Scenes from the future

2008-06-02T18:32:00.000-07:00

Also, I should be honest about this, I caught myself singing this song on the way to work today. And not the infectiously catchy chorus part. The verses.

2008-06-02T18:14:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I moved out of what colloquially (but quite consciously) became known as "The House of Boring" where I had lived for two full years. On our last day there I half-joked that I had a life before moving there, but I could not remember what it was, or maybe even didn't want to. Sentimentalities aside, I will miss almost everything about it because the last two years have been pretty life-changing, in a good way.

My ears perk up anytime I hear a story about valuable museum pieces being found in someone's dusty attic or basement, and today's story from the New York Times is especially noteworthy because it involves Weegee. Weegee, for the uninitiated, is Arthur Fellig, an American photojournalist who worked mainly in New York City in the first half of the 20th century. His work is gritty, distinctly urban, and paints a picture of a frequently idealized time that is every bit as ugly as anything you might read in the papers today.

2008-05-23T12:48:00.001-07:00

Sometimes it's nice to watch Henry Rollins just be a jerk to someone.

I've been pretty busy the last few weeks, hence the lack of content. We're on the edge of Memorial Day weekend and I'm going to be using the time to pack for an impending move.

I finished "The Moviegoer" by Walker Percy today. It was a good quick read, and the theme of "sense of place" is one that I can appreciate.

There's no way that I can talk myself out of this one tonight.

2008-05-18T09:22:00.000-07:00

By and large my favorite band of all time is Texas is the Reason. In earlier posts I've made my case for the Promise Ring, so by now it should be no surprise that I consider the upper-tier of the mid to late '90s "emo" category to be among the greatest and most, for lack of a better term, pure sources of music ever recorded. There's something ultimately unique about Texas is the Reason which sets them apart from a Sunny Day Real Estate or a Promise Ring. They only existed for 3 years. In that time, they did one ep, one lp, and two split 7-inches. An entire recorded discography of 14 songs, unless I'm missing something. The lyrical and music thread that ties their work together and that makes them so appealing to my ears is the overwhelming sense of urgency in the songs. Do You Know Who You Are into Back and to the Left from the lp is 6 combined minutes of buildup into breakdown that nothing has ever matched in terms of power and intensity. I listen to it over and over, sometimes for days at a time.

2008-05-05T13:45:00.001-07:00

Mother Night will be playing our last show this weekend. I'll say a few things about that here, since things are so busy that soon it will be friday and then saturday and then it will be over. They're things I want to say because, although hokey and cliched, it's rare in life that you actually get to say goodbye to things you care about.

Mother Night was a band that I started with four people I loosely knew in the fall of 2002. I had been in a few bands before but nothing that had really stuck, however I knew at that point in my life that playing guitar, writing songs, and playing in front of people was all I really wanted to do. I also knew that what impressed me most about the hardcore bands I really loved when I was younger was not the fact that a million people liked them or that they played huge shows, but that they seemed to put all of their mind, body, and soul into the music they played. So that was really what I wanted to emulate from day one. The idea of playing music for it's own sake, and that being an end unto itself was at the same time confusing and exhilarating to my young mind, and I can happily say now, six years later, that what we did with this band is something that I would have respected and been into at that time.

When we started this band I was just entering my sophomore year of college. I turned 25 two weeks ago. It was in the context of this band that I learned how to really play guitar, and how to write a song. I went places I would have never imagined being and met people that now, I couldn't ever imagine not meeting. We created a family, not just of the people in the band but of the community of friends and relationships that formed around us. And though it irked me sometimes, the fact that we were as much about having a fun time as we were about the music is what I'll remember most, and the thing that will carry on the longest after I switch my amp off on Saturday afternoon.

We're ending this for no specific reason other than that it feels like the right time to do it. I doubt any of us will likely ever be done with music entirely. It goes without saying, but this band has been a major part of my life for the last few years. It's outlasted almost everything that I once thought would be a constant, and when things were at their worst for me the band and the people in it were alternately an escape from things I didn't want to deal with and a support system to help me keep it together. It's for all these reasons and more that after Saturday, I'll definitely miss it, but I won't ever forget it.

Just don't get old.

2008-05-02T13:28:00.000-07:00

The Promise Ring is my favorite band, possibly ever. I have a few "favorite bands" and each is for a different reason, but the Promise Ring is the most pure among these. I just fell in love with their music at a young age and never stopped feeling the same way about it. Somebody added this live video about a week ago and I still can't get over how good the "Nothing Feels Good" era stuff sounds. For years I assumed they were terrible live because I had a vhs of a live set from CBGBs where Davey apparently had the flu, but this is a different animal entirely. Watch.

