I get geekier every January

Every year instead of making a new year's resolution I pick something new to become obsessed with. This started at the end of 2005 when I was visiting Hastings with a couple friends, and I mispronounced "Martin Scorsese" (SKOR-saes). The ensuing discussion resulted in my realizing that I was REALLY distanced from post-WWII cinema. I just didn't watch movies that much. So my 2006 resolution was to watch as many films as I possibly could. I was renting three films a week off the bargain rack, and checking off titles from the AFI's 100 list like a health inspector at Huddle House. And now I'm a film major, so that should tell you something about the benefits of obsession.

In 2007 my new obsession became music. Oh, I listened to music before that, but not like it was an insatiable god. Honestly, it seemed like kind of a cop-out at the time, because I already listened to music. But when the music I listened to casually became mine, it gained importance I didn't know it could have. Something switched on a whole world in my awareness of the nuances and politics of sound. I started buying Harp and Razorcake magazines, and I started this blog for concert reviews once I moved to Nashville where there was finally a music scene to analyze. I was a radio DJ... for a while (didn't make it to the final exam). Ok, so maybe I didn't take it all the way to temporal dusk, but I can still tell you all about how the Stooges ended up signing with Elektra back in 1968.

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By the way, pick up the new album from I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness. It's thick, moving stuff
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So this year, after much deliberation, I've decided that the winner of my affections in 2008 will be: The Graphic Novel. Yes, it is a medium I already have a bit of familiarity with, but thus far it's only been fleeting caresses with (mostly) borrowed books. This year I delve into cult comics like Maus and Sin City as well as artsy shit like Epilepsy and Black Hole. With the Great Escape comic store right outside campus, it shouldn't be too hard to get hold of stuff like this.

Things I will explore for probably less than year:
Eschatology, futurology and the coming Apocalypse
--Because the end of the world is coming, and I'd sort of like to watch.
The books of Genesis, Job and Ezekiel
--All contain great meta-narratives with themes of creation and destruction.
Zombies
--Somehow my knowledge on this subject isn't as extensive as I'm comfortable with.
H.G.Wells
--He was the Isaac Asimov of the century's turn, not to mention a fucking prophet
Hinduism
--I don't know a thing about this religion except that there's an Elephant and an Octopus-lady who get pissed fairly easily.

Happy New Year

The Twelve Days of Solitude

I am back in Dyersburg and I have not seen anyone yet. The day after I drove in, my mother began the process of moving all her possessions across town to a smaller, more manageable house.
Today we are still surrounded by cardboard boxes, and eating off styrafoam--maintence people stop by everyday to fiddle with the water heater or the electricity. My two brothers are in Florida with my father for Christmas, and my mother has to work full days this entire week, so I am spending a lot of time alone in this unfamiliar house. At least I get a chance to read. I didn't do too much of that last break because I was spending so much time with friends, so now that I have all this alone time, I am finally remembering how to lose myself completely in books.

Christmas was yesterday. I have never spent Christmas alone before. No presents under the tree, no laughing children, not even a warm meal, just boxes and boxes of old photographs and bed linens. I don't blame anyone; my mother has been going through a lot of stress lately and it's been almost all I can do to keep her from bursting into tears at times (the divorce and all). So on Christmas morning, I decided to paint a picture. I cut up some of the cardboard we had stuck in the garage, and unpacked all my paint supplies I had brought with me from Nashville. I spent about eight hours out in the garage, and I was pretty proud of the result. It's a single tree facing twilight at the dawn of a snow storm.

It made my day just wonderful, it really did. All that joy I was hoping to get from familial warmth I found in the act of creation and the intricies of nature. I usually go into "Everything is Beautiful" mode around full moons, and the one on the 23rd felt so intense I thought I would explode with joy, despite everything. I have been taking hour-long night walks ever since I got back in town--Nashville makes me miss the outdoors so much--and it just makes everything okay. How you can you be sad when there are molecues and electrons, stars and galaxies swirling all round you? There is so much love in the air around Christmastime.

