2004 and 2005 were big years for music. Both years saw the release of any number of albums that I return to over and over again. I try not to let my musical tastes be defined by a few albums or a few bands, but it’s hard to deny that the music released in 2004 and 2005 left a lasting imprint on that first decade of the twenty-first century. Not the least of these albums are ‘Funeral’ by Arcade Fire and ‘Apologies to the Queen Mary’ by Wolf Parade. They’re the kind of albums I look back on and remember where I was the first time I listened to them. When I listen to them now I still have moments where I hear a new phrase, be it lyrically or musically, and I get goose bumps as though I’m hearing it for the first time. And they’re the kind of albums that a single live performance can amplify one hundred times.

The problem with albums like these is that everything Wolf Parade and Arcade Fire do afterward will be compared to these debut successes. If someone’s first impression is a homerun, everything else that band does has to live up to or exceed that initial impression. Albums like these become the high water mark. It’s an unfair standard to hold someone to, but it’s the way the art world works. I try my best not to live by that standard, but with albums like these you’re almost afraid of what the follow-up will sound like. Will they be able to live up? In the end it doesn’t matter because the past is the past and you have to accept it. Five or six years down the road is a long time, and you are not the only thing that has changed. That being said, Wolf Parade and Arcade Fire have released albums worthy of attention this summer, and they both deserve a lot of praise.

‘Apologies to the Queen Mary’ was one of those albums that I knew right away I loved. The first time I listened to “I’ll Believe In Anything” I listened to it two or three times before I could let the rest of the album go. The only other song that’s done that to me is “Modern Girl” by Sleater-Kinney, but I digress. It was obvious listening to ‘Apologies to the Queen Mary’ that Wolf Parade is a collective with two distinct creative voices in Spencer Krug and Dan Boeckner. This became even more obvious in subsequent years with the success of their respective side projects, Sunset Rubdown and the Handsome Furs. Early in Wolf Parade’s life that distinction was almost a dichotomy, as though the voices of Krug and Boeckner fought each other and drew their strength the way complimentary colors fuel their opposite. I even had friends who split themselves into opposing camps – the Krug side and the Boeckner side. I’ll admit I leaned towards Krug (see my love of Sunset Rubdown), but I loved everything about ‘Apologies to the Queen Mary.’ This was an album that lived in my car for weeks, that accompanied me to the laundromat or to the garage waiting room, and I learned to love every song.

In 2008 Wolf Parade released ‘At Mount Zoomer,’ which admittedly was not ‘Apologies to the Queen Mary’ but by no means did it fail. I knew going into it that three years had passed, and I like ‘At Mount Zoomer.’ Krug and Boeckner had married their dichotomous sounds into one entity, and the music benefited. ‘At Mount Zoomer’ was not a bad album, but it was not one of my favorites of 2008. I don’t think it even made my top ten. That doesn’t mean I didn’t like it. I liked everything Wolf Parade did with it. I liked that they made an investment in their future. Listening to ‘At Mount Zoomer’ I could tell this was a stronger band, a more unified band. The album itself didn’t have quite the staying power that ‘Apologies to the Queen Mary’ had, and I delegated it to iTunes rotation rather than popping it in the CD player during downtime or on snow days. It was time to wait and see what Wolf Parade did next.

Now it is 2010, and on June 29 Wolf Parade released ‘Expo 86.’ Whatever Krug and Boeckner did to marry their sounds has blossomed into something extraordinary. ‘Expo 86’ doesn’t wait to get going. The first track, “Cloud Shadow On the Mountain,” kicks in without hesitation, and that’s the attitude Wolf Parade create with ‘Expo 86.’ This is an album to be listened to loud. ‘Expo 86’ is a voyage of highly danceable synth rock, and it is an album I want to hear performed live. It’s as though Wolf Parade cares. They care enough to make an album so infectious and so listenable that you want to hear it reverberate in an auditorium. You want this music to vibrate through every cubic inch of your body because listening to it on a stereo isn’t enough. Lyrically I need to sit with ‘Expo 86’ a while longer, but in “Two Men In New Tuxedos” Spencer Krug addresses the issue of dichotomy with Dan Boeckner. “You’ve got the promise that I gave you,” Krug says. “You’ve got the strongest one/ We are two oxen under one whip/ We are two men in new tuxedos/ And we are ready to jump from behind the wall.” Anyone who thought Wolf Parade could never surpass the high water mark of ‘Apologies to the Queen Mary’ can go to hell. Living up to the past doesn’t matter. ‘Expo 86’ is the present and I’ll listen this stupid thing to death.

