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Today I accidentally saw the word “challengers” and just had to listen to that New Pornographers track:

My friend Beth was talking about it last night at bible group and about how much she liked it.

“I like it so much, I don’t even want to listen to it.”

I honestly can’t figure out what she means by that but there’s something to it. I know what feeling she’s getting. It’s that feeling that you can’t describe and since you can’t, you don’t even want to have to bother with it. Or, maybe you’d rather the feeling be something tangible that you can hold and squeeze like a cute puppy as opposed to something that can’t ever be fully scratched.*

There are songs I listen to like that where it just gets in your soul and turns you into a wax sculpture. You completely lose focus on whatever you are doing, including listening to the song and that empty, yet completely fulfilling feeling just floats in the exact middle of your chest. You know, that exact moment where someone starts to give you a shoulder rub and you lose all sense of awareness.

After listening to that track, I decided to make a playlist of songs that give me that similar feeling from The New Pornographers. I’ve done this a thousand times before (I don’t know why I don’t just save the playlist) and every time I do it, I always end up adding Sufjan songs as well. Sufjan is my go-to guy for midsection feelings.

This made me think about what to call the list since I can’t verbally describe the “style” of music I’m looking for. I want to figure it out so I can quickly add more artists whenever I decide to remake this playlist. And now that I think about it, I can probably get some Ben Folds on there, as well as Midlake.

Here are the characteristics I’m looking for:

• slow to mid-tempo
• atmosphere (there has to be reverb, echo or orchestration of some kind)
• either a soft, breathy voice (Sufjan) or a pretty voice that can get LOUD (Neko Case)
• the drums can be anything but I really like a driving beat (My Rights Verses Yours) or maybe even non-existent
• banjos tend to work well, especially a lush recording of them, but they are not required
• piano almost always works
• a french horn? you’re killing me

Of course, those aren’t requirements, just a couple of things I’ve noticed in the songs I’m putting on this list.

If you read those characteristics, it seems as if I’m just saying that I’m a fan of adult contemporary music, which I guess I happen to be (depending on the era). And, I have to admit, my favorite artists are making music that is very similar in sound, specifically Ben Folds as he gets older and older - and, if you want, Vampire Weekend has that whole Graceland thing going on, and I’ve become a big fan of their’s over the past month.

I guess I’m trying to coin the phrase Indie Adult-Contemporary. In doing a search on the term, I’m far from the first person to come up with the phrase (a Pitchfork writer being at the top of the Google list), but I definitely want to get it going so that when people describe new music to me they can just use the IA-C genre tag to make it easy.

Here are some artists that I would argue fall in that category (not entire the catalogs of these artists, mind you):

• Ben Folds
• The New Pornographers
• Midlake
• The Shins
• Field Music
• Sufjan Stevens
• Ben Kweller
• Badly Drawn Boy

And the list goes on… Please join with me in incorporating this term into your daily routine.

*although, I would argue that there is no amount of squeezing that will ever fulfill your appetite for cute puppies (as would Todd Glass)

Bon Jovi performing cancer cure concert [BROKEN]

What can’t this man do?

OMG, SUFJAN STOP!!!

Stop swirling around in my head for the better part of my day!
Stop making me feel the emotions expressed in your songs!
Stop writing music to fit your lyrics perfectly!
Stop making my eyes well up with tears!
Stop complementing your piano and guitar with banjo and oboe!
Stop being the most talented Christian musician ever!
Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!

My friend calls me up on Wednesday and tells me that the record industry is having a big deal in Cleveland this year. They usually have it in LA or NY but they decided to have it in Cleveland this year. Cleveland has become the big to-do for the music industry lately. I don’t know why and I don’t care - as long as they keep bringin’ it.

Anyways, he tells me that he got invited to a Ben Folds concert and was wondering if I wanted to come. I said sure and then he tells me that only 30 people got invited and its a special private performance. I about crapped my pants when he told me I could come as his guest. In fact, if I hadn’t already crapped my pants before he called, I would’ve.

This blog entry is all about this night and what a glorious night it was.

Let me start by apologizing for the quality of the pictures. The room we were in was crappy for my digital camera and I basically had to take all of my pictures in the dark. So, that’s why they are blurry and cut weird.

The night started when I decided that I would go downtown early and meet up with my friend John Connor (from Q104) who was working his radio gig at Shooters. I parked near his house and had to find my way down into the flats to the west bank which I didn’t realize was a hefty walk. This is the first picture I took just kind of testing the camera out and shooting into nothing. I don’t use this camera much and I’ve just since decided that I’m going to, so I’m still getting the hang of it.

