What we find funny then and now

I just had to share this music clip. Mavis Staples, Wilco and Nick Lowe rehearsing the old Band song “The Weight.” I’ve been on a bit of The Band kick as of late and this is just an amazing cover of the song. Mavis Staples just sings the hell out of the song. You can even see the guys in Wilco just take a step back in wonder when she starts to sing.

I’ve been thinking recently about just where my sense of humor comes from. Meaning just what was I exposed to as a child that determined what I felt was funny and, more importantly, influenced my writing style and my brand of humor. Ok, at least I think that at times I can be a funny writer intentionally. But what I wanted to think about is what drove it.

If you made me list the TV shows that I watched as a kid (say before I turned 10) that influenced me the most I would say The Muppet Show, The Monkees and Monty Python. Yes, even as a 10 year old I was aware of Monty Python. Add in the Douglas Adams “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” series and Dave Barry columns and you have the main components of what would make up my brand of humor and I would have to say that I am not alone in that regard. Now here is the interesting bit, not only were all those shows meant for adults but they instilled in myself and a lot of other people in Gen X a very specific brand of comedy.

Think about those shows. All three of the TV shows completely ignored the fourth wall and were full of self-referential, meta-humor. The idea of a running plot was only vaguely considered important and in many instance it was just gag upon gag upon gag. Now is it surprising that Seth MacFarlane, who created Family Guy, is a month younger than I am? We have the same influences and create what we have always found to be funny. Even a show like How I Met Your Mother is written to my generation due to the reliance on running jokes and constant gags while something like Two and a Half Men with its more classic sitcom format is geared to the aging Baby Boomers who grew up with more straightforward sitcoms.

You can see the same thing with music. When I was young I was first introduced to music with new wave and punk and when I grew older that combined itself into grunge. Add in country music and you have the entire alternative country scene. We take the influences that we have as children and meld them to what we want to create as we age.

Sadly this means that as I continue to age and move out of the target market what I find funny will no longer make the air. Music today is being made by those who grew up in the latest era of the boy bands and bubble gum pop. Someone who thought that Friends was the epitome of comedy is working on a new sitcom. That is just the way the cycle of culture works. Thank god for DVD collections.

New Year's Resolutions Revisited

Everyone has their own traditions for New Years. Maybe it involves spending the day with family or trying out the latest hangover cure or, if you are the Big Ten, losing every single game you possibly could. For me the New Year marks several things. It means that I start a new Word document for my writer’s journal which is now entering its fourteenth year. Yes, that means essentially fourteen years of keeping a diary. I’d say that I am a teenage girl but even teenage girls don’t keep diaries for fourteen years. But my main focus of the New Year is making my resolutions.

However, before I post my 2011 Resolutions I thought that I should check how I did on the 2010 edition. Because resolutions are meaningless without public accountability.

Resolution # 1: Get my weight down to under 190 pounds: As of this morning I weigh 196 pounds. Technically I did not reach my goal but this is down from my peak weight of about 215 earlier this year so it is still a loss of 15 to 20 pounds which is pretty impressive for a non-Biggest Loser contestant. The even better news is that I have been able to keep the weight off all year. I still have more to lose, especially going into the wedding, but at least I made progress on this one.

Resolution # 2: Be more attentive: I have worked a lot at not being so much a slave to multitasking. Essentially what would happen is I would be talking to Kim and she would notice that I was fading from the conversation because I was doing something online. I used to think that I could do two things at once but now I’ve come to realized that I just tend to do two things badly in that instance. I still fail too often (Triple Town on the Kindle can apparently take control of my mind) but I would like to think that I am in the moment more now than I was at the beginning of the year.

Resolution # 3: Complete a 3,000 piece jigsaw puzzle by myself: Done. Took me four months of sitting on the floor of my apartment with the most evil jigsaw puzzle ever made (I swear to God it was one third sky and the sky was the easiest part of the puzzle) but I did it. It is sad to think just how much joy I take out of completing something like that. There are times in my life where I have to take on a challenge where for me to succeed I have to have the will to finish more than anything else.

Resolution # 4: Have breakfast every day: Technically true if you consider coffee on its own as breakfast. Horribly untrue if you believe that breakfast should consist of something other than a Fiber One bar (and trust me, there is no joy in eating a Fiber One bar.) Given how much effort I am putting into losing weight you would think that eating breakfast, which is always stated as the first thing you should do to lose weight, would be easier to do. Focus for this year, obviously.

