Alex Hates Music: Fun-a-Day 2015

Day 10

TODAY'S SONG:

"Omaha" by Tapes 'n Tapes

I remember reading about this band on Pitchfork, which gave this album its “Best New Music” nod of approval. It came out just a few months before I graduated college. In their review of Tapes 'nTapes, Pitchfork mentioned Pavement twice, so I was obviously intrigued. They fell a little short of my unreasonably high expectations, unfortunately.

Just in case you are not familiar, Pitchfork is an online music site, like Rolling Stone if it dropped Matt Taibbi and their unhealthy U2 obsession. Reading reviews on Pitchfork (and then getting angry at reviews on Pitchfork) was one of my favorite pastimes during my college years.

Pitchfork: Easy for opinionated people to hate.

I learned about a lot of my favorite music through this site. A little while after college, I realized I wasn't getting into as much new music and couldn't figure out why. Then it occurred to me that I no longer spent hours upon hours a day scouring the internet for new music. That was probably a healthy change up, but there sure is a huge gap from 2007 to 2010ish where I wasn't listening to anything new. One of my New Years Resolutions was actually to check Pitchfork daily, just to keep up better with the indie music world. So far that's been working out pretty good, although a project like this (writing and recording a new song every day) kind of forces me to stop listening to anything else. Which is kind of a bummer since Kayleigh and I just picked up a bunch of records on Saturday morning, including the new Dan Mangan + Blacksmith and Sleater Kinney, both of which I've been eagerly looking forward to for quite some time.

Dee's: A fun place for college kids and old people to drink.

What am I talking about? Here's the memory this song reminds me of. Sitting in my attic room in our house in Pittsburgh's South Side, listening to music beside my bookshelf dominated by Kurt Vonnegut and Bret Easton Ellis. The window had this great video of the downtown Pittsburgh skyscrapers and after Steelers and Pirates games you could usually see fireworks shooting off across the rivers. And it reminds me of going to Dee's with my roommate Dale and meeting up with various friends, getting mad at the jukebox selections while drinking $1 PBR drafts. It also reminds me of the time my buddy Steve accidentally put a $10 bill into that same jukebox, thinking it was a single, so we spent about 20 minutes trying to pick a bunch of songs when he realized he couldn't get his money back.

Here's my song. I wrote it at the bus stop!