2008-04-21T20:29:00.000-07:00

Two quick things...

1. I started a project today that I've been thinking about for some time now, which is to scan and upload many of the old flyers that I have saved over the years. I did the first batch of 25 (of what I expect to be about 100) today. I'm still working on all the tagging/description, but the images are up. Check it out.

2. I was shown this website "Muxtape" today. Essentially you create a digital mixtape, which can be uploaded and then shared. There's no particular rhyme or reason to mine, but it's a sampling of stuff that I've been listening to lately. Again, check it out. Just click on a song to listen to it.

2008-04-15T07:08:00.000-07:00

Generally if I should finish a book I'm reading on the morning train ride, my lunch that afternoon involves a trip to the store to find something new. Finishing a book on the ride home however is a little trickier, as this leaves me emptyhanded for the next morning. It is in these situations that I end up grabbing something from the shelf to tide me over. Such was the case the other day when I grabbed "All Souls' Rising," the first book in Madison Smartt Bell's trilogy of historical fiction novels about Toussaint L'Ouverture and the Haitian Revolution.

I have a love/hate relationship with historical fiction as a genre. On the one hand, the idea of putting words into someone's mouth strikes me as hokey and unnecessary. My life in archives and libraries has taught me that if anything, the real story is often so interesting as to need no added characterization. On the other hand, books like Shaara's The Killer Angels and even arguably A Tale of Two Cities played a major role in getting me into history during my formative years.

I guess what I like most about All Souls' Rising is that Bell uses the island of Haiti (nee Saint-Domingue) itself as a character. It is not merely the setting or the background, but an active force in the plot. I think you see this type of thing a lot more in films because it's easier to pull off with some type of visual (Gone Baby Gone and There Will be Blood are two stellar examples from recent memory).

Unfortunately the trilogy loses quite a bit of steam as it heads into the second book, and by the third merely plods to its conclusion. But All Souls' Rising is one of the most visceral pieces of fiction I've ever read that somehow manages to boil a major historical event down to the ground level. All the more amazing considering the event took place over 200 years ago.

2008-04-10T07:51:00.000-07:00

Today we're going to briefly talk about Grey Area, for no other reason than that I'm listening to Fanbelt Algebra right now. Though they are now defunct, to me they are the band that still does the melodic hardcore/catchy chorus thing the best. Formed by Ernie, formerly of Token Entry and Vinny Value of Warzone/everyoneelseever, Grey Area confirmed the notions that a- you could be catchy, super fast, and simultaneously make people want to mosh; b- you could be lyrically heartfelt while still being very direct and touching on a variety of subjects; and that c- you could be on Victory Records in the late '90s and not be completely awful. One of the first bands I ever put any serious effort into was largely inspired by Grey Area and though it never really came to much of anything, its an idea I'd like to revisit sooner rather than later.

About two years ago they played a series of reunion/goodbye shows, and I caught the one at CBs. Needless to say it was great and they sounded as good as ever, but if you don't believe me just go to the videotape:

Great news from the WPA

2008-04-03T18:09:00.001-07:00

2008-04-02T06:55:00.000-07:00

Some stuff of note for this morning, April 2, 2008:

1. This essay caused me to slam my head on my desk because I suspect that no one quoted in it is joking, even a little.

2. Previously unheard Texas is the Reason live set. Full post to come in the next few days on the importance of this band to my life/the world at large.

3. Pretty good review of Uppers/Downers. Also, in music news, last Mother Night show May 10th. More on that in another post.

4. After watching Johan Santana completely ruin the Marlins on opening day, Pedro pitching four innings of slow pitch softball and then hurting himself quickly brought us back to reality. Thank you Pedro.

5. Something cool to check out is the "Earl Cunningham's America" exhibition at the American Folk Art museum in NYC. I like this museum a lot even though my interest in "folk art" ranges from lackluster to totally nonexistent, and I especially like Earl Cunningham because he does such unexpected things with color. They remind me of the Charles Wysocki prints that my mom hung around the house when I was young, only not so rigid and in the technicolor palette of the 1960s. Good times.

2008-03-31T21:03:00.000-07:00

The relatively mild winter that just passed hasn't made me need the sights and sounds and smells of this game any less. Welcome back. Go Mets.

