arun in brooklyn

the above is probably my favorite superchunk lyric…and it’s interesting because the words on the page are so blatantly ordinary and plain…but somehow interlaced with the twangy instrumentation and mac’s tenor delivery on “phone sex” and it just sticks…in that way that all great pop music makes simple things stick…

lately everything seems overwhelming…school is catching up to me…endless papers mount…mom and dad moving (or trying to)…and teaching kids is just never good for high stress periods (no matter how much you love it/them)…the weather’s bright…my head feels heavy…harsh winds…

on the way to work this morning, i luck out and manage to grab a seat on the C train after the clinton-washington stop…i’m listening to the drift on my ipod and in a moment of quiet lull, i hear the elderly man next to me reciting something from a book…he says something about a grasshopper and it all sounds too familiar…i take my earphones out and realize he’s reading james and the giant peach to the little girl sitting next to him…he’s even doing all the voices…i close my eyes, lean my head back and enjoy being read to for the next fifteen minutes…on the ride home…he’s not there and no one else is reading roald dahl out loud…i think about how amazing it is that i still love being read to at the age of 23 and wonder how even more amazing everything would be if everyone were reading roald dahl books aloud to their children on the subway every day…

cover #2: first release – karate

this is actually the 2nd time i’ve recorded this song…the first version was given as part of a birthday present to my friend azita…she never liked karate and we’d fight about it…i think all the (amazing) guitar solos and improvisation between the verses and choruses made her lose interest…in an effort to prove to her that the geoff farina’s songwriting (and lyricism) were nothing short of brilliant, i recorded a more song-oriented version…that was some years ago…this is pretty much the same version…cleaned up a bit and with a better performance on guitar and singing…

i recorded this song using a slightly altered version of a drop D tuning and played it in the key of D…enjoy…

cover # 1: trailor trash – modest mouse

there’s probably no band i’ve been obsessed with more in recent months than modest mouse…this tune appears on their classic (and best) record, lonesome crowded west…there are a lot of reasons why this song is terrific…but i’ll just pick one for now and tell you that the lyrics are so beautifully fucked-up and they’re married to a melody that’s utterly heart-breaking…

i recorded this song using an altered version of an open D tuning and played it in the key of F#…enjoy…

peace etc.

ooxx aa

hmm…covers…these are interesting things…and for the most part, i’ve stayed away from covering other people’s songs…but this is a little project i’ve always wanted to try…and i finally have some pretty good ideas of how to do it without making these songs completely redundant and pointless…inspired by friends and artists who have done similar projects, i will be recording a cover song in my home studio approximately every week or so…we’ll see…since i’m bad at making lists, i’m not covering my top 100 favorite songs or anything like that…instead, i’m just going to cover any song that seems to be in my head on any particular day or series of days that i think i can do something interesting with…

most of these songs will sound little to nothing like the originals…the originals will (always) be way better anyway, so trying to imitate them would be wholly foolish on my part…generally, i will be recording these songs using my acoustic guitar (a martin dx-1) which will more than likely be tuned to some weird tuning that i’ve concocted (because i don’t know how to play the guitar in standard tuning)…this will also likely lead to songs being played and sung in different keys and with slightly altered melodies…you have been warned…

all songs will be recorded in my home studio using my old m-audio mobile pre (which totally sucks, but is awesome because it still works), a shure 57 microphone, and an intel imac running digital performer 5.0…i will make all the songs available as mp3 files encoded at 192 kbps here on this site…

i thank (and apologize to) all of the wonderful artists whose songs i will no doubt defile as part of this experiment…

thanks for coming along…enjoy…

ooxx aa

the clouds erupted early this morning…brooklyn is a chaotic mess of delayed traffic, broken umbrellas and mini-floods cascading down broken streets…i return from band practice, missing the 48, and getting caught in the rain at the corner of nassau and manhattan…my umbrella flips backwards about four times before i finally give up on it altogether…i’ve come to strangely love situations like this…i wait on the corner while people rush around me…ducking into the nearby dunken donuts or the liquor store accross the street…one lady waves for me to get inside…i smile and tell her i’m fine…i appreciate the gesture…but i’m listening to “blonde on blonde” by nada surf…and in the pouring rain, it sounds like the most beautiful thing you’ve ever heard…lovely…

milwaukee is a blurry void of bright green, open space, and cold, crisp air…chris picked me up from the airport last thursday…on the drive home, we observed the recent developments…large cranes responsible for half-created freeways that seem to be sawed off (criss-crossing with the 43 at some point or another)…chris asks (half-seriously) if “they’re trying to make milwaukee more interesting?”…and i replied that the battle to make milwaukee interesting was lost somewhere around the time the museum almost went out of business…

something less than sadness grips me when i come to terms with the fact that home is more memories of silly conversations, foolish decisions, and long hours in basements than anything directly linked to the city itself…i say less than sadness because there’s a glimmer of beauty to think that we’re more responsible for our fondest impressions than anything else…and to think that (just maybe) we can recreate that again…with the right people at the right time…

chris says he and jess want to move out of the twin cities area in a few years…without thinking, i throw in my pitch for their relocation to brooklyn…because whether i realized it or not, i’ve been rebuilding “home” here for the last two years…it feels more comfortable than anywhere i’ve been in about six years…possibly ever…so, if you are reading this, i probably want you here…drop me a note, and i’ll prepare a dossier on the why you’d want to live here…i can be very convincing…

back to brooklyn tomorrow…all things go…all things go…

peace etc.

