More Musing from Middle Class Suburbanites

The Albums of My Life primer

2008-03-04T03:14:00.002-05:00

Over time, I've fashioned myself as an authoritative voice in my small enclave of friends.
By shouting down, criticizing, debating and always, always stating my opinion as irrefutable fact, I have violently forced my iron will of music opinion on most of my friends.

I find, however, my upbringing on music to have been entirely imperfect.

The plain fact is most people missed the opportunity to be on the ground-floor of singular cultural moments in music. I would certainly fall into the category of someone missing many touchstones from my music education.

My Beatles vocabulary came in the form of "Can't But Me Love" over and over on B103 instead of listening to the deep cuts from Revolver on my parents turntable.

My arrow shot right past Weezer, Dinosaur Jr., the Pixies and even Nirvana and landed dead center in the middle of Better Than Ezra’s bullsye.

I missed Big Star, the Replacements, the Beastie Boys, Elvis Costello, Little Richard, Biggie, Blur, Todd Rundgren, Prince and Stevie Wonder.

Instead, I threw my lot in with Pearl Jam, TLC, Pink Floyd, Will Smith, Dr. Dre, Bush, Boyz II Men, Jimi Hendrix, Live and Michael Jackson.

I owned a lot of Greatest Hits records. I owned a lot of CD’s where I listed to just the one or two singles and never bothered with anything else. I made mix tapes which contained Hootie, Seal, Dave Matthews and Monster R.E.M!

Monster R.E.M!

That’s not the good R.E.M.

They’ve got like 5 incredible albums, you‘d think I would have lucked into one of them. And you know which song? “Bang and Blame.” I had “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” staring me in the face and I was like: “You know what, go ahead and give me the brooding mid-tempo slog, instead.”

In the grand old-tyme tradition of the weblog, I have decided to gaze longingly at my navel and offer you my unsolicited opinion on the albums that have played a formative role in creating the pontificating ubremecht I am now. I’m here to confess, defend, critique and apologize and maybe poke a hole in the myth that we are born with good taste in music.

We are not.

Mine is a message of hope.

Tomorrow begins the “Albums of My Life” project. First up: Days of the New’s The Green Album.

The Saddest House

2007-02-01T22:47:00.000-05:00

It was maybe 10 days before Christmas. My second of three appointments was a medium sized cape code; a two family home in Staten Island.

The only thing I cared about at the moment I pulled up to the house was whether it was a two family or a one family because it meant the difference of $50 in my pocket and I needed to buy presents. That was how far my mind was from where it ended up.

Maybe I should backtrack one second. I'm a real estate appraiser, I go to people's homes, I inspect them, I compare them to other houses in the area and finally ascertain value through a series of systems that are so excruciatingly boring seppuku or some other violent self-flagellation would probably be preferable to their tedious description.

I mention my job, because it has me meeting strangers everyday. Many of the strangers I meet walk-up up to the door when I knock and stare at me, without greeting, as if they were thinking the well-coiffed-chubby-white-boy-fairy had unexpectedly paid their doorstep a visit and they simply did not know what to do with me.

So, even after I'm greeted with nothing more than a vaguely enraged eyelid-half closed silence and some dogs barking in the distance I politely identify myself: "My name is Matthew, I'm the appraiser for your house." Often, I motion to the tidily written piece of paper on my clipboard which contains their name, address, phone number, appointment time and exact loan amount from the bank, they themselves hired, as proof that I have indeed not materialized out of thin air to steal their muumuu or 15" Maury Povich viewing television. I explain that I simply want to perform the service they authorized and leave... quickly... because for real, this place reeks of cigarettes and dirty dishes.

But very often I am greeted with only a hesitant "Yeah, whatever." They let me in, I finish very quickly, and I leave.

I digress, though. This hypothetical only serves to contrast what happened to me about ten days before Christmas. I approached the house and took an outside picture, as I always do, but when I looked down at the view screen of my camera I noticed that a man had walked out of the house and into the shot. When I looked up he was waving politely and smiled. I introduced myself, he put down the to Dell computer boxes he was carrying into the large trash pile already on the curb and invited me inside.

I don't remember his name. I suppose I could look it up but it doesn't matter very much. He was mid-40's, slightly graying full head of hair, average build, in pretty good shape and he had that gruff, manual labor coloring to his hands and face. He didn't look beaten down or old for his age, though, he looked like my grandfather -- like a man who worked his whole life -- like a man who worked harder than me.

Inside, he offered me a bologna sandwich and I said no thank you. He motioned to the fridge anyway and started pulling out cold cuts. I politely told him that I had another appointment and that while this was a unique and very appreciated gesture -- and it was -- that I simply didn't have the time.

The inside of the house was clean, but seemed empty. There was a brown leather couch on the far wall facing the large flat screen tv. I remember noticing stockings hanging from the chimney with three boys and one girls name on them; as well as one that said mom and one that said dad.

The home market is not very good right now for people who already own houses, interest rates are higher and many people are paying off loans on houses that are not worth, or barely worth the loan amounts for which they are paying their mortgages. People who refinance their homes right now do so for a reason and very often they tell me about it.

This man was no exception, he casually explained to me:

"Money got a little tight around here these past couple weeks."

He said to me "I mean, you know how it is, I haven't been able to work these past few weeks because I've been trying to take care of all this bank and lawyer stuff."

He said to me." I mean, money was tight before my wife took all my kids and took off."

He clarified: "Well, all except my oldest boy, he decided to stay here with me."

he said to me: "I haven't talked to her since. I'm not even really sure where to send my kids birthday presents."

He said all of this to me pleasantly with an almost smile. The type of smile you could only have when you're pouring your heart out to a complete stranger.

This man was easily one of the nicest I'd come across in my time appraising, or really in my life. He just had that air of accommodation and decency.

He was seated at the dining room table ashing a cigarette into a half-full tray with a half opened Milwaukee's Best can on the table in front of him and another empty one beside it. It was just before 11 am. This was my only insight into where his wife went.

