Goddam, I want a cigarette. As I try to quit smoking for the third time in two weeks, I can't help looking forward to buying cigarettes later tongiht. Also, I want everyone who reads this to send me an e-mail message at flaggthecat@hotmail.com. It can be about anything, but I want to know what it's like to have a comments link.

I woke up today and, instead of immediately going back to sleep, like I usually do, I pressed play on my stereo. And listened to Thee Michelle Gun Elephant. What's so cool about this band? Is it just that they're Japanese? Well, let me tell you, that helps a lot. I can read their lyrics in another writing system and study Japanese while rocking out. I can ponder the juxtaposition of two very different cultures. I can take great joy at their photographs, which are always high quality, frequently black and white, featuring four scowling Japanese gents in various silly/awesome costumes.

Is it their music? Well, that helps a lot too. It has a lot of integrity. They essentially play garage rock, which is a troubled genre. It’s close to blues rock, and like that genre, it has no room for bad ideas. Garage rock either sounds fantastic or like a bad self-parody. If the band slows it down just a little, they become heavy metal. If the lyrics veer the slightest bit toward misogyny or unpoetic boasting or celebrations of drunkenness, again, it becomes heavy metal. The guitar solos are either spot-on awesome, or else they're just bad (they can be bad in various ways: meandering, overly cocky, untuneful, unrhythmic, or just uninteresting). Too much noodling and it becomes a jam band. The singer has a range of possibilities, but he must not screech, constantly yell, have too big of an ego, or be overly simple melodically; or else it becomes, respectively, glam metal (see: The Datsuns), heavy metal (see: Poison), heavy metal (see: Guns ‘N Roses), or The Von Bondies (see: The Von Bondies).

Now, TMGE are well within the range of great garage rock. The kind that makes me jump up and dance and say, “shit, yes.” Early Who; mid-period Stones; The New York Dolls (some of it, anyway); The White Stripes (particularly on songs like "Astro", "Hypnotize", "Now Mary"); the best Oasis (“Fade Away” is a great example. It’s one of the most compulsively listenable songs in my collection, right up there with “Tom Courtenay”, “Electricity”, “100,000 Fireflies”, “Going Out West”, and “Debaser”); the occasional Velvet Underground song that pulled out all the stops (“White Light/White Heat”, “What Goes On”, “Beginning to See the Light”, “I’m Waiting for the Man”, “Head Held High”. The songs where they said, “Who cares about melody? Find some chords and play the shit out of them!”); Extended Forefinger (hell yeah, mutha). Now, you may have noticed: there are no unadulterated garage rock bands on this list. A band that plays pure garage rock generally gets bored and branches out; or else they suck; or else, yes, they are inspired. Now, I’m not going to say that TMGE are inspired. Let’s just say they haven’t gotten bored (as Scott likes to say, they rock as if their lives depend on it), and they sure as hell don’t suck. Generally their songs are right where garage rock ought to be, and they sound really good, if not inspired.

So what makes them so cool? Is it the bizarre lyrics (which include the occasional English phrase like “oasis’s ice” and “black tambourine” and “the redhead Kelly”)? Could it be the album packaging (probably not. It’s mainly a lot of murky nature pictures, and the band pictures that I’ve already described). Surely it can’t be that no one’s heard of them, because that’s just not logical.

No. It’s none of those reasons. Why are they so cool? They’re so cool because they’re called Thee Michelle Gun Elephant. Next question.

I love how there's a review of Summer Sun which ecstatically states, "It's one of their best albums since I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One."

And how Pitchfork thinks "Let's Be Still" is one of the two worst moments on the album, and All Music Guide says it "comes dangerously close to noodling," but almost every other review says something like "'Let's Be Still' is one of the best moments on the album." There goes continuity.

This blog has two purposes; no, three. The first is definitely "if Anne can do it", that is, if Anne can return from the train tracks at midnight and blog, well then, so can I. The second is, I haven't blogged in several days, and I don't want to get lazy. The third, most important, reason, is that I want to make this blog about more than myself, or even my interests because, in the end, who cares?

Scott says that the main inspiration behind everything in our lives is fear of death. For me, the three main actions of life are eating, sleeping and having sex. I'm not just being cynical here; to my mind, those are the three things around which everything else in our lives are based. It's been well established that fear of death is mixed in with the sex drive, what with the desire for immortality, and for connection with another being (which reinforces our own existence). Eating's connection is also fairly apparent, as it provides us with building material (by decomposing something else, cruelly enough). Sleep is something of a concession to death.

