Who's the best Big Five team in Philly?

What What!

Attention Citizenry...

Due to lack of time, internet access, and motivation, I am canceling my year end countdown crap.

But because I'd already had this made up, here's the list:

1. Scott Walker - The Drift
2. Liars - Drum's Not Dead
3. Joanna Newsom - Ys
4. The Pipettes - We Are the Pipettes
5. Jim Noir - Tower of Love
6. Fern Knight - Music for Witches and Alchemists
7. Cyann and Ben - Sweet Beliefs
8. The Fiery Furnaces - Bitter Tea
9. Man Man - Six Demon Bag
10. Espers - Espers II

With the following honorable mentions:

- The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America
- Yo La Tengo - I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass
- Larkin Grimm - The Last Tree
- Squarepusher - Hello Everything
- Matthew Friedberger - Winter Women/Holy Ghost Language School
- Matmos - The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of the Beast
- Paul Simon - Surprise

So there you go. You don't have to wait two weeks for me to ramble on about everything this year.

"Interesting" notes:

-Last year's Greg Weeks Count was two (his solo album Blood is Trouble and Espers' The Weed Tree), and this year it's up to three (Espers II, Music for Witches and Alchemists, which he produced and sang and played guitar on, and Sweet Beliefs, which he sang on for a song).

- Four of the top 10 artists were on my list in either 2004 (Liars, Cyann and Ben) or 2005 (Espers, Fiery Furnaces). If we include honorable mentions and make these lists retroactive to include albums from 2004 that I didn't hear during 2004, Espers and the Fiery Furnaces would both have been on there too (Espers got an honorable mention, Fiery Furnaces were not on my radar screen until early 2005).

AND ONE MORE NOTE...

Gerald Ford has died, which means that the Democrats have also taken control of the House of Living Ex-Presidents, by a two (Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton) to one (Bush 41) margin. What a sweep!

Tom's Favorite Songs of 2006

If you got here late (and by late I mean an hour ago or whatever), you can read my whole mission statement (why I'm still bothering to do this, etc.) in the post below this one. Or if you're too lazy to do that, just click here. This is slightly different from how I've done it before in that I'm mainly trying to pick songs that didn't end up on my albums thingy (although this is not the case with all of them). But anyway, here are some of my favorites of 2006:

Lily Allen - "Everything's Just Wonderful" - Lily Allen is surprisingly good to me, as I've written about before, and this was the song that hooked me. In fact, I specifically mentioned it before. It's just a good pop song, oozing effortless cool, with a wordy chorus that's an unlikely candidate to be suck in your head for days, but there it is.

Grandaddy - "Jeez Louise" - Grandaddy always sounded weird when they were really trying to rock out (it hurts having to write about them in the past tense). It seemed somehow out of their comfort zone, because even though everything was really loud, it was missing some intensity or something (think "AM 180"). In truth, this one would probably sound just as good if they dialed down the distortion and layered on their usual synths and whimsy and whatnot, because it's a good melodic rock song with all the usual harmonic twists that somehow make sense. That was their specialty over their last two albums, and even if it wasn't Earth-shattering, it had a tenacious consistency that grew on you at the most unexpected moments.

The Flaming Lips - "Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" - At War With the Mystics turned out the be the first Flaming Lips release in almost a decade and a half that wasn't a complete reinvention of what the Flaming Lips were, and by that lofty standard it was a disappointment. That's not to say it didn't have its moments, though. Neither Wayne Coyne nor Stephen Drozd have the most naturally great singing voices, so it was an interesting choice to start the album with 20 seconds of layered a cappella harmonies (compare that with the spacious bombast that opened up The Soft Bulletin), but it ends up working. "Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" is about as close as the Lips ever come these days to being a normal rock band, which says a lot about how delightfully weird they are, especially when those odd harmonies come back for another minute during the bridge.

Belle and Sebastian - "Song for Sunshine" - I described this as something like "Sly Stone verse with a Todd Rundgren chorus" when I first talked about The Life Pursuit, and that still holds, but hey, it's still a great song. It's hard to believe this is the same band who recorded If You're Feeling Sinister (people who got on the B & S bandwagon late are likely to be confused with the "twee" tag that used to haunt them), and I like the more recent outings considerably less than the old, but who doesn't? It's not like they don't still have great moments.

Zero 7 - "You're My Flame" - A lot of this list is shaping up as a tribute to past years' "best of" artists. That's an accident. But I still like Zero 7, even as they keep on shifting from "groovy downtempo act" to "indie soft-rock." "You're My Flame" is a song that never would have ended up on their first album, but it's still a fun dose of soul-inflected electro-pop.

Scritti Politti - "Dr. Abernathy" - Listening to, of all people, Scritti Politti in the year 2006 seems like an outrageous anachronism (popular bands from the 80s seem connected to their time frame in a way nobody else is), but I'll be damned if White Bread, Black Beer isn't actually way more listenable than the ultra-sterile mechanized pop of their 80s heyday. As long as Andy Partridge isn't making music these days, this is the next best thing. Also, how is it possible that Green Gartside is 50 years old? His voice is still impossibly smooth and bright. He must drink nothing but honey and green tea.

Stereolab - "Vodiak" - I'm not sure if this counts, coming as it does from a b-sides compilation, but I didn't hear it until 2006, so here it is. Picking one song from any given Stereolab album can be damn near impossible, but this one best embodies the outright coolness of the band. Splatty 60s organ? Check. Driving Neu!-style beat? Check. Synth beeps and blips? Check. Two or more unrelated female vocal parts? Duh, of course. They could keep doing this forever, and I will always dig it.

Justin Timberlake - "My Love" - Come on, you know I had to have this one on here. Just try to think of a hit single that has been as popular as this one, but also sounded this idiosyncratic and unlike anything else, while also happening to be a brilliant song. What's the list of songs that fit those criteria? "Good Vibrations," and then what? "Hey Jude," maybe? "Tiny Dancer?" "What's Going On?" That's not bad company to be in. If you ask me, FutureSex/LoveSounds is a real snooze once you get past track 5, but Justin Timberlake has a few classic pieces of pop to his name already.

Mogwai - "Glasgow Mega Snake" - I told you I'd get to this one! (See last paragraph in the link.) The first song on Mogwai's album this year was called "Auto Rock," which just about summed up the ho-hum autopilot they seemed to be on for the most part, but "Glasgow Mega Snake" is something else. Everybody should download this and play it with your speakers turned all the way up sometime. Or blast it in the car sometime. It's the type of screaming, raging instrumental rock that Mogwai made their name with, that they do like nobody else. It's all the fury and intensity of "Mogwai Fear Satan" compressed down to three minutes. I can't think of any more superlatives to use.

So that's that. Coming soon: album runners up.

Tom's Year-End Music Talk Starts Now!

Well, it's that time of year again. No, not Christmas. Well, it's that too. But I'm referring to the end of December, when all the people who have nothing better to think and talk about twiddle their thumbs and compile pointless year-end reviews of what they thought the best of the year was in art, music, whatever.

And as I have done for the people couple years, I will be doing my own thing, music related, of course.

I considered not doing this at all, or in doing it in some other form than a Top-Whatever list, because I am more and more turned off by the idea of ranking art and and designating some things that I like as "better" than others. In any given year, there are usually only two or three albums that absolutely blow me away anyway, and beyond that, I have trouble designating one thing as 6th best and another as 7th best, especially since, like so many other people in the internet-driven world (there's a music writing cliche for you), I now take in such a wide variety of music that it's almost pointless to even try to do this. When the Pipettes ended up next to Scott Walker on a first draft of my list, I couldn't help but question the purpose of even trying to compare those two. It felt like looking at Tiger Woods and the 1927 Yankees and trying to decide who was better, in general, at sports.

But that's what's fun about music, isn't it? And I decided that an individual's list is probably more interesting than those compiled by websites or magazines, since any given person is more prone to weird oddities than a collective will, which tends to accentuate that which is more widely appealing, even if it's not #1 on anybody's individual list. (I'm using TV on the Radio and The Hold Steady as examples of this, even though I think they are both good.) On top of all that, people seem to enjoy when I do this sort of thing. My readership probably jumps from 5 people to 10 people. Wow!

So I'll be doing what I've done before: first some individual songs I liked (I'm trying to focus on songs from albums that didn't make my top 10 this year), then my "runners up," then my top 10, which, as always, is purely a reflection of my opinion, and not an attempt to "canonize" anything, nor an attempt to force anybody to like anything or admit something HAS to be good. If you're annoyed that I'm doing this, you're taking it way more seriously than I am (despite my own lengthy explanations of this whole thing).

Debate is encouraged. Some of my picks will certainly be easier for dissenters to tear down than others (in Joanna Newsom's case, I am disregarding any argument against her that involves her use of the word "thee"), but whatever. Let's all have fun. Feel free to leave your own top-whatever picks in the comments (anybody can post).