I finished inspecting the downstairs and we went upstairs to the bedrooms: the purple one, bed half-unmade with at least 10 dolls sitting slouched over waiting for their mom to return. The next room over with the John Cena poster on the wall across from the picture of the Playboy logo, with a perfect dust spot under the television in the shape of an X-box and finally to the loft upstairs where his last remaining child was sleeping. His son. About my age.

I stand by my childish belief that Christmas is the most beautiful and enchanted time of year for anyone who lets themselves feel any foolhardy altruism.

But Christmas has a cruel way of bringing the harshness of real life into clearer focus.

Towards the tail-end of the appraisal, the man left my side and went downstairs to answer the phone. I didn't hear the particulars, but the tone of voice he had conveyed the desperation people have when they simply cannot do what they need to do to satisfy whatever person or company or agency is on the other end. He got off the phone when he saw me coming down the stairs, returned the smile he wore the entire appointment and asked one more time if I would be interested in a sandwich.

He paid me what looked like pretty close to his last $500 when I told him we couldn't accept personal checks. He did so pleasantly and with that same air of accommodation.

I finished my appointment, and I left. I wrote the report the next day. The house was worth more than enough to get the loan he needed.

I think about that day a lot. I always wonder what happened to him and his family. I think about his wife. I think about how in love with him she might have fell when she met that same kind, laid-back, accommodating man I met.

I think about how scared and heart-broken she must have been the first time she saw whatever it is he must turn into when he's had more drinks.

I think about my parents.

My mom made a very bad decision marrying my dad -- and somehow it turned out to be the luckiest thing she ever did. I think about what would've happened to my dad if he hadn't met my mom -- or if she refused to tolerate him as much as she did.

I have a tough time reconciling the pure unhappiness that is that family's life. I have a hard time reconciling why I deserve to be so much luckier. Who's to say that he isn't a generally well-intentioned man who loves his family but has more flaws than he knows what to do with -- like my dad?

How close was my dad to staring an empty stocking with my name on it, not knowing where I was?

In my year as an appraiser, I've seen broken down houses, a house less than a year old that looks like a warzone, babies crying in rooms with no one attending to them, and the most ungodly filth you can imagine. I don't know why that story sticks with me.

My dad always says: "There but for the grace of God go I." Its probably the most incredibly trite thing you could hear someone say.

For my father, and I guess for me, it's also so completely true.

Sorry for being so self-indulgent, everyone. I'll try to be funnier next time.

The Old Guard

2006-12-14T23:26:00.000-05:00

Wow, three weeks, I guess its been a while. Sorry, guys. We'll keep it political today, I think.

In the interest of full disclosure, I really really, really, really, really, really, really, really, don't like Hillary Clinton. That having been said:

Somewhere in New York city, or maybe Washington, their roams a menace. With coiffed hair and a toothy, thank-you-Dr.-Zizmore grin she charms middle-aged women, people with BA's in English from CUNY or Hofstra, and all those who praise her for "standin' ba her man!" almost ten years ago. I give you the fire-eating, carpet bagging, mealy-mouthed, fawning, kow-towing, some-of-my-best-friends-are-black, divisive little wench of a she-devil the rest of you like to call Hillary Clinton.

Ick.

But then, maybe I'm being unfair. I mean, with all the copies of Hell to Pay: The
Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton and the full Ann Coulter library lying around my house,. maybe some of my parents right-wing rant actually managed to seep into my head. For starters, I consider myself a bit of a pacifist and I think that war should be entered into deliberately and extremely carefully. Surely, my liberal brethren Hillary Clinton can back me up on that.

In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including Al Qaeda members, though there is apparently no evidence of his involvement in the terrible events of September 11, 2001. It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.

-Hillary Clinton, Senate floor 10/10/2002

I believe that we lost critical time in dealing with Iran because the White House chose to Downplay the threats and to outsource the negotiations. I don't believe you face threats like Iran or North Korea by outsourcing it to others and standing on the sidelines. But let's be clear about the threat we face now: A nuclear Iran is a danger to Israel, to its neighbors and beyond. The regime's pro-terrorist, anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric only underscores the urgency of the threat it poses. U.S. policy must be clear and unequivocal. We cannot and should not – must not – permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons. In order to prevent that from occurring, we must have more support vigorously and publicly expressed by China and Russia, and we must move as quickly as feasible for sanctions in the United Nations. And we cannot take any option off the table in sending a clear message to the current leadership of Iran – that they will not be permitted to acquire nuclear weapons.

-Hillary Clinton, Princeton University 1/23/2006

See? As peaceful as a dove. Wait a minute... ::rereads:: What the hell? Umm, what was the difference between her and John McCain again?

"Oh, well, John McCain is a war hero." said the imaginary annoying liberal in my head.

Are we really going to elect our statesman on this record as soldiers and likeability as opposed to the issues? I replied.

"Well, no, it's a two party system; and if that's your thing, you can vote for whichever party supports whatever issue you agree with."

Oh, well then, let's get started.

For the freedom lovers among you, the Democrats are for protecting your civil liberties:

10/25/2001 - Vote 313: H.R. 3162 (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism (USA PATRIOT ACT) Act of 2001. Voted Yea

10/25/2001 - George Bush's approval rating according to CBS: 77%

For those of you who went to the anti-war protests, the Democrats oppose the war in Iraq:

10/11/2002 - Vote 237: H.J. Res 114: Authorization for the Use of Military Force Against Iraq. Voted Yea.

10/11/2002 - George Bush's approval rating according to CBS: 63%

And for those of you who want to find a solution to the malaise of the war, democrats want to assist all of mankind and will do whatever is most beneficial for the Iraqi people:

6/22/2006 - Vote 182: S 2766: Amendment calling on the president to withdraw troops from Iraq. (The "Good Luck Fuckers", Vote). Voted Yea

6/22/2006 - George Bush's approval rating according to CBS: 33%

Yep, there's the voting record of someone who stands up to the powers that be. But, in case you're wondering: on welfare, unfunded healthcare initiatives and abortion she's allllll lefty. I guess its too much work to be liberal on everything, so she just picks the important stuff.

