Theme Park Experience

There was no shortage of great music released in 2017. I have an extensive   Spotify playlist   of songs I enjoyed, but for the sake of brevity, here is my list of my favorite albums and shows this year. Favorite albums Mastodon, Emperor of Sand One of the best Mastodon LPs in years, and my favorite since Crack the Skye . Seems like when Mastodon goes for the deepest of deep about life and tragedy, they produce some of their strongest work. This is the record I can listen to over and over and not skip a single tune. Lost Balloons, Hey Summer The second album from Jeff Burke's indie pop group shows he really is one of the best songwriters around. Not just in the pop punk/garage world. In general. With shades of country, folk, and the Kinks, I admire everything Burke does even more. White Reaper, The World's Greatest American Band Yes, this album title is a bit over-confident, but this four-piece makes a mighty fine statement here. What happens when a band plays s...

There's a phrase music critics share when news of a musician's death breaks on a major holiday and the writer has to come up with something right then and there for a quick turnaround: a Dead Beatle. Meaning, this is such a serious loss that whatever you're doing with family and/or friends has to wait. Since no publication I write for demanded something about Tommy Keene when news of his unexpected passing broke on Thanksgiving, I held off on saying something beyond Facebook posts and tweets. But I did stop in my tracks after a long and lovely day with Hope as newlyweds and shared my grief and shock about Tommy's death. He was 59. Tommy Keene had a long and fruitful career as a solo artist. He came from the Washington D.C. area playing in bands before going solo. His second and third albums, Songs from the Film and Based on Happy Times , were released on Geffen Records in the mid- to late 1980s. At a time when hairsprayed hard rock, teen pop, and the remnants of n...

On November 17th, I enjoyed the best day of my life with my soulmate, along with many family and longtime friends surrounding us. Getting married to Hope was the best decision I've ever made, in a life filled with non-decisions and indecisiveness. In the year prior to meeting Hope, I wasn't sure I'd ever find somebody to spend the rest of my life with. Coming off a short period of friends dying, a relationship falling apart, and playing musical chairs with jobs, I wanted life to get better, not turn into something I settled on. Despite hearing horror stories about how hook-up culture and dating apps were ruining relationships for everyone, I believed there was someone out there who could see me at my best and worst, tell me what the deal is, and who could inspire me, and vice versa to her. I found that in a fellow podcaster I met through Twitter. We decided to get married, accepting that neither of us are perfect or without flaws. It took me a long time to understan...

There's a phrase often said when a writer draws a lot of ire from readers about his or hers work: "Well, I must be doing something right." With a large amount of page views, comments, Facebook shares, and tweets to back this up, a writer can think a purpose has been served, and a message is coming across. I don't totally believe that. Writers complain (usually on Twitter) when "nobody" cares about an article they wrote when page views are low. Conversely, they'll boast about how many people clicked on a link to justify their take. It's all a measure of how people apparently care in the digital age. What I've seen is when someone has a brash take on a topic (a trend in music, a concert review, etc.) and the headline really amplifies the gist of the article. This is written to be "the truth," when ultimately, it's an opinion, and hopefully, a well-informed one that is backed up with facts. But facts can be relative when they...

Two years ago, I almost saw Manchester City play in America. Rain during a Texas summer is rare, but there was so much of it in Houston in 2015 that the pitch was unplayable for a friendly between City and the Houston Dynamo. Joel and I found out the match had been cancelled right as we walked into the pub where a City meet-up was. Alas, City sent Mike Summerbee and Brian Kidd for a Q&A, gave us free drinks, and free merch. Clearly, City cares about its American fans. I had debated flying to Manchester to see a match, but funds dictated that I should stay stateside. Plus, I had heard of another City trip to America halfway through the 2016/2017 Premier League season. I chose my summer vacation days accordingly. When the club announced a trip to the United States in 2017, I knew I had to see at least one of the matches. I decided to see the Nashville match against Tottenham Hotspur over the LA and Houston matches. Though there would be a lot of driving (10 hours to be ex...

