When I started out with this blog, I was merely tossing my hat into the ring. The funny thing was that everybody else was doing the exact same thing at the exact same moment. As a result, we became inundated with people who thought they could write about music. I being one of them.

The fact is, thanks to the over abundance of blogs that are out there, any opinion on any music can easily be found. You can find an article that tells you your favorite band is the greatest since The Beatles, and you can find an article that tells you the band that you hate so much isn’t worth the scum between the toes of Creed. Your own opinions about your own musical taste were never influenced when you ventured out into the blogosphere, only reinforced. You looked and looked until somebody agreed with you. Once you found what you were looking for, you felt justified in your liking or hating of a musical group. Music blogs became mere confidence boosters rather than music critics.

I really had no ultimate plan when starting the blog. Ideally, it would have added something to the conversation. It would have inspired discussion and valuable discourse over the current state of music. I would have offered something that you wouldn’t have found on other blogs. And for myself, I would have matured as a writer and become more knowledgable on the topics I wrote about.

I believe I accomplished several of those. Of course, there were many, many failed articles. There are things I regret writing, and there are articles that I’m proud of. I’ve stood headstrong on many of my positions I wrote about, and I’ve changed sides completely on others. I tackled many different types of music blogging, and a few of them withheld. I never really gained much of a readership, and only once was I able to rattle a cage enough to receive a response, but that’s not entirely how I gauge the success of a blog. I gauge a blog’s success by its substance, and that is what is lost on so many amateur blogs that are being written.

As much as we like to imagine ourselves as a modern Lester Bangs, that 200 word fluff piece, the knee jerk reaction to inconsequential opinions, the random numbers assigned to albums, the youtube rants; all of those aren’t worth reading or watching long after they’re posted. None of those will go down in history as Dave Marsh has. None of them offer any kind of beneficial observations on music. No light has been shed on any of music’s dark corners. The blogs that have thousands of hits? Most of them just plant key search word combinations so that they show up on Google before everybody else’s blog. What we need are blogs with purpose. Blogs with more than just instant gratification driven, lazy editorials. That is what I hope to accomplish next.

At this point, however, I’ve accomplished what I wanted to, and it’s time to move on to the next thing. In the near future I’ll be starting a new site in collaboration with some other authors.

As for now, and for the end of this music blog, I would like to thank the very few Scheibe Says readers. Hopefully you came across something that was mildly thought provoking.

I would also like to thank the thousands of visitors who were deceived by a search engine and were expecting MySpace porn when they clicked on my site, but instead found pop music commentary. Hopefully you unexpectedly read something interesting, and that the next site you visited was more relevant to your search.

-Reid

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10.

Scott Pilgrim VS. The World – Soundtrack
Hear me out before you scoff at this one. Some movies are less “period pieces” than they are only quick snapshots of a certain style/attitude of a point in time. This allows us to capture the big picture trends, as well as the small picture fads (the ones we laugh at when we watch the movie again years down the road). Their soundtracks do very much the same thing. While many of these songs are not new releases, and only a handful are originals, it’s a pretty solid mix-tape of what the kids were listening to this year. What else is more 2010 than seeing T.Rex on the same album as Sex Bob-Bomb? That’s why I think the soundtrack to Scott Pilgrim deserves a spot in existence like (500) Days of Summer of yesteryear.

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9.

Eels – End times
Act II in E’s drama was shot down on the grounds of being “too sad,” but the rest of us have the cojones to recognize the value of quietly depressed music. It’s nice to see an artist put out an album with such lonely honesty when everyone around him is spinning neon bubblegum pop. As has been true in music for ages, it is much more difficult to perform slow, quite, and painful music than it is anything else. An album of this caliber is unachievable to the majority of the power pop groups that are dominating the internet-waves. This isn’t an album you sit around the living room and share with your friends, but chances are you secretly listened to End Times several times but just don’t want anybody to know

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8.

The National – High Violet
Not much to be said about The National other than their portrait of an album has the darkest color palate of the year. A quality that has become signature for the group and celebrated by their fans. In a year where releases by the heavy hitters caused more anxiety than pandemonium, High Violet stuck the landing. It wasn’t Earth shattering, but a solid and reliable album from beginning to end. It would be nice to have more of those.

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7.

