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johnbazley · 5 years

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My Favorite Albums of 2018

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Honorable mention: Bruce Springsteen - Springsteen on Broadway

This one is tricky to place on a list; it’s not technically an album, though it’s not technically a film, and since I watched it on Netflix/listened to it on Apple Music, I can’t really call it a show I attended, either. Still, as a long-time Springsteen fan from the suburbs of New Jersey where the Boss cut his teeth, this performance floored me. Essentially a performed, abridged version of his 2017 memoir Born To Run, cut with songs from his fifty-year career, Springsteen on Broadway finds Bruce Springsteen examining the threads of his life, trying to make sense of them, and deconstructing the legendary persona he has spent his career constructing. The result is the reframing of many of his biggest and greatest songs. If you are at all interested in the craft of creative non-fiction or Bruce Springsteen music, Springsteen On Broadway is a must-see.

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30. Pale Waves - My Mind Makes Noises

This album reminds me a lot of The 1975’s first record, which I adore. It’s catchy as hell, and it’s my favorite pure pop record of the year. It’s too long and samey—I skip around a lot when I listen now, and there’s probably a fantastic ten-track album within these fourteen songs—but there are some real hits on here. I spent enough much time on the subway this year trying not to bop my head to “Eighteen” that I’d feel wrong not including it here.

29. J. Cole - KOD

I haven’t loved the past few J Cole albums, but I have fond memories of listening to Sideline Story as I rode around Monmouth County, New Jersey in the passenger seat of my friend Kevin’s car the summer after got his driver’s license. I think of those summer nights whenever J. Cole announces a new album, so I always listen to them, no matter how much I disliked the previous one. KOD surprised me because for the first time since Sideline Story, I felt like I had something to chew on and unpack when I read the record’s lyrics. There’s a statement made here about the consumption of black art by while people, and while it is certainly up for debate how effectively that statement is made—I can’t help but feel like substance users are thrown under the bus at times—I do think Cole has finally released a record with a thesis statement. Hopefully his next one has features!

28. Earl Sweatshirt - Some Rap Songs

Admittedly, this album might be much higher if it had released earlier in the year. There is a strong case to be made that Earl Sweatshirt is the greatest rapper alive, and that Some Rap Songs is his best album—I just didn’t spend a whole lot of time with it this year.

Despite that: I love the mixing on this record, how everything sounds obscured, like a recording of a recording. Earl, much like his old Odd Future cohorts Tyler, The Creator and Frank Ocean, has gotten much better at what he does since the collective dissolved a few years ago, and his lyricism is better than ever. There’s a trend toward immediacy in hip-hop at the moment as streaming numbers increasingly play a larger role in the business end of things. Some Rap Songs feels like the only album in the genre released this year that was designed with long-term consumption in mind. I can’t imagine this album will leave my rotation any time soon.

27. Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

I’ve always been kind of a fair-weather Deafheaven fan. I listen to the new albums when they drop and appreciate them for what they are, but I’m not enough of a metal fan to spend much time with them after that honeymoon period ends. I come back to Sunbather fairly regularly, but mostly because it reminds me of the summer when it gets cold out.

Ordinary Corrupt Human Love is the first Deafheaven album I’ve fallen for. It’s the first Deafheaven album I recommended to my friends in the group chat who don’t care for metal music at all. Sunbather, and to a lesser extent, New Bermuda showed that there’s plenty of room for experimentation within the black metal genre, but Ordinary Corrupt Human Love blows the whole thing up. I love a subversive record, and while I didn’t spend as much time with this album as I did with other records on this list, I spent a lot of time thinking about it.

26. mewithoutYou - [untitled] LP

All I can say for this record is that it scratched an itch. It’s been a while since I’ve been truly invested in the Will Yip-produced Run For Cover emo scene, but this record reminded me of those heydays with the Citizens and the Balance & Composures and the whathaveyous. I don’t think it’s Yip’s best produced album, and I don’t think it’s mewithoutYou’s best album, but “Julia” worked its way into my head quite often this fall, like an old friend I hadn’t heard from in a few years, coming home to visit.

25. Noname - Room 25

Noname is just so good at this shit. After Acid Rap, I hoped she’d release a mixtape. She did, and Telefone was one of the best albums of that summer--a pivotal summer of my life, the summer we got Blonde, Coloring Book, Puberty 2, and Atrocity Exhibition, no less. Room 25 is even better, and proves that Noname is here to stay.

I put “Ace” on a playlist called “better by fall” in October. That playlist was full of mellow songs that calmed me down, that also had BPMs high enough to put a spring in my step and get me my out of my apartment when I didn’t feel like leaving my bed. It was my happy place when all of the shit started hitting every fan a few weeks into the fall semester. I think I’ll remember this fall much in the way that I remember the summer Telefone dropped--a lot of darkness, a lot of growth, but mostly a lot of good songs.

24. Basement - Beside Myself

I feel like so few rock bands today are concerned with structure and songwriting like Basement are on Beside Myself. This record reminds me a lot of early 2000s Jimmy Eat World output, which is mostly because of how the guitars sound, but I think that comparison really comes together in the strength of the choruses and the way the songs build and release. Each song is built like a brick house. I’ve always kind of doubted that this band would ever be able to top 2012’s Colourmeinkindness, and while I still prefer that record to this one, this one is a nice addition to a discography that gets better with each new release.

23. Vince Staples - FM!

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot this year is home. I moved from New York City back to New Jersey in large part because I felt like I needed it--2018 was the year that I accepted that this place made me the person I am, and that I should embrace it. I wrote a lot about this state and my community here.

FM! resonated with me because it felt like Vince Staples doing the same. I liked Big Fish Theory, but I didn’t return to it much after release, largely because it found Vince abandoning much of the Long Beach, California-centric lyrical content that made me love Summertime ‘06 so much. I think there’s a potency to an artist writing about the good and bad of their hometown, and I love FM! because Vince does it well, in a stylish wrapping that feels more like a meaningful concept record than Big Fish ever did, despite what critics said about that album.

22. Janelle Monáe - Dirty Computer

I remember walking around Grand Central trying to catch a train the day after Dirty Computer dropped this spring, listening through the album in full for the first time as I raced through corridors and took my seat, and thinking as “Americans” came to a close, “oh, yes, this is the best album of the year.” It just seemed like a fact at that point that no one could possibly top the beauty of Dirty Computer, which consists entirely of very catchy songs that construct a larger statement piece about queerness, blackness, and womanhood. And while it may be true that Dirty Computer is the best album of the year, I have not listened to it in full since, mostly because I got very distracted with schoolwork and other music in the weeks following its release. However, that listening experience was my most memorable of the year, and this is the only record on this list that I’ve only listened to once. I think that counts for a lot.

21. Alkaline Trio - Is This Thing Cursed?

Earlier this year, I drove 20 hours round-trip to Maine and back to visit a friend in Bangor. I spent most of those twenty hours listening to old Alkaline Trio records, as I’ll do from time to time when I feel nostalgic for my middle school years. I think spending so many hours with Good Mourning and From Here To Infirmary this summer prepped me to love Is This Thing Cursed?, which feels like it could have been released right before Crimson.

If you haven't already been in on Alkaline Trio, Is This Thing Cursed? probably won’t change your mind (though you might like the last record, My Shame Is True, which is more “““mature””” and less spooky, but I digress), but it’s a solid addition to a great discography from a band I’ve loved since Tony Hawk’s Underground came out.

20. Saba - Care For Me

Care For Me is the best rap album that no one talked about this year. The first time I heard “PROM / KING,” I figured Saba would blow up in 2018 the way that Kendrick Lamar did after good kid, mAAd city. That didn’t happen, but I still think Saba is bound for stardom.

19. Hop Along - Bark Your Head Off, Dog

I didn’t stick with this album as much as I thought I would when I first heard “How Simple”--I think a lot of my adoration for this album actually zeroes in on that song, actually--but we had a nice summer fling.

18. The 1975 - A Brief Inquiry Into Online Relationships

This album is probably my biggest disappointment of 2018. So much of it doesn’t work for me. I wish I could cut out every terrible, self-indulgent lyric like “Kids don’t want rifles, / kids want Supreme” and “I found a gray hair in one of my zoots, / like context in a modern debate, I just took it out.” “The Man Who Married A Robot” had to have been written by a man who thinks he has something profound to say about how humans are affected by technology, but has also never seen 2001: A Space Odyssey. Matty Healy apologized for his ridiculous and offensive comments in The Fader about misogyny in rock music and hip-hop, but I can’t return to “Love It If We Made It” after Matty essentially said “hey actually I don’t know what I’m talking about, sorry y’all” with regard to its lyrical content. I think Healy is essentially rewriting Drake’s career, coming so close to genuine profundity at every turn and constantly falling victim to his own inflated ego.

Still, I adore the minute-to-minute songwriting on this record so much that I can ignore its many failed attempts at crafting a larger statement. “I Like America and America Likes Me” is so good that I don’t mind skipping “The Man Who Married Robot” when it’s over. “It’s Not Living If It’s Not With You” is exactly the type of song that seems effortless to The 1975, but no one else has quite cracked yet.

17. Mitski - Be The Cowboy

Be The Cowboy is probably my least favorite of Mitski’s records. This one didn’t blow my mind the way that Puberty 2 did, and I don’t think it’s as timeless as Bury Me At Makeout Creek, but it’s still a god damn good Mitski album. “Old Friend” makes my heart skips beats.

16. Foxing - Nearer My God

I don’t really remember this album coming out. The only thing I remember about the first time I listened to it was that I was falling asleep on the subway, constantly restarting it from track one and dozing off again before that song ended.

15. Courtney Barnett - Tell Me How You Really Feel

I’ve always felt like I should like Courtney Barnett more, and it all clicked into place for me on this record. I love the vocal melodies and how they play with Courtney’s guitar work. It’s also a very enjoyable listen from start to finish, and when it first released, it was my go-to walk-around-my-neighborhood-and-think-about-life album.

14. boygenius - boygenius

This release is such a dream come true that it almost feels wrong—how could two of the best active songwriters today start a band together? And how does that band live up to every expectation? How did Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers come through with their best songs ever for their supergroup? This is the EP that shouldn’t exist because we don’t deserve nice things.

13. The HIRS Collective - Friends. Lovers. Favorites.

This is the album you’re all sleeping on. The best hardcore album of 2018 and among the best of the past five years. For fans of scary, heavy music with lyrics about trans and queer liberation. Read this and listen.

