My life falls into a pattern where something can be in front of me for a long time, but I never really see it. And when I finally notice it, I'm left wondering whether I'm walking through the world with blinders on. But better to see it late than to never see it at all, right? That's why "discovering" the band Unrest has been one of the best parts of this craptastic week.

Several months ago, a package arrived in the mail from some lovely kids in Ohio (thanks P&N if you are reading this) who burned me several albums worth of tunes they thought I'd like. At about the same time, I had purchased a lot of new music, so I didn't have adequate time to really sit and listen to each album. I trended toward the familiar and shuffled around on the bands I didn't know anything about. But this week, I made my way down toward the latter half of the alphabet and found Unrest, a D.C. band led by Mark Robinson, founder of the beloved TeenBeat record label. How could I have missed this band? Seriously? Why did nobody tell me?

This song, Cath Carroll, is tribute to the the British journalist/musician by the same name. That's a picture of Cath as taken by Mapplethorpe.

035 Cath Carroll

Unrest

Here's the official video:

Unrest - Cath Carroll

Speaking of videos and women named Cath, if anyone is keeping score at home, Death Cab For Cutie's "Cath" is the year's worst video, no contest. What's that you say Ben Gibbard? The woman you love married the wrong man. You think he's a tool. And your director just got finished watching The Graduate. Is that what we're dealing with Benny-G? Ok baby, here's the plan. Yes, we're going to play out your whole unrequited love fantasy, blow-by-blow in this video. Oh, remember that child star from that 80s movie? Yep, we got him, and we told him to go very method in his acting. Yes, yes of course you'll be in it too. So will your band, looking like hostages in a video they don't want to be party to. Yeah, the future might be in plastics.

Wedding Crashers

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Editor's Note: For the next 10 weeks, I'll be writing occasional posts about the 10 records that played a role in shaping my music taste. Underscore on the word occasional. 

Flood
When I was 13, I laid down some hard-earned babysitting money on a record that I can say saved me from commercial radio’s death rattle in the early 1990s. Looking back, I place both blame and credit on They Might Be Giant’s Flood for a lot of choices - musical and otherwise - that I’d make in the coming years.

Flood

Setting up a pattern that I’d carry with me well into adulthood, I purchased Flood because I had a bad crush on a boy who was a big They Might Be Giants fan. He seemed witty and sharp, so whatever he was into, I wanted a piece of.

The first time I plunked the tape into the player, I remember being somewhat disappointed and turned off by the nasal whine of the Johns’ vocals. But I faithfully listened and re-listened to it. Eventually, it got in, and I played the tape so many times that I wore it down to a warble of sound in some places. It is the only album to this day that I can tell you with 100 percent certainty what the opening lyrics are (“Why is the world in love again?” if you care).

Flood spoke to me. Like all 13 year olds, I felt wildly misunderstood. I wanted out of the suburbs, and They Might Be Giants seemed to offer a window into some impossibly hip post-punk Brooklyn arts scene that I was convinced I’d want to be a part of as soon as I could flee Herndon. To be into TMBG at that time was to zag against the cultural zeitgeist, which was definitely zigging toward either grunge or boy bands.

They Might Be Giants - Lucky Ball and Chain

In the 2002 documentary Gigantic, either Sarah Vowel or Ira Glass (can’t remember who) describe how clever you think you are as a teenager being a fan of TMBG, getting into their obscure references and witty wordplay. And that is exactly what I thought. It was very self-satisfying to be into something that a relatively small group of people liked. On a related note, I have always had a tremendous soft spot in my heart for geeky guys who can make me laugh. I blame that fully on this album.

I haven’t listened to Flood in years, but to leave it off my top 10 list would be a disservice to my former self. Like most fans of TMBG, you eventually grow up, realize they are a gimmick band and grow past them. And with that, the smug teenager inside of you who values the clever and the obscure above all else dies a little death.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

On this day, in celebration of our nation's independence, I will:

1. Play all the Billy Bragg commie songs.

2. Contemplate the brilliance of the lyrics "Killers in America work seven days a week."

3. Listen to the Clash.

4. Answer a text message from my friend in Malaysia, who remembered our Independence Day. Even though I lived there briefly, I can't for the life of me remember theirs. This, unfortunately, is what it means to be an American.

