Wow, what a night with This Will Destroy You! I’d seen them once before, just a few years ago, and the experience was mostly the same, but they had more songs from their most recent album (which are somewhat different from the rest of their canon and add a nice flair to their setlist). They aren’t a theatrical or energetic live show, but if you are invested in their music, it is very, VERY emotional. I’ve included tonight’s setlist, every song is a link to the studio version of that song for any people who are interested in this band. And the concert might seem short, but bear in mind the live versions of some of these songs go past the 15 minute mark:
I could not be more excited to see This Will Destroy You tomorrow right here in Harrisburg! Yes, this is a band with a somewhat annoying name (until you get used to it and actually love the name) but they have gradually, over the past few years, become one of the more important bands to me in my life.
This Will Destroy You (TWDY) is what is known as a post rock band, although that term, post-rock, can be argued about at length exactly what it means or what qualifies. The commonly accepted definition is a group of people that plays strictly instrumental rock music, typically long songs, 10 minutes or longer, with multiple sections, no refrain or chorus musically, and an intense quiet/loud dynamic, although any of these elements can be changed, and the fundamental post-rock-ness remains.
Anyway, I began to love this band about 4 years ago, right before Karla and I got together. I had heard their name here and there as I was making me my way down my post rock journey, and had just started listening to their first album when Karla and I got together. I was still living in Philadelphia and she was living in Harrisburg, and she would come to see me about every two weekends. One weekend, TWDY was playing a show in Philly, and she was coming to see me that day, but she wasn’t going to be getting in until late at night. So I left her my door key, and I went to the concert. I remember feeling amazed at the concert, listening to this music that meant so much to me, that was so intense and so profound, knowing that the woman who I already knew I was going to be with for the rest of my life was laying in my bed back in my Philadelphia apartment. Which by the way I was going to ride my bike to after the concert; I was so hip. I felt so amazing, perhaps, the most amazing I’ve ever felt in my life. When I got home that night, I slid into bed with her and woke her up and talked to her about the show, then as she fell back asleep, I put their self titled album on the stereo quietly, and I drifted off to the sounds of Burial on the Presidio Banks.
My relationship with the band has only deepened over the past few years since I moved back to central Pennsylvania. I have acquired a jewel of a collection of their vinyl albums, including the centerpiece of the my post rock collection, their “Live from Reykjavik” on three vinyl records. In addition, the very first movie that Karla and I ever saw in a theater was “Room”, in which their song The Mighty Rio Grande is featured during what is arguably the turning point and the most intense part of the movie. See below:
It is arguable that I put on this band’s music more often than any others, even though at this point I still would not classify them as my actual favorite band, but it is the perfect mood music, when I’m feeling a little down, when I feel like I need inspiration, when I’m reminiscing, when I’m writing. This band’s music runs through the fabric of my life almost like no other band, and somehow, tomorrow night, they’re playing a show in Harrisburg!
My favorite song of theirs is this one, A Three-Legged Work Horse:
Our culture is full of tales that suggest there is a prime way to live life; movies, music and books that implore you to chase your dreams, to leave the safe confines of your daily routine, to reach out and grab life by the whatevers, because, you know, you only live once. It’s a moving, inspiring narrative. The thing is, you see, in our society, typically when someone does that sort of thing, we all look at them like they’re crazy. I can’t believe she just up and moved to New York—to be an actress! She had a pretty good job here, too. She’s nuts!
And so on.
This is not going to be a piece of writing where I tell you how you should be living. For the most part, how you are living is between you and, possibly, those closest to you. It’s got nothing to do with me. They make so many movies etc suggesting you grab life by the armpits because those kinds of things make money. People love to be told how they are pissing away their existence. Why? Because almost everyone is, in some way, convinced they actually are pissing away their existence.
It’s hard to know how to live your life, right? By the time you get one thing figured out, one part of you fully colored in, you’ve changed in other ways, and now you’re chasing other ghosts, ironing out new parts of you, nursing new interests. The songs tell you to chase your dream but very few of us have just one enormous dream. Most of us are a collection of dozens of itsy bitsy dreams. I don’t suggest driving your car off a cliff over an itsy bitsy dream.
All I’m personally concerned with is being passionate, living with vigor. I keep changing, evolving; it’s like I’m in the center of an orchard that is spinning around me and I’m leaping at fruit as they fly past. Even as I near my fortieth year, I find my changes accelerating: I would be unrecognizable even to my thirty-year-old self. With so much swirling into and out of my crosshairs, it’s impossible to laser-focus on something. What I need is passion for everything. The racing heart, smelling the book, walking outside in the cold to take the photograph, the peach juice running down your chin, holding Her as tight as I can. I don’t need to move to New York to be an actress to squeeze the juice out—but maybe you do, so maybe you should.
And maybe you’re OK with rote routine, eating your food and drinking your water just to stay alive as long as possible. That’s fine, too. Like I said, this isn’t a piece of writing to tell you how to live your life. That’s got nothing to do with me, because nobody’s paying me to write this.
For a few years in my early twenties I was passionate about Alcoholics Anonymous. I mean that’s who I was for a little while. I thought it was the life for me. After being tentative and gradually going into that world, I fully immersed myself once comfortable. I would get phone calls late at night and go talk to a drunk in need. I gave a talk to troubled teens attending an early intervention class at a local church. Almost all of my friends were members of AA. We went to meetings together, then went out for coffee afterward, then sometimes even back to an apartment or house for a movie night after the coffee. We took road trips together to meetings and seminars. At the time, I was still considered a “young person in sobriety” (I was 25-26) and my closest AA buddies and I went to the Pennsylvania Convention of Young People in Alcoholics Anonymous (known as “Pennsypaa”). We took over a hotel in downtown Baltimore (that’s right, it was in Baltimore–they like to make it a nice trip for everyone no matter where you live in the state) for three whole days. That’s how passionate I was about Alcoholics Anonymous. In addition to tons of panels and activities, there was also a room where they had round-the-clock meetings, one an hour, for the whole three days. I made it my mission to do a stretch of 24 hours straight, but I think I only got 7 or 8 before I had to go sleep. I had my favorite AA jokes (“They asked me to go to that meeting and give a talk on humility, but I said I’d only do it if enough people showed up”), I had my favorite chapters in the Big Book (“Us Agnostics”), and on and on. It was my life and I thought it would always be. It isn’t my life anymore, though. It hasn’t been for a very long time. Those guys I went to Baltimore with–there is only one of them I am still in touch with. But that’s how it is supposed to be, back before social media changed our expectations; people, like passions, are allowed to come and go. You can let them go.
Like most of my blog entries lately, I’m just kind of thinking out loud here. Don’t look too hard for an overarching theme or thesis. As my birthday approaches I’m doing a little taking stock. Certainly my life right now is the most amazing it’s ever been–it is not putting on a front to say that. People think that if you say your life is amazing on the internet that you must be lying, but they think that because their lives are not amazing. I assure you mine is.
No, I am not taking stock of my life in some way that implies it needs improved, but rather, to discern just how I have changed so much. This is one of the more massive themes of all the blog entries I’ve ever written: how the old me becomes the new me becomes the old me becomes the new me and on and on and on. And why do I think you’d want to read about this? Why, because I assume the same thing is happening to you.
I suppose it’s possible this is not happening to you. It’s possible the old you became the new you and then you stayed right there, and now you’re just you. But again, that’s none of my business.
What I want to get at is, how much of those old me’s are still part of me? Are there fundamental bits of Seth mixed up inside me, that have always been there and shall always remain? Or do we change, piece by piece, insidiously, until the person we see in the mirror bears no relation to the people we were 10, 20 years ago?
Is there even a way to know the answer?
Sometimes I think the only thing in this world that cuts to any part of the truth of existence is music–music without words–and the only thing I can really create is words, but no music. So there you have it. Questions stacked on questions like mirrors looking into mirrors.
I’ve seen Pearl Jam live 21 times. Approximately. It might be 17. I know it is more than 15. At some point in my life I knew that number very concretely. That is how much has changed within me since I gave up the ghost on Pearl Jam. For a very long stretch, the band was my life. I bought everything you can possibly imagine–spending thousands of dollars on the band’s merchandise. When they would tour, I would take vacations from work and follow them up and down the east coast, staying in hotels by myself in places as diverse as Jersey City to Virginia Beach. I attended about 75% of those Pearl Jam shows all alone, and did not mind one bit. I used to tell people I had to go to as many shows as possible because Pearl Jam concerts were “my church”. Especially the long instrumental parts they would play in “Even Flow” and “rearviewmirror”; I would close my eyes during these times and replay my life up to that point, flipping through memory images, whatever came to mind and seemed significant, and then giving immense thanks that I had come through everything to be in a position to be standing there, right then, as this band was creating this music, and I had enough money to buy the poster and a t-shirt and my own hotel room. When the band cycled back around to the climax of the song, I’d open my eyes, always tear-filled, and they’d pour down my cheeks, and I’d jump like a maniac as the music built to a catharsis, and I’d scream and pump my fists and let out my barbaric yawp. It was my church. I did that for a long time. Seven or eight years. But I don’t do that anymore. I didn’t even look at the setlists for Pearl Jam’s last two tours. I’m more of a Miles Davis kind of man now.
People talk very poorly of “routine”. They are afraid of falling into routine. They think routine will just sap the authenticity directly out of your life.
Here is what they mean: they are afraid of getting old and having responsibilities.
Lord knows I was afraid of those things for a very long time. I lived by myself for a decade and railed against the breakfast-nook-having, 401k-caring-about, child-rearing snoozevilles. But guess what? While I was living alone, bitching about all that, I still had a routine. I may have been able to take road trips more often, stay out late, what-have-you, but ultimately, if what you fear is routine, then you are fucked, mister, because whoever you are and whatever you do, you are already in a routine.
I have a family now. I am now living much closer to what some people would call a “normal adult life”, and yes, we have a routine. Having a routine is how you make sure you get out the door in the morning (if that’s what you have to do), get food in your belly, pay the power company on time. Having a routine and being in the flow of “normal” adult life doesn’t mean your passion has to be siphoned off.
But you gotta work at it.
The last thing I want, as I near forty and the changes inside me keep accelerating, is to live joylessly, simply existing, from one day to the next, sun up, sun down, alarm beeping, alarm beeping. Luckily my partner is also a person with no interest in living an ordinary life, even if we do want to have breakfast nooks someday and pay attention to our 401ks. Intense existence and successful adulthood, I think, are not mutually exclusive.
I want our family to be safe from harm but I don’t want to “be safe”. I want desperately to reach further and further out of my comfort zones. I want to do new stuff until the day I die. I don’t want to only listen to the music I loved in high school. The world is so damn huge. We’re only here for a blink.
I have learned that it is possible to grow up and still let the juice run down your chin.
Approximately three years ago (the time period of my life when I was living with my mother in South Jersey), I was driving my car listening to NPR. I was listening to the show “All Songs Considered.” I had tuned in about halfway through, and was listening to a conversation with a musician whose name I never caught. He was a very serious man, he took his music very seriously and everything he said was heavy and dense, laden with meaning, a man many people might label as over-serious, and off-putting to some. But it was just the kind of talk I like, because I like art that is discussed with reverence. At the end, him and a small band played a song, the title of which I didn’t catch, although I caught some of the words. (it was “Nobody Knows”, although I have yet to find a recording of a live version that rivals the one I heard on NPR that day). The performance was absolutely haunting, and I couldn’t get it out of my head. Unfortunately, I had still never heard the man’s name, or even the name of the song. Eventually I Googled some of the lyrics, and I did manage to find out who he was: Willis Earl Beal. I YouTubed him, watched some performances, and fell quite in love. Not only was his music amazing, his lyrics were literature, and his voice had a bluesy-country-rock quality I’d never heard anywhere before; he sounded like God would sound if he was slightly drunk. But on top of all that he had a philosophy to his entire oeuvre, a philosophy of nothingness, of him being nothing, of channeling the universe, and all of us also being nothing. It’s a pretty intense philosophy, and more than I can really explain here in this blog, and maybe more than he could even explain to you, but something about it, somehow, connected deeply with me. I bought his debut album, Nobody Knows, on vinyl as well as CD, and even bought two extra copies on CD and sent to friends of mine who I thought might appreciate his music. I dove deeply into some of his online videos, they were not music performances but helped to fully flush out his philosophy, The Church of Nobody. It would be fair to say that for a short time at least, I was a disciple. Being interested as I am in tons of things, he slid off my radar a little bit after a few months, but would always pop back up here and there. I would say not two months will go by without me going to a small Willis Earl Beal phase.
