My Top 30 Albums of 2012

Presented, for once, without commentary or apology. See you in 2013.

30. Thee Oh Sees: Putrifiers II

29. Grimes: Visions

28. Dirty Projectors: Swing Lo Magellan 

27. Death Grips: The Money Store

26. Wild Nothing: Nocturne

25. Spectre Folk: The Ancient Storm

24. Purity Ring: Shrines

23. Animal Collective: Centipede Hz

22. Chromatics: Kill for Love

21. Beach House: Bloom

20. ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead: Lost Songs

19. Merchandise: Children of Desire

18. Mac DeMarco: 2

17. The Young: Dub Egg

16. Naomi Punk: The Feeling

15. Yellow Ostrich: Strange Land

14. Ty Segall Band: Slaugherhouse

13. Japandroids: Celebration Rock

12. Lotus Plaza: Spooky Action at a Distance

11. Black Moth Super Rainbow: Cobra Juicy

10. DIIV: Oshin

9. Weird Dreams: Choreography

8. Grizzly Bear: Shields

7. Micahu and the Shapes: Never

6. Metz: Metz
5. The Babies: Our House on the Hill

4. Frank Ocean: Channel Orange

3. Tame Impala: Lonerism

2. Fiona Apple: The Idler Wheel...

1. Cloud Nothings: Attack on Memory 

Travis-ty or Something Else: Revisiting Pitchfork’s Most Infamous 0.0 Rating

During its long and vaunted history, the music website/indie tastemaking farm known as Pitchfork has done its fair share of tossing its now quite substantial weight around to influence its loyal readers to purchase albums, attend shows, and climb aboard the buzz express of certain artists and bands. The rise of acts like Broken Social Scene, the Arcade Fire, Animal Collective, and Crystal Castles directly coincided with gushing reviews and ceaseless coverage on the site. This symbiotic existence often makes it difficult to discern whether Pitchfork creates the initial buzz for such artists or whether the site merely rides the waves of growing external popularity. Whatever the case, Pitchfork possesses a great deal of power, which it wields primarily by way of its wordy album reviews, but more precisely by the numeric ratings that accompany each review. Albums, five of which are usually reviewed each week day, can receive anywhere from a 0.0 to a 10.0. Records that reach somewhere above the 8.4 mark receive a coveted “Best New Music” label (though this cut-off point seems rather malleable). Many of the albums that are reviewed, by virtue of the fact that the site selects ones that its readers will care about in the first place (which does include the Taylor Swifts of the world), end up getting relatively favorable scores. It is a rare event to see an album receive a score greater than 9.0, but equally as rare to see a score below 4.0.

As of this writing, Pitchfork has bestowed perfect 10.0 ratings on 12 albums upon their initial release—not counting dozens of others that have received the score after being reissued. Because of Pitchfork’s sway over the indie world, these so-rated albums may be recognized as being part of a pantheon of ‘indie’ music classics (at least until at some point later, slight revisionism occurs: see …And You Will Knows By the Trail of Dead’s Source Tags & Codes, which received a 10.0 upon release in 2002, but barely made the top 100 on Pitchfork’s best albums of the decade seven years later). On the other side of the coin that brings indie fame and notoriety is the dreaded 0.0 score, of which the site has doled out 12. This rating, from pretty much any angle, indicates that the album is worthless. It also alerts readers that the world may somehow be worse off just by the mere fact that the album exists in recorded form. This is harsh, to be sure, but the rarity with which this horrific score is handed out and the care with which the site ostensibly evaluates albums, this valueless rating must mean something. Most of the zeros-point-zeros have been awarded to albums that Pitchfork would not be expected to review at all—including two KISS albums, Bachman Turner Overdrive’s “Greatest Hits,” and a Jet record (one that arguably got a 0.0, but no actual digits were present on the page— just a video of a monkey urinating into its own mouth). One can safely assume Gene Simmons and the guys in BTO were none too bothered by a severely negative rating by some indie music website, so the impact of these 0.0’s is quite negligible. Other 0.0’s were given to artists Pitchfork has at times adored (and even given perfect 10.0’s to), but were so far along in well-respected careers, the scores really wouldn’t have had much of an impact on their legacy or ability to sell albums in the future (see Sonic Youth, the Flaming Lips, Robert Pollard).

After sorting through these other worthless records, we arrive a little review penned by Chris Dahlen, dated September 27, 2004, in which the album Travistan by Travis Morrison receives the dreaded mark of the beast and, in a flash, Morrison’s career as an independent artist immediately crumbles. Radio stations won’t play his music. Fans stop attending his shows. Record stores refuse to carry the album. (NB: While there weren’t many glowing reviews for the record out there, critics like Robert Christgau and sites like AllMusic did give the album at least decent marks). I understand this may all seem quite insignificant. Who is Travis Morrison anyway? Well, readers of Pitchfork in the early 2000s would have been quite familiar with the band Morrison fronted from the mid-1990s until 2003, The Dismemberment Plan. Pitchfork appeared to be staunchly in the D.C. band’s corner by the time the curtain closed on The Plan’s existence (though they have since reunited). The site gave the band’s final studio album, 2001’s Change, an 8.6, and the reissue of that album’s predecessor, Emergency & I, got the high holy honor of a perfect 10.0. So, when the Plan disbanded and Morrison struck out on his own, most indications—without even hearing the music—pointed to at worst a neutral review, buoyed by the fact that this was Travis Morrison and Pitchfork loved his old band. Surely Morrison had obtained enough good will over his career to avoid a rating worse than death.

