» indie night school may have been useful for rock bands, but it was also useful for the panelists. thanks to sean, i have learned how to rent a car without requiring a credit card. it works!

anyway, here’s my side of the cell phone incident. sean was talking about something when this guy’s phone goes off. rather than direct it to voice mail or take the call outside, the dude just sits there talking on the phone, growing louder by the moment. [gee, i wonder why he had to practically shout? were there other people talking?] sean tries to politely shush him and then something inside me, let’s call it oh, The Rage, comes out. i grab my microphone, “Yo. You. You on the Treo 650. There’s a fucking panel going on. Stop talking — what we’re saying could be life changing.” He promptly disconnects.

not that i’m miss manners but geez! what kind of moron takes a phone call while sitting in the front row? not only is he wasting his money, its a waste of time for the rest of the paying audience. this is where i simultaneously curse the offender and covet his expensive cellphone.

» one of the great things about driving down to chapel hill is that it gave me plenty of time to listen to the new tenement halls cd. even if you werent familiar chris lopez’s old band, the rock*a*teens, you’ll certainly enjoy this. lots of great hummable hooks! the record comes out this fall.

» finally had the opportunity to dine at lantern. ive passed the restaurant numerous times during previous trips but finally… its really worth it, especially if you want to splurge on a nice dinner. prices are similar to rx. lantern doesn’t accept reservations, so make sure you get there early [especially if you’re running on a schedule]. expect a wait but don’t worry. there’s a bar in the back where you can order a junebug [pimm’s cup with ginger garnishes] or other sexy looking drinks. while i’m on it, allow me to say this is the summer of the pimm’s cup. its sweet, non-boozy and refreshing. mojitos are so last year! what i had: pork & chive dumplings [appetizer], lemongrass beef with rice noodles [dinner]. i skipped out on dessert but i swear, next time.

» opening up for superchunk were tennis and the mennonites, a relatively new CH band. they were alright and you can check them out here. superchunk, were awesome. my inner fifteen year old was elated. here is the full setlist: kicked in / hello hawk / on the mouth /green flowers / seed toss / some damage (new song) / unbelievable things / her royal fisticuffs /rainy streets / watery hands / like a fool / water wings / baxter / hyper // my noise / new low / cast iron // 100,000 fireflies / slack mf. best line of the night, by mac, “do you think we would play ‘her royal fisticuffs’ if this was our final show?”

ned & i headed back to his house, the rest of the show wandered over to OCSC, which gets my vote as one of the best bars ive been in.

» kickball. what can i say? im horrible at sports, but i managed a run for my team, The Holy Roman Empire. we won, 17-16. this is twice i have been on the winning team. serious grilling ensued. looking forward to next year!

» more in the saga of pleasing my inner fifteen year old: sara let me pillage her band t-shirt collection. hellooooo, instant coolness. [not that i didnt have awesome shirts before.] i am now the proud owner of band shirts from tanner, polvo, the softies, bush tetras and more. now if i could get my grubby paws on a helium t-shirt circa pirate prude again, my life would be nearly complete.

i couldnt make this stuff up if i tried, courtesy of my editor, mike mckee:

this is the best bad news i can think of! we’ve arrived, haha.

apparently, some folks were so enamored with the illustration for our recent Sleater-Kinney cover that they decided to bootleg the image onto T-shirts now for sale at a handful of boutique shops in manhattan.

the shirts have not been cleared, nor have we signed off on the use of the images, and would like to help spread the word that the illustration is the work of New York graphic designer Todd Allen Breland.

» personal merge favorites beatnik filmstars, have reformed! check out their new website. also merge related: i am going to see the “on hiatus” superchunk at the cats cradle tomorrow night. my inner fifteen year old is elated beyond belief. jon wurster has a piece in the indie weekly.

» saturday at noon its the Merge Cup, a yearly game of kickball for aging indie rockers to remember why they ignored sports and listened to music in the first place. as dan bejar said last year, “its like watching all the kids who got picked last.” my only hope is that CSTB covers the game, play by play.

» tonight i share my own booking war stories with a crowd of people who think paying 12$ will earn them a slot on a plain parade bill. i said it, i went there. oh, i am such a dick. its a shame this is the closest you’ll get to any bickering because the moderator told us to play nice.

» in a completely unrelated note, here’s an incredible piece on a woman’s childhood in sicily, previously posted in the financial times. as many of you know, i spent a fair amount of time living overseas. our experiences are strikingly different but its a really interesting and useful read.

