Write an Album in a Month

“But Brian,” you ask, “do you know what you’re doing?”

NOPE!  RPM’s encouraging me to do so, and I’m encouraging my friends to do so, so I’m considering taking a shot at it as well.

I think Carl Newman once said an original voice comes from being inept at mimicking your favorite artists.  I’m inept!  I can do this!

Indie Rock: For Sale

So, in advance of my trip overseas for New Years, I figured I should clean house on my CD collection and sell some on eBay.  With the advice from TeeCycle Tim, I bundled them in groups of 5 to 10 based on categories.  Some of the categories are a bit of a stretch, but I think I did a good job.  If you’re curious…

• 6 Rap / Hip Hop CD Bundle here*
• 6 CD Bundle: Folk and Indie Singer/Songwriters here
• 9 CD Bundle: Emo Punk Rock here
• 6 CD Bundle: Brit Pop and Brit Rock here
• 9 CD Bundle: Alternative Grunge 90s Rock here
• 6 CD Bundle: Female Singer/Songwriters here
• 7 CD Bundle: GREATEST Rock Artists of All Time here
• 8 CD-DVD Bundle: Rock and Pop here **
• 5 CD Bundle: Punk Indie here
• 6 CD Bundle: Punk Indie Emo here
• 7 CD Bundle: Indie / Pop here
• 8 CD Bundle: Indie/Electro here
• 6 CD Bundle: Indie Rock here

*(yes, I purchased a Limp Bizkit album.  I was young).

**(Hilarious.  Though, I will defend to death why I bought each of these albums)

Where’s Brian?

I’m a busy boy, but three things I wanted to tell y’all about:

1. I’m writing for a tri-city music blog, BemBang repping Chicago.  We mainly make fun of stuff.
2. My pet project — the Football-via-Teen Drama blog Gridiron Girl (co-written by Kenny, Matt and Rob) — will be getting a weekly column spot at Third Coast Digest as we start revving up for 09/10 football season.
3. Oh, Rob also writes a hilarious Milwaukee Brewers column for 3CD called Dear Ken Macha.  I highly recommend you check it out.

Oh Yeah.   FYI.  Brett Favre is OUT as a Viking.   Hellllloooo Mike Vick?!?!?!  That would be hilarious.

Best Albums of the last 12 months or so… Hood Internet

Hey.  It’s prettymuch May.  Can I slack any more?  I figure, since the year is nearly half over, I’ll just post 12 or so albums I liked over the last 12 or some months…

The Hood Internet – The Hood Internet vs. Chicago Mixtape

(#2 of 12 in no particular order)

Comprised of DJ STV SLV and ABX, The Hood Internet represent the future of the mash-up. Gone are the days where you mix one song with another song just because you can, or because they share a strange time signature, or because they make a hilarious song title. Technology is such (and GirlTalk has shown) that there is a way to mix any song with any another song and make it sound good. The next step, the step Hood Internet is going in, is voluntary restraint for the sake of clarity and craft — in this case, restricting the mix to only bands that share the city they all hail from.  Also, it’s my City, so I’m biased.

The best part?  It’s a Mash-Up so it’s FREE

Geronimo Jackson: LOST Rock Found

The Fictional Geronimo Jackson -- they look like Sawyer's people

Except for a few times in Season 1, when the lovable Hurley would put on his Discman to listen to some god-awful Grey’s Anatomy reject songs while observing life on The Island in slo-mo, the two things I  tend to obsess over — LOST and pop music — rarely come together.

But lo and behold, hipster culture dictator Pitchfork Media broke a VERY interesting development a few weeks ago:  The story of a fictional classic rock band Geronimo Jackson / real San Diego throwback rockers The Donkeys. The Phork reports:

On a recent episode, the character Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) is heard listening to a Geronimo Jackson song called “Dharma Lady”, and last week, the song appeared as a free download on iTunes. Over on the “Lost” message board Dark UFO, someone noticed that “Dharma Lady” is almost the exact same song as “Excelsior Lady” by the Donkeys …

The non-fictional Donkeys

Well played Dark UFO dude!  Pitchfork, thorough journalists as they are, took it straight to The Donkeys’ label, Dead Oceans, to pose the question, “Are the Donkeys Geronimo Jackson?”.  The reply was revealing, also, hilarious:

“It seems as though it’s possible that the Donkeys also existed as Geronimo Jackson in 1977. It might be possible that they were part of a Dharma Initiative experiment on time travel … Geronimo Jackson is likely to appear on extras of the season five ‘Lost’ DVD, where they will feature the band recording ‘Dharma Lady’.”