Philly sports are in a slightly less dire situation

Let's start with the Eagles, who beat the Panthers Monday night in what was apparently a very exciting win (I didn't see the second half because of work). Sure, it's just one win, but still... it's one win! That's exciting these days!

Jeff Garcia: 300+ yards, 3 TD passes, no interceptions. Any of you guys still want A.J. Feeley in there? And let's not forget that he basically outperformed Peyton "God's gift to quarterbacking" Manning last week (not that Manning had to actually do anything to lead the Colts to their blowout win).

Then I read this: "The Eagles took the lead when their offense was set up by a Brian Dawkins interception of a bad passed caused by pressure from the defensive line." Hell yeah! About damn time those guys showed up. The defense didn't seem to play all that great, and Jake Delhomme had way better stats than he should ever be allowed to get, considering that he's Jake Delhomme, but the important thing is that they didn't give up more than they gained, and they made some big plays to seal the win.

A few more games like that and the Eagles might just earn the right to get blown out by New Orleans in the first round of the playoffs (the implicit prediction there is that Chicago and Seattle are getting the byes).

Moving on, the Phillies may have lost out on the big power hitters, but who wants to be stuck paying $136 million to Alfonso Soriano until he's an old man, anyway? Chicago is going to be dying to get rid of that contract in a couple years, like Texas was with Alex Rodriguez and Boston is every offseason with Manny Ramirez (and you can see Soriano becoming a huge pain in the ass and demanding a trade like those two guys too, if the Cubs don't start winning right quick). And like the Astros will be with Carlos Lee soon enough. Soriano might come back full circle to the only team that could afford him, the team that traded him to get A-Rod in the first place. You heard it here first, folks: Fonzi a Yankee again by 2010.

Anyway, the Phillies signed Not-Randy-Wolf to a three year deal, completing a rotation that looks like it could easily be one of the best in the NL. And Adam Eaton finally gets to play for the team that drafted him. It's not quite Peter Forsberg's 13-year Philly homecoming, but it's nice anyway. (And that Forsberg trade was still a great deal in hindsight; wouldn't you much rather have our amazing memories of the Eric Lindros era than wonder what could have been if the Flyers had just kept the 50 guys and $80 billion or so that became the foundation of Colorado's Stanley Cup-winning teams? Sure, we might have had a couple parades down Broad Street, but what's that compared to, say, Lindros getting hammered by Scott Stevens? Or Lindros' dad's pissing contest with Bob Clarke?)

Speaking of Forsberg, the Flyers are starting to play like professional athletes, slowly climbing their way up out of the cellar. Or they'll be out of the cellar soon. The point is, they're getting a lot better.

Plus, John LeClair was recently waived by the Penguins, and rumor has it the Flyers are interested. I think that's a good idea. Philadelphia has a long-standing tradition of bringing back our aging former stars for one last futile gasp at glory. Everybody from Hugh Douglas to Ron Hextall all the way back to Jimmie Foxx has done it. Hell, even Rocky Balboa's making another go of it. Let's add ol' Johnny LeC to the list! I can just see Allen Iverson returning to the 76ers in six or seven years after being traded at the end of this year, playing second fiddle to some guy who's a freshman in high school right now, and finally admitting that maybe, just maybe, even he needs to practice now and then.

And the 76ers, they're looking up too! They've got... uhh.... hmm..... Oh, I got one! Remember when Mo Cheeks helped that girl sing the national anthem when he was with Portland? What a great guy! (Wait, actually that was a really heart-warming moment.)

One final note: did anybody see Sylvester Stallone at the Eagles game last night? He was never exactly the most handsome guy in the world, even if he's always been ridiculously ripped, but his face has definitely suffered from significant droopage and a little bloat over the past few years. Combine that with his weird, outdated haircut, and you know what? The New Yorker who's been posing as a Philadelphian all these years is actually starting to look like one of those weird, wrinkled Italian guys you see in South Philly. You know, the guy who's had season tickets to the Eagles since they opened up the Vet, who's capable of drinking an entire case of Budweiser before 1 pm on a Sunday, and who still goes to games at the Linc wearing his Kelly green Seth Joyner jersey that he bought in 1991 (or he would if it still fit him). That's what Stallone looks like now. Except he's still from New York, he's still a phony, and he still only ever comes here when he wants people to go to another Rocky movie or buy his book. See you when you need press for Rocky VII, Sly.

Music in (not so) Brief

The Beatles - Love - This is kind of an officially-sanctioned remix/mashup thing, in case you somehow were not aware of that. I remember watching a TV special a couple months ago about the making of Love, which had at least as much to do with Cirque du Soleil as it did with George and Giles Martin (what kind of a first name is Giles, anyway?). It was kind of annoying to watch George Martin and Paul McCartney pat each other on the back, congratulating themselves for having the brilliant range of vision to put the rhythm track from "Tomorrow Never Knows" underneath the vocal from "Within You Without You." ("Hey, you know those two really trippy songs we did? Let's make them into one really trippy song!") And you can just imagine Paul McCartney's joy at the thought of removing George Harrison's guitar solo from "Drive My Car" and replacing it with Paul's own solo from "Taxman." ("If I can overdub the background vocal, we can take George out completely!")

So Love is basically an exercise in pointlessness. There are probably five minutes of things worth hearing over the 26 tracks. My favorite moment by far was mixing the end of "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite" with the end of "I Want You (She's So Heavy)." Adding some of Paul's vocal histrionics from "Helter Skelter" was the icing on the cake. Aside from that, there's nothing much worth mentioning. The songs are still the Beatles', and thus they are still brilliant, but that's not really the purported point of this release. There's the exact same a cappella version of "Because" that's on the 3rd Anthology release, a version of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" that's also on the 3rd Anthology, except with a pointless string arrangement. Other "brilliant" ideas: using the live Ed Sullivan intro to go into the studio version of "I Want to Hold Your Hand," reducing "Glass Onion" to 1:20 (actually, that does kind of help that song), flipping the tape of "Sun King" backwards and calling it "Gnik Nus," and awkwardly cramming the vocal from "Octopus' Garden" on top of the string arrangement from "Good Night." "I Am the Walrus" appears virtually untouched; I guess there's no point in trying to make that song any weirder.

Anyway, to finish my thought about the TV special: McCartney, Martin, Ringo Starr, Yoko Ono, and a woman that I'm assuming was George Harrison's wife or girlfriend or something all showed up in Las Vegas for the premiere of the Cirque du Soleil show based on all this music. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, but it looked to me like Paul and Yoko still hate each other. That's what I call carrying a grudge.

Oasis - Stop the Clocks - This is a "best of Oasis" release. I'm not reviewing this. I'm not even going to listen to it. I just wanted to take the opportunity to talk about how annoying I find Oasis. These guys could have been legends if one of the Gallaghers had OD'd or something in about 1997. People might have even hailed Be Here Now as an ambitious masterpiece if that had happened. But instead we're stuck with the same old crap a decade on, where the brothers Gallagher start saying whatever comes out of their head to any tabloid reporter with a notepad any time there's a new Oasis release, and we all get stuck reading headlines like "Noel Gallagher: Radiohead are 'rubbish.'"

Also, Stop the Clocks is on two CDs. Guys, come on. If the Rolling Stones want two discs for their greatest hits, they can have it. Same with, say, David Bowie. Hell, the Beatles basically took four discs for their best of. You guys? I don't think so. You don't need two discs to contain your five good songs from your two listenable albums.

Squarepusher - Hello Everything - Oasis could use lessons in late-career management from electronic maestro Tom Jenkinson. Hello Everything is basically one of those albums that spans everything he's done over the past decade (not unlike Yo La Tengo's new album), and it works pretty well, even if it's not particularly cohesive in a way that earlier albums like Hard Normal Daddy and Music is Rotted One Note were. He still plays bass at about a million miles per hour, he still likes a lot of noise, and you'd still give yourself a heart attack if you actually tried to dance to this "dance" music. If you've never heard Squarepusher, I'll put it this way: Aphex Twin made ambient music before he heard Squarepusher. (Like anybody reading this has heard Aphex Twin but not Squarepusher. Whatever.)

The Trans-Siberian Orchestra has at least one suburban compatriot

Ah, Christmas. Nothing quite brings out the bad taste in people like the Yuletide.

There are two manifestations of this type of bad taste: music and lights. Christmas music is almost uniformly bad. With the exception of maybe Vince Guaraldi's Charlie Brown soundtrack, most Christmas music is about either sap or pomp. Most of it is sickeningly sweet ("Chestnuts Roasting O'er an Open Fire," "I'll Be Home for Christmas," "White Christmas," etc., "White Christmas" made even worse by the fact it was written by Irving Berlin, probably the most famous Jewish songwriter of all time), and the rest of it is absurdly bombastic ("God Rest ye Merry Gentlemen," "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel," and most of the more Christian songs).

The lighting is a spectacle of itself these days, an hilarious trademark of suburban culture, and as with the music, the more money one has to spend on lighting one's home, the further it drifts from the boundaries of good taste.

