Thursday, December 31, 2015

Epilogue: I Forgot One

A special, first time occurrence on IMU:

I'm writing this as an addendum to my year-end music list because I started heavily listening to Joy, Departed  by Sorority Noise after I put up the post and really do feel like it's one of the best albums put out in 2015. The band has all the best parts of Blue/Pinkerton/Songs/From the Black Hole Weezer, but doesn't make them sound tired and cliché the way most bands around right now do. Great fuzzy power-pop and good song writing.


Tuesday, December 22, 2015

They Tell Me That It's Good for Me, but I Don't Even Care

When I write a post for IMU, I put pressure on myself to have the post touch on at least one important idea or theme because that I what I think makes my "good" posts good. It is a pretty necessary thing in my mind. I mentioned this in that "ranking post" I wrote a few months ago. This doesn't always to be explicitly done in my writing, as even the three posts the precede this one, which are strictly documentary in nature serve a specific purpose of, in the future, illustrating where I was at, what I was doing, and what I was into at a specific time, which I think is a main theme of this blog.

This pressure for a bigger theme can sometimes deter me from writing though, because I tell myself that there is no use in writing something here if I don't have a bigger idea or plan in mind. I guess that is sort of good, in that it drives the quality of content here way up, but it is also bad because it drives the quantity way down. Do I write sparingly, but make the posts long and intelligent? Do I write all the time and end up putting up shitty posts frequently? This is something I struggle with.

I was turning this over in my head a bunch today because I feel like I have nothing of value to say lately. I got a big round of edits on my thesis back during recording and have been wrapped up in going through those edits. Reading through old writing and especially someone pointing out all of the inconsistencies and mistakes and dumb parts of that old writing can be not so fun, so editing has gone Rogue and sort of sucked out all of my creative writing power. Making something like a year-end list is easy because I have it all planned out and just need to write a blurb about something I like (not to mention that I wrote like half of it like a month ago and saved the draft). But tapping into my emotions and writing something that means something and says something? That's hard.

Nevertheless, I feel like I need to write something to keep me sane, so what you get is the ol' IMU special: Me writing a bullshit post about the writing process of this blog.

#content
#imusicalgenius

FIN

P.S. I just listened to Fuel for the Hate Game by Hot Water Music and Huey Lewis and the News' Greatest Hits back-to-back and can honestly say that I enjoy "The Power of Love" more than any track on the former. For real.

Thursday, December 17, 2015

Hit Your Head

I also thought I would introduce something new this year and include my favourite TV shows from this year. I watch a shitload of TV and have gotten a lot more on top of watching shows while they air instead of binging them in one huge session, which has led to me getting a lot more into TV, while also getting a little more critical of what I watch. Or maybe I am just becoming a junior cultural critic. All I know is that now I think a lot more about why I like a specific part of a TV show than I used to and I sort of think about TV the way I think about music now. I'm not very diverse in my tastes, but I think I'm starting to know my shit somewhat. That being said, I am committed to lowbrow and vernacular sensibilities and will always call it "TV" instead of "television", the same way I call them "movies" and not "film". Most of the time, at least.

Anyways, my favourite TV of 2015:

Silicon Valley, season 2



I am pretty sure that Silicon Valley is my favourite show on TV right now and if it's not, then it's my favourite comedy by a landslide. This show is a lot closer to Office Space than most Mike Judge stuff, which I guess explains why I like it so much. The writing manages to balance and blend high and lowbrow humour in the way that only Mike Judge can when he's at his best. I LOVED the first season, but the second one managed improve itself by fleshing out the side characters like Danesh, Gilfoyle, and OJ. Just like the "dick joke of all dick jokes" at the end of season 1, season 2 manages to get a lot of mileage out of simple ideas by taking them as far as they can go, both logically and illogically, if that makes any sense.

Togetherness



If Silicon Valley isn't my favourite show on right now, then it is certainly this one (ignoring Thrasher's "Skateline" weekly fake-news update series, which doesn't count, I guess). The skill that the Duplass brothers have at creating funny, interesting, and most important touching movies translated perfectly to this TV series. They absolutely nail being in a stale relationship, feeling overlooked and friendship. I feel as though Togetherness is a very realistic look into life as a 30 year-old, which is something I'm not quite at, but almost at. This whole season hit me square in the goddamn feelings.

Regular Show, seasons 6 & 7



Regular Show elevated itself to "Favourite Cartoon Ever?" status pretty quickly, so I may be a bit of an RS apologist. I don't expect the level of consistently great episodes that was present until the end of the 3rd season, so I find it easier to swallow when the show puts out a fairly by-the-numbers episode involving a zany plot that resolves in a giant event. However, for every episode like that, the show has at least two great ones that do either of the following: 

1. Touch on Mordecai or Rigby romantic life with Margaret, MY GIRL C.J., and Eileen. This is secretly the show's greatest strength and when they use this as an episode's central plot it speaks to many things I've experienced myself.

2. Take the zaniness to a much higher level. The crazy episodes work best when the writers and artists wear the show's influences on their sleeves and don't shy away from corny 80's action movies, stoner comedies and anime.

Though the show is not the most even its ever been, there are many episodes which expand the show's mythology and make it even more of a joy to watch. There is not bigger parallel for me in media than reading me as Jekyll/Hyde type as Mordo and Rigby.

Man Seeking Woman


No show impressed me more in 2015 than Man Seeking Woman. After seeing the pilot I immediately became a huge fan of Simon Rich and I love reading the stuff he writes now. This show takes every insecurity that young men have while dating and blows them up into this huge surreal, silly and ridiculous monstrosity that you have to laugh at because of how stupid and silly they are, while also laughing at yourself because you can think of like five times you did the exact thing that is happening. For example worrying about your new significant other hanging out with their old one (in this case a Japanese penis monster, illustrated above) or your mom asking you about who are dating (by tying you up in a chair and torturing you for the information). I guess a big part of why I enjoy is because I am the exact demographic they are targeting (20-something straight white male), but holy shit did this show hit all the right spots for me.


Master of None



I watched the first episode and thought "Yeah, that was pretty good," but realized part way through the second how in love with this show I was. Aziz's writing on the show is amazing and balances the millenial references/criticism he's known for with a new romantic softness that works SO WELL. I would never imagined that he would be this good at writing romantic repartee. The overall arc of the two main characters is great and very relatable for anyone who's been in a long-term relationship. Not to mention that only white guy in the main cast is Eric Wareheim playing the weirdo. A wonderful debut series.

The Last Man on Earth


Will Forte is a god. Though a lot of people gave the show flack for having a protagonist that is a dick and difficult to relate to, I thought it was great that in a time of most network comedies being full of fun, great people (Parks and Rec, Brooklyn Nine-Nine), TLMoE took the opposite approach and tried to tap into the worst parts of your personality. If you think that you wouldn't react the same as these people to situations, then dog, you lyin' to yourself. The first season was a clinic in cringe humour and didn't really ever lose steam, in my opinion.

The constant building of the initial, obvious, Cast Away joke in the first episode was one of my favourite things on TV this year. I may or may not have my own power ranking of all the balls.