Resolution # 5: Get to work earlier: Sigh. Yeah, I failed at this one. I have no idea why it can be so tough for me to get out of bed in the morning. I will be awake, listening to NPR, but can’t take those few steps out of bed. I even keep an alarm clock on the other side of the room but when it goes off I get out of bed, turn it off, and then promptly get back under the covers. Maybe my bed is just too comfy. Or I’m lazy. One of the two.

Resolution # 6: Learn to cook to the point that I can make dinner for Kim: Well, I never made dinner for Kim so I guess this one should be considered a failure. I still have a desire to learn how to cook and I am making some progress but I still have a great deal of distance to go before I could legitimately say that I know how to cook. But again, given that I am going to be really health focused this year I think this might show up on my new list.

Resolution # 7: Reader’s Choice: If I remember correctly the reader’s choice for this year was to take up swimming. I don’t believe I swam at all this year. I didn’t even buy goggles though let’s face it; the goggles do nothing. I apologize to all of my readers out there.

Resolution # 8: Have 100 people read the blog in one day: I’m not sure if I broke this level or not. I did have some pretty popular days per Blogger stats and I became the number one link on google for searches for “strawberry shortcakes enemy”, which should count for something. Plus, I had a reader from Greenland and a Greenland reader must be worth like, 20 Canadians. I’ll admit that I really fell out of the blogging habit this year for a lot of reasons but it is nice to know that I still have an audience.

Resolution # 9: Expand my musical tastes: I surprisingly failed at this one. I probably bought less music this year than at any point since I was 16 years old. And I didn’t download stuff for free either; I just simply did not search out new music. On some level I blame the death of the music magazines and my lack of concert attendance as it is much tougher for me to find out about new acts than it used to be. But mainly I think I just needed to give my ears a year off. Maybe this year I’ll be able to hear new music without being so blasé about it.

Resolution # 10: Prepare to be the best husband that I can be: If there was anything this year was about it was this and I am still a work in progress. I always thought that being in a relationship would be easy; I am a nice, caring guy so just being myself would be all that is required. However, I never noticed the selfish guy who also existed there because when you aren’t in a relationship being selfish really isn’t that big of a deal. Plus, I have now been with Kim longer than all of my previous relationships put together and that is even if you consider going to get coffee with a girl to be equivalent to dating. In essence, I’ve never dealt with the issues that arise when you are in a real relationship.

I still screw up from time to time. More often than that to be precise. But I am pissed to no end at myself when I screw up and am trying everything I can to be the best that I can be. I am the luckiest man alive to be with Kim. It’s the least that I can do to try to be my best in return.

Best of 120 Minutes: Old school Wilco tonight. I just can’t find the time to write my mind the way I want it to read.



The five random CDs for the week:
1) Cowboy Junkies “Rarities, B Sides, and Slow, Sad Waltzes”
2) Rilo Kiley “More Adventurous”
3) The Tragically Hip “Road Apples”
4) Belly “Star”
5) Alejandro Escovedo “Gravity”

The Oughts: The Album of the Decade

The Best Disc of the Decade: Wilco “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot” (2002…kind of)

There are two reasons why this album is the best of the decade. One is what it meant musically. The other is what it meant to the music business.

Musically it is simply a collection of perfect, nonconformist songs. Some songs discard the typical verse chorus verse structure. Others meander along for a while before returning to a central core. Over the course of the disc Wilco breaks from being an Americana band trying to cover Byrds songs and becomes something different. Not a rock band, not Dylan, but something falling in between.

And like Gillian Welch at number two this album ties itself to the most important event of the decade in 9/11. And like Gillian Welch it was not meant to have any connection at all. It is strange that outside of Springsteen’s “The Rising” there really was no music that linked itself to the moment that we all can find ourselves transported back to in a moment and the only moment of my life where I could say that the world changed as I watched television. Over the course of the album Jeff Tweedy sings “Tall buildings shake, voices escape singing sad, sad songs”, songs are titled “War on War” and “Ashes of American Flags” and a distant broadcaster’s voice repeats the radio call signs “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.” The album is introspective and simply feels of those months where we all wondered what this new world would be.

For that alone, this would be a top 15 album. It is the story behind the album that makes it the most important disc of the decade.

Prior to this disc Wilco was a well respected but not altogether popular band. They never sold 100,000 copies of an album but toured well and made the label money. They were a music fan’s band in the days of boy bands and Limp Bizkit. Their label gave them the money to create Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and when they saw the product they hated it to the point of dropping Wilco from the label and giving them the rights to the music for free. All because they did not see a hit song in the mix.

