Backhanded Compliments

Unless you treat your blog like a digital diary, you want people to read what you write.  While I certainly write for myself (sadly, this is where I do most of my writing these days, so clearly I don’t write a whole lot), I also want people to read my posts and chime in too.  Perhaps it’s self-indulgent, vain, or even delusional to think that people want to read what I write, but I enjoy writing whether two people or two hundred people check out a post.

So, anytime my blog stats run high (and “high” by my standards are quite low), I’m humbled that people would use their goofing off at work leisure time to swing by my blog.  In the spirit of that, I decided this morning when my post about the Hold Steady’s new album Stay Positive received a comment from the infamous WEB SHERIFF that I would take it as an odd sign of validation.

Stereogum wrote about the digital copyright enforcers earlier this spring around the time that the Racontouers’ album came out.  Some people resent the group for it’s strong-armed tactics (specifically, for pre-warning bloggers about leaked albums in a manner that borders on harrasment and threats) while others begrudgingly accept that even if digital copyright laws need revision, someone needs to enforce the rules.

Here’s how I see it (remember, I’m delusional enough to think that people care about what I have to say): it’s pretty clear how I heard the new Hold Steady album, so I’m not one to lecture about leaked albums.  I will say that I will buy Stay Positive when it comes out (on vinyl, no less) and that everyone should make their own purchasing decisions.  However, I’m not going to post any leaked material on my blog.  In fact, I’ve only posted one MP3 of a song that was out of print choosing to link to other people’s pages when they have something of interest.  I don’t aspire to be a MP3 blog for the simple reason that there’s so many other people that do it well (see my links in the sidebar for a couple highlights). I’d just be completely redundant if I posted MP3s as well.

So, if as one commenter wrote once, I’m a wuss for not posting links to leaked albums, so be it.  This blog is something I do because I enjoy it, and I can’t afford the time or the money to deal with any of the big bullies record labels trolling the ‘net.  Besides, Google is much more helpful.

And the next time that WEB SHERIFF pays a visit, I won’t get upset.  Instead, I’ll take it as a sign that the Google algorithm is being kind to my blog.

First Impressions of The Hold Steady’s Stay Positive

So I heard the new Hold Steady album Stay Positive this weekend.  I’m going to reserve posting any thoughts about the album until it comes closer to coming out.  However, I want to share a couple of my favorite lyrics from it so far:

Here’s the opening lyric to the album (from “Constructive Summer”).  You’ll understand why I love it.

Me and my friends are like,
the drums on “Lust for Life”.
We pound it out on floor toms,
our psalms are sing-a-long songs.

Stylistically, Craig Finn plays on what he does best – crafting details, building characters, and telling stories (not to mention self-referential lyrics that cross reference others parts of the band’s catalogue).  The characters are the same – they get into trouble, they look for redemption, they look out for each other – but the names are absent.  It sems like reoccuring personalities Gideon, Charlemagne, and Holly could be among the Stay Positive cast, but they’re never singled out by name.  Perhaps this is Finn’s way of moving on; he declared that a lot of these songs are about “getting older,” so perhaps it’s time for a new cast of characters.

However, on second thoughts, “Lord, I’m Discouraged” sounds like it exists on some parallel world to the Hallelujah in “First Night” (musically, it’s similar as well – an emotive ballad near the end of side one – even if it doesn’t hit the same emotional climax that “First NIght” soars to by the end).

The sutures and bruises are none of my business
She says that she’s sick
But she won’t get specific
The sutures and bruises are none of my business
This guy from the north side
Comes down to visit
His visits, they only take five or six minutes

So the stories are there, and ultimately they’ll fit in well with the other stories in a live setting.  Perhaps I hoped for more of a thread running through the album, but I’ll live with the album a bit longer before forming my opinion.  Don’t get me wrong – these are excellent stories (and I’ll refer you to the band’s Myspace page to hear the first single “Sequestered in Memphis”) that take a couple listens to unravel and reveal themselves.

If Boys and Girls in America was the sound of a band erupting from bingo halls to big rooms, Stay Positive is a snapshot of a band willing to stretch itself with new concepts, a few new tricks, and a newfound awareness of who they are and what they mean to their fans.  I refer you to the final track, “Slapped Actress,” that I imagine is going to come near the end of the set this summer.

