melvins mondays

Despite my frustration with certain aspects of being Peonage, I do like that I can now do my work with the accompaniment of such Batcave-friendly sounds like King Buzzo and friends. And I got to go through files relating to shady city politics and mobsters. And with coffee. Not too bad.

whoever said we'd wash away with the rain...

Running errands for work since I have my car today was much needed because even changes of mundane scenery save me from completely zoning out and heading into that usual route of melancholia.

I'm tired and depressed, thinking about too much, grieving some things I wish were not as they are, and coming down from the buzz of countless cups of coffee. I'm sure part of this is the weather and the feeling of helpless frustration at the state of the world that's haunted me since my teens. Some who believe say that I shouldn't get depressed but if my God walked the earth a man of sorrows, I think it's okay.

Tonight will be tea, candles, creating, sleeping, meditation, solitude, music. It's times like these when I'm glad I live alone because this way I don't bother anyone and I can just be...



So much blood I'm starting to drown
Runs from cold to colder
Time to time the sky's come down
To help me lose my way
Tears and lies for answers
You and open veins, God knows I'm gone
Girl I just want you to
Come on down
Lord it's a storm and I'm heading to fall
These sins are mine and I've done wrong, oh babe
Come on down
Long Gone Day
Mmmm, who ever said
We wash away with the rain
See you all from time to time
Isn't it so strange
How far away we all are now
Am I the only one who remembers that summer
Oh, I remember
Everyday each time the place was saved
The music that we made
The wind has carried all of that away
Long gone day
Mmmm, who ever said
We wash away with the rain
So many tears I'm starting to drown
The rain in heaven's all come down
Silver spoons affix the crown
The luckless ones are broken
Fears and lies for answers
You and open flames
God knows I'm gone
And I just want you to
Come on down, hmmm
Lord it's a storm and I'm heading to fall
These sins are mine and I've done wrong
I want you to, oh, I just want you to
Come on down
I fear again, like then, I've lost my way
And shout to God to bring my sunny day

this is getting old and so are you...

Teenage angst has paid off well, though I'm not so bored and not that old yet. Life's gotten more interesting, even as it's settled into some kind of conventional routine.

I remember hearing on the radio about Kurt Cobain but I was eleven and didn't pay much attention but when Layne Staley died, it wasn't unexpected but still heartbreaking and me and my fellow slackers mourned together on a rainy Tuesday in the basement of Tri-C.

Every time someone talks about "The Voice of a Generation" I'm wary because not every person born after 1970 is an angsty suburban cracker and we tend to project our likes on the rest of the world just like our boomer overlords. My younger cousins don't know who Kurt Cobain is, and because people on the Internet don't know how to read, the first search on Youtube comes up as "Smells Like Team Spirit" which sounds like a hilarious trainwreck of a customer service program.

I know that the cryptic lyrics and perfect squalls of guitar spoke to my lonely soul who'd just discovered the guitar and music at the same time, tuning my dad's instrument down to D and a half step to play like Jerry Cantrell.



Who needed boy bands and love songs when there was cathartic angst to wallow in?



I learned how to play that song from a guy who went to rehab, and did the painting below my first year as an art student, and it hung in every dorm room and apartment I lived in until I moved home in '06 and it sat in a portfolio stuffed with old projects and band posters I forgot I owned. I see more hipster kids with flannel shirts than usual and know that the inevitable revival will eventually happen.

an attractively packaged bad idea

Dear Chris Cornell,

I've expressed dismay before, I'm assuming I'm in your target demographic as an aging late-to-the-party lover of most things rock-and/or roll, and my blue-collar Clevelandtown roots mean that I don't have any qualms of hipsterdom in admitting that I love overwrought 90's kings of angst/substance abuse and was once so enamored with downtuned guitars that I probably have freshman year mixtapes with the likes of Creed and Days of the New (statute of limitations, dear readers! A decade ago, it was either this or Limp Bizkit on the radio, and I had yet to discover college radio and more subculturally acceptable/superior sounds).

