Broken Hearts Are Blue "truth about love"

In 1997 I bought this #brokenheartsareblue cd because at the time I would have purchased anything called "broken hearts are blue".  This is one of those albums that when I revisit it I am awash with both nostalgia and simultaneously just how fucking good it is.  It's a period piece to be sure. It's post-hardcore/indie/emo when that stuff wasn't yet formulaic and hadn't become a saturated genre of a sound rather than songs.  The band is a relative mystery.  I've checked on the internet over the years looking for more projects by the members in hopes of hearing more of this sincere rock.  In 2015 someone released a remixed/remastered version of this cd on their bandcamp page.  While it's fun to hear this beloved album reexamined I vastly prefer the original form. There's no gloss, no sheen of cliche production. The album sounds like a well done rehearsal recording, everything is audible and seperate. There are some warts on the performances but that only makes it seem more valid and sincere.  There is a bookworm-chic angle at play here that I love too, it's just pretentious enough to feel smart but never comes off as annoyingly vague or condescending.  I was listening to this in my car as I drove our youngest son to my mother-in-law's home in Niagara Falls. It's a cold grey rainy morning and I was pounding my steering wheel to soulful drum fills and howling off-key along to the vocals. It was beautifully melancholic catharsis.  It's a favorite of mine.
I checked amazon to see if there were any reviews or gossip about this out of print release.  I was shocked to see that people are asking $150-$450 for this CD!  It feels even a little more treasured now.
Definitely look this up on bandcamp.

The Geraldine Fibbers "what part of get thee gone don't you understand? "

I have a weird soft spot for '70s and early '80s country music.  As a child my parents both listened to the stuff and for many consecutive summers we attended clam bakes and events at a Rod and Gun Club in Franklinville,NY.  My parents and their friends would drink, eat and drink while their kids and my siblings would hunt for crayfish, skip rocks, play hide and seek and generally just wander around the countryside.  At night they would move their drinking into the club's bar and give us quarters to play the jukebox.  The lot of us kids would twirl and dance to George Jones, Eddie Rabbit and Charley Pride.  I've since gone in to buy those nostalgic CDs but before I did I was turned onto this #thegeraldinefibbers disc.  A co-worker had been playing this in the print shop where we worked.  They cover a bunch of those country standards I had loved as a kid in a loving but avant-garde style.  Weird wobbly musical saws and androgynous vocals brought the songs back to my attention.  I caught this band perform at the Mohawk Place in the late '90s and shortly after bought the rest of their epic and varied discography.

Braid "frame and canvas"

#braid were the band that made me love the tense/release style of post-punk/emo.  It's a very rhythmic way to play which really accentuates time signatures and counter rhythms. I'm a suckered for this stuff.  This cd was in constant rotation in 1998, a time when I was starting to play in a variety of bands.  I was folding in all this stuff I was discovering, pulling influences and trying to write in those sounds.  I ended up playing in goth-folk, shoegaze, indie, stoner rock and doom metal bands.  But in 1999 I wanted to be in a Braid rip-off band. I was able to catch them perform just before they broke up at a weird bar/hall on Buffalo's east side.  They were muscular sounding without being "tough".  They pulsed with precision in a paneled back room that smelled of years of spilled cheap beer and unchanged mop water.  It was one of those "so glad I was there" shows.  I feel like I went on to share stages with every person in that room.  You hear talk of "scenes", and while those are often inflated accounts or misleading cultural adhesives, that night watching these guys in an off the beaten path venue felt intimately special.  I brought a person to the show I was in a fledgling band with.  A year later I quit that band and that dude had weaseled his way into the upper echelon indie rock snob levels.  On more than one occasion I heard him cite this show.  It really was that good.  And this disc is the crowning jewel of their discography.

