I’m not going to try and justify or apologize for the fact that I recently viewed the new Genesis documentary/concert film, When In Rome. I did it, and I am not sorry. (Nor am I sorry for riding my bike to the nearest Wal-Mart, which is in the suburbs, to purchase the DVD because Wal-Mart is the only U.S. retailer selling the DVD, and I kind of wanted to be able to say that I rode my bike to a Wal-Mart in the suburbs to buy the new Genesis DVD.)

I have a Masters of Fine Arts degree.

Whether you’re a fan of Genesis and/or Phil Collins or not, I think this short film is a nice little portrait of what happens when a handful of wildly successful musicians in their mid-fifties decide to undertake that dubious endeavor that is the reunion tour, and the developments, both positive and otherwise, that result from a fifteen-year hiatus and subsequent reconvening in lavish rehearsal halls tucked away in Lausanne and Helsinki with seven months to rehearse and a quadrillion-dollar production budget.

Through it all, the person who acquits himself surprisingly admirably is actually Phil Collins. There’s none of the supposed egotism or overweening ambition that has led to various PR issues over the span of his thirty years as a solo artist (and I stress the word “artist”); no mention of Tarzan, or any of the other occasionally middling pap he’s churned out during his solo career, or his insistence on collaborating with Eric Clapton, or Tarzan, or his three divorces, or Tarzan. Rather, he emerges as a talented but flawed musician in his autumn years—which was never how I’ve perceived him until a very specific moment in the documentary.

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Posted: June 13th, 2008 under Video, Music.
Comments: 3

(Last Monday I had the rare opportunity to see Stars of the Lid perform live. Because I apparently can’t let a beautiful musical moment stand on its own without documenting it exhaustively, I came home and wrote this review.)

During the first true spring rain of the season, an eclectic array of people—hipsters, the art crowd, older classical-music aficionados, season-ticket holders, and everyone in between—crammed themselves into the tiny seats at the Southern Theater, not quite sure what to expect from the Wordless Music Series‘ Minneapolis stopover. While the artists currently showcased in the series do happen to traffic in instrumental music, the “wordless” component of the name probably refers more to the eschewal of genre tags as outlined in the series’ mission statement: “The various boundaries and genre distinctions segregating music today … are in an artificial construction in need of dismantling.”

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Posted: April 28th, 2008 under Minneapolis, Concerts, Music.
Comments: 1

In hopes that I can somehow magically impel my thesis to finish itself by leaving it untouched in the next room while I lie on the couch in front of the television, I am watching Breaking & Entering, a strange and beautiful film I’ve been meaning to Netflix* for a long time, ever since I bought its score simply because it’s by Underworld (actually, a collaboration between them and Gabriel Yared). This is always a strange and kind of lovely way to discover a movie, so that while watching it I am hearing music with which I’ve become intensely familiar—jogged to, slept to, included in mixes—cast in a new context.

Like I said, it’s a beautiful film, both for its music and its cinematography, but also for the pretty people who populate it, and who are pretty to look at. It’s a difficult film to describe or pin down—one moment an urban crime drama, the next a portrait of a troubled family, the next a postmodern morality play—a shapeshifter that grabs me in the manner of any art that resists simple characterization, like You Shall Know Our Velocity or For Hero: For Fool: I can’t quite say what it is I like about it because I’ve never seen anything quite like it before.

And now if you’ll excuse me, I have to hit “pause” and check to see if my thesis has typed “THE END” at the end of itself like I politely and magically willed it to.

Underworld & Gabriel Yared - “Happy Toast” (mp3)

* (”Netflix” here being a colloquialism meaning “to let a DVD languish in an envelope atop of one’s television for six weeks so that one’s Netflix subscription does rather the opposite of paying for itself.”)

Posted: April 18th, 2008 under Film, Music.
Comments: 3

1973: My father obtains a position in the fledgling Russian department at Grinnell College and moves, with my mother, from Baltimore to a tiny town in south-central Iowa. Their families think them crazy; they might as well be joining the Peace Corps and shipping off to Zaire.

1975: Grinnell College scores a major coup by bringing to campus a relatively unknown young singer-songwriter named Bruce Springsteen. It turns out when he’s on the cusp of a national breakthrough; he plays Grinnell a month after releasing Born to Run and a month before landing on the covers of both Time and Newsweek.

