OK, this is listmaking I actually give a shit about. Shows. You know I go to a lot of them. I almost never buy records [if i do, its probably on my 20$ spending limit at the princeton record exchange. and they're all old.] but I certainly do see bands. I’d be willing to wager that the number of shows I have seen adds up to much much more than the amount of records in my personal collection.

I did this one in chronological order, mainly because I had to jog my own memory for some of these. Plus, I wanted to see if I saw approximately one awesome show a month. Almost.

Best Shows I Saw In 2004
Kinski / Constantines: SXSW, March 2004
Cardigans: Maxwells, May 2004
Patrick Wolf: Piano’s, May 2004
Mergefest / Superchunk: Cat’s Cradle, July 2004
Guided By Voices Karaoke: Tonic, August 2004
Electrelane: Transit, September 2004
Sonic Youth: Electric Factory, September 2004
The Futureheads: Transit, October 2004
Jah Division: Tonic, October 2004
Fiery Furnaces: Khyber, October 2004
Dead Milkmen: Trocadero, November 2004
Nancy Sinatra: World Cafe, November 2004
Travis Morrison: Khyber, November 2004

Best Shows I Booked In 2004
Dresden Dolls: Doc Watson’s, February 2004
Head of Femur: Doc Watson’s, February 2004
Sons & Daughters: Doc Watson’s, March 2004
Metal Urbain: Tritone, April 2004
Quails: Millcreek Tavern, May 2004
Casiotone for the Painfully Alone: Tritone, July 2004
This Radiant Boy: Tritone, July 2004
Gravy Train!!!: Silk City, July 2004
Jim Guthrie: Tritone, August 2004
Medium Medium: Tritone, October 2004
Ariel Pink: Tritone, October 2004
The Nein: Silk City, December 2004

Awesome Band Award of 2004
Dragon City, for being so gosh darn good!

happy new year, you corny indie fuX0rs!

[actually, i dont think indie folk are corny. but i think indie folk, like joanna newsom & such IS corny. a pox on your family for liking that stuff.]

wednesday 12/29, i will be on WPRB, 1-3PM EST.

Merry Christmas to all of you! Please listen to Jon Solomon’s 24 Hour Christmas Show and cheer him on. The dude is tired but his show is awesome!

♦ can someone please help me figure out why part of my entries are cut off when i directly link to them?

♦ does anyone have a copy of the new issue of philly style? im only asking because there’s an interview with me in there and of course, no one’s bothered to send me a copy. ill reimburse you.

♦ i am in love with audioscrobbler, because i have creepy voyeuristic tendencies.

i am in the throes of a nasty winter cold, my children, all brought on by this yo-yo weather we’ve been having. mucus, fever, achiness, the whole nine yards but i broke out of my makeshift infirmary to go to this reading series, which is put together by the folks at the philadelphia weekly.

my sole reason for attending was to cheer on sara, who was reading. [as you may recall i wished her "happy birthday" one week too early on this blog] i arrived at tritone in the midst of gabe boylan’s piece on soft rock, which sadly i did not catch enough of due to making the rounds of hellos and finding a spot to stash my jacket. but it sounded very good, the whole five sentences i heard.

after a brief intermission, sara was up and read “i love my boyfriend but i hate the grateful dead”. combining elements of insecurity, anger and a really annoying sixties rock group, sara managed to dispel and uphold various stereotypes of the dead and its fans. while she hates that they steal her boyfriend away from her sometimes, she loves the fact that deadheads havent turned him into a shitty, uncaring indie rocker. sara makes an obvious but very telling point: taste in music does not define the core characteristics of a person’s soul. shit, now im wondering what my record collection really says about me.

after sara was former PW contributor / philebrity mastermind joey sweeney, who arrived onstage with a guitar strapped to his body. he talked, then he’d play a fragment of a song, talk some more, and then again play more music, but i didnt realize what he was doing at all until the very end [talking about how he came to write "name songs" and how he gave them up]. due to joey’s unfortunate mumbling through the talking portion, the audience was mystified.

