so, i made a rather impulsive and hasty decision (treebeard would be discomfited) yesterday to switch my blogging platform to tumblr. the interface is great, it's way easier to set up twitter and facebook forwarding, and hooking it up to my lazyblazers.com domain was super easy. all things that blogger made unnecessarily difficult. plus, now that i'm in the habit of making many short posts rather than many long posts, tumblr appeals to me...not having to navigate all the (admittedly nice) options and menus on blogger will make things easier and faster.
nonetheless, i made something ridiculous like 1,250 posts on this blog over a few years, and a lot of those words and the thoughts and comments generated by them helped get me through a lot of tough times, so it's a bit sad to close the doors on the ol' blogger. then there's the madden 2003 playoff coverage, which was just, like, whoa.
anyway, i'll be on blog.lazyblazers.com still, it'll just point to my tumblr blog now. it's also (amazingly simply) set up to cross-post to facebook and twitter. so if you follow me there, get ready to get frustrated and stop.
also, i'll be leaving this blog open in case i want to come back to it someday, so my little emo corner of the internet here will still be open for business.
confucius once said "only the wisest and stupidest of men ever change". huh.
Dec 8, 2010
Nov 2, 2010
RIDESHARE - Phish 2000.05.23
I can't seem to get enough Phish lately, and the Phish shows indulge me by continually being awesome. It's a vicious cycle.
I'm digging through a lot of solid '92-'93 stuff right now, but about a week ago I tumbled to a great '02 show and this amazing '00 one.
Phish 2000 shows, when they're good, hit that spot where it's almost like a 90s-era Phish live mixtape: you get some early 90s shredding, some mid-90s technique, some late-90s funk, and a few Farmhouse tracks jammed out in jaw-dropping ways that only seemed to happen before the hiatus. This show is one of those.
"AC/DC Bag" sounds like it could have come straight from a '92 show, and it moves right into "Wilson", and then, just when you're settling into the groove, out comes "First Tube" to surprise and otherwise stimulate you.
Take, for instance, the "Weekapaug"-less "Mike's" that comes out of "Ya Mar" and goes into "Simple", then "It's Ice" before finishing up the run with "When the Circus Comes". Not only are these segues effective, that combination of songs is just bizarre. Just reading it makes me want to listen again.
Pretty much the entire second set is this way too...and the band jams throughout in a way that's fitting to the setlist...oftentimes you can almost hear them reaching to figure out a way to connect such interestingly disparate material. And that's a good thing. This weird mix doesn't work 100% of the time, but I'd rather listen to a show like this than a perfectly played but paint-by-numbers show any day. I should eat this show.
I'm digging through a lot of solid '92-'93 stuff right now, but about a week ago I tumbled to a great '02 show and this amazing '00 one.
Phish 2000 shows, when they're good, hit that spot where it's almost like a 90s-era Phish live mixtape: you get some early 90s shredding, some mid-90s technique, some late-90s funk, and a few Farmhouse tracks jammed out in jaw-dropping ways that only seemed to happen before the hiatus. This show is one of those.
"AC/DC Bag" sounds like it could have come straight from a '92 show, and it moves right into "Wilson", and then, just when you're settling into the groove, out comes "First Tube" to surprise and otherwise stimulate you.
Take, for instance, the "Weekapaug"-less "Mike's" that comes out of "Ya Mar" and goes into "Simple", then "It's Ice" before finishing up the run with "When the Circus Comes". Not only are these segues effective, that combination of songs is just bizarre. Just reading it makes me want to listen again.
Pretty much the entire second set is this way too...and the band jams throughout in a way that's fitting to the setlist...oftentimes you can almost hear them reaching to figure out a way to connect such interestingly disparate material. And that's a good thing. This weird mix doesn't work 100% of the time, but I'd rather listen to a show like this than a perfectly played but paint-by-numbers show any day. I should eat this show.
RIDESHARE - Wilco 2004.11.13
This review is mega-short because, honestly, I listened to this like 2 weeks ago and after everything that's happened since then, I barely remember it.
Here's the setlist.
Most of the main set was standard 2004-era Ghost tracks, until the end which was a particularly stellar "Poor Places" > "Spiders" match-up.
Also of mention was the first encore's rare "Another Man's Done Gone" and "Candyfloss".
High quality show, but nothing revolutionary if you've already heard some 2004 SBDs.
Here's the setlist.
Most of the main set was standard 2004-era Ghost tracks, until the end which was a particularly stellar "Poor Places" > "Spiders" match-up.
Also of mention was the first encore's rare "Another Man's Done Gone" and "Candyfloss".
High quality show, but nothing revolutionary if you've already heard some 2004 SBDs.
Oct 18, 2010
RIDESHARE - Phish 06.11.1994
setlist here.
this is the only full show i've gotten to in the last couple of weeks, though i've gotten partially through a pair of fantastic phish shows (2000 and 2002, surprisingly) that i'll review as soon as i find the third disc of each and listen to it.
this show is one of the treasured june '94 phish run, arguably one of the finest months of live music ever done by anyone ever in the universe of history for all time. infinitely.
while i didn't like this show as much as i did the 06.18.94 show, it could still be one of the not-best-ever-but-still-best parts of the best-ever month of 6/94. make sense? let's move on.
this setlist was definitely more interesting. it starts off with some pretty standard rockers ("wilson", "chalkdust torture", and an amazing version of "you enjoy myself"). YEM segues into "rift", and then things really start to pick up. as usual, "rift" live is a little spotty, but "down with disease" and "it's ice" are standouts of the first set. "tela" is an interesting addition; a song i hadn't heard in awhile and that put a smile on my face. but, you know, it's not really known for its jam pyrotechnics. "stash" was a solid, if standard-to-great rocking jam to end the set on.
the "2001" > "antelope" opener was a great way to start the second set. "flufflhead" is one of my favorites, and this was a pretty standard version. the rest of the second set and the "suzy" encore is when things really started to take off and never really let up.
the selection of songs is the attraction here. there's a great variety of songs in the setlist, but not really any terribly exploratory or strange jams to enjoy...most of the show is flat-out rock-jamming, so if that's your thing you'll love this show. it goes without saying that this sort-of-criticism should be considered along with the fact that this is a june '94 show, which means that even if most of the show is straight-up rock, every single note is perfect, all the harmonies are spot-on, and every solo is perfect. so, while i found the 6/18 show more interesting, this one is still better than 90 percent of any other live music (and any other phish) that you'll ever hear.
this is the only full show i've gotten to in the last couple of weeks, though i've gotten partially through a pair of fantastic phish shows (2000 and 2002, surprisingly) that i'll review as soon as i find the third disc of each and listen to it.
this show is one of the treasured june '94 phish run, arguably one of the finest months of live music ever done by anyone ever in the universe of history for all time. infinitely.
while i didn't like this show as much as i did the 06.18.94 show, it could still be one of the not-best-ever-but-still-best parts of the best-ever month of 6/94. make sense? let's move on.
this setlist was definitely more interesting. it starts off with some pretty standard rockers ("wilson", "chalkdust torture", and an amazing version of "you enjoy myself"). YEM segues into "rift", and then things really start to pick up. as usual, "rift" live is a little spotty, but "down with disease" and "it's ice" are standouts of the first set. "tela" is an interesting addition; a song i hadn't heard in awhile and that put a smile on my face. but, you know, it's not really known for its jam pyrotechnics. "stash" was a solid, if standard-to-great rocking jam to end the set on.
the "2001" > "antelope" opener was a great way to start the second set. "flufflhead" is one of my favorites, and this was a pretty standard version. the rest of the second set and the "suzy" encore is when things really started to take off and never really let up.
the selection of songs is the attraction here. there's a great variety of songs in the setlist, but not really any terribly exploratory or strange jams to enjoy...most of the show is flat-out rock-jamming, so if that's your thing you'll love this show. it goes without saying that this sort-of-criticism should be considered along with the fact that this is a june '94 show, which means that even if most of the show is straight-up rock, every single note is perfect, all the harmonies are spot-on, and every solo is perfect. so, while i found the 6/18 show more interesting, this one is still better than 90 percent of any other live music (and any other phish) that you'll ever hear.
Oct 17, 2010
late saturday night polemic: singlism is stupid and should die in a fire
so, as i've been made increasingly aware by the internet, there's this thing called "singlism". as many of its proponents point out, it's a stupid word. as i am now going to point out in the most polemical fashion possible, it's also a stupid concept.
it is perhaps telling that in the most coherent and professionally-published piece on singlism i could find (through an admittedly quick google search), there is no concrete example, ever, of how people have been, or will in the future be discriminated against by the fact of their being single. there's a lot of mumbo-jumbo about how people who are single are frowned upon in the workplace and in life because being single isn't "normal" or whatever, but beyond that i see no reason in any of the reason i've done thus far for organized, militant action on behalf of singles whose lives are judged so pointless in our relationship-obsessed culture that that culture goes out of its way to enact its bias against singles in real-world ways like paying them less (as women are paid less, on average than men) or giving their children lower-quality education (as is generally the case for minority children when compared to whites).
and there's where my first problem arises. it's a purely rhetorical one, to be sure, but i'm still angry and want to rip the heads off of teddy bears: the idea that somehow singlism is on par in severity or in the necessity for social awareness with racism, sexism, or classism is just absolutely ridiculous and is a testament to how transparent those first three things are to most white, upper-middle class americans (generally the people agitating against singlism). is there a set of culturally-reinforced assumptions made on behalf of single people by not-single people? yes, of course. is the practice of group A making up a set of then-culturally-reinforced assumptions about group B based on perceived difference as a way of group A self-reinforcing their already-assumed superiority a practice that's been going on for at least thousands of years, partially as a method of defining community? yes, of course. people in relationships are going to insist that being in a relationship is the norm, the same way that men who get to have better jobs over women are going to insist that it's just normal because to argue otherwise might be to put their own jobs in jeopardy.
i'm not completely insensitive to the singlist plea. i've got a good amount of experience being single myself. now you're thinking: "wow, the dude who insists on hard evidence from the internet is going to prove his point using personal anecdotes?" yes. shut up.
there was a period not long ago at all where i was single for about three years. going into said period, i was pretty aware that it was likely to be a long single period (i.e. i wasn't really interested in dating, didn't think i would be for awhile, and didn't know of anyone that was beating my door down to get a ride in my motor-carriage). as such, i tried to approach it constructively. unlike, say, the last time i was single for an extended period of time, coming out of a long high school relationship that i, in my AWESOME high school naivety (is that a word?) thought was going to last forever. the result was a decent near-year's worth of sullen depression until (of course, you guessed it) i met someone else and got to scurry back to the haven to dated-dom rather than deal with my issues.
anyway, the time was i was most recently single was rough, in a lot of ways. especially the second year or so, which coincided with the time in which most of my friends moved from pullman and i, too socially awkward to really make any new friends, basically spent an entire year or so in my apartment watching movies and playing madden 2003. eventually, though, i decided that four virtual super bowl rings were enough to secure my online legacy and i ventured back out into the world.
i guess my point is that i learned a lot through those years, both about making friends and about dating relationships. i learned a lot about how i had viewed friendships and relationships before and how detrimental my own selfish need for that kind of contact made it so difficult for me to initiate in the first place. interesting thought: if you don't desperately, creepily, intensely need every interaction you engage in to sustain your mental and spiritual health, those interactions get a lot easier, and more fun, and ultimately more fulfilling.
and i wouldn't have learned all that downward-facing-dog-bullshit had i remained in relationships. i had to hit what my old self regarded as the bottom to realize that that bottom was really just a different type of life. aside from the snarky label (which i'll get to in a minute), you could consider me a converted singlist. by the end of my three-year exile into singleland, i was absolutely happy and content to be alone romantically. which was about the time that i met someone and started a relationship that was functional and made me happier than i thought you were supposed to be in relationships (i don't think this was a coincidence). it's cliche (or, as spellcheck suggests, "cloche") to say that you have set the bird free and see if it comes back on it's own, but that's exactly what happened. the minute i stopped needing my life to be a certain way, the minute it became clear it was fine just the way it was.
so how does this tie back to singlism? IT DOESNT
no, i'm just kidding. it does.
"singlism" simultaneously expresses discontent and reinforces the idea that being in a relationship is a status symbol, neither of which actually helps anyone be any happier with their lot in life.
the first of my two complaints is pretty easy to grasp. if you feel the need to express loudly and clearly how perfectly okay you are with being single, to the point of discriminating and/or trash talking people who are in relationships...clearly you're not actually okay with being single. and this goes both ways, lest you think i'm choosing sides: if you really need to brag about how happy you and your SO are to everyone within hearing range, obviously things aren't going that well on some level.
the other complaint is a little more esoteric, but probably more important. i guess the best way to say it is that "singlism", by its very existence as a term and as a way of expressing difference between two perceived-different social groups, simplifies much of the reality of both being single and being in a relationship. it reinforces the idea that the main reason to be in a relationship is because you can be or because you should be - it doesn't matter if you're happy in the relationship, or who the other person is or what they're like or what they're name is...what matters is that you've got a date! on the other side, it casts not-dating as rebellion against the status symbol of dating. if you're not dating, it's not because you've got issues you're refusing to confront, or because maybe, simply, you just don't want to date. no, you're special because you're standing up to the institution! "singlism" just reinforces the idea that dating is the country club, and not-dating is wearing ripped-up jeans and ramones t-shirts...with the added "twist" of saying "hey, the ramones are fucking better than stupid golf anyway!"
if there turns out to be legitimate discrimination in any case (in a professional sense) because of someone's relationship status, then obviously that's bullshit and should be opposed. but i don't see any of that here. what i see is people who want to make a legitimate lifestyle choice a social statement. suddenly, dating or not dating is on the same level with whether you choose to wear a tie to work or a t-shirt, whether you wear dress shoes or converse all-stars. and that's not fair to the actual people you might actually be dating (or not dating), because the reality is that relationships are way more complicated than this stupid binary gives them credit for. it's like reducing politics to two parties just so that everyone has to pick a side. and we can all see how well that's working out...
but i suppose that's a rant for another late saturday night.
