Post-Austin SotW + Ghostland Observatory show

Hi kidlets. It's been quit some time since I sat down and wrote an actual post here. Blame it on work, blame it on the holidays, blame it on the a-a-a-lco-hol, whatever. Here I am. Sharing some thoughts, can I first please ask the great beyond who the hell told Pete Yorn that he should record an album with Scarlett Johannson? I mean, I get it, shes hot and all, but she is also married to the extremely hot Ryan Reynolds, so I'm doubting the motivation there was hanky panky. I mean it isn't like her first album of whiny emo covers was any good. I don't even get why she recorded it, to show the world her superb and moast flawless musical taste? Start a blog Scar, make a celebrity playlist for iTunes. Just don't go botching all that perfectly good music. Plus Pete Yorn is kind of an indie songwriting God - so what gives? Downgrade.

Also, to comment on the general state of pop culture right now, I'm going to go ahead and say Don't Be Tardy for the Party and Lady Gaga are really really awesome, and Twilight is really really bad. And no, I do not want to read the books, even if they are SOOOO much BETTAR than the movies OMFGZZZZ. But, I am really amused at all the Robert Pattinson (Pattison?) junk I have been seeing - a cross stitch pattern and to-scale wall decal being the most memorable pillars of crazy I've come across.

Ghostland Observatory, House of Blues, Orlando FL
So by complete accident, we signed up to get promotional text messages from Southern Comfort, a fact that he found annoying until he got a text invite to a private party sponsored by the brand, for a Ghostland Observatory show at the House of Blues in Orlando. Being that we were already planning on being in Orlando that day (sadly to take said boyfriend to the airport), it worked out that I got to go and bring my friend Kelsie. Weirdly enough, you had to show the door man your cell phone with the text message code on it to be admitted. Once we were in, we were immediately given a shot, tickets good for free drinks, and a pair of party glasses so our eyes would be protected from "the lasers". The lasers? Cryptic. Mind you, this is all completely free. Anyway I figured Ghostland would be a good show since way back a friend of mine showed me a YouTube clip of the lead singer getting crazy at SxSW, but I had no idea what I was in for. The whole laser thing really came into focus when the band came on, as the concert was pretty much a full-on light show. The guys next to us were tripping on X and seemed to be having a lot of fun on another level than us. And can we talk about the Annie Lenox cover? So random and awesome. Ghostland put on a memorable show, and I think the HoB was an especially great venue for them considering the technical aspect of the show wouldn't have gone off as well without their sophisticated equipment. Regardless, I was impressed and so was Kelsie. We came out of the show a sweaty mess from dancing. I couldn't believe I'd had such a great night for the cost of zero dollars. If you get the chance- go see them, bring sunglasses, and ingest some kind of mind-altering substance if that's your thing.

Bon Iver - Blood Bank
Album: Blood Bank EP
This is my current loop song, by which I mean it is the song I am playing pretty much in a consecutive loop right now. I've had my needle stuck for several days now and this song and EP are such a tease for whats looking to be an amazing album.

Capybara - The Wimp
Album: Try Brother
I'm pretty excited about this one. I came across the band by recommendation of my sister, who lives in Austin, who I was visiting at the time. She actually bonded with the band when they came through town and hasn't stopped singing their praises since. Once I listened to them for myself it wasn't all that hard to tell why - Capybara is upbeat without being saccharine and impossibly hip without being unapproachable or overly challenging. I really like this album - you'll notice when you listen that there's no real lead singer... everyone kinda does everything. An equal opportunity band - how democratic.

Mayer Hawthorne - Your Easy Lovin' Ain't Pleasin'
Album: A Strange Arrangement
Okay first of all, this is a white guy in Buddy Holly frames. I think he wants to look like Elvis Costello... unoriginal. Luckily his look has no weight on his music - if you like Raphael Saadiq, old Carolina beach music, hell even Al Green, you'll like this guy. He, like Saadiq, is reviving an older sound that I for one have missed.

Black Moth Superhero - Forever Heavy
Album: Dandelion Gum
Holy heady. Might be my favorite recent band discovery. If you like anything remotely psychedelic, trippy, 70's-infused, electronic... you can safely go ahead and just download the entire album. Trust me.

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros - Come in Please
Album: Up from Below
I hear a lot of Bob Dylan and a lot of The Beatles in this album... not that that's a bad thing. I think I first heard Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros on NPR and I'm kind of obsessed with them. The whole album's really good. I wish I had something more eloquent to say about it, but honestly, I just like it. Speaking of NPR, they just did a really good run down of the decade's most important albums that is worth a listen if you want to download the (free) podcast.

