The Ozone Shack

My Top 14 Albums of 2014 (And Why I Should Dislike All of Them)

2015-01-14T13:41:00.001-08:00

Most people reading this will only be personal connections of some kind. I haven't been doing much of any kind of writing lately but I put this up. Furthermore, I'm no longer proud of the content I have currently, and as you're probably aware the site looks like crap and I don't even own the domain name anymore. So I really don't want too many people seeing this. For those of you shaking your head or wishing I was putting out something more: I still have a lot to say and I will be puking it out soon. I have pages of outlines and some timetables that are very ambitious given my current state. It's time to channel me some Ben Franklin. I'll be eating right, sleeping right, getting in some vigorous exercise, and of course, grinding out some verbage every day. But first, allow me to impose my musical tastes on you one more time.

14) Cynic - Kindly Bent to Free Us
Buncha shoegazing jerk-offs!
13) Lake Street Dive - Bad Self Portraits
There are hundreds of bands of this prominence and quality in America and I just happened to endorse the one I saw at Hardly Strictly. What a lazy fuck.
12) Phish - Fuego
Phish is a band for scoffing at and nothing else
11) Davenport Cabinet - Damned Renegades
Overly sympathetic to a sidekick's side project. (sidekickprojekt?)
10) Royal Blood - Royal Blood
You could get the same experience hanging around a Guitar Center on a Saturday afternoon.
9) Opeth - Pale Communion
"It's not even real Opeth."
8) Umphrey's McGee - Similar Skin
B(r)and loyalty. They could make an album of chickens being strangled by guitar strings and I would still like it.
7) Elbow - The Takeoff and Landing of Everything
Radiohead for grannies and nannies.
6) TV on the Radio - Seeds
I'm well aware that I' supposed to scoff at everything past Return to Cookie Mountain and I done fucked up here.
5) Young The Giant - Mind Over Matter
It's basically boring pop music for suburban whitegirls.
4) Crosses - Crosses
Nauseating garbage.
3) Aphex Twin - Syro
"You goddam shill, you don't even like electronic music, you just like it because of the jazz harmonies."
2) Antemasque - Antemasque
I'm just in denial of the fact that we'll never get a new Mars Volta album.
1) The Phenomanauts - Escape Velocity
Of course I picked a local act that writes songs about spaceships and robots. My behavior could be predicted by simple algorithms.

Compostable Nacho Cheese

2014-06-26T19:28:00.003-07:00

Nacho cheese is compostable. I’m not talking about the nice shredded queso fresco blend at your local taqueria that they put on chips to nuke to feed you when you’re drunk. I’m talking about the neon goo they give you at the ballpark that’s made of a couple hundred-odd chemicals, none of which resemble anything found in a dairy product. The kind that I, a hyper-lactose-intolerant, can drink gallons of without any of the gastrointestinal recourse. (But it brings other kinds.) And it can be composted! Companies and municipal services that compost food waste will accept nacho cheese. They will theoretically convert it into nutrient-rich organic matter that can be used for nourishing and sustaining plant life, possibly plants that provide us with food. Perhaps the gasses emitted can also be used as some sort of biofuel. Will the end-product also glow with the radiance of a thousand neon suns, as did its molecular antecedent? Will the bioluminescent ooze permeate into the roots of our crops, making its way into our bright orange what fields, our bright orange granny smith apples, our bright orange kale? Perhaps it will be used as livestock feed, and we will have bright orange turkeys on Thanksgiving. Or perhaps it will find its way into the feed for our dairy cows, and at last, we will have a cow that makes nacho cheese instead of milk.

The Shape of Punk to Come

2014-02-19T16:22:00.000-08:00

We're exposed to art the wrong way, as a series of coded messages, there to disguise simple things as complicated. It's why the cognitive activity most associated with English classes is "bullshitting." Especially when it comes to poetry. Poetry was what faggots with too many feelings wrote who were too big of pussies to state their feelings directly. And they did it just to ruin your adolescent life. They did it to make some kid a sesquicentury later squirm in his desk trying to figure out what the hell a Grecian Urn was anyway. Until you want to smash that Grecian Urn and all of Western Civilization with it.

But that frustrated high school freshman doesn't need to do anything. The work has already been destroyed. It has been destroyed by the treatment of art as a puzzle to be unlocked, a way to conceal truth from those who aren't worthy of it. So we have turned our backs on art, simply because we weren't properly introduced.

Any expression we make, everything scrawled on a cocktail napkin or carved in stone, every thought, every idea, has an expiration date. Ideas are mortal. The lives of mortals were as short to the Greek gods as the entire artistic tradition surrounding those gods is to the age of the earth. Great art endures, but only with people, and people break down, and people die.
II

Might be time I start believing in angels. Bodhisattvas too, even if that doesn't entirely fit in with my theological framework. It makes sense in light of recent revelations. No, revelations sounds too much like some Truth (note the capital T) received from on high. Realizations then. Angels, Bodhisattvas, and other spiritual beings descended into a material world (perhaps Gnostic emanations and nature spritis) would imply a general sense of order to the world. They would in effect be cosmic repairmen. But of course the world is still very much a disorderly place.

The people who benefit us the most on the spiritual and metaphysical levels tend to be dysfunctional. They're brilliant but dysfunctional. They don't belong here and they're ill equipped to go back to where they came from. The funny ones are clearly depressed, the brilliant ones have some kind of brain damage, the ones who makes us think clearly can't think themselves and the prophets of new thought love in disastrous ways.

So there are angels out there. There are spirits of extreme compassion and wisdom and they just get distracted with money and alcohol and movies. They came here with a purpose and they end up fading on a mattress on the floor of a loft. They suffer brain damage from the magnetic flux upon entering the physical world and live their lives as the degenerates and fuck-ups among us. In other words, they're the fun ones.

III

I know people who have had their last adventure. And I want to tell them. Of course I can't, because it's improper - although I'm never rarely bound by propriety and more by a desire to never step on any toes, basically staying the fuck out of the way - and because they are already far too entrenched in their situation; the kind of people about whom I care enough to rescue from a sepia existence are also the kind of people I would never want to put through the turmoil caused by breaking out of it. So they'll spend their lives in a well decorated room (things won't be bad enough where the room necessarily has to be described as tasteful) never once even stepping out on the fire escape to enjoy the view or the breeze while they smoke a cigarette or a joint. Their idea of a fun group meal will be a bland stir fry and get upset when that one intrepid soul present tries to throw in red pepper flakes or another tablespoon of hoisin sauce. They will be phlegmatic, and their rallying cry will be a dispassionate "hmff."

What can I tell these people? You were avatars of mischief and horizon chasers. Now what? Now your life decisions that seem to make you entirely happy are killing that spirit you were born with? Of course I can't. Who am I to weigh in, he who only seeks entertainment, disguising it as a search for [choose one: meaning, truth, beauty, transcendence]?

You won't find me on the traditional edge. The traditional edge has become the center of attention, an overpopulated shantytown of thrill-seekers, those mindlessly trying to push an imaginary edge. The old edge has become the new middle. The people who think they're edgy are just beating against the shadows of old barriers. The new pioneers are the ones who are going back, picking up the dead and the wounded. For the dead they make shrines and monuments - rock cairns and small mortuary temples with the ideals of the departed depicted in subtle hieroglyphs. For the wounded they focus every orifice of spiritual energy on their patient, nourishing with both substance and thoughts. But in their care all ideology is discarded, carried out in carts by orderlies, dumped in a pile and lit on fire. What remains is the human at the core, reborn in 2014.

A revived Steinbeck sees the tech folks crowding the Mission and the chimeric bartenders on Judah and decides this is no longer a frontier. This is the dust bowl so many fled, these are the monarchies that drove the footloose and the adaptive away from 19th century Europe. A revived Hunter S. Thompson sees his beloved Haight-Ashbury as an iterative circlejerk and heads for some mid-sized city in Indiana to shake things up.

I'm not entirely pround of it but I've made mix CDs, which were the modern equivalent of mix tapes until a few years ago when Spotify made it irrelevant and redundant to have any physical music or even think of music in terms of your own collection. The idea is that you balance the rockin songs and the songs which express your feelings. This might be the perfect form of expression for me, since I can a) impose my musical tastes and b) care while pretending not to care, hiding behind the shield of the obscure prog rock acts I stick in all the wrong places to break up anything resembling a cohesive emotional message. To mangle the whole digital mix tape format even further, I would eschew the time-tested structure of alternating feelings and rockin, and instead put a rockin core in the middle surrounded by a thick layer on both sides of mid-tempo songs and Red Hot Chili Peppers b-sides. I should leave that kind of thing for people who can take themselves seriously, who can express themselves without a paper trail of disclaimers and a six-inch lead plated wall of irony.

All music used to be shared. Even if it was just one caveman singing about skinning a deer, it would be heard. When we invented drums and flutes, making music was a communal activity. The only way you could make music was with other people in the drum circle. The other participants had to hear what you were doing, you had to hear them. If you wanted to hear music without making it, someone else would have to make it for you, and you would have to share some kind of experience with them.

For thousands of years, hearing music was almost always a communal act. Even royalty with private chamber orchestras would have at least one family member, a vizier, or maybe even a eunuch present. The only way to hear that hot new symphony or opera was to go to a public performance. The only way to hear those piano preludes in the comfort of your own home was to have your daughter learn the piano and play it as you gathered in the salon, and this of course required you were wealthy enough to have a daughter who didn't work, a piano, the means to educate said daughter in the arts, and a salon in which to gather. Maybe someone in your one room homestead could scrape some tunes out on a fiddle. You would sing while working in the field or while driving your horse to market. If you lived near a town you could go down to the pub to hear some errant troubadours.

With the phonograph came the ability to listen to music without any musicians in the room. But it still had to be played through a speaker, meaning everyone in the room was having the same musical experience. (Ok, we could get into how every consciousness is its own frame of reference but we won't. Let's just settle for the fact that everyone was likely hearing the same thing.)

Then we got headphones. Music could be compartmentalized to the individual listener, but it still was sedentary. You had to be where the record player was. Then the Walkman gave us freedom from even a physical location. And it was only an awkward pause in human history before the mp3 player gave us the ability to take all our music everywhere.

The new paradigm is that if you want it to be, music is an entirely private experience. Not only are we supposed to be insulated from the world, but we are supposed to keep our music to ourselves. I remind myself of this every time some asshole is blasting music on the bus. (And almost always you can only the drums and a few s and t sounds from the vocalist.) It's a miracle that most of the time, people can listen to their own music without getting anyone else involved. And that I can listen to my own obnoxious music at a volume close to the threshold of pain without dragging anyone else into my sonic experience is also a canonization-worthy miracle. But still, every time I hear someone on public transit playing their music loud enough that everyone can hear, I get angry, when I should really be marveling about how much of an anomaly it is that the conditions have even been created for this to piss me off.

VII

Today, across the world, thousands of teenagers are going to discover Led Zeppelin for the first time. I cannot express how much I envy them.

They are about to have their Zeppisode. Your Zeppisode usually starts sometime between 12 and 16 years of age. It mostly affects males but has also been observed in female populations. It occurs when you first hear Led Zeppelin and are captivated by this hitherto unfamiliar sound. It can be as short as a single play of Immigrant Song, or it can last into your twenties. It's an interesting phase, because you're trying to define yourself as your own person, but the only way you know how to do it is with traditional symbols of rebellion. And there is that appeal. Yes, it's loud, so it communicates your angst. And yes, it's slightly more acceptable to be that weird kid at your high school who decks himself out in Led Zeppelin shirts rather than just that weird kid at your high school. It gives you a reason to check The Hobbit out from the library. They carry with them the whole mythology of rock and roll. It's the first time you can be conspicuously into something which is decidedly adult.

But there's a reason beyond the identity that so many dazed and/or confused teenagers have such an affinity for Zeppelin. Even if you have heard everything that comes after Led Zeppelin, you have never heard anything like Led Zeppelin before. Even if Jimmy Page did allegedly steal all of his riffs, no one had played those riffs like Jimmy Page and no one will. And when you first hear it, you feel like no one has ever heard this before, and no one has ever felt this way before. It doesn't matter that everyone alive in the last 40 years has heard this before and they have all felt the same way. Led Zeppelin makes you feel like an intrepid adolescent explorer. And once you wander far enough, you will cross the known world into the sublime, where you will find your people.

VIII

I feel that in time I will experience what every human has experienced and will experience. I do not mean that I will find some universal common meaning. No. I am of the delusion that I will actually have every experience that has been had, I will live every life that has ever been lived. I will one day take shelter in the acropolis while Athens burns around me, I will spend six months puking over the deck of a clipper ship for a chance to mine ten square feet of land along the shores of the San Joaquin, I will reach my head out of the porcelain factory window in Novgorod and proclaim that it is now in the hands of the workers, I will be a stoned dropout sitting in my pickup truck with my brand new Dead Kennedy's cassette tape. I still believe these will all happen to me, because the only thing I really want is to experience everything.

IX

How could you ever be sad at IHOP? Just imagine endless stacks of golden pancakes, emerging from a gleaming kitchen, each time the door opens the smell of frying dough and bacon wafting out and caressing your nostrils; picture the smiling faces as they spread some kind of delicious voodoo butter on their steaming, perfectly proportioned and perfectly round tall stack, then luxuriously drizzle three flavors of syrup over it, until it spills off the pancake and ever so delicately laps up against a side of crisp yet tender bacon, the symmetry of its waves reminding one of the harmony of the universe. And as you cut into that golden, fluffy pillow of dough and put it to your lips, you are overcome with a sense of calm, a sense of warmness, a sense of oneness with everything in the universe, as if you were being enveloped in the bosom of God. At IHOP, there can be no tears.

They asked him why he did it and he told them the truth. The truth was that he couldn't really wrap his head around the fact that people who weren't himself were having entirely coherent streams of consciousness and making decisions autonomous of his control. This did not suffice as an adequate explanation. Upon hearing the allegations he thought that jumping from a reasonably high place might be an adequate way to express himself in this situation. It would have to be one high enough where he would definitively die upon impact but not high enough that he would have any time to regret his actions on the way down. For obvious reasons this would have been a bad decision, but not for the obvious reason that first comes to mind: he did not have sufficient control over his legacy to be a martyr, and if you're going to die for the purposes of protesting the complexity of modern life, he thought, you had better have the right people on your side.

The thing to do would be to go out in anger, taking a gun and holding hostage those who had wronged him. He would have them tied up, he thought, pointing the gun in their face, yelling, throw in a few pistol whips to remind them what was ahead. Probably a murder-suicide type deal, no one wants to do the time for what he was considering. But it would be worth it, seeing that fear in their eyes once they realized they had no control, that they were going to die. And that, he thought, would make me a perfect artist, giving someone, just even one person, that pure, uncut feeling.

XI

The people of this rock learned long ago to trust the currents with their fate, scanning the horizon for their departed leader. Before we were born, a generation or so, he got his hands on an angel suit complete with an airtight glass halo, set his sights on the sky, and when the people asked him where he was going, he only said he was "going up." They say he strapped forty seven bottle rockets to a chair, attached wings of tarpaulin together with dental floss and chewing gum, and perched atop the southwest minaret of a local mosque he lit a fuse. We haven't seen him since but they say he's coming back. The tides are strong, even the most intrepid assholes don't get very far away. Sometimes we'll rig up canisters of condensed milk and dried mashed potatoes with another bottle rocket, if we can spare one. Then we shoot it off in the direction we last saw him going. The first time we sent a can opener. We might be stuck here but we're not stupid. We sit in bars, huddled under the TVs, waiting for some news. We don't know whether we hope he'll come back, but we know one of us will have to be the next person brave enough to defy this rock.

XII

There's nothing good I have to leave you with, but it doesn't mean I have nothing good to say. Just nothing good for this occasion. There's probably a good story or anecdote with which I can tie this whole project together and wash my hands of it, but I can't find it. Truth is, not much of substance can stay on the surface of my memory for very long. Not long enough to be written down anyway. Maybe I chuckle, maybe I cringe. Every once in a while I'll yell something to drown out the thought. This is probably how the people who yell at me on the train got that way. It all started with a few regrets and a bad coping mechanism. For a long time writing, or at least storytelling, was my coping mechanism. But that doesn't really suffice anymore. I can no longer write in service of myself. I can't say exactly what it will be for, but it if I am to make anything it will have to be with a sense of greater purpose. I can't say that it will be high art in service of the revolution, but I can say it will be a decent attempt at making a decent world.

I won't be flying the spaceships, but I can take you to space with my stories. I won't be the next charismatic leader, but I can write his speeches. I won't be playing on the next album that defines a generation, but I can at least write the liner notes. And these too will go out of style and deposited in the filing cabinet for the ideas of a bygone era, then eventually burned when it no longer suits the purposes of the people from the edges. Thank you for supporting this folly. I don't need your applause, I can let myself out.

The Ozone Shack's Top 13 Albums of 2013

2013-12-31T19:50:00.000-08:00

2013 was a little bit of slim pickins. Approximately 56% of the music made was acapella covers of "Royals" on Youtube and most of the rest was by bands whose album covers look like they were taken through an instagram filter. So here's what we got. But first I should address...

