Homeward bound

It's dark now as I make my way out of the building after work and head to my vehicle. I don't mind the cooler weather fall brings, but the early nightfall, I could do without. Another nondescript day of work like so many before it, gone by the wayside. Another day, another dollar, they say.

I hop into the driver's seat of my metal and plastic mode of transport after throwing my laptop case in the back seat. I have my iPod, but decide to see what the talking heads of drive-time AM sports talk have in store for me first. What else - NFL talk. The NFL dominates the sports landscape during its off season, so it's no surprise the topic of conversation 24-hours-a-day while games are actually being played.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all

Why this clip? Just watch.

Arcade Fire "The Suburbs" Video

Spike Jonze-directed video for the title track from the newest Arcade Fire album. I don't post videos just for the sake of posting videos, but this is pretty good. And a bit unsettling.

It's not you, it's me (well, maybe it's you)

Our relationships with bands isn't too dissimilar to our relationships with people. Some are built to last. Some start out great and then fade over time. Some just weren't meant to be. Sometimes it's the band's fault. Other times, it's the listener who's to blame. And sometimes, it's no ones fault - listeners and bands simply grow apart.

This, of course, happens on a monthly basis when you're a teenager. One week it's hip-hop, the next it's classic rock, the next you meet a cute goth chick who works at Starbucks and you're all about Bauhaus and eyeliner. You get the point. Sure, everyone's musical palette refines at a different rate, but I'd guess for most, by the time you hit your mid-to-late twenties, you have a pretty good grasp of the music you will probably listen to till you either can't hear anymore or you die (just pictured myself listening to Fugazi as a 90-year-old).

So, with this in mind, here are a few bands I've more or less broken up with over the last few years, along with a brief history of the torrid affair. Scandalous!

The forgotten song

Look, people, I'm getting old. I forget things. My back gets sore for seemingly no reason. I change into sweat pants or pajama bottoms the minute I get home from work. It takes every ounce of restraint for me to not yell at the neighborhood kids when whatever "game" they're playing spills onto my lawn. Anyway, let's get back to me "forgetting things" before I forget the point of this post. I forgot about a song. Not just any song, mind you. A song I would consider in my top 15 or 20 songs of ALL TIME.

"How could that happen?," you might ask.

Well, I'll tell you as soon as I finish this Werther's Original.

Mmmm, tasty. OK, so my iPod crashed maybe two years ago. I had recently moved, so my CDs (see, old) were all boxed up and the computer that had since served to house all my mp3s (whatever those are) was no longer functioning. No biggy. My Bridge partner, Terry, had nearly everything that was on my iPod on an external hard drive. Problem solved! Now, let's go to Hometown Buffet, it's nearly 6:30.

Flash forward to last week. I'm sitting where I am now, at my desk at work, and I'm not quite sure how, but something triggers this forgotten song. It's a Pixies song. I know it's a song on Bossanova, but it's not the version that's on Bossanova. So I fire up the old Google machine and within seconds, my memory sufficiently jogged, I remember the song is the Pixies At The BBC version of "Is She Weird."

The Pixies are one of my favorite bands. EVER. Top five as of right now and that ain't changing anytime soon (I'm set in my ways, just like any self respecting old person). So why the fuck wasn't this song on my iPod? Well, my Bridge partner and I share many musical interests. The Pixies aren't one of them. So when I restocked my iPod with all his digital goodies, the Pixies were left out in the cold. And as of me typing this, I still only have Surfer Rosa on the iPod because I'm lazy and don't want to find the box that has all my Pixies CDs.

Total sob story, huh? I need another Werther's.

"Island 5" Albums

This is a well-worn subject. The old "you're stranded on a desert island and you can only have five movies/albums/etc..." We've all played it, numerous times, for sure. So why not again?

The impetus for this post was reading this on the NPR Music blog. The writer, Robin Hilton, made some interesting points while revisiting his own "Island 5" from a few years ago. Namely, it would be easy to just list your five favorite records, but what if a few of them are really similar in tone, mood, tempo, etc.? As much as you may love them, having virtually the same sounding album may not be the best choice when you're "stuck" with just five. One must choose wisely and account for differing moods and states of mind. I'm not sure if I did that or not. Essentially, I picked an album from each of my five favorite bands, and I did cheat and pick a compilation (gasp!) for one of them.

Here are my "Island 5" albums:
The Clash - London Calling
The Smiths - The Smiths
Fugazi - The Argument
Radiohead - Kid A
Pixies - Death to the Pixies

Before cheating with my Pixies compilation, I had The Thermals album The Body, The Blood, The Machine on the list. I needed an up-tempo rocker as my picks were decidedly mid-tempo. I tried to settle on just one Pixies album, and I couldn't. So I copped out and picked a compilation. Sue me, I'm stuck on a freaking desert island for chrissakes!

But wait! I do have an original caveat to add to this VERY ripped off post. From your five albums, pick the song you want playing when you're being rescued. Picture this: You board the rescue boat, weak from a diet of coconut and shellfish. You're handed a bottle of water and you immediately begin guzzling, so fast you nearly choke. You're lips are dry and chapped, you're face is weathered and sun burnt. The boat takes off and you're in the back, looking at the island you called home for a few months slowly disappear from sight. You're saved. What song from your list of five albums is playing?

Mine: "How to Disappear Completely" from Kid A. It's actually an insanely prefect song for the occasion. The mood, the lyrics, the title - EVERYTHING. Oh, my rescue would be magnificent with this song playing in the background.


