The Bitter Buffalo

In honor of the pending September 13 release of Volumes 4-7 of Palm Pictures' Directors Label video compilations (Volumes 1-3 of which are absolute must-owns, especially the Michel Gondry set), I am digging up an old favorite (of mine, if not yours): A Half Hour Wasted, Volume 6. Back in the early days of satellite TV (well, early for me anyway), MTV2 called itself M2 and played nothing but music videos all day long. I watched M2 for hours on end, and every day I lament its untimely passing and transmutation into the unwatchable MTV clone MTV2 is today. Once a week, at a randomly selected time, I'd watch M2 for exactly one half hour. I'd write about the videos I saw, grade them, and post them to Pat Angello's pre-blog blog, which he called Spooboy.com. I called my silly pastime "A Half Hour Wasted," because that pretty much described the endeavor perfectly. When possible, I've included streaming links to the videos described. I don't control the format (and I'm truly sorry about the ads), I merely provide the links. Therefore, it'll be up to you to install Quicktime, RealAudio, or whatever it is you'll need to view the videos. In any case, they're a lot better viewed on a normal television than they are in a 2 x 2 window on your PC. Herewith, for your blogtacular dose of daily (or semi-daily, or whenever I get around to updating this thing) entertainment... A Half Hour Wasted Volume 6 Total Time Wasted this year: 3 hours, 2 minutes View date: October 12, 2000, Start Time: 5:50 p.m. Eastern, End Time: 6:24 p.m. Eastern This time, when I turn on the TV, M2 is showing a Beck video, "Deadweight." Since I reviewed Beck first the last time around, I decide that I'm going to wait until the next full video before I start reviewing. I figure it's the right Christian thing to do. Foo Fighters "Next Year" Director: Phil Harder This is the video I get to review first today. And it's a good one. Here, the Foos are astronauts on their way to the moon. Using stock footage from the Saturn moonshots in the late '60's & early '70's, and Forrest Gump-ian special effects that incorporate the band members directly into the film, director Harder has made yet another cool video for a band that simply excels at making good videos (what other band would have the good sense to commission Devo's Jerry Casale to do a video?). In this one, we see Dave Grohl in a spacesuit. He's in the cabin of a spaceship with the rest of the band, just as the flight is beginning to lift off from the pad at Cape Canaveral. We see the rocket taking off from the familiar camera-fixed-to-the-launch-tower view. As the rocket passes the camera, the insignia on the side reads "FOO FIGHTERS" (instead of UNITED STATES OF AMERICA). That's just plain clever. At the end, in the video's funniest shot, the band's faces are inserted into footage of the Apollo astronauts as they are congratulated by Richard Nixon. Great stuff. Grade A- U2 "Beautiful Day" Director: Jonas Ackerlund This video is completely pointless, yet absolutely beautiful. Filmed in an airport in (I presume) Europe, it's really just a bunch of slow motion shots of the band walking around and playing their instruments in a visually striking setting. Eventually, they wind up on a makeshift stage playing on top of a bunch of haphazardly placed rugs, in the middle of an airport runway, while planes take off and land right over their heads. Even though this is totally fake (I know this because I saw "Pushing Tin," and I'm almost absolutely sure from having seen that movie that they would have been blown over if a plane had REALLY landed right over their heads), it's still pretty cool. And I love the nod to the old U2 video for "Gloria," in which the band is performing on a makeshift stage (complete with rugs and everything, or at least I think there were rugs and everything -- it was a long time ago when I last saw it) on a barge in a river somewhere in Europe. The best thing about this U2 video is that it's for the best U2 song these guys have recorded in years. I can't wait for the CD! Grade: B+ Queens of the Stone Age "The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret" Director: John Pirozzi Look. I've already reviewed this video once, and I believe I said even then that I was starting to get sick of it. And though I still like the song (that is, I find myself whistling along to the "whatever you do" chorus whenever I hear it), enough is enough. This is why I don't listen to the radio: the programmers are so sure they know what I like, they play the same crap over and over again until I absolutely hate it. It's a conspiracy. M2 isn't as bad as radio (and it isn't as bad as regular MTV), but they still piss me off just the same. So, to the M2 programmers, I beg you: Please give it a rest. Play something new. Grade: C- Badly Drawn Boy "One Hour Around the Block" Director: Suzy Ewing Well, just like that, right after I complain about having seen one video too many times, the M2 programming staff decides to play something I've never seen before. And it's a really cool video, too! It tells the story of a guy -- British, I'm guessing (by the way he's dressed, by his teeth -- he's in his early '20's and is still wearing braces -- and by the side of the road he's driving on), who picks up pretty girl for a date. She smiles, and we see that she's got braces, too. Another guy in a dopey hat is just driving his car around. Who is he? I dunno. I guess we'll find out later. The guy who picked up the girl flirts with her and laughs. She flirts and laughs right back. He stops the car, they get out. She takes off his glasses. Then, in a scene that looks almost exactly like the cover of the Chemical Brothers' Exit Planet Dust CD, they kiss. But since they both have braces, their mouths get locked together. What starts out as a sweet, romantic gesture turns vaguely menacing. Then, that other guy who was just driving around comes across the couple and picks them up. Then he drops them off, still attached by the teeth, at the hospital. In a neat little touch, after they get out of his car, he kisses his fingers and touches a picture of he and his girlfriend that is stuck to the dash. Bonus points for being directed by a woman. Grade: A- Good Charlotte "Little Things" Director: Nigel Dick This guy seems to only be able to make decent videos for Oasis. I say that because all the other ones he's done, including this one, suck. Just like most Marcos Siega videos (in fact, at first I thought this WAS a Marcos Siega video). The band, which looks like every other rock band that wants to be Blink 182, is inspiring "rebellion" in a high school somewhere. But if I were a high schooler watching this video, I'd be offended by the fact that I was being portrayed as a complete idiot, to say nothing of the fact that the song is a blatant -- and I mean BLATANT -- rip-off of Nirvana's smells Like Teen Spirit (the video for which, you might remember, is the *original* high school rebellion video). Junk. Grade: D Eminem "My Name Is" Director: Dr. Dre/Phil Hartwell According to the media, I'm supposed to be pissed off at Eminem. He's mean and nasty and he hates gay people (just like Dr. Laura, actually). But as I watch this video, I can't stop laughing. It's like vintage Weird Al Yankovich, but filthy. Em' appears in all sorts of different costumes as he raps lines like "I wonder which Spice Girl I'll impregnate," and "How you gonna breast feed me, mom, you ain't got no t**s." This is a perfect example of the principle I discussed earlier in the QOTSA review, except in reverse. I can't tell you how much I hated this song when it first came out. But since I haven't heard it in at least a year, I can finally appreciate how damn funny this guy is! Great stuff! Grade: B+ Madonna "Music" Director: Jonas Ackerlund Madonna says that Ali G, the British comedian who plays the chauffeur driver in this video, is "brilliant." He's the best part about this video (except maybe for the song, which is admittedly pretty good for Madonna), but I still don't understand what Madonna sees in him. The rest of the video is a mess -- and Ackerlund is usually a reliable video director (see the U2 review). Here, we don't see a lot of Madonna, except when she's sitting down in the back of the limousine, or when she's sitting down at the stage in the strip club stuffing dollar bills into women?s, um, snatches. Could this be because she was extremely pregnant at the time this thing was filmed? I dunno. But it seems to me that the quality of a Madonna video is directly proportional to the amount of time we see her wiggling her body. And since the only time we see her "body" in this video is during an incredibly stupid cartoon interlude, this one just doesn't make the cut. Grade: D+ Bjork "Big Time Sensuality" Director: Stephane Sednaoui Thank you thank you thank you, M2. The fact that you play videos like this one is the reason I waste a half hour (actually, a lot more than that) watching your channel every week. The premise is a simple one. Fix a camera to look down the length of a flatbed trailer, drive the trailer slowly through Manhattan, and put Bjork on the trailer to do what she does best, wiggling, dancing, flailing her arms, and accosting the camera. The end result just happens to be one of my all-time favorite videos -- one of the few videos that will ever get a grade of A+ from me. And that's not just because I have a crush on Bjork. Grade: A+

