Porltand

Beautiful.

Minneapolis and Lake Superior

As my trip continues on, I've now left Minneapolis and headed out to Portland, OR. There wasn't too much excitement to report from Minneapolis, since the trip was mostly just a low-key visit with my mom. However, we did take a day trip up to the Apostle Islands in Wisconsin, on the south shore of Lake Superior. Pretty scenery, though I couldn't get too many great pictures. Here's a few excerpts, though.







More to come soon on Portland.

One Town Down

As some of you may or may not know, I started a cross-country trip last week that will take me through Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland and San Francisco. There's really no strong justification for this trip, other than my own desire to get out of Maryland for a while and live out of a suitcase for a couple of weeks. (It's also an excuse to visit friends and family that have spread out across the country).
On the 11th, I left Baltimore and headed to Chicago. Despite the stigma of the date, there wasn't a single delay or snag in security at the airport. That's not to say there were no problems, though. After sitting on the runway in a tiny jet for 45 minutes after we were supposed to take off for Philadelphia (where my connecting flight to Chicago was leaving from), all of the passengers were forced to de-board the plane due to electrical system problems. That is to say, the electrical system wouldn't stay on. But hey, at least they checked on that before we were in the air.
There is a silver lining to this story, however. After arguing with a gate attendant for another half hour about how I needed to get on a flight immediately so I could make my connecting flight, they offered me a direct ticket to Chicago on a partner airline that would actually get me to Chicago sooner than the connecting flight would have. Even better, after getting on my new flight, the flight attendant announced "Since a large portion of our first class section is unsold on this flight, we would like to offer free upgrades to any interested coach passengers." You better believe I was up in a second.
Anyway, the flight was pretty uneventful after that, and after landing and getting my bag, I caught the train into town to meet up with Jacky, my friend from college who was putting me up for the next few nights. I got settled, took a short nap, and sat around listening to jazz with the housecats while waiting for Jacky and her roommates to get back from their jobs. After that, we hung around, drank on their back porch (which had a decent view of the Sears Tower), and caught up. Unfortunately, this was pretty much all I got to do during my stay there. Because of Hurricane Ike, there was a massive storm system in Chicago that dumped flooding rains on the area for my entire stay; effectively ruining all the hopes I had of getting into the town and seeing the city. But hey, I still got to hang out and meet some cool and interesting people.
After a few days of hanging around waiting for the rain to stop, I finally got to take a trip into the city...to catch my bus out of town. The rain did stop that day, though (which is good, because my bus stop was on an uncovered part of a downtown street across from Union Station). I spent the next 8 hours on a bus, alternating between talking to the pro-Palin girl from Minneapolis who was also going to college in Israel sitting next to me and knocking out a few chapters of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Still, for the price of $28, the bus ride was top-notch. And I didn't get my head cut off.

So anyway, here I am now in Minneapolis, visiting my mom and working on grad school applications. I'm hoping to get more work than sight-seeing done this week, but we'll see how it goes. I'll be heading to Portland, come Monday.

Here's a few pictures that I was able to take while in Chicago. Not much, but then again, there wasn't much to see.

The Rebirth of Vinyl

First off, let me say that I know vinyl's never really been dead. I've got a record collection myself, and would much rather lose my entire CD collection and my iPod before I lose those things. That said, however, it really has been replaced by the CD over the years as the primary physical source of music. What does a CD have over vinyl, though? When you think about it, really only the compactness. So, now that digital copies are around, making it much easier to take hundreds upon hundreds of albums anywhere in a device smaller than a CD, it doesn't make much sense to keep buying CDs. I guess that's why iTunes is getting so popular.

But what about the rest of us? The people who want the hard copy? The people who want the vinyl quality sound? The people who want the album artwork? Do we have to buy the CD or digital copies AND the vinyl?Well, recently, some distributors have come up with a new sales pitch that has made me want to buy an unused copy of an album for the first time in quite some time. Certain labels and distributors (such as Insound) are now selling vinyl copies of new releases along with a promotional code which you can use to download digital copies of the album straight to your computer, iPod or whatever. In some cases, even, record labels are taking pre-orders of new release vinyl and giving you the digital copies before the release date. With a price that's about the same as a CD, this whole concept is starting to make me forget some, but certainly not all, of why I hate the music industry.

Some Mix Tapes

So I've decided to post some track lists to mixes I've made for people or situations. If you don't know the person, or weren't there for the event, it's probably not going to be as interesting, but here we go anyway:

Steph's Mix (vol 1):

1. Dick Dale & the Del-Tones - Surf Beat
2. CAKE - Never, Never Gonna Give You Up
3. Lily Allen - Everything's Just Wonderful
4. Gnarls Barkley - She Knows
5. Eels - Mr. E's Beautiful Blues (Untitled)
6. The Strokes - Automatic Stop
7. Andrew Bird - Immitosis
8. The Avalanches - Frontier Psychiatrist
9. Fela Kuti - Lady
10. The Go! Team - Huddle Formation
11. The Apples In Stereo - Energy
12. The Pipettes - Pull Shapes
13. The Raveonettes - Dead Sound
14. Buddy Holly - Oh Boy
15. Broken Social Scene - 7/4 (Shoreline)
16. Viva Voce - High Highs
17. The Decemberists - I Was Meant For The Stage