She & Him – Volume Two
I’m guessing that the She & Him hype has come and gone. Zooey has gone from to-die-for indie princess to the too-mainstream-for-me-to-like indie princess. Regardless of how 2008 you will look by throwing down her and M. Ward‘s sophomore duo album, you can’t escape the golden glow emanating from every single song. Much more established than Vol. 1, Vol. 2 sticks to what the duet is best at: country roots infused with indie. This album takes the country genre that has been hijacked by meatheads and hands the keys back to its rightful owners. When She & Him performed in Nashville this past fall, you can be sure that the walls of the Ryman heaved a sigh of relief.

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6.

The Walkmen – Lisbon
Eat your heart out, 60s surf wannabes. Lisbon is the album that you were trying to create but got too full of yourself to be able to accomplish. The unique sound of The Walkmen married with the amp fuzz launch everybody into a 2010 by way of 8mm film. The main difference is that they spent more time crafting the album than scouring antique shops for costumes that would magically turn them into psychedelia. Thanks the advent of “vintage” music, we’ve had to put up with ear-puking bands like Girls. Luckily we can count on The Walkmen to get it right. To their credit, they already had established that sound long before Lisbon. Maybe things will take a turn for the better with surf-wave now that they have Lisbon to reference. This is the album that took care of our needs when all the other bands left us feeling unsatisfied, used, and cheap.

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5.

The New Pornographers – Together
You can’t even get through 30 seconds of this album before realizing that it’s something above the rest. Finally the unlikely combination of A.C. Newman, Neko Case, and Dan Bejar have gotten their gears in order. What before was a disjunct and glitchy machine that briefly showed its potential before getting caught on the inevitable snag, is now a powerhouse of a multi-brained robot. They’ve finally earned the chance to be ascribed to their album’s namesake: together. When Challengers came out, it seemed as though these musicians would never be able to enter the studio as a whole rather than individuals. Distraught, we all were a bit nervous when they announced their new album because, frankly, we didn’t want proof that Twin Cinema was the best that we were going to get out of this band. Labeling the album as a “breakthrough” would be heavy on the hyperbole side, but it’s safe to say that we needed this album as much as the band. Our faith was teetering for a moment, but Together has given us our anchor.

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4.

Dr. Dog – Shame, Shame
Shame, Shame is being overlooked by many not because they think it’s a poor album, but because it’s hard to believe that it was only released 8 months ago. The album entirely surpassed the cutting edge, exciting stage and went straight to being a well-worn classic. The songs, especially “Shadow People” and “Where’d All the Time Go?” aren’t new releases to us, they’re old friends that invoke nostalgia. Amazing that only 2 years ago promoters were working overtime to break Dr. Dog into the market, and now here they are calmly creating the best pop album of 2010. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s so laid back, and that it reminds us of easier and brighter days that never really existed that make the album so enjoyable. This couldn’t have been recorded in 2010, it’s far too gloomy of a world out our windows for us to be whistling, grooving, and clapping out hands. But they did, and as demonstrated by the next couple of bands, it was oddly against-the-grain for its time.

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3.

(image via getupstaydown.com)

Danger Mouse and Sparklehorse- Dark Night of the Soul
This is one dark album. The writing, the sound, and its background. It brought together artists I would never imagine on the same album, and it was written with a sadness that is only accentuated, whether appropriate or not, with the series of events that unfolded thereafter. Sure, it was technically released in 2009, but with the unintentional weight that the album bears it would be crime to leave it unrecognized for 2010. The suicides of Vic Chesnutt and Mark Linkous make Dark Night of the Soul one of the last albums to contain their work. This alone makes is entirely invaluable. The permanent cloud over the album, however, does overshadow the credit where a lot of the credit is due. That is, the outstanding genius that is Danger Mouse. Everything that this man touches is pure gold. Since hindsight is 20/20 we are able to acknowledge just how lucky we are that these two artists combined their ambitions. The ability to take such an array of artists and craft them into a cohesive album, without it sounding like just a compilation, is an art in of itself. It is a privilege that all of us get to experience Dark Night of the Soul, one that we shouldn’t take for granted.

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2.

