Hitting the Marx

Ok, so we're a couple months into our new presidential era. What's been going on? Obama and our congress spent $837 billion, passed the largest government budget in history, mind you, this is all after Bush signed the first 700 billion in Tarp funds, is currently aquiring $1 trillion in bad mortgages (meaning WE are buying $1 trillion in bad loans), and now he's trying to pass more legislation that makes it easier for the government to bail out (read: take over and have a stake in) failing companies. This is really scary. We are gaining some speed on the slippery slope we began sledding down last fall.

When the government and tax payers bail out a company, they gain oversight over that company. In theory, this sounds good: "if the government is bailing them out, it should have a say in how that money is spent, you know, no big bonuses, no frills." But what happens when the government wants to make more decisions for the company? Like saying "You must loan to risky candidates"? That didn't work well the last time.

It just scares me. This is what the people voted for. Our government is, and rather quickly, swallowing up private-sector businesses. Anyone who is not struck by fear at this needs to open a history book and study the rise-to-power of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao, Castro, and lately, Hugo Chavez. There is a pattern here, we've scene gradual government involvement many times and it has never ended well. This is freaking me out...

first First Tube in years!

(I've been trying to post this video for 10 minutes and it just won't show up, so just click here --> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qPYb2lqi84

Word from the show was that they were super tight and well rehearsed.

03/06/09 (Fri) Hampton Coliseum - Hampton, VA
Set 1: Fluffhead, The Divided Sky, Chalk Dust Torture, Sample in a Jar, Stash, I Didn't Know, The Oh Kee Pa Ceremony > Suzy Greenberg, Farmhouse, NICU, Horn, Rift, Train Song, Water in the Sky, The Squirming Coil, David Bowie

Set 2: Backwards Down the Number Line*, Tweezer, Taste, Possum, Theme from the Bottom, First Tube, Harry Hood > Waste, You Enjoy Myself**, E: Grind***, Bouncing Around the Room, Loving Cup

Comment: *first time played. **with false start. ***acapella. First set lasted 1:50. June = Phish

I am so excited for my 5 Phish shows in June!

My Top 15 Albums

Think of 15 albums that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life or the way you looked at it. They sucked you in and took you over for days, weeks, months, years. These are the albums that you can use to identify time, places, people, emotions. These are the albums that no matter what they were thought of musically shaped your world.

OK, there are some albums that may be "better" or more popular than others, but these are the albums that hit me like a train.

15 albums, other than my #1, they are in no particular order:

1. Umphrey's Mcgee - "Safety In Numbers" - This album, artwork by Storm Thurguson (pink floyd, phish), stayed in my cd player for just over a year. Literally, it did not come out. I bought this album at their show at the second "Jam in the Damn" in Amsterdam, NL. The disc was released by Inside Out, a European label, and has slightly different packaging and liner notes than the US version. This came out at a time in my life that I really connected with the material (also the same week that I wrote most of my lyrical contributions to The Station's "Speed of Sound"). It is an album that was recorded during Umphrey's loss of a close friend and Bayliss's divorce. It both pulls at the heart strings, punches the gut, yet offers redemption and hope. A classic best experienced from start to finish, no album before or since has hit me so hard. (in all fairness, I typically skip tracks 4 and 5, Nemo and Women Wine and Song) www.umphreys.com

2. Pink Floyd - "The Wall" - I know may fans would argue that Meddle or Dark Side should rank above this, but when I was in high school I fell in love with this album. It's a work of art that has been disected time and time again to analyze the literary aspects that make this concept album such a bold, timeless epic. With a strong focus on the lingering effects of war, abandonment, excess, and fame and fortune, it describes the emotional walls that we all erect, the universal fears of inadaquacy we all feel, and emulates the madness and release that comes with "losing it". I have many fond memories of cruising the country roads south of Chatham blarring this album and I still like to pop it in during late night drives on the road.

3. Stephen Kellog and the Sixers - "Glass Jaw Boxer" - SK6ERS are singer/songwriter Stephen Kellogg and his bass player and drummer, they're from New Hampton, MA and you should check them out. This album is was their first on Everfine Records, the label started by O.A.R. At a time in my life when I was increasing getting into heavier, more progressive rock, something in me was so drawn to this cd, the complete antithesis of my recent forte, a paradox of my own taste. I saw SK for the first time on a sunday at the Canopy Club in Champaign a couple years back (though he played a few times at the bottom of the hilton several years earlier) and the 3rd song he played, "Forth of July" spoke to me. It grabbed the thoughts and feelings in my head about my (failing) relationship at the time, my insecurities about myself and career, and my own need to man up and enter new stages of my own growth, and related them through his song. It was a song that I wish I had written cause I'd put it on the setlist every single night. I decided during that song I would buy the album. Despite the fact it's been made known most of my band really dislikes the cd, I love to blare it and sing along, nearly start to finish. www.stephenkellogg.com

4. moe. - "Wormwood" - This is a great album on several levels. The song selection is killer: Bullet, Gone, Four, Kyle's Song, and Letter Home, and many more. It was also one of the first of it's kind (at least as far as I know): the drums and bass and most of the guitars were recording at live shows, the vocals and several other overdubs were laid down in the studio later. It is a hybrid live/studio album. Great hooks, good energy, I still love it every time I listen to it. My favorite part of playing their festival "Summercamp" the last 6 years: I get to see 3 moe shows every year for free!!!

