How many bars can one go to in 4 hours and soak in some sweet BAAM action? I decided to see what kind of damage I could do and get a sense of the festival.

Stop 1. I enter Bottletree at 9:45 to catch the very end of Gum Creek Killers/Grey Haven. Sounded good- wish I had gotten there earlier. Nice Crowd

Stop 2. Since Green Seed isn’t going on until later, I make a run for the Nick to see the The Dirty Lungs. They are sufficiently dirty, and I have a beer and listen to 3 songs. Decent crowd.

Stop 3. It’s 10:20. Let’s go by Stillwater Pub. I catch 3 songs of what I think is The Big Nekkid. Not my thing, but hey, whatever. Stillwater charges me two extra dollars because I only want to put 1 beer on a credit card. I guess I understand (yet still here I am calling them out on it). Nice crowd here too.

Stop 4. Back to Bottletree at 10:45. Here is my negative statement that I said a few times last night- someone pulls out a turntable, and Bottletree is empty. It’s too bad- I love The Green Seed, and what I heard was the usual quality hip hop that they are known to produce.

Stop 5. Last stop of the night for me- Parkside. Positively packed- but most aren’t there for the acoustic music in the back patio by Sam Pointer. 20 minutes to get a beer, and take some pics. Sam was really good- lots of strange sounds coming out of an acoustic.

Stop 6. Walmart (not pictured). There wasn’t anything BAAM related at Walmart, but when you go to 4 bars in a night, you gotta get some stuff for your poor wife who missed all the fun.

Overall, I was impressed with the crowds. I imagine some people weren’t happy showing up to their favorite bar and being told  that it was $15 to get in, but it did seem that more people than I expected were inside each venue.  Tonight will be different for me- the plan is to park it at Rogue Tavern and see the slate of bands there. BAAM made a good first impression. For more info on BAAM, check out their site.

What is your first instinct upon approaching a homeless person in 5 Points South? Do you reach for spare change? Lower your head and quicken your pace? Pretend to have no money or make an excuse like “I only have my credit card”? Become irate because there’s no way in Hell you’re giving your hard-earned money to a crazy drunk/drug addict?

This is really a trick question, since your chances of encountering the homeless in 5 Points are extremely low. Most “homeless” there are actually professional panhandlers, who most likely have a warm room where they count their money from the night’s exploits. Somehow, we as a society have conflated homelessness with panhandling. Our perceptions are not entirely uninformed, however; many panhandlers will claim homelessness as a defense for their begging. To hear it from the true homeless of the city, 5 Points is a place to be seen, and that’s something most of them would like to avoid.

Despite their reluctance to show themselves publicly, several have made their stories available for us to see and know and feel what it is like to be at home on the street. Former Birmingham native Jason Wasserman (who you may recall from our scene history as a founder of early DIY club Unity 1605 and a member of None But Burning) spent four years on an ethnographic project at UAB along with Dr. Jeffrey Clair and the students of a class they team taught, ultimately culminating in the film “American Refugees: Homelessness in Four Movements”. Here, “Movements” refers to the musical score, composed by Patrick Houston, in which each of the four chapters of the film is accompanied by an appropriate musical mood. The slow arpeggio minor chord and note movements give way to intense, percussion-thumping, heavy-hitting power chords as the film’s story channels the emotional spectrum of homelessness.

“American Refugees” debuted last month at Speakeasy–an appropriate venue, given that its proprietor George Cowgill and Wasserman worked together on another documentary “0274: Rezulin and the Death of Monica George”. Thanks to the support of the community who participated in the film screening, about $1,000 was raised for The Church of the Reconciler and The Firehouse Shelter.

Noticeably missing from the list of recipients of donations are big-name organizations such as Jimmie Hale Mission. This choice is best explained by the examination of homelessness policy and “treatment” offered in the written accompaniment to the film, “At Home on the Street: People, Poverty, and a Hidden Culture of Homelessness”. First, notice that I quoted “treatment”; Wasserman’s interest in homelessness was piqued because of what he calls the growing “medicalization of homelessness”–the idea that homelessness is necessarily medically, not socially, defined. As a doctor of medical sociology, he wanted to examine the viability of such a treatment, and failing that, offer a social explanation.

