Cursive, Ottobar 8/8/09

YES, WE CANNOT RESIST CURSIVE, especially when they play the club less than five minutes from our house, on a Saturday night. As I’ve just returned from the show, have a drink to mix and a water to glug, I will stick (for now? eh, let’s not kid ourselves…) solely to the set list. I will add, however, that as blown away as I was by “What Have I Done” at the DC show earlier this year, having him sing it from the audience, and reach the “take a look around you, you’re preaching to the choir…” part two people away from me was unbelievable.

They started around 11:15, went until 12:40.

Dorothy at 40
Mama, I’m Satan
The Radiator Hums
Driftwood: A Fairy Tale
Making Friends and Acquaintances
Bad Sects
Butcher the Song
Mama, I’m Swollen
The Martyr
Some Red-Handed Sleight of Hand
Art is Hard
What Have I Done?
[encore]
Big Bang
I Couldn’t Love You
Modern Love (yeap, Modern Love, with members of Love Language on percussion and vocals and general goin’ crazy)
The Recluse
The Great Decay

Note: This was one of the, uh, other kind of Cursive shows. Actually, maybe the DC was the other, and this was the normal? In other words, Mr. Kasher seemed a bit soggy (only in his demeanor, the playing and singing was pretty much up to par), and rather than the occasional dramatic pause, songs like The Martyr or Dorothy paused for a good three to five minutes at the dramatic peak so we could all have a good smarm fest (on both sides). In “The Great Decay,” this actually devolved into a ridiculous(ly entertaining) rooster-call/vocal-scat call-and-response session between Tim, members of the band, and a couple of audience members he tilted the mic to. When he first started doing it, I thought first that it was a subtle “Arrested Development” reference, then for a brief instant believed/wished/hoped they were about to dive into “London Calling” (or as I called it before I knew the name, “the rooster song”).

Spectre of the Specter

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090428/ap_on_go_co/us_specter_switch

I’m sure there’s a down side to this, but for now, I say to thee, “hell yes.”
For the last few years that I have been actually paying attention to news, government, and legislation in my idle way, Arlen Specter’s name has been one of the first and few that I distinguished from the rest, the congress-person I actually remember other than my own from MD. This is mostly because the guy has a head on his shoulders and a conscience in his…uh, conscience-compartment. Pretty much every time I hear he’s done something or said something, I’m thinking, “THANK you. Somebody making some damned sense here,” or “Maybe there’s hope after all if this guy’s a veteran Republican.”

So, take that Tom Skerritt!
(Title pun/obscure film reference brought to you by the Roy H. Park School of Communications)

Top 5 Albums of the College.

Okay, I swear I’m just gonna blow this one out real fast. No liner notes, nuthin (Update: now featuring liner notes!). Just boom boom boom. Go–[no particular order]