2008-03-27T07:34:00.000-07:00

Seth Stevenson of Slate is writing an ongoing series of articles about his trip to Disney World. I can't say I agree with all of his observations, but its always nice to see someone approach the place with an attitude that's somewhat more nuanced than "Disney's polished version of reality is stupid and/or creepy."

Vinyl Leaves is the go-to book for this kind of thing, but this and this are just as good.

2008-03-25T09:28:00.000-07:00

My affectation for The Great Gatsby is well-documented in these pages and in others, but it should be noted that my fondness for Fitzgerald's writing also spills over into his other works, most commonly into his short stories. My favorite of this category is Winter Dreams, a piece written during the early stages of Gatsby and which bears more than a passing resemblance to the novel. I love it however, and to my knowledge it has escaped most of the more widely available collections.

Music I have been listening to lately includes but is not limited to Aloha (Here Comes Everyone, Light Works), Matt Pond PA (the Nature of Maps), and the Polar Bear Club record from two entries down. I'm trying to hasten spring's full arrival through sheer will, though I'm not sure it's working.

2008-03-21T17:36:00.000-07:00

These Take Away shows have gotten around a lot but I still think they're one of the coolest music-related things on the internet. The above-posted Beirut one remains my favorite but I'd also recommend the Sound Team or Jens Lekman episodes. Watch them on the actual website, the quality on YouTube is not so hot.

Busy times lately, but getting back into the swing of things.

At midnight my house is ablaze

2008-03-11T07:39:00.000-07:00

Despite playing in bands and going to shows for a long time, one thing I've never really gotten trapped into is the whole prospect of doing shows for other bands. I think I can count on one hand the number of times it's happened, and it's always been the result of someone else dropping the ball in some way or me being tricked into it unknowingly.

The last time this happened was two summers ago, and the band in question at the time was called Polar Bear Club, from upstate New York. To this day their set at that show, in a basement that must have been at least 100 degrees, is one of the best I've ever seen and for years will probably be what I think back on when people ask me about New Brunswick and basement shows.

The reason I'm posting this is because their full-length record comes out today, and is worth your time. Stream the whole thing here.

2008-03-10T18:34:00.000-07:00

Oh, speaking of Sawyer, once me, him, and most of the usual suspects were in Montreal and at like, 4 in the morning on the tv in the hotel room we were confronted with THIS:

Just let that soak in.

Words of wisdom from Sawyer

2008-03-10T08:04:00.000-07:00

[11:03] divefeetfirst518: like, i may have done too good a job making it a band for degenerates
[11:03] divefeetfirst518: i was hoping for drunks and maybe like bums
[11:03] divefeetfirst518: not convicted sex offenders per se

2008-03-08T08:20:00.000-08:00

About once every calendar year I try to read a William Faulkner book and quit halfway through. This year's selection was Sanctuary. Given that it's considerably shorter than my other failures (the Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying) I had high hopes for reaching the end, but I just can't vibe with the stream-of-consciousness thing. Probably never will.

Abandoning fiction, I have moved on to The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity. It's a topic I became interested in after reading Nathaniel Philbrick's Mayflower last summer. So far, so good.

Also! My new guitar is here. She's so pretty. Having it makes me very enthusiastic about starting something new, musically.

Kafka on the shore.

2008-03-03T12:15:00.000-08:00

On a day like this when spring seems an inevitability, the record that I always turn to is Sound Team' "Movie Monster." I don't know much about Sound Team, I got into this record only a few months before they broke up and the one chance I had to see them (when they came around with Voxtrot) I couldn't make it to the show. This type of anonymity is sort of refreshing for me. I can count on one or two hands the number of bands I genuinely like that I a) haven't seen and that b) don't have an elaborate history that I know by heart. "Movie Monster" is a subtle summertime jam that somehow sounds equally at place at a party or as I'm falling asleep. I like versatility and I like charm, and this record possesses both in astounding quantities.

2008-03-02T17:47:00.000-08:00

I hope that I'm never in a situation where I'm forced to choose a favorite Wikipedia article, but if so I'm about 90 percent certain that this is my choice.

Could I love him more?

2008-02-29T06:46:00.000-08:00

On 1988, july 23, Bruce Springsteen skipped a VIP-arrangement during his tour in Denmark and took a walk down the street. There he met the street musician John Magnusson and asked him if he could borrow one of his guitars. Apparently they played a few songs together while about 50 people stopped around and listened to the music.

2008-02-28T12:34:00.001-08:00

Tonight after work I'm trekking to North Jersey to see Matt Pond PA, who have been one of my favorite bands for a few years. I try to explain my infatuation with this band to people and sometimes they get it but mostly they don't. I'll try again.

