365 project,"i went to a whore, he said my life's a bore, so quit my whining cause it's bringing her down"

183.

Artist: Green Day
Album: Dookie

It is my opinion that 1994’s Dookie and J.A.R. from the soundtrack to the movie Angus are the only decent things that Green Day has ever spewed out.

The trite garbage they produce now makes my ears bleed within seconds of realizing they are being accosted by such drivel. It pains me in the moments that I have no choice but to sit through a more modern Green Day tune, but I didn’t always have such a deep-seated hate for this band.

1994, as I have said before, was my favorite year for music. Lots of stuff that came out that year still finds itself being spun regularly for me in 2011. In some ways, I never really did grow up beyond 14-year-old me. I don’t know why that is, and its something that bugs me to no end, but that’s a conversation for another blog entirely. Anyway, I remember being so excited when Dookie came out, because hey, we got to say Dookie, and poop and fart jokes were funny (look at me saying “were” like I don’t still laugh at this stuff now.)

I can’t remember if it was the first time I had ever heard this album, but I’m pretty sure it was. A few of us were hanging out in my friend Bob’s bedroom and he pulled this album out of a stack of stuff sitting on his shelf. We all listened to the same radio station, so at this point we had all heard the single, but he was amazed with a the hidden track at the end of the song, called “all by myself” and he wanted the rest of us to hear it. Of course, at 14, a song about masturbation might have been the funniest thing we could have ever heard, and if I remember correctly, we may have walked around singing it in school for a few days after we heard it. Afterall, we were just coming into our own around this time.

There are songs on this album that I can tolerate. There are songs on this album that I might actually like. But I never upgraded from cassette to CD on this one, so if I really wanted to listen to it, id have to listen on spotify like I did tonight, or borrow my mom’s CD, which is kind of weird. Not the borrowing of her CD’s, but the borrowing of her Green Day Cd. She owns more Green Day than I do, which I guess is easy, as I own none.

365 project, "one baby to another says im lucky to have met you/i dont care what you think as long as its about me."

182.

Artist: Nirvana
Album: Nevermind

I hold some opinions on music that are not the social norms, and especially vary from my peers. I talked before about how I just didn’t “get” Radiohead, while most others in the same scene drool over Thom Yorke like he is the best thing to happen to Earth since sliced bread. Nirvana is another band that I just don’t really have much desire to listen to.

Back in like1994, I asked for a slew of cassettes for Christmas, and received a few of them from my Aunt Chris. Nevermind was one that I unwrapped that holiday season, and I remember feeling so bad-ass because I had a cassette that had a naked baby on it. What can I say? I was a kid. Anyway, I used to listen to this album inside and out, and I was really into a lot of the other “grunge” acts of the time, mostly because that is what my friends/the people I thought were cool were listening to, but I never really felt a connection with Nevermind the way I had with albums previous to or since this time. I just shrugged that off and told myself that I liked it. I was a “grunge” kind of kid and these were the bands that I was supposed to be listening to, otherwise I wouldn’t fit in.

Since that time, I have come to the conclusion that I do not really like Nirvana, but I think what it boils down to is that I just do not like the hype. I know that Nirvana changed the face of music when this album was released. Boy bands and bubblegum pop were the rulers of the airwaves and it was starting to look like nothing was going to be able to dethrone them, until out of nowhere (or Seattle) comes this shaggy looking dude with long hair and a flannel shirt, and a new era of music was born. Labels were tripping over themselves to sign similar artists, and Seattle was the place to be. There was an army of kids in plaid flannel shirts, mostly stolen from their father’s work gear (I know that is where mine came from) and Doc Martens, hanging out in the malls and movie theaters, and feeling like they finally had a voice. It was a movement. Absolutely.

But I got bored of it after a while. In the 20 years since that album came out, it has really started to drain me to turn on the radio and still hear these songs every single time. I don’t know how often I’ve flipped through the six presets on my car stereo and heard 1 song that I didn’t know, three stations worth of commercials, and 2 stations playing Nirvana. It got old, and instead of getting mad at the radio stations who are STILL forcing this band down my throat, I got mad at the band. I mean, I never really liked them anyway, right? So what does it matter, and its not like I’m going to hurt Kurt Cobain’s feelings…he took care of that on his own.

