Year In Music 2011. Top 10 List.

Oh 2011.

Usually I wax poetic about the year in music but I'll try to keep my remarks short this year. Rough year in music. Glee still sucks. Somehow American Idol got more annoying with Steven Tyler and Jennifer Lopez. I moved to LA and fell in love with Amoeba Records. Loving all the tribute albums that were released this year and I'm starting to get in this mix tape trend.

So onto the list.

Honorable Mentions.

Frank Ocean, The War On Drugs, Fleet Foxes and AraabMuzik

10. Toro Y Moi Underneath the Pine





This album is simply beautiful with rich layers of keyboards and vocals. It is French Pop, krautrock, chill wave and 80's funk pop rolled into one. "New Beat" has a swagger not found in their debut album. "How I Know" is the best Stereolab song in years. (Sorry Strereolab. I love you). Sure, within the album their is the prerequisite nod to the Beach Boys but so does 38% of all hipster records.

9. Shabazz Palaces Black Up



Remember Digable Planets? Remember their smoked out jazz groove hip hop that everybody dismissed as a Tribe Called Quest rip off. Shabazz Palaces might not have a unique sound either but it's a great sound. Black Up might remind you of Madvillain or Cannibal Ox and that is nothing to scoff at. Ishmael Butler crafts precise lyrics focused on attacking corporate greed and the need for a revolution if not on the streets than within our minds.

8.  Smith Westerns Dye It Blonde





Dye It Blonde was my fun record of 2011. Insanely catchy, with big hooks and often bigger choruses. It's got a skip and a hop, kick the air kind of appeal. It's a bouncy T. Rex meets a less arrogant 90's britpop sound that is far too infectious. Bravo!

7. Washed Out Within and Without




So chill wave might be the big thing or the next big thing or last years big thing. It doesn't help that it can be hard for the casual listener to differentiate between chill wave and certain forms of dubstep. I'm looking at you James Blake. Washed Out's primary focus is to let the good time roll but it's an incredibly warm and sensual album. It's great for the beach, fabulous if you have a decent pair of headphones and can work in the club.

6. The Weeknd House of Balloons




The Weeknd released three mixtapes in 2011 and all are pretty darn good in their own right but the first, House of Balloons is clearly the best. It's hard to not get excited about this new generation of R&B that isn't a retread of neo-soul, laying down jazz/funk grooves or trying to completely rip off Michael Jackson. It doesn't break from all traditional R&B conventions but embraces electronic music and indie music to a different degree. Abel Tesfaye truly explores, in a wonderful and beautiful breaking way that can be too uncomfortable when given too much thought, the recklessly over drugged and oversexed world of the scene.

5. SBTRKT SBTRKT





Sure I'll (try to) say it and not sound like an idiot but this album is wonderfully polished and glitchy. Is it dub step? I don't know. WIth vocal contributions from Little Dragon, Jessie Ware and Sampha this album is far less annoying than most dub step you will find. It's bass heavy, It has an old garage, Chicago house, club music feel to it. While records from Mount Kimbie and James Blake came off (to me) as overrated, SBTRKT feels danceable, intimate and soulful.

4. Girls Father, Son, Holy Ghost





In 2009, Girls Album was my album of the year with it's simple 50's era guitar riffs and tips of the hat to the Beach Boys, Elvis Costello and Spiritualized. This album has all of those influences and then some. Throw in some Elliot Smith, early 90's guitar rock and smokey bar blues and soul. This is not Album but it is a great, great, great record that deals with heart ache, spiritual unrest and family conflict... mmm, fun, but it is.

3. Bon Iver Bon Iver





A female friend likes to remind me how much this album melts her heart. Despite the lame recommendation and the the fact the Bon Iver likes to buddy buddy with Kanye West often, this record is anything but lame and is impeccably graceful. It's simple enough that a gentle drum roll feels like rolling thunder. Their is an ambiance to this record unlike most in which the vocals or the music could simply stand alone and the album would be as lovely as the isolation it soaks in.  Bon Iver is an exploration of remorse and bewilderment. It is concrete and dream like all at once.

