Following Friday's extremely earnest and sentimental post, I thought I would keep it simple and give you some music recs for a rainy Sunday in Montreal.
Back when Beat Noir had just put out Ecotone, we played a flurry of shows in support of the release, including a particularly good one in Toronto to a packed house with bands from Ontario. We were getting a good response to the album and were feeling ourselves. The morning after that show, Kyle sent us Sleep Through to the Light way before it came out and we were all struck by how much better it was than what we had just done. Wayfarer's been one of the best emo bands in the world since Our Fathers and I'm not sure why more people haven't taken notice. While most of the bands from the Southern Ontario punk scene of the 10's have broken up, like The Decay, Orphan Choir, and !ATTENTION!, Wayfarer has stuck around and continued to put out music that grows on what preceded it. This record's fucking amazing.
The World's Best American Band was one of my favourite releases of 2017 and has stayed in pretty consistent rotation since then. Given how much I enjoyed that record, I was predictably eager to check out White Reaper's new album You Deserve Love when it came out last week. They dial down the performative stadium rock irony a little bit ( :'( ), while staying devoted to giving you a cross section of early 80's FM radio rock. Wonderful stuff and a for sure presence on the end of the year list.
I went and saw Ancient Shapes in Montreal last week. Absolutely loved the S/T debut, but TBH didn't invest as much time in the follow up, Silent Rave. I was shocked and excited at the show when the newer cuts they played tended more towards a power-pop (as much as AS could get more power pop) and lo-fi glam direction than the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants catchy punk of the first two records. Huge choruses all around and for sure my favourite Ancient Shapes release and favourite Romano release since Modern Pressure.
Also on that show were Teenanger, who I had never checked out before. They were great!
Sunday, October 27, 2019
Friday, October 25, 2019
An Honest Answer For All of Them
Earlier this month, I was browsing I, Musical Genius, as I sometimes do when I'm bored. While looking at the index on the right side of the screen, I noticed the "2009" near the bottom and realized the 10th anniversary of this blog had come and passed earlier this year without me recognizing it.
Happy 10th birthday I, Musical Genius!
This is already the most navel gazing-est of all websites, but you'll have to allow me revel in it in this case. It's a big occasion!
Even though there are posts labelled as being from 2008 on this site, those are actually from before this blog started. I used to post blogs on MySpace (dating myself badly on that one), and I imported those when I started IMU because I thought they were good longform pieces and I wanted to flesh out the content a bit and give people something to check out when they came. That's very funny in hindsight, because boy oh boy was I very bad at writing and editing at that time.
I started IMU on March 8th, 2009 for a couple of reasons. As I said, I used to post blogs on Myspace, but people were moving away from that platform and there wasn't nearly the same level of engagement. I sometimes posted blogs on Facebook, but most people on that site focused on simpler social interaction. Realistically, most important factor was that I had gotten dumped for the first time in January of that year and I was having a difficult time coming to terms with that.
A fewer of my newer punk friends had blogspots, so I decided to shift over here and start this site as a new project for myself. Being the sheltered suburban teen that I was, getting dumped seemed like the hardest thing in the world to go through at the time and that difficulty was bleeding into other areas of my life. I was struggling at pretty much everything and had a subterranean sense of self-worth. Of course, given that I was emotionally fragile and loved ska, the name had to come from an ASOB deep cut. I hoped that through starting the blog, I could channel all the things I was feeling into something that was creative in some way.
I think that comes across in the early posts of this blog. They are truly bad and embarrassing, and many of them are just me talking about how important cheesy pop-punk breakup songs are to me. That's okay though! The site served its purpose!
I hesitate to say something like "IMU saved me!" because that's dumb and saccharine and not true. I think what's closer to the case is that IMU has always been a reflection of my life at the time. This is why I've never deleted any of the cringey posts from the beginning of the site (or the cringey posts from much later as well). I don't think it's bad to acknowledge who you used to be and look back at how you've changed. If anything, you should be glad that you've changed over a decade, because if you haven't, you for sure suck ass.
As I matured and learned more about myself, who I was a person and what that meant, that started to come through in the posts. Gradually I moved away from short sentences accompanying videos to longer entries with a central idea. I definitely got much better at writing and developed a voice somewhere along the way.
