Friday, June 30, 2006

Music To Write Reports To Too


How funny, I was going to post about what I listen to when I write my effing reports for work. The reports I have to do totally stress me out because they are a mix of financials and counts of delivered services. In other words its all numbers and I am so not a numbers gal. To add insult to injury, the week after I turn them in, I get approximately four to five calls from different people in the company verifying some of the numbers because my reports get compiled into their reports. There's not a problem with my calculations, it is just that everyone is scared to death to turn in something inaccurate so double and triple checking occurs. So when I do reports, I need audio valium. It's old old school for me. My two albums of choice:

Ella and Louis Again - Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong

Frank Sinatra Sings the Select Cole Porter - Frank Sinatra

If I don't want to go quite that old school, I go for Derek and the Dominoes' Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Yes, Derek, I DO want you to crawl across the floor to me.
--J

Music To Write Reports To

In a hotel room in southern California last week, I sat in front of my laptop and wrote reports for work while listening to this pretty varied playlist. Be warned. This playlist is all over the damn place (like me). -K

Love Train – Wolfmother
Wolfmother is a breakout band hailing from Australia. This song makes me feel crazy sexy. It’s a marriage of Sabbath riffs, Zeppelin-esque vocals (that I mistook for Jack White when I first heard this song on the radio) and funk. It’s my favorite song that I’ve downloaded this summer.

Bliss – Muse
I read in a 2005 Alternative Press magazine that Muse is the band that all your favorite bands are into. I saw Muse here in St. Louis. It was the first time I went to a concert on my own. Razorlight opened. At this show, I met two guys who were Muse superfans. One of them had traveled from Newfoundland to see them in St. Louis. I love meeting superfans and I loved this show.

Free - Donavon Frankenreiter
In 2004, this song was in heavy rotation on the radio in Melbourne, Australia. One Saturday, my British friend Moo and I took a hike up into the hills surrounding the city. We heard this song a million times on this day, but it didn't matter. This song is so full of good feeling that you can't get sick of it.

Pass It On - The Coral
These guys hail from Merseyside, England. Pass It On's plucky guitar, easy rhythm, and message of acceptance and moving on was a light during dark times for me back in the winter of 2003/2004. The claustrophobia I experienced at work and in Huntsville as a result of an awkward breakup with a coworker was cause for me to climb the walls. To escape the gossip at work I would sit in my cubicle and listen to streaming Virgin Radio. It was on this station that I first heard Pass It On. It is extremely easy on the ears the morning after if you are in the habit of finishing a bottle of red wine every night just to get to sleep. Dark days are gone, but this song remains a remedy.

I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do - ABBA
I love ABBA. When I hear this song, I have vague, but happy memories of red geraniums, German family members, and a sunny garden. Lovely.

Photograph – Def Leppard
I always think of the early days of MTV when I hear this song. It’s so full of hooks! Gotta love it.

Dancing With Myself – Billy Idol
Billy Idol music is ageless to me. This song makes me feel alive just like it did when it was in heavy rotation on MTV in the 80s. Every time I hear it, I want to dance like Molly Ringwald in The Breakfast Club. Oi, sexy!

Thunder Road – Bruce Springsteen
I love this man’s work so much. This may be my favorite song of Bruce’s besides “Racing in the Streets”. On a cold late November night, this song came on while I was driving down the NJ Turnpike heading to Woodbridge, NJ, and I sang every word. Loudly. Bruce has a way of telling stories through song that is unmatched in my opinion. Pianos, saxophones and melancholic story-telling make up all that I love about this artist.

Rocket Queen – Guns N’ Roses
I have always thought that the change in the middle of the song was amazing. When I read Chuck Klosterman’s opinion of this song in Fargo Rock City, I wondered how I could meet this man. I’m here in St. Louis, Chuck. I’m here.

If You Want My Love – Cheap Trick
Cheap Trick is one of those bands that I have fallen in and out of throughout my life. The light in this song has, for me, never gone out.

Snow (Hey Oh) – RHCP
What’s a trip to California without some RHCP? I’m currently celebrating their new release. On a related topic, RHCP’s cd BloodSugarSexMagik was the very first cd I ever owned.

Under Pressure – The Used/MCR
I’m a lifelong Queen and David Bowie fan. I was a little nervous when MCR covered this song as it is a little ambitious. I am really impressed with this cover. For a time all proceeds went to the Tsunami Relief fund when purchased on iTunes. This cover nails it.