Steph's Mix (vol 2):

1. Josh Ritter - To The Dogs or Whoever
2. The Commitments - Destination: Anywhere
3. Grace Potter & the Nocturnals - Toothbrush and My Table
4. Manu Chao - Por El Suelo
5. Feist - Sealion
6. M.I.A. - Pull Up The People
7. People Under The Stairs - Step In
8. Kanye West Feat. Jay-Z & J. Ivy - Never Let Me Down
9. Otis Redding - (Sittin' On) the Dock Of The Bay
10. The Cure - Close To Me
11. Okkervil River - Unless It Kicks
12. Belle & Sebastian - Another Sunny Day
13. The Coral - Pass It On
14. Jenny Lewis With The Watson Twins - Handle With Care
15. Neutral Milk Hotel - Ghost
16. Ray LaMontagne - Within You
17. Lemon Jelly - Space Walk

Steph's Mix (vol 3):

1. Buena Vista Social Club - Chan Chan
2. Old Crow Medicine Show - James River Blues
3. Mason Jennings - The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
4. Kaki King - Happy as a Dead Pig in the Sun
5. Wilco - Jesus, Etc.
6. Jack Johnson - Mama You've Been On My Mind/A Fraction Of Last Thoughts On Woodie Guthrie
7. The Slip - Before You Were Born
8. The Hold Steady - Party Pit
9. Tilly & The Wall - Nights Of The Living Dead
10. Bela Fleck & the Flecktones - The Sinister Minister
11. The Long Winters - Blue Diamonds
12. Islands - The Arm
13. Easy Star All-Stars Feat. Toots & the Maytals - Let Down
14. My Morning Jacket - Smoking From Shooting
15. Ratatat - Seventeen Years
16. Wyclef Jean - Staying Alive
17. Ben Folds - Bitches Ain't Shit

This was supposed to just be a one-CD project at first, but when someone tells me simply to "give me music," it's hard to whittle the selections down to one CD. I tried to keep some sort of theme flowing between songs on each CD, but still ended up with a few awkward transitions in there (see: My Morning Jacket to Ratatat).

Beach Trip (getting there):

1. The Coral - Spanish Main
2. Dick Dale & The Del-Tones - Lovin' On My Brain
3. Ray Charles - What'd I Say - Parts I & II
4. Ray LaMontagne - Three More Days
5. The Hold Steady - Massive Nights
6. Bruce Springsteen - Tenth Avenue Freeze Out
7. Violent Femmes - American Music
8. Eels - Losing Streak
9. The Mountain Goats - Dance Music
10. Josh Ritter - Right Moves
11. Ted Leo & The Pharmacists - Who Do You Love?
12. Weezer - Surf Wax America
13. The Strokes - Someday
14. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Down On The Corner
15. CAKE - Never, Never Gonna Give You Up
16. Beck - Sexx Laws
17. The Word - Joyful Sounds
18. The White Stripes - Hotel Yorba
19. Streetlight Manifesto - Down, Down, Down To Mephisto's Cafe

This mix was made for a weekend trip out to the beach with some friends. The ride out was 3 hours long, so we all agreed to make a mix that lasted an hour, and just listen to everyone's during the drive there and back. Being me, I wanted my mix to really reflect the mood, or rather the experience, we were in at the time. Figuring we would be in a totally different state of mind (and energy level) on the way out and on the way back, I made the above mix explicitly for the drive out. It's hard to put into words what sort of emotional resonance I was hoping to achieve through the song choices and juxtaposition, but the best way I can put it is that I was trying to make everyone feel the same way I feel every time I listen to - or even better, watch the music video for - the song "Space Walk" by Lemon Jelly. Again, hard to put into words, but something similar to just sitting in the passenger side of a car with the window down on a beautiful day, watching the scenery go by without a thought in your head or care in the world.

Beach Trip (getting back):

1. Lemon Jelly - Elements
2. Wilco - Impossible Germany
3. John Butler Trio - Better Than
4. Islands - Jogging Gorgeous Summer
5. Easy Star All-Stars Feat. Toots & The Maytals - Let Down
6. Interpol - Evil
7. Ratatat - Germany to Germany
8. Gnarls Barkley - She Knows
9. Lou Reed - Walk On The Wild Side
10. Israel Kamakawiwo'ole - Panini Pua Kea
11. Rilo Kiley - Ripchord
12. Fleet Foxes - Heard Them Stirring
13. The Cure - Close To Me
14. Okkervil River - Unless It Kicks
15 . Manu Chao - Minha Galera

This mix was made for the ride back after a day at the beach. Again, I made this mix with a fairly clear conception of how each song would play off the state of mind we were in at the time; that being pleasantly exhausted from a long day at the beach. Whereas the drive out mix was more thematically focused towards enjoying the beauty of driving towards the shore on a perfect day, this one was more oriented towards the feelings associated with piling into a car with your friends sleepy, sandy, and just generally content with life. If I could, I would have made the sunset last the entire duration of this mix to more perfectly compliment the visual I had for each song. What we got instead was driving over the Bay Bridge into the sunset while listening to Impossible Germany, and that sits just fine with me.