» exhibit A: why i quit drinking. of course, this past weekend i did ring in a new year of awesomeness with fine friends and many bottles of wine. the worst part about no longer drinking is that i forget what being drunk feels like until its too late. i do ridiculous things, like write this sign, or yell at bob pollard during guided by voices karaoke. [you’ve never lived until you have drunkenly yelled “fuck you, im important!” at the man onstage at tonic. however, sometimes its better to not walk on the wild side.]

of course, my intent was not to hook up. i swear im not lying when i tell you being alone is the best thing in the world. thanks to the desexualized nature of spaces such as the khyber and the like, i can walk in and know ill never be hit on by a dude. i cannot believe i am appreciative of the sausage party known as indie rock, but i am.

before this turns into an alcoholic’s paean, the thing i miss about drinking is that flash of clarity you get somewhere in the midst of all the haziness. even the ancient greeks knew that intoxication was useful in the creative process. ditto for my best friend edmund burke.

i was sitting at the RUBA, after a night spent at rx & the 700 club, when it struck me. the room was full of folks looking for that one last drink before heading home, chatting with others about records and whatever — your average demilitarized hipster warzone. rather than have some dude ask me to “hang out and listen to records” [zzzzzzzzz], what if i was just upfront about hooking up? so i scribbled a plea for tenderness on the back of a greeting card envelope, just to see if this elicited a reaction. my friends laughed hysterically, but i think they thought i genuinely wanted some action.

here’s where the drinking doesnt come in handy; due to my intoxicated nature, i was not able to accurately determine whether the shocked looks on peoples faces were: a) the result of acknowleding the latent sexuality in social places like this; or b) that a perfectly nice woman like me would have to resort to trolling for sexual partners. [please! i deserve better than an indie rocker!]

» the reason im sharing this potentially damaging story is because today i received a transcript of an interview i did with a sociologist about nightlife in philly. as some of you know, sometimes i put on these things called “shows” and this particular person thought i might be a good research subject. it is by no coincedence when i pulled my own stunt over the weekend, i remembered the interview because we talked about some of these things.

id share parts of it if i knew it was OK to do so; until then ill remain appalled at the sheer amount of “like”s and “you know”s in this thing. reading this, any notion i had of appearing smarter in conversation than on paper has dashed.

» exhibit b: appearances can be deceiving. everyone has an opinion on ultragrrrl. i wasnt sure what to think when i approached her for an interview, which is out in the current issue of rockpile. contrary to popular belief, she’s not stupid and had quite a bit to say. you can read the interview for yourself but i must warn you i had to hack it down to meet word count requirements. i think im going to post the complete thing here within a week or so.

Creeping Weeds “Long Way Down”

You know in movies how people fall down dark holes and in their downward trajectory, there’s always special effects showing what they’re passing? If its a comedy, they’ll show some dinosaurs and random cultural oddities of an era bygone. Well, thats kind of what this song is like, minus the comedy. “LWD” sounds like four different kinds of songs at specific points. First its a ragged Wilco throwback where the singer sounds a lot like Jeff Tweedy (’circa Trocadero Valentines Day show, 1997 — a show I remember because Tweedy mooned the audience and threw a veggie tray at us) and takes this giant gulp of a breath to transform itself into some sort of mid-90’s indie rock thrash. I would have completely written off this song if it werent for the acoustic bit that would follow, as it sounds so dry next to the oversaturated distortion of the section before. I’m really loving the sound of these two things bumped up against each other. Somehow it merges into back into that thrashy sound, kind of like the scene in Xanadu where the 1940’s meet the 1980’s [you know]. Its not as grating as the first time around and even holds a little bit of a groove, the kind you can whistle along to, until it stops and we’re left with that classic staple of 90’s indie rock: voices in the background. I kind of wish the song wasn’t left at such a nebulous finale but I’m willing to enjoy the sights along the way. (Visit the Creeping Weeds HERE.)

dont fucking mess with me, im a streetwalkin’ cheetah with a heart full of napalm and im gonna bust. blame septa for this psychotic twist. i dont know what happened but it took me two hours to go ten blocks on my train ride home. i should mention that i left the station at 8pm, so i had a two hour train ride back to philadelphia as well.

i wish this variety of snapping could produce such literary beauty as my treatise on springsteen, but its not happening. after a two week break, im back at the station and my on-air demeanor was more like a person who had not done a radio show in years. i spazzed and stuttered all over the place; thankfully audio hijack decided to only tape 30 minutes of my show this time around so you’ll never have any idea as to how bad it really was. but im telling you — it was bad.

[what i currently hate about recording my show — i have to leave my computer in PA and trust that audio hijack wont screw up. i wish there was a place i could plug in at the station and just record there. because i cant hear the sound of my voice, im on the verge of tears otherwise.]

things that were good: new records [mazarin, thee minks, denison, melron recs comp], a visit from ex-wprber jannon [have a safe trip to LA!] and this week’s show seemed to fly by in record time. its moves much quicker when i break every half hour to read the playlist, as opposed to my usual 45 - 60 minutes. [eh, im lazy.]

very psyched to play the believer comp, although the constantines & spoon tracks are off-limits, even though the cons recorded the track at soundgun in philly… i wonder if i can use that as a loophole?

proposed specialty shows within my specialty show:

playlist after the cut.

