Pop Radio '08

I recently spent a week at the beach with my family, which meant that I would have to take a vacation from the knobby indie rock and post-punk music that generally dominates my playlist for a brief jaunt into the world of corporate radio.  Full disclosure: I do enjoy a brief trip right of the dial every summer, if only to see what kind of music major record labels believe humans should go apeshit over.  As my taste in overproduced radio music veers more to top 40 than the boring and misogynistic post-grunge cock rock that populates guitar stations, I became familiar with a number of the hits of Party Summer '08.  These ranged from pleasantly forgettable (Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl") to abominably horrible (Jesse McCartney's "Leavin'").  One song, however, stuck out from the rest: "See You Again" by barely pubescent media juggernaut Miley Cyrus.

Up until two weeks ago, I was largely ignorant to the Miley Cyrus phenomenon.  I had a vague notion that she was some sort of double-life leading middle schooler from a Disney Channel show and I heard there were some borderline creepy pictures of her on the internet with her dad, the world's most famous punchline, Billy Ray Cyrus.  Still, in spite of her supposed ubiquity, I had never seen an episode of her TV show (still haven't, though the premise has been explained to me) or heard any of her songs (even now, only just the one).  Now though, I'm starting to see what the big deal is.

As it happens, "See You Again" is one of the most baffling mixtures of the elevated and the banal that I've ever heard.  Here, for the benefit of the reader, is a breakdown of the song's lyrics, with commentary.

"I've got my sights set on you and I'm ready to aim."

Okay, perfectly normal.  Girl likes boy.  Although it is odd that she simultaneously has her sights set and is also ready to aim.  Hmm...

"I have a heart that will never be tamed."

Holy cow!  What the hell?  Where did this come from?  If a girl said this to me when I was 15, I'm pretty sure I would have soiled myself.  In fact, I'm not convinced I wouldn't react the same way now.  Perhaps it's for a more mature audience?

"I knew you were somethin' special when you spoke my name/ now I can't wait to see you again."

Okay, again--normal.  A standard pop song trope, the "When can I see you again?" angle.  

"I've got a way of knowing when something is right"

Okay...

"I feel like I must have known you in another life"

What?!  Most 15-year olds aren't even conscious that they're living this life, let alone reaching out to loves from past incarnations.  And what high school romance has the depth of a love for the ages?

"'cause I felt this deep connection when you looked in my eyes/ now I can't wait to see you again."  

Deep connection...okay, makes sense and another repeat of the song title.  Now, to the chorus, where the listener discovers exactly why she wants to see him again:

"The last time I freaked out, I just kept lookin' down,/ I st-st-stuttered when you asked me what I'm thinkin' 'bout"

Makes sense.  Everyone--particularly teens--makes a jackass out of themselves in front of a crush at least once.  Woody Allen has made a career out of it.  I do find it odd, though, that the girl with the un-tameable heart can't summon the courage to speak to some pasty nimrod who runs the popcorn machine at the local multiplex.  Also, the st-st-stuttering is a nice, if somewhat theatrical little trick for a pop song.

"Felt like I couldn't breathe, you asked what's wrong with me/ my best friend Leslie said, 'Oh, she's just being Miley.'"

Another head scratcher--does this not seem to be a legitimate medical concern?  Altered speech, shortness of breath?  Is she having a stroke?  And why is the best friend character okay with all this?

"The next time we hang out, I will redeem myself/ My heart can't rest 'til then/ Oh-whoa-whoa, I--I can't wait to see you again."

Curiouser and curiouser!  Redemption?  Another reference to her heart's restlessness?  Most people would hope never to see the other person again--maybe she really does possess a heart that will never be tamed.  An odd juxtaposition with the reference to "hanging out."  

"I got this crazy feeling deep inside/ when you called and asked to see me tomorrow night"

Another normal thing for a 15-year old girl to say.  I find it odd that he would want to see her again, though, after her poor showing on their last encounter.  As someone who feels profoundly embarrassed for other people, I certainly wouldn't put myself through something like that.  Apparently, that "deep connection" she talked about earlier is pretty profound.

