Tag Archives: KEXP

Down at the Community Center

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Not sure about anyone else, but I need regular detours and diversion from the ugliness of the world. Or perhaps it’s not diversion: maybe I’m just focusing on things that bring just a bit of joy, and less angst directed towards things that really don’t matter (politics, Twitter trolls, religion, who’s fucking whom, etc).

Music’s probably not everyone’s cup o’ tea, or probably not my rock and roll fixation that’s not gotten assigned to old geezers on nostalgia trips. Whatever.

I know a few readers are fans of Connor Oberst/Bright Eyes. He’s launched a new act with Phoebe Bridgers called, Better Oblivion Community Center, which if you’re not careful, you’ll confuse for a small town nonprofit. They even have an .org-based URL.

I’ve been digging Bridgers’ music for awhile, including her recent indie “supergroup,” Boygenius, with Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker. Bummed I missed Dacus in Portland because the show was sold out and I tarried scoring my tix. Oh well. There will be other shows.

Anyways. Hope you enjoy this video as much as I did.

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Songs From the Car Seat

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I have two laptops. One that is my “travel” computer. It’s one of Lenovo’s Yoga Ideabooks, perfect for use on-the-go. It’s the very same version that thieves in Providence snatched after smashing the two side windows of Mary’s RAV4, the night before Mark’s celebration of life at Brown. My insurance money allowed me to buy another one.

On that laptop is a very long attempt at writing a review of Thursday night. I completed it on Friday afternoon after trekking to the JFK Presidential Library and Museum, as Mary and I had decided to spend an extra day in the city before boarding the train north for home, on Saturday. While she caught a catnap before we headed out to a romantic dinner in the city’s North End, I was banging out a review that I guess will never see the light of day.

It was Valentine’s and Mary and I were in Boston to see Car Seat Headrest (CSHR). Actually, I was the one who wanted to see the “next big thing” in indie rock, but being such a good sport, she decided to take me up on my offer of a second ticket and hit the rock show with me, even though she could care less about the indie music I’ve loved for forever: that’s the kind of girl that she is and has always been. I’m sure that quality is also why Mark loved his mom like he did.

Today is Sunday, three days after Thursday. We thoroughly enjoyed our time in an urban environment very different from where we live in Maine.  Amtrak’s Downeaster made this trip especially enjoyable.

Back from Boston (from the Prudential Skywalk)

Our time in the big city was fun. I think the reason we had such a good time is because we left the car back in Brunswick. Being able to experience a city without the hassle of driving in city-style traffic lessens the stress. That and not having to find parking is a plus, too. Of course, it helps to be in an urban environment that has a stellar public transportation system. I know the locals love to bash the MBTA, but for someone like us who live in a small town with minimal public transportation options, being able to embark on public rail to crisscross the landscape of a major American city was a plus, and kind of fun, too. Continue reading →

End or Beginning? (2018 Recap)

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Shit!! I made it through another year!! Barely, on fumes, with my low fuel warning light flashing on my figurative dashboard. But, I’m here at the end of another romp through the Gregorian 12-step.

I’m edging closer to pulling up alongside yet another sad anniversary of losing my only son, maybe the best person I’ve ever known or ever will know. I don’t expect to meet anyone like him again and that’s something impossible to ignore.

Riding shotgun on a two-member team that’s managed to make it through the worst of stretches a life can parcel out, I’ve also weathered abandonment, lies, and the usual failings that humans are genetically predisposed to deliver. Fuck it, though! There’s something celebratory in all this darkness and mourning. At least approaching it in the spirit of the age-old wisdom that co-worker Wilma Delay dispensed back in my Westville Correctional Center days: she told me, “Baumer, sometimes you gotta’ laugh to keep from crying.” I sometimes wonder what became of ole’ Wilma. She always made more work for me with her predisposition to never moving off her sit-stool and more-often-than-not assigning herself the task of setting up the evening’s prisoner’s meds, which meant she had to do little else. Her co-workers picked up the slack. But I believe her heart was in the right place.

I remain flummoxed by the speed that grief allows a grieving person to spiral downward. One minute, you are coping with the shitty stick you’ve been handed and the next, you are contemplating a painless way to end it all. I’m not messing with you. It’s that fucked-up at times. I don’t anticipate it will ever get too much better than that in all honesty.

