Drive Blind

I'm Not one to Sit and Spin

I love every new R.E.M. album when it first comes out, even Around the Sun, so it shouldn't be any surprise that I'm loving Accelerate only a day after it was released. This one is seriously good, though, and I don't see it souring over time. From the opening urgency of "Living Well is the Best Revenge" through to the not-as-goofy-as-it-could-be "I'm Gonna DJ" this album doesn't have a clunker of a song on it. With almost half the songs under three minutes, the album doesn't have a chance to wear on you. I've already noticed multiple times that I've put the CD on while I'm doing other things around the house and I can't believe how soon I'm listening to track 8. Of course, once I hit the end, it usually goes right back to the beginning.

A lot has been made of this album being R.E.M.'s return to Document or Lifes Rich Pageant-style rocking, but I see it going back even farther than that. The really raw rockers - "Living Well..," "Accelerate," "Horse to Water," and "I'm Gonna DJ" sound like an R.E.M. that's really never been put on record before. Rather, it sounds like the band in 1980 and 1981 when they were learning how to be a band and were oozing raw energy on stage. I've never thought that the early albums captured everything that I've heard in all of the live recordings I have from that time. Much of that is probably because the band quickly evolved into something much more than a loud, fast guitar band, but the excitement of those early performances is something that I have always wished would've been captured in the studio. Much of my pining is probably rooted in nostalgia for the band I didn't grow up with, and I certainly don't want to give the impression that I think the early records are lacking.

In a way, this album is the culmination of a slow progression over the past five years of the band re-discovering some of those "learning to be a band" songs. In that time, they've gone back into their stash of 10-15 early R.E.M. songs that never were put on tape and gave them some new life. This started with "All the Right Friends," which was put on the Vanilla Sky soundtrack, "Permanent Vacation" was unearthed for regular live performances, and even though its Genesis was 1985/86, "Bad Day" completed this digging through the unrecorded back catalog. All three of those songs sound like they could be brand-new recordings that belong on Accelerate.

My good writer friend Jess will be very happy to hear that one thing I've really been stricken with on this new album is Michael Stipe's lyrics. I don't always take as much of an interest in the words as I do the sounds, but it's been hard to ignore these. It's obvious from many of the songs here that he wants his frustration with the state of the world now to be known. It's still Stipe, though, so you still have to dig through the words a bit to get to the meaning. There are songs about the media's lack of responsibility, the government's poor response to the Katrina disaster (with the line "If the storm doesn't kill me the government will" printed large on the lyric sheet), and something about Mr. Richards, who's apparently been sent to jail and I can't quite tell if we should sympathize with him or despise him. What I've really noticed about these lyrics, though, is how even they seem to be reaching back to earlier R.E.M. The most obvious is "Sing for the Submarine," where Stipe directly references three old song titles - "Electron Blue," "Feeling Gravity's Pull," and "High Speed Train." In this Pitchfork interview, he explains how these songs are all related as they're about his own dream world. He's a strange guy, yes, but it's refreshing to hear him being so open about his songs, both older and current. A less obvious reference that I've tied, at least in my mind, to an older R.E.M. song is the line "bridge the schism" in "Mr. Richards" which was also used in "Hope" off of Up. I might be reading too much into this, but it's not a too-common phrase, and the song's feeling sort of echoes the repetitive pulse of the older one, as well. I've also taken note of the use of "pageantry" in "Man-Sized Wreath," which I'm tying to the title of their fourth album. Maybe a strech, but I like the idea that Stipe is reaching into the past to make these great new lyrics.

Well, this has taken me as long to write as it's taken to listen to the album one more time. Music will provide the light I cannot resist, indeed. Time to hit play again.

Accelerating

Pitchfork put up their review of Accelerate today. I think it definitely deserves a higher rating than they gave it, but I won't complain about it too much (unlike these guys). However, I was happy to see that the reviewer changed the review mid-day with my correction that R.E.M. had actually toured for Around the Sun. Ooh, I know, wow, I found an error on the internet. Still, I'm glad someone is listening.

Fun pictures of my weekend can be found over at Kat(i)e's Flickr page. Yes, the parenthesis are completely necessary.

Now I'm sitting around here at 38 minutes to midnight and I'm not standing in line at a record store. Unfortunately, I don't know of any in the immediate area here that are open to sell me new R.E.M. the minute the clock turns over to Tuesday. I wonder if the midnight sale is another casualty of online music shops. From my first week at college, when Oasis's Be Here Now was released, I was down at Mike's Movies & Music or City Lights once every few weeks. It was always a good way to procrastinate on my homework. That way, I had something to listen to while I stayed up until 2:00 finishing it all.