"I'm not a mind reader, but I'm readin' the signs/ that you can't wait to see me again"

Hmm...

From that point, the song just repeats lines until its conclusion.  Sonically, it's in the propulsive tradition of a dancefloor single, with a heavy beat and the quiet-loud-quiet arrangement.  It's fun, yeah, in the boring way that radio dance music often is, but the lyrics are endlessly engaging.

A large amount of the criticism directed at Miley Cyrus revolves around her status as a role model for young girls.  Particularly in the flap over her Vanity Fair spread, critics accused her of being too sexualized at too young an age.  Apparently, these people are afraid that seeing Hannah Montana's back in a fashion magazine will lead to an army of preteen sluts engaging in rampant sexual acts with total abandon.  While this would be a negative (as far as I can tell, the age of consent is pretty accurately set) but it seems to be the wrong concern to me.  What strikes me as more troubling is her emotional maturity.

Ultimately, parents could censor their daughters' abilities to see the Vanity Fair spread.  VF isn't pumped into every facet of a girl's life the same way that pop singles are.  And while those pictures were creepy and probably not the best image, songs like this encourage something even worse.

Although a large part of "Hannah Montana" deals with MC trying to conceal her celebrity identity so that she can experience a normal childhood, the girl herself has no such luxury.  No normal girl has top 40 hits, makes movies and plays to sold out audiences in giant arenas.  Face facts: Miley Cyrus is a celebrity and is, therefore, beholden to a different set of concerns and priorities than the rest of humanity.  That's just the way our celebrity obsessed culture works.  And as much as people like to bitch about it, they're all a part of the problem when they pay for those Hannah Montana notebooks, movie tickets and that Disney Channel subscription.  Love the world you find, I guess.

Anyway, unless someone's daughter is dangerously psychotic, she's not going to actually believe that she is Miley Cyrus.  Outside of idle fantasy, I would wager most girls don't think of themselves in Miley's sneakers.  We've bred too strong a visual culture for that.  Musically, on the other hand, I imagine that almost everyone--preteen girls and their dads alike--cast themselves as the singer in any given song they hear.  And there's the problem.

"See You Again" is a really mature song.  And not mature in the way that a peep show is mature--mature as in grown-up.  It deals with the notion of love in a way that is simultaneously over-romanticized, totally abstract and yet grounded in some form of relatable reality.  It arms the preteens of America with the idea that they, too, could immediately find their true love, some Prince Charming from a past life re-incarnated as the worthless gadabouts their fathers lie awake worrying about.  (See my cynical characterization of the song's male hero above.)  

Yes, Miley Cyrus might totally flip out someday like Britney or Lindsey.  Yes, she might go on to become a symbol of all society's negative projections of "sluttiness."  But let's remember what happened with both Brit and Lindz when they started sleeping around and stopped wearing underwear: the media turned on them, revoked their good girl cards and slapped an NC-17 rating on everything they did.  Just because Miley Cyrus got her start on the Disney Channel doesn't mean that she herself is a more insidious Trojan horse of pre-pubescent hypersexuality.  If she were to start showing her nether regions to photographers her Disney roots would disappear just as fast as her predecessors.  Let us not forget--Americans love smut, trash and garbage as much as anyone else in the world, but insist on pretending to be morally superior whenever possible.

The horrible, banal truth is that she is selling--directly over the airwaves and right into the hands of elementary school girls--an idea of love that may be even more damaging.  After all, girls already mature more quickly than boys--remember the freshman/senior hookups from high school?  Do we really need to give this shark a gun?    

Pitchfork '08: Sunday

Alex and I arrived shortly after Jeff on Sunday and hurried to meet him just as Times New Viking were getting ready to start. To be honest, I've never been 100% in love with their recorded music, but their live show was a blast. The trio stopped between each song to discuss their next move and they cranked out a surprising amount of voltage for a three-piece. Also, Beth Murphy is rrrrrrrrreally hot.

