Six Song Six-Pack - The Valentine's Day Edition

Does anyone actually LIKE Valentine's Day? Someone has to, right? Every year it approaches followed closely by groans and eye rolling, yet there it is on every TV show and coating every Walgreens candy aisle, seemingly stronger with with each iteration. How does that happen?

Some would say that it's merely the inexorable machinations of a capitalist system that demands seasonal grist for it's consumerist mill and they wouldn't be wrong, but I suspect there's more to it than that. February is a rough month, especially here in Chicago. It's cold, it's grey, the Bears are done and the Sox are not yet playing in Arizona. Given that the next holiday on the horizon is followed by forty days of fasting, it's fair to say that we could use a little psychic sustenance to pull us through. And what's better than l'amour to give succor to those suffering in the cold? Romantics get to gush over flowers, cynics get to look forward to some guarenteed lovin' and everyone else gets to mock it from afar.

On Warmer Music's Fall 2011 Mixtape

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.

Concert Review - Ted Leo & the Pharmacists at Millennium Park and Fireside Bowl

“I don’t what to do about this country, man. Like this is a serious problem for me. I’m losing sleep.”

“I know.”

This was the conversation a friend and I had while walking to the Ted Leo & the Pharmacists show Monday night. It’s been a rough few weeks for American liberals as we’ve seen incompetent leaders on both sides of the aisle fiddle while our already-burning nation edges closer and closer to the tinderbox. I have to admit it was starting to wear perceptibly on me, making my chest clench every time I turned on the radio.

Times like these call for in inspiring music and, as always, Ted Leo was the man for the job.