DUH-DUUUUUUUUUH!!!
it is perhaps telling that in the most coherent and professionally-published piece on singlism i could find (through an admittedly quick google search), there is no concrete example, ever, of how people have been, or will in the future be discriminated against by the fact of their being single. there's a lot of mumbo-jumbo about how people who are single are frowned upon in the workplace and in life because being single isn't "normal" or whatever, but beyond that i see no reason in any of the reason i've done thus far for organized, militant action on behalf of singles whose lives are judged so pointless in our relationship-obsessed culture that that culture goes out of its way to enact its bias against singles in real-world ways like paying them less (as women are paid less, on average than men) or giving their children lower-quality education (as is generally the case for minority children when compared to whites).
and there's where my first problem arises. it's a purely rhetorical one, to be sure, but i'm still angry and want to rip the heads off of teddy bears: the idea that somehow singlism is on par in severity or in the necessity for social awareness with racism, sexism, or classism is just absolutely ridiculous and is a testament to how transparent those first three things are to most white, upper-middle class americans (generally the people agitating against singlism). is there a set of culturally-reinforced assumptions made on behalf of single people by not-single people? yes, of course. is the practice of group A making up a set of then-culturally-reinforced assumptions about group B based on perceived difference as a way of group A self-reinforcing their already-assumed superiority a practice that's been going on for at least thousands of years, partially as a method of defining community? yes, of course. people in relationships are going to insist that being in a relationship is the norm, the same way that men who get to have better jobs over women are going to insist that it's just normal because to argue otherwise might be to put their own jobs in jeopardy.
i'm not completely insensitive to the singlist plea. i've got a good amount of experience being single myself. now you're thinking: "wow, the dude who insists on hard evidence from the internet is going to prove his point using personal anecdotes?" yes. shut up.
there was a period not long ago at all where i was single for about three years. going into said period, i was pretty aware that it was likely to be a long single period (i.e. i wasn't really interested in dating, didn't think i would be for awhile, and didn't know of anyone that was beating my door down to get a ride in my motor-carriage). as such, i tried to approach it constructively. unlike, say, the last time i was single for an extended period of time, coming out of a long high school relationship that i, in my AWESOME high school naivety (is that a word?) thought was going to last forever. the result was a decent near-year's worth of sullen depression until (of course, you guessed it) i met someone else and got to scurry back to the haven to dated-dom rather than deal with my issues.
anyway, the time was i was most recently single was rough, in a lot of ways. especially the second year or so, which coincided with the time in which most of my friends moved from pullman and i, too socially awkward to really make any new friends, basically spent an entire year or so in my apartment watching movies and playing madden 2003. eventually, though, i decided that four virtual super bowl rings were enough to secure my online legacy and i ventured back out into the world.
i guess my point is that i learned a lot through those years, both about making friends and about dating relationships. i learned a lot about how i had viewed friendships and relationships before and how detrimental my own selfish need for that kind of contact made it so difficult for me to initiate in the first place. interesting thought: if you don't desperately, creepily, intensely need every interaction you engage in to sustain your mental and spiritual health, those interactions get a lot easier, and more fun, and ultimately more fulfilling.
and i wouldn't have learned all that downward-facing-dog-bullshit had i remained in relationships. i had to hit what my old self regarded as the bottom to realize that that bottom was really just a different type of life. aside from the snarky label (which i'll get to in a minute), you could consider me a converted singlist. by the end of my three-year exile into singleland, i was absolutely happy and content to be alone romantically. which was about the time that i met someone and started a relationship that was functional and made me happier than i thought you were supposed to be in relationships (i don't think this was a coincidence). it's cliche (or, as spellcheck suggests, "cloche") to say that you have set the bird free and see if it comes back on it's own, but that's exactly what happened. the minute i stopped needing my life to be a certain way, the minute it became clear it was fine just the way it was.
so how does this tie back to singlism? IT DOESNT
"singlism" simultaneously expresses discontent and reinforces the idea that being in a relationship is a status symbol, neither of which actually helps anyone be any happier with their lot in life.
the first of my two complaints is pretty easy to grasp. if you feel the need to express loudly and clearly how perfectly okay you are with being single, to the point of discriminating and/or trash talking people who are in relationships...clearly you're not actually okay with being single. and this goes both ways, lest you think i'm choosing sides: if you really need to brag about how happy you and your SO are to everyone within hearing range, obviously things aren't going that well on some level.
the other complaint is a little more esoteric, but probably more important. i guess the best way to say it is that "singlism", by its very existence as a term and as a way of expressing difference between two perceived-different social groups, simplifies much of the reality of both being single and being in a relationship. it reinforces the idea that the main reason to be in a relationship is because you can be or because you should be - it doesn't matter if you're happy in the relationship, or who the other person is or what they're like or what they're name is...what matters is that you've got a date! on the other side, it casts not-dating as rebellion against the status symbol of dating. if you're not dating, it's not because you've got issues you're refusing to confront, or because maybe, simply, you just don't want to date. no, you're special because you're standing up to the institution! "singlism" just reinforces the idea that dating is the country club, and not-dating is wearing ripped-up jeans and ramones t-shirts...with the added "twist" of saying "hey, the ramones are fucking better than stupid golf anyway!"
if there turns out to be legitimate discrimination in any case (in a professional sense) because of someone's relationship status, then obviously that's bullshit and should be opposed. but i don't see any of that here. what i see is people who want to make a legitimate lifestyle choice a social statement. suddenly, dating or not dating is on the same level with whether you choose to wear a tie to work or a t-shirt, whether you wear dress shoes or converse all-stars. and that's not fair to the actual people you might actually be dating (or not dating), because the reality is that relationships are way more complicated than this stupid binary gives them credit for. it's like reducing politics to two parties just so that everyone has to pick a side. and we can all see how well that's working out...
but i suppose that's a rant for another late saturday night.
DUH-DUUUUUUUUUH!!!
Oct 6, 2010
ever wanted to hear a big beat mashup of phish and the dead?
i've been a little bit obsessed with this set of remix/mash-ups that i found on soundcloud the other day. all of it's pretty much great - the guy has a great ear (?) for this stuff. if you're in a hurry, though, just check out "a gentle hell" (a trippy version of wilco's "hell is chrome" mashed with thievery corporation), "just break" (jurassic 5 and radiohead), and best of all "freezerflowerfluff" (phish's "tweezer" and "fluffhead" mashed with the dead's "china cat sunflower").
Bonnaroo Booty by mopo
Bonnaroo Booty by mopo
hang it on the fridge 2!: my first ecopoem
so, i've reading a metric shit-ton of ecopoetry lately and while it's not really my genre (mixing environmental justice and poiesis has never really seemed like a recipe for anything but disaster, but i digress), i thought i'd write a poem mimicking some of the gestures i see in a lot of these poems. let me know what you think!
------------------------------
i'm eleven miles from pasco
traveling south on US-395
when it hits me
this smell that clouds the air
invisibly suffuses my car
slides through the air vents
and dives down my nose
at first contact it's
already too late
it's everywhere
i don't smell it as much as feel it
it punches my sinuses like a double shot of vodka
with slightly rotting sausage floating in it
at this point, my eyes are watering
the factory smokestacks dotting the banks of the columbia
in the distance
reduced to white smudges against a blue sky
after a few moments, my brain assimilates the assault crookedly
responding with both nausea and hunger
to a smell that makes less sense on the level of instinct
than the sensation of having your own arm hacked off
now, at various points in my life you could have rightly called me
hippie
bleeding-heart
inhumanist
vegan
idealist
granola
etc.
and it would have been accurate
but
i wouldn't be exaggerating if i said i would gladly give up
my car
my computer
my apartment
my guitars
my furniture
my bed
my bicycle
my microwave
my refrigerator
my records
my TV
and my shoes
if it would make it so no one on earth would ever
have to smell
that smell
again.
------------------------------
i'm eleven miles from pasco
traveling south on US-395
when it hits me
this smell that clouds the air
invisibly suffuses my car
slides through the air vents
and dives down my nose
at first contact it's
already too late
it's everywhere
i don't smell it as much as feel it
it punches my sinuses like a double shot of vodka
with slightly rotting sausage floating in it
at this point, my eyes are watering
the factory smokestacks dotting the banks of the columbia
in the distance
reduced to white smudges against a blue sky
after a few moments, my brain assimilates the assault crookedly
responding with both nausea and hunger
to a smell that makes less sense on the level of instinct
than the sensation of having your own arm hacked off
now, at various points in my life you could have rightly called me
hippie
bleeding-heart
inhumanist
vegan
idealist
granola
etc.
and it would have been accurate
but
i wouldn't be exaggerating if i said i would gladly give up
my car
my computer
my apartment
my guitars
my furniture
my bed
my bicycle
my microwave
my refrigerator
my records
my TV
and my shoes
if it would make it so no one on earth would ever
have to smell
that smell
again.
RIDESHARE: Wilco 04.28.2000
like all the other millenia-era wilco shows i've listened to lately, this one was a grower. at first i spent awhile nearly driving off the road while screwing with my CD player's EQ (the recording, though a SBD, is not necessarily the best, and the vocals are really low in the mix with the odd combination of drums and keys being preeminent). on top of all that, "candyfloss", which is the first song and one of my early-era wilco favorites, starts about 2/3rds of the way through the song. what is it with wilco recordings lately and cutting off the first half of the opening song?
i was considering taking the disc out and playing something else until "i must be high" came on. it was a really interesting version: energetic and folksy, but with that unmistakable post-summerteeth electronic touch. this was a theme throughout the show. some of the best moments of this show are the times when you get to hear a.m. or being there songs sounding more like yankee hotel outtakes than their original versions. another main set highlight was "hotel arizona", hands down my favorite song on being there, recreated into a wholly different animal and yet still just familiar enough to be fascinating.
this band sounds so different than the raucous noise-jam band of even a few years previous. while they're clearly still willing to experiment on stage, they do so with a little bit more patience, and ultimately their sound is better for it. take, for example, "how to fight loneliness", which gets a few little instrumental jams throughout the song. while it might have been "experimental" for the wilco of '97 to scale this quiet, introspective song into a flurry of feedback screams as it neared its end, this wilco peppers the song with quiet but complex instrumental interplay that's just as impressive but that suits the tone of the song. when every single song doesn't end with everyone screaming and guitars catching on fire, it makes the songs in the set more distinguishable and thus makes the show in general a more nuanced experience.
anyway, one of the "loud" highlights, as usual, was "someone else's song", played as a metal dirge. the main set closed with "misunderstood", and most of the double (triple?) encore was mermaid avenue songs. so if you're not a fan of those albums, the second half of this show might be a wash for you. i really dug it, especially, as usual, the "hoodoo voodoo" closer.
if there's one gripe i have about this show it's that, for all the summerteeth material in the setlist, none of the songs were played like summerteeth songs. maybe this was a choice on the band's part, or maybe they simply just didn't have the equipment, but when you hear a song like "can't stand it" (or "candyfloss", or "i'm always in love", etc.) without all the little flourishes that are present on the album version, the song tends to sound less artistically different and more just flat.
i was considering taking the disc out and playing something else until "i must be high" came on. it was a really interesting version: energetic and folksy, but with that unmistakable post-summerteeth electronic touch. this was a theme throughout the show. some of the best moments of this show are the times when you get to hear a.m. or being there songs sounding more like yankee hotel outtakes than their original versions. another main set highlight was "hotel arizona", hands down my favorite song on being there, recreated into a wholly different animal and yet still just familiar enough to be fascinating.
this band sounds so different than the raucous noise-jam band of even a few years previous. while they're clearly still willing to experiment on stage, they do so with a little bit more patience, and ultimately their sound is better for it. take, for example, "how to fight loneliness", which gets a few little instrumental jams throughout the song. while it might have been "experimental" for the wilco of '97 to scale this quiet, introspective song into a flurry of feedback screams as it neared its end, this wilco peppers the song with quiet but complex instrumental interplay that's just as impressive but that suits the tone of the song. when every single song doesn't end with everyone screaming and guitars catching on fire, it makes the songs in the set more distinguishable and thus makes the show in general a more nuanced experience.
anyway, one of the "loud" highlights, as usual, was "someone else's song", played as a metal dirge. the main set closed with "misunderstood", and most of the double (triple?) encore was mermaid avenue songs. so if you're not a fan of those albums, the second half of this show might be a wash for you. i really dug it, especially, as usual, the "hoodoo voodoo" closer.
if there's one gripe i have about this show it's that, for all the summerteeth material in the setlist, none of the songs were played like summerteeth songs. maybe this was a choice on the band's part, or maybe they simply just didn't have the equipment, but when you hear a song like "can't stand it" (or "candyfloss", or "i'm always in love", etc.) without all the little flourishes that are present on the album version, the song tends to sound less artistically different and more just flat.
RIDESHARE: Phish 06.25.1995
one more review to dredge up from memory from last week, and then i'll be caught up to what i listened to yesterday. then i can go back to blogging about other things that actually matter.
RIDESHARE is my 2010 version of my old Madden 2003 franchise posts...
this '95 show (setlist here) was a pretty fascinating meld of the technically precise, no-holds-barred '94 sound and the more experimental spacy '96 sound. like, in all the best ways. first of all, the show starts with pretty standard but solid "ya mar" and "AC/DC Bag" (when does "AC/DC" ever really sound any different, anyway?), then immediately jumps into very early versions of "taste" and "theme from the bottom", both of which are instructive and exploratory.
to address my own setlist bias for a moment, i'm basically just in love with the first half of this set. while i could generally take or leave "AC/DC bag", "ya mar", "taste", "theme", "if i could", "divided sky", and "i didn't know" in one set, even if they were terrible versions, would make a killer set in my opinion. and these are far from terrible versions. one of my favorite phish guilty pleasures are the noodle-guitar-and-piano jams at the end of songs like "if i could" and "squirming coil", and this "if i could" brings that jamming in spades.
this show has another great "scent of a mule" with some page pyrotechnics, though "maze" is, well, it's just "maze". i've never really understood the appeal of that song. the "mike's" > "why don't we do it in the road?" > "hold your head up" > "weekapaug" string is probably the highlight of the show. again, i'm biased because i love the "mike's" > "weekapaug" duo as much as i love anything phish, but this version of "mike's" is particularly gnarly ("gnarly" in this case meaning "super dark guitar-led jamming").
overall, this show wasn't on the same level as some of the shows i've previously reviewed as far as setlists go, or as far as playing (there was a lot of technically great jamming, but a few of the songs went on for upwards of 10 minutes without actually really developing any themes or differentiation). however, there were some standout moments (middle of each set) that would be worth another listen.