Arcade Fire – The Suburbs
One of the most anticipated albums of the year, and one that caused the most uneasiness when waiting for the first singles to arrive. Would Arcade Fire be able to do it again? How could they possibly top Funeral, or the heavily, mysteriously hyped Neon Bible? What direction would they take? Would there be a theme like in Funeral? Would it be a social commentary like Neon Bible? Questions swirled all the way up to its street date, but one thing was to be sure: we really couldn’t be sure of anything. Ironically, Arcade Fire told us exactly what it would be with the single “Month of May.” “2009, 2010 / gonna make record of how I felt then.” The puzzle was easily put together by most critics even when the track list and cover was revealed, but mostly to their disappointment. There was no challenge this time. And a record about the suburbs? Boring. But what is more 2010 than that? The middle class suburbia is boring. They’re stuck, they’re dreamers chained to a desk, they stare at the at the clock waiting for their turn to drive home in traffic wondering what went wrong. It turns out that this is the most relevant record of our time. They promised a record about how they felt at the time and that was exactly what they did. Arcade Fire made a record that commented on everything from upperclass hipsters (“Rococo”) to infrastructure (“The Suburbs”). ”Modern Man” describes the epidemic known as complacency with the subdued but prevalent frustration. The Suburbs tells us what we don’t want to know: we’ve failed ourselves. We’ve killed our romantic aspirations, we’ve lost our inner-child, and we can’t stand the site of what we’ve become every time we look in the mirror. Arcade Fire essentially took one of those photos that you weren’t ready for, and you realize that they caught a side of you that you’ve been trying to hide, but you can’t take back the photo because Arcade Fire already copied it and plastered it up and down every single street. The most poignant element, and the worst lashing we receive, is the eerie not-too-distant future that they paint in the final third of the album. Visualized by Spike Jonez’s music video for “The Suburbs,” we get a peek into what the world may be like in a mere 10 or 20 years from now. In other words, the world that our kids will see as a result of our soulless submission to suburbia. All this, and then combine their abilities to compose and you realize why this is one of the most magnificent albums of 2010. A time capsule of our shortcomings, of our current desperate situation, and of our fear of what is to come next.

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1.

(image via gorillavsbear.net)

Sufjan Stevens – The Age of Adz
This is the year that Sufjan Stevens challenged the world. He took his sound and turned it upside down, started anew, fresh, tried out new ideas, experimented. Or did he? Critics pounded the album. They wanted the old Sufjan. This was just a bunch of “noise.” (Didn’t people say that about Animal Collective‘s Merriweather Post Pavilion last year?) But if anyone had dared listen to all of his albums that were not “normal” such as the older Enjoy your Rabbit or even last year’s The BQE, then they’d realize that The Age of Adz is a conglomeration of everything Sufjan. Not only was he using the f-word (gasp!), but he still even managed to reference his Christian influences that are apparent in all of his previous albums. It wasn’t just thrown together either. It was genetically morphed to give birth to a freak of nature mutant the size of a goddamn volcano. This frightened the critics (they’re all currently too distracted by the big, helium filled, Thanksgiving Day Parade balloon floating past their 11th story window known as Kanye West), and they tried to come up with every excuse as to why the album sucked so that they could keep it out of their top 10. The songs are too long? Too many instruments? Confusing clicks and sounds? Irregular structure is uncomfortable? No wonder symphonic music is dead, most of these people simply can’t handle the complexity. When Sufjan unexpectedly  came out with the EP All Delighted People, it was very clear that Sufjan wasn’t “fuckin’ around.” His songs weren’t going to be crammed into a radio-friendly length, or pre-packaged into the hit-machine structure. He threw out all the limitations, but didn’t musically emphasize this decision (zero progressive rock to be found here). He just created songs that were complete. “I Want to Be Well” is a perfect example of not forcing anything. The song allows the anxiety-riddled Sufjan to build up, bubble over, and plead in defeat for his own peace of mind, so what does it matter that it’s over 6 minutes long? The most obvious is the multi-movement “Impossible Soul” that too many people end up turning off because the auto-tune portion makes them uneasy. The Age of Adz uses all of the tools. How people can attribute all the sounds as “distracting” is beyond me. Maybe if they would pull out their earbuds and respect the work with a decent sound system then they could hear the music as Sufjan intended. These sounds have purpose, they are well placed notes, and their irregularity adds to the anxiety of the song. You aren’t supposed to feel comfortable while listening to this, and I again reference the anxiety that permeates the whole album. I may be overstepping my bounds, but is it wrong to gather from the songs that Sufjan is facing an internal battle between composing the songs that are in his heart vs. the songs that people want him to compose? Is he not battling the same battles that songwriters face when losing self-confidence in whether or not people will like the song they’re in the middle of? People are not giving him enough credit, attributing randomness and carelessness to these compositions. Think of the courage that it must have taken to make this album. There is the album-spanning mantra reminding the audience (or just Sufjan reminding himself) to not be distracted. You have the self-reflective “Now That I’m Older,” and the openly religious “Get Real Get Right.” Hell, in “Vesuvius” he goes so far as to address himself directly. This isn’t an album that grows on you, you grow on it. It never changed, you just overcame the challenge. Such provocations are rare, and they resonate throughout history. Like Bob Dylan plugging in, and Stravinsky’s riot inducing Rite of Spring, casting aside what the populace wants is only achievable by great artists. Not everyone is going to be happy, many will call them traitors, but their work is timeless. To lose any of these would be a blow to the entire music world.

