.:Colter:.

I bought a copy of Adobe Premiere Elements (just $80 with rebate) because I had an idea for a video to Spiraling’s “The Future” (Please buy the album now). The song is about all the things we were promised about the future that still have yet to be delivered. Initially I thought I was going to have to cut amongst several old sci-fi serials on file at the Prelinger Archives[1], but I found one video that had everything I need. Fittingly, it was from New York’s 1964 World’s Fair, perhaps the single saddest and least accurate depiction of the future man has yet devised. Here’s my video.

On a related note, as we approach 2010, we will once again pass through a threshold of science fiction movie disappointment (we haven’t even made it to Jupiter!) much the way we did when we passed 2001. The next scheduled Disappointment Threshold for me will be when we reach 2015, the year of Back to the Future II, and we won’t even have hoverboards to show for it.

1.) I have previously plumbed the depths of the Prelinger to make a video for Jeff Buckley’s “Be Your Husband.”

Attention Music Lovers: My favorite band in the world is now selling its albums for $5 each, just in time for the holidays. If you don’t already own Transmitter or Time Travel Made Easy, then either I haven’t pestered you enough about Spiraling, or you’ve been reluctant to spend money. Now there’s no excuse. 5 dollars.

If I could buy one album from the last 10 years for everyone I know, that album would be Transmitter by Spiraling. I can’t say enough great things about this band. I have a hard time describing their sound: keyboard-led power pop with great songs, lyrics, arrangements, vocal harmonies, drum parts. Just look at my Last.fm page. They are the band I listen to most. The next runner-up is more than halfway down the scale.

Maybe it’s just because the band speaks to me as a musician and music nerd; maybe you won’t enjoy them as much as I do. They’re an independent rock band with great pop hooks but they aren’t anyone’s “buzz” band. Pitchfork probably wouldn’t like them. Prog fans may find them too poppy while pop fans may find them too proggy. But those are the bands I tend to like most.

I remember the first time I heard them. Jamie made me a CD-R of Transmitter and shortly afterward I bought a real copy. I pestered Chris King at Sticky Fingerz to give them gigs, and I got their CD to the Riverfest booking people, who gave them a choice slot opening for Live back in 2006. They’re actually a big reason I moved to New York – they were some of the first friends I had up here, and I’ve been delighted to have seen just about every show they’ve played up here in the last two years.

Buy a CD. If you don’t like it, I’ll buy it from you next time I see you.

Here are a few brief videos of things I’ve done and seen in the last few weeks.

• John Hodgman and former Daily Show head writer David Javerbaum at Barnes & Noble. Woefully under-attended due to crappy rainy freezing weather. There were like 10 of us there. I got my picture taken with them. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 3A.
• Super-guitarist Steve Morse playing one of my all-time favorite tunes of his.
• Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid’s music and video presentation, Artificial Afrika. Part 1, Part 2

The weather was impossibly perfect. We loaded in at 11:30 a.m. and made our way up to Lincoln Center to set up. A fine day to stand around waiting. Although my search for a quick bite to eat was fruitless (not much in the way of to-go food in that neighborhood so I had to settle for a sandwich from Starbucks), I did enjoy relaxing and chatting with the other 199 guitarists at Damrosch Park. We took our seats around 6:30 and the crowd started filing in. And kept coming. And coming. I did not expect thousands of people.

Fortunately I was on the end of my section, right by the gate, so it was easy for me to catch Amy, Alllie, Caroline and Matt. They took up a spot right next to me. My boss, Marya, also stopped by to say hi. The crowd eventually had to be turned back because there were no more chairs.

Our hour-long composition started around 7:45, slowly building, section by section, into the final climax. Toward the end, the sounds became so huge and otherworldly that people started standing up to receive it.

We finished to a long ovation. It was like nothing I’ve ever experienced.

UPDATE: The New York Times estimates 10,000 people showed up.

Remember a few months back when I was on the fence about a particular guitar? Well, I’m not anymore.

I took the plunge and ordered an Ibanez PGM100 reissue from Guitarsmiths in Harrison. I find the blue and pink strangely appealing. For the historical context of this guitar’s appeal for me, you’ll have to watch this video and pretend you’re a 14 year old boy in 1990. Phil at Guitarsmiths gave me a great deal and even sent it to me before taking my credit card number.

The guitar at left is another $150 (with case!) Craigslist bargain. No more guitars for me for quite some time. But then I always say that…

I attended my fourth SXSW last week in Austin. For reference, that’s 2005, 2006, 2007 and now 2009.

There weren’t as many acts this year that I was face-slappingly excited to see, although the trip itself was thoroughly enjoyable simply because of the weather, the chance to bike around town, and to see a guitar show and record convention.

