Top 10 garbage music of 2014

 

If we go through every year with a deluge of horrible shitty music, why should this year be any different? Not that Taylor Swift pop shit. That other shit. That other shit that people listen to and wank to the idea that they’re listening to cool alternative or indie music, but really it’s just more drivel.

This is my list of that other shit. Shit that music know-it-alls – the college radio stations, the indie music rags, the self-proclaimed underground pundits – tout as big and clever, but really, it’s all just derivative bollocks.

It takes almost nothing to impress someone these days. The music industry isn’t fucked because of piracy. It’s fucked because the music itself is shit.

Before I go on, I must qualify that while this list seems overly skewed towards females, it wasn’t designed to be so. Gender didn’t factor into the equation. It just so happened that this year, we seem to be lauding a lot of shitty music being pumped out by bands that just so happen to have a woman take centerstage.

So, here we go.

 

1. Angel Olsen. I was fucking duped by Angel Olsen. Or is that with Angel Olsen? A friend of mine at work pulled me into his office excitedly one day to play me Angel Olsen. He played the slightly crunchy track, “Forgiven/Forgotten.” Hmm, not bad, I thought. Not terribly original, but it was a familiar grind that I was fond of. So I picked up the album. Talk about fucking bait-and-switch. Maybe with the exception of “Hi-Five” which like one of the best efforts to channel Roy Orbison in recent years, the rest of album was boring, moaning shit that’s been done a million times better by the likes of Beth Orton, Laura Marling, and about a hundred others before her.

 

2. Sylvan Esso. Why the fuck are we even listening to this band? Admittedly, I only just found out that this was a band was more than one person. I thought Sylvan Esso was just some woman’s really unfortunate name. But no, this duo actually chose a name that sounds like a gas station handing out GEDs. But never mind the name. Is there anything new or interesting we’re hearing when we’re listening to Sylvan Esso? Seriously, they sound like a mopier version of a shitty band that are shitty at making any money off their music despite being tapped for a Hyundai’s Christmas TV campaign. Fuck those guys and fuck these guys.

 

3. Future Islands. For fuck’s sake, just watch this and try not to want to fucking die. At least David Brent had the decency to be goddamn satire.

 

4. The Black Keys. I’m glad I chose the right side in the Black Keys-versus-Jack White let’s-see-who’s-better-at-ripping-off-the-blues feud. “Lazaretto” was fucking superb, even if most of the appeal was the cool-as-hell Ultra LP vinyl issue. Because, let’s face it, it didn’t take Jack White’s album to make you realize that the when The Black Keys aren’t recycling the blues through a fuzz pedal, they’re pretty shit. Stop trying to “grow” or whatever shit musicians feel they need to go through to try and reinvent themselves. We all bought your first records because we liked the way they sounded. Keep making the shit that we used to like from you. There’s a reason AC/DC’s lasted all these years – they’ve spent 40 years singing strictly about their cock and balls; granted, they suck, but at least they had the brains to figure out what’s working for them.

 

5. tUnE-yArDs. First off, you’re a grown-ass woman.   Stop spelling your name like an Adderall-fueled 6th grader who posts selfies on Instagram at least 75 times a day. Second, forced quirkiness is the worst kind of quirkiness. Covering up a sheer lack of talent with the fog of deliberate eccentric noises doesn’t make you an artiste, it makes you a charlatan. Or Jonny Greenwood. Which is sorta worse.

 

6. Real Estate. If you can find a more boring band to make it big in 2014, you’re either lying or… you know what, let’s just leave it as you’re a goddamn liar. I have no idea how such boring music can make me feel so fucking pissed off, but hey, Real Estate, you got it done. Also, I fucking hate that they’re named Real Estate. Sunny Day Real Estate should sue them for sullying half their equity.

 

7. FKA Twigs. You, too, can be FKA Twigs. Pull 8 to 10 random records out of your music collection, and play all of them AT THE SAME TIME. Then grab a mic and just sing some shit into it in your most wispy, twee voice. Voila! You just made an FKA Twigs record. I wish she’s fucking tell me what her name is now, not just what it used to me.

 

8. Courtney Barnett. Take what you like about Dylan’s signature monotonous vocal style, rip any heart out of it, give it to some shithead from Australia who nags herself through every song like she’s trying to push a heavy bicycle uphill and you get Courtney Barnett. Sorry for even drawing you into this comparison, Bob Dylan (even though you kinda suck these days).

 

9. Perfect Pussy. What made Minor Threat, Big Black, or Black Flag so much fun to listen wasn’t just the angst; they had songs that had form, some trajectory. Growing out your armpit hair and screeching into a mic for 3 minutes does not make you a formidable punk act. There’s no fucking way these guys actually write or rehearse anything. It’s all just “play really fast and loud, and Meredith, just act like you’re really pissed off that someone fucked up your kombucha order.”

 

10. Tweedy. What better way to produce an album of dad rock for the pleated khaki masses than for a dull dad to record with his even less interesting son. Tweedy are the Dockers of pop, the sort of band that English teachers put on when they’re feeling “alternative.” I never liked Wilco or Son Volt or any of that shit, so to see that this is now being passed on generationally is really disappointing.

 

Honorable mention:  Foo Fighters.  Sonic Highways wasn’t their shittiest album to date.  But it’s right up there.  The only reason they get a pass is because of their HBO series.  As rock docs go, it’s pretty lousy and pedestrian.  But I’m glad that someone mainstream’s taking the time to try and bring Nashville, Steve Albini, the whole Positive Force scene, and desert rock to the masses.  But Sonic Highways is still a shitty, shitty record.

 

Boy, did this year fucking suck when it came to music.

 

 

 

A Year of Reinvention

Shit, has it really been a year? A year since I last posted something to this good-for-nothing blog? Almost to the day. Good thing no one reads this shit, or someone might’ve actually thought they were missing something.

