WAD CITY

The Sound of Young Albinia

There’s a lovely post over at Textism, where most posts are lovely, about the convergence of two things you might be interested in: a quite possibly excellent public radio program that I never heard of before now, and a quite awesome personality with whom you most definitely should be already familiar.

One is called The Sound of Young America, and is a PRI interview show that Textism has come around to and which he has found to be quite worth a listen. The other is Steve Albini, a musician, sound engineer, and all-around rabble-rouser whose thoughts on the music industry are sure to enlighten as they are to enrage.

Back in December 2007, TSOYA interviewed Albini, and Textism posted a few snippets pulled from this interview, all of which are wonderful little jewels. Textism writes:

So after saving the podcast interview with Albini for a couple months, like a treat to be awarded whenever I got around to remembering it was still there, I listened to it yesterday. I’d never experienced him being interviewed off the page before, and it really is a treat: you’re struck by how he wanders around in his own analogies, never straying far from the point and remaining engaged with interviewer and audience.

In addition to the audio candy, this post does a number of things:

1. Though I am kind of over podcasts and have pretty much stopped listening to them, I know I need to give this one a listen.

2. It reminds me about and points to this awesome exchange from way back in 1993/94 wherein Albini penned an angry letter to the Chicago Reader for a lazy article about Liz Phair, Urge Overkill, and the Smashing Pumpkins, and elicits a couple of months of reader responses. In hilarious irony, the banner ad I see shills the 15th anniversary re-release of Exile in Guyville.

3. It reminds me about and points to this incredibly influential and widely cited article originally published in Maximum Rock & Roll in the 90s entitled “The Problem With Music” in which Albini argues why big label rock is almost always a scam. Worth a read, if you’ve never had a chance.

4. It reminds me, but does not point to, the fact that I have yet to listen to Shellac’s last album, Excellent Italian Greyhound, released last June. For shame, Wad City, for shame.

flycatchers

arrived at my mom’s place in west virginia yesterday. tom showed us the nest of the great crested flycatchers in the wooden birdhouse box on a tree just off the side portch. four little babies tweeting and a mother darting in and out of the trees in search of tasty insects for them.

when we came home from dinner, we saw one little guy leaning out of the hole and were there to see him flutter and fall to the ground about fifteen feet below the birdhouse. then we noticed a second one down there.

after going back and forth on what to do and poking about on the internets (are they nestlings or fledglings? they have some feathers, but really just barely? should we put them back in the nest, leave them, or make another nest closer to the ground? etc) we followed the advice of one bird site and made a mini-nest out of a margarine tub and we nailed it to the tree about five feet off the ground. we put the two little nest/fledgelings in there and they tweeted for a little while and then went to sleep.

we wondered if we’d done the right thing, and this morning we found out the answer: definitely not. the two little birds in the margarine tub? gone. the two remaining babies in the birdhouse? gone. the nesting materials? everywhere. apparently a crow or an owl or something else found them in the night. now the home is nothing but an empty hole.

was it because the margarine tub was white and obvious? did this then alert the predator to the birdhouse above? would the owl have found them on the ground under the tree? did they tweet to alert the predator? in the immortal words of mike lafontaine, wha’ happened?

should we have put the birds back in the birdhouse? left them on the ground? the internet did not have solid answers and so we failed. we doomed four infant birdies to their distruction and we doomed a mama and a papa great crested flycatcher to tweet a sadder tweet today. you can hear it in their song, which is softer this morning. it’s a lament. a wail. a damning call to shame.