Original of the Species - U2
I do my love of U2 no justice with this tiny blurb. I have been a supporter of U2 since the early 80s (I, unlike many hardcore fans, feel that POP was not a disappointment, but a successful and admirable departure). Someday I’ll write about what this music means to me in a proper post, but for now just know that this song is U2 doing it to me again…

Time to Burn – The Rasmus
This band hails from Finland. I wouldn’t have known about them had I not been scouring YouTube for vintage HIM videos months ago. The vocals are a bit strained at times and the poppy production is not always my cup of tea. Their album may at times even sound like a more sinister Backstreet Boys production, but I’m not ready to write them off yet. Their music has a powerful and melancholic sound that makes me think they are almost there…

Don’t You Ever Leave Me Baby – Hanoi Rocks
Before there was Nightwish, HIM, or The Rasmus there was Hanoi Rocks. I hear an influence of the New York Dolls in this song. I first heard of Hanoi Rocks back in 1984 when drummer Razzle’s death in “the” car accident with Vince Neil was reported on the news. This song is not epic or cathartic, but it represents what I like to hear when I just want to get out of my head a little bit and sing along.

MakeDamnSure - Taking Back Sunday
This is an emo band and an emo song (see Emo Memo below), but I love this song.

There Is a Light That Never Goes Out – The Smiths
I have always enjoyed the Englishness of The Smiths. I really think that one could write a paper on their lyrical irony and how this music somehow reflects English society and one’s reaction to living in it. Yeah, no.

Thursday, June 29, 2006

Semi-Deep Thoughts While Driving

I truly love driving by myself. Yesterday I had a two and a half hour drive home from a client meeting and enjoyed just listening to music. I had the following random thoughts.

Santo & Johnny’s Sleepwalk - Here I was, driving along a two-lane highway as the sun was setting on a perfect summer evening, and that song was the perfect soundtrack.

K is right. Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy is the Feel Good, Inc. of 2006.

Dolly Parton’s Jolene still makes me nervous. I remember hearing that song as a kid on the radio and being torn up about what was going to happen.

I have to mentally separate the Michael Jackson of today from “I Want You Back”, in my opinion, the best Jackson 5 song. It is just not the same person.

Listening to the live version of “Best of You” by Foo Fighters gets me excited about the upcoming concert in August in Chicago.

Listening to The Emperor’s New Clothes by Sinead O’Connor made me remember how much I loved that CD in 1990/91 before she went nuts.

I wish could sing “Tell Me Something Good” like Chaka Khan does.

Favorite lyrics on the drive:

Original of the Species – U2
“I want the lot of what you got, and I want nothing that you’re not”

Lua – Bright Eyes
“But me I’m not a gamble, you can count on me to split. The love I sell you in the evening by the morning won’t exist”

--J

J's Foo Restrospective


As K mentioned, I also experienced Foo Fighters at Big Spring Jam in September of 1997. Let me provide some background. NO ONE GOOD comes to Huntsville, Alabama except country acts. I understand that this is probably because Nashville is only two hours away, but that is exactly why OTHER people besides country performers should visit Huntsville. So what people end up doing to see concerts is to drive two hours north to Nashville, two hours south to Birmingham, or four hours east to Atlanta. In 1997, with a two year old daughter, there was no chance of me leaving the city limits to see a show. I had been playing The Color and the Shape pretty much nonstop in the car until my daughter asked me to “make that man stop yelling”. Big Spring Jam is the big music event in Huntsville, and the local acts are usually the best part. But, when the Foo took the stage that year, it was kind of like driving 100 miles an hour down the road and sticking your head out the window.

I have since seen them in the following places:
May 1998 – Nashville River Stages
June 2000 – Nashville with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and special guest Peter Frampton
May 2003 – Chicago
June 2003 – St. Louis
May 2005 – Baltimore
October 2005 – Champaign

I’ll probably write a little about the individual shows in later posts, because they all have a story, especially the nail-biter of a show at the HFStival in Baltimore. Of course, the Champaign show was especially great. Oh, and my only child is almost eleven and she still doesn’t like listening to that man scream :)
--J

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Ville Valo and The Agents

In 1999, HIM's Ville Valo collaborated with The Agents, a Finnish folksy/jazzy band, on three songs. I purchased the compilation cd on which these songs appear from a music vendor in Finland through ebay.com. Every HIM fan out there should be exposed to these songs. -K

1. Paratiisi. This is a Finnish classic and a lifelong favorite of V's.


2. Ikkunaprinsessa. If my Finnish is correct, this song title translates into "Window Princess".


3. Jykevaa on Rakkaus. This is the Finnish version of Dusty Springfield's "I Only Want To Be With You".

Crapping Your Pants Funny by Judakris

I was innocently reading my latest issue of Rock Sound when I turned the page and saw a quote from Every Time I Die member Keith Buckley. I have been laughing out loud over this one.

"It happens to me a lot, like more than normal people, where I think I'm farting and I just shit my pants - like really badly shit my pants."

No kidding, I have an ex-boyfriend who did this once right in front of his roommates and me. It was hilarious then, too. -K

Hahaha! Years ago, a family member of mine had a similar accident. My brother M and I of course thought it was hilarious and was recounting the tale to a family friend. He very seriously responded like this, “Yeah man, that happened to my dad at the grocery store. He was getting a his grocery cart, farted, and shit is pants. He had to put the cart back, lay newspaper over the driver’s seat and go directly home. It was terrible!” What I remember most about that story was how serious the storyteller was. Like shitting your pants is the silent killer that no one acknowledges. -J

Emo Memo

This is a mock memo that I found in an April 2006 RFT. It made me smile. -K

Emo Memo
To: New Employees
From: Emo-Rock Headquarters
Date: April 27, 2006
Subject: Corporate Guidelines

With all the recent hires, we thought it would be prudent to review some essential company guidelines.