Willis isn’t famous by almost any definition in America. You’ll never see him in a magazine, (although you might see his name briefly mentioned Rolling Stone). But there are a few circles in which he is very famous. Some of the alternative music press covers him extensively, treating him almost like the next Bob Dylan, with the positives and the negatives that might come from that. He appeared in the much lauded independent movie, to vehemently mixed reviews. Music and culture critics are very torn on how to take him and how serious he is, and his philosophical approach to music, which some say is absolutely brilliant, and some say means almost nothing. Following his debut album, Nobody Knows, he put out an album the next year, Experiments in Time, which I must admit even I was not a big fan of. It was too aimless and meandering, seemed thrown together in order to put an album out. It was also markedly different than the album prior, and if nothing else, I had to respect his change in direction.
Flash forward to yesterday. I work at a nationally recognized coffee chain. I was sitting out in my lobby, doing some work on my laptop, when I looked up and saw what I thought at first was a kind of hapless man, walking around with a cell phone, looking for an outlet to plug it into so he could charge it. I had to snicker because of how fairly helpless he looked doing it, but there wasn’t much I could do to help him as none were open at the moment. I went back to my work. A few minutes later something caught me out of the corner of my eye. I looked up to see the same man, who was with a woman about his age, at one of my outside tables, apparently having trouble with a bee. He was trying to shoo it away from his table with a magazine. He was up and running around, and the woman he was with was laughing at him. I chuckled to myself, and then did a double take. The man was wearing a Willis Earl Beal T-shirt, that has his Nobody logo. My first initial thought was, holy cow, a Willis Earl Beal fan! It would have literally been the first time I had encountered such a thing. But then I realized the man I was looking at roughly matched Willis’ description. I looked at his face, and it was him! There was absolutely no denying it in my mind. Willis Earl Beal was at my place of employment. And before I knew it, I also realized that I was getting up to going talk to him. I can’t really describe the surreal nature of this, especially since I now work in a suburban Harrisburg, Pennsylvania store, not exactly the sort of place independent artists travel through frequently. But there was never a moment of hesitation in my mind, or any rehearsal of what to say, or even a moment of nervousness. I just said to myself, I’m gonna go talk to Willis Earl Beal . And that is what I did.
I walked out the front door, turned the corner, and cognizant of the fact that they might not want interrupted or bothered, I said, “I’m sorry, but are you Willis Earl Beal?” He definitely looked startled, as did the woman he was with, and he said, “yes I am!” The exact wording of what followed kind of escapes me. I thanked him for the music, and he expressed some shock that he had been recognized. Even though he is a large figure in some critical circles, he’s not a man who gets recognized often. We quickly began speaking very much like equals, like two people who were just talking to each other. It was one of the most surreal, electric experiences I’ve ever had. Now, while I’m a fan of Willis Earl Beal , I can’t say that he is absolutely one of my favorite musicians. That would be misrepresenting the case. He would not make my top 10. Would he make my top 20? Absolutely. I am passionate about a whole lot of things, and Willis Earl Beal certainly falls into that category. So all of a sudden, I go from working at my job in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to sitting across the table and speaking quite frankly and candidly to Willis Earl Beal. This is the sort of thing that simply does not happen.
After a few minutes I admitted I had not heard his latest album (Noctunes), and he offered to sell me a copy of it on vinyl out of his car. I quickly ran to the neighboring supermarket to get some cash, which I overpaid him for by a little bit in appreciation for his artistry. He signed the record for me, and him and his girlfriend (who is the woman he was with) did not appear to want to stop speaking to me. The three of us had a good rapport, so I just continued to sit there and talk to him. We spoke a lot about the nature of creating art, and how one’s voice and talent evolve over time, and how some of your earlier stuff can become unrecognizable to you. I told him about how I dabble in writing, and we spoke about that craft as well as the craft of music, me admitting I know nothing about creating music but my intense appreciation for it. We spoke about what it is like in our culture to become known like he is, but still struggle financially, and what is like to have people you don’t know recognize you, and how that changes you as a person. All in all, it was only a 20 minute conversation, but it was very real, and a very intense experience for me. I daresay in some ways it seemed to be a pretty intense experience for him too, not only to be recognized, but I think he rather enjoyed the conversation, as did his girlfriend,
I excused myself even though I had much more to say and didn’t necessarily have to get back to work, but I didn’t want to overstay my welcome. I went back to my laptop, and looked up periodically every few minutes, to the astonishing sight of Willis Earl Beal sitting outside the window. He was there for about another hour, when I watched him and his girlfriend walk off and get into his car. Another astonishing fact that came out of this meeting was the fact that he is playing a show here, in Harrisburg, tonight! How such a thing slid under my radar, I won’t know, but you best believe I will be there. I quite some time ago stopped hero worshiping people, thinking that the famous or semi famous people that create the things I love are somehow different or more elevated than me. So I definitely do not have a feeling that I was in the presence of a different sort of person in this experience, but the infinite level of statistical improbability of what happened, coupled with the ease with which the two of us fell into conversation, and the depth that we reached, cause a sensation in me but I don’t even have a word for.
I had big plans to write my first big concert blog in a long time after last night’s Arcade Fire show. I long ago ceased writing lengthy concert reviews when I realized nobody really cared (not your fault!). But last night’s show was SO different than any rock concert I’ve been to, I had big plans. But the need to go to work in between the concert and the blog has taken the wind out of my sails, so allow me to make a long story somewhat short.
So the music media has made a big fuss over this tour. Arcade Fire has, in the past year or two, become an immensely popular band, but not in the usual way. They don’t have any radio songs. Their music doesn’t necessarily appeal to the average music consumer. And yet millions and millions of people like them. They are a band with “indie” or “hipster” appeal, and when a band such as that decided to play arenas, a lot of people cry foul. I understand this argument. To make music from a distinctly artful, non-populist place and then play immense buildings whose construction was underwritten by public tax dollars and then named after banks and beer companies, well, it’s weird, but also: that’s life. What ya gonna do? They’d have to play ten times as many club dates to allow this many of their fans to see them. And I have no problem with talented artists getting rich. So anyway. There was also the thing I mentioned earlier in my blog about them requesting formal wear and costume. So yeah. A lot has been said and written about this tour (known as the Reflektor tour).
The band obviously has done all it can to silence these critics. From the moment I entered the building I never once thought about the fact that I was at an arena rock concert. Not once. Not everyone was in costume or formal wear, but well over 50% (my guess would be 70%) were in one or the other. Enough so that I never once felt self-conscious about my mask. There were many and various interesting things set up and taking place throughout the concourses that added to the effect of being somewhere other than a rock show–I don’t have time or space to detail them. The house lights were kept off for the entire duration of the audience being in the building. This is actually unheard-of. What this means is, once we left the concourse area where you buy your beer and t-shirts and went into find our actual seats, the lights were off. Like, even before the opening act. The lights stayed down during the opening act. Of course there were the lights from the stage, etc, but the big lights, the “house lights”, stayed off. This added a major effect of otherworldliness (although admittedly also was in many ways a pain in the ass). The lights stayed off when the opener was done playing, in the wait period before Arcade Fire came out (the house lights always come up between acts!). but most surprisingly, the lights still stayed off even after Arcade Fire was done. This almost seems like a safety concern! But it was worth it. It was the first thing, aside from our own costumes, that immediately changed our expectations of this event.
The modern-day rock concert is very predictable. It moves with a certain pace and certain things always happen on cue. Nothing was to be like that at this show. I swear I’m trying to hurry this story up.
The opening act: Dan Deacon. This man is an electronic musician (he makes music by himself using, well…electronics). Again, right off the bat, just not what this audience is expecting. But I must say, his music does compliment Arcade Fire’s rather well. The big deal here is that Dan didn’t play from the stage Arcade Fire was going to. He was on a stage at the other end of the arena. This was genius. See, the folks in the first 20 or 30 rows against the stage (they are not in assigned seats like me but are General Admission) are not going to do any dancing or moving, because they are concerned with their placement by the stage. But Dan’s position at the other end brings the General Admission folks who were too late to get a good spot at the main stage over to HIS stage, and he proceeds to do amazingly interactive things with them; dance contests, “high five walls”, all kinds of neat stuff that probably is pretty run-of-the-mill at electronica shows but is all-but unheard of at a rock show. The audience was interacting. On a large scale! AND, on top of all this, this unique and terrific activity made those of us in the stands rapt with what was happening. Let me break that down: a bunch of hipster rock fans were rapt with attention at an electronic musician opening act.
So that was kind of neat.
So Dan Deacon got done and we waited for the main act. The lights stayed down which was creepy and awesome and annoying. The wait wasn’t as long as normal. After about 20 minutes, with very close to no warning, the main stage throbs with sound and light, the curtain gets yanked up, and suddenly Arcade Fire is playing “Reflektor”, the title track from their new album. I was really far away but this is what it looked like from closer. It happened with so little warning, I can’t find a video on YouTube that actually caught the beginning:
So then they rocked our faces off for awhile, which I won’t bore you about. There were tremendous things throughout to really set the show apart: confetti and lots of it from the rafters, lots of glow in the dark things, incredible stage presence with jumping and dancing and twirling of strings and people wearing many different masks and just all kinds of oddities. But mostly just really incredible, intelligent, emotionally-charge artistic rock music that can’t be beat.
I regret there is not yet quality video of their performance of “Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)”, a song that is constructed like a swelling rock anthem, but is a story about two children whose town gets completely buried in snow, but they climb out their chimneys and survive, eventually reverting to more bestial ways and forgetting much of their past civilized lives, while also falling in love with one another. It exists as a wholly unique song in the pantheon of rock. It has always moved me with its sideways and unexpected approach to deep human themes such as fear of loss, longing for love, and desire for the unexpected. And yet, as unconventional as it is, as the song began to play, 20,000 people sang, quite loudly, along with me, lines such as
“Then we tried to name our babies,
but we forgot all the names that,
the names we used to know.
But sometimes, we remember our bedrooms,
and our parent’s bedrooms,
and the bedrooms of our friends.”
We were singing these unconventional lines like it meant something to us, like it was important. Like they were secrets.
On their most recent album, they have a song called “We Exist”, which is about the pain of teenage gays “coming out” (so far as I know, everyone in the band is straight). A great moment for me was Win’s introduction of this song, which can be seen in the video below, and then the absolutely terrifyingly gnarly version of the song they proceed to play. What isn’t visible in this video is that during this song, the “reflektor man” came out and stood on Dan Deacon’s stage, as spotlights
“Reflektor Man” on the opener’s stage during “We Exist”
bounced beams onto all of us, as Win sang, from the vantage point of teen gays, We exist! It added yet another layer to the complicated, thrilling, and admittedly academic theme of reflection, twinning, and identity that is explored on the new album.
So the band ended it’s “main set”. Here is one of those conventions of the modern concert industry I was speaking about. The main act plays for about an hour and a half and walks off the stage, pretending the show is over. We all know the show is not going to be over, that there will be an “encore”, regardless of whether it is asked for. It is expected (one way we usually know this? The house lights stay off, which of course means nothing to us now). Well, literally the SECOND Arcade Fire walks off the stage, the openers stage again (which is closest to me) rises up in the air, and there are “The Reflektors”…this is an “alter ego” band that Arcade Fire has used throughout promotion leading up to this album. This alter ego band looks like this:
The Reflektors are normally Arcade Fire wearing exaggerated masks of their own heads (get the exploration of identity and reflection????) but clearly this group that just popped up on the second stage was not them. After claiming to be the true “great band here tonight” and trying to get us to chant “Arcade Fire Sucks”, a recording of Chubby Checker’s “The Twist” started playing and The Reflektors pretended to be playing it. About halfway through the song, Arcade Fire came back out on the main stage (never a moment of us having to cheer really loud for under some guise we were “trying to get them back out”, no long moments of interminable waiting…just straight-through unexpected oddity).
