the year in music – 2008…thus far

and so begins my yearly ritual. more to keep track for myself than anything else. this year, i’m including cd purchases AND concerts. because i’m forgetful. and because these things need to be recorded for posterity.

well, that and i want your input on what should be my next purchases. (the list has been updated, upon request, and you can now just mouse over the pictures to see the artist and title. html coding is my friend.)

january:

february:
09 feb 2008 glen phillips – avogadro’s number, ft. collins co.

march:
12 mar 2008 lemonheads – ned’s downtown, albuquerque nm.

april:

may:
01 may 2008 teitur / old springs pike / helgi jonsson – baby grand, wilmington de
02 may 2008 teitur / old springs pike / helgi jonsson – johnny brenda’s, philadelphia pa
03 may 2008 garrison starr – borders, nyc
03 may 2008 teitur / jenny owen youngs / old springs pike / helgi jonsson – bowery ballroom, nyc
09 may 2008 wilco – popejoy hall, albuquerque nm

june:

august:

september:

october:
18 oct 2008 conor oberst – taos solar center, taos nm

november:

december:

Si se puede!

I just got home from the Barack Obama rally. I am tired. I am hoarse. I am hopeful.

It was exciting to volunteer for the campaign, walking the line that stretched for blocks, encouraging people to vote early. It was enlightening to talk to people whose friends were denied the right to vote, even this early in the voting, and are having to fight for the opportunity to exercise their right to vote.

It was comforting to stand next to complete strangers for nearly seven hours, and be able to talk to them like you already knew them. I talked to a representative from the Navajo nation about their fear that the government will begin mining uranium on their land again, and about how the people are so poor and so in need of work that they are not even sure if the fear can overcome their own urges to give in for the money. I talked to people who have been canvassing their neighborhoods so much that they know who is going to answer the door at each house, what that person is going to talk about, and even sometimes what the person will have on their television.

It was hilarious listening to George Lopez talk. That man could have grown up in my house, listening to him talk about bologna with the red plastic string and the guy selling green chile out of his car… How many rallies do you go to, where there are chants of “Odelay!!!”? I love Albuquerque.

But more than anything, it was inspiring to listen to Barack Obama speak. He spoke of how our country needs to be united again. How we are ALL citizens of the “real America”. How the education system needs to be reformed, but how parents need to be responsible for turning off the television and giving their children books.

And probably what resonated the most for me was his love for this country. A country where the child of an immigrant, who didn’t come from a rich or connected family, who worked hard to get through college, who has young children, who believes that the citizens of this country can make it a better place for all its citizens, not just the rich ones… where that person can be President. Because all of those things, they apply not just to him. They apply to me, too.

I hope the fact that nearly 30,000 people showed up to this rally compared to the 1,000 people that showed up to the McCain rally here this morning will correlate to election day. (*edit: the new estimate is that over 45,000 people were in attendance.)

*fingers crossed*

Conor Oberst, Taos 10/18/08

It’s fall break from school, and Conor Oberst was in NM. Talk about timing! We loaded the family into the car and drove 2.5 hours up to Taos to catch the show at the Solar Center.

It was such a fun show. They played almost everything off the new album. (What? You don’t have it yet? Rush out and get it. It’s fantastic!) They opened with Moab, and halfway through, my 8y.o. decided she didn’t want to be in front anymore, so she headed back to the table. The 7y.o. stayed up front for the whole thing, and I think Conor was amused by her because he kept smiling at her. Then, during Reason Pt.1 he climbed off the stage and sat right in front of her and grabbed her hand. The girlies all around me were swooning from his mere proximity.

Highlights of the night were Danny Callahan, I Don’t Want to Die in a Hospital, Souled Out!, and NYC-Gone, Gone. The kiddos crashed as soon as their bottoms hit their car seats, but they’ve been singing his songs all morning, so I think they had a good time.

Full flickr set here.

saying thank you

It seems strange to think that one would have to consider whether a thank you note can be deemed appropriate. I would guess there was a time when a handwritten thank you note was the norm if someone did something nice for you, where it would be considered poor manners if the note weren’t sent.

Nowadays, we send a hasty email. Fairly generic, maybe even with an automated signature. And I’m sure for most situations that an email will suffice.

But what about the situations where it doesn’t seem to be enough?

I’ve recently returned to college after a really long break, and I’m majoring in Biology. Not the easiest subject to jump back into. Remember asking yourself in high school when you would ever use calculus again? Well, I didn’t, so I forgot it, so I had to take it over. That and a myriad of other courses.