2. Fucked Up David Comes To Life 





It's sad to think that Fucked Up could totally sell out by changing their super appropriate name for something clever, commercial and dated. If they could replace the singer's vocal chords so he can sound more like Billy Joe Armstrong then they would be HUGE. Sure, they might be huge in the mainstream but they might suck too. Fucked Up try to live up to the early days of hardcore punk but with the exception for the vocal to me, the record sounds like a wonderfully layered classic rock album. There is little about this record that is not accessible if you have an open mind. These are songs of outrage, rebellion and sadness but you can fist pump and run up a mountain while enjoying. Kick ass record.

1. M83 Hurry Up, We're Dreaming





Okay this seems like an obvious choice. M83 crafted an album that has drawn comparisons to the Beatle's White Album with My Bloody Valentine's Loveless. It can be dancetastic "Midnight City" or silly, "Raconte - Moi Une Histoire." It also carries the usual M83 tricks of the trade like 80's, 80's and more 80's. Also epic, epic and more epic. It is as if Anthony Gonzalez wanted to make an 80's sound that by no means could have been produced in the 80's. I'm okay with it. Congratulations.

Why I'm Single - A Stuffed Animal Story (Not an Innuendo)

So a good friend of mine got me a Snoopy stuffed animal/toy/awesomeness from Build A Bear. This means a couple of things.

1. My friend Kim is thumbs up for getting me a really cute Snoopy stuffed animal/toy/awesomeness.
2. Build A Bear is a lot cooler than I thought for carrying Peanuts characters.
3. I am kind of lame for having stuffed animals at my age but super rad for admitting it. balance. I also have two stuffed manatees named Manfred and Manuel (Manny).

So I am currently single and I won't deny that Snoopy takes up half of the bed. Yeah, I said it. Snoopy resides on the left side of the bed on the northern territory. One morning I awoke to find him there, looking comfortable on one of my pillows. I, the selfish bastard was using three of the four pillows I own and for some reason was heavily contemplating taking the fourth pillow. Then I stopped and reflected; if i take the fourth pillow then Snoopy might not be comfortable and I would feel bad. He still resides on my fourth pillow and I plan to go to Ikea this week to purchase a fifth pillow.

thank you.

goodnight.




Please note that my social and romantic status has nothing to do with my fear of commitment, my inability to be satisfied with myself or the people I meet, my confused romantic idealism and my high standards in the pursuit of love. No, I'm not flawed.

Thank You R.E.M.

A couple of days ago R.E.M. announced that they were breaking up. That they were calling it a day as a band.

"A wise man once said--'the skill in attending a party is knowing when it's time to leave.' We built something extraordinary together. We did this thing. And now we're going to walk away from it... I hope our fans realize this wasn't an easy decision; but all things must end, and we wanted to do it right, to do it our way." Michael Stipe, from the band's website.

It was a bit of a sad day for me. Sure I was struggling with a cold on the day that the news broke which did not make the day easier. It was sad day for me to see one of my favorite bands say that they were no longer going to write, create, perform and distribute their talents, skills and message. Despite the sadness I understand. Thirty one years as a band does deserve a happy ending. Though I cannot make any proclamations on the state of the band at the current moment I can say that it is hard to deny their success and the scope of their reach over the past three decades.

I first got turned onto R.E.M. as a young teenager. Around the mid 90's when Automatic For The People was released. I didn't become a die hard fan until 1998 when they released their first album as a trio, Up. I was one of those teenage kids who found refuge in their brand of pop music.  I don't care if it has become cliche, something used in countless movie or television shows but "Everybody Hurts" is a very supporting and uplifting song. I have a lot of great memories and personal connections to friends, past girlfriends that won't talk to me and some past girlfriends that do, and family to R.E.M. music. One of my favorite rock moments was seeing the band perform on a surprisingly chilly night in southern Florida at the Langerado festival in March 2008.

