Anyway You Want It - Journey - Departure - 1980

"Hey Everybody! We're all gonna get laid!"

Seriously, are there many more perfect examples of mindless, flat-out stupid, summer time bliss than "Anyway You Want It?"

And in the pantheon of just plain dumb rock lyrics you'd have to include "She Loves to Move/She Loves to Grove/She Loves the Loving Things"

Angelita - Jon Auer - Songs from the Year of Our Demise - 2006

So I hosted a party at my apartment this weekend, and made the cardinal mistake of any party host. I got drunk too fast.

See, I had started early, giving myself a little boost while I cooked and cleaned. Then my roommate was trying to perfect his Mojito recipe...and obviously that required some taste tests and few different variations. Then there was the shot of whiskey that had to be done when the party started. Then I started drinking the communal punch (the Grape Drink, the alleged purpose for the party) when the first guest arrived. Next thing I know, I realize that I'm kinda woozy and there was a very real chance that I would in fact be that drunk guy stumbling over furniture, spilling drinks, grabbing boobs that I really shouldn't grab...fortunately I was able to pull up my Irish powers to keep my shit together long enough to find my bearings, and fortunately only my closest friends noticed that I kept going to the bathroom to splash water on my face. The lesson has been learned....next time, I will be better prepared.

Anyway, this is Jon Auer doing his post-Posies thing....which is surprisingly AOR, but not necessarily in a bad way.

The Angel With Good News - Zumpano - Goin' Through Changes - 1996

I was coming home from a birthday dinner at a Mexican place in my hood last night, when I saw something that basically proved that humanity lives for Schadenfreude. Walking down Union St. I saw a middle aged balding man in sweat pants and a t-shirt awkwardly carrying a deli bag in one hand and a granny cart in the other. As he was walking it was clear that he was either crazy, drunk, or having an exceptional bad day that was effecting his public composure. He seemed to have trouble carrying his two belongings, and he was continually muttering in an angry whisper at whatever boogie monsters he was seeing.

As he walked, he was attempting to unfold the granny cart and the handle got snagged on his pants. All the sudden the baggy sweat pants were around his ankles. Thankfully he was wearing boxers. But instead of the obliviousness you usually get from the half naked crazies in the city, he was totally mortified. He immediately dropped everything and started struggling to pull up his pants, but whatever condition he was suffering some made this extremely difficult. He pulled at his sweats while the angry mutters of "Ohhh geez, ohhhh man" got louder.

We were probably less than 10 feet behind him when it happened, and 3 of the 5 people in our party were lovely young women, which probably did not help his extreme embarrasment. We did our best to make it to the other side of before we burst out into laughter...but I had to think he heard us.

Anyway, due to the coincidences of song titles, I've already had plenty of opportunity to complain about what I a disappointingly limp album I find The New Pornographer's Challengers to be...but it was not completely unprecedented. The second Zumpano album was something of a disappointment to those that loved the bouyancy of the first. Songs like The Angel With Good News might have pleased the fans who wanted Zumpano to persue its more Harry Nilson/Burt Bacharach vibes...but for those of us who loved the power pop drive of the first album, it was, with a few exceptions, something of a snooze fest. This song is a prime example of said snooze fest.

Do

Androgynous - The Replacements - Let It Be - 1984

The Summer of 1984 was the first time I can remember having a great time, the first time I remember thinking "Wow, summer is awesome!" I was 9. The movie theater had been playing such treasures as Ghostbusters, Gremlins and Temple of Doom (I was too young to realize its shortcomings). I spent a lot of time at the pool or cruising around the neighborhood with my cousin Ryan. I was too young to be stressed by girls or grades or any of the crippling self consciousness that would plague my junior high years.

Sadly, I was an oldest child so I had no older siblings to play Replacements records for me. I would only discover them backwards through Nirvana. (I don't know if anyone remembers the relentless Replacements comparrisons they received prior to Cobain becoming St. Kurt). Not that I had gender identification issues...that and acne are the two adolescent traumas I escaped...but an older brother might have at least ensured that I was listening to better stuff than Axel F, Summer of 69, and the theme from the aforementioned Ghostbusters.

Andalucia - Yo La Tengo - Fakebook - 1990

I feel like my entire office is coasting through to the weekend...and yes it's Monday. It's just one of those weeks where it feels like everybody in the city is zombie walking through the week to make it to that early dismissal on Friday and the long weekend vacation/staycation they've got lined up for Labor Day. Even the subway seemed slow.

Anyway, speaking of Slow...here's YLT covering John Cale on the Fakebook album. Sadly, I can remember a time when YLT putting out a mellow album was a new and novel twist, rather than to be expected and sighed at with disappointment.

