Snowblind

Down here, where we're at
The weather changes, that's the way it goes
Sometimes it snows, when everything's wrong
Sometimes it snows, but when it does, it doesn't last long
-Uncle Tupelo, "Screen Door"

Lots of Uncle Tupelo for me lately, and this song feels especially poignant with this massive storm we're having, coming after weeks of unseasonably warm weather (two weeks ago it was about 65). Except this snow seems like it will last forever - it began at about 4 p.m. and shows no signs of letting up. It's thick, mixed with ice and sleet. Good snowball fight snow, if I had anyone to exchange volleys with.

***

Lots of Tupelo, to be sure (they're St. Louis' greatest musical export after Chuck Berry, and even though they're from the Illinois side of the river I can now identify the places they mention in their songs), but also lots of Animal Collective. The new album has songs titled "In The Flowers" and "Summertime Clothes," but to my ears there's no better wintertime album.

It's positively ethereal, haunting and comforting at the same time. I listened to it as I spent 15 minutes attempting to drive out of the parking lot of the newspaper office. See, everything in these Ozark towns is built on hills. Either that, or the roads are on the hills and the homes and businesses are sort of sunken in around them. Makes for scenic driving in peak conditions, but that also means that its nigh impossible to go anywhere when it snows. I had a bear of a time getting up one of those steep inclines, as our office in St. Robert is thusly sunken in. I got out, but it took me forever because I could only really turn left.

***

I gave a woman a ride home. She was walking, as she usually does, but she said "It's kind of stupid to do it in the winter, I guess."

Ya think?

When I saw her she was in the middle of Old Route 66 in St. Robert, bundled up in sweats, a hoodie and a parka. I almost hesitated but she looked harmless enough. She was. We talked about how people don't know how to drive in the snow around here because all the soldiers come from Texas and Georgia. Then some guy in front of us, with Florida plates (naturally), fishtailed as he was going around the giant hill that divides Waynesville and St. Bob (the same one where the frog resides). We chuckled.

She told me that before I got her the police stopped her once and told her to get off the road and walk on the sidewalk to be safe.

"I told them that I thought I was still on the sidewalk. You couldn't tell what was what."

While they were talking, a snowplow whizzed passed them. She got blasted. The officer, still in the car, did not. They didn't offer her a ride.

SportsTime

Despite the terrible header (which we're getting rid of, thank God), I like today's sports page. Maybe that has something to do with the fact that I wrote 80 inches of copy tonight. What can I say? I'm proud of the fruits of my labor. And my game story (on the Waynesville-Lebanon game) is probably the best I've done since I got here. Check it (full story online here):



Here's a bit of that game story - the beginning, anyway:

Jack Hittinger, Daily Guide
WAYNESVILLE--Going into Friday night’s tussle with Ozark Conference and district foe Lebanon, Waynesville head basketball coach Tim Bildner knew his team would have to be ready to defend the three. His team prepared accordingly.
He didn’t, however, prepare for this: a 68-66 “barn burner” that saw the Waynesville Tigers (13-3, 2-0 Ozark Conference) come back from an eight-point deficit, lead by nine, and then win by two. All of this, mind you, took place in a span of eight minutes in the third and fourth quarters.
“I’m glad to survive that one,” Bildner said while sitting on the bleachers after the game.
He needed the rest. The visiting Yellowjackets (8-7, 0-3) made 13 three-pointers out of 26 attempts–a 50 percent clip.
“We can’t even get that on two-pointers,” Bildner said, shaking his head.

The rest of the story, as I said, will be online Monday. So you'll have to wait. But here are some pictures, if you are so inclined: BJ Ray dunking; Kendall Lewis (this one would be sweet if he wasn't blurry); Donald Perry (need to figure out how to edit so the flash from another camera doesn't look so obvious); Brandyn Preston; Preston dunking.