(Antawn just edges out Gary for the top spot)

The Jinx



When discussing this show, I've described it as "killing the true crime documentary genre" and I stand by. The revelation at the end of the series, in which Durst unknowingly confesses, is the best and craziest and most interesting thing that a documentarian  could possibly hope to achieve in making a project like this. You start with an interesting and high-profile murder case, deconstruct all of the evidence, follow the fucked up subject through his life while he keeps somehow escaping from charges, keep building and building and then bam.

Documentary Now!


A lot of great comedy is on TV right now and a lot of it is getting a lot of attention, but I think this series deserves a lot more than it gets. Fred Armisen is predictably great, but for me this was a Bill Hader tour-de-force. I really don't understand why someone hasn't taken him and made them their leading man and then laughed at how great it turned out. Each episode is a perfect send-up of its source material and though I could maybe pick a favourite one if I sat down and really thought about it, it would be really tough. The show's funny enough if you don't get all the references, but if you're picking up what they're putting down, it is phenomenal.

Rick and Morty


I only got hip to Rick and Morty this summer and powered through the first season before diving into the second right after. Funny sci-fi is hard to do well and even harder to keep funny, but this show excels at it. Jokes circle around many times in the series and keep getting better. Whereas a lot of Adult Swim shows go all-in on ridiculous and eschew continuity in favour of fucked up plots and zaniness (Aqua Teen, Sealab, Tim and Eric), whereas as this one stays just as dark and twisted while somehow maintaining a mythology. When Dan Harmon is on top of his game, there isn't really anyone who can touch him in smart, self-referential and somehow touching comedy and that is evidenced in Rick and Morty. The second season is even somehow better than the first!

I sure do watch a lot of comedies, don't I?

Monday, December 14, 2015

It Sounds Stock!

Three post in one day?! We are a content machine here at IMU. Beat Noir, in various forms, was in Niagara on the Lake from the 5th to the 13th to record our second album. Here are some pictures I took during this week, which was one of the most fun I've ever had.




















2015 Jams

I used to love writing about all the new music that came out each year. Then for a few years I got down on myself and thought "Who really cares about what I liked?" Last year I thought about it and came to the conclusion that I do really like writing this stuff up and writing a really long post about all of my favourite music from the last calendar year is honestly more for me than you and serves as a sort of marker for different points in my life. I can go back and look through old lists and, through looking at the music and what I had to say about it, see where I was at at the time. There was time where I tried to include a whole ton of stuff and give my opinion on every single relevant release that year as a way to validate my taste, but I'm past that now. This is a much more free-flowing exercise for me now and I find it pretty enjoyable. Once again, I've ditched numbers because who really cares? I guess you can decide what I liked best by reading what I write and making your decision that way.

I've linked a place to stream, download, or buy each album in its name if there was one available.

Mac McCaughan- Non-Believers




All the early press I saw for this album described it as the singer from Superchunk making the soundtrack to a John Hughes movie and I guess that's an okay description, but I think a better one would be a midway point between Superchunk and New Order. Obviously homie is going to retain influences from his band when he's been in it for like 25 years, so it ends up being Majesty Shredding, except with much less distortion and much more synth. I was a little let down by the last Superchunk record, so I wonder if Mac was saving all of his good songs for this one, as it's incredibly strong front-to-back. This is something that I came back to constantly this year and haven't stopped listening to since its release. I don't really bother deciding which album is my hard #1 anymore, but this one would be in contention for sure.

The Mountain Goats- Beat the Champ




One of the nerdiest things about me is that I absolutely adore pro wrestling. I know that it's not for everyone and it's one of those things where those who "get it" get it and those who don't don't. When this release was announced, it seemed pretty out of nowhere for The Mountain Goats to release a pro wrestling-themed album, but I was instantly excited because I already loved the band and this would combine two things I already liked. What makes this good though is that rather than the album's theme being 80's or 90's WWF and WCW, which are already in the public consciousness, John Darnielle instead channels his love old old territorial wrestling which makes it a lot more endearing and gives the songs a very strong emotional core. It's not the best album of the year, but it does such a good job of building a world with the songs and that is so special.

Adventures- Supersonic Home




A lot of fuzzy, shoegazy emo came out this year. A LOT. I guess emo kids all started smoking weed? Since the genre is getting watered down so much, most of it was pretty uninspiring, but Adventures hit a sweet spot for me. I like the vocal melodies a lot and there's a bunch of good riffs and grooves and the album is really enjoyable front-to-back. "Tension" is one of my favourite songs from this year.

Jeff Rosenstock- We Cool?



Jeff Rosenstock's music has gotten so much more popular among punk kids my age in the last few years and I'm really happy for the guy. Because I am a musical elitist, I tried to use that as ammo for me starting to drift away from the new music it makes, somehow thinking that more people liking it would make me like it less. That's lame. Like what you like because you like. This is not my favourite thing he's ever done, but there are many good songs and the lyrics are ace. Jeff forever.

Turnstile- Nonstop Feeling




I've gotten to a point where I know what I want from hardcore and that is just riffs and breakdowns and yelling. This album gives me those things. I like dumb hardcore and I like breakdowns and this band throws back to a lot of stuff I like from the late 80's and early 90's both in their sound and aesthetic. To me, it's equal parts Anthrax and Sick of It All and that is right up my alley. Of course I love this album.

Sean Bonnette- Skateboarding's Greatest Hits



I do not listen to Sean Bonnette's band Andrew Jackson Jihad. I can totally see the appeal, but it's just not for me, but this release made me rethink that. He picked his favourite songs from skate videos and then recorded his own weird versions of them. This release really resonates with me because it hits me in so many different emotional and nostalgic places, as I can think of my favourite songs from videos too. A song dovetailing with a skate part is always a multi-layered intersection of the counter-culture of skateboarding, the culture of the video's team, the tastes and personality of the rider of the specific part and also something that suits the skater's style. When it works out it adds such an intense ethereal feeling to a skate part that makes you want to immediately go outside and try a handrail for the first time. This release makes me think of all of this and how it has been present in my life and all the great feelings it has given me. I fucking love how he included clips from each video part before songs as well.

Skate or die.

Shopping Cart- Weird Year


Despite all the members of Shopping Cart being good friends of mine, I only managed to see them one time. At that show, I had so much fun watching them play that it reminded me exactly why being in a band is fun. I think that this feeling comes through in these songs. Shopping Cart broke up. Long live Shopping Cart.


Deafheaven- New Bermuda




The hair on the top of my head is longer than the hair on the sides, so I guess I'm obliged to like Deafheaven. This album rips.

Pet Symmetry- Pet Hounds




Pet Symmetry put out a really good EP and a really good demo, but both left me wanting a lot more from the band. The songs were really strong and well put together and I kept snooping around to see if more music from the band that I hadn't heard existed somewhere, but that was for naught. I was really looking forward to this album, which was helped by the early release of "Give Thanks (Get Lost)". The band totally delivered and the album is a tight 25 minutes of wonderful emo-y power-pop. I love when band's don't try to do too much and trim the fat off of songs, not shying away from short songs. If you've got enough hooks, who gives a fuck? Good lyrics, great guitar work and heavenly melodies. Hasn't gotten old since it came out either. This would be another one I would put up near the top of an ordered version of this list.