Here is a picture I took while waiting for the bridge to connect. A big barge was rolling through (complete with a tugboat, which, ironically, was pushing) and I looked down and noticed that someone had made a stamp and stamped the side of the bridge. I like graffiti and I like Spy Vs. Spy so ’tis a perfect photo opp.

When I crossed the bridge I noticed, high up, that someone had a stop light in their window. I thought I could make a funny joke about Cleveland’s streets being so crazy that they go everywhere (and I mean everywhere) but that’s not a funny joke.

I finally make it to Shooters and here is what I see. This guy (John) gets all the girls, especially the golden ones:

His show ends at Shooters and we make our way back to his apartment. We listen to Sufjan Stevens on the way back and it’s beautiful. We get there and our friend Emily is calling and is trying to find his place. Here are two pictures (out of this timeline) of John and Emily:

After Emily gets here and we park our cars into John’s lot, we make our way over to the Ritz Carlton hotel where Ben is playing. We walked there since he lives downtown and it’s pretty close to his apartment. On the way there we are talking about how exciting this is and how we hope we can still be normal Ben fans even though this is an industry show. We were talking about using the flash in our cameras and how we hope we are able too. I didn’t think so - I was expecting a suit and tie affair - everyone else didn’t have a definite opinion. This part of the story is actually quite boring and I think my description does it justice.

We got to the front entrance and I’m expecting a bit more than was there - nothing but a doorman (who was very nice, as was the rest of the staff - almost weird-nice). We looked around for some sort of info on where to go and we talked to the front desk. This party was very secret, I guess, and so I assumed we would need passes, guest lists, golden beards, etc. - something to let them know we were “in.” Instead, all we needed was the knowledge that the show was going on. We told the lady we were here to see Ben Folds and she told us to go up to the 6th floor and it was to the left. Easy enough.

We get to the 6th floor (oddly enough, there was only a 1st floor and a 6th floor) in a flash and out into the lobby where we are told to go into this middle-sized room. The room was very cozy and there were elegant chairs and sofas splashed around the room. There wasn’t really anyone there yet so we went right to the front chairs, next to the piano. The piano was about 5 feet from us - you can’t tell in the picture, but it was SO close. I was starting to get very excited.

We were talking about our cameras again so I started taking pictures to see what it would look like without the flash and with the flash. As you will see, it was VERY hard to get any good pictures. Even with the flash, it was still hard to frame the pictures since my viewing screen was almost black.

The pictures were okay - I got a few more of the piano:

I even got a blurry one of the equipment for no reason at all.

I decided that I would take a couple of pictures so that you can get an idea of the room. I took some of the chandelier(sp?) and of the view from the window. I didn’t want to mess with anything so I put the camera up close to the closed drapes to see what kind of picture I could get of the Cleveland skyline. You can’t really tell what it is, but I think it looks cool and I just explained what it is so don’t complain.

Here’s what the night’s all about - radio people. These people all have something to do with radio, or they know someone who does.

According to John, these are the bigwigs from Epic. A bit blurry but maybe I did it to disguise their identities. You’ll never know (unless you read the beginning of this and find out why they are blurry).

AND THEN - the man shows up. I was really disappointed because I couldn’t get any good shots of him coming in. Just a few blurry ones here - if you’ll kindly squint-and-notice in the second picture, Frally (Ben’s wife) is standing next to him. Also, in the first one, he has his arm around her.

Finally - what you’ve all been waiting for - a setlist, followed by the pictures that accompany that same list.

1. He sits down at the piano and just starts playing Zak and Sara. It was great. My friends did the clapping part and I was a bit embarrassed because I still hadn’t felt out the vibe. Ben chuckled when they did it and I think I started to realize that it didn’t matter what the night was like - we were there to see Ben and it was going to be fun and loose.

2. Ben starts laughing about how he hasn’t done a gig like this in a while and that the room reminds him of his first give ever when he was 12. He had written 15 songs and he was playing a chicken dinner. During his set, the older ladies kept asking him to keep it down a bit. He was annoyed by it because he was only 12 and had written all these songs and no one was giving him credit. Towards the end, they asked him to play Happy Birthday and he left.

3. This next part really let me know the vibe of the night. Ben said that he would take any requests that we had. We all started yelling out stuff. I yelled out Rocky and he said that he didn’t know that one. I also yelled out Lydian Song but it was overshadowed by shouts of Emaline (from my friend), Brick (from idiots), One Angry Dwarf, etc. He said that he would play them all (implying that he would play them all at once - a funny joke, if you’re there so I shouldn’t even have told you about it). Also, someone yelled out Happy Birthday and he played the first line of it.

