My yoga DVD has an excellent workout.* But I hate the music. Like much yoga music, it ranges from bland to treacly to offensively annoying. So I recently took the routine’s instructions from the DVD and combined that audio with my own mix of downtempo instrumental electronic music, leaning heavily on the artists you’d expect, like DJ Shadow and Boards of Canada. (This is where music geekery and yoga assholery converge.)

But at the end of the program, during the “constructive rest” segment, comes “Bad Days,” by Timo Mass, the gorgeous closer to his all-killer-no-filler 2002 dance freakout, Loud. And while it’s ideal music for “letting my body undulate on the waves of my breath while my brain sinks into my heart” (the DVD’s words, not mine), I may have to swap it out with a less potent, emotionally loaded piece.

Because “Bad Days” actually connotes very good days: the sunny spring of 2002 when I didn’t have much of an agenda beyond drinking beer with Neil and playing drums in a party band. There were some bad days back then, too: I wasn’t so much on a career track so much as wildly derailed from it, and I was letting a number of personal relationships deteriorate for various reasons.

But euphoric recall allows me to only remember the sunny afternoons and the bacchanalian nights in Iowa City bars, and seeping in through the cracks between the dance anthems and the sweaty rock songs was this one—bright, patient, searching.

* That is an actual sentence I typed, on a blog with my real, full name on it; a blog that anyone in the world can read.

Posted: February 18th, 2010 under Iowa City, Music.
Comments: 1

Shuffling through an iTunes library containing 105 days of music means that I will occasionally land upon a long-forgotten item so obscure that, were I still storing music on plastic media, would remained consigned to the backs of my closest for years, if not forever.

Such a moment occurred the other day when my player landed on a half-finished track by a band I was in seven years ago. We were called Racecar Radar and we were an Iowa City supergroup, inasmuch as a band comprising members of three local, unsigned, about-to-break-up bands can be.

We had some good songs, though, and we went on to do great things in other contexts, so Racecar Radar remains a brief pit-stop, preserved in the amber of the hazy alcoholic summer of 2002. We did stick together long enough cajole our way into John Svec’s studio for a few days in August to bash out a few demos, only one of which we finished.

One of the unfinished tracks is also one of my favorites. Its working title was “Lighthouses” and Dino wrote it. I won’t post it here because it really is noticeably unfinished and would require a major overhaul, which will never happen. Dino’s scratch vocal is buried in the mix, the lyrics half there; the guitars are out of tune with each other; the whole thing is rough and unmastered.

I forgot this song even existed until my computer thrust it at me the other day, and I was immediately plunged into the usual morass of nostalgia and what-could-have-been, but I also noted that—if you’ll permit me brag for a moment—I am killing the drum performance on this recording. Read more »

Posted: November 19th, 2009 under Iowa City, Music.
Comments: 2

“That challenge haunts all animators. We grow up thinking that our bike is cold when it’s left out in the rain, or that a leaf on a high branch is afraid of heights. ” – Andrew Stanton

“I chose, with not too much deliberation, a nice new desk at which I will accomplish many accomplishments for at least the next three years.” – Me

I’m not an animator, but I still get sentimental about inanimate objects. At the end of this month, in order to be closer to my job(s) and friends, I’m going to move to a new apartment. My last few moves were marked by ill-preparedness and last-minute all-nighters spent haphazardly throwing things into boxes. I’m trying to be a little more organized about it—I consider this my first “adult” move—but I still can’t help but feel overwhelmed by all the shit I have to do before July. Not to mention the emotional strain of vacating a place I’ve inhabited for three years—the longest I’ve lived anywhere since my parents’ house in high school.

So I’m trying to get started early. Today my project was to disassemble the aforementioned behemoth of a desk. It’s served me well in two apartments and through the entirety of my MFA program. I wrote a lot at that desk. But because it’s from IKEA, and because I probably didn’t care for it as well as I should have, it’s basically falling apart, its bolts missing and its famous IKEA particleboard disintegrating. I don’t think it can survive another move and I don’t relish the idea of carrying it up three flights of stairs.