Basically, I have a preternatural concern for place and time which manifests itself in my tastes in books, movies, art, music, etc. I think in a way this concept appeals to everyone. To hear a song and find yourself transported to a specific place or time in your life is an amazing thing. Its why people dance to certain songs at weddings, for example. But taking a melody and then tying it to a moment is the easiest of several routes to that end. What's far more challenging, and I think noteworthy, is to somehow craft something (be it a song, film, or painting) which is wholly imbued with a sense of time and space from the start.

This is what Matt Pond PA is to me, generally, and why I will travel a few hours back and forth to see them on a Thursday night. There are of course exceptions. I hear Halloween and I'm in an apartment where I listened to it on repeat a dozen times or more. I hear Summer (Butcher Two) and I'm barefoot in someone's wet grass, having a cool drink on a July night. But even better than this are the songs that take me places I have never been, and which make me know feelings that I have no real reason to feel. Musical escapism is my concern here, and it's something for which I have the utmost respect and admiration.

In other news, after a decade with old red, I purchased a new guitar. Expect a new post when it shows up on my doorstep.

Do you like this band too?

2008-02-21T15:24:00.001-08:00

Hey look, the last 5 years of my life can be compressed into a 5 minute NPR feature!

Racing in the streets

2008-02-21T06:09:00.000-08:00

Happy 60th Birthday, NASCAR. I made you this!

Some mistakes you never stop paying for

2008-02-19T17:10:00.000-08:00

Finished The Natural on the train today. I might watch the movie tonight if I feel up to it.

It's been so long since I read the book that I had all but forgotten the level of disparity between Malamud's Roy Hobbs and the one Redford portrays on the big screen. Sitting there, speeding in the dark towards New Brunswick (which, coincidentally, is almost exactly how the novel starts) I couldn't come to a conclusion as to which was more believable.

Currently listening to Springsteen's Seeger Sessions for the first time. Into it.

2008-02-18T06:38:00.001-08:00

My master's thesis has been digitized. I wouldn't recommend reading the whole thing unless you need some kind of sleep aid, but someone might find it interesting.

2008-02-17T18:44:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite bands and one which I guess surprises some people based upon the bands I play/have played in is Denali. The first time I saw Denali I think was in 2002, when they were touring on their first record. The show was in the Douglass College student center at Rutgers, a small weird space where bands would sometimes set up and play in the small lounge. I knew nothing about them, but a friend's band was opening the show, and a girl I had a crush on at the time had mentioned that she would be there.

The way they sounded in that strange room with the lights turned off is something that I've never really replicated. At that point I had never before seen a band come across so powerfully without screaming, yelling, and jumping up and down. It was an incredible experience and an eye-opening one from a musical perspective.

You can download their original demo for free from JadeTree:

http://www.jadetree.com/mp3/Denali-Demonstration.zip

2008-02-16T12:22:00.000-08:00

I just ran out of hard drive space and had to delete some music to make my laptop function again. How embarrassing. It would seem that I can add "external hard drive" to the list of junk I need to purchase. On that ever-growing list I'll rank it slightly below "paper towels" and slightly above "a guitar that I have not been slamming into the ground for 10 years."

Interesting article in the Times today about the almost-universal appeal of my favorite book.

It's all about where you put the horizon...

2008-02-12T07:05:00.000-08:00

Checked this out yesterday. Great movie-- bad pacing. To my mind, it starts too slow and ends too quickly. Those issues aside though Casey Affleck plays "awkward young man" like it's all he's ever known, and Brad Pitt is surprisingly complex as the title character. I'll back it.

In honor of pitchers and catchers reporting for spring training I'm re-reading the Natural. More on that as it unfolds.

I guess I am just a heathen still...

2008-02-09T21:31:00.001-08:00

What can I say? Sunday will ostensibly be a day of rest but this weekend was ivy league hockey, sweaty basements and broken lightbulbs, long walks in the rain and brief conversations about art. I couldn't ask for more, and I won't settle for less.

I have a lot of favorite bands and favorite songs but the only one that matters is Heathens.

2008-02-08T06:43:00.001-08:00

I don't know what I could have written in an e-mail that sparked this, but this was one of the sponsored links on my gmail account this morning:

http://www.besteverbuffalo.com/cms/

Everybody wants to rule the world

2008-02-06T17:05:00.001-08:00

50 degree evening in February. Windows open and Tears for Fears on my stereo. Count it.

