Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Last month I bought a new computer and for the first time finally have a CD burner. The first CD I burned was a mix that I gave to J.G.'s brother John as a Christmas gift:

1. Fugazi - "Song #1"
2. Medications - "Safe And Sorry"
3. The Dismemberment Plan - "The Ice Of Boston"
4. Apollo Sunshine - "Ghost"
5. Sonic Youth - "Teen Age Riot"
6. Superchunk - "Detroit Has A Skyline"
7. Brendan Benson - "I'm Easy"
8. Private Eleanor - "Estimated Distance"
9. Elvis Costello & The Attractions - "No Action"
10. Spymob - "It Gets Me Going"
11. Bob Dylan - "Simple Twist Of Fate"
12. Jeff Buckley - "Grace"
13. Lake Trout - "Pill"
14. Ted Leo/Pharmacist - "You Always Hate The One You Love" (mp3)
15. The Geraldine Fibbers - "Lilybelle"
16. Bruce Springsteen - "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)"
17. The Posies - "Song #1"

The Ted Leo track was the first thing I ever heard by him, way back in 2000 when I reviewed a crappy indie comp for Pitchfork that it was on, and it slowly had me hooked by the time Tyranny of Distance came out. In a way it's still one of my favorite songs by him and I kinda wish he'd do a whole record like that, solo and lo-fi but still energetic and song-driven.

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10:53 PM

Saturday, July 16, 2005
Great Fluxblog selection the other day of one of my favorite Geraldine Fibbers tracks. Also, The Sands, who I mentioned a minute ago, have an mp3 up on Riff Raff, which says SFJ sings on it but I don't know what his voice sounds like and it sounds a lot like Chris Lee on some parts of it, maybe only harmonizing. I still don't get the whole Riff Raff/Riff Central thing, though. Are the interviews fake or just staged in a way that's supposed to be awkward and funny? Either way it reads like all those indie rock in-joke articles on The Onion.

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6:33 PM

Mixtape Tuesday

Tuesday, March 22, 2005
About 2-3 years ago I was hanging out a lot with a friend of mine named Chris in York, PA and playing drums in his band (I live a half hour from the MD/PA border so it's not a long drive). Chris strummed really slowly on an acoustic guitar and ran it through a bunch of effects and delay and I just played along and sometimes we had a keyboardist and/or a bassist and/or a violinist. Chris was a cool guy, I liked hanging out with him, although I wasn't really on the same wavelength with him musically at all. I don't think he was at all aware of how indifferent I was about some of his favorite bands (Flaming Lips, Modest Mouse, etc.). But in a way I'm more cool with people like him who are kind of naively enthusiastic about their generic indie taste than cynical or really trying to be cool. Anyway, I kind of regarded it as a fun challenge to play slow, pretty shoegazey music, even if that's not really the kind of thing I actually listen to. Actually, come to think of it, all 3 of the bands that I've played in for a significant amount of time and accomplished something with (i.e. play in front of an audience and/or record original material) have all been rock subgenres that I don't really listen to (my last band was a metal band and in high school I played in I guess you could call it a 'screamo' band, although again I know nothing about that stuff). That's kind of the gift and the curse of being a drummer, though; you can have a completely different background than everyone else in the band and it doesn't matter if you can keep a beat. But it also means you rarely get to play what you really want to play. This is pretty much the reason why I'm taking a break from playing drums in other people's bands to make a solo record so I can actually figure out what kind of band I really want to play in by making one up.

Anyway, where was I? The band in York...Nice folks, although everyone I knew up there seemed to be a morbid alcoholic, and to this day my general impression of York is that it's this really depressing little college town where everyone drinks too much, although for all I know that's just the people I hung out with there. But Chris was a nice dude, I haven't seen him in a while and keep meaning to hang out again. At one point while we were doing the band thing he asked me to make him a mixtape, and I kinda tried to go for some of that slow pretty guitar music he likes, but from some indie-ish bands that I like (plus the Built To Spill stuff because he was really into them). I think it came out pretty well.

side 1:
1. The Posies - "Coming Right Along"
2. Ted Leo - "Parallel Or Together?"
3. Shudder To Think - "Red House"
4. The Geraldine Fibbers - "Outside Of Town"
5. Ben Folds Five - "Twin Falls"
6. Built To Spill - "By The Way"
7. Cat Power - "Rockets"
8. Jeff Buckley - "Mojo Pin"
9. Death Cab For Cutie - "Styrofoam Plates"
10. Sonic Youth - "Rain On Tin"

side 2:
1. Lake Trout - "Holding"
2. The Dismemberment Plan - "The Face Of The Earth"
3. The Minutemen - "No Exchange"
4. The Minutemen - "History Lesson - Part II"
5. Ted Leo - "Biomusicology"
6. Ken Stringfellow - "Your Love Won't Be Denied"
7. The Geraldine Fibbers - "Butch"
8. The Posies - "Every Bitter Drop"
9. The Posies - "Fall Song"
10. Chris Lee - "Dixie's Door"
11. Two Dollar Guitar - "Stones Vs. Zep"

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1:43 PM