4. He decides to play All U Can Eat and he explained the origin. He asked if anyone knew who The Divine Comedy was and I raised my hand. I was hoping that he would start talking to me about The Divine Comedy and how great they are and that we would make a deep connection and be best buds forever. He just nodded instead. The song is dedicated to Neil Hannon (The Divine Comedy) and it’s about Neil’s beef with America. He likes America but this song is about the parts of America that Neil doesn’t like.

5. John requested Emaline and Ben honored that request. My friend said that he actually teared up a bit (his cat is named Emaline - and apparently he has something with his cat).

6. Ben says that someone requested Bitches Ain’t Shit. He explains that he wrote the song with Dr. Dre but that Dre doesn’t know it. He says that Dre wrote words so if you don’t like the words you can’t blame Ben. It was amazing - we all chanted, (”and all the children say”) “Bitches can’t hang with the streets.” It was beautiful.

7. Then he played Brick.

8. Philosophy was up next complete with the Pyser ending.

9. Landed. Someone to the left of me clapped for this song. He must not have heard it performed 15,000 times on every show like I have.

10. He started asking what our requests were again and I yelled out Tom and Mary this time. I could hear some other people yelling some of the other same stuff like Dwarf but I did hear someone yell Common People. Anyways, he heard my Tom and Mary very clearly and chuckled saying, “I don’t even remember that song! Shit, I wrote that when I was 18! Thanks for - that’s - wow. I know the first few chords. I’ll play those.” He played the opening chords (which were so awesome) and sang the lyrics, “For the benefit of Tom and Mary,” and then said that was all he knew. We all laughed, but secretly I cried a tear.

11. He ended up playing The Ascent of Stan (which, while good, can not be satisfying without the techno and banjo, in my opinion) saying that he would play that first, Dwarf next and then a song that proves that record industry folks can keep a tune.

12. One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces - he explained that a lot of people think that this song was written from his perspective but they are wrong. It was written about all the ass he kicked in high school.

13. He ended (and forgot to play Army or Not the Same) by saying, “Thanks y’all. Feel free to come up and play duets on the piano. I’m going to go get a beer.”

Here are the pictures I could manage to get while trying not to be annoying, trying not use the flash (although I only did that once or twice - most everyone else was using flash, why not me?), trying to get more than one perspective from the same seat and trying to see in pitch black to frame him in the picture.

He left the room and we were kind of bummed because we didn’t know where he was going to get a beer. It looked like they were ushering him out of the room. Well, my friend wasn’t having it. She went through the door to find him and we followed. Turns out the beer was right by the door and everyone pretty much lined up to talk to him. I felt kind of bad because he’s trying to relax with a beer and here we are trying to talk to him but he was so nice. The whole time we are trying to talk to him though there was a guy that kept introducing him to industry people and it was very formal - it was almost kind of gross. Like - here is so and so, they don’t care about you, but they think you are cool and it will make them cool if they say hi to you. Also, they hope to make money off of you. But, I am stereotyping and being a snob. It seemed like there were a lot of fans in there that truly liked Ben. My friend told him that she would be playing The Luckiest at her wedding (which, by now, is so overdone - especially by all of my freakin’ friends that stole the idea from me back in 2001 - damn all my early marrying friends!). He said that was sweet and then signed her iPod with a little piano drawing. I told him that the show was great and that I wanted to thank him for introducing me to The Divine Comedy (hoping that this would be our deep connection that we didn’t get to have during the show) with the Songs of Love cover. We talked for a couple of secs about how great Neil Hannon’s voice is and about how he had just seen him in Dublin. He also told me that the end credits of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was done by Neil and I told him it’s another reason for me to go and see it. We got some pictures taken and off we were. There are two of each with us because both times Ben blinked in the first take.

I mentioned that I felt kind of bad trying to talk to Ben right away after the show, you know, bugging him and all. I felt okay about it after talking with him but my feeling changed again when leaving because behind all of these people pushing in to talk to Ben was Frally looking kind of lonely and almost like a little girl being pushed away by people crowding around her famous dad. I felt a bit sad for her but also realized that this isn’t anything new for her, I’m sure.

And thus, the night had come to an end. We walked back to his apartment and called some people about our experience. It was a great night and God bless John Connor for letting me straggle* along and God bless Ben for being so freakin’ talented.

