A Chirstmas gift to our readers.

A brief note: If you celebrate another holiday, then consider the title to be a seasonally appropriate salutation, since, well, I and Thomas are Catholic, myself, if only fashionably and it feels a bit too off the mark to say a holiday gift. So, as you probably figured, no offense is meant.

Shopping at Borders shouldn't give me an existential dilemma. It, however, did. As I passed the clearance books (after picking up a copy of Do Androids Dream Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick and Common's Universal Mind Control for my brother's Christmas gift), I saw something that was so value packed it defies my best attempts at an explanation as to even begin to chart or map it. On sale for eight dollars was the complete works of Edgar Allen Poe. Eight bucks for his complete works?

You could spend hours looking at the Raven and still never truly suck all the meaning out of it, and you know what? There's about forty-odd other poems there, not to mention the seventy something stories. It's so massive, I don't know where to begin. I didn't buy it, (Zach might shoot me, but to do that, he'd first have to read this, which I'm pretty sure doesn't happen.) because I already bought two other books from Borders just yesterday, The War Within by Bob Woodward and a book of Islamic poetry by a man called Rumi. (As is my want, I've gotten 12 chapters deep in Woodward's book by now, and haven't started Rumi.)

Looking again at the book, which appears now, to be about roughly three quarters the size of a throw pullow and twice as deep, could I ever have gotten to it? Also, my bag was bulging from the two books and CD I had already bought. I have enough books that I've started to finish, which include:

the Arab Predicament by Fouad Ajami
the End of Faith by Sam Harris
the Mystery of Capital by Hernando DeSoto
But Is It Art? by Cynthia Freeland

If I'm lucky, I'll finish three of the four by the middle of January.Thus, an upwards of seven hundred page book, most of it requiring in depth reading, I don't know if I'll ever get through just doesn't seem worth it, even as a complete discography, just to have purchased it once and be done with it once. That said, I'll almost certainly go back to Borders later on this week and pick it up then because it's everything Edgar Allen Poe ever wrote for eight bucks. I'll find something, I'm sure.

That's when I realized: There's far too much media, whether it's music, literature, TV shows, movies or games to sift through everything I want in one life. I've got lists and lines of games and records and books and almost everything else. Hell, I have Killzone in my PlayStation 2 right now, with Odin Sphere, Dragon Quest 8 and God of War 2 on deck. I have no idea if I'll be able to finish another one of those games within the time I return, and hundreds of CDs on my computer sent to me by PR people that I don't know when I'll get the time to listen to.

I guess now is a good a time as any for a huge pronouncement, it feels to me like there's always going to be something else to read, listen, watch or play before I die. But, beyond all that, now I have another goal, but hopefully this one encompasses many smaler ones: I just want to write something one day that's worth the investment of time.

So. We'll (Who am I kidding, I) will try to keep posting here when I have something to say that doesn't fit into the other writing projects I have. May your next week be without hassle and as little stress as possible.

Here's to never having enough time!

At least I'm honest, right?

We're back.

I'd lie and say we've been busy, but you all know better by know. Truth is, we've been working, some of us in summer camps, some of us manual labor, some of us on other pursuits.

I'm fairly sure the point of this blog was to pay for our liquor (beer, specifically), so typing this out after I've been drinking seems only appropriate. I've been listening to the Gaslight Anthem for the better part of the summer, mostly to the yet to be released the '59 Sound disc, and it's pretty fantastic, even if the same ground is covered each song on it. It sounds like Bruce Springsteen in 2008, if he was just starting out. On every song some variation of "driving", "Saturday night", "dancing" "the radio" and another that's not coming to me now. The themes, somehow, don't get tired. Maybe that's because of the liquor.  Neither, for that matter, do the song structures, which, for all but one song, is verse/chorus/verse/chorus/chorus/chorus (and if they're feeling adventurous, they'll throw a bridge in there).

In a way, the '59 Sound sounded oddly familiar to me on the first listen, because the first comparison was JRPGs. Much of the same themes are recycled in JRPGs, and I don't tire of those either. The one I'm still playing (Persona 3), has the same themes of teenagers making up for the sins of the earlier generation, a corporate coverup which has disastrous effects on the populus, a main character with an epic destiny and high school girls in short skirts as the rest of the genre.