Fleet Foxes - Mykonos
Album: EP
One of my favorite bands hands down, and such a great song. I feel like they were on some late night show lately and blew it out of the water, I'm itching to see them live.

Bishop Allen - Dirt on Your New Shoes
Album: Grrr
There's something about Bishop Allen that brings to mind the word "plucky". Here's a song that has some good ideas about how to make a day feel lived.

Beirut - My Night with the Prostitute from Marseilles
Album: March of the Zapotec
Well, at least nobody will ever ask what inspired the song.

Blitzen Trapper - Wild Mountain Nation
Album: Wild Mountain Nation
It took me about three seconds to love Blitzen Trapper. It is like The White Stripes made a rock n roll baby with MGMT and raised it in the South.

"I think that we’re all in debt and we all need to know the gratitude of the era of music that comes after all of the great artists. To talk about Tennessee Pusher being a great record is a bit superfluous when you imagine that somebody got an advanced copy of Sergeant Pepper’s and was the first to hear it for five hundred mile and got on the phone with Paul McCartney and said, ‘Your record’s really good, man.’ So, for a long time, I really felt like I had a foot full of concrete over that. That somehow being in the shadow was a bad place. But as I got older…well, you know, you just have different eras and times of creative thought. You have a Renaissance and then you have another time that comes after it.

I think that anybody who heard those Dyaln records when they were a kid wanted Dylan to be there father too. I always like this quote that Pedro Martinez said. He said, “Maybe the Yankees are my daddy.” Anyway, we all wanted that man to be our old man cause he’s been such a huge influence. He really taught Us a new sense of beauty. Or re-taught us. Because what Bob did was to recount what’s been said before, and that’s all that anybody can ever do. Because it’s all been said before. I’m looking at floor to ceiling shelves of books in which it’s been said since the Age of Bronze. They’ve been saying the same ultimate truths about the world. You can read the mystic writings of poet Rumi and know that Bob read them. Or you can read William Blake’s A Little Boy Lost. You find the trailings of Dylanisms throughout all the literature of the world. He really read the greats. And he listened to American music. And that was his medium. He needed to find a way to be William Blake and Robert Frost and Dickinson with guitar. He needed to be Hart Crane with a harmonica. So, what better way to do that than sing Black American music? To wear the mask, you know, minstrelsy. Well, Jews have been wearing that mask a long time. Look at Al Jolson.

I grew up in the world where Black and White is now so blurred. And those signs for whites and ‘coloreds’ have been painted over a dozen times. But they’re still there underneath the paint. And it’s all a part of the social fabric. So, the themes may have been totally diluted by the mall, and seventh grade lunchroom politics, but underneath it all, it’s still the quintessential Mark Twain America that you hear referenced to when you listen to Bob Dylan. " - Ketch Secor, Old Crow Medicine Show

Slack City, FL

Many thoughts today. The first being that I am pissed off. Right as I stumble on the awesomeness that is On the Bridge, WUFT removes ALL music from the station. Talk about a what the fuck moment. I mean, I'm sure its because of people like me who don't donate but listen - they have to pay royalties every time they play a song, so I'm sure it was an easy and hefty budget cut. Still though, no me gusta.

Secondly, I was pleasantly surprised to get a nice email from James, the lead singer of Sons of Bill, a band I've mentioned on the blog before (you may remember me saying they blew Reckless Kelly out of the water last spring back in Jacksonville.) Still amazed that people other than my friends read this thing... I mean why anyone thinks my rambling thoughts about music are important is beyond me, but hey, I'll take it.

So wow - fall is here. School starts for some of you fools (not I), but living in a college town you find yourself living in terms of semesters and not seasons. It gets me thinking about the summer now behind us, the songs that remind me of it, and the changes that come with the new lease on life that "back to school" gives you. The year is full of potential, laid out in front of you, hopeful and promising. And lest we forget, toe has again met pigskin. The hope for a perfect season is still tangible (and reasonable, if your QB happens to be Tim Tebow).

My days in this town being numbered gets me thinking about the things about it that are pretty cool. My boyfriend and I were in the car the other day talking about all the musical offspring Gainesville hath born unto the world - most notably Tom Petty, but also a huge range of other artists like John Vanderslice, Less than Jake, Hot Water Music, Against Me, and Sister Hazel.