I thought this blog lived only as an archive of files on my hard disk, but lo and behold it lives on a server in Mountain View as well!

Pterodactyls are among us! Yes, this is true. I walked out to my car this morning and noticed that it had been defaced by the most amazing display of avian high altitude bombings. A streak of shit ran from the roof line, down the window, bisected the door handle and down the entire door to the doorsill. Truly astonishing. The shear volume of the fly-by shitting leads me to believe that either walruses can fly or pterodactyls are not extinct.

Completely unrelated, Frank Miller is penning Batman comics again. Miller is the guy who basically brought comic books back from the dead and reintroduced a considerably more gritty Batman in "The Dark Knight Returns" in 1986. The Bitter One will likely remember I picked up the softcover collection of the 5-issue series back in our days at St. Lawrence. Having not spent much time with my childhood hero for well over a decade "The Dark Knight" was a great reintroduction. In 1996 a limited run, signed leather bound edition was released. Having a bit more disposable income I picked up a copy of that as well. In any event, Miller went on to do Sin City and the comic version of 300 - both of which were turned into visually amazing films. He is back to Batman. Miller is writing "All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder" for DC Comics. This Batman is even more gritty than the one in "The Dark Knight Returns" and I absolutely love it. Unshaven, exhibiting the charm of a sociopath (at least where criminals are concerned), and violent as hell Batman skulks around Gotham City having kidnapped the recently orphaned Dick Grayson and imprisoning him in the batcave telling Dick that if he is hungry he can kill and eat any rats that cross his path. The newly-formed Justice League made up of Wonder Woman, Superman, Plastic Man and the Green Lantern is the object of Batman's derision as a bunch of bumbling boobs who don't use their abilities to their fullest extent. The Justice League don't like Batman because he is a loose cannon giving super heros a bad name. Wonder Woman wants to kill him, Superman disapproves of his methods, Green Lantern just wants to try and reason with him and Plasticman, well, who knows what goes through his mind - he's a flake. It is a lot of fun and if you liked Batman as a kid you might want to track down the back issues.

Further unrelated, in church this past Sunday the hymn being sung was "something, something, Jesus Christ, something, something." Izzy, who turns 4 this Thursday pipes up "Jesus Christ, now that what I'M talking about!" It was all Jeannine and I could do to not burst out laughing. A four year old has no business tacking on "Now that's what I'm talking about" to anything much less Jesus Christ. Sebastian has taken up climbing. Everything. We caught him climbing a door jam in the upstairs bathroom the other morning. He grabbed either side of the door molding with his hands and since he was barefoot he simply "walked" up the door jam. We weren't sure if we should be proud or mad. In the end we laughed, told him that it was pretty impressive but we don't climb stuff in the house.