But again, here we are—another new year goading us into resolutions and pronouncements, sent out into the great unknown. What’s one to do, save for going along, with some remote hope of getting along.

Wrapping up 2018, here are the things and people that helped bring the year to a tolerable close:

  • Books and writers
  • Music
  • A new understanding of family
  • A few true/blue friends
  • Better physical health and the return of some measure of fitness
  • A sense that despite all of the brokenness and tears, Mark’s parents are doing the best we can be doing in terms of honoring his memory.

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Gifted

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Back in 1996, Nada Surf had a major hit with their song, “Popular.” It was a take down of the fickle elements of high school popularity.

The band easily could have become just one more one-hit-wonder littering the pop-rock landscape. Their record label wanted another “Popular” and their follow-up didn’t have one. Then, like happens often, the A&R asshole at the label began imposing his total creative cluelessness on the true creatives who made up the band. This process never results in anything positive, and yet labels have been doing this kind of thing, forever. Elektra dropped the band mid-tour, while they were in Europe. So much for “developing talent,” A&R schmuck!

To Nada Surf’s credit, they persevered. This meant touring whenever they could to rebuild U.S. interest in their band, while taking on day jobs to pay the bills. Then, Let Go, their third record, and the true follow-up that they wanted to make to their debut record found a home on tiny Barsuk Records out of Seattle, Washington. The band got solid reviews and here we are, 15+ years later and Nada Surf are still going strong. Continue reading →

America (Never Been)

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I’m a fan of Car Seat Headrest. I have been for a couple of years.

When Mark was out on his final walk, I emailed him about the band during October, early in his trip:

Hi Mark,

Did you think the story about Yo La Tengo and the Mets was funny? I did and got such a laugh reading it last night.

Mom and I have been reading at night, and not watching much TV. Can’t say I miss it at all.

Last night, was reading, while also listening to some Car Seat Headrest from their show they did at KEXP in 2014, I think.

They have so many great songs. Will Toledo is one of those prolific songwriters who got his start making music in his bedroom and releasing it on Bandcamp at first.

The song “America” made me think of your trip. Will’s writing from the perspective of seeing the country from life on the road, most likely in a tour van. The first line goes,.

“You can drive across the whole thing in four days…if you want it,” which again is the time when you’re driving. Still, there’s this sense of America being out there if you really want to see it, which you are doing on foot, literally!

Anyways that’s some of my “wisdom” or at least thoughts, this morning.

Nearly four weeks meat and dairy-free. God, I feel so good physically and my mind seems clearer. Really enjoying Michael Greger’s How Not To Die. Reading about eggs and chicken and the risk of salmonella in the chapter, “How Not To Die from Infections” last night was like a jolt—chicken and eggs exponentially increase your risk of salmonella, which is a serious infection that can kill you. He also talks about plants and how they boost your immunity. Great stuff!!

Mom says you are speaking at a school? That’s awesome!

Well, godspeed to you today as you journey forward.

Love you!

-Dad

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Who Taught You To Live Like That?

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When I was typing out the title to this post, I accidentally pecked out “who taught you to lie like that.” I had to chuckle because I was thinking that very thing this morning while ruminating about a certain president who resembles a Cheeto, and the prevaricators who carry his water.

But I don’t want to write about him (today).

I blogged about emotional intelligence the other day. Another topic that remains in heavy rotation in my thinking.

Canadian bands and artists have colored my musical palette for quite some time. I think it dates back to a trip to Montreal that our unit of three made back in the early 1990s. I ended up finding a cassette tape by The Tragically Hip (RIP Gord Downie). I became a fanboy from then on for their north-of-the-border take on classic rock.

I finally got to see “The Hip” play live at The State Theater. There were probably 500 people there on a hot August night in ’98 to see Canadian rock royalty perform. The show wasn’t heavily promoted. Mary and I learned about it when a plane flew over Old Orchard Beach pulling a streamer that said, “Tragically Hip at State Theater” that night. I said to her, “we should go.” And we did. It’s probably one of five shows we’ve attended together in our 35 years of marriage. What our pursuit of live music lacks in quantity, I think it more than makes up for in quality, though: Cheap Trick (with UFO opening), Dave Mason, The Grateful Dead, Lucinda Williams (The Bottle Rockets), and The Tragically Hip. Continue reading →

Media’s Cock Roach

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Living in Trump’s dystopian nation (if you haven’t ingested the Kool-Aid), sometimes you can forget that this American life sometimes delivers treats, too.

