Contra Review

mp3 - Vampire Weekend - "Horchata"
Or Stream the whole damn thing here
Even more info here

Does Tickle Me Elmo ever drunk dial a Zhu-Zhu and tearfully harangue him in a slurred speech tearing him down; screeching out some mascara-dribbled Joan Crawford-eque tirade of how everyone’s just going to love you and then leave you and move onto the next hot young floozie? I’m sure it’s happened…right?

This is close to what I imagine when observing the already-exasperated phenomenon of "blog-buzz-bands." The "blog buzz" background’s often the preface to any blurb, screed or review hacked out for New York’s crisp, clean, champagne-bubbly pop and cutesy Afro-beat folksters Vampire Weekend; how listeners were prescribed to get on the bandwagon early for this hip, clean-shaven crew that promised to reappraise Graceland-era Paul Simon, make yacht-rock edgier and wow-you-n-woo-you with their honey-dipped harmonies and invigorating choppety rhythms.

Well, yeah, that pretty much happened (before their debut even came); but then it did come out and all the rumors seemed true and we all fell in love with their Oxford collars (and "Oxford Commas"). Their style of pop, maybe a wee bit wimpy (if not nerdy) and maybe a wee bit derivative (if not ostentatious) was the epitome of "infectious." Like crystal meth-Starbursts – we all kept unwrapping it – but, just as quickly, we all got stomach aches and crashed from our sugar highs. To their credit, or vindication, they are still the apex of what was considered "buzz bands" in terms of disarming talent, (however fleeting it still might end up), still, though, Vampire Weekend, with their debut batch of orchestral calypso-flavored rumba folk, entranced us with their sorcerer-like pleasing pop.

But there is something to be said for staying power – and that’s something that just can’t be conjured by would be tastemakers, be they Pitchfork.com for bands, or Wal-Mart for Zhu Zhus. Hence, I’m leery when, initially I feel, again, sanctimonious gaga love for these cascading string plucks, measured cello hums, head-swimming coos ("White Sky"), these charming xylophones that chop and pound into marching drums and elegant humming ohhhs falling like the winter snow vilified in its escapist chorus ("Horchata"), or the almost Talking Heads-ian style of those strangled, jittery guitar riffs under the oh-my-god-I’m-freaking-out-tightness of the drums ("Cousins"). But they can’t pull off the high strung style of "Cousins," and "Horchata" can overstay it’s welcome (not unlike "Cape Kod Kwassa Kwassa"), and attempted poignant pieces ("UR a Contra") fall flat. The victory here is when they bring in the synths in (sorry Ted Nugent), like the revelatory reggae-pulsed space-buzz/piano prance of "Diplomat’s Son," or massaging gush and fuzz furled march of "Run."

The nigh-Animal Collective-tasting electro-poppety-pop of "California English" recalls keyboardist Rostam Batmanglij’s foray with recent synth-project "Discovery." Though we may burn this out just as fast, Contra’s one redeeming quality is it’s intricate layers ("White Sky,") dressy but discrete arrangements ("Taxi Cab") and ponderous lyrical content (the lackluster "Holiday"’s anecdotal Iraq War reference.) "Here comes the feeling you thought you’d forgotten," Ezra Koenig aptly sings in "Horchata," the question: how fast will we forget it again?

Questioning the need of almost everything - and having to choose which story to tell

Welcome to somewhat of an unwinding freak out moment... Feeling a shaken perspective in this "post everything" generation - and exploring the limits of the language of music - (or, can anything sound like something else, can't everyone/thing be compared to someone/thing?)

Anyhow...

I was having a conversation with a Detroit set songwriter/recording-artist, about blog buzz bands dominatnig the internet channels and how they come with - clipped to their links and mp3 downloads, as they sit on the shelves of blogs everywhere, these tacit, hard-nosed suggestions that if you are not "in-to" this band, than you are losing your proverbial edge - The most recent buzzed lamb to fall before the commenter slaughter (actually this will be their second asscention to the shat-upon-throne since their 08 album assured them an inevitable return), is Vampire Weekend - a review of (their latest, Contra) you can read here in a day or two...

