So out of the three choices, there are two classic rock stations (97.1 and 97.9) and one contemporary rock station (93.1). I chose to stick with 93.1 because it happened to be the one not at commercial. A song came on that a lot people find enjoyable for a lot of different reasons. To many its lyrics are extremely touching and I’m sure a lot of people have made out to it in their car or put it on mix tapes in the hopes of getting a person to make out with them in a car.

The song is “Do You Realize?” by the Flaming Lips and I hate it.

I don’t hate it because it’s a bad song. The music isn’t bad and the lyrics are touching if used in the right context. The problem for me is that I’ll forever associate it with a story I once read back when I used to frequently read McSweeney’s. It’s a funny site, some of the time, and the content is mostly user generated. Anyway, the story was, roughly, that a man and his nephew were driving along probably in somewhere like Nebraska or Kansas when this song came on. While pondering the seriousness of the lyrics (which is what emo McSweeney’s contributing uncles do) the nephew apparently had a brain aneurysm and died. That’s the fucking story. So the contributor went on to talk about how the song’s lyrics will forever connect him to that horrible moment and instead of the easy and typical “this song is about a beautiful girl and love” it now means enjoy life while you can and other “you never know what can happen so get a shitty tattoo to remind yourself to live each day to the fullest” nonsense.

It’s amazing how a throwaway, one-paragraph anecdote from a stranger on a comedy website can ruin an entire song for me. Literally every time I hear that song I think of some kid I never met dying of a sudden aneurysm. This naturally leads to me thinking about my own mortality and then I start wondering if that sharp pain that went through the right side of my head was cancer/aids and am I or am I not totally fucked.

So thanks, random McSweeney’s contributor guy. Sorry to hear about your nephew. I hope that story wasn’t real. I’m also exceedingly bitter at McSweeney’s (and I don’t read the site anymore) because in my younger days when I actually thought I was talented and possibly funny I may have attempted to send in my version of a list of which the premise was rejected band names for Color Me Badd. The note telling me it wasn’t very good still cuts me deep. I’ll probably cling to that butthurt until the day I die. Probably of a brain aneurysm while listening to that fucking song.

When Tom Ricketts purchased the club a lot of fans got excited. They assumed that he’d change the culture for the better. It hasn’t happened yet. We witnessed two years of mediocre to terrible baseball and a lame duck front office who never really had a chance to fix what they’d already broken.

Cub naysayers will disagree, but after 2003 a few things changed. First, Cub fans got a taste of winning and they decided that they liked it. In 2004, the Cubs were super talented but fell apart for a number of reasons – some baseball related, some not so much. Lou Piniella became manager and he got things back on the right track. Back-to-back playoff appearances reminded us that winning is fun. After 2008, we remembered just how painful losing is. What was probably the best Cubs team of my lifetime failed to win a single game against the Dodgers in that year’s NLDS. Something within me died after that series. Everything that could go wrong went wrong and the best team of my lifetime limped out of the playoffs impotently, forever remembered as another failure.

Since the 2008 flameout it’s been a different aura emanating from the majority of the Cubs fan base. Sure, you’ve still got great attendance and people singing “Go Cubs Go” after a win in September that leaves the Cubs only 15 games under .500 – but for the most part the fans have grown weary of bloated payrolls and excuses.

The Cubs began the search for the man (or woman) to generally manage them in the middle of the summer when they cryptically fired Jim Hendry a month before anyone else knew about it. Tom Ricketts has gone about his business with the stealth of a fictional ninja. Now that they’re on the verge of landing Epstein, the details have finally begun to leak out and we’re starting to get the full picture of the deal.

Should I be excited? That’s what I’m struggling with today. I don’t know how to feel about this. On one hand, this is arguably the best outcome I could have hoped for. The similarities between the Red Sox circa 2002, when Theo Epstein became the youngest GM in baseball history, and the 2011 Chicago Cubs are staggering.

And yet there is so much work to do. The roster in place is average at best and it’s full of bad contracts and overrated “youngsters” like Darwin Barney and Tyler Colvin. Epstein is still going to have to work within the constraints of a Ricketts budget, whatever that might be. He’s still going to have to standardize an organizational philosophy at all levels. What it means to be a Cub is trash. What it means to win is king.

I’m not a skeptic when it comes to Epstein’s ability as a general manager. He’s got a proven track record that no other potential hire can match. When Theo took over in Boston he talked about turning the Red Sox into a “scouting and player-development machine”. That’s exactly what the Cubs need to become. It’s not enough to throw a contract at a couple of high-priced free agents anymore. The organization, at its lowest levels, has to get better.

I guess what it comes down to is that the lifetime I’ve spent following and watching Cubs baseball has numbed me to the idea that some season everything is going to come together and culminate in a championship. It happened twice for Boston, a team that once was the butt of the very same jokes that the Cubs are today.

If you read the comments from fans of rival teams, you’ll see the condescension:

This is career suicide for Theo Epstein.