So today I'm going to read another XKCD webcomic, microwave myself a paper cup of soy milk and read the last fifty pages of _One Hundred Years of Solitude_. This probably should have been the saddest Christmas ever, but it wasn't. It's actually been one of my favorites.

Aaaaaaaaaaaannd, we're back!

So for those of you who had at any point been keeping up with my blog, you may have noticed a three month span or so in which I stopped caring for you, the reader. For this I apologize; allow me to explain. Shortly after the wildbirds concert I realized that I could not simultaneously (A) go to concerts every week (B) make decent grades and (C) have a social life. That's why I've decided to change this from a

MUSIC BLOG

to a regular old

WHATEVER-I-FEEL-LIKE-WRITING BLOG

If you were just reading this for the music reviews, you may want to unsubscribe. Haha who am I fooling. I'm sure the Matt Pagan element was the only reason you the reader read these little segments anyways, amirite?

I figured the concert reviewing was probably dead after I went to a momentous Regina Spektor show that I just didn't bother telling you about, reader. (Again, my apologies.) What's that? You hadn't heard about it? She overdosed and had to go to the hospital. Her clever technical manager told everyone it was a "stomach virus," that caused her to collapse onstage during the mic check, but we all knew. Everyone left the show really dissappointed and a little worried.



Mirrors

I kind of shocked myself today when I found that I had spent a considerable time in front of my bedroom mirror. I'm not really a vain person (at least I don't consider myself one), so I had to wonder if it's my own image I keep looking at or of it's the mirror itself. Mirrors have always had a surreal sort of attraction for me ever since I read Through the Looking Glass as a little kid--an attraction that was heightened the first time I saw the Matrix.

When I was a kid I would always try to get through to the other side of the mirror, but there was always someone who looked just like me blocking the portal. "He clearly wants to get to my world, and I to his," I reasoned. "If only we could coordinate our movements, we would both be happy." Of course we never got this figured out, mostly because every time I opened my mouth to give him directions, he would think of something to say at the exact same time, and both our sentences would get lost in interruption.

Perhaps I keep expecting to find some great truth through self-reflection. Occasionally I do, but it's usually more along the lines of "My hair is frizzy today" or "I have bags under my eyes." Maybe I'm just comforted by the knowledge mirrors give me that I actually exist in the physical world. I have a body like everyone else and I'm not just a bunch of mental energy watching some movie starring all my friends and acquaintences. You'd be surprised how easily I forget that sometimes.

The Wildbirds 9/20/07

Disappointed by the opening acts of previous shows at The End, I decided to skip the first forty minutes or so of music on September 20 in favor of a much-needed meal at Cafe Coco (apparently I'm much too skinny). As soon as I walked back into the club, I was blown away. A band called Bona crescendoed their final minutes with Explosions in the Sky-intensity. The music was so dramatic, the lead singer started banging his entire forearm on the keyboard. "Go back! Rewind!" I shouted, hoping to hear more the beginning of this act if I could force some sort of time warp. My pleas with the space-time continuum went to little avail, and the audience was too enthralled by the band on stage tearing their instruments to shit to listen to me anyway.

In a few minutes the Wildbirds took the show back to traditional Rock n Roll. Of course I use the word traditional loosely. This is Rock in its original, unadulterated form. With roots in Wisconsin, lead singer Nicholas Stuart explained his music by discussing one of his idols, "I think Bob Dylan was filled with intensity and that's what's missing from a lot of music theses days." These guys are definitely not a punk band, but they played this venue like it was a 1970's CBGBs. The guitar solos alone proved this dixie-steeped garage band could just as easily have held its own performing alongside classic Zep as they could have Jet. The band is touring in support of their new album "Golden Daze"

When Dark Meat took the stage, it was like watching a a tie-dyed Volkswagen pull into ring three of a Barnum & Bailey show. Straight out of the indie music hotspot in Athens, Georgia, the band's ten attending musicians marched out, all with their faces painted, holding saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and piccolos. Membership apparently doubles when they play at home. The dance punk collective still managed to avoid highfalutin ska by layering anthems that sounded like Los Angeles destroying itself in a fire. Singer and band founder Jim McHugh said, "The crux [of our band] is we're all into annihilation. The best musical representation of any human experience is when it goes from being controlled to being eradicated... that's what we aim for." The chaos onstage quickly manifested itself in the crowd; hearing the same four measures played by almost every instrument in "Three Eyes Open" was tremendous. They're album "Universal Indian" is out now on Cloud Recordings.

