Bring back album-based music!

The following are the top ten most important albums to my life, thus far.

10. "Films About Ghosts" by Counting Crows
"Oh, well happy new year's baby
We could probably fix it if we clean it up all day
Or we could simply pack our bags
and catch a plane to Barcelona 'cause this city's a drag."
Counting Crows put on the best live show I've ever seen. The experience was moving in ways I couldn't have expected from a band I wasn't even there for. It became clear during a particularly riveting rendition on "Mrs. Potter's Lullaby" why Goo Goo Dolls open for them.

9. "Enema of the State" by Blink 182
"I haven't been this scared
In a long time
And I'm so unprepared
So here's your valentine."
I wouldn't play guitar if it wasn't for Tom Delonge. No two-ways about it. And while I can't remember if it was "Dammit" by this band or "Brown-Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison that was my first learned, I can accredit the effort to Blink. This album appealed in every way to the middle-school kid in me who didn't get girls and just wanted to be a middle-school kid making mistakes and being vulgar and being young.

8. "Greetings From Asbury Park" by Bruce Springsteen
"I stood stone-like at midnight,
suspended in my masquerade
I combed my hair till it was just right
and commanded the night brigade"
For years, this was the CD I played while in my Dad's truck. For entire trips to various campgrounds and back again, Bruce accompanied. It's pretty safe to say that when I started really writing songs I wanted to be the next Bruce Springsteen. Today I hope to one day hold a candle to him.

7. "What It Is To Burn" by Finch
"Stay with me
Cigarettes and open air, hand in hand
I said stay with me
'Cause every star that I see is brighter than the last"
This album IS my freshman year of high school. I got turned on to it by a sophomore in my drama class and, I guess, I haven't been the same since. It was my first exposure to "emo" or whatever it was and I loved it. I went through an elitist classic rock period junior year and I can't even express how refreshing its been to come back to this album. Like coming home by walking backwards.

6. "Your Favorite Weapon" by Brand New
"And is that what you call a getaway?
Tell me what you got away with
Cause you left the frays from the ties you severed
when you say "best friends" means friends forever"
If "What It Is To Burn" is my freshman year, "Your Favorite Weapon" was sophomore. Yes, "Deja Entendu" is "better." But this isn't about that. This record put poetry to my frustrations for the first real time, I think. I covered songs from it in my first "band" at my first "show," the local Cornerstone Cafe.

5. "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning" by Bright Eyes
"The end of paralysis, I was a statuette
Now I'm drunk as hell on a piano bench
And when I press the keys it all gets reversed
The sound of loneliness makes me happier."
I accidented upon Bright Eyes by perusing shared networks on iTunes last year. I found myself listening to strangers' libraries more frequently than my own. It's all about the lyrics and I'm always so thrilled when people get that. Conor Oberst is the artist I'm most frequently compared to, and be that meant positively or negatively... I'll take it.

4. "(What's the Story?) Morning Glory" by Oasis
"All your dreams are made
When you're chained to the mirror with the razor blade
Today's the day that all the world will see"
Oasis is the first band I ever went to see with friends. I'll never ever ever forget it. Taking the train, eating at Nathans in Penn Station, noticing the British kids behind us smoking weed, Jet, crescent moon tambourines, and Ultimate the next morning. How perfect.


3. "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" by Wilco
"The cash machine is blue and green
For a hundred in twenties and a small service fee
I could spend three dollars and sixty-three cents
On Diet Coca-Cola and unlit cigarettes"
My album I'm currently wearing out. It's so working/middle-class. So earnest. So midwestern. I tell people I want to move to Oregon or Nebraska. It's because of the worlds that exist in these songs. Wilco is from Illinois but it's a universal things for the middle-Americans I think. Something I've never gotten, having lived only on coasts. A slower life, a big sky life.

2. "Black Sheep Boy" by Okkervil River
"So why
did you flee?
Don’t you know you can’t leave his control
only call all his wild works your own?
So come back and we’ll take them all on.
So come back to your life on the lam.
So come back to your old black sheep man."
It occurs to my how much I owe Apple for my musical taste. I happened upon Okkervil River on an iTunes radio station. The first song I heard was "Black." OR is my favorite band. There's just nothing I can say that can express what their songs have done for me.