About two or three weeks ago Flickr, the photograph hosting service/experiment announced that it had teamed up with the Library of Congress. See it in action at Flickr Commons. What this essentially means is that, on a trial basis, Flickr users will be able to tag digitized photographs from the collections of the Library of Congress in much the same way they would tag a friend's snapshot or someone's vacation pictures.

This is huge to me for a few reasons. This past fall I spend a considerable amount of time writing a thesis about how social tagging, of the type utilized on Flickr, YouTube, and de.lic.ious among other places could be a formidable tool in efforts to provide better access to digitized museum collections. I'm cutting out a ton of details, but basically the problem is that museum cataloging has, for the longest time, been approached in a manner that is essentially borrowed from libraries. However the inherent "value" of an artwork or an artifact is one's personal connection to it and its context within the greater scheme of (art) history. This is a context that traditional cataloging rarely provides. But tagging, on the other hand, allows for far greater flexibility and draws from a wider pool of communal knowledge and insight. Its something worth exploring. My main focus at the time was Steve.Museum but given my current line of work (archives) its thrilling to see this attempted on such a scale, and with the backing of the major players in both areas.

2008-02-05T08:08:00.001-08:00

Maxim Ryazansky recently updated his website with a few more shots from his "Pursuit of Happiness" series. See them at http://www.foreveroutsiders.com and find out more about the project in this interview. Max has been an acquaintance of mine for years, and his ability to identify and focus his camera on the complete absurdity of American life in the 21st century never ceases to amaze me.

Another face in your audience

2008-02-04T15:33:00.000-08:00

I rediscovered this Farside video today. I had forgotten how truly incredible it was. What's the funniest is that this show took place in 1995. I went to shows at this place in high school (so circa late 90s/200) and then I went to a show there last year and in each instance the room has looked exactly the same. Though this show predates it by a few years, Farside's "the Monroe Doctrine" is something that never leaves the rotation.

In other unrelated news, the Giants won the Super Bowl, the Mets have a solid pitching staff, and tomorrow New Jersey democrats will be choosing between a former first lady and an African-American in the presidential primary, largely based on their actual campaign platforms.

Strange times indeed.

Twist of Cain

2008-02-03T21:27:00.000-08:00

It is with little to no hesitation that I have chosen to devote an entire entry to the first Danzig record, a masterpiece of over-the-top riffage that has haunted me for years on end. I don't quite know how to explain this one, because it seems so obvious. At some point in your life, you have undoubtedly crossed paths with Danzig, and without question you were perplexed. Who is this short man in a mesh shirt? What am I to do with him? Where does he get off employing such a personage?

The answer to all those questions, and so much more, is in the first six tracks of this record. Twist of Cain, Not of This World, She Rides, Soul on Fire, Am I Demon?, and Mother. The a-side of this record is, I kid you not, a juggernaut of what Lucifer was doing in the late 1980s after he moved to North Jersey.

What brought this post on was hearing "Mother" in a commercial for the Sarah Connor Chronicles during the Super Bowl tonight. I don't know what demographic they're targeting exactly, but to be quite frank, I'm sold.

Whatever happened to the scenes from the future?

2008-02-03T10:42:00.000-08:00

This is a new blog. Over the past few years I've had a handful of blogs, and my general rule of thumb is that when the earliest entries stop making sense to me its time to start a new one. So here we are. This one will be slightly different though, in that it will be less centered on personal insight and observations, and more about my perceptions of the world around me, as manifested in books, music, film, art, etc.

We'll begin with the title. "Scenes from the Future" is the second track on the Ivory Coast's "The Rush of Oncoming Traffic." The Ivory Coast was a band from, as far as I can determine, the Boston area. Though the record was recorded 10 years ago at this point, "the Rush of Oncoming Traffic" sounds to my ears like a record that could have come out yesterday, today, or tomorrow. The jangly guitars, hyperactive drumming, and vocals that hover around the correct pitch but never quite hit it all belie a certain maturity and sense of musical self-awareness that runs through the record.

"Scenes from the Future" is one of the standout tracks. The lyrics express a specific feeling of disappointment that at some time we all share when we discover that "progress" as its commonly recognized has nothing to do with monorails, spaceships, and giant glass towers but instead is characterized by changes in infrastructure, the value of the dollar, and other considerably more abstract factors. So in the end we hold up individuals such as Jules Verne, Gene Roddenbery, and George Lucas not only for their creativity, but because they carry on in the face of this universal truth.