Where ‘Expo 86’ is Wolf Parade at their infectious best (so far), Arcade Fire released an album last week that is nearly on the opposite end of the spectrum. This is going to work against them, and I think that’s entirely unfair. Let’s get the reminiscing out of the way right now. ‘Funeral’ is a modern classic. Enough has been said about ‘Funeral’ by too many people since it converted so many in 2004. One of the things I love bout Arcade Fire is that their albums make me sit for a moment after I listen to them. I’m not immediately blown away by their albums, but the first time I listened to ‘Funeral’ I knew it would be something I loved. There was enough happening on ‘Funeral’ that I had to sit with it and experience it two or three more times, and I did, and two or three listens later I was looking up the French translation for those lines in “Une Anee Sans Lumiere” and “Haiti,” driving with the windows down and screaming along with “Wake Up,” and thinking “I carved your name across my eyelids/ You pray for rain, I pray for blindness” was the only line in any song that ever hit the heartbreak nail on the head. And then reality quickly sunk in. After enough listens and loving ‘Funeral’ as much as I did, I realized there would be a follow-up album.

‘Neon Bible’ is a great album. It’s not ‘Funeral.’ Arcade Fire will never release ‘Funeral’ again. If they do release ‘Funeral’ again, they are doing everything wrong. I don’t want Arcade Fire to repeat themselves. They are better than that. They are more creative than that and they have so much more to say. If you’re expecting everything Arcade Fire does from now until the end of time to sound like “Rebellion (Lies),” you can keep waiting while the rest of us move on. ‘Neon Bible’ was an outstanding follow-up to ‘Funeral,’ another one of those albums I knew I would love after two or three listens, and I did. I was lucky enough to see Arcade Fire three years ago at DAR Constitution Hall, and it made ‘Neon Bible’ that much more memorable. Too many people didn’t like ‘Neon Bible,’ or they say the same thing, that it took them a while to get over ‘Funeral’ and give ‘Neon Bible’ a chance, but it will never live up to ‘Funeral.’ An outlook like that is symptomatic of a serious case of tunnel vision. With an outlook like that you’ll never fully appreciate Arcade Fire’s third album, ‘The Suburbs.’

Last week (on August 3) Arcade Fire released ‘The Suburbs.’ Already people are writing it off as a failure. I’ve heard it called repetitive. I’ve heard it called a disappointment. I’ve heard it called simply ‘meh.’ What seems to be the common factor among negative reviewers is the lack of a catchy tune on ‘The Suburbs,’ that ‘The Suburbs’ has good lyrics but you can’t dance to it. I don’t think dancing is the point here.

As with ‘Funeral’ and ‘Neon Bible’ I was not immediately drawn into ‘The Suburbs,’ but the difference between ‘The Suburbs’ and its predecessors is that when ‘The Suburbs’ ended I didn’t just sit for a moment. I found myself locked in a lengthy philosophical analysis of American quality of life. ‘The Suburbs’ is an album very much of its time. It is an album about economics, about struggle. ‘The Suburbs’ is an album about coming home after escaping from the prison of youth and realizing home is even worse now than it was ten years ago, but you wish with all your might that it was still ten years ago and you were locked in that old prison of youth.

‘The Suburbs’ is not a musically daring album, but it doesn’t need to be. The strength here is in the lyrics. In the title track’s opening lines Win Butler captures every kid’s desire to escape, “In the suburbs I learned to drive and you told me we’d never survive/ Grab your mother’s keys, we’re leaving.” What our parents built meant nothing to us at the time, but now that it’s falling apart we find ourselves falling apart vicariously. “So can you understand why I want a daughter while I’m still young/ I want to hold her hand and show her some beauty before all this damage is done.” This album is all about watching the markets crash, running through wilderness streets and searching vainly for an echo, folding your arms tight in youthful defiance without realizing you can’t lift yourself up with folded arms. Much of ‘The Suburbs’ is about driving, about learning to drive and driving through the sprawl as though the simple act of driving is enough to break free. Sprawl is the key word here.

The best track for me is “Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains).” “Living in the sprawl, the dead shopping malls rise like mountains beyond mountains/ And there’s no end in sight.” Go for a drive today, tonight. Drive to the fringes of urban sprawl. Or just drive to the suburbs and see what it’s really like – all the shopping plazas full of empty storefronts and beyond them the new shopping plazas where new stores will be dead within five years, only to have even more shopping plazas built beyond them. Go for a drive through economic low tide and tell me it’s not the most depressing thing you’ve ever seen. People grow up in the sprawl and want to get the hell out. Yes, ‘The Suburbs’ can be repetitive at times, but this is the sprawl. This is the repetition of dead shopping malls in the suburbs. I think people don’t like ‘The Suburbs’ because it hits too close to home. By no means is ‘The Suburbs’ the catchiest album of 2010, but I would call it the most thoughtful. I don’t think I’ve ever come across an album that has me wanting to write a forty page essay. I probably could write a forty page essay about Arcade Fire, but I’ve already written enough (for now).

Like Wolf Parade, a fellow Montreal band that found success in the early 2000’s, Arcade Fire have proven they don’t need to live up to a meaningless high water mark. They know we are living in the sprawl. Get up and dance if you want, but you can’t deny this is a new wasteland. Maybe dancing to Wolf Parade is the only way to keep our sanity when faced with all the dead things left in the recession’s wake.

