RustedRobot

My year-end music list this year is different. Not necessarily in style, but in form. The era of buying full albums is more or less over for me (and I think many others). I might have bought one or two full albums this year. Now I scan through albums via song samples and just buy songs. So I struggled with how to rank my tops for 2008 this year. I also didn’t get to really comb the depths as much as I have in the past, though I did find some new stuff that really grabbed a hold of me. In the end, I’ve decided to post some of my favorite songs of 2008. I hope you enjoy them and I hope I make you a rabid fan of something you haven’t heard previously - that’s really what gets me going.

The following are in no order whatsoever:

Pete & The Pirates:  I found these guys on EMusic.com, who recently revamped their music recommendation service and whatever they’re using now for recommendations is 100 times better than before! Yeah, Pete & The Pirates is a terrible name for a band, but I found some excellent stuff from them a few months back and it’s sticking. Check out “Lost In The Woods.”

The Delta Spirit: perhaps my favorite band of the new year and I just discovered them about four weeks ago when I saw them open for Nada Surf. I was purchasing their music the next morning. There is a timeless, slightly weathered feeling to this music, yet a young energy that you just can’t shake. If you only listen to one band from my list here, listen to this one (but really, I know you’re listening to all of these. You better be - these posts take a long time). This one is called “Parade”

David Byrne & Brian Eno: Again, EMusic. I am not a fan of David Byrne. Oh, I loved Psycho Killer and maybe one or two of the songs from the mid-1980s (I did love “Burning Down the House”) but I just can’t get into the Talking Heads. Any of it. Believe me, I have tried. So why did I sample this? Well, the way it was written up as a mini-review made me start sampling and I’ll be damned! It’s terrific. Most notably the song “Home,” which I also included in a November 20th post here, but it’s such an excellent song it’s here again:

Blitzen Trapper: I know I’ve mentioned Blitzen Trapper here a few times. I’ve decided that their latest album isn’t as good as their previous effort, but it’s most certainly got a few phenomenal tunes on it and they continue to pretty much defy any genre or real accurate description, so of course I love them. Here’s the softer side, via a song called “Furr,” which I was so-so on until I saw them do it on Conan. Now I LOVE it.

Jenny Lewis: Perfect example of why I’m only doing songs this year: I’m a BIG fan of Rilo Kiley, Jenny Lewis and even The Elected. But Jenny Lewis’s solo album released this year really turned me off. With the single exception of this song, called “Acid Tongue,” which feels so real and so heartfelt that I couldn’t stop listening to it when I first heard it. Sometimes she can just crank out a special one. This is it.

Easton Stagger Phillips: It seems to me that no matter what Tim Easton does, it absolutely resonates with me in such a huge way. In between his own albums, he cut this one with some Alaskan friends of his and it’s pretty much a stunner. Very down home, warm, comfortable feeling with this one, so much so that I bought the whole album after hearing just one song - I didn’t have to sample the rest. I knew it would be incredible and it is. There isn’t a bad one to be found on this, so I’ll just close my eyes and poke a pencil at one song. It’s “She Was Gone.”

Okkervil River: holy SHIT! I never got into these guys before, but their latest release has some AMAZING songs on it. Just sweeping, epic stuff - great lyrics, great music, great everything! I was so pleasantly surprised. For this post I’m picking “Blue Tulip” not just for it’s emotional ebb-and-flow, but because it contains the my single most favorite moment in a song. It starts at about the 2:10 mark, really starts to stab you at about 2:40 when that guitar hits and then BURIES you at about 3:08 when the lyrics start up again. This is near-perfect song craft. Might be my favorite song of the year.

For every single inch of me, I’m going to make you mean it,
With every single cell of me, i’m going to make you mean the words you sigh
You lie

Sam Champion: This is one of the reasons I SO love it when people leave a comment on this blog. One day out of nowhere a few years back I got an email from a woman in Wisconsin who told me she’d been reading my blog for a year or so and thought we were musical compadres. So she recommended a local named Sam Champion so I went and sampled it and thought - very good. Well, he released another record this year and I found “You Can’t Stop” and downloaded it right away - just an awesome rock song. Love that riff in the beginning and the end, because you don’t feel at all like you’re getting a great rock song - then it HITS you! The middle is a total curve ball and it’s all good.