The Problem of The Afterman

In 2012, I screwed up. I mean, I screwed up in a lot of ways with my professional and personal life, but I also screwed up with my album of the year. I gave the first half of a double album the album of the year. Remember when Return of the King won best picture? IT was obvious it should have gone to Fellowship of the Ring two years earlier, but there's no way you can give the first installment of a planned trilogy best picture. And that's what I did. By giving Coheed and Cambria's The Afterman: Ascension album of the year, I gave Fellowship of the Ring best picture. Now Descension comes out and I can't give it album of the year. So I removed it from the running. But really, it's de facto album of the year. I just won't recognize it as such. (But you know it is.)
Key Entity Extraction V: Sentry The Defiant by Coheed and Cambria on Grooveshark
#13
Stone Sour
House of Gold and Bones

Much like Afterman, House of Gold and Bones is a metal concept double-album about a comic book written by the bandleader, in this case former Slipknot vocalist Corey Taylor. Bluesy metal riffs meet with pyrotechnic rock, hardcore, and post-grunge. To be honest, I don't know what the story is about, but it has something to do with a character called "The Human" who begins as a ball of pure existential pain, in a strange sphere that is part of a Milton-esque cosmology. This may be an unpopular comparison to someone coming from any musical perspective, but House of Gold and Bones sounds sort of like everything early Avenged Sevenfold should have sounded like. There's gritty vocals, crunchy guitar timbre, and drum beats that walk the fine line between groovy and blasting.
Black John by Stone Sour on Grooveshark

#12
Volbeat
Outlaw Gentlemen and Shady Ladies

Michael Poullsen says he got his inspiration for this album "listening to Johnny Cash and Elvis in one ear and Creator and Merciless Fate in the other." So here we have it, a Rockabilly Cowboy Metal band from Denmark. Tonally and harmonically, it's much more European and classically based, but the ethos is American blues based metal. And harmonicas, did I mention there's a harmonica? It's interesting to hear a Scandinavian's take on Western ballads and Johnny Cash-esque tales from the wrong side of the law. Forget spaghetti western, this is a Smørrebrød Western. There's also a cover of Young the Giant's "My Body," because apparently one band whose vocalist has a slight but noticeably comical accent needs to be covered by another.
Lola Montez by Volbeat on Grooveshark

#11
Dream Theater
Dream Theater

This is the quintessential Dream Theater album. So it makes sense they just called it Dream Theater. Asymmetrical riffs pulled off with technical precision, a Rush tribute riff, dancing chromatic sixteenth note triplet guitar runs, dire yet uplifting philosophical lyrics, throat singing, and of course, a 20 minute suite. "Enigma Machine" might even be the quintessential dream theater song. These guys are the Giving Tree of prog metal. They've given us so much already and just keep pumping it out.
Enigma Machine by Dream Theater on Grooveshark

#10
Kurt Vile
Wakin on a Pretty Daze

Well shit, look what I done. I listened to some goddam indie band with a pretentious name (does anyone actually know who Kurt Weill was?) and I'll be slurpin corn pone at the county fair if I were to say I didn't like it. Also, please don't make me slurp corn pone at the county fair, I don't even know what that would be like, how much I could eat or if people would be watching or if I could just do it behind a tent alone with nothing but my shame, while on the outside world, rosy cheeked wholesome teenagers exchange promise rings and win plush whatevers from gap-toothed carneys on the run from the troopers two states over. Because that's what we're all doing, really. Except our corn pone is metaphysical poverty, and the the tent that sequesters us from the world is our cult of materialism. And Kurt Vile? He's outside leaning against the propane generator, having a cigarette.
Was All Talk by Kurt Vile on Grooveshark

#9
Steve Wilson
The Raven that Refused to Sing (And Other Stories)

Steve Wilson, the antidote to Thom Yorke, gave us this sprawling prog epic of excellent musicianship. I had been hoping for a long time that Steve Wilson's band, Porcupine Tree, would pump out another album sometime soon, but instead we got this nice substitute. Strap yourself in for 54 minutes of genre discord, haunting melodies, and top quality studio work.
The Watchmaker by Steven Wilson on Grooveshark

#8
Valerie June
Pushin Against a Stone

A daughter of Memphis soul and bluegrass teams up the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach to make a haunting, bluesy album. It comes out of the dusk on a languid breeze, both enchanting you and making you feel like the loneliest person in the world. Auerbach's influence shows on tracks like "Can't Be Told," but there are also some bluegrass tinged gems like "Someone to Love" and "Tennessee Time."
You can't be Told by Valerie June on Grooveshark

#7
Bombino
Nomad

Oh look, this one was also produced by Dan Auerbach. For those not in the know, Bombino is a guitarist from Niger, playing in a style known as desert blues. It's basically traditional Berber and Tuareg music electrified. Because this music shares a lot of its harmonic language with the Blues (in fact, this is where it came from) it sounds a lot like the blues. But make no mistake, it is not derivative, the desert blues is its own tradition. And of course, like on every desert blues album, there's the obligatory song about how the Tenere desert is both harsh and beautiful. We get it already.
Her Tenere by Bombino on Grooveshark

#6
Scale the Summit
The Migration

I discovered these guys a few years ago when they toured with 3 and Cynic. Formed by two Houston-to-LA transplants Chris Letchford and Travis Levrier, Scale the summit is all about technical perfection and incredible musicianship. On The Migratoini, they roll out a carpet of triumphant leads, aggressive riffs, and delicious bass lines. Speaking of bass solo (bass so lo you can't hear it!) there's the song "Evergreen," reminiscent of Jaco Pastorius' "Portrait of Tracy." It all wraps up in a finale which the band described as "their most difficult song yet." With the skills these guys have, that's saying something.
Atlas Novus by Scale The Summit on Grooveshark

#5
Unknown Mortal Orchestra
II

If I had to call this album something (which I guess I do since I'm writing about it) I would say minimalist psychedelia. Drums, bass, slinky guitar work, and soft-spoken, harmonized vocals. And drugs. So many drugs.
No Need for a Leader by Unknown Mortal Orchestra on Grooveshark

#4
Portugal. The Man
Evil Friends

Portugal. The Man runs the line between enlightenment and hedonism, or at least that's how they want us to see them. Really, they're just weird. A couple of weird dudes from Alaska with guitars and drums and a few synthesizers. This took a little more getting used to than 2011's In the Mountain in the Cloud, and there was no song that stood out as much. (In fact, the lead single was probably the weakest on the album.) But there's some more maturity here, and after pumping out eight albums in nine years, Portugal. The Man knows how to make a Portugal. The Man album. "Atomic Man" may just be the best breakup song ever written, with the line "After you I don't know what I believe in / After you hell should be easy."
Sea of Air by Portugal. The Man on Grooveshark

#3
Palms
Palms

What do you get when you take three members from Isis and mix them with Chino Moreno of the Deftones? You get Palms, a tapestry of dark ambient post-rock. Whether you're brooding in a dark room, skinning racoons in your garage, carving cryptic messages into the walls of your basement, or running from the monsters that live in your brain, this is the album for you.
Tropics by Palms on Grooveshark

#2
Janelle Monae
The Electric Lady

Janelle Monae set out to create "something nobody had heard before," and while she didn't quite transport us to a new sonic dimension, she came pretty close to her goal. Futurism meets oldschool in this masterwork of soul. Oh yeah, and Prince is on the album. Fucking Prince! From the hip-jiggling "Dance Apocalyptic" to the strutting "Rock and Roll" to the epic power ballad "Primetime," to the neo-soul of the title track, this album weaves together a tapestry of slick urban sound.
Dance Apocalyptic by Janelle Monáe on Grooveshark

#1
Crash of Rhinos
Knots

I picked Knots for Album of the Year on speculation. I don't believe it has reached the level of appreciation I will eventually feel for it a month, six months, a year, maybe even a decade down the line. But I can't know that until the time comes. This album feels like one where I'll keep noticing things to appreciate over the years - just as I have with albums like Second Stage Turbine Blade, London Calling, Pikul, Gut the Van, Graceland, Wish You Were Here, and Deloused in the Comatorium - rock (or rockish) albums where you appreciate something you hadn't before with each listening.

I suppose I should share the story of how I came across this album, for it involves being a judgmental asshole. My roommate and I were sitting around talking about pretentious indie bands with stupid names. We somehow got it in our heads that Pitchfork review scores were based entirely on how stupid and pretentious the band or artists name sounded. To test this, we went on Pitchfork and looked for the band with what had, in our estimation at the time, the worst offending name. At that point I didn't realize there was a band called "Fuck Buttons" (really) and if I had I would have never found Crash of Rhinos.

My roommate clicked the link and started reading the review aloud to me. They had a pretty good score so our hypothesis hadn't been debunked. But it actually sounded like they were a pretty cool band. Or at least that's what the review sounded like, I can never actually understand what Pitchfork reviews are saying and they may indeed be written by bots. So my roommate downloaded the album, and we listened to the whole thing that afternoon. We were impressed.

We agreed, Crash of Rhinos is what Explosions in the Sky would sound like if they were a hardcore band. The guitar work somehow manages to be ambient and driving, and you paradoxically float over this driving groove. It makes me feel like I haven't since, really, freshman year of high school. Where you're both cynical about everything around you but you have the feeling of wonder as everything is still new to be discovered. It's good to remember that. I still have much to discover.

Song of the Year
"Whopper and a Forty" by Brad Neely

The Ones that Almost Made It (But Didn't)

#14 Pearl Jam, Lightning Bolt

#15 Jim James; Regions of Light, Sounds of God

#16 Superchunk, I hate Music

#17 Sigur Ros, Kveikur

#18 Jake Bugg, Shangri La

#19 Nine Inch Nails, Hesitation Marks

#20 Queens of the Stone Age, ...Like Clockwork

#21 Low, The Invisible Way,

#22 TesseracT, Altered State

#23 Iron & Wine, Ghost on Ghost

#24 Pretty Lights, A Color Map of the Sun

#25 That one Neko Case album with a really long title

#2 Dance Gavin Dance, Acceptance Speech

#27 Streetlight Manifesto, The Hands that Thieve

#28 Deafhaven, Sunabther

#29 Colin Stetson, New History Warfare vol. 3: To See More Light

#30 Daft Punk, Random Access Memories

#31 August Burns Red, Rescue & Restore

#32 Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

#33 James Blake, Overgrown,

#34 Gogol Bordello, Pura Vida Conspiracy

#35 Killswitch Engage, Disarm the Dissent

#36 Karnivool, Asymmetry

#37 Cass McCombs, Big Wheel

#38 Noah and the Whale, Heart of Nowhere

#39 The Strokes, Comedown Machine

Biggest Disappointment: Tegan & Sara, Hearthtrob
I was expecting another delightfully weird release from the alt-something duo of Canadian lesbian identical twins. Instead they made a bunch of garbage pop songs.

Well that was 2013. I expect the list for 2014 to be dominated by washboardcore and recordings of Jeff Tweedy's night terrors.

A Veteran's Day Story

2013-11-11T14:30:00.000-08:00

Veteran's Day is a national holiday, but this isn't a story about American soldiers. Since the holiday originated as the more globally-minded Armistice Day, I think there's room in this day to honor the soldiers of other nations and other causes, even if the causes they first started fighting for were as simple as baseball and beer.

Elliot Dalton joined the Queens Own Rifles of Canada, a kind of army reserve, during peacetime. Canadian military bases had a competitive league, about the same level of play as mid-level minor league teams. Elliot was a pretty good baseball player - not quite Major League caliber, but good enough for his talents to be of use in the Canadian Armed Forces League. It being peacetime, the bases were more concerned about this league than they were about preparing for war, so it seems, because the Queens Own Rifles enlisted Elliot as a ringer.

His brother Charlie Dalton heard from Elliot that they were allowed to sell alcohol on army bases. Charlie loved beer, and this was a problem, because back then the whole province of Ontario was dry. Except, for some reason, the military bases. Again, it was Canada in peacetime, very few fucks were given.

A few years roll by and it's not exactly peacetime anymore. In fact, it's World War II, and the Canadians are fighting alongside the Allies. The brothers Dalton are both officers in the Queen's Own Rifles, and both end up commanding battalions landing in the first wave at Juno Beach on D-Day. Before loading into their respective landing crafts, their only parting words were "I'll see you tonight," confident they would both make it through one of the bloodiest days in human history.

Elliot had the distinction of being the first Canadian officer to land on the beach on D-Day. Not only did he and most of his battalion survive, but they were able to secure their position of the beachhead, make it off the beach, and push inland, making it all the way to Bernier by mid-morning. Things didn't go as smoothly for Charlie and his battalion. His landing craft hit a mine in the water and he had to swim ashore with a piece of shrapnel in his ass after abandoning most of his ammunition to stay afloat. When he found his way to a foxhole, he picked up a non-jammed rifle from a dead soldier, and then managed to rally his troops, who were in severe disarray, and lead a charge on a pillbox. In doing so, he ensured that the second wave of troops landing in that area were met with almost no resistance. As they tried to move inland, they encountered a Panzer division and were forced to retreat across a minefield.

In the confusion, Charlie Dalton was presumed dead, and his family, including Elliot, was told as such. A few days later, Elliot was wounded, grazed by a bullet in the head after trying to advance further inland. But the whole taking a bullet to the head thing was taken by the higher ups to mean that he was dead, because that's usually what happens when you take a bullet to the head. So while he was recovering in a field hospital, the rest of his family was notified that he too had died.

Several days later he was taken to a hospital in England. As he was being processed, a nurse told them that there was already someone in the bed they had planned to put him in. Elliot told her that was ridiculous, because that bed was reserved for Major Dalton.

Then nurse went in to ask the man in the bed who he was. "He says that he is Major Dalton," she reported.

"Well I don't care who the hell he says he is," said Elliot, "I'm major Dalton dammit!"

Once another bed was made for Elliot, he was rolled into the room to find that there was, in fact, a Major Dalton in the room. It was Charlie, who had been taken to that same hospital the same day he was presumed dead. Like Elliot, Charlie had also been told that his brother was dead. Their mutual indignation turned to joy when both brothers discovered the other was alive. Oh, and despite the headshot and infected shrapnel wound between them, they both recovered in time to liberate the Netherlands.

Elliot and Charley Dalton were two of my dad's uncles, making them both my great uncles. I wasn't sure how much of that story was true and how much was added through the family oral history. But a few years ago I found out that it was all true, when the Queens Own Rifles of Canada named an armory (they spell it armoury back up there) after them. My dad went to Toronto for the dedication. There was a military parade and some speeches. But when he finally got the chance to ask about the story in the military hospital, he found out it was all true. In fact, it has become a piece of the Queen's Own Rifle's of Canada lore. So remember that your veterans weren't always fighting for an ideal or some imaginary line on a map. They were fighting for baseball, for beer, and for each other.

An East Bay Original

2013-10-04T01:19:00.001-07:00

Man has to create karma, that's the way it is / Man has to keep going way beyond his will / Man has to keep on being 'cause there's nothing else / A man just always has to go for himself"

-Van Morrison, Man Has To Struggle

Young, liberal, educated people should not use cliches, my young, liberal, and educated brain tells me. We should not think in cliches. And we certainly should not see the world operating in cliches. But despite all that, I can say with certainty the "baseball as a metaphor for life" is a shadowy figure stalking me in a dark alley.

It's the eve of the NLDS between the Oakland A's and the Detroit Tigers. And we once again have the familiar narrative of a team on a shoestring (by Major Leagues standards) budget going up against a Goliath. Even if, they're really not the underdog, having secured home-field advantage. Even if, they've proven every year that when an economy-class player comes to Oakland, magic happens. But they're still perpetual underdogs.

The truth is, most of us are perpetual underdogs. The A's are perpetual underdogs; on paper, going into any season or playoff matchup, they will not look as good. We have to prove ourselves at every opportunity. Because of their lack of star power and admittedly decrepit stadium, the A's have to demonstrate, every time they're in the spotlight, that they deserve to be there. You have to exploit what's not being exploited. We've all seen or at least heard passing mention of Moneyball, so we know that the A's have been forced, out of necessity, to find gold where everyone else sees garbage. We're all trying to assert who we are, and we're more like the Oakland A's than most of us realize.

Back in my former life as a runner, I ran for a mid-major level school in the NCAA. Our coach would tell us that as an athlete for a team in our position, you had to make the uniform happen every time you put one on. There was no flashy University of Oregon O on the front, no BCS Conference logo anywhere. There was no cache that came just from putting on the uniform. You had to make it with your performance. You have to, no, you get to, make make the identity that comes with the uniform, each time. And every time, you had to, no, again, you get to, create that identity from scratch.

Most people know this, though not necessarily in a sporting context. You're doing this every time you represent where you're from and who you are. I don't mean that in a hip-hop REPRESENT kind of way, although that is an excellent example. Chances are, you're from a place that's second to somewhere else. For Oakland and the rest of the East Bay, that place is right across the water.

San Francisco has attained that kind of mythical status, along with cities like New York, London, Paris, and Rome, where the name alone is enough to conjure an air of romanticism and wonder. People living in these cities or moving to these cities don't have to do anything to contribute to the culture; the culture exists as an innate part of these cities, built into their very framework. San Francisco is a city rich in icons and mythology. It's a place you go to find yourself because the city can give and you don't have to give anything back in return.

This cultural monolith both absorbs and overshadows the other cities in the Bay Area. There's nearly 6.5 million of us living outside of "The City." Still, many people place their identity in San Francisco because it sparkles more, the name carries more weight. There's Hunter S. Thompson riding a cable car while eating the world's most authentic tacos from the Mission. People are a lot less willing identify as being from places such as Oakland, San Jose, or Fremont, not because there's anything intrinsically wrong with those cities, but because San Francisco is an identity magnet. It's a place people want to be from because it makes them interesting without actually having to be interesting.

(Oh look, it's a Coastal Californian bitching about how where he's from doesn't get enough respect. Cry me fucking river!)

In the East Bay, we have that mid-major situation going on. We have to make an identity for ourselves with every action. And the A's, in a lot of ways, are the mid-major team of the Major Leagues. They will be underrated. They will receive proportionally lacking coverage for their successes. You could say putting on the green and gold jersey doesn't carry as much respect nationally as some other jerseys. That is, until you start winning.

The A's aren't just the area's "other" team, like the Angels, Mets, or White Sox; they're the team from the area's "other city." People are not only swayed by Giant's nice new stadium where they can watch players hit baseballs into the ocean, but because it's San Francisco.

They'll be going up against a team whose star makes more than their entire payroll, but that's nothing new for the A's. The identity, carved out by years of performance and then brought to the nation's conciseness by Moneyball is that they will hold their own against, and win, in these situations. But that identity only gets reaffirmed upon performance. There's no magic that comes with putting on the uniform and stepping out into the ballpark. It's an identity based on showing up when no one thinks you will. A scrappy underdog can only be one by performing and an undervalued player can only show he's undervalued by defying expectations.

I'm not going to go so far as to say the A's are America's Team, or the People's Team. But they represent a predicament that most of are caught in. You have to work every day to make and maintain your identity. Nobody is going to hand you a positive version of who you are. That is made by your actions.

Every day you put on the uniform that is your skin. What are you going make of it? What will you have it represent? People might write you off as a bum or a thug or a loser, they might write you off because of your skin color, how you dress, how you talk, where you're from, and what you don't have. No matter what, or who you are, you're probably an undervalued player in life. You might be playing in the shadow of a mythical city, and you will be struggling to define yourself. It's a struggle that will never end. But every time you show up, and you make it happen, your task for the day will be accomplished.

Entropy

2013-09-17T23:43:00.001-07:00

"But if I had never tried, how could I try again?"
-Joey Eppard, Balloon

Running is one hell of a drug, and I seem to have relapsed. And believe me, it was a drug I abused. Some people ran for recreation, or for breast cancer, or to get balls of color thrown at them. I was apparently on a mission to destroy myself. I'm surprised it took me so long to do so, because my body is apparently held together with dental floss and chewing gum.

Once I stepped away from the track (at the time, I thought it would be forever) my body was no longer saturated with cortisol and I could think clearly. It was then I began to realize all the things I had been doing wrong, all the coulda shoulda wouldas in my career. But then I realized all the things I could do which had been so off limits before. Simple things like staying up late or making spontaneous road trips were now things I could do as I tried to integrate into baseline humanity. I also realized something else. Since I had never needed to exercise just to stay in shape, I had no concept of recreational exercise. I couldn't fathom that you just go to the gym or hit the roads just to keep the entropy away. Or that you even had to. So entropy happened to me.

At first, everything started to feel better because it didn't have to carry my 80 miles every week. It was nourished by high energy foodstuffs such as hydrogenated soybean oil, high fructose corn syrup, and flour so refined it doesn't even know what farting is. For a while, this was all good. I needed to repair. You can't make repairs while you're moving, and you certainly can't make repairs without parts. Then the aforementioned entropy started creeping in. Everything just got so weak that all the injuries that forced me to quit running started getting worse even though I wasn't running a step.

That's another thing I learned. I used running to escape my crippling social anxiety. It makes sense that you're staying in on a Saturday night if you have to get up and run 18 miles on Sunday morning. But when you don't have anything to do on Sunday except watch football and maybe nurse a hangover, it's a lot harder to reconcile why you're sitting in your room watching Netflix on the preceding Saturday night. (I guess now I could justify it to the world by posting "LOL I'M AN INTROVERT" on my facebook page but that seems like cheating, and would most definitely be lying.)

I had both the indulgent personality and savviness of a college freshman away from controlling, moralizing parents for the first time. Lump on top of that a kid from a household where soda and candy were taboo and who certainly wasn't allowed taco bell. Maybe even throw in a pinch of an Amish kid on Rumspringa. And all of this was hitting me at age 21, where I first had the opportunity to live like a reckless young person but paradoxically felt I had the body of an old man.

A brief side story about the Amish because this is too good of an opportunity to pass up: There was an Amish man from a nearby community who would show up to parties at my cousin's frat house at Penn State. At the end of the night he would stumble to his buggy. My cousin once asked him if he would be able to make it home on a night when he seemed particularly intoxicated. The man replied "I'm fine, my horse knows the way!"

