I promised that I’d issue a reminder about my interview with photographer Autumn de Wilde for Left of the Dial. My interview airs tomorrow morning from 11 – noon and can be heard streaming through WQAQ’s webpage (listening directions are on the Left of the Dial page as well). We discussed her book about Elliott Smith as well as music, movies, photography, and other random topics as well.
I’m very proud of the interview and I’m excited for other people to hear it. I’d really love it if you listened tomorrow morning – it’s going to be shitty weather in the Northeast so it will make for some great listening on an otherwise dreary Saturday morning.
In general, I have a lot of respect for ESPN columnist Bill Simmons. Sure, at times his logic is faulty (usually clouded by his blind love for his Boston sports teams – a fault that all sports fans fall prey to from time to time), but he writes his columns with humor and a genuine love for sports. Recently, Simmons has outdone himself on two specific occasions. The first is his article on the NBA’s successful All-Star Weekend in New Orleans a couple weekends ago. In particular, Simmons cites the NBA’s overwhelming volunteer work over the weekend as commissioner David Stern’s proudest moment.
The second stretches towards the other end of the spectrum. Over the past couple days, Simmons printed countless letters from distraught Seattle Sonics fans over the surprisingly under-the-radar saga regarding a potential move to Oklahoma City. The first article, one Simmons bills as his “longest piece I’ve ever sent to my editors,” is a compendium of angry, depressed, frustrated, and confused Sonics fans railing against their greedy owner, David Stern’s tacit compliance, and the general gloom of their franchise leaving. I’m not a Sonics fan but I found myself sharing the same frustration as I read through the e-mails contrasting memories of the Sonics’ championship year and their mid-90’s resurgence with the seemingly hopeless present.
In particular, Simmons’ follow-up article had a couple more e-mails that really drove home the point. One e-mail captured the sentiment of the entire mailbag.
City: Moses Lake, Wash.
Name: Jon Bartlett
I read every e-mail in your Sonics mailbag. I clicked on the YouTube link and watched all the Kemp dunks. Tears were welling up in my eyes. Then I read the e-mail from the guy who couldn’t watch the Kemp dunks without crying, and I started tearing up more. Then the next to the last e-mail where the guy couldn’t even write his e-mail because he was crying. I’m 37. We’re grown men, we don’t cry! That’s how much this hurts. Suffice it to say that you got 3,000 emails, well there are 10 times or a hundred times as many people who feel the same who just didn’t get a chance to write. Stern doesn’t realize how big a mistake he’s making.
In addition, a couple readers referenced Seattle legends / personal favorites Pearl Jam as possible allies. Ben from New Haven hit the nail right on the head.
I just read your “Save the Sonics” mailbag, and I know this e-mail is too late for its inclusion, but I can’t believe no one suggested getting Pearl Jam involved in the fight to save basketball in Seattle. The band members would be perfect spokesmen as NBA fans (as you know, the original name of the band was Mookie Blaylock and their first album is named for his jersey number) and Seattle legends. Plus, you know Eddie would love to take on backstabbing, heartless, billionaire businessmen in a public fight. I’m sure you can use your column or other channels to appeal to the band to join the cause; their support makes too much sense for it not to happen.
I would not be surprised if members of Pearl Jam become involved. Jeff and Stone were fixtures at Sonics home games in the mid-90’s. Regardless, it’s unfathomable that a city like Seattle will lose their franchise because the taxpayers won’t fund an owner’s unreasonable and excessive stadium demands. As Simmons points out, Commissioner Stern’s silence makes him equally culpable; there’s some reasonable compromise out there in the ether (probably involving sale of the franchise to local ownership with the current owner purchasing a new franchise) and Stern owes it to the Seattle fans (and the fans of the NBA – a league that has improved itself tremendously over the past year).
Those of you who’ve known me for a long time (well, maybe even if you haven’t known me that long) know that I harbor fantasies of being a music journalist. While I’m happy being a professional educator and an amateur critic, the journalist in me still appears every now and then.
