Annual Report

This site is scary and beautiful.

The 2007 Feltron Annual Report is a well done report on the authors year.

And absolutely riveting.

I like the disclaimer on the drinks section: "Please note: Due to the vagaries of the author's recollection while consuming alcohol, several drinks may have gone unrecorded."

Can't Have Nothin' Nice

Of Course, the wife and I bought a shiny new '08 Rav4 to carry our precious daughter and all the precious equipment that she requires (Stroller, Pack-n-play, etc.) to wherever we need to go as happy little family. So Dad, in rushing to daycare to pick up said precious cargo, got in an accident and now that shiny red paint is scratched and the smooth straight line of the driver's side is interrupted by an evil wound. It's still drivable and luckily my daughter wasn't in the car yet, so it could have been worse, but damn the luck!

No Time for Plots

As I've found myself going out a lot less this year, I have to admit to watching a ton more TV. Most of it bad, most of it just a way to zone out and not think about anything. One of my favorite shows I've discovered is No Reservations with Anthony Bourdain. It does fall into the realm of mindless TV. It is mostly just him traveling to places near and far, drinking (alot), eating (weird stuff) and exploring the underground of a particular city. The hook is that he kind of the anti-travel-show travel-show.

He has written several books including the lauded Kitchen Confidential.

There is an interesting interview with him in The Onion.

In this interview he talks about writing fiction and he says,

"Things I can't say in non-fiction, I can say in fiction. But there's that damn plot thing. I really resent plot. I like creating characters and environments. That's really fun for me. But having to create a story arc is something I have always resented."

And here is where I get to my point, a few weeks ago, listening to MPR, I heard an interview with Nora Ephron where she says dissmisively that she can't watch a lot of TV because she like "stories," that she likes "plots." It had a lot to do with the way she said it, but it just seemed like the most arrogant thing to say. As if she were above anything that was just mindless fun, and that the people who might enjoy an hour of watching somebody get drunk and be a smartass are base and incapable of creating art.

Xmas Spectacular 2007 Pt. 2

Part One is here.

7. Dress Blues – Jason Isbell

This is a devastating song about losing a friend in the war. Every couplet is like its own poignant vignette of the way loss affects people. “Now the high school gymnasium's ready/ full of flowers and old legionnaires/ Nobody showed up to protest/ just sniffle and stare

“But there's red, white, and blue in the rafters/ and there's silent old men from the corps/ What did they say when they shipped you away/ to fight somebody's Hollywood war?”

8. Chemicals Collide – Cloud Cult

This album, The Meaning of 8, hit me hard this year. The theme of loving and losing a child, and the vivid descriptions of a child’s carefree life resonated intensely to me. Becoming a parent this year, I can’t imagine not filtering the contents of this album through that lens. This CD was in my car when my daughter was born and I remember listening to it on my way to the hospital one morning when my daughter was just a few days old. It struck me dumb, as I spent that week in a daze, listening to lines like, “These days it’s hard to tell what’s outside from what’s in my mind.”

9. All The Stars – The Evening Rig

Jason Miller’s former band, The Crush, was one of my favorites when they were around. Reemerging after the demise of that band, The Evening Rig touches on the same topics of heartbreak, longing and regret. The sound is a bit different though, and while people may disagree with my comparison to the Drive by Truckers, I still see them going in that direction.

10. Merry Christmas (I Don’t Want to Fight Tonight) – The Ramones

The obligatory Christmas song on my CD. Not the greatest song, but I think it works.

11. Bus12 – The Umbrella Sequence

This came of the underrated record, Events. I just love the part where the music drops out and the last syllable of the word “Possibly” sails up and bridges the gap until the electronic-pop music starts again. This whole song is worth it for me just for those five seconds.

12. John Allyn Smith Sails – Okkervil River

Just as I knew that Mouthful of Bees would open this mix CD, I knew this Okkervil River song would close the CD. Wonderfully literate and clever, this dark song touching on John Berryman’s plunge towards the Mississippi cops a riff from the Beach Boys’ “Sloop John B.” Will Sheff’s voice gives me the chills. I think a lot about singers and whether they are really giving it their all, I don’t think there is any doubt that Sheff means what he says.

previous spectaculars: 2006 2005

Xmas Spectacular 2007

Here is the first half of my Xmas Spectacular for 2007. This isn't really a best-of kind of list, it's just a bunch of songs that I thought sounded good together and wanted to share with my friends.

