Autumn Souvenir

Blind Pilot 3 Rounds and a Sound Hands down, the record I listened to most this year. Every song is great, with the highlights being "Things I Cannot Recall," "The Story I Heard" and the perfect "Two Towns From Me." This is straightforward Americana, and far superior to overhyped darlings the likes of Fleet Foxes or Avett Brothers. Alamo Square, San Francisco This neighborhood is the closest I've ever come to calling a place home. New Jersey never felt right, Connecticut was The Ice Storm minus the hot tubbing, Boston was fine for a few years, Myrtle Beach was hell on earth and Brooklyn had all the trimmings but lacked kindness and community. Alamo Square has it all: diversity, grit, a handful of halfway houses, a great dog park, spirit and a neighborly charm that somehow brings folks from different classes, races and ages together. Barack Obama It's a wonderful feeling to be proud of your president. He's not perfect, and boy does he look com

On the flight back east, I finally got around to watching the Low documentary, You May Need a Murder . I was very late to Low, only discovering them after reading a review of 2005's The Great Destroyer , a record that unexpectedly floored me. I went back and picked up Things We Lost in the Fire, later 2007's Drums and Guns and then sort of lost interest. And then a neighbor recently offered to loan me the documentary. The film mostly centers around lead singer Alan Sparhawk's life on the road with his wife and two children. Having logged approximately "500,000 miles" on the road, Sparhawk lets us inside a mind that seemingly turned to religion over chemical dependence. According to Sparhawk, he recognized at a young age where alcohol would lead him and cut it off early. Whether that was substituted with his almost militant religious views is debatable, but this 70-minute films seems hardly enough to even catch a glimpse of all that swirls in his mind. Having su

20 "Janey Don't You Lose Heart" (1998) How did this not make it onto Born in the USA ? 19 "Open All Night" (1982) Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Two-Lane Blacktop . "It's New Jersey in the morning, like a lunar landscape." 18 "For You" (1973) The rare early love song. And 35+ years later, maybe his best. 17 "Reason To Believe" (1982) Through it all, we still find a reason to rise each morning. 16 "Incident on 57th Street" (1973) Spanish Johnny had "bruised arms and broken rhythm and a beat-up old Buick," but was "dressed just like dynamite." Like many of his songs, there's good behind it all. 15 "Spirit in the Night" (1973) The first signs of Dylan. 14 "This Hard Land" (1985/1998) Dylan wasn't the only one largely influenced by Woody Guthrie. 13 "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" (1973) Feels like the beginning of it all. 12 "Atlantic City" (1982) With

Probably the best Wilco show I've ever been to.

Despite music playing an integral role in my life, it's rare that a song comes along that buries itself in my soul. A song that hits me so hard that I simply can't stop talking about it. A song that has such a profound impact on me that it alters something. Or maybe just fulfills something in me. And as hard as I try, and I'm likely coming up short here, there's really just no way of explaining it. The closest feeling I can summon is that feeling of falling in love. Overcome, I guess. It's been a number of years since a song has hit me like Bruce Springsteen's "The Promise." A song recorded for the Darkness record, and evidently somewhat inspired by Bruce's troubles with longtime friend and one-time manager Mike Appel, Springsteen left this masterpiece off of Darkness due to the personal nature of the words. Most of Bruce's greatest song are stories about others. There's Johnny 99, Wild Billy and Frankie. However, this was one was about h

In a subpar year, I can't seem to chronologically list these out. Nevertheless, here are my ten favorites from 2010: Bruce Springsteen The Promise I initially considered this ineligible given the usual re-issue rules, but the majority of these tracks are previously unreleased. Sure, they're over 30 years old, but "The Promise," the alternate version of "Racing in the Street" and the classic Iovine song are enough to land this in the top five. "Racing in the Street" is simply mind-blowing. An already perfect song, this uptempo version of despair and dreams on the Jersey-shore boulevards captures everything that is Darkness on the Edge of Town . "Tonight, tonight, the strip's just right. I'm wanna blow 'em off in my first heat. Well, now, Summer's here, and the time is right, for racing in the street." The remaining tracks prove that the Darkness sessions were possibly the peak of Springsteen's career creativity. Eels E

Seeing Mangum/Neutral Milk Hotel sits alongside a home coke slurpee machine as the kinda thing that defies belief. There's a part of me that's dying for it to happen and perhaps an even larger part that hopes that it never does.

