Best of 2004
Yeah it’s so High Fidelity, but I can’t narrow down my music lists to just 5 songs or albums. First up, here are my favorite 10 albums of 2004, in no particular order:

Travis – 12 Memories
By far their best album yet, solid from top to bottom. How is this band not huge in America, but Franz Fucking Ferdinand is? Damn corporate labels.
Ghostface – The Pretty Toney Album
Something about Kanye West’s College Dropout just seemed forced, repetitive, and gimmicky, whereas Ghostface makes that old school feel seem right. In his demented way.
Muse - Absolution
My favorite Radiohead album unequivocally is The Bends, and Muse carries on that aesthetic. A solid rocker of a CD.
Rachael Yamagata - Happenstance
It took me awhile to get around to listen to this album, but I’m damn glad I did.
Wilco - A Ghost Is Born
So it’s not up to the ridiculously high standards set by Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, but it’s still a great album, an interesting listen with some gorgeous sounds.
Garden State Soundtrack
Do soundtracks count? Maybe a little too heavy on The Shins, but it evokes the film perfectly like any great soundtrack should do.
Zero 7 - When It Falls
Ethereal, and just too damn gorgeous. I didn’t think they could top Simple Things - holy crap was I wrong.
John Legend - Get Lifted
Smooth, smooth, old school soul. With a cameo from Snoop Dogg thrown in for good measure.
Norah Jones - Feels Like Home
I had thought maybe she was a little bit overrated after the success of her first album. Nope.
Snow Patrol - Final Straw
Continuing the banner year for Brit rock. I’ve always enjoyed a bit of warm melancholy in my arena rock.

As for my favorite songs of 2004, again in no particular order:

Elliott Smith – "Coast To Coast"
Goddam I miss him.
Air - "Mike Mills"
All electronic to all orchestral in four and a half glorious minutes.
The Mooney Suzuki - "Alive & Amplified"
Incredibly great song, incredibly terrible album. Motherfuck The Matrix – maybe the worst production choice ever.
Magnet and Gemma Hayes - "Lay Lady Lay"
Best Bob Dylan cover ever. Yes, I know what that statement entails.
Minnie Driver - "Ruby Adeline"
Yes, that Minnie Driver. Gorgeous lullaby to close out her lovely album, which was surprisingly good (very Beth Orton-ish), and nearly made my year’s best list.
The Roots - "Star"
I can hear the vinyl crackle now.
Brian Wilson - "Good Vibrations"
How great was it to finally hear Smile? I like this version better than the 37 year-old one.
Young Heart Attack - "Starlite"
As I’ve said before, the coed Texas equivalent of The Darkness, a 70’s throwback guilty pleasure. I thought for sure this one would have been put on a teen soap soundtrack or an SUV commercial by now.
Nas - "Coon Picnic (These Are Our Heroes)"
Scathing, vicious, and right on the money.
Keane - "Somewhere Only We Know"
It still sounds really good when played with guitars, by the way.
Wilco - "Company In My Back"
I attack with love. The mandolin riff may be the prettiest thing they’ve ever recorded.
The Streets - "Blinded By The Lights"
Watch the incredible video and the track makes sense.
The Bees - "Horsemen"
Who-ish arena rock with Beach Boys melodies. Near-perfect.
Kings Of Leon - "The Bucket"
Finally, a Kings Of Leon song that doesn’t sound exactly like every other one.
Fatboy Slim and Damon Albarn - "Put It Back Together"
Is Damon stupendously baked, or intentionally lazy with the vocals? Fuck it, it’s fun.
Rachael Yamagata - "1963"
Goddam what a gorgeous piano riff. And that husky voice. I’m here if you ever need me, Rachael.
Zero 7 - "In Time"
Hell, pretty much pick any track off of When It Falls. This one just happens to be my favorite.
Snow Patrol - "Chocolate"
Most confounding song title of the year. Exceptionally great track, though.
Ryan Adams - "English Girls Approximately"
Just for the final haunting distorted guitar riff. "Love Is Hell" is great too.
Muse - "Apocalypse Please"
I dig the impending doom piano riff. Of all the great tracks on this CD, this one makes me want to break stuff the most ("Hysteria" runs a close second).
Rufus Wainwright - "Little Sister"
Orchestral and gorgeous. The final flourish gives me goose bumps every time.
Norah Jones - "Those Sweet Words"
An embarrassment of riches for me this year, and by riches I mean half-Asian, half-Caucasian, smoky-voiced sirens with jazz-blues-country influences.
Travis - "Somewhere Else/Love Will Come Through"
I can’t split them up, maybe my favorite consecutive tracks since "Monday/Outtasite (Outta Mind)" on Wilco’s Being There. Why was "Love Will Come Through" left off the Garden State Soundtrack? For more Shins? Fucking hell.

