Rock The Bells 2008

"It ain't the sixties again

Niggas ain't hippies again

We ain't falling for the same traps"

Nas, "Black President"

It's in my nature to over-interpret things. I can not help but attempt to dissect things, to take any event or action or text and to read into it for the subtle themes and the buried messages. To disinter any subtext that might be there. And since we're living in an age of 24 news cycles that thrive on over-analysis and perpetual commentary on minutia, an era where a jubilant husband's celebratory fist bump with his wife on one of the single biggest nights of his life becomes grist for days of interpretation and commentary, my natural tendency becomes perhaps even more pronounced. So, when presented with a major hip hop festival, held outside of Washington DC, in a year when a black man is the Democratic nominee for the Presidency of the United States, it would be all to easy to see the event as being simply one enormous symbol. But this would miss the point entirely. The Rock The Bells Festival was both less than that and so much more.

"Run-D.M.C. first said a DJ could be a band

Stand on your feet, get you out of your seat

Beat is for Eric B. and LL as well, hell

Was is for Anthrax, still it can rock bells"

-Public Enemy, "Bring the Noise"

Murs:

Murs opened the show on the main stage, going on about 90 minutes after the doors officially opened, and before a significant portion of the crowd had arrived. Murs was as charismatic as usual, joking that he had learned from this stop on the tour that not all of Maryland is like The Wire, and promising that if there was rain, he was going to slide down the hill where the lawn seating was. His set included "Early Mornin' Tony", from the second Felt album, "Bad Man" and "H.U.S.T.L.E" from the Murs 3:16: The Ninth Edition album and "Looking Fly", form his upcoming Murs For President album. He also plugged his latest collaboration with Durham's Ninth Wonder (Murs' mention of Ninth got a bigger pop than when he mentioned his collaboration with Slug from Atmosphere, which might give you some idea of the what the crowd was into. Unless I am, despite my intentions, already reading too much into things).

The next act was a local MC named Wale, who I only knew from a guest spot on the latest Roots album. But at least some of the crowd seemed to know him. Wale did two songs, then left after promising he would return. After Wale, Supernatural, who was emceeing (the master of ceremony kind, although he also is the hip-hop kind of MC, if you follow) free styled for a bit. He broke out the classic freestyle spot of asking people in the front row to hand him objects to rhyme about. This was fine.

Dead Prez

The first overtly political act of the show, Dead Prez opened with "Turn Off The Radio", then tried to make me lose interest when they claimed that "George Bush is way worse than Bin Laden is". I've gotten somewhat used to rappers (and non-rapping liberals who've had eight years of the Bush debacle to ratchet their hyperbole up) saying stupid shit like this, but it still irritates me. If you want to argue that Bush is the worst president ever (which I still don't actually agree with), fine. But comparing Bush to Bin Laden (or Hitler, or whichever other monster you can think of) reduces your political message to an Internet flame war. In the middle of their set, DP performed "Hip Hop", which is unquestionably their biggest hit (in part thanks to Dave Chappelle, but it was huge before Dave began using it as his intro music every week on his TV show) which struck me as an odd choice. They played a bit from Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On" to transition into "Mind Sex", and that was fine.

Immortal Technique

This act I was dreading. Immortal Technique is probably one of the ten most gifted MCs in independent hip-hop, but his politics irk me even more than those of Dead Prez. He started off his set by yelling "Bin Laden didn't blow up the projects", which is true, but irrelevant. He then said something to the effect that Bin Laden didn't attack the third world. This is bullshit. When Al Qaeda bombed the US embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, at least 200 Kenyans and 11 Tanzanians were killed, compared to approximately 12 Americans. Keith and I decided that this set would be a good time to get some lunch. As we were walking away, Immortal began talking about how Bush brought down the World Trade Center. In short, Immortal is a wonderfully talented MC, but as far as I'm concerned he can go fuck himself.

Rakim

Rakim, almost universally hailed as one of, if not the absolute, greatest rappers of all time was next. His set mostly consisted of standards like "My Melody", "Don't Sweat the Technique", "I Ain't No Joke", and a version of "Paid In Full" that was mostly performed by the crowd. I've seen Rakim headline the Cat's Cradle, and naturally it was better seeing him at a smaller venue, but I also feel like the mix was slightly off, making the 3o set slightly disappointing. But, hey, it's still Rakim.