Well, the pattern is there for most every action, conscious or unconscious. Creation and conversation are similar to the sex drive in their intentions. Appreciating music, writing, movies and such appear to me to be part of the desire for immortality; it is almost as if, subconsciously, we think that if we learn enough about the world, we will end up immortal. Someone, I forget who, said that all men believe in their own death in the same way that agnostics believe in God. (Oh, and acts of religion are so obvious as to not require elaboration.) Keeping clean is similar to eating in the desire to stave off decomposition. I can't think of many important things which don't somehow tie in with what I've already mentioned (aside from going to the bathroom, which is more of a consequence of eating than it is an action). This is a very general, but inclusive, description of all of life. And fear of death is, indeed, shown to pervade every activity.

Looking at more specific actions is perhaps pointless when examining fear of death, but another action worth observing is the process of picking which specific actions will make up our own lives. We all create individual personalities, not necessarily through conscious desire (that's just going to Hot Topic, and it doesn't work); usually it is through our unique circumstances, which cannot help but be different for each person. Our experiences are thus necessarily different, and experience plays a large role in personality. Anyway, as is obvious in modern western culture, people tend to try to assert their individualilty, their egos. It is exclusively for their own benefit, as reasserting the self can fool one into believing he isn't going to die.

Even seemingly selfless actions, like, say, saving an animal which is about to be hit by a car, can be construed as another form of fearing death. In this example, perhaps we save the animal out of a desire not to see something die, which would remind us of our fate. Interestingly, the standard western moral system places priority on selflessness if an action is to be moral. It cannot explain this without circular argument.

It is also interesting that Buddhism is an attempt to destroy the ego, which would simultaneously destroy the fear of death (if there is no "I", then it is meaningless to say that "I am going to die").

This is all just an experimental rant in an attempt to blog exclusively about an idea rather than events in my life.

GOD'S IN HIS HEAVEN, ALL'S RIGHT WITH THE WORLD.

Sonic landscapes. Critics use that term often, but I doubt it will ever lose its metaphorical power and become just another straight-ahead descriptive phrase. I got Yo La Tengo's Painful today, and sonic landscapes are what I keep thinking of. Not the word, mind you--the actual landscapes. "I Heard You Looking" calls up an image of riding down the highway late at night somewhere in the midwest and watching mountains slowly ooze by, while power lines and tiny bushes shoot across the window. "Nowhere Near" is sitting on a porch on a summer night and langorously taking in a view of a forest, smoking and drinking beer, not talking to friends but just being with them. "From a Motel 6" is, god, a burning building, or a forest fire . . . at night. Oh, these songs all take place at night, in case you didn't notice, and have a lot of forests in them. Yo La Tengo would go on to make definite daytime landscapes, like "Tom Courtenay" (total walking down big city streets music midday, checking out antique shops and seeing all the funky architecture, old city like London or certain parts of New York, etc . . . ooo, sonic architecture!) or "Stockholm Syndrome", which exists in the summer in a small park with a lake and a large forest you can escape to if you want. "Superstar Watcher": basement of a poorly heated, dilapidated mansion, with a coughing radiator and voices coming through the ceiling.

Okay, enough pretension for one night. Although, I will say that if there is any connection between Yo La Tengo, The Smashing Pumpkins and U2 (as a label on the WMBC copy of I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One claimed) it is that all three create sonic landscapes, or did at one point (U2 have lost the tendency almost entirely, and the Pumpkins only did it when they wanted to, like "Silverfuck", "1979" or "To Shelia". Well, most of Adore, really. Sidenote: Zwan does not create sonic landscapes. Not even "Endless Summer", an obvious candidate, creates a sonic landscape). I would theorize that sonic landscapes generally have vocals in the background or somehow distorted, or else more a part of the music than the focus of it. Untraditional song structure (rock song structure, anyway) helps. No anthemic moves, no backbeat drums, perhaps less variation of themes (not to say the songs must be the same the whole way through, just that the themes of the various parts of the song must match; no verse-chorus-verse, no rawkin guitar solos, no catchy harmonies popping up and dropping away. Still, repetition seems to help, and adds to a hypnotic effect).

Okay, now enough pretension for one night. Praise Fa.

Today I attempted to introduce my brother Jeff to The Velvet Underground. He came into my room for some damn reason, and I said, "Hey, Jeff, wanna listen to a song?" He agreed. He must have forgotten who he was up against (people frequenlty forget, and actually agree to my propositions; like, "Hey, wanna walk to 7-11?").

First I played "Tom Courtenay." He sat looking kind of expectant, then like he was being watched and trying to escape his pursuer. He got jittery, pet Mulder for a while, and sat back again. Then he attempted to leave. All this before the song was half-way through. So I had to forcibly restrain him, by holding tightly to his shirt cuff. By 2:20, he was attempting to unbutton his shirt whilst my face was turned, so I grabbed his arm and made sure he heard every last ecstasy-inspiring note.

