I could have sworn I wrote a top five at the beginning of 2010 reflecting back on 2009 (a year in which I was blown away by Okkervil River and Jenny Lewis), but sadly I can't find it in my archives.

This last year was a great musical year.  Here are my top five.

January 3rd - Andrew Bird, The Opera House.
Not only was the venue great - my, the Opera ( Read more... )

Okay, that's it.  I'm leaving an emergency $150 buffer for concert tickets in my day to day bank account at all times.

Or I'm getting a *real* credit card (solely for the purpose of buying concert tickets ... and A.P.C. skirts)

Hunter Street in Lewisham smells like Dunedin: green and muddy, filled with the smell of hedges and muddy driveways; azaelas and jasmine, after the rain ( Read more... )

His sophisticated conversational trivia is great.  Also, he has swine flu.  Porverino :(

"I picked home one last souvenir from South America, it's called the H1N1 virus. Wrongfully known as the Swineflue.

I was crossing the Atlantic when things started getting really bad, the fever was hallucinogenic and shaking me like a leaf and I grabbed the ( Read more... )

I <3 The Eastern album that my friend Kathryn sent me from NZ recently, mainly because when I listen to it I find myself thinking about braided rivers and their cold glacial melt, sitting on car bonnets on chilly mornings, tussock and lupins, grey lyttleton harbour, corrugated rooves, telegraph poles, industrial towns that are slowly dying, the ( Read more... )

Live music just blows my mind.  I love the oblivion and the catharsis.

I went to see Okkervil River at the Annandale last night.  What a bunch of awesome fuckups.  They just went off.  It was amazing.  Not at all polished; just desperately bittersweet, frenetic and loud.  I really enjoyed Bon Iver earlier this year, the music was beautiful and ( Read more... )

I am on the Reference Desk this evening, for three hours.  It is the school holidays.

This is the noisiest, most boisterous library I have ever worked in.  It makes me miss the nice quiet old days of working Saturdays in the rare book room at Dunedin Public Library, or hiding on the third floor of the Science Library for whole afternoons during ( Read more... )

I met these people when I was in Dunedin last month.  Two bands: The Eastern, and Chelsea Motel.  They have the hard but envious job, at the moment, of touring around the South Island (and I think now the North Island) playing in all kinds of strange places for food and board and sometimes even actual money.

They were beautiful people and played ( Read more... )

I see an article in my future about the music of Josh Ritter and the industrialistion of the West.  Maybe for Folk Music Quarterly (I made that journal up, but it probably exists).

Do you ever have those days at work where you just put your head down and manage to be more efficient than anyone has ever been before, in the history of the universe - where what would take a lesser mortal days to accomplish, you manage to achieve over the course of a couple of hours ( Read more... )