let's kick things off with a little ryan, shall we?

obviously.

in the honor of last night being the final night i will ever spend in my bedroom in westview terrace, i decided to fixate today on two ryan adams songs that come to mind a lot when i'm thinking about my old apartment and things that happened there and around there.

since i of course have all of ryan's 6,500 songs completely memorized, what this really means is "i heard these two songs today and i want to type about them and post videos because i have my computer and internet back and am alone on my new apartment".

so.

the first song is "so alive", my favorite song from "rock 'n roll". this is (honestly, this time) the ryan song for me when it comes to listening to loud, brash rock with not quite as much substance as a "heartbreaker" or "cold roses". everytime i listen to this song, i want to fucking hit someone in the face, drive a car really fast, and have sex with someone who sort of hates me all at the same time. how's THAT for a ringing endorsement?

so here's a video of ryan and his then-band (the killers, i believe...no, not those "the killers") playing "so alive" live:


and here's a download of the song from one of my favorite ryan shows, the 12-11-2003 sonic apocalypse. you'll notice everyone playing a guitar seems to start in a different key, and things don't pick up much from there, quality-wise, but it's a perfect snapshot of the pre-sobriety ryan adams plowing through the finish line of another show/bender. the rest of the show ain't bad, either, especially the five or six stage dives during the first encore song...

the second song is "everybody knows", a song which i didn't really like that much until i heard it at the elsinore theatre in january and everything sort of clicked about it for me. whereas the main draw of "so alive" is the driving rhythm and the guitars that make you want to smash bank windows, "everybody knows" is one of those excellent lyrical songs where ryan manages to put down a really complicated concept in concise but flowery language. and the cresendo/bridge thingie partway through is a great little jam...it doesn't sound like much maybe in recorded form, but it turned the apathetic indie-music crowd in the elsinore into a mass of synchronized, fist-pumping, smiling humans. so it must be doing something right.

video:


live download (from 1/26/2008)

i know i probably posted these videos and stuff before, but i haven't been here long enough yet to want to whine about how lonely i am and how hard it is to write songs. that'll probably be tomorrow.