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(10/24/11 6:00am)
Part of the appeal of older Mountain Goats albums was the
intimacy brought out by the simplistic performances. Each track
showcased singer/songwriter John Darnielle bleeding through his
guitar into a cheap boom. Part of the appeal of newer Mountain
Goats albums - including their latest Heretic Pride - is
that, while the production value has increased, the songwriting
value has not been affected.
(05/05/11 6:00am)
My favorite entry on Wikipedia is ""List of helicopter
prison escapes."" I was first directed to the page by my
brother, and it's an interesting topic in its own right (escaping
prison via helicopter has to be the most ballin' exit anyone's ever
had). The stories in the entry are interesting unto themselves,
too. You can read about David McMillan's 1983 botched escape and
subsequent trial, or Pascal Payet's somewhat ominous 2001 escape
(he's still at-large).
(04/28/11 6:00am)
I'm 22 years old and less than two weeks away from finishing my
Bachelor's degree—the last thing I need is another good excuse to
waste away the sunlight with a backpack full of Tecate Light (the
old weight-loss plans take no days off). It's mostly just because
I'm not a very complicated person, y'know? And so it seems like a
near certainty that the Mifflin Street Block Party—the biggest
daytime drinking party this side of Lambeau Field—would be right in
my wheelhouse.
(04/22/11 6:00am)
You all heard Nas: Hip hop is dead. Back in 2006, Nas pushed the
thesis that record execs stole the keys from the MC's and drove the
genre off the highway of creative progress and into the ditch of
commercial appeal. And it's true—nobody on major labels spits hard
anymore.
(04/14/11 6:00am)
These days confessing I don't pay much for music is tantamount to
saying I sneak candy into a movie theater or a flask onto a
putt-putt course. Y'all don't just accept that kind of thing—you
expect it from me. Because I'm broke, y'know? My minimum-wage
income gets stretched thin enough just covering my social drinking
habit, not to mention any time the GF drags me out to dinner.
(04/13/11 6:00am)
While it's disappointing that JoAnne Kloppenburg's time atop the
race for Wisconsin's Supreme Court justice was short-lived, it's
not surprising. And no matter where you prop your feet on the
political spectrum, it is extremely important that this election
undergo a rigorous investigation in order to preserve government
transparency and election legitimacy. It also holds, though, that
no matter where you prop your feet on the political spectrum, it
does not matter all that much who comes out the winner.
(04/07/11 6:00am)
My friend Anthony said he thought Interpol was the best until he
heard Joy Division, which is a pretty succinct example of how the
further we stretch history, the more backwards we make it. It's
fair to say that Interpol never would have happened without Joy
Division's influence, and thus listening to Interpol without
knowing about Joy Division comes off as something like a
superficial appreciation of dark, gloomy post-punk. Know your
roots, as they say.
(04/06/11 6:00am)
Like everything else these days, we learned about it through
Twitter. The gavel came down March 18, and the official account of
the AP Stylebook announced: ""Language evolves. Today we change AP
style from e-mail to email, no hyphen. Our editors will announce it
at #ACES2011 today.""
(03/25/11 6:00am)
For me, Pokémon started and ended with the Red version (or Blue, if
that happened to be more your style). They've made abundant
follow-ups to those versions which I lost track of years ago, but
it's not that I'm too stubborn to continue the journey. And
actually, in retrospect, my favorite part about Pokemon was that it
never ended. Completing the game only meant that you (or rather,
Ash) were prepared to venture into the world on your own accord to
overcome even more obstacles. The end was just the start. The
entire game was nothing but a caption of process, detailing the
various stages that typify the collaborative growth of a greater
whole.
(03/10/11 6:00am)
Nobody really invites me to house parties anymore, and I sure do
miss going to them. For one, the beer is cheaper than at the
Paradise or the Echo Tap. Second, there's a good chance you have a
mutual friend with most people who are also sitting in your
friend's musty basement and drinking Natty Light from a keg, which
makes you seem like less of a creep when you talk to all of
them.
