Author: J T. Ramsay

J T. Ramsay http://jtramsay.com

In Praise of Second Chances

We had this series at Sty­lus Mag­a­zine called “On Sec­ond Thought” and I’m por­ing over the archives tonight. Wish I could right­ly say how many bands I dis­missed sim­ply because Pitch­fork hyped them to the moon. Have you real­ly ever lis­tened to that band called Black Kids? You have?! Wild…

When that col­umn was­n’t ded­i­cat­ed to some mad­ness, like ele­vat­ing some sec­ond rate album to cult sta­tus, it was real­ly good. Right now I’m draw­ing inspi­ra­tion from that spir­it of re-dis­cov­ery and lis­ten­ing to Ted Leo with fresh ears. I only ever saw him play once and that was at teen­sy tiny Brown­ies on the LES. It was so loud I could­n’t prop­er­ly hear for a good three days. Went with friends who were wild for him. I was­n’t feel­ing it. Bought Tyran­ny of Dis­tance, lis­tened to it a few times and felt like it was too poppy.

It’s fun­ny how will­ing you are to lis­ten to stuff like Wolf Eyes and Burzum before you have a kid who’s bounc­ing off the walls and your atten­tion span flies out the win­dow. Now I crave thought­ful pop like nev­er before. Ted Leo’s sud­den­ly right in my wheel­house. Does­n’t hurt that the guy is one of the most good-natured indie rock guys out there, hav­ing fun with his brand of celebri­ty in videos like the one he did for “Bot­tled in Cork” above.

Can You Find Craft Beer in Fishtown?

My eyes rolled very hard when I read this bit from Michael Klein. Fish­town needs anoth­er fan­cy beer place like a hole in the head. I may be will­ing to give it a pass if the food isn’t just anoth­er run-of-the-mill gas­trop­ub as they say, but the thought of squeez­ing into Moe’s does­n’t real­ly appeal either. It would be like set­ting up a restau­rant in my skin­ny lit­tle home.

I know I com­plain about this all the time, but restau­ran­teurs look­ing to take advan­tage of rea­son­able terms here in Fish­town and beyond: please under­stand that sim­ply boast­ing a craft beer selec­tion won’t be enough to lure cus­tomers away from their reg­u­lar haunts. Even bars like Star­board Side offer some nice taps. Want to know how often I go to the Abbaye now that I’m around the cor­ner from Mem­phis Tap­room and Kraft­work? Hell, I don’t even ven­ture as far as John­ny Bren­da’s unless I’m going to see a band. Be more creative!

I know most local beer crit­ics rev­el in this. It’s an embar­rass­ment of rich­es, to be sure. But I can’t help but think that Philly could real­ly use an enfant ter­ri­ble in the beer scene. It’s soft and bloat­ed and increas­ing­ly self-impor­tant. Who will set things straight?

Enjoying the 2011 Philadelphia Phillies

Love when my reg­u­lar morn­ing reads include Beer­lea­guer, Crash­burn Alley, Phillies Nation and more of my favorite Phillies blogs. Fol­low­ing the games on Twit­ter is a treat, although Chris @LONG_DRIVE isn’t in mid­sea­son form, yet. Miss check­ing the Fight­ins for all the great flubs. I caught a bad typo on the new Phillies score­board at the On Deck game against the Pirates in tribute.

I love the 2011 team. I know every­one’s freak­ing about Utley, but c’mon peo­ple, get it togeth­er already. Look at the injuries we had in 2008 and 2010. We may not have won it all in 2010, but it was­n’t because injuries held us back. The 2011 team needs to do what it’s doing right now: beat the bad teams hand­i­ly and let pitch­ing keep the good ones in check. I think the Phillies fan men­tal­i­ty aligns with Char­lie Manuel’s too much, i.e. we need home run slug­gers to win games. Truth is, you get a few guys to hit dou­bles reli­ably and we’re still scor­ing runs in bunch­es, just like last night. The home runs will come, but it’s great that you’re not wait­ing for that salvif­ic at bat.

For some­one like me who loves low-scor­ing games, this team is a dream. Watch­ing Roy Hal­la­day and Cliff Lee back to back, pitch­ing for my team, is just unre­al. When Roy Oswalt is going against the oth­er team’s #3, it’s just not fair. Heck, even Joe Blan­ton is going to get some very favor­able matchups over the course of the sea­son. It’s a thing of beau­ty to know you have 4 All Star-cal­iber pitch­ers out there going every day.

Will we win it all? Hard to say. How far can the Phear­some Phour­some take us? I love Mad­son, but there isn’t a great deal of reli­able help out there. Which Raul will we see after the break? Will Fran­cis­co fig­ure out right? Can Dom Brown be an impact play­er down the stretch? Can Jim­my play like it’s 2006 again? Lots of questions.

If this team makes the play­offs, watch out. It’s hard to imag­ine even elite teams not find­ing them­selves down 2–0 just on the strength of our pitch­ing. If we get Utley back at any point, or if Dom Brown can rejoin and con­tribute mean­ing­ful­ly, we may being march­ing down Broad Street again.

(Also, how many teams are think­ing they could use a spare starter right now? Boston’s been bru­tal­ized by the Rangers to start the sea­son. Won­der if they’d be inter­est­ed in Ken­tucky Joe. Can’t wait to see how the Yan­kees rota­tion plays out, either.)

In Praise of Ex.fm

Remem­ber when music start-ups were such a source of frus­tra­tion for me? Now I real­ly enjoy some of them! Chief among them is ex.fm, which my friend Mark showed me just the oth­er day. Pos­si­bly the most use­ful Google Chrome exten­sion that does­n’t involve a Google product.

What does it do? It sniffs out all the mp3s on a page and stores them tem­porar­i­ly in the exten­sion, which allows you to browse away from their source while you lis­ten via a sleek play­er. I’ve been play­ing Mark’s blog like a mix­tape thanks to it, as well as blogs like Songs from Treme and more.

Now if it could just trav­el back in time to 2003…

First Quarter Music Report

Lov­ing this album. Feel like J. Mas­cis’ voice has always cap­tured that spir­it of not real­ly try­ing, which was the apoth­e­o­sis of all things good in the ’90s. Along those lines, I’m catch­ing up with Wild Flag, too. ’90s nos­tal­gia real­ly has trans­formed into some­thing else entire­ly, has­n’t it?

Real­ly like the new Moun­tain Goats, too. You can lis­ten to that one here. What’s become of me?

An aside: I blame “Port­landia” and Com­e­dy Death Ray for my new­found appre­ci­a­tion of Aimee Mann. Helen was way ahead of me on this one. The lat­ter show is also respon­si­ble for my renewed appre­ci­a­tion of Ted Leo, even though the “Bru­tal­ist Bricks” was qui­et­ly one of my favorite records last year.

Kurt Vile and Cold Cave are ear­ly win­ners, too.

Feel like this is as good a time as any to men­tion that the ex.fm Chrome exten­sion final­ly has me lis­ten­ing to music tum­blrs. Maybe that whole “blog j” thing Gerd Leon­hard men­tioned ages ago was­n’t as sil­ly as I thought.