We skipped Dirty Projectors and the opening of Boris to merch around a bit and get set up to see HEALTH, which ranks as the biggest mistake I made all weekend. First of all, the B stage was running behind due to adjusted showtimes after the El Guincho pullout, which meant that we had to sit through most of the High Places set. While they made interesting music, I was about as engaged as I would have been by two people reading from Bartlett's onstage. Another hot girl in the band, though.

Next up, HEALTH, a noisetet from L.A., came out with their specific brand of screaming, shrieking ear violence. I liked the group's aesthetic philosophy and I would have been interested in hearing more of the set, but Chicago's biggest cocksword took a spot next to us and insisted on clobbering the living dogshit out of me during each of HEALTH's "songs." I got fed up with battling Mr. Cuntlips after about ten minutes and we slipped away to get better spots for Les Savy Fav.

As it turns out, I owe that pretentious dicksuck a thank you because we were superclose for LSF, which turned out to be the highlight of Sunday afternoon. Lead singer Tim Harrington wore a headband with a small camera attached and started the set clothed in a neon fringe getup that he shed before the conclusion of the first number to reveal shiny, skintight leggings that left one of his legs bare. (Note: if you've never seen Harrington, he's a flabby, balding nutcase who looks like a disgruntled bear). During the second number, Tim leapt from the stage and ran through the audience, stopping to lie down in front of Jeff, Alex and I for a bit while we all mugged wildly at his camera. Further antics included: donning a Sherlock Holmes outfit and encouraging the crowd to contact their alderman to buy the park so that we could have a concert there every day; climbing into a garbage can which the crowd hoisted, followed by a hilarious Oscar the Grouch impression; rolling in mud before delivering another hilarious monologue about Native American rituals and an explorer named Charles Chicago; anointing each of his band members with mud; starting every song with something along the lines of "oh, this song, sweet!"; a skintight body stocking which was anatomically labelled and said "every body has a body." While Harrington's escapades were the highlight of the concert, the band's set was unspeakably tight and featured "Yawn, Yawn, Yawn" and "The Sweat Descends," amongst other superhits. A total blast.

We then skipped most of Dodos to eat and get good spots for Ghostface Killah and Raekwon, which meant catching the tail end of the Occidental Brothers Dance Band International, a tight act that just didn't appeal to my taste. On the heels of that, Ghost and Rae should have been awesome, but they ended up being my biggest disappointment of the whole festival. They were fine and did a fun version of "Nothin' to Fuck Wit'," but overall they seemed tired and never played more than two minutes of any song. Not bad, but not as mind-blowing as the Clipse show from '07.

Alex and I skipped out then to catch Spiritualized and Dinosaur Jr. To ensure a good spot for Dinosaur, Alex and I saw J. Spaceman from across the field. He was undoubtedly the loudest fucking set of the entire weekend--he was louder from across the park than Dinosaur was from twenty feet back. I'm not super-familiar with his stuff, but he played my favorite two tracks from Songs in A&E and didn't speak to the audience once during the set. Also, though his band kept playing, Pierce hurled his guitar at the drummer and walked offstage two minutes before his set was over, coming back out to wordlessly clap his hands and stare into space. If the "is this dude still on drugs?" jury was still out, I think they're returning a verdict sometime soon.

Spiritualized's ungodly noise got me superjazzed for Dinosaur and, as they warmed up, Alex leaned up to shout "I think I may shit myself from noise!" Though he didn't (how awesome would that be?!?) they were mindblowing. Mascis is a guitar god, although he seemed about as interested in playing a show as he would be in fighting an actual dinosaur. Lou Barlow was still really into what was going on and Murph is as thrilling a pure rock drummer as I've ever seen live. The power trio opened with "Been There All the Time" and "Back to Your Heart," my two favorite songs from Beyond. After the show, I asked Alex if it was obvious that they didn't like each other. His observation: "I don't think it matters because of how fucking good they are." Sage.

Spoon closed out another superb weekend of indie rock in the park with a tight set that, though not as good as the show I saw them play last October, was by no means disappointing. With some canny light effects, they played a solid mix of older and newer songs. Bradford Cox--of Deerhunter and Atlas Sound fame--joined the band onstage as we were leaving to bring the 2008 festival to a close.