1. "The Blue Album" by Weezer
"You walk up to her.
Ask her to dance.
She says, "Hey, baby, I just might take the chance."
You say, 'It's a good thing
That you float in the air...
That way there's no way I will crush your pretty toenails into a thousand pieces.'"
I was on a Boy Scout canoeing trip. I was maybe eleven or twelve. My dad and I were carpooling with another family. The other kid in the car was a couple years older than me and on the ride home he asked his dad if he could change the music. After a nod of his dad's head he slipped in a cassette. For the next two or three hours I listened to "The Blue Album" three or four times, interrupted only by the clicking as the car's cassette deck flipped it every five songs. I would have never gotten into rock music, never mind alternative rock music, had it not been for this experience. It's still close to me, despite Weezer's decline. And I think it always will be.

So, to summarize, my life by album:
Middle School: "Enema of the State" by Blink 182
9th Grade: "What It Is To Burn" by Finch
10th Grade: "Your Favorite Weapon" by Brand New
11th Grade: "(What's the Story?) Morning Glory" by Oasis
12th Grade: "Black Sheep Boy" by Okkervil River
Freshman: "I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning" by Bright Eyes
Sophomore (s0 far): "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" by Wilco

Hm.

Bomb the blogosphere,
Mike

On the surgical stage

Aside: This note will be composed of disjointed, largely unrelated but nevertheless applicable one-liners. Sorry. This is going to end up highly confessional. Really, don't read it. Sorry. /Aside

How is it that I can surround myself with people and still feel lonely? It's possible that I'm just not good at convincing myself that I'm supported.

Pretentious people are the most self-conscious and insecure.

I am probably pretentious.

I am probably not as pretentious as I seem sometimes. But maybe I am.

There's little better than being proven wrong on a bad first impression. There's little worse than being proven wrong about a good first impression. Being proven right doesn't really make me feel any more or less of anything. Except maybe cynical.

If you asked me what I looked for in a girl the first thing I would think of would be a mutant Audrey Hepburn/Jenny Lewis and the first thing I'd say would be, "I don't really know."

If you asked me again I would say, "cute, sweet, well read and listened, honest, and in possession of a good, honest laugh." What I would mean to say would be, "cuddler, handholder, lyrics-quoter, and whisperer." What I would really mean would be, "crazy about me." And I would picture sweaters and sidebangs. But those aren't really important.

I think sidebangs are so cute because foreheads are so funny looking.

I'm too picky.

When I find out that someone told me something because it's what I wanted to hear, while they told a party with a conflicting opinion that they agree with them, I get deeply hurt.

Some of the behaviors that bother me the most are behaviors I would adopt given the right circumstance. That makes me feel horrible. But I don't think it's really so bad to be jealous as long as you're honest about it.

Coupland is right. Dogs are beautiful because they never fall out of love.

People are always telling me not to worry about what others think of me-- that I'm amazing and people just don't realize it-- that I've just gotta keep truckin' or hangin' in there or-- that there's a setting and a cast of characters out there waiting for me somewhere--
That is the worst advice.

The term "breakdown" doesn't mean deconstruction or collapse into power chords and crashing cymbals. It's because life is an album and at times things unravel and move at different speeds. We tend to do a lot of screaming during those times. Whether we open our mouths or not.

But it will always always all come back together for one. last. chorus.

I talked about this last time-- but people don't want to hear the truth. And so to preserve what it seems I'm supposed to be I gotta bottle back up. This must be why I've got pores called fingertips. Pens and guitar strings. Blogs and conversations that are only ever half open.

Thinking about how much it would mean to me to be read into makes me feel narcissistic, arrogant, and pathetic.

All writers are liars.

Conceit is like skin.

But it's not the kind of lying you're thinking of. If I say, "I love you," it means I love you. But I'm lying because I didn't say, "I love you because you remind me of the midwest and how I've only been there in postcard racks."

Or assuming a persona. Maybe I don't love you-- but if I did it would be fucking beautiful.

That doesn't make any sense.

None of this makes any sense.


Bomb the blogosphere,
Mike