I think of blog post themes all the time - "songs of the summer" was one that recently got scrapped when all that came to mind were a few Michael Jackson songs, and a Gainesville-themed post seemed like a good idea, but honestly, this blog is about music I like, endorse, and actively listen to, and of those local yokels I just mentioned, the only ones I listen to on any kind of regular basis are John Vanderslice and Tom Petty.

Also, I know as much as I talk about the Avett Brothers it seems obvious that I would post my thoughts about the album that recently came out, however this guy summed up my exact feelings so directly that if I were to try to put it in my own words it would just come off as plaigarism, so go ahead and read his thoughts (and, to agree, mine) on "I and Love and You" by clicking here.

I promise I'll be back with regular updates soon, chock full of listenable goodness courtesy of some other local yokels at Grooveshark. I'm a full-time graphic designer and work has been busy lately. I'm still on twitter though - you can follow me @songsoftheweek.

See yall soon.

PS... new Vampire Weekenddddddd

...pretty exciting and great, if you ask me.

Where the Wild Tings Are Featurette

Simply because I'm excited - October will be here sooner than you think!

Avett Brothers @ St Augustine Ampitheatre

To anyone that reads this blog, it's no secret that the Avett Brothers are far and away my favorite band. To those same few, it should come as no surprise that I thought tonight's show in St Augustine was fucking great. I'm currently in some kind banjo-induced musical post-coital state. The perfect time to pen a "review".

The venue itself was made for nights like tonight. The blazing sun's sticky southern heat called for breezy dresses and sunglasses, but as night fell, a cool breeze wafted through the rafters and tempered our sweat without letting us forget that this is summer.

The opening band was decent enough - you could tell the waify lead singer loves Ryan Adams a little too much. They have a long path to greatness, but the foundation was there, and they sufficed for a solid warmup. To their credit, I think they're more of a club band - they just got lost in this venue and they failed to energize the crowd they way they should have because of it. Thank God there was some crazy wookie in the pit dancing for the entire crowd to behold - he was the most entertaining part.

The Avett Brothers took the stage without much delay, no rockstar attitude, no making the fans wait. They opened with Paranoia in B Major, then brought Kwon onstage and went straight into Laundry Room (my favorite new track on the EP), jammed out on the last few bars, and followed it with And It Spread - at this point everyone's on their feet and the crowd's forgotten about the nap they took during the opening act. Paranoia was particularly great, but everyone went apeshit when they jammed out after Laundry Room.


Scott's energy in particular is infectious, he's so wiry and visibly passionate - it completely reflects onstage. He is just batshit crazy all over the place. Seth is a little more reserved, but he offsets his brother well. Kwon is absurd - anyone who can make a cello look cool and easy is cut from a bolt of badass cloth. And Bob, or "Bouncing Bob", as I like to think of him. I joke that the guys don't need a steady percussionist soley because they have Bob on bass, not only plucking the foundation, but keeping rhythm by jumping on every beat. Every oneo f them has instrument ADD. The fact that they can each move seamlessly from bass to banjo to guitar to piano to drum set to kickdum makes my head want to simultaneously explode with admiration and envy.

Next the guys went into Please Pardon Yourself, and a particularly facemelt version of Shame - a hight note of the show for me. It's easily one of their most popular songs, and the crowd knew every word - Scott got into it and started directing a clap rythm. This isn't band that gets up there and plays in front of a crowd, they are a band that plays FOR and WITH the crowd. They never forget to get you involved. Distraction #74 was next, which was a song I've kind of blipped past before, but came home and immediately revisited.

So then they gave us a little taste of the new stuff they've been working on with Rick Rubin. I'm extremely hesitant of the new record simply because when any band signs on with a major label and a big-name producer, the financial investment being made in the band is expected to be reciporocated with high record sales, which can be dangerous.


The Avetts don't necessarily have a mass-market sound, which is what I like so much about them. They are the kind of band that can roll into a studio, do a raw performance, cut it, and put it on a record no sweat. It's a sort of gruff production style that I feel really defines them, and a departure from that spooks me because I can't imagine liking them if they sound too slick.

They played the title track of the new album, I and Love and You. This is going to be their breakout song - if there is any chance that your Mom will be listening to her favorite Adult Contemporary station one day and hear the Avett Brothers, this is the song she'll hear. That said, it's a great ballad and I've been playing it heavily since purchasing the EP. Its GREAT live. They followed it with another cut from the next album, equally fantastic in a totally different way, Kick Drum Heart. The percussion in this song, predictably, is sick. It's a little bee-boppy on the EP, but live it's high energy and infectious.

