Nice work today, iPod. A good mix of tempo and mood and there's even a bootleg track that I completely forgot I had. For that particular concert I paid a rather hefty sum to stand so close to Thom Yorke that I could have flung my personal effects at him. Not that I did. But I could have.  My Random Ten is looking more and more like me all the time. Someday it will put all my most embarrassing guilty pleasures on display and I'll finally be able to profess my love for--well, you'll see.

1. The New Pornographers - "Execution Day"

2. Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine - "Bloodsport for All"

3. The Pixies - "I've Been Tired"

4. Ben Folds Five - "Kate"

5. Nick Drake - "At the Chime of a City Clock"

6. Junior Senior - "Chicks and Dicks"

7. The Arcade Fire - "The Woodland National Anthem"

8. Radiohead - "No Surpises" (Live at Alpine Valley)

9. XTC - "Making Plans for Nigel"

10. R.E.M. - "Oddfellows Local 151"

Weezer just announced they're playing First Avenue on May 3 and I really feel like I should have something to say about that. After all, Rivers Cuomo and I shared a lovenest inside my head for the better part of a decade (long enough that I believe we had an imaginary common law marriage). But 85% of my brain says, You threw him out on his ass as soon as you heard "Hash Pipe." Good riddance. The other 15 is a sucker for that video they made with the Muppets. Still, I'm reading John Luerssen's unauthorized biography Rivers' Edge: the Weezer Story and so far it has only reiterated what I've slowly admitted to myself over the last five years: Rivers is an egomaniac in the studio, an occasional nutjob, and in some ways a very sad little man. Luerssen does include some early '90s pics of the Dork King with bitchin' metal hair, though. I might just have to scan some of those. Speaking of which, if you dig through the archives at Complicated Fun you might just find a scan of my official Weezer fan club membership card, including a picture of yours truly at age 13. Happy hunting.

I returned from a week in Austin yesterday morning, only to hear that Little Dirt are playing their last show on Friday at the Hexagon. This is one of the bands I nominated for Picked to Click last year. Given my toddler-like exhaustion brought on by an 18-hour roadtrip, my first impulse was to throw a tantrum and stamp around the office yelling, "No no no!" I took a day to calm down and though I'm still heartbroken, I'm the tiniest bit more articulate now. In case you haven't heard them (which you probably haven't since they've only played a few shows since quietly releasing their debut ep in September), here's a crash course: 

Little Dirt are a rootsy pop band that I greatly enjoy despite not enjoying rootsy pop bands in general. If pressed for a comparison, I'd say they're somewhere between Neil Young and Camper Van Beethoven. Lead singer Zac Stanley's voice has an inexplicable twang that disappears when he talks. Sometimes they throw in handclaps and I forget the term "alt country" exists and I'm a happier person. They're huge Replacements fans. I've seen Zac in a dress a la Bob Stinson on SNL. I've also seen Zac's wife and bandmate Kim Carolan dressed up like Angus Young but they don't seem to talk about AC/DC nearly as much as they talk about the Replacements.

Since none of that was probably very helpful, check out their website for mp3s.

I love scavenger hunt movies. It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Rat Race, Follow That

Bird—pretty much any movie where there's a pot of gold at the end of the road trip rainbow. So while I was excited about Brother and Sister's rescue mission/record release show, Hollywood had already set some pretty high expectations. (For example, I was hoping to pilot a prop plane). The funny thing is the local siblings came through in fulfilling my scavenger hunt fantasy (minus the plane). I think the time and effort building up to two hours last Friday night deserve a little more credit than a simple concert review blurb.

 

Preparation — Friday morning

All pre-registered "secret agents" receive an email alert that the "evil head master wench" has kidnapped Brother & Sister. Agents are to report to a cul de sac in Dinkytown at 5:30 p.m. with items including a flashlight, a piece of chalk, a tape measure, a calculator, and a swimsuit. I leave work early and put my swimsuit on under my clothes. You know, in case I suddenly have to dive to the bottom of a lake and retrieve a treasure chest or something.

 

 

Clue #1 Less than half the teams are on time but the all stragglers trickle in asking the same question—what the hell is this? No one else on my team ("The Well-Respected Press") bothers to show up, so I'm kindly adopted by Team Death to Our Enemies. A crusty punk hands out badges, clue workbooks, and files containing missing persons reports. When everyone's present he gives us instructions: "Go to that bridge."

 

Clue #2 Hung on the train bridge just south of Van Cleve Park is a banner reading "this is a walkway. yet on our path do find new coding tag. you please go revisit all third letters. be fast cum kwick to save me hurry!!!" Reading every third letter, it says, "I saw you ad in City Pages a tree back cover."

 

Clue #3 We grab a copy of the paper at Joe's Market and scan the back page. "I Saw You — Pining For You. Reading on the bridge. Let's do laundry at the Tub Coin-Op. I'll dry — you fold."

 

Clue #4 A dryer marked "Brother and Sister" is full of hand-decorated t-shirts. They show a calendar with "people" written in every square. 

 

Clue #5 After a few minutes spent ransacking Everyday People, a cashier starts slipping people envelopes. Inside is a collage of a couple milling around a giant T on a bridge. It's hard to tell what they're doing. This is where we lose the most time. After Chuck Terhark and I run (okay, okay, we mostly walk) across two bridges, we figure it out. They're WASHING a 'T' ON the BRIDGE.