I used to hope that my audience would keep growing and that I'd have this big community around the blog. Not so much that I could monetize it or anything like that, but so I could interact with people who read it and talk about stuff. I hoped that people would drop into the comments and dialogues would start. I guess I've always been sort of desperate for that sort online community, but I never made much of an effort or did a good job in fostering that around IMU.
That's okay though. At this point, IMU is basically just for me. And Matt and Rebecca. And you random lurkers, who I know come here sometimes.
How I've thought of this blog has changed a lot over its existence. I feel like I used to think of it as a music site, where people could discover new stuff thanks to my ~excellent taste~ (this meant generic pop-punk bands from Florida). Shockingly, that did not take off. These days, I like to think of it as an online zine. Most people probably find it closer to a diary. I guess it's somewhere in between those two things.
It's hard to explain why, but I'm extremely proud of I, Musical Genius. I think a huge part of it is that it's something I've stuck to for more than a decade. Many friends have started online projects that they're "throwing themselves fully into" and then given up shortly thereafter. That's totally okay, as keeping up with personal projects while having to navigate your life and your job or school or anything else is hard, but that's exactly why I'm proud. This site is just writing. There's no filler that's just me re-posting photos that someone else took or sharing a meme with no comment. I've sat down and written things that I'm thinking for ten years and inside of me, that feels commendable.
Maybe Blogger will get deleted one day. If and when that happens, I don't know what I'll do. But for the moment, IMU is still here and is more less a digital reflection of my existence and everything I've done.
In the early days of this blog, I used to end every post with lyrics from a song that I thought captured the ethos of the entry and I remember one of those quotes coming from "Faction" by Less Than Jake, the last song on Borders and Boundaries. In wrapping up a toasting of this project, there wouldn't be anything more appropriate than to end with an introspective pop-punk song about sticking to your ideals from the band who stuck with me so closely along the way.
Strike a match folks.
Happy 10th birthday I, Musical Genius!
This is already the most navel gazing-est of all websites, but you'll have to allow me revel in it in this case. It's a big occasion!
Even though there are posts labelled as being from 2008 on this site, those are actually from before this blog started. I used to post blogs on MySpace (dating myself badly on that one), and I imported those when I started IMU because I thought they were good longform pieces and I wanted to flesh out the content a bit and give people something to check out when they came. That's very funny in hindsight, because boy oh boy was I very bad at writing and editing at that time.
I started IMU on March 8th, 2009 for a couple of reasons. As I said, I used to post blogs on Myspace, but people were moving away from that platform and there wasn't nearly the same level of engagement. I sometimes posted blogs on Facebook, but most people on that site focused on simpler social interaction. Realistically, most important factor was that I had gotten dumped for the first time in January of that year and I was having a difficult time coming to terms with that.
A fewer of my newer punk friends had blogspots, so I decided to shift over here and start this site as a new project for myself. Being the sheltered suburban teen that I was, getting dumped seemed like the hardest thing in the world to go through at the time and that difficulty was bleeding into other areas of my life. I was struggling at pretty much everything and had a subterranean sense of self-worth. Of course, given that I was emotionally fragile and loved ska, the name had to come from an ASOB deep cut. I hoped that through starting the blog, I could channel all the things I was feeling into something that was creative in some way.
I think that comes across in the early posts of this blog. They are truly bad and embarrassing, and many of them are just me talking about how important cheesy pop-punk breakup songs are to me. That's okay though! The site served its purpose!
I hesitate to say something like "IMU saved me!" because that's dumb and saccharine and not true. I think what's closer to the case is that IMU has always been a reflection of my life at the time. This is why I've never deleted any of the cringey posts from the beginning of the site (or the cringey posts from much later as well). I don't think it's bad to acknowledge who you used to be and look back at how you've changed. If anything, you should be glad that you've changed over a decade, because if you haven't, you for sure suck ass.
As I matured and learned more about myself, who I was a person and what that meant, that started to come through in the posts. Gradually I moved away from short sentences accompanying videos to longer entries with a central idea. I definitely got much better at writing and developed a voice somewhere along the way.