I still like the big Seattle bands, but those last two Soundgarden records were pretty damn amazing, with enough heaviness and intricate minor key melodies to warm my Led Zeppelin-loving soul. Your solo record was overwhelming but that's because there was no Kim Thayil. I think a few of us tried to like Audioslave despite the name, but it was really boring and never got as rifftastic as it could've. And then as if genericness wasn't bad enough, you hooked up with Timbaland and became the creepy old cracker at the club.



Since anyone with any sense can see the huge amount of suck here, though in your interview with spin you think this is some of the best work you've ever done, you're cashing in on the filthy lucre and nostalgia tripping to get the old band back together.

As far as I know, nobody in your band is dead, but I have a feeling that I'm not going to be pleasantly surprised as I was when Alice in Chains got a new singer and put out something that was pretty good. Heck, even snakedancing Scott Weiland has embarrassed himself less than you and still put out a record with some actual guitar and songwriting instead of singing about bitches at the club.



Guess it keeps me from getting nostalgic for the nonexistent golden years.

got me wrong

I was accused last night of hating men.

Aforementioned acquaintance, who seems to get her ideas of what ideal manliness is and what a woman's supposed to do/be from supermarket magazines, trashy romance novels, and unrealistic movies, is not a reliable source on my relations with the male species, and I found this comment amusing especially given the context that it was taken out of. So it's not just a grain of salt I'm taking this with, it's the Dead Sea.



In all honesty, I enjoy the male species far too much to buy into this whole anti-dude thing, especially considering that most girls aren't interested in the things I'm interested in. Just because I'm interested in the same things as some of the male species, doesn't usually mean that we're interested in each other. It's just nice to enjoy what you enjoy with others once in awhile without worrying about things getting messy.

Besides, it seems like even the smartest of them end up dating really boring chicks who listen to country music, buy expensive purses, and watch terrible reality shows but put more time into their personal appearance than I do which makes me question their judgment slightly. Or they end up with impossibly thin fashionista hipster types that I know better than to compete with. Maybe it's an ego thing, to feel superior or it's something reserved for nights out with the bros. Whatever.

In all honesty, females of any age have generally caused me more trouble and drama than most men, be they classmates, catty coworkers, nasty bosses, or crazy mothers. Too much testosterone or too much estrogen is usually a bad thing. We need each other to balance each other out.

In other news, I've got about ten minutes before I'm gone, to go let the downstairs neighbor's dog out, have dinner with the family and the might-as-well-be-family-in-the-best-way in-laws, start working on some cut and paste-y awesome layout art for the first time in forever, and maybe work in some Darkthroning in the woods or at the Cemetery of Awesomeness.

And because there can never be too much Alice, I'm going to do a way-cooler-than-Michael-Stanley doubleshot to start off your weekend. Muchas gracias to Randal for hooking me up with what has become my winter car music and making me realize that I wrote off said debut album as sounding "Too 80's" in my misguided youth.

Sorry about my ditziness in the way of closing up.

I don't go broke, but I do it a lot...

My younger sister and I had a conversation about drugs the other day and she was shocked that I've never smoked weed because I "seem like the kind of person who would," which is something people have said to me ever since high school because I was relatively mellow, drew trippy doodles in a sketchbook, was incredibly skinny and long-haired and listened to weird music.

She hangs out with a bunch of suburban hippie and metal kids who are probably a lot like my friends at her age, who skateboard, get stoned, and listen to Black Sabbath and Sublime but she's somehow never heard of Cheech and Chong, which my dad and I introduced her to over Christmas. Kids these days.

Caffeine is my mom's vice of choice and while she swears she's not addicted, she can't go a day without her coffee. I used to make fun of her but then it became my drug of choice as well. I didn't start until I got my first and current "real grown up job" and found that I really did like the taste of black coffee.

It got to the point where it didn't matter if it was good coffee or not just as long as I had it, and I soon realized that between work, Saturday mornings with my mom, and Sunday mornings at church where there is always good strong coffee, thanks a pastor who drinks espresso by the cup and the Ethiopians, I now drink at least 2 cups a day.



