Yesterday was the closing night of bro-in-law’s final high school musical. Three years ago he had never acted, and last night we were supposed to see him sing an act full of solo songs and take a bow for the final time on his high school stage. And not just him. We’ve watched his castmates transform from shy Sophomores to powerful performers, most of whom we’ll probably never see again.

However, there was the problem of the rain.

In Philly it was just oppressively dreary, but as our car crept northward through NJ it became obvious that the effects of the storm were a little more tangible in our adjoining state.

First, a flooded road. Then, a route with power lines hanging over the road at a precarious 45-degree angle over the asphalt. Next, a traffic accident. Subsequently, downed trees.

When we finally arrived in E’s hometown we discovered the entire township or borough or whatever it is was without power! Even the high school, as her brother informed us sullenly via text.

There would be no closing night.

We drove carefully into E’s family’s cul de sac, black as pitch. After commiserating about the show we ate dinner by candlelight. When we were done, I excused myself to the adjoining room to bang on an out-of-tune piano I’ve been promising to have tuned for years.

As I bashed through cover songs, carefully avoiding the most dissonant keys, I contemplated.

We had ascribed so much value and meaning to the closing night. We came for the opening weekend too, but the last show was supposed to be extra special.

Now, it didn’t exist. No final hurrah for the cast to sing even better or for us to clap even louder.

We didn’t get a closing night, but I’m still just as proud of our brother. And, in retrospect, I clapped just as hard as I could clap when we saw him last weekend.

The significant thing was really how many times I’ve seen him bow over the past three years – and how proud and loud I have been the entire time.

The significance isn’t in the next moment – it’s in the last ones. It’s in the moments of progress, not just the destination.

We loaded up the car to head home rather than brave the blackout for the night. Two minutes from E’s house we noticed a Target sign, lit up in red.

The power was back.

Bathed in the neon glow of stores powering up from their slumber, I wondered about my moments. Am I living my life now, or waiting for the next chance to live it? Am I waiting for the next show to play better? Waiting for the right moment to kiss E like I mean it?

Our route home was flooded, and E wanted to turn back. I rested my head on her shoulder as we paused in the jughandle, awaiting our turn.

“Do you want to go home to Philly?” I asked her?

She nodded yes.

“Then we’ll find a way to get there.”

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1. Doppelgangers
2. Don’t Play That Song (A Trio of Links)
3. all the world’s a stage

Recently one of her finds was an awesome Brit blog A New Band a Day, which provides literate, in-depth looks at young bands on a daily basis. Author Joe Sparrow is deft and opinionated, and the combination makes for a blog filled with love letters to music and withering op eds.

One such op ed that got my attention was “The Trouble With Live Gigs,” which lamented the false promise that live is the only way to hear music. I responded at length in comments, and Joe was so ultimately cool as to collect my commentary into a massive guest editorial, which runs today.

Head over to read The Trouble With Live Gigs: A Response, by yours truly. And stay awhile to discover and download new music.

Bonus new music: Want the Philly local equivalent of New Band a Day? Philebrity just posted ten of their favorite tracks from Philly’s indie music scene, with photos, writeups, and streams for each band.

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2. invoke the infield fly rule!
3. Found a Catfish Haven

This is especially tricky for me, since I turn into a very unmusical pumpkin if I stay out past midnight, but this week I had motivation – I was determined to get my new tune “Dumbest Thing I Could Do” out of my living room (where I blurrily video-demoed it earlier this week) and into the ears of as many people as possible.

Thursdays present a perfect non-pumpkin opportunity to do just that. First, hit the early open mic at Crossroads hosted by my dear friend Victoria Spaeth. Then hit a standard-timed one, playing in the first half. A popular choice is to hit nearby Buckets bar & Grill after Crossroads, but that puts me farther from home. Instead, I substituted McGillin’s, a super-popular pub in Center City.

Crossroads Coffee
Crossroads is an unpretentious coffee shop on Ridge Avenue in Roxborough/Manayunk. The counter at the front the shop opens up to a two-story, all-wooden room complete with a wrap-around balcony on the second level.

While I wish it had more of their comfortable armchairs and that the balcony was given more attention, I love the space for its golden natural acoustics. You barely need amplification. Also, the staff is super-friendly (shoutout to MIKE!) – full of suggestions of pescetarian food and their favorite drinks (last night: chai latte with a shot of espresso, which would have turned me into a human squirrel, so I just had tea).

