I upgraded the Wordpress platform that SYP runs on to the latest version 2.7 (from 2.6.5). What that means to me, is a shiney new backend interface, and an integrated upgrading tool for future point and point point releases. What that means to you, is that the song name no longer shows up in the audio player. Maybe one day I’ll figure out how to fix it so that you can see the song names again. In the mean time, the artist/song are ususally the last two Tags in the list of Tags at the conclusion of each post. In the mean time, somebody tell this guy to eat his pants.
For those of you not in the know, music is a big part of my life. Not in the “I have an Aerosmith tattoo on my ass” or the “I followed Phish around for a few years” way though. There’s nothing wrong with having band tattoos on your backside, or showing your love for a bands music by stalking them across the country for years on end, those just aren’t my style. But I have always been involved with music, performing it, producing it, reviewing it, watching it (yes watching sound), and of course listening to it, and I’ve always been pretty dependent on it too. Dependent on it in the way that an alcoholic is dependent on her alcohol (chicks can be alcoholics too).
Since I have lived a relatively drug and alcohol free life so far, music has always been the medium that I could use to consciously alter my state-of-being. The occasional coke (red) has some effect, but in order to really have an effect, I’d need to binge. Even after an all night bender, the caffeine pales in comparison to the effect music can have (I imagine the difference between smoking a cigarette to shooting some heroin). I’m not a genrelitist (although I’ve yet to find a country song that can move me much), I am a sucker for a good song.
What’s strange about my love for music is that I ignored it for a while. When I was little my parents used to put Stevie Wonder and Michael Jackson on the turntable all the time, and I remember listening to it in the living room. In some houses we lived in, it was the only activity I would do in the living room (in the houses we lived where the turntable wasn’t in the living room, I never went into the room). Then for a few years I didn’t listen to much music at all. My brother always had hundred of tapes/CDs of his favorite Rap/Hip-Hop artists, but I didn’t have any music.
Until one day Seb bought me the single ‘Run-Away Train’ by Soul Asylum on tape. I think I had just gotten a tape player for my birthday or Christmas. I listened to that tape on the hour long bus ride to school everyday, and the hour to three hour bus ride home from school everyday. Imagine how much capacity I have to love music if I could find love in a Soul Asylum song…
Fast forward to this weekend when I happened across the album Bring Me Your Love by City and Colour. City and Colour is the name for Dallas Green’s solo act, which he focuses on when he’s not pouring his time and energy into Alexisonfire. Most of that won’t mean anything to you, because like myself he is a Cannuck. That said, check your Canada-hate at the door because this album is the most beautiful twelve consecutive songs I have heard in eight years. Every single song is a keeper depending on your mood, and if you have a free hour anytime soon, I recommend putting on your headphones or speakers, turning off the lights and just listening. If you don’t have an hour free anytime soon, make one, because this album may change your life.
You will notice that all of my posts so far have at least one song to accompany them. I feel that life is better with a soundtrack and that the same holds true for reading my blog. This post however, will not have a song accompanying it. This is because I want you to go buy this album (or steal it), and listen to it from front to end. It will be well worth your hard-earned money, for it’s the type of high that only comes around once or twice a decade. Let me know what you think.
My good friend Benjamin Costello (‘Jamin) released his long-awaited album this week entitled ‘Start Again Tomorrow’. It’s been quite some time in the making, and I know he is ecstatic with how it turned out. I’m sure he’s also happy that it is available to the many hands that have been grabbing for it for so long.
He has been performing two shows a week, an hour a piece, via live web-cast on Stickam which you should check out if you get the chance. I’ve always thought that performing for an hour or two a week for an audience in a comfortable setting is a brilliant idea. It’s a low-level commitment on behalf of the audience and it also capitalizes on the potential to attract any of the millions of people who are bored on the Internet at any given moment.
The rub with doing live web performances so often is that you have to be good. There is no editing the video post-facto, there is always someone watching, and if you are as good as ‘Jamin then that could mean up to 13,000 visitors within an hour. A few shows ago he was featured on the Stickam homepage and as a result he got a lot more exposure then he was anticipating. That is a lot of emo tweens knocking at your web-cam.
I’ve had the privilege to hear the evolution and refinement of the album over the last few years, more actively in the last few months, and there are two songs that are really next to none. I honestly enjoy most of the songs on the album, all for different reasons, but ‘Girl’ and ‘Just For Now’ are really outstanding. During one of the recent Stickam shows I was chatting with our mutual friend Matt as ‘Jamin was playing ‘Girl’ and our discussion went something like this:
Matt: Whose song is this?
Me: ‘Jamin wrote it.
Matt: Really?
Me: (Pause to think about it, to make sure I wasn’t lying) Yup.
Matt: Wow. This song is really good. The kind of good that you don’t want to believe it was written by someone you know.
Me: Yes.
I think Matt summed it up pretty well. Again, not to take away from the other tracks on the album, but I honestly wouldn’t be surprised to hear either of those two tunes on the soundtrack to a successful indie film in the near future. Anyway, a job well done ‘Jamin, for those of you who you dig ’singer/song-writer’ acts(with each passing day I hate that phrase more and more, but how else to describe it? ‘Man and his music’?), do yourself a favor: Go buy the album, kick off your pants, sit back, relax, and enjoy.