Morrison was given no free pass. Aside from the stark “0.0” looming over the review page, the reviewer said this of the record: “Travistan fails so bizarrely that it’s hard to guess what Morrison wanted to accomplish in the first place” and “Throughout the record, Morrison seems dead set on sabotaging the music’s few positive attributes with fatal dorkisms and a surprisingly dad-like sense of humor.” Call me anything, man, but whatever you do, don’t make it “dad-like.” The review sent shockwaves of sorts through the indiesphere that ultimately sabotaged any chance the album had for moderate commercial success. Morrison’s record label said the review’s effects were “immediate and disastrous.” Morrison himself said that fans’ view of him changed almost instantly due to the review. He later told the Washington Post that he felt Pitchfork was trying to “take him down a peg.” What many felt could have been a fruitful and productive career as a solo artist was pretty much over before it even began. The effects of the review were so far-reaching that in 2006, a Pitchfork managing editor told Wired Magazine that after Travistan, the site was making an effort to be “more careful about doling out such brutal reviews.”

But now, some eight years since the bomb went off, how does Travistan hold up? Does it still carry the fetid stench of that 0.0? Though I’ve long been a fan of the Dismemberment Plan (and saw them play live just a couple of weeks ago), I had totally and completely avoided Morrison’s solo album like the plague since it was first released. I didn’t want a genuinely horrible record to somehow color the way I viewed the band’s previous material. Yet I also have a morbid fascination with things that are considered objectively bad. So, after many years of delaying, I put my fears aside and listened. And while the album was not one I would recommend to a friend I actually liked, or turn on at a party unless I wanted everyone to flee for the exits, I didn’t turn to dust or stone once the soundwaves reached my ear canal. But for someone desperately waiting for a conclusion to the “ellipsis in sound” of the album closer “Ellen and Ben” from the final Plan album Change, I was sorely disappointed. And that perhaps is the whole issue. When you have lofty expectations for how something should sound and then the music goes in an entirely different direction, you’re naturally going to judge more harshly than you would had you no preconceived notion of what it should be like in the first place. So it is almost impossible, as someone who has heard Morrison’s prior work, to not yearn for something in the same vein as later Dismemberment Plan material. Travistan is decidedly not that. But I have tried, upon multiple listens, to divorce my expectations from what the album really is as a stand-alone creation independent of any precedent. Unfortunately, even after this effort, the record still sounds pretty dreadful.

The biggest problem with Travistan, which Dahlen mentions in his Pitchfork review, is the head-scratchingly dopey Schoolhouse Rock-esque interludes in which the presidents on various pieces of American coinage sing from their own perspective about wanting to be removed from said coinage. There are four of these on the album and if they sound like a terrible joke, they play out much, much worse in reality. They are silly and pointless. The rest of the album is all over the place thematically, as we cover zoo animals on “Song for the Orca,” the story in which Travis gets the snot beat out of him on “My Two Front Teeth, Parts 2 and 3,” the harsh reality of death on “People Die,” and modern political discourse on “Che Guevara Poster.” There is no apparent cohesion in these ideas, which makes one wonder why they are all here.  And the lyrics—the lyrics! They are almost completely groan-inducing and lame. For example, on “Born in ’72,” we get: “I'm born as male as can be/Well, I'm still more important than she/My friend got passed over for a raise/And she said she thought she'd sue for days.” And, honestly, it gets worse, but I’ll spare you.

The album reeks of someone trying too hard, yet seemingly not trying hard enough. That’s a symptom that shows up all over the album, in just about every song. We delve into a really heavy concept and then just dance around it until the time runs out, and the listener is left wondering what the purpose of even having bothered to write the song is. Yet, in spite of baffling rhymes, trite lyrics, and herculean efforts to sound ‘unique,’ there are moments on the album that approach ‘good’ And while these moments are rare and never hold a majority in any one of the songs here, they do exist and give the album some—albeit miniscule—value. Surely, the oddly listenable chorus on “People Die” or the sweet near decentness of “Angry Angel” must place this album somewhere north of ‘devoid of any worth whatsoever.’

Let me be clear: this is not a good album. I have now listened three times all the way through and I don’t anticipate putting myself through that ordeal once more. But how bad is it? I feel like a real 0.0-worthy record would have to be far worse than this one. There are a few stretches of a few songs that sound kind of interesting and, I admit, got my toe tapping. I figure an album that is one of the worst of all time would have to be unlistenably offensive musically and lyrically from the first note all the way until silence returns again. I am no Pitchfork reviewer, but surely this album couldn’t have gotten much lower than a 2.2.

I wish I could say I learned something from this experience, but just as my penchant for watching late era Eddie Murphy films (Norbit!) leaves me feeling nothing but dumb and empty, I don’t believe I gained much from thrice listening to Travistan. Though, I’d advise anyone who is curious to check it out to go ahead and do so, and decide for yourself what you think of it. We all see (and hear) things differently. I hope someone somewhere out there falls completely in love with this album and blasts it loudly from their car on warm spring days. But please, for the love of God, don’t do it while I’m around. 