There are rough patches in both pieces. Equipping a character in Persona 3 with a weapon means you have to walk up to them, and go into their inventory, scroll down, and then exchange the weapon, which is a pain, considering that the standard in JRPGs is that all characters can have items swapped out from your menu. Miles Davis and the Cool, off of the '59 Sound has it's own issues, a fairly pointless minor part in the song that (almost) kills the flow of what could be the perfect song to play during the iconic scene in Say Anything, with a hook of "so I laid a kiss on a stone/tossed it upside your window, upside the roof", but the song survives due to its strength everywhere else. 

Speaking of everywhere else, when Persona 3 gets into a groove, it's pretty much undeniable. Spoilers follow.

One of my favorite scenes in the game is one after a brutal death, a particularly close friend (Akihiko) of the deceased says his goodbyes to his friend after the ceremony and the rest of the school left the auditorium. Somehow, the character, has a conversation on his own with the deceased, just to say goodbye, but introduces it like this: "I had the usual for lunch...Ramen tastes a lot better when you're cutting class."

Spoilers end

The power in those sentences is in what isn't said. It's not that the ramen, likely, was made any better, but that the deceased character kept telling him to cut class with him, and he probably never did.

The same power in what isn't said can be found in the song High Lonesome, where the singer (Brian Fallon) murmurs to a girl "It's a pretty good song, babe, you know the rest" before hesitating and finishing the line: "baby, you know the rest." Again, the power is in what isn't said. Lord knows what meaning that song has for the two of them, and Mr. Fallon only hints at it.

Hell, Persona 3 doesn't feel like a JRPG when I play it, and yet I've already sunk roughly three four days into that game. I can't count the number of times I've played the '59 Sound straight through. Maybe 40 60something? Lord only knows. Even if the themes are recycled and familiar, I still enjoy the time I spend with both discs, and will spend more before the summer is out. 

Demos: Don't Push Us When We're Hot

Discussions of breaking the theme aside, here's the draft I sent over to the newspaper to be published. Sometimes, the demos deserve to be outshown by their full studio release sibling, and I think this column is a great example of that. Fear not, I've got something for the theme week, but this will tide you over until I'm happy with the quality and quantity of my output.

There is a discussion among music industry pundits as to what, exactly, to do with the games "Rock Band" and "Guitar Hero". After you get through the usual "Why don't they just play real guitars?" question (Answer: It differs from person to person, but in a lot of cases because it's fun faster.) and the suits thumbing their noses (Hello Velvet Rope!), what emerges most often is the word "market".

Market is an important choice of word. It shows what gamers are thought of. It dehumanizes the subjects and dismisses the idea of a shared community, experience or anything else except for age or geographical location. I'll return to this later. But, they see an "emerging market" for music in gamers. This "emerging market" is the enthusiastic "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" players who will buy new songs, sold as downloadable content. Why are we an emerging market? Because the record industry didn't pay attention to gamers before (even with the huge success of SingStar abroad), and now that downloadable content and "Guitar Hero" took off in numbers that raised some eyebrows, suddenly, gamers (and I include myself) courted.

This means, first and foremost, there's going to be a lot more garbage released on "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band", as any band who is smart enough will insist that part of their contract mandate that the label work with MTV or Harmonix to get their material on the games will, with the right push from the label (read: burlap sacks filled with money), get their focus tested single in. (See also: The upcoming Aerosmith edition of "Guitar Hero".) But, it also means that Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and Beatles songs (what the industry might reasonable call high profile content) will become available to play.

The music industry sees the energy and willingness to spend money in the gaming world as something worth tapping into, and worth trying to profit off of. (They are not wrong, gamers are an reliable market which generates revenue consistently and in a physical retail environment. For an industry losing its core demographics left and right, this is an especially tempting pie.)

The interaction between the players in "Rock Band" and "Guitar Hero" and the feeling of "yes, I'm nailing this song" are what sells copies, and makes believers out of gamers. This is at odds with the current state of the music industry. There's enough economics people in the music industry, which is common knowledge, but not enough believers.