We’re the directors
Our hands will hold steady
I’ll be John Cassavettes
Let me know when you’re ready

Man, we make our own movies.

More on this later, I promise you.

R.E.M. / Modest Mouse / The National Tour Starts to Accellerate (or, “Ignoreland?!”)

If Memorial Day is the unofficial beginning of the summer, then it’s only appropriate that I start looking forward to some of the awesome things I’ll be doing this summer. After a very busy year, I’m looking forward to what I’m dubbing “The Summer of Brian.” I’ll elaborate further once I reach the official start to the Summer of Brian (when I get a job for the fall!)

One thing that I will discuss right now is the R.E.M. / Modest Mouse / The National tour that just kicked off on the West coast this week. I’ve seen R.E.M. twice before and I’m going to double that total this June. I was excited already to see one of my favorite bands as well as two other bands I’ve yet to see (in particular The National because I loved 2007’s Boxer). However, looking at some of the setlists from the first two stops (Vancouver and The Gorge in Washington for the Sasquatch Festival), the setlists look phenomenal. In addition to the usual suspects (most of Accellerate, a smattering of the hits), R.E.M. is bringing out EXTREMELY rare songs – “Harborcoat” and “Time After Time” from 1984’s Reckoning (the latter hadn’t been played in over twenty years!), “Auctioneer” from Fables of the Reconstruction, “Gardening at Night” from 1982’s Chronic Town EP, and “Let Me In” from Monster.

While these are all exciting, the one I got the most excited about was “Ignoreland” from Automatic for the People. To the best of my knowledge, the band never performed the song live and have now played it at both shows so far. Murmurs.com’s guru Ethan Kaplan captured a clip of the performance on his cell phone.

EDIT: I stumbled on the complete video this morning via the Pop Candy blog.  Here it is:

R.E.M. also set up an awesome fan community centered around sharing media for their tour. The site serves as an aggregator to collect pictures, videos, blog posts, and even Twitter tweets related to specific shows by giving a specific code to put in your posts and tags to bring everything together. So far, there only been a limited amount of content (it looks like Ethan is shouldering a lot of the load), but I plan on at least blogging and maybe tweeting a little bit for the two shows I’m attending (6/13 at the Tweeter Center (#remtweet) and 6/14 at Jones Beach (#remjones)), maybe taking a few pictures if my seats are good enough.

I’m curious to see how this pans out – I’ve kind of embraced this web 2.0 stuff a lot and I think this could be a great way to share pictures and information with fellow music fans.

Technorati Tags: #remjones, #remtweet, ignoreland, modest mouse, r.e.m., summer of brian, the national, web 2.0

King of the Mound: Jon Lester No-Hits the Royals

Somewhere during my four years in Providence, I grew a dull dislike for the Red Sox. To be fair, I’ve determined that my borderline hatred (I’m no Yankee fan, so it’s seemingly contradictory that I’d hate the Sox) comes from the annoying Red Sox fans (who outnumbered the annoying Yankee fans) and Kevin Millar. Since Millar moved on and I’ve moved away from the oversaturation of asshole Sox fans, this burning fire cooled.

Regardless, I’ve been rooting for Jon Lester since he fought off cancer. As you know, I’m a sucker for stories whether they are underdog, revenge, redemption, or even just a damn good plot. When I caught on ESPN’s bottom line that Lester went through six innings without yielding a hit, I turned right over to NESN and stayed glued to the coverage.

Unlike Gavin Floyd’s no-hit bid a couple weeks ago, I kept my mouth (or, more appropriately, my twitter-ing) quiet. I sat perched on my seat through the seventh, paced through the eighth, and started sending vague “turn on NESN” messages through the ninth. Despite a lead off walk in the ninth, Lester looked completely dominant through his 130 pitches, blowing away major league hitters like they were me in little league.

I’m a sucker for a no-hitter, but when a kid (he’s 11 months younger than me, I can call him “kid”) who not only returned to pitch professionally after defeating lymphoma but also achieved one of baseball’s greatest feats tonight, I’m completely awestruck.

