I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: AIRBORNE TOXIC EVENT-“Sometime Around Midnight” (2009).

I’ve been hearing this song on the radio a lot lately (WRFF especially seems to play it a lot).  But they never said who it was!  I liked it, but I was sure it sounded like an old song.  Ack, but what was it?  I kept coming up with a band called Dear Mr. President.  And then I heard the truth.  It was the Airborne Toxic Event.

I’m still not sure that Dear Mr President is who I’m thinking of, but their song “Fate” has a similar vocal style at the beginning…it morphs into a different song altogether, but maybe that is what  was thinking of.

As for this ATE song, I really like it.  It’s got this weird quality that I find appealing.  It’s  a slow builder, but the vocals are what’s so intriguing about it…very understated with a whispered feel, until the big stadium chorus comes in.  And yet, there’s no chorus.  The song builds and builds to a chorus that never arrives.  Nice trick, guys.

Heh, I was just looking back over my previous post about Airborne Toxic Event, and I see that I do know this song from when I first listened to it on MySpace back in June 2008.  At that time I compared them to the Church.  I guess I can’t let them be their own band.

I’m certainly going to have to check out their CD

[READ: March 26, 2009] “Tails of Manhattan”

I don’t always include the one page pieces from the New Yorker, but since I like Woody Allen, I figured I’d include this one.  It also gets a special mention because in Allen’s collected essays he often has jokey pieces that are topical, and it’s rather rare that I am completely aware of the topical reference.

This piece is about two old Jewish men who are reincarnated as lobsters (funny in itself), but it also concerns Bernie Madoff.  And since it’s unavoidable, I know who Madoff is an what he did.  I assume this piece would be funny in even you didn’t know who that was (or in 5 years when we forget), because the idea of lobster revenge is always funny.

Allen’s New Yorker pieces aren’t always funny, so it’s nice to see that he can still do a concise little piece like this that really hits the mark.