And Now:

Greatest Misses of the Weekend:
No Age
Elf Power
Dirty Projectors
Dodos
Bon Iver
Cut Copy

Names I'd Like to See Next Year:
Okkervil River
Robert Pollard
Hot Chip
Bishop Allen
Belle & Sebastian
Islands
Wire
My Bloody Valentine (ha)
Pavement (ha-ha)

Dumbest Conversations I Heard:
"You know who they should get for next year's Don't Look Back? Guided by Voices doing Bee Thousand!"

"How are they gonna put Ghostface back here with this shitty speaker?"
To which Alex responded:
"How do you work with that shitty brain?"

As the 19-year-olds were passing a joint:
"No man, I have too many addictions already."
"But...you don't drink that much?"
"Yeah, I don't...but I have a HUGE collection of books and records."
-This one was actually Jeff, but I'm counting it anyway

Pitchfork 2008: Saturday

I had more hope going into Saturday as I had a much better hangover (Friday started at 6pm and it's hard to carry a hangover that deep) and our team was four strong, burgeoned by the addition of Alex and Adrienne. The downside, however, was that we were staring down the barrell of at least two hours of rain. Nevertheless, we soldiered into the afternoon as both Adrienne and I wanted to make it in time for openers Titus Andronicus.

And thank God we did. Frontman Patrick Stickles opened by playing a solo cover of Pulp's "Common People," making it through the first verse and one chorus before the rest of the band joined him and the group slammed into an original number. From there, the set was a frenetic half-hour bash along that featured some scaffolding-climbing by Stickles and several unhinged and awesome cuts from their debut record The Airing of Grievances (which I subsequently picked up). They somehow managed to combine some crazy Dylan-y swinging with about as much punk force as a blast furnace. Stickles closed his set with a speech about remembering the community spirit of an indie rock festival when we all returned to our normal jobs on Monday where everyone is out to get one another. My surprise hit of the festival!

We skipped most of the Jay Reatard set to meet up with Jeff and secure solid spots for the upcoming Caribou performance, which turned out to be quite a spectacle. With a decent selection of both older songs and stuff from Andorra, Dan Snaith and his band put on an excellent show. The band's drummer is an ungodly good musician and the moments when Snaith stopped playing guitar to join in on drums were transcendent. As Jeff observed, "It looks like a mirror!" Highlights included "Melody Day" and "She's the One," my favorite song from the new record.

I'm not exactly sure how I fucked up and missed this part, but I've heard that the opening section of Fleet Foxes set was quite moving as they charmed the audience to silence. I saw most of the set from the extreme right of the stage, close enough to hear the music but too far away to hear Robin Pecknold's audience banter. Fortunately, I got to hear "White Winter Hymnal" before we split to get a better spot for for Dizzee Rascal.

After bursting onto the stage and dismissing Fleet Foxes as "folk shit," Dizzee Rascal started his first song twice in between shouting at the sound guy. (Note: Caribou went on about ten minutes late due to sound problems at the same stage and apparently the sound tech was a dick about it. What goes around comes around, eh?) After the initial fuckups, however, DR put on a highly fun and refreshingly gunshot-free hip-hop show.

We caught about a third of the Vampire Weekend set from somewhere near the sound tent, surrounded by a number of much bigger fans. According to Adrienne, we really pissed off a bunch of the people around us (my best joke: "I think the bassist is one of their dads!") and they were pretty boring out in the open air. Frankly, VW makes music aimed at indie-ish girls (to wit: the whole front row was filled with cute blondes who knew all the words) and I don't really care for it. "Oxford Comma" is a pretty good song, though.

Though Jeff was pretty excited for !!!, he graciously agreed to watch them from across the field so we could get close for the Hold Steady. I'm glad with our choice, because then the heavyweights showed up.