With one more month of unbearable humidity ahead of us and nearly two months of rest and relaxation behind us it is time to look back and reflect. Although truth be told my summer hasn’t borne much rest and relaxation. It was Homer Simpson who said, “When you get a job like me you’ll miss every summer.” As it is, I take a moment to reflect on my summer – my summer and its lack of writing. Murmur took a brief hiatus, and I took an even longer hiatus as one thing led to another. To make up for it I believe I owe everyone a mix.

This year’s summer mix is called “Vibrations In the Air Have to Come From Somewhere.” I set out assembling these songs back in May with modest determination. I had recently overdrawn my checking account for the millionth-ma-billionth time, after I spent two months under the impression that I was fiscally all right, and I’d be damned if I let the man keep me from having fun this summer.

The first half of these songs reflect that attitude. “Bankrobber” is the type of Clash you listen to while you grill barbecued pineapple hamburgers with your best friends Memorial Day weekend, and “To Be Someone (Didn’t We Have a Nice Time)” is the Jam reminding me I’m screwed. Then about halfway through May I had the worst week of my life. Anyone who follows Murmur or looks in the links will know what happened. The summer mix completely changed gears, and I let it go because you have to let the mix speak its own language. A mix is like a self-portrait of the person assembling it. How do you feel at a given moment? How does your music logically arrange itself in a way that best illustrates a few weeks in your life? This mix is what it is – two halves of time and space – and I love it. I hope you love it, too.

Vibrations In the Air Have To Come From Somewhere – Summer 2010

1) Bankrobber (Robber Dub) – the Clash

2) One By One – the Black Seeds

3) Mother Earth – Memphis Slim

4) Singer Songwriter – Okkervil River

5) Empty Heart – Wolf People

6) To Be Someone (Didn’t We Have A Nice Time) – the Jam

7) William It Was Really Nothing – the Smiths

Big Boys – Elvis Costello and the Attractions

9) The Mall and Misery – Broken Bells

10) The Predatory Wasp of the Palisades Is Out To Get Us! – Sufjan Stevens

11) Temptation Inside Your Heart – The Velvet Underground

12) Combat Rock – Sleater-Kinney

13) Do You Want New Wave Or Do You Want the Truth – Minutemen

14) Planetary – Rainer Maria

15) Burn 2 Ash – Chad Van Gaalen

16) Start A War – the National

17) Functionality – Pylon

(It stinks that the song where I got this mix’s title has no videos on the internet. This is a short video of Pylon, the greatest of all Athens bands past and present. Go out and get ‘Gyrate’ right now.)

Three years ago the National released an album called ‘Boxer.’ Many people hailed ‘Boxer’ as 2007’s album of the year. I was not included in this group of people. For a long time, long after 2007 ended and the shit-storm that was 2008 began for me, I straddled the fence regarding the National and ‘Boxer.’

At one moment I could see what everyone was talking about – a weighty album, a meaty album with nooks and crannies full of juices and flavors, an album anchored by the strong track “Mistaken For Strangers.” Then the next moment would come and I was on the other side, the negative side, seeing through ‘Boxer’ and agreeing that “Mistaken For Strangers” was indeed the strongest track, except that it fell in the number 2 slot and the rest of the album disintegrated afterward.

I oscillated back and forth like this for a long time, even as late as last year, and then I finally gave up. Let me defend myself for a second. I cringe to call it giving up, because I firmly hold this opinion. ‘Boxer’ may have been the single most overrated album of the Twenty-first century’s first decade, and the National may have been the single most overrated band. I gave up trying to like ‘Boxer’ because it wasn’t going to happen, and I wasn’t going to kid myself. I formed my opinion, and yes it is a negative opinion, but no one can say I didn’t give ‘Boxer’ a chance. I’m fair, but I’m also honest.

In 2010 the National are back with ‘High Violet.’ After only a few listens I am experiencing the same oscillation between love and pulling-out-my-hair that I did with ‘Boxer.’ For the most part, though, this time as I sit on the fence I have both of my legs on the positive side. The best thing I can say about ‘High Violet’ is that this one is everything I wish ‘Boxer’ had been.

The worst thing I can say about ‘High Violet’ is that it doesn’t kick in until the later tracks, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. What dragged down ‘Boxer’ for me was having such a strong track like “Mistaken For Strangers” so early in the placement. After the high I was stuck with a sustained low – an intense low, yes, but still a low. ‘Boxer’ never recovered. With ‘High Violet’ the National sustain the emotional drive they are so excellent at igniting like a slow motion Roman candle.

