Jon Jeff.

I'll be seein' ya, Bean Blog.

2011-10-24T13:56:00.007-05:00

I'm moving my blog over to Wordpress. A full blown explanation is located on the new site, but the main reason I'm leaving Blogger is adaptability. I feel that Blogger is (surprisingly) getting left behind in terms of social media and Web 2.0 capabilities, and as a future information professional whose career is based on evolving and forward-thinking, Blogger just hasn't stayed as relevant as I might've hoped. So hop on over to my new site and give it a look-see. And as Bilbo said, "I regret to announce...this is The End [of Blogger]. I am going now [to Wordpress]. I bid you all a very fond farewell [until you click the link below]. Goodbye!"

Wordpress blog.

-Jon

Steve Jobs: 1955 - 2011

2011-10-05T19:18:00.004-05:00

The passing of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs came as quite a surprise to me. I knew he had been battling cancer for many years now, and his resignation as Apple's CEO got many people wondering if his health was significantly failing. I looked at his step down as just a way to slow his pace of life down, to get away from his job and focus on things that were more personal to him. So I was a little shocked when I saw the headline announcing his death.

And I'm surprisingly saddened by the news. I don't find myself mourning the death of strangers too often. The news of someone's loved one passing or of a soldier killed in battle or a young child dying in a tragic accident is always sad to hear, but I'm rarely personally affected. While I certainly wouldn't say I'm personally affected by the passing of Jobs, I do feel more sorrow than I would expect.

I think it's because of this man's legacy. Steve Jobs was an original. His work was groundbreaking and changed the shape of information and how we take it in and experience the world around us. He played a far bigger role in popular culture of the last thirty years than most people would think to attribute to him. A musician or actor can do their craft well and move people and affect change by their status or societal role. But Jobs did more than that. His creativity has changed the scope of an entire industry forever.

Jobs' work in personal and portable computing has essentially defined how I listen to and digest music. That blows my mind. When I became a legitimate musical consumer, it was early on in the decade. That's when Apple released the first iPod. And while I didn't have my own personal iPod until about five years later, the invention of iTunes and its subsequent ubiquity on computers created the essential music listening experience for me. When I think of the absolute best way to really listen to and take in, to digest and absorb and consume, to really engage in a new album, the perfect scenario for me is in my apartment after 9 pm, one lamp on the lowest notch, room temperature about 68°, window open, light breeze, rum and coke in hand, and my laptop hooked up to my Bose computer speakers playing music from iTunes. I love to see those play counts increase. Adults who grew up in the '70s mourn the loss of analog formats and are sad to see so many people not listening to turntables anymore; in fifteen or twenty years I'm going to be sad to see that my kids are listening to music on whatever the new hip thing is rather than on iTunes.

In essence, Jobs provided me with a fundamentally important part of my life experience. Music is so important to me, and I listen to it with his program and his devices. I owe a great deal to his legacy.

Aside from that, it's rare to see such a perfect mix of talent, creativity, business savvy, innovation, and personal and professional aesthetic in our culture today. It's sad to see such a creative mind leave the world. Thanks for everything, Steve. You gave my musical world a home.

-Jon

Martin Sexton.

2011-09-07T23:48:00.001-05:00

EDITED (9/07/11): Found this amazing video of Martin performing his song "Hallelujah" live. Please watch. His voice makes my heart feel things.

Last night we had the pleasure of seeing Martin Sexton play a solo show at the Iowa State Fair. I haven't seen a show as good as his in years.

I've known about Martin for a long time. I think my first exposure was probably about 10 years ago, when a cool older kid in youth group who liked weird music introduced Joel and I to the song "Candy." I've listened to him on and off since then, never really falling in love a particular record but enjoying a variety of his songs. This concert opened up a whole new side of his music that I'd never really caught before.

This guy has absolutely one of the most soulful sounds around. His stuff is very Americana without crossing over completely into just straight folk music. I don't want to call it "rock," but that seems most fitting. It's like heartland rock and roots rock and blues rock all jumbled with just the slightest pinch of jazz (he scats from time to time). A lot of songs are very anthemic, but not Coldplay anthemic, more like pre-Born To Run Springsteen anthemic. Very everyman music, like music you'd listen to driving in a dusty old pickup truck, driving towards the Rocky Mountains on a lonely two-lane highway as dusk sets in. It's stuff to sing along to.

He pulls this sound off perfectly in concert. It is incredible to see him perform; he transforms his guitar into the most rhythmic machine and pulls sounds out of it I can't describe. The first thing I noticed when he started to play was just how percussive he was able to make his guitar. He didn't need anybody along with him because he made his one instrument sound like seven instruments. And this was no convoluted guitar pedal manipulation, he just manages to coax an insane array of sounds, both rhythmic and melodic, out of his guitar, as he's singing some crazy lyrical rhythms. With just his voice and guitar, he creates these incredible musical atmospheres that pour over you. Really amazing stuff.

I've never heard a guy sing like this. He has almost a Jack Black-ish voice, but if Jack Black was about seven times better and had the most incredible falsetto ever. Seriously, I don't know how Martin does it, but his falsetto is just so solid. Not a hint of waver, he is as solid singing falsetto as he is singing with his gut. A fitting example would be the song "The Way I Am." In this song, he does this part that is very nearly a yodel, but he transcends into this stirring amalgam of breath and melody, hitting notes just shy of lederhosen. He's actually released two recorded versions of this song, one on his debut album In The Journey and another on his 1998 album The American. I enjoy the earlier version better because you can hear less production on it. He went into a booth and played his guitar and sang into a microphone and behind him you can hear the silence in the studio. He turns a great song into a chilling performance.

I would absolutely recommend going to see him if you get the chance. Something else I noticed in his show was how socially minded he seems to be. A lot of his lyrics have a slight spiritual undertone, and they seem to be very much pro-love. Only a few of his songs hit a bit of a political tone, but without getting overtly pro-left/right he hits more on this social theme of making the world a better place. Depending on what side you fall on, you can interpret it as either right or left. But rather than taking sides in a futile debate of "Which party is better?" his songs promote love and peace and the well-being of humanity. In a society where that worldview might be often touted but rarely acted out, it's refreshing and inspiring to hear these songs.

Martin is phenomenal. I hope you get a chance to see him, or buy a record, or somehow get his music in your head. And I'll leave you with this song, which was his encore at the show we saw. As much as I hate fan-made videos, this song is too good to pass up.

Enjoy.

-Jon

Friends don't let friends....*

2011-08-27T16:48:00.002-05:00

I've been dying for something to write about lately and all of a sudden I am buzzed and I thought, duh, why don't I write about why exactly I am buzzed?

Kind of a long story. Since I have a University of Iowa email address, I occasionally get emails from them telling me about research studies that are being conducted. So about a month ago, I got an email from the National Advanced Driving Simulator** calling for people within the ages of 21-35 who drink moderately to participate in a research study about drinking and driving. I thought to myself, "Self***, you are between the ages of 21 and 35 and you drink alcohol in a moderate fashion, you should sign up for this study and see if you get in."

Crazy thing. I emailed back, signed up, and got a call back. I answered all the health/drinking screening questions and lo**** and behold, I was an acceptable candidate for this study. I set up an appointment for an in-person screening and went, did the urine test, a driving sign recognition test, they took height, weight, resting heart rate, asked me some questions about my driving habits and my drinking habits, and then we spent some time on this driving simulator. This is really what the study is all about, and they wanted me to get used to the simulator.

The sim itself is pretty cool, it is made up of four screens, 3 high-def HP computer monitors and one crappier computer monitor with no logo on it. 3 of the screens are on top where a car windshield would be, and the 4th crappy one is where your dashboard instruments would be, and that is what is displayed on it. The 3 high-def screens display the actual simulation environment where the subject is driving. I must say, for a simulator, it's pretty realistic. Obviously the graphics are not real life, you are driving a simulator, but the way your brain interprets the 3 computer screens is crazy, it actually feels like you are driving. When cars pass you, you hear their motor get loud and then recede into the distance, thanks to effective mimicking of the Doppler Effect (nice .gif) by the simulation program. Plus they recreate the environment pretty well. The subject (for this study) drives along a rural country road at 55 MPH, and there are hills, nice cloud formations, the occasional Ford Taurus or USPS truck passes, and one or two lovely country farmhouses. Real great programming.

So the study consists of the subject coming in, driving the sim for 10 minutes to get used to it, then "dosing." The dosing consists of putting on a nose plug and drinking two tall cups of Hawaiian Punch in 10 minutes. The trick is that they may or may not have put a certain amount of Everclear***** into the cups. You're not supposed to know so as not to affect the results of the study. Ha. Give it three minutes and you know whether or not you've consumed their awful liquor. Plus the nose plug is horribly painful to wear, especially on a schnoz like this one.

After you've consumed the drinks, you sit for about an hour to and constantly take breathalyzer tests until you've reached a certain BAC. Once you hit their projected BAC (you aren't supposed to know how much you've taken in for a particular session), you get to drive the sim. And not just drive it, you are put through a divided attention test. The sim looks like the windshield of a real car, and that includes both rear view mirrors. Right next to each mirror there is a little box, and occasionally through your drive there appears an orange arrow. If the arrow is pointing left or right (corresponding to the side it's box is on), you are supposed to press a button on the steering wheel. It an arrow appears that is pointing up, you are supposed to press nothing, just keep driving as normal. Quick recap, you are driving along a rural country two-lane highway, cars occasionally pass, you are supposed to keep a steady pace of 55 MPH, as well as stay in your lane, and whenever an orange arrow appears that is pointing left or right you are supposed to hit your corresponding button. And I did mention that you are buzzed out of your brain correct?

And then after you drive the sim, you wait. And wait. And wait. Since you are picked up at your residence by one of the researchers in the study, for legal reasons, you can only leave when you are dropped off by one of the researchers as well. And they don't let you leave until your BAC is back down to a level of 0.03, which takes approximately 140 hours. Exaggeration, for my first dosing visit it took me about 3-4 hours to get my BAC down to an appropriate level to leave. So really what they're paying you for is the waiting time.

Did I mention this is a compensated study? If a person successfully completes all four dosing visits, along with the initial screening visit, they are paid 365 doll hairs. That's right, three hundred and fifty donuts******! So as Colleen and I are both participating in this study, we will end up with over $700. I have nothing else to say but cha-ching.

So to those who read my blog yet do not approve of drinking, let me implore you that this is in the interest of science and the results will be put to good use by NADS and the University of Iowa. And we get paid, which is a HUGE bonus. Colleen and I are actually funding our Celebratory 2nd Anniversary Trip to Chicago through doing this study together. So not only is this study good and safe for the study of drunk driving, it is essentially funding love and romance. Who can honestly say no to that?

-Jon

*This blog has been written and edited completely while under the influence of alcohol over the course of 3 weeks. Please keep this in mind while noticing any *'s and spelling/grammar errors.

**The first guy you see on the home page is Omar. He has the most intense facial hair I think I've ever seen. Looks like Fred Flintstone.

***I did not actually think these exact words. Referring to the phrase in bold, when people say this in real life, I feel more rage in my body than I do about most things.

****NOT "low"

*****Everclear, NOT Everclear. One time Colleen and I saw Art Alexakis perform a solo acoustic show at Coe College. It was surprisingly good. Not Martin Sexton good (shameless plug) but he was good.

******Here's the thing, this is a reference from the 1979 movie The Jerk starring Steve Martin. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a video of the scene from which this line comes so here is another funny scene. I love how he jumps when he exclaims about the arrival of the new phone book.

?uestlove.

2011-08-20T17:23:00.009-05:00

Another blog courtesy of "drinking" and "driving." Pitchfork recently interviewed ?uestlove and as always, it is an entertaining and incredibly informative read. The guy is an absolute music genius, one of the few of our generation whose music references I take very seriously and view as must-adds to my music collection. He's got this intense knowledge of music; today's various music scenes as well as a deep intimacy with soul music of the '60s and '70s. It blows me away.

This blog is inspired by two interviews with ?uest that I read today. One is from 2003, and one is from yesterday (8/19/11). The guy is this mad scientist/chameleon/jack-of-all-trades of music. I certainly would not want to restrict him to a hip hop box because he clearly knows the world outside of it, even though his band (The Roots) is a hip hop group. He makes music references like all he does all day long is listen to music. It's amazing. I want that job. I want the music research job, where you listen to records all day long, read liner notes all day long, figure out who played drums on what record while producing another record, how music connects, how musicians align, continually grow the big picture view of this giant web of music of the last 100 years. It's obvious by how he talks that ?uestlove has this kind of over-arching, encyclopedic knowledge of music.

But what I love the absolute most about ?uestlove is when he talks about D'Angelo. ?uestlove was integral in the creation and production of D's landmark album Voodoo and all I've ever wanted is for a musician to put out something as good as Voodoo in the last ten years. I think some have come close, possibly even matched it, but so, so few. This album is just out of control good. I am talking a kind of good that percolates. Good that sneaks up on you. Good that shows up after the fifteenth listen and gets better every single time. I still hear stuff on this album that I haven't caught before. I've never heard anything as layered as this.

But this isn't the time to actually write about Voodoo in a review sort of way.* What I want to highlight here is how important ?uestlove is to the current music scene. The first interview is eight years old now. ?uestlove and the interviewer chat about the then-current state of black music and how sociopolitical aspects of the day play into black music, but the good stuff comes when they start to chat about working with D'Angelo during the recording of Voodoo. It's such a cool concept; Voodoo was made on the principle that music is art and should be made with the utmost respect to those pioneers who have come before and the unknown visionaries that are to come and always with respect to the art itself. All of these incredibly musical people came together and made this mind-blowing album. It wasn't about money or gaining fans, it was about releasing a product, this work of art that could change how someone listened to music. "If creating music were a political party, then we were sort of being socialists." Why can't more artists think this way?

What I love is how he reinforces this ideal. He mentions going into the studio to record with John Mayer around the time of the interview (?uestlove played drums on "Clarity" off of the Heavier Things album in 2003). And ?uest actually says it was the most fun he'd had playing since recording Voodoo. He said he went in to record the one tune and they ended up jamming out like six new songs. That's incredible. It makes me so excited to know that these two musical brains have collaborated in the past and they are both still making music today, albeit not together. It is a giant relief to me, and it's one of those moments I have so infrequently nowadays when I think "Oh yeah, John Mayer used to be make amazing music and still has the potential to put out a completely life-altering record." Here's to hoping.

Also equally as interesting in this interview is how he profiles the breakdown of D'Angelo. How releasing "Untitled (How Does It Feel)" as a single off of Voodoo contributed to a very sexualized public persona that D'Angelo found hard to overcome. How the tour to support Voodoo quickly unwound because of all of this public hype. It's a sad story, but one that is pretty common in genius artistic circles, as ?uestlove puts it, "...they sabotage their shit."

Fast forward to August '11. In this interview with Pitchfork, ?uestlove speaks a lot more about The Roots and where they are, what it's like to be a house band of a late night host, etc. He does delve into the Soulquarian era a bit at the end, but overall this whole interview shows less his involvement with D'Angelo and more his ground-level view of rap over the last 20 years and how it has changed. This guy has been an integral part of hip-hop for over two decades now, and he has been in various circles as that time has gone by. This is a really interesting read for anyone who likes music, and especially anybody who likes hip hop.

I'm happy we still have ?uestlove around. I desperately hope he continues to coax D'Angelo out of semi-retirement, but at the very least, I hope he keeps collaborating. That is where I think he comes up with the greatest stuff. He has this uncanny ability to pull real music out of artists; he is our generation's Quincy Jones and D'Angelo is his Michael Jackson. I just hope they eventually reconnect and make their Bad.

-Jon

*Not sure I ever will, only because it's hard to write about something that good. All it seriously would be is me repeating over and over how awesome the whole freakin' album is. Each track, "Wow this one is amazing." Doesn't make for the best read. What I should do is accumulate every time I've mentioned it in passing in another post and you'd have basically my every thought about the insanity and genius that is that album.

Les' talk t'som peple.

2011-08-02T21:26:00.009-05:00

What I love about culture is that there is always something new to discover and enjoy. A few months ago, Norm MacDonald debuted his Comedy Central effort, Sports Show with Norm MacDonald, and unfortunately, it aired for nine superb episodes before some monkey at Comedy Central didn't see it making the same ratings as second season Tosh.0 episodes, and it got canceled to be replaced by what? Reruns of Tosh.0. Shame on you, Comedy Central.

That's a tangent though. This is about Norm, or rather, what Norm exposed us to. On one of his early episodes, he introduced his "nephew" Kyle and a remote segment he did at a UFC event. It was one of the funniest non-Conan remotes I'd ever seen. Thankfully, it must have gotten a great response, because Kyle was back a few episodes later to do another one.

Kyle's segments are basically him at a sporting event, interviewing athletes or spectators. His interview style is incredible though, it's as though the character he's playing is a person with high-functioning Asperger's syndrome. His speech patterns are so forced, he intentionally slurs his words and doesn't ask fully-formed questions or even speaks with fully-formed sentences, leaving the interviewee struggling to guess what Kyle is saying or asking them. He is completely socially inept, often hugging people unnecessarily or mumbling his words and then really enunciating when asked to repeat himself. He makes everyone feel awkward and uncomfortable during the exchanges, and wow is it funny stuff. Take a look.

His intro to the segment is one of the funniest things I've seen in my life. I found it so funny, in fact, that I went on YouTube to try to find the Kyle remotes once I found out Norm had been canceled. My only luck was that first UFC segment, but on a whim, I clicked on one of the suggested videos on the right sidebar, which I very rarely do. I don't trust YouTube's suggestions, but I'm glad I took the risk this time. What I actually found was a video that Tosh had shown as one of his viewer videos of the week. I remember liking it but not until I watched it again that I realized the main funny guy in it is Kyle! So I watched some more videos uploaded from the YouTube user GoodNeighborStuff.

Turns out Kyle is part of Good Neighbor, a comedy group out of L.A. that does random sketch comedy. Granted, lots of their stuff is weird, a prime example being the end of the following "Toast" video and all of the transitions from Kyle's interview segments. I get that they add to the low-budget, randomness aspect of the segments but I could do without them. But ultimately, Kyle is really the breakout star of this group. Even in the group's actual sketches he plays a watered down version of his bad interviewer character and it is hilarious. For example:

This whole sketch gets very kooky. Colleen pointed out that it veers mildly into the realm of performance art/slam poetry, which neither of us are crazy about. The best part is Kyle's struggle to toast to his friends. I'm not sure if I'm laughing more at the outdated phrases he uses like "mofo" and "pimp" or the tone he uses; it's so earnest in wanting to sound cool and aloof and it comes off completely opposite.

Here are the other videos I found of Kyle and his bad interviewer character. Really funny stuff. I hope he can find another place to showcase this character, because I seriously cannot get enough of it.

Favorite moment: 0:30

Favorite moment: 1:20

Favorite moment: 1:06

Favorite moment: 1:36. I can't stop laughing at the face face he makes at the end of that little blip.

-Jon

The Wire

2011-07-14T16:35:00.003-05:00

I just finished up what was, possibly, the best show I have ever watched. Gritty, real, suspenseful, and complex, HBO's The Wire has more to offer the average TV viewer than nearly anything on TV today.

The show primarily follows the Major Crimes Unit of the Baltimore Police Department as they try to crack several high-level cases. This is as simplistic of a description as you can possibly get. The show is incredibly layered, and in reality, it is about the overall social institution of the modern American city and the competing institutions within it. There are several aspects of this show that blew me away as I watched, mainly because it was very challenging. This is no network cookie-cutter TV show. As the viewer, you are thrown into a world you might know nothing about, and expected to keep up with the lingo, a huge array of characters, a deep web of plots that continually intersect and affect each other. I don't think I've ever been challenged so much by a television show, just simply to keep up with what's going on. With this in mind, it's certainly a tough show to get the hang of, but once that is accomplished, once the language is learned and names are remembered, you dive into the world headfirst and are shocked by what you see.

We begin with Jimmy McNulty, an alcoholic murder detective in the Baltimore Police Department, and the story follows the events that occur due to his desire to bring in real criminals. From there, you're introduced to police officers, police commanders, politicians, drug dealers, drug soldiers, drug addicts, longshoremen, stick-up boys (I had never heard the term stick-up boy until I watched The Wire), elementary school kids, journalists, prisoners. This barely starts the list of the cast. You meet so many characters, all of them different, fighting the particular system they are in, trying to change it rather than be changed by it. That's the difficult part about watching this show. Each season deals with a different urban institution: the police department/drug trade, the harbor union, the local political structure, the school system, and the media. Each system is made up of individuals who are figuring out how best to survive. To me, that is what is most hopeful/depressing about the show, that at the core, it is about survival, and how Americans can do nothing but do their best to survive with what they've been given. No one chooses to be born in the poor neighborhoods to parents who don't stick around or who can't provide. Often, the people that we see are people trying to get out of their particular situation, and by doing so they compromise ideals or blend into their system in order to find their way out. It rarely works. This show breaks down the stereotype pushed on us by the American Dream, that if you just push, work hard, keep your nose to the grindstone, you will eventually succeed and be happy. This show takes that concept of success and completely turns it on its head. There are characters who you think find success, but what have they given up to get there? How do they view that success once they find it? The natural instinct in every human being to survive is shown to be innate yet flawed, as so many of us don't have the means to survive, or the concept of survival is far different than we originally expect.

There is a realism in this show that I'd never seen before. Right out of the gate, you are thrown into this world. There is no set-up, no checklist of character names/professions/relationships that are marked off in the first two episodes to ground the viewer into the environment. From the very first episode, the viewer is treated like just another citizen on the streets of this Baltimore, as someone who has lived this life and understands the names and the looks and the language of these people. Which is definitely a difficult thing to wrap your mind around when you're a white, male Iowan. It was a challenge to keep up with this show. We constantly had to pause and discuss what we just saw, or rewind a scene to catch dialogue. But if you can catch up and learn to follow along, holy cow is it rewarding. I've never seen a show that felt so raw. There isn't sugarcoating in this show. It's violent, it's visceral, it's authentic. Nothing feels out of place, or made-for-TV. And that's why when things happen that you don't expect or didn't think could happen, it's jarring. It's easy to look at a city's low-income school system and hope that the teachers are all just trying their best to teach the kids, or that the politicians are actually attempting to make good on their campaign promises to bring reform. Is it really happening that way? It shocked me to see assumptions and conventions I had in my head about how society runs flipped and turned around, and the reason it was really shocking was because I believed the show. There isn't any doubt as you watch that this must be how things are done. Obviously, it's still a TV show, so real life will prove itself to be somewhat different. But it's a testament to the show how incredibly real you feel it all is. Things don't seem faked in The Wire.

One huge element of the show that really adds to that feeling of authenticity is the music. Aside from five instances in the entire run of the program (a song played over season ending montages), all music in the show is diegetic, or environmental music. If you hear a song in a scene, it's because the song is coming from a character's boombox, or from the speakers of a passing car on the street, or the house music from a strip club. There is no atmospheric music, no musical score in the traditional sense. And even more so, the music supervisors of the show added that much more credibility by choosing songs that would legitimately be listened to by citizens of the city. There is a lot of rap in the show's soundtrack, and very East Coast, Washington D.C. area rap. Not lots from New York. The program showcases popular songs from Baltimore artists, things that the people of that city would be listening to. I didn't notice it for a long time either, which is really interesting seeing how much music can add or subtract from the video medium. It just adds an entirely new layer of realism to the show that I love. And the theme song, holy cow it is an awesome one. The song is Way Down In The Hole, originally by Tom Waits, and it is performed by a different artist for each season of the show*. It is a powerful song, and one that wouldn't necessarily be thought of as the best choice for this show's theme song. But that's what makes this show great, there are parallels and painted pictures and metaphors all over the place. As the viewer, you're encouraged to piece things together and make your own opinions about how things are done, how the characters interact and live their lives, and catch on to a vague sense of what the show is trying to say. There is no easy solution or wrap-up at the end of each episode. There are symbols that just barely point to what the show might be trying to communicate; it's up to the viewer to really bridge those gaps.

On the whole, I'd classify this show as a bit of a downer. There are moments where hope shines through, but this is a show where characters (main and peripheral, there is no invincibility spell even for some of the show's most important characters) meet untimely ends, characters fail, efforts to do good or to succeed or to survive absolutely fall flat. This is a show with very few heroes, yet at the same time you find yourself rooting for a wide variety of the characters at different times. The Wire takes the normal procedural cop show format and turns it inside out. In those shows, you have good guys and bad guys, and the good guys are the cops who have to solve a crime perpetrated by one of the bad guy criminals. And at the end of the hour they've solved it and somebody is in jail. Nothing like that in this show. You know how as you grow up, you begin to see things less in terms of black and white and more in terms of a gigantic spectrum of colors and circumstances and finding real truth is difficult? In The Wire's Baltimore, characters seem to be born with that knowledge. And having that knowledge doesn't make life any easier. These are all people who are just trying to find personal success in what they do, and it is very nearly impossible to do so, because in life, there are almost always things that keep people down. It doesn't matter who you are, where you're born, or what you try to do, there are forces beyond your control against which you constantly have to battle. McNulty wants to solve crimes, he wants to be "good police", but what can you do when the mayor puts pressure on the police chief to juke crime stats so that it looks like there is less crime than there really is? The police are told to whatever is necessary to make the stats look good rather than solve real crime. Go for the low-totem, easy-to-bag criminals and make good numbers rather than bring down the kingpins who are responsible for the real, society-affecting crimes. Everybody is looking for a way out of their own personal hell, their own undesirable situation, and the lines begin to blur on who is really succeeding. It's powerful stuff you see in this show.

And that's why I'm labeling it the best show I've ever seen. It tells the best story, and in the best way. This is a story that really matters to people, because whether they know it (or believe it), these cultural issues affect them. It shows how important survival is, but really tests you to figure out what is acceptable to give up in order to survive? We clearly cannot do it on our own power. I think this is a very alien concept to the modern American mind; we can't do it ourselves, we require some outside power to come to our aid. We grow up being told that we can do it, we can achieve all our dreams, as long as we just work hard and apply ourselves. And I think the message that we are incapable of that on our own is a tough concept, but ultimately, a real truth in life and important to remember. It's a struggle to work through too, because the next question is inevitably: where do we find our help? None of these characters ever seem to hit upon it the right way, but it's incredibly entertaining and challenging to see them struggle with the question. Also, there is lots and lots and lots of sex, violence, and language throughout this show. Like I said, no sugarcoating. Be forewarned.

-Jon

* The version by the Blind Boys of Alabama (Season 1) is far and away my favorite.

The Voice Recap: SPOILER ALERT

2011-06-30T12:09:00.005-05:00

Disclaimer: All thoughts, statements and proclamations contained within are the sole opinion of the writer. And they are opinions only. And I disagree with lots of people and most news articles I've read about the show so be forewarned... I despise Dia.

The Voice ended it's first season run last night and I certainly have some conflicting emotions. Ultimately, the show was a success for me because despite its many flaws, I kept coming back for each new episode because I was invested. I must say, I am very pleased with the winner. Javier obviously had the best technical voice of the whole crew, and while it might not have been the most unique voice, nobody deserved the title more than him. But let me back up a bit.

