First Impressions II

I've been back to downloading new music, even though I haven't listened to everything I have now. I try and find bands I have not heard about on the radio or in a magazine, instead I just scroll down the list of the new adds for the site and if the band name, or album, or art grabs my attention I write it down.

Later I search them out on-line and I write down the first thing I think of when I hear them. I try and not judge them based on their web page, and I hope I'm not too harsh on them. I list the album name, the band name, and my first impression of them.

Don't take my word for it, the link goes to the bands site. Click it and you can give them a listen yourself.


3 Rounds & A Sound
Blind Pilot
West Coast Alt.Country

Fields & Floods
Joshua James
Another Folk Singer

African Trip
Leeroy
Reinventing The Reinvented
I really liked this guys stuff as I listened to more of it especially after I saw this video.

The Mysterious Production Of Eggs
Andrew Bird
Happy Music For Sad Times

We Play Endlessly
Sigur Ros
Beautiful Ambiance

How To Fake Like Your Nice And Caring
Cargo City
Happy Germans Do American Pop

Green Magic
El-Thule
Metal Mas Macho

The Great Shakes
Swingset
Not Bad

Serve or Suffer
Esoteric
Rolling Metal

Sun Moon & Stars
A Band Called Quinn
Squeaky Girl Makes Pop Pops

Burn Piano Island, Burn
The Blood Brothers
Screaming Thrashing Awesome

This Is Why We Don't Have Nice Things
Every Avenue
Your Radio Station Loves Them

Dirty Urine
The BadSeed
Buy Your Own Beats & Some New Rhymes

Since the band above was not listed as The Bad Seed, I did not find them at first. Instead I found this Bad Seed who is The Anger Of Wilkes-Barre. I thought this Bad Seed was more likely to have an album called Dirty Urine, but I was missing the clever entendre that the Brooklyn Bad Seed was going for, alas. Based on Brooklyn Bad Seed's myspace I hope he doesn't dedicate a beef to these kids, cause I think they would kick his ass. Speaking of Wilkes-Barre...

Leave Ruin
Strand of Oaks
The Love of Wilkes-Barre

Rock and Roll
The New Standards
On Vibes....

Fade to Bright
Squirtgun
America Does Rock Best :P

Truck Off
Goober Patrol
Brit New Punk

Handshakes, Hello & Goodbye
The Prisoners Dilemma
Its Just Soooooooo Sad :..(

The Spell
Ivan
Men Without Hats Goes Solo, Electronique

Wall Of Sound
Natural 7
Roomful of Beatbox

Vibrate You
King Adora
Boring Rocker

When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence
Harmonic 313
Aussies Dig Rap

Hope you enjoyed the list or even better found it useful or best found a band you liked, but before now you had never heard.

Fall of The Empire

Its old news now, but the Republican Party is collapsing. You didn't need to be a soothsayer to see it coming, the writing has been on the wall since August of 2005 and the New Orleans fiasco. An ever lengthening war, a growing budget deficit, an economic collapse, a crumbling infrastructure, and lack of public oversight all overseen by a Republican President, Congress, and Supreme Court, it is no surprise that the American people voted overwhelmingly Democratic in the 2008 elections.

While all of these things represent enormous problems for Americans the problem facing the Republican Party is larger still. The Republican Party has ignored Americans and the result is they are becoming, not just a minority party, but a regional party.

The Republican Party turned its back on there enemies in the "Liberal East" much to their own detriment. America changed and what was once a rural country is now an urban one. By the 2000 census 76% of the population lived in urban areas. The largest density of people in the country is along the Atlantic coast between Boston and Washington DC. The most people live in the area that the Republicans have most ignored, no that is not true. The most people live in the area of the country that the Republicans have most slandered and maligned.

Basing their public policy around corporate rights and farm subsidies left a large population of Americans wondering what the fuck Republicans represent. This resulted in the 2004 "Red State v Blue State" election map. East, North, and West went solidly Democratic while the South and Center of the country went Republican. While G.W. was patting himself on the back and cramming more privatization down the Americans throats the real story went largely unnoticed. The Democratic base was growing. Bush rode his 3% (about 3mil ppl) and called it a mandate. By contrast, Obama, a racial minority candidate who until 40 years ago was de facto disenfranchised in a large chunk of the country (durr, did you forget yet), won a 6% majority (about 6mil ppl).

The election map spread Democratic victories to Ohio, Nevada, and even Colorado. These states went "blue" because the densely populated urban areas cast votes for Democratic candidates. The chickens had come home to roost. Republicans had blamed the Elite East, and Wacky West, claiming their urban blight was the cause of America's woes. Meanwhile the rest of the country started to look like the coasts, the spiteful elimination of projects and programs that would have helped New York or California were now being missed in Cleveland and Denver.