My first focal point isn’t until track 6, “Bloodbuzz Ohio,” when Mike Berninger sings, “I was carried to Ohio in a swarm of bees.” On my first listen of ‘High Violet’ I was rewriting a longer work, and that line alone grabbed me. I knew I had to listen to ‘High Violet’ two more times, three more times, however many times it takes not to love ‘High Violet’ but to at least understand it. “It’s taking forever,” Berninger says on “Runaway,” and I want it to. Maybe I will never understand it, but that isn’t the point. The point is to listen. The point is to try. Most of all, the point is to be lost. I want to be lost in the tangled honesty of ‘High Violet.’ Here at the end, five hundred words later, I leap from the fence to spend the rest of the year with the National.

When discussing love songs you have to categorize every love song ever written. What is a particular love song about? Is the love that inspired the song an innocent love or a passionate love? Is the song about a feeling of love experienced for someone, or is the song about the act of loving/making love? When is a love song no longer just a love song but a work of art that transcends simple answers? When do the simple answers of a love song speak the greatest truth of all?

The most famous love songs tend to be about someone particular, either written for a real person or inspired by a real person. Near the top of most lists would be “Donna,” by Ritchie Valens, written for his real-life girlfriend Donna Ludwig. “Layla” also ranks near the top, a song that Eric Clapton wrote for Pattie Boyd in 1970. Boyd was married at the time to Clapton’s good friend George Harrison, but a love triangle was alive and well and blatant. Harrison and Boyd divorced a few years after the release of “Layla,” and when Clapton finally married Boyd in 1977 George Harrison attended the wedding reception with Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney. Try to wrap your mind around that bit of Dickensian romanticism. Makes for one hell of a song, though.

One of my favorite love songs written about a real-life significant other has to be “Tiny Dancer,” by Elton John, although he only gets a music and performance credit. Bernie Taupin wrote the lyrics, and he wrote them about his wife, Maxine Feibelman, who was indeed a dancer. The bus scene in ‘Almost Famous’ might have something to do with why I love “Tiny Dancer,” but I sang this song long before I saw that movie. I think about touring musicians, girlfriends and spouses traveling along wherever they go, and I think of the line, “Looking on she sings the songs/The words she knows, the tune she hums.” I’ve always imagined Bernie Taupin standing in the wings watching Maxine as she watches the show, madly in love with his wife and telling her how amazing she is the only way he knows how.

Perhaps love songs that are written for actual people wind up being the most famous because they’re grounded in reality. We tune to the real emotions of a moment, a year, a lifetime, whatever it takes for someone to boil over and create a remarkable piece of music. Whether or not we admit it and whether or not the notion truly is sentimental drivel, love is what keeps the human race going. Couples loving each other, love as the safety net of friendship, the act of forgiveness as the boldest statement of love someone can make – love is how humanity never ceases to surprise me year after year. We attach to love and listen to love songs because each and every one of us relates to love, the search for love, the need for love like our bodies need water. Love shows us the way whether we like it or not. The world would collapse without love.

An underrated and overlooked category of love song is the song written by a parent for his or her children. While storming over this piece I wracked my brains to come up with examples, and the best I could do are Will Smith’s “Just the Two of Us” and Loudon Wainwright’s “Rufus Is a Tit Man.”

Overlooked and highly underrated, because I think we fail to fully realize and appreciate the love of our parents until we are parents ourselves, or until something tragic happens. This type of love song is the best love song. This type of love is where we begin. With our first breath we know this love, and with each successive breath this love grows stronger. This type of love is the most important.

I talk about Sleater-Kinney a lot, and hopefully this will be the last time for a while, but when I think of every category of love, every instance of a real person inspiring a truly great song, I think of Sleater-Kinney. I think of Corin Tucker and all the hardships her family faced with the nine-week premature arrival of her son Marshall. I think of his strength, his survival, and I think of her love boiling over into a hell of a moving song called “Lions and Tigers” that didn’t make the final cut to the album ‘One Beat.’

I think of every love song ever written, every song about passion and every song about innocence, every song about real people and every song about fictional people, and I think about how much I adore “Lions and Tigers,” not just as a favorite love song but possibly as my favorite song, period. This song is the exclamation point on life. Love conquers all, and it starts at the beginning. Tonight I am thinking about “Lions and Tigers” because tonight is the beginning of a new life, a new statement ready for an exclamation point. I will let “Lions and Tigers” say everything there is to say, except that I love you Audrey Victoria Leitzke, born April 28, 2010.

Thank you Tim and Emily for making love possible.

First and foremost, for the band and for those of us who may have heard the wrong thing, I believe the gentleman in the crowd shouted, “We were better last time,” not, “You were better last time.” I will touch on this later, but I wanted to clarify that.

Quasi came to Washington, DC, on April 24 to play the Black Cat, and I am going to miss hearing at the frequency my ears are slowly ringing away twenty hours later. For my first show outside of Roanoke in nearly three years I remember all the things I love about making the three-plus hour trip and all the things I hate. The love far outweighs the hate, which is why I keep coming back and throwing away gas money like confetti. I’m making it rain for Chevron. As long as it’s all in the name of supporting great music I’ll sell out Mother Earth.

