I was supposed to be in Rome, GA tonight, spending the New Year's Eve with family in anticipation of a "Resolution Run" 5K tomorrow morning. Unfortunately, the lovely missus was taken down by some nasty congestion/coughing thing, so those plans are kaput. Which is probably just as well, considering that a band of tornado spinning storms are due to hit the area about the time said 5K was due to kick off. So we'll be ringing in 2011 from Ye Olde Loftstead in the city.
Which means I have a lot of time on my hands. And a lot of time on my hands means schemes. Mad schemes. Like a fish to water, baby. It's sort of what I do.
One thing I'd like to do more of next year is read books. I had a bad year for reading in 2010. When I did get a chance to read, I tended to get sidetracked by ugly political arguments instead. I'm looking to ratchet that down a little in 2011, and I hope to devote my regained time to reading more. I have an assload* of texts in the house, and I'll inevitably buy more as the year goes on, so my first requirement if I'm going to carry through on this resolution is to define some sort of system to keep me focused. To that end, let me share with you my new library selection methodology.
Step 1: Dig your old D&D dice out of the closet. (Please, do not try me with that 'I don't have D&D dice, those were for dorks!' gambit. Just get the damned dice and stop pretending.)
Step 2: Devise your system. Break your library into six zones, to be associated with a 6-sided standard die. Each zone should have no more than 20 individual shelves. (If your library is large enough that this is a problem, you may expand your six-sided "zone" die to an 8-, 10- or 12- sided solution.) Standard shelves will hold between 40 and 50 books. I have selected two 20-sided + one 10-sided die for book selection. Of course, if you want to go three 20-sided that's perfectly feasible too.
Step 3: Roll to hit.
Okay. You're good to go. From your 6-sided die, find your zone. From your first 20-sided roll, choose a shelf. From your 50-60-sided rolls find your book. I simply count left to right, personally, what with my not being of Hebrew or Arabic lineage. Of course, should you be a right to left reader, feel free. Just don't touch the Torah, dude. Seven years bad luck, that.
And the winner is...
Nick Hornby; Juliet, Naked.
Yes. I really did just create a more or less random text selection algorithm using old gaming dice. What? Did you think I had suddenly become something other than a dork while you weren't looking?
I think I shall blog this experience all year.
s/
Friday, December 31, 2010
Thursday, July 8, 2010
Not to be greedy, but...
If the managerial style of Bobby Cox can be summed up in one pithy phrase, it is this: "win the series." He, and his teams, figure if you take 2 out of 3 more often than not, you're going to be in the running for the title at the end of it all. He is, of course, absolutely correct. I very rarely find issue to argue with Cox' managerial tendencies. Even the bullpen usage. But for the next three games, I will suggest that the "win the series" strategy is good, but not optimal.
After today's travel day, the Braves open the final series of the "first half" in New York. Three against the second place Mets and then the All-Star break to rest up and recuperate a bit. In the absolute worst of case, the Braves get swept in Citi and go into the break tied for first in the NL East. Lose 2 of 3 and they take a one game lead into the break. Win 2 of 3 and the lead is 4.
But if they sweep the Mets...
Six games up on the second place team, be it the Mets alone or the Mets and Phillies (if the Reds get swept by PHL) is a commanding lead to open the second half. Make it so.
After today's travel day, the Braves open the final series of the "first half" in New York. Three against the second place Mets and then the All-Star break to rest up and recuperate a bit. In the absolute worst of case, the Braves get swept in Citi and go into the break tied for first in the NL East. Lose 2 of 3 and they take a one game lead into the break. Win 2 of 3 and the lead is 4.
But if they sweep the Mets...
Six games up on the second place team, be it the Mets alone or the Mets and Phillies (if the Reds get swept by PHL) is a commanding lead to open the second half. Make it so.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Where to sit at Turner Field
This is a public service announcement. This is only a public service announcement.
This is Turner Field:
The main gates to Turner Field are located on the north side of the stadium, leading into the plaza that abuts the outfield pavillion seats. Secondary gates are located along the north-eastern and north-western facades.
The best seats are located in the red (Dugout Level) or black (Field Level or Pavillion Level.) Ticket prices increase as you move closer to home plate.
Any seat in the lower levels along the 1B or 3B lines will have perfect sight lines of the field of play. Sections 108-107 (around the curve of home plate) are protected by netting. This can slightly obscure views if you're *really* into perfect sight lines.
Seats in the outfield Pavillion areas are slightly blocked by the "moat" that separates the field of play (and the OF wall) from the stands. The moat is about three feet wide and prevents yahoos from interfering with the games. Yankee Stadium could have taken the hint.
Seats in the terrace and club levels provide shade. This is not to be scoffed upon during Georgian summers.
Seats in the upper decks are cheap for a reason. You're WAY far away from the baseball up there.