Anyhow, I rattle off a handful of bands to said songwriter, a list that included bands that "blew up," momentarily, three or maybe even four years ago - God forbid blogs attempt such a retrospective-ready long memory - and name-dropped flahses like Tapes & Tapes, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, and Wavves...

Wavves, we paused on, and then posited that perhaps he had done some considerable damage to the legacy, whatever its worth, of the "genre" of "lo-fi." Lo-fi: scorched and scraped sounding recordings from a 4 track or 16-track, often recorded thusly for economical purposes, (maybe even sometimes caught on a minidisc recorder, or perhaps even more shrewd and primitive and despearte means), is a sound and style often attributed to Guided By Voices - then later Sebadoh, and as we progressed through the 90's, Pavement and then Ariel Pink's Haunted Grafitti.

We started wondering about the damange done by what could be perceived as manufactured trashiness, or, simply, bands that try to sound "lo-fi" - the actual embrace of rough-hewn aesthetics, as opposed to, in the past, it being out of necessity or economy. Well, before I could go into any deep philosophical rant, I stumbled onto a "rant" from the I Guess I'm Floating blog. Definitely worth a read.

And then, reading through that comment board, it made me decide that perhaps instead of lamenting the idea that this 2010-and-beyond generation of forever-altered blog brained listeners will have mangled perceptions about "lo-fi" music, contorted by resentment born from hipster-site-pushed overexposure, I should instead flip it around, step out of the box, and question what role "blogs"-themselves have played in this hysteria.

Sebadoh and Guided By Voices and Pavement were already famous, on some level--an underground cred-thing or whatever, after they broke up, but they have gained a new kind of fame ever since bloggers started constantly writing about music (thus often having to compare new bands to something) - they became messianic, mythologized, crowned as ominious and powerful Godfather figures.

I decided not to argue the legitimacy of sonic aesthetic - (so many musicians/bands, when they're starting out, just immitate what they grew up listening to, and some may just go the extra mile, in this, the year of our lord, two-thousand-and-ten, that they are that much more dedicated to recreating the sonic quality of their favorite bands and now that much more capable, through technology, of creating that screwy amp-filtered fuzz) - 'nuff said, for now, from me.

Where I started unwinding was, the rant link above, most importantly, questioned the legitimacy of the labels or "genres" created for these buzz bands. These labels, or "genres" are a symptom of so many blogs.

The operative word above is "so" many blogs...I could have easily said "too..."...many. (Are there too many?) Anyhow, you can only describe sound with so many words (as Elvis Costello said, "writing about music is like dancing about architecture...") - and eventually, with so many of us at our lap tops uploading paragraphs packed with witticisms as we try to keep things sharp for our readers on a daily bassis - it becomes an added trick for the game and its players, to dream up new classifications for these bands.

Thus that "genre" invention - the cause of digging up so many bands so quickly and needing to classify their sound as, not necessarily unique, but part-of-something - part-of-an-exploding-spider-web-of-a-trend, trendiness!! hipness!! ...as a new movement, a new buzz, a new "must be in-to-this-band" situation, that we need to name the beast, give it a species - because every epidemic needs to be named - every band needs to be put under a banner. Or do they?

If "genre" creation/designation and band documentation is out of control - if there are too many blogs all copying each other or blowing out and blowing up the same shit - then it exposes the flaws of so many of these would-be music "journalists" as actually being closer to attempted taste-makers - (is that not the goal of 94% of these blogs? To get a piece of this....this weird monstrous club of cool, where we dole out hip knowledge or direct people to new places to download new things to feel the "new hip!")...when they (all these bloggers) should all cool their jets and remember why they really (or hopefully) started their blog (in the first place) - because they love music.