Curtis Mayfield "superfly"

Some albums are just make you want to pick up a fender jazz bass you haven't touched in years and pluck it in front of your small children.  This is one of those albums.  While doing housework today I put this meaty masterpiece on by #curtismayfield and little butts were shaking while dad was dusting.  It's one of those albums that usually yields  a "why don't I play this more?" revelation.   I was reading the back liner notes while the cd player was loading and I realised this disc was released the year I was born.  I started thinking about how I must have been destined to be a bass player if I was birthed along side this record.  Then I considered how many people were born that year and a higher ratio of bass players born in 1972 is probably unlikely and that sometimes I get carried away with these notions.  The bass playing on this disc though... sheesh.  It's not flashy, it not slap and pop gymnastics... it's tasteful and commanding.  The warm thick tone of the production is like soothing honey to my ears.  It's records like this that make me fall in love with the instrument all over again .  Now I've never cited Mayfield as an influence, the fact is though you're favorite bass player probably really loves this album, so by transitive influence this cd has changed your playing as well.  My betting money is that my favorites Nate Mendel, Joe Lally, Geddy Lee and Josh English all love this album.
One afternoon of listening to this cd two times in a row has me contemplating picking up a small practice amp (the wife would kill me if I fired up the Ampeg).  It's doing what music is supposed to do: inspire.

Snfu "and noone else wanted to play"

One of my skateboarding buddies used to wear this t-shirt.  I held him in high regard so I bought the cassette when he wasn't around so I could listen to it and legitimately hang out alongside that great shirt.  It's great politically incorrect thrash punk from the mid '80s with some sort of cannibalism obsession.  A couple years layer when I had moved to the country after failing to emancipate my ass and losing my teenage job I met the only rural punk rock skateboarder and we instantly became friends and made each other mix tapes.  He put "cannibal cafe" off this album on the tape he made me.  That was another vote of relevance for the album.  If a record keeps appearing in your life you know it's a keeper, so this one has adorned my collection for many years.

Dr. Octagon "s/t"

The #droctagon album is one of those genre defying anomalies.  I always had a harder time getting into rap mainly because my suburban white upbringing didn't coincide with the lyrics of most of the rap I had heard.  I've always enjoyed the deeply rhythm based music but the poetry didn't effect me.  When I heard this CD the weird sci-fi sexual stream of conscience lyrics weren't alienating to me.  I know that sounds weird because I'm not a sex obsessed extraterrestrial.  I just didn't feel fraudulent enjoying the words.  The rapper Kool Keith who adopted the Dr.octagon persona for this release is a well documented anomaly in hip-hop. He's a polarizing character with an immense discography.  This was my first exposure to him and ultimately my favorite.  After years of listening to this (it was released in 1996) I became aware that the real reasons this CD is so damn good is the producer Dan the Automator and turntableist DJ Qbert.  The sci-fi soap opera aural setting for the rap is an alchemistic perfect storm.  Everything is perfect.  Every bloopy-bleep is precisely where it needs to be and every sample - scratch is tasteful and masterfully done.  All you have to do is listen to the instrumental track "bear witness" to hear their masterful and seamless production shine.  The album is a unique listen that has a universal appeal.  That's no small feat.
Oh and it has a Pushead album cover so I would prob own it even if it sucked (I'm looking at you Blitzspeer).

Juno "and this is the way it goes and goes and goes"

I first heard #juno from a 7" I received to review for a fanzine.  The a-side "Venus on 9th street" became a favorite of mine and I included it on a bunch of mix tapes in 1998. So when my band got asked to open for them when they came through town I was pretty pumped.  The show was in a basement in Buffalo's University Heights neighborhood.   All I really remember from the show was that it was comfortably cramped and I played through a borrowed fender bass cabinet that I absolutely hated. The other thing I remember is that Juno had three guitarists and the woven playing was something to behold live.  Recordings often have multiple tracked guitars, so the effect on the album doesn't have the same magnitude, live however it was really remarkable.   It was alot of fun being a part of the music scene in buffalo at that time.  There was a great culture around it, shows got booked at venues and houses, people came out to each other's shows. We made friendships with touring bands and traded shows in other cities. It really felt like it was adding up to something.  To quote Emett Otter's mom: "the fact that it didn't doesn't seem to matter much"  And to quote Penny Lane from the movie "Almost Famous"  "whenever you get lonely you can just go to the record store and visit your friends".

