Celebratory

I watched the Phillies win in the vestibule of the First Unitarian Church on Sean Agnew's laptop. I got a bunch of confetti in my mouth and am pretty much out fourteen dollars considering I (along with mostly everyone else) rolled before Tokyo Police Club even started playing.

The Lemonheads-"Confetti"

(Evan Dando was born in Philadelphia and apparently still has family in Allentown.)

Phillies World Series

Only three games in World Series have been called a tie before the ninth inning: in 1907, 1912 and 1922... due to darkness. Holy shit.

Um, luckily Monday night wasn't called a tie in the midst of the shittiest fucking rain storm of my life. Things at 7th and Pattison were pretty hunky dory until it started. Just a lot of people drinking beer and watching analog television. But as soon as the rain (nearly horifuckingzontal) started, it was like the last few scenes of Children of Men when they're in the refugee camp; fights, people throwing bottles at cars, awful drunk girls. We rolled before the end of the fifth. I was soaked, hadn't been inside for hours and was incredibly nervous for whatever the conclusion would bring.

Lester Bangs-style coverage written for my grandkids coming later today...

Everyone is Everywhere

I think the best part of living in the city is being able to do things on a whim. For example, I heard about this house show in West Philadelphia yesterday, scheduled for earlier tonight. So it was last minute, but I didn't have any plans... so I could go. Just took the subway there with Scotty and Amanda like usual; was able to procure alcohol which is no big deal because there's no driving involved. It's just so easy. But yeah mostly I want to talk about the show.

Everyone Everywhere is this great bunch of dudes (3/4 Temple kids and I see them around all the time) that play just like, this really happy, Promise Ring-style pop-punk. Like (old) TPR, they sing about pretty mundane (or maybe just really specific?) things; partying because an old friend is back from a semester abroad, bike rides, um, houses with no basements. It's really simple stuff. Not really a retread but it's not breaking new ground either, but for some reason I can't get enough of them. They just make me really happy. I got to see them for the first time tonight at the brand new Breakfast and Dessert House (awesome space, but will probably grow into a really whack scene.) On stage they give off this really lovable vibe... like those really nice guys from back home. And they're back in town for like, Thanksgiving or something. And they're all really into it and like me, sometimes say too much (actually that's really just guitarist Tommy Manson but really, for some reason, this band can't do any wrong in my eyes. Why is this?!). The set was great. They have a seven-inch coming out sometime on Flightplan Records... it's been in the works for like, fucking ever. Should be available by the time they play with Lemuria (November 12, Circle of Hope. Cannot waiiiiit.)

Johnny Foreigner headlined. They're from England and are apparently pretty big (10/10 on Drowned in Sound for their debut) over there. I'd never heard them until I heard about the show and I checked them out. It's like, good spazzy pop but I didn't really delve that deep. Tonight, watching them play, all I could think was Los Campesinos!. I mean, their sound, for one, has the same restless, on-edg-and-still-kinda-twee feel to it. Their singers have the same haircuts. They both wear too-small, girl-cut shirts. This whole Campesinos/Foreigner thing was really bothering me for the first part of their set... I just couldn't get into it. LC! have released one of my favorite records of the year and I just kept wishing it was them I was seeing instead of Johnny Foreigner. But like, there was a tipping point somewhere and I really started to feel it. Johnny Foreigner are actually probably the better of the two bands. They're only a three-piece so there's a lot less bullshit and they're not as stylized as LC! can sometimes seem. What I'm saying is is this: they play the same kind of awesome, glitchy, Pavement-centric twee shit I love but it's only the essentials; no glock, no violins, no group-shouts etc. Also, Alexei (vocals) never called me out on Myspace.

Everyone Everywhere
Johnny Foreginer
Septa Green Line (West Philly trolleys=whackest shit ever. Why can't we have a transportation system fit for the 21st century?)

Much Like "New Wave..."

...the Tom Gabel E.P. (I know, right? Where the eff did this come from?) is merely half-good. Listen for yourself: http://www.purevolume.com/tomgabel. "Harsh Realm" and "Anna is a Stool Pigeon" are standouts. Just when I thought I was fucking done with this guy... I go buy tickets to his solo show at the Barbary (November 11 if yr counting) and decide to stream Heart Burns while reading about elevated trains.

