Malkmus/Philly Weekend Synopsis

Hi gang. Sorry I’ve been out of commission for so long, and that I never finished Part II of Worst Songs of All Time. What happened was I was sitting down to write about “Silly Love Songs” by Paul McCartney, and how much I hate it, and while I was writing I got more and more angry about it, then suddenly I blacked out. When I finally came to I was in a mental hospital, where they told me I had been singing Wings’ Greatest Hits and banging my head against the wall for the past week. Afterwards they let me go, but told me to take a break from blogging about shitty music for at least a few weeks.

So don’t worry, I’ll finish up Part II a little later. But before that I’d like to discuss some musical acts that I actually enjoy. When I told everyone I was going to see Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks in Philly a few weeks ago, most peoples’ reactions were along the lines of, “Who the fuck is that?” Well, that’s sort of like saying who the fuck is Elvis or The Pope, but probably worse. The bottom line is this: if I’m going to a concert, that means the band either kicks ass or is Jimmy Buffett (however Buffett concerts promote binge drinking, an activity which kicks ass).

Stephen Malkmus performs his latest hit “Hopscotch Willie”

In Philly I hung out with my old DX friend. I won’t use his real name here, lest this blog entry become evidence in a court of law. Let’s call him “Jewberg” (his first name is Michael, but I’ve never called him Michael or Mike before, not once). The main objectives for this weekend were:

(1) play Rockband for PS3
(2) see Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks
(3) participate in a fantasy baseball auction

Objective 1 was accomplished immediately. Rockband is probably superior to Guitar Hero in terms of gameplay, but it may take a while to get used to if you’re a Guitar Hero expert-level player. What sucked was I was right in the middle of totally shredding on the “In Bloom” guitar solo, when my friend’s fiancée returned home and started hassling us. However, that did lead to the following exchange which I found amusing:

Fiancée: Michael, why does the whole house smell like pot?
Jewberg: Because we were smoking pot.

Then she started going on and on about how there was a 7 year old coming to their house and it would be bad if the house smelled like weed. Technically this was true. What she failed to mention was that the 7 year old stepdaughter of a guy, who was coming over to smoke weed, would be coming as well. His real name is Matt or something, but I call him “Motherfuckers” because that’s the name of his fantasy baseball team.

After our company had arrived, future Mrs. Jewberg and Motherfuckers’ girlfriend/wife (I forget which) were hanging out, and all of the sudden they were like:

“Hey, let’s go smoke some pot!”
“Yea, good idea!”

Unbelievable. I mean, I don’t encourage any sort of illegal activities in front of children, but it’s not as if they even know what pot smells like. In contrast, saying something to the effect of “I’m going to go smoke pot right now” in front of a first-grader seems like a bad idea to me. It was also interesting and somewhat fitting that she looked exactly like Little Miss Sunshine–I guess Motherfuckers would be like the coked-out grandfather.

Owner of the fantasy baseball team “Motherfuckers”

After they were gone I gave Jewberg $5 to roll me a J for the concert, and I was on my way. I got a little nervous because the guy in front of me got practically cavity-searched; they even made him open his pack of cigs to see if there were any marijuana cigarettes in there. I had the goods in my sock, so I was pretty safe (one time I walked into a Phish concert with a bowl in my shoe, and then I had to walk up 8 flights of stairs–my foot really hurt afterwards). Here was the Malkmus setlist:

Main Set:
Elmo Delmo
Hopscotch Willie
Vanessa From Queens
Dragonfly Pie
It Kills
Cold Son
Gardenia
We Can’t Help You
Real Emotional Trash
Baby C’mon
Baltimore

Encore:
Malediction
Us
Taxman (Beatles cover)
Church on White

Grade: A-. “Hopscotch Willie” and “Baltimore” are outstanding songs, and were performed exceptionally with a good amount of improvisation. I’m not a huge fan of “We Can’t Help You” but all of those other songs are good. Malkmus shows are usually 70% material from his latest album, fortunately Real Emotional Trash is arguably his best. I would’ve liked to hear “Water and a Seat” or “Pencil Rot” though. The encore was terrific, great performance and song choice for the Beatles cover.

The next day I got breakfast at Wawa, one of the Philly metro area’s finest food emporiums, and prepared myself for an intense day of fantasy sports. The task at hand: to out-dork the competition by building the most statistically-productive imaginary squadron. During the draft, I got a little excited and spent most of my money on 5 or 6 dudes, so my team sort of looks like: A-rod, Big Papi, Ichiro, … , David Eckstein, Brad Ausmus, Chan Ho Park. An interesting coincidence here is that Malkmus is a self-described fantasy sports dork. In fact, during the show one guy shouted out, “How’s you NCAA bracket?” and he was like, “Pretty good so far, I had Villanova and Xavier, Georgetown screwed me over though…” What a cool guy. Sorry I have to go now, I have a meeting in exactly 1 minute.