The Cubs have ruined better men than he and they’ll ruin him, too.

The organization is rotten to the core and this is just going to pacify the dumbest fan base in the world.

They’ll tell you that the Cubs could have the best team on paper that has ever lived. They could resurrect Murderer’s Row but since they’re the Cubs they will find a way to fail. That’s what the Cubs do.

These people don’t know the future any more than you, me or Theo Epstein do. There is a massive amount of work to be done and I can only hope Theo Epstein is able to push aside all of the peripheral bullshit that comes with being a part of the Chicago Cubs and carry out a clear vision to turn them into what Boston is now.

What I wouldn’t give for the rest of the country to finally hate the Cubs for the right reasons. Make it happen, Theo.

Interestingly enough, being a metal kid in middle school I wasn’t too enamored with the alternative music movement that began taking place sometime around my tenth or eleventh year on this planet. Being that young and not having had the privileges that Google affords me now, I didn’t have any access to music other than what was on MTV, radio and what my friends told me to check out. My friends loved metal ergo I loved metal. When Pearl Jam started getting huge I was not supposed to be impressed – but in one of those memories that sticks with me for whatever reason, I was in my friend Steve’s living room and the video for “Even Flow” was being shown on MTV. It was all the rage. And I’ll never forget Eddie Vedder looking batshit insane ready to leap to his death from the scaffolding while the band ripped. Standing in Steve’s living room watching that video might not be my first ever exposure to Pearl Jam but it’s my first concrete memory of them. From there it dawned on me that listening to the same three bands was pretty shortsighted.

It’s funny to me that while I was learning to accept the mainstream, Pearl Jam were being cannonballed into it before they had fully realized what was going on. Crowe does an excellent job of conveying the band’s ascension from hoping to make a dent in the Seattle music scene to playing for festivals of thousands of rabid fans in seemingly the no time at all. As Crowe portrays it, the band and Eddie Vedder were still getting to know each other when things took off and the band came into high demand for all things media. Movie appearances (1992′s Singles), magazine covers, music videos and award shows – they were being eaten alive by the machine. To paraphrase Eddie, they were being so shoved down the public’s throats that it wouldn’t be long until people didn’t want to listen to them anymore.

I really got the sense of Eddie’s vision for the band and how they didn’t want to be yes men. They didn’t want to be the people that they hated when they were growing up listening to records and practicing chords. And so as quickly as fame was forced upon them they fought back and said no. Crowe perfectly juxtaposes a live performance of “Blood” over Eddie looking like he’s been sucked dry by the sudden rise to superstardom. When someone tells me that Pearl Jam was great up until Vitalogy or No Code or they’ve been irrelevant since Yield, that’s just the general public’s reaction to a band making the music they want to make. They tried their best to preserve their band for their true fans and weren’t interested in pandering to the leeches looking to make that extra dime.

Part of getting older is realizing that your idols get older, too. Nobody has the same taste in music for their entire life. Musical taste evolves with experiences and no band (maybe Everclear) writes the same album over and over again. The kind of show Pearl Jam put on in 1992 is not anything like the show they put on 2011. That’s just reality. I’ve always preferred the unbridled insanity of their early shows but that’s not a knock on their current demeanor at all. They’re still one of the best acts you’re going to ever see live. But if there’s any curiosity as to what it was like in the earliest days of the band this movie will move you over and over again.

A final note, one of the most enjoyable stories this movie tells is that of Andy Wood and Mother Love Bone. I didn’t know a lot about him going in but it was really cool to see the footage they had compiled of some of those shows and I walked away with a newfound appreciation for “Crown of Thorns”, especially with the “Chloe Dancer” intro. It’s hard not to wish I was a part of that whole scene – there’s something very romantic about seeing a band in its infancy. Whether they end up like Pearl Jam or a somewhat tragic story like Andy Wood’s, it’s music history and something people never forget.

I found a halfway decent video of Mother Love Bone playing “Chloe Dancer/Crown of Thorns” from 1989. The quality isn’t amazing but it’s a lot better than it looks. Give it a listen and try to check out PJ20.

So on to the song infatuation. I’ve had recent conversations about bands like Arcade Fire or Death Cab for Cutie – basically indie darling bands that made it big. I used to listen to these bands all the time when I was a single, mopey piece of shit and those kinds of lyrics spoke to me. I spent a lot of time thinking about girls and failed attempts at courting girls and so whiny, indie music was perfect for me. I suppose if I put on We Have the Facts and We’re Voting Yes I would get some semi-nostalgic kick out of it. Every song I used to enjoy takes me back to a time and place. It just so happens that the time and place those songs recall is forever linked with hopeless relationships and various embarrassing attempts at being cool.