I've been unsure during the whole run of the show whether or not it seems like an effective structure. The whole coach votes and audience votes seemed confusing and ineffective, and especially since the voting system changed every week. It was hard to keep up with how things were actually getting tallied. And since each coach became emotionally invested in their particular team, they seemed to get less and less helpful as the show went on and offered less criticism. By the end, not a single coach said anything negative about any performance, other than "Didn't like the setting." Far too complimentary for a group of amateurish singers who all faced serious missteps in any given performance. I stopped caring what the coaches were going to say because they all basically said the same thing, "You have a fantastic voice, you're such a star, such great presence, I'm a fan of you!" Watered-down mumbo-jumbo if you ask me.

Which begs the question, how important is a contestant's actual vocal ability in this show? How soon does it become more about presence and spectacle than talent? Biggest case of this is with Team Cee Lo's final two members, Vicci vs. Nakia. Nakia's final performance was Whataya Want From Me (that's actually how the song title is spelled, and it makes me sick.) Nakia did a fine job with the tune, but forget it as soon as Vicci comes out and does a (vocally) average rendition of Dog Days Are Over, but who had an entire fleet of Japanese Taiko drummers to back up her own fiery drumming. Who sang better? Nakia. Who performed better? Vicci. Vicci wins. Of course you're going to win if you're the last performer and you have a grand show-stopping tune to cap off the night. So is it fair? Who the heck knows.

This also leads me to believe that the coaches stopped doing anything worthwhile except for choosing songs to sing. With one glaring exception (DIA), the finalists all had great voices. And they all faltered on certain songs because of poor song choice. But did the coaches EVER give them any real vocal critique past the semifinals? Of course not. When really, what could've been said were things like this:

"Javier, the original song you sang actually seemed a bit off for you. You didn't seem comfortable, you sounded out of breath the whole time, and your voice didn't ever seem to find its power through the song. Nerves maybe?"

"Vicci, rather than turning every song into a contest with yourself to see how much air you can push out of your mouth by hitting as high of a note as you can, try scaling back a little and showing some variety in your voice."

"Beverly, stop falling back on hitting that one wavery high note you hit in every single song when you're not sure where to go with a vocal run."

"Dia, you're awful in general. Go back to the anime cartoon you came from."

The last one is a little harsh, but you get the idea. Nobody was flawless all the way through, but the show just got so freakin' feel-good by the end.

In terms of the four finalists, I wasn't totally on board with all of them. My ideal final four would've been Xenia, Bev/Frenchie (didn't care, liked them both), Nakia, and Javier. There was no way Xenia was going to make it to the final four, and I'm surprised she even made it as far as she did. The girl had the voice most noticeably different than everyone else on the show, but gosh did she lack some stage presence. Her performance of Price Tag was clearly uncomfortable to watch, even if her voice was fun to hear. Nakia just had more flair for me than Vicci. Vicci has a decent voice, but I wasn't buying into her whole war-dance/primal scream persona. Who could seriously listen to an entire album of her taxing her lungs that way? It'd be exhausting. And Casey Weston's weak Dolly Parton impression was absolutely no match for Javier's range and technical skill.

And then there's Dia. Where do I begin? From the very beginning, she has played this show like a game. Granted, it is a reality show vocal contest game, but the fact that she is playing it so obviously makes me hate her. She is without a doubt the most disingenuous person on the show. Looking back, she started out harmless, singing some breezy song with her innocuous voice that got Cee Lo and Blake to turn their chairs. Whatever, not a big deal. She came across as this super shy girl with an interesting voice, but oh if only she could break out of her shell! said everyone. Fast forward to the battle round, still a bit stronger, but boy Dia you really need to break out of your shell if you're going to get further! And everytime she's on camera up to this point, she's blinking her little mousey eyelashes at everyone and giving off this "Are these big celebrities telling little ol' me that I have a good voice? It couldn't be!" vibe. Then comes her performance of an acousticey Heartless, which sorry, has already been done by another reality show singing competition. Go get a more original cover, Dia. But oh my gosh! Dia finally came out of her shell! Nobody saw that one coming! Where did this little on-stage firecracker come from?! And then in the coaches remarks, she's back to blinking at them like she didn't know what just happened and she's just so thankful for all their kind words, blah blah blah. Awful. This girl knew exactly what she was doing the entire show, and she apparently fooled Blake and all of voting America with her snake-like behaviors. So from then on, she just kept the strong performances coming, and not strong vocally, just strong in that everybody thinks she's doing so well by singing confidently when really she's had that in her the whole time. She played it so well, she started with a problem that was very easy to fix, no confidence/no stage presence, and when she did fix it, America freaked out and started buying her crappy Kanye cover on iTunes. Annoyed me to no end. How could you have released FOUR albums without any confidence in your vocal ability? Does not add up. If you look at her and you look at Xenia, obviously Xenia was being real because she actually did look uncomfortable and was not good on stage. She's sixteen! She wasn't faking anything. Dia was faking all the way.

And here's the worst part: her voice is not that great. Sure, she can carry a melody just fine, but her voice sounded basically like this to me. I can't really explain it much better than blaaaah-blaaaah, blaaah-blaaaah. Like she pushed her tongue out all the time and the sounds came from the back of her throat. Just awful to listen to.

Ironically, the only person that seemed to ever point out that she was playing the game well and putting up a front was the show's fakest asset, coach Christina. There were actually two or three times where Christina's comments were less than flattering and came just short of calling her out on her game-playing and Dia's little cat-like demeanor changed from this:

to this:

Kudos, Christina.

Here's the most frustrating part about Dia for me too, she nailed her duet with Blake. They chose the best possible song, it sounded great, Blake's country voice fit just perfectly into that Tom Petty song. If she had made her Voice debut with that song and not played her manipulative game, I would've liked her far more. I'm so glad she didn't win.

So overall, did the show succeed? Did it find The Voice? I'm saying definitely. Javier has a great voice, and deserves the accolades he's receiving. Should it be up to America to choose The Voice? Definitely not, as based on the finalists original song performance, Javier just barely beat out Dia. Neither of their originals were that great. Javier had a good song, he just did not deliver a good performance. Based strictly on original performance, you know who I thought was going to win? Beverly all the way. Yeah her original song was a little cheesy bland vanilla ("lovesick...lovesick...I'm sick of love!"), but gosh did she deliver a great performance, and not only spectacle and stage presence, but she nailed her vocal part. She had the best original performance without a doubt. Yet Javier still wins. Did America choose right? Yes, but I wouldn't trust them to do it again.

One last thing before I wrap; the show needs to ease off the product placement. Yes I know the finale needs to be exactly that, a finale, with grandiosity and flourish and big names, but I don't consider Pitbull and Ne-Yo to be big names. Stevie Nicks was a good draw with some legit credibility (even if she has the most nasal voice ever), but the Train singer? Even worse, the OneRepublic singer? American Idol alum Katherine McPhee? Do we need a Social Media Correspondent? Or a "chance" run in with Gym Class Heroes in the next door studio which allows Adam to perform their upcoming hit single on which he is featured? All this stuff seemed SO contrived and I'd love to see less of it and more actually performing by the contestants (and the coaches for that matter). And now a few favorites:

Favorite Voice: Probably Xenia. While she wasn't technically the best, nor certainly not the best on stage, she had a super unique tone for a 16 year old and was really fun to listen to.

Favorite Performance by a Contestant or Coach: Team Cee Lo's cover of Everyday People by Sly & The Family Stone. Cee Lo's afro wig was unforgettable.

Top 3 Season 1 Moments:

3. What song does Christina choose to duet with her protege? HER OWN SONG. This was the icing on the cake for how inflated her ego could actually get.

2. Brad Paisley asking Blake a question mid-song and Blake responding in kind by singing while sitting down then getting up and joining Brad on stage. So cheesy.

1. "If The Voice should be delayed for anyone, it should be...for the President. LET'S, GET, TOIT!" - Carson Daly, possibly the blandest and cheesiest human being alive. Can't wait for what gems he's got in store for us during Season 2.

-Jon

P.S. Was Cee Lo and Vicci's Pat Benetar cover inspired by Hook? Cee Lo made a great Rufio.

Reception Dances

2011-06-12T00:31:00.005-05:00

What makes a good wedding reception dance? Not the reception itself, but specifically the dance. I have attended two weddings this season, and only have one more before the summer is over, but it's been something that I've thought about at every wedding I've ever been to (that had a dance) and I want to try and dissect what exactly makes or breaks a reception dance.

I see a few very fundamental factors that need to be considered: audience, atmosphere, and the music itself. Let's take a look at each.

1. Audience

This is where you need to start because these are the people who are going to be doing the actual dancing. If you are not putting out material that pleases them, you'll lose them and subsequently, you'll lose the dance. So you've got to read the room a little, see what age brackets are really represented, and even more importantly, what age brackets will get up and do the most dancing. This is a tough one because while weddings can skew younger or older, you're guaranteed to have at least somewhat of a variety of people to satisfy. And you won't be able to satisfy them all. Tough stuff. Also, you've got to read what sort of music your crowd will groove on. Is it a country crowd? Is it an old swing crowd? A very religious crowd? All this needs to be taken into account when choosing songs. More on that soon.

2. Atmosphere

What kind of wedding is it? Religious, younger, older, traditional, alcohol, modern, big, small, dance floor, or a mix of some or all? All of these types and some extra ones will certainly affect how the dance goes. As I think about it, it's kind of hard to actually qualify how exactly each of these components fits into making a great dance. In the most general sense, I would say the best fit for a killer dance is going to be young, mildly-liberally religious, big, and I'm going out on a limb for this one, no alcohol. Call me crazy, but all too often alcohol takes away from the good-natured vibe of a great dance. It makes non-drinkers uncomfortable, and there is nothing worse (for me) than dancing around/with people who have drunk themselves into the sleepy-eyed phase. I've only once seen alcohol at a wedding done with class and taste and it contributed to the overall party feeling of the dance.

Another important aspect that falls under this category is the DJ. Is it a professional wedding DJ or a friend of the bride or groom? For a couple that wants their dance to go a specific way, this is a very important thing to take into account. There is no right answer here, and there are many pros and cons to each. Quick list:

Pro DJ Pros:

1. Equipment - Any pro DJ worth their cost will provide an excellent sound system that should not give you any problems during the dance. No feedback, killer song transitions, etc.

2. Pacing - Almost every pro DJ I've ever seen keeps the whole reception moving so much better than friend DJs. Not to say it can't be done by friend DJs, but for the most part, pro DJs seem to have a better sense of how to keep things from getting awkward. Announcing the bridal party, announcing what's coming next (cake cutting, first dances, garter/bouquet toss, etc.)

3. Song selection - Any pro DJ worth their cost will have an extensive song collection that will include an array of genres, years, artists, etc. Any guest can make a request and it will almost certainly be available to play (unless it's on the bride/groom's don't-play list).

4. Groovin' - This relates to the pacing point but more specifically to the dance itself. Almost unequivocally, a pro DJ will have more experience than a friend DJ in terms of what songs will keep people interested and on the floor. Most friend DJs (with few exceptions) don't know what to play next to keep the floor busy and that's a detriment to the flow of the dance.

Pro DJ Cons:

1. Price - ALWAYS more expensive than friend DJs. No exception.

2. Familiarity - Pro DJs should be just that: professional. They will almost certainly not know the marrying couple personally, and for that reason, won't have an intimate knowledge of the reception and the potential guests that will be there. They have to go completely off the must-play/don't-play lists the couple makes beforehand and then read the room once they arrive.

Friend DJ Pros:

1. Familiarity - A repeating point from before, but this is the biggest draw that I can see to having a friend do the DJing. Friends know what kind of music you like, you can implore them to play exactly what you want when you want.

2. Price - Way cheaper than a pro DJ. Obviously.

Friend DJ Cons:

1. Skill - All too often with friend DJs, there are far too many uncomfortable song transitions, and it's almost always due to the fact that the friend is working off either the bride or groom's laptop connected to the PA system, probably playing songs off a playlist made in advance by one of the two that is entitled "Wedding playlist." Friend DJs are usually doing it for the first (and possibly only) time and this lends itself to a fair amount of poor song selections and bad transitions. Doesn't make people want to dance.

2. Equipment - Most friend DJs are first-timers and won't be bringing more than a laptop/iPod to plug into the PA system and going off a pre-made playlist. This won't always be a big deal but if there is a technical issue, they probably won't know how to handle it.

3. Pacing - More having to do with the reception overall than the dance specifically, friend DJs don't often do announcing in a way that makes things flow the best. Wedding guests prefer to know what's going on rather than guessing what's happening when.

4. Groovin' - While I have seen exceptions, most friend DJs just don't know what songs are good dance songs and what are not. It's a very complex art to play songs that will get into people's heads and make them get up and dance and overcome the fear of being judged by other people not dancing, and most friend DJs are first-timers and haven't had practice playing different songs to get people dancing.

So it's obvious from my list that I would go for a pro DJ over a friend DJ. Duh, we had a pro DJ at our wedding and while he wasn't without mistakes, I was way happier with his performance than I would've been with a friend DJ. Not to say I've never seen a friend DJ kill it, but it's such a rare occurrence.

3. Music

Probably the most important aspect of the whole event, because barring a few crazy exceptions, almost any audience can be moved to dance if the right music is played. Great wedding tunes are hard to pin down, but there are some tunes that I've seen fail more than once, and I doubt could ever really work. This is in no way a comprehensive list of songs about which I can opine, but these are the only ones coming to mind this second.

- Party In The U.S.A.

One of those weird songs that is an absolutely great tune, one of the best hooks around when it came out, but I don't personally think it makes the best dance tune. It will certainly get people dancing, which I guess is the ultimate goal of any song played at a dance, but rather than having a killer beat that facilitates fun dancing, it's just a little too slow and ends up leaving the people on the dance floor basically moving slowly and singing the song to each other in order to not feel uncomfortable. So it's not my favorite. But it is a good song to play to attract people to the floor.

- Mambo No. 5

I love this song. Good rhythm, fun melody, it's a great dance tune. And as it's a one-hit wonder, everybody knows it and it will both draw people to the floor and keep them there.

- She Bangs

This is a weird song, because I love it, and I just wish more people enjoyed dancing to it as much as I do. I think it's just barely too fast for its own good.

- Cupid Shuffle/Cha Cha Slide

I've got both love and hate for these tunes. They are reception dance staples, and for that reason lots of people hate them. But they hold so much merit because of how easy they are to pick up and dance along with. People who would never dance will get up and dance because they are being told exactly what to do and can copy everybody else. There is no sense of "everybody's watching me" that often keeps more reserved people off the floor. And if you are a good dancer (Meredith Bell), man these ones are fun to play around with.

- I Gotta Feeling

Another reception dance staple. Not in love with this one, and I think it might have even been played twice at our own reception dance (bad form DJ Tony). But again, the merit is there because it pulls people onto the floor. And it's got a fun kind of message for a reception dance. I'm mainly just annoyed everybody gets excited to dance to a song featuring vocals by Fergie.

- Don't Stop Believin'

I despise this song, and I have always wondered why it would ever show up on a DJ's playlist. I get that everybody knows it and can sing along, but it is, in no imaginable way, a good dance song, and is not even a good closer. People just have to sing it to each other and can hardly move around the floor in an awkward way with this one. So bad.

- Hey Ya!

Another solid hit that's not often thought of to play. Who doesn't love to shake it, sh-shake it, shake it, sh-shake it, shake it, sh-shake it, shake it, shake it, sh-shake it, shake it like a Polaroid picture?

Who the heck knows how to make the dance great? A DJ could play a string of just the best songs you've ever heard, and not get a single butt off their seat and onto the floor. On the other hand, the songs could all suck, and with the right crowd, they will fight through it and enjoy themselves on the floor (see: us at the last wedding we were at). Whatever the case, reception dances are so much fun and a great way to celebrate happy nuptials. I'd only ask for She Bangs to be played more often.

-Jon

Old clothes.

2011-05-17T10:31:00.002-05:00

A few weeks ago I raided my dresser and got rid of lots of old stuff that didn't fit. It's a mildly depressing thing that some of my absolute favorite t-shirts didn't fit anymore, (1) because it means I'm gaining more mass than I burn off and (2) because it means I had to part with some of the most character-defining articles of clothing I've ever worn. Before I dropped everything off at Goodwill, I took a few pictures of the most important shirts. Here they are.

Iowa Soccer Baseball Tee:

Not that significant of a shirt other than it was one of the first where I could tell Colleen really loved how I looked in it. I had never really noticed that before with any of my clothes, and I remember walking into youth group wearing this shirt (the first baseball tee I'd ever worn where the arms are a different color than the torso, makes your shoulders look huge) and seeing Colleen raise her eyebrows like "Hmm!" It was a special thing. On the other hand, one time I got called out on wearing this shirt and I started to talk about how I liked the Iowa men's soccer team. It's only club. So that was embarrassing.

Rhea Central Super Jacket's Tee:

This one was a bummer to dump. I found this scrunched tight in a rack of crappy old t-shirts at a thrift store in Dayton, Tennessee. It was a local thrift store, not a Goodwill or Salvation Army, so the opportunity to find cool vintage clothes is upped quite a bit. This is the only really great thing I found that day, and I didn't immediately think it was great but thought I'd get it since I hadn't found anything else. It fit perfectly and was super comfortable, enough to wear to run or to play frisbee in or go to youth group or hang out or whatever. Versatility can make a pretty good piece of clothing absolutely essential in a wardrobe. The shirt was plain white, with a weird dragonfly/insect/man on it with flitting wings and a pretty phallic stinger right between his legs. What I found funny is that he's saying "Feel the sting!" with gritted teeth and he's finger wagging at you. Framing the insect-man were the words Rhea Central Super Jackets. Pretty simple, but I ended up wearing that shirt possibly more than any other in my wardrobe over the course of the next four to five years. Yikes. It was getting pretty gross by the end. But there are loads of cool pictures from high school with me in this shirt. More on why that's important to me later.

The Benes #41 Cardinals Jersey Tee:

This was definitely the hardest to even think about parting with, so I didn't. This one is the only one I kept, tucked away in an obscure corner of my dresser. I'm not sure exactly why I got so attached to this shirt. I purchased it years and years ago at a thrift store with Luke; I think it was the Salvation Army in Marion. This was the first jersey t-shirt I'd ever found and I immediately fell in love with it. I was probably 15 years old, and the silliness and irony of a t-shirt made to look like a jersey suited the style I was looking for perfectly. I didn't know who Benes was, as I was a Cardinals fan in name only and not in

practice, but my oh my was I the biggest name-only Cardinal fan you'd ever meet. Around this same time I purchased my first Cardinals ball cap which was permanently attached to my head for the next few years. So just the mere fact that I had found a cheap Cardinals shirt endeared it to me. That it was a jersey tee made it a must-have. I wore this shirt probably not as much as the Rhea County tee, but this one was worn during some of the most indelible memories of my teenage years. Two of my absolutely favorite pictures of Colleen and me feature the Cardinals tee.

I love these pictures. These, and the Cardinals shirt, bring me back to the super fun first years of our relationship, and at an even more basic level, they bring me back to the fun years of being young. As uncomfortable, awkward, depressing, zitty, drama-filled, "whatever other miserable adjective you can think of" as teenage years are for everyone, they are so much fun. Those are the years you really begin to figure out who you are, what your identity is. You start learning how you relate to the opposite sex, what sorts of things you find funny, what things you really enjoy doing, what kinds of music you like to listen to. I really enjoyed my teenage years, and occasionally being reminded of them is fun.

The Cardinals shirt was with me through some of the most important days of those years, and I just didn't want to get rid of that one. So I kept it. It's odd, maybe this is just me trying to wax philisophical about getting a little older, our culture, or whatever, but I feel like my generation (and even less so the ones coming after us) have fewer and fewer relics or mementos from their childhood. I think we all have toys we played with or books we read, but it's so rare to actually still have the items that define our realities as young kids. Every time Colleen and I visit my family in Kansas City, I love looking through the bookshelf down in the basement that has the huge collection of completely random books that Mom and Dad had collected over the years. For some reason, those flimsy paperback books about Sesame Street characters still resonate with me and bring to me this overwhelming nostalgia. And I feel like the older I get, the less I have keepsakes like that. Fifty years from now, no grandparent is going to show their Facebook account to their grandkid and say "When I was your age this is what we spent our time on, look how many friends I've amassed over the years!" How lame is that? It's an old-fashioned ideal, but I want tangible items I can give my kids to touch and feel and smell and read and play with and wear.

So while it certainly doesn't fit anymore though, I am saving the Cardinals shirt for my kids. Who knows whether or not we'll raise Cardinals fans or if they will like dumb clothes like jersey shirts, but I would like it to be kept in a basement closet of some kind to be discovered by my child. It managed to catch the eye of a pretty young blonde girl a long time ago, who says it couldn't happen again?

-Jon

The Voice

2011-05-10T21:52:00.007-05:00

NBC finally pulled it off. They got Colleen and me hooked on a reality music contest show. We first saw the ads for The Voice about a month and a half before the premiere, and usually when a show is overhyped I immediately write it off. A reality music contest judged/coached by Christina Aguilera, the girl-voiced Maroon 5 guy and a country singer, hosted by Carson Daly? Thankfully Carson managed to pull in the artist who released one of the Top Three Best Albums last year and who has the soul to match his wardrobe, Cee Lo Green. I'd seen Cee Lo do some featured spots on some rap albums prior to the Gnarls Barkley album "St. Elsewhere", but his name actually solidified in my brain after he and Danger Mouse released the single "Crazy" in 2006. I definitely wouldn't ever have expected him to do a reality music contest show so I figured this one was worth tuning in for.

Oh so right. The first two weeks were blind auditions, where the four coaches get to pick 8 singers for their team based only on their vocal performance. After the blind auditions, the coaches then have pairs of singers off their teams perform duets and then they decide which singer they keep on the team and which one gets booted off the show. After each team is whittled down to four people, then show will go live for I guess audience voting rounds? I'm not sure past that but for now, the show is riveting reality TV.

What is the draw here? I'm confused as to why I like the show but I think it has to do with a combination of good singers and good coaches. With American Idol, you have to sit through the first few shows of crappy auditions to finally get to the actual contestants. With The Voice, I'm not sure where they got the contestants, but most have had some kind of experience with singing, whether it's on broadway, releasing actual studio albums, back-up singers for famous singers, etc.

And the coaches! Cee Lo is obviously awesome, and it's so great to see him talk about music and singers and goof off with the other coaches. His outfits are outrageous. With Adam, I used to be a huge Maroon 5 fan (they've got pretty redundant to me the last few years but whatever), and he's got some pop music credibility so I'm fine with him. Christina has singer cred all over the music industry, so while I'm not a huge fan of her, I appreciate her being a coach as she's got some pretty impressive, albeit often gaudy, pipes. Then there is Blake Shelton. Started off not liking this guy because he's country, what is he going to have to offer? He won us over on the first episode. Not only is he a pretty funny dude, he might be the one coach who has the most legitimate pieces of advice for the contestants. So while I will never listen to his music, I definitely think he adds a lot to the show. And that's why, you don't judge*.

After the blind audition weeks, the coaches pick two singers off their individual teams and have them practice up (with the help of a celebrity coach aid) on the same song which they then perform as a duet, then the coach picks one to stay and one to go. I wasn't sure this change in the show's format was going to work but holy cow it definitely does. It immediately draws out some fierce competition having two singers singing the same song at the same time. I will say though, in terms of the coaches actually coaching their singers before going out into the battle round seems a little pointless. The coaches don't actually seem to offer much technical advice and their celebrity friends offer even less. The aids were Reba McEntire, Adam Blackstone, Sia, and Monica. I don't care much about any of them other than Adam Blackstone (producer on many great records, he's playing the sickest bass with ?uest and James Poyser right here), and he just wasn't featured much. They could be done with the celebrity cameos and it wouldn't hurt the show at all.

So the battle round went off like crazy, super fun to watch and listen and root for a certain team and singers within teams. The only thing I'm torn about is the finality of the coaches decisions. This was demonstrated better by Blake than anyone during the first battle round. He had two guys singing against each other, the country guy (Patrick) and the soulful guy (Tyler). Blake ended up going with (SPOILER ALERT) country boy Patrick, which was severely disappointing. As good of a voice as Patrick had, Tyler had pipes that blew his competitor out of the water. He was so much more entertaining to listen to, he had real range and emotion in his voice versus the one-note stylings of Patrick. The better singer was robbed. And there's no second chance, no comeback or anything. We're just left with a singer who is less entertaining than another one. Disappointing.

So the show rocks, and if you haven't seen it, it's still early enough on to catch up with it and keep watching. Good reality competition TV, which I think is hard to find.

-Jon

*-J. Walter Weatherman

A-A-R-D-V-A-R-K!

2011-03-10T21:18:00.006-06:00

Cool new thing you should check out. Ever had a question but didn't know how to get an answer? Sure, you can hop online and see if you can turn your question into a search for which Google will return some results, but Google is an engine, a program, not a human. For example, Colleen and I are new to North Liberty and it's time for our six month teeth cleaning. Since we don't know anybody in North Liberty that we can ask for recommendations, we pop on the web to see what we can find. But how do you use Google for this kind of query? You can't exactly search "friendly dentist, north liberty" and hope to get any sort of legitimate return that you can use. So much for the most popular search engine in the world.

You should check out Aardvark. This is the new generation of searching. In the last five years we've seen social media and networking blow up like nothing anyone expected. It only makes sense that search and discovery would find a way to incorporate the social aspect into itself. So here's the deal with Aardvark. There's a text box in which you type your question in natural human language, anything like "Which is the friendliest dentist office in North Liberty?" or "What's the most reliable brand of tires?" or "What's the best bbq sauce that pairs well with Sam Adams beer?" Aardvark takes your query and finds another human user that can provide an answer. So rather than just getting a list of links that might or might not be what you're looking for, you get a response in human language from another human who has a better idea of what you're looking for.

It works like this, and this might be what turns some new users off initially. You do have to sign up to even ask your question. But it's nothing more than an email and a zip code. It also asks you what subjects about which you'd consider yourself able to answer questions. So you sign up, and Aardvark then takes your query and sends it on to its ever-growing set of users, hopefully one of which will answer your question. Depending on the type of question and the key words that are found within the query, your query is sent to users who have specified that they have some knowledge about the key word subjects. Real life example, I recently queried "What is the most trustworthy auto repair shop in North Liberty, IA that can repair a broken exhaust pipe?" The main key words picked out of this query were car maintenance and North Liberty and the question is sent to other users who have specified that they have some knowledge about car repair, and even more optimal, users who are located close to North Liberty. My query was received by Josiah M. in Iowa City, IA and he replied back through Aardvark "I can highly recommend All Season's Auto". Boom. Now I've got at least an idea of where to start looking for auto repair from someone locally.

This is such an awesome idea, even though there are some obvious cons. The pros are pretty great though. Firstly, the design and user interface is just perfect. The main page has great colors and hardly anything except just the one text box to enter in the query. It's very Google-esque in its design without immediately recalling Google. The other huge pro is that returns are going to be far more user specific than you'd get from Google. Having your query sent to other human users who can understand your natural language question lets them answer it in a way that you, another human user, will be able to understand. It's awesome.

Plus, by becoming a user of Aardvark, you also become an answerer. When you sign up, you pick a list of subjects in which you've got a little expertise, and if another user asks a question that involves one of your subjects, you might get an email or instant message (or whatever specific type of communication you've listed with the site) from Aardvark that says something like, "Hi (your name), want to try answering this question? (then it lists the user's question)" This is a great system because it allows the answerer many options. The answerer can go ahead and answer the question with an easy reply email, they can simply choose to ignore it and the query will get sent on to another user, they can flag the question as inappropriate, or they can refer the query to another user they have in their network that might be able to answer it. Example: I get a question from a user about the best sushi around North Liberty. Unfortunately, I don't like sushi so I know I can't give a good answer. Luckily, I have a friend in my Aardvark network that does live in the area and loves sushi, so I refer the question on to them to see if they can answer it. Also, as you get answers to your questions, you can add the users whose responses you like the best to your network to continue to query those users most often. That's what makes this interface so great; it is so user-centric and really boosts the social networking aspect of search and discovery.

