Steve and I were conversing this evening and he pointed out that almost all of the new and interesting music that he listens to comes from my recommendations. This is touching, but I doubt it would make for a good radio show. Unless…?

“Well,” I joked, “You could just take what music I pick off of my radio session, and then add your own commentary!”

The truth is, this isn’t a horrible idea. Steve is actually far more amusing than I am - and it would be additionally humorous if he were to base his entire show off of correcting my mistakes or merely putting his spin on what songs I picked. It would give each radio show two “flavors,” which might be fun.

Maybe we’ll try it, maybe we won’t. We do seem to have a large number of listeners out there. Like six or something. And with Steve’s help, we are determined to raise that number to SEVEN!

Well, I cant really seem to find anything in my defense or support about this edition, so without further adue. “One Hour Report 2: The Curse of the Sequel”

Update
ARRGGGH! It is acting silly. I will fix it later.

Update
ARRGGGH! It’s not acting silly anymore. At least I don’t think it is — adam.b

I picked up my copy of September 2003 issue of CMJ New Music Magazine and saw the subhead for Steve Kllinge’s peice on the band “My Morning Jacket.” It read: “Reverb: That’s What’s Happening.” And so I skipped the article.

Now, what’s wrong with reverb?

Everything. Almost. Well, close anyway.

Reverb is, musically speaking, an oddball concept. I already heard it the first time. What makes you think I’ll like it better just because it’s echoing and fading away? Are you attempting to repeatedly assail me with the sound so I like it more? It seemed to me the idea was, “if you don’t like a chord or a lyric the first time, you’ll catch the echo and then fall in love with it.”

“No. They aren’t going to get me with that,” I would tell myself.

“What?” I would respond.

I always speak to myself - but I don’t always listen to myself.

What I did listen to was this record. I overcame my skepticism of reverb. I don’t know if I was feeling especially tolerant that day. I’m not certain why I picked up this album. Okay, it was the bear on the cover draped in confetti streamers. I’m a sucker for bears on album covers draped in confetti streamers. What can I say?

This album was nothing that I expected, which is always enjoyable. What this record does well is soar. It’s not a lyrically deep album. In fact, most of the tracks have very few lyrics and some have hardly any singing. What nearly every song does has is a huge level of audible effort. The drummer doesn’t just keep beat or try to do his own thing. The drums add such tremendous depth to this music it’s almost hard to highlight them too much. The guitar work is impressive, but not showy. Add keyboard and occasional sax to complete a very musically tight sound.

It’s amusing that I always thought of reverb as a way to help musicians cover up their inadequacies. A fatter, fuller sound can hide a lot of looseness. But this is a band playing and working in complete coordination, while maintaining a very fluid style.

I’m very impressed. And it’s not just impressive. It’s great music.

So, did I overcome my anti-reverb bias? Yep. And My Morning Jacket’s It Still Moves provides the perfect road to recovery.

12-Steps to Overcoming Disgust of Reverb
01 - “Mahgeetah”: I love the sound of the guitar on this track. I want to sound like this. But, um, what the heck is this guy saying? And who the what is a Mahgeetah? (Still a great track!)
02 - “Dancefloors”: Easy to get into. The best way to describe this song is putting on a pair of very old, but very comfortable jeans. This track is quite accessible. It’s straightforward, it feels good, and it just rolls. The sax adds a pretty sweet sound.
03 - “Golden”: Classic country style drum beat, sweet vocals, killer harmonies, and some very nice guitar make this one of the standout tracks.
04 - “Master Plan”: Builds quite a bit. Not my favorite, but a decent song.
05 - “One Big Holiday”: Yeah! You can feel within 20 seconds that this is a GREAT track. Cool guitar picking leading into an amazing (mostly guitar) number. The drums feel really smooth and the bass just lets you right in the front door.
06 - “I Will Sing You Songs”: Long and very sleepy - but great to listen to while reading.
07 - “Easy Morning Rebel”: Welcome back to the country.
08 - “Run Thru”: Turns into a thumping little track before it’s over. The drums and guitar are so tight together, it’s impressive. Not much singing, but if they’re going to play like this, do I care?
09 - “Rollin Back”: Please throw this track away. It’s crap. Maybe I’ll change my mind after hearing it some more, but it sure feels like it just wanders aimlessly, never finding what it’s looking for.
10 - “Just One Thing”: To me, this is THE track. I could listen to this for days. I did not like it until I’d heard it about five times. “And I want it so bad, it’s the first thing I see when I wake!” he says - and you believe him.
11 - “Steam Engine”: This is the little engine that couldn’t. Couldn’t get me to like it.
12 - “One in the Same”: I love it when albums end like this does. The band picked a track that seems to conclude the record. “To all the people I’ve loved, don’t think poor of me.” Well, I don’t think he loved me, but that’s okay. I don’t think poor of him anyway.

WHOOPEE! Thanks to the kindness and generosity of Adam, I can now make my subdomain the way that I want to and get away from conforming with Bloggers layouts! Thanks Adam, you’re the greatest! Now I just need some inspiration and something to actually put on the page. Oh well, I’ll just wait until I hear some great ideas that I can steal. Until then check out what I have so far at the fabulous steve.mathcaddy.com

And I promise that I will put up the second edition of 1 hour news, and my first session of Mathcaddy radio…. eventually.

Here’s the latest Mathcaddy Radio session.