My mother and father attend the concert to see what all the fuss is about. It’s held in Darby Gym, an ancient barnlike basketball structure a block and a half from their house. Darby has a high, curved roof and an ornate brick facade; it’s a gymnasium, of course, so the acoustics aren’t the greatest. My parents are there for only a few songs when my father decides to leave. My mother stays a little longer, but my father, about to turn forty, deems it simply too loud.

1983: “Dancing in the Dark” is taking the pop charts by storm, its video in heavy rotation on MTV, to which I am glued whenever possible. We’re renting a row house in Greenbelt, the my mother’s hometown near DC. I spend the evenings bouncing off the walls in my pajamas, listening to Top 40 radio in the bedroom my brother and I share, trying to stave off bedtime. I thrash around on the bed, imitating Courtney Cox’s dance moves from the video.

1985: Singles from Born In The USA are still ruling the charts; now it’s “Glory Days”, Springsteen’s hokey bar-band anthem about summer, baseball, and drinking. I only really like one of those things I and I still love the song.

I’m watching the video on MTV one afternoon in Greenbelt, the volume cranked way up, when my father comes thundering into the living room, raging at me about God forbid his sons should go outside, God forbid they should read a book once all summer, about Goddamn it watching this crap all day.

I sadly hit the volume button on the TV’s remote, and the E Street Band’s rollicking good times fade into the background.

Posted: March 19th, 2008 under Grinnell, Music.
Comments: 6

Over the weekend I finally got around to watching The Lives Of Others. Because it’s in German, with English subtitles, I couldn’t do crosswords while I watched it, which is what I normally do while watching movies at home. And so it had a much firmer grip on my attention than most movies viewed at home (on the warbly old eighties-vintage television bequeathed to me by one friend, while I lie on the surprisingly comfortable IKEA sofa bequeathed to me by another, in the comfort nook of my apartment, late at night, under a couple of blankets, crosswords in my lap) and, partly because of this and partly just due to the film’s tremendous impact, I found myself overwhelmed.

The Lives Of Others is one of those movies that makes it look easy to make excellent movies. Watching it, you wonder how anyone could ever make a bad movie, since this one is so effortlessly, organically good. But the effect is deceptive, I know, and I’ll never be a filmmaker but I know that when I’m reading a truly good piece of writing, it has a similarly effortless, assured quality, and I want to look under the hood to see how it’s done but of course there’s no latch to release the hood. You can’t even see the lines where the hood opens, or the stitching in the seams, or whatever other clumsy artisinal analogy I could make here. So it’s frustrating even as it’s inspiring. But I’ll take it.

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Posted: January 7th, 2008 under Film, Literature, Music, General.
Comments: 5

(Five albums.)

Of Montreal, Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer? A classic case of the sort of band I didn’t pay enough attention to until I saw them live, and really, I can’t think of a better way to fall in love with this band, to go from casual listener to true believer. There’s the theatricality, the unrepentant eroticism, the costumes and stage props hearkening back to the band’s obvious antecedent, another divisive, weirdly pansexual band that you either did or didn’t get. So I came to know the band backwards, by attending their show in March because I had a free ticket, wandering noncommittally around the First Ave balcony during the first few songs, eyes glued to the stage by the end. I came home and spent the first spring thaw listening almost constantly to this album, feeling grateful I couldn’t fully sympathize with its suicidally despairing lyrical conceit and could instead fixate on the ridiculously catchy music that both buoyed and betrayed that premise, a towering art rock song cycle that never took itself so seriously or spread its layers so thick that one couldn’t, at nearly any of its hour’s moments, shake. one’s. ass.

LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver What more can be said, really? I won’t go with the Loving Tribute to Brian Eno angle, or the Aging Hipster Makes Dance Music Cool for Thirtysomethings angle, or the Arch Lyrics Skewer Faddish Capitalistic Modalities angle—though strong arguments could be made for all three, and my initial favorable reaction to the album was probably due to some combination thereof. But as time went on and spring came around and I began listening to the album while running or taking the bus somewhere, and began recognizing “Someone Great” as the saddest dance song ever, all those qualifications melted away and it was just me and the music, unmediated by blog-culture interpretations. So, these songs remained unwaveringly solid and dependably good and unpretentiously euphoric right through the rest of the year, so that when I visited Chicago over the summer and sat across a table at the Goldstar talking with Dino about the music we’d been listening to, all we had to say regarding this album was to repeat “All My Friends” and “song of the year!” to each other across the table in increasingly emphatic voices that weren’t half as facetious as they sounded like they were.

