In The New Year

And, just like The Walkmen, I know that it's true, it's gonna be a good year. Unlike those guys, no skeleton makeup for me.

My 19 Favorite Tunes of 2008

So, tell me, does the album even matter anymore? When I think about a really awesome album like The Who's Quadrophenia or The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's or The Clash's London Calling, these were more than a collection of songs, they were cohesive works of art.

Today, I very rarely listen to an album as a single work of art. More often than not, I listen to a song here or there because that's how I buy music. I think because of the series of tubes known as teh internets, we listen to music differently now. The era of the single is back, the era of the long-playing album is over. Of course, feel free to disagree with me as Paul Boll did over FredBurgers at lunch yesterday afternoon.

Anyway, I don't really think I can put together even a short list of best albums because I don't feel I have the opportunity to listen to enough albums to even put together a short list.

Don't get me wrong, there were some albums I really liked. Alejandro Escovedo's Real Animal may be the best album he's ever done. British Sea Power's Do You Like Rock Music? was an impressive piece of power pop. But I'm not sure the album really matters anymore.

Whether albums matter or not, I thought this was a great year for music. Here are my 19 favorite songs of the year, in something approximating order of preference. Listen, enjoy, react, disagree:

1. "Constructive Summer," The Hold Steady
The Hold Steady seems to inspire lots of debate -- some minimize them as just a bar band and other call lead singer Craig Finn pop music's answer to John Updike. The truth is probably somewhere in between -- they are a cerebral bunch of rockers who play with a lot of heart. Honestly, they remind me a lot of another outfit with Twin Cities roots, Soul Asylum. "Constructive Summer" was completely brilliant -- I could listen to it 10 times in a row right now.



2. "Sex on Fire," Kings of Leon
I was surprised this wasn't a bigger hit. I felt that this song could be a huge hit of "Hey Ya" type magnitude. It wasn't, but it was still a No. 1 hit in the UK. Lead singer Caleb Followill is sort of the male Lucinda Williams -- with that kind of raspy, ragged vocal. Not everyone's taste, but I kind of like it. Watch the video here.

3. "L.E.S. Artistes," Santogold
I think of Santi White, also known as Santogold, as an Eighties throwback -- a little bit of Blondie, Grace Jones and Siouxsie Sioux mixed up into a souffle of awesomeness. She really should be a big, big star -- in a better world, she'd be Beyonce.



4. "So Said What," French Kicks
Which Brooklyn under-the-radar supergroup do you like better -- the French Kicks or The Walkmen? The way you answer that question reveals ... something. I actually prefer the French Kicks, if for no other reason than The Walkmen are better known for their version of Mazarin's "Another One Goes By" than Mazarin is. Yeah, I'm splitting hairs because The Walkmen are rad, too. But the French Kicks ... they're just a wee bit radder. This song channels a certain Beach Boys easiness with a post-punk vibe. It's a real feel-good song.

5. "Grace," Goodwin
This is a total homer pick. I love Fort Worth. I love power pop. Tony Diaz and Daniel Gomez put those two things together quite nicely. Continue to rock, gentlemen. Here they are playing down the street from my house at The Moon.




6. "Sister Lost Soul," Alejandro Escovedo
Back in my Austin days, I worked at the same Sound Warehouse as Alejandro. I still remember the day his then wife (or ex-wife) killed herself. That's a trauma that I still think he wrestles with, and I think you can hear it in this song.



7. "Can’t Say No," Helio Sequence
I've been listening to a lot of KEXP (Damn you, Dominick!), so I've been brainwashed by the Seattle Music Mafia. All the same, Keep Your Eyes Ahead is a brilliant album, if I kept track of that kind of thing. This song is my favorite.



8. "I’m Not Going to Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance With You," Black Kids
Infectious, fun pop. If Robert Smith of The Cure made it successfully though therapy, he would probably make music like this.



9. "Lost Coastlines," Okkervil River
Representing the 512 area code on this list is Okkervil River. Actually, I could just as easily insert their cut "Singer Songwriter" here, but I'll put in "Lost Coastlines" here because, well, because I can't find a link to the video. Meh.



