Green Tee Readings

I know there are a lot of music genres, like latvian nasal chanting, punk-cabaret, and cookie monster metal, so I get that some disagreement of where a particular album might best be categorized. Edge cases are, by definition, hard to slot into specific categories.

“Rock” is a pretty broad genre, probably used by the more hierarchally obsessed as a catch-all for works that bend/cross genre. It is not a genre that really fits with If You’re Feeling Sinister era Belle and Sebastian*, and (I’m looking directly at you for this one, eMusic) not at all a genre for Pelle Carlberg’s The Lilac Time, which I mistake for light Belle and Sebastian when I’m not paying attention. Is it because he says “fuck” and “shite” in songs? Can pop** musicians not swear? Or write songs about being more sad that a rhinoceros died than a grandmother?

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* Somehow that album, too, is tagged rock.
** I differentiate strongly between rock and pop. These are different genres, people.

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I just spent the last few minutes calculating pizza area vs price so I could determine what size pizza I wanted to order. In case you wanted to know, Rosati’s super jumbo 24″ Hawaiian Pizza is quite the bargain at about 5.92 cents per square inch. In comparison, the small, a 12″ pie, costs roughly 10.4 cents per square inch.

Clearly, if future medical bills are not worrisome, pick up a super jumbo.

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Amusement in less than a minute

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In place of having something useful or interesting to say, here’s a list of the ten albums I’ve listened to most in the last six months, according to last.fm.

1. Folksongs for the Afterlife - Put Danger Back Into Your Life (310)

2. The Pipettes - We Are the Pipettes (309)
3. Crooked Still - Shaken by a Low Sound (209)
4. The Mendoza Line - Full of Light and Full of Fire (186)
5. Lucy Soul - The Great Unwanted (186)
6. The Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs, Vol. 1 (175)
7. Gillian Welch - Hell Among the Yearlings (168)
8. Loose Salute - Tuned to Love (163)
9. Moros Eros - I Saw the Devil Last Night and Now (158)
10. Voxtrot - Raised By Wolves (158)

I find it strange that I couldn’t tell you the first thing about either of the two last albums, other than where I got them from. Hell, I can’t even remember putting the Moros Eros album in either a Winamp list or on a significant iTunes rotation. I could probably talk about the Voxtrot EP a bit just because I know Mothers, Daughters, Sisters and Wives pretty well, but it’d all be a sham.

As I’m looking through the chart a bit more, I’m noticing that it’s way out of date. Hayes Carll is nowhere to be found, even though he’s the fourth most played artist on my Overall Chart, and I discovered him less than a month ago. Whatever.

For anyone looking for a point to this exercise in navel-gazing, here’s three bands from the above list that more people should listen to: Folksongs for the Afterlife, The Loose Salute, and Crooked Still. Folksongs for the Afterlife are a great shoegazing group, full of swirling textures and delightfully dreamy vocals, and some of the vocals even stand out. The Loose Salute do sweetly melancholy better than anything since Mojave 3’s Love Songs on the Radio. Crooked still do wonderful country/bluegrassy things with strings. Sometimes you just need more cello.

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There were times during the bowling season where I’d know from the first practice ball that things were going to work out pretty well. I’d stand in my neutral starting spot, a bit right of center, get the ball to cross the arrows at about the 13th board while sending it out the the 6th at the farthest point and it’d just come right back into the pocket. It’d be like a week hadn’t passed, like I was still locked in from the last time.

I’d know where I’d have to move as the lanes broke down. I knew all the adjustments I’d have to make with speed and line and release positions. Those were the days when shooting mid-sixes were easy. It was a walk. It was fun.

Today was like that. The email that I thought was hard to write and that I was a little worried about went just fine. I got a little more out of it than I’d expected. It was a day I felt more engaged in the process of being alive, of enjoying being alive more than I’d felt in a while. Maybe it was the second day in a row of glorious sunshine and passably warm temperatures. Maybe it was thinking through the email as I walked to work one last time and deciding that It Was Good.

But probably it was that even though writing it was hard, it actually kind of ran on rails. I knew before I had it proofread the changes that I might want to consider. I’m really glad I wasn’t left staring at a ringing 10.

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