12. Brian Fallon - Sleepwalkers

Sleepwalkers is exactly where I wanted Brian Fallon to go after Painkillers. I know so many Gaslight Anthem fans who want Fallon to write the same song over and over--and I love that song, to be fair--but Fallon’s songwriting is most interesting to me when he’s branching out and experimenting with new songs. I think that’s why I’ve always loved Get Hurt, and it’s certainly why I love Sleepwalkers. The British invasion sound that Fallon plays with here fits like a glove, and the slowed-down Manilow-esque “Etta James” is the best song he’s written in at least four years. I feel like Fallon’s next album will be a bit more typical, as the cycle of Fallon records tends to go, but Sleepwalkers stands out and I hope Brian Fallon never stops writing songs.

11. Jeff Rosenstock - POST-

I think there’s a fantastic seven-track album within POST-. I don’t care much for the long songs here, because I don’t think longer song structures are well-suited to Jeff Rosenstock’s frenetic style, so when I listened to POST- this year, I most often started with “Yr Throat” and turned it off once “9/10″ was over. I’ve included it so high on my list because I think that seven-track album is perfect. It’s frustrating how good those songs are. The thing about Jeff Rosenstock is that he writes so many songs (this is the first of two appearances he’ll make in my top eleven of 2018) that I can forgive the clunkers, especially when they’re so nicely bookended at the beginning and end of an album.

The fact that the larger “rock” audience hasn’t caught on to the fact that Rosenstock is one of the best songwriters alive and releases multiple records each year is confounding. WORRY. remains one of the best rock albums of the decade, and POST- is a perfectly good follow-up.

10. Now, Now - Saved

Now, Now’s turn with Saved reminds me so much of the recent Paramore trajectory. It seemed for a while that the previous album would be the last. When the island-pop follow-up with a new lineup was announced, I feared that everything I’d previously loved about the band was gone. Then the album came out, and I fell head over heels for it.

I listened to Saved a lot on my roof this summer as I stole time and watched the sun set between my two jobs. I often had a few free hours here or there, and I spent so many of those hours listening to “Window” or “AZ” as I sipped a beer and watched the planes land in Queens.

I don’t remember much of this year--so much of it blends together in a way that, honestly, concerns me. But the nights I spent with “Saved” blend together as well, and if I look back at my summer in 2018 and only remember getting drunk as the sky turned pink in Brooklyn with “SGL” in my headphones, I’m cool with it.

9. Ruston Kelly - Dying Star

I’m not usually in the business of recommending country albums, so you know this one must be good.

Dying Star does so much by the books. “Mockingbird” could be a radio hit. “Cover My Tracks” features a main melody that I swear I’ve heard in a Ryan Adams song before. It all works, mind--it works so well that the subversive moments all land even harder.

Maybe I’m just out of touch with the genre, but I have never heard a song like “Son Of A Highway Daughter” before. I didn’t know country artists were allowed to pull a “Hide and Seek” and hide the instruments behind several minutes of vocoder vocals. If this has been going on longer than Ruston Kelly’s tenure in writing songs, please send those albums to me.

I love interesting music, and Dying Star is the most interesting country album I’ve heard since Taylor Swift’s Red (will not be answering messages debating Red’s existence as a country album, thank you).

8. Pusha T - DAYTONA

I spent most of the early parts of 2018 angry at Kanye West. As the “Santeria” beat unfolded from the speakers of my 2003 Ford Escape, stuck in stand-still traffic in Staten Island, mere weeks before its transition would fail and leave me stranded in an AMC Theaters parking lot, I had a single, fleeting moment of shit, what am I going to do if this Kanye album is good?

Luckily, that feeling faded before I crossed the bridge into Jersey. But there are elements to Pusha T’s greatest record, DAYTONA, that prove that Kanye hadn’t lost quite all of his marbles when he conducted these beats and dreamed up the concept of the all-killer-no-filler, seven-track hip-hop album. Every second of this album is good. Because it has so few keystone moments, every moment is memorable. In that sense, listening to DAYTONA reminds me a lot of listening to Bruce Springsteen’s Born To Run. Springsteen conducted that album so each side of the LP would start and end with one of the record’s best songs. Therefore, each moment of picking up the record and flipping it results in some thought of “damn, that was good and I am truly enjoying this LP.” I feel like DAYTONA is structured similarly, albeit with the lens for the streaming generation. Pusha gets in and out of verses effortlessly here, and each track opens and closes in a memorable way. Before you have time to get bored, the record is over and repeating and you're ready to hear it again.

It will likely be another several years before another Pusha T record, so it will be interesting to see how this one’s short length holds up as the thirst grows. But for the time being, part of me wishes every album was so dedicated to trimming the fat and delivering the goods only.

7. Travis Scott - Astroworld

I’ve never been wrong about a rapper like I was wrong about Travis Scott in 2014. I wrote Travis off when “Mamacita” dropped because he came across to me as a Yeezus impressionist who wanted desperately to be Young Thug. In 2018, Young Thug hasn’t had the hit I’ve always assumed was around the corner, and Kanye is a hack.

I can only imagine hearing a song like “Sicko Mode” in high school. The way that song, and so much of Astroworld, effortlessly hops between movements, weaving in and out of movements and codas as if that’s ever been allowed in pop music--Travis Scott really did something here. It’s like he traded all of the corniness for genuine insight into the mechanics of hip-hop music, and in the process released of the genre’s standout albums in a post-DS2 world. Sometimes, it’s good to be wrong.

6. Staten - I don’t want to be alone anymore

I always laugh when Justin puts out a new song because he’s so god damn good at this. Unsigned artists shouldn’t be able to make pop music that sounds this solid, this well-produced. Find me another local musician who’s making pop music on the level of “Saturn” or “Loy’s Son.”

There are a ridiculous amount of good Staten albums, and I don’t want to be alone anymore is one of my favorites. Do yourself a favor and spend some time on Justin’s bandcamp page.

5. Antarctigo Vespucci - Love In The Time Of E-Mail

Love In The Time Of E-Mail is my favorite Chris Farren full-length. I love the grit that Jeff Rosenstock brings to Farren’s otherwise glossy songwriting style, and I love how Chris’ lyrics straddle the line because funny and heartfelt, often in the same song. I think my single favorite moment from a song this year is the bridge of “Breathless on DVD,” where Farren sings: “Am I unhappy because I’m not free, / or not free because I’m unhappy? / I wanted to see you / to see if I still wanted to see you.” “Breathless On DVD” is the kind of song that makes you wonder how some emo band didn’t already write this whole album a decade ago. It instantly meshes with the canon of albums I’ve spent my life with, and fits like a glove. I hope I never wear this one out.

4. The Wonder Years - Sister Cities

I wrote a bit about this album in a personal essay for Substream earlier this year, but to elaborate a bit: The Wonder Years have a habit of releasing life-affecting albums right when I feel like I need one. The Upsides and Suburbia I’ve Given You All And Now I’m Nothing came into my life a few months after I ended my first real relationship and started to wonder why I had spent so much of my life up to that point consumed by my own inexplicable sadness. The Greatest Generation came out a month shy of my high school graduation and I spent a lot of time that summer delivering pizza, dreading the day I’d have to leave my friends to move into a dorm room and meet new ones, listening to The Wonder Years and wondering if this is what it feels like with my wings clipped, I’m awkward and nervous, I’m awkward and nervous.

Sister Cities is an album about boundaries and the bodies of water that separate us and how traveling the planet makes us feel more distant and more connected to the people who pass through our lives for however long. I split my time between New York and New Jersey this summer, working a handful of jobs across both states, trying to pay my rent without the help of student loans and putting a little bit of scratch aside in case I needed to get out in the next few months for whatever reason. Around this time, I also began to process how upset I was about the death of my Aunt Mary, who passed away during my first week of graduate school, whose funeral was the first of a handful I had to miss due to geographical limitations and work obligations. I slept on New Jersey Transit a lot those weekends, and I listened to this album on repeat as I dozed off, as my train passed over bridges and into tunnels, until I woke up and walked off into a different home from where I started.

I think there’s a shift here—Dan Campbell is no longer belting out war cries like “I’m not sad anymore, I’m just tired of this place” or “I’m gonna shoulder the weight till my back breaks, / I want to run till my lungs give up.” It’s a quieter, more personal record that wrangles with quieter, more personal subject matter than previous Wonder Years releases. That resonated with me this year, and while I’m not sure how much I’ll return to Sister Cities compared to The Greatest Generation or even The Upsides in the future, I will not forget the time we spent together in 2018.

3. Spanish Love Songs - Schmaltz

Schmatlz was my most played album of 2018—I think that counts for something. Like if The Menzingers incorporated Bomb The Music Industry’s synthesizer lines, Spanish Love Songs make the most fun denim-clad Americana punk I’ve ever heard. I love every song on this album. I wore it out this year, and then I played it some more. I hear so often from my friends in the punk scene that there aren’t enough new bands making good punk music—this band is doing exactly that, friends.

I think Schmaltz, more than any other album on this list, will be the one that will forever remind me of my time living in Brooklyn. I spent countless nights last year walking home from my local neighborhood bar, Aunt Ginny’s, drunk, anxious, spinning as I avoided traffic and worried about homework I hadn’t done yet and mouthing the words to “Beer & NyQuil” and “Buffalo Buffalo” with Schmaltz in my headphones. It’s a cathartic record that made me feel considerably less alone in a year where my loneliness was more pervasive than ever. It’s a time and a place, but that time and that place weren’t so bad.

2. Jake Newcomb - Yosemite

When I was in my last year of high school, Jake Newcomb was in a pop-punk/emo band called Cross Town Train. Cross Town Train had a song called “Red Floral Dress,” and I can still remember the first time I heard it, in a friend’s house where we all hung out after school. “Red Floral Dress” was Cross Town Train’s best song, I think, the one that the crowd always went crazy for. I heard it hundreds of times that year, most of which I spent at local shows with friends and drunk in basements. I still consider it my favorite song of all time.

I loved and continue to love “Red Floral Dress” because it was the first time I can remember one of my friends creating a piece of art that felt not only impressive from a craft perspective, but truly important. It was cathartic. I was very confused about feelings of love toward everyone that year—my friends, my romantic interests, my hometown, my family—and that moment at the end of the bridge: “I’d been anticipating this for weeks,/because I don’t know how I feel about you—/and then I saw you, and then I saw you, and then I saw you,” sounded so obvious to me. Of course there is an answer here. There is an answer, an answer that Jake Newcomb has figured out, and it will come for you in time.