Last week, it was #InternationalClashDay. This afternoon, while listening to Maine Calling, hosted by Maine media vet, Jennifer Rooks, I found out it’s #WorldRadioDay. Hot damn! I love radio, so why not celebrate the hell out of the day? The verdict of Rooks and her guests was that radio’s still going strong and will continue to survive.

I grew up when you could still hear rock and roll on the AM dial. Now it’s the domain of conservative talk dirges and hosts positing an alternative version of America vastly different than the one I grew up in. Wanna’ make America great again? Flush Rush from the airwaves and play some music!

Happy families listen to the radio.

When I’m home and working, I stream music via several dial-based stations that I can’t pick up in Maine. This is one of the wonders of the internet and technology in my opinion. Here are my top four.

  • KEXP (Seattle, Washington)
  • WMFU (East Orange, New Jersey)
  • WMBR (Cambridge, Massachusetts)
  • WMPG (Portland, ME)

I can pull in WMPG’s signal on my stereo receiver and of course, in my car. I am a fan of their weekday afternoon “rock blocks,” especially Wednesday’s Radio Junk Drawer, with David Pence. More and more, I’m apt to be streaming KEXP most afternoons that aren’t Wednesday. Continue reading →

Combat Rock

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It’s difficult sitting here in 2018 Trumpworld, recalling how another hated politician spawned a musical revolution. But back in 1975, when Great Britain’s longest-serving post-WWII prime minister took office, the fury of the then-nascent punk scene hadn’t yet been funneled her way. Punks’ anger and rage found an able target in Margaret Thatcher just two years later.

Thatcher climbed atop her conservative perch, two years prior to the release of Never Mind the Bollocks, the Sex Pistols’ punk “shot heard round” the music world. Britain would never be the same, as Thatcher (much like Reagan in America), turned her attention to dismantling much of the country’s social infrastructure. And Trump seems hellbent on scrapping what remains of America’s.

While the Sex Pistols received the lion’s share of attention from the media for their outlandish “manners,” sneering frontman, Johnny Rotten, and McClaren-esque media savvy (not to mention their shot across the bow, “God Save the Queen”), it was a group of working class twenty-somethings from Brixton who embraced an incendiary ethic of rage, channeled through punk sensibilities and three-minute song structures, that would later evolve and incorporate reggae, rap, dub, and funk, demonstrating that punk could be more than three chords structures, played at breakneck speed. Continue reading →

Ziggy Played Guitar

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[I wrote this Monday night]
As we age, it’s an ongoing battle not to become a nostalgia act—in the music we listen to, the books we read, the clothes we wear—especially when others our own age are entrenched in the past.

I see it on Facebook. In the people that I once knew, went to school with, and most of whom I likely haven’t seen face-to-face in 35 years. And yet, we somehow have some tenuous connection that Mark Zuckerberg is able to exploit?

Last week I was listening to KEXP, one of the stations I enjoy streaming, given the sad state of radio in my own region. I prefer to listen to music that was written and recorded in the last decade and stations like KEXP (from Seattle) play a mix of newer music, while recognizing some of the pioneers and icons of rock and their contribution to the history of the genre.

David Bowie would be one of the latter. In fact, KEXP highlighted Bowie, celebrating his birthday last Friday, with what they were calling “Intergalactic David Bowie Day,” playing a shitload of his music, old, and new, including his latest (and last) album, Blackstar.

David Bowie, as Ziggy Stardust (circa 1973).

David Bowie, as Ziggy Stardust (circa 1973).

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News From Around the World

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The past four days have been an interesting stretch. I’ve actually been down the rabbit hole for much of three of them, piecing together the most ambitious short-term freelance assignment that I’ve landed to date. The payout for giving up my weekend is about a month’s worth of income. After the year I’ve had, any ka-chingle at this point is welcome. I’m actually in the throes of a decent late-year rally.

Up from the rabbit hole.

Up from the rabbit hole.

While in the course of my work, a major international event occurred, too—a terrorist attack in France—but I literally couldn’t stop to ponder or pay much attention to it (save for about 5 minutes on Saturday morning when I checked my social media feed). I did see that many “friends” were acting like lemmings. Continue reading →