It’s been fairly routine for the past three semesters. Coasting through the classes, not really being inspired by much at all, just following the path with my head down, backpack heavy on my shoulders.

I started early in the semester doing review questions for my Plant Form & Function class. I just wasn’t getting what the professor was asking for. So I went to office hours, sat in the little chair across the big desk, and asked about the question. The professor looked at me, and then just sort of reiterated the question again. I again said that I just wasn’t getting what he was asking for. He tilted his head to the side a little, one of those looks that made me feel really small and insignificant, and again basically reiterated the question. But then there was a shift. He told me to try to work it through, and to come back with my ideas the next week and we would talk about what I had done.

I left frustrated and grumbling, quite possibly cursing silently, or not so silently.

And I went home and worked up the question. I crossed it out. Worked it up again. Read some scientific papers to see if I could figure it out, but only felt increasingly stupid. The next week rolled along and I showed up at his office with my scribbly paper in hand, along with another handful of questions that I had jotted into my notebook during class. I was nervous that he was going to give me that look again, the look that maybe I should have just kept answering phones or that I was out of my league.

Instead, he went over the scribbly paper with me. He talked about all the steps of the question. He answered all the little questions I had scrawled into the margins of my class notes. And it all made sense. But not only did it make sense, I wanted to learn more. I drove home puzzling the complexities of enzyme functions in my head. Instead of just plodding along on my path, I started to look around at all the opportunities around me and everything that I had the chance to learn. After every class, I would have a new page full of thoughts and questions that popped into my head during the lecture. And I looked forward to each time that I would get to sit down and talk science with him. He even wrote a letter of reference for me for a research program, which I never imagined I would get after only six weeks of classes.

I would imagine that hundreds of students pass through a class each semester without ever talking to the professors face to face, and would hope that a professor might want to know that there was one student that he really reached. But I find myself wondering if it’s okay to write that thank you note. He will still be my professor for another two weeks, until the Animal Physiology section of the course kicks in. An email seems horribly insufficient. A few lines thanking him for taking the time to write the letter of reference doesn’t seem enough. How do I thank a professor who has inspired me, sincerely and genuinely, without it seeming like I am jockeying for a grade?

Le Teitur

One of my favorite singers is a certain gentleman by the name of Teitur Lassen. Besides being a fantastic musician and songwriter, he is a very funny and smart person.

UncensoredInterview.com has put up some short candid interview clips from when Teitur was recently on tour in the States. He talks about everything from Obama, to dry humping, to Brooklyn (But not together, because that would be weird.) He even talks about music…

Awesome squared

A double dose of awesome for the week:

Local awesome:

My friend’s brother, Joey Hagerty, was selected to be on the U.S. Men’s Gymnastics Olympic team! (That’s him, third from the right.) It’s even more delicious because he was pretty much written off a few years ago when he had shoulder surgery. He’s a total dark-horse contender this year, coming seemingly out of nowhere to be the third man named to the team. You probably won’t hear much about him during the coverage. He’s pretty low-key. But I’ll be wearing my “Team Joey” shirt during the Olympics. Yessiree.

and in the world of…
W W aWesome:

Those in the know have already gone through several changes of underpants in anticipation of…

Yes, that’s right. Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog! A Joss Whedon (swoon) production featuring Neil Patrick Harris (local swoon) as Dr. Horrible and Nathan Fillion (mega-super French accented le swoon) as Captain Hammer. Don’t believe me? Watch the trailer, foolish mortal.

Teaser from Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

Act One premieres FREE on July 15th at DrHorrible.com. Lick it up, baby. Lick. It. Up.

Gratitude

I was thinking the other day about why relationships don’t work out. Why you can be so in love with someone one day and then some time later there is nothing left but hurt and resentment.

I think that when you have so much of your emotional energy tied up into one person, it becomes more difficult as time passes to not associate every emotion with them, whether that person is the cause of the emotion or not. When you are happy, you attribute part of the happiness to them. And when you are angry, you do the same.

With really long relationships, and maybe the reason divorce is so common, we all go into relationships with a set of expectations about our lives and what they are going to be. Then, when the expectations (about our jobs, our lives, anything) aren’t fulfilled, the person closest to you can become the target of that misplaced disappointment. If you always dreamed of becoming an author, then years later it hasn’t happened, it’s easier to blame the person you are with for holding you back or to direct your anger at them than to be grateful to them for sticking around while you were flailing about being miserable.