More about the communication that this interface allows between users. With a site like Google, you query some terms and get some returns. That's the end of it. You can tweak your query a bit to get different returns but it's still querying a generic machine search engine. With Aardvark, the whole search/return system is like a giant conversation between users. I query something, another human user responds, and if I want, I can respond back to continue on a conversation between us. This allows a huge amount communication, conversation, and concept searching among users.

Here is a great example of this. I submitted a query, "What are some good blues albums that are stylistically and sonically like the album 'Bluesbreakers With Eric Clapton' by John Mayall?" I got four responses:

1. Vera S. (27, female, from Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine) said: "you can check out 'Similar Artists' section at http://www.last.fm/music/John%2BMayall%2B%2526%2BThe%2BBluesbreakers"

2. Jim B. (59, male, from Bowling Green, KY) said: "Hi, Try Stevie Ray Vaughan, The Paul Butterfield Blues Band, Derek and the Dominoes, Otis Rush, Cream, Johnny Winter, and one of my all time favorites Albert King. Jim. Also, try Peter Green Jim"

3. Tolgahan K. (22, male, from Rockville, MD) said: "John Mayall has plenty of albums with great guitarists, Clapton is just one of them. "A Hard Road" with Peter Green, and "Blues Breakers" with Walter Trout are very similar to the one with Clapton, just pure electric blues. Also check out Clapton's "From The Cradle", one of the best blues albums that is modern, yet pays respects to the traditional stuff."

4. Michael E. (male, Chickawauga, GA) said: "Try Jonny Lang, Buddy Guy, Jimmie Vaughan, Taj Mahal, Little Ed and the Imperials, Steve Vai and the rattlers, Robert Cray, Dr. John. Just to name a few Mayhal was a St. Louis style Blues. Try a little Chicago style with South Side Johnny(has a brass section) Hope this helps."

This is a pretty good sampling of responses I'd hope to receive from most queries. The first one is pretty dumb; if I had wanted to use Google for this query that's what I would've found. Not helpful. But the other three are great; people who have actually listened to the album and know what other albums sound like it suggest those and artists with similar styles to John Mayall. The last guy even got specific with different genres of blues style. Awesome. And I can respond back to any of these that I want to, basically starting an online dialogue.

Clearly this engine is not without its set of disadvantages. The fact that the entire system is based upon communication with other human beings rather than just pulling up a list of links means that timing is an issue. For every query I've tried so far, responses have taken upwards of an hour to come back. Not optimal if you're looking for the best Mexican in town and you're hungry right now. But for less urgent queries, this is such a unique way to find answers to questions.

Another big con for me is that Aardvark was recently acquired by Google. I was a little disappointed to hear this, even though it will mean the system getting more publicity and more users, thereby improving the quality of its output. Google is such a giant monopolistic company, and while the products that they offer are absolutely great, it's always nice to see an upstart with an idea that actually has something to offer that Google doesn't. But this isn't a dealbreaker for me, and I'll still continue to use it when I need.

Here's the link again: give it a try. It's not a perfect replacement for Google; for most queries, you'll probably want to stick to Google. But for those times when you need an opinion from someone, have some time to spare before you get an answer, and want more returns than the top ten corporate sponsors from Google, try Aardvark. And then let me know what you think. It's a pretty cool thing.

-Jon

Open Letter to John Mayer

2011-02-13T20:16:00.007-06:00

Dear John,

I watched the 2011 Grammy's last night. What has happened to our music culture?

I am glad I kept watching through the first quarter of the show, because it got far better as it went on. But it started out rough because Lady Gaga performed. And more than anything I was confused. I have been for about a year now actually. I've listened to her stuff; I enjoy dancing to it about once and then it fizzles out for me. How has she become such a powerful force in the industry? It's her persona. It goes so far beyond her music. She is all spectacle; rather than just releasing killer dance music and not dressing it up, she promotes her persona through everything she does. It has never seemed to be just about music with her. Releasing a new album isn't her end product, and unlike musicians in the past who have used their music to promote some sort of social ideal outside of themselves (I don't need to give you a music lesson here, but Sam Cooke's A Change Is Gonna Come is the first one that comes to mind), Lady Gaga seems to use her music as one facet of her persona for the end result of promoting herself, but it's dressed up in the garb of "Be whoever you want to be! For me that means shoulder spikes, fake blood, and dinosaur eggs." I've seen her performances on different televised events and rather than seeming inspirational, it all comes back to her. What would a performance of hers be like without looking like an extra off of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine? What would be left of Lady Gaga if you took away all the pomp?

Same with Justin Bieber, but in a different way. Everything I see this kid do seems contrived. His documentary just came out this weekend. Wait, his documentary? He's sixteen years old. How does this kid deserve to have a documentary? He has no story yet! Someone found a cute young kid on YouTube, realized how well he could be marketed in the right hands, and the gamble paid off. How many sixteen year olds have as much musical talent as Bieber has? Lots of them. And most of them go on to music schools or perform in orchestras or sing in church choirs. I didn't see any real musicality from him last night, all I saw was some slick dance moves and a baby playing left-handed guitar chords. Not enough, Justin.

What about spectacle done right? Look to Cee Lo's performance with Gwyneth. I loved it, mainly because they both have the chops to back up how visually grandiose their performance was. They both sounded amazing and it was so much fun to watch. Yeah it was over the top, there was a fake rocket ship on stage and Cee Lo was dressed like a giant rainbow-colored chicken. I laughed each time the back up puppets shushed to keep the performance TV friendly. That's the kind of spectacle I want to see in our culture. Glam done right, not shock value for shock value's sake.

I need more of good stuff, like Dylan's performance with Mumford & Sons and the Avett Brothers. Sure, Bob Dylan is old and his voice isn't what it used to be, but he has earned his place on that stage. He gets to go up there and sing whatever he wants and however he wants to. It was great to see an old legend perform with new talent; they looked like they were having a blast.

So here's why this is penned to you, John. I wish the real talent in our culture produced more. I know real music takes longer to write and produce and output but it's disheartening to see what a powerful market force Justin Bieber is and how he is dominating everything when all I wish I had was a new Coldplay album or a new album from you. I want less choreography and more playing. I want to see collaboration and creativity in a musical sense, not who can come up with the craziest dress. I loved seeing Raphael Saadiq dancing around on stage with Mick Jagger. I want to see which musicians D'Angelo has back him on his new album and figure out as much about them as I can. I want more albums like The Roots/John Legend's Wake Up! from this last year. I can't wait for Adele's album to come out next week. I know it's selfish of me as a consumer to demand so much output from the talent, but what is a consumer without a producer?

And ultimately, the Grammy's weren't as discouraging as I thought they would be. I cheered when Esperanza Spalding won Best New Artist over her tough competition and when Arcade Fire beat out the other huge smash records for Album of the Year. And please don't stop making music. Your performance with Norah and Keith was my favorite of the night. Rhythmic, sexy, succinct, understated. Such an awesome tribute. And it was nice to know you don't have the lyrics to Dolly's entire discography memorized.

-Jon

Musical Connections

2011-01-24T14:03:00.007-06:00

Uncovered a new gem in my music collection last night. As is my custom with the new year, I am currently listening through my entire collection in a systematic fashion. I have two different playlists I choose from: all albums with 0 play count (just ones to which I haven't listened), and albums with a "last played" date from the year 2010. I was getting ready to read in one of my class books so I went to my jazz section to choose something light. I stumbled upon Cannonball Adderly's classic Somethin' Else. I've listened to this one quite a bit, it's a really great album featuring Miles Davis. I've had this album in my library for probably five or six years, at least since 2005. And originally, I only got this album because the cover art for John Mayer Trio's album Try! was essentially an exact copy of the cover art for Something' Else. Cool connection there. Thanks John.

Anyway, I play the first track, entitled Autumn Leaves. Again, nothing special, I've listened to this tune quite a few times and have enjoyed it. But this time, I hear the melody kick in right around the 1:30 mark. Normally with jazz tunes, my ear isn't good enough to actually know what the melody line is unless I've heard the tune in some other context (i.e. John Coltrane's cover of My Favorite Things, as that's a famous song outside of Coltrane's recording, I know when he plays the melody line). This was the case with this song. The previous times I'd heard it I wouldn't have been able to pick out the melody line. This time, however, I heard something familiar around the 1:30 mark that pricked my ear. I couldn't figure out where I'd heard it before. I checked the song title (I hadn't really thought about what I was listening to other than the album title) and realized this was a song I fell in love with a few months ago after I got Eric Clapton's latest album, Clapton.

It was a pretty good album; I'd given it a few listens but didn't go nuts over it. Except for the closing track, Autumn Leaves. I didn't know when I first heard it that it was a cover, I just thought it was a beautiful, heart-breaking, gorgeously-played tune written by Clapton. It didn't seem like an off-base assumption; many of his songs feature chords that fit so well together iced with breathtaking guitar lines. I listened to this song over and over when I first got the album, I could not get over how simple and how beautiful the chords sounded. And his solo at the end just blew me away. More than anything the tone of his guitar sounds so rich.

So I loved the song. I had no idea the song was 65 years old. It was originally a french tune written by Joseph Kosma entitled "Les Feuilles Mortes" ("The Dead Leaves") and English lyrics were written by Johnny Mercer, a stalwart contributor to the Great American Songbook. It has been recorded by a variety of different artists, and is a fairly common jazz standard due to its simple yet creatively beautiful chord progression.

This was mainly an exciting find to me because of the potential that still lies in my music library. I've been listening to it, adding to it, trimming it, editing it for years now, and still, I just now found a new musical connection that blew me away between two completely unrelated albums. What other awesome links are waiting for me to find?

Here's what I found:

-Jon

"I don't make home videos, I make home films."

2010-12-25T01:14:00.010-06:00

I've been wanting to write about this for three months. Colleen and I finally gave our Christmas present to her family; the (nearly) comprehensive collection of their VHS home videos on DVD.

First, the how. Here's what you need:

Computer (I used my Mac)

VCR

Adapter with audio/video cable ports and USB ports (and included software for capturing video) (Elgato Video Capture Device for Mac users)

DVD burner

Blank DVDs

Video editing software (iMovie for Mac users)

DVD burning software (iDVD for Mac users)

Photoshop software

VHS tapes

In a nutshell, here's what we did. Recorded all the VHS tapes using the VCR and adapter software, loaded the raw video files into iMovie, edited all unwanted portions out, placed chapter markers on the files, grabbed still frames to use for menu screens and the DVD covers, transferred edited video files to iDVD, picked the specific menu template, formatted the menu and chapter selection screens so they would fit a normal television screen, loaded stills into the menus, double-double-checked everything and then burned the DVD. Time-intensive parts were capturing the raw footage from the tapes onto the computer and burning the actual DVDs because capturing the video required just starting a tape and letting it play the whole way through in real time and burning the DVDs took like 6 hours a piece. Thankfully they were time-intensive and not labor-intensive; I could get one started and go do homework or something. The labor-intensive part was the editing. The most frustrating part was making sure everything worked. The worst portion of this entire project was the afternoon I got a video down to the final edit and tried to burn it. For some reason, the software kept saying I wasn't putting in a recordable DVD in the drive when clearly I was putting in a recordable DVD. I couldn't find an answer anywhere, online, I called Best Buy, Staples, everybody's gave me the same answer, "Huh. Weird, it should be working." Thanks a lot everybody. So I ended up having Staples send in the drive and get me a replacement drive, which worked perfectly. But for that afternoon...yikes. I was not a pleasant person to be around. But for the most part, the editing went fairly smooth, the biggest hiccup was trying to find a version of iMovie that had a chapter marker functionality. For some insane reason, Apple removed that tool from the previous version of iMovie when they upgraded to the version I have on my Mac (iMovie '09). Thankfully, Colleen's Mac is still kicking four years in and that had the older version of iMovie so we used that. The only problem is that hers is wicked slow so the process was slowed down a bit, but we still managed to get it done.

The covers were easier; Colleen and I went to the UIowa Main Library and used Photoshop to create the covers. I found a free cover template online that I loaded into Photoshop and changed around to feature our chapter titles, DVD titles, and stills from each video. We also made the backgrounds of each a different pastel color so put together the set of eight DVDs looks awesome. We just had them printed at Copyworks after their graphic designers resized the file so it would print to fit an actual DVD case.

Now a bit of the why: this is very possibly the biggest gift I've ever given or been involved in. Not physically big but more in the emotional attachment Colleen and I have to it. I've given some gifts in the past to Colleen that I was excited about, but this one was different, because it was really a joint effort between the two of us. It connected me to her and her family in a way that I hadn't really expected. We spent many hours recording the raw video, figuring out chronological orders, adding clips together, editing out the many unwatchable, damaged parts of the VHS tape or random stuff like the 1988 Iowa/Iowa State basketball game Jim had preserved. In the past, when the girls would get out the old VHS tapes and watch them, I would usually watch and enjoy them to a certain extent, not as much as the girls but still laughing at seeing how they were when they were young. But working on this project connected me to this videos more deeply because the end result is ultimately ours. I wouldn't label us "creative" types, and I don't mean in the sense of being a unique personality (we are both pretty odd), but more in the sense of doing actual creating. We don't paint, never had many drawing skills, never been much for creative writing, and we both are very musical but we don't exactly create it. However, this project was an act of creation for the two of us. We took raw materials in an untouched form and turned them into something beautiful and creative. And finishing it up to give away is an emotional thing because it's like your baby.

What made this gift especially meaningful for me to give away is that it's exactly what I want to do with my career. At the core, librarianship is about getting information into the hands of people who want it and can't find it. It's about preservation of information and extending access to anyone who needs it. Colleen and I had a lot of raw information and a specific user set and we've connected the two beautifully. It was a very rewarding experience and I hope to do it again soon. The best part about it is that next time I do this type of a project, it will be so much more efficient because I've worked out 75% of the kinks and can visualize each piece of the process so much better than before. That being said, anybody who's interested in hiring me, I'll do a better job than Walgreens and for an insanely lower price. Just let me know. Seriously, I am itching to start another project.

But after all is said and done, can you really put a price on this?

That's what our kids will look like.

-Jon

Facelift.

2010-12-08T13:55:00.004-06:00

Thought it was an appropriate background. I was close to choosing something else; it's almost sensory overload. I also figured out how to make the entire blog space wider so it will stop cutting off the right side of YouTube videos I embed. Niiice.

In approximately 4 hours, Semester 1 is done. Today Colleen said, "If you think of it like a pie, you're 1/4th done with the pie!" What a delicious metaphor. I would say my graduate school experience so far has been like French Silk.

Speaking of blogs, this is a super sweet one that was featured on Neatorama. These two guys decided to pick a random place in the world and stay there for three months, their thinking being that three months is a good amount of time to get to know the location, not as well as the locals but certainly better than the average tourists. The main reason it caught my eye was that their first 91 days was spent in Oviedo, Spain. Going through all their blog posts was very reminiscent for me, as I recognized tons of the places they visited. It was cool to see somebody else living in the place where I lived, taking pictures of foreign places that became so commonplace to me and my classmates. So it won't be nearly as great if you haven't been, but it's certainly worth a peruse. The duo are currently in Savannah, Georgia, taking pictures, chattin' up the locals, and experiencing Georgia as it's meant to be experienced. I guess. Who knows, I've never been to Georgia. Here's their blog:

Savannah & Oviedo

So that's cool. I also wanted to put up the final project I worked on for my computing class. I worked with a guy named Jon on it; surprising we didn't come up with some clever play on having the same name. Our project was to design a site or system that was interactive for web users and met some information need. Clearly, we went above and beyond that. Check it out: Live in Iowa City. Jon came up with the idea and I wrote a killer proposal and then we put the site together. That's not completely accurate. Jon constructed the majority of the site since he had access to an external server and had some experience in PHP coding and I contributed a few pretty simple HTML coding pages, Javascript, etc. Right now, the site has a lot of things to update and fix, but the functionality of most everything is there. Be sure to click the events to see the sweet drop down animation. After we presented our project to the class, our professor said this was like halfway through his next class' coursework as he didn't really get into the details of PHP in this class. So that's great. Even better, Jon and I are both the class in the spring so I smell a continuation project happening. Look out for this site to blow up soon. I'm predicting the Facebook of the next decade.

I hope we get snow soon.

-Jon

Rap Doc.

2010-12-01T15:46:00.003-06:00

So...this looks awesome.

The audio is off, and it's directed by actor Michael Rappaport, which is unexpected. But other than that, this whole documentary looks super interesting. Tribe is almost certainly my favorite hip hop "group" versus single rap artist, and getting to hear thoughts and interviews by the group members themselves along with other prominent members of the hip hop community is bound to be very interesting. Sign me up for anything where ?uestlove talks about music. I'll keep my radar up for this thing on DVD.

-Jon

The Ghost Inside

2010-11-08T14:21:00.005-06:00

This is awesome. Continuing the tradition of DJ Danger Mouse flipping conventional music media on its head, here is the latest video from Broken Bells, the pairing of Danger Mouse and Shins lead singer James Mercer.

The song is The Ghost Inside off of their self-titled debut album. This is the second video released for this song, and this one is far cooler in terms of being really off-the-wall zany. The whole thing is basically the entire video of Private Eyes by Hall & Oates, with Mercer's mouth interposed over Daryl Hall's. So you're watching what was a terrible video from 1981 co-opted to make a cool video from 2010. Very reminiscent of Danger Mouse's video mash-up from The Grey Album. The result is a little creepy looking, but man is it unique. This probably breaks several copyright laws of some kind. Danger Mouse rules.

-Jon

Lonely Avenue

2010-10-27T16:54:00.006-05:00

Music review time. I recently acquired the new collaboration between Ben Folds and Nick Hornby, an album called Lonely Avenue. It has a different feel than previous BF releases, but that's a given as it's a collab. Still absolutely worth a listen.

I'm assuming most readers know who Ben Folds is. He has been releasing records for the last fifteen years, some under the moniker Ben Folds Five and later on a few solo albums. He has gained a niche among college-aged and young adults with his heinously catchy melodies and heartbreaking lyrics. And he is a whirlwind live performer. If you ever have the chance to see him, TAKE IT. It will be one hell of a show.

Nick Hornby is an artist not generally corollated with writing music. He has written about music his entire career as a writer, but this is his first instance of actually collaborating on a musical album. He is most well known for writing several popular novels, including High Fidelity, About A Boy, and Juliet, Naked, as well as the screenplay for the 2009 movie An Education, which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. So the dude's got chops. I am not in love with every single thing he's ever done, but on the other hand some of his work is the best written material I've ever read. This guy knows how to pierce your heart through writing about normal people with real problems. He can capture dialogue so incredibly well and make you feel heartache you've never had.

So how do these two collaborate on an album of music? Hornby writes words, Folds writes lyrics. Sounds weird but potentially awesome. And in my opinion, it turns out to be mostly awesome. The interesting part is that it clearly sounds like a Ben Folds album, but the disconnect happens as he starts to sing. The lyrics are not Ben Folds lyrics, and you can tell. It feels more like a Nick Hornby book than a Ben Folds album. And on some songs that's amazing, some it doesn't completely work. I don't think Hornby has his complete songwriting chops down yet, like on songs like Your Dogs and Picture Window. The songs have great feelings communicated but they don't feel natural to me. And that's just me. The majority of the album works great. And I think the biggest reason it's great is because they chose the perfect pairing of artists. Nobody could've pulled this album off but Ben Folds. His music is the ideal vehicle for Horby's writing. Hornby writes in such a familiar way, with stories about real people, and that's how Ben Folds has always written his music. It doesn't feel totally like a Ben Folds album, but it's as close as you can get. And the off-kilter feeling you get isn't bad, it's just not totally Ben Folds.

One of the best examples is the song Password. It uses a really unique songwriting device, spelling of words, and at first listen it seems a little cheesy, but after a few listens and the songs sinks in, holy cow it just rips you apart. You stop listening to the spelling of the words and you feel the pain in the narrator. That is unique and weird songwriting. But it's awesome. The song changes gradually the more you listen to it.

Final verdict? Great album. Not the best Ben Folds album ever but that's because it's not purebred Ben Folds. What it is is a great listen for fans of either artist.

-Jon

P.S. The album comes with killer liner notes. A quick blurb written by Hornby about each song, and then four different short stories written by him as well. Super great. Cool photos too.

Hip, Hip, Hooray!

2010-10-18T13:22:00.005-05:00

Yesterday, Colleen ran 26.2 miles. It was incredible. She participated in the IMT Des Moines Marathon with 1,634 other runners. She was running with the Iowans for Africa group from Orchard Hill Church in Cedar Falls. The group was running to raise support for a elementary school being built in Mozambique, in the region they sponsor. There were about 60 or 70 runners from Orchard Hill, all wearing bright yellow shirts. It was really cool to see so many of those shirts pass as we cheered the runners on.

It was a really cool experience, even as a spectator. As a runner, obviously it's incredibly physically draining and difficult, but ultimately rewarding. And as a spectator, it's such an interesting atmosphere, there is so much goodwill among the thousands of people around. Everybody wants everybody else to finish strong and do their best. We all cheered not only our small group of runners we knew but also the entire Orchard Hill team and all the other runners working hard.

Colleen ran with her small group of friends with whom she'd been training since May. They all finished great, each about three or four minutes apart from each other. I was able to catch up with them eight times around the course to cheer them on. Colleen did such a great job, her final time was 4 hours, 43 minutes, and 31 seconds, and her average mile time was 10 minutes, 50 seconds. So great. She kept a very steady pace throughout the whole race, and only really slowed down to a walk for a few seconds at most water stops. I couldn't be more proud.

So hip hip hooray for Colleen. She was very strong and determined throughout the whole run. Now if she could just get me to do the next one with her! *tuba noise*

-Jon

Metadata in the Real World.

2010-10-06T13:37:00.007-05:00

Library school is in full swing for me. It's hard, but not impossible. Lots of reading, which is annoying only because when people ask me what classes are like, I have to reply, "It is a lot of reading." This furthers the stereotype that all the field consists of is reading. Wrong. Librarianship isn't about books, it's about information. One main concept we've started to talk about now is "metadata," essentially, data about data. Informally, metadata is "a cloud of collateral information around a data object" - Clifford Lynch. Metadata are the descriptions of items or records in a catalog that allow you to search by keyword or description rather than the search engine having to search loads of full text and taking much longer. Example time.

So for a particular album or book or DVD or journal article, metadata and data are different. Let's look at a random album to make this a bit more real, say, the album 19 by Adele. Metadata would include things like, album title, artist, record label, executive producer, and the data for the specific album would be 19, Adele, Columbia/XL, and Jim Abbiss. So that's metadata.

Metadata allows better cataloging and more efficient searching. But it's also super complex and confusing, far more than I ever really thought it would be, mainly because no specific format for metadata has achieved real standardization in the information world. So you've got millions of different individuals, corporations, libraries, and groups using all sorts of different search methods using different metadata. Confusing.

It's an interesting concept to me though, and it will be especially interesting once I learn how to apply it to real life or actually get to work with metadata in a real way. Since that won't happen for awhile, I've decided to undertake a giant personal project to get my head around the idea. I'm metadata-ing my iTunes library. Hawt.

I'm going to try to get one album a week catalogued, which means I'll have this whole project done by the year 2022. Not bad. To get more specific, I'm going to basically be adding info about each album I have into the comments section of a song or album's info. So I'm starting with some cataloging already done, a few standard fields all filled in:

1. Album Title

2. Artist Name/Group Name

3. Year released/recorded

4. Genre

5. Album Artwork

Five fields, all already filled for every song and album in my library. But I'm going a bit further. I'm going to add as many additional authors as I can for these songs. For example, I just catalogued the album of earliest release date in my library, the Columbia Symphony Orchestra's recording of George Gershwin's masterpiece, Rhapsody in Blue, and the New York Philharmonic's recording of another of his beautiful works, An American in Paris. Here's the metadata I added:

1. Additional author: Gershwin, George (1898 - 1937)

2. Add. author: Bernstein, Leonard (1918 - 1990)

3. Add. author: New York Philharmonic and Columbia Symphony Orchestra [each one labeled to the specific track they recorded]

4. Original recording date: June 23rd, 1959 (for Rhapsody) and December 21st, 1958 (for AAIP)

This will be unique for every single album, and very possibly for every single song. For these two Gershwin songs, they have different information because they were released and recorded before the standard "album" as we know it was commonplace and they were two totally different works done by the same artist; it's only for continuity's sake that I've put them together under one album label. Once I get into newer albums, there will be a lot of additional metadata fields for record label, additional performers (featured artists), executive producers, etc. There is tons of extra information I can add. If I wanted to go totally nuts, I'd start cataloging sampled works in the music I have. Holy cow that would be insane. I could label samples of samples and also do covers. The data is seriously unending.

So far, the biggest obstacle I'm running into is that iTunes isn't set up for this kind of data entry. The comments section of song info is really the only place I can put this much superfluous information, and I can't organize it as well as I'd like. I can't even put info into separate lines. Blah. The other main problem is that while iTunes is referred to as a "library," there is no good catalog setting through which to search. Anyone who pops onto my iTunes and is curious to see what items I have that have Leonard Bernstein somehow included in their metadata has to create a smart playlist that matches the following rule: "Comments" "contains" "Add. author: Bernstein, Leonard". Not a lot of room for error here. But it's a work in progress. And (I hope) it's getting me ready for some sort of real world work in the field of library/information science, whereas in all of my classes we're basically just gabbing at each other all day long.

Oh hey, if anyone wants me to completely revamp their iTunes collection, making sure no duplicates are there, everything has correct data entered in all fields, then add lots of metadata for better cataloging purposes, and you're interested in paying me hundreds of dollars to do it, just let me know.

-Jon

"You cannot wield it, it has no other master!"

2010-09-14T23:00:00.003-05:00

This is freaking amazing.

INTERACTIVE MAP OF MIDDLE EARTH.

Essentially a Google map of Middle Earth. Wow, this is incredible. You can even look at the labels in Elvish. This is a great compliment to what is easily one of the greatest stories ever told. Truth be told, this is a little nerdy or geeky or whatever, but still it's cool. Look at the background page; looks like an old, unrolled scroll. Who's up for watching the trilogy?

-Jon

Jon AKA web designer.

2010-09-09T22:12:00.004-05:00

How sweet is this? I have created my own web page.

Take a peek.

For my Computing Foundations class, we get to use the library science program's online web server to upload things like websites. Our first assignment was to learn a bit about HTML by reading a textbook and writing a website in HTML. It's pretty cool, programming in HTML isn't really "designing" a website, but rather taking the template for a website and telling it what to do. So this is website is very basic but I'm still pretty happy with it. Obviously it could use some work and I will hopefully be updating it as I come up with new stuff; any suggestions?

-Jon

Thoughts over coffee.

2010-08-30T08:27:00.006-05:00

I'm in the 4th floor of the University of Iowa's Main Library. Tucked far away in a corner of the Graduate Reading Room. The only other thing in this room are stacks and carpet dryers left by the overnight cleaners. In the last week, I keep thinking of things I should write about, but they are always just germs of ideas and it would be so much easier to "tweet" these things rather than blog about them. Luckily, I don't have Twitter and am forced to think through what I want to write about.