The best seats for the buck, IMHO, are in the outfield Pavilion. I will not tell you the precise section number, for fear that you will buy my seats. That would be sad and make me cry.
Parking, should you drive, is available in multiple lots to the north and east of the stadium. There are smaller, non-official lots to the south and west of the stadium, but the further you go in that direction, the more likely it is that your stereo will not be waiting for you when you return.
This has been a public service announcement.
This is Turner Field:
The main gates to Turner Field are located on the north side of the stadium, leading into the plaza that abuts the outfield pavillion seats. Secondary gates are located along the north-eastern and north-western facades.
The best seats are located in the red (Dugout Level) or black (Field Level or Pavillion Level.) Ticket prices increase as you move closer to home plate.
Any seat in the lower levels along the 1B or 3B lines will have perfect sight lines of the field of play. Sections 108-107 (around the curve of home plate) are protected by netting. This can slightly obscure views if you're *really* into perfect sight lines.
Seats in the outfield Pavillion areas are slightly blocked by the "moat" that separates the field of play (and the OF wall) from the stands. The moat is about three feet wide and prevents yahoos from interfering with the games. Yankee Stadium could have taken the hint.
Seats in the terrace and club levels provide shade. This is not to be scoffed upon during Georgian summers.
Seats in the upper decks are cheap for a reason. You're WAY far away from the baseball up there.
The best seats for the buck, IMHO, are in the outfield Pavilion. I will not tell you the precise section number, for fear that you will buy my seats. That would be sad and make me cry.
Parking, should you drive, is available in multiple lots to the north and east of the stadium. There are smaller, non-official lots to the south and west of the stadium, but the further you go in that direction, the more likely it is that your stereo will not be waiting for you when you return.
This has been a public service announcement.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Sam Hutcheson's Top 11 Sabrenerd Baseball Dork's* Basements
Last week Chris Jaffe wrote a column at The Hardball Times where he listed his personal ranking of Major League Baseball team names. It generated more comments than any of his actual research related posts, so he followed it up with another inane list, this time of MLB stadiums.
In the ensuing Baseball Think Factory melee, "DL from MN" said:
10. Aaron Gleeman lives like royalty in his three hundred acre, Sun King style palatial estate. He dines on freshly braised lamb shank and hangars of Kobe beef prepared on site by one of his legion of cult-like devotees. He has but to snap his fingers and dancers culled from the prettiest women in the entire Upper Midwest appear from the wings for his entertainment. As he speaks his wisdom, an army of stenographers record his every utterance, in the manner of Thomas Aquinas. Nonetheless, Aaron is an unhappy and angstful man, prone to fits of depression and violent anger, because, let's face it, he still lives in Minnesota.
9. Dayn Perry blogs from a corner cubicle from within the Fox Network compounds located in suburban Connecticut. He can see Sean Hannity's head just over the partition wall if he stretches his neck just so. His coworkers often talk bad about him behind his back, as they believe the constant smell of urine and human feces indicates that he is a "dirty f*cking hippie" and needs a bath. In fact, that's just the lingering smell of Shea, which never washes out.
8. Craig Calcaterra splits time between his home offices in Ohio, where he wears Spongebob pajamas and plays board games with his children, and his new digs in Conan O'Brien's old Tonight Show studios, where he wears Spongebob pajamas and plays fetch with Andy Richter.
7. Tom Tango blogs from a sphere of pure, crystalline mathematics, the complexity and perfection of which you could never hope understand.
6. No one has the heart to tell Joe Sheehan that it's only a model.
5. I've never been to P. W. Hjort's basement, but I wanted to point out that more people should read his blog.
4. All lines of sight into Chris Jaffe's basement are blocked by his hair.
3. Every piece of furniture in Rob Neyer's well apportioned man cave is woven entirely out of flannel, except the 12-foot tall ice sculpture entitled "Lord James in Repose", which is carved from the frozen tears of pure, unrequited love.
2. Dan Szymborski inhabits a warren of catacombs that lead directly into the Baltimore sewer system, and thus eventually to the Mountains of Madness. Upon entering the upper levels, the visitor is inundated by cacophonous sensual overload. The tinkling of classical piano distracts the ear, while the eye struggles to find purchase upon the constantly shifting, shimmering reflective glaze of 12,000 old hubcaps stolen from passing motorists. The olfactory senses are overwhelmed by the intermingled scents of votive candles, burning frankincense and myrrh, and the stench of the Elder Gods that Lie Beneath. There is also an undertone of the piles and piles of chicken bones thrown across the floor. Contrary to popular belief, Dan does not use these in his voodoo-like ZIPS divinations. Rather, they're just leftovers from the WingStreet deliveries last week.
1. Chris Dial lives in a comfortable, split level ranch in Cary, North Carolina. His daughter, quite thankfully, takes after her mother.