5. Guns n Roses - "Appetite for Destruction" - So I'm 8 years old, just started taking my first drum lessons, and my brother gives me a blank-tape copy of Appetite. I flipped. I put on my head phones and played along, learing the album note for note. It was the only album I had at the time and I just couldn't get enough. The cd is full of pop gems, raw anger/defiance, and a legit (no matter how fashionable) chip on the shoulder, everything needed to suck in any male under the age of 38. The drumming is not phenominal, but it was enough for an 8 year old to be able to pick up and keep up with. The band as a whole is woven into our society, how many home teams play welcome to the jungle just before kick-off? and this is album that started it all, guns n roses career as well as my first dreams of playing music for a living (read: being a rockstar)

6. Radiohead - "OK Computer" - When i first heard bits and peices of this disc in '99, it didn't connect and I didn't get it. When I found it (along with my high school cd case!!!) last year I ripped it into my ipod and first played it while at Barnes and Noble reading an eagles biography. It clicked. That entire cd could be a soundtrack to nearly any quiet situation: driving, walking in a crowded store (which i was the first time i listened to it), or back ground music. Their use of layers and textures is unrivaled. If you were to play any one part in most of the tunes you wouldn't see the whole picture, but when you mix in a plethora of simplistic ideas you are treated to a lush landscape of sonic bliss. While some may find Thom Yorke "whiney", I find him open, human, and amazingly melodic. Great disc.

7. Phish - "Rift" - I believe this could be my favorite Phish album, although at the time I got into it I was inundated with live shows of theirs and had little use for the albums. From the opening "Rift", to the groovy "Mound", and the angelic (though quite pop-y) "Fast Enough" featuring Alison Krauss, this album hits the mark from start to finish and will always remind me of my twice a weeks drives from EIU home to springfield to practice and play shows. It was during these drives that I fell in love with Phish and this album comes to mind first, rivaled by.....

8. Phish - "Story of the Ghost" - Phish fell into a more laid-back and funkier phase than they'd ever really delved into before. The infectious grooves of the title track, "Birds of a Feather", and "The Momma Dance" are impossible not to bob to. The symphonic arrangement of "Guyute" (GUY TEE), the mellow, melodic charm of "Brian and Robert", "Water in the Sky", and "Wading in the Velvet Sea", and the cooky rusty rick-shaw feel of "Limb by Limb" (which I will always remember struggling to play on my practice kit in my tiny bedroom my first year of college) combine to be a great all around album that any prospective fan should check out. c'mon, you know you want to...

9. Damian Rice - "O" - I first heard of Damian Rice when I used to listen to Micah Walk cover him at the Floyd's open mic night Monday's in (wow) '04-'05. He plays soley acoustic, accompanied on one track by a jazz trio playing slow mellow funk ("Volcanos"), but often only accompanied by strings and the lyrical antogonist to our protagonists love-lost desperation, the lovely voice of Lisa Hannigan (who I believe is coming out with her own stuff now). This album conjures up thoughts of a broken hearted man (boy?), progressively intoxicated (by heartache or alcohol, who really knows?), in a tiny apartment late at night recording his innermost pain, desperation, self deprication, and pain following a break up, into a four track recorder sitting on a stool next to a furious scribbled notebook lit by candlelight. Backed up by a part-time string section. Take a sec and read that again, because that's really the image I have. Throughout the album, Allison's voice enters as the flashback mental representation of the girl that holds this desperate man's heart in her hands. Great album, highlights are The Blower's Daughter > Cannon Ball, Amie, Delicate, and Volcano. As he plunges deeper into his affliction, I lose interest in the album, first 60% is where the money's at.

10. NIL8 (pronounced like "Annihilate" without the A) - Doug - NIL8, from Springfield, IL was the first band I ever saw that wasn't playing an arena. Until then I didn't realize that bands played concerts for less than 2,000 people. Naive as it sounds, I had just never been to a smaller concert. This ignited the second round of my silly childhood dream of playing music for a living. They were packing all ages shows at the Atrium (the center open area of Vinegar Hill Mall in Springfield). I was 16, full of wonder, amazement, and happy to learn the lyrics and throw my fist in the air in my white-suburban-middle-class disdain! To this day I think they could break it big. Their melding of punk/pop/I don't give a fuck is catchy, melodic, and quite political (though I don't subscribe to their philosophies, I dig their tunes). I never forget 7th hour study hall, I'm in the empty band room at high school, headphones on, playing along with their machine gun tempo punk rock drum beats as the chorus teacher Mrs. Waltrip walked in. By the look on her face you'd think I was butchering a cow hanging from the rafters of the band room. Priceless. The album is a short montage of my age 16-18 coming of age. Still listen to it from time to time.