I've been enamored of Craig Finn and Co. for almost a whole year now, with feelings of admiration persisting for almost two years. I understand there's not a terrible amount of innovation to what they do, but once you see them live you realize that there doesn't need to be. Since Saturday, I've seen two responses to their set. Response A: I love the Hold Steady and they were awesome!!! or, Response B: I don't really like the Hold Steady...but they were awesome!!! And indeed they were. The emcee introduced them by saying "Ready? Hold...hold...Hold...Steady!" and then the five gents strolled onstage. Finn stepped to the mic and shouted "Hey Chicago, we're gonna build something this summer!" after which the group threw themselves headlong into "Constructive Summer" from their excellent new LP Stay Positive. I was grinning so much that I nearly forgot to breathe as Finn jumped to the front of the stage and began excitedly punching the air. As the song slowed down, I noticed that I had been squealing with delight throughout the opener but it was too loud for me to hear myself. Anyway, he introduced the group's next number as being about "A girl, a guy and a horse!" before the quintet slammed into "Chips Ahoy!" The set included a fair number of songs both from the new record and Boys and Girls in America. At one point I turned to Alex to shout "I'd pay five hundred dollars to go drinking with them one night! One of us wouldn't make it!...It would be me!!" Other highlights: Finn changed some lyrics in "Massive Nights" to involve drinking in a church and closed it out with "You guys are the hardest motherfuckers in this town!" Also, the audience got the group out for a one-song encore, "Killer Parties" from their debut Almost Killed Me. Before the song, as the band vamped, Finn offered: "I'm gonna say something...and I say it a lot, but I say it because it's true...there is so much joy in what we do up here--and we're glad that all of you could be a part of it." As the song drew to a close, he gleefully announced "All of us--and all of you--and all of your friends--and all of our friends--we are all...The Hold Steady!" I've never had more fun at a show and I've never seen a band take more joy in playing music. It. Was. Awesome.

Jeff had dipped out midway through THS to check out Atlas Sound, so Alex, Adrienne and I refilled our Goose Island beers and took up spots near the edge of the crowd for Jarvis Cocker, another of my heroes. While I was a bit far from the madding crowd to get the brunt of the set, Cocker is an undeniable showman and I'm glad I got to see him. He managed to take off his jacket by leaping and delivered a charming lecture on notable Chicagoans with a hefty amount of his British sense of humo(u)r peppered in to boot. The set contained no Pulp songs (oddly, Titus Andronicus were the only band to play anything by his old group) but did close with "Running the World," perhaps the only protest song to so prominently and gracefully feature the epithet "cunt."

I'm not all that into ghost effects so, though the light show was quite impressive, we skipped Animal Collective to see a bit of No Age before slipping out the back gate with Jeff. Unfortunately, I missed the NA/Abe Vigoda Replacements cover, though I could hear it from the other side of the wall.

Crammed full and exhausted after nine hours of live music, we set out to drag each other through every seedy watering hole that the Windy City had to offer. Though by that time I was too tired to get drunk (!), we still managed to drain Chicago of an admirable amount of its beer in preparation for the next day.

Stay tuned for Sunday highlights.

Pitchfork 2008: Friday

After seeing The Dark Knight, Jeff and I hiked back to Don's apartment where I discovered I'd lost my tickets. After a few minutes of very loud swearing and throwing some of my possessions about, we headed to Union Park where I hoped to score a weekend pass for not much above face value. Fortunately, thanks to the world's worst lowballer, I got three tickets for only five above face. Not too bad considering I paid DOUBLE PRICE to see Wolf Parade a week earlier...

Anyway, we entered the park as Mission of Burma were tearing through their post-punk classic Vs. with as much energy as they put into the original recording. They were easily the highlight of Friday night, though I sort of missed more of the concert than I'm proud to admit.

This was my second time seeing Sebadoh and, frankly, I don't understand why they played second. Maybe MOB had somewhere else to be? Anyway, they were fine and very similar to their recorded output: half moving balladry and skewed pop bliss and half punk rock screaming/ garbled nonsense. Lou Barlow's charming, if somewhat awkward, crowd chatter was endearing and I enjoyed their set more than most festival attendees, though Jeff and I slipped out three-quarters of the way through to get better spots for the PE show. I did feel bad, though, when I looked across the field to see Lou Barlow playing an acoustic guitar that was totally drowned out by the throbbing bass of the Bomb Squad's warm-up.

