So Go Ahead...

...and get fucked.

That's right. Go ahead and do it.

That comment was spawned by how depressed I've been since listening to this weekends episode of "This American Life". Seriously, if you're a fan and haven't heard it yet, don't listen unless you love to be miserable. But I'm going to go ahead and talk about it anyway because I can't stop thinking about it. Plus, let's be honest, a small part of me DOES love to be miserable. The episode was called "Scenes From a Recession" and included three acts. The first was about people who got fucked by buying condos from slumlords who took their money and ran, literally, out of the country after leaving them with dilapidated pieces of crap that were again, literally, sinking because they never bothered to lay concrete foundation. On top of that, they left these people with all the unpaid utility bills of other units in their buildings that had been foreclosed on. One lady had to pay a $3000 water bill to keep her condo that was sinking into the ground after the owner of the whole complex fled the country.

Next was the story of a local bank that went under two months ago and was gobbled up by the FDIC... a somewhat necessary thing to happen but the people worked there, again... got fucked. They'd been told they'd simply merge with another bank in the area and it wouldn't be a big deal. Then one Friday afternoon 80 FDIC agents slowly rolled into the place, proverbially and pyshically surrounding them and saying, "You're now owned by the US government and we're converting you to another bank. It has to be done by Tuesday so no one's going home. You will work round the clock till Tuesday morning." FUCK! It's Friday afternoon... you're putting your coat on to go home and spend the weekend with your family, and BAM! You're told you need to stay all weekend even though you may not have your job anymore on Tuesday. Dick move. One guy started crying when he was telling his story of that weekend because he missed his daughter's seventh birthday party.

Dudes... Fuck.

Then finally the one that was most depressing to me because it hit the closest to home was the stories of Circuit City workers who had basically been conned or forced by circumstance into riding the sinking ship into the sea. Holy shit... These guys got FUCKED. It makes me feel extremely lucky to work for the only electronics retailer that hasn't posted major losses yet and was listed by Forbes as the second least likely place to lay people off during the recession. It's not the greatest job in the world and it doesn't pay the best but at least I've got security and a good business model that doesn't force me to fend for my job by selling people shit they don't want or need. On top of that these people were taken for a ride all the way through the store's liquidation sale. All the employees interviewed said the mantra of customers had become, "... and that's why you're going out of business." Most of these guys are getting paid $8.50 to $9 an hour with no benefits and no severance pay, and nowhere else to go because no one is hiring, and they know their jobs are going to be gone in a couple months and all the while they have to deal with dickweeds shitting in their mouths going, "You can't sell me this HD TV for a hundred bucks? That's why you're going out of business! This is all YOUR fault asshole! Yes you! You punk ass twenty year old who's just here because he needs to pay his tuition and rent!" Okay. I made that one up, but I gaurantee that's how all these guys felt every time a customer asked about discounts. Although one employee did recount one experience where a customer lost his wallet somewhere, not necessarily in their store. The customer came back to check for it and it wasn't there so he told the kid at the door, "That's why you're going out of business!" The kid replied, "Yes sir. 30,000 people are losing their jobs because you lost your wallet." Fucking-a dude! At least someone stood up for himself, if only for a second. Like I said, I work for a place that isn't going under and I still deal with customers on a daily basis who say, "Why can't you guys give me a discount? Don't you know there's a recession going on?" or "That's ALL you can discount this for?" It's shitty. Some customers just have no concept of the fact that you have no control over these things and that you legitimately are doing your best to help. I can't imagine how these guys had to feel at the end of each day.

One poor kid kept talking about how he constantly had to say he was sorry and he was "doing his best" and the question at the end of the day was, "Why?" Why did anyone do their best or apologize to asshole customers when on the last day all the higher ups at the store said, "Ok kids... go ahead and GET FUCKED." After all the extended warrantys and extra computer peripherals and cables they had been forced to push onto customers or they'd be fired for all those years so the store could make more money whether the customer needed that shit or not, Circuit City simply said, "We'll take that cash, now go get fucked."


Have a nice day guys. The sun is shining!
Oh no wait... it's supposed to rain today. My bad.

Dude the Coloring of this Mic is Like SO Warm!