But the epidemic of trying to go gaga (or manufacture a new gaga-feelign) over the next buzz thing - is eerily close to selling something - cooking up a frenzy to then shoo people into - perhaps, and this is probably reaching, not far from the "pop" explosion of '99 with Britney et al - where TRL sent hoards of people into music stores to buy the-now-dinosaur-ized-CDs. But then, is it really that bad?

What happens, do we go radical and forget "genres?" What about the old stand-bys? Indie-rock? Garage-Rock? Punk-Rock? Prog-rock? Shit...one keeps going...neo-psychedelia - electro-pop - new-wave - glam-rock - ahh... on and on.

Bloggers pre-suppose that, if not now already, then soon - we will not need traditional music journalists, because the power is in the hands of the DIY-home-set-writer. And, sure, right-on-and-more-power-to-ya...

But if this recent veritable upchuck against buzz bands, where blogs seem to feel the way to make a name for themselves is to "stay ahead of the curve" and thus continue to find band after band after band......and thus...collect each new fniding under a new exasperating genre name...if all this wacky out of control genre-labeling is any indication - then we can pre-suppose that no one can really play the game of blogs correctly, no one can stay AS ahead as possible, because there is always another blog around the corner with crazier, newer, hotter shit that you ain't ever heard of... The snake just eats itself.



Then what the hell is the worth of a blogger? Make up your mind. Are you a critic? Or a tastemaker? Or are you something else? Because you can-NOT be both...or at least, it will take some fine-tuning if you would like to be... Finding buzz band after buzz band forgets the crucial question - what is the worth of the next buzz thing???? Why do we lap toppers take some perplexing comfort in knowing...that we know...what all those who are cool and cutting edge, also know...

Do we need genres? Do we need blogs? Do we need journalists?

One hopes we need journalists. It's likekly, I'll admit, that the traditional music journalist should submit that he/she can never compete (or, for that matter, win-back) the ground of music reviews - that is forever the territory of the online writer. But a documentary style feature/interview/profile - will hopefully weed out the journalists from the bloggers. Or at least, the music writers from the bloggers.

That is the hope.

But if blogs, in their mad, rapid-fire-way, create the need for so many different buzz bands to be given attention to - how does the journalist really know who to document - who will be worth the documentation? Who really has the good story...

But there is no final answer to any of this - and I don't claim to have found it. I'm not preaching we go back to the old ways, I'm not saying we hold artists to high/elitist/snooty/masterpiece standards and I'm not saying we tear down the whole thing and embrace anyone who farts onto a snare drum and records it to be-also-worthy of our attention... But, we shouldn't reduce the treatment of artists and their songs to level of quickly-forgotten-youtube-clips. (Again, it's a snake-eating itself - is it not great that so many bands can get onto these blogs? Yes. But what is the worth of getting onto these blogs anymore? Especially when they often give the music lip-service or just tag it with catchy genre-labels and call it a day, - with another band, bagged, tagged and classified...on and on and on)

I think we all have a good story to tell... So perhaps the journalists' use is not dead yet. And good criticism can survive - but I'm not sure if it embraces a wariness of being selective of what bands to consider, or consider everything? It's chaotic.)

Since more and more musicians are finding the means to record on their own and upload their material - that means more and more albums for more and more blogs to review...

But how about instead of trying to cache everything under banners of quirky genre names - we just talk about the music, describe it, how it sounds, the movements it follows, the arrangement, the passion - and whether it's actually any good?

Or forget about good vs bad - at least just try to interpret it - on a deeper level then putting a sticker on it that says "lo-fi/surfer-pop/psycho-silly/world-freak-noise-orchestra/yazz-rock..."


If we don't have the attention-span or patience to take in a record, re-spin it numerous times and form our own conclusions and loves for it - then we may see the death of a crucial element to one's personal library - "staying power."

1 / 15 - Lager - - 2 / 12 - Majestic Cafe

G'mornin...welcome to Saturday

I have little words today - just posters

Like these that include some DC favs, like the Marthas, Black Lodge, Rogue Satellites and more!