I have been thinking about “Red Floral Dress” a lot lately because Jake Newcomb released a new album this year. Yosemite is a nine-track album, the first full-length album that Jake wrote and released on his own. I love the vocal melodies and I love how beautiful the acoustic arrangement sounds, but the reason I resonated so quickly with the record is because of how obvious it all seems. Lyrically, the record follows the story of a relationship from beginning to end. Each of its tracks address peripheral factors that put stress on a new relationship. “Sparky” was inspired by the death of Jake’s childhood dog, which coincided with the relationship. “Warped Tour” and “Cross Town Train” consider shared experience and lack thereof between the singer and his partner. Several tracks, like the standout “Little Things,” explore lowercase-p-political themes, like how poverty, the perceived inability to provide for a significant other, and the ever-present fear of climate change damage the ability to see a potential relationship as something that could possibly last in the long-term. In the closing title track, Newcomb croons without judgment about the passage of time: “It’s been a long time / since I loved you / like I used to.”

Yosemite sounds so clear to me—much in the way that “Red Floral Dress” sounded like an obvious answer to my teenage anxiety, Yosemite sounds wise and experienced, vulnerable, and relatable. The album artwork reflects my feelings best—a landscape full of trees, cliffs, fog, dirt, a layered image of a valley that goes on for miles that simultaneously seems so clear, beautiful, and obvious.

1. The Story So Far - Proper Dose

There is so much that I love about this record. I love the production, how it paints frontman Parker Cannon’s voice in a manner that show off his technical chops while retaining so much of the timbre of scorn that gave The Story So Far rise in the punk scene in the first place. I love the committed dive into acoustic tones and slowed down BPMs, both songwriting elements that TSSF have been flirting with since “Placeholder,” but entirely nail with “Upside Down.” I love how surprising these songs are—how the the “save my soul” refrain emerges from the ashes of a 90-second punk banger at the end of “Need To Know;” how the slurred, auto-tuned vocal line in “Growing On You” worms its way out of the bassy “Line” interlude, giving both tracks a sense of linked significance.

All that aside, Proper Dose is my favorite album of 2018 because of its urgency and importance. Its structure and content remind me of Tyler, The Creator’s Flower Boy, which was my favorite album of 2017. On that record, Tyler tells a story while wrangling with questions he doesn’t yet have answers to. Once he has confronted the central knot on “Garden Shed,” rapping as quickly as he can to put his admission of confusion out into the world before he has the ability to stop himself—“that was real love I was in / ain’t no reason to pretend”—the narrative begins to accelerate, rushing in as many disparate directions as possible in rapid succession. The rambling “Boredom” jams up against the erratic “I Ain’t Got Time!” before the split “911/Mr. Lonely” directly confronts that the narrator is lonely and depressed, but will keep on dancing to throw ‘em off. The b-side’s lack of cohesion is its cohesion, as a meta-narrative emerges—Tyler is racing to the end of a record, hoping to find the answers to his questions there, as if all endings inherently offer serendipitous and logical conclusions.

I think Proper Dose is structured similarly, albeit with significant differences. The lyrics to Proper Dose are primarily concerned with Cannon’s struggle with addiction to xanax and prescription cough syrup, and the arc finds the narrator reaching for answers. It’s here where the whole record comes together for me. Yes, “Need To Know” culminates in a surprising refrain, but that refrain is as inevitable is it could possibly be—when Cannon’s frustration and desperate admissions of internal struggle reach their ends, the only logical move is a shift and a direct address: Save my soul. That slurred vocal effect in “Growing On You” works so well because he sounds depleted, and by track ten, Cannon has already effectively shown the extent to which his addiction has left him exhausted. “Not as simple as I wanted it to be,” he sings slowly, as if the words are being pulled out of him, as if doing so is the only way to reach some type of conclusion. “Now I gotta say all of the things that are bothering me.”

All of this is to say that I have written a lot this year, and I still have more trouble than I’d like to admit writing about the knots that tie me up inside. An advisor of mine once told me that writing toward hardship and trauma is like holding a beach ball underwater: it gets harder the deeper one goes. If you let go, the ball returns to the surface, and you must start the work over of returning to previous depths.

I think Proper Dose would be The Story So Far’s best album even with its lyrics—urgency and importance—removed entirely. The vocal melodies here have improved dramatically over 2015’s self-titled effort, and for the first time, the songwriting sounds as though the band prioritized the listening experience over the crowd-going experience for their live shows. But it’s that leap of faith, that urgency and importance, that excavation of one’s own hardship, that makes it resonate so deeply with me.

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The Unlikely Preacher of Action Sports

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The Unlikely Preacher of Action Sports

Sal Masekela steps off a helicopter onto the white sands of Tavarua Island Resort, a tiny speck in the Fiji archipelago, and walks into a gorgeous open-air restaurant that overlooks a world-famous reef break appropriately dubbed Restaurants. He greets the Fijian staff by name, hugging them, asking them about their lives since his last visit.

Masekela, you may recall, was the face and voice of ESPN’s X Games, hosting both the summer and winter events for more than a decade. With his iconic dreadlocks and smooth baritone, he was a fixture at the center of the action-sports universe, narrating nearly every history-making moment at the games, from Travis Pastrana’s double backflip on a motorcycle in 2006 to Shaun White’s perfect halfpipe run in 2012.

Today, six years since a breakup with ESPN, Masekela remains deeply entrenched in action sports. He is here, on the surf mecca of Tavarua, for a vacation with a group of friends comprised of athletes, movie stars, entrepreneurs, Instagram influencers, and their families. As he makes the rounds, a guest compares him to Ricardo Montalbán, the suave Mexican actor best known for playing Mr. Roarke on Fantasy Island. Somehow, despite the fact that Masekela is a stocky black man, and recently bald, it’s a rather apt observation. It can be challenging to walk anywhere with Masekela, because everyone who sees him wants to stop and talk with him and he wants to talk to everybody. He is Larry David’s worst nightmare.

This is Masekela’s 16th trip to Tavarua but nonetheless a special one, because it’s his first visit since his father died from prostate cancer six months ago. Hugh Masekela was a trumpeter and is often credited as the father of South African jazz. He played and toured with everyone from Paul Simon to Dave Matthews and was nominated for three Grammys. During apartheid, Hugh left South Africa to study music in the United States, but he remained outspoken against the brutality of South African racial segregation. In 1986, he recorded “Bring Him Back Home,” a song demanding the release of Nelson Mandela that would eventually become a rallying cry for the anti-apartheid movement.

Tavarua is Masekela’s favorite place on earth, and he’d implored his father to travel there with him. They made plans for the fall of 2016 and even purchased tickets, but at the last minute, Hugh postponed. A year and a half later, he passed away. This trip, these waves, Masekela says, are for his dad.

Masekela hosting Lollapalooza in Chicago (Jeremy Deputat/Red Bull Content Pool)

The vacation also comes at a significant moment in Masekela’s career—a moment when he hopes to find a path back into the limelight. Since walking away from the X Games, he has continued to work in television, hosting a series for Red Bull Media House, reporting stories for NBC at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, and hosting a sports documentary series on Viceland, among other gigs. He’s had bit parts in movies. His band, Alekesam, which blends jazz, soul, and R&B, has been featured on HBO and Showtime and released its second album last summer. Still, Masekela has grander ambitions, though he struggles to define them.

Like many major figures from the heyday of action sports, Masekela is still coming to grips with the fact that his world has lost much of its cultural and commercial cachet. As recently as 2011, an average of more than a million viewers tuned in to watch the four-day-long Summer X Games on television. By 2017, that number dropped to 385,000. (ESPN says viewership is actually up when you account for streaming and social viewers, but declined to share year-over-year numbers.) The formerly rebel sports of snowboarding, BMX, and skateboarding have been adopted by the Olympics. The bad-boy stars of yesterday are now middle-aged dads.

Masekela has ridden the action-sports wave as far and well as he could’ve hoped, but no ride lasts forever.

That Masekela became the face of the X Games in the first place was wildly improbable. He was born in 1971 in Los Angeles, the first child of Hugh and Haitian immigrant Jessie Lapierre. By the time he turned four, his parents had moved to New York City and split up, and his mother was remarried to a Jehovah’s Witness, who raised Masekela in the church. But despite his stepdad’s best efforts, Hugh’s influence endured. Masekela split time between marijuana-clouded jazz clubs and going door to door spreading the Truth. “Growing up between those worlds gave me a strange set of skills,” he says. “For a long time they felt like a burden, like I was always working to fit in.”

His mom and stepdad moved around a lot, ultimately abandoning the East Coast for Carlsbad, California, at the start of Masekela’s senior year of high school. Relocating across the country was difficult for him. During the drive out, he spent rest-stop breaks at pay phones. “I was calling my girl back east and not saying anything,” he says. “Just weeping on the phone for like ten minutes, that high school heartbreak shit.”

But on his first morning in Carlsbad, he discovered that his new house sat on top of a steep hill with a view of the ocean, a feature that he credits with shaping the trajectory of his life. “Imagine, you walk out of this house onto this lawn, and you look and you’re like, Oh shit we’re right here.”

Masekela with his father, Hugh, in 2016 (Abby Ross)

Surfing became the focus of Masekela’s life. As a Jehovah’s Witness, he was discouraged from playing organized sports, but several of the members of his congregation surfed, and they loaned him a board and a wetsuit, which he put on backward the first time. He spent his downtime at school paging through back issues of Surfer, neglecting his schoolwork to study board sports. He refined the basic skateboarding skills he’d started developing back east, and he learned to snowboard. “Nothing else sounded as good,” he says. “I didn’t want to be around people who did it. I wanted to be around people who lived it.” He became a full-on disciple of what he would call the shred life.

The tension between his new passion and his commitment to the church began to mount. At 19, Masekela went to South Africa to meet up with his father, who had recently returned home for the first time in 30 years. It was 1991, and Mandela had just been released from prison. During the trip, Masekela explored life a bit too enthusiastically for the church’s standards. His sins were, in his words, “that I made out with a bunch of girls and smoked some pot.”

When he confessed, the elders chose to disfellowship him. “You have to keep going to church, to the meetings, but no one talks to you,” he explains. During his exile, Masekela remained close with his mother, but the social isolation was a brutal punishment. “It was without a doubt the most difficult time in my life,” he says. “I was severely depressed. I held a knife to my wrist in my kitchen many times.”

He moved to a new congregation in a nearby beach community called Leucadia. In 1993, while working at a restaurant, he crossed paths with several employees from TransWorld Media, which produces board-sports magazines and films, and he charmed his way into a job as a receptionist. In no time he worked up to sales jobs and small-scale announcing gigs for skateboarding competitions. His circle of friends expanded to include the pros he was interviewing at contests. By 1996, he was the team manager for Boks, the nascent action-sports division of Reebok, where he helped build the brand’s surf, skate, snowboard, and BMX teams.