But im sitting here tonight listening to this album, and am realizing there are some songs here that I legitimately like. I don’t feel like I am listening to fit in with any group, because at 31 years of age, I have my friends and I don’t know that what music I listen to matters as much to them now as it did in high school. I am listening and singing along and there is a chance that I am alternating between typing this entry and playing the drums on the desk.

Now I may have to rethink the way I feel about this band. LB will be happy.

365 project, "she is strong and silent/she is blunt and shrewd/she thinks that nobody loves her/if she only knew"

181.

Artist: Brave Saint Saturn
Album: So Far From Home

I am a Christian. I do not run around shouting this from the rooftops or beating people over the head with my Bible, but I try to live my life the way Jesus dictated and I try to do what is right and just in light of those beliefs.

One of my most favorite memories of anything ever is from a night in Pittsburgh several years ago.

I went into the city with a group of my friends from college, which also happened to be a group that was called “Christian Fellowship.” We were there to attend a conference geared towards college-aged Christians called Jubilee. It was a pretty huge event, and I don’t remember a whole lot from the weekend, but I do have scattered memories of hanging out in the hotel lobby and of popping into the conference room to see Over the Rhine play (I didn’t know who they were then. I only know of them now because of that conference. I don’t know that I have ever really heard one of their songs.)

We had a lot of free time at night, too, and since we were in college, we had some leeway. I remember walking with the group across one of the several bridges in Pittsburgh so that we could all go eat dinner somewhere as a group. I have no idea where we went to eat, I just remember being traumatized by having to walk over a bridge, as im terrified of bridges (and for that reason alone, going to school out near Pittsburgh was a horrible idea.) I think that this weekend was the first time I’d ever really spent any time dahn tahn  so I remember being pretty in awe of the whole thing. Pittsburgh is a very different city from Philly, so there was a bit of culture shock, for sure.

At some point during one of those lobby hangouts, I remember seeing a few of my friends walk past with their instruments, heading outside. We asked them were they were going, and they said to come with them. We crossed the street over to Point State Park, and as we approached one of the bridges we could hear it. There was a spontaneous Praise circle happening underneath. It was late, and the park was filled with mostly vagabonds and homeless people at that point, and then all of us. The others in the park came over and worshipped with us, and by the time the gathering broke off, there were somewhere near 70-80 people underneath of that bridge.

It was one of the most beautiful moments I have ever been a part of in my life, and every time I hear the song “under bridges” from this album, I am immediately transported back in time to that night 12 years ago.

365 project, "everyone's a little queer, why can't she be a little straight?"

180.

Artist: Weezer
Album: Pinkerton

Sometimes sophomore albums are just as good as debut releases, and sometimes they are met with just as much critical acclaim. I’d say that was the case with this album. The majority of the people I know have one common belief about Weezer, which is that there are two eras, before Pinkerton and after. Something changed about the awesomeness of the band’s songs once Rivers wasn’t looking for love anymore.

Have I mentioned yet the time that I saw Brand New and Jesse said “don’t dare me to play it like I won’t” in reference to El Scorcho? I know that I talked about that show, because the entry was just last month, but I can’t remember if I mentioned that. At any rate, when the band played El Scorcho, it brought the whole room together in a different way than we were already bound. There is something beautiful about a room of people breaking into random song.

There are so many emotions that I have tied up into this album, though I can’t remember a specific incident or instance where this album was playing. Although I remember when I realized how amazing it is, so I’ll tell that story.

Right after I got my record player, I spent a lot of time shopping for vinyl, and was rather indiscriminate in the things that I picked up-I was going more for quantity than quality at that time. If I saw something that looked like I might maybe have some interest in it in some way, or if I saw something that was cheap, I picked it up. I have an entire crate of albums that reflect this insanity, but im counting on the day that I just NEED to listen to Martika’s Toy Soldiers.

At some point during this frenzy, I stumbled across a benefit 7” that featured Weezer, Ben Kweller, AM Radio, but mostly I was excited because it had a Phantom Planet song, and at that time I was (not going to lie here, I kind of still am) obsessed with their song California.

Of the four sides to this little guy, the side that ended up getting played the most was the Weezer side, because Why Bother? is a pretty fantastic song, and who can’t relate at least some point in their life to the lyrics? The idea of not even wanting to waste time with someone because in the end they are going to crush ones heart anyway just seems too true. Once someone crushed my heart once, I definitely found myself feeling this way. It isn’t even worth putting myself out there because its just going to end badly and I am just going to get crushed. “it happened to me twice before, won’t happen to me anymore” should be my motto.