On to movies, which I can narrow down to 5, because I have no life and didn’t see that many flicks this year:

Shaun of the Dead
Here’s hoping they don’t try to make an American version.
Ocean’s 12
So exactly what I was looking for.
Kill Bill Vol. 2
Maybe a little overly drawn out, but still quality.
Big Fish
The sea of daffodils, so damn good. The ultimate Southern Gothic film.
Garden State
Everyone’s already gone on and on about it, all I’ll add is Largeman’s reaction to Sam’s dogs always cracks me up.

As for TV, Nip/Tuck and Rescue Me were quality, but it really all comes down to Keen Eddie. That the DVD has almost none of the original soundtrack is a pop cultural crime against humanity – fuck Paramount up their stupid asses. Mmmmmm, Sienna Miller. That’s a good mental image to end the year on, I must say.
- posted by Liebs @ 10:54 PM 0 comments

 
A New Girl In My Life
She’s got sweet curves. She sings when you touch her the right way. It feels natural to hold her in my arms. Her name is Isabelle. She’s my Washburn D10SLH acoustic guitar. I’m still a drummer first and foremost, but it was time to learn how to play the guitar as well. Plus, when Isabelle is on her guitar stand she really ties the room together.

I’m happy I went with the left-handed version, doing it up Hendrix and Cobain style. Calluses are well on their way, I’ve got several chords good to go, and I can pretty much get through "Driftwood", though I need to improve my speed between chord changes. Hey, it’s only been three days, cut me some slack. Especially with my thick, stubby fingers, guitar virtuosity is never going to happen. Just being good enough to do a little busking across Europe would be fine with me.
- posted by Liebs @ 1:54 PM 0 comments

 
Tsunamis Ain’t Nuthin’ To Fuck With
Here’s an email from a guy from Sri Lanka who I played rugby with back at MIT. Thankfully, he was the fastest player on the team.

"Thank you for everyone’s concern. I am safe with no major injuries and got home a few hours ago. My family members were also not affected, since they were in Colombo. I was on an east coast beach with some friends when the tsunami hit at about 9.15am on Sunday. We were on the beach in the morning when we saw the waves coming and ran inland to escape them. We ran about 150m inland and then realised we could not outrun the large wave that was following us, so we climbed up a partly built house. Within a few seconds the wave crashed onto the house and took the house and us with it. Fortunately, I managed to grab a coconut branch with one arm, pull myself to the tree and hug it with my legs and arms. The first wave poured in for about 10 mins and then sucked most of the water back into the sea. After that I got down and saw one of my friends. Then both of us started yelling out the names of our two other friends. One of them heard us and came out. As we were looking for the other friend, we heard shouts of "another one is coming" and started running back into the jungle. After following some villagers inland and finding some slightly high ground we climbed up a tree. The second and third waves flooded the area around us, but didn't hit the tree. We were about 1km inland at this point. We then heard a huge noise and saw a very large fourth wave heading our way. The wave was crashing close to us and came about three feet up the tree we were on. After this wave was sucked back into the ocean things became relatively calm and we waited on the tree for a while. After the water levels had decreased a bit, we decided to head towards the only high ground we could see, with the help of some villagers. At one point I had to use a rope to get over a stream because I can't swim. The high ground was already being turned into a refugee area. There was a Special Task Force (STF) military unit nearby that was organising the rescue and relief effort in the area. There was still a threat of more tidal waves and there was no road out of the area because the only bridge connecting it to the mainland was destroyed by the waves. We had to wait our turn to be airlifted by the one helicopter that was assigned to the area because the whole country was affected and limited resources were available. The helicopter had a mechanical failure and was grounded for six hours. We were taken to a big rock by the STF to spend the night in safety and brought back to the refugee area in the morning. Finally we were airlifted to a nearby city at about 1pm on Monday. One of our friends was still missing, so we tried to locate him and waited for his father to get to the area. After doing what we could to help locate him and sending information about him to all the military bases, hospitals and refugee camps in the area, we headed for Colombo today. Will try to do more about the missing friend tomorrow. The death toll in Sri Lanka is expected to hit 25,000. It was a very sad and scary experience. There is a lot more detail to be said, but I'm really tired now and I'm heading to bed. Will tell you more later."
- posted by Liebs @ 8:26 PM 0 comments

 
Yes, I Have A Thing For Chick Singers
Is it so wrong that I fantasize about having a three-way with Rachael Yamagata and Norah Jones?
- posted by Liebs @ 8:38 PM 0 comments