Self Defense Family- Heaven is Earth



I am pretty late to the End of A Year/Self Defense Family party. I dabbled here and there, but never really gave the releases any attention. That changed this year though, as they were one of the bands I listened to the most this year. I think that I prefer the older You Are Beneath Me material more, but that's not to say that I don't appreciate the intellectual slant of this new material and just how much this band tries to do. Writing essentially all parts in the studio? Four different producers and studios doing two songs each to make up the album? Very, very cool. As artists, it is truly impressive what Self Defense Family is constantly doing.

Nai Harvest- Hairball



I hate to draw comparisons to Brit-Pop with this release because I think I'm mostly doing that because of the band's accents and haircuts, but that is the first thing I think of. This band, like Adventures, play a style of shoegazey, fuzzy emo that seems to be all the rage these days but I get the sense that their music is also informed by growing up around bands like Blur and Pulp in their rockier moments. There's a lot more classic guitar-pop tricks on this album than their contemporaries (dat ride cymbal on the opening track) that flesh the songs out nicely. "Buttercups" is one of the best songs of the year.

Antartico Vespucci- Leavin' La Vida Loca


I love this band. A lot. The goodness of their first EP expanded, but not stretched, over 10 songs. Hell yeah.

Dogs on Acid- Self-Titled



Early in 2015, my ipod broke and for about 3 months I only had 7 or 8 "A" bands synced on it, which led to me leaning heavily on the Algernon Cadwallader discography for a long time. When I heard the bass player had a new band, I was excited but thought that Dogs on Acid was one of the worst band names I'd ever heard. Their first demo didn't do much, but this full length is absolutely wonderful. It's alty-punk played about the best you can play it and it has dominated my listening habits since it came out. I don't even think the band name sucks anymore either.

The World is a Beautiful Place & I am No Longer Afraid to Die- Harmlessness




One time, Babs and Sierra and I were getting nachos on the Sneaky Dee's patio. TWIABP and Dads were playing the venue that night and a bartender was writing the bill on a sandwich board outside. He asked us if we had heard of the bands "The World is a Beautiful Place" and "I am No Longer Afraid to Die" were. We told him it was one band's name and he said it was the dumbest thing he'd ever heard. Jokes about the length of this band's name are pretty hackneyed, but that story was too good to not share. This album is good and poppy and is the first thing I've gotten into from them. The long songs don't even feel that long, you guys.

Oso Oso- Real Stories of True People who Kind of Looked like Monsters



I hadn't heard of Oso Oso before I saw them open for The Hotelier this year. They blew me away and nailed a emo/pop-punk/pop-rock bulls-eye that I didn't know I needed. At the show, Mitch described them as very Third Eye Blind-like and upon hearing that, I agree. This album is absolutely great and catchy and full of good riffs and I think good stuff will be coming from them for sure. Super into this one and can't wait to see what they do next.

I also took the liberty of compiling a mix with one song from each of these albums. If you would like a taste of what I've been into this year, you can download that RIGHT HERE.

This is What I Want

Apparently the band Ma Jolie is breaking up and that sucks, because it pretty much always sucks when people stop making music. To be honest, I haven't listened to them very much recently at all, but there was a time when I was very into ...Compared to Giants and had a really great night while seeing them at a show on a trip to Cleveland in 2012. It's not even as though that is one of my favourite albums or anything, but upon seeing that the band is breaking up, the news brought up my few memories of that band and also of that particular time in my life.

Because of that, I feel the need to post the album here:

Ma Jolie- ...Compared to Giants

Friday, December 4, 2015

Healthy Body, Sick Mind

I'm person who looks back on their past a lot. I would say that I do this in a healthy way, in that sometimes I remind myself of friends I used to have and things I used to do that I wish I could bring back, but also think about things I did or ways I acted that were wrong. I think it's important to learn from your mistakes, but also that it's important that you don't forget who you are.

Since I've always been very involved in music, whether it be playing in a band, or going to shows, or buying records, looking back on musical taste is one of the main ways that I do what I was talking about in the last paragraph. Everyone's tastes evolve over time and if they don't, you are way too boring. There's nothing wrong with still loving stuff you discovered as a pre-teen, but if you don't grow in your interests that sucks.

Everyone has some bad music they used to listen to, but I try to look back on shitty bands I used to love within the context of where I was at the time. Sure, Pennywise really sucks and I can't believe I loved them at one time (let alone had the cover of Self-Titled as my MSN display picture), but me listening to Pennywise is directly tied to Punk-o-Rama 8, which was huge in introducing me to a lot of bands who I still love and are undeniably good. They also were a band that Damien and I used to play together on guitar and bass, so they are also tied to my friendship with my best friend and to me learning how to play bass.

In looking back on bands, I always find very empowering when I think about I still love a band as much as I did when I first heard them. I was listening to the Operation Ivy compilation yesterday and that is what inspired this blog post, because I still absolutely love those songs and they all still sound as fresh as the first time I heard them. If I've been listening to a band for like 15 years, then there has to be something about the band that draws me to it more than others. And that means that that particular idea has to be more important to me than other things. If that idea is more important to me and is something that draws me back to things regularly throughout my life, than it must be an integral part of my personality.

Right?

Right.

In the case of Operation Ivy this would the social awareness and criticism contained in their lyrics, and if that is an integral part of my personality, from the above logic, then that is a good thing.

It doesn't hurt that they play fast as hell too.

I don't know. This is a shitty blog. Operation Ivy rules and I still feel as powerful and positive as I did the first time I heard them in 8th grade. That's all I'm trying to say.

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Greyscale Memories



While writing last week, I was possessed to listen to Beat Noir's only album, Ecotone for the first time in forever.

Hey, since I mentioned it, I guess here you go:

I GUESS I CAN'T EMBED BANDCAMP PLAYERS ANYMORE

Like I said, it had been a minute since I had actually listened to the album in full, which I guess means I hadn't experienced the songs from a listener's perspective in a little while. The main way I interact with the songs is through playing them at shows, or more recently since we haven't played a show in two months, at practice. And we barely play them at practice because we're getting ready to record!

I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm not as familiar with the songs as I once was. But I also think that an album is a work of art itself. Bands put a lot of effort into the track order, artwork, overarching themes, etc., so it's been forever since I had experienced Ecotone as a whole. I still know the songs we play live, "Nicky Driscoll", "Ancienne Gloire", "The Wars", inside out, but that's not the same for other songs. There was even songs I forgot were on the album! Somehow I forgot that "Sheltered Town / Bitter Sea" which, frankly, I think is our best song, is on the album. The Six Feet Under clip in between "Nicky Driscoll" and "Deathwish" completely slipped my mind, which is funny, considering that Ecotone is basically Six Feet Under: The Album! and we watched the entire show while writing it.

It's also much different listening to the 10 songs now, about two years later (I think?!) then it was hearing them all the time while making the album. There's a lot of things going through your mind while creating an album that seem like a good idea at the time. Making an album is a really hard and long process, so you end up having a million fucking ideas about what you want to do with your art to make it stand out, to make it good, to make each part of it distinctive and different. "Hey, we all like Sloan and Thrush a lot, so let's make this song an alt-punk song." "Hey, we like C.C.R., so let's put 70's rock riffs in this song." Some of those work out and some of them don't, but it's kind of impossible to tell what will at the time.

