Cool Band T-Shirt Contest

A little game I play at concerts, mostly to pass the time in the pre-show standing around time, is what I call the Cool Band T-shirt Contest. How it works is this: when you come to show that I attend, if you choose to attend wearing a Cool Band T-shirt, I will judge you. If you wear the coolest of cool band T-shirts you may win! And what is your prize? Well, mostly the respect and admiration of your peers (fellow music geeks), which may, if you happen to be fortunate enough, get expressed with a glance and a nod, perhaps even a muttered "Cool shirt. You see them?" Now, as you may have figured out, I went to the Pixies Doolittle show tonight. Yes, it was awesome. I may share more in a future post, I may even devote an entire post to the music that played before the opening act, between them and the Pixies, and after the show. Although I didn't have time to properly judge the Cool Band T-shirt Contest tonight because the show started promptly on time, I think I won! Not only did I get more than one glance and nod in the direction of my TV on the Radio Hoodie, I got an enthusiastic "That is awesome! I love that!" from a fellow music fan.

Love & Hate

Two columns over at Pitchfork this week both make reference to the vast amount of music available to us in this day and age. I should point out first that while I read Pitchfork almost daily, I rarely read a full review (although their reviews are really the power they wield). I'll maybe read a paragraph or two of a review of an album I'm interested in, mostly to see how they are justifying the 5.8 or 7.9 or 8.5 they are giving it. I do however, read the columns completely (Why We Fight, Poptimist and Resonant Frequency) - that is where I find the really interesting and fascinating ideas. But back to the point - too much music out there and the old twins love and hate. When you are as in to music as I am you often think of yourself as a music lover - the one thing I shared in my "About Me" is my music fandom - but this leads to all sorts of problems. You look for things to love and this can be costly in terms of time and money. I spend hours listening to new music - it's the reason I watch the Wedge weekly, listen to several podcasts that are devoted to new music, read blogs, review sites and aggregators that will help me find my next love. Plus I lose those hours to music that I already know I love (I can feel my brother agreeing with me as I type this). I have justified this in the past by the power, joy and wonderful sensation of falling in love with new music - it can be exhilarating! But when faced with the amount of music that it is possible to expose oneself to you do have to choose what to limit yourself to. Perhaps you can write off entire genres - "I don't like rap/country/classical" - or time periods "Nobody's made truly great rock since 1973/1979/1987/1991/2000" - or levels of popularity "If they signed to a major label, I'm no longer a fan" - or locality "I don't like anything but local music." So you choose to hate music in order to cherish your true loves. When I was younger, I was very much in tune with that hate - I was an angry young man after all - but somewhere along the line I decided to be nicer. Perhaps it's my job that makes me want to feel only the positive emotions of love and joy and lose touch with the anger and hate but maybe I can embrace and cherish my inner angry young man to say no to more music and YES to less? Why the Frente album cover up there? Because I love it and I know few other people who do.

I was wrong

I remembered today that there actually is a song with my name in it. It is called "Space (I Believe In)" from the Pixies, although technically it is about a guy named Jefrey with one F! Did I mention that I'm seeing them live this Saturday. Plus I get to cross "see a band play an album in full" off of my bucket list.

Dancing about architecture

The title above comes from the oft repeated but difficult to attribute quote that "talking (or writing) about music is like dancing about architecture." The point usually being that it is difficult to convey anything meaningful about music through words and we should just listen. If it is true, which it might be, I still want to talk about music. I like talking about music, I like thinking about it, I like reading about it, and I even like writing about it (however poorly that might be). Sometimes I do all this analyzing at the cost of actually listening but I do think it is helpful. I think that doing anything well requires you to think about why, how and what the point is rather than living easily with your eyes closed. All of this is in part inspired by the news that some Radiohead fans received their King of Limbs Newspaper Albums editions early today and I can't wait to get home, check my mail and, once I receive mine, talk about it with the other Radiohead fans I know. It also reminds me of my half serious plans to start something akin to the Devon Record Club right here in Calgary.

Cut The Cable!

I had each of my two sons in my car today and as usual, was asked to play a Beatles CD. The one I usually select is a Ringo heavy mix I made for them that starts with "Yellow Submarine." For the past year or so, my oldest son and his cousin have insisted that among the sound effects and captain's orders are the words "Cocker Muncher" which to them is just ridiculous gibberish (for now) but for others, well ...
I finally found a satisfying answer from the internet. The words are actually "Cut the cable, drop the cable."

Yin & Yang

I was watching The Wedge tonight and during a video for the song "Vanessa" by Grimes I was thinking an apt comparison might be Crystal Castles. Now, typically, when a comparison comes to mind it is often of the "sounds like" or "if you like x you'll like y" variety but this was an example of Grimes being the yin (soft, gentle) to Crystal Castles' yang (hard, aggressive) although they both feature high, sonically manipulated, female vocals over a largely electronic background. The other time that this sort of yin and yang comparison hit me so definitely was when first listening to Juana Molina's Un Dia and thinking that the yang to her yin would definitely be Drums Not Dead by Liars.

Breadth Versus Depth

I like music, a lot of music, a lot of different music and much of the time when I'm selecting music to listen to one of my many considerations is variety. I rarely listen to the same album twice in a row or even in the same week or month. My typical answer to "What are you listening to lately?" is "A little of everything."  There are advantages to this pattern including feeling like I'm actually listening to much of my (admittedly large) collection of music - I have to justify all the time, money and effort I've put into that collection after all - and by listening to stuff from all through that collection I feel like I get more of it than if I'm sampling a small slice. But I'm beginning to consider the advantages of sticking with one thing for awhile. Currently, I'm listening to the Pixies non-stop, including multiple consecutive plays of Doolittle in anticipation of seeing them play live in just over a week. They will be playing Doolittle in its entirety too! And when The King Of Limbs came out, I listened to only it for a solid week. Some time ago, I advocated to my brother (another music geek extraordinaire) the act of "pretending a band is coming to town" so that you would then immerse yourself in their material in order to be "ready" for the show. This works even better when they are coming to town and you are actually going to see them.