I don’t feel like counting how many times I’ve made this trip. To see Stars alone I’ve driven to Washington, DC, four times. When you live as far away from DC as I do you have to choose the shows you really want to see. This means letting some of them get away. This also means picking the really important bands – the shows that give hauling ass more credence. The journey turns into a religious pilgrimage, a trek you have to complete in order to sleep at night knowing the music gods are pleased.

When I saw Sleater-Kinney on their last tour nearly three years ago I had to make the trip twice in four days because the first attempt at the 9:30 Club got cancelled. I drove home to Roanoke the next day feeling like I’d lost the Super Bowl. That was my last chance to see a band like Sleater-Kinney, and a massive triple-digit heat wave had to go and strain the 9:30 Club’s transformer to the point of explosion.

However, when I came home and checked my voice mail and found the show had been rescheduled two days later, I started doing cartwheels on my front lawn. It meant driving to DC and back in one night and going to work the next morning at 10:00, but there was no way I’d let this one escape. Living so far away from ground zero puts a story behind every trip. You remember each one as though they are individually branded. It doesn’t make the experience more memorable or more extraordinary. You just return home feeling like you’ve broken out of your boon dock shell. It’s like leveling up in experience points.

But what about the show? Quasi did play a solid set last night, and that’s why I’m writing this. Let’s talk about that.

Seeing Quasi was like seeing old friends. When you’ve seen a band multiple times, each time they take the stage is like saying hello to the old crew. This was my first time seeing Quasi, though. Obviously I’ve seen Janet Weiss perform before with Sleater-Kinney, but I had never seen Quasi. What made this so personable was the accessibility of Janet and Sam Coomes. Maybe I’m not very observant, but I’ve never seen a headlining act manning the merchandise table as the venue doors open.

I made it to the Black Cat a little after 9:00, scanned the sparsely populated floor when I went upstairs, and was surprised to see both Janet and Sam standing behind the merchandise table. Who wouldn’t go say hello? I bought my shirt from Sam, and while I was fumbling with my bag and the thousand things I had in hand I set my wallet on the table. What does Sam do plop an identical wallet on the table next to mine. Here I am before the Quasi show and I’m comparing wallets with Sam Coomes. Of all the “what the hell” moments in my life this was probably the best. Only a hipster like me would be this giddy, although the “what the hell” factor didn’t sink in until well after the fact. At the time, mid-conversation with both Sam and Janet, it just felt natural.

I’ve been raised, trained, engrained on the sanctity of theatrical illusion. With every production I’ve ever been involved the rule is the actors/performers never set foot in the house after the doors open. The theory behind this is that it “breaks the illusion.” After last night, I can safely say that theatrical illusion is a crock. Every show I’ve ever been to here in Roanoke has been among friends. My friends are in the bands and we hang out before the show, during the show, after the show, inside the venue, outside the venue. Who cares? They’re here to play music. We’re here to hang out and watch them play music. We’re all real people living real life. There should be no illusion, just a great fucking time. I’m getting thumped off my ass tonight and I might as well tell the band I’m looking forward to it. A minor interaction – a brief conversation – was the best way to preface the night.

When Quasi finally played there were no reservations. They were here to thump me off my ass, and they succeeded. Maybe it was my proximity to the speaker but as I said before I am going to miss hearing at that frequency. But it’s a fair trade. Quasi do everything right. Sam Coomes is like Jerry Lee Lewis projected through a Picasso prism. His energy alone is enough, and it doesn’t hurt that he picks his SG with his fingers.

Janet Weiss is everything I want in a drummer. She’s fluid. She’s patient. She makes it all look so effortless, but she’s tearing the kit to shreds and hitting you with an artillery barrage. All the while she’s back there just having the time of her life. I think of three musicians who symbolize each aspect I look for in a drummer. Mitch Mitchell is the frenzy. Levon Helm is the concentration.

Charlie Watts is the sheer enjoyment of playing music. Janet Weiss is as if all three passed through a matter transporter and had a horrible accident, but the horror is to our benefit. Some amazing new being has been created by combining the superpowers of all three drummers. That new being is Janet Weiss, and there are too many great things to say about her. So I’ll stop with what I have. Add Joanna Bolme on bass laying the groundwork like John Entwhistle and you have Quasi, April 24, 2010 at the Black Cat. They were raw, they were confident, and they were absolutely in love with that stage. Quasi are not a reincarnation of the Who, but anyone who has watched the Happy Who Year DVD that came with the Kill Rock Stars preorder of American Gong knows that Quasi should have been at the Super Bowl this year playing Who covers. And they ended the show last night with “Pictures of Lily,” sounding like they were born to play it.