The more entrenched he became in action sports, the further he drifted from the church, leaving religion behind for a new gospel.

Masekela’s big break came in the winter of 1997, at a snowboarding conference in Vail, Colorado. Boks had just folded, and his future was uncertain. He knew he had to do some networking.

The event took place in the wake of the first X Games, which was an embarrassment to everybody who cared about action sports. Purple skateboard ramps and clueless commentators left the community and industry furious at how their lifestyle and products had been represented.

Masekela in the studio with bandmate Sunny Levine (Abby Ross)

During a Q and A session that included executives from ESPN and MTV, Masekela decided to speak up. “At a certain point, I don’t even know what happened, but I was standing on top of my chair in the back. I said, ‘You know, I watch all these things—the X Games and what you guys are doing on MTV—and you don’t have any voices that represent our culture to tell people about what they’re seeing. Bill Bellamy doesn’t fucking snowboard. Here’s the deal: I’m young, I’m black, I surf and I snowboard, and I know that I could get in front of the camera and do that.’ ”

He got a standing ovation. “People were buying me beers all night like I had just given some weird ‘I Have a Dream’ shred speech.” At an after-party, an executive from MTV gave him a business card. The next year, Masekela was commentating the MTV Sports and Music Festival, offering the insider’s perspective he’d cultivated since landing in California years before.

By 1999, Masekela had landed a job as a reporter for the Winter X Games. The following summer, when Tony Hawk landed the first 900, Masekela was standing at the top of the ramp. From there it was pretty much game on. The action-sports wave was barreling into the mainstream, and Masekela was pitted as its chief evangelist.

Masekela’s presence on Tavarua is conspicuous for many reasons, but even if he was less gregarious, he would still stick out. Other than the Fijian staff members, he is the only black person on the entire island. By contrast, the kids on the trip are named Chili, Coast, Country, Fin, Hazel, Jet, Lyon, Oz, Rider, River, Roman, and Tashen. That list may not be exhaustive or spelled exactly right, but the point is: the only thing whiter than the sand here is the people.

Tavarua, like many tropical-island resorts, is a destination for people with money. There are spa treatments. There’s a yoga space. There’s an artificial-turf tennis court. Speaking of tennis, Masekela loves tennis. He also loves golf. When you grow up as a skateboarding Jehovah’s Witness, perhaps adding golfer to the list becomes easier.

But still, as a black man at the center of a nearly all-white industry, Masekela has encountered racism many times. In the early nineties, the owners of a surf shop where he was working let him go, telling him that business was slowing down and they needed to cut back on staff. But a friend who was still working there told him that the owners didn’t think Masekela matched the image of what a surf-shop employee should be—which is to say, white.

Masekela on Niue, in the South Pacific (Sal Masekela)

“Even though I had gone through all sorts of fucking racist shit as a result of starting surfing and snowboarding—people making fun of me and calling me a nigger and telling me that we don’t even swim—I still didn’t think something like that would happen,” he says. “It really, really fucked me up.”

When he got the job as the host of the X Games, the racism became more pernicious. People would assume he was a marketing choice made by network executives—that he had studied up on the difference between a heel flip and a pop shove-it after he got the job, when in reality he could do both of those tricks. “There were people who started to be like, ‘Wow, that’s really gutsy of ESPN to pick a black guy to do this. So smart. You don’t really do this stuff do you?’ ” The same authenticity that got him the job was suddenly being questioned because of his skin color.

“I didn’t have an agenda to be like, I’m the fucking Great Black Hope of action sports. I wanted to be the best commentator. I wanted to be seen as on par with the greats in broadcasting and entertainment.”

One warm summer afternoon on his couch in Venice Beach, Masekela was in a reflective mood. We were surrounded by boxes that he hadn’t unpacked since he moved to the house 12 months ago. The front door was open, and sunlight streamed in.

He told me about his split with ESPN, back in late 2012, saying that the network had wanted to renegotiate his contract. He said that a big reason he left was a feeling that ESPN had begun to devalue action sports in general. For Masekela, this was unacceptable; they were his life. A few weeks after quitting, he cut off his dreads.

“I was kind of wrestling for identity,” he said. “I cried while doing it. There were people who told me, ‘You just lit your career on fire.’ And I’d be like, ‘If you know me and consider me a friend, and you’re telling me that my hair is my calling card, then you’re telling me that you don’t hear what it is that I have to say.’ ”

Masekela near his home in Venice, California (Nikko LaMere)

As a host and announcer, one of the greatest strengths Masekela brought to action-sports events was his credibility. “We had a lot of these bro-type announcers who didn’t really capture what was going on,” says snowboarder Shaun White. “Sal knew us personally, so he could kind of talk about how a guy has been wanting to do this trick for so long and what it would mean if he did it during this run.”

Today, though, being respected by core board-sports athletes doesn’t do much for a guy’s résumé. Masekela is eager to begin a new chapter but admits he doesn’t know what that will look like yet. Which is why he’s trying a little bit of everything. He’s starting a podcast, tentatively called What Shapes Us, for which he’ll interview the deep well of exceptional friends he’s made over the years, and possibly broadcast conversations with his father posthumously. He’s touring with his band, he’s hosting more traditional adventure and travel stories for National Geographic, and he’s trying to do more acting. He says he’d like to host another TV show, but only if it feels right.

One impediment to Masekela’s career reboot is the fact that he’s not the most organized person. He doesn’t like budgets or spreadsheets. He has a tendency to lose things, forget stuff, and miss flights.

Case in point: he arrives on Tavarua a day later than planned, after a fundraising event for his charity, Stoked Mentoring, ran long and he didn’t catch his plane to Fiji. But after he finishes unpacking, he hops on the evening boat to Cloudbreak, an infamous wave that detonates two miles from the island on a barrier reef. Just about anywhere else, you’d call the conditions good to great, but by Cloudbreak standards things are looking somewhat pedestrian. The wind isn’t quite right, the lulls between sets are long, and the wave isn’t barreling like it should.

Then, just before dusk, the wind dies a bit, and the reef starts to grab the swell. All of a sudden, Masekela is on an absolute gem—green and gold, backlit by low-angle tropical sun. Miraculously, the inside section gets hollow, and he tucks into the barrel. You can hear him whooping with joy. Finally, just before the wave ends, he kicks out the back. He’s probably 100 yards or more down the reef, but he reels in his board and heads straight for the lineup.

The sun is setting, but Sal Masekela is paddling back out.

David Shultz (@dshultz14) is a freelance writer in Santa Barbara, California. This is his first feature for Outside.

Source

https://www.outsideonline.com/2380521/unlikely-preacher-action-sports-sal-masekela

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mrmichaelchadler · 5 years

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Thumbnails 11/2/18

Thumbnails is a roundup of brief excerpts to introduce you to articles from other websites that we found interesting and exciting. We provide links to the original sources for you to read in their entirety.—Chaz Ebert

"CIFF 2018: 'The Hate U Give' and 'Widows' on the Red Carpet": My interviews with filmmakers Steve McQueen and George Tillman Jr., author Gillian Flynn and actors Viola Davis, Michelle Rodriguez and Amandla Stenberg at the Chicago International Film Festival, published at Indie Outlook.

“There’s no question Tillman Jr.’s film would make an essential double bill with Carlos López Estrada’s ‘Blindspotting,’ another powerful illustration of modern-day prejudice amplified shamelessly by our president. ‘What I want to illuminate for audiences is the importance of having empathy instead of sympathy, of having understanding as well as the ability to listen to each another,’ Tillman Jr. told me. ‘We must have the tough conversations provoked by this film, and I’m very excited for audiences to take it all in.’ Among the most potent truths illuminated by ‘The Hate U Give’ is the tendency for white people to mistake ‘color blindness’ as a form of acceptance. Having been open about her own sexuality in recent years, Stenberg told me that the importance of acknowledging one’s identity extends far beyond the realm of race. ‘Whether it’s your blackness, your gayness, your trans-ness or whatever it is, I think it is always so important to acknowledge the components of self that make us us,’ stressed Stenberg. ‘The premise of ‘I don’t see color’ is one that rests upon the idea that we live in a post-racial or post-identity society, which is not true. When we relate to one another and see, hear and regard each other, I think it’s really important to be inclusive of all the different facets of self that contribute to one’s own experience. You have to make sure that when you are seeing someone, you are seeing them not despite of who they are, but including and because of who they are.’”

"The Many Faces of Women Who Identify as Witches": Including Deborah Kampmeier, the exceptional filmmaker pictured above, in an article by The New Yorker's Naomi Fry. Catch the exhibit at NYC's ClampArt before it closes on November 24th.

“In her portrait series ‘Major Arcana: Witches in America,’ which will be shown at the ClampArt gallery, in Chelsea, beginning October 4th, the photographer Frances F. Denny seeks to explore the figure of the contemporary witch beyond the cultural chestnuts that have shrouded and obscured it. In the course of the past two years, Denny, who holds an M.F.A. in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design (where I taught her for a semester a number of years ago), has travelled in California, Louisiana, and along the East Coast, taking the portraits of dozens of women who identify as witches. Her subjects are of diverse age, social class, and ethnicity, and practice a range of rituals, often drawing on ‘mysticism, engagement with the occult, politically oriented activism, polytheism, ritualized ‘spell-work’ and plant-based healing,’ according to Denny’s exhibition notes. Among them are ‘self-proclaimed green witches, white witches, kitchen witches, hedge witches, and sex witches.’ The series as a whole aims to avoid easy formulas and, instead, to exhibit the heterogeneity and individuality of modern-day witches, Denny told me recently, adding, ‘I’m not pinning these women down.’”

"Fare Thee Well, Filmstruck": Our critic Monica Castillo eulogizes the irreplaceable streaming service in her latest Tiny Letter newsletter, which you can sign up for here.

“I don't need to tell you the news has been bad lately. But to lose a source of comfort in these trying times? It feels especially cruel, almost personally so. Last week, Time Warner pulled the plug on FilmStruck, the streaming service that offered treasures from the TCM vault and the Criterion Collection. As far as I know, there is no other streaming service that takes programming and extras so seriously. FilmStruck started the season after I began at The New York Times. It was exciting news to cover, and I felt especially attached to FilmStruck because of the timing. I picked movies from its collections after work to de-stress. Later, I came up with ideas on how to cover some new discovery I just HAD to write about. I cried my way through the early films of David Lean during a few rough patches, and I threw on old favorites like the movies of Peter O'Toole while doing chores to keep me company. FilmStruck proved the streaming world wasn't all bad news for classic movie fans, but that it could be a curated resource useful to diehard cinephiles and newcomers alike.”

