The Strain

I finished The Strain yesterday, and to be honest, I am not looking forward to The Fall.

I think for a 14 hour round trip to Annapolis, this was a good book on tape. I didn't have to think too much about what was going on in the story, but it kept me engaged. I am not sure that reading The Fall will do it for me, I don't feel invested in any of the characters (I don't care what happens).

Fellow bloggers, please let me know what I am missing (or just tell me to realign my expectations).

Book Review: Love is Mixtape: Life and Loss, One Tape at a Time, Rob Sheffield

I periodically argue with my friends (and co-bloggers) Max and Chris, about whether music can be objectively good, or whether music quality is something entirely subjective. Chris and I tend to argue not so much in favor of the objective goodness of the music we like, but against any notion of objective quality in the music we don’t like. Max, on the other hand, takes a less hard-line approach, and also has, though only in a couple cases, questionable taste in music. Of course, the argument is more entertaining than anything else – no one seems to be swaying anyone else’s opinion or even trying to – but fundamentally the argument raises a good question.

Personally, I hate the song “I Love the Way you Love Me”, by Faith Hill. I think the song is bad because the lyrics demonstrate an insultingly low level of creativity; the rhymes in the ballad don’t rhyme; and though they generally follow a simple, ringtone-annoying tune, the content of the lyrics really don’t make sense.

To wit:

If I could grant

You one wish

I wish you could see the way you kiss.

Explication is not necessary. On any level, is this good?

Rob Sheffield knows a lot about music, he really likes it and he listens to a lot of it. Rob Sheffield grew up on music, professionally critiques music for Rolling Stone magazine, and recalls the music playing during the most significant moments of his life – including the mixtape he was listening to around the time, at 30 or so years old, when his wife died. In Love is a Mixtape, Rob describes this tragedy.

Chuck Klosterman, a guy whose essays I like, wrote a blurb indicting that Love is a Mixtape is the best book about music that he’s ever read. The problem is the book is not really about music at all. Well, I guess it is about music and it isn’t. The book tells Rob’s story – it’s compelling, and interesting, and tragic, and profound in a lot of ways. Having recently gotten married myself, I’m really glad I read it. Among other things, what was probably cathartic for Rob to write around 10 years after the fact helped me gain perspective on the good fortune I possess in my life.

And yet, the songlists for 22 mixtapes drive the story. For each tape, the author lists all the songs on side A, and then all the songs on side B. After, often, the author describes what he liked about these songs and how they ended up on the mixtape. Invariably however, the organization of the mixtape and the reasons for its composition blend into the narrative of the author/Rob’s life.

Though it’s not the main idea of the story, in his book the author re-frames our debate on whether music is objectively good or bad. Regardless of the quality of a given song, Love is a Mixtape shows, like a lot of other forms of art, the ability for music to punctuate moments in your life. Whether a song is good or bad is not as important as what you were doing, or who you were with, or what was happening when you were listening to a given song. The entire flavor of a song can also change by taking the song from its original album, and placing it on a mixtape with other songs similarly swiped and reorganized.

Rob’s story is tragic, but in a lot of ways he is a character with whom I can identify. He was about my age when his wife died, he has about my level of education, and he likes a lot of the same music I like. Apart from his story however, what’s interesting to me are the musical recommendations I took from this book. The author listens to a wide variety of music and puts on his mixtapes everything from 60’s rock-a-billy, to soul, to indie, to top 40. Yet, Love is a Mixtape seldom delves into intricate detail of the music itself – lyrics, meter, tone, rhythm. Rather, from the narrative of a moment in the author’s life and the way he felt about what he was listening to, for reasons entirely personal, I began to wonder if I’d also like that song. The objective goodness or badness of music didn’t persuade me. I was persuaded by the way the song impacted the quality of the author’s experience, and how the author’s experience changed the quality of what he was listening to.

A couple of year’s back I was in Florida for Chris’s wedding. Apart from losing a pretty big round of credit card roulette on Friday night, the weekend was very enjoyable – many old friends were around in a beautiful location to celebrate a close friend getting married. On the way to the wedding I believe, I was sitting in the back seat of a rental car, whose front seat occupants were Max and his wife Aimee. I don’t recall who was driving, but I do recall we were in a great mood, it was a beautiful day, but we couldn’t find a radio station we liked. Part of the reason we couldn’t find a good radio station was because no matter what song came on, I claimed I could come up with songs, on the spot, that were better than whatever was on the radio. After one particularly dreadful song, I came up with a masterpiece: I like ham, I like cheese, put it all together that’s how I feel about you baby.[1] This song was our anthem for the rest of the weekend and Max, Aimee, and I still sing it to this day.

The song I bested puts a smile on my face to this day as well: Eeewww I love the way you, love the way you love me…

[1] The refrain also works as follows: I like ham, I like cheese, put it in a sandwhich that’s how I feel about you baby.

Success it Never Came

Pavement taunted us with “Here” as the final encore, but it was not that kind of night. This was a much louder show than what we saw at pitchfork, this may have to do with being indoors, but the feeling from the band was just different (better). I am not sure who was playing the second percussion kit, but it based on what I have heard of him, it could have been Gary Young. This guy was a maniac, screaming into his microphone, running around the stage, and at one point breaking shit (I think we would agree that this guy does not use shaped skis).

They played a lot of the hits, “Shady Lane”, “Trigger Cut” (one of my favorites), “Frontwards” (another favorite), and the expected songs form Crooked Rain.

I would have liked to seen, “I love Perth”, and “Here” as well as “Zurich is Stained” would have been nice for Jen. But I did think it was cool that they played “Date with Ikea” S.M. did not seem too engaged during it, but Spiral Stairs must have felt good that one of the encores was his song.

I forget what they played after the “Here” tease, but it was a rocker, and a fitting end to a loud night of music. If you are going to see them, bring some earplugs.

One thing that was similar to the Chicago experience, I am exhausted today.

Down the Fall Line

Here we go.  Dropping in...