*actual title and ownership held by moms
In the ensuing Baseball Think Factory melee, "DL from MN" said:
"What we really need is a tongue-in-cheek article rating various mom's basements since nobody here actually watches a real game."Let no man accuse me of not knowing my sweet spot.
10. Aaron Gleeman lives like royalty in his three hundred acre, Sun King style palatial estate. He dines on freshly braised lamb shank and hangars of Kobe beef prepared on site by one of his legion of cult-like devotees. He has but to snap his fingers and dancers culled from the prettiest women in the entire Upper Midwest appear from the wings for his entertainment. As he speaks his wisdom, an army of stenographers record his every utterance, in the manner of Thomas Aquinas. Nonetheless, Aaron is an unhappy and angstful man, prone to fits of depression and violent anger, because, let's face it, he still lives in Minnesota.
9. Dayn Perry blogs from a corner cubicle from within the Fox Network compounds located in suburban Connecticut. He can see Sean Hannity's head just over the partition wall if he stretches his neck just so. His coworkers often talk bad about him behind his back, as they believe the constant smell of urine and human feces indicates that he is a "dirty f*cking hippie" and needs a bath. In fact, that's just the lingering smell of Shea, which never washes out.
8. Craig Calcaterra splits time between his home offices in Ohio, where he wears Spongebob pajamas and plays board games with his children, and his new digs in Conan O'Brien's old Tonight Show studios, where he wears Spongebob pajamas and plays fetch with Andy Richter.
7. Tom Tango blogs from a sphere of pure, crystalline mathematics, the complexity and perfection of which you could never hope understand.
6. No one has the heart to tell Joe Sheehan that it's only a model.
5. I've never been to P. W. Hjort's basement, but I wanted to point out that more people should read his blog.
4. All lines of sight into Chris Jaffe's basement are blocked by his hair.
3. Every piece of furniture in Rob Neyer's well apportioned man cave is woven entirely out of flannel, except the 12-foot tall ice sculpture entitled "Lord James in Repose", which is carved from the frozen tears of pure, unrequited love.
2. Dan Szymborski inhabits a warren of catacombs that lead directly into the Baltimore sewer system, and thus eventually to the Mountains of Madness. Upon entering the upper levels, the visitor is inundated by cacophonous sensual overload. The tinkling of classical piano distracts the ear, while the eye struggles to find purchase upon the constantly shifting, shimmering reflective glaze of 12,000 old hubcaps stolen from passing motorists. The olfactory senses are overwhelmed by the intermingled scents of votive candles, burning frankincense and myrrh, and the stench of the Elder Gods that Lie Beneath. There is also an undertone of the piles and piles of chicken bones thrown across the floor. Contrary to popular belief, Dan does not use these in his voodoo-like ZIPS divinations. Rather, they're just leftovers from the WingStreet deliveries last week.
1. Chris Dial lives in a comfortable, split level ranch in Cary, North Carolina. His daughter, quite thankfully, takes after her mother.
*actual title and ownership held by moms
Sunday, February 7, 2010
AC Newman and His Very Special Episode of Friends
Previously on Buffy: It's a young man's game, and young is a passing phase.
I'm about to delete seven paragraphs that have been written and re-written ten times. I'm going to do this because this piece has become a microcosm of why I stopped writing about music. Searching for some sort of "in" I've muddied the waters entirely. There's no clarity at all. I started with a simple premise. After sorting through my preliminary "best of" lists for the 2000s, I found a godawful number of records attributable, more or less, to AC Newman. I wanted to call out the fact that between four excellent New Pornographer discs and his two solo albums, Newman had released an ass-ton of quality music over the decade and should be lauded accordingly.
Then I got sidetracked. I got off topic for a while on Newman's pre-Pornos work with Zumpano. Somehow that led into a tangent about SubPop's search for a post-grunge identity at the end of the 90s, and then all of a sudden I was talking about the Shins. What the fuck? This is why I stopped writing in the first place. I found myself tossed between repeating the same stock judgments over and over - "AC Newman is a pop genius and the new album is fantastic!" - or searching endlessly for some hipper-than-thou twist that would blur the repetition some subtle bit. I got to the point where I hated to read my own work, and that's not a place any writer should be. I have no intention of going there again. So I'm deleting all of this shit and starting over.
AC Newman released six albums in the last ten years that I would say he "owned" creatively. As the driving force behind The New Pornographers, he owns their sound. Yes, the band builds in layers on the "supergroup" concept, mixing Dan Bejar's avante pop with Neko Case's indie-twang chanteuse voice, but the crux of the matter has always been Newman's 60's era counter vocals and interwoven melodies. To understand this, one need only listen to a solo album by the three primary contributors. Bejar and Case each have very distinct solo sounds. An AC Newman record is basically a New Pornos disc with other players filling in for Bejar and Case.
Of the six Newman led albums of the decade, you could have a raucous debate for supremacy. While I might be convinced that 2005's Twin Cinema is the most fully realized of all the work, at the end of the day I always return to the record that originally sold me.