Ughhh... Oh my GOSH dudes! I need to talk on this thing more often. I keep telling myself, "dude, go write stuff. Go write stuff now!" and in reply I just go... "Nah... I'd rather spend three more hours perusing what the pretentious dicks over at Gearslutz have to say about the HK235AZ-2000 Jiggawat Tube Pres blah blah blah..." What a fucking waste... I keep telling myself. That's something I never really understood about the audio world... people's obsession with gear and making recordings that sound 100% polished like they were recorded in outer space.

I've said it before and I'll say it again:

Good song + good musicians + semi-decent room and mic placement = GOOD RECORDING. PERIOD. No ands ifs or buts about it.

All the Auralex bass traps and diffusors and Grace pre-amps in the world won't make a bad song good and they won't make a bad musician play well.

These dudes spend hours arguing over what the best sounding mics, compressors, and pre-amps are and who has the best tubes for whatever, yadda yadda, but a lot of them are just recording in their basements or bedrooms so it really doesn't matter. To an extent, discussing this stuff is like a painter sitting around for days on end trying to decide which paint brush to use instead of thinking about what he's going to create with it. I just don't get it.

Lately I've had this fear of turning into the guys on those boards who spend so much time bragging about the tens of thousands of dollars they've poured into their gear and then when you go listen to the stuff they've recorded it's all clean and polished... but it's lifeless and their songs and the songs of the bands they work with are all terrible because they spent so much time obsessing over gear and getting clients to come pay to use their gear so they can buy bigger gear and on and on and on... and then they spent 30 years never bothering to listen to or write good music so now they blow their families money turning their basements into the ultimate listening station and their wives all hate them... and on and on and on... again.

Ugh... please tell me I won't end up like that.

But I mean, it's not all bad. There are some legitimate professionals on there... somewhere. Because I have found a nugget of insight on these boards every now and again. But for the most part it's all just one big pissing contest to see who can do the most name dropping. Not for me. And yet I still waste so much time perusing that crap. It doesn't make sense. Sometimes I really hate having access to the internet.

On another note, I've saved up a bit of cash and between all my experiences in teaching and recording and such, I think it might be a good idea for me to put a couple hundred more bucks into outfitting my own collection of recording gear (I'm gonna buy the warmest pres man!) and my goal is to offer the most cost effective and helpful way for young people to record demos and get on their feet. It seems to me that there's way too many people out there who are preying on young musicians with a couple hundred bucks to throw around and either over charging them or giving them a shitty project but convincing them it's awesome... or both. I'd like to be the dude who's like, "straight up dudes, we're just recording in my bedroom, so I'm barely going to charge you shit... and if you aren't good enough to make a good recording yet, I'm not going to lie, tell you it's awesome, and then take the money and run. We can work that shit out."

So that's what I want to do... but it's kind of hard because I never really live in the same place for more than a year at a time at this point in my life so I can set up a decent place to work. Plus the fact that I already work with teaching kids to record at my job... so I can't really take money from anyone under the age of 18 to do a recording for them from my house. We have rules against that and stuff. Plus I don't want to use my job as a funnel to further profits for me down the line... that's kind of scummy. But whatever... that's what I've been thinking about these days.

First I need to get a bigger hard drive in my computer and then upgrade to the full Logic Studio... cus it's sweet.

I am now the Grumpy Old Man Shaking His Fist

First I want to quickly note that if you enjoy this blog but you're reading it on Facebook, come on over to frontporchaffairs.blogspot.com to see the original post because I think when I post videos they don't carry over to Facebook on the feed. Anyway, I wanted to try and finish up that list of life changing albums, but this shit is just annoying the hell out of me...



So first there's this fear mongering propaganda... Glenn Beck's rallying cry of "We Surround Them" and "The 912 Project".

And then there's this...







These are scenes from a rally in downtown Cincinnati yesterday where a bunch of yuppies who would normally accuse people of being "jobless hippies" for being involved in this kind of thing came out to bitch and moan about how the government is taking ALL of their hard earned money and putting it directly into the pockets of crack dealers and hookers... no seriously, I just wasted the last twenty minutes of my life reading their comments on the situation and I very badly want to get in all of their "don't tread on me" and "git r done" faces and say...

SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Why do I want these people to shut the fuck up?


