Shuffle play Friday-Songs about superheroes

It's time for another Shuffle Play Friday, my weekly homage to a handful of songs that I’ve discovered, or become reacquainted with over the previous seven day. I try to keep it light, or lighter via these posts.

This week, I was thinking about leadership, and the lack of it wherever you look—locally, at the state level (the two areas where I get to stare this paucity in the face), and following the healthcare debate, it’s quite apparent that the election of Mr. Obama hasn’t done anything to change the corporate stranglehold on power and politics. If you aren’t one of America’s elite powerbrokers, you are SOL and without an advocate for the things that matter to the working or middle classes.

We need Superman in the worst way, but he seems to be unavailable at the moment.

Larry Norman-Reader’s Digest/Only Visiting This Planet

I’ve written about Larry Norman before. This morning, I heard another song that made me thing about this track of Norman’s from a 1973 album.

Norman sang, “It's 1973, I wonder who we're gonna see
Who's in power now? Think I'll turn on my TV,
The man on the news said China's gonna beat us,
We shot all our dreamers, there's no one left to lead us.
We need a solution, we need salvation,
Let's send some people to the moon and gather information.

spoken: They brought back a big bag of rocks.
Only cost thirteen billion. Must be nice rocks.

Things haven’t changed much since 1973 in that while we haven’t had a major leader gunned down recently in the U.S., we still have no one left to lead us.

Who can we call upon, if as Norman sings, we have no one to lead us out of the wilderness.

Crash Test Dummies-Superman's Song/The Ghosts That Haunt Me

I remember when this song first made its way onto the playlist of our local adult ontemporary station, WCLZ. The lyrics painted Superman as a world weary everyman, albeit one with extraordinary powers. It was an interesting twist on the superhero take coming from Hollywood.
Brad Roberts’ signature voice singing the song’s quirky, but outstanding lyrics make one pine for someone with super powers.

Our Lady Peace-Superman Is Dead/Clumsy

Another Canadian band with a song about Superman—is there something in the water supply to the north that promotes songs about superheroes?


I read that the song was making a statement about television, and the influence that it has on children, and the unrealistic expectations that it engenders. The band’s lead singer, Raine Maida hearkened back to the simplicity of the television he remembered—black and white images of the original Superman, and then, he contrasted it with the two popular cartoon morons of the moment, Beavis and Butthead.

The Rosebuds-In The Backyard/Lifelike

One of my favorite online stations that I listen to is KEXP, out of Seattle. This station is a great example of what FM radio should be, a freeform station hearkening back to the days when the FM dial was about unpredictability, and catching music that you weren’t expecting. It’s all so predictable today, by-and-large, as corporations have wrung most of the vitality from the radio band.

Quilty 3000 does a great Sunday afternoon show that I try to catch every week. The KEXP site allows me ease of access of Q3000’s shows as they archive the streams and I usually go back and listen.

I liked this one by Raleigh, North Carolina’s, The Rosebuds, a band I had never heard of before last Sunday. They also happen to be on Merge, which is always a positive endorsement in my book.

Mason Jennings-The Field/Blood of Man


The first Mason Jennings song I ever heard wasn’t played by Jennings, but by my niece’s husband, at the Tarazewich (Mary’s family) Christmas gathering two years ago. He and I had our acoustic guitars out late at night in front of the fireplace, alternating takes on songs we could play. He began picking out the chords to “Forgiveness,” an extremely poignant song about family relationships.

Jennings new album is getting solid reviews and I think I’ll end up picking it up. Jennings plays all the instruments himself, and it represents Jennings stripped down and raw, which is how I like him best. He is also scheduled to play Portland in October, I think.

This particular track is about a soldier in a war far away (Iraq?) who loses his life and the perspective of a parent’s sense of loss and memories that remain. It also touches on the responsibility of our leaders (“If I was the president…”) and how they’ve failed our lost sons and daughters. The father goes out to “the field,” a place that obviously holds meaning according the Jennings, and tries to connect with the disappeared son.

Five more tunes for this week are now in the can, and another SPF is posted for readers that love music. Long live rock!

Leading with my chin

I’m proud of the weight I’ve lost (36 pounds), as well as ramping up my fitness routine and achieving some positive gains from the lifestyle changes I’ve made.

Over the past 13 weeks, I’ve gone from being someone who never walked away from a plate of nachos, an extra cheeseburger, or a second helping of ice cream, to exhibiting the kind of discipline I once had, but had set aside once I segued into my 30s and 40s.

I’ve been talking about “losing 20 pounds” to anyone that would listen for about 10 years. Making the shift from talking about it to doing something about it puts me in select company in America, because we’re a country of whiners who rarely do more than sit on our fat asses and complain about _________________ (fill in the blank), without doing a goddamned thing to change the mix, or play a different hand.

For the past two months, I’ve upped my training from 3-4 days per week of 12-15 miles on my bike, to where I’m now biking five days/nights per week and logging over 100 miles weekly. Usually, Saturday, and/or Sunday involve rides of 25+ miles. I’ve also signed up to participate in The Dempsey Challenge, a member of Team Tarazzmatazz.

Given my newfound fitness focus, and given the very demanding work schedule staring me in the face for the week, with three events scheduled beyond my normal 8:00 to 5:00 daily routine, I knew I had to get out on my bike early, pre-work, if I was going to get in five days on the bike this week.

This morning, I was on my Diamondback at 5:45 a.m. just prior to sunrise. I was well equipped with a bright fluorescent vest, and two new lights that cost me about $70 last week, to aid in visibility now that I am battling shorter days for road time.

About 45 minutes into my ride, an awesome early morning with the sun just coming up on the horizon, my front tire caught one of the ubiquitous pavement fissures that populate Maine’s back roads. Our roads are a mess, as the cash-strapped legislature and our do-nothing governor continue cutting corners on road maintenance in order to deal with budget woes. In a matter of seconds, my front fork had been spun around and my 223 pound frame was being hurtling over the handle bars. I think I hit my right knee first, and then began a bumpy landing, first touching down on both hands, then my elbows, and finally coming to a rest on my chin. As I lay on the pavement, I was afraid to reach up and feel my throbbing chin, thinking that I’d be feeling stands of shredded skin.
Gingerly hoisting myself up and on my feet, moving my neck and flexing my wrist and arms, I knew I was sore and banged up, but it didn’t seem as though anything was broken. My biggest concern was my chin at that moment. I grabbed a paper towel stained with chain grease out of my gig bag on the back of my bike to dab my chin. After putting pressure on my scraped chin and pulling it away, I was surprised that there wasn’t much blood at all. I was a afraid to glance in my rearview mirror, however, not sure what horror I’d come face to face with.

I dialed my cell phone (which I always carry) and called Mary.

“Mary, I just took a bad spill off the Shiloh Road. I’m pretty banged up and shaky,” I stammered. “Can you come pick me up?”

Mary had just left the house for work, but she immediately turned around and motored my way.

I managed to work up the courage to look at my chin. Amazingly, there was no fragmented laceration, or jagged gash—just a nasty looking case of road rash—a serious abrasion. I was lucky!

I twisted my front fork back around and into place. My bar ends on my handle bars were badly bent. My hands were shaking, but I got on my bike and started cycling towards the intersection where I’d eventually rendezvous with Mary and her Rav 4.

I was never so glad to see her vehicle when she turned the corner and I dismounted near the lighthouse, just off east of Route 125 in Durham.

We managed to wedge my bike into Mary’s SUV, after removing the front tire and doing a bit of tugging to fit it into the back.

