Memorial Day

My fascination with airplanes is only half as complicated as my fascination with war. Plenty of posts here have spoken to my aversion/attraction to airplanes. In short, I love planes, but I hate to fly. WFUV’s Vin Scelsa probably best summarized the whole thing when we spoke just after September 11th (and just prior to…

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Favorite Things, Volume III

In August, 1989, my friend Greg and I piled into my silver two-door, four-speed Volkswagen Rabbit, and drove 750 miles from Valley Forge, PA, to Athens, GA, for no reason whatsoever except to see the hometown of our favorite band, R.E.M. As we rolled through five states, we consumed five tanks of gas, sixteen D…

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(Not So) Kool Thing

Figures that I’m dressed like some West Palm real estate agent the day I ride the elevator with Thurston Moore. Not like I would have said anything, or foisted a CD on him or anything. Still, you don’t wanna look like a total tool bag when the Godfather of Alternative Rock is in the house.…

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Downer

“So what you’re saying,” she said, “is that you’re really into your head right now.” We were in the basement of The Knitting Factory. Chris Abad, was setting up on stage. I had just finished a three minute rant in response to Chris’ fiance, Megan’s, simple inquiry of “How are you?” “Yeah,” I replied. “In…

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Undisputed

Everyone was singing along… To my cover of The Undisputed Heavyweights’ “Roll Your Windows Down.” Which was great. Game day started with a jolt. Abbi and I snoozed through the alarm. By the time we stirred from sleep, we had a 10k race to run in a half hour. We sprinted up to Central Park,…

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The Love You Bring Won’t Mean A Thing

I’m going to tell you a secret… I don’t like to play guitar. Ok, lemme qualify that. I don’t like to play guitar at my shows. In a perfect world (one in which my entire iTunes catalogue comprises the iTunes Store’s Top 100 Albums for a year straight), my band would include both rhythm and…

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Roll Your Windows Down

I met the kid just a few days into a freshly installed 2004. I’d been working with his lovely girlfriend for some time. I’d heard she was dating an aspiring rock star. I wanted to meet him. So there I was in some dark, anonymous Lower East Side Bar, on a regular Friday night in…

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Straight Up & Sadly

I wish you could’ve seen the sunset just now. The day started crappy and gray, lugging thirteen dress shirts and a pair of linen pants (Memorial Day is moments away!) to the dry cleaners; jockeying for position on the 1/9 (I’ll always call it that, even if the 9 is long gone); sipping bad coffee…

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I’m Not Sleeping

Could be the allergies. Could be the dreams. Could be that the neighbors left the light on right over my bedroom window. Whatever. I’m not sleeping anymore. The first time I woke up tonight was, in retrospect, pretty painless. I stirred from some random dream, visited the little boys room, put my arm over my…

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Better Than That

The guys are gone. The empties are lined up like dead soldiers. The instruments are tucked away. The cables are bundled and hung. I’m watching the sun set. Chris, Tony, and Ryan left a few minutes ago, and with them a kick drum, hi-hat, cymbals, upright bass, electric bass, and acoustic guitar — all of…

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