"The Halloween Tree": Andrea Thompson revisits the 1993 animated gem at The Young Folks.

“Yes, Halloween has lasted, but everything mentioned above is mere window dressing. What has kept this holiday going is one of the universal truths of humanity which unites us all, and that is our fascination with fear and the individual horrors that shake us to our core. Few movies understand this, but the Emmy-winning 1993 TV movie ‘The Halloween Tree’ does. I discovered this little gem as a kid because I had the childhood most writers have, the kind with a nose fully inserted in a book. And the author of many such books was one of the great masters of sci-fi himself, Ray Bradbury, the author of the novel of the same name, as well as other books such as The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Fahrenheit 451. For the film adaptation, Bradbury actually penned the screenplay and serves as narrator, which means much of his poetic prose is preserved. The movie takes place on Halloween Night, and follows four preteen kids, Jenny, Ralph, Tom, and Wally, all costumed up as a witch, a mummy, a skeleton, and a monster respectively, and eager to join their best friend Pip. As ‘The Halloween Tree’ puts it, ‘Some say that on the day he was born, all the soda pop bottles in the world fizzed over. Pipkin, who could yell louder, sing better, and eat more popcorn. Pip, the greatest boy who ever lived.’”

"'Bohemian Rhapsody': A Disservice to Freddie Mercury": Solzy at the Movies critic Danielle Solzman eloquently explains why the hotly anticipated biopic is a missed opportunity.

“While the band’s popularity is the large focus of the film, it’s hard to discuss Freddie Mercury without knowing what we know about his sexuality. There were the rumors in the tabloids during the band’s heyday. The film doesn’t ignore it per se. There’s a montage of clips where Freddie and personal manager Paul Prenter walking into gay clubs. Even though we see him clearly hitting on guys, there’s not much outside of the relationship with Paul and even Jim Hutton (Aaron McCusker). This is it. Nothing to say of Freddie’s relationship with radio DJ Kenny Everett (Dickie Beau). There’s not even any sex scenes between them! I liken it to social media in that they’re only showing us what they want us to see. The biggest worry obviously has come true. It really does a disservice to the singer. When Freddie receives his AIDS diagnosis, the moment is not as emotional as it could be. This is a serious disease that killed many people. It led to his passing at the age of 45 years old on November 24, 1991. Here it is, the film misses an opportunity to have a bigger focus on his battle with the disease. To make matters worse, Freddie was diagnosed two years AFTER the Live Aid performance and yet as they rehearse for the gig, he opens up about his battle with AIDS! If you’re going to tell the story, tell it the right way.”

Image of the Day

Chicago's indispensable "cine-club," Filmfront, 1740 W. 18th St., is celebrating its first three-and-a-half years of free film and education programming with a fundraising party on Saturday, November 3rd. For more information on the event, visit Filmfront's official Facebook page. You can make a donation here and sign up for its monthly newsletter here. Also be sure to check out my article on Filmfront from 2016. Poster courtesy of Jacob Lindgren.

Video of the Day

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The streaming platform Kanopy recently teamed up with the Goethe-Institut to showcase 48 acclaimed German features on its streaming platform. View the complete list here.

from All Content https://ift.tt/2CW9wiK

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rollinbrigittenv8 · 7 years

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Interview: Bunkhouse’s Liz Lambert on Going Local With Hospitality Outsiders

Liz Lambert, the COO of the Bunkhouse Group, got her hospitality start at the Hotel San Jose in Austin when it was catering to down-and-out residents. Bunkhouse Group

Skift Take: Here's one of hospitality's most interesting thinkers on hiring, her approach to service, and the importance of community when launching a development.

— Colin Nagy

When canvasing interesting hoteliers and hospitality figures for who they look up to in the industry, one name is a recurring fixture: Liz Lambert, the chief operating officer of the Bunkhouse Group.

Raised in West Texas and educated in Austin, Lambert pivoted an early career in law at the District Attorney’s office in Manhattan into a varied and vivid career in hospitality. She has launched extremely thoughtful boutique properties along the entire range of price points, from the Austin Motel to the Hotel San Jose and the higher-end, discrete rock and roll hideout, the Hotel Saint Cecila.

Recently, she’s expanded her vision outside of Austin and Texas into a new property in Todos Santos, Mexico, an hour north (but a world away) from Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and is in the process of a significant edit of a classic rock and roll hotel, the Phoenix Hotel, in San Francisco.

Liz Lambert, COO of the Bunkhouse Group, is speaking at Skift Global Forum 2017. Get Tickets Now

Skift caught up with the hotelier and queried her on her thoughts on hiring, what constitutes her approach to hospitality, and the importance of community when launching a development. The interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Skift: Can you describe your start in hospitality?

Liz Lambert: When I bought the San José, I wasn’t able to raise the money to do the renovation right away and ended up running it for awhile as the residential hotel it was when I bought it – it was a pay-by-the-week home for folks who had fallen on hard times in one way or another. I saw a lot of things and learned a lot during those years. I was working the front desk, doing housekeeping shifts sometimes, and becoming intimately connected to the lives of the people who were living there.

I think those years are obviously some of the most formative in terms of my understanding of what it means to be a host, and what it means to provide shelter. I certainly learned how to perfect hospital corners during those years.

Skift: You’ve since built several cult properties, each with a different feel but with an incredible approach to service. How do you hire?

Lambert: When I first started, it was really important to me that we hire people with no hospitality experience. I wanted our employees to be able to think unconventionally, to work without a preconceived notion of service, and to bring their genuine personalities to the job. We look for people who have other things going on in their lives outside of work that they are passionate about. You can teach someone customer service but you can’t teach them how to be interesting, engaging human beings. We don’t have concierges, but we do have staff who are really excited to tell you about their favorite show happening in town that night. This is such an important part of who we are as a company. As we’ve evolved, we’ve hired a few people with hotel experience to broaden our overall expertise — but just a few.

Skift: You’re entering the San Francisco market, which is not known for great hotels. What attracted you to the Phoenix?

Lambert: The Phoenix was my mentor Chip Conley’s first hotel ever. His origins in the industry were similar to mine – we came from outside of the hotel world and wanted to create something different. His first guests were down-on-their-luck folks as well; it was the Tenderloin in the 80’s, if you can imagine.

At the same time, the Phoenix has always been a beloved rest stop for touring bands, because it has a parking lot that can hold a tour bus and the hotel is in the epicenter of some of the city’s most important live music venues. So it became this sort of legendary place over the years, where the grittiness of the Tenderloin became the backdrop for the rock and roll scene traveling through town. There were a lot of crazy memories born there. When Kurt Cobain died, he had a note in his pocket on Phoenix Hotel stationary. He had written joke wedding vows to Courtney on it. Pretty amazing.

It’s weird that San Francisco doesn’t have more interesting hotels, given the amazing history and culture of the city. We’re going to do our part to carve out a little bit of soul there if we can.

Skift: How will you change or shape it?

Lambert: We’re going to edit the Phoenix and make it a bit more cohesive from a design standpoint, and pay homage to its cultural heyday in the late 80’s and early 90’s. We want to acknowledge its roots and elevate the legend that it is, but at the same time we need to manage guests’ expectations. It’s still a motel in the heart of the Tenderloin.

It is not a huge repositioning: a refresh of the rooms and courtyard, and a renovation of the lobby. We’re excited to add some cultural programming in the amazing little oasis of the courtyard to create more community there.

Skift: How are you viewing the state of modern hospitality and the opportunity for hotels?

Lambert: Technology is of course changing hotels dramatically, much like it has changed the music industry, retail, film and television, and transportation. In hotels, AirBnB has been the great technological disruptor. But a good hotel, a hotel that is part of a fabric of a place, is something that can’t be replaced. Every day, a different community is created in the lobby and common spaces of a hotel. There is a collective energy and excitement that can’t happen when you are renting someone’s apartment while they are out of town.

Skift: What is your design philosophy?

Lambert: My brother Lyndon always said, “Let people be the color in the room.” Lots of hotels really over-design: there’s clutter and too much stuff everywhere. When you create a backdrop for things to happen, a kind of blank canvas for human experience then that’s where the magic is.

Skift: What is special about your Austin roots?

Lambert: Austin is changing. South Congress is changing. But for me Austin is the perfect amalgamation of things that haven’t changed. It’s a university town, a capital, the converging point for hippies and rednecks. It’s the home of the cosmic cowboy. It is the blue dot in the middle of a red state, a town built on an ancient underground aquifer, with a music-centric culture that has remained remarkably independent throughout its history. Austin has done really well at staying weird even as it changes and grows.

Skift: How did you approach Todos Santos in terms of community and culture?

Lambert: The hotel in Todos Santos was a new challenge for us since it isn’t our native culture. Building community is more than just paying lip service. It’s about spending a lot of time in a region, getting to understand it deeply. It’s about elevating those people and businesses in the community that are doing meaningful things, from the artists to the musicians to the ladies who run the fish taco stand, and finding ways to connect our guests to them. Our goal is to try to eliminate the gated walls and barriers between guests and the people who live there.

For example, we want our guests to be able to walk down to the beach and interact directly with the fishermen to buy their daily catch that we can prepare for them in the hotel restaurant. We want people to make those real connections to this magical place and the people who live here.

For Hotel San Cristobal, one of our biggest concerns was about the idea of bringing in staff from Cabo. Todos Santos didn’t have a big service industry to tap into. It’s a small town that hasn’t had a lot of tourism over the years. The service model in Cabo is generally very formal and rigid, and we didn’t want a bunch of people working at the hotel who were from out of town and unfamiliar with Todos Santos. And more than anything, we wanted to create opportunity and jobs among the local community.

Skift: How did you approach staffing the hotel?

Lambert: Because so few people in the community had customer service experience, and because we didn’t want to bring in a bunch of staff from outside the community, we had to figure out how to build the talent within Todos Santos. We worked with an amazing organization called Saira Hospitality. They do pop-up training schools that focus on the deeper, intangible elements of hospitality. They don’t teach staff where to put the fancy fork on the table so much as they teach students how to connect genuinely with hotel guests. This isn’t something that is generally encouraged in other Mexican beachfront hotels.

One of my favorite things they do at the school is to expose students to the kinds of vacation experiences that guests are having. They do wine and culinary tastings, take students out on adventure trips etc. This allows future staff to really understand what a vacation here feels like from the guest’s perspective, which is so awesome and really translates to a more engaging relationship between staff and guests.