Today's e-mail from The Independent in SF

Tax Cuts : The GOP takes control of the House and what's their top priority? Yep, extend the tax breaks for the wealthy. I read this and immediately forwarded the news on to my middle-class friends and asked, "Tell me again why you continue to vote for this party?" Crickets. I mean, the Democrats wanted an across-the-board cut for everyone making under $250,000/year. Anyone over that would fall back to pre-Bush rates. No way, said the GOP. Instead of putting tens of billions towards the deficit (doesn't matter so much now, does it Boehner?), saving jobs in the public sector (ya know, middle class folks like cops, teachers, firefighters, parm cooks), let's help out those already well off. I mean, I understand the rich wanting equal taxation, but in these times? Really? Facebook : For the first time maybe ever, I think the folks at Facebook have made a redesign mistake. I've never clicked one of those silly "I want the old FB back" things but the new &

First Tweedy opens for Yo La Tengo and now this. What a week to be in NY/NJ. 01 Oh Comely 02 In the Aeroplane Over the Sea 03 Gardenhead 04 Engine 05 Ghost 06 King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1 07 Song Against Sex 08 Naomi 09 Two Headed Boy 10 Two Headed Boy Pt. 2 Listen Here

Minutemen The Punch Line Mott The Hoople Live Rick Danko Rick Danko Waylon Jennings Waylon Live Bruce Springsteen Save My Love 7" Okkervil River Don't Fall In Love With Everyone You See M. Ward Post-War Elvis Costello This Year's Model

Although about 90% of the content on this blog is about music, I rarely give straight-up record reviews. This is primarily because records take me a long time to process, usually about a year. I really don't know how music critics have the ability to listen a few times and deliver their take. I can do so with movies and books, but music takes almost endless listens. And more often than not, the truly great records take a long, long time. The best ones are never fully absorbed. It's little surprise that the Darkness box set had me giddy, and bordering on manic. Okay, manic. As I've mentioned in earlier posts, Darkness on the Edge of Town is much more than a record for me. I can say with absolute certainty that it played a large part in shaping my views, outlook, understanding, and morals. Growing up short on mentors, it was this record, in my early twenties, that taught me the lessons I needed and longed for. It was the characters, the landscape, the emotion and the lives.

When I transferred schools in 1993 and moved a few states north, my lack of knowledge and understanding of the world bordered on embarrassing. If you asked me about the Bay of Pigs, I probably would've directed you to a distant corner of the Bronx Zoo. A few months later the Civil Rights Movement would jar my life perspective, but had you inquired about the NAACP in early 1993 I probably would've referred to the National Association for the Advancement of Chicken Parm. I often wonder how I even got into college. Outside of college basketball and the Yanks, my brain was basically wide open. After a crappy first semester, I enrolled in a class called "Inequality in America." It was around this time that I graduated beyond the basics of rock n' roll and discovered Uncle Tupelo, The Bottle Rockets, dug deep into Springsteen's Darkness on the Edge of Town and began to recognize common themes running through the songs. The guys in Uncle Tupelo were looking for a w

I'm guessing it was 1995 or so. I clearly recall that we were still listening to cassette tapes in the car. It was a seemingly forgettable rainy Saturday morning, when my brother and I awoke and were hit with the inspiration to hop onto the Parkway and head down to the towns where Springsteen was raised. We made it to Freehold, Asbury Park and a few others. As the rain picked up, we searched for the places in the songs, but the few points we marked to visit were either closed or gone: The Stone Pony, some guitar shop we imagined was once the home of Bruce's first Japanese guitar, a few boardwalk items mentioned on some early records. We really didn't see much, but we listened and searched. We made it through to The Wild, The Innocent, Darkness and Greetings . As we were about to head back to the Parkway, feeling somewhat deflated as we'd failed to immerse ourselves in Springsteen, on came "Something in the Night." We turned onto a stretch of road and right as

From now until the release of the Darkness box set, this blog will cover nothing but Springsteen. That's eleven days of Bruce. We'll be posting videos, stories, lyrics, lists, the occasional racy nude and anything else that comes to mind. To kick things off, the video from the title track to the fantastic film The Wrestler .

