Young Man Blues / TV On The Radio

I would pretty much give up my real job to play in a band. I say "pretty much" because in actual real life, I haven't and I won't. But you know that's kinda what I really want to do. Everything else is just bullshit that I do to get by. I have a job at a university and it's OK, I suppose. I get health insurance and I have an office with a computer. I work with more or less nice people. Although some of them are rather weird in the socially-awkward-kind-of way. But nothing that would drive me crazy or anything. The university runs like it's the movie Brazil in that things work very slowly and you have to fill out everything in triplicate. One of the drawbacks of my job is that I have to deal with a lot of people all the time. For someone who has determinedly tried to avoid people his entire life, this is obviously rather ironic that I ended up in a job where I'm constantly bombarded by people who have some need to speak to me. (Just to be clear, they need to talk to me not because they enjoy conversing with me but because they actually really need to do so to do their work).

I've been thinking that I'd really like to go to the TV On The Radio show next week in Brooklyn (actually, they are playing three nights in a row) but as usual, because this is a show in New York, all the shows are sold out. I enjoyed watching the clip of them performing on David Letterman. See / watch / look:



The other day, I was walking by a bar in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I randomly ran into a person I had not seen in at least ten years. She used to be this cool chick who (along with her husband) were the landlords of the house where I lived in Amherst. I'm not sure what she used to do, but it had something to do with the film industry. She would always go to the Sundance film festival or Cannes or something. We had some crazy ass party times in Amherst, Massachusetts. It was at a completely insane phase of my life and our little house, which we used to call the "White House," singlehandedly kept afloat the alcohol industry in America. (Thanks Dave!) Anyway, so I run into this chick and she was smoking outside a bar and we exchanged pleasantries and I got her number. I had no intention of calling her back but accidentally a couple of days ago hit her number on my cell phone. Fuck! So I had to talk to her. But strangely it turned out to be a good conversation. She has like two kids now. That is some weird shit. I cannot imagine her being a mom and everything. We is getting old old old.

Anyway, one of my favorite songs from that period in Amherst was the Who's "Young Man Blues." This was some badass rock and roll shit. It's worth it to watch this video (from 1970), especially because this is the Who, firing on all cylinders. Check out the one minute stretch from 3:45 to 4:45 in the video. That's exactly how I feel sometimes.

Everytime I played this song at the "White House," I would turn up my stereo and wanna smash the whole fucking house down. I'm sure she didn't appreciate the volume. But I needed volume. Did I mention that I would rather play in an ass-kicking rock'n'roll band than do anything else?



KICK ASS