the end of the night, you paid what you thought was fair for what you drank (again, the Berliners seem to be very big on the honor system) but by the time we got there it was well after midnight and quite closed. We ended up drunkenly attempting to photograph a beautiful, snow covered church at night with mixed results.

We finally ended up in some bar called The King Kong lounge where we stayed till about 330. The King Kong Lounge was the kind of bar that would have looked in no way out of place on Ave B. It was a faux dive done in red light, with old time American movie posters on the wall, and Cronenburg's Crash (as opposed to the Oscar winning crap from a few years ago) being projected on a back wall. We sat on one of the couch, nursed some beers and took in the talent before finally calling it a night.

Wow...and this was all day one...sheesh.

Art Bitch - CSS - Cansei de Ser Sexy - 2006

2009-03-04T15:40:00.003-05:00

My friend Kamni had recommended a bar on the North East side of town called The Absinthe Depot, so once we got done getting our tourist on, we decided this was something we needed to go check out. We walked quite a bit taking in the sites of the city at night (still mostly empty due to the weather) until we came upon our destination.

The "bar" itself was really more of a specialty liquor store with 3-4 tables in the front for service. The only options were coffee, water and absinthe (sold in both the 3 euro 50 regular and 4 euro 50 "special"). The man who ran the place had a certain gruff charm (again, Berliners are ridiculously friendly) and as we were the only customers we carried on a good amount of conversation about the city, his business, NYC and what have you.

During the time we were there (probably about an hour and a half) we only saw a few customers come in, and they were all to buy things to take with them...beers or bottles of the green stuff. But at around 1130 a group of 4 absolutely hammered Icelandic folk came stumbling in the door. And I gathered from their entrance that they had been to this place earlier in the evening and that the owner was not terribly happy to see them back.

There were 3 men and one woman, all seemed to be in their mid-40's. They apparently ran a local theater and had the bombastic personalities to suit that business. They joined us at our table without a proper invite, and proceeded to roll a hash joint (something that still managed to leave Anand amazed).

After several very drunken and loud conversations occured regarding our opinions of Berlin, what we knew about Iceland, and American politics it came up that I lived in Brooklyn. One of the Icelanders asked where and I said "Prospect Heights, I've lived there for nearly 4 years". He then jumped up and said "I used to live in Ft. Green (one neighborhood over, for the none Brooklyn people). At that point the owner of the bar said "oh? I lived in Ft. Green for many years". Apparently he'd lived there in the 80's and told a few stories about what the place had been like back then. It is indeed a small planet.

The Icelanders then asked what we planned on doing, at which point I dutifully pulled out my print out of places to check out. The woman in the group (Who was definitely trying to get her Cougar on) made fun of me quite a bit for having a "Drinking itenerary" but I personally think that she just lacked vision. As the place closed at midnight, the Icelanders tried to drag us along with them on wherever there adventure would take them next, but Anand and I were having none of it...we ducked out and on to our next adventure.

CSS is one of those bands that I feel slightly guilty for liking. They are "fun" and little else, though I must admit the lyrics to this are fairly wittily scathing. I guess the obnoxiousness of the art scene in Brazil isn't terribly different than the art scene in NYC...I would make a joke about it having more waxed vags, but that's probably not even true anymore.

Arrow - The High Strung - Get The Guests - 2007

2009-03-04T13:39:00.003-05:00

Now that we were appropriately lubricated, we left Kruezberg before it got too late and before our stoned Berliner tour guides talked our ears off. Our next stop was the more touristy center of town where we would check out the Reichstadt and the Brandenburg Gate.

Among the many fascinating things about the city is their public transportation. First of all, it is entirely on the honor system...you buy a ticket from a machine, and then get onto a train without ever going through a gate or a check in. You then ride the train. No one ever takes your ticket. Ever. Secondly, not content with the choice between elevated train, subway and ground level trains, the Berliners do all three. And finally, like everything else, it is shockingly clean.

The advantage to going on this trip in February (other than the cheapness) was that we were relatively free of other tourists. The layer of snow also helped, basically ensuring that we could walk around Berlin city center without much interuption or distraction. We did have our one moment of scummy American tourist behavior when we used the space between an empty tourist info booth and a construction wall as a make shift bathroom...but mostly we just took very reverent pictures of the Brandenburg gate, a lovely monument made even more so by the snow.