Winter "into darkness/eternal frost"

Word association made me think of this band today.  It appears autumn has finally arrived here in New York and that means winter is just around the corner.  #Winter.  Oh man that's a sweet proto-death/doom band, they totally picked up where Celtic Frost should have gone: slow to sloooow tempo smeary metal with deep vocals and obligatory "heys!" and "oohs!"   Had I found this album upon it's release in 1990 I would have freaking LOVED it, I found it a decade later and kind of feel cheated that I missed this band when they were active.  It's definitely among my favorite metal albums and it's amateurish production (well the mix is pretty poor in any event) kind of adds to the sincerity of the disc. 
I played in many bands over the years.  Some really good ones.  I dabbled in a lot of styles of music but one of my big regrets is I never started a band like this.  Just singular in an effort to be slow and heavy with lyrics about aberrations and forgotten thrones.  I briefly played with a guy in a doom project he called "Burial Sword" (great fucking name), but we fumbled through some jam sessions with no drummer and the project never got legs.  Maybe when all three of my boys are in school and the wife and I are afforded the time to have hobbies again I can start up an old guy version of this type of band.  I've stubbornly held onto my bass gear so that won't be an obstacle.  Just aged arthritis and expanding waistlines and proportional receding hairlines.  I imagine that hypothetical band would look pretty rough, maybe we had better play in hooded robes or something.   We could call ourselves something befitting like: "ancient ones", "one foot in the grave" or "my wife won't come see us perform".

7 Seconds "soulforce revolution "

While it may seem to spit in the face of convention this is my favorite #7seconds album.  The breakneck tempos of the band's highly regarded earlier works is gone giving way to mid tempo alt-rock.  Kevin Seconds (vocals and guitars) had apparently discovered drugs and there's an early nineties hippy vibe to this record.  The photo of the bass player is of him hugging a tree for fuck's sake.  The album was released in '89 but I didn't buy it until '90.  I was expecting more of the posi-punk that was on mix tapes I had heard but listened to these vulnerable songs instead.  Upon listening to this again the album sounds super dated.  It has a thick layer of 120 Minutes alternative rock sheen.  I loved it and still do.  The summer before I started college I got a job working as an off-term custodian for a school. It was a lot of scraping gum off desks and refinishing floors. That hot summer I got the worst case of athlete's foot from cleaning the school's locker rooms.  It was brutal.  After the day's work was done I'd head back to the room I was renting and lay on my sweaty mattress and spray various powders my mom got me on my burning itching dogs.  To this day I'm susceptible to the foot fungus.  A souvenir from that summer before the cares of the world crept in.  This was my soundtrack for that time and while this may all sound gross and unfortunate I had a good time that summer and it was the last care - free one so it'll always be bittersweet.  Though to be honest I'd be cool without the athlete's foot shit and just the CD. C'est la vie.

Dead Can Dance "toward the within"

I've always been under the impression that if you like "world music" you are a pretentious pony - tailed douche. They nailed the stereotype with Tim Robbins character "Ian" in the motion picture "high fidelity ".  Before you start in on me: I recognize the irony of me disliking something for being pretentious.  I'm a poster boy for the condition,  maybe it's like how same magnetic polarities repel.  So how can #deadcandance mix world music with goth and come up with something so cool?  I dunno, probably alchemy or some mystic goth witchcraft.  Maybe it was that I discovered them at a point in my life where I would pay attention to anything a little offbeat because I was so interested in the world I couldn't see outside my isolated college town setting.  It was most likely their awesome cover of Sinead O'conner's "I am stretched on your grave".   The album is very cinematic with lush chamber instrumentation and the male/female vocals are beautifully melodramatic.  If you're a little adventurous and like somber romanticism this is the best place to start in their discography.  If you like waving a pretentious flag around play this the next rainy morning your roommates or family members are sleeping in.  Add the odors of brewing coffee and sandalwood incense for effect.  If you really want to push the envelope brew the coffee for them but sip out of a french press and quietly assert that you just prefer the taste.  Yeah.  That's the spot.
I am a douche,  I just can't grow the pony-tail.

