Reply, Do Not

A while back I let a call from an unknown number go to voicemail (as I always do).  The message left was from the dealership that sold us our Camry, offering to trade me a 2011 Camry for my 2007 straight up!  … oh, and did we forget to mention extending your payments for another few years.

ANYWAY, the other tidbit in the call was that they wanted to confirm my email address: wowcalralberg@gmail.com.

This is going to come as a shock to you, but: that is not my normal email address (even if it is significantly better than my normal address).  Now I was faced with a dilemma — in order to give the correct address I would need to return a call and talk to another human (something I seldom do), especially when it’s from a commercial entity.

Long story short – I did, for some reason, feel like I wanted to get email from the dealership though so I took the only logical step: I registered wowcalralberg@gmail.com and set it up to redirect mail to my primary account.  Now wowcalralberg not only gets email: he gets email with awesomely informative subject lines and even better sender names:

Oh, and by the way, our best guess on “wowcalralberg” is that it’s a gross misreading of “monicahalberg”… maybe?

Summer’s Started!

We had lots of fun last weekend, including a trip to the farm with cousin Corryn, Lola, and Opa!  We’ve been buying our milk nearly 100% from Sassy Cow Creamery for a while now.  This year’s tour was of the organic setup – it was great to see exactly where the milk in our fridge comes from and get to chat a bit with the people that make it happen!

Henry was very excited to get pulled from the creamery to the organic barn behind the tractor!

Later we had some baseball practice.  With the way the Brewers have been playing lately, I believe he may actually have a chance to get called up this summer.

Lest you think it’s all fun and games: we did have to observe & manage the garbage trucks as they moved through our neighborhood.

2010 Music… So Far

2010 has already been a banner year for new releases (as forecast).  To avoid some end-of-the-year legwork this year, I’ve been keeping track of my album rankings as we go here.  I’m sure even these early entrants will get re-arranged as I re-listen and such, but I wanted to get you a sneak peak — hopefully it’ll help out if you’ve got some money burning a hole in your pocket and are looking for some recommendations.

It’s been just incredible so far this year — Not even halfway into the year, I would tell you that I “highly recommend” spending your hard earned $10 on any of these 33 discs.

My Favorites so far – I haven’t put a lot of thought into how these compare with 2009 but I’d say any of them would have had a shot at #1 on my list last year.

Hot Chip :: One Life Stand

Hold Steady :: Heaven is Whenever

Broken Bells :: Broken Bells

Apples In Stereo :: Travellers In Space

Eels :: End Times

LCD Soundsystem – This is Happening

The National :: High Violet

Gorillaz :: Plastic Beach

Los Campesinos::Romance Is Boring

Great discs. Each of these discs (well, half of them anyways) – will be #1 on somebody’s list at the end of the year

Charlotte Gainsbourg::IRM

She & Him :: Volume Two

The Frightened Rabbit :: The Winter of Mixed Drinks

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club :: Beat The Devil’s Tattoo

Ted Leo :: Brutalist Bricks

Caribou :: Swim

Titus Andronicus :: The Monitor

Black Keys :: Brothers

Strongly Recommend - Really strong discs, although we’ve  finally started to fade a little bit

OK Go:: Of The Blue Colour of the Morning Sky

Kasey Anderson :: Nowhere Nights

MGMT :: Congratulations

Surfer Blood :: Astro Coast

Very good stuff.  Really hard to believe that 5 months into the year I have discs this far down from some of my all-time favorites… and I can’t even classify them as “disappointing”.

Josh Ritter – So Runs The World Away

The New Pornographers – Together

Beach House :: Teen Dream

Ben Sollee & Daniel Martin Moore :: Dear Companion

Spoon :: Transference

Yeasayer :: Odd Blood

The Magnetic Fields :: Realism

The Morning Benders :: Big Echo => first couple songs had me convinced awesome, then dove

Drive By Truckers :: The Big Todo

Midlake :: The Courage of Others => starts really strong, fades really fast

Jakob Dylan :: Women and Country

Kids!

We’ve settled in a bit to life with two kids — it’s great to be at a point with a little more consistency to the schedule!

Tess has started to give some real smiles and sleep consistently at night (which, of course, doesn’t mean all the way through the night).

Henry has adjusted to the big-brother role incredibly well.  He’s really developing a lot of personality recently and is at an incredibly fun (if sometimes stressful) stage right now

A New Addition

We’re thrilled to have welcomed a addition, Tess Jean Halberg!  Everyone is happy, healthy, and home.

“Does Henry know what’s going on?” was a pretty popular question leading up to the arrival.  While he was quick to answer that “sister” was what was in mumma’s belly, I wasn’t so sure he could possibly really know what that meant.  Turns out I should have given him a bit more credit as he was quickly able to connect the dots upon meeting her.

After a day or two of basically leaving her to her own business – spurred by seeing cousin Claire holding Tess on her lap – Henry got really excited about being around her.  Now she gets tickled when she’s crying and has had a couple of pacifiers gently (<– yeah, right) placed in her mouth.

The dogs are doing well and have begrudgingly accepted their demotions from the #4/5 ranks down to #5/6.  It doesn’t hurt that they are completely warn out from a couple exercise-filled days at my parents, followed by a lack of restful sleep at night.

Thanks to everyone who’s dropped us a kind word in email/SMS/Facebook/Twitter.  We’re hoping you all get to meet her very soon!

