February 28, 2005
Are They Trying to Make Trade Fair?
Someone in the conference room across the aisle is playing "Clocks" over the sound system. Why aren't I ever invited to the cool meetings? All I get is some guy trying to figure out why his laptop won't play nice with the projector.
February 27, 2005
Repent Now, ACF Nationals Are Sooner Than You Think!
Should I tell our fearless leader(s) that I have to leave by 6:00 on April 1? Neko Case is playing the Temple Club in Lansing and that's when doors open, according to my ticket. And if they think I'm skipping this to read playoffs at ACF Nationals, they have another thing coming.
February 23, 2005
She Follows Her Own Muse, I'll Give Her That
Last night I went to the Coldplay/Fiona Apple show at the Palace with my sister, Craig, and Dave. I have to say, I was both much more excited and worried by Fiona's performance. She's a volatile performer, to say the least, but her material is so much stronger than Coldplay's. I picked up my sister from the E.L. shortly after 5:30 and headed toward Flint. I always forget just how far south I have to travel on I-75, so I was irrationally optimistic when we hit the I-69/I-75 junction shortly after 6:00. We made it to our meeting point shortly after 7:00, worried that we were late. This was irrelevant, since Craig and Dave were 5 minutes behind us. It was soon rendered even more irrelevant when we realized that we also had to wait for the person who'd be using Craig's tickets. With all the waiting, we made it to our seats less than five minutes before Ms. Apple took the stage, which really was for the best, cutting down on the dead time. Her set list:
Get Him Back
Better Version of Me
Shadowboxer
Criminal
Paper Bag
Tymps (The Sick in the Head Song)
Oh Well
Limp
Extraordinary Machine
Fast As You Can
The music itself was rock solid. Her band is quite good, in addition to her own accomplishments. She split her time about 50/50 between being seated at the piano and standing at a mic. The singing was a bit...off. "Get Him Back" was sung much more harshly than on the album version, and when she fell out of key on "Better Version of Me", I began to suspect some monitor difficulties. I have to believe she's too good not to be able to correct something like that. The key difficulty didn't recur for the rest of the show, so I think they might have made the adjustment. The harshness from "Get Him Back", however, didn't diminish and actually increased through "Shadowboxer" to the point of atonality.
I can't get away from a couple of ideas. One, that she was trying to fill the Palace with her voice, playing to the seats way at the back, trying to erase the giant empty space in the middle of the arena. Two, that, as a result of it, on too many songs she ended up reaching her limit about a third of the way in. It's like reaching saturation on an amplifier; there's only so high it can go, no matter what you put into it afterward, so you end up with a distorted signal. It would be just fine if, on occasion, she were to shrug off actually hitting the note perfectly in favor of putting an exclamation point on a phrase at the climax of a song. But I'm not on board with doing that in the first chorus, because that just leaves you with nowhere to go.
Now, here's the thing: Only four of the songs were really hurt by this, but they included all of the first three (including destroying "Shadowboxer") and that colored my view of the rest. "Tymps", "Criminal", and "Fast As You Can" were really good, I'd say, and "Paper Bag" was near-perfect.
Barker/Wallace Opening Act Criteria:
Banter was kept to a bare minimum. She introduced her band near the end and just before "Fast As You Can" she coyly mentioned that Coldplay would be coming out next, and that was the full extent of any banter or thank-you. She played "Criminal" and "Shadowboxer", her radio hits, she balanced things from the new album with favorites from her first two. The only thing resembling a solo was a lengthened drum intro to "Fast As You Can". In theory, this is a great turn as an opening act. In practice, it left something to be desired. I'll give it an overall B, because it would be six kinds of wrong to give her a lower grade than Gavin Rossdale. This was a severe case of artist/venue mismatch. I think she'd be amazing at some place like the Royal Oak Music Theatre.