What remains to be seen is how the people making "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" will respond to the tempting offers of money to stuff their high profile game with sub-par material. "Guitar Hero 3" (the latest iteration) had small, but unforgivable problems with button response time, which is crucial in a timed response game. On the other hand, it had a more varied and deeper track list, which made "Guitar Hero 3" unbearable to play, knowing that when I hit the notes correctly, and on time, the game would not register it, making a "plunk" noise and taking me out of the experience.

That edition of "Guitar Hero" has since sold over a couple million copies, which is a success for any game. The problem is, players who bought the game got frustrated with the controls, and have since stopped playing that edition. As the music industry loses goodwill left and right, it's important to note that the "Guitar Hero" and "Rock Band" franchises have had some crossover success. Let us hope the success is not Pyrrhic.

Theme week: Hedonism. And vaguely anti-corporate sentiment!

Upon hearing that my beloved Planningtorock is going to be at South by Southwest this year, I sprang (Sprung! Springed!) into action, and tried to get Zachary to convince me this was a bad idea. Since this is Zachary, however, nothing is ever a bad idea, but in the end, we found out that the cheapest way to do this would still cost far too much money, and maybe result in us getting mugged. In Austin. Texas, why are you our most irascible state? Don't change, though, we still love you.

In our way.

In fitting with the theme of this week, let's see what Webster's Dic(HAHAHA)tionary has to say about Hedonism: "The doctrine that pleasure or happiness is the sole or chief good in life." Well hey, okay. Didn't Oscar Wilde say that same thing exactly? Well, he did, but in defense of Webster, Wilde said a lot of things. Cheesy introductions aside, really now, I struggle to understand individuals who do not, in their way, life lives for their own happiness. Self flagellating monks took doubtless pleasure from their whips and uncomfortable shirts, knowing that their reward lay beyond. Further, I mean, come on - monks? Seeking the chief good in life? Those bros were ALL ABOUT the chief good in life. Thanks a lot for your crappy definition, Daniel Webster. I hope you get what's coming to you.

Anyway. My greatest vice, aside from eating diet foods and bitching about iPods, is music. It is an intensely personal vice - I meet other people with different tastes, and I must resist the urge to rend the flesh from their bones for not agreeing with me, or for having even heard of the bands I like. And I fully acknowledge that this is a stupid thing to think, because music is like TOTALLY OMG WOW a personal experience, and so it is a ridiculous thing to force my subjective assumptions onto strangers. So when it comes to music, I usually just shut the hell up and hold back my tide of bitchfork-like fury against the uninitiated, because no one likes that. The last thing I want is people hating me for silly reasons - there are already so many good reasons out there. I'd feel like I was wasting their time.

So there are things that we must do to preserve our hedonism - our happiness is never a sure thing. We are sensitive to the moods of others, to the weather, to what we ate last night for dinner. Our pleasure is never immune to distortion, and it is always precious and fragile. It is a rare gift to find those individuals who are able to enjoy themselves with the relentless force of a hurricane, or even to be able to ignore the small details that derail more detail oriented minds. Hedonism is so often pegged as a bad idea, but why? If it is the pursuit of happiness and goodness, what's so wrong with that?

I might argue that there are profits at stake. If you convince others that they aren't having a good time, you can provide for them an easy out. Consider the advertising blurb for the Hedonism resorts:

"Sleep in. Stay up late. Give up counting calories. Have a drink before noon. Give up mineral water. Dine in shorts. Talk to strangers. Don't make your bed. Go skinny dipping. Don't call your mother. Let your hair down. Don't pay for anything. Don't leave a tip. Be your beautiful self in spectacular Negril or Runaway Bay, Jamaica."

These are the same manipulations that get us to spoil ourselves and buy a luxury car, or to indulge in some hideous new meat patty and sauce at a fast food restaurant. The above text does not inspire me to be beautiful in any way - it makes me an ugly, self-centered jerk. An easily impressed self-centered jerk. Talk to strangers! Eat in shorts! These are not, strictly speaking, novel. If we are made to think that these things are new and that they can be provided by this service, then our sense of being beautiful and free hinges on paying these fuckers. Don't get me (and my misdirected self-righteousness) wrong, there are some people who probably totally love that place. But they are tools and I hate them. The more we relegate the pleasures of life to a specifically cordoned off area, the more they are removed from our daily life - we become the agents of our own discontent.

