Slow States

[We interrupt our countdown of Wilco's best songs for a word from the 2005-2009 Diamond Chalice Award recipient from the Player Hater's Ball, Off Tackle Empire's Graham Filler.]

Please Don’t Feel Obligated To Listen To Wilco

I went to a Bob Dylan concert last year. Ol’ Bob is getting, well, old. Anyways, he garbled through about five minutes of something incomprehensible, jammed for awhile, and then fell asleep, snoring loudly for an hour. Not a great experience. Then I realized it was just a dream and the whole thing was actually a Wilco album.

I have a philosophy on why people may enjoy Wilco. Indi music wasn’t the monstrous beast it is now back in 2002, so when this non-pandering piece of understated American gritty “The Band”-esque music came out, it surprised a lot of people. “What is this intriguing band” they asked, “what is this dull, dreary sound they have created,” they asked.

I am not, contrary to Patrick Vint’s assertions, a hipster. I’m a lawyer who knows good and bad music when he hears it. I do kind of look like that guy though. Dammit.

Anyways, now that we have nuanced, awesome indi music that pulls us all the way from The National’s morose awesomeness to Band of Horses balladic genius to Arcade Fire’s ramshackle operatic epics…we know what good indi music is. But back then we didn’t, so Wilco filled a void. So now everyone can stop moping around with your coors light in dark bars and replaying “Jesus Etc.” thinking about your lost love…and go listen to real music.

I have a story about the Sky Blue Sky album…I heard a song called Hate It Here…I thought it was weird, I was experimenting, I decided to keep listening to it…so I added it to my Ipod, played it a few times, realized how barebones and uninteresting it was…and eventually hated it.

Stunning. And then Sky Blue Sky apparently sucks as a whole album.

Like seriously, I could see, maybe, just maybe, getting drunk in Bloomington, Illinois and hanging out in a nice dive bar next to a strip mall, and hearing, “Jesus Etc.” or even “I’m The Man Who Loves You”…and possibly feeling like yeah, this reads the mood right.

But that’s it.

Goddamn is Wilco boring. At best, it’s background music during the heartbreaking part of movies. But the goddamn generic nature of the music kills me. And the new stuff is more Jason Mraz than Radiohead.

I actually think Wilco would be a decent band if people didn’t slobber all over them. My expectations were raised. Hell, in honor of being the Wilco hater, I decided to listen to them all day. Unfortunately it was making my day bad so I switched to something I enjoyed..

I think people should do what they want in life. One professor at Miami (OH) always lectured about living your best life;  don’t be weighed down by expectations or what you think others want. So my fellow music lovers, don’t feel like you must like Wilco. You won’t lose your Indi Card for admitting it’s a boring band that sort of peaked years ago and has been surpassed by legions of better bands. Just move on to all the amazing music out there and explore the vast wild world of genius songwriters and brilliant front men. You’re going to thank me.

Let’s talk about a few songs by Wilco.

Handshake Drugs – This might be the worst song I’ve ever heard.  What part of this am I supposed to enjoy? I realize barebones is cool, but barebones without any pop sensibility is just a jam session.

Kamera – I would put this song on, assuming I was using it as background party music where no one actually had to listen to the song. Music is supposed to draw you in and inspire, not make you fall asleep.

War on War – Probably the best song I listened to all day and it was completely forgettable.

Jesus etc. – Ah, how understated, I get it, Wilco is always so fucking understated. I’ll bet they go to McDonalds and get their meals downsized and with less flavor. I’m getting a distinct emo country feel here and that’s not a compliment.

I’m The Man Who Loves You – WOW.  So now Wilco is doing their impression of Phoenix during a jam session. This sounds like Radiohead without any understanding of say, catchy or intriguing musical concepts. I also thought there was some Simon and Garfunkel here, but I’m not sure because I fell asleep during the song.

I’m Trying To Break Your Heart – I feel like I’m getting somewhere here. I feel like I learned something. Yup, Wilco is the American version of earlier Radiohead! Oh, but with less talent, less pop sensibility, less irony…

Raining on someone’s parade is never fun, but it’s necessary. I wanted to finish with a few thoughts…and then of course some song suggestions for when you toss out all those Wilco albums. I love music…and I really truly love the idea of “Indi” music. I love the idea that always ALWAYS, new music will be out there to discover, popular or barely known. But with this vast amount of great music that exists, more attention needs to be paid to band or artists that spark the imagination, that show you something new, whatever that may be. The latest Wilco CD is by far the most accessible of their work, but it’s “dad rock” blandness makes me unable to give it an extended listen. Why spend time on Jeff Tweedy’s Dylan Lite when I can be replaying Justin Vernon’s haunting, intriguingly grainy vocals?

To sum up:

Wilco: Background music for a Wes Anderson film. Way in the background.

Wilco: Something the limousine chauffer plays at low volume as we drive to the cemetery to bury my gramma.

BONUS FEATURE!

Here are some songs you should probably go listen to instead.