So. The encore. They played a four song encore. The second was a cover of BoyzIIMen’s “Motown Philly”. They’ve been playing geographic-specific covers at every show so far, but I honestly was not prepared for this! Watch this amazement by clicking here.
The next-to-last song was the Haitian-music inspired “Here Comes the Night Time”, which featured by far the largest blast of confetti I’ve ever seen. Click here to see it. Start watching around 3:30 to be in good shape for the confetti blast.
They closed, of course, with their raucous heartwrencher “Wake Up”. If you watch only one video on this page, you should make it this one. Look at and listen to the crowd in the great video this person took. This rivals the best crowd moments I ever had at a Pearl Jam concert. Here are 20,000 grown people have an absolute, without-a-doubt, joyful cathartic moment together. I should have expected that moment when they let us do the singing but it took me by surprise and shook me up. Watch how, after the drastic tempo change about 3/4 of the way through the song, the entire arena turns into a huge dance party. And seeing the big frat-boy-esque lugs beside me just belting out lines like “I guess we’ll just have to adjust!” was a perfect illustration of what makes this band so great, and also so unconventional.
Setlist:
1. Reflektor
2. Flashbulb Eyes
3. Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)
4. Rebellion (Lies)
5. Joan of Arc
6. Rococo (with snippet of Lady Gaga’s “Do What U Want”)
7. The Suburbs
8. The Suburbs (continued)
9. Ready to Start
10. Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)
11. We Exist
12. No Cars Go
13. Haiti
14. Afterlife
15. It’s Never Over (O Orpheus)
16. Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
Encore:
1. Normal Person
2. Motownphilly (Boyz II men)
3. Here Comes the Night Time
4. Wake Up
There is a lot of trash around my neighborhood. Like, ALOT. I suspect it is a result of there being snow cover essentially all winter long (preventing any random trash from being cleaned up or blowing away, etc) and then having all of the snow melt in one day, in addition to there being so many cancelled trash pickups due to aforementioned snow. But seriously, my hood looks like ass. I hope the city has a plan to clean this all up, because we’re not going to do it ourselves, and as things are, Pennsport and really all of South Philly kind of looks like something from Judgment Night.
Speaking of Judgment Night, anyone near my age remember that soundtrack? Remember how that was kind of a big deal, with rock bands playing with rap stars? Remember the Crow soundtrack? Is this still happening, soundtracks that are big deals? I don’t really hear about it, and I’d be tempted to think it’s because I’m too old, but really, let’s be honest, I’m still really fucking hip. I heard a few rumbling about some of the Twilight and Hunger Games soundtracks (a few of “my” bands had songs on them) but they didn’t seem to be cultural milestones.
Speaking of me being “hip”, let’s get something straight: I am not a hipster. Not even close. For all those reading, let’s define what “hipster” has come to mean over the past few years. It means this guy:
First of all, in this guy’s defense, Swans is a badass band.
But clearly, I am not this guy.
I like a lot of what hipsters like. I like the same bands. I like the same authors (because hipsters read!). I like the same movies. We have the same worldview, typically.
Hipsters and I even share the trait that we kind of think we’re pretty great, and the stuff we like is probably better than the stuff you like.
But…hipsters want constant credit for it. They want to dress and grow facial hair and present themselves to the world in a way that demands your attention and that you acknowledge they are hipsters. Despite outward appearances, I do actually have a very well-formed fashion philosophy that involves minimalism and austerity. I don’t wear any jewelry. I don’t accessorize. It’s not as though I want to “blend in”, but more a nod to the notion that the content of my work, words, and deeds is what defines me. I define myself through the way I walk, the way I glare at you as I pass you, the way I laugh with my head turned down while patting you on the back. My simplistic and earth-toned style of dress is not meant to make me blend into the pack, but instead to put me, myself, and the content of my personality front and center, and not have the focus be on the quirkiness of my outward presentation. The way I see it, any boring, fluffy fraud can pick out bullshit clothes at a thrift shop and grow a Rollie Fingers ‘stache. It takes balls to be compelling with a t-shirt on.
There are many other substantive ways in which I differ from hipsters: they’re mostly vegan, I’m mostly beef and cheese. They’re all about tattoos and piercing and I’m indifferent (I have one tattoo almost by accident). And on and on. But mostly it’s about people: they want to be defined as part of this group, and I want to be defined as only me. I am not a part of any movement. For the love of science, folks, how could anyone who knows me and also is familiar with hipsters think that I am a hipster?? Please think for yourselves. You can like My Morning Jacket and not be a hipster.
SPEAKING OF BANDS I LIKE (I am doing great with transitions in this entry!) this coming Monday I am seeing Arcade Fire. So pumped! Anyway, before this tour started, they announced they would like the folks attending their shows to wear either formal attire or costume (here is an article about it and here is another one…and that second article is not at all happy about it). Believe it or not, there was actual backlash about this! I mean, this is Arcade Fire, not freakin’ Foo Fighters. What kind of person would be a fan of this band and not like this, or at least be unsurprised by it? This sort of thing is exactly why we like Arcade Fire! They make badass quirk rock that you can hang in the Louvre…I don’t want to see their show in jeans and a t-shirt. If I owned jeans (hipsters wear jeans, I don’t own a pair, so fuck you).
Anyway, I stopped by a costume store today to find something to wear. I bought this awesome mask. I’m not sure about the jacket…should I wear what I have on in this picture, or something goofy, or something “normal”?
Notice they only played six songs. Well, that took three hours. I thought they were going to play all night!
Here is the video of their set-closing, bone-crushing barnburner, “Behemoth”, from the show I was at Wednesday night. Even if this kind of music isn’t your thing, I implore you to just watch a minute or two to get an idea of just what in the world this band is all about:
1. Let’s talk a little bit about Facebook, and/ or any other online social media you’d like to apply this to: my Facebook page is not a magical realm of free speech and considered debate. It (as well as, obviously, my blog. Hey, you want a blog too, you can get one!) is a place where I put the stuff that I already think. Sometimes, that stuff is “I like Triscuits”, but other times it might be “We need stricter gun control in this country, because guns and people kill people.” Those are my opinions, and I didn’t get them from numbskulls like you, I got them from the world, and my observations of it. Now, you are of course more than free to have your own opinions, and even ones that are different than mine, but these people that seem to think that everything needs debated all the time, and that you need to listen to all sides of a debate! are mistaken for a few reasons. Yes, debate is healthy and necessary, but I don’t spend all my time online, nor do my opinions get formed or forged there. By the time I’ve “statused” an opinion, I’ve read about, watched something about it, talked to a human being in person about it, observed something about it, etc. I communicate things via social networks that I already think. Now, you may ask, what’s wrong with even more debate? And my answer to you is, nothing is wrong with more debate, but not Facebook debate. Facebook debate sucks. Nobody is ever swayed by anything said online, it makes me hate you, it reveals your lack of grasp of the English language, it wastes my time, and makes people who like each other say things they regret. Just don’t bother. And then, the topper, is when since it is after all MY Facebook page, I delete the contrary comments so as to avoid the debate, the person notices I’ve deleted the comments and wants to get all high-and-mighty as though I am oppressing their free speech or quashing some important, vital public discourse. Listen Chachi, this aint Meet the Press, you aren’t the Op-Ed page, and Facebook isn’t housed in the National Archive. Step off my status, Anthony Scalia, I already know what the fuck I think.
2. I just saw “Gravity” in the movie theater. This was a fantastic experience. Now, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t about to become my “favorite” movie, but it is very unlike anything else I’ve ever seen in a movie theater. It is an experience. I don’t want to oversell it here, but listen, this thing has GOT to be seen on a big screen, in 3D, if you want to grasp what the whole point of the endeavor is. Do it. Go. Soon.
3. As you may know, for many years, I was a very vocal opponent of professional sports. I thought they are a nuisance distraction from what is generally important in the world. I thought the energy and attention that followers of sports devote to them was a drain on other places they could be placing that attention, such as government and world affairs, the fine arts, the world of science, and the great story of human history. Guess what? I still absolutely think that is true. There isn’t really any getting around it: professional sports are, by-and-large, a great waste of time by otherwise fantastic cultures. It’s just that at some point a few years ago, I made a conscious decision to drink the Kool-Aid. I now follow sports like a 70s housewife followed soap operas; all-too aware of their impotence in the world, but completely invested regardless. And it is through that lens and with those caveats that I now say this: why the fuck do some of you people make a conscious decision to have “your” team be a team that is nowhere near you? Like someone from Pennsylvania, with no connection to Colorado, being a Denver Broncos fan (hey! We have two pretty neat football teams in our very own state!) or someone from California being a Green Bay Packers fan (again…THREE serviceable teams in that particular state). Now, I hear what you’re out there saying: But Seth, didn’t you just say that sports were essentially meaningless? Didn’t you compare them to soap operas? If so, isn’t my choice to follow the Vancouver Canucks just like preferring “General Hospital” over “One Life to Live”? Well, that’s a pretty good point, but you’re wrong. One of the few socially relevant and culturally significant facets sports do afford us is the ability to help define our regional cultures, bring us temporarily and intensely together as citizens of a common area, form loose bonds out of otherwise unrelated people, and energize regions and cities with not only economic growth and civic pride, but a kind of localized patriotism which, even though it arises from games that in reality mean nothing, it serves to define us as people from a certain place, with a certain history and tradition. Once you have bought into this artificial but nonetheless powerful facade, you become part of the tapestry of the history of a place and culture. And you want to go and just…like some team colors? For a team that is from a place you’ve never been, and which you know next-to-nothing about???That is NOT like choosing one soap opera over another, it’s like watching static on a screen while “Gone With the Wind” is on the other channel. Put some meaning into your meaningless sport, I don’t care how long you’ve “liked” the Yankees.
4. My buddy Kyle knows a girl who is in a band called The Colourist, and it turns out, they might actually be on the cusp of being a legit famous band! (how do we know they are going to be famous? You have seen them in a commercial! This commercial!) They are currently on tour opening for a band called The Naked and Famous, which is a band that is currently enjoying a fair amount of stardom, at least on the “indie rock” scene. Anyway, Kyle, knowing my penchant for concert-going and thinking one or both bands might be down my alley, asked his friend who is in The Colourist (her name is Maya) if she could put me on the guest list for their upcoming show in Philly at the Trocadero, and she did! So tomorrow night, I get to go see a rock show for free! Yay! Now, I have not been able to really familiarize myself all that much with the material of either band, but the listening I have done, I like but don’t love. Both bands do make, generally, the kind of music I like, but they seem to draw a bit more from pop influences than usually suits my taste, but again, I haven’t listened too much. But I certainly like them enough to go see them play! Thanks again for the hookup, Kyle!
Here are the songs I have liked most so far from The Colourist as well as The Naked and Famous:
You may or may not know that one of the unstated goals I had when moving to New Jersey and hence ending the “living-alone-very-far-away-from-everyone-I-know” experiment, was to try to be less of an asshole. Living so solitary, as I did for two years in Erie, hastened an already alarming trend within me that caused me to be cynical, unkind, and judgmental. And nowhere was this more evident than when I went to concerts.
I was alone, and everyone around me wasn’t. Generally speaking, the type of people who go to concerts are nice, gregarious, outgoing folks who want to make friends. I hated them, I ignored them, I went as far as to be mean to them. I hated strangers, but I hated strangers at concerts the most.
So it was with great pleasure and not just a little surprise that I realized, as Band of Horses was about to start playing tonight, that I had made friends at this concert; I was first in line (that’s right, first), and I never gave a second thought to striking up good-natured temporary kinships with my front-of-the-line-mates. I ended up on the railing next to two of them (a married couple from Wisconsin who are following the band) and we talked Band of Horses while we waited for the show to start. They saved my spot for me when I needed to pee—one of the more complicated and worrisome aspects of attending General Admission concerts by yourself. When the show was over we hung out together to try to get setlists (we didn’t) and it was just very pleasant. I ran into some other line-mates after the show as we stood in line at the merchandise booth and we talked like we were old pals. It felt nice not to be an asshole.