Wehrmacht "biermacht"

In 1989 I remember seeing ads for this record in magazines like "Rip" and "Metal Mania". The thrash metal and crossover scenes were in full swing and I was really caught up in the movement.  This record looked really cool to me, the album art featured a Mad Magazine style illustration of the denim clad longhairs riding a tank made out of a beer keg. Totally appealed to a seventeen year old version of myself.  My friends and I spent a lot of energy searching out illicit means to obtain beer. An essential part of headbanger culture was "partying" which translated to a handful of dudes chugging warm beer on a garbage picked couch in a vacant lot.  This album cover promised a soundtrack for this endeavour.  I never found the album.  It's promising purpose haunted me though for years.  As the world would have it the record label that produced the album went belly up in the early nineties.  The record went out of print and thrash metal ran it's course and evolved into a prefix for other subgenres of metal.  About ten years ago thrash metal had a resurgence and new bands began paying homage to the sound and aesthetic of the thrash metal heyday.  I was poking around the new bands and enjoying the nostalgic appeal which led me to reexamine the discs of my youth. This in turn led me to study what critics believed to be the essential releases of thrash.  In those article I rediscovered this album's art and hunted down a reissue online.  I would have loved chugging warm Genny pounders to this as a teenager, but as a 44 year old I'll crack open a micro-brew IPA from Vermont and sip while nodding in approval on headphones as not to wake the kids. It's blurry fast and all mid-range production washing over me (through headphones) like a siren song to a simpler time. Well, this is what I'd be doing if I hadn't written this at 8am after walking my kids to the school bus stop.  The next beer I drink is for you #wehrmacht , it took us a while to hook up and both of our hangovers probably last a great deal longer now, but I'm glad I followed through and gave this album a chance three decades after it's release.

Bender "funny kar"

I received a copy of #bender "funny kar" to review for a fanzine in 1994.  While I wasn't into the CD's art at all I loved the chunky pop-punk on the disc. While listening and taking notes for my review I read that the band was from Toronto, just and hour and a half north of Buffalo.  While the border has always been a hassle for bands I had hoped to maybe catch these guys.  Never did.  In any event I wrote a favorable review and kept the disc around.  I used a couple of its anthemic songs on mixed tapes.  They were a band made for mix tapes:  strong catchy songs recorded well by a really obscure band. They made you look cool.  Along the way I started listening to this CD a lot.  A friend of mine had recently moved to NYC and got a job working for the hipster girl clothing company Delia's.   He phoned me up one time and told me to call the service line for the store after hours.  I did and the "hold" music was this album.  He was so pleased with his influence and honestly I was pretty impressed too.  That kind of shit is golden to twenty-two year old obsessive music fans.  After starting writing this all u can find out is this is their only full-length on the defunct Ringing Ear records (a home to a bunch if awesome early/mid nineties pop punk)  kind of surprised they never got any bigger, it prob was the really awful album art/concept.