Wale came out again, and did his bit from his Roots collaboration, "Rising Up".

Ghostface and Raekwon.

They did a mix of their solo stuff and some Wu-Tang standards like "Ice Cream", "Bring Da Ruckus" and "C.R.E.A.M.". Then came the mandatory ODB tribute, which led into a version of "Shimmy Shimmy Ya". Every Wu-Tang member I've seen live has basically done this, so it wasn't unexpected.

We left before the end of this set to catch the Cool Kids at the second stage. The Cool Kids are an indy group, who've described themselves as "The Black Beastie Boys", which is oddly fitting for their style. It began raining a little during their set, but it still kicked ass. I would have liked to see the whole performance, but I had to leave early to catch De La Soul. Keith, who has seen De La before stayed for the whole set, and seemed to enjoy it.

De La Soul

I was expecting De La to include the Gorillaz track "Feel Good Inc." in their set. I mean, every time I've see Del he's closed with "Clint Eastwood". But this wasn't to be. Good set from De La, including "Potholes In My Lawn", "Stakes Is High", a small medley from the De La Soul is Dead album and "Me, Myself and I". For "Buddy", Q-Tip joined the group on stage.

As soon as the De La set is over, we went back to the second stage to see part of hip hop legend Afrika Bambaataa's DJ set. Unfortunately, Bambaataa wasn't wearing his outfit from the "Renegades of Funk video.

His set was basically dance music (James Brown, Prince, Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock), so after about ten minutes in the drizzling rain, we went back to catch Method Man and Redman's set.

Meth and Red:

If you like songs about getting high, this was the set for you. They wound up running long, and I really believe that after the fifth song about blunts and 40's, I understood just how much they enjoy intoxicants. Or maybe it was just the humidity making me cranky. Also, I couldn't stop thinking about the last time I know of Meth being in Maryland, when he was being interrogated by Bunk Moreland about having killed his dog. (You see, the cops had heard on the wiretap that Cheese (Method Man) had said that he killed his dog. But they thought that he was using the term "dog" in the colloquial sense, rather than having literally killed his pit bull after losing a dogfight. It was way more awesome than it sounds). They played "How High", from the feature film of the same name, and promised that a sequel is coming. Oh joy. There was another ODB tribute, only this time they did "Shame on a Nigga" and "Got Your Money". At this point, it occurred to me how glad I am that pro wrestlers don't feel the need to shout out all the dead wrestlers at every show. Wrestlemania would last 9 or 10 hours. At the end of their set, Meth and Red invaded the crowd while kind of performing "Rapper's Delight". That was pretty damn cool.

Next up was the reunited Pharcyde. Unlike all of the acts up to this point, who had simply used the video screens to show live footage of the show, Pharcyde had a whole video package prepared for their set. From our seats, I could see the stage pretty well, but for the people on the lawn this might have sucked a little. They opened with "4 Better of 4 Worse", then went into "Running", which featured a graphic honoring the late producer J. Dilla. Keith joked that when Obama makes his Inaguration speech, he'll feel the need to shout-out ODB and Dilla. Fatlip performed his solo track "What Up Fatlip". The set went on with "Yo Mama", "Pack the Pipe" and closed with "Passin' Me By", which has to be on the shortlist of the greatest hip hop songs ever. I liked this set a lot.

Mos Def.

Now this was just... perplexing. I like Mos Def a lot as a rapper, but I have a theory that Mos works much better with a collaborator to reign in all of the things he's interested in doing at any given moment, because left to his own devices, we get sets like this. He opened with a kind of cover of "The Message", then there was a bunch of that Jamaican style of rapping that guys like KRS do, and some Reggae style singing. I'm not recognizing most of what he's doing until he does "New World Water", off of his first (and only really really good) solo album. More Jamaican stuff. Dude is from Brooklyn, not Kingston. He finally gets around to "Definition", but apparently couldn't find someone to do Kweli's part (or just do Talib's part himself. I've seen guys from the Wu-Tang do two or three different rappers' parts of songs), so the song just kind of ended. The crowd was really into "Definition", because the song is so fucking awesome. The only other song in his set that I recognized was "Ms. Fat Booty". I really wanted to like Mos' set, but instead I was just kind of confused and disappointed.

