Truthfully, the title and the cover art have nothing to do with this mix. I made it quite a while ago, with the intention of maybe making a new mix, but I just made one now that I didn’t have a title for. So, here we are. I hope you enjoy. Some of them are quite sad, but lovely all the same. Didn’t really plan for this many covers, either.

Tracklist:

1. C’Mere by Interpol
2. Heart in Your Heartbreak by The Pains of Being Pure At Heart
3. Sentimental Tune by Tegan and Sara
4. Crossed Out Name by Ryan Adams & the Cardinals
5. Your Heart Is An Empty Room by Death Cab For Cutie
6. Ghost by Voxtrot
7. You and I by Wilco
8. By Your Side (Sade cover) by Beachwood Sparks
9. All I Have To Do Is Dream (The Everly Brothers cover) by Bob Dylan
10. Without Permission (Caroline Martin cover) by The National
11. Suburban War by Arcade Fire
12. Maps (Yeah Yeah Yeahs cover) by Rogue Wave
13. Sea of Love (Phil Phillips cover) by Cat Power
14. Don’t Have to Be So Sad by Yo La Tengo
15. Pale Blue Eyes by The Velvet Underground

download .zip here

I’ll leave you all to read between the lines, I guess.

In the wake of The White Stripes’ sudden break-up, I snooped around my brother’s room and carefully pored over his Under the Great White Northern Lights special edition box set, particularly gravitating towards the book of photographs that Autumn de Wilde carefully composed, documenting their life on tour in 2007. It’s on sale on Amazon right now, for a super marked down price, so go get it if you can! It’s absolutely beautiful.

(I have yet to purchase her book of photographs of Elliott Smith, called… Elliott Smith, but it’s been on my list.)

It reminded me of this other book of tour photos taken by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Nick Zinner called I Hope You Are All Happy Now, which was what eventually would push me to actively photograph and document most of my early college life. I’ve also always been a fan of tour photos on the explosions in the sky website. I think those best capture what I wanted to go for with my photographs.

I’ve always had issues with being called a photographer… I think that’s largely why I stopped obsessively taking pictures. I just really wanted to kind of take photos of my day, and being called a photographer really made me anxious about this great room for failure that came with that label. Because I know nothing about the technicalities of photography. I really could not give a frak about aperture and settings. I rely a lot on “feeling out” the alchemy of light and space, so whenever someone talks to me about photography, I panic.

But that’s another story. Leafing through these pages again, I’m reminded of why I fell in love with photography in the first place. So, in remembrance and as a sort of tangential tribute to these people, I made a short book thing of a made-up band. I hope you enjoy. :)

You can view and download it here.

I was going to add text, but then I got lazy. Please, please, please enjoy it. (I COMMAND YOU. TO ENJOY IT.) And while you’re at it, please listen to this song.

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I hope it looks somewhat like a tour? And I hope someday I can tag along someone who is on tour. Cough, Marvin, cough.

Sure, it’s not the last day of the year yet, but I have slowly been making rounds around my blog archives and other means of internet documentation (music plays, books read, etc) and I am feeling as though so much has happened for me this year. 2010 is such a nice, round number, and it really made me think that Great Things were about to happen. It’s funny how a succession of numbers that don’t really mean anything—at least nothing that I am privy to, since I’m pretty much clueless when it comes to numerology—can give off that feeling of Mattering and of Significance. I don’t know about you, but 2010 really had a nice ring to it. And so, I expected and I hoped and I was met with a lot of failing.

If anything, this was the year of Trying Times, and I mean this phrase to mean more things than one. High highs coupled with low lows, and everything else being coated by a generally hopeless disposition. Post-graduation ,everyone went about throwing around the term “quarter-life crisis,” and making ourselves feel better by using the word “funemployed” to describe our own respective states of loss. But underneath this self-deprecating veneer, most of us were all, quite unfunnily, at a loss as to what the next steps were.

