Slow Robot

I'm out.

2005-02-21T14:39:00.000-08:00

After barely dipping my toes into cyber society, I must now depart. I have traded my little space here for the sun and computerless coffee shops and books with weathered pages and frisbee golf and Saturdays spent without thinking about anything that exists solely on a server that I will never see. From now on, I will be writing my thoughts on pieces of paper scattered about my room and possibly in a journal, which you will be able to buy online after I die in 2085 or so. Until then, well, you're just going to have to wait.

Thanks.

I'm sitting at home alone on a Tuesday. Or, I'm in the Bahamas.

2005-02-16T00:52:00.000-08:00

I just posted to Team Tinnitus and I can't remember how to link it. So. It's on the right. It's not much, but you should check it out.

I'm back. Or, Am I?

2005-02-09T01:03:00.000-08:00

Yes, I am.

It's been a long three weeks. I usually deal pretty well with the whole seasonal depression, thing, but the last three weeks have been pretty tough. A lot of losing all ambition, drinking, and then forcing myself into spurt of creativity and, ugh, productivity. It's wearing. Maybe I should just get a suit, like the bearded guy on the Mens Warehouse adds told me; suits are proven, by scientists, to increase productivity. Or something. But who needs a suit when you can just wait painful weeks to hear an album that lifts you out of the funk.

This time that album is the Decemberists' Picaresque.

The difficult thing to grasp with the Decemberists for me was always how Colin Meloy, the bespectacled lead man of the group, is quoted extensively talking about his influences: The Smiths (and especially Morrisey), the Waterboys and Robyn Hitchcock. The guy even wrote a 33-1/3 book about the Replacements' Let It Be. These artists don't exactly add up to the Decemberists.

But I think it comes through on this album. Meloys written an album that captures the spirits of those artists greatest albums, many of which got me out of deep funks in their own time in my life. It's that whole darkness delivered over pop thing. The "sugar coated pill." That's a phrase that always struck me as odd, paired with the "get use to it -ism" of "swallow that pill." Or maybe I made those sayings up. But it fits with this album. There's something about shaking your ass to a song that skewers American political thought like "16 Military Wives" does.

Not that it's a new thing; but it's always a sign of a great album.

Matos goes mad. Or, a new Team Tinnitus post.

2005-01-14T17:45:00.000-08:00

A couple new reviews from Team Tinnitus. One from the Real Matt Wright who was diggin' on the good vibes of Mirah at Nocturnal last night and the promised review of Monday's Karaoke session, with a great photo of Matos. Check it.

Blogs don't die, they just fade away. Or, I just stumbled into the graveyard.

2005-01-12T15:14:00.000-08:00

I found this while searching for a different blog. This is an entry from May 20, 2004 and it's the last one this person ever posted. It's not really amazing for what it says, but the fact that this was the last one. There was no attempt to ease off. Cold turkey. I wonder what happened to him or her? There's got to be thousands of these types of final posts. How do you write your epitaph? Welcome to the blog cemetery:

I wonder how many links I ought to have in my blog to make it 'linky' enough.

I wonder if I'm really part of a blogging community.

I wonder if it matters that I have now been indexed by Google.

I wonder what it means to be part of an online community. Is it enough if we casually observe, laugh at, raise our eyebrows at, each other's daily comments about our lives?

I wonder if community requires physical touching. I wonder how much of the senses must be engaged and exchanged to constitute human interaction.

I wonder how the vast reams of writing that people create really contribute to the collective consciousness, the collective unconcscious, or the collective creative brain progeny of our civilization.

I wonder if it's really worth it.

I wonder about Iraq, and Israel, and Somalia, and the Sudan, and every other place on Earth where chaos rules while a border away or a few miles away everything is peaceful.

I wonder if I really wonder. I wonder if I really know there's no answer. I wonder if I know there's no system to tie it together. I wonder if I know that we are part of a blnid, teeming, probabilistic mass of life.

I wonder how much of life I unconsciously avoid.

I wonder if anyone is out there.

I've got a license to ill and I'm using it. Or, I feel like I'm going to die.