Then boom, they took it right into Go to Sleep. I mean really, shut the fuck up. At this point I'm on sensory overload. I was glad when they slowed it down for a bit - a solid stretch of some older stuff - Old Joe Clark, Solomon (a rare treat), lol lol, and a touching, brotherly duet of Murder in the City - a great song about family, which as my boyfriend so thoughtfully observed, is a common theme in their songwriting, which I find refreshing.

Next was PG Annapolis, and At the Beach. Then Seth performed a solo version of 16 in July, which was fine, but I was hoping to hear Ballad of Love and Hate if they were going to go that route. Oh well. They wrapped up the show with November Blue and blew any last remaining faces off with Will You Return.


They didn't tease us long for an encore - the first choice of Perfect Space, to me, was totally meh. I would have rather heard something like Swept Away, which I think is a better encore song. But they kicked it into gear with the ever-reliable crowd pleaser, Die Die Die, which Kwon destroyed.

All in all, a fantastic show - it makes me so excited to see them in a club context in September when they play in Tallahassee. I mean, what else can you say about the guys? They simply put on one of the best live shows there is to see. Their talent is well-honed and masterful, their songwriting is impeccable, they sound just as amazing on an album as they do live - nothing feels lost in translation. I think it's the mark of a truly great band. And the Avett Brothers are a truly great band.

I'm ready for September.

07/06: Excessive Alt Country Post, part I

If you're a fan of bluegrass or alt country and you live in the Gainesville area, I hope you've beat me to the discovery I made this afternoon in the car - 88.1 FM (NPR) at 4:00pm on Sundays. We paused on the station, when to my utter shock, the Avett Brothers came blaring out of the speakers. The DJ (I have to find out who this chick is) then followed them with Ben Kweller, another Avett Brothers song, My Morning Jacket, and then Matt Costa. It was as if I had custom-designed a radio station! I was so happyyy.

The radio show, in conjunction with our nation's birthday and the Avett Brothers show coming up this month in St Augustine, inspired me to dedicate this post to what I spend the majority of my time listening to (and what I could easily fill this blog with exclusively) - alt country, folk, and bluegrass - good ole Americana. Hold on to your britches kiddies, this is gonna be a long one, in two parts, anchored by the Avett Brothers, so I'll hold off on the commentary unless it's important. (P.S. - the show's called On the Bridge and has been going since 1998.)

Avett Brothers - I and Love and You
Album - I and Love and You (EP)
Buy the EP on iTunes, its less than three bucks.


Hayden - Disappear
Album: The Place Where We Lived



Deer Tick - Ashamed
Album: War Elephant
*thanks Frye


The Band of Heathens - Don't Call on Me
Album: The Band of Heathens



The Duhks - This Fall
Album: Fast Paced World



Elvis Costello - Down Among the Wines and Spirits
Album: Secret, Profane, and Sugarcane
The entire new Costello album is great, but takes a few spins to really hear just how great. Couldn't find it on Grooveshark, but it's well worth the purchase price.

Hoots & Hellmouth - Want on Nothing
Album: Hoots & Hellmouth



Felice Brothers - Don't Wake the Scarecrow
Album: Felice Brothers



Matt Costa - Emergency Call
Album: Unfamiliar Faces


The Everybodyfields - Wasted Time
Album: Nothing is Okay



Gram Parsons - Still Feeling Blue
Album: Grevious Angel

Rest in Peace FSC & RGK

“Yesterday’s just a memory, tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be.”
— Bob Dylan

Video Break: The Woods

This is not only the shit, but my sister is friends with the rad people who made it... and the band (The Woods). She's so hip.

SotW 6/24

Tishamingo - Chest Fever
Album: The Point

I've loved these guys for a long time. Margaret, one of my girl friends from high school, had a family member in the band which is how I originally heard of them. They've been making a name for themselves on the festival circuit ever since, and seeing them in Tallahassee the on the eve of the UF vs FSU game over Thanksgiving is a local tradition. It's the one time a year my worlds collide, and my college friends and home friends merge into a giant cluster at Potbelly's in Tallahassee. Tishamingo never fails to put on a great show, and this cover is one of my favorites.

Cross Canadian Ragweed - Jenny
Album: Mission California

Normally I don't like when CCR goes back and re-visits old stuff that sounds better raw (case in point: "Alabama"), but this is a re-do that I think for once, was actually done better. They slowed it down, and it actually sounds good with some production behind it. Kudos.