Arriving back home around 7:30, I began peeling off my biking attire and apprising the damage. Beside my asphalt-stained chin, my right knee was badly bruised, with some abrasions and showing signs that it was beginning to swell. Fortunately for me, the weather was cold enough that I donned a windbreaker and as a result, my only injuries were a few abrasions on my left elbow, and a very sore neck and back. After calling into work letting them know of my incident and that I wasn't going to be in for the day, I spent the rest of the morning icing my knee, and trying to lose the shaking in my hands.

Twelve hours removed from my brush with a serious injury, I’m pretty sore, slightly bruised, and my chin is already scabbing over. It certainly could have been much worse.

[Bike helmet and gloves--don't leave home without them!]

In addition to escaping a brush with broken bones and something even worse, my bike was virtually unscathed. Feeling a bit better this afternoon, I was able to make adjustments to my bar ends, putting them back in place. My front tire needs to be re-trued, as it was slightly warped, but other than that, I think I’m ready to get back out on the road, although I may take tomorrow off for some recovery time.

Writing prompt

Successful authors routinely find their way into elite MFA programs. At least that's what I've been told. My son is now at Brown, enrolled in their MFA program for writing so I guess he'll become a successful author. Even better--he's blogging about the process, at least the first 10 days in.

Apparently other Brown MFA'ers blog, as evidenced by this blog by Amish Trivedi, a poet who comes to Brown by way of Iowa City. He occasionally displays a political side, weighing in on Glenn Beck, healthcare, and capitalism.

Ah, to be young and enrolled in an MFA program, instead of hopelessly wedded to work and the daily saga of the adult treadmill/hamster wheel.

Here's a list of some of the more prestigious writing programs, from Atlantic Monthly.

Shuffle play Friday-forget the past

[I’m getting this week’s musical post up a tad early (yes, Shuffle Play Friday is back for another week).

On Sept. 10, 2001, which is now eight years ago, I started work at UnumProvident Insurance (now just plain UNUM). The next day, during training class, the Twin Towers came down and they sent all us trainees home, as well as the rest of the training department. People were freaking out, crying hysterically; I was glad to be home, processing all of the news coverage by myself, and later, with Mary, when she came home from work.

In many ways, I had hit a wall at that point in my life, knowing that I had to make some different choices. Since then, I've in embarked on a new path, in essence, reinventing myself. It's been a long arduous journey and I've done things in parts/sections. My physical transformation/metamorphosis has been the last to arrive, lagging far behind the other changes. My weight ballooned, even while other aspects (my soul/spirit/intellect) had gone through some serious growth and development. It feels good to experience some sense of completion nearing, and have equilibrium restored.—JB]

This week, I discovered that Canadian rock is more than The Tragically Hip and Bachman Turner Overdrive. Actually, I already knew that, but I’ve been listening to CBC Radio 3, and a host of new music that’s from our civilized neighbors to the north after being linked there through an interesting web search journey one night, a journey that reconnected me with Julie Doiron, former singer for Eric’s Trip, a band I was a fan of during my WBOR days.

Back when I was doing my radio gig, I often stopped by the station mid-week after working my day shift job for the local power company. I’d want to preview new stuff that always seemed to arrive around Wednesday. Seeing that my shows were usually Saturday nights and wanting to be the freshest DJ on the air, I’d spend a couple of hours going through the “new” CD bin. It was usually a night when student DJs like Colin Decker and Alec Thibodeau (from Car and later, Lincolnville) had their shows. I’d gotten to know them and we’d talk music and I’d get a sense about what they were digging. Pete Hodgin, who is now a teacher and not long ago was still DJ’ing on WMPG (Portland’s stellar community station), with a Friday rock show supreme. Hodgin was another student that I enjoyed trading music preferences with. He’s the DJ that got me into some great Midwestern rock on the Faye Records label, like Ditchwitch. He also turned me onto the lo-fi geniuses, Guided by Voices, circa Vampire on Titus, and before Spin and other indie rock mags picked up on the Bob Pollard story.

Those were good times!

Doiron, btw, is now performing solo and has been putting out stuff for a decade after Eric Trip’s demise.

Grand Analog-I Play My Kazoo/Metropolis is Burning

In an age where there seems to be so little that’s new and wondrous, I’m really enjoying a whole new batch of artists that I’m not familiar with, via the world of new Canadian music. As a big fan of all things Canadian, having someone like Grand Analog pounding in my headphones, while writing late at night has been one of this week’s guilty pleasures.

The Junction-My Love Was There For Me/Another Link in the Chain

Another Canadian artist that I’ve been grooving to this week; when The Junction sing the refrain, “In a time of doubt, it’s easy to feel sorry for yourself,” I say “fuckin’ yeah,” as I nod my head to the frenetic beat of the tune and the chorus of “sing along, sing along.”

Tune in, tune out the sorry world, and push the problems of the world outside the cocoon of sound emanating from my computer.

Sometimes all we can hope for in this world of disappointment is that one person who “is there” for us. Check out the YouTube video and have a get happy moment.

Superchunk-100,000 Fireflies/Incidental Music 1991-95

It was the summer of 1994. WBOR usually was off the air during the summer months when most students returned home. For whatever reason, the 50 watt college blowtorch stayed on the air most of the June, July, and August. I happened to have the Brunswick/Bath area for my service area as CMP’s meter installer extraordinaire, which meant that my improvise sound system in my truck (a cheap Sanyo AM/FM cassette deck stayed tuned to indie rock all summer, as I completed my orders, which included disconnecting the power for many of the area’s low-income residents that had failed to pay their utility bills. What can I say—it was a host of shitty jobs I held for much of my 20s and 30s as I struggle to locate a truer path.

Almost every DJ on ‘BOR played this killer Superchunk (originally penned by Stephen Merritt and recorded by his band, the Magnetic Fields) track that still packs a wallop and sounds great a decade and half later.

It’s debatable if there was a band more emblematic of American indie rock during the early to mid-90s than Chapel Hill’s Superchunk.

Julie Doiron-Heavy Snow/I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day

A member of the aforementioned Eric’s Trip, a Moncton, New Brunswick four-piece named after a Sonic Youth song.

Eric’s Trip were one of a slew of lo-fi, four-track wonders that populated the indie scene during the early 90s. Doiron played bass, guitar, and sang.

Doiron, who veered away from electric music for a period after Eric’s Trip broke up, choosing quieter melancholy arrangements, has again embraced elements of electric guitar, the pace changes, and the more stripped down sound that her first band was known for—oh, and that voice!

Keep on rockin’ in the free world!

Biking before dark

Today was my third day over the past four of biking vigorously. Saturday, I rode 26 miles, Sunday, it was just over 20. Yesterday, I gave my legs a rest, and then tonight, I raced the sun as it was setting after work, to bike a route just shy of 21 miles.

It’s been awhile since I’ve pushed my body physically like this. At 47, I thought my days of intense physicality might be past, but apparently, I still have some tiger left in my tank.

I enjoy the physical changes that losing 35 pounds, and rounding into shape are bringing to bear 0n me. I think our physical condition influences who we are and our outlook about life much more profoundly than I’ve considered before.


[I snapped this 15 minutes before the sun set; this is about 6 miles from our house, along the power lines in Pownal.--JB]

Question authority

It's nice once in awhile to come across a well-written opinion piece making perfect sense. Like Reason Magazine's Jesse Walker sharing a few thoughts about Mr. Obama not being our nation's guidance counselor, as well as other cogent points, like this one.