Which brings me to this:



You may have seen this before, because it's a couple years old. If you haven't, trust me, it's real. Here's the full story.

Here's the thing with bad taste: if your bad taste is strong enough, if you execute it with enough steadfast conviction, your bad taste ceases to be a negative factor. It becomes something akin to the music of, say, Queen: it is completely ridiculous, it is completely over the top, but that's exactly the point, and it is awesome.

And, in short, that's what we're witnessing with this video. After all, there's nothing more ridiculous than the music of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, which takes everything ridiculous about Christmas and Queen and adds a dash of unselfconscious pretension to top it off. Combining it with a bombastic light show that's coordinated with the music is the type of absurd and brilliant touch that can push something over the edge that separates "stupid" and "amazing."

Or perhaps it doesn't separate the two as much as join them.

band name bonanza

For whatever reason, I probably put more thought into band names than most people. I think this makes sense on some level. First impressions last, and often say a lot, right? First off, I'm going to get a little mileage from the archives. This was written on January 12, 2005:

How to Make a Band Name that Doesn't Suck

by Tom

1. Pick something that's memorable, or at the very least not completely mundane and generic. Go ahead, try to find ANYTHING on Google about The Music or The The.
2. Avoid pop culture references. These are bad because audience reactions will be along these lines:
50% - Don't get the reference
25% - Get the reference and think it's stupid
25% - Get the reference but don't really care about it.
They're also short-sighted. Pray for Mojo might seem cute now, but can you imagine if there was a band around today called "Archie Bunker's Chair" or something like that? The only band that I can think of that gets away with this one is Mogwai. Franz Ferdinand do too, but they're beyond "pop culture reference" and into "historical reference."
3. To paraphrase Sub-Pop's Pitchfork Media parody, if you name your band something that nobody can pronounce, don't be surprised when nobody can pronounce it. Examples: !!!, and with all due respect to two of my roommates, Kilion and Mahlon.
4. If your band is anything that could remotely be considered to be (the dreaded word...) "emo," for the love of God, don't use an "-ing" verb or a name of a month or day of the week. If you have both (God forbid)... then your band is probably Taking Back Sunday and your name fits perfectly because you're a band of walking cliches anyway.
5. Shock value = not really shocking anymore. If your band name is Rotting Christ or I Raped Mother Teresa, we're not recoiling in horror. We're laughing at you.

Hmmm...

Well, I suppose there are a couple of things I would add, and some things I would say differently now (and some things I would be more diplomatic about). First off, I would definitely stress Google-ability. In this day in age, it's all about the internet, and if nobody can remember how to spell or pronounce your name, they're not going to find your myspace page, and they're not going to go to your shows. And if you just read that and said, "If people can't spell or pronounce my band's name, that's their problem, not mind," then you may be a pompous ass. Maybe. And nobody is coming to your shows.

Here are a couple more rules I'd abide by:

6. Don't name your band after a pre-existing song by a band you like, unless you want to be associated as a mere ripoff of them forever. I like Brian Wilson as much as anybody, but you'll never see me in a band called "Heroes and Villains." And twenty years from now, when the surviving members of Godsmack go on a reunion tour of Boston-area bars and pubs, people are still going to be saying, "I bet those guys like Alice in Chains, heh heh."

If you have to name your band after something already existing, make it from a relatively obscure poem, play, or novel, or an even more obscure arthouse film. That way, you get the added benefit of appearing literate, and nobody will ever say things like, "Man, Modest Mouse totally ripped off Virginia Woolf." (Nor did they rip off Modest Moussorgsky.)

7. Remember that Simpsons quote about a band name that is funny the first time you hear it, and gets more and more annoying each time after that ("The Be Sharps")? Avoid that kind of thing. The Dandy Warhols, The Boy Least Likely To, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, etc.

So there you go. Once again I've spent far too much time on that. What is a good band name, you ask? That I'm not so sure of. My only answer is anything that's not a bad one.

Revenge of the hippies!

Another link (how blogger-ish of me):

Hippies still trying to ruin the country.

I had to read it almost three times before I was convinced that it wasn't actually an Onion-esque satire piece, and even now I have my doubts. The overall effect, however, is the same: I link to it as a comedy piece, because Lord knows it doesn't warrant any serious discussion. It's hilarious that there are people in the world with such an absurdly skewed view of their political opposites. I'm not saying that people like this don't exist on the left (the "Bush is the next Hitler" people are similarly deluded; I will say again, as I have before, that I think Bush is well-meaning but catastrophically misguided), but I haven't seen anything this ridiculous in a while.

Here's the icing on the cake: "For aging hippies, it's easier to keep blaming old enemies than to confront new ones..."

Because blaming, of all people, aging hippies for all of the problems in this country is not at all beating a dead horse.

Jimmy Stewart's got nothin' on Dubya

This amuses me.

Philly sports are in a dire situation

Donovan McNabb has now had injuries that have ended his regular season on November 14, 2005, November 17, 2002, and November 19, 2006.

Donovan remains, at this point, my favorite NFL player (I maintain that no player in the entire league can do as much for their team when they are hot as #5 can for the Eagles), but at this point we have to start wondering if injuries are a part of the deal with Donovan, if he's another Eric Lindros.

I, for one, would hate to see McNabb's career in Philadelphia end that way, since he's easily the most gifted football player ever to play in this town (seriously, can you name anybody better? Steve Van Buren?), but at this point, it seems like a legitimate possibility. A torn ACL is 8 to 12 months, so even at the most optimistic, McNabb will be back only barely in time for training camp next year, and at worst he could come back a year from now, more than halfway through the 2007 season.

McNabb turns 30 next Saturday, and will be almost 31 by the time of his return next year. With the relatively short shelf life of NFL players, it's not out of place to ask if the best of the McNabb/Reid era has passed, and if it's not time to rebuild around a new quarterback.

At this point, I feel ridiculous pondering such questions, but if/when Donovan McNabb gets hurt again, it won't be such an easy question to shrug off. I can only hope at this point that he comes back in MVP form, as he has before, but I'll be holding my breath for all of next year. I'm probably as big a fan of Donovan McNabb as anybody around, save maybe Sam and Wilma McNabb, but if Donovan is a lost cause, it's time to let go. Only time will tell, I suppose.

INSULT TO INJURY: The Cubs seem to be on the verge of signing Alfonso Soriano, apple of the Phillies' eye, for 8 years and $136 million. This will likely mean the Phillies will be stuck with Pat Burrell in left field for at least another season, and their big right-handed protection for Ryan Howard (who may be the NL MVP, which we will find out later today) will be some combination of Burell, Jeff Conine, and Wes Helms. Ugh. Was it seriously a few days ago that we were talking about the Phillies being legitimate World Series contenders?

Here are our prospects for our other teams: the 76ers have an aging superstar (Allen Iverson), a rising star (Andre Iguodala), and an unhappy role player (Chris Webber), and don't seem to figure as more than a .500/first round playoff team, and the Flyers are as awful as they've looked in 15 years, with Peter Forsberg, the best player in the world, almost certain to be gone by the end of the year. Ugh. The Phillies are actually our best hope. God help us.

Joanna Newsom/Van Dyke Parks

I hardly need to add to the avalanche of lavish praise heaped upon the new Joanna Newsom album, Ys. I am also going to be the first person to write about it without explaining how to pronounce the album's title.

To keep things a bit brief, I too think it's fantastic. It's one of those rare albums that absolutely blew me away the first time I heard it, and is only getting better with subsequent listens. The links above will provide a good enough summary of the album and its greatness, so I'm not going to spend too much time describing the sound. The songs themselves unfold like a book, and contain a small book's worth of lyrics that will have me and everybody else analyzing months from now.

However, I think for me, what may push it over from "very good" to "fantastic" are the string arrangements by none other than my old pal Van Dyke Parks. As a card-carrying member of Parks' small but feverish cult (ok, I don't literally carry a card), I'm always happy to see Van Dyke turn up anywhere. In fact, I just recently watched a pair of Beach Boys documentaries that feature some interviews with the always-interesting half-hippie-half-beatnik (which I was actually planning on writing about in this space).

Of course, Ys isn't the first time Parks has made significant contributions to somebody else's amazing album, but he's put out a couple of classics himself. His debut, Song Cycle, features a lot of the idiosyncratic orchestral swirls that frequently grace Ys. And where did he go from there? A whole album of calypso music titled Discover America in 1972. Considering 1984's Jump and 1998's live album, Parks seems to resurface with a great album once a decade. Maybe he's getting warmed up for something with Ys. If not, I can still enjoy the rambling brilliance of that album.

Election notes:

8:46 - Here's what I'm looking at on CNN right now in the New Jersey Senate race:

Kean: 52%
Menendez: 47%

Projected winner: Menendez

Say what? Lou Dobbs ran through some vague explanation about exit polls and the demographic makeup of the counted precincts, and why that means Menendez has won already, but still... isn't this how all the networks made fools of themselves in 2000?