Right when I started being able to jog for a mile or two without feeling like the disintegration of my body was imminent, I got a concussion by falling and hitting my head after giving blood, proving that no good deed goes unpunished. Now that was entirely my fault, since in the course of the previous two days I had killed half a 30-rack of Coors Banquet Beer and then only had two bags of fruit snacks for breakfast. Upon being revived, my blood pressure was 80 over 20. In layman's terms, that means my heart was pretty damn close to stopping. Now being in a blood bank is a pretty good place to have your heart stop, I would imagine, since they have a couple AEDs in the room. So concussed and unable to exercise, I grew soft and doughy.

There were bouts of regular physical activity. I would go on a few runs in a week, I would play Frisbee, I would swim in the ocean. But I kept getting sick or my back would get jacked up again and then I was back to being Cecil the Sessile Slug

I remember at one point, walking for two miles made my hip hurt a great deal. But three months later, after a journey across the country and back, which included lots of walking and some mad dashes to catch buses, I walked from the rim of the Grand Canyon and back in a single day, chafing at the bit because some people in my group had to slow down for a thing as silly as heat exhaustion. Spine in allignment, hips stable, ankles sturdy, muscles moving in perfect rhythmic integration. A journey makes you younger. I wanted to get back in the shape I once was, because now I knew I could. And I don't know how to do that by just exercising; I have to train. So I thought, why not, I'll try again.

This time is not the same. I don't have the time, resources, or durability to train like I used to. I'm training for shorter events, probably solely focusing on the 800 meters, because it requires less volume. I have no delusions of grandeur and am not expecting any kind of success. I don't ever expect to run a personal best ever again, (although I will certainly try). And I'm not using a training calendar, or even a specific workout schedule. I have a list of workouts which I plan to do, in order. When I do them is entirely based on how I feel. If I feel good enough, I'm hitting the track hard. If not, I'm jogging easy on the roads, or just sitting on my ass and letting things heal. If I miss a day of training, it will get done eventually. I'm under no time crunch and I certainly have no expectations.

Training is kind of like making a mix tape for your physiological systems. You need to send the right message, not too strong, but you also can't beat around the bush. That's why you have to calibrate your intensity to Goldilocks levels. And I didn't realize this until it was too late.

But now I'm just glad to run and to move around. Maybe just for my sanity, maybe just for something to focus on. I've got a stack of index cards with workouts written on them that I draw from every few days, and a dirt track right down the street with my name on it. I might not have any money for shoes or nutritional food, but neither did Kip Keino at one point. So fueled by frozen food and a lack of fucks to give, I'm off, once again, booking it to nowhere in particular.

Vasco da Gama

2013-09-09T00:47:00.001-07:00

Evolution is a privilege reserved for the underdogs.

In the 15th century, the Ottoman Empire kicked the Portuguese out of the Red Sea and blocked most of the overland trade between Europe and Asia. They created a world empire, one of the largest the world had ever seen, with the vision of restoring the Roman Empire under Islamic rule. They even used Rome's second capital, Constantinople. (Which of course you know was re-branded as Istanbul thanks to They Might Be Giants.) They got in power the way everyone had for the past two thousand years before them - conquering, subjugating, and culturally dominating.

Now the people on the Iberian Peninsula weren't too happy about this. They were blocked from the overland trade routes which had connected them with India and China since the Pax Romana. And they figured they would prosper because they controlled these trade routes. They would sit on the established patterns to success which they had commandeered and rake in the gold bullion. They had the Afro-Eurasian trade networks by the balls and thought that things would always be that way.

The Spaniards and the Portuguese now had the privilege of being the underdogs. Instead of looking at the world and assuming that it must continue as it always had, they were forced to find new ways to gain power and wealth. So the Portuguese did what no one else had done before and sailed strait to India, all the way around the Cape of Good Hope. The Spaniards made an even greater leap, attempting to sail to India by going west, something no one had ever dreamed of before. And it would have worked, were there not a whole hemisphere in their way. So instead of the traditional land-based empire, extracting tribute and coming in with the imperial army once a decade or so to trash the native population, they opted for a maritime-based, mercantile states.

Western Europe went on to write the next chapter of world history, doing all kinds of horrible things to the native peoples they encountered. And the Ottoman Empire would enter into a slow decline for 400 years until Britain and France, who were the runts of the litter at the time of Ottoman Turkey's ascendancy, carved up the Middle East according to their own designs.

Maybe the cycle has started over. Maybe the empire of trade is over. I wouldn't know, I'm an American (partially). I don't have the perspective of the underdog. I can't evolve.

Interstate Blues

2013-08-15T18:24:00.002-07:00

Standing in Buffalo Park, a bluff above Flagstaff, it's hard not to be struck by the full moon. At an altitude of over 7,000 feet there's less atmospheric interference so it looks like there's a floodlight on everything, every diction you look. But it's not just the altitude that makes Flagstaff a unique city for looking at celestial phenomena. It's the world's first dark sky city. Meaning, it's the first city in the world to actively minimize its light pollution. The streetlights are designed to emit barely any ambient light on anything but the streets themselves, and there are strict codes on what kind of lighting setups businesses can have. And even up here in Buffalo Park, looking out over Flagstaff's dark sky, you can still hear the roar of two interstate highways meeting.

But this city owes its existence, or at least its current state of existence, to that very interstate. Flagstaff is located only 70 miles from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, and it's the city you have to drive through to get there. And you'll probably end up staying here too, since Nature in all her wonder doesn't seem to be enough stimuli for the people who hop out of their cars at the rim and wave their iPads around for a few minutes and then go to a motel so they can watch real hosewives of somewhere on the story box. The next day they will drive another eight hours to spend another few minutes with their iPads in front of another natural wonder. It's where the tourists come, and it's also where the truckers come, and the road trippers who haven't seen anything but mountains and desert for hours in both directions. It's also the place you have to pass through to get to Las Vegas or LA from a big chunk of the Midwest and Eastern Seaboard. And it's all because Interstates 40 and 17 meet right in the center of town.

It's not hard to see that for many Americans, where you live has been determined by the Eisenhower Administration. If you look at one of those pictures of America at night, or for the more empirically minded, one of those maps where a red dot represents x many people, you'll see that population patters form a Cartesian grid across the middle. The people go where the roads go.

Flagstaff itself might be the exception that proves the rule. It first rose to prominence because of the railroad lines, and then was sustained by the oft-romanticized Route 66. Now two only two trains stop each day, one going east and one going west, and Route 66 is a creation myth. But it survived as the hub of Northern Arizona because, well, as far as the interstate patterns go, it is the hub. It's why Flagstaff is Flagstaff, instead of Holbrook or Winslow or Bellemont or Williams. And it wasn't just a silly name that's kept Tuba City from taking that place. Instead of the roads fitting the population geography, the population geography fits where the roads are.

But how has the interstate system shaped our minds? Or more specifically, how does the interstate make us think about where we are and where we're headed? (In a strictly literal sense, and not the kind of literal that actually means figuratively.) Because if you're headed somewhere, you're probably taking the interstate.

That's how I got to Flagstaff. It was in a van that doubled as the owner's house. I found the ride on Craigslist. We left Albuquerque at 10 AM and got to Flagstaff at 2:30 PM, the whole time taking just one road. We needed no landmarks to navigate. We crossed the Continental Divide without having to find the most gradual ascent or the most suitable passage. The interstate took us there.

And still, this is some of the more scenic fare the interstate system has to offer. Between the Rockies and the Appalachians, all you can see from the interstate is urban sprawl and signs for gas stations on top of long poles. There's no navigating that has to take place other than figuring out which exit to take and maybe a few interchanges.

The problem I have with this way of navigating is that you're not aware of how where you're going is related to where you are, and you certainly aren't aware of any of the points in between. There's no spatial awareness being developed, no mental map being made of the land and the terrain. It's just a series of tubes that will get you to your destination. Every place becomes an isolated location in which you just appear.

Now we don't even need to look at a map. Your phone just tells you where to turn if you ask it. There's no brainwork involved in figuring it out.

I've always been a person who values knowing exactly where I am, and where that is in relation to everything else. I have a smart phone but I don't use the GPS. I look at the map and figure out where I'm going manually. Why? Because I like my mind being engaged that way. And I want to know where I am.

The most useless people when it comes to orienting themselves are generally the ones who grew up in mass-produced suburbias. They've got to be driven everywhere in your mom's minivan, with a gameboy or DVD player in the backseat to keep them from looking out the window and observing where they're going. These kids grow up thinking you just appear in places. They don't see how all the places are connected. And most of us, thanks to the interstate system and internet-assisted navigation.

Now I'm all for progress, but I don't know if I would call this progress. Technology has advanced, but our brains have regressed in a certain kind of spatial understanding. Call me idealistic but I think that technology exists to make humans better and more effective, not the other way around. (I think even Ray Kurzweil could agree with me on that one.) Technological advances are a failed endeavor if they downgrade humans in the process.

So let's be aware of where we are. Look at a map, look at the landmarks, watch the subtle changes in ecosystem and landscape as you go. And find your way without asking the internet or your phone where to go. Think of it like a game. And you get points for doing well. Those points make your brain level up and then eventually you get a better brain.

But if you don't use your brain, it will never level up.

Bob

2013-08-01T17:17:00.000-07:00

"We left Worchester with our boots and our bags and America dressed herself in front of our eyes"
-State Radio, Adelaide

Skinny trees. I remember, as I dozed off, being struck by how damn skinny the trees were in Louisiana. The pine trees, that is, or at least the ones I could see from the train. The trees in New Orleans were thick, covered in ferns and dripping with vines. But from the train leaving New Orleans, headed towards the Texas border, all I could see were tall skinny pine trees coming out of the swamp.

I woke up just over the border in Texas as we crossed the Neches River and I saw fish actually jumping out of the water. I didn't know they did that outside of Porgy and Bess. Ten minutes later we stopped in Beaumont, Texas for 45 minutes, which is approximately 44 minutes too long. Now I am sure Beaumont, Texas is loved by every one of its residents and there are many great things about it. But all I got to experience was the Amtrak station, two toothless old railroad enthusiasts taking pictures of the train, the thousand percent humidity East Texas air, and the Dollar General, which has nothing for sale for a dollar and reeks of the crushed dreams of its employees and customers alike. I guess the dollar store has been killed by inflation and the general store has been killed by specialization in the commercial sector. Not that the latter is bad. If it weren't for the specialization that came with the industrial era, we wouldn't have railroads, and I wouldn't be getting across Texas on anything with more horsepower than a horse. Several very nice Texans asked me if they could help me find anything. I told them "no, I'm just looking," because I didn't want to tell them "I'm doing an ethnography or your town's pathetic dollar store."

We had to get back on the train to make it to our afternoon-long layover in Houston, so I couldn't explore all the wondrous sites that Beaumot has to offer. For some reason the train needs to spend a couple hours idling on the tracks in Houston, and the passengers are free to roam around the neighborhoods north of Downtown. Although you're close to Downtown, there's nothing to do there and you're separated by a wall of Texas highways making convoluted overpasses. Maybe if I had some more time I would find NASA mission control and try to talk to space.

Instead I wandered around trying to find a bar to hang out in for a few hours. And that's how I met Bob. He looked maybe sixty, his hair gray but his eyebrows still black. Salt-and-pepper beard. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and red suspenders. Could have been that this guy had wasted away too much in Margaritaville. He walked with a cane and the accompanying cane shuffle so at first I resented him picking me as a walking companion. But we had a similar goal and old people are great sources of wisdom and encouragement.

There was nothing around. We wandered for over an hour, ready to settle for a convenience store with cold beer but even that couldn't be found. It's just a humid, sticky mess out there, filled with smog and nowhere to go.

Circling back to an intersection near the train station we met up with another passenger. His name was Troy, and he was moving back to Portland from New Orleans, where he had been working as a pedicab driver. The French Qaurter is filled with these. For those of you who don't know, a pedicab is a rickshaw without a canopy, propelled by a healthy American on a bicycle, rather than an orphan on the streets of Calcutta. He had come to the Crescent City a few months prior in a school bus converted to run on used vegetable oil and with the seats replaced by beds. They had to stop every four hours or so, depending on the quality of the oil they had picked up at the last stop. He said they would always look out for Mexican restaurants, since they consistently had the cleanest oil.

We decided to head north, away from downtown, the only direction we hadn't tried yet. After 20 minutes of walking we saw a sign on the other side of the street with a Belgian flag and a sign that read "Cafe Brussels." No way. No fucking way there's anything even vaguely European in Houston. (Sorry for all the riffing, Houston. I only do it because I know you can take it.) Aside from King Leopold raping the Congo and having a region named after Ned Flanders, the only thing I really know about Belgium is beer. Delicious beer, made by monks and smiling, ruddy, stout innkeepers. We walked inside to glorious air conditioning and a bar with a panoply of taps. Bob asks "do you have beer?"

"Of course we have beer," says the owner, a tall middle aged woman with a Walloon accent. "Belgian beer is the best beer in the world."

Bob stared at the taps for a few minutes, looking increasingly confused and distraught. "Now, I like Budweiser," he said. "What do you have that's like Budweiser." She pours him a glass of a white ale (Belgian, of course). Gracefully. No jokes about how American beer is like having sex in a canoe, just lets the product do the talking. Bob approved. The owner said this was the first Monday they were open, and that she was unsure they would get any customers. We lucked out.

On the walk back to the train station Bob told us why he needed the cane. He had some form scoliosis since he was fifteen, and as a result had horrible arthritis in some of his discs. When he was diagnosed as a teenager, the doctor said he would be in a wheelchair by the time he was 40. Here he was in his 50's and still walking upright, although not exactly bipedal. I told him about the stress fracture I had in my back, and my herniated disc that would probably never heal. We were back pain buddies!

We played blackjack in the observation car during the next leg to San Antonio. In our economy, half a pistachio shell was one money, a banana chip was five, and a plastic cup was twenty. When someone ran low on shells we just took more from our federal reserve of snacks and Amtrak plastic cups causing mass inflation in our little economy. As the game progressed and we plodded across South Texas, Bob began to look more and more pained. He kept grabbing his back and wincing. Eventually he went to his seat and grabbed two bottles of painkillers, different kinds he was supposed to take together. One of them I recall was Vicodin and I can't say I say I remember the name of the other. He took some of both and for a while it seemed as though he would zone in for a hand and then zone out again. I don't know if it was because of the drugs or the pain. With spinal problems, the pain can be just as debilitating as any narcotic. He started bobbing around in his chair like a Hasidic scholar reading the Torah. Occasionally he would get up and walk around.

Some time before midnight we pulled in to San Antonio. Another layover of a few hours. All we had to eat that day was delicious Belgian beer and pistachios, so we decided to find a Denny's which we had heard was nearby. We walked towards downtown. It seemed Bob was in a lot of pain but he said that walking was the best thing for him. Having gone through something similar I knew this was true. Walking is the best thing for a hurting back. Sitting just makes it worse.

Bob mentioned something about being hospitalized a few years prior. He said they thought he was homeless. For the first time I doubted whether a spinal deformity was the worst of his problems. Maybe there was something more going on here. I even wondered if it was just a mask for a drug problem. But then I saw the way he moved and I recognized it immediately. That was how I move when my disc flares up. And there were times he would slip back in to perfect lucidity. He was there in the conversation, engaged, the pain ebbing, and then it would come on again in another wave, demanding his full attention.

The waitress brought him his some coffee and as he was bringing it up to his mouth another spasm of pain washed over him. His hand made a sudden jerk and he spilled the coffee everywhere. He offered to clean it up but the waitress insisted she do it. Just walk around in the parking lot, I told him, we'll be out soon. I shared my doubts with Troy. He didn't know what to make of it either. He did take a lot of drugs on the train. And they didn't exactly seem to stop whatever symptoms he was having.

When I broke my back - it wasn't too serious, you have to keep in mind, only two hairline fractures in the lateral processes of my lowermost vertebra and a herniation in the disc above it - there would be days when I would feel nothing. Then there would be days when I couldn't concentrate on anything except the sound of my own moaning as I lay on my back. (The bone has healed but the disc probably never will. It just usually stays asymptomatic now if I stretch a lot.) When there's a problem with your disc, you can be fine one moment and then all of a sudden you will feel a tightness creeping up on you. You try to ignore it like a superstition but it gets stronger and stronger until there is pain radiating out in all directions from one node of pure 24-carat distilled pain. You have no choice but to be useless as you ride it out. Clear your calendar and find something to distract you that can be done lying down. That's what must have happened to Bob. He was fine when he got on the train, fine wandering the streets of Houston for something cold to drink, but all that sitting, putting pressure on the spinal column, must have triggered something. I hoped it was just that - back pain. But then part of me hoped it was something else, because whatever afflicted him, if it was indeed with his spine, was the mother of my Grendel.

We asked Bob if he wanted to go back to the train station to find a place to rest. He said walking made it feel the best. Nobody can come to San Antonio without seeing the Alamo, and even though it was almost 1 AM, we had to check it out. Today, it's hard to picture the Alamo as a makeshift outpost garrison in the middle of the desert. There is no dirt for Davey Crocket to draw a line in with his boots. The whole building is surrounded by paved walkways, rolling lawns, and informative plaques, lit up with floodlights all through the night. I guess they figure Texas is where all the energy is coming from and they're going to use all they can. Bob asked me to take picture of him in front of the Alamo with my phone and then gave me his email address and I sent it to him.

We then went across the street to a fountain, which we followed down a staircase and through the lobby of a hotel. It ran all the way to the San Antonio River Walk. Basically, the city of San Antonio has decided to use their oil money to create an artificial river that winds through downtown and also extends something like forty miles outside of the city. I had actually started a draft of a story set in a fictional Central Asian nation that suddenly became wealthy from oil deposits and built a new capital complete with an artificial river, but I scrapped it after I realized I had no plot, just an interesting setting. Looks like San Antonio had the idea first, but could actually follow through.

The River Walk is set a story beneath street level. It's this little bubble of lushness and attractive building facades that feels a world away from the streets on the surface. Not that there's any natural greenery or soil to speak of; everything is paved over and the banks are the stone walkways that line both sides. There were ducks though. Sometimes we would walk under a bridge and see some ducks roosting for the night. They knew at this point that people were less of a threat and more providers of food. It was pretty dead, being past midnight on a Monday night (Tuesday morning?) and the only people out were overdressed, screeching drunk women and busboys cleaning up outdoor tables. I heard a jazz trio closing out at some chain restaurant's bar, but after New Orleans I new that if I went in to give them a better listen, whatever I heard would be a disappointment. Bob would sometimes zone out of lucidity and into pain-induced delirium, but the walking did seem to be doing him good, in the aggregate.

We made it back to the train station in time for our train's 2:30 AM departure. Troy and I crashed in the observation car, keeping an eye on Bob. Sitting down looked like it did a number on him and his face would sometimes contort in pain. He started bobbing and weaving around again.

At some point I must have drifted off and I woke up in the plains of West Texas, gradually browning as we made our way west. Cormac McCarthy country. I needed to do some stretching to shake off the night of sleeping in an observation car chair, watching the sun rise over the plains. Then I remembered Bob. I found him at the far end of the car, sitting in a chair, waving his torso around like one of those wacky inflatable arm-flailing tube men which car dealerships display to announce sales where you can buy a car for nothing now and be making payments for the rest of your life. Troy and I were unsure of what to do. He had already taken a copious amount of painkillers. At this point he was even difficult to talk to. I got him some water since it was all I could do, and then just waited. I sat there, trying to read but it I couldn't keep focused. But there was nothing I could do either so I just tried to read or enjoy the gradually changing landscape.