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The “Just Missed the Cut” of the year:

Spoon – Transference
Ben Folds / Nick Hornby – Lonely Avenue
Deer Tick – The Black Dirt Sessions

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The “Why the Hell Not?” of the year:

Less Than Jake

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The problem is, they’re very, very biased. Not in the sense of, a rap blog will pick mostly rap albums, metal blog will pick mostly metal albums, etc. That is a given. I mean that they are time biased. Overhyped albums that drop in February and then lose steam by November are gone and forgotten. Albums in the midst of their overhype get ranked obsessively high, but then settle in to their true rank in the ensuing months. This is why you aren’t seeing Dr. Dog’s hit album “Shame, Shame” anywhere, but the Kanye machine is consistently ranking number one. Maybe Kanye’s album really is number one, but you can’t really prove that until next March or so. I  have a feeling that several of the albums that are creeping towards the elite tiers of lists would not fair so well if they had sat on the shelves for a month or two longer.

That’s why you should take these lists with a grain of salt. The radical, ill-informed decisions made now are what make these so fun to read when we’re supposedly older and wiser. Just don’t jump to conclusions. Or take Pitchfork seriously. You already knew that last one, though.

My own list will be coming out after finals, and I will be discussing its premis when I post the article. In the mean time, visit Largehearted Boy for a list of every single best-of list.

And I don’t wanna be sober
Wanna get in a fist fight
Stumble home with a black eye
I know bruises are a sign
I went out punchin’
I said what I wanted
I got what I needed (right when I needed it)

“Appetite” by Dixie Dirt

The idea behind the mix is that everyone I come in contact with is eventually forced to listen to a song or two against their will that I am obsessed with at that moment. This particular mix is a collection of the most memorable and profound songs that lasted throughout my undergrad. Therefore, everyone who received a copy at my terribly awkward goodbye dinner would come across a song that they themselves had been forced to listen to at one time or another.

Extended beyond Flagstaff and my undergrad, the premise of the mix should still hold true to anyone who has ever had the misfortune of being on Facebook at the same time as me. Even the students that I’ve just recently met in Tennessee can probably lay claim to a couple of these tracks or artists. That is the beauty and the intended function of the mix.

All that personal crap aside, it’s just a mix of good songs. Click the link below to download it. As always, don’t ruin the mix by skipping around to your favorite song. Have a little dignity and listen to it straight through, top to bottom, at least once.

Go here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/pckscw

Footprints:

1. Dan Le Sac VS. Scroobius Pip – The Beat That My Heart Skipped

2. Arcade Fire – Intervention

3. Elvis Presley – In The Ghetto

4. DeVotchKa – Enemy Guns

5. Neutral Milk Hotel – Holland, 1945

6. DeVotchKa – Death By Blonde

7. The Beatles – Flying

8. Andrew Jackson Jihad – But I Love You

9. They Might Be Giants – Leave Me Alone

10. St. Vincent – Paris Is Burning

11. Destroyer – The Music Lovers

12. Now It’s Overhead – With A Subtle Look

13. Randy Newman – God’s Song (That’s Why I Love Mankind)

14. Blind Willie Johnson – Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground

15. Jon Crocker – A Way To Move Across The Ground

16. Hank Williams – There’s A Tear In My Beer

17. New Buffalo – Cheer Me Up Thank You

18. The Weakerthans – Watermark

19. Edward Sharpe And The Magnetic Zeros – Home

20. The Frames - Fitzcarraldo (Live)

21. Daniel Johnston – True Love Will Find You In The End

The current perception of vinyl is thus (and this is based on articles that I have read, documentaries that I have watched, and conversations that I’ve heard inside and outside of record stores): Vinyl is a clean reproduction of the soundwave that was recorded, while CDs are merely samples; therefore, vinyl records are “pure” while CDs are “partial”. Which leads to the conclusion that vinyl is better and more complete than CDs.

This is not entirely true, and, just like a political debate, many inconsistencies have been reproduced so many times that they have been accepted as truth. One of the first misunderstandings is fixed in the above statement if you replaced “vinyl” with “analog” and “CD” with “digital”. Doing so brings you closer to the truth, but still not 100%. Notice that vinyl doesn’t necessarily mean analog and that CD doesn’t necessarily mean digital in the realm of sound purity. There are many factors that aren’t being considered when arguing the “pure” vs “sample” (such as tape hiss and noise floors/bit depth and converter quality), but you can find crazy in-depth research articles that tackle that comparison to a scientific point. This is where the “wax is good, plastic is bad” perception in the current music medium market is improperly skewed.

In the past, not much ear has been given to all the lip about vinyl vs. CDs because it didn’t really matter, but now there have been negative effects due to the on going antagonization of CDs. First is that vinyl has been bumped up in price. Records used to be the discounted alternative to CDs because they were cheaper to make (and during the price gouging of CDs during the early 2000s, this was quite a discount). Now, kids are paying more for records than the CDs under the impression that they’re getting more bang for their buck. Yes, printing on 180 gram does bump the price, and many labels will use the mp3 download code as an excuse for raising the price (which is like charging you 20 bucks for a CD because it also comes with a cassette version for your car). There have also been many bands that are now releasing records only on vinyl (I’m looking at you, William Oldham), or releasing their albums first on vinyl and then the CD on a later street date. Frankly, that’s just dumb and not really fair. Most importantly, though, is the illusion that they’re buying more of the music that was recorded on the album than if they were to purchase the CD. Most of the time, especially with the newer albums, this is not true.

What does it take for a vinyl record to be more complete than a CD? Well first off you need to record entirely in analog. And I mean, entirely in analog. That is where every waveform that goes into the microphone, through the cables, through the components, and onto tape is reproduced on a record without anything being cut out (note: I purposely listed many things that come between the voice and the record, the only thing “pure” is a live performance). There certainly are many studios still running without a hint of a DAW, but unless you have thousands of dollars to invest in the declining pool of engineers that know how to put a razor to tape, then chances are your music is going to be a bunch of 1′s and 0′s at some point in the recording process.  But wait a second, the main argument against CDs is that it is merely “samples” of the music. I thought that was unacceptable and what vinyl fixed? Therein lies the heart of my problem with the vinyl being pressed today. What you’re listening to on modern vinyl, more often than not, is the digital signal, with all its glorious sampling, converted back into an analog waveform and then pressed into wax. That’s definitely not how records are being marketed, or perceived by the public today. People should understand that the second anything is converted to digital to be edited, the analog vs. digital argument is moot regardless of it being pressed onto vinyl or encoded onto disc. It’s all digital. Herein lies the fudging of facts when consumers are told that vinyl is the pure sound, whereas CDs are mere samples of the sound. Unless the recording was made in a 100% analog studio, then the vinyl sound is no different than the CD sound. The only difference is that the digital to analog conversion is happening before you put the needle to the groove, instead of after you put the laser to the disc. That’s where we begin another level of the “what’s more intact” debate.