CNN has some very weird broadcast quirks. Why didn't they give Anderson Cooper a desk? He has to walk around awkwardly asking panelists questions, and while they answer he has to stand on the other side of their one long desk like he's Richard Dawson or something. And what's with the handheld camera work? They ran out of dollies or something? It looks unprofessional and weird.

Casey and Rendell have both been projected winners. Hallelujah.

More later, probably.

DECISION 2006! (semi-ironic title)

Believe it or not, I have been looking forward to this day for almost two years. I tried to find the blog entry that would prove it, but it was written long before I started this thing, and I'm not diving back into that xanga hellhole. But I distinctly remember writing something like "in only 20 months Pennsylvania will have the chance to rid itself of Rick Santorum."

So here we are. I voted earlier today, and am now sitting back, eagerly awaiting results from across the country. Will Webb and Menendez pull it out in Virginia and New Jersey? Will Democrats actually win House seats in districts in Idaho that are 70% Republican?

Bob Casey's lead over Santorum here in PA has looked fairly safe all along, and Ed Rendell is probably going to win over Lynn "Vote for me, I played football!" Swann in a landslide, but I still have my fingers crossed.

Anyway, I want to be one of those pious types who encourage everybody to Participate in Democracy and Be a Good Citizen and all that, but let's face it: if you're going to vote for Santorum, I'd honestly rather you stay home. I'm not that pure with my motives. And it's getting late in the day anyway.

I'll be back tomorrow with more thoughts.

Vote Casey.

I like indie music as much as (or more than) the next guy. It probably makes up half of what I listen to, the other half being any and all music recorded before 1975.

But here's the thing. There's a lot of really bad indie music. The ratio of bad to good indie music is probably much higher than the ratio of bad to good major label music. And regardless of the music, the indie "scene" (whatever that means, I'm not even sure what I'm trying to describe now) has inspired some questionable choices. Moustaches, men in women's jeans, and any other number of things that may or may not be ironic, if only anybody could tell.

Which leads me to this:



























Basically, I can't think of any conceivable reason for that to exist, and it was so mystifying that I just had to share it with everybody.

Here's the thing.

I am currently angry because I wrote a big long thing about baseball and some other things, and it has apparently disappeared. Arg.

Music for Halloween

Ah, October 31st, the night of the year when the ghosts and goblins come out from their seclusion and freely roam the streets, extorting candy from weary homeowners. Nothing scarier than that!

Anyway, as part of my attempt to get into the spirit of the holiday, I was thinking of discussing some of my favorite scary movies. That having been done several million times by now, I'm taking a road slightly less traveled:

Music for Halloween to Creep You Out and So Forth

(As chosen by a jaded hipster doofus for other jaded hipster doofi, which means no Iron Maiden)

Liars - They Were Wrong So We Drowned - This one's an obvious choice. It's a concept album about witches, for Christ's sake, but it's not one that features lots of harmonizing metal guitars and such, instead propelled by feedback and noise, and sloppy pounding drums.

Scott Walker - The Drift - This one puts Liars to shame in terms of how unsettling it is. It's insane to me that this guy used to make big gushy pop songs, while he now makes creepy avant-garde soundscapes with about as much connection to the concept of "pop music" as Enya does to the world of heavy metal. The Drift is actually unlistenably weird if I have it on by myself in the dark. Especially gut-wrenching: the part in "Jesse" where all the atonal strings suddenly drop out of the mix and Scott is left alone wailing "I'm the only one left alive!" for half a minute.

Bela Bartok - "Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celeste" - You know all those parts of The Shining where Jack Torrance is creeping around with that crazy gleam in his eye in that "calm before the storm" way, and there's that slim, vaguely atonal music that fits so perfectly with the mood that you barely notice it's there until it jumps out at you? That's the third movement of this.

Godspeed You Black Emperor! - f#a#oo - "We're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine, and the machine is bleeding to death."

Bobby "Boris" Pickett and the Crypt-Kickers - "Monster Mash" - Zombies, the Wolfman, Dracula (and his son), and Frankenstein all in one place?! In 1962, terror reached heights previously experienced only by Abbot and Costello!

And with this idea having reached its "hilarious" novelty entry, it's clear I'm out of ideas, although I did have a pretty easy target that I passed up, being that Kevin Federline's album was released today. Michael Jackson's "Thriller" is not included because I get tired of that song overshadowing the eight better songs on the album of the same name (even though it's almost ridiculous to think of "Billie Jean," "Beat It," and "P.Y.T." as being overshadowed by anything in the world of pop music).

More lazy quickie album reviews...

Some of these I should have written about months ago. I don't care. Here we go:

Yo La Tengo - I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass - I thought Mogwai were a lock for the year's funniest album title with Mr. Beast, when along came Yo La Tengo with this sentence that looked for sure like it had to be a joke. Sonically, the album is all over the place in a way that they haven't been since 1997 (when you-know-what landmark album was released), but Yo La Tengo are about as good at ten minute guitar freakouts as they are at three minute pop gems and subtle, introspective ballads. It makes from some strange juxtapositions here and there ("Daphnia" into "I Should Have Known Better," which isn't a cover of the Beatles song, is particularly jarring), but all of it works.

Paul Simon - Surprise - Paul Simon is not exactly en vogue among the nation's youth, or anybody under the age of 50, probably, but I love him just the same. Even so, who could have seen this coming? That it's his best solo album since Graceland is a given, but that doesn't quite express how good it is, even if it's an appropriate comparison, since, like Graceland, it comes as a somewhat radical reinvention and a new direction for an artist who needed one. And this from a guy that pretty much everybody thought was over the hill after Rhythm of the Saints was released. Surprise is quite a... well, you know.

Justin Timberlake - FutureSex/LoveSounds - I'll admit it! I like it! Ok, I like the first half, really, and most of that credit should probably go to Timbaland, who still has a great flair for making some very weird things sound very accessible. The best moments are fascinating because the in-your-face sexuality is betrayed by the weird, robotic, and sometimes abrasive grooves. Seriously, "Sexyback" is not sexy at all, but I love it anyway for the heavy distorted disco beat and those weird filtered vocals. Meanwhile, "My Love" is probably the coolest song I've heard all year, and "Love Stoned" is a great experiment in how the same words can change meaning with context. The lyrics are often laughably bad, and the second half drags to the point where I can barely finish it in one sitting, but it's a lot more than I ever expected from the star of *NSYNC.

The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls in America - Blah blah blah liquor blah blah blah anthem blah blah Springsteen. I never thought I'd see the day when it would be hip to be influenced by Bruce Springsteen, but here we are. I will gladly welcome it. This is big, huge rock and roll done right, and everybody needs a fix of that once in a while. And if it eventually results in a few more hipsters with whom I can talk about the genius of "Jungleland," I have no problem with that either.

Zero 7 - The Garden - I honestly can't recall whether or not I've talked about this one on this blog before, which seems about right. Jose Gonzalez (the man with the most generic Hispanic name in the world) is a great fit for Zero 7, and Sia Furler is still churning out her soul-by-numbers, but they've lost their charm since Simple Things as they've veered away from down-tempo jamming and more toward faceless adult contemporary pop. That said, "You're My Flame" and "Futures" are still great, and their version of Gonzalez's "Crosses" is about as good as the original, which was outstanding itself.

One more thought about Cory Lidle...

You don't need me to tell you how strange and tragic Cory Lidle's sudden passing was. Instead, I'll leave you with a memory of my favorite moment during Cory Lidle's tenure with the Phillies.

It was a game earlier in the 2006 season against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Cory Lidle wasn't even pitching (I don't remember who was). It was a fairly normal game, when Julio Lugo of Tampa Bay attempted a bunt that rolled foul, and suddenly the home plate umpire turned toward the Phillies dugout and waved his arm, ejecting somebody, and Cory Lidle ran out on to the field screaming about something.

I've watched thousands of baseball games in my brief time here on this planet, and I can't ever recall a player getting ejected from a game he wasn't playing in in a non-brawl situation. We found out after the game that apparently Lidle took offense to Lugo attempting a bunt hit with two outs when his team had a four run lead and yelled at him from the dugout.

And that's why Cory Lidle was one of my favorite Phillies during his time here. He wasn't a Cy Young pitcher (though when he was hot, he bore a very strong resemblance to Greg Maddux), but he knew how to play the game, he knew his role, he was always open and honest (even if it got him into trouble, as it did mere days before his death), and he called bullshit when he saw bullshit. Baseball could use more guys like Cory. He'll be missed.

One more thing: while we're on the subject of the passing of former Phillies, condolences are in order for the family of Johnny Callison.

Remember several months ago, when Cory Lidle was famous mostly for being thrown in with Bobby Abreu in that infamous trade to the Yankees?

Those days are just about over, I would think.

