Given the limited time I've been able to work with recently, I know I should be writing about the late, great
Leslie Nielsen, who passed away the other night. I can think of very few entertainers who had as much of an influence on my
sense of humor as he did. Nothing made me laugh harder than some of the facial expressions and idiosyncratic one-liners he
made as Frank Drebin, which is especially remarkable because the man practically reinvented the art of deadpan in the world
of slapstick comedies.
On a recent flight back to DC, I thought of an idea that I hadn't really imagined since
I was in middle school. I was watching the Itchy and Scratchyland episode of the Simpsons and I realized how many
great portions of great jokes would make great song titles. I promptly drew up a fake tracklist of this fake concept album
around that episode. In a tribute to the comedic legacy of Leslie Nielsen, here is a Leslie Nielsen-related concept album
tracklist. The only rule is, each song title has to elicit a funny memory from the show or the actor. I'll post the much better
Simpsons one soon.
Things have no changed since that last entry. Everything is still crazy on my end, and the radio show is
still on the backburner, though I do think about it a lot. Just a quick FYI, RagnaROCK is coming to the DC Arts Center on
January 14th and 15th at 10pm. So, put it on your calendars. More info coming after the holiday.
Given how much
conflict we all face in our daily lives, all the seeminly unattainable goals, and inevitable disappointments, its easy to
lose sight of what's really important. For those reasons, combined with the annual TDC tradition, Thanksgiving is once again
my favorite holiday, and I just wanted to wish all the best to each and every one of you who is still reading this. Here is
your gift, thanks to my good friend Lauren. Have fun and be safe.
Good afternoon and hope your hump day is going well. It’s always hard for me to keep updating this
site with relevant material while the radio show is on brief hiatus, but I figured I’d spell something out about a weird
sub-subgenre that I haven’t been able to get enough of lately. It’s an outgrowth of the mid-to-late 90’s
emo/pop-punk golden age that one could only describe as “young adult contemporary.” I’m not sure if anybody
else uses this label, but I stand behind it. Nearly all of the bands at the forefront (e.g. American Football, Sunday’s Best, or any of the 3 itemized below) were strongly rooted in punk rock and "screamy" hardcore,
yet for several reasons, shaved off the edge that made their music, at one time, difficult to present to mixed company. In
many cases across the board, that proved itself a poor creative decision, but in these particular cases, it fomented a wave
of some of the most beautiful, sincere, and moving tunes to ever hit your local college music store. Evidence follows.
Elliott - False Cathedrals (2000) Tip of the hat to The Cuban Dan from Philly for clueing me into this band. They were an emotastic quintet from Louisville,
Kentucky that started out at the core of the tortured emo, post-hardcore crowd. By the time that they released False Cathedrals
in 2000, singer/guitarist Ben Higdon was singing more like Richard Marx than Jeremy Enigk or the ever-tortured Tim Kinsella.
As horrible as that seems at first mention, when you listen to “Drive On To Me,” you understand why it’s
firmly imbued in my list of 10 favorite songs from the last decade. Suddenly, the piano and the bass battled for supremacy
rather than noisy guitars, and Revelation Records had the sensitive, literary older brother in their family of bands. Here is the place I first found it a couple of years ago, and I hope you like it as much as I do.
"Shallow Like Your Breath"
Weston - Matinee (1997) During Weston’s run of reunion gigs around the East coast these past couple of years, the Lehigh Valley veterans haven’t
been able to get away with playing anything but the well-known gems from their first two albums. A True Story of Teenage
Rebellion and Got Beat Up are both landmarks from the mid-90’s pop punk surge, but describing Matinee
under the same pretenses as the first two albums isn’t fair. By this point, guitarist Jimmy Snyder, complete with his
high-pitched, adolescent wail, had all but taken over the band. They had come to terms with their late 20’s, and were
loathe to write songs about dating cheerleaders and carving cute girls’ names into desktops, because that would have
just been creepy. Instead, they put a gorgeous old movie theater near their hometown on the cover, and wrote a beautiful set
of post-adolescent love songs that would have had a perfect home on adult contemporary radio if there had been any justice
in the world. Only a couple of the songs on here got any play during their late ‘00s, Dave-lost-his-job-so-why-not series
of reunion jaunts, and not a single one landed on the live album they recorded at Maxwell’s last year. “Next to
You at Night” and “In April Sometime” are just as good, and much more heartbreaking, than anything from
the first two records. I usually recommend this album before anything else in their catalog. Listen to it here and tell me if I’m using bad judgment.