Sure Shot

Don't know how long this will be up, so watch it now (and never mnd the fact that the video is too large for my damn blog): Marshall's Markel Humphrey drains a 75-foot three to beat SMU.

Watch more ESPN videos on AOL Video

Mostly I like the interview; he seems like a nice kid and he's honest about it:

Interviewer: If we give you 100 tries to make that shot in that same situation, how many times do you make that shot?
Humphrey: Out of a hundred, I'd probably have to say...zero. That's just a lucky shot, man, I just threw it up there.

I love my job because I can watch this video, at full volume on full screen if I so desired, and nobody would bat an eye. Yes, that's right. Just one of the many perks of being a sportswriter (which also include working from 11 a.m. to about 12 p.m. every night and driving to obscure little high school gymnasiums in small towns to watch a wrestling meet. Awesome).

Best albums in 2008

Not of, mind you. IN. Because I didn't exactly listen to every new album this year. Or even all of the ones I was "supposed" to listen to. So it's a mix: new albums from this year that I liked, but also albums that are actually old but are new to me. No particular order on any of these, except Portishead and the Walkmen are probabaly 1 and 2. Album name links to review, song name to YouTube sample.

Superlatives:
Portishead, Third ("The Rip")
Walkmen, You & Me ("In The New Year")
Q-Tip, The Renaissance ("Move" / "Renaissance Rap", this is one track on the album but I think they work better as separate songs)
Cut Copy, In Ghost Colours ("Feel The Love")
Times New Viking, Rip It Off ("The End of All Things")
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Dig, Lazarus, Dig! (listen to MP3 in review)
Spiritualized, Songs in A&E ("You Lie You Cheat")
Black Mountain, In the Future ("Angels", "Tyrants")
Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend (scroll down for Christgau's take)
Wale, The Mixtape About Nothing (listen to MP3)

Darn good:
Silver Jews, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea ("Aloyisius, Bluegrass Drummer")
R.E.M., Accelerate ("Man Sized Wreath")
Los Campesinos!, Hold On Now, Youngster ("Death to Los Campesinos!", but their Pavement cover is the best thing they've ever recorded, unfortunately it's only on the EP)
Tokyo Police Club, Elephant Shell ("Tessellate")
Dungen, 4
Black Milk, Tronic ("Give the Drummer Sum")
Flight of the Conchords, Flight of the Conchords ("Ladies of the World"...the only reason why this album isn't great is because they fucked up some of the songs from their stand up and overproduced them...except this one...seriously, I want a whole album of nothing but songs like this and I'd enjoy it...even if they weren't being ironic, I think I'd love it...that fadeout thing at the end is brilliant, I could chill out for hours to stuff like this)
Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks, Real Emotional Trash
Drive-By Truckers, Brighter Than Creation's Dark ("The Man I Shot")
Black Keys, Attack and Release ("Psychotic Girl")

Older albums I got into/ back into (only a smattering, these are the notable ones):
Chavez, Better Days Will Haunt You
A Tribe Called Quest, Midnight Maradurs
Uncle Tupelo, Anodyne, Still Feel Gone, No Depression
Wilco, Summerteeth, Being There
Son Volt, Trace
At The Drive-In, The Relationship of Command
Drive-By Truckers, Southern Rock Opera
Nas, Illmatic
Galaxie 500, The Peel Sessions
Superchunk, Here's Where the Strings Come In
Guided By Voices, Do the Collapse

I didn't listen to:
Wolf Parade, At Mount Zoomer
The Dirtbombs, We Have You Surrounded
The Kills, Midnight Boom
Presidents of the USA, These are the Good Times, People
Local H, Twelve Angry Months
Tapes 'n Tapes, Walk It Off
Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes (and not sure I want to in this case)

Anything else I forgot about. Which means that I didn't care enough to listen to it or didn't remember enough about it to remember it came out this year. Or I'm just retarded and forgot something good. Damnit.