Coldplay Set List:
Square One
Politik
Yellow
Speed of Sound
God Put a Smile Upon Your Face
X&Y
How You See The World
Don't Panic
White Shadows
The Scientist
'Til Kingdom Come
Ring of Fire
Trouble
Clocks
Talk
----------------------------------------------
Swallowed in the Sea
In My Place
Fix You
Like I expected, I enjoyed going to the show much more than I enjoy the songs. Chris Martin's lyrics tend to bug the crap out of me, which is less of a thing at a concert, particularly one in a huge arena. I went and saw Coldplay at the State Theater in downtown Detroit back in 2001 or thereabouts, so I knew that they put on a good show. Craig's already sent his recap up, so I'll skip over anything I didn't have a strong reaction to.
Square One
So they begin the show with a giant digital countdown timer on the screen behind them and it gets to zero and . . . it starts counting up again? Such a tease.
Yellow
The people on the main floor must not get to a lot of Michigan football games. When the beach ball comes near you, you bat it backwards until it gets near the top of the stadium, not towards the field of play.
God Put a Smile Upon Your Face
Spysex!
Speed of Sound
I know this is hyperbole, but it conjures an image of a falcon engaged in a dive becoming very concerned as his feathers begin separating from his body due to the induced drag from flying at such a high speed. Or maybe just the smoke trails of a bird in a hypersonic wind tunnel, showing the way the shock waves come off the head. Thus I can't help laughing at this song.
Don't Panic
This song makes me want to get fired from my job at a Vietnamese restaurant.
The Scientist
Craig already said it, but I was all geeked at the Flight Simulator thing. Look, Meigs Field! And the Adler Planetarium! And the Shedd Aquarium! And then the Magic School Bus cam dove right through Chris Martin's pores.
'Til Kingdom Come
This is, by far, the best song on X&Y. The rest of the album is a competently-executed post-punk sort of thing that's heavily indebted to U2. They're done being rock underdogs and ready to be rock stars. And they're just less sympathetic that way. They're writing songs like "Fix You" instead of "Yellow", they've gone to a position of power from one of striving. This is the one song on X&Y that puts them in a position of uncertainty, trying to get through whatever's going on. They're confident in their course of action, but not where it will lead.
I wasn't really that keen on any of the encore music, although "In My Place" was pretty well done. I would've liked to hear "Shiver" again. I hate hate hate "Fix You". It's so trite and awful. The outro is good, but if I want to hear that kind of rhythm, I can get it from The Postal Service's "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight".
So, that was it. I took my sister back to the E.L. and made my way home, getting in at a reasonable 1:30AM.
February 21, 2005
Week 2
If you didn't know much about the winter Olympics and you only paid attention to the big names, you'd think that the US team wasn't doing so well. Michelle Kwan is out. Bode Miller has been disqualified from half of his events. Jennifer Rodriguez hasn't won a medal. Apolo Anton Ohno got only a bronze. But the American team is quietly on pace to do at least as well as they did in Salt Lake City. We medaled in pretty much every snowboarding event, we've picked up three long-track golds, and Ted Ligatey won our first alpine gold medal in a dozen years. Belbin & Agosto won the US's first medal in ice dancing in 30 years.
There are only five nations so far with Olympic medals which aren't European: Canada, the US, Australia, China, and South Korea. Latvia has more medals than the whole of Africa and South America combined. Softball and baseball were cancelled at the 2008 Summer Olympics because the sports weren't popular/competitive enough around the world. I'm jus' sayin'.
February 16, 2005
Letters
Dear USA Men's Ice Hockey team,
Please get better. Tying Latvia is a poor start to your Olympics. The other countries in your draw are rather good, so this was supposed to help you out. I would urge you to get it together.
Your friend,
Me
The snowstorm on the East Coast seems to have gotten to the members of the US men's hockey team. Or maybe I'm looking for something to hang this 3-3 tie to Latvia on. Things obviously could be worse. The Czechs lost to the Swiss(!) by a 3-2 margin. I didn't see the game, but I have to imagine that Aebischer stood on his head to make some saves. Russia tore the Swedes apart, 5-0, so I think they've established themselves once again as the team to beat.