As a teenagers, I hadn't heard much of the 80's R.E.M. other than some of the hits. There are people who believe that the band peaked with their very first album Murmur in 1982. I don't agree.  Since 1982, R.E.M. has released 15 albums not including greatest hits and live recordings. That is quite a workload, matched by few in rock history and matched by even fewer in American rock history.

While many other bands of their era faded out, broke up or lost relevance years and years ago, R.E.M. stayed afloat, took giant steps towards granduer, hit a couple of pitfalls, lost a founding band member to retirement on the sole condition the band would continue to make music without him, stumble and rise again. Other bands of the earlier 80's were defined by the 80's and that is not so with R.E.M.

The greatest achievement other than the millions and millions of record sales, the giant world tours, the awards and so on is that R.E.M. never stopped evolving as a band. It's hard to pin down a signature
R. E.M. sound. Sure there is an intricacy about how Mike Mills played bass and a unique subtlety to Peter Buck's guitar playing rarely found in American popular rock but it's hard to define their sound. Sure, it's hard to pin point the sound of their earlier records because they don't sound like country (but they do), they don't sound like 50's classic rock (but they do), they didn't sound like the current alternative rock of the era (probably a good thing), it wasn't old but it wasn't new, but it was refreshing and familiar all at the same time. It's hard to find a band in the 90's that changed and adapted their sound more than R.E.M., as the band refused to be defined by what was current or popular.  Probably the most signature thing about the band is Michael Stipe. As Eddie Vedder said about Michael Stipe during the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, "he can be direct, he can be completely abstract, he can hit an emotion with pin point accuracy or he can be completely oblique and it all resonates." But other than his poetics, the most defining and underrated thing about Stipe was his voice. Though it may not be the prettiest voice it is a definitive one. The saddest thing about shows like American Idol is that a voice like his would never succeed and that is a great shame about the music industry today. A tragedy the music industry seems perfectly fine with neglecting.

R.E.M. has had an influence on bands like Nirvana, Radiohead, Pavement, the Counting Crows, Sheryl Crow and countless others. They also had a giant influence on me.

thank you R.E.M.

My Top 5 R.E.M. Albums
1. Automatic for the People
2. Document
3. Reckoning
4. Up
5. Murmur

Top 10 R.EM. Songs
1. The One I Love
2. Nightswimming
3. Orange Crush
4. Bang and Blame
5. (Don't Go Back To) Rockville
6. Walk Unafraid
7. Losing My Religion
8. Finest Worksong
9. Find the River
10. Accelerate

To the NFL, the Players and the Fans

What do you think about the NFL lockout?

If you are fan you probably think it is pretty dumb. I do. I find it hard to understand the plight of players playing a game, a physical game nonetheless but play a game for large sums of money and still want more. I have a hard time sympathizing with owners who make millions to produce a football team and a game yet still want more. There are countless others who wish they could be in their shoes and in this day in age, it is hard to look at any of this as other than greed.

I understand that is a very simplistic view of the lockout but what about the fans? How does a lockout help the fans? How do the players demanding more and the owners demanding more help the fans? Does it make ticket prices cheaper? No, not likely. Does it make the cost of a hot dog and beer cheaper? No, not likely. Does it make foam fingers or fan jerseys cheaper? No, not likely either. In fact none of this lockout nonsense will make anything about the game cheaper or more accessible.

A friend suggested that the lockout allows teams to put a better product on the field. A better product on the field is better for the fans. Sounds good but I don't think that is a guarantee. If an organization has more money to spend on the team that doesn't mean that money will be spent. If an owner has more money to spend on free agents that doesn't mean the right players will be chosen to field a better team. It seems like a very lofty argument.