The Hold Steady: I’m not as gung-ho on these guys as I used to be and I think their new album wasn’t as adventurous as I hoped. That said, what they did before worked, so they didn’t really have to throw any knuckleballs here. And there were a couple very good tunes on thier 2008 release. This one is my favorite, called “Slapped Actress.”

Sloan: come on, you didn’t think I’d leave my favorite band of the last TEN years off, did you? Their 2008 release “Parallel Play” wasn’t as much of a romp as their double album from ‘07, but it is, of course, full of terrific power pop. These guys can be relied on 100% to make music that will make you tap your feet. Their live show, which I think I’ve probably seen 4,356 times now, is one that ranks among my favorite. Ever. This is “Witch’s Wand.”

The Black Keys: these guys are just pure ass-kickers with a sound all their own. Some would call them bluesy, others call them straight-up indie rock. It doesn’t matter what you call them - they make good, old-school music. You pretty much know it when you hear them. This is  “Things Ain’t Like They Used To Be.” Enjoy!

The Racontuers: just like their first offering, I didn’t want to like them because I just can’t stand The White Stripes. But I can’t help it - I love these guys. More old-school rock that takes me back to the days of cranking WCOZ on my parents Scott stereo system (local alert! local alert!). This is one called “Rich Kid Blues.” Classic rock lives!

Nada Surf: of course. These guys are making a run at Sloan for me. They just keep putting out album after album of such high quality material that it’s not even funny. It’s also not even a question anymore - when there’s a new album, ALL of it is purchased. No questions asked and no songs heard. It’s a done deal. You know I love a band when I get a baby-tee from the band for my kid. If you don’t like “Weightless,” then get off my cloud!

Kelley Stoltz: one of my favorites of the last couple of years. Seriously, this guy is a genius. I don’t know what else to say at this point, besides that he’s so creative, inventive and crafts tunes that leave me occasionally quite speechless. One of them is “Put Your Troubles To Sleep.” Why can’t I  get over the guitar part that kicks in around the 2:10 mark? I can’t get over how much I love it.

Holy shit, 2008 was better than I thought! Listen and leave comments!

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The cliche is “you get what you pay for.” This weekend as I was outside snowblowing I told myself that a) having a snowblower and b) spending a little extra for a higher quality snowblower is well worth it. You do, indeed, get what you pay for. Then, as I mindlessly went up-and-down the driveway, creating snow-line symmetry, I thought that’s all well and good, but what defies the cliche? In other words, what can you actually crimp a little on and still get something good? The first thing that popped into my head was wine. I’m not a huge wine drinker, but I do know that some $6.99 bottles taste GREAT! So what else? What other products defy the cliche?

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This Person Needs Glasses

I dork out on all the parent magazines. If you’re a parent, you probably know them - Parents, Cookie, Wonder Time, etc. They’re so cheap that we get most of ‘em. I’ve come to realize that these magazines make a living off of basically publishing the same 12 issues every year. It’s complete genius.  In June 2008, you got the “summer activities issue,” which, if you look,  has the exact same articles and themes as the June 2007 issue. Get it? Either way, we still read them, desperate for tips on what we can do to keep our kids engaged and amused. ANYTHING to keep them from freaking out in boredom.

What I find very amusing in the latest issue of Parents Magazine is this ad. Now, parents, in looking at this ad, do you see anything out of ordinary? I certainly do. For one thing, when I’m applying diaper cream to my kid’s arse, that is NOT where the cream usually goes. But I guess Desatin needs to deliver the message somehow that baby’s behinds are cute and if you use desatin, you get to put cream on that cute little behind. Alas, what is not reflected in this picture is your kid freaking out from diaper rash - or where the cream actually goes. As Faith No More sang in its early days, it’s a dirty job, but someone’s gotta do it.” We care a lot, indeed.

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Christmas cards appear to be much more important when you have children. You finally have something personal you can splash on the front of the card. I mean, when you don’t have kids, you can’t put a picture of you and your wife/girlfriend on a card, because that’s tacky, although one year (pre-kids) I did tell Stephanie that we ought to dress up in Chrismassy clothes like red and green one-piece sleeper pajamas, sit in front of the fireplace and pose as young babies one year for cards. I pictured myself with one of those huge candy canes and a big, stupid smile on my face, seated next to Steph. It would have made an AWESOME card. As you might imagine, it got voted down. Rightly so, I suppose.

