Category: Post

     Below please find an example of what happens when you go see Weezer on a tour that Yahoo sponsored so they have giant cut outs of Weezer and they take your picture for free but you wore corduroys and put the picture in your back pocket and sat on it and were unaware that the combination of free color photography, corduroys and buttsweat would cause such a violent reaction.

     Also of note is the fact that Adrian Tomine, who does ‘Optic Nerve‘ supplied the art for the tour t-shirts.

     Additionally, the show was good fun. I missed the first band, saw most of the Get-Up Kids set, and obviously all of Weezer’s set. Hits were played. Sing alongs were had. Drinks were drunk.

     Since I know you all care so much, here’s an mp3 of the most recent song to come out of my basement. It’s not totally done yet, so I didn’t bother making a perfect quality file, but I’m pretty proud of how it came out (And also of the fact that Rob was on a cruise ship in the Caribbean so I got to play drums on it). Ha!

     You see, I’ve had my analog four track for upwards of six years now, which means I’ve gotten really good (If I do say so myself) at getting the best possible quality out of it, and I’ve developed all sorts of startegies for recording and mixing different insturments. I recently upgraded to digital 8 track, and soon after, reluctantly realized that I’d have to learn how to do everything all over again.

     Digital machines have these things called ‘Virtual tracks’ which are a pain in the ass to learn, but a godsend when you realize their potential. Gone are the days of having to record a bass part, a guitar overdub and harmonies all at once, starting over every time someone messed up. Now we can record essentially as many tracks as we want.

     The only problem I had was in the mixing stages. The first two songs I recorded went through roughly 20 cycles of mix, burn, get in car, listen, and reject. At any rate, I think I’ve finally got the hang of it. If you do download it, let us know what you think.

     Death Cab for Cutie played in Detroit last week. I was gonna go, then I wasn’t, then at the last minute a friend got out of an exam early and talked me into it. Of course, I ended up being glad I went, as Death Cab were incredibly tight, and they actually played some older songs. I finally got to hear ‘Champagne from a Paper Cup’ live, and they even played a cover of Bjork’s ‘All is full of Love,’ complete with the throaty-nonsensical-Icelandic yell in the middle. The And / Ors, on the other hand, were a huge disappointment. I had never heard them going in to the show. All I knew was that they counted Jejune’s Arabella amongst their members. Unfortunately, they also have a guy who apparently stole Evan Dando’s voice and likes AC / DC a lot.

     Moving on, I suppose now would be as good a time as any to rave about what a great show Sportsnight is. It’s on Comedy Central on Thursday nights, and it is officially my new favorite show. Amazing camera movement and Altman-esque (See: The Player) visual story telling. All this in a soap-opera / sitcom! Hot damn! Why didn’t anybody tell me about this sooner?

     Also TV related: My friend just let me borrow the Sopranos DVD box set. I’m four episodes in and already 100% hooked.

     The new Suburban Sprawl website is now up and running. Go there to view the clips of Red Shirt Brigade on MTV’s Undressed. Also: Southern has picked up the SSM catalog for distribution! Hooray.

Some random links:

• Crazy Little Red Riding Hood themed japanese television commercial.
• Some sort of forthcoming Radiohead remix album.
• Interesting article on Jay Ferguson (Of Sloan fame) and his record collection.

Chris Ostafinski says:

Remember seeing Ted Leo and hearing that song that goes “If I don’t like someone I stop fucking them?” It’s frequently on Napster and it’s called “You Always Hate the One you Love” and it’s as good as you remember it. Now get busy.

..and he’s right.

     Usually the impetus for me posting here would be me wanting to find something out on the internet, finding it out, thinking ‘Hey, that’s kind of interesting,’ and then posting it here. That hasn’t happened a whole lot lately, and I’m not sure why.

     No, wait – I just figured it out. Tivo is the reason why. And also I’ve been working on the Suburban Sprawl site. At any rate, be forewarned that this is one of those extremely disjointed grab-bag posts.