But again, I'm coming off as too cynical. With, the democrats recently taking control of Congress (the health of Senator-elect Johnson notwithstanding), Hillary Clinton will lead the charge into a new era for the American government. Why, just look at this quote from the last election cycle from incoming House speaker Nancy Pulosi:

The criminal indictment of Majority Leader Tom DeLay is the latest example that Republicans in Congress are plagued by a culture of corruption at the expense of the American people.
- Nancy Pelosi, 2006

So clearly, we can expect the democrats and their preumptive leader for their charge into the White House to change the cultural on The Hill and throughout government at large! Oh, man, I feel much better.

Oh, right.

Who hasn't covered up the questionable death of a friend? ::Nervous Chuckle:: Am I right?..

Ethics is such a nebulous concept...

I think of the names bandied about for a possible run at the Democratic nomination: John Kerry (again), Al Gore (again), John Edwards (again), Hillary Clinton (sweet Jesus, no).

Please, please, please, can’t we just let the old guard die? Clinton wasn't that good. Seriously, he presided over an era of unbelievable peace and prosperity and all he had to to do was stay out of its way, let it run its course and take credit for it. He certainly wasn't the worst president we've ever had, but my God can we stop nominating his lackeys for
shit?

Can't Dick Gephardt, Joe Biden, John Kerry, John Edwards, Al Gore and Hillary just go away?

There are so many better choices. So many dynamic voices who are real Democrats with really actually different ideas! Its true, they're around!

Dennis Kucinich
Russ Feingold
Barack Obama
Jack Reed
Dick Durbin

and on and on and on. I guess, I just want to know, why don't we have 2 parties? Why is all the attention paid to being centrist when what that means is the debate keeps moving farther and farther to the right.

We're debating whether or not some torture is wrong these days. Torture. This is how far we've come.

But, I guess more of the same will have to do. "Maybe 12 years of Republicans in the White House will teach us to change things.

guess who voted for the first time....

2006-11-21T14:03:00.000-05:00

i'm a little late to the party in discussing the 2006 elections, but that's how i roll. i became an american citizen about a year ago. before that, as a nri (non-resident indian) i had no voting rights. thus, on election day my mother, sister, and i all voted for the first time in an american election. i voted for spitzer for governor, and green party candidates for the other races which included them. mostly i voted for the green party because i would really like to see a viable third party emerge once again in american politics. this has happened a handful of times (the populists in 1892, the bull mooses of teddy roosevelt, and ross perot and the reform party). these guys never stick around for long, but they tend to make one of the larger parties co-opt many of their tenets, and in my eyes that's mostly a good thing, especially in the case of the relationship between the green party and the democrats. i also voted on three propositions, my favorite part of the whole process... yay direct democracy!

however, i was really more interested in the process, and aesthetics than the actual political repercussions of the election, and in a personal way. i was with a few friends, and we drove to the sayville library hoping that there might be some voting going on over there. no luck... on to sayville high school. there was definitely some voting going on over there, but not for my electoral district. finally i went over to the west sayville fire department to get my vote on. later i drove another friend, damon, to roslyn in order for him to cast his vote. it all seemed so quaint. in my daily life, i check train schedules within a couple of seconds, look up cd tracklistings at allmusic.com, get damon to text message me directions he got on his cellphone from google, and can pretty much find any kind of media within a minute or two provided with a computer and an internet connection. so, physically driving to a place in order to pull a lever to register my political convictions was quite the event for me. what's strange is that checking the box next to the candidates felt less real and less political than watching noam chomsky give an hour-long lecture in colorado on google video last night.

my political convictions derive from my belief in weber's definition of the state... a monopoly on the use of legitimate/authorized violence. violence is lame... so i tend to not get mixed up in affairs of the state too much. i only voted this year to see what it's like. for me, knowledge and understanding of any sort is a much better form of political participation than placing a vote, which is why, watching that chomsky video felt more fulfilling than voting.

maybe its my relative youth and inexperience but it seems to me that the united states is in a precarious position that will be discussed twenty years from now as a turning point in american history. and for all that the voting station itself was run by volunteers all over the age of sixty, bored to tears and barely competent enough to cross my name off the list. it was all so underwhelming.

The Exquisite Impossible

2006-11-19T16:47:00.000-05:00

Clearly, I will never write post again that wasn’t directly contributed to by Ashraya.

“The universe where fiction exists is enchanted with endless possibilities of the improbable occurring often and with a strong sense of justice.”

-Me, in my last post “The Fiction Imposter”

“…and yet, the best fiction concerns itself with dreams unfulfilled, love unrequited.
doesn't it?

it may be a grander love, it may necessitate prison-breaks and launch a thousand ships, etc.---but I think it's in illuminating the impossibility of such love that literature has the most success.”

-Ashraya’s response to “The Fiction Imposter”

It certainly cannot be said that my last post wasn’t reductive and a gross over-generalization about topics (e.g. love, literature) that have been explored in a more thorough and satisfying manner than anything I could ever hope come up with.

That having been said, I still believe what I wrote, though that may be more my jaded view of love than anything objectively true about its nature.

Ashraya brought up an interesting point that echoes something Udbhav said right after I posted on Tuesday. That is, that the best literature doesn’t really allow the type of storybook love that I was ascribing to it.

And she's right.

My favorite books rarely end in a typically satisfying manner. “Mother Night” ends with the main character hanging himself so he cannot be acquitted of the war crimes for which he so desperately wants to be punished. “A Prayer for Owen Meany” ends with the title character saving a group of children, but only by sacrificing his own life. “Survivor” ends with the main character dying in a plane crash of his own concoction. “White Noise” ends with… well, I’m not really sure what the deal with the whole supermarket thing was, but I’m pretty sure Jack dies.