And then my spidey sense tingled. I looked up at Bob's end of the car and saw the conductor standing next to him, on his walkie-talkie. Based on my experience with Amtrak conductors, I knew this was not good. These are the people who kicked me off a train for having a non-permissible bag the day before Christmas, who will take any attempt by a passenger to preserve some dignity as a personal offense. At least that's how my negative experiences have gone. To be fair, there are plenty of times a train ride passed without incident. But if they don't like the way you're acting, they will not hesitate to throw you off the train.

I saw the conductor taking Bob to the downstairs compartment of the observatory car. I followed him down and once he had sat Bob down I pulled him aside and told him what was going on. He's just got a little back pain, I said, there's nothing to worry about, he's not drunk or anything. The conductor brushed me aside and went further back to the coach cars. I followed him trying to explain the situation. I finally corner him in the back of the train and ask him what's going on. He says that he's going to have to kick Bob off the train because he was "bothering people." Who was he bothering? I asked.

His response was "there are over 200 people on this train I have to worry about."

"Who? Which of those 200 passengers was he bothering."

"Well if he is in pain, like you're saying, he needs to get to a hospital."

"So what, you're just going to strand him here?" I knew he didn't have much money and might not be able to afford buying another train ticket when the train came through again in three days, let alone a place to stay for that long.

"Hey, you want to get kicked off the train with him." He turned to leave.

I blurted out the most verbose thing I could say at the moment. "Aw, fuck you man!" I'm not sure he heard it.

I paced around wondering what I should do. Maybe I should just get kicked off with him. I was only going as far as El Paso and I had no pressing engagements there. Was it time for me to just sack up and get kicked off so I could take care of him? I wanted to see America and maybe the best place to find it was in some water stop in West Texas. I decided to fight tooth and nail to keep Bob on the train and let my future on it be determined with how the conductor decided to react. Because tyrants only have power when they take your authority, not when you surrender it. But I wouldn't be alone.

We rolled into Alpine, Texas, a deceptively named town of 5,905 people. Waiting for us on the platform were four police officers. The conductor walked Bob out and started talking to the sheriff while I tried to explain to another officer that Bob hadn't bothered anyone and that the best thing to do was get him to LA, where his daughter and her family were waiting for him; they would know what to do best. And then other passengers, who were out on the platform stretching their legs, came forward. There were about fifteen people all butting in to the conductor's conversation with the sheriff. One woman just kept repeating "he aint botherin nobody. He aint botherin nobody!"

I had another exchange with the conductor and at the end dropped the f-bomb a second time, saying "this is fucked up, man." This time the conductor turned around. "What did you call me?" I stated back at him. "I didn't call you anything. I was just expressing my displeasure with the way this scenario is unfolding, that's all." One of the officers pulled me aside and told me I did good not mouthing off to him, because the conductor was trying to get me kicked off for profanity as well. If that were to be my fate, then so be it.

An assistant conductor and a third officer asked Troy and I for our side of the story. The assistant conductor seemed adamant that Bob shouldn't have even got on an Amtrak train, since he had other options. I pointed out to him that he couldn't afford to fly and that taking a bus is even worse for someone with that kind of back pain. When we tried to see if maybe Bob could use one of the handicapped seats, he said he couldn't, because he didn't know if they were going to be full later with reserved tickets. I tried to tell him that as a conductor in 2013 he should be able to know this information, because of things like the internet, and wifi, but I guess Amtrak is not with the times.

I walked over to the conductor and sheriff. The other passengers were still tring to keep Bob on the train. Some of had broken off and had formed a circle. They were praying. And Bob, right now he was standing up, lucid, competent, calmly telling the conductor that he didn't have the rights to do this. The conductor maintained that Bob was bothering "at least 12 people on the train." I reminded him that it's a bad idea to lie to a police officer but he kept up his tirade of bullshit.

Again, I felt obligated to grab my backpack from the coach cabin and get out here, in Alpine Texas, of all places, and make sure someone was taking care of Bob. I paced around the platform for a few minutes, walking to the other end. But as I was walking back I noticed Bob getting back on the train. The sheriff walked up to me and shook me hand. He looked me in the eye and said "thank you." I couldn't believe it. I should have at least said "no, thank you" or something along those lines, but I was so dumbfounded as faith in humanity once again washed over my brainscape I just stood there grinning like a midget on stilts.

We did it! A bunch of strangers actually came together and helped our fellow man out of a situation with two kinds of authorities. You don't get that kind of camaraderie on an airplane, that's for sure. On a cross-country flight you just stare at your magazine and cultivate your hatred for everyone around you, especially the guy behind you. But on a train across Texas, you're family by the end.

There was an RN in the group of passengers on the platform advocating for Bob, and she had agreed to sit with him all the way to Los Angeles, making sure he was okay. There would also be an eyewitness to confirm, still, that he aint botherin nobody.

The rest of the way to El Paso I kept an eye on him too, getting him water so he could take his painkillers and some snacks so they wouldn't sit too heavy on his stomach, while his personal nurse for the rest of the trip talked to him to keep his mind off the pain.

I last saw Bob on the platform at El Paso. He had gotten up to stretch his legs and alleviate some of the pressure on his spine, and I was getting off the train for good. I would walk through the deserted streets of El Paso, into the Second Ward, and then across the border into Juarez. What I was looking for I don't know. "Vaya con Dios, my friend," he said. We shook hands, I threw my backpack on and walked off to find my next adventure.

A Cure for Writer's Block

2013-07-22T16:14:00.002-07:00

"A richer people could give more, but they could never give as much." -Flavor text from a Magic The Gathering™ card

Tomorrow, I'll probably quit my job that I started today. At least I plan to. Friday, on an unemployment special mid-workday run, I pulled up a tab off a flyer on a phone pole for some kind of grassroots campaigning gig. I called them at 1 in the afternoon. I interviewed at 4 that same afternoon. I started Monday morning, and now, on Monday night, I have decided to quit.

Quitting this job is a luxury I cannot afford. But I'm not just quitting this job; I am quitting on principle. That is a solid gold bidet at Versailles with single-cut diamond taps and that runs aged cognac. And in part, one of the principles that caused me to luxuryquit out of my means was that this job was causing me to contribute to the culture where activism, or doing anything else on principle, is a luxury. Which gives me a nice, hermetically sealed, full-circle(jerk) way to justify leaving. (Wow, two paragraphs in after my return from the Wilderness and I'm already packing in the cock jokes. And I think I just made another.)

The cause. It's a great cause. Let me tell you about how shit is fucked up in our great state of California. Let me phrase that better, since my parents or pastor or impressionable youths might be reading. There are some major issues in the battle for California's future, and one of them is how we're going to handle what forests we have left. I can tell you these facts because I was spitting them out all day to disinterested passersby who were just trying to get their damn kids to soccer practice so they could go home, close the blinds, and read 50 Shades of Gray while eating something vaguely resembling chocolate, or something Greek yogurt-based, in their brief 90 minutes of respite from those little fleshy bags which preserve their DNA at the cost of a ruined 18 years. Here's the deal: we're going to lose over a million acres of forest in the Sierra foothills in the next few years. 65,000 acres get chopped down every year, and then the logging companies, just to add the Mr. Burns finishing kick, spray the ground with arsenic and a cocktail of up to 300 other noxious chemicals, none of which are regulated by the state. Since 80% of our drinking water comes from forested watersheds, this is bad news for everything in the state that needs water, like crops, endangered herons, humpback whales named Humphrey that for some reason swim a hundred kilometers up the Sacramento River, and oh yeah, people.

But you might say we need to replace forests with apocalyptic wastelands and put cancer in our drinking water for the economy! Because jobs! Because, you know, all those loggers are going to be out of work and there will be no building materials to build job-creating infrastructure. Environmentalists are killing progress and it's all Obama's fault, or something like that. The truth is, you can log without clear cutting. It just doesn't give you a big yield right away. Instead, you have to manage your resources so you have both a steady stream of lumber coming to market and enough living trees to keep that stream going. You have to be responsible, budgeting your forest. Investors prefer clear cutting because it provides a quick and dirty return on their investments.

These are real issues, issues which, admittedly, I didn't know about until Friday afternoon. But now that I know, I'm using the only means I have to really do good, writing about it. Because it's out of my hands. It was even out of my hands when I was working for the people trying to stop it.

It's coming down to a lobbying battle. I was standing out in front of a Whole Foods with a Sierra Club shirt on going up to people who conveniently developed a trendy gluten allergy sometime in the last few years, and these people just wanted to sign something. They see a clipboard and a pen and hear me talking about one of the millions of awful things in the world and ask "where do I sign?" Well shit, I don't have anything for you to sign, my superiors just need your damn money. Because the timber industry has its tentacles going deep into the lobbying scene. Since their money comes from commercial ventures and investors, who have incentive for it to succeed, they are going to get however much money they need. The Sierra Club needs to get members to contribute so they can get money to hold their own in this battle. And they will always need more money.

So this is where I come in. The agency I work(ed) for is not actually the Sierra Club, but an organization called Grassroots Campaigns. Basically, they're a progressive gun for hire fundraising institution, contracted by various organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center, Oxfam, the ACLU, and of course, the Sierra Club. I'm no economist so I don't know whether or not this cuts costs or ads in overhead. Maybe if I were an economist I would reason that if they're doing something, it has to be saving them money, because in the Economist's Dimension, all decisions are made based solely on financial gain. However, I'm not sure if contracting Grassroots Campaigns to do some of their fundraising was the most cost-effective way to do things. Canvassers are paid eight dollars an hour with commission past a certain amount of money raised. This is going to make you pushy. This will make sure you shake everyone by the ankles. And if, in a week, you average canvassing less than $140 per day, then you don't keep your job. This practically makes you mug people for charitable donations.

I spent my first morning getting the rap down, a set of talking points which, although it only takes a minute to recite on rapid fire, is far too cumbersome to give to a bystander who wants to get out of there. Most of the facts pertaining to the issues I have already given, but far more eloquently. Of course, there's also the stuff about "GIVE US MONEY ON A MONTHLY BASIS OTHERWISE YOU'RE BASICALLY PUNCHING A BABY OWL IN THE DICK!" and how you can do it monthly with a credit card to make it easier for the Sierra Club to budget for a long-term Western Front style lobbying battle. (I often wonder if our Lost Generation will be one lost to apathy.)

After a good old fashion grassroots organization let's all get energized meeting, we break into groups to go to canvassing locations. My group was going to the most far-flung location. At least I get to see the world in this limited sort of way. We piled into a rental car with two canvassers for the SPLC who were going to a nearby location. There's another piece of overhead. To get to some of these spots at the periphery of the Bay Area, Grassroots Campaigns has to use rental cars. More getting billed to the Sierra Club.

They listened to top 40 radio. Top 40 radio is a way to identify when people don't really care about music, they just like having it on in the background. They'll like what is convenient to like. Ian, a kid from East Oakland who would be canvassing for the SPLC said he had done some research on them and found that about 60% of what they raise goes to the top of the organization and the rest goes to the actual fighting for causes like taking down hate groups. But all he had to say about it was that it "seemed kinda sketchy." I found myself wishing I could compartmentalize my mind like that, do my job without thinking about how it's all connected, where I fit in the machine. We need someone to fight those hate groups but should it really be people so corrupt? It's hard to find the greater good when nobody is doing it.

Getting farther from the Bay Area's population core now, we lost the top 40 station and someone started flipping through stations until he settled on some kind of 20th century synthpop. "Hahaha, this is so Eighties man!" he said. I need to find a way to bottle the 80's aesthetic and sell it as a tincture in organic stores. I would make a killing.

We set up in front of a whole foods. Two of us flanked the sides and the third covered a park across the street. I got about 15 minutes of observing my supervisor canvassing, and then we switched roles and he watched me. Then he cut me loose and I was alone in the mighty Whole Foodsian jungle. In the next hour and a half I was able to get one donation from a guy who said that he studied marketing psychology and that my tricks would not work on him. (My "tricks" were limited to shaking his hand and telling him my name.) He handed me a 20 and told me to go away.

Now people are supposed to fill out forms with their names and addresses, and we prefer credit cards over cash, probably for purposes of corruption. (First off, nobody trusts you with their credit card information, even if we don't need the security code on the back. We write down the information but we do make a rubbing of the embossed numbers on carbon paper using a coin, but who has time to sit around doing that?) One really strange thing we needed was, from those paying with a check, a second check left blank except for the word "void" written on it. This did not sit well with the one person who gave me a check. Since it was a struggle to get the first check out of her I let her off the hook.

I talked to some people who had been members of the Sierra Club for a long time. Since I was out there for a 3rd party contracted by the Sierra Club, I really had nothing to say to him. I knew nothing about what else the Sierra Club has been up to. I couldn't even tell people what their membership would get them other than a good feeling and junk mail. But these lifelong members, they thought I was awesome. I didn't want to tell them the truth because being told I was awesome already made me feel awful inside. One woman even said "I bet your parents are really proud of you." She thought I was doing a good thing out of passion for the cause. But I was just a lousy progressive gun-for-hire. I know that the reason for feeling awful was because of a discrepancy in how I was perceived and in what was actually going on, and that if I told them it might actually make me feel better. But I just nodded and smiled. I can be a bit of a sadist. Sometimes I would just take the cop-out of "it's my first day." There are so many things that need your attention now, but all they ask for is your money. We've got government espionage, civil wars across the globe, racially motivated violence, and now even my hooded sweatshirt has become political by appropriation! And here I am trying to get you to cough up more than a few bucks to save some conifers! There are awesome people out there, doing awesome things that will make a difference, and I am not one of them. Do not inflate me.

And then the euphoria of not caring came over me. I was a zen monk (not the trendy fake American kind but the real deal) and beheld a sizable chunk of causality in an instant, seeing myself standing in a whole foods parking lot as the logical conclusion of my car breaking down all those years ago, a time trial in American flag running shorts, recycled emotions slapped onto a blank CD, singing Billy Joel in an MRI machine, a late-night phone call to make me useful again and a chance meeting the next day when all I wanted was to be useless, discovering my beard had turned black in a Wendy's restroom, a promise to myself I knew I would break, Flagstaff hailstones the size of golf balls, a spilled Jamba Juice, a concussion on the floor of a blood bank, being stuck one too many times in LA traffic, a few too many empty bottles of Trader Joe's wine, a broken window, the weight of all my blown opportunities, and a road trip to Long Beach which would end up taking me as far as Boston, all coming together like history in the mind of a delusional Saleem Sinai preparing for his birth, all an unbroken chain of accidents and artifacts bringing me to this very whole foods for this very purpose, telling me this was no fault but my own and the only way to break the cycle of the birth and death of my aspirations was to abandon whatever passivity-borne-of-confusion had left me so incapable of transcending my own mediocrity. I used to feel like there was some kind of manual to life that everyone but me had received, but in this moment, it becomes clear that there is no way there could be a manual for all this, for all I've done and seen, and for all the people I've met along the way. It's all just choices in a the wilderness and I was going to have to make one. I think it was around then I decided if i really objected, on principle, to what I was doing, then I would have to do something about it myself.

On the ride back I talked with the other canvassers about how to distinguish who is going to give you money and who is a waste of your time. Sometimes people want to talk about the issues but aren't in a position to give money. We are supposed to get them out of there as quickly as possible, to get money from people who can afford to care more. They told me soon I would undergo a session of "Awareness Training," which would help me better identify who would be willing to give. Isn't the purpose of a "grassroots" campaign to build a broad base of support to the point where it incites a mass movement? All this does is raise money that will get poured into the Sacramento entertainment industry as lobbyists take state senators for a night of schmoozing on the town. It's putting the people who already have the power (and the money) in a position of more power.

During my "debriefing" I brought up how I felt really conflicted about shaking people down for money this way to support a lobbying battle. Notice that I didn't say I felt bad, I just felt really conflicted. This is an issue that needs to be addressed, and unfortunately, lobbying is how these things get done now. My super told me I can't think of it that way. The antecedent to "that" was not the conflict about structural flaws in the ways we make changes to the structural flaws in the macro-structure. I didn't tell him that much. I just told him I was conflicted about asking people for money. He then went on to tell me that I just have to think of what I'm doing as the 100% right thing to do.

And I certainly didn't. The first thing I thought when I walked out was "shit, I need to go do something that does some real good in the world to absolve myself for what I've been doing today." And then I realized that's not what your'e supposed to be thinking after a day of working for a grassroots organization to protect the majestic splendor and beautifully complex system that is God's Spaceship Earth. You're supposed to see all the corporate sellouts, the people splurging on needlessly frothy coffee, and all the conpsicuous consumption around you, and feel like you've done a truly good thing while everyone else keeps their head down.

Whatever other work I end up finding will probably be something where I do nothing for the common good, except maybe help people which brand of toothpaste to buy. I won't be doing the right thing, but at least I won't be doing something that keeps the wrong thing going on.

All I can say for now is try to be one of those passionate people. Follow the news, do research, make your own opinions. Drink chocolate milk if your stomach can handle it. Drive with the windows down, wear silly hats, grow your own food. Vote no matter how long the lines are, give people rides, take the bus, tell your friends to take the bus. Read books that aren't on a screen and reuse all your things until they fall apart. Remember that nothing has to be the way it is (except for things like the laws of physics because we can't change those) and make some fucking eye contact with each other for once! Say hungry. Say free. And dammit, do the best you can. Because that's all I can ask of anybody.

Sorry to break the mood with a shameless plug, but you should really consider following the Ozone Shack on twitter. https://twitter.com/TheOzoneShack

Brooklyn-Bound Chiropractor

2013-04-26T18:42:00.001-07:00

There's something special about being alone on the New York Subway in the middle of the night. Yes, there is someone operating the train but they're so removed and so invisible it might as well be an automated system, a force of nature propelling you beneath the city of illusory insomnia, because everyone must sleep at some point even if their city doesn't. You step in to an empty, silent cavern and a cascade of sound and light fills the building, heralding its destination. The doors open for you and only you. They close and seal you as the solitary entity on this mystic journey through the dark. I wondered if the Warriors would hop on, joining me on their escape to Coney Island but no one else came and I sat in a chair facing backwards.

The gentle rocking of the train jostled my rib cage, it jostled my neck and my lower back. It squeezed my calf and hamstring muscles. It loosened my knees. My back cracked, my neck cracked, my arms popped out of their sockets and back in again. My hands flopped over into the anatomical position, the scar tissue in my forearms and wrists shredding in an instant and then recoiled back, a chain reaction of cracks releasing down my digits. (You'll get arthritis doing that, I clearly remember my eighth grade English teacher telling me.) The handholds came down and grabbed my neck, the best chiropractor in the known universe yanking it to both sides, then up, then down each vertebra, releasing the tension on each one. The metal poles came in and slammed against my glutes, shoving the sciatic nerve into place and a wave shot down my legs causing every molecule to vibrate at the same perfect frequency.

They pulled apart my fingers and my toes, cracked every joint and released every muscle. Each rib was pulled as far from my spine as it would allow without being ripped out and turned into a woman and then snapped back in place, the cartilage stretched and the ligaments made new. The feeling of well-being, of alignment spread through my body, once again a complete system, no longer a crumpled mass of scar tissue and regret.

And then at the next stop the people got on again. In their suits and their makeup and their put-together personal lives, their places to go, their dates to be on and people to meet in social situations well-defined by the media. Shoes matching hats. Demeanor matching scent. Agenda matching indoctrination. And I was once again misaligned and calcified, bruised and broken, atoms vibrating in a grating dissonance.