1. Cursive’s Domestica
   I had this one day that kind of sent me soaring off in new musical directions. It was the end of 2000, and I had a final for my film sound post-production class. At some point I realized I had locked myself out of my on-campus shared-studio-style apartment, so I walked back to Park, where my acquaintance and fellow final-taker Jay L. was still hanging around. Hearing my predicament, he basically was like, I gotcha, and took me out to lunch, which doesn’t seem like a big thing but I thought was exceedingly generous (somehow I didn’t have my wallet either? I feel like he paid for me? Or maybe it was just the generosity of offering to fill up the time until my roommate would be home, coming from a guy I liked and worked with on a TV show but was by no means friends with. At any rate, I totally associate this day with Jay’s sharing nature.) On the way to the diner (Manos–the days of going to the State diner had passed), at the diner, and on the way back to campus, all we talked about was music. Mostly, he talked and I listened. (In other words, for those of you who’ve been subject to relentless music ramble/oppression/educational lecture from me, I was in the other seat.) He turned me on to Cursive, who I think I’d heard of through starting to get into Bright Eyes, but had not yet heard, At the Drive-In, and probably a dozen other bands that didn’t stick as well. On the way back to campus I heard “Ceilings Crack” by Cursive for the first time–”Passed out in your yard!…”–Jay explaining that the song caused him to make sure he’s drunk each Bastille Day–I first heard the Cursive story, of the release of the first album, the breakup as Tim Kasher left and got married, then came back…Of course, Jay and I also bonded over the Beach Boys. For the rest of the year, we’d see each other and kind of go nod, nod. I think somewhere I have a picture of him on Fountain Day with Portland Native, he’s wearing a vintage Beach Boys shirt.
   So. Point is, I bathed in Cursive for the rest of college, mostly Domestica. It was catchier than Such Blinding Stars for Starving Eyes, and for some reason I didn’t get The Storms of Early Summer until last year. Domestica is pretty much perfect. It’s got the Cursive-cohesive story holding the songs together (it’s a breakup album, perhaps THE breakup album as far as I’m concerned, although I feel like recently I read somewhere that Mr. Kasher at some point said he saw the couple sticking together in the end). Great, great lyrics that make the physical and figurative battleground and weapons come scarily to life, and some things that are just awful, awful to imagine saying to someone you love(d) (“To prove you still feel/you only feel sorry for yourself”…yeah, I was trying to think of more and pretty much any line on the album works.) It’s not so relentless in its rocking that you’re burned out by the end, but there aren’t really any “slow” songs per se. My favorite (with about eight others coming in close second) is “The Radiator Hums.” Also, randomly, this is the album that made me start paying attention to drums.
2. Bright Eyes — Fevers and Mirrors
   I read about Bright Eyes and Conor Oberst in a magazine that was sitting around at Portland Native’s house. No idea what magazine, I think I’d never heard of it before and haven’t since. I’m not sure what intrigued me, but it was basically this kid who was about my age, who appears so nervous on (very small) stage that he can barely sing, that his voice comes out all tremolous. Whatever it was, I hit the napster (hell yeah napster.) and downloaded most of Fevers and Mirrors. It actually took some time for me to fully get into. I loved “Movement of a Hand” for a quite a while without getting much into the rest, then “Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh” and “A Scale, A Mirror, and These Indifferent Clocks” fell into place. Eventually I really liked the whole thing, though I prefered the more traditional-sounding ones to more…I dunno, different-tempo’d? ”When the Curious Girl Realizes She is Under Glass” or “Sunrise, Sunset.” If I listened objectively now, I’d probably pick out “An Attempt to Tip the Scales” or “Something Vague.” “Something Vague” and “Haligh” definitely hold some forever-sway, though, due just to being so fucking crushing and time-travely. I think I learned the chords to about half the album; every time I hear “Haligh” I’m sitting up against a car in the parking lot of the Oakwoods in LA, waiting for some people to get their shit together to go camping at Joshua Tree (a story unto itself), when I grabbed either Kurt’s guitar or my own and for some reason plonked out  and sang “Haligh, Haligh, A Lie, Haligh” note-perfect. There were maybe two people there, half-listening, maybe it was just Jimmy BigHead. I’ve never done it as well since. Apparently I still had my pipes in LA ‘01; I think I did something similar with “Something Vague” in the living room of MP and Richard From Home Depot In The Bronx (though naturally MP also played his own song, which was just as good…) So yeah, it certainly says something about my, er, emotional disposition during college to put this one on the list, but it’s undeniable. I’ve lost touch a bit, but for half a decade or so there, it was really nice to age in tandem with Mr. Oberst as he wrote the soundtrack to my life.
3. Neutral Milk Hotel — In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
   Yeah, so what hasn’t been said? Thanks, Eli for an IM away message that put me onto them. Thanks, Mr. Mangum, for providing one of the only parts of my senior film I’m actually still immodestly proud of. Thanks, Shleigh (and my fellow Pollution Tour 2001 travelers) for tolerating me singing every word of this, drunk, at the top of my lungs as you propelled us swiftly, wind-blown, through the hills of South Dakota in the middle of the night. This album worked best for me by revealing itself slowly.
4. Grandaddy — The Sophtware Slump
   During a small period of college (say, half a semester or so) in which I got myself broken (figuratively), this album fixed me. It had help from the kindness of a stranger, and the listening ears of some real friends, but this album was my medicine for a while. Earlier that fall, Portland Native, Penny, and I had gone on a road trip to my house, where we stayed for a weekend in order to see Elliott Smith at the Recher in Towson. Grandaddy opened for him, and it was quite amazing. Not mind-blowing, like the Flaming Lips show I would see there a few years later, but really good and a little moving and surprising coming from an opening band I’d never heard of. (On my keychain I actually still keep an orange bottle opener that used to have the Grandaddy logo on it from that show.) There was a large video screen behind them, and it probably played different things, but the one I remember looked basically like the cover of The Sophtware Slump except without the lettering, and with digitally-animated deer bounding gracefully across. This very well could’ve been during “So You’ll Aim Toward the Sky,” a song that played a large part in my healing process. Basically during that time in which I felt dumb to the world, I could put on that or “Hewlett’s Daughter” and feel five times better.
   That, of course, puts it up near contention, but I’m sure other albums consoled me at other times (Crooked Fingers, say). Thing is, The Sophtware Slump–and I still believe this today, comparing it against pretty and really good other Grandaddy albums–is fantastic. It’s a sound that seems so commonplace today–throw some bleeps and chirps over an otherwise lo-fi indie-rock song–but at the time was surprising and beautifully executed. There’s a wonderful, disturbing theme of nature vs. technology running throughout, not in an obvious “hey, save the trees down with cars” kind of way, but rather a strange, almost ridiculous way (“Broken Household Appliance National Forest”). Most of all, of course, there are great songs, regardless of what they sound like or are “about”–”The Crystal Lake,” the opener “He’s Simple, He’s Dumb, He’s the Pilot,” “Jed’s Other Poem (Beautiful Ground)…and so on. I’d really like to just mention “So You’ll Aim Toward the Sky” one more time. It’s worth it.
5. Tullycraft — City of Suburus
   Tullycraft! Seen before on this blog (albeit in my usual “I’m gonna totally write about this band from first album to last, super-thorough, give a primer kind of deal” and then I conk out after the third release way), this album is what started my love affair. Thanks to both Portland Native and Penny–they can duke it out amongst themselves as to who introduced me, who introduced them, although I believe it was a guy named Ian whose radio show Portland Native and I tried to revive before the Man shut us down who introduced them to Tullycraft. Again, like nothing I’d ever heard. My high school listening to Nirvana and Beck and the Halo Benders brushed me up against Calvin Johnson, but otherwise I didn’t know what twee, or as I like to think of Tullycraft (and how I heard it described then), softcore, was. I know I loved it instantly, wanted for extended periods to hear nothing but. (Portland Native coming through with several tapes full of stuff like Bunnygrunt, the Softies, All-Girl Summer Fun Band, and the like.) City of Suburus just put me in a good mood–no, it didn’t just do that, it made me feel like the world was all right, like my life was fucking great, it was like the soundtrack in a movie that makes the scene MORE than it would be with dialogue or no sound, except the movie was my life. Nearly every track on this is stellar–”8 Great Ways,” “Ticket Tonight,” and of course “Vacation in Christine, ND.” Seeing Tullycraft live last summer may have been the biggest fulfillment of an Always Wanted to See Them/Never Thought I Would dream I’ve ever had.