Boston "s/t"

I almost universally hate "best of/greatest hits" compilation CDs.  The only exceptions are home made ones (the love and weird deep track picks often make those cool) and two from my youth: "ramonesmania" and Misfits "collection".  So when my ex-wife asked to borrow my #boston greatest hits CD I was naturally confused.  I didn't have a greatest hits collection.  She was referring to their first album.  If you've spent any time in an area with a classic rock radio station you are intimately familiar with every single one of these songs.  Seriously, there isn't one song on this album that they hadn't played to death.  Fortunately for the exposed this album is a manual for awesome production quality.  While there are plenty of albums that I like all the way through I can't think of any other album that each and every single song on the record is a damn radio airplay single.  Not one.  Can you?  There's plenty of lore surrounding the making of this record and their subsequent releases don't live up to this debut's standards.  But damn, this is one great guitar and vocal driven album.

For the record: I freaking love rarities compilation CDs.

Stevie Wonder "signed, sealed and delivered "

Every week here at the Menter Lair we have "music sunday".  In an effort to encourage our children to avoid the trappings of television and video games the only electronics we allow are the radios.  After dinner (if they've been reasonably well behaved) they get to watch a little t.v. before bed.  It generally works well and we get to share some music.  Typically it's me picking what's played and to avoid the complaints of my wife one of the artists we can agree on is #steviewonder . This is one of his early albums and has a real driving motown backbeat that makes Sunday chores a little bouncier. "Sign, sealed and delivered" is one of my favorite Wonder singles.  The kids tend to ignore my picks but I like to think I'm subconsciously instilling good taste.

The Smiths "hatful of hollow"

I was staying with a friend's girlfriend in her studio apartment when I was 17.  That summer the small place was a flop house for all of my skateboard and misfit friends.  The central piece of her interior decor was a gigantic poster of Morrissey smugly lounging.  We used to mimic the photographed pose in condescension.  #thesmiths and Morrissey were chick-rock as far as we were concerned.  Musical bedfellows to the other alt-girl rock bands like the Cure and the Violent Femmes, we had no time for that stuff and adorned the ceiling with a Dead Kennedys "DK" logo made out of electrical tape to "dude" up the place.  We were so young and so damn opinionated.   Many years later in my late 20s I actually listened to the Smiths and realised I loved them.  Kind of missed the boat on the mopey tennage thing so I was determined to make it up.
I really liked this comp of BBC sessions, the production has just a little of the sheen rubbed off giving a lot of these songs a little bit of bite.  When I did start listening I realized I knew of bunch of these songs from the John Hughes '80s Era of teen films and a band I loved Quicksand had covered "how soon is now?".  Let's be clear: I still think Morrissey is a smug twat, but the alchemy of the band is undeniable. I've never been a fan of his solo work but the sum is greater than the parts on these CDs. On a lot of these live in the studio takes Andy Rourke's bass playing is a focal point and had a huge influence on my playing during my indie - rock band years. 
I know back at that apartment we had snapped photographs of us parodying that giant poster.  It'd be a fun keepsake of my musical journey (and Era-relevent memorabilia )  kids today will prob never know the struggles of photo - mat  surprises.

Devo "freedom of choice"

Among my earliest music related memories is seeing the music video for #devo single "whip it".  It was 1980 and I was attending 3rd grade at Cheektowaga Central Elementary school.  We were latch key kids, but occasionally my mom would drive my sister and I to school.  Those mornings gs were special because she would often buy us egg mcmuffin sandwiches at the McDonald's across the street from the school.  Even to this day if I taste one of those sandwiches I'm transported back to those mornings and I can smell pencil shavings and vinyl folder binders.  I remember we had a "field day" that year at the school, it was a day where the students participated in athletic events. I recall two things: being super proud of my standing long jump blue ribbon and singing "whip it" to myself for the duration of the day.  Being only eight years old I didn't get the sexually overtones of the video, but I did appreciate the singer's  proficiency with a whip.  Come to think of it I can't remember how u even saw that video as MTV hadn't happened yet.  I imagine one of my uncles introduced it to me at my grandmother's west side house.  I remember when I was older and bought this devo album I was suprised at how guitar oriented the songs were, I remembered them as a synth band. Thankfully one of my Co workers likes the band so I get to hear this stuff once in a while.