"We just ran out of coffee" on my 4am day is a scary sentence to hear because if I don't have it, I'm either sleepy or cranky and can get by but it's just not the same. We put our five dollar bills together so I could make a run across the street at 7:30 in the morning to buy a pound of house blend much to the amusement of the baristas who live off our culturally acceptable addictions.

Now we're stocked up for awhile and I had this totally guilty look when the head honcho came in early while I was in the middle of my early morning coffee ritual / 15 minute break I never take.

Upon return, I was rewarded with a copy of 'Dirt' since mine disappeared around the time all the drama went down and I moved out and I drove out to the burbs to meet up with the family for my uncle's annual New Year dinner. It blew my mind again and reminded me of recording "Down in a Hole" and "Would?" off WMMS onto cassette tape, listening to the radio with my dad, and conversations with my crew of friends back in the day wondering why Layne Staley is dead and Dave Navarro is still alive.



I worried about my little sister and some of the really negative stuff she was listening to coupled with the whole unhealthy self-image propagated by girls on the Internet who think that emaciation and cutting is sexy.

Then again, my musical diet in high school was almost exclusively dead or might-as-well-be-dead rock stars, coupled with the writings of Poe and Hawthorne with most of my art done with colored pencils on black paper.

I still think that Conor Oberst and these whiny indie kids who claim Hall & Oates as their biggest musical influence ever suck, but my boomer coworkers and hipster friends think that what I like sucks too. It must be one of those generational things. Then again, my dad likes this song just as much as I do.

eve of the eve

With a Christmas vacation pending for the first time since my high school graduation, I am so ready to go home even though I'm watching a friend's dog and haven't totally finished shopping as my plans for DIY gifts for almost everyone are still sitting in a kiln and unfinished on shelves.

And I can't wait until I don't have to hear any holiday cheer sung by Wham!, Billy Squier, We Are The World, or Wings. I do find a pleasing poetic justice in that Bob Geldof will have to hear his creation sung by snarky carolers at his house til the end of time.

I need to get some more coffee for certain individuals, wrap some things in brown paper (possibly will put the lino print blocks to good use), maybe make some candy or something. My grunge buddy's band is playing out on the east side, but I don't know if I'll make it out there tonight even if I'd love to hear a Mudhoney cover or two.

With all this to do, I don't want to deal with any kind of bar scene and anytime he's dating someone it's awkward because me and him have been chummy on a totally platonic we-like-sports-and-music level for the last decade or so which makes things awkward especially when said girl usually could care less about obscure 80's Pacific Northwest sludge and usually prefers country.



Speaking of obscure Pacific Northwest sludge, if all goes well I'll be guest-DJ-ing with my fellow english major/rap battler/punk rocker extraordinaire partner in crime on New Year's Eve from 11-12:30 in the afternoon playing all sorts of 90's grunge also-rans. Expect to hear some Green River, Seaweed, the Gits, Love Battery, Mudhoney, and Melvins. I'm sure those expecting more class of '77 sounds won't be thrilled, but it should be fun.

Stone Temple Pilots / Scott Weiland Comedy and Laser Spectacular

I planned to get a crew together to relive our middle school musical years by going down to the usual spot to check out the Stone Temple Pilots, but it ended up just being me & Vanessa for the musical tailgating adventures. A terrible local band played before Cage the Elephant, and we watched various characters debate the best way to hop the fence, while a lot of people who looked like they were in their 30s filed in below us.

One guy gets in by wearing scrubs and saying he's part of the EMS crew but he got kicked out, and then a ghostly pale older metalhead guy in a black cutoff t-shirt started talking to us about "killer songs," Salvador Dali, Alice Cooper, "The Man,"("the cops are always hassling the hippies and the artists, the poets and the freaks. tryin' to keep us down maaan..." and so on.

