Closer

A couple of things I want to talk about in this post. So bare with me:

1.)After the exam on Monday I may be headed up to the Green Mountain State to see an old friend, Drew. If I can get the money together, I’m hoping to leave early Thursday and be back either late Sunday or early Monday. Vermont is apparently cool (temperature wise) and quite beautiful. Added bonus: The Canadian border is only 10 miles away. Drinking age in Canada: like 4 or something.

2.) I found an old gift certificate to Best Buy the other night and went to go use it. As I perused the isles of electronic goodness, I finally narrowed my choices down to two CDs. The first was the new AFI release with a ridiculously bad name “Decemberunderground,” or “Show our Bones” by Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Both are apparently quite good from what I hear and both are a bit on the main stream side so I couldn’t decide for like a half hour. In the end I flipped a coin and got the AFI. I listened to it through in the car on the way back and I sort of liked it. It was different enough from Sing the Sorrow their last album but retained enough of the essence of what mad them popular in the first place. To those of you out there who are now thinking that I’m a stereotypical AFi fan note this; I have a normal relationship with my parents for the most part and I haven’t shopped at Hot Topic since I was sixteen. I do however think that AFI is an interesting pop band with a talented singer (as long as he doesn’t scream like a sparrow being eaten alive by Orson Wells. Miss Murder the single at the moments is probably the worst track on the CD, which is saying something because its not that bad of a song. The rest sort of blends together in the end, however the there are a few stand outs. Love Like Winter is nicely Stark, if lyrically bereft of any meaning and Summer Shudder is rousing. I wouldn’t say it makes me want to do things in the same way that Move Along by All American Rejects does but close. (Mike will be one of the few to understand but that’s okay. Anyway there is little buyer’s remorse for this one. However I am interested to hear the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

3.) As some of you may know Mike and I have a little running argument about which band is better Joy Division or New Order. While entirely futile and imbecilic, it is fun so I thought I would share some of my arguments on the topic with the readers at large. Joy division typifies the movement of post punk (almost as bad a name as emo) more than another band. You could say the New Order has the better sales, that PiL had the Name (Johnny Rotten), That Devo and Pere Ubu were around before but the core of what the movement was about had its most creditable start in Manchester. It was a city in decline. A former industrial juggernaut that at that point 1979-1982 was in such a wretched state, it could not help but breed the dissonant and alienating sound that Joy Division mastered. When you hear a song like Atrocity Exhibition you can feel the alienation the space and aimlessness that was abundant in the youth of the day. The music itself not just the lyrics give off that presence.

Alright I have to get back to work but this was part one of many in my argument…