Monsanto and GMO Corn: It Aint Easy Bein' Sleazy

2013-03-27T22:31:00.000-07:00

In case you haven't heard, while the American public was distracted by the supreme court case on Prop 8 the federal government sneaked an addition to the 2013 agricultural appropriations bill essentially protecting Monsanto and other distributors of GMO seeds. Now it was a last-minute addition, so it's not entirely fair to blame congress for passing it or Obama for signing it in to law, because it was just one point on a much larger bill, but on all levels, it really was a disservice to the American people. The provision basically states that judges can't halt the planting or sale of GMO seeds even if they pose an imminent health risk. This comes a few months after prop 37 was voted down in California, meaning that food products containing GMOs do not have to be labeled. A friend and I were lamenting this today, and he basically said that if GMOs had to be labeled, the free market would decide whether or not GMOs foods will continue to be sold; if they are as destructive as opponents claim, then the market forces will no longer make them commercially viable.

This is the friend of mine who worked at a libertarian think tank and once wrote an article for their publication that was against government restrictions on genital mutation. So I think it's safe to say he's all for a free market. (He is by no means pro-genital mutation. He just treats it as would Voltaire.) Now, I enjoy and appreciate our free market system as much as anyone. But I think in the case of GMOs, and destructive foods in general, the free market will not save us.

Let's use Flamin' Hot Cheetos as an example. If you know something about food, you know that Flamin' Hot Cheetos are bad for you. The ingredients are required by law to be on there, tucked away somewhere on the back in fine print. It's labeled, and if you read it, you realize there are some unholy things on the back, including hydrolyzed soy protein, disodium guanylate, and red 40 lake. You can't stop people from eating Flamin' Hot Cheetos. I once witnessed another friend of mine (now you know I have at least two more friends than you thought I did) down almost an entire bag of Flamin' Hot Cheetos. She would have finished the whole thing herself if I hadn't helped out and subsequently got Flamin' Hot Cheeto dust up my nose, killing my sense of smell for a week. Short of a big neon label on the packaging saying CAUTION THIS WILL MAKE YOUR THIGHS BLOAT AND YOUR TESTICLES SHRIVEL! I don't think there's any warning they could slap on it that would discourage consumers.

A century ago, people were able to successfully vote with their wallets against the Chicago-based meat packing industry, thanks largely to Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. It exposed what really went into the meat people were consuming: rat tails, bits of rope, the severed hands of Lithuanian immigrant meat packers, etc. But this was something on a macro scale. We can't even visualize what's going into our food this time around. Rat tails. Everyone can picture it and no one wants to eat it. But a protein that acts as a pesticide caused by the introduction of a vector of bacterial DNA to the genome via a retrovirus? It sounds kind of scary, but what is it to you? Looks like corn. Tastes like corn. It's not as nutritious as corn, and it might give you cancer, and it's making livestock infertile, and it's contaminating the gene pool and contributing to bacterial evolution in a way that is bad for humanity, but hey, at least it's not a rat tail.

People will do things that are bad for them if it makes them feel good. You have probably ate something with GMO corn in it. And it was probably delicious. Labeling is the first step. It will get the health-conscious and the people who can afford regular corn to shy away from GMO. Because standard corn WILL become more expensive and I believe we'll see a day when only the well off can afford non-GMO corn. Don't believe me? All vegetables used to be what is now considered "organic." Now you have to pay more for it. The next step is being able to criminally prosecute irresponsible GMO companies, and make them liable for the ecological and health damage they cause. I would like to trust the free market. I would like to trust the wisdom of the crowd. But we're the same species that can eat a whole bag of Flamin' Hot Cheetos in one sitting, that smokes a pack a day, that gets addicted to heroin. This is the species that has caused desertification, mass extinctions, and once punched a hole in the Ozone Layer all for the sake of sustained exponential growth. I don't know if we can trust ourselves to stop Monsanto.

Don't forget to follow The Ozone Shack on Twitter! It's like the Ozone Shack but less filling.
https://twitter.com/TheOzoneShack

Lentcore

2013-02-13T21:21:00.001-08:00

"There is nothing so depressing as boundless optimism."
-Wicked Witch of the West, The Wizard of Oz

The very fact that I don't know how to begin this post means that I am lacking confidence in my ability to write an opening sentence. Which is why I should simply begin writing and not look back. Because this year for Lent, I am giving up all negativity, in both thought and speech. This saccharine quadragesimal* period will probably see me dead, crushed under a gigantic pile of good vibes, but I can't exactly entertain those notions at this point.

*You like that word? I think I may have made it up.

Like every proper writer, I ooze forth a veritably palpable sludge of negativity. (I know that sentence was a bit if a criminal act but I wanted to use the phrase "veritably palpable sludge" and now I'm appeased.) I thrive on it. I thrive on the cynicism, the snarky comments. I take refuge in pessimism. Not that I'm sad. In fact, being negative makes me happy, worrying makes me feel at ease, and I'm uncomfortable saying positive or affirming things. Now that I think of it, I'm uncomfortable when people say positive or affirming things to me. Even when someone likes my facebook status, I feel like I owe them something. The universe is not right when all things are well.

If you think about it, this is really more of a survivalist trait than anything else. Natural selection favors people like me. This is probably the reason why anxiety med usage is so rampant. We had to be on the lookout for predators/Arena Football teams like the San Jose Sabercats, who were lurking behind every darkened corner and rustle in the underbrush. We also had to make sure a rival clan of hominids wasn't going to smash our heads in and carry off our womenfolk. So we evolved to be anxious, pessimistic little assholes.

There was also a race of hominids living in South Africa some thousands of years ago who basically philosophized themselves to extinction with their pessimism. Based on their brain size, anthropologists have hypothesized they had an average IQ of 150. And they just sat around thinking "why am I alive? I will one day die" and didn't hunt or reproduce. Not to mention the fact that we've got a pretty horrible evolutionary strategy going on with big brains and bipedalism; the head keeps getting bigger and bigger and the hole it has to come out of keeps getting smaller and smaller. Meanwhile Homo Sapiens were running around lighting things on fire and getting themselves killed hunting woolly mammoths. And some of these moronic Homo Sapiens probably were a little pessimistic at times, but they kept it under wraps enough to reproduce. Malnutrition also helped keep that cognitive development to a healthy minimum.

Now we grow up with adequate nutrition and schooling and Mozart in the womb. All of a sudden these big old brains get to develop to their potential and they start to realize all the things that are amiss. And some of us come to the conclusion that, not only are we going to die, but the intervening time between now and then will be full of mostly shitty things.

But much like many peoples' religious beliefs lead them to say "no" to evolution, my religious beliefs will have me say "no" to this particular aspect of evolution. For the last few years, I've given up swearing and all associated euphemisms (except for that one year where I decided I wasn't going to use forks for some reason) but that usually just led to me bottling up a little bit more of my negativity and doing a lot of grunting.

I feel like this will be an episode from a sitcom. I, the curmudgeonly character, must be positive, it will make a noticeable improvement in both my life and everyone else's life, but I will then become so obnoxiously positive the rest of the ensemble cast forces me back into my dark and gloomy state. And I will be happy to return to this state, because being negative is what really makes me happy, and is the glue that holds the world around me together. Or possibly like that episode of the Simpsons where homer tries to suppress his anger and all his pent up anger ends up turning into cysts in his neck. Except my negativity will probably manifest itself as some kind of rash or boils.

But for the next forty days, I will let that fall apart. I am going to be the most positive, obnoxious, motivational poster mounting, motivational slogan believing, exercise encouraging, humanity affirming, pastel polo shirt wearing, smile until you melt the paint off the walls optimistic.

Now I know this isn't a personal website, but I may keep a few updates on here, just in case the world worries about my dying from optimism poisoning. Because it has been known to happen.

And I cannot wait until Easter, when I can finally, once again, start acknowledging that the things that suck actually do suck.

Yelp! Review of an Amtrak Train

2013-02-08T16:09:00.002-08:00

I continue to waste my writing chops on Yelp! reviews that don't really tell you anything about the establishments in question. The following is based on my journey from LA to Seattle on Amtrak's Coast Starlight line. Surprisingly, I was by no means the first yelper to review this train. If you must know, I gave it two stars (out of five).

This is a long review so:
CLIFF NOTES
1) The workers are rude and don't know snakes from dildos when it comes to interpersonal skills.
2) The wifi does not work so..
3) Bring a book or
3a) Bring Booze
4) The experience and the people you meet are worth it.

Ok people, don't let the two stars put you off too much. The train itself is, just like Amtrak, a pretty crappy establishment, owing its continued existence to annual infusions of cash from the federal government.

However, with the right attitude and supplies (by which I mean alcohol and possibly drugs) this train can be a blast. I took this train all the way from LA to Seattle, a 32 hour ride with no delays, and you will get delayed. Being an Eagle Scout, I was prepared, bringing with me a water bottle full of cheap wine and a flask of tequila. I had planned to maybe sip on the wine while I watched movies on my laptop and save the flask for emergencies. But I was in for a much more raucous ride than I had planned for.

Between Santa Barbara and SLO I headed up to the observatory/lounge car to catch a glimpse of the scenic California coast and the UFOs we all know they're keeping at Vandenberg Air Force Base. There were some other early twentysomethings hanging out in the observation car, playing loud shitty dubstep (is there any other kind?) off laptop speakers and playing dominoes. As I walked by they invited me to sit with them. This may only have been because they thought I was carrying weed on me, probably because I was wearing a drug rug and ripped cargo shorts. But never the less, I had found some friends to pass the time.

Let me break down my crew of fellow wayfarers for you: 1) A model/softcore porn actress with bipolar who had lost custody of her daughter and claimed to have been recently living in Las Vegas with rapper Spice 1. She was consuming copious amounts of Amtrak bar wine since the wifi wasn't working. 2) A guy on ketamine who claimed to be a prophet of the post-2012 paradigm and had smuggled his chihuahua on board in a dufell bag.He would occasionally give it little sips of water. At one point he was complaining his palms were itchy. 3) A guy with blood on his shirt who said he had lost all his stuff at the border then spent a few days staying with and... keeping company a lonely middle aged rich woman living in the Hollywood Hills. 4) A guy who claimed that he was a time traveler. Now, I normally wouldn't give this kind of claim any credence, But this guy was dressed straight out of an 18th century daguerreotype, complete with a handle bar mustache which if it were waxed he could twist while kidnapping orphans.

We soon made friends with a guy who two days prior had been released from prison after serving 13 years for purchasing stolen property. Now he's tatted up to the gills, no one will hire him, estranged from everyone he knew and loved. Another glorious victory for our criminal justice system. We also expanded our crew to a few other people, none of whom were nearly as colorful, but some of whom had pretty sweet mustaches.

Later in the night, when everyone else had left the observatory car, we broke out the flasks and had a pretty good time, drinking, playing cards, cursing, etc., all the things considered to be on the far end of the moral divide pre-20th century. During stops long enough to step out and smoke, some of them would go out and pass around a joint on the platform. We were full on partying on the train. We were even playing music as loud as we could on those woefully insufficient lapotp speakers. The porn actress even flashed her tits a couple times, I shit you not. (I'm sure that Amtrak does not guarantee this will be part of your experience.)

I should warn you that all of this is clearly against Amtrak policy. We had to make sure no one saw us taking nips from the flasks or smelled any alcohol. The music is also technically not allowed but nobody seemed to care.

I would have loved to take this train in the summer to get more daylight hours for looking at the scenery, especially in the Siskyous, which you cross at night, and the mighty Columbia. That's kind of more the sun's fault than Amtrak's though.

My return journey was not nearly as fun. I was seated in the aisle when there were plenty of open empty rows around me, and when I tried to move the porter told me that I had to stay in my seat because "families would be getting on later." I told him I could move back to my assigned seat at that time, and that with a little bit of democracy and diplomacy between us passengers we could all sort this out without his intervention thankyouverymuch. He took this personally and threatened to have me thrown off the train. Maybe he's fed up from dealing with rugged individualists (read: assholes who have problems with authority figures) like myself every day, but I think this was a bit of an overreaction.

Another note about the dickishness of the staff: On a previous trip when I was taking the train from Santa Barbara to Oakland, I was not allowed on the train, although I had already paid for my ticket, because my bag was too large for carry-on. This was two days before Christmas. I asked the conductor "where's your humanity?" and he got in my face and started yelling at me. There were some expletives involved. I don't know his name, but he's a bit pudgy, with an extra chin coming out the bottom of his original one, and wears small glasses that make his eyes, already beady from the folds of fat encroaching on the sockets, look even beadier. If you see this conductor, do me a favor and fart in his general direction.

So, if you want slow (but the good kind of meditative slow) travel that's marginally cheaper than a Southwest flight, filled with fun vagabonds, this is the only way to travel. And honestly, I think it's the best way to see America. After all, it's your tax dollars propping the thing up, you might as well take advantage.

The Top 12 Albums of 2012

2013-01-09T16:25:00.000-08:00

So here it is compiled together. And in keeping with the schema used to catalog 2012 in music, this will be:
PowerTier I - The Mobots and the Bolts

Because, let's face it, these guys won the year 2012.

So without any further ado, here they are, your top 12 albums of 2012, all in one place. We'll start with:

#12 Soundgarden - King Animal

I've got to admit, I was worried about Chris Cornell's ability to continue to be Chris Cornell. I saw Soundgarden two summers ago and he looked like he had seen better days. I wouldn't have been surprised if his face had just kind of fallen off. At one point, instead of taking a guitar solo, he just destroyed his guitar by ripping out his pickups with a flathead screwdriver and made us all listen to the strange sounds it made. Being Chris Cornell is a trying occupation, that's for sure. I still can't tell if he is actually a genius or behaves in a way that tricks everyone into thinking he is, but either one is a feat. So he might as well be one.
By Crooked Steps by Soundgarden on Grooveshark

#11 Hot Water Music - Exister

The Tampa punk quartet got back together for their first LP in eight years, characterized by tight harmonies and even tighter beats. I think what a lot of the albums recognized this year are proving is that you are, in fact, never too old to rock and roll. Especially with Ian Anderson. It makes me wonder how you can keep the attitude up that long. After 2012 kicked me in the balls I don't know if I'll ever be able to outwardly display much of the rock n' roll aesthetic at all. At least right now. I just don't have the willpower. I just want to sit inside and sip mint tea with a little honey in it. Maybe watch reruns of bad sitcoms. But this will hopefully get me out the door. But if the revolution comes before then, it had better be televised, because that's the only way I'll get to see it.
Boy, You're Gonna Hurt Someone by Hot Water Music on Grooveshark

#10 The Gaslight Anthem - Handwritten

The day before I saw them in concert, I tweeted at frontman Brian Fallon. It said that if they played the song "We're Getting a Divorce, You Keep the Diner," we would buy the band a round. Alas, they had a setlist that they were sticking to, and they weren't doing much from their first LP. I'm not complaining, it was probably the last time most of us are going to get to see them in a venue that small. My friends and I kept making requests but Brian Fallon kept blaming it on Benny Horowitz, that he needs the setlist to be exactly as they rehearsed. He was kind of drunk and also probably lying. He also kept ordering expensive drinks for other members of the band and sticking them with the tab. We were rocking out so hard the band noticed, and Fallon pointed at me and said "watch out for this guy, he's on bath salts or something." Because, you know, it was topical at the time. It's nice to get noticed by the band without needing to show your tits.
"45" by The Gaslight Anthem on Grooveshark

#9 Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros - Here

This is the band that lives in a bus and goes about barefoot. Three years ago, they captured our collective heart with their hit "Home." Now, they face the challenge of following that up, and the consensus is that they haven't. Well I say to hell with consensus. This album may be a bit more laid back, and they've matured a little. Maybe not too much though. Thematically, it's mostly Beatles brand "love" and vague pantheism, not very weighty stuff, but that doesn't really bother me. I'm about the music, maaaaaaaaaaaan. The textures are delicious - rubbery bass, ragged drums, clean guitar work, tight vocal harmonies. Oh yeah, and the horns. There might not be as iconic a horn riff as there was on "Home," but they use it well.

That's What's Up by Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros on Grooveshark

#8 Father John Misty - Fear Fun

Posting by Trevor Crown

Josh Tillman’s latest project, Father John Misty, ascended so mythically into the musical consciousness this year that his emergence deserves comparison to Bon Iver’s in 2008. You’ve heard at least three versions of the mountain-man-in-a-secluded-cabin story, but have you heard the one about the Fleet Fox who moved to California in a van full of shrooms, reinvented his musical persona, and proliferated widespread grooving? If you haven’t already, you will soon.

Misty’s debut for Sub Pop, Fear Fun, pays its debts to Sgt. Pepper’s and 1970’s folk rock with interest by innovating even more than it steals. With Tillman’s strong lead vocals, rich harmonies and tight instrumentation, lyrical substance would almost seem too much to ask of him, but Tillman’s lyrics are perhaps his greatest strength. Fear Fun wryly depicts Los Angeles in all of its glamorous mania, and will keep you dancing (or at the very least, swaying) to its final note. There’s just no sense in fighting it; let the groove take you.
I'm Writing a Novel by Father John Misty on Grooveshark

Trevor Crown is made out of sunshine and freedom. With his winning smile, he is everything America needs, and will become president in 2044.

#7 Dave Matthews Band - Away From the World

I'm not sure why everyone identifies DMB as the epitome of conformity and unoriginality in musical taste. Here's something crazy for all you haters to chew on: he makes really good music. Good arrangements, good songwriting, and a tight, professional band. Maybe that's why everyone hates them. They're professional and polished and well rehearsed. Was Steely Dan that hated in their heyday? This album is packed with full orchestrations and phat sounds, deftly shifting through textures and moods. Just like you remember DMB always doing. Except you don't, you just know of Dave Matthews as someone who people you hate and drive trucks listen to. Which I don't understand, because I've never actually heard Dave Matthews coming from a truck. I have heard him in Starbucks, which I guess gives a little weight to the argument. I'll have to ask the Ozone Shack's pop culture consultants, as soon as I get some.

And you know what, for the musical sample, I'm going to give you the nine minute suite, because it's fucking awesome.
Drunken Soldier by Dave Matthews Band on Grooveshark

#6 First Aid Kit - The Lion's Roar

Post by Justin Flom

There I was. A normal Friday morning grinding through Los Angeles traffic in order to work for Morgan Freeman. As a change of pace from whatever unmemorable thing I normally listened to in the car with my roommate, we decided to cast our luck with NPR. Or at least, I think it was NPR. I may be wrong. Regardless, I was not in the least suspecting that my life was missing a pair of unbelievably talented Swedish sisters.

The radio gave me a small sampler, saying that the timeless-sounding sister act, First Aid Kit would be on the air from 9 until 12. The problem was that my work started at 9.

When we got into the office, I weaseled my way into getting an errand mission from the taskmaster. I borrowed the car and listened the hell out of the reassuring, gentle, yet bizarrely impassioned relationship between these two singers. It turned out that Johanna and Klara were the perfect companions for a grinding caravan to the Santa Monica Costco.

Their message and guitar was hard-hitting when it needed to be, but unlike the par for my style of music, it didn't get you riled up. First Aid Kit exists to make you feel things you never have before.

The next step was to buy tickets for their Hollywood show which was... that night!

I dialed up my folk-loving friend back in Long Beach, and waited for confirmation from a third party, all the while, longing for the reassuring ringing of the multifaceted instrumentals and soft voice of my new discovery.

Then, the taskmaster sent me to the basement to file things for Morgan Freeman. Don't get me wrong, I'm ecstatic I had the opportunity to organize one of Morgan Freeman's storage rooms, but the nature of the basement project put me out of radio contact for two hours and the show sold out. Down, but not defeated, I went home and bought their new album, The Lion's Roar.