I used to hope that my audience would keep growing and that I'd have this big community around the blog. Not so much that I could monetize it or anything like that, but so I could interact with people who read it and talk about stuff. I hoped that people would drop into the comments and dialogues would start. I guess I've always been sort of desperate for that sort online community, but I never made much of an effort or did a good job in fostering that around IMU.
That's okay though. At this point, IMU is basically just for me. And Matt and Rebecca. And you random lurkers, who I know come here sometimes.
How I've thought of this blog has changed a lot over its existence. I feel like I used to think of it as a music site, where people could discover new stuff thanks to my ~excellent taste~ (this meant generic pop-punk bands from Florida). Shockingly, that did not take off. These days, I like to think of it as an online zine. Most people probably find it closer to a diary. I guess it's somewhere in between those two things.
It's hard to explain why, but I'm extremely proud of I, Musical Genius. I think a huge part of it is that it's something I've stuck to for more than a decade. Many friends have started online projects that they're "throwing themselves fully into" and then given up shortly thereafter. That's totally okay, as keeping up with personal projects while having to navigate your life and your job or school or anything else is hard, but that's exactly why I'm proud. This site is just writing. There's no filler that's just me re-posting photos that someone else took or sharing a meme with no comment. I've sat down and written things that I'm thinking for ten years and inside of me, that feels commendable.
Maybe Blogger will get deleted one day. If and when that happens, I don't know what I'll do. But for the moment, IMU is still here and is more less a digital reflection of my existence and everything I've done.
In the early days of this blog, I used to end every post with lyrics from a song that I thought captured the ethos of the entry and I remember one of those quotes coming from "Faction" by Less Than Jake, the last song on Borders and Boundaries. In wrapping up a toasting of this project, there wouldn't be anything more appropriate than to end with an introspective pop-punk song about sticking to your ideals from the band who stuck with me so closely along the way.
Strike a match folks.
Tuesday, October 8, 2019
Leads to Somewhere I Don't Know
Bro, shirtless Vinnie with star tattoos, counting in "Gainesville Rock City" with a dart is my everything.
Monday, October 7, 2019
Focused Vision, a Life of Your Own and It's Worth Living
I promised a playlist on Monday last week and am posting it today. Never say Timmy doesn't love you.
Some real homesickness is starting to set in over here. It was easy to not miss Toronto when it was bright and sunny in the summer, and we were regularly going back. Now that some of my yearly traditions that were tied to Toronto, like my annual baseball game with my mom or Thanksgiving, are starting to come around, I'm feeling a lot more aware of the distance between my friends and family and I.
Boo school.
Boo rain.
Boo watching former Blue Jays succeed on playoff teams.
School is starting to ramp up, and while I'm doing a decent job of balancing my work (and do need to remind myself of that), it feels like I'm running through a restaurant with a tray of filled water glasses. One of them has to spill soon, right?
To do a very "me" thing and use a horribly over-used cliche, this is all a marathon and not a sprint. I can't rush through work hoping that there won't be more waiting for me next week, because that will never happen. What's more important to diligently wade through things, trying somehow to pick out ideas and books that relate to my research when they come up, and hope somehow that I'm still standing in December.
Some real homesickness is starting to set in over here. It was easy to not miss Toronto when it was bright and sunny in the summer, and we were regularly going back. Now that some of my yearly traditions that were tied to Toronto, like my annual baseball game with my mom or Thanksgiving, are starting to come around, I'm feeling a lot more aware of the distance between my friends and family and I.
Boo school.
Boo rain.
Boo watching former Blue Jays succeed on playoff teams.
School is starting to ramp up, and while I'm doing a decent job of balancing my work (and do need to remind myself of that), it feels like I'm running through a restaurant with a tray of filled water glasses. One of them has to spill soon, right?
To do a very "me" thing and use a horribly over-used cliche, this is all a marathon and not a sprint. I can't rush through work hoping that there won't be more waiting for me next week, because that will never happen. What's more important to diligently wade through things, trying somehow to pick out ideas and books that relate to my research when they come up, and hope somehow that I'm still standing in December.
Thursday, October 3, 2019
I Guess That's Just the Way Life Goes, Ya Know?
