Song of the day 2/06/2011

Seattle attracts so much music and is awesome.
Seattle also has too many stupid festivals and camping-based torture near by.

God I hope the reformed Archers of Loaf do a show actually in Seattle.

Song of the Day, 6/1/2011

Ugh, the flu. The new Death Cab for Cutie album is out this week, and I feel like I should have listened to it and have some sort of brilliant commentary on it by now. Instead I've been puking my guts up and having fever dreams for the last 48 hours.

Death Cab For Cutie Storytellers |Death Cab For Cutie |Storytellers |Music Videos

So instead, check out the latest sign that we're all old now - Death Cab for Cutie on VH1's Storytellers. Movie Script Ending is one of my favorite songs, it's about driving into Bellingham and it came out at a time when I was doing a lot of driving in to Bellingham - the album came out the week before I moved down to Seattle for college.

I could place most of the lines of the song, but I couldn't ever really figure out where the Bottoms on Barstools line was - but it turns out, it's about one of my favorite bars in Bellingham - the legendary Beaver Inn.

They also play and share the story behind Photobooth, another one of my favorites. When I hear it, I can smell the smells that mark the end of a Pacific NW Summer:

Death Cab For Cutie Storytellers |Death Cab For Cutie |Storytellers |Music Videos

There also is a house - or was house - in the lettered streets that I used to pretend this song was about. I didn't know the people that lived there real well, I was in high school, they were in college, I went to a party there, like, once I think - but I'd often drive past and see a couch on the lawn and pretend this song was happening. (And that I wasn't invited. But maybe, someday I would be.)

SotD 5/31/11 - Dan Mangan's Robots

I recently had the privilege of attending the fourth show by local house show producers Notes From Home. The evening's entertainment was Cataldo, Hey Marseilles, and Dan Mangan. Of the three of them I had only heard Hey Marseilles before.

I have little experience attending house shows but wow, what a way to experience music. The setting was intimate, the sound was good, the people open and friendly, and I just felt like I was experiencing something special. The highlight for me was that every band that night performed a sing-along song and they all successfully got the entire room singing. This song was Dan Mangan's sing-along contribution.

Happening Now: The Thermals

#sasquatch

Song of the Day, 5/28

I'm heading out to Sasquatch right now. Woo! We're playing Radiohead covers at noon.

Anyways, so, I missed yesterday too preparing for this adventure.

Sorry.

And I'm having a hard time pulling embed code from YouTube on my phone, so you're going to have to click through to this video of Pulp's first show after reuniting this year.

Song of the day 5/26/2011

The original brief for contributing to this blog was to write about Seattle-centric stuff, as you can see I live to disappoint.

Kerbdog – Sally

I still have the ticket stub for this show somewhere, October 1993 Manchester Academy : The Almighty, The Wildhearts, Kerbdog. Jesus tap-dancing Christ, this was a hell of a thing to unleash on a young man. I’d been to a couple of shows before this one, but this was the first gig where I got to stand at the front next to the speaker stacks (this and the endless repetitions of doing similar things almost exactly like this are why if you speak to me today you have to yell directly into my ear). Kerbdog were the opening act and were barely older than me. It was amazing.

Years later when I was in college I saw them again and after the show, because of poor transport links between “where I studied” and “where rock was at”, my friends and I had to wait for a train for a couple of hours, we waited in the bar, we met the band and they bought us drinks. Thoroughly charming chaps.

This song is off their second record where they became less metal and learned to write pop songs with crunching fuzzy guitars.

They did two records and split up. Their bass player went to university to study civil engineering and the other two formed Wilt who were quite good, but less good. People like me remained obsessed with Kerbdog to the point where for the last few years they they’ve relented and done an annual reunion show in Ireland around Christmas. I want to go to that. I owe them a drink.

Song of the Day, 5/15/2011, Part 2

It'd be pretty sad if I didn't come back and post a part 2, wouldn't it?

The new David Bazan record came out yesterday. When I was a teenager I went to a few Pedro the Lion shows, and I always thought they were weird and kind of horrible - one in particular (Pedro the Lion, Ida, and the Juxtapositions - I think) the entire crowd turned over between sets. The friendly indie rock kids rolled out, and the Christian Youth of the year 2000 rolled in.

I found this to be incredibly creepy, and it made me feel really weird and dirty about listening to Pedro. And liking it. I thought they were a Christian rock band, and they weren't for me.



Years later, I read a real article on David Bazan and his relationship with religion. And I sat down and actually listened to his lyrics. It turns out, I didn't get it. And neither did the armies of Christian kids that were creeping me out at those shows.


Bazan's new record sounds good. It sounds REALLY good. I highly suggest hitting up the audio page on his website and listening to the first track featured there - Wolves at the Door. It's been my jam of the last 48 hours.

Then skip 'Bless This Mess', which doesn't work for some reason.

And listen to Please, Baby, Please, which is another fantastic track.


And sit. Be cynical. But love. Understand love. Understand everything I didn't when I was 16.