"Oh, same thing."

Enzo brings us records as part of his regular UPS duties. Fun guy, Italian or, don't wanna offend anyone, possibly Sicilian or hey. Good guy either way. Just look at him:


When he got to the store today, somehow navigating that awesome brown truck through all the TV people and gear choking us for days on end




he found me playing Minor Threat at volume and jumping around like a fucking idiot young hardcore kid -- menacingly, looking for a fight -- which I am not. TV people irate me, is all.

Enzo: "You musta got laid last night."
me: "No, I just [what? ...] -- I'm just well-caffeinated."
Enzo: "Oh, same thing."
me: "?!?"

Then he just left! Now we've got a TV cop out front directing real traffic.

On the passage of time

You'd think by now that any real music fan has got to be pretty fucking sick of the Pixies.

The second part

I always thought it was what you know.



It's also the way you react to bullshit. Increasingly so.

What troubled economy?

God bless America.

CMJ the real easy way: Violens + not much else

For the first time in about 20 years, there's gloriously little reason for me to engage CMJ week in my usual aggressive three-shows-per-night way. So last night found our gang lazily trawling the dregs of the Lower East Side club scene—which is essentially every place outside of Cake Shop. The Delancey is a sorry dungeon of a club (live music in the basement, indolent text-twizzlers and DJ on the ground floor, young urban narcissists on the roof), which hosted the annual New Zealand party. We're all NZ partisans, though the pickins were rather slim this year: Openers the Naked and Famous were neither but managed to add a spark to au courant indie sounds, which is more than can be said for the rest of the bands, who did little more than ape the done-to-death UK/Amerindie style of 2005–present. ["Angular" guitars, anyone? Twelve angular guitars, just ten cents, whatta bargain…] Sub Pop signees the Ruby Suns showed flashes of charm (and no angular guitars), but whenever the duo brought a potentially good idea into a song it was abandoned just as quickly, an audio version of MTV-style jump-cut editing. Rhys "Murray Hewitt" Darby MC'ed and, unsurprisingly, stole the show without trying. On ya.

Violens, the Annex, 10/21/08 (PHOTOGRAPH: Tim Soter)

An easy walk from there to a moderately less odious orifice, the Annex, for a band we knew we like, Violens, who are already good and only going to get better. The perpetual (for now) obstacle for this NYC-via-Miami quartet is that its pristine pop songs can't possibly sound as good onstage—at least not if you're relegated to pull-the-plug rooms like the Annex (though Friday at Bowery Ballroom should be the thing/place/ticket). Sure enough, while not a disaster it was difficult sifting the brilliance of "Violent Sensation Descends" out of the indifferent mix, though I've heard this band mixed less competently, and the epic scale of new song "Until It's Unlit" came through. Bonus points for the way they launched into their set—seemingly distracted line-check becomes gathering storm reveals song.

Tonight's non-dilemma: Game 1 of the World Series or the unsurpassed guitarist Chris Brokaw, whose solo gigs are about as common as October baseball for the Phils.… The answer, of course, is both. Especially since it looks like I'll be at games 3, 4 and 5 in Philadelphia.

Update: Phillies win, Palin holding on for dear life

As everyone knows and says, the word surreal is rampantly overused. So I'll describe the sight of Shane Victorino going yard on CC Sabathia with a maximum allowable number of Phillies on base as akin to a dream invading reality, a perpendicular collision of the familiar and fantastic. On TV.


And yet, watching the VP debate now, I see so much losing going on that it's a struggle to remember that a very important baseball game was just won. (Look, there's an election every four years. Phillies playoff wins? Somewhat extremely less often than that.) Joe Biden is crayony, predictable and incapable of a real knockout blow no matter the opponent. Sarah Palin seems like she's using some words for the first time ever tonight. And she's staring right at me when she talks. And she's a maverick! It's all too fucking creepy. Still—you can tell Ms. Low Bar is maintaining just enough hull-integrity that the conservative blowhardati and other Kool-Aid salesmen will try and declare a draw. I'll cop to having wanted to see something spectacularly disastrous in this debate, but even if it doesn't happen, anyone watching can see, hear and almost smell the sheer-cliff void behind Palin's rote (but admittedly, technically impressive) memorization of talking points for every major issue. It's obvious she's not qualified for national office, but she might not be qualified to be governor of Alaska, either. At least that's not everyone's problem.