Bon Iver – For Emma (In Paris, live, I just am not sure it gets better than this.)

Jeff Buckley – Vancouver (His angriest song, and that’s saying something.)

Neutral Milk Hotel – Aeroplane Over The Sea (I know you’ve all heard it. I don’t care. This is how you make a record. This is provocative. And when he says, oh hell I’m getting emotional, I’ll just cut and paste…)

Now, how I remember you
How I would push my fingers through your mouth
To make those muscles move
That made your voice so smooth and sweet
And now we keep where we don’t know
All secrets sleep in winter clothes
With one you loved so long ago
Now he don’t even know his name

Jeff Mangum – I Love How You Love Me (Covering a Phil Spector girl band song from the 60’s and just killin’ it, killin’ it so good.)

Adam Haworth Stephens – Heights of Diamonds (Lead singer of Two Gallants, his solo album was too light for some, but man, this track will take you somewhere.)

Bright Eyes – Approximate Sunlight (Now that’s some haunting shit.)

Jens Lekman – Friday Night at the Drive In Bingo (Never heard anything like this, something I can say for most of Lekman’s stuff. Brilliant use of horns…)

The National – Slow Show (You want depressing? This is actually a love song, but they make anything sound depressing. Pay attention the drums at the end, very moving use of drums. Go listen to Conversation #16 also.)

Funny. Thought I posted this weeks ago. The video is appropriately vintage 1970′s:

Official site. Hype Machine. More tracks.

Why is this man smiling? And yes, this is his brightest smile.

Okay, okay, it’s $50,000.  But Northwestern and Iowa, for whatever reason, brought up the bottom of the Big Ten’s member payouts in FY 2009-10:

Each Big Ten school received in excess of $20 million from the league, with the exact amounts varying. Michigan State received the most at $20,141,838, followed by Ohio State ($20,083,504) and Purdue ($20,080,504). Northwestern and Iowa received the least at $20,032,504 each, though they’re not exactly clipping coupons.

In all, the conference paid out $220,620,959 to its member schools during the fiscal year. Schools received just over $19 million each in the previous fiscal year.

Also of note, we found out that Ohio State’s E. Gordon Gee was the nation’s highest-paid University President during the Tressel fiasco. I wasn’t aware of how big the salary gap was within the conference, however:

The form also shows that Big Ten commissioner Jim Delany was paid $1.623 million, making him the highest paid commissioner in college sports, as has been previously reported. Ohio State president E. Gordon Gee might have had a tough year off the field, but he was paid $2,531,327 for the fiscal year cited. Penn State’s Graham Spanier was the second highest-paid Big Ten president at $813,855, followed by Michigan’s Mary Sue Coleman at $786,849.

I’m not much for sports talk radio these days, but there’s one show I can’t quit — the Steve Czaban Show on Sporting News Radio.  Czabe was on Fox Sports Radio for a while, before being canned and replaced for that QUITE FRANKLY HOWEVA guy we all know and love so much.  These days, Czaban’s on Sporting News Radio (which, luckily, I happen to get on Sirius 94 every weekday morning).

He’s responsible for introducing a rather hilarious and useful word to my vocabulary — the “road win”, which (let’s not sugarcoat this) is a term for successfully dropping a deuce in foreign territory.  Just made an emergency stop at the Molly Pitcher Service Area in Cranbury, New Jersey — epic road win!

This sets a new, weirder standard:

A couple from Vienna, Va., recently reported an unusual home break-in. But it’s not what the intruder took that’s the problem. It’s what was left behind.

The break-in happened Tuesday afternoon in the 900 block of Moorefield Hill Grove SW. The couple returned to their home to find the front door unlocked. They searched the house but found nothing missing.

But they did find that someone had left human waste in their toilet bowl.

“When you gotta go”, and all that. However, this is an honorable a break-in as there could be, other than the obvious lack of flushing. Nobody likes to have their toilet dry-docked, after all.

Purdue blog Hammer and Rails is reporting the a body found in Lake Freeman is that of fifth-year reserve running back Sean Matti.  He disappeared while swimming on Sunday afternoon.

There was a Jim Tressel tribute float in the Columbus 4th of July parade.

Snark momentarily eludes me. Carry on.

(h/t @MCalo10)

Testing out the WordPress mobile app on the slow train to Philly. It’ll be predictably quiet here, given the quelling of BlogWar2K11 and the holiday weekend. So have a great Independence Day, screw the British, and let’s all reconvene here next week with all ten fingers intact.

The long, boring saga of former N.C. State quarterback Russell Wilson comes to an end this afternoon with his choosing between one last year of football at either Wisconsin or Auburn, or continuing his professional baseball career in the Colorado Rockies organization.

Says Adam Rittenberg:

If he chooses football, my sense is he’ll end up at Wisconsin. The schematic adjustment on offense won’t be nearly as dramatic, and Wisconsin’s pro-style offense can help prepare Wilson for the NFL. The Badgers’ supporting cast at running back and offensive line doesn’t hurt, either.

