You Say You Want a Revolution!?

Well, I don't have one for you.

What I do have is a brief story about how one time I went out to real Virginia (this would have been last week) and as I was just starting to drive, I realized that I didn't have any CDs with me in the car (and mind you, this car has a 6-CD cartridge changer in the trunk!) so I stopped at my favorite record store to buy some. Since it's kind of a long drive, I purchased 3 new CDs. I am doing my part to keep the record companies in business. I only pirate software. So here's what I think about those 3!

1) Shame, Shame - Dr. Dog: Honestly, I'm a little disappointed. Fate was totally good, so I expected the same. It was only regular, not totally, good, though. I think it earns 11 dog-eared DSM IVs out of 14 (They're not a real doctor, but we call them Dr. Dog)

2) Infinite Arms - Band of Horses: You know that one song, Funeral by Band of Horses? Yeah, that's about my depth of knowledge of them too, until I bought this album. Basically, I chose to buy it because The National was sold out and I'd heard of this band and the cover looked really cool. I know I'm not supposed to judge things by their covers, but a lot of time it works! And it did here. This album does for symphonic dirge-pop what Shame, Shame did for medical canine-pop. By that I mean it was a new album. Rating: a linear approximation of a Taylor series (the fourth Taylor series to be exact)

3) Congratulations - MGMT: I liked it. I don't care what anybody else says, I like it! (BTW, what do other people say? I really want to make sure I'm not going outside the group consensus on this. I don't want to lose my valuable CRED points.) There is a song about Brian Eno. Rating: On a scale of 1 to Clever! this one gets a "ConGradulations!" with a picture of a diploma.

A Tale of Two CDs

So I've now listened to the latest Avett Bros. album approximately a baker's dozen times while driving to and from work and/or stores and I've come to the conclusion that I have to call it a total sell-out. It is basically a mainstream wannabe that lacks the pure poppiness of actual mainstream music without the vibrancy and banjo that made their past efforts (see Gleam and Emotionalism for example) so awesome.

Now this is hard for me to say, and I come by this after many hours of deliberation. You see, I've never heard any other Avett Brothers albums before in my life. However, I am aware that many of their "true" fans do not like the latest offering. I definitely don't want to be one of those Ralph-come-latelys because then I totally lose all my credibility (sort of like how I feel about people who have only heard the Kings of Leon's newest album, which sucks and is a total sell-out). So I am forced to pretend that I don't think this newest album is very good so as to look like someone hip and in the know. You wouldn't think being hip should be so difficult, but you are wrong. It's a lot of work.

The great thing about this decision is that even though I claim to think "I and Love and You" is a total cop-out, major-label, Rick-rubin suckfest and how they were WAAAAAAY better back when, I can still listen to it in secret. If I listened to it in public without shame, I would be opening myself up to all kinds of mockery by the real deal fans.

Basically, I just want to make sure I'm hipper than anybody else at work, which is, let's be honest, in the northern Detroit suburbs, like shooting a barrel with a gun specifically designed to shoot barrels with barrel-seeking missiles.

You Might Remember a Little Thing Called THE FRENCH JEAN SHORT REVOLUTION!

At this most wonderful time of the year, I often like to recollect things. Last year I tried recollecting all the 1987 Topps baseball cards, but then I remembered that collecting things is pretty lame, let alone REcollecting.

So I decided to reminisce instead. It was way more satisfying. I reminisced so much that I threw my back cortex out! First I reminisced about ye olden times when I used to wear jean shorts. That was pretty cool. Then I reminisced about The Dark Ages (birth - 4), but that didn’t take very long. It turns out that all my memories from that period are actually just photographs. I guess you could say I have a 100% photographic memory of those ages!

Finally, I reminisced about Saturday when I took los kids (that's Mexican for "the kids") to the Henry Ford Museum. They had this Lego Castle Adventure exhibit that had big ol’ bins of Lego bricks for any/everyone to dig their hands into and build stuff with. In retrospect (which is what reminiscing is all about), these bins seem like a bad idea. Unless Lego bricks are naturally self-disinfecting. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure they are not.