In the end, the owners and players were willing to gamble with something that is not entirely theirs to play with... the game of football. Who adheres to our demands? Oh, wait, do we, the fans have demands? Unfortunately not. Unfortunately the fans are not united or unionized. We cannot stop watching the games. We cannot stop checking news reports to see whether or not the lockout is over. We cannot stop checking tweets from players about this or that, whether or not the tweet has any relevance to the situation. We cannot stop, even for a second to hate football, the league or the players. We are just glad to have it all back. Thank goodness the NFL has come back! Hooray for Sundays, the occasional Thursdays and Saturdays too! Hooray for fantasy football and tail gating. Hooray!

But again. What about the fans? Should the our admiration be restored simply by rewarding us with a full season of football? As the saying goes; Baseball is our past time but Football is our passion. Why can't we be passionate about the mistreatment of the owners and players towards the fans? Why can't the fans simply say no. Why can't we band together and remind them, the owners and the players that neither side is anything without the fans? How do we do this? I have no idea but I have suggestions that are outside the realm of reality. My favorite idea is simply boycotting a preseason game. Yeah, why not? No one likes preseason anyway. If the NFL makes $200-$250 million per week off the preseason, why not boycott a week to remind the NFL and all associated that without the fans the league is nothing.

I think the owners, players and league has forgotten that notion but at the same rate the fans have forgotten to stand up for themselves. When we look back at all of this, it will be a crisis averted moment and no one will ask how anything about how the game was made better for the people who buy the tickets, the popcorn, ball caps, paint the caravans in team colors, cheer their teams for generations and generations, and love the game of football.

Thanks U2.

Imagine you want to go to a show. You spend almost 2 hours in traffic trying to get to the stadium. You park for more money than the usual baseball game that typically occurs in the stadium. You talk to scalpers who have nothing cheaper than a $150 ticket. The cheapest ticket sold for this concert was 1/3 that price. You meet scalper after scalper with tickets ranging from $150 - $400. You cannot afford that much money.

One guy who looked like Roger Federer plus an extra fifty pounds tries to sell you a ticket for $250. He doesn't believe that you cannot afford the ticket because after all, according to him, you, look like Tom Cruise. (Feel free to check out Me, Tom Cruise and My Mother's Vindication) Unfortunately being a third rate Tom Cruise doesn't pay you anything. Apparently looking like a fourth rate Roger Federer doesn't pay either.

Imagine, After a while, you meet a guy in a powder blue polo shirt looking for not just one ticket but four! You chat about previous shows you've seen and how crazy some of the scalpers are for the high prices they are trying to pass as legit. Every now and then, the two of you find yourself at the same gate with looks of desperation and bewilderment.

You walk around the park to kill some time, searching for hope and a little luck. You talk to the rock gods and ask for a little help and inspiration. It's been two hours of waiting and no luck. With hope fleeting you find yourself back at the main entrance at the ticket booth but no luck. Then a small crowd emerges at the main entrance. Packed like packing peanuts they are shoving to get inside. You see your powder blue polo wearing friend inside the stadium and it hits you... SOMEONE IS GIVING OUT GENERAL ADMISSION TICKETS TO THE SHOW!!!!!

You get in for free and get to stand 200 feet away from your favorite band.

That was last night. It was awesome. How did it happen? I don't know. Were the rock gods listening? Did they relay a message to Bono, the Edge, Adam and Larry in which they were told of my sadness and dismay thus commanding someone to get the stranded into the show? Probably not but it's fun to think about it that way. Most likely a radio station was giving away extra tickets or their was more room available in the general admission area than expected so someone suggested that we get another 50 or so people in the stadium so they can spend more money. I'll stick to the myth that is currently bouncing around in my head. The myth that makes the night seem a bit more magical and me a bit closer to the band.

The show was amazing. I can talk at lengths about how great the show was or how wonderful it was to see my favorite band play songs I've never heard them play before. It's always great to see a band for the 6th time and not get tired of them, the show or their music. I wish that number could be higher than 6 but U2 tickets rarely come cheap.