Auburn is an excellent option as well, but Wisconsin could have a higher ceiling this season.

“Personally, I would like to see him stay and work on baseball and so would all the people in our organization, but he has a once in a lifetime opportunity to go to a school and compete for a national championship in football,” said Asheville manager Joe Mikulik. “It’s a tough decision, but it’s a choice he has to make on his own.”

Wise words from a career baseball mana…wait. Joe Mikulik. Where have I heard that name before?

[Update: ESPN says "sources" say that Wilson has left Asheville and will choose Wisconsin. In a total coincidence, Wilson will announce his decision on ESPN's "College Football Live", because what's the point if ESPN can't pimp it out for a few thousand extra eyeballs on The Mothership, right? "Yeah, Rece, I'm going to play baseball, but thanks for having me on the show! Give Mark May a noogie for me, wouldya?"]

As noted by the LBU guys, there are only nine Saturdays standing between us and Big Ten football. Not so bad when you think of it that way, right? And yeah, the most compelling opening weekend game is Northwestern at Boston College, but still.

The Ghost Of A Saber Tooth Tiger is Sean Lennon and the lovely (seriously, Google Images don’t lie) Charlotte Kemp Muhl. Here they are on Conan performing “Jardin du Luxembourg”:

And as a bonus, here they are performing “Lavender Road” on WNYC.

[As long as we're talking beers, why not check out our friends at BrewManiacs?]

You may recall that, many podcasts ago, Kevin homebrewed an IPA that was in the 150 IBU range. This concoction eventually earned an informal title which I hesitate to type from my work computer. Turns out that some dastardly Canadians took this as a challenge:

The wicked new beer from Flying Monkeys, a craft brewery based in Barrie, Ont., was rolled out at Gambrinus Bistro and Cafe (formerly Chancey Smith’s) Tuesday. Alpha-fornication is billed as the world’s “hoppiest” — not “happiest” beer — although the 13% alcohol content could easily encourage typos. The brew’s brutal bite is based on a massive dose of hops, the natural flavouring agent derived from flowers that makes beer bitter.

“You won’t be drinking pints of this, you’ll be puckered up for an hour,” said Peter Chiodo, an artisan brewer and founder of Flying Monkeys. Chiodo said a really bitter beer might measure about 80 on the brewer’s bitterness scale. Alpha-fornication clocks in at 2,500. The beer is named for the alpha acids that make hops bitter.

…

Chioda has no delusions his new beer will be a big seller and is brewing only a small batch. But the Flying Monkey brewery store in Barrie did sell six bottles of the stuff — at $45 a bottle.

…

Flying Monkeys gained notoriety this year with the release of Smashbomb Atomic IPA. The LCBO initially banned the beer from its shelves because of its violent name. Angry fans revolted and the LCBO relented after the beer’s label design was toned down.

Chioda says Alpha-fornication is one of a series of Everest Experiment beers launched to push the art of brewing to an extreme and grab a little attention. Chioda hopes to sell some brands in the LCBO by Christmas, including one called Divinity, which despite its name packs a sinful 25% to 32% alcohol content.

“It’s a movement — a movement to showcase the craft and how complex and versatile beer can actually be,” Chioda said.

As someone who gets agitated at anything hoppier than a bland Pale Ale, this is chemical warfare to me. But as Chioda notes, craft beer has become quite the experimental playground in North America. If we can have chili pepper beers, smoked beers, banana bread beers, and pizza beers, why not a 2,500 IBU beer?

What’s the strangest brew you’ve had?

What, a guy can’t take a leisurely stroll with his metal detector and take a peek at his football team without the crushing bureaucracy of the NCAA getting in the way? The lawlessness is now so rampant in Happy Valley that Joe Paterno is brazenly admitting NCAA violations on national television:

Joe Paterno was taking a leisurely stroll on the Penn State campus last week when he did the unthinkable. He broke an NCAA rule “without even thinking about it,” the longtime Nittany Lions coach said. Yes, even Paterno can run afoul of the many regulations set forth by college sports’ governing body.

Passing by Holuba Hall, where several football players were conducting unsupervised workouts, Paterno stopped to watch for a few minutes without speaking to anyone, he said. Suitably impressed, he returned to his office where he reported to the coaching staff that at least one player had looked good and caught his eye.

“You know you broke a rule?” someone said, pointing out that coaches aren’t permitted to watch players working out before the start of practice in August. Penn State spokesman Jeff Nelson said the university will report the incident to the NCAA. “Our compliance office is aware and will relay the circumstances to determine if there was a secondary violation,” Nelson said.

Paterno told the story Monday during a taping of the ESPN program “Difference Makers: Life Lessons with Paterno and Krzyzewski.”

First, this is clear evidence that BSPN IS OUT TO GET US. Total witch hunt, and I also suspect Mark May spiked Joe’s Sanka with truth serum. Second, will this reign of rampant cheatery ever be brought to justice? George Dohrmann, your reservation at the Altoona Comfort Inn is confirmed.