If anything at all was wrong with the night, I would call it the crowd. Seriously? Quasi is playing the Black Cat and it’s only seventy-five percent capacity? Nobody is dancing? What is wrong with you people? I don’t expect a circle pit but I want to bounce a little. Somewhere in the middle of the show someone shouted, “We were better last time,” a comment that the band misheard but which prompted an adequate and necessary response. Why would someone pay money to see a band they don’t like just to shout, “You were better last time?” But the comment was indeed, “We were better last time.” I did not see Quasi the last time they played Washington, DC, but being part of that crowd I have to agree. We could have been better. I wish we had been better. That crowd was like an embarrassingly tired sex partner when you’re ready to roll. Next time Quasi is in the area I’ll make the pilgrimage. I’ll be a one-man cheerleading squad, even if it means being “that guy.” They take the time to be so accessible, to play so energetically and play so well. The least I can do is show them ho much I love it. And I did love it. Quasi thumped me off my ass, and I want them to do it again.

The last time I looked at an up-to-date music chart out of sincere curiosity was in the late 90’s when I still subscribed to Rolling Stone. I was still in high school when I decided I had better things to listen to than the boy band b.s. handed down to us by MTV. The face of Twenty-first century pop remains very similar to Justin Timberlake’s and Christina Aguilera’s, so I see no need to examine another music chart when I still don’t care. However, I will study a music chart if it happens by accident, and if it leads me down a nice train of thought. Today I stumbled across a story about the latest UK singles chart http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/8603208.stm.

It seems that Lady Gaga has been toppled from the Number-1 spot by Scouting For Girls. I’ve never heard of Scouting For Girls, so this led me to wonder what a band called Scouting For Girls might sound like. Here they are
with the official video for their chart-topping song “This Ain’t A Love Song.”

A phrase that comes in handy for me X-number of times a day is  “Are you kidding me?” I think that says it best. This is not a defense of Lady Gaga or having her back in a bar fight. As the video for her former chart-topper “Telephone” shows us, Lady Gaga could probably stand fast and swing her own pool cue if need be. I’m just surprised that over a decade has passed since I cared about what was topping the charts, and nothing has changed. Scouting For Girls bare more resemblance to Vanessa Carlton than they do to Justin Timberlake, but sentimental gruel will never cease to dominate the airwaves. I had some hope. I must admit. I saw a song titled “This Ain’t A Love Song” topping a singles chart and thought for a second that maybe, just maybe, it might be worthwhile. Perhaps I just saw a song called “This Ain’t A Love Song” and immediately had visions of Public Image Limited.

Oh, but these visions and hopes are so misguided and futile. I tell myself I don’t look down on others for the music they claim to love. For the most part I follow this rule. In this case I can’t. It would be crass and hypocritical of me to say that PIL has more substance and merit than something as ridiculous as Scouting For Girls, but it’s true. That Scouting For Girls track is just so harmless. Music doesn’t have to be loud or abrasive or even offensive for me to call it edgy. Even if my ears aren’t bleeding I’ll still like it. I just like my power raw. I want my music to grit its teeth with a fresh tattoo still bleeding on its arm.

Music needs to take an honest chance. A flavorless Scouting For Girls and Lady Gaga’s blurred cooch just aren’t going to give me that honesty. I can’t define that honesty because it’s different in every case. All I know is that sometime in high school I realized honesty had no place at the top of a singles chart. I don’t think I want my honesty to top the charts. Honesty is by definition unfettered. Whatever tops the charts has gone through any number of processors on the way. Give me danger any day, as long as it’s bipolar and has teeth. Give me music minus the safeguards of public decency. It’s a lot more interesting out on the fringes. I might come back with an endearing scar or two.

With the pure excitement within each release from the Wolf + Lamb label and their glass half filled with a warmer touch, comes the collaboration between Shaun Reeves and Guti.  The two DJs both met at last year’s Winter Music Conference in Miami and immediately hit it off.  So much so that Guti ended up tattooing Shaun’s name on his arm just after their first meeting.  It may seem a bit strange, but it’s quite evident the two have some chemistry.  Hold Me Tight carries two interesting tracks that carry their own persona.

The remix of Popkullies & Rebekah’s Hold Me Tight waltz’s through lighthearted beats and fuzzy intonations, bringing the listener to greener pastures.  Saudade paints a more somber picture, yet carries scattered elements that bring the whole track together in a conceivable vision.  Although it’s short with only the two tracks, Hold Me Tight EP is an entertaining listen.  It certainly brings a positive vibe, which makes it a good spring release.

1)  Hold Me Tight (Shaun Reeves and Guti Remix) – Popkullies & Rebekah

2)  Shaun Reeves and Guti – Saudade

A bold notion that I rejected many years ago is the assertion that music can change the world. While I consider myself progressive and tolerant, yearning for change in our current system and jubilant at the small victories we garner along the way, I don’t believe that music can bring about sweeping reforms. My current thinking can best be described as pessimistic optimism. I want change, and I celebrate change when it occurs, but I prepare myself for the worst.