Many aid shelters, religious and otherwise, operate on the basis of treating addiction as a means of solving the homeless problem. As it turns out, to qualify as being homeless, one must either present with drug addiction or mental illness. This is best illustrated with an experience Wasserman had while going underground at a shelter to make observations: while eating dinner, someone asked him what drugs he was on, then told him he had better come up with something to be on because he wouldn’t get a bed without an addiction. Wasserman’s new friend didn’t stop there; he offered suggestions for drugs to claim he was addicted to that were most believable because of their minimal physical effects and widespread use. Not only will use of the shelter’s facilities be denied on this basis, but even much-touted job training and education programs are off-limits until a participant graduates from a drug addiction/rehabilitation program. As the film and book observe, these catch-22s often serve to further alienate the homeless population and cause them to choose the street over shelters and their “recovery”.

Another problem with the current treatment of homelessness is that it is an industry. Much like police need crime to exist so they can exist, homeless shelters need homeless people. As obvious as this seems, the repercussions are enormous. Many shelters have quotas to fill in order to receive government funding, and these quotas are too often attached to artificial metrics designed to attempt an objective measurement of the shelters’ efficacy. To bring this idea into perspective, I’ll illustrate with an example of metrics in use at my part-time delivery job. Our company keeps a customer service “score” that is based solely on the amount of time lapsed between the time an order is placed and the time it is logged out of the store for delivery. Anything over a certain time is automatically late and subtracts from the customer service score. No quarter is given for delivering next-door or maintaining accurate delivery quote times.

The common thread between my job and homeless shelters is that somewhere along the way, someone established a standard that is now widely accepted within the industry and rarely questioned or reevaluated in spite of change. The difference is that where the worst-case scenario for my job’s metrics is that someone goes too long without food they can afford, and will probably get their order free if they raise a stink about it. The worst-case scenario with shelter metrics is that not filling quotas means less funding, less food, fewer people to feed, and no manager to complain to for a free meal because you aren’t happy with the results. When your food is running late, you have the choice to cancel and eat somewhere else or go home and cook. When you are homeless, though, you have no choice. Waiting for your next meal is no mere option–it’s a reality.

The average American is merely 3 paychecks away from homelessness. In this economy, we should ALL be concerned about homelessness policy if we hope to avoid becoming a statistic and succumbing to a stigma.

For more information on “American Refugees” and “At Home on the Street”, visit At Home on the Street.

From the opening sounds of the newest Hold Steady album “Heaven is Whenever”,  the slide guitar lulls me into happiness. “The Sweet Part of the City” if you will. You know, “the part with the bars and restaurants”.

Listen- I desperately love The Hold Steady. This will be less of a review and more of me just reminding you how damn weird I get about music I love, and how much I think about why I love it. There is a richness to their music and lyrics that I can’t fully grasp. Parts of a long, long story slowly doled out over the course of five albums, all of which are excellent in their own way. Some, like “Boys and Girls in America” and their latest work particularly stand out to me. There’s a refreshing lack of cynicism in their music, full of mantras and repeating phrases that emphasize almost a philosophy on life. This might sound horrible, but the most amazing thing about this band is that they pull it off without being preachy or hokey. Well, they may be a little hokey.

I’m going to do one of those things you should never do- I’m going to compare them to Radiohead.

In 1998 at some point, a friend burned me my first CD. It was OK Computer. Never mind the thrill of holding in my hands a complete album  that only took 45 minutes to copy. I had written off the band because they weren’t the Supersuckers or Reverend Horton Heat at that time (I would go back to the Bends later and realize how big of an idiot I was) but this album, much like the new media in my hands at the time, changed nearly all my perceptions. I wore that CD out. Literally. Never seen it before, or since, but it stopped playing at one point. What did it? The same thing I was talking about with The Hold Steady- that mysterious deeper sense of something lying underneath the music. Something you can’t fully understand but that you can see the shape of. In Radiohead’s case, I’d venture to say it was that overwhelming feeling of modern society and it’s crushing force upon you. I was just exiting college and faced with “responsible adult life” barrelling toward me, and it fit my current state quite well.

And now, being 35 and quite happy that my most of my stupid days are behind me, this band speaks to me in a similar fashion. Lost snippets of my 20′s, filled with the knowledge of my “old age”. There is a college/post college feel of the era they seem to embody- when you first had some money in your pocket and all your friends had parties all the time. It was when it was strange and disconcerting to find yourself with nothing to do on a Friday night.