But these, my favorite books, contain truly impossible love stories. “Owen Meany”, for example, the beloved Pastor of the church has taken an affair with the narrator’s mother. We find out later, after much investigation by the narrator that she was waving to him at the moment of her death.

I’m not going to try to bore you with an entire essay of literary criticism. But I will submit an idea. Ashraya said, as I quoted above “I think it's in illuminating the impossibility of such love that literature has the most success.”

And I completely agree.

The idea of literary love being truer than actual love is not mutually exclusive from the fact that literature so rarely lets that very love flourish.

In the same way that the love that exists in literature is so transcendently complete and real, so is it when that love cannot exist in literature it is so transcendently and completely impossible.

Consider this, and I use this as an example not for self-pity but I believe it is a fairly universal experience. The person with whom I have fallen most completely in love with is my ex-girlfriend. I would have married her without any hesitation and even now, I don’t think I would have been wrong to do so. I was in love. I don’t think you could ever convince me otherwise.

And then it just ended.

There was no real reason for it; there was not great event to tear us apart. We didn’t cheat on each other, I didn’t hit her, I didn’t go to war or prison, she hadn’t met anyone else. It was just over. Maybe because we were young, maybe because we didn’t quite have the same priorities, but basically to this day, neither of us knows exactly why it happened; but it.

I bring this up too illustrate that there was nothing transcendent about it; there was nothing that was romantically impossible about the whole ordeal. Our relationship, like many before it and many after could not continue.

And the fact is, that shits not worthy of a novel.

Even when love is impossible in literature as it so often is, it’s beautifully impossible. There are greater forces at work, as if God himself had ordained that this love was too perfect and could never exist.

So, even at that I would prefer the romantic notion that my love was fated to be impossible rather than it just being some random concoction of two peoples baggage resulting in an untenable situation.

Even, when it makes things impossible, the impossibility literature provides is, many times, much more lovely than the real thing.

The Fiction Imposter

2006-11-14T19:47:00.000-05:00

This post actually started out as something that was going to be a comment on Ashraya Gupta’s (Udbhav’s sister) blog. Incidentally, her writing is a whole lot better than the crap we’re putting on here, so go read it (http://thebluenotebooks.com/Ashraya/). I’ll wait.

I’ll start with the quotations from her most recent post that elicited my over-long reaction:

"today I tried to sing a love song for an hour and failed. the notes were there, the intonation---but I was somehow soulless in my innocence...

"I've never been in love and I don't hate the world, so perhaps I lack the emotion...

"it's funny how easy it is to write about what I do not know, or at least what I believe I do not know. middle-aged dissatisfaction, unwise marriages, the trials of boyhood. I've experienced none of it---but my fiction somehow leads me to it, giving me confidence I never knew I had."

Good writers will always do a better job of furthering our romanticized notions of love better than anyone who's ever actually fallen in love. Having been in actual love doesn’t qualify you for anything because actual love isn’t nearly as real as literary love.

People escape from prisons for literary love; they start wars, put themselves in great peril; open themselves up for all manner of humiliation and ridicule. Actual love doesn’t offer any of these possibilities.

If you actually love someone and you return to them after any significant length apart, it doesn’t matter how much threat you risked, it’s pretty well guaranteed that they moved on. It doesn’t matter how boldly or publicly you profess your love for someone you’ve worshipped from afar. It won’t work. They’re too good for you. Otherwise, you’d worship them right up close.

In fiction, however, these activities are rewarded. And rightfully so.

The universe where fiction exists is enchanted with endless possibilities of the improbable occurring often and with a strong sense of justice. All events, be they beneficial, harmful or neutral occur judiciously with the God of the realm at least giving you some reasoning for the decisions made.

If real life experiences crept in, the literary world would fold under into chaos, random chance and cruelty.

Life experiences just fuck everything up.

I choose, and will continue to choose to embrace a world where enchantment is possible. And if that means believing in the fraud perpetrated by authors sitting at a desk not too different from the one I’m sitting at now, then so be it.

The stories of those who have “experienced life” haven’t countered with anything even remotely as attractive yet.

20 reasons why the 70s are better than the 90s (part II)

2006-11-13T14:22:00.000-05:00

captain and tenille - love will keep us together
two month fever: i think i'm going to use love will keep us together
two month fever: for part two
Achilles24601: really?
Achilles24601: ballsy?
two month fever: captain and tenille?
two month fever: its pop music
Achilles24601: yeah
two month fever: better than sonny and cher
two month fever: or whatever
Achilles24601: hmm
Achilles24601: were ike and tina 70's?
two month fever: i don't know....
two month fever: oh shit, ccr
Achilles24601: lol
Achilles24601: what about the Carpenters?
two month fever: i hate them!
Achilles24601: they were better than Captain and Tennille!
two month fever: no way, love will keep us together is a fucking sick song
mp3

which leads us to....

credence clearwater revival - who'll stop the rain - i have a love/hate relationship with ccr, there's gold in their trash. i mean sonic youth and stephen malkmus were fans, so even if you don't believe me, you have to listen to what they tell you don't you? plus, you can't argue with this kind of classic song structure: intro, verse 1, refrain, verse 2 (add a doubled vocal), refrain, bridge, verse 3 (with harmonies!), refrain, end with introductory riff.
mp3

chic - good times - disco! yay! this bassline is so sweet that sugarhill gang replayed it for rapper's delight. for all the flack that disco gets, artists like chic and the bee gees brought genuine sophistication and craft to the form. nile rodgers and bernard edwards understood that disco centered around rhythm, and most of their better material is best heard with that in mind. the guitar is essentially part of the rhythm section, leaving melodic touches to strings and keyboards.
mp3

tom zé - dodó e zezé - for my money, tom zé is better than all the other brazilian tropicália artists save for maybe caetano veloso. but that's only because i know very little about any of the artists, and i really like todos os olhos.
mp3>