Children shouldn't be taught that the president—any president—is a beloved paternal figure with a grand plan for everyone. (From the original lesson plan: "Students might think about: What specific job is he asking me to do? Is he asking anything of anyone else? Teachers? Principals? Parents? The American people?") Children should be taught the truth: that presidents are polarizing figures who are constantly dogged by controversy. That Americans don't always agree about proper public policy, and sometimes they disagree enough to do something as drastic as keeping their kids home from school. That politics is about conflict, not listening in unison while a friendly face on a TV screen dispenses instructions.

I also liked the link out to McLuhan and the phrase, "the medium is the message," something I've been rolling around in my head of late.

It puts some of the political craziness of the past week into some kind of manageable context. Maybe that's why the magazine he writes for and manages is named Reason.

You call this change?

I happened upon this while doing some late night internet reading and was struck by a portion of the post:

With Kennedy gone, we are at the mercy of a weak, squabbling, visionless Democratic party and a President whose domestic reform policies are adrift–sliding towards the horizon with each passing day: The lost battle for Afghanistan. (Seriously– the British, then the Soviets, and now us?) The phony victory on Wall Street, one bubble replacing another. Health care reform being taken over by right-wing screwballs at the town meetings. The very idea that amidst all this, Obama is vacationing on a huge estate on Martha Vineyard’s is smack out of the George Bush playbook (except that with W, it was the Texas chainsaw vacation).

It appears that for the many who had hopes and dreams that the New Jerusalem would be ushered in during an Obama presidency, reality has finally begun to set in for all but the Kool-aid camp.

If the Van Jones debacle isn't another example of Obama's inability to stand beside and defend anyone or anything that might tarnish his ties to the establishment, then I don't know what is.

I was struck once again by the political bait-and-switch represented by Obama and his faux leftism, despite what the idiot choirboys (like Beck, Limbaugh, et al) spew about Marxism, as I listened to Jonathan Kozol speak for three hours on BookTV about education in the U.S.

The interview with C-SPAN's Connie Doebele was wide-ranging and touched on Kozol's books about our failed "segregated" system that creates educational haves and have-nots, typically along racial lines, excluding blacks and Latinos.

Kozol talked about being “stunned” by the large number of what he termed “devout liberals,” all living in major U.S. cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles—these are mostly privileged white people, self-identified liberals that refuse to face up to the fact that they’ve abandoned poor African-Americans and Latinos to what Kozol calls “apartheid schools.”

Obama, the nation's most prominent African-American abandoned public schools for his own two daughters.

Progressives were duped once again, as they usually are when they pull the lever for a Democrat.

Spouse's Jose Ayerve featured on SistersTalk

I'm keeping the rock and roll theme going here at WordsMatter. Spouse front man, Jose Ayerve, gets a nice feature interview at SistersTalk Radio.

SistersTalk is a Gay/Lesbian podcast, highlighting artists/musicians, authors, entertainers, and others from the Gay/Lesbian community.

Jose talks about his music, his influences behind Spouse, and some of his other music. Beyond music, he also shares his own personal coming out story, and the response of his own parents and others. You also get to hear a couple of Spouse songs, including one of my fave tracks, "Are You Gonna Kiss, Or Wave Goodbye?"

Attention Brooklyn-area music fans!! Jose will be part of a CD release party for "Ciao My Shining Star: The Songs of Mark Mulcahy," at the Williams Music Hall of Williamsburg, September 20, an interesting disc he was part of with some other big name rock and rollers.

Great interview!

Random musings during the Friday nocturne

Rather than continuing my recent Friday routine of Shuffle Play Fridays, I leave you some random thoughts I’m ruminating on during the early AM on Friday. The coyotes nearby have roused me from my sleep with their barking and calls to one another, so I decided to leave the comfort of my bed, albeit one that had me lying there fully awake, to visit my office and spend some time in front of my computer screen.

-Writing blues

There was a time when I considered my personal pool of energy to be unlimited. What I’m discovering, based on my current experiences is that our individual reservoirs are more likely finite, and we are able to shift resources around, depending on what our focus and priorities are.

Last spring and early summer, I’d work a full day, come home, have dinner with Mary, and retire to my “hobbit hole” and work another three to four hours (and occasionally longer) on what eventually became Moxietown. That wasn’t a sustainable routine, but I did manage to maintain it for six months, or so. Once the book was released and the Moxie Festival completed (which is where the bulk of my sold out title got dispensed), I took some needed time away from serious writing.

Over the winter and during the early spring, I ramped up my writing and began what I thought would be book #3, a book that I intended to be a compilation of my experiences of my sojourn into fundamentalist Xianity during the early 1980s. After completing about 25,000 words, I found the writing becoming mechanical and devoid of much vigor. About February, I came to recognize that for whatever reason, that project needed to be moved to a back burner because I had hit a wall. It has remained on its own SanDisk in my desk drawer since.

After taking a month off, I got reengaged by writing some longer essays, releasing a few snippets, portions and samplings via an occasional blog post here at Words Matter. There have been weeks when I’ve been as prolific as any period that I’ve experienced as a writer. Unfortunately, the summer months (what we’ve had of a summer) have found those bursts of fury spaced further and further apart.

Blogging by and large has been easy for me. One of the reasons that I’ve persevered as a blogger is that I find 1,200 to 1,500 word posts relatively easy to crank out. This blog has become my veritable semi-regular column on a variety of topics, my most recent inclination to write about being music, although music writing and the recent development of Shuffle Play Fridays have been more about creating a weekly blog placeholder, or a means of putting up something that might draw readers back from time to time, as I sometimes get fixated on things like blog stats and return visits. Stupid, eh?

This past week, however, I think my physical fitness focus has caught up with me. The past three or four days, I haven’t had my usual flurry of blog post ideas flooding my head during my work day. Often I jot them down on a scrap of paper or notebook I keep for idea generation during a 90 minute drive to Skowhegan, or some other remote outpost that I serve in my day job. Hence, there has been a paucity of posts here this past week. My work blog has also languished for a much longer period. An occasional idea has floated by, but I’ve been lacking sufficient energy/passion to post it.

I attribute this to channeling so much energy into the physical side of things, which has siphoned off some of my creative energy and fire of late.

Is this a reality for any other writers out there? Does one have to sacrifice being fit and in some semblance of being in shape if they want to become wildly successful, or at least a prolific practitioner, toiling in relative obscurity?

-MOB rules

I can’t abandon Friday morning music musings entirely. Partly, this is a result of my current reading, which is Michael Azerrad’s excellent book about indie rock, Our Band Could Be Your Life. One of the 13 bands that Azerrad highlights is Mission of Burma that seminal Boston-based band that has influenced so many other bands that followed their blazing of the musical trail.

Only rock obscurantists like me care about MOB (my own preferred acronym, although it’s not unique to me, as I’ve seen the band’s name represented as MoB) and their music has receded into the musty corridors populated by vinyl and cassette tapes, both of which I have a deep affinity for.

Formed in Boston, MA in 1979, the band consisted of Roger Miller, Clint Conley, Peter Prescott and Martin Swope. Musically, they were as intense as any punk band, but they were also able to separate themselves from regular three chord crowd through their use of unusual time signatures and chord progressions, as well as tape effects (courtesy of Swope).

A truly groundbreaking outfit, their music was destined to be ignored, or cited long after the band broke up, like most artists that hit the scene too early, or inaccurately time their 15 minutes, only to be a mere wisp of smoke in some grander scheme, a mere rock and roll footnote.

