Now Playing/Album of the Week

Portishead, Third
After 11(!) years Portishead finally release their 3rd LP, just out today. Got the vinyl version with a free mp3 download of the entire album, and it rocks. There's just a hint of their old sound lingering in a few tracks–this year's model is much darker, creepier, and at times noisy. Standout tracks: "We Carry On", "Plastic", "Machine Gun", and "The Rip".

DREAM THEATRE Part 7: How CDs Are Made

Neko Case and I are trapped in a hotel room. We're looking out the window and below us is a mob made up mostly of cops, people from Neko's record label and strange men running around in lab coats. The cops are shouting for us to get out of there, they've got the place surrounded, and if we don't comply they'll gas us out. It's at this point that I notice we're both dressed in 1930s era gangster suits. I ask Neko what the big deal is, and frantically she says her new album is going to drop in a few days, and they want her to get in "that thing." She's really starting to freak and I ask her "What thing??" She points outside and in the middle of the street I see a huge silver disc, propped up on a sort of platform and surrounded by strange machines manned by the lab coat guys. It looks like a giant CD. I ask her what that is, and she replies rather incredulously "Well duh, it's a CD! Those scientist guys are going to stick me into that thing, shrink it, and make millions of copies! How'd you think CDs were made, anyway?!"

Album(s) of the Week

Cat Power, Jukebox
Her second collection of covers. Pretty diverse selection including songs by James Brown, Frank Sinatra, Hank Williams, and Nick Cave, yet somehow the indie chanteuse manages to make each tune wholly her own.



Lair Of The Minotaur, War Metal Battle Master
The band's label, Southern Lord, describes their newest album thusly: A concept record about solving problems with a big fucking axe. OK, shut the fuck up right there, ace...SOLD!



Explosions In The Sky, The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place
I saw them play 2 nights last month at the Great American Music Hall, and have been digging into their catalog since. This is my personal favorite.

Kid's Stuff part one: Antioch Rawks!

An e-mail from my friend Ami, who works as a special education teacher. You can't make this stuff up!

So today Keith (1st grade) and I are working on fluency and comprehension of stories. I have him reading a Level 2 Reader story about NASCAR. Keith knows all about car racing, I guess he goes on Saturdays in Antioch sometimes to watch the races there.

Anyway, he's sort of stumbling through it, but doing a pretty good job. He reads about how before the races everyone stands up and reads the National Anthem. He actually decodes the words "National Anthem." I'm praising him all over the place and am really impressed he figured it out. So, I start asking him about what the National Anthem is. I start singing the first few bars of it.

Keith says, "Oh no, oh no. I know what it is..."

And then, with the most earnest face, and with 100% sincerity, starts belting:

"We will, we will rock you..."

I cracked up, explained it was a rock song, but that it WAS often sung at sports arenas.

He says, "Well, it's the national anthem in Antioch..."

There are just some days where I love my job.

My next camera...

DREAM THEATRE Part 6: You Sunk My Battleship!

My friend told me about this dream he had where he and I were wandering around a museum, and we came upon an enormous room filled with giant replicas of battleships and submarines. Within that room was a special area where you could play Battleship, the old Milton Bradley game, but your game pieces were the giant models, each about the size of a dining table. So we each chose just one battleship, and proceeded to play. Whenever my friend would call out coordinates he would miss, but every one of mine were hits. Then much to his dismay, he realized upon closer inspection of his side of the board, that the whole board was actually laid out on top of the ship, so EVERY coordinate I called out were hits! The dream ended before he could call out "You sunk my battleship!"