Since I was born, I have not stopped moving. I don’t mean day to day (video games and computers always seemed to handle keeping me still quite well), but year to year it was one place to the next. As a result, I missed out on a lot of things that my contemporaries who were born-and-raised in their hometowns have/had. I don’t have many childhood friends that I still keep in touch with or even know how to find, nor many family traditions or regular reunions. I have a small family, but they are pretty spread out (throughout the states, and the globe).
As a result, I have always enjoyed participating in others annual get together, especially the famous Memorial Day celebrations in Voorheesville with Matt and his lot. Even though I’m a total newcomer, his friends and their families treat everyone on that sacred day as one of their own (I’m sure they do on the other 364 days of the year as well). It’s a small but wonderful town, and it’s not hard to feel like I’m one of their ilk, especially considering the crowd I roll with while in town. If I’m not partying it up with the likes of the first son and daughter of the town (I even broke one of the Mayor’s wine glasses), I’m engaging in several hour long Drunk Monopoly games just a room away from where the infamous ‘Bill Murray and the Ghostbusters’ alcoholic concoction was introduced to the town (keep in mind, this was before it became the popular drink that it is today).
I know what you are saying, two paragraphs in and this post has nothing to do with the title. Well, astute reader, as wonderful as participating in others occasions of dependable annual comfort and familiarity, they just aren’t…mine.
Two years ago, Aimee happened to move to Chicago and Matt and I decided to go visit for a long weekend in the summer which was picked because of it’s alignment with the dates for the Lollapalooza music festival. A short and cheap flight from New York, it was the perfect combination ’summertime and get out of the city’ event. After those three days of non-stop sun and music I decided that this would be my annual tradition. I had never been to Chicago, and it only seemed fitting that my tradition be established in a place that I had never been, especially with a history not tied to any single geographic location. I had attended with friends that I had met in only the most recent part of my relatively young life, and it only seemed fitting that my tradition be established with those who I had not known for very long.
It’s no longer cheap and conveniently quick to get to, and Aimee no longer lives a short walk away from the festival grounds. The bands this year aren’t as excitement inducing as they were last year for me. Matt couldn’t make it last year, but Leigh filled in and we had a wonderful time, this year it’ll just be Aimee and I. The thing is, it’s not about the place (it could move from year to year like it used to), it’s not about the bands (it could be a full three days of bands I’d never heard of), it’s not even about who is going and who isn’t (one year my friends could all be too busy to attend).
It’s about something I can look forward to before they announce the dates for the following year. It’s about knowing there is a weekend at the end of every summer that I can depend on spending three days soaking in tunes and audio waves. It’s about a tradition, my tradition, that I get to share with Perry Farrell and tens of thousands of other people. It’s about Lollapalooza.
I just got a newsletter email from Paul saying that it was the year anniversary/birthday of his album release (‘Cycles’). It seems like it came out only a month or two ago, but after checking my calendar, it has in fact been a year. This is ridiculous and also important, for two reasons.
The first reason is that another album can’t be far behind. In the decade or so that I’ve known Paul, he has been involved with the release of five or six full length albums and countless EPs/demos/singles. According to this track record, it’s about time for Paul to start working actively on his next album, which is exciting. Since his move into the heart of the Lower East Side, his sound has gravitated in a very different direction then us old-timers were accustomed to, and that makes the impending album a very new/scary/exciting prospect.
The second reason is that a year has passed in what seems like only one tenth of the time. His email isn’t the first instance in which time has seemingly flown by. I am a very logical and practical person, and thus have always known that the more time that passes the less value each passing second/minute/hour holds. For those of you who are no good at maths (or those who are just generally unintelligent), I’ll break it down for you.
When you are 1 year old, 1 year is 100% of your life.
When you are 10 years old, 1 year is 10% of your life.
When you are 20 years old, 1 year is 5% of your life.
What this means it that as you get older, each increment of time is a smaller percentage of the whole. When you were six years old, and your mom told you that you could get a puppy when you were nine, she said “don’t worry, it’s only three more years”. If you were smart, you would have reasoned with her in response “mother dearest, that means I have to wait another half of the time I’ve been alive, are you bat shit insane?” You didn’t though, you cried until Rugrats and Doug came on, and then asked again in another few months.
So now when you have to wait a year or two for something, it’s no big deal. Products get announced a year or two before they go on sale and it’s standard procedure, people get excited, and no one cries. Should you though? It’s only 4% (let’s round up) of your life to wait a year for something you’re excited about, but according to my other calculations it’s 4% of a life that you will only have one of. So you get excited, but just for a day or two. You don’t hold out, don’t waste the time in limbo, because before you know it the next big thing will come out to be waiting for or excited about, and the funny thing about those 4%’s is that they start to add up.
Here’s to enjoying each and every 4%, sans crying about the waits, and sans waiting all together, and of course sans your pants.