11. moe. - "The Conch" - I just love this album, highlights are "Blue Jeans Pizza", "Wind It Up", "The Pit", "Tail Spin", and "Where Does the Time Go". Great songs, chock full of lines and lyrics so catchy you cuss at them cause they won't vacate your attention. There are some albums of theirs that I could take or leave, but this one is solid. I REALLY needed moe. to come out with this album when they did. I had been losing interest, decided not to travel out of state to see them anymore, and just really needed them to write some new stuff. Enter the Conch. I would have trimmed the fat and taken out the several 30-60 sec song interludes, but nonetheless, it's in my top 15.

12. Micah Walk Band - "Change" and "Bright Side Fantasy" - As I stated above, I first saw Micah playing solo acoustic in springfield a few years back. I was immediately drawn to him. His songs, that at the time centered around your standard breakup/loss themes, were stunning. I've never seen one person armed only with a guitar and a microphone competely silence a room of 40+ people who 30 seconds before were deep in conversation not really caring about the shy yet commanding voice behind the mic. I asked micah to open for the station at a few shows, i sat in with him, and quickly befriended him on a professional level. Before long he'd put together a band that was rocking out to his songs. I have both of these album listed here because they both overlap the pool of songs that Micah wrote during that first year or 2 after I saw him. "Change", "Numb", "Ordinary Things", "Paducah", and "I Don't Mind" stand out and remind me of a distinct tumultous time in my life. Couple years ago Micah moved to Chicago to pursue in a little better market than we have here in Central Illinois. Please check out micah, he's great. http://www.myspace.com/micahwalk He's also on facebook but I don't know the address.

13. Dave Matthews Band - "Live at Red Rocks" - These discs also stayed in my cd player for well over a year. This distinctly reminds me of my senior year of high school. Carter Beauford is an outstanding drummer that is constantly challenging the minds of young protege's everywhere. Dave's style of playing is also unique and his personallity shines through in his lyrics, phrasing, and the kalidascope of emotions he encompasses in his writing. This was also the band that got me from Pop Crap > Dave Matthews > moe. > Phish > Umphrey's Mcgee. I can't tell you the effect that this chain has had in my life and career. Sidenote, Jeff Coffin, sax player for bela fleck and flecktones and "Jeff Coffin's Mu'tet" recently took over sax duties after Leroi's premature passing. Makes me want to brave the frat boys and 13 year old girls to go see dave again. Unfortunately, I lost interest in dmb after they discarded "The Lillywhite Sessions", an outstanding collection of music in my humble opinion, and released whatever album had "I Did It" on it. Ironically, I was so turned off by the distortion and electric guitars that I discarded his post Before These Crowded Streets career. Maybe I over-reacted, but I moved on to other things, but that cannot change the effect this album had on my 18 year old ass.

14. Tool - "10,000 Days" - So this album, the antithesis to DMB, first piqued my interest eminating from Dave's ipod during some late night drives on tour (this album is AWESOME to pop in at the start of 5 hour drive at 3am). This was also the same time that I was getting into Stephen Kellogg (see number 3) and I think this represents the complete polarization of my musical tastes. On one side, emotional, simple, and straight foreward singer/songwriter pop, on the other, complex, mathmatical, dark, progressive metal. Highlights are "Vicarious", "Jambi", "10,000 Days", and "The Pot". This is a great weight-lifting album as well!

15. The Beatles - "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" - OK, now hold on a minute before you judge. While I think the beatles had better material, this album was insanely progressive for it's time. A few years back, my band covered this entire album for Halloween. It was the first time since appetite for destruction that I learned an entire album from start to finish. While I wasn't much of a fan of Ringo's drumming before, after spending a couple months learning every song note for note I got to get into his head a little bit and gain much more understanding about why he played what he did, as well as why he didn't overplay the way I probably would have. Ringo was a small support role on that album, (he said the only things he learned during the recording of this album was how to play checkers and chess), his parts simplistic, steady, and out of the way. When you're playing with two of the greatest collaborators of all time, Ringo hit the nail on the head, back off, add what you can, and stay out of the way when it's appropriate. Long story short, after delving into this album I emerged with a greater understanding and love of the The Beatles.

And that's my list, these are not the "best" albums of all time, but they are the 15 that I recall having the most impact on me.
Dave