Local lovers of Brian Jonestown Massacre and old-timey Black Rebel Motor Cycle Club should check out the above show to support/acknowledge a visit from touring LA band The New Romans

Meanwhile, stay tuned for more about February 12th at the Cafe^

Gleaners Fundraiser - Belmont - 1 - 16

I've just come in from shoveling gobs of brown slush... and, instantly, without playing it even having to play it on my stereo, Scarlet Oak's country rock ballad, "Snow in Michigan..." gets in my head... in which it makes reference to all this heavy, wet, bastardly brown muck -

Ah well... Here we are in the heart of winter - and while we can always sneak inside for a bowl of hot porridge or a nip o' the ol' whiskey flask, we should be thinking of those less fortunate -

Throwing concerts for good causes is, for as heartening and prosperous as Sounds & Spirits / Mittenfests were, are under-utilized – so it’s vital we jump at the chance to support local organizations and nonprofits dedicated to helping those in need. We’ll get that opportunity again, this coming Saturday (1/16) at the Belmont in Hamtramck, as a handful of interesting acts perform to support Gleaners Community Food Bank – a local organization that saves more than 25 million pounds of surplus food from being wasted and provides it to hungry people in SE Michigan.

The line up includes the vigorous and varied punk styling of Noman, along with the soulful, piano-pound, twang-touched and harmony-heavy rock of Old Empire. Also joining the cause is the urban-tinged-country-rock elegance of Scarlet Oaks (pictured). D’Allie, The Ready and Adieu round out a bill that will also feature a collaboration of Kelly Jean Caldwell’s murky Americana folk and Aaron Ruth’s dark atmospherics under the moniker, Wiccans. More info: Gleaners – gfcb.org; thebelmontbar.com

The 15th and 16th - Scrummage Cafe - Woodman Release show

Hello all...

Guitarist Ray Thompson and his valliant electric blue Rickenbacker grace two different stages with two different bands this weekend - via the opening slot his band, Pigeon, (pic#1) will play for the release show (at Small's in Hamtramck) for vibrant space-folk family band Woodman / and soulful psychedelicized-blues-pop of High Speed Dubbing - (both bands release, respectively, a 7" (pictured below) and a cassette - on LocoGnosis) - but then, back to the Rickenbacker - you can see it shine the night before said-affair, at another concert - this one featuring Thompson's other (more long standing) project, The Oscillating Fan Club (pic#2) - as they host a nice, cozy, feedback heavy winter get-away of psyche-pop, psyche-rock and psych-o-horrorshow hoorahs, joining Oblisk and Lord Scrummage in the Majestic (Theatre) Cafe!

P.S. - The Oscillating Fan Club recently finished up their 2nd full length LP - (tentatively titled Barn-Burners & Lullabies) -with Jim Diamond - all that touch up stuff, like mixing and mastering is yet to be done - so don't expect anything until around May-Day-ish. But, rest assured, it'll be on vinyl - with either some mp3-capabilities or maybe some "old fashioned" CD's...we'll see...But that's much later...
till then - you can hear whatever songs might wind up on said-album at the Cafe, 1/15 - and then, actually get present-day/physical-vinyl, from Woodman, at Small's...

1 / 15 - Majestic Cafe - Oscillating Fan Club - Lord Scrummage - Oblisk

1 / 16 - Small's Bar - LocoGnosis Release show - Woodman - High Speed Dubbing - Pigeon - Duende

Here's some art

White Mystery - 1 / 15 (U of M - Ann Arbor) - 1 / 16 (PJs Lager House) - Interview: Miss Alex White

“It’s a blessing to be born with a best friend to shred with.”

Miss Alex White, Chicago’s baroness of walloping punk-tinged blues, has had a busy quarter of a century life – starting in music from when she was a wee child, beside her brother Francis, making noise together on their first instruments – then playing in a handful of bands through her teens, including “Trash and Heat” (with Francis, in which they once opened for Jack Yarber of the Oblivians) then a recording project (again, with Francis) called “Forestbride,” then into her early 20’s where she played with the late Chris Saathoff in “Alex White and Chris Playboy,” and onto current groups like Candy Apple Killings and Hot Machines. She started her own record label (Missile X) and had her fronted garage-punk band, the forceful and formidable Red Orchestra, signed to In The Red records for said-band’s first two releases.