I’m not the first (& I certainly won’t be the last) to wish Jon Lester congratulations. It might not be the most dominant no-hitter pitched in my lifetime, but behind Jim Abbott’s no-no, it’s probably the most inspirational.

“Everything was Almost”

I yelped in a brief fit of joy this morning when the words “Interview: Paul Westerberg” showed up in my Google Reader.  As I read Joshua Klein’s terrific interview with the indie icon, several things became perfectly clear.  I’ll present them to you as a numbered list.

1.  I have a profound love for The Replacements.

OK, that’s not really new news.  However, it’s startling how clear these things become with something as simple as an interview.  If I had to distill these feelings, I’d focus in on the band’s singularity.  Sure, many critics talk about the ‘Mats legacy, their being stuck between the late ’70s emergence of punk and the early ’90s “revival,” or their (in)famous live shows.  However, few bands did everything that the Replacements excelled at – most notably for me a raucous mix of punk’s energy, Westerberg’s acute ability to capture human nature, and, most importantly, damn good songs.  Klein and Westerberg discussed the concept of the band’s “legacy.”

Pitchfork: Even to this day, when somebody says a band is influenced by the Replacements, often times they’re just talking about alcohol intake. Certainly, no other bands sound quite like the Replacements.

PW: Yeah. It’s the label they put on you if you don’t come up with one. The bands we toured with– R.E.M., every band I ever knew– drank and took their share of substances. They just weren’t known for it. I guess we were the first– Christ, we weren’t the first band to get up there loaded.

2.  The Replacements should never, ever get back together.

To be fair, I’m game for reunions (see: Pavement, My Bloody Valentine), but I’m not sure that a ‘Mats reunion would satisfy (pun avoided) anyone.  In addition to noting that a reunion would only have two original members (Westerberg and sometimes GnR bassist Tommy Stinson), Klein & Westerberg discussed the band’s dubious live reputation

Pitchfork: In a lot of ways you guys got a real bum deal. When you were on, you disappointed the people who came to see you sloppy and falling down. When you were sloppy and falling down, you disappointed the people who came to see you on. You could never make everybody happy.

PW: I don’t know when– what year, what time– that happened, but it definitely came to that point, where it was a lose/lose situation for us to get up there. Lots of times we would try to balance it. We’d get up there wasted, but by the end of the set we’d sober up. We’d bring it together at the end! [laughs] The theory was that people would remember the last thing they saw. We made our grave for us to lay in. We’d horse around, and then everybody wanted that. A few of us got tired of it. Some of the band was very serious, and others wanted the care-free early days. I was sort of caught in the middle.

One would think a reunion (Klein suggested that rumors linked the Replacements to Coachella a couple years ago) would take this dualism to the (il)logical extreme; more than likely, Westerberg, Stinson, and friends would provide workman versions of their back catalog.  I’d be content with seeing Westerberg and his band tear through a few classics along with his own songs.

3. Like the best forms of art, I learn more about myself through these songs.

I’ve gone into this a bit when I decribed how my “anthem” shifted from “Bastards of Young” to “Road to Nowhere,” so I’ll only briefly discuss.  No matter what mode Westerberg worked in – the odd tape manipulations of “Within Your Reach,” the power-pop of the Pleased to Meet Me album, or the alt-country “I’ll Be You” – I always appreciate Westerberg’s perspective.  Maybe I’ve been encouraging my students to connect with literature too much, but these songs simultaneously remind me of very specific times/events in my life without becoming painfully tied to my history.  That’s a pretty remarkable accomplishment, especially for someone as invested in music as I am.

Perhaps because I like to root for the underdog, or perhaps because I simply want Westerberg to be rewarded appropriately, I was pleased with the last interchange in the interview:

Pitchfork: Is what your music has meant to so many any consolation for missed opportunities?

PW: Oh, yeah. I listen back, and I hear what’s there, and I know in my heart, in my gut, that we were the real deal. No one can take that away. You can call us buffoons, or clowns or whatever. But when we wanted to, we were as good as anybody.

4.  I need to get those Replacements reissues soon, and I need to listen to Hootenany sooner.

“[Procrastinators] of the World / Unite and Take Over” + Muxtape

I’m a rare breed.