People are serious about this tailgating thing. There were lawn chairs, minivans with the backs opened up, coolers of beer. The cops would drive by or perch on top the hill above with binoculars and while this wouldn't have bothered me before, the sight of the blue and white cars makes me jumpy but they didn't bother anyone.

Evidently there were hundreds of people down here for 311 ("They come through every year") and there was a great crew for Slayer earlier this summer and some of the guys are regulars and come down here for everything but were especially saddened that it rained during REO Speedwagon the night before. I'm thinking about coming down again for "Fake Sublime" in two weeks just for the people-watching awesomeness that could ensue.



I forgot how many of those songs were in constant rotation on the radio when I was in high school even though by then they were getting close to a decade old. They were one of those bands that really wasn't held in the same regard as others, but seemed to have some kind of universal appeal in the burbs. One of the girls in my English class in 7th grade explicated on "Lady Picture Show" and another friend of mine used to bellow "STONE TEMPLE ROCKS" at inopportune moments, and my dad was a big fan of "Interstate Love Song."

The light show alternated between being interesting and having that look of those Windows Media Player visualizations with names like "Vortex" or something someone's kid did in Photoshop and often made no sense whatsoever. Scott Weiland's weird white boy dancing and stage banter was absurd as only a recovering 90s junkie can be ("and, uh, this song, is like, off of Purple. I think you know it... Uh, yeah, we actually practiced our songs again before, uh, going out on the road... yeah Cleveland, like those were the best years of my life.." and they played all the hits and a few I didn't expect (though I would've loved a few more off "Tiny Music"), like their cover of "Dancing Days" that I've always loved.





And I enjoyed the crowd of bros and their lady friends watching the show with us, and the odd ones that showed up too, like the quiet guy in khakis and sperry topsiders who showed up by himself and knew all the words to "Dead and Bloated," and the couple slow dancing on the bed of a red pickup truck to "Plush."

It felt like such a Cleveland night, with the strange mix of characters hanging out in a barbed wire parking lot in the industrial part of town looking down across the valley to the stage singing all the songs and clapping and saying "no way in hell I'm paying $60 for that show" while singing lyrics that don't make a whole lot of sense in a totally unironic way.

given to fly

Friday night I was on a front porch with some friends drinking tea and watching the storm come in until the temperature dropped and the rain got horizontal.

And after a Sunday afternoon of attempting to create a garden out of the sides of the fences in my back parking lot, and taking my own photo walk, Frank picked me up to go see Pearl Jam downtown.I haven't seen him since we saw the Dirtbombs back in '08 and we caught up and reminisced about back in the day and where everyone is now and how everything's changed since then.

I've never seen Pearl Jam before, somewhat avoided it for economic reasons and also during the Bush II years when the albums weren't so great and there was a lot of political ranting that I didn't feel like listening to.

But I like this last record and despite the steep ticket price, the show was good and long, one song after another that I loved and never expected to hear live... amazed that Eddie Vedder still has that kind of energy and I also realized throughout the course of the night that I know all these songs but I still don't totally know what he's saying in half of them... guess I'm not a real fan, hmmm?

They were the soundtrack though for a lot of us growing up in the burbs and these songs brought back so many memories of cutting class and driving around Cleveland listening to the radio with my dad in a beatup 1985 Pontiac 6000 station wagon, borrowing his wornout flannel shirts (I still have one by the way, but my roommate told me I'm not allowed out of the house in it), banging on a crappy acoustic guitar and a friend of mine singing "Last Kiss" on a hot sticky day, shelving library books to my tape of "Yield," angsting out to "Black." The first time I heard "Even Flow?" Damn.



There's a part of me that loves a good nostalgia trip and gets sentimental over weird things, but I'm so glad I'm not 19 anymore and hanging out with people based on if we liked the same bands or both looked weird because now that I look back on it, a lot of those people really weren't all that nice.

anyways, this is what was played...

