here’s what sucks: not being sure as to whether i should continue this show during the fall or not. no no, i want to but it has to do with time & financial commitments. its easy to take a day off mid-week for a show because my workload is lighter when summer break is in session. during the school year, im not so sure i can afford the day off.

the thing is, this show needs to happen — lack of local programming on radio, etc, blah blah — so i need to find a way to make this work. most importantly, i love doing it. if i had a car, this wouldnt be an issue but i have to take the train to my show and ultimately, thats where the timesuck is.

let’s do some quick math: 2 + 3+ 2 = 7. thats the amount of time i spend on my radio show. whats not factored in is that i arrive at the station 1-2 hours earlier than my show, so that i dont worry about mass transit screwing me over.

is there anyone out there who wants to drive me? i know, its sad begging for a ride on my blog. but you know whats sadder? realizing i spend more time traveling than being on-air. driving to princeton takes 45 minutes, traffic willing, but i havent a car. and renting a car every week sounds ridiculous.

here’s the deal — if you think you can do this, ill gladly cover the cost of gas, treat you to snacks and you get to learn how a radio show is put together. we can come up with a better name for you than “intern”.

its moments like this i wish there was a chinatown bus to princeton.

anyway, this week’s show. now that ive got some excel spreadsheet action happening, putting together shows is a piece of cake. but its the end of a season, thats why i feel like im in my groove. new this week: us funk team, patternismovement, aquila rose, windsor for the derby. played an unreleased [in the states] track by the feelies and received a lovely phone call from a miss julia factorial. pretty psyched to throw in some res, a favorite of mine from a few years back. word is that she’s got a new record coming soon. the capitol years track might be the unofficial theme song to this show. yes, thats the notekillers covering jefferson airplane. dont you love how i edited the swear out of the track? fear is technically not a philly band, but when you have a frontman like lee ving, its difficult to not play something by the group.

playlist is behind the cut, as always.

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im positive the transit gods are conspiring against me because there’s no other way to explain the amount of bullshit i have to deal with when i head to princeton for my show. every week, its something else, something new — a train delay, system shutdown, etc etc.

despite this setback, i managed to put together a pretty awesome show in the span of 20 minutes. totally loving the new cd selection method, seems to make things easier.

i got the new annie hayden album and im loving it to death. yes, there’s a replacements cover. its beautiful. im sorry to whoever called up requesting mazarin and heard my sigh. i like that record but im tired of people requesting that one song. yknow? im very thankful for whoever requested b.c. camplight, even though i played it. the record’s so good im more than willing to play it again.

afterwards, andrew of the trolleyvox was recording a set for jon’s show, so i hung around. its pretty sweet folks. big thanks to him for the ride home!

playlist after the cut.

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i have words and stuff in a few places this month. feel free to check them out!

» new in rockpile #116: reviews of the robot ate me, the nitelights.

» xlr8r #90: pop on trial column number three, featuring rundowns on yah mos def, plastic little, hail social, kiss me deadly, nobody, brazilian post-punk and !!!.

» 2005 WPRB program guide: photographs of dungen & les savy fav at intonation.

if you’ve ever wondered what the top 40 artists played on my radio show this summer were, well, here they are. thanks to the wonder of microsoft excel and pivot tables, i was able to determine how many times a song was played. ive got a few more weeks before the end of my show, so this could always change!

in the meantime, this should squelch all debate about the best local music. if not, feel free to voice your concerns.