I think it's been long enough now that I can see the warts on the album, which I assume were evident to listeners when it came out. "Collages" is a bad song. I should never, EVER, write a bassline as dumb as the one I wrote for the verse of "Nom de Guerre". "Song for Movement" might be a better song if we just took out the intro.

But for all the miscues I saw while re-visiting the record, I was also very refreshed by the fact that I'm still very proud of all of the songs. I also re-listened to Permanently and was really ashamed of how bad it is. That did not happen with Ecotone. As soon as the first track (not the intro) was about half-way through I said to myself, "You know what? This is a good song." and found myself repeating that a lot through the listen. Even the songs I don't necessarily like so much have good parts. I think the lyrics and ending of "Collages" are still good. Really, all of the lyrics are good, in my opinion and Duff doesn't get his due. The ending of "Nom de Guerre" is really fun. Maybe we're just good at writing the outros of songs? Who knows.

I've always wanted to be in a band and I guess I should count myself lucky that I've been in one that's enjoyable to be in with friends that I really like for the past 3 1/2 years. For a long time while I was in high school and university, my dream/goal/whatever was to be in a band and have a full-length record so that I could point to it or show it to people and say "This is my album." And I can do that and be proud of it.

Something funny to me is thinking about how each member of Beat Noir would react to this situation. I know that Duff would hate every song, maybe admitting that one or two had miniscule redeeming qualities. Mark would probably love every one. Colin is the wild card, though if I had to guess, his opinion would probably be close to mine.

This is also interesting to me because Beat Noir is going to Niagara on the Lake to record our second album soon. Is that breaking news?! IS THIS AN IMU EXCLUSIVE? Anyways we are and we are a much different band now. We don't practice very much. We haven't played a show in forever. We aren't nearly as active as we were when making Ecotone. In Mark's words, we sort or morphed into a "studio-only" band by accident. That sounds silly, so please know that I was joking. Though that was also due to us playing a bunch of dumb, bad shows this summer.

I don't even know it there's a central point that I'm trying to get to in this post besides "Beat Noir is different now." Maybe also that I still like our record? These seem like dumb and trite points, but I do know that I felt something while listening to the record again. It's a lot like going back and looking at an old part of your facebook timeline. These songs represent a very specific time in my life. I have great memories of writing the album in Colin's basement, Echo Base, and the Breithaup jam hall. I still remember when the album went got "released" (I was at a dinner with several art history profs and smile at my phone. Such a 21st century digital boy I am.).

I think in general though, this is a weird side of the excitement I'm feeling about recording our new songs in two weeks.

Saturday, November 21, 2015

Illegitimate Blues

I haven't written a for-real blog post since November 2nd and that is because I have been extremely busy writing my thesis, which has sucked up all my writing power Shang Tsung style.

I guess that previous sentence implies that I'm only able to write about one thing at a time, which sucks but is sort of true. I find the more I write about a topic or write in one style, the easier it comes to me. If I've been active on IMU, then long form posts come easier than if I have force my way through my first post in month. If I've putting in shifts at the library all week, it's way easier to sit down and hammer out some good chunks of a chapter. I, like most people, wish I could just sit down and be prolific, but that just ain't true.

I like using word ain't. I guess that's weird for a kid from Scarborough? Who's not from Alabama?

I was thinking about a post on the way to my parents' house in Scarborough the other day and one of the main ideas kicking around in my head was that this blog is a distraction. This is 100% true. I use the internet to distract myself ALL THE TIME and this is definitely part of that. I'm a real big procrastinator, so if I have an assignment to do and the need isn't absolutely pressing, then I fire up the blogger tab and start tapping away here.

What I was thinking about though, is that you can definitely classify this blog as a "good distraction". Using the above example, I think there's something to be said for one of my impulses being to write on here because writing is an expression of your creativity and it involves you using your brain and thinking about new ideas and then trying to express those ideas. It sure beats the hell out of browsing pro wrestling news, which I am also guilty of, in terms of your mind actually doing something. So even if some of the posts look a lot like this, it's better than mindlessly scrolling through facebook or instagram or whatever (fangraphs, in my case). In this way, I use that as ammo for my procrastination. It's like "Well, I'm not writing that, but I am writing this". In the moment, it makes perfect sense to me.

I suppose this ties into a lot of thoughts I've had on technology over the last few years. This all started when I read the book Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart, which I recommend to people my age and younger more than pretty much any book. I kind of hate that smart phones are just a major part of everyone's life now. I completely understand why they are and I understand that many people are kind of forced to use them because everyone else does, but fuck if it sucks man. Every time I'm going somewhere and look around, every person is face down looking at their phone. I don't want to come off as too high up on my already high horse, but you know what I do on commutes since I only have a flip phone? I read. I listen to music. I write.

That is all consuming or making art in somewhere. It's doing something that is adding to my life in a positive way.

I just think that scrolling through various social media as the way you pass your time is fucking awful. It's just useless information that is interesting enough to interest you for the time you are reading it and then you forget it the second you aren't.

Now, I know this isn't a new phenomenon. Before smartphones kids my age would spend an entire night on MSN (though that was at least talking to someone) and I'm sure that there were tons of pre-2000 kids who spend an entire day in front of a TV watching shows just because they were on and not because they liked them at all. Maybe people are going to fill their mind with useless information no matter what and it's just a matter of where it comes from? That's dark.

Also, it's unfair that I act and write like I'm not a slave to technology as well. I spend a lot of time on my computer and am on it right now, publishing this post to what is consider a "social media" site, I guess. Blogs are social media right?

But like I said, if writing stuff here is my distraction, then I am cool with that.

Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Once upon a time, I tried to explain why I thought Harvey Danger were an underrated band and very culturally significant.

This article does a much better job of that than I did.

Monday, November 2, 2015

Basements

There seems to be an inevitable lifecycle as a punk where you go from curious to nervous to invested to jaded to bitter. We all try to avoid this as much as possible, but it is apparently failsafe. If you've been interested music and ever involved in a particular scene, there is always a certain time period or group of bands that evoke the most nostalgia. You start to think "Back then, it was different. It mattered", but in reality everybody thinks that about something. The punk kids older than you thought that about what came before you and the kids younger than you think about right now. Life, of which punk is of course a part, is always changing

It's really easy to look back on a certain time period as the "Golden Age" of a scene simply because you were there to experience it. Maybe just being there is what really matters.

For me, that time was about 2005-2012 or so (or maybe now? I guess?) in Ontario. I went to a lot of shows, though more importantly I went to a lot of shows that featured local bands from Ontario. I have vivid memories of the first times I saw Junior Battles, !Attention!, and The Decay and when I think about that now, it's more or less like there's a rose-coloured lens over the whole thing. I couldn't believe how good the music and bands around me were. I made unforgettable memories in weird and awesome places. It mattered more than anything to me.

With that, I give you this collection of music made by my peers that affected me in a major way. I have strong memories tied to all of these releases and the people who made them. I tried to limit it to one release per band for the sake of it not being overwhelming and tried to go for 7"s or EPs when I could. It can sometimes be a little daunting to jump into a giant collection of music, or at least thats the way I find it, so I tried my best to curb that as much as possible. I hope you like these songs, because they were a big deal for me.

