Not All Who Wander Are Lost

The Onion: Arbiter of cool?

Thanks to a healthy addiction to HypeMachine and a longheld fascination with making the world my soundtrack regardless of genre, I own most of the albums mentioned in this week's AV Club. Arctic Monkeys? Flaming Lips? Morrisey? Yeah Yeah Yeahs? Hey, I'm so cool, I play outtakes of that **** for my middle school students. In class. (And Morrisey's first album was better.)

Especially disappointing, then, to have never heard of the seven bands the AV Club labels as up and coming in their accompanying grammatically garbled feature The New What's Next In Music: 2006.

Okay, maybe I don't get out much anymore -- with two kids and a dayjob, until the folk festival circuit kicks in, I'm not the SXSW type. The part of me that longs for Bonaroo is easy overwhelmed by the part of me that hates seeing music from more than 20 rows back - and when you've seen Phish from the sixth row, with your elbows up against Jon Fishman's mother, anything else is a letdown. I'd rather be at this year's Jazz and Heritage festival, anyway. Damn you, Dad.

But you want up and coming? I knew The Weepies when they were just Deb Talan. And I saw Brandi Carlile open for Ray LaMontagne way back before anyone even posted her music. So maybe there's hope.

Yeah, the AV Club's the bomb and all, but I got some cred, yo. In 1991 my turntable swam with De La Soul, Fugazi, the Lemonheads. I got mistaken for a teacher by Evan Dando and Juliana Hatfield once. Heck, I saw Green Day perform free at the Hatch Shell when we were all, like, fifteen. Beat that, beyotch. Those "up and coming" bands never go far, anyway.

PS: In case it wasn't glaringly obvious, I'm still ubersick, mostly brainfogged and hallucinating, with that burning forehead that accompanies the early stages of "get yo butt back in bed before you fall over". Here's hoping my natural "voice" will return with my health, cuz this pseudo-ironic streetchat isn't winning me any new fans, fo' shizzle.

Comments:

Oh, you wanted to play THAT game?

I've hung backstage with the Mighty Mighty Bosstones back when they were playing tiny local clubs in Boston.

I saw Shawn Colvin from two rows bac. Suzanne Vega, too. In tiny folk clubs.

As performer check-in boy for folk fstivals, the list of famous folks who have chatted me up goes from Ani to Dar Williams, Arlo to Richie Havens, Janis Ian to Lowen and Navarro.

Saw Guster in a bar. Had dinner with Peter, Paul, and Mary. Helped John Pousette Dart find his lost car. Partied at the home of a Lemonheads band member.

The list, by the way, is over 200 shows long. And most pre-date the decade.

# posted by

boyhowdy : 10:33 PM, April 07, 2006