P.S.

Dan Beirne at Said the Gramophone just posted his own 'visual accompaniment' for this song by Canadian indie band Sunset Rubdown.

Download this video and play it in QuickTime or your iPod or wherever you tend to do such things:
Sunset Rubdown - "Us Ones In Between"

The video itself is basically about 48 seconds of unexplained gloomy imagery and slow motion footage of cars driving backwards in the rain, followed by credits. But the credits are where the real genius lies here. Beirne implies an entire dramatic backstory in simple, suggestive, centered text. The cast of characters include GIRL (herself), HER FATHER (himself), HER CAB DRIVER, HER PAINTING TEACHER, HER ACCOUNTANT, and dozens of others who never make actual appearances in the film proper. The rest is a laundry list of line items, chronicaling where she was, who she talked to, who she made love to, her favorite story, what she drank, what she wore, who she met, what she looked like, who she told off, what she said to him, how long it took her to make big decisions, her best dream, where she worked, how she broke up with people, how she grew up, and ultimately, how she died.

Beirne simply gives us the soundtrack and a random collection of whos, whats, and wheres, and leaves it to us to imagine the context. I love it.

P.S.

Funny enough, as I was watching the aformentioned masterpiece of credits, Lamkini and I were in the middle of a conversation about how people often write emails and put all the stuff they really wanted to say in the first place in the postscript. This is apparently a very effective way deliver bad news or mention things that you're not quite comfortable with being forthright about.

We came up with a few examples:

Dear Lamkini,

It's such a nice day out. What's going on later? Beers?

D-Mac

P.S. I need your rent check ASAP.

---

Dear D-Mac,

I really love Italian food.

Lamkini

P.S. I accidentally slept with your ex-girlfriend. Talk later?

---

Lamkini,

What's UP man? How's it hanging?? This is Dr. Patel just writing to say hey. Did you catch that Hawks game last night by any chance? Whoah, I mean... I don't know if you're a big basketball fan, but that was a nail-biter if I ever saw one. You never really know how those games will turn out until the very last second, you know? Anyway, just saying a quick hello. Don't be a stranger, okay?

Regards,
Dr. Patel, MD

P.S. Your test results came back from the lab. You have a very rare debilitating disease called chronic lamkosis and you probably only have approximately five minutes to live. Later!

---

D-Mac,

Bank of America here. The old B-of-A. Hey you!! Man, this week has been so long. I can't wait for the weekend--we're closed you know. Aaaaaanyway, just wanted to shout atcha. Holla back when you can.

Sincerely,
Bank of America, Credit Card Services

P.S. Someone apparently stole your credit card and bought a giraffe. It was $400,000. You need to fix that. Soon.

The Greatest Mixtape Ever Made

My senior year of high school Melissa Metts gave me the best mixtape I had, and still have, ever heard. I was in love with Melissa Metts all year long and I never told her. She still doesn't know. We were in the same AP Calculus class, and she sat two rows over from me. The person who sat between us was my friend Kevin.

I mean I guess Kevin was my friend. We both played on the varsity soccer team and always cracked each other up in Calculus by doing impressions of our teacher, Dr. Krueger, and I helped Kevin study for the AP Exam (I don't think he passed). But Kevin and I weren't like "real" friends. We didn't hang out much outside of school, or call each other, or tell each other we were in love with Melissa Metts. So Kevin's sitting there was definitely an inconvenience for me.

Melissa was about 5'3" with brown, sort of wavy, short-ish hair. She was undeniably "cute," which I don't think was necessarily something you tried to cultivate if you hung out with the people she hung out with. She was a total smart-ass and had the best smile ever. Something happened over the summer before my senior year and that whole Grunge/Seattle-Glorification thing started happening. It seemed like when we got back to school half the girls had gone out and bought striped knee-socks and mini-skirts and dyed their hair so it was darker--and less innocent-looking maybe. Melissa hung with that group of people. They all tried to act hardcore and hardly any of them really were.

Melissa's best friend was Lindsay. Lindsay really was hardcore. She had black hair, wore big "I will totally fuck you up" boots and ripped jeans, drew fake tattoos on her arms with ballpoint pens, had a pierced nose, and made her own t-shirts by taking white undershirts and a Sharpie marker and writing something on the front like "think for yr self." Lindsay did not approve of my soccer-playing, cornfed whiteboy ass. She sat behind Melissa, which was also hugely inconvenient for me.