Mass Romantic is probably the decade's most revered album that absolutely no one listened to when it came out. Released in the holiday dead zone of 2000, on tiny little Mint Records out of Vancouver, the disc floated aimlessly in no man's land for most of the winter. But word of mouth kept building about this so-called "Canadian supergroup" and their sold out tour dates. I eventually picked it up on the strength of Stomp-n-Stammer's recommendation (itself driven by the Jeff Clark's drop-jaw lust for the much ballyhooed Case). At the turn of the century Mass Romantic's intricately layered combination of crunchy, fuzzed-up guitars, light, intertwining synths and over-dubbed vocal melodies was a revelation.
The album kicks off with the title track, an infectious little pop number with more hooks than that guy from Hellraiser. The first thing you hear is Kurt Dahle counting off, sticks clicking out an up tempo in standard time, then the immediate kick of the rhythm guitar, slightly distorted, curt and syncopated, hitting on the half beats. Duh-unh, duh-duh-unh... Behind it a synthesizer tweets out a little riff designed to sink into the listener's reptilian brain. (This before "tweet" became associated with public sharing of insipid half-thoughts by a generation of ADD sufferers.) Twelve bars in and there's Neko, singing out something completely indecipherable. "Mass romantic fool wears Foster Grants his books on tape rings true, like everyone wants to say I love you to someone on the radio (radio.)" Indecipherable, not such that you can't understand the words, but in the sense that until Turing did his maths Enigma was indecipherable. I challenge anyone to make sense of this code.
But that's the beauty of the project. You don't need it to make sense. You have the hooks, thrown at you in such numbers as to assure something catches your skull broadside. You have those damned rhythm chords chunking out the time. You have the synths snaking there way around your spinal cord, leaving a cottony, novocaine numbness in their every wake. And then, just as you're beginning to realize that you're already caught, they throw Neko at you.
Until Mass Romantic Neko Case was thoroughly pigeonholed within the alt-country scene. Her work to date had been a mediocre debut, The Virginian, followed up by the thoroughly excellent Furnace Room Lullaby (we'll come back to that one later). Her fame and popularity, such that it was, rested on her status as the underground's new Patsy Cline, belting out torchlight standards atop steel guitars in smoky backroom bars. Also, she tended to disrobe during her shows. We indie rocker dorks, we do love it when a pretty woman strips while singing for us. I'm pretty sure that Case puts on extra sweaters prior to shows just to facilitate this sort of semi-burlesque, but I digress.
The point is that up until the thirteenth bar of the self-titled opener of Mass Romantic no one south of Minnesota had ever considered Case as a *pop* singer. We were young and foolish I suppose.
I am thoroughly convinced that, had Newman not had the foresight to open this record with a Case song, The New Pornographers would not have been the sensational success they turned out to be. Certainly, as we move further into the record we find gems being led, vocally, by Newman himself. The second track, "The Fake Headlines," is a Newman song. But our willingness to listen hinges on the insane catchiness of the opener, and that relies notably on our preexisting love affair with Neko Case. (The term "Beatles-esque" gets thrown around so often in writings about music as to make it nearly meaningless, but if you want to know what it *should* mean, listen to the intro to "The Fake Headlines.") By the chorus Case has melted back into the mix and we're presented with the most unexpected of things: a band, rather than a collection of contributors. And then we swing, fully immersed, into the strongest track on the album.
I'm not sure, exactly, how to convey my love of "The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism" without falling into the same sort of cliched hipsterisms that drove me to stop reviewing music in the first place. There's that bended synth intro bit, just those three or four seconds of warped up, computer generated growl before the rhythm section and accompanying keys kick in. There's the catchiness of Newman's vocals. There's the subject matter of the lyrics with their happy conveyance of a life lived in scenes drowned in more than sound. And then there's the falling bridge that drops you into the first chorus. Mostly, it's that bridge. Pick it up somewhere near the 50 second mark and listen: "I say my, my, my slow descent; into alcoholism it went..." and it's right there, that guitar+snare run of sixteenths dropping you bodily onto the chorus as Neko rises to the fore vocally. "Something like THIS song; something like this song; something like this song...." Salvation holdout central indeed. I am a simple man with simple needs. I love this damned song.
It doesn't let up. The first eight tracks of the album are all outstanding, the run from "Slow Descent" to "Jackie" and "Letter From An Occupant" never lets go. You're all the way to track nine, "Execution Day," before you get to a song that is merely good. And that's it. That's the low point for the entire album. "Centre* For Holy Wars" grabs you by the lapels again, immediately tossing you defenseless and gasping for air into the maw of "The Mary Martin Show," a song that competes with "Slow Descent" in stupid, glittery brilliance. The Pornos at least let you down gently with the closer, "Breakin' The Law."