But this is just half of what makes this band special to me. The music is straightforward rock, but never boring. It is “head nodding while holding 2 Miller Lights so you don’t have to go back to the cooler” kind of music. It reminds me of so much without copying. It evokes memories of everyone singing “Gimme Shelter” in the Plaza at 4am. It reminds me of long road trips across the Southeast just to see bands play and stay in cheap hotels.

When I read something like this very thing I’m writing, I always wonder if the author is just reading far too much into the artistic work. And perhaps, I am.  I think this is a brilliantly conceived and executed template for what rock and roll meant to my generation (whatever the hell we are). I don’t want you to think that The Hold Steady is the perfect band. But I think they are a pretty damn good one.

Or I could be totally full of shit.

“And if you swear to keep it decent, then yeah, I’ll come and see you
But it’s not gonna be like in romantic comedies
In the end I bet no one learns a lesson”

The Hold Steady is playing September 25th at Workplay. “Heaven is Whenever” is their latest album.

For those of you waited until the very last minute (which was all of you, strangely) to enter our ticket giveaway, I regret to inform that both pairs of tickets have been won. That is, of course, unless you–the reader–happen to be one of the winners, in which case kudos to you. Thanks for playing, and thanks to Red Mountain for helping us out and giving to our fans!

I did mention consolation; fear not, procrastinators, for I have two awesome shows lined up for you tonight if you are not holding those Pretty Lights tickets.

First, at the always awesome Bottletree, dance-rockers HOCKEY are headlining along with The Constellations and The Poselles. Tickets are only $10 at the door, and the show is 18+. That’s just half of what you would have paid to shake your thang at Sloss, so do it!

Next, at one of Birmingham’s newest DIY venues The Firehouse, one of Bottletree’s finest promoters has brought YOUNG WIDOWS (!!!), My Disco, and the final show ever for We Are Alive. This one’s only $8 and is for the kiddies and the oldies (i.e. ALL AGES)! Support your locals!!!

Once again, Birmingham alternative radio has sounded its death knell in the form of automation, which will soon be followed by FM simulcast of WAPI (featuring the likes of Matt Murphy and Sean Hannity). As of 2 pm on Sunday–at the end of Reg’s Coffee House, a show that has been on in Birmingham on many stations in many forms for just over 13 years–Live 100.5 is going talk radio.

To be sure, many fans and faithful listeners are angered, saddened, and pouring out support in the form of a Facebook group called “SAVE LIVE 100.5!” When I first heard the rumors, I had counted myself among those numbers. It reminded me of the news of 105.5 The Vulcan’s transition to talk radio, Rock 97.3′s transition to I-can’t-even-remember-what, and worst of all, 107.7 the X going off the air [note: I was in high school at the time, and there was no such thing as iTunes, iPod, Pandora, and Internet radio, so yes, it was that important to me]. For at least the past 10 years, Birmingham’s alternative radio mainstays–if you can call them that, considering–have come and gone at a pace that nearly equals that of the city’s DIY venues.

This is a sad fact, considering that at least the radio stations enjoy(ed) corporate sponsorship.

As I mentioned before, losing the X was such a heartbreak because there simply was no alternative. Now, however, alternatives abound in the form of portable music players, podcasts, Pandora on your smartphone, Sirius-XM satellite radio, and myriad Internet radio stations that all enjoy the liberty of being (mostly) free of censorship, paid advertisements, limited variety [how's that for an oxymoron?] and of course, free from the horror that is OVERPLAYED MUSIC [note: every time I hear the opening riff to Temper Trap "Sweet Disposition", I die a little inside]. So while Live 100.5′s line-up of programming, cast of DJs, and sponsorship of local events will all be missed, I am now honestly ready to stop lamenting the loss, rallying against simulcast conservative talk radio, and pooh-poohing corporate broadcasting and start investing in the music that matters to me.

Moreover, I am ready to declare FM radio entirely obsolete (and I’m probably several years behind in saying so, but I’m also a poor college student without most of the fancy alternatives I just listed above).