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Posted: December 27th, 2007 under 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 Iowa City, Images, Music.
Comments: none

Sunrise: 7:16 a.m.
Temp: 39° F
Wind: SE @ 7mph
Humidity: 89%
Soundtrack: Odd Nosdam, “Up In Flames”
Milk: $3.39/gallon

Posted: November 19th, 2007 under Minneapolis, Images, Music.
Comments: 2

Last night I had the pleasure of hosting my old friends who are now in a band called Bowerbirds. They played at the 400 Bar and then crashed on my floor. It’s always bittersweet to be reunited with people who used to be such an integral a part of my life and at such a formative time—Mark and Phil and I (and Wes, too) were pretty much inseparable throughout most of junior high and high school (which is when it’s arguably most crucial to have friends from whom you’re pretty much inseparable)—I say bittersweet because I only see them a couple times a year, at best, since we went our separate ways a few years ago. Fortunately, they are the sort of friends with whom I can fall right back into the sort of jocular camaraderie that we perfected in eighth grade and which has served us so well ever since that it hasn’t changed a great deal, much to the delight and then immediately subsequent annoyance of any friends, acquaintances, girlfriends, etc. who’ve come along in the intervening two decades.

The other huge, obvious dimension to this is that Mark and Phil and I (and Wes, too) formed a band together in high school and another one later on, and any of the music we’ve made since then with other people in other permutations is inevitably entrenched in and informed by the embarrassingly naive but, again, incalculably crucial and formative initial musical excursions the four of us made in our parents’ attics, basements, and living rooms, excursions which were—fortunately for posterity and probably unfortunately for our credibilty—exhaustively documented and subsequently digitized and now housed in my iTunes library so that, when I wanted to wake the band up this morning, I simply had to turn up my stereo and begin playing a recording of a show we played in Gardner Lounge at Grinnell College in May 1994, when we opened with a cover of “New Day Rising” by Husker Dü. Their heads came off the pillows with a quickness.

And, while none of us knew back in 1991 what trajectory our musical lives would take, I don’t think we could have possibly imagined just how wildly unpredictable they’d be. We drafted Phil into the band in eighth grade and ordered him to be our lead singer. “Just make up some lyrics,” we told him. “It doesn’t matter.” At the time he couldn’t play guitar, and pretty much taught himself over the next few years. That he is now a formidable songwriter whose songs are almost frighteningly, autistically brilliant, and to have those talents duly recognized and ratified, is a surprise of the best kind, though of course it now seems inevitable. But that Mark and Phil—who probably, more than any other factor, informed my (incredibly forceful, incredibly loud) drumming style by forcing me to compete with the volume wars they’d wage with their guitar amps in my parents’ basement—would eventually land in and make their name with a rustic, romantic folk trio born in North Carolina (touring with the much-beloved Mountain Goats, whose principal player’s wife [in a quintessential small-world coincidence] attended Grinnell and was in the audience of the aforementioned 5/94 show) is, of course, an outcome none of us could have foreseen.

So naturally it was also bittersweet to see them playing at the 400 last night, in front of a large, appreciative crowd, most of whose constituents ventured over to the merch table afterward to pay their respects and buy CDs and ask for autographs—and to miss the days when Wes and I were right there with them, playing louder music to smaller crowds in smaller rooms. Bittersweet, but inspiring—it makes me want to play my drums more often and in a greater variety of contexts; to compose music; to join new bands and continue playing with the ones I’m in; to try my best not to succumb to a 9-to-5 after I get my degree in May and instead fight tooth and nail to make a living with my writing and music, as improbable and elusive as such a lifestyle always seems, has always seemed. It is not easy, and rarely glamorous, but all the more rewarding for being so hard-won.

Posted: November 1st, 2007 under Grinnell, Music.
Comments: 2

Oh hello, everything I’ve been wanting from music and the world.

Underworld - “Faxed Invitation” (mp3)

Posted: October 18th, 2007 under Music.
Comments: 2

Sometimes I get exhausted just thinking about writing about something about which so many other people have already written, or about something so zeitgeisty. This is one of those times. Nothing I say is really going to change the music or sway anyone’s opinion of it or even contribute anything remotely useful. It’s just going to add to the noise.