I’ve taken so many detours and side steps, and I’ve wrestled with so much uncertainty. I guess it comes with wanting to get the best for myself, but I’m constantly questioning whether this decision was the best, or if I was settling. I do think that most of the pains I went through were necessary sadnesses, things I needed to experience if only to arrive at the things I know now. I’ve tried new things, and I’m glad that I did.

2010 has been a tough time for me, but the truth is, I’ve had a lot of help along the way. Even though I had never experienced this much disappointments and failures before in my life, I can’t help but feel really grateful for everything. Like I told a few of my friends earlier this month, I quite liked 2010 more than I hated it, and I say this in all earnestness. If the good things do come with the bad, then I’d have to say that I would still want it all, anyway.

Because there are still a few more days left before 2010 ends, I’m going to save the year-in-review for later. I’m just really grateful for opportunities, second chances, and the occasional surges of boldness that have allowed me to try new things that were scary, but also, ultimately fulfilling.

I have a lot of things to say to a lot of people, but I suppose I have six days to muster up the courage to tell them, instead of copping out and typing them in a blog entry.

And, in closing, a tiny Christmas mix for you, comprised of eight meager tracks. I always mean to post Christmas mixes, but they always come together way too late. This is what I have so far, and I hope you like them regardless of their being Christmas-y:

1. The Only Gift That I Need — Dashboard Confessional
2. Linus and Lucy — Vince Guaraldi Trio
3. The Christmas Song — The Raveonettes
4. Xmas Time Is Here — My Morning Jacket
5. Baby, It’s Cold Outside (cover) — Darren Criss & Chris Colfer (Glee)
6. Christmas TV — Slow Club
7. Baby, Please Come Home (Darlene Love cover) — Death Cab For Cutie
8. Christmas Time Is Here (Vince Guaraldi Trio cover) — Mayer Hawthorne

Merry Christmas, everyone. I hope it was good for you. :)

I’ve always loved making mixes. Some are really hard to do, this one came to me pretty easily. (Funny how the title seems to hint at something completely the opposite.) I nearly broke my weird rule (about adding more than one song by an artist) but I prevailed, and it turned out pretty OK.

Here’s the tracklist:

1. “Ask” by The Smiths
2. “Slow Hands” by Interpol
3. “Tulips” by Bloc Party
4. “Do You Remember?” by Ra Ra Riot
5. “Run” by Vampire Weekend
6. “Whiskey” by Voxtrot
7. “Futile Devices” by Sufjan Stevens
8. “Ghosting” by Freelance Whales
9. “Say Yes” by Elliott Smith
10. “I Found a Reason” by Cat Power (The Velvet Underground cover)
11. “Call Me On Your Way Back Home” by Ryan Adams
12. “Slow Show” by The National
13. “The Wind” by Cat Stevens
14. “Maps” by Arcade Fire (Yeah Yeah Yeahs cover)
15. “Wait” by Death Cab For Cutie (Secret Stars cover)
16. “Sa Madaling Salita” by Ang Bandang Shirley

There’s a story in there somewhere.

Download here.

Or, How I Learned How To Stop Worrying And Love The Fact That Spent Half My Monthly Paycheck To Go See Ezra Koenig.

I’ve been putting off writing this entry for a while. Partly because I am denial that the day I had been waiting for for a few months now is finally over. This was some far-off point in time that I kept reminding myself about whenever things got a little rough. It was something to look forward to, and now, it’s become something to look back at.

I know people write Vampire Weekend off as hipster shit, seeming to lack longevity in the music scene. Even more people think that they are just pretentious hacks, because they all went to Columbia, and write about sons of diplomats, exotic milky drinks, cultural obscurities, and punctuation marks with specific uses. But I love them. A lot. I loved them enough to do something I had never really done, which was to quite literally go the distance.

(Plus, I don’t think anyone else can write about the subtleties of difference between the flavors of English Breakfast and Darjeeling tea quite like they do.)