Recently I had a long phone conversation with a friend of mine. Though we are not very close (we’ve had four in-person conversations so far), we ended up talking for almost an hour. I had originally contacted him for an article I worked on about his uncle, but then we talked about a variety of things about his band, their new album, and his recent move to California. That portion was not for the article; it was simply catching up on things in our respective lives. When I got off the phone, I thought, Wow, it’s great to have an actual phone conversation with someone. The following night, I got a call from a friend I helped out with his radio show a couple of years ago. Hadn’t talked to him in months, and it was good to hear from him. He invited Hope and me for a get-together, but we couldn’t come because of work schedules. But we kept talking and chatted about what all we have been up to since late last year. Once again, I was reminded of what I can get out of a phone conversati...

Mere minutes after Jawbreaker announced a reunion show at this fall’s Riot Fest in Chicago, I realized every band I devoted a chapter to in Post has reunited. Next year will mark ten years since the book came out, back when all of the bands (except for Jimmy Eat World) had broken up for the foreseeable future. Since a lot of people who have read the book have asked me if I would do a sequel or new edition someday, I started to ask if one is truly wanted. A number of people said they would read it, so I started to look into options. After I received rejection letters from publishers, I thought, This is looking like another DIY affair. My hopes to bring this to a larger audience had another setback. I don’t say this with bitterness in my body. I’ve accepted there is a reality about audience appeal in writing extensively about these bands. When Post originally came out, it was when emo was at the end of its big ride in the mainstream. Now emo is a topic frequently talked abou...

Recently an article on Buzzfeed touched on a very real experience for me: being in your 30s and holding onto your compact disc collection. I will not dispute any of the contents of the article, as I believe it is factual and correct, but I do object to calling CDs "outdated physical media." Maybe it was a way to bait me into reading the article. Well, sometimes, you have to let the internet win and give the article a click. When I'm at home, I listen to music either on my turntable, my Spotify account on my phone or desktop, or my iTunes library on my desktop. Near my turntable is a multi-disc CD player that I have never turned on since I've lived in my current residence. The last time I used it was about 10 years ago when I would co-host theme parties and burn mix CD-Rs for them. I'm not even sure the player is set up correctly through the receiver. All it does is collect dust, but I'm not about to get rid of it. While they aren't getting a lot o...

In life, we make choices. We have to. You can avoid making them for as long as you want, but life is always moving forward whether you like it or not. The past can seem very vivid because you've lived it, seeming like the basis of what's to come. No matter how long we've lived, where we come from is all prologue to today. With my life, I look forward to spending the rest of it with Hope Harrell. We had talked about marriage for months, not in the superficial, but the actual reality of being husband and wife. Where we would live, how would we like to live with children, and how to grow together with age instead of apart. This past Monday, I asked her to marry me, and she said yes. Hope and I are not without flaws. But thanks to her, I have really understood my flaws and realized how to live with another person's flaws, too. She brings the absolute best out of me. I have so many more reasons to live a fulfilling life thanks to her.  Sometimes we don'...

Something I left out of recent concert reviews was the topic of the audience talking during the whole performance. I'm asked to write a review of a performance by an artist, not of the people watching the performance. So that armchair sociology has to be addressed somewhere else, like this blog. Talking comes with the territory, as most shows I've been to have had that white noise. But usually that is relegated to the area right in front of the bar. People buy drinks, talk with friends, or try to make new connections. I get that. But when I watched Explosions in the Sky play at the Bomb Factory last summer, I couldn't help noticing how many people chatted away while the band put on an incredible show. Hope and I were seated upstairs in a spot where we could see the stage and the crowd quite well. As the band played one great tune after another, I kept hearing people talking down below. It was not a small group of people. It was a lot of people. And they weren't an...

Last week, there was a thread floating around Facebook about albums you listened to in high school. It was a fun rundown of records that made a significant impact on you, but there was another side to it. Some Facebook friends rhetorically criticized selections on people's lists. They sarcastically thought a lot of people lied. "All these dudes my age trying to act like they didn't like Korn in their formative years," wrote the singer of a doom metal band I admire. I agreed with him, and I saw how the conversation turned deeper. There's a good question of, are you exaggerating the importance of these records, or are you being highly selective in your choices for fear of not being accepted?   I do not claim to having some sort of credibility 20 years ago when I was in high school. I did not try to be the cool older brother or a know-it-all music critic to anyone. I would correct people on things from time to time, but my music listening was mostly a privat...