Year: 2010

Let’s Talk About MLB Winter Meetings, Okay?

Noth­ing quite as excru­ci­at­ing as watch­ing your team lose a star out­field­er to a sor­ry team with­in the divi­sion — for unrea­son­ably big bucks, mind — while watch­ing them hap­less­ly pur­sue bar­gain bin replace­ments like Jeff Fran­coeur, Matt Diaz, George Sher­rill and Den­nys Reyes. Would’ve been adding insult to injury if we tried to add any of those guys even in a pla­toon. Can’t right­ly tell if it makes it hurt more to hear the Phillies bandied about as being in on Cliff Lee and Zack Greinke or if that’s just part of a push to make guys like me feel bet­ter about a team that real­ly has no choice but to stand pat this off­sea­son and hope things go a lit­tle dif­fer­ent­ly in 2011.

Will say that the Nats being big spenders real­ly warms my heart. Love that the Fish are being aggres­sive, too. The NL East does­n’t get enough cred­it for being the hor­net’s nest it is.

Last­ly, Selig real­ly does need to expand the league to include the mys­tery team that gets cit­ed any time talks heat up with a free agent. Craig Cal­cater­ra has been writ­ing about this over at Hard­ball Talk for a bit. The tweets com­ing out of Orlan­do have been pos­i­tive­ly hilar­i­ous. Have to say that the rumors def­i­nite­ly keep me engaged with base­ball dur­ing what is oth­er­wise a very slow offseason.

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Check Out Nightlands New Video

My friend Mark made it. It’s pret­ty cool, so I’m shar­ing it, but chances are you saw it on Pitch­fork or pret­ty much every blog in the known uni­verse. It’s that good! So are Night­lands. Can’t wait to see them play the Ox in late Jan­u­ary. It’s gonna be down­right cozy in that icebox!

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In Praise of Local Music

Know what’s been on my mind late­ly? Local music! Lots of it. I just caught the Purl­ing Hiss bug last week . Just got hand­ed the new Prowler CD by my favorite bar­tender at Mem­phis Tap­room, Kei­th. Ran into Ports of Call there, too. Snagged the new Woe disc. Watch­ing Shak­ing Through videos with Par­ty Pho­tog­ra­phers and Read­ing Rain­bow. (Give Shak­ing Through some mon­ey, okay?) Picked up the new Sun Air­way LP. Need to get that Night­lands record ASAP. Turns out there’s more to the Philly music scene than Dr. Dog. Who knew?

Lots of peo­ple did. I’m lit­er­al­ly the last guy to the par­ty. Why? Nev­er paid much atten­tion to the local scene when I was com­ing up as a rock crit­ic because Doug Wallen had that beat cov­ered like a blan­ket and I was­n’t all that impressed with what was hap­pen­ing back in the mid-’00s, apart from bands like Man Man and Espers. That’s changed. And how.

Sure, some of it can be chalked up to me not being paid to care about music any­more. Lis­ten­ing to new music became a chore. Feel like I missed lots of great stuff because I tuned out, but now I’m back with open ears. In fact, I’m arrang­ing inter­views with some of the bands list­ed above now. Can’t wait to chat with some of these artists and show­case a renewed Philly music scene!

So tell me: who are your favorite local bands?

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Constant Hitmaker Kurt Vile

Not sure how I feel about Kurt Vile’s sound, but one thing’s clear: the dude is a born enter­tain­er. Had a fun time watch­ing him play with his band the Vio­la­tors last night. 

First time I met Kurt was at the first Beach House gig at John­ny Bren­da’s. He was sit­ting next to me at the bar, hop­ing to meet the guy behind Car Park Records. What hap­pened next is history.

Felt good to con­grat­u­late him last night. He played to a packed house in his home­town! Shows that Pitch­fork rat­ings aren’t the end of the world. Wish more bands got that.

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