February 15, 2006
Upright Snowboarders Brigade
So...is anyone else waiting for the next SNL and hoping that Amy Poehler plays Hannah Teter in some sort of sketch? Just me? OK. But she'd be perfect, I'm telling you. I like watching the interviews with the snowboarders. They're tend to be unpolished and unlike any of the other athletes.
People complain a lot that American Olympic coverage ignores the presence of other countries, and that has some basis in fact, but it doesn't bother me that much. The Olympics awaken the nationalist within, so I'd like to know about our athletes. The problem, for me, is that they look for two or three athletes to hang their entire coverage on. Sasha Cohen had a much better chance of medaling in figure skating, but Michelle Kwan was the story and NBC is still trying to unload their fawning coverage of her. Somehow Bode Miller became the odds-on favorite for the gold in the downhill, ignoring the fact that he hasn't had a runaway season on the World Cup circuit and also ignoring the entire nation of Austria. It was some sort of national tragedy when he came in seventh or whatever, a fraction of a second out of the medals. When he missed a turn in the slalom part of the alpine combined, his Olympics suddenly became unsalvageable. By the way, Ted Ligatey won the gold medal, the USA's first gold medal in any alpine sport in over a decade. Just in case anyone cares.
February 13, 2006
John Williams Is A Rich Man If He Gets Paid Every Time They Play That Theme
I've begun my fortnight of overdosing on Olympic coverage. So far I've watched long-track speed skating, short-track speed skating, men's downhill, men's singles luge, pairs figure skating (Why? I don't know), women's ice hockey, men's cross-country pursuit, women's cross-country pursuit, men's nordic combined, women's freestyle moguls, and men's snowboard halfpipe. Curling starts today, so I really miss the CBC coverage.
February 9, 2006
Tilting Against Another Windmill
I wasn't stupid enough to actually watch all of the Grammys last night, but I was dumb enough to pay attention to the results this morning.
Surprising good result: Aimee Mann wins a Grammy (Best Recording Package)!
Horrifying Corollary: So do the Black Eyed Peas (Best Rap Performance By a Duo or Group)!
The Grammys set about reinforcing their image as old, anti-rap, and more about commercial success than artistic merit. Any time it looked like they weren't quite sure what to do, U2 ended up with the award, five of them in all. Now, I know the Grammys have it rough, far rougher than the Oscars when it comes to nominations. But they demand either that you be a huge commercial success in the year of your nomination or that you have a long career behind you, where you were at one point a huge commercial success. It also helps if you're not in not in hip-hop. I mean, you can still get nominated. You'll just lose. That's all I'm saying.
Look, I know the awards show would be boring if you didn't know most of the nominees. I get that. And I know that they want at least a handful of people over the age of 35 to know what's going on. But thou shalt not give awards to Mariah Carey, least of all for songwriting. By rights, Sleater-Kinney, Sufjan Stevens, Low, and My Morning Jacket should all be up there. Even Rolling Stone readers should recognize them instantly. Kathleen Edwards is still more country than Faith Hill, so she could take some nominations in that area. M.I.A. should get some recognition in hip-hop.