So, enjoy hedonism week. Think about what you do for your own pleasure (you sickening freak), and about how different you would be as a person if this were taken away from you. ON WITH THE SHOW.

Theme Week: Secret Cartography

This week, we will delve into the project of mapping the unseen, divining the secrets of maps and charting old secrets. We will explore imaginary geographies, and share anecdotes relating to geographical explorations in reality. We will make grandiose promises, with nothing more than a glimmer of hidden knowledge to back them up. We will map out the future and past, showing you hidden things about each.

In that last capacity, here's a post I wrote acouple months back about Daft Punk's 'live album'. I never posted it, and I think it fits the theme rather well:

-
Alive

So, yes. Daft Punk! They create music somehow. Magic may be involved.

Their new album Alive, is a strange beast. A live album from a pair of DJs, it contains no completely new songs, but instead mixes old favorites into new mashups seasoned with highly enthusiastic crowd noise.

The crowd is justified in their enthusiasm.

It is a very good album. It is also an interesting album, because the more Daft Punk you've listened to before, the more you will probably enjoy it. This isn't to say that if you've never heard a Daft Punk song before, you won't enjoy the album: depending on your taste in music, you might. It's very good music of whatever precise genre Daft Punk happens to be, and, as a dabbling Daft Punk fan, there are tracks that I don't really recognise. I still like them. However, in the tracks that I do recognise, a strange alchemy takes place.

For example, an entire song been compressed into background music-beats, abbreviated but perfectly recognizable, that underlay another song, changing its context. If I didn't know either song, I would just hear one song, with an interesting counter-melody of synth beeps. But I know and recognize both; they amplify and play through each other, each one carrying with it a full emotional context of history and place: the people I've kissed, the roads I've driven while that song played.

Unlike more lyrical music, techno doesn't tell a story: it creates a space for you to tell your own. Hearing these songs successfully interposed and amplifying each other is like discovering that the perilous forest you killed an ogre in fits in between the walls of the cloud mansion you've always dreamed of, that the tulgey woods can grow out of the pavestones of Ankh-Morpork--that Narnia is Amber.

I'm not sure that this album really deserves that sentence, but I like the sentence too much to remove it. Also, I'm pretty sure I have more to say about techno songs being places rather than stories. Maybe I can work it into that hypothetical One Piece rant I'm supposed to be writing.

Back to the album.

It is, in short, a little bit like finding that someone has taken many of your favorite landmarks and shuffled them into a single super-landscape, where you are cordially invited to walk. They've done it in a way that, while not always perfect, contains glimpses of transcendent beauty, where the new context raises familiar sights into new realms of meaning that abandon nothing.

It's a little less awesome because they were all built by the same architect, so they're probably just some places you're fond of instead of Narnia, Amber, Viriconium and so on. That said, it's a little more awesome because you don't have to worry about distortion of the artists' intent: they distorted it themselves.

There are the slightly awkward elbow-junctions of back-alley and cloud bank, but even these are always handled with a charming grace, and give you somewhere to walk between one transcendent glimpse and the next.

It's not a perfect album. But it's made me smile harder than pretty much anything else this week. When it's on, it's on. And when it isn't, it's building to bring it back harder than ever when the time is right.

And that's more than enough for me.
--

I wrote that on December 14th of last year, and never posted it, possibly because I had failed to beat James to the punch on reviewing the album, which we both eard for the first time simultaneously.

So there you have it: a secret brought to light, light shed on darkness, and a thesis about the imaginary geography of music brought, at least dimly, into view.

An entire week of such cryptogeographical expeditions await us. I, for one, can't wait.

Amusement.

Where half of the staff currently resides, it is in what might refer to as the snow belt of America. After a certain period of time, the darkness (and consequent lack of sunlight) assaults and overruns my sense of humor and sometimes, the reserve of hope I carry for nights starting at 3 p.m.