I guess I could log into iTunes and download it, but I still want the disc and the artwork and the experience of really buying something I can hold in my hand. There's not even a record store especially close to where I work, so I might have to wait until the end of the work day. For now, I might as well just head over to iLike and give the album one more streaming listen while I again try to finish my homework. I've come a long way.

If You Wanted The Moon

This is one of my favorite live recordings, and I've finally found a video of it on YouTube. I've been looking for this for years. It was recorded at MTV's Inaugural Ball for Clinton in 1993. Enjoy.

Happy Pi Day

Get your fix here.

Live at Stubbs

There's not much to say today. Just go check out R.E.M.'s show they played at SXSW last night. NPR is streaming it.

Kicking, Squealing, Gucci Little Fenway

This year's "Who's playing at Fenway?" rumors have begun, and some sources are putting the best odds on Radiohead. While they might not seem like an obvious choice, in a lot of ways this does make sense. They're already planning to be in North America around the time that these shows usually happen (end of July) and Boston was on the list of cities at which they'll be playing. Most importantly, though, if they're going to play Boston this year they're probably limited to either this gig at Fenway or the Garden because of their self-imposed transportation restrictions. They've said that on this tour they want to minimize their environmental impact. From a study that they did last year, they found that the largest environmental problem of touring usually doesn't come from the band themselves, but rather all of the people driving to the shows. So, that rules out the Tweeter Center in Mansfield, where they played in 2005 (I think). I guess they could also play at the BoA Pavilion, but even though that's close to the downtown, the majority of people still seem to drive there. I can't see Radiohead going out on a summer tour and playing a big indoor arena like the Garden, so chances don't look too bad for Fenway Park. At least I can hope for it.

A few other things:

Dead Flowers has a newly-unearthed recording of a very early Velvet Underground show, which includes a "new" song.

Write a riff about Magic Hat's Pandora's Box beer, win a psychedelic guitar.

This is my New Favorite Place to waste my time online.

Mini Pinball

Okay, this is the last MINI post for a while, I promise. During tonight's Lost I saw a new commercial for the Clubman. Of course, I usually skip the ads with the DVR, but this was worth checking out. The Clubman (in Hot Chocolate, naturally) is sitting at the bottom of a life-sized pinball machine and uses the rear doors to paddle the giant ball through the machine. Unfortunately, I can't find the video online either at YouTube or the Mini website.

I've finally turned my Mini Lust into action. Earlier this week I went to MINI of Peabody and put in an order for a British Racing Green (with silver roof & rear pillars) Clubman S. Unfortunately, after last week's launch they were flooded with orders before I got there, so we'll have to wait until the beginning of May to take delivery of ours. I've waited a few years to get one, so I think I can make it through a few more months.

So, no more MINI talk here for a little while, but I'm sure it'll creep back in here a bit more regularly around mid-April. Let me know if you come across that pinball commercial.

Update: Okay, it just took a quick stupid Google search. Check out the video here.

Anyone have a spare three Mil?

If anyone is looking to add to your record collection, there's a pretty good deal over at eBay right now. I'd be hesitant to bid on this myself unless I could be sure that it would include at least one copy of Radiohead's Drill EP.

Hot Chocolate

Join the Club, Man

Last night we went to Peabody to see the unveiling of the Clubman, the newest model in the MINI Cooper line. The event was catered with lots of English beer and wine, and things like ravioli and mini hot dogs and hamburgers. We milled around for a while until they opened up the doors and let us into the service center, where they had set up a few hundred chairs, a curtain, and a big disco ball. After parading a few of the old, familiar MINI models by us (like a fashion show), we got to the Clubmans. They had four different ones, all of which looked great. Before this, Maura and I had really liked the British Racing Green color, but the new exclusive-to-Clubman Hot Chocolate looks pretty delicious. After the fashion show, we ogled over the cars back in the showroom for a few more minutes and then headed home. It wasn't a bad way to spend the evening. Now we just have to make our final choices from the long list of options and decide when we're going to go place an order for one of our own.

I'll have some pictures of the event up soon. For now, here are a few other things to check out.

Remix your own R.E.M. video.

You can download a lot of Smashing Pumpkins shows directly from their website. I saw them once, in 1999, but haven't been too interested in their recent revival.