Another example: I thought we were the only ones who had to - literally - take 4,234 pictures before we found one for the Christmas card that worked. I came to find out at a party this weekend that many other parents share this same process. You just keep taking pictures until you get one that is even remotely acceptable. I’d love to show everybody the thousands of pictures that we took, so you can see the proof. In most of them, the following scenarios are occurring:

• The picture comes out with one kid sitting there with a beautiful smile on his face, while the other one is only 30% in the picture, has one arm and one leg up in the air - and a look of utter panic on his face.

• They are both sitting there calmly, the only problem being that a) one of them has a stream of snot coming out of his nose that wasn’t there 2 seconds ago when you were setting them up and b) the other one sees the snot and goes exploring into his own nose for the same.

• For some reason, on shot #3,421 you finally get a good pose, but the kids are blurry and the background is crystal clear. Yay!

• Both kids look pissed off.

• Both kids have their eyes closed.

• Both kids are looking in different directions.

So how did we get one that worked? Well, we put them on the couch and I had to stand off the side and - as hard as I could - bounce them up and down by beating on the couch cushion. They were looking right at me, smiling, while Steph snapped away. It worked! So if you get a card from us, you can clearly see they are not looking at the camera. They are looking at their dad, laughing at him and trying to figure out why the doofus is making stupid noises and pounding on the couch cushion. There you have it!

An extra holiday shout-out to the folks at Tiny Prints, whose Christmas cards look awfully nice, but they can’t really figure out how to operate the rest of the business. We ordered our cards and red envelopes the last week of November. We finally got them late last week. With no envolopes. Poor Steph calls on Friday and they tell her we will DEFINITELY have them on Saturday, overnighted. No envelopes come Saturday. Or Monday. Call on Monday. We’ll DEFINITELY have them on Tuesday. Here they are! Only half are red, though. The other half are silver. What? Not a huge deal, but it’s still not what we ordered. Call back, we’re told we’ll DEFINITELY have the rest of our red envelopes by Thursday, December 18th. For an order we placed the last week of November. Wheeee!

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Neil Young

There are only a few musicians whom I’ve long admired that I haven’t seen live yet.  Haven’t seen R.E.M. Or Van Morrison, The Kinks/Ray Davies, Teenage Fanclub or The Left Banke. Okay, just kidding about that last one. Until Saturday night, it seemed inexplicable, but I hadn’t ever seen Neil Young, either.

I can’t really say that Neil Young is on the list of my top 10 musicians of all time, but I can tell you that there has never been a time in my life when I wasn’t in a Neil Young phase. There is always a Neil Young song in that catalog somewhere that is going to work for you. I also admire him for always following his heart when it comes to his music. Whether the decision was a good one or a bad one - and there were plenty of bad ones - Young never veered from where his muse took him and he’s never sold his music or created a jingle for a commercial.

So Saturday night I crossed Young off the list with my homeless-for-the-weekend friend, out in the rusting, steel traps of Worcester, MA at the DCU Center. First things first, though. The “DCU Center” will always be the Centrum. No matter who pays for the name of the building. It’s the Centrum, ok? Just getting that out of the way. We missed Everest, the opening band, but Leo and I are fans of Wilco, the middle band, and while it was very very odd for us to see them in an arena, they still put on a neat set to a very appreciative crowd. I wasn’t sure if they were fans of the band or truly surprised by a new band they were hearing, but the crowd really dug them, so I was happy to see that. It feels like yesterday when I saw them at Johnny’s D’s in Somerville three weeks before their first album came out. But it was 1995. They’ve come a long way.

Young took the stage promptly at 9:15 and hit it like a locomotive hurtling down the tracks, everything firing. The first four songs were barn burners - opened with “Love & Only Love,” then “Hey Hey, My My,” “Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere,” and then thankfully, “Powderfinger,” one of my favorite Young tunes. Truthfully, I could have gone home right then and been satisfied. And maybe I should have, because from then on it was incredibly hit-and-miss, much like Young’s career. So I wasn’t surprised, nor was I disappointed. The band sounded terrific, you had just had to wait for the nuggets you liked the best. Among those for me were “Cortez The Killer,” “Get Back To The Country,” and, despite their repetitive play on classic rock radio, “Cinnamon Girl” had the guts and whack of a band of twenty-somethings and “Old Man” had a crispness, clarity and heart that just I didn’t expect. The song which Young wrote when he was 24 is now about him and not the guy who lived near him at the time.