*huh?

Simple and funky - not two words you normally associate with The Beach Boys, but this song is described by such words. This doesn’t have the Beach Boys feel as I like, but this was at a time where Brian Wilson was loosing touch with the band/world and his music was winding down. It’s still a good song and it fits the album perfect.

The piano sounds like a kids piano and the lower keys are pounded as such. I really like the sound of it - sort of warped. Couple that with some organ and a funky bass and you’ve got a hit! Well, maybe not a hit, but at least a good song.

The song is pretty much just like other love songs - it’s about a guy that works all day and wants to come home to his lover. The difference is that he’s pleading with her that they stay together no matter how hard it gets.

Every mornin’ our love is reborn
And it lives with me all day long
Things start changin’
Take as a little rearrangin’
But our love grows on and on

It puts a little bit more heart and emotion into this fun rock song.

makes me think of: going to the Rock Hall of Fame and listening to Good Vibrations like I had never heard it before, thus inspiring me to buy the Smiley Smile/Wild Honey comp

This is one of the instrumentals on the latest LP from The Flaming Lips. It’s a great track too, what, with all the keyboard horns and beat programming. It’s got a lot atmosphere and it puts you in space as I imagine it’s supposed to. After all, the title implies that we are getting ready to reach our destination, Pavonis Mons, and this is the music we are supposed to hear upon doing so.

I’ve never been to Pavonis Mons, much less travelled there in a balloon but I can be 100% sure in telling you that this is exactly what it’s like.

makes me think of: working third shift at the hospital and streaming this album from the computer

This is an example of a song by “Weird Al” that I would probably absolutely love if Ben Folds sang it. Probably, any song by “Weird Al” that I like would be better if Ben Folds sang it - which is a coincidence since Ben Folds and “Weird Al” work together on occasion.

“Weird Al” is the master of the song and style parody but he also writes his own original music. At first I was trying to figure out if this was a style parody but I don’t think it is. It’s a good sounding 80s song and that’s what I like about it. Plus, it has harmony and any song with harmony gets added 10 points to it in my review book.

This song was probably hilarious to me when I was a kid. It is about a guy who can’t understand why a girl (that he creepily stalks) won’t go out with him. He talks about going through her garbage, spying on her with a telescope and shaving a mohawk on her cat. It’s not something that is amazingly funny now since my tastes in comedy have matured way beyond this but I get the joke. “Weird Al” is also the master of irony.

If you can look past your hatred for “Weird Al’s” goofy parodies (and remember that this is the guy who did UHF) and see the talent he has for writing good pop songs, then you will like this song. If you can’t, then you’ll probably hate me for reviewing it.

makes me think of: sitting in the parking lot at my apartment

Today’s song meaning comes from a guest writer (not that he knows it):

Taken from SongMeanings:
Now, is this the deepest song ever? Of course not. But it isn’t “pop, pain and simple.” It *does* mean something.

Got it?

I really like this song - now. I didn’t like it when I first heard it but that was because I was expecting something different from the group that did the Crank Yankers theme song. I did eventually hear what I was looking for and once I threw out my expectations I started to like this song.

The keyboard in the break is awesome. I love cheesy ‘boards so much.* The one thing I thought about though when I first heard this song was that this guy’s voice reminds me of “Weird Al’s.” He sings better than “Weird Al” but that’s not the point of “Weird Al,” of course.

*I also like saying ‘boards instead of keyboards.**
**This is the first time I’ve ever said ‘boards instead of keyboards.

makes me think of: driving home from Record Exchange with my cousin

I cannot figure this song’s meaning for the life of me. I can make assumptions based on a couple of the lines. For instance, “Is this love of ours a lie/ It is chemically derived to ascertain and sequester the pain/” tells me that the singer wonders if they are just together so that they don’t have to feel the pain of not being with someone - the pain of heartbreak. This line, “Tell me about your love affairs/ I want to know all the lurid details/” confuses me a bit. If the singer wants to know if his lover is sleeping with someone else, then why the cute curiosity? Of course, maybe this song is just about two f- buddies and the singer’s true feelings. By the way, the title of the song means “The Bones.”

I really like this song. I like The Unicorns a lot and this song is so fun. The keyboard in the beginning sounds great and it really builds up to the itensity of the guitars. The slow breakdown in the middle adds a great feeling to the song too. I love when songs do that - so long as they come back and this one does it very well.

By the way, I’m eating a really big bag of those yellow round tortilla chips. They’re my favorite.

makes me think of: looking at their website