Many people possess (and even embrace) dualities in their life, myself included. However, the one I’m most proud makes little sense to me. As many of you know, I’m a habitual procrastinator. However, I’m also obsessed with productivity.

Yes, my head hurts too. I’ll explain.

I’ve come to terms with my procrastinatory tendencies. I have all the usual symptoms – lack of focus, scattershot insomnia, guilt over putting things off, and strange obsessions to get minuscule activities accomplished when larger ones loom (my iTunes library is miraculously tagged). In recent times, I’ve accepted that this is how I work and that little to nothing will change this.

However, I’m also obsessed with ways to become efficient. I read Lifehacker religiously, scouring the site for ways to streamline how I work. Google Reader is the best thing that’s happened to me in ages to the point that I’ll open Firefox and not have anywhere to go because I’ve gone through everything that I want to see (and some things I didn’t). I’m always looking for something that will improve or replace something else.

So, how can someone who accomplishes so little maintain this obsession? Seth Stevenson’s hilarious piece for Slate titled “Letter to a Young Procrastinator” boils it down to one simple idea:

I’m here to tell you that it was none of these things. The root cause of my procrastination, in technical terms, is this: I’m lazy. Extremely lazy.

Honestly, he’s probably right. Many times, I put things off because, quite frankly, I don’t feel like doing them. Who really wants to move all those empty water bottles from the back seat of the car to the recycling bin? Does my master’s thesis really need to be written before 11:00 the night before it’s due?

And the obsession with productivity? I see a fine line between laziness and efficiency. The old saying suggests that we work “smarter, not harder,” and I see working “smarter” as doing less work. Simply put, if I work efficiently, I’ll have more time to run more Mario Kart races, add more feeds to Google Reader, or find more books to add to my to-read list rather than reading them.

However, dear reader (who, I realize, will probably be procrastinating as well when you read this), all hope is not lost. In fact, I feel empowered by my self-awareness and see my procrastination as an asset. Stevenson agrees as well:

For true procrastinators, nothing gets done without a deadline. As we say in journalism: The deadline is your friend. And when that deadline looms too near to procrastinate any longer, you need to take care of business. Crank it out, baby.

Executed correctly, this method is in fact terrific practice for maintaining your cool in stressful work environments. Pressing deadline anxiety can be channeled into an extreme level of focus. If you can train yourself to complete your assignments under pressure, quickly and efficiently, you will always find yourself in demand.

So, should I be proud of this? No. Does it make me a better person? Probably not. Does it get the job done? Absolutely. Even while writing this, I procrastinated by writing e-mails, reading about Facebook’s devaluation and a live-action Fraggle Rock movie, and generally spacing out. Old habits die hard.

In a related note, I updated my muxtape for Left of the Dial with some new songs. If you’re new to muxtape, it lets users make twelve song mixes that play right from your browser. It would be a great way to procrastinate. Listen to my muxtape over at the Left of the Dial site. If you end up making one, let me know – I’ll listen to it later.

Technorati Tags: slate, muxtape, procrastination, google reader, productivity

Mid-May Mets Update

So I’ve been busy with other things that I haven’t really discussed the Mets at all. This is probably because I haven’t been keeping up with the Mets the same way I have over the last couple of years. Sure, I read the box scores and keep up with everything going on at Metsblog, but I haven’t been watching as many games as I did in the past. This was underscored when the other night I watched Baseball Tonight (and caught the end of Gavin Floyd’s near no-hitter) rather than watch the beginning of the Mets-Dodgers game on SNY. I think that once it starts to get warmer, I’ll start watching more games.

So far, the Mets have been tepid at best – they look like a million bucks one day (see 12-1 rout of Dodgers) and like a dollar on other days (see the previous Dodgers games). Predictably, the NY media began their Chicken Little routine, calling for Willie Randolph’s head. While the Mets didn’t storm out of the gates as many expected, there’s a lot of baseball left to be played.

While the Mets flounder around .500, the two major moves this offseason have paid dividends. First, GM Omar Minaya looks brilliant for trading Lastings Milledge for Brian Schneider and Ryan Church. While Milledge goes through the motions in the Nationals’ outfield, Ryan Church has been one of the biggest bright spots for the Mets so far this season. Perhaps the most impressive part of Church’s game to this point has been his defense, specifically his rocket arm that’s throwing out runners from right field.