Here is a picture of the line (from my vantage point at the very front!!) just before doors opened:
Band of Horses speak to my soul, whatever the fuck that means. This band continues to evolve into a force in my life hitherto unfelt. Tonight was my fourth time seeing them (still haven’t seen my Band of Horses white whale) and my emotional reaction keeps evolving (meaning I come close to crying like a baby a whole lot). Ben Bridwell’s lyrics, coupled with the band’s live show–which is 100% exactly the kind of live show I want from a band–hit me in some secret place that even I can’t locate.
Here is tonight’s setlist:
01 Monsters >
02 Neighbors reprise
03 Compliments
04 Cigarettes, Wedding Bands
05 Laredo
06 The Great Salt Lake
07 Islands On the Coast
08 Northwest Apartment
09 Is There A Ghost?
10 Slow Cruel Hands of Time
11 Older
12 Electric Music
13 Dilly
14 Window Blues
15 Everything’s Gonna be Undone
16 Weed Party
17 Knock Knock
18 Ode to LRC
19 The Funeral
encore break
20 No One’s Gonna Love You More Than I Do (Ben & Tyler only)
21 A Song for You (Gram Parsons cover)
22 The General Specific
The concert last night was AMAZING. Partly because it featured two bands that I’m pretty much at the apex of liking right now, and it’s been a long time since my concert-going career was so in tune with what I’m currently digging (which is why you may have noticed a significantly higher rate of commentary about this concert on social media than I normally indulge in), and partly because I really have slowed my concert going frequency in the past year, so now when I do go to a concert, the experience is starting to have some of that oomph that it had in the beginning, oh-so-many years ago.
The Band of Horses show destroyed me emotionally, while the My Morning Jacket show ripped my face off, in the good way. I won’t bother you with specifics, but it was wholly satisfying. Although, one specific: I finally got a “Steam Engine” from My Morning Jacket, after seeing them 7 times now. “Steam Engine” is my white whale with this band. I’ve just thought up that term for this purpose, but it’s perfect. I seem to have a “white whale”” with just about every band I see frequently. My sister and I shared one with LIVE (it was “White, Discussion”) and we finally got it on their farewell tour. With Pearl Jam it was “Hard to Imagine”, which at one point seemed unthinkable I’d ever hear…and by the end of the 2008 tour, I was actually annoyed when they kept opening with it! haha. Anyway. Aside from those two, I think I have yet to see any of my other “white whales”. Oh, and of course, I got “Steam Engine” last night, and I definitely fucking cried.
Of my opener/ closer predictions, I got one out of four correct (“The Funeral” to close BoH’s set)…which was by far the easiest guess, but was no gimme! I got one from each band’s wishlist that I had made. Not too shabby.
The inside of the Mann Center for the Performing Arts, before the crowd arrived. I had a seat in the balcony.
Band of Horses during “Infinite Arms”.
Band of Horses setlist
1. For Annabelle
2. NW Apartment
3. Knock Knock
4. No One’s Gonna Love You More Than I Do
5. Detlef Schrempf
6. Infinite Arms
7. The Great Salt Lake
8. Cigarettes, Wedding Bands
9. Older
10. Ode to LRC
11. The First Song
12. Laredo
13. The General Specific
14. Is There a Ghost?
15. The Funeral
My Morning Jacket during “It Makes No Difference”
My Morning Jacket setlist
1. X-Mas Curtain <—this is an incredibly abnormal opener
2. First Light
3. Outta My System
4. Holdin’ On To Black Metal
5. Tyrone (Erykah Badu cover)
6. Mahgeetah
7. Into The Woods
8. Evelyn Is Not Real
9. Gideon
10. Rocket Man (Elton John cover)
11. The Bear
12. Strangulation
13. It Beats 4 U
14. Steam Engine
15. Victory Dance
16. Circuital
17. Touch Me I’m Going To Scream pt. 2
18. Touch Me I’m Going To Scream pt. 1
19. Highly Suspicious
20. Wordless Chorus
21. Run Thru
22. Smokin’ From Shootin’
Encore One:
1. Wonderful (The Way I Feel) [with Ben Bridwell of Band of Horses]
2. I’m Amazed
3. It Makes No Difference (The Band cover)
Encore 2:
1. Off The Record
2. One Big Holiday
In case you’re even mildly interested, I recorded MMJ coming onto stage and the first few minutes of “Xmas Curtain” (which has some incredibly interesting lyrics)…for me, one of the most interesting things to see from shows I wasn’t at is how the bands start the performance…the entrance music, the first few chords, the audience response…and MMJ never disappoint in this regard. (notice the red and green lights for “Xmas Curtain”, which, as far as I can tell, may or may not be about having sex with a prostitute on Christmas). This also gives you a good idea of how far away I was :(
The dual concert of two of my favorite bands, Band of Horses and My Morning Jacket, is in two days, and even though I have exactly zero friends who are fans of both these bands (I know a few people who *kinda like* each one but no superfans), I have to get a few things out into the public sphere here. I’ve been following both band’s setlists on this tour (here are Band of Horses’ and here are My Morning Jacket’s), and both bands are mixing up their setlists more than any band I’ve ever seen short of Pearl Jam, and I dare say that if they had PJ’s depth of catalogue, it would be even more extensive than Pearl Jam. Band of Horses (BoH) and My Morning Jacket (MMJ) are mixing up their openers and closers a lot more than Pearl Jam ever has.
So, although my so-called friend Kyle once mercilessly mocked me in a blog entry of his for making entries like this, I feel compelled to put my wish list for both bands here, as well as my predictions for what will open and close each band’s sets. Even though none of you are fans, if I am right or I get my wishlists, at least I can point back to this and say I did it! And if I don’t, nobody will care, so it’s really win-win for me.
Band of Horses
Opener prediction: Am I a Good Man
Closer prediction: The Funeral
Top 3 wishlist:
–Evening Kitchen
–Compliments
–No One’s Gonna Love You More Than I Do
My Morning Jacket
–Opener prediction: War Begun
–Closer prediction: Steam Engine
Top 3 wishlist:
–O is the One that is Real
–Steam Engine (anywhere in the setlist will do)
–It’s About Twilight Now
And here is a sweet video of MMJ playing “Dancefloors” at Red Rocks a little over a week ago:
Man Man is a strange, quirky, totally badass Philadelphia band that is somewhat difficult to describe. (I wrote all these entries in a fevered marathon about 6 months ago. I don’t mention the Philly thing because I just moved here; they’re just one of those band’s whose city of origin factors greatly in their mythos, like Silversun Pickups from San Diego, Death Cab For Cutie from Seattle, Bruce Springsteen from Jersey, etc) I highly encourage you to read their Wikipedia entry, which describes them better than I’d possibly be able to.
Although they are not my favorite band, the concert I attended of theirs remains (by a small margin) my favorite concert-going experience ever. I implore you to read my blog entry about that experience here; for some reason the embedded YouTube videos have disappeared from that entry, but fear not, for here is a live version (studio Man Man is just kind of unnecessary) of my favorite song of theirs, “Top Drawer”:
You need a haircut. You need a shoeshine. You need aristocratic glow-in-the dark erotic magnet.
I know!
You need a moped. Half-boy half-horse head. You need a black Cadillac so death can drive him or ride in the back
I know!
I am a smoke fire, scared of holy water! People claim I’m possessed by the devil, but Mama, I know, I’m possessed by your daughter.
I know! I’ve been told! I am dancing through.
I am the top dog, top dog. Hot dog, hot dog.
You need a new body. You need a latte. You need the lingering scent of holiday men doing hot Pilates.
I know!
You cry wet cement. You lost accidents. You wonder where true love went cause the breeder in your bed don’t butter your bread.
I know!
I am a smoke fire, scared of holy water! People claim I’m possessed by your daughter, but Mama, I know I’m possessed by a problem!
Click here to read about this list. Click here to see all previous entries.
My 63rd favorite song of all-time is:
“Born to Run” by Bruce Springsteen
It took me a long time to realize that Bruce was totally amazing. For many years—up until very recently—I just dismissed his stuff without really taking a look at it. I don’t know why. Some of the people whose taste I really trust, as well as some of my favorite artists, have been singing his praises since I can remember. But it wasn’t until the first time I visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in late 2010 (when they had a large exhibit dedicated to Springsteen) that my ears finally perked up.
At first blush, “Born to Run” can seem a little oversized. Maybe a little melodramatic, a little too aware of itself. But it’s not. It’s just that something so genuinely epic, heartfelt, and true is so rare, one hardly knows how to approach it when it comes along.
“Born to Run” is an encapsulation of life for anyone, regardless of where you’re from, what your background is. And as the music swells to match Bruce’s poetry-quality lyrics, the rare phenomenon of perfect artistic confluence occurs.
Pictures, video, and setlist from My Morning Jacket show, 8/10/11 in Pittsburgh
Jim James and Neko Case duetting "Islands in the Stream"
The following videos are all from the same show, but only the first, “Knot Comes Loose”, was taken by me (the sound sucks.) The others were taken by people with better cameras and shittier crowd positions. :)
Picture of the setlist taken from the band’s Facebook page:
Setlist:
1. Victory Dance
2. Circuital
3. Off the Record
4. I’m Amazed
5. Gideon
6. You Wanna Freak Out
7. Knot Comes Loose
8. Slow, Slow Tune
9. Evelyn Is Not Real
10. Honest Man
11. Dondante
12. Movin’ Away
13. Smokin’ From Shootin’
14. Run Thru (end only)
15. First Light
16. Touch Me (I’m Going to Scream) part 2
17. Mahgeetah
Encore:
1. Wordless Chorus
2. Islands in the Stream (w/ Neko Case)
3. Holding Onto Black Metal
4. One Big Holiday
So. That was a pretty insane trip home (and lots of other places). I’m not even sure where to begin. This may end up being a ridiculously long and disjointed blog entry. I apologize in advance. If it ends up not being extremely long and disjointed, I will come back and delete this intro, and you will never read it.
First, I should like to thank my family (Dad, Mom, Sister) for their various forms of hospitality and much-needed displays of unconditional love. Yay human spirit and the familial bond! I feel pretty damn good about my family. You guys rule! And thank you to all my friends who made me feel as if I never moved away. I am blessed beyond belief with deep, intense, loyal friendships! In addition, a big frowny face to those who I had to miss on this trip (most notably, loyal blog reader and renowned Muse, Cory. Little does she know, my next trip home is going to be so all about her, she will have to call the cops on me. And the truly lovely Mercedes, whom I am unabashedly smitten with. Also, on-again-off-again blog reader Tiff, who I had *promised* a certain something to…well, next time, ok???). I was stretched a little thin to do and see everything and everyone I wanted, but it was fairly satisfying nonetheless.
My Zany Itinerary
Let me just show you the zaniness of where I’ve been the last week and a half. I am going to include tomorrow, as I go to Pittsburgh tomorrow for a work seminar. Here’s where I was, for the most part, the last ten days:
3/25: Erie, PA/ Carlisle, PA
3/26: Carlisle, PA/ Asbury Pary, NJ
3/27: Mantua, NJ
3/28: Brooklyn, NY/ Newark, NJ
3/29: Manhattan, NY/ Mantua, NJ
3/30: Mantua, NJ/ Carlisle, PA
3/31: Carlisle, PA
4/1: Carlisle, PA
4/2: Carlisle, PA/ Erie, PA
4/3: Erie, PA
4/4: Pittsburgh, PA
4/5: Pittsburgh, PA/ Erie, PA
And I aint even tired yet. Bring. It. On.
My Newville Tour
Early on in my trip, I had a little extra time to kill early in the morning, and I drove into Newville (the small town I grew up in) and walked around the town for the first time in many years (I have been there plenty as of late, but not actually walked around). I took some pictures of major landmarks in my life, also making sure to get a few pictures of some of the places that have played large parts in some of my blog entries. Here is a bit of a pictorial tour of Newville:
My first house, 66 Big Spring Avenue. My bedroom was the top two windows on the right of the picture.