-First, Glenn Beck and his bullshit fear mongering. Seriously. For a minute I thought this guy was kind of funny because he was so crazy. But now people are actually listening to him, he's referring to himself as a televangelist, he's on TV shouting and waving his arms because "the government controls your lives and is taking all your money!!! We have to stand up and FIGHT!!" PUNK RAWK DUDE!! Where were you when the government was taking our money, and instead of spending it on us in our own country they were using it to blow up and kill those people who had nothing to do with 9/11? Where was your nationwide protest then asshole?! You were surely one of those people referring to anyone who disagreed with it as a "jobless hippie".

-Another thing, Beck calls this his "912 Project" because according to him we all woke up on September 12, 2001 and instictively "knew what to do". That's what he wants to get back to to solve this "problem" of "big government". We all apparently stood up, waved flags around, sang country songs, and yelled, "Fuck yeah America!" And then what? What did that solve? Well... now more people hate America than ever and as a matter of fact, this attitude was a catalyst for the real problem we face today... you know, the whole "world being out of money" thing, not the "big brother" conservative talking points... Anyway, yeah. Alan Greenspan even admits it. Those historically low interest rates that got the wheels turning on the downfall of the economy were set in place by him as a direct response to 9/11, right in step with the drum beat of jingoism that was going on at the time.

-Next, the distribution of the stimulus that those people are so pissed off about? Here's the general gist of it...




A big chunk of it is going right back to them. Jackasses. But what really offends me on a more personal level is that most of these people take issues with money for "protecting the vulnerable" AKA social programs. As someone who works and has experience in the non-profit industry I can tell you first hand that YOUR TAX MONEY IS NOT PUT DIRECTLY INTO THE HANDS OF CRACK HEADS. That argument pisses me off to no end. So many of the people protesting yesterday commented that they are tired of paying for hand outs to their neighbors because they work hard for their money and their neighbor needs to as well... well yeah, your neighbor should, but some people need help getting there or else they will become or remain those crack heads who continually try to drain the system. So why not invest in helping them get out of that situation, so you can stop complaining about giving your "hard earned money away to crack heads"?


-And in line with my last point, I'm going to go on a limb and assume most of these people would claim to be Christians. Isn't Christianity all about community and helping your neighbor? Propping up the less fortunate and not getting rich and such? And then comes the obvious argument to that point, "Well yeah, but why should the government tell me who I help with my money and how!?" The simple answer to that is "because you are a greedy asshole." Yeah, I'm a bit of a Hobbesian when it comes down to it and I still believe that the average individual is inherently evil and instead of actually helping the less fortunate like they all claim they would do if it weren't for those gosh darn taxes... that they'd just buy a bigger TV or give it all to their church so they can buy a bigger Jesus statue at best. Thus, call me a square because I know it's not very "punk rock", but I still have faith that a group of elected officials has much better a chance of investing our money in "protecting the vulnerable" than the individual "Christian" left to his own devices. Besides, even if these people do donate their money, a donation to godhatesfags.com is considered "charity" by many people, so...


-Finally, if these people are so adamant about "laissze-faire" and the "government is ruining and controlling my life! (...even though I was willing to let them get away with anything they wanted when I was scared of brown people dropping a plane on my house a few years ago)", then that's fine but, if that's how you all want it then...

-Don't take any roads on your drive to work tomorrow.
-Don't save hundreds of thousands of dollars on your childrens' education.
-Don't call the cops next time you get robbed.
-Don't call the fire department next time your house is on fire.
-Don't drink tap water or bottled water anymore... or take a shower for that matter.
-Don't take your trash out once a week to have it magically get "taken care of". Same goes for your sewage and flushing the toilet.
-Don't complain when there's no gas left in twenty-five years because no one bothered to figure out a better way.
-Don't complain when you lose your job and can't afford to find a new one.
-Don't get pissed when you get foreclosed on because the banks inevitably screw us all over again.

...figure all that shit out yourself assholes.

More Life Changers

So I slept till noon today and ate me some Strawberry Eggos and that was about it. Then 5:30 rolls around and I'm packing up after finishing teaching my class and GOD DAMN I AM STARVING! You know that 'about to pass out and unable to focus on anything' kind of starving... it me hard and fast like never before. These moments motivate me to do things like spend 15 bucks on pizza for just myself... which I did and now I feel just as tired and lazy except that I never want to think about pizza again, but I still have four massive pieces left... so I'm bound to eat them sooner than later. Sike! I'll save most of them for Jen because she works till midnight and will probably be that same kind of hungry when she comes home.

