Thriller was the first album I actually owned. Beginning at age three, I listened to and became familiar with my parents’ Beatles albums, but I couldn’t claim them as my own.

When I was seven and Thriller was released, I begged my mother for it, and she was all like, “Why don’t you just have Uncle Henry make a tape of it for you?”

“That’s not the point!” I whined. With all due respect to my uncle Henry—definitely one of my hipper, more musically aware uncles— I wanted the official album on tape, the complete package: that shimmery white suit reproduced in a tiny 3×4″ format, and the ugly beige cassette itself, with the song titles and everything stamped on the plastic. That was my holy grail.

So I wore my mother down and eventually got it, and played the hell out of it, and eventually lost it, and a couple years later moved onto the second album I ever owned, Songs From the Big Chair. But that album, the video for “Shout,” and the ensuing 25 years of pop music couldn’t have existed without Thriller, or the man who created it.

As soon as I heard the news yesterday, my brain performed that curious elision that allows adults to reckon with nuance, controversy, and cognitive dissonance: I immediately forgot the past 20 years of Michael Jackson’s narrative—the weirdness and the plastic surgery and the baby-dangling and the allegations of impropriety—and thought only about Thriller and Bad, about being a single-digit age in the 1980s—an era I consider more frequently even as it continues to recede.

The bells at Minneapolis’ City Hall are playing Michael Jackson songs. You can hear them all over downtown. I recorded them playing

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Posted: June 26th, 2009 under Chicago, Music.
Comments: 4

I already alluded to this Onion article about adult kickball. But then, lying in bed last night, I began thinking about my 2004-2005 tenure with the World Adult Kickball Association’s Chicago Deep Dish league.

Those were heady days: three consecutive seasons of truly horrid playing on my part and raucous postgame summits at the bars whose owners probably could not fucking believe they sponsored an adult kickball league.

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Posted: June 4th, 2009 under Chicago.
Comments: 1

Our last shows of the tour were excellent: First there was the impromptu open-mic in Adams Morgan, DC, where a crowd member, upon finding out we were from Minnesota, shouted “Al Franken!” and “60!” between every song.

After that we drove to Philadelphia, where we were warmly welcomed by the women who run Girls Rock Camp there and several of their friends, including members of the delightfully insane ensemble Oh! Pears. The next day we even walked around the historical parts of the city.

That evening we joined Oh! Pears onstage at Johnny Brenda’s, along with An American Chinese and The Mean.

The drive from Philadelphia to Minneapolis was twenty hours long and punctuated only by a midnight meal at Denny’s and the unfortunate news of Jay Bennett’s death.

Now that I’m back, I’ve done that neat trick I performed after my tour with Nolan, which is to immediately and efficiently ablate from memory all the tedious or frustrating parts of touring with a band, leaving only memories of the fun, and the desire to do it all again as soon as possible.

More here.

Posted: May 27th, 2009 under Chicago, Music.
Comments: 1

While in Iowa over the weekend, my brother and I traveled to Iowa City to attend the joint birthday party that Ransom and Angie were throwing. It’s an hour’s drive east from Grinnell, a drive I’ve probably made close to a thousand times.

It was dark. My brother, in the passenger seat, cued up “Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It)” on his iPod. I smiled for the entire duration of the song. I found myself entertaining the admittedly mundane thought I always do in the presence of great art:

How sad that people who died before this song was released cannot hear it.

But maybe they can—and for the rest of the song my only (mundane but worthwhile) wish in the world was this: that all the dead people I’ve known and haven’t known should be able to enjoy “Single Ladies”—and every other creation of equal or greater value.

Driving back, at 3 a.m., my brother put on Lost and Safe by the Books. I’d forgotten all about that album, and the Books, but 3 a.m. on an empty Iowa highway was the perfect time to be reminded.

“Be Good to Them Always” began and I immediately pictured an extremely specific location: the corner of Pierce and Damen, facing east, four years ago. Morning, summer. Taking a left at Penny’s and rounding the corner, hurrying to catch a train. Already sweating in my work clothes. I suppose song was in heavy rotation on my iPod.

The song’s lyrics—if you can call snippets of dialogue and field recordings lyrics layered over beats, cello, and Rhodes, all chopped into carefully reconstituted smithereens—those lyrics were unsettling then, and seem prescient now, on the perpetual cusp of national disaster.

Different music, different context, same mundane but worthwhile wish: that the dead should hear this music. At 3 a.m. on an empty Iowa highway that wish was transformed; it became less mundane, more desperate, both less and more specific—extrapolated out to address whatever amazing song might be playing, but now also invoking a singular departed.