bruce sprinsteen - tenth avenue freeze-out - i haven't really included the gigantic albums of the 70s in either part of my posts. there's no zeppelin, pink floyd, or the like, but i can't resist born to run. the song cops quite a bit from the stax sound, but that's alright by me.
mp3

big star - feel - 70s guitar rock can go wrong in a lot of ways, none of which i feel like enumerating here, but when it's done right.... oh the sweet satisfaction. you know the song featured in the beginning of that seventies show? it's a terrible cover of a great big star song, "in the street." they inexplicably change the lyrics to "we're all alright." could somebody explain why they did that?
mp3

emerson lake & palmer - hallowed be thy name - oddly enough, my father has always loved elp. i think they're ok. one night he played me this song, pointing out the lyrical shenanigans in the song. nothing beats a well placed pun i guess. i do prefer the band to other prog rogck like genesis or king crimson and as somebody who would like to be able to call himself a piano player one day, i definitely prefer emerson's playing to yes keyboards.
mp3

fleetwood mac - sara - my favorite fleetwood mac record is tango in the night. rumors is pretty damn good, but not as good as most people tell me it is. tusk, on the other hand, is somewhat of an enigma for me. i've always been interested in the album that comes after the huge blockbuster. oasis bloated beyond all conceivable levels of reason for be here now (which i actually kind of love). i don't know tusk well enough, but sara strikes me as something kind of similar, yet its done so beautifully and with such a sure touch that i can't find any fault with it.
mp3

the doobie brothers - listen to the music - to add to everything else that's already great about this song, it has banjo for god's sake!
mp3

donna summer - i feel love - heralding the arrival of electronic pop music and foreshadowing the birth of techno, the sonic details in the song are astounding. the synth bass is panned hard to both speakers, with one being slightly behind the other propelling the song forward relentlessly. disco with no cheesy strings.... amazing!
mp3

apologies to steely dan, kraftwerk, todd rundgren, harry nilsson and many others that i failed to include.

20 reasons why the 70s are better than the 90s (part I)

2006-11-09T14:09:00.000-05:00

this is by no means the top 20 reasons why the 70s are better than the 90s or an encapsulation of the 70s as a whole. if you're looking for that, i hear time/life is very good at that sort of thing. also, to be very clear here matthew and i are painfully provincial when it comes to our music. almost all of our picks are from either great britain or the united states. both of us tried our best to fairly represent most sections of popular music from our respective decades. we were not limited to only choosing singles, although the bulk of my selections are.

the clash - (white man) in hammersmith palais - so i'm not a huge punk rock guy, but i do love myself some clash. matt told me that i have to try and represent music from the 70s as fully as possible, so this can count as my entry for punk rock.
mp3

stevie wonder - jesus children of america - from his 1973 album innervisions, i feel like this song epitomizes the stevie wonder groove. the interplay between bass, multiple keyboard tracks, and drums is what propels this song forward. some of the keyboards share space on the track with bass since they both occupy the same band of frequency. but both leave space for each other, avoiding an overcrowded mix, and resulting in sweet jesus dances.
mp3

michael jackson - don't stop till you get enough - michael's first solo record just barely sneaks into the 70s. the first track from off the wall, don't stop till you get enough is guaranteed to make me smile and start shuffling those awkward feet of mine every time i hear it. i firmly believe if you listen to enough michael jackson you will become a better dancer eventually. it worked for me!
mp3

bob dylan - idiot wind - released in 1975 on blood on the tracks, i figure this can cover my bases as far as singer-songwriters. i mean this is way better than james taylor or cat stevens. i'm not sure the comparison works, but i want it to work, so that's that. dylan is really really mean on this record.
mp3

marvin gaye - mercy mercy me - the bells sound really pretty on this song. i think you can make a serious argument for motown's backing band on what's going on as one of the best ever assembled. i guess some of the memphis session players or booker t & the mg's could give them a run for their money. but damn do they sound good on the whole album.
mp3

carole king - it's too late - carly simon and all those other solo female performers don't compete on the same level as carole king. just ask todd rundgren.
mp3

america - ventura highway - my parents had an old tape called history: america's greatest hits. my sister and i listened to it constantly. this pick could just as easily have been sister golden hair, sandman, horse with no name, tin man, or muskrat love because i love all the songs on that particular greatest hits. looking back on it, naming your band america, and then naming your greatest hits collection history is pretty ballsy for a soft-rock band. i hear they're enjoying quite the revival amongst the young and hip. at least that's what spin told me.
mp3

david bowie - heroes - ok, so this is a pretty obvious choice. david bowie pwned the 70s, and heroes pretty much pwns the rest of his material. i mean if the song can survive atrocious covers by both the wallflowers and oasis and still sound pretty good it has gotta be great.
mp3

george harrison - i live for you - it's a very hard decision for me to make, but i think all things must pass edges out plastic ono band and ram as my favorite beatles solo album. i think i'm going to use i live for you to encompass a lot of country-rock that was going on in the 70s just because of the silly reason that it has slide guitar in it.
mp3

jesus christ superstar - what's the buzz / strange things mystifying - for my money, the best musical andrew loydd weber ever did, phantom of the opera be damned. there are several versions of this musical, i myself prefer the 1970 version. oh, and if anybody's interest in a reconsideration of judas iscariot was piqued by the musical/movie, borges wrote a really great piece, "three versions of judas," about the subject which is really worth checking out. judas = the true son of god? omg!
mp3

part II to come in the next couple of days. it'll be chock full of all that arena rock, prog rock, and laser shows that i so woefully disregarded in part I.

Worse for music - the 90's or the 70's?

2006-11-02T18:40:00.000-05:00

My friends, the music gods did not look favorably on me when I was born. For the first 5 years of my life I was confined to a prison made almost entirely of "Sweet Home Alabama," "Uptown Girl" and "Le Freak." For this was the music on the radio stations my parents listened to.

I have counted among my favorite bands over the course of my life acts such as Van Halen, Days of The New, Phil Collins, Meatloaf, Ace of Base and Bush.