10. "I’m Good, I’m Gone," Lykke Li
Duffy, Adele, I want nothing to do with you. Y'all can't carry Lykke Li's mascara.



11. "Unforgettable Season," Cut Copy
More electronica. I think "Cut Copy" is Australian for "awesomeness."



12. "Northwestern Girls," Say Hi
I liked their old name, Say Hi To Your Mom, but this ambient little ode to Seattle's pretty ladies is quite a fetching little tune.



13. "Midnight Man," Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
No Tom Waits album this year -- Nick Cave is an acceptable substitute. Besides, he got the word "chrysalis" in the song.



14. "Ladytron," Ghosts
Heavy electronica. This song is surprisingly addictive.



15. "The Re-Arranger," Mates of State
Probably the best most-maligned band of the year. The husband and wife duo of Jason Hammel (drums/vocals) and Kori Gardner (keyboard/vocals) sound like they are having a good time. Why not enjoy?

16. "The Step and The Walk," The Duke Spirit
Liela Moss = Marianne Faithfull + Nico. You do the math.



17. "Sometime Around Midnight," The Airborne Toxic Event
Easily my favorite band name of the year, this song is overwrought and maudlin. What more could you want from pop music?



18. "Oxford Comma," Vampire Weekend
I agree -- I don't give a fuck about an oxford comma.



19. "You Want The Candy," The Raveonettes
Uh, yes. I want the candy. Has there been anything out of Denmark this much fun since Legos? I think not.

Waiting for January 21

I found this poem leafing through a book today, and it seemed like an appropriate poem for our current age of anxiety. I don't know what keeps you up at night, but if you are anything like me, it's probably quite a list. This poem is called "Listen" by Charles Simic. It captures the feeling I have about life right now.


Everything about you,
my life, is both
make-believe and real.
We are like a couple
working the night shift
in a bomb factory.


Come quietly, one says
to the other
as he takes her by the hand
and leads her
to a rooftop
overlooking the city.


At this hour, if one listens
long and hard,
one can hear a fire engine
in the distance,
but not the cries for help,


just the silence
growing deeper
at the sight of a small child
leaping out of a window
with its nightclothes on fire.

Caldo de Pollo at Benito's

My good friend, Paul Boll, tells me has always told me that the chicken soup at Benito's has magic healing powers. Last Thursday, I got to put it to the test after spending my morning with chills and aches, I high-tailed it over to Benito's with Dan McCarron to experience the healing power for myself.

The tasty soup gave me a temporary bounce, at least enough to get through my post-lunch conference call, but that didn't keep my health from heading south faster than a subprime mortgage lender. The flu's a bitch this season, people. I've spent the past few days in bed.

Final verdict: Magical, no. Tasty, yes.

Happy Thanksgiving, Y'all

I wish that I had written this, but it was written by one of Bill Stott's former students, forwarded to me by my former teacher. It sums up; my feelings pretty well -- practice gratitude today and bless you all.

"Today is Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday. Because, in addition to the fact that it doesn't have all of the pressure of Christmas, the confused commercial icons of Easter or the bittersweet mix of MLK Day, we celebrate being thankful for all we have. This is one key to happiness that I try and share with as many people as possible: rather than focusing on what we want and do not have and is out of our grasp, thus being always somewhat dissatisfied, it's much more powerful and life-changing to give thanks for the things we do have, even the simplest things, like food in the fridge, friends we love, a job, an education, beautiful weather, a comfortable bed, hot water, great conversations, good shoes, freedom, a healthy mind and body. And so today, I would like to say thanks to you all, for the impact you've made in my life, for helping me on my journey, for the times we've shared, and for all of the wondrous experiences that are continuing to unfold.

"Life is sometimes not so much about what happens, but more about how we perceive the things that do happen. So give this a try: for just a few minutes tonight while lying in bed before drifting off to dreamland, give thanks for all the things you have. And then in the morning, before you climb out of bed, do the same thing. Try it for awhile, and you'll be amazed at how quickly your life changes, and how soon you'll be focusing on life's treasures rather than its forgettable disappointments."

