Yea, I’m futzing around trying to find a template I like (and considering jumping ship to posterous, just because I know a couple of folks with blogs over there).

Anyway, I kind of like this one, and it’s got the built-in music list so my adoring fans — I’m sure I must have some — can see what I’ve recently been listening to.

http://pitchfork.com/news/41745-pitchfork-music-festival-announces-initial-li…

So it turns out my son’s guitar teacher works at the Pitchfork Music Festival. If I’d known tickets were going on sale today, I would have gone to yesterday’s lesson to talk to him about it.

So the question now is…. do I have the $$$ for the 3-day pass?

This is an absolutely brilliant video. Joy Division done “darkwave township house” style — I don’t know what that means, but I like it. And the visual style is compelling.

South Africa is one of those places about which I have only the vaguest understanding — it just never rises to my eyeball level, so what I know about it is based primarily on the anti-apartheid protests and boycotts of the 1980’s. This video is not exactly an invitation to book travel, but it makes me realize that there are huge swaths of the world out there beyond my limited consciousness horizon.

Perspective.

via Dazed Digital

How do any of these Fox “News” personalities look at themselves in the mirror in the morning?

Why isn’t this hypocrisy and stupidity about teachers and other public workers made clear to the populace EVERY SINGLE DAY?

Listening to “Soundtracks” http://i.mixcloud.com/CSHji by The Open Source Transmission #nowplaying on Mixcloud.com

Testing the Tumblr app for the Droid. Also, American Flagg is still awesome almost 30 years later.

http://www.sxswtorrent.com/

Must… download…

Part 2 soon (I hope).

[W]hen people ask us to think of the children, they often seem to be less concerned with preventing material harm and more concerned with preserving “innocence,” that is, with preserving the child’s absence of moral agency, with preserving the child’s status-as-child.

Overthinking It: Grand Theft Auto and the Problem of Evil

I really love this track. Ethereal vocals, odd rhythms, and lyrics that are just this side of making sense.

The band hails from Northampton, Mass., and have released four albums since 2005 (the last one in late 2010, with another one already in the works). I snagged their self-titled debut album from eMusic, but unfortunately, I found that the music didn’t grab me the way this song does. I’m thinking their sound must have evolved, though, and if their more recent stuff is at all like Beesting, I want it all.

Band website: http://www.winterpills.com/

I’ve decided to start writing more. My goal is to start seeing more shows and discovering more new (to me) music, and inflicting my views about it on anybody who makes the mistake of popping in here to look around.

First, however, I have to make a confession. I don’t really know that much about music.

I like a lot of different kinds of music, and I know some things about the artists and songs that I like; but I’ve never studied the history of the bands and music I like in any depth; for many years, I didn’t really pay a lot of attention to the music scene; and I don’t make a serious effort to keep up with music news. I am familiar with the aficionado dynamic that treats music like a giant game of one-upping Trivial Pursuit, and I muddled my way through it when I worked at my college radio station fifty thousand years ago. But I’m just not that good at it.

As a result, I probably don’t know that the bass player for the Chorknozzles used to play tambourine with the Weenypops. I can research the hell out of shit like that, though, so if you see me making those connections, you can bet I’ve been pawing through the Interwebs to bring you that particular tidbit. Because I want to look smart, too.

In a similar vein, I can’t tell you that Chunderthighs’ latest hit sounds a lot like the Blumpkins before their lead singer found Ba’haiism. I just don’t have all that music floating around in my head. If you tell me it’s so, I might check it out and agree (or disagree) with you, but it’s just not something I am going to think of off the top of my head. In the meantime, the comparisons I do make may leave you scratching your head in bewilderment.

I also find that when I find a new band that I like, it often turns out that they were pretty popular among the cool kids 15 years ago and they’ve long since broken up. So I may present a discovery here — something I gleaned from a SXSW torrent, for instance — and you all will jump up and say, “Oh, we stopped listening to them back in 2005.” Just shush. Leave me my illusion of being a pioneer.

So there you have it, my deep dark secret. I hope you won’t let it come between us.