EL OH EL

I went to Main Street Music in Manayunk yesterday. I like going there because 1. They have a great selection 2. The guy who works there is very nice and 3. It's kind of far away and in the "city" so I feel as if I'm going on an adventure even though I always park in the same spot and always go to the same Starbucks to purchase a juicebox because I think walking down Main Street in Manayunk sipping organic apple juice out of a box is a funny thing to do. Anyways, I go in the store and it's just me, the guy who works there, and some upper class white kid with his mom. This had me thinking about what I listened to when I was his age, which was about six give or take a year. I really liked Kriss Kross. I had their album Totally Krossed Out on tape as well as a t-shirt on which the album cover was pictured. I recall being intimidated by their confrontational tone on the track "Lil Boys in da Hood." This is unsurprising, since I was scared of many things back in those days. I digress, however. This young lad went up to the very nice man who owns the store, and here's what happened:
Kid: Do you have Young Money?
Guy: Uh...we might...but if we did it would be Parental Advisory.
Kid: What does that mean?
Guy: It means that it's unedited.
Kid: What does that mean?
Guy: It means that it has foul language and I can't sell it to you unless your mom says it's OK.
(Mom looks at kid and shakes head indicating "No.")
Kid: SHIT!
There were several things that I found to be funny about this situation. 1. The kid and his mom shouldn't have even been shopping for music in a place like Main Street. The fact that they went there and not a place like Best Buy that would sell such mainstream music that a six year old would listen to indicated to me that the child's mother was a new age dildo and only supports independent businesses. 2. The child asked for a Young Money LP in an independent record store. For those of you who do not know, the Young Money record label releases albums from the likes of Lil Wayne, Drake, and, eventually, Nicki Minaj, among others. 3. The child uttered "SHIT!" when the record store guy told him that he would not be able to purchase an album due to the fact that it contained foul language. This was perhaps the funniest thing of them all. Following this outburst, the boy stomped out of the store with his mother walking quickly to catch up. I wish I had recommended Totally Krossed Out to him before he left.

Things I'm Excited About

1. The Free Energy show this Friday
2. The Roots Picnic on Saturday, 6/5
3. The Belle and Sebastian dance party on Saturday, 6/12
4. The World Cup
5. The last day of school on Monday, 6/21
6. The Passion Pit show on Sunday, 6/27
7. The She & Him show on I forget the date sometime in July
8. The road trip my Dad and I will take to South Dakota to see the Crazy Horse Memorial
9. The Jersey Shore
10. Not getting a summer job and being a bum with a paycheck for 2.5 months

Awe-Inspiring: The Wrens

I really liked The Wrens about two years ago, when I was a senior in college and I listened to The Meadowlands each day en route to student teaching at Swift Middle School. I LOVE them after seeing them live last Friday. Easily one of the top five live performances I've ever witnessed. They took 17 minutes to play the first two songs in their set, "This Boy is Exhausted" and "Hopeless." Each had a long, drawn-out introduction and an extended ending. Never have I seen a band enhance their songs so much while playing live. And their enthusiasm was off the charts. Guitarist and co-vocalist Kevin Whelan was the main instigator. He jumped off of the speakers several times and even held out his mic into the crowd for a fan to briefly take over on lead vocals. Fellow guitarist/vocalist Charles Bissell was divine as well, and his solo on "Thirteen Grand" was eargasm-inducing. Hell, the whole show was, but that was especially. I enjoyed them so much that I bought a t-shirt, something I haven't done in several years. It reads "The Wrens: Keeping Folks Waiting Since 1989." It refers to the fact that The Wrens have been around for over twenty years and only have three albums to their credit. Here's hoping another one surfaces soon.

Total Mind F***: Babies

They made a movie about babies. Real rap. It's 79 minutes of babies doing stuff. Just babies hanging out and chewing on stuff and peeing and burping and then they sort of learn to walk at the end. I felt really bad for the African baby because he always had flies on his little bald head. I also felt bad for the Mongolian baby because he almost never had any pants on and his mother left him to his own devices pretty frequently. He was crawling out in a field with no pants and goats and horses could have trampled all over him. The American baby was annoying because she had a dumb name (Hattie) and her parents were a bunch of new age dildos. I guess my fav baby was the Japanese one because her parents took good care of her and she did normal stuff like go to Japanese gymboree. The funniest part of this movie though was the end credits because they played a Sufjan Stevens song and now whenever I hear a Sufjan song I'm gonna laugh because his music will have me conjuring up images of babies. He's a dildo too. This movie would have been better if they got John Cleese or some other British dude to add some witty narration. I wouldn't recommend this movie to a friend but I'd see it over Iron Man or any lulz-worthy superhero movie any day.

*Edit*-Sufjan Stevens isn't a dildo. I actually like his latest release. My bad, Sufjan.

