11.5.24
Please America, do the right thing today...

11.6.24
Well fuck.

11.7.24
Time to opt out of the news for a while. I know exactly how horrible everything that's coming is going to be without knowing the specific forms the horrors will take, and even though a lot of it will have minimal impact for me personally, I hate all the suffering and death that will happen due to the radical far right policies of the incoming regime.

It gives me no pleasure whatsoever that many Trump voters will be the ones most severely impacted by the worst of his policies, but maybe this will be the tough love they need to realize that their votes need to be based on whose values and goals actually align with theirs, not who is most entertaining to watch. Paraphrasing from a Reddit thread I saw today, America fucked around, and now it's going to find out.

11.12.24
Jason, one of my friends from high school, started learning how to play music a decade or so ago, and he now plays in three separate bands with his daughter Galaxy: the Dancing Fleas, a ukulele-centric collective; Spaceport Floozies, which is just the two of them playing covers; and Y'ALL'RE, a four-piece punk band where he plays guitar and she sings. I've always wanted to see him perform live, I finally got my chance last Friday when Y'ALL'RE came to Atlanta to play their first show outside their home state of North Carolina.

They both got into town a few hours prior to the show, so I took them to dinner at Holy Taco in East Atlanta Village, my go-to spot to bring out of town visitors. While we waited for Galaxy to arrive, Jason and I checked out a relatively new record store in the area, Black Habit Records. It was a small shop with limited inventory, but I found two things that have been on my wantlist for a long time: a copy of Soul Asylum's fourth album, Hang Time (which was the first Soul Asylum record I ever owned), and a reissue of Elliott Smith's Figure 8.

The shop owner (Ben I think?) was pretty chill, and he ended up purchasing three copies of Y'ALL'RE's debut release, First Edition—one for himself and two to resell in shop. He also gifted Jason and I K Records stickers that had been given to him personally by K Records founder and Beat Happening frontman Calvin Johnson during a visit to the shop earlier this year.

We had a nice dinner and conversation at Holy Taco until Jason and Galaxy had to head to the venue to do their load in, and since it would still be a few hours until they took the stage, I headed back home to chill for a bit before driving down to the venue. They were playing a place called Ideal Sports Bar that I'd never heard of before that's located down near Lakewood Amphitheatre. It was definitely a neighborhood dive bar kind of place, but it had a nice vibe and everyone seemed pretty into the live music (there were two other bands on the bill that night in addition to Y'ALL'RE).

I sat at a high top table in the back and chatted with a guy named Brian who was there to support his two friends who were in the first act, the Alyce Inversion Project (a partnered duo who joined us after their set). Y'ALL'RE came on around 9:15, starting their set with a cover of Sleater-Kinney's "Modern Girl".

They played about 45 minutes, which is about as long as they could play, even including two unreleased songs and two covers. It was a really great show—Galaxy has a great stage presence and is a compelling, charismatic frontwoman. They couldn't get the sound right with her vocals—they would go from too loud to almost non-existent, sometimes within the same song, but she had the crowd despite the technical issues.

They've been offered an opening spot at the Earl sometime next year, and while I would happily go see them play again no matter what the venue, the Earl is one of my favorite places to see a show in Atlanta, and I'm desperately hoping they can make that happen.

11.13.24
I have had many, many opportunities to see the Drive-By Truckers over the years, especially since moving to Atlanta—they are based in Athens, and they play both Athens and Atlanta pretty regularly (including an annual multi-day residency at the 40 Watt Club). But I finally made it happen over the weekend when Julie and I went to see them at the Tabernacle on Saturday night.

I was especially motivated to see this show because their current tour has them playing their epic Southern Rock Opera double album in full. It was my introduction to the band, and it's still my favorite of their releases, and I don't know when (if ever) they'll decide to do this kind of show again.

Main songwriters Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley are the only two permanent members of the band, and the vast majority of the songs on this record are written by one of them (there are two songs from then-third guitarist Rob Malone, but those are two of my least favorite tracks on the album, and, tellingly, those were the only two songs they didn't play on Saturday night). Hood is generally my preferred songwriter of the two, but two of my three favorite songs from this record are by Cooley ("72 (This Highway's Mean" and "Zip City").

Hood contributed about three times as many compositions to Southern Rock Opera than Cooley, so he was the focal point of the live show, and he had a great stage presence. He looked a lot like Danny McBride's washed-up pitcher Kenny Powers from the show Eastbound & Down, but if Kenny was both smart and emotionally intelligent.

One of the recurring motifs of SRO is the tension between being proud of many aspects of your Southern upbringing but hating the racism and small-mindedness that is also part of that culture, a theme that is sadly all too relevant given how Nixon's Southern Strategy still has a grip on American politics in the age of MAGA and Trump. Just to reinforce exactly where he stands on the issue, Hood had an extended speech about how we must not give in to fear and stop fighting the forces of oppression and bigotry despite how this election turned out, and also had a mid-song shout out of "Fuck these motherfucking racists!".

I was excited to hear Cooley's songs, but I was a little disappointed with his vocal delivery. On the recorded versions, he has this laid back delivery that floats a little above the music, like a storyteller with his own rhythm that is complimentary to the music without always being in lockstep with it. But playing live, he seemed to struggle a little bit with playing guitar and singing at the same time, and the vocals seemed to take a backseat to the primacy of the guitar.

I'm glad I finally got to see them live, especially with the focus on SRO. I haven't loved their last few albums nearly as much as I do SRO and the two records that followed it, Decoration Day and The Dirty South, so I don't know that I'd like a more typical concert from them that would pull in material from across their quarter century discography.

