I can't say that it's not a strange place to be at the moment - coffee and my physics homework *done*. Rad rad rad. Now I'm tense and I want to record some music, but I have no idea what style. I should actually finish my 3,239 unfinished songs. Heh, who am I kidding? They're always unfinished! That's the charm of it all!@#

Music: Outside of Glassjaw, DNTEL and The Postal Service are leaping around my mp3 playlist. DNTEL is in itself a fine artist, with a quiet rumble of glitch-inspired beats swarming around soft vocals, sometimes nothing at all. The excellent collaboration of DNTEL and the lead singer of Death Cab For Cutie's "The Dream of Evan And Chan" is the highlight of the album, with one of the most static-smooth beautiful transitions between a swirl of noise and soft vocals. Think Fennesz meets Fiona Apple. Think Hooverphonic blended with a cup of Cocteau Twins. Think awesome. Because the entire Postal Service album is both of those gentlemen working together. Even when it doesn't hit the mark, it's still a hell of a lot better than a lot of other things out there, like badgers or Hitler or cats.

For now it's more Jeff Buckley, as well. I made that above graphic whilst listening to him, so that's why the quote is bookending the picture - but I've always found it rather lovely, yo.

Top Five Concerts:

1. Sigur Ros @ The Ogden: Hands down. The climax of "Vaka", which was the first song played, left me with the curious notion that there was something more than music happening. No joke: those delightful pre-kiss jitters. And then they played for a very long time. They're relatively popular now, and it seems years ago that I ordered their CD from Iceland and got a hand-written reciet with the CD. heh. ...well, actually, that was years ago.

2. Trail of Dead @ The Ogden: Static-choked sound systems, broken beer bottles, ranting, no small amount of total rocking out, and the complete obliteration of the entire stage after the final track - under squeals of feedback and the dull edge of bass, the drum set was attacked, ravaged, the speakers torn down, and these Texan boys do that every night. God bless them. Most energetic live act I've ever seen. And this was their OPENING slot. heh.

3. These are no longer in sequential order, but Nine Inch Nails / A Perfect Circle @ The Pepsi Center. The ticket was 50 damn dollars but it was worth it, I promise you. I was 10 feet away from Trent Reznor while giant red screens devided behind him, swayed, moved, parted, came back together. My first time seeing NIN live and completely worth it. And APC is no short order, either.

4. BT / Hooverphonic - I've been a huge fan of both of these bands for years, and Hooverphonic in particular just amazed me. The wall of sound inherant on their earlier albums is just beautiful when live. I think they added strings to "Inhaler", which is already a wonderful song. BT had a live band instead of spinning records, which was excellent. And then I walked behind the stage and met both of them.

5. This will be a tie between Mike Doughty at the Fox and Tool at Fiddler's Green. Mr. Doughty came a short time after a painful breakup, and it was such a small-rock thing. Acoustic renditions of his rad solo album as well as many Soul-Coughing covers. Singing "Janine" at the end of the night just MADE it. And then I met him, had him autograph things. He's super-nice.

And Tool at Fiddler's might of had something more to do with the circumstances surrounding it. It was my first time seeing Tool and it didn't matter that Fiddler's is a TERRIBLE VENUE. You might as well listen to a band play over AM radio, except with not as good of reception. Some ampitheaters do it right (like one of the most beautiful venues ever, Red Rocks) and then there's Fiddler's Green, which seems content to let all acoustic qualities of the theater just float up into the air instead of come to the audience, while charging you 4 dollars for a bottle of water. And they have a noise cerfew, too! Isn't that cute? I'd have a more rockin' time drinking non-alcoholic beer at my grandmother's house.

But I did get a first kiss there from a person who would end up being my girlfriend for 1.5 years. Well, we all make mistakes, but at the time I was top of the world and also quite taken with the Tool performance. Actually, Prodigy performed later. That was nice. I enjoy festivals - common music folk gathered together for a good cause.

My day is melting away and I should most likely get the ol' guitar out and try to finish some inklings of music. I could write, I suppose. Actually, writing is going ultra-rad, because I'm getting published in three different publications in the next month. Rad! Of course, if I got PAID, that'd be even better. Because we know what an economy-usurping profession being an english major is. Watch out, Wall Street. I'm going to own you.

in it for the sex and the money,

Dr. Jared