Of course, the Johan Santana seems to be a success as well. While Santana might not be blowing away the National League like many thought, he’s put up a series of solid starts that the Mets squandered in their late innings. It’s too early to fully evaluate the trade, but so far so good.

I’m happy to have Santana in Queens, but I was also happy to see that Carlos Gomez, one of the young Mets traded to acquire the ace, hit for the cycle the other night. After the trade, I wrote that while Gomez can’t possibly replace Santana (or even the departed Tori Hunter), Minnesota should appreciate Carlos Gomez. In his brief time at Shea last year, Gomez showed the hustle and skill that will make him an asset to the Twins.

So, for now, I refuse to pass judgment on the Mets and hope that as the weather heats up, the bats do as well.

The Hold Steady at Wesleyan’s Spring Fling

So this afternoon, semi-impulsively, I decided to crash Wesleyan’s Spring Fling concert on their campus green. A little while back, I read that The Hold Steady were playing a free show at Wesleyan but that it was “students only.” I was disappointed but I resigned myself to the fact that I wouldn’t get to see the band. Then, for whatever reason, I looked into it again and through the Hold Steady’s messageboard, found out that the show might not be students only.

So I did the logical thing – as soon as I got out of school, I picked up lunch and headed up to Middletown with no guarantee that I would catch the band’s set (let alone make it to the show if they checked for student IDs). Luckily, I parked in a faculty lot about 1/2 mile away and walked right on campus & up to the stage where 50 people huddled around as the rest of Wesleyan reclined (and drank) on the hill.

I made it there maybe 20 minutes before the band went on, enough time to hear The Hood Internet play some mashups (including a mashup of Tag Team’s “Whoomp, There It Is!” with LCD Soundsystem’s “Someone Great” and Dizzee Rascal’s “Fix Up, Look Sharp” with “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”), make friends with Jonesie from the THS message board (a very cool guy who introduced me to the band afterward, but more on that later), and took my place right up front with my elbows resting about one foot from Tad Kubler’s guitar monitors.

The show was awesome – a couple new songs, a lot of songs from their magnificent Boys and Girls in America album, and a couple old gems (“The Swish,” an insane run of “Stevie Nix”/”Multitude of Casualties”/”Your Little Hoodrat Friend,” and awesome closer “Killer Parties”). I bounced my head along to the songs, jumped around, snapped some pictures, and even furthered my karma by letting a short girl behind me have my spot against the stage.

In addition to being a necessary injection of energy from one of the best live bands playing these days, I realized that today’s show presented a fitting bookend to this time of my life. At the beginning of my masters’ degree program (I wrote about it the other day too, I promise to stop talking about it eventually), I went and saw the Hold Steady for the first time. I went to a show in the basement of a Masonic Lodge in Hamden (3 days before Boys and Girls in Americai came out) by myself after going to a wedding reception about a month into the program. Since then, I’ve seen the band five more times, completed a masters’ degree, and grew up a whole lot.

Today’s show had a few similarities – I made a very quick decision to go, went by myself (which, other than these two THS shows, I’ve only done once to see Spoon when I mangled plans with my friends), I got changed in the parking lot (although today was in broad daylight, thankfully nobody drove by as I changed my pants in the front seat of my car), and the show exceeded expectations.

After the show, Jonesie introduced me to Tad and from there we met Franz, Craig, and Galen (who jokingly told me that he brews the beer himself at Hi-Fi) who were all insanely cool to talk to everyone for so long. Craig even talked to someone on a cell phone! Awesome guys all around.

This show also produced another first for me – I uploaded my first YouTube video (I’m now part of the problem!) I took a brief clip of the breakdown in “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” with my digital camera and it came out pretty good (especially the sound considering the shit mic that’s built into it). If I knew that it would come out like this, I would have taped an entire song. Anyway, here’s my video and after the jump I’ll link to some of my pictures I took today.

Updates Galore

As I detailed (or, at least, obliquely suggested) in my last post, I have an influx of free time these days.  While I have things I should be doing, I’m much more interested in self-indulgence.

