“I Have No Resolution”

Happy New Year – Be safe everyone.

I’ll end 2007 by sharing this video with you. It was extra funny because I was just folding my 1995 R.E.M. tour shirt (which, from now on, has a new name).

There’s now hundreds of these videos on Youtube. Needless to say, this is part of the reason I’m up until 4:00 am tonight.

Here’s another one that I think of around this time of year (even if I fell asleep when I saw them – oops)

The Consummate Performer

So somehow I missed this earlier, but Pitchfork presented a link to this video:

He even does the hand gesture from the original video!  That frog can do anything.

After the break there’s a link to the original video and a live performance.  Merry Christmas!

My Friends, Continued

So as I wrote about “All My Friends” the other night, I started thinking about some of the different articles I left out regarding the song.

First, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out the write-up in Pitchfork’s Top 100 Singles of the Year. Mark Pytlik notes how the track has “an opening line worthy of a great novel” and while it is a great introduction, it’s made great by the story that follows.

The strangest part about “All My Friends” is despite enthusiasm for it, I haven’t evangelized the song really at all. When I compare this to other things from the last couple years (you’ve probably heard me praise the Hold Steady or Ted Leo), I’ve barely mentioned “All My Friends.” Then, as I dug up some old articles to link to, I realized why. The true power of the song (and really, as far as I’m concerned, the power of music) is the emotional response that it triggers. While some songs/bands/albums create a sense of community, “All My Friends” reflects inward rather than outward.

In my previous post, I generalized the song as being about “getting old.” More specifically, it’s a song about growing up, moving on, and thinking about people from your past. In his blog Status Ain’t Hood for the Village Voice, Tom Breihan writes about how “All My Friends” will always remind him of a college friend who died suddenly this past spring. He begins the entry by saying “I probably shouldn’t even be using this space to talk about this, and I don’t want to make too big of a thing out of it” and proceeds to talk more about his friends getting together to grieve rather than the song. However, it makes sense that he’d open up such a personal part of himself in discussion of this song; James Murphy and company hit upon the rare piece of popular art that profoundly affects its audience.

In an article for Slate, Hua Hsu (author of a phenomenal article about the Brit-Pop era that will always remain in my bookmarks) concludes by sharing “the pleasant shock of recognizing my newly 30-year-old self within” the track, and like Hsu, I’m starting to appreciate what Murphy sings about. Last night, a bunch of my high school friends got together for our annual “Festivus” party. With all of us scattered up and down the Eastern seaboard, we’re rarely all together in the same place aside from this one night of the year. Even though I don’t see these people often enough, we fall right back into place (which usually involves crafting and telling filthy jokes that I won’t print on the internet). I find that these reunions come just when I need them; I just completed an extremely challenging and draining semester of full time graduate work and full time (first year, essentially) teaching, so I’m still a bit emotionally exhausted after working constantly for several months. Nights like these manage to restore the “charge” that helps me keep going. Last night, as Mike and I discussed our different “end of the year” mixes and we discussed Sound of Silver and the “where are your friends tonight” line played in my head over and over, I realized that my friends were exactly where I wanted (and, to be honest, needed) them to be.

So to James Murphy, thanks for creating one of the finest pieces of modern popular art in recent memory. More importantly, thanks for helping me “find myself” (like tons of others it seems) in your art.

And to my friends – those I saw last night, those I’ll see over the next week, and those I haven’t seen recently enough – thanks for being a source of inspiration, joy, and happiness. I can only hope that I will return the same to all of you.

(OK, sappy time is over – Happy Festivus!)

Welcome back, friends

First, Mike and I are trying to start up a new blog. The hope (at least from my end) is that if Mike and I start writing together, we’ll motivate and challenge each other to write more (and ultimately, better). So stay tuned for that new collaborative blog’s address (as soon as we come up with a name for it!)

Until then, since it’s been months since I wrote here (and I had to go blab about it elsewhere on the web), let me tell you about my favorite song of the year.

There’s been a tremendous amount of music this year that I’ve loved (at some point I’ll have to go through the absurd experience I had on the last night of the Hold Steady’s tour the night before Thanksgiving, but that’s for another belated blog post), but I’m not sure that a song has resonated as much with me as LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends.” Their album Sound of Silver was a startling step forward; James Murphy always knew how to put together a track, but on this album he simultaneously became a songwriter and a capable singer. Murphy has an absurd number of moments on this album where he’s moved on from the self-titled debut. On “North American Scum,” he sounds both defiant and confident, and songs like “Someone Great” and “New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down” find Murphy crafting near-perfect pop gems. Where Murphy’a best card (lyrically) used to be sarcasm, he manages to write honestly (and, to a degree, endearingly) about his experiences.

However, Murphy and his band reach their apex on “All My Friends.” I never thought I’d be the type to enjoy a song that relies on one chord repeated for nearly seven minutes, but the track manages to build and build to an emotional climax as guitar, vocals, percussion, et all, are added on top of the repeated piano figure. It probably helps that I’ m starting to identify with Murphy’s message of “getting old,” but I still think that the song it crafted masterfully and manages to remain interesting and engaging when it could easily veer off into monotony.

Here’s a live performance of “All My Friends,” and I highly recommend Sound of Silver to you as you’re completing your end-of-year reflections. As soon as Mike and I decide on a blog, I’ll post my favorite albums of the year as well as my “Best of 2007 Mix.”

Until then, enjoy.