RIDESHARE is my 2010 version of my old Madden 2003 franchise posts...
this '95 show (setlist here) was a pretty fascinating meld of the technically precise, no-holds-barred '94 sound and the more experimental spacy '96 sound. like, in all the best ways. first of all, the show starts with pretty standard but solid "ya mar" and "AC/DC Bag" (when does "AC/DC" ever really sound any different, anyway?), then immediately jumps into very early versions of "taste" and "theme from the bottom", both of which are instructive and exploratory.
to address my own setlist bias for a moment, i'm basically just in love with the first half of this set. while i could generally take or leave "AC/DC bag", "ya mar", "taste", "theme", "if i could", "divided sky", and "i didn't know" in one set, even if they were terrible versions, would make a killer set in my opinion. and these are far from terrible versions. one of my favorite phish guilty pleasures are the noodle-guitar-and-piano jams at the end of songs like "if i could" and "squirming coil", and this "if i could" brings that jamming in spades.
this show has another great "scent of a mule" with some page pyrotechnics, though "maze" is, well, it's just "maze". i've never really understood the appeal of that song. the "mike's" > "why don't we do it in the road?" > "hold your head up" > "weekapaug" string is probably the highlight of the show. again, i'm biased because i love the "mike's" > "weekapaug" duo as much as i love anything phish, but this version of "mike's" is particularly gnarly ("gnarly" in this case meaning "super dark guitar-led jamming").
overall, this show wasn't on the same level as some of the shows i've previously reviewed as far as setlists go, or as far as playing (there was a lot of technically great jamming, but a few of the songs went on for upwards of 10 minutes without actually really developing any themes or differentiation). however, there were some standout moments (middle of each set) that would be worth another listen.
Oct 5, 2010
stun the puppy, burn the whale!
one of my favorite moments (if not THE favorite moment) of the phish shows i've seen so far...just found some youtube videos of it for the first time.
the last song they played at blossom this past summer was a great version of "squirming coil", which ended, as you can see below, with page alone on stage playing a piano solo. then, he finished, the spotlight went off, and the lights came up for the night. great encore.
two versions of the video, neither of which are amazing quality, but they both do the job :)
the last song they played at blossom this past summer was a great version of "squirming coil", which ended, as you can see below, with page alone on stage playing a piano solo. then, he finished, the spotlight went off, and the lights came up for the night. great encore.
two versions of the video, neither of which are amazing quality, but they both do the job :)
Oct 4, 2010
hang it on the fridge!: my translation of genesis from 2006
i did this translation as part of my language project back in 2006. it's translated (if i remember correctly) from king alfred's old english. i don't know if anyone will find this interesting, and i'll be the first to admit that it's not the best translation, but it's certainly closer to the sense of the "original" text than anything we've got today, for what that's worth. my notes in parenthesis:
Also, the serpent was (geappre) than all the other beasts that God had made across the earth; and the serpent said to the woman: ‘Did God forbid you (plural), that you (plural) cannot eat of any tree in Paradise?’ The woman answered: ‘The fruit of the trees which are in Paradise we eat: and of the fruit of the tree that is in the middle of the garden, God bade us not to eat, not to touch that tree, lest we die.’ Then replied the serpent to the woman: ‘You will not die at all, though you eat of that tree. But God surely knows that your eyes will be opened on the day which you eat of that tree; and you will be then like angels, know both good and evil.’ Then the woman saw that the tree was good to eat from, and it seemed to her beautiful to the eyes and pleasant to sight; and she took of the tree’s fruit and ate, and she gave it to her husband: he ate it. And both their eyes were opened: they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves and they made breeches (clothes?).
In response God came and they heard his voice, there he walked in the garden during midday, and Adam and his wife did hide from God’s sight in the midst of the trees of the garden. God called to Adam, and said: ‘Adam, where are you?’ He said: ‘I heard your voice, sire, in the garden, and I was afraid, for I am naked, and I hid.’ God said: ‘How do you say that you were naked, if you have not ate of the tree that I had bade you not to eat of?’ Adam said: ‘That woman that you gave to be with me took of the tree and I ate.’ God said to the woman: ‘Why did you do that?’ She said: ‘The serpent deceived me and I ate.’
God said to the serpent: ‘For this that you did, you are cursed among all cattle and wild beasts. You will go on your breast and eat the earth all the days of your life. I set enmity between you and the woman and your offspring and hers; he will crush your head and you will (strike?) at his heel.’
To the woman said God also: ‘I multiply your misery in your childbearing; in pain you will bring forth children and you will be under your husband’s authority and he will control you.’ To Adam he said: ‘Because you listened to your wife’s voice and you ate of the tree that I bade you not to eat, your work on the earth will be cursed; in sorrow will you eat of the earth all the days of your life. Thorns and brambles will spring forth, and you will eat the earth’s plants. In the sweat of your face you earn your bread, then you will return to earth, from there you were taken, for you are dust and to dust will return.’
why don't more video games address critical thinking?
so, after reading this article over breakfast this morning (oats with smuckers' jelly mixed in, as i forgot to buy enough actual fruit to get me through the week), i got to thinking about a few of bogost's points. and, since i'm taking a break from exam-ing this afternoon, i thought i'd blog about them. you know, like a real, old-fashioned blog post.
i really like the way that bogost breaks down and effectively dissolves the idea of a free speech debate around the content of the new medal of honor's use of the taliban as a multiplayer (team? side? what's the right word here?). that the debate boils down to whether or not it is tasteful to include the term "taliban" in the game does in fact illustrate how little of a political point the term's inclusion - or the taliban's inclusion - was meant to make in the first place. what's (maybe) worse, the fact that taking the term out of the game - replacing it with the catch-all term "opposing force" seems to have largely sated the game's critics shows how little the popular view of video games still expect from those games. in a time when so many are ready to fiercely defend video games' status as "art", doesn't it seem strange that the things that still get us talking critically about games most readily are things that are projected onto those games from outside cultural contexts?
as bogost mentions, the inclusion of the taliban in medal of honor could have been a point within the game and therefore also outside the game for discussion regarding the nature of war and the ambiguity of conflict. instead, what you get is the same old "you can play as the bad guy!" bullshit "special" game mechanic, made controversial by a label slapped on it meant to refer to real-world events outside the game, and thus stir association with the controversy attached to those events. the bottom line is that even our most controversial, thought-inspiring games generally refuse to start discussions of their own, and are content to ride on the backs of controversies already being enacted on the culture at large.
example: GTA, the game series best-known for pissing people off in the real world (the fact that it introduced the genre of the sandbox shooter is never nearly as important, somehow). GTA isn't controversial because the game itself forces you, through its gameplay and/or story, to confront interesting moral conundrums or engage in critical thinking. it's controversial because you can shoot hookers and shoot down police helicopters in a fighter jet. so what? i mean, i don't want to derail my point into a different conversation about whether GTA's level of violence is acceptable, but, seriously: so what? how is the conversation about whether or not playing GTA will turn our kids into murderous maniacs a more important conversation to be having than a more basic conversation about why, 30 years after the NES, we're still playing games that only challenge the gamer to mindlessly gun down everything that stands in their way en route to a completely heroic objective in a universe of perfectly black-and-white morality?
games have the ability to generate such a conversation, but they so rarely do. players stomp everything in their way for hours upon hours en route to rescuing the princess, but nobody ever stops to think that, hey, when luke blew up the death star, he was technically killing thousands of potentially innocent people.
does this mean that i think every game in the universe needs to address the metaphysical implications of mortality, or that the next time you boot up your franchise in madden you should have to face maddeningly (no pun intended) complex decisions regarding the emotional repercussions of your fake players' professional sports careers on their marriages? of course not. part of what makes games fun is the magic circle, the idea that there's a border beyond which the game doesn't go. sometimes i shoot a scientist in half-life or blow him up with a pack of explosives simply because i can. precisely because it's something that would be completely outrageous in real life but within the game there are no consequences. games like medal of honor build their appeal on the basis of the idea that you can be one man and single handedly save america from the taliban, or the nazis, or the combine, or whatever. of course that's ridiculous, but that's often why we play.
however, is it too much to ask to want games that are still games, but are smarter? here, as much as i HATE intimating that video games and movies are in pretty much any way related, i think bogost has a good point comparing the criticality of games to that of film. sure, a lot of people go to the movies for explosions, or date movies, films that could hardly be considered "critical thinkers". at the same time, though, you have a movie like avatar becoming the biggest movie of all time. now, say what you will about the mythic, derivative story (aren't all our big stories derived from myths?), at the core of avatar is a film that forces the viewer to consider a lot of post-Columbian assumptions of Western superiority...it's a popcorn flick,but it's also a postcolonial text, albeit one that's fairly obvious and ham-handed. and when people saw it, even people who weren't stuffy lit majors or cultural critics, people fucking talked about it. for months. it started a discussion that likes of which i haven't seen touched off by a movie since The Matrix. which, incidentally, was another movie that worked both on the level of popcorn flick and metaphysical garbage masher. whether or not you thought either of those movies were good, nobody can argue that they don't force the viewer to confront a critical subtext amidst the explosions. people make movies that are all about challenging assumptions, too: brokeback mountain, food, inc., restrepo, and people go see that shit.
yet, then there's video games, sitting forlornly on the fence, complaining that nobody will buy them if people are forced to actually think. the primary difference between movies and games is obvious - interactivity. the interaction the player has with the game has to be enjoyable, or else the player won't come back. but can't you have interaction without casting the player as a Good or Evil in the game world? wouldn't players be more likely to want to play a game if the character they embodied was able to interact more realistically with a more morally ambiguous world? there's a difference between wanting to play in the magic circle because games are fun and wanting to escape into a stupider microcosm of the real world where nothing you ever do is questioned.
i have little to know experience with MMORPGs, but i almost wonder if those types of games simulate a critical reality more than traditional games, because at least within the world of an MMORPG, your actions effect others and you have to acknowledge some level of society.
geesh...i was going to talk about some examples of games, but i see i've gotten way carried away. i guess i'll see if anyone responds to this and then maybe i'll write a part two...
i really like the way that bogost breaks down and effectively dissolves the idea of a free speech debate around the content of the new medal of honor's use of the taliban as a multiplayer (team? side? what's the right word here?). that the debate boils down to whether or not it is tasteful to include the term "taliban" in the game does in fact illustrate how little of a political point the term's inclusion - or the taliban's inclusion - was meant to make in the first place. what's (maybe) worse, the fact that taking the term out of the game - replacing it with the catch-all term "opposing force" seems to have largely sated the game's critics shows how little the popular view of video games still expect from those games. in a time when so many are ready to fiercely defend video games' status as "art", doesn't it seem strange that the things that still get us talking critically about games most readily are things that are projected onto those games from outside cultural contexts?
as bogost mentions, the inclusion of the taliban in medal of honor could have been a point within the game and therefore also outside the game for discussion regarding the nature of war and the ambiguity of conflict. instead, what you get is the same old "you can play as the bad guy!" bullshit "special" game mechanic, made controversial by a label slapped on it meant to refer to real-world events outside the game, and thus stir association with the controversy attached to those events. the bottom line is that even our most controversial, thought-inspiring games generally refuse to start discussions of their own, and are content to ride on the backs of controversies already being enacted on the culture at large.
example: GTA, the game series best-known for pissing people off in the real world (the fact that it introduced the genre of the sandbox shooter is never nearly as important, somehow). GTA isn't controversial because the game itself forces you, through its gameplay and/or story, to confront interesting moral conundrums or engage in critical thinking. it's controversial because you can shoot hookers and shoot down police helicopters in a fighter jet. so what? i mean, i don't want to derail my point into a different conversation about whether GTA's level of violence is acceptable, but, seriously: so what? how is the conversation about whether or not playing GTA will turn our kids into murderous maniacs a more important conversation to be having than a more basic conversation about why, 30 years after the NES, we're still playing games that only challenge the gamer to mindlessly gun down everything that stands in their way en route to a completely heroic objective in a universe of perfectly black-and-white morality?
games have the ability to generate such a conversation, but they so rarely do. players stomp everything in their way for hours upon hours en route to rescuing the princess, but nobody ever stops to think that, hey, when luke blew up the death star, he was technically killing thousands of potentially innocent people.
does this mean that i think every game in the universe needs to address the metaphysical implications of mortality, or that the next time you boot up your franchise in madden you should have to face maddeningly (no pun intended) complex decisions regarding the emotional repercussions of your fake players' professional sports careers on their marriages? of course not. part of what makes games fun is the magic circle, the idea that there's a border beyond which the game doesn't go. sometimes i shoot a scientist in half-life or blow him up with a pack of explosives simply because i can. precisely because it's something that would be completely outrageous in real life but within the game there are no consequences. games like medal of honor build their appeal on the basis of the idea that you can be one man and single handedly save america from the taliban, or the nazis, or the combine, or whatever. of course that's ridiculous, but that's often why we play.
however, is it too much to ask to want games that are still games, but are smarter? here, as much as i HATE intimating that video games and movies are in pretty much any way related, i think bogost has a good point comparing the criticality of games to that of film. sure, a lot of people go to the movies for explosions, or date movies, films that could hardly be considered "critical thinkers". at the same time, though, you have a movie like avatar becoming the biggest movie of all time. now, say what you will about the mythic, derivative story (aren't all our big stories derived from myths?), at the core of avatar is a film that forces the viewer to consider a lot of post-Columbian assumptions of Western superiority...it's a popcorn flick,but it's also a postcolonial text, albeit one that's fairly obvious and ham-handed. and when people saw it, even people who weren't stuffy lit majors or cultural critics, people fucking talked about it. for months. it started a discussion that likes of which i haven't seen touched off by a movie since The Matrix. which, incidentally, was another movie that worked both on the level of popcorn flick and metaphysical garbage masher. whether or not you thought either of those movies were good, nobody can argue that they don't force the viewer to confront a critical subtext amidst the explosions. people make movies that are all about challenging assumptions, too: brokeback mountain, food, inc., restrepo, and people go see that shit.
yet, then there's video games, sitting forlornly on the fence, complaining that nobody will buy them if people are forced to actually think. the primary difference between movies and games is obvious - interactivity. the interaction the player has with the game has to be enjoyable, or else the player won't come back. but can't you have interaction without casting the player as a Good or Evil in the game world? wouldn't players be more likely to want to play a game if the character they embodied was able to interact more realistically with a more morally ambiguous world? there's a difference between wanting to play in the magic circle because games are fun and wanting to escape into a stupider microcosm of the real world where nothing you ever do is questioned.
i have little to know experience with MMORPGs, but i almost wonder if those types of games simulate a critical reality more than traditional games, because at least within the world of an MMORPG, your actions effect others and you have to acknowledge some level of society.
geesh...i was going to talk about some examples of games, but i see i've gotten way carried away. i guess i'll see if anyone responds to this and then maybe i'll write a part two...