The Republicans look forward to this gigantic problem, and they look ahead cluelessly. I had the good fortune to attend the RNC Winter Meeting in DC a few weeks ago, and as luck would have it, I walked into the room just as the Chairman of the Washington DC Republican Party asked a panel of Republican strategist THE question. "Having ignored and thereby lost a base in the Northeast cities, how do we get back a presence there?"

The answer was sadder still. The experts confessed that the problem was bigger then the Northeast, and had spread to Central, Western, and some Southern cities. After another expert chimed in that the Republican Party was losing ground in such stalwart states as Indiana and Iowa, they went on to offer absolutely NO solution, none, zero, nothing. They had no idea how to get themselves back. They admitted that supporting the desires of this group of people would mean a desertion of values that they feel are so core to the party that they can't give them up.

When you reach a point in your evolution that the landscape has changes, your food source becomes scarce and you habitat dwindles, you have two choices: change or die. From the look of things, the Republicans are choosing die.

Jobs For The New Economy

I saw this guy at the corner of S. Dearborn & Monroe in Chicago Thursday. He was dragging that bundle of assorted cables down the sidewalk in The Loop. My guess is he had been "dumpster diving", or more then likely loading dock diving, gathering them. The enterprising man will likely take his collection of printer cables and cat 5 line down to the local scrap metal yard and sell the lot. I can't imagine how much he will get for it all, but the price of copper is not bad right now. It probably took him less then an hour to collect what I would guess, without insulation is about 7 or 8 lbs of copper, and that is just the current load. I can only assume he has more stashed near by.

I can't imagine that scrap metal reclamation is the best business to be in, but there are worse hustles. So if human resources needs to see you this Friday, you can always do this. Although if you are in The Loop you will have some competition.

Trying To Listen To Every Conversation In The Tea Shop At Once

Are used to it, but then schools like UIC, UFC, and DePaul all have programs that...like for example...connect all the dots...a part of the schools libraries...some how managed to be at least professional...that's very possible...they have to take her seriously...you have to understand that for various reasons...he said it perfectly...this year it's pretty limited...all the services that it does, though...it used to be it was money, it's recurring, telecommunications, telephone lines...What else can I do?...but it sounds like its going away...I told you I didn't think they would...it was kind of at that moment that he would say yes, that moment has passed...Barbara!...it just gets better and better didn't it..I can't wait til tomorrow...only 500 bucks...we heard, I heard...stepping up a little differently...don't send it to the house...I don't know...that is exactly what I was thinking...he put the offer out to me I feel like saying...so much so...what your saying is...what we're going to change the environment in such a way...putting rules around breaking up your own school district...deciding based on the numbers...its weird the balance between new schools and everyday schools...you have to tell him that...where is that going...I know...a new school area...you were talking about February...lets talk about that...but not the Cubs, the Sox suck...we should definitely talk about that definitely talk about that next week...black tea...black tea...solidly spoken...he said something that all of us...9 thousand dollar sale...the other players are minor in scope to Gates...sorry man...I've got his email...other systems can help out too...I know I have given you a lot more to think about, I don't know if I have given you a specific direction.

Chicago, Capital of the Great Lakes. New York City may be Gotham, but Chicago is Metropolis. A spider web of streets stretching out along the shore of Lake Michigan. A mix of old world hand craftsmanship and new world industrialization. Art Deco Roman goddesses perch atop skyscrapers while the serpentine steel L shuttles the cities inhabitants along. If you allow the hyperbole, the Superman of this Metropolis is Barack Obama. (sadly his name is still not in the spellchecker dictionary.)

So much is going on the city right now that I am having a hard time getting a full grasp of things. While, Obama continues to appoint cabinet members and iron out the plans to try and right the listing ship that is our country; the governor is being charged with trying to sell Obama's vacant US Senate seat.

In all of this the Chicagoans I have met seem unsurprised. The city and state have a history of corrupt government. Most of the people I have spoken to only shrug their shoulders at the most recent charges of corruption, it is not so much apathy as it is concern for the larger looming economic troubles.

Across town the Republic Windows and Doors Company is about to shutter its local factory and move operations further inland to Iowa. This can only be a sign of things to come. All along the Great Lakes industrial cities are collapsing under the weight of the unemployed left behind when their companies closed their plants and moved their offices. While it Chicago is surely insulated from a majority of the effects of large scale loss of industrial closure, no one thought Detroit would collapse so horribly either.

Surely the comic book Superman would be given pause at the enormity of the problems we now face. Although he only had to wait until his clever writers came up with some deux ex machina to cure his conundrum. Our superman will have to rely on his own intelligence and the ability to find long term solutions for our problems.