It was certainly a night I won't forget. Thanks rock gods. Thanks U2.


me at the end of the show trying to look cool.

A Trip to Hawaii. A Trip to Pearl Harbor

Hello

Recently I took a small family vacation to Hawaii. It is actually the third time I have been to Hawaii. During each of my visits I have made sure to spend some time at the historical monument, Pearl Harbor.

If you know American history, World War II history, or just good old World History then you know the importance of Pearl Harbor, the bombing on December 7, 1941 and the effect it had on history since.

Today Pearl Harbor is a national memorial. Over 4 million people visit the island of O'ahu yearly and it is hard not to imagine a large portion of those people visiting the historical site, national monument and burial ground.

When visiting, it is hard to imagine that in such a beautiful place could host such a horrific event. In the serene blue skies and the sun soaked Hawaii, in a violent act of war, over 2400 Americans lost their lives. You cannot forget the several hundred that were injured as well as the Japanese soldiers that lost their lives either.

As I visit Pearl Harbor I think or have a moment of thought in which I feel that the worst thing about Pearl Harbor wasn't the attack but that it is so far away from everything. The attack on Pearl Harbor is one of the most tragic events of the 20th century yet it occurred on island over 2300 miles away from the continental US and almost 4000 miles away from Japan. It is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean removed from much of the world. At the time of the attack, Hawaii was not even a state in the US. There is a physical distance, a certain disassociation because it was not a state and as time passes, the worst thing that could happen is that we forget what occurred and how the attack changed history.

The terrorist attack on the US on September 11 occurred not only in one of the biggest cities in the world but in modern travel, a short airplane ride away from most Americans. It also occurred on our morning news programs and in our high speed internet culture. Pearl Harbor isn't next door. You cannot drive to Hawaii and it is not a quick plane ride from anywhere. In 1941 newspapers were still the dominant news force and you could still see news reel footage before the feature at your local movie theater. The times have changed.

I guess what I am simply saying is that it is a shame more people don't and/or can't visit Pearl Harbor. It is a powerful reminder of the dangers, past and present in our world. During my last visit it is hard to not hope for an end to senseless violence and that one day peace will exist across the world.

Thank you to the brave men and women who fight honorably for their country and for freedom. May we all find peace one day.

A Death Deserved and A New Day

Osama Bin Ladin is dead.

A face of evil is dead. A face. Yet there are countless faces of evil that run rampant across our towns, cities, states, countries and globe.

I am every bit so happy that Bin Ladin is dead. I am proud and honored by the men and women who have sacrificed their lives to bring us to this moment. It is a bold and selfless act committed by soldiers and those caught in between that allowed for this moment to occur. I am very happy to know some soldiers who have shown this bravery and very proud to call them friends.

Yet I give pause. A moment to reflect. Is it possible to think that the killing of one man ends it all? Is it naive to think that by killing one we can live in peace? World War I was the war to end all wars and that storyline never came to pass. How many wars must be fought for all of us to finally learn? When does the hatred and greed that breeds war end?

I am happy that his death brings closure to so many but yet it does little to stop the hate that circles this world. I fear it will only create more hate.

Justice has been done. It has been the will of two Presidential administrations, intelligence networks, brave soldiers and the patience of American people that made this happen. Over three thousand American troops gave their lives to this cause with many more suffer physical and mental pains. We cannot forget the Afghan army soldiers and civilians who have also fought and lived and died through this tumultuous time. To forget them is to dishonor them.

I simply and naively hope that this is a step towards better times. Tolerance, acceptance, understanding, education and unity must be something more than cliched slogans and fantasies. There is a natural conflict, a philosophical argument... if you kill 1 to save the lives of many would you do it? Killing Osama Bin Laden has taken the lives of many and my only hope is that no more lives are lost because of this blind hatred, unwillingness to accept others, cruel notions of pride and maniacal terrorists ambitions.



Call me naive but I think we all want to live in a safer and better world.

May the powers that be bless us all.