So why start writing again? I don’t even know if I want to commit to that. “Writing again.” There was some self-induced pressure to post something every few week or so. I have no idea if this is going to be a one-off, or if I’m actually gonna get back to this.

Right now, I’m on a plane. With about 13 hours to kill. I started watching the first two episodes of Dave Grohl’s televised love letter to American music, “Sonic Highways.” I’d originally written off the effort as  yet another shitty way to shill the Foo Fighters’ new record. Yeah, I wasn’t completely wrong but I’m not completely right, either. While not an original endeavor, Grohl’s gone all Ken Burns on us by taking a deep dive into some pivotal points in American music history: Chicago blues, the DC punk scene, Nashville, and so on.

The second episode – the one about the ‘80s punk scene of DC – dealt a lot with the idea of DIY music. The DC punks had no one to make, press, and sell their music. So they did it themselves and that’s how Dischord Records came about. Invention being the mother of necessity and all that.

Well, it has been a year of reinvention for me. A year ago, I was at a job that was incredibly challenging – I needed to do more, but there wasn’t more to be done. So I walked across the street – quite literally – and started working at another shop, but it was ad shop to which I wasn’t accustomed. I’d cut my teeth at big Mad Men, Galactic Empire-type agencies: all TV all the time, hundreds of people with fancy titles and excruciating egos to match, and none of the creativity to back it up. Now I’d joined a shop that started life a few years ago as a modest digital ad agency that had grown up almost too quickly. At best, the median age is probably 28 (I have no idea, I guessing here) and most folks hadn’t done anything other than digital marketing. They weren’t familiar with the only world I’d even known: TV, print, radio – you know, all the shit that people used to consume before they all married their smartphones.

And that’s how I ended up on this airplane, on my way to produce the agency’s very first TV commercial. Shit, for some reason I feel like I’m taking this agency backwards.

And speaking of going backwards, what better way to embrace a midlife crisis than to start your own fucking band? For years, I’d jammed on a song or two with friends who’d play gigs around town. These friends are all crazy talented people, but they almost never played the stuff that I wanted to play. I mean, who many fucking times can you play a Marshall Tucker Band tune to a disinterested bar?

So in January, I hatched a half-baked idea to grab three of my buddies to start a band. Like a bunch of high school kids. Except we’re all old as fuck now, we all have families and responsibilities and shit, and we all have white collar jobs that we trudge to each day… but fuck it, you play the bass, you play keyboards, you play the drums, I play guitar, fuck it, let’s start a motherfucking band. DIY, motherfucker. Let’s play the shit that WE wanna play. With thundering drums. Distortion turned to 11. Yeah, my Peter Pan complex knows no bounds.

And when we got together to play for the first time in our drummer’s dad’s basement (yeah, you read that right), we were fucking awesome. Wait, did I say awesome? No, actually, I didn’t mean that. I meant to say we were fucking awful. Yeah, we were so beyond shitty.

Half of us had played in real fucking bands back in the ‘80s. One of us played around New York in a hardcore band that once opened for GWAR, so you know he’s got his shit together. Another one of us actually went on the road with his band and a chestful of original songs. The remaining two of us had never played in an actual band setting. So, you know, what could go wrong.

The first time we played in front of a crowd, we fucking bombed.   We strutted to the stage like we were fucking rock stars and by the second verse, our whole show fell apart. We forgot entire passages to the song, my fingers knotted up on the guitar, sound levels were all over the place, and it was just a big fucking mess. Crashed and burned right away.  In front of a few hundred people.

Yet for some unexplained reason, we actually got asked to play a second time. People are either highly charitable and forgiving, or they’re all fucking deaf. Still, we were grateful for a second chance, so we took it – a two-song appearance at a commemorative screening of “Purple Rain.” We threw down two Prince covers – “Darling Nikki” and “Let’s Go Crazy” – and the crowd didn’t walk out! So, you know, SUCCESS!!

Summer came and we booked ourselves into two summer block parties. By “book,” I mean, we offered to drag our shit out to the middle of the street and play a set of covers during a large outdoor picnic, and get paid with free beers. No one’s dropping bills for our shitshow. These things were a humbling experience, so say the least. Now, outdoor sound quality is shit, no matter how good your gear is (and being a garage band and all, we have shitty gear), and no one’s really there to listen to you play. You’re auditory wallpaper, a lot of distortion and cymbals that are getting in the way of drunken conversations. But, after a couple of hours, when everyone’s a bit more tanked, it means you start to sound a bit more tolerable, and folks actually start to get into the tunes you’re playing. But you never actually stop realizing that at all times, you’re still a bit shit at this whole thing. Especially for a band that’s only been together for about 6 months.

Which is probably why we didn’t think too deep into it when our bass player got us a paying gig – an actual paying gig! – at a local dive bar. We had about 3 weeks to prep for this, and for 3 weeks, we were in our drummer’s dad’s basement rehearsing our balls off. We knew we were never going to be great, we just tried to be good enough so that people didn’t fucking walk out.

We worked the show from all angles. We told EVERYONE. We had to. This band was going to have a short shelf life if we had a paying gig and NO ONE showed up. We told everyone. We sent out dozens of emails. We abused Facebook and Twitter and every imaginable social channel. We told our friends, we told strangers. We needed to fill that tiny bar.

In the end, we’re told about 200 people packed into that little bar in our little town. Holy shit. The whole place was just a flurry of people and abuzz with friends from all over who came to see these four idiots play some cover tunes for 3 hours. I have no idea if we were any good that night, but that was the best we’d ever played. I have no idea if anyone had a good time, but we had the best fucking time ever.

That night, it didn’t matter if anyone else bought into the idea of us as a band, but we fucking believed we were finally a proper band. The training wheels had come off. We played the music we wanted to play, and we pulled our little shitshow together and we formed a fucking band.