The open mic was front-loaded with a lot of my favorite Philly performers. Vicky is quickly becoming one of the best singer-songwriters in the entire Philly scene, and now that she plays with a band it’s a rare treat to see her solo – especially doing newer tunes like “Electric Love.” (I’m still hunting a solo version of “Breathe & Release,” which may wind up being my song-of-the-year if she finishes recording the damn thing).

After our back-to-back sets I caught up with Joshua Popejoy (disclosure: client; awesome acoustic rocker) who is putting the finishing touches on a solo record bearing the title After the Ash. I have been dying for a studio version of at least half of the tracklist, so I encouraged him to FINISH IT ALREADY! (I can shout these things because I actually finished my own long-promised solo record.)

I also chatted up my open mic buds Bill McConney and Alec Stewart, both in fine form. Plus, Aaron Brown, who I’ve rhapsodized over previously. He’s got a songwriters-in-the-round show coming up at Tin Angel on 4/15.

Crossroads Coffee House. Thursday night open mic, signup ~6:30pm, music ~7:15pm. Usually limited to ten acts, two songs each. 6156 Ridge Ave., Philly, 19128. (Hint: Take the 9 bus from Walnut up Ridge Ave.)

After another songwriter (whose name I missed! I’m lame!) I had to excuse myself to bus down to CC, though in retrospect I could have spared another half hour. Deposited at Broad & Chestnut (by a Septa bus that did its best to run me over while I stood INSIDE THE BUS STOP), I wandered in a circle trying to remember which street leads to the special Underland occupied by McGillin’s.

McGillin’s
McGillin’s is the oldest continuously operating tavern in Philadelphia. It’s tavern in the classic sense – not dive-y in the least, a menu full of hearty, affordable food, and a lengthy beer list.

The best time you can have there is with a big crowd – either of your own making, or during one of their famously great karaoke nights. However, it’s a Philly open-secret that they also host an open mic night on Thursdays in their upper level, with its 20-foot antique oak bar.

The McGillin’s open mic is cool for a few reasons. The aforementioned food is high on the list. The setup includes a raised stage, sturdy stools, and a spiffy pair of wireless mics. The room can be still packed from happy hour, which gives you an audience happy to sing along to covers. And, host Mark is the friendliest possible dude in the world – affable, knowledgeable, and he makes me feel like I’m playing Madison Square Garden.

Last night the lineup was sparse, which meant mega sets for all. I played a monstrous five songs, including “Bad Romance” (HUT!) and a slinky, sweaty, rocking version of “Dumbest Thing I Could Do” (YES!).

While Mark played I got to know Philly bassist Mitch Beer. Mitch splits time between his supergroups BAM! and Soulfatronic while gigging with other local and national acts. He toured with Diggable Planets last fall, and might be heading out with them again soon! A very cool dude I hope to meet again.

McGillin’s Old Ale House. Thursday night open mic, signup from 9pm, start varies. 1310 Drury St., 19107. (Hint: Walk south on 13th from Chestnut; Drury is on your right.)

All in all, a great night of music. I even made it home before pumpkin time!

Related posts:

1. Open Mic-ing: Time, and the stuff that happens there
2. Monday @ Downey’s Open Mic
3. And So It Goes

As a remedy, our first order of business was to head to one of our favorite open mics – at Time Restaurant on Sansom Street.

Time is one of the nicest rooms hosting an open mic in Philly at the moment. Beautiful atmosphere, great wines and beers, an actual stage(!) with drums and an upright piano, and an always chill audience who actually listen. Plus, a super-cool pair of attentive hosts in Mark and Pete G.

Then there are the artists. Time tends to be a hub of cool musicians, and you never know who you’ll run into. Tuesday it was Cris Valkyria, Casey Alvarez, Dante Bucci, Victoria Spaeth, and a lot of other familiar faces. New ones too – Benn Rabb visiting from Connecticut, and the nicest possible dude named Nathan, whose CD (and last name) is still in Gina’s possession.

Unusually, there was only a single microphone stand around for the night.

If you’ve ever seen (or even heard) Gina and I, nearly every one of our tunes has heavy duty harmony throughout. When I saw the single stand, I had a prima donna moment where I was like, “How can we even do this? WTF?”

I decided to turn a weakness to a strength. What if we did our hardest core of hard core harmony tunes together – face-to-face on a single mic? Wouldn’t it just make the spectacle of us a little more spectacular?

Well, I think it did. And, honestly, it was a lot of fun. We’re so used to our unamplified, unmodified voices that many times striking a perfect blend through a PA system can be more than a little daunting. What better solution than to just put the two of us into a tiny space and let us feel things out?

We played a good set, and had a good time. If you’re a Philly songwriter – or, a Philly wine-lover who also digs singer-songwriters – Time on Tuesday nights is prime destination.