Your band must include a day, a month or a season. Please note that "Thursday" is taken, but you're welcome to go with something like "The Thursday Capitulation." Our research department highly recommends the use of "Sunday" and/or "Indian Summer."

Please leave the resonant singing voices at home - we require a thin, high-pitched whine. You're welcome to offset this with screams/shouts from a second vocalist, but nothing too blood-curdling.

Attire-wise, hoodies, ringer tees, and Dickies-style clothing are all preferred. The more you look like a gas station attendant, the better.

Guitarists - encourage angularity, but don't be afraid of standard melodies and hooks. Now is not the time to be too arty or adventurous.

The more angsty and confessional your songs, the better. Don't feel bad about lyrically lashing out at the girls who've hurt you - females will still come to your shows and sing along to every word. Stick to these guidelines and you're certain to rise quickly up the corporate ladder!

Monday, June 26, 2006

Foo Fighters- K's Mini-Retrospective

The first time I saw the Foo Fighters was in 1997 in Huntsville, AL at Big Spring Jam. This is an outdoor concert festival. J and I were both there, but we didn’t know it. It was the first time that I remember seeing Dave Grohl come out from behind the drum set. I was completely impressed by his showmanship as was the entire crowd. Gradually, the Foo Fighters became a mainstay on WZYP and every sporting event thereafter.

The second time I saw the Foo Fighters was on October 4, 2005 in Champaigne, IL. J and I had gotten to the show early and chatted with a tattooed roadie that we ran into again during the Taylor Hawkins show at the Double Door.

The Kaiser Chiefs opened for the Foo Fighters that night. They were good performers, but didn’t hook me.

Some highlights of the show were DOA, the acoustic then rocking rendition of Everlong, and Dave’s stroll out into the audience very close to us. A fortunate jock kid got up onstage and jammed with the band.

Afterwards, J and I stood out by the buses for a few hours and met and hung out with the band. This was a monumental moment for J. She had never met the guys before and it didn’t matter how long it took, we were both going to meet them that night. They did not disappoint. I’ll let J give tell her own story of meeting Dave, who was hilarious and extremely charismatic. We have a picture of those two that has been referred to as the Runaway Bride Picture. That was also the first time we met Taylor Hawkins. I yelled his name at some point and he yelled back "COMING!". We hadn't even really met yet, but we were already bickering. TH is a very personable and warm soul. As a fan, I was smitten.

Peanut from the Kaiser Chiefs was hanging around and I couldn’t get over how he reminded me of Pete Doherty. It was an uncanny resemblance.

In August, we have tickets to see the Foo acoustic set in Chicago. I have seen pictures of the set online. I can't wait to experience this show live.

Metal: A Headbanger's Journey

Canadian anthropologist Sam Dunn has created a very smart and in-depth review of the history, the culture, and the fans of Heavy Metal. He takes the viewer from Birmingham, England, to Wacken, Germany, to the burning churches in Norway, to the living room of supergroupie Pamela Des Barres. While it is an engaging documentary that offers an evolutionary chart of heavy metal and all of its subgenres, its structure does little for personality. Unlike Klosterman's celebratory book 'Fargo Rock City', which forced me to laugh out loud and come away with an even deeper understanding of the hard rock culture and what the music meant to its author (and me, for that matter), 'Metal' left me with a casually disinterested feeling. In 'Metal', Klosterman appears briefly and explains that Heavy Metal was not a way to understand why you didn't belong. Heavy Metal was a way for you to not belong, to feel ok about it, and to understand that there is something larger out there other than you. I agree with this wholeheartedly. For me, I think the documentary spent a little too much time trying to intellectualize a music scene that was more into living than thinking. This documentary does enlist the insight of musicologists, journalists, first-person accounts, sociologists, and interviews with key band members from bands such as Slayer, Dio, and Black Sabbath. I enjoyed Rob Zombie's commentary .-K

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

DeRogatis vs. Corgan


I had to share this anecdote from Jim DeRogatis’ Milk It! since it involves the Double Door. In the 90’s, Billy Corgan was pretty pissed off at DeRogatis for some less than stellar reviews. DeRogatis writes:

“In February 1995, the band (Smashing Pumpkins) booked several nights at Chicago’s intimate Double Door nightclub to road-test its new material before recording Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. I was indeed banned from these shows (along with all other Chicago journalists, unless they agreed not to review), but the Double Door’s stage is backed up against a large plate-glass window that borders Milwaukee Avenue, and I took a lawn chair, sat outside in the sub-zero chill, and heard better than if I’d been inside the hot, smoky club. I phoned in a report for the newspaper on deadline, and the notion that he could not control everything really got Herr Corgan mad”.