It's really bizarre, because I was reading about the crash, before they knew who the pilot was, and was shocked that an airplane flew into a building in Manhattan. Then I refreshed the page to see if anything had been updated, and saw that not only was the pilot somebody I'd heard of, it was somebody I knew a lot about, and had been rooting for for a couple years. It was somebody I'd seen pitch in person plenty of times. So weird...

You may or may not have heard about TMX Elmo, which is the 10th Tickle Me Elmo (hence the X), and which may or may not also be "Xtreme." Toy manufacturers have informed us that it will be this Christmas season's sensation, and as dutiful consumers, we as Americans will rush to the stores and buy it. And you may think to yourself, another Tickle Me Elmo? Didn't we already have that fad?

But maybe you haven't seen this thing in action yet...



I mean, seriously... wow. I thought Elmo in Muppet form was enthusiastic, especially in comparison with his Sesame Street pals like Oscar the Grouch, or the morose Telly. (The inestimable Cookie Monster, of course, possesses a manic insanity all his own.) But this doll is an onslaught of noise and disjointed robotics, not so much ticklish as epileptic. It's easy to see why little kids will love it (for a week or so), and why dogs will be terrified of it (forever).

It's hard to imagine that this sort of thing would exist at all if Jim Henson was still alive (happy belated 70th, by the way, Jim), for reasons I'll go into at a later time, but here we are.

Boards of Canada - Trans Canada Highway

This may shock you, but there has been a new Boards of Canada release on the market since May, and I only bought it last week!

Now, keep in mind that the delay was due to the fact that the release in question is an EP, titled Trans Canada Highway, in the great tradition of highway-themed concept albums such as Kraftwerk's Autobahn, and, um... Kraftwerk's Trans-Europe Express. Ok, maybe not.

At any rate, Boards of Canada have proven in the past that they're perfectly capable of releasing EPs just as good as LPs, as shown by Twoism, Hi-Scores, and especially the sublime In a Beautiful Place out in the Country, so this release is not at all to be feared as a refuse bin for b-sides (or, at least, the b-side equivalent of a band that sees no point in releasing singles).

If you've been a reader of this site long enough, you know by now that there's no point in even questioning whether or not I will like a Boards of Canada release, and Trans Canada Highway is no exception. It begins with "Dayvan Cowboy" from 2005's The Campfire Headphase, which is getting a second or third round of appreciation from me right about now. It also ends with a "Dayvan Cowboy" remix by Odd Nosdam, and even the remix is good, taking an already fantastic song and turning it on its head to provide 9 minutes of eerie, suspenseful beauty.

The middle section is what we might call B.O.C.-by-numbers (but, you know, not the other B.O.C.). At this point, if you've heard Boards of Canada, you can guess what these tracks will sound like. If you haven't, good Lord! What are you waiting for?! "Left Side Drive" is a Geogaddi-style number, with glacially shifting patterns (and if you're struggling for a description, let's say one of Brian Eno's ambient pieces with a slowed down hip-hop drum loop). "Skyliner" goes back further, to the Music Has the Right to Children days, with its busy drum beats and wavery synths. The other two tracks are short vignettes, which, true to form, are just as worth hearing as the rest of it, even if they may not be substantial enought to warrant description here.

The only thing here that's really worth noting is that the guitars of The Campfire Headphase seem to have been a temporary phase, as they're nowhere to be found other than the title track. Whether this is a sign of the band's future or a brief look into its past is anybody's guess. Either way, I'll be waiting for LP #4.

An uneducated movie review...

I just did something quite unlikely. I watched a chick flick. By myself. By choice.

The film in question is In Her Shoes, and I'll admit that I watched it as much because I knew it was filmed in Philadelphia as because I'd read a couple reviews of it awhile ago that said that it was baiscally "a chick flick, but not a chick flick."

It was one of those things where I ended up liking it despite a number of reasons I shouldn't. First of all was the on-the-nose symbolism with shoes. Sisters with nothing in common have to walk a mile in each other's shoes, and so do grandparents who argue with their son in laws, and husbands and wives, and blah blah blah. Every time director Curtis Hanson (8 Mile, L.A. Confidential) cut to a close up of a person's feet, I got that much more infuriated. And speaking of cheap symbolism, is it possible not to notice Cameron Diaz' character wearing less and less makeup as her entitled slutty bitch character "matures" and "learns life lessons" and whatnot? Or how about the way Toni Colette's stuck up career woman consistently loses weight in accordance with throwing off her careerist shackles and "learning to love life" and such? (Colette, by the way, looks just fine even when 25 pounds heavier than normal.) Oh, and here's a scene nobody saw coming: when Diaz gets a job at a retirement community and befriends a blind patient by reading to him, who could possibly have foreseen the morning when she comes into his room and finds... *gasp* he's not there! His stuff has been packed up! "Was he moved?" she asks, as if there's going to be some sort of surprise when we find out that he's died.

And yet...

Shirley MacLaine is still adorable. She's a little more wrinkly and less irresistably cute at the age of 72 than she was in, say, The Apartment, back in 1960, but honestly? I'd still hit that. Toni Colette is cute too, in what magazine writers would probably call an "unconventional" way. Both, of course, are great performers. I found myself considering turning the movie off halfway through, but honestly wanted to know what happened to the characters, which I suppose is a testament to Jennifer Weiner's book, which I've never read. Not to spoil anything, but the quarreling sisters kiss and make up, the couple that everybody knows is going to get married gets married, and the grandmother and estranged son in law make up too. Hooray! What a great, mushy, feel-good ending!

I've already mentioned the couple reviews I read that described In Her Shoes as a chick flick, but not really, but how is a movie that ends with a wedding in which every single main and secondary character is present not a chick flick?

In the end, though, I'd rather expect a chick flick and sort of get one with In Her Shoes than expect a comedy and get a chick flick, like, say, Wedding Crashers.

Of course, I forgot to mention what might have been the most fun part: picking out the Philadelphia landmarks! Colette goes to the Italian Market in South Philly, and she also goes to a Sixers game and then talks with her boyfriend about how the Sixers have no three point shooter at Pat's Steaks after the game. (Real Philadelphians, of course, know that most corner pizzerias make a cheesesteak just as good as Pat's, Geno's, or Tony Luke's, and that the Sixers have a three point shooter, they just have no defense.) And Toni Colette actually takes a run up "the Rocky steps," or as non-tourists know it, the Art Museum. I've seen a few film crews at the Art Museum, but I'm pretty sure that this wasn't one of them. Oh well.

Thoughts and crap about 9/11... on 9/11

Every year on this day for the past four years or so, I've tried to do some remembering, some reflecting, some figuring out what the hell everything means. I've never really recorded any of that anywhere, though, until now, I suppose.

Five years is an interesting anniversary (and if you don't know what I'm referring to, I have no idea what planet you live on) because it's far enough away to allow us to reflect somewhat less emotionally than we may have before, but it's still close enough that everything still seems so vivid in our minds. We all predicted that day back in 2001 that we would always remember exactly where we were when we found out. I still remember, clear as day. I was in English class in my senior year of high school. The principal made an announcement over the PA system to let us know what was going on, and my teacher immediately pointed out a grammatical error that he made, which was some remarkable composure since his son worked in the Pentagon at the time.

So what's it all mean? I'm not one to say, and there are a million other talking heads who think they are, so I'm not going to offer a grand analysis of what 9/11 means in the long term. What strikes me the most when I think back, though, is how quickly our collective grief and shock turned into national pride, the kind of which I'd never felt before. I never felt so earnestly proud to be American, and I never have since then, and probably never will again.

What makes me angry now is that patriotism and national pride have become political statements, and I don't know what's worse: that there are politicians on the right who drape themselves in the American flag to keep people from questioning the horrible things that they support (hello, Patriot Act), or that there are many people on the left (myself included, often times) who have a knee jerk reaction against the very word "patriotism," who think that being proud to be American is somehow a conservative ideal.

Aside from that, I think I'm bothered a bit by how otherwise "normal" everything seems, which just doesn't seem right somehow. All the remembering and newspaper articles and TV specials feel a little forced, but at the same time, I think I would be unhappy if it became just another day. It's going to be weird when our kids see 9/11 that way, in the same way that we see December 7, 1941.

I don't know, I started writing this with a lot of thoughts, and they've kind of dwindled down to nothing. Time to step down from my soapbox and let life go on.

The Status of Things

I have moved into a new apartment. It is located at 43rd St and Baltimore Ave, which is a very nice location, with a park, a cafe, and numerous restaurants located nearby. I like it very much. Unfortunately, I'm not getting internet access there until the 19th, which means that I'll be checking email and such sporadically at various libraries, public (40th and Walnut) and Drexel (33rd and Market).

So anyway, here are some random thoughts that I'm having about things:

- Steve Irwin - I think the biggest surprise is that he didn't get killed sooner. I mean, by all accounts he should have died 20 times by now, right? That said, I'm trying not to laugh at the situation, and I am genuinely a little bit disappointed. Steve was one of those guys that brought a genuine and earnest enthusiasm to everything he did. He just wanted to share his joy with the world, and there's nothing bad that you can say about that.