I offered to compile someone a two-disc set of two tracks from my favorite artists. Since she already has a lot of Springsteen and Ritter's entered the fray, they have been left off. Disc One Via Chicago : Wilco Ashes of American Flags : Wilco It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train To Cry : Bob Dylan Don't Think Twice, It's Alright : Bob Dylan The Way : Bonnie "Prince" Billy Love Comes To Me : Bonnie "Prince" Billy Song of 27 : Richard Buckner Town : Richard Buckner Rise : Josh Rouse Ugly Stories : Josh Rouse Packing Blankets : Eels The Good Old Days : Eels John Allyn Smith Sails : Okkervil River Lost Coastlines : Okkervil River Birds : Neil Young I Believe In You : Neil Young Disc Two Settled Down Like Rain : The Jayhawks It's Up To You : The Jayhawks Next To You : Tim Easton Troublesome Kind : Tim Easton Watch Me Fall : Uncle Tupelo Chickamauga : Uncle Tupelo Denton : Damien Jurado Fuel : Damien Jurado Barrier Reef : Old 97's Busted Afternoo

Bruce Springsteen released The River .

"Indulge no one's taste but your own" Arthur Phillips, The Song Is You , pg. 57 I made it to page 59 before having to put the book down and sit on that sentence. It made me think of baseball. I used to love the game. While watching the World Series last year at a bar in the Bay Area, I recognized my passion for the game evaporating. Although I checked most box scores this year, 2010 was the first year since 1978 or so when baseball didn't grab me. And I fear that it's likely lost forever. Why fake it? I've done it time and again. I'll nod after a terrible show and say, "Yeah, that was great." Or to a song that sucks. Or some football game that has me bored to tears. I know what I love. Great books. Great music. Dogs. Parks. Friends. Wisdom. Records. Solomon Burke. Big Star. Edson. Some may call it closed-minded. I think it's just knowing what moves me. What brings me to sing while walking through crowds on Church Street. What makes it all com

For those of us who seem to tie every single event to music, it's our relationships, perhaps more than anything else, that seem to be tied to particular artists, records or songs. I've really only had three "serious" relationships and each has an artist. The one straight out of college was The Jayhawks. My most recent was Josh Ritter. The one that ran from 2002-2005 in Park Slope was Solomon Burke (slightly nudging out Josh Rouse). I discovered Burke via Joe Henry, one of the my favorite artists of the last 20 years. Singer/songwriter, turned jazz frontman, turned producer, Henry stood behind the boards on Burke's fantastic 2002 comeback album Don't Give Up On Me . Mostly covers (Waits, Dylan, Lowe, Costello), Don't Give Up On Me , is likely the best contemporary soul record I own. And it was this record that led me to Cooke, Redding and all the rest. Sometime around 2004 or so, my girlfriend and I were on a near endless search to unearth more Burke materi

I have these Sennheiser headphones that I rarely use, mostly because they're so big that they make my ears sweat. But man, what sound they produce. Crystal clear. This afternoon I took the pup out to the backyard and tossed on these earmuffs. The first song to come on was Jeff Tweedy's cover of Dylan's "Simple Twist of Fate" from the I'm Not There soundtrack. I agree (with myself) that the highlight of that soundtrack is Jim James' cover of "Goin' To Acapulco," but man, Tweedy's cover doesn't get enough recognition. For the first time in a few months, a song brought on chills. I think it was mostly the lyrics..... They sat together in the park As the evening sky grew dark She looked at him and he felt a spark Tingle to his bones It was then he felt alone And wished he'd gone straight And watched out for a simple twist of fate They walked along by the old canal A little confused, I remember it well Stopped into an o

I learned about this record while reading an interview with Jay Bennett a number of years back. It's come to be one of my favorite records. Simply stunning.