Long story short, this afternoon I recorded a phone interview with photographer Autumn de Wilde. She compiled an awesome book about Elliott Smith and was kind enough to chat with me about Elliott, photography, movies, and music. I’m really excited with how the interview turned out – we got to talk about Elliott’s sense of humor, Polaroid film, and The Shining among other things - and I’m very excited for other people to hear it.
I’ll be broadcasting the interview on my radio show on Saturday, March 1 and then I hope to archive it on the show’s site as well. I’ll be plugging it again next week in a more eloquent manner – right now I just wanted to document my excitement for the interview and for an afternoon of “playing journalist.”
This past weekend I went up to Providence for a night to celebrate “Alumni Weekend” at Providence College. Well, that’s only partially true – I did go to Providence, it was alumni weekend, but it was more a convenient excuse to see friends that I haven’t seen in a while rather than to give PC more money to attend their alumni weekend events. I was thrilled to see a bunch of old friends from my music days and I was happy to watch the Slam Dunk contest and catch up with many of them.
I also got to see Matt and Mike, two of my former roommates, again this weekend. As Mike and I discussed afterward, “we make great use of our bullshitting” and I couldn’t agree more. In fact, I would like to share the game that we invented with you: Mod Uno. Here’s a picture of the front and back cover of the game:
The back story: the last time that I saw my old roommates, Mike introduced us to the concept of playing Uno everywhere. We distracted patrons at a diner in the middle of Rhode Island and amused the crew at a Providence Dunkin Donuts by busting out the brightly colored card game. This past Sunday our crew found ourselves on Thayer Street in Providence with some time to kill. After ruling out a matinée screening of I’m Not There so that Mike’s friend could come meet up with us, we parked ourselves in a semi-posh restaurant to have a couple drinks and spin our productive type of bullshit (I’ve coined the group “The Think Tank” due to our brilliant, hilarious, and vulgar ideas). At this point I ran across the street to a CVS to try to buy an Uno deck so that we could play. When that failed, I came back with the next best thing: a deck of regular playing cards and a set of Sharpie Micros (which I confused with Sharpie Minis, I was somewhat disappointed). I tossed the cards and markers on our table (we managed to amuse/charm a waitress into giving us a table with enough space to play (and a free cup of coffee for me) – needless to say we left a generous tip) and declared our mission – if we couldn’t find Uno, we’d make our own.
Thus, “Mod-Uno” was born. It began by changing the face cards into the action cards (Reverse, Skip, Draw 2, Wild, etc) but things got interesting when we noticed that one of the promotional cards had the same back as the regular cards and thus could blend in seamlessly with the rest of the deck. I passed the card to Matt along with a marker and told him to invent an action card. This is where the “Mod” part of the game began:
After a few revisions (the “counter-clockwise only” was added during the game when we realized the card was too powerful), we had another thought. At the beginning of a new round, we each took a marker and “modified” one of the cards in our hand. These cards ranged from strategic (“switch hands with the discard pile”) to the absurd (“say yahtzee! upon playing or draw 12 cards”) and led to the addition of new rules (“player must stand before playing a heart or face a draw 12 penalty”).
While I’m very proud of our new game, I’m reminded that my friends always manage to make me laugh. After the jump I’ve included pictures (I just joined Flickr) of some other “Mod-Uno” cards and other acquisitions from the weekend.
I’m looking forward to this weekend a whole lot – it’s been a long week and I’m on vacation next week, so all I have to do is survive one more day (and really, I only have one class to teach tomorrow because my film appreciation class will be watching Silence of the Lambs for the duration of the period). I’m going up to Providence again for alumni weekend (which for me will be an excuse to see a whole lot of old friends all at once) but before that I need to throw out a plug.
Left of the Dial, my college radio show (which, let’s be honest, is really an internet radio show with a 2-mile FM rebroadcast), returns this Saturday morning. My official slot is 11 – noon, but there’s nobody scheduled before me, so as soon as I can get out of bed on Saturday morning and get over to QU, I’ll be on the air. I’d love to have you listen, so be sure to check out the Left of the Dial blog for listening instructions and contact information.