So what did Wilco do? They put the album online in fall of 2001 for everyone to hear. Critics and fans alike listened to it and thought it was amazing and could not believe that they could not get it in stores and that no label would release it. I knew a record store that was burning the CD for people who didn’t have a high speed internet connection. Everyone wanted to have a copy of the record. Labels started to get into a bidding war over the rights. Eventually Wilco signed with a label and the album was released commercially.

Here is the fun part. The label that dropped Wilco and the label that resigned them were essentially the same label. Warner Brothers owned both of them. They were paid for the same album twice and their greatest promotion came from releasing the album on their own online.

The music industry as we knew it in the nineties is dead. The labels no longer have control. The artists now have the power. There are flaws in this system to be sure but understand one thing; anything that allows for the creation of art such as this is worth the cost.

You've got a blue eyed soul...

Best of 120 Minutes: Back in my day, we didn’t have huge portions of the DVD section at Best Buy dedicated to Anime. (Or DVD for that matter but let’s ignore that for the moment.) I couldn’t just walk into any bookstore and pick up Manga collections. Nope, back in my day if we wanted to act like we were hip to Japanese culture we had to watch Matthew Sweet videos. See how much we had to suffer compared to the kids of today? Do you know how hard it was to create a complete set of Voltron episodes on VHS? And let’s not even get into the minor differences between Battle of the Planets and G-Force. Anyway, for those who need their anime fix here is “Girlfriend.”

Bizarre TV moment of the day: Flipping on A&E and seeing the movie Mannequin. Now A&E stands for Arts and Entertainment and I’ll be damned if I can figure out how Mannequin fits into either of those categories. This would be somewhat along the lines of AMC deciding to show an Air Bud marathon. I make fun of MTV for not showing music but technically they are at least still broadcasting television.

So I went to see Wilco at the Crossroads on Saturday night. For those who don’t know their KC geography, the Crossroads is about three blocks from the new Sprint Center. This wouldn’t be an issue except that Elton John was playing the inaugural concert there at the same time thus creating a parking zoo. First off, Elton John fans aren’t the type that typically go downtown and seem to be confused by the concept of one way streets. Then there are the opportunists best exhibited by the following example.

While driving to the Crossroads I come across this guy standing in a small parking lot with a cardboard sign on which he had written “Parking - $10” with a magic marker. Now this lot is a good six blocks from the Sprint Center and about five from the Crossroads. In addition, I drive by this lot weekly when I go to the Brick and I’m almost certain that this guy had nothing to do with it. But he had it pretty filled when I drove by. I bet he pocketed $200 and then called the tow company. I admire that sort of ingenuity, I really do. Me, I parked in a free lot that Grinders had set up a block from the show.

Grinders is kind of what I assume South by Southwest is like, which I would know better if I ever made it to Austin. Basically this big open backlot covered with mulch featuring a stage, beer stands and not much else. This isn’t a problem except that we got three inches of rain on Saturday thus resulting in rather wet mulch, which when you stand on it for five hours without moving tends to cause a degree of lower back pain never before experienced. Add to that the fact that I decided to be cool and not wear a jacket, resulting in my being cool and cold. The price of fashion, I guess.

Wilco was just amazing. I’ve seen the band several times over the past decade and this might be the best I’ve ever seen them. It was definitely the happiest I’ve seen Jeff Tweedy in a long time. Typically he can get annoyed with the crowd or the band but this time he just seemed to be enjoying himself. It was interesting in that the focus was not on the latest album. They tended to play those songs almost as an afterthought to the playlist. It definitely was not a “let’s push the new disc” type of show.

Mainly because they did something I never would have expected; they played four songs off of AM. That is Wilco’s first album and my personal favorite even though it is in no way their best disc. Being a critic and a fan are really two different things. As a critic I can find flaws in AM and see how it is simple and restrained and not as technically and lyrically challenging as something like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. The fan in me will always grab AM when I want to listen to a disc, though. It was amazing to see Wilco play these songs because for years they simply haven’t. I don’t know if I’ve ever heard them play Box Full of Letters live and it is one of my favorite songs. That really was a treat for me, it was as if the band was thanking its long time fans.

Overall, just a great show. The band was tight, the music was great and the crowd was really cool. The asshole quotient seemed to be extremely low and I didn’t even seem to be surrounded by a bunch of people more interested in talking than seeing the show. That is a rarity at a show like this and I have to say it impressed me. Add this to Arcade Fire as shows that made me wonder if there really is a music community in this town.