--J

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Re: In the Beginning...


As K wrote, a year ago tonight we were at UIC Pavilion watching Gerard and Mikey Way watch Oasis. It was so stressful! How could we be asked to pay attention to the dick-swaggering Liam Gallagher when the show was in the audience?

I loved K’s post about this night. What a crazy example of fate, that among all the Cubs hat-wearing frat boys in the audience, the Ways happen to sit across the aisle from the one gal who can recognize them from behind?

We were late for the show because as we sipped margaritas at a restaurant in Country Club Hills, Illinois, Mel’s car got hit in the parking lot.

Yes, Gerard was incessantly biting his nails as K mentioned. I felt like I was looking in the mirror. I now realized what I looked like hardcore gnawing on my hand just as he does.

It was much more of a show than we ever imagined. --J

The Alternative 90's

“How do those of us who love rock ‘n’ roll interact with it in real life? We sit on the couch and blast the stuff on the stereo, trying to convince each other that the music we love is something that our friends need in their lives, too, while simultaneously railing against the crap that we brought that turned out to be a hype” –Jim DeRogatis

I am more than halfway through Jim DeRogatis’ Milk It! Collected Musings on the Alternative Music Explosion of the 90’s. I highly recommend this book. It got me thinking about a conversation that K and I had on one of our road trips. I think everyone in our age group who likes music inevitably has to share their like/dislike/indifference towards Nirvana. I am puzzled by what an icon Kurt Cobain has become to some teens today. During the summer of ’91, I had just moved back to the States from Germany. I was waiting tables and watching MTV while I tried to decide if I was going back to college. I was thinking about beauty school until my friend D said to me, “Just what we need, another hairdresser”. I think I saw Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit video every day, at least three times a day that summer. Because of video saturation and the “I don’t want to be a rock star” image of Kurt Cobain, I never got into the music. I was through because of the media coverage. I told K on this road trip that I was more of a Pearl Jam fan at that time than Nirvana. She was the opposite. For some reason, as much as those two bands probably hated it, they are forever fused together in my mind as if one is the alternative to the other. You have to like one or both, but you have to like one. Anyway, this little anecdote from Milk It! cracked me up.

“One of my best friends, the head sports photographer for the Chicago Sun-Times, recently told a revealing story about Eddie Vedder. A longtime basketball fan who roots for his former home team the Bulls, Vedder had courtside seats for the championship series between Chicago and the Seattle Sonics. At one of these games, Kenny G. played an excruciatingly painful free-jazz version of the national anthem. It seems Kenny had to walk past Eddie on his way back to the sidelines, and Eddie stood there glaring at him the whole time and wielding him both middle fingers”.

--J

Monday, June 19, 2006

A Point of Irritation

Now that I’m home I decided to be lazy last night and this morning and catch up on all of the stupid stuff that I Tivo’d over the last two weeks.

When K and I first talked about doing a blog together, I jokingly discussed a post that would be titled “An Open Letter to Pete Wentz” (bassist and leader of Fall Out Boy) where I would basically be telling him how I wanted to kick his ass. More fuel was added to the fire when K and I spent an afternoon with my 18 year old nephew, D, who also can’t stand Pete Wentz. Pete Wentz, there is a 30-something woman in suburban St. Louis and an 18 year old in Gary, Indiana who want you to go away. It was all a big joke and I felt a little bad hating a complete stranger. Shouldn’t I get angry about real things like the war in Iraq, Corporate America, the road construction outside my house that the city chooses not to complete? No, instead all my anger is focused on one guy. Maybe it all stems from the fact that he grew up in Wilmette, Illinois. He’s a “have” and I grew up as a “have not”, but I think by the end of this, you’ll understand that even if you grew up as a “have”, you too can Pete Wentz. K doesn’t like him. One of my favorite quotes about him by her is something like, “He tried to OD on Ativan for Chris sakes”. So once again, he is lame even in his attempts to be dark.

So getting back to the crappy programs I Tivo’d , guess who was a pre-show interviewer on the red carpet for the MTV Movie Awards? You guessed it, Pete Wentz. And did he suck? Of course he did. The other really mediocre moment in a sequence of many was a performance by AFI. I don’t know much about them besides the drag queen/punk style of the lead singer and bad music. K predicts that they are about to break out in a major way just like Fall Out Boy. Why? Which brings me back to Pete Wentz. I’m a loyal, longtime subscriber to Blender magazine. When I get a new copy, I like to read it uninterrupted, cover to cover. The 5th anniversary edition hits my mailbox and who is on the cover? Fall Out Boy with Mr. Wentz front and center. The quote on the cover from him states, “People either love us to death or absolutely hate us”. Well, at least he is self aware.

The inside article, which I did not read, had a little box listing “Pete Wentz’s Five Favorite High-Risk Stage Moves” that I just could not ignore. I have to document these because they are so dorky you won’t believe them:

1. “’Around the World’: This involves me throwing the bass around my neck and CATCHING it. Problematic when I get an amazing rug burn around my neck from the strap.”