The Essential Ontario 2008-2012.

Friday, October 23, 2015

Smoke 'Em if You Got 'Em, 'Cause We're Never Gonna Learn

Following the federal election on Monday, I got into a pretty heavy Dillinger Four kick, specifically their 2002 album Situationist Comedy, which is my personal favourite.


The reason being, Dillinger Four is one of the more leftist bands I could think of off the top of my head at the time. They also are a particular type of band for me. I don't listen to them often enough and each time I put them on, especially this album, I'm immediately pissed off at myself for not remembering how much I love the band. They write really great pop-punk, but have so much going on beneath the surface that it really elevates the band from good to great if you're paying close enough attention.

Granted, I came up with the idea for this post about 4 days ago and only got around to writing it now, so I'm sure some of the ideas will be diminished.

Dillinger Four have long been the darlings of your average punknews.org and Fest frequenter and a lot of that is due to the band's image as four burly guys who like to play fast, sing loud and drink lots. Especially the last part. This image mainly comes from the band's live show, which is a whole lot of the last three things. However, I think that this is way too sweeping of a generalization and really undermines the sharpness of the thought that is put into the band's lyrics. 

The song "Gainesville", which is about the Fest, is what the band is most well-known for among your average punk fan and while that is a really good song, I think it's unfair. Fest has gotten to be very, very popular and most goers adopt the song as a sort of anthem for the festival, for obvious reasons, but Dillnger Four released the album in 2008, meaning they must have wrote the song even earlier than that. To me, that means that the song represents the band during the very earlier stages of the festival, like the 4th or 5th edition, rather than the larger punk circus it's become now. I'm not trying to deny that the festival is still fun, but I'm definitely sure that it's not the same as it used to be at all. The song is about feeling good and drinking in the sun in Florida when you're used to cold weather where you come from. Again, while a good song, to me that doesn't even come close to summing up Dillinger Four and it seems lame that that is what most punk fans have distilled their existence into.

For me, Situationist Comedy, is what defines the band. The opening song, "NOBLE STABBINGS!!", was my introduction to the band as it was including on a Fat Wreck Chords compilation I had bought, which is what caused me to pick up this album over their earlier releases. At first the band seems like a pretty rough ride because of how fast they play (very fast!) and their guitar tones and vocal style. 

Bruh, the bass tone. Holy fuck.

And this is correct, I think this is a very conscious throwback to early 80's hardcore by the band. Given that the members are older (I would assume they're close to or over 40), this comes off as the member experiencing that music first hand and playing their punk music that way because that's how they learned it. This is rather than an appropriation of an earlier generation's style of playing, which is more and more the case with punk and especially hardcore these days.

But underneath this fast roughness is a band who is absolutely phenomenal at writing melodies and especially vocal harmonies. They are so good at that you don't even really notice it until you realize that you are humming along to a song that's like over 200 bpm. Every single chorus is huge. There's these great, unconventional but catchy guitar riffs everywhere you turn. The pop sensibility is astounding.

Case in point, one of my favourite cuts from the album, "folk song.":




I guess that I also really like this release because it in particular really fits with my personal politics. The album was released at a time when being a "political" punk band meant yelling about about George W. Bush and the military and not much else. Dillinger Four instead took a more subtle approach, describing their experiences living in a post-9/11 United States and how it affected them. This works out really well, because rather than being introduced to their ideas, you are introduced to their experiences and you can then relate to them. The result is basically you thinking "I can understand why you think that." instead of just "You think that."

There are a ton of great lines about being working class, which is why the album was on my mind during and following the election. It's a great soundtrack to being critical, but also thinking about why you should be critical.

I'm not really one for giving political statements to people, but I would like to leave with the following, that I think is helpful for people to keep in mind in today's world:

Try to be aware of the greater system that you are a part of and think of why you are a part of it. Be aware of your relationship with money and commodities and do not let them govern what and how you do things. Always think "Why?" and do not let people force you to do things you do not want to do.

And crank this fucking album while you do that, I guess.

Thursday, October 15, 2015

October 14th, 2015

On October 8th, I resolved that I had to buy a ticket to see the Blue Jays play a playoff game at home. My mom has told me that I had been to a playoff game, but given that the last four times the Jays before 2015 were 1989, 91, 92 and 93, and I was 0, 2, 3, and 4 in those years, my memories of those playoff drives are hazy recollections of Toronto freaking out about Joe's home run at best. They were about to play their first that afternoon and I figured that buying a ticket for the second game would be a good bet, in case the series ended before it came back to Toronto for the 5th game. I paid a 70% mark-up on a 500-level ticket and watched the Jays lose in 14 innings on October 9th, to fall within one game of a series loss. That was an absolute heart-breaker of a game to be at, but the experience of being at a playoff game in a hot crowd was just wonderful.

I never lost faith in the idea that the Jays would come back and win the series, despite being down 0-2 and going to Texas, but I had resigned to the fact that the October 9th game would be my only playoff experience for 2015 and I was happy with that.

The Jays then won both games in Texas, like I knew they would.

I came home on Tuesday morning to find a note from my mom saying that her and my dad had gotten seats for the 5th game of the series and that my dad had to work and couldn't go. In terms of surprises, this was pretty far up there. Not only was I going to a playoff game and not only was it in good seats, but I was going to see this series be decided.

By now, most of the world is passably familiar with how the game went. Really what you need is this:


I have been to a lot of Blue Jays games in my life. Probably more than 95% of people. This was the best and craziest, but most importantly, most emotional from a fan standpoint that I've ever been to. You could not ask for more from a baseball game. This game was up and down and up and that final up was just about the highest one you could get. Being a Jays fan, I experienced pretty much everything thing that you able to feel while watching a baseball game during it.

I've said this many times, but my family is a Blue Jays family. My mom found it was a great and affordable way to do things with my brother while she was a single parent. Hearing her describe the first game they went to, in 1983 is heart-warming. While they were at The Ex, the Jays were giving away free tickets to that afternoon's game, the Jays of course still playing at Exhibition Stadium at that time. Upon entering the gate, they found that the team was giving away free hats as well. My mom was supporting herself and my brother on just her salary as a new high school teacher, so to have something so affordable to do with him was absolutely great. From there, she started to buy more tickets, before eventually getting season's tickets in left field behind her favourite player, George Bell.


Before Wednesday's game, to our surprise, George Bell threw out the ceremonial first pitch. My mom immediately jumped up, in her George Bell jersey, and started screaming "GEEE-OOOORR-GGYYYYY!" and it put a smile on my face a mile wide. The two fans in front of us turned around to give us a thumbs up and we struck up a conversation with them. It turned out that they were from Long Island and had grown up with the game's starter Marcus Stroman. They showed a bunch of pictures of them with him and they cheered with us all game, giving high fives and hugs whenever the Jays got a hit or made a play. Given that Stro is my favourite Jay, it was a great and positive section of fans to be in.