Confession: I've never been as enamored of old-school hip-hop as most whiteys. I know that the music is good and I do enjoy listening to it, I just prefer my rap to be slicker and about horribly irresponsible topics like killing and drugs. That being said, I was fairly excited for the live rendition of It Takes a Nation of Millions... and was...a little disappointed. To begin with, the Bomb Squad opened for PE and played almost a fifteen minute set of snoozarific beats that brought me down faster than Jim Cooper at a campaign rally. Public Enemy never fully climbed out of that hole as far as I was concerned. Chuck D's chiding of Flav for missing opener "Bring Da Noize" was funny, as was Flava Flav's repeatedly calling his own album by the wrong name. Frankly, the whole thing left me a little cold and Jeff and I boned out before the big closing medley, which I've read was awesome. Alas...

My Angel Stepped Out of Heaven

The fantasy is always the same.

Well, that's not true. The fantasy is always similar. Perhaps we're in a record store. I walk by and casually glance at the stack of CDs in her hand...she notices. "Before and After Science is my favorite..." I offer sheepishly, gesturing at the disc on top. "Yeah, I love Another Green World so much," she replies. We spend the afternoon listening to records and drinking her absinthe, alone together, together alone.

Or perhaps it's an Art Brut concert. I spot her amidst the hipsters early in the set and keep casting sidelong glances toward her throughout. We eventually notice each other in earnest as we're the only ones who know all the lyrics to the XTC cover. I buy her a gin and tonic and we stay at the bar after the concert, talking about Fall b-sides until the bouncer kicks us out.

Such are my thoughts at seeing the creature known as femina hipstera mascara, better known as the Hipster Cutie. Such flights of fancy are generally enough to satisfy my urge to speak to the fairer sex and only rarely do I leave kicking myself for not actually approaching the girl.

Fast forward: in the summer after I graduated college, I found myself with several friends in Chicago for the second annual Pitchfork Music Festival, an outdoor concert hosted by the internet's most powerful bastion of music opinion. It promised to be a three-day spectacular of rocking out (independently), amusing t-shirts and ill-advised hairstyles. In short, my kind of place.

The weekend would also serve as a much-needed vacation for (and from) myself. I had just quit a dead end job due to a combination of laziness and arrogance. While away, I intended to take stock of my life, which was on the cusp between "post-collegiate bohemian" and "worthless layabout." I figured I could squeak out about two more months of sitting around my apartment before my lack of income and pesky need for sustenance would force me to get a job. The only rational choice, then, was taking a vacation from doing nothing so that I could waste money at a faster pace and cook up some new schemes.

Since my amigo Brandon and I had failed to get tickets for the Friday night performance, we went out and got totally hammed while our friends hit up the concert. After getting us tossed out of two bars, he bought a case of Bud Light and we drank it on the way back to the friend's apartment where we did our passing out at night. Exactly the sort of mature, reasoned decision that you would expect from two recent college graduates.

The next morning, I was dragged from my alcohol-induced coma just in time to get on the El train and make it to the show. I was sitting in the sun on the El platform, nonchalantly enjoying the last gasps of my hangover from the night before when I felt a sharp jab at my ribs. I turned angrily to my friend Brandon when he pointed me in the direction of the most otherworldly creature I have ever seen. I fell instantly in love.

Fortunately, the girl wore an iPod so the three males in our party could talk about her with little fear of being noticed. She seemed to be light years away, metaphorically and literally, as she started at the ceiling and smiled, clearly entertained by whatever she was listening to (and, presumably, by the three idiots obviously salivating over her less than teen feet away). I prepare to imagine the two of us frolicking at the concert...and then, suddenly, everything changes.

I made a rather crude joke at my friend Brandon's expense, causing him to put all of his considerable frame into attacking me. I flew out of my El seat and into the aisle. The girl noticed and started laughing before removing her earphones. "Hey, are you guys going to Pitchfork?" she asks in a thick Chicagoan accent. It sounded like music.