David Garza CD Release Party

This just in ... Saturday at Dada in Dallas.

Klosterman on GnR's "Chinese Democracy"

Chuck Klosterman reviews the new Guns N' Roses album, "Chinese Democracy." Here's the lead: "Reviewing 'Chinese Democracy' is not like reviewing music. It's more like reviewing a unicorn. Should I primarily be blown away that it exists at all? ... I've thought about this record more than I've thought about China, and maybe as much as I've thought about the principles of democracy."

They'll Put Anyone on TV ...

... but it's easier if you are dressed like a dork rocking the cowboy hat / Hawaiian shirt combo.

On I-35 Between Bruceville and Eddy

I know what you're thinking -- I need a one-ton concrete jackalope. Problem solved -- take I-35 South from Fort Worth to these purveyors of concrete kitsch between Bruceville and Eddy. Your neighbors will thank you for it.

Happy 100, L.B.J.

I've written before about my admiration for Lyndon B. Johnson. Tuesday would have been his 100th birthday. I think the most fitting tribute was this post from George Packer at The New Yorker:

Whenever Democrats gather to celebrate the party, they invoke the names of their luminaries past. The list used to begin with Jefferson and Jackson. More recently, it’s been shortened to F.D.R., Truman, and J.F.K. The one Democrat with a legitimate claim to greatness who can’t be named is Lyndon Johnson. The other day I asked Robert Caro, Johnson’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning biographer and hardly a hagiographer of the man, whether he thought Johnson should be mentioned in Denver. “It would be only just to Johnson,” Caro said. “If the Democratic Party was going to honestly acknowledge how it came to the point in its history that it was about to nominate a black American for President, no speech would not mention Lyndon Johnson.” Caro is now at work on the fourth volume of his epic biography, about Johnson’s White House years. “I am writing right now about how he won for black Americans the right to vote. I am turning from what happened forty-three years ago to what I am reading in my daily newspaper—and the thrill that goes up and down my spine when I realize the historical significance of this moment is only equaled by my anger that they are not giving Johnson credit for it.”

Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

William Faulkner once wrote, “The past is never dead. It's not even past.”

True dat. I can still remember sitting in bar drinking Guinness and talking with PeteG about the magnificence of Joe Strummer a year ago, or walking down the midway at the State Fair a decade ago with my year-old daughter perched on my shoulders or the smell of a spring evening on the first night I ever kissed my wife. To me, it seems like these things happened just this morning.

And sometimes our past and our present and our future can all become one, all tangled up in memory and possibility. And sometimes, as the great writer Tim O’Brien reminds us, sometimes the past can even save us.

I bought a book at Taylor’s Bookstore in Arlington, Texas in 1991. It was and is called “Write to the Point.” It’s a book about writing by my old professor from the University of Texas, Bill Stott.

Bill was one of my favorite professors at UT. I took a class from him in the spring of 1989 called the History of Photography that he taught with J.B. Colson, a professor of photography in the College of Communication.

To say that the class was a transcendent experience would be an understatement – I don’t believe you can learn about the genius of Walker Evans for the first time and not feel like the world has somehow changed. I spent that summer reading “Let Us Now Praise Famous Men” late into the night in a tiny yellow house on 30th Street, smoking Luckies and wondering if I could ever write something that great.

It wasn’t the last experience I had with Bill. I spent more than a few hours talking about Evans and James Agee and documentary expression during his office hours when I was still suffering from the delusion that I would go the grad school. My last semester in Austin, I took one last writing class from Bill and wrote some of the best stuff I ever wrote in college.

The real highlight for me was the way he would grade papers. Students would turn in their assignments in a 9x12 manila envelope with a typewritten paper and a blank audio cassette enclosed. Bill would read your paper aloud, grade it and return it to you. Sound terrifying? It was anything but. Not only do I treasure those memories, I still have the tapes.

That fall, I bought “Write to the Point,” read about five pages, then put it on a shelf.