DO NOT HOLD OVER PEOPLE
i just got a huge kick out of the warning on this coffeemaker, as i instinctively took "do not hold over people" in an emotional sense rather than a physical sense. as in: "if you ever find yourself in a messy breakup argument with your ex-significant other, you CANNOT say 'how can you say i don't love you?! i bought you that coffeemaker!'".
'twas funny to me at least.
RIDESHARE - Phish 06.06.1996
so after my near-transcendent experience with the '94 shows, i decided to bounce around a bit, and first went back to '96 (i also listened to an '02 show last week, but misplaced the last disc, so i'm sort of waiting to find it before i write anything). this '96 soundboard is a "page show"...you know, one of those shows when, time and time again all of trey's guitar pyrotechnics are completely overshadowed by page just ripping off one absurd keys solo after another. i like these kinds of shows, but if you're one of those fans who only enjoys hours of guitar noodling and nothing else, you probably won't like this one.
sEtlIsT
usually, a show opening with "split open and melt" is not a good omen for me. i don't know what it is about that song, but i've never really enjoyed it. the hook repeats too many times, and the jam at the end is usually too structured to really break into anything interesting. that said, this was a decent version (i.e. better than bad, at least) and the segue into "poor heart" was pretty unexpected and hilarious. this was page madness moment #1. "runaway jim" and "funky bitch" were par for the course, which is to say, awesome. then there was "theme from the bottom", which was page madness moment #2, followed indirectly by "scent of a mule" in which entire warehouses of keyboards and pianos must have been melted to fine ash. the first set closed with a pretty by-the-books "highway to hell", which prompted a horn jam by yours truly.
part of the draw of this show for me comes from the fact that billy breathes has some of my favorite phish songs on it, and here you get to hear a number of those songs in early form, before years of touring sort of formalized the jams that build around them. "theme" was one of those, and the second set brought extremely raw versions of "waste" and "character zero". they weren't the best versions i've ever heard, but it was interesting to hear them so differently. the second set had few standout-type moments otherwise, but was overall a great set of tunes. the show closed with page rocking one more time on "ya mar", and then a cover of hendrix's "fire" that had trey sounding more like '92 or '93 phish than '96.
sEtlIsT
usually, a show opening with "split open and melt" is not a good omen for me. i don't know what it is about that song, but i've never really enjoyed it. the hook repeats too many times, and the jam at the end is usually too structured to really break into anything interesting. that said, this was a decent version (i.e. better than bad, at least) and the segue into "poor heart" was pretty unexpected and hilarious. this was page madness moment #1. "runaway jim" and "funky bitch" were par for the course, which is to say, awesome. then there was "theme from the bottom", which was page madness moment #2, followed indirectly by "scent of a mule" in which entire warehouses of keyboards and pianos must have been melted to fine ash. the first set closed with a pretty by-the-books "highway to hell", which prompted a horn jam by yours truly.
part of the draw of this show for me comes from the fact that billy breathes has some of my favorite phish songs on it, and here you get to hear a number of those songs in early form, before years of touring sort of formalized the jams that build around them. "theme" was one of those, and the second set brought extremely raw versions of "waste" and "character zero". they weren't the best versions i've ever heard, but it was interesting to hear them so differently. the second set had few standout-type moments otherwise, but was overall a great set of tunes. the show closed with page rocking one more time on "ya mar", and then a cover of hendrix's "fire" that had trey sounding more like '92 or '93 phish than '96.
RIDESHARE - Jeff Tweedy 02.25.2006
well, hello there. it's been about thirty-five years since the last rideshare...exam-writing has intervened, and lindsey has been going to tri-cities with me often lately, which means that 35-minute "tweezer" jams don't go over as well as when it's just me in an empty car.
these reviews are actually from about a week and a half ago, and so much has happened since then, i don't really remember the content of the shows that well, or even what a "CD" is, really. nonetheless, i'm going to take my best shot at reviewing mr. tweedy's show at mandel hall in chicago, for which the setlist can be found here.
i'm getting to be really fond of starting out these cold, cloudy, morning drives with a mellow wilco or tweedy show, then following it up with a blistering early phish set on my drive back out of the canyon of heat-induced despair otherwise known as tri-cities (despair only because the temperature is like 20 degrees higher there than in pullman due to elevation droppage). anyway, this tweedy show really hit the spot.
it was a great soundboard, and the songs were a great mix of the ones that you can hear in similar incarnation on the sunken treasure dvd (which you should buy if you're a wilco fan at all) and a lot of songs from a ghost is born. hearing really clean, precise solo acoustic versions of tunes like "muzzle of bees", "spiders" and "theologians" was a treat. there were even some surprises among the expected, more "folky" choices in the set: "one by one", "(was i) in your dreams", "bob dylan's 49th beard".
though the third set followed the usual procedure for this particular tour: usually nels and/or glenn joining tweedy onstage for a few songs, the songs for this particular show were a bit of a surprise. getting to hear rearranged versions of "in a future age" and "dash 7" was maybe the highlight of the whole show.
overall, a great combination of a unique setlist, solid sound, and of course a solid performance makes this, for my money, almost as good as the aforementioned sunken treasure audio companion for a collection of solo tweedy tunes.
these reviews are actually from about a week and a half ago, and so much has happened since then, i don't really remember the content of the shows that well, or even what a "CD" is, really. nonetheless, i'm going to take my best shot at reviewing mr. tweedy's show at mandel hall in chicago, for which the setlist can be found here.
i'm getting to be really fond of starting out these cold, cloudy, morning drives with a mellow wilco or tweedy show, then following it up with a blistering early phish set on my drive back out of the canyon of heat-induced despair otherwise known as tri-cities (despair only because the temperature is like 20 degrees higher there than in pullman due to elevation droppage). anyway, this tweedy show really hit the spot.
it was a great soundboard, and the songs were a great mix of the ones that you can hear in similar incarnation on the sunken treasure dvd (which you should buy if you're a wilco fan at all) and a lot of songs from a ghost is born. hearing really clean, precise solo acoustic versions of tunes like "muzzle of bees", "spiders" and "theologians" was a treat. there were even some surprises among the expected, more "folky" choices in the set: "one by one", "(was i) in your dreams", "bob dylan's 49th beard".
though the third set followed the usual procedure for this particular tour: usually nels and/or glenn joining tweedy onstage for a few songs, the songs for this particular show were a bit of a surprise. getting to hear rearranged versions of "in a future age" and "dash 7" was maybe the highlight of the whole show.
overall, a great combination of a unique setlist, solid sound, and of course a solid performance makes this, for my money, almost as good as the aforementioned sunken treasure audio companion for a collection of solo tweedy tunes.
Sep 29, 2010
ye olde recordings have finally be re-upped!
though my hunt for an easy website design tool and time to make an AWESOME personal/professional website continue to fall through (it's been what, 2 years now?), i've finally found a convenient and non-stupid way to re-up all of my old sessions and records for download.
all hail mediafire!
okay, now i seriously have to go write my exams.
all hail mediafire!
okay, now i seriously have to go write my exams.
Sep 27, 2010
mint medley session available for free download and consumption!
so in defiance of my coming exams, i found myself staying home saturday afternoon and setting up a recording space in my bathroom. i'd been toying with the idea of using the bathroom to record any guitar-based songs lindsey would want to put on her album, but i'd never actually tested the room to see what it sounded like. so, i decided to take an hour or three and see what a song or two of mine sounded like in there, sung from different parts of the room, sung with the mics shifted around, with the shower curtain open or closed, etc.
by 8pm i had recorded 14 songs.
so, i thought it would be fitting to post them online as a soundcloud session before i disappear into the abyss for three weeks. there aren't any new songs here (i'm mostly working on poems right now, and usually those flesh out into songs eventually, but none have yet), but there are a lot of new covers. here's the whole setlist:
1. Angel From Montgomery (John Prine cover)
2. Damn Sam (I Love a Woman That Rains) (Ryan Adams cover)
3. Dusty Roads
4. The Melody
5. Albuquerque (Neil Young cover)
6. Bob Dylan's 49th Beard (Jeff Tweedy cover)
7. Palace
8. Ripple (Grateful Dead cover)
9. Forget the Flowers (Wilco cover)
10. Hey Sue
11. Sample in a Jar (Phish cover)
12. Box Full of Letters (Wilco cover)
13. Better to Be Loved > Jam > Millie > Shelter From the Storm (Bob Dylan) > Millie
14. Via Chicago (Wilco cover)
and here's the soundcloud widget:
Mint Medley Session by lazyblazers
by 8pm i had recorded 14 songs.
so, i thought it would be fitting to post them online as a soundcloud session before i disappear into the abyss for three weeks. there aren't any new songs here (i'm mostly working on poems right now, and usually those flesh out into songs eventually, but none have yet), but there are a lot of new covers. here's the whole setlist:
1. Angel From Montgomery (John Prine cover)
2. Damn Sam (I Love a Woman That Rains) (Ryan Adams cover)
3. Dusty Roads
4. The Melody
5. Albuquerque (Neil Young cover)
6. Bob Dylan's 49th Beard (Jeff Tweedy cover)
7. Palace
8. Ripple (Grateful Dead cover)
9. Forget the Flowers (Wilco cover)
10. Hey Sue
11. Sample in a Jar (Phish cover)
12. Box Full of Letters (Wilco cover)
13. Better to Be Loved > Jam > Millie > Shelter From the Storm (Bob Dylan) > Millie
14. Via Chicago (Wilco cover)
and here's the soundcloud widget:
Mint Medley Session by lazyblazers
Sep 22, 2010
i accidentally wrote my biography
so today i was responding to a student's email, trying to dispense sage advice about professionalization, when i realized i'd just written basically my entire life story of the last five years. so i just thought i'd post it here in case anyone cared. it's not especially interestingly written (or interesting in content), but ctrl + v is so easy, why not?
----------------------
Of course, all of that isn't to say that studying something like Chaucer or Shakespeare is worthless; I still think a lot of that stuff is fascinating. That travel writing class I took ended in a class backpacking trip to the Selway river that was (instead of just a fun way to end the semester) a really logical extension of the books we'd been reading and all the stuff we'd been studying. When I realized that I could still study lit theory and actually back up that study not with the words of dead white guys but by writing about my own experiences in the woods and in cities and during cross-country trips and that kind of thing, it wasn't a hard decision to switch my focus :)
----------------------
As far as the professional stuff goes, I actually got my MA here at WSU (in Pullman). I started my Bachelor's at Kent State University in Ohio, which is about an hour from where I grew up, and I was a computer science and programming major for a few years. It's sort of a cliche story, but basically what ended up happening was that I realized I didn't like my major and all of my elective classes that I had to take to graduate ended up being English classes, as I realized more and more that those were the classes I really liked. That was a bit surprising to me, since I had actually been a terrible English student in high school.
Anyway, I changed my major and graduated with a BA in English and a really crappy book that I had had to write for my undergrad thesis.
As everybody says, there's not a whole lot that you can do with a BA in English (there are some things, but I didn't want to do any of them), so I quit school for a few years and just worked normal minimum-wage type jobs before applying to grad school and ending up at WSU. I picked WSU because they give assistantships to all of their incoming English graduate students. Basically it's a deal where they pay your tuition and you teach introductory writing classes for them while you get your degree. I really liked the idea of getting to work while going to grad school instead of just sitting around reading books all day (ironic, considering what I'm doing right now), so I came here.
I finished the MA in 2007 and missed getting in the Ph.D program by one person, so I stayed on and taught as a faculty instructor for a year and then started the Ph.D program two years ago. So, yeah, I've been an English major all the way through, which in some ways is a really good thing, but also can be a bad thing, I think, especially as doing interdisciplinary work gets more popular.
I actually did my MA thesis on Chaucer's Canterbury Tales...up until about 2007 I was obsessed with pretty much anything written in English before 1500 or so. Then, I think I just got sick of it. I'd been working on the same topic for about five years at that point and I think it just got old. Fortunately, around that time I took a great class here at WSU from two fantastic professors. The class was about the history of travel writing, and it really got me thinking about a lot of things, but primarily it got me thinking about how literary theory and all the wordplay and academic argument that goes with higher education in English literature can actually be paired with real-world concerns. I mean, the stereotypical idea of the English professor is someone who spends all their time reading a bunch of made-up stories by dead white guys and writing articles that explain what those dead white guys meant to say. Now, I'd be lying if I said that I don't enjoy doing that from time to time, but what drove me away from Chaucer in the end was the fact that I couldn't really see how studying it mattered to anyone other than me. I guess ending up at ecocriticism was just a logical progression from there.
I really love ecocriticism because it's so innately connected to real-world concerns, and politics, and policies, and how real people and real cities and real countries live their lives. You can look at something like Carson's Silent Spring and see really easily how that book mattered to our society in really obvious ways, and from there it's easy to see how studying that impact as a graduate student can be important.