We responded that we are, in fact, headed that way. Our new friend, it seems, is also going to the hipster fest. The six of us chatted briefly as the train came to a stop and we prepared to switch. What happened next is the sort of thing that I can only liken to the feeling a mother gets when her child is trapped under a large boulder. I employed a focus and a clarity that verged on precognition. I could see three and four moves into the future and somehow knew exactly what to say. I perfectly boxed out the other two guys and they tacitly took on the role of wingmen, as per the Code of Guydom.

In the train station, I made a joke about the fact that both Brandon and I were wearing plaid shorts. "Did you guys plan that?" she said. "Oh, yeah. I'm Brandon and this is my life partner Blake..." he said. She laughed and I introduced myself with my actual name. I missed hers as I was deafened by the blood rushing from my head to other parts of my body.

[NB: Her name actually became something of a topic for discussion throughout the rest of the trip. My friend Kelly SWORE that it was Angela. I was adamant that she said Amanda. The other girl in the group, Brooke, felt her name had been Andrea, though not strongly. She's in my phone as Amanda...I suppose she'll stay that way, unless I ever actually call her.]

The rest of the trip to Union Park took half an hour and we had to wait outside the gate for another forty-five minutes (apparently Yoko Ono demanded a soundcheck). Throughout that whole period, I delighted her with a variety of stories. We talked about Chuck Klosterman, Led Zeppelin, Jaegermeister, purchasing literary materials and other topics too numerous to mention. At one point she laughed and said "You should be a professional storyteller! You get so excited." I smiled and considered asking her to marry me.

As we entered the Festival, we got split up. I was then alarmed as someone jumped on my back--it was Amanda. "Hey, they swiped my vodka!" she said. Apparently the guards took any water bottles that hadn't been sealed. "You have to go get it back!" In that instant I resolved to kill every single guard on the grounds, but she started laughing. She and I exchanged phone numbers--and I'm pretty sure she entered me as "Blake"--and promises to meet later then headed off to enjoy the day's festivities.

I saw her twice again that day, once during the Grizzly Bear set and, more substantially, after Cat Power. She made a comment about turning gay for Chan Marshall and I nearly died. When my group of friends went out that night I planned to call her but I thought I remembered her saying she wasn't twenty-one and lived outside the city. "Oh well," I thought, "I'll call her tomorrow."

The next day I would leave my phone at home. I wouldn't see her again before we left. In fact, I may never see her again. I comfort myself with the fact that it's better this way: since I didn't see her, I can imagine she would have slept with me. Had we actually met on Sunday, I would probably have blown it.

I resolve to keep her number as a souvenir.

When You Sleep

I have never slept well. I have never slept well because I am a ridiculous person: I am terrified of zombies. I recently discovered this is (sort of) a problem that many of my friends share. A number of people I know wrestle with insomnia. These people, however, are kept conscious by totally pragmatic troubles: paying bills, the existence of true love, the possibility of nuclear holocaust, et cetera. My eyelids hang open until the wee small hours because every time I close them, I see an army of undead corpses shambling toward me. Clearly, I am in need of professional help.

This is nothing new. One of the many terrors of my childhood was the inability to sleep. One entire summer my parents thought I was seriously ill. I likely looked this way because I only slept between six and ten a.m. for an entire two month span. You see, on the day that school let out, I watched Ridley Scott's Alien for the first time. Every night that summer, I lay awake quaking in abject fear, certain that a xenomorph would crash through my ceiling and rip my face off should my eyes even flutter shut. I would finally succumb to exhaustion around dawn, only to be jarred awake, soaked with sweat a few hours later in time for "The Price is Right." That was a horrible summer.

Before that, during the period I now refer to as my religious phase, I was kept awake by a paralyzing fear of missing the Rapture. In retrospect, this seems a bit naive. I doubt that the ressurected Lord would bypass someone merely because they were asleep. Fear, childhood and religious fervor know no such reason.