Bonuses:

1. Modest Mouse — The Lonesome Crowded West/This is a Long Drive For Someone With Nothing to Think About/The Moon and Antarctica [One of these would be on the real list, but I couldn’t decide on just one of them; I got into mm in I think late 1999 thanks to both my friend Ash and the Spin 90 Greatest Albums of the 90s feature that mentioned them as a “see also” after There’s Nothing Wrong With Love and I thought, geez, I keep hearing this name, and now from Spin, okay, it’s time to find some…So, I think by the time I returned to Ithaca in late January I was insane for the first two full albums and in breathless anticipation of the third. All three certainly lived all over my college career, so they really deserve to be up there. Oh, and don’t forget Building Nothing Out of Something!
2. At the Drive-In — Relationship of Command
3. The Flaming Lips — The Soft Bulletin
4. Everything else released by Saddle Creek from 2000-2002. (I think at some point I had at least one album by every band on their roster, and every one was awesome.)
5. Both of the Elliott Smith compilation tapes made for me by Portland Native.
6. Jets to Brazil — Orange Rhyming Dictionary
7. Built to Spill — Keep it Like a Secret
8. 764-HERO — Weekends of Sound

Top 5 Albums of the 90s

IN THE SPIRIT OF THOSE FACEBOOK top 5s, the avclub, and of course High Fidelity, I’m offering an attempt at decision-making.

Here are my top 5 albums of the 90s, meaning albums I heard and loved during the decade (not got into later,  a la Emergency & I, or even just on the cusp of the decade–I think I first heard Modest Mouse in late ‘99), albums that I think are great but not necessarily the Best, albums that I think may go unnoticed by history, albums that I have remembered in the last few weeks–for surely next week or even tomorrow I’ll remember one and realize it just HAS to be on the list.

This is in no particular order:

1. The Scofflaws–The Scofflaws
I’ve been digging through all my old ska tapes and digitizing them lately. This was really the first one I wanted to have. It’s just a classic. Groovy, great arrangements. I’m digitizing a tape of the first “Skarmageddon” collection right now, and thinking about this album versus the songs on that makes me feel like the Scofflaw’s first album doesn’t even really belong under the “3rd Wave” of ska label (which I guess I associate with distorted guitars and more fast-paced/punk rhythms–the guitar is not a prominent instrument on this one).  It’s almost more of a lounge album. There aren’t many originals, but the covers/re-arranged tracks are really the standouts: “A Shot in the Dark,” “The Man With The Golden Arm,” and of course “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.” I think in the 90s I was drawn to the fun stuff –”Pee-Wee,” “Paul Getty,” but as time went on it was really the instrumentals that I loved, especially one of the CD bonus tracks, “Rudy in Paris.” Thinking about it now, The Scofflaws probably gave me a good excuse to keep playing the saxophone, or at least feel cool while doing it.

