¤ jetless heights

+ Sun, April 10

Out To Lunch, Back At Noon

Just shy of a month and still very much a dollar short.

We’re out to lunch, munching on the tasty bits of the semester’s end.  Papers grilled over a bed of tests, sautéed in a succulent project sauce.

Bear with us through the next week and a half and you’ll be treated to stories of Italian adventures followed by the glowing nights of Ann Arbor summers.

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+ Sun, March 13

15. Interpol – PDA

This past weekend me and some buds packed it up and high-tailed it down to Chicago to catch Interpol sexily swagger their way through the Aragon Theater.  Similar to last time, they played as spartan as possible.  Beyond singing, I think Paul said between two and three words to the audience.  That, in conjunction with the precision they perform with and Carlos’ gothic coroner’s jacket/Dracula suit made it very much an Interpol set through and through.

Interpol - March 12, 2005 - Chicago, Illinois - Aragon Theater

  1. Next Exit
  2. Slow Hands
  3. Narc
  4. A Time To Be So Small
  5. Stella Was A Diver And She Was Always Down
  6. Public Pervert
  7. Not Even Jail
  8. Hands Away
  9. Evil
  10. NYC
  11. Take You On A Cruise
  12. PDA

    Encore
  13. The Specialist
  14. Obstacle 1
  15. Roland

One of the things I like most about Interpol is the motion that each track seems to carry.  Take PDA.  The way I envision this song is as something running towards a cliff and taking flight at that ultimate moment of danger and tension.

Check out those first three minutes of flight check, building up material and laying much foundation.  Plowing through this and that, muscling its way through to that moment, 3:09 in when the ground cuts away.  Soaring free, propelled by their own weight, outward those guitars fly.  They hang aloft for a full 45 seconds before those wings of Sam Fogarino spread and pump, propelling that flight further still.  Cruising past the hazy cirrus clouds of Paul Banks’ vocals, the stage is set for a brush with the angels in the following track.

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+ Wed, March  9

14. Weezer - The World Has Turned And Left Me Here

Hello dear, I know it’s been a while but spring break time is simply not computer time.  However, spring break has ended and to you I return.

This past Sunday was the first surprisingly warm, sunshiny day of the year.  With the sunlight reflecting off this year’s record breaking amount of snowfall brighting all, light on white, it was very hard to not feel fantastic.

Driving to my parents’ having the windows down and Weezer’s blue album on was a perfect fit.  Rounding the corner to the exit of the student ghetto, there’s a couple stereotypically smiling, running then embracing.  What’s with these homies?

Arriving there, Chadwick the iPod went back to sleep and my original blue album disc spun up.  Cracked case, worn and weathered by many hundreds of plays, it’s just as good as it was that May day in 8th grade.  Baccus still sits there in the insert, smoking his pipe with antennae buzzing.  There’s the amp Rivers sets his juicebox down on in the Say It Ain’t So video in what’s possibly the most perfect moment in all of publicly documented Weezer history.

8th grade.  My, how long ago that was.  I had just discovered this fancy technology that was starting to catch press called “MP3”.  MacAMP was still in beta, encoding took 15 minutes per song, your best bet was still to download songs off Hotline servers.  With your 56k modem.

I was a paperboy then.  Trusty Discman in bag, out I went.  Ah, there it is.  The tambourines at the beginning of My Name Is Jonas always remind me of how yellow-green those maple leaves were against that brilliant blue sky you only see in May.  The way The World Has Turned And Left Me Here seemed to be oh so perfectly written for me and my middle school crush.  I’m not sure whatever happened to her, but I do know is that the solid, carefree-ness of those early summer days in that carefree time of early ‘99 are forever imprinted on the blue album.  Top of my 8th grade game—gigantor glasses, Yoda shirt and all.

Now, to go to my garage and play my stupid songs.

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+ Fri, February 25

13. Radiohead - Subterranean Homesick Alien

It was July of 1997 when I heard Radiohead’s Ok Computer for the first time.  How on earth did I, a seventh grader, nab one of the best albums ever produced the month it came out?  I really don’t know.  Ask Mark Tuttle, he told me to buy it that one day we were at the old Tower Records downtown.

I didn’t really know the band at the time so I didn’t really have too much of a drive to listen to it, honestly.  The first time I did though was quite the experience.

It was one of those dull afternoons you can have in the summer when you’re left with too much time on your hands.  No one was terribly up for doing much so, being bored, I rented a movie.  That movie, as it turned out, was 1993’s Fire In The Sky, some alien abduction “true-story” that I had wanted to see years earlier.

I remember sitting there listening to Subterranean Homesick Alien when that scene where the narrator wakes up the ship came out.  Him floating down the hall, covered in alien juice as those lofty guitars floated here and there.  His terror along with the disorientation in that song.  Lost, foreign, ethereal.  Listening to it today walking back from work, I could steal feel that organic claminess just as clearly as I could 8 years ago.