After walking around the Reichstadt and "Museum Island" for a bit we found a glass wall that had all of the articles of German Constitution written on it, and perhaps most impressively...if you looked straight through the glass wall, you could see a techno party happening in one of the office buildings on the other side. It was sort of like Berlin in one encapsulated image.

Everytime this song, by this Williamsburg-by-way-of-Detroit band has come up on this playlist I've sworn that it was a Jayhawks song. And I suppose they should take that as a compliment.

Arrest Yourself - Hot Chip - The Warning - 2006

2009-03-03T13:44:00.006-05:00

After dinner we stumbled around Kruezberg for a bit until we found a bar we liked. We checked out and quickly rejected a couple of old man bars, as well as a few that seemed like meat markets for college kids, until we happened upon a place called Luzia.

Luzia at first glance seemed to be a coffee shop. The interior was all done in dark woods, and little tables with metal chairs. The clientele were mostly late 20's to 30's, either in couples or alone with a book. But the music was all speakeasy jazz and there were certainly drinks to be had.

The bartender was exceptionally friendly in recommending some fine German beers for us to try out. Actually, every Berliner we met was exceptionally friendly. It's as if the subtext of every conversation you have is "See, Ve are not Nazis! We are fun and friendly people who live in a beautiful multicultural city". If I had a Euro for every Berliner that emphatically described the city as "Multi-cultural" I'd have come back richer than I left.

Anyway, we were sitting there having our second or possibly third beverage when Anand started staring at whatever was going on over my shoulder in a mixture of amazement and curiosity...it seems that the gentlemen behind us were engaged in an activity that while we knew was legal in Amsterdam, we did not realize was something you could do publicly in Berlin. Turns out that Berlin's laws are a bit more liberal than one would expect, in this regard. We struck up a conversation with the two smokey individuals and asked for advice on what we should check out with only two days to see the city.

As stated above, Berliners seem to be very into the idea of proving to the world that their city is a wonderful place, and that they've moved past the uglier parts of the 20th century...so these two stoned germans (well only one spoke English) proceeded to advise us to basically check out every single museum and historical landmark in the city, when really what I wanted to find out was where the cool bars and shows were. Never the less, you couldn't fault the boys for their civic pride.

Ideally, I would have had this Hot Chip fall into the London portion of the trip, as it certainly is basically the mold for this type of Synthy, Dancy Brit-Pop. It's a decent song, but Andy Samburg's "Jizz In My Pants" skit on SNL has basically made this type of song unlistenable to me though. All I can think of is lame ass londoners with their bad hair cuts and sweaters tied loosely around their necks dealing with premature ejaculation.

Arpeggi - Radiohead - Boston - 6 5 2006 - 2006

2009-03-02T17:27:00.003-05:00

Prior to the trip I had done a fair bit of research about Berlin. I knew that I would only have a couple of days to explore it's charms and I didn't want to waste it bumbling around the lame parts of town and tourist attractions (as I had done in Paris 5 years ago...I didn't find the cool neighborhood until my last night). So, I had taken a survey of people who had been to Berlin before, people who's opinion I respected and who I thought could give me the inside scoop.

Most of my responders had pointed out Kruizberg as a cool part of town. Kruizberg was fairly easy to identify on our tourist map as it occupied most of the south east corner of the city proper. Anand and I both being avid walkers and we had come prepared for the snow and cold, so we decided to simply walk from Check Point Charlie down to the hood. We walked....and we walked...and we walked...and yet we seemed to be constantly walking under highways and around industrial complexes...there were no cool bars and restaurants...there weren't even any bars and restaurants and my fears that maybe Berlin was not as cool as I was lead to believe became even more solid.

Finally, we broke down and asked a man in a coffee shop (one of the first things we came upon) if there were any bars and restaurants we could hit up in the area. He pointed us to take a left and head down two blocks...and with that we found Kruizberg center. Apparently we had managed to walk about half way around the circumference of the neighborhood without ever actually entering it. But a brief walk around showed us more or less what we were looking for. It had elements of the East Village and Williamsburg here in NYC, but with it's own East German touches. There were a surprising number of ethnic (non-German) restaurants to be viewed, including, somewhat unexpectedly 3-4 Mexican places...but we can always get that at home. We ended up getting kabobs and giant beers at a Turkish place, finally getting some "lunch" at 4 in the afternoon.