Mathcaddy Radio: Session 3

01: The Long Winters - “Carparts”

02: Scott Andrew - “Cast the Net Wide”

03: Clem Snide - “Mike Kalinsky”

04: Of Montreal - “Penelope”

05: Hayden - “Dynamite Walls”

06: My Morning Jacket - “Golden”

07: Pretty Girls Make Graves - “A Certain Cemetery”

08: Mull Historical Society - “Watching Xanadu”

[43 MB MP3 :: 47 Minutes]

I just realized that I am getting dumber. And it’s bothering me. I have drawn up a small graph to illustrate the path of my intelligence over the past decade. My findings in drawing this graph startled me terribly.

It used to be that I did not make spelling mistakes, grammar mistakes, punctuation mistakes, or typos. That’s just who I was. But recently, I have noticed that I have made some serious errors on mathcaddy.com.

Take the posts regarding mathcaddy radio sessions one and two, for example:

Here, I wrote “addition” instead of “edition”. Whew. How horrible is THAT?

And here I actually misspelled the word “welcome.” Ouch.

Will someone please put my keyboard out of its misery?

Every so often, when walking into a library, I notice signs that say, “blah blah blah blah Friends of the Library blah blah blah.” I never seem to follow up this quick glance with a complete read of whatever it is these flyers say about the “Friends of the Library”. And my laziness leaves me wondering.

Just who ARE the Friends of the Library? And what do they do?

When I was a kid, my friends were the ones I spent the most time around. This makes the bakery and the law firm next to the library potential friends of the library, I suppose.

Although I did spend a lot of time with kids who happened to be related to me - and I didn’t call them my friends. My friends were the ones who I spent the most time with by my choice. So I guess that would mean the bakery and the law firm are probably just cousins or siblings of the library. The law firm is probably the smelly cousin.

Anyway, that still doesn’t answer the question. Who the heck are the Friends of the Library? I have no idea. But let’s not go there. It seems they don’t want to be known and no amount of conjecture on my part is going to uncover their identities. And also I’m bored with trying to figure out who the Friends of the Library are.

So on to our next question: What do the Friends of the Library do?

Well, when I was a kid, my friends just ditched me and went to go play video games. Hmm… nah. I don’t think an institution of the Library’s stature would associate with people who play video games. But maybe the Library’s friends just ditch him and go quote poetry! No. Also too boring to pursue as a possibility.

Hmmm… I have some friends who made fun of me behind my back. That’s it! That must be what Friends of the Library do! I can see it now! They would probably say things like:

“Hey, did you see the Library this morning? He forgot to close his automatic closing doors! What a dork!”

“I can’t believe the Library is still using those stupid ‘click click click’ things that check for stolen books! I quit using mine in, like, 1982!”

“Did you see the cover on the Library’s Trapper Keeper! It’s pink! What, did his MOM pick it out for him?”

“Have you seen the librarian that the Library has been hanging out with? She looks like a librarian!”

“What’s up with the Library lately? He hasn’t changed his clothes in eight years and he smells like mold!”

“Ha ha ha! Someone stuck this big sign on the Library this morning! And he didn’t even notice!”

or…

“Look! That Library is such a push-over. He lets me borrow anything he owns and then if I don’t return it, he just threatens me with mailed post-cards saying they’re ‘overdue’!”

Every so often, when walking into a library, I notice signs that say, “blah blah blah blah Friends of the Library blah blah blah.” I never seem to follow up this quick glance with a complete read of whatever it is these flyers say about the “Friends of the Library”. And my laziness leaves me wondering.

Just who ARE the Friends of the Library? And, more importantly, why do they get their moniker capitalized? These are clearly specific Friends of the library, and judging by the capitalization of their name, they must be “Friends” that are “Important”… perhaps “Friends” in “High Places”.

And if there are “Friends of the Library,” it follows that there are “Enemies of the Library.” You might expect me to be deathly afraid of your average Enemy of the Library.

But this is not the case. I can understand being an Enemy of the Library. Libraries are one of the most valuable fixtures in Western society. They promote the education, enlightenment, edification, and other e-words of the masses at little or no cost. And this is something which must be avoided, as it could lead to the destruction of our civilization. People getting something for nothing through collectively funded institutions backed by the government and designed for the public at large? I, for one, would feel great Fear to be found sitting near a Friend of the Library on a dark night at a lonely bus stop.

The real question is this: What would a Friend of the Library do? I shudder to think.

Boy, that sucked. I’m going to try again. (see version 2.0)

It’s really too bad, but this site does not play well with old browsers. I found this out while visiting Kristi’s grandpa yesterday. He was running Windows ME (aaaa!!!) and I think IE5 (someone correct me if I’m mistaken). mathcaddy.com did not like his computer. It just looked beyond bizarre. Oh well. I guess I need to do a little more design research. Why am I telling you all this? I have no idea. This is probably the most boring post ever. To make up for it, dear reader, I am going to follow this up with something as random as I can possibly think of. Hopefully it’s amusing, even if there’s a good chance it won’t be.

This morning I saw a new comment posted for a post that I had never read before, you can see it here. The first strange thing about the post was that it was posted back in July of 2003. That kind of made me wonder why someone was reading and actually commenting on stuff that long ago. But the totally wierd thing was the comment.
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When did those comapanies start a campaign to post advertisments in year old blog posts? That doesnt make too much sense to me, and what does Cialis have to do with “Adventures in Time While Wearing Broken Watches and a Shirt that Says ‘Welcome to the Future’?”