Let’s talk about reasons to listen to stations like Live 100.5, and I guarantee there are equal, if not better, alternatives that will fill these needs:

- Discovering new music: On Live 100.5, programs such as Reg’s Coffee House, Tuesday Night Music Club, Urban Fabric, and Sunday Night Social helped establish new music from favorite artists and even paved the way for up-and-coming greats [Reg likes to brag that he was the first to play John Mayer on his program; now, you can pay a nice chunk of change to see him headlining world tours, and for a little more, you might get to see some of the "drug addict" action he confessed to with Jessica Simpson in the infamous Playboy Magazine interview]. Alternatives to this include: Pandora’s Music Genome Project, iTunes Genius, Sirius XM-U, and plenty of Internet stations if you’re willing to dig in a little. Also, Bottletree hosts monthly Radio Free Birmingham shows that feature all local acts and charge no admission. Who says you have to pay for new music?

[I'm legally required to tell you that you do, in fact, have to pay for new music not experienced at free concerts. So, do your patriotic duty and buy, legally, with money, some new music and support your artists by not using SoulSeek and joining CD exchanges]

- Validating your tastes: ‘fess up, everyone; you know you love it when you hear your favorite song on the radio, and you text/call in your requests for it constantly. Alternatives: Really?! Who needs REQUESTS when you can just TELL (quite literally, in the case of the iPhone 3GS) your iPod to play a specific song, album, or artist? You can hear that favorite song of yours on an infinite loop, if that tickles your fancy.

- Finding out about shows/events near you: Live 100.5 did a good job of keeping their events calendar up-to-date and annotated frequently, and the DJs were great at pulling off killer show announcements and promotions/giveaways/etc. The station’s Twitter page, though? Not so much. It was usually only there to mention concert ticket giveaways. Alternatives: I’m glad you asked. There’s always ::ahem:: the bham.fm Dose. You can also keep tabs with The Terminal’s Timetable and tweets, or check out Sam Killpack’s Hipster Guide to Birmingham on freeThinkBham to see where to keep your ears to the ground. Following your favorite venues on Twitter/Facebook/MySpace/etc. is also a good way to find out what’s going on where and with whom.

- Winning coveted concert tickets: See above on DJ promotions and giveaways. Alternatives: Well…sometimes we at bham.fm get lucky and score passes to noteworthy indie shows, but mostly we just give away spots to shows we are putting on. However, Bottletree’s promotion machine Brian Scott Teasley is definitely in the business of giving away tickets with trivia questions that generally only require a quick Google search to answer. Twitter followers/Facebook fans/MySpace friends also tend to get in on the ground floor for all shows, big and small.

- Making mental friends in a creepy way with DJs: You’ve listened to them long enough to pick up on their speaking patterns, turns of phrase, and schtick that makes them them. Whether you love or hate Reg’s tendency to blank out, Dru’s impressions of artists she plays on the station, or Chris’s self-described terrible sense of humor and penchant for babbling, you know and love your DJs. Alternatives: If only people followed our writing staff with that same fervor! You can catch Chris Adler performing as a singer/songwriter or stand-up comic here in Birmingham. DJ CO CO actually IS a DJ, and he performs in town quite often as well with local acts like Kids Got The Disco and Toga Toga. You can even use one of those Talkboys from the Home Alone 2 movie and record your own Rogue Tavern commercial and try to do your best Chris impression: “It’s Rogue. TAH-vern….two–count ‘em–TU-HEEWW. POUND. BURGER!” Wow, that’s creepy.

So, to sum up: RIP Live 100.5, FM radio is dead, and if you want to continue to experience music in ways that Live 100.5 may have helped you discover, it will take only slightly more effort and money than pushing the “Radio ON” button on your console in your car.

WorkPlay and yours truly have come together with Through the Sparks, Secret Dangers and Henry Dunkle to put on the flyest Christmas show this side of the decade.

The fun starts right before 8pm tonight, but the bar’s open earlier for all those 21+ to get right.

It’s only 10 bucks for 3 bands, and donations will be made from the door to awesome local charities who could use some holiday love.

RSVP on Facebook and stay tuned to our Twitter and FB fan page for any updates.

Special thanks to WEOWNTHESKY graphic design for the sweet trippy poster and thanks to you guys for such an amazing year in music, Birmingham. You deserve to party.