And if all that were not enough gentle reader I am - it almost pains me to admit this - not a real musician at all but a... a drummer!!! Ghastly as it sounds, I have no real musical ability! I'm not even a percussionist; I merely play a drum set.

Why do I admit all of this to you, now, sweet consumer of my darkest secrets? The answer is simple really. I have refused to let this horrid musical upbringing stain my life forever. I have pulled myself up by my bootstraps thrown off the yoke of my parents insidious classic rock and dance-pop and learned to be my own man!

And yet, a new evil lurks to dishearten me and ostensibly destroy my musical renaissance.

Perched on a throne made of the twisted remains of the Gin Blossoms and REM, sits this evil self-appointed Zeus of the musical universe who striketh down upon me with plasma-charged copies of London Calling and White Light, White Heat which explode on impact.

He scoffs at my nearly worn-through copy of Throwing Copper; He chortles heartily as I meekly explain how Pearl Jam really was far more experimental than anyone gives them credit for.

I beseech him: "Why, O god of the musical cosmos do you mock me?! Have I displeased you?! Is there no rest for those who enjoy a little Jane's Addiction every now and again?!

He merely throws his head back and laughs stoutly. For, he is Udbhav, Music Snob of the Punjabis.

Today, however, I have challenged his authority, for I refuse to stand by and have the good name of the 1990's besmirched any further! I say fie! For the 90's plainly outstrip the 70's by any measure and today I will prove it.

I will place a below a list of not necessarily the best, but the most complete list of the great music the 90's had to offer. There are sure to be some glaring omissions but to narrow down an entire decade to 20 songs is quite difficult, I encourage all to comment and to of course, ridicule and perhaps violently accost Dev when he puts his response of the 20 best 70's song up, soon to follow.

But enough of all that, here's the list, in no particular order.

Beck - Lord Only Knows

Weezer - Pink Triangle

The Breeders - Cannonball

Radiohead - Paranoid Android

Notorious B.I.G. - Juicy

Stone Temple Pilots - Interstate Love Song

Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah

The Fugees - Fu-gee-la

Public Enemy - Fight the Power

Dr. Dre - Let Me Ride

Beastie Boys - Sabotage

Nirvana - Come As You Are

Oasis - Morning Glory

Nas - It Ain't Hard to Tell

Tool - Stinkfist

The Spice Girls - Two Become One

TLC - Diggin On You

Arrested Develpment - Tennessee

Blind Melon - No Rain

Wilson Phillips - Hold On

Please feel free to comment. I feel so liberated after so long under the thumb of the evil musical dictator. Long live the 90's! Huzzah!

Nothing Compares 2 U

2006-11-01T15:52:00.000-05:00

i had a pretty horrible semester at columbia in the fall of 2004 for various reasons which aren't really relevant to this post. what is relevant is that i decided to take a year off from school following that semester. i was planning on interning at a music studio and working as an electrician in the hamptons but it took me a while to really get that plan on its feet, and by the time spring rolled around i had a lot of time on my hands. fortunately/unfortunately my band had just enlisted a new manager, michael lavolpe, and i had started spending a lot of time at his place. we did some administrative work for the band, did some planning, but mostly we smoked pot and played mvp baseball. now mike is a pretty big yankees fan, and every time he beat me in home run derby or hit an inside-the-parker as i tried to figure out how to throw home he would always be doing it with these men named derek jeter and alex rodriguez.

i'm not an idiot. i knew who derek jeter was. i knew the new york yankees. i knew they'd won a bunch of world series, especially in the late 90s. matthew record, my esteemed colleague, would talk baseball once in a while, but most of it was pretty much over my head. I knew baseball was all about tradition, history, numbers, and abbreviations. but there were so many stats: rbi, era, obp, all these numbers and I had no idea what to do with them. i have to admit, i learned the workings of the game by playing mvp baseball with mike, matt record, and my bandmate matt czerniawski. the one constant in mvp baseball was that somebody always picked the yankees. i learned their names, their positions, some of their numbers. i incorrectly learned that tony womack had some serious power to right at yankee stadium, and hit home runs better than anybody else in the lineup. as i learned how to play, i slowly began to learn how to watch. yankees games were on every day, and i wasn't doing shit so i had the time to watch them through. i fell in love.

i thought i had fallen in love with baseball, but looking back on it, baseball came after the yankees. i walked into the 2005 season with every reason to hate the yankees. i'd grown up with an automatic aversion to "winners." i didn't follow any sports on any kind of serious level, but i hated manchester united, the brazilian international soccer team, the patriots, and almost every other dominant team in sports i didn't really understand. but the 2005 season was an odd one. the yankees didn't really look much like the best team in the sport. i mean, how dominant could a team with a starting rotation that included carl pavano really be? they were starting a season after the biggest collapse in post-season history, and as little as i knew about baseball, even i'd seen those last four games against boston. but for a chronic underachiever like me, something about their belief and discipline was truly beautiful to watch day in and day out. i watched them spend the last few weeks of the regular season chasing the red sox. i watched robinson cano become a serious part of a team stuffed with legends. i watched the yankees clinch the al east title. i watched the yankees lose in embarrassing fashion once again before getting to the world series. and with every game i watched i saw more to love about the team and what they did. with that came an appreciation for the other parts of baseball. here was a completely alien subject matter which thousands devoted their lives to playing, watching, discussing, and writing about. my student self, largely gathering dust in the corner as i spent a year with hammers, electrical wire, microphones, and alcohol finally had something to entertain itself with.

so, i submit myself as a two year baseball fan. pardon my mistakes as the naive missteps of a rookie.

I don't know who my friends are, I no longer know how to help them

2006-10-25T01:06:00.000-04:00

"some things just aren't meant to be understood..."
-10/24/2006

"...I couldn't be more heartbroken right now."
-10/24/2006

More and more I find there is a serious diconnect between myself and the people I love. I can't say exactly when or how this happened but I can feel my friends falling away from me, making their own in-roads into adulthood, experiencing loss, serious adult problems, money, substance abuse and through it all, where the fuck am I?