In spite of my disregard for Bill’s book, I managed to make a career using words, first with eight years as a newspaperman at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, then another few years working for Internet startups before spending almost seven years working as a corporate communications consultant for some of the biggest companies in Texas. Then one day in December of last year, I gave the middle finger to my boss after she said I could neither write nor edit.

As liberating as it can be to lay out a giant “fuck you” to someone who doubts your ability, I must confess that this prompted a bit of an existential crisis. I mean, could this person be right?

So I grabbed my copy of “Write to the Point” off the shelf. About half way through this magnificent book, I had an epiphany. Not only could I write, but realized that I learned to write in large part because Bill Stott showed me the way.

As I read, I dog-eared pages, underlined key passages, starred items and wrote things in the margins. Among them:

There is no “perfect way” to writing.

Say what you mean as plainly as you can.

Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.

Context matters enormously.

Is it alright to end a sentence with a preposition? Yes.

Try the first words that come to mind because they are the most natural.

Style has no necessary relation to an author’s character.

Writing a bad sentence is natural. All it takes to right a competent sentence is patience and practice.

Write as you talk.

To read these words were an affirmation and a motivation. Ever since, writing has seemed somehow different – easier and effortless. And most days, I feel pretty good about my writing, too. Some people are even kind enough to tell me that they enjoy my writing – including my new boss.

I’m grateful to Bill Stott for his teaching and his patience 20 years ago. And I’m grateful that he wrote a book like “Write to the Point” that was able to say the things I need to hear when I needed to hear them.

When I read the other day about his struggle with cancer, it was like a dagger in the heart. How could something like this happen to someone who is so alive in my memory?

In part, that’s what got me off my ass to write this post. I wrote last year after the passing of another great UT professor, Kurth Sprague, that if I have learned to write at all, then Kurth and Bill Stott and F.J. Schaack were certainly, in part, responsible. I stand behind my previous statement.

But one last thing I underlined in Bill’s book I believe is worth mentioning:

“People think I can teach them style. What stuff it is. Have something to say and say it as plainly as you can. That is the only secret of style.”

So be it. Bill, you were there for me in 1989, and you were there for me again in 2008. You made a difference, and my life is better for having you as my teacher.

Thank you.

Don Draper Knows How To Sell Books

It's funny. Frank O'Hara hasn't been in my consciousness before, say, a few weeks ago when I visited the Beat Generation exhibit at the HRC at UT-Austin. An excellent exhibit, but if you are going to see it, you'd better hurry because it ends this Sunday.

Nonetheless, Frank O'Hara figures prominently in the Season Two premiere of Mad Men on AMC when Don Draper sees a guy at a diner reading the Frank O'Hara book, Meditations in an Emergency. For more about this book, check out Michael Leddy's blog.

At the end of the episode, Don reads aloud the fourth (last) section of "Mayakovsky," the last poem in Meditations:

Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.

For a fictional character, Don sure knows how to move books. When I checked Amazon.com just now, it was the No. 1 selling book of American poetry. Suck it, Robert Frost!

Tom Waits in Atlanta Podcast

Got two and half hours to spare? If you missed Tom Waits on the Glitter and Doom tour, you can catch the rebroadcast of the Atlanta show on NPR. I highly recommend it.

Tom Waits at The Palladium in Dallas

Photo from Unfocused Mike

A long time ago during my Austin days, my old roommate Russ worked on a movie called The Ballad of the Sad Café being shot on Willie Nelson's ranch out in Dripping Springs. Russ was the stand-in for Keith Carradine, which meant that he literally stood under the hot lights in the hot Texas sun instead of Carradine as they set up camera shots. When everything was ready, Keith would step on to the set and shooting would begin.

Toward the end of shooting, Russ decided he would allow himself to ask Keith one "Hollywood" question. Because Keith Carradine had recently starred in Cold Feet, the question to Russ – and me – was obvious. "What's Tom Waits really like?"

I don't remember much about what Keith told Russ other than something like, "He's a poet, really." I know the answer was much more comprehensive and thoughtful than that, but I was thrilled to talk to someone who talked to someone who talked to Tom Waits. And for years, I was such a big fan of Waits' music that I assumed that any kind of connection to the man would be some sort of transcendent experience.