Welcome to my world. Pterodactyls shitting on my car, precocious proclamations from my daughter and my son imitating Spiderman.

Just a warning. If you are standing directly in front of the car doors as they slide open and I am getting off the train you will get walked into. That automated voice tells you to stand to the side and to allow passengers to get off the train before boarding. Take heed. I don't care if you are a man or a woman. Young or old. Black, white, yellow, or red. If you are so damned inconsiderate as to stand RIGHT THE HELL IN FRONT of the doors as people are waiting to get off of the train you deserve to get hip-checked. And you tricky little bastards who try to weasel your way in like a salmon swimming upstream as people are getting off the train. You are a fucking target. I am going to have a suit made out of leather with all sorts of rusty tin can lids and razor blades sewn into the sleeves. I am going to look like something out of the fucking Road Warrior. I will walk directly into you.

And what the heck is it? Do I have a sign on my forehead that says "Hey! All you morbidly obese commuters, sit next to THIS guy!" It never seems to fail, I'm sitting there in my one seat, bag in my lap and some GIGANTIC person (usually a woman) decides to sit next to me. But it isn't just next to me. It is partially ON me. They have one cheek sort of resting on my thigh and spilling over into their seat. Their other cheek is half in the seat, half hanging out into the aisle. Their breathing is labored from the exertion of walking down the metro platform and they smell like garlic. Argh, why me? I just want to sit and read my book in peace. Now I'm wedged between some garlic smelling, heavy breathing fat lady and the window of the metro car. And if I shift - just a little - to try and get a bit more comfortable, or a little less sat upon, I'm shot this look like I'm the problem. Like I'm inconveniencing Gigantor.

Whew. I feel better.

Today's commute sucked. But it is better than driving on the Beltway.

(And with this post any chance of public office, elected or appointed, is effectively destroyed.)

After waiting forever and not had anything to eat in about 12 hours my patience is rewarded. I have been assigned a room. So, they detach me from the monitor in my temporary room, attach me to a mobile unit, plop me in a gurney and wheel me to my room. Upon arrival my ER nurse completes paperwork with the cardiac ward nurse. It is like those prison transfer scenes in movies. I feel like Nic Cage in "Con Air" but without the receding hairline.

As I am getting set up in my new digs the ER nurse tells me "Hey, when everything is settled, come on back to the ER. We are DYING to know what the problem is. We've never seen anything like it." Nice choice of words, jackass.

Bobby, my new nurse, busies himself with hooking me up to a wireless transmitter. All the wires from the EKG equipment go to this little box that slides into a specially made pocket in my hospital gown. That little box transmits to the wall-mounted monitor displaying my vital signs. Kind of nifty. Now I can go to the bathroom without trailing wires behind me. When he is done I ask Bobby, no, I plead with Bobby for some food. I get a box lunch. Never has white bread with sliced turkey tasted better.

I fall asleep around 1245.

Somebody comes and takes my blood around 115. Great. This is what happened to my daughter (see my October 29, 2007 entry).

In the morning my new, new nurse stops by to check my vital signs, get my food order and give me aspirin. Somebody else takes my blood. I ask when I will see an actual doctor. Nobody can give me an answer. A tech comes by to get a print out of my heartbeat. He tells me it looks like I have PVC. My confused look prompts an explanation. A Premature Ventricle Contraction. An irregular heartbeat. No big deal. How enlightening.

Jeannine calls me on the room phone. She is trying to drive back down to Maryland from New York but some serious lake effect snow is hampering her progress. That and the fact our son managed to puke all over the inside of the car. Jeannine is stressed.

Around 1000 I finally see a doctor. For about 15 minutes. She tells me there is really no big deal. A PVC is pretty common and can be controlled through medication as well as some weight loss, exercise and reduced stress. I wonder how it is that she can be so blasé about this when the ER nurse was treating me with all the curiosity usually reserved for sideshow freaks ("Come see the man with the wacky heartbeat. Come see him soon, he may be dead if you wait too long. Step right up, step right up.") Oh, and about that “reducing stress” bit? Yeah right. I have a 5 ½ year old and a 3 year old to whom I am a human jungle gym. And in case you hadn’t noticed, there is this little thing called a war going on and it is my job to help support the men and women over there. Stress comes with the job. It is a standard feature, not an option.

I'm given a prescription for some drug and make an appointment for a stress test.

My tests, a week or so after the hospitalization, include having some radioactive stuff injected and then getting some sort of a scan to see what is going on. I think it was an MRI. I can't remember. (Plus, the radioactive stuff does NOT give me Spidey Sense or allow me to turn green and get huge when angered. Bummer.) Then I get hooked up to an EKG monitor and hop on a treadmill that increases in speed and incline to see how my heard reacts to increased work. Then I get that scan again. And then a sonogram where they can see my heart valves and muscles working. A few days later I get the results, I'm told everything is within acceptable parameters. Good to know. I still need to see an electro cardiologist to find out exactly what is going on with the weird heartbeat. It is controlled for the most part but if I have too much coffee it gets kind of whacky. Caffeine and alcohol get things jumping. A neighbor had a brunch a couple weekends ago and I had a couple bloody marys. My heart started doing flip-flops. So, booze may be a thing of the past.