Just yesterday, I commented on how my visits to the blog went through the roof over the past week and a half. I was so thrilled each day when I looked at my wordpress stats and saw all of my visits.
However, the last 24 hours eclipsed everything I wrote about yesterday – I broke my single day readership stats (modest for most, but impressive by my standards!) by almost five times my previous best. I know a lot of you ended up here looking for a certain new record that I want to find as well, but I’m thrilled to have you stop by and I’d love to have you back (the subscription options in the top right sidebar will tell you when to come back, hint hint).
With so many new readers, I’ve done a few maintenance things that I’ve been putting off. First, I updated my “about me” page by adding some more relevant information and links. I also added a few new blogs to my blogroll – Carrie Brownstein’s Monitor Mix blog for NPR and Matthew Perpetua’s Pop Songs 08 (where he’s been gradually writing about every R.E.M. song). I’ve also added a new header image and ran my RSS feed through Feedburner to make it more readable.
I’ll have some new things to share with you soon, but I wanted to reflect on my blog’s biggest day. Thanks again. To celebrate the occasion, here’s a video of the Talking Heads’ “What a Day That Was” from Stop Making Sense, one of my favorite concert films.
I’m not too proud to admit that I’m addicted to my blog stats. I like seeing how many hits a day I get and how all of you wonderful people end up reading my humble little blog. Over the past two weeks, my “stats” have blown up – for the last eight total days I’ve eclipsed my previous high total of hits every day. In fact, today I hit a personal best milestone that was twice the number of hits from the high before this previous high run.
So what’s caused the spike in visitors? A little post I wrote about the new R.E.M. album Accelerate. Since then, I’ve been getting a ton of traffic (and I imagine, frustrated surfers) looking for information about the leak of the band’s fourteenth album.
Up to this point, it doesn’t appear that the album found it’s way to the internet. However, if that changes, let me know.
And for all you new readers – welcome and thank you. I’d love to have you keep coming back – bookmark me, subscribe to my RSS feed, or follow me on Twitter. It would make me happy!
I’m sitting through what would now be my second complete listening since and I’m struck by a few different things. First, I’m surprised how well I know most of the songs. It lacks an obvious “single” and many of the tracks bleed into each other. Still, I realize that I really know and love most of the key songs on the album – the title track, “Holland, 1945,” “Two-Headed Boy,” and the sprawling “Oh Comely.” While these songs fit together best as an entire album, I’ve found that I can still enjoy each one individually.
Secondly, I’m still impressed by how unique this album sounds. I’m using “unique” in it’s most literal sense – I can’t think of another album that sounds like In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Jeff Magnum’s voice shouldn’t sound as sweet and sincere as it comes across; he’s not going to win American Idol with these pipes. However, when he stretches his voice slightly further than its range allows and he cracks a high note, it’s a flaw that gives his songs unique character; all of these raw sounds – the production that distorts slightly around the edges, Magnum’s warbled notes, and the studio ambiance of Magnum putting his guitar down at the end of the album – are more like character-building scars than hemorrhaging gashes that weaken the overall effect. One might say that it’s “perfection” lies in these imperfections – the album would suffer under the guidance of ProTools and AutoTune filtering.
Magnum’s imagery is equally singular. It’s been widely stated that the album comes from his emotional response to reading The Diary of Anne Frank as an adult, and whether this story is authentic or apocryphal matters very little to me. His lyrics conjure a special type of imagery; as a listener I’m not always sure what he’s singing about but I’m certain that his words conjure the proper emotional response.
Magnum’s reclusive behavior contributes to the album’s legend as well. While Magnum still makes occasional live appearances, he’s seemingly retired Neutral Milk Hotel. It’s strange as well – the artist still lives yet I think that a lot of us approach his work as if he passed away shortly afterwards. Perhaps there’s a connection here; as a listener who knows very little about Jeff Magnum, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea sounds like Magnum dumping every ounce of his soul into his album. Maybe the part of him who created this work “died” as he commited it to tape.