David Gray

He’s high on my Best of the 00s list.  His most recent album, “Draw The Line”, was on my Best of 2009.  And he put on a great show last weekend at the Riverside.

David Gray has an incredible ability to replicate the sound – and more importantly for his vocal style – the intensity of his studio recordings, for live shows.  How he manages to bring that sort of energy on a consistent basis is really impressive.  I mean, seriously — this is live?  Listen without your eyes on the video and you’d swear it’s an engineered studio recording.

… and if you’re a David Gray fan, I’d highly recommend checking out another video in that series –  an interview on KGSR-Austin.  Sounds like another album is on the way very soon here… and there’s a clue as to why “that wacky drummer”  isn’t around anymore.

Here’s a great video from PabstRiverside, from the show we were at:

Rock.

I’ve been to a couple great shows lately that I haven’t had a chance to properly write-up.

One was a very laidback/intimate show featuring some great bands for the Muzzle Of Bees 5-Year Anniversary.  It’s hands down my favorite music blog (local or not) – you really should be following it.  On top of the great bands they brought to town, it was great to meet the sites founder, Ryan Matteson.

The other was one of the first “country” shows that I’ve been to.  Justin Townes Earle put on a great show a few weeks back that my buddy Fox came to town for.  Joe Pug made for a great opener and we got a killer fish fry at Toby’s beforehand (<– check out that site and tell me that fry isn’t going to be incredible).  Awesome night.

Finally, we get to last night’s show.  It had been a long time since I’d been to a live show with the word “punk” in the description – too long.  but Ted Leo & The Pharmacists had the prescription to cure my slow music ills (<– groan).  Loud, fast, no messin’ around, just can’t hold still – really great stuff.

You can hear the new disc on their MySpace page.  You should definitely check it out.

Goings On

Why hello there.  Just thought I’d check back in.

We’re getting very close to the big day, all of the sudden!  Henry generally seems to have some idea that there’s a baby on the way – and that it currently resides in mumma’s tummy – although, I can’t really imagine how he could possibly comprehend it.

In the meantime, we continue to play choo-choos every waking hour.

We had a chance to hang out with Mike & Claire when we picked up Henry at Nana & Bapa’s house this morning.  Both kids took some rides on the rocking horse – it’s the same one that my Mom and her siblings grew up with, so it’s sorta a rite of passage in the family.

Look Ma! No Hands!

Claire has started receiving weekly visits from the toothfairy!

I’ve been to a few good shows so far this year and Monnie and I are really looking forward to seeing David Gray again next weekend with Mike, Sheila, Rob & Emily!   and, of course, stay tuned for the big news coming ahead!

Wilco, The Show

and if you think that post-title is cliché, just wait until you hear what I have to say next:

• Their 28 (!!) song set was played with such an incredible amount of energy and passion that there really was only 1 song that I would say missed by any amount… I’ve been trying to remember which song this was… it was fairly early… it was quiet… and the girl behind me could be heard to say “ooh, it’s quiet – now we can talk!”.
• Jeff Tweedy’s playful and comfortable stage presence makes you feel at home. I think he’s off drugs… or on drugs… whichever would help — at any rate, both his musicianship and frontman duties are really top notch and I’ve never seen him better.
• Nels Cline was absolutely ridiculous. My thoughts on him remain: (1) that dude can play and (2) it would suck to have been his neighbor when he was perfecting how to get exactly the right amount of feedback out of that amp.  If you’re curious how good this guy is you just need to watch the other guys when he solos — they turn and watch him — literally.

pic via muzzleofbees.com (click for more, from Ed Oliver)

Ok, so now that we have those pieces of incredible insight (that you can’t find anywhere else!) out of the way…  This was the best Wilco show that I’ve been to.

Whoa, whoa, settle down.  I know that it couldn’t possibly have been as good as the show that you saw at [fill in name of smaller venue] in [fill in year when you were younger] but here’s the thing:  things have changed, man.  It’s a different band now and them’s just the facts.

This is a polished, Overture-center-playing band now.  Sure they still have their fair share of quirks (flexatone anyone?) but If you want to see that old “can you believe we get free beer just for playing” vibe again, I’m afraid you’re going to have to wait til their (headlining) gig at the 2030 Columbia County fair… of course, that doesn’t mean that every venue is going to have lids on the beers and 3/4 of the audience in their seats, but you see what I mean.

There is a reason that this particular show was so strong though, and I’m fairly convinced that Wilco knew about it coming in as well (hence the decision to stream this particular show to the universe).  They chose Overture Center because they learned something during the very first song that they played at the venue in 2007:  The sound of “The El” going overhead in Via Chicago is absolutely perfect.  This time around, they leveraged that knowledge of the acoustics masterfully.  The wall-of-sound approach isn’t always as obvious as it is in that moment in Via Chicago but they came back to it consistently and masterfully throughout the night.

I know you’re mad that they chose a decidedly un-rock venue, but the fact of the matter is: there are only so many venues where you can simultaneously play really loud and really clean.  and when you’ve got guys like Nels and Pat Sansone wailing back and forth – man, that’s just tough to pass up.

set list here

Will

We were down in Chicago last weekend to meet the newly arrived William Ryder Foster! It was great to meet the little guy and get to see Nate and Ericka (it had been way too long).

and since we were in the neighborhood… we made a trip over to the Shedd Aquarium. I had never been there (neither had Henry), so we had a great time taking it all in for the first time. There were many highlights, but this giant turtle perched on some uneven rocks, was right up there.