The Fire is Burning

The Arcade Fire is no longer an underground sensation or one of those bands where people say "oh yeah, they sound familiar." I first heard of them in the fall of 2006 and they didn't immediately grab me. At the time I was more skeptical of semi-electronic sounding music and preferred being able to listen to each instrument in turn. They vocals on the songs I heard also seemed a bit obscured, which doesn't generally suit me.

It was the following spring or summer that I learned - listening to their first full length album "Funeral" on the metro to and from work and internships. Their music has something special and I still can't quite put my finger on it.

Friday night I saw them in concert for the first time. They played DAR Constitution Hall here in D.C., which is not one of the better places to see a show. Having come up on the Allman Brothers and then Phish and Widespread Panic, I am accustomed to seeing concerts where there aren't a great deal of stops between songs and the songs are generally between 6 and 8 minutes, so it was difficult to adjust to shorter songs with longer stops after each song. The 80 minute set is what I'm used to being the first set, not the whole show.

But all that said, the show was great. The energy in the room started to coalesce about half way through and the band did a nice job building momentum into the end of the show and the encore. If you have a chance to see them live, I highly recommend it.

Their records, however, absolutely must be on your shelf. No collection is complete without them. This could be the best band of the decade.

Even more taken than I was, a writer from the Washington Post characterized the band as "a sort of modern-day art-rock answer to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band" and found "an undeniable grandeur and a thrilling vastness to the songs . . . but it's no empty bombast: In the studio and especially in concert, Arcade Fire's emotional music plays as deeply meaningful, soul-stirring art."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/05/AR2007050500995.html

Here are 2 mp3s from their show in New York on February 17 of this year. The first is a bit slower and close to spoken word. The other is not:

My Body is a Cage

Keep the Car Running



* I should recognize that the brothers who lead the band are from Texas, although they moved to Canadia before forming the band.

Texas is Awesome, pt 1

I have a few recurring topics, including "Albums", "Tips for D.C. Tourists," "Cheezy Music," and "The Little Things" series. Today I'm starting a "Texas is Awesome" series. We all know how awesome Texas is, mostly because people from Texas always tell us, but this is just icing on the cake...

Swinging for the Suburban Fences, but Not Too Hard

By RALPH BLUMENTHAL

BELLAIRE, Tex. — It's not just one, two, three strikes you're out at the old softball game in Feld Park.

Belting one over the fence will do it, too.

Home runs are outs in this otherwise all-American Houston suburb about nine miles west of downtown, where encroaching development has upended one of the sport's most hallowed rules, even, for a time, getting home run hitters ejected from the batter's box.

(Inside-the-park home runs — what the Amateur Softball Association soothingly calls "four-base awards" — are still O.K.)

It is not as if this city of 17,000 — named perhaps for the gulf breezes and swallowed by the Houston metroplex nearly 60 years ago — has anything against the American pastime. The bulbous white water tower that looms over town like a giant onion still celebrates Bellaire's two baseball legends, the 1999 high school national champions and the Bellaire Little League All-Stars that took the American pennant in 2000, making it to the World Series in Williamsport, Pa., only to lose a heartbreaker to Maracaibo, Venezuela, 3-2.

But when the love of green space and recreation ran headlong into property rights amid a homebuilding boom, something had to give.

"I don't want to be in the backyard to be clunked on the head with a softball," said Lee Decker, a builder whose new and yet-unsold $721,000 two-story house overlooking left-center field lost two windows late last year to homegrown sultans of swat in the park's Optimist Club league. Mr. Decker has since been mollified by the long-ball sanctions and a 50-foot-high fence-and-net barrier that has proved impervious to all but one improbable blast of 300 feet or more several weeks ago that broke another window.

If I was a kid down there, all of that dude's windows would be busted out.

On the iPod:
Tom Petty, She's the One

full article available at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/16/us/16bellaire.html?th&emc=th

I like you man, but you're crazy

You got a dart in your neck.

For whatever reason, I've had a little trouble feeling inspired about posting this week. Sometimes I go on tears where I have 3 or 4 post ideas a day - right now, without my car woes, I would be dry.

And I just figured it out - Nolege & The U.S. of Cuda had both been on long hiatus without a post. They don't know each other, but they both came back last week, within two days of each other. They must have sapped my strength.

Have you ever worn a head/sweat band and played 4 games of ultimate frisbee on an unseasonably warm & sunny november day and forgot to use sunblock and ended up with sunburn & a white stripe across your forehead? No? Me neither - but I know this one guy ...

Feelin' Blue?

Have you lost purpose in your life? Do you feel unsatisfied in a deeper way? Ask yourself...What Would Miers Do?

In Midcareer, a Turn to Faith to Fill a Void

By EDWARD WYATT and SIMON ROMERO

DALLAS, Oct. 4 - By 1979, Harriet E. Miers, then in her mid-30's, had accomplished what some people take a lifetime to achieve. She was a partner at Locke Purnell Boren Laney & Neely, one of the most prestigious law firms in the South, with an office on the 35th floor of the Republic National Bank Tower in downtown Dallas.

But she still felt something was missing in her life, and it was after a series of long discussions - rambling conversations about family and religion and other matters that typically stretched from early evening into the night - with Nathan L. Hecht, a junior colleague at the law firm, that she made a decision that many of the people around her say changed her life.

"She decided that she wanted faith to be a bigger part of her life," Justice Hecht, who now serves on the Texas Supreme Court, said in an interview. "One evening she called me to her office and said she was ready to make a commitment" to accept Jesus Christ as her savior and be born again, he said. He walked down the hallway from his office to hers, and there amid the legal briefs and court papers, Ms. Miers and Justice Hecht "prayed and talked," he said.

She was baptized not long after that, at the Valley View Christian Church.

read the rest at http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/05/politics/politicsspecial1/05miers.html?th&emc=th

"And the walls..." or "Busted"

I am torn as to whether this post should be named after the John Cougar Mellencamp tune:
Some people... ain't no damn good
You can't trust 'em, You can't love em
Second best is what you get
'Til you learn to bend the rules
Time respects no person
And when you lift up must fall
They're waiting outside
To claim my crumblin' walls

Saw my picture in the paper, Read the news around my face

When the walls
Come tumblin' down
When the walls, Come crumblin', crumblin'
When the walls, Come tumblin', tumblin'
Doooooown


Or the more fun Young MC song, Bust a Move:

Girls a fakin' ... goodness sakin'
They want a man who brings home the bacon
Got no money and you got no car
Then you got no woman and there you are
Some girls are sophistic... materialistic
Looking for a man makes them opportunistic
They're lyin on the beach perpetratin a tan
So that a brother with money can be their man

But either way, today is a good day. There is hope in the universe.

DeLay Indicted in Campaign Finance Probe

House Majority Leader Says He Will Temporarily Step Down

By William Branigin and Amy Goldstein

Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, September 28, 2005; 2:51 PM

A Texas grand jury today indicted Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) on a criminal count of conspiring with two political associates to violate state campaign finance law, and DeLay announced he would temporarily step down as House majority leader.