(03/09/11 6:00am)
There are 67 games in the NCAA March Madness Men's basketball
tournament, and the Badgers will only have to play six of them
before they can cut down the nets in Houston. That leaves 61 games
and 62 teams unaccounted for. Yet most of us are going to sit in
front of the television and let Bryant Gumble direct us through
almost all of them anyways. My point is: There are abundant
opportunities for subordinate rooting interest to heighten your
March Madness experience, no matter how devoted you are to
Buckingham U.
(03/04/11 6:00am)
My TA said every social movement needs a soundtrack. He was right,
too. Mahalia Jackson's gospel outreach helped settle the tides for
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s peaceful march to the U.S. Capitol. And
don't forget that America's national anthem was the product of one
of the greatest social movements of all time—the Revolutionary War,
in which we Americans kicked the overbearing British off the
debased island we rightfully pillaged and ransacked first.
(02/24/11 6:00am)
One of my brothers is eight years older than me, which means I had
someone feeding me sage advice from a very young age. And because
of who my brother and I are, most of this advice has manifested in
fantasy sports and, certainly, pop music. For my 13th birthday he
gave me a full book of CDs (what a concept), which has continued to
inform my personal preferences to this very day.
(02/17/11 6:00am)
Over the last month or so, I've changed my mind about this new Yuck
record more times than I've had to tie my own shoelaces. It's a fun
and rascally record, but mostly it's a record unsure of where to
set its footing.
(02/17/11 6:00am)
Here's a question: If you were stranded on a desert island and
could only listen to three records for the rest of your life, which
would they be? I think about this myself a lot, and sometimes I ask
other people their answers to make up for my inability to make
substantial conversation with other people.
(02/11/11 6:00am)
I'm usually a ""glass is half empty"" kind of guy. I don't think
that makes me cynical, just pragmatic in that I like to see
production where others are contented by stagnancy. That's exactly
why I hate watching soccer games— I can't bear to watch anything
that might not have a clear loser (or winner, whatever). They say
ties are like kissing your sister, and though I love my sister
dearly I never kiss her unless my glass of Wild Turkey is well past
the point where it could be construed as half-anything. But still,
in real life, sometimes those polar distinctions are actually one
and the same.
(02/02/11 6:00am)
The thing I love about dubstep is that it's loud as shit. That's
all I knew about it two years ago when I started working at an
Italian deli with my go-to on all things electronic, Alex. It's
loud, angry and transgressive—exactly the things I liked about punk
rock when I wore those Sex Pistols T-shirts at the converted
Alcoholics Anonymous house that hosted all the high school punks'
mosh pit shows. But I don't care as much about the
antiestablishment rhetoric as I used to. In hindsight, lyrics from
bands like Anti-Flag and the Exploited are laughable, and dubstep
fixes that by usually not saying anything.
(01/27/11 6:00am)
Last week the universally liked-but-not-loved band Cake's new
album, Showroom Of Compassion, became the No. 1 record on
the Billboard charts and set a new record in the process—it was the
lowest-selling No. 1 record since Billboard charts were created.
That's not exactly the distinction you want flying around your
name, but it's symptomatic of where the music industry is going
these days: down.
(01/21/11 6:00am)
Listen: I'm the last person who wants to read some crotchety bro
complain about how he's having a midlife crisis because the
bartenders at the rock 'n' roll shows never ask to see his ID. But
I'm getting old. And if you grew up in the same house as me
(figuratively, of course), so are you.
(01/19/11 6:00am)
Everyone sounds like the Beatles; that's the whole point. The
reason the Beatles are so universally popular is because they
undressed pop music to its fundamental hooks, excising the fatty
matter that distracts or bores listeners. Thus, to draw comparisons
to the Beatles is to say a band writes catchy, agreeable pop
music—which means close to nothing.