For example, I am back in school again. It's a little different this time around, as I am a full-fledged graduate student. This brings with it many perks, such as a key to the School of Library and Information Science (SLIS) Department ($200 lost key fee) and the entitlement to look down on younger students I pass on the street. But there are still lots of reminders of what undergrad looks like in this city. I pass by Mayflower, my first dorm, every time I drive into the city for class. Kids are always outside waiting for the bus to come pick them up and drive them into campus. I remember the year I spent out on those steps with my first generation iPod shuffle. Last Friday night I went to a CAB sponsored event at the Union, the stand-up comedy of David Koechner. The show itself was terrible, he's never been funny in any movie or show he's ever been in, why would his stand-up be any different? But I was more struck by the crowd which attended. It was almost entirely the freshman class of this school. I saw one older couple, probably fans of Koechner from his early SNL days, but everybody else was young and wearing Iowa apparel. Groups consisted of four nerdy-ish looking guy friends all enjoying their first week of college. Young, young looking couples fresh out of high school. Girls whose outfits were just a bit too paltry for their own good. I remember being those kids and seeing them all just brings back all those feelings of being on this campus by myself, scared, lonely, not really knowing what I was doing and feeling in over my head all the time.

But then I remember I have an expensive key that opens a whole wing of the library that they can't get into, and I snap out of it. Niiiice. You know else I've been reminded about? SLOW WALKERS. Gracious there are some slow walkers on this campus. If you must walk slow, just do your best to be spatially aware and move out of the way of walkers with a purpose. Gosh is it annoying.

And classes have started for me now; I'm a full week in. It's going to be a lot of work, a heck of a lot of reading but really interesting. Once I really get into the readings I can start to share interesting articles/books/whatever I come across related to the field.

Finally, September is just around the corner, which means BRING IT ON MUSIC MONTH. Can't wait. Plus Coll's and my bird-day month. Plus the start of fall weather. Hi-oh.

-Jon

P.S. The Daily Show writing team wins the Emmy over The Tonight Show with Conan Brien's writing team? There is no justice in this world.

Do you remembah the twenty-first night of Septembah?

2010-08-12T13:32:00.006-05:00

September is shaping up to be the best month in months. More related to music than anything else, but some other things as well. Get a load of how many albums are coming out in just a few weeks time. Because of the uncertainty of release dates, I'll list them alphabetically by album:

Clapton - Eric Clapton

Not much to say, other than this is probably going to be a pretty standard, run-of-the-mill Clapton album. That is to say, another awesome album of killer blues/pop tunes layered with the most melodic guitar playing you can hear in today's music scene. Most people say John Mayer is the next real bluesman/guitar player of our generation; it's because he essentially copies everything Clapton does musically. Smart move, because Clapton rocks. He can write great hooks and then throw a solo in that melts your face. Or heart. Depends what kind of mood you're in. Either way, this is going to be a great album, no question.

Kaleidoscope Heart - Sara Bareilles

A few years back, Sara Bareilles hurtled onto the pop scene with her single Love Song and her debut album Little Voice. Holy cow does this woman have some pipes. Seriously, this whole album was full of hook after hook. Her voice sounded real. And bold, and unique. I think it was different because she had a powerful voice, and it was good, and there wasn't a hint of disingenuousness* in it. I have heard the first single off this new album and I liked it, but I'm hoping that the deeper cuts will yield even better results. That's how it was on her first one. Love Song was a great song, but holy cow there were loads of even greater songs on it. This will be an awesome album.

Lonely Avenue - Ben Folds & Nick Hornby

Any music by Ben Folds is a guaranteed winner**. Lyrics contributed by Nick Hornby, author of novels like About A Boy and High Fidelity. How could this thing be bad?

Nothing - N.E.R.D.

OK, this one I'm a little iffy on. Their last album was a pretty big let-down for me, mainly because the album before it was absolutely awesome. I won't be buying this one on Day 1, but I'll give it a listen and see if it has the potential to grow on me. I can't give up on Pharrell yet.

Record Collection - Mark Ronson

Another one I'm unsure of at this point. I've only heard the first single, and it was a little synth-heavy for my taste. Ronson's last solo album was really fun, he had horns going all over that thing and some great guest spots. This one, fewer guest spots, and possibly a more electro bent to it. Which isn't bad, if it's done well. I trust him to do it well.

Untitled - Adele

This one is the album whose release date could be pushed back as no real definitive release date has been set as of yet. It would be hard for me to not like this one though, or at least be more open-minded with this one than any of the others. Adele's first album took forever to grow on me, but oh my did it ever grow on me. Her voice just enchants me, and musically her debut was really different for a pop album. Nothing cookie-cutter. And on this next album, she's getting producing from Rick Rubin, flavored with a country-twinge, and she's got some heavy hitters playing sessions with her, namely Pino Palladino (John Mayer Trio, D'Angelo, Clapton, anybody ever who wanted a good bass session player) and James Poyser (executive produced Al Green's 2008 effort Lay It Down and worked on D'Angelo's Voodoo, 'nuff said). It's going to be awesome, even if it takes awhile to get into my system. Super, super excited about this one.

Wake Up Everybody - John Legend & The Roots

This is going to be another really fun album. I love soul music, especially when it's redone to sound awesome by awesome musicians of our generation. Almost this whole album will be covers of old soul tunes from the '70s. Awesome. I've started collecting the albums from which the covers are taken, and they are all really good. All of this music revamped by the one and only ?uestlove will just be fun. And it will be great to listen to John Legend and enjoy it again.

So considering that through the month of September, I will almost double the number of albums I have released in 2010, it's safe to say that it will be the best music month of the year. Unless Kanye actually does release his new rap album in November. Here's to hoping.

-Jon

* this is almost not a real word.

** see: the spoken word album Has Been by William Shatner. Sounds like a recipe for disaster doesn't it? Thanks to the incredible producing touch of Ben Folds, it's an awesome listen.

A brief history lesson.

2010-07-05T14:06:00.005-05:00

A very cool article from the LA Times about the beginning of the Disney Archives:

click

The very first ticket to Disneyland ever sold. To Walt Disney's older brother Roy, for only $1. This is awesome for a few reasons. Preservation is such an important part of our life. Librarian Smith was able to join a company that wasn't holding its own history in such high regard and turned it around so they wouldn't lose sight of where they came from. What a huge accomplishment, and especially for a company as enduring as Disney. Disney is truly one of the most established brands in this country's history. I would argue no other company's name has as much clout behind it. "Disney" evokes such an enduring legacy of pure entertainment infused with heart and meaning and love and goodness. True, they've produced their fair share of crap material in the last twenty years*, but no other brand name has as much good quality entertainment under it's belt as Disney does. And they've done so well by keeping sight of their past. They've let their past successes inform their current endeavors. You've got to keep sight of where you came from to know where you're at and where you're headed. That's why the Disney Archives are so important and awesome.

It's also another reason for me to get excited about library school. I have no idea what I want to do once I'm actually there, but heading into the program is exciting because I know my core desires have to do with what the field is all about. Information, preservation, organization, communication. Lots of -tion words that are important in life. It's cool to me that in hopefully three years, I will get a job in an institution where information is highly regarded and I will get paid to organize and communicate that information to others. Awesome.

Also, Lost was/is the most incredible television experience I've ever had. Hopefully more on that later.

-Jon

* Why they chose to work with Roseanne, I'll never understand. Moo.

Garfield minus Garfield.

2010-06-07T19:27:00.004-05:00

This is a hilarious to me. I read the newspaper comics quite often as a kid, and there were a few that held a special place in my heart. Calvin & Hobbes, Foxtrot, The Far Side. These were all very funny comics strips. Then there were the others. Family Circus. Beetle Bailey. Marmaduke. But then there was Garfield. I think there was probably a time when I legitimately thought it was funny, but that passed quickly. When I got a bit older I realized it was just a stupid comic about a cat who thought things and a lonely, middle-aged guy who was the most pathetic character. Possibly ever.

This blog illustrates that perfectly. Imagine if Jon Arbuckle couldn't understand Garfield's thoughts, that Garfield was just his cat who was fat. The things Jon says would be horribly pathetic, wouldn't they? This blog brilliantly has taken Garfield out of the Garfield comic strip and you're left with just Jon Arbuckle and his pure, unadulterated loneliness. Far funnier than the actual comic strip.

Enjoy.

-Jon

I love Michael McDonald's voice.

2010-04-19T22:52:00.004-05:00

One thing that's great about my wife is that she loves Time Life Records Classic Music collections. Especially their infomercials. The other night as we were flipping TV stations, we stumbled across the Classic Soft Rock collection. Now all their collections truly are really good, whether it's the Classic Soul Ballads, Classic Rhythm & Blues, Midnight Soul, Flower Power, etc. But we started watching the Classic Soft Rock infomercial, because each infomercial has clips of the artists performing their hits while a clip of the song is played. One of the clips was The Doobie Brothers playing "What A Fool Believes." Colleen says, "Oh I love this song!" and I reply, "Hm. Never heard it." She responded with such incredulity that I immediately felt a little embarrassed but determined to get a hold of the whole song. I grabbed my computer, loaded up Youtube and away we went. This is what I found:

Holy crap. What a great tune. This is why Colleen is great. While I know lots and lots and lots of music, there is a lot of music from the last 50 years that most people know that is just absolutely awesome, like this song, but that I never heard or was ever exposed to because my parents listened to a lot of Michael Card while I was growing up. No old Chicago or 5th Dimension or Doobie Brothers or Paul Simon or Stevie Wonder or anything. So I missed tons of this good stuff. Music that I would absolutely love if only I knew about it. Thankfully, Colleen does. And she is educating me, little by little. So enjoy this tune if you haven't heard it in a while. It's incredible.

-Jon

Top 25 Albums of the 2000s

2010-04-01T22:58:00.004-06:00

I was hoping to get this one done closer to the beginning of the year, but this list is so freakin' long that it took me awhile to write. So here we go.

25. Rockin' The Suburbs - Ben Folds (2001)

This album became a go-to album during my first year at Iowa. I remember standing at the bus stop right outside of Burge after dinner, waiting for the bus to get back to my room in Mayflower, and listening to The Ascent of Stan over and over. The harmony starting right around minute 3:00 and especially at 3:10 just floored me, and listening to it now still hits me in a crazy way. There was just so much great stuff on here, and I hadn't heard the piano used in such an effective, pop way before.

Top 3 Tracks:

1. Not The Same

2. The Ascent Of Stan

3. Still Fighting It

24. Feed The Animals - Girl Talk (2008)

Watch out boys and girls, this one's definitely not one you play on a family vacation. Girl Talk is just one dude, a computer, and the most brilliant mind for mash-ups ever. Greg Gillis has taken samples of music from the last 60 years and mashed them all together in a way that makes me want to start riots. This whole album is the most high energy thing I've ever heard; it's basically just straight club gangster rap over samples like The Carpenters, The Band, Chicago, Earth Wind & Fire, etc. The beat never stops. It just goes, and goes, and goes, and the listener is just happy for the seemingly endless onslaught of pure rhythm and movement that is shot like a heroin syringe right into your musical arm vein. Awesome.

Top 3 Tracks:

1. Set It Off (the Bubba Sparxx's Heat It Up over a sample of Dexys Midnight Runner's Come On Eileen is pure brilliance)

2. In Step (the Earth, Wind, & Fire sample of September underneath Ludacris rapping in Fergie's Glamorous sounds SO good here)

3. Give Me A Beat (when Ice Cube's AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted starts over Daft Punk's Face To Face, it makes me want to dance for seven years straight. Unbelievably great.)

23. The Odd Couple - Gnarls Barkley (2008)

Their first album was good, but man this one was so awesome. It is such a bizarre album; I have no idea how exactly to describe it or label it because it has so many different sounds. It's like soul electro pop cartoon circus music. Whatever you want to call it, it's awesome. Cee-Lo's voice over the production of one my favorite producers, DJ Danger Mouse, fits so perfectly.

Top 3 Tracks:

1. Charity Case

2. Who's Gonna Save My Soul

3. A Little Better

22. Back To Black - Amy Winehouse (2006)

Aside from her decadent lifestyle filled with drugs and alcohol abuse, Amy Winehouse belongs in 1968. Or maybe with that stuff too. The reason I loved this album so much is because it has so much Dusty Springfield/Aretha Franklin/etc. soul with just the right pinch of '00s beat. It's really just Motown for Generation Y. And while Winehouse has got one hell of a voice, I have to give credit to Mark Ronson for that incredible production. He pulls some favors here, as you can hear the rich sounds of the Daptone Horns playing on most of these tracks. No wonder there is so much Rhythm & Blues on this record.

Top 3 Tracks:

1. He Can Only Hold Her

2. Back To Black

3. Tears Dry On Their Own

21. Room For Squares - John Mayer (2001)

I loved this album when I was in high school. Listening to it now, it's still good, but certainly a first record. I will say this though, I'm really glad I found this album when I was 16 and not 23. If I heard this record for the first time this last year, I would've probably set it down right away and not even gotten to the good stuff. On it's own, it's a fine album, but compared to his later work, it's pretty bland. Far more poppy than anything else. But if nothing else, it's really a great indication of what a great artist John Mayer is. This was his first album. How does a guy write a song like 3x5 on his first record? Impressive.

Top 3 Tracks:

1. 3x5

2. City Love

3. 83

20. FutureSex/LoveSounds - Justin Timberlake (2006)

This is one of the best second records I've ever heard. Justin Timberlake went from the bubble gum pop of 'NSYNC to pop with a bit more of a hip-hop edge (thank you Neptunes) on Justified, and then holy cow did he upped his game with this one. I didn't get into this album at first, mainly because another of my very favorite records (spoiler alert, it's #1 on this list) came out on the same day (my bday coincidentally). But once I really dug into this, it had so much to offer. There are layers upon layers of sexy, soulful, electro-pop on this album. The interludes alone are worth the purchase price.

Top 3 Tracks:

1. LoveStoned/I Think She Knows Interlude

2. Until The End Of Time Feat. The Benjamin Wright Orchestra

3. What Goes Around.../...Comes Around Interlude

19. 19 - Adele (2008)

I don't want to sound sexist here, but I don't groove on female vocalists as much as male vocalists. Maybe it's just cause I can't sing along. Adele is a grand exception (to the me liking her, not to the me singing along). She has one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard. Period. And to hear a voice of this caliber in our age of auto-tune and paint by numbers pop starlets is just astounding. Adele has such control in her voice, it's remarkable. And on top of being floored by her voice, the music on this record is really great. It's great modern British pop sounds with lots of homage to late '60s soul. Plus one of the best Bob Dylan covers ever.

Top 3 Tracks:

1. Hometown Glory

2. Tired

3. Right As Rain

18. Alive 2007 - Daft Punk (2007)

I had a hard time not putting this one higher on my list, but in reality, I only truly fell in love with the first half of this record. But holy cow what a first half it is. I think going to a Daft Punk show would be the best way to burn calories, EVER. They put on a hell of a live show which really just equates to one colossal dance party. This show consists of just a mash-up of killer Daft Punk songs. My only beef with this is my normal beef with Daft Punk: they give us too much of a good thing. Some of the later tracks are too long and too monotonous to stay focused and into the music but that is not the case for tracks 3-5, the most glorious continuous seventeen minutes and thirty-seven seconds in music I think I've ever heard. The triumvirate ofTelevision Rules The Nation / Crescendolls, Too Long / Steam Machine, and Around The World / Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger is breathtakingly and relentlessly awesome. Awesome the way my grandparents use the word. The whole time I'm just filled with wonder at how incredibly cool these songs sound. It is just an onslaught of sound and beat and melody and robots and guitars and cheering and beauty. Probably great for working out.

Top 3 Tracks:

1. Around The World / Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

2. Television Rules The Nation / Crescendolls

3. Too Long / Steam Machine

17. The Black Album - Jay-Z (2003)

If you ever want to hear an artist at his zenith, listen to this album. One might argue that The Blueprint is Jay's best work, but I have to stick with The Black Album. The Blueprint was the game changer for Jay-Z, and this one is the one that solidified his status as King of the Rap Game. First off, the production on this thing is just insane. He's got Kanye, Just Blaze, Timbaland, Eminem, the Neptunes, even Rick Rubin produces on this record. What a line-up. And then on top of some of the sickest beats I have ever heard, you've got Jay at the top of his wordplay. This is like watching Michael Jordan play basketball in 1996. His verses are just crazy good. Jay's got swagger cause he knows this is his "last" album and he's going out on top. You can hear a bit of sadness on December 4th when he says "Goodbye to the game, all the spoils, the adrenaline rush." This album was truly Jay's "grand closing."

Top 3 Tracks:

1. December 4th

2. Encore

3. 99 Problems

16. Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future - The Bird And The Bee (2009)

I heard the first single from this album back on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno (the original, not Part Deux) and it absolutely blew me away. I even blogged about it I think. Yup I did. This woman's voice is just perfect, so soft and pretty and melodic and overtaking. Her harmonies are gorgeous. The chorus on Diamond Dave has some of the prettiest vocal layering ever. And the music production is so weird, it's like jazz/pop rooted in electronica. It sounds like an odd mix, but the sound combinations produce such a huge wall of breathtaking music.

Top 3 Tracks:

1. My Love

2. Ray Gun

3. Diamond Dave

15. Try! - John Mayer Trio (2005)

Who knew John Mayer could play the guitar? I did. And so many of his fans did too, but this album, along with the arrival of the Trio was the moment we could hold our heads up high and no longer be reviled for being fans. This is a powerful album from the guy whose record company had released Daughters as his previous single. He breaks out of that mold completely though, introducing his young fans to hits by Ray Charles and Jimi Hendrix, as well as showing them what Daughters was originally written as (slow soul tune). And a seven and a half minute slow blues tune too? From the Wonderland guy? John Mayer effectively avoided getting pigeonholed with this album and started to dictate his own career rather than having it dictated to him by his record label. And in the process, you gave us a pretty bad ass record. Well done, John.

Top 3 Tracks:

1. I Got A Woman

2. Wait Until Tomorrow

3. Gravity

14. X&Y - Coldplay (2005)

The Joshua Tree for my generation. Coldplay had had a small hit with Parachutes, gained some notoriety with A Rush of Blood to the Head, but this was the album with hype. Everybody wanted to see where they would go next and they took it to another dimension with this one. A dimension where bands only play arenas. Every song on this album seems like it would fit a giant stadium better than anything else (coincidentally, Coldplay just performed an acoustic version of A Message on the Hope for Haiti TV special months ago, and it was SOOO great). I fell in love with this album. So many immense sounds and instruments and melodies and harmonies and it's just so great. No one can write emotion that bursts out of your soul into song like Coldplay. And this album proved that.

Top 3 Tracks:

1. What If

2. Fix You

3. The Hardest Part

13. Miles Remixed - The Apple Juice Kid (2008)

This one is maybe the least well known on my list. Okayplayer.com (The Roots website) featured this album as a free download by kind of famous producer The Apple Juice Kid. I had never heard of him but the album cover looked sweet and I had a fairly large Miles Davis collection, which I enjoyed listening to from time to time so I thought I'd give it a try. Glad I did. This is one of the smoothest sounding albums ever. It combines the jazzy melodies of Miles Davis from the '50s and '60s with some beautifully smooth hip-hop beats. AJK has just taken bits and pieces from some of Davis' seminal works and cut them up, rearranged them, and mashed them together in a way that is just so easy on the ears. That's one reason I liked this so much. I listened to this when I studied, I listened to it playing darts in our duplex garage, it was perfect mood music. There were so many nights that Kevin and Colleen and I would stay up late, throwing darts, drinking a bit and just talking while this was playing in the background. It creates a very tranquil atmosphere in which to hang out. Jazz often turns lots of people off due to its grand or seemingly pompous nature. This is an album that takes jazz and makes it completely listenable.

Top 3 Tracks:

1. SnapMusic

2. Masco

3. ViolinGreen

12. Catching Tales - Jamie Cullum (2005)

This album finds its strength by being very catchy pop, but rooted in something that isn't ubiquitous in today's music scene. Jamie Cullum has the jazz piano chops to pull this album off super well. He's got crazy chords all over the place and sexy progressions and melodies, it's just so much fun to listen to. His voice can be a bit grating at first listen, but with time, one comes to realize how much control he's got and how easily he can manipulate his voice. And hoo boy can this guy scat!

Top 3 Tracks:

1. 21st Century Kid

2. My Yard

3. Nothing I Do

11. Parachutes - Coldplay (2000)

It's remarkable that Parachutes is a debut album. Coldplay writes and sings and plays with depth, emotion, and some real sexy piano music. Chris Martin might not have the most technically perfect voice ever, but he does exactly what he needs to do song after song here. Listening back to it, it's amazing to hear how much depth these guys wrangle out of their acoustic guitars. One of my favorite records ever.

Top 3 Tracks:

1. Trouble

2. We Never Change

3. Sparks

10. Late Registration - Kanye West (2005)

Another great sophomore album. I liked The College Dropout fine enough, but this is when I knew for sure that Kanye could deliver and his debut wasn't a fluke. There are so many great tracks here, and the music is insanely eclectic. Kanye brought in an outsider not really known for producing hip-hop, Jon Brion. He is known for scoring movie soundtracks such asMagnolia, Punch-Drunk Love, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind (one of my personal favorites), and Synecdoche, New York, among many others. And his influence on this record is key. Kanye is great but pushed the boundaries of his own style with Brion's help. This is a bizarrely eclectic albums with sounds you'd never expect from a huge hip-hop star. Also, Kanye lays down some amazing samples all over the place here, including, but not limited to, Otis Redding, Ray Charles, Curtis Mayfield and Bill Withers. How much more soul can you fit onto one record?

Top 3 Tracks:

1. Gone Feat. Consequence and Cam'Ron

2. Crack Music Feat. The Game

3. Gold Digger Feat. Jamie Foxx

9. Heavier Things - John Mayer (2003)

There is so much growth between this record and Room For Squares. He went from writing pretty run of the mill pop songs to songs with some punch to them. Sure, these are mostly all pop songs again, but with just enough soul hidden inside that they can catch you off guard. One of the strengths of this album is that it matches sonically with what he's singing about. The feelings evoked by the words of Wheel is exactly the feeling evoked by the music of the song. And many of these songs just hit bullseye in that regard. Clarity, Something's Missing, Split Screen Sadness. There is emotion that lines up just perfectly between music and lyrics. It is a very satisfying listen.

Top 3 Tracks:

1. Clarity

2. Wheel

3. Something's Missing

8. Discovery - Daft Punk (2001)

I know I've written about this album somewhere else. Thinking about it now it might be in an unpublished Top 5 Favorite Artists blog somewhere. Anyway, this album rules. For me, it's the sum of everything good about Daft Punk's strengths. In their older stuff, the "techno" sound of their music overtakes everything and they don't use any restraint. On this album, they take the techno sound and turn it into songs that are listenable. Real songs, not just seven minute club tracks. Songs with different parts, verses, choruses, the occasional bridge here and there. It's that complex of a thing, but when they start writing real songs in their crazy robot sounding style, it's so awesome.

Top 3 Tracks:

1. Digital Love

2. Something About Us

3. Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

7. Fly Or Die - N*E*R*D (2004)

This album is the summer of 2004 for me. There is hardly anything that makes sense on this album musically, considering who N*E*R*D is and the kind of music they made before this. Since some of N*E*R*D's members make up the hip-hop production team The Neptunes, you'd think this album would be rooted in hip-hop. Not at all. While there are some flavors of hip-hop throughout, this is far more of a crazy pop-rock album than anything else. Am I supposed to dance to these songs or "rock out" as the saying goes? Who knows. You listen and you love it.

Top 3 Tracks:

1. She Wants To Move

2. Maybe

3. Breakout

6. Once - Glen Hansard & Marketa Irglova (2007)

Most soundtracks are comprised of songs from which clips were featured in the movie. This one is different; almost all the songs from the soundtrack are performed in their entirety in the movie. Which, now that I think about it, makes the movie more of a musical than anything. Tangent. These songs are breathtaking. The voices are simple; his voice warbles from time to time, but you can tell he means every word he sings. That is truly a rare trait in music today. Her voice is beautiful; so simple and it fits right where it needs to. She doesn't overpower him and only adds to him. It's perfect. Their combination is so well-matched. It might be such an emotional album for me because it's so intimately tied to the movie. When I hear these songs, I think of the relationship between these two characters and that they are really singing these songs to each other. They are singing about hurt, about loss and pain and failure and love and hope. When The Guy really lets his voice loose in Say It To Me Now, it is chilling because you hear what he is feeling. That is where the strength in this album lies. There isn't anything technically out of this world, it's mainly just two simple voices over simple instruments. The beauty lies within the feeling behind each voice and how much they can communicate with just their voices. Amazing.

Top 3 Tracks:

1. Say It To Me Now

2. Lies

3. Once

5. Graduation - Kanye West (2007)

Highest ranked rap album on my list here. Kanye reached his zenith with this album. He had a great sound on The College Dropout, tweaked it just enough with Late Registration and hit the nail on the head with this album. Just great production here, all the way through. The craziest samples ever. Steely Dan, Daft Punk, Elton John, Curtis Mayfield, and one of my absolute all time favorite samples ever, Michael Jackson's P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing) samples in Good Life. Maybe the hottest sample ever. So clever too. P.Y.T. is such an incredible pop song, and Kanye just took it and slowed it waaaay down, until it's almost unrecognizable. It took me lots and lots of listens before I realized he was even sampling anybody, and then I had to really focus to catch the sample. So subtle but man the end product is just so hot. And can I talk aboutFlashing Lights for a second? I don't even think I should. This is definitely on my Top 5 Hip Hop Songs list. It is undeniable how great the beat in that tune is. This album isn't perfect (Drunk And Hot Girls and Big Brother are two huge blemishes), but where Kanye gets it right, he REALLY gets it right. Beats and rhymes both. He was completely on top of his game here.

Top 3 Tracks:

1. Flashing Lights Feat. Dwele

2. Good Life Feat. T-Pain

3. Homecoming Feat. Chris Martin

4. Viva La Vida or Death And All His Friends - Coldplay (2008)

It has to be hard to release albums each better than the last. Coldplay has pulled it off for the last decade. Impressive. I had a lot of high hopes for this album and was totally blown away by it. The sounds here are just crazy. The intro song, Life In Technicolor, just starts with the craziest sounding weird piano instrument and opens into a huge rolling sea wave of sound that overtakes you and doesn't let you come up for air until the end of the album. The band paints so many landscapes with the songs. If I was to make a music video for Cemeteries Of London, I would have the band playing the song amidst a giant Revolutionary War battle. Cannons firing all around them, soldiers bayonetting each other. The song just sounds like a colossal battlefield to me. And how about Viva La Vida? Maybe the most inspirational sounding song I've ever heard. Really though, this whole album boasts songs that are just big. They belong in another universe. Just like X&Y, I feel like the only place they could ever truly live is in a giant stadium arena. I can't imagine Death And All His Friends any other way than the whole band performing it in front of tens of thousands of fans. All the way through, this album just sets my heart on fire.