2005-01-12T11:46:00.000-08:00

I have nobody but myself to blame for my current state. After an extended weekend of 7 am bedtimes and whatever activities are required to stay up that late, the gates of my immune system have deteriorated and some form of invasive crud, let's call it, has infected my temple rendering me completely useless. A small price to pay for a weekend of good memories, though. Let's review, shall we:

Saturday
Michaelangelo Matos, Seattle Music editor and former Minneapolitan, is in town for the weekend before he reads from his book at Powell's Bookstore on Monday. I pick him up in a cab at a Starbucks and we head to housemate Mike's restaurant for a delicious Italian meal with plenty of free wine. Before the meal begins Matos hands me a bag filled with 21 CDs. It's his 15-volume set of singles from 2004 and a 6-volume set of reissued singles. To me this is incomprehensible and I am trying still to digest the idea--along with all the music. There's some good stuff here, and I got to hear a lot of it, but not before Mike, Matos and I spent a few hours at the Virginia Cafe discussing music, women and television. Intense debate ensued. Heated up from our discussion, we headed home and stayed up until 6 am geeking out, playing music for each other off of our iMacs. At one point when Matos and I had our noses buried in our computers Mike turns to me and says, "So this is how we socialize now." He was joking--a bit--but I still felt the truth in his words. So we played some cribbage. It was much better. Of course there is no denying the ease computers lend to playing round robin DJ. A lot of great stuff was played. A couple favorites from the night include:

"Covered in Punk" by Portobella
A sassy British toss off featuring a super crass-and-sexy female lead saying things like "Eat my candy," repeatedly. The beat itself is a trip and then the guitar comes in--a straight lift of the riff from Blur's "Song #2"--and the song reaches orgasmic levels. Leaving all in earshot covered in punk. Gross.

"Hits of '69" by LMP
A 10-minute medley of LMP covers of 1969 pop releases all tied together with a boom-thwack beat, "Hits of '69" manages to induce both fits of laughter and rapt attention, me trying to figure which song could possibly be next. My favorite part is Yoko Ono's "John and Yoko" which features the two simple repeating each other’s names. Douglas Wolk wrote about it and the oddball box set that it comes in in last week's Seattle Weekly.

Sunday
Woke up at 4 and poured over the bankruptcy filing for Art Alexakis, the much-hated-in-Portland singer for Everclear. Things aren't looking good for Art. He owes the IRS $2.75 million, has sold most of his houses and his band's Singles collection, released in October because, we thought, the public demanded it has only sold 40,000 copies. Ouch. Ate some Thai with Matos and my wonderful semi-hippie friend Mackenzie and then watched After Hours, which is a beautiful twitch of a Twilight Zone episode, with all the paranormal replaced by coincidence. Crash

Monday
Woke, worked and headed down to the 33 1/3 reading at Powell's where Matos read from his book on Prince's Sign 'O' the Times, Douglas Wolk made a multimedia presentation from his Live at the Apollo book, the Decemberists' Colin Meloy read from his Let It Be (the Replacements) book and Mike McGonigal read from a draft of the first chapter of his book on My Bloody Valentine's Loveless. McGonigal's use of the word fuck was both excessive and completely appropriate, much like My Bloody Valentine.

The all-male panel was asked if a woman would be writing any of the books, as if they had any say in the matter. I almost followed up by asking if anyone that didn't wear glasses was going to be allowed to write any of the books (noticing that there were a total of 16 eyes on the panel and that I, myself, have 20/20 vision, I was concerned). Then I decided that that wasn't a good idea.

I did get a chance to talk to Colin about his reference to Grain Belt Premium in the latter part of his book. A deliciously smooth Minnesota beer, Grain Belt Premium has long held the nickname "Primo" and Meloy, perhaps attempting to relate to 'Mats fans refers to it multiple times as Primo, but never by it's proper name. I pointed this out to the Colin--who was dressed much better than the actual music critics on hand--feeling that it was my duty as a former Minneapolitan. He didn't seem to care. Then I patted him on the back and said, "Great. Can't wait to hear that new Decembro's record."

Okay, I didn't do that.

Then we went to Dante's for Karaoke from Hell. Check out a review of it, upcoming on Team Tinnitus, which has changed its name from "How I Got Tinnitus" to account for the fact that it will soon feature a couple more writers from Portland. I am building an army.

I tricked out my blog. Or, Mark relearns HTML.

2005-01-08T20:17:00.000-08:00

Check out the rad sidebar extras I've added. I feel like a genius. There's some links to things written by some very smart people. There will be more, but these are good to start out with. Check 'em out. And I started a live review blog called "How i Got Tinnitus." The first review is up. It's of the Divorce and the Carolines at Berbati's Pan last night.