When the song ended, I said, "So, do you wanna hear some Velvet Underground now?"

He shifted his eyes left and right and said, "Um, no-oo . . ."

"But they're really go-ood . . . Do you know who was in The Velvet Underground?" He shook his head. "Lou Reed. You like Lou Reed, don't you."

He tried to creep away, so I grabbed his shirt again, then asked him to shift over so I could reach my CD player. He obliged and I put on "What Goes On." He didn't seem to be getting it, so I said, "How 'bout that organ?"

. . . .

"I said HOW 'BOUT THAT FUCKING ORGAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! GODDAM, LISTEN TO THAT GUITAR!!! HOLY LIVING MOTHER OF FUCK, THAT GODDAM GUITAR!!!!!!!" He escaped at this point. He may never understand The Velvets now.

My parents asked him what all the screaming was, and he simply said, "Greg's finally gone insane." Really it was just that goddam organ. Fuck.

And His and Her Circumstances makes me indescribably happy. I don't want it to ever end. The story is so pointless, but it makes me so very happy. I could just watch the opening credits for the rest of my life and never get bored. "You may dream . . ." Hideaki Anno, I'm very glad you're alive. And I know you read my blog, Anno-sensei, because you read everything in the world, just so you can know as much as possible about life in order to make such stellar anime.

"Decora" is just. The greatest song. Ever. Wooooooooooooo-ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Wooooo-eh-ahhhhh-ahhhhhh.

I started to learn Korean last night. It seems insanely simple. I went to the library and got The Korean Language, which is literally about the Korean language rather than teaching it. The book is a collection of eighteen essays which appeared in a scholarly (and no doubt smarmy) journal on Korean. The table of contents lists the authors, and it was mostly Koreans who wrote the essays, but every so often, sandwiched between Kyun Lee and Bok Hwa you get Theodore Albert Jameson III. The first essay discusses the history of the language, which doesn't go back very far because until about the fifteenth century, earlier dialects were written in Chinese characters whose voicings in Chinese resembled the intended Korean word. This essay also includes an explanation of the Korean letters (although not, as I would like, an explanation of how they came to be, merely of the sounds they represent). There are only about ten consonants, and the vowels are variations of each other, so I found that I was able to read "Ira Kaplan (guitar, vocals)" and "Georgia Hubley (drums, vocals)" within an hour. Oh, for the unaware, I bought a copy of the Deluxe Edition of Yo La Tengo's And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out, intended for sale in Korea, so the liner notes are in that langauge and the lyric sheets include facing page English and Korean. The album itself has no liner notes. These were written specifically for their Korean audience. So I must know what they say.

Oh, and track six of the first CD of Special Album by Baby V.O.X. (a Korean girl-electro-pop group I bought at the same time of Han's Band, now in John Darnielle's possession) is called "Ya Ya Ya." I think that's pretty awesome.

Anyway, last night, after learning this basic, basic Korean, I went outside to smoke and the prospect frightened me a bit. One of the fears in my acid flashbacks related to reading. Roman letters nauseated me. I can't explain why, and you're just going to have to take my word for this. Whenever I would read, my heart would start beating faster and faster, my eyes would widen; and just because of the letters. I was, however, learing kanji at the time, and these calmed me. That is a partial explanation of why Korean frightened me. Really, though, it is more related to another flashback fear, which is even more complicated. See, during the trip, I thought that everything there was to learn in the world was suddenly incredibly easy, as if during my actual life I was muddling through these concepts which seemed complicated and worthwhile but were just bullshit puzzles made to keep me busy and humiliate me. I'll write a book about this someday; I'm sure it would make stellar fiction. The main point for Korean is that it reminded me vaguely of that feeling that everything I hadn't learned, and had assumed was difficult, was actually incredibly simple with few variations and not requiring any thought to understand.

And so on. But the main point of this blog is that those liner notes are withing my grasp.

I knew for a couple of weeks that The Mountain Goats were going to play on April 5 somewhere close enough that I could see them. Scott had introduced the band (the man) to me several weeks before that, when I mentioned a band called East River Pipe and said it was essentially just one guy, F.M. Cornog, recording a bunch of two-minute songs in his living room. He told me about another such band, also essentially just one man, John Darnielle, who recorded in the same way. It didn't sound like anything special, and he didn't have any with him, so I kind of forgot about it. He kept mentioning the band, though, and in late February I finally heard some when he bought All Hail West Texas at Sound Garden. I was immediately impressed. "Best Ever Death Metal Band out of Denton" is the greatest introduction I've ever gotten to a band. A stream of words with an almost hexametrical beat, a mixture of bitterness and earnestness, humor and sadness, nasally and excited vocals, guitar accompaniment that somehow sounded complex and simple at the same time. It wasn't the contradictions that sold it, though; it was the overall awesomeness of the songwriting.

