Category Archives: All about me

Saturday Music Club Reviews Part 1 – From Steampunk Trenches Cool to Indian Summer Pollution

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Okay, for those who are just joining us, every Saturday, or Tuesday, or Saturdayish day, some of my friends, and some people I don’t know from Sweden, send out music. A song. Just what we’re listening to at the moment. It’s a great way to be exposed to great new music. It’s also a way of spreading the news about bands that need more airplay. And it’s about friends. Here’s to good friends. At some point, I started reveiwing the songs. The SMC’s own Simon Cowell. I’m wearing a black t-shirt. There will be blood.

Kasey Chambers – Pony – My new favorite song. Love Kasey Chambers when she does alt country. When she does her whiny-indigo-girls type of stuff, I hit the next, next, next. But when that girl is on her game, she is unbeatable and haunting. Love the weird, little girliness of this song. Eery. Like Drusilla in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Adore this song.

Clawfinger – Truth – Love this gnashing guitar, rap, Red Hot Chili Pepper cursing fest of sound and delight. Gonna keep this one. However, I gotta say, at one point, the lyrics, the song, hit me like something Michael Scott and Dwight Schrute would have put together. It’s paper, it’s Dunder-Mifflin paper, m*****F*****. Don’t count the asterixes. You’ll be disappointed. Wanna write a book that captures this. Its very ardent. So good, I had to listen ot it twice. Explicit lyrics. They say the “f” word.

Camera Obscura – French Navy – Wow, retro breakfast with a side slender bacon. I felt like it was the 1960’s again, and I was about to sweet talk a hippie chick into my van. But then, I realized, it was 2011. No more vans. No more hippie chicks. Just the distant dream of a cool little song. Very Vampire Weekend.

Butch Walker – Trash Day – Oh, is this Tom Petty and the Delaware Destroyers? Was that Tom Petty’s band. Is this Butch Walker or Paul Westerberg and the Replacements? This is total college band radio nicety with better production values. It’s not bad. I like it. It’s trash day in Atlanda, GA. It’s just, um, derivative. But is that bad? It’s good. The songs it’s derived from are good. It’s all good. And catchy. And nice. I’ll keep it. I’ll recommend it. But it won’t win prizes for newness.

Stone Sour – Zzyzz Rd – Nice piano opening. Isn’t there a literary magazine called Zzyzz. No, I think the literary magazine has a “v” in there somewhere. Lies and promises. Okay. Waiting for the hook. Okay, the drums hit, and I’m hooked. This is a song, after time, that I would either love, or hate, or love to hate, or hate to love. Love that angsty, piano, sing-song, fade away stuff. Nice bridge. Again, nothing new here, it’s the old, done really well. This is my song. Too tired to care, and I gotta go. I would add, gotta go home. Tired and I don’t want to go home. Nicely done. It’s a keeper. Gotta go home. He never says it. Man, that pisses me off. Why won’t he say gotta go home? Why, Spock, why? Okay, I’ll stop. Angsty. Love it.

Six Feet Under – Lycanthropy – Very guitary at the start. But I like the name of the song. And now a demon is about to start screaming. Better get more interesting. I can only death metal when the right mood hits me. I mean, the exact right mood. I mean, it has to touch me like a werewolf’s paw. This wasn’t screamy or demony enough for me. Speaking of lycanthropy, I’m gonna write a novel with were-mules. Yeah, old west, steampunk, weremules. Lots of Braying. “You’re one of us! Carniverous!” That’s funny. But not in a good way. Need more. And then it just fades away? Come on, guys. Come on.

Gordon Lightfoot – Sundown – You know, I used to like Gordon Lightfoot until I realized people called him Gord. His greatest hits was called Gord’s Gold. Gord. Stupid. Yeah, I am that petty. Seriously. This is a great song, and it’s about a girl who was bad, bad news. You know, those kinds of women I could never deal with. I know, I know, the femme fatale, the danger, the mystery, the erotic heights of the unattainable. Those kinds of women don’t mess with me because they know, instinctively, I could never keep up. So like in most areas of my life, I’ve avoided pain by being a wussy man. Next life.