It's a journey of unique feelings. The title song stabs into your pride and motivates and convicts at the same time. It flows right into "Emmylou," which turns you 180 and makes you want to fall in love with someone thoughtful. The corners just keep turning on this album, from "Blue" to "I Found a Way" to the concluding, Conor Oberst-featuring "King of the World."

First Aid Kit, at least for me, is helping to set a new standard for up-and-coming mainstream folk. In a genre that will pretty much accept any amalgamation of bearded men with guitars, the Söderberg sisters, with their dozens of inventive instruments and near impeccable melodic play, are queens. The music they make will never admit so, but they know it and you should to.

Emmylou by First Aid Kit on Grooveshark

Justin Flom is a filmmaker, board game designer, and sideburns enthusiast living in Long Beach, California.

#5 Van Morrison - Born to Sing: No Plan B

Continuing with the trend of old dudes, it's Van Morrison coming in for fifth, with what might be the best album title since Guns n Roses' The Spaghetti Incident? This album is the product of a performer who's been perfecting his craft for decades, and it shows. Few have been around the block as many times as Van Morrison, or had a a career with as many ups and downs. But after all the tribulations, coping with fame, (and drugs!) he knows, and we all know, that this guy was born to sing.
Open the Door (to Your Heart) by Van Morrison - www.musicasparabaixar.org on Grooveshark

#4 Of Monsters and Men - My Head Is an Animal

This album was released in the band's native Iceland in 2011, but the US release was this year, and dammit if I'm not a xenocentric bastard! It's a 2012 release!

It's been a good year for Norse acts. Of Monsters and Men came to fame after winning Musiktilraunir, the Icelandic national Battle of the Bands. Being a Scandinavian thing, I imagine that it resembles an actual battle a lot more than it's American counterpart. Iceland may be a cold dark place half the year, but the tag team vocals of Nanna Bryndís Hilmarsdóttir and Ragnar "Raggi" Þórhallsson (I had to use their full names because they're awesome) resonate with warmth, and the horn section, when utilized, is downright sizzlin'. If you're picturing Bjork when you think of music from Iceland, don't. While the album cover might be deliberately strange, the music isn't. The sound falls somewhere into the fringes of Indie Folk, but without any of the pretension that comes with the genre in the American market. Just listen to the horn riff on "Little Talks" and you'll be hooked, I promise.
Little Talks by Of Monsters and Men on Grooveshark

#3 Amadou & Mariam - Folila

In May, I submitted something to a publication, which I thought had no chance of getting published. In my attached bio, all I said was that I spend my free time on Google Earth, looking at satellite images of places I will never go. This is kind of true. I will sometimes go on Google Earth and just sort of dick around, looking at Earth from space. I'm kinda weird sometimes. Oftentimes I'll find myself looking at the Sahel of Northern Mali. It's a majestic landscape with some incredible history, even if most of it in the last few hundred years have been depressing. (The loss of the University of Sankore is an event that should be mourned the same as the Library of Alexandria.) And this year's civil war didn't exactly turn the page on a brighter chapter.

But there's still vibrancy coming out of Mali, notably in its musical acts. While Tinariwen may rock out a little harder, Amadou & Mariam have distinguished themselves as the ambassadors of Mali to the World, with their take on the Desert Blues sound, adding in rock guitars, Syrian violins, an Afro-Cuban horn section, Middle Eastern Flutes, Tablas, and percussion of the mysterious Dogon people. The husband and wife couple of Amadou Bagayoko and Mariam Doumbia are both blind musicians who met in a school for the blind have been jammin ever since. On this album they bring in a host of excellent collaborators, including Santigold, TV on the Radio, and Bertrand Cantat.
Wily Kataso by Amadou & Mariam on Grooveshark

#2 Andrew Bird - Break It Yourself

I din't realize how great I had things when I discovered this album back in July. The days were long, I was subleasing a room in a great apartment, I slept on a pad on the floor which was great for my back, no furniture except for a rocking chair I found on the curb, the walls were lined with books since I had no bookshelf, I had an amp, a guitar, and my standup bass in the center, and a ceiling fan with three settings. I had lots of time to dick around and write but I was also getting my edumacation in order. And I was dissatisfied with how uncomplicated my life was. Well now shit is complicated. And I'm not exactly digging it. But this album allows me to be nostalgic for a time that almost lasted long enough to be real.

What, you want me to talk about the music? Listen to the fucking music yourself! It's great though. I don't know why I'm such a curmudgeon. I'm listening to the album right now and nobody should be anything but ecstatic while listening to it. If you need me I'll be thinking about going to IHOP but ending up not actually going to IHOP.
Orpheo Looks Back by Andrew Bird on Grooveshark

#1 Coheed and Cambria - The Afterman: Ascension

You never know quite what to expect from New York based prog-something outfit Coheed and Cambria, so I'll admit that I'm not exactly clear as to whether or not this is the first half of a double album or the title simply is another symptom of being a comic book band. (For those uninitiated, Coheed and Cambria's material tells the story of a comic book series written by frontman Claudio Sanchez.) So it feels a little premature to be giving this album any accolades when it might not be technically finished. However, I couldn't see myself doing anything else.

If we need proof for life in space, we need only to look to Coheed. While it may be the story of a fanciful science fiction universe, there is more real human emotion in the songwriting than most bands could dream of. This is the band that wrote a song about a talking bicycle explaining the pitfalls of love. The songs may be about strange people in a universe whose mechanics we cannot understand, but in telling their stories, Coheed captures insightful facets of the human condition. Take this lyric, for example, from the title track: "Your selfishness has robbed you of the man you could have been." The band is further energized by the return of the original drummer Josh Eppard and new bass player Zach Cooper (formerly of AM to AM), who stepped in to fill in the big shoes of Michael Todd after he was arrested for robbing a Walgreens in order to fund an Oxycontin addiction. (Rock n Roll muthafuqqaz!) Like 2003's In Keeping Secrets of a Silent Earth and 2005's Good Apollo, this album is an instant classic, something I'm truly happy came out this (last?) year.

In fact, that, I think, has been the criteria for all these albums in the top 12 of 2012. They're the albums that we're truly lucky to have in this time. Sometimes I was torn feeling that the "best" albums weren't always being listed as high as they should have been. But I don't think that's exactly what this project is about anymore. It's about the albums that I can look back on and say "I'm glad that came out at the time it did." Sometimes we didn't get the music we deserved, but we got the music we needed, and I'll take that. Especially in this time. Sometimes it's hard to be optimistic about the future of music, especially popular music, when you hear the state of what's out there today.
Key Entity Extraction IV: Evagria the Faithful by Coheed and Cambria on Grooveshark

PowerTier II - The Mars Rovers

2012-12-30T00:07:00.002-08:00

The countdown to the top 12 albums of 2012 is further protracted. First we have to get to the ones that almost made it. Honestly, had I compiled the order on a different day, they might have.

Howlin' Rain - The Russian Wilds

It was the year 2012 and I was convinced rock n' roll had departed for the Undying Lands, marking the end of the third age. I even scribbled down the lines "The fate of rock n' roll proves / That everything I love will eventually leave." But it may be still alive in this cathedral of neo-classic rock, complete with gritty vocals, driving backbeats, crunchy guitars, and an almost 1:1 song to organ solo ratio. Evoking all of the epic sounds I wish I had experienced in the 70's, The Russian Wilds is something like a tour-de-force, but not as overused of a phrase.
Dark Side by Howlin Rain on Grooveshark

Jack White - Blunderbuss

I think I lost a lot of potential friends by going up to strangers on my way to class one day and singing, in my best overdriven falsetto, "I EAT SIX-TEEN SAL-TEEN CRACKERS THEN I LICK MY FINGERS!" But if they didn't get the reference, then maybe I don't want to be friends with them anyway. White comes out with a high energy, hard grooving album, which sounds like higher-fi version of his previous acts.
Hip (Eponymous) Poor Boy by Jack White on Grooveshark

Lord Huron - Lonesome Dreams

We've had to put up with a lot of self-indulgent indie singer songwriters in the past few years, most of whom were two white to now what a real beat is and instead lost us in a fog of self-indulgent harmonization and flannel. Since they are, on paper, an indie folk band hailing from LA, Lord Huron could easily be a caricature of the aforementioned type of band. Sure, I did discover them via Shazam (on an Android NOT an iphone, people) in an overpriced knicknack shop of some kind (with wooden spoons for forty dollars, why I was there I have no idea) but I went home and listened to them one GrooveShark, not Spotify! While eating spaghetti, made with no organic ingredients! Then I probably watched football, drank a Coors Banquet Beer, and argued against performative gender roles! I guess if I'm going to be usefull they sound kind of like Local Natives but without the weak attempt to sound worldly.
Ends Of The Earth by Lord Huron on Grooveshark

The Sea and Cake - Runner

Last year, I described The Sea and Cake's sound as the molecular distillation of cool. I stand by that statement. When you're trekking through Bakersfield, this is good music to keep the zombies away. (I'm sure Bakersfield is a very nice city with much to offer but I have yet to see it.)
On and On by The Sea and Cake on Grooveshark

Dispatch - Circles Around the Sun

Maybe if I had got the chance to see these songs performed live I would have rated this a little higher, but I did not get to see this with the added magic of live Dispatch. They're all great tracks in their own way, but what makes you fall in love with a Dispatch song is the live rendition. That's the way it was with the new EP that came out last year, and I hope it will be that way when I see them again. Don't get me wrong, I am ecstatic this exists. January 1st, 2011 the band announced they were touring again, and I got my tickets right away. Then I found out there was a new EP. This wasn't just a reunion tour. This was a full on resurrection. Then we got word of a new album. I know it's not quite the same as when they were a vague rumor on the breeze that you would then discover on Napster and experience full force when they rolled up to your college campus in two beat up vans, but still, they're a force the universe needs. Also, the title track may be the best song about space exploration since "A Space Oddity," which, coming from the Ozone Shack, is saying something.
Sign of the Times by Dispatch on Grooveshark

The Sheepdogs - The Sheepdogs

"My heart is won by southern fantasy / could you understand how much that means to me." These lyrics encapsulate all you need to know about the Sheepdogs, who might be the Allman Brothers Band reincarnated as Canadians. Granted, they are from Saskatoon, which is kind of like the Deep South of Canada. Well, actually, maybe that's Calgary. Much like the Gaslight Anthem wants to be in the universe of a 50's motorcycle movie, I can tell The Sheepdogs want to be the hard rockin, hard drinking, heavy tokin guys raising hell in backwater Mississippi. I don't know, don't quote me on that. Just listen to this album.
How Late, How Long by The Sheepdogs on Grooveshark

The Bouncing Souls - Comet (Also Winner of Album Cover of the Year)

The Bouncing Souls prove that you can keep make high-energy, melodic punk without losing any of the attitude or the edge. These guys have been around for a while, at the forefront of New Jersey's pogo punk scene, making quality music for two decades now. (In fact, they started playing as a band before I was born, so when people tell me to tone it down, I can just point at these guys and say you're never too old to fist pump.) I first put on this album driving myself to the emergency room after I got a concussion.

Why was I driving myself to the emergency room? Well, on a Monday, I gave blood, and since I had probably drank too much Coors Banquet Beer and not enough water during the preceding weekend, and had only eaten a pack of fruit snacks and trail mix that morning, I was dehydrated my blood sugar was low. When I stood up upon finishing the machine sucking my blood out, my blood pressure fell over the fiscal cliff and I passed out, hitting my head on the tiled floor. When they revived me, my blood pressure was 80 over 20 - any lower and they would have had to defibrillate me. I went home with nausea, hating light and sound, but thought it was just my brain starved of blood and nutrients. Tuesday night I went to a wine and dessert thing and puked after two and a half glasses of wine, but I thought "ok, I just gave blood, maybe blood loss affects your blood alcohol content more than I thought." Wednesday I felt even shittier, and I assumed that it was some weird kind of hangover. Thursday I felt even worse and I realized something was wrong. Friday morning I called the blood bank and they told me that I should drive myself to the emergency room to be evaluated for a concussion. ANYWAY, I was worried about my ability to maintain focus, so I put on loud, energetic punk to keep me going. And I made it. I'm still here. Thanks guys.
Fast Times by Bouncing Souls on Grooveshark

Stay tuned for the top 12, coming tomorrow and Monday!

PowerTier III - The Ridiculously Photogenic Guys

2012-12-29T17:26:00.003-08:00

The continuing countdown to the top 12 albums of 2012

Neil Young with Crazy Horse - Psychedelic Pill

Neil young makes a statement here. That statement is: "I am senile, and I don't care what you think." This album starts with a twenty seven minute jam, and has two other songs well over the fifteen minute mark. He also states that he's going to "get a hip-hop haircut," which is the best evidence agaisnt anybody that they're going senile. And because he's senile, Neil Young does whatevere the hell he wants. Therefore, Neil Young proves that rockers are like fine wine: they can age into the perfect state of coolness. This music is best listened to loud. Headphones are acceptable, as long as they drown out all ambient noise of the supermarket. I listened to this album while grocery shopping and I was lost in a haze of a bygone time, when this supermarket would be smaller and their might be woodchips on the floor. The lighting would be a halogen tone, rather than the weird soft warm brown light they fill that place with now. It was a time when they needed get high and turn their amps up just to breathe man. Neil is keeping it a live.

Silversun Pickups - Neck of the Woods

It's tough to be the Silversun Pickups. When you're a band with such a definitive sound - hell, when you invented your own sound - you have the curse of having to push boundaries and also sound just like you did. I know people who say that the original EP, Pikul, was the only "true" Silversun Pickups album. That is, it is the only thing made by the Silversun Pickups that sounds like the Silversun Pickups should sound. So this might have been a bit of an underwhelming release. But it did what I hoped it would do: retain the Silversun Pickups aesthetic while expanding into new kinds of sounds. And really, that's what every band should do. Unfortunately, that kind of artistic sensibility gets bashed by fans and critics alike. Anyone who does so is a martyr in the Ozone Orthodoxy.

Alabama Shakes - Boys and Girls

This was the perfect soundtrack for riding on a Greyhound bus. I was on the bus because they wouldn't let me use a hamper as a suitcase on an Amtrak train. I apparently need to invest in a duffle bag or something. But this music is the kind of music where you can't buy a duffle bag. You can't even by whiskey to drown your sorrows at missing the train. And there is no nice man who will let you exchange your train ticket for a bus ticket. Also, the protagonist of the title track is 22, which is something I can relate to.

Hang Loose by Alabama Shakes on Grooveshark

Calexico - Algiers

While I seem surprisingly willing to talk about music on the internet, I have a hard time talking to strangers about music in real life. I don't remember how it happened, but I told someone that I was excited to listen to the new Calexico album. He asked what they sounded like. The best I could come up with was "kinda like if Wilco had a lot of south of the border influences." Laid back, dark and brooding, sweeping horn swells, acoustic guitar montunos, upright bass, the perfect soundtrack for aimlessly wandering the southwest.
Sinner in the Sea by Calexico on Grooveshark

Michael Kiwanuka - Home Again

The son of Ugandan parents fleeing the Amin regime, London-based singer Michael Kiwanuka might be the heir to the legacy of Soul music. Home Again mixes old-school sounds in with the singer/songwriter aesthtic and a tinge of afrobeat horns. And he pulls off the duality of the great Motown singers who could project both swagger and insecure longing at the same time.
Tell Me a Tale by Michael Kiwanuka on Grooveshark

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - The Heist

I think this is the first time I've recognized an iTunes number one selling album with more than a blurb. Maybe Dispatch's eponymous EP got to number two, I'm not sure. But that's not the point right now. The album was independently recorded and produced by the duo. No major label was involved. I'm not mentioning it because it's what makes this album remarkable. I'm mentioning it because I think this is what makes this album great. Mainstream rap is clogged with excess and extravagances, but this polished without being ornate. Bonus points for the humility as well; most mainstream rap gravitates to statements of grandiosity, and while I know that trash talking is a viable element of the art form, once you get an album contract you have to deviate from that subject matter. Macklemore will admit he has problems, owns up to his alcoholism, stands up to homophobia, and, allegedly, only has twenty dollars in his pocket.
Can't Hold Us (feat. Ray Dalton) by Macklemore & Ryan Lewis on Grooveshark

The Mars Volta - Noctourniquet

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala have come a long way since leaving El Paso in a van with At the Drive-In at age seventeen. This album may represent the band coming full circle, in their own strange way. When it was in production, Rodriguez-Lopez described Noctourniquet as "just future punk!" He also was willing to relinquish some creative control, which he has had a notoriously tight grip on previously. This is stripped down, with mostly standard length songs, no ornate horn sections, no ambient buzzing, no five movement suites. Most of the weirdness, and in fact, most of the sounds in general, are electronically generated, and the intricate drum beats, I suppose, make this their dubstep phase.

When I saw the Mars Volta in 2011, they were a minimal five-piece, with one of the members only using a MacBook to make sounds of some variety. Cedric was running around stage, dancing with the mic stand, doing backflips, and at one point tried to rip his shirt off, but for the most part they were subdued. Omar was motionless, the top button on his shirt buttoned, concentrated on picking out the intricate polyrhythms on his left-handed guitar. At this year's Coachella reunion of At the Drive-In, reports indicate, there was no rocking, no thrashing, the energy they brought to the stage as teenagers wasn't there anymore. Being the Mars Volta seems to be taxing on everybody involved. It's been eleven years since De-Loused In the Comatorium, and with every year my hopes that we're going to get another one of those diminishes a little more. This year I think I was willing to put them down for good. But I'm glad for the output from this duo on the last two decades, including this fine piece of whacky craftsmanship.
Molochwalker by The Mars Volta on Grooveshark

And speaking of bands in their dubstep phase...

Muse - The 2nd Law

Yes, all you die-hard Muse fans are going to hate me for recognizing this one. It's like the bastard child that should be locked in the closet and fed fish heads and residue from the gruel pot. Say what you will, but this concept-ish album about entropy may be the band's finest effort. Sure, the title suite is a little, well, dubsteppy. They were always trying to be epic, they always had dense carpet of sound going on. Even the haters have to admit, there is some solid guitar work and impressive vocals on this album. Every band has that album when they are at or past the apex of their stardom and puts out their "mature" effort, and I think for Muse, this is that album. Not that it's a bad thing at all. It's much more carefully constructed than The Resistance, and the musicianship is better than even on Absolution. Just don't let the whole entropy thing bum you out.
Panic Station by Muse on Grooveshark

Check back soon for PowerTier II

The 2012 Album Awards Show Pregame Festivities!

2012-12-28T23:20:00.000-08:00

I think I listened to a lot of music this year. During the long, protracted, kick in the balls that was 2012, there was a soundtrack of passably good music with a couple of standouts playing in the background. This is where that music gets recognized.

I spent a lot of time anticipating making this, but once I got into the process, it was terrifying. What if I snubbed some albums, what if I overrated some? Will I lose friends over this? Will I get a severed horse's head on my pillow? The answer to all of those questions is probably yes.

So here's how this works. The top 12 are in their own PowerTier. (Since this is 2012 I suppose that could be #PowerTier, but it's not because hashtags are Ragtime and I'm a classically trained pianist in 1910's Atlanta.) Everything else is grouped into PowerTiers, which can range in size from one album to infinity albums. Outside of PowerTier I albums are not ranked with respect to other albums within their own PowerTier. Albums in the same PowerTier deserve roughly around the same level of recognition, in the eyes of the Ozone Shack.

Of course, there's the disclaimer that this is entirely my opinion. I am not ranking these albums on how they correspond to the Ideal Platonic Universe of Good Music. There is no such thing. The world is only what we make of it.