Mountains and the Plains in Between: On Road Trips

Zack was talking, but I don’t remember what he was saying. He inhaled deeply, then allowed a cloud of carbon monoxide and other assorted toxic compounds to slip from his lips. Most got sucked out into the cold darkness. The remainder drifted over to the passenger side of the car, where I was fiddling with the radio. Without thinking, my lungs automatically closed, just as they did when my dad smoked while driving me around town as a child. I thought, for a second, that maybe if I held my breath for a second longer, I could stop time. I drooped my head to the right and gazed out the window at the towering, lighted bridge that crossed the Narrows and led to Dartmouth. The Bedford Basin was lying silent, its creaking, immense cargo ships tucked away to bed along the shoreline. We’d just eaten at the Henry House near downtown Halifax and there was a warm fire going and people chatting at small, wooden tables. I was quite full and quite drowsy. The air on the outside was cold and grazed my face as the heat from under the car’s dashboard warmed my feet.  If I’d cared to think hard enough, I would have thought to that F. Scott Fitzgerald quote about how he was riding in a taxi and looking out at the sky and buildings and he started to cry because he had everything he wanted and knew he would never be so happy again. I could feel it in the damp Canadian atmosphere: this moment of softened peace belied the terror of everything suddenly ending, lurking just beneath the surface. Reality was setting in to my obstinate brain: this might be the last road trip I ever take.

I’ve learned over the years that when it comes to travel, some people are ‘get in, get out’ types who usually fly to their destination of choice, take a hired vehicle to a hotel, do some sightseeing around town/spend a few days on a beach, and then get carried by metal wings back where they came from.  Other people are more taken with the concept of a road trip, of forcibly navigating an automobile across terrain to get from one place to another.  While I come from a family decidedly in the former group, I most assuredly belong in the latter. The same would be said of Zack, whom I have road tripped with throughout the Southeast (2004), to the Pacific Northwest (2008), to Ontario (2010), and, on our latest trip, to the Maritime Provinces of Canada. I have also taken several other Zack-less road trips to Boston (2008), Maine/Northeast (2009), and Minnesota/Great Lakes (2010). These last few years, I have lived for them. Though the phrase ‘half the fun is in getting there’ is a tired cliché, there is some truth in it—though I’d argue it’s more like three-quarters of the fun.  I would gladly trade the conveniences of not having to meander through the complex roadway systems of the American Northeast for the freedom of being able to actually see what exists in the spaces between point A and B.  I’ve found traveling this way creates a different perspective of the place you end up in; you can more easily conceptualize the interconnectedness of dots on a map when you physically pass through the Great Plains, the Rockies, and the deserts of eastern Washington to get to Seattle, instead of being magically transplanted from the East Coast to the wet metropolis surrounding the Seattle-Tacoma Airport.  I understand I am usually in the minority in having this travel preference, so I’ve learned I must jump at the chance to take a road trip whenever the opportunity arises. 

There are few undertakings as American as a road trip (NOTE: it may also be as much a part of the Canadian experience, seeing as four of my road trips have taken place at least partially in that country—so it may be best to call it a ‘North American thing’).  Though it can sometimes feel overstuffed with humanity and fast food restaurants, ours is a nation with copious amounts of space. And like a restless people, we feel we must traverse every inch of it. From Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley to National Lampoon’s Vacation, our popular culture is littered with commonplace tales of traveling across the country by automobile. By the time Henry Ford rolled out the Model T in 1908, the nation finally had the mechanism it needed for traveling long distances, though it took a long time until the process of driving from the East Coast to California was practically plausible. A big step towards that end occurred when the U.S. Highway System was developed in 1925 thanks to the Federal Aid Highway Act, which took the administration of interstate roads from private entities and gave it to the states. (It also began the all-too-logical standardization of highways being identified by numbers rather than proper names.)  In the ensuing years, technology proliferated and car travel became an inextricable part of the American experience. By the middle of the 20th century, a new system was needed to accommodate the influx of so many automobiles, so in 1956 the Interstate System was created by way of the Federal Aid Highway Act. Today, that road system covers some 47,182 miles.

The road trips of my life began, as most things do, at the discretion and will of my parents. We would board our Suburban and get hauled to the beach or down to South Carolina to see my great grandmother. These early road trips didn’t do a lot for me. While the destinations themselves were fine, I found traveling by car to be simply a nausea-inducing nuisance. At that point, largely because it was so foreign to me, air travel was the more thrilling mode of transport. All that changed, however, when I was 15 and I took a bus trip over the course of several weeks across the entire span of the United States— from San Antonio to San Francisco to Colorado and Memphis. For me, it changed everything. Finally, I learned the red and yellow squares and misshapen polygons on classroom maps were actual places I could stand on. There was real territory west of the Appalachians after all. I knew that as soon as I returned home and got a car, I would hit the road and explore every nook and hiding place on the continent. My heady youthful enthusiasm got ahead of me, though: for a while the only car trips I took were to decidedly non-exotic places like Roanoke, Virginia and Myrtle Beach. Eventually, during my first spring break in college, I realized I finally had the opportunity to just get in the car and go. Zack, an aspiring road tripper himself, was game, so we loaded up our things, surveyed the snow-covered ground and decided that going ‘somewhere south’ was the best plan of attack. Over the course of that week, we traipsed through the southern wilds, from Savannah to St. Augustine, from Panama City to Baton Rouge, from Jackson to Memphis, then back to our starting point. We did nothing that resembled the MTV spring breaks I had long viewed with awe, but it was glorious.