The Once and Future Kings 9/13/07

With a performance consisting of droning guitar and cymbal-heavy drums, lead singer Jess Edison said the band aimed for a sound "both lyrical, melodic, and ambient." My first impressions were that the band sounded a great deal like Radiohead. And with hypnotising songs like "I Want to Kill the President," there was really not much to dislike in this band. The show was tempestuous, but as the show progressed I began to realize, "This band sounds EXACTLY like Radiohead." To be fair they've been playing in obscurity for only for eight months, but it will definitely be worthwhile to watch as this band grows into a style of their own. Their EP Emergent Sea comes out in October. Catch them at Cafe Coco September 22.

Heypenny 9/9/07

Although they've been together for only three months, the band's debut CD Use These Spoons sports infectious pool-side guitar pop that arrives at sometimes surprising complexity. The melody-driven falsettos manage to make even their angriest lyrics sound glad. By the third song of the night, it was clear that the flavorful idiosyncrasies of their music were not just the result of lucky electronica programming. Even with their absent percussionist replaced by a drum machine and cowbell, the live show brought out their bouncy stage personalities. Keyboardist Ben Elkins, who has been playing violin since he was two-and-a-half, said he plans on sending the music in a "less organic, more Michael Jackson-ish" direction with Heypenny's current project. "Innocent and boyish," as bassist DJ Murphy described his music, Heypenny is an indie band that despite their age certainly has a record deal in their near future.

In Glorious Times by Sleepytime Gorilla Museum

Even though the "good" album is said to have a diversity of style and a unity of mood, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum's In Glorious Times resists falling under such a simple adjective. To say the least, the Oakland band's fourth creation is a tour de weird of Art school metal. Lopsided time signatures and tempos that change five and six times in one song immediately bring to mind fellow lords of noisic Mr. Bungle. However while that band is always willing to sacrifice structure for their colourful sonic theatrics, SGM always manages to maintain a singularity in each song-- despite the feeling that one is speeding through one of Dali's surreal landscapes. In terms of the emotion created, the album is frequently similar to the terrifying violence of Stealing Babies, if their music were built up slowly then warped, twisted around, sped up then slowed back to apologetic lulls. This is the sound of an orchestra on LSD all fighting with each other. However, it would be wrong to call this album dissonant or chaotic just because they self-consciously oppose traditonal note-arrangments. It is not noise used as music, but music turned into noise. Experimental? Yes. Disarming? Yes. Confusing? Oh, hell yes. But every movement of every song is meticulously planned to force an exact psychological reaction from the listener.

Trash Gully 8/18/07

Big Attack of Philadelphia, PA introduced themselves as "socio-political rock music," and probably provided the most highly developed show of the evening, maintaining a high-octane stage presence despite a broken bass string. Drummer Matt the Baptist, a mohawked vegan in short-shorts, said the band aimed for a sound like Gang of Four or the Clash. The rush and activism of the city rushed through their blood throughout the performance, especially in the opener "Forward" which quickly identified them as a more-than-decent talent in the east-coast punk scene. They played their chords like their solos--in spurts of danceable energy, interspersed with the obligatory "oh-oh-oh." The band ended with "Keep Us Apart!" which started off like a half-noted crowd-calmer, but built up to an excited anti-factionalist anthem.

The National Rifle, currently touring with Big Attack, also took a political stance with their music. The pop punk ensemble, a bit more accessible than their co-artists, used diverse instrumentation to arrive at a surfer, let's-party sound, such as in the mosh-inducing chorus of "Rehab." However, because of NR's emphasis on contrast in their songs, the live show almost didn't do the band justice until the minor key finale "Ok hole," a head-banging nod at Cursive-esque intensity.