Anyway, lifting the needle and taking it back to the beginning of the groove over and over again just lent itself to my growing appreciation for this band and especially this album...I was all about them until they released the green album, but that is a story for another time.

Also, they wrote this song around the same time, and it is on the deluxe version of the album, and it makes me super happy:

"can't keep what you didn't have. can't even give it back"

The new Kevin Devine album, "Between the Concrete and the Clouds" will be released on September 13th, but because Kevin tours relentlessly, and due to the spin.com stream of his first single, it's fairly easy for me to say with certainty that i will love this album. 

just something i needed to make note of.

Ive mentioned before about hearing a song and it feeling like you've never heard it before, at least in the attentive sense. that is how i feel about this song, and it is uber fitting for how im feeling lately. 

Incubus~I miss you

To see you when I wake up
is a gift I didn't think could be real.
To know that you feel the same as I do
is a three-fold, utopian dream.
You do something to me that I can't explain.
So would I be out of line if I said,
I miss you.
I see your picture, I smell your skin on the empty pillow next to mine.
You have only been gone ten days, but already I'm wasting away.
I know I'll see you again
whether far or soon.
But I need you to know that I care
and I miss you. 

365 project, "i'll remember you as another lesson learned cause/i don't need this love/you lost my love/don't want your love/not like this"

179.

Artist: Anoop Desai
Album: All Is Fair

Oh man, I am so torn with this album. I loved Anoop on American Idol (he was my second favorite, behind Danny Gokey) and I was pretty excited to get my hands on his stuff, and the beat is decent, but some of the lyrics are just so…bad…

The first song on the album, “My Name” starts off with this gem “Girl, you pop it like a toaster/makin’ me want to get closer” and I can’t decide if that’s supposed to be funny, or if he’s just trying to come up with something clever. I have a feeling it’s the latter, and I feel bad for laughing. I don’t know that I could write anything better, let alone land a contract as a recording artist, so I am really in no place to judge, but those that can’t, blog, right?

I have made it partially through the album twice, and once more all the way through, and on that listen, I heard something else that made me groan, but now I am going back through the lyrics and I can’t find what song it was. I want to be clear that not all of his lyrics are groan-worthy, but there were a few that stuck out that made me sad that I was listening to these songs.

Overall, the album has a decent beat going on. I can get behind most of what is going on here. I feel a lot like I’m listening to BSB meets R.Kelly with a bit of Indian flair thrown in for kicks. I have caught myself bobbing my head along with the music one more than one occasion, and some of the songs are actually decent, but then I catch some of those lyrics that just seem out of place and I’m taken right out of the moment.

I guess it comes down to would I recommend this album to you, and the answer to that is…probably not the whole album, but there are a few songs on there that I can see myself falling in love with given the chance to get to know them better. The question then becomes-will I allow myself to listen to this album long enough to fall for these songs, or will it disappear from my itunes?

365 project," i feel like i've been living in/a city with no children in it/a garden left for ruin by and by/as i hide inside of my private prison"

178.

Artist: Arcade Fire
Album: The Suburbs

I remember initially hearing a song from this album on YouTube or something, and thinking that I really liked it, but then forgetting about it three seconds later (oh, shiny, look…)

Maybe a week or two after the initial encounter, I was in my bedroom “cleaning” (which really equates to moving piles of crap from one place in the room to another) and I was listening to WXPN and I heard a line that I fell in love with immediately. Sometimes you just hear things that you can absolutely relate to in that instant, and that was how I felt about this song. The line in question was “So can you understand?/Why I want a daughter while I'm still young/I wanna hold her hand/And show her some beauty/Before this damage is done.” One of the things that bugs me most about where I am in life is that I still don’t have any children, because the only thing I have ever really aspired to be was a mother. Anyway, if you listen to those lines in context, it doesn’t really apply to me at all, but those lines jumped out and made me want to run right out and buy the album.

I didn’t do that, as I couldn’t afford it, but I did obtain the album, and listened to it a few times. I wasn’t as thrilled by the album as I was by the single. Sometimes that is just the way it goes, you know? You hear a song and you fall in love with it, but then you get the album and its just…different. It doesn’t give you the same tingly feeling inside or whatever. Eh, I don’t know. What I do know is that I was less than entertained by the new disk and just kind of let it sit stagnant in my itunes until tonight.