Sep 17, 2010
RIDESHARE: Wilco 02.01.1997
this one got off to a less-than-auspicious start. i had chosen the disc because it was marked "07.02.01" (i mark CDs in euro-style dating for ease of sorting), and i wanted to hear an '07 show because i love the rawer versions of the sky blue sky songs.
so imagine my surprise when i popped the first disc in and it started in the midst of "misunderstood", then continued through five more being there-era songs. it took about that long for me to realize that i must have forgotten to put the leg on that first "0", making it "97" instead of "07".
so here's the set i got.
much like the phish show i just reviewed, this one taught me the error of my ways, in a sense. i generally don't like bennett-era wilco that much, and have never understood why so many wilco fans insist that the late 90s were the peak of the band. this might be because i really just don't like jay bennett's playing (which is a rant for another day), but for whatever reason, while i occasionally like to put on early, "raw" wilco, i come away with the impression that, for as fun as they are, they really aren't that good.
this show was good.
like i said above, for some reason "misunderstood" cuts in about 2 minutes into the song, and actually the first few songs are a bit unlistenable because someone keeps fiddling (either the sound dude or the taper) with the volume levels and tweedy's voice is nearly inaudible. however, things pick up.
this show's version of "that's not the issue" is one of those versions where it literally sounds to me like all the members of the band are stoned out of their minds and banging on their instruments erratically and totally failing at staying in any time signature or scale; yet, at the same time i'm a little afraid that they're just playing in a scale or something that i'm not familiar with and i'm not cool enough to get it. anyway, this song was sort of a disaster.
everything else is pure being there wilco. loud, clashing guitars, wild alternation between screamed and whispered lyrics, and more feedback than you can shake your pickups at.
things really start to get off the chain when the band finishes "passenger side", only to launch immediately into a "punk" version of the same song. after that, madness ensues, including two versions of "box full of letters", three uncle tupelo songs ("we've been had", "gun", and "the long cut"), which oddly sound like three of the most well-rehearsed songs of the night. the last few songs, including the final "dreamer in my dreams" run around 10 minutes apiece simply because the band never stops banging on guitars, drums, and piano long enough to stop the song and move on to the next one.
this show had an undeniable energy to it, and underneath that the band showed a real ability to not just devolve into screaming and strumming - the nuances of the songs often still come through despite the volume and the reverb. the focus here is being there; if you love that record, you'll love this show. i actually want to go back and listen to the record this weekend now, thanks to this show. though i doubt i'll ever think than any wilco is better than '06 - present wilco, i see the appeal of this kind of show now. i might grab another one from this era to review for next week.
so imagine my surprise when i popped the first disc in and it started in the midst of "misunderstood", then continued through five more being there-era songs. it took about that long for me to realize that i must have forgotten to put the leg on that first "0", making it "97" instead of "07".
so here's the set i got.
much like the phish show i just reviewed, this one taught me the error of my ways, in a sense. i generally don't like bennett-era wilco that much, and have never understood why so many wilco fans insist that the late 90s were the peak of the band. this might be because i really just don't like jay bennett's playing (which is a rant for another day), but for whatever reason, while i occasionally like to put on early, "raw" wilco, i come away with the impression that, for as fun as they are, they really aren't that good.
this show was good.
like i said above, for some reason "misunderstood" cuts in about 2 minutes into the song, and actually the first few songs are a bit unlistenable because someone keeps fiddling (either the sound dude or the taper) with the volume levels and tweedy's voice is nearly inaudible. however, things pick up.
this show's version of "that's not the issue" is one of those versions where it literally sounds to me like all the members of the band are stoned out of their minds and banging on their instruments erratically and totally failing at staying in any time signature or scale; yet, at the same time i'm a little afraid that they're just playing in a scale or something that i'm not familiar with and i'm not cool enough to get it. anyway, this song was sort of a disaster.
everything else is pure being there wilco. loud, clashing guitars, wild alternation between screamed and whispered lyrics, and more feedback than you can shake your pickups at.
things really start to get off the chain when the band finishes "passenger side", only to launch immediately into a "punk" version of the same song. after that, madness ensues, including two versions of "box full of letters", three uncle tupelo songs ("we've been had", "gun", and "the long cut"), which oddly sound like three of the most well-rehearsed songs of the night. the last few songs, including the final "dreamer in my dreams" run around 10 minutes apiece simply because the band never stops banging on guitars, drums, and piano long enough to stop the song and move on to the next one.
this show had an undeniable energy to it, and underneath that the band showed a real ability to not just devolve into screaming and strumming - the nuances of the songs often still come through despite the volume and the reverb. the focus here is being there; if you love that record, you'll love this show. i actually want to go back and listen to the record this weekend now, thanks to this show. though i doubt i'll ever think than any wilco is better than '06 - present wilco, i see the appeal of this kind of show now. i might grab another one from this era to review for next week.
RIDESHARE: Phish 06.18.1994
so last week i tacitly suggested that maybe '94 phish was not nearly as good as it gets credit for. then i listened to this show the next day and it slapped me across the mouth for my impertinence.
good god. there are bands who can be more technically proficient live than '94 phish, there are bands that can improvise better than '94 phish. but there is no band i've ever heard in my life that can do both at the same time so well as this era of this band. i'd forgotten, and was immediately reminded why people have complained about phish live for 15 years. because they never have been and never will be as flat-out good as they were then. does that mean that they're not worth listening to now? of course not. this summer '94 tour was like catching lightning in a bottle; it's so good you feel like there must be some sort of mystical, ghostly force that decided to infuse the band's instruments with the power to play the music of the cosmos.
no, seriously, it's so good it's driving me to a fucking histrionic breakdown.
anyway, here's the set.
to avoid just bellowing superlatives for ten paragraphs, i'll just hit the really, really high points:
- "rift". this version of "rift" is amazing, and amazingly fast.
- this "AC/DC bag" was so exciting that i broke into spontaneous horn-jamming:
- the entire second half of the first set has no particular standout, but is pretty much the epitome of the improv/technical brilliance i was ranting about above. every song boomerangs out into places you don't expect, with everyone still hitting every note, and then when the do wrap back around to the typical parts of the songs, they do so with a speed and a skill that's rare even for phish.
- maybe my favorite part of this show is the opening of the second set. i very keys-heavy "peaches en regalia", followed by a "bowie" that takes about six minutes to even get started due to three distinct but equally brilliant improv jams the band breaks out in sequence. then, when "bowie" finally hits in earnest, it's one of the best versions i've heard yet, with a groove in the middle that needs to be heard to be believed.
- the other highlight of the second set is "you enjoy myself". for a phish song i've probably heard a few hundred times by now, this version did a great job of throwing in some curves that i still didn't expect, and made a great closing case for this being one of the best shows i've ever heard.
- the encore is simple, short, and perfect in terms of song selection. what else would you end a show like this with besides "tweeprise"?
good god. there are bands who can be more technically proficient live than '94 phish, there are bands that can improvise better than '94 phish. but there is no band i've ever heard in my life that can do both at the same time so well as this era of this band. i'd forgotten, and was immediately reminded why people have complained about phish live for 15 years. because they never have been and never will be as flat-out good as they were then. does that mean that they're not worth listening to now? of course not. this summer '94 tour was like catching lightning in a bottle; it's so good you feel like there must be some sort of mystical, ghostly force that decided to infuse the band's instruments with the power to play the music of the cosmos.
no, seriously, it's so good it's driving me to a fucking histrionic breakdown.
anyway, here's the set.
to avoid just bellowing superlatives for ten paragraphs, i'll just hit the really, really high points:
- "rift". this version of "rift" is amazing, and amazingly fast.
- this "AC/DC bag" was so exciting that i broke into spontaneous horn-jamming:
- the entire second half of the first set has no particular standout, but is pretty much the epitome of the improv/technical brilliance i was ranting about above. every song boomerangs out into places you don't expect, with everyone still hitting every note, and then when the do wrap back around to the typical parts of the songs, they do so with a speed and a skill that's rare even for phish.
- maybe my favorite part of this show is the opening of the second set. i very keys-heavy "peaches en regalia", followed by a "bowie" that takes about six minutes to even get started due to three distinct but equally brilliant improv jams the band breaks out in sequence. then, when "bowie" finally hits in earnest, it's one of the best versions i've heard yet, with a groove in the middle that needs to be heard to be believed.
- the other highlight of the second set is "you enjoy myself". for a phish song i've probably heard a few hundred times by now, this version did a great job of throwing in some curves that i still didn't expect, and made a great closing case for this being one of the best shows i've ever heard.
- the encore is simple, short, and perfect in terms of song selection. what else would you end a show like this with besides "tweeprise"?
Sep 13, 2010
new (old) poem
i actually wrote a new poem today. which is not a huge deal, but it also sort of is because i haven't written literally anything new in at least a year, maybe more like a year and a half.
unfortunately for you, i'm not going to post my new poem yet, as i want to look at it in the morning and see if it makes any sense at all, and then i'll pass it along.
however, i've finally gotten this other older poem to a point where i can read it out loud and not feel like it absolutely sucks, so i'm calling it officially finished. so i'll distract you with it while i continue to work on the new one. cheers!
-------------
three peaces
I
talking can terraform
can flatten the tangled
topography of the mind
into flat verdance
i can see what’s coming miles away
nothing jumps out
nobody screams
and even at night the shadows stretch under the moon
but at least i can see the tips of them.
II
the edge of the shore
water running
into
and up
and over the pebbles
pulling them
pushing them
they roll as they rest in that
interminable but
gentle grasp
fireflies at the edges of this scene
at the edges of my fingers
fighting off
cold darkness indefinition
all at once
giving form to everything
while also being cowed by it
the stars are coldhardbright
they eat enough of the sky that
i almost feel like i can grab them
but i won’t
even the utmost beauty
perhaps especially
the utmost beauty
seems perilous to touch out here
i stretch out on the rocks
a million peas with a mattress hidden underneath
from this angle the sky is splintered
by the spidery fingers of a birch tree
leaning out over the beach
from the closest green spot to
the fringe
the edge
the fire’s light
is almost invisible
but i can see the smoke
curling
around the tips of my toes.
III
the moon’s loud enough that it’s night
but not it's night enough to sleep
the riverbed
long since abandoned by anything that could have given it that name
lies
dappling the moonlight into a thousand shades
rose, for love (?)
pearl, for age
silver, for time
blue, for the sky
which is still blue even when it’s too dark to tell.
unfortunately for you, i'm not going to post my new poem yet, as i want to look at it in the morning and see if it makes any sense at all, and then i'll pass it along.
however, i've finally gotten this other older poem to a point where i can read it out loud and not feel like it absolutely sucks, so i'm calling it officially finished. so i'll distract you with it while i continue to work on the new one. cheers!
-------------
three peaces
I
talking can terraform
can flatten the tangled
topography of the mind
into flat verdance
i can see what’s coming miles away
nothing jumps out
nobody screams
and even at night the shadows stretch under the moon
but at least i can see the tips of them.
II
the edge of the shore
water running
into
and up
and over the pebbles
pulling them
pushing them
they roll as they rest in that
interminable but
gentle grasp
fireflies at the edges of this scene
at the edges of my fingers
fighting off
cold darkness indefinition
all at once
giving form to everything
while also being cowed by it
the stars are coldhardbright
they eat enough of the sky that
i almost feel like i can grab them
but i won’t
even the utmost beauty
perhaps especially
the utmost beauty
seems perilous to touch out here
i stretch out on the rocks
a million peas with a mattress hidden underneath
from this angle the sky is splintered
by the spidery fingers of a birch tree
leaning out over the beach
from the closest green spot to
the fringe
the edge
the fire’s light
is almost invisible
but i can see the smoke
curling
around the tips of my toes.
III
the moon’s loud enough that it’s night
but not it's night enough to sleep
the riverbed
long since abandoned by anything that could have given it that name
lies
dappling the moonlight into a thousand shades
rose, for love (?)
pearl, for age
silver, for time
blue, for the sky
which is still blue even when it’s too dark to tell.
Sep 8, 2010
RIDESHARE - Wilco 02.24.2005
wow, tuesday was a good day for in-the-car music. it suppose my luck was cosmically meant to balance out the fact that every other aspect of my life was totally and randomly ruined and obliterated yesterday.
as he types, still-drying black fingernail polish dripping onto the keys.
so, on tuesday i pulled a near-perfect ghost is born-era wilco soundboard, and an incredibly varied yet gorgeous '94 phish show. i'll be reviewing the phish later, as i still have one disc left to listen to.
setlist for wilco is here.
so usually what current-era wilco does is center their main set around whatever newer material they're most excited about at the time, and then they follow that with two encores (the definitely-two-encores-all-the-time thing is something i've never really understood, but oh well) that revisit a lot of older, being there-era songs (for all the "old school" fans who apparently want all their wilco to sound exactly the same). that formula normally makes a great show all by itself, but here they twist that formula a bit, and to great effect.
the main set is almost all ghost is born material, and it's played with a mix of screeching, crunchy big guitars and that harrowing screaming noise jamming that the band really started scaling back in '07-'08. '05-'06 is probably my favorite for the band (was there something in the air in 2006?), so i guess i'm biased here, but in this show they play the ghost tracks enough like the studio arrangements to communicate the songs' subtle details while deviating (mostly by making the guitars a little heavier) from those arrangements just enough to make things interesting.
interspersed perfectly with the ghost songs are a few old, toned-down staples, that after the torrents of noise and crunch come like breaths of folky-fresh air. "should have been in love", "always in love", and "shot in the arm" fill in nicely in this role. the main set closes with "reservations" coming out of an absolutely harrowing "poor places" jam, and then segues into an exceptional "spiders".
the first encore goes by pretty much as expected, save for a "misunderstood" that's worth noting, as it's played with the amount of intense noise and dissonance present on the amazing album version, which is something i've rarely heard from '98-'03 wilco.
the second encore is seven songs long, and includes a rendition of "bob dylan's beard" and covers of "comment" and a note-for-note-perfect "don't fear the reaper".
i'm just going to leave it at that. because that's amazing.
on a scale of 1 to 10, this show, like my fender hot rod deluxe amp, goes up to 12.
as he types, still-drying black fingernail polish dripping onto the keys.
so, on tuesday i pulled a near-perfect ghost is born-era wilco soundboard, and an incredibly varied yet gorgeous '94 phish show. i'll be reviewing the phish later, as i still have one disc left to listen to.
setlist for wilco is here.
so usually what current-era wilco does is center their main set around whatever newer material they're most excited about at the time, and then they follow that with two encores (the definitely-two-encores-all-the-time thing is something i've never really understood, but oh well) that revisit a lot of older, being there-era songs (for all the "old school" fans who apparently want all their wilco to sound exactly the same). that formula normally makes a great show all by itself, but here they twist that formula a bit, and to great effect.
the main set is almost all ghost is born material, and it's played with a mix of screeching, crunchy big guitars and that harrowing screaming noise jamming that the band really started scaling back in '07-'08. '05-'06 is probably my favorite for the band (was there something in the air in 2006?), so i guess i'm biased here, but in this show they play the ghost tracks enough like the studio arrangements to communicate the songs' subtle details while deviating (mostly by making the guitars a little heavier) from those arrangements just enough to make things interesting.
interspersed perfectly with the ghost songs are a few old, toned-down staples, that after the torrents of noise and crunch come like breaths of folky-fresh air. "should have been in love", "always in love", and "shot in the arm" fill in nicely in this role. the main set closes with "reservations" coming out of an absolutely harrowing "poor places" jam, and then segues into an exceptional "spiders".
the first encore goes by pretty much as expected, save for a "misunderstood" that's worth noting, as it's played with the amount of intense noise and dissonance present on the amazing album version, which is something i've rarely heard from '98-'03 wilco.
the second encore is seven songs long, and includes a rendition of "bob dylan's beard" and covers of "comment" and a note-for-note-perfect "don't fear the reaper".
i'm just going to leave it at that. because that's amazing.
on a scale of 1 to 10, this show, like my fender hot rod deluxe amp, goes up to 12.