It is no surprise then, that my family has purchased for me, at great cost, a piece of technology I simply refer to as the happy lamp. I fully expect the nice lady to come around with the happy needle sooner or later. This, and other happy needles have been instrumental in my continued survival around here.

Augustine reminds me I gain little from telling you this. I note otherwise. It is my hope, readers, that you learn from what I am about to say.

You do not have time to spend your free time doing things you don't like. Your free time is valuable enough as it is. I realized this some time before playing Rock Band for 5 hours more or less straight. True, I do have other homework to do, and I had about 3 hours of sleep last night, but my mind hasn't felt that clear afterwards for weeks at a time. Yes, I had to wake up with a half can of Jeff Gordon approved energy supplement, but I felt (finally) like I was doing something worth doing. And, when the band got a sound guy and bodyguards, I took that as confirmation that something was going right.

Perhaps it was another misplaced urge to play some Hot Water Music songs and having to settle for Deep Purple, Blue Oyster Cult and Black Sabbath. (Toward that end, if I must pledge fealty to a Black something band, then I bend my knee to Black Flag.) It is not that Highway Star, Don't Fear the Reaper and Paranoid are bad songs, and the original bands are not good, in fact, quite the opposite. But, I don't really want to play a nice, clean guitar part with a singer who has, you know, notes to hit. I want to play a song where the guitar players are great, and the singer looks over at the crowd and passes them the microphone.

Alas, Rock Band in it's wisdom, does not understand this. I did, however, have a little leap for joy when I saw that singer's avatar now had a NYHC shirt on. I took that as a little tip of the cap and a secret handshake between someone at Harmonix, and anyone else from the punk and hardcore scenes who found themselves playing their game. And my heart sang, just a little, when I saw on Kotaku that At the Gates (From Slaughter of the Soul, no less!) was going to be on the March 4 DLC update.

As I write this, I have a couple other projects and assignments I should be turning my head to, including an interview with the Out_Circuit mastermind, Nathan Burke, in advance of his new disc Pierce the Empire With a Soundwhich is a fantastic little disc, perfect for wandering out in the deep, deep snow and getting lost with your thoughts and neuroses.

Brand New might still have the words "wake up, you are going to die" on their myspace page, and they hit the nail on the head for the first time since they wrote Moshi Moshi and Guernica, but this is Eleven Names, not Long Island, so I'll do this a little bit differently. Find something you enjoy. Find something that amuses you, and do it. It (especially around this time of the year for our readers in the Northern Hemisphere) is a cold cold world, and if you can make people laugh, then you have warmed it, if only for a moment or two. There is enough pretentious, humorless garbage floating around me that I can guarantee you with all my heart and soul, humor and joy are two of the few things still worth doing.

Carpe diem. Carpe noctem. But carpe something.

Wait, what?

The Daft Punk live disc (Alive 2007) is what a live CD should be, in my opinion. It is boisterous, energetic and if they don't hit every beat, well, I haven't noticed, and I don't care.

As you may have guessed, Daft Punk is not really my thing or my usual cup of tea.

So, to be told by multiple sources that this disc pretty much rules, I gave the One More Time mashup a shot. Lo and behold, the roar of the crowd very nearly sings "One More Time" just once before the volume is dialed back up and the noise hits again. I am hooked. It is teasing, at least to my ears. (And yes, I did just link to Pitchfork Media. Let me say that while for the most part, their readers tend to be hyper-elitist pricks that make Napoleon look a humble, self-secure human being, their festivals have been exquisitely curated, even if I hate most of the people there and don't like the acts performing.

I have said this in public before too. I'm not talking smack on the internet and not backing it up. While I have not seen Clap Your Hands Say Yeah live, I very sincerely doubt their performances inspire their fans like this.)

What does the Daft Punk live disc do, though?

It makes me want to join in or start a dance party. That, for many of my friends back home is anti-thetical to their understanding of me. I guess college does change you.

Originally, this was going to be about Daft Punk, but my love for the Kanye West disc, which I have been steadily listening to since roughly a week ago is usurping that. It will surprise at least one ex-girlfriend of mine to hear that I am listening to "Good Life" because at the time we were close, I did not listen to much hip hop and it was only later on when I finally admitted that I hadn't listened to that much of it, and was really too deep in punk rock to leave the pool, even for NWA, the Wu-Tang Clan or Public Enemy.