As I said, Newman would go on to spin this sound into six high quality releases over the course of the decade, all of them worthy of a few bucks tossed across the counter culture. As I said, as I always do, I tend to gravitate toward the albums that first hooked me - Mass Romantic and 2003's Electric Version. That's just me. I know folks who could argue convincingly that 2005's Twin Cinema is the best album of the decade. (I have my own thoughts on that.) 2004's solo, The Slow Wonder, is a fantastic record. All of them work on that same 60's pop "wall of sound" thing. Taken as a whole, you're talking about six releases of high quality and merit. It's rare that you stumble onto an artist that can turn out two or three. Here's looking forward to May's release of New Pornos #5.
Mass Romantic (2000) - 7sponges**
Electric Version (2003) - 5sponges
Twin Cinema (2005) - 6sponges
Challengers (2007) - 5sponges
The Slow Wonder (2004) - 5sponges
Get Guilty (2009) - 4sponges
*They're Canadian. They spell things funny.
**For better or worse, I will always default to the EvilSponge rating system.
I'm about to delete seven paragraphs that have been written and re-written ten times. I'm going to do this because this piece has become a microcosm of why I stopped writing about music. Searching for some sort of "in" I've muddied the waters entirely. There's no clarity at all. I started with a simple premise. After sorting through my preliminary "best of" lists for the 2000s, I found a godawful number of records attributable, more or less, to AC Newman. I wanted to call out the fact that between four excellent New Pornographer discs and his two solo albums, Newman had released an ass-ton of quality music over the decade and should be lauded accordingly.
Then I got sidetracked. I got off topic for a while on Newman's pre-Pornos work with Zumpano. Somehow that led into a tangent about SubPop's search for a post-grunge identity at the end of the 90s, and then all of a sudden I was talking about the Shins. What the fuck? This is why I stopped writing in the first place. I found myself tossed between repeating the same stock judgments over and over - "AC Newman is a pop genius and the new album is fantastic!" - or searching endlessly for some hipper-than-thou twist that would blur the repetition some subtle bit. I got to the point where I hated to read my own work, and that's not a place any writer should be. I have no intention of going there again. So I'm deleting all of this shit and starting over.
AC Newman released six albums in the last ten years that I would say he "owned" creatively. As the driving force behind The New Pornographers, he owns their sound. Yes, the band builds in layers on the "supergroup" concept, mixing Dan Bejar's avante pop with Neko Case's indie-twang chanteuse voice, but the crux of the matter has always been Newman's 60's era counter vocals and interwoven melodies. To understand this, one need only listen to a solo album by the three primary contributors. Bejar and Case each have very distinct solo sounds. An AC Newman record is basically a New Pornos disc with other players filling in for Bejar and Case.
Of the six Newman led albums of the decade, you could have a raucous debate for supremacy. While I might be convinced that 2005's Twin Cinema is the most fully realized of all the work, at the end of the day I always return to the record that originally sold me.
Mass Romantic is probably the decade's most revered album that absolutely no one listened to when it came out. Released in the holiday dead zone of 2000, on tiny little Mint Records out of Vancouver, the disc floated aimlessly in no man's land for most of the winter. But word of mouth kept building about this so-called "Canadian supergroup" and their sold out tour dates. I eventually picked it up on the strength of Stomp-n-Stammer's recommendation (itself driven by the Jeff Clark's drop-jaw lust for the much ballyhooed Case). At the turn of the century Mass Romantic's intricately layered combination of crunchy, fuzzed-up guitars, light, intertwining synths and over-dubbed vocal melodies was a revelation.
The album kicks off with the title track, an infectious little pop number with more hooks than that guy from Hellraiser. The first thing you hear is Kurt Dahle counting off, sticks clicking out an up tempo in standard time, then the immediate kick of the rhythm guitar, slightly distorted, curt and syncopated, hitting on the half beats. Duh-unh, duh-duh-unh... Behind it a synthesizer tweets out a little riff designed to sink into the listener's reptilian brain. (This before "tweet" became associated with public sharing of insipid half-thoughts by a generation of ADD sufferers.) Twelve bars in and there's Neko, singing out something completely indecipherable. "Mass romantic fool wears Foster Grants his books on tape rings true, like everyone wants to say I love you to someone on the radio (radio.)" Indecipherable, not such that you can't understand the words, but in the sense that until Turing did his maths Enigma was indecipherable. I challenge anyone to make sense of this code.
But that's the beauty of the project. You don't need it to make sense. You have the hooks, thrown at you in such numbers as to assure something catches your skull broadside. You have those damned rhythm chords chunking out the time. You have the synths snaking there way around your spinal cord, leaving a cottony, novocaine numbness in their every wake. And then, just as you're beginning to realize that you're already caught, they throw Neko at you.