‘Salmost Christmas and I know you’ve been waiting for it. You have been sitting at home, restless in your rockers, just wondering when it was going to come. Well I’m finally here to ease your trepidation, my good friends. I’m here to deliver unto you my list of the Top 25 Albums of 2009. Now get ye quickly to a quarry and gather stone on which to carve my words! Or, uh, just leave a comment and let me know what you think of the list. Don’t be shy. Let us know what your favorite albums of the year are! I only numbered and blurbed the top ten but rest assured that the other fifteen albums listed here are fantastic and worth your endless attention and adulation. Just like the entire staff of bham.fm.

THE TOP TEN:

1) The Decemberists – “Hazards of Love” :: Maybe the boldest major label debut folk rock opera ever. This is the album Colin Meloy and his merry  musicians were meant to make.

2) Neko Case – “Middle Cyclone”  :: It’s easy to get caught up in the storm of Case’s gorgeous voice on her eighth studio album. Yeah, damnit, that was a pun.

3) A.A. Bondy – “When The Devil’s Loose” :: Review

4) Pine Hill Haints – “To Win or to Lose” :: Review

5) Austin Lucas – “Somebody Loves You”  :: One of alt-country’s most interesting, infectious voices comes out with what may be his darkest album yet.

6) Monsters of Folk – “Monsters of Folk”  :: Despite the mountain of prerelease hype and buildup, this collaborative effort from M. Ward, Jim James, Conor Oberst, and Mike Mogis does not disappoint.

7) The Avett Brothers – “I and Love and You”  :: Another pretty album from everyone’s favorite genuine bluegrass rockers. This time with a little less bluegrass and a little more Rick Rubin.

8.) M. Ward - “Hold Time”  :: Another solid, sweet release from the man who is unfortunately soon to be known only as Him minus She (though She does make an appearance or two).

9) V/A – “Dark was the Night” :: This double-disc benefit comp, produced by members of The National, brought together some of the brightest stars in underground music for a great cause.

10) Dirty Projectors - “Bitte Orca”  :: Initially confusing, eventually catchy. There’s obviously a method to the madness in this Brooklyn duo’s sophomore effort.

And for those sober enough, here are 11 through 25, in alphabetical order.

Andrew Bird – “Noble Beast”

Arctic Monkeys – “Humbug”

Bill Callahan – “Sometimes I Wish I Were an Eagle”

The Black Keys & Guests – “Blakroc”

Built to Spill – “There is no Enemy”

Chuck Ragan – “Gold Country”

The Dead Weather - “Horehound”

Elvis Perkins in Dearland – “Elvis Perkins in Dearland”

Jay Farrar & Ben Gibbard - “One Fast Move or I’m Gone”

The Low Anthem – “Of My God, Charlie Darwin”

Mos Def - “The Ecstatic”

Mountain Goats – “Life of the World to Come”

Norah Jones – “The Fall”

Pearl Jam – “Back Spacer”

The Swell Season – “Strict Joy”

J Tillman, yesterday’s Daily Dose, just recently released a new album, “Year in the Kingdom”. Despite being a moderately successful singer/songwriter for several years now Tillman is perhaps best known as the drummer for the band Fleet Foxes. After listening to this album I can see his influence in a lot of their music. He sounds like the love child of the Fleet Foxes and Nick Drake. Yeah it’s a tad incestuous but it makes for one great beard and some awesome mellow folk.

The album recalls a lot of early 60s folk. Tillman uses a lot of Biblical imagery (in the title track and “Marked in the Valley” for starters) as well as many gorgeous references to nature. The spacious, airy arrangements keep the attention on his soft, pleasant, but otherwise unremarkable voice and his madly poetic lyrics. “Let me lie across your crescent spine / Press my belly to the mountainside / Glorious our earthly bodies rise / Fall and rise” (from “Earthly Bodies”). Attaway to make nature sexy again, beardy!

This album isn’t all faerie forests and poetic love songs. It has its dark moments. The minimalist, sad “Age of Man” sounds like a post-apocalyptic soul searching dirge. And “There is No Good in Me” is another sleepy entry into the suddenly ballooning vampire folk genre; “There is no good in me / I possess a taste for blood / I have numbered mankind’s days / I have watched the father spare the ram and throw his son upon the flames.”

Much like Fleet Foxes, Tillman utilizes some great harmonies and unexpected instruments (damn right he uses a koto) to excellent effect. The orchestral arrangements are often pretty enough to warrant more attention (the soft violin on “Howling Light” comes to mind). This album really does sound like a stripped down Fleet Foxes. It’s a beautiful, languid, and powerful show of talent. Even though it’s his fifth studio album this will probably be considered his ‘breakout’ record. He’s definitely got my attention.