Read more »

Posted: June 7th, 2009 under Iowa City, Minneapolis.
Comments: 3

Over the weekend Amanda and I flew to North Carolina to attend the marriage of my friend Wes to his fiancée, now wife, Theresa.

Even before the wedding, we knew it was going to be a pretty great weekend because our rental car was a silver Mustang, and upon arrival in Raleigh we went straight from the airport to Waffle House.

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Posted: April 20th, 2009 under General, Grinnell, Images, Iowa City, Music.
Comments: 7

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

Maybe it’s just the time of year, but I’m feeling nostalgic. Then again, I’m always feeling nostalgic. From the vaults:

Nolan – “Convincing” (live at Gabe’s, August 2005) (mp3)

Posted: December 19th, 2007 under Images, Iowa City, Music.
Comments: none

1979. My parents took me to Paris to visit my mother’s sister Mary and her husband Greg. Because I was three years old I was obsessed with all things Sesame Street and was horrified to discover that, on the French version of the program, Oscar the Grouch was blue and played the trumpet. The number-one song in the United States on Christmas Day was “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” by Rupert Holmes. Greg had a massive record collection and I implored him to operate the record player so I could listen to Beatles albums and the brand-new Muppet Movie soundtrack, which caused me to become frantic with glee.

On Christmas morning my father and I were the first ones to awake. We sat in the kitchen for about two hours while he read the paper and wondered to himself when I was going to remember that it was Christmas morning. When I finally did, I opened my presents, which included a wind-up plastic bird and a miniature car ferry with removable cars. Mary made me a pretend radio out of a cardboard box and wrote “Jake’s Radio” on it. On New Year’s Eve I spent the last ten minutes of 1979 dreaming about Big Bird and willing myself not to wet the bed.

1986. My family moved to Ann Arbor, and the snowfall seemed more intense and abundant than what I was used to back in Iowa. Our new home had a fenced-in yard, which made the snow drifts seem even larger. The number-one song in the country on Christmas Day was “Walk Like an Egyptian” by The Bangles. In my fourth-grade classroom I was the New Kid, and during our current events unit I struggled for the first time to understand AIDS.

Our house also had something called a “family room” where we spent most of our time and which was separate and distinct from our “living room” where we hardly spent any time. This also took me a while to parse. We had cable television, which was also novel, and I quickly became obsessed with MTV and David Lee Roth and Madonna’s video for “Open Your Heart”, which caused me to become scandalized in all sorts of ways I had yet to comprehend. Nickelodeon showed reruns of The Monkees, which caused me to become obsessed with the Monkees.

For Christmas we traveled to see my grandmother in DC. All I wanted for Christmas was Laser Tag. I would absolutely die if I did not get Laser Tag for Christmas. Then, for Christmas, I received Laser Tag, and so I lived.

I also got my first Walkman, and roamed my grandmother’s house with my headphones clamped to my head and my Laser Tag gun in a holster on my waist, blaring my Monkees tapes. On New Year’s Eve I spent the last ten minutes of 1986 falling asleep listening to Mickey Dolenz sing “Last Train To Clarkesville” and willing myself not to wet the bed.

Read more »

Posted: December 4th, 2007 under General, Grinnell, Iowa City.
Comments: 9

I met Leah at an after-hours party in an AUR apartment on Burlington Street in April 2002. Over the course of that spring and summer I re-met her a number of times at bars and house parties. My memories of Leah and that summer in general are a bit hazy, due in part to my consumption beer and also because I was drinking a lot of beer. But then, we all were.

But as time went on and Leah became a fixture in my social circle (or, more accurately, I became a fixture in hers) I noticed something: I never didn’t have fun when she was around. When she’d arrive at a party or enter a room I felt myself at once relaxing and perking up because it meant things were about to get more interesting, whether it meant that we were headed to the Deadwood, or that approximately three dozen of us were going to hang out on her front porch (“Portugal”) and empty several cases of PBR, or maybe sit around her kitchen table drinking rum & cokes (or, as she liked to sing, “People all over the world, join hands / start a rum train, rum train”). One thing was for sure: I was going to laugh my ass off.