Hahahah.  It seems they did indeed.  Alrighty then.  A simple “yes” would have sufficed.

Anyway, Geronimo Jackson seems to be a recurring reference in the show — on T-shirts, on posters, but most prominently in the scene below.  Hurley and Charlie (who could easily pass for clerks at Championship Vinyl) sift through the Dharma record collection and come across the GerJack LP Magna Carta…

Innnnnnnteresting Charlie.  Hmmm.  You say you’re an “expert of all things musical,” but you’ve never heard of them, eh?  Hmmmm.  Maybe that’s because YOU’RE IN THE BAND in the past (future episodes)!?!?!  Wha? Sounds ridiculous, but why not?

I personally like to think that Charlie is bound to show up again.  First of all, one of the lesbians hiding in the Looking Glass told Charlie that the stations’ passcode was the song “Good Vibrations” and that it was originally programmed “by a musician”.  That’s a weird tidbit of information to throw out there as your dying words, isn’t it Bonnie?

Also Charlie gets the code on the first crack before he drowns.  Is it too crazy to assume that Charlie himself wrote that passcode?  I don’t think so.  Meaning, Charlie didn’t die at that point, and is sure to have lived and done other things, like, ummmmm, jumping through time and forming a band in the 70s. It’s possible.  After all, we’ve seen people we thought were dead come back to life in the show before.   Isn’t it possible that Charlie is in the band Geronimo Jackson?  Could be.

Also, is it at all possible that Geronimo is actually the name of Jack’s son?  Doubtful.

You can down the Donkey’s on music blog Gramotunes.com: The Donkeys – “Excelsior Lady”

Indie Fantasy

With Fantasy Football a long ways away, and with Fantasy everything else sucking, we have created the obvious next step in “fantasy gaming”…. Fantasy Indie Rock.

Is there any better way to monitor the commodity that has become “indie” than by drafting artists as properties and tallying points?  I don’t think so.  It’s a simple formula:  Their name gets mentioned on Pitchfork or Stereogum news, you get a point. Simple as that.

So me, Curran, Kenny, Matt and Rob sat down and did our inaugural “Indie Rock Draft” this week, and began tallying points.  The scoreboard is on a Google cloud spreadsheet so everyone can make changes and update their rosters as need be.

I’ll keep you updated on it’s progress, but for your enjoyment (and so I can tag the shit out of this post), here’s how the draft went (please note, Matt came late):

Round 1

1. Curran    Kanye West
2. Kenny    Wilco
3. Rob    Animal Collective
4. Brian    Colin Meloy

Round 2

1. Brian    M.I.A.
2. Rob    Lily Allen
3. Kenny    Radiohead
4. Curran    The Decemberists

Round 3

1. Curran    Neko Case
2. Kenny    U2
3. Kroll    Conor Oberst
4. Rob    Girltalk
5. Brian    Death Cab For Cutie

Round 4

1. Brian    Peter, Bjorn & John
2. Rob    Sigur Ros
3. Kroll    Ladyhawke
4. Kenny    Andrew Bird
5. Curran    Grizzly Bear

Round 5

1. Curran    Jane’s Addiction
2. Kenny    Bruce Springsteen
3. Matt   Jesus Lizard
4. Rob    Dangermouse
5. Brian    No Age

Supplemental Draft

1. Matt    Crystal Stilts
2. Matt    Pains of Being Pure At Heart

The strategies were interesting… do you draft small-time bands with their SXSW stock rising, do you try to take a big guess on who’s going to be announced at Lollapalooza (or the billion of other festivals doing press releases),  do you risk taking the frontman of a band in the hopes you can double-up on points for their solo AND group material, or pick-up a producer who has his hands in a LOT of recordings but sometimes isn’t mentioned in shorter news articles.  Ohhhh, strategery.

If you’re curious, here are the top-5 scorers as of yesterday, 3/25:

1. Animal Collective – 6
2. Dinosaur Jr – 5
3. Death Cab For Cutie (tie) – 4
3. Passion Pit (tie) – 4
5. *13 bands tied with 3 points each*… Beach House, Billy Corrigan, Black Lips, Conor Oberst, Department of Eagles, Dirty Projectors, Grizzly Bear, Jimmy Chamberlin, Kanye West, No Age, Soundgarden, Vivian Girls, Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Take My Stuff and Pay Me For It – Genesis (not the band)

I don’t like giving stuff away, even if it means getting money back in return.  This must change.