Maybe I’ve seen one too many reformist presidents riding a tidal wave into the White House only to squander whatever momentum they had and hand control back to the power grubbers they deposed a few years previously. I’ve heard too much music in the twenty-something years I’ve paid attention to music – in the coinciding twenty-something years I’ve been aware of a political machine – to believe that music bears any relevance to the way our system works. I hope. I really do. Without hope, what is the value of life? Sometimes I need a reminder to rekindle my hope. There has to be reason in the madness. There must be hope burning somewhere in the saturated market of twenty-first century America. More often than not, I find that reminder.

Eternal Summers are a duo from my current hometown of Roanoke, VA. Comprised of Nicole Yun on guitar and Daniel Cundiff on drums, they are my new modest obsession. While I am tired of the indie rock guitar/drums combination brought to us by the White Stripes and made more prevalent by the Black Keys (that’s chiaroscuro if I ever saw it), Eternal Summers don’t fall into the current garage rock trap of pseudo-blues that was exhausted the moment Joss Stone “fell in love with a boy.”

Eternal Summers play garage rock and they play it well, but theirs is more of a benevolent garage rock. The sound is raw. The edges are rough. But there is a tenderness, as well. There is a tenderness that doesn’t so much underlie the sound as it lays a blanket on the dusty concrete for us to hang out on while Nicole and Daniel play a show for their friends. With a subtle twitch of the hand they do just enough to soothe the soul. I could go with a case of Amber Bocks and listen to this all night.

The CD version of their current EP released last year, but the vinyl edition released just this month. I picked it up last week before a show at a local record store/venue called Bazaar Consignments, and since then it is the first thing I listen to whenever I come home. That’s saying a lot because at the same shop, a day later, I picked up Dr. John, Billy Preston, and Buddy Holly. Eternal Summers trumps all three and gets first whirl on the player. Part of me does this because I support the local bands and know beyond a doubt that what we have here in Roanoke is easily the equal of anything Pitchfork is telling you to download.

The rest of me – the majority of me – listens to Eternal Summers because while I don’t believe that music can change the world, I still hope. I am hungry for hope. Humanity survives on hope, and Eternal Summers bleed hope on every track. Eternal Summers remind me of the power of hope. I hope for big things like economic recovery and sexual equality. I hope for little things like having money to adopt a cat and a little rain now and then to make the days greener. I hope that one day one of the great bands we have here in Roanoke will escape and draw the rest of them along on their coattails. By their very name Eternal Summers make me hope for an infinitely brighter future. On “Fall Straight Back” Nicole sings, “Please don’t leave me out of your plans.” No need to worry about that. Just keep doing what you’re doing and make it better every day.

Here is a mini documentary about Eternal Summers in Charlottesville that I discovered while writing this.

“Able To” is indeed a great song. I have to dance whenever I hear it, and I never dance.

Tonight as I waited for my nachos grande at Sheetz I noticed the employees were listening to the R&B channel on their radio. This was a welcome change to the typical bad pop that may or may not be Top 40 I usually hear at Sheetz. I wouldn’t know Top 40 anymore if it shanked me with an iPod Nano. All I know is that when I’m waiting for food at Sheetz I usually hear something that sounds like Chris Cornell doing Counting Crows covers. Tonight it was hopping bass and horn sections, a killer combination. I nestled against the food case with all the cheese cakes and Oscar Meyer sausage snack kits and waited for my nachos with a nice grin.

And then it happened, as it usually happens when I’m listening to music on a public institution’s radio. I heard a familiar bass riff, followed by a vocal intonation, and I knew what I was hearing. The lyrics only validated my condition. It was the Temptations singing “Ball of Confusion,” and the next thing I knew I was laughing. I was laughing at visions of Robert Downey, Jr., at the beginning of ‘Tropic Thunder’ waving his arm at a helicopter and yelling, “Lay that shit down!” Nobody saw me laughing, which was okay. Even if someone noticed me I wouldn’t have been able to do anything but keep laughing. This is a condition I have, and I have lived with it for years. I never want to be rid of this condition, this affliction of instantaneously connecting random song with its corresponding scene in even more random movie. Not many people are able to do this as often as I do. It just happens. I love it.

A few recent cases in point:

1) While sweeping the floor at the coffee shop that employs me I heard a tango piece on the radio. Immediately I thought of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tia Carrere, and I realized I was listening to the song they dance to at the beginning of ‘True Lies.’ None of my coworkers knew what I was talking about, but I kept talking.

2) One day at the same coffee shop, on a day off, I was reading a book when I heard Dean Martin enjoying the shade and imploring his friends to drink the drink that he had made. I saw Marge Simpson dancing drunkenly on a ledge at Mr. Burns’s mansion singing the same song. I texted my brother with the news and he knew what I was talking about. I went back to my book remembering that that was the episode where the family shocks each other in electric chair therapy.

3) Not in a public place but on my record player (and actually last year), I was listening to Pavement’s ‘Slanted and Enchanted’ for the first time when I hit the beginning of “Perfume-V.” Suddenly I was between sketches on Human Giant with a brief bit of music taking us into the next piece of hilarity, probably a tale of intrigue in which the Illusionators attempt to cross a busy intersection blindfolded. No one was around to know what I was talking about. I consider it their loss.