In April of 2008, she hooked back up with her first true band-mate ever, Francis – and they formed the bare-bones gut punch guitar-n-drum style blues rocking White Mystery, which will release an album this year. The name came to Alex when she was eating airheads candy and found the flavor, “white mystery.” “I kept the candy wrapper and said, ‘Francis, this is our destiny.’”

It’s gleefully grimy and guttural, feedback drenched, splattering guitars and drums like steel-toe boots trouncing a failing factory catwalk down to the cement floor, enriched by the fiery, rousing roar of Alex, as both bodies, one standing at guitar, the other wobbling at a kit-set stool, thrash their own bodies around to the hook-filled fracas with their furled flame-resembling red mops flaying in the wake of their bobbing heads.

“A two-piece is a straight forward partnership with all the essentials,” remarked Alex, who, with brother Francis released a couple 7”s last year, for their single “Take a Walk” (Whistler) and for “Power Glove” (HoZac). “We play what comes naturally, which is the powerful and soulful rock n roll we were raised on. Plus, we’re siblings, so the choice to keep it simple and in-the-family is easy.”

Being from Detroit, I know all too well that tossing the label of “garage rock” on any band can potentially strike some nerves, and Alex admits that, over the years of playing rock n roll and releasing records, she’s gotten thick skin and shrugged off most mis-reads of the band and her sound. “The funniest mis-read is a review where the writer called me a “raven-haired beauty” because of the black and white cartoon on the record cover. I’m very much a redhead!”

Amongst her influences she listed the songwriting of The Ohio Mirros and Twinkeyz, and subsequently the Modern Lovers, Shangri-Las and Rolling Stones. “Francis and I listen to rock together in the car, like Zeppelin and Cream,” said Alex. “He loves a lot of metal, too.”

The White Mystery full length comes out this month – with ordering capabilities (on CD) and pre-ordering capabilities (for vinyl) available at their Web site, as well as a video of the pair, recording the album in a Chicago steel factory.

Up next – a west coast tour in the summer, then Europe in the autumn. You can join the White Mystery club to stay in touch about “parties, shows and records. The rest,” says Alex, “is a mystery.”

White Mystery plays PJs Lager - 1 / 16 - with: Kommie Kilpatrick, Psychedelic Horseshit, Jeff the Brotherhood, The Amoebas, Liquore Store and Higher Power.

(photo: Diane Alexander)

Bored Games - Vezina - 1 / 14 - Lager House

Happily unaware of the reach of this blog (thus nurturing a preferred down-playing), I'll at least venture that those reading have been out to a few local shows this year, and gotten a sampling of the hors d'oeuvres platter of bands here -

Well, what if locals like Lightning Love and New Grenada had a kid and made it listen to the Shangri-Las, Beatles and Black Lips? Well, if you're eyes are still in their sockets at the rolling my name-dropping likely induced, then take a listen (and pay a visit to see 'em live) to Bored Games, from Milwaukee, WI - who play the Lager House on 1/14 (Thursday) - with locals Vezina

The Bored Games quartet shuffle out jangly, fuzzy guitars and stomping drums - it comes off, deceptively, as playful, as any good late 50's pop flavored project should, but packs a shiv of biting, shove-you-back lyrics - yet delivered in such a sacarine and soothing tone (check out, "I Don't Care"). Guitars swing and shimmy, surfy, angular (see the aptly titled "Winter Blues") over percussion that's apt for simple toe-tapping head bobs, but could easily wind out of control into some basement-bound house party trounce. Between punk...or...pop...-who's to say - go see for yourself...if you find yourself...please forgive..."bored"...on a weeknight........