2. Soul Coughing–Ruby Vroom
This was my brother’s CD that I found, I think in the basement, while he was away at college and I was in high school. I remember I must have been close to leaving for a band trip to Europe, because the tape of it (with Beck’s One Foot in the Grave, and album that I should probably put in the runners-up down there) is one of the few I brought on that trip, and I think I didn’t actually listen to it until I was traveling. What a fucking mind-blowing experience! Sure, Soul Coughing’s sound probably seems kind of old hat to most people now, but I was 16 (which I remember was old at the time but is young now, at least in terms of music-exposure), I had no idea who these people were, it was a weird name, the album had a collage of a woman in an old-timey astronaut suit and a Ren-like weasely guy holding a pitchfork and a pipe, and it sounded like someone dropped their entire record collection in a blender, put some beats to it, and sang/rapped/spoken-worded over it. I guess it wasn’t long before I was in heaven, memorizing lines like “I could get lost in a lunch box/lie low in the mittens in the lost and found” and “gone savage for teenagers who area aesthetically pleasing/in other words/flyyyy” and every ridiculous one of “Sugar Free Jazz.” I eventually named my first email address after one of the songs, my computer monitor in college had “…if you were the Baltic Sea and I were a cup, uh huh…” scrolling across it for a lot of months.  Ruby Vroom lives on a lot of bases, from the bouncy, loose opening track “Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago” (The Soul Coughing Underground has for years had some “song explanations” by M. Doughty, one of the best of which is for this one.) to darker, full songs like “Blue-Eyed Devil,” to some pretty devestating sparse tracks. The best, for me, are “Screenwriter’s Blues,” “True Dreams of Witchita” (“I’ve seen your hand turn saintly on the radio dial/I’ve seen the airwaves/pull your eyes towards heaven…”) and, of course, “Down to This.”

3. Grant Lee Buffalo–Mighty Joe Moon
One of my favorite bands that no one else likes or ever mentions, it seems. I know Grant-Lee Phillips gets some recognition by my music-snob pals out in LA where he had (has?) deep roots at the club Largo, but that’s it. I think I’ve known one guy who ever heard of or liked them, and my (unrelated to GLB) recent attempts to contact him have drawn only silence. This is perhaps why my listening to the GLB collection Storm Hymnal a week or so ago was so depressing and enthralling. (I’ve never had their first and third albums, so tracks like “Fuzzy” and “Jupiter and Teardrop” are still really effective.) Mighty Joe Moon is really a great piece of “americana,” one that to me stands up there with albums by The Band and Neil Young. It starts with a searing guitar line, in a searing song about, well, the Branch Davidians in Waco (“Lone Star Song”). There are a couple other rockers on it, including “Sing Along,” a sort of cornucopia of man’s accomplishments that features one of my favorite stand-along lyrics of all time:

“Evel Knievel and the legacy of John Wayne
Gacy, Gacy…”

…then crashing into the chorus. They reference Tecumsah, the Cumberland Gap; there’s a whole song about Johnny Cash. But like I said, most of this came later for me. At first it was just the haunting, huge-sounding music, Phillips’ voice going from deep-pit hollows to eerie falsettos, the tracks bouncing back and forth between the guitar crunchers and restrained, sparer mid-tempo numbers. It’s definitely a sad, heavy album, and I’m sure I spent a little too much time with it going into college (“I’m bad at this thing, happiness/if you find it, share it with the rest of us”). But then again, it’s also got one of the sweetest songs I know of, “Honey Don’t Think,” about a feeling anyone who’s ever fallen for someone they just know they don’t deserve but get anyway has had.
So yeah. Good album.

4. Built to Spill–There’s Nothing Wrong With Love
Hmm. I could ramble, but instead et’s just say:
“In the Morning,” “Car,” cello, Doug Martsch’s voice, “Twin Falls,” “I’m all right, said the man to his wife,” guitar, guitar, guitar, “Big Dipper,” okay, every song on it and everything about it. This one’s actually on some of the professional Best of the 90s lists.

5. Pavement–Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Since the early 00’s, Brighten the Corners has pulled up alongside and tied Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain as the Pavement album for me. I’ll admit I was never the hardcore early-years Pavement guy; although I love Slanted and Enchanted, Pavement started with CR for me. Brighten the Corners is somehow a little more developed, I like the tempos, I love the lyrics. But this is a list of 90s albums, and to me nothing says 90s like Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. (I’m also ashamed to admit I somehow completely missed the boat on Wowee Zowee, I remember Andy D having/playing it in my car on the way to school once, then Johnston made a tape of it for me, and…I dunno, maybe it got engulfed by Archers of Loaf roaring onto my radar? I didn’t buy a CD of it until last year, and I’ve still only listened to it two or three times…) I have a feeling nothing Malkmus or the rest of the Pavement boys makes for the rest of my life will top this album. I had at least two tapes of it, one CD that skips during the climax of “Cut Your Hair” now. Credit where credit is due: I think I’d heard “Cut Your Hair” on HFS and spent a month trying to remember the name of the band, then somehow I ended up with a CD that was given to my brother but he already had a copy of it, I think by his girlfriend, and he made me promise to thank her for it. I think I did (I remember knowing to look for her in the journalism room at school), but if not, thanks, Shannon. At any rate, I remember playing it everywhere, playing on a boombox in my grandfather’s old Dodge, playing it at home, singing it while running, etc. Now that I think about it, I guess I knew of Pavement before Built to Spill, because I remember looking forward to their set at Lollapalooza (in WV, where they walked off stage) but also “discovering” BtS there.
So yes, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain is what everyone says it is (everything good, anyway). There might be a track or two I can take or leave if I’m just driving half an hour and know I gotta get to one of the last songs, but they’re all excellent one day or another (a few weeks ago I found myself thrilled to have “Hit the Plane Down” stuck in my head while walking around at work; that was probably a first). I have at least two excellent “Fillmore Jive” moments: one during the summer between high school and college, when my friend Dr. Ive and I drove my brother back down to Blacksburg, VA, where he was, with several college friends, to depart carless to the wilds of San Francisco and the rest of his life. She and I drove down one afternoon, dropped him off, and drove back the same night. I think I had something like 18 or 24 hours between shifts at Little Caesars; at 4 in the morning, under a cloudy moon, I stuck my head out the window as I blew over the bridge at Loch Raven Reservoir, singing “I need sleep…I need sleep…I need sleep, why won’t you? why won’t you let me?…” The other was a night in college, possibly on or near my birthday, when I got suddenly drunk and surreptitiously sick at the place of a friend of a friend (most likely due to a shot of old, nasty whiskey from his “Little Pisser” statue; it should also be said that these were the days when I was smoking filterless cigarettes and only had a tolerance for three beers, max). I somehow found a very unexpected copy of Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain that I proceeded to play, I think even skipping to the song I felt just like, “Fillmore Jive.”