I know Singapore isn’t really that far away from Manila, and I suppose that’s why I decided to fly out in the first place. It was, to me, a glimmering opportunity to live out a dream that was always too far away to grasp. My favorite bands seem to like skipping out on Manila on tours, sometimes even skipping out on Asia altogether (The National, I am looking at you JK, they just literally posted a date for Tokyo. YOU MUST COME TO MANILA), so this was such a tempting situation that I voluntarily got myself into. And it was frakking worth it.

I still get chills and a jolt in my heart whenever I think about how I actually saw them play. I know that when you lay it out, it really doesn’t make any sense. “What’s the big deal?” you are probably asking yourself, but I really don’t know how to explain it. How do I explain that I can probably live off this post-concert high until the end of the year? How do I concretely prove to you that seeing them play songs I’ve looped endlessly and sang along with in showers and hummed and shared with girls I wanted to be friends with and put on mixes for boys I like-liked gave me such a rare and pure sense of joy and excitement?

For more than half the show, I was holding on to my camera, trying to capture the entire thing, trying to pixelize my proof: “I was there, and this is what I felt,” I wanted to be able to say. But then I realized that I don’t need to prove anything to anyone. Certainly not my feelings. Certainly not my “religious experience,” the real fun and joy I felt, seeing one of my favorite bands up there, sharing what must be this tiny little thing to them with their fans, whose lives are probably changing, even for just a little bit, for just a little while.

My friend, Jamie, is one of the biggest Vampire Weekend fans I know. This is one of the many things that we share with each other—along with a Boy Band That Must Not Be Named, Dunkin Donuts coffee, and a Harry Potter ‘ship—something foundational to our friendship, if you will. I consider her one of my good friends, even though she lives in Oahu and even though we’ve never met. I can count on her to “get” me when I talk about things like this. I can count on her to “get” it and understand that I mean it when I say that seeing this show meant the world to me, how it counts as one of the greatest days of my life. Even though I was rows upon rows of people away. Even though I lost my phone. Even though I have a burning hole in my pocket from paying for the trip. Even though I am now in danger of being fired, since I wasn’t able to do much work while I was away (and because I didn’t really tell anybody).

I know Jamie gets it, and I know some of you might, too. And now, without further ado and without (much) further rambling, here’s the proper concert update that some people have been waiting for.

Vampire Weekend’s setlist. I made an iTunes playlist because that is how I sometimes roll. The last three are the ones from their encore. My brother said Ezra referred to “Walcott” as “Cape Cod,” though I cannot confirm nor deny these allegations, as I was too busy ogling his lovely face.

Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa, aka one of my favorite songs of theirs.
It reminds me of some of the nicest things is why.

Rostam!

Ezra & Chris T.

This was during “Cousins.” I can tell because of the lights,
which by the way were really awesome, appropriate, and properly-timed.
We really might as well have been watching a light show. I was so impressed.

Guh. So precious.

Ezra, Chris T., and Chris B.

Love you forever~

More photos under the cut. I think you will be able to tell who the (obvious) favorite is, but I just want to say, for the record, I love all of them a lot. Continue reading Vampire Weekend on a Weekday….

It’s kind of a story-telling, I guess. Tracklist:

1. Krafty • New Order
2. After Hours • We Are Scientists
3. Thank You Mario But Our Princess Is In Another Castle • The Mountain Goats and Kaki King
4. Sometimes • My Bloody Valentine
5. This is the Dream of Win and Regine • Final Fantasy (Owen Pallett)
6. You and I • Wilco
7. You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me • Smokey Robinson & the Miracles
8. I’ll Do Whatever You Want • Memphis
9. A Hiccup in Your Happiness • The Lucksmiths
10. English Girls Approximately • Ryan Adams
11. Most of the Time • Bob Dylan
12. Rose Parade • Elliott Smith
13. Wet and Rusting • Menomena
14. Sleep All Summer • St. Vincent and The National
    (Crooked Fingers cover)
15. Sparks • Coldplay
16. I Think Ur A Contra • Vampire Weekend
17. The Ice Is Getting Thinner • Death Cab for Cutie
18. Start A War • The National

Download the .zip here.

Continue reading MIX: A Slow Regression Into a Quiet Retreat…