Somehow during the school year Melissa and I started passing notes across the room. We inevitably got on the subject of music, which led her to realize I didn't know any of the bands she liked. She offered to make me a mixtape. Having this girl that I was obsessed with make me a mixtape was obviously a huge coup and a great sign, and if I'd had any skills or any clue about how to act with girls I would've immediately made her my little grunge lovergirl. But no. All I got was a mixtape. But it was, as I have said, the best mixtape I've ever heard.

I'm going to list the songs and let that be the end of this blog (by the way, it might be obvioius, but I still have this mixtape after all this time). The songs are great, and this tape was how I got interested to a bunch of great bands (most prominently The Pixies, which changed my life...seriously) that were totally different than anything I listened to at time, but the best thing about the tape was that in between every other song or so Melissa had recorded herself talking and making little jokes and being just about as cute as a person can stand to listen to. I know, I know...now it seems obvious how into me she was, but if you can believe it, I had absolutely no clue then. You can slap me the next time we meet.

SIDE A:
Here Comes Your Man - Pixies
Broken Face - Pixies
Time For Livin' - Beastie Boys
Allison's Starting To Happen - Lemonheads
I'm Waiting For The Man - Velvet Underground
Head On - Pixies
Suggestion - Fugazi
Jane Says (Live in Japan) - Jane's Addiction
Sunday Morning - Velvet Underground

SIDE B:
Lightening - Ultra Vivid Scene
Caribou - Pixies
I Been Tired - Pixies
Dollar Bill - Screaming Trees
We Are Each Other - Beautiful South
Bone Machine - Pixies
Waiting Room - Fugazi
Sweet Misery Blues - Violent Femmes
Black Girls - Violent Femmes

Galactic @ The Roxy - Point / Counterpoint

POINT: By Lamkini

I can't speak for Dmac, but I'm not a big jam band music fan. I don't dig the music unless it's like the top one percent of the top one percent of skill level, and I don't generally dig glow sticks, or trippy pseudo-hippy bellydancing. I will say that I do love how much jam band fans love jam band music. They fucking LOVE being at jam band shows, and that's definitely not the case with like the disaffected Emo cutter crowd that you find at...well, a lot of shows I like. So basically what I'm saying is that I went to this Galactic show already not liking the brand of music they play so take everything I'm about to say with a grain of salt.

I hated the Galactic show. I hated the skunky smell that filled the air while people furtively hit joints deep in the crowd. I hated the mediocre musicianship. I hated the run-down venue. I hated the overpriced drinks. I hated the overpriced ticket (thank you Ticketmaster). I hated the opening bands. I hated it.

I did like a few things, and to prove it I will now tell you what they were. Everyone I saw at this show was in a good mood. That was awesome. Good vibe in there. The drummer for Galactic, Stanton Moore, was fantastic, just fantastic. Stanton Moore was basically the only thing I liked about Galactic, and luckily he had a drum solo in every single song (ok that did get old, but whatever, work it if you got it, right?). Galactic's second set was much better than their first set. Starting with the first song, which was apparently a Tower Of Power cover, and continuing into the second song, which was sort of an old-school, James Brownesque soul/funk groove, the grooves were much more accessible and easily identifiable. Also, one of the opening bands, Stooges Music Group, joined Galactic on a good portion of the songs for the evening, and the extra horns added a lot to the overall band sound.

I heard Galactic used to have a guy who was lead singer and was amazing but he's left the band and the rest of the band decided to keep on truckin' without him. I really would have liked to have seen Galactic in that formation, but I doubt it would've helped me like them more. I found myself the entire evening wishing I was at a Karl Denson's Tiny Universe show (find out where KDTU is playing and buy a ticket NOW if you haven't seen them). The level of musicianship in Galactic, excluding the drummer, was just not up to the level it needed to be at to be an all instrumental band. The grooves didn't have that thing that makes me (not a dancer) wanna dance, nor did they have that thing that makes me hum the melodies or keep bobbing my head long after I've left the show.

In the end, I left the show humming the theme song to Late Night With Conan O'Brien, and Galactic didn't even play that. Max Weinberg and the Max Weinberg 7--now that's a kickass band.