Runners-up (also in keeping with my new [4/16] title for this blog that I’m too lazy to change, Top 5 90’s albums of the 90’s):

Soul Asylum–Grave Dancers Union
Beck–One Foot in the Grave
R.E.M.–Out of Time
Counting Crows–August and Everything After
Ben Folds Five–Whatever and Ever Amen
Lemonheads–It’s a Shame About Ray

Add It To the Best in Shows… [J. Roddy Walston & The Business/Egg Babies Orchestra/Young Sir Jim @ the Ottobar 3/28/09]

…WITH THE ELEMENT OF SURPRISE CONTRIBUTING quite a bit.
So it started back at the beginning of March, when I was all up in the air about what to do for my birthday. This happens every year, where I feel the need to celebrate my birthday, and no shame in being the catalyst for everyone else to do it, too–I do not remember most people’s birthdays, and therefore do not expect them to remember mine, but everyone likes a party. This year, I ran into the too-many-ideas problem (duck-pin bowling? Baltimore Blast game? Kareoke?). The result came in a conversation with my friend J: we were standing in the parking lot at work one early morning, I ran him through the dilemma I just ran you through, he told me that he has a dilemma for his birthday: that it occurs on a Saturday, opportune party time, but that he had promised (in his specifically generous, big-hearted J way; that is, whether or not he’d actually committed, he felt the tug of loyalty he feels to all his friends) a friend that he’d go see his band that night at the Ottobar.
Anyhoo, long story short, one of us suggested having a March Birthdays Party for all (including him, his wife, me, and at least three other friends) of us together. This, through a couple reschedulings, took place on Friday night. Saturday night was the show, and since e and I hosted the party–we thought it would take to the streets and bars of Hampden eventually, but it was pretty clear that wouldn’t happen even before the party started–I almost forgot about the show, or at least it diminished in my looking-forward-to-ness. That’s mostly because it seemed like a no-cares show, like, more a night at the Ottobar, or a brief couple of beers at the Ottobar than Goin To a Show at the Ottobar. We knew the bassist of the first band through a longtime friend of mine who’d been in a relationship with him for a couple of years. By Saturday night, I was teetering on the usual weekend fence of See My Friends or Chill on the Couch With E and Whiskey and Books and Movies and Music, but eventually said, okay, sure, I’ll go for a drink or two and Young Sir Jim’s set, then come back, finish watching almost-terrible-ass Brokedown Palace.