Album of the Year?: Treats

I don't usually succumb to blog hype. I find it to be almost always unfounded, a silly attempt by people to crown a band before they've earned the throne. "Let me see the full-length before I call myself a fan," I usually say. There is one band, however, that I made an exception for-Sleigh Bells. If you don't know their story, allow me to give you a brief summary. Derek Miller used to be in the hardcore band Poison the Well. He makes the music. Alexis Krauss used to be in a girl pop group. She sings. You can imagine the results. When I first heard them at the beginning of November, 2009, they blew me away. The loud guitars, the crunk-ass beats, the soft, feminine vocals. It was nothing like I (or anyone, I'm pretty sure) ever heard. I drooled over each new track that leaked over the past six months, and even bought tickets to a dumb Diplo show just to see them. The full album, Treats, came out today, and it's tremendous. So many bands release a few promising EPs, only to have their first album suck. Treats delivers, though. It contains many of the songs that have been floating around the internet, like "A/B Machines," "Infinity Guitars," and "Crown on the Ground." The song once known as "Beach Girls" appears now as "Kids," and its T.I.-esque synth line has been replaced with scuzzy guitar. My favorite song by them was always "Ring Ring," and it's called "Rill Rill" now. It's still the same song, but hearing it in high quality beats the hell out of hearing it on their MySpace. This is music to dance to, murder people to, and save the world to. I can't even make out the lyrics, but these jams are so good that they could be about old people farting and I wouldn't care.

This is the best album I've heard this year so far. Their sound is completely original, and Treats will undoubtedly spawn a boatload of imitators.

Review: Concerts From Last Weekend

I was lucky enough to see several bands perform live last weekend. Lizzy and I saw Frightened Rabbit at the First Unitarian Church on Friday and Grizzly Bear at Dickinson College on Saturday. Here are my thoughts:

As previously stated, the FR show was at the FUC, a fine place to see a concert. It's small, the sound quality is always good, and the crowds are generally pretty enthusiastic. Two bands played before FR-Bad Veins and Maps and Atlases. Bad Veins are two guys-a drummer and a guitarist. Upon seeing their name, I remembered reading about them in the Target employee newsletter (back when I worked at Target) that they won some sort of Target battle of the bands. As expected, they sounded like the the Killers and the Bravery and those types of bands. They weren't bad-they were just a little boring. Maps and Atlases are a four piece math rock band. I liked them. The singer/lead guitarist had some really good guitar licks up his sleeve, and it was really cool to watch the rest of the band fall into place with him. Frightened Rabbit lead singer Scott Hutchinson was watching from the floor during their set, and he talked to everyone who came up to him and posed for pictures with people. I thought that was pretty cool. His band came on after, and they were really good. They played their asses off, and it was clear that they weren't mailing the show in. We were in the back until about 2/3 of the way through their set, until I felt compelled to push my way to the front when they started playing "Nothing Like You." Later Lizzy would tell me that the people we pushed aside looked really pissed off. Sorry, dudes. It was much more fun jumping around with the 18 year olds than standing in the back with the 30 year olds. They played all of their best songs, including my personal favorite "Head Rolls Off." The most memorable event of the night occurred as we were walking to the car. Scott Hutchinson was walking down the street, and as he was passing I said something like "Great set, thanks for coming here." He said "Thank You" and kept walking. Lizzy, residing in an alternate universe like always, didn't realize it was him until he had passed. "Wait, that was the lead singer?" "Yeah, dude." Hutchinson was already half a city block away, but that didn't stop her. She did her little Lizzy sprint and caught The Modern Leper himself. And she didn't just say "Great Show." She asked him for a hug. And they hugged. And it was beautiful.

Next night was Grizzly Bear at Dickinson College. See my previous post to learn how we found out about this show. I'm usually pretty wary of shows at private colleges (coughMessiahcough) but Lizzy and I decided that the Grizzly Business was too good to pass up. Andrew Von Novak was present as well, and he had some sound musical knowledge to contribute. Lizzy had a Spice Girls t-shirt to contribute. Both Grizzly Bear and opening act The Morning Benders had some great tunes to contribute. The Morning Benders sound like Grizzly Bear junior to me, which still makes them a good band because Grizzly Bear are a great band. They played a nice set and ended with the breezy "Excuses," their best song. The whole crowd was "dum dum"-ing and singing along. Then Grizzly Bear came on. They were as good as I hoped they would be, playing material from their most recent album as well as Yellow House. They covered everything from "Two Weeks" to "Colorado," and closed with some awesome re-worked old song that I didn't know. After watching them play live, I've concluded that drummer Chris Bear is the MVP of the band. He played the drums with an intense passion, one that I'm sure inspires the rest of the group.

S'all for now...

Summer Jam: "Bang Pop"

Say what you want about Free Energy's debut album Stuck on Nothing. Yes, it sounds like it was recorded in 1979. No, it isn't incredibly inventive. But I'll be darned if you listen to the third track, "Bang Pop," and don't start dancing. Or at least tap your feet. This is surely one of the catchiest songs I've ever heard, from the drum beat to the flow of the vocals to the singalong chorus. It's a balls out, smoke 'em if ya got 'em, booty shakin', T-Rex-emulating jam. I've listened to it at least ten times in the last 24 hours.

I'm pretty sure this track will start its fair share of dance parties this summer.

The Chance Factor

I'm pretty sure at this point that life is just a series of missed and made connections. There's always the possibility of an event occurring that can completely change the course of someone's life. Or maybe just their weekend. Example: This past weekend Lizzy and I went to The First Unitarian Church in Philly to see Frightened Rabbit, one of our favorite bands. We were outside standing in line before the doors opened, and I decided to strike up a conversation with the fella who was in front of me. Obviously we started talking about music, and he informed me that Grizzly Bear, another band that Lizzy and I enjoy, would be playing at Dickinson College the following night. This show wasn't promoted to the general public in a big way, and wasn't even posted on the official Grizzly Bear website. We ended up going and had a great time. What would have happened if I hadn't talked to the guy in front of me? I wouldn't have known about the show and would've probably done something far less exciting. I learned an important lesson from all of this-talk to anyone and everyone. You never know what some random dude might have to say or where it will take you.