First, a bunch of loosely-related music stuff:

     So I saw the New Pornographers awhile back. Their Drummer had stick-twirling down to such a science that even fellow artful-stick-twirler Damon Atkinson would have been in awe. He also played the perfect drumkit (Rob, you especially should read this part): a four-piece with high hats and a crash / ride, nothing else. And it sounded great. Their new CD is so pop it hurts. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

     I also bought the new Tortoise album, ‘Standards,’ and I must say, I don’t see why this record is getting such great reviews. It’s not bad but it’s not a perfect album by any means. Yes, I’ve listened to it several times (at work even!). The silkscreened jewelcase is nice, but I like ‘Millions Now Living…’ way better. But that’s just me.

     I also got the new The Stereo full length for free. To fully appreciate my opinion of this CD, you’re going to have to allow me a rather pitchfork-ian analogy. Here goes:

     Remember the Sonic the Hedgehog video games? How whenever you moved Sonic too close to a ledge he would flail his arms either side-to-side or in windmills (depending on how close to falling you were) to keep his balance? Well The Stereo are a lot like that. On past releases, they’d be moving along at a respectable clip (for a pop punk band, of course) and then somehow manage to ruin it. Thankfully, they do that a lot less on this record than they did on the last one. Make no mistake, there are still a few moments when Sonic goes over the edge – the inexplicable four bar break for unaccompanied double-time handclaps in ‘On My Sonar’ and the extremely ill-advised and awkward sounding falsetto bits on the third song being perfect examples. But beyond these ultimately forgivable oversights of judgement, ‘No Traffic’ is a perfectly acceptable sing along pop punk album. Not anything that will break new ground by any means, but it sounds nice (Listening to this as a home-recorder will make you insanely jealous of J. Robbins ability to manipulate guitar sounds), and it’s catchy, too.

     You may or may not know that the new Dave Matthews record came out tuesday. I bring this up only because Barnes & Noble Inc. decided that this event was significant enough to issue a commemorative Gift Card featuring the album art. The only other artist that B&N has deemed culturally significant enough to be singled out in gift card form thus far has been Dr. Seuss. So, yeah that’s kind of scary. The arrival of these giftcards puzzled the entire staff at the store where I work.

     If you ever find yourself in a gift-giving situation where you’re not sure what to get someone and opt for a gift certificate, and you’re pretty sure the gift recipient would enjoy glancing at Dave Matthews and Co. occaisionally while browsing, head right out to your nearest Barnes & Noble. Also: a fun game to play at any music store is ‘Guess who is here to buy the new Dave Matthews.’ This is a very easy game to win.

     If Scooby Doo was as large a part of your childhood as it was mine, this video clip will probably give you just cause to hate Hollywood: [11.9 MB high-quality version, 6.2 MB not-so-high-quality version]

     Just for the hell of it, you should probably know that Captain Underpants is all the rage with the literate youth these days. If this offends you, here is their version of an apology.

     Ha.

P.S.
     You should definately know that there is an awesome 8-page Pixies retrospective in this month’s Mojo, and anyone who can find me online video clips of Phillip Seymour Hoffman and John C. Reilly from ‘True West’ will automatically become my best friend ever. Additionally, I’d like to point out and apologize for the fact that I began three sentances in this post with the word ‘And.’

     Disclaimer: This turned out to be a pretty scatterbrained update, mainly because it was written in bits and pieces over the last week or so. Hopefully the next one will be a bit more coherent.

     So I’m back on my Guns N’ Roses Pinball kick again. To be fair – I never really stopped being on a Guns N’ Roses Pinball kick. A week or so ago I asked people to email me if they knew the location of any GNR Pinball machines. This was so I could begin work on the Ultimate GNR Pinball Location Guide. Unfortunately, I’ve only had three submissions, so it’s not exactly the ‘Ultimate’ GNR Pinball Location Guide yet. Click here for what I’ve got so far.

     Then there’s the wealth of extremely trivial GNR pinball information I unearthed, presented in descending order of interest. Found on a Slash fan site (More on this later):

Question from Jeff of Portland OR:
My question is regarding the GNR pinball machine. There are several GNR songs on there; however, there are other songs on there that are not on any GNR album. For example, the “SLASH solo guitar feature” or the song played on the “extra ball feature”. Did you actually record these songs for the pinball machine? I’ve also heard that there are other unreleased tracks on the machine. Is this true?

