Hello, friends. I just wanted to say wassup and let you know that I’m still here. It’s been busy around here at the BC Outpost. I promise to post something magnificent soon.

Hey Patwannas.

Real quick: Yesterday, I was walking home after work and I happen to glance into a basement apartment and what do I see: a naked man with nothing between me and his yorder, but his laptop. My doctor says no computers for at least a week. Sorry if that means you have to go elsewhere for breaking nerd news.

Anybody see a halloween costume that didn’t blind them?

Wild fires, smild fires. This is a national crisis.

UPDATE: WORSE - We only have 14 months to save Simply Red.

I love that Simply Red thinks they aren’t already retired, and that they are doing the brave thing by launching a farewell tour when anyone who actually would go still assumes it’s a reunion tour.

You, ladies and gentlemen, are looking at a way too generous birthday gift from Jason Cobra. Official Chauncey Billups Adidas b-ball kicks. Now yours truly has a long standing love affair with Chuck Taylors, but these suckers are so glowing nerdy-white and beautiful, I feel compelled to actual get into shape and wear them on the court because I will magically be able to drop science on all the little kids in my neighborhood. Thank, JC!

Regular season kicks off the day after Halloween.

Elsewhere…

Brotherly Love Returned: Gorilla drops some econ science on the music biz over at recordreviews.org.

Also we’d be remiss if we didn’t say how glad we were to have Grambo back.

Dear Scott,

I realized as soon as I started school that I would never be able to read the New Yorker again. It’s not that they don’t print great stuff (including this from George Saunders, who is apparently the only person in the world other than me who didn’t think “Borat” was the most brilliant piece of cinematic satirical genius in the history of humanity) sometimes. Mostly, my problem with the NYer is that the entire magazine seems to be written, laid out, edited, printed, and shipped from a compound located several miles up its own ass. I can’t explain it any better than that. I think you know what I mean.

The point is, that review makes me angry for the same reason the rest of the magazine does. The most insulting part is not that SF-J makes a total douche of himself –

[Oh, and he does. Who gives a flying fuck what a guy who says things like “I’ve spent the past decade wondering why rock and roll, the most miscegenated popular music ever to have existed, underwent a racial re-sorting in the nineteen-nineties” with a straight face thinks about rock and roll (or anything else)?]

– it’s that he gets people who like Pavement for the right reasons (people who heard them and thought Finally, music that celebrates my suburban bookworm lameness and makes me feel smart and loved and maybe just a little bit cooler than I felt yesterday and so on) to defend themselves by invoking the same ironic detachment that allows douches like him to thrive! Don’t fall for it, Scott (or anyone else) — your sincerity is in fact sincere.

You’re gonna have to read this sooner or later. To wit, Sasha Frere-Jones gets bored at an Arcade Fire show and attacks indie rock as chronically too white. Sasha is the guy standing next to RZA by the way. He also defends his own white funk band as implicated better than most of my favorite bands because they play black music.

So here’s what I think.

Dear Mr. Frere-Jones,

So I like a lot of indie rock loving nerds, I want to tell you to shut up. But i’ll give you that lots of the music I love and listen to everyday is very “white” and lacks deep soulful rhythm. When I feel like listening to soulful music, I go for the real stuff; actual black artists or honkies devoted and talent enough to pull it off. Why settle for white funk when you have the real stuff?

Where I think your article was really misleading to the oldsters dumb enough to read the New Yorker to learn about pop music, not only because it didn’t bother to mention the huge success of TV on the Radio, the Black Keys and the White Stripes, both with indie fans and in relative mainstream, but because it implied that rolling was inherently more important than rocking.

Your identity politics are bush league. You don’t say anything about the utter mess of rap-rockers that ruined rock for 5 years. You’re picking on Arcade Fire, Wilco, and Pavement for even dumber reasons than you did poor little Stephin Merritt.

J-Ho and I have talked about this many times. We never really came to any conclusions. I guess The Chronic is amazingly great, but Slanted and Enchanted ultimately speaks to me more. Two great California albums from ‘92, but come on more indie fans and musicians grew up closer to somewhere like Stockton than South Central. Why should we pretend otherwise? Why should we have to keep trying to be Snoop, or even Little Richard? Malkmus pointed out Dave Brubeck, Rush, and REM are closer to our experience, why can’t we ironically celebrate that?

Pavement, with all of it’s toss-off musicianship and shambled lyricism, on some goofy level validates me to me. Before that record, I knew great art could from the ghetto and sharecroppers, because of Motown and the blues, and the classic rock that celebrated them. What Pavement said was meaningful music that was true to itself could come from my suburban existence. Lo-fi noise rock by over-read undergrads with more vinyl than talent meant there was hope for me as me. Not as somebody playing dress-up.

I rock the suburbs. Irony is my sincerity. I love hip-hop, but a white riot is the best I’m gonna do and I’m fine with that.

PS - BACK IN THE DAY, HALL AND OATS WAS NOT AS GOOD AS MICHAEL JACKSON. YOU ARE FUCKING NUTS.

UPDATE -More kindling for our indie nerd bonfire:

Exhibit A: Lester Bangs tackling real racism in the punk era.

Exhibit B: Pavement on Leno refusing to play nice.

Exhibit C: Animal Collective playing “For Reverend Green,” which somehow might be the missing link to this whole thing.

The high seas are awash with pirates.

UPDATE: New pic due to broken link. That’s what I get for not hosting my own images.

Good news, Barber Collegiates: My personal threat level has been lowered to turquoise and I’ve emerged from hiding! It’s been a hectic few weeks, and I understand four or five people are dead, but que sera sera. Many thanks to everyone who sent cookies and vodka to The Barber College Secured Location.

Being an incredibly famous writer can be dangerous. You never know who might use your words to justify violence.

On my way home tonight, I saw a guy on the train who looked just like Scott. The resemblance was uncanny. I thought for sure Scott was at BC HQ 700 miles away, but I decided I would test the look-alike just to be certain. I was like, “How vital do you think organizations such as the Elephant 6 collective are in this era of digital media, especially considering the RIAA’s hostility toward artists and consumers alike?” He was like, “Excuse me?” I was like, “For what? Not being the real Scott?” Then I stole his iPod.