As much as baseball is fun to watch, for me it also has a much deeper emotional resonance. It is a physical manifestation of my family's strength and bond. We've joked that main reason my dad, a life-long fan of the sport well before there was an MLB team in Toronto (He traveled to see a World Series game in New York in the 70's! He can remember his teacher putting playoff games on the radio during the 50's!), married my mom was the season tickets. They are truly in love and are a picture of a successful and loving marriage, and while it would be stupid to suggest that they got married because they were both ballfans, it would also be stupid to suggest that the Jays and baseball don't play at least some type of role in our family's relationship.

I always wondered why other kids went on vacations while my family didn't when I was younger. It seemed like every kid in my class got to go somewhere, while I stayed put in Toronto. It was only later that I realized that we got our Jays tickets every year instead. Maybe I was jealous when I was younger, but I'm certainly not now. Going to games for my whole life with my tried and true ballfan parents is how I learned to truly appreciate the game and all its subtleties; realize the importance of a lead-off walk, appreciate the pitcher throwing a 0-2 pitch in the dirt, runners taking an extra base. There's a lot that goes on in the game's quieter moments and when you become aware of this ebb and flow and the minor mindgames that accompany these miniature battles, it's when you become aware of the true beauty of baseball. It's through these that you realize what makes a great player great.

I hate to play the superiority card and talk about how I'm a good or a true baseball and Jays fan and most people at the game aren't, but following the shitshow at yesterday's game I kind of have to. There were two very drunk and very bro fans behind us at the game who were indicative of many of the fans there who clearly have no idea how to act at a baseball game. This has long been a condition that you have to deal with as a Jays fan, because Toronto is not a "baseball" city. Or maybe no city is a "baseball" city and most fans have no idea how to act at sporting events, but I know that when I went to a Mets game in New York, that they sure knew how to act. But Toronto does seem especially bad sometimes. The two bros behind us incessantly yelled "HAAAAMM-ELLLLLS!" all game and yelled that every Rangers batter was "A JOKE". I can understand being a vocal fan and cheering loudly, but if you are here to only heckle the other team and not cheer for your own, then fuck off and give your ticket to someone who actually cares. If you are calling Adrian Beltre, ye of 413 career home runs and 74.9 career WAR, objectively one of the best 3rd basemen of all-time and one of the finest ballplayers of the last 20 years, a joke, then all you are doing is calling attention to how much of a joke you are and how little you know about the game.

Of course the biggest embarrassment in the game was when the fans started to throw beer cans onto the field following an odd play. For the record, the umps absolutely made the correct call and double checked with the office in New York to make sure. They did absolutely nothing wrong and went out of their way to make sure that they didn't. The imagined slights that fanbase keeps yelling about are starting to get tiresome. NEVER THROW SOMETHING ONTO THE FIELD. If you do, you deserve to get kicked out and I hope you do. There are few things that say "I don't know shit about baseballs and am knee-jerk reaction garbage" than what happened last night. As soon as the downpour from the 500's started, I said "Embarrassing." and our new friends from New York agreed with me.

Your own players were telling you to stop. Fuck all of you.

But this does not detract from what followed that inning. Elvis Andrus forgetting how to field, a bases-loaded RBI by Josh and then, of course, Joseeeee, Jose, Jose, Jose.

I commonly tell a story, mostly about how you should never give up hope on your team, in which my Dad ceded going to game 6 of the 1993 World Series in favour of a possible game 7. This meant that my mom got to see Joe Carter's walk-off home run to win the World Series in person. In terms of Jays moments, you can't get better than that. That is her personal "Jays Moment". 

It has been different for me, because I have watched mostly out-of-contention teams throughout my life and each of my favourite moments have been singular player accomplishments. I was at the Halladay-Burnett game, which was a big one, Jose's 2010/11 seasons were also up there, watching Carlos Delgado mash for 12 years, everything that was Roy Halladay, I couldn't say that I had my own moment in Jays history until yesterday.

In my last post I mentioned that the beauty of the playoffs is that you can't expect what comes next and you never know what type of things can go right. Of course this also goes the other way, as for 15 minutes or so many people that the Jays could possibly lose the series on a momentary defensive lapse by Mr. Defense, Russ Martin. To have gone 22 years without playoffs, go down 0-2 and then battle back at the away park to tie the series, only to lose it on a mind-boggling, albeit correctly-called, play would have been the ultimate injustice. To go all-in trading for the biggest names in baseball only to lose in the first round. In my mind, I knew it wouldn't end like that, it couldn't. My mom and I immediately stood up to sing "OK Blue Jays" as loud as we could.

Jose Bautista has gotten a little bit of a rotten deal in Toronto. For some reason, until yesterday, the city has been very hesitant to embrace him as the home run-on-base-arm strength machine that he is. First it was because he was too good, too fast. Then because he yelled at the umpires too much. Maybe all the white Torontonians thought he was too Hispanic, I wouldn't be surprised. Everyone refused to accept that he was "the guy" despite the fact that he could not more obviously be "the guy". He is a generational talent who excels in many aspects of the game and seems to be a strong presence among his teammates. He is the best right fielder of this decade. He magically turned around his career out of nowhere with the Blu Jays, and still Toronto was hesitant to embrace him as our baseball overlord.

It had to be Jose. All along, it had to be Jose. After the high tensions of the seventh inning and the fans going crazy and the high pressure situation he got himself in, it had to be Jose.

This will forever be my Jays moment. I was there and nothing can ever erase that. It really does feel that the last 26 years of my existence as a Jays fan, all the games I went to, crying when my Dad and I left early during a blowout as a child, all the games watched at home bemoaning the lack of getting the runner at third home, re-watching plays from '92 and '93, it was all just a build up to the release of this specific moment. Jose's home run was perfect in every way and even though I was in a building filled with 54,000 people and we were packed into tight seats in section 125, it felt like my mom and I had our own little space there in seats 6 and 7. I could not imagine a more perfect way to celebrate the home run than I did, hugging my mom beside me.

Go Jays.

Thursday, October 1, 2015

I Was on Top of the World, Livin' High

Last night the Blue Jays clinched the American League East for the first time since 1993. Considering I was 4 years old when they did that, and eventually won the World Series, I have only vague memories of this period of my life. I was born into a Blue Jays family that have been season ticket holders since 1984, so being fan wasn't even a choice, it was just something that I grew up with and has always been a part of me. I eagerly awaited going to Saturday day games with my mom and sister so that we could all sing the "Woo-Hoo!" refrain of Shawn Green's walk-up music, "Song 2" by Blur. I would look through binoculars at Pat Hentgen to get a better look from our 500 level seats. When my sister started diving competitively, my dad and I went to almost all of our family's night games. I saw Chris Woodward hit three home runs in a game. I remember watching Carlos hit 4 on TV and thinking his batflip on the final one was just the coolest. I always liked going to baseball games and playing baseball, but baseball, and specifically the Toronto Blue Jays, becoming one of my favourite things in the world, something I devoted a significant portion of my time to and something that I had a very large amount of emotion invested in crept up on me.

This was because it wasn't an interest that I shared with the kids at school. They only cared about the Leafs. Baseball players were all fat. They were all on steroids. A kid in my class getting Leaf tickets was treated was treated like VE Day, whereas if I came in and said "I went to the Blue Jays game last night." nobody would care in the slightest. It really didn't bother me all that much, it's just the way it was. Because I didn't have anyone to talk about baseball with at school, it internalized all of my feelings about baseball and the Jays, I just learned that nobody seemed to care about it and for that reason, didn't really talk about it.