Stupidest thing I did last night? Well I paid the karaoke MC at the Boiler Room 20 dollars--20 DOLLARS!--to bump me to the front of the line and play "Love Will Tear Us Apart." Who am I to walk in, waving my money around, demanding to be satisfied? I felt like Donald Trump. I sang like him too.

The O.C. made me dance like a little girl. Or, An unhealthy night on the couch.

2005-01-07T01:21:00.000-08:00

Okay, so I'm watching the O.C. tonight with my housemate Mike and, in the middle of all the zingers and jew jokes, the girl who runs the superlame rock club in Newport tells Seth to come back for the Modest Mouse show that night. My response was to jump up and do a little dance akin to the one my little cousin does whenever someone mentions Spongebob. I would have thought nothing of it if not for my roommates laughter (a kind laughter, not a mocking one). All I can think about now is how pissed I was a few short years ago when Low's "Little Drummer Boy" was used in a GAP commercial. Sure Modest Mouse isn't directly selling anything, but it's a short leap from the teen soap to the teen closet.

Mr. Brock got quite a lot of face time in the episode; much more than that doof from the Killers did a few episodes back. And, refreshingly, the band didn't play the hits "Float On" or "Ocean Breathes Salty," opting instead for the delightfully paranoid "Paper Thin Walls" and "Blame It On the Tetons" (the closest thing to a ballad from the latest album). Oh and then they played "The World At Large" as the episode faded to black.

In the middle of the episode Mike turns to me and say "I wonder if Isaac Brock is sitting at home watching this and wondering what the hell is going on." I bet he is, and I bet when Marissa and her dad cuddled for warmth on the beach towards the end of the episode he got a little teary eyed.

I survived Christmas and all I got was a few crummy ideas. Or, a wine-inspired ramble.

2004-12-28T23:28:00.000-08:00

Not to be Ameri-centric, but can’t you imagine some of the election dominating Evangelicals thinking that this recent craziness, and the fear that comes with it, is God’s punishment to people who live near water. You know, the blue states. I wonder. I know it freaks my Oregonian ass out a bit.

But, anyway, that’s just what I’m thinking about while listening to Dust to Digital’s Where Will You Be Christmas Day? My bio-mom got it for me for Christmas along with the totally awesome Goodbye, Babylon box set—which, as a musical artifact sitting in my room, is pretty awesome. The Christmas album is filled with a lot of blues Christmas songs, some gospel and other (for me) indescribable stuff. The one I’m listening to right now is a bluesy love song called "Santa Claus" where Walter Davis works the jolly red-clad character into a damn good lament about the singer and his baby. And the next song sounds like vaudevillian orchestra. Weird.

But I was shocked to hear one of the songs that sounds EXACTLY like the Joggers "Back to the Future" from their Startime debut, Solid Guild. The Joggers are a fantastic Portland band that plays a poppy garage rock with bits of what they call shape-note singing. Anyone who knows what that is, kudos. But for the rest of us it means that they sing these four-part atonal harmonies that build, reshape, and repeat in a sort of rollicking manner. Pair that with some cutting guitar (two ultra-hot Gibson SGs mind you) and it’s pretty awesome. But "Future" sounds exactly like "Sherburne" by the Alabama Sacred Heart Singers. I mean it is EXACTLY like it. It’s fantastic wherever you hear it and as effective in the rock format as it is as a gospel, but the chant is exactly the same in both songs. Next time I see them I’m going to ask.

Oh, so I changed the mix CD for my sister back in Wisconsin. The first draft was a bit depressing. Quite a few songs about leaving, dying and never coming back. Eek. So, this new one is a considerable improvement I think. "Less Than Zero" is so much more fun, and dangerous, than "Watching The Detectives." Devendra Banhart’s"Little Yellow Spiders" instead of the "cause I’m never comin’ back"-laced "At the Hop." And she needs to hear Neko Case. She’s a red head. Oh, and I named it "Leprechaun Park," after the smallest park in Portland. Ain’t that cute.