 
Christmahanukwanzikah?
I know a lot of you have enjoyed the Virgin Mobile commercial, and watch The O.C., but please, stop, just fucking STOP with the holiday combination greeting shit. Leave my religion out of it, for fuck’s sake. It’s misleading, now everyone thinks Hanukkah is an important Jewish holiday – it’s not, it’s arguably the most irrelevant and unimportant holiday we have. Which I guess is the only reason why we’ve let it become somewhat commercialized. That’s my other problem with this holiday amalgamation, gentiles think Jews will crassly commercialize our important holidays just like they do. What y’all do with your holidays seems vulgar and alien to me (though by no means am I questioning y’all’s right to do with your holidays what you want). There will never be an O.C. Yom Kippur special, understand? And that’s fine. And we understand that being less than 2 percent of the population of this country, Christmas will be everywhere in December each year. That’s not a problem, we can still order in some food and watch football and basketball. But stop wishing me a Merry Christmas, or Chrismukkah (a conspiracy by Fox to assimilate my people once and for all), or Christmahanukwanzikah. Stop asking me if I have a tree, or if I’m going home to spend time with my family for Christmas. Just leave me the fuck alone about it. Thanks, and have a Merry Christmas. . .you fucking goyim.
- posted by Liebs @ 9:38 AM 0 comments

 
Julia Roberts Double Feature?
It certainly wasn’t my intent, but Tha Playa and I were bored, so we did the Ocean’s Twelve-Closer double.

I dig the original Ocean’s Eleven, and I’ve probably seen the remake about a hundred times (for several months it was always on one of the HBOs). I’ll have to see it several more times on DVD or TV to make sure, but I think I like this new one the best of the three. It sums up the rat pack attitude perfectly. I knew I was being fucked with the entire time, so I didn’t try to figure out any sort of logical plot intricacies. The humor was my type of funny, all the camera trick homages were eye candy to my cinematic sweet tooth, and David Holmes killed it again with the soundtrack. Catherine Zeta-Jones is one classy dame, and if anyone in charge of the 007 franchise had any sense, they would make her the next James Bond. To all the womenses out there, if you have a haircut like Isabel’s, I am putty in your hands.

Since most everything else playing at the gigaplex was crap, and we had nothing else to do, we decided to stretch the $6.50 and watch Closer. Not really a date movie (unless you’re as jaded as some friends of mine are), but certainly the epitome of a ladder theory movie. I always enjoy seeing London on film (a bit homesick for it, to be honest), and Natalie Portman is fantastic as usual - good lord what a spectacular bottom. I agree with director Mike Nichols to cut her nudity, it would have totally distracted from what was the best-acted and most powerful scene in the film. Was it an enjoyable couple of hours, though? Not really. Interesting, more like it. But my theory is that most women will really like this movie, even though they’ll tell you that some drivel like Legally Blonde is their favorite flick. Most guys, they’ll be content with seeing Natalie Portman in thong knickers.
- posted by Liebs @ 9:33 PM 0 comments

 
Self-Righteous Bastard On The Radio
Called in to World Soccer Weekly, was on hold for about 30 minutes, and then was on the air for about 10 minutes, started talking about Aston Villa, then moved on to discussing how to get American youth more interested in soccer, how ESPN’s soccer coverage and MLS management suck ass, and even got to tell them about the Atlanta Silverbacks youth program. Steven then hooked me up with a six month subscription to FourFourTwo Magazine. Ace. “Give ‘im a haaaaat…”
- posted by Liebs @ 9:31 PM 0 comments

 
Champs Sports Bowl, Dec. 21
Georgia Tech vs. Syracuse. Brother vs. Sister. Kiddo, the Orange are going down!
- posted by Liebs @ 7:58 AM 0 comments

 
Big Balls, or No Brains?
Yesterday I performed with The Casual Poets at the MSE Department’s annual Christmas party. It was an unusual show for me in several respects:

1. I think the largest audience I’ve ever played for, approximately 150 or so.
2. It was a well-lit room in the daytime, and no stage lights to blind me.
3. I know most of the audience.
4. It was an acoustic set, so there was no drumkit to hide behind.

We played our now-infamous Brit rock cover version of Britney Spears’s “Baby One More Time”, followed by Travis’s “Love Will Come Through” and ending the set with “The Thermo Song”, an original with the fantastic lyric “A D is just a B without its belt on”. I continued the recent trend of handling most of the singing, much to my chagrin. Afterwards, the women complimented me on the performance, and the guys told me they admired my courage for getting up in front of the crowd. Par for the course. But it did make me realize I hadn’t thought about the audience or the setting at all until we were sitting there playing for them. Would I have still done it had I thought about it beforehand?

Yeah, probably. I’m a dumbass, and let’s not kid ourselves, I have no shame or integrity left.
- posted by Liebs @ 2:52 PM 0 comments