DIY, motherfuckers. And that’s how I reinvented myself right into a(nother) fucking midlife crisis cliche.  Godamnit.

Last show at Terminal 5

I don’t go to a lot of concerts (relatively speaking), but I probably go to more than my fair share.  Thankfully, majority of bands out there are absolutely deplorable, so that certainly helps me set an artificial limit to my concert-going.

One thing I’d still like to do some time is go to a random concert every single night of one week.  Just randomly pick five different venues, then go check out whatever bands playing there that night.  Probably better if I don’t recognize the band so I’m not prejudging the show.  If I’m lucky, at the end of the week, I’ll have found a few new bands I want to listen to.  At worst, I’ll have uncovered a bunch of unlistenable bands to completely avoid like the plague.  Either way, it’s five night out, and there are worse ways to spend five nights out.

One venue I’m excluding from the list of venues is Terminal 5.  Fuck Terminal 5.

For as long as it’s been around, I’ve been going to Terminal 5.  After all, what choice do you have if a band you like decides to play there – you suck it up and go.  You go despite it being the worst fucking concert venue on the planet.

Last weekend, I went to what is probably my last time at Terminal 5.  The show’s line-up was absolutely brilliant, on paper at least.  The Beach Fossils, followed by Lee Ranaldo, followed by headliner Kurt Vile.  That’s a lot of talent packed into one night.  No throwaway bands here.  For the first time in the long time, we headed to the show right when the doors opened, unwilling to miss even a minute of the opening bands.

Getting there to Terminal 5 is both easy and hard.  “Easy” because being about as far west as possible in Hell’s Kitchen, it is surrounded by absolute shit.  There are no decent bars or restaurants within a 3-block radius to keep you from getting to the joint on time.  Most other concert venues have probably dozens of better than average watering holes where you can get a few brews and a decent meal before the show.  Not Terminal 5.  Terminal 5 is in the middle of Manhattan’s black hole.  There is jack shit around Terminal 5.  If you wanna grab a brew before a show, you’d have to walk a half-dozen blocks away to find anything.  It is also for that same reason that it’s hard to get to – it’s nowhere near any subways, and it’s in the anus of Manhattan.

Since it’s in such a shithole part of the city, the least you’d expect is for the joint to make up for it by being extra awesome.  After all, why would people keep schlepping all the way out there, right?  Well, the concert hall itself is fucking terrible.

Shaped largely like a cube, the main floor is peppered with large obstructive pillars.  The second floor balcony protrudes so far out that if you’re in far corner of the hall – any corner – you’re not seeing shit.

And that’s before you’re assaulted with what is indisputably the worst sound system in the universe.  It doesn’t matter if you put Jimmy Page or Jimmy Buffett on that stage – both will sound equally shitty.  Everything out of those speakers sounds like muffled farts through a bullhorn.  There is absolutely no articulation whatsoever (which is really important when you’re trying to listen to farts).  Honestly, I’ve had more pleasant afternoons listening to my neighbor’s dog bark incessantly at squirrels.

But that’s not all you have to listen to when you’re at Terminal 5.

You see, when you combine the fact that Terminal 5 is middle of the downtown Baghdad of New York and the fact that the sound is fucking dreadful, it becomes clear that Terminal 5 is being kept afloat by people who don’t really like music at all.

You go to any show there and you will invariable – and this entirely without exception – be surrounded by chatty assholes who don’t shut the fuck up.  People talk throughout entire gigs.  Whomever and whatever the fuck is playing on stage matters not one iota to these assholes.  Somehow, these assholes have rationalized the idea that the middle of a crowded thousand-decibel concert is the best place to carry on a meaningful conversation for two hours.  It’s always the same sort of person, too – it’s always either some tall bearded douchebag in a flannel shirt, or some overenthusiastic chick who looks like Marnie from Girls.  In other words, everyone in that place.  I can’t remember the last time I was at Terminal 5 when I’ve had to turn around to tell people to shut the fuck up.

Not one thing about Terminal 5 makes it appealing to see a band. I’ve been suckered into going to that concert sphincter for years, but I can’t bear going to Terminal 5 anymore.  I’ve seen my last show there.  I like Kurt Vile.  But Terminal 5 made me hate Kurt Vile.

And that’s what it comes down to: I’m not going to let Terminal 5 ruin the bands I like.

Fuck Terminal 5.

 

 

 

The older my kids, the shittier my parenting

I used to be a good parent.  Did I say “good”?  No, that’s not what I meant at all.  Not “good” by any stretch of the imagination.  I think what I meant was “not terrible.”  Which is about as much as one can hope for when you have your first kid (we’ll call him Kid Uno for simplicity’s sake).  With your first kid, you’re overprotective, neurotic, and almost invariably, massively annoying to everyone else around you.  I know this know because of all the other first-time parents around me.  With your first kid, you act like you’re the first person in the universe to have a kid – everything is fascinating, pioneering, like no one in the world has ever experienced what you’re experiencing.  But in reality, you’re irritating the shit out of everyone around you with your fucking kid.

I’d like to believe that I wasn’t like that with my first kid.  But I can’t tell ‘cause I can’t properly remember what I was like with Kid Uno.  I do remember that when my second kid (and we’ll call him Kid Dos, because why not) came around, I was a shit ton more chilled out about everything kid-related.  “Chilled out” perhaps has positive connotations – relaxed, not overly excited, somewhat in control, etc.  Except that’s not entirely what I meant.

In this case, chilled out meant giving zero fucks; my parenting nose-dived into a tragic spiral from Kid Dos on.  It is astounding how little I give a shit anymore.