But my feelings are largely positive, if that counts for anything, so maybe I’m adding to the noise in a positive way. Here is some random noise.

I predict that “How much did you pay for it?” will join such other questions as “Who did you vote for?” and “Where were you on September 11?” in the annals of Big, Loaded, Zeitgeisty Questions. It will get trivialized in year-end pop-culture roundups, and the Onion will do something about it, and it will probably get tiresome way before that. Before it does, I’ll give you my answer: Ten dollars.

I was initially going to pay five dollars. Here’s why I upped the price: By the time I got home from school at dinnertime and sat down at my computer, the servers had crashed under the weight of eleven billion people trying to use them all at once, and I decided to go the ethically gray route of obtaining it via BitTorrent. (By the way, is it really ethically gray, if one has the above-the-board option of paying zero dollars for it? Get on the case, IP lawyers.)

By the time the servers were back up and I decided to purchase the album, I raised my price to ten dollars. (Actually, GBP£5.45 [five pounds plus “transaction fees”], or US$11.12.) Why? Because by then I’d listened to the album about half a dozen times and decided the songs were worth at least a dollar each.

Why did I even bother to pay for it when I already had it? I honestly don’t know. It’s not like the band needs the money. I paid ten dollars for it because it felt important. It felt correct. It felt zeitgeisty.

And another thing: Radiohead albums should only be released in the fall. This dark, claustrophobic sound doesn’t belong in the spring; certainly not the summer. Maybe that’s why Kid A is my favorite. Maybe they should release an album every fall. That’s an agenda I could get behind.

This afternoon I was in my office on campus and I heard loud but muffled music coming from either somewhere in the building or perhaps outside. My officemates heard it too, and after a few minutes I concluded that it must be an In Rainbows listening party because the upper registers sounded like Thom Yorke’s voice. I think the words I used at the time were “the mewling and howling of Tom Yorke’s voice.”

That moment also felt important and correct and zeitgeisty. We hear stories about the listening parties held on the day Sgt Pepper’s came out. That doesn’t happen anymore, for a lot of reasons. I guess I had tiny listening parties for Vs and The Downward Spiral and Change, but they weren’t really listening parties as much as depressed people sitting in a small, dark room. Actually, that sounds pretty appropriate in this context, too.

I don’t know. This band has done something really important and correct and zeitgeisty here. I’m just not sure what, or why, that is.

Posted: October 11th, 2007 under Music.
Comments: 1

THE UNREASONABLES
The 400 Bar
Saturday September 29
8:00 p.m.

The Unreasonables - “Five Years Gone” (mp3)

The Unreasonables - “Skronkydink” (mp3)

Posted: September 27th, 2007 under Music.
Comments: none

This morning I was sitting in a coffee shop near campus when I was startled by a sudden cacaphony of clanging bells, shrill whistles and a sound not unlike a boat horn. Streamers and confetti began raining down from the ceiling, and the cafe’s interior lighting went dark as spinning colored lights and strobes flashed across the startled and confused clientele. A clown emerged from the kitchen, wheeling in a large cake. I wondered what occasion could possibly merit this degree of hoopla. Finally, a banner was unfurled, covering one entire wall of the room, and heralding the one-millionth time Andrew Bird’s The Mysterious Production Of Eggs had been played in a coffee shop.

Posted: September 25th, 2007 under Music.
Comments: none

The Onion recently declared that 1997 is the new 1967, mostly due to the profusion of culturally influential music that was created during both years. After all, 1967 had Sgt Pepper’s and Forever Changes, among other milestone albums, and 1997 had Either/Or I Can Hear The Lonesome Crowded OK Computer Floating In Space As One.

Also, Savage Garden.

It’s hard for me to disagree with their assessment. After all, I’ve already made it clear how I feel about 1997.

Although, if 1997 is the new 1967, that means right now I’m one year old, Star Wars just came out, and eight years of Reaganomics isn’t far off. Holy shit, we’re fucked.

Posted: September 24th, 2007 under Music.
Comments: 1

Seriously. Why are you reading this instead of acquiring and listening to Marry Me?

St Vincent - “Your Lips Are Red” (mp3)

Posted: July 30th, 2007 under Music.
Comments: 1