No matter how enjoyable the other trips have been, none can compare to the summer I cajoled my aging metal machine from North Carolina to Baltimore (to get Zack), out to Seattle, up to Vancouver, down to San Francisco, through Nevada and Missouri, and back home again. This trip took place under the guise of attending the Sasquatch Music Festival in central Washington (which was excellent), but in truth, the trip itself was what I most cared about. It took three full weeks. Along the way, we saw the things you’re supposed to see—the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Mount Rushmore, Fisherman’s Wharf, the Space Needle. But it was all that space in between the places you’re supposed to see that stuck with me. They appear in my brain often: Driving through empty Kansas during a violent storm at night and my body growing rigid out of some fear that a twister would snatch us up and transport us to a land of witches and dancing scarecrows. Or winding our way around a twisty road in Northern California and noticing how the sun was hitting the dusty mountains in a peculiar way. Or plunging off course to find a town called Box Elder because of a stupid Pavement song. Or stopping in the middle of nowhere in Montana so we could touch real snow in late May. Or listening to that Band of Horses song while driving past the Great Salt Lake it was named after. All of this vast meandering is a type of freedom that I have been unable to replicate in any other undertaking in my life. It made me feel like an American and it made me feel free. 

The thing about road trips is they take a lot of time. As we grow older and the carefree days of spring breaks and summer vacations evaporate, our time is put at a premium, and the simplicity of flying becomes too difficult to pass up. Thus, as my twenties drag on, I know full well that the door is likely closing on the road trips of my life. Thanks to my journaling habits, which began on that first bus trip out west, I have meticulously documented the banal details of these trips, listing everything I ate, the names of roads we took, my best estimations of temperature and humidity, and the music that was playing when we crossed that one bridge into Jacksonville. These small bits don’t mean a lot by themselves, but taken together, they create a fuller picture of what these trips were like. I can now read what I wrote, listen to the same songs I was listening to, and look at the pictures I took to try to recreate what it felt like to actually be out there, on the open road, with new possibilities at every stoplight.

Road trips, at their philosophical ideal, should serve as a reminder of how big and how small the world really is. They should also give us hope that there are still spaces out there to explore, even on a planet that at this point has nearly every square inch mapped and surveyed and viewed with a just a swipe of the finger. But going there and seeing for yourself that these places exist, where you can collect tiny memories on back roads and keep them forever, is really what’s important. If I’m not again standing on the rocky point at Peggys Cove in Nova Scotia or gazing at the sun setting into the Pacific in Eureka, California sometime soon, with the wind whipping through my hair and the sun blinding my eyes, I feel pretty secure that the mental images of those places will stay with me for a long time to come. But even if they don’t last, at least I have pictures, which maybe will be able to create in me a glimmer of the things I was feeling when I took them. Until hopefully, one day soon, I’ll grab my trusty atlas and head out on the open road once again. 

It’s a Pity You Won’t Get to Read My Essay About Throwing a Pity Party

It would have been perfect. Almost too perfect. My essay on how to throw a pity party for yourself had everything you could want in a thousand-word blog post: drama, intrigue, cerebral humor, nostalgic pop culture references. There was going to be a hilarious picture of me wearing a pointy Sesame Street birthday hat, with my arms crossed, frown on my face, my eyes drooping towards the ground. Pure art, I tell you. And the words! You wouldn’t believe how many inventive rhymes, alluring alliterations, side-splitting metaphors, and well-positioned hyperboles one man could fit into such a small space. The vivid description of eating hummus with your bare fingers would have made your mouth water. The colorful imagery of rooms filled with red and blue balloons and the heavenly sounds of My Chemical Romance bellowing through the walls was so real it would have kept you up at night. There were even allusions to Hansel and Gretel, Mighty Ducks 2, the War of 1812, and the fourth Black Flag LP. Though the piece was near bursting with moving parts, it was all tied together in a harmonious balance of subtle satire and clear-eyed seriousness. It was insightful and had universal appeal. I just wish you could have read it.

You see, this blog post could have made me a star. It could have taken this sleepy blog from the dregs of Blogspot-ville and launched it into the cushy stratosphere of internet buzz, massive site hits, and thousands upon thousands of loyal followers. Ten years down the road, I’d be sitting in a palatial estate, pet chinchilla resting on my lap, donned in a navy blue velour bathrobe, chatting with Barbara Walters for another TV special, when I’d get the Big Question once again: “How did you come up with the blog post that started it all—the so-called ‘Pity Party’ essay?” I’d smile knowingly, take another sip of my peach bellini, and say, “Well, Barbara, to tell you the truth, it just came to me. I was at home alone on a Saturday night and a lightbulb went off, so to speak.  I started writing, knowing all the while that things would never be the same again.” And off we’d go.

The entirety of this inevitable narrative arc would have been so compelling. I’d be chased down the street by paparazzi daily and I’d dine only in exclusive restaurants. Everything would be different. If only you’d been able to read this essay, you would have re-posted it, tweeted it to your friends, and scribbled its memorable quotations on the back of love letters. We as a people would finally conclude that, yes, truly transcendent, everlasting literature can in fact be created in this sorry modern world.

But alas—it was not meant to be. As with so many things on the great wiring system of words and pictures that is the internet, someone else had this simple, brilliant idea before I did. In fact, so many people had already written on the topic that producing a tongue-in-cheek discursion of pity parties must be just another pedantic step all humans must take on the path to adulthood. The other blog posts out there already had droll little pictures, humorously appropriate party tips (even food and music suggestions!), and similar jokes to the ones I was going to tell (not as eloquent, of course). And then I realized the gig was up. These ideas were old and tired. I couldn’t force the multitudes of readers of this blog to shuffle through just another irony-fueled instructional essay about how to throw a party for one. It just wouldn’t be right.

So, perhaps a measure of gratitude is owed your humble author for sparing you the horror of propagating a mildly humorous but overused idea for even one more day. This act of mercy does not come without cost—you should have seen my joke about playing Super Mario Brothers while drinking four-dollar cabernet—but in the end, pulling the plug on the project was the only reasonable course of action I could take. I hope you’ll come to understand and forgive me in time. But do not fret, dear Reader: I have been blessed yet again with the inspiration to write a totally original, 100% unique piece on a nostalgic journey into the popular culture of 1990s as seen through the eyes of a Millennial that is sure to knock the proverbial socks off the entire world wide web. Prepare thyself. 