But I still don't dance without lots of prodding.

I don't know what it is about the song. Perhaps it is the message, delivered by Kanye West and an autotuned T-Pain (You may remember him as the performer of "Buy U A Drank") about life and trying to stay positive about it. "Let's go on a living spree, they say the best things in life are free..." Perhaps it is the squeaky brightness of the electronics behind the voices.

Music will make you do strange things. Thank God for that.

See, I can update about real things.

I recently purchased two pieces of vinyl and the reaction from my friends was “did you really buy vinyl?”, with a certain amount of disdain, as if I had just sunk myself into the pit of elitist, masturbatory self-congratulation of being a evangelizing vinyl owner. They’re right, though. There is a choking pretense and elitism that follows the format, for better or for worse.

But. The real question is contained in the question that comes to us at easiest to hand, which is “why did you buy vinyl, when you don’t even have a record player?"

The answer comes down, ultimately, to a discussion of format. Because of my work elsewhere, I am able to receive promotional copies of CDs, or the files that comprise them. Therefore, I have the files, and I have the portability the current formats are useful for. In other words, I can put the songs on my iPod and on my computer and I don’t need the CD again.

I don’t need a CD player, since I have an iPod, and so the CD, once the files that comprise it have been ripped to my computer, sits on my shelves and computer desk and only gets use when I want to flick through the CD jacket sleeve or look for lyrics.

This is to say that once I have ripped the files onto my computer, I have no use for the format I have purchased, aside from the art and packaging that goes with them. And this is where the vinyl comes in. There are two reasons, so I have heard, why one would buy vinyl. First, for the sound quality, (which ends up atrophying) and the art.

Since I don’t own a turntable, I can’t defend the sound quality argument. Art and packaging on the other hand, I can defend without issue. I have seen the packaging for the CD version of this release (Minus the Bear’s Planet Of Ice), and when I leafed through it, it was clear that while it looked awesome, it was missing a certain je ne sais quoi. Also, when I heard that a good friend of mine who was putting out the vinyl release had worked really hard on the jacket (that being the album artwork), I knew which format my purchase of the album was going to be in.

I view the double disc vinyl releases like this the same way my parents view coffee table books. They are meant to be looked at, and meant to be full color, glossy and exquisite. In this case, I paid for sumptuousness in a format, when I already have the music, so my question of which format to purchase is between $14 for a CD who’se art I don’t like or $10.50 for a double disc vinyl that one of my friends worked on who’se art I do.

That’s not much of a decision. But if you're going to call me an self-absorbed, arrogant prick, which is probably true, you're going to have to find some other way to do it instead of the fact that I'm now buying vinyl on the side.

Yeah, it's been a while. (But at least I still updated before Zach.)

A disclaimer. I've been working, reading and writing assignments rather than posting here. It's been two weeks now since my last post, and much has happened. Parties came and went along with a rekindled Starcraft obsession, though the Starcraft has stayed, to my euphoria.

But, like most of my posts, music is involved.

Why is it that before large gatherings of my friends, I hear and succumb to the siren call of Thursday's "War All the Time"? The first verse is about committing suicide with a friend in the garage with the car running. And I play this before parties. Where people are having fun. And enjoying themselves, and perhaps, even my company. There is something wrong here.

I'm nervous, and large crowds scare me. That shouldn't be news. I do want to inoculate myself with melancholy, and said song is quite the powerful fix.

Its position may soon be usurped by Crime In Stereo's "...But You Are Vast", a melancholy song about either the singer's medication (the singer had cancer when he was 18, and it's now in remission) or a girl. The first line? "You're no good for me." Jesus. That's how the song begins.

Late at night, when my phone hasn't rung for days and it's 40 degrees in the house, my fingers worm their way to Boysetsfire's demo for phonecall 4 AM, with the line "please believe I've lost myself inside of you". Or, when all of the above are happening, and when I feel like the beat just can't go on.