11.14.24
On Monday night, with only a single day break between the Y'ALL'RE and Drive-By Truckers show, I went to see the Canadian band Tokyo Police Club at the Buckhead Theatre. I've never seen them live before, but they announced that they are disbanding after this tour (they don't have a new album to support, so this really is a farewell tour where they get to play their best material), so I made sure get to the show even though I was a little burned out from the previous two concerts.

There was a great vibe to the show—the audience was very chill, and had a nice mixture of older fans like me who have been listening since their debut EP in 2006 and younger folks who have only recently discovered the group. The band was in a loose, happy mood, even though they played their songs with impeccable technical precision. It was heartwarming to see them like that—a group of childhood friends who have made a two-decade career together in the music industry who still seem to genuinely like one another and like being around each other all these years later.

While their more recent albums haven't resonated as strongly with me, I'm still bummed that there likely won't be any further releases from this band, who, in a different timeline, could have had mainstream success in the US (they're pretty big in their native Canada, having twice been nominated for Album of the Year for the Canadian version of the Grammys, the Juno Awards). That's especially true now that I've seen them live—Monday night's show is one I won't forget anytime soon, and it's the kind of experience that keeps me going out to live concerts.

11.19.24
The punk band Les Savy Fav had quite a run of solid albums and singles from their 1997 debut 3/5 to 2010's Root for Ruin, which many assumed would be their final release. After finishing the tour for that album, they seemed to have disbanded, playing two or three dates a year at most and not releasing any new music.

But then they surprise released a new record, OUI LSF, in May of this year, and although they didn't do a traditional tour that kept them on the road for weeks at a time, they still played more dates this year than they have in the previous decade combined. And they finally made a trip to Atlanta over the weekend, playing Friday and Saturday nights at the Earl as part of that venue's 25th anniversary celebration.

I had tickets to both nights, but after seeing three shows and doing social stuff with friends two other evenings in the week leading up to the Friday night show, I decided to skip that one and focus my energy on the Saturday night show. It started later than usual, even for the Earl, so I didn't head over to East Atlanta Village until after 9.

They had a reputation for wild live shows back in the day, and they definitely lived up to it despite the decade plus gap since they were an active touring outfit. Frontman Tim Harrington initially came onstage wearing an oversized green mumu, oversized weird sunglasses, and sparkly metallic strips on his face. He didn't spend long on the stage, however, almost immediately hopping down into the crowd, where we had to collectively keep his microphone cord held aloft as he made his way around the floor of the venue and eventually back to the stage.

As the show progressed, he began to lose layers of his ensemble, going from mumu to shirt and pants and eventually to a t-shirt that said "I'M IN MIAMI BITCH" and his boxer shorts, while also ditching the sunglasses and peeling the metallic strips from his face. To say this was an interactive show is an understatement—Harrington spent way more time in the crowd that he did on stage, and I think everyone in the venue got at least a couple of close up encounters with him where he was singing in your face, giving you a hug, or engaging in a pantomine with you. He also went out of the performance space and into the bar area at the front of the Earl, spent time at the back bar and the merch booth, and even went into the men's restroom for a couple of minutes. Highly entertaining, even though you couldn't really see much of what he was doing unless he was within 10 feet of you (which happened at least once a song, since he very rarely stopped moving).

Despite how much I liked the vibe of this show, I'm glad I only went to one performance. I'm very much a stand-in-the-back-of-the-room-and-observe kind of live show attendee these days, and you couldn't do that at this show. Harrington could launch off the stage or come barreling through the crowd towards you at any moment, and whenever he was in your vicinity, you had to be prepared to help with the microphone, especially if you were one of the taller patrons like I was. It was an exhilarating communal experience, but also a little exhausting for someone like me who just wants to remain unnoticed in my own little world.

11.20.24
My mom's birthday was on Monday, but since it's hard for us to get out to where she lives during the week, we decided to celebrate on Sunday by taking her out to dinner and then to the Winter Lantern Festival at the Gwinnett County Fairgrounds. My sister and her husband picked up my mom (they only live about 10 minutes from her) and brought her to the Diner at Webb Gin in Snelville, which is also where we took her for her birthday five years ago.

They serve breakfast all day in addition to their dinner menu, and I ended up getting eggs benedict with home fries and grits. All the food was really good, and relative reasonably priced given how food prices have skyrocketed the past few years. My mom wanted a piece of carrot cake for dessert, but we were running late, so she only got to enjoy a few bites and then took the rest to go to have later.

She didn't know about the lantern festival, just that we were doing something else after dinner, so it was a cool surprise for her. We took Will at the tail end of the last season in January of this year, and although it was pretty cool, we could see evidence of weeks of wear and tear, especially on the features that were easy accessible to little kids. They just opened for this season the weekend before we took my mom, so everything was in pristine condition, and as far as we could tell, it was all new for this year. I think my mom really enjoyed it, and really liked spending the day with her kids and her grandkid for her birthday.

I'll see her and my sister again next week for Thanksgiving, which I am hosting again this year. My dad, stepmother, and probably my other sister (who lives in the same town as my dad) will also come down for that holiday, and we'll likely do another evening out to see a holiday light show, either the Botanical Gardens or the Atlanta Zoo.

11.21.24
I went in to work on Monday feeling fine, but shortly after I got home in the afternoon, my throat started to feel scratchy, and by the evening, that had blossomed into a full-blown illness with head and body aches and fatigue. I felt even worse on Tuesday, so I took a sick day, and although I tested negative for Covid, I was still feeling bad enough that I also took a sick day on Wednesday.

I'm feeling better today, and although I'm still pretty miserable, I'm definitely improving and I was able to work from home today rather than taking another day off. Luckily things are pretty quiet this time of year, so I was able to go at a slower pace but still catch up on all my outstanding tasks. I'm planning to be out for most of next week for the holiday—Will has the entire week off, so it might be fun to go do something with him before the extended family stuff starts later in the week.