 

When my kids were much littler – young enough when at least one of them was still shitting his pants – I took so much care over what I fed them.   Something like breakfast – the most important meal of the day! – was a meticulously calculated affair.  I’d spread just the right amount of jam – not too much, not too little, and fuck you, no high fructose corn syrup, you animal – on their toast.  Whole grain toast!  None of this shitty white bread bollocks.   I mean, how’re you gonna know if something’s good for you if it doesn’t have two full cups of sawdust in it, right?  I’d carefully cut up, skin, and core an apple because shit, these guys needed their wholesome nutrition directly from a fruit.  Full cups of milk.  Whole milk for full milk power.  That sort of thing.

This morning, I lazily filled their bowls with some peanut butter cereal, and promptly forgot the milk.  I’m not even sure if they ate it, that’s how little of a shit I give these days.

 

Keeping the kids occupied?  Whatever the fuck it takes.  Things like TV and movies aren’t a luxury – they’re basic necessities, essential tools when used strategically  will do wonders by keeping your kids distracted enough so that you can get other shit done.

In this case, I’m not even shielding Kid Dos from age-inappropriate content anymore.  Whatever works for Kid Uno works for Kid Dos now.  Kid Dos is watching shit that Kid Uno never go to watch at his age.  Questionable language all over the place, and I have the nerve to get mad when they use the word “heck.”  (Yes, yes, the irony is not lost on me, given the tenor of this blog, assholes.)

“Hey, you guys wanna go watch tons of explosions, gratuitous violence, a skin-to-win Gwyneth Paltrow, and two dozen Iron Men?  AWESOME!!!”

 

I don’t get to help out with the kids’ homework very much.  They don’t get a ton of homework, but they often tackle it when they come home from school, while I’m still at work.  That said, the missus probably does a fair job “refereeing” the exercise…  I think.  I have no fucking idea.

I used to try and sit with them to help them with some of the homework if I wasn’t in the office.  But these days, it does seem that more and more of their homework is done online.  While I should probably more concerned about their online access, I somehow saw this as an excuse to fuck off even more.  I mean, how many pairs of hands can be on the keyboard at the same time, right?

“You’ve got to do your homework on the computer?  Well, go right ahead!”  I have no idea what type of homework a 6 year-old needs to do online, but I’m far too willing to let him loose on it.  I suppose if I was a more responsible parent, I might sit with him to make sure he’s not accidently running into questionable material (like everything his father writes online).  But I’m not, so I don’t.  I am a shit parent.

It’d be one thing if my deplorably parenting habits were just passive actions like simply not bothering.  But I’ve now found myself going out of my way to be irresponsible.

 

A couple of Sundays ago, I woke up and decided that Kid Dos should have a drum kit after months of talking about it.  Kid Uno plays the cello, and Kid Dos had nothing, so I got it in my head that I needed to rectify this immediately.  Truth is, I was at a concert the night before, and the band had a kick-ass girl drummer – and girl drummers are the fucking best.  There was also a veiled sliver of me that thought that this was also my chance to learn to play the drums.  Don’t act so surprised, I’m not the first asshole to use my kid to get something I wanted.

Things happened rapidly.  I found two listings for drum kits on Craigslist.  After a few email exchanges, and conferring with my drummer friend, I bolted down to Brooklyn, and by 3pm, I came home with a shiny blue drum kit for Kid Dos.

He couldn’t be more excited to give it a good and proper thrashing after I put the whole kit together.  And I do mean thrashing.  I play guitars loudly and full of distortion, so I understand the beauty of noise.  But drum kit in the house in the eager hands of a 6 year-old?  Holy fucking shit, this I was not even remotely prepared for.  The kid can hold an impressive beat, but holy shit he’s loud.  Loud enough to make my aging ears ring.  Loud enough for me wonder if I’ve made a terrible decision here by giving him something that might damage his hearing.  Drums, what a great idea.

I guess one upside is I’d be too deaf to hear anything when I get yelled at for being such a shitty parent.

 

 

 

You’re too Canadian

Forget the “eh” suffixes, forget the poutine, forget the moose and beaver jokes, forget aboot it all.  The oft-overlooked Canadian stereotype is that they’re a painfully polite bunch.

This was never more evident that the show I went to a couple of nights ago:  METZ at the Bowery Ballroom.

It was hard for me to imagine what this show was going to be like, given that this is a band with only one album.  One album that comprised ten songs, with a total running time of about 28 minutes.  The last time I saw a band with similar credentials, it was Vampire Weekend at Terminal 5, and I swear that show was done by 10:30 – 10:30!! – and no one had any idea what the fuck to do with the rest of the night.  We were all let out of show, and I swear I saw kids in pajamas getting ice cream with their parents.  That was just fucking weird.

But METZ are nothing like Vampire Weekend.  I guess folks categorize these guys as noise punk, whatever the fuck that means (I fucking hate these categorizations because they’re all trying too fucking hard, and each label is more meaningless than the next).  A power trio from Toronto that’s not fucking Rush.  They don’t suffer Graceland-era Paul Simon-type melodies.  These guys are built one thing and one thing only – noise.  So maybe I shouldn’t get too concerned.

After a couple of entirely forgettable opening bands, roadies cleared the stage and started to set up for METZ.  After a very quick setup – gone are the days of thirty pedals on the floor with a rack of half a dozen guitars; now it’s one instrument going into one, maybe two pedals and that’s it – the lights dimmed, the crowd cheered… and the roadies came back on stage.  Wait, what?  Holy shit, those weren’t roadies – those guys setting up were METZ themselves.  I’d never seen that shit before – a headlining band setting up their own gear.  “Oh, that’s alright, don’t go through any bother, we’re quite happy to take care of ourselves.”

How painfully Canadian.

The lead singer/guitar player looked like a millennial Bill Gates.  The bass player looked like comedian Rob Delaney.  The drummer, fuck knows what he looked like but he was back there machine-gunning away at the heads.

A couple of polite hellos and boom, off they went.  Bill Gates launched into a rapid, piercing riff and shrieked into the mic like a dragon whose balls had been set on fire.  Eager headslamming on stage; in front of me, a mosh pit quickly formed.

