January 2011 Archives

Standing on ceremony, as usual, and simultaneously embracing the bromide that "it's not a goal unless it's written down," I'm noting down some things I want to do in my newly kicked off year. I get a three week dispensation on January 1 since my birthday is in January as well. OK, here goes:

House

1. Fix garage door
2. Organize spare guest room
• This implies at least two of the following: purchase sleeper sofa, find shelving solution for books, find solution for desk/office area clutter, get crap off the floor, hang more pictures or put them in the basement
  
3. Give the yard a bit more regular love

Reading

1. Make a quicker dent in the unread New Yorker pile (now at 8 months behind; but at least I'm smart enough to say I won't catch up this year)
2. More books than I've averaged lately

• Attend four book group meetings this year (I've already missed January and we don't meet in December, so I need to make 4 out of the remaining 10 months)
• Read at least three additional books from the stacks and stacks in the house

Food

1. Try more new recipes
2. Eat appropriate portion sizes

Miscellaneous self

1. Take glass-blowing lessons (i.e. cash in Groupon)
2. Either complete half-marathon or bike around Lake Washington (again, initially I had both but one would be a big accomplishment)
3. Blog more frequently *cough, cough*
   
4. Visit Dad

Eleven for 2011? Coincidental and not at all original. Seems like a big number now that I'm looking back across this, but several are certainly easily attained and only moderately more difficult to maintain. We'll see.

Perhaps I'll check back in here on my progress, which if successful would be killing two birds....Just a thought -- has anyone in the history of birds and stones killed two of the former with one of the latter? (Falling from the sky in Arkansas doesn't count.)

For those who know me, know my ego is pretty small. (I make up for it in height.) So, ever since I read the article "Cyberspace When You're Dead" last week, I've been thinking about why I maintain this infrequently-updated blog. I guess I should have been thinking about to whom I'm going to bequeath my online "property," who should know my user names and passwords, etc. when I'm not around to remember that I keep forgetting to blog. But that's really one of the very last things I'll spend time considering.

Nevertheless, I have a modest-sized digital record out there:

• I tweet.
• I've (finally) updated my Facebook profile to the "new profile layout."
• The professional me is out there, the substance of which became the guts of an "article" about my purchasing a house.
• I have accounts at a couple of the popular online photo-sharing sites.
• And this blog. And probably a few other things I'm forgetting.
  

I don't know. I don't have a will, let alone a hint of a clue of a plan of what I want to do with the physical objects I possess that have some personal or material value. So to think about the digital "objects" most definitely hadn't crossed my mind. And now that the notion has, what of it?

By one definition, starting a blog is an act of utter narcissism. Heck, how many times will I use the first-person pronoun in this post alone? But I don't think I did it for vainglory. (Although maybe I did it so I could use words like "vainglory" without consequence.) At one time, I did contribute to a blog  -- or 'zine, semi-more accurately -- in no small part because I thought I wanted to write about music and try to get paid for it. But it mostly was a labor of love, in all senses of both words. Almost Famous it wasn't. And today, it seems this only gets updated when I want to write more about music.

Back in the days of letter-writing, my friends and I did a lot of that. Several commented that they said they could "hear" me in what I wrote, that I wrote just like I talked. I took it as a compliment though it's probably also why I never felt I could write fiction. Since all I seemed to know how to do was write like I talked, a book full of characters who all talked like me would be tiresome. (And full of parenthetical thoughts.) Later, I learned how to write scholarly papers but the idea of a book is both daunting and somewhat disinteresting. Though I do believe in the idea that everyone has one book in him/her. I think I know what mine would be and it would be non-fiction. No surprise.

So, no real answer to why maintain the blog. If I want to talk to my friends, I should just do that, no? And also, relatedly, no posthumous digital plans. I mean, if everyone says I write like I talk, once I'm no longer talking why worry about a digital preservation strategy? (see: no ego)

I'm opinionated about music. OK, I'm opinionated about a lot of things, though I tend to write the most about my music opinions. So, cutting to the chase, what I heard that was released in 2010 merits, at best, a C-. Longstanding personal favorites who released albums this year mostly get a thumb's up from me. Objectivity and I are sometimes ships passing in the night. "Mid-career" bands releasing a third or fourth or fifth album this year mostly were disappointing (Ted Leo (sorry, buddy) and the Hold Steady lead this pack). And probably the less said about the career turn of Paul Weller the better. Wake Up the Nation was certainly more coherent than 22 Dreams, but I think he needs to take another walk through the wild wood for inspiration.