Actually, I’m being a bit hyperbolic concerning MOB (or MoB) because in 1981, they actually signed a record deal with Ace Of Hearts, a Boston-based label run by Rick Harte. Harte was a producer of some local renown and he took a liking to the band after hearing seeing them play live in Boston. As local labels went at the time, Ace of Hearts was a great place of the band to be. Harte cared deeply about his artists and his product. Like most indie labels, small press book publishers, and other creative endeavors operating outside of the mainstream (read, popular, mass-produced culture), distribution tends to be an issue. It was for MOB and Ace of Hearts, which at that time was one of the few indie labels out there.

Their first single, “Academy Fight Song / Max Ernst” single actually sold out very quickly and both songs have become fan staples of the band.

Next came the EP “Signals, Calls And Marches,” which also sold out its initial pressing of 10,000. It was later was reissued by Rykodisc (with six remastered original songs and two bonus tracks – both from their first single) and Matador (with video material and even more bonus tracks). I own the Rykodisc CD version.

Later, the band released the full-length "VS," which is generally considered to be one of their best works, and has been recognized by several critics as one of the best albums of the 80s.

Despite developing a strong following in Boston, and a few other indie outposts at the time, MOB broke up in 1983, partly because of Miller's worsening tinnitus, due in large part to the band’s notoriously loud live performances. The band went out for a farewell tour and released a live album “The Horrible Truth About Burma,” which came out on Ace Of Hearts in 1985.

During the 90s, it was rare to read an interview with a member of a variety of post-punk outfits without them dropping a MOB reference, citing them as a key influence.

The band reformed in 2002, playing a bunch of reunion shows. They garnered rave reviews, drawing old fans, and new acolytes alike. Bob Weston (who plays in Shellac, a math rock outfit, with Steve Albini) had replaced Swope at the mixing board and on tape manipulation. OnoffOn was released in 2004 on Matador, as well as a new live recording. 2005 brought another new record, with several tentative titles, but finally was christened "Obliterati."

There is a new record in the works set to be released next month, on Matador. Recorded in Boston back in March, "The Sound The Speed The Light" has an October 6 release date.

-Front running in Tampa Bay

I’ve chronicled my personal hatred of the team formerly known as the Devil Rays here at Words Matter. My antipathy for the club has a back story that’s hard for me to let go of. Last fall’s AL final between Boston and ball club with its front running fan base that couldn’t go away soon enough, is still fresh in my mind.

Despite a lineup that virtually has no center, and another sub par outing from Josh Beckett (is he injured again?), Boston managed to take two of three important games from TTFKATDRs, hopefully finishing them off, one year after baseball’s dumber prognosticators were hailing them as the AL’s team of the future. Oh yeah—I owe Clay Buchholz an apology, as the young hurler sucked it up last night and gutted out six innings to log another quality start—Buchholz may actually be rounding into a major league pitcher after all.

Tampa Bay is America’s professional sports armpit in my opinion. An overbuilt southern city, devoid of much in the way of culture (typical of much of the “new” south), fans of TTFKATDRs have to be some of the worst bunch of bandwagon riders in all of MLB. For the past three nights, each time NESN’s cameras would pan the crowd (of what should have been a sellout), we saw a wash of empty blue seats, as the good folks of Tampa Bay couldn’t muster enough enthusiasm to even half fill the ugliest and most user-unfriendly professional sports venue in North America (Tropicana Field makes the Big O in Montreal look like Camden Yards), in what was the ball club’s watershed series of the 2009 campaign.

So long Tampa; you got a sniff last year, but now it’s back to being suck city all over again, you foreclosure wasteland, and Siberia of an American urban area, masquerading as a viable place to live and conduct business.

Shuffle play Friday-DIY

I just started reading Michael Azerrad’s Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes From the American Indie Underground, for a book club I’ve been invited to join. I can already tell it’s going to be an interesting read for a couple of reasons that are quite obvious to me—indie rock, particularly the type Azerrad highlights, is informed by the DIY ethic that drives me forward in my own life. Also, each of the 13 bands featured are favorites of mine, and I think Azerrad is spot on for highlighting their significance, as well as providing a good deal more detail on most than even I was privy to. The only one of the 13 that I’m a bit dubious on would be the Butthole Surfers, although I’m sure once I get to that chapter, I’ll come to appreciate what they were about in a way that I’m not, at present.

This is a book that puts late 70s/early 80s punk/hardcore into a particular historical context that’s often missing from rock criticism, and any other writing connected to rock and roll. Actually, one of the benefits of the book is that it fills in details about a key period in the evolution of early punk/hardcore, and how it reached its watershed moment in Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Sprit,” when the entire indie/underground scene blew up and changed, almost overnight.

In light of Azerrad’s book, this Friday’s Shuffle Play Friday features tracks from some the 13 bands featured, as well as representing some of my favorite rock songs of all time.

Hüsker Dü-Ice Cold Ice/Warehouse Songs and Stories

Back in 1984, stranded in the center (or close to it) of the country, shipwrecked and looking for a new source of meaning, music became my new drug, replacing fundamentalist religion. At the time, Chicago’s WXRT hosted "The Big Beat," a hour-long indie rock show, every Friday night at 11:00. This became my gateway into a whole new world of underground music I knew little about.

Fast-forward to early 1987 (the year I’d move back to Maine, in August after four years in the post-industrial armpit of NW Indiana) and pre-internet, so there weren’t a wealth of places for someone living in Chesterton, Indiana to connect with indie music.

It was on ‘XRT where I first caught wind of Hüsker Dü and their loud, fast rock and roll. “Ice Cold Ice” was being played regularly. I drove up to Michigan City to pick up Warehouse Songs and Stories on cassette, after reading about it in the latest issue of Rolling Stone.

Black Flag-TV Party/Damaged

It’s hard to imagine the unbridled passion that Black Flag brought to their music in today’s corporate rock environment. The anger was real, with Henry Rollins working out his issues onstage each and every show, often on the heads of members of the audience that pissed him off.

Rollins wasn’t Black Flag’s first vocalist, but he was the one that moved the band forward and gave them their more serious focus that they become known by.

The band’s sound, characterized by Greg Ginn’s fractured, atonal playing style came to epitomize the hardcore punk sounds, since Black Flag were one of the first playing this kind of music in the U.S.

I picked up Damaged in a used vinyl shop. TV Party is a throwback to some of the goofier tunes that characterized the earlier years when Keith Morris (later of the Circle Jerks) was on vocals.

DOA-51st State/True (North) Strong and Free

I first saw DOA in Chicago, in 1986 on a bill with the Descendants, DC3 (former Black Flag member Dez Cadena’s band), and a fourth band that escapes me now, some 23 years later.

DOA, led by the irrepressible Joey “Shithead” Keithly are still going strong. Like Black Flag, DOA originated as a punk hardcore band, but later introduced a more melodic approach to their songs.

The band, which hails from Vancouver, BC, wear their Canadian hearts on their sleeves. This song captures the Canadian inferiority complex that comes from being America’s neighbor to the north, as well as the love/hate thing that is the reality when you live next door to someone that can potentially make your life hell if you piss them off.

At this stage of their career, think a Canadian Ramones, and you’ll be close.

The Minutemen-History Lesson-Part II/Double Nickels on the Dime

The title of Azerrad’s book comes from this song. DNOTD was released in 1984. I owned it on cassette, acquiring my copy back in the 90s. I still regularly listened in that format, but the cassette player in my old 1984 Pontiac chewed the tape up last w/e, so I’ve got to get it on CD, or vinyl, as this album is one I must own.