Time Restaurant. Tuesday night open mic starts around 10pm. 1315 Sansom Street, Philly, 19107.

Related posts:

1. Open Mic-ing: Crossroads to McGillin’s, and the distance between
2. Monday @ Downey’s Open Mic
3. Arcati Crisis Upstairs@Zot

WTF, am I doing a meme? Yes, because one of my favorite bloggers and virtual pals Kari from Inflammatory Writ addressed this very interesting set of questions to the internet at large, and I found them compelling.

I guess that’s how memes start. It’s like mono getting passed around in your Junior year of high school – everybody thought it was a good idea to kiss that one boy, and things just spiraled out of control from there.

Anyhow, here we go.

Novel you wish you’d written
When it comes to tone, of course I would want to have written a Douglas Adams Hitchhikers novel – either the eponymous one, or So Long and Thanks for all the Fish, which I adore. It’s not only the irreverence, but the ability to casually state ridiculous, farfetched notions as fact.

As for an entire work, tone and content and all, can we count Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas as a novel? It is semi-fictionalized, after all. That is far and away my favorite collection of printed pages bound together with a spine and a cover. I read it several times a year.

(If I can count a comic book, the original run of Gen 13, because I HAD ALREADY WRITTEN IT before it came out. Argh.)

TV you wish you could have been/could be a staff writer on
I’d say the West Wing for sheer quality, but they didn’t have staff writers, huh? In current TV, Supernatural, because I think they do a highly underrated job of combining comedy, drama, and horror.

If I can time travel, any season of The X-Files or Buffy, because they both changed the way we watch teevee and both turned out to be a masters class of televised sci-fi. Especially with Buffy, those writers now write, produce, and show-run seemingly every good fantastical show on the air.

Or, I Love Lucy, because it was the greatest television program ever aired, no matter what my wife thinks.

(That said, I’d probably want to be nowhere near the writer’s room of any show I even half-like, because it’s a maddening position to be in! Like, I wish I could go to Battlestar Galactica’s writer’s room during 4.5 and just smack them in the side of the head for every drawn out scene of Eddie Olmos screaming or crying. But, by virtue of being in the room I wouldn’t see the utter wince-y-ness of that, and would probably think it was a good idea.)

Blog you wish you’d started
Pitchfork or LargeHearted Boy. I think if I wasn’t so caught up in the making of music I’d love to cultivate a blog devoted to the consumption and evaluation of it.

Play you wish you’d written
The House of Yes. Dark, wicked, genius.

If we can count musicals, of course I’d say Hedwig. Or, Hair, just so I could have written both “Let the Sunshine In” and “Sodomy.” What an oeuvre.

Poem you wish you’d written
I like a lot of poetry, but I don’t have a lot of favorite poems. One I particularly connect to is Sylvia Plath’s last one, Edge. I love the form of it, but also I feel like it emerged from a certain sort of resigned desperation that most people (and poets) dare not cultivate. So, I suppose I wish I could write it without visiting that place?

(I once wrote a poem to match it for a college class, and nine years later it still resonates pretty strongly. I suppose I was both desperate and resigned at the time, to a degree.)

Screenplay you wish you’d written
It’s hard to separate good movies from good screenplays in my head. Like, The Prestige is an amazing movie, but I think that’s more in the directing and acting than the screenplay. Similarly, The Fountain has a beautiful plot, but it’s hard to separate that from Aronofsky’s vision.

I am tempted to say The Royal Tenenbaums, but that’s another director-as-auteur flick. Let’s go with The Princess Bride. There’s a movie whose success is inexorably linked to how it appeared on the page.

Song you wish you’d written
Good lord, how do you choose? If I could have just one it would probably be “Poses” by Rufus Wainwright. It’s not my favorite song, but it captures a particular snapshot of me so perfectly.

(More recently, “She Doesn’t Get It” by The Format. Less recently, any of these ten songs.)

Blogger with skillz (or readership, for that matter) you wish you could steal:
Oh, dear.

At the moment I’d say Seth Godin. How does one man make every post so thought-provoking? Unreal. I could write a blog dedicated to parsing his blog. I’m always sending his posts to my friends.

And, I guess, Dooce. Not because she is the most widely-known blogger on the planet – she can keep her readership! It’s more that no single person in the universe makes me laugh out loud as frequently as she does – except for maybe Tina Fey. Many of my favorite posts on CK are when I adopt a Dooce-ish tone.