It seems I’m increasingly less impressed just by my collections of things, especially because I went about all such collections half-assedly. I also had to concede that, because most music is now bought and enjoyed digitally, having CD jewel cases on display not only seems like a waste of space, but also a somewhat dated (dare I say cliché?) male interior design choice.

Seriously – what’s the point of displaying jewel cases anymore – to prove that you go somewhere and buy proper albums instead of going online?  Is that a claim to fame nowadays?  It’s seems pitiable, and very nearly a failed attempt at elitism. Now, if I was a vinyl junky it would still be cool to have crates of that shit sorted in my apartment, Rob Gordon style, but I am not.  I never got into vinyl. I do not own a record player.  So it’s time to say “bye-bye” CDs and hello to whatever money a record store will give me.

I can’t get rid of ALL my albums at the same time though… they’re my most-prized, but still poorly maintained and disorganized collection. Baby steps.

I decided to start weeding out the ones I never listen to, or will feasibly never take out of their cases again.  Everything was fair game, so long as it is also stored on my external hardrive backup.  This logic only half makes sense. Apparently, I’m only comfortable giving up something I never use so long as I could feasibly use it sometime in the future.  However, this does explain why I have pairs of jeans in my closet that have never worn, never plan on wearing but can’t bring myself to give away.

“So”, I comforted myself, “you’re not really losing any of these albums, just the physical manifestation of them.”  Yes.  That’s still off-putting though, isn’t it?  What is it about saving things on a computer that makes you feel still slightly uneasy?  Why do we still print out important emails?  Why am I abstractly distrustful of Google’s “cloud computing”.  For me, I guess the physical presence of an item is a comfort — an increasingly wasteful, expensive, and unnecessary comfort.  (Just like most comforts!)

So, recalling some Buddhist-like advice (“It doesn’t matter where you start, only that you finish,”)  I grabbed my topmost CaseLogic that was topped by a fine layer of dust, and opened it up to the M-through-P discs.  I then sat my ass down in front of my cheap sleek Sweedish black-painted wood media center and got crackin’…

I’ll try to document my little adventure more later this week.

Lolla Predictions… already?!

Chicagoist has thrown the gauntlet down in predicting who might make it to this year’s Lollapalooza… in a “purely speculative” way.

It seems that Lolla guessing has gone the way of political campaigning, in that the speculation begins as soon as the last year’s event has ended.  So, despite it being 6 months away, I can’t help but continue the rumor mill… heavily abbreviated via c’ist:

we are almost positive Jane’s Addiction will headline with their original line-up. They’ve already played a few small shows in L.A. … We also wouldn’t be surprised if The Smashing Pumpkins headlined a night …

And there’s one band we’re really hoping plays this year, and that’s Blur with Graham Coxon in the line-up .. And how could we forget Pavement?

Okay.  Pavement, granted.  Yes, there’s been plenty of rumor talk about that, and I would be thrilled to see them play.  Watching Stephen Malkmus do Pavement covers alone at Pitchfork was sort of satisfying but made me yearn for the whole she-bang… you know… it’s like picking the salt off a pretzel and eating it. (ed. note: work simile ever)

As far as Jane’s Addiction, that would be interesting.  But leave it to Perry Ferrel to book his own band as “the big surprise. ” Ferrel’s current project, Satellite Party, is completely mediocre but P.F. keeps on putting them pretty high-up on the Lolla band list despite the crowd’s collective indifference.  At least Jane’s Addiction reforming would be worth touting.

Blur would be great. Fingers crossed on that one.

I HIGHLY doubt Smashing Pumpkins would do Lolla, considering how few times they even play in the greater Chicago area (or its outlying casinos) not to mention Billy Corigan’s penchant for tantrums and cancellations.  Quite frankly, based on the reviews the last tour received, I don’t know if I’d even WANT to see them play.  Without D’Arcy or James Iha, it’s really not the Pumpkins anyway and I’ll rot in hell before they get Iha to sign on (or find which corner of the world D’Arcy ran off to).

So, if we’re being purely speculative, not based on any actual information, here’s my Lolla wishlist:

• The Beatles
• The Velvet Undergrond (special appearences by Nico and Warhol)
• Leonard Skynard (original line-up)
• Nick Drake (special appearance by Zach Braff)
• Dogstar

Update: The Smiths!

Valentines Day, out. Fun Day, in.

I, personally, am a big fan of slamming V-Day.  But for once, I will not waste valuable blog space complaining about couples.  I will simply point out that, if you’re a dude, 2/14 is pretty sweet this year.  If you’re a taken dude, you will be so sad you’re committedand will not be able to partake in Saturday’s events.  (Though, you could probably convince your gal pal to go with you if you can somehow convince her that it was her idea…

February 14th, 2009:

12am to 11:30am

Sleep.  Then maybe some Madden ’09.