This is the first year I took videos, though:

St. Vincent
Nellie McKay
Maps & Atlases
6th Street on Thursday

Sadly I neglected to bring my camera’s battery charger, so my documentary efforts were cut short by Friday evening. D’oh! Still, I managed to get in a few nice pics of Andrew Bird, Ben Harper, Gomez, American Princes, and a bunch of St. Vincent, my new crush.

All this in addition to my usual batches of old signs, peculiarities, sundries and whatnot.

Here are some recent things I’ve written for The Deli. (www.thedelimagazine.com)

(more…)

I always read people’s end-of-the-year review lists of music and secretly wish that I kept up with the pace of new music during the year, but honestly I never can. There’s so much to discover in the nooks and crannies of the recent past, and so the amount of music I discover in any given year that actually came out that year is like a snow cone on the tip of the proverbial iceberg. That said, here are some things from 2008 that wound my particular clock.

Steinski – What Does It All Mean? 1983-2006 Retrospective
Steve Stein is hip-hop’s Missing Link between old school rap and today’s collage-sample producers like Prince Paul and DJ Shadow. I wrote about this phenomenal album in-depth here back in July.

Spiraling – Time Travel Made Easy
I have a hard time finding enough great things to say about my favorite band. The new album is more laboratory-crafted syth-pop-rock with a proggy edge. “Victory Kiss” is the greatest radio single you’ll never hear. “Cold Open” is the best album intro (and title for an album intro) I’ve heard in a long time. And “The Future” is one of those songs I wish I’d written about how disappointing it is that we’re almost to 2010 and we haven’t made any headway into the life promised us by the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Jetsons, the 1964 World’s Fair, or hell, even Back to the Future II[1].

Panic at the Disco - Pretty. Odd.
I know the young teenagers like this band a lot, but I don’t hold it against Panic. I still haven’t heard their first record, but this album shines like a thousand Christmas trees. Clearly they wanted to make a grandiose Sgt. Pepper statement with it. It may be the best sophomore record I’ve heard by any band since Jellyfish’s Spilt Milk.

Sonny Landreth – From the Reach
The world’s greatest slide guitarist goes the star-studded route, with help from Eric Clapton, Eric Johnson, Robben Ford, Vince Gill, Dr. John, and Mark Knopfler. I’ve been dying to see what Sonny and Eric Johnson might do on record, and “The Milky Way Home” does not disappoint.

Other fine releases from 2008: Take Shelter by Boondogs, Play by Brad Paisley, An Invitation by Inara George with Van Dyke Parks, and Other People by American Princes.

Pre-2008 music that I discovered for myself this year: Mew, Mika, Mulatu Astatké, Pelican, The Factory, The Nines, Henry Cow, Soft Machine, Hawkwind and Dada’s amazingly gorgeous final disc, How to Be Found. Honorable mention goes to the distinctly nonmusical but no less compelling Conet Project.

Albums I’m dying to hear in 2009: the new records from The Mercury Program, David Mead, Owen, and The Bird and the Bee.

1.) Although I have to say I’m impressed that my mom’s TV does display her caller ID so we’ll know not to pick up when Flea calls.

Here is a collection of my most recent scrawlings for The Deli:

Villa Vina
Tin Veil
The Secret Life of Sofia
Super 400

The AV Club’s yearlong feature Popless, in which Conway’s own Noel Murray takes a sabbatical from all new music listening to focus on weeding and reviewing his entire collection, is wrapped up, and I had to pass along this elegant crystallization of what it means to move into parenthood from mere adulthood:

And I’ve got no problem at all with music that’s soft, pretty—even wimpy. I’m a middle-aged family man. I have nothing invested anymore in being thought of as a badass.

This may be the very reason why my musical tastes are all over the map: I have nothing invested in being thought of as anything other than someone whose tastes are all over the map.

While I’d like to admit that I’ve never much cared for what people think about the music that I like, somewhere in college, as I was transitioning out of metal and guitar wizardry[1], I think I subconsciously was guided by the desire to be known as someone whose music collection had no borders, someone to whom nothing was musically off limits. Working at a college radio station, I saw a lot of people putting limits on what they could or should listen to or not. Indie/college rock demands that you not listen to a lot of things: 80’s rock isn’t cool, jazz fusion isn’t cool, mainstream pop isn’t cool, thrash metal isn’t cool[2]. I certainly wanted no part of that hierarchy of badassery. If loving Huey Lewis and the News and Megadeth is wrong, I didn’t want to be right. And I still don’t.

By the way, I cannot recommend more highly that you go back and read each and every weekly Popless entry to learn about a lot of music you’ve probably never had the time or inclination to listen to – here is the first installment of Popless. And here is the index of all the articles.

1.) Or more specifically, “being thought of as someone who was a guitar badass.”
2.) Except Slayer, because there’s a certain hipster credibility to Slayer, because Slayer is the scariest band most indie rockers have ever heard.