But things were about to change.

NAS.

Nas opened with "Hip Hop is Dead". If I was one of the simple-minded people who had simply pre-judged the song and album when Nas announced it, I would probably write something about how ironic the opener was. But I'm not. He played a couple of tracks from his new album, Untitled, namely "N.I.G.G.E.R. (The Slave and the Master)" and "Sly Fox", his attack on Fox News and Bill O'Reilly, in particular their criticism of him for doing a benefit concert after the Virginia Tech massacre. Nas was already on fire. His new album is amazing- easily my front-runner for the best album of 2008, and his delivery was impeccable. After three songs, he already owned this crowd. If I could tell you how much this ruled, I would be Greil Marcus. Next came a sort of medley off of his landmark debut Illmatic, including "New York State of Mind" (which he changed to "D.C. State of Mind") "It Ain't Hard To Tell", "One Love", "The World Is Yours" and "Life's A Bitch". During this part of his show, someone threw a beach ball onto the stage. Now, I've always of Nas as being far too serious for his own good- a trait that I think has held him back from being as loved as he is respected. So, I expected Nas to either ignore the beach ball, or get snarly about it. Instead, he just playfully threw it back into the crowd. Next was "Street Dreams" (his re-working of "Sweet Dreams are Made of These" and "If I Ruled the World".

Now, Nas' new album ends with one of the best political hip-hop tracks from a main-stream artist in some time. "Black President", which opens with a sample from Tupac's "Changes-"Although it seems heaven sent/we ain't ready to have a black president" immediately countered with a "Yes we can/change the world", with a sample of Obama saying "Change the World". It works amazingly well. And live, with a crowd of thousands of Obama supporters, this brought chills to my fucking spine. This was the moment where all of the potential symbolism I was talking about earlier actually came together to create real magic.

After the high spot of "Black President', Nas began winding down his set with high spots like an exuberantly defiant "Hate Me Now", "Got Urself A..." which his DJ mixed with the beat from "Still D.R.E.", "Made You Look" and finally "One Mic", which he put everything into. His set seemed to prove what Rock The Bells is meant to be- that all we really need is one mic and one beat. This set should have closed the show, because there was no way that anyone could top that. This was everything that I love about hip-hop, everything that I love about music- the passion and the intellect, the heart and the brain. I probably sound like a fucking idiot at this point, but... Fuck, it was just better than anything.

A Tribe Called Quest closed the show. Their set was fine, but I was spent from the Nas set, and probably didn't enjoy it as much as I would have if the sets had been reversed. Tribe hit most of their high spots- "Excursions", "Oh My God", "Lyrics To Go", "Footprints", "Bonita Applebaum", "Check The Rhime" and "Scenario". And, as everyone probably expected, they closed with "Can I Kick It?". Not only is that the right song in terms of crowd recognition, it was fitting to close the giant hip hop show with a song so quintessentially hip-hop, if you see what I mean. Or maybe I've been typing this up for so long my mind is beginning to go, but I decided that I would have to get through this in one shot or it probably wouldn't be finished until next week. Anyway, I was surprised that the line about David Dinkins, which is a nearly two-decade old reference to NYC mayoral politics, was left in. I would have bet money that they would have come up with an Obama reference to replace it. This is why I don't gamble, I guess.

So, yeah. Awesome show, and Nas ruling more than made up for any slight disappointments about Immortal being a jackass and Mos being confusing.

"There's no delayin'

what I'm sayin'

as I'm rockin' you well

Rock the Bells"

-LL Cool J, "Rock The Bells"

Reports of Hip Hop's Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

Just got back from Maryland.  Expect a long piece about the Rock the Bells show either tomorrow or Wednesday (I have about twenty pages of notes in my little notebook.)  The short review is that Nas gave what might be the single greatest performance I've ever seen.