Well, I was wrong.
As soon as I pulled onto 26th St. and saw people parallel parking, I knew it was not going to be the night I thought. Indeed, there were no spots in the lot, and I had to drive around to Maryland Ave. to get a spot. Then the doors were on the side rather than the front, and there was a line spilling out. When I got in, I thought, Shit, this is more people than I’ve seen at the Ottobar in years, besides for Ted Leo or the Walkmen.
J and I chatted with the Friend of a Friend until his band went onstage. Even for them (Young Sir Jim), our place at the back of the crowd was nearly at the sound booth. Young Sir Jim did a pretty good job; the crowd seemed fairly appreciative. It was hard not to think that this was the biggest crowd they’d played for, and it was clearly a pleasure for them. Personally, I thought they didn’t suck: the lyrics made me cringe quite a bit, but the vocals often made up for it (actually, it’s possible that if they’d been buried a little more in the guitars, it would’ve been alright). The music was thankfully varied enough from song to song; if I’d heard the same thing over and over, as I feared at the beginning of the set, it would have been capital a Awful. They did set off my jammy/stoner radar, though, which always gives me the mixed feelings of “ayy, not so much my thing” and “aww, this reminds me of college…”
So by this time, despite still wanting to go back home and wondering how I would make it through the next whatever it would be, 3 hours, with only one or two beers left in my Still Driveable quota, I had the sneaking suspicion I should be sticking around for the rest of the bands. The crowd was thick, not-overly-hip, not all 18-22 years old, and I’d seen a couple of familiar and friendly faces from The Scene, as I know it, which is mostly from high school and very little.
J and I retired to the upstairs, if only because we’d both not been to the Ottobar in “awhile”/”forever” depending on who you asked. They’d managed to keep the clique pocket over by the DJ area, where tonight instead of BBCers or soul-night goodfooters like I remembered from the early Aughts there was a clutch of people who appeared to be having some sort of Boogie Nights/Divine tribute night. Mind you, this is my ascertation by trying not to stare, so take it how you will.
[Twelve hours later, I continue writing:]
So after partaking of another beer and some heretofore at the Ottobar unseen snack plates, we felt the bass through the floor and headed back downstairs. As we’re descending the skinny staircase, I hear, I swear, the theme to Top Gun. That huge ringing guitar line, fully orchestrated. This, apparently, was Egg Babies Orchestra. We’d not only stumbled upon a J. Roddy show, or an Egg Babies Orchestra show, but Egg Babies Orchestra’s second annual Movie Show. By the time I left my beer by the front door, went out the front door, came in the back door, and pushed my way up to–I just want my beer, I swear–the front, the sheet hanging behind the band was filled with the sweaty, hunky visages of Tom Cruise and Anthony Edwards playing volleyball, and the band–two or three guitarists, bass, keyboards, xylophone, vocals vocals vocals, and drums by Mr. Anders (also of Gary B. and the Notions).

I went around the building to the upper/back area again where I met up with J and we watched Egg Babies cruise through “Xanadu,” “A Quick One,” “The Never Ending Story,” the theme from St. Elmo’s Fire, “UHF,” and so on and so forth. Staggeringly delightful. My only regret is that the sound doesn’t really translate to the top bar area, but there were enough people down there I felt the need to reserve energy for the last band.

And that need turned out to be accurate. In between Egg Babies and J. Roddy Walston & the Business, I ran into someone I’ve mostly known through shows since high school, and I mentioned that I hadn’t seen J. Roddy before. “Really?” he said, seeming kind of surprised, “You’re in for a treat.” It was quite an understatement.
I’ve read enough in the last two days of the few paragraphs floating around the internet about J. Roddy Walston & the Business that I won’t belabor too long to replicate that feeling I had at 2:30am Saturday night through words.
But I said goddamn!
I both said goddamn! and said I said goddamn!
J. Roddy & the Business beat you up, shake you around, hammer it around, stomp all over it, rock you, and roll you. He plays piano like a hungry kid with his utensils pounding on the table, a hungry kid who is also trying to fuck the shit out of something under the table. Okay, it’s there, it’s hard not to see it, but I’d say it’s better described as a maniacal lurching around, probably the only way to really let it all out while still playing piano (I’m guessing; I’m mediocre guitar player, a piano player not at all). He also romps it up on guitar, for Saturday’s set maybe a little less than half the time. Meanwhile, the Business are there, matching every single physically-rocking ante Mr. Walston throws in the pot, and upping them a fair amount, too. I had one of those moments I love at shows, where you see certain people milling about the crowd all night long, and then they end up onstage at the end of the night and totally blow your perceptions of them. There was a guy who walked by me during Egg Babies’ “UHF” rendition that made me think, “And there goes Weird Al himself–or at least the new, non-fro’d version of him.” Now I’m pretty damn sure he was the bassist for the Business, who whipped his long curly hair about and threw himself around and screamed his fucking lungs out like he wanted to show My Morning Jacket a thing or two.
We’d perched outselves on the mezzanine, I guess I felt like an outsider for not having seen them before, so I wanted to let the floor go to those who seriously wanted to party. Plus, hell, the mezzanine is fine place to watch the show.
So, yeah. Unbelievable. Best new band I’ve seen or heard in a long time. Had some thoughts along the lines of “won’t be surprised if that’s the last time I see them in a venue that small” and “they’re gonna get much, much bigger, if there’s any justice in this world.” Today I read something about there being trouble translating the live energy to record for awhile, though I think they said that was solved on last year’s Hail Mega Boys. All I know is today I looked in my wallet and was like, “20 dollars, what the hell are you still doing in there? Why didn’t I trade some of you for that J. Roddy CD? Why on earth did I think a rad t-shirt was enough?”

When not even all was said and done, I ended up getting at least one or two more beers than I should’ve to drive home. I said, wait, fuckit, this is badass, my foot is stomping relentlessly, no, my whole leg is stomping like crazy, I’m headbanging…keep ‘em coming, I’m walking home.
(In the end e came and got me and J, so big thanks to her!)