Until Mass Romantic Neko Case was thoroughly pigeonholed within the alt-country scene. Her work to date had been a mediocre debut, The Virginian, followed up by the thoroughly excellent Furnace Room Lullaby (we'll come back to that one later). Her fame and popularity, such that it was, rested on her status as the underground's new Patsy Cline, belting out torchlight standards atop steel guitars in smoky backroom bars. Also, she tended to disrobe during her shows. We indie rocker dorks, we do love it when a pretty woman strips while singing for us. I'm pretty sure that Case puts on extra sweaters prior to shows just to facilitate this sort of semi-burlesque, but I digress.
The point is that up until the thirteenth bar of the self-titled opener of Mass Romantic no one south of Minnesota had ever considered Case as a *pop* singer. We were young and foolish I suppose.
I am thoroughly convinced that, had Newman not had the foresight to open this record with a Case song, The New Pornographers would not have been the sensational success they turned out to be. Certainly, as we move further into the record we find gems being led, vocally, by Newman himself. The second track, "The Fake Headlines," is a Newman song. But our willingness to listen hinges on the insane catchiness of the opener, and that relies notably on our preexisting love affair with Neko Case. (The term "Beatles-esque" gets thrown around so often in writings about music as to make it nearly meaningless, but if you want to know what it *should* mean, listen to the intro to "The Fake Headlines.") By the chorus Case has melted back into the mix and we're presented with the most unexpected of things: a band, rather than a collection of contributors. And then we swing, fully immersed, into the strongest track on the album.
I'm not sure, exactly, how to convey my love of "The Slow Descent Into Alcoholism" without falling into the same sort of cliched hipsterisms that drove me to stop reviewing music in the first place. There's that bended synth intro bit, just those three or four seconds of warped up, computer generated growl before the rhythm section and accompanying keys kick in. There's the catchiness of Newman's vocals. There's the subject matter of the lyrics with their happy conveyance of a life lived in scenes drowned in more than sound. And then there's the falling bridge that drops you into the first chorus. Mostly, it's that bridge. Pick it up somewhere near the 50 second mark and listen: "I say my, my, my slow descent; into alcoholism it went..." and it's right there, that guitar+snare run of sixteenths dropping you bodily onto the chorus as Neko rises to the fore vocally. "Something like THIS song; something like this song; something like this song...." Salvation holdout central indeed. I am a simple man with simple needs. I love this damned song.
It doesn't let up. The first eight tracks of the album are all outstanding, the run from "Slow Descent" to "Jackie" and "Letter From An Occupant" never lets go. You're all the way to track nine, "Execution Day," before you get to a song that is merely good. And that's it. That's the low point for the entire album. "Centre* For Holy Wars" grabs you by the lapels again, immediately tossing you defenseless and gasping for air into the maw of "The Mary Martin Show," a song that competes with "Slow Descent" in stupid, glittery brilliance. The Pornos at least let you down gently with the closer, "Breakin' The Law."
As I said, Newman would go on to spin this sound into six high quality releases over the course of the decade, all of them worthy of a few bucks tossed across the counter culture. As I said, as I always do, I tend to gravitate toward the albums that first hooked me - Mass Romantic and 2003's Electric Version. That's just me. I know folks who could argue convincingly that 2005's Twin Cinema is the best album of the decade. (I have my own thoughts on that.) 2004's solo, The Slow Wonder, is a fantastic record. All of them work on that same 60's pop "wall of sound" thing. Taken as a whole, you're talking about six releases of high quality and merit. It's rare that you stumble onto an artist that can turn out two or three. Here's looking forward to May's release of New Pornos #5.
Mass Romantic (2000) - 7sponges**
Electric Version (2003) - 5sponges
Twin Cinema (2005) - 6sponges
Challengers (2007) - 5sponges
The Slow Wonder (2004) - 5sponges
Get Guilty (2009) - 4sponges
*They're Canadian. They spell things funny.
**For better or worse, I will always default to the EvilSponge rating system.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Speaking of Troy Glaus...
The Braves are depending on the guy to play first base and anchor the offense behind Chipper. A lot of ink has been spilt regarding the nature of this gamble. Most of it is tinged to no small extent with "is this all" bitterness. I understand the bitterness. Expectations were set higher than an injury rehab, flipping Javy Vazquez for Melky Cabrerra and a LOTTO, and Eric Hinske. Nonetheless, deflated expectations is no reason to frag the analysis on what Glaus is likely to bring to the table. 33 years old, which isn't young but isn't Chipper either. Prior to last year's season lost to shoulder surgery he posted four straight years of 120-something OPS+. Gets on base and hits the ball hard. What's not to love?