ooxx aa

i remember quite vividly the day when chris pushed his cd player into my hands, handed me his headphones, and said “learn this keyboard hook!” during another monotonous (and ultimately useless) day of gym class circa may of 2000…the hook he was referring to is the subtly-infectious synth lead that drives much of the dismemberment plan’s “the city”…and being sixteen and completely obsessed with synth hooks at the time, i was immediately impressed…although, things that impress you when your sixteen are not necessarily the most deserving of anyone’s attention…but even then, i knew this album was something else…and now, seven years, two college degrees (almost), several musical projects, and one record label later, i’m more impressed with this record than i ever was before…and i don’t even know how i appreciated it as an ignorant sixteen year old who’s musical tastes were (at best) limited to a relatively narrow string of punk-rock and indie-pop (classical music and jazz withstanding)…

emergency and i always served as an artistic inspiration…it’s courageous in every regard and stretches across a palette of music that i didn’t even know existed when i first listened, all without being the slightest bit redundant or derivative…i’d venture to say that the first two years of my relationship with this album were mostly pure admiration in that “this-is-so-mind-blowingly-awesome-that-i-totally-don’t-get-it” kind of way…and i suppose, when you’re a teenager you don’t have the life experiences to really relate to an album with so much depth and magnitude…still, it was a moot point at the time, there were enough incredible keyboard hooks, melodies, guitar rave-ups, and unprecedented production aesthetics to warrant a complete obsession with this record, even as a teenager…

somewhere over the course of the last seven years, emergency became, unequivocally, my favorite album…ever…its imagination and innovation are easily the biggest reasons why i spend 12-15 hours a week holed up in a small room in greenpoint fiddling with guitars, keyboards, pedals and various recording equipment…striving to create something that even brushes up against the level of its inventiveness…i don’t know when the last time i even listened to this record was, but listening to it has strangely become completely irrelevant because it’s significance has woven itself so gently into the fabric of my daily life that i can’t help but think about the album without having to listen to it…the narratives in “spider in the snow” and “the jitters” capture the daily routines and observations of city life in astonishing detail…the daring (and near-insanity) of tracks like “i love a magician” and “8 and a half minutes” exponentially increase my will and desire to raze all modern musical conventions when i’m working in the studio…

the bitterness, pessimism, humour, and occasional hopeful glimmer of “post-collegiate life” (pitchfork media) are captured so distinctly and personally in travis morrison’s storytelling…collegiate “friends” slowly slipping away into oblivion, growingly depressing parties featuring even more depressing acquaintances and pseudo-friends, the limitless minutiae of everyday life (bills, loans, temp jobs, trash pick-up etc), loneliness, alienation (half the time by choice), and in the end just managing to hold all the spiraling pieces together in the midst of life’s dizzying, inclement weather…these are unwaveringly realistic, cynical, and acutely inspiring anthems for the twenties…speaking first hand, i wouldn’t want them any other way…

the dismemberment plan’s reunion show in washington, dc (april 28th) came at perhaps the most welcomed time…two years into a “real” job, living on my own, bachelor’s degree in-hand, and working harder than ever to stitch creative expression into my daily life, the plan’s masterpiece work is more interesting, relateable, and beautiful than it’s ever been…i don’t know if i’ve anticipated a show with this much unbridled excitement since i actually was sixteen…waiting to see the plan for the first time…strange, indeed…

peace etc.

ooxx aa

momentum is a strange thing…somewhere around post number sixty-five i lost the energy, motivation, momentum, whatever to continue this thing…and have since wondered what to do with this space…ultimately debating with myself over the significance of posting a series of observations about my daily life…and the occasional comment about a show/record/song etc that seems to be capturing my undivided attention at any given time…

recently, i (re)-watched the documentary, killing a camera, which puts to tape the last four shows that braid performed in milwaukee and chicago before calling it quits…the retrospective that came attached with the documentary’s reissue in 2004 has chris broach commenting that if the band had better foresight they would have toured much less and prevented the incendiary burn-out that directly led to their demise…but as he puts it, how could they have known…

in a related matter, i have decided to (re)-start this website…and so as to avoid another extended period of writing deficiency, i will post considerably less, but with (hopefully) a more focused and better written set of thoughts, observations, and (of course) music related reviews and musings…

thanks for being patient and thanks for coming along.

always love.

ooxx aa