And this is because the Jays were bad for a long time. Not "no World Series in 106 years" Chicago Cubs bad. Close to "no finishes above 3rd place for 30 years" Cleveland Indians bad. But just bad enough that they wouldn't even sniff the playoffs for the next 22 years. It was frustrating. They were good enough to show promise and make you wonder if maybe, just maybe, this would be the year if this would work out or that would work out. But it never did, not even in the slightest. There was rebuild upon rebuild and they never worked out.

But all of a sudden 22 years of frustrated watching consistently sub-par teams doesn't seem like it matters at all, because the Blue Jays just won the American League East. No Wild Card games for the Jays. Whenever there is a narrative of failure (my specialty), the hero always has to conquer that which has kept him down in order to be victorious. Mario must slay Bowser before getting to Peach. Luke must beat Vader. Harry must kill Voldemort.

The Toronto Blue Jays had to slay the New York Yankees. The Yankees, the winningest team in history, has long been the schoolyard bully to the Blue Jays' meek nerd due to the fact that they both played in the AL East. 19 games every against each other every year and every year the Yankees took them to task. If the Blue Jays wanted to get into the playoffs to have a chance at the World Series, they would have to get through the Yankees first. And they did. They won 13 games and the Yankees won 6.

And now the Blue Jays are on their way to the playoffs.

Whenever an incredible run, like the one that the Blue Jays have been on since the end of July, happens, it requires pretty much everything to go right. When the Jays failed in the past, one or more things went wrong. Often it was good hitting, but bad starting pitching. One year the Jays had 5 great looking young starters, but an awful bullpen and no hitting. This year everything has gone right. They have an amazing offense, a very good starting rotation, and a very good bullpen. But I don't just mean that the greater parts of the team need to perform well, I mean that even on a smaller level, everybody has to do what they are supposed to.

This always creates a lot of interesting stories about unlikely candidates. A great example would be Dave Roberts, who had an up-and-down career as a low-power base stealer for about 10 years, but will live FOREVER in Boston as the guy who stole 2nd base off of Mariano Rivera in the bottom of the 9th while facing elimination. He was a pinch runner and that was all he did in that game and he wasn't on the World Series roster for Boston. But none of that matters in the slightest. What matters is the World Series victory that Boston fans commonly trace back to this steal.

There have been tonnes of feel-good stories on the Blue Jays this year. I already talked about Kevin Pillar. Another example would be Chris Colabello, who toiled in independent baseball seemingly forever before making his MLB debut as a 29 year-old (that's late) two years ago. He put together two short and garbage seasons before the Jays grabbed him for nothing this year. He came up to the Jays while the roster was suffering due to injuries and played the worst fucking left field I've ever seen. But he did hit. He didn't walk and he struck out a lot, but somehow he kept defying the BABIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play) gods and seemingly went 2-4 with a double or home run every night and had an 18-game hitting streak. I kept expecting him to crash and his batting average to plummet, but it just never did! He kept fucking hitting! Chris fucking Colabello became an anchor in the goddamn lineup somehow! He looked like his body was disproportional at the plate and his swing made no sense and he kept not really walking that much, but he just kept hitting.

I don't expect Colabello to reproduce his 2015 season ever again. I would not be surprised in the slightest if he just bounces around the major leagues for the rest of his career, not really ever nailing down a roster spot. But I will always remember him fondly and always praise his name to the highest for how he lead the Blue Jays to a goddamn AL East title this season.

Yo:





Sidenotte: Reyes celebrating in that video :')/:'(

Even smaller things just keep going the Blue Jays way. When stud/all-star/is he even human? shortstop Troy Tulowitzki got hurt, the team traded for light-hitting infielder Darwin Barney to shore up the roster for the end of the season. Barney is a defense-first player, but has proven to be more than adequate in the role requested of him. He's made a ton of great plays in the field, as was expected, but I think what I'm going to remember most is this play from last night. For reference, when the Blue Jays clinched the division, it was in the first game of a double-header, so though they wanted t celebrate, they had to wait through an entire other game. Ultimately that home hum meant nothing, as the Jays lost 8-1, but after a Darwin Barney home run that followed a 15-2 win to clinch, I found myself thinking "What else could go right this season?"

I suppose that the beauty of playoff baseball, especially when you've waited this long and are so unfamiliar with it, is just that: You don't know.

Tuesday, September 29, 2015

I Had Power, I Was Respected

Today Rebecca texted me saying that she was watching Frozen for the first time at work and that she was really enjoying it and was surprised by the emotional gravity that sneaks into the movie. This entire post is about how somebody actually didn't see Frozen in the last two years.

But actually, the film does seem to resonate with this generations children, specifically young girls. That's because it touches on the matter of sisterhood, which is relatively rare in film, but also because both Elsa and Anna are positive female role models. Rather than conforming to what society wants from her, Elsa does her own thing and that works out for her. You could read this a variety of ways, for example as a metaphor for being queer, but really it applies to almost anything. That type of character arc doesn't happen to female characters nearly as much as it should in popular media.

The main way that Frozen communicates the emotions tied to the film's events is through song, a Disney staple. In case you lead a life similar to Patrick Star, you know that "Let It Go" was the "Can You Feel the Love Tonight", or "A Whole New World" or "Under the Sea", etc. of the film. My favourite, personally, was "Love Is an Open Door", which Rebecca echoed. Look at us, too cool to pick the one that everyone likes.

What this did was remind me of one of my all-time favourite movies, Toy Story, and not only how good that movie is, but also how good its soundtrack is. Hearing the three original songs from the Toy Story soundtrack by Randy Newman just destroys me. The first time I saw the movie I was six and since then it has come to mean a lot of different things to me and represented different feelings. I could probably write a dissertation on how the movie has stayed with me through the years, but I can barely finish the one I'm already working on, so I'll stick to just the music.

When I was young I loved the songs, but that was mainly because they were the songs in a movie I enjoyed. I didn't think about the content in the songs or what the words meant, I just knew them as the sounds that complimented parts of a movie I really liked. But the songs do have a very strong emotional core to them and when paired with the visual elements of the movie, they come across as emotionally devastating. I subconsciously knew the emotions tied to the songs because of the movie, but I couldn't articulate those thoughts yet because I was a six year-old boy.

I always liked the movie, but I sort of re-discovered its appeal in high school. When I was younger I liked it because I played with toys all the time and the thought of my toys being sentient seemed like the coolest thing in the world. In high school I understood the greater themes of the movie and seeing Andy's attachment to his toys triggered very strong nostalgia in me towards the bond that I used to have with my toys. I think I even got out my Lego and played with it again.

I went through another re-discovery of the movie during university when my friends and I went through a phase of watching Disney movies at our house. I constantly said how Toy Story was one of my favourite movies and probably annoyed the hell out of everyone around me. This time, the main thing that stuck out to me was how well-crafted the songs were. Now when I listened to "You've Got a Friend in Me" I thought about my friendship with Brian and how I felt what the lyrics in the song said. This wasn't a "Oh yeah, it's that song from my childhood." it was "Holy fuck, this song."

