Weeknotes: July 21–25, 2025
I love it when the teller sends your check for a little ride on the scanner. Watching it loop around the bend is my favorite part of visiting the bank. So many transactions happen invisibly, I think I'm just excited when I see something happen in front of me. Like the satisfying thump of a rubber stamp.
Twenty minutes later I'm at Barnes & Noble buying yet another copy of Ann Leckie's Ancillary Justice for a friend's birthday. I was like this with Becky Chambers' The Long Way To a Small, Angry Planet — every book lover I knew got a copy on their birthday or at Christmas. At the top of the escalator, I take a few hasty steps down, then realize I'd rather enjoy the free ride. The breadth of the store comes into focus around me and I feel some nostalgia for the pre-digital world when a big chain book store felt like the gateway to possibility.
My next stop is less inspiring — Dick's Sporting Goods, another box store in a strip mall. I've been here three times this summer and whenever I walk through the door Aerosmith's "Dream On" is playing. That can't be a coincidence. But why would this gritty 52-year-old rock ballad be a cornerstone of the Dick's playlist? Aren't there other more appropriate jock jams, even within the Aerosmith catalog? What about "Walk This Way" or even "Sweet Emotion." Does "Dream On" sell more tennis rackets?
In Saline I help K hang a couple shelves and we share a pizza. Across the street working in her garden is my old neighbor Kay. She lost her husband in the fall of 2020 while I was still living there. We all loved Doug. He was one of those affable small town neighbors — friendly, helpful, funny, a reliable presence on our street. I still send Kay a Christmas card every year, but haven't talked to her in ages. I walk over and we catch up for a while. She says she's turning 87 on Friday. I make a mental note to send her a birthday card too.
Weeknotes: November 11–15, 2024
On WCBN the DJ plays four Alvvays songs in a row. I think about driving to Cleveland with Serge this past spring to see them play the Agora Ballroom. We had a fun night. Ever since, I've wanted to title a song "Alvvays in Cleveland." My brother and his girlfriend went to Cleveland a couple weeks ago to see the Mongolian folk metal band the Hu and visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for the first time. I told him to give my regards to Colin Blunstone's sweater. He sent me a picture with the caption "I am changed."
Weeknotes: June 24–28, 2024
Monday, June 24
I've been thinking about all the great bands I've seen recently and how it has rekindled my love of concert-going. This inspires me to start a spreadsheet of every concert I can remember attending. Lists are my language. How have I not made this one yet? I begin with the past decade which is well-documented in my planners and journals. After that I resort to memory and the internet, researching the dates of some of my most formative experiences. Here's what I learn.
Between 1988 and 1990 (ages 11-13), my parents spent a lot of money to make sure I saw some of the bedrock touring bands of the era. Of course, my very first concert was a few years earlier, the Beach Boys with Warren Zevon on Memorial Day weekend, 1984. I have vague sensory memories of it, but can recall no strong details. I sadly remember nothing of Zevon and only know of his participation from the ticket stub. In retrospect, I know Dennis Wilson had died the previous December, so I wouldn't have had a chance to see all three Wilson brothers. Could Brian have possibly been there? It seems doubtful. That was a rough period for my hero, though I later had a beautiful experience in the summer of 2000 taking my mom to see him play the Pet Sounds album live in Cleveland.
But in the late-'80s, I owned my first electric guitar and was already deep into my mania. In August 1988, barely a week after it opened, I was taken to the Palace of Auburn Hills to see Crosby, Still, & Nash and then Pink Floyd, just two days apart. A month after that my mom and Mary Jane Benner took me and her son Josh back to the Palace to see Def Leppard's massive Hysteria tour. To this day my mom remains a big fan of the Lep. In November 1989, I went with Aaron Dilloway and his brother to see the B-52's at the Fox Theatre on the Cosmic Thing tour. Toad the Wet Sprocket, an incongruous pairing, was the opener, touring their first album Bread & Circus, which I also loved. Between December of that year and June 1990, I saw the Rolling Stones (with Living Colour), Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers (with Lenny Kravitz), Billy Joel, and David Bowie. Seeing Bowie's Sound + Vision tour with my brother remains a watershed moment in my life. And of course he, being four years older, was already going to see far hipper bands than me: Jane's Addiction, Pixies, Love & Rockets, Beastie Boys. Some parents pushed their kids into sports or academics. My parents were devoted music fans and lifetime concert-goers. This was the education I received at a crucial age. How could I have become anything other than what I am?