I'm so overwhelmed by the sheer tonnage and realness of the things my friends are experiencing that I don't know what to do.

I go so long without speaking to my friends because of life and work and stress that by the time I I re-enter the amosphere I feel as though I have no place to to try to awkwardly re-insert myself into their lives.

Most of all, I hate myself because I know I'm just going to sit and here and feel bad about it and not do anything. What could I do?

Its so much and I'm not sure I could ever be any real help.

I'll wear my weakness tonight.

"I let you down."
-Udbhav

does ringo starr suck?

2006-10-23T23:37:00.000-04:00

update: ringo starr really does suck. i just got pwned by an anonymous poster who informed me that paul played drums on dear prudence, and suggested the triplet feel for ticket to ride. i verified what he told me, and he's right! that's what i get for not doing my research. apologies to all.

matthew and i are both fans of the beatles. i would say i could be placed under the "rabid" category while matthew just likes them a lot. matt believes my love for ringo is a byproduct of my fandom, and argues that ringo was not a necessary ingredient for the miraculous success of the beatles. matt is wrong. usually when i tell matt that he's wrong i like to bring in how beautiful ringo's drums sound. that's usually countered with "george martin and geoff emerick deserve that credit." i would say that although both those men were monumental in shaping ringo's drum sound, sound begins from the player. it's colored by microphones, pre-amps, eq's, compression and the like but you can't create something out of nothing... well at least before the age of drum replacer. but, just for the sake of fairness i will avoid all discussion of how great ringo's hi-hat sounds, or that inimitable snare drum from here on out. i'll stick to the parts. and here are a few of them.

ticket to ride (from help!)
ringo's drums in the verse use what are known as triplets. the term boils down to playing in threes in standard 4/4 time. it's what gives the song's verses their lurch. sure, the melody is reasonably strong, the byrds-like ringing guitar is pretty enough, and the words are serviceable. however, if that was all there was to the song, i'd put it at the level of "the night before," "another girl," or the many other songs in the beatles canon that i would call the "paul and john like to show off by writing songs better than pretty much everything in half an hour" category. however, add ringo to the equation, and suddenly the verse is falling over itself, drunkenly stumbling into the chorus. it almost makes us believe that john really is sad that "the girl that's driving [him] mad is going away."

glen kotche, wilco's drummer, commented that sometimes when he writes a drum part, he's playing to jeff tweedy's lyrics, to highlight tweedy's "poetry." ringo is that nerdy girl who never reads anything without a highlighter. his strength doesn't lie in songwriting. don't pass me by and octopus's garden are weak, but ringo knows that. so he listens. more than anyone, he must know and acknowledge john, paul, and george's songwriting prowess. his job is to make sure everybody else sees it too, and that's exactly what he does on "ticket to ride."

dear prudence (from the beatles)
i'm going to get into some sticky territory here as i'm going to argue for the merits of what ringo is not doing. not in the vein of idiot rock pundits maintaining the beauty of that ac/dc douche drummer never playing a fill or meg white's minimalist tendencies. ringo plays plenty of fills, and has a few songs where the drums can be termed "busy." yet, his ego is not the sort that drives him to want to play at every moment. he comes in for the first time on "dear prudence" when john begins what i'll term the first verse (where he sings "the sun is up"). ringo doesn't play anything for the chorus that introduces the song. ringo uses hi-hat, kick and snare, ending the verse with the subtlety of an open hi-hat hit rather than a ride or crash. in the second chorus, he drops the hi-hat altogether, resorting to rare tambourine hits, only adding hi-hat halfway through. the bridge is similarly devoid of any hi-hat. 2nd verse you ask? same beat, with claps behind the snare! the first time ringo hits a cymbal is three minutes into the song. that's when ringo gets all up in it, and struts his stuff. yet, never overstaying his welcome he meekly walks away with a pedestrian beat to bring the song back to its beginning.

ok, now listen to dear prudence, then go put on travis barker on whatever random blink 182 record. sure travis has got some chops, but do you really have to hit that damn cymbal on every beat travis? drums in a small rock group very much lead the changes in dynamics. power all the time through continuous bashing of crashes and rides ends in the result of no power at all. the ear tunes out, desensitized by a constant attack. but ah ringo knows that. he knows he can be boring, so he'll make you wait.

rain (b-side to the paperback writer single)
this whole recording is slowed down, giving it that sleepy feel, turning john into a muddied, slurred mess and making those crashes sound like the biggest thing you ever heard in your life. in one of ringo's earlier moments in the song, about 15 seconds in, he starts his fill with the hi-hat moving to snare. that slightly open hi-hat keeps popping up as an introduction to the majority of ringo's fills in the songs, and there's pretty much a fill every 5-10 seconds. its a thematic constant in the constantly changing soundscape of the song. backwards vocals, paul's ridiculous bass line, shifting drum fills, and harmonies that keep ascending are anchored by that tiny little hi-hat hit. it helps to keep the listener excited without throwing him off the cliff of unpredictability.

ok i feel that i'm starting to get all fanboy now, and this is getting a little ridiculous. but unless you're a drummer, or a total beatles nerd like me, you might never have noticed some of these things. it's easy to dismiss drums unless its rush and the drummer will never shut the fuck up. its also easy to reduce rock drums to animal and his primal beating of hide and skin. there can be a lot of beauty hidden under all of that, and ringo knows it and so should you.

The Third Version of Lying

2006-10-23T23:25:00.001-04:00

Why is baseball important? The short answer is, it's not.

The longer answer? It's an elegantly living, breathing flux-but-static remnant of purity. Of a game thats a game and nothing more than a game. It's a reminder of the days when you could swim for 9 hours straight because there was nothing more important.

The grass is so much greaner on a baseball field than anywhere else. The players become your friends. They visit with you 3 - 5 times a day, everyday; at least 162 times a year. And always in the summer when you have more time to enjoy their company.