Another thing I love is that is that we opened the school up to anyone in the community, not just those who wanted to work for us. We received over 100 applications and were able to accept 48 students. Of those, about 40 percent ended up getting jobs at our hotel while the other 60 percent are working elsewhere in town or have businesses of their own. In the end, over 98 percent of Hotel San Cristobal’s staff are locals. We’re really proud of that.

Skift: What are you inspired by in hospitality today? What are trends you see?

Lambert: I’m inspired by the ways really good hotels continue to reinvent themselves and create culture and meaning through programming. Little things like the music playing and the retail that’s being sold have such a strong ability to tell the story of a place and to make people leave with a sense of having been somewhere. We’ve got everything from 80’s-style water aerobics in the pool at the Austin Motel to an annual pet parade in the parking lot at the San Jose and way more.

I’m amazed what the teams at each of the properties come up with to continue to grow and build on the spirit of each of the hotels. It’s incredible to watch how the culture that our staff comes up with continues to build the identity of each of these places. It really does take a village, and I’m lucky that the Bunkhouse, village is as amazing as it is. I think this is the trend that most hospitality companies are trying to figure out. How to create real experiences. There’s no playbook for it. It’s really about the creativity and shared passion of the group doing the work.

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touristguidebuzz · 7 years

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Interview: Bunkhouse’s Liz Lambert on Going Local With Hospitality Outsiders

Liz Lambert, the COO of the Bunkhouse Group, got her hospitality start at the Hotel San Jose in Austin when it was catering to down-and-out residents. Bunkhouse Group

Skift Take: Here's one of hospitality's most interesting thinkers on hiring, her approach to service, and the importance of community when launching a development.

— Colin Nagy

When canvasing interesting hoteliers and hospitality figures for who they look up to in the industry, one name is a recurring fixture: Liz Lambert, the chief operating officer of the Bunkhouse Group.

Liz Lambert, COO of the Bunkhouse Group, is speaking at Skift Global Forum 2017. Get Tickets Now

Skift: Can you describe your start in hospitality?

Skift: You’ve since built several cult properties, each with a different feel but with an incredible approach to service. How do you hire?

Skift: You’re entering the San Francisco market, which is not known for great hotels. What attracted you to the Phoenix?

Skift: How will you change or shape it?

Skift: How are you viewing the state of modern hospitality and the opportunity for hotels?

Skift: What is your design philosophy?

Skift: What is special about your Austin roots?

Skift: How did you approach Todos Santos in terms of community and culture?

Skift: How did you approach staffing the hotel?

Skift: What are you inspired by in hospitality today? What are trends you see?

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cronicallona-blog · 7 years

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THE HISTORY OF SOCIAL NET WORKING

Long before it became the commercialized mass information and entertainment juggernaut it is today, long before it was accessible to the general public, and certainly many years before Al Gore claimed he “took the initiative in creating” it, the Internet – and its predecessors – were a focal point for social interactivity. Granted, computer networking was initially envisioned in the heyday of The Beatles as a military-centric command and control scheme. But as it expanded beyond just a privileged few hubs and nodes, so too did the idea that connected computers might also make a great forum for discussing mutual topics of interest, and perhaps even meeting or renewing acquaintances with other humans. In the 1970s, that process began in earnest.

Mullets reigned supreme in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s; computers were a far rarer commodity. Machine languages were bewildering, and their potential seemingly limited. What’s more, this whole sitting-in-front-of-a-keyboard thing was so… isolationistic. Put all this together and you have a medium where only the most ardent enthusiasts and techno-babbling hobbyists dared tread. It was, in effect, a breeding ground for pocket-protector-wearing societal rejects, or nerds. Boring, reclusive nerds at that.

Yet it also was during this time, and with a parade of purportedly antisocial geeks at the helm, that the very gregarious notion of social networking would take its first steps towards becoming the omnipresent cultural phenomenon we know and love in 2014.

BBS, AOL AND COMPUSERVE: THE INFANT YEARS

“Put all this together and you have a medium where only the most ardent enthusiasts and techno-babbling hobbyists dared tread.”

It started with the BBS. Short for Bulletin Board System, these online meeting places were effectively independently-produced hunks of code that allowed users to communicate with a central system where they could download files or games (many times including pirated software) and post messages to other users. Accessed over telephone lines via a modem, BBSes were often run by hobbyists who carefully nurtured the social aspects and interest-specific nature of their projects – which, more often than not in those early days of computers, was technology-related. Moreover, long distance calling rates usually applied for out-of-towners, so many Bulletin Boards were locals-only affairs that in turn spurred local in-person gatherings. And voila, just like that, suddenly the antisocial had become social.

The BBS was no joke. Though the technology of the time restricted the flexibility of these systems, and the end-user’s experience, to text-only exchanges of data that crawled along at glacial speed, BBSes continued to gain popularity throughout the ‘80s and well into the ‘90s, when the Internet truly kicked into gear. Indeed, some services – such as Tom Jennings’ FidoNet – linked numerous BBSes together into worldwide computer networks that managed to survive the Internet revolution.

But there were also other avenues for social interaction long before the Internet exploded onto the mainstream consciousness. One such option was CompuServe, a service that began life in the 1970s as a business-oriented mainframe computer communication solution, but expanded into the public domain in the late 1980s.

CompuServe allowed members to share files and access news and events. But it also offered something few had ever experienced – true interaction. Not only could you send a message to your friend via a newfangled technology dubbed “e-mail” (granted, the concept of e-mail wasn’t exactly newfangled at the time, though widespread public access to it was). You could also join any of CompuServe’s thousands of discussion forums to yap with thousands of other members on virtually any important subject of the day. Those forums proved tremendously popular and paved the way for the modern iterations we know today.

But if there is a true precursor to today’s social networking sites, it was likely spawned under the AOL (America Online) umbrella. In many ways, and for many people, AOL was the Internet before the Internet, and its member-created communities (complete with searchable “Member Profiles,” in which users would list pertinent details about themselves), were arguably the service’s most fascinating, forward-thinking feature.

Yet there was no stopping the real Internet, and by the mid-1990s it was moving full bore. Yahoo had just set up shop, Amazon had just begun selling books, and the race to get a PC in every household was on. And, by 1995, the site that may have been the first to fulfill the modern definition of social networking was born.

THE INTERNET BOOM: SOCIAL NETWORKING’S ADOLESCENCE

Though differing from many current social networking sites in that it asks not “Who can I connect with?” but rather, “Who can I connect with that was once a schoolmate of mine?” Classmates.com proved almost immediately that the idea of a virtual reunion was a good one. Early users could not create profiles, but they could locate long-lost grade school chums, menacing school bullies and maybe even that prom date they just couldn’t forget. It was a hit almost immediately, and even today the service boasts some 57 million registered accounts.

One of the first iterations of SixDegrees.com.

That same level of success can’t be said for SixDegrees.com. Sporting a name based on the theory somehow associated with actor Kevin Bacon that no person is separated by more than six degrees from another, the site sprung up in 1997 and was one of the very first to allow its users to create profiles, invite friends, organize groups, and surf other user profiles. Its founders worked the six degrees angle hard by encouraging members to bring more people into the fold. Unfortunately, this “encouragement” ultimately became a bit too pushy for many, and the site slowly devolved into a loose association of computer users and numerous complaints of spam-filled membership drives. SixDegrees.com folded completely just after the turn of the millennium.

Other sites of the era opted solely for niche, demographic-driven markets. One was AsianAvenue.com, founded in 1997. A product of Community Connect Inc., which itself was founded just one year prior in the New York apartment of former investment banker and the future Community Connect CEO, AsianAvenue.com was followed by BlackPlanet.com in 1999 and by the Hispanic-oriented MiGente.com in 2000. All three still exist today, with BlackPlanet.com in particular still enjoying tremendous success with more than eight million visitors per month.

FRIENDSTER, LINKEDIN, MYSPACE AND FACEBOOK: THE BIZ GROWS UP

In 2002, social networking hit really its stride with the launch of Friendster. Friendster used a degree of separation concept similar to that of the now-defunct SixDegrees.com, refined it into a routine dubbed the “Circle of Friends,” and promoted the idea that a rich online community can exist only between people who truly have common bonds. And it ensured there were plenty of ways to discover those bonds.

An interface that shared many of the same traits one would find at an online dating site certainly didn’t seem to hurt. Friendster CEO Jonathan Abrams even once referred to his creation as a dating site that isn’t about dating. Within a year after its launch, Friendster boasted more than three million registered users and a ton of investment interest. Unfortunately, the service has since seen more than its fair share of technical difficulties, questionable management decisions, and a resulting drop in its North American fortunes. Although briefly enjoying success in Indonesia and in the Philippines, Friendster has since abandoned social networking and now exists solely as an online gaming site.Introduced just a year later in 2003, LinkedIn took a decidedly more serious, sober approach to the social networking phenomenon. Rather than being a mere playground for former classmates, teenagers, and cyberspace Don Juans, LinkedIn was, and still is, a networking resource for business people who want to connect with other professionals. In fact, LinkedIn contacts are referred to as “connections.” Today, LinkedIn boasts more than 297 million members.MySpace also launched in 2003. Though it no longer resides upon the social networking throne in many English-speaking countries – that honor now belongs to Facebook just about everywhere – MySpace was once the perennial favorite. It did so by tempting the key young adult demographic with music, music videos, and a funky, feature-filled environment. It looked and felt hipper than major competitor Friendster right from the start, and it conducted a campaign of sorts in the early days to show alienated Friendster users just what they were missing. Over the years however, the number of casual Myspace users declined, and today the site exists now as a social networking site targeted to bands and musicians.