This Month's eMusic Downloads (July)

George Carlin- Jammin' In New York

George Carlin- Carlin On Campus

Liz Phair- The three new bonus tracks for Exile In Guyville

The Decembrists- The Tain EP

The Pharcyde (who I'll see next week at Rock the Bells)- Labcabincalifornia

The Pixies- Come On Pilgrim (I'm closing in on a complete Pixies collection)

Super Furry Animals- Phantom Power

MF Doom/MF Grimm- Special Herbs +Special  Spices Volume 1

Kidz In The Hall (also at Rock the Bells)- The In Crowd

Blueprint w/ Aesop Rock- "Encounter

The Instruments (An Elephant 6 spin-off)- Dark Smaland

I saw the new Batman movie.  It was fine, although two and a half hours was way too long.  Heath Ledger was pretty damn good as Joker, and I think Gary Oldman is absolutely perfect as Jim Gordon.  But the funniest thing was the trailer for Watchmen.  Now, the idea of a Watchmen movie is as fundamentally flawed as trying to do a Citizen Kane novel, and I won't go to see it, but that wasn't what was funny.  What was funny was that the song playing during the trailer was The Smashing Pumpkins song "The Beginning Is The End Is The Beginning", which was from the soundtrack for the George Clooney Batman movie.  The notion that Warner Bros. is reusing songs for their comic book movies appeals to me on some twisted level.  I'm hoping that the next Superman movie features the U2 song from the Val Kilmer Batman movie. It was the third movie I've seen this summer based on a comic book, and that's probably enough for a while.  But I am curious what Christopher Nolan will do in a third Batman movie.  I'm hoping we get to see his take on The Riddler.  No idea why, but I think that would be interesting.  The only problem is then we'd probably have a third Batman movie with Two-Face and Riddler as the villains, and that represented the beginning of the end for the franchise the last time around. 

 

Elderly Wasteland

I'm in the midst of a big documentary kick through the Netflix.  I can't quite identify the moment it began, but I realized the way that things would be after watching Errol Morris' documentary The Thin Blue Line the other night.  How I got a minor in film studies without being forced to watch this amazing film is beyond be.  Right now, I've watching Errol Morris First Person series of interviews.   Well, that and parts of the Who tribute show on VH1 Classic.  Pearl Jam is doing their version of "Love Reign O'Er Me", which is fantastic, but I was kind of hoping that they would do a Who song I had never heard them do before.  Their drummer (he used to be in Soundgarden, and for the life of me I can't remember his name at the moment- I almost called him Jack Irons) is no Keith Moon.  Then again, who is?  Now Pearl Jam is doing "The Real Me", which is also off of the Quadrophenia album.  I'd be willing to be that Eddie Vedder knows every word to Quad.  God, if they played "Punk and the Godfather" I'd be so happy.  Either Mike or Stone Gossard threw his guitar into the air and let it hit the stage to end the set, I couldn't tell which from the shot.  Neat little touch.  Now, half of the Who are playing "Baba O'Riley".  I missed the Flaming Lips playing, which I had meant to watch.  

  Until the last season of The Wire comes out on DVD in August, I have a feeling that documentaries are going to be most of my Netflix rentals.  

I'm still looking for the next book I'll fall in love with.  Last week I was so wrapped up in my sister's wedding that I fell out of whatever reading pattern I was in, and now I'm having a problem getting back into the groove.  I should probably go ahead and read the book about Big Star that's been sitting on my shelf of music books for about 15 months now.  That seems like a good way to slip back into practice, now that I think about it.

The Rock the Bells show is sneaking up on me, and I haven't done as much background listening as I had hoped to.  I'll probably pick up Nas' new album tomorrow, since his set will probably be pretty heavy with new stuff.  Nas has always been more talented than likable.  