It must be said that you can buy a beer anywhere in Germany. You can buy a beer at Dunkin Donuts. It honestly would not surprise me if beer was available at your local dentist office. You probably can get a beer at church...and a giant stein at that.

Once we finished our lamb and giant beers the sun had set, and we were ready to see what the neighborhood had to offer.

Another version of Arpeggi (Weird Fishes) from the pre-In Rainbows tour.

Arpeggi - Radiohead - Live in London 6 19 2006 - 2006

2009-03-02T16:03:00.005-05:00

We landed in Berlin at 830 AM (that's 130 AM NYC Time) and I was groggy as fuck. To make matters more interesting, not only was snow falling on the city, but there were already 4-5 inches on the ground. We took a shuttle bus back to our Hotel in The Alexanderplatz. Fortunately they let us check in when we arrived, so that we could go take a brief nap and shower before heading off on our adventures.

The Alexanderplatz seems to be a big shopping district on the old East Berlin side of town, and while there were certainly some decent stores and restaurants over there, my initial reaction to the city was that perhaps the rumors that I'd heard of it being a great town with an active underground art and music scene were a bit overstated...but I would soon learn that, not unlike NYC, it's all about the neighborhood that you are in.

Our first stop was the remainder of the Berlin wall. There is a small museum there called Check Point Charlie, to commemorate the milatary station where well supervised traffic was allowed to move between the sides of The Iron Curtain, but most people had told me that it was a waste of time and judging by the brief glimpse I saw through the door, I agree. There is a small section of the actual wall about 1 block long that we did view...it's covered in graffiti and fliers, but it still gives a sense of what used to be.

Incidentally, my favorite flier on the wall was the poster for the Romone's Museum.

Next Stop, Kruizberg.

This is an early live version of the song that would eventually become Wierd Fishes/Arpeggi. Most of the elements are already in place and it's still a great song.

Around and Around - Chuck Berry - The Ultimate Collection Disc 2 - 1959

2009-03-02T11:42:00.004-05:00

Ok, so clearly my plan to update this from Europe did not take shape. Though in some fairness to myself, it was not due to my unwillingness or lack of time, but due to the criminal lack of free wi-fi available in European hotels...and I wasn't paying 20 Pounds just to update y'all.

Anyway, vacation was good and much needed and I'll do my best to give you a thorough recap (with a few details excluded to protect the guilty) over the next few days. So where to start...

Well, I was due to depart from my office at 2PM on Wednesday the 18th. At 1:55 my boss called me into his office just to make sure that "my head was in the game". I found this rather curious timing as I was 5 minutes away from a European vacation and my head was anywhere but "in the game". I suppose he thought my cage needed rattling. As I returned to my desk to grab my stuff and shut down, several of the guys I project manage tried to intercept me and tell me that there was a crucial issue that would impact our next release and that we needed to go to the boss right away...but I wasn't falling for that trick. I let them know that it was 2:07 and "as of 7 minutes ago, this is official someone else's problem".

I met up with my buddy Anand and we walked up to the village to get a good old American cheeseburger at The Corner Bistro and then headed up to Penn station to catch the train out to Newark Airport. For those that have never done it, one of the charms of taking a train out of Penn station is that you can buy giant 32 oz. draft beers to take on the train. They give these to you in soda cups complete with a lid and straw, and honestly if you've never tried to drink a 32 oz. beer through a straw in about 25 minutes...then you haven't lived my friend.

Curiously enough the police have a check point in between the train and the airport, and Anand was convinced that our recently slammed beers would cause some trouble, but despite the most thorough check we got on the entire trip, we made it to the desk and through real security with plenty of time to spare.

After a trip to the duty free store, we popped into the airport bar and threw down a few stiff whiskeys. Finally we boarded the plane with the appropriate buzz going. I passed out relatively quickly and wouldn't really wake up until we touched down in Berlin...

As for the song, this is Chuck Berry doing his thing (and no, I don't mean installing cameras in women's toilets)...it's no better or worse than usual. Not much else to say on that one.

