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

For several years I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Minneapolis supermusician Shawn Neary, whom I first met when his old band, Boy With Stick, played with my old band, Nolan. He’s from Iowa too, and when I moved up to Minneapolis he’d already been here a few years, playing with Boy With Stick but also with a little band called Tapes ‘n Tapes (whatever happened to those guys?), the delightful pop trio Seymore Saves The World, and finally taking on bass duties for beloved local juggernaut Cloud Cult. Shawn is the best evidence I’ve seen that a person can have a successful career in music while remaining a genuinely nice guy.

He’s also been quietly carving out a (side? solo?) project called The Wapsipinicon, named for a river in Iowa. The other day, Shawn walked straight into my workplace and handed me the band’s first album, San Geronimo, hot off the presses, and I was abundantly grateful. The Wapsipinicon is playing a CD release show at the Kitty Kat Club on March 6. Here is my favorite track from San Geronimo (so far), called “Get Out of My Town.”

Posted: February 9th, 2010 under General.
Comments: none

Since I made my students do a freewrite today, I figured it was only fair that I do it too. The prompt was “Write about whatever song is stuck in your head right now.” All day, I’ve had “Accidents Waiting to Happen” by 12 Rods swirling in my brain, playing the frantic drum part on my teeth, despite a long bus ride soundtracked by iTunes shuffle and an episode of This American Life.

The thing is, this isn’t even one of my favorite songs from Lost Time, or one of my favorite 12 Rods songs, period. My favorite off Lost Time is probably “Terrible Hands,” the sort of song you can tell would have fit right into a Dismemberment Plan set. Not that “Accidents” wouldn’t. Not at all.

Posted: January 25th, 2010 under General.
Comments: none

I rang in the year 2000 indulging pretty much all of my vices at once. I finished college. I didn’t have a cell phone or a broadband internet connection. I lived in a series of rental properties. I discovered the Dismemberment Plan. I taught ninth- and tenth-grade English. I moved to Iowa City. I became a substitute teacher. A friend died. I discovered Music for 18 Musicians. I got a job at a bookstore. I recorded an album in New York. My band broke up. I got a new computer. I woke up late on September 11. I got my first cell phone. I went to London. I joined two new bands. I ran my first 5K. Neil moved away. Wes moved away. I started a blog. My drums were stolen. I got a job scoring standardized tests. I bought new drums. I recorded an album in Iowa City. I was fired from my job scoring standardized tests. I went to California. My dad died. I quit my job at the bookstore. I got a job at a day care. I read Infinite Jest for the second time. I moved in with my mother. Mark moved away. I joined Friendster. I went on tour. Phil moved away. I moved to Chicago. I got a job at a sign-making company. I discovered Talk Talk. I quit my job at the sign-making company and got a job at a corporate law firm. I joined a kickball team and an alt-country band. I joined MySpace. I got a new computer. I discovered Stars of the Lid. I got into grad school. I quit my job at the law firm. I read Infinite Jest a third time. I moved to Minneapolis. I got a new bike. I made new friends. I joined Facebook. I lived in a horrible rental property. My new bike was stolen from my horrible rental property. I got a job working for Garrison Keillor. I shaved my head. Garrison Keillor fired me. I moved into a nicer rental property. I turned thirty. I joined a new band. I went to a lot of weddings. I quit drinking. I discovered Subtle. I got a new bike. I got a job at a café. I shaved my head again. I took up yoga. I got a new computer. I went to London again. The bridge fell. I wrote a book. A lot of my friends moved away. I wrote for some magazines. I joined Twitter. I got a job teaching writing. I met someone special. I joined a new band. I got an iPhone. I read Infinite Jest for the fourth time. I quit my job at the café. Iowa got civil rights. I got a job at a coop. I got a tattoo. I went on tour again. I got another job teaching writing. I went to the beach. I moved into a new rental property. I got a new computer. I recorded my first day album. I got proper winter boots and a proper winter coat. I woke up early and walked to work, in the snow, and the sun hadn’t risen yet.

Posted: December 31st, 2009 under General.
Comments: 2

A slipshod assortment of my favorite music of the year.