Oh, there were curveballs in the dirt, of course. There were two stretches in the show when he just about put the place to sleep. Which is fine, really. Again, Young was playing what he was passionate about and if he happens to be in the mood to play a lot of songs (some new) about cars and coughing up the bucks, so be it. You just want to be there when he uncorks the one or two in a row that make it worth the price of the show.

I suspect if I had seen Young previously, I would have been disappointed. But I’m glad I went, because I’m not leaving this great world until I see all the people who’ve made the music that contributed to the soundtrack of my life. Check another one off the list. Saturday night’s set list is here.

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The legendary Van Halen tour rider from the early 1980’s is up and available in all its glory at The Smoking Gun. This is the one with the whole “no brown M&M’s” thing, among other gems. Enjoy, it’s awesome.

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• Last night while Christmas shopping I popped into the Verizon Wireless store and finally got to see a Blackberry Storm in action. There sure have been a lot of lukewarm reviews of this phone, as most people who use Blackberries use them because of the physical keyboard, which is gone on the Storm, replaced by a touch screen keyboard — which a lot of people were harping negative about. Me, I had absolutely no problem on that keyboard (note: I was using it in landscape mode with the full qwerty display). I guess my fingers must be skinnier than most, because I was rolling through test emails and text messages on the Storm with no problems at all. The negatives: the speed in switching between applications and also the landscape-to-portrait screen switch were way too slow. I’m pretty sure that’ll be addressed in software updates. The BIG negative for me: there doesn’t appear to be a cradle that will act as both an FM Transmitter and charger for my car. I don’t drive without my IPod sitting in that FM transmitter, so if Blackberry or some aftermarket company can’t produce one soon, I’ll have to go with the IPhone, despite the horror that AT&T is. Here’s a Twitter-stream of folks using the Storm.

• Amusing little ditty: every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I take the kids to day care in the morning and pick them up in the afternoon. This morning I had the Apple TV rolling during the kids breakfast with a bunch of music. Recently I went online and found a bunch of my favorite movie and TV show quotes, most of them about :30-45 seconds long. Now as the music shuffles through, there’s an occasional intermission between songs with funny movie/TV quotes. This morning while feeding the boys, an old Beavis & Butthead piece came on and both kids just started laughing. I am not sure yet if this is good or bad.

• I’m serious - listen to that Delta Spirit song I posted yesterday.

• Gross

• I’m somewhat terrified to get a Christmas tree, given that our boys are now getting themselves into just about everything. Should I be worried about them pulling it down? I think it’s obvious that there will be no ornaments or lights within reach.

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I’ve written more than once here about my appreciation for all things Nada Surf, so I’m not going to go into any detail about how great a band they are and how they inexplicably keep getting better with age. Their live show is always a bomb of great rock ‘n’ roll and they proved it yet again last Tuesday at The Paradise. Despite my having a pretty horrendous chest cold, I went anyway. Because there’s certain bands you just cannot miss.

However, I was glad we got there in time to see the opening band, a group I’ve never heard of called The Delta Spirit. They were thrilling. A little more earthy than Nada Surf’s music, but the pairing made a heck of a lot of sense. They appear to be a five-piece (not sure about how many they have for studio recordings) and add in a nice occasional mix of piano, harmonica and things like tamborine and other little knick-knacks that make things very interesting. The next morning I downloaded their album (yes, I paid for it) and it’s really resonating. Their singer appears to be a very young guy, but his voice has that weathered feel that makes him sound older than he is. The live show is filled with energy all around. This is a very exciting find. Here’s a sample, the song is called “Trashcan.” Enjoy. Leave feedback if you want. Highly recommended……the whole album is solid.

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I play a game of pickup hockey nearly every Monday night. For those of you who aren’t into sports or whatnot, the word “pickup” just means it’s not a league. So there’s no refs, we loosely keep score and there’s no whistles. This particular group on average is much younger than I am and the speed is quite fast. It keeps me on my toes, keeps me in good shape and also keeps my self-esteem firmly ensconced in the back corner of a closet somewhere. It’s always a really good game.

Anyway, I walked into the locker room last night and stepped right into the middle of a story being told by one of the very few guys in the room who is older than I am (by 2 or 3 years tops). He was talking about when he was home for college once around 16 years ago and a cousin or relative came out of the closet to his family and then was subsequently banished from the family for it. Nobody really sounded surprised or shocked about it, then the guy says, “I didn’t care, really, back then I was in college and more accepting of anything.”