My dad is a huge Randy Newman fan and when I was talking about the movie one day, he got out all of his old Randy Newman records. He's a really cool guy (you get to choose who I'm referring to) and his records are all very satirical and cynical, which isn't exactly what you would expect from him if you, like me, were introduced to him via the Toy Story soundtrack.

For example, from "Money (Is What I Love)"

"I don't love the mountains
And I don't love the sea
And I don't love Jesus
He never done a thing for me
I ain't pretty like my sister
Or smart like my dad
Or good like my mama
It's money that I love"

I think he's trying to say something!

I won't lie and say that I'm all that familiar with Newman's music, or that I'm even familiar enough to approach it critically, but he means something to me through my relationship with my dad and I think it's pretty lame that everybody my age only knows him through that fucking stupid Family Guy sketch.

Anyways, back to the songs he made for the Toy Story soundtrack. "You've Got a Friend in Me" was the biggest song, and deservedly so, as it's the catchiest one and has a very family-friendly sentiment, but the one I really want to talk about is "Strange Things", which plays in the movie when Buzz Lightyear is starting to occupy more of Andy's time and Woody is becoming jealous.




There's a panning shot of Woody's astonished expression while the "Straaaaange things are happenin' ta me" plays and that kills me every time.

I think that this is the best song on the soundtrack. It seems like whenever I get back into a "Toy Story is the best" frame of mind, I'm at a point of change or transition in my life and I suppose that this songs really resonates for that reason. But I think that the case is really that your life is always in transition and always changing, so this song really just applies all the time.

I high school it was about me packing and moving to university, in university it was about me learning how to grow up and move on from a break-up, during the summer at Ontario Place it was about me entering the last year of my undergrad and not being sure about what I would do and now, as I'm sitting in a bachelor kitchen, it's about me looking the end of my thesis in the face.

This means that the song can apply to me at more or less any point in my life and it's probably that way for a lot of other people to. In reality, strange things are always happening to you, so this song has nailed down transcendental truth of human existence, which is the mark of a truly great song.

I'm not really sure how to end this, as typing it out has brought up some pretty strong emotions in me, so I guess just next time you feel weird about shit put on this jammer.

And then after that put on "You've Got a Friend in Me" and think about your best friend.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

Rolling Like a Cel-eh-bri-tay!

Early last Friday evening I found out that I won tickets to Riot Fest in Toronto. The lineup featured some things that I really wanted to see and some that I just didn't care at all about. Since I got the tickets for free I figured it would be worth to head down for the Sunday of the festival, since I was already committed to watching the Blue Jays play the Red Sox at 4 PM on Saturday (A disappointing game featuring a rare blow-up from Roberto Osuna resulting in a 7-6 loss).

I've become pretty disenfranchised with large music festivals. Before things like Riot Fest and Osheaga and Wayhome and Veld were things, artists used to tour a lot more. A band who were signed would tour Canada in the summer, bringing maybe a smaller labelmate along for the ride to go with a few local acts to fill out the bill. This kind of set up was great because it let me see my favourite bands in a more intimate atmosphere (I mean, even the Kool Haus was more intimate than Downsview Park), but also because it gave smaller bands crucial exposure and allowed them to grow. Nowadays many bands just run a circuit of festivals, Riot Fest ->The Fest->Groezrock->Soundwave->etc, and playing large tours has pretty much become a thing of the past. Though I'm sure that most bands, especially the older ones, love this because it lets them have more down time, for me it sucks and has taken away one of my favourite parts of the summer.

With the influx of large music festivals, a weird (at least to me) culture of people who go to these festivals has popped up. It seems like there are people who buy a ticket to most, if not all, big festivals and make being a "festival-goer" a part of their identity. I've noticed people on facebook who seem to have a new picture of themselves in front of a large banner for each new music fest. Google "Music Festival Guide" if you don't believe me. For every girl in a flower crown or bro in a tank top, there are 5 BuzzFeed lists telling what to wear/eat/drink/do wherever they are.

And whatever, people are going to do what they want/like and I have no control over that, so I shouldn't let it get to me, but something I've noticed is that they people who go to these things don't seem to give much of a shit about who they're seeing. They don't even care about the artists there and that really rubs me the wrong way. They are just there to be at the festival, not to see anybody, if that makes any sense.

Case in point, on the Sunday at Riot Fest was headlined by 6/9 (RIP ODB) of Wu Tang Clan. There were a ton of die-hard Wu fans to see the set. For example, my friend Erik, the drummer of my first two bands, is a huge Wu fan, so seeing the set was of paramount importance to him. But for every one of those, there were two people there who didn't really know anything about Wu Tang Clan. Sure they have the "W" shirt and know that "Wu Tang Clan ain't nothin' ta fuck with" or that "Cash Rules Everything Around Me", but I bet they couldn't name a single album. I bet they couldn't name a single member. They love the brand of Wu Tang Clan and they like the idea of being a person who likes Wu Tang Clan, but they don't really do. Logically, a Wu Tang fan probably would have also been interested in seeing Atmosphere's set earlier in the day, yet his crowd was 1/5 the size. With how much people seemingly have to advertise their interests and themselves over social media now, it seems like having a visual signifier is now more important than the signified, and that's just fucked to me.

Instead of watching Wu Tang, I decided to watch Weezer, who were playing all of Blue (Do I italicize "Blue Album"? I mean, it's really self-titled and wasn't called "Blue" until "Green" came out. Hard to say.). Their crowd was also huge. I expected this and tried to not worry so much about how shitty they crowd was around me, though it was monumentally shitty. I will limit myself to one complaint: A large number of extremely drunk bros doing a "Rosanne singing the national anthem at Wrigley"-level rendition of the falsetto "Hoo-ooh"s during the pre-chorus in "Buddy Holly". Fuck off guys, you actually completely ruined it for me. 

Some assholes aside, everyone seemed to actually be pretty into the set. But the dumb part came in the second half. The singles that Blue is known for, "Buddy Holly", "Undone - The Sweater Song" and "Say It Ain't So", all come early, so as soon as "Say It Ain't So" ended, THOUSANDS of people left the crowd. Guys, the three best songs on the album are left! A first I was annoyed, but I was coming down from a few red wines and uh..., which, combined with the really nice sunset made me really relaxed. The fact that all of the bros and drunks were leaving during the nerdiest song on an already nerdy album made me feel kind of good too. Rivers singing "I've got Kitty Pryde and Nightcrawler too, waiting there for me" during an exodus of assholes made me sort of realize that I was who this song was meant for and that made me feel really good.

That didn't last long though, as some dick started yelling "'Beverley Hills'! Play 'Beverley Hills'!" behind me while Weezer played "Susanne". THEY PLAYED FUCKING "SUSANNE"!

After this I walked over to catch my friends Like Pacific and upon realizing that their set had been moved up and I had unknowingly missed it, watched the last two songs of Wu Tang. The crowd was maybe 1/5 of what it had been earlier which I can only imagine was a result of all the poseurs leaving once they realized that they don't even know the songs they thought they did. The being said, everyone who was still there was super into it and there was a giant crowd of people worshipping the stage with the "Wu" gesture.

I hate being right sometimes.