1. The Now – Mouthful of Bees

I knew from the moment I heard this song, the first track on my mix CD would belong to this group of youngsters. A frenetic, warbling, lo-fi song filled with a propulsive drum beat and guitar hooks to make Doug Martsch jealous.

2. Diggin’ on You – Stook!

I don’t know if this is the best song on Stook’s newest record, When the Need hit the Wax. The whole album is great with tracks like “Lovesick Firecracker” and “Hennepin Avenue” traversing the heart-on-sleeve lyrics of Stook and the musicality of The Band. What I do know is that driving home after a bad day at work, there is nothing to make you feel better than screaming along with the lines, “Hey, Hey, Baby, Baby/ Don’t you know you drive me crazy.”

3. Trampolining – Ice Palace

I was racking my brain, thinking off all the bands we covered in the HWTS podcasts this year. This is one that I kind of forgot about, but listening to it again, I have to say this is just catchy-as-hell pop song. And that is pretty much all I know about Ice Palace, except that their album, Bright Leaf Left, came out on Darren Jackson’s (Kid Dakota) label, Speakerphone Records.

4. Soulful Automatic – Little Man

Last year, when Duplomacy’s album, All These Long Drives, came out, I told people it would be in everybody’s year-end best-of list. They made it to mine, but not many other peoples. I said the same thing this year when Little Man’s album came out. It’s definitely on my list, and I’ve seen it on a few others. A classic-rock infused record, the songs are just plain good, and that’ll get me every time.

5. The National Side – Romantica

I was a big fan of Romantica’s first album; It’s Your Weakness that I Want. When I first heard the new album, America, I was a little disappointed. I think I was in the minority on that one. It took me a few listens to understand what was different. Romantica’s first album was a bit more eclectic, in my opinion. America is more focused and given time, I now realize that the songwriting is better, it’s just that the little R&B flourishes of the first album are abandoned for a pretty straightforward roots rock sound.

6. Clifton Bridge – Mark Olson

I haven’t always been a fan of Olson’s work outside of the Jayhawks. The Creekdippers seemed a bit too hippie for me. This album, however, features Olson’s intimate and fragile songwriting without a lot of pretext. This is what I love about music—the artist laying his or her feeling out on the table and saying, “have at it.” This song has nothing to do with the 35W Bridge, of course, but after that tragedy, this song certainly took on a deeper meaning to me.

Here are some previous spectaculars: 2006 2005

Part two is here.

Almost made it(s)

Every year I make a mixCD for my friends around Christmas time. I am going to post the songs that made the cut soon, but here are a few that were in the running, but just didn't make the final cut.

Dan Israel - Triangle
Matthew Ryan - Blackbird
His Mischief - Rock Song (Hyperopia)
Cloud Cult - Pretty Voice

...And this

While I was searching youtube for that maddening clip below, I found this human Tetris video. I think my favorite part is the sound effects.

Baby, Baby Let me Get Away From Meatloaf

My wife is an admitted HGTV addict. Therefore my exposure to shows like Househunters and Design on Dime is more than I would care to admit. Lately, HGTV has been airing this commercial for a new show called Sleep on It.

The commercial spoofs Meatloaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Lights." The problem with all of this is that the songs just gets stuck in my head. I wake up in the middle of the night with that song playing in my head. Driving to work, I'm singing, "Let me sleep on it/ Baby, Baby, Let me sleep on it." Please, Please, someone make it stop...

Top 89 of 2007

I thought that there would be more local music on The Current’s top 89 songs of 2007. Six out of 89 is not a very good showing; I don’t think that necessarily reflects the quality of local music in the past year, but the quality of voters in the poll. The highest ranking artist is Brother Ali, which is no surprise, but I thought that he and Cloud Cult would crack the top 20, at least.

