Snobbin: Beautiful Trash in the Pop Culture Gutter

We are Lost There is a feeling in the air, barely recognized. A feeling of bittersweet retribution floating from the ground -- from the air It is tragic, barely remembered, nothing less than a connection, nothing less than an undiscovered moment, relapsing into a popular epiphany. I see the embittered moments of our youth. I see the sacrificial lambs of our generation bouncing prosaically in halls of quiet remembrance. Why are we so lost in this transgression? Why are we the ones who can't remember? Our generation is massed together like clay Earthen in construction, lost in the moment. A ghostly transition clumps together, a sullen moment; when we were kids, you and I were scared. We felt the pressure of happenstance, a ghost, a death, a measured moment of time; I still feel that way -- I feel like something is wrong -- we need to move. The air is tragic -- let's find a solution to our problem, to our fear, to the feeling of danger . . . A telephone call...

Grant Lee Phillips' Walking in the Green Corn is a contemplative affair, much like 2009's understated Little Moon . Unassuming yet self-aware, Phillips' songs pack a quiet power.  Always a first-rate vocalist and lyricist, he digs deeper here paying homage to his Native American heritage in ways he hasn't since Virginia Creeper. Phillips blends his subtle lyrics with quiet guitars and tons of intimacy. He expertly sets the stage for his story songs, taking his time in order to get the details just right. On "Vanishing Song" his lyrics are sparse, yet they tell an expansive tale of times long gone. "Great Horned Owl" is more upbeat, recalling Grant Lee Buffalo more than Phillips' solo work but still creating a vibe of late nights and long ago moments. Walking in the Green Corn perfectly captures the intimacy one feels with old friends as new discoveries become more important because they are made together. Phillips' narrative world is f...

La Costa Perdida, the first Camper Van Beethoven album in nine years isn't quite as ambitious as 2004's stellar, yet under appreciated concept album, New Roman Times . More of a continuation of later Cracker albums; its lengthy tracks call to mind the sprawling Greenland or the California-centric Sunrise in the Land of Milk and Honey. "Too High for the Love-in" is a lengthy and weighty bridge between the last days of CVB and latter day Cracker. It's becoming harder to tell the songs apart. Most could as easily have fit on a Cracker album, despite their more exotic instrumentation. Evident proof that the band can still write a catchy hook., the song's eastern-tinged intro is reminiscent of early albums. Female vocals ba ba beneath a catchy guitar line before David Lowery's cracked and knowing vocals come in, singing "I was too high for the love-in./ I woke in my car at the drive in./ And there was a bird in my kitchen when I got home." Once ...

When I was younger, I used to love snow. I would go skiing regularly, barely feeling the cold. I would push myself over hills competing in an imaginary race. If my dad was with me, I would try to beat him even though he could ski much faster. I spent hours training on the kiddie hills trying to master the wishbone technique for climbing difficult hills. I soon realized that the faster I could go, the easier it would be to climb the next hill.  The snowy pine trees and flitting chickadees were a welcoming sight five miles down the ski trail after a difficult run. Although I get envious when I see an older skate skier zoom by and leave me in the lurch. My younger body cannot compete with these octogenarians who ski daily, their arms and legs purely muscled. I still feel like a skinny kid, although I am much bigger, older, and out of shape. I would ski more if there was more snow. Each year we get less and less, the trails are practically bare here. Muddy ruts -- they resemble d...

A few years ago while skimming the thrift store bins, I stumbled across several Ampex snapcase cassettes from the Sixties. I had never seen anything like them aside from a Joan Baez cassette, One Day at a Time , with a similar slipcase, also manufactured by Ampex. Even after a bit of internet research, I have not found much information on them, except that they seem to be prime finds. I found two Velvet Underground cassettes and a Vanilla Fudge. Each is well-worn in a black case with a pasted on cover. Of course, the Velvet Underground cassettes were more interesting, but none of them plays very well, so they are only useful as audio artifacts. Each was manufactured by Ampex in Elk Grove Village, IL. and belonged to J.R. Kregenow, who wrote on them for easy identification. The cover art is not very clear or and the titles are listed below as there is no back cover. The Vanilla Fudge cassette, Near the Beginning, only contains four tracks including a cover of Jr. Walker's "Sho...

The first 8-track I ever purchased was The Clash's underrated Give 'Em Enough Rope from a dusty shelf at my hometown thrift store in the mid 1990s. It was quite a musical find, and has, perhaps, led to a lifetime of scanning such shelves for musical esoterica. The Give 'Em Enough Rope 8-track is an unassuming wonder; it does not even have the iconic font of other early issues. The band's name is in the block capital print of the early U.S. pressings; I'm not sure how many of these were even manufactured. The later U.S. pressings had a fake oriental font that was later replaced by the UK design. The iconic cover adds another level to the Clash's cowboy/rebel mythology. Indeed, the final mastering was done in the United States under the eye of Sandy Pearlman, best known for his work with Blue Oyster Cult. A great account of these sessions and others is found in Pat Gilbert's superlative biography, Passion is a Fashion: The Real Story of the Clash. Th...

 Years Leave Us  Another rough year has come and reluctantly bitten the dust. We sit complacent, or, perhaps, angered. There is too much tension in our bones -- we sit sprung, ready to snap, compromised. We can barely meet eyes, mostly because I am insufferable. I pay for my mistakes often before I make them. The anger that wells inside needs an outlet. Where will it go? I hope it dissipates soon. Gremlins I lack patience with electronics. I will toss, throw, or break into shards any that come near me. I blame it on the Gremlins, but it is my own uneasy, impatient nature that fills the junkyards with instant rubble. My heart tells me no, but I break things anyway. They say patience is a virtue, but that doesn't help us. We want it now, an instantaneous MTV generation gobbling up internet bandwidth. We can't stop; we eat cellphones for breakfast, overload mp3 players, trip every electronic switch into the red. Why you ask? Because we can. Roughhousing the Environmen...