Act Now: A Life of Infomercials

Like most kids, my sister and I relished the opportunity to wake up early on a Saturday morning and spend some quality time in front of the television. Unlike most kids, however, my sister and I typically ended up watching not animated tales of anthropomorphized animals chasing each other off cliffs, but good old American infomercials. For hours, we’d sit there, admiring the wonders of food dehydrators, suction bags that could transform your closet into a clutter-free zone, knives that could slash through metal, and exercise machines that could melt away fat in a matter of seconds. If a broadcast opened with “The following is a paid presentation,” we were probably going to spend the next 30 minutes watching. The thing is, we really weren’t all that interested in what these new-fangled, not-sold-in-stores creations could do.  We did, however, find the presentations of them to be utterly absurd and ridiculous. We would thus spend the duration of the program howling at the processed spectacle of modern commercialism. It was all great fun.

Over time, as we became seasoned connoisseurs of infomercials, their predictability became part of the humor of it. Like clockwork, payments would be slashed (“BUT WAIT…”), additional worthless goods would be tossed in the package if you called in the next 10 minutes, and there’d be a sloppy demonstration of ‘the old way of doing things.’ These ‘why go on living this way’ demonstrations were often shown in black-and-white, and contained perplexing happenings like lemon juice being inadvertently squirted in an unsuspecting woman’s eye or a cabinet full of Tupperware avalanching down on someone’s poor grandmother. 

The structure of these shows was also part of the entertainment. The old school infomercial conceit was the completely transparent trick that we were watching a ‘real TV show,’ some kind of regular program that you just happened to catch while flipping through to a find a Welcome Back, Kotter rerun. These faux shows featured a saccharine host (who was always oddly identified as a ‘famous TV personality,’ though I’ve yet to see one anywhere outside the parallel universe in which infomercials exist), replete with a diverse and ebullient audience who seemed just a bit too enamored of the item we were discussing. They would clap vigorously, gasp at incredible new features, and nod knowingly at their neighbors in utter amazement because holy cow, she just cooked a chicken in plastic bag in the microwave. Often, these presentations took the form of gradual discovery, as some inventor or ‘guest star’ would guide us to the light and the way (accessible exclusively through this new device). We would begin our journey like a naïve Magellan, embarking out towards the unknown. All we have is a problem (not enough time, too many unused bananas, too many pots on the stove), and then we’d find a simple new product to resolve this issue (an item impressive in its own right, no doubt). But over the course of the half hour, we would uncover an endless array of features, bells, whistles, and would then be offered a lengthy line of cookbooks, starter kits, dish towels, coupon packets— just about everything under the kitchen sink. And then we’d learn, like spying new land in the distance that could not possibly exist, that the whole package was, by some act of a higher power, a “$200 value for only 3 easy payments of $29.99.”

As long as I’ve been alive, infomercials have been to American television what Fergie has been to the Black Eyed Peas—I know that it existed beforehand, but I shudder to think what that time must have been like. Thanks to the deregulation of commercial content over the air during the 1980s, the infomercial business took off in the mid-90s and has continued to grow and evolve to this day. Though the infomercial has changed a great deal since those halcyon days of the 90s, the general concept has remained the same: we get the opportunity to reach well-beyond the average 30-second spot to learn the ins-and-outs of some of today’s most history-altering products. The standard bearer in this field has been and will likely always be Ron Popeil and his “set it, and forget it!” Showtime rotisserie oven—one amongst a large arsenal of inventions Popeil developed. As soon as my sister and I saw Popeil’s name appear on the black title screen, our spirits would rise, and our minds would race to consider what new device Ron had in store for us today. In a world full of glossy and generic faces, Ron felt like the kindly avuncular figure down the street who tinkered with gadgets in his garage and was just so delighted that you’d asked to see what he’d been working on. The programs on which his products were featured contained all the best and most entertaining elements of infomercials—the overly enthused host, a crowd bursting with excitement, price slashing, revelations of the highest order, call-and-response shouting—it was basically like an easy-to-digest tent revival. All infomercials that came after have been judged against Popeil’s work. In the time since, sadly, few have come close to reaching that lofty ideal.

The other day, I had the pleasure of partaking in what may be the last of the great infomercials. It was a presentation of the Magic Bullet (a device my sister has actually ordered, I might add). This program is centered on the totally plausible idea that a British* man and his purported wife have invited some neighbors over for the sole purpose of demonstrating how unbelievable this little food preparation gizmo is (Spoiler Alert: it’s basically an unnecessarily small blender that you can put in the microwave). The houseguests, gathered round the kitchen like eager scouts at a campfire, gush with mouths agape and eyes wide over the fact we can make chicken salad in six seconds, then turn around and whip up a fluffy chocolate mousse in less time than it takes to say “Type II diabetes.” (NOTE: I calculated, and at the rate these folks were cranking out food, you could make some 600 new dishes in an hour—a pretty impressive feat). Though our hosts are quite amiable, it’s the gathered neighbors that are the most entertaining characters in this piece (just as the audience in the old Popeil infomercials was always the reason you watched). There’s a grumpy doubting Thomas in our midst, not sold on what his friends are serving. There’s a seemingly strung-out lady who comes over with cigarette in hand (with ash a mile long) and disheveled hair, donning a nightgown (who does that?). But by the end of the show, once everyone has been plied with nachos and frozen drinks, the skeptics among us are stamped out, and we arrive at the inevitable conclusion that, yes, this really is indeed the ‘ultimate party machine.’ We’ve all learned an important lesson here today, though I cannot exactly say what that that lesson is.