I wonder what might have happened to make him less accepting? It does seem that as a lot of people get older, they get more conservative. But why? What happens from, say, age 20 to 30 to 40 that moves some people to a more UN-accepting viewpoint? For me, I’ve become far more accepting than I was at age 20. A lot of that can be attibuted to working in a fairly non-traditional, artistic business most of my 20’s, where being gay was so plainly accepted that I didn’t even bat an eyelash at any of it. I also attended a very liberal university, so that opened my eyes as well. Look, everyone is entitled to their opinion, so my question isn’t a criticism, it’s more of a sociological observation and a question about why some people evolve the way they do.

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I don’t know where the threshold is, but it’s somewhere around 17-18 months - when your kids start really running around and developing their personalities. Now, as every parent wishes, you hope you’ve set the tone for their temperament, but each human is their own sculpture - there’s only a certain amount of shaping for their genetics and their observation of you. So on Saturday night, we took them to a party and hope the best. What we found is that parties are very tiring. I was looking forward to seeing some people I hadn’t seen in a while. After attending this event, I feel like I still haven’t seen them, because the longest conversation I had was probably one minute long.

The rest of the time is spent following kids to make sure they don’t a) destroy something valuable in someone else’s house, b) kill themselves or c) harm another child. So the party was a success in that regard. In fact, I got true joy out of watching Zachary obsessively play a piano (a real one) for the majority of the night. Occasionally he would look up at me and just smile, then put his head down and keep banging on the keys. I got additional joy out of watching Nathan wave at everyone and smile. That was nice.

But, boy, were we tired. Parties are hard. I was jealous of the parents who have kids over, say, 5. They can just drop their kids on the floor and they all go play together or whatnot while the adults get to talk. Oh, it’s hard for them in other ways, I get that. I don’t think being a parent is ever easy.  But I do look forward to that time when I can just be at a party and do normal things like eat and speak!

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I’ve always had great interest in the auto business and many years back I thought I may want to make a career of it (not selling them, I mean at the corporate level). I think it’s probably because here in the modern day, cars say a LOT about who we are. They are a decent indicator of someone’s personality and in most cases, one’s financial status. I say “in most cases” because there are the frivolous folks out there who go beyond their means. But whatever, I’m not judging, just stating fact. My point is that I believe you can get a good read on someone if you just look at their car.

If you were to look at my ‘02 Camry for instance, you’d think, “safe, right down the middle, takes little risks financially, loves stability and doesn’t need flash to keep him happy.” And you’d be about 90% right - I admit to needing a little flash (hello, 42-inch TV and Apple TV)! My long-winded point: it saddens me greatly to see what’s happening to the American auto companies. I’ve said before in this space that I would like nothing more than to see them succeed and I really, truly believe they will. I also believe that GM’s stock is a STEAL right now, though I haven’t put my money where my mouth is…..yet.

The issue with the U.S. car companies is purely one of trust. American cars were bad for a whole generation (mine) and now that they’re starting to be seen as mostly solid and dependable again, they may be turning the corner. But have you ever tried to turn a corner while driving a cruise ship? Takes some time. That’s why I hope that they get some funding from the government. In addition to the horrible trickle-down effect on our economy if one of these companies shuts down - and I don’t mean Chrysler - I think it would just take more wind out of our sails. Given everything that’s gone on the last 8 years, we simply don’t need that.

But the money should come with conditions. HUGE conditions. If the Obama administration is smart, they will have the foresight to look well into the future and see a world where electric/hybrid/whatever vehicles will be the norm. Where cars that get not 30, not 40, not 50, but 60+ miles per gallon are the way to people’s pocketbooks and pride. Again, this can’t be done overnight - mandating car companies to short-term, unattainable goals will only cripple them more - they need to equip factories to make such vehicles, they need to work out the technologies and they need to adjust the workforce to accomodate it all. It will take time, so some some sort of tiered plan must be the way. 

I’m 76,500 miles into my Camry now. I suspect I have a few years left. As tempting as it is right now to go out and upgrade, I think my options will be tenfold better in five years than they are today. I also truly believe that by the time I’m ready, American cars very well may be positioned far better. Like they said on the X-Files, I WANT to believe.

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I had an interesting exchange on Facebook with some old high school classmates last week. Over the last 1-2 months, the amount of people in my high school class (1989) who have signed up for Facebook appears to have exploded. There are people coming out of the woodwork! We’re closing in on our 20th reunion next year and I’m curious to see how that might unfold, given you can get up to date on nearly 1/3rd of the class via Facebook. 

