The Delicate Sound

Why have I become obsessed with The Hold Steady ? Is it because they are a band of guys on the far north side of 30 who rock out? Is it that their songs "speak to me?" Craig Finn and his crew from Brooklyn (by way of Minneapolis) write songs that repeat phrases like "kicking it," "separate trips," "getting high" and other staples of high school life. Or are they? The Hold Steady - Boys and Girls In America (2006) takes its title from a Jack Kerouac reference that somehow winds its way to Minneapolis and John Berryman. The songs are amateur sociology at its finest: girls, drunken escapades, winning at the track, taking drugs at an outdoor concert and that staple of everyone's teen years: the all-ages hardcore matinee show. And girls. The endless girls vs. boys allusions carry every song to a peak that leaves you wondering what you did wrong. Beyond the epic quality of the lyrics , the songs are musically very Springsteen in their construction....

I realized today that I could clarify my statements regarding mood and music. It really comes down to whether you want to the music to change your mood or sustain it. Sometimes you just need to wallow in misery - roll around in it and really get your hands dirty with misery. That is the case for sustaining your mood with music. To go back to what I was saying in my previous post, sometimes you want to change your mood or more accurately: you want the music to change your mood.

For thirteen years I have been sending an email to a group of my friends from college on this day with that subject line. It generally revolves around what I am thinking, what I have been reading and most importantly what I have been listening to. The music part is the key because thirteen years ago today my best friend Bob Suwala died. The recipients have shrunk in numbers due to moves, lost addresses and the general and gradual disconnection of modern life. Bob’s girlfriend, his housemates, bike riding buddies and the many people he knew. Bob was the most connected person I knew when he was alive: he had an internet connection from school and we spent a lot of late (very late) nights perusing and posting to the Usenet groups in particular alt.rave. This was in 1990 - 1992 and the web was still but a glint in Tim Berners-Lee’s eye. Bob and I shared a passion for music particularly electronic music – in those days it was house and becoming techno. Hardcore wasn’t really a term yet and ...

Music can be bi-directional for me: it can change my mood or I can change the music to fit my mood. Either way it is a symbiotic relationship of a sort. On my short drive to work each day I listen to my own personal radio station in the form of my iPod. I always like the songs as a whole but they are not always what I want to hear so I find myself skipping a lot – particularly in the morning. Sometimes my iPod really feels my mood and plays a lot of good songs in a row. Sometimes I get frustrated and skip the whole way to the office. I listen to albums in their entirety more in the morning than at night. I also find that an album or group of songs will seem great in the morning but after a day at work, the same songs can have little or no relevance to my mood. Today iPod Radio played Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti (Disc 2) in its entirety. If “Down By the Seaside” cannot put you in a good mood, you have issues. Led Zeppelin will be available on iTunes in November. Rock on!

I have been an Apple and Mac devotee for 20 years - today I got to join the future. I stood in line at an AT&T store to buy an iPhone. I got there at 5:30 thinking "no one in Stamford will be buying an iPhone." Hmmm...It seems like apple.com is available in Fairfield County, CT and 30+ people had my same stroke of brilliance - before me. I worked the whole day and made it to the store only to find myslef roughly 40th in line. No big deal. The store manager dork came out and announced at 5:45 PM "You must have a verifiable email address and a credit card. And you must have Windows XP or higher." Clunk. What an idiot. "Or OSX..." Long story short - after letting 4 people at a time into the phonebooth (!) sized store, the same dork announced there were no more 8 GB iPhones - only an undisclosed number of 4 GB. But they were offering a way to pre-order the 8GB and get it by overnight mail in "a business day" which meant Tuesday. After waiting in...

For those of you who know me - I lived in Manhattan for 5 years and loved it. I used to go out to dinner, shop for records and go to shows and get home really late. Tonight I had the good fortune to do all those things again. Mini restaurant review: Rare (228 Bleecker Street) is a bistro that combines two great tastes that taste great together: beef from the nearby meatpacking district with Murray's famous cheese from across the street. I am a longtime fan of the burgers at the Corner Bistro on Jane Street - but these are on a whole different level. No manner of prose can describe them - just go have one. The same people that own Generation Records (210 Thompson Street) also own Bleecker Street Records (239 Bleecker Street). While vinyl is clearly enjoying a revival if not rebirth, the pickings are slim these days. I did manage to find a copy of Freur's Doot Doot album from 1984. The photo on the back of the sleeve was worth the $10. Thanks to Clay for that one... Besides a...

I went to high school and college during the 1980s. I also spent 6 years working in a record store - the first three being 1987-1989. I like to think of it as the Golden Age of Indie Rock: Creation Records at its peak, Manchester swaggering in and grunge still on the rack at the Salvation Army. Record companies were still making LPs at this point - CDs were becoming the defacto standard but nonetheless, three formats were still being produced (cassettes being the third). When you work in a record store, it goes without saying that you play cool music in the store. One such record that I came to know was The Feelies - The Good Earth, produced by Peter Buck himself - at the time the godfather of American indie rock. The Good Earth represented everything that was good about music: no pretense, quiet and noisy, subtly complex, reverent to its influences (Velvet Underground, Television and Big Star), awe-inspiring. I can think of no record save for the Stone Roses first record - that I ha...

My band (my COVER band if you must know) got together at the behest of our zealous lead singer to raise money for a school in Rwanda that he'd been involved with. Let's put on show! Three bands: Jean-Paul Samputu from Rwanda, Space Cabbage from the NY area, and Ask Your Mom (us) from well, here.

I was given this book by a friend who knows I like the Beatles and who knows I am a reader. These are both good points to make given how obsessive I have become about the Beatles as a result - and the fact that it is nearly 1000 pages long. I stayed out of trouble (i.e. didn't buy any more records, books or guitars) and spent time with my wife and kids - albeit in a state of near total ignorance at times...another parallel it turns out. What this book showed me was that the Beatles were a unique sensation for two reasons: their collective and astonishing gifts with songwriting and a work ethic that was second to none. By the time the Beatles signed their first record deal in 1963, they had already played over 1000 shows in the UK and Hamburg. Not all those shows were a result of this work ethic, but the drive to keep playing, night after night (pills notwithstanding) was clearly driven by something intangible and incredible. The book is an exhaustively researched work that focuse...