4/19/12

I love this song, because it's kind of happy and sexy, but it's still so sad. Maybe it's just because I listened to it around 5 times in the span of four hours, but, I liked it before that, too. Today, though, it was kind of perfect. Made me think of what I'm leaving behind and what's ahead - and how, despite that, it'll be alright.

You know, you love *somebody* not some*body*. Know the difference, and notice. Speak the truth, it's the only part that counts.



"She ain't lonely now
See her shuffle across the floor
Yeah, she's happier now
See her smile and say "come on"

Let's dance all night
Let's dance all night
Dance all night
Yeah, I think she'll be alright

I ain't lonely now
Yeah, I got someone I love
Someone I think about
Someone for me to take care of

Dance all night
Dance all night
Dance all night
Yeah, I think I'll be alright

She ain't lonely now
See her shuffle across the floor
Yeah, she's happier now
See her smile and say "come on"

Let's dance all night
Let's dance all night
Dance all night
I think she'll be alright"
~Dance All Night
Ryan Adams and the Cardinals, Cold Roses

4/19/12

I start an adventure today.

I'm almost jealous of myself.

The saying goodbye is by far the hardest part. Because saying goodbye to people you love is the only way you get to love something new. A heart can give only so much, so, we change and shift and settle somewhere new. The only way to do that is to make room.

We never forget. But it's never quite the same.



I loved this album real hard when I first discovered it. Must've been 2003/2004, sometime during my sophomore year of high school. I remember listening to it in the summertime, surrounded by friends and mischief. That might have been the last year I was innocent. At least, it was before I learned the true fatefulness of mortality, what happens when we live and love and die. I still love this album, I still find solace and hope in it, years later.

They've been busy years, full of everything, but I won't forget this song. Funny the things that stick with you. I think about the places I've been, the things I've seen, the people I love...and they all mean so much to me, some more than others, some in different ways. Some, they make you wonder if there's anything or anywhere or anyone else on the planet who will be able to cut through your reflection enough to make you really think about what's important, that pebble through a softly rippling stream that sets off a physically impossible to fight chain reaction.

Those people are tough to find. They don't come around too often. But the adventure beckons, and life won't wait around for you.

"and thats the way its been,
ever since we were kids but now,
now weve got something to prove
and i, i can see there eyes
but tell me something, can they see mine
cause whats left to lose,
ive done enough
and if i fail well then i fail but i gave it a shot
and these last three years, i know they've been hard
but now its time to get out of the desert and into the sun e
ven if its alone

i was on your porch last night,
the smoke it sank into my skin"

~On Your Porch,
The Format, Interventions and Lullabies

4/14/12

Just a post to commemorate the Lovedrug concert I went to Wednesday, April 11, 2012 at the Bug Jar wtih my dear sister. Spent a good hour before the show chatting with the band, sharing stories about travel and music and bands and life and partying. Lent out a cigarette or two. Entirely likable gentleman, not taking themselves too seriously but not spotlight-seeking.
All in all, enjoyable company, hope I was too, though my sister told me I talked too much. I was drinking Jack and diets, so, my animation increased tenfold as dark liquor tends to do to me. Layer on talking about compression, and Taylor v. Martin, shady American suburbs and favorite musicians, and yeah, I'm in a pretty good mood.

I am past the point of being intimated by meeting musicians I look up to. At one point, sure, but the mystery of the traveling musician is just that, a mystery, and it's a complete fallacy when you get down to it. There is no magic potion, these are men and women with a lifestyle choice that has a number of conseqeuences most people don't want to take, or give up on. And it creates drama, intrigue, romanticism. Talent will do that to a soul. Hence the allure.

But, I digress. The show itself - a 50 minute rip through nine or 10 tracks old and new. Incredible. Pretty much everything sounded perfect, no technical difficulties, no notciable alterations to songs to make them easier. No kitchy audience banter, no smug prefacing. Just the tight live performance of modern American grunge-inspired and melody-laced rock and roll.

The Bug Jar is tiny - they may as well have been performing in my parent's basement, and I think if I asked them, they would - so keys and auxiliary sounds on albums were not replicated live. The setlist reflected this - no "We Were Owls" otherworldly intro, no piano-driven "Everything Starts Where it Ends" cuts. But that was OK, this was about silky guitars, eat-your-heart-out melodies and a really-fucking-tight rhythm section.