PS: For those Gary B. & the Notions fans out there (oh, wait, e, I already told you this…), I talked to the drummer for a bit after the show, and while I’ll let Gary and the band divulge their releases and news when they want, I’ll say that he quelled my fears that the band was fading away. They’re just working and waiting.

a little lesson in songology

“LIFE IS ATTACKING ME!” I FAUX-complained. I picked up the magnet and free DVD coupon that had dive-bombed me from the refrigerator off the floor.
“Life is a Highway?” e said.
I leaned against the door of the fridge, realizing something.
“Does he–
Is he saying, “I wanna ride it all night long?”
“Yeah, he is.”
I thought and/or said to myself that I’d never realized that, despite having played the song in front of an audience, and therefore rehearsed it many times.
“That’s actually kind of hard to sexualize,” I said. This was a turnaround from two seconds before, when I was shocked at that phrase appearing in that song.

I explained.
“First of all,” I said to e as she sat on the red pommel horse chair, “You can’t really ‘ride’ a highway.’
“Secondly, if you were to ride a highway, you couldn’t really ‘ride’ it like you would if you were doing that sort of thing having sex with someone.”
The ice in our glasses melted, waiting for whiskey and vodka. e started to chortle.
“Thirdly, I don’t think he wants to have sex with life.”

It’s the end of the world as we know (and I feel fine)

SORRY FOR THE UNCREATIVE POST TITLING THERE–it’s a shameless hits-baiter.

I’ll simply say this:

Why was America denied a pop/rock music grudge feud between R.E.M. and Billy Joel upon the release of “We Didn’t Start the Fire”?

R.E.M. totally scooped him on the style and content (although a little wikipediaing reveals a 1974 song called “Life is a Rock [But the Radio Rolled Me]),  so I think there should’ve been at least a small war of words.

I used to know every word to both of the songs (although what used to come out of my mouth didn’t really count as “words” during the R.E.M. song). I’m going to officially decide that “It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) is the better song, although I haven’t heard “We Didn’t Start the Fire” in years.

Bonus fact: Storm Front was the first album I ever bought.

Ravens update

I’M TRYING TO KEEP UP WITH THE RAVENS even in the offseason for the first time, if only so that during next season I know new the new names.

This Matt Birk business sounds pretty amazing. Good to know Flacco will have a veteran in front of him.

But losing Jim Leonhard? How did we let this happen? That guy is awesome. I can understand Bart Scott going to the Jets, he’s a big name, and Lewis thinking about it or trying or whatever he was doing, again, big(gest) name. And I’m not too sad. But Leonhard seems fresh (was gonna say “young,” but apparently he’s not too young) and really on the rise. He seemed to be almost Flacco’s mirror in the defense last year–the guy who surprised you, especially considering what you have to do to be noticed amidst the Ravens’ defense.
I was already thinking about it, and have been since learning the cheer from my Jersey friend QOWJenn, but I think I’m one notch closer to Jets Fan now.
Seriously, I’ll be surprised if Leonhard doesn’t turn out to be a great player.

quote of the day

OKAY, SO THIS PROBABLY OCCURRED yesterday, but this morning there was a story on Morning Edition Capital News Connection about the earmarks in the latest spending bill going through congress. Some people like it, some don’t, etc. I kind of got my fill of the earmarks arguments yesterday on the Kojo Nnabdi show, and I was zooming down I-95 so I kind of tuned out until they set it up:

Apparently John McCain is (somehwat understandably) unhappy about all the earmarks, tried to pass a resolution or a thingy or something saying no earmarks, didn’t work, so I guess he got up in front of the Senate (someday I’d love to learn exactly how the Senate works on a minute to minute basis, because the things people choose to talk about, you’d think there are like 357 hours in each day) and started listing, angrily, the earmarks. There was the one about the pig odor in Iowa, and some others, but then he got to, and here’s the quote:

“”We are going to spend $951,500 for a sustainable Las Vegas. What does that mean? What does sustainable Las Vegas mean?”

I would even add some exclamation points in there. He sounds so confused, and at the same time so petulant. Not “why are we wasting money on this crap,” not “how on earth is this enough money for a sustainable Las Vegas?” But seriously, like “I am so ANGRY! SOMEBODY EXPLAIN WHAT THIS MEANS TO ME!”
[Oh, it's been so long...WALNUTS!]

Here’s a couple of links, since the audio is ten times better than reading it. (It’s an honest to goodness literal LOL.)

http://www.cncnews.org/index.php?files=story.php&storyid=mMRpv5ew6UY7HsF6bDIB

http://www.cncnews.org/popup.php?stryid=mMRpv5ew6UY7HsF6bDIB&mp3name=EARMARKS_WYPR_030409.MP3

[PS--i just realized the tone he's using. It's almost exactly the same as "What the fuck is the internet?"]