- Yo La Tengo - Here's the album title of the century: I am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass. I managed to download it before I moved out of my old place and lost the internet, but all the songs get cut off with a minute left to go for some reason. Am I actually going to have to buy it?! It sounds pretty good from what I heard.

- The Valerie Project - I'll admit it: I am completely in love with crazy neo-hippies who make weird psychedelic folk music. And I've talked numerous times about how much I love Greg Weeks and Espers (just use the search bar at the top of the page). So how could I not love this?

- Gary Higgins - Speaking of hippies and folk music, Gary freaking Higgins (!) is playing at the First Unitarian Church. Of course, I'm sooooo cool that I saw him last fall. Espers opened up, believe it or not. I might go see him again, though, because who knows how long it will be before he kicks it? We've lost fellow psychedelic hermits Arthur Lee and Syd Barrett in the past few months, and that stuff comes in threes, right?

- Cell phones - My cell phone bill for this month is probably going to be gargantuan. Not having the internet has led to a lot of text messages and phone calls that would probably otherwise not have happened. On the other hand, I've actually had an honest-to-goodness phone conversation with at least one person that I've never actually talked to in a non-internet setting. So that was nice.

Ok, I'm done. More if and when I get an opportunity.

Is this the worst idea ever?

Elton John plans hip-hop album.

Usually when an aging white pop musician wants to change things up by switching genres, they jump over to classical music (see: Billy Joel, Paul McCartney). I guess we can give ol' Reggie credit for at least thinking outside the box to some degree, but it's hard to foresee this theoretical album being anything but a complete disaster.

You know how the last couple Santana albums have featured a thousand guest performers, who all do their own thing while Carlos plays his same three guitar licks on top of whatever is going on? Think about a hip hop version of that, except instead of guitar licks, think of Elton John cramming his ornate melodies into Dr. Dre's G-funk.

Weird, right?

The Mental Illness Manifesto: A Rambling, Sleepless Rant

If you're prone to either paying attention to frivolous news from Hollywood or enjoying the schadenfreude from a famous person's downfall, or both, you may have heard that Tom Cruise's production company was dumped by Paramount Pictures. (For a nice change of pace, I'm linking to a CBC article. Canadians probably have to see American-made news all the time, so we'll switch it around.)

Now, all of you here, and most people who write about entertainment news and that sort of crap for a living, are probably thinking to yourselves, "Well, duh. Didn't you see him jump on the couch?"

I'm going to say again that I have no idea why jumping on a damn couch is such a huge freaking deal. If I had Tom Cruise's kind of money and fame level, I'd do whatever I damn well wanted to do, and if that included being exuberant on nationally syndicated talk shows, then I see no reason for that to stop me. And you can tell me that the couch was a symbol of all of his excesses, and blah blah blah, and I'll ask: what excesses? What has he done from a behavioral standpoint that's so bad?

So keeping in mind that Cruise's antics over the last year, which people mindlessly classify as "bizarre" or "hysterical," aren't really that important, I'm going to posit that maybe, just maybe, Cruise is being punished for his criminally irresponsible attitude toward psychiatry and mental health in general. I don't really feel like linking to something or summarizing it, because most people probably know what I'm talking about. But to me, that is what he's done that's made me dislike him. That is why he's a Class A Asshole, and I'd like to think that his production deal wasn't renewed because he's displaying a bigotry that is all too common in today's society. I often think of homosexuals as the final minority group that is overtly and legally discriminated against, but people with mental illnesses definitely fit into that category too. (Women and racial minorities of all sorts are regularly discriminated against, of course, but at least that's technically illegal.)

Of course, that affects me a lot more personally than gay rights, because people with mental health problems happens to be a minority of which I am a part. So, because I'm feeling fiesty right now, despite being exhausted, I am going to stand up (figuratively speaking, I suppose) and say this, and I encourage others like me to do the same:

I am a victim of mental illness, and Tom Cruise and people who think like him can go fuck themselves.

Now, although Tom Cruise does make a fine poster/whipping boy, there are some problems with that. First, we need a better term than "victim of mental illness." Then, to balance out the inevitable PC-ness of whatever we come up with there, we need to take a page from the homosexual playbook and steal the bigots' derogatory term and embrace it. I've known lots of gay people who refer to themselves as "faggots" or "queers," so maybe we can start proudly referring to ourselves as "lunatics" or "nutjobs" or "basketcases."

Hmm... we've got our work cut out for us there.

Second, we need a short and memorable term for people who discriminate against us. Something that fits in perfectly alongside "chauvanist," "racist," and "homophobe." We can't say "Tom Cruise and people who think like him" every time, and way too many people qualify as "ignorant morons" for different reasons to use that.

But this is a battle that should be fought. Some day I would like to be able to ask my boss at work whether or not my health benefits cover psychiatrists and therapists without him filing a mental note that I am "potentially unstable" or something. Or, when somebody asks, "Where are you going?" to be able to answer truthfully that I'm going to a psychiatrist or therapist rather than rack my brain to remember whether or not I used the dentist as an excuse with that person recently. I suppose it's a personal battle as much as a societal one, because I could easily tell the truth in those situations. But the point I'm making is that anticipating the judgement of other people shouldn't have to be a factor. You know, kind of like how gay people can be "open" or "in the closet," but are still subject to the judgement of society at large.

I guess I'm working on being the mental health equivalent of more "open" and less "closeted."

Of course, the difference between having a mental illness and being gay is that the latter can be a celebrated point of pride, while the former is classified as an "illness" for a reason. We'll never be proud of our conditions, and would rather not have them at all, and often despise the fact that "normal" people will never know how we experience things.

Anyway, to bring things back around to the starting point, Tom Cruise wasn't dumped because of his ignorance and bigotry, nor his "disturbing" behavior. He was dumped because movie executive idiots don't think that people will go see his movies anymore. Money trumps everything else.

If it wasn't so early (might as well be "late," for all the sleep I got), I would try to organize this into something cohesive. But I'm letting it sprawl out, because I feel like it.

At any rate, my final thought is: fuck Tom Cruise. (And, you know, people who think like him.)

EDIT: As it turns out, Liz Spikol made almost the exact same point a few days ago. Oops.

I hate Dane Cook

I always get more comments and responses when I go negative, like I did with my last post, and while I try to avoid that for the most part (since I have a reputation with almost everybody who knows me as being excessively negative already), I'm going to succumb to temptation once more...

There are a lot of celebrities whose fame is perplexing, and doesn't quite seem to correspond with their level of talent. There are movie stars (Ben Affleck), TV stars (pick any reality TV host or contestant), musicians (Green Day), artists (Anne Geddes comes to mind, although "artist" is really pushing it), novelists (Dan Brown), and... miscellaneous, I guess (Paris Hilton).

Most of the time those people don't bother me. If people like them, or pay attention to them for reasons I can't figure out, that's fine. And believe it or not, I don't think I'm better than those people, although I certainly come off that way a lot of the time.

Well, like I did before with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, it's time to admit that sometimes people's taste pisses me off.

The point of all that crap being: I fucking hate Dane Cook.

Dane Cook is to stand up comedy what the Strokes are to music: all style, no substance. Dane Cook seems to mistake yelling a whole bunch as an adequate substitution for things that are actually funny.

Worst of all? He steals jokes!

Pretty much everything about him pisses me off though. His stupid "Dennis the Menace, but foul-mouthed" schtick. His hideous wife-beater. His manic stage movements that seem to distract people from the fact that he's not actually saying anything remotely funny. Basically, everything about him screams, "I am an idiotic frat dude and if you have no intention of actually thinking about why or if something is funny, you will love me!"

He's like some kind of cretinous combination of David Cross and George Carlin, without the wry outrage of the former and without the wit of the latter.

Ugh. I've run out of indignancy for tonight. I just had to get that off of my chest.

I shall now bash an easy target for 15 minutes

I've come to the conclusion recently that I really hate the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

In my teen years, I ranged from being mostly indifferent to them to kind of liking them. That kind of evolved into a nice period where I mostly forgot about their existence, save for every now and then when I would hear "Californication" or "By the Way" or whatever that song was called, and say to myself, "Well, it sounds like the Chili Peppers... but more like a corporate recreation of the Chili Peppers." (You could substitute "Foo Fighters" for "Chili Peppers" in that last sentence and it would work just as well, by the way.)

Now, though, I can't stand them. I think something snapped in me when Billy Preston died and I read that the last recording he played on was the latest Red Hot Chili Peppers album. Whatever happened, I can't stand them. Old Peppers, new Peppers, it doesn't matter.

Older Chili Peppers albums are like hearing what a George Clinton band would sound like if Clinton had been brainwashed by a bunch of idiotic frat guys and sodomized with a broomstick. Braindead white boy funk? They got that down! The worst rapper in the world, thrown in the mix? Check and mate!

