lcrelyea
rebeccapatrick
ce.
Tommy Wilson
stephenkillion
amsettineri
Peter Cavanaugh
AndrewI have yet to find a summer jam. There are a few bobbing up to the surface every now and again, but it seems as soon as I put an effort into making one of them my summer jam, it recedes back to the murky collection of music overtaken, disappeared, like waves under waves under waves. Which, I suppose, is the beauty of summer jams. Or anything really. There is a proverb, a saying. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. When the beer is running on an endless loop and the girls all look so pretty and the days stretch out forever and the boys will strength from nothing for a baseball game that isn’t a league function, the summer jam will appear.
What, then, makes a good summer jam? I kicked off the season with Neil Young. He’s a toss-up. If you don’t have a backyard, he’s a winter scene. I would argue, however, “Are You Ready for the Country” turned up to a moderate level while nibbling at some whiskey in a wicker chair, shoes off, absently swinging a badminton racquet at the fireflies ain’t a note short of idyllic.
After that, I spent the latter half of July cleaning and listening to rap. I was heavy on Cam’ron and the Diplomats. Juelz Santana’s “There it Go” is solid, but – via Girltalk’s use in Night Ripper – played out. I’ve thought on multiple occasions that “Soap Opera” from Cam’ron would work. It’s got the nice sped up chipmunk vocals of yesteryear, the Kanye West aesthetic. Cam goes smooth over hard, thus allowing the audience to either groove slowly with drink in hand or simply head nod in time while playing a game of H-O-R-S-E.
Of course, by calling out these songs as potentials, they can be nothing more than that. The summer jam must occur naturally, unguided. Kissing the one and only Wendy Peffercorn in a game of spin the bottle cannot will not compare to unexpectedly locking up with The Icebox (pre-makeover) outside the concession stand in the mist and echo of the park lights freshly extinguished. It has and always will be a season of spontaneity.
Until someone hires me full-time.
So, y’all got a summer jam yet?
Masochism isn’t the word, but I love getting emotional watching the human interest stories on ESPN. The small town that battles funding issues and somehow wills its high school to a state championship, the blind boy that gets to take a few snaps on senior night out in Oklahoma. I wouldn’t say the floodgates open, but my eyes will get watery.
And I hadn’t really thought about it until after watching the ESPYs this year. The first award that really got me concerned a football coach who pulled his town together after a tornado came through and ravaged everything. I was sold after the first act. Thing is, last year, that same coach was shot and killed by a former player. I guess, then, the ESPY was given to this coach’s legacy. I don’t know. Later on in the show, NBA coach George Karl was given the Jimmy V Award. Not to make light of cancer and death, but the award is a weird event. It’s effectively saying, “hey, as the recipient this year, I’ve got cancer and you can probably expect me to die in a few years.” Yet again, however, I found myself being swooped up in the highlight reel and leaving my critical eye far far away. It’s like McDonald’s food, you know? There is some truth there (there are a few grams of protein, etc), but it is designed to make you cry (taste good).
Oh man, this all to say that I’m getting stoked on ballads right now. I remember when “Maps” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs came out, and er’body was bummed because it was not punk rawk. It was straight-to-mixtape-cheesy or something. It was Weezer going “green album.” Well, I’m here arguing for the ballad now. And I should probably start by talking about “Patience” by Guns ‘n’ Roses, but for the sake of going over the top, it has to be “November Rain.” It’s perfect. It is unnecessarily long. It is accompanied by a mini-”film” which seemed to saturate the mid nineties. It has a string section. Bad boy deluxe, Axl Rose puts himself behind the piano. Slash plays a solo in front of an abandoned church. Etc, etc. I’m limiting my thoughts and observations of this song to surface qualities, things anyone can make because that is what’s best about the ballad. I’m sure some real work could be had in talking about this, but a good ballad is perfectly accessible. Anyone can project his or her relationship struggles, life struggles onto it.