SLASH replies:
There are eight different original GNR recordings which were taken off the masters. An unreleased song is “Ain’t Goin’ Down” with no lyrics. If you see the Viper pinball game which I also did the music for, you’ll find “Speed Parade” there. It’s the sound the car makes.

     Here‘s a meticulously detailed document that covers the scoring and gameplay functions of the machine. This is probably only mildly interesting if you’ve played the game. A sample quotation:

“Match sequence: The animation shows a woman pulling her shirt off over her head. The picture then scrolls down, and she’s covering herself with a big card (on which is displayed the match number). If you don’t match, you get the very neat quote, “aww, dude!” If you do match, WAIT!!! You should know by now that you have to wait until the match animation finishes before the credit is actually awarded. This delay seems very long, compared to other recent DE pins.
There is an option in the menus called “Modesty Option.” Switching this OFF changes the match animation. The girl still pulls her shirt off, but when the picture scrolls down, she’s not covering herself, and one match digit appears on each breast.”

     Photos of most of the playing field and moving parts can be found here. This is noteworthy because the artwork is fucking hilarious.

     
Here‘s a meticulously detailed document that covers the repair of Data East pinball machines. This is only interesting if you are a very big nerd.

     While digging up all this GNR pinball info, I stumbled across the funniest websites in the world. The first one is a collection of video clips of GNR’s slash, featuring the most hilarious descriptions ever. They make Slash seem like a puppet, under the control of the author of the website or something. In the following excerpt, please note that the capitol letters are as they appear on the site.

Bang Your Head, SLASH!

Sing, SLASH!

LET ME STAND NEXT TO YOUR FIRE!

ROCK THOSE REPTILES!

Introduce Blues Ball, SLASH!

Bring It On Home, SLASH!

Play Us A Smooth Solo, SLASH!

Play That Steeler Fight Song, SLASH!

Show Them How to Rock, SLASH!

..and so on.

     Also from the same author: The Official Photos of Slash Relaxing Page.

     Rachel Leigh Cook pretending to sing lead in a faux pop-punk version of the Archie comics spin off Josie and the pussycats. I have not the words. Click here to see a video.

     So there’s this Japanese film that probably won’t ever see the light of day over here, called Battle Royale. The plot is basically a sadistic mutation of Survivor: A junior high school class (42 students) is sent to an island and given a set amount of time to trim the crop down to one winner. If more than one student is still alive at the end of the allotted time, they are all killed. Obviously this would be perfect fodder for the new presidential administration, and no studio in their right mind is going to touch it with a ten foot pole. AICN‘s Harry Knowles (Do the grammar and spelling oversights on AICN ever bug anyone else? because they sure do bug the shit out of me.) makes quite a case for the film’s merit in this article.

     Did you know Weird Al is getting married? So I guess there’s hope for everyone.

     It seems like just about once a week since November 20th, something in relation to my brother’s accident will happen to get me really pissed off. Just last night I was thinking how quiet this week has been relative to the past few.

     That all changed this morning of course (My luck, and all). We got a call at about 9:30. It was one of those instances where you’re half-awakened by the ringing, but you know someone else will get it, and your body refuses to surrender to conciousness until the few functioning brain cells are sure it’s important. This is roughly the same thing that happened on the morning of November 20th, simply substitute knocking for ringing. You’d think by now, my body would know to just wake up, already.

     At any rate, it was the City of Livonia on the other end. It seems that the memorial that Chris’ friends and classmates have built for him at the intersection where he was killed has been found to be an ‘eyesore,’ a ‘nuisance,’ and a ‘hazard.’ Someone had called to complain, and on further examination, they’ve ordered us to remove it by Sunday night, or else they will have it removed.

     Just the fact that they would do this boggles my mind. We’ve been careful to keep it clean. We’ve had to take things home to avoid overflow into the street – Chris’ bed is overflowing with stuffed animals.

     If you live in Livonia, and you disagree with this decision, you can join others in leaving a candle at the intersection on Monday night (2/19). If they’re heartless enough to remove every trace of a community mourning the loss of a friend, the very least we can do is make it a pain in the ass to clean up.

     I had all sorts of fun popculture crap I was going to write about today – but I think this is enough for now. Maybe tommorrow.

