Blah de blah (Back from the dead!)

Seeing how the decade is ending, I feel like I need to make something to fully encapsulate everything about the decade in every possible way. So obviously, what needs to be done is a top ten list. Because that wasn’t old when Letterman did it first a decade before I was born.

Also, wasn’t this decade totally like the worst ever? And by worst ever I mean most full of 9/11’s.

Which reminds me-

“Thursday, December 3, 2009

A Nov. 26 article in the District edition of Local Living incorrectly said a Public Enemy song declared 9/11 a joke. The song refers to 911, the emergency phone number. “

-From the corrections page of The Washington Post

I will seriously do that list. Or something else dumb like that.

Official Anouncements and stuff...

I am a certified man. One with a certificate (in the mail). Its true, no one can ever take this away. Hopefully this certificate will bring me more acclaim and work than my handy "fake MD" and "Bar Passed" certificate. I only got to sue myself for medical malpractice which i thought was very rude...

ANYWAYS...

For anyone who is actually reading this... anyone? anyone? I have become a certified agent of KAOS. Thats right, the god of order and all things good in the world (its very confusing I know). Now he permits me to perform my act of honoring him every friday morning from 6-9 am through the air and web waves. He is a trickster god, but a very predictable one as well, with a schedule and all the goodies.

So yeah, bullshit aside, I have a new show on KAOS

It starts this friday, give it a listen will ya?

I'll start posting show information if interested. Check it out at kaosradio.org. Thats an organization y'all.

I am not a wuss, but I feel like one.

I have a really conflicted relationship with indie pop, which as I type it I have a problem with defining. Like, that it is the part of an ex that in retrospect I should have noticed in the begin of the relationship before it got all weird. Yeah, its like a nervous tick or a dangerous obsession with Pee Wee Herman to me. Its a part of the musical landscape I pretty much avoid naturally, it just doesn't do much for me.

Maybe I'm an old fogey who feels like most classic pop hooks have been written already, so for me the styling of a Vampire Weekend or even a Belle and Sebastian or their numerous army of twee-poppers feels like a screwdriver being thrust into my skull. I find this really strange. Why is it that this one type of music gets under my skin more than pretty much any other. Is it my inner snob saying "the music is too simple, it doesn't feel like they have listened to enough CAN or Glenn Branca," or maybe I'm just sort of a bro of indie music.

I just don't get it. Maybe I just don't understand whats wrong with me. Maybe I just have a taste in music. And that's that.

Quick Review: Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest

I know I should just be doing record reviews in twitter. By the way did you know I have a twitter account? Painful shilling over...


The first time I listened to Grizzly Bears follow up to their in my mind seminal Yellow House, I thought it was underwhelming, boring, and in the worst meaning of the word, workmanlike. It felt very familiar, without any of the immediacy I felt when I put Yellow House in the first time. Of course, the funny thing is, after listening through it four, five, six more times, I think it might actually be a better album. Veckatimest's heights are absolutely as much of the revelation as Yellow House was for me.

The band is playing their tightest pop songs ever, but still drenched in the reverb, counter-rhythmic drumming, and, of course, harmonies that has defined the band for me ever since I first heard their single Deep Sea Diver many years ago. They are working like a working-band, pumping out great songs with great inventive production, fantastic song writing, and excellent musicianship in the best way any good moody indie band can: by not bowing to any pressures, just continuing down their creative path. At this moment, I cannot think of a better way for them to follow up a breakthrough like Yellow House.

Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest

Score: 4 yummy, if oddly named animal related pastry!