I had a dream about elevated trains. I had a dream I was riding the Market-Frankford El all night with my extended family. Um. All this reading about public transportation on Wikipedia has got to stop.

Midterm in the Marnin'

They turned on central heat in my building a few hours ago. It makes this far-off drip/clank noise that's keeping me the fuck up. Someone, make it stop. It's rendering me completely unable to go to sleep!

Crooked Head

I hate it when people like a given band for their "talent." I avoid using talent to describe any band. The best bands lack any sort of talent. They just write good songs. But there's one thing I have to say about Fucked Up: they're a hardcore punk band with some legitimate talent. You know the deal: Canadian band fronted by a self-described 300 pound baby writes six minute punk epics with a situationist bent, satisfying bookish critics and upped-punx alike. Their new album, Chemistry Of Common Life, pushes the band forward in a way that makes a lot of sense. You get the punk rawk, but also piccolo solos, bongos... you know the deal, you've read the reviews. They brought the whole brutal-yet-philosophical-and-high-minded mess to the Barbary last night. It blew people's heads off.

Like any punk show, it's important to talk about the crowd, which, halfway through the first song, had a gaping hole ripped into it. That led to the usual bouncing off of other people business. It was a lot of fun because, this being a Fucked Up show as opposed to, say, a Champion show, one has to keep this up for more than just two minutes at a time. There were a few points where vocalist Pink Eye entered the audience, picked somebody up and used them as a sort of human battering ram to get through the motionless back-half of the room. He also donkey kicked some longhair in the face which was badass.

Fucked Up closed the often ascendant set with a cover of Wire's "12XU;" Fitting, seeing as my soundtrack for the last two weeks of weird frustration has been Wire and Fucked Up. At a time when punk is at a really strange crossroads, Fucked Up, justifiably, rise above both trendy bullshit and those trashy kids in G.B.H. shirts longing for a scene they were too late to ever be a part of.

Living Is All About This

I get two phone calls about a free Death Set show in Center City. All ages, free alcohol. I have to write a journalism paper. After an hour of contemplation/research, I decide to follow my heart and Josh's alcoholism; we go to the show. I drank a lot of Sparks. I don't remember much except Scotty and Josh both played drums for Ninja Sonik, I made a likely fatal mistake, Gabby took a fuck load of pictures, lots of people broke up with their boyfriends and Josh crowd surfed during the Death Set's set. I do definitely know it was a transient exceperience. Especially afterwards: thousands of people on the corner of Broad and Market; high fives, slow taxis, traffic as far as the eye can see... Phillies are in the world series, motherfucking Death Set.

CRUSADES! CRUSADES!

I fucking love this band. They're called Fucked Up and I probably should have gotten into them sooner. What could be better than a group of Canadians led by a schizophrenic, three-hundred pound situationist playing six-minute hardcore punk epics? It's like Black Flag but bigger, longer, uncut. Less neck muscle. They're coming to the Barbary Saturday with the recently-heralded and kinda sexy girl group Vivian Girls. I might break my neck. It'll be worth it. The time is ripe... I need to get my frustrations out at a really violently passionate punk show.

I'm feeling really light right now... I was planning to stay up all night cramming in the Tech Center for the history midterm I thought I had tomorrow. I got through a lot of reading before it dawned on me it's not tomorrow but Monday the 20th... Regardless, I'm staying up late.

Did you know that Magnolia is the best movie ever? Ever have that feeling at the end of a record or a movie or television show where you just want to cry for no reason other than that what you just witnessed was, like, for lack of a better and less general word, amazing? Magnolia gave me that feeling. I'm not sure if it's because one of the characters really hit close to home, John C. Reilly's utmost purity or just the shear bulk of the film I just watched but I got it. Please watch this movie. Every day for two weeks. The soundtrack is very good also. Tonight, I described Aimee Mann as a morose Sheryl Crowe...