Top 3 Tracks:

1. Lost!

2. Viva La Vida

3. Life In Technicolor

3. Voodoo - D'Angelo (2000)

Remember that sexy music video from about ten years ago of that super buff black guy singing the song with no clothes on? The camera rotated around his whole body, just showing his insanely ripped torso? That was D'Angelo. And that video basically communicates what this album is all about. SEX. But it really is so much more than that too. But the sexy is the most obvious element of this album. I'd never heard music made of silk before this one. Each song is a study in not just how to get a certain feeling behind the music, but how that feeling can be communicated by the musicians. True, the feeling here is sexual/sensual soul, but it's so well communicated by how the instruments are played. The bass is pushed so far back behind the beat, it's like a game between the musicians to see how off kilter they can take the music without completely tearing everything apart. Imagine musical notes dancing around each other like they know some sexy business is going down soon. That is this album in a nutshell. Reading over that again, that's the worst comparison I could come up with but it's the only way I can communicate how much soul this album has. So much.

Top 3 Tracks:

1. Greatdayindamornin' / Booty

2. One Mo' Gin

3. Feel Like Makin' Love

2. Al Green - Lay It Down

Al Green is one of those classic artists that has enough credibility from the last fifty years that basically most anyone you ask would say "Oh yeah, I love Al Green!" when really the only songs they know are Let's Stay Together, Love And Happiness, and if you're lucky, Call Me (Come Back Home). I used to be one of those people, at least until two years ago. And then he released this album. After the opening bass riff of the first track, I was sold. Not only on this album, but on Al Green as a musician in general. This was the album that did it though. Produced by ?uestlove and James Poyser, both from The Roots, this album is like the incarnation of the '70s Al Green soul imputed into the R&B of today. Holy moly is it fun to listen to. Soft guitar, bass lines that are just out of this world, horns that could only have come from James Brown's band, and all of this lays the setting for that silky falsetto of Al Green. A few great guest spots too, John Legend, Anthony Hamilton, and Corinne Bailey Rae. And the songs are just good songs. Songs about love. No politics here. No messed up relationships. Just simple love songs, of which good ones are very hard to find nowadays.

Top 3 Tracks:

1. Just For Me

2. Lay It Down Feat. Anthony Hamilton

3. What More Do You Want From Me

1. John Mayer - Continuum

It might be a while before Mayer tops this album. This one came at just the right time; he was at just the right spot in his musical timeline to coalesce so many different genres and influences into a modern masterpiece. He touches on blues, jazz, funk, lots of pop, and in general just music that can be enjoyed by such a wide range of humans. And that's just the music. Lyrically, he reaches into the deepest depths of anything he had done (and even stuff he's done since this album). There are truly universal themes here, themes that at some point or another, everybody thinks about this stuff. Everybody has issues with seeing their parents age. Everybody has issues with dealing with the good and the bad in life. Everybody deals with the concept of belief in one form or another. Everybody deals with fighting off the world in order to hold onto their confidence. There is genius writing all over this one. And back to the music again, every song can be traced back to its influence if you listen closely enough. This album sent me on a hunt to find what inspired it. Here's a short list: Curtis Mayfield, Eric Clapton, Buddy Guy, George Harrison, Steely Dan, Coldplay, and Ray Charles. And that doesn't even cover all of the songs. It's hard to find things that aren't really, really great on this album. And that's why it's on the top of this list. It's so difficult to pull together such a great mix of elements and pull it off so perfectly as Mayer does here. Great album art too.

Top 3 Tracks:

1. I Don't Trust Myself (With Loving You)

2. Slow Dancing In A Burning Room

3. Stop This Train

Metal mouth, tin grin, railroad tracks. I can't think of any others.

2010-03-21T11:31:00.003-06:00

I'm starting an experiment tonight. For the next two weeks, I'm going to wear my retainers to bed every single night. I don't plan on this being a pleasant experience. Right after I got my braces off, my orthodontist told me I should wear the retainers all the time for the first six months and then just at night for a year after that. He also said most orthodontists are starting to recommend that former braces-wearers just wear their retainers for the rest of their life.

Ha, I said. We'll see how that goes.

I've hardly worn them every night since that day, much less all the time. My longest streak of consecutive nights wearing the retainers is probably four days. And I can always tell that it helps keep my teeth together, mainly because the mornings after I wear them to bed, my teeth are in excruciating pain. I can hardly chomp on my Golden Maple Quaker Oat Squares.

So hopefully these two weeks won't be awful for me. But they probably will be.

-Jon

P.S. Remember that time that UNI upset the best team in the nation for a school-record breaking NCAA tournament run? That was pretty awesome.

I can hear my stomach grumbling at me.

2010-03-10T18:18:00.004-06:00

After I graduated, I challenged myself to write one blog a week. It didn't go well until the end of February, and I think since around then I've kept it up alright. So the only real reasons for this blog are that I want to get my one blog for the week and I'm hungry and don't have much brain capacity for anything deeper than this.

I am very hungry right now. Colleen is meeting her mom out for dinner tonight so I've got to fend for myself. I could just eat a microwaveable pizza, but who the heck wants that when there is truly an assemblage of great fast food places close by? Here's the rundown:

McDonalds:

Great tasting food, but I feel worse after I've eaten a Mickey-D's meal than any other fast food place. Why? Not sure, it might be from that documentary Super-Size Me, which I didn't even see. Thanks brain for ruining a perfectly delicious restaurant. Super cheap and great fries. Except they have Coke products. Bummer.

Burger King:

One of my favorite fast food places. Cheap and good. And again, great fries. Good chicken sandwiches too, all on the dollar menu. Again though, Coke products. But after I'm done I don't feel like I ingested straight fat into my arteries like I do after the golden arches.

Taco Bell:

Hey gang, let's head south of the border! TB is such a great place to eat. A nice change from the normal cheeseburger. And even though every item on the menu is some permutation of cheese, beef, beans, and a shell, it's all still really good. And Pepsi products, so I can get my Mt. Dew. Except for the Mt. Dew Baja Blast they have is awful, tastes like Listerine. Gross.

Long John Silver's:

Anybody want flies on their food? Didn't think so. Granted, I haven't been to LJS' for years and years, and I remember loving it when I was a kid, there just always seemed to be three or four flies cruising around the joint every time I ever went there. Weird. I should give it another go sometime soon.

Hardee's:

Worst ad campaign ever, which is probably why most people I know say they "hate" this place. Too bad for them, because Hardee's is the best fast food joint there is, no contest. It's a bit on the pricier side, but it's so worth it for what you get. Delicious, crispy fries, regular or curly. Giant drinks (even their medium puts other places larges to shame). Huge angus beef patties. I don't even know what angus beef is, but man is it tasty. It's just all fun food to eat. What a great place.

So there's a quick rundown of what's around to eat. I could also just get a large pepperoni pizza from Little Caesar's for $5.35. One of the best deals around. But in the end, who really cares where I go for dinner except me? Weekly blog done.

-Jon

Spring Music Preview '10.

2010-03-04T20:16:00.003-06:00

Rolling Stone has published their annual Spring Music Preview, giving its readers a sneak peek at new albums coming out through the summer. Here's what I think.

1. Erykah Badu - New Ameryikah Part Two: Return of the Ankh (3/30)

Weirdest title ever. What is the deal with Erykah Badu? Do I like her or do I not? It's a tough one. Sometimes she's like a female D'Angelo, sometimes her music is just a tish too freaky for me. But I'll probably get my hands on this album eventually. She seems like one of a few truly creative and free-thinking minds in R&B today, and that goes a ways with me.

2. Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings - I Learned The Hard Way (4/06)

This one actually isn't profiled by the Rolling Stone article which is weird because it will almost certainly be better than most of the other albums on their list. There are not many groups these days with such an authentic, old-school sound. They are straight soul/funk/R&B. They sound like the JBs have time-warped fifty years and connected with Sharon Jones to make just the purest sounding soul music. I'm sure this album will be no different.

3. Keane - Night Train (5/11)

Another one not profiled by RS. I'm iffy on this album because I haven't even heard Keane's last album, Perfect Symmetry, back from late '08. So I should probably pick that up before getting excited about a new Keane album. That's sort of how Keane is for me though. I don't get excited about their albums, I get them months (or years) after they are released and then I have a quiet appreciation for them. It'll be the same with this album I'm sure.

4. Jack Johnson - To The Sea (6/01)

Considering the change between In Between Dreams and Sleep Through The Static, I can only imagine this is going to be a killer album. And Jack Johnson has long hair now. Weird.

5. Sara Bareilles - Title TBD (Date TBD)

Remember how great Sara's first album was? Word on the Wikipedia is that ?uestlove and James Poyser (both of The Roots) are helping her out with this one. Enough said. It's going to be incredible.

6. Maroon 5 - Title TBD (Date TBD)

Oh wow, Maroon 5 is coming out with a new album? Forget it guys, you released a totally phenom first single, a decently good debut album to back it up, and followed it up with kind of crap. It's going to be hard to redeem yourself after taking like four years between albums. Who do you think you are, Sade?

7. Mark Ronson - Title TBD (Date TBD)

One of the best producers around. Whatever he does with this album is going to be awesome. His second album was great, Amy Winehouse's Back To Black was great, the stuff he does with Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings is great, Rhymefest's Blue Collar was great. It doesn't matter what direction he goes in because he can do great stuff in any genre. Bring it Mark.

So those are the albums that stood out. None of my favorite artists have stuff coming out, but man is this year already looking miles better than last year's spring preview. And so far, this year has been waaaay better than last year. Already, we've got new albums from OK Go, Sade, Jamie Cullum, Daniel Merriweather, Corinne Bailey Rae, and in the next month, Broken Bells, Gorillaz, and Jimi Hendrix. While none of these are Top 5 Favs for me, the number of albums I'd like to get is way bigger than normal. Awesome. Cheers to 2010 huh?

-Jon

Another one about music.

2010-02-23T20:02:00.007-06:00

First, I know it's been nearly three months since I wrote last. Yikes. I'll see what I can do about it.

In a week, Jamie Cullum's fourth album, The Pursuit, is released in the US. I'm crazy excited, because Jamie Cullum is awesome to begin with, but yesterday I finally listened to one of the songs off this upcoming album. I hadn't heard any cuts yet, and holy cow did this one blow me away. You will almost certainly recognize this song by Rihanna:

OK, so that's a great pop tune, killer MJ sample in the middle, great beat, fun to dance to, the whole bit. It's a fun song. Now, here is one facet of Cullum's genius that blows me away. He can take a song from basically any genre and make it incredible in his own specific way. He takes Rihanna's great song and turns it into this:

Why can't Youtube write embedding codes that work well? I'm not savvy enough to get this video to fit inside the parameters of my blog. Anyway.

Gosh. Hear how he builds into the chorus? It feels so huge. And his chords, oh man does he nail this song. He turns this great pop tune into the most beautiful, jazzy anthem. Unbelievable.

The last album I bought was JM's Battle Studies; before that, Jay-Z's The Blueprint 3. I hardly ever by CDs anymore, and this is one that I am definitely making the trip out to Best Buy next Tuesday to get. You should too.

-Jon

Battle Studies.

2009-11-23T20:48:00.006-06:00

Well, that's an embarrassing way to start this review.

Quite an event last Tuesday. John Mayer finally released his fourth studio album, Battle Studies, and I got to experience hearing brand new, non-live, studio-made, John Mayer-written music for the first time in three years. Pretty exciting stuff for me. And admittedly, I was a bit nervous, as John's become quite the douche in the last three years, but it turns out my fears were unwarranted.

JM hasn't branched too far out here. If nothing else, he's taken a few steps backwards in regards to his other music. But this isn't a bad thing. His pre-Continuum music is great, so these new songs are really just a nice addition to his body of work. Most of them are anyway. As a whole, Battle Studies isn't as cohesive as Continuum, in terms of musical style and song quality. The only thing that really does bind most of the record together is a general (I use that term loosely, see Crossroads, Who Says, War Of My Life, none really pertain to the ->) theme of breaking up. Musically, he definitely dabbles in quite a few areas, but as a whole he's stepping back towards the pop scene. Continuum was just so soulful; soul emanated from every part of that album. Not so here. Overall it's much more of a pop music, radio-ready type of feel.

OK the songs. If I had my way, I would cut three songs off the record, completely retool one song, and leave the other seven exactly how they are. That's not the best percentage, but still alright. It's the middle stretch that is just plain bad. The triumvirate of Who Says, Perfectly Lonely, and War Of My Life really pains me, and Crossroads might be one of the most disappointing covers I've ever heard. Who Says sounds like an extension of his a-hole lifestyle set to a pretty little acoustic ditty, which is catchy enough that it's annoying how bad the song is. Sorry John, but very few of your fans relate to planning trips to Japan by themselves and canceling them at will. Perfectly Lonely is one of those empowerment songs that I find so inane. It'll be the one at concerts that all the lonely people pump their fists to and sing along too loudly with, trying to fool themselves and everybody around them that they're so happy they're alone. Annoying. I know this might seem like a dumb thing to say since I'm married but why can't he write one song about actually finding love or being in love where there aren't any negative little asides, or "this is great BUT..."? Just one John. I only want one.

Crossroads is a real bummer for me too. When I saw this on the track list I was psyched because of how great his Hendrix cover was on Continuum. This cover sounds like he pulled it directly from Guitar Hero. I seriously think Steve Jordan sat down to a drum kit with four parts, each a different color. And the guitar tone is so awful, which only makes the solo worse than it already is. This is just a really uninspired cover, which bums me out because usually JM does covers so well (see Free Fallin', Bold As Love, Kid A from the old days). He chooses awesome tunes, not always the most well-known, and makes them even better, injects them with something unique. This is just sonic mush. Wish you could have a re-do on this one John.

But if you listen to the good parts of this record, he really starts to shine again. The strongest element of this whole album is his voice, but only when it's bolstered by the melody lines he sings. He has seemed to hit on really quality melody lines, that are not only gorgeous, but fit his voice perfectly. Assassin and Heartbreak Warfare are the two I'm thinking of most here, but also listen to All We Ever Do Is Say Goodbye, Edge Of Desire (anybody else think this song sounds like Jimmy Eat World circa 2004?). All beautiful melodies.

Assassin is shaping up to be my favorite song off the album, and thank goodness it's smack dab in the middle to break up all those crap tunes. This one really demonstrates the little things that put John Mayer above most pop artists recording today. Just like 95% of popular music, the first chorus of this tune is underlined by some pretty simple power chords. It's at 3:41 when the second chorus starts right after his guitar solo, holy cow he adds just the second note of each chord to each chord he plays and it elevates the foundation of the song to a whole new level. It's a subtle addition but it really distinguishes it from the humdrum music that we hear so often.

And I have to note the bass playing here. Bassist Pino Palladino is out of this world. To get the full effect of his playing, throw on some headphones, turn them up just a bit more than you normally would, and listen to the introduction up through the first chorus. Listen to the bass. Pino is the most controlled bass player I've ever heard. No matter how many notes he seems to bounce over, every single one fits within each chord and leads the listener along without them knowing where we're going. Listening to this song for the first few times, I could never predict what was coming next in the bass line. So great. Pino kills it here.

One quick note about Half Of My Heart, almost certainly coming to a radio near you very soon. The song is fine, nothing too special, but the back-up vocals are sung by freakin' Taylor Swift. Alright JM, I've got beef with this. She's got a fine voice, clear and pretty, but she's hardly even in this song, and the only reason I can really see that you added her in this is to grab a few new country music fans and tween fans who weren't at music-purchasing age when Mayer released Wonderland eight years ago. At the writing of this, Half Of My Heart was at #7 on the iTunes Singles chart. And I guarantee it's only because the title is followed by (with Taylor Swift). And with all of his clout, all of his street cred in the music community, he gets Taylor Swift to guest on his record? The man has worked with Billy Preston, B.B. King, John Scofield, Herbie Hancock, is friends with Buddy Guy and Eric Clapton, and he gets pop-tween-queen Taylor Swift to guest on his record. Just kind of a bummer to me.

Other random thoughts: War Of My Life wins the award for gayest John Mayer song title, while Friends, Lovers Or Nothing is definitely a great track and it will be a great show/encore closer. In very much the same vein as I'm Gonna Find Another You, just more Beatles-ish. Bold move too, leaving out that ol' oxford comma.

So I don't think it's not his best work, but overall it fits well into his canon. And now that I've had a week with it, I can say that it's worn well already. The first two days I gave the songs I didn't like five or six listens to give them a chance and then started skipping them, the last few days they've all definitely grown on me. So go buy it. Support good music, because the month of November will have seen album releases from Weezer, 50 Cent, Bon Jovi, Fall Out Boy (a greatest hits compilation, are you kidding me?), Lady GaGa, Adam Lambert, Rihanna, and Lil' Jon. When the music scene is that bleak, you've got to stand up for what's right and good in this world. John Mayer might not completely fit those two adjectives, but he's far better than all of the other stuff I just listed.

-Jon

A thank you letter to J.J. Abrams

2009-11-10T11:13:00.005-06:00

HOLY COW CLICK THIS AND READ.

?????

I have to give all credit to Adam and his friend who linked this article on Adam's blog. I am speechless after reading this. J.J. Abrams has exactly nailed so many genius thoughts in his commentary of modern American popular culture. The Age of Immediacy, what a dead-on phrase. This is exactly why I strive to keep my iTunes library so immaculately organized and complete, and why I was so excited for The Dark Knight before it came out. This is why I don't want to watch Lost on TV, I want to wait until the whole show is on DVD and I can enjoy it in the privacy of my own home, away from prying eyes and spoiler-happy media junkies. I admit, I am absolutely a technophile and love keeping up with the media and the newest trailers and who's going to be in what new movie four years down the road, but there are some things which are so artful, so full of originality and excitement, that I do my very best to save every facet of the adventure so I can enjoy it the way I want. Slowly and each part in its due time. Mystery is such a valuable thing and in our culture of complete publicity and overexposure, where everybody has to know who is dating who, with a few clicks of a mouse button you can find out what your favorite celebrity's next project is, where they shop or even what they had for breakfast, mystery is such a rare and priceless commodity.

Thank you, J.J. Abrams, for bringing mystery back into the American eye and making us love it and long for it. Please don't ever stop making awesome things to watch.

-Jon

This is why I don't scare people.

2009-10-30T14:59:00.002-06:00

'Tis the season. I still laugh every time I see this.

Happy Halloween.

-Jon

Juliet, Naked

2009-10-20T21:11:00.003-05:00

I just finished the latest novel by Nick Hornby, called Juliet, Naked. Where to even begin with this one. Definitely worth the read. Hornby has such an incredible way with dialogue and metaphor. He communicates his ideas in such unique ways through his prose; everything he has written is informed with this very intelligent yet accessible use of words.

My favorite Nick Hornby book is still, and probably always will be, High Fidelity. It had the perfect voice of a messed up guy just trying to figure out his relationships, connecting everything in his life with music. The book speaks to me more directly than any other novel I've ever read. And while I liked that one more than Juliet, Naked, this was definitely the most entertaining of all his novels behind High Fidelity, probably because it's much along the same lines. The book is about an English couple who lead mediocre lives. The guy is Duncan, obsessed with the music of Tucker Crowe, a reclusive American musician whose last release (entitled Juliet) came out twenty years ago. Since Duncan is the regarded as the foremost authority on all things Tucker Crowe (he is basically in charge of the Tucker Crowe online forum/message board), he is sent an advanced copy of Juliet, Naked, an album of the demo tracks that eventually would become the tracks of Juliet. He writes a review of this new demo album, and this review is the impetus that sets a whole string of events in motion. That was maybe too long of a synopsis.

There are a lot of reasons why I liked this book. And one big one why I didn't. Let's get the negative out of the way. I didn't like the ending. Done. Now to the good stuff. It read better for me than any of his other books (with the exception of High Fidelity, of course). A big part of that is probably due to the musical nature of the content, which I really enjoyed. Hornby has this intimate knowledge of music, and just as important, he knows how to translate that knowledge to the page. It's incredible. And to hear his observations on music from different viewpoints was very cool. You've got the musician himself, the obsessed fan, and the non-obsessed fan, all with thoughts on the same album. Even cooler, it's not just a normal album, but demos from a critically-acclaimed, classic break-up album. There is an important and intriguing relationship between the recorded album versions of songs by an artist and the demos of those songs. Hornby explores that musical relationship to very interesting depths. And the voice of each main character seems right on. I obviously don't know what it's like to be a famous and successful music artist but it sounds right to me. I do, however, know a lot of how the obsessed and non-obsessed fans think and feel towards the music of their idol and towards the idols themselves, and Hornby has nailed exactly how these fans think and feel and talk.

One thing that I especially loved in this book is how Hornby breaks down the relationship between the fan, the art, and the artist. One of my favorite passages of the whole book is when Duncan's girlfriend Annie reads his review of the newly released Juliet, Naked (the demo album) and finally sees Duncan in a new light. It's such a brilliant exposition of fans versus their idols and the art they create and to be honest, it got me super worried about myself. I'm not an artist. I don't write songs that people listen to and enjoy. I don't write novels that people read and enjoy. Et cetera. Yet I'd say the majority of my blogs are my review of something, an album, a book, a TV show, whatever. And Annie's thoughts on Duncan's review are scathing, because while he writes thinking he is an expert on the music of Tucker Crowe and able to expound on his music with more authority than anyone else, she realizes that really he's just a pompous ass who reviews other people's work with a smug authority because he can't actually create anything of real value himself. As soon as I finished that passage, the passage where Annie realizes what Duncan's review actually says about Duncan as a person, I immediately read it again and then thought about how I write. It's a tad distressing to think that the writing you've spent a fair amount of time and energy on might just be a lot of hot air. It will, at the very least, make me think as I continue to write about things I'm into, or things I'm not into.

Back to the book. So there's lots of cool thoughts on fans, artists, art, etc. Also covered in great lengths is divorce and the relationship between spouses, exes, and parents and children, some close to home, some estranged. Hornby doesn't tread lightly around taboos, and it makes for very thoughtful writing. He challenges societal conventions, but not in a "let's tear the system down" type of way, in a rather subtle way. For example, he touches on the subject of the differing of parental love toward different children. And he handles the subject gracefully and makes sense in the way he writes. That's what I love about Hornby's writing. It makes sense. Even if you don't agree with him, you've never seen the idea presented from quite such a unique angle and it makes you think hard through what he's saying.

This is a great book; Hornby's written another gem. But don't take my word for it! (Dun nuh dun!)

-Jon

Sex & the City

2009-10-19T16:12:00.004-05:00

Admission: I watch, and thoroughly enjoy, Sex & the City.

It's an admission not because I feel guilty about it (I don't), but
rather because it's uncommon. While I haven't polled lots of guys
about it, I still don't know many that would call themselves fans of
the show. The core audience is middle-aged, single women. But I'm
throwing caution to the wind here, and it's really a great show.

What the heck do I find enjoyable about it? It's relational. All the
best (or all my favorite) art draws somehow on relationships. Most of
my Top 10 Favorite Movies are, at their core, about relationships. And
I'm not just restricting this to romantic, heterosexual relationships.
SATC analyzes so many different kinds of relationships, romantic,
platonic, hetero-, homo-, parent-child, and on and on. Yes, there is a
nearly superfluous amount of sexual content on the show, but just
because it's called Sex & the City does not limit the breadth or scope
of its knowledge to sexuality. More often than not, it relates its
sexuality to relationships and how the two are intertwined. Makes for
an engrossing show.

Until the last few episodes Colleen and I watched, one of the things I
liked most about the show is that instead of indulging itself in the
ubiquity of the "drama"-filled TV story lines, each episode could
stand alone in an observation of some aspect of relationships. There
is the ever-present story arc of Carrie and Big's relationship, but up
until the last few episodes, that was less about stereotypical, soap
opera-esque "drama" and more about the real issues that the two faced
in their getting together, breaking-up, lasting feelings towards each
other, etc.

However, that important distinction was crushed in the last two
episodes we watched. Carrie is dating Aiden, everything is going
great, and Big finds his way back into Carrie's life. Spoiler alert:
she ends up cheating on Aiden with Big. Not that cheating doesn't
happen in real life, but I certainly don't want to see it pop up on
this show when it's on every other relationship show on TV. It's
unoriginal.

I still hold out hope for the show though. As long as this stupid
cheating story arc ends itself soon, I will continue to watch and
enjoy it. With that in mind, I probably wouldn't recommend it. While
it makes very interesting observations about relationships of all
sorts, its portrayal of life in Manhattan for the thirty-something
single woman seems fairly absurd. They are always eating out, always
out for a drink, always buying expensive shows, always having
uninhibited sex with whoever they want. I've never lived in Manhattan
nor even visited New York, but the lifestyle they depict just seems
far too good to be true. I'm fairly certain that in real life, all of
these women would be homeless, penniless, in debt up to their eyeballs
and just chock-full of STIs. No thanks.

But it's not reality is it? It's just fantasy and so makes for a great
thirty minutes of TV.

-Jon

An iTunes Update. Kind of.

2009-10-16T14:51:00.004-05:00

Here's something cool. Pop into iTunes. Highlight your main music library, and organize it in a grid (the three buttons to the immediate left of the search field in the top right of the itunes box). Make sure you're viewing all albums or all artists. Now click View along the menu bar at the top, go down to "Sort Albums", and make sure that "By Year" and "Ascending" are checked. Now back under the View tab, go to "Grid View" and make sure that "Group Albums" is checked. Now you're looking at your iTunes library as chronologically as is possible.

I'm wondering how many people will think this is cool. Or how many people read my blog anyway. Regardless, I find this to be a cool way to look at the music you listen to. It's also started me thinking about music in terms of years. What year was most musically important to American culture? What year is most important to me in terms of my favorite albums ever released? It's an impossible question obviously, but still fun to think about. Based on the music I have, 1967 was a super important year. Aretha Franklin's debut album, along with the first two Jimi Hendrix Experience albums and The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper. I hope Apple eventually lets you incorporate months into the "year/date" classification of your music. I would have a hey-day.

Here's a breakdown of my library. My earliest dated music is from 1924, George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. It's the only classical piece I have in my iTunes. After that I've got Robert Johnson's Complete Recordings released in 1936, and then Miles Davis' classic album Birth of the Cool in 1949. After that, starting in 1954, my library really starts off. Here is the breakdown. Keep in mind this does include EPs and the few singles I have, so these numbers aren't exact. I have, however, taken into account double albums (e.g. The Beatles' White Album, etc.).

'50s: 22 albums

'60s: 67 albums

'70s: 80 albums

'80s: 22 albums

'90s: 50 albums

The Naughts: 269 albums

Year with the fewest albums: 1985 & 1988 (1 album)

Year with the most albums: 2006 (55 albums)

From 1954 to 2009, there are only two years for which I only have one album. That means for 53 years of music, I have at least two albums released in each of those years. Crazy. Interesting too that both years I only have 1 album were '80s years. Man did those '80s suck musically. They were such a weird transitional period, moving from disco and the birth of "hard" rock in the '70s to the oh-so-bubbly bubble gum pop era of the '90s. Don't know what it is about those '80s they just don't appeal to me. With the monumental exception of Stevie Ray Vaughan, one of my biggest guitar player influences.

So sort of a cool thing. You can listen through your library chronologically if you want. Or pick out a favorite song of the year. This will make it a lot easier to do "Best of the Year" lists from now on.

-Jon

11:12 p.m.

2009-10-05T22:56:00.000-05:00

Monday night. Writing thank you notes. Drinking Busch Light. I hear rain outside and Vince Guaraldi inside.

No complaints.

-Jon

Are You The Goddess?

2009-10-02T09:20:00.000-05:00

This video is starting to make the rounds; I've seen it on various websites, Twitter, that sort of thing, so I decided to jump on the band wagon and post the official The Next Hilarious Video. Somebody just took an awful video dating reel from the '80s and spliced it to make a montage of the worst possible clips. Get a load of these guys.