Now that I'm done whining about the nominations, now I can whine about the results. I can't complain too much that "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" is record of the year over "Gold-Digger", except to say that it's a make-up for last year. I can and will vociferously decry How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb's win for Album of the Year over Late Registration. The win for "This Love" as Best Pop Performance By A Duo or Group was another make-up award. Les Paul's take on "Caravan" may well be the best pop instrumental performance, but I don't know if I can get behind a Duke Ellington number winning a pop Grammy. Extraordinary Machine's loss to Kelly Clarkson's Breakaway in Best Pop Album was particularly awful, but Fiona Apple shot herself in the foot last time she won a Grammy, so it wasn't a surprise. It would've been cool if LCD Soundsystem had won in the dance categories, but it's not like The Chemical Brothers are bad. Tony Bennett seemed to win just for being Tony Bennett, but at least Rod Stewart didn't win. "Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own" isn't much of a rock song, so it definitely shouldn't have won Best ROck Performance By A Duo Or Group w/ Vocals. I don't like System of a Down, so I'd much rather have seen "Little Sister" by Queens of the Stone Age win Best Hard Rock Performance than "BYOB". "Grammy Award-winning" should never be an accurate adjective to describe Slipknot. Funeral by The Arcade Fire losing to Get Behind Me Satan by The White Stripes for Best Alternative Album was just wrong, but their loss to Glen Ballard & Alan Silvestri for a Josh Groban-performed song from The Polar Express in the category of Best Song Written For Motion Picture, Television Or Other Visual Media flies in the face of all good sense. Mariah Carey beat out John Legend for Best R&B Song. The Black Eyed Peas "Don't Phunk With My Heart" won for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group. Faith Hill and Tim McGraw won over Rodney Crowell and Emmylou Harris for Best Country COllagoration with vocals. Steve Lillywhite over everyone or Producer of the Year, Non-Classical.
On the other hand, there were some results that I liked. John Legend deserves Best New Artist more than the other nominees, for sure. I can't bring myself to dislike Kelly Clarkson. She was so genuinely moved when she won for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, plus she did sound good on "Since U Been Gone". "Feel Good Inc." richly deserved Best Pop Collaboration w/ Vocals. Alison Krauss and Union Station seemed to win everything they were nominated for on the country side of the ledger. Emmylou Harris picked one up for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. Del McCoury Band won for Best Bluegrass Album. Aimee Mann. Bolcom: Songs of Innocence and Experience (featuring the University of Michigan School of Music Symphony Orchestra, the UM Chamber Choir, UM Orpheus Singers, UM University Choir & Choral Union, and the MSU Children's Choir) won the Grammys for Best Classical Album and Best Choral Performance, the only non-professional groups even nominated in any classical category.
There are still a lot of extra categories with only slight competition. Do we really need Best Latin Pop Album, Best Latin/Rock Alternative Album, Best Traditional Tropical Latin Album, Best Salsa/Merengue Album, Best Mexican/Mexican-American Album, AND Best Tejano Album in a world where the Latin Grammys also exist? Why are we splitting Best Native American Music Album and Best Hawaiian Music Album into separate categories? Why is there a Best New Age Album category? Couldn't Best Polka Album and Best Reggae Album be folded into Best Traditional or Best Contemporary World Music Album?
February 6, 2006
Post-Super Bowl Haze
I didn't get to go to the Super Bowl; I watched it on TV. But my parents did get to go and they had what was reputed to be "a great time". Non-football highlights:
Last week I found the only used-CD store in the vicinity. Selection is limited to one wall of your usual strip-mall-sized store, but it's all alphabetized and vetted for scratches, so that helps. This time I found Quasi's Field Studies and Liz Phair's Whip-Smart. I should go back and get that Essential Springsteen set ($10.99); Sleater-Kinney's cover of "Promised Land" is still in my ears. I also saw a Stereolab album, but it wasn't Marmalade, so I don't know if it's any good, a couple copies of Aha-Shake-Heartbreak by Kings of Leon, and I think there was something by Mission of Burma, but there wasn't a lot of non-mainstream stuff. The thing about a used-CD store is that it reflects not only what people are willing to buy, but also what they're willing to part with. So the size of the Dave Matthews Band section is both discouraging and encouraging at the same time.
January 24, 2006
What Song Titles Tell Me
January 20, 2006
Music by the Numbers
At the end of last year, the Onion AV Club published their 2005 retrospective on "The Year In Music", and I've finally gotten around to taking a look at it. There are 99 unique albums on the lists - including honorable mentions - from the eight writers. Two get four mentions, three get three, 15 get two, and there are 79 albums that pop up on the list just once. The Consensus Top Four are The New P()rn()graphers' Twin Cinema, followed by Low's The Great Destroyer (four appearances, but two were Honorable Mentions), Sufjan Stevens's Illinois, and Sleater-Kinney's The Woods (2+1HM). Rounding out the top five would probably be The Go! Team's Thunder, Lighting, Strike. It only was mentioned twice, but it was the number 1 album on both lists.