Anyway, I had updated my Facebook status to say that I was amused at how many of the women that I was too shy to speak to back then had popped up on Facebook. I got a ton of responses, but the gist was basically that my assertion of shyness was ridiculous. Now, this is partially true - I would be the first to admit that if you knew me well enough, I was anything BUT shy. Alas, there was a whole set of people (ahem…women) that I was just too shy to talk to. Awkward, even. No idea why. I am sure it had something to do with confidence. It also seems that the women I wasn’t shy with were the ones I went to school with my whole life in Lancaster versus the other two towns, who we didn’t merge with in school until 9th grade (regional system). So I think you’d get a variety of very different answers if you asked people about me. Of course, most would simply say “who?”

Funny thing is that I never had a remotely serious girlfriend that went to my high school. There’s one person that I went on two dates with. That’s it. Seriously. The one girlfriend I did have in high school was from another school and I met her because she was bagging and I was ringing the cash register at our supermarket jobs, so I was forced to talk to her! 

So what’s with me? Multiple personalities? One of those people who you really have to get to know? Beats me. I was a wholly different person back then. Then again, it was half a lifetime ago now, so I would imagine we’ve all changed. I know a few who haven’t, though.

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I’ve always been curious about people’s ATM habits. When I was in college (90-94), I had the option to take $5 out of the ATM. I miss those days. Then they had minimums of $10, which I hated, because it meant I could impulsively go get $10 out of the bank and go buy a CD. This meant I’d probably have to skip a lunch or a dinner and beg a roommate to share food or whatever. That problem was easily solved, though: I had two jobs in college, one was at the local supermarket and the other was at the Kent Student Center - both offered plenty of, uh, secret eating opportunities. 

Anyway, I don’t remember when it became the de facto minimum of $20 at the ATM. As I’ve gotten older and advanced in the workplace, it became less of an issue, but sometimes I wish I still had the option to take less than $20, at least. Because it seems the more I take out, the quicker it exits my wallet. 

The amount I take out most often now is $60. What is your “go-to” amount when you take money out at the ATM? 

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Two good little tidbits captured from the internet over the last week or so:

• Interesting little ditty written by Nirvana’s Krist Novaselic about that night at the 1992 MTV Music Video Awards (in my old man voice: when they were actually interesting to watch) when Novaselic tossed his bass up into the air, only to miss the instrument on the way down and have it clock him in the head. The actual event isn’t as funny as the backstage interaction Cobain had with Axl Rose. Novaselic apparently pops up occasionally in this column. Drummer Dave Grohl also has a decent story on the event.

• Now - to sports. I swear to you that before this baseball season (2008) even started, I was thinking to myself about David Ortiz. And I kept coming back around to the Mo Vaughn situation the Red Sox had back in the late ’90s when he was about to become a free agent. The two stories have very similar parallels. Their physical makeup is very similar and their five year arc of being unbelievable, fearsome power hitters are very similar. Ortiz, of course, has proven himself to be a far superior clutch hitter. But the similarities between the two cannot be overlooked. Here are Vaughn’s career numbers and here are Ortiz’s. So anyway, I was thinking back before the ‘08 season started that given the similarities, we might expect Ortiz to run into the same health issues as Vaughn did - slowly sort of falling apart. Of course, one never knows, but I do actually agree with Chad Finn’s article about trading Ortiz while the gettin’ is good. I have felt this way since spring training last March.

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Lots of people think the music business is falling apart. It is, to a certain extent, and that’s a good thing. Ever since recorded music became available for purchase, it’s largely been class warfare - the record labels (the rich) and the artists (the poor). Exploitation repeated itself time and time again and the artists were the Charlie Brown’s, always having the ball pulled away at the last second. 

No more. It’s not a done deal yet, but the collapse of the music business as we know it is almost complete. More and more artists are realizing that the emergence of downloads/digital is their chance to cut out the bullshit, i.e., the labels. As much as Lefsetz babbles on and on about everything in his blog, one thing he repeats a lot sticks as gospel to me - labels need to evolve themselves more into artist managers than the big-stick wielding entities that they are. Or they’re done. It’s kinda that simple.