Whenever the guy who starts at 1:39 pops up, holy cow he says hilarious thing. Really though this whole thing is great. Happy Friday.

-Jon

Countdown.

2009-09-26T14:39:00.001-05:00

The wait begins. John Mayer has put the first single off of "Battle Studies" up on his website. (If you want to give it a listen, it's right here.) With his last two albums, I managed to wait until the release date to hear the entire thing for the first time (excluding a few listens of the single, which is hard to avoid due to the radio, music TV, etc.), and it definitely paid off. I grew to know each album as a whole rather than The Single and then The Rest Of It, commonly known as The Good Stuff. I don't want the single living in a different space in my head than the rest of the album. This almost always pays off for listening to most full albums for me, and I don't want to make Battle Studies any different.

That being said, 1 month and 22 days until the album is released. Good grief.

-Jon

"Hey, wha' happened?"

2009-09-25T14:12:00.000-05:00

These two clips are from the Christopher Guest-directed a mighty wind. The film is a fake documentary about the organization of a tribute concert featuring three old folk acts from the last 40 years and it stars much of the same cast as other movies directed by Christopher Guest: Best In Show, For Your Consideration, Waiting For Guffman, and the classic This Is Spinal Tap. I'm not a giant fan of any one of them; they're all pretty funny but not laugh out loud. Except for these two clips. Each scene features Fred Willard as a ridiculous manager of one of the folk groups in this tribute concert. Colleen and I were crying after this first clip, we rewound it like four times. Not much else by way of introduction so here you go:

And the second one:

I can't get over how funny his character is to me. The love of catchphrases, the fart machine, the whispering, his hair. His phrasing is just too funny. The "19seventymmmm" is such a funny idea, when I get that old and I ever have to reference anything from my 20s I'm going to do that everytime. Again, the movie as a whole is alright, but man this guy is thoroughly entertaining.

-Jon

Sorority Girls Keep Texting Me.

2009-09-24T13:39:00.000-05:00

On Monday, I was at the Union grabbing a bite to eat before class and I got this text that I subsequently deleted because it was from a number I didn't recognize and it didn't make any sense. Anyway, the text itself read somewhere along the lines of "ahoy ladies! anyone up for a kill today?"..... What did it mean? I didn't have a clue, and that's why I deleted it. I thought it was a fluke. I have since received a string of texts like this, and I have yet to reply to any of them to tell them I'm not who they think I am. Here are the other texts I've received in chronological order (note: all poor grammer and spelling is exactly as the texts are received by me, with a blank indicating an excluded phone number):

"Hey girls! If anyone is free between 3 and 4 today... Contact Caitlin lueck about an easy kill for big points! This is laura muyres btw."

"Nik miller is leaving olin at 1 45. Anyone have his name and is ready to kill then? Txt jankowski ______"

"Trevor funk is in class in the school of ed until 1215. lets get him he'll never suspect it and hes worth extra points. Txt _______ its schmelds"

"ahoy ladies! Claire needs ppl to go to intermurals let her know if you are free"

"ahoy laides! Stake out at noon whos in? Talk to jesse if you can make it"

"Ahoy who has Kriepkes name??"

"Anyone free from now till one?"

"Who has matt abrahmsons name?"

"ahoy are you up for a kill at 345"

"Ahoy! If you are not busy, we need to kill some boys who are in aliber. Blake and nick thierer are for sure here. Tell me if youre in! Spread the word please."

"ahoy! Who is up for a stake out this afternoon? Is you are available contact beth ann"

"This is from Carley. we need these names.. brunning rapp myhre brice raether frahm dang and david text claire asap!! ______ foward on"

"BE CAREFUL!! Try not to leave your dorms! Stay inside and if you need to go somehwere get a ride. NO hubble and No spikes! We are almost done!"

"Yes. Its a waterballoon fight!"

"We played better and harder than those baby TCs so let's go super soak them and finish it off! Everyone come to the house at 10 for some sneaky TC fun! Forward!"

I'm so confused by all of this. It seems like some fraternity/sorority type of game of which I've inadvertently become a part. Weird. I'm not sure how long I should keep receiving these before I text back to say I'm the owner of the phone number and not whoever they think they're texting. What a weird problem.

-Jon

album art exchange.

2009-09-23T16:13:00.000-05:00

Check THIS website out. By far, it is the most substantial, comprehensive collection of album art I've ever found. And all really high quality too. Plus a nerdy little blog about the new cover art that comes out each week. It's awesome.

I stumbled on it a few days ago and went on a rampage through my iTunes. The only albums that didn't have cover art were a few John Mayer live shows I had, but everything else had at least some kind of art. The problem was that a lot of the cover art was from Google images and wasn't the same size, good resolution, etc. So I went through all my cover art and replaced as many images as I could that weren't uniform. And aside from the approximately 10 dissimilar album covers I couldn't find, all of my 539 albums now have consistent album art. It is a wonder to behold.

-Jon

fall music preview '09.

2009-09-19T09:44:00.000-05:00

just noticed that rolling stone has again released another seasonal music preview. let's do it. artist name followed by album title in italics and release date in parentheses.

1. mika - the boy who knew too much (9/22)

this is almost certainly going to be the most fun record this whole season. now i'm not crazy for mika; his last album was great, and i just never really got into it. it's just a good one to have on reserve in your ipod just in case you're ever driving and want to start a party in your car. he's got pop music down to a science, big sounds, colorful melodies, hooks like you wouldn't believe. and he's got the voice to sell it perfectly. he sounds like freddie mercury dashed with just a hint of gay. good joke jon.

2. the roots - how i got over (10/20)

torn on this one. i've got lots of roots records, but i've never fallen in love with any of them. and since i've never seen them perform live, i can't actually lend any weight to the "best live band ever" title that they get all the time. i didn't really give their last two albums more than a few listens as they seemed very dark and very unhappy about white people in general. their beats have always seemed pretty raw and not meant to draw the listener in by being easy to digest. that being said, i saw them perform their single "how i got over" off album of same name on late night with jimmy fallon, the show on which they are the house band (and really make the show watchable in my opinion), and it was super great. lots of fun, high energy, just a great tune. i've also heard the album version on okayplayer.com (the roots flagship website) and while it is different than their performance, it's still a good tune. so i have no idea about this album. could be great, could be a pass-over for me.

3. creed - full circle (10/27)

hahaha. remember how awful these guys were back in 2001? when i mock a song by singing in a ridiculous "rock" voice, scott stapp is who i'm emulating. can't believe they got back together to make more music. a real shame.

4. the swell season - strict joy (10/27)

looking forward to this album more than all of them except jm's. the swell season are glen hansard and marketa irglova, the two actors/musicians from the 2007 movie "once". i've never really written about this movie or it's soundtrack, and i'd like to sometime because it is incredibly affecting to me. suffice it to say that both the movie and the music from it are real beauty, and what i've heard from this new album is very, very good. i've heard a few live versions of a couple tunes and the record version of the tune "low rising" and it completely blew me away. this album is going to be a year-end favorite for me.

5. john mayer - battle studies (11/17)

last and the one i'm most excited for, without a doubt. what's up with jm releasing all his studio albums in the fall? he's got a thing for autumn i think. as of yet, i haven't heard a single thing except background snippets of tunes off this album, and i'm excited and anxious to hear where he's going after one of my very favorite records ever continuum. it's been three years since that album came out and lots has happened in his life since then. mainly he's become a douchebag in the public eye. we'll see how that translates to music. hopefully something great.

there we go. loads more albums were on the list, just nothing that really excited much more than these. and i'm probably only going to buy the last two when they come out, the rest i can wait awhile to hear.

i was looking back at my previous "music preview" posts and noticed that i said lots of things about albums i was excited about and then they let me down or they totally blew me away. i think what i'm gonna do from here on is every time i go over a new music preview, i'll take a look back at the most recent preview and take stock of what i actually liked or didn't like. that being said, i'm gonna do the last two spring previews from this year and last year to catch up. album title first followed by artist in parentheses.

- hard candy (madonna): didn't even listen to it. heard the single with justin timberlake, thought "eh."

- rising down (the roots): like i said earlier, very dark and raw. hard to listen to for me. didn't love it.

- lay it down (al green): without a doubt one of my Top 5 Favorite Albums. of any genre. any artist. of all time. fantastic, brilliant, luminous album. can't say enough good.

- we sing. we dance. we steal things (jason mraz): never really digested it. but it sounded alright.

- viva la vida or death and all his friends (coldplay): another brilliant album from coldplay. totally love this band, and this album, along with al green's, was for sure my most played during 2008. such a great, great record.

- weezer (weezer): didn't even bother. i wrote about it just to make fun.

- seeing sounds (n.e.r.d): definitely let down by this one. i loved the single but the rest was just too off-kilter for a n.e.r.d record. i was hoping for much more along the lines of fly or die and i got just something weird.

- way to normal (ben folds): loved it. listened to this a ton. really fun, great melodies, great hooks, great tunes overall. awesome album.

so those were all from the spring '08 preview, and the four albums i wrote about for the spring '09 preview were all duds, as in i didn't listen or buy any of them so i have no follow-up at all.

have to mention one album that almost fell through the cracks here, since it wasn't on the spring '09 preview and it was just released so it missed the fall '09 preview too. jay-z just released the blueprint 3 a week ago and i must say he has another winner. i am in love with this album right now. great beats, great rhymes, great collabos, everything on here is awesome. jay's still got it. such a great record. definitely will tide me over until october 27th, which will then suffice until november 17th. come on autumn!

-jon

2 videos.

2009-09-14T23:56:00.000-05:00

i've come across 2 videos lately.

1: this one is 10 minutes from jay-z's 9/11 benefit concert at madison square garden in new york. he had loads of guests but this is a clip of my favorite guest.

now while i love john mayer, i'm a little iffy about his performance at the show. i don't know what it was, he just didn't seem totally on. he didn't seem to add tons to the music. and he was a little too styled out. leather jacket and tight pants? it just didn't seem very representative of how he usually is. but whatever. he played guitar for jay-z. talk about cred.

2: cat massage.

man i find this funny. i'm assuming this is just a edited version of an awful longer version. this is from the twitter page of neal brennan (created chappelle's show with dave chappelle). hilarious at 2:37 when the cat looks to the cameraman for help.

-jon

make up some music.

2009-09-14T15:59:00.001-05:00

this thing is so freakin' sweet.

directions:

click any of the squares. each square makes a tone. each square in a horizontal row makes the same tone at a different timed interval. if you light up two squares next to each other, there will be no pause between the tones. light up two squares with a space in between and you'll get a longer interval between tones. likewise, each square in a vertical column makes tones; the lower the square in the column, the lower the tone. press space to clear the board and start over.

on top of that, if you click on the audiotool button below the grid, and then the audiotool button again on the next page, it loads a flashplayer program where you can basically make your own beats in your web browser. and we're not just talking one simple keyboard here. there are so pedals, electric keyboards, soundboards, and other equipment that you can use to tweak your beat. i discovered all this like ten minutes ago so i hardly even know what kinds of stuff i can do. this is clearly for experts, i'm gonna look at it for like thirty seconds, not figure anything out and be done.

but the tone matrix is awesome. and simple. whether you spend a long time figuring out some nifty little beat in your head or you just randomly light up a bunch of squares, you'll have a very cool sounding thing. have fun.

-jon

p.s. this is from k. west's blog. bummer about him this weekend.

The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day

2009-09-03T08:27:00.001-05:00

I just watched the trailer for The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day. Yes, the sequel to the "cult classic" The Boondock Saints.

This movie, or set of movies, now joins the list of "Why did they keep going?" franchises. I know that sounds negative but it's not completely; I would add good movies to that list along with bad. This list includes, yet is obviously not limited to: Green Street Hooligans (yes, there is a sequel), basically any horror franchise, every single superhero franchise (good and bad included, I'm looking at you Christopher Nolan's Batman movies and Fantastic Four, respectively), Lost Boys, most of the Disney Animated Classics, and loads more I can't think of right now. The point is why do studios/filmmakers/directors/etc. continue movie franchises when continuing almost certainly means devaluing the franchise of any sort of credibility?

Let me go back a little bit. The Boondock Saints is a great movie. Funny, violent, exciting, artistic, it's very entertaining to watch. While it doesn't seem to have much premise other than "two Irish residents of Boston go on a violent God-ordained rampage and kill lots of bad gangsters in their city," it makes for an interesting concept and really is more of a vehicle for how the killing goes down. Which sounds mindless but translates to a very cool movie.

So you have this movie. It was (apparently) a disaster to make, made no waves when it was released in theaters, and then became a huge hit released on DVD, thanks to the powerful effect of word-of-mouth between college kids. It's considered a cult classic. And now, ten years later, a sequel is being made. I just watched the trailer, and it looks like they've replaced the Rocco character (comic relief sidekick from the original) with another Rocco-like character, and instead of Willem Dafoe playing the FBI agent tracking the Saints down, he's been replaced with a "sexy" crime-fighter who's "really gonna give them hell." Those are not quotes from the trailer, just a way to emphasize the cliches of movie sequels, the whole "upping the ante" factor. Sounds awful doesn't it?

Here's the interesting part. It might not be. The same writer-director of the original is helming the sequel, and the whole main cast (excluding Dafoe) is returning. This means the same two Saints (who really sold the original), their same bushy-bearded dad, and the squad of Boston police officers who were Dafoe's lackeys in the original. It actually seems like it might turn into a decent movie, as far as movie sequels go.

I think I was just a little annoyed by the fact they were making a sequel at all, as good as this might be. The Boondock Saints was a great movie, why can't it be left at that? People sacrifice their art and continue to make something after the creative well has dried and it cheapens whatever of the original was good.

So unless I hear that it really is awesome, I probably won't see this movie. Because honestly, how many people do you remember saying "Man Home Alone 3 is really where the series took off. I'm so glad they got rid of Macaulay Culkin"?

-Jon

heads up.

2009-08-24T21:19:00.000-05:00

hate to harp on about john mayer but he just released very big news.

the latest album, "battle studies," will be released on november 17, with the first single to be released ahead of that.

HOLLER.

-jon

tell 'em that it's.....

2009-08-17T10:57:00.000-05:00

i'd like to state first and foremost that as a nation, we should move on from michael jackson's death. yes he was a pop icon, but the guy hadn't released anything really good since '87's "bad." his talent was not taken from us "too soon," as is always said when a celebrity dies. he wasn't murdered, there is no conspiracy, we don't need to hear any interviews with his personal chef. he was just an old dude who had some health problems and had a heart attack. move on, mass media.

that being said, i want to bring attention to this performance of "human nature" from the mj tribute show. say what you will about john mayer, the dude is such a versatile musician. love that guitar tone.

-jon

you don't know jack!

2009-08-13T13:16:00.000-05:00

i tend to exaggerate often in my daily speech. two of my most common embellishments are that something is "the best" or "the worst." and since i work at a video store, these are mostly used in reference to movies, tv shows, or actors. i used to think that the office (us) was probably my favorite show on tv, and then i discovered arrested development. really absorbing arrested, and seeing the office's last two seasons of unfunny episodes, led me to replace the office with arrested development as the reigning favorite television show of mine.

it's nearly time to pass the torch, arrested. i just finished watching the third season of 30 rock for the second time and my goodness. what an incredibly funny show. i can honestly (and without any exaggeration) say that it is, by far, the funniest show on television right now. there isn't any show that even comes close to touching 30 rock. this blog wasn't going to be about 30 rock however, so all i do want to say about it is that to me, it seems so similar to arrested development, so if you've seen one but not the other, please go watch the other. they're both outstanding shows.

i wanted to bring attention to jack mcbrayer, the actor who plays kenneth ellen parcell on 30 rock. i recently saw him late night with jimmy fallon about a month ago, and then again on the tonight show a couple weeks ago. he is very funny in person, and even better, very much like his character on 30 rock. here he is on jimmy fallon.

i find him really funny. and he's just one of the many funny characters on 30 rock. so watch it.

-jon

p.s. jimmy fallon uses the word insane too often to describe things.

Jon's 101th Blog Post Spectacular!

2009-08-09T20:26:00.001-05:00

i just realized that i inadvertently missed my big 100th blog post by posting a joke about inter-species relations. oh well.

so i've actually written 100 blogs. that's a pretty cool achievement for me, especially considering some of them were pretty substantial. others obviously were pretty dumb (see last post) but i'm decently proud of myself for keeping up with this for as long as i have. it's a great feeling to write something and then put it out for anybody to stumble across. a good outlet. so thanks for reading. i don't plan on quitting anytime soon.

as is hopefully noticeable to the avid reader of my blog, i've changed the look up a bit. this template is called rounders. don't know why. i've seen some other blogs that are designed in very cool ways (awesome picture karlie), but i have no idea how to church this thing up other than changing background colors. oh well.

i'm also confused about font and almost more importantly, spacing of lines. i kind of feel like the blogspot service isn't the most user friendly when it comes to organization.

but that's what i intend on figuring out as i continue to blog. here's to hoping you'll stick around while i learn how to space all my lines evenly. that would be awesome.

-jon

quick joke.

2009-08-05T13:44:00.001-05:00

funniest actual joke i've heard in a long time, from conan's monologue, wednesday, july 29th:

"in south carolina, a man has been arrested for the second time for having sex with a horse.

... apparently this guy just couldn't take 'neigh' for an answer."

-jon

turns out my cellular telephone was a lemon.

2009-08-03T13:29:00.000-05:00

i've had quite an important last couple of weeks. among other things, i got a new cell phone with a new number. i'll have the old one for the next few days so if you want my new number just text the old one.

and maybe once i've got time to process everything else, i'll write a bit about it. we'll see.

-jon

update.

2009-07-11T19:24:00.001-05:00

edited to say: forgot to mention earlier that i am nearing my 100th blog, so when that happens i will update this mug just a bit. change fonts, maybe even a color or two. my buddy adam did it and it looks awesome and it will also look like i am copying him now. dang.

remember when i used to blog? the good ol' days.

since it's been over a month, here's some stuff that's happening as of late.

been listening to ben folds as much as i can. everything too, old/new/stuff with the five. smoke is still one of the most incredibly well-written songs i've ever heard. mulling over a possible Top 5 list of favorite songs. we'll see.

my bachelor party was thrown last night. super great time. might put up pictures recap the night a bit. i want to give a tip o' the cap to my best bud joel and the boys for putting on one hell of a party for me. thanks guys.

and along those lines, it is two weeks until i am married. in exactly two weeks time i will be shaking my tookus on the dance floor at my reception with my beautiful new bride and a bunch of our friends. i am super nervous but even more excited.

started reading a book now that my summer class finished and i've got a tad bit more free time. it's called a severe mercy by sheldon vanauken. it's a walk through of this guy's relationship with his wife and has a lot of letters from his good friend c.s. lewis. pretty good so far.

while making the slideshow for the wedding, i got a glimpse of how cool i was in high school. seeing all the cool clothes i wore made me want to try and reclaim a bit of that former glory so i went out and bought a cards cap. holler.

and that little raspberry on my hand is from the bachelor party. i was a 1st-time kayaker.

consider yourself updated. i'm off to work.

-jon

conan's first week.

2009-06-04T18:11:00.000-05:00

conan o'brien has officially taken over the tonight show franchise on nbc. he's gotten through his first week and i couldn't be happier. he moved in with little to no hiccups, and it looks as though he's gonna make a great host.

monday was such an exciting night for me. i'd waited three months with great anticipation to see conan back on the air and i was just amped to see the news anchors end with "stay tuned for the tonight show with conan o'brien on next!" right off, i've gotta say that seeing conan's new show, i was left with the impression that he really loves television. just as a medium, as an art form, as a way of communication, he loves television. his show started with a decades old nbc peacock logo stating, "the following program is brought to you in living color on nbc." super cool homage to an era of television gone by. his intro too has a very cool old-time microphone with a very vintage nbc logo on it and loads of flashy lights, and his new set really has the perfect mixed feeling of vintage and contemporary styles. for example, there is a mural wrapping around the stage above conan that's hard to see on tv, but it's a really trendy art-deco vintage mural with scenes from 1920s LA area and nbc logos. just really cool stuff. it's hard to explain but it just seems that conan loves tv and this whole new show is very much an homage to television from the past. such a neat thing.

conan's cold open was a great way to kick of his show too. seeing him literally run across the united states was really funny to me. the man has just the longest limbs you could ever imagine. it's incredible, and seeing him sprint across wrigley field was great. it was a great intro that i think was endearing to leno's old viewers.

the new intro is really cool too. i mentioned the old mic, but it's just a very hip, vintage montage of lights and sounds with conan's old pal and new announcer andy richter announcing conan and the band and guests. a fitting job for andy. and the theme song. oh man when i heard conan's old theme music from late night i was just ecstatic, but they've updated it with some real flourish and it kills now. it's such a great tune. seeing max weinberg and the tonight show band (previously known as the max weinberg seven) playing was great too, i'm so happy they came from new york to join conan on the show. they are such a great band.

so overall, conan was great. he seems really happy and really grateful for this new opportunity and is really excited to take the show over and make it his own. while he didn't seem completely at ease on the first night, by the end of the week he was really getting into his groove. i have no doubts he will feel right at home right away.

i guess what i mean by completely at ease is on late night, there was a lot more of him killing time during the monologue with just silliness. conan making jokes about his hair or how the audience cheered too much for him or how a joke bombed. so far on the tonight show, there has been a lot more pre-produced sketches, off-set segments (also called "remotes") which has conan interacting with just normal people, like universal studio tourists, workers on the universal studio lots, random LA citizens, etc. i've always found these segments funny, because conan has an incredible knack for improvisational comedy and finding the comical within normal situations with normal people. some of my favorite moments from late night were his remotes, like the old-tyme baseball sketch, anything that triumph the insult comic dog did, conan's bird-watching outing, conan's formation of a boy band, and conan's dinner with associate producer jordan schlansky. these are just a few of the absolutely hilarious sketches that conan has done off the set. if you have a chance, take a look at these sketches because they are thoroughly entertaining. if conan keeps this kind of comedy up on the tonight show, his viewers are in for quite a treat. what has been missing a bit, and was coming back slowly by the end of the week, was his off the cuff silliness on camera. during his monologue, conan plays the audience so well and often rambles just enough to say hilarious things. he comes up with ridiculous "impressions" of celebrities that are just him doing things like pulling on fake suspenders to do larry king. they aren't actually "good" impressions but they are funny. it's this type of silliness that has taken him a bit to ease back into since starting but i think the more he takes over the show the more we'll see it.

one thing that improved greatly as the week went by was the return of great old comedy bits from late night. when i realized they were doing in the year 2000 on wednesday, any of my fears for conan's switch to an earlier time slot were alleviated. i was unsure if they were gonna bring a lot of bits over or use max and the band in bits as much, and seeing them take a classic bit from late night and giving it just a little bit of pizzazz for the new audience was reassuring. thursday's show saw the return of max weinberg as more than just a great band leader but also a really weird and hilarious member of the show's comedy team and friday's show featured the old bit celebrity surveys. i'm not worried anymore. they'll bring over the funny stuff and leave aside the not as good stuff.

the first week was jam packed with celebs. will ferrell, tom hanks, gwyneth paltrow, ryan seacrest, and a few lesser knowns. musical guests included pearl jam (debuting a brand new song from their forthcoming album), green day (who gave conan a guitar as a house warming present), sheryl crow (performing the same song she did on her debut performance on late night with conan o'brien way back in '93 or '94, whenever it was), and most importantly for ME, john mayer trio. the trio hasn't played together in like a year and a half and to see them performing on stage was just really great. they covered california dreamin' by the mama's and the papa's and were backed by a los angeles children's choir. so awesome. leave it to john mayer to turn a '60s folk song into a real rock 'n roll tune. get a load of this.

so it's been a good first week. i want to call it great just because i'm excited to see conan doing the job he was born to do, but i'm gonna keep my grade at good for now, mainly cause i know he hasn't won many new viewers' hearts yet. but i know the show is only gonna get better. conan has only ever improved in his 16 years on television and this is his chance to really do what he wants with his show and with his comedy. can't wait to see what he's got up his outrageously long sleeves.

-jon

out with the old, in with the old.

2009-06-01T10:20:00.000-05:00

conan o'brien wrapped up the final episode of late night with conan o'brien back in march. i'm not sure why, but leading up to that show i had been actually kind of sad thinking about conan packing up and taking the reigns of the tonight show. conan had been hosting late night for 16 years now, which is actually pretty incredible if you think about it. the first year or so of the show was reamed by critics and fans alike, and subsequently has become the funniest late night talk show on television and for my money, the funniest show on television period (that's right office writers, you really have dropped the ball).

i guess it made me kind of sad thinking about his move because while i didn't watch him growing up, i started watching him all the time when i was in 8th grade and all through high school. along with jim carrey in dumb and dumber, conan was the most influential person when i was developing my own sense of funny. the guy just did and said things that always made me laugh. he was very self-depricating, but not in a "pity me"-woody allen type of way. he made fun of himself all the time, yet always laughed at the jokes he made at his expense because he knew they were funny. that's a subtle but important distinction that resonated with me very strongly. and he not only made jokes about himself, but jokes about the quality of the show, sketches, props, special effects, ridiculous audience members, inappropriate guests, etc. nothing was really off limits, but he was always respectful. his jokes were never truly mean-spirited, in his monologues, after making a completely inappropriate joke about whatever, the audience would usually laugh/make a "ohhhh" sound and he would make this hilarious face where he tensed up because he knew what he said was too much. he knew it was a joke and that face was part of the delivery but i always found it just very funny.

jay leno is also no longer the host of the tonight show. his last show was very nice; a fitting tribute to end his seventeen years as host. leno has always been kind of a tough cookie for me; i've never wanted to like him all that much but i've always enjoyed watching his show. he was never really loved by the critics or even by carson it seems. letterman was always thought of as the true successor of the tonight show and was generally treated better by critics than leno was. but leno has always been more popular with the american public, and kept the tonight show the number one rated late night show on tv. i think it comes back to his personality. his jokes were never grade A, usually landing in the cheese pile. but he was a nice guy. everybody always talks about how you could have a beer with jay. he didn't "get" twitter, just like most every american over the age of forty-five. part of it for me is that while his jokes might be too accessible or not very intelligent, he always seemed to know exactly that and just went with it and enjoyed getting easy, silly laughs. he reminded me of my dad in that way. he was always ready with the old rim-shot punch line and was pleased whether he got a big laugh or a groan and a roll of the eyes. and that's why he was successful. because people gravitate to kindness. to sincerity. and jay delivered that. he didn't deliver high-brow comedy, but he delivered a lot of silly jokes and a bit of escapism.

jay's last show was surprisingly sweet. he had the obligatory best of jaywalking sketch, and then had conan on as a guest, which was very gentlemanly of him, considering conan was taking over in two days. james taylor was jay's handpicked musical guest, playing sweet baby james, the song jay heard on his way out of boston nearly forty years ago on his way to hollywood to try to make it in show business. and then his sign off. very sweet, very leno. he introduced all the kids that had been born from couples who had met each other working on leno's tonight show, sixty-eight total, from age zero to seventeen. it was a really nice sentiment to end his last show. and it was sad too. the same type of sad conan's goodbye on late night was in march, not completely sad because he's not gonna be gone for long. but still sad. a lot of people my parents' age kind of see this as the end of an era since leno was really the only guy they liked. hopefully they give conan a chance.

if nothing else, he'll be treated better and given more slack than he was when he took over late night in '93. conan's evolution since '93 is really incredible. he started as a nervous, seemingly unfunny host who had just gotten the gig because he had connections with lorne michaels, producer of most of the funny stuff on nbc and a pretty big power player at the network. conan had been a writer on snl at the tail end of the '80s and had started writing for the simpsons during the best seasons of that show (3rd-4th). having known him from his snl days, michaels gave conan a shot once letterman announced he was leaving late night and boy did it not go over well. nobody had ever heard of this guy conan. he had never been on tv. he seemed awkward and unsure of himself. his first episode of late night was posted somewhere online a few months ago and i watched the first little bit of it. holy cow it is uncomfortable to watch. conan so very clearly isn't sure how to perform on tv, he's really nervous, and expresses that anxiousness through a lot of laughter. too much laughter. but it's understandable, the guy was an unknown taking over for fan favorite letterman. but seeing that first episode's awkward laughter and too-slow comedic pacing, it is a wonder to tune in now and see conan do his thing on late night. he owns it. he is perfect. he has become a true performer. he knows how to handle the crowd and make them laugh, he knows how to handle slip-ups in the show, he knows how to appear cool and very relaxed in his role as host. in 16 years he became the perfect host.

he belongs as host of the tonight show. i'm so intrigued to see how he fits into this new role. everything i've heard is "conan's gonna have to grow up to make it on the tonight show" but on his last show of late night, he promised he wasn't going to. reading interviews/articles about his new show recently though, i think that he knows he will have to reformat his unique brand of comedy just enough to keep the older viewers laughing along with the young kids. i don't think it will be too much though. i think he's almost got more freedom now if anything to do things with his comedy he hasn't been able to before. on leno's last show they showed a clip of a bit where conan has an academy award-winning makeup artist turn him into a completely different person and he hosts a focus group of old people watching clips of conan on late night to see how the older crowd likes him. i'm not sure what it was about it but right away it just felt like a little bit different kind of sketch than he would ever have done on late night. and it made me so excited to see what he's got in store for the tonight show.

watching conan walk out onto the tonight show stage after being introduced by jay, hearing the crowd cheer for him, hearing the tonight show band playing conan's theme song, the whole thing made me swell up with pride. conan is my tv hero. he was really gaining popularity as i started to watch him back around 2000 or 2001, and probably more than anything in the last ten years, conan has influenced my humor. it's incredible too, because i haven't even noticed it until the last year or so. conan's comedy was so subtle in sneaking into my subconscious; his bits were just hilarious to me, the way he would mock his hair or his complexion or height, the immediate rapport he had with guests of all types, just from being a good conversationalist. all of this worked it's way into my personality and has influenced me in big, big ways. and seeing him on leno's last show was just great. i hadn't seen conan do anything since his own last show last march, except for watching old late night sketches over getting amped for conan's tonight show, and seeing him again do anything on tv was just so exciting. he really is the funniest real guy on tv. he knows how to talk to people, famous or non, he knows how to ask questions, he knows how to go with the flow when things don't go exactly as scripted, he knows how to make people laugh, he knows how to make fun of himself, he knows how to make fun of others, he is extraordinarily good at improv, he will do just great as the host of the new tonight show. conan o'brien, i can't wait. you are ushering me into my adult life. thanks.