Sep 6, 2010
RIDESHARE - Phish 04.17.1994
more phish!
for last thursday's drive, i took a trip back to what's generally thought of as the phish golden age: 1994. this is the time when the band (at least in the popular view) had melded together their pre-1994 shredding skills with a new, occasionally more measured and experimental approach, and had, on top of that recently started road-testing a ton of songs that would eventually go on to become phish live staples. interestingly, this show turned out to be about as far from the quintessential '94 phish show as i could have gotten.
setlist here.
so, last time, if you'll recall, i unilaterally decided to declare that phish shows could be split up into two types. this show, out of sheer spite, i'm sure, decided to go dramatically against my proclamation. the setlist was varied, the performances were varied, and everything was, by and large, excellent...though by the end of the show the one significant thing missing was any sense of "flow" (to use an English 101 student term). if i had played this show and then had someone tell me it was actually a mixtape, i wouldn't have been surprised.
the show opened with "loving cup", which is odd in and of itself. "foam" is always a welcome sight, and this version ended too soon. easily one of the highlights of the first set. "divided sky" as the fourth song of the show just confused me. it felt really early to have to digest a 15-minute-plus monster, and the band sounded like they felt the same way. there were no mistakes, per se, but the jamming sort of circled itself over and over for about ten minutes and then we moved on to "mound". similarly to "simple", i pretty much ALWAYS love "mound", and this version was no exception. the "down with disease" > "if i could" run was the best part of the first set. i'm one of the few (apparently) who can't get enough of "if i could", and this particular jam carried that ethereal, almost-but-not-quite-cheesy punch better than most. the transition to "my sweet one" was pretty brilliant, but the rest of the first set itself was nothing to write home (or on your blog) about.
i'd like to reiterate the comments i made last time about "bowie". this version was no different for me: i love it, but i don't know why. "wolfman's" > "uncle pen" was the highlight of the second set for me. a long, drawn-out funky jam following "bowie" was a perfect juxtaposition, and then following that with the tight, composed bluegrass of "uncle pen" made a great one-two (-three?) punch. from there on out, though, the second set (and the encore) were a bit confusing. they were an eclectic mix of pre-1994 and "new" songs, and it really just sounded like the band wasn't really comfortable with getting those two sides of their sound to cohere yet. especially, the encore, which should have some aspect (i think, anyway) of a coda or reprise or just a straight-up balls-out facemelt to it, was pretty flat. "cracklin' rosie" is always fun to hear, but it's never going to make anyone pump their fist in the air. "hold your head up" was actually just page playing the organ riff through once, which lead directly into a pretty by-the-numbers version of "bold as love". and that was that.
overall, and interesting setlist and a few great moments, but there's not much to recommend this show over, say, the previous ones i've reviewed on here. definitely check out the "if i could", though. it's good stuff.
on a scale between a compsognathus and a tyrannosaurus, this one's definitely a styracosaurus.
for last thursday's drive, i took a trip back to what's generally thought of as the phish golden age: 1994. this is the time when the band (at least in the popular view) had melded together their pre-1994 shredding skills with a new, occasionally more measured and experimental approach, and had, on top of that recently started road-testing a ton of songs that would eventually go on to become phish live staples. interestingly, this show turned out to be about as far from the quintessential '94 phish show as i could have gotten.
setlist here.
so, last time, if you'll recall, i unilaterally decided to declare that phish shows could be split up into two types. this show, out of sheer spite, i'm sure, decided to go dramatically against my proclamation. the setlist was varied, the performances were varied, and everything was, by and large, excellent...though by the end of the show the one significant thing missing was any sense of "flow" (to use an English 101 student term). if i had played this show and then had someone tell me it was actually a mixtape, i wouldn't have been surprised.
the show opened with "loving cup", which is odd in and of itself. "foam" is always a welcome sight, and this version ended too soon. easily one of the highlights of the first set. "divided sky" as the fourth song of the show just confused me. it felt really early to have to digest a 15-minute-plus monster, and the band sounded like they felt the same way. there were no mistakes, per se, but the jamming sort of circled itself over and over for about ten minutes and then we moved on to "mound". similarly to "simple", i pretty much ALWAYS love "mound", and this version was no exception. the "down with disease" > "if i could" run was the best part of the first set. i'm one of the few (apparently) who can't get enough of "if i could", and this particular jam carried that ethereal, almost-but-not-quite-cheesy punch better than most. the transition to "my sweet one" was pretty brilliant, but the rest of the first set itself was nothing to write home (or on your blog) about.
i'd like to reiterate the comments i made last time about "bowie". this version was no different for me: i love it, but i don't know why. "wolfman's" > "uncle pen" was the highlight of the second set for me. a long, drawn-out funky jam following "bowie" was a perfect juxtaposition, and then following that with the tight, composed bluegrass of "uncle pen" made a great one-two (-three?) punch. from there on out, though, the second set (and the encore) were a bit confusing. they were an eclectic mix of pre-1994 and "new" songs, and it really just sounded like the band wasn't really comfortable with getting those two sides of their sound to cohere yet. especially, the encore, which should have some aspect (i think, anyway) of a coda or reprise or just a straight-up balls-out facemelt to it, was pretty flat. "cracklin' rosie" is always fun to hear, but it's never going to make anyone pump their fist in the air. "hold your head up" was actually just page playing the organ riff through once, which lead directly into a pretty by-the-numbers version of "bold as love". and that was that.
overall, and interesting setlist and a few great moments, but there's not much to recommend this show over, say, the previous ones i've reviewed on here. definitely check out the "if i could", though. it's good stuff.
on a scale between a compsognathus and a tyrannosaurus, this one's definitely a styracosaurus.
RIDESHARE - Wilco 11.02.02
finally, something that's not phish. i've been on a bit of a phish kick lately because that's just what happens to me during late summer for some weird, probably evolutionary reason. my phish hormones start raging and i want to eat bacteria cultures and use my own dreadlocks for clothes. but none of that happens in this universe, because this is the clean-person universe.
well, now that it's fall (at least i'm wearing a hoodie indoors and not sweating), wilco will likely take over. especially because i have to get my wilco fix vicariously this year thanks to the fact that they're not touring the US this fall, leaving with my no choice but to constantly play "the lonely 1" on loop every night while tearing my tweedy posters off the wall, throwing them across the room, and then falling asleep hours later cradling them to my tearstained face and mumbling apologies.
god, i've been reading cracked.com too much.
amidst the blathering, have thee a setlist!
i picked an '02 show to listen to on a cold, dark day because i figured it would be mellow and it seemed to suit the proceedings. little did i know that i'd chosen quite literally the show that plato saw the shadow of on the wall of the cave and he knew he was looking at "mellow".
wilco shows, as is to be expected, generally don't deviate as greatly from one another as phish shows tend to, simply because the songs are mostly pop-rock songs of under four minutes in length. as such, i probably won't talk much about specific tracks in wilco show reviews, but more just about the show in general.
this show started pretty interestingly, with "hesitating beauty" sort of lazily fading in from silence, followed by "one by one". things got about as rollicking as they would ever get with "sunken treasure", and then there was an early pre-ghost is born version of "less than you think", which was pretty much just who i presume to be jay bennett on the keys while tweedy sung over it. pretty great, and lacking the 15 minutes of distortion from the studio version of that track. another highlight was the "war on war"/"kamera" combination...these songs are both mid-tempo slow-rockers in general, and they sound almost indistinguishable if you just have them on in the background, but for some reason i love them both and love hearing them back-to-back even more.
the highlight of the show (maybe) for me was a brief and totally unexpected wilco jam which took place first at the beginning of "how to fight loneliness", then led out of it in the form of a segue into "not for the season", which itself concluded with an epic, multi-minute kotche drum shower.
"poor places" and "reservations" made a good pair of closing songs for the main set, as the static from one led appropriately into the naked-sounding piano chords of the second. after a closing bit of noise-jamming, the encore started with "misunderstood" and continued to be a pretty normal wilco encore, aside from the general mellowness. it's funny how the one thing that always stays the same about wilco is their encore(s). you know you're going to get tons of loud being there songs. it was nice to hear "red-eyed and blue" and "far, far away".
overall this show was very slow and "chill" (as the kids say), and also the soundboard feed is mixed in such a way that often all you can hear is the cymbals, keys, and tweedy's voice, so a lot of times even when the band is clearly playing like they're rocking an arena, it sounds like you're listening to them play on only a piano to a small crowd in a small barn. not bad, but potentially disappointing, depending on what you expect.
this was a show that absolutely epitomizes that just-post-YHF era brooding wilco sound for me. subtract a few style points for all of jay bennett's "i'm soloing even though it's the verse because i don't respect the fact that a song has to have some level of inherent structure because i'm so different", and you have an otherwise great winter '02 show. on a rating scale based on the first five numbers of the fibonacci sequence, this show is a 2.
well, now that it's fall (at least i'm wearing a hoodie indoors and not sweating), wilco will likely take over. especially because i have to get my wilco fix vicariously this year thanks to the fact that they're not touring the US this fall, leaving with my no choice but to constantly play "the lonely 1" on loop every night while tearing my tweedy posters off the wall, throwing them across the room, and then falling asleep hours later cradling them to my tearstained face and mumbling apologies.
god, i've been reading cracked.com too much.
amidst the blathering, have thee a setlist!
i picked an '02 show to listen to on a cold, dark day because i figured it would be mellow and it seemed to suit the proceedings. little did i know that i'd chosen quite literally the show that plato saw the shadow of on the wall of the cave and he knew he was looking at "mellow".
wilco shows, as is to be expected, generally don't deviate as greatly from one another as phish shows tend to, simply because the songs are mostly pop-rock songs of under four minutes in length. as such, i probably won't talk much about specific tracks in wilco show reviews, but more just about the show in general.
this show started pretty interestingly, with "hesitating beauty" sort of lazily fading in from silence, followed by "one by one". things got about as rollicking as they would ever get with "sunken treasure", and then there was an early pre-ghost is born version of "less than you think", which was pretty much just who i presume to be jay bennett on the keys while tweedy sung over it. pretty great, and lacking the 15 minutes of distortion from the studio version of that track. another highlight was the "war on war"/"kamera" combination...these songs are both mid-tempo slow-rockers in general, and they sound almost indistinguishable if you just have them on in the background, but for some reason i love them both and love hearing them back-to-back even more.
the highlight of the show (maybe) for me was a brief and totally unexpected wilco jam which took place first at the beginning of "how to fight loneliness", then led out of it in the form of a segue into "not for the season", which itself concluded with an epic, multi-minute kotche drum shower.
"poor places" and "reservations" made a good pair of closing songs for the main set, as the static from one led appropriately into the naked-sounding piano chords of the second. after a closing bit of noise-jamming, the encore started with "misunderstood" and continued to be a pretty normal wilco encore, aside from the general mellowness. it's funny how the one thing that always stays the same about wilco is their encore(s). you know you're going to get tons of loud being there songs. it was nice to hear "red-eyed and blue" and "far, far away".
overall this show was very slow and "chill" (as the kids say), and also the soundboard feed is mixed in such a way that often all you can hear is the cymbals, keys, and tweedy's voice, so a lot of times even when the band is clearly playing like they're rocking an arena, it sounds like you're listening to them play on only a piano to a small crowd in a small barn. not bad, but potentially disappointing, depending on what you expect.
this was a show that absolutely epitomizes that just-post-YHF era brooding wilco sound for me. subtract a few style points for all of jay bennett's "i'm soloing even though it's the verse because i don't respect the fact that a song has to have some level of inherent structure because i'm so different", and you have an otherwise great winter '02 show. on a rating scale based on the first five numbers of the fibonacci sequence, this show is a 2.
Sep 3, 2010
RIDESHARE - Phish 07.26.98
RIDESHARE: Phish 07.26.98
i spun this one on tuesday, so i need to do it quick, lest i forget.
i've really been feeling the 97-98 phish lately; something about the wide open spaces of a drive through the southeastern washington desert lends itself to spacey, 30-minute
versions of “also sprach zarathustra”. or the other way around. or something.
anyway, setlist here.
on a five-star scale where zero is a pepperoni pizza and five is a five-cheese pizza, this show would be a three-and-a-half cheese pizza.
the highs were high and the lows weren't low...let's just say there were a few times throughout the show where i caught myself realizing that i hadn't been listening for twenty minutes because i was subconsciously finding the scrub brush more engaging than the music.