As expected, the ubiquitous Facebook now leads the global social networking pack. Founded, like many social networking sites, by university students who initially peddled their product to other university students, Facebook launched in 2004 as a Harvard-only exercise and remained a campus-oriented site for two full years before finally opening to the general public in 2006. Yet, even by that time, Facebook was considered big business. So much so that, by 2009, Silicon Valley bigwigs such as Paypal co-founder and billionaire Peter Thiel invested tens of millions of dollars just to see it flourish.The secret of Facebook’s success — the site currently boasts more than 1.3 billion active users — is a subject of much debate. Some point to its ease of use, others to its multitude of easily-accessed features, and still others, to its memorable name. A highly targeted advertising model certainly doesn’t hurt, either, nor did financial injections such as the $60 million from noted Hong Kong tycoon Li Ka-shing in 2007. Regardless, there’s universal agreement on one thing: Facebook promotes both honesty and openness. It seems people really enjoy being themselves, and throwing that openness out there for all to see.PULLING AHEAD: HOW FACEBOOK AND TWITTER WON THE WEBFacebook is king for a reason. It wasn’t just through luck that founder Mark Zuckerberg’s darling came to reign supreme over the social media kingdom. It was, in fact, a series of smart moves and innovative features that set the platform apart from the rest of the social media pack. First and foremost, the 2007 launch of the Facebook Platform was key to site’s success. The open API made it possible for third-party developers to create applications that work within Facebook itself. Almost immediately after being released, the platform gained a massive amount of attention. At one point in time, Facebook had hundreds of thousands of apps built on the platform, so many that Facebook launched the Facebook App Store to organize and display them all. Twitter, meanwhile, created its own API and enjoyed similar success as a result.DT’s early hands-on with Google+.The other key to success was Facebook’s ubiquitous ‘Like’ button, which broke free from the bounds of the site and began appearing all over the Internet. Now you can ‘like’ or “tweet’ just about everything even when you’re not on Facebook or Twitter. Realizing the power of social networking, Google decided to launch their own social network (Google+) in 2007. It differed from Facebook and Twitter in that it wasn’t necessarily a full-featured networking site, but rather a social “layer” of the overall Google experience. Initially, Google generated a lot of buzz with the service’s Hangouts feature, which allowed users to enter live video chats with other online friends. At the time of launch, Facebook was scrambling to keep up by integrating a video chat feature of their own.Within just four weeks, Google+ had garnered 25 million unique visitors, with as much as 540 million active monthly users as of June 2014. Regardless, the service definitely didn’t dethrone Zuckerberg’s behemoth, especially considering more than half of Google+ users have never even visited the service’s official site. It still arguably showed the world that there was still room for innovation and competition in the realm of social networking, though.THE MULTI-PLATFORMED SELF: THE RISE OF MOBILEOver the course of the past two years, “Fourth screen” technology — smartphones, tablets, etc. — has changed social networking and the way we communicate with one another entirely. What used to sit on our desks now conveniently fits in the palm of our hands, allowing us to effortlessly utilize functionality once reserved for multiple devices wherever we go.Given the abrupt rise in mobile computing, it’s not surprising the most popular social media platforms of the past several years hinge on the capabilities of smartphones. Photo and video-sharing applications such as Snapchat and Instagram, the latter of which has now garnered a staggering 20 billion images since the app’s initial inception in October 2010, exist almost entirely on mobile. The same goes with platforms such as Foursquare, an application in which users use their smartphones to check in to various locations around the globe, and various matchmaking services. Tinder, for instance, currently boasts more than 10 million daily users, each of which swipes for potential partners based on their approximately in relation to their smartphone.Mobile-based platforms also approach social networking in an entirely different fashion than their Web-based counterparts. Rather than offering a comprehensive social networking experience like the now-defunct Myspace and the struggling Google+, they instead specialize in a specific kind of interaction service that involves the sharing of public images (Instagram), the private sharing of images sharing (Snapchat), augmented reality (Foursquare), and location-based matchmaking (Tinder). People essentially use the various services in conjunction with other platforms to build a comprehensive, digital identity.“People now exist on multiple platforms, and instead of fighting against this trend, larger companies are tapping into this new environment.”Indeed social media companies no longer see the market as strictly zero-sum, or at least that’s what Zuckerberg continues to say in public. The registration process for hundreds of applications such Snapchat, Instagram, Foursquare, and Tinder can be completed using already-existing Facebook, Gmail, or Twitter accounts. Furthermore, a number of platforms allow users to simultaneously post content using several platforms at once. Again, people now exist on multiple platforms, and instead of fighting against this trend, larger companies are tapping into this new environment.VIRTUAL REALITY AND AUGMENTED REALITY: THE FUTURE OF SOCIAL NETWORKINGIn March 2014, Facebook acquired Oculus VR, a company on the cusp of mass producing virtual-reality headsets. Upon sealing the deal, Zuckerberg commented regarding the communication potential for the platform, highlighting the slew of potential uses for the virtual technology when it comes to academics, viewing live events, and consulting with doctors face-to-face. However, Facebook has taken a hands-off approach in its management of Oculus VR, allowing the company to continue focusing predominately on gaming applications while other parties — i.e. the Pentagon — quietly look into using virtual reality headsets for military purposes. A number of medical experts have even begun using virtual reality to treat anxiety, combat-induced P.T.S.D., and other pronounced mental illnesses. Adult entertainment, meanwhile, has invested in virtual reality for years.Oculus RiftTo simplify my point, it appears a good deal of people have high hopes that virtual reality will become the next blockbuster computing platform. The technology already exists, and with the consumer version of the Oculus Rift VR headset slated to go on sale in late 2014 for under $300, the potential for widespread adoption of virtual reality has never been greater. At the very least, the Rift’s success or failure in the market will shape Facebook’s approach toward incorporating virtual reality. Note that augmented reality differs from virtual reality in that it applies digital interaction to the real world instead of creating an audio-visual experience from scratch. In terms of social networking, augmented reality offers a number of possibilities. For instance, people could share their name, interests, relationship status, and mutual friends all within a digital sphere.Google GlassBelieve it or not, augmented reality already exists in apps like Yelp and Google Ingress. Smartphones are more than capable of delivering augmented reality, and as one might expect, the technology is the entire concept driving Google Glass’ digital integration with the real world. Google’s deliberate decision to sell Glass at an inflated price of $1,500, however, is likely meant to exclude the general public while the tech giant and a selective group of consumers — aka “explorers” work to hammer out the device’s flaws. The day Google lowers the price of Glass to its estimated production cost of $150 marks the day when widespread adoption of augmented reality, including augmented reality in social networking, becomes a greater possibility. Until then, there’s always Snapchat and the overuse of hashtags in just about everything we do.THE BID FOR ORIGINALITY: FACEBOOK AND TWITTER BET BIG ON VIDEO AND LIVESTREAMINGFueled by the rise of third-party apps, social media giants were forced to take note of the video format by 2012. But not before that same format, in a different guise, had laid waste to any form of originality on their respective services.A spending spree followed. Within the span of just a couple of years, several major buyouts —and failed acquisition attempts — took place within the sector. In 2012, Twitter purchased video-looping platform, Vine. Later that same year, Facebook bought Instagram, which would eventually introduce video-sharing into its own app app to great success. Then in 2013, Facebook made its infamous bid for Snapchat, which was turned down by the makers of the ephemeral messaging app.VineMeanwhile, the video-shaped void on Facebook and Twitter had been filled by new media companies that were experts in the art of viral content (i.e. BuzzFeed, 9GAG, Mashable). An earlier source had been YouTube, which had heralded the dawn of the internet celebrity with its homegrown roster of creators. Despite their popularity, however, viral videos posed more complications for social media giants than they did opportunities.Left to operate independently, both Instagram and Vine proved to be solid investments. Their respective owners, however, were still facing the same issue. By 2015, Twitter was being labelled as “inaccessible” due to its flat growth in user numbers. Facebook, on the other hand, saw its users sharing less personal information. Instead of original posts, Facebook news feeds and Twitter timelines became bloated with viral videos, memes, GIFs, and clickbait articles — making them harder to navigate in the process. As in the past, the perceived solution came from an existing product, which ended up paying the ultimate price for its abrupt rise.Having dominated the conversation at the 2015 SXSW Interactive festival, livestreaming app Meerkat caught the attention of Twitter. Capitalizing on what it viewed as an emerging trend, Twitter bought rival livestreaming app Periscope just a few months later. It has since integrated Periscope streams into its main platform, in an attempt to further popularize the app. Fast forward a few months to the end of 2015, and Facebook inevitably followed suit with the launch of Live Video. Overshadowed by its rivals, Meerkat quickly quickly abandoned livestreaming altogether.PeriscopeIt is easy to see the attraction live broadcasts hold for social networks. Like viral videos, livestreams have the unique benefit of making viewers feel like they are ‘in the moment.’ A popular livestream has a snowball effect and, in turn, can quickly become a trending topic. Like the immediacy offered by Snapchat, the format can transform the mundane into the unmissable. Best of all, it allows social networks to lay claim to something original, which now autoplays on its flagship platform.The integration of the livestream on Twitter and Facebook has also made the two companies more open to striking broadcast deals with third-parties. In turn, having seen the success that BuzzFeed and its counterparts have had with video, both traditional and new media companies have been quick to embrace Periscope and Facebook Live.Nowhere is this theory better evidenced than Twitter’s recent deal to livestream NFL games. This compromise on the part of the social media giants comes in the wake of the realization that they can no longer be relegated to the second, third, or fourth screen. They have to be the main attraction by showcasing viral, trending, or popular visual media — whether original or not — in real-time, fueling interaction and reaction in the process.This article was originally published on August 5, 2014, and updated on May 4, 2016, by Saqib Shah to reflect the widespread adoption of video-sharing platforms and livestreaming.

REFERENCE:(https://www.digitaltrends.com/features/the-history-of-social-networking/)

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betweenthenotesblog · 7 years

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Just What The World Doesn’t Need - Another Top 10 Band List

For going on two years now, since I first started this music blog, I’ve been fighting the urge to publish my all-time top 10 favorite artist list.

There are many faults in publishing a favorite artist list. First off, when the entity doing so (me), doesn’t have the street cred, a favorite artist list can fall flat. Let’s face it, I’m no Pitchfork or SPIN Magazine columnist. Also, such lists are very subjective. Finally, proclaiming a top band list can be seen as a tad narcissistic because who really cares what a blogger like me thinks?

That said, I’ve often wondered how I’d rank my favorite artists/bands. When I think about that, I can certainly come up with a few top candidates right off the bat, but after the first three or four obvious artists come to my mind, filling the list out seems difficult. I also struggle with how to rank those bands I loved when I was young versus those I gravitate to as I am close to entering my sixth decade of life.

Answering this question really isn’t as easy as it might seem.

But recently, I attempted to find my answer. I tried to do so as objectively as I possibly could. This is where my long-time, trusted friend comes in - “The Weighted Average.”

In an attempt to objectively determine who my top 10 favorite artists are, I did what I often do when making a big decision, things like purchasing a car or changing jobs. I developed a weighted-average spreadsheet to help bring objectivity to the answering of this question.

The spreadsheet I built involved quantifying the number of iTunes songs I have in my catalog for each artist, along with the breadth of each artist’s overall number of published songs and finally, and most highly weighted, I tried to rate the amount I listen to each artist at the present time. I weighted this factor more because I believe that anyone’s favorite artists can fluctuate based on their current listening habits. What I mean by that is if I were doing this list when I was 18 years old, Led Zeppelin and The Police would have made the cut. Now? Not a chance because I rarely listen to either of those bands, despite the respect I have for each.