5. Drink for every time someone declares "freedom isn't free" or attempts to be wry and calls America "Murica."

6. Remember that my father threatened to hang the Union Jack from our house every 4th, but never did.

7. Do the thing that all people who actually live in the District do: avoid the Mall at all costs and hang out on a friend's roof in Northwest, safe from the great unwashed masses downtown.

8. Recall one of the best lines from the movie Dazed and Confused: "This summer when you're being inundated with all this bi-centennial, fourth of July, bru-ha-ha just remember what you're celebrating. That's the fact that a bunch of slave-owning aristocratic white males didn't want to pay their taxes."

9. Eat some sort of dip that probably has mayonnaise as a prime ingredient. Renew dislike for mayo, firmly entrench myself in the mustard camp in the age-old mustard vs. mayo wars.

10. Think about why I find this cover art so compelling. Something about it just feels lonely. Go listen to some Pernice Brothers.

Yours, Mine & Ours

The Pernice Brothers

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

I had a rock star moment on the Metro today. And when I say rock star, I mean I was listening to a song so good during the commute back into the city that I was forced to strum along and put on a show. It was on the late-ish side, the trains were nearly empty, and the suit across the aisle from me looked up and smiled as if to say "I want whatever you got." That, or you're crazy. But I'm going with the former.

Thanks go to both Hot Rod and Akajen for talking about Dressy Bessy long ago. Fuck me, I love twee Indie pop.

Dressy Bessy (Bonus DVD)

Dressy Bessy

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

There's been something that's bothered me for almost a year, and I figured it out last night. Prurient has this game "Celebrity Hump Island," which Mer wrote about last July. It involves picking five celebrities/famous types that you'd like to be stranded on a desert island with. You can't have more than five, so rules being rules, if you change it up, you gotta kick some people off. It's all very scientific.

At any rate, I came up with a hastily composed list of four last year, and the only one who stays on there with the benefit of hindsight is foppish Hugh Grant (pre-crows feet, circa Four Weddings). But a very recent revival of my interest in mid-90s hip-hop has made me realize a grave oversight on this list: Q-Tip, from Tribe Called Quest, pre-solo career, while he was still doing the vaguely modest thing. How could I have forgotten?

A Tribe called quest - Electric Relaxation

Sorry Becks. I know you're heartbroken, but you're off.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Editor's Note: For the next 10 weeks, I'll be writing occasional posts about the 10 records that played a role in shaping my music taste. To review.

Help! [UK]

The Beatles

But they were so much a part of my growing up, that I really can't disown them. My father played them constantly. We owned all of their records in multiple formats (CDs, the American vinyl versions and the British vinyls, which were different than the versions released in the U.S.). We had stacks of books about the band. We had documentaries, demos and rare outtakes. When my father's side of the family got together at Christmas, someone would grab a guitar and we'd sing Beatles songs. Wince. I know. But it's true.

I can't say I listen to the Beatles all that often these days. But when I do, it's like coming home again. And I find that the older I get, the more I appreciate their earlier albums, which I had pretty much dismissed as lame when I was a teenager.  Help! is certainly not their best album, but it's the first I clearly recall knowing all the lyrics to. And if your parents are going to force an album on you, you could do a lot worse.

The Beatles - Ticket to Ride

Glad to see that somebody is raising the kids right:

ticket to ride

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

After a day and a night without any air conditioning in the District, I now know on a deep and personal level why more crimes are committed when the temperature rises. Because I'd like to commit them. Right now. The Target and Best Buy in Columbia Heights have been sold out of window AC units for days, and I'm going out on a limb here and predicting they'll fly off the shelves this week faster than I can get home from work to buy them.

Please don't ask too many questions, or you'll find that I'm to blame for my situation. Yes, I traded cheap rent for no AC. This seemed like a fair exchange in October. In May, with the threat of a DC summer seemingly far away, a busy weekend/work-week travel schedule and a wedding to attend this weekend, it seemed reasonable to wait until early June to buy window units. Hindsight is now mocking me at every turn, saying, "Big, Fucking Grave Error in Judgment" in blinding, neon letters. The storied DC summer has arrived.