2. “JUMPING off the bass cabinet. Feels great in the air. Can be a bit harsh when I land and all of my internal organs shake”.

3. “The ceremonial LICKING of the bass. Mostly it’s gross—rusty and sweaty (have your tetanus shot current).”

4. “The onstage THROWING of the bass across the room. Looks sweet when it goes right. Like watching a car crash in slow motion when it goes wrong”.

5. “There’s this move that Damien from MTV calls ‘the Electric Chair’. You just make your entire body SHAKE super-fast. One time I did it and my bass hit me right in the face. My orthodontist just shook his head at me”.

First of all, like AFI, style over substance. Second of all, doesn’t he take all of the edge out of all of these risky moves? I’m waiting for him to tell us that he eats a special diet before the show because of his diverticulitis.

When all is said and done, I do have Dance, Dance on my iPod, but I’m not proud of it.

I promise to write something positive next time. --J

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

In The Beginning There Was Oasis at UIC Pavilion, June 20, 2005 - Chicago, IL

I intended to write a review for Chuck Klosterman's Killing Yourself to Live, which I finished two nights ago. I can’t just yet. Why? It’s because I heard "Helena" on the radio on the way home. I decided I needed to tell the story of two young women who went on their first concert road trip together and realized that there was something special happening. It’s been a year since that memorable concert road trip and you, reader, should know how this shit began.

J and I are two women whose paths have crossed a couple of times in the past. Once was at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in the late nineties, where we both took an upper-level literature class. Then after parting ways for a year or so, I waited on her and her husband at a restaurant where we gave each other cliff notes of what we were doing. Soon after, I interviewed for her and she hired me. We both ended up moving to the St. Louis office and took a few long walks after work. Most of our conversations were free therapy: we would unleash all of our angst about life, work, and the transition from Huntsville to St. Louis. I did most of the talking, as usual. For me, my life was work and my cat, so it was great to have a friend in whom I could confide. It had been a tumultuous couple of years and so having her to talk to was a life saver.

OK- so during this time, we discovered our shared love of music. J suggested we head to Chicago and see Oasis, with Jet opening up for them. In 2004, I had spent three months traveling and working out of our Melbourne office and so I had heard a lot of Jet. I immediately signed on. Plus, Oasis’ music was a fixture on the music scene when I was college. I loved them.

We drove up to Chicago and met up with Aunt B. and Mel, both childhood friends of J. It was the first time meeting Mel and Aunt B. I had met Aunt B once before, but I was really loaded at the time and for various reasons don’t really want to consider that the first time I met her. She knows why.

Anyway, so we headed to the venue and sat down. The auditorium contained a microcosm of college youth and people like us. Nothing special, really.

Jet played all the hits that I knew and we enjoyed them during their relatively short set.

Afterwards, the roadies came on to build Oasis' set. I was sitting on the aisle and got prepared to hear some great tunes that would take me down memory lane. We were hot. It was a little humid in the UIC Pavilion.

Two petite guys came walking down the stairs past me dressed all in black. J leaned over and said “look, Good Charlotte just walked in”. As soon as I looked down at them, they had stopped in the aisle about six rows down, I went cold. I noticed Mikey Way first. He has hair and glasses that you can’t mistake for anyone but Mikey Way. Next to him was a goth kid who had a mop of black hair under a black and white trucker hat. I grabbed J’s knee and said “that’s My Chemical Romance”. J looked at me and laughed as though I had just cracked a joke. I wasn’t joking. She looked at me and asked, “how the hell did you recognize them from behind?”. I may not always remember how to set up reports at work for my customers, but I sure as shit remember details of my bands. Let’s not analyze how I know them from behind. That’s best left unsaid.

Now, I had been a growing fan of theirs and had tickets to see them at Warped in St. Louis the next day. A few weeks before purchasing my ticket to see MCR at Warped in St.L, I had brought to work the May 2005 Spin magazine with them on the cover. I stepped into J’s office and threw the magazine down on her desk telling her we need to watch out for this band. (Ok, that sounds really dramatic, but I remember it like that.) I had already become obsessed with the band's music and videos. I especially had an affinity for the oddball lead singer, Gerard Way. That goth kid standing next to Mikey was Gerard Way. I almost shit myself.

They started coming up the stairs and were now one row down from me, taking the seats in the aisle across from me. “GERARD!”, I said and he looked at me. I stood up and shook his hand and introduced myself. I think I said something like “I’m going to see you at Warped in STL tomorrow. Good luck- blah blah blah”. I don’t know what I said, really. He grinned the whole time and was very gracious. I suddenly felt very awkward and something odd happened. I didn’t want to out them any more than I had. Of course, they weren’t that BIG yet, but to me they were. I ended whatever rambling I did quickly and sat down. Aunt B and Mel thought he was some old friend, but J quietly explained that Gerard was my Dave Grohl. With that, they understood immediately what was happening. I was meeting my number one guy. J told me I should have asked the guys for a ride to St. Louis. She even offered to rough me up a bit so that I looked desperate for help. Pathetically, I actually considered it for a couple of seconds.