A mosh pit?  That’s adorable.

About that mosh pit – it was the nicest, most gracious mosh pit I’d ever seen.  I mean, how often have we gone to show where fuckheads who don’t know how to mosh end up slamming around and punching someone in the face, then a fight breaks out, and everyone gets tossed from the floor by security.

In this case, everyone knew how to mosh.  It was weird, but everyone followed the unwritten rules of moshing.  If someone fell, a bunch of guys would reach right in to help pull him up.  Girls jumped into the middle of it, and the guys would take it easy.  Despite all the slamming and stomping around, there just wasn’t much angst and rage.  The mood was more, “hey, we’re just here to have a good time”, not “hey, we’re here to kick the shit out everyone.”

It was the most polite mosh pit I’d ever seen.  Meaning, it was the most Canadian mosh pit I’d ever seen.  Which begs the question – did the band bring their own moshers?

Back to the band, METZ’s on-stage presence bordered on being marginally comical.  When the amps were screaming, they shrieked and raged like banshees.  Between songs, Bill Gates would gently thank the crowd, “Thank you so much, you guys.  We’re so happy to be here.”  Insane noise machine one minute, boy scouts the next.  It was this seamless transition between madness and gentleness that made it all so fucking bizarre.  Yet, remarkably refreshing.  Here, check it out yourself:

Even when the bass player had blood pouring from the bridge of his nose when he slammed his head into the mic, he sheepishly told the crowd, “Excuse me, I’m gonna have this looked at to make sure I don’t need the hospital.”  He came back with duct tape between his eyes (a proper rock move), thanked the crowd, and then resumed slamming his head to his bass lines.

So, so Canadian.  Canada rules.

 

 

Adventures in solo concert-going

 

The concert had been planned for months and with about a week to go, I found out that I was about to go to this concert by my own damn self.  The show was in Brooklyn, and the band was !!!.  Granted, !!! are not necessarily a household name, but they’ve been around long enough to have a bit of a following.  Frankly, when I found out they were going to play in New York, I was surprised that the band even still together.  For being some sort of dance-punk band, !!! don’t really make too much social noise.

In any case, fondness for the band aside, I was now not looking forward to going to this show.  Because I think going to a concert by yourself is more than a bit sad.  It means that pretty much everyone else you know would rather be doing something else than to go to your dopey show with you.  I take this shit personally – it’s like an implication not just of your company but also of your taste.

Thankfully, the missus saved me from this lonely agony.  Not because she was going to come with.  Fuck no, she was going to stay home, probably put some awful show on Netflix, and go to bed by 10pm.  This concert wasn’t even going to get started ‘til after 10pm.

Instead, she told me that someone who works with her is going to show as well and that I should meet up with her at the show.  “She’s soooooo impressed that you know this band, and that you’re going to their concert.”  Huh?  “What she means is, for someone your age.”  Turns out this person is at least – at least – 10 years younger than me.  Some sassy, concert-loving 20something who’s going to her first show at the Music Hall in Williamsburg.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.  I’m now more depressed than ever.  Now I really don’t wanna go.

But I stop being a pussy about it, hopped in the car and drove down to Billyburg.  I rolled into the venue, and there’s no one about, the floor’s practically empty, and there were two techs on stage setting up.  The doors opened an hour ago!  Fuck me, even arriving an hour after the doors opened, I’d arrived too early.  There is no faster way to feel like a total fucking rube than showing up early for something, anything – a concert, a date, a holiday party, the birth of your kid (never show up until the baby’s crowning).

But I was already in.  So I went to the bar, sucked back a couple of PBRs, and went out to the floor once I heard the pounding beats of the opening band. Holy shit, I NEVER show up for opening bands.  And if I ever happen to, it’s usually just to see them walk off the stage.  Here I was, about the to watch not one, but TWO opening bands before !!! would come on.

Once again, I’m proven what a fuckwit I am.  The first band, Yellow Dogs, turned out to be excellent.  I’d never heard of them before.  Opening bands are pretty much the only thing left in the world where it’s OK have “never heard of them before.”  After their set, I googled them.  Holy shit, these kids had been through quite a bit.  I guess being a rock band from Iran has its share of challenges.

After their set, I walked back down to the bar in the basement, saw the Yellow Dogs bass player, and chatted with him for a few minutes.  I’m interrupted by a text: “Hey, we’re here, where are you?”  The fuck?  Oh right, the 20something I was supposed to meet at this show!  I was so wrapped up in my loserdom that I totally forgot about this kid!  I tell her to meet me at the bar in the basement.

She shows up.  She also looks like Megan Fox.  And behind her, out step 4 other 20somethings.  1 boyfriend, another couple, and a dude who wastes not time telling me he just celebrated his 21st birthday at the Brooklyn Bowl.

Oh good.  (For fuck’s sake.)

I immediately feel my crippling Peter Pan complex kick in, and I’m desperately trying to not be weird about this.  Because feeling like an old fuck is ALL ME.  No one else is actively making me feel old, this shit is my head.  I feel like someone’s old creepy uncle tagging along with the kids to some show in hipster hell.

My salvation came from within the crowd when the !!! took the stage.  It came in the form of a tall man with a desperately balding pate, probably in his late-40s, dressed in a black track suit, who was entirely way too psyched to be there, and whose single dance move (and he was dancing even before the music began) the entire evening was to look left, look right, look left, look right, and repeat non-stop for an hour and a half.  Hey, at least, I’m not that fucking guy!

In the end, it turned out to be an excellent evening.  Seriously.  It was fucking awesome.  Discovered a new band.  Got to meet some new people, who turned out to be some of the most tolerable nicest 20somethings around.  Absolutely brilliant show (has to be, when the lead singer pops up right in front of you – LEFT).