The five random CDs for the week:
1) Robbie Fulks “13 Hillbilly Giants”
2) Sarah McLachlan “I Will Remember You”
3) Kasey Chambers “Barricades and Brickwalls”
4) Cowboy Junkies “The Caution Horses”
5) Uncle Tupelo “Not Forever, Just For Now”

Lost another one of my idols...

This is going to be a tough post to write. I should hang black banners on my blog or something. I mean, how in the world am I supposed to write when Captain America has been murdered? They shot him down like a dog on the courthouse steps. What type of world do we live in where even Captain America is dead?

(Sorry if I spoiled the ending for anyone who has been reading the Civil War series. But yes, Marvel has decided to kill off Captain America. It’s still not clear what they mean. They may have just killed Steve Rogers and someone else will take up the costume. They may use the typical Dr. Doom “He’s not really dead” storyline. Or maybe they are serious and, much like Bucky Barnes, Cap is no longer with us. I, along with the rest of the Avengers, are officially in mourning.)

Ok, a few more thoughts on last night’s post. I’m not kidding when I say that record stores rely on my business to stay afloat. When I left for B-school the independent record store I shopped at weekly went under in less than six months. I really think that I had something to do with that. And even though I do most of my shopping at either Streetside or Border’s I don’t consider them to be a godless, bloodsucking corporate machine. I mean, they are, but Border’s has a rather nice selection and the people who work at Streetside are cool. That’s why I don’t entirely fault them for doing this promotion to make a few dollars, just as long as they admit that it is a crass marketing stunt. Ticketmaster, on the other hand, uses my fees to purchase gold plated toilet seats and when the revolution comes I swear I will be manning the firing lines when we put those bastards up against the wall.

Looking at it (and some Soundscan data that I have) it really looks like it had to be a platinum selling disc to even be mentioned. That would take out The Postal Service and Death Cab for Cutie, even though both of those discs would make the cut of influential discs of the past ten years. It’s great that they included “Way to Blue” on there but that is based more on sales than on awesomeness. I’m more surprised that only one R.E.M. disc (and one Radiohead disc) made the cut. Both are popular bands with large catalogues and you’d think they would merit inclusion over every Led Zepplin disc.

There is one other ranking that I will have to give them credit for. Beastie Boys “Licensed to Ill” came in at 31 and that is a fair ranking. Remember that when “You’ve got to fight” came out everyone took them to be one hit wonders. Vanilla Ice before anyone had heard of Rob Van Winkle. The fact that they had a long and impressive career astounds me. Especially given the rumors that all of the band members had died of cocaine overdoses in 1987. Though if we are giving late 80’s rap groups some love could we include a Fat Boys record? Or at least give a special mention to Disorderlies for being the best film starring a rap band ever?

Anyway, I need to talk about the Glen Kotche show on Monday night. Glen is the drummer for Wilco and this was the last date of his solo tour before he joins back up with the band. And this was a solo show by the drummer. That’s as odd to write as it is to see. An hour long drum solo does not sound like the most exciting thing in the world to me. But he did something at this show that makes it the early leader for “Weirdest set of the year” and tops The Ditty Bops bringing out a guy on stilts for the weirdest concert moment that I have ever seen.

We’re about halfway through the set, which was really good. He used a couple looping tracks at time to give a bit of melody but he mainly used a tricked out drum kit to keep things interesting. Then he introduced this track called the Balianese Monkey War Chant. Which was based on a Hindu myth involving several gods who spoke using various strange attachments to his kit. (One I think was one of those metal springs that used to be attached to my dorm room lamp). He starts playing and hitting cymbals and looping some of the noise. Then he gets up and turns to this folding table that is behind him.

He lifts this blanket off the table and you see that there are about forty small boxes on the table. About the size of a Matchbox car. He turns on this miniature flashlight and begins to lift the lid on each box and shines the light into the box. As he does this, you begin to hear chirping sounds. Yes, Glen Kotche played a drum solo while being accompanied by a table filled with crickets. Forty some crickets chirping into the overhead mike.

It was the damndest thing that I’ve ever seen in a concert.

He really used the crickets as a musical instrument. They provided the background vocals for his solo and served as a counter voice for all of these characters that he invented with his drum kit. I’m not sure how he did this, or how the crickets didn’t immediately jump around the stage or if this is the strangest rider request ever. All I know is that it was bizarre but it worked. You felt that you were in Bali trapped in the midst of a Hindu myth. And pulling that off when in reality you are standing in a bar in a strip mall in Kansas City is one hell of an accomplishment.