Oh, you say, it's the whole shoulder surgery thing? I can understand that. But here's the thing. No one outside of the Braves' (and maybe the Cards') medical staff know a good damned googly shite about Troy Glaus' shoulder. Mark Bowman and Dave O'Brien don't know anything about it. Neither Szymborski and Tango and whomever is doing projections at BP these days have a singular clue about it. None of the great unwashed blogging hordes know a damned thing. (I include Will Carroll here.) All of which means that Glaus represents the worst possible scenario for the sabremetric cognoscenti. He is a case for which we have no reliable data. He quite literally can't be predicted. The most important factor anyone would need is locked tight underneath the medical staff's non-compete clauses and Glaus' right to privacy.
With that said, we are solely dependent on the Braves' word. It's a position we never feel comfortable in, but it is the case nonetheless. Atlanta says Glaus is likely to hit his bonus metrics, all of which hinge on playing time. The Braves believe Glaus' shoulder will be fine. Considering how dead on accurate they were regarding John Smoltz' shoulder last year, I see no reason to not believe them. Until shown otherwise, I'm pencilling Glaus in for 265/365/480. I'll take a 120 OPS+ in the cleanup spot, thank you very much. Considering the Casey Kotchman Horror of 2009, that's a nice thing to look forward to.
Oh, you say, it's the whole shoulder surgery thing? I can understand that. But here's the thing. No one outside of the Braves' (and maybe the Cards') medical staff know a good damned googly shite about Troy Glaus' shoulder. Mark Bowman and Dave O'Brien don't know anything about it. Neither Szymborski and Tango and whomever is doing projections at BP these days have a singular clue about it. None of the great unwashed blogging hordes know a damned thing. (I include Will Carroll here.) All of which means that Glaus represents the worst possible scenario for the sabremetric cognoscenti. He is a case for which we have no reliable data. He quite literally can't be predicted. The most important factor anyone would need is locked tight underneath the medical staff's non-compete clauses and Glaus' right to privacy.
With that said, we are solely dependent on the Braves' word. It's a position we never feel comfortable in, but it is the case nonetheless. Atlanta says Glaus is likely to hit his bonus metrics, all of which hinge on playing time. The Braves believe Glaus' shoulder will be fine. Considering how dead on accurate they were regarding John Smoltz' shoulder last year, I see no reason to not believe them. Until shown otherwise, I'm pencilling Glaus in for 265/365/480. I'll take a 120 OPS+ in the cleanup spot, thank you very much. Considering the Casey Kotchman Horror of 2009, that's a nice thing to look forward to.
30 Somethering - Thoughts on the Aughts Part I
In which we introduce our new project to average TWO posts per month this year...
There comes a point in life where a man just has to admit it. It's a young man's game, and young is a passing phase.
For me, the definitive moment came when Paul asked me to put together a best-of list for the 2000's. That's when it really hit me hard. I am no longer hip to the indie, kids. I no longer live on the razor's edge. There was a time...oh yes, there was a time; drink and drank and drunk, and pogo in you head everybody. But alas, no more. My liver has tired. I started the decade more or less in tune with the ebb and flow of the underground but somewhere in the middle I'm pretty sure I lost sight of the shore. I'm no longer getting too old for this shit, I am already too old for this shit. I am an old man. I have old man biases. So be it. You have been warned.
Back before affixing "post" or "gaze" or "core" to any existing genre became acceptable form for describing some "new" style a bunch of us were searching for some way to describe the nascent sounds that would eventually coalesce into "post-rock." This was early- to mid-90s, before there was an Evilsponge, back when we were just sitting around Paul and Tracy's apartment, drinking beer and spinning discs, passing the time before that weekend's show. It was proto-sponge, a drink in every hand, and we were trying to figure a descriptive for this new sort of sound seeping out of the empty spaces. I'm pretty sure it was Paul, in a fit of wit and pique, who finally came up with the phrase "Slint-damaged bands."
In a lot of ways, I think of the 2000s as a Slint-damaged decade. This isn't so much a criticism as a statement of direction. To my ear, the last ten years have been dominated by artists exploring the edges of traditional song*. Whether it be the found-recordings/orchestral mash-ups of Godspeed! You Black Emperor, the proto-jazz freakouts of Do Make Say Think, or the hazy experimental electronica of Radiohead since "Kid A" it seems like music has been more concerned with introspection and soundscaping than, you know, writing a singable song. From post-rock to math-core to drone to sludge-metal, it's all dominated by experimentalism, off beat time signatures, and the disappearance of the human into the void. None dare call it prog, but it has left me feeling somewhat disconnected from the times. While I appreciate a good wonkish digression now and again - oh Jesu, how thou doth dismantle my very concept of being and time - I am a rock guy at heart.
My basic relationship to music was defined by Chuck Berry right at the very start. I got no kick against modern jazz, unless they try to play it too darn fast. But lose the beauty of the melody? Well, in that case you've probably lost me too. I want that back beat, the kick and the snare, the hook that brings you back. I want that riff that catches you in the gut and slings you around the room until you're so much meat pudding. I want lyrics worth belting out in the solitude of hours long commutes and the anger and heartache that drives them. I'm a rock guy. I'm a pop guy. I'm a fuzzed out bass and distortion marred guitar guy. I'm a lyrics worth paying attention to guy. What can I say? It's gotta be rock-roll music if you wanna dance with me.
