By this point in the year, most of my friends are pretty sick of me but this year, I'm starting to fear for my safety. As you might remember, I'm one of the few Chicagoans who is an unapologetic fan of winter. Far from a popular position in an average year, this year it was the kind of thing that had visions of torches and pitchforks dancing in Chiberians frostbitten heads.
But even after a winter as historically bleak as this one I will still defend my love of true winter because it makes the spring all that much sweeter. This morning I smiled because it was raining. Rather than snowing. In late March. Only someone whose dealt with freezer burn on their lungs could find happiness in a drippy, 40 degree day.
Indeed spring in the midwest is a brief and flighty thing that exists for, at most, six non-consecutive weeks between March and early June but it's no less glorious because of it. A long-time spring fever sufferer, I still dream every year of the utterly giddy feeling I got in college when the season's first day over 50 when I could get away with skipping an afternoon class, throwing together a mixtape and go tooling down country roads to find a place to walk amidst woods and birds.
Don't get me wrong, as a whole, spring 'round these parts is perhaps the least satisfying season. But like that girl/boy/other you always had a crush on growing up, the brief moments when the light shines on you are unbelievably heady in a ways a solid. steady relationship/season (OK, this metaphor is getting out of hand) never quite could.
There are some songs that you read the title of, hear for the first time and say "there's a mix there." I remembering buying Rogue Wave's first album in fall 2007 (at B-Sides in Madison, WI I might add, one of my all-time favorite record stores) and having just such an experience. I was trudging across the Rock River on one of those disgusting November mornings that makes you question why anyone ever bothers and listening to Out Of The Shadow when "Postage Stamp World" started playing. Its dry acoustic guitar and warm production immediately made life seem a little more bearable. When Zack Rogue started singing about "this postage s-stamp world" and the pedal steel kicked in, I was in another place. Soon I would leave for a semester abroad and my Postage Stamp World Mix would be my companion the whole time, providing aural comfort and stability throughout my travels. When I'm ready for some platinum-grade nostalgia these days, I give it a spin.
Camera Obscura's "Let's Get Out Of This Country" is another song that was dying to be a mix from the second I heard it. Dreamy pop, more escapism, it was destined to soundtrack great travels, either mental or physical. Along with it, I threw together a little bit of globe trotting, from a Bob Dylan song about a country that no longer exists (and that he wrote on a bet) to one of Big Star's loveliest little throwaways to one of the best Jonathon Richman/Modern Lovers songs of all-time, even if it is an instrumental. Ted Leo & the boys make such powerful get-off-your ass and move music, they had to be in here twice as well. I hope you have as much fun in these songs as I did.
Tonight at 5:30 pm I was at Garfield Park Conservatory with a few hundred other committed geeks and aficionados quaffing locally-made beers to mark the kickoff of Chicago Craft Beer Week. It's a glorious, eleven day (that's right, a week can be eleven days when there's beer involved) celebration of Chicago brewers and Chicago bars that celebrate great beer. Not just in the city but throughout the suburbs there will tap takeovers, special brews, beach parties, mini-golf and almost any manner of beer-related merrymaking that you can think of - a hophead's dream come true.
Craft beer was a part of my life for years before I touched the stuff thanks to my father dragging my mother and I to brewpubs across the country throughout my childhood. By the time he left me at college with the instructions "When you drink, drink good beer," I was hooked. It's not coincidental that I was also getting pretty seriously into music around the same time as beer makes music sound better and listening to music is a perfect opportunity to drink great beer. With that in mind, I decided to make a minor contribution to #CCBW with an esoteric musical salute to the brewers that make Chicago such a great beer city.
You might have noticed from previous posts, that I sometimes worry about life moving too fast. It's so easy to get caught up in your job or politics or tv shows or family problems or whatever your poison is that I often feel like I'll look up and it'll be a month later than I remember. Music, along with beer and sports are passions of mine that also help keep me grounded in time and space. With Chicago's unseasonably cold weather since Labor Day wreaking havoc on my circadian rhythms, it was only a matter of time before I made a seasonal mix. As I write, it is before the autumnal equinox but I can also see the leaves outside my window just starting to lose their color and feel a cold breeze blowing, so I figure I'm safe in posting this.
You'll never find a bigger sucker for covers than Your Narrator, so when my beloved, Onion AV Club announced last year that it was starting a series commissioning covers of classic and "new classic" songs, I couldn't have been happier. The premise was even bolstered by the fact that they would all be covered in a room in the AV Club's Chicago offices that was decorated as one of the greatest flags in the world.
The rules for this contest were a little odd - there was a list of songs and bands would be invited to pick a song to cover from an ever-shrinking list, meaning that there were more than a few odd fits. The results of the first round were successful enough that a second round of covers was commissioned this year, which concludes today with the Fruit Bats' cover of "The Other Woman". Overall, the results were mixed, there were some faithful and nice takes, a few workmanlike covers and a few more that just missed the mark - wildly. And to be fair, a lot of times covers that are great fun live when you just wanna dance, fall flat on a computer screen when you have the original a click away.
But there were enough amazing moments to make the project worthwhile and today i bring the top six, countdown-style. You can watch the videos and download the songs after the jump.
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