Actually, some sort of power-ranking system might be useful here. I think I'll do it like this (# of mentions)*(sum of the inverses of the rankings)+(0.25*# of mentions), where an Honorable Mention gives you a ranking of 11. It gives a substantial boost if you make it onto the list more than once and a huge lift if you make it near the top. For instance, Kanye West's Late Registration made it on two lists, ranked 7th and 9th, for a power rating of 1.008. The National's Alligator only showed up once, but at #1, for a power rating of 1.250. I might add to this if I see other top ten lists that seem decent. Here it is.
My summary: I own 8 of the 99 albums, 3 of which are in the top 5. I own music by 21 of the other artists. I've seen 8 of them in concert, soon to be 10 (Marah's coming to the E.L. and Fiona Apple is opening for Coldplay). Before I read this list, I'd heard of 59 of the artists on it. I'd say I'd never heard of 40 of them, but one of the albums is a compilation, so that doesn't work. The National and Edan each received #1 designations, so having had no knowledge of even what genre to put them in makes me feel a little off the pace.
January 18, 2005
The Kids Today With Their Music
Never trust CBS with a show about music. I'd be deeply suspicious if FOX tried it, but CBS? The Cretaceous Broadcasting System? In the pilot episode of Love Monkey, Tom Cavanagh's character flies out to Monroe, MI to see some kid, Wayne, perform in a club. Wayne is a John Mayer-y, husky-voiced, TV 17-year-old with above-average acoustic guitar skills and faux-deep lyrics. Tom pronounces the kid a "genius". And that's where they lost me. Wayne has a radio-friendly style and a just-shaggy-enough haircut for Non-Threatening Boys Magazine, a la Ben Kweller or the guys from Rooney. The kid has dollar signs written all over him, but he's no "genius".
The musical references they make throughout the episode are all old, too. OK, they mention Beck and Tori Amos, but otherwise it's Dylan, Zeppelin, and they might have mentioned the Ramones and Talking Heads when they went to CBGB's. Here's where they should have taken a cue from The West Wing. In the first episode, Sorkin wanted viewers immediately to know that you weren't always going to know what the characters were talking about and that it would be OK. Instead, they're hanging out signposts that date from the Carter administration. They didn't mention a single artist that hasn't gone platinum.
And the music cues are just as obvious. The last song they played: "Mr. Brightside", by The Killers. Daring! Especially when The O.C. had The Killers on the show in, like, November of 2005. CBS: We're Only A Year Late When It Comes To Slavishly Following Trends! Actually, that points out something else. The O.C.'s music supervisors have a talent for picking radio-friendly songs by bands that commercial radio ignores. On a show purportedly about the music industry, where a character proclaims that "It's about the music!" while arguing that the focus on flash-in-the-pan successes is hurting the label in the long-term, shouldn't somebody have decided that Music Supervisor was going to be the most important off-camera job?
I don't expect to hear The Liars on this show (leaving aside whether I'd want to hear The Liars); I expect the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I don't expect the Decemberists; I expect Death Cab. I don't expect LCD Sound System; I expect Daft Punk. And I hope that they'd at least bypass The Killers for Bloc Party (to at least keep it closer to The O.C.) or Kaiser Chiefs.
January 16, 2005
Teamwork
Moderator: He's the voice of the landlord [on The Boondocks]
Steve: What's his name? What's his name? Oh, he played the cop on Freakazoid!
Moderator: Captain, your answer please.
Me: Oh, Cosgrove! Ed Asner!
Joe: Designate.
Me: Asner.
Moderator: 10 points.
Moderator: His home run ended the longest World Series game in history
Clock: [ticks]
Team: [Inconclusive discussion]
Me: Oh! He spells his name--
MOderator: Captain, your answer please.
Joe: Designate.