So when I finally saw Waits in Chicago back in 2006, it was inevitably a bit of a disappointment. It was fantastic, but not transcendent – except for "Falling Down." However, I'm not sure any artist can live up to those weighty expectations.

Nonetheless, my enthusiasm for the music of Tom Waits remains undiminished and I bought tickets to last week's Dallas show the moment they went on sale.

Much has been written already about the lack of A/C and the dearth of bars. And yes, it was freaking hot in there and the line for any beverage -- with or without alcohol -- was unmercifully long. But for the chance to stand within 50 feet of the man for the entire performance, I'm willing to put up with a lot. However,the conditions may have had more to do with Tom Waits than the Palladium management. At the Tom Waits show in Chicago in 2006, the concessions closed 45 minutes before Waits took the stage and I chalked up the lack of air conditioning to the 100-year-old venue. That show was actually much hotter. If Waits wanted to create a revival meeting atmosphere, lots of heat and no booze are the way to do it.

And that's what it was on Monday night -- a tent revival replete with the showmanship, hucksterism and funkiness. And Waits has always been equal parts Howlin Wolf, Kurt Weill and Billy Sunday with a dash of Cookie Monster playing "Greensleeves." And when he played "Such a Scream" and "Eyeball Kid," he even channeled a bit of James Brown.

My biggest complaint was that the mix -- it was muddy and missing all of the high end. But what surprises me is the songs he played that are among my favorites like "Hoist That Rag" weren't my favorite songs of the evening. The songs I liked best were "Lie To Me," "Fannin Street" and "Black Market Baby" -- not songs I listen to all of the time, but he just blows them out live. And all you "Wire" fans have to love hearing "Way Down in the Hole." It's kind of special.

Transcendent? No. But I've moderated my expectations. Exceptional? Absolutely. Waits is a master showman and I can sleep better at night knowing that I've seen one of my musical heroes not once, but twice. If you ever have a chance to see him, you should. You won't be disappointed. I know I wasn't.

Best Books of the Past 25 Years

Entertainment Weekly released its list of 100 Best Reads of the past 25 years and I didn’t fair too well – four out of 100. Here’s the breakdown:

Have Read
7. Maus, Art Spiegelman (1986/1991)
31. The Things They Carried, Tim O'Brien (1990)
57. The Bonfire of the Vanities, Tom Wolfe (1987)
80. Bright Lights, Big City, Jay McInerney (1984)

Have Bought and Not Read
2. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, J.K. Rowling (2000)
9. Cold Mountain, Charles Frazier (1997)
26. Neuromancer, William Gibson (1984)
84. Holes, Louis Sachar (1998)

Will Probably Read Soon
37. Persepolis, Marjane Satrapi (2003)
53. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon (2000)
64. Underworld, Don DeLillo (1997)
88. High Fidelity, Nick Hornby (1995)

Might Possibly Read Sometime
11. Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer (1997)
28. Naked, David Sedaris (1997)
50. The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen (2001)
79. The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell (2000)

Would Like To Read But Most Likely Never Will
1. The Road, Cormac McCarthy (2006)
18. Rabbit at Rest, John Updike (1990)
24. Lonesome Dove, Larry McMurtry (1985)
36. Angela's Ashes, Frank McCourt (1996)
42. LaBrava, Elmore Leonard (1983)
47. World's Fair, E.L. Doctorow (1985)
66. A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, David Foster Wallace (1997)
74. Friday Night Lights, H.G. Bissinger (1990)

"A Death in the Family" Revisited

We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child.

So begins one of my favorite book, "A Death in the Family," by James Agee, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1958. Agee was a tortured genius haunted by the death of his father when James was 6, and this novel, published posthumously after his death of a heart attack at age 45 in 1955, is the work of a writer in peak form.

Or so I thought. I read today in The New York Times of a "restoration" of Agee's work to it's original form.

