MIRRORBALL

First of all, we owe an apology for the lateness of this update.  We usually like to get a review up on Tuesdays, but we were on the road all day this past Tuesday before playing a show that evening, and that's part of what I want to talk about.

The show was great.  We played at a fairly large neighborhood bar in a cozy residential zone not far from downtown Indianapolis.  The place is called the Vollrath Tavern, and the venue rep's name is Elvis.  We got there and Dave asked him where the bathroom was.  He immediately fired back with "Men's or women's?"  I knew right away that this dude and this night were gonna be awesome.

It turned out that the venue was an original-music-only venue, and after getting called and threatened by BMI or ASCAP or some other such fascist organization, they actually enforced it.  When the first band played a cover song, they were immediately addressed by one of the workers and told they couldn't do that again.  Then when we played our set, we played a relatively new song of our own, and we had our sound shut down in the middle!  Someone in the audience swore that it was a cover of a Queen song.  We were apologized to and given a free shot for our trouble; plus it was a good laugh when we started the song from the middle to finish it.

But it kind of got me thinking, as a songwriter, is it good to write something that reminds someone of something else?  Obviously if it reminds him of something terrible, the answer is, "Go find a day job, clown."  But if it reminds him of something he likes, shouldn't this be taken as a compliment?  I think so.  While it is important to have a voice and sound of your own, when a person listens to you for the first time, he doesn't know what you sound like, so he can't very well compliment your new song as sounding like you.  It is notoriously difficult to describe music in and of itself without comparisons (try it sometime, and then you can come back and complain about my album reviews).  So if a new fan is ready to believe that something we wrote was written by Fredury Mercury and company, I'm willing to take that as a compliment by comparison.  It certainly means the crowd is listening, anyway!

ONCE UPON A TIME, when the world was young and unicorns still smoked joints in fields of clover, when the rain was made of rootbeer and I didn't grow sandpaper on my chin every few days, I kept a regular record of my tiniest and most precious thoughts in a blog much like this.  A blog, much like this, which is likely still tucked among the balled-up tissues and old grocery lists in the wastepaper of an Internet past, somewhere, waiting in the weeds for me to announce my run for state treasurer and pounce with fangs bared and bad poetry dripping from its hungry teeth.  (Excuse me while I change my underwear.)  This is the scary thing about the Internet:  that terrible limerick you wrote about your grandmother's nassssty breath is never going away.  Ever.

But here I am, back again, pecking away at the keyboard with bated breath, waiting for MAGIC to happen.  Writing, however, has not taken kindly to my vacation.  It's hard work, man!  Thinking all day of things to say and when the time comes to say them, coming up cobwebs.  (Have I written enough yet?)
But I'm no boring slouch - I've got things to say!  Adventures to recount!  Anecdotes to amuse!  I could keep you riveted for hours spinning yarns about organ abuses past, present, and future, complete with local color courtesy of my terrible accent from the City-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named.  And, oh how you'll laugh.  You'll shoot beer out your ears, you will, you will.

(Where's the word count on this thing?)

Here's the first Interesting Thing I will share with you lucky ducks: my list of things to do on my Holiday Wonderland Adventure-Time! (tm)

1. Eat.
2. More eating. (preferrably of these)
3. Ringing of eardrums with old war-buddies (i.e. JAMMING).
4. Going to THIS!!!!!!!!!!!
5. Forgetting temporarily that the sun exists

Anything else I'm forgetting?  I'm a bit of a Scrooge, so don't hesitate to ream me out for it.

ANYway, I'm thinking that I'll have more to say next week after we've been on the road for thirty hours and hit as many of those roadside casinos in Oklahoma as we can.  Hope you and yours have a wonderfully commercial-free interruption of your regularly scheduled programming.  Toodles!

This week I'm kind of continuing the theme of reviewing a band's final release.  This time I want to talk about what is probably my favorite overall Pavement record, Terror Twilight.

I spent a good while trying to decide why I like this album so much.  It's not as energetic as some of their earlier work, and nowhere near as diverse as Wowee Zowee.  The lyrics are no more or less decipherable than on any given Pavement album.  But one thing that occured to me was that this record is focused, and that's partly what makes it stand out.  There's no musical half-assery going on here; everything sounds like it was carefully considered and arranged.  The pop songs are tight and catchy, while some of the more expansive numbers feature very intricate guitar interplay.  But at the same time, the record does not sound sterile at all.  Oh sure, the production is sparkly clean as needed, but while the various musical twists and turns sound planned and rehearsed, they do NOT sound either forced or tame.

The writing is a big reason why.  Malkmus can come up with a catchy little set of chords and melody in his sleep, and he's no slouch at letting it all hang out with a heavier rock riff either.  And his vocal delivery makes sure that things never get boring; even when he sounds lethargic ("Major Leagues" comes to mind), the slight sarcasm is still there, proving he doesn't need to shout or warble out of tune anymore to get his "I really don't care what you think" attitude across.

For me, the standout song on the record that really highlights everything I love about it is "Speak, See, Remember".  It starts out as a catchy little jazz-pop thing, punctured by some sharp vocals over a pause or two, but in the middle it suddenly morphs into this beautiful jangly double-guitar heaven of melody.  But just when you're smiling all over, in comes the distorted guitar that breaks the formerly tight rhythm into a slacker-rock riff that builds with harmonizing guitars before crashing back into a small reprise of the beginning of the song.  These are all the things I love about Pavement - catchy chords, double guitar jangle, vocals that alternate between beautiful melody and sneering attitude, and a good slacker's riff every now and again - and they are all on display in a measured and mature fashion on this album.  Is it possible to call a "slacker's riff" mature?  Yeah - it means it's got the attitude without being obnoxious.  Like this record.

It's been quite the year out here, and I'm having a hard time believing my December-minded calendar.  But, no matter how I deny it, he days are growing shorter and the Christmas lights are popping up all over town.  The last month of the year always seems to fly by the fastest and this has been no exception.  We're heading out for our big roadtrip back East next Sunday, a leisurely jaunt across 1,700 miles of truckstop politics, Little Debbie hangovers, and the occasional bluehair plowing down the left lane at forty miles an hour with the turn signal blinking.  We're playing shows in Indianapolis and Pittsburgh, partying with friends and relatives, and making music in spare bedrooms; a distillation of all things heady about the homeland in ten short days.

But there is still so much to do before then!  There's a gig later this evening in our neighboring town of Dolores, another the evening before we leave, and all manner of gift-buying, packing, ass-scratching, venue-calling, sleeping.  But Christmas always comes when I'm feeling most restless, so no complaints from me.

Christmas also leaves me speechless, because there's always so much bullshit in the air that it's hard to think. Those days when Toys-R-Us catalogs had me dreaming feverishly of the Big Morning have long gone, and I do not miss the terrible television commercials and dedicated twenty-four-hour-a-day holiday music barrages on the radio when January rolls around.  I don't get the need for conspicuous consumption.  I don't understand the competition implied in the act of gift-giving, the silent, instilled need to feel like you're showing someone else up.  But the beautiful thing about travelling during the holiday season is that you get a chance to see what's really happening in people's lives this time of year.  The drama of life is more interesting than any Hallmark special will ever be....and tastes better, too.

And it's because I have nothing but good things to say about Christmas that I end this post with a picture of a two-headed turtle





See you guys in the New Year, when I've run out of things to bitch about (temporarily)


-DAVE