In the end, it seems I am fairly healthy but before learning what was going on it was pretty scary. Boring at times but when I started thinking about things it was pretty scary. What did I learn? If you think you may have had a heart attack, tell the ER nurse up front. You get to the head of the line in a hurry. Also, iPods don't screw up precision medical equipment. If it is OK in the ER, you should be fine on a 727. Additionally, we human beings are pretty amazing pieces of precision equipment. It is astonishing how one small thing out of balance can throw the entire system out of whack. And as we age, how more tenuous the balance is. I guess this was my wake-up call to try to rebalance my system. Finally, it made real my father's saying about how you have to protect your health because without it we have nothing. If I couldn't run around outside and play with my family the quality of my life would be drastically diminished. If nothing else, this gave me some perspective I didn't have before.

It feels like somebody put a cinder block on my chest and a pumped-up blood pressure cuff on my left arm. My legs are weak and my vision blurred. I’m sweating. “So, this is what it feels like to have a heart attack,” I think. I am riding the metro on the way home from work. I had planned to go to the Gap and buy a couple new pairs of khakis but instead decide to go to the local ER. Jeannine is out of town so after getting to my “home” metro station I drive to my house, grab a book and my iPod and head to the hospital. On my way I call Jeannine to let her know where I am likely to be for the next few hours.

For the previous ten or so days I had been dealing with a wildly irregular heartbeat. I had experienced it for years but after a day or so it generally “reset” itself and went on pumping in a normal rhythm. Not so this time. For days it has felt like my heart was doing flip-flops in my chest. Bum-bump, Bum-bump, Bum… BumpBumpBump, Bum-bump, Bum-bump… Placing my finger against my neck I could FEEL my pulse out of whack. After about a week I had had enough and made an appointment with my primary care physician, coincidentally a board certified cardiologist, for Saturday. And here it is Friday night with me checking into the ER fearing a heart attack. So much for my appointment.

“Sir, you should have just told me that from the start,” the admitting nurse tells me after I describe the weight on my chest and the tightness in my arm. After waiting patiently in line to get admitted to the ER my number finally came up. When asked about what had brought me there I told the nurse about how I had been experiencing the weird heartbeat, how it usually goes away after a day or so, blah, blah, blah. When I tell her about my chest and arm suddenly we are all business and I am whisked into a little sort of ante-room with a curtain, given an aspirin, have my chest shaved (ROWR!) and all sorts of frigging electrode thingys with wires attached and plugged into a machine. Blood pressure and temperature taken. Eyes peered into. “How are you feeling now?” I am asked several times by several people. “OK, I suppose.”
“We need to take some blood.”
“OK, no problem. Why?”
“To see if there are any enzymes that are indicative of a heart attack.”
“OK.”

In walks some girl who starts poking around my arms trying to figure out where to stick me. She arrives at a seemingly suitable location. And misses. Then she moves to the left arm. Finds a spot. And misses. Again. No blood taken. Now we are trying to figure out the next spot I can get poked. I tell the girl that if she messes up this time I get to try it on her. And I’m not a professional blood-taker. So she arrives at a suggestion. How about the BACK OF MY HAND!!?? I figure what the hell, when my kids had to get IV fluids because they had awful diarrhea and got dehydrated they got stuck in the back of the hand. I can man up. Now I know why they cried so much. I think a tear rolled down my cheek. They took blood. Finally.


So they look at some print out from the machine that they attached me to and make some concerned looking faces. I’m then moved into my own “private” room in the ER. A bed with a curtain around it and I get hooked up to my very own “Machine that goes ‘BING’.” This is when the fun really starts. The male nurse assigned to me takes a look at the crazy readouts from the monitor and says, I kid you not, “Wow! That is pretty crazy. I’ve never seen anything like that.” And stares at the machine for several minutes. When a weird beat appears on the monitor he asks “Did you feel that?”
“Yep.”
BLIP
“How about then?”
“MmmHmm, that one too.”
Blipityblip
“Woah, you felt that one, I’m sure.”
“Oh, yeah. That one too. Hey, is it OK if I listen to my iPod? They tell you not to on airplanes because thy can supposedly interfere with the equipment (although I think that is BS) so I wonder if I can in the hospital. I mean, I don’t want to kill anybody while listening to my music.”
“Sure, no problem. You won’t kill anybody.”

The phone over my bed rings. I pick it up. It’s my Dad. Jeannine called my family to tell them what was going on. Dad has a screwed up heartbeat too. Atrial fibrillation. He has been through all this stuff himself and knows a lot about it. He asks me how I’m doing. Asks me what the docs have said. He tells me what to ask about. Tells me about diagnoses, treatments and procedures. Tells me he loves me. We hang up.

My brother calls. I tell him all about my adventures at the hospital. I tell him about the pot roast I made in the crockpot and have eaten for lunch and dinner for 4 days. He suggests that when the doctors look at chest x-rays they may find my heart is shaped like a pot roast. He goes on to suggest my pot roast diet may be the contributing factor to my current cardiac woes. He may be right. We joke around some more, say our “I love yous” and hang up.

It is getting late. I call Jeannine on her cell phone since it is a “local” call. She asks me how I’m doing (bored as hell). When I’m going to get moved to my own room (soon, I’m told). What the doctors have told me (nothing since I haven’t seen a doctor).

I decide to listen to some music. Feeling melodramatic I try to decide what music I want to hear if I’m dying. Scrolling through my iPod I pass Orff’s “Carmina Burana” (too over-the-top) and land on “Similar Anniversaries” by Small Sails. A fairly recent purchase. Just as I start to get into it my male nurse comes by and looks at my monitor again. Says something about a “branch break” which is a pretty serious deal having to do with the electrical impulses to the heart getting completely screwed up leading to heart disease. He walks out. I scroll to The Smiths.