Other things that made/make me feel this way:
The Hold Steady's Separation Sunday. Somewhere in the middle of "How a Resurrection Really Feels."
The Titus Andronicus show at Haverford, twice. When Patrick opened the set with a cover of "Going Away to College," and later when they played "Albert Camus" by my fucking request.
Toy Story 2.
Arcade Fire's "No Cars Go" and "My Body is a Cage" back to back.

Actually, I don't think I cried at the shear amazingness of these things but the feeling that overcame me was something akin to what I got from Magnolia...

Things that don't make me cry but feel amazing:
Two forties to the face on a Monday night.
My bed.

Divorce Song

And the license said
You had to stick around until I was dead
But if you're tired of looking at my face I guess I already am
But you've never been a waste of my time
It's never been a drag
So take a deep breath and count back from ten
And maybe you'll be alright

I'll Never Ask for the Truth but You Owe that to Me

"The two locomotives and eight of the twelve cars derailed, four of them falling 15 feet off a bridge into a dry river bed. Mitchell Bates, a sleeping car attendant was killed, and 78 people were injured, 12 of them seriously."
Read about the Palo Verde Derailment

I spent a lot of the time I was awake yesterday reading about train lines in the United States.

Lemuria
Their influences say Lemonheads and Sebadoh which rules but I hear more that dog. than anything else. Circle of Hope November 12, can't wait.




I'm afraid that the circumstances that led to this song (or any song like it) could only have existed between 1990-1999.


Too true: "I'll never ask for the truth but you owe that to me."


I'm really pissed at myself for not even trying to get into the Wire show Friday. Scotty's was excellent (Leitch House is a paradise) but this (U.S. Wire tour) only happens once every, like, five years,


Junior year of high school, this became one of my favorite songs ever written.

With Bands Like Theirs...

It's no secret I love No Age. Nouns is probably going to be the best album of 2008... if not the decade. I just put it on and I'm two songs in, wondering, when there's good music how the fuck can you care about anything else. Say you invest an amazing amount of time or love or care or yourself into something (or maybe all of those things into something at once)... the return is never going to be as rewarding as your favorite record. Your favorite record remains consistent. It says the same things all the time. It's there for you when you need it. It doesn't call you back because it doesn't have the ability to. A wonderful excuse if I've ever heard one. It doesn't matter that it can't call you anyway because when you pull it off the shelf and put it on or cue it up on iTunes, it's always happy to hear from you. It proceeds to be all these things when the first notes come through the speakers... consistent, eliciting good feelings. It doesn't matter that you and I haven't talked about anything of substance since Friday night. I don't know why that is. I don't know if I'm in the wrong. I don't know if any of this is happening for a legitimate reason. But all that uncertainty disappeared five minutes ago when that drawn out "thuuuunk-cluuuuunk" turns into four tom-hits on Dean Spunt's drum kit. "I feel a common breeze..." Thanks Dean, the rest is history.

Satisfied, Unhealthy. Unhealthily Satisfied?

I just finished my very first college paper. It was on Jorge Luis Borge's short story The Immortal, probably the best thing I've read since I got here. I took myself away from the productivity vortex that is the desk in my dormitory and trekked across campus with Steven K. to the Tech Center (open twenty-four hours a day...) This was after we saw Stereolab and Atlas Sound. I like Atlas Sound, never heard Stereolab. Vice versa for Steve K. We fell asleep two different times; myself during Stereolab, for the bulk of their set, and Steve during Atlas Sound for the bulk of his. You could've gathered that, I guess. Anyway, yeah, I had to write this paper and I did and yeah I'm satisfied. Something strange happened afterward. I went into 7-11 to see if they had headphones. They didn't so I left, yeah, duh, and then, not so duh, starting coughing and throwing up into their trashcan. Was it my sickening self-satisfaction? Was it frustration stemming from lack of conversation? Was it something that I shouldnt've been smoking? Was it the travel coffee mug Wyatt gave me our first weekend here? Was it the fucking Wawa hot dog (I hope not)? It didn't matter because the remains of the chili dogs I vomited on (on, not up. Wawa's ground beek/pork/mystery meat doesn't suck as much as "the Sev's.") may as well have been vomit anyway. I'd better go brush my teeth.