Things I Read: 2008

Michael Chabon - The Amazing Adventures of Kaviler and Clay
Michael Chabon - The Yiddish Policeman's Union
T.S. Eliot - Four Quartets
Louise Erdrich - Tracks
Jeffrey Eugenides - Middlesex
Jonathan Safran Foer - Everything is Illuminated
John Gardner - Grendel
Graham Greene - The End of the Affair
C.S. Lewis - Till We Have Faces
Carson McCullers - The Member of the Wedding
Alan Moore/ Dave Gibbons - The Watchmen
Tim O'Brien - The Things They Carried
Tom Stoppard - Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead
Stefan Szymanski - National Pastime: How Americans Play Baseball and the Rest of the World Plays Soccer
William Carlos Williams - Selected Poems

Seven songs

I got this from the blog of former Stylus writer/ current PopMatters writer Ian Mathers. It actually looked like a good idea. Here are the "rules:"

"List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good, but they must be songs you're really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they're listening to."

I kinda want to see what others are into, but I'm not sure how many people would actually write it up. So I won't "tag" anyone. But I am interested in the frequent listening habits of others these days. So hit it up.

Anyway, here are mine. I tried to make these actually sound, you know, thoughtful and thought-provoking. I may have failed. Here goes either way:

"Electric Relaxation" - A Tribe Called Quest
There's this bit in the first verse of the song, Phife's very first rhyme, I like 'em brown, yellow, Puerto Rican or Haitian / Name is Phife Dawg from the Zulu Nation / Told you in the jam that We Can Get Down / Now let's knock the boots like the group H-Town. Right as he starts that rhyme, the upright bassline in the back goes "BOOM-BUM-BOOM-BOOM-BUM-BUM-BOOM-BHUUM-BHUUM-BOOM-BOOM-BUM..." I can't get that damn bass out of my head.
At that point the lyrics of the song (about how smooth the members of the Tribe are, sexually) are pointless. Uncharacteristically of the Tribe, the lyrics take a big backseat. The bass and rhyme structure are so smooth on their own that Phife and Q could very well be rapping through Anton LaVey's "Book of Satan," or "How-to" book on kitchen sink repair, and it wouldn't even matter. Although, Phife's verse near the very end is kind of hilarious, in a twisted sort of way: If my mom donױt approve, then I'll just elope / Let me sink the little man from inside the boat / Let me hit it from the back, girl I won't catch a hernia / Bust off on your couch, now you got semen's furniture.

"Break Up Your Band" - Chavez
Somehow, Matador let both Chavez albums go out-of-print. Maybe they never got big because they're not really any genre. They're one of those bands where for which it's impossible to create a Pandora station, because it thinks that they're like 5 different (wrong) things. They could be indie, but they're too earnest. They could be emo, but if they sing about relationships, they're opaque about it. They could be math rock, but they actually care for pop song structure. They could be punk, but they're too complicated. They could be metal, but they don't scream enough and they're only good musicians (no Kerry Kings here). See where this can go?
Anyhow, they re-released their entire discography on a 2-disc set. Which equals about 28 songs. It's a pretty excellent comp top-to-bottom, but this is the one song that stands out.
Everything about it encompasses what a three-minute rock song should encompass. Slowly-building intro? Check. Solid drumming? Check. Appropriate hooks (that little power-chord-and-bass thing in the verse that goes "DUH-DUH-DUH-DUNDUNDUNDUN")? Check. Anthemic chorus? Check. Engaging vocal melody? Check. Strange, almost disconcerting video? Check AND check. The only thing it's missing is a solo, which only becomes apparent when you really think about it too hard. Thing is, it would be superfluous. Man, I wish they recorded more music...