Maybe we don’t rage quite as hard as we did four years ago—which is probably, ultimately, a good thing—but I still feel relieved, and reassured, when I see Leah appear on the scene. A couple years ago, when Jaret began appearing with her, it was as if the fun and the goodwill had been doubled. Maybe even quadrupled.

Photo by Joe

Congratulations, you two. Join hands, start a rum train, etc.

(my Flickr set)

Posted: September 17th, 2007 under Images, Iowa City.
Comments: none

Over the weekend I was in my old stomping grounds attending Ransom and Angie’s (or Rangie’s, if you will) combined birthday celebration. Angie’s half of the celebration included a tasteful party, while Ransom’s half spanned the whole weekend and more hedonistic. (Ransom’s birthday and all affiliated celebrations are more commonly known as Weebsday.)

More here.

Posted: April 23rd, 2007 under Images, Iowa City.
Comments: 5

Last month I posted a couple of songs by the Hypocrites, a band which, once upon a time, reigned supreme at Grinnell College. My high school band VIVID appeared alongside them on a compilation of Grinnell and Iowa City bands, released by Grinnell alum Tom Zlabinger on his upstart indie label HUM Productions.[1]

Anywhos, after that earlier post I got an email from Xander, the Hypocrites’ guitarist. He is the latest in a series of people around the world who’ve emerged from the Internets after stumbling upon my blog.[2] He expressed his pleasant surprise at finding mp3s of his old band online, and then asked if I had any VIVID mp3s to share.

Well, of course I did. I’m kind of surprised that, although I’ve posted songs by other old bands of mine, I don’t think I’ve ever ventured into the territory occupied by my first band, which flourished during that dark yet hopeful time to which we now refer, with not a little wistful anxiety, as the Early Nineties.

The short version of the story is that my three best friends and I formed a band and named it after Living Colour’s first album.[3] To a burgeoning catalog of originals we added a bevy of Primus and Nirvana[4] covers and in addition to shows in our friend’s basements, we began playing shows in various nooks and crannies around Grinnell College, and earned the admiration and/or curiosity of the students there. We were several years their junior, didn’t drink or do drugs, and were elated when Tom and the Hypocrites and the rest of that tiny scene validated us.

In April 1995, Tom booked us two days in Minstrel Studios, in its old location just off Dubuque Street. Our parents reluctantly, miraculously, excused us from school and let us borrow a couple of their minivans to haul our stuff to Iowa City. We were blown away by the prospect of being recorded professionally, by an actual studio engineer, doing actual overdubs, and having everything mixed to DAT (remember DAT?) and, maybe if everything worked out, appearing on an actual compact disc. There’s a hilarious amount of flanger and chorus on the guitars and mid-nineties reverb on the drums, and at several points we come perilously close to sounding like Phish, but we were pretty goddamn proud of ourselves. These are the three songs that resulted from those sessions:

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(mp3)

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(mp3)

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(mp3)

In these days of iTunes, GarageBand, and MySpace, when pretty much anyone can record demos and post them online immediately and effortlessly, these little recordings hammer home how much the current system differs from the machinations of amateur music production as it operated twelve years ago, and they endear me to the blissfully naïve teenagers we were when we recorded them.

[1] Even typing these words and names elicits in the author a certain cognitive and temporal dissonance.

[2] Other people who’ve gotten in touch with me include an individual who found my review of a Starship album, someone whose last name is Nolan, the guitarist for the New Fast Automatic Daffodils, several high school classmates, and Ian Frazier’s publisher.

[3] The name VIVID always had to be printed in all-caps, and for the duration of the band’s existence we remained woefully ignorant of the adult video production company with whom we shared our name.

[4] And Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, Led Zeppelin, the aforementioned Living Colour, U2, Fishbone, King Crimson, Stone Temple Pilots, Depeche Mode, fIREHOSE, The Police, The Breeders, The Smiths, Hüsker Dü, Van Halen, the Beatles, and probably several other bands I’ve forgotten about.

Posted: January 8th, 2007 under Grinnell, Iowa City, Music.
Comments: 12