Maybe this affliction of mine is a form of brainwashing. I have watched these movies and television programs so much that when I am in public and hear songs featured on their soundtracks I have no choice but to relive those scenes. It’s definitely a form of conditioning. My brain triggers a formulated response because movies and television are such a part of my life, past and present. I love music just as much, and when you put something I love together with something else that I love there will be a response worthy of the love I feel for both of the parties involved. I will smile, and I will tell all acquaintances within earshot or accessible via text messaging of the love I am feeling. Is it brainwashing if you like it? Probably. But I don’t care.

I don’t care because the people who used these songs in their respective scenes did not use these songs as a gimmick or as instant gratification to their fans. The people who used these songs did not use them in the same way that Zach Braff used the Shins for that scene in ‘Garden State.’

When I hear Dean Martin in public I don’t immediately search for more of his music and think of how much I love the Simpsons every time I hear him sing, nor do I think of how much Dean Martin changed my life. I think of how the show’s writers established early in the series that Marge can be a lush if given half a chance. When I hear the beginning of “Perfume-V” I definitely think of how much I enjoy Human Giant, but I always forget about “Perfume-V” until I hear it at that point on ‘Slanted and Enchanted’ because the entire album is worth listening to. Remembering “Perfume-V” on Human Giant is a momentary anecdote that passes as I fall back in love with the music.

I make these triangular connections of music, movies, and life because the people who made these movies went to careful lengths to choose the right song that works with a scene, and the music doesn’t dominate the scene. The music is necessary to the scene, but not in the same way that the Shins will change your life when Natalie Portman hands you her headphones. On one hand is a momentary remembrance of something that made me smile because it worked on multiple levels. On the other hand is frivolous sentimentality that belongs in an episode of The OC, probably a montage, probably involving people dramatically staring into space. My affliction is a refined affliction based on quality entertainment that I have involuntarily deemed worthy of random total recall. If you can wrap your mind around that you win this week’s grand prize. This week’s grand prize is respect.

That being said, this is not a bad movie or song to brainwash yourself with:

I remember the last time that Heidi (Get Physical, Berlin) came to town, there was quite a bit of hype going around.   Most people were really psyched.   All the people who believe in pussy-power (I’m one of those people by the way) were psyched to have a woman behind the decks.  A whole crew came down from NYC to see her play.  A cousin of mine from Greece who’s a student at Tech actually came up, and I saw her randomly.  I didn’t even know she was coming and it had been so long since I had last seen her, I actually blew her off at first because I thought it was some random that thought I was her friend.

And of course there were some haters.  Some of you motherfuckers immediately dismissed Heidi as a cover girl for the Get Physical Label (as if a label that’s so successful would need such a thing in the first place).   Coincidentally, those people also take the “we don’t like anything if we’ve heard it before” approach.  Which really means that they should just stick their head up their own assholes, so that they can listen to the sound of their intestine as it creates shit…and talk about how different and trend-setting THAT is.

Regardless of whether or not you’re a motherfucker or a great person, there are some things about Heidi which are undeniable.   She plays awesome music.  She’s an energetic DJ who clearly loves her career.  When Heidi is behind the decks, the whole room knows it because it’s impossible to ignore that bouncing, bubbly, blonde fro as she’s grinning and jumping up and down to the records that she drops.  When she played last year, there was a vibe in the room that was so dense, it had everybody getting down.   And I say that in the purest sense of the phrase.  In the same way that there’s a big difference between getting down to a cool ring tone and getting down to James Brown, there’s a big difference between getting down to Heidi and getting down to other dj’s.   As my sister put it at last year’s show, “Heidi brought the FUNK!”

On a personal level, playing with Heid last year was one of my favorite experiences as a DJ…and I’ve played with a lot of globe-trotters in my time.   Heidi was just awesome to hang with, to play with, to talk about music with…and to listen to.  She was really inspiring and one of the things I love most about her… she keeps it real.  I’ve waited almost exactly a whole year for her to come back, and it’s bound to be another special evening.  I just hope that a lot of you are able to make it over to share in on this great night.

Event Info:

Friday, May 19

HEIDI
[Get Physical | Berlin]

GEORGE KARMOKOLIAS
[Surrender Dorothy | DC ]

OPEN BAR FROM 9:30-10:30!

**Get on the guest list here**
Reduced entry until 10:30PM
http://mnmlife.com/guestlist

Get advance tickets here:
http://fla.vor.us/169867-HEIDI-and-MIND-CONTROL-LIVE-tickets/HEIDI-and-MIND-CONTROL-LIVE-Washington-The-Muse-Nightclub-and-Lounge-March-19-2010.html

http://www.mnmlife.com
http://www.physical-music.com

2nd Floor
The Muse Nightclub
717 6th Street NW
Washington, DC
http://www.museloungedc.com