Things have changed quite a bit since those days and I’ve gone back to my roots as a youngster where the only thing I listened to was heavy music. Sure, not everything I listen to is heavy and I’ll still freely admit that I enjoyed the last Bon Iver record and Best Coast is pretty entertaining. But mostly, I’m trying to find something to nod my head to. I had ignored renowned stoner-rock band Kyuss for way, way too long. Not because they’re bad and I actively avoided them. I just didn’t take the time to hear a few songs. Thankfully, with Spotify now holding a death-grip on the majority of my electronic devices I can listen to anything someone mentions. While it can lead to some musical A.D.D. for the most part it’s been an excellent addition to my listening habits.

So not long ago, I embraced my love of the stoner-rock genre and sat down with some Kyuss and it was everything they said it could be and more. Somehow I settled on their album Gardenia and the title track from that record is absolutely awesome. I will now leave you with the song for your listening enjoyment. Get ready to enjoy a song about cars, possibly weed and sex. What the hell else could you want?

Please take eleven or so minutes out of your day and give this one a listen. If it floats, go ahead and listen to the entire album.

The album I’m most excited about is the new Mastodon record that’s going to be called The Hunter. They’ve released a track called Black Tongue that sounds like a mix of their last three records. From all accounts Brent Hinds and Co. have decided to let it all hang out on this one and some of the track names give a strong indication as to the mood they were in during the creation of the album. Names like Blasteroids, Stargasm, Curl of the Burl and The Octopus Has No Friends don’t leave any doubt that this is going to be a fun ride. Also, here’s the cover of the album:

Boner.

Opeth is also releasing new material in September and their new album is going to be called Heritage. Opeth is one of those polarizing bands within the metal community. You’ll see a lot of metal enthusiasts derisively refer to them as not being a real metal band. I don’t really care because a lot of metal fans are fucking assholes. Though in this case they may have a better case than ever as singer/guitarist Mikael Åkerfeldt has stated his desire to move away from the growls of previous works and do something different.

I just wanted it to be different. I had a pretty strong urge to do it differently and not be stuck in a rut, so to speak. I’d like to think that every album we’ve done has been an album that reflects what we really wanted to do at the time. This time around, when I started writing, I was a bit disillusioned with what I wanted to do and what we should do as a band. I didn’t want us to get stuck with a sound. I get restless and when that happens it’s just time to move on and try something different, and that’s what we did with this album. We just wrote eleven or twelve songs that sounded like stuff that I would want to listen to now, rather than writing stuff that sounds like things we’ve already done before. We have always tried to do records that we want to hear. There’s no exception to that rule with Heritage, but it’s a different sounding album than our previous ones.

You can hear the first single here. While it does sound a lot different from previous Opeth works, I don’t think anyone is surprised to hear them trending in this direction. It has been long rumored that they were enamored with a more progressive rock sound and frankly as a fan of that style I think I’m going to love this album. There won’t be any harsh vocals this time, which is good news for those that were turned off by them (myself not included). I’m anxious to hear how this song fits within the context of the entire album.

An album I’ll be keeping an eye on is Dream Theater’s first album without original member and world-class drummer Mike Portnoy. Without going into details of his departure from the band, I think it’s going to be interesting to hear an album without his influence as it was massive on all of their previous releases. To be honest, I was probably the world’s biggest Dream Theater fan when I was a kid. I was also fourteen years old. It’s been a long time since I’ve anticipated any kind of release from DT and while I’ll definitely get around to listening to A Dramatic Turn of Events, at this point it’s probably fair to say Dream Theater is a band from my past.

Apparently Megadeth, Meshuggah and Machine Head all have new records coming out this fall as well. While I’m not a huge Machine Head fan it’s more because I just haven’t sat down and listened to them. They’re a band from the classic era of metal and by all accounts I should love them. Megadeth is never going to be what they were and now that Dave is off the smack into Jesus and birther conspiracies it’s going to be hard to take him and his lyrics seriously. Dave, I’ll buy your next bag of heroin. Anything. Just stop this. There’s not a ton of information about the new Meshuggah album other than this interview with guitarist Frederik Thordendal. It sounds extremely promising but it’s Meshuggah. It’s got a zero percent chance of being bad.

What albums did I fail to mention here? If you’ve got something you think I should have included or need to check out feel free to drop a comment below.

Anyway, here’s a clip from what must be a stop on the Badmotorfinger tour. The clothes and sound all fit and there’s no date listed, so that’s what I’m going with. Check it out and look for the special shout out to Eddie Vedder around the six-minute mark. Enjoy.

Perhaps the live performances of these enigmatic songs will flesh out more than the album versions did. Judge for yourself. Enjoy.

The key aftershow is Titus Andronicus on Saturday night at Reggie’s. I’ve been told I have to see  Titus Andronicus but they play at the same time as blog favorite The Joy Formidable and that isn’t a trade I’m willing to make. Now everyone can  go see The Joy Formidable tear up the stage and we can all go to Reggie’s at 10 o’clock to continue the good times on Saturday.

I’d also love to hit up the Death From Above show on Thursday night at the Metro but that would require some serious people moving on my part. What aftershows look worthwhile to you?