And now, some Hoosier pride (though maybe Boilermaker is more appropriate considering Axl and Izzy hail from up north):
Filed under: Inspirational Anthems
I read an entertaining post somewhere wherein a white dude was trying to talk about rap but didn’t want to really talk about rap because he said white dudes only talk about rap to prove they aren’t racist. That being said, I saw Three 6 Mafia this past weekend. They performed at the Congress, which is a mere five-minute walk from my place. Most of their music is straight bangers, so it only made sense to see them. I had never been to a rap show before, let alone a rap show in a big city where actual gang members live. As much as I can enjoy Project Pat or any offshoot of the Wu-Tang, I am a honky from Indiana. I was, obviously, a little out of my element. We arrived late because rap shows are notorious for not starting on time. There was a boy getting hassled by a security guard near the entrance – “I’ll put my boot up yo’ white ass if you try to get back in!” Another man was being escorted out with the guard pouring out a bottle of Svedka Vodka. My companion for the night, Schlemmer, had to check his hat when we got in. Everything has the potential for gang affiliation. The security guard just inside searched me harder than I had ever been searched. Had I been somewhere else, I might’ve felt violated. For some reason, here, I felt excited. This was new, raw. I saw potential for danger, but at the same time it felt controlled, like things could only escalate so far. The show was pretty gnarly. Guards patrolled the floor with the heads down, smoky eyes cutting paths in front of them, yanking punks to a room where what happens we could only imagine. I’m not going to comment on the actual performance, I’m not qualified. I can say it was awkward at first when I found myself getting swooped up in the theatrics and singing along “I’ll knock the black off yo’ ass! I’ll knock the black off yo’ ass!” amidst a crowd of, well, mostly black people. It didn’t matter, though. Everyone got down. At the end, there wasn’t a big epiphany where we embraced a group of black dudes and we all walked out of the Congress arms over shoulders. And aside from the girl that was either eyeing me in a good way or in a ‘look at that honky’ way, we weren’t really even acknowledged. The point is, Three 6 slays.
Filed under: Night Drive Tunes
A lot of my memories of Muncie are stunted, blurred or pushed deep away from retrievable compartments. There are, however, still a collection that surface now and again to remind me that my time there could – while not necessarily be deemed a success – mean something.
Nick Cave came on by accident tonight. Just one song following the other.
Every town has those haunted spots. Zero-gravity hill, the haunted bridge, the house up past Center Street where that blue light is supposed to hover. There was something just outside of Muncie, maybe it was kind of pedestrian, a graveyard, but we decided to drive out to it. It was north, I remember that much. Halloween, and I think I was in the back seat, there were two other people in the car. Nick Cave was getting a lot of play from us around that time, putting on his Murder Ballads just made sense. I could say a lot about this album, nothing journalistic merely memories tied to it, but I’m only thinking about that specific point on the road. We’re encased in this black jello with two cream headlights leading our way. It’s one of those roads that receives enough traffic that you hesitate to call it a country road, but it is void of advertisements and billboards. There was probably a dip, the car lurched forward and “The Curse of Millhaven” began.
Filed under: sing like no one is listening
You spend the first couple of months of college forcing friendships. Projecting things onto people, creating qualities in yourself that probably aren’t supposed to be there. Trying to blaze girls or trying to talk about blazing girls or at least catching your roommate jacking off once or twice. This one kid, Drew – and with any friendship no matter how insignificant you really can’t find the beginning – lived in the honors dorm. I think he had a guitar or he smoked dope, or maybe he just had a Radiohead t-shirt. We talked about our love of cross-country and beer. He had an older sister, and us being freshly eighteen, there were still advantages to having older sisters. She had left a trail of friends and ex-boyfriends scattered around Muncie, and Drew and I met up with two of such guys one night at a local bar. We got there early because the door didn’t card before a certain hour. I had my first public beer there. It wasn’t noteworthy. These two guys. One was tall, not just tall, but thick. I think he dug hockey or maybe he was from Nebraska. The other was average, very 90s Indie. Now, it seems it was one of those short friendships where both parties got what they needed. We desperately wanted those cool, older boys from movies about college to find us and shape us. They desperately wanted those naïve, younger boys to give meaning to their drunken evening ramblings. We, Drew and I with the two older boys, first bonded on the band Interpol. That’s not the band I’m looking to talk about. It was one of those, “you dig that one song right? Here man let me put on some Guided by Voices.” Now, having some understanding of what it means to have a little self-awareness, I can understand that first epoch of college to be truly well, college. It’s not a negative reflection, nor a longing one. Just a reflection. And really the only song that has stuck with me is “Gonna Never Have to Die”. That’s what this is about, that one song.
-peter