I’m
Really
Fucking
Bored

By 11PM I’ve been at the hospital for about 5 hours and still don’t have a room of my own. I’ve heard all sorts of commotion, people getting wheeled in from ambulance runs, kids crying, adults moaning. It’s been great. But then again, it is the ER. I listen to music. I watch the monitor to see if I can control the BLIPs. Nope. Finally, at midnight I get assigned to a room. Still haven’t spoken with a doc and haven’t eaten since noon. Now I’m bored and grumpy.

I was so excited to get an MP3 player embedded here that would allow readers to listen to my own playlist, that I neglected to test its functionality on Internet Explorer (it worked fine in Firefox, of course).

If you logged in here yesterday or earlier today to see my inaugural Best Tracks of 2007 post using Internet Explorer, you saw some random huge playlist that bore little resemblance to my little 12-song post below. That was my mistake. I figured out the problem, fixed it, and now you should see the playlist exactly as I intended it to look (and sound).

Please read, listen, and comment as appropriate.

----------------
Now playing: Blonde Redhead - 23
via FoxyTunes

And so begins my (probably way too) ambitious effort to share with you my favorite music tracks of 2007…

I made an effort to sequence these tracks as I might a CD mix (though I did not attempt to edit any segues or transitions between songs). Use the embedded MP3 player above (if you are so inclined) to listen to them in the order I’ve written them up, as you’re reading about them, or download a ZIP file here that you can add to your iTunes library and sequence as you wish. Ideally, you’ll burn them to a CD and listen to them in your car. These tracks would make a pretty good driving mix, I think.

This first installment includes tracks by bands I had never heard (and, in most cases, never even heard of) prior to 2007. With the exception of Doveman (which was included on a free Stereogum compilation – see below) and The Field, everything on this list was downloaded from eMusic. If you haven’t already done so, sign up now (ask me how). It’s so worth it.

1. Miracle Fortress: “Have You Seen In Your Dreams”
From the album, Five Roses

My friend and colleague, Jon Wilson, discovered this gem on eMusic (the risk associated with experimentation there is so low – the whole CD cost him maybe $2 – and the upside is so high… it’s almost impossible not to try new stuff). In Miracle Fortress, he found yet another excellent band from Montreal (see also Besnard Lakes, Malajube, Arcade Fire, et al), with a CD full of soaring melodies and meticulously crafted pop tunes. “Have You Seen In Your Dreams” is one of those pop songs that hint at the familiar (Beach Boys, Fleetwood Mac, Caribou) without being wholly derivative of anything in particular. And it’s damned pretty, too.

2. The Answering Machine: “Silent Hotels”
From the EP, Silent Hotels

In a year when it seemed like every other thing I listened to was Scottish (The Twilight Sad, Frightened Rabbit, Life Without Buildings, hell… even The Fratellis), this one song stood out as my absolute favorite of the bunch. I like the spare, jangling guitar refrain and the shouty call-and-response vocals. It sounds like a conversation between two people sitting at two ends of a long, busy bar.

3. No Age: “Neck Escaper”
From the album, Weirdo Rippers

My favorite pop songs are teases. By that, I mean songs that build to a climax but scuttle off as soon as that climax is reached. The House of Love’s “Happy” is my classic example of that – the song fades out just as it hits the chorus. “Neck Escaper” is just two minutes long, and the first minute or so is a slow, instrumental build to the “song” part of the song. Then, at 1:20, the song hits its stride, gives us forty seconds of big love, and walks away.

4. Electrelane: “Between The Wolf And The Dog”
From the album, No Shouts, No Calls

This tune plays like the bastard lovechild of Sleater-Kinney and Stereolab, but somehow manages beat either of those bands in terms of sheer accessibility. It opens with a blistering guitar lick (“The Wolf,” maybe?), then ramps up the tempo and seems to be heading into full-bore S-K territory when it adds an analog synth riff and “doot doot” vocals (“The Dog”?), then mixes the two into one of the catchiest rock songs I heard (and almost ignored, but more on that in another post) all year.

5. The Besnard Lakes: “Devastation (Alternate Version)”
From the EP, Casino Nanaimo

The shorter version on The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse is very good, but I think this is one of those cases where more is better. In this case, more is four extra minutes of the epic neo-psychedelic rock and roll (see also The Black Angels, Black Mountain, and probably several other bands with “Black” in their names) that helps transition the album from a Beach Boys homage to something much bigger, darker, and much more interesting.

6. Yeasayer: “2080”
From the album, All Hour Cymbals

Reaching out to ‘70’s and ‘80’s AOR for inspiration seems to be in vogue these days (A Mountain of One, Midlake), but I like the results SO much better than I did the source material (ask me again in 20 years what I think about the bands that will be drawing on Jack Johnson, Norah Jones, et al, for inspiration, and I’ll buy you a candy bar for remembering to ask).

7. Burial: “Archangel”
From the album, Untrue

Dubstep, to these ears, sounds like an upbeat version of the stuff Tricky was doing ten years ago. But what do I know? “Archangel” in particular sounds like the CD changer in my car back in 1998 (loaded with Massive Attack, Tricky, Portishead, Lazy Dog, etc.) started to skip. And, somehow, it sounded really good.