Iron & Wine - Cinder and Smoke
Album: Our Endless Numbered Days

Haunting, spare, and soft - like most of his stuff. However this song has a certain tempo to it that plucks along in a sort of sneaky musical tiptoe that makes you curious. It makes me think of wandering unfamiliar places.

The Beatles - Elanor Rigby
Album: Revolver

I have been so into The Beatles lately - particularly their late stuff. The White Album, Revolver... I'm obsessed. It took me a long time to truly enjoy the band - I always appreciated them for the musical monsters they were, but I never grasped the gravty of it until recently when I really began listening to their albums on heavy rotation.

John Mayer - Wheel
Album: Room for Squares

Say what you will about him, but John Mayer is a really smart guy and one hell of a wordsmith. His twitter is an endless source of amusement for me and watching him in interviews is entertaining because he's usually much smarter than the person he's talking to and consequently, subtly patronizing them. I mean, he is a pretentious asshole, but I love the guy, I get the biggest charge out of him. Plus he's got this really unique relationship with his fans. He's probably the uber-geek of pop music. He blogs, he vlogs, he tweets, he openly admits to googling himself and regularly checks Perez Hilton... he's got this constant banter going with the world and I dig that, because he feels accessible. But about the song - it's the last line that I love; "I believe that my life's gonna see the love I give returned to me."

Jay Stewart - TheMovieEnding
Album: The Electronic Sessions
free download at Myspace
Tallahassee, represent. Truly though, no bias here - there are plenty of local bands and kids making music from my hometown or related to UF that straight up suck. Jay is not one of those - this song just got picked to be in a Microsoft ad campaign - kinda awesome. That said, I really do like the song a lot - it went straight onto my ipod alongside Thievery Corporation and Little Joy.

Bob Dylan - Desolation Row
Album: Highway 61 Revisited

Good ole Bob. This is Salty Dog music. For the rest of my life, when I hear Bob Dylan or Janis Joplin, I'll think of macrame, Yuengling pitchers, juke boxes, train sets, and elk heads. Fact.

MGMT - Time to Pretend
Album: Oracular Spectacular

Ok, so this is somewhat of a repeat, but this song needs to be mentioned again, just because I feel like it so well sums up my six month tailspin earlier this year. "I'm feeling rough, I'm feeling raw, I'm in the prime of my life... this is our decision to live fast and die young... now let's have some fun." Whatever was in my system has now worked itself out, but I feel like this is the theme song for being young and reckless.
On that note, some other SotW all-time favorites:
Steve Earle - The Galway Girl

Fleet Foxes - White Winter Hymnal

Mofro - I Believe (In Everything)

O.C.M.S. - Methamphetamine


A parting note from Paul Levine of The Purple Hatter's Ball: Just a reminder to everyone that The Purple Hatter's Ball is this Saturday at The Ponderosa Wildlife Preserve in Quincy. The weather forecast looks good. The temperature is likely to drop during the day into the upper 80's and the evening should be cooler, in the 70's. Could be a brief shower to cool things off but, overall, it should be gorgeous. Gates open at 2PM, music begins at 4PM.

If you're not familiar, The Purple Hatter's Ball was started last year to celebrate the life of Rachel Morningstar Hoffman. The line-up of incredible musicians that will play to honor Rachel's memory include Dubconscious, The Malah, Greenhouse Lounge, Catfish Alliance, The Dirty Robots, Green Hit, Gravity A, Corporal Boil, Trial By Stone, Flight Risk, Slight Persuasion. Tickets are only 30 bucks.

Just a Few Honest Words

Ben Sollee - It's Not Impossible
Album: Learning to Bend


I have a crush. To think, a week ago, I hadn't the fainest idea who this Ben Sollee person was. Now I do. And I thank Ward's grocery store for that. Also, the illustrious veggie chef Peter Berley. I swear, the dots connect. I'm going somewhere with this. For non-locals, Ward's is a local supermarket stocked to the hilt with cheap wine, local produce, bulk beans and grains, and all kinds of other good stuff. On Sunday, I went there and got a little carried away because I've been more into this whole flexitarian (enter Peter Berley) thing lately. Less meat, better for the body, better for the planet. But I digress.

