Music for Cleaning Basements

July 31, 2010


A list:
Albums listened to between 9 pm and 3 am while surrounded by the hum of four wet-vacs as I desperately fought to stay ahead of the seeping water slowly trying to fill our basement, thanks to a recent ridiculous bout of wetness.

1. Pink Floyd – Animals
2. Tool – Aenima
3. Modest Mouse – The Moon and Antarctica
4. The Mountain Goats – Sunset Tree
5. Jets to Brazil – Perfecting Loneliness
6. The Hold Steady – Heaven is Wherever

So. Tired.

Tags: Music, The Top..., Vilhauer |

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Neil Young, “Cortez the Killer” – 10.22.78

July 17, 2010


Two days before I was born, Neil Young and Crazy Horse played the Cow Palace in California.

It was a great concert. It became an even better concert video: Rust Never Sleeps.

What a killer.

Tags: Music, Random YouTube |

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Selling it all

July 8, 2010


I took my CD collection to the record store the other day.

It took a while to get through the doors.

To be honest, the box was heavy, and I was by myself, and the door wouldn’t open properly. There were physical strains accompanying the mental ones. But, yeah. I’ll admit. It was kind of hard.

For a little while, at least.

It wasn’t so much that I was selling the CDs – after all, they’d sat in our basement for a full year without so much as a peep, and before that they had been pushed to the attic where they rarely saw human contact – but that it felt so irreversible.

Over 1000 albums. Stacked, alphabetized, moved twice, organized and reorganized. A representation of two people’s musical tastes; a chronicle of over 15 years of changes and favorites and succumbing to pressure.

And then, I turned around and left. The box sat on the counter. I’d hoped for the best. They were literally out of my hands.

At some point over the past few months, a string of nostalgia snapped. The notion of holding onto a physical representation of an abstract sense became ridiculous. The music wasn’t on those CDs – it was in the air, in my ears and (oh, man, here comes the sap) IN MY HEART.

(Coincidentally, it is on our computer, too.)

When I shifted my view of music from something that you hold and collect to something you listen to and enjoy and allow to run free, I understood I had to move. To unload the discs while I still could, while someone else was still interested in buying them, before others came to the same realization: that holding on to CDs – especially if they’re already stored on a computer and an iPod or whatever it is you store your music on these days – has become as antiquated as cassette tapes and 8-tracks.

Maybe you’ve already done this. Maybe you progressed faster than I did.

Maybe. Then again, maybe you’re in the same place I was. If so, take it from me – a former CD junkie:

Your music is not tied to those discs. You can let them go.

Tags: Music, On... |

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Albums I had never heard until I heard them on vinyl and, OMG, why did it take me so long?

July 5, 2010


Neil Young – Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
Talking Heads – Stop Making Sense
Paul McCartney – Ram
The Concert for Bangladesh

(And one album I liked a lot but like even more now that I have it on vinyl:)

Pink Floyd – Animals

Tags: Music |

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The Story of Phake

June 28, 2010


A quick story on persistence.

I was in a band. It was called Phake. The name was a play on the idea that, though we had attempted to infiltrate the local punk rock scene, we weren’t punk rock at all. We were fake punkers, fighting for a niche in the local hardcore punk scene, and in the early days of ironic t-shirts I threw together a self-made number that proclaimed our not-punk-though-really-we-wished-we-were status.

It was our fifth name in a year of practicing. It stuck.

With it came a distressing label: “Not Very Good.” But, let’s be honest. That label might have been deserved.

We weren’t very good.

At that time, we didn’t care. Or we didn’t know it. A little of both, really.

But we tried, and here’s the thing: we eventually worked our way into the public conscience, like worm wriggling into rotten wood. We got better – still not good, but BETTER – and, as things often work, we stumbled into some kind of routine. Our practices sounded something like this [WARNING - shitty garage band alert.]

Then, one guy got kicked out and another guy decided he was done and soon the band was over, just as we had supposedly found our niche and identity.

I don’t bring this up because I’m nostalgic, or because I needed an excuse to play this video that our friend Jim inexplicably kept long past its freshness date, but because I realize how badly we all needed to flail and stumble and fail before we could really belong.

Except for me (the non-musician in the group) all four members ended up becoming fantastic musicians and songwriters and people in general. Some still play today. Bring the five of us back together, and there might be something special.

And while I didn’t gain anything musically, I did gain confidence, which I suppose is the ultimate instrument of a lead vocalist.

I failed. We all failed. We had a whole lot of fun and made a bunch of friends that we still hang out with today and, hey, we can all say “Yeah, we were in a band once,” and that kind of cool points doesn’t come around that often.

Given the chance – and given the friends and experiences and confidence I gained – I’d fail all over again.

Tags: Friends, Music, Vilhauer |

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Boognish at the ready

June 26, 2010


There are two camps: those who absolutely adore Ween and everything they’ve ever touched, and those who don’t understand.

I’m in the first camp, unabashedly. And, thanks to being so close to my first Ween that I CAN TASTE THE WASTE, my full-indoctrination into the cult of the Boognish is about to be complete.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Tags: Concerts, Music |

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A personal ranking of the various versions of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by someone who hates the well-known version by The Tokens

June 18, 2010


1. “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight” by R.E.M.

2. “The Guitar (The Lion Sleeps Tonight)” by They Might Be Giants

3. “Wimoweh” by Nanci Griffith

…

317. “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” by the Tokens

Tags: Music, The Top... |

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