I don’t even remember Oasis for most of the show. I just remember that since Gerard and Mikey were in between us and the stage I spent the duration of their presence watching Gerard’s every move.

Somehow, Gerard’s bad posture and incessant nail-biting didn’t turn me off. Every now and then I would look at J in disbelief. Her reenactment of his nail-biting still cracks me up.

At some point, Gerard went up to the concession stand and J followed. When she came back I grilled her for details. She observed how uncomfortable he seemed in his own skin and how he and she almost knocked into each other by accident. She thought he was very unassuming. I think that after observing someone from a safe distance you can get a feeling for bullshit. Gerard isn’t a bullshitter. When he says he was the oddball kid who spent a lot of time in his head, it was painfully obvious that this was true. We got it.

They didn’t stay for the whole set. They left right before Oasis performed “Don’t Look Back In Anger”. J and I were both relieved because now we could both focus on the show. Having had a most serendipitous encounter with Gerard Way, I sat on the back of my chair and put my arm around J while we sang that song back to the band along with the audience. It was one of those moments that you can’t explain. To say that I felt connected to J is true, to say that I felt connected to the universe is true, to say that someone was giving me something to be happy about for the first time in a hellish couple of years is extremely true.

We decided to drive back to St. Louis that night. We drank Red Bulls and talked music and life the whole way back. We came up on several band buses that we figured were carrying the bands to St. Louis for Warped. One of those was MCR’s bus, I knew it. We drove alongside them for a lot of the road trip.

We listened to a lot of David Bowie, which seemed perfect for a nocturnal drive. It wasn’t all cathartic and emotional. We listened to some Misfits, Foo Fighters, and Queen. At some point the sun was rising to J’s left. I looked toward her and said “Oh my God, J, look”. She grinned a crazy grin and said “YOU’RE GONNA HAVE TO TELL ME WHAT, ‘COS I AM NOT LOOKING AT WHATEVER HORRIBLE THIING IS OUT THERE!”. It was just the rising sun! HAHAHA Two Red Bulls each and we were already paranoid and strung-out coke heads. I love it.

When we got back home J went to work and I got ready to see MCR for the first time at Warped. As that morning became day, we had completed our first concert road trip together. It was the beginning of a blog waiting to happen.

-K

Tuesday, June 13, 2006

It's a Long, Long Road


It feels like I have been away from home forever. This weekend I drove five hours Friday night up to Louisville, Kentucky and then got up and drove five more to lovely Northwest Indiana to go to my nephews' graduation. I was also able to attend my nephew S's t-ball game. I think my brother S summed it up when he leaned over after observing the crowd and said to me, “You don’t realize how many rednecks live in the Township until you come down to the ballpark”. My nephew, D, had to point out one of the moms watching her kid play t-ball. The woman had a mustache with hair that curled down on her lip and extremely furry sideburns. D’s comment was, “Man, I wish that was my mom. Maybe I could grow a mustache myself then”. Nice. Needless to say, sarcasm is alive and well in our family.

It was a long drive for a weekend trip, but my ten year-old daughter was a trooper. Here is what I learned on the trip:

1. As catchy as it is, it IS possible to hear Shakira’s Hips Don’t Lie too many times.

2. The stretch of Interstate 65 going through Indianapolis, Indiana is called the Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds Highway.

3. Smartfood popcorn and Rockstar energy drink come together to form the world’s most perfect meal.

J

Leisure Reading

Right now I am involved in a research project in a graduate program that I really don’t want to do but now have to, so I’m planning on spending my free time from that and work by reading about music and pop culture. I just finished reading Killing Yourself To Live by Chuck Klosterman and before that, Fargo Rock City by the same author. They were both pretty good. The relationship discussions in Killing Yourself To Live were a bit tiresome, but even Chuck commented on how the reader would probably have that impression, so I guess I give him credit for realizing that. His comments on pop culture though are dead-on.

I’ve moved on to two different books, 100 Best Album Covers: The Stories Behind the Sleeves and Kill Your Idols: A New Generation of Rock Writers Reconsiders the Classics. Here’s my problem with the album cover book, the list is international. Even if Itakura, Konishi, Shigeto, Ba Na Na & Wakui (compilation album of little-known Japanese artists) has the most killer album cover, I really don’t care to know the details behind its conception. There are a couple of standout album covers by bands I am familiar with in the book. Some examples are Prodigy’s The Fat of the Land, Prince’s Lovesexy, The Rolling Stones’ Some Girls, and The Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill. There are also some you just know will be included like Nirvana’s Nevermind, The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Rolling Stones’ Sticky Fingers, and David Bowie’s Pin-Ups. My favorite from the book is The Clash’s London Calling. What a classic cover. What I didn’t know before reading this book is that the pink and green lettering on London Calling was an homage to Elvis Presley’s first album cover.