I have attempted fruitlessly to derive meaning from all the hours spent watching infomercials throughout my life. In all that time, I have ordered exactly one product—a speed reading kit that I asked for when I was not yet old enough to call in. I quickly learned to my chagrin that the cassette tapes the kit contained mostly discussed how to alter your diet to speed up mental processes (not a convincing argument to the chicken nugget fiend I then was). So, if I wasn’t interested in purchasing anything, why should I spend so much time watching protracted advertisements? To me, infomercials occupy a weird alternate universe built upon layers of canned absurdity and bastardized reality. Everything feels like it’s on the verge of descending into a maddening hell (see what happens to Ellen Burstyn’s character in Requiem for a Dream, for example), yet it also seems not all that distant from what we know of the world. There is a kind of magical allure to a place in which everyone is enthusiastically trying to peddle something amazing to you with a smile that’s a bit too wide. It’s a Pleasantville-esque planet where everything is gee whiz, so exciting and fascinating and simple. The humor comes in the fact that someone is trying to pass off gussied-up consumerism as real life and think they are getting away with it. I’m sure it made us feel smart, my sister and I, to sit there as kids and think we were sharp enough to see the man hiding behind the screen. In another light, infomercials are a distillation of what makes contemporary life so frustrating and weird—having to constantly separate the authentic from what someone is trying to sell you. These programs confound this process that in a way that is impossibly hilarious to me. So if liking infomercials makes me a weirdo, then so be it. They're still better than Jersey Shore.

*Americans must have some keen propensity to mindlessly trust whatever comes out of a British person’s mouth—they are inordinately represented in infomercials, though I rarely see them on this side of the pond in real life. 

Kool Thing of the Week # 6: Peanut Butter

Yes, seriously, peanut butter is the koolest thing going this week. This humble yet incredible paste made from legumes grown underneath the earth--which has served as a major source of nourishment for yours truly since I was about four--deserves a bit more recognition than it receives. I eat peanut butter sandwiches every day, but I somehow never get sick of it, so I thought I’d take a second out of my life to state publicly that peanut butter is pretty awesome. According to my precise calculations, I’ve eaten roughly 4400 peanut butter sandwiches over the course of my life—some with jelly (grape only, please), some with honey, some with bananas, but an awful lot of it has been just by itself. This figure does not factor in all the peanut butter-related snacks I have consumed, from Reese’s cups to ‘nabs’(Lance Toast-Chee crackers to some), to slathered on celery in the form of 'ants on a log.' So, it's safe to say I have had my fair share of food products covered  in copious amounts of peanut butter. For most of my existence, I have preferred the smooth variety of the stuff, but in recent years, I have become quite attached to the chunky version. But any which way you try it, peanut butter is perfect for any occasion.

I had long (incorrectly) believed that famed scientist George Washington Carver was the man who invented peanut butter, but apparently that is not the case. While Carver did do a lot of work with peanuts, the first patent for peanut butter was issued to Marcellus Gilmore Edson of Montreal in 1884. Edson, a chemist, reportedly concocted peanut butter for people who had trouble chewing solid food. So there you go. I just don’t know why this guy wasn’t more famous. Someone should have given him a medal. Or perhaps he should be on our currency. Surely the invention of peanut butter is as praiseworthy as anything Alexander Hamilton did.

Even though National Peanut Butter Day won’t come around until January 24^th of next year, now’s as good a time as any to celebrate and enjoy one of humanity’s great achievements by preparing peanut butter on an apple slice or fixing a peanut butter sundae or just chowing down on a plain old peanut butter sandwich. And don’t forget to tip your hat to old Marcellus while you partake in this food of the gods, because I shudder to think where our society would be without it.

Oldies Corner

While the vast majority of my favorite songs fall somewhere between two minutes and six minutes in duration, I can recognize that sometimes you don’t need that much time to get your point across. (See all those great early Angry Samoans songs that were like 30 seconds each.) Lo-fi heroes Guided by Voices have always been quite adept at distilling a melody down to its most essential parts, putting it on tape, and then moving on to the next one. Nowhere does the band do that better than on “Pimple Zoo” from the 1995 album Alien Lanes. Clocking in at just about 40 seconds, it may be, per second, my favorite song of all time. I used to get frustrated that the song didn’t carry on just a bit longer, but now I can say I think it’s fine just the way it is. See for yourself (it won’t take very long): 

It's Only Like Three Blocks: Hopscotch 2012 Recap

I’m not sure what it says about my experience at the Hopscotch Music Festival this past weekend when the most indelible memory involves my friend dropping his beer. Or rather, seeing his beer knocked out of his hand when an unidentified object came flying across Berkeley Café (tossed by the guitarist from the band Last Year’s Men) and made contact with my friend who was at the time quite oblivious to the threat of aerial attack. But that was the first thing I thought of when I began writing, just a few dozen hours removed from the festival, thinking of a way to define my third trip to Hopscotch in downtown Raleigh. Like the previous editions of the festival, everything was a whirlwind and hazy blur—though I saw only about 30 of the 175 acts performing over the course of the weekend, I felt like I never stopped moving and was never not listening to music coming from somewhere. I never got to digest anything whole before I was whisked away into the thick night air and down Martin Street once again. I don’t count that as a bad thing, though. There’s a kind of  maddening excitement that comes from knowing there’s music being made behind every brick wall in a one-mile radius and feeling you must do all you can to see as much of it as possible.