I do what I always do in these situations: went home, downloaded everything I could find by the artist, and neglected it. Then I started listening to it as April 5th approached, and each new superb song, one after the other, took over my mind. They had beautiful imagery and metaphors, passion, exquisite non-sequiturs, good rhymes, and an expansive range (even if it focused on strained relationships). I knew April 5th would be something special.

Cultural events have a very organic existence in people's minds. When a person first hears about something, it will probably have little significance unless it is obviously related to him. If he hears about it frequently, he will begin to pay attention to it; if he identifies with the source of information on the subject (such as friends or trusted critics), it will rise in signifigance. If the subject comes up frequently in conversation, in many different settings, is seen on television or heard about on the radio, etc., it will take on special significance, perhaps becoming part of the person's self-image. This holds true whether the person considers the subject worthless or worthy. He can identify himself as one who either hates or loves the subject, but if it has significance for him, he won't be neutral on it. It becomes almost personified, an entity. When the subject is an object of the media, a book or author, band, movie, or the like, anything with a personality behind it, there is a necessary dichotomy between the image in the person's head and the actual personality which created this image.

The Mountain Goats was, at this point, many things to me. I had seen John Darnielle's website, Going to Jakarta. I knew he had a love for death metal bands and yet sang something closer to folk music. I knew that he was intellectually inclined, and very opinionated. I had read criticisms of his albums at pitchforkmedia and All Music Guide. He was a topic of conversation between me and Scott, a placeholder for a certain type of band. We called him "awesome," imbued him with a sort of supernatural, transcendent status. The Mountain Goats was also, of course, a series of songs I had heard, disembodied sound, words.

Anyway, we were going to see this man and hear him play these songs. I was both excited and scared.

Scott, I thought, was going to pick me up after work on Saturday. I worked from 12 to 8:30 and the cafe was just slammed with customres. Someday I'm going to have to analyze our culture to see why so many people would go, at the very same time, to a bookstore cafe, most likely with vague intentions, where they end up buying overpriced drinks which are mostly concept (I'm buying a caramel macchiatto! I'm sophisticated and savvy to cultural trends, vaguely Italian, indelibly hipster! I drink espresso, which is like coffee, but cooler!). I manuevered my way to the back kitchen to work on my project for the day, cleaning the refrigerator. We have a list of activities which someone has to do every week, and the supervisors dole them out to the workers somewhat randomly. I was determined to make the most of what fate had handed me, and so spent as much time as possible actually cleaning it rather than standing up front dealing with the ghoulish onrush of Starbucks zombies. As an added bonus, the workday always seems shorter when my activities are broken up; even if I'm working the whole time, it's like a extra break to split my time up front with an hour in the back room. So I cleaned the five years' worth of dust on top of the refrigerator, swept and mopped under the refrigerator, removed shelves in order to properly clean iside the refrigerator, all the time dodging my coworkers who came back every so often to actually get food from the refrigerator, which is, after all, its primary purpose, its being at work staying itself, if you will. People were giving me looks and asking, "Greg, are you okay?"

At four p.m., during my lunch, I went over to Safeway to prepare for the concert. I took out $60 from the ATM and bought a pack of Camel lights. The night before I had an altogether pleasing experience when I went to the Mobil across the street to buy a lighter. The man behind the counter showed me a bin full of Bics, and when I took one out, he said, "Come on, don't get a white lighter, you really want this one," he said, pointing to a cream-colored lighter. He was putting the bin back as he said this, apparently not aware of who he was dealing with.

"You know, you're right," I said. "I do want that one."

"Going to smoke a little of the reef, eh?" he asked. I was altoghether amazed that he would say this in front of the other customers . . . let alone me. My only response was to pull out my pack of Dunhills. I wish I had thought of something witty. Since I didn't have the change, he gave it to me for four pennies less, and I walked out of the store with a lighter which would later be used by none other than John Darnielle.

Back to Barnes and Noble, where I was getting more and more apprehensive as I got closer to 8:30. I spent my last break just pacing and smoking. The customers still hadn't let up. I always feel kind of guilty, kind of cocky, when I stand outside the store and smoke. Mothers walk by with their baby carriages, young children run after each other, winded old couples help each other into the store, and all have to walk through my smoke. They just wanted to look at the books. And yet, there is an ashtray there, and tobacco is legal and permitted in this setting, and if I want to smoke, I'm going to smoke. I'm so confused.