Newer Chili Peppers albums are like hearing what would happen if some Armani-wearing douchebag with slicked back hair said to Anthony Keidis, "We'll give you a billion dollars if you water down your sound as much as possible." So now instead of moronic raps and preschool melodies about having sex and shooting heroin, we have moronic raps about... what the hell is this song about anyway?

Of course, more recently, we don't even seem to get the moronic raps. Only lazy vocals that just drift in and out of nothingness, yet seem to trigger some deep-rooted urge in people to spend money on crap. The outrageously flashy bass-playing has been similarly diluted. Flea was probably the best thing they had going for them. Now all they have is their mountains of cash, their generic songs about nothing, and that drummer who looks eerily like Will Ferrell.

This turned into a kind of formless rant, but I'll admit one thing: "Breaking the Girl" was a cool song. I'll give them that. Don't try to throw "Under the Bridge" at me as an example of a good song, though. Choirs of children are a cheesy crutch that's been overused at least since "Across the Universe" (which is a good song despite that, and really, that was only two girls or something, right?), and definitely since "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2."

For music dorks only

Today I sat down and actually read a review at pitchforkmedia.com. I usually eschew the reviews (unless they really rip something to shreds) and go to the news and interviews and whatnot, but today they reviewed a box set of Tortoise songs that I haven't heard yet. And since Tortoise is one of my favorite bands, and they gave it a 9.2 out of 10 (although I'm still not sure how they decide that it's a 9.2 and not, say, a 9.3), I sat down and read it.

And what do you know? I actually enjoyed it. It's the kind of review written by and for dorks like me. Which means that it's probably utterly useless to people who won't get references to Miles Davis' On the Corner (which this blog is actually named after!) and Can as "dance music you can't dance to." Another dorky music nerd reference: "Casey Rice's 'Cobwebbed' sounds a bit like an Aphex circa Selected Ambient Works II DAT discovered a few decades later in a storage unit out by the highway." If you actually know what a DAT is, you're probably a step ahead of most people. If you have Selected Ambient Works II, you're golden.

My personal favorite, though: "And though bookish indie heartthrobs can now make a mint singing about the Cook County chamber of commerce over Steve Reich pastiches, Tortoise offered no such easy ins."

Ouch! Take that, Sufjan! I love Sufjan Stevens as much as the next person, but the writer's got a point there, I guess... listen to your copy of Enjoy Your Rabbit and go out and buy yourself a copy of Reich's Music for 18 Musicians and see if Reich shouldn't be suing Sufjan right now.

So what's my point here? I have no idea. I do know that there are probably few things more infuriatingly stupid than writing about writing about music (Would Frank Zappa say that's like dancing about dancing about architecture? Another nerdy reference for you.), so some people are probably reading this and rolling their eyes so far back into their heads that they can see their own brains. But I'm bored and killing a half hour, so indulge me today and I swear I'll write about Snakes on a Plane tomorrow.

OK... Go watch this

Up until today, I've been fairly indifferent about OK Go since I first heard them. Decent power pop, I suppose. Not really anything special, but not by any means bad either.

Today, I just became a huge fan of OK Go:



I like bands that don't seem to take themselves seriously while doing just that at the same time, and I can't think of a more perfect example than this. Think about the time and effort that had to have gone into that.

Mostly, though, it's great because it's unbelievably fun and inventive. I haven't had this much fun watching a music video since I first saw Bjork's "It's Oh So Quiet." My personal favorite part is the move that starts right at 2:19, but it's all fantastic. I also like when the guy in red pants almost falls over at about 1:00.

So anyway, if they did stuff like this at their live shows, I would go see them. But the music, catchy as it is, isn't the best part.

Tom spouts opinions about a ton of new music in ten minutes

The title is pretty self-explanatory, right? Let's get this thing started...

Sufjan Stevens - The Avalanche - Holy hell! An avalanche is right! Sufjan continues his onslaught of music with yet another loooooooong-ass album about Illinois. You may remember that I was very much a fan of Illinois, but this is what we call overkill. I don't need or want another three versions of "Chicago," and every time I hear Sufjan work his "Stereolab-via-Chicago (the band, not the song, but the song too)" magic, it starts sounding a little more formulaic. Ditto for the historic-observation-via-family-story songs. Illinois was long enough as it is. This is just too much for me to stay interested in.

The Futureheads - News and Tributes - I guess these guys liked XTC's Drums and Wires so much that they decided to record a sly tribute album to it. I didn't hear the first Futureheads record, so I can't say whether or not their, um... "homage" is a new thing. I also haven't listened to it enough to really get a strong impression of anything on more than a superficial level, so if I'm missing some mind-blowing lyrics or something, forgive me.

Six Organs of Admittance - Sun Awakens - Ok, NOW we're talking. I wouldn't recommend this to everybody, but if you have the patience for a 23 minute drone of a song, check it out immediately, because it's worth every second. Side A is good too, if a little scattershot.

Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out of This Country - I wanted to be the first person ever to write about Camera Obscura without mentioning Belle and Sebastian, but what's the point? Besides, if I did that, I wouldn't be able to point out that Camera Obscura actually made a better album this year than Belle and Sebastian did. The apprentice has become the master! Or something like that.

Matmos - The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast - I like Matmos. They look like NASA technicians from the 1960s. They're pals with Bjork. (On the Bjork live DVD I have, she performs in outlandish outfits while they sit at computers onstage in white suits looking somewhat bored.) Plus there was that infamous thing where they recorded sounds from a liposuction to use in their music. And now here comes the weirdest concept album of the year (step aside, Liars!), audio portraits of gay and lesbian figures, from Ludwig II to Joe Meek. It's occasionally unsettling (the sound of "shit" is interpreted rather literally), but always fascinating. Plus, Bjork makes a brief appearance, which means a million bonus points for Matmos. It's mostly music to be appreciated on an intellectual level, but I have no problem with that.

Lily Allen - Alright, Still - I didn't want to listen to Lily Allen at first because her MySpace page described her genre as "Pop/Hyphy/Ska." I don't know what "hyphy" means, but "ska" is about as big a red flag as I could ask for. Plus, why should I care about the music of a spoiled daughter of an actor/comedian and a film producer? Well, I'm going to grudgingly admit that she's actually pretty good. Her album drags toward the end despite being only 36 minutes or so long, but considering that she's my younger brother's age, it's still pretty damned impressive. There's enough there to warrant repeated listens, especially to songs like "Smile" (which was apparently a #1 hit in England) and "Everything's Just Wonderful."

Bobby Abreu, we hardly knew ye...

It's been a weekend of mixed emotions for the die hard Phillies fan such as myself. First, David Bell was traded to Milwaukee for nobody, which is a shame because it came right as he finally got on my good side for the first time since 2004 by playing like a competent major league third basemen.

The big shebang was yesterday, of course, when the Phillies traded Bobby Abreu and Cory Lidle to the Yankees for four people of little consequence. Finally, Rheal Cormier, who, like Bell, had finally gotten back on my good side after a disastrous 2005, was traded to Cincinnati for a prospect of middling talent.

So holy crap, where do I start?

First of all, I'm sadder than anybody to see Bobby Abreu go. We sports fans of Philadelphia like to pride ourselves as being more knowledgeable than the average fans, but the way we treated Abreu never really reflected this. He's been one of the best hitters in all of baseball for almost a decade, and what do we do? We rag on him because he doesn't dive into the right field wall like Aaron Rowand would (apparently we'd be better off with more players who play hard-nosed defense and have an on base percentage of .322 and less players who play average defense (and yet have an amazingly strong arm) and have an on base percentage of .427 and also hit 100+ RBI every year). Any team in the league would be happy to have Abreu, and any team would be better with him than they are without him.

If it's true that he was traded to free up the money that we would pay him, which it seems to be, this reflects extremely low standards by the Phillies' GM, Pat Gillick. Remember when he vowed not to trade Abreu unless he could get a top tier starter in return? That standard sure dropped. It seems like these days all he's worth is a shortstop who might someday hit in the 8 hole for a team like Pittsburgh. And hell, let's throw in Cory Lidle too! It's not like the Phillies have any problems with starting pitching...

So here's what to expect from Bobby now that he's joined the Evil Empire: he'll be rejuvenated, find his power stroke again, be a 30/30/.300 guy again, and win a World Series or two.

Are we used to seeing former Philadelphia athletes win elsewhere yet? Curt Schilling sure didn't mind leaving. Scott Rolen doesn't have a ring yet, but does play for one of the most consistently great teams in the league. And we didn't get anything of value in return for those guys either! (Placido Polanco excluded, but we traded him for a relief pitcher who's currently in jail in Venezuela.)