 

     If you are here because of the Steve Malkmus review on Pitchfork, here is the article to which Mr. Nick Mirov referred.

Since I don’t really have anything else to say today, a few more old features that don’t make me cringe are here, here and here.

Additionally: If you know the location of a Guns N’ Roses pinball machine anywhere on this fine earth, please send the name and location of the establishment in which it resides, along with the address (If possible, cross streets’ll do) to me. This is for very important research.

     Last sunday, there was a man sitting in the cafe with a nice-looking rectangle-style (Yeah, so I’m not up on my business person terminology. Sue me.) leather briefcase. This would not be unusual if the man hadn’t been both greasy and creepy. A closer examination revealed the contents of his briefcase:

• cigarettes
• cigarette lighter
• two (2) volumes of an encyclopedia set.

     First – we don’t sell encyclopedias. So this greasy creepy guy was presumably visiting his local B&N in order to a.) smoke and b.) read his encyclopedias. It was reminiscent of a youngster ‘playing grown-up.’ Well, the briefcase and encyclopedias part, at least.

     Anyways, the same guy comes back in on the following Saturday and is asking about books on bombs and explosives. He generally makes it known that he is the resident ‘bomb guy’ to all the staff. This in addition to being creepy and greasy. Anyway, after firmly reenforcing his “I love explosives” rep, he leaves his briefcase sitting on a table and leaves. So everyone who is working thinks it’s a bomb. I was not working on this day or I would have chuckled heartily and said: “Wait! It is only cigarettes and encyclopedias!”

     I wasn’t working, though, so the police were called and after what I would imagine was some very unintelligent police-level-risk-taking, they decide “Well fuck! let’s just open the case!” and the store blows up.

     Just Kidding!

     Actually the case was empty. But the police were called and they did open the case, only to find it empty. Apparently his encyclopedias and cigarettes are too valuable to leave behind when psychologically toying with bookstore employees. So the next day is Sunday. I am working. I have not yet heard the ‘bomb threat’ story. He approaches the information kiosk.

Him: (pointing at nothing in particular) That’s mine.

Me: (pointing at a book) This?

Him: No.

Me: (pointing at different book) This?

Him: (Annoyed) No. (Dramatically making “air quotes”) The briefcase.

Me: Oh. (Hands him briefcase)

     So anyways, I think I disappointed him. He was trying to be all dramatic and ominous and play his ‘ha ha you pissant, you thought it was a bomb’ card, but I was totally oblivious to the whole ordeal at that point. Looking back, I kind of wish I could take the briefcase back and let him get it from a more informed employee. After all his planning and hard work, I had to come along and ruin the payoff.

     Oh yeah, there’s also the B&N pervert. This guy writes the typical bathroom graffitti:

Be here 12:30.
I give good blowjobs.

     But he actually shows up, and creepily follows any unsuspecting male customer who happens to have to piss at 12:30 into the bathroom.

     Did I mention he drilled a hole in the partition between two of the stalls so he could ‘peep?’

     The maintenance people put a bolt through the hole, with metal plates on either side, to which he responded in permanent marker: “Was this really necessary?”

     On the same day that I handed over the bombless briefcase, the rudest woman in the world came in. She is waiting at the info kiosk with her grade-school-aged daughter, who is remarkably polite considering her breeding. I will now revert to my preferred ‘screenplay’ recounting style:

Her: (Extremely pissed off) I just don’t understand you people! You leave to show people where a book is and then you’re so slow to come back!

Me: (Dumbfounded)… Well actually I haven’t been gone for more than a minute.. (My coworker walks up behind me) … and neither has she.

Her: (Insanely pissed off) Well whatever! I need ‘Call of the WIld’ by Jack London.

Me: (Thinking) You’re standing less than a foot away from a shelf that says ‘fiction, alphabetical by author’ and you can’t find Jack London? (speaking) O.K. it’ll be right this way.

     Apparently she didn’t hear me. She just stared at me in a “I hate everyone and I will destroy them by being rude until they die from it” sort of way. So I went to the section and grabbed the two different editions of ‘Call of the WIld’ that were in fiction. Meanwhile, she has remained at the information kiosk, raving like a madwoman about how I walked off in the middle of helping her because *I* was rude! My coworker is trying to convince her that I went to get her book.