PowerTier VIII - The Benghazi Coverups
David Byrne & St. Vincent - Love this Giant
Good Old War - Come Back as Rain
State Radio - Rabbit Inn Rebellion
Chiddy Bang - Breakfast
Titus Andronicus - Local Business
The Vaccines - Come of Age
Bad Books - II

PowerTier VII - The Eastwood Debates

Tame Impala - Lonerism
Psychedelic trip-rock that might have been trying to sound a little too much like late-era Beatles, especially in Kevin Parker's vocals. I mean, even the color scheme of the cover is evocative of Abbey Road.
Mind Mischief by Tame Impala on Grooveshark

Gojira - L'enfant Sauvage
I guess the French can shred. This was the soundtrack while I did Christmas shopping at the Half Price Bookstore in Berkeley. I got some pretty angry gifts.
Born In Winter by GOJIRA on Grooveshark

The Cult - Choice of Weapon
Post-punk meets classic rock with the epic sensibilities of a prog outfit.
The Wolf by The Cult on Grooveshark

The Maccabees - Given to the Wild
This spacey, well crafted rock made one of my monthly bike rides to K Mart for overpriced cleaning supplies and RC Cola much more bearable. Also, they used Andy Goldsworthy art for the cover, which is bonus points in my book.
Child by The Maccabees on Grooveshark

The XX - Coexist
I heard about this one on NPR. NP-fucking-R! Where's my tote bag?
Angels by The xx on Grooveshark

Godspeed You! Black Emperror - Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!
The band who already gave us too many exclamation marks gives us too more. This is good music to listen to while you are playing Civilization IV on Ambien. In my personal experience anyway. The Sumerian fighter planes kicked my ass though.
We Drift Like Worried Fire by Godspeed You! Black Emperor on Grooveshark

PowerTier VI - The Rookie Quarterbacks

Deftones - Koi No Yokan
One kind of sludge that even Captain Planet can get behind!
Poltergeist by Deftones on Grooveshark

The Tallest Man on Earth - There's no Leaving Now
The sophomore effort of Swedish singer-songwriter Kristian Matssen offers a richer and more diversified sonic texture. This was a pretty good year for Norse outfits, as we'll find out later.
1904 by The Tallest Man On Earth on Grooveshark

Circa Survive - Violent Waves
Where will this album fit into the Great Taxonomy of the World? I'm not sure. Like the Ozone Shack, it will probably end up in the miscellaneous pile.
Phantasmagoria by Circa Survive on Grooveshark

The Shins - Port of Morrow
I purposely underrated this. Maybe because I was waiting for it for so long, or maybe because I know that Pitchfork overrated it (although I have no intention of giving them more traffic by finding out). This once groundbreaking group is settling into their comfortable middle period.
No Way Down by The Shins on Grooveshark

Ian Anderson - Thick as a Brick 2
The follow up chronicling the last thirty years of one of rock n' roll's favorite conceptees, Gerald Bostock. Jethro Tull has aged relatively well. Maybe a little depressing, but so is the fate of rock n' roll.
Adrift and Dumfounded by Ian Anderson on Grooveshark

Anathema - Weather Systems
Symphonic prog metal with guitar textures that sort of remind me of Joey Eppard's style with the edge taken off. Good for implacable nostalgia and a vague sense of emotional dissatisfaction
Untouchable part 1 by Anathema on Grooveshark

Tier V - The Joseph Gordon-Levitts

Neon Trees - Picture Show
Well I'll be damned if this isn't my second guiltiest pleasure of the year. Also, their drummer is hot.
Moving in the Dark by Neon Trees on Grooveshark

Matisyahu - Spark Seeker
Christian Rock is a multibillion dollar industry and generates mostly bland garbage. Jewish reggae is confined to a handful of artists and has a consistently better output. What can I say, God's chosen people.
Fire of Freedom by Matisyahu on Grooveshark

The Big Pink - Future This
Ok, this looks like it's shaping up to be the Guilty Pleasure PowerTier. But I like music for the way it sounds, not what it sounds like. Yeah, this album is a little electronic hipstery. Actaully, I don't know if it does, that's just what somebody said once. I think his favorite band is Pennywise, so his judgment is questionable.
Hit the Ground (Superman) by The Big Pink on Grooveshark

Isis - Temporal
A fantastic mix of thrash and prog metal textures. This collection of unreleased demos from the band's career highlight's what made them such a dynamic act.
Ghost Key (Alternate Demo Version) by Isis on Grooveshark

The Lumineers - The Lumineers
The latest toast of the neo-folk movement serves up forty two minutes of catchy melodies and heavy pickin'.
Big Parade by The Lumineers on Grooveshark

Rush - Clockwork Angels
Geddy Lee, Neil Pert, Eric Lifesen. One of the power trio of power trios (the other two being Cream and the Jimmy Hendrix Experience), Rush should have burned out a long time ago. But after their synthesizer era and being reduced to a gag in I Love You, Man, Rush is still up and kicking with Clockwork Angels.
The Anarchist by Rush on Grooveshark

Plants and Animals - The End of That
I can't decide if this is alternative rock or just rock. Or are they just the same thing now? Like Rush, they're also Canadian. This is good music for staring at storm drain runoff cutting through a sandbank on the beach and thinking about the disparity between human time and geological time.
The End Of That by Plants and Animals on Grooveshark

Minus the Bear - Infinity Overhead
This one is good for watching pelicans on their fall migration. They look like organic WWII bombers (pelicans, not Minus the Bear).
Lies and Eyes by Minus the Bear on Grooveshark

Power Tier IV - The Higgs Bosons

Passion Pit - Gossamer
A surprisingly sophisticated album for a band whose name is a euphemism for vagina. (I was going to use "Take a Walk" for the sample, but let's face it, you've already heard it.)
Hideaway by Passion Pit on Grooveshark

Grizzly Bear - Shields
Before I gave this a listen, I was thinking "pff, ok, Grizzly Bear, this'll be interesting." But by some divine miracle, obnoxious stubble didn't appear on my face, and an American Spirit didn't appear in my hand. Sometimes the thick textures in the slower songs still bother me, but I'm willing to look the other way.
Sleeping Ute by Grizzly Bear on Grooveshark

Chromatics - Kill for Love
It's not hard to get lost in the haunting beauty of this electric tapestry. Extra ballerness points for opening with a Neil Young cover.
These Streets Will Never Look the Same by Chromatics on Grooveshark

Hot Chip - In Our Heads
Britain's weirdest semi-mainstream band reloads with another fantastic release, possibly their best yet. Eight years ago, they were claiming to be a sighted Stevie Wonder, and now they claim the world is no longer round. Yep, not much has changed, except for maybe higher production values.
Motion Sickness by Hot Chip on Grooveshark

Nightmare River Band - Last Goodbye
Underground Punk/Bluegrass/Country band drops their horn section for what is, regrettably, a sophomore slump after their fantastically bizarre Call the Cops!! Am I disappointed? Maybe. But not too much. We're lucky to have them.

Special Honorable Mentions
Before we go on to PowerTier III, I want to take time to mention two albums

Album that I'm Mentioning to Make It Seem Like I Get It: Dirty Projectors - Swing Lo Magellan
But really, I don't.
Offspring Are Blank by Dirty Projectors on Grooveshark
You with me?

Check back soon for PoerTiers III, II, and the top 12 Albums of 2012!

Yelp Review of an Undisclosed Chinese Restaurant

2012-11-27T23:46:00.004-08:00

I grew up down the street and my family would go here on a semi-weekly basis when I was growing up. Now it's always the first place I go when I'm home. It might just be the MSG or maybe it's all the countless cherished memories I have here with family and friends, but there is no eatery that can provide me with as strong a feeling of satisfaction.

Every time the decor seems to get classier by a few quanta, to the point where they now have piped-in soothing piano music, white tablecloths, and even some artwork on the walls. The place is usually pretty empty since most of their clientele does takeout, but eating in is a great experience. (Fun fact: there used to be a sign out front that advertised free valet parking, but since their parking lot consists of about ten parking spaces in two separate lots and they are at the intersection of two narrow streets, this was always a lie.) You can't really go wrong with any of the entrees, except the walnut shrimp look like are covered with a mixture of phlegm and whale semen. But don't let that dissuade you, the walnut shrimp are delicious once you get past the appearance.

What most people don't realize about this place is how incredibly well stocked the bar is. It's probably the most under-utilized stash of liquor this side of prohibition. However, be warned: although they have all the necessary ingredients to make sake bombs, it's a trap. When my friends and I asked for some, the bartender seemed confused. A Chinese man sitting at the bar tried to tell him what we wanted, and all of a sudden they were yelling at each other in impassioned Cantonese. The two waiters and the maitre d' got involved in the discussion, and then even the manager got involved, causing it to escalate into a six person hustle and a bustle. We had created a mini Chinese soap opera. To quell the situation, we just asked for three Saporros and three cups of sake. We thought this was the end of the saga, but as it turns out, their glasses are not conducive to sake-bombing. They taper about halfway down to the point where the sake cup gets stuck, blocking some of the beer at the bottom until you tilt your glass all the way back, at which point you have to brace yourself to keep the dregs from spilling all over you.

When the bombs drop and there is nothing but fallout and burned cities and black soot blocks out the sun, I will fight my way through hordes of mutants in a beat up diesel pickup truck, on the off chance that this is the one place from the world I once knew that has survived.

Strangers with Wi-fi

2012-11-26T16:45:00.002-08:00

My demographic was raised to be terrified of the internet. We were first exposed to it at the same time as our parents. It was just as new to them as it was to us. Back then our parents didn't see it as being useful for very much, except my dad was very excited about this whole "e-mail" thing. What they did realize was that it was a way for their kids to talk to strangers without ever leaving the house. Which meant, of course, that pedophiles from the Tron universe were going to scan us into the computer and cybermolest us.

You would hear vague rumors that almost coalesced into anecdotes about a kid who went missing because of someone they met in an AOL chat room, how this stranger with cybercandy figured out where they lived and where they went to school and one day the kid just up and got abducted. Of course, you would have to voluntarily divulge this information, but try telling that to a panicked parent. So they forwarded bad jokes to each other via their hotmail accounts and poured themselves stiff drinks. Or at least my parents did. And you know, I really don't blame them.

Then the Bush Era rolled around and it wasn't the pedophiles that were out to get us on the internet, it was the g-men. The FBI was reading every email you sent. The internet was a series of tubes, and each of them passed through a shadowy basement room in the J. Edgar Hoover building where dissidents were held without warrants and branded with cigarettes by scotch-sipping men in black. You were one email saying that all the guests at the party would be "blown away by your cake" from going to Guantanamo. These were true facts.

And now we're all in a panic about Mark Zuckerberg having rights to the information that we publicly broadcast using a medium he created. Unless you're Amish or my mom or some Yupik tribesman wandering the frozen tundra chewing on seal blubber, you've seen the statuses where people are making a disclaimer about their profile being their intellectual property. I actually don't know what the content of this chain status is. I haven't read it. Because I know that it's meaningless. You already agreed to everything they asked when you created your profile.

I don't even care if they use any of it. What's up there for facebook corporate to appropriate anyway. Pictures where I'm awkwardly tagged in the background? My futile attempts to be witty with statuses like "Fabric softener? I hardly know her!" The movies/bands/books I say I like in order to project some kind image of myself? Go ahead, take all of it.

In fact, it probably should be their intellectual property rights. The you on facebook isn't you, it's a version of you that was created by the constraints of the medium, and by the culture of sharing bits of pieces of your life that wouldn't exist without social media. If they have the patience to dig through all the garbage on my profile, then they deserve whatever turds they end up polishing.

Also, the first person to make this post their status gets a free Ozone Shack prototype coffee mug. Go!

Paralysis Epidemic Adventure Live Blog

2012-11-23T15:09:00.000-08:00

So today is a monumental event. Somehow, I got tricked into playing Dungeons and Dragons. I will be live-blogging the entire process. This is apparently the third part to a campaign that has already been underway, so it behooves me to provide some backstory.

Backstory: A plague that causes paralysis has spread across the land. Initially, one of the hardest struck towns contacted a band of adventurers to find the source of this plague. They were accompanied by the town doctor, whose name was Hellarug. They ventured into the mountains, believing it was caused by an evil magician, but the magician was not found. Instead, they stumbled upon a group of perished travelers who had conceived a map of the mountains, which lead to cave. Within this cave, they were forced to fight a giant squid, and through a series of intricate waterways, the group was split up. Many were never found. The remaining adventurers found a small gathering of minotaurs, who had found that the source of the sickness was in the water, and were applying a remedy. The minotaurs led them to a crazed mad scientist named Barnby, who needed more of a special yellow flower in order to create more antidote. At this point, one of the Tiefling adventurers had been entirely struck down by the plague and could not move. The final two of the adventurers ventured into the forest and were attacked by bears. Once again, they were separated.

It took a long time, but several of the adventurers were finally reunited, after their failure, and added more to their group. They returned to the alchemist's house to conjure more antidote and began their journey back to the caves, where they believed the water source was running from. They were never seen again. dun dun dun...

3:14 I have been informed that Carmen Jello the Better will not be joining us on this quest.

3:51 Dungeonmaster: "Ok, here's how the modifiers work, it's really confusing." This is going to be a long evening. Still drafting characters...

3:56 Game manual: "Hafling males have no beards, but often have long, flowing sideburns."

4:29 Dungeonmaster: "Let it be known that the Dungeonmaster has decided that Tieflings are the black people of the Dungeons and Dragons universe."

4:36 Beers have been broken out. We are attractive people and are not in a basement. We are defying all stereotypes of Dungeons and Dragondom.

4:45 I have drafted my character.I AM HIMBRICK THE AMBIGUOUS OF DIRECTRIX ADVENTURE DYNAMICS INCORPORATED (OF WHICH I AM THE PRESIDENT, CEO, CFO, AND SOLE EMPLOYEE). I AM A TIEFLING (WHATEVER THE FUCK THAT IS) WHO SPEAKS THE COMMON LANGUAGE AND ELVEN. I WAS RAISED BY ELEPHANTS AFTER MY PARENTS WERE KILLED FOR BEING EVIL, AND LED THE ELEPHANTS TO VICTORY IN THEIR WAR AGAINST THE WOOLLY MAMMOTHS. NOW I ROAM THE WORLD SEARCHING FOR TRUTH AND PEOPLE WHO LOOK AS FUNNY AS I DO. I AM 6' 2", 210 POUNDS, 37 YEARS OLD, HAVE BLACK RAMS HORNS AND DARK BLUE HAIR. I AM A ROGUE, WHICH MEANS I HIDE IN THE SHADOWS AND USE STEALTH TO VANQUISH MY OPPONENTS. I LIKE LONG WALKS ON THE BEACH AND SPOONING VIGOROUSLY. CURRENTLY, I HAVE LEATHER ARMOR, DUAL WIELD HAND CROSSBOWS, AND CAN ALSO DUAL-WIELD DAGGERS AND USE SHURIKEN. YOU DON'T KNOW IF I'M GOOD OR EVIL. I CONSTANTLY WRESTLE WITH MY DUAL NATURE, SINCE MY ANCESTORS SOLD THEIR SOULS TO DEMONS IN EXCHANGE FOR POWER, BUT MY ELEPHANT ADOPTIVE PARENTS TAUGHT ME THE GENTLE WAYS OF NATURE.

5:18 Here is my party:
Aukam, the goliath monk. He worships Kord, the purity of battle. Is riding a horse that is half his size.
Driker the Striker! A halfling ranger, at 12 years old, is a prodigy in the arts of Ranging, whatever the hell that is.
Bonaparte, the dragon-born warlord. Likes martinis. Gets bitches all day long. Bitches love dem scales.
Andaris, half-elf half-paladin. Got over his daddy issues to become a battle-loving badass.
Diomedes, human wizard. Was a member of a town and became unhappy with his life after being faced with a large problem. At the time he was known as Hellarug the doctor. He noticed he had magical abilities, and devoted himself to the dark arts in order to gain personal fortune.

5:40 Finally, after creating our characters and figuring out what spells we know, it's time to flip this bitch!

5:41 Forex, an eldrin wizard, has just joined our party. He the half-brother of one of the former adventurers, who is missing and presumed dead.

5:46 Our in-game Wills might be powerful, but our "IRL" wills are not. Time for a beer run.

6:20 Our team has been contacted by the chieften of the Minotaurs. I'm doing this for 75 gold pieces. I don't know if that's good or not in this economy, but I don't know what else there is for work in this universe.

6:23 We're debating the difference between presignation and cantrips. I'm so lost...

6:29 I tried to hit on a minotaur woman in an alehouse and she shut me down. I thought she would find my horns attractive. I guess not.

6:57 I've been hit with two arrows after stepping into a booby trap, one in the right shoulder and one through the left thigh. I lost 20 hit points. Fuck this game.

7:04 The Dungeonmaster will not let me retroactively change my stats to better reflect my backstory. I don't know if I can keep roll playing if this is the case. So confused...

7:09 Another fucking booby trap! Fuck this dungeon. Fuck this game!!!

7:10 Andaris set off another booby trap but dodged it. This is so not fair!

7:19 Dungeonmaster: Two figures enter from the other side of the dungeon. In a language you don't understand, they say "halt."
Me: Then how do we know they said halt?
DM: Because they inflected it the same way you would say halt.
Me: But what if it's a tonal language?
DM: Uhhhh... It's not a tonal language.

7:21 Bonaparte: Can we diplomacy the shit out of them?

7:25 We're discussing the finer aspects of the player/character duality. I never knew we would get so philosophical.

7:37 Two of our party are currently fighting monsters called "oozes." The minotaurs have informed us that they have an affinity towards water. Also I think I'm getting a little drunk at this point. Also, we are once again debating the difference between player knowledge and character knowledge.

8:34 We've been fighting the oozes for a long time. These fuckers be strong.

9:09 Driker the Striker! has just died. That's why you don't bring 12 year olds into battle.

9:22 The DM just suggested I use a saw booby trap to saw off the arrow that has lodged itself in my bicep. #suggestionsfromthedungeonmasteryoushouldn'ttake

9:30 Kip the Minotaur has been hit. He is bleeding... AND OOZING!!! Kip has turned into an ooze. This dungeon is worse than 'Nam!

9:46 I just dodged a boulder with my cat-like reflexes!

9:54 A wave of water just washed us out of this dungeon into the next section of the map. That was convenient...

10:05 People seem to be losing attention. I need to come up with inane things to say...

10:11 d4, d8, d10, d20, and now they're calling a regular die a d6. I'm in another world.

10:29 Andaris: I demand an explanation.
Barnby: Fair enough.
#bondvillain

10:33 "He thinks it will be awesome, but really, it will kill everybody."

10:34 Andaris: I'm sorry Barnby, you sn-ooze, you lo-oooooze!!!

10:59 My character has just apparently lost control of all his actions, because of the way I rolled a 20-sided die. Just like real life...

11:01 Wow, I just fucked my teammate up. If only I could have been that effective fighting the oozes.

10:09 Diomedes has been betrayed by our minotaur allies and is now dead. He would have died honorably, except he spent more time sexting than he did playing the actual fucking game. Now the turns will go faster, I suppose...

11:11 DM: Roll for will.
Me: Wait, who's will?
DM: No, willpower, dumbass.

11:23 I have switched my deity alliance from Ionas to Glob. omGlob...

11:26 We have stopped the plague. The minotaurs turned on us, but we killed them all, so the minotaur chieftan doesn't know about it. We get our 75 gold reward.

11:27 The minotaur chief gives us each an additional 25 gold for our fallen comrades. First DnD quest is a success. Now time to mourn our dead.

The Salt Woman, Part I

2012-11-21T15:19:00.002-08:00

Thought I would post the first part of this story before I head out for this holiday of gluttony and tryptophan saturation. Part II will be readable in a week or so.