1.Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio? The Ramones
2. Date With Ikea, Pavement
3. Less Than Zero, Elvis Costello
4. Little Yellow Spider, Devendra Banhart
5. I Will Dare, The Replacements
6. The Tigers Have Spoken, Neko Case
7. Float On, Modest Mouse
8. Jezebel, Iron & Wine
9. Take Me Anywhere, Tegan & Sara
10. So Says I, The Shins
11. Evolution, Gift Of Gab
12. Future, Cut Copy
13. Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots Pt. 1, The Flaming Lips
14. Disorder, Joy Division
15. Damaged Goods, Gang Of Four
16. Government Center, Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers
17. The Legionnaire's Lament, The Decemberists
18. Four Leaf Clover Badly Drawn Boy

Before listening to the Christmas CD I was going to rattle off about the homily given by my parent’s priest on Christmas Day and compare it to Pink Floyd’s The Wall. But this post has grown long. Someone should remind me to do that some time soon.

"Like a Rolling Stone” will not always be the #1 song of all time. Or, The 0s and 1s have it.

2004-12-24T15:05:00.000-08:00

On my red-eye flight from Las Vegas (where you can smoke in the airport) to Minneapolis (where it was 20 degrees below zero when I landed!!!) I read this quizzical passage:

"Where lies the boundary between meaning and sentiment? I wondered. Between memory and nostalgia? America and Americana? What is and what was? Does it move?"

It could be from an incredibly self-aware story in No Depression, but it's not. It's from an article in Harper's by Donovan Hohn called "A Romance of Rust: Nostalgia, progress, and the meaning of tools."

I have to admit that I really do not know how to use tools very well. Earlier this summer I cut the arms off my couch to fit it into my room, but the workmanship was somewhat shoddy and really, destruction is much easier than creation. But tools have always been a part of my life. My father owned a lumber yard, which I worked at thoughout my high school summers, much to the chagrin of the yard's real workers, I imagine. Plus, the Baumgartens are a farm family, many of my uncles living in the same fertile valley in southeastern Wisconsin my family did (which is where I'm typing this right now). I spent many summer days digging through barns filled with retired farm implements and curious whatsits made out of metal, wood and springs. So, whereas most people under the age of 40 would have skipped over Hohn's 18-page story, I dug in.

Hohn spends the story skipping around the Midwest, hitting estate auctions and tool museums, talking to Galoots--the self-given name of tool fetishists--trying to answer the questions posed above. The questions take Hohn from pre-industrial societies concerned with function over form to post industrial society where function has been perfected and the self-sufficient artisan has been replaced by the consumer, reliant on machinery and outsourced labor. The result is a society where traditional tools are more novel than necessary, leading to companies like Stanley reinventing the same tools with different bits of rubber attached and maybe a new and exciting sports utility knife that folds out from the handle to satisfy the customers want of something new. Hohn isn't damning the modern, but he does make some good points about the beauty of work (the type that strains your back not your eyes) and the culture that that work creates. And all I can think as I'm eating my pretzels is how much this reminds me of music and rockism. Here is what Hohn writes after referencing a Karl Marx quote that reads, “Estranged from labor, the laborer is self-estranged, alien to himself”:

“For the most serious tool aficionados ... the hegemony of mind and machine over hand and matter entails an estrangement more profound even than the one Marx imagined and estrangement not only from self but from time. Old tools imply an entire way of being, an artisanal cosmology.”

Replace “tool aficionado” with “rockist” and “old tools” with, say, “the acoustic guitar,” and this could be a thesis about Nick Hornby. Mind and machine over hand and matter = laptop over guitar. Those old coots who love their handsaws and have nothing but disdain for robotic assembly lines in Japan are neighbors to the man who says that a guitar-led band has soul, while a band that clicks and buzzes with Grooveboxes and Moogs is writing the soundtrack for a lifeless wasteland. Rockism, of course, is more complex than this, involving celebrity and the lipsync and more, but the question of instrumentation is a big one. And speaking as someone more in tune with the strum than the click, I’m curious to know exactly where that boundary between meaning and sentiment is. And something tells me that Rolling Stones' Top 500 Songs that came out last month is probably a good measure, it’s glossy pages the equivalent of a worn tool shed filled with hundreds of hammers and bow saws that are wondrous, rusty and mostly useless. I’m not going to say anything about that list except that most acts on it did a great amount of physical work to create their songs. Guitar strumming, drum pounding, bass slapping or tamborine clapping were involved in probably 95 % of those songs–I don’t have the issue on me right now, so I might be off, but I can’t imagine by much. Fans of electronic music would find little of interest here and that’s a very telling fact. Electronic music (or elements of it in other genres) is quickly becoming ubiquitous, and as a tool it is much more meaningful than most of the music on Rolling Stones’ list.