And maybe once you start hurting each other, you start pushing each other further and further away until nothing is left between you but space. How do you bridge that gap once it is created, and how do you mend the places that don’t seem to fit together anymore?

It would be a much different world if we could somehow try gratitude in place of bitterness.

it might be broken

I’ve been feeling a little bit off for the last few weeks. I’m not sure what it is. The sun is shining, my serotonin levels are up, I just bought new sandals. Life is good. But something feels broken, or at the very least a little bruised.

This happens periodically. I’m not the most consistently chipper girl on the planet, by any stretch of the imagination. What is strange about this time is that my usual fix isn’t working. It used to be that there was certain music that I could listen to that would act as the Neosporin on all the little scrapes and bruises of my psyche. It didn’t fix them, but it made them heal a little faster, with slightly less scarring.

And my music isn’t working anymore. In fact, it feels a little foreign to me right now, like somehow it changed, or maybe I changed. But it’s not the right fit. And instead of making me feel better, it’s just making me feel sad.

I think maybe it’s because the music reminds me too much of a friendship. Well, not even really a friendship, per se. Have you ever met someone that you liked to be around, but the friendship was always more important to you than it was to the other person? Where you are always left feeling like maybe you aren’t funny enough, or smart enough, or special enough to qualify to be that person’s friend? Who needs friendships like that, right? And for this person, I always feel like I am always held at arms length, like I am allowed to exist on the periphery of their existence, but not any closer. And that was enough, for such a long time, that I convinced myself that it was all I was worthy of.

Then I spent time with other friends who brought me in as family, with open arms and open hearts. And I think maybe the contrast between the two made me realize that I’m not only worthy of true, honest friendships, but also that maybe the other relationship isn’t worth all of my energy.

It’s not that the person is a bad person, by any stretch of the imagination. And the person will probably always be a part of my life, but I’ve started to accept the limits of where our relationship lies. I’m done making all the effort though. It’s too exhausting.

Back to the broken – How do you heal when your favorite comfort reminds you of your sadness?

i was maimed by rock and roll

WILCO – Popejoy Hall, Albuquerque NM. 09 May 2008

I was late on the WILCO train. I admit it. I’m probably one of the few people that can say that they started listening to WILCO because they saw The Autumn Defense (John Stirratt and Pat Sansone’s side project) first. But that’s my history. I bought not only my first WILCO cd, but every WILCO cd in 2007 (exception: Mermaid Ave.) This wouldn’t all seem so unusual, had I not lived in the land of WILCO for over five years.

The problem with being a WILCO fan in Chicago? Everyone in Chicago is a WILCO fan. They play 5 night residencies, and every show sells out in seconds. When it was announced that they were going to play a show in my new / old home of Albuquerque, I was a little giddy. I was in a class when pre-sale tickets went on sale, so I relied on my husband to get the tickets. I figured he scored big when I saw the tickets were Orchestra Pit, Row B. I thought “Second row! Woohoo!” When we got to the venue, and the usher showed us our seats?

FIRST ROW! WOOHOO!!!!!!

The opening act was Retribution Gospel Choir. Their music was neither gospel, nor choir. They were kinda Deep Purple-meets Rush-meets pain in my ears. That’s all I have to say about that.

Then… WILCO.

I can’t give you a set list because quite honestly, I was too busy dancing around to even think about song names. This was easily one of the best, if not actually the best, rock concerts I have ever been to. And I’ve been to my share of concerts. I was right at the feet of the guitar genius Nels Cline.

That guy is so good it’s SICK.

But the whole band is good. That’s the thing. Yeah, it’s Tweedy’s show, but you can’t help but absorb it as a band, instead of little pieces. Like, when you see Ryan Adams, sure the Cardinals are good. But it’s all about Ryan Adams. This was pure WILCO.

Song highlights for me: Heavy Metal Drummer, Impossible Germany, Side With the Seeds, A Shot in the Arm, Pot Kettle Black, Handshake Drugs, Ashes of American Flags, Hate It Here.

Sadly for me, my über music crush, Pat Sansone was all the way over on the other side of the stage, leaving me to swoon from afar. Trying to take pictures of him is like trying to photograph a tornado.

All in all, it was a mind-blowing, incredible night. There was really no better way to see a band for the first time than in the front row, surrounded by complete die hard maniacs. Definitely, definitely, definitely go see them if you ever get the chance.

Full flickr set.

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