Saturday 11am : Kelly Willis 1205pm : Jonathan Richman feat. Tommy Larkins 230pm : Steve Earle / Robert Earl Keen / John Doe / David Olney 330pm : Richard Thompson 420pm : Gillian Welch 545pm : Steve Earle & The Bluegrass Dukes Sunday 11am : Lucero 1155am : Peter Himmelman 145pm : Earl Scruggs 205pm : Randy Newman 305pm : Elvis Costello & The Sugarcanes 440pm : Nick Lowe & His Band 545pm : Emmylou Harris

Incredibly uncomfortable look w/Dave Bielanko @ The Pontiac, Philly, 10.31.98 From 1998-1999, Marah were the greatest rock n' roll band in the world (my apologies to Slobberbone, The Gourds and about 90 other incredible bands from this time). I used to drive from New York to Philly about once a month to hang with Maggie, Frank, Brendan, Second Frank, Jerry, Donny Pizza Sauce and many who I haven't seen in close to a decade. When the original rhythm section left, they took a tiny step back, but still maintained the spirit. Here they are in 2000 in Toronto.

Having lived on this block for four-plus years, I now know a good portion of the residents by first name. This must say something about San Francisco. I lived in Brooklyn for six years and in terms of my block, I think I knew my landlord, the guy who torched the adjacent building by falling asleep while chaining Winstons and my girlfriend (who lived with me). There's this one fella who I see every now and then who just looks like he clearly has EPs from one end of his apartment to the next. He was one of the neighbors I knew by face. This morning, while talking to a pal who was on his way to his job at the Chronicle, EP guy strolled by wearing a Feelies t-shirt. I hate to be one of those guys, but c'mon, a Feelies t-shirt? One hour later, we'd covered Luna, The Wrens, Teenage Fanclub, Yankee Stadium, Maxwell's in Hoboken, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, his dislike of Wilco (near full nelson), Minneapolis, Chicago, Blonde Redhead, touring, Absolutely Kosher Records, The J

There were probably about twenty of us in the hotel room. It must have been close to 4am, just a few hours after The Drams wrapped their set on the 18th floor of the Hilton. We were in Austin, Texas for what very well may have been my final South by Southwest. As we downed one Tecate after another, I decided to declare that Drams lead singer/songwriter is "a better songwriter than Paul Westerberg." I stand by that statement, but Brent, who was in the room, along with many of his rabid fans and friends, kinda laughed it off. I think I repeated the statement time and again and challenged everyone, Brent included, to dispute what I clearly considered fact. Man I had a rough hangover the following day. Brent recorded four albums from 1996-2002 with his first band, Slobberbone, the highlights being 1997's Barrel Chested and 2000's fantastic Everything You Thought Was Right Was Wrong Today . In early 2005, Slobberbone played their final show. A few months prior, they'd

It's almost as if they never existed. A search of this phenomenal band returns just about nothing. It seems as if I check YouTube every few months hoping for something to surface. A few very rough videos have actually landed, but they don't do this band justice. When I think of The Damnations TX, I think of the Athens, Georgia band The Possibilities. I mean, they have nothing in common, and don't even sound alike, but I've created some sort of mental connection. I don't know, I guess they're just two more bands that I think should've made it. I loved The Possibilities, but they weren't as good as The Damnations (they later had to add TX since some other band had the name). I saw both bands just once, The Possibilities at The Baggot Inn in New York and The Damnations at South By Southwest. The Possibilities were better live. But The Possibilities didn't release a record as good as The Damnations' 1998 debut Half Mad Moon . It's Car Wheels on a