And The Same - Fugazi - Margin Walker - 1989

I was wasted at my BBQ on Sunday and Fugazi came up on my iPod and my friend who is also named Josh and I had a lengthy convo about the Fugazi fans we had known back in the day. Both of us came to the same conclusion that people who really loved the band were always great guys, but also little antagonistic. You're standing there having a conversation with Fugazi fan A and all of the sudden he's driving his finger into your chest, telling you how corporate America is ruining everything and soon we'll be nothing but an oligarchy and slaves to mediocrity...but you don't quite understand why he's treating this like a fight, when you totally agree with him.

And, rather obviously, I think the straight edge thing is pretty lame...but what are you going to do? The world needs cage rattlers too.

And The Cradle Will Rock - Van Halen - Women and Children First - 1980

Ok, so I mentioned the wait in line for the ID in order to drink...but I didn't even get to the biggest indignity of the day. The beer pens.

So, after you waited your 45 minutes for a beer...you had to stay in an enclosed area about 25 feet by 15 feet in the grass. You could not take your beer out to the show. You were also limited to 5 beers and they stopped serving at 830. To enforce this they had a ridiculous system...a purple x was drawn on your left hand in permanent marker. Then you were given a plastic wrist band with 5 plastic pull tabs. Each time you bought a drink a tab was pulled from the bracelet.

Basically, this sets off all of my alarm bells at once. First of all, there's the simple practical matter of having to sit in a confined pen to drink my beer, when I'm at an outdoor festival. Second of all, there is the moral principle of the thing. This is clearly designed to try to curb underage drinking...and nothing infuriates me more than things done for "the protection of the children". The world exists for adults...children should be toughened up for the world not protected from it, and adults should not be made to curtail their lives for the sake of the children. Beyond that, we are kidding ourselves if we think silly activities like this are actually going to curb underage drinking...and we are sucking all the fun out of childhood too. What the hell else are you supposed to do when you are 16 at an outdoor concert in August, you are going to sneak beer...that's what you do! And finally, kids these days don't even drink that much...they just steal the prescription drugs out of your medicine cabinets and snort them. The attitude that kids were pure and innocent and only corrupted by our society is one of the reasons I had to get the fuck out of the midwest...and to have it occur here in NYC (ok, Jersey, but barely) really infuriates me.

I'll give you a for instance of the kind thing that sets me off. I'm sitting in the beer pen drinking a couple beers and I bum one of Anand's cigarettes. Sitting next to us is a woman in her mid-late twenties reading a book. She immediately starts covering her nose and exaggerating a cough. Seriously! First of all, honey, go do your fucking homework somewhere besides the beer pen. Second of all, it's THE BEER PEN...it's bad enough I have to be locked in here drinking, you could at least not take up space READING. And third of all, when you are in the only place in the park where you can legally do anything even slightly unsavory...maybe you can cut me some slack on having a cigarette. Ugggghhhhh.

You know who'd really hate the beer pen policy? David Lee Roth, that's who. The Cradle Will Rock indeed, Diamond Dave. Rock on!

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.

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...

Amity - Elliot Smith - XO - 1998

"And Amity, as you know, means friendship..."

I just can't resist a Jaws joke especially in a tacky segue...the follow up to this post:

http://ocdipod.blogspot.com/2008/07/amber-canyon-magik-brightblack-morning.html

is here:

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gGxSXC2jWjGWou8lPsy7d2ZJKrNAD92638380

Anyway, Elliot Smith being a bit more rocky than usual...which if you know me, you know that I am for.

American Flag - Cat Power - Moon Pix - 1998

Now this is the Cat Power I used to love...batshit crazy, drunk off her ass, morose, barely coherent...music filled with odd ominous sounds and feedback rather than Memphis horn sections and a professional drummer.

I sit here enduring the longest Friday afternoon in human history while my girlfriend sits on the beach. The old Cat Power was right. Life is hell.

Amber Canyon Magik - Brightblack Morning Light - Brightblack Morning Light - 2006

So I'm at the beach on Saturday, sitting on a towel with two topless twenty-something girls (no, seriously) and a cold bottle of wine and thinking my life is pretty sweet. It was a hot day and all the tropical storm activity down south meant the waves were pretty intense for a NYC beach, and despite my urban slacker demeanor, I do truly love playing in the waves.

It gets to be about 530 and I decide to take one last turn in the waves. I'm jumping into the waves and riding them into the shore, but at this point the water is crazy. One wave picked me up and threw me, and I knew I was going to end up face first in the rocky sand...so I put my hands out to try to push off. The force of the wave whipped my legs up over my head, causing me to do a, completely unintentional, but basically perfect (and probably cool) back handspring. However, I also heard something in my back go "Pop" and while I was totally fine. There was the few seconds where I was like..."Oh shit, I'm the guy who got paralyzed for life being thrown by a wave" And that was pretty much it for me and the ocean that day.

Later on a man had to be pulled from the water...ambulances and helicopters came in for the rescue and somebody's day at the beach got ruined. Thankfully it was not me.