(ZOMG, do you remember way back when I blogged about Dooce getting Dooced? No? Well, I do, because I am elderly in blog years. Good times. )

–

I think it’s interesting how a few of my answers focus on things that are funny. I claim to not enjoy funny things, but I think what I really mean is, “mainstream comedy does not typically appeal to me.” I don’t like most sitcoms and funny movies.

I do love to laugh.

When I was a child I wanted to be a comedian for a living. True story.

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1. Live From the Icebox
2. Getting Regular: OCD moms, Suck flashback, pop economics, APOD, and other think-provoking links.
3. February Funk

I have so much weekend to tell you about (Presenting at TrendCamp! Our first Arcati Crisis show of 2010! Another performance upcoming at Tin Angel!), but first I want to focus on my funk-breaking.

Even the cheeriest, most pro-active person (i.e., me, possibly you?) can fall prey to a crummy mood – where nothing we do seems to be worth doing. That was my February Funk.

Of course, funk is not exclusive to or contained within February. Nay, THE FUNK can capture you at any time of year. We’re just most susceptible when it’s dark and icy and we haven’t had a garbage collection for 16 days.

When you are me, and spend your spare time opening up your head and letting art out, THE FUNK is a pretty crippling condition. My internal editor is vicious enough already without any added incentive!

Luckily, I have the good fortune to be friends with many other people who have art inside of their heads, one of whom is Katie Barbato.

I’ve blogged about Katie before. She is an outstanding songwriter, a typically flawless singer, and leader of The Sleepwells, one of my favorite local bands.

Katie, too, had fallen prey to THE FUNK, and invited me over to her apartment for a serious funk break-up session. There was fresh hummus, sugar cookies, a stunning view, and Katie and her amazing songs.

And calling it quits with THE FUNK.

Over several hours Katie and I curated our own special mashup of VH1 Storytellers and Rock Opera, following a narrative from the dumbest things we could do to contending with the apocalypse to the stories of what we had lost in 2009.

Sometimes I can be so insular in my shared songwriting space with Gina that I forget that there are others out there channeling their feelings into songs – and that their feelings can be pretty similar to my own.

Not only did Katie share feelings, but she shared some stunning tunes. A few familiar ones, as well as some brand new ones being birthed. Katie writes with such beautiful, intuitive voice-leading – it was a special treat to follow along from across the couch instead of from across the bar. I should have been jotting down the names of tunes as we went, because I came away with several new favorites.

By the time we made it to our last songs and I played the mated pair of “Shake It Off” and “Regenerate” their equal parts rage and resignation came hurtling through me so strongly that my whole body was trembling for minutes afterwards.

As I wrapped myself up for a walk home through twinkling flakes of snow, I realized that Katie and I had shaken off THE FUNK. It was replaced with the purpose and self-respect I had been missing.

Every day since then has been awesome. Thank you, Katie, for sharing your songs and having the sense to shake us out of THE FUNK!

Gentle readers, if you too find yourself mired in funkiness you should seek out the coolest person you have interests in common with and have them BREAK YOU OUT!

I have a bit more news about Ms. Barbato and The Sleepwells, but that will have to keep for another few days. Let’s just say, you’ll have a chance to see a version of our funk-breaking shtick for yourself very soon…

Related posts:

1. February Funk
2. Not Dead, Just Floating
3. Philly: Seen on the Scene

I have never seen a show at First Unitarian before (blasphemy for a Philly music-lover, I know). The show was upstairs in the church proper – a church in the warmest and most inviting sense, and with wonderful acoustics. It was a perfect fit for St. Vincent’s precise, melodic orchestrations.

Backed by a woodwind player, violinist, bassist, and a spectacular drummer, St. Vincent stunned me throughout her set. I think I was most stunned because I got to take the show in alone and with no context – alone in my head, contending with such a remarkable show.

I like going to concerts alone. For all the fun of sharing a music experience with friends, their proximity can take me out of my connection to the music. Are they comfortable? Can they see? Do they know this song? Why don’t they want to dance? Sitting solo at the end of a pew my connection to the music was direct – some songs found my gaze raptly on her fingers, others eyes closed and inside of my own head.

As for context, I don’t really know anything about St. Vincent – I didn’t even know what instrument(s) she would be playing! That left me completely agog at how her five-piece recreated lush album arrangements with both fidelity and embellishment.

Most of my St. Vincent listening is spent repeating first half of 2009’s Actor, so I was worried I’d be bored after she tore through spotless takes on “Save Me From What I Want,” “Neighbors,” “Laughing With a Mouth Full of Blood,” and a crunchy “Actor Out of Work” for her first four tunes. That boredom never came. Even as we tread into songs I recognized less, each was intelligible and compelling. Neither foreknowledge nor committing songs to memory were pre-requisites for enjoying the performance.