More Info

1 - 8 - Lager House - Matt Truman Ego Trip - the Drags - the Satin Peaches - DevilFish

I’m excited for this show’s potential for discovery. Now, I’ve rambled a bit already this year about the once-globe-trotting/prodigal-son-returns story of The Satin Peaches and their murky/dreamy atmospheric indie-rock style (recently releasing their Still Sour EP), and lately I’ve spat a few lines propping up the recently accelerated DevilFish trio – a balance of dark psychedelia and sunny surf grooves (recently releasing their debut LP). While I want you to just eat up DevilFish – I also want to draw attention to up-and-comers The Drags and, about 2 hours south of us, Bowling Green’s The Matt Truman Ego Trip (pictured).

The Drags formed only last April but seems to already have their shit together, with a pop-leaning style informed heavily by indie’s golden age, art-punk’s spindly riffs blended to a NY-flavored post-everything shred—invigorating, forthright, shimmering stuff (go listen to “Cruel” at myspace.com/thedragsdetroit) The Matt Truman Ego Trip can give you that shoulder-shuddering forehead-slapping eureka moment of pure body-arresting rock dynamism – guitars that wave and twirl at 90mph, vocals that chop, bite and growl and drums that can spin your head off. It’s vigorous, it’s instigative and it regales fits of depravity – the kind of recipe that makes you fall in love with rock, again (“Industry Standard” at myspace.com/thematttrumanegotrip).

P.S.

Look for The Drags record to be out this coming Spring.

(Matt Truman Ego Trip--Pic by: Walter "Blackmac" McKeever)

Wonderland Continues Next Weekend - Hastings Street Ballroom - 1/8 - 1/9

The rabbit hole goes deeper and Alice stays lost in the dreamy upside-down world of Wonderland for a few more days – as the troupe of artisans that have now twice put on weekend’s-worth of performances interpreting Alice’s adventures in Wonderland via a guerilla-style psychedelic-rock-n-roll variety show of dance and music, featuring a number of local artists, spanning burlesque dancers, exotic dancers, belly dancers, bungee-dancers, singers, musicians and two mad tea guzzlers hanging from hooks, will continue for another weekend of shows – an encore batch of performances following this past weekend’s string of sets at the Hastings Street Ballroom. (715 West Milwaukee, in Detroit)

You can read about it here or here and find info from Theatre Bizarre or the Wonderland site (whoooareyou) – for tickets – head over to Showtime Vintage (at 5708 Woodward, in Detroit) – tickets are $22, with performances Friday (1/8) and Saturday (1/9) – with doors opening at 9pm.

We’re all mad here.

Photo: Trever Long

A Rush and A Push - 2010 and whatever's next

What would you call it? What name would you give to classify it? What spews forth?

Your songs, your words, fitted together in acrobatic contortion, strategically poised for such graceful punches and soft stabs and all the while hoping to spin the minds of those who take it in with the delicate hands of a sculptor, pressing with a softness and a strength upon a mold so malleable upon introduction yet so hardened upon hoped-for comprehension. Whatever it may be…your songs, your words, your music,…your limitless and amorphous paint splattered upon the crumbling but still yet seemingly ceaseless slabs of concrete…occasionally taking it all in, in a very where-do-we-go-next sort of way, on another passenger-seat-bound pull through the cold streets as square buildings guarded by beautifully sulking oaks of red and yellow whirl by you, once again, on another night, out again, and back…out again, and back, like the hypnotic repetitive round of a carousel, through this gutted and glorious city.

Why worry? Why even think about it?

Because I was too sober last night and now I’ve had too much coffee the morning after to not feel like a bee stung fox, high on amphetamines of some kind, running around the forest, ragged and riled, with an arrow through my gut, jumping from one tree stump to the next like my quadruped life depended on it…mind racing as to where the next kill will be, and who…and what hunters are after me now… I am, again, over-thinking…almost everything.