How hot is it? It is, as I described to a friend, "film-noir" hot. If I knew how to make mint julips, I'd be drinking them. If I smoked cigarettes, I'd partake of those too. A layer less than naked? I'd want to know about it. To make matters worse, I decided to do my laundry across the street last night. You have not begun to live until you've done your wash in a packed, hot, sweaty laundromat with perverts on either side of you ogling your underwear. It's a rich experience, I assure.

If I don't make it out of this heat wave alive, I'm requesting a few things. First, somebody needs to be in charge of making a funeral mix that rocks everyone's face off and includes "Motor Away." Second, nobody - and I mean nobody -  who is over the age of five will dare wear any seersucker to my funeral. I don't care how hot it is. And third, will somebody please, please show a little respect and play Sam Cooke? He's really the only thing I can stand to listen to in this heat.

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

When my friends started joining Facebook last year, there were a few reasons I initially balked. The first was that I didn't want to cultivate a cleaner online version of myself. I didn't want a public-facing identity to mange. And I figured that if I had to sanitize my thoughts to appear professional, then it wasn't really me. And why bother then?

The second thought that entered my head was Chad, a guy from college who took an introductory art history class with me. I must have said something he liked in the class, because he stalked the hell out of me for the next four years and then some. I have a hard time being truly mean to anyone, but it got to be too much. Nobody wants a tape sent to their dorm room that only contains REM's "You are the Everything." I stopped speaking to him.

He responded by filling my mailbox with letters that got to be increasingly irate. I told him he was scaring me. He later apologized and asked whether we could be friends. I went soft and agreed, but soon came to realize that was a mistake. I stopped reading any of his emails and cut off all communication with him about eight years ago.

But aside from not wanting Chad to contact me and not wanting another online life to tend to, my friends convinced me that the benefits of being on Facebook outweighed any of the drawbacks. And I have to say I agreed. I started hearing from all sorts of people I hadn't thought of in a long time, and it was nice to reconnect. Within a few weeks of being on there, Chad found me. That was easy. I deleted that one.

What's more troubling is an email I got this week from a neighbor who lived next door to my family until I was about 3 or 4 years old. We moved away, my parents kept up spotty correspondence with them, and then the communication faded. The old neighbor asked how my parents were doing (which is a loaded, painful question for me), and then this: "We were wondering what ever happened to sweet Caroline?"

How the hell am I supposed to answer that? Really. That email has been an albatross around my neck since the day it arrived. I don't want to address whether I'm sweet, whether I've lost any of my sweetness, and where exactly the sweetness went if I don't have it. I am sweet. But I am other things too. Best not to spoil any image she might have of me. I can't write back.

I know the Diamond is making a comeback, but I've never liked the song.

Neil Diamond_Sweet Caroline

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

Well over a year ago, Akajen wrote a post about musical influences. She posed this question: "What saved you from a life of musical ignorance?," and it sparked a 33-comment discussion that, frankly, I'd revisit every day of my life if I could.

There's a lot of talk among my fellow music geeks about the DID (or maybe it's desert Island Mp3s these days?). But I've always been much more interested in the records - not necessarily the best ones in your collection or the ones you even listen to today - that for better or worse shaped your musical tastes. So for the next 10 weeks, I'll be writing about the albums that started it all/ruined me and changed what I listened to at the time. I don't mean "changed my life" in that annoying way that Natalie Portman declares the Shins are gonna change your life in Garden State. These aren't "of-the-moment" records for me. I don't listen to at least three of them with any regularity. These albums don't always represent the band's best work. But they're in the DNA. They are where I've been, and where I'm going. They are (in order of when they came into my life):

Read and post comments | Send to a friend

I wish I didn't have to tell you this, but the wretched Late Night Shots crew is setting its sights on the ladies who hang out at the Black Cat after determining that the women who hang out there are "straight up better looking than just about any female you would run into out in Georgetown..."

Well, yes, we are. But that doesn't mean we want you here. I think I speak for all when I say:

Bikini Kill "Suck My Left One"

Read and post comments | Send to a friend