When Agee died, he left a hand scribbled manuscript of a novel that was almost finished. The handwriting was "so crabbed that psychics should have been called in to decode it." David McDowell, Agee’s protégé and literary executor, cobbled together the version of the book that is known and loved today, a lyrical autobiographical account of Agee’s first six and a half years, ending with the death of his beloved father in a car crash.

Scholar Michael A. Lofaro spent years shuffling through the original manuscript to create "A Death in the Family: A Restoration of the Author’s Text," by "tracking down the variants, squinting at Agee’s gnarled handwriting, deciphering illegibilities, comparing drafts, speculating, emendating, annotating — and when it comes to his predecessor McDowell’s version, lacerating."


But was Lofaro able to improve on the original? Will Blythe, writing for The Times says yes:

"At last we have 'A Death in the Family' that appears closer to the author’s original intention. This tidying is good in its own right, but the main reason to celebrate the publication of this version is that it serves as a fresh reminder of the wondrous nature of Agee’s prose — unabashedly poetic, sacramental in its embrace of reality, and rhythmical as rain on a Tennessee tin roof."

I would like to heartily add an "amen" to the previous statement. Even without the novel, Agee would have been remembered for any of his many accomplishments. He was an accomplished poet and a well-regarded journalist who worked for Fortune and time Time in the 1930s. He may be best remembered for his collaboration with the great photographer Walker Evans on their book about the plight of Southern sharecroppers, "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men," but he is also considered the father of American film criticism, which he defined in his book, "Agee on Film." And, if that wasn't enough, he was the credited screenwriter on two classic films, "The African Queen" and "The Night of the Hunter."

I can't wait to read the new version of this old favorite. If you haven't spent time with Agee, seek out his work at the bookstore or library. Or even spend a moment with this overview from The New Yorker. He is an American original worth remembering.

7:02 p.m., Wednesday on Magnolia Ave.

I believe in serendipity. Sometimes things just happen that are better than anything you could have ever planned. It's these little surprises that make it worth getting out of bed in the morning.

It was a long day. One of those days where one thing happens and then another and before you know it, it's 7. So I turn off the CPU, grab my bag and begin to head out the door when I see my man, Dan McCarron, Heineken in hand, headed to the fire escape to take seven minutes off of his life. So I grab a cold one and join him.

And in the warm evening sun of a Texas summer, we sit and appreciate the fact that, even though Heineken is kind of a piss beer, sometimes it's just the right thing. It reminds me of drinking beer back in high school, when you were really going uptown if you were drinking Heineken. Of course, that was back in the Eighties when you only had about five beers to choose from.

It's not quite a Proustian memory rush, but drinking a Heineken certainly takes me back about 20 years. And standing in the heat under a wan blue sky in the fading yellows of a disappearing day, telling stories about Coney Island and CBGBs and Joe's Pub and cracking a few jokes with a friend -- I found it an unexpectedly pleasant way to spend a few minutes on a June evening in Fort Worth, Texas.

Yeah, my office is cooler than yours.

Tom Waits Coming To Texas!

El Paso, Dallas and Houston are tour stops this summer.

Regrettable Moments in Marketing History

My new Starr Tincup work friend David Hisbrook shared this with me, courtesy of American Copy Writer. The moral of the story is this: a ram hitting a guy in the balls is funny. A ram hitting a guy in the balls twice is frickin hilarious.

Spring Mix 2008

To all my friends who have asked -- Yes, I've been away. But it's all good. I've got a new job at Starr Tincup down on Magnolia Avenue. It's the greatest place in the world but I am busier than I've ever been, which doesn't leave a lot of time for blogging.

So I am taking the easy way out to get a post up ... I'm leaning on my man the Stash Dauber for inspiration. Here is my Spring Mix for 2008. Check it:

1. PPT > Higher
2. Goodwin > Grace
3. Say Hi > Northwestern Girls
4. British Sea Power > Waving Flags
5. The Raveonettes > You Want the Candy
6. Glen Hansard > Say It To Me Now
7. Band of Horses > The General Specific
8. M83 > Graveyard Girl
9. Nina Simone > Please Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood
10. Joe Strummer > Coma Girl