Anyway, the message here is...don't fuck with nature or she will fuck you up.

Brightblack Morning Light...doing their super stoned organ music thing. Either you like it or you don't. I like it well enough.

Alone, Jealous and Stoned - The Secret Machines - Ten Silver Drops - 2006

I'd like to talk for a moment about Rollercoasters...rollercoasters are awesome. End of.

Well, no...I'll say a few more words. I went down to the Brooklyn landmark that is The Cyclone on Saturday. I wasn't sure it was still running as the Astroland at Coney Island has been on the way to closing down...but thank the heavens The Cyclone is still going strong.

After an afternoon of sitting in the sun and sand drinking beer on Beer Island (yes, that is a real thing now and not just something I dreamed up...it replaced the putt-putt course, which is an upgrade in my book) I was all ready for some action, and the Cyclone rarely dissapoints. Part of the thrill, of course, is that it is so old and rickety. You could actually die. This could be the one time that the car derails from the track and flies off into the ocean hurtling you to the most fun demise you could imagine...hands in the air and screaming. But fortunately I survived.

My attempt to listen to the iPod on the ride (and thus having an appropriately soundtracked experience) was less succesful though. I managed to keep the headphones on my head and the volume at a sufficient level. The problem was keeping the audio jack in the iPod. Perhaps next time I'll duct tape it in or something. Suggestions are welcome.

Allison Krause - The Stills - Logic Will Break Your Heart - 2003

A month and a half later, and we are finally out of the "all"s.

So since I've talked quite a bit about my love for summer being based on the inverse relationship between the temperature and the amount of clothing women wear, I guess it's time I talk about some of the things I love about the summer that don't make me sound like a giant perv....which is why you are going to get an ode to my love of the grilling.

I am rarely tempted to leave the city all behind and go grab a suburban life...but one of the few things that would appeal to me about that is the grill in the back yard. Grilling involves many things my caveman-self loves...building a fire, cooking meat, drinking. In addition to that, being the guy running the grill serves another, larger, social purpose. As the grill master at a barbeque you are relieved of the responsibility of mingling. People come to you. They bring you meat to cook. They make you drinks. They come and talk to you because they feel bad you are "Stuck at the grill" and as long as you don't under-cook chicken, you come away looking like the hero.

Allison Krause niether seems to be about the Alt-Country singer nor does it particularly sound like her...in any way...however this song does contain a great joke about technical virginity...which is funny in and of itself. The Stills managed to piss away all the good will they earned with this album with their subsequent releases. Yes, the album is entirely derivative, but it's a good listen...and will always remind me of the crazy second half of 2003.

All We Have - Brazilian Girls - Brazilian Girls - 2005

So, since I ripped apart the MTA a few posts ago, I should probably sing it's praises for a thing or two. I had that moment this morning, on my way into work, were I realized that there were an absurd number of hot chicks on my subway car. This was the car that, should it be the only thing to survive an apocalyptic event, you'd be perfectly happy to assist in repopulating the species.

Anyway, this is more of Brazilian Girls and their weird German mime sex.

All Those Expectations - Peter, Bjorn, and John - Falling Out - 2005

Speaking of expectations...I nearly wrote this blog post last night, in which case you would have gotten a lengthy screed involving me giving a viking blood eagle to the children of the head of the MTA. I would have summoned dark gods to devour his soul and the furies to chase him through all eternity, but my lady friend came over and calmed me down. Now I'll settle for forcing him to watch endless episodes of Mama's Family and eating nothing but brussel sprouts and matza.

Anyway, after a single drink (no really, just one) with my co-workers I headed to the Q train...at 742 on a Monday evening...hardly late...the sun was still out for christ sake! I waited on the platform for a Q train for 45 minutes, before I finally went and berated the poor attendant in the booth. She called Dekalb Station, who told her to call City Hall, who then sent her back to Dekalb Station. Apparently, no one had any clue where the Q trains were. She then informed me that the heat was causing mechanical problems on several lines.

Two things:

A - How the fuck do you lose an entire train line? The Q isn't even that long, sure it goes out to Brighton Beach, but it stops at 57th St...where did all those trains go on a Monday evening?

B - HEAT!!!!????!!?!?!?!?!? That's your fucking excuse!?! Heat? Really? Word? That's what you got? 102 years of MTA service and you fucktards haven't figured out how to make your shit work on a hot day?

Honestly, despite my grumpy demeanor, I'm a pretty laid back guy, BUT, and this is a Michael Moore sized but, nothing infuriates me more than the incompetence of the MTA. The steal my life, a little bit at a time...and I can be as angry as I want to be about it and it will not affect them in the slightest. The fact that I eventually stormed out and took a cab in no way impacted the MTA...they can continue to be awful with no regard to their customers. Makes me go batshit feral.

Anyway, this PB&J being mellow, which I like far less than PB&J when they rock.