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normally i dont like to talk about my dreams on the internet [there's so many of you staring at this thing and not responding, even when politely asked] but this was too funny/revealing/sad/etc to not share.

i was a member of clap your hands say yeah, except that it wasnt a band full of dudes. it was more of a co-ed project, closer to a broken social scene deal; they had asked me to be their bass player. i was playing my first show with the group at a place not unlike emo’s outdoor stage. the venue was packed to the gills. even though i accepted the job only mere hours earlier, i thought i was doing a pretty amazing job at matching the band’s sound. in fact, i thought i was kinda awesome.

that is, until some guy in the front row started screaming about how i suck, then proceeded to get up on the stage and critique my playing style. everything he tried to teach me that was “right” sounded out of step with the band and even though i knew i was fitting in nicely, i was so upset that i crying — and i mean bawling — while continuing the play. after the gig was over my bandmates were concerned about me, offering to find the dude and kick his ass but i told them it wasn’t worth it. since we were on tour, we crashed at my grandfather’s house [my parents live 15 minutes away, why didnt we stay there?] and then it turned into another dream after another dream until i slowly woke up.

it would be easy to label this as “yet another one of maria’s countless anxiety dreams”. but as i often tell myself, i know myself better than any of you ever will, i know its really some sort of bizarre manifestation of a conversation i had last night at the millcreek with rick of national eye. another person of our party mentioned that the hail social record wasn’t doing it for them, to which a few agreed. rather than do the usual philadelphian thing, which is sit around and make fun of the record, we wondered why folks latch onto the album regardless. is it their friendship/allegiances to the band’s members or are they really finding something beneath the surface. if the latter, what is it?

hail social write songs about nothing, which is not the same as writing songs about nothing. other band’s nothingness usually winds up being attached to an object, resulting in a somethingness. titles on the band’s debut appear more like fragments plucked out of larger sentences: “hands are tied”, “get in the car”, “more time”, “feeling is wrong” and so on. this is unlike a band writing songs in which phrases are uttered in a more universal manner. superchunk’s “slack motherfucker” exists as anthem because of this very thing: “im working / but im not working for you / slack motherfucker / you motherfucker!” macaughan’s original target might have been the shiftless co-worker at a menial minimum wage job but who among us hasn’t applied the lyric to our own lives?

this is not to say that all songs should strive to become anthems, listeners merely want a simple sign to point us down the path of understanding. lines like “come out tonight / there will be someone waiting” (from “come out tonight”) don’t point us anywhere. the vagueness implicit in the statement seems more frightening than anything. who is “someone” — a bill collector? friends? who? in “track #1″ [the fifth track on the album, make of this what you will] we get our answer: “never mean what you say / turns out you couldnt reach anyone / youre out of touch/ out of time / let it go”.

uh, what?

between this and the recent theory that spoon’s gimme fiction has a secret tracklisting [then refuted here], i have to wonder if musicians have taken a serious interest in that whole derrida theory of “once something is understood, it is over.” OK OK, im paraphrasing but you get the idea. if we understood all the secrets of our favorite bands, do they hold the same sway over us as they did when we were kept in the dark? is obfuscation a necessary tool in maintaining the band’s upper hand or at the very least, their existence?

this show got off to weird start. as you know i have this little loop of music that i talk over [it helps eliminate um, dead air, um] but it wasnt in the same spot on the instant replay machine. so my show starts off with some bumbling around. laugh if you want, go ahead. its OK.

otherwise, not too bad. i took a new tack with programming this week. after pulling a bunch of cds, i placed them in groups of six. i took each mini set of records and figured out a playlist from there. this way i didnt risk blowing my load too early or too late in the show, especially when it came to new stuff.

also, can anyone spot the hawk? i entered the wrong code on the instant replay machine and there was a hawk sample, all ready to go. everyone knows i cant resist goofy sound samples. many many summers ago, i did a radio show with bubble noises during talk overs. hmmm…..

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my pal meredith’s been working on this for a couple of years now, so how psyched am i to finally read it? new books are like holding newborns. check out the site for the first one here.

» amy has written all you need to know about harry and the potters. i finally got to see them on a sweltering friday afternoon and was pleasantly surprised at how much they reminded me of atom & his package.

» aside from our benefit for WOAR, i managed to squeeze in some time to see vivian host [one half of the syrup girls] tear up the dance floor at regan disko headache. im kind of sad this dj night is ending, since its one of the few in town that manages to get the crowd moving to not-as-obvious music. as you know, one of my biggest frustrations with local djs is that everyone does their own variation on indie rock / hip hop / new wave / etc. hell, even im guilty. so its nice to see a night that takes music and just shreds it to pieces.

