Posts from 2004

Aging punk rockers is clearly the theme of the day. 

I stopped by the Apple store in Soho on the way back from a meeting today.  If you haven’t been to this store, it is disneyland for a guy like me.

I had to get some accessories for my iPod.  I got in line to check out and David Byrne is in line in front of me, buying essentially the same stuff I am buying plus some blank CDs so he can rip, mix, burn.

Beside the fact that David Byrne is one of the coolest people alive, and a great musician, and in his day one of the best punk rockers ever, he’s a real person, who stands in line, carries a back pack, and buys his own stuff, and is a member of the iPod generation.

I thought for a second about snapping a picture, but decided that I don’t want to be part of the snapperazi, one of the few digital trends that I don’t particularly like.

That was a nice moment in an otherwise hectic day.

We got a ton of new music in the past month.  And it’s all been on my Heavy Rotation list.  U2, Eminem, Green Day, Rilo Kiley, Badly Drawn Boy, etc.

We also got the new Paul Westerberg record but I didn’t dig it when I first heard it and it hasn’t been on my list.

But The Gotham Gal loves this record and she’s been playing it every day.  And you know what? This record grows on you.  There is a lot of good songwriting and if you like Westerberg the whole record makes for easy listening.

But there are some gems on this record, Lookin’ Up In Heaven, As Far As I Know, and a three song stretch near the end with What About Mine?, How Can You Like Him?, and Breath Some New Life which features Paul doing some killer guitar playing.

Killer punk rockers normally do not age this well.  And so this record goes into Heavy Rotation.

OM Malik has an interesting post about the end of the personal blogger in favor of the branded blog (Engadget, Gizmodo, etc).

First, I don’t think that is really happening.  Sure the big portals like Yahoo! are trending toward picking up on the blog brands.

But as much as I like OM’s blog and read him a couple times a week, I’ll read my daughter Emily every day.

If you add all that affinity up, the personal blogs are killing the branded blogs as a category.  What someone need to figure out is how to monetize personal blogs.  Then we’ll have an interesting discussion.

The album of the week in our household has been Green Day’s American Idiot so I am going to select a song off that disc for my MP3 of the Week.

It’s a hard choice.  American Idiot, Jesus of Suburbia, Holiday, Blvd of Broken Dreams, Give Me Novacaine, and Extraordinary Girl would all be excellent candidates.

But nothing gets me going like that first guitar riff on Holiday.  Plus its the holiday season.  So Holiday is my MP3 of the Week.

  "It’s not hard, not far to reach. We can ride to rockaway beach." – The Ramones

Actually this is a somewhat bastardized quotation.  I left about the part about hitching the ride.

But in any case, riding to Rockaway Beach was what Brad and I had in mind this morning. It was my last Sunday ride of 2004 and we decided to make it a good one.

We did the usual shot across the Manhattan Bridge, through dowtown Brooklyn, and up the slope into Prospect Park.  From there, we did the ride toward Coney Island down Ocean Parkway.  But we took a left at Avenue U and rode through some great ethnic neighborhoods until we got to Marine Parkway.

We passed Kings Plaza shopping mall, where The Gotham Gal had her first big job, running the cosmetic floor at Macy’s Kings Plaza in the early 80s.  That brought back some memories!

As we passed Floyd Bennett Field, Brad got a flat and we stopped to fix it.

Then we crossed the Rockaway Inlet on Marine Parkway Bridge.  The views were awesome from the bridge.

Once we reached Rockaway Beach we rode along the beach, rode through the really nice neighboorhood of Neponsit, and then through town and back along the beach.

We went back across the inlet on Cross Bay Bridge, where we got an incredible view of JFK Airport.

We rode through this cool little town on an island in the middle of Jamaica Bay called Broad Channel.  And then through the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge.

After we crossed the end of Jamaica Bay, we realized we were about an hour and a half from Manhattan by bike and I had to be home in an hour.

When we got to Howard Beach, we stopped at a nice Starbucks, which are everywhere, and asked where the nearest subway station was.

It turns out we were a couple blocks from the A train’s Howard Beach subway station, which was the nicest subway station I’ve ever been in.

The ride home on the express train took 45 minutes and it was my deadline of noon when we came back up for air at the W 4th Street stop.

I made it to 43 without needing glasses, but at my annual physical last month (which I passed with flying colors) my doctor asked me if I could read the fine print in his pocket prescription guide.  I couldn’t.  He then gave me his "drug store" reading glasses and I could read it no problem.

So he told me to go to a drug store and get some for myself.  Which I did today with The Gotham Gal and Josh and Emily.  They picked out a pair that they said I looked good in.

The best part is now I can look up from my reading with that look I’ve always wanted to use.

Getting older does have its finer moments.

The Gotham Gal has had a hot hand on the airwaves today.

When I came down for breakfast, there was a song that I had never heard called Year of the Rat.   It’s a great song and I went over to the crestron to check out who was singing it.

Badly Drawn Boy (aka Damon Gough) of course.

If you like Belle and Sebastian or Kings of Convenience, you’ll dig Damon’s music.

His new record is called One Plus One is One.

We’ve got two other Badly Drawn Boy records, Bewilderbeast and Have You Fed The Fish.  They are all great.

I can’t help but be taken with the story of Jason Kottke and Sony.  It’s David vs. Goliath but I’m not sure where the slingshot is yet.

Jason is one of the earliest bloggers and a true pioneer in the blogging world.

Sony is a big Japanese consumer electronics company that has a bunch of lawyers at their disposal.

Jason is apparently into Jeopardy and was following the Ken Jennings run on his blog.  Somehow he got wind of the fact that Ken had lost and posted that, along with an audio clip of the losing question on his blog.

Well I guess Sony got pretty pissed at Jason and sent some threatening lawyers after him which has now gotten Jason rethinking the whole blogging thing.  Jason can’t compete with the billions that Sony has when it comes to legal fees.

Well I want to know what Jason did that was wrong.  He learned something that others wanted to know and he posted it on his blog.  Too fucking bad that Sony didn’t want that news to get out.  Then run the goddamn show live.

If they sue him, I am going to send him some money.  I hope you all do too.

This list is in danger of becoming a greatest hits list with London Calling, Joshua Tree, Kind of Blue, Nevermind, and Exile on Main Street. 

It’s not supposed to be the best records of all time.  It’s supposed to my favorite 50 albums. 

Now I don’t feel like I’ve strayed from my mission which is to list my 50 favorite records, but maybe I’ve leaned toward to most obvious choices.

So it’s time to reach deep down and come up with a record that’s going to generate some controversy.

Tonight I came home from a long week at work and The Gotham Gal had one of my all time favorites on the airwaves.

Martin & Me is J. Mascis’ version of going "unplugged" with his favorite Dinasour Jr tunes, and a few other songs like Carly Simon’s Anticipation, Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Every Mother’s Son, and The Smiths’ Boy With The Thorn In His Side.

I have always loved Dinasour Jr. and the reason is J. Mascis. He is among the best guitarists I’ve ever heard.

I could listen to this record every week for the rest of my life and never get tired of his raspy vocals and some of the most incredible acoustic guitar playing I have ever heard.

Thanks Jo – you get an assist for this one.