There was one incident around 8:00 when, while I was taking an order, one of my coworkers crept up next to me and lent her head on my shoulder. A mildly pretty high school senior, bright and bubbly in fine Jeff Mangum style. And I didn't really know how to feel about this. The options were: embarrassed, mildly violated, or pleased, with various levels of pleased. I choose mildly pleased.

Then I was off work and I went outside excited and expecting Blue Thunder to pull up at any moment. I took out a cigarette and smoked, leaning back against the huge front windows. Minutes went by. I began to pace, examining cars as they made the turn into the shopping center for signs of boxy light-blue Honda Civics. Preferably with Scott White at the wheel. I lit another cigarette and started looking around the other parking lots, thinking that maybe he was somehow inside already. I considered whether I should call him; I expected him to at least be on his way, and thought that at most I would get his mother saying, "Scott left half an hour ago to pick Anne up." I decided that I might as well, and to my surprise, Scott came on the line. He knew it was me. He always knows it's me. "Hello, Greg," he said in a slightly jubilant, slightly tired voice.

"Scott? Why are you still there?"

"Don't worry, the concert doesn't start until 10:30."

"But I'm off work now!"

"Sit tight, Greg. I'll be there soon."

"But Scott! What, like, forty minutes?"

"Just sit tight, Greg."

We hung up. I found out later that Scott didn't know I was calling from work. I thought he knew I'd be there but must not have said so, since he went to my house first. "Does Scott always wear a bow tie?" my mother asked me at dinner today.

Anyway, I sat and read, expecting Scott to come up behind me at any moment. When it became 10 o'clock, I got nervous again and went outisde for another cigarette. A few minutes later, I heard Scott shout something like, "We're coming, Greg!" followed by Anne's voice, which was even louder, but I don't remember what she said. I ran toward the Thunder and off we went.

You can see Anne's blog for an account of this section. My blog now turns to perception.

As Anne says in her blog, the Talking Head is small. So small that Scott immediately noticed Nelly from St. John's sitting in a corner, and then saw Kant girl in the middle of the crowd. Even at a venue as small as the Black Cat, we probably wouldn't have known they were there.

So small that after the band who opened for the opening band left, the small number of people who went to the bar actually freed up enough space at the front for us to get right up to the stage. Right up to the stage. We could kneel over and be on it.

And then The Translucents appeared in their gawky, mildly well-dressed, singer with hair like Dave Grohl, second guitarist with beard like Dan Keys, hot foreign-looking bassist, keyboard-toting glory. We were close enough that when I asked Scott if we should ask that they tune up to "What Goes On," and Scott mock called it out, the guitarist heard us. And did it. I check this off of my list of life goals.

After they were done tuning, the singer said, "Thank you for sitting through that long-winded instrumental. This one's called" whatever. And they proceeded to play a cool mixture of the Velvets, The Strokes, early R.E.M., etc. And it kicked ass. Only . . . I was so close that I could see every twirl of the singer's hair, the placement of each finger on the fret. So close that those iconic movements, the kicks and thrusts and facial contortions of passion, looked like a band jamming rather than a band on stage. The music was great, and I would have ordinarily been overjoyed, but I was so close to the people making the music that, in this setting, it was actually hard to get into. I became self-conscious and analytical. (What is it about this music that I appreciate? Why does it give me joy to see these two guitarists playing interlocking rhythem parts? What's so cool about an organ?)

My subconscious idea of the rock star, the icon and hero, in some way better than me, unquestionable, perhaps greater than human, battled against this group of four people very much like me, who happened to know how to play instruments and had written some songs together.

I later bought a Translucents t-shirt. The band had only brought three CDs, and Scott got the last one, so the singer held up two shirts. "Your choices are . . . collander or tea ball."

"Definitely collander. How much are they?"

"I don't know. How much do you think?"

"You can't ask me that . . . I don't know . . ."

"Okay. I'll start the bidding at eight dollars."

Anyway, back to the concert. By the time John Darnielle came on, Anne and I were actually sitting on the stage, Scott kneeling right behind us. The chair Anne mentions was right in front of me. I sat right at John's feet, looking up at him as he played. He partially escaped this humanizing effect that had rendered The Translucents into just four people who happened to be on a stage. Mainly because he was just so damn cool, thumping his foot along with an imaginary bass drum, contorting his face on certain lines, shaking his whole body on others. At the same time, I didn't find myself worshipping him, as I would have expected. I didn't feel self-conscious, but he still seemed more real and fallible than most people I've seen on stage. It was less of a spectacle than most shows, and more like a friend playing songs for me.