If this were a real music review, I would tell you about how Yo La Tengo’s quiet whisper somehow filled the massive (for Hopscotch) Memorial Auditorium, or how I could have sworn Jenn Wasner from Wye Oak was wielding not a guitar, but some kind of swift blade that kept rousing me from near slumber early Sunday morning at Lincoln Theatre. But the trouble with describing things this way is the fact that they feel less like solid memories and more like slowly dissolving dreams. I know as fact that I saw these things happen. I know how much I enjoyed seeing Roomrunner at Tir Na Nog, and how I sang along too loud with Built to Spill on City Plaza, and how I kept thinking Zeus seemed a million times better at a sparsely crowded White Collar Crime than the time I saw them with thousands of people in the hot sun in Toronto. But the fine details of the sounds that we paid good money to hear? Lost, it seems, forever.

As the number of festivals I’ve attended has grown to more than a handful, I have begun to realize these events really aren’t all about the music after all. They aren’t about checking off dozens of bands from some wish list or being able to tell your friends you were at X seeing X (so be impressed).  It’s about sitting under an overhang while the clouds unleash torrential rain on a Saturday evening, mumbling about the band Oneida, and thinking of all the numerous places and possibilities that were around you. It’s about stumbling into a place out of the rain and being pleasantly surprised by music you’ve never heard before and will probably never hear again. It’s even about taking a stupid rickshaw down the street to the next venue just to say you’ve done it.

Thursday night, as we stood in an ever-growing, yet unmoving queue outside the Pour House, we came to the realization we were not going to see Dan Deacon as we had planned—even though it was supposed to be the must-see show of the day and we would have scored major cool points for being there. But then it dawned on me, in just a matter of steps we could be somewhere else, and it didn’t really matter who we saw or what anyone else thought about it. We could have a good time around the corner, down the street, or just sitting on the balcony at Busy Bee watching all the people stumble around down below (which is exactly what we did).

I’ve now come to the conclusion that music festivals are ‘big picture’ events, made up of a sloppy stew of bits and pieces of sights and sounds you really can’t make out. But they all need to be there in order for it to work. I may not be able to make sense of a lot of what happened. I may not be able to replay perfectly in my mind Lonnie Walker’s exact set list or figure out the name of that Pictureplane song that I couldn’t get out of my head. But I know that I enjoyed it. And I know I can’t wait to do it all again.

Dead Aim: (Finally) Saying Goodbye to AOL Instant Messenger

Every day was the same. I’d clench my teeth for almost an hour as our school bus waltzed through the labyrinthine suburban streets between Parker Middle School and my little corner of the world on the other side of town. Once we finally arrived on my shady lane, I’d run inside the house, tell my mother my day was ‘just fine’ and then I’d dash up the stairs to the family computer, quietly resting there each day like a present waiting to be opened. I’d wait for what seemed like hours for the machine to wake up, go through the anxiety-inducing process of hearing the buzz and hum of the modem making synaptic connections through wires and space, arriving somehow on the world wide web. Then, at the word “Welcome,” we had liftoff. I was transported to the world of screen names and chat rooms and emoticons, which in my juvenile mind, was akin to some blindingly bright heaven on earth. All the people I passed in the hallway earlier in the day were there. So were all my friends from camp. So were millions and millions of strangers who, after the requisite “a/s/l?,” were potential best friends for life. It was a thrilling experience, signing on every day to chat about nothing but who was going out with whom, what you were doing this weekend (nothing), and what music videos on TRL were totally overrated. It was as big as my world got at that point. And even if the spatial range was quite limited, the possibilities it contained seemed endless.

I have a strange tendency to hold on to things longer than I should—be they t-shirts from sixth grade or old letters from forgotten friends or 10-day-old pizza in the refrigerator. Even after something has become useless or moldy or passé or devoid of any real meaning, it’s still not easy for me to get rid of it and banish it from my life forever. This propensity to hold on too long explains why, as recent as this past week, I was signing on regularly to AOL Instant Messenger (aka AIM)—nearly 15 years after I first appeared on the scene as “Carthage45” (a reference to the North African home of Hannibal—in case you had any doubts that I was not a dork)—in spite of the fact that I didn’t know anyone else who used it anymore. For the uninitiated, AIM was created as an instant messaging service initially part of America Online (AOL), an internet service provider that unbelievably still exists. AIM soon developed as a stand-alone instant messaging system that allowed you to compile a ‘buddy list’ of screen names of people you knew who you could then chat with. From the time it first became available, I was hooked. It has now been part of my life for so long as a source of communication and connection and the airing of grievances, it has become daunting to say farewell, in spite of the fact that AIM has completely lost all the usefulness that initially drew me in.  

What AIM has meant to me over the years is hard to quantify. It was, in its earliest stages, a way to solidify friendships, obtain breaking news updates from the soap opera that was middle school, and gain a foothold in some external space even when I lived in a world that was regimented by parents who were hung up on making sure I did my homework and got to bed on time. Later, at boarding school, it became a lifeline to the distant outside world—as it was the only practical way I could keep in touch with friends back home or people who were locked up in other dorms after lights out. In college, the device lost a lot of its luster, but it still served as a means to keep in touch with friends from high school, and a way to easily figure out where people were going out or what the assignment in English class was. Since that time, it has basically been a quiet, uncrowded room where people from the past would appear without warning, out of thin air, to say “hello, how are you?” and then disappear into the murky deep once again. One by one, the screen names I was so used to seeing pop up on my buddy list each afternoon like clockwork vanished completely until only one or two appeared with any regularity. In the last couple of months, even those few remaining holdouts have completely abandoned it. Now, I feel like I’m the last person in the room, left behind to turn out the lights before the party is closed down for good.