COUNTERPOINT: By D-Mac

I actually can speak for D-Mac, so I will. I would not consider myself a "big jam band music fan" either, by anyone's standards, but I do appreciate good music, whichever unfortunate moniker happens to be attached to it. Some of the bands I really like happen to be lumped in with the "jam band" scene, which I have no problem with. If this means I have to sit through a five-piece electric kazoo ensemble doing their best reproduction of the 33-minute "Mountain Jam" off the Allman Brothers Band's Eat A Peach record in its entirety while saving my spot on the lawn for the funk/soul band that I came to see then so be it. I'm a trooper. I won't promise to like it but I'll keep an open mind.

Now admittedly, my musical palate is quite selective, however my concert-going standards are probably not as high as Lamkini's are. Being more of a perfectionist (in a good way) with his own music, Lamkini also demands the most out of the musicians he pays his hard-earned Lincolns (or Jacksons in this case, thanks Ticketmaster) to see. I totally respect that. I don't always agree with it, but I respect it.

After reading Lamkini's review of last Friday's Galactic show, I must say that even when applying the prescribed amount of salt, I still find some of his points a little hard to swallow. Allow me to expound.

If you don't know what you're getting yourself into before going to a "jam band" show, then I have a nice piece of real estate I'd like to show you under a large rock in The Middle Of Nowhere, USA. Overpriced tickets, glow sticks, pseudo-hippy dancing, and crappy opening bands are all pretty much par for the course at a show like this, but you won't find more a more loyal fan than a jam-band fan. Why is this? Is it the stellar musicianship? Not typically. Is it the radio play these bands are getting? Absolutely not. These are not just fans, but a community - nay, a family - of like-minded individuals who have all set out to do one thing: enjoy themselves. I'd argue that this genre of music, moreso than almost any other I can think of, thrives on the precept that the listener is responsible for his or her own good time. You can only get out what you put into it. If you want to see flawless musicians flaunting their pristine instrumentatal prowess, this probably isn't the show for you. If you want to stare at your shoes and feel sorry for yourself for a couple of hours, I know of several other shows around town that you can go see (I'll probably be at some of them). But going to a Galactic show and complaining about the psuedo-hippie kids is like vacationing in Dubai and complaining about all the "furinners".

My point is that I had a good time at the Galactic show. No, it wasn't the best show I've ever been to. It wasn't even the best Galactic show I've ever been to. But it was a good time nonetheless. I wasn't blown away (except by the drummer who was indeed fantastic) but I wasn't disappointed either.

COUNTER-COUNTERPOINT: By Lamkini

Dmac, you ignorant slut. No seriously, there was nothing absolutely sucktastic about this show for you??

COUNTER-COUNTER-COUNTERPOINT: By D-Mac

Okay, okay fine. The one hilarious nod to the awfulness Lamkini depicts that I'll offer is about the second opener, Papa Mali. By the time we got to the venue and paid for our overpriced White Russians (which I had promised Lamkini I'd splurge for if he came to the show), Mali was just finishing up one of the last songs of his solo set. We noticed he was using digital looping with effects pedals and had already built up his own virtual wall-of-sound against which he could just sit back and attempt to engage the crowd in a semi-intelligable dialogue, sort of like a poor man's Keller Williams. "Drink a little beer. Have a little wine. Smoke a little kind. Everybody keep happy," he repeated until he could elicit some sort of response from anybody in the crowd. After recieving some small level of participation, he continued, "Chicken fly high, chicken fly low, chicken fly high, chicken fly low...," and continued rambling in this fashion until the end of the song. I have no idea what this song was about, but Mali assured us afterwords in his thick New Orleans accent that "That was a true story."

THE LAST WORD: By Lamkini

So in the end, we all survived it, I with my snobby-bitch attitude and Dmac with his open-mindedness and glorious promises of White Russians. The End.

Make Right With You

Okay here's what we did. Dmac and I both like this song by Luke Temple called "Make Right With You." We thought it totally sounded like a song that would be in a movie. For all we know it is in a movie. So Dmac gave us both an assignment: to write a movie scene in which this song appears and specify which director would direct. We both wrote our respective scenes without discussing with each other. Here they are. Listen to the song while you read the scene descriptions. Read slowly. It's better that way. Trust us. Okay here goes.

