Am I cock-blocking squirrels?

Autumn is here. Biking about whatever this is called I hear the beautiful crunch of leaves beneath my tires. For me, this is a reassuring sound. It sounds like a slow move towards some sort of progress. As I head towards the top of the hill, I’m glad to look down below and coast for the next several minutes.

Unfortunately, my joy takes away from squirrels. I noticed it on my bike ride today. Whenever I got close to two squirrels frolicking, pouncing on each other with abandon, they split apart. The squirrels separated into two distinct entities, rather than that one blur of fur and love. Am I cock-blocking them? Are their lives becoming worse now that I interrupted their affection with my affection for a machine?

Maybe one of those squirrels was a day trader. Perhaps he earned good money and hoped to settle down. When he woke up that morning, he noticed gray hairs on his head. Even though he can afford to live in a desirable part of Brooklyn with ease, he realizes he’s no longer young. Going through his record collection, he’s realized he’s losing his edge. The only band whose new album he got was Arcade Fire’s “The Suburbs”. Already his tastes dictate that he should be a ‘cool dad’ but without any young squirrels to look after, he’s feeling alone. Most of his friends already have a house in the suburbs; they gave up the rigors of city life. Years are passing him by as he attends more and more weddings, looking at the lovely newborns. 

The other squirrel took a more creative job. She worked at Melville House. DUMBO seemed to be changing. Though she greatly enjoyed editing Tao Lin’s “Richard Yates” book, she began to wonder if this is it. Maybe it was time to leave the city and settle down. She goes to relevant art gallery showings in Park Slope, Williamsburg, and Bushwick. But she’s starting to realize she’s getting to be the older one at these gatherings. 

That’s when he saw her. She saw him. It felt right. Each part complemented the other. Both of them shared similar moderately liberal views. Rather than move to the suburbs, they’d raise their squirrel young in the city to keep them cosmopolitan. Together they began running, jumping up and down off trees, relieved they had found each other before it was too late. No longer would they be forced to handle the cold of winter alone. Instead each of them could wrap themselves in the other one's tail, forming a perfect ying and yang of harmony.

But what the hell is that coming towards us each one exclaims simultaneously. A blue streak making a vast racket is moving at such a fast pace. Thankfully we’re squirrels so we can outrun it. But which way should we run? 

Squirrel nature dictates that they run to where they were last safe. So in the middle of the street one runs to the left, one runs to the right. Before they separate they make their final goodbyes knowing they’ll never meet again. He didn’t add her on facebook, she didn’t add him on facebook. Their meeting was so fleeting. Instead they’ll just go back to the misery of squirrel online dating, hoping to meet squirrels that don’t heavily abuse drugs and express some interest in upper-middle class things like Piet Mondrian paintings, aging YUPPIE bands like Yo La Tengo, and burying nuts in the ground.

She’ll end up meeting some squirrel who is nowhere as cool. Rather than a hip cool one like the one I tore away from her, a biology teacher for the 7^th grade will do. His last name will be pronounced “Sack-Her” as he tells her, flashing a lame grin. Together they’ll settle into some comfortable suburb outside of Chicago and he’ll insist that instead of raising the kids on religion, he wants to raise them on the morals displayed in old comic books.  Looks-wise, he’ll look strikingly similar to Gary Sinise if Gary Sinise was a squirrel.

He’ll end up meeting a squirrel at a luncheon for one of his charitable events. Together they’ll talk about the need to find a cure for autism in squirrels. Eventually as the conversation progresses both will realize they went to same Catholic schools as children. Slowly they will come closer together. Compromises will be made and the kids shall be raised by some sort of laissez-faire Catholicism, with the major sins discussed (like murder, stealing to prevent their children from climbing on furniture to take their sweets) and the minor ones left out. 

Neither squirrel shall feel as complete as they would have in the original relationship though. Each one of their partners lacks the cool, lacks the initial spark. It feels as if they are “settling down” rather than “falling in love”.

I offer my sincerest apologies to these squirrels. To relieve their pain, I too go through similar circumstances myself, as a human being. Next time I see two squirrels in the sweet throes of embrace, I’ll make sure go to the other side of the street.

Does New Jersey get New York’s “Sloppy Seconds” (tour-wise)?

New Jersey is a small plot of land adjacent to New York City and the surrounding area. Originally settled by well-to-do Dutchmen, it decreased in importance as New York began its ascent into the upper stratosphere of cool. Meanwhile, New Jersey continued being more relevant than Delaware, that combination hick/pollution state.

Bands know this. Every time a major band tours, they always hit New York. Hell, they even might do a few shows upstate. People from New Jersey know this as they have to take the colossal failure known as New Jersey transit, transferring multiple times before they arrive in Penn Station, before taking yet another train to Brooklyn.