-jon

An Important Message From Conan O'Brien

2009-05-31T01:51:00.000-05:00

two more days. funniest man on television.

-jon

old blog #2: i own a giga pet named "A".

2009-05-19T14:21:00.000-05:00

i'm excited. november started, a huge test is finished, the next two weeks will keep me sufficiently busy but not crazy, and then thanksgiving break is going to rule. for three main reasons.
1. the wednesday before thanksgiving week, savion glover is performing at hancher auditorium at my university. most people probably wouldn't know savion glover by his name, but if you are anywhere near my age and grew up watching sesame street(one two three four five, six seven eight nine ten, eleven twelve-elve-elve-elve-elve-elve!)(pinball machine cartoon), savion was the black guy with dreds who tap danced all the time.

how could you not love this guy?

he will be performing with a live band, so...a killer tap dancer and a live band at hancher? it's gonna be a fantastic show. what makes it even better is that i have a midterm directly before the show so the show is like a huge treat. and my girlfriend is coming down for it so...how could it be better? if savion invited me on stage to dance with him? yes that would make it better. but that's the only way.
2. as i mentioned before, colleen is coming down for savion's show and then she and i are driving back to uni that night. i'm skipping the last two days of class that week and extending my break to eleven days. unbelieveable. the first five/six days will be spent at uni with friends, getting a feel for my new university. i'm psyched.
3. for actual thanksgiving, i'll be probably in kansas city. which is cool. i'm not ecstatic about going home, but it will be really nice to see my sisters again. thanksgiving day will rule. lots of food. lots of lazing around. post-thanksgiving cold turkey sandwiches are awesome.
so november is bringing good things. and i want you to know about these:

find this movie playing somewhere and watch it.

1. half nelson. i just saw it tonight and really liked it. still digesting it so i'm not even gonna say too much. other than ryan gosling is a phenomenal actor. saw it at iowa's indie theater, the bijou, which is a sweet place. one of the few things i'll really miss when i'm at uni. check this out, they are having a FREE pre-release showing of the tenacious d movie coming out, how sweet is that? i'm going.

"if you want to see the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain."

2. ricky gervais. funniest man on television? possibly. star of the office, which was originally a bbc show before it became popular here in america. and if you like the steve carell version on nbc, it's a hundred times funnier with this dude. and his new show on hbo, extras, is unbelieveably funny as well. i can't really communicate how much this guy makes me laugh through a facebook note so...just watch him if you ever get a chance.
i'm done. i've got lots of other stuff i'd love to tell you about but it's late. so happy november. i hope you'll enjoy it as much as i will. and i really need to figure out how to communicate ideas in some other way than a numbered list. that is so trite. and i'd like to know how to make my photos bigger. adam? anybody?

jon

p.s. i really hope somebody understood my pinball machine cartoon reference. if you did will you let me know? i have never, in my entire life, met anyone who knew what that meant other than my older sister hannah. so if you know what that is, tell me. i'll probably freak out.

thoughts from 2009 jon:

a. i wrote this on november 3, 2006.

b. savion glover is an INCREDIBLE dancer. that show was one of the coolest live performances i've ever seen.

c. half nelson is still a great movie. watch it if you haven't.

d. i'm going to write more in depth about ricky gervais' brilliance sometime in the future.

e. i needed to ease up on the list format. i used TWO numbered lists in this one post. confusing

f. the pinball sketch. number 11:

old blog #1: Web + Log = Blog

2009-05-17T01:24:00.000-05:00

I used to think the whole concept of blogs was really arrogant, like it's just one person going on some rant thinking everybody else really wants to hear their thoughts and opinions about the world. and what do I know, maybe lots of people do want to hear the the writer's thoughts. it's just the whole idea that the writer thinks his thoughts should be read/heard by everyone. it just seemed high-handed to me. until lately. i recently read a fantastic review of FutureSex/LoveSounds in a friend's note, and it really convinced me that blogging is alright. not conceited, just a handy way to let people get into your mind a little if they want. ok enough of this intro. here are some things i've been into for the last week or two.

1. Most people know i'm not a huge sports buff, but even I was following the World Series. and while i don't have a tv, i spent game 5 clicking the refresh button on si.com every 30-60 seconds. it made for an exciting night. go cards.

2. organic chemistry...as much as that might be lame, it's actually really interesting to me. unfortunately i'm not smart enough to be a chem major. shame. it's cool now that we're actually getting into practical stuff, we can do all sorts of reactions and crap. actually not in real life, but on paper, i can do reactions involving alcohols and ethers and epoxides. pretty cool.

It's called 18-crown-6 because it has 18 total atoms in the ring and 6 total oxygen atoms...and it looks like a crown.

3. bob dylan. he's just really good. that's all.

4. this whole "my shares" deal on facebook is really cool. at least to me. it's weird, i really thought that this blog feature and now the shares would catch on really fast, but not many of my friends write many notes, and so far the shares thing hasn't gone over too well. which is really too bad, because it's a way cool thing. i've only put up a few things, but i'll add quite a bit as time goes on.

5. i read today that reese witherspoon and ryan phillippe separated? i'm pissed.

Come on. Seven years of gorgeous red carpet snapshots and you're calling it quits?

6. i'm transferring to uni.

so that's all. i have to look over some notes for a biology quiz tomorrow. my bio t.a. has such a big butt, it's really hard not to stare. and he's a dude...so it gets a little awkward. but it's just so big! later.

jon

p.s. Mathmatical equations - actual numbers = really annoying.

thoughts from 2009 jon:

a. this blog was written october 30, 2006.

b. the friend i was referring to who wrote the album review was adam. you can read that blog here on facebook and his actual blog is here. great stuff.

c. the thing about my shares on facebook was way back when facebook was intuitive and cool. remember, back when high school and college were separated? when "apps" didn't exist? when you actually had to be in school to get an account? anyway, the notes feature was brand new and it was an easy way for me to start blogging without having to sign up for an actual blogging site, which i thought was lame.

d. the post script was referring to when people write sentences like "britney spears + last few years = so white trash!" i think i had read a sentence like that before i wrote it and it annoyed me.

e. since the font from facebook carried over to this website, i think i'm just gonna leave it as it is. it's a little disfunctional it seems like but it'll have to do.

old blogs.

2009-05-15T21:34:00.000-05:00

tonight i was on facebook and i remembered that i originally started blogging using facebook "notes," and after a few i decided to switch over to blogspot. i don't regret the decision, as facebook as become overridden with so much pap. anyway, i glanced through my old notes tonight and decided to add them onto this mug because a lot of them showed quite a bit of insight into how i write today. reading a few of them i was actually envious of how well thought out i think they are. so i'll start with my oldest one and add them every few days and maybe add a couple two-and-a-half-years-later edits/thoughts to them.

enjoy,

-jon

whatever works.

2009-05-08T11:32:00.001-05:00

great news. the trailer is finally out for whatever works, a new comedy written and directed by woody allen. that's not the great news. the great news is that it stars larry david. for the uninitiated, larry david co-created seinfeld along with jerry seinfeld and currently stars in curb your enthusiasm on hbo. i wasn't allowed to watch seinfeld growing up, so i never really got into it when i was younger, and i've only recently started to watch it more often, and it's funny. but it's definitely no curb your enthusiasm. the character of george was based on larry david, but nobody plays that character better than larry david himself, and that's why curb is funnier to me.

can't get off track. i just watched the trailer and while it's clearly no annie hall, it looks like the funniest woody allen movie i've seen in a while. and finally, FINALLY, a woody allen movie that doesn't star the insufferable scarlett johansson. gosh i hate that woman. larry david is just a funny guy. he has funny mannerisms, his cadence is funny to me, his face just makes me laugh. and while the supporting cast isn't full of any of my favorites, it still looks solid enough to make for a very good woody allen yarn. now i just hope it will be released somewhere around cedar falls. doubtful.

-jon

gigs #3 and #4: the hub and the hydrant.

2009-05-07T17:32:00.001-05:00

we kind of need to find a new place to play.

#3 was pretty standard, with a few interesting things to note. it was a benefit deal for one of the art groups we have on campus, which my friend paige is a part of, and she was the one that actually asked us to play. interesting too, we actually played last, this band called the beat strings opened, which was kind of funny because they were an actual band that sounded kind of like franz ferdinand, really upbeat, high energy, and then we took the stage. two dudes with an acoustic and one with an electric. weak sauce. but anyway. we played with bruce again and i played my electric, which really made a big difference in my playing and made me NOT want to play acoustic on stage again. i just feel so limited in what my hands can translate from my brain when i play the acoustic. it suits me a billion times better to play on my strat. so it was a lot more fun this time around and i got into my groove a lot faster than before. one thing that plagued our set was the lack of practicing though. eli and i had played quite a bit the week prior to this show and we worked a lot of cool things out on certain songs and even added a brand new song to the list, but we were unable to coordinate a time to practice with bruce so he came into the gig not on the same page as eli and i. we still played well i think but it definitely could've been tighter among all three of us. another cool thing about this gig: paige sang with us. that was cool to have a girl's voice amongst our sound. the most interesting thing about this show for me though was my process of relaxation on stage. i felt alright from the get go, a titch nervous but still ok. as we played on though, it got late, and people obviously got tired and started to go. as i watched people get up and walk out, i stopped thinking completely about the audience and just started to goof off and play what i wanted. that was a lot of fun, i almost just stopped caring about whatever eli and bruce were doing and started making jokes to owen and colleen and joel, who were all sitting at a table together. it was a lot of fun. less people = more fun for me. and we debuted our new song, "mess around" by ray charles. such an awesome tune, and i'm glad we have a ray charles cover in our set. super fun to play, with a chance for me to really dig into a 12-bar blues solo, which was awesome on my strat. problems: too freakin' short. we played it and out of nowhere the song was over. it's literally done in like two and a half minutes for us, which is just far too short. not good for our set and not fun for me. so overall the gig was fine. i can tell i'm getting better about being on a stage.

#4: best gig so far, by far. absolutely the most fun i've had on a stage, and i felt like i played my best so far and really got into it. started off the show with about 0.1% nerves, which is basically negligible for me. so that was great. it was just eli and i again, with me on electric. i was a bit wary before the show whether or not it was gonna sound good with just eli on acoustic and me on electric but i really felt like we found a good sound with this set up. the crowd was great, which to me means it was mainly our friends. it was the thursday before finals week so the hydrant didn't have many patrons, and i was kind of behind a speaker so most of the people who i didn't know i couldn't even see. that relaxed me a lot right from the get go. and i finally got to see how i performed with a bit of alcohol in me, which is not bad at all. around the middle of the set i started to get a bit of a buzz and instead of making me worse at playing it was just a lot of fun. it also helped me take the song omar bay on a lot easier. omar bay is the one tune where i've got a solo but i just haven't figured out yet how to make it a good solo; it's such a weird chord progression and trying to find a good melody to solo with over this progression has stumped me. but after having a few drinks, along with playing it later in the set after i've gotten comfortable, when eli looked at me and said "omar bay?" i was like "yeah....i'm gonna get you this time, omar bay." and it was awesome.

and my strat. gosh i love playing electric so much more than acoustic. it takes a ho-hum set list for me and turned it into something really enjoyable to be a part of. we played some really rockin' tunes too, the weight sounds great with me on electric, and we finished off our last set with hooch, and kevin actually came up and freestyled a little over this super funky groove we found. that's the kind of stuff i wish we played more of. stuff where i can really forget about being on a stage and just bob my head and play. it was super fun.

on top of that, a super fun one was mess around by ray charles. we ended our first set with it, and it's such a good set closer, except that it is just so short. solution is just to figure out how to medley it with another tune, preferably another ray charles tune if we could. i'm thinking i don't need no doctor, i got a woman, possibly what'd i say. figuring out how to medley a few tunes will be my project as soon as this week is over.

no more gigs on the horizon right now, but whatever else comes, i sincerely hope they are like #4. oh yeah i'm done with the semester too. awesome. two more classes and i'm out of college. holler.

-jon

p.s. my font changed for some reason unbeknownst to me. i tried for like thirty seconds to get it the same as the others but then i got lazy. so i guess just deal with it for this one post. sorry.

rashida jonz.

2009-04-28T19:56:00.000-05:00

i am watching an old episode of late night with jimmy fallon, and he introduced rashida jones (most well known as karen from the office) and the roots played "jonz in my bonz" by d'angelo for her walk-out song. the roots are incredible.

-jon

test blog.

2009-04-25T21:51:00.000-05:00

let lily lick lionel's lusty leathers, let lily lick lionel's lusty
leathers.

just a test, i set up email blogging on blogspot and i wanted to give
it a whirl.

-jon

gig #2: the hydrant.

2009-04-25T21:43:00.000-05:00

well second gig has come and gone. it kind of came up much more suddenly than the first one and it was more of a hodge podge i guess you could say, but it was still a ton of fun. little back story, eli lets me know that he's playing on thursday night at the hydrant and bruce can't due to a prior gig the next day for which he wants to save his voice (bruce's actual band stable daze was playing friday night and recording the show for a live record) but eli asked me if i would be interested in playing with just him. the problem with all of this is that the week ended up being full of stuff and we weren't really able to practice at all until thursday afternoon. by "practice" i mean eli coming over at 4 pm (gig was at 10) and us talking about songs we might want to do and not actually playing any more than one song together. ironically, it was the song i flubbed up big time at the gig but i'll get to that.

in the end, we decided that since it was just two of us, it'd be better if i was just gonna play along since we didn't really have time to practice at all. not really a night for me to play solos since there was just the two of us. and that was a good plan, but it would've been better had i been able to play some of the songs first. anyway. fast forward to later, we go up to start playing. and let me tell you, the hydrant got packed quick. i had invited more people than i realized and i think every person i told showed up. there were school friends, work friends, church friends, old friends. even a professor. it was pretty nuts. so the place felt really packed. which didn't really make me nervous, and just the fact that i wasn't really nervous was great. so eli and i go up and i just say to him play whatever and i'll catch up and we start. and i don't catch up as fast as i had hoped.

this was the result of a few little problems. first, i should've asked eli to turn my guitar up louder in the monitor. i could hear it ok, but not great during the one or two solos that i had in the beginning and i'm not one to play my guitar loud anytime at all, especially when i'm playing along with someone else to a song i've never really practiced before. so that was problem number one, and probably the biggest one. secondly, we played the song omar bay as we had at the hub at our first gig, and boy did i suck. eli gave me a solo and it was like will ferrell's devil character trying to join in. i couldn't hit notes and i was just struggling to play anything that sounded remotely good. eli took the song back quick though so it was ok. but man after we ended i could feel the sweat on my forehead and knew i had ground to gain after that.

the bright side was, as far as i could tell, the night only got better after that first crappy omar bay. we played a ton of stuff, and for a long time. we started at like 10:15 and played for about a hour, then took maybe twenty or thirty minutes and went back on until like 1:15 or 1:30. and since it was just eli and i, when we were playing we were actually playing. no eli solo sets for me to take a break. by the end, my fingers were killing me and my hands felt like glue.

we played tons of stuff too. hooch, the weight, falling slowly, always lift him up and never let him down, gulf coast highway, arms of a woman, will it go round in circles, a few eli originals, what i got, candy, street corner preacher, sitting waiting wishing, more stuff. tons of stuff i'd never played and didn't even know he could play, like candy. that was super fun cause we had never talked about us being able to play it and then he started this little riff off and i was like "what's this?" and he was gonna walk me through the chords quick and he was like "it's candy" and i immediately joined in where he was at. and then we rocked it. it's a song very conducive to two guys on acoustic guitars in a bar. another one i really enjoyed was the weight. again, hadn't played it with him before, or actually ever, but since it's a total of three chords, i picked it up quick. and it's just a fun sing-along and we threw some funk into the last few choruses that eli wasn't expecting but liked a ton.

one reason it's fun to play for some of these new people is that they don't know all my old guitar tricks. i'm pretty good at guitar, but even more than being good, i'm really good at making it seem like i'm really good at guitar. and for someone who doesn't play guitar or doesn't know tons about music, it's not that hard to come across as good. for most of our audience at the bar that night, me playing the D chord as a 7th in the chorus of the weight makes it sound funky, and all i did was play one note differently than eli did. and yet people will cheer if i play that one note and bob my head like i'm really "feeling" the groove. i'm such a poser.

but it was still a lot of fun once i found my footing. what i really think would make me and eli sound better is a time to play and practice with no one else really around. a time where i could sing harmony loud, and we could go over songs multiple times until we got them down. not playing until showtime isn't good for me. we've got two gigs this week coming up too so hopefully we'll get to play soon.

gigs this week: wednesday night at the hub (benefit/charity type show for paige. i think bruce is playing with us? i definitely want to practice before this thing) and then thursday night at the hydrant. it'd be fun to have bruce but i haven't seen that guy since i think our first show so i have no idea if he still exists. so potentially a repeat of this second gig with just eli and me. and hopefully my name will be on the ad poster hanging up at the hydrant. that would be awesome. hope to see you out there!

-jon

colleen's wall post.

2009-04-14T20:19:00.001-05:00

follow-up:

spitting image.

-jon

p.s. colleen wants credit for finding this picture.

compliment.

2009-04-14T01:01:00.001-05:00

tonight, colleen and i were sitting in her living room watching tv and doing homework and cheers comes on and she goes, "you kind of look like that guy," referring to sam, played by ted danson.

i love that girl.

-jon

spring music preview '09.

2009-04-10T13:28:00.001-05:00

so rolling stone has recently released their spring music preview, showcasing bunches of albums coming out in the next six months or so. here are the ones that caught my eye for one reason or another.

1. bob dylan - together through life (4/28)
bob dylan is an enigma to me. his music isn't exactly campus-walking music to me because i wouldn't necessarily call him all that good. like technically good. he was revolutionary, ground-breaking, all that, but he played simple guitar tunes and sang his lyrics through a weird wail. not saying it's bad, but i just wouldn't call him a virtuoso. so i wouldn't say i'm excited about a new bob dylan album, and i certainly won't go get it right away, but it will eventually find it's way into my itunes library.

2. ben harper - white lies for dark times (5/5)
this is more noteworthy just cause ben harper is a artist i respect, even though i hardly ever listen to him. he's one of those artists that i know is incredibly talented, his live shows are out of this world, he has a very cool style, but i've just never really focused on him or his music. i have his live at mars album but that's it. and the main reason i have that album is cause of his sexual healing cover (so freakin' sexy). so for me, seeing he's got a new album coming out is more like "oh. i bet it'll be good" but that's about where it ends.

3. dave matthews band - big whiskey and the groogrux king (6/2)
this is almost the same as the ben harper release for me; i almost wish i was a bigger dave fan so i was more excited about it. when i was around 15 though i fell in love with the dave matthews band and absolutely ate up all of their albums. for the last 5 years or so though, i haven't really listened to them at all. so this album i'm kind of iffy about. maybe one day in the future i will find all my old dave cds and put them on my computer and introduce them to my kids and fall back in love with their music. at that point i will probably get this album and not like it as much as under the table and dreaming.

4. ok go - title tbd (august)
i guess i can't say i'm excited for this one either, but i'm interested to hear how it sounds. their first album was great and i never really got into the second one more than like three of the tunes, but i think i would've liked it had i really spent time on it. but when lead singer damien kulash says this album sounds like "purple rain through broken speakers," that's definitely enough to intrigue me.

there were a bunch of other albums that made me say "hm interesting" but nothing i was excited about. even these four i'm like "eh." other ones i noticed but don't care about were eminem's new album, lil' wayne's, 50 cent's, green day's, jonas brothers, mos def, black eyed peas. i have thoughts about all these, but only like a sentence long so it wasn't even worth writing them down. on second thought that's wrong. here's what i think about those 7, respectively:
- you can rhyme like nobody but that doesn't matter when you don't rhyme about anything substantial and your music is SO childish.
- you had the biggest album last year but none of the songs were good. how does that work? i hope this new "rock" style you're exploring shows everybody that you actually do suck.
- no one cares anymore. what happened to the no more solo albums pledge if your album lost to kanye?
- stop trying to make epic punk music. those two words don't belong together.
- you got your fame from the DISNEY channel. how can you look at yourselves as real artists?
- i wish i liked your music more. you are a great emcee but your stuff's just not accessible to me.
- holy cow you guys stopped being good before you ever even started. pump it was kind of a fun song, yet nothing good came before it and nothing good has come since. your new song is awful. how are you still popular?

the other thing of note in the rolling stone article is how many old artists are releasing new albums. elvis costello, dmb, depeche mode, bob dylan, steve earle, flaming lips, green day, willie nelson, sonic youth, wilco, neil young. these people have all been around for at least like 15 years, some much much longer than that. that's incredible. and at the same time, disappointing that really none of them i'm big fans of.

so that's about it. really kind of a disappointing year. last year i had coldplay, ben folds, al green, john mayer. some of my absolute favorites. this year...nobody. sucks. guess it'll give me time to focus on my surplus of older music.

-jon

gig #1: the hub.

2009-03-29T18:07:00.001-06:00

ladies and gentlemen, i'd like to introduce you to the immortal string trio.

about two weeks ago, i played at the hub with these two guys. from left to right, it's me, eli, bruce. it was a ton of fun too. i was really nervous leading up to it, mainly cause the only other time i've ever played on stage was at church like three times, and these guys have been performing forever. the other reason i was nervous was that i was a little out of my element. the gig was originally gonna be at the hydrant, a small little bar that my roommate kevin works at, which i've spent a substantial amount of time at. i thought it was gonna be a really small crowd, nothing too big of a deal or anything, but then plans changed with the venue owners and we ended up playing the hub on a wednesday night. the hub is a quite bigger bar than the hydrant and i had an extra week to think about it so i got myself pretty worked up.

the day came and i got to the bar around nine, set up my guitar with eli and then just chilled out while people started trickling in. one cool thing though, eli took me down to the "green room" of the hub, i guess every venue's gotta have a place where the performers can chill out before/after the show away from the whole crowd. unfortunately the hub's green room is just the basement with a coffee table and like two crappy leather chairs and an old couch. all purchased from a thrift store most likely. so i went down with eli and bruce and another dude whose name i can't remember now and just hung out while they had a few cigg-butts. we talked through the set list a little bit but basically just decided to wing it. and we went up and played a few songs. i think our first set was about five or six songs, nothing too much. i think it was mainly to get my nerves out.

it worked too. basically the way the three of us play together is either eli or bruce takes lead vocals, the other sings harmony, eli plays the basic rhythm guitar part, bruce will dink around a little with that and i get to pretty much do whatever i want. which means adding what i can during verse chorus parts and then they usually give me a solo in songs that call for one. that was what i guess i was most nervous about; i can play chords on a stage in front of people all day and it wouldn't bother me, especially if there are two other people playing those same chords on stage with me. but soloing is a different story. when a solo happens, i'm trying express myself and the feeling of the song through strictly musical notes, and the spotlight is on me. yeesh. so the first couple songs featured a solo from me or just me playing along and it felt good to get the nerves out. especially once i realized that it was essentially like playing in my living room.

this is where i gotta give it up to my friends. all of my friends know i play guitar, and most know that i play a lot and that i'm better than the average shirtless college dude. so everybody was really supportive once they heard i was playing my first actual gig because playing with other people has always been something i've sort of wanted to do but never enough to actually pursue it aggressively. also, i've never really met anybody that has suited my musical sensibilities all that well either. i certainly hope that doesn't come off as i've never met anybody as good as me because that's not it at all, i'm not great and i've met people so much better than myself at guitar. what i mean is i haven't met anybody that's really matched what i enjoy listening to or playing to very well. eli and bruce fit that better than anybody i've ever really met.

so my friends knew i was excited and nervous about this, and they came out in droves to support me which felt great. and made me feel very much at home, literally, because with almost everybody who came, at one point or another in the last year, there have been one or two nights at least where i've played guitar in the jam shack (our garage) with all these folks around drinking. once i realized that the only difference between me playing at the hub for these people and me playing in my garage for these people was that i was standing two feet above them, i found my groove pretty quickly.

so i want to thank everybody that came out. there were new friends and old friends and super old friends, and it really meant a lot that everybody took so much out of their wednesday night to come and see us play. thanks.

so back to the actual thing. i played for about five or six songs, they let me take a break, eli and bruce duo-ed a few tunes, which is always fun to listen to them sing together, and then each of them did a solo set. so i had about an hour to hang out in the crowd and talk to friends and have a couple beers. it was great too, eli and bruce are both really great performers. they've got killer voices and they both have their own great style on guitar. and the songs they do are awesome. eli covers billy preston...enough said.

an hour goes by and eli invites bruce and i back up for another set. this is where it got fun for me. i had the jitters out and we just jammed and it was so great. set list (in no particular order):

soul scream (a bruce day original)
anywhere i go (slightly stoopid)
rivers of babylon (not sure)
wagon wheel (old crow medicine show)
2 drink minimum (chris cornell, written by john mayer)
omar bay (state radio)
arms of a woman (amos lee)
man in the hall (state radio)
always lift him up and never knock him down (old crow medicine show)
gulf coast highway (nanci griffith)
falling slowly (glen hansard)
what i got (sublime)
street corner preacher (amos lee)

that is the first list we made of songs we might potentially play. i think we did most of them, there were like maybe one or two we didn't do all together, and i know we did one or two of them twice. but you can kind of get the feeling of the music we played. folksy, acousticy, no distortion or anything like that. just music that is easy to play and fun to play well. here is the end of my solo in arms of a woman. this is nothing fantastic, and watching it again i notice how freakin' much i have to practice to get actually good or worth listening to. rather than fresh melody lines, my solos are normally just a glut of notes that fit in the chords being played cause i usually can't come up with new melody lines themselves. and from just a technical point of view, i mess up pretty obviously here and there. but again, this is my first time playing on stage ever so i was happy with how it went. and sorry about the video quality; the video function on blogger is nothing to write home about.

my favorite part of that is kevin yelling at the end, "i live with him! he's my roommate!" that's not his normal voice. devotees will remember kevin as the upside-down smile guy. anyway.

so that was it. i got to hang out with some friends and play guitar for like four hours. and on top of that, i got two free beers out of it, and on top of THAT, i got paid. like i was a legitimate working musician. this put me through the roof cause honestly, the thought of getting paid hadn't crossed my mind through these few weeks like once. i was just excited i was getting to tag along with two seasoned performers to play on a stage in front of people i liked. i felt like the kid brother who had just gotten lucky and got to hang out with the older kids. i hadn't thought once that i was gonna get compensated in any way. if anything, i was surprised i didn't have to pay the bar owner to let me up on stage with a guitar, but when the owner of the hub gave me money for the gig, forget about it. what a treat. a great way to end my night.

so right now, there has been a little talk between the three of us about playing another show soon. the next one will be at the hydrant on the 2nd (tomorrow), and it's actually just me and eli playing this one, bruce had a prior engagement. but i'm really excited because now that i have one gig under my belt, the next one will be a lot easier to be psyched for, and eli and i will have a fun time experimenting with what we can do on our own. he plays some great songs when he does solo shows and i'm excited to see what i can do with them. plus the hydrant is a super small and fun bar so i am already looking forward to it. we're going on about 10 pm. hope to see you out there.