I have been trying to upload the famous picture of my mother and I admiring my grandmother’s garden, but I am having some trouble, so here is a link to that picture on Facebook. And here is a picture of that back yard area today:
One of my most popular blog entries ever was “The Fruit that Ate Itself“, about me being bullied in a local church yard. I snapped some pics of that area in current day:
The church yard itself.
The line of trees is where the dreaded swingset and slide had been.
The Senior Center where the "fight" ended. Those are the bushes I flew through in the climactic moment.
If you’ve read my blog entry “Down the Rabbit Hole“, you may be interested to see this cellar door on one of my childhood neighbor’s homes:
OK, so just a few more pics here, but not related to any previous blog, just some Seth-historic stuff:
The very spot where I got on a school bus for the very first time.
This was my corner when I was a crossign guard.
Friendies
I had almost too much fun with friendies to try to sum things up here. I’ll hit some highlights:
I surprised Kate with my presence not once but twice, and she lost. her. shit. each time. First, Michael and I surprised her at her house:
It was also on this visit that this picture of Michael happened:
A few days later, I was strolling through Carlisle wasting a few minutes before picking up another friend, when I came across Kate and her family at the local eatery The Green Room. As I was leaving them I took this pic of Kate, her husband Matt, and their son Dylan:
Let me just take this moment to say, as I was strolling around Carlisle that night, I was struck by just how freaking cool of a town it is. Those of you who still live there, please do not take it for granted. First, it is totally adorable. And such a great pedestrian town! And for a relatively small town in central Pennsylvania, it is arts-friendly. Open mic nights, free music, poetry readings, public displays of photography, and on and on, are quite common. The area known as the square and the surrounding blocks are humming with a vibrant intellectual life (not to mention some fantastic cuisine). Please partake of what the gem of a town has to offer!
My brief time with Burke was spent in some fairly intense conversation that may, in fact, make me think about my life differently. Oh, and Johnny Depp is a fucking sellout.
I spent some truly hilarious time with Jenny. Jenny is quickly becoming a Major Friend. (if her name is unfamiliar to you, this was the last woman to be an “official girlfriend”…and if my hunch is true– that I am a lifetime bachelor– she may go down in the history books as the last woman to be an official Seth girlfriend…what a distinction!). Anyway, I sure do love this woman. She has the special ability to make me laugh until I am worried about my health…without saying anything. She has a non-verbal humor akin to Kramer. She can just look at me and I lose my shit. Here we are, loving life:
Of course, you know I saw Michael, and it resulted in a moment of hilarity that I am pretty sure you “had to be there” for, but we decided that Merle Haggard had at one point recorded the “classic” song “You’re Gonna Make Daddy Fart (and Momma Aint Gonna Be Happy)”. I still laugh when I type that.
Mary and I had one helluva time trying to find parking in downtown Harrisburg—notable because it’s usually not THAT hard. Sure, those few blocks in the very center of town are tough, but we were unable to find ANY spots on the street ANYWHERE. When we finally did park (in a garage) we ended up just hanging around Strawberry Square , when in fact we had intended to go to the Susquehanna Art Museum. I’m still not sure in the least how this distraction occurred, but we had a blast. But the major news from this venture is that Mary has OK’d some photographs of herself! You may or may not know that pictures of Mary are quite rare. She just hates pictures of herself, and of course I love taking pictures of people, so this is a friction. Plus, she really is one of the most exquisite women in existence, so I always feel as though the world in general is being deprived of some joy by the absence of Mary pictures. When I take a Mary picture, I have to show her, wheneupon she then either insists on immediate deletion, OKs the picture for my own personal collection but not anyone else’s eyes, or (the most rare) OKs a picture for online distribution. So here, lucky world, are 4 new Mary pictures:
That's the back of Mary's head in the lower right.
Staying at Dad’s
It is with much chagrin that I realize I did not take a single picture of my papa and me on this trip. *sad face* Nonetheless, I must say, spending time with my dad just gets more and more pleasant as the two of us age. It never stops surprising me how we continue to grow into friends (while he retains his essential papa-ness). He is one cool dude and we somehow never run out of things to talk about.
This also marked the first time in recent memory that I have stayed at Dad’s for multiple days without my sister also being there. In this sense it was entirely unique. The last time I stayed at my dad’s by myself for more than one night was way back when I was still drinking and on-again, off-again living there. So this was new, and really, really great. In a lot of ways, it felt like a true homecoming, learning how that house and I interact when I’m a grown-up, and sober, and left all alone with it. Turns out we get along just fine. And I sleep magnificently in my old bedroom. But it’s tough getting used to that shower again.
Hey Rosetta!
I’m gonna really have to shrink down the Hey Rosetta! story, or I’ll be here all day. So, in summary:
Here are pictures from Paul and I’s show in Asbury Park, NJ. It was a fantastic time, both Paul-wise (Paul, thanks for helping me see that not all my close friends have to be women!) and band-wise. Really, one of the more satisfying concert-going experiences I’ve had.
Then, I made an audible call and went to see them by myself twice more over the next three days, in New York City (more on NYC later). Long story short, I ended up basically knowing the band. But they started talking to me. I suppose when you are a band that is really famous and successful in Canada, and then you come to the states and are playing bars where most of the people are ignoring you, and there is a short fat guy with gray hair jumping around and screaming your lyrics, when he shows up to your NEXT show in a different state, it is worth taking note. So as I was taking this picture of the chalk board advertising their show in Brooklyn, a few of the band members were walking out of the bar and saw me and introduced themselves.
Because shows like this entail a lot of waiting around (if you insist, like I do, on front row) in small bars with no “backstage” area for bands, as well as lots of changing-out of gear between bands (not to mention trips to very small bathrooms), the two shows in New York would prove extremely fertile ground for me talking to the band. This went way beyond my previous “thank you, your music has meant so much to me” that I’ve been able to give other bands. This was basically a getting-to-know-you situation. Specifically cellist Romesh Thavanathan, lead guitarist Adam Hogan, and violinist Kinley Dowling spoke quite a bit to me and I was definitely on a first-name basis with them by the end of my second New York show, and I’d had a chance to speak to every member of this six-piece band. Certainly, this was fairly incredible, but also….in some ways, not as great as you’d think. Parts of this experience were awkward. I may blog more about this at some point, just because it was pretty intriguing (ever have your favorite band watch you as they are playing?) But don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t trade it for the world. It was an amazing experience. Here is a video I took of “Red Song” at Union Hall in Park Slope, Brooklyn, followed by a few select pictures of the New York shows:
I also managed to snag handwritten setlists off the stage two of the three nights. Here are scans of the setlists:
So now, for the benefit of probably just myself and maybe Paul, here is some Hey Rosetta! setlist discussion: on the first setlist shown, Bandages was skipped. On the second shown (from my thrid concert, Manhattan) ‘Bandages’ and ‘Red Heart’ were swapped in position (as were the two songs where a swap is indicated, ‘Yer Spring’ and ‘Welcome’…and talk about a way to open a show! “Lions For Scottie” into “Welcome”!) Here are all three setlists for shows I went to this tour:
Asbury Park, NJ
1. New Goodbye
2. Yer Spring
3. New Glass
4. Bricks
5. Another Pilot
6. There’s an Arc
7. Seeds
8. Red Heart
1. New Goodbye
2. Yer Spring
3. New Glass
4. Bricks
5. Another Pilot
6. There’s an Arc
7. Welcome
8. Red Song
9. We Made a Pact
10. Seeds
11. Red Heart
12. A Thousand Suns*
*’Bandages’ is on the setlist in the 12 spot, but ‘A Thousand Suns’ was played.
Manhattan, NY
1. Lions For Scottie
2. Welcome
3. Yer Spring
4. New Glass
5. Yer Fall
6. There’s an Arc
7. I’ve Been Asleep For a Long, Long Time
8. Holy Shit
9. New Sum
10. Seeds
11. New Goodbye
Encore:
1. Bandages
2. Red Heart
And now, for the record, the sum total of Hey Rosetta! songs I’ve seen, including the two acoustic shows I saw last year:
1. Red Heart–5 times
2. Bricks–4 times
3. I’ve Been Asleep For a Long, Long Time–3 times
4. Lions for Scottie–3 times
5. Bandages–3 times
6. New Goodbye–3 times
7. Yer Spring–3 times
8. New Glass–3 times
9. There’s an Arc–3 times
10. Seeds–3 times
11. Seventeen–2 times
12. Red Song–2 times
13. We Made a Pact–2 times
14. Another Pilot–2 times
15. Welcome–2 times
16. A Thousand Suns–1 time
17. Yer Fall–1 time
18. Holy Shit–1 time
19. New Sum–1 time
Mom’s/ Sisters
So my mom now lives with my sister, which makes visiting everybody much easier! It was quite nice to see everybody all at once! In the same breath, however, I must admit it made me feel as though I did a poor job of paying ample attention to everyone. When you are seeing a gaggle of loved ones all at once for the first time in a long time, it can be a strain to give equal time. I think specifically of the nephews, who I love uncontrollably but whom I was not able to give the sort of attention they are accustomed to receiving from me. When it came down to it, my mom and my sister were the center of my focus (not to mention the antics of Pumpkin Latte). Don’t get me wrong, I had a lovely time! I guess I’m just feeling some guilt, cause those boys worked up a good amount of anticipation for my arrival and I almost certainly dissapointed. That being said, the time with Momma and Sis was marvelous. LOTS of laughs, and a new momma/ son tradition: I claim her and I are going to do the Jumble together, and then I end up freaking out over how amazing she is at it, while I add absolutely nothing to the process (she really is amazing at the Jumble). Also, I “T”d my sister, which always rules. A brief but incredibly heartwarming time. Some select pics:
Sister and Pumpkin Latte, as she was taking their picture
Sis, Me, Mom
New York
The New York trip is another thing I shall have to gloss over, or I’ll be writing this blog entry until next week. I did what I typically do: I drive right into the city, pay a thousand dollars to park, and just walk around. I usually have very little plan other than one or two fairly simple goals. This trip’s goals: see sunrise from inside Central Park, and buy a New York Times from a newsstand and read the whole thing from inside a midtown Manhattan Starbucks during the morning commute hours. I’m not sure why I wanted to do these things, but once the goals were in my mind, I could not seem to let them go. I accomplished both, and although being in Central Park during sunrise was magical, it was not easy to get any great pictures of the event, due to the vast amount of:
a) Tall trees, and
b) skyscrapers
These things blocked the view of the actual sunrise rather effectively, but feeling the world come alive from within the park was quite joyous. Here is the best picture I got of the sunrise:
I spent almost two hours in the Starbucks, enjoying my latte and an incredible issue of the NYT. I suppose for a moment I felt as hip as I’ve always suspected I am. It was a quality time.
I spent the rest of the day wandering around, taking pictures, eating, even napping briefly in the tranquil section of Central Park known as the Woodlands. I also visited, for the first time, the Central Park Zoo, which was a lovely treat. Here is some video I took of the Sea Lions being fed (and putting on a little show) followed by some pictures:
Sunset, Brooklyn
Me in Central Park
Some Things I Learned
1. 8 months is not long enough to forget how to get around (but it IS long enough to cause some occasional navigation confusion)
2. When you are a single man in your 30s who moves away from everyone he knows and doesn’t visit home for 8 months, a surprising amount of people from all demographics will just straight-up ask you about your sex life. This is fodder for an entire blog entry at some point that will be in the form of a “rant”. FYI, nobody need worry about my sex life, mkay?
3. You may think where you live is boring, but leave it for a little while and then come back; you may just find it’s really cool.
4. There are really hot ladies everywhere.
5. Don’t tell people you got fat. You may think it will make your fatness less awkward, but it makes it moreso.
6. Things change. Buildings get knocked down, businesses change their name, streets get re-directed. Accept these things as a natural course of existence. (reminds me of a Hey Rosetta! song: “The schools that we went to have all been closed./ And all of my teachers are dead, I suppose.”)
7. You can walk further than you think you can.
8. If you move and your sports allegiances change a little bit, you can just kinda keep that to yourself on your first few visits home.
