Ouch. That’s Hot.

It always warms my heart to have a little local flava in my national media. Spin brought back the love this month with a pithy article on a local audio contagion known affectionately as “Shitgaze”, written by local boy Joel Oliphint and centering on the bands that call Cafe Bourbon Street home sweet home. (But no reference to the Taco Ninja. Tragic.)

Out of love and respect I won’t mention the fact that I have nearly no patience for the stuff. What can I say, I like my music a little more crispy. I’m all for low-fi and DIY, but still, I’m the guy who’s favorite Clash album is Sandanista and who was secretly relieved when Iggy lost some of the Raw and just kept the Power.

Still, for a second-string city, Columbus has so much going for it. It’s a place where the little trickles of mid-western creative juice pool up and nurture something new. Not every blossom blooms to my liking, but sometimes you’ve got to gaze on some stinky shit to make the garden grow. I’m glad we’ve got it. I’m going to miss it when I’m gone.

Finally I’ve found the label for this nonsense I’ve been spinning obsessively for the last few weeks. (Picture the little rat in the cage, tongue lashing the coke-spiked water-bottle foaming away at his little lips. twitch twitCH! TWITCH!!… ) Anyway here ’tis: INDIE-POP. Post-Pop’s already taken (damn you, Peaches!) And this is more of a return to form, like your third-wave feminism: It ain’t afraid to be what it was born to be. More Carrie Bradshaw, less Murphy Brown.

So here’s The Ting Tings: Big in the UK, and (I predict) without a future in the states. We can’t handle ambiguity (see: the Darkness). You’re either in or your out. Hanging with the in-crowd or slumming with the freaks, take a pick and don’t cross the line. These kids have played both sides of the fence and can’t seem to sit still. Picture the White Stripes playing a round of Dance Dance Revolution and you’ll get the idea.

__________________

addendum: I just googled indie-pop and it’s been taken too. drat! suggestions anyone?

Like a Big Mac, I’ve been loving it. But I must confess: I’m afeared. I’m quaking in my creative boots. I’m weak in my musical knees. Atrophy, dust, rust, and disease. The problem is this: Do I only like things that remind me of the music of my youth? Is there a future left for me? Or am I on a slow slump to a Sarasota double-wide pining for the way it used to be?

First of all, the album: It starts off with (and gets back to every 3 tracks or so) a nice bit of retro-80’s pop-balladry. That’s the hook. The barb is the dub, the punky-reggae party that slips into the groove like a track off of Sandinista and lights up this little corner of the dance floor of my heart. Throw in some sonic experiments that wouldn’t be out of place as a later Massive Attack track and you’ve got yourself an album. You’ve got yourself an album that sounds a lot like something I can relate to. Yes me: a 30-something, formerly hip, trying to keep up with the day job and the kids and the wife and the rest of life. Is this really a market to target?

There’s more to Santogold than that, but there’s something purposeful about the way she snips melody from the Smiths, screams like one of Siouxie’s banshees and has a Peter Murphy impersonator guest on the track “I’m a Lady”. Or maybe she just has good taste. Maybe I do too.

Here’s to hope, and here’s to the future.

… is good for at least the drive home too.

Call me shallow, but I really don’t care that I can’t understand a word of this. I actually tried to learn French a few years ago. Rocki and I picked up a “Learn French In 24-Hours” type course on tape at a bookstore while vacationing in Chicago. It seemed like a good idea at the time. We listened to the first cassette too. Then we got bored when it asked us to repeat the phrases back to the unseen man hiding in the car radio. I just couldn’t bring myself to ask for the whereabouts of the watercloset from an automaton in mixed company. Though he did have an outrageous accent.

I liked the accent a-plenty. Which brings me back to Yelle. It’s 80’s dance-pop (with a few updated beats here and there for good measure.) She sings like Stacey Q and raps like Debbie Harry. Shatter this heart of glass!

Come to think of it, it might be better that I can’t understand the words. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve cringed mid-step in an otherwise enjoyable moment of self-adulation, dancing alone to one of Madonna’s more recent tracks. Sometimes the words just get in the way.

Need more proof? Just can’t get enough? :: You Tube !

To each their own.

If you like sports, read Sports Illustrated. If you’ve got the entrepreneurial bug, check out Fast Company.  And if you think words are fun, pick up Eats, Shoots & Leaves.