I was awestruck the whole time, really, too enraptured to notice the world around me. Any thought that dared enter my head unrelated to the performance in front of me quickly burned out, unable to compete. Before the show I wondered if they may have intentionally held back a bit, as they were playing in NYC the following night and clearly that's the crowd you want to impress coming off a new album, right? - but this concern was not validated. They played tight, they played well, the entetained the living daylights out of a small but devoted crowd, true troubadors to the end.

It can't be easy, weeks on end on the road, but what a challenge, when home is a memory, and friends and loved ones are scattered around the country. A meaningful moment is hardly replicated elsewhere, just replaced by a new one til it all blends together into one mess of snapshot recollections - meanwhile, your energy pours out on stage night after night, thretening to leave you stale if you push it that much harder. Human is human, right? Even at those times when we feel so much more - like when songs still your heart and mind, or when the blood in your fingertips delivers the pulse in your soul, or when the tiny fraction of a second between the last moment and the next one captures more meaning than you'd ever care to begin to unravel.

Oh yeah, that concert. Damn. "Wild Blood," "Dinosaur," "Pink Champagne," and "Great Divide" all made appearances, as did "Angels With Enemies," and "Blackout" which I was very excited to hear. "Blackout" in particular sounded amazing, fierce and imposing and frightening til the last foreboding lyric - "walk down the hall/and put yourself to bed." They closed with "Anodyne" and I was thrilled to hear it. Gorgeous, chilling song (see below for video worthy of equal adjectives, cut from cult b-list horror flick). The crowd, throughout the night, was incredibly responsive - Lovedrug fans are a devoted breed.

After the show I got my "Wild Blood" vinyl signed, without a shred of fangirl shame. I have so much respect for this band and every time I see that record I'm going to remember to never give up, always stay true to yourself, and don't be scared to show the truth - it's the only thing that counts.

I just fucking love this band.

4/10/12

An all-time favorite song, making more sense than ever.

"This time, I'll be sailing
No more bailing boats for me
I'll be out here on the sea
Just my confidence and me

And I'll be awful sometimes
Weakened to my knees
But I'll learn to get by
On the little victories

This time, I'll have no fear
I'll be standing strong and tall
Turn my back towards them all

And I'll be awful sometimes
Weakened to my knees
I'll learn to get by
And I'll learn to get by
On the little victories
And if the world decides to catch up with me
It's a little victory."
-Little Victories
Matt Nathanson, Beneath These Fireworks

You go forward, you take what wins you can but you do not let them define you. You do not build Rome in a day, you do not cave to the pressure to achieve some social standing utopia. Even if you did, you'd be disappointed by it, empty with nothing to show for yourself but wasted time. Instead you stay true, you go forward, and you wake up each day to chisel away at the block of marble that is your life's potential, finishing your own one-of-a-kind masterpiece.

Somewhere, probably some cheesy movie, I heard some line about life being a gift, and having no intention to waste it. I've felt that way but I've also felt trapped. I've felt the dark shadow of mountains towering before me render me useless, leaving me saying "What the hell do I think I'm doing here?" But I haven't given up, and I've cleaned up and tossed out the clutter.

I am going to start an adventure, finally, and I am not going to look back. I have no intention to waste it.

4/4/12

I say with certainty this one of my all-time favorite songs. Like, I don't think my life would be the same if I never heard it. I don't think I'd be the same. Last summer was jam-packed with Cassino, on walks down to the Pickering, on car drives out to the eastern Finger Lakes and down Route 364 to the end of Canandaigua Lake, winding up at Bare Hill.

I can also say, upon reflection, I didn't necessarily care what this song was about. I just knew it was beautiful, but the other day, driving the route I always drive only to be averted by traffic cones, it hit me and I realized how much it's about the chase, the struggle, the trappings of American life.

This is why I say, tambourine hit on the two, please.

"Marionette made its marks, dragging on the pavement.
The dogs of sleep and sick were tangled in the strings that keep the leverage.
Come on, come with light...Illuminate and drive...
I need to leave what followed me
When I washed in from the sea
That's taken so many of our lives
With its awful waves

Chevrolet is done, it's sunk into the ground.
Chromes become my dining couch,
The ornament on a broken house,
And the weathers com alive
And it's leaking inside
Knocked the breakers paralyzed,
And turned my savings on its side.
Its taken many of our lives
With its wild ways
So my mother says

Heaven found on my way out
Heaven found on my way out
Heaven found on my way out
Heaven found on my way out

I took a walk one way...

And with a spark, all the lights in the city started racing
Out interstates and up the up the buildings, through the walls
and turn so filthy
And it lights this room that we pay with our lives, everyday
The toll booth of the birds of prey"
~Kingprince
Cassino, Kingprince