After the last song, he went and sat in the corner with the bassist. I commented to Anne that the rest of the crowd had no idea that John was sitting just a few feet away while they waited for him to come back and play an encore. I had been waiting for him to finish to smoke since, during the set, I was unable to bring myself to ask him if he would mind my smoking.

When he did come back, he sat down, looked at me, and mouthed, "Can I have a cigarette?" I thought he was asking me to put mine out, and motioned as if I were doing so. *Is this what you want, John?* He positioned his fingers as if he were smoking and then waved his hand toward him. I held out a cigarette and he asked, "Can you light it for me?"

He set up his guitar again and I considered whether to actually light it or whether to give him my lighter. I decided on the latter, although I did hold the cigarette in my mouth while I got the lighter out of my pocket. That was an odd choice, I suppose. He lit it and handed the lighter back to me. Someone called out, "Stop smoking, you're the greatest songwriter ever!"

He giggled a bit and said, "Thank you!" which he had been doing all night whenever the crowd cheered and applauded, as if he weren't expecting people to like him. He took a few puffs and handed the cigarette back, saying, "Can you hold this for the next minute and forty-five seconds, roughly?" I took it and he played a song I had never heard, an incredibly joyful drinking sort of song, "When the Cubs beat every team in the league, then I will love you again like I used to." I couldn't help but try to sing along without even knowing the lyrics. Anne seemed to know every word, but said later, "I don't know how I knew that song, really." It was just that sort of song.

I gave him back the cigarette and he took a few more puffs, then crushed it.

Things I learned today:

1. Never buy an album I have on CD-R instead of an album I have reason to believe is good, but haven't heard. Four years ago, I was in Best Buy holding a copy of 13 in one hand and Their Satanic Majesties Request by The Rolling Stones in the other. I only had enough money for one. I already had a burned copy of TSMR. This was the heyday of Napster, and I was getting everything by the Stones. Why? Because I had already gotten hardcore into The Beatles, and my Rolling Stone Album Guide from 1981 made the Stones look like an exotic, godlike, massively mindblowing, incredibly influential evil twin of The Beatles. Which, of course, they are. But oddly enough, it looked better on paper than it is in real life. Dave Marsh does some odd things with words.

Anyway, my copy of TSMR sounded a little . . . funny. I wasn't yet at the stage where I wanted to buy everything just for the packaging (although I was damn close even then), but I wanted to see if perhaps a store bought copy would sound more perfect than mine.

"Tender" was on the radio a little bit then, and I really liked it. Between that and "Song 2", I was ready to buy a Blur album.

I made the wrong choice, and listening to 13 now, I really wish I had picked it up all those years ago. I'd be a cooler man today.

2. John Darnielle is really fucked up! Yes, John Darnielle, the man who penned such fun, happy, light-hearted songs as "Golden Boy" and "The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton" has more free-floating angst and dementia than Frank Black and Thom Yorke put together. It took just one listen to The Coronor's Gambit to convince me of this.

3. Korean pop is awesome. Thank you, cute smiling woman in the Catonsville Asian supermarket, for letting me know what I was in for by saying, "You made a good choice," even if you were thinking, "What a couple of freaking weirdos. I wonder if they're gay?" John Darnielle will be very happy with his birthday gift. Now if we could only find a really big lolly pop. (N.B.: only two people in the world know what I'm talking about here.)

4. She goes, and now she knows she'll never be afraid to watch the morning paper blow into a hole where no one can escape.

5. Deeeeeeee de-dee-de-de, deeeee de-dee-de-de, deeeee de-de-dee de-de, deeeeee de-de-dee de-de.

6. There is a really cool bear on top of a hippie store on Main Street Ellicott City which eternally dips its plastic wand into an ever-flowing supply of soapy water, blowing bubbles into the chill spring air. No, seriously.

7. Cola and espresso combine to form a delicious foamy drink with a light taste of citrus. Great for walks down train tracks discussing post-modernism with Scott.

Last night, I decided that I don't listen to enough of the music I buy. I must have twenty albums I've never heard. I don't just want to listen to it, though. I want to understand it, too; get into it, archive it in my mind, add it to my conception of music. And since the St. John's program made me read more than I would otherwise, I adopted it.

Th. 4-3
The Mountain Goats, Full Force Galesburg

Mon. 4-7
The White Stripes, Elephant

Th. 4-10
Yo La Tengo, Electr-O-Pura

Mon. 4-14
The Manic Street Preachers, Generation Terrorists

Et cetera. Or something like this.