Essentially, if the recording is made at a higher sample rate and deeper bit depth, and then that higher quality signal is pressed onto vinyl before it’s converted to what a CD can handle (16 bit, 44.1 sample rate), then you have in your hands a better reproduction of the original waveform. Once CDs develop beyond that limitation (a 24 bit, 96 sample rate for example), then that’s an even weaker argument against discs. So then what is left for a vinyl record to have more than a CD? Well that depends on the listener. This is the last, but definitely not least important component to sound completion: hardware. Working backwards through the signal chain, if you have crappy speakers then it doesn’t matter what you pump through them, sounds will be left out. If your cables routing the signal are bad then the sound goes through another point of degradation. Then there’s the player. If your CD player has a terrible digital to analog converter, then you’re not going to pump nearly the amount of sound that is in your disc to your speakers. And if you’re playing a burned CD of mp3s, then why are you even trying? On the other side there is the record player. If you think there were too many chances of sound degradation in the digital signal chain, then I doubt you’ll want to even touch anything that has to do with records. Places where you the sound purity can be potentially lowered include the pre-amp, the turntable, and even the exact record and how it came off the pressing floor. If the record isn’t in pristine condition, then it loses the battle versus CD. Condition of the record is always declining, even if you keep it in an air tight container and not a single microscopic piece of dust sleeps in a single groove. You’re still hurting the condition every single time the needle grinds through the valleys. And I don’t even want to get in to the ways the cartridge, calibration, and quintessential needle type plays into the formula. All of these including the tape hiss when recorded into an analog format raise the noise floor and cover up certain frequencies. So much for a “pure” sound.

So while the audiophiles are off digging up their frequency response studies and pitchforks, I want to conclude with the inconclusive blanket statement that neither formats deliver an exact replication of the performance. Each have their perks, and each have their downfalls. However, only one of these formats is being heralded as the golden format, the time hardened format, the “pure” format, and only one of these formats is being antagonized, unfairly criticized, and ignorantly labeled the “impure” format. All of this is causing a rift as polarizing and make-believe as the dual party system in American politics. It is creating an uncalled for price increase on new vinyl justified by false premises. And worst of all, it is allowing hipsters to point to their record collections and feel far superior than their CD buying counterparts. In the end, that’s all it really boils down to. Vinyl looks better than CDs, vinyl is “cooler” than CDs, vinyl feels better than CDs. Which is all true, but all superficial. So why can’t we just accept that that’s all it really is? Vinyl is furniture in your room, the look is more important than the practicality, and it’s just so cuddly. And there’s nothing wrong with that, but the second you start trying to pretend that you’re a better, more in-the-know person for buying wax over plastic, then you are being scammed. And that’s why I have a beef with vinyl.

I say that it’s good. Arcade Fire is still Arcade Fire.

What more do you want? Listen to it, breathe a sigh of relief that it isn’t a dud, and then listen to it again.

The end.

Though, I could write a whole article about how Ian Cohen’s review of the album over at Pitchfork was full of soul-destroying filth, but then I also like to think that my few readers are smart enough to already know that Pitchfork never writes anything worth reading. However,  if you have bulimia and are having trouble inducing the puking, then I’d 100% recommend the article. Props if you get past the first paragraph without ralphing your dinner.

Christ, I can’t pack up and move out of Flagstaff without shit going down can I? I was meaning to write an article about this, but I figured the only bands dumb enough to “boycott” this state were worthless, washed up bands that nobody wanted to see in the first place. Instead, I hear a news report on the topic from NPR and holy crap there’s more to it.

We’re in a lot of trouble!

Not us in Arizona, but the morons who think they know what the fuck they’re doing. If this is what you think a “boycott” is, if this is how you think artists should take action against obvious strikes against human rights, then forget it. Throw in the towel, pack up your things, there is no hope for us left. Rage Against the Machine? Conor Oberst? You guys are suposed to be raising the banner and stirring the indie, apathetic youth pot! But what do you do? You hold a benefit concert…in LOS ANGELES. What good does that do? It brings in all the hispanics in L.A. and puts money in your pockets without actually risking having to do anything, that’s what it does you pussy ass pieces of shit. You bruisers don’t have the balls to come to Arizona and actually try and start something, that’s why you hide behind this “boycott” of yours. Hell, if the civil rights movement involved everyone staying as far away from the South as possible, then blacks would still be drinking from different water fountains. What did they do? They sent BUS LOADS of people to the protests and they FOUGHT for their rights! You are cowards. You sit back in your comfortable chair in Hollywood and push buttons on a computer pretending to be outraged. What a bunch of scared little children. Fine, stay away. Let those of us who have a pair take to the streets. You lie and spew bullshit about how, “Well they might arrest us because we’re brown, that’s what SB 1070 does, that’s why we have to stay far away.” You know what Gandhi did? He got arrested. It’s called civil disobedience, it’s called sacrifice, it’s called caring enough to risk your life. If you don’t care enough to risk your life, then let all the hispanics who are now about to be subjected to the worst kind of racism that America has allowed since the Jim Crow laws. They’re willing to put it all on the line, but you obviously aren’t.