On the way home, “Paradise City” came on the radio, so I put down my windows in the 30-degree wind as I crossed the Whitestone Bridge and let out a long howl.  Right then, I shit you not, a shooting star whipped directly overhead.  It was the most ridiculous moment of the night.  And the fact that that’s how I chose to end my night (shooting star notwithstanding), it really did tell me that no matter what, I’m a ridiculous old fuck now.

 

 

That’s not how you use the “Rudy” theme. We have rules for that.

Every time “Rudy” is on TV, I drop everything and I have to watch it.  Even though I’ve watched it about a hundred times by now.  And every fucking time, it makes me cry, right at the end.  I’m an enormous pussy like that.  But then again, I understand that this movie has the same effect on a lot of dudes.  Even some die-hard life-long Notre Dame haters.

“Rudy” is one of the greatest films ever made.  Shut up, ‘cause I’m not taking any argument about this.

So Game 1 of the 2012 World Series rolls around, we cut to a commercial break and I hear the “Rudy” theme.  It’s quick cut footage of kids and grown-ups, all doing every manner of sport.  90-seconds later, the end frame reveals that it’s a spot for Dick’s Sporting Goods.  90-seconds of growing aural exhilaration and it’s a giant cock tease for a shitty sporting goods chain store.

Fuck. That.

You can’t fucking do that.  The “Rudy” theme carries meaning.  It has a certain quality to it.  In fact, it’s got lots of qualities to it because of the film: tenacity, redemption, grit, glory.  NONE of which apply to a sporting goods chain store.  So, fuck Dick’s (that sounds weird).

There are very limited occasions in which you’re allowed to use the “Rudy” theme.  Here are the very few occasions the “Rudy” theme is be allowed.

• Football games.  Of course, part of it is the theme’s pedigree – it’s football music for a football film.  But it can only be used with football.  Not hockey, not basketball, not baseball, not any other sporting event – despite what Dick’s wants to sell you.  A lot of that has to do with the late, great Steve Sabol, who with his dad, perfected the art of overdramatic football film.  The Sabols had this remarkable talent to slow down film and make even the derpiest football action look like a Wachowski action sequence.  And not to get all band geek here, but mostly because the “Rudy” theme is a bit of a march.  No other sport has in-game action that mimics a march like football does.  No other sport has such military-esque assembly in which such attention is paid to orchestration and timing.  No football, no “Rudy”.

• Weddings.  Specifically as the bride walks down the aisle.  Shut up and stop being so selfish, girls, let the groom have this one.  The whole fucking day’s already all about you chicks.  For some reason, dudes always are nervous as shit on their wedding day (I have no idea why – I got married in my mid-20s and it was a fucking breeze).  So the least the guy can have is a cool-ass theme song as his bride walks down the aisle.  It’s a fucking kick ass piece of music, it’ll pump up the dude and get rid of his nerves, and it’ll be the one thing – the one fucking thing – that’s about him on that day.

• Pre-school graduations.  This is mostly for the dads who have to go to these stupid things.  As a rule, kids get too many graduation ceremonies growing up.  Pre-school graduations, kindergarten graduations, first grade ceremonies, the list goes on.  Stop making a big deal out of something the kids are SUPPOSED to do – finish the grade and move the hell on.  So for something as goddamn gratuitous as a pre-school graduation, you might as well make it kick ass for the attendees.  No “Pomp and Circumstance” – that’s college material, and you 5 years-old ingrates haven’t earned it.  No, put on the “Rudy” theme, the kids won’t know any better and every fucking dad is going to be high-fiving each other.  Everybody wins.

• After an In-N-Out Double-Double, Animal-style French fries, and a milkshake.  Because you know that meal is fucking epic.  Which means it needs to be celebrated.

So, just for good measure, here’s the ending of “Rudy”.  The bit that always makes me cry.  That’s what the “Rudy” theme means.

Goddamnit, I just cried again.

 

 

Jack White held us all hostage and somehow we were all OK with it

After many tries, I managed to nail some Jack White tix for one of his shows at Radio City Music Hall.  I was nearly not to be because I wasn’t able to get tickets to the first show, but a second show went on sale shortly after the first one sold out and I got a pair for the second night.

Turned out, I was one of the lucky ones.  Not because I actually managed to score highly sought-after tickets.  But because as most would know by now, JW cut his show short on the first night.  There was outrage after the show.  Not like car fires or riots and looting – this is New York, not Detroit, after all.  No, trilby-adorned post-hipsters would rage against JW the only way they know how: by blowing up the #jackwhitedebacle hashtag on Twitter.  NOTHING expresses your rage better than letting your thumbs bang out a series of furious tweets to all your followers, amirite!

That said, I felt bad for those who paid hard-earned money to go to see JW on Saturday and got robbed of a full experience.  On Sunday, people were searching were answers.  As was I, because I had tickets to see him on Sunday, and wanted to know if I was going to get robbed of a proper show as well.  But no clear answers came.  Some suggested that JW was pissed that crowd wasn’t into it enough – the now infamous “NPR convention” rebuke – while others suggested that he was pissed because he felt that most of Saturday’s tickets got scooped up by scalpers, yet others suggested that the JW got pissy about the sound system.  Not that any of it mattered because not a single answer would’ve been good enough for the people who went to that show.  Regardless of how they came about their tickets or their mood, they paid and showed up for a proper show.  And the only thing that JW was obligated to deliver – a proper show – was nowhere to be found.  Too fucking right people were fucked off.

So when Sunday evening rolled around, we made our way to Radio City.  I’d been waiting for this show for months.  Screw that: years.  I never made it to a White Stripes show.  And scheduling conflicts kept me from Raconteurs and Dead Weather shows.  Finally, this was my chance to see one off my long-admired artistes.