It got me to thinking about album covers that made an impression on me, not the best album covers, but ones that defined scary to me as a child. There are a couple that came to mind in no particular order:

Edgar Winter – They Only Come Out At Night
I don’t remember how old I was when I saw this album in a store, but it is one of my earliest memories. It scared the daylights out of me and still does. I have no idea what the music is like by this artist, according to the reviews on Amazon, it’s “smokin” and scared the heck out of more people than just me.

Kiss – Destroyer/Alive/Love Gun/Kiss/Rock and Roll All Over/Dressed to Kill/Double Platinum/Hotter than Hell/Alive II
My older brothers were huge Kiss fans, and they had all of these albums. When I was eight years old these all scared me, but I also found myself sneaking into their room to pour over every inch of the Kiss album covers, posters, etc. until my brother, M would smack me upside the head and tell me to get out. --J

Monday, June 12, 2006

High Eyes

Not to put too much pressure on him, but M is the reason I will never completely stop drinking. It is too goddemm fun.

The only thing missing Saturday night was my better half- J, who has been out of town on business for FREAKING EVER. To digress slightly, J has an executive office that is HUGE and a perfect playground for M and me to take unprofessional pictures with my camera phone and immediately text her the images. The intent for these pictures is to (1) teach her to never leave us again and (2) to make her know that we miss her terribly. We “punish” because we “love”. This is probably why J is a mom and we are not. To further demonstrate this, we often yell at Feefers for walking into the room in that “cat” way of his. It’s infuriating. (we're usually laughing when we do it, because he's a beautiful and lovely baby.) Anyway, the last series of photos we sent was to celebrate June 6, 2006. M and I both wore black and took turns prostrating ourselves on her floor in crucifixion poses while wearing a homemade mask her daughter had made. It was HILARIOUS. To us.

In retrospect, J would probably have been glad to have missed it. I had just received my second HIM dvd that had a couple of “making of the ________ video” special features. I love the making of’s with Bam Margera because during the shoot something always seems to go wrong, i.e., a keyboard has not turned up and then there are hours to kill. It’s these moments I love because it usually entails Bam and Ville showcasing what hilarious drinking buddies they are. That night I had brought two HIM dvds, one that the band officially released (the mother lode) and the one that Bam Margera released. The latter was what I had gotten in the mail that Saturday morning.

After our first bottle of wine M threw the first pack o’Marlboros across the living room, signaling it was time to open the second. We noticed an ominous storm approaching. The windows were open, of course, and so there was a breeze coming into the loft that set the mood for the night ahead. It lasted for much of the evening.

We finished the making of’s and were locked in. It started with M’s request to watch the featured videos after each making of, and then went downhill from there. By the time we crashed, we had studied Wille Walo for four hours straight. After the videos came the live performances, then the special feature live performances, then the laptop came out and youtube happened so that we could see other versions of the videos that will never be seen on American tv. It was a multimedia event in the highest degree. I think with every question M might have had I could answer with a click of a button. It was incredible. There is a special feature where HIM performs 'The Sacrament' to a HUGE audience in Russia. As we watch Ville play with his nose and forget his own lyrics, M comments “yup, those are ‘high eyes’”. That’s not funny to anyone, but us. This comment was said with such deadpan conviction that we both looked at each other and exploded in laughter. I would love to immortalize these quotes in a book, but honestly you have to hear him say it. It’s M’s delivery of these very unspecial quotes that is so memorable. “High Eyes” is one, and J has one: “Gorgeous”.

What I remember, with a bit of humility, is pointing out how in charge Ville is on stage, how effing romantic and perfect “In Joy and Sorrow” is as a song and how the live performance is at the Rock Am Ring festival in Germany and how you can see Nurburg’s (not Nurnberg, where I lived) castle in the background “uch, look at that. IT’S SO PERFECT!”, my explanation for the song “The Beginning of the End” and how it was about an ex-girlfriend who was hospitalized for anorexia, immediately followed by me asking “did I just yell that?”, and replaying the live performance of “This Fortress of Tears” for M a few times.

Ok, so we really watched a lot of HIM that night. But, we also studied Suede and tried desperately to get through MCR’s Life on the Murder Scene (which we had already studied with wine on a previous night). It was unfortunate because by the time we put that on I was already starting to fade. Once The Fade engulfs me, the end is near. But I was still rendered speechless at the opening of Helena. That song will never fail to kill me just a little bit.

At M’s request, I created a perfect HIM playlist to be played at our respective funerals. Here it is:

The Beginning of the End
When Love and Death Embrace
Death is in Love with Us
This Fortress of Tears
In Joy and Sorrow
The Sacrament
Play Dead
The Funeral of Hearts
Join Me in Death
Resurrection
The Path

-K

Saturday, June 3, 2006

Red Hot Chili Peppers' Stadium Arcadium


I eagerly anticipated the new Chili Peppers double CD, Stadium Arcadium. I got their last CD, By the Way, for Christmas in 2002 and for the next six months, that CD was the soundtrack of my everyday life. I fell in love with it. Those six months were extremely turbulent and songs like Minor Thing, Venice Queen, Dosed, all got me through. Maybe I was putting too much pressure this next CD, but I expected nothing less than phenomenal.