Me: (Stalling for time) Geofffff--
Joe: Blum!
Moderator: 10 points.
January 12, 2006
Space Totally Pwns You
I know it's been pointed out in other quarters, but I love the Every Day Should Be Saturday reviews of the university promotional spots you see at halftime. Their review of the Michigan Apollo XV ad didn't hurt, of course. I love that ad. I mean, it's not just an ad for my university, or even my college. It's an ad for my department. And we pwn you.
January 9, 2006
No, We Don't Need the Ski Patrol This Time
Once upon a time, when I was in seventh grade, my parents bought a place up north in Gaylord. A few years ago, my siblings and I went up there on our own for the first time. Before we were done with our first day of skiing, my brother had a concussion, having been hit in the back of the head by the chairlift. Until this weekend, we hadn't been back without my parents, so I had some seriously low expectations. Anything that didn't put Stephen in the hospital was OK, so I was really happy with how things actually turned out.
The weekend after New Year's is almost always the quietest weekend of the ski season. Everyone already came up around Christmas; many stayed the whole week through New Year's, like we did. People are busy catching up on what they'd neglected in the run-up for Christmas, so they don't have the time or the inclination to come right back up north.
We all usually manage to get it together and make it up north for this weekend, but Steve and I were the only ones available this time. The weather report hadn't been very encouraging early in the week (mid 30's temperatures Monday-Thursday -> poor snow), but things were supposed to improve going into the weekend, including some fresh snow on Thursday and Friday. We packed up our respective cars in our respective cities and headed north without much of an idea what we'd actually find.
It turned out that we made the right call. Saturday morning, it was 28°F and cloudy. It didn't make for an inspiring sight on its own, but the three new inches of snow helped. When we arrived at the Otsego Ski Club, the lifts were turning and two big Bombardier groomers were just coming off the slopes.
The first run of the day is never the best. It's usually too tentative, feeling out what the snow will be like for that day, whether it will be wet or dry, icy or soft, man-made or natural. The difference between snow from the sky and man-made snow is like the difference between Coke and New Coke. Sure, they have the same general properties, but anyone who says it's just as good is a liar or a fool. Man-made snow is coarser and tends to form (or at least mask) patches of ice, but natural snow will compress without it coming to that. On Saturday, my first run told me that the snow was in good condition, natural powder that had been packed and groomed.
The skiing itself was pretty wonderful. Packed powder makes for quick, tight turns and you can go just about as fast as you want. 28° is nearly an ideal temperature for a cloudy day. The snow doesn't start to melt, like it would if the sun were out, but you don't get cold too quickly in your hands and feet.
After we'd skied for an hour, it began to snow again. The houses on the hills across the valley disappeared. When we went in for lunch an hour after that, you could barely see the bottom of the hill.
The snow kept up for another 4.5 hours, until 5:00, but we called it a day an hour before then. The roads were in better condition at the end of the day, but barreling through the countryside at 55 mph, trying to follow the ruts in the snow as best you can is always a little exciting.
On Sunday, I remembered to bring my new camera, this year's big Christmas gift. I've been annoying people with it for the last couple of weeks. This weekend was Stephen's turn. For the first time this season we had sun on the slopes, and I wasn't going to let it go to waste. I took the picture on the left over Christmas break and the one on the right on Sunday.
I've also been playing with the digital movie feature. I don't really like that it makes Quicktime movies, but I suppose I'll have to live with it. Stephen took this 6-second clip of me going over a makeshift jump (Size = 2.6 MB). He took two other movies of me, but I was overshadowed by his index finger in those. I'm hoping they get more snow in the next couple of weeks. They don't start putting together good, large jumps until all of the other runs are open.
We spent two hours skiing on Sunday, but the weather started to turn about halfway through that. The clouds came back in and blotted out the sun, the thermometer started to drop. Weather like this is usually a prelude to snow, so we headed back to the house to close everything up and get going back downstate. It was a nice weekend, and this time I didn't have to frantically search for the Blue Cross card. Good times.