Posted: April 7th, 2009 under Chicago, General, Grinnell, Iowa City, Music.
Comments: 1

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Posted: March 17th, 2009 under Chicago, Images.
Comments: none

In an effort to take my mind, and yours, off Tuesday’s momentous importance and the incipient nationwide dread tying our collective electoral stomach into knots, I want to share the good news that over the weekend I traveled to Chicago with my new band to play a show there.

I think the statute of limitations on referring to Run At The Dog as “my new band” has almost expired, which is nice. Especially now that we’ve successfully survived a road trip together. Even though I’ve suspected as much for several months, I’m now completely convinced that we are a good fit for each other as musicians and friends. And I think I proved to them that I am the sort of person willing to drop everything and make a 14-hour road trip, spend money on gas, sleep on the floor, etc just to play a rock show in another city. It’s important for them, and me, to know that I am still that kind of person.

The best part of the whole experience, other than the show itself, was singing along with the Scissor Sisters and Tears For Fears in the middle of the night during the return drive. If a single album can give birth to the collective musical consciousness of five people, it would seem that Songs From The Big Chair is the musical father of Run At The Dog, and we are all siblings living under Roland Orzabal’s roof. This is, happily, true of most of the bands I’ve been in.

Finally, here’s a video of our first song on Saturday night. It’s a personal favorite.

Posted: November 3rd, 2008 under Chicago, Music, Video.
Comments: 2

I’m beginning to suspect—after being placed on standby for a flight out of O’Hare because I arrived late at the airport and missed my original flight due to a delay on the Blue Line caused by repairs on the northbound tracks which require passengers to be herded off the train and onto a shuttle bus which takes them one stop up the line to reboard the train and continue to O’Hare and pretty much adds another 45 minutes to any Blue Line trip to O’Hare, and getting to sit in first class after I almost didn’t make the cut but then did because the off-duty pilot who was sitting in the first class seat I eventually occupied was willing to get off the plane and take a later flight all so that I could get back home in style with my feet up and unlimited refills on my Sprite and a soft leather seat that reclined way more than the 79 degrees to which the seats in coach recline—that I should miss my flights more often.

Posted: November 5th, 2007 under Chicago, General.
Comments: 4

I was in Chicago over the weekend.

This is a good time to apologize to all my friends in Chicago who didn’t know I was in town because I didn’t tell them. I get nervous about informing people about a visit ahead of time because then it’s always disappointing if we don’t manage to get together.

As Sonya emailed me, “Fuck you. You never tell us when you’re around. I miss you.”

Of course, it’s arguably even worse when they find out I was in Chicago after the fact, via something as impersonal as a blog post.

I guess I’m just a colossal failure however you slice it.

But anyway, while in Chicago I took a walk past my old apartment, my first and only home when I lived there. My brother had given me some idea of what to expect, but I was still startled and a little bit sad to see it for myself.

I mean, don’t get me wrong: that place was in serious need of renovation. Parts of the foundation were sinking into the ground, so that our living room floor had a few degrees’ incline. And it’s not like the place was an architectural landmark or anything.

But we all know that human nostalgia runs counter to structural improvement.

It’s surreal to look into what used to be my bedroom.

Or that window in the upper right-hand corner, just inside of which I could usually be found every weeknight at six p.m., drinking beer and playing GameCube or watching Simpsons reruns.

So long, #3E. You were good to me. And Jason. And the sixteen roommates he had in the three years before I moved in.

And I can now say, with 100% confidence, that I know exactly how the residents of New Orleans felt after Katrina.

Posted: August 28th, 2006 under Chicago, Images.
Comments: 3

As some of you know because you saw me there, I was in Chicago this weekend for about twenty hours. I paid my broseph a surprise visit and partied with him, Dino, Nick, Leah, and a bunch of other homeslices.

It was a rousing success, except I got way too drunk because I hadn’t eaten enough and was sleep-deprived because I had to get up early on Saturday morning to get on the train. Oh yeah, I took the train to Chicago. It was sixteen total hours of slow-moving, cross-country, Kerouacian romanticization of modern travel. I actually enjoyed it quite a lot: I got some reading and writing done, drank a $5 Sam Adams in the lounge car, and the seats are waaaay more comfortable than an airplane’s.

More photos from the party, and more fruity train photos, can be found in the gallery.

Posted: March 27th, 2006 under Chicago, Images.
Comments: none

More here.

Posted: January 3rd, 2006 under Chicago, Images.
Comments: 6