.:DataWhat?:.

Currently listening to the new Great Lakes Myth Society record.

bear with me...

So beautiful. Starts out with just Jamie and an acoustic guitar, then Liz, then builds from there. "The Salt Trucks" contains probably what is the most subtly elaborate bass playing performed by a Michigander, at least in the past ten years...I can't rememeber who the bass player from Grand Funk Railroad was, but Scott's better.

The album really starts with Tim's song "Across the Bridge." I remember the time that Porchsleeper played with TOBASOL at the Heidelberg, and Liz played her little violin decends with sooo much delay that it sounded like Valkries coming out of the sky and the whole band was totally laughing, but it sounded so cool that some of that echo made it through to the final recording. The little vocal breakdown is so beautiful, and even Fido gets to blast his angel-pipes for a change.

Oh, Greg. I am so glad "Love Story" finally made it onto the recording. It starts so subtly with your emotive croak and banjo (Jamie? Jimmer?) and then busts into the full band bop until the sweet sweet harmony bits. Lovely bridge, back in with bravado, and the little falsetto bit you do over the final choruses are probably my favorite part of the whole album. Thank you Fido for the sleigh bells.
Ooh ooh, ooh ooh, ooh ooh, ooh oooh.
Oh James, so wry. Is everything so serious? "The old shops beneath them awaken?" Very ominous. Perfectly so. The summer's coming storm. Every time PJ and I listen to this song in the car, she thinks it's a real siren and looks for the ambulance. I'll see you at the fair on Ann Street.

Ah, the Fender reverb rattle crash, Someday kids will learn of Jim Hawkins and Paul Bunyon by listening to this song. I am amazed by Greg's off-beat guitar jumps in the verses, and the low-end in the breakdown literally rattled my teeth. Crashes like none other. Penny's favorite song.

I ate lunch at that little diner. They have photos of Duke Ellington and Jimmy Stewart on the walls. Hi Pat. Your piano sounds good.

I have to admit, the roughs I heard of "Seeds for Sale" always got so abrasive and scary at the chorus I never quite got it. I always felt scared for Liz. All blackboard and fingernail. Now I get it. You need that to temper the British-by-way-of New-Zealand traditional folk verse. Make a run for the highway and leave them behind.

Best use of a chromatic harmonica since "Red-Headed Stranger" by Willie Nelson. So much great bass tone, sweeping and arching and aching. Why cry when you can be in Michigan on Halloween? It was fun seeing you in the parade Tim.

"Isabella County, 1992" is the best song on the album (Mike Goodale agrees), and possibly the best song you've ever written. That totally insane shape-note bridge, and the vehemence and passion behind Jamie's justification for going to college up there...the regal Melodica and the finality of the chorus. So good.

"No. VI" has really crept into my consciousness. I admit I didn't have a lot of faith in it the first time I heard it, but it has evolved into this stark elaborate tone poem of railroad sound and tape noise, with chunky percussion and great harmonies. Yep.

I have seen The Northern Lights. This is exactly what they sound like. Spooky bridge, ELO pre-chorus, Bruce Springsteen saxophones, that build that never stops building until the searing horns tear the building from its foundation. It gets into your marrow.

After that song, you need one of Greg's cries for understanding and love from his fellow man. Oh good, here's one. This is melodically one of the best pre-choruses ever written. I remember Jennifer (who is a doctor of music something something now) heard the choruses on "Silent Apologies" she said "the truly great melodies are not written, but rather they are discovered" and I think Greg has done more melody excavating than anyone else I've ever met (except maybe Harry Nilsson, but I've never met him, so I guess there you go). I'm also glad they left in the little laughy bit at the beginning, and the super avant-jazz saxophone freakout. If this is the sound of Greg fucking up, I never want him to get it right.

"Railway Ties" is a sweet little toy piano song about how Liz misses Elliot when he was living in Pittsburgh. I think of you as I drink my malt liquor. A one and a half minute valentine.

then...KER-POW! a song about being drunk. Sprawling and double-tracked. There's an amazing use of cymbals in the bridge segment here, they almost sound backwards, or...something. Six dusty cottonmouths, I'll breathe the sweetest air.

The final song on the album went through several changes, one of which had each of the band members singing a verse, which was quite cute and a nice little postcard for the fans, but ultimately overwritten with a ghostly section with voices from dead radio voices reporting the statistics of Great Lakes shipwrecks, capped by a horn crescendo (Matt Collar? I think I hear you in there) and a great final chorus. For a long time this song scared me because it seemed so final...not just end-of-the-album final, but like end-of-the-band final...I'm gald that they could create a musical device that gives the listener the feel of a literary epilogue, but I'm also glad they are still around to play at the Elbow Room last weekend.

15 tales with very specific geographic and spiritual locations. Cold and embracing, stripped-down and elaborate, warm and mysterious, far-reaching and uncomplicated. Thanks guys, can't wait to see the packaging.

P.S. the typewriter has been drinking.

::

Cringeworthy video of the 1984 introduction of the Macintosh by Steve Jobs.
Everyone is so dazzled by graphics that are more basic than the display screen on an iPod...screaming like it's the Beatles in 1964.

::

Care to step into Gene Simmons' Boudoir? In it you'll find horribly photoshopped images of Gene Simmons form Kiss with a different celebrity in various (fake) states of undress. Is that all of Charlie's Angels in there? Did Liv Tyler and Natasha Henstridge carpool over to Gene's to be in the same photo? And the...simply unfathomable fake photo of Janeane Garofalo has to be seen to be believed (sorta...well, you know what I mean).
I would normally think this was the work of a thirteen-year-old boy, but something tells me it isn't.

::

WARNING for Men

This new scam is being pulled mainly on older men.

What happens is that when you stop for a red light a young, nude woman comes up and pretends to be washing your windshield.

While she is doing this another person opens your back door and steals anything in the car.

They are very good at this.

They got me 7 times Friday and 5 times Saturday.

::

Rob found this crazy-ass car accident online.

I guess the car drove right up the guide wire from the ground to the telephone pole, propelling the vehicle upward onto the wires.

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Two new Search Engines:
Vivisimo which gives you sort of a cool 'tree' of related searches, and Gizoogle which is the shizzle.
Spinners in the "O"s and all.

::

Thanks Collar
Thanks Rob
Thanks Earl
Thanks Lee

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