But as I drew closer to Radio City, I wasn’t feeling as charged up as I had expected.  The specter of Saturday night still hung over my psyche, and I walked into the lobby with reserved expectations.  Clearly I wasn’t alone, I could feel the same dense fog of apprehension all around me as well.  There seemed to be this muted hush, everyone’s mood seemed more downbeat than I’d ever seen.  Everyone knew what happened the night before.  Everyone probably had the same mixed feelings of “I hope he doesn’t pull that shit tonight” and “he’s can’t possibly be that much of a bitch two nights in a row, right?”

The slightly tense atmosphere was further confirmed when one of the dapperly dressed roadies greeted the crowd before JW came on, and said, “Let’s try this again, shall we?”

Yes, let’s.

The clock ticked after 9pm, the lights went down, and JW and his bevy of band members (we got the girl band) took the stage, and right out of gates, the show started weird.  I may be mistaken, but it sounded like everyone started with one song, then abruptly changed to “Missing Pieces”.  A bit like how Led Zeppelin would start “Black Dog” by playing the opening riff of “Out On The Tiles” to throw you off.

What followed was a frenetic and furious set.  JW tore through his set with a certain amount of rage and haste.  He pounded through one song, then the next, and the next, and the one after that, and on, and on.  The show was a runaway train, as if JW himself was trying to get the hell out of Dodge.  Between songs, he’d only pause if he needed to change instruments, and then it was off to the races again.

I don’t think JW addressed the audience even once.  No hellos, no banter, no intros, no goodbyes.  It was business from beginning to end.  JW wasn’t interested at all in connecting with the audience.  It was straight up, “You want it, here it is!”  It didn’t seem antagonistic, he just got right down to it, no fuckin’ about.  If that’s the sort of show he wanted to put on, then I’m in for the ride.  Less talk, more rock, thank you.

Yet, I couldn’t help feeling throughout the entire show that JW was holding us all hostage.  Between songs, the crowd cheered and hollered, as you would expect any concert crowd to.  But this time, I felt like I was cheering to just keep JW happy, to keep from storming off the stage like he did the previous night.  When there were quiet pauses between songs, it was as if JW was testing the crowd to see if we were all riled up enough to be worthy of the next song.  “Don’t go, Jack, we’ll all scream loudly so you’ll keep playing!”

And that is a straight-up load of arse.

That is not how I want to experience a show.  I don’t want to cheer a performer to avoid a negative outcome. I want to cheer because I’m fucking into the show, and I’m trying to laud genuine well-earned praise.  And while JW’s set was completely praiseworthy – it was a damn good show – the previous night’s antics had left an indelible stain.

I get that JW’s a pretty intense fucker.  He’s not running for Mr. Congeniality.  In case anyone forgot, he’s a fucking rock star.  Things like tantrums, going off the playbook, getting fucked off, getting into fights are all good ol’ straight up rock star bullshit.  Hell, the show I went to see before this was Jesus And Mary Chain at the Irving Plaza, and the crowd were actually stunned when the Reid brothers didn’t get into a fight and storm off the stage after 15 minutes.  It’s one thing to see this sort of shit coming (case in point, G’n’R, Nirvana, JAMC, etc.).  But this wasn’t typical Jack White territory.

He’s not even close to being the first performer to pull shit like this, and he’s far from being the last.  But when you’re a rock star who’s ambitious enough to tour with not one, but TWO bands, and you insist in playing a different setlist every night, you better get your shit together.  No one made you go on tour, Jack White.  You took this on yourself.  And then you took our money.

Get it together and make it fucking work.

 

No, you don’t need that goddamn SUV

This is almost not worth my time.  It’s fucking ridiculous that I’m actually taking time out to rebuff some stupid article I just read.  Because the subject of SUVs is so fucking old and tired, and it’s been done to death, and it’s fucking boring.

Yet, THIS CANNOT BE A REAL ARTICLE.

Surely this is some shitty troll write-up that’s meant to rile up certain gearheads who are stupid enough to get riled up (me).  I mean, most of the time, I love Gawker – Deadspin, in particular – but holy shit, do they come up with some massively pointless articles every so often.  In fact, that’s the problem with a lot of these sites that used to be sites that just reposted someone else’s stories.  Somewhere along the way, they decided that they need to compete as content generators and not just content aggregators.  And in so doing, often they struggle to come up with some minimum amount of original content for our insatiable appetite for said content.

And that’s why we end up with such a seemingly banal yet thoroughly retarded write-up assuming to validate SUVs.

If you can’t be arsed to read the article, here’s the sum up of what the whole stupid write-up is driving at:

OMG, your mom must’ve gracefully descended from the heavens, with all her hyper intelligence and miraculous supernatural powers, to have managed the herculean task of carting your stupid ass all over town without some swollen, overpriced pretend-offroading vehicular monstrosity.  Just how DID she manage?!  What a saint!  Oh, the humanity!

With all due respect – and complete sincerity – do fuck off.

ZOMG, sedans aren’t “convenient as something with a big tailgate”!!!  WE NEED A TAILGATE!!  Everyone needs tailgates!!  And sedans can’t accommodate large car seats!!  “OMG, these soft, pudgy, fast food-fed kids are too big-boned to fit to a family sedan!!”  “We must pack lightly – the horror of not being able to cram the entire contents of my house into my car!”  “Honey, there’s no way I can’t fit little Maddie’s Barbie dream house, her pack-n-play, the bottle warmer, her DVD player, all her Baby Einstein discs, AND your mega-duty breast pump into our normal car so that we can go to the mall – WE TOTALLY NEED AN SUV!!!”

This writer’s a fucking idiot.

As a father of two, I’ll just say that anything larger than a four-door sedan is completely pointless and unnecessary.  We have comfortably survived – fuck it, thrived! – with only four-door sedans.  Imagine that: a simple sedan, four wheels, four doors, a trunk, and we’ve managed fine.  Car seats, strollers, diaper bags, toys, foldable playpens, all the shit that you *need* (:rolleyes:) when you have little kids – they all fit nicely into our humble Volkswagen sedan.  AND a little dog, too, beeyotch.  I never even had a roof rack on my car until very recently (hey, it’s not my fault that paddleboards are 12 feet long).