Then there's Nick Drake. His body of work like a very powerful, addictive medication. The music powerful and the sorrow is palpable as it comes through the speakers. It is the kind of music I listen to when I just want to hear music and I don't care who is listening. It is not quite sad bastard music. American Football is sad bastard music, they are a group who (in my opinion) made a full length that should be the soundtrack to crying over the opposite sex, if you're straight, and the same sex if you're not. (For all the bisexuals reading this, forgive the gender binary.) But Nick Drake carries a different melancholy. I'd argue from what little I've heard, Nick Drake is more about reminiscing about previous partners. Now, the Styrafoam remix of the Postal Service's Nothing Better arrives on the airwaves, and the dagger that is the song slips in between my armor. Moments later, more people enter the DJ booth, and the armor goes back on. Sigh. That'll stay with me for a while since the DJ booth is cold, and I'll stew in my memories until I can leave the booth and begin the uphill walk home.

Suddenly.

I'm Yours, Boston begins playing, and suddenly, I don't need the armor, and the feeling of melancholy evaporates.

Music can fuck with your emotions, and thank God for that.

Theme Week: Hello?

Saying hello is something every person has to do, eventually. It is an introduction to the person that follows. That's simple enough, but when you're a band who is putting out a new release, with what track do introduce the listener to your new material? How do you present your new artistic statement? Do you start a track that reassures fans that you haven't changed too much? Do you start with an example of your new sound? Do you start with the best song?

If you're Rise Against, and you're introducing Siren Song of the Counter Culture, you start with the absolutely ripping/nearly speed metal of State of the Union, which, by the way, will have you flailing your arms pretending there's a drum set in your immediate vicinity. This CD, of course, contained, their acoustic radio hit, "Swing Life Away", but as an introduction to the "new" Rise Against disc, it worked wonders. Put on the internet by the band a month in advance, the response was electric, and silenced the critics that said their new digs at Dreamworks softened them.

If you're dance-punk collective Head Automatica, and you're introducing Decadence, your best foot forward is the 2:14 ass-shaking "At the Speed of a Yellow Bullet", whose lyrical content is about an arms dealer. "I'm burning houses, baby!" Darryl exclaims and you're wondering just the guy is saying and why your hips are moving to it, but the beat just keeps going, and your body continues its motions.

If you’re math-metal wunderkinds Dillinger Escape Plan, and you’re introducing your new full length Miss Machine, you choose “Parasonic Youth” (currently downloadable on their MySpace page) as your opening track with your new singer screaming WE WROTE THESE PLANS, then you start with the inhumanly fast drumbeat with absurdly heavy guitars and you let that greet listeners who wonder if the 5 years between records and the new singer has had changed Dillinger dramatically.

Of course, if you're former-Misfits-fiends-turned-quazi-Brit-rockers AFI, and the disc you're introducing is the hotly anticipated Decemberunderground, you'll start with "Prelude 12/21" the same kind of gang vocal chanting that introduced your other major label release, Sing the Sorrow, with hints of the "cold-pop" flavor that is to come on Decemberunderground in the background.

If you're genre-defining act Minor Threat, you'll sequence your career discography such that possibly your most angry and to the point song "Filler", a 1:32 song about religion and violence, is the first song the listener hears. The aesthetic, short, fast, loud and nearly incomprehensible vocals would resonate through America.

And if you're me? You avoid the topic altogether, and weakly point back to your original post as evidence that you’ve followed through on the theme before it was announced If that doesn’t work, talk about some bands and releases you've come to cherish, and hope through speaking about the bands, the music, man, you've made a nice introduction to your character.

Oh well. Here’s how I introduce myself in public: nervously. Perhaps with a joke. A self-deprecating shot at least a minute into the conversation. Leave the vicinity as quickly as diplomatically possible, hoping I’ve come off passably.

If it’s an attractive member of the opposite sex, I just aim for not stammering and putting together a couple coherent sentences. Really, it’s all you can hope for in an introduction. Real conversations are for later.

P.S. Tom, as for who I’ve been mistaken for, the ones I remember are Daniel Radcliffe, a couple times every year, someone’s girlfriend (twice in the same week!) by the same guy, various 30 year old women and really, not much else.