Why? Because we’re now a nation of button pushers. Working smarter, not working harder, is the ethic of the day. Who needs James Brown live when we can loop “baby, baby, baby” over and over again and get it perfect every time. Mr. Brown might have been "the hardest working man in showbusiness,” but he’s no match for binary code. Any emaciated under-exercised pale cube jockey will tell you that.

Of course, I'm a sentimental bastard and you will never ever take my copy of Blonde on Blonde away. Well, at least not until I get it on my iTunes.

You know, we have a lot of hard work to do today. Or, The only way the center is ever gonna get better.

2004-12-22T01:08:00.000-08:00

So, I ended up picking the satisfied lady in the songwriter's contest I wrote about yeaterday. And having surpassed that test of my endurance, I finished up the track list for my little sister's Christmas mix CD. Things that I learned during this process: that Tegan & Sarah album is pretty rad and I am into a disproportionate amount of depressing music. Hopefully the Joy Division won't bring her down. But if it does, Jonathan Richman is there for her.

"Do You Remember Rock 'n' Roll Radio?" by The Ramones
"Four Leaf Clover" by Badly Drawn Boy
"Government Center" by Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers
"The Legionnaire's Lament" by The Decemberists
"Float On" by Modest Mouse
"Jezebel" by Iron & Wine
"Disorder" by Joy Division
"Micronomic" by Lali Puna
"Evolution" by Gift Of Gab
"Future" by Cut Copy
"Kissing The Lipless" by The Shins
"California" Low
"Take Me Anywhere" by Tegan & Sara
"Less Than Zero" by Elvis Costello
"It's Been Raining" by Kimya Dawson
"The Sound Of Settling" by Death Cab For Cutie
"Damaged Goods" by Gang Of Four
"Shady Lane" by Pavement
"At The Hop" by Devendra Banhart
"Let The Distance Keep Us Together" by Britt Daniel
"Cotton" by the Mountain Goats

I head for Wisconsin tomorrow. 8 inches of snow. A low of 4 degrees last weekend. I will be wearing layers and layers of threadbare T-shirts and cardigans, as well as the gloves my dad wore in 1976. And my family will make fun of me.

Confronting the "other." Or, A more pretentious title.

2004-12-20T22:14:00.001-08:00

I’m listening to a song called "A Lonely Lovers Game." It’s a duet. Slow piano piece. The woman is melodramatic, the man is a little pompous—a little like a Phantom of the Opera duet. It’s the third song I’ve listened to in the last 20 minutes. They all have one thing in common: the fact that I have no idea who these people are.

The discs were delivered to me to judge for a local songwriter’s association contest. It’s the second year I’ve done it. And, for the second year in a row it’s my, um, most interesting listening session. Both years they’ve told me I’m going to get the "rock" category, and then I end up with one or two "rock" tracks and about six "other." Seems like "rock" is on the wane with songwriters these days.

"Other" apparently means "with a tempo," so I’ve got a couple Stevie Nicks rip-offs, both with tearin’ guitar solos, and a song that sounds like a brilliantly satisfied woman doing a sort of loungy middle-eastern rumba and one with a guy who sounds like Clint Black, but this guy enjoys repeating his choruses a hell of a lot more. The weird thing isn’t how random these styles are, but the fact that I don’t have any clues as to how I should feel about them before I pop them in the stereo. Each package contains a CD with a song title on it and a lyric sheet. That’s it. No band name. One of the lyric sheets had some puffy lettering, which made me think they might be super-zany ska, but it was just one of those Stevie Nicks rip-offs. I’m so accustom to getting something. A one sheet, CD art, band photos. At least a band name for Christ's sake.

Okay, I’m overplaying any frustration I might have. But, dammit, it’s weird. It’s like hearing a great song on the radio, waiting for the name and never getting it. Except there’s no radio station to call or look up on the web to get the artist’s name. It’s just me and the song.

It shouldn’t be this weird.

But right now it’s a toss up between the satisfied lady and the more convincing Stevie Nicks. I need a couple more listens.

So, now I’m off to Peacock lane, a nearby street with houses and houses of Christmas lights. I’m sure I’ll have a story about it.

Oh, and I switched up some stuff on my conventional year-end list. I threw in the Cure album, which I just kind of forgot about, and the DFA Compilation #2, which I finally got just a couple weeks ago. And with that, the best albums list is finally almost finalized. But soon I’ll be changing the best Portland band.

Looking for an Elliott Smith song without drugs, drinking or puking. Or, making a mix CD for my kid sister.