Sometimes, when you listen to an album, it is all about your mood. Again, if this popped up during a string of pop-punk songs, I’d be very liable to skip past it, because it would kill the mood, but sitting here at nearly two in the morning, listening to music and learning about more deceit in my little town, it just feels…perfect. Actually, until right this very second I didn’t realize how appropriate it is to listen to an album about the suburbs while I am reading about embezzlement from my town little league and seeing the reactions from the people I grew up with in that very organization. While this isn’t the first I’ve heard of this situation, now that it is out there in the public eye, I can talk to other people about it. The whole thing really breaks my heart.

I’m going to end this with that thought.

365 project, "some people wake up on Monday mornings/Barring maelstroms and red flare warnings/with no explosions and no surprises/perform a series of exercises"

177.

Artist: Andrew Bird
Album: Armchair Apocrypha

I am so up and down with this album. I have deleted it and re-uploaded it to itunes about 37 times…okay, maybe not 37, but its happened a few times. I listen to it, decide I don’t like it, delete it, and then hear one of the songs on TV or on the radio or something and decide I need to listen to it again.

I first heard Andrew Bird at bonnaroo back in 2006. I think. I really don’t remember what year it was. He seems to be a yearly staple at ‘roo. At any rate, Mandy had a friend that was hanging out with us on whatever day this was (this was the first year we went down, actually. He had to pick the lock on the lockbox for them because Mandy’s purse got stolen and it had the keys in it. Now ask me to remember what year was the first year we went down…) and he told us that we NEEDED to see this dude play, so since there was nothing else going on, we made the trek to Centeroo to check him out.

All I remember is Mandy’s friend telling us “this dude whistles and shit. He does everything on his own and he fucking whistles.” I know that I ended up liking the set after it was done, and was proud of myself for finding a new artist, but sometimes I think I would love anything anyone showed me at bonnaroo, as that is just the nature of the festival. This actually probably isn’t something that I should share, come to think of it, but whatever. Haha. How many of you will actually be down there with me next summer to force new things on me? Exactly.

Anyway, I don’t know why I initially fell out of love with this album, but it happened. I do believe that I just got tired of it, as it was one of the things that was stuck on my ipod during the bad years when I couldn’t do anything to upgrade/change/update anything on that bad boy. These days I still don’t love listening to the album, and as a matter of fact, kind of sighed and scuffed my feet when I realized it was time for this one, but I am on my second go-round with it, and I’m going to be honest with you, it isn’t terrible.

I guess I never really did think it was terrible, its just different from what I regularly listen to, so that makes it hard to swallow at some points. If I’m in a pop-punk mood or something, and this pops up on my play list, it is kind of a drag, you know?

I have the song Fiery Crash on my itunes more than once, which leads me to believe that I decided to keep that one around in at least a few of the delete sessions, and never realized it. My favorite song on the album, though, at least currently, is the song Scythian Empires. It’s a bit more upbeat than some of the other songs, I guess. I don’t know, really. It just has something hook-y about it that as of late has caught my attention.

Here, lets just cut to the chase:

"put your car on cruise and lay back 'cause this is summertime"

This past weekend, I went down the shore with my two best friends. I was excited about playing in the ocean and hanging around on the sand all day, and of course about eating terrible food on the boardwalk (fried pickles all the way, man) but the thing I was most excited about on this particular trip was making a “we are going to the beach” mix.

I thought long and hard about the songs that made the most sense for the hour trip, and came up with what I considered to be an awesome mix. Different trips have different feels, and knowing that we were heading for a fun day down the shore, but coupling that with the fact that it was very likely we’d sit in traffic long enough to double our drive time, I had to keep the whole thing fresh and make sure that the songs would carry us through the traffic jams as well as the open road.

The other consideration when creating this mix was the audience. The three of us have some different tastes in music, so I wanted to cover that as best as I could without subjecting myself to an hour and a half of Hannah Montana or show tunes.

So I put together this mix, and couldn’t wait to listen to it while cruising down to Ocean City.  But guess what? I left it in my car when I got into Nicole’s car, so we never even got to listen to it. I figured instead of wasting it, I’d share it here with you guys. It really is a good “driving around during the summer” disk.

if you are interested, the download can be found here. 

365 project, "don't need a helmet, got a hard, hard head/don't need a raincoat, i'm already wet"

176.

Artist: Pearl Jam
Album: Vitalogy

I have two distinct memories of this album.