With the prevalence of so many means of digitally communicating with people—from Gchat to Facebook to text messaging—the utility of AIM has declined drastically in the last five to seven years. Some studies report that AIM held over 50 percent of the instant messaging market as recent as 2006, a number which has now dropped to less than 1 percent—a staggering decline even in the ever-changing world of communications. People stopped using AIM simply because there were suddenly so many other easier, hipper ways to tell someone you were too tired to watch a Star Wars marathon. Especially as mobile phone technology has grown, the ability to stay in touch with friends at every hour of the day has become a real possibility (and for some, a necessity). No longer do you have to wait to get home to sign on and hope that someone else is online—you can just text them or send a message on Facebook or tweet at them or facetime them or whatever. As has been the case with much of our recent technological advancement, communication tools are forever shifting and adapting to find new methods to make our interactions with others more instant and more controlling of our lives. Though AIM was for many people an obsession that took up a substantial amount of time, there was still the ability to eventually sign off and return to a haven without the ding of a new instant message. That wall that provided some sense of privacy and distance has since been shattered by ‘improved’ technology, thus destroying the need for an Instant Messenger service that was dependent upon making yourself available at the exact same time someone else did. Somehow, I miss that idea.

A few months ago, I pulled out the old laptop that I had in high school. Out of curiosity, I turned on the shockingly clunky apparatus just to see what was contained inside. Amidst the folders for Napster and papers for 10^th grade history class, I noticed a program known as Dead AIM, which if I remember correctly was somehow ‘better’ than your average AIM. Unbeknownst to me, that program had logged every conversation I’d ever had while using it. And I, perpetually bored and self-reflective, decided to read all of what was documented there, trying to decipher cryptic messages like they had been transmitted by unknown beings from outer space. Like my recent foray into examining old notebooks of poetry, this experience was uncomfortable and unsettling—envisioning myself so long ago, typing furiously into the night, trying to be funny, trying to sound smart, trying to create real connections with people. It captured, in just the couple of months that I used Dead AIM, so much about what high school was like. Whether I was arguing politics or reveling in oblique away messages (which would soon be replaced elsewhere by ‘status messages’), the chats were all foreign and fascinating, like some kind of time capsule I had forgotten I’d buried in the back yard.

Just as my reticence to throw away old shoes has nothing to do with any deep-seated love for the rubber in their soles, my inability to sign off from AIM forever has nothing to do with its design or functionality.  I’m not attached to the medium itself, but to what happened there. That feeling of possibility, of being able to instantly and directly communicate with dozens of people with the reckless abandon of adolescence is what I feel I’m leaving behind. Because in many ways, I still chat as I did then, just in a more mature and limited form. But it somehow isn’t the same. Even on this occasion, as I finally decide to not sign on to AIM anymore, I doubt that I will actually delete the program from my computer. I will leave that primitive golden yellow running man icon on my desktop so that I can be occasionally reminded of what it was like to come home after school and chat with friends or stay up late into the night telling bad jokes and quoting terrible song lyrics to people I hardly knew and not think a thing of it. And I guess, in the end, that has to be worth something.

Kool Thing of the Week # 5: Hopscotch Music Festival

For the third consecutive year, downtown Raleigh is gearing up for the Hopscotch Music Festival, which kicks off this Thursday evening. Started in 2010 by the Independent Weekly, the 2012 edition of the event will be the largest yet, featuring  175 acts from a wide array of musical genres at 15 venues around Raleigh. The festival, as its name suggests, is all about hopping from one show to another, as the schedule features a veritable smorgasbord of offerings for your musical enjoyment. Festivalgoers have the chance to see some of the capital city’s finest venues, ranging from Raleigh Memorial Auditorium, to the Contemporary Art Museum, to local hangouts like Kings and Slim’s.  Headliners The Roots, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and Built to Spill will play at the City Plaza stage outdoors in the middle of Fayetteville Street. While the main festival runs during the evenings from Thursday to Saturday, day parties in the downtown area kick off around noon each day and will feature plenty of music, fellowship, and in some cases, food (score).  For the more intellectually-minded, visit one of the panels at the Edward McKay Used Books & More Cultural Series, which will take place at the Raleigh City Museum at 3pm each afternoon.

Having attended the previous two iterations of the festival, I can say without reservation that it’s a pretty awesome experience. Whether it was seeing Chapel Hill band Embarrassing Fruits play twice in one day or witnessing Guided By Voices tear it up on the City Plaza stage with the glistening Raleigh skyline behind me, Hopscotch has provided me with a boatload incredible memories in just two short years of existence. It’s a wonderful showcase for downtown Raleigh and all the exciting music that’s being made in the Triangle, yet it also provides a great opportunity to see talented acts from all over the world. Organizers have done a stand-up job in crafting the lineup so that, while choosing which bands to see is no easy task, the high quality of the options ensures that you really can’t go wrong no matter which course you decide on.

For more info, check out the Festival website: http://hopscotchmusicfest.com/

Oldies Corner 
In honor of Hopscotch, I thought I'd post a video from one of my favorite bands who will be performing at this year's Festival--the pride of Boise, Built to Spill. This here is a live version of the song "Stop the Show," which appeared on the near-perfect Perfect From Now On, an album released way back in 1997. I've seen Built to Spill live two or three times before, but I'm still really looking forward to seeing them again this Friday at City Plaza. So, rock out and enjoy.