8. Doveman: “Airbag”
From the album, OKX: A Tribute To OK Computer

Stereogum, a music blog that became a critical daily read for me in 2007 (though they’ve been around longer than that) produced two outstanding original compilations in 2007, and distributed them, free of charge, to anyone interested in hearing them. The first, a tribute to Radiohead’s OK Computer, produced at least five tracks that could have wound up on this playlist. Doveman’s take on “Airbag” is here because, like the best cover songs, it remains true to the source material without compromising the coverer’s artistic vision. Haunting and beautiful.

9. The Field: “Sun & Ice”
From the album, From Here We Go Sublime

I spend a lot of time working and listening to music with headphones, and a fair amount of time driving as well. Not all electronic music works well in both environments – traditional upbeat techno can be irritating while trying to get some work done, and electronic ambient stuff can cause you to get sleepy and drive off the road. “Sun & Ice,” like all of the brilliant From Here We Go Sublime, walks that line exceptionally well. I’m also a sucker for the little dropout at 4:45 that made me wonder if my iTunes broke.

10. A Sunny Day In Glasgow: “5:15 Train”
From the album, Scribble Mural Comic Journal

Included for fans of Cocteau Twins, My Bloody Valentine, Seefeel (you know who you are), and any other act that layers big guitars, echo-y drums and fairy-like vocals in compositions that sound like they were either produced in 1987 and were twenty years ahead of their time, or produced in 2007 and sound like a whirlwind from the past. Also included for those of you who said a band from Philadelphia had no proper place in the pantheon of shoegaze. Take that, haters.

11. Small Sails: “Somnambulist”
From the album, Similar Anniversaries

“Somnambulist” is a lot like the Miracle Fortress cut, though the similarities didn’t strike me until I listened to both cuts in the context of preparing this post. So, everything I said up there applies here (including the part about Jon Wilson discovering them), except Small Sails is from Portland instead of Montreal.

12. Delorean: “As Time Breaks Off (The Requesters RX)”
From the album, Transatlantic KK

Hands down, my favorite driving song from 2007, “As Time Breaks Off” is pure, dumb, euro-Disco – knowing nod to Daft Punk inserted here for both effect and credibility – utterly catchy yet thoroughly insubstantial. This remix foregoes the original’s petulant (but still excellent – this is no knock on the original) vocals and devolves almost immediately into an indulgent electro-wank that – for me, anyway – provided the perfect musical compliment to a moonroof-open nighttime drive in the hot, humid, Carolina countryside. All this from a bunch of nameless Basques, no less. Who knew?

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Now playing: Black Moth Super Rainbow - Forever Heavy
via FoxyTunes

So, the Bitter One himself decided to come down from Mount Tonawanda (Look it up if you want to get the joke - if you don't get it, ask, I'll share. I'm good at sharing.) and ask me how I'm doing. So, here you go. Or at least a snippet.

A couple Fridays ago I was on the phone with Jeannine when I heard in the background, kind of soft and scruffy "momiswallowedapenny." I understood when Jeannine told me she had to go. I'm understanding like that. Damn, I'm good. Apparently Izzy swallowed a "penny." Mind you, everything coin is a "penny." Could have been a nickel. Hell, could have been a Kennedy half-dollar if we had them lying around. So, this happened on a Friday afternoon. Saturday comes and goes - no poop. Sunday - no poop. Monday - no poop. Monday evening, out of the clear, blue sky puke everywhere. We just came in from playing at a playground, she went to pee, came out of the bathroom and then half-digested Mac-n-Cheese all over the entryway. And then a second and a third round in rapid succession. Hmmm, no poop but lots of puke. Pediatrician is closed. Take her to some "All Night Peds" franchise. Kind of like a McDonalds of healthcare. They didn't have an x-ray machine but thought that the puke and the penny were unrelated.

Tuesday, after not eating all day and being curled up in a ball we get blasts out the other end of the digestive tract. Twice. The Pediatrician tells Jeannine that if Izzy throws up again to take her to the ER. I'm thinking, she puked up everything yesterday, hasn't eaten today, there is nothing to puke. A bad gauge of health. So, I leave work early and take Izzy to the ER. I explain that I know the ER drill - sit and wait, see if anything changes. We have waited days so I really don't feel like waiting. Fearing a "penny" is causing an obstruction I want an x-ray to determine what, if anything, she managed to swallow and block her GI tract.

We get x-rays. I'm told by the doc that she is glad i was insistent because something looking like a coin is at the top of her stomach and may be obstructing her digestive system. After consulting with the GI surgeon at Children's Hospital she is being directly admitted and will likely undergo surgery the next (Wednesday) morning to remove the obstruction. Go home, change Izzy into PJs, get a book for me and off to Children's Hospital. While waiting in line to check Izzy in I get a call on my cell phone. My grandmother died. "Yeah, I really can't deal with that right now. I'll be in touch." (It wasn't unexpected. She was 95, in declining health and the last time we spoke when asked "How are you?" she responded "I keep waking up and am rather disappointed." Still, it sucks.)