Luke Temple - Make Right With You


Lamkini:
DIRECTOR: Cameron Crowe
SCENE DESCRIPTION: Montage. Boy messed up. It is raining. Boy walks in rain to Girl's house. He's wearing jeans, a grey t-shirt, a denim jacket with a black Ramones button on the left pocket, black Chuck Taylors. Boy walks in gutter not on sidewalk. Cars pass. Rain. Boy knocks on Girl's door. Girl doesn't answer. Boy knocks again. Girl stands on other side of door quiet, leans against door, no tears, no expression, cat walks in and out of her legs. Boy puts head against door. Their heads would be touching if it weren't for the door. Boy leaves. Boy at home. Boy cutting and pasting pictures making a collage. Flowers, sunshine, construction paper hearts. Boy looks over finished collage. The rain runs down the window. Song ends. Fade out.


Dmac:
DIRECTOR: Wes Anderson
SCENE DESCRIPTION: This scene appears about 2/3 of the way through the movie, and takes place some time after the protagonist, played by Luke Wilson, gets in a huge quarrel with his love interest (some up-and-coming girl-next-door type, like Scarlett Johansson pre "Lost In Translation" or Natalie Portman pre "Garden State") about socks or something. Some time has passed where we see both characters upset, but getting on with their lives. They're not on speaking terms. As this scene begins, it's late evening in the Spring, and the sun is still out. Luke Wilson's character is at a company softball game with all of his co-horts. Everyone except him seems to be having a good time. He's on the bench, sitting next to Vince Vaughn, spitting sunflower seeds and shooting bull. Vaughn tosses Wilson a can of beer and opens up one for himself. "What's with the pity party, man," he says, "We're only down two runs, and I'm about to tie this thing up." Vaughn's next up to bat, so he steps up to the plate, beer in hand. You can hear cheering from a little girl's voice behind the fence. Vaughn looks back, and smiles at his young daughter and lovely wife, who is something like 12 months pregnant. The wife smiles back, and Wilson notices how happy they are. Vaughn puts his beer down on home plate and says, "Daddy's gonna hit a homerun for you baby." He takes a swing at the first pitch and cracks one out, it looks like it's going all the way. He starts to run the bases and looks back to say something to Wilson, but sees there's just an empty spot on the bench where he was sitting.

[cue music: "When all goes sideways and all goes blue..."]

Cut to Luke Wilson running as fast as he can down the street. He's flashing back to various moments he and his girlfriend had shared, and he's remembering how happy he was. We cut back and forth between him, running down the street, Vince Vaughn rounding the bases, and old memories of he and his girlfriend. By the time the song is over, Wilson at the girl's doorstep, she opens the door and he starts to apologize. She doesn't let him finish, and plants a big mushy wet kiss on him, and we realize that it's okay now. They're back together.

[end scene]

Will Death Cab For Cutie

In answer to the question you're going to ask, yes, we are getting paid outrageous sums of money to write four thousand blogs about Death Cab For Cutie and any song, video, concert, and digestive event they produce. Not really.

Okay so yes, we're writing alot about Death Cab. We love them. Here's another one. GOD!

Yesterday I was complaining to Dmac that I had to put the kibosh on the advances of yet another young vixen who was batting her vixen-y eyelashes at young lamkini. Okay it wasn't nearly that self-aggrandizing. It was more like, "Dmac...sniffle...Why can't I love?!" Or something like that. So Dmac, being the kickass music addict he is and being a good friend emailed me this song:

Death Cab - Your Heart Is An Empty Room

The great thing about Death Cab, especially in this song, is that they don't try to do too much. They find a cool vibe, a few cool chords, they lay it down, they don't deviate. This is not Phish. Don't get me wrong, I think Phish are amazingly talented, but Phish wouldn't know what to do with "Your Heart Is An Empty Room." They'd turn it into a Samba where one guy sings while playing an immersion blender.

Anyway. I love how Death Cab controls their songs. They aren't gonna careen out of control. They aren't going to try to go over your head and show you how smart they are or how many music classes they took. That's refreshing. It's modest and intimate and kickass. And Ben Gibbard's voice is cool.

Not A Role Model

I heard this badass Violent Femmes cover earlier today on KEXP and thought I'd share.

Gnarls Barkley - Gone Daddy Gone (click the track in the myspace player)

Who is Gnarls Barkley you ask?

Well, the GB website spins quite a yarn on this mysterious personage:

...Clinton Jacks works as a cook in a Waffle House restaurant near the South Carolina coast. “One night back in the year 2000,” he recollects, “I saw Danger Mouse come in here. Cee-Lo was with him. And they had this other dude with them, dressed up like H.R. Pufnstuf. Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo ate big meals, but H.R. Pufnstuf only wanted hash browns. Then they left, Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo, but H.R. Pufnstuf stayed around for hours. He must’ve had twenty cups of coffee. I went in the bathroom, and when I came out, he was gone. But he left a $500 tip on the table. And he left a little note that said, ‘Compliments to the chef. Gnarls Barkley.’”...