Cheer-Accident, “Blue Cheadle”

It’s a minor miracle that I managed to 1) live in Chicago and 2) be a progressive rock fan without ever discovering Cheer-Accident, a progressive rock band from Chicago. They’ve been around nearly 30 years but I never heard of them until my band opened for them at the Hexagon in February. It was probably the most appropriate bill we’ve ever been on: four playfully proggish bands with decent senses of humor, culminating in these bedraggled prog heroes from Chicago playing their hearts out well after midnight on the Hex’s tiny stage.*

“Blue Cheadle” is the best example of the more accessible but no less dangerous direction the band’s taken with their new album, Fear Draws Misfortune. The song forms are shorter and poppier, with indie elements like a fat, wet snare sound, horns and strings, and female harmonies. Lord knows what the title means, or what the lyrics are, but it’s one hell of a song, as much for its grooves and melodies as its wickedly impossible meters.

Also here’s a video of the band performing the song at the Hideout, in Chicago.

*Two highlights of that show, by the way, were when some jerk in the audience shouted “Chicago sucks!” during a quiet moment in a song, and Thymme Jones responded, while still playing, “The city, or the band?” and when bassist Alex Perkolup told Run At The Dog that we sounded like the B-52s, only “less gay.”

Posted: December 17th, 2009 under Music.
Comments: 3

(Well, not that new, but being as I’m a bit behind the curve on account of my being an Old, I think I’m doing pretty well.)

The last time I saw Bon Iver in concert, my old skateboarding buddy Mark was in the band, and neither he nor Justin Vernon would shut up about how much they loved Collections of Colonies of Bees. So I’m glad that Vernon was able to collaborate with them, and while Bon Iver fans will probably not find it as accessible as that band’s debut, it has grown on me, existing as it does at the perfect intersection of abstract sound collages and more conventional pop forms.

The best example of this is “Island, IS,” which I’ve had on constant rotation the past week or so, and which seems especially appropriate for Minneapolis’ first big Snowmageddon of the season. Because I’m still annoyingly precious about the music I listen to in certain moments, I don’t just throw on anything while inching my car through slushy traffic or holing up in my claustrophobic apartment. Unmap is good winter music, so I’m glad I came a little late to it. Justin Vernon seems incapable of making music that isn’t somehow tinged with the pallor of a long Midwestern winter, but then, his band isn’t called Bon Ete. (A little foreign-language humor for you there.)

Posted: December 9th, 2009 under Music.
Comments: 3

ARE YOU A DRUM NERD? IF NOT, READ NO FURTHER.

Something about winter makes me want to hole up and get better at the drums. Perhaps because I recently read Tea & Drumpets, I decided to try and learn the very difficult songs on Bill Bruford’s solo albums. During the winters in high school I learned to fake my way through most of his parts with Yes and King Crimson, but the stuff on One of A Kind is just crazy hard. Tonight, rusty, out of shape, I was humbled but still having fun stumbling through this ridiculous song:

Posted: December 3rd, 2009 under Music.
Comments: none

Musician, cultural theorist, and jukebox saboteur Brian Eno says that it’s cool to be uncool. The cool vs. uncool distinction is no longer meaningful, he says, largely due to the explosion in access, hybridization, and genre bifurcation across every aesthetic plane.

We’re living in a stylistic tropics. There’s a whole generation of people able to access almost anything from almost anywhere, and they don’t have the same localised stylistic sense that my generation grew up with. It’s all alive, all “now,” in an ever-expanding present, be it Hildegard of Bingen or a Bollywood soundtrack. The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness.

If anyone is cool enough to tell us when we can stop worrying about being cool, it’s the coolest 61-year-old on the planet.

This is good news for me, since I am approaching that age where I care less and less, with each passing day, about what’s cool, much less how to define the term. The inexorable uncoolness we swore we’d outrun at any cost, even as it devoured our parents, is nipping at my heels, and I’m okay with that.

Were this a critical essay, I’d have to go to all the trouble of defining what cool even means, and triangulating Eno’s argument against others, but fortunately I can just link to his essay and consider how it refracts the points made by an older one that’s always been a favorite: “Against Cool” by Rick Moody (not available online, but it is in the 2004 edition of the Best American Essays).

And with the time I saved, I can now go listen to Another Green World. Thanks, laziness!

Homer: You know what the song says: “It’s hip to be square.”
Lisa: That song is so lame.
Homer: So lame that it’s… cool?
Bart and Lisa: No.
Marge: Am I cool, kids?
Bart and Lisa: No.
Marge: Good. I’m glad. And that’s what makes me cool, not caring, right?
Bart and Lisa: No.
Marge: Well, how the hell do you be cool? I feel like we’ve tried everything here.
Homer: Wait, Marge. Maybe if you’re truly cool, you don’t need to be told you’re cool.
Bart: Well, sure you do.
Lisa: How else would you know?