I don't imagine anyone else does this sort of thing, except for music journalists, I suppose. After I get done with The Manics (which I want to know thoroughly in case I end up actually going to Manchester with Elise, oh my God), I'll probably make it more systematic, so that I can see connections and influences among artists.

Anyway, tonight I listened to Full Force Galesburg many, many times, and I will tell you about it. This blog will have a practical purpose. I don't want to merely talk about myself. Tonight I'll tell you about John Darnielle.

The sleeve comes with a paragraph-long story of sorts, full of images (just like his songs). "Old barn, strange sounds. Gin. Sunlight. Almost broke my own heart down there in Vicksburg." This culminates in John and a woman getting a motel room half an hour past Iowa on the other side of the Mississippi. He says "these songs are about what made that moment either possible or inevitable, depending on how you look at it." Okay, then. Is this a concept album? A song-cycle? Is he just flat out lying? It seems to be something between the second and the third. This album is close to a song cylce, but the songs are just a bit too disconnected for even that loose term. If there is a story, it is not clear, but the emotions in the songs are related and there are possibly two characters running through the album. (Oh, by the way, "Full Force Gale" is a Van Morrison song. I'm certain John Darnielle loves Van Morrison.)

The album starts with "New Britian." I can't tell if this song's immediecy comes from the song writing, or just its placement at the beginning of the album. Mountain Goats songs frequently feel like a fresh start, getting my attention on the words, keeping my mind on the song, involving my emotions. "New Britian" definitely grabs my attention, and its shadow lingers over the entire first side. It contains an image common on this album, that of watching the sun on the water; really the sun in general. The line "this morning I know who you are" haunts the rest of the first side. He doesn't say what he "knows" about the girl, but he seems vaguely uneasy with her. He says that he's not getting through to her, and that the things she tries to say make his blood run cold. If this album is a song cycle, it starts right in the middle. It seemed from the liner notes that it would involve two people traveling west, but in this song they're already on the Mississippi.

Next is "Snow Owl," which is the most beautiful song on the album. It has slow, pretty chords, and John plays a half-melody on the higher notes while strumming these chords. It's kind of like an acoustic Yo La Tengo. Someone plays a harmonica in the background, to little effect, really. The song is about a snow owl he happens to see out his window because he can't leave his house. It introduces a theme of the beauty of nature, as well as the failure of language when the beauty is too much to take: the owl "takes apart the alphabet letter by letter." If the first song is meant to introduce the story(if, indeed, there is one), this song is apparently outside of that story.

"West Country Dream" has music kind of like Violent Femmes: frenetic, tense pop. The lyrics seem to be about tension between a man and a woman, perhaps the same two characters from "New Britain." It contains the line "I know who I am, and I know who you are," which is a definite echo of that song. Their relationship seems to be on the skids, perhaps because they aren't talking to each other. This tension remains for most of the songs detailing their relationship. "New Britain" started out, "You've had it up to here with my west-country talk," and apparently here they are in the west country and she still doesn't care about his ideas. No one cares for John Darnielle. But we love you, John.

"Masher" is next, and it seems to yearn for a time before this tension. The key line in this song (not quite its chorus, but something close) is "I'm losing control over language again," which seems to be a result both of the love he felt for the girl and the awe he feels for nature (theme happening). He's losing "most of the things I used to hold on to/most of the things I used to say to you." This is yet another theme of the album, losing one's grasp of the world and over one's feelings. This is certainly something I've experienced, more than I want to at that. We love you, John.

"Chinese House Flowers" has some beautiful images, but the story of this song is unclear. My interpretation is that John is following the girl to see what she is doing; she is possibly cheating on him. The shade of the light reminds him of a specific moment when the gleam in her eyes made his blood freeze. "I want you more than I want anything," he says. "I want you the way you were." Not hard to interpret this line, certainly. She has changed, and perhaps fallen out of love with him, but he still loves her. Yep, I've been there before. Scott, you know you've been there. Oh, John. We love you even more.

"Ontario" again has the image of John's conception of the world disentegrating. "I thought I'd figured out the world and its circular way. Then I saw the sun fall out of the sky the other day." This fear of the sky falling comes up in a couple songs. John apparently feels like Chicken Little. Also, apparently orange tree blossoms pain him. I wonder why. This image seems potentially connected to the image of the sun falling out of the sky, but it's not clear.

Then there is "Down Here," which rocks. Electric guitar. Harmonies on the chorus. Earnest singing, even more earnest than usual. "It's all coming down, down here." We love you, John.

