Thanks to the Hold Steady for another massive night. So cool to see all the kids at the show with kids of their own

Since college, this has been my go-to listening during crunch time. From the microcontroller final class project to my current job, it has yet to fail me. Just helped me get through another tight schedule.

It only seems to work if I listen to the whole thing, but once the piano outro starts in “How A Resurrection Really Feels”, my work is done.

I have never met a hoodrat. I have never drank gin from a jam jar, let alone in an emergency room. Never been shaken or stirred in a dirty storefront church. Chicago has never seemed tired to me. Still, the album speaks to me.

Everyone seems to have a go-to for this situation. If for some reason you need one, you cannot go wrong with Separation Sunday.

irrational anger point of the day: the Tidal review calling Twin Cinema a disappointment, like there’s not at least 3 all-timers here. I get hooks from the non-singles on this album stuck in my head 15 years later, having not listened to anything by this band in months. Try to explain to your spouse why you’re humming something called Jackie Dressed In Cobras, and what it even means. I DON’T KNOW IT’S JUST CATCHY AS HELL

I was lucky enough to get into Google Music early, by invitation. I have used it ever since, with a 1-month hiatus around 2014 to determine that Rdio was the best streaming service available (lol). In reality, the only option at the time for people with iPod-filling-sized music collections was Google Music. You could probably run a Subsonic server or something, but that stuff was for nerds. This was one of the largest companies in the world, offering a consumer solution for a consumer problem.

This was all before the wide realization of Google’s penchant for killing its offerings that people actually liked. But this one has obviously been much harder – they’ve started trying to kill their original music service over 2 years ago with no luck.

Youtube (in terms of branding) is already a step down. It has its own trouble with extremism, etc. Also, streaming music on Youtube always seemed like an anachronism to me – your medium is wrong, you are using unnecessary bandwidth, also you aren’t cool enough to have amassed your own collection. Can’t beat (ad-supported) free, I guess.

Grandfathering into the early adopter’s rate has saved me roughly $160 so far, over Spotify and others. May not be enough monetarily to justify staying, but it is enough to say I got in before it was cool. And to people who curate music collections, that is worth more lol.

The wrench in all this is I got a 3 month trial to Tidal, and it is going pretty well so far. It apparently can be combined with Plex, which may be getting back to that holy grail of mine + theirs. Will have a decision to make soon.

 

LCD Soundsystem – call the police from YouTube

LCD Soundsystem’s new album ‘american dream’ featuring “call the police” and “tonite” is out now: http://smarturl.it/americandream DFA vinyl: http://smarturl…

today’s vibe
https://pilch.me/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/ig49lPt0.jpg
Thursday was a massive night @theholdsteady

This was our third Hold Steady show. First one was the Pitchfork Music Festival in 2008, and second was in Indianapolis in 2014.

The Hold Steady has been my go-to since early college, and it has aged much better than other favorites from that time. I maintain that had I not been listening to their first 3 albums on continuous loop for the last 72 hours before finals, I would not have completed my microcontrollers class project and would have failed out of college. Same went the next semester with compilers class. Saved by Barfruit Blues and A Multitude of Casualties.

My only note was that I was looking forward to hearing “Chicago Seemed Tired Last Night”, and did not, maybe because it was their first of 3 nights in Chicago and they hadn’t been in Chicago last night. I did enjoy their cover of the opening band’s song “Fresh Pope.”

Raising toasts to Saint Joe Strummer
What the hell, I’ll tell my story again
The setlist

(I have published this far, far after the fact because I am a busy person, but this needed to be logged at the correct time for posterity.)

to quote that college rock staple, Smooth, by those classic college rock artists Carlos Santana and Rob Thomas, “man it’s a hot one” 🎸πŸ₯΅