Much as I get a hankering for some Strunk & White from time to time, there’s something far more entertaining about the way that Ms. Truss goes about pausing to consider the placement of a comma. Indeed, I learned a thing or two.

For instance: Did you know that the British call a period a “full stop”? Mind blowing! Made me feel like Albert Hofmann after a hard day in the lab.

It has made blogging a little tougher on the noggin. Whereas my thoughts used to flow to the page with the grace and agility of a teenage Marylou Retton, I’m now constantly stuttering upon the keyboard debating both the accuracy and necessity of every minor mark, each stroke stuck in sacrifice to the gods of grammar, lest they damn me for running on a sentence too long.

Who me?

Overall I found the British/American usage debates interesting, agreeing more with those across the pond than with the rules passed down to me from generations of jingoistic grammarians. I’m bound to lose on that one. It’s only a matter of time until we’re all speakin’ ‘Merican.

And I got to toy with the Oxford Comma a little longer. Life is good.

So it’s starting to scare me a little bit. My Top Two newest favoritest bands of 2008 came to me via recommendations in GQ. Why do I read Spin? Why do I read Paste? Why do I talk to all of you music geeks out there? All I really need is a connection to MySpace Music and my subscription to GQ. I’m all set. And they can help me with those annoying button-down vs. spread collar questions that keep coming up. It’s a two-fer!

I’m pretty sure I’ll have forgotten these guys by 2009, but they’ve been nice to pal around with the last few weeks. The new self-titled disc is 12-tracks of solid rock ‘n roll. Nary a bum cut on the platter. Some of the lesser tunes (like “Love It All”) are nicely rescued by ‘ze guitar which likes to hang out in the left speaker and tastefully fill the melodic holes with little licks.

Sometimes it sounds like The Strokes, sometimes it sounds like The Stones. Basically, it’s the album that Jet tried to make 5 or so years ago. Remember them? No? Me neither. But I might remember The Kooks a little bit longer. This isn’t the kind of rock that’s built to last (a lesson The Killers forgot while recording Sam’s Town.) They’re just playing the game — the rules of which were written years ago by guys like Ray Davies and Pete Townshend. But it’s a game that I like playing too. Roll the dice, you Krazy Kooks! I’m in!

This cartoon is by Jeremy. Who is Jeremy? I really don’t know. Jeremy is just some guy I came across via GoodReads when he weighed in on Blankets:

Unless it comes with a device that magically produces a boundless supply of delicious cookies when I verbally specify into a tiny speaker what kind I want, I seriously doubt that I will ever read a better graphic novel than “Blankets”.

Does it help that I came of age during the ’80s with a fundamentalist Christian family in a small town? It certainly enhanced my enjoyment, but judging from the reviews I’ve seen here and elsewhere, a scant, detestable few have failed to find anything of value in Thompson’s wonderful story, regardless of their upbringing. That’s right: if you didn’t enjoy this book, I am angry at you, and I don’t like you very much. You have effectively negated any good deeds you may have performed in your life thanks to your failure to acknowledge this fine book as a masterpiece. Way to go, numbnuts.

I had intended to write a much nicer review than this but now I’m too angry because for the past ten minutes I’ve been imagining scenarios in which people tell me they found the book to be corny and sappy, whereupon I stab their eyes repeatedly with pointy rocks, screaming “ALLOW ME TO DESTROY THESE AS THEY CLEARLY HAVE DONE YOU NO GOOD! THIS IS A SERVICE TO YOU! PLEASE STOP SCREAMING! DON’T YOU LIKE HELP?!?!?”

Jeremy likes to post random bits of his Maine existence: curious garage sale finds; the forgotten frontiers of pop-culture; music, of course; and old comics scrawled in notebooks years ago, like the one posted above. And the ones posted here.

I think about Jeremy sometimes. He reminds me of many a first friend. He reminds me of teenage summer afternoons spent amusing ourselves with a regular rotation of iced coffees, taco bell, and camel lights. Creativity without target, unharnessed brain cycles spinning, spinning, spinning… and for what? Where are we now? What was that Jeremy…?

Work! It’s what there is!

Well then, here we are. I’m trying to make the best of it, and frankly it’s been going a lot better for me now that I’ve let some more of those unharnessed brain cycles do a little untargeted spinning. Jeremy, if you’re ever in town and need to use the john, stop by. And stick around if you can — the first beer’s on me. Life’s better with guys like you around.