2004-12-19T23:53:00.001-08:00

Here I sit on a Sunday night contemplating the appropriateness of Devendra Banhart's free-love-with-farm-animals lyricism to young children. About an hour ago I gave up all hope of finding an Elliott Smith song to put on the Christmas mix CD I'm making for my 12 year old sister, Emi, and I can't help but wonder, "Am I doing this right?" Why am I avoiding good songs about questionable behaviour? Those are the always the best. Aren't I giving my sis a completely skewed idea of what music should be? Wasn't I listening to NWA and the Dead Kennedys when I was 12? This whole mix CD for a minor thing is hard work. I appreciate even more the tapes my cousin Kurt made me when I was a kid.

I don't think anyone would say that everything is appropriate for the junior mix tape. But it's hard to know where to draw the line. My cousin put "Holiday in Cambodia" on that first mixtape when I was about 12, which was fine with me. "Holiday"? Well that sounds nice. "Cambodia"? Do they have camels there? I wasn't that stupid, but I didn't have any clue what the hell that song was about in the exact same way I had no idea what "Born in the U.S.A." was about. I liked 'em both. That guy is going on holiday with a guy named Pol Pot and this guy is killing the yellow man (I always pictured Pac Man as the cartoonish victim). That's cool. I think it’s Emi’s right to be confused like that.

So, I guess Devendra is in and I'll look over the Smith albums again. And some Wolf Eyes, maybe?

Someone asked about the name of the upcoming Sleater-Kinney release. The album will be called Entertain according to www.pauseandplay.com/cdfront.htm.

Would you call Modest Mouse fans "Mouseketeers"? Or how Isaac Brock turned me into an asshole.

2004-12-18T16:55:00.000-08:00

Walking to the Modest Mouse show at the Crystal Ballroom last night, a couple things occurred to me. 1. The last band I saw perform for 5 nights straight was the backing band for my High School show choir during a particularly intense tour through Germany. 2. I was skipping a friend's holiday/birthday party--complete with an ugly holiday sweater contest--to see a band that I had already logged about 4 hours with during the previous four days.

For those of you who do not live in this soggy city, the band, riding a modern rock radio wave, sold out the Ballroom (cap. 1800) for five consecutive nights. Leadman Isaac Brock is a Portlander and this was a way for him to give back to the community, I guess. Although, to be cynical, a five night stand at $20 a head in the Ballroom adds up to $180,000, and whatever cut they get of that must be a nice perk to add to the goodwill.

So, why did a night of sing-alongs to angry self-depricating anthems trump a night of sing-alongs to Colonel Sanders' Christmas album and drinking cheap beer? Well it is the holidays and, to be honest, I feel a lot more like screaming "God I do hope you are dead" with a couple thousand strangers than talking to friends about my work week. Horrible, I know. But that's that, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one in town who let someone down to see one or more of the shows. Especiallly considering that Isaac Brock's songs cater to the miserable loner type. I mean, the guy wrote a song about Charles Bukowski.

Miserable or not the crowd at least played the part, screaming along with every pessimistic self-satisfying screed on cue. "Who would want to be such an asshole" they screamed with an ironic smirk during "Bukowski;" "I hope you are dead" they screamed during "Satin in a Coffin;" "You get away from me" they screamed during "Ocean Breathes Salty" and on and on each and every night. Cleansing? Yes it was. But it was also scary. Modest Mouse's songs have to be the most sinister chunk of pop culture right now, taking the whole dialogue from emo's alienation to a willful isolation (which has been a problem for my friends, my country and myself for a while now). Whether or not getting together and screaming "I'm an asshole. You're an asshole." will solve the problem, Brock and Co. hit a nerve.

The band did have to trick people into this realization, though. "Float On," the first single off the band's latest album, Good News for People Who Love Bad News, is just about the happiest song Brock has ever written--it's also one of the most brilliant. Dressed in an anthemic chorus of "We'll all float on," that song took over radio and M2 and introduced a whole lot of people (yes, frat boys and suburbanites) to the band. And the album cover is a bit misleading. Sure it's got arrows piercing a wall on it, but wrapped up in those soft pinks and greens, the album is a gentle comeon, promising nothing, but certainly not indicating the anger within. Unsuspecting teens, tweens and parents bought it and soon they were all singing that they hoped someone was dead. Isn't that the one thing you aren't suppose to say. I mean no one even really says that about Osama Bin Laden. But here, for the fifth night in a row I'm saying it with a bunch of strangers and my buddy Mike. And by the time I'm screaming it, I'm not even thinking about that party anymore. I, asshole.