Hopefully you didn’t miss his show at Btree last night.

The new A.A. Bondy record, “When the Devil’s Loose”, is pretty fucking terrific. I was trying to think of a more poetic way to put that, but that’s really what it boils down to. A.A. Bondy is the new project of Scott Bondy, formerly of Verbena, the late-90s grunge band from Birmingham. Except now Mr. Bondy is playing folky acoustic stuff with the guitar backing of Ian Felice from The Felice Brothers. And he’s doing it well.

“When the Devil’s Loose” is a great album for stargazing. That may seem like a strange statement, but just give it a listen. It’s got a spacey, relaxed mood and there are numerous references to the stars, cosmic phenomenon, and just fate in general. Take the first song, “The Mightiest of Guns”, for instance. One refrain goes, “With every breath you drink in the night / You won’t give up your blue without a fight / And looking at the sky there is no pain / See the stars all falling down like burning rain / They were fired by the mightiest of guns.” You try listening to that while checking out some of Alabama’s famous shooting stars and not get a little bit of a chill. The light, percussive finger-picking and atmospheric backing make you feel like you’re already belly-up to the night sky.

There’s also the “stars raining down from the sky” and “howling at the moon” he sings about in “I Can See the Pines are Dancing”, a toe-tapper that recalls late-60s folk with its simple structure and pleasant harmonies. It is available free for download here.

Want more? How about the final track, “The Coal Hits the Fire” with its watery-sounding, mood-setting intro. It just wouldn’t be a good folk album without a train song, you know? Except this train takes you around the sun. Of course. It’s all just his poetic way of saying that in time we all must leave and only our memories shall remain. Pretty, right? Damn right. He’s good at that.

And there’s “Dancing on the Moon”, a pleasantly simple piano track about the joys and woes of a temporary romance which ends when “the comet will come and swing ’round the sun”. I’m telling you, this dude loves him some cosmos! I bet he’s read all of Carl Sagan’s books.

Don’t fool yourself into thinking that Bondy is a one-trick pony, though. He can also wax poetic about the appeal of leaving behind life’s doldrums for the “roar and the pound of the wild, wild sea” as he does in “A Slow Parade”. That song also showcases what I think is some pretty clever use of cadence to emphasize his point. Plus, I really like the line “Sometimes I don’t mind at all / Sometimes head against the wall”.
There’s plenty of dark imagery, too. The soulful title track alone mentions knife fights, drowning, dangerous confections, and some murderous dogs. And there are demons, twilight, and reckless abandon to be had on Mississippi nights with the slow, driving acoustic guitars of “The Mercy Wheel”.

Speaking of which, a couple of the songs almost feel like they belong in the next “Twilight” movie. Before you go grabbing for your garlic garlands, believe me when I say that I mean it in the best possible way. Most obviously there’s “Oh the Vampyre”, but I’ll talk more on that later. There’s also the seventh song, “False River”, which drips with sexy harmonies and sounds like the appeals of a vampire trying to seduce some supple young country girl out of her innocence/mortality.

My only real complaint about the album is highlighted well on “Oh the Vampyre”, actually. It’s a cleverly-written song about the trials of being a vampire, complete with jaunty, twangy backing guitars. But Bondy sings this ostensibly light-hearted tune with the same vocal treatment he gives all of the other songs. Don’t get me wrong, I like the song. It definitely made it on my recent Great Halloween mix. It’s just that Bondy doesn’t seem to have a whole lot of vocal range. I found myself wondering on a few occasions what the songs would sound like if performed by, say, Neko Case or Jim James or whoever else pops into mind as having a stellar (I can do starry language, too, bub) vocal range.

On a few occasions the album also reminded me of Elvis Perkins first album, natch. So I was pleasantly surprised when I found out that the two would be playing together at Bottletree on Tuesday, November 10th. Yeah that’s like today, y’all. It’d be a crime to miss these two excellent artists performing together. You can bet your starry, starry ass that I’m going to be there.