Anyway, I used those factors to create a weighted spreadsheet using a 5-to-1 scale to try to officially quantify my top 10 favorite artist list. Those ten artists with the highest average score made the cut.

Without further explanation for how I got there, here is a look at my current Top 10 favorite artist list, subject to change.

# 10 - J Cole

I can thank my son Jonathan for bringing J Cole’s music to me. That boy has been singing J Cole’s praises for the last few years. I find myself listening to J Cole’s 2013 release Born Sinner constantly and his newer stuff is almost as good. Considering I’m an older Gen-Xer who missed the rap revolution by about five years, I was surprised and somewhat delighted to see a rap artist make my top 10 list.

Jim’s Favs: 1) Born Sinner, 2) 2014 Forest Hills Drive

Discography: http://www.allmusic.com/artist/j-cole-mn0001089515/discography

#9 - Husker Du

I am definitely a product of the mid-to-late 1980s pre-alternative music explosion and in my world, Husker Du was a big part of that. I still listen to their albums fairly regularly, especially their 1987 swan swan song double-album Warehouse: Songs and Stories. Most of their catalog still holds up, if you can get past the poor production quality that makes virtually every song sound like it was recorded inside an extra large tin can. I never saw them live, but have seen their lead singer Bob Mould play countless times.

Jim’s Favs: 1) Warehouse: Songs and Stories, 2) New Day Rising, 3) Flip Your Whig

Discography: http://www.allmusic.com/artist/h%C3%BCsker-d%C3%BC-mn0000639053/discography

#8 - Pixies

See my Husker Du commentary for why a guy like me might fall in love with an awesome band like the Pixies. The Pixies changed the college music game for my generation like few others. I still listen to their albums quite often. There might not have been a Nirvana without these forebears who hit the scene a few years prior to the Grunge movement. They reunited a couple of years ago and while the new albums don’t move me as much as the older stuff, it is good to see them be able to still put out quality music.

Jim’s Favs: 1) Doolittle, 2) Trompe le Monde

Discography: http://www.allmusic.com/artist/pixies-mn0000895136/discography

#7 - Wilco

Where do I start with Jeff Tweedy and his revolving door of mates? As I reviewed my spreadsheet findings, I quickly realized that this band would have been in my top three just five years ago, as I really don’t listen to them as much now as back then. But, I certainly have a lot of their songs in my iTunes catalog and that counts for a lot. I have also seen them live 5+ times and although I’ve passed on doing so that the last couple of Kansas City tour stops, they are a great live band and definitely worthy of being in any top 10 artist list.

Jim’s Favs: 1) Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, 2) Summerteeth, 3) Sky Blue Sky

Discography: http://www.allmusic.com/artist/wilco-mn0000254215/discography

#6 - The Good Life

I would not have guessed that this Tim Kasher side-project would make my top 10 list. But indeed, the spreadsheet tells me they are worthy. The Good Life, which doubles as the state motto for Kasher’s (and my) home state of Nebraska, has been described as the “softer-rock” side of Kasher’s artistry. Tim Kasher’s primary fame (if you can call it that) is for the work he has done with his band, Cursive. He started The Good Life in 2000 and they still put out great music out as evidenced by their under rated 2015 release Everybody’s Coming Down.

Then again, maybe I shouldn’t be surprised that The Good Life made the list. After all, they are one of only four bands, the others being Husker Du, The Afghan Whigs and Radiohead, for which I have adorned a band sticker on my car. Currently, a The Good Life sticker is attached to my Volkswagen GTI.

Their 2003 release Album of The Year is considered their finest work. It is a story of a lost soul, played out on the streets of Omaha and Council Bluffs. Just the recipe for a guy like me who grew up in Nebraska.

Jim’s Favs: 1) Album of the Year, 2) Everybody’s Coming Down

Discography: http://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-good-life-mn0000059700/discography

#5 - The Afghan Whigs

Oh yes. The Afghan Whigs.

There was a time in my life when this band meant everything to me. While most people have either never heard of, or are only vaguely familiar with, The Afghan Whigs, there are those among us who just can’t get enough of them. This is evidenced by the 1,384 ardent members of “The Congregation” a very active Facebook group for hard core fans like me. I never saw them live during their heyday, but when they reunited in 2013 after a 12-year hiatus, I flew to Atlanta with my college buddy and fellow Whigs disciple Tim, to see them play. That show and that album Do to the Beast proved that The Afghan Whigs are one of the best bands and live acts around, even as they enter the AARP zone. The Afghan Whigs will release a new studio album later in 2017 and I can’t wait to listen to it.

Jim’s Favs: 1) Gentlemen, 2) Black Love, 3) 1965

Discography: http://www.allmusic.com/artist/the-afghan-whigs-mn0000602859/discography

#4 - Cursive

Cursive is another former alt-music media darling that has never had legit mainstream success. But, that doesn’t diminish their greatness. These Nebraska natives and flag bearers for the critically acclaimed Omaha music scene have made a national impact and still sell out clubs all over America.

There are two main reasons why I love this band. First, there is Tim Kasher’s lyrics. This guy can tell a story like few others and it is usually a very twisted one. Several of their albums are concept works in nature. Secondly, the sounds this band creates using dissonant guitar chord progressions is very unique. Their sound is an acquired taste, for sure. This is one of those bands that I absolutely love, but that few of my contemporaries have ever gotten into.

Despite that, I always feel solace when I either attend one of their shows or I read that they’ve sold out famous clubs in Chicago, LA or New York. This underscores the fact that there are others who also see this band’s brilliance. I find strange comfort in that.

Jim’s Favs: 1) Happy Hollow, 2) I AM GEMINI, 3) The Ugly Organ

Discography: http://www.allmusic.com/artist/cursive-mn0000138271/discography

#3 - Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks

Make no mistake. I’ve had a man crush on Stephen Malkmus and his guitar work for over a decade. It all started in 2003, when I saw Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks open for Radiohead in St. Louis.

I didn’t even know Malkmus’ name prior to that evening. I knew of his ‘90s band Pavement, but never really listened to them.

It is pretty rare for an opening act to make an impact, but I was immediately struck by the sounds Stephen & The Jicks made that night. From there, I purchased a couple of his solo albums and eventually became hooked.

While Stephen Malkmus is most known for fronting the 90s alt-rock band Pavement, I would say that his post-Pavement solo albums have showcased his guitar playing more than much of his Pavement work.

Beyond the excellent guitar sound, his unique song structures and quirky lyrics make him an acquired taste. But if you like excellent alt-rock guitar and unconventional lyrical structures, this guy just might be for you.

Jim’s Favs: 1) Real Emotional Trash, 2) Wig Out at Jagbags, 3) Stephen Malkmus (self-titled)

Discography: http://www.allmusic.com/artist/stephen-malkmus-the-jicks-mn0002016143/discography

#2 - Pavement

If you’ve gotten this far, you know that I knew of the band Pavement before I ever knew who their frontman was.

And when I say I “knew Pavement,” I really didn’t really know them when they were an active band. Pavement was a living, breathing thing from 1992 to 1999 but my only real knowledge was their radio hit “Cut Your Hair” which I never really cared for.

But after seeing Malkmus live, I went back and started listening to Pavement’s catalog, the whole time wondering what the hell I was doing in the 1990s to have not listened to them when it was all actually happening.

I love Pavement for many of the same reasons I love Stephen Malkmus. It is the unique song structures combined with the incredible guitar playing. This band also had a penchant for long guitar outros, always a plus in my book. But something else that I found enduring with Pavement was the low-fi sense about them. Many of their early albums sounded like they were produced in a garage. The music was almost Guided By Voices-esque (another band I truly adore).

Low-fi or not, Pavement is a great, great band. One that I wish I had gotten into when they were still producing albums. Luckily, they made Kansas City a reunion tour stop several years ago and played an excellent sold out show at The Uptown Theater.

JIm’s Favs: 1) Wowee Zowee, 2) Brighten the Corners, 3) Slanted and Enchanted.

Discography: http://www.allmusic.com/artist/pavement-mn0000752314/discography

#1 - Radiohead

To give you a sense for how much I love Radiohead, here is a stat for you. As I dug into my iTunes library to see how many songs I had downloaded for each artist, Radiohead’s total number came in at 181 songs, including bootlegs. The next closest band, Wilco, was at 105 songs. These 181 Radiohead songs did not include the countless dozens of songs I’ve downloaded that pay tribute to Radiohead. Compilations and albums like Radiodread, Strung Out On OK Computer “Radiohead Dubs” AmpLIve’s RainyDayz Remixes, etc.

The sheer number of Radiohead or Radiohead inspired songs I own is maddening. Combine that, with the fact that the only time I have ever gotten choked up at a concert was when Radiohead played “How To Disappear Completely” the first time I saw them play live. That happened despite me being a guy who never cries. Yet there I was, getting all kind of the feels.

Knowing that Radiohead is my all-time favorite band is the easy part in my mind. The hard question I often ask myself is why? Why do I love Radiohead so much?

A skeptic would tell you that their songs are depressing, that many of their albums sound the same, that they’re a bit pretentious. And those observations aren’t necessarily off base.

So why do I love them? As I thought about this more, there are a myriad of reasons:

Radiohead aren’t has-beens. Instead, they have constantly worked to re-invent their sound, the way they release albums, how they do business.

They are arguably the best live band in the world.

They are all incredible musicians. Listen to their “The King of Limbs” album (my least favorite of theirs, by the way) and tell me that these guys aren’t world-class musicians.

They are nerdy, in the coolest way possible.

The sound of Thom Yorke’s vocals. Oh, that voice. It speaks to my soul.

Jonny Greenwood - He is timeless in every imaginable way. The creativity he brings to making interesting sounds is unmatched.

Longevity - They’ve stayed together, while remaining relevant for going on 26 years.

Tonight at Sprint Center will be the fifth time I’ve seen Radiohead play live.

Great bands like Radiohead don’t last forever. I don’t foresee, nor do I even want Radiohead to hang on like The Rolling Stones or The Who. The reality is that I am getting older. And they are getting older. I get the sense that this may be one of, IF NOT THE last time, I’ll ever see them play. That is why I plan on getting as close to the stage as I possibly can this evening.

It’s not every day you get to see your all-time favorite band play music. So I’m going to make this count.

Jim’s Favs: 1) OK Computer, 2) In Rainbows, 3) The Bends, 4) Kid A

Discography: http://www.allmusic.com/artist/radiohead-mn0000326249/discography

#JCole #Pixies #huskerdu #radiohead #stephenmalkmus #cursive #AfghanWhigs #pavement #TheGoodLife #Wilco

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