Montreal is starting to feel like home now. I find that places and routes come to me automatically now that they've been built into my routine. I still hesitate a little bit while asking questions in French and feel self-conscious about butchering the official language that everyone speaks, but that's slowly improving and eventually that doubt will shrink into a recess of my mind where I don't notice it so much.
It's weird, I thought I had above-average French, but realized quickly that I had above-average Ontario French, which is not the same thing as speaking it well. That was a tough thing to realize when we moved hear and I had to come to terms with the fact that rather than being bilingual, like so many people told me throughout my life, I would need to put serious work into learning it and getting to a point where I can adequately speak it. That's a long way off, but hopefully I will get there before long.
EV, and Faubourg Tower and Grey Nuns have turned into my academic homes and without even thinking about it, they've become the places I rely on to spend time in. It's funny to think about that sort of place, where you can count on it hosting you and not having to worry about a time limit or spending money or being welcome. On one hand, I need those places to have a spot to work, but it's also nice to know I can relax and do nothing if I need to. Not that I ever really get a chance to do that with the demands of a PhD, but it feels good to know I can if I really want to.
I've been reading a dense and esoteric-ass Michel Foucault text for the last two weeks and it seems like that is influencing how I'm writing at the moment.
NO!
Maybe the path to getting back to my actual writing voice is to talk about something a little more lowbrow.
This past weekend, Rebecca went to go visit a friend and help them prepare for their wedding. While Two things that she generally doesn't want to watch? Extremely bad movies and things about skateboarding. I covered both bases by watching the 2009 movie Street Dreams.
It was the exact type of bad that I love to watch: Horrible acting with equally terrible writing and a plot that is just linear enough to not make it a slog to get through.
Maybe it will only be funny for skateboarders, but there's at least one thing in every scene that made me howl. "There are 10 million street skaters in the United States. This is their story." as the title card. P-Rod is heinous as a leading man. Rob Dyrdek's character saying "I heard about this unreal spot in Ohio" and it cutting to the public skatepark he had just built at the time. Dyrdek and Terry Kennedy playing 24 (?) year-olds. P-Rod talking about his white whale trick "The Knack" and him landing it in a sequence but the movie not acknowledging that.
I could watch things like this endless. My brain is bad.
I've found a lot of good music lately, so I'll compile that and post it on Monday. Capiche?
It's weird, I thought I had above-average French, but realized quickly that I had above-average Ontario French, which is not the same thing as speaking it well. That was a tough thing to realize when we moved hear and I had to come to terms with the fact that rather than being bilingual, like so many people told me throughout my life, I would need to put serious work into learning it and getting to a point where I can adequately speak it. That's a long way off, but hopefully I will get there before long.
EV, and Faubourg Tower and Grey Nuns have turned into my academic homes and without even thinking about it, they've become the places I rely on to spend time in. It's funny to think about that sort of place, where you can count on it hosting you and not having to worry about a time limit or spending money or being welcome. On one hand, I need those places to have a spot to work, but it's also nice to know I can relax and do nothing if I need to. Not that I ever really get a chance to do that with the demands of a PhD, but it feels good to know I can if I really want to.
I've been reading a dense and esoteric-ass Michel Foucault text for the last two weeks and it seems like that is influencing how I'm writing at the moment.
NO!
Maybe the path to getting back to my actual writing voice is to talk about something a little more lowbrow.
This past weekend, Rebecca went to go visit a friend and help them prepare for their wedding. While Two things that she generally doesn't want to watch? Extremely bad movies and things about skateboarding. I covered both bases by watching the 2009 movie Street Dreams.
It was the exact type of bad that I love to watch: Horrible acting with equally terrible writing and a plot that is just linear enough to not make it a slog to get through.
Maybe it will only be funny for skateboarders, but there's at least one thing in every scene that made me howl. "There are 10 million street skaters in the United States. This is their story." as the title card. P-Rod is heinous as a leading man. Rob Dyrdek's character saying "I heard about this unreal spot in Ohio" and it cutting to the public skatepark he had just built at the time. Dyrdek and Terry Kennedy playing 24 (?) year-olds. P-Rod talking about his white whale trick "The Knack" and him landing it in a sequence but the movie not acknowledging that.
I could watch things like this endless. My brain is bad.
I've found a lot of good music lately, so I'll compile that and post it on Monday. Capiche?
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