The Greatest Thing Since the Last Thing That Was Great

When I was in middle school, I watched a potentially distressing amount of MTV.  This was around the time when they were playing the videos for "Soul To Squeeze" and "November Rain" constantly.  And every hour, they would run the "MTV News" bit where Kurt Loder had to tell all of the kids about the big news story of the day.  And of course, I was never watching when, say, he reported on Kurt Cobain killing himself (I heard about that on NPR during a car ride to a chess tournament in Charlotte, just to give you an idea of how cool I really was).  The only story I remember was one about some kid who got kicked out of a mall for wearing a t-shirt for the band Fishbone that had the phrase "Fuck Racism" on the back.  I have no idea why I remember that, since I'm not sure I've ever actually listened to a Fishbone song.  Anyway, it turns out that VH1 Classic has their own version of this- a two or three minute "news" segment that runs at the end of every hour.  Only, instead of telling semi-real news stories about "classic" bands, the segments are invariably commercials for new albums from heavy metal bands.  Kiss, in particular, for reasons I can't begin to discern.  So, after tonight's Venture Bros.  was over, I was flipping through the channels, and on my cable system, VH1 Classic is two channels away from the Cartoon Network.  So I caught the most awesome segment with Judas Priest talking about their latest album.  It's a concept album about  Nostradamus- a double album actually- and watching three aging guys wearing their heavy metal leather outfits and talking so seriously about Nostradamus turns out to be more Spinal Tap than some scenes from the film This Is Spinal Tap.  To give you some idea of how awesome this is, I quote from the "Story line" section of the album's Wikipedia page.  "Nostradamus [no italics is sic] centres [also sic, leading me to believe that the British contingent of Judas Priest fans won out on a wiki editing war that was truly a thing of beauty] around the life and times of the prophet.  The first disc details various prophecies he has about the future and the end of the world.  This leads to him being exiled.  Later on, after his death, the world realises [also sic] just how right he was."  The album is out now, and there's a version that includes a 48 page booklet.  The mind can only boggle at the potential brilliance of that.  I just looked at the track listing, and the last track is called "Future of Mankind" and is eight and a half minutes long.  Just when you think that you've seen all that the world has to offer, something like this returns to restore your since of... wonder, I guess?  

My sister's wedding seemed to go well.  I won't bother describing it, since there's a very real chance that only two people reading this blog weren't there in person.  And today I got the cathartic thrill of deleting about a dozen songs that my sister insisted I download onto my computer.

I think I had gotten used to being fairly busy over the last few days, because I couldn't really relax today.  So I went to see Hellboy 2, in part because I thought the first one was pretty decent, but mostly because I wanted to go the movies and that was the only thing I hadn't seen that I have any intention of ever seeing.  The movie is very interesting visually, but mostly sucks as a story.  del Toro, the director, seems to believe that audience has some sort of emotional connection to these characters, which is a very odd thing to believe.  If I hadn't already divested myself of any expectations for the Hobbit movies (yes, movieS.  Peter Jackson could do each book from Lord of the Rings in one film, but Guillermo del Toro needs two movies to tell the story of Bilbo Baggins stumbling across a piece of jewelry, walking around with a bunch of dwarves, then arguing with a dragon, then going back home), I would probably be concerned.  

I picked up the new Beck album.  I've only listened to it once, while I was driving around on Saturday.  The album seemed fine, but it didn't jump out at me as much I was hoping for, especially since Danger Mouse produced it.  Beck is one those acts that I like, but I would have a hard time explaining precisely why.  I mean, I love Odelay as much as the next guy, and maybe this idea I have that Beck is looked at as some sort of standard-bearer for music fans between the ages of, say, 25-40 is just my own misconception, but... actually, I'm not sure where I'm going with this.  You figure it out.  

I also bought the new Weezer album, even though I had agreed with myself that I wasn't going to.  Which goes to show how much I can be trusted.  I listened to the first three songs on the way to the movies.  The first track was kind of just there, the second track was a mess, and the third was the single "Pork and Beans", which seems all of the obvious "singles" from the post-Pinkerton albums- "Hash Pipe", "Keep Fishing", "Beverly Hills" and so forth.  I'll listen to the rest of the album with the hope that it can only exceed my low expectations.  I form odd sense of cultural obligation.  I've bought all of Weezer's releases this decade (including an import version of the Green album, the import of the "Island In The Sun" single and the limited release EP of the band live in Japan) out of a sense of obligation.  But I was once as big a Kevin Smith fan as I was a Weezer fan, and I haven't seen one of his movies in the theater since 2001.  

All The Bathorses and all the Batmen

I saw some "news" story about the mad rush for tickets for the upcoming Batman movie, and I got to thinking.  Specifically, I began to think about just how many Batman movies have come to theaters since the first Tim Burton film.  Do you realize that this will be the seventh Batman movie since 1989?  The list goes: Batman, Batman Returns, Batman Forever, Batman and Robin, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight,  and the somewhat forgotten animated film Batman: The Mask of the Phantasm.  I tried to think of other franchises that have been this prolific over the same time period, and I could only come up with two: James Bond, which will have had seven films since 1989 when Quantum of Solace opens later this year (License to Kill, Goldeneye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, Die Another Day, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace) and Star Wars, if you count the 1997 theatrical re-releases of the original trilogy, plus the new trilogy and the up-coming animated Clone Wars.  There have been five Harry Potter movies (and three or four to come, since they are splitting up the sixth book, and one would assume that they might do the same with Deathly Hallows.  And apparently, Saw V is going to come out this year, even though I have a hard time imagining who is clamoring for this.  (I just googled "movie franchises", and I realized I had completely forgotten about the Star Trek movies, of which there have been six installments since 1989.  Since I just watched the documentary Trekkies last night, I probably should have thought of that).  