There's a reason why 2/3's of the country calls football their favorite sport but there are almost twice as many members of the Baseball Writers Association then its football counterpart. There aren't casual baseball fans.

You don't date baseball; you marry it immediately and pray it doesn't leave you to fuck the personal trainer.

So why is any of this relevant? Did I start a blog so I could metaphorically touch myself over the internet about how super-duper nostalgic baseball makes me feel.

Yes, I did. And don't be such a dick about it.

Beyond that, though, I've chosen to open my blog this way because it's this very love of baseball that millions of other men (read: teeny, tiny little boys whose pituitary glands still function normally divorced of their stunted intellectual growth and high motor skills.) share with me that engenders a little neorosis that I find fascinating: a need to consume and memorize statistics.

Ah yes, right after "damned lies" comes that insidious little arbiter, you know, math and reason and logic and not completely-fabricated-lies-based-on-nothing-more-than-what- sounds-intuitive-to-some-guy-who-hasn't-given-the-matter-any-thought-until-that-exact- moment that I call statistics.

Everyday I go to work and I write up reports. No one keeps track of the exact number of mistakes I make. No one cares. My job is watching paint dry on the side of a barn while drinking beet-juice with Henry Kissingerly boring.

But baseball is another story.

I doubt there's ever been another period in human history where what somebody did for a living was kept track to the third decimal place. The third decimal place. My job performance is currently tracked to the zero decimal place.

Last year when Alex Rodriguez batted he got a hit 29.000% of the time. if he faced a left-handed pitcher that number jumped to 29.411%, If he played on a field made of astroturf, his chance at a hit dropped to 17.808%. If he played against the Chicago White Sox it jumped to a hefty 43.478%. All of these numbers are readily available to anyone with the inclination to find them.

There is a point to all this, and here it is: if you ever listen to sports talk radio (which, by the way; don't) you'll never hear any of this. Instead of citing the meticulously kept statistics on the air, Brandon Tierney who appears on 1050 AM in NYC will grace your ears with the Orwellian insight of "this guy plays the game the right way," "or that guys a gamer" or "he's clutch."

He's clutch? What the hell does that mean?

When you listen to sports talk radio, you will hear caller after caller talk about how they love Alex Rodriguez's teammate Derek Jeter and how he is so clutch and how he always come through in big moments and how he carried the team to 4 World Series championships.

But, those same meticulously kept stats tell us unequivocally that while Derek Jeter is a very good player, Alex Rodriguez is much better by pretty much any metric. Derek Jeter is good, Alex Rodriguez is one of the best who ever played the game.

But we ignore those meticulously kept statistics? Why? Because we don't like them. They counter our preconceived notions. They don't feel right.

But who cares, right? Its just baseball.

Well, the problem is, its not just limited to baseball. Listen to Sean Hannity or Al Franken for five minutes and count how many over-arching claims they make without even a stitch of corroborating evidence. "Bush is an idiot." "John Kerry is the most liberal Senator in Washington." "NPR is propaganda for the left." "The economy is improving because of tax cuts."

We may as well be saying: "I like this Bush fella. The guy's a gamer. He's clutch. He's a good leader. The world is safer because of him."

Says who?

Just because people repeat things over and over again doesn't mean its true.

I, Matthew Record, do solemnly swear to make the bare-minimum, absolute, positive, lowest rung, just a little better than adequate job to try to substantiate the things I say.

But seriously though, this Barack Obama guy. He plays the game the right way. He's got heart. If only he wasn't the most liberal Senator in Washington.

Sigh.

beginnings

2006-10-23T22:13:00.000-04:00

two month fever: what are we going to write a blog about
Achilles24601: umm
Achilles24601: the things we care about
Achilles24601: baseball, music, why transitioning into adulthood sucks
Achilles24601: the utter incompetency of our government
Achilles24601: the usual
two month fever: can what you just wrote be how we describe it?
two month fever: what are we going to call it?
Achilles24601: I was thinking "more musing from middle class suburbanities via the blogosphere or how I learned that my opinion matter too"
Achilles24601: *matters
two month fever: yeah that's good
Achilles24601: lol
two month fever: should i sign up on blogspot right now?
Achilles24601: In all honesty I thought you would shoot the idea down right away
Achilles24601: hell yeah, sign it up
two month fever: ok
Achilles24601: I think the intro should be my "suck + moderately less suck = almost no suck at all" equation
Achilles24601: I'll be right back Ms. Jessica Simpson lover is calling me
two month fever: i need your email address
Achilles24601: beautiful.mercantile@yahoo.com
two month fever: ok i sent you an invitation
Achilles24601: whats the user name and pw?
two month fever: you make your own
two month fever: i believe
two month fever: there should be a link in the email
Achilles24601: ok
two month fever: you'll be able to sign up as a poster for the particular blog
Achilles24601: ok
Achilles24601: I'm in
two month fever: cool
two month fever: you have to do the first post
Achilles24601: why?
two month fever: it was your idea
Achilles24601: ok
Achilles24601: how long should it be?
two month fever: it can be whatever you want
Achilles24601: ok
Achilles24601: how often do you think we should update?
two month fever: whenever you want to write something
two month fever: as long as its not just rants
two month fever: unless they're really funny
Achilles24601: define rant
two month fever: meandering 500 word posts with no real point
two month fever: of course unless they are funny
Achilles24601: sweet

...

two month fever: i already know what my first post is going to be
Achilles24601: whats that?
two month fever: selections from this conversation, its all meta man.

...

two month fever: so are you gonna post or what
Achilles24601: I'm working on it
Achilles24601: its going to take me a little while
two month fever: ok
two month fever: is our address ok?
Achilles24601: sure
Achilles24601: can you capitalize the name, though?
two month fever: sure
two month fever: capitalize everything?
Achilles24601: the words that should be
two month fever: which words are those
Achilles24601: More Musings from Middle Class Suburbanites
two month fever: what have you got against from?
Achilles24601: everything
two month fever: fixed

for the record i would like to say i hate capital letters, but what matt says goes.