All of which is a roundabout way to say that I expect some might find my tastes a little retrograde. I consider "Kid A" to be more tragedy than artistic expansion. I can't listen to Animal Collective for more than two minutes without a reflexive "WTF?!" I'm a soul adrift, a man without a country. Mine was a decade out of step. Much like the preceding twenty years I spent the last ten immersed in power punk and swampy blues rock, Brit-pop and twang-infected Americana. It is what it is, and if you're still with me, it's just this. I'm a rock guy. These are my favorites from the last ten years. Your mileage may vary. These results may not be typical. All returns require receipts. We hope you enjoy your stay.
*for the purpose of this exercise we will pretend that hip-hop does not exist
Tomorrow: In which we actually start with the lists...
Obligatory baseball comment that gives Darren cover for posting this to BBTF: Troy Glaus and Chipper Jones will both crack 30+ HRs in 2010. It will be Chipper's last truly magnificent effort before he fades quietly into his Cooperstown reward.
There comes a point in life where a man just has to admit it. It's a young man's game, and young is a passing phase.
For me, the definitive moment came when Paul asked me to put together a best-of list for the 2000's. That's when it really hit me hard. I am no longer hip to the indie, kids. I no longer live on the razor's edge. There was a time...oh yes, there was a time; drink and drank and drunk, and pogo in you head everybody. But alas, no more. My liver has tired. I started the decade more or less in tune with the ebb and flow of the underground but somewhere in the middle I'm pretty sure I lost sight of the shore. I'm no longer getting too old for this shit, I am already too old for this shit. I am an old man. I have old man biases. So be it. You have been warned.
Back before affixing "post" or "gaze" or "core" to any existing genre became acceptable form for describing some "new" style a bunch of us were searching for some way to describe the nascent sounds that would eventually coalesce into "post-rock." This was early- to mid-90s, before there was an Evilsponge, back when we were just sitting around Paul and Tracy's apartment, drinking beer and spinning discs, passing the time before that weekend's show. It was proto-sponge, a drink in every hand, and we were trying to figure a descriptive for this new sort of sound seeping out of the empty spaces. I'm pretty sure it was Paul, in a fit of wit and pique, who finally came up with the phrase "Slint-damaged bands."
In a lot of ways, I think of the 2000s as a Slint-damaged decade. This isn't so much a criticism as a statement of direction. To my ear, the last ten years have been dominated by artists exploring the edges of traditional song*. Whether it be the found-recordings/orchestral mash-ups of Godspeed! You Black Emperor, the proto-jazz freakouts of Do Make Say Think, or the hazy experimental electronica of Radiohead since "Kid A" it seems like music has been more concerned with introspection and soundscaping than, you know, writing a singable song. From post-rock to math-core to drone to sludge-metal, it's all dominated by experimentalism, off beat time signatures, and the disappearance of the human into the void. None dare call it prog, but it has left me feeling somewhat disconnected from the times. While I appreciate a good wonkish digression now and again - oh Jesu, how thou doth dismantle my very concept of being and time - I am a rock guy at heart.
My basic relationship to music was defined by Chuck Berry right at the very start. I got no kick against modern jazz, unless they try to play it too darn fast. But lose the beauty of the melody? Well, in that case you've probably lost me too. I want that back beat, the kick and the snare, the hook that brings you back. I want that riff that catches you in the gut and slings you around the room until you're so much meat pudding. I want lyrics worth belting out in the solitude of hours long commutes and the anger and heartache that drives them. I'm a rock guy. I'm a pop guy. I'm a fuzzed out bass and distortion marred guitar guy. I'm a lyrics worth paying attention to guy. What can I say? It's gotta be rock-roll music if you wanna dance with me.
All of which is a roundabout way to say that I expect some might find my tastes a little retrograde. I consider "Kid A" to be more tragedy than artistic expansion. I can't listen to Animal Collective for more than two minutes without a reflexive "WTF?!" I'm a soul adrift, a man without a country. Mine was a decade out of step. Much like the preceding twenty years I spent the last ten immersed in power punk and swampy blues rock, Brit-pop and twang-infected Americana. It is what it is, and if you're still with me, it's just this. I'm a rock guy. These are my favorites from the last ten years. Your mileage may vary. These results may not be typical. All returns require receipts. We hope you enjoy your stay.
*for the purpose of this exercise we will pretend that hip-hop does not exist
Tomorrow: In which we actually start with the lists...
Obligatory baseball comment that gives Darren cover for posting this to BBTF: Troy Glaus and Chipper Jones will both crack 30+ HRs in 2010. It will be Chipper's last truly magnificent effort before he fades quietly into his Cooperstown reward.
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