An open letter to the person who left the “Space Hog” note under my windshield wiper

DEAR PERSON WHO LEFT THE “SPACE HOG” NOTE UNDER MY windshield wiper,

We don’t know each other, but now we have a special connection. You’ll forever be known to me as the person who, shall we say, “got my goat” for a few hours one chilly Wednesday morning. And to you, I’ll forever be that person who you thought took too much space with my car when you were trying to park yours. Remember this time. It will never be this magical again.

Let’s start off simply. First of all, it’s parallel parking. I hate to get all “dumbed down” with you, but alas your simple gesture as spoken volumes, and one of those lengthy, nearly-illegible books is dedicated to your confusion about how parallel parking works. Here goes: you drive down the street. You see a spot, you wonder, can I fit my car in this? If the answer is yes, you pull into it. If the answer is no, you keep driving. When you pull into the spot, you aim for several things: a) not hitting the cars in front of and behind you, b) parking close to the curb, and c) leaving enough room for the other cars to get out, even if you’re just doing so so that they don’t damage your car. Now, in the circumstance you thought you saw me in: if there is space for more than one car, you pull forward or back so that another, future, theoretical car can get in.

Here is how my (our? I can only assume you live near me, otherwise you would not have walked back to put a note on my car) street works: The same way. There is nothing special about our street, no special rules I broke. There is only one special circumstance, one that, if you are of the parking passion enough to get angry and put a note on my car, you are of the parking passion enough to notice: There is a car on our block that doesn’t move. Or rather, moves very infrequently. There may be more than one, but there is definitely one. It is blue, and it is noted by its Notre Dame plates. I personally don’t mind this car not moving. It gives the neighborhood character, not unlike the old Dodge Dart that has been for sale in the parking lot across the street for nine months, or the old man who used to site in a plastic chair in the same parking lot. It says, my neighbors live here. I only mention the blue car to explain that it is the source of the situation.
Here’s the thing about the blue car: A month or so ago, when it parked where it has currently not moved from in however long, it parked in an odd spot. My guess is, it did so in the middle of the day when there were very few cars parked on the street. So, it parked wherever it pleased. Later, when everyone came home, they parked, parked, parked, and uh oh! There was a little extra space. That extra space always ends up right in front of the blue car. Not always in front of the blue car and behind the next car, mind you. But always between the blue car and H[censored] Street.

Why? Because, from H street to where the back of my car was last night/this morning, give or take a foot or three, you can parallel park three cars. How do I know? Because every time I’m lucky enough to park in front of my house, I’m the third car back, and us three cars are in there snug. And the blue car is sagging back a little–a tempting, almost a spot goddammit why did someone leave that little. What the blue car needs to do is pull up those 5 or 7 or whatever feet, and the whole rest of the block, all the way down to 34th, or down to the fire hydrant that you can’t park in front of, at least, will realign and maybe by the end another car will be able to squeeze in.

In the meantime, I’m just going to keep parking in front of the blue car, and I’m going to keep leaving a gap between us–a gap dictated not just by me, but how big the two vehicles from me to H—- St. are: if it’s my girlfriend’s car and the other car just like my girlfriend’s from up the block, well, we’ll be having a siesta of extra space (maybe even enough for you to run your notes off at Kinko’s!); if it’s, say, my next door neighbor’s Tacoma and the pest-control Super-Duty F-350 I sometimes see on H—– St., well, there’ll be no extra space behind me and you’ll be happy.

A few extra tips, PWLTSHNUMWW–

1. I’m not a “Space Hog,” I’m a “Space Saver.” Why? Because my Civic is small. It can fit into small parking spaces. (It still fits tons of stuff–my entire life’s possessions; five CRT computer monitors; a nuclear density gauge, a concrete sampling kit, an air-pressure meter, a sampling pan, 16 concrete molds, my jump suit; I can take it pretty much anywhere, and I can get 39 mpg if I want–There are no disadvantages to having a small car.)
   So I’m just gonna keep making that space, and you know who’s gonna park there? The first person on the block to buy a SmartCar.
2. You’re an idiot. Not only are you a jerk, or an asshole, or (lest my sympathy wane) someone edging toward hypoglycemia enough to write and leave a note on my windshield, but you are idiotic enough to make a big noise, a grand gesture, to raise your hand in class violently so that the teacher calls on you, but not know the answer–not, in fact, to have studied the material at all. You, sir or madam, do not understant parking. If you did, you would know that these things happen, like life, like death, like mushrooms, like farts. Extra, “wasted” space between cars happens when you have people arriving home at different times. (For an example of the contrary, I suggest you study the block of Charles St. that contains The Brewer’s Art, specifically the east side of the street, on a Friday evening at 6pm, just as it opens to parking. There will be no wasted space.)

Lastly, let me say thank you. Before this morning, I though the band Spacehog referred to some sort of cosmonautical swine. I hadn’t dreamed of anything different.

Sincerely,
The Guy Under Whose Windshield Wiper You Left the “Space Hog” Note