I never saw the Minutemen live, but I did see Mike Watt’s post MM band, Firehose back in the late-90s when they played the old Zootz nightclub, in Portland. I met Watt after the show, as he stood and shook hands with everyone that came, a holdover from the days of punk, when by-and-large, bands appreciated their fans, and there wasn’t the star/fan divide common with most entertainment/sports, today.

X-Johnny Hit and Run Pauline/Los Angeles

I don’t know why Azerrad leaves X out of his book, as they warrant a chapter, in my opinion, as they are one of the seminal bands in the early days of American punk. They also have had a tremendous influence on so many other bands that followed.

In 1986, X released The Unheard Music, a documentary chronicling the members of the band, and the Los Angeles punk scene. I heard it advertised on the aforementioned WXRT, Chicago's alternative rock station. It was playing at a theater on Fullerton, in the city, and I drove my 1968 Chevy Impala, with a dead cylinder, the requisite 45 miles from Chesterton, to catch the showing.

There were about 5 people in the theater, in a seedy end of the city, but it was worth the trip and gas to get there. Great rock movie and I was totally hooked on X and have been ever since.

The movie captures the seamy underside of Los Angeles, the one that Jim Morrison sang about in “LA Woman,” and the one I went searching for on my recent trip to the City of Angels.

Yet another album I once owned on cassette.

Lessons learned from losing weight

It has been nine weeks since I stepped on the scale on June 23 and decided I was going to begin taking steps towards ending being overweight.

Actually my 259 pounds on my 6'4" frame was obese on all manner of weight charts. While I'm still considered overweight according to a variety of weight charts, and my BMI of 27.87 on FitDay still classifies me as such, my weight this morning is 229 pounds, which is 30 pounds lighter than I was at the end of June. I've hit my weight goal three days ahead of schedule. Even better, I am in the best shape I've been in since 1993, when I was pitching for Coastal Athletics in the Twilight League, competing against college "kids" ten years younger. I'm starting to feel that athlete's "buzz" that comes from being in shape and having clothes fit properly.


Here are a few key things I've learned over the past nine weeks on my fitness/weight loss journey:

* Awareness of what I'm eating
* Losing weight requires limiting portion sizes
* The importance of regular, vigorous exercise
* A realization that this is a lifestyle shift, not a mere diet

It's interesting that whenever you make significant change (s) in your own life, these changes produce fallout, and will prompt naysaying from those around you that may not be in the same place that you are at the moment.

Yesterday, I was waiting for a meeting to begin and someone I've worked with over the past three years asked me if I've lost weight. When I told her that I had, she then began lamenting her own weight and went off on a rant about how "it's so easy for men to lose weight," and that it's so hard to eat right, etc. I mentioned that my wife had lost 20 pounds, and that seemed to quiet her a bit about weight loss and men (it was informative for me when this person mentioned that she had just been at a local eatery that has an all-you-can-eat buffet).

The reality of losing weight is that it is difficult. I love to eat and it would be easy for me to eat half a box of triscuits, or have a big plate of taco chips, piled high with cheese, sour cream, and salsa. There was a time when I might have two plates of nachos while watching a ball game. I regularly had second helpings at mealtime. Instead, I now am aware of how many calories those nachos contain, and I don't eat them anymore. I also limit myself to one serving of dishes at dinner. At the same time, I love cheese and I make sure I have a bit of cheese most days, as well as other treats. I've also discovered how wonderful apples, red peppers, and other fruits and vegetables are as lunch items, instead of a high-calorie sub from a local sandwich shop. In fact, I rarely eat out, choosing instead to pack my lunch each work day. I am also saving quite a bit of money foregoing these lunch purchases.

What I like about the routine I've adopted, as has Miss Mary, is that we are both eating healthy foods (and some not so healthy--I still have a penchant for pepperoni and other foods high in sodium), but practice moderation, not a trait that's in vogue any longer. This is a great time of year to be doing so because despite our rainy summer, many local farmers are selling their produce along Maine's roadways. During the past week, we've had fresh cucumers, zucchini, and corn (with butter, btw).

Another positive development from the past nine weeks is recognizing that targeting a healthier weight doesn't have to involve freaky diets, colon purges, or eating highly-processed, packaged food pitched by all manner of celebrities. It's empowering to recognize that it is possible to decide to do something, develop a plan, and through attention to that plan, achieve desired results.

Friday night in the city by the bay

Living in a rural state like Maine, crammed up into our nation’s northeast corner, cultural offerings and entertainment choices often are lacking, at least compared to larger metropolitan areas of the country, and even New England. Save for Portland, there are few if any places that offer more than a movie at a metroplex, a chain meal at the strip mall, or a back road Allen’s Coffee Brandy, cut with a jug of milk.

Portland is small compared to other cities within a two hour drive, south from Maine’s southern boundary. At the same time, there are few cities of Portland’s size that offer the variety of activities available to participate in on a given Friday or Saturday night. And it has an amazing number of topnotch restaurants, although just how Portland matches up with other larger cities has come under some scrutiny of late. Others chime in on this matter..

What I especially appreciate about the city, and have for the past twenty years, since moving back from the Midwest, are the opportunities to see artists and bands in smaller club settings, particularly those of the independent variety. Portland has its arena shows at the Cumberland County Civic Center, and pricier events at Merrill Auditorium and a few other venues, but if you want to go out and catch a band that represents what I referenced yesterday when I asked rhetorically (regarding Joe Pernice) the question “why hasn’t this guy/band hit it big, yet?” from Friday’s post, then you usually can find several choices in Portland, especially at places like Space Gallery.

I’ve blogged about Jose Ayerve and Spouse several times at Words Matter. My friendship with Jose dates back to my days spinning records and playing DJ on the Bowdoin College station, and then reconnecting with him several years later.

Given that Spouse doesn’t play out as much as they once did, as band mates are growing older, acquiring additional responsibilities beyond music, and that all of them live south of here (mainly in Mass.), when I get wind of an upcoming gig, it gets filed away in the memory bank.

I’d been aware of last night’s gig at Space for a couple of months. Being that is was a Friday night, and Miss Mary and I had been through a particularly tough work week, I suggested that we hit a Happy Hour locally, connect with some old friends at Slainte (Chris Keenan plays every Friday night, from 5:00 to 7:00), and I even Tweeted our niece hoping that she might be free to meet us for a drink.

As luck would have it, we experienced the perfect convergence. I caught up with Alexa, Chris’ wife, who I used to work with, we got to hear Chris run through his set, have a couple of pints of Guiness, Joanne did meet us, and we let the stress of work slide away.

Afterwards, with the night still young and Jose and Co. not expected to go on ‘til much later, I was interested in a bite to eat. At first thinking Norm’s, Joanne suggested 555 (or Five Fifty-Five), on Congress. I’m so glad she did. I had wanted to check out the place and we weren’t disappointed. The restaurant has been receiving quite a bit of buzz, including Chef Steve Corry being voted one of the 10 best chefs in the country.

Eating at the bar, we had drinks, I had the sam’s blt burger, with organic arugala mayo, bacon pickled sweet tomatoes and melted Vermont cheddar. MMM!! If one must imbibe calories, then this is the way to go. Actually, even with my beer intake exceeding my usually austere one light beer per summer night regimen, I didn’t get too far “off the reservation” with my night on the town. Mary had the steak n’ fries, which features a three-day marinated hanger steak. After a drink with her aunt and uncle, we bid Joanne “adieu” as she was headed home to see hubby and prep for Yacht Rock @ The White Heart. Mary never has shared my affinity for amplified music, so after sitting in my car and chatting for a bit, she headed for home. I was off to rock out at Space, any a rare late night out.