A few weeks ago I asked my friend Matt Myrick to do some sort of write up for the upcoming Califone show at Workplay this Wednesday. Unfortunately that show has now been canceled. Still, it would be a waste not to give you this, even if these words do sting a bit now:

Sam, I couldn’t really come up with anything to say. Asking me to write about Califone is like asking a priest to talk about God or a mechanic to discuss his favorite car. Surely, neither can separate his love and devotion for the thing from what s/he has to say.

I tried to write, but there are only so many variations of the word ‘awesome’ out there, and ultimately the piece amounted to clichés and senseless, unscientific praise—much like a song I wrote to my ex-girlfriend when I was 15. So I ran a bunch of Google searches and perused shelves of music magazines until I collected a collection of quotable quotations from what others have said about Califone. Here ‘tis:

“Califone combines the Mississippi delta and hill country with the sonic wizardry of a Luc Ferrari piece or Wilco’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Armed with open-tuned guitars, banjo, fiddle, rattling percussion, thumb pianos, organs, synthesizers, and just about every other noise-making trinket you can imagine, each Califone album deconstructs popular Western music by tearing it down to its roots if only to bury it beneath a sea of fuzz and decay. This music is sophisticated.“

~Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune and
author of Califone: a short history of manifest destiny
and the sea who killed it
(forthcoming)

Surely at least one critic has used the term “deconstruct” to describe Califone’s music, though he probably understands very little about Deconstruction.

~Stanley Fish, American literary theorist and legal scholar

“It’s not hard to defend the claim that popular music audiences, at least in general, aren’t very discerning listeners. I’m not making an attack here. Person A doesn’t listen to Kings of Leon for the same reason that Person B listens to John Adams. Each wants music to do something different for him. But there is a distinction to be made: it’s a distinction about ‘A’rt and art—about finding more interesting ways to push air than the next person. And that Califone doesn’t receive the same critical attention as bands like Arcade Fire and My Morning Jacket or the goddamn Artic Monkeys—well, it’s just proof that music journalists know very little about music as Art.”
~Thom Yorke, lead singer of popular rock band, Radiohead

“Califone is kind of weird, but I can’t help but dance when I hear ‘A Chinese Actor’. They might benefit from similar electronic handclaps in their other songs.”

~Richard James

“The first time I heard ‘Wingbone’ was one of those unforgettable musical moments. You know, no one really remembers the first time they heard Beethoven’s 5th. It’s like you never heard it for a first time. It was just always there inside you, like you could sing that opening sequence since the day you were born. ‘Wingbone’ is like that, which is why that moment was so paradoxical: I remember hearing it for the first time—I was conscious of it as it happened—but I’d known that song since the day I was born.”

~David Fricke

“Jay Z thanks Califone for all of his success, and he has more #1 records than Elvis.” ~Jay Z

“Califone is a band of wandering gypsies. They steal cars, chop them up, and sell the parts to the Russian Mafia when the group makes its seasonal trip to Brighton. Califone is stealing your car right now. By the time you go check, the car will be gone, and Califone will have replaced your car with an identical car, with identical trash on the floor. They never forget the garbage, and they always get it right.”

~ Alvin Kersh, former FBI Deputy Director

“Califone is more American than Bruce Springsteen.” ~Willie Nelson

“Califone sounds like an unnerving landscape scene from a civil war film, set in the south, summer heat radiating from the screen, an empty field surrounded by oaks or pines, no clouds, dry as a dead tree—someone could make a violin from its wood, but no one would know how to tune it.”

~David Foster Wallace, Author

“everything you think you know about califone is wrong” ~Tim Rutili, Califone founder

“When Reprise rejected Quicksand/Cradlesnakes, the media readily latched on to the story. Everyone loves a great ‘band takes on big bad record label’ scoop. We love to cheer for the underdog. Anyway, you all know the rest. Reprise releases the band and essentially gives them the album, band shops it around, band signs with another Warner subsidiary (who has now essentially paid for the album twice), and the record turns out to be the best selling of the band’s career. In addition to being the biggest critical success of 2002 (often referred to as the best rock/pop album since Thriller), the album eventually goes gold and ‘Califone’ becomes a popular household term for ‘Awesome!’ and a synonym for ‘Badass Underdog!’ Never again will Reprise reject an album because it’s ‘too adventurous’.

~Greg Kot, Chicago Tribune
and author of Califone: the
Morricone of Indie Rock (but
there ain’t much competition)

“Califone is the Beatles of our generation.” ~Paul McCartney, former Beatles member