-jon

reptile.

2009-03-29T13:54:00.000-06:00

eric clapton is sort of a tough case for me. he is widely acknowledged as one of the best guitar players ever to grace the stage, even prompting graffiti artists in the 70s to write the infamous phrase "clapton is god" various places around england. the problem for me is that his music and his playing is so deeply rooted in the blues. now this is absolutely not a bad thing, but instead of adding the sensibility of blues into his pop music (or vice versa) in a subtle way, he often plays lots of just straight up 12 bar blues music, like straight from the 20s. it's pretty intense bluesy music. and as much as that music is great, i usually don't just sit down and listen to an album full of it. that's why i've never really digested anything he did with cream, anything with the yardbirds, any of the derek and the dominoes, any of his first few solo albums. the only ones i've ever really gotten into are obviously unplugged (basically the album that taught me how to play real guitar) and pilgrim.

i had heard this album reptile once or twice, but really the only songs i had remembered and liked were the title track and the album closer. i first heard the album in kansas city, so sometime around 2003. fast forward to 2009, my roommates and i set up my new record player in our living room and we put on the first record i'd ever owned, stevie wonder's hotter than july. we are sitting there talking and listening to it and all of a sudden the fourth track comes on, i ain't gonna stand for it. it sounds crazy familiar but i can't exactly place where i've heard it before. it jangles around in my noggin for a day or so before i realized clapton covered it on reptile so i dust those files off on my ipod and have been listening to it consistently for about two weeks. it is a really great album. it consists of three covers and lots of originals. here's a bit more on it.

1. "Reptile" (Eric Clapton) – 3:26

title track. just a simple instrumental, but there are so many great chord patterns in this one. there are two really incredible parts to this song, the gorgeous lead guitar part and everything else. let's break the everything else down first. there is a really groovy acoustic picking the chords in the background, and whoever is playing this rhythm guitar has got some serious funk in his bones. and the chord progression is so quiet but foundational. such good rhythm playing. on top of that, you've got a really quiet fender rhodes electric piano adding gorgeous chords and riffs in the background, spicing up the tune just enough. the bass is almost impossible to make out but essential, and the drum part is so sexy. the drummer is really rocking the brush stroke perfectly. i also hear the occasional wind chimes that close out a verse, such ambience. in the end though, two words really sum up the drum part: egg shaker. 'nuff said.

now the lead guitar part. what a hawt solo. overbearing this is not. this is where clapton's playing really comes into focus and has the potential to slap you in the face if you are paying attention. he's got such beautifully bluesy little licks that sit perfectly in this completely un-bluesy tune. and it's just a catchy solo. if nothing else, it's fun to listen to because it sounds like it's fun to play. on the concert dvd one more car, one more rider, clapton's band opens with this track and it just looks like a fun tune. and if i had to play my electric guitar with only one tone for the rest of my life, this would be one of the few i would be choosing between. such a muffled, warm sound.

2. "Got You on My Mind" (Howard Biggs/Joe Thomas) – 4:30

this is one of the more traditional blues numbers on the album. tunes like this really showcase how much the blues are imprinted in clapton's dna. he's got the guitar riffs of the great bluesmen down perfectly and adds his own touch. this is also one of the songs that nails clapton's voice so well. his voice sits perfectly over a 12 bar blues progression and you can really feel the blues in his voice. it's clear when it needs to be and growls just enough to be awesome.

3. "Travelin' Light" (J. J. Cale) – 4:17

written by usual clapton collaborator j.j. cale, this one has a bit of a rockin' feel to it. clapton's guitar sounds great as ever, but i'm not crazy about this song. it just doesn't really speak to me all that much, and the solo is a little too whiny for me to really want to learn it or anything.

4. "Believe in Life" (Clapton) – 5:05

a slower track, this has a very pilgrim-ish feel to it. sounds like change the world's distant cousin or something. nice little acoustic chords behind the lead guitar. it's a great tune, but clocking in at just over five minutes, i hardly ever listen to the whole thing unless i'm listening to the whole album straight through no skips, which only happens occasionally. this isn't one i skip to ever. which doesn't mean i don't like it, but there's just not enough that captures me to hang in there for a full five minutes.

5. "Come Back Baby" (Ray Charles) – 3:55

the first cover on the album. this sounds very much like the ray charles original, just a lot more full and better quality of recording. this tune features the real gravel in clapton's voice to belt out tunes written by ray, and he really tears into his guitar solo, something not found in ray's version. great tune.

6. "Broken Down" (Simon Climie/Dennis Morgan) – 5:25

this is a really great bluesy track. it's along the same lines as old love, not thematically but musically for sure. by that i guess i mean just a really killer tune, something that sounds almost harsh, and would sound perfect with a full band or played acoustic. the album features a full band version, but this tune would fit well with just an acoustic guitar and a lead playing over it. really catchy progression, even if it is a simple two chords. leads to lots of soloing possibilities, which clapton takes advantage of. this tune features a fantastic huge mix of instruments that all add a lot to the song. super fun to play with.

7. "Find Myself" (Clapton) – 5:15

this has a very ray charles feel to it but it's a clapton original. the rhythm plunks along a cute little chord progression. worth 4 minutes, but not 5 and a quarter.

8. "I Ain't Gonna Stand for It" (Stevie Wonder) – 4:49

here's the track that reignited my whole love affair with this album. hearing the stevie wonder original made me want to hear this again and it was all over after that. this song is just too much fun. my vote goes to clapton's rendition rather than stevie's. stevie's smacks just too much of country, while clapton's pulls off this really full sound that just blows out your ears. this is one of those songs that makes me wish i could sing and play at the same time. i don't know how clapton does it but to sing the chorus with any sort of conviction while riffing like he does is incredible. it's like his guitar and his voice are trading licks.

9. "I Want a Little Girl" (Murray Mencher/Billy Moll) – 2:58

quickly becoming another of my favorites on the album. this has the plunkiness of an old ray charles tune with a splash of clapton soul. anybody that sings about the girl of his dreams being able to cook chicken...that's good lyricism right there. no other way around it. great piano on this one too, with gorgeous guitar over it.

10. "Second Nature" (Clapton/Climie/Morgan) – 4:48

haven't given this one tons of listens. but i enjoy it. not much else to say other than it's pretty generic.

11. "Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight" (James Taylor) – 4:47

he turns a sexy james taylor song into an even sexier eric clapton song. i always thought this was a great song but hearing it with some rippin' guitar over this hawt chord structure really takes the song where it needs to be. sexy music deserves sexy guitar and clapton provides it.

12. "Modern Girl" (Clapton) – 4:49

really cool acoustic number. it's got a gorgeous melodic structure and a weird cheek popping noise every third beat which is awesome.

13. "Superman Inside" (Doyle Bramhall/Clapton/Susannah Melvoin) – 5:07

the low point of the album for me. sounds really generic. reminds me that clapton is still capable of making music that larry the cable guy fans could potentially enjoy listening to. kind of a bummer for me.

14. "Son and Sylvia" (Clapton) – 4:43

beautiful acoustic instrumental. this and reptile were the two songs that really hooked me from the beginning with this album, like 6 years ago when i first heard it. i think i heard this right around the time i had purchased my strat, and learning this was a great exercise in terms of picking stuff up by ear and soloing too. the layering in this tune is superb; each verse just keeps adding more and more, another guitar, a harmonica, weird instruments i don't even know about. and added all up it just sounds so beautiful.

i'd recommend this album to any clapton fan, no matter how marginal. clapton spans like eighty different genres for this album so it's got something anybody can groove to. plus lots of other good stuff too. check it out.

-jon

live from new york, it's a crappy show.

2009-03-27T12:32:00.000-06:00

there are two "golden eras" of saturday night live that are generally recognized as the highest points of the show's history. the first was early on after the show started, when the cast consisted of john belushi, dan aakroyd, jane curtain, chevy chase, bill murray, among others, along with consistent guest spots by steve martin and andy kaufman (even though he's very often connected with the early years of the show, martin was never actually a cast member). popular sketches from this time were the blues brothers, most of what steve martin was a part of, and weekend update. weekend update really took hold around this time along with a new form of presidential parody not before seen on primetime tv.

the second golden era of the show came at the tail end of the 80s and on into the 90s. the cast consisted of, for my generation, the greats. adam sandler, chris farley, david spade, dana carvey, mike myers, and had writers such as conan o'brien and robert smigel (the man behind the tv funhouse shorts, such as ambiguously gay duo, and the voice of triumph the insult comic dog). this was absolutely one of the highest of the show's highs. the sketches the writers were coming up with were so funny and they had the strongest cast to really hit them out of the park. conan left snl to write on the simpsons while smigel went and wrote for dana carvey's next project, the dana carvey show, both of which were critically acclaimed. the seasons of the simpsons with conan as a writer are generally regarded as some of the shows best seasons, and the dana carvey show was also critically acclaimed, and even though it lasted for one season, it featured the early tv work of stephen colbert and steve carrell, along with the writing talents of smigel and stand-up louis c.k. it just goes to show how important writers are for snl, and really for any comedy show. the cast of the 80s/90s decade turn was a phenomenal cast, but without a solid set of writers they wouldn't have had anything good to work with.

and that's why snl is suffering now. if you look at the cast, it's really consistent. bill hader, jason sudeikis, seth myers, fred armisen, will forte are all extremely funny men. every interview that hader, sudeikis, myers, or forte had on late night with conan o'brien was very funny, and they are all really funny in most of the movies they show up in. and kristin wiig is possibly the funniest woman on television, at least until amy poehler premieres her new nbc comedy "parks and recreation". wiig has some of the funniest characters on snl right now, including the target lady, penelope, judy grimes, and part of the duo the a-holes. she also does hilarious impressions, which in the last few months have included bjork, barbie, and my absolute favorite, kathie lee gifford on the today show. plus she's super pretty. so the cast is strong.

here's where the show runs off the rails for me. andy samberg and his comedy group the lonely island, which is him, akiva schaffer, and jorma taccone. samberg is a regular cast member on snl, and all three of them are writers for the show, and in the last season or two the show has taken a very clear turn towards the type of humor that these three are famous for. they started by making crappy low-budget tv episodes and directing music videos for themselves and now they're doing that on snl. they do almost all of the digital shorts as far as i know, and the whole show is infested with their brand of "zany", off the wall humor. i quote zany because it's the type of humor that crappy people would call "random." my friend owen and i were talking about this the other day, that for awhile, in the last few years, the words "random" and "awkward" have become SO overused because they are now associated with humor. jr. highers started saying things like "the office is such a funny show because it's just so awkward!" no. the american version is not awkward. it's funny because of the relationships on the show and socially inappropriate behavior. the british version was absolutely awkward, and so few people in america would like it nearly as much as the american version. we can't stand subtle, and the american version is nowhere near as subtle as the british. another word that caught on fire was "random". "oh gosh how random is that that demetri martin labels all of his props!" that's the kind of "zany", or "random" humor that can be attributed to the lonely island. one perfect example of this from their pre-snl days is the "we like sportz" video. it's just schaffer and taccone in a song about how they like sports. and man is it stupid. in no way do i find it at all funny. they are good at making crappy music on like 16-track recorders and writing stupid words that rhyme. the zaniness i was talking about is the stuff like spelling words "sports" and "nuts" with z's, or "sux" instead of sucks. they play these stupid characters who look uncomfortable on camera, yeah that's how they're supposed to look but it's just not funny. i don't get why all of america thinks these guys are great.

this has only gone from bad to worse. samberg got on the map with "lazy sunday", probably the only video i've ever seen of his or the lonely island that i thought was funny at all. you can still see some of their "random" humor getting in here though, like "double true" being spelled in all different colors. how is that funny? since lazy sunday it's only gone from bad to worse. some of the worst i've seen are the digital shorts like "people getting punched", "andy popping into frame." please people. none of this is funny or original. it's brainless. it's insulting to watch because they have no respect for their audience. people getting punched is a long video of samberg running around and punching people before they bite into food with some crappy lonely island-produced song playing over it. then samberg does a stupid dance after he punches somebody. how is that humorous? andy popping into frame is almost worse, again a long video of NOTHING but empty shots of scenery around new york with samberg popping his face into the frame and smiling. not funny. pointless. comedy comes from jokes, from wit or irony or sarcasm. this is none of those things. this is an asanine waste of film.

one of the things that i dislike about samberg especially is the obvious fact that he and his comedy buddy writers seem to think that he has a funny looking face. he doesn't. the faces that he makes are NEVER funny. he just looks like one of those douchebag juniors in college who think they should be in standup because they can make their bar buddies laugh. his faces are not funny, which adds to my hatred for the andy popping into frame sketch.

ok so how about the recent, hugely popular sketches lonely island have done like "jizz in my pants" or "i'm on a boat". for some reason these are insanely popular on youtube and the like. now i will concede, i somewhat see the humor in lampooning these ridiculous genres of music. but at the same time, the lonely island guys seem to be doing it less with a sense of "this is actually ridiculous" and more with a wink/nudge "how funny are we that we are doing this, right?" it feels arrogant to me. my biggest beef with the jizz in my pants video is that so much of the comedy in this sketch is supposed to come from the faces the samberg and taccone make but again, samberg does NOT have a funny face and taccone's is nothing to write home about. also, justin timberlake WHY are you in this video? no point other than for face time. obnoxious. and the i'm on a boat video is funny, "because they actually got t-pain to do it right?!!" no. that simultaneously makes your video kind of smart but more stupid because first of all, to lampoon something as ridiculous as that kind of rap music only works if you can have someone like t-pain help you out, so it's kind of smart, but it defeats the purpose because it shows they are actually fans of t-pain and his music. so it's moot. no point to it. and t-pain sucks. and the song sucks. and just the idea isn't funny to me. i feel like so many people think it's great because "nobody has thought to do something like this yet and make fun of these self-indulgent rappers like this yet!!" but if you spend any amount of time actually analyzing the current state of rap music and realize that THIS is the kind of music that is popular with our culture, the genre is unintentionally self-parodying in its nature. to watch any music video by the yin yang twins or lil wayne (if kanye's not careful he's gonna find himself on this list too) or any of these ridiculous rappers or listen/read an interview by them or just listen to their music, it is SO ridiculous that it doesn't NEED to be parodied. it blows me away that somebody can't listen to their music and not see how incredibly absurd it is. the satire of the lonely island towards this genre is completely unnecessary and that's why it's not funny to me.

so that's why watching snl isn't fun to me right now. maybe in a few years the show will cycle through their writers but i just wish all the great talent in the cast wasn't wasted on guys like samberg, taccone, and schaffer. they are the worst.

-jon

p.s. i thought about putting up some of the lonely island videos i mentioned, but i didn't want them polluting my blog. i didn't even post any links. if you want to see them, youtube has most of the pre-snl lonely island stuff and hulu has most of the current snl lonely island stuff.

NOTE: edited to say that the movie hot rod sucks too. i turned it off at the scene where samberg is about to street luge down the hill and he starts saying all that "wwwwHy am i talking wwwwHich wwway?" cool samberg. watched family guy in the last three years?

before the music dies.

2009-03-19T23:26:00.000-06:00

hulu.com is one of the greatest sites i've been introduced to in awhile. while they don't have all the tv shows one might want, they have a heck of a lot of good ones. they have all of nbc's late night talk shows (which are clearly the best), lots of great sitcoms (all three seasons of arrested development, always the most current office and 30 rock episodes, etc.), and even full movies. there aren't loads but they are free.

i just finished watching a documentary called before the music dies. it discusses the current state of american music and the american music industry. included are interviews with lots of musicians, including ?uestlove, erykah badu, doyle bramhall ii, bonnie raitt, branford marsalis, eric clapton, dave matthews, and others, and also some industry insiders, including music critics, a&r personnel, label execs, etc. if there is something i love, it is listening to real musicians talk about music. these people are people who know what they are talking about it because they live it. this is their niche, whether they are musicians or critics or labelmen. some really interesting thoughts about where our music is currently and where it's come from and hopefully where it is going.

it's about an hour and a half, so if you've got the time, please watch it. just go here. it's a fascinating documentary about the unraveling of the music industry and its intense commercialization in the last ten to twenty years. i can tell that something is communicating its ideas well when i actually want to turn it off so i can listen to good music. about halfway through i paused the movie and listened to a few tracks off bob dylan's the times they are a changin'. this got me excited to work harder, or at least be more intentional in my music listening, and making sure my time is put towards real pieces of art.

and come on. the opening segment of the movie is just one of the most incredible performances by anybody i've ever seen. look at how that man dances!

-jon

spring break '09 and not a single free day to do what i want.

2009-03-19T23:19:00.000-06:00

i have all these great ideas about things to write about. i write the ideas down, then i never get to expanding on them. i'm giving you a list of my most recent thoughts so i will have more of a push to actually write them.

1. recap of my first gig.

2. track by track review of eric clapton's reptile.

3. why i think snl kind of sucks lately (i know it sounds like i'm jumping on a bandwagon that's been rollin' along for almost a decade now but i've got some legit thoughts about it, let me explain myself.)

4. conan o'brien. this one might not show up for awhile cause i might just turn this into a Top 5 Comedians type of blog. we'll see.

and then a quick little one i'm about to jot down and post. brb.

-jon

the debut of the immortal string trio.

2009-03-10T15:18:00.001-06:00

get a load of this.

this is on the official website of a local bar called the hub. i am playing there tomorrow night with two local performers slash friends, eli and bruce. eli is in a band called the barefoot compadres and they've played together for awhile and they are awesome. lots of college-y type covers, but the good ones. no crash or banana pancakes here. stuff like oar, old crow medicine show, amos lee, etc. and bruce plays all over the place, here in cedar falls, cedar rapids, and last time we practiced he was telling me about a gig he had just done in des moines. he plays mainly solo but also duos with eli occasionally. and he sounds like chris cornell. it's incredible. actually both of them have killer voices, eli fronts barefoot compadres and sounds like a mix of everybody he sings, so when they sing together it's a great blend. awesome harmony.

so a few weeks ago eli and i are out with some friends and he asks if i want to come and jam with him and bruce the next day and the next day comes and we jam, bruce teaches us a new song that he wants to start playing and then they ask me to play with them for this gig. yikes. i feel like the little brother tagging along with a brother and his cool friend. these two guys play all the time around town and even in other towns, and when i play i'm usually sitting on my bed in front of my computer playing along with itunes, not in front of real people who are drinking real drinks and listening and watching me play. i'm mortified.

i think it'll be fun though. the two or three times the three of us have met and played our set we gel really well and sound pretty good if i can say that. we play a mix of the stuff the two of them play, folksy acoustic rock type of stuff. nothing flashbang but fun to sit and drink to and even more fun to stand and play. i'm looking forward to it. if at least just to get a real gig under my belt and not be so nervous next time. should be fun though. if you're around, come check it out. the hub, wednesday night around 9.

-jon

p.s. i had no input whatsoever into what was put onto the hub's website, especially concerning me. i actually have no idea who wrote that. just wanted to clear any doubt.

303,000 results? really?

2009-02-13T01:38:00.000-06:00

go to google.com. type in, but don't search for, the phrase "i am extremely". see what the last google suggestion is.

-jon

p.s. found at failblog.org

the grammys.

2009-02-09T16:42:00.000-06:00

disclaimer: as my roommates and i do not pay for or have access to cable television, or any television for that matter, i was not able to watch the grammys. everything i know of last night's award show is hearsay from the internet.

let's start with the positive. or the dark cloud with a silver lining. quite a back story here. chris brown and rihanna were both scheduled to perform at the grammys. before the awards show, chris brown turned himself into the police for reports of alleged assault, so he pulls out of the show. rihanna, for reasons unknown, also pulls out of the show. there is a lot of speculation as to whether rihanna is the victim of the alleged assault. regardless, instead of having their performances, the grammys threw together one of my dream-come-true performances.

let's stay together - jt and al green.

skip the first minute. jt is horrible when he isn't singing, acting, dancing, or doing anything that involves more than just plain talking. this is so great. back when it was first announced that al green was doing an album with ?uestlove, i read a story from mtv that said justin timberlake was in talks to guest on the album or at least had made it clear he wanted to guest. for some reason it never happened, which is i guess good because the album is incredible without him, but this performance is really good too. the one thing that really would've made it just stellar would've been john mayer on guitar rather than keith urban. cool dude, you're good at guitar but you are a country artist. john mayer transcends genre, and that's why he's great. but still this is an awesome performance.

super great performance number two: lost? - chris martin, jay-z.

chris martin is such a so-so performer to me, at least voice-wise. he can't really hit his falcetto notes. his bouncing around the stage is sort of weird too. but for some reason i still really like him. and going into viva la vida is awesome, what a grand song for a band to play. i absolutely love seeing drummer will champion banging away on that bell. and their background vocals are super great. so coldplay rocks.

great performance number three: b.b. king, buddy guy, keith urban, and john mayer in a tribute to bo diddley.

Vid
by tryjm

notice it's only great, not super great. it's a cool line-up of old/new musicians, but it's sort of a ho-hum performance with nothing really special to write home about. plus it's really short.

worst juxtaposition of artists performance: burnin' up/superstition - stevie wonder and the jonas brothers.

i'm sorry, did you just say the jonas brothers? yeah, so they might be the new face of pop music, but come on. these guys in no way have the chops to be put next to stevie wonder, living legend of r&b, soul, pop, jazz, funk, or whatever other genre you could attach to him. the man is an incredible artist, and he is stuck playing "burnin' up" alongside two crappy guitarists and some iffy vocalists. what happens to nick, who is supposed to be the good singer in the group, when he first starts his verse of superstition? and kevin and nick both playing guitar...it's a bummer to me that in our culture, showmanship is favored over actual talent. you might not be able to play your instrument very well, but if you are a natural born performer, than you will probably be famous. shame. and joe needs to stop trying to growl when he sings. it's not happening buddy.

hip-hop performance of the night: swagger like us - m.i.a., jay-z, kanye, t.i., lil wayne

this is ok. m.i.a. is incredibly fat. jay-z clearly has the most class of any of them. kanye, since when did mullets become fashionable again? t.i. kind of just sucks. and lil wayne, my goodness i do not understand what the appeal of this guy is. he won some grammys last night, thank goodness he didn't win the big one, album of the year. granted i haven't heard his universally-hailed album tha carter III, but what i have heard is just bad. awful beats, like painful to listen to. i do not get why he is so freakin' popular.

so those were the performances i saw. there was one little "bombshell" dropped by some presenters. blink-182 is reforming. an ellipse is really the only way i can communicate my emotion for news. blink sucks. they are basically responsible for making that crappy pop-punk garbage that infests the radio nowadays phenomenally popular. but i mean come on, who doesn't love a band who releases albums such as enema of the state and take off your pants and jacket? and honestly, who can forget their cameo (the mere fact that it's a cameo just makes me fandom soar) in the classic coming-of-age movie american pie? HORRIBLE. all the way around they are a terrible band who should not make any more music or try to be relevant at all. in any way.

ok as far the winners of the grammy awards go, i was generally fine with it, with a few exceptions.

1. jennifer hudson won for best r&b album. without a doubt, this should've gone to al green for lay it down, by far the BEST r&b, and nearly the best of any genre, album released in 2008.
2. raising sand and songs from it won record of the year, album of the year, and best pop collaboration with vocals, among other awards. now i get that this is a really good album. i've listened to it, and it was ok. i didn't fall in love with it. it's got a very distinct sound that i am surprised has garnered so much acclaim. but record AND album of the year? no way, especially when you look at both of those lists: coldplay, adele, radiohead. there was so much good music that probably should've won. and best pop collaboration with vocals should've absolutely gone to alicia keys and john mayer for lesson learned. i think i've written about this song before, how it is one of the most gorgeous pieces of music i've ever heard in my life. robert plant and alison krauss sound good together, but alicia and john KILLED it with that song. such a bummer. my biggest beef with raising sand winning so much, and are you ready for the bombshell here? IT WASN'T EVEN RELEASED IN 2008! it was released october 2007! and it won the grammy for best pop collaboration with vocals LAST YEAR! it's ridiculous. how is that even allowed? upsetting.

while i was displeased with those awards, i was EXTREMELY pleased when i found out daft punk had won for best dance recording AND best electronic/dance album, with around the world / harder, better, faster, stronger and alive 2007, respectively. SO deserving. that album is awesome.

so all in all, a pretty good show (i think, since i didn't really watch it). let's hope the oscars aren't any worse.

-jon

i'm glad lotr made the list.

2009-02-04T20:20:00.000-06:00

this is the side of the kansas city public library parking lot.

well done kansas city. you just sealed the deal with this. if i ever live in a big city, it's kc without a doubt. absolutely inspired. I LOVE LIBRARIES.

-jon