As it was released in 1994, my first copy of this album was on cassette. (I later re-purchased it on vinyl because I could not resist the fun in listing to the song “spin the black circle” on a black, spinning circle. See? isn’t that fun to think about?) It didn’t take me very long at all to realize that my two favorite tracks on the cassette (“nothingman” and “better man”) were in the exact same place on opposite sides of the tape. This resulted in my playing one song, popping the tape out of the walkman, flipping it, and playing the other song. This happened more times than I care to remember, really, though life for me got a lot easier with the invention of the flip switch on the newer models of the walkman. This meant that I no longer had to physically switch the tape, I just had to flip a switch. awesomesauce.

The other story still makes me laugh, even all of these years later. I have always, since I started owning music, spent the first few weeks after buying a new album with said album stuck on repeat. In later years, that has meant making copies of the album so that I could have one in the car and one in my room, plus one on my ipod, but in 1994, this wasn’t the easiest task, so I just basically walked around with headphones on my ears nonstop. Actually, I used to take my walkman in the car with me whenever we would go anywhere, so that I didn’t have to listen to my dad’s music in the car. I still do this on the rare occasion that I am riding anywhere with my parents, though its far more likely that I will just drive myself so that I can sing along at the top of my lungs without disturbing anyone else’s conversation.

So if I was 14 when this album came out, that would have made the twins 10 years old. 14 and 10 seem to be the perfect taunting ages, and obviously we were no exception. We still all pick on each other, even hovering around 30 years of age. I guess its just a sibling thing.

Anyway, it has seemingly always been my mission in life to make my brother Tim listen to the same music that I listen to. I guess this was largely due to the fact that his musical taste is similar enough to mine that he could be converted, while the other two were farther out there, my sister listening to top 40 stuff and my baby brother listening to rap. I distinctly remember chasing Tim through the back yard one day trying to put my headphones on him in order to make him listen to the song “bugs” on this album. He didn’t know what the song was, but he didn’t want to listen, so he kept running from me until we got yelled at to get into the car. We climbed into the van, and I spent the entire trip to mom-mom and pop-pop’s trying to make him listen to the song. I never did succeed.

365 project, "and trusting gets harder now/i wish you were here beside me/my failures my fears and doubts have been haunting me/i'm just not who i thought i'd be"

175.

Artist: Stavesacre
Album: Speakeasy

I have been stuck at 175 for days. I have tried and failed on at least three different occasions to listen to an album and write an entry, but between lack of focus and lack of anything to say, I have struggled a bit. Hopefully this album will prove to be the one that gets me over this hurdle and back into the race.

I was given this album out of one of the radio station closets. I cant remember which station it was, but they had a bunch of stuff that they were looking to get rid of, and because I did the Christian radio show, I was given a box of stuff that was otherwise going into the garbage, and this album was in the box. Something about the cover or the song titles made me decide that I needed to give it a listen, and it was love at first sight, or sound, I guess, as far as I was concerned.

College wasn’t the easiest time I have ever had. I went through a lot of growing pains during that time, and spent some of it in a really bad headspace, particularly my junior year. I know that it didn’t help that I was in a situation where I was around a lot of other people that were going through similar circumstances, and boy does misery love company.

I distinctly remember being in my dorm room one day, having blown off all of my classes because I just couldn’t face anyone else, and listening to this album, and then hitting repeat, and going through that for a few hours. I don’t know what exactly it was about listening to this album, but doing so calmed me down and brought me back to a safe level of sanity. Obviously I cant say that it was the album alone, I’m sure there were other factors at play there, too, but from that point on, this album means peace and calm.

Although this was one of my favorite albums (actually, probably BECAUSE of that fact) I lost it somewhere along the way. I don’t know if it was left in a roommate’s stereo, if it disappeared inside of my old car Rhu, or if it got left behind at the radio station one day, never to be seen again. All I know is that it is gone, and that this made me very sad for a very long time. There have been nights since college that I have been feeling less than stellar, and needed to hear “gold and silver” to calm my worried soul, but was unable because the CD was missing.

Tonight, however, I was talking to my friend Tim (who happens to be the biggest Stavesacre fan I have ever met) and listening to music on spotify. I went through a whole chain of songs that lead me to the cure, and on their song list, I noticed “fascination street” (which Stavesacre covers). I thought to myself “well, spotify DOES have everything, let me just check, just in case” and because I’m writing this entry up tonight, I think it is evident that they did indeed have this album.

I am glad.