Despite their obvious limitations, New Jersey can attract touring bands in a large variety of ways:

1.       When you arrive into Newark airport, you see a stop for a “Penn Station” only it isn’t actually in New York but in the industrial armpit known as Newark. Bands who have English as a second or third language thus get fooled into playing for the hipsters in the area who were too poor to afford New York

2.       Newark airport looms large over this one as well. As you wait for your flight out of Newark, you can decide to play a small show in Hoboken. Hoboken is kind of like Williamsburg except older and with Hipsters having evolved into the next phases of life, both cool dads and yuppies. That way you can make enough to afford one of those in flight sandwiches as you head towards a hipper city like Austin or Portland.

3.       This is called the “Mom and Pop” theory. Like Long Island, many people in New Jersey immediately realized how boring and lame their state was. Upon their graduation from High School, they applied to whatever New York based school they could and never looked back. James Murphy of LCD Soundsystem fame did this, as did countless others. Eventually you’re forced to at least keep in touch with those who spawned you. Thus, a short stop to collect money and affection makes economic sense. Call it the “parents show”.

4.       You are on the New Jersey turnpike and understand why truck drivers get paid more for driving up North (this is assuming you’re a band outside the Northeast area). Slowly but surely you lose your mind and get hopelessly. Eventually you find an ultra-shitty (and actually sort of creepy) small bar and are forced to play in order to obtain free beer and Buffalo wings. Your life is at an all-time low. The reverse works for bands coming from up north going to PA, etc.

So New Jersey doesn’t offer any coolness of its own. Instead, it holds this “mooching pattern” as a way of siphoning off the cool, kind of like how you used to impress others by stealing your cooler sibling’s clothing. You didn’t know it was cool; you had just run out of things to wear and failed to understand basic laundry etiquette.

Hopefully at some point New Jersey evolves beyond this wretched cultural starvation. Perhaps someday bands really will want to tour there, instead of just being sort of stuck there waiting for their plane or getting horribly lost.

Will “Steelywave” wash over us in 2011?

Lo-fi didn’t always rule over us with a rusty iron grip. Back in the early 2000s, there was a movement towards excessive high fidelity, up to the point of almost sheer absurdity. Part of that had to do with IDM’s fascination of perfect sound, the beginning of MP3 sharing of “bedroom musicians” and the glitch movement. Bedroom musicians used to spend inordinate periods of time on their music, making sure it sounded sure of itself and fully polished. Radio still maintained a greater importance, and you could find alternative kinds of music from major stations (though it did happen mostly at night). Glitch, although supposedly focused on digital error, ended up having some very pristine, highly processed sound.

            Now that so many bands sound like “they recorded inside a bum’s ass” there’s bound to be some sort of indie rejection of what has become a norm for so many bands. Certain bands have already caught onto this, cleaning up sound that had previously been messier, like Neon Indian on that one new song, Ariel Pink on his newest album, or Nite Jewel on her new EP. Eventually these outliers will become the trendsetters, if it already hasn’t happened.

            Part of this lo-fi came from nostalgia for the “unremembered 80s” but what about the “yet to be mined for material” late 70s? And now, I’m not talking about No Wave and Punk. Punk died. No Wave may be explored, but so far precious few bands have tackled the difficult style. I’m talking about light jazz-rock fusion, you know, Steely Dan. Steely Dan, that YUPPIE band which played the YUPPIEST of music to investment bankers and other assorted rich New Yorkers, is poised to make a giant comeback.

            In terms of comeback, I don’t mean their ghoulish faces haunting your children’s nightmares, though they are legendary for being hideous people. Instead, they might decide that now, with interest in disco coming back, light jazz-rock fusion might be next.

            How do they take advantage of this? Well, they can use their extremely obnoxious sense of humor, like they did once they sent a letter to Owen Wilson about his role in “You, Me, and Dupree”. Perhaps sending a letter to Pitchfork about how hard they suck it and with rewrites of their album reviews, to make those albums look thrilling. Basically, the heavy irony they already incorporate in their day to day lives (from being assholes) will help to build a following among young people everywhere.

            Marketing will be important, so they might want to do something to be funny and get it somewhere besides their embarrassingly bad website, which looks like it was designed by your grandfather. I’d suggest crashing a party, or acting like the creepy weirdos you describe in so many of your songs. Or just write parodies of your old songs:

“Driving like a tool out to Hackensack

Snorting coke off of a hooker’s crack”

-Daddy Don’t Live in that New York City No More

            Failing this, there’s an easier way: re-edits. They’ve already been done with equally cheesy music (disco) and you don’t have to write any new songs. Get Todd Terje to come on in, and re-edit all your songs. He can even edit out those things you hate in music, like passion, emotion, and raw talent. Instead, all that will be left is your unhip sound, made hip using technology. Think of it as a facelift for music. I’m sure your old-school fans are more than familiar with the procedure.