Stadium Arcadium is kind of like exercise to me. I have to remind myself that I need to listen to it, and once I do, I feel better, but not good enough to seek it out without a lot of strong focus. I liked “Charlie”, “Torture Me”, “Strip My Mind”, and “Wet Sand” on the first CD. I haven’t really picked out any faves on the second. Maybe during my upcoming road trip I’ll give that second CD a thorough listen. Geez, that sounds like too much work! --J

You Might Think This Isn't About Music, But It Is

My brother and sister-in-law live in the house that I grew up in and they have the same neighbors next door and across the street as we did growing up. Recently my sister-in-law told me that the girl that used to live next door to us (her parents still live there) was getting a divorce. My response to her was, “But according to her Christmas letters, her life was perfect!”

This girl, D, 5 years my senior, was my nemesis growing up. I was the youngest kid on the block, the baby of my family. No one else felt the need to pick on me for being the youngest, well except for my brother M, but that’s part of life, right? D was merciless. She was one of those girls who would draw you in pretending to be a friend and then she became super mean in the end. She even took it public. Both of us, with about 60 other kids, participated in a summer play at the local high school. I tried to stay out of her way, here I was a pudgy third grader, but she would find me and taunt me in front of others until I ran into a bathroom crying. Basically I hated her growing up, but was oddly fascinated by her behavior. Why pick on me? I had nothing to covet. She on the other hand was the princess of her family. When I was a kid, out of boredom, I would look at the JCPenney catalog for hours. I can’t EVEN discuss how long I would look at the JCPenney Christmas catalog when it arrived! It was insane! I spent hours looking at all of the bedding pictures in the back of the catalog and pick out the one I wanted the most. For some reason, at the age I thought the end-all be-all would be to have a bedding set from JCPenney with one of those frilly skirt things, bedspread, and matching curtains. My mom wouldn’t even think of it. When she decorated my room she made curtains and everything else in the room and I thought that was totally lame. You had arrived if you had a matching set from JCPenney. Well, D not only had matching bedspread, pillows and curtains, that bitch had a mural on her bedroom wall of the same pattern! Why torture me, her life was perfect. All I had was ugly white wood paneling and homemade crap.

As the years went by, we became kind of chummy via letter since I haven’t lived in the same town as her since 1988. I try not to think about the past because she was so mean and think about her in the present. However, right around 1995 she started sending the “Christmas Letter”. If you’ve ever received one, you know of what I speak. It’s a non-personalized brag letter where you highlight how wonderful your kids and husband are and what great home improvements/vacations/purchases happened in the past year. When I started getting these I realized that she hadn’t really changed. She wasn’t being spiteful, but she was all about the brag. A highlight was when she sent a picture of her two boys, probably aged 11 and 5 with the Christmas letter. As soon as I looked at the picture I spotted something odd. I called my best friend at the time and asked her if she had received the “Christmas Letter” from D. Her response, “Yep”. I asked her if she anything seemed out of place. She responded, “You mean her oldest son flipping the camera a bird?” Exactly! She hadn’t noticed before she sent the picture out that her oldest snarky son was surreptitiously flashing his middle finger in the picture. It all seemed okay after that.

But my favorite little bit in one of the Christmas letters of past was a bit about a concert. I was just reading an essay that discussed the fact that a high percentage of people attending a concert just do it in order to say that they were there, not really to enjoy the music. It’s for the cool factor. Back in 2002, I received the “Christmas Letter” from D and at the end of it she said something to the effect of “and let’s not forget the John Mayer concert D and I attended this summer. It was rockin”. Her husband is a “D” name as well. Okay, what’s wrong with this? It’s 2002! The only album John Mayer had out at the time was “Room for Squares”, that album that boasted the single “No Such Thing” where he sings about his high school and his parents. I admit that I got his album “Heavier Things” for Christmas 2003 because my guilty pleasure that winter was the song “Bigger than My Body”. But I never admitted to anyone that I owned that CD until I was drunk this past December at a friend’s house and had to confess to someone. However, boasting about a John Mayer concert in 2002 to put out some kind of rockin image of yourself, now that’s just wrong. Since then, I have felt superior, and actually feel a bit sad for her. It’s all about karma I suppose. --J

Friday, June 2, 2006

Random Thoughts on a Friday Morning

"Crazy" from Gnarls Barkley is such a cool song. It's my "Feel Good, Inc" of 2005.

Keane's new song "Is It Any Wonder" opens like a diluted "Zoo Station". Come on guys, emulating U2 is so Coldplay.

I want Travis to come back with a spectacular album.

I don't want to like Daniel Powter's "Bad Day", but I do. Oh, and that clever little video. *sigh*

Time for work...

-K