Bassnectar – Timestretch – OMGosh. Please, this song is killing me with cool. I have cool leaking out of my eyes. Cut me? I’d bleed cool. This song is so deep, so entrenched. It’s a World War I fight song. It’s steampunk on acid. It’s so thick and juicy, you couldn’t cut it with a steak knife. You’d need a saws-all. I think dubstep might be the music of my soul. I am going to keep this and pray for more. Arguably, the best song I’ve ever heard. And just when it gets too deep, it then veers off into a wimpy perfect bridge. Last two minutes, variations on a theme. A cool theme. Kick it. Ha, comment on youtube = “If I was the leader of a country this would be The National Anthem!”

Maplewood – Indian Summer – Yeah, is the year 1976? No. This song sounds dated. And not in a cool, steampunk, world war I entrenched cool fight song cool sort of way. Cool. No, this song brings up extra footage from BILLY JACK and the kids have long hair, and flowers in their air, and they’re running across a field, with golden speckles in the sunlight. And then you see an Indian man, crying. One tear slides down his cheek. Pollutions is wrong and makes Indians sad. If I have to hear this guy say ‘Indian Summer’ one more time, I might have to kill him. If the 1970’s Indian Pollution Man doesn’t beat me to it.

You Will Never Write Your Novel, Ever

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Recently, I spent a weekend at a writer’s retreat, and the whole thing is to go away and write. It’s like The Dick Van Dyke Show episode where Rob Petrie goes away to the cabin to write his book because he couldn’t focus at home. It’s a common writer’s idea. I won’t write today, because someday, I’ll have a ton of time to write and boy, won’t it be great. Like Harry Chapin Carpenter’s “Cat’s In The Cradle”, we’re gonna have a good time then.

The thing is, I don’t buy it. Writing is a daily habit because if you wait for the perfect time to write, it will never, ever come. There’s never going to be a good time.

A friend at work, whom I love to hate, and hate to love, gave us a book which has the secret to life. Seriously. It’s by Jeff Olson, and it’s called The Slight Edge. The idea of the book is simple, people are successful by the little choices they make, every day, just itty, bitty little choices that by themselves don’t mean much, but over time, add up and make all the difference in the world. Writing is like that. If you wrote 43 minutes a day, which is the length of a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, you would have a novel faster than if you waited for eight hour chunks. Because how often do you have eight hour chunks? If you have my life, you never have them. You long for them. You hunt for them. They are an endangered animal, elusive, yet beautiful. Come here, little eight hours, come to Daddy.

So I’m enjoying the writers retreat because I’m using it to sneak in projects I won’t have time to tackle once I return to normal life. So in the end, maybe that’s the best way to use the time I got, sneak in the impossible books I’ll never have the time to write.

And Rob Petrie never did write his novel. He got distracted. It’s not about the time you don’t have, it’s about using the time you do have, and realizing how lucky you are in this moment and being grateful.

And that pistachio episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show always unnerved me. Pistachios, everywhere, weird.

Zealot in the Buffet Line

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I was at a Juice Plus event, and I was talking to a food zealot. Man, I love zealots. Of course I would. I like intensity, high drama, and conflict and those things follow zealots around like hounds tumbling after a poodle in estrus.

So I ask the zealot something that bothers me. I have a hard time being “that guy”. The guy who orders a salad. The guy who doesn’t eat the cookies when they are passed around. The health nut, whack job guy. I’ve never been a man’s man. Never. Ever. Ever. I just can’t turn off all my emotions and grunt and watch sports and scratch myself. I can do some of those things, some of the time, but I can’t do them all at once. Not stoic enough. In my next life, though, Clint-frakkin-Eastwood.

So I ask the zealot the question, “How do you handle being ‘that vegan guy’?” And he said something very interesting. He said that he does it for other people, to be an example, to be the change he wants to see in the world. Yes, he does it for himself, to be healthy, to live longer, to perform in his life better, but in the end, it’s so he can foster a healthy environment for other people.

I really wish it was easier to eat better. Even if there was tons of social pressure to eat well, we’d all still hit Taco Bell and gulp down donuts, at the same time, burrito donuts, hmm, because that food tastes so good and is so fun. Eating rotten is fun and rebellious. Hurray, donut burgers.

In my environment, there is social pressure to eat poorly. So maybe, if I can be the example, if I can be the guy who orders a salad, who skips the cookie, who risks being labeled whacky, I can help other people make the hard choices when it comes to food.