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Mazarin “The New American Apathy”

A fair amount of the songs on Mazarin’s new album begin with fade ins, completely at odds with the title, We’re Already There. It’s the kind of thing that confuses me greatly, like SEPTA’s official slogan of “We’re Getting There”. I mean, are we there? Are we not? Are you just mocking us? The band has derailed from its par-for-course dreamy lyrics and switched to something a bit more weightier in content. Mazarin would still prefer to float in through the window rather than crash right through your wall and the half stuttering / half steadied rhythm of this song sounds not unlike beatmatching gone awry, removing any heft from its social commentary. “TNAA” makes for a pleasant experiment in misdirection, if you’re willing to have it. They’re getting there and yet, they’re already there. (Visit the official Mazarin website HERE. Purchase We’re Already There HERE.)

Mazarin CD Release Party: 8/1 at Silk City with Mike Wexler and The Double (Matador Records)!

Pay Attention Southern Friends:

The musical genius that is Sean Padilla and his project, the Cocker Spaniels, are hitting the great roads of The South for his first tour ever. You know that special feeling that happens when you get on the ground floor of something truly awesome? That’s what this is gonna be like.

He is fully endorsed by the über-cool TV ON THE RADIO and will probably hate me for namechecking them but tough titties, Sean. I want people to attend your shows. Also to note, he is playing with personal local faves THE SPINTO BAND and the ever-awesome HAPPY HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME fest.

Here is an mp3 of his faaaantastic “The Only Black Guy at the Indie-Rock Show”.

It is quite possible he is playing near you. Here are some tourdates!

C.SPANIELS DIRTY SOUTH SUMMER ‘05 TOUR!

07/25 - Houston, TX @ Super Happy Fun Land
w/ The Dimes, Freedom Sold and Chim Charoo

07/26 - Austin, TX @ Flamingo Cantina
w/ the Jeff Botta 4, Sinizen, and Everything’s Gone Green

07/27 - Denton, TX @ Art Six Coffeehouse
(424 Bryan St, 940-484-2786)

07/28 - Oklahoma City, OK @ The Electric Chair
w/ Pudding Attack, Moon Mission Death Squad and Asleep, Audience…Dream!

07/29 - Fort Smith, AR @ Hesher’s Music
w/ the Exception, the Ash Louis Trio and For the Sake of Pat Most

07/30 - Memphis, TN @ Java Cabana
(2170 Young Ave, 901-272-7210)

07/31 - Jackson, MS @ WC Don’s
w/ RedHill City and Obid Charm

08/01 - Birmingham, AL @ Moonlight Music Cafe

08/02 - Nashville, TN @ Hair of the Dog
w/ Joseph Faison (of Mr. Special)

08/04 - Morristown, TN @ The Downtown
w/ Dana & the Robots and Ballroom Dancing

08/05 - Chapel Hill, NC @ The Cave

08/06 - Charlotte, NC @ SK Net Cafe
w/ the Experts and the Blots

08/08 - Atlanta, GA @ Lenny’s Bar
(as part of the Kirkwood Ballers Club evening)

08/11 - Athens, GA @ Little Kings
(as part of the Happy Happy Birthday to Me Popfest)

08/16 - Orlando, FL @ Stardust Video and Coffee
(1842 E Winter Park Rd, 407-623-3393)

08/17 - Miami, FL @ Luna Star Cafe

08/18 - Tampa, FL @ Sacred Grounds Coffeehouse
w/ GeriX

08/19 - Baton Rouge, LA @ Tequila’s Cafe
(formerly known as Cafe Reggae) w/ A Cup of Tea

08/10 - Houston, TX @ Super Happy Fun Land
w/ Head of Femur and the Spinto Band

another year older, certainly not wiser. some of my photographs from intonation wound up on pitchfork’s site today! i guess they wanted to give me a good surprise! ill leave it up to you to figure out which are mine.

in other news, im speaking on this panel that is about booking shows next thursday. for those in philly, you should come to this because it could be really exciting. im hoping the frequent whiners of the scene show up to talk shit to our faces. otherwise, im just going to sit there and think, what the hell am i doing here? details and junk below the cut.

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paul asks, “When was the last time you spent a week doing absolutely nothing at all?”

i genuinely cannot remember the last time i found myself in this situation. im one of those people who will spend all day cleaning their room and its a mess an hour later because i decided to embark on some new project. i believe this falls somewhere in between the categories of “inability to acheive solitude”, “unchecked attention deficit disorder” and “nervous energy”.

of course, its arguable that i really do anything worthwhile. i have days where i feel like i havent accomplished a single thing. im gonna have to blame the internet for that!