     I arrive with the books. My coworker says, “See I told you he was helping you.” which only pisses her off more. She takes the two volumes from me. The first contains both ‘The Call of the Wild’ and ‘Whitefang.’

     “Did you ask me if I wanted more than one story in the book? No, you didn’t ask me that.”

     She looks at the second version. It’s annotated.

     “Did I ask for an annotated version? No I did not. These are way too thick. I want a thinner version.”

     At this point I’m pretty well pissed, primarily because this woman is going out of her way to be rude to me. Barely resisting the urge to point out that she didn’t specify that she did not want an anthology or annotated version, I take her to the children’s classics section and show her versions that are ‘thinner’ because they don’t contain ‘white fang’ or annotations. She wants a blue cover. There are three versions with a blue cover. She wants the thinnest version with a blue cover. She gets it.

     I ended up showing her at least 6 versions of Call of the Wild, and do you know what she did on her way out? She complained to my manager that I was inefficient. If I’d had a brick, I would have gleefully embedded it in her skull.

     Also: If you are buying something somewhere and your total is 19 dollars and something cents, you are not obligated to say “That was a good year.” No, really. You can stop. Especially if you’re old.

     Today a woman set off the security alarm thing on the way in. This happens ALL THE TIME. I don’t know why, I just know that it does. Most people just shrug it off, and probably pack their coats with books, knowing full well that we’ll wave them through when the alarm goes off on their departure. This woman however, was determined to find out what the hell was setting it off.

So she emptied her pockets and walked back through. Beep.

She set down her bag and walked through. Beep.

She set down her purse and walked through. Beep.

She took off her coat and walked through. Beep.

She took off her belt and walked through. Beep.

     Finally, a female coworker asked if it could be a new article of clothing. Suddenly, the woman realized she was wearing a relatively new bra.

     So she went into the bathroom, took off her bra, put it in her bag, and walked through. No beep.

     Doghouse records has released remastered versions of the Get-up Kids’ first full-length, and both EP’s (On one disc). The only problem I have with this is that they changed the artwork. Call me stubborn, but I disagree with changing the artwork to a full length album – just on principle. Doesn’t that strike anyone else as just plain wrong? Save your originals for a few years and sell them on eBay.

     Dolly Parton does a cover of Collective Soul’s “Shine” on her new album, ‘Little Sparrow.’ No, I’m not kidding.

     It seems that everyone in the world loves Icelanders Sigur Ros. I was initially turned off by their ‘Both English and Icelandic as languages are too unexpressive to communicate our grand message so here’s a new language, suckers’ stance, which is surprising because I’m usually a huge fan of pretension in rock. If you weren’t lucky enough to pick up something by them before “the Buzz” hit, you’re not likely to find too much in the shops, as it seems they have an unhealthy propensity for limited editions. I managed to find that film score they did on vinyl, but as my luck would have it, there’s a skip in my copy. It did, however, come with a coupon redeemable for a free limited edition print, which will surely be “ebay gold” in the months to come. You can listen to real audio samples of their work here.

…and speaking of pretension, here’s a loosely translated Dutch interview with Godspeed You Black Emperor!, in which they pretty well thrash Radiohead. A rebuttal from GYBE! guitarist Efrin follows the interview. [via Usagainstthem]

     You may or may not have noticed that the updates have been pretty frequent around here lately. That probably has a lot to do with the fact that I’ve essentially dropped out of school for the semester.

     Yeah, I never thought I’d do it either. The reason I did, you see, is because I got stuck with one professor for three of my four classes this semester. In some cases, this might be a good thing, except you’ll notice that I used the phrase ‘Stuck with.’ See, this professor has a reputation. He prides himself on making one third of each class drop, and not passing another third. He’s been on ‘sabbatical’ for the last two years, and Wayne State’s Electrical Engineering department has had record graduating classes since he’s been gone, because people have waited to finish the program until they can do it without dealing with him.

     I thought I could handle him. This of course, was stupid of me. I lasted about two weeks before getting into two arguments with him in one day. He decided to give us a Tuesday pop quiz in two of my classes on homework that was due on Thursday.

     “The prepared student will have already started working on the homework,” he said.