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+ Thu, February 24

12. Spoon - I Summon You

Spoon is a band that I really get and really don’t get all at once.  They’re easily accessible, there’s nothing ethereal happening here.  At times the songs seem simple, nothing too outlandish.  Other times, those very same songs seem impossibly intricate and infinitely detailed.  This is weird and I’m still stricken by it years after first hearing them.  I think now that it’s the product of nothing less than genuine love of the craft and an honest and open pursuit of quality.

I cheat you tonight with a song that you simply can’t get yet.  Their fifth LP doesn’t even hit the streets till May 10 and I’m going to tease you with a song from it.  I suppose, though, that it’s not too unfair as I know this song originally from the demo teasing Britt Daniel did to me last summer.

How simple this song is!  On that demo, yes, it’s lone guitar and vocal, but the music, it’s so simple!  But god, listen to this song and tell me that it doesn’t completely pervade your brain.  One day in January my housemate had just come in.  He walked past my door as this song was playing and stopped midway up the stairs to come back and hear the rest of it.  A minute later he was in his room streaming it off me.  3 minutes and 55 seconds later he had his guitar out and was practicing it.  This was caused by 2 or 3 seconds of spontaneous exposure.

What is it about this song?  It’s not bouncy pop, indeed, the subject matter is rather heavy and loaded.  It’s not loaded with varying hooks and upstage production, hell, this is a rough demo with a pretty unvarying guitar part.  It’s not even particularly well recorded!  But yet there it stands, engaging as ever.

My take?  Champion songcraft.  Brilliant devotion to the process of making music.  A crystal clear idea from a sharp mind, brought to creation by educated hands and a sensitive ear.  Examine the flushed out album version and you’ll find more evidence.  That acoustic guitar stills sits there center stage with Britt’s throaty rasp, but the song finds itself with a little more kick from a persistent drum kit and with a little more aural pleasure from a quiet, airy guitar floating through the verses.

All that and Spoon do it with no apparent effort.  Believe me when I call this an instant Spoon classic.

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11. Weezer - El Scorcho

The first time I heard El Scorcho was in David Nestor’s car in 6th grade.  I remember hearing the “Goddamn you half-Japanese girls” line and writing whatever group that was off on the spot as some crappy, racist group or something like that.  I did this.  I did this with Weezer.  And no, I can’t believe it either.

I didn’t end up buying this album until early 1999 when I decided to, y’know, catch up with every single other one of my peers and give Weezer the good listen they deserved.  I bought the blue album and Pinkerton at roughly the same time and essentially listened to nothing but them for the next 4 or 5 months and indeed, 7 years later, I still hold them as two of the best albums I own.  Absolute classics.  Pinkerton’s been on my mind recently as I’ve finally come to terms with those that call it as an “emo” masterpiece.

And I settled on the subject how?  Simple: those people are wrong.  Those people are wrong and I hate them.

Let’s look at Pink Triangle as an example.  Nice song about a guy falling in love with a lesbian, something for him to be bummed out about for sure.  If this were an emo song the rough trajectory would go as such: boy meets girl, boy learns girl is a lesbian, boy moans for 3 minutes, boy performs acoustic solo, boy performs “edgy” electric solo, boy moans for one minute more, boy’s strained vocals fade out.  That’s that, but this, this is Weezer and after a nice sarcastic rocker, they end the song with the quaint litte “If everyone’s a little queer / Why can’t she be a little straight?”  Sarcasm topped with—oh yeah—more sarcasm.  And it’s funny!  What emo songs ends with humor?

El Scorcho itself?  Come on now, it’s a song about a girl and it’s named for a hot sauce in a New Mexico restaurant.  Emo that, record reviewer asshat.

When it comes to Pinkerton, certainly it’s an album about heartache and longing and all the other fun girl things, but get serious here.  Weezer approaches the subject with a playful, sarcastic take, poking fun at the girl, poking fun at themselves and even poking fun at their little, ol’ three chord music.  If this were truly an emo album, it wouldn’t be having fun, it would be wistful and longing.  And Rivers definitely would not let you know that he’d rather keep whackin’.

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+ Wed, February 23

10. Smashing Pumpkins – Set The Ray To Jerry

Sorry all, I plum forgot last night (plum!) to post a song.  So love, here you are.
 
The Pumpkins may be best known for their louder, more aggressive songs but what I enjoy them for the most are their more ruminative tracks.  Take “Porcelina Of The Vast Oceans” or “Galapogos” from Mellon Collie or “Mayonaise” off Siamese Dream, hell, even on Adore there’s an excellent example in “For Martha”.  Yeah the ’90s will remember this great band as a loud rocker band, and certainly they were, but I feel their prestige is most apparent when they took it slow and methodical.