 

Clue #6 A square on the bridge reads, "Go to Difficult Mathematics — Heavy Thinking"

 

Clue #7 We drive to the Hard Times Café and find a note on the bulletin board that says something like, "You don't usually look at the covers when you wake up. But today you should."

 

Clue #8 We grab a copy of the Wake, the cover of which has been inconspicuously designed like a Mad Magazine fold-in. Fold the sides, flip it 90 degrees: "SPOKES"

 

Clue #9 Another case of simply asking the guy working the Spokes Pizza counter if he's got anything for us (wink, wink). He hands us a picture of Linda Tripp, 3 Rocks (Kid, Chris, and The), someone sewing, a seashell, and the Club (the thing you put on a steering wheel to prevent car theft).

 

Clue #10 We arrive at the Triple Rock Social Club but before we reach the door, we're the victims of a hold-up. A masked girl ushers Matt and Ken into the back of a Budget van. It peels off, its walls barely muffling the sound of live music. A Brother & Sister cover band is giving private performances as the van makes a two-block circuit. The rest of our team returns unharmed (although they say the van reeked of B.O.), holding a wooden building block. The sides of the cube feature an @, a picture of the U.S. and Canada, A, T, M, and E.

 

Clue #11 A kid loitering near the ATM outside the Block E Borders slips us a piece of paper. It says, "RamandaN isn't ending, it's just begINNing," followed by a long list of numbers to be added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided. Chuck and Ken do the math on a cell phone as we walk to the hotel. We've got our room number.

 

Clue #12 We're on our best behavior inside the Ramada, grateful for losing the pack that would've blown our cover for sure. The door of Room 328 is propped open but when we enter a guy in boxer shorts asks, "Who are you?" We mumble and back pedal until he says, "Oh, you're agents. There's a clue on the stereo." A boombox is playing a loop of spliced song lyrics. "Upper level"..."Parking garage"..."H-A-R-M" (we're not driving to Roseville, are we?)..."O-N" (thank god). It takes several listens to get it all and then we're back in the car, headed toward the Harmon Place Ramp.

 

We drive to the top, expecting to find the band rocking the rooftop. Afterall, it's an automatic ramp with no attendant to call the cops. But on the roof we only find the winning team (damn you, Matthew St. Germain) and a girl in an eyepatch. The evil head master wench tells us we're the second team to arrive. The hunt was supposed to end at 7:30 but pretty soon it's 7:40 and only a couple other teams have shown up. With a little needling, the wench divulges the location of the show. We're all going to the YWCA to go swimming.

 

Insert crazy rock show pictures here (they're coming soon, I swear)

 

I've been thinking about the effect this whole experience (particularly the surprise pool

party) had on a bunch of rock fans and it reminds me of Andy Kaufman's show at Carnegie Hall. He wanted to return his audience to a state of child-like wonder. A tabernacle choir sang, Santa showed up, and it seemed like the evening couldn't get any better. Then Andy announced he was loading everyone onto buses to take them out for milk and cookies. The "agents" emerging from the locker rooms at the Y wore a similar expression as the "children," a mixture of disbelief and absolute joy. When I stepped into the shower later that night and caught a whiff of the chlorine in my hair, I made the same face just thinking about it.

Not only do the Make Up, Spoon, and Wire all pop up two weeks in a row, Ian Svenonius gets a double shot. On a side note, I'm slowly phasing out some of the stuff that came with my hand-me-down iPod to replace it with music I listen to for actual pleasure and not merely out of convenience.

1. The Rapture - "Love is All"

2. The Make Up - "Untouchable Sound"

3. Weird War - "Baby It's the Best"

4. Trash Can Sinatras - "Make Yourself at Home"

5. Spoon - "Metal Detektor"

6. Constantines - "Scoundrel Babes"

7. The Notwist - "One with the Freaks"

8. Yo La Tengo - "Our Way to Fall"

9. Ride - "Decay"

10. Wire - "Marooned"

I'm putting together a long post about Brother and Sister's fantastically original record release show. In the meantime check out the Onion's profile on Thomas Dolby. It's a bit dry and technocentric for the most part but such an innovative artist deserves the press. If you're like me and played The Golden Age of Wireless in heavy rotation throughout most of the '80s, you might be more interested in the "Mr. Dolby Remembers" section on his website. It's got some background on specific songs, plus great anecdotes packed with British new wave name-drops. And then there's the time he showed up at Michael Jackson's house with mono only to find a bunch of kids in their jammies...

As stolen from American Idle who stole it from Rox Populi and Feministe. Here's what the random mix of my iPod spit out this afternoon:

1. Public Image Ltd. - "No Birds"

2. Versus - "Never Be O.K."

3. Spoon - "Quincy Punk Episode"

4. Kali Bahlu - "A Cosmic Telephone Call"

5. Galaxie 500 - "Here She Comes Now"

6. Imperial Teen - "Million Dollar Man"

7. Wire - "Strange"

8. The Make Up - "Caught Up in the Rapture"

9. Guided by Voices - "Motor Away"

10. Kid Dakota - "Summer Cold"