But anyway, what you're here for. Picking back up with the list of "Life changing" records, and note: that's not current favorites or all time favorites... they're "life changing". You know, after the first few times you hear it you know some small or even very large part of your life will never be the same again. It's that kind.

So here we go...

11 - Refused, "Shape of Punk to Come"



This is another of many on the list that I was late to getting around to. I started listening to this band a lot more when I was in college and getting more and more into recording. Nowadays this is the album by which I quality test all other recordings (production wise). It's perfectly cohesive, fantastically produced, and a big part of what makes those elements so good is how well written and thoughtfully planned every detail of it is. It kind of proves the old saying of "good songs + good musicians = good recordings". Well the actual saying goes "good songs + good musicians + good mic placement + one or two other things I don't remember off the top of my head = good recordings"... the other stuff is important... but not that important.


12 - Tom Waits, "Blood Money" ties with "Rain Dogs



I had heard a few Tom Waits songs before I got "Blood Money" but not a whole lot. I was very intrigued though. Once I picked up this album I was hooked and now am convinced he's one of the greatest song writers ever because aside from his voice he's unique in that he can get away with anything and do it well. I got "Rain Dogs" shortly thereafter and just couldn't bring myself to shun it because while my life was changed and my mind was blown by the seemingly melodic dissidence throughout "Blood Money" that was so foreign to me until then... "Rain Dogs" is just perfect and I got them pretty close to the same time, so... s'all good.


13 - Rancid, "And Out Come the Wolves"


Every fan of punk rock no matter how "advanced" or "adult" they like to pretend their tastes are; all of them have to admit that this record was in their library at some point and they listened to it a lot. The first time I heard it was at a swim meet where my sister's friend Allie, who knew I had just started listening to punk rock, played it for me on my Sony Discman (rofl at the 90s). It was totally awesome and just last week Kyle played "Journey to the End..." on the jukebox at Murphy's, which reminded me that I can't deny that I still kind of love it.


14 - Mos Def, "Black on Both Sides"


I wasn't really that into hip-hop for a long while after seventh or eighth grade aside from the occasional awesome release like Outkast's "Stankonia". But somewhere in the past three years or so I stumbled upon this album and got myself re-hooked on the stuff. It inspired me to go back and explore a lot of stuff I've been missing out on and rediscover the awesome jams that are...

15 - Public Enemy, "Fear of a Black Planet"


Like I was saying, after getting back into hip-hop this album is pretty much the epitome of what hip-hop should be, to me. Somewhere in the 90s, about when I stopped listening for a while, rap music got caught up in the game of money, money, MONEY! RAP ABOUT GETTING FUCKING MONEY!! Every 50 Cent and Gucci Mane wannabe (or even those guys themselves) out there needs to go back to this record and remember what hip-hop has the potential to be, a platform for a misrepresented culture to make it's voice heard. It's a platform from which you can be pissed off and be yourself but still get your point across in an intelligent manner whereas the "get money/my swag" generation is just perpetuating a negative stereotype over and over and over again... but Lil Wayne says some wild shit, so I'm okay with him.

16 - Kid Dynamite - "Shorter, Faster, Louder"


Before this album the only hardcore I was really into at all was Minor Threat, Dead Kennedys (do they count), and Gorilla Biscuits, so I thought all hardcore after the 80s was just the tough guy, muscle bound, straight edge, way too expensive clothing, BS that is still kind of the trend these days. Then I got this and found out that there's still awesome hardcore out there (since this album, this band and the surrounding scene has split off to form and inspire a lot of really good bands). It showed me that it can be melodic and thoughtful, but still fast as hell. And that's pretty sweet.

17 - The Slackers, "Wasted Days"


I'd heard the Slackers on all the Give em' the Boot compilations and kind of bobbed my head to their songs whenever they came on. I also had their first record "Better Late Than Never" before I got this album and wasn't quite hooked yet. But this album had "The Nurse", a song which is still mind blowing every time I hear it (as you can see this is makes a lot of things life changing... it's ability to still blow my mind over time). It is now my theory that the Slackers are the most objectively good and likable band since the Beatles... It's just that no one knows it yet.