I'm sorry. Am I boring you?

2004-12-17T15:55:00.000-08:00

So, my editor just called my top ten list for 2004 "conventional." "Conventional?" I ask. "How?" "Well, I just mean that I've actually heard of all these artists." Of course she has. She's my editor. Anyway, the top-ten including my forced witticisms and word-play will be published in Willamette Week next Wednesday. But, as a teaser, I've posted my top 30 and then some other year-end lists. And, yeah, I'm sure some of this is misspelled, but I've got a bad Modest Mouse hangover and copy editing ain't on the agenda today. Enjoy.

2004’s Top Albums
1. Devendra Banhart, Nino Rojo
2. Kanye West, College Dropout
3. Arcade Fire, Funeral
4. The Hold Steady, The Hold Steady Almost Killed Me
5. duo 505, Late
6. The Mountain Goats, We Shall All Be Healed
7. Joanna Newsom, The Milk Eyed Mender
8. Modest Mouse, Good News for People Who Love Bad News
9. Candi Staton, Self-titled
10. Green Day, American Idiot
11. Viva Voce, The Heat Can Melt Your Brain
12. Dizzee Rascal, Showtime
13. The Futureheads, Self-titled
14. Interpol, Antics
15. Richard Buckner, Dents & Shells
16. Sonic Youth, Sonic Nurse
17. The Thermals, Fuckin’ A
18. The Eagles of Death Metal, Peace Love Death Metal
19. DFA Comp. #2
20. The Streets, A Grand Don't Come for Free
21. Dosh, Pure Trash
22. Air, Talkie Walkie
23. John Tejada, Logic Memory Center
24. Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, Shake the Sheets
25. The Good Life, Album of the Year
26. Tegan & Sarah, So Jealous
27. Psychic TV, Godstar: Thee Director’s Cut
28. Franz Ferdinand, s/t
29. The Cure, s/t
30. Cut Copy, Bright Like Neon Love
*Bonus: DJ N-Wee, The Slack Album (The Black Album/Slanted and Enchanted mash-up)

2004’s Top Portland Albums
1. Viva Voce, The Heat Can Melt Your Brain
2. The Thermals, Fuckin’ A
3. Richmond Fontaine, Post to Wire
4. Dolorean, Violence in the Snowy Fields
5. Corrina Repp, It’s Only the Future
6. Josh Hodges, Sexton Blake
7. Blitzen Trapper, Field Rexx
8. Talkdemonic, Mutiny Sunshine
9. The Helio Sequence, Love and Distance
10. Blanket Music, Cultural Norms
*Bonus: Modest Mouse, Good News For People Who Love Bad News (Isaac Brock lives in P-town. The rest of the band doesn’t.)

2004’s Biggest Dissapointments:
1. Le Tigre, This Island
2. PJ Harvey, Uh Huh Her
3. Travis Morrison, Travistan
4. U2, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
5. R.E.M., Around the Sun
*Bonus: Bjork, Medulla (Solely for the throat singer)

What Will Most Likely Be Awesome in 2005 (Some album titles not available)
1. Low, The Great Destroyer
2. The Decemberists
3. Spoon, The Beast and Dragon are Adored
4. New Gorillaz album with Danger Mouse and De La Soul
5. Frank Black, Honeycomb (guests: Al Green, Lucinda Williams, Cheap Trick, The Band)
6. Billy Corgan’s solo album
7. Flaming Lips, At War with the Mystics
8. GNR, Chinese Democracy
9. Lauryn Hill
10. Bright Eyes
11. ODB, Dirt McGirt
12. Sleater-Kinney, Entertain
13. Kanye West, Late Registration
14. Queens of the Stone Age
15. Al Green
*Bonus: Soul Coughing reissues

What Will Most Likely Suck in 2005
1. D.M.C. (formerly of Run-D.M.C.), Checks, Thugs and Rock n' Roll (guests: late Jam Master Jay, Kid Rock, Korn's Fieldy, Sarah McLachlan, Limp Bizkit's DJ Lethal)
2. Paris Hilton
3. Limp Bizkit (Wes Borland rejoined, which means nothing really)
4. New Weezer
5. New Billy Idol
*Bonus: Billy Corgan solo album