Khanate "things viral"

When I go after experiencing a genre of music I go hard.  In 2003 I was working as a coffee roaster and in the bowels of that coffee shop I would blend and package the artisan coffee I had roasted that day while the distorted dirge of doom metal blared out of a crappy portable radio.  The few coworkers that would venture through the basement would make off hand remarks about the aural sludge that was brewing.  I was obsessed with the slowest and most caustic examples of the style I could find.  I had read about the legendary band Burning Witch, and while they had already broken up some of their remnants formed the band #khanate .  These slow howling songs offended everyone who was nearby when I played it. That kind of made me love it more.  I got to be all snobby about art.  Man, I love that.  I believe the song "fields" on this album is a suicidal love letter to suicide.  It's grim stuff and the refrain of agonized vocals howling "I did this for you" is spine chilling.  I still find this disc fascinating, it's not pleasant to listen to but it is a cathartic one.  I'm going to drift off to the upside down with this on headphones methinks.  Good night!

Morbid Angel "gateways to annihilation "

I was working at a silk screen print shop in 2000.  One of my Co workers became a good friend, we bonded over gaming and death metal.  While my musical path had strayed from metal for years this guy held the course.  A death metal aficionado if ever there was one.  Early on in our friendship he turned me on to Immolation and re-introduced me to #morbidangel .  He made me a mix CD of his favorite Morbid Angel tracks and I listened to it intensely.  I started purchasing their discography and while doing this they released this disc "gateways to annihilation" which actually became my favorite album in their discography.  Side note: it was at this time I realised the band were titling their releases in alphabetical order "altars of madness", "blessed are the sick", "covenent", "domination", "entangled in chaos", "formulas fatal to the flesh" and then this album.  I revealed my discovery to my buddy and we both reveled in the trivia. This record is my favorite in their solid body of work up to this point because of it's doom-laden tempos.   The band shifted into low gear for this release and adds a dimension to their brand of death metal.  From field recordings of chipping crickets to paced double bass drum attacks (Pete Sandoval is a death metal drumming pioneer) and the great Dan Seagrave album cover of a Lovecraftian landscape this is upper echelon type death metal. While purists may prefer their faster paced albums the pace here weights the album in a delicious way. I'm going to assume my buddy will have a different opinion if and when he reads this.  I love geek debates of fetishized interests and welcome his case for what I'm assuming will be a different favorite release.

Skinny Puppy "last rights"

When this album was released I had become friends with the record store manager in the small college town I lived in.  I later moved into the small house he rented on the outskirts of town.  He first wooed me with mix tapes he made on his 4-track recorder. He crossfaded tracks and inserted movie samples, they were works of art.  I had no idea he was a talented musician as well.  We both fell in love with this album and he even more so with #skinnypuppy musical canon.  We have kept loose contact since 1992 and I've watched his own musical compositions turn from Frippian guitar prog to ambient shoegaze structures.  Somehow I always hear Skinny Puppy's influence in his work that sounds nothing like them.  Whenever I hear Skinny Puppy I think of him and all of his projects (including his knack for photography).  We enjoyed this CD immensely, it's caustic weird rhythms and prog compositions are littered with horror and psychedelic imagery. And while the disc is maddeningly structured (the individual songs aren't marked by the tracking numbers so your player will start track 2 halfway through the song and et cetera. Dicks.) We devoured it that year.  It's the kind of music that if you "get it" you love it, if you don't then you complain it's noise. Their discography is vast and varied sounding but this is arguably their masterpiece  (though their disc "too dark park" can be thrown into the argument as well) they have a bunch of interesting side projects as well, though most are ambient and not as engaging as their collective output.

P.s. check out my buddy's current project: Cystem.