So here I am, back at home, grocery sacks full of things like french lentils, silver queen corn, leeks, asparagus... and I did what anyone raised by my mother would do - I went on a two day cooking binge. I made everything from boiled peanuts to tomato basil soup (no, I did not eat all of this myself, friends graciously helped at a nosh-laden gathering later). Point being, during this two day spree I was subsisting on vino and the Avett Brothers station on Pandora. All the sudden I hear this floaty vibrato and a cello that totally yanked me out of my culinary zone. Ben Sollee. The album was on my iTunes not 15 minutes later.

I do this stupid thing sometimes where I do yoga at like, 12am. Then my endorphins get going and I can't sleep. Plus that Tazo black tea is like crack and I can't stop drinking it. Wide awake about 1:00AM, I was trolling twitter and saw Jason Mraz had updated his blog. I wish I knew Mraz. Not in a creepy fangirl way, just because he's my brand of weird and I dig the way his clock ticks. He says ridiculous shit like "freshness factor five thousand" and constantly challenges people to broaden their horizons and look after our planet. I love it. I take awhile to get to the point, bear with me.

Anyway, I'm reading his blog and I see an entry dedicated to a blog started by Ben Sollee and friends. This is what elevated Sollee from album in my iTunes to all-around crush of awesomeness. The blog, as it turns out, documents he and a few friends' three-hundred-someodd BIKE trek from home to Bonnaroo. For poverty! So incredibly inspiring! It makes me legitimately contemplate doing something on a smaller scale for Wanee or MagFest. I'm putting a link at the bottom of the entry as well, so after you get done reading, you can head over and read about his ride and view some of the group's road videos. Detrimentally, by watching the videos, I also saw how cute he is. To the primarily male readership of my blog, I promise this did not influence my opinion of his music, so shut it.

G. Love & Special Sauce - Gimme Some Lovin'
Album: Philadelphonic

A song about mornin' lovin'. Gonna wake you up with a kiss on the cheek.



The Beach Boys - God Only Knows
Album: Pet Sounds

While we're on the topic of love songs, this is arguably the best one ever written. In the words of Mr. Gump, that's all I have to say about that.


Seu Jorge - Mania de Peitão (Large Chested Mania)
Album: Cru

I once had a guy tell me in conversation that he appreciated "the absurd in music." Regardless of the fact that I later made a cataclysmic ass of myself with said guy, those words stuck with me, because they struck me as such a good way to describe his definitive appreciation of certain sounds. Seu Jorge is, to me, intelligent absurdity. Maybe because it's foreign, maybe because it's slightly challenging, maybe because of the ukulele... who knows. What I do know is that it's a tongue-in-cheek sort of sound that's funny for the same reason Paris Hilton is - you know she's ridic, but you also know she's in on the joke. (PS... to those in the know - Paris Hilton: the original Becky? Thoughts and feelings?)

New Grass Revival - Callin' Baton Rouge
Album: Grass Roots / Anthology

Fuck you, Garth Brooks. No just kidding Garth, you're cool... in a your-version-is-comparatively-sub-par kind of way. Sorry. Party on Garth.


Passion Pit - Moth's Wings
Album: Manners

This is what I like to call a victory song. I'm not much of a musician, but sometimes I hear a song and I wish to hell I wrote it. Writer's envy perhaps. Regardless, this is one of those. It's absolutely perfect - the melody, the hook, the chorus, the climax, the lyrics. It's got a "finished" feeling without being overproduced... it's poetry - sound and words woven together in a snagless tapestry. I simply cannot see why anyone wouldn't like it.

Dear friend as you know
Your flowers are withering
Your mother's gone insane
Your leaves have drifted away
But the clouds aren't leering up
And I've come reveling
Burning incandescently
Like a bastard on the burning sea


You're drifting like a fire
Buried deep beneath the water
You're pressing on your low low
Is stepping on my toes
Whose side are you on?
What side is this anyway?
Put down your sword and crown
Come lay with me on the ground

You come beating like moth’s wings
Spastic and violently
Whipping me into a storm
Shaking me down to the core
But you run away from me
And you left me shimmering
Like diamond wedding rings
Spinning dizzily down on the floor


* http://pedalingagainstpoverty.blogspot.com/ is Ben Sollee's blog. Also, his cover of A Change
is Gonna Come makes me really happy. Oh yeah, he's on twitter too.

On a Totally Unrelated Note...

Okay okay, new "actual" post soon, I promise. But for now - I want to ask you a question.

What have you done to help others today?

I love the idea of the movement at helpothers.org - it's a simple way to pay it forward when someone performs a simple act of kindness.

Hold a door open for someone, thank your checkout girl at Publix, tip your bartender a little extra, get somebody flowers just because, bake some cupcakes to share, give a friend a lift...