"birds of a feather" is a great song and a great opener, and this version was no different...though maybe it was a sign of the show's overall "too little of a good thing" feel in that this "birds" clocked in at about six minutes, about ten minutes shorter than usual. then comes "better believe it baby", which i've heard a number of times already in various TAB shows and, no matter who plays it, i never like it. same thing here. rarely will i just not like a phish song (rather than just a particular night's interpretation of it), but that's the case with this clunker. and it came on while i was puttering through colfax, no less.
there's something that draws me to "bowie". i love the speed and precision of the intro section, especially in earlier years' shows, but then everything always just goes to shit for me in the middle. i don't know why. compared to other phish jams, i always find "bowie" jams to be loud, screechy, hard to follow and generally unpleasant...but the wait up to that last second pay-off somehow always makes me forget the middle section and want to bounce out of my seat (or car) at the end. this one was no different. the "frankie" > "reba" mashup is nicely mellow and hypnotic, while i was a bit let down by the first set closer of "funky bitch" (another one of those few phish songs i just don't like) and "good times bad times", which followed the zeppelin version a little too closely to be interesting.
the second set was marked by some pretty incredibly covers. it opens with "la grange", which i didn't even know that phish ever played, and their version was wonderfully faithful to the zz top original, albeit with a hectic blues-rock jam in the middle. this version of "you enjoy myself" takes a few extra minutes to get started, which i actually really liked...it was interesting to hear them jam out the beginning of the song a bit longer. "albuquerque" was another song that i didn't know phish had ever covered, and as the song started i immediately thought to myself "hmm, this sounds like a neil young song". and then it was and i was all "yeah!" and the guitar was all "skeedly deedly deedly!" and my car was all "vrooooom!"
so there's that.
I LOVE "SIMPLE". that's probably pretty clear by now.
after "simple" was a great version of hendrix's "bold as love" and the show closes with four solid (there's that word again) but not really outstanding songs.
i'm going to go out on a limb and say that most phish shows i listen to or attend fall into one of two categories:
1) band starts out strong, falters near the end of the first set, tries too hard at the beginning of the second set, ends on a great note after recovering
2) band starts slow, slaughters everything for the end of the first set and the beginning of the second, and then ends the show on a decent, but not impressive note.
the first gorge show from last year was definitely a Type 1 show for me, while the second gorge show and this year's blossom show were both Type 2. this tape definitely epitomizes the Type 2.
i spun this one on tuesday, so i need to do it quick, lest i forget.
i've really been feeling the 97-98 phish lately; something about the wide open spaces of a drive through the southeastern washington desert lends itself to spacey, 30-minute
versions of “also sprach zarathustra”. or the other way around. or something.
anyway, setlist here.
on a five-star scale where zero is a pepperoni pizza and five is a five-cheese pizza, this show would be a three-and-a-half cheese pizza.
the highs were high and the lows weren't low...let's just say there were a few times throughout the show where i caught myself realizing that i hadn't been listening for twenty minutes because i was subconsciously finding the scrub brush more engaging than the music.
"birds of a feather" is a great song and a great opener, and this version was no different...though maybe it was a sign of the show's overall "too little of a good thing" feel in that this "birds" clocked in at about six minutes, about ten minutes shorter than usual. then comes "better believe it baby", which i've heard a number of times already in various TAB shows and, no matter who plays it, i never like it. same thing here. rarely will i just not like a phish song (rather than just a particular night's interpretation of it), but that's the case with this clunker. and it came on while i was puttering through colfax, no less.
there's something that draws me to "bowie". i love the speed and precision of the intro section, especially in earlier years' shows, but then everything always just goes to shit for me in the middle. i don't know why. compared to other phish jams, i always find "bowie" jams to be loud, screechy, hard to follow and generally unpleasant...but the wait up to that last second pay-off somehow always makes me forget the middle section and want to bounce out of my seat (or car) at the end. this one was no different. the "frankie" > "reba" mashup is nicely mellow and hypnotic, while i was a bit let down by the first set closer of "funky bitch" (another one of those few phish songs i just don't like) and "good times bad times", which followed the zeppelin version a little too closely to be interesting.
the second set was marked by some pretty incredibly covers. it opens with "la grange", which i didn't even know that phish ever played, and their version was wonderfully faithful to the zz top original, albeit with a hectic blues-rock jam in the middle. this version of "you enjoy myself" takes a few extra minutes to get started, which i actually really liked...it was interesting to hear them jam out the beginning of the song a bit longer. "albuquerque" was another song that i didn't know phish had ever covered, and as the song started i immediately thought to myself "hmm, this sounds like a neil young song". and then it was and i was all "yeah!" and the guitar was all "skeedly deedly deedly!" and my car was all "vrooooom!"
so there's that.
I LOVE "SIMPLE". that's probably pretty clear by now.
after "simple" was a great version of hendrix's "bold as love" and the show closes with four solid (there's that word again) but not really outstanding songs.
i'm going to go out on a limb and say that most phish shows i listen to or attend fall into one of two categories:
1) band starts out strong, falters near the end of the first set, tries too hard at the beginning of the second set, ends on a great note after recovering
2) band starts slow, slaughters everything for the end of the first set and the beginning of the second, and then ends the show on a decent, but not impressive note.
the first gorge show from last year was definitely a Type 1 show for me, while the second gorge show and this year's blossom show were both Type 2. this tape definitely epitomizes the Type 2.
The Best Road Trip Slideshow Ever
so i just set up this cool new facebook/twitter/blog linky-thing, and it seems to be working. on the off chance that it actually is, and to indirectly celebrate my 1200th post and 140,000 miles on my car, i thought i would post The Best Road Trip Slideshow Ever.
test post!
pretend i'm saying something interesting!
or, just check out this photograph of a monkey playing football:
or, just check out this photograph of a monkey playing football:
divided christmas sky traveler
i was just remembering the other afternoon how freaking blown away i was when i first started listening to phish and was SURE i'd heard the middle part of "divided sky" before. eventually i figured out that john popper used phish's melody for his "christmas song", which has listened to every christmas obsessively for almost a decade prior. incidentally, it's the best christmas song ever, pretty much. evidence of awesomeness and synchronicity below.
full blues traveler song:
the relevant part of "divided sky" starts around 4:15:
full blues traveler song:
the relevant part of "divided sky" starts around 4:15:
Aug 29, 2010
RIDESHARE: Phish - 12.29.98
awesome new feature!
to "celebrate" my new job/teaching gig in richland (i refuse to call it tri-cities because you can't be in three places at once), i've decided to institute a new feature on the blog. all summer, i've been carrying out the slow, agonizing, but largely work-un-intensive task of converting all my CDs to digital files, for easier sorting, storing, and backup. just to give you an idea of the enormity of this task: so far i've ripped over 18,000 tracks, and i'm not even close to 1/3rd of the way through all the CDs. it's insane. part of the insanity is my realizing that i have at least 100 live shows on CD that i've never listened to before. this dovetails nicely with the fact that i'm now spending about 10 hours a week in a car by myself.
so...i'll be listening to tons of phish, wilco, and RA shows (big surprise!) over the next few months and i figured i'd do short write-ups on each show as i listen, so that later when i have everything stored digitally, i can remind myself what's worth listening to again and what's not.
let's start with the only full show i got through last thursday: part of Phish's '98 NYE run, a soundboard tape from 12/29.
here's the setlist and link from etree:
Set I
Rock and Roll, Funky Bitch, Punch You In the Eye, Horn, Ginseng Sullivan, Split Open and Melt, Brian & Robert, Guyute, My Soul, Freebird*
Set II
Free, Limb by Limb, Also Sprach Zarathustra**, Boogie on Reggae Woman, You Enjoy Myself E: The Divided Sky
full show rating: ****
***** - that puddle looks a lot like my face...
**** - i'd rather listen to this than do most things.
*** - good.
** - most shows are better, but there are probably some high points.
* - i'm now actually dead from having killed myself from having listened to this.
the show starts with "rock and roll", which i have to admit that i'm partial to lately because it's a song that's been rocked out to the extreme at 2 of the 3 phish shows i've been to. plus, it's just a great opener. this version starts by following the original song quite closely for the first few minutes, and then explodes into a lot of blistering soloing...it's a lot shorter and less exploratory than the versions of the song phish has been playing lately, but it's a great start. it segues into a solid "funky bitch" and then "punch you in the eye", and doesn't really let up until "horn", which is a great song, but hey, it's still "horn" and there's nothing new here. i don't normally like "ginseng sullivan" that much, but maybe it was the driving-through-farmlands i was doing and maybe not...this particular version is really jumpy and yet the playing is really clean, and it's just a damn fun tune at this point in the set. the middle part of the first set is also all solid, but just solid. the set closes with a stellar "my soul" and the always-hilarious a capella version of "freebird" there's not much in this set beyond the first three songs in this set that jumps out, but i really really liked the whole thing...i think part of the greatness comes from the entirely wacky selection of songs, and part comes from the fact that though this show comes from the funk "era" of phish, it's packed with a lot of great blues and rock jams in the first set. it's a truly unique sounding show if you put the tape on expecting it to be a typical '97-'98 show.
the main draw (for most) of the second set will be the YEM set-closer and the following "divided sky" encore, comprising about 45 minutes of music between the two of them. each is (again) a solid version of the song, and i remember how at one point in my phish fandom the idea of these two songs back-to-back would have, by itself, made this show a must-download. however, the real draw for me here was the "also sprach zarathustra", which is the only real moment of space-funk in the entire show, but it's a doozy. things start off very atmospheric and out-there and only get...umm...spacier as time goes on. this performance, combined with the straight-out rock of "free", which is a song that rarely gets jammed out like it does here, makes this second set worth listening to.
all in all, this is a great show for the variety in the setlist, the fact that there aren't any real duds at any point (though i don't like "boogie on reggae woman" myself, the song is performed well here), and for a few very high points. if you're looking for a truly transcendent show, keep looking, but you could do much worse than this one.
to "celebrate" my new job/teaching gig in richland (i refuse to call it tri-cities because you can't be in three places at once), i've decided to institute a new feature on the blog. all summer, i've been carrying out the slow, agonizing, but largely work-un-intensive task of converting all my CDs to digital files, for easier sorting, storing, and backup. just to give you an idea of the enormity of this task: so far i've ripped over 18,000 tracks, and i'm not even close to 1/3rd of the way through all the CDs. it's insane. part of the insanity is my realizing that i have at least 100 live shows on CD that i've never listened to before. this dovetails nicely with the fact that i'm now spending about 10 hours a week in a car by myself.
so...i'll be listening to tons of phish, wilco, and RA shows (big surprise!) over the next few months and i figured i'd do short write-ups on each show as i listen, so that later when i have everything stored digitally, i can remind myself what's worth listening to again and what's not.
let's start with the only full show i got through last thursday: part of Phish's '98 NYE run, a soundboard tape from 12/29.
here's the setlist and link from etree:
Set I
Rock and Roll, Funky Bitch, Punch You In the Eye, Horn, Ginseng Sullivan, Split Open and Melt, Brian & Robert, Guyute, My Soul, Freebird*
Set II
Free, Limb by Limb, Also Sprach Zarathustra**, Boogie on Reggae Woman, You Enjoy Myself E: The Divided Sky
full show rating: ****
***** - that puddle looks a lot like my face...
**** - i'd rather listen to this than do most things.
*** - good.
** - most shows are better, but there are probably some high points.
* - i'm now actually dead from having killed myself from having listened to this.
the show starts with "rock and roll", which i have to admit that i'm partial to lately because it's a song that's been rocked out to the extreme at 2 of the 3 phish shows i've been to. plus, it's just a great opener. this version starts by following the original song quite closely for the first few minutes, and then explodes into a lot of blistering soloing...it's a lot shorter and less exploratory than the versions of the song phish has been playing lately, but it's a great start. it segues into a solid "funky bitch" and then "punch you in the eye", and doesn't really let up until "horn", which is a great song, but hey, it's still "horn" and there's nothing new here. i don't normally like "ginseng sullivan" that much, but maybe it was the driving-through-farmlands i was doing and maybe not...this particular version is really jumpy and yet the playing is really clean, and it's just a damn fun tune at this point in the set. the middle part of the first set is also all solid, but just solid. the set closes with a stellar "my soul" and the always-hilarious a capella version of "freebird" there's not much in this set beyond the first three songs in this set that jumps out, but i really really liked the whole thing...i think part of the greatness comes from the entirely wacky selection of songs, and part comes from the fact that though this show comes from the funk "era" of phish, it's packed with a lot of great blues and rock jams in the first set. it's a truly unique sounding show if you put the tape on expecting it to be a typical '97-'98 show.
the main draw (for most) of the second set will be the YEM set-closer and the following "divided sky" encore, comprising about 45 minutes of music between the two of them. each is (again) a solid version of the song, and i remember how at one point in my phish fandom the idea of these two songs back-to-back would have, by itself, made this show a must-download. however, the real draw for me here was the "also sprach zarathustra", which is the only real moment of space-funk in the entire show, but it's a doozy. things start off very atmospheric and out-there and only get...umm...spacier as time goes on. this performance, combined with the straight-out rock of "free", which is a song that rarely gets jammed out like it does here, makes this second set worth listening to.
all in all, this is a great show for the variety in the setlist, the fact that there aren't any real duds at any point (though i don't like "boogie on reggae woman" myself, the song is performed well here), and for a few very high points. if you're looking for a truly transcendent show, keep looking, but you could do much worse than this one.
summer of the memes
so i had to explain the "double rainbow song" to a (disgustingly uncultured) friend of mine today, and it reminded me that i'd wanted to write this entry awhile back and then it slipped my mind when i got caught up in fistfighting bears and writing poetry.
this summer was memorable for a lot of reasons (many of which i will someday hopefully get around to writing about before i totally forget about any of them), and somehow the soundtrack to much of the adventure and action was (for some reason) based on three ridiculously addictive/bizarre internet memes.
1) the '60s-era IHOP theme song
this one was introduced on, i think, the first day that john was in pullman. he innocently mentioned that there was some batshit insane video on youtube of an old IHOP commercial, and so, being the connoisseur of batshit insanity that i am, i had to check it out. this is what i saw:
WHAT. IS. HAPPENING.
why the voice? i mean, i understand that going to IHOP is an excuse for dressing up in your sunday best and fucking skipping across a field with a huge cloud of balloons clutched in your trembling fist because IHOP is awesome and if you are NOT caught up in a paroxysm of joy at the prospect of panqueques, there's something wrong with you.
however. this is horrifying. the singing seems to be slightly off-rhythm from the music, and both are insane. also, nobody in this commercial GETS PANCAKES. two people get vaguely italian dishes, one person gets a salad, and the fourth person gets what is obviously a now-extinct giant mollusk pulled from the depths of the sea off the shore of whatever dark, lovecraftian hamlet this IHOP is located in. thanks, IHOP. i not only never want to go to IHOP again now, i never want to go ANYWHERE again.