Do you even know when to boycott? Do you even know what its purpose is? Right, to cut off valuable financial resources to institutions that rely on others to pay to use their services or purchase their goods. It’s a great way to put businesses with poor business ethics on their knees, really makes the average Joe feel like they have SOME power in the business world. It works great, if you know what you’re doing. If you don’t, you just end up shooting your friends in the foot.

So what the fuck are you doing boycotting the people who are on your side? You’re putting venues, promoters, and bookies out of work. You’re punishing the fans who are certainly 100% against 1070. I doubt that redneck prick in the pickup truck with the Minutemen bumper sticker (the vigilante border patrol, not the punk band. God, do you even know what’s going on in Arizona?) that is wearing an NRA trucker hat owns Digital Ash in a Digital Urn, or jams out to The Battle of Los Angeles. What you are doing with this “boycott” is just hurting everyone in Arizona even further. I know you want to think that you can do some serious damage to the Arizona economy, but trust me: Arizona’s economy does not hinge on the one gig you booked at Celebrity Theater. Canceling it will not send a message to Jan Brewer, canceling it will not make Joe Arpaio pause for even a second, canceling your show will do NOTHING.

I have never been more ashamed of my state, and now I have never been more ashamed of the phony artists that I have been supporting after all these years.

Don’t worry, we’ll remember years from now who actually stood up. Namely, these people. These are the ones who actually have a clue as to what’s going on. So what should you do instead? Come to Arizona, have your stupid show, and donate the profits to the many groups who are fighting against the bill. Buy your lunch from that makeshift Mexican stand, cool off with an ice cream sold by that poor, undoubtedly undocumented hispanic pushing the cart, use all that “power” you think you have to draw even more crowds out to the mass protests. Get involved, for the love of God get off your lazy asses and get involved.

But you won’t. Because you’re all a bunch of goddamn cowards.

Onwards!

“And In The End…”
A College Graduation Mix

1. Cursive – “Staying Alive”
By starting off the mix with this song’s boiling over dissonance and children’s choir resolution, I’m able to create a mix that is less of a recapitulation of the last several years and more of an epilogue. All of the prior experiences, and then finally this song, are the true introduction to the mix. The worst is over, and then this mix is what happens next.

2. Johnny Depp from the “Gonzo” soundtrack - “The Edge”
Because in my undergraduate, I found out where the edge was, and I will always know that it’s still out there.

3. Stiff Little Fingers – “Gotta Get Away”
Begin the exhilaration of being free from the shackles of earning a degree. This song is about having itchy feet, about wanting to mix up a life that has become stagnant. “But the cars are all flashing me, bright lights are passing me, I feel life passing me by.”

4. Cream – “I Feel Free”
Mmm, the feeling of freedom. You know it won’t last, and you know that it’s not entirely true, but for the first time in a long time you feel like you’re free. This is the song that plays in your head when you step outside after several years of being stuck in a small room. This is the calm ecstasy before the storm of opportunities come rushing into your head.

5. Camera Obscura – “Let’s Get of this Country”
You’re free, and you feel as though you can do whatever you want, so screw it all, let’s get out of this country. This song is the flood of possibilities that lite your imagination on fire. You crave the open road, and this time nothing is going to stop you from consuming it.

6. The Traveling Wilburys – “End of the Line”
Literally, this is the end of the line (of college, that is, not of life), so while things may be coming to an end, why should  you have to sit around and wait for it when you have one last chance to make the best of it? Carpe diem, it’s been fun, and maybe I’ll see you again some time.

7. The Beatles – “The End” (Anthology)
“And in the end, the love you take, is equal to the love you make.”

8. M. Ward – “One More Goodbye”
The mix turns back around and away from the excitement of what the immediate future could potentially hold, and returns to the present. It’s now time to realize that I’ve only got one more goodbye, and instead of all those that came before, it’s the last goodbye that actually counts. The song is about all the last chances. One more chance to share your thoughts, one last party, one last chance to reconsider if you want to leave, and then finally one more goodbye.