As clean and straightened as any gray-toned office-bound day jobber sipping his last bit of coffee before lunch break by the Xerox room, I drove a gaggle of my closest allies out to Ypsilanti last night, out to Mittenfest IV, to drink in our merriment and exert our boisterousness at the end of such a confusingly regarded decade – shitty for so many reasons, yet, at our age, so undeniably formative; absolutely apocalyptic on numerous levels, yet undeniably the time frame in which we found so much resilience, through our friends and through the endearing strength of small and locally-set little-engine-that-could mentalities of non-profits, do-it-yourselfers, self-producers, and helper-outers-of-all from various pockets of the community.

In such a sober state as I was, on what is one of the more nerve-wracking nights to be out driving with the paranoid thought of a teeth-gnashing, white-knuckled, cross-eyed belcher with a kaleidoscope belly and a mushy mind swerving his Chevy Tahoe from one stop light to the next, mere turns away from tangoing with your unlucky ass, I was able to reflect, in the fleeting moments after midnight, as I spoke with friend and musician/writer/recorder Scott Masson (of Office and The Juliets), on the inevitable continuousness…of writing.

What will I do? Continue. What am I resolving to do this year? Continue. Why even stress about it, why even break it down, why even try to catch yourself as you’re spewing out whatever it is you will spew – the records all these bands are writing as I type, and the records yet to be written in the forthcoming spring. Everything is eventual.

Masson and I, our conversation dotted by a parade of grinning folks freshly charmed by sips of champagne, takes a breath and wholeheartedly affirms that he prefers creating while not under the influence… Indeed, I would agree with him. Though I can’t deny that this screed is being squeezed and pulled by the swirly eyed maniacal devil of the combined potency of three consecutive cups of black coffee, yet still…in the heat of a few well wishers of a happy new year and a remarking upon how this blog actually still writes about music…I would say to you, if you will pardon me this cheesiness, that I write, almost every god damned time, under the influence…of music,…(often your music, as there are so many of you in this city).

I am finding, if I do allow myself to reflect upon development and “look back” at this year and past years, that much of my writing is, inevitably, inspired almost entirely by music. Which is why, to share a personal note, why I can’t yet bring myself to write that confounding and illusive novel of countless false starts and dubiously histrionic plot twists, and instead, am quite able to sit down, consistently and reliably, and put headphones on and write about the waves and walls and winding emotions culled and killed and coaxed, through the recorded arrangements of a human being and a guitar, or the passion I hear in their voice (or, at times, lack thereof).

Where was I? Regardless, that’s the whole point. If you’ve got no passion, what the fuck do you have? Because, when I say, continue…, we, Scott and I, and everyone, will simply, merely, proudly, continue…I do not mean in a perfunctory manner – I mean it because it is a quiet calling, inside of us…and that it is fueled by pure passion. Passion – means we have no choice but to continue. Or, shit, maybe it is that we, in fact, choose…to continue.

I’m crashing on this caffeine high…, I think it’s time to just put the headphones back on, listen…and breath.

More writing later.

The Year In: Interviews

I just wanted to say, thanks for reading! All of you! Thank you...

This is mostly out of boredom, but perhaps it will wind up being insightful(?) - but, one last top ten list for the year - top ten interviews -

Prussia - thoughts on digitally releasing music

Bill Callahan (Smog) - the psychology of lyrics


Spiral Stairs (Scott Kannenberg of Pavement) - on the development of songwriters

Computer Perfection - on finding identity, as a group, as songwriters

The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre - on their sordid blog legacy and juvenile scene politics

Heavy Trash - on the shared sensibilities of punk and rockabilly - and what it once meant to be "punk"

Skygreen Leopards - on the rewards, for listener and artist, found, when "arty" or "experimental" artists try out straight "pop" styles

Lightning Love - part 1 - and part 2 - on security with perceived identity, popularity's pressure, and the kinship of band mates

City Center - on encompassing the un-encompass-able, through music - through all means necessary/available

The High Strung - on abandoning comfort zones, self-doubt, band unity and embracing risk

(thanks again)