Wash, Hail Hail, Corduroy, Got Some, In Hiding, World Wide Suicide, Force Of Nature, Immortality, Go, Even Flow, Army Reserve, Unthought Known, Daughter/WMA, Sleight Of Hand, Johnny Guitar, Do The Evolution, The Fixer, Why Go, Just Breathe, Given To Fly, Leash, Porch, Wasted Reprise, Life Wasted, Black, The Real Me, Smile, Alive, Indifference

sunny days and 90's nostalgia

I took a walk on the lunch break and basked in the sun that has decided to shine on this gray and rusted city. Everyone was outside and it almost felt like some kind of weird local holiday with us total strangers greeting each other with "Isn't this beautiful? Just when I thought I couldn't take any more..."

Ended up getting interviewed by a Plain Dealer reporter about my feelings on the weather.

I'm so used to gray skies and general ickiness that it doesn't bother me that much but days like this when the sun feels like your friend and not something that will probably give me cancer someday are just so awesome.

Kinda really excited that Pearl Jam is playing here in May though it'll probably sell out like it always does before I get tickets... my radio connections don't extend to the arena.
I wish someone more exciting than Band of Horses was opening, but I have an unashamed love of all things grunge and 90s since I heard this song on the radio when I was 15.



It did take me awhile to figure out what most of the songs on "Ten" were about because I never really paid attention to what Eddie Vedder was saying, I just loved the guitars and the energy and the way his voice does that squeal thing when he's trying to sound earnest and hit the higher range. For subject matter involving mental illness, school shootings, and incest, the song still sound, well, more upbeat than they should.

On a less upbeat note, evidently the surviving members of Morphine are touring and coming to the Beachland in May which I'm also pretty thrilled about... Since I'm too young to remember these bands in their prime, I'm looking forward to this too. Morphine's music gives me the shivers in the best way and I never thought the saxophone could sound so heavy.



And I'm totally looking forward to another summer of ill-advised Cleveland adventures, potential road trips, hanging out at Edgewater at every opportunity, wondering what this year will bring since it never seems like there's a dull moment.

i hate you chris cornell.

I used to think the Rolling Stones and Johnny Rotten were the primo example of embarrassment in the music world, but I think Chris Cornell has them beat at this point.

Being a grunge kid in high school a few years after the whole thing had died, working back from the horrendous radio rock that permeated growing up in Parma and driving around with your friends to "X-treme" radio, I found my sound in my dad's record collection and the four big Seattle bands (Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, Nirvana, Pearl Jam). My dad and I used to listen to Soundgarden together and this was one of our favorite songs.



From there, I started listening to massive amounts of college radio and became a huge fan of the more obscure Northwest acts. I was totally that kid who wore chucks and thermals and flannel and did artwork to the sounds of the Screaming Trees and tried to learn all of my favorite Led Zeppelin songs on the vintage electric guitar I bought because it looked like Kurt Cobain's Jag.

When I think of my senior prom, I don't think about the bad top 40 they played there, I remember driving there listening to Mudhoney, debating the merits of Joy Division, and shouting out requests for Slayer and Rush from our chairs even though all the music had been pre-picked by the powers that be. When I think of my high school prom, I think of "Touch Me I'm Sick" rather than something more romantic and sappy.

My tastes have diversified since I was 18, thanks to friends and roommates who turned me on to world music, good hip-hop and soul, but when any overplayed 90's classic comes on the radio, I always end up rocking out.

I picked up some cassettes when I was in Columbus, namely Living Colour's first album, U2's Achtung Baby, and Soundgarden's 'Superunknown' which have been getting loads of rotation in the Sexy Saturn when it's not 'The Low End Theory'), but this newest shenanigan by Chris Cornell almost makes me want to forget he was part of that band. Good grief.

EDIT: So Youtube is getting rid of any uploads of this song and that's probably a good thing for the sake of humanity.
Dude, you used to be in a band that was actually pretty awesome. Now you're that creepy old guy in the club. You could have aged gracefully like Greg Dulli or Mark Lanegan, or heck, even Robert Plant, but nooooo... you thought working with Timbaland was a great idea. Seriously, the wrath of the nonexistent metal gods needs to smite you right now.