We bid Joanne “adieu” as she was headed off to Yacht Rock @ The White Heart and Mary was headed back home. I was off to rock out at Space, any a rare late night out.

There were two opening acts on the bill ahead of Spouse. I showed up during the middle of the opening set by local guitar player Adam Kurtz. Kurtz was working his way through several computer enhanced solo guitar excursions. Definitely an interesting player. I wasn't expecting much, but I'd definitely check out a set of his again, particularly on a night when I wasn't hoping he'd finish so I could see the act I was waiting for, always the curse of the opening act.

Between sets, I had a chance to briefly chat with Jose and we spoke about Pernice’s book tour that he’s managing. We chatted briefly about publishing, my own upcoming book projects, and he introduced me to the guys in Sandra Black, who drove up from Morgantown, West Virginia to play with Spouse (and follow them to Northhampton, MA on Saturday). The band brings a very distinctive delivery to their indie-infused rock. I heard elements of the Pixies, VU, noise-rock, but what really propelled the band’s sound and made me want to hear more from them was vocalist Billy Zweiner’s delivery, which I wish I had words to describe, but it was unique in a very positive way. The band was very tight, which was even more amazing in that Jose was standing in on bass because the band’s regular bassist, Jason Henry’s wife just had their first child, so he was AWOL for the first time ever. Jose mentioned they hadn’t had a chance to practice, foregoing a run through for a day for the boys at Scarborough Beach, instead. Sound check was it for them, but I thought they were pretty amazing.

What else can I say about Spouse. I’ve seen them as a three-piece, which they were for this show (JJ O’Connell on drums and Ken Maiuri on bass), a four, or five-piece, and I”ve seen Jose solo several times. Each time, I think, “these guys are so much better than 95 percent of everything else on the alt-rock landscape,” but Jose and the band continue to languish in indie rock obscurity.

Spouse broke out five new tracks from what will be their latest offering due in the fall. I thought the new material had a much harder edge than the standard Spouse fare making up their current catalog. That isn’t to intimate at all that the band has sacrificed songwriting, or their melodic sensibilities. Jose’s guitar playing has evolved over the years where he truly carries the band in a very understated way not common with most guitarists and band leaders. He truly understands the concept of band, versus wanking away like so many axemen.

As the band segued into their older material, I couldn’t help but sway, bang my foot, and groove to the all-too-familiar strains. Spouse’s “Are You Gonna Kiss or Wave Goodbye?” from 2004, was one of the CD’s that pushed me forward during the writing of my first book. I can write to certain types of music, much of it mellower than Spouse, but that CD will always hold a select place in music that I own.

I also felt pangs of bittersweetness as I thought back over the years. My life has shifted dramatically for the better over the past seven, or eight years. As I grow older, I no longer feel as “at home” at shows, and tend not to go out and see bands. Spouse and in particular, Ayerve, remain one of the few artists that will make me stay out into the early hours of the AM to catch them live.

Today, I woke up nursing a hangover and struggled through my 20 mile bike ride. I’m actually feeling a bit dehydrated, but I’m glad I got out once again to a rock show. It’s a connection to the past that I cherish, albeit an experience of youth that is slowly slipping from my grasp.

Shuffle play Friday-Shoegazing

In what may become a semi-regular Friday posting, I’m again sharing a few of my favorite tracks of the past five days. Some of these were accessed via Last.fm, the UK-based radio community and music-based website. Some of them are on CDs I own, and the Asthmatic Kitty track comes via the label’s website.

Swervedriver-Last Train to Satansville/LTTS

I miss shoegazer bands like Swervedriver. Great tune, great title (from an album of the same name) and definitely worth searching out for the requisite “put me in the mood for partying” song prep for aprez work activities.

The first time I heard the term "shoegazer" used was 1993, in a conversation with Bowdoin student and fellow WBOR DJ, Tim Rotramulus, who was a fan of several British bands that fit the shoegazer M.O.

My Bloody Valentine-Sometimes/Loveless

Since I launched my track list with a shoegazer entry, I think I’ll stay with it. My Bloody Valentine ruled college radio in 1993, a time when music had an entirely different feel than it does now.

Back before iPods, and shuffling off to Buffalo-ing, songs mattered and MBV knew how to extend out and push the rock guitar envelope, unafraid of songs that clocked in beyond three minutes. Hit single? What’s a hit single, man?

Cryptacize-Cosmic Sing-a-long/Dig That Treasure

An Asthmatic Kitty band (Sufjan Stevens’ label). Typical of the label, quirky, but captivating. The refrain of “Every note is an unfinished song” keeps running through my head, after this listen.

Patterson Hood-Belinda Carlisle Diet/Killers and Stars

Patterson Hood leads the Drive-By Truckers by day, but after he comes home, puts the wife and kids to bed, he retires to his basement where he becomes just another singer-songwriter with earnest lyrics and songs about former pop culture icons.

Since I'm in the midst of my own weight loss adventure, the word “diet” in the title caught my attention--but I'm not dieting, I'm making a "lifestyle change."

Actually, Hood is a damn good songwriter and his two solo records are worth checking out.

Son Volt-Adrenaline and Heresy/The Search

As I’ve written before, music has always been a soundtrack supporting the good and bad of whatever’s happening at a particular time in my life. Son Volt’s Jay Farrar became a key companion for me in the mid-90s during an especially difficult time in my life. Stuck in a rut, working a job that paid the bills, but offered little else and knowing I had to find a way to change my life's orbit, Farrar’s band at the time, Uncle Tupelo, spoke to me via their Still Feel Gone LP. Farrar’s voice and accompanying songwriting captured much of the frustration, disillusionment, and daily angst I was carrying on my much younger shoulders.

Farrar’s gone on and put out some fine music with Son Volt, and also as a solo artist. I especially like this track from the band’s 2007 release—more mellow than much of my favorite Farrar material, but still packing power and a message with some wallop.

The Pernice Brothers-Somerville/Live a Little

Friday mornings are often when I grab some CD I haven’t listened to for awhile, and pop it into my carousel as I prep for my final workday of the week.

This morning, I happened to come across If You Want My Listmaker, Volume 3. I own hand-numbered copy 35 (of 40) of these semi-regular CD burns that the erstwhile blogger and suffering Mets fan sent out.

The Pernice track caught my eye for several reasons. One, Pernice is one of these under-appreciated musical talents that always leave me scratching my head saying, “why not Joe Pernice,” instead of Pearl Jam, Creed, Nickelback (feel free to add your own choice) or any other choreographed corporate rock band that absolutely sucks, but surely keeps chuckling on their regular trips to the ATM.

Somerville, isn’t the kind of town that a songwriter would pen an ode to, but then again, Joe Pernice isn’t your ordinary songwriter.

Particularly interesting that I’d pick Listo’s CD this morning with the Pernice track, because I’m heading into the closest thing to a city within a reasonable driving distance, Portland, to catch Jose Ayerve and Spouse tonight.

Spouse has connections to Pernice and Co., and in fact, Jose is driving Mr. Pernice around and manning his merch table and managing his book tour for It Feels So Good When I Stop (Riverhead Books), his first book.

For baseball fans out there, Pernice and Ayerve also wrote a song about Manny Ramarez that ran during the credits for Fever Pitch.

Happy Friday, all. Rock out and rock on!

Twitter babble

Mashable, a site that bills itself as "the social media guide," indicates that "40.55% of tweets are pointless babble." Gee, that's a surprise.