"Seven" - Sunny Day Real Estate
An emo band you can actually get behind. One that doesn't even look like an emo band, really (although their lyrics painfully betray their case...but it's sort of another instance of where he could be singing about anything because his voice is so powerful and perfect for the music).
Really, only three things I want to note about this song:
(1) The hook in the verse where the full band comes in and plays those six or seven quick chords.
(2) The fact that the lyrics repeat over twice. Good thing you'd have to look them up to really figure out what he's saying, because it's pretty shitty faux-poetry. Although I do like the line The mirrors lie, those aren't my eyes, even if it means nothing.
(3) The harmonies in the chorus. Geez. I don't even understand what it is about them. But they're just sorta thrown in there and they work.

"Factory Belt" (the second song, halfway in) and "Gun" - Uncle Tupelo
Not just an obligatory nod to both of the main songwriters (Farrar and Tweedy), I'm genuinely convinced that they're both geniuses. Sure, Tweedy's got Wilco and everyone fawns over him, but Farrar got jipped. Tweedy took the band and made another, more successful band, but Fararr basically did the same thing Tupelo was doing (with the old Tupelo drummer, at least) and stayed in obscurity.
Regardless, I like both of these songs for a variety of reasons. The former is Farrar's paean to working life combining Neil Young, the Minutemen and old-school country. The latter is a straight-up love song (well, maybe not "straight-up" like "Love Me Do" but a love song nonetheless). The reason why I'm so into these songs, though, is because both have this one lyric that keeps sticking out in my mind that makes me have to listen to it over and over. In "Factory Belt" it's the chorus line of It's tiiiime to lay this burden down/ Stop messin' arrouuund/ Don't wanna gotothegrave...without a sound.... Especially the harmony on the first "lay this burden down." They do that all the time on their songs (especially Tweedy when Farrar is singing lead), but for some reason this one sticks out.
"Gun" also has a similar sort of musical feel (all the heavy strumming in the chorus, kinda like "Factory Belt"), but its vocal vibe is totally different.
Tweedy sounds more jubilant than somber or gruff, as is Fararr's usual case. And there are no harmonies on this one. Just Tweedy singing 'Cause my heart, it waaaas a gun/ But it's unloaded now/ So don't bother me. The part that really sticks me is after the guitar solo, when everything drops out and he sings I sold my guitar to the girl next door.... It's just so vulnerable. I'm obsessed with it.

"Motor Away" - Guided By Voices
Don't ask me why, but any song that begins with the words "Post-punk X-Men" has my attention. And then the guy gets in the car and it gets serious and Bob starts wailing about how you can be anything that they told you to/ You can belittle every little voice that told you so, it makes you want to ram your car at full speed into whoever happens to be pissing you off at the time. And then when he continues and goes into the part about speeding going down icy streets and finally implores you to speed away...I swear, I start going 20 over on my mountain highway home street.

Nylon Smile - Portishead
Some of the songs on Third blend together, so it's hard to pick one. That's certainly not a knock on the album - I picked it up again the other day after a few-month-long hiatus (I listened to the shit out of it the week or two after I bought it, which ended up being about a month after it came out). It's just that all the songs have a certain minimalist vibe going on in them. It's hard to explain fully, and this live version doesn't have the exact feeling as the album.
Maybe it's the production: on the album it sounds like Beth Gibbons is simply alone in a room. The "instruments" are incidental. They're background noise; the guitar and sequencer could be the rhythm of the city at night while the percussion could be the sounds of the machinery in the boiler room that one can hear through the vents. Either way, they're back there making noise and they're the perfect compliments to her haunting (she sort of howls between actual singing) lament: Cause I don't know what I've done to deserve you / And I don't know what I'll do without you [...] I can't see nothing good / And nothing is so bad / I never had a chance / To explain exactly what I meant. And it ends right there. Literally a split second after the last "t." Is it a song? Or is it emotion?

Chest bump

Say what you will about Dubya (I think we all have, so I won't again), but at least he's good for incidental humor. And something about this picture just makes me smile and think, 'Hey, maybe he's not so bad.' For like five seconds. But still.

(Found this on the Freep's Year in pictures 2008. It's not nearly as good as this one from the Boston Globe via the Sadbear, but it has this picture too, which I love.)