I came away completely in awe of Annie Clark AKA St. Vincent. Her vocals were perfectly controlled throughout the show, on par with or besting her delivery on disc. Especially impressive was her guitar work, which is obscured beneath lush arrangements on LP. At the show it was much more prominent. On “Mouth Full of Blood” she navigated a series of classical-style walks and hammers, but she also worked fuzzed out riffs on the later “Marrow,” and an evocative solo and blast of utter noise on encore “Your Lips Are Red.” Also, her clean guitar tone was simply to-die-for.

Clark was winsome between tunes, gently thanking a crowd that receded into rapt silence after each bout of thunderous applause. She was clearly delighted to be playing for us, and was disarmingly frank when she confessed to the effect of, “Philly shows are great.”

I have to applaud local promoters R5 Productions for the presentation. The show was sold out, but not oversold – everyone was comfortably seated. The mixing was utterly perfect, whether that was due to St. V’s front of house guy or a well plotted sound system (probably both).

Altogether, a fantastic experience. I’m so happy that snow and slow SEPTA didn’t leave me couchbound for the night.

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How? Here’s a glimpse:

I don’t have a driver’s license, I don’t have any debt, I don’t live in a house, I cook everything from scratch, I cut my own hair, I practically never buy new or anything at all for that matter, I am not on any prescription medicines, and I am in great physical shape.

Essentially, he has eliminated the American addiction for conspicuous consumption from his financial diet, and it hasn’t left much else to spend on. I can definitely appreciate his no-frills approach to spending – even within my yuppy, metro life I’ve managed to live marginally.

For a more detailed analysis of how Jacob works his magic, see his recent post Your budget is like a sinking ship. He literally compares the average American budget to a ship, showing how you can plug the leaks. He also aggregates the spend on some common items – like clothing and furniture – across a lifetime, like so:

$2688 a year or a lifetime cost of more than $200,000 simply to have other people prepare your food. If the average income is, let’s say 40000 after tax, would you really want to work 5 years of your life just so you can eat a meal you didn’t make yourself a couple of times a week for the rest of your life?

While his simplistic living might seem beyond your ability to withstand, his bottom line can make sense for anyone – identify the quality of life that you want, and then plug the leaks.

Related posts:

1. Living Marginally
2. The Cost of Maintaining Me
3. Resolving to be more resolved actually made me more resolute.

No matter your sentiment on her music, Gaga’s outreach to fans has been nearly flawless from day one. Note that none of the five points involve buying or selling anything. What makes Gaga’s brand so powerful is she gives away a package of inclusiveness and mythology (not so dissimilar from Tori Amos’s strong success in the 90’s).

You’ve somehow been spared my intense Gaga addiction for the majority of the past year. Suffice to say, I am fully subscribed to her.

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Of all the people to contemplate that question, you wouldn’t expect one to be the founder of Bandcamp, the kick-ass digital music publishing platform that allows any band to adopt the recent Radiohead model of “pay what you will” and “choose your own file format.”

Yet, last month Bandcamp released their first ever physical record as an unlabel, an album by ukulele-ist Sophie Madeleine. It’s literally a record – a beautiful piece of red vinyl with screen-printed artwork, along with a digital download of the album. The release is limited to a mere 500 copies.

Not only is their unlabel model intriguing, and not only does founder Ethan Diamond have great taste in collateral (including Edward Tufte’s beautiful Visual Explanations), but the Bandcamp folks have a mind towards music as anthropology and not just noise:

[The album] must somehow be made into an object that every one of your fans has to own, has to hold while they listen to your music, and has to show to all of their friends. It must be transformed from a disposable good into something your fans will fetishize.

Ethan raises a point that will dominate this decade of music sales. People don’t cultivate large physical collections of music the way they used to. My friends are typically shocked when they witness the number of shelved CDs in my living room.

To get someone to buy an album instead of downloading its contents – legally or illegally – the media has to be more than a vehicle for the music. Record companies have it only half right when they stuff on video clips and re-purposed press kits. They tend to be of a “use once a destroy” value.

The whole point is to create something no one would destroy – something they want to keep, touch, share, and revisit.

Clearly, Bandcamp isn’t just about digital music distribution – it’s about musical modernism. Providing pain-free downloads and designing killer album packages both serve the same purpose: promoting music.

Disclosure: My new LP is available for download exclusively via Bandcamp, as is E’s band Filmstar’s first demo.

Related posts:

1. Did CD Baby sell out indie artists on digital distribution?
2. You can download my album for free!
3. Brown Bag Demos, Vol. 1