From what I can gather from other sources, GB is the combined alter-ego of hip-hop magnate (and Atlanta native) Cee-Lo Green and Brian Burton a.k.a. DJ Danger Mouse, who was nominated for a Grammy for producing the second Gorillaz album, Demon Days.

The Femmes cover is part of their new album, St. Elsewhere, scheduled to be released in the US on May 9th. You can pre-order it on Amazon.

Listen to more on the official website or the myspace page.

Jackie McLean (1931-2006)

Apparently all my blogs are going to be about death for a while.

Jackie McLean died last Friday (March 31st). If you're not a jazz fan or just don't know who he was, he played alto sax with the likes of Miles, Sonny Rollins, Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, and so on.

I came to know about Jackie McLean a couple of years ago through an interview on NPR's Fresh Air. Hearing McLean in that interview I was immediately struck by how modest and generous he was, how willing to answer any question. He spoke so highly of Bud Powell, whom he credited with really giving him his fundamental "music education."

McLean seemed to be able to see no faults in his heroes. When asked if he got angry the time Charlie Parker took a sax McLean had rented and sold it for heroin, McLean said that Parker was a complex man with complex problems he couldn't begin to understand and that he could never be angry at Parker. Amazing. He seemed like he was like that all the time, just a chilled out, respectful, grateful, devoted musician.

I'm not sure what it was about Jackie McLean that got my attention when I heard that interview. He has a way of speaking slowly and deliberately almost like he's thinking about which words he's going to use and then listening to them when they come out of his mouth to make sure they sound right. It's kind of hypnotic to listen to him speak. I thought when I heard him play sax it would sound similar, maybe a Miles Davis kind of drawl, smooth, cool, sexy. But it's not. He's explosive and powerful and strong and can hit all the high notes that Miles with all his "cool" can't come close to.

I'm not the biggest jazz fan in the whole world. I know what I like, and I know what I love, and I know what I don't like. Usually I come by music through wanting to hear the other musicians Miles played with or whatever. It was cool to hear Jackie McLean speak and immediately want to hear his music.

Jackie McLean - "Jackie's Ghost"

Stopping for Directions

I know, I know... ANOTHER Death Cab post. Please, bear with me.

Yesterday, DCF4C officially released Directions, the "visual companion" DVD to their album Plans. It's a collection of 11 music videos, or short films, each inspired by one of the songs on the album, and each created by a different director, limited only by budget and time.

The band had been previewing one of these each week on their website over the past couple of months, but I only managed to catch the very last video, "Stable Song" by director Aaron Stewart-Ahn, before they took it down.

I was anxious to see the rest of the films on the DVD, so I stopped by the bookstore on the way home from work yesterday to pick up a copy. My efforts at Borders were fruitless, so I decided to try luck at Best Buy (I needed to get a new remote control for my DVD player anyway so I thought, two birds, one stone). When I got to the store I noticed a tour bus parked out front, which I hypothesized might be Edwin McCain's because I remembered he had been in town the night before to sing the national anthem at the Braves home opener, and there was a big "EDWIN MCCAIN" logo and graphics painted on the side of the trailer, so I just put two and two together. "Maybe Edwin is a fan of Death Cab too," I thought, so I parked the car and hurried inside before he snatched up the last copy. When I got inside Edwin was not buying anything at all, rather he was up on stage playing songs off his new album, Lost In America.

Apparently, I had shown up just in time to catch the last few songs of his in-store performance, but not wanting to seem like I had just come by myself to catch a glimpse of some semi-famous soft-rocker in an appliance store, I quickly found the movie aisle and focused intently on the new releases. The staff were all running around like it was Rex Manning Day at Empire Records, a couple of guys were playing X-Box, and the few dozen other patrons who were there all stood crowded around the stage waiting for Edwin to finish playing already so he could hurry up and sign their merch. Not me though. I was shopping. Okay, so I may have tapped my feet a little during the la-dee-da-dee-da's at the end of "Gramercy Park Hotel" but can you blame me? The song's effing catchy. Let he who is without any guilty pleasures cast the first stone.