9. DeVotchKa – “We’re Leaving”
This is it. This is the last night in town. This is standing up before the going away party and telling people that, come morning, you’ll be long gone, so drink up. One of my favorite songs on the mix, I knew it had solidified a spot when I saw DeVotchKa perform it in Flagstaff. I had to remember that this mix was, for most people, the last music that I would share with them while I was around, and if any song could be my exit song, this would be the one. Disney movie fashion. Everyone singing along, dancing, drinking, and in the midst of it all, I slip out the door never to be seen again. Not to be melodramatic or anything.

10. Casiotone for the Painfully Alone – “Nashville Parthenon” (Daytrotter session)
This song has to do with the fact that I’m going to Nashville (well, Murfreesboro) for graduate school and was simply utilizing the first line as a personal touch to address the listeners directly. “If you ever make it back to Nashville, remember you have still got a friend.”

11. Destroyer – “The Music Lovers” (EP)
This is my nod to all of my fellow music majors. “Ah, but we were the music lovers!”

12.  Johnny Depp from the “Gonzo” soundtrack – “The Wave”
This is the beginning of the second half of the mix. From this point on, the mix is from the perspective that the moment has already passed, and that the only thing we can do now is look back over our shoulders at the high-water mark.

13. The Weakerthans – “Sounds Familiar”
“We emerged from youth all wide-eyed like the rest. Shedding skin faster than skin could grow.” This childhood allegory of adulthood is the appropriate beginning to this part of the mix. The sad reality is that we’re growing up, and there’s no stopping it.

14. Andrew Jackson Jihad – “Growing Up”
This is where it starts to sink in that this whole getting older deal isn’t as great as we had originally thought it was going to be. The initial enthusiasm to dive into what comes next has given way to cynicism.

15. Low – “Death of a Salesman”
Growing up sucks, but the most depressing reality of it all is the cruel realization that the dreams that you have been holding onto for all those years are simply implausible. Eventually, you’ll have to burn those aspirations in a rage. This song is the reminder that it’s not all fun and games from here on out, and that eventually you’ll have to put food on the table.

16. George Harrison – “All Things Must Pass”
All things must pass, not everything lasts forever, and eventually everything will turn into memories. It was inevitable from the get go that someday we’d part ways. No matter how much you deny it, life continues to prove this song correct. As corny as it sounds, the next three songs I sequenced so as to imitate the end of a day. This song is the sunset.

17. Fleetwood Mac – “Landslide”
This song is a requirement any mix with this type of theme. This song is the middle of the night.

18. Andrew Bird - “Yawny at the Apocalypse”
This song is the light that appears just before the sun rises. Nothing else can be said about it, you should be able to understand why I put the song on the mix by merely listening to it.

19. Jon Crocker – “Long and Fond Farewell”
This is, well, my long and fond farewell. I don’t think I’d be able to write a song that says it better than how Jon Crocker said it. This final section of the mix is me communicating directly to those listening. There is no hidden meanings or indirect portrayals, it’s all pretty straight forward. “I won’t be here to see you in the morning, I won’t be here to sing with you at night, yes I’m going to go and find a better life.” People should be putting this song on their mixes around the world.

20. DeVotchKa – “How It Ends”
You already know how it ends, but there is no escape from the numbness that is caused both by a major event’s conclusion, and those hypnotic repeating chords. This song leaves you in a state of untainted nostalgia. This is technically the end of the mix, and since most everyone knew, or were forced to know, of my obsession with DeVotchKa, most everyone listening to the mix should have already known that this would be how it ended, both the mix and my time here.

21. Johnny Cash – “We’ll Meet Again”
This was not supposed to be a part of the flow, and was actually meant to be a hidden track, but unfortunately CD-Rs are limited in their capacity. Instead of leaving it off, I figured the mix might as well end on a positive note: Johnny Cash’s beaten and rusty voice singing out its hopeless and blind optimism that, hey, I don’t know where, and I don’t know when, but I know we’ll meet again.

22. Steam – “Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye)”
I couldn’t resist. This song is only on here cause I’m a jerk.