A recent article over at Techcrunch showcases a telling tale. At a recent music industry conference, the keynote speech was given by Ian Rogers, who used to run Yahoo Music and realized quickly that DRM and copy protection will NEVER be the answer. He now leads the forward-looking Topspin, which is looking to be the pipe for music’s new “middle class.” Among other things, he pointed out how the recent album release from David Byrne & Brian Eno (which is actually quite a good record) might be the norm sometime in the future:

The first example is David Byrne and Brian Eno’s new album Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. By distributing digitally and keeping most of the profits themselves, the gross revenues of the album matched what they could have expected to get as an advance from a music label within the first 50 days. The second example is a lesser-known artist in his twenties, Joe Purdy, who has sold 650,000 tracks on iTunes and was able to buy a house from the proceeds.

How about that? I’ve never heard of Joe Purdy, but good for him. That’s the way things should be. Here’s the full piece at Techcrunch (not that long). And here’s one of the tracks from that surprisingly good Byrne/Eno album. It’s the best work I think Byrne has done since his Talking Heads days. 

UPDATE: Here’s a more detailed analysis of the Topspin/Byrne-Eno story - excellent read.

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It is a very tempting time to buy a new car. Years ago, I might have done so on a mere whim. The economy is horrendous, the automobile companies are a disaster and based on a few friends I know who’ve purchased lately, the deals are fantastic. I might view it as a good opportunity to finally get myself into a Hybrid vehicle. But as I make my way into my late 30s, my fiscal conservativeness continues to apply me in a tighter headlock. We probably could get a car, but we’re not. For some reason, this recession feels more threatening than the 2000-2001 recession did. Part of it has to be the new spawn that now live with us. Like they say, that changes everything. But it’s more than that - there’s a quiet nervousness about everything given the plummet we’ve seen since late summer. It’s frightening.

So I’ll continue driving my 2002 Camry. Hell, it only has 76,000 miles on it and I get it serviced every 3-5K miles. So if Consumer Reports is right, than I have another 5-7 years left on this thing. At least. We’ll see if my, um, vanity can last that long.

I see that Blitzen Trapper, one of my new bands-of-the-month, made an appearance on Conan O’Brien on Monday. Here’s the video:

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Last night Steph went out for a bit and I was sitting in our kitchen after dinner, getting caught up on some work email. My father-in-law, Steve, stopped in to pick up something that we had borrowed from them and we started talking for a few minutes. The day after Obama was elected, he had sent an email to both of his daughters with a brief reflection of the historic moment that had just occurred in our country. Steph showed me the email and something caught my eye that I could barely believe, so I had to ask him about it.

Turns out I wasn’t imagining things. Steve spent Martin Luther King’s 33rd birthday WITH him. King was speaking at Steve’s college and not only did he get to introduce King to the student body for the speech King made at the college, he also had dinner (cake and all) with King and about ten other people afterwards at the home of one of the college professors. This was 1962! We are talking about arguably some of the peak years of civil unrest in the United States. 

So we spoke about it for a few more minutes and Steve went on to say that in observing King, the way he spoke, the way he carried himself, there was an obvious resolve in the man to solve the problems our nation was facing through non-violent means. It wasn’t a facade when the speech was over and the lights turned down. This man lived it. Breathed it. Believed it. And Steve also mentioned that despite the resolve of King, there was also a true sadness to the man.

Amazing story. I told him and Steph that there has to be a book soon, because the work he did and the life he pursued probably deserves documentation of some kind.

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I remember back in the 1980’s when there was a huge hullabaloo across New England about the fact that Boston (the band) was finally going to release another album. The buildup to it was immense. It had taken them something like seven years to complete “Third Stage,” and in the months leading up to it, you would have thought the Pope was coming. Then the first single, “Amanda” hit radio and everyone flipped out, even though the song itself wasn’t exactly what we wanted to hear as freshman in high school. I mean, come on. Where was “Smokin’?” 

So the album came out. And of course, it was a disappointment, despite its huge sales numbers. I don’t even know that it was bad (ok, it was bad), it was just that so much was made of the wait that it became totally impossible to satisfy the buildup. 

I just heard the first Guns ‘N’ Roses single from their upcoming album, which took - get this - FOURTEEN years to make. Are you even kidding me? The last time they released an album, Bill Clinton had just taken office. Today, full albums mean nothing, sadly. We are, more and more, a music society built on single songs. Part of me thinks this is perfectly logical, as it’s very rare to come across an album that is packed front to back with quality. The other part of me, the sentimentalist, dearly misses discovering a full album - the joy of a great song here and the drag of a weak song there. Those days are pretty much over.