2) nanerpuss
this was introduced to me by lindsey, on the same day as the above commercial. here's the original:
now that's crazy, but it also has this bizarre, catchy quality to it. the kind of quality that makes you wake up in the middle of the night sweating, screaming that you are the nanerpuss, and - guess what?! - you like pancakes. it gets worse:
are you dead yet? here's my favorite:
this is the one that cracked my world in half. for weeks afterwards i would literally halt in the middle of a busy word day, and unaware if what i myself was doing would shout "I'M WHAT'S KNOWN AS THE NANERPUSS! I AM A BANANANANANANA!!!!" for serious. it was bad.
3) the double rainbow song
i'm not going to explain this one to you if you don't already know it. the first video is the necessary context. the second video is the song. this song was my ringtone all summer because it is awesome, and surprisingly catchy and song-like and good and i like it. you should listen.
this summer was memorable for a lot of reasons (many of which i will someday hopefully get around to writing about before i totally forget about any of them), and somehow the soundtrack to much of the adventure and action was (for some reason) based on three ridiculously addictive/bizarre internet memes.
1) the '60s-era IHOP theme song
this one was introduced on, i think, the first day that john was in pullman. he innocently mentioned that there was some batshit insane video on youtube of an old IHOP commercial, and so, being the connoisseur of batshit insanity that i am, i had to check it out. this is what i saw:
WHAT. IS. HAPPENING.
why the voice? i mean, i understand that going to IHOP is an excuse for dressing up in your sunday best and fucking skipping across a field with a huge cloud of balloons clutched in your trembling fist because IHOP is awesome and if you are NOT caught up in a paroxysm of joy at the prospect of panqueques, there's something wrong with you.
however. this is horrifying. the singing seems to be slightly off-rhythm from the music, and both are insane. also, nobody in this commercial GETS PANCAKES. two people get vaguely italian dishes, one person gets a salad, and the fourth person gets what is obviously a now-extinct giant mollusk pulled from the depths of the sea off the shore of whatever dark, lovecraftian hamlet this IHOP is located in. thanks, IHOP. i not only never want to go to IHOP again now, i never want to go ANYWHERE again.
2) nanerpuss
this was introduced to me by lindsey, on the same day as the above commercial. here's the original:
now that's crazy, but it also has this bizarre, catchy quality to it. the kind of quality that makes you wake up in the middle of the night sweating, screaming that you are the nanerpuss, and - guess what?! - you like pancakes. it gets worse:
are you dead yet? here's my favorite:
this is the one that cracked my world in half. for weeks afterwards i would literally halt in the middle of a busy word day, and unaware if what i myself was doing would shout "I'M WHAT'S KNOWN AS THE NANERPUSS! I AM A BANANANANANANA!!!!" for serious. it was bad.
3) the double rainbow song
i'm not going to explain this one to you if you don't already know it. the first video is the necessary context. the second video is the song. this song was my ringtone all summer because it is awesome, and surprisingly catchy and song-like and good and i like it. you should listen.
foo, you just got nailed!
last night, i heroically dealt with squads of armacham soldiers the only way i know how...with a nailgun.
i'm looking at you, valhalla
if you're in a "dance club" and you ask the DJ to play some new order and they say "who?", it's not actually a dance club.
Aug 20, 2010
when it rains, it pours lemonade (that you made from the lemons life gave you)
so, in my 10619 days of life on earth, i've now locked my keys in my car twice. that means, on any given day, i'm .0188% likely to lock my keys in the car (and 99.98% likely to not). those are pretty good odds. unless, of course, you consider the fact that the last time i locked my keys in the car was almost a year ago today. that means that within the last year, i've actually been .55% likely to lock my keys in the car, up drastically from 0% in the previous 28 years. at the rate i'm currently going, assuming i live to be 70 years old, i will lock my keys in the car 82 more times before my death (the movement of technology away from metal keys towards biometrics notwithstanding).
all this math shit leads to a more important question: is grad school making me lose my mind?
i'm almost certain that i'm stupider than i was five years ago, though i'm not sure exactly if grad school is to blame. all the hookers and blow might have something to do with it, i suppose.
all this math shit leads to a more important question: is grad school making me lose my mind?
i'm almost certain that i'm stupider than i was five years ago, though i'm not sure exactly if grad school is to blame. all the hookers and blow might have something to do with it, i suppose.
Aug 15, 2010
ode to bryan tower (today at 5pm you played "somewhere over the rainbow")
o great cyclopean eye
you shiver the hot night air with your
burning red glare that throws
rust-colored shadows across the edges of my books like
spilled paint
even on kamiak butte you arrest my slumber
as your unblinking gaze penetrates dreams free of
literary aspirations
now that you are fixed, i once again have will
now that you are fixed, i once again have purpose
now that you are fixed, i once again seek to kindle the fire
of mordor in the hearts of my orc army
the world of men shall fall
OHCRAPITHINKITSTIMETOEATDINNER
you shiver the hot night air with your
burning red glare that throws
rust-colored shadows across the edges of my books like
spilled paint
even on kamiak butte you arrest my slumber
as your unblinking gaze penetrates dreams free of
literary aspirations
now that you are fixed, i once again have will
now that you are fixed, i once again have purpose
now that you are fixed, i once again seek to kindle the fire
of mordor in the hearts of my orc army
the world of men shall fall
OHCRAPITHINKITSTIMETOEATDINNER
why do i even have a twitter account anymore?!
i used to think twitter was stupid, then i thought it was totally awesome, and now i think it's stupid again. does this mean that i'll eventually again think of it as the proverbial bee's knees (or as today's english students would say, the B's knee's)? or is it dumb and stupid like a broken toy when you're two years old? i haven't checked my twitter feed for eleven days and my life hasn't come to an end. i find i learn a hell of a lot more reading actual articles read through my RSS feed, and if i want to talk to people, i just talk to them in real life.
am i getting old?
why is everything suddenly in sepia tones?
why am i an envelope?!
am i getting old?
why is everything suddenly in sepia tones?
why am i an envelope?!
i'm like your mom's doorbell, everyone gets a turn
something went horribly wrong in that post title.
anyway, as a way to keep a tenuous hold on the sanity i described so incoherently in the previous post, i'm going to try to force myself to write at least one blog a day from now on. sometimes they might be about things that happened during that specific day, but i'm hoping to actually write some Writey McWriterson things as well. we'll see. if i can set aside an hour every two days to exercise my body, i should be able to set aside the same amount of time to exercise my brains (and my fingers, and my brain's fingers), right?
WRONG.
oh god, my toaster's on fire quick someone throw water on it
crash
anyway, as a way to keep a tenuous hold on the sanity i described so incoherently in the previous post, i'm going to try to force myself to write at least one blog a day from now on. sometimes they might be about things that happened during that specific day, but i'm hoping to actually write some Writey McWriterson things as well. we'll see. if i can set aside an hour every two days to exercise my body, i should be able to set aside the same amount of time to exercise my brains (and my fingers, and my brain's fingers), right?
WRONG.
oh god, my toaster's on fire quick someone throw water on it
crash
there will be a time when time won't come fast enough...
...but until then, i wouldn't mind it if things slowed down a bit. life is crash-bang-booming through the end of summer and into the beginning of fall, and in pullman that means: 1) 95-degree temperatures every day for the next month and 2) yearly existential dilemma over whether the payoff of my job is really worth the completely insane hours and less-than-minimal pay.
fortunately, #1 is easily mitigated by a few strategically placed $10 box fans.
#2 CAN be easily mitigated by a few strategically placed bottles of wine, but history has shown that that solution is impermanent at best.
author's note: i put slices of kiwi in this giant salad i made a few nights ago and then they rotted the next day, so now i'm eating huge, tasty piles of hearty salad that is really great except the one out of every ten bites that has a brown, rotting chunk of kiwi in it.
every fall, especially now with the advent of facebook, i see a tidal wave of comments, blog posts, and status messages bemoaning the end of summer, discussing one last weekend trip or party before "work" starts, or complaining about how everyone is already "stressing out". i empathize in a sense. i had (as you'll find out in forthcoming posts) pretty much the most fun, adventurous, exciting (and, conveniently, healthiest and cheapest) summer of my life this summer. it was a relief knowing that i can still enjoy life in a really fundamental, kid-with-a-cardboard-box sort of way even though i'm almost 30, and it was also just fun to have so much...fun. god, i always sound so profound when i talk about good things.
so in a sense, i'm sad to see summer go. i'm sad to ramp back up to 14-hour workdays, setting my alarm, and not just being able to say "the hell with it all" every few weeks and disappear into the hills with my tent. there's so much i have left over that i wanted to do this summer that i literally have a Google Doc listing all the places i want to hike to and camp at and climb mountains around next summer. it's a bummer to realize suddenly how enthusiastic you really are about something (traveling, hiking, playing music, you name it) just when you have to chuck it all and get your nose back to (on? in?) the grindstone.
but stress? fear? this terrifying amount of angst that so many of my fellow teachers seem to have? i don't get it. i don't feel stressed at all. either i'll succeed or i won't. i'll work to the utmost of my ability at all of the things i have in front of me before december, and if my bosses don't think i did a good enough job...what else could i have done?
i guess i've kind of always thought that way, at least since i started teaching in 2005. maybe it has something to do with my past working all kinds of crappy jobs while needing to constantly suck up to authority figures in order to keep said crappy jobs. maybe it's the fact that even though it's been five years now, i'm still really grateful to have the job i have, and while there are days that i'd rather sleep in than teach class or write a seminar paper, i've never once woken up with that horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach like i used to on a monday morning before heading off to chipotle or the gas station. and that's why i don't get the stressing out. why would you go through the incredibly rigorous process of getting a ph.d if you didn't want to? i mean, sure it's not the most pleasant process in the world, but it's not like things are going to become suddenly simpler when you finish the degree...more than likely you're going to end up doing the same thing you're doing now, somewhere else, with even more pressure on you and maybe a little more money in your pockets. and that's the GOOD option.
i'm not picking on anyone in particular here, and honestly i'm not trying to "pick on" anyone at all. i guess i'm just trying to understand...nobody just stumbles into a job teaching college the way you might stumble into selling cars or managing a chipotle. there's a long, deliberate process involved in people like myself getting ourselves to the stage that we're at. if that process is really destroying your life, do something else instead. challenge is important, but so is being happy.
i'm sad because i'm going to miss all the opportunities i briefly had during the first half of this summer to indulge in some things i don't normally have the luxury of indulging in when working 80 hours a week, but the only thing i'm going to be stressed out about is whether or not my car's going to survive the drive to tri-cities on thursday. and, hell, i'm not even that good of a teacher or student. if anybody SHOULD be worried, it should be me...
fortunately, #1 is easily mitigated by a few strategically placed $10 box fans.
#2 CAN be easily mitigated by a few strategically placed bottles of wine, but history has shown that that solution is impermanent at best.
author's note: i put slices of kiwi in this giant salad i made a few nights ago and then they rotted the next day, so now i'm eating huge, tasty piles of hearty salad that is really great except the one out of every ten bites that has a brown, rotting chunk of kiwi in it.
every fall, especially now with the advent of facebook, i see a tidal wave of comments, blog posts, and status messages bemoaning the end of summer, discussing one last weekend trip or party before "work" starts, or complaining about how everyone is already "stressing out". i empathize in a sense. i had (as you'll find out in forthcoming posts) pretty much the most fun, adventurous, exciting (and, conveniently, healthiest and cheapest) summer of my life this summer. it was a relief knowing that i can still enjoy life in a really fundamental, kid-with-a-cardboard-box sort of way even though i'm almost 30, and it was also just fun to have so much...fun. god, i always sound so profound when i talk about good things.
so in a sense, i'm sad to see summer go. i'm sad to ramp back up to 14-hour workdays, setting my alarm, and not just being able to say "the hell with it all" every few weeks and disappear into the hills with my tent. there's so much i have left over that i wanted to do this summer that i literally have a Google Doc listing all the places i want to hike to and camp at and climb mountains around next summer. it's a bummer to realize suddenly how enthusiastic you really are about something (traveling, hiking, playing music, you name it) just when you have to chuck it all and get your nose back to (on? in?) the grindstone.
but stress? fear? this terrifying amount of angst that so many of my fellow teachers seem to have? i don't get it. i don't feel stressed at all. either i'll succeed or i won't. i'll work to the utmost of my ability at all of the things i have in front of me before december, and if my bosses don't think i did a good enough job...what else could i have done?
i guess i've kind of always thought that way, at least since i started teaching in 2005. maybe it has something to do with my past working all kinds of crappy jobs while needing to constantly suck up to authority figures in order to keep said crappy jobs. maybe it's the fact that even though it's been five years now, i'm still really grateful to have the job i have, and while there are days that i'd rather sleep in than teach class or write a seminar paper, i've never once woken up with that horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach like i used to on a monday morning before heading off to chipotle or the gas station. and that's why i don't get the stressing out. why would you go through the incredibly rigorous process of getting a ph.d if you didn't want to? i mean, sure it's not the most pleasant process in the world, but it's not like things are going to become suddenly simpler when you finish the degree...more than likely you're going to end up doing the same thing you're doing now, somewhere else, with even more pressure on you and maybe a little more money in your pockets. and that's the GOOD option.
i'm not picking on anyone in particular here, and honestly i'm not trying to "pick on" anyone at all. i guess i'm just trying to understand...nobody just stumbles into a job teaching college the way you might stumble into selling cars or managing a chipotle. there's a long, deliberate process involved in people like myself getting ourselves to the stage that we're at. if that process is really destroying your life, do something else instead. challenge is important, but so is being happy.
i'm sad because i'm going to miss all the opportunities i briefly had during the first half of this summer to indulge in some things i don't normally have the luxury of indulging in when working 80 hours a week, but the only thing i'm going to be stressed out about is whether or not my car's going to survive the drive to tri-cities on thursday. and, hell, i'm not even that good of a teacher or student. if anybody SHOULD be worried, it should be me...
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