So it turned out Best Buy didn't have the new Death Cab DVD either, so I was going to have to be more crafty. By now it was getting late, and I was getting pretty hungry, so I decided I was going to give this thing one more shot before calling off the hunt. If Criminal Records, the local know-it-all music boutique, didn't have it then nobody would. So made my way to Little Five Points and went inside to have a look. Not only did they have it, but there was also some sort of Built to Spill album release party thing going on there for their new album, You In Reverse. I mean, Doug Martsch wasn't there or anything, or Edwin McCain, or even Rex Manning, but they had free pizza. Who can turn down free pizza? I pretended to look at some used CDs while I wolfed down five slices (hey, I said I was hungry), then paid for my merch and headed home.

It wasn't until I got home and popped my shiney new "visual companion" into the DVD player that I remembered I forgot to get that remote control at Best Buy. Stupid Edwin McCain!

You can check out the trailer on their website, order a copy on Amazon, or download the videos on iTunes.

UPDATE:

In addition to the 11 videos filmed for the DVD, there are also a couple of bonus tracks, including this live footage filmed on the camera phone of an "annoying fan" who demands to hear "Talking Like Turnstiles" at a DC4C show and then procedes to force his way on stage and get chased off by security. Antics ensue. The "fan" is actually filmmaker Lance Bangs pulling one over on the audience, and other unsuspecting fans.

Mr. Gibbard, You've got some splainin to do...

I'm not mad at you, Ben Gibbard. I'm just, well... disappointed.

Last night's show at the Tabernacle in Atlanta just left me with a bitter taste in my mouth. I could tell from the start that something was awry. When you walked out on stage solo, sat down at the keyboards and began to play "Passenger Seat", you just seemed a little out of it. I don't know if it was a slight crack in your voice, or your apparent frustration with the microphone you kept adjusting, or the way you just never seemed to get comfortable with the crowd, but you weren't the same consummate indie-rocker that I saw light up the stage at Variety Playhouse twice in '03 and '04. In your defense, I'd imagine having to be so inexorably emo seven nights a week has to take it's toll on you vocally and physically after awhile. You've got to be exhausted by now.

I thought it was brilliant how smoothly you transitioned from "Passenger Seat" into "Different Names For The Same Thing" to open the show. It was the perfect way to hush the crowd and get us prepared for the second half of the second song, where the band comes crashing in with all of the electronic farts and bleeps that we anticipated so eagerly. I was also very pleased to hear "The New Year", "Title and Registration", "Photobooth", among other favorites. It was a good performance, don't get me wrong, but if we're being honest here, I expected better out of you, Benjamin.

Before I go too far, let me assure you that I wouldn't want to say or do anything to jeopardize our almost four-year relationship. We've had such great times together. I still remember the day a co-worker slipped me the new Postal Service album and I listened to it incessantly at work, in the car, at home, in the shower, for weeks on end. I went back and listened to the albums you'd made with your band, Death Cab For Cutie, and eagerly awaited your new releases. I was blown away by Transatlanticism, and then again more recently by Plans. We became fast friends. You always knew the right things to say, and I was such a good listener. It worked. I even introduced you to my friends, and they loved you too. We still do.

But you could have given us a little more last night. Where was that energy you brought to the stage in shows past? Remember when you played "We Looked Like Giants" in '04, and there was that part in the end with the long instrumental outro, and you and Nathan or Michael or Jason, or whomever the drummer was at the time BOTH played dueling drum solos (or duos, I guess) on the SAME drum kit? Remember?? That was... AWESOME! You totally changed that song for me that day. I never really even liked it before, and now I can't listen to it without singing along, "Do you remember the JAMC? And reading aloud from magazines?". You could have played that one again last night, Broseph. Or you could have at least played the one Chris Walla wrote, "Brothers On A Hotel Bed", but you didn't. You can imagine my surprise when in the middle of "The Sound Of Settling" you abruptly announced that well, it was that time of the night and then you barely played the last note of the song before you were already off the stage. What a rip. Sure, you came back out for an encore, including an acoustic "I Will Follow You Into The Dark" and the title track from your previous album, Transatlanticism, but you really had no choice there. It was the least you could have done.

So what was the deal, man? Were you not feeling well? Were you sandbagging for tonight's show? Was it something we did? Sure, I'll admit that we, your fans, have gone through a lot of changes lately. We've grown quite a bit, especially since your getting signed to a major label and the commercial success of your latest album, but what did you expect? Your average fan may be trading in his cardigan and courdoroys for cargos and croakies, but you keep writing radio-friendly gems like "Soul Meets Body" and you're bound to attract patrons of that ilk. Embrace it. Enjoy it. But we're not asking you to pander to it. The rest of us still like you just the way you were in the Barsuk days. We're okay with you and all these new fans you've been gallivanting around with, but just don't drift too far away us, okay?