Just something that occurred to me.

Don't even ask me about how my day went.  Suffice to say that trying to hook a laptop up to an ancient amplifier is a bitch.  After visiting a Best Buy, a Circuit City and a Target, I think I finally have daisy-chained enough adapters and cables together to actually get music to flow through the speakers for my sister's wedding reception, but I'm taking nothing on faith at this point.  I'd worry about the fidelity of the sound, but given some of the songs my sister has demanded, it might be a hidden blessing if people can only half-hear David Cook, "The Electric Slide", "The Cha-Cha Slide" (which is a more inane version of the electric slide.  I know, I didn't think it was possible either) and Edwin McCain (Do you like Hootie and the Blowfish?  Then you'll love their inbred cousin!  At least, that's how I remember him from the two weeks in 1995 when people gave a shit about Edwin McCain).  

(To be fair, she is letting me choose about 85 or 90 percent of the music, so it's kind of mean for me to keep mocking her taste.  On the other hand, I can't help it, because I'm the kind of person who thinks that High Fidelity hits a little close to home.)  

Talking Wedding Music Blues

Yesterday was the big conversation with my sister and her fiancee about what music will be played at the wedding reception.  It went slightly better than I expected, except for the moment when I was on the other side of the room, and unable to get to my computer before she downloaded George Michael's "Faith" from iTunes to play at the reception.  (That kind of sounds like a joke, but it really isn't.  She literally did this, even though I thought that we had reached a compromise when I agreed to play both a Bon Jovi song AND a Journey song in exchange for salvaging some shreds of my own self-worth).  Also, it's a very good thing that I never took the iTunes recommendations very seriously- after the last few weeks, the suggestions it kicks out are going to be amazingly schizophrenic.  Something along the lines of "I see you've bought Iggy Pop, Chris Bell [he was the key member of Big Star who wasn't named Alex Chilton, if you haven't been keeping score], and American Idol's David Cook.  We recommend The Stranglers, Brian Eno and Clay Aiken"

My sister's fiance's suggestions were more interesting.  If I do get married one day, I can imagine requesting several non-conventional wedding reception songs. But not, for example, "Bulls on Parade" by Rage Against the Machine, or Eminem's "Square Dance", or quite so many Beastie Boys songs.  After giving the matter some thought, I've actually become curious about how people would react to the Rage song, but alas, my sister vetoed that one out of hand, despite not ever having heard the song, except possibly while watching him play Guitar Hero. (The only time I can ever think of my sister referring to Rage was when I was in high school and she was in middle school, and she called them "The Raging, Dancing Machine".  Which in retrospect is kind of awesome).

So, yeah.  Next Saturday is going to be... something.  

The picture is of Sly Stone, for no real reason besides the fact that I like Sly & The Family Stone.  I will probably sneak "Dance to the Music' into the mix during the reception.

 

Notes From The Mundane

So.