Lemonheads "hate your friends"

Before Evan Dando turned the band into a hippy pop band the #lemonheads were an awesome punk band.  Their debut "hate your friends" got me through a long ass bus ride to Johnson City, TN in the summer of 1990.  I have taken bus trips a few times in my life and I really always hate that mode of transportation.  It's not that I hate driving places, it's that I hate not being able to stop whenever you feel the urge.  The long winding road loses all it's romance if you're stuck in an uncomfortable seat with no options to exit.  What makes road trips fun is the prospect of adventure, on a bus you're relegated to passive observer.  The whole trip might as well be a t.v. show you're watching through plate glass.  That trip was with a volital girlfriend to visit her sister at college.  This album I had on cassette (the cd wasn't released until 1992 which I had bought immediately) is filled with short blasts of romantic punk ("ever") and well, more short blasts if romantic punk ("uhhh").  It filled the gaps between our fights and was a great soundtrack for the trip.  Years later I was invited with a friend to fly out to San Diego to visit his sister and see the Big Four concert.  While you can't jump out of a plane to chase adventure the sheer shortness of the trip is a good tradeoff.  On that trip we found the Taang! Records shop and I bought all the pre-crappy Lemonheads releases, but this one remains my favorite.

Elliott Smith "either/or"

It was around Christmas time in 1997 I saw the movie "good will hunting" alone at the Elmwood regal theater.  I had a friend who worked there and would let me into the shows for free, and looking back on it now im pretty sure she had a crush on me but i was too self absorbed and self-loathing to notice it.  I was full blown emo depressed and I loved the movie. A character with limitless possibilities was a stark contrast to the feelings of absolutely uselessness I harbored.  The thing that struck me as I made the long snowy walk back to my apartment on west utica was the soundtrack.  I stayed through the credits to find out who was whispering these haunting songs peppered throughout the movie.  In the lobby I scribbled the name into my sketchbook: "elliott smith".   I don't remember where or how I got the money to buy this CD but I did and it started playing in tandem with Sunny Day Real Estate.  At this time I was living with two close friends.  One of those snowy days one of them walked past my room and I was laying on my back on my bed with my cheap bass guitar across me. I was plucking the open "E" string and letting it vibrate my stomach. He left the apartment and did whatever for however long it was.  When he returned I was still in the same position doing the same thing, he admonished me and I pitifully gathered myself and went for a snowy walk with this cd on my walkman.  Probably wasn't a recipe for snapping my funk, but it's a vivid memory for me.  I walked to a coffee shop and sketched strangers while #elliottsmith sympathetically whispered words of discomfort.

Kerosene 454 "situation at hand"

One of the things they don't tell you about being a dad is the amount of poop that gets on your hands.  I woke up to the dog having an I door accident and the littlest guy had a brimming diaper bomb when he awoke.  I've washed my hands raw, wish I could wash my nostrils out too.
In 1996 I discovered #kerosene454 ,  at the time I was working at a chocolate factory on the east side of buffalo.  I used to ride my bicycle for the commute through some of Buffalo's roughest neighborhoods.  Like most of my life if I wasn't actually in a conversation I was wearing headphones.  I taped this cd and it was a pedaling soundtrack for a good chunk of that year.  I had an opportunity to go to NYC that winter with the plan of seeing this band play a show with Texas is the Reason and Bluetip. I made the show late and only caught the last two songs of Kerosene 454's set.  I was bummed and thrilled at the same time.  They were powerful and precise live and I ignored my company the minute we walked in. He handed me a beer and I nodded but never took my eyes off the band. I guess that was kind of a dick move but this show was kind of my Woodstock, especially at that time of my life. I was still reeling from a heart crushing breakup and back home I was shoplifting to eat because chocolate was barely covering the rent.   My friend had actually bought me the train ticket for the trip and had paid my cover and just bought me a beer.  I should have been groveling thanks but instead I stood there focused on the band and ignoring him.  My cheeks are flush with shame even now.
You can wash shit off your hands but you can't wash the dumb, ignorant shit you've done off your heart.