Right now, somewhere, Bill Murray is being awesome.

Flash forward three years...

Oh yeah, I have a blog.

33. Wake up and fight!

Woke up to a morning full of fate. You see I don't have to count the drawers when I close the record store tonight, which translates to me only doing simple enough, hands on work that I can do with my right hand tied behind my back & eyes closed... or stoned.

So I turned on my record played, turned on my computer, sat back, lit up and watched everything sync up. As Jeff Tweedy's cover of Simple Twist of Fate started running through my ears a small ad appeared on the MPR website informing me tickets for his show in Rochester go on sale tomorrow. I did a double take and chuckled as the way the beam works sometimes. Whewfta, you see, had I not taken this road today I very likely would never have known about that show until it was sold out and too late. whewfta.

My next step was too feed the addication 500,000 million others suffer from every day, the Facebook. I signed on, with a mild amount of self loathing and what should appear on my screen but a message from Katy, entitled Wake up and Fight! Which is enough to get me really beleiving in the beam and my luck, but just in case, it's about Woody Guthrie, who I fell asleep listening to last night.

bide your time until Brothers

Music lovers everywhere, rejoice! We only have to live a mere four more days without the Black Keys latest, Brothers, it drops on the 18th. The follow up to Attack and Release was recorded in Muscle Shoals Studios, where previously demigods like Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin and the Rolling Stones have stood, breathed and laid down tracks.

After a year riding on a packed boat in the seas of hip-hop with Damon Dash as the captain one can assume and hope the boys learned a lot. If the instruments they used on the record are telling in anyway then they definitely diversified after their time in a collaboration. A late night brain storming in their hotel room produced a Harpsichord. Also used on the record and probably thought up under similar late night fiending, a parlor piano, realistic synth, Hammond organ and a Wurlitzer.

Mixed by Tchad Blake, Brothers also features Nicole Wray, who was a part of Blakroc and formerly a protege of Missy Elliot. Wray contributes her voice to three of the fourteen tracks. Other than that, the album is all Black Keys, only one track wasn't produced by the Ohioans, Danger Mouse, who produced their last alum, Attack and Release, produced Tighten Up. Also, all the songs come from the mind of the Keys, aside from one cover, the Jerry Butler tune, Never Gonna Give up on You.

Although forced patients is never an easy thing, in this case it's all we can do until Tuesday when planets allign and our ears and hearts get what they've been yearning for.

Minnesota Loves Harlem

Tuesday nights are the best night for action. I've been frequenting the bars and back alleys of this town legally for 3 years now and have developed my thesis.

Monday brings out all the great fiends, the ones who really believe and want to take back a day society has tried so hard to tarnish for us. Wednesdays are the midweek mark and as a member of a larger organism it seems almost a requirement by that point to go out and check in with your fellow goodtime seekers. Thursdays are the rise to the inevitable release that is a well spent weekend.

Tuesdays, they are the forgotten child, by most reasonable people, that is why they are the best. It is when the truly wild ones are out, to be out on a tuesday is a statement that you will go out every night (and probably do). There are no ties that could bind you from living your life truthfully, tuesday-nighters live in constant search of adventure. They don't let jobs and better judgement get in their way.

This past Tuesday Harlem tore up the 7th street entry stage along with Voytex and Teenage Moods. The fellows from Austin played a sweat filled set, that along with assistance the $2.75 PBR's, had onlookers in a frenzy. Their nostalgic, bopping, garage rock sound put to rest anyone's reservations about the night, it being a Tuesday, which has a stigma as a night of calm. By the time they broke into "Friendly Ghost" a full on dance riot had erupted in front of the stage.
With all hope of calm out the door the boys pounded through the rest of their set playing tunes from their Matador release, "Hippies" and crowd favorites from their unsigned says of yore. Only a month into the release of their sophomore effort and the fellas were already breaking hearts, mostly when the night came to it's close and those of us with our eyes still closed, intent on maddness and dancing had to adjust to the dim club lights and accept that the next day we'd be working with sore feet and necks , but our hearts content knowing we'd been a part of Harlem's Minnesotan adventure.

vinyl fiending

my recorder player has made a real fiend of me the first weeks of 2010. having this magnificant machine in my room and at my immediate disposal at all times is just too much.

maybe I would have hope for a normal social life if not for my employment. but when you work in a record store you really have no choice but to fiend.

all I want to see is joshua trees

A season to graduate. That's what this seems to be. My friends count down the days one by one and I cant even fit my remaining days in this collegiate prison onto one calendar, maybe three would do it.

And to boot, the journalism program has been cut from MCTC for next year. So sticking it out is starting to seem a lot less appealing. That undeniable urge to run is rising in my chest again, I can only hold it down for so long, and it's already been way to long.

I'm tired of staying up too late and missing the morning sun. It's not normal, all these hours I spend up when the sky is black writing in notebooks and watching images from places I wish I could be. I've always been nocturnal, yes, but I am also a tofu eating, sandal enthusiast hippie and I love sunlight.

It's not always my fault though, tonight American Experience started the story of Geronimo right when turning in early crossed my mind and then after that, American Future : A History (on immigrant issues). Can I be blamed in the face of an insatiable interest in life?