I've been 26 for a couple of days now, and I still haven't gotten the hang of it.  But I'm not too worried about it.  I've mentioned a couple of times that my sister is getting married in about a week, so my secret hope was that my life would re-enact Sixteen Candles, and everyone would forget my birthday.  Unfortunately, no one did, and I didn't get that magic moment with Jake Ryan.  I think I mainly wanted to meet John Cusack.  Everyone gave me cash in lieu of gifts- the one exception was a copy of the new David Sedaris book.  So that was all fine.  I used some of the money to pay for my ticket to the Rock The Bells festival in DC.  I bought new headphones, to replace the two pairs that broke over the last five days (one pair just gave out after months of abuse, and then I accidentally destroyed my back-up pair when I was taking a bag out of my car during a driving rainstorm- I was trying not to get too wet and didn't notice when I slammed them in the door.  I discovered them the next morning and had one of those moments where I vaguely feel like I've failed at life.  Because I was up so early, I went ahead to Target to buy a new pair.  Since I was flush with gifted cash, I felt like I should buy something else while I was there, which is an incredibly odd impulse when you look at it rationally.  If I had been thinking clearly, I would have bought the new Futurama DVD, but it was 8:15 in the morning, and that level of logic was inaccessible to me.  So I wound up staring at the CDs for sale.  I thought about buying the new Weezer album, but I couldn't bring myself to give up 16 dollars for something that I'm so sure will be a disappointment.  So I ended up buying the 25th anniversary re-release of Thriller, which was on sale.  In retrospect, I really can't understand why I did that.  I mean, it's a great album and all, but I'm not a Michael Jackson fan, and I can't imagine any other circumstance where the idea of buying the CD would have even occurred to me.  There are probably two or three valuable lessons to be learned here.  

The tracklist that I made for myself about my birthday goes as follows:

1. Pearl Jam- Corduroy (Live, from the Live on Two Legs disc)

2. Nirvana- Oh, Me (From Unplugged)

3. The Pogues- Medley: The Recruiting Sergeant/The Rocky Road To Dublin/The Galway Races

4.  The Rolling Stones- Torn & Frayed

5. U2- Vertigo (Live, from an EP I found on iTunes of U2 at the Brooklyn Bridge and only bought the one song)

6. Weezer- Perfect Situation (which is the one song off of the last album I actually liked)

7. Aesop Rock- Flashflood

8.  The Beatles- I'm Happy Just To Dance With You

9. Bob Dylan- Idiot Wind

10. Bruce Springsteen- Darkness On The Edge of Town (Live)

11. Buck 65- 1957

12. The Clash- The Guns of Brixton

13. The Coup- Busterismology

14. Neil Young- Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues (Live from the Bob Dylan 30th anniversary show)

15. The Stone Roses- Made of Stone

16. Mcenroe and Birdapres featuring John Smith- A Little Bitter

17. Radiohead- Anyone Can Play Guitar

I just finished reading the new Sedaris.  It's good, but I didn't like it nearly as much as the other ones.  I'm a little worried that he's begun to run out of past, so to speak, and is forced to write more essays about life as a middle-aged, mildly famous, neurotic gay man, which are inherently less funny than essays about being a twenty-year old hitchhiker or child who is neurotic even by the standards set by the rest of his family.  

Where I'm Calling From and Where I've Been

If I were a mixtape, it would sound something like this at the moment.

1. Nirvana- Aneurysm (Live version from a bootleg I have where the guys who printed up the liner notes thought that the title was "Come On Over") (key line: " Love you so much it makes me sick")

2. Aesop Rock- Commencement at the Obedience Academy "Must not sleep/must warn others")

3. Neutral Milk Hotel- Communist Daughter ("Bends toward herself the soothing")

4. Talking Heads- Take Me to The River ("Love is an ocean that I can't forget")

5.  Neil Young- Tonight's The Night ("As real as the day is long")

6.  Robert Johnson- Come On In My Kitchen ("Babe it going to be raining outdoors")

7. The Refreshments- Interstate ("I don't need a miracle but I could use a push in the right direction")

8. Soundgarden- Outshined ("I got up feeling so down")

9.  Mission of Burma- That's When I Reach For My Revolver ("But all of that is changed now")

10. Love- A House Is Not A Motel ("And if someone asks you/you can call my name")

11.  The Beach Boys- I Just Wasn't Made For These Times ("They say I got brains but they ain't do me no good")

12.  The Jam- That's Entertainment ("Waking up from bad dreams and smoking cigarettes")

13.  Graham Parker- I Discovered America ("Everyone said quit now and that's when I found hope")

14. The Flaming Lips- Waitin' For A Superman ("Well I thought it was already as heavy as can be")

15. Eliot Smith- Speed Trials ("But it's sure as fate and hard as your luck")

16. MF Grimm- Children Of Cain ("Children of Cain just nod to this")

17. Bruce Springsteen- Magic ("This is what will be")

18. Atmosphere- Tears For The Sheep ("The language was primitive, the listener complex")

19. The Replacements- Swingin' Party ("If bein' afraid is a crime we'll hang side by side")

20. Canibal Ox- The F-Word ("I'm more than just a shoulder to cry on")

Sometimes I'm pretty sure that most people don't go about things in the ways that I do. 