20. Brother Ali – The Undisputed Truth
22. Cloud Cult – The Meaning of 8
27. Dan Wilson – Free Life
42. Low – Drums and Guns
69. Prince – Planet Earth
79. The Alarmists – The Ghost and the Hired Gun

I did vote in the poll, but I can’t remember what I picked exactly. Locally, I know that I picked Brother Ali and Cloud Cult. I also picked Romantica, The Glad Version and Dan Israel. There were two artists that were not on the ballot, surprisingly, but I wrote them in anyway. They were Little Man and Stook. Some of the national acts I chose were Wilco and Okkervil River.

Places

Places where my dog has thrown up in the past two days:

1. Dining Room
2. Kitchen
3. Back Steps
4. Living Room
5. Kitchen

Things #2

Things that I say I could do without (but secretly, either because of obligation or the fact that I secretly like this thing or that I secretly enjoy hating this thing, I really could not do without).

1. The New York Yankees
2. My Job
3. McDonalds
4. ABBA
5. Washing Dishes

Things

Things I could do without

1. Ann Coulter
2. Rush Hour Traffic
3. The new Rilo Kiley album
4. Tim McCarver and Joe Buck talking about baseball
5. The real estate market that, thus far, has not allowed me to sell my house

Salvation Blues

It's Mark Olson weekend pretty much...
Unfortunately, for me, I have to go to Portage, WI for a wedding tomorrow, so I will miss his show at the 400 Bar. His new album is incredibly good. I talked about it in the HWTS podcast that came out last week, which you can listen to here.

Tony Thomas has an interview today with Mark Olson, which you can listen to here.

Olson is also playing at the fetus tomorrow at noon or at 2:00, depending on who you listen to.

I guessed and started the rumor that Olson would have some "special" guests with him and Olson himself, in his interview with Tony Thomas, intimated the same. Should be a brilliant show.

Happy Birthday

My friend, Jen is having a birthday bash with some great bands. You should really go...

My bridge story is like most people’s: not really about the bridge, but more about me. My sister-in-law called my wife to tell her to turn on the television. I was in the other room leaving a message for a friend whose dog had just died (a sad country song of a story in itself). “A bridge on 35W collapsed,” my wife said.

I thought first of the Diamond Lake Road overpass that they tore down a few months ago. I thought it must be an overpass somewhere that fell down—tragic, but relatively minor. I was wrong.

As I watched the news and listened to MPR constantly for the next few days, I couldn’t shake that helpless feeling. Like someone punched you in the stomach. I kept watching and listening, never really hearing anything new, but unable to turn away. I kept seeing this tangles mass of steel and concrete, splintered up towards the sky and swimming in the brown muck of the Mississippi. I couldn’t turn away. It looked to me like a movie, something not real, something that couldn’t happen a few miles from my house, something that doesn’t happen in Minnesota.

As I watched, my mind began to work in the exhaustive way it works—creating dark fantasies of myself driving over that bridge. What would I do?

Each day after work, I pick up my daughter from day care and drive her across town to our house in North Minneapolis. Each day I drive over bridges, past lakes and alongside that mighty river. I kept imagining myself with my daughter strapped into her Graco in the backseat, trying to get to her, underwater or teetering on the edge of a concrete cliff. These dark fantasies haunted me constantly. What would I do? How can I stand it? How can I protect this little, beautiful person? I didn’t want to tell my wife about these haunting thoughts, but I had to eventually, I couldn’t keep it to myself. I said plainly, “I keep thinking about being on the bridge with her. What if I had to save her, or worse yet, what if I couldn’t?”

“I know,” is all she said.

I think she knew, but I couldn’t really tell her what I meant. I couldn’t verbalize the twisted thoughts that were in my head. I couldn’t say them out loud.

Again, I kept looking at those images of the bridge. I couldn’t believe it was real.

I went out the Friday after the collapse to the 331 Club to see JG and Mary Everest. I was there by myself and I was enjoying the music, for the first part of the night, it was therapy to unnerve myself from the bridge and my nightmares. About 12:30 though, I found myself staring at the floor, daydreaming about that bridge. It was consuming me again, I knew it was right down the street and I knew that I had to go see it.