The annual nod for album that gets a lot of praise and I don't get in the least: Broken Bells. Oooh, James Mercer sings about mean things. But the real penalty flag I'm throwing here is on Danger Mouse who's gone from the astounding Grey Album to just plain grey.

And the moment you've all been waiting for...

10. Sun Kil Moon -- Admiral Fell Promises
A man and his guitar. An album of all originals from Mark Kozelek under his band name, Sun Kil Moon. Two years ago, Sun Kil Moon toured as a full group; in 2010 it was just Mark solo on stage as he is on nearly all the tracks on Admiral Fell Promises. He isn't breaking any new ground here: long songs that unfold at a deliberate pace with detailed stories as pinpoint as photojournalism. The formula works for him and you either like it or not. I'm firmly in the like camp, though objective enough (HA!) to say that this collection doesn't hold from song one through ten. He has added some flamenco flourishes to his intricate acoustic guitar runs that don't always add the right color, but the story-telling is top-notch. The brilliance and beauty of "Half Moon Bay" cannot be understated. Name-checking Highway 1 and Devil's Slide that wind past the seaside town and attendant nostalgia. It instantly shares top billing among my favorite Mark songs -- Sun Kil Moon's "Carry Me Ohio" and Red House Painters' "San Geronimo," another track about a San Francisco Bay Area village.

9. Los Lobos -- Tin Can Trust
This is going to date me, but the boys from East L.A. have been doing this for what, 30 years now? I can argue they are quintessential American band weaving Mexican cumbia, American roots, rock, and straight-up blues, effortlessly shifting from English to Spanish and back again. Melting pot, anyone? And, remarkably, through three decades the Wolves remain the same, led up front by David Hidalgo's mellow-as-whisky voice and Cesar Rosas burlier guitar leads. (And the next time you see Rosas without his Ray-Bans will be the first; the man must have had them on his face in the crib.)

For the most part, the extra guests that have found their way onto recent Lobos' releases were left off Tin Can Trust to the album's benefit. The most visible partner is the Grateful Dead. Lyricist Robert Hunter has a co-songwriter credit on the weak link "All My Bridges Burning," but Los Lobos dig deep into the Dead's "West L.A. Fadeaway" to great affect. The lyrics ("I met an old mistake walking down the street today" and "I need a West L.A. girl, already know what I need to know") take on extra bite coming from a very East L.A. dude. The question wasn't rhetorical in 1985, but the view from here -- wondering whether wolf will survive -- isn't tough to answer.

8. Best Coast - Crazy for You
Those who know me can't be surprised I fell for Best Coast. To borrow an Imperial Teen album title, what is not to love? Fuzzbox guitars, catchy hooks, easy-to-pick-up lyrics, girl singer...it's like the Jesus and Mary Chain was fronted by a Reid sister. And yes, I know all about Sister Vanilla.

7. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
OK, OK, I submit. I'm a late-comer to Kanye. His off-mic persona is off-putting. But, I'll now give him the Russell Crowe defense: a total asshole (and he'll tell you so about 5,000 times on ...Fantasy) but a top-notch performer. C'mon, rapping to the beat of Sabbath's "Iron Man"?! 'Nuf said.

6. Emma Pollock -- the Law of Large Numbers
One is the loneliest number, yes? The Law of Large Numbers is actually full of songs about a pretty small number: two. As in a couple. And just about every song has a first-person narrator and a "you." The exceptions? The book-ending instrumental tracks "Hug the Piano," a solitary pursuit with a very consistent partner. In the first song with lyrics, "Hug the Harbour," the narrator says, "My trust lies in your precision." And "precise" is the descriptor I kept coming back to as I listened to ...Large Numbers more and more.

The music is impeccably turned out and matches to the cadence and rhyme of the lyrics. There's not a spare beat, not an overstuffed thought. Even Pollock's diction makes every word, especially on the end of a line, clearly distinct. An odd observation I readily admit, but the production is so sharp that it genuinely seems to have been a calculated decision. For instance, "Red Orange Green" has end rhymes of "weekend" and "weakened" and you can hear the difference. This song, perhaps my favorite, also suggests that Pollock listens to fellow Glaswegians Sons and Daughters -- and probably should give their "Rama Lama" a co-songwriting credit. The film noir-ish music matches the onomatopoeia in the chorus ("creak creak creak...tick tock tick...flip flop flip"). With a family and a business (Pollock founded indie label Chemikal Underground Records and was in the "house band" the Delgados), tours to North America are infrequent. Best pick this one up to hear her at all.