We get Izzy up in her room. The first one is occupied by an infant with tubes and stuff hooked up to her and will not stop crying. We got moved. A steady stream of residents, interns, etc. asking questions. (Here is the part where I tell you it is scary to have reached an age when I can legitimately ask "When did the doctors get younger than me?") Of note is the fact that Izzy had a scrape/scab from playing roughly with Sebastian at SmalWurld at Ikea. (This is where Jeannine and I go for a date. Drop the kids off to play for 45 minutes while we shop child-free. A sad state of affairs.) When you drip the kids off they give you one of those GIANT pagers that light up and buzz. If they need you they page you. We got paged and ran back to SmalWurld. Apparently Sebastian had been a bit rough with Izzy and we were asked to remove the kids. Yeah, my son gets bounced from SmalWurld. Great. Anyway, Izzy got a scrape, it scabbed over. Each intern/resident who looked her over saw it and asked "Ohh, goodness, where did THIS come from (you child abusing sicko)?" Only that last part was not spoken but intoned. After the medical parade we get left alone. It is about 1030. I ask Izzy if she is tired. She is. I ask her if she wants to cuddle with me. She does. She falls asleep. It is 1100. She gets woken up for IV fluids. Nice timing, people. Kids don't like to get IVs. They make a lot of noise in protest. We go back to the room at 1130 and finally fall asleep. Well, sort of. Kids crying. People walking around. Not much sleep to be had. Up at 700. No idea when the endoscopic procedure will take place. But I do have that detail, general anesthesia, a machine breathing for my little girl while they stick a scope down her throat to snatch a coin from her belly. I'm unsettled.

I meet the doc. He tells me about the procedure. About the anesthesia. "How long is the recovery period?" "Not long at all," he tells me. "It is a minimal amount of drugs. She will be up and running before you know it." "What could go wrong?" I ask. "She could die. But it is HIGHLY unlikely." Oh, great. Thanks for that.

We get an x-ray before the procedure to see if the "penny" has moved. The penny was swallowed on Friday. It is now Wednesday. After so many days, it finally moved. It is in her lower GI tract. The surgery is called off. The "penny" will, well, get pooped out. And guess who gets to look for it. I pocked a handful of exam gloves before leaving the room anticipating my mission. I think it passed and we missed it. She is doing just fine now, thank you. We did learn an important lesson, there are differences between Piggy Banks and Izzy Banks. Piggy Banks are much better for "pennies."

I'll post my corn chowder recipe next time. I have to go to bed.

OK, I'll give this a whirl. I finally figured out how to sign back in after Blogger did their whole "let's make this easier" redux thing and completely fucked the whole thing up making it impossible to sign in. I'm not going to spend too much time typing here since it may be an act of blogging masturbation. If one of you gobs decides to read this and let me know I'll share my deep, dark secrets. Or at least the recipe for my fantastic corn chowder.

I haven't posted anything here in a LONG time, but I keep thinking I am just about ready to write something. We'll see about that.

Meantime, enjoy the mini slideshow of my kids, Logan and Sophia. They're too awesome, really.

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Listening to: Miracle Fortress - Poetaster
via FoxyTunes

So yeah. Just wanted you to know that I finally have access to this damned thing. Took a while to get it done but at long last, here I am to breathe life into this blog.

But not right now. Now I'm going to bed.

But I'll be back.

Swear.

M.

PS - Cute photo of Christmas Logan.
PPS - So, when does 2.0 arrive?

... and now it's time to purge.

Originally, I thought I’d throw one or two of these reviews up a day (and even started to do that with the Black Angels review), but then I faced the mirror and realized if I haven’t had the energy to post here but twice since April, what the hell am I thinking I’d post every day? That’s insanity right there. Insanity, I tell you.

Nevertheless, I did compile a list of my favorite music of 2006. And I am presenting it here, alphabetically, by artist. If you insist on knowing my absolute top pick of the year, I’d say it’s a toss-up between Yo La Tengo, Fujiya & Miyagi, and LCD Soundsystem. Or maybe TV on the Radio. Or perhaps Band of Horses. Tapes ‘n’ Tapes is good, too. So is Mew…

... now, maybe, you see why I’m throwing these up alphabetically instead of order of awesomeness (to brazenly borrow a line from My Name Is Earl).

Since I want you to decide you like these CDs, too, I have provided a link to an MP3 file of a cut from the CD being discussed. And since I want these artists to continue to make a living so I can hear more great stuff from them in the future, I am setting this post up so you can click on the album art and link to an on-line retailer (of my choosing, ha!) that will be more than happy to sell a copy of the CD to you.

Finally, do yourself a favor and sign up for eMusic, which is the best $20 monthly music investment I have ever made, period. You can download several of the CDs on this list from them (including Califone, Fujiya & Miyagi [if your account is set up somewhere besides the US, unfortunately], Tim Hecker, Tapes ‘n’ Tapes, and Yo La Tengo) legally, in their entirety, at bitrates between 128 and 220 kbps, and without any DRM attached whatsoever, for around $2 an album. That, my friends, is quite a deal.

(And hey, if you check out eMusic and it sounds good to you, send me an email first. They have a tell-a-friend promotion that would put free downloads in my cart if I refer you. And I like free downloads. A lot.)

And now, with no further ado, my list:

Band Of Horses
Everything All the Time
When I first heard them, Band of Horses struck me as sounding awfully similar to The Shins, as both bands produce soaring power pop with distinctively high-pitched vocals. But a mid-day Pitchfork Music Festival set under the searing Chicago sun last July demonstrated to me that Band of Horses are less intent on scoring the closing credits of the latest Fox Network primetime teen soap than crafting deliberately heartfelt country-tinged melodies about weed parties and salt lakes. To my ears, “The Funeral” soars above the rest of the record, but there really isn’t a bad cut to be found anywhere on it.