So, go ahead and list your five albums in the comments along with your rescue track.

You should read this

Not this. This post on the Aquarium Drunkard blog. Read it if you're looking for something good to read. Or even if you're not.

Conan to the rescue?

After nine months away from the medium that made him famous, Conan is back. Back doing an opening monologue, back interviewing celebrities with something to promote, back introducing musical guests that hopefully fall more in line with those on his old Late Night show and not from his short stint on the Tonight Show. Yes, Conan is back. Doing the normal things late night talk show hosts do. Were you expecting more?

I wasn't, but I'd bet there were more than a few Conanites who were expecting a glorious return to television whereby he would use his new platform on basic cable to revolutionize the stale genre, or at the very least, spruce it up a bit. Two shows in, and it's pretty much business as usual. And that's just fine by me. The genre of late night TV may be old and stale, but as of now, it still sorta works. People want to hear jokes about the news of the day, and watch celebrities get interviewed, and watch bands play their newest singles. Like any show, it's not always gonna be good. Monologue jokes will miss, celebrities will phone in their interviews and Kings of Leon will occasionally be booked. It happens. But having Conan back to laugh it all off while laughing at himself, and in turn, giving us something to laugh at, is a good thing.

Monday's show was a bit predictable. Cold open. Jokes about NBC. More jokes about NBC. Jack White. It was good, familiar. Last night was better. Conan's visit to the TBS Standards and Practices guy was hilarious and I don't remember a single joke about NBC or Jay Leno. Which is good. He's really beaten that horse to death already, no? He had an entire comedy tour with jokes and songs based solely on that, and he joined Twitter (thankfully) and he's done some bits for the web. It should be out of his system. And he doesn't need it. He's too smart and too funny to keep going to that well (which, let's be honest, dried up before the summer). Now I'm sure guests will bring it up now and then and a stray monologue shot may be fired, but as I said above, hopefully those are few and far between.

So, welcome back Conan! It's good to have you back, goofing around on TV. Just don't book Kings of Leon all that often, huh?

Here's last night's bit with the TBS censor. Classic Conan.

More song of the year finalists

Here are a few more songs in consideration for what will ultimately be a Top 5 list of my favorite songs of 2010. More to follow, most likely.

Gateway music (in a good way)

I made a lot of questionable music choices in the mid-to-late 90s. Southern California was awash in 2nd generation punk, or melodic punk as I've heard it called, and I was all about it. ALL. ABOUT. IT. I bought the CDs, wore the t-shirts, attended the shows (multiple Warped Tours!). Punk was definitely not dead as far as this skinny little white boy was concerned, and I cruised around greater Orange County in my Mazda pickup, windows down, detachable face Pioneer stereo cranked up to offensive decibel levels to prove it.

But questionable music choices or not, I regret nothing. For while my foray into the punk scene may have introduced me to the less-than-stellar Unwritten Law, Strung Out and Guttermouth (among many, many, others), it also introduced me to The Clash, The Buzzcocks, Stiff Little Fingers, Descendents, The Stooges, Black Flag, Minor Threat, Bad Brains and The Jam. Just to name a few. All seminal bands in their own right that transcend any genre or "scene" - bands that have stuck with me and still grace my iPod today.

As for all the shitty bands along the way - I'd like to think I helped put some of their kids through college, because I bought an obscene amount of CDs back then. I'll probably get rid of them someday, but for now, they're still a reminder of a fun period of my life. And a little NOFX every now and then never hurt anyone.

Musical regrets

My friend Vicki, whose blog you should peruse if you're the video game-playing type, mentioned in a tweet and on said blog that she laments not seeing At The Drive-In live before the band famously imploded.

I, on the other hand, did.

But really, that's beside the point. This isn't to rub it in (more than I already have) that I saw one of the best live acts of the early aughts and she didn't*. Hell, she was just a teenager and I was in my concert-attending prime. The point is, reading her mentions of ATDI got me listening to some of their stuff again and searching for some live clips of the band. The below clip, which I remember taping to VHS, shows ATDI not long before the aforementioned implosion, but still in face-melting form.

So watch as At The Drive-In blows the roof off the Ed Sullivan Theater and the toupee off Letterman's dome. This one's for you, Vicki.





*My big musical regret: Not seeing Elliott Smith before it was too late. Especially a show he did at Detroit Bar in Costa Mesa.

Some song of the year finalists

I've done a year end list of my favorite albums released in that calendar year ever since I started this blog in 2006. In fact, I think it's the sole reason I started it, other than to pick up chicks ("that's right, I'm a blogger baby"). It's kind of a big deal (to me). I think this year I may just start a new tradition and also put a little list together of my favorite songs from that year as well. Thinking just a Top 5. Over the next few weeks I'll post some YouTube clips of those tracks, and I welcome some suggestions in the comments. Here's a few to start:














I'll be posting more as they come to me. Suggestions, please!

Pixies on Dennis Miller Live

I posted links to these amazing clips to my tens of Twitter followers. This is probably a better venue as it seems 40 or so people stumble across here on some days, and these clips need to be shared.

Yes, after Dennis Miller was on SNL but BEFORE he bombed in the Monday Night Football box and then became a shill for the Republican Party, he had a horrible talk show. But, he had the Pixies on, not once, but twice! In consecutive days. Credit where credit is due, I guess. Enjoy these Trompe le Monde era performances.