Sorry for yelling. Now how 'bout some T&R for old times' sake?

Death Cab For Cutie - Title and Registration

I'm glad we had this talk.

Death Cab For Cut-Short

Death Cab played a short set tonight...

Passenger Seat / Different Names For The Same Thing
The New Year
Why You'd Want To Live Here
Title And Registration
Crooked Teeth
Lightness
Photobooth
A Movie Script Ending
Amputations
For What Reason
(bathroom song)
What Sarah Said
Soul Meets Body
Expo '86
The Sound Of Settling

Encore:
I Will Follow You Into The Dark
Transatlanticism

More later, for now off to bed.

The Value Of A Good Education

What follows is a real IM between the two lovable scribes of this here blog. This is what we do all day long when we should be earning money for someone else's beach house in Destin.

Lamkini: dude
Dmac: ?
Lamkini: i'm gonna show you a blog that will make your balls shrink to the size of raisins
Dmac: yikes, i'm not sure i should look at it
Lamkini: haha...it's from that hucksblog guy from yesterday...just awesome... you gotta read this when you get a few mins

Lamkini: ok this is part three in a series, but you can read it and it's awesome. like completely awesome. this guy is amazingly talented.
Lamkini: http://hucksblog.blogspot.com/2005_08_01_hucksblog_archive.html
Lamkini: the one at the top
Lamkini: sorry no
Lamkini: the second one down
Lamkini: DFL III

[Dmac reads the blog.]

Dmac: that's great
Lamkini: right?
Lamkini: sigh...
Lamkini: i just wanna sit around all day and write
Lamkini: and not lift heavy boxes full of paper
Dmac: but somebody has to lift heavy boxes full of paper
Lamkini: why should it be a semi-bilingual, dual degree college graduate, with a great sense of humor and pretty good guitar skills?
Dmac: why, do you know someone more qualified?

[Aaannnd scene.]

This is the writing of the whiner's bio

So I've been immersing myself in the Mates of State albums I picked up at the show at the Variety on Friday night. We showed up a little too late to catch the first opener, Maria Taylor, whom I was looking forward to after checking out the stuff she's got posted on her myspace page. We did, however, get there in time to see the other two openers, Destroyer and Magnolia Electric Co.. I didn't know much about these two bands coming into the show, but I had heard positive reviews so I was hopefully curious. I must admit I was a little disappointed. Okay, I was very disappointed. I won't go into too much detail on these guys, as I'm still trying to convince myself that they weren't that bad. I mean, they've both been enjoying some level of recognition (or hype?) as of late, so there must be something about them that people are responding to, right? There had to be something of substance there, and I was becoming frustrated with myself that I couldn't break the code. What makes this music good, valid, even necessary? If anyone is familiar with these guys and can tell me their take, I'd welcome a second opinion.

The way things were going so far, I felt bad dragging Lamkini to the show. What's worse, he even managed to get us in for free and then ended up bailing after awhile. If only he'd stayed for about twenty more minutes, when Mates of State took the stage with their humble two-piece ensemble. By this time my anticipation had been lowered a notch from hopefully curious to cautiously optimistic, but I still hadn't given up hope. Thankfully, my fears were allayed as the first few notes were played. The combination of Kori's raw synth/organ playing with Jason's loose drumming, along with their conversational vocal dialogue and high-register harmonies, all resonated together to produce a full-bodied sound vastly exceeding the sum of its parts. I had to call my high-school physics teacher after the show to tell him that the Mates of State had just obsoleted the first law of thermodynamics.

Going to see Death Cab play the Tabernacle this Wednesday. They're playing back-to-back sold-out weeknight shows here in Atlanta before going on to play for the Cameron Crazies in Durham (a town that needs a good distraction after LSU dashed the mens b-ball team's hopes for the final four, and the lacrosse team dashed their own hopes for any kind of respectable future).

UPDATE:

Apparently I missed this April Fool's stunt pulled on Mates of State by the openers during the show at Variety. Okay, so despite my earlier comments, I at least have to give these guys some credit for having a sense of humor and the balls, if you will, to pull this off. Well played. Thanks to Dumb Nostalgia, where I found this posted originally.