Take “Set The Ray To Jerry” off the extended 1979 Single from the Aeroplane Flies High boxset.  Dig those pulsing drums and the low/high interplay of the guitar and xylophone.  How perfectly the calmness here goes with a snowy day.  With a secluded, independent feel and that brittle beauty of so much in winter, they go together so well.  I remember one day last winter, setting out onto North Campus as this came on the iPod how perfectly it all fit together.  Those big gobs of snowflakes you get when it’s not too cold seemed so native to the high guitar noodling you can hear towards the end of the track.

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The Monthly iPod Update

It’s been a month since the iPod shuffle came out, and that’s much too long for Apple to go without generating a metric assload of press off their little white wünderboxes.  “More iPods!” Steve exclaims.

I see one very solid thing and one kinda …crappy thing about today’s update.  They very good thing is that starting at the $100 pricemark, there’s an iPod every $50 and no obvious product cannibalization occurring.  This is very intelligent marketing and it really opens the product up to an enormous range of people.  From $100 to $350, you’ve got your choice of an mp3 player ranging in capacity from 512mb to 30gb and that’s a very major thing.  At the very high end, you can step up the cost $100 and pick up a massive 60gb player.  Based on my library size, that’s about 43 days of non-stop music.

If you ask me, this was a very conscious effort on Apple’s part.  The question is, how do you finagle the devices into the price points without taking losses by underselling?  According to Apple, you take out all the extras.  Nowadays, there’s no iPod that comes with a dock or a case.  Firewire cables are missing from every model updated today (though they all have USB2 cables) and indeed, the iPod mini doesn’t have an AC adapter anymore.  Yes, you can still buy all of these from Apple later, but keep in mind, when I bought my iPod in May of 2003 I got a case, dock, cable set, headphones and even the little headphone remote.  Then again, I paid $150 more than today’s 30gb player and I didn’t get a color screen or 15 hours of music playback.

I don’t view these accessory shortcomings as too much of a detraction.  The USB2 cable is as fine as the Firewire cable, the iPod case Apple makes is wholly inaccessible and the dock, well, you have to admit that a dock is simply an expensive nicety for any device.  If this is what it takes to get these players at the sweet price points they’re at now, so be it.  I expect the $200 4gb player and the $350 color-screen 30gb iPod to sell insanely well over the next few months.  Better than ever, in fact.

(And, for what it’s worth, you can find the older iPod photo’s for $120 off in the Apple rebates section.  40gb player, color screen, 15 hour battery life with a dock and case for only $479.  Not too shabby for you close-eyed readers.)

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+ Mon, February 21

9. Yo La Tengo – ∀

If I were to pick my “I’m stuck on a desert island and I can only have one band for the rest of my life” band, I’d pick Yo La Tengo almost immediately.  The second I’d pause would be spent handing out deep apologies to Broken Social Scene, Interpol, HUM and The Shins.

I always find myself lost for words when it comes to this band.  With a career as old as myself, there’s a lot of ground to cover and I’m frantically trying to do that as quickly as I can.  It’s been less than a year since I first ran into them and I’ve already purchased a large portion of their output in the last decade.  70 songs in without a single one that I need to skip and with many that I need to replay.

I know this isn’t exactly a song, but as you might be able to understand, it’s hard for me to pick just one.  There’s the rolling duo of Cherry Chapstick and Little Honda.  There’s the loving touches of Autumn Sweater and You Can Have It All.  The sensual Moby Octopad, the rough ‘n tumble Deeper Into Movies, the passive-aggressive Nuclear War and the guitar rock of all of Painful.

And to think, I’ve only scratched the surface in the last nine months.  You can expect to hear more of these songs as I find the words.  Yo La Tengo for president, man.

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+ Sun, February 20

8. Modest Mouse – Tiny Cities Made Of Ashes

Me and Modest Mouse, we go back.  In fact, I can trace our relationship back to one single point in time.  You see, it was the summer after sophomore year and I had asked Rigel for a mix, with the only qualifier being that I wanted it to get me into Modest Mouse.  I suppose now, thinking back, it wildly succeeded.

In any event, that summer, my parents and I went out west, around Seattle and Victoria Island for the most part.  In a tidy little book store in Portland I picked up 1984 for the first time and more or less devoured it in the next 3 days.

It was while reading that I more or less did nothing but listen to that tape as we drove through those mountain roads sightseeing.  It’s because of this that Tiny Cities Made Of Ashes has always reminded me of that book.  It’s a very good fit, if you ask me.  Take the background anvil clank, the frenzied chorus begging for an escape plan, the monotonous vocals, the very song name itself.  It all alternates between a lifeless and drab scene and a panicked demand for freedom.  You can’t get too much closer to 1984 than that, can you?

I ended up buying The Moon And Antarctica on that trip and honestly listened to nothing but it for the rest of it.  If you want to fall into Modest Mouse, I very much feel that that CD is the best way to do it.  Accessible, enjoyable and good – certainly a hell of a lot easier than the obtuse anger of, say, The Lonesome Crowded West.

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