Not only is the website a great source for ideas and inspiration, they offer something called "smile cards", which you can leave behind after you perform an anonymous act of kindness that encourages that person to pay it forward. I left a flower on my roommate's windshield with one :)

Go check it out and get your warm n' fuzzy on. "The fragrance always remains on the hand that gives the rose." - Gandhi

Life Hacks: My Music Organization Philosophy

Talking to a friend of mine the other day who is equally as obsessive about organizing his music library, I got to wondering about the distinctive nuances that distinguish one person's OCD from another.

After being what tech companies like to call an "early adopter" of the ipod, I've been poring over a digital library since the Napster years, and over that time, I've developed some unique tricks to not only compliment but also counteract some of iTunes' intuitive (and lets face it, sometimes counter-intuitive) settings.

The only place to begin is with the basics. I prefer to download full albums because I believe in the album as an art form. It gives due respect to the artist to listen to the songs as a unit in the order that they so carefully placed them. Producers and aritists agonize over song order in the studio, only to be dissected single-by-single by the a-la-carte iTunes clientele. That said, I like to always be sure the album is labeled correctly in every way - artist, song titles, song order, and with the advent of cover flow and a more visual iTunes library (kudos to Apple for finally getting around to acknowledging the value of cover art), correct cover art.

Cover art. Oh, cover art. Doesn't it bother you when that little square is blank? It seriously offends my OCD. I use a small, light program called GimmeSomeTune (for mac) that automatically downloads album artwork and song lyrics for anything I place in my library. It's handy. On the rare occassion it can't pull something up, I either right click and tell iTunes to "find album artwork" or go to album-art.org, press Cmd-I, and drag the art to the cover box.

I like to maintain the purity of my iPod (I'm really starting to sound like a freak, aren't I?) - that to me, means not filling it up with one-song junk and cluttered playlists. Again, I'm an album girl. However, I use the "Genre" category to my advantage. I categorize similar music using extremely broad genres with non-technical names (ex: "Heady", "Indie", "Chill", "80's") that reflect a listening mood moreso than a genre. That way, I can head to genres on my ipod when I'm im a certain mood, tell it I want to listen to "chill" music, and it throws on David Gray and Ray Lamontagne for me.

But what about playlists? Admittedly I used to be a playlist junkie - I spent hours perfecting mood-reflective playlists - until I realized Pandora and last.fm could be trained to do that for me. So now, I use those programs if I'm in the mood for something random, or something I would never download or pay for - like when I'm getting ready to go out, I fully admit it's the Justin Timberlake station on Pandora for me. With a little customizing and being dilligent (at least at first) about adding artists and telling the programs what you do and don't like, Pandora and last.fm are in my opinion, a superior replacement to laborious playlists that can be streamed through newer model iPods if you have wifi and a Bose sound dock like I do.

I'm also an editor. I never keep more than a few heavy-rotation albums on my hard drive at any given time. To me, my iPod is the place to fill up with memory and RAM hogging .mp3 files. If I listen to music on my laptop, it's usually just a few new and/or very favorite albums (ie, right now I only have The Avett Brothers' Emotionalism, New Grass Revival's Greatest Hits album, and the new Dave Matthews Band album, which I'm giving a chance and deciding if it deserves a permanent residence on my iPod). Again, when I want to listen to other music on my computer, there's Pandora and last.fm ready to be of service.

Some features I simply ignore. Like ratings - how pointless. If I didn't think it was a four or a five-star album, it wouldn't be on my iPod, idiots. Other features I'm figuring out how to embrace - like Genius, which is cool, but it seems to me that Pandora and last.fm do a better job of plucking similar-sounding tunes out of obscurity for your discovery.

I don't do movies or TV shows, so we can skip that. On rare occassion, I do audiobooks, but I only keep my favorites stored. David Sedaris's pithy stories usually have a permanent residence, (who ever gets tired of hearing "You Can't Kill the Rooster"?) but one-time reads like Middlesex come and go (good for long drives), but I'm more of a tangible cover-and-pages type of reader anyhow. Same for podcasts. I subscribe to and download a few of them on iTunes - specifically This American Life and video yoga classes - but they never make it to my iPod.

After that, all that's really left is housekeeping - checking for duplicate songs and what have you. If you're like me and have multiple iPods (I have one for the house and one for the car) - I recommend installing a program like Senuti that allows you to copy songs from your iPod back to your computer to load on another iPod (or just for backup).