The earliest tormentors I can recall are vague memories of some sort of witch and ghost, sort of an evil duo that I believed would spring from beneath my bed. When I think about these two, though, I can only remember them doing some sort of malevolent (but basically unharmful) dance that looked like the choreography from a Scooby Doo episode. Anyway, my point is that I have never been able to get a good night's rest because I have a hyperactive imagination that has been spoiled by years of violent horror films. Even now, about once a month, I wake up drenched in sweat and screaming because of a recurring nightmare that takes a very specific scene from Zach Snyder's Dawn of the Dead. In fact, one of the main reasons I want to become famous is so I can meet that son of a bitch and knock his block off.

Consequently, I will always be the kind of person who buys two dead bolt locks. I will also always staunchly defend the right to bear arms, lest we ever need to defend ourselves from the recently departed. It seems like too big of a risk to take a chance on. Thank me when the time comes.

In the interim, I have considered several options for getting some rest. I toyed with the idea of sleeping pills, but I've never really been the doomed starlet type. For a short time, I thought about drinking myself to sleep with a bottle of Early Times every night. After careful consideration, however, this seems dangerous (and worse still, expensive). NyQuil was promising but the dreams were just too exhausting and I ended up sweating through my sheets every night (although no monsters were involved). And then I discovered My Bloody Valentine.

Amongst my roommates and I, MBV were something of a punchline for a long time. The British band served as shorthand for everything that was wrong with Pitchfork and music snobs. (NB: The internet webzine named their 1991 masterpiece Loveless the best album of the 90's, later to be shifted to second in a rehash of the same poll.) Eventually, I picked up a copy of Loveless on while I was taking a break from the men's store where I pretended to work while ogling girls and sleeping in the stock room. I spun the record a few times but never really got a lot out of it; the vocals were indecipherable and the guitars sounded like a migraine. For the most part, Loveless just occupied the space in my collection between Mountain Goats and the Old 97's.

Then one night I was convalescing with the worst case of strep throat I've ever had. I honestly considered slitting throat just to feel a different kind of agony. The only pain medication I had was some leftover hydrocodone from a minor surgery a few years before. I popped one in my mouth and put Loveless in my player. I'd heard it was a stoner album, so I figured it couldn't hurt. At least not as bad as my poor throat did.

And then time stopped. The first few tracks slid by unobtrusively, priming the canvas for what was to come. By the time track five kicked in, coincidentally titled "When You Sleep," I felt like the roof of my room had been ripped off. I could actually see the guitar sounds and it was amazing. I felt like I was riding a dolphin through the stars while tripping on LSD (that pain medication was major league stuff). The next track--"I Only Said"--came on and I was in a field of those fire plants from Mario Brothers with a psychedelic Yoshi. He passed me his sunglasses. When I put them on, the night sky exploded in colors. Something crazy was happening.

Track eight, "Sometimes," was the soundtrack to an intergalactic strip club filled with dancers that blinked in and out of existence, every color of the rainbow. I laughed and I could actually see the "HA HA" coming out of my mouth. How had I lived twenty years without this music??

As the album drew to a close, I was finally drifting off to sleep...I think. I remember as the shimmering synth notes of "Soon" filled my room, I imagined myself, still in the dinosaur's sunglasses, dancing with every girl I had ever loved. We were all laughing and jumping in slow motion. The walls fell in around me.

I awoke the next morning, still groggy from the pill, and stared down at my CD player for a long time. How had I missed it before? The watery, dreamy guitars...the whispered vocals, like the most important secret you'll never hear...the thudding drums that, mixed just a bit louder, would crush your ribs...the pounding, cardiac bassline...

These eleven tracks are, in a word, magic. This is my second favortie album of all time, behind Imperial Bedroom. Since that amazing night when the cosmos aligned, I have listened to it roughly five hundred times, in various states of altered consciousness. Every time I get something new. Stoney sober or blackout wasted, there is always something I'd never quite noticed before. MBV brainchild Kevin Shields has said that much of it was written during and for the period right before you fall asleep, when you're aware of how absurd your thoughts are. I find it difficult to grace that liminal stage of consciousness now without this record. I sometimes will shout myself awake just before drifting off unless it's on.

So there you have it: I may never love a woman and I'm terrified of fairytale monsters, but I had one hell of a drug trip one night.