I know some families with one or two kids, and they all have some beastly SUV with an enormous engine in it.  They clamp on some equally enormous luggage carrier to the roof rack.  The rear of the car’s got some a massive bike rack.  And it’s got a hitch.  I have no idea if the luggage carrier on top ever has anything in it, but those bike racks are always empty, and everything’s permanently bolted to their SUVs ALL THE TIME.  Really?!  The fuck you need all that shit for?  It looks like a prop from the upcoming Mad Max movie.  It’s like they’ve just bought some monstrous car and they’ve got to further validate this purchase by attaching all these extra bits and pieces on it because “that’s why we needed the big SUV!”

I’ll tell you what this is: fucking gluttony.

So what you end up with is single-digit mpg, a heavy lumbering shit box that handles even more poorly than it already did, awful parking jobs (because, admit it, you can’t park that thing for shit), and maximum carbon monoxide for maximum earth scorching.

I speak from the perspective of having two kids.  And I get that there are many families who aren’t limited to two kids.  God, you feel like such a fucking underachiever these days when you have only two kids.  “You have only two kids?  Fuck that, we’re going for more kids than the Brangelinas, loser.”

Yet, it matters little whether someone’s got two kids or nine.  Fact is, most of you are gonna buy an SUV no matter what.  Because you want more, MORE, MORE, MORE!!!  Just don’t use your goddamn kids as the excuse.

And I’m not suggesting that anyone has to make do with less (though that’s hardly a bad thing).  I’m suggesting that maybe we can all learn to live without so much fucking excess.

 

Paris and London: just the lowlights

Let me start by getting one thing out of the way.  That old adage about how Paris would be wonderful if it weren’t for all the French?  Bullfuckingshit.  Paris blows because it’s filled with Americans.  Everywhere you go, it’s Yanks all over the place.  What the fuck, I thought we were in some massive sinkhole of economic diarrhea – yet, Paris, one of the most expensive cities in the motherfucking universe, is filled to be brim with holidaying Yanks.  Fucking blows my mind.  Granted, I was there to do the same, so I’m not gonna begrudge someone else’s holidaying shenanigans, but goddamn there are a lot of Yanks in Paris.

Anyway, two weeks in Paris with a slight detour to pre-Olympic-bullshit London yielded some entirely pointless observations:

French countryside.  For all talk about the visual orgasm that is the French countryside, it’s remarkably dull.  You might as well be driving through the middle of New Jersey.

British graffiti sucks.  Banksy notwithstanding (which is technically is street art, not the sort of graffiti I’m talking about).  On the left is what was scrawled on the back of a loo in an average pub right off Greek Street in London’s Soho.  Compare that to the right, taken from the bathroom at Max Fish in New York’s Lower East Side.

When you make the mistake of going to see the Mona fucking Lisa, you usually have the misfortune of getting crammed with about 150 other boneheaded tourists all clamoring to see the same stupid painting.  Problem is, every single of one of them will be a complete imbecile.  Not only are they pushing and shoving, you get dipshits like this trying to take a picture of the painting from about 30 feet away.  Using an iPad.  Took every ounce of self-restraint not to swat that iPad out of his hands and send it hurtling towards the Mona Lisa itself to test out the painting’s perspex shielding.

 

This fucking guy at Versailles.

Café du Flore, Café Deux Magots, Brasserie Lipp – apparently this view affords you a tiny lukewarm cup of espresso that’ll set you back 10 euros.  We hit all three landmark restaurants in one sweep one lazy Tuesday afternoon.  Sure, they were lovely and boasted all sorts of literary history, but holy shit do they know how to work the whole tourist trap thing.  In fact, all the tourist traps are finetuned to perfection.  We hit a whole bunch of them – Au Pied du Cochon, Bofinger, Chartier, the three above.  You walk in and not a single Parisian is to be seen in any of these places.  Yet, somehow they make you feel OK sitting down and having an unspectacular yet unoffensive meal.  You know full well that you’re in a tourist trap, for some fucked up reason, you’re OK with it.  Which is heaps different from any given tourist trap in New York.  I think.  I haven’t been to New York tourist traps in a long while, so I’m just projecting here.

Andouillette.  Speaking of restaurants, my typically brave demeanor when it comes to food finally betrayed me.  On my final night in Paris, having already tried so many typical French foods, opted for one of the few remaining things I had yet to try: andouillette.   Sounds like an andouille, right?  And I fucking love andouille.  I had to try it.  Even if the description is nothing like andouille – andouillette is a sausage that’s constructed of chopped up tripe stuffed into an intestine.  Not just a natural gut casing, but the whole fucking intestine.  Filled with chopped up tripe.  How bad could it be?  Holy shit, never ask that question when it comes to andouillette.  Because the andouillette will punch you in the mouth with a definitive and declarative answer.  It tastes like you’ve just eaten the toilet from Trainspotting.  And you can’t swallow it because it’s all hard and crunchy and it tastes like shit and you start to gag and the combination of gag and a mouthful of shit causes you to asphyxiate, and your only solution is to wash it down as quickly as possible by guzzling wine right out of the bottle which causes you to instantly become the ape-like retarded tourist in the restaurant.  Everything is horrible and you want to die.  After coming to, I politely sent the plate of Satan’s pinched loaf back and ordered a steak tartar instead.  You have no idea how delicious a raw hamburger is after you’ve tried andouillette.

The subway music is much more interesting.  That’s not to say that any halfwit walking around with an accordion equals something good.  In New York, half these schmucks on the subway create some indiscernible racket and demand loose change from you.  Parisian minstrels, on the other hand, often sound like they might actually be good at weddings and bar mitzvahs.

Deodorant.  Europe is gonna be so awesome when they discover deodorant.