12:15pm

Handmade Market at The Empty Bottle for FREE!  In which they “…strive to create a  market, with affordable handmade, mostly local items. There are a ton of crafters in the city, and we try to make this accessible to up and coming designers, jewelry makers, and others. Come out and help support your monthly crafter’s market”

 

3pm

The Chicago Auto Show!  Yes!  If you believe what you hear on the news, I think no one in the United States has bought a single car since the Spring of 2008.  Now’s the time!  And, since American automobile companies are so ahead of the game, I’m sure all that well-invested electric car research has already produced a car that runs on a hybrid of electricity and energy expelled by resorting your coworkers recycling after they’ve left for the day.

 

7pm

Impress everyone around you by informing them what The Minutemen was referencing when they named their stellar double-album “Double Nickels on The Dime”.  Everyone at Quimby’s bookstore will be impressed.  Accept, of course,  Michael T. Fournier… the writer/critic/historian who will be in attendence, speaking about his most recent entry into the 33 1/3  lit canon.

8pm

No one’s cared about the NBA All-Star game since Magic Johnson came back to chuck up 3-pointers over Isaiah Thomas for the feel-good story of, well, the last time anyone cared about professional basketball.  But what’s this, The Skillz Challenge?  Eff yeah, I’ll check it out.   Especially since my boy Derrick Rose is playing against Devin Harris, Jameer Nelson and Tony “Shit Tattoo”Parker.  The challenge is legit too, as the past winners are sweet (and much more impressive than the dunk/3-point champs… hi Craig Hodges!) — Steve Nash ’05, Dwayne Wade ’06-’07, Deron Williams ’08.

10pm

Your choice of awesome concerts:
Flosstradamus and  Gatekeeper at The Abbey Pub;  The Chamber Strings, Kevin Tihista, and Lonesome Cougar at Cobra Lounge; Fucked Up, A/V Murder, and Boystown at The Empty Bottle, or drop a hundo wit your shorty to see Jeff Tweedy @ the Vic.  If you can’t afford a hundo, just make a video and you won’t have to worry about spending money on a g/f:

BPRB Updates – Turn Back the Clock this Spring?

New stuff added to the “Bored People Are Boring” things to-do list…

Very suprised to see what bands will be making the rounds in the Spring.  Namely industiral music originators Throbbing Gristle will do two back-to-back shows at Epiphany (yes, that church place)… after playing NY and Cochella shows.

• Throbbing Gristle, “What a Day” MP3 (c/o blog Farced)

 

Next on the suprise turn-back-the-clock list is Chicago’s own Red Red Meat.  The band’s roster is a who’s-who of Chicago indie rock icons, including Tim Rutili, Ben Massarella and Tim Hurley (of Califone), plus beloved producer Brian Deck (Liz Phair [when she was cool], Tortoise, The Sea and Cake, Modest Mouse).

•  Red Red Meat, “Flank” MP3 (c/o KEXP blog)

 

 

Lastly in the old-news-made-new-news list this week, Bob Nanna (Braid, Hey Mercedes, City on Film) has a new full-band type project with ‘Mercedes bandmate Damon Atkinson called Certain People I Know and he’s twittering his little heart out about it.  As of right now, CPIK ranks as my third-favorite Smith-referencing bandname… right behind The Boy Least Likely To and Pretty Girls Make Graves.  Fittingly, the pride of the Illini are playing their first show in Urbana on March 13th at Courtyard Cafe and then make they’re way up to Chicago to play at The Beat Kitchen on the 19th.

  

*NOT The Cardigans.

Also of note is a band I randomly came across on The Next Big Sound site, Raise High the Roof Beam.  They’re doing not one, but TWO shows in the upcoming months.  The production value on these songs are iffy at best, but I do enjoy the sound.  It has the strum-and-pluck of solid indie pop (as the Salinger reference would infer) but I also hear a little bit of playful Johnathan Richman, and I can almost gurantee they’re fans of Wes Anderson.  Just a hunch.

• Raise High the Roof Beam, “” MP3 (c/o Pop Headwound)

 

All dates added on 2/6:

February:
Raise High The Roof Beam
GP Dreams
The Sundresses

March:
Certain People I Know
Women
Volcano!
Red Red Meat

April:
Lily Allen
Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head
Mason Proper
Raise High The Roof Beam
Throbbing Gristle
Flight of the Conchords