Cleaning House

For the most part, I've used this blog as a place to let the world know about things I think the world needs to know. Not that I expect that many people will see it or that many will find it too interesting, but I like to put it out there anyhow. I'm thinking of you, my dear readers (I hope that making that plural is accurate). Well, maybe it's time for me to be a bit more selfish. As part of my recent quest to de-clutter many parts of my life (most notably the floor in my study), I've been looking at my browser that always seems to be overflowing with tabs that I'm going to get back to look at again sometime soon. "Soon." I think that I'm going to try a new experiment where I save/archive these links here, on driveblind, rather than in my broswer tab bar. That way, I'll be able to go back through them when I have the time or desire, and maybe some of you will find something interesting there, as well. The seed for this idea comes from, in a small part, from Brad at Bradley's Alamanac, who mentioned to me once that the origination of his blog was so that he had a place to keep all of his thoughts, ideas, and concert news before he forgot about them. It just happened that it got to be really popular - it certainly helps that he's very gracious with his regular postings of excellent concert recordings that he makes.

This might also mean that there will just be more junk on the site, but I think it's worth a try. I'm also thinking of this as a way to increase the frequency of my updates here, but I really want to avoid posting for posting's sake.

So, here's the first batch of tabs that I can close, finally.

Thom Yorke will be guest DJing on NPR's All Songs Considered tomorrow.

Mark Ronson has done a pretty cool cover of Radiohead's "Just" and has a very appropriate video to go along with it. Fortunately, he doesn't try to hide what he's saying.

This would look cool on the back of my MacBook Pro, but there are probably better ways to spend my money.

How to take care of your car in 75 easy steps. That reminds me, I need to bring the Beetle in for an oil change tomorrow.

If this is a map of web trends, then driveblind.net is a 2-mile walk from the nearest bus stop that will connect you to the commuter rail line that runs its trains twice a day.

Polyethylene was my email alias when I was in college. Looking back, it was a really bad choice (I had to spell it out to everyone), but I really liked the Radiohead b-side from which I'd taken it. So I thought it was cool. I should check out the local band with the same name. They list Radiohead as one of their main influences, so maybe we've had similar inspiration.

Just Release Them Already!

There have been talks of the Beatles on iTunes and The Beatles remastered, for years now. I just saw this quote from mastering engineer Greg Calbi in a CNet article:

They're not being remastered just for iTunes; they're being remastered because they got a deal with iTunes. I was partially involved in the discussions leading up to the remastering sessions; most of the Beatles catalog hasn't been remastered in 20 years.

I'm willing, as I'm sure a lot of people are, to go out and re-buy the entire Beatles catalog once these come out. I have all of the discs from the box set when they were originally put on CD in 1986, but despite the great music the recordings really don't sound that great. They had been mastered for LP and they're missing a lot of the low end and full sound that a recording mastered for CD has. Last year's remastered/mash-up of Beatles songs for Cirque de Soleil, Love showed how really great these songs could sound. I assume that the tracks that were put on that disc are just step one in the remastering process, and there are a lot of other songs to take care of (about 150, I think), but I really am surprised that it's taken so long. Sir Paul's not getting any younger, and Ringo probably wouldn't mind having something else to pad his bank account.

Schmapped

I just found out that some of my photos have been selected for an online travel guide, Schmap. They just found some of my photos on Flickr and have linked to them (with my permission), but it's pretty cool to have some out there. I haven't really looked through this travel site beyond admiring my photos, but maybe I'll think of it before our next trip. The two that were selected were:
Boston, #9 Park
Sydney, Bridge Climb

Somerville's Biggest Pats Fan

This guy made a seamless transition from Christmas to football playoff season with his house decorations. Cars passing by on Medford St. were honking for most of the day before the Super Bowl. Alas, he had completely dismantled the whole showcase by 11:30 Sunday night. Now, we'll just have to wait for St. Patrick's Day.

To the woman who punched my friend on the street after the game last night

It was only a football game. Yeah, I was pretty bummed that the Patriots lost last night, as well. I didn't expect my party to end with Giants fans cheering in my living room, but that's what happened. When they left my house in Somerville, I'm sure that they were very proud to be wearing their Giants sweatshirt and beaming from their team's exciting win. You probably didn't want to see that, but what good did getting in their faces and calling them names, kicking a rear view mirror off his car, and eventually throwing a few punches, do for you? Does that make the Pats loss any more bearable? I feel so bad that my friends were jumped leaving my place. The best that I can take away from the game last night is that the Patriots are still going to be one of the teams to beat next year. They might be back on top, but if this is how the fans react to a loss, as heartbreaking as it is, I'd much rather see them finish 8-8 and finish their season in December. It's only a game.

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