What I've been up to:

 

Reading: Dennis Lehane's Darkness Take My Hand and Sacred, The Corner by David Simon and Edward Burns (it's kind of a precursor to The Wire. Actually, I picked up the Lehane books in large part because he wrote for The Wire.)  Slam by Nick Hornby, which was good but not great, and intended more for teenage readers than his other books (although it might have enough cursing to irritate some high school librarians, which I consider to be a point in its favor), I just started Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses,  and we'll see if I finish it, as it looks like a fairly demanding read.  Also, there's a slight chance that Islamists might go after me for reading it.  

Listening:  Besides the stuff I mentioned, I've been getting prepared for the Rock The Bells festival later this month by listening to some of the acts on the bill that I'm less familiar with, like The Pharcyde and Immortal Technique.  Beyond that, a lot of the usual suspects.  Plus I'm still working on the music for my sister's wedding reception, which is alternately fun and maddening.  Guests who know me will be able to tell which songs I chose, and which songs the increasingly deranged bride chose.  Also, do you really think Elvis Costello's "Allison" is appropriate for a wedding reception?  I get that my sister's future husband's sister is named Allison, but I can't be the only person who actually understands what the song about, can I?  I mean, why don't we just play all of Dylan's Blood On The Tracks while we're at it.  (Except for "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts", which could potentially work.  And on some tv show, there was a wedding where the theme song was "Shelter From The Storm", but I think they only heard the parts about "I came in from the wilderness/a creature void of form/ 'Come in' she said I'll give you/shelter from the storm" and missed the entire rest of the song, which mostly consists of lost loved and Dylan comparing himself to Jesus, which is practically an entire sub-genre of Dylan songs.  But the show got it wrong by using the album version.  I would have used the live version from the Hard Rain album.  But that's just me)

Watching: Wall-E, which I liked, the second season of My Name Is Earl, which I started on Netflix after finishing the fourth season of The Wire.  I think Rome will be next.  I saw the new Narnia movie, which was okay but way too long, and The Happening,  (going to see it wasn't my decision, which I hope I don't even have to say.  As is often the case when I see a bad movie, there was a girl involved.  The only bad movie which I saw in the theaters by choice over the last few years was The Da Vinci Code, which I had to see after it got booed at Cannes.  I was hoping for a true train wreck, but Ron Howard could only produce a mediocre mess.)which isn't so much bad as inscrutable.  It's like a film made by aliens who had seen a few Earth movies, but really didn't understand them.  But it's also pretty bad.  I think I was the only person in the theater who wasn't so much pissed off as impressed by it's essential strangeness (strangeness in the bad way, not the awesome Night of the Hunter or David Lynch way).  I saw Indiana Jones, mostly out of a sense of cultural obligation.  It wasn't really bad, but it was staggeringly unnecessary, and the actors seemed to know this.  I finally caught up with Battlestar Galactica, which I had begun avoiding this season.  The final few episodes of the half-season were pretty decent, so I'll wind up finishing the ride when the show re-starts.  Oh, and The Venture Bros., which is still six kinds of awesome.  And my secret shame is watching Hell's Kitchen on Hulu.com.  I hate the reality show parts of the show (i.e. all of the contestants display sociopathic tendencies, pointlessly dramatic commercial breaks, inane contests) but I'm a sucker for Gordon Ramsay yelling at people.  I wonder if BBC America shows episodes of the British version of the show, which I'm positive is better than the Americanized version.  And if next season is b-list celebrities, then even Ramsay can't keep me there.

Playing: No one game in particular.  Some GTA: San Andreas, some re-playing of the original Half-Life on PS2, some Super Mario Galaxy, some Bully.  But there's no game that I'm obsessed with at the moment.  I picked up Lego Indiana Jones for the Wii, mostly because of how much I love the Lego Star Wars games.  It's pretty good, but by no means is it a must-buy, especially since it doesn't take very long to finish.   

The picture is Neil Young, but you already should have known that.  

Oh, and by the time I finished editing and rewriting this, I looked up and it was Thursday. I am apparently 26 now, which is slightly vexing.  I thought that 25 was a perfectly reasonable age to be.