18 - Bob Dylan, "The Free Wheelin' Bob Dylan"


Growing up my parents were always into "that old timey stuff" and had us listening to it, and I was always okay with it because I figured I could have grown up in a house with parents who were into Christian Contemporary or something worse. Is there anything worse than that? I dunno... I never thought much of Bob Dylan aside from him having a pretty good voice for a guy who can't sing until I started checking out his bootleg release series that started a few years ago and reading up on the guy. During the period at which this album came out he was still awesome, but I honestly don't care too much for the stuff that came out after he didn't want to be stereotyped as a "folky". The lyrics are great because people think of them as being iconic of the generation in which they were written, but for myself getting into it about four years ago, I was identifying with a lot of what Bob Dylan was saying, even though I'm pretty sure if you ask him to this day what his lyrics mean he goes, "I don't know what they mean! They're just words! I wrote em' down and sang em'! They don't mean nothing!" (no seriously, he says that).


19 - Defiance, Ohio "Share What You Got"


This band is what I listen any time I need a good old fashioned "heart warming"... I really don't know any better way to describe them. It's a bunch of midwestern kids who see the same problems with the world that I do, so it resonates pretty well with me. But they have a way of looking at things with a bit of an optimistic hopefulness through their music that I am never able too. And I like that. I on the other hand am usually a pessimistic bastard about everything... Not nearly as cool. Plus I love sitting on porches and there isn't much better porch sitting music than this. PLUS, "share what you got"... what a nice little motto to live by... If you've got more than enough... why not just share what you got? You'll find that not only does it make life more enjoyable, but it comes back to you when you don't "got".

20 - The Lawrence Arms, "The Greatest Story Ever Told"


This was another band I was kind of late getting into as this was one of the first albums I heard and now they, and all their side projects, are among my favorites and one of the biggest influences on our new greatest band ever... Bears. Sloppy drunken live shows aside, this band puts together thoughtful and fresh songs in a genre that many people think has been beaten to death. Well sucks to all of them, because bands like this (and D4, like I said yesterday) show us just how good and diverse punk rock can be if you take the time to write some good songs.


All right. That's ten more down and I'm getting tired and I want to drink beers and i want some one to get me the Micro Force shaver so I can shave my face in the swimming pool. Guys. That's awesome.

25 Life Changing RECORDS!! Or at least the first few...

I hate doing these stupid "chain letter" type posts, but my cousin who has a way of forcing me to do things because she's kind of like your mom, if all the stuff your mom sternly told you that you had to do was "come visit me and drink beers" type of things.... well she "tagged" me in one of these on Facebook. So whatever. Here goes.

Anyway, it's the "25 Albums that changed your life" deal or whatever. I also decided to do it because it's something that's legitimately interesting to dwell on for a few minutes.... it's not your "Top albums" or "Favorite albums" but ones that changed your life. Interesting. So let's take a gander shall we... Also, beyond the first few these probably won't be in any particular order.


1 -The Queers, "Love Songs for the Retarded"



The first punk rock record I ever heard. It was the beginning of my eighth grade year I believe and my friend's older sister went to school at the University of Cincinnati at the time. She lived at (or near and hung out a lot) a house known simply as Glendora around here which was famous for putting on tons of punk rock shows. Anyway, she bought this record for her brother Brie's birthday to introduce him to punk rock. He brought it over and we listened to it in my tiny bedroom a couple times and my mind was blown. Until then I had no concept of "punk" I thought it was dudes throwing up on each other or something... I dunno. Some shit like that. But this was different. These dudes were pissed off like I was, but they were having fun and making jokes about it... just like I liked to do. I was hooked, and still am. Six or seven years later I found myself hanging out with the new residents of that house on Glendora and seeing and playing shows there myself. Small world.


2 -The Vandals, "Hitler Bad, Vandals Good"



Brie also got this album from his sister on his birthday and was part of that same listening session. Again... minds blown. Life changed.


3 -Beastie Boys, "Licensed to Ill"



About two years before those first two albums I was getting more and more into different types of music and thought, "Maybe I should start building a collection of my own music to listen to outside of MTV (they still played music videos at the time) and the radio. This was the first album I ever bought, and it is perfect.