9. As you leave places you have stayed for just a day or two, remember to gather all your various “chargers”. We have a lot of chargers in this day and age.
10. Family and friends really are the best things in the world, even if saying so sounds cheesy and cliche. Fuck it, it’s true!
I Almost Forgot…
Today is my 8 year sobriety anniversary! The original purpose of this vacation was for me to have off and see my loved ones leading up to the big day. (I just have to complete my anniversary tradition of watching “Dark Days” on the anniversary itself) So…yay me! But also…yay you! Thanks everybody for putting up with my horribleness when I was horrible, and then helping me live such a satisfying and fantastic life in my sobriety! What a treat, to be able to celebrate the week leading up to it in the way I did. And how neat is it that I almost forgot today was the day??? That must mean life is pretty good. I love you, everybody!
The Hey Rosetta! show in Asbury Park, NJ with Paul was a truly thrilling experience (so much so that I am locked in an intense internal debate over whether to go see them again in Manhattan sometime Monday or Tuesday…I guess you’ll find out via blog post eventually!) I’d type a longer entry about Paul andI’s experience, but I’m on my sister’s laptop and this keyboard and mouse are confounding me. This time, the band was fully electric (you may remember the first two times I saw them, they were acoustic) and it was MINDBLOWING. Paul and I once again got to thank the band and shake their hands, and we both got handwritten copies of the setlist off the stage (I’ll be scanning mine in when I get home). A ball-to-the-wall awesome time. The setlist was:
1. New Goodbye
2. Yer Spring
3. New Glass
4. Bricks
5. Another Pilot
6. There’s an Arc
7. Seeds
8. Red Heart
Hello folks!!! As you may or may not have heard, I am writing you from the ol’ homestead of central Pennsylvania (and New Jersey and maybe New York or Philadelphia, at some point). I didn’t give any forewarning on this develppment, as I desperately wanted to avoid having an “appointment” vacation, where I make so many plans with people I no longer seem to posses free will. I want to visit home but also have an actual vacation. I mean…I work real hard.
Anyway, you won’t (probably) be hearing from me much in the interim, although before I left Erie I set up a few blogs to post automatically (mostly the recurring blogs with days in their names…Monday’s Song, etc) so we won’t feel my absence entirely. I just wanted to put that out there in case you happen to know I’m in the middle of a 5 hour drive and an Audio Poem posts, you know I’m not doing that shit from my car!
I had a perfect day yesterday, seeing my dad in the morning, some terrific friends (Michael and Kate) in the afternoon, and then having a near-flawless road trip with Paul to see a mind-blowing Hey Rosetta! (not to mention getting to meet Paul’s precious brand-new son, Parker). Paul: we somehow seem to have more to talk about with each other than we did as younger men, plus we laugh even more. What a rare quaility. You’re a gem, sir.
I’m off to New Jersey now (I know…I was just there yesterday, but I promise, it’s not the same town) to see my mother, my sister, my nephews, and Pumpkin Latte.
Also, it’s really sunny, and 42 degrees (right now that feels like 70!)
And just wait till you see the pictures I’ve been getting!
Like…OMG. I was just surfing around Ticketmaster.com, trying to find something cheap and easy to go see or do in the next week or so. I happened to come across a listing for a band called Gifts From Enola. I was intrigued, as there is a town called Enola near Harrisburg. They are playing in the same venue I saw Deerhunter at a few months ago in Cleveland. So I looked them up. And they are a small post rock band. (post rock is the genre of rock that is super-serious instrumental stuff. There are not a lot of post rock bands, and seeing one live—even a smaller one—is a rare event. A few of my most favoritest bands are post rock, such as Explosions in the Sky and Godspeed You! Black Emperor). It’s on a day I have off (and I work midnight the next night) and tickets are six dollars. So even if it snows, I can just not go and I won’t be out a big loss. This is a tremendous find. And there are two opening bands listed who I haven’t even looked up yet! This is major! Check out the video for their song “Dime and Suture”, posted below. It is certainly not for everybody, but it is like whoa for me.
Despite the fact that I am only a passing Rolling Stones fan, the documentary “Gimme Shelter” remains my favorite documentary ever, firmly within my top ten of overall films. First, it’s a Maysles brothers film, and they are basically the Copolla or Kubrick of documentarians. Their conception of where to put the camera and how long to keep it there are without peer.
Secondly, “Gimme Shelter” hinges upon the Stones’ free concert at Altamont that ended in murder. If you don’t know the story, read it here. The Maysles use the fact that folks watching the film almost invariably know how the story ends to build up a surprising amount of dread. I could not find a great clip on YouTube of the concert leading up to the bloodshed; but please watch the film if you haven’t to see THE example of masterful documentary editing. You can feel the exact moment that Mick Jagger knows he is fucked. He has a crowd of 200,000 in front of him, no security except fucking Hells Angels, and people are not listening to him. And if he STOPS playing, things could be even worse. It is tense, dread-filled, high drama that ended in real death.
The Maysles also make the interesting decision to intercut the concert footage with footage of Jagger watching the concert footage after the show is over and everyone knows someone died. These reaction shots from Jagger are incredibly interesting—and dare I say sometimes accusatory—and by far the most cunning use of the documentary medium I’ve ever seen. The Maysles should be household names (they went on to make documentaries like “Grey Gardens” and “Running Fence”).
There is, as far as I know, no more unique, pivotal, brilliant use of the documentary medium on American culture than Albert and David Maysles’ “Gimme Shelter”.
(oh also, there is some concert footage in the film that is not from Altamont. This footage is also extremely interesting, as it chronicles a very interesting and brief time in rock concert history: the very beginning of arena rock shows. It’s very interesting and clear that they were still figuring things out. I would kill to go to a show from this time period!)
And for the love of everything, don’t try to watch this using Internet Explorer!
1. The first concert I ever went to was 80s superstar Tiffany. I remember being very excited, despite not really knowing who she was or what was going on. I went with my mother and my sister; it was at The Forum in Harrisburg. This is one of those memories that consists of just a few details and sensory portraits. Bright, colorful lights. Standing on the cushioned chair. So many people.
2. I’ve always thought that somehow I got my love of Dr. Pepper from my Grandma Allie, though I do not know where this belief comes from. I have never seen her drink it, not does she ever have any at her house. But I have a flash of a memory: my family, on vacation in Ocean City, Maryland. Grandma and I, somehow, are alone in the hotel room. I am very young. We are sitting at the dining room table together, discussing (to my memory) two things: how much my allowance is, and Dr. Pepper. On the table with us is a sweating, lovely crimson 2 liter bottle of Dr. Pepper. This small, insignificant memory has forever welded Grandma Allie and Dr. Pepper together for me.
3. I lost my virginity in the Subaru Legacy station wagon that had been passed down to me from my mother, on a dirt road in the far, far out country of Perry County, Pennsylvania, at the age of 16. The rap album Regulate by Warren G. was playing, and I was 16 years old. The car smelled of vanilla car air freshener. I had one of those tree-shaped air fresheners hanging from the volume knob of the radio. I used a green condom, for reasons unknown.
4. My dad and I used to go to Harrisburg Senators games all the time. They are the minor league baseball team for that city. I remember very little of the games themselves. What I remember most is the arrival and the departure, but especially the departure. We’d usually leave early if the result was clear, so we walked past all the seated fans, then out to a largely empty parking lot. Then, inside Dad’s car, he’d tune into the AM station broadcasting the Senator’s game. The combination of drying sweat, kicking-in air conditioning, the calming sounds of a radio-broadcasted baseball game, and often gloaming sunset light—well, things don’t get much better than that, at any age, I dare say.
5. I went on a vacation to Vermont with my friend Brock’s family, when Brock and I were teenagers. At the time, it seemed like a pretty boring vacation, compared to my family’s beach vacations. We stayed at a sleepy lake town called Lake Rescue, in a very posh cabin. It all must have been very expensive. Nowadays, it’s just the kind of vacation I’d like to take—grilling delicious meat on the stained-oak deck overlooking the sun setting over the lake, lazy days canoeing, hiking the flat trails, falling asleep to the sound of ducks diving for food. At the time, though, Brock and I were miserably bored, though we did invent a sport called Twizzling, the rules of which I have long since forgotten.
6. My first real drink of alcohol—other than a few sips of champagne at somebody’s wedding sometime—was what the kids call a “40” (a 40-ounce bottle of Malt Liquor) and a few Zimas. I was 16. It was at the apartment of an adult who I did not know, but who knew one of my friends. He supplied us the alcohol. We just sat around, consuming, and it was frankly a little boring. I didn’t feel much. After completing my allotment of Zimas, I asked the adult friend-of-a-friend if he could go back to the bar (which was just across the street) and buy me “a beer”, which I thought might put me over some sort of edge. I didn’t know you couldn’t just buy one can of beer, and I got laughed at. I wouldn’t have my “a-ha moment” with alcohol until the second time I drank it, though I usually combine these two stories for a more powerful “alcoholic’s first drink” story, but that version is not true. The bar where the adult frind-of-a-friend bought the alcohol went out of business and recently became a pizza shop, less than a block from my last apartment in Carlisle. I used to go there for pizza all the time.
7. I have had sex in the projection room of a movie theater.
8. While I have never been a grade-A athlete, there were, for a time, things I excelled at, though none of them were of any use to me in organized sports. I was very good at gym class type things, like floor hockey. At my high school, we played a lot of a specific type of dodgeball called “bombardment”, and I was freaking amazing at bombardment. Two years running, it was offered as a ‘club’ (a fun class of your choosing you had once a week) and I took it, along with my more athletically-skewing pals. We were on a team called the Pussycats, and we dominated for the entire two years it was offered as a club, winning all 4 championships (2 a year). The only thing is, the first championship we won, I cheated. I had been hit by a ball, and no one saw it, and I didn’t tell anyone, and I was the last man standing for our team. So if I’d have been honest, we would have lost.
9. I once saw my sister fly over the handlebars of her ten-speed bike after she tried jumping a hill I had urged her to jump, and it was one of the most terrifying moments of my life. I thought she’d die!
10. My father and I went golfing once, and little did we know that the water in the golf course’s drinking fountains actually had a high level of fecal matter in it. It was a very hot day, and we drank a lot of it. The next day, my mother, myself, and my grandma Cohick went to see WWF Live in Hershey. On the way there, I ate (and swallowed) an entire pack of grape bugglegum. Halfway through the show, I got very ill, and once we got home, I vomited and kept on vomiting for what seemed days (I think, in fact, it was days). It wasn’t until later that we pieced together what all happened, after a class-action lawsuit was brought against the golf course. To this day, I cannot chew grape bubblegum.
Due to the severe limitations of “top ten lists”, as well as the sheer amount of crap I love each year, I’ve decided to institute this general list of 50 things I plain-old loved in 2010. Most will be things that did not appear on my music or movies list, as well as things created, released, or performed in 2010, but I’m not going to limit myself with actual ground rules. Here are, quite simply, in no particular order, 50 things I loved in 2010:
50. The New York Times
Hear hear for a newspaper that still dares to have sections devoted to important things like science, business, and art. I’ve found it difficult to spend less than two hours on a copy—even on a day like Tuesday.
49. Red Bull Cola
It will probably be a short-lived experiment, but the delicious and almost-natural cola from Red Bull was a tasty shot of adrenaline (even if it was overpriced).
48. Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson in “The Other Guys”.
The movie itself may have been lacking, but these two good sports’ 5 minutes of screen time made the enterprise worth the price of admission.
47. “Dancing with the Stars”
For awhile, I hated myself for this guilty pleasure, until I realized it was actually genuinely compelling television. Cynical hipster naysayers need to actually watch a season (I should know–I am a cynical hipster naysayer)
46. The segment on NPR’s “Whad’Ya Know? with Michael Feldman” where they listed fake WikiLeaks
Far and away the most I’ve ever laughed at the radio.
45. The new Ansel Adams photographs
Whether or not they are actually Ansel Adams’ is still in dispute—but they’re terrific photographs anyway
The documentary that reveals (gasp!) how Prop 8 was engineered by the institution of the Mormon church. Enraging, and engaging.
