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

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.

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

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.

Anna Lee (Dressed In New Lightning) - Grey Revell - Crazy Like An Ambush - 1999

So my crazy subway preacher was back yesterday. I see him about once or twice a month...but yesterday was the first time he'd ever directly addressed me. I had my headphones on and was walking towards the back of the train before I realized that he was pacing and preaching. I quickly backed into a doorway, audibly saying "Oh Boy" as I did. This clearly drew his ire. And for the rest of his ride I became his example of "white people".

I felt like pointing out that I work for an African-American owned company, that my boss is a black man, that my roommate is a black man, and that this hardly makes me a good example of "The Man"...but I have enough crazy preachers in my family to know that you just don't engage them.

One woman on the train that got on at Borough Hall, during his rant about judges and lawyers, decided to engage him...this was a mistake. She tried the "I agree with you, but do we have to do this now" tactic...which was a mistake, but at least got him off my case.

Anyway, this song is nice enough...but the guitar bit sounds a lot like Mirah's "Archepeligo". And I don't know, the dude with an acoustic guitar thing only goes so far.

And Someone With Strengths - Wheat - Hope and Adams - 1999

So I went to the Saturday show of All Points West at Liberty State Park this past weekend to see my boys Radiohead play. This is the first of many posts, I'll probably spend ranting/raving about this show...but let's start with my biggest statement...which I'd like to state, has nothing to do with the performance of the bands....Jesus Christ did that fucking suck!

Okay, so my buddy Anand and I met up in the early afternoon to do a little pre-gaming and then head out towards Jersey. We had bought our $25 ferry tickets in advance, so we assumed the wait wouldn't be that bad...but when half the city of NYC wants to get out to a little park in Jersey...you are going to wait for a ferry. So first line I waited in, 1 hour.

Then you get to Jersey and you gotta walk a pretty good distance to get to the concert area...where security thoroughly pats you down. And when I say "security" I mean whatever Jersey crackheads they could find willing to pat you down and yell at you if they find anything...of course there were very authoritative looking state troopers around to enforce the decisions of the power mad crackheads. Second line I waited in 1.5 hours.

THEN you had to wait in line to get your ID bracelet to buy booze. Time spent waiting in this line 45 minutes.

Time spent waiting in lines for port-a-potties 1 hour.

Then of course, the line to get back ON the ferries to go home at the end of the night 1 hour, 15 minutes.

So time spent waiting in lines on Saturday: 5.5 hours. Time spent seeing my favorite band...about 2 hours. Something of a trade off I must say.

Wheat are kind of an Irish Wilco, depending on what way that sways your opinion, judge this song accordingly.

And One (On One) - The Lily's - The Three Way - 1999

My brain is complete mush after a lovely Brooklyn evening. Met over at my buddy Shani's place, where I met up with my lady friend and a couple of her friends. Drank a bottle of wine and ended up doing most of a shot of Jaggermiester (dear God, why?) that one of the ladies couldn't handle. Then went out to McCarren park to lay in the grass and listen to The Black Keys' show (which was awesome btw...never thought a two piece could fill the sound at an outdoor show so well.) where we split 3 mini bottles of Proseco and 4 red stripe. We also succesfully got a pizza delivered to a street corner which is bit of a Brooklyn badge of honor. Then went back to Shani's for more beer and vodka soda....so yeah, mushy brain.

This is another song from The Lily's album where they want to be The Zombies. Which is a perfectly acceptable aspiration. They lift the same angry "I'm so fucking hungover and strung out" guitar tone from "Happiness is a Warm Gun" that James Murphy would later use for "Never As Tired As When I'm Waking Up" six years later. And, of course, how can you not love a song with a harpsichord?

And My Unit Moves - Robert Pollard and Doug Gilliard - Speak Kindly of Your Volunteer Fire Department - 1999

And now another song from this album. Sometimes a random assortment isn't that random. I guess that's how poker works. Sometimes you get numbers, sometimes you get a royal flush.

And yes, this song my very well be about Bob's wang. But with him, you just never know.

Amputations - Death Cab for Cutie - Something About Airplanes - 1999

The ability for music to trigger nostalgia is hardly a phenomenon that requires more discussion...but this song has such a strong association to me...it takes me to a very specific time and place. But what's odd about this time and place is that it's not terribly memorable. I mean, I suppose as a little slice of a time and place in my life, it's interesting...but that I'd have such visceral memory (I can even remember how I felt at the time) is really a fascinating intersection of time and memory and music.

Anyway, it was summer of 2001...It was my second summer in the city, but since I moved to NYC in June, it was my first summer with established friends. My girlfriend at the time had decided to spend the summer doing an internship in Oxford Mississipi...I was not happy about this. But on the flip side, it left me with a certain amount of freedom to do what I wanted. I also was too broke to afford a computer or internet access or Air Conditioning in my tiny apartment (if you've never lived in New York...unless you are wealthy or got a kick ass job, you will spend your first two years here unimaginably, eating ketchup packets and duck sauce poor). I also had a friend of mine crashing in my tiny one room apartment, and he never really got the hint that he should...you know...go out and do something.

On weekend days during that ungodly hot summer I would go to my office and just sit in the free AC, get wasted, surf and write. So that's what this song takes me back to. I'm sitting alone in my old office, ungodly high, writing short stories for writing group, hating my girlfriend, but loving my new crazy life. So odd.

Anyway...

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

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

That's not even a word, dammit!

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

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

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

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

All By Ourselves - Sloan - Between The Bridges - 1999

I was living in Cincinnati in 1999, and if you need further evidence of why I have such ambivalent feelings about the place, absorb this fact. In 1999 the local independant weekly picked Sloan's Between the Bridges as the best album the year, with The Flaming Lips The Soft Bulletin as a #2.

Now don't get me wrong, Sloan can be a tremendously entertaining band and they can write a good hook...there are quite a few of them on this album, including this song. And The Flaming Lips have lost some of their cool through computer ads, endless hippy festival appearances and one really bad album. But seriously, don't forget what an amazing pop symphony TSB was at the time...and despite it's charms what an unremarkable power pop album Between the Bridges is.

Anyway...

Accepting Applications at University - The Lilys - The 3 Way - 1999

This is from that Lilys' album where they try to sound like The Zombies...which is fine. There are far worse bands to emulate. Plus, though I'm not entirely sure, I get the impression that the lyrics are kinda dirty.

Abigail, Belle of Kilronan - The Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs Volume 2 - 1999

And speaking of Merge Records...

Gosh remember when Magnetic Fields were just this quirky indie-pop band with a ridiculously ambitious project? Remember when you thought Stephen Merritt was closet prodigy, a sweet gay boy with Johnny Cash's voice, a cheap keyboard, and ridiculously low self-esteem? Remember when you didn't know he was a pompous, self-regarding asshole with no respect for his peers?

Yeah, I don't remember any of that either...

Here's the one where he tries to pretend to be Irish...