First, I updated my Goodreads account with a bunch of books I want to read.  I’m sure I’m forgetting some, so take a look at my to-read list (it’s also one of those RSS widgets in my sidebar) and let me know what I’m missing.

Also, I think it might be time for a new layout for the blog.  I changed the header image from a dark shot of the neck of my guitar to a brightened shot of the knobs on my brother’s amplifier.  I’d love a new header image if you have one you want to propose/lend/give to me.  In addition, I think it might be time for a new layout for the blog as well.  One of the things I love the most about WordPress is the ability to adopt new “themes” that change the color/column structure/general layout of one’s blog.  I looked at the themes quickly but nothing jumped out at me.  If you have knowledge of an awesome WordPress theme, let me know.

Wow, this is maybe the neediest entry I’ve ever written.

Well, now that’s over.

The cliched authors of the past declared spring a time of rebirth, but lately I’ve been racking up closure left and right.  First, I finished my 3/4 of a year as an English teacher, a experience best described as fulfilling and frustrating.  To make a long story short, I taught the first half of the year for tuition money ($8,000 -$10,000-ish, I’m not really sure and I’m not going to look it up) as a long-term sub and then taught January – April for my student teaching (which meant that I technically paid for that experience).  I’ve come full circle on my thoughts concerning that experience; at first, I was over-the-moon excited to have my own classroom and students.  Then, I became perpetually drained – in addition to teaching, I also took three classes three nights a week, so I logged a lot of late nights not just because I couldn’t sleep but because I needed to turn in assignments or come up with something for my students to do the next day.  I was so tired that it continues even after the end of the semester and through December vacation.  I’m not sure I ever really shook it until a couple weeks ago to be honest with you.

After I got tired, I got angry.  I’m not going into this aside from saying that I knew I was signing myself up to work for far less than I deserved and the only way I got through that was through the unwavering support of a few colleagues and a lot of friends.  It’s amazing, however, how people will see you wear yourself out and scoff at you because you didn’t “do enough.”

Enough of that though.  I came to terms with my experience and I’m confident that the positives outweigh the negatives.  Needless to say, I was a bit blindsided by how much I actually miss “running the show” in front of the classroom.  I guess that means that now, many years later, I’ve found a direction I’m satisfied with pursuing?  That being said, I’m also enjoying the freedom from the dual responsibilities of being both a student and a teacher.  It’s nice to be able to do things (like blog!) without having to feel guilty about ignoring other things.

But back to that direction thing.  I’m done with my teaching experience, I just finished all the work for my masters’ degree, and I’m sending out applications to find a school in the fall that wants me to help their students become better writers and thinkers.  I’m not sure that I started to grasp the magnitude of this until a point on Saturday during my final radio show broadcast.  Matt came to keep me company (and “documentarize” the event) and at one point I played the Replacements’ “Bastards of Young,” a song that I’ve declared as “my personal anthem” (or alternately, “my jam”) when playing at the jukebox at Rudy’s or in my car or anywhere else.  Perhaps I liked the richness of the “dreams unfulfilled / graduate unskilled” line, or maybe it was because I shared that jittery uncertainty that the bard Paul Westeberg sang about with defiant grace on the track.  As Matt and I listened to it, I realized that I’m not at the same place I was when I proudly saw myself in the song.  Sure, I’m still full of (what I’d like to think is) righteous anger and constructive cynicism, but I’m not as aimless as I was when I was 16 when I first heard the song, 18 when I graduated high school, or 22 when I graduated college.

Instead, this whole process, one that might reach all the way back to the summer of 2006 but certainly intensified over the last 8 months, somehow managed to change me.  I’m not entirely sure when it happened or how it really happened, but it occured nonetheless.  I think I started to realize this when I was in New Orleans (more on that later, I’m still not sure I have proper perspective on that experience).

So after a long tenure of professional growth, I’ve personally grown as well.  Don’t get me wrong, a part of me will always identify with “Bastards of Young” and its bold assertion of uncertainty.  I guess, however, I’m in need of a new anthem/jam because, for the first time in a long time, I don’t feel “stuck.”  I’m moving – I’m not really sure where I’m heading, but that’s ok.  I’m content to be in motion and enjoy the ride.

For now, I’ll throw this one out there as a potential “jam”