42. VEVO on YouTube
Sure, this music channel on YouTube is 100% a corporate whore, but my year has been exponentially enhanced by concert footage of my favorite bands not shot by a drunk frat boy with a first generation iPhone.
41. James Franco’s “Palo Alto”
Franco’s collection of short stories is good—real good.
40. James Franco on “General Hospital”
Yeah, it’s on before I leave for work, so sue me if I watch it every now and then! Franco’s performance as–ahem–Franco was an over-the-top piece of performance art so nuanced (with nods to the real-world oddity of James Franco being on a soap opera) that I often found myself stunned something so lovely and sophisticated was happening on American daytime television.
39. James Franco in “127 Hours”
Portraying a not-so-likeable man within a bare-bones script who also has to cut off his own arm, Franco manages to make us like him, and makes us want to be better people, too.
38. James Franco’s art opening in New York
James Franco opened a gallery exhibit of his art in New York this year, and although not all of it is great, some of it is incredible, and it’s all very valid. To imagine a Hollywood star opening an art show he says–out loud–is about the “sexual confusion of adolescence” makes me think we may be living in a culture with, well…culture. See some of the art here.
37. James Franco in “Howl”
So, the movie kinda stinks, but Franco hits an underappreciated home run as the poet Allen Ginsburg, an unlikeable, grizzly gay man with so many conflicting character traits, it’s an amazing juggling act Franco had to do–and a bona fide joy to see. Also, John Hamm is in the movie, too!
36. Salvation Army Stores
Thanks to this discovery, the visual palette that is me (it seems absurd to call what I have a “fashion sense”) is evolving for the first time in a decade. (read: more sweaters)
35. Joel Stein’s column in TIME magazine
The most self-absorbed man in the newsmagazine business continues to get funnier, even as his subjects get more serious. Every week, I’m sure he’ll be arrested.
34. The Mac Wrap at McDonalds
I seem to be the only human alive not disgusted by this, either literally, morally, or some other, more etheral way. But I’m not disgusted. I’m delighted.
33. “Gimme Shelter” performed at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony by U2, Mick Jagger, and Fergie.
Rock and roll heaven. An absolute orgasm. And I don’t even like U2!
32. The repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Because even republicans want to get into Heaven.
31. Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom”
Franzen is this generation’s Hemingway. And “Freedom” is his “A Farewell to Arms”. Read it. Just do it.
30. The March to Restore Sanity
I wasn’t there, and I didn’t see a lot of it, but I love it anyway.
29. The “LOST” finale
It’s much debated, but I was never an “I need answers to X, Y, and Z, and I need them freaking spelled out for me” kinda guy. I didn’t have LOST theories. I work more by “feel”. And the finale certainly felt right. I still cry, every time.
28. The “twist” ending of “Remember Me”
Everybody hates it. I love it. What’s new?
27. The Chilean miners
Seriously? This story was too good to be true. If they made this movie and it was fictional, you’d be all like “No way this would happen like this.” Just an unbelievable story. The rare event of real news being real entertaining–and then uplifting.
26. John Updike’s “Endpoint”
Sadly, this posthumous collection is the last poetry that will ever be released by Mr. Updike. Luckily, it’s amazing (but, also, terribly terribly sad.)
25. “The Good Wife” on CBS
I’ve just discovered it, so I have to get caught up, but it is tickling me.
24. Seeing Art Speigelman give a talk at Dickinson University
Seeing the legendary literary graphic novelist give a highly entertaining and informative talk was one of the live event highlights of my year, and nobody had a guitar.
23. My super-secret crush, The View‘s Sherri Shepard.
I will do unspeakble things to this woman. In the good way.
22. Mila Kunis and–yes–James Franco in “Date Night”
See #48 and substitute these actor’s names.
21. The comeback of The Atlantic
One of the oldest and most respected magazines in the world revamps itself and somehow does not end up sucking. In fact, it’s now better than ever, and just announced a profit for the first time in a decade. And thankfully, it is somehow still completely pompous.
20. Michael Vick
I sure know when to get back into Philadelphia sports, don’t I??? I simply love this real-life tale of redemption; if I didn’t believe in second chances, my own life would probably look a little bit different.
The Netflix-like service provides you with rotating art prints (and a neato frame). Sure, they don’t do much but hang there, but it’s a great way to explore what you like and don’t like about art. It’s interesting to find how your relationship with a piece of art changes as it hangs in your home; much different than seeing it for 5 minutes in a gallery.
17. Dogs
Still the best thing going.
16. “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon”
Fallon has really hit a stride that is pure magic. Sure, he’s not breaking new ground like his competition Craig Ferguson (who’s got a bit of briliiance working, as well), but Fallon’s show works miracles within a formula. Delicious.
15. The Fusco Brothers
The smartest, funniest comic strip in (or probably NOT in) your local newspaper just keeps getting funnier. And smarter. And harder to find.
14. BuyBack$
A store that is just cheap, used DVDs, CDs, and Blu-Rays? Yeah. I’m kinda all over that.
13. The re-release of new-age symhony In C.
Composer Terry Riley’s experimental, semi-electronic classical piece In C was re-released on CD this year, and it is just as addictive as when I first owned it back in high school. Shades of just about all my current favorite artists can be heard in this breakthrough work.
12. Cherry Crush
Because it’s fucking delicious.
11. “What Up With That?” sketches on Saturday Night Live
This is by far the most enjoyable recurring sketch on SNL I’ve seen in years. It has a concrete element of the absurd, and a perfect setting for uproarious celebrity cameos. And Keenan Thompson is a genius, I don’t care what you say! Click here for a selection of this year’s What Up With That’s on Hulu.
10. Roles For Women
There’s still not nearly enough meaty roles for women in movies—Hollywood, indie, or otherwise—but this year saw a few choicer roles than before, thanks to dandy’s like “The Kids Are All Right”, “Please Give”, and “Secretariat”.
9. Dan Simmons’ “The Terror”
One of the most interesting, and also more difficult, novels I’ve ever read. Simmons’ explorers-trapped-in-icelocked-ships-being-terrorized-by-unseen-monsters-yet-also-slightly-based-on-historical-fact-of-Franklin’s-lost-expedition has got to be the world’s first historical fiction gothic horror novel. And it scared the shit out of me.
8. Cleveland
It really does rock.
7. slate.com
The one-time almost-sad story of an great website gone bad is now a must-read internet newsmagazine. I have it set as my homepage.
6. Blu-Ray discs in Reboxes
Hey thanks.
5. The first fight scene in “The Book of Eli”, where Denzel cuts that dude’s hand off.
OK, so the rest of the movie is kinda hum-drum, but that knife scene by the underpass with above-mentioned amputation is pure badass movie magic.
4. Free concerts in the square in downtown Buffalo
I got a free front-row Ed Kowalczyk show, courtesy of the city of Buffalo, in a very attractive, quaint little square with a big statue of some dude (Mr. Buffalo?) in the center. Can’t wait to see next year’s schedule!
3. Katie Couric doing CBS’s Evening News
I just plain trust her. A throwback to old-school news.
2. The poster for The National’s album “High Violet”.
Good art and good music, all affordable? Sign me up. Check out the poster here.
1. “The Expendables”
The movie was pretty bad, but I’d watch these guys pop popcorn.
So after raving and annoying everyone for the better part of a year about Hey Rosetta!, I finally saw them twice over the weekend, and boy howdy, it did not disappoint! I’ll sum everything up lickety-split: had an awesome time seeing Paul and Davey, saw two great sets of music, met and had conversations with two members of the band (Tim Baker, lead singer and main songwriter, and Romesh Thavanathan, cellist), had those two members sign one of their vinyl albums, spent a relaxing and spiritually fulfilling day on my own leisurely driving from Ithaca to Buffalo then meandering around Buffalo, eating lots of food and taking artsy pictures, then had an even longer conversation with Tim Baker the second night (he came over to me after their set while they were still tearing their equipment down and talked to me from the stage, then asked me to stop by their merchandise booth and talk to him before I left! Then we had a 5 minute conversation before I left which bordered insanely on “friend-like”. It was like walking in a dream. Granted, I’ve only been a fan for a few years, it’s not like this is a major band from my history like Pearl Jam or 7m3, but I don’t think I can deny they’ve vaulted to “favorite band” status, so it was beyond cool!). So there’s a really quick rundown of the weekend.
There was, I suppose, a minor dissapointment. Because Hey Rosetta! was opening for a schmaltzy singer-songwriter lady named Sarah Harmer whose fans aren’t really hard rockers, Hey Rosetta! opted to play sort of “Unplugged” sets on this mini-tour. Parts of this were really cool—the arrangements of these songs like this are actually really, really cool and coupled with the fact that these shows are now very unique in the Hey Rosetta! universe gave these shows a very special and intimate feel (and probably gave Tim Baker much more reason to ask me questions about the show than he normally would have; it was quite clear he wasn’t exactly sure how the whole thing was coming off). However, I can’t deny that there were parts when I wished I could have jumped around and lost my mind. A few of these songs are real blood-pumpers and even though the slow, quiet versions were beautiful, I wanted some loudness! Here is an example of the changes. This first video is the studio version of one of my favorite songs of their, “I’ve Been Asleep For a Long, Long Time”. You just have to hear the first 30 seconds or so to get an idea of how it goes:
Now here is video I took at the Buffalo show of the “unplugged” version of the same song. I have no idea why it’s so damn dark, it wasn’t that dark in person! Also my damn batteries ran out halfway through the song (did you read that, Mom?) so you don’t get to see the extremely interesting way they end this version. But still, you can see the extreme difference in the arrangements:
So, you can see it’s a very cool version. I feel pretty special having seen these versions, but now I just need to see the electric set! here are the setlists:
Ithaca setlist
1. 17 (new song)
2. Red Song
3. Brick (new song)
4. I’ve Been Asleep for a Long, Long Time
5. Lions for Scottie
6. Red Heart
7. Bandages (new song)
Buffalo setlist
1. 17 (new song)
2. I’ve Been Asleep For a Long, Long Time
3. Brick (new song)
4. Red Song
5. Lions For Scottie
6. We Made a Pact
7. Bandages (new song)
Here is video I took of “Red Song” in Ithaca. This is not a different version of the song; this is the studio version:
I need to thank my buddies Paul and Davey for making the weekend so special; we’ve agreed to have a similar outing once every 6 months. It’s good to rekindle things. Anyone else want to rekindle? Oh and I now have a new codename. It’s no longer Wise Guy in the Backseat, but M.R. Science. That’s not mister science, but the letter M and R, like the M.R. Ducks t-shirt. I dig it.
Anyway, I had a much more artisitic and heartfelt blog entry in mind, but I am just burnt out, so this will have to do. Here are a bunch of pictures from all phases of the weekend. (I originally posted about 3 times as many photos but WordPress is being weird. This will have to suffice; also a few of the captions are acting weird, my apologies.)
Me with Tim Baker at Castaways in Ithaca, NY.
Paul with Tim Paul and Davey at Castaways in Ithaca
First attempt to get a picture of all three of us. My head looks like a peanut.
Success! My head looks like a peanut.
The vinyl that Tim and Romesh signed for me. That's Tim who wrote the sentence.
I know most of you are probably sick of hearing me blather on about the incredible amazing fantastic band Hey Rosetta! And it looks like, very soon, I may be able to rein in the salivating.
Barring any unforeseen craziness, (read: snow) I should be seeing the band live TWICE this coming weekend: Friday in Albion, NY and Saturday in Buffalo, NY. They’re opening for a singer/ songwriter named Sarah Harmer who I haven’t heard of before and who I still haven’t been able to really familiarize myself with, although most of her music seems to sound like this (click ‘preview track’). In short–not bad, but not exciting. Having read her wikipedia page, it seems she may in fact be rather famous in some circles. I just aint in dem circles.