» on frequent rotation these days: shocking blue’s at home. sure, you know them as being the original songwriters of “venus” but they’re so much more than that. stilted english ["goddess" sounds like "got-ess" and i love it], sitar and heavy bass. bought the new orange juice reissue but havent given it a good listen yet. if its half as fantastic as the packaging… thanks to ned i managed to score some of os brazoes recordings. when not listening to that, ive had rita lee’s hoje e o primeiro dia do resto da sua vida on — it has its moments.

yeah, you know that article. its only been around for a couple days and its gotten people really worked up, including myself.

» who the fuck does their factchecking? everyone knows the “sixth borough” is hoboken/jersey city. my expertise on this subject comes from living in a town dubbed “the brainy boro”.

» ultimately, what makes me go BAAAARF! about this piece is how the term “ten year tax abatement” gets thrown around as if its a hip new fashion at urban outfitters. but hey, this is in the style section.

so let me get this straight — not only do the two major construction projects in philly [cira centre & comcast tower] have tax abatements to lure businesses, a majority of home construction has the same thing? has the city lost its fucking mind?

[as an aside, remember that when liberty 1&2 were constructed the city offered the same thing; now those leases are coming up and many of the businesses which reside there are considering moving to the new buildings so that they -- guess what? -- avoid paying taxes for another 10 years.]

id like to know how the city plans on funding itself, if no one is paying the taxes [though stifling and tax restructuring is a topic for another time] we desperately need. on the good side, when all the homes of these carpetbaggers [yes, im totally calling them that from now on, so eff off] burn down, there won’t be a fire department to rescue them.

its folks like us, who may or may not have well-paying gigs, its citizens of the city’s most blighted areas that will be paying for this revitalization and frankly, that sucks. and they want to cheer us up with free wireless internet.

» on the good side of things: there’s the championing of local music, laris & kendra. but thats really it.

» it feels like every three months there’s an article about how philadelphia’s suffering a “brain drain”. but now im reading about how so many people are flocking to this city. im not sure i understand — does this mean all the smart people are being replaced with assholes?

» last night at locust bar karaoke [which i hope now does not become crowded with carpetbaggers] my friends and i discovered that i am quite good at impersonating sam kinison. so please, imagine all this in his voice, and pepper the end of statements with a few good screams.

Hail Social “Repetition”

Post punk has a specific energy; even when the Delta 5 are singing about minding your own business, they do it with such a force that the space between who’s being victimized and the victimizer turns a murky gray. For most of their new album on Polyvinyl, Hail Social does a good job at replicating that oddly directed aggression, which makes the withdrawn and pop-oriented “Repetition” an oddity on the album. The staccatoed guitar and steadied bass create a cell around Dayve Hawk’s beautifully sung, echoing and melancholy lyrics. (Oh how I wish guys sung half as pretty as Dayve does!) There’s shades of teen angst here, so I wouldn’t be surprised if this wound up in the background of The O.C. (Purchase Hail Social’s self-titled album HERE.)

Sympathizers “Chatter”

Just because one decides to pen a faintly “political” song on their new record doesn’t exactly qualify them for a slot on Air America. If you want some lessons on how to talk la langage politique (thank you, dashboard widget!), take a cue from the Sympathizers. Yeah, they just totally one-upped your namby-pamby song by making a whole album rife with political imagery that doesn’t sound preachy or boring. Out of all the songs on Dread At The Control, “Chatter” comes off as the least halting and sounding the most like a full band - the repeating chorus of “chatter away” seems to swell like the Philadelphia Orchestra, and with each instrumental addition (sleigh bells, layered guitars) the song reaches this awe-inspiring crescendo, which I bet is not unlike the CIA tapping yours and countless millions phone calls. (Purchase the Sympathizer’s Dread At The Control HERE.)