4 -Mighty Mighty Bosstones, "Let's Face It"



I haven't heard this record in a while, but it has influenced my taste more than most. My sister bought it when "Impression that I Get" was a big radio hit. We listened to it a few times and didn't really get it... but we really liked that song because it was on the radio. A few years later after I'd learned a bit more about punk rock and had at least heard the word "ska" tossed around we went back to it and were like "Ohhhh! This is fucking awesome!" Plus it taught me that you can use music as a platform to say "Hey dudes, being an asshole isn't cool" because there were a couple songs on there about fighting racism and such.


5 - Streetlight Manifesto, "Everything Goes Numb"



This record came out right before I started college and was pretty much my anthem for the first year or so of it. It also sort of started to show me the difference between "ska" and "punk with horns"... this album is more of the latter but it's so good and the songs are so epic and diverse (even though most of them are the same chord progression in the same key) that it makes you realize that most "punk with horns" bands aren't that good.


6 - Against Me!, "Reinventing Axl Rose"



This was also one of the anthems for my first year of college and as much as I hate to admit it, was the first step towards my musical tastes that make up The Best Revenge. Until then I didn't know that there was any way to combine the folk and blues music my parents had made me grow up on with punk rock. This album was like dipping a pinky toe into the pool of that whole idea I guess.


7 - Bomb the Music Industry! "Album Minus Band"



Two exclamation points in a row! Rumor has it that Jeff Rosenstock wrote and recorded this album by giving up drinking for a month and locking himself up in his apartment and doing the whole thing on a Mac laptop with a mic or two and a drum sequencer in his living room... and the songs were absolutely awesome. Sure the sequenced drums and amount of high end screeching from the synths is a bit grating to listen to these days, but the guy felt how I felt about the music industry, politics, the world in general and he expressed it all without help from anyone else... pretty inspiring stuff. And still today, every new album he puts out seems to be keeping up with where I am in my life and I'm like, "yeah man."

8 - The Clash, "London Calling"



I was a little late getting on board to this record. I bought it when it was re-issued with all those scratch recordings or whatever and before that the only Clash record I had was "Sandanista", so it didn't really make sense to me. Once I got into this followed by their self-titled I was like, "Oh. I get it now. Joe Strummer is my hero!" and he still is. Plus, just look at that fucking album cover.


9 - Dillinger Four, "Midwestern Songs of the Americas"



When I first started college I didn't really know much about punk beyond the NOFX, Rancid, Bad Religion, what-have-you more mainstream stuff that most people are into at first because I was in a small town and bands didn't just show up all the time. So while I was assimalating myself into that culture my first few months of college I made friends with Dan who conveniently enough booked all the good punk rock shows at Radio Down (R.I.P.) which meant I got in for free since he was my only friend in the music scene at the time so he had to take me to every show. Anywho... he took me to see Dillinger Four and they're one of those bands that if you don't really know the songs ahead of time you can't really "participate" in the show... but still I saw that something pretty important was going on here. Plus, the bass player had a tattoo across his chest that just said "HOW MUCH ART CAN YOU TAKE" in big bold letters. Fucking rock and roll. I was sold. I bought this record and realized how much more there is to punk music and how diverse it can really be... and on and on and on. If you ever see me at Murphy's with an extra dollar in my pocket, you will hear a song from this record.

10 - NOFX, "So Long and Thanks for all the Shoes"



At Christmas dinner for whatever reason we were talking about music and my parents were like, "so who is your favorite band?" I sat there for a minute and decided if we're going with most listened to and overall consistency in taste it'd probably have to be NOFX. That and the fact that they've always known exactly who they are and don't give a shit otherwise. They're drug sniffing punk rockers who are pretty into politics and sometimes just like to get drunk and play lousy... and that's perfectly fine. I bought this record when I was in eigth grade right after I heard those Queers and Vandals records and last March I got to see them play "the Decline" in it's entirety, which was one of the best shows ever. So... ten years and running as a huge fan... I guess I have to give them props.


Okay... this is taking way too long and I have to go teach kids how to make beats and get an oil change still today... So I'll do the next ten or so in the next post. Word dudes.