last up was erik bader, another PW contributor who’s a cross between robert pollard of guided by voices and david foster-wallace. his reading started off as a reading, talking about how he was always dumped by girls who wanted to date guys in rock bands and that the only way to really win a girl over was by playing music himself, which lead to this skull, his bedroom 4 track project. OK, take that synopsis, add about 4,000 more words and that’s bader’s writing style. its not life changing, its not bad, but its the best he thinks he can do. [on that note, please check out douglas wolks musings on "the best that one can do" here.] after he read his piece, it dissolved into a 30+ minute performance by this skull, which was like any other lo-fi hometrack outfit, and by that i mean it was fairly boring and full of inside jokes that about 4 people in the audience would get.

i get the idea behind lit & whimsy — it attempts to fuse the rock aesthetic to a reading. im totally down with this idea. i like it a whole lot. however, no rock club in their right mind would pack a bill [and give everyone equal billing], then proceed to let one band/artist/etc go over their alotted time. thats what compels sound engineers to turn microphones off. trust me, ive been there. was it JSBX or boss hog that preached about bands never needing to play longer than 30 minutes? well, someone much smarter than me said it.

sorry, i hate listmaking [though i am drafting a "best shows of '04" list, because that is more relevant to me]. anyway, here are some records that i liked in 2004!

annie - anniemal
butchershop quartet - rites of spring
casual dots - s/t
electrelane - the power out
fiery furnaces - blueberry boat
futureheads - s/t
hot snakes - audit in progress
M83 - dead cities, red seas & lost ghosts
patrick wolf - lycanthropy
poster children - no more songs about sleep and fire
q and not u - power
sea snakes - clear as day the darkest tools
sharkquest - gods and devils
sonic youth - sonic nurse
sons and daughters - love the cup
ssion - opportunity bless my soul
the mice - for almost ever scooter
the streets - a grand dont come for free
trouble everyday - days vs nights

you know, i have no idea what pitchfork really said about travis morrison. all i know is that they gave him a 0.0, and supposedly out of some “oh how could you break up the dismemberment plan” spite. fucking christ, god forbid our musical idols should want to challenge themselves. what do people expect, ex-bandmembers to do, write songs like stephen malkmus?

anyway, i was curious. i mean, what could be so horrible that would warrant such marks? i was expecting a trainwreck; instead i received one of the best shows ive seen all year.

travis morrisons live performance seems to be like a sonic sibling to mutant disco of the early 80’s. the stage was bedecked with all forms of alternative percussion and keyboards. there was little to no guitar [bass or otherwise] used, which made for an incredibly funky set. there was even a cover of janet jacksons “when i think of you” and plenty of rumpshaking — yes, i said R-U-M-P — going on. forget mutant disco, this was freaks-and-geeks, im-so-excited disco.

id like to think that if travis and his band werent heading back to DC, they’d hang out at tonight’s performance by the dumpsta players, another incredibly freaky group of genderfuckin’ freaks. plenty of hot tunes and even hotter dances.

here’s the deal: we need someone who has their shit together and is very personable/outgoing, especially because the job is so people-oriented. we’re sorry that the job is not full-time but our budget is very small because we’re an arts organization.

as ive stated before, this place rules. its very un-corporate, full of awesome food and writers. there are only 7 other staff members and a crew of workstudy students, as well as a larger volunteer community of 30+ members.

you can find out more about KWH here:

http://writing.upenn.edu/~wh/

you wouldnt be working with me per se, but i am the directors assistant so we’ll be in contact on a daily basis.

we need to hire someone by 1/7/05, so apply ASAP!

if you want to apply or have more questions, please email me.
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happy birthday sara sherr!

i love you as much as a woman can love another woman… except not in that way. i cant wait to see you read tonight at lit and whimsy, where you will be better than all the other readers.

update: today is not 12/21, which means sara’s birthday is next week. anyway, happy birthday!

our city’s own dr. dog gets a write up in the NYT.