The key here is the number of “perhaps” and “maybes” – we’re left to interpret and respond to this album in our own individual ways. Some fall in love with these songs while some idiots like me use words like “apocryphal” while writing about it. The main point is that years later, and for years to come, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea will continue to elicit these responses from listeners.
After the break I’ve included a video of Jeff Magnum performing the title track (as linked in that Stereogum article) Read the rest of this entry »
For someone with little vested interest in last night’s game (at school today I jokingly told a colleague that I’m a “non-denominational football fan” – I’ll let you play with the religious ramifications of that one), I’m not sure that I could have asked for a better Super Bowl from top to bottom.
The reason I placed my preference with the Patriots was centered around the idea that a perfect season would make an excellent story. However, I’m not sure there’s a better story than the one that played out last night. The Giants pulled together a scrappy performance from a generally discounted team (I personally envisioned a blowout, but then again I write about football 2 – 3 times a year) that featured an impressive defensive performance, a few enchanted plays (be prepared to see David Tyree catch that football on his helmet for the rest of eternity), and a star-making performance out of Eli Manning. This was the kind of story that if Disney made it up (or, say, bought the rights to), we’d deride them for making the most cliched sports/underdog movie of all time.
However, you didn’t come here to read what I had to say about the game – let’s talk music! I was pleasantly surprised with Tom Petty’s performance both in the setlist and the performance itself. I didn’t expect lots of flash in the performance, but the songs sounded excellent and the setlist was a mix of crowd favorites(“Free Fallin’” and “American Girl”) with perhaps my two favorite Tom Petty songs – “Running Down a Dream” and the unexpected surprise (to me) of “I Won’t Back Down.” While I didn’t expect the pace of the song to fit in with a football halftime show, the tone of the song completely fit the NFL champions. As Petty calmly sings about being backed against the fiery gates of Hell, he repeatedly proclaims his refusal to give in. In a very strange way, Eli Manning’s demeanor (and elusive nature on the Tyree catch) presented the physical manifestation of Petty’s song. It was an apt soundtrack to his performance.
Petty played some of his best-known songs, from “American Girl” to “I Won’t Back Down”. The delivery was staid and earnest, with very little flash. The drama and movement of Petty’s songs have always been in the lyrics themselves, or in the stripping down of the excess, the sudden emphasis on a perfectly constructed chord progression. “American Girl” sounds like it could have been written in recent years. (It almost was, by The Strokes on their debut album.). And “Free Fallin”, a meditation on life, love, and loss, was sung by tens of thousands in the crowd. It was a more heartfelt moment of togetherness than the one conjured by American Idol’s Jordin Spark’s delivery of our national anthem.
Additionally, music industry blowhard Bob Lefsetz wrote (devoid of his usual over-the-top rage) about his preference for musical moments over sports moments.
Football was never cool. But music was. Music was that sound that Harry Chapin heard in his head as he drove his taxi. He could be a star in his own mind, even though his life was positively second-rate, at least economically. Music is the elixir of life, it gets you through. I’ll be high on this Super Bowl victory till…TUESDAY? Shit, I’ve already come a long way down. But I still tingle when I think of seeing Petty at the Whisky back in ‘77.
Sure, I can’t argue with the emotional power of a great rock show and I’m fortunate enough to have my own personal collection of “tingle”-inducing moments (ask me in person some time). However, I think that Lefsetz discounts the communal nature of sporting events. While I can buzz about the time that I saw the Hold Steady in the basement of a Masonic hall, that memory is largely a personal one. However, the beauty of sports events like last night’s game is that it belongs to everyone. Today’s reports suggest that Super Bowl XLII had the second highest ratings of all time (behind the M*A*S*H finale). We might hold concert memories (and other personal highlights) close to our hearts, but games like that will become cultural touchstones for all time.
Regardless, I have a humble request. I’ve learned heard rumors that the new R.E.M. record Accelerate has leaked. If you can confirm this (and even better – point me towards it) I would be forever grateful.
(by the way, if you want to know my prediction: Pats 31 – Giants 17)
Posted by Brian 
Posted by Brian 
Posted by Brian 
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