Army of Me - Bjork - Post - 1995

2009-02-18T11:25:00.003-05:00

So, as of 2PM today I will be embarking on a little bit of a journey. My friend Anand and I will be heading off to Berlin for a couple of days. From there, we'll be flying to London and meeting up with our friend Rance. We'll try to catch the Arsenal v Sunderland match on Saturday. On Sunday, we'll be picking up a rental car and driving up the length of England, all the way into Scotland and stopping in Glasgow. On Monday (my birthday) we'll rock it out in Glasgow. Tuesday we'll head back to London and catch Arsenal v Roma...Wednesday I'll be back in the states.

This may be a pipe dream, but I hope to do some blog updating while on the road...if not, I'll come back with plenty of updates.

Anyway, this is in my opinion the best Bjork song...debate while I'm away.

The Army Corps of Architects - Death Cab for Cutie - Sub Pop Singles Club 7 Inch - 2000

2009-02-18T10:17:00.003-05:00

This is one of those rare songs that I can actually remember where I was the first time I heard it. Not because this song is especially memorable (it's not) but because it is the B-side of a much better song...however since that song starts with a "U" (Underwater) I probably won't get to it till like 2012.

When I first moved to the city, one of my favorite cheap ways to hang out with my friends was to go to my friend Rance's place and listen to music. Rance had a good size record (by which I mean vinyl) collection, and his roommate had an even bigger one. My friend Josh, who I had just started hanging out with, was a member of the Subpop single of the month club and had just gotten the latest from a new Pacific Northwest band called Death Cab for Cutie....this probably would have been around January of 2001.

I sometimes miss those times, of just sitting with my friends and listening to music and drinking beer. I miss the ability to be totally captivated by new music, but now I sit back and wonder about those times "How did we just sit around and listen to music and not do anything else?"

Army - Ben Folds Five - The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner - 1999

2009-02-12T17:07:00.003-05:00

I was having weird nostalgia for this song and decided to download it a couple of weeks ago. I had a fragment of the chorus stuck in my head and couldn't quite remember how the rest went. I could also hazily remember a party in May of 1999 where it was played and wanted to bask in that brief moment of long forgotten nerdy youth. It's odd the details I remember from the night, as it's mostly a blur. I remember a lot of making out in my pantry. I remember there was an SNL on TV that Sarah Michelle Geller hosted and she did the skit about a magazine that was just about women holding their own boobs a la Janet Jackson on Rolling Stone. I remember jello shots. And I remember me and some friends trying drunkenly to sing along to this song at the top of our lungs, though none of us knew the words. The thing is once I reheard the song, I instantly remembered why it was not entirely successful and doesn't even really hold up as a guilty pleasure in the way that other BF5 songs have in my subconscious.

I never understand the strategy of having a loud verse followed by a restrained chorus. I mean, I understand it as like a contrarian artistic choice...the typical structure of a pop song is to have a verse that climaxes in the chorus. Though hardly the inventor, Cobain popularized the formula of quiet verses that explode in the chorus (with an acknowledged nod to The Pixies of course)...so the late 90's tried to turn that on it's head by reversing the equation. The problem with this course of action is that...the verse-chorus-verse structure just works! And while you may get style points for defying our expectations, it is ultimately a frustrating experience. The verses work to build excitement for a climax that is downplayed, again...full marks for fucking with your audience, but at the end of the day the pay off is why I listen to music.

Arms Aloft - Joe Strummer and The Mescaleros - Streetcore - 2003

2009-02-12T16:56:00.000-05:00

Wow, you blink your eyes and all of the sudden it's two weeks later and you haven't touched your already ridiculously ambitious blog...sigh. It's busy times here in my life. Work is insane, the world is falling apart, and I have a bitch of a chest cold (my second of the winter)...and I leave for a weeklong vacation in 6 short days.

Though I must say nothing gets you jazzed up for a trip to drive around England and Scotland quite like Joe Strummer singing about driving around England and Scotland. I shall add it to the Driving In England playlist, post haste.

Arms Against Atrophy - Titus Andronicus - The Airing of Grievances - 2008

2009-01-29T17:18:00.003-05:00

The Airing of Grievances was one of the few capital "R" rock albums that really grabbed me last year. In a year that was primarily dominated by dancey electronica and hushed, pastoral folk, it was nice to find an album that could find a way to marry low fi production with shredded vocal and bashed drums energy levels and still be interesting.

And this was probably the song that sold me on them, with it's Westerburg-esque vocals, paint by numbers guitar solo and intense Catholic imagery to describe something fairly mundane (in this case a broken arm) this song had me at "Hello"