Growing up, I remember the caravans would come through the town four times a year, twice in each direction. They came once in the middle of summer and once at the end, and they carried salt and nothing else. They would come in the pinelands out of the east with their bags empty and return loaded up with the stuff, stopping in the high country towns before returning to the pinelands. They say that without salt the body leaks out through the skin until it deflates and shrivels up. This is why, my father explained to me, we depended on the salt caravan.

They got their salt from a woman who lived in the badlands, who extracted it all by herself from the earth, and on one occasion when I was fifteen, burned half the town to the ground in what can only be described as a supernatural occurrence.

A trip to the salt flats took her three days down the course of the river, a journey she would make with her mule as many times as she could during the summer when the salt flats were dry, and in the fall when there were still patches of salt that weren’t underwater. She knew where to find the purest veins; since she had only one mule to load it was only worth her time to bring back the stuff that was free of impurities. As she dug her hands would crack, and her face would crack, weathered by the salt blowing in her face. And after a day of digging she would fall asleep on the salty ground lying on her back, spread eagle and looking at the stars, sometimes recalling that she had once heard that there are as many stars in the sky as there are grains of salt, her mule tied to stake she had planted in the ground. She stayed until she had filled her mule’s packs, as well as two woven wicker baskets she would load up with as much as her frame could carry, and then make her way back.

Upon returning to her dugout she would leave the salt in huge piles in an enclosure she had made, the roof sealed with pine tar from the mountains and the floor covered with lizard hides to keep the salt from being ruined by rainfall. And then she would bathe in the river, its icy force breaking over her naked wiry frame, although it was the river who thought it could break her. She would pinch clumps of hair between her thumb and forefinger, then pull outward away from her scalp, squeezing the salt out from between her follicles until every last bit of it was gone, then sit naked on a rock watching the river flow until she had shivered herself warm.

She lived on the provisions the caravaners would trade for the salt, along with whatever she got from the traps she kept in the foothills and the berries and wild roots she gathered. The river, it seemed, was too alkaline for any fish. That was fine, the salt it bore was what fed her, ultimately.

They say she would grind the salt herself by crushing the rocks in her hands, that she could simply hold it up, squeeze, and the whole thing would turn into fine grains to be packet into the caravaners’ bags. When they showed up she could feel them coming, feel the vibrations of the ground as their pack animals approached, and would have the bags of salt lying in the open, ready to be loaded. They regarded her with respect and uneasiness, always paying her up front in tools, sacks of rice and potatoes, sometimes a can of anchovies all the way from the sea. As they loaded up the salt she would watch them idly, picking at her teeth with a shard of bone. They would wave to her as they departed but she never waved back. She only stared at them until their thin line of mules vanished over the pass, when she would go inside and carry on whatever it was she did with her life. Probably cracking her own neck, repeatedly, with a grimace of mixed pleasure and pain.

Except on this occasion she approached the leader of the caravan and told him she was coming with them.

“I’ll take my own mule,” she had said to him, “I’ll even have him carry salt, he does it already anyways.” She stood almost a head shorter than him, and for the first time he noticed there was nothing in her frame that suggested such a strength as she was reputed to have. “I think it’s been five years since I been in town,” she continued, not to justify herself, just to explain, “so I’m going with you.”

The leader of the caravan had no reason to object, although he had heard stories about her. He heard that before she came out to work the salt flats she would wear a necklace made from molars she had knocked out in bar fights, that making eye contact with her for too long would give her power to paralyze you, that she turned into a dog at night and could summon the dead spirits of her people, whoever they were, to do her bidding. That she kept a jar with a human heart underneath her hammock. All apocryphal at best, but all who knew about the Salt Woman also knew some sort of story about her. None agreed. Some said it was a necklace of shrunken skulls, that it was an ibex that she turned into, that she in fact was possessed by dead spirits against her will. But they all agreed that there was a jar. In some stories she slept clutching it.

“You can come with us,” he said, “but you’ll have to camp separate. Some of the men wouldn’t find it” he paused “proper.”

“They’ve heard the stories, haven’t they?” she said.

His eyes momentarily widened and he said nothing, but then a smile crossed her face.
“I’ve heard a lot of them too, and I can assure you there’s not much to them.”

“Not much?”

“Well there has to be something, else I wouldn’t be out here, right?” She picked at something between two molars with her shard of bone. “We’ve done good business for years. You trust me, don’t you?”

“Of course,” he said. “Load up your mule and let’s get moving.”

They stood for a moment regarding each other, his beard encrusted with salt and her hair bleached by it, a thin layer that she could never get out, even in the river. She cracked a smile and he could have sworn her cheeks were going to split as she moved them.

“I think I’ll enjoy this trip,” she said, “I think I’ll take a lot of enjoyment in it.”

To be continued...

Pilgrimage With the Technicolor Gypsy

2012-11-19T23:34:00.000-08:00

There's a tree downtown from which, legend has it, the first humans were born. They were squeezed out, from a crevasse between two massive exposed roots, head first like most babies, but could crawl upon touching the earth. The tree nourished them and sheltered them; extending its branches downward with fruits rich in electrolytes and amino acids, and blocking the elements with thick foliage and its own subtle infrared energies. These people had no one to observe, no one to speak to them, so they created their own customs as the need arose, and called each thing what they felt it should be called. After growing to where they could walk tall under their own strength they ventured out from under the branches and called many things what they were. After all, they were those things. No one had ever said otherwise.

This morning I made a pilgrimage to the tree with a Technicolor Gypsy. She pulled over in her pickup truck as I was biking and through hand signals and sketches in the dirt we determined we were going to the same place. Somewhere off in the distance I could hear airplanes taking off. I threw my proverbial horse in the back of her truck and hopped in the passenger seat. She had neon turquoise hair and wore a bright pink bandanna. We each spoke of our homelands in our respective tongues. I told her of the forests with bark the color of fire hidden in valleys flowing with rivers of fog and the radical diviners who tore apart matter itself in their mountain hideout. Although I couldn't understand her language exactly I gathered she was from a place where a great desert met an even greater ocean.

Of these first people, some accounts say there were twelve, some say there were seven, some say it was a prime number between fifty and one hundred. There certainly were more than two. They set out, in a group, for the end of the universe, which they could see from the highest branches of the Mother Tree. But as they walked towards the horizon, naming things as they went, it receded into the distance with increasing speed, until they could no longer be sure it had an end. They wandered in this fashion until one of the women became pregnant and they decided that if more people were to be made, it was best to be stationary like the tree that birthed them.

Today there is no mention of what makes this tree special. It's the largest in the park, by far, but there is not even so much as a plaque to commemorate what happened here. Kids hide behind it to smoke pot and drink cheap beer. The Technicolor Gypsy and I sat cross-legged on the grass, staring at it, passing back and forth a thermos of tea. Tea that was black like delta soil.

This first child to be born did not grow up to name things. Some things he could not name, because his parents' generation had already called the things what they were. But there were new things, which no one had said were anything, left for the child to name, but he did not. They journeyed back to the Mother Tree to ask why. But they received no answer. That was, until they decided to climb the tree once again. After waiting for several days she provided them with fruit and soft canopies to rest on. By the time they reached the top they could see that the world still had an end. So they kept moving to push the universe outwards in all directions, so their children would come to know the joy in giving names.

Fog drifted in from the ocean and hit the mountains, coalescing into thick clouds which broke apart on the southern slopes. The Technicolor Gypsy said it was time for her to go. I grabbed my bike out of her truck and she drove off to chase the currents. I ate tacos from a taco truck with my ass leaning against my bike frame, standing under a street sign. I smiled at motorists who didn't smile back. The man running the taco truck gave me an extra cup of salsa. I tucked it into the side pouch of my backpack and started the ride back home, along dusty roads with semis spewing dust and diesel fumes. It's a long way to the edge of the universe but I may never need to go that far. Home is far enough from the Mother Tree.

Exclusive Interview with Cub'b, New Album Setting/Context

2012-11-15T21:14:00.000-08:00

Producer Chris Cubbison, or as he is known by his stage name, Cub'b, has just released his debut LP, Setting/Context. You can purchase it for as much or as little as you want, or just give it a listen, at his Bandcamp page.

The Man Himself

I would try to sell you the album, but I think the music sells itself. Plus, Cub'b himself agreed to sit down for an interview and can do a way better job of explaining the album than I can.

Ozone Shack: Talk about the platform you chose to release this album. The way you released it is something that’s becoming more of the norm these days, where you put it up on a website and the customer chooses how much they’re going to pay for it, or if they pay anything at all.

Chris Cubbison: First ,as a listener, I love that it’s going that way. I love the internet with music because taste and genres can become incredibly specific, you can find any sort of genre online, and depending on how much effort you put in, you can immerse yourself in an online culture where you can find multiple like-minded artists. Just last night I was searching through multiple websites – online labels- just pressing download button after download button. Just as a listener, I really appreciate that. It also kind of changes things for the artist, because your tastes and genres can become so specific, and so dense I guess, there’s kind of an oversaturation on the internet, and it can be hard to find artists, and not only that, but it can be difficult for an artists to get noticed or get some kind of following. It kind of changes the game. It makes it a different playing field.

OS: You mentioned downloading music. I feel like a trend that’s happening a lot, with Grooveshark, Spotify, YouTube, where people don’t actually need to have a copy of the recording, they can just access it through the cloud. But it seems as though you like actually having the music. I’m one of those people myself. What are your thoughts on having the music on your hard drive and getting it from the cloud?

CC: I kind of see with things like Spotify it’s blurring the line. I don’t know if I see much of a difference between streaming something on Soundcloud and having it on your hard drive. It kind of blurs the distinction between the two. Recently, I’m appreciating the fact that artists are putting their music online. And with Spotify and Soundcloud, it’s nice that it’s up there. I think it’s also interesting to think about the social connection, just because Spotify kind of take music and make it social

OS: And not only that, but there’s the added element where people can see what you’re listening too.

CC: They can see your taste, and that’s interesting too. People delve into things for different reasons too, maybe to be seen as liking this, this and that, but I don’t know, I think at the end of the day it has to come down to your own personal interest and whatever you want to get out of it.

OS: Well as for the album itself: Talk a little bit about what went into making it.

CC: Basically, I started working on all the songs at the end of last school year, during finals week. I was just starting to do some new tracks, wasn’t really thinking about where they were going. It feels like I get my best creative moments during the worst times, like during midterms or finals I get something and I’m like “dammit I really want to work on this.”

Everything on it was basically me, I think there were two tracks on there that feature a couple friends of mine, but it’s interesting the way that I did it. A lot of my friends are kind of describing it as collage music, and I think that kind of makes a lot of sense when I take a step back, because I’m working with a lot of samples, but not exclusively with samples, it’s kind of balance between pulling from other sources and putting in my own kind of stuff as well.

The equipment I use: An SP 404, Roland drum sampler. That piece of machinery is extremely conducive to sampling, because you can just plug in anything into it. On the album itself I pull from different sources for sampling; I sample vinyl a lot. That was a lot of fun. There were times when I was home in San Diego and I might be bored so I would go to a record store where I would buy ten used records for ten dollars or something. I would try to choose things that were random, where I look at it and go “what the fuck is this?” or this looks like it could be interesting.

OS: So it’s almost like a found art element?

CC: Definitely. It’s interesting because I think that the idea of found art or even collage isn’t really limited to one medium. But with music, the idea of sampling has kind of changed the way I listen to music at the same time too. I feel as though, as a listener, there have been times when I’ve been like “I don’t really listen to this genre” and then slowly I become more familiar with it and like it. I think the idea with sampling is that it broadens your perspective and your taste, because I feel like I’m not really listening to things with the mindset of “I like this” or “I dislike this,” but “what parts can I appreciate from this?” I like to think that there’ a positive you can taek away with everything you sample or everything you listen to, and it’s also about warping that or changing that. Basically this summer it was a way to stay entertained. I basically see the 404 as a big toy, I feel like a kid when I’m playing with it.

So yeah, I’m sampling with the 404, and then I also add in other instruments, like keyborard, bass, and guitar. The sampling itself is a balance from vinyl, other sources like youtube clips – a lot of time for the samples I’ll take clips from youtbue and warp them or change them in some way – and then there’s also an element that I really like of live sampling, or field recordings. There are a cpule tracks on there where I was out and about and I had just a microphone, I would hear something and record it and try to integrate it into a song. There were a copule on the album that included field recordings. On the track Aquarium I actually got a lot of sounds from the Birch Aquarium in San Diego. There’s this kind of water art installation outside and I just kind of recorded stuff on my iPhone and transferred it all to the 404. Also with the track Lunar Beach, for the beach noises, I was actually at Campus point. I was just sitting there with my microphone. I felt really silly when people would walk by.

OS: What about the spoken samples?

CC: A lot of those came from YouTube, movies or speeches, or just certain authors that I like who had readings online. I balanced that with my own vocals too. There were certain songs where I felt like it was appropriate for me to sing instead of pulling something from somewhere else. And with vocal samples, I feel like I have a lot of fun with that, because I feel as though – not just with vocal samples but with samples generally – it’s kind of a way to stack meanings and stack messages within your songs and kind of embed different meanings within them. I think that’s something I think about a lot. It can really shape a message when you’re trying to get that through in your music.

OS: Do you get to the point now where you’re listening to music or just in the world and start hearing everything as a potential sample?

CC: I feel as though I’m starting to look at the world that way, yeah. I even think that listening to music, I’m starting to break it down to individual noises that I’m hearing, not just a whole collective song. I might listen to a song and be like “oh, I really like the snare,” or “that hook is really good.” I’m starting to break it down and dissect different aspects of music – not just technically but in terms of meaning and in terms of voice.

OS: Let’s talk a little bit about how you perform this stuff live. When you do this stuff live you have your samples and then you’re playing some kind of instrument over that. I’ve seen you do it while playing bass and also with bongos. Talk about what that process is and how it’s different from creating material for the album.

CC: The live stuff is definitely different. I’ve only performed [the material off this album] once or twice. I think that can be kind of difficult as an individual just because I feel like I have to compromise certain parts of songs, just ecase I can’t physically do them all at once. It really depends on the way it was recorded when I’m trying to figure out how to play it live. A lot of times I’ll just have certain parts of songs or certain aspects of the songs that will be playing and then I’ll play a specific part up against that with backing tracks. That can be difficult, but it forces me to prioritize what I want to do. Ideally I would be able to make every single noise live, but I’m still in the process of learning how to do it.

OS: And then you’re also using real instruments.

CC: Yes.

OS: We’re sort of entering an epoch where real instruments aren’t really perceived as being necessary anymore. How do you feel about that shift?

CC: I’ve thought about this a lot. I try to come to a balance in my head. I think that a lot of people are turned off by the fact that everything is going digital, and that certain genres are going more towards computer-based, and I think there’s something to be said for that. I think that there’s something that can be appreciated for physicality of music, even with recorded music vs. digital. But also at the same time with live music, I feel like live instruments add a certain element of finesse or technical ability. I’m saying this very humbly. I’m definitely not the most talented when it comes to that. I think that at the end of the day it’s not what you use, it’s how you use it. As long as you’re pursuing something that’s on part with whatever you want to do, that’s the goal. I think that people today kind of get caught up with how things are made; they add a lot of significance to programs or instruments instead of the person using them. The way that I approach music is not really computer based. I’m recording onto a computer and I’m recording into Ableton, but all the beats I’m making and all the noises I’m making either stem from samples on the 404 or from instruments. It’s not like I’m making noises on the computer and using them as a crutch.

OS: It sounds like what you’re doing is a healthy blend of using the electronic medium but also creating the music yourself. I guess I would say that’s something I have a lot more respect for than a DJ who just splices and kind of creates a Frankensong. Now I’d like to ask what your diet of music, so to speak, was like growing up.

CC: Yeah, my taste in music has changed a lot and I think that happens with everybody who kind of digests music. I try to listen to a lot of different types of music. I’m not trying to listen to something just so I can say “oh, I’ve listened to this,” it’s really kind of a self-motivated thing.

OS: You’re trying to integrate it into your musical being; you’re trying to grow.

CC: Yeah. I think that a lot of times, with music, when people say “I don’t like this genre,” you’re kind of building a wall between what it is you like and what you don’t like. When you say “I don’t like rap” or “I don’t’ like R&B” you’re building a wall between yourself and what you can enjoy from that genre. I really try to give everything a fair chance. To more specifically answer your question, lately my music tastes have greatly diversified. I think that has a lot to do with my friends. With my friends from back home, listening to music is a way to stay connected. I think at first, before I made music, it was a way of keeping up with my friends, you know, I would listen to something and we would talk about it the next chance we got to catch up. As I started making music, that’s also become a way of staying connected, you know, sending each other tracks and noticing musical progression without actually seeing each other.

I don’t know, I listened to a lot of 70’s punk in middle school, and I appreciate the way that was made, you know, it’s music from below, not music from some kind of established realm. High school when I met a lot of my friends I started diversifying. In the last couple years I’m really starting to enjoy beat music and experimental music. The more time you spend listening to any genre the more you understand it.

OS: Anything you’re particularly digging right now?

CC: There’s a lot I’m digging. I’ve been listening to a lot of my friends’ music, from different areas around the United States. I’m getting into Beat Music and experimental ambient and kind of weird house music, and techno. In the last week, I’ve listened to Andy Stott, he’s a British producer, I’ve been listening to a lot of Soundcloud artists. There’s this one community called the Astral Basement, they make a lot of experimental beats that I feel are up my alley in terms of listening and producing at the same time. I try to follow a lot of young guys on the internet that are doing a similar thing to me, maybe in a better and more depth extent. There’s this producer in Ohio, he’s like 19 years old, his name is Contact Lens, he’s released a lot of stuff. A couple San Diego artists, there’s this 15 year old kid called Television Sky, and he’s really good, he’s released like 12 albums.

OS: And that wouldn’t even be possible ten years ago.

CC: It really wouldn’t. And that’s just a sign of the times. People can make music on their own; they don’t need to worry about getting the record contract to be noticed first. It’s more of a self-motivated process today, or at least it can be.

OS: Any artists or bands out there right now that are doing something right? We’ve talked a lot about the role of the artist in our conversations, and I’m wondering if there are any musicians out there who you think are really fulfilling that “artist’s role.”

CC: So many. I think the role of the artist today is to make something that nobody else can make, and to be really unique with your sound and be sure that when somebody is listening to that, they’re listening to you. There are so many people doing that today and that’s the thing about the internet. If I may do a shameless plug, my friend Austin Cesear up in the Bay, he’s doing a lot of really interesting stuff. Another friend who’s in New York, Lotide, is going to be having a lot of really unique stuff coming out soon.

I don’t know, I think that a lot of people when they’re making music get caught up in the accessibility of it. They might make something to pleasure an audience or to fit within a genre. The way that it’s going today, I don’t’ think that the artist should approach something and be like “I’m going to make this kind of music” or “I am going to be this kind of musician.” I think they should be making the music and letting it speak for itself.

OS: Yeah, you know, the one area where I’m more of a Platonist than an Aristotelian is in regards to music, because in Platonic philosophy, the things below are representative of some pure thing that’s up above. I should listen to how the music sounds instead of what it sounds like, you know? That’s how I should evaluate it.

CC: Yeah, that also comes down to how it’s enjoyed. If someone is going to a concert and they have a premeditated notion of what it should be, I think that’s also setting yourself up for disappointment. People should be going into music with no expectations of what it should sound like, that way it’s more fulfilling.

Once again, Cub'b's debut LP, Setting/Context, is available for download from the following Bandcamp page: http://hlf-pin-mzk.bandcamp.com/album/hfpn010-setting-context

Send him some love, Ozone Nation.