The Lexicographer's Rules

Last Saturday the gal and I went to the sold out M. Ward show at Warsaw in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Great stuff. He has a voice like a field of green tobacco. Rating: A-. The minus is because I totally thought that was a steel guitar at the front of the stage, but when he finally played it—for one song, I believe—it was just an electric keyboard. How can you dash a man’s hopes like that? Update: I forgot to mention there was a woman playing drums. Chicks who play drums are automatically enshrined on my list of “Rock and Roll Crushes I’ve Had Since I Stopped Believing in Girl Cooties.”

The opening band, Pagoda, was a gigantic waste of ear cilia. Who saddled M. Ward with that crap? First, if your bassist is wearing a polo shirt, you don’t rock. Second, you can’t rock out on the FIRST song, dipshits. You’ve got to build to it. Earn it. Third, put away the Led Zeppelin box set. I can just hear them now, stoned with their feet up on a plywood and milk crate coffee table, “Dude. Check this out. Stole it from my brother’s Camaro. Nobody’s ever heard of ’em, but you’re never gonna believe how good this Led band is. We could use, like, half this stuff.” Fourth, people were destroying their gear on stage about ten minutes after electricity and guitars got together to make one delicious treat. So played. And don’t think we all didn’t notice how you destroyed the guitar case and not the guitar. Rating: F, for “Fucking retards.”

What, exactly, does green tobacco sound like? 

That second review, unlike the band, rocked.

Your cousin Elizabeth told me about you.

Green tobacco: it’s the sound of cicadas and whippoorwills in August, just after dusk on a day of hay-cutting and hay-hauling, when the tractor is back in the barn, the chickens are settling down, the dogs are asleep under the porch, and the fat that dripped into the barbecue pit still crackles once in a while.

My cousin Elizabeth should stop surfing the web at work. : )

You should thank your cousin for sending traffic your way. And Marcia just sits in the next cube so I pretty much just tell her things over the wall.

Really, Elizabeth and I are basically the same person.  Even if she tried to keep a secret from me, I don’t think she could do it. 

Besides, the bosses are in meetings all day today.  What are we supposed to do instead of surf the internet?  Work??

Ooh, I love M. Ward! Did he play his awesome, pure-sex cover of “Let’s Dance”?

If not I shall send it your way.

No! He didn’t play that. I might have it in iTunes, though. A bunch of his stuff came up on Hype Machine a few days ago.

>>>>First, if your bassist is wearing a polo shirt, you don’t rock.<<<<

Word.

And what Marcia said about that second review.

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