I thought about titling my post, "Tower of Babble," which is a reference to the biblical Tower of Babel, about how God confounded the languages of the earth's people and scattered them throughout the earth, in response to an attempt to build a vast tower for "the glory of man." I reconsidered, primarily because I'm listening to Stephen Prothero's Religious Literacy: What Every American Needs to Know--And Doesn't on CD. Prothero's book bemoans America's lack of religious knowledge, even among those who consider themselves Xians. I figured that dropping the TOB reference would land with a "thud."

BTW, Prothero is on Twitter, babbling along with all the other twit(terers)s, myself included, helping to hold up the 59.45% end of the platform that's not pointless.

Palin death panel update

I wanted to post a brief follow-up to my Tuesday post on Sarah Palin's statement that Democrats planned to ration care under their healthcare plan, and would be instituting "death panels" by which they would carry this out.

Palin had indicated that under the Obama plan, rationing would take place and that "my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of [President] Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care."

Palin's beyond the pale (beyond the Palin?) comments, and the subsequent run this has had all over right-wing is extraordinary, and shows the length to which idealogues will now go to distort and bend truth if it serves their political endgame.

Fortunately, Media Matters for America has provided an antidote in the form of a report that clearly debunks this craziness, once and for all (let's hope).

The report offers 40 different media sources discrediting Palin's claims that President Obama and fellow Democrats ever intended to institute death panels. It also shows clearly that there isn't some phrase, or subclause hidden in the bill that could remotely be construed as supportive of anything resembling Ms. Palin's science fiction scenario.

The death of the (record) album

If you are of a certain age and music mattered to you, then you remember the days of buying albums at your favorite record store (mine were DeOrsey's and Manassas, Ltd.).

Radiohead's Thomas Yorke recently issued a pronouncement that the band may never make a full-length record/album again, citing that "...it's become a real drag," from a creative standpoint. Sasha Frere-Jones, on her blog at The New Yorker offers this and then, this.

Her take as a musician is that albums are a mere "widget" that is produced to keep record companies happy. She adds,

Only a crazybones would deny the magic of “London Calling” hitting the Earth. But that kind of perfect chain comes along only once in a while, and even when it does, how often do you listen to it in the original order, without interruption? Unless you’ve got lots of free afternoons or long rides, you probably don’t. And most people with more than a few albums like to mix those public documents into private orders that reflect preferences and personal associations.

I would respectfully disagree with her opinion that great albums are an aberation. Well, let me back up a minute. There was a time when bands/artists regularly made great records, and in fact, there is a genius to the sequencing of songs that contributed to the magic of a great album, like London Calling.

Most of the music I listen to regularly, I know the track order and often listen in that order (although, not always). Is that the experience of others? Is this limited to age, as in older music fans prefer order and sequencing and younger listeners are happy with their iPod shuffle play music experience?

It's apparent that the day is coming, I think, when albums and blocks of songs won't matter, and Yorke and Frere-Jones comments indicate that it's not that far away.

I'm curious if readers have a particular record/album that they couldn't imagine life without?

Palin's death panel pastiche

I happened to check the news from New Hampshire, curious about the president’s visit to the Granite State, on Google, at the end of my work day, before leaving the office for home. Curiously, the LA Times, a newspaper with a conservative credo chose this headline, Obama says ‘death panels’ aren’t on his healthcare overhaul agenda, to introduce reporter Christi Parsons’ update for readers.

I continue to find the various angles by which mainstream outlets spin out the news quite interesting, and obviously biased, but not necessarily towards a liberal bent as malicious, misinformed parrots often claim. Here is the lede Parsons used for her 700 word article on Mr. Obama’s town hall visit to Portsmouth.

“Addressing one of the more volatile complaints about healthcare reform that he is proposing, President Obama said today Tuesday that he doesn't want to set up government "death panels" that decide which Americans get health services and which don't.”

Until yesterday, I was ignorant to the furor being stirred up once more by right-wing talk radio concerning President Obama’s attempt to spearhead healthcare reform in the U.S. I had stopped by my parents on my way back to the office from Brunswick. I spent about 20 minutes with them, and as I was getting in the car, my mother mentioned something related to her own healthcare situation, then made an offhand remark about government “death panels.”

I thought, “where the hell did this come from?" I had innocently stopped to pay a courtesy visit and once again, I was about to be sucked into the whirling rotors of the right-wing noise machine and its never-ending Jabberwocky. Luckily, I astutely extricated myself by making a bad attempt at a joke and hopping into my car and I was off. My curiosity had been whetted, however.

Last night, I did some research on the “death panel” topic, and while I shouldn’t have been surprised at how gullible people can be that get most of their news from right-wing talk radio, I was again perplexed and at a loss to ever counter this ongoing misinformation campaign foisted upon many good seasoned members of the U.S. population. Actually, the topic was so taxing, I had to lie down at 8:45 and the next thing I knew, I was snapping awake and it was 11:15 pm, just in time to catch Maine Congresswoman Chellie Pingree swapping Moxie stories with Stephen Colbert.

I’m not sure what makes some people so fearful of their government that they think their president is considering euthanizing them. I actually recognize how incapable government is of getting anything done, let alone killing off a considerable segment of the population. If you want to target your fear at a large institution visiting death on the U.S. population, and anywhere else they set up shop in the world, think McDonald’s, not Barack Obama and his supposed "socialistic" tendencies.

Actually, people like my parents are the last people Palin’s death panels are going to target, because they’re pillars of health, and drain little from the public health system. Thankfully, I’ve made some changes in my own way of living, and losing weight will ensure that if by chance I wake up in the midst of some dystopian nightmare ala Rush Limbaugh’s active imagination, I too will be able to skirt the long reach of a bureaucratic death czar or czarina, or internment at some remote work camp (they're coming to take me away, ha-ha!) being set up as I type away at my keyboard.

Staying on task

Still on my quest to reach my optimal weight (whatever that ends up being). Despite a weekend where I could have gotten offtrack (a Friday night Sea Dogs game, beer and excess junk food), I managed to get on the scale this morning and register another Monday loss.

On Friday, I spoke to a group of graduates from a training I helped recruit for, held at CMCC. This group of precision manufacturing trainees completed a rigorous 12-week program, and my topic was reinvention, a topic that is familiar to me.

Making changes in our lives continues to be a necessary requirement as the world continues to change. Yet, so many people resist change with every fiber of their being.

Change is difficult, and I'm not always open to all possibilities. I am trying to be as adaptable as I can be, however, and roll with things more often.

Shuffle play Friday

Music may, or may not be the universal language. For me, however, music plays an important role in life, helping me over some of the difficult parts, and sharing in the good times.

I don't have the time to develop a longer post, so for the sake of throwing up some paint on the wall, here are some tunes that I'll be listening to, as I wind down the long work week.

Kings of Leon-California Waiting

Southern rockin' good 'ole boys who've hit it big after paying the requisite rock and roll dues. I actually don't know much about them other than each time I pick a KOL track at Last.fm, I'm never disappointed.

Nada Surf-Blizzard of '77

Nada Surf, who could have been just another one hit wonder when "Popular" broke them to MTV Nation back in the summer of '96, instead, have perservered and carved out a nice rock career of literate songs, and catchy melodies. "Blizzard of '77" is one of those tracks that will have you longing for winter snows, and school cancellations.

Hot Tuna-Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning

One of my all-time fave bands, I've seen Hot Tuna live several times and met Jorma Kaukonen. In fact, Jorma shared some guitar tips with me (not that they've done me much good, given my woeful chops) at Raoul's Roadside Attraction, a former Portland musical hotspot that is sorely missed~RIP

My Dad is Dead-The Only One

Mark Edwards is MDID, a veritable one man band. MDID was one of my Guided by Voices era discoveries, when GbV opened me up to the rich rock and roll vein of Dayton/Cleveland area bands, through Robert Griffin's Scat label.