ANYWAY, the mondo super exciting element of this New York excursion is the fact that the first concert, in Ithaca, will be being attended not only my myself but by two of my longest-held dudefriends, Paul (codename: Mr. Turnpike) and Davey (codename: Nature Boy). It’s been yeeeaaaarrrs since the 3 of us hung out at the same time, and even longer than that since we went on an exciting road trip together (it should be noted that the three of us essentially invented the “exciting road trip”, so this is really like a comeback tour for us.) Paul and I will be spending Friday night in a hotel in a town close to Ithaca (the town of Painted Post, NY), with Paul leaving early the next morning to head back to PA to play in a championship game in his flag football league (Davey will just be going home Friday after the show, as he lives in upstate NY and Painted Post is the opposite direction from his house.) While Paul drives home to play in his football game, I’ll be driving to Buffalo, NY, to see Hey Rosetta! a second time on Saturday night, this time by myself! If this all seems confusing (and you for some reason give a crap) I am prepared to provide you with maps of all three of our movements.
First, on Friday afternoon, I will be driving from Erie to Painted Post, NY, to meet Paul at our hotel. Here’s what that looks like.
Likewise, Friday afternoon, Paul will leave from central PA to Painted Post, NY, to meet me at the hotel. At the moment I can’t remember where his work is located, so I’ve got him leaving from Carlisle.
Around this same time, Nature Boy Christopher Davey will be leaving his home in the city of Oswego, NY and heading to the town the concert is in–Ithaca, NY. This is Davey’s trip.
After meeting at the hotel, Paul and I will travel together from Painted Post to Ithaca.
Then the three of us are meeting, having dinner, and going to the show, which will look kind of amazing, like this:
That might sound overly complicated to you, but I think maybe I’ve just over-explained it. The point is that I am really, really excited about this trip. I am more excited to see Hey Rosetta! than I have been to see a band since the first time I saw Pearl Jam in 2000. Add to that an excursion with two lifelong pals–well, it might be awesome, but it also sounds like the beginning of a movie…
So, barring it turning into “Judgment Night” (and if it meant we got to hang out with Jeremy Piven, I might even be OK with that), it’s gonna be a great two days!!
(for the record, my codename is Wise Guy in the Back Seat OR Wise Man in the Back Seat, depending which one of them you ask. You can imagine this is the kind of nickname an alcoholic comes by. Luckily it’s too damn long for anyone to ever really call me it!)
1. Oh hi, billhanna. I see you ‘liked’ goatees on Facebook yesterday. Our adversarial relationship about facial hair will continue to the grave. THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!
2. Anyone who knows Tasha, check out the link, she just got a radical new haircut! I love it!
3. I have quite few friends who are talented musicians—one of them is the great Bootney Lee (real name Ryan Straub). I double-dare you to click on the link and check his music out.
4. Guess who I’m going to see next month, as the three of us meet up in central New York for a Hey Rosetta! show??? Well that would be none other than my life-long buddies Paul and Davey! (he’s Chris Davey, but we call him Davey). This is going to be exceptional as it’s been a few years since we were together, all 3 of us. And did I mention it’s a Hey Rosetta show??? I still haven’t seen them live–the shows I was supposed to go to awhile back had to be skipped because life is like that. I am uber pumped for this!
5. It has been way too long since I tagged my friend Amanda. I mean that just like it sounds, too.
6. You know who rules? My mom! She just quit smoking!!! Raise the roof!
7. I’m still tickled pink about the Doctor Strange drinking glass that Tony Magni gave me as a going away present when I moved to Erie. Thanks Tony!
8. My friend Denise has a very under-appreciated photo blog. Click to link to check it out!!! She’s way talented!
9. The lovely Sarah P. has just had a baby! Huzzah! She doesn’t have any sort of online presence so I’ve linked to a picture of Big Ben, which is in England, which is where I met her!
10. My dad is one cool mofo. What’s my evidence? Every single day I become more and more like him, and I am most definitely one cool mofo. Dad, we are some cool dudes!
11. I tag Ron all the damn time, I aint saying anything about him!
12. Big days for my buddy Burke, who has just started going back to school while also remaining a steadfast David Hasselhoff fan. Kudos, wanker!
13. I could probably talk about Mary all day, but I’m pretty sure she’d friend-disown me. She dislikes scrutiny.
14. My dear, dear friend Michael (that’s a lady named Michael) sent me the most lovely letter in the mail yesterday. She sure is a freaking great friend!! It was quite touching, it brought a tear to my eye. Everyone should have a friend like Michael!
15. California buddy Kyle is finally off the unemployment and working at a bank!!! Yay Kyle! Now: no more excuses for sneaking into movies, you heathen!
16. My freaking cool-as-shit sister just got a job working at a law firm! What what! Dellingers can do anything!!! Click the link to read her badass blog!
17. Also in the world of talented musician friends of mine: Duane, who records under the name DreamlandNoise. Click the link for just a small sampling of his superb “space funk”.
18. What to say about my girl Cory? She recently moved back to central PA, like, RIGHT after I left it. *frown face* She’s just the shiznit in every way, and is quite a talented artist. I’ve linked to some of her art but you might not be able to see it if you’re not FB friends with her. Which would be your loss.
We all know I have a habit of writing a preparatory blog about artists I am about to see in concert a few days before I see them; I do this because most of the bands I like are completely unheard-of, and maybe partly because I’ve run out of truly interesting things to write about, but whatever, you’re here, and that’s all that counts. I’ll try to keep it short.
Band of Horses is one of those indie bands that is super, super hip inside the indie rock community but will probably never break through to the mainstream, as their music is simply not commercial (though they do have a song, “The Funeral”, that has been used in a few car commercials). Although, they are quite reminiscent of My Morning Jacket, a band that, despite never having a song on the radio, now plays to sold-out stadiums, so I suppose there’s hope for a large audience for Band of Horses.
They’re actually a fairly new band. I’m too lazy to look it up but I wanna say they’ve been around since 2005. A little over a year ago, I put them at #80 on my list of 100 Favorite Bands. Now, after a third album has been released, I’m sure they’d enter my top 30.
Here’s their only moderately “famous” song, “The Funeral”. Lyrics are on the video:
They’re a difficult band to amply describe. Like My Morning Jacket, they seem to draw equal influence from country, rock, and seventies standards, melding all the sounds into something so cool it’s almost corny, or so corny it’s almost cool. (“The Funeral” is much more “rock-y” than their typical song). Witness this song, “Factory”, which seems to meld Big Band, Americana (think The Band or Gov’t Mule) and freak-era Bowie.
Band of Horses also contains one of the more interesting figures in Indie Rock–Ben Bridwell, lead singer/songwriter. Much in the way The Lemonheads were not a very famous band, but their lead singer Evan Dando was a major spokesman for the music of their time, Bridwell fronts a laregly ignored band but is one of the more interesting figures in indie rock at the current time. Couple that with the fact that the band doesn’t tour very much and their tours are very brief, and it does in fact feel very special that I’ll be seeing them next week.
Also, opening for them is a band called Brad. I do not know Brad’s music very much, but I do know that Brad is a side project of a man named Stone Gossard. Stone is the rhythm guitarist for Pearl Jam!!! He’s also my third favorite member of Pearl Jam and my favorite guy named Stone, as well as my favorite guy to ever wear an all-orange outfit! So even though I don’t know the band’s music very well, it’ll be awesome to see Stone up close and see him playing music in a small venue.
Back to Band of Horses: this is my favorite song of theirs. I simply cannot get enough of it!
So I had a really, really amazing time seeing (and, yes, meeting) Emily Wells last night! My heart is still all sorts of aflutter!
First, although you may percieve my fandom of Ms. Wells as being brand new, allow me to direct you to my 100 favorite bands post from January of this year, where I list “the Emily Wells trio” at #43 (I even linked to a video!). Of course, this is kinda a cheat—the trio is only a touring band, Emily records as a solo artist, but I really wanted to get her in there!
Anyway, she’s been circling around the periphery of my favorites for a few years now, and has really been climbing over the past year as more and more new songs started to hit YouTube (a new album is coming soon). Also, I follow her more closely than a lot of artists because her Facebook is actually HER, and she responds to comments and actually interacts with you.
In short, I am totally in love with her, which is very rare for me. I’m not the kind of guy who goes gaga for women he hasn’t met and/or famous women. But Ms. Wells is just amazingly talented, adorable, cool as shit, and has a huuuuuuge sex appeal. So when I saw she was coming to within a few hours of me, I jumped at the chance to see her live.
The show was at an on-campus “coffee shop” at Oberlin College. It was a nice drive there–it took me right through downtown Cleveland. I’ve been to Cleveland before but not for many years, and never sober or by myself, so it was a cool experience. Then I arrived at the coffee shop, called The Cat in the Cream. The doors were locked, as I could hear Emily and her trio still soundchecking inside (I arrived at 7, show was slated for 8:30). What I found interesting was not just a lack of anyone else milling about waiting for the doors, but the generally deserted nature of the campus in general. After wandering around for awhile, I overheard some students mentioning that this was the first Friday evening since classes started; no one was really into hanging around campus, and despite Oberlin’s reputation as a hip arts and music school, Emily Wells just might not be famous enough yet to keep kids from going to off-campus keg parties.
So around 7:45 I went back to the Cat in the Cream. I could still hear Emily soundchecking, but I tried the door anyway, and it opened. Inside was a tiny coffee shop with about 20 tables and a stage that was clearly built for singer-songwriter open mic nights. The trio was soundchecking a song I’d never heard, but I didn’t look at them right away–for some reason I was “playing it cool”. I walked to the counter and bought a coffee (they didn’t have espresso drinks; some coffee shop!), walked to a table in the front, center stage, and experienced my first ever bout of star-struckness at a female (I’ve been star-struck a few times at male artists, but this female thing was very very new to me).
The first thing I noticed was she was short; at least as short as me if not shorter. This rules. And she is just so, SO adorable. No pics or videos properly convey her level of adorablness. Here is some video I took of her talking to the sound guy during the soundcheck:
At this point, it was just myself and 5 other people in the coffee shop. The trio ended their soundcheck and left. The lights went down as we waited about 20 minutes for the show to start. During those 20 minutes, the number of attendees swelled from 5 to approximately 30–most of them on a few couches in the back. As bad as I feel for artists playing to half-empty rooms, this is even more cool for me, as I get more eye-contact time from the artists.
The trio came in and opened with a song I’ve never heard (Emily kept telling us they were playing mostly new stuff, and she was right. I only knew about 5 of the probably 15 songs they played, but it was all really incredible). Anyway, here is video I took of the show opening:
In all seriousness, I am not just in love with Emily’s personality and looks. Her music is fucking incredible, and I honestly can’t imagine a more talented single musician I’ve ever seen live. What she does with looping and multi-instrumental songs is beyond anything you’ve ever seen. If she were a man, I’d be just as into him. This is addictive music that takes a few listens to completely fall in love with. The fact that I think her and I are perfectly matched as a couple only adds to the allure. :) Here is some video I took of some between-song banter of hers:
As I said, most of the songs were new but incredible, but they did play the best of the already established songs, all of which I was way too into to spend any time shooting video. Of the “symphonies”, they played 1, 2 and 6, and they were OUT OF THIS WORLD. Especially notable was “Symphony 2: The Click Boom Boom”, which was one of the most satisfying live experiences I’ve ever witnessed. There appears to only be one video in all of YouTube-land of this song being performed live, and the quality os not great, but here it is (NOT from the show I was at):
So, after the show, most everybody just filed out of the coffee shop. After seeing a truly incredibly performance from an incredible woman, my usual fearlessness had been replaced by a tiny amount of nervousness, but I did approach Emily as she was packing her stuff up. “Emily!” I said, and she looked up from the wires she was…doing something with. “Great show!” I extended my hand and shook hers, which was miraculously smaller than mine! “Thanks for all the great music.” She smiled and said I was welcome, and thanked me for coming. I wanted to gush more and perhaps ask for a picture with her, but I was not getting a “say more” vibe. I also wasn’t getting a “leave me alone” vibe, but I was pretty content with the interaction I’d gotten. I also told the drummer, who was right next to her, that he was amazing (he was, too).
After meeting 7 Mary 3 last year, and now the incredible Ms. Wells, I am fully addicted to meeting and thanking my favorite musicians. And it’s that thanking part that’s key; I have rarely been as happy in my life as I am when I get to tell the artists who bring me joy how important that is to me.
Notes From the Fire 