"Opening Credits"
Jets to Brazil - Perfecting Loneliness (2002) So, Blake Schwarzenbach may be a great English professor at Hunter College, but did you guys know he is an influential musician,
too? Yeah, he used to be in this band ‘Jawbreaker’ that are important or something. Anyway, after the glass-gargling,
distortion-riding days of Jawbreaker were over, he decided it was time to slow (and water) things down. By the time that they
released their final album in 2002, 6+ minute songs almost seemed second-nature to the guy who once drew fire for dragging
Jawbreaker songs like “Condition Oakland” out past 4 minutes. But now, in retrospect, a record that runs 71 minutes
doesn’t seem so out of place in his body of work, especially since it’s one of the best “autumn” albums
I’ve heard. Much like the turn that Elliott took toward the end of the century, piano suddenly hogged the spotlight,
and nobody was screaming anything. Occasionally, the noise picked up to counter the tender moments like “Lucky Charm,”
but the latter’s aesthetic won out, and it left even more broken hearts in its path. If people in their mid-20’s
could have teenage kids, this is the type of music the kids would endlessly ridicule them for liking. I’m still letting
my mom hear it for a Michael Bolton tape she denies ever owning. My mom would probably like later Jets to Brazil better anyway.
See for yourself here.
Tip of the hat to The Cuban Dan from Philly for clueing me into this band. They were an emotastic quintet from Louisville,
Kentucky that started out at the core of the tortured emo, post-hardcore crowd. By the time that they released False Cathedrals
in 2000, singer/guitarist Ben Higdon was singing more like Richard Marx than Jeremy Enigk or the ever-tortured Tim Kinsella.
As horrible as that seems at first mention, when you listen to “Drive On To Me,” you understand why it’s
firmly imbued in my list of 10 favorite songs from the last decade. Suddenly, the piano and the bass battled for supremacy
rather than noisy guitars, and Revelation Records had the sensitive, literary older brother in their family of bands. 
During Weston’s run of reunion gigs around the East coast these past couple of years, the Lehigh Valley veterans haven’t
been able to get away with playing anything but the well-known gems from their first two albums. A True Story of Teenage
Rebellion and Got Beat Up are both landmarks from the mid-90’s pop punk surge, but describing Matinee
under the same pretenses as the first two albums isn’t fair. By this point, guitarist Jimmy Snyder, complete with his
high-pitched, adolescent wail, had all but taken over the band. They had come to terms with their late 20’s, and were
loathe to write songs about dating cheerleaders and carving cute girls’ names into desktops, because that would have
just been creepy. Instead, they put a gorgeous old movie theater near their hometown on the cover, and wrote a beautiful set
of post-adolescent love songs that would have had a perfect home on adult contemporary radio if there had been any justice
in the world. Only a couple of the songs on here got any play during their late ‘00s, Dave-lost-his-job-so-why-not series
of reunion jaunts, and not a single one landed on the live album they recorded at Maxwell’s last year. “Next to
You at Night” and “In April Sometime” are just as good, and much more heartbreaking, than anything from
the first two records. I usually recommend this album before anything else in their catalog. 
So, Blake Schwarzenbach may be a great English professor at Hunter College, but did you guys know he is an influential musician,
too? Yeah, he used to be in this band ‘Jawbreaker’ that are important or something. Anyway, after the glass-gargling,
distortion-riding days of Jawbreaker were over, he decided it was time to slow (and water) things down. By the time that they
released their final album in 2002, 6+ minute songs almost seemed second-nature to the guy who once drew fire for dragging
Jawbreaker songs like “Condition Oakland” out past 4 minutes. But now, in retrospect, a record that runs 71 minutes
doesn’t seem so out of place in his body of work, especially since it’s one of the best “autumn” albums
I’ve heard. Much like the turn that Elliott took toward the end of the century, piano suddenly hogged the spotlight,
and nobody was screaming anything. Occasionally, the noise picked up to counter the tender moments like “Lucky Charm,”
but the latter’s aesthetic won out, and it left even more broken hearts in its path. If people in their mid-20’s
could have teenage kids, this is the type of music the kids would endlessly ridicule them for liking. I’m still letting
my mom hear it for a Michael Bolton tape she denies ever owning. My mom would probably like later Jets to Brazil better anyway.