So with the Phillies having emphatically declared themselves "sellers" and not "contenders" (check back in '08, says Gillick), here's the shortlist of teams with old allies to root for during the remainder of the 2006 season:

- Detroit Tigers - They have the aforementioned Placido Polanco, plus they're the feel-good story of the year, considering how badly they've stunk for quite a long time. They now have the best record in the league.
- Cincinnati Reds - Another story of a rising underdog, they also have former Phillies Eric Milton and Rheal Cormier.
- Boston Red Sox - Curt Schilling, Mike Timlin, and manager Terry Francona are the old pals here. But they all were with the '04 team that won.
- New York Yankees - It's time to think the unthinkable. The Yankees have Abreu and Lidle. They have Phillie fan favorite Sal Fasano, who's not quite the same without his hair and fu manchu, but is still the same Sal Fasano who busts his ass for every single foul ball and who used to drink 30 beers every day. Their third base coach is former Phillies shortstop (1970-1981) and former Phillies manager (2001-2004) Larry Bowa. And on top of all that, I find myself almost feeling sorry for Douchebag Supreme Alex Rodriguez, who really, truly has no way to stop fans from booing him. He could hit .400, and people would complain that he still got out 60% of the time. In other words, he's a little like Bobby Abreu was in Philadelphia. Except that Bobby Abreu wasn't a pretty boy douchebag, no matter what some people said. But still, with all that, let's put it this way: if the World Series comes down to the Yankees and the Mets, we have a clear choice.

Finally, one more note on Abreu: did anybody see his post-game interview with Harry Kalas and Chris Wheeler yesterday? Bobby proved himself a man of utmost class and dignity, and deserves all the respect that any of us can possibly give to an overpaid professional athlete. I'm going to miss him, and even knowing that he'll be playing for the Yankees, I'll still root for him.

Fiery Furnaces & Man Man update/the one-year anniversary of tomsmashblog

A month ago today, I saw the Fiery Furnaces and Man Man at the Theatre of Living Arts in Philly. I wrote about it on this site a couple days later.

Well, guess what! Now you too can feel some of the immeasurable insanity that I experienced that night, thanks to National Public Radio! Here is your link. You can download or stream live sets from both Man Man and the Fiery Furnaces, played live at the 9:30 Club in Washington three days after I saw them.

I tell you what, that stuff is going straight onto the ol' mp3 player.

In other news, my own blog turns one year old today. For nostalgia's sake, here is the somewhat uninteresting first post here. As you can see, the idea to post on a regular schedule fizzled out almost immediately. Oh well. Let's see if I make it another year.

Ever wonder how on Earth you got to where you are?

Sunday night was an interesting night for me. I know I said when I started this here blog that it wouldn't be an account of my day-to-day life, but I promised to several people that I would post this.

I was at a friend's house with some other friends on Sunday night. It was normal partyish thing with normal partyish activities. Then, suddenly and without warning, and as far as I can tell, for no reason whatsoever, people's clothing started coming off. Look:


That was before the gals' pants started coming off too. There are plenty more pictures where that came from, all taken with my shitty camera phone (and many of them by other people who commandeered my phone, so I'm only sort of a creepy voyeur or something). Suffice it to say that there are more than half a dozen people who are going to have to pay me a lot of money to keep quiet if they ever plan on running for a high-profile political office. Especially Alex:


So now if anybody asks whether I have a picture of myself in my underwear, I can answer yes. Because people ask me that all the time, apparently. But I'm not posting that one.

Anyway, to the people who asked/demanded that I post this stuff on the internet, here you go. You may revel in your shame(lessness).

Final side note: the Blogger spell-checker recognizes "shitty" as a word, but not "blog."

The Flaming Lips = Gods among men

Here's a picture I took tonight of a Mr. Wayne Coyne, of the Flaming Lips. He opened the Lips' set by surfing the crowd in a giant inflatable plastic ball, and there he is.

I'll have more elaborate thoughts on my third Lips show eventually, but for now I'm just going to say that I'm once again dumbstruck with awe and joy at the mere existence of such an amazing live experience. It's impossible to feel down at this point, which for me is saying a lot. Everybody in the world should see them at some point.

I love the Flaming Lips.

Syd Barrett: 1946-2006

On March 24, 2006, I happened to be thinking about Syd Barrett. I wrote this:

"Wouldn't it be neat if, after Syd Barrett (link for those not fully aware of who that is) quietly passes away alone in his home in Cambridge, his family finds and releases a series of mind-blowingly amazing fully finished albums, proving that he never lost his gift after all? One can hope anyway, right? Happy belated 60th, Syd. (Two months late is better than not at all.)"

It's now July 11, and Syd has quietly passed away in his home in Cambridge. He will be mourned briefly by obsessives like me, and will be gone, but not forgotten, much in the same way as he lived for the past 35 years.

As celebrity deaths go, this one isn't particularly tragic, but it's sad because we never got the chance to hear Syd talk about himself. It's every Syd fan's dream to hear from the man himself about what happened to him in the late 1960s, what he's been doing, what he thinks. Our biggest loss is that we have only hearsay, rumors, and stories that may or may not be true told by people three steps removed. Syd will forever be a mystery, in death even more so than he was in life.

This is a shame because Syd is the quintessential musician who's famed more for his legend than for his music. It's a shame because not enough people will ever truly appreciate the ramshackle brilliance of The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (not to mention The Madcap Laughs and Barrett). And it's a shame because Syd may have died without ever knowing that there were people who wanted more, not just more music, but more of Syd in general.

In closing, I'm trying as hard as I can not to sign off with "shine on you crazy diamond," but it's hard to find something as appropriate that works as well (for those unaware, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond was written by the Barrett-less Pink Floyd as a tribute to Syd). So go ahead, Syd. Shine on.

A Soccer-stupid American watches the World Cup final

Before Sunday, it had been at least eight years since I'd watched an entire soccer game. I know I was mildly interested in the 1998 World Cup, but even then, I'm not sure if I watched an entire game, start to finish. It's not out of the realm of possibility that I've never seen all 90 minutes of a soccer game.

So I decided on Sunday, with nothing better to do and with my beloved Phillies in a free fall, that I'd watch the World Cup final game between Italy and France. I'd been following, in my own half-assed way, the results of the tournament so far, without actually watching much other than highlight reels; I was aware that many people hated the ESPN announcers, that people were paradoxically concerned with both the excessive yellow- and red-carding and the excessive thuggery and violence (not to mention excessive diving), and, of course, that the United States didn't make a whole lot of ripples (by the way, Ghana, if you think you're so tough, you wanna throw hands, military style?). I also noticed that my buddy Jim Noir is starting to make inroads in America in the form of adidas commercials. You've got to start somewhere, I suppose...

Anyway, the first problem I encountered, which comes up so often in championship bouts in any sport, was that I didn't care at all who wins. Unless you're a die hard obsessive fan, you need somebody to root for to stay interested in the game. Only somewhat arbitrarily, I picked France's side. I'm closer to being French than I am to being Italian (French Canadian blood on my mom's side of the family, no Italian at all), I disliked Italy because of that nasty elbow from a guy whose name I think was de Rossi (no relation to Portia, I'm assuming) into the face of my fellow American Brian McBride, and, above all, the French were underdogs. Plus Zinedine Zidane's name sounds like a James Bond villain, and his sharp widow's peak helps with that image.

Of course, anybody who watched the game knows that there was a good reason to dislike France that came up in about the 110th minute, as Zidane, the superstar... Well, you probably know what he did, and words fail me when trying to describe how absurd, idiotic, and inexplicable his actions were. I guess "absurd, idiotic, and inexplicable" work. (Unintentionally hilarious side note: note that on the linked video, the French announcer immediately begins shouting "Why?! Why?!" after the headbutt.)

So Italy won in penalty kicks. Penalty kicks struck me as a stupid and anticlimactic way to end a game, especially a final game. My thinking was: they just played for 120 minutes to decide on a world champion in soccer. Shouldn't they finish it by, you know, playing soccer? On the other hand, it was clear that both sides were completely exhausted by the time the extra periods ran out. France seemed to have to take out their two best players (not counting the red-carded Zidane) because they were too tired to play on. If the teams had to play any longer, the winning goal would likely have come on a stupid mistake that never would have been made if not for the exhaustion, and that would have been even more anticlimactic. So I guess I'm ok with the penalty kicks.

So did I learn anything? Am I a soccer fan now? My overall impression was pretty much what I had before: for the casual fan, soccer is a game of mind-numbing tedium, interrupted by occasional flashes of brilliant excitement (the two goals and Zidane's oh-so-close header come to mind). I'm sure that there are layers and layers of nuance and subtlety that make the game interesting to the hardcore fans (I'm constantly explaining this to the people who mindlessly say that baseball is boring), but I'm not willing to devote that kind of time or effort to soccer. I'll probably be watching in 2010, though.

Final note: some people may be riled by my constant use of the word "soccer" instead of "football." Here's the thing: In America, it's called soccer, not football. Football means something else here. If you're going to get upset about that, you might as well also be offended by the fact that I call the host nation of this year's Cup "Germany" instead of "Deutschland." Got it?