So there. I just think that when your music is organized, you're going to end up listening to more of it and getting more from your library than if it's a cluttered, slow, mislabeled mess. I didn't say I wasn't obsessive.

A few more solid tips from Leopard Tips:

• If I have an artist who does duets or collaborations, I keep them all under the primary artist, and list the collaborator in the song title field. For example, if Alison Krause sings backup on an Alan Jackson song, the Artist is listed as "Alan Jackson" and the song title is "The Angels Cried (w/Alison Krause). This keeps all the Alan Jackson songs together. The only time I stray from this is if an artist does a lot of duets with the same person and I consider that music radically different from their normal output... then I list them as a separate artist. For example, Elvis Costello & Burt Bacharach is listed as a separate artist as the music is really different from Elvis' normal output.

• If I have a lot of bootleg or alternate songs from an artist (like the Beatles or Dead), I'll list the alternates under a separate artist name like "Beatles (alt)". This is because I don't really want to hear bootlegs or alternate tracks when listening to random mix of the Beatles.

• I list all artists by first then last name. I just don't like the look of the other option, "Jackson, Alan". Too messy for me. As long as you're consistent.
  

• I don't like any artists in all caps - I retype them to keep the look consistent.

Video Break

A stop-motion wedding invite, Vampire Weekend's M79 as the soundtrack. Awesome. Thanks Britt.

SotW 6/1

Big Brother and the Holding Company - Another Piece of My Heart
Album: Cheap Thrills

Credit's usually given to Janis Joplin (Big Brother and the Holding Company's lead singer) for popularizing the song, but her band wasn't the first to perform it. In their case, it's actually an Erma Franklin cover. I dedicate it to Brittney, Sarah, Lindsey, and all the Salty Dog crew who go into hysterics every time this song comes on the jukebox.

Perpetual Groove - Save for One
Album: Athfest 2008

Even though someone told me once that "Perpetual Groove and their emo jamz make me want to gouge my eyes out with my ticket stub", I like them. No, they aren't particularly heady or challenging, but they put on an alright enough show that as long as you're paying under 15 bucks to see them, you're getting your money's worth.

The Dodos - Walking
Album: Visiter

My new band obsession. This song is the jam - I love the banjo. It's like Fleet Foxes and Avett Brothers had a love child.


Buffalo Springfield - Broken Arrow
Album: Retrospective

Short-lived but no doubt earned their spot in rock n' roll history for serving as a springboard for Neil Young and Stephen Stills, among others. I love the constant tempo changes. This is what music in the 60's was all about, in my opinion. Broken Arrow switches from victorious to melancholy in a single note.

Hot Chip - (Just Like We) Breakdown
Album: The Warning

Spare synth-rock that's got an 80's new wave vibe - the whole album can be listened to as a whole in one of those monolithic stretches of sound where at times, you aren't quite sure where things begin or end, but you like it. I'd be interested to see these guys live. Thanks for the rec Bobby.

Railroad Earth - Hard Livin'
Album: Amen Corner

Solid bluegrass roots let Railroad Earth branch out into a sound that has mass appeal without any slick over production or trite hooks. Granted, by mass appeal, I'm not talking Billboard Top 40. I'm more thinking a good band to indoctrinate your DMB-devout friend into alt-country or bluegrass.

Tim Easton - The Young Girls
Album: Porcupine

If you like The Band and Ryan Adams, I feel like you'll be into Tim Easton. His music is solid and unpretentious, and it feels like he snuck out of playing some bar and then peppered his sound with some kind of gruff off-the-street vibe a la Steve Earle. This song's a little more obsessive and bluesy than the rest of the album, so give the whole thing a spin, and then look into the rest of his stuff if you like darker neo-traditionalist rock.

Interpol - Obstacle 1
Album: Turn on the Bright Lights

Ok, weird, but Interpol totally remind me of when I worked at Nordstrom circa 2005-2006. I worked upstairs in the trendy contemporary departments where we blasted music videos all day long on a four hour loop, and they were ALWAYS on our playlists - usually sandwiched somewhere between The Sounds and Gwen Stefani. B-A-N-A-N-A-S.

Levon Helm - Got Me a Woman
Album: Dirt Farmer

This song cracks me up, because he talks about his woman like she's his car. The lyrics are priceless. But hey, he loves that woman.


moe. - Nebraska
Album: Tin Cans and Car Tires

I just like it, I don't have anything deep to say about it. Makes me happy, I love moe. and I love when they play this song live. The end.