Posted: December 2nd, 2009 under General, Music.
Comments: 3

Thank god we’re finally done with that long, dreadful weekend of face-to-face reunions and the terrifying embrace of home and hearth, right? I’m thrilled to be back in the realm of the daily grind and regular blog updates and, what’s more, listening to new music for the first time in a while. I bought several new(ish) albums for my Thanksgiving weekend drive: Volcano Choir’s Unmap, Neon Indian’s Psychic Chasms, Bear in Heaven’s Beast Rest Forth Mouth, and Memory Tapes’ Seek Magic.

I realize none of these are the freshest, most cutting-edge musics out there right now, but the older I get the less concerned I am with any of that, and besides, the edgiest bands out there are so obscure, they don’t have names or even MySpaces yet! I just started a new band while I was writing that sentence and we’re playing our first show as soon as I alert the other members upon figuring out who they are.

So far my favorite of these new acquisitions is Bear in Heaven, which isn’t entirely surprising since they incorporate lots of synths and their drummer is lethal. Another secret to their success might lie with their name; bands with Bear in the name seem to do pretty well. The band I formed in the previous paragraph will be called Bear Wolf Iver On The Radio.

Bear In Heaven’s new album is called Beast Rest Forth Mouth, which, I don’t know, strikes me as kind of a dumb title. It smacks of laziness when a band, album, or song name resembles several random words thrown together. But maybe I don’t know the whole story! And the music is really good, so who cares what your album is called? Please don’t be mad at me, Bear in Heaven!

Hurry up and listen to this song; it’ll make your day better.

Update: I sometimes remind my blogging students to be judicious in the snark they dispense online, since every once in a while the target of your oh-so-clever nastiness might contact you out of the blue. In my case, Hometapes founder Adam Heathcott, a very nice man, wrote me an email explaining: “Beast Rest Forth Mouth is a mnemonic for the four directions of the compass: East West North South.” So, not random at all. Sorry for being a dick, folks!

Posted: December 1st, 2009 under Music.
Comments: 2

As my music journalism class heads into its final weeks, I want my students to read some unconventional, unprofessional, and esoteric examples of music writing. Last week they graciously indulged my sadistic decision to assign Hipster Runoff’s infamous Animal Collective post. This week I asked them to read a piece from the War Against Silence by Glenn MacDonald, a software engineer by trade and a music geek by default.

I forget how much I miss The War Against Silence until I revisit it. From 1999—when I discovered it while searching for fellow Loud Family fans—until 2004, when MacDonald discontinued it, TWAS was the source of some of the best music writing on the web, and was the first instance of cogent, articulate online writing I ever encountered. That MacDonald wrote TWAS as a labor of love, with purportedly zero interest in becoming a professional music writer, only makes his project seem more rarefied and noble.

Eight years after he posted it, his ostensible critique of Amnesiac, Vespertine, and Life on a String also frames MacDonald’s immediate response to the events of 9/11/01. Eight years later, the piece holds up not only as a review of three new releases but also as a bracingly prescient time capsule containing one very smart person’s comprehension of the incomprehensible.

One of MacDonald’s best lines in the piece comes near the front. “Here is a very simple rule,” he states. “Music is what humans are best at, so anything that seems to supersede it, we should not do. Or phrased as semi-solipsism, in a sort of inversion of Wittgenstein’s point about what language can’t express, anything I cannot comprehend, should not exist. We, as a species, must be past this, or we will not survive.”

I have read this piece repeatedly over the intervening decade, and that bit still makes me catch my breath. MacDonald doesn’t dither about the role music plays in our lives or how best we humans might employ our ability to listen to and perform music. I have had the privelege of making music with and reading the words of people who agree with this statement and think very hard about it, and MacDonald’s words—this whole treatise, because it really is a kind of manifesto, still makes my spine straighten a bit, serving as a mild admonishment to care more—about music, about other people, about life.

“This isn’t a record, it’s the inherent sound of streets and data and buildings, of all the wreckage we surround ourselves with even if it hasn’t fallen yet.”

Is that even music journalism? Who cares? I certainly don’t.

Posted: November 23rd, 2009 under Music, Reading & Writing.
Comments: none