It was sometime in early 2005 when a pal wrote and said, "Go buy a Super Audio CD Player and all the Dylan SACDs. Then call me." About an hour or two later I was in Best Buy picking up the player. I then drove down El Camino to Tower and picked up Blood on the Tracks . He also suggested that I pick up some beer, turn on the CDs and do nothing else, which is exactly what I did. Commence Maxell blank tape logo. (If you're under 30, you probably don't get that. If you're over 30, just deal with the crappy analogy.) By the following afternoon, I'd picked up Another Side of Bob Dylan, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, Oh Mercy, Bringing It All Back Home, Nashville Skyline and Infidels . Now five years later, despite all the vinyl, the George Jones Box Set, the Big Star Box Set, the Willie Nelson Atlantic Years and all the rest, these seven CDs remain my prized possessions. The sound is that good. Super Audio CDs lasted on the market for about 48 hours. Only a few ar

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I've definitely been getting back to basics. I've now been without television for well over a year, I can't remember the last time I watched a Yankee game and Netflix recently got the boot. It's music and reading. I've finally gotten around to reading A Confederacy of Dunces , which, midway through, is better than I'd anticipated. I don't know, there are certain films, records, books that have that universal acclaim that are often downright terrible. I like searching for things to do. With more than 50% of my normal media unavailable, I now look through CD racks, scour the shelves for a book I'd forgotten to read. Or maybe read a book again. I recently re-read Bill Morrissey's Edson . I went to the library this week and picked up some DVDs. Since I didn't get to grow up mid 20th century, I can at least pretend. I recently mentioned an old tradition I'd developed of listening to an entire record via the headphones, uninterrupted. Last night, I

Paper Trails by Pete Dexter, Stories, 2007 : 7.8

This idea is completely stolen from a blog post I read this morning entitled The Importance of Sitting In One Place and Reading . Although the concept is borrowed, the idea behind it all has been ruminating in my head for a while now. Sometime late last year, I fell into a new habit. After finishing dinner, I would lie on my couch and listen to an entire record, uninterrupted. I'd move from Dylan to Oldham and The Faces to Tim Easton. Most of the time I would close my eyes. I would find myself falling into the stories, the romance, the longing, the fury. My cell phone would be in the other room. For forty minutes to an hour I would do nothing but listen. And dream. The idea came from specific memories when music changed me. There was the beach in Ponte Vedre, Florida when Son Volt's "Back Into Your World," accompanied by a rising sun and a girl I loved altered my senses. There was the cliff in Pacifica, CA when The Arcade Fire's "Intervention" charged t

There's little argument that Wilco were at their peak when Jeff and Jay hit their creative stride. From 1996-2001, Wilco had wrapped recordings on Being There , Summerteeth and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot , (not so) arguably their three best records. On July 4, 2001, Jay Bennett left/was dismissed from the band, and the releases that followed have suffered. Hardly throwaways, A Ghost Is Born , Sky Blue Sky and Wilco (The Album) have some strong songs, but the depth just isn't there. All that said, let's list off the top ten Jay-era Wilco tunes and the ten best following Jay's departure. It ain't even close. Wilco : The Bennett Years 1 Via Chicago 2 Misunderstood 3 She's a Jar 4 I Am Trying To Break Your Heart 5 Sunken Treasure 6 Ashes of American Flags 7 Poor Places 8 How To Fight Loneliness 9 I Must Be High 10 A Shot In the Arm Wilco : Post Jay 1 You Are My Face 2 Wishful Thinking 3 Country Disappeared 4 Impossible Germany 5 Sky Blue Sky 6 Handshake Drugs

I'm guessing it was 1995 or so when my older brother and I hopped into my Mazda 626 and drove down to Asbury Park and Freehold, New Jersey just to see where it all went down. We drove by a number of guitar shops and wondered if any of them once housed that Japanese guitar. We parked outside the Stone Pony. As the hours passed, we just kept driving around. It all felt like Born To Run and Darkness . As track three on the latter came pouring through the tape deck, my brother pointed to the street sign. As Bruce sang, "Well, I'm riding down Kingsley, figuring I'll get a drink. Well, I turned the radio up loud, so I don't have to think." We were on Kingsley. And boy did we turn that radio up loud. After years of rumors and false starts, on November 16th, Columbia will release the three-CD / three-DVD set The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story . In addition to a fully remastered Darkness , the set includes 21 unreleased tracks, as well as the DVDs The Promise : Th