"Twin Human Highway Flares" tells the story of that motel room half an hour past Iowa. The songs on this album don't tell me what made this moment inevitable, but then, maybe it's one of those things you have to listen to fifty times before you get it. Like Trout Mask Replica or Black Foliage. At any rate, this is a beautiful song, and the images do a good job summing up the setting, characters, and situation; who needs prose? The chorus has a similar sentiment to "Source Decay" from All Hail West Texas, never wanting to forget an emotional event, everything about it, how it felt, precisely how it all looked. We love you, John.

"Weekend in Western Illinois" is the best song on the album. I want to cover it and play drums to it. There's an organ riff as good as the one on "What Goes On"! He sings about Galesburg! He calls rain "the sky opening up like an old wound"! Woo! He loves them dogs lolling in the rain! This song is so happy, the singing is so emotive, and it almost has a hook! We love you, John!

And then the story, such as it is, just packs up and leaves at this point. The remaining seven songs don't seem to reference the past events at all. The feelings and themes remain the same: disentegration of a relationship and a conception of the world, the beauty of nature (oh man, "the sky's gone crazy with stars"), west-country talk ("We're not as far west as you think we are"), memory and the effect of something distant in time on the present. A few of the songs perhaps have the same storyline we started out with, but "Evening in Stalingrad" is just . . . weird. How'd they get in Russia? They go to Chechnya for the weekend? The Chechan war had started by 1996, right? What the hell is going on here? The songs also get a bit repetitive, with similar tone, tempo, and rhythm, even lyrics; elsewhere, John usually varies those pretty effectively. But by the end of the album, there is no question that John Darnielle is the master of awesome. "It's All Here in Brownsville" wants to warn you that "it's all coming apart again." And it rocks, so you better listen to it.

I almost want to say that The Mountain Goats cross Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Springsteen, and Van Morrison. But really, although elements of his songwriting may be similar to these artists, his vision is all his own. I'm surprised he's not strictly a poet, since he really doesn't write songs; the lyrics are essentially all that matters. But then, he has an excellent, unique voice, and he's very good at matching his tone to an appropriate rhythm and chord structure. And if he were just a poet, we couldn't see him live on Saturday at The Talking Head.

We love you, John.

It all goes by so quickly. Just last year I was sitting in my room at SJC Annapolis, probably listening to White Blood Cells and putting off my seminar reading. Now the only thing I can put off is going to sleep, or reading back issues of The New York Times so I can finally recycle them. I've gone through so many "prospective girlfriends" that I have trouble remembering them all. Hell, I even had a girlfriend. I've lived in three cities and visited many more. I quit two jobs. If I had been able to look into the future one year ago, my current musical tastes wouldn't be unrecognizible, but I would definitely be surprised. Very surprised. "What's all this Indie rock doing in my collection?" I would say. "The Magnetic Fields? They're, like, lo-fi British techno, right? What does Polewach think about all this?" One year ago, the only Belle and Sebastian I had listened to was The Boy with the Arab Strap.

Anyway, Mulder shit on my floor sometime before 11:30 am this morning. He was locked in my room, so I can't really blame him, but still, he should know better. I thought I had this all worked out. I told him just last weekend that if he had to go really bad, he should just tell me. "I don't care if it's 5 in the morning, you tell me you have to shit and I'll let you out of my room." He just looked rather nonplussed and started licking himself. "Mulder?"

"Yesh?"

"Do you remember what I just said?"

Licking.

"Mulder?"

"Yesh, you said, wake you if I have to let a load out. Now be quiet, I'm dirty." Oh, my cats can talk, in case you didn't know. Mulder in particular talks a lot of shit about me behind my back. I would stop letting him sleep on me, but he's so cute. He really talks crazy sometimes. Especially when no one has fed him in a while. He just gets delirious, shaking his little gray tail and muttering about meat and mean-spirited women, and wondering who took his balls, and when they're going to give them back. I guess it was kind of mean of us, promising him that we were only borrowing his balls; he wouldnt' let us take him to the vet unless we explicitly promised him that it was just a loan. Maybe he won't be "fixed" in Heaven.

Mulder recently finished his latest novel. It's titled "Moon in the Gutter," and will be available next month from Penguin Classics. It's a new direction for him. It's his first English-language novel, because he finally feels confident in his adopted tongue. He wrote his first and second novels in Russian and Sanskrit, respectively.

Over the next several days, I plan to listen to as much Mountain Goats as I can, in preparation for Saturday. I'll try to listen without playing Spider Solitaire, for a change. Expect my impressions of albums and songs. Also, I'll have to add some concept to my content. I told Scott (who will likely be my only reader) that this would be unlike other blogs, and so far, it definitely isn't.

Let no one have any illusions, this is just a modern rock blog.