Califone
Roots And Crowns
On my eMusic review (yeah, I post there more often than I post here, sue me) of Roots And Crowns, I wrote that Califone sounded “as if Caribou bred illicitly with Iron and Wine.” I’ll stick by that assessment. “The Orchids” is perhaps the strongest cut on the CD, and it is (improbably, perhaps) a cover of a Psychic TV tune. And coming from a guy who could never quite see past the grotesquery of Genesis P. Orridge, that “The Orchids” sounds as pretty to me as it does is either a testament to Califone’s musicianship or a tacit admission on my part that Psychic TV actually wrote a good song.


Fujiya & Miyagi
Transparent Things
On eMusic (it was the first new CD I downloaded with my eMusic account, and shortly after I did so it was yanked from the US eMusic catalog… snooze, you lose) I called Transparent Things, “an infectious and highly listenable combination of vintage Kraftwerk and disco new wavey proto funk.” This, clearly, is where my extremely limited musical vocabulary begins to fail me (I was sleepy, and perhaps a bit drunk, when I wrote that). Whatever. Transparent Things is classic British electro, from two dudes who have spent an awful lot of time listening to Neu! While my words may fail me, the music itself does not. Hear what I mean on the opening track, “Ankle Injuries.”

Tim Hecker
Harmony in Ultraviolet
I cannot imagine a single one of the people who are most likely to be reading this will like this album. Nevertheless, in light of new information about Clap Your Hands Say Yeah that indicate that CD was actually purchased by me in -- and included on my Top Ten List of -- 2005, I am selecting this ambient masterpiece for inclusion in this year's list. Although I am posting "Blood Rainbow," I could have selected any of the tracks. Taken as a whole, Harmony in Ultraviolet is an immersive wash of noise and subtle production tricks that is as good for zoning out (or drowning out) as Fennesz's Vienna, which has roughly the same effect on me.

LCD Soundsystem
45:33: Nike+ Original Run
The first (and so far, only) $10 I’ve spent at the iTunes store, and boy am I glad I did. James Murphy’s contribution to Nike’s series of “workout soundtracks,” 45:33 provides the perfect uninterrupted soundtrack for drudgery (i.e., work), driving a long ways, or running. Actually, I wouldn’t know about running since I don’t run. Still, this is a masterful and lighthearted tromp through about five distinct disco-fueled “movements” that’s perfect for anyone who likes Daft Punk, Chemical Brothers, or, well, LCD Soundsystem. Too bad it isn’t available on CD (but I did find an MP3 copy of the first five minutes for you to sample).

Mew
And The Glass Handed Kite
Goofy Danish prog bombast normally wouldn’t find a place on my year-end list because just that description alone makes it sound horrid. Plus, the CD cover art is truly some of the worst I’ve seen this millennium. Nevertheless, the album itself is amazing, full of complex and catchy pop melodies that not only won me over (and over and over and over… I’ve listened to the CD more times than just about any other on this list since I ripped it to my iTunes back in September), but also caught Beth’s ear too. That overlap is pretty rare, and is most definitely “Special.”

Regina Spektor
Begin To Hope
Initially, Spektor comes off as a less serious Fiona Apple, or a more emotionally-stable Tori Amos. All three women write their own songs and have managed to score studio time with some truly amazing producers. But where Spektor soars is her songcraft – playful story-songs that indicate an imagination at work, not unlike a great novelist. It also helps that she has a voice that will get inside your head (especially if you’re wearing earphones) and take up permanent residence there if you let it. “Fidelity” might sound trite and gimmicky (and destined to score an especially heart-wrenching breakup scene on Veronica Mars) to you. To me, it’s my foremost guilty musical pleasure of 2006.

Tapes ‘N’ Tapes
The Loon
Take a healthy dose of The Feelies, throw in a bit of Pixies, then sprinkle a liberal amount of any cool lesser-known Minneapolis band (The Suburbs, maybe, or The Wallets) and maybe you’ll get something like The Loon, as promising a debut album as I heard all year. These dudes have now officially sold out (that’s a good thing for working musicians), signing a contract with XL records and whoring “Jakov’s Suite” to some ad agency that was in turn hired to do an ad for, I believe, Nissan. With cars – Nissans in particular – it’s true: “you don’t move, you don’t move, you don’t move, you don’t move away.” Right.

TV On The Radio
Return To Cookie Mountain
Either you buy their art rock-meets-a cappella shtick, or you don’t. I do, in a big way, and found myself massively rewarded by Cookie Mountain, which is the closest thing to a truly original record as was released all year. “Wolf Like Me” (see their spellbinding Letterman performance of it, and watch Letterman’s face turn from jaded skepticism to something approaching sheer awe) may be (as one of you said to me a while back) the best Bloc Party song Bloc Party never recorded, but you only have to listen to the opening track, “I Was A Lover” to understand how a single band can combine so many styles in a coherent and compellingly infectious way. TV On The Radio are destined to emerge from the ‘00s as one of – if not the single most – important band of the decade. You’ll see.

Yo La Tengo
I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
Hoboken’s finest finally won me over (I have no idea why the hell it took so long for me to come around, but I finally did) with the most immersively listenable psychedelic record of the year. The best cuts are the bookends, both of which run longer than ten minutes apiece and pick the listener in an audio maelstrom, give him (or her) a good toss, then redeposit him (or her) a half mile away, with nary a hair on his (or, alas, her) head unruffled. Between those cuts, though, are a seemingly randomly diverse collection of tunes that collectively work as a superb album, start to finish. Though I’m tempted to post my favorite track (the epic “The Story of Yo La Tengo”), I’m gonna cite bandwidth concerns and post “The Room Got Heavy” instead (and promise you the Black Angels similarities are purely coincidental).

Labels: Badly written music reviews