So anyway, Guns ‘N’ Roses don’t have a chance. Oh, people will go see them because they want a sniff of the old stuff, but the new album will be received exactly the same way “Third Stage” was. It’ll sell nicely, then after about five minutes it will hit your dustbin. Doesn’t even matter how good it is, the buildup has already destroyed it. Oh - and the single? Not. Good. At. All.

And who cares? I don’t. Not when Built To Spill and Band of Horses keep hitting home runs like they do.

Here’s an applicable song to today’s post by Built to Spill, called “The Wait”

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We had a good plan. On Sunday, I was to fly down to NYC because I had two meetings down there, one Monday and one Tuesday. Steph was going to come down later on Monday and we were going to have - get this - two nights in NYC. Unheard of, really. Part of the trip was that some friends of ours just had a baby, so we were going to visit them as well. Seems so simple, right? Here’s what really happened:

• The trip started out great! I got on the Delta Shuttle (general seating, much like Southwest) and it turns out they had a first class cabin - general seating! - so I grabbed a first class seat. Sweet. Eventless flight, land in NYC, get to hotel. Allergies rocking my sinuses in full force, just like they have been since August 24th.

• Wake up the next morning and my head is pounding. Uh-oh. Sinus headache from allergies. And I forgot my Sudafed at home. Not just the normal Sudafed, either. I get the meth lab Sudafed where you have to bring the card up to the register and have them scan your license and sign stuff. The good stuff.  Anyway, I forgot it. Call Steph, have her bring it down. No problems!

• Problems. Whenever I get out of a cab I scan the back seat to make sure I’ve left nothing in there. I do this ALL THE TIME. But my head is pounding, my stomach hurts a little (probably hungry) and this time I get out of the cab without looking. Five minutes later I’m setting up shop in the NY office and my Blackberry is gone, like a fart in the wind. Poof. Back of the cab. Shit!

• Feeling progressively worse, but still thinking it’s allergies because I missed a day on Sudafed. Meeting number one cancels on me (I am somewhat relieved). Not hungry at all, so I skip lunch.

• I get an email from Steph. An absolute SAINT named Julie has called her and tells her she found my Blackberry in the back of a cab. I am overjoyed and also now thinking this just might not be allergies, because I am really starting to feel craptastic. Advil has dulled the sinus headache a little, but my stomach is flaring, my throat hurts and the congestion is now more along the lines of head cold and not allergy.

• Highlight of my day - I go over to the Credit Swisse offices at 24th and Madison and get my Blackberry back. I nearly bow and kiss Julie’s feet. She’s about 6 foot 7. 

• Steph arrives in town at about 4pm. I finish work (somehow) and get back to the hotel at 6:30pm. We go out for dinner, but dinner for me is abbreviated. I’m surprised I was able to eat the amount I ate and I need to stay upright for a couple of hours after - unsettled stomach. Now it is obvious - this ain’t no allergies anymore, this is a bad head cold and possibly the flu.

• Next morning confirms it - flu. Stomach bad. Horrific congestion. Headache. NO energy. I got nothing. Still, like an idiot, I go to the office. Like a aged prizefighter, I wobble around the ring and finally fall to the canvas at about 1pm. I cancel meeting #2 and go back to the hotel, where I stay, horizontal, until 9:30am yesterday. Train home yesterday.

 

 

 

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Stephanie and I had an interesting conversation the other night. What if we were get rid of Comcast entirely? Our phone would go away and we’d be on 100% cell. We’d have to pay for an internet connection, of course, but could get that through Verizon’s Fios. TV is easy - you can now get pretty much any show (HD and non) via the Apple TV, which we have. We only have about 4-5 shows that we watch regularly, so it’s not like we’d be breaking the bank for it.

Yes, other costs would go up (cell bill, internet since it’s not packaged) but it seems like we’d save some relatively significant money. This is a problem the cable companies are going to face sooner than later as Apple TV-type boxes make their way into people’s living rooms. Getting TV shows and movies via the internet instead of via your coaxial is coming fast! 

Alas, there’s one major issue here - sports. Still can’t get that via Apple TV. And while I don’t watch much sports these days, I still want the option to watch it and it needs to be there and available to me, even if I only watch four games a year of whatever. But I can’t imagine it’ll be long before the pro sports leagues realize the importance of the “on demand” model and start piping it in to you the same way we’d get our shows - live via the Apple TV or some similar contraption, for a per game fee. Oh yes, I’d do that in a second.

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