Edwards has since relocated to North Carolina where he continues to toil in obscurity, churning out solid output, which now spans more than two decades. Highly recommended.

BTW, Edwards has a blog that he updates periodically.

Loud Family-Idiot Son

Former Game Theory frontman Scott Miller's band. Another amazingly talented, but sadly neglected rock genius, ala Mark Edwards. Miller writes smart, melodic power pop (I know, too cliched) that the world should know about. Instead, poser bands make the millions and Miller toils away in California obscurity.

Happy Friday, all. Rock out and rock on!

Cheapened Communication: The Lost Art of Writing Letters

If you’re over the age of 30, you surely remember the thrill that once accompanied receiving personally addressed correspondence—once known as letters. It might have been a letter from a friend that had moved away, a favorite aunt sending a check for your birthday, with a handwritten note, or some other form of entreaty that arrived via parcel post.

The advent of email was trumpeted with much fanfare, and the usual ballyhoo that attends each subsequent technological advance. Email was supposed to usher in a new dawn of communication, making it easier and simpler to communicate regularly—yet, another “democratization” in interpersonal relations and correspondence, as if letter writing was the communications equivalent of living behind the Iron Curtain. With this attendant ease of communication has also come an ease by which members of society now feel compelled to unload what’s on their chests, often without much thought and reflection. You can witness this regularly when you read online news articles that allow comments, or blog posts at blogs that have a good deal more traffic than mine. At least letters allowed some measure of time to cool off, reflect, rethink, and possibly tear up that angry note or letter before mailing it. Email allows us to hit “send” as soon as it is composed.


What has happened over the past five years is that people rarely even send an email anymore. First there was MySpace, where you could add friends by the mouse click. Then, it was Facebook, and recently, Twitter. Now, communication is more truncated than ever, although few people seem concerned about this.

One of my favorite books on our cultural downward descent was Morris Berman’s, The Twilight of American Culture. Berman clearly depicts the intellectual decline of the west with a prophetic urgency. While there are those cultural critics that think this downward spiral can be halted, and even reversed, Berman’s pronouncement is dire. There is no reversing the trend and little we can do to arrest the corporate clutch of our communication that has become ubiquitous.

There are those who consider Berman too dark and depressing and prefer to remain in denial. Books like TTOAC aren’t for those types. They remain ensconced in their cocoon, informed by reality television, video games and WIRED articles.

On the contrary, one of the most intriguing aspects of Berman’s book isn’t any hope of a cultural revival, but what he characterizes as some hope for anyone that desires to find meaning in a culture that’s rapidly disintegrating. It’s what Berman refers to as the “monastic option,” and he calls those who accept the charge as “new monastic individuals,” or NMIs. The monastic aspect is a nod to medieval monks who retreated from conventional society in an attempt to preserve its literary and historical treasures.

What Berman is talking about is creating “zones of intelligence” in both a private, as well as local ways. He maintains that it is important that these monastic activities be kept out of the public eye as much as possible. He specifically picks on simplistic efforts like “fifty ways to save the earth” and “voluntary simplicity,” to name two. Berman cites Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and the “book people.” It is about adopting a “guerrilla” way of life. I found his ideas intriguing back in 2000 when the book first came out, and his prescriptions ring truer now, almost a decade later.

What could be done to adopt our own monastic option? What if a small band of monastic individuals made a pact to write letters periodically, possibly once per month to one another? I’ve heard of others who have done similar things. We could return to mailing articles to one another, cut from newspapers, or copied from a magazine, much the way these things happened before people began incessantly forwarding links.

****

Technology has resulted in a truncated style of communication. The nature of technology lies in its ability to reduce all things to a binary function—the number one, or a zero. This makes communication, and in particular, correspondence, transactional vs. remaining relational.

Most human beings have a gregarious side. Our evolution has incorporated storytelling and narrative as part of our development. Anthropologists have discovered remnants of early communication involving elements of stories, even if these were just pictures on the wall of a cave.

Writing letters has been man’s preferred method of communication, at least since the invention of paper. Historians have been able to piece together the lives, and develop portraits of important men (and women) primarily by sorting through their letters and correspondence. David McCullough’s delightful book on the life of John Adams relied heavily on Adams’ letters, back and forth between Adams and his wife Abigail, with Thomas Jefferson, and other historical figures that are now revered, who happened to be contemporaries of Adams.

I don’t know what will happen to history and those men and women living during our current epoch, a period of emails, Facebook wall postings, and Twitter. Will it be possible to reconstruct a life 100 years out into the future, if nothing tangible remains? What kind of archiving of email correspondence is taking place? If an ISP has records of your communication today, what happens 25, 50, or 100 years out, given the possibility of mergers, acquisitions, or the disappearance of the ISP, displaced by some newer, more effective communications platform?

Will historians acquire an alternative means to capture people’s correspondence? What becomes of history at that point, and does anyone even give a damn about it?

I don’t want this post to devolve into a philosophical exercise. It does concern me on several different levels, however, including technology’s obvious orientation towards altering our ability to remain connected to our past. I see this as one of technology’s most serious negative implications, its ability to sever our tether to who we were.

I’ve been ruminating about what could be done to enhance Berman’s model of new monasticism, and letter writing might be an entry point to becoming a new monastic individual, or a NMI. Choosing to be a member of a small group of letter writers, sending off a letter, possibly once per month, handwritten (or not, depending on whether you still have some semblance of penmanship remaining), one or two pages in length, dispatched to a post office box, roadside mailbox, or apartment letter-box seems like an exercise worth considering. An added benefit might be the anticipation of receiving a delayed response in the form of a letter, which takes time to travel from Portland, Maine to Portland, Oregon.

One of the challenges to aging in our own time is the rapid acceleration of change. Change no longer brings improvements, like moving from ice box to refrigerator did for food storage, or the reductions in physical labor required to live, where bodies wore out by the age of 55, or 60 (hence the age of retirement being 65). Granted, even those kinds of improvements wrought by technology could bring contrary opinions about benefit. Unless you subscribe to the belief that all technology is suspect, we might agree that technology did bring improvements in quality of life. Of course, there are those like John Zerzan and others who present ideas positing contrarian views about technology and its impact on civilization. I’ve read Zerzan, Derrick Jensen, and others. Their points have some appeal, but that’s fodder for another day.

My point here is that the acceleration of change and technology’s reach, have far exceeded our capacity to regulate and set parameters for the benefit of all of us, not only the elite. I think of the reach of technology today and its impact on our ability to preserve basic privacy, if we choose. Governments around the world can track and monitor everything we do, or say, and our own vote whether to participate, or refuse, has been usurped by the onslaught of change.

Writing a letter won’t necessarily alter technology’s relentless march forward (or backward, depending on your orientation), but it might allow us a periodic reconnect with the human side.

I’d be happy to get the ball rolling by writing a letter to the first five people that send an email with your name and address. Once you receive my letter, I hope you’ll consider sending back a letter response of your own.

In my way of seeing things, this reestablishes a more human (and maybe, humane) way of interacting and communicating.

[A regular reader points out that I have no listed email, which might be a problem if you would like a personal letter. I'll use an innocuous email for obvious reasons (spam and all that other good stuff connected to "benign and altruistic" technology); here it is-- mediadrop04 (at) yahoo (dot) com, remember to replace the (at) with an @ and the (dot) with a .--Jim]