I drive down University to where the avenue intersects the interstate and I slowed and looked to my right. Powerful lights lighted the whole span and I could see a section of bridge tilted up towards downtown like a giant concrete launch ramp. I could see nothing beyond that, the road just dropped out of sight.

I drove home not feeling better, I sat on my couch and listened, through my headphones, to Cloud Cult’s The Meaning of 8. There are so many songs on that album about a parent and child separated by tragedy. It was just the kind of wallowing torture I needed. I stared blankly at the wall as I sat on my couch listening.

When I woke up the next morning, I felt better. The fantasies stopped. I still felt heartbroken and helpless, but I felt better. I think maybe my bridge story is still happening…

New Spins for the Old Drunk

I may have embarrassed myself at the Spins last night.

Me: I don't know if this means I have a drinking problem, but if I have one beer then I just want like twelve more.
Alexa: That sounds like a drinking problem to me.
Me: Oh.

Anyway, here is what I spun at the Spins:

1. Gray - Heartless Bastards
2. New Drink for the Old Drunk - Crooked Fingers
3. Across The Line - Scott Miller and the Commonwealth
4. Trouble Doll - Matthew Ryan
5. Charango (Isla Negra) - The Dad in Common
6. Sangre de Stephanie - Lifter Puller
7. Sound System - Operation Ivy
8. Quarter-Life Crisis - The Cardinal Sin

Last Week and Next Week

My Dinosaur Jr review is up over at HWTS.

What I didn't mention is that the friend who went with me to this show was the same sidekick for the last Dinosaur Jr show I saw ten years ago. The Boathouse, where we saw that show, has shut down now. Norfolk has a new venue called the Norva. I've never been there, but I can tell you the boathouse was kind of a weird place. It was actually on stilts on the water--an actual boathouse. During shows that were not 21plus they would put up a rail running perpendicular to the stage and they called one half the beer garden. When shows would get crazy the bouncers would be stationed along this rail and as kids tried to crowd surf or jump over the rail, the bouncers would pummel them.

Next Saturday come celebrate five years of internet goodness. The HowWasTheShow.com five-year anniversary party.

Saturday June 9 at the Turf Club. 9pm

First Communion Afterparty
The Slats
Jeremy Messersmith
Mouthful of Bees
Estate

Lullabye

If you want your heart to break because of a beautiful lonesome song, then go here and listen to lullabye.

Alison played this song at the hoot this past Friday and it absolutely floored me.

Take a Look at my Girlfriend

I stopped at garage sale in Northeast Mpls this past weekend and found this little nugget of vinyl goodness. Supertramp's Breakfast in America. I remember listening to this album a lot when I was a kid. I had it on a cassette tape and I just loved staring at the album cover with the city made out of breakfast cereal boxes and dished and cutlery. And "Libby" posing as a service industry statue of liberty. The music is good too. Released in 1979, this album is full of straightforward seventies rock. I've listened to the record about five times since Saturday afternoon.

The Spins Have Hit Glass

I want to have some more to say from now on, but at this moment I wanted to post my setlist from the Spins this past Saturday. The Spins is an event hosted by HowWasTheShow.com where the writers and editors basically make mix CDs to play while they drink $3.00 mystery beers with whomever shows up. It happens every other Tuesday at the Nomad World Pub. The next version happens May 22.

1. Hayden - "The Hazards of Sitting Beneath Palm Trees"
2. Cloud Cult - "Chemicals Collide"
3. Brian Just - "Duluth"
4. Guided by Voices - "The Bride Have Hit Glass"
5. Story of the Sea - "Bubble Gum"
6. Matthew Ryan - "BabyBird"
7. Archers of Loaf - "South Carolina"
8. Lifter Puller - "Secret Santa Cruz"
9. P.O.S. - "De La Souls"
10. Lucero - "Bikeriders"
11. The Rockford Mules - "Crooked Tooth"
12. Self-Evident - "Automatic Lewis"
13. Dinosaur Jr. - "Sludgefeast"
14. Best Friends Forever - "The Loneliness Song"
15. Faces - "Ooh La La"
16. Alpha Consumer - "The Son of the C.E.O. of Rubbersuit Co."
17. Brother Ali - "Forest Whitiker"