     I wasn’t prepared. I had spent all weekend preparing, playing and recuperating from a benefit show in my brother‘s memory. The little bit of the homework I did manage to cover on Monday night (Which I worked on until 3 AM) was not covered on the quizzes.

     Needless to say, after the first quiz I argued about the validity of testing us on material that we technically were not yet required to know. He would hear none of it.

     By the time he handed out the pop quiz in the other class, I was already fuming. Looking up to his desk and seeing him smiling in my direction sealed it: I didn’t need to deal with this right now.

     I had scheduled my classes mere days before my brother was killed, and I had bitten off a pretty difficult semester. It is my firm belief that, given a different instructor, I could have done alright. Unfortunately, I got stuck with a power-tripping egomaniac who, naturally, has tenure.

     Anyway, long story short, the dean let me drop the classes, and I was unable to add any new ones. So here I am working almost full time, taking one techinical writing class, updating this site a lot, and most importantly: not being wound like a watch from the stress.

     Here‘s a pretty interesting, if extremely dorky discussion of whether or not humans are the only animals who conciously commit suicide.

…and Fred was nice enough to dig up the full text of the book Morrissey published on the New York Dolls.

     I probably would have been a hell of a lot more interested in that New Pornographers record that just came out if someone had bothered to tell me that it was the brainchild of Carl Newman. “Who is this Carl Newman?” you might be asking. Carl Newman was the singer of a Vancouver based Sub Pop band named Zumpano who put out quite the gem of an album called ‘Look What the Rookie Did.’ If you don’t own it, consider your life incomplete.

     At any rate – Carl Newman is the male vocalist on this new recording and Neko Case handles the female vocals. It sounds a lot like Zumpano would have sounded in the transition between “Look What the Rookie Did” and “Goin’ Through Changes” (their second album), but if Neko Case were singing. I’ve only heard one song off of it (It’s on this month’s CMJ sampler. So is the Steve Malkmus song that was inspired by ‘Cabin Boy.’ So is a really good song by the band Spoon. They changed the way they package those free CD’s) but that one song was enough to convince me to buy it on sight.

     …and speaking of Zumpano – I distinctly remember reading an article last summer in one of those free Windsor weeklies that detailed how they were on hiatus until one of their songs got used in a movie trailer. Apparently the liscensing royalties for use of a song in a trailer are significantly greater than those paid for use in the movie proper. Based on their good fortune, members of the band said that a Third full-length would be forthcoming. This New Pornographers project doesn’t exactly bode well for my hopes of a third Zumpano album.

Some Zumpano Links:

• An old interview with Michael Ledwidge, and a live review from the same source.
• And hey, look, you can download the videos from their first album, courtesy of Sub Pop.
• Wouldya look at that? MTV.com actually ran a version of the “third album” story in October of last year.
• Hot damn! there was a japanese version of the second album that also had their two 7″ B-sides and two other songs I’ve never heard before. If you have this, please contact me. I just want those two songs.
• Finally: I just found out that the New Pornographers will be at the Magic Stick on Friday the 16th, and I will be there.

     The Afghan Whigs officially broke up recently after 14 years of making good music. This doesn’t surprise me at all, because I’ve been on an absolutely wicked Afghan Whigs kick of late, and whenever that happens, the band invariably decides to break up. I’m glad I had the chance to see the live though, albeit only once. Looks like now we’re going to have to settle for “That sissy John Spencer,” because that Twilight Singers album was pretty piss poor. Here‘s a pretty good MP3 of a song that will never get the studio treatment from Mr. Dulli and Co.

     Loyal viewers of MTV’s Undressed should note that hometown boys Red Shirt Brigade were heard in the background of last night’s episode. Not surprisingly, MTV used an instrumental clip from “Strychnine Police / Death Arcade” to score a segue between two ‘relatively attractive people fighting and / or being overly dramatic’ scenes. Also featured in the episode were At the Drive-in’s “One Armed Scissor,” and that really bad song by Crazy Town. A video clip should appear soon on the Suburban Sprawl Music site which will be redesigned before you know it. The episode will be rerun in the wee hours of Sunday Night / Monday morning. And to think, if I didn’t watch the show religiously, they wouldn’t even know.