The Expedition

“There is no indignity of being afraid to die, but there is a terrible shame in being afraid to live.” -Alydon (Dr. Who Classics: The Expedition)

The Killers Hiatus?

My poor beloved The Killers have probably been the most brutalized band in the history of the press.

Exhibit A: The "Best Album in 20 Years" quote debacle. The press backlash for the band’s cockiness was insane.

Exhibit B: Tiffs with the Bravery, Fall Out Boy, your mom…Ok, maybe Flowers didn’t slip up and insult your mom, but for awhile there, the band (well, Brandon) was telling everyone under the sun who he thought was the shit and who he thought was a piece of shit.

So jump ahead to now. The band has been together for over five years, they’ve already been one of the biggest bands in Europe and now quite possibly in the states. They’ve released three albums. a b-side album and a live DVD/CD. They’ve toppped end of the year decades as one of the best bands to remember. In short, they are a major success.

Yet, now the press and the internet has started the rumor mill. They’re breaking up. Flowers wants to go solo. Blah blah blah blah.

Ok. Yes, Killers guitarist Dave Keuning said that the Vegas glam-rockers’ Feb. 21 show in Melbourne will be their last—for a while, at least. But is that any reason to expect they’re done?

Let’s talk it out…

They’re Done:

• Quitting while ahead. This way they’ll always be remembered as great and not for some flop record down the line.
• Band tensions. There are two busses when this band tours. The party bus and the family bus. Perhaps the straight-lace boys were clashing too much with the party animals.
• Live DVD was only made so they could say goodbye. The band lives on with the live DVD, though you’ll never see them live again.
• Brandon really wants to go solo. Perhaps he realized there wouldn’t be enough room on stage for the rest of the band with his new shoulderpads.
• No idea where to go next. They’ve done the dance album, then the americana rock followed by the final frontier of space rock. Now where to go? Quitsville.

They’ll Be Back:

• Why stop now? They’re ahead of the game and selling out and playing major shows-hello Lollapalooza. Why stop when making lots of money?
• Ummm. hello non-stop touring. Even my job gives me holidays and days off. Plus, poor Flowers just had a new kid in August that he’s hardly been able to spend time with. They are allowed some days off from recording and touring.
• Promised covers album. 2009 was filled with interviews mentioning this, covers of Lauper, the Eagles, Fleet Foxes and Bright Eyes. They can’t back out on this now.
• They just want a little absence to make the heart grow fonder. This break is just so that the people don’t get burnt out on Killers overload.
• For as much as people call this band out for their egos, this is also a huge proponent in their favor. Why leave the scene when bent on world domination?
• While I loved "Day and Age," it wasn’t as popular as the prior two, so I think the band is more apt to go out on a higher note. No way is that their final album.
• Really? A solo Brandon? I love him, but I think not. He needs a band to counter his personality. No one would ever take him seriously solo. It isn’t like the Killers are the N*Sync to his JT. No, in this case, going solo does not make him cooler.
• They love music, the band and their fans. If they were unhappy and thinking of quitting, would they have really just gotten thier social media act together? And more importantly, would they really have brought their fans the wonderful holiday tune "Zombie Hands?"

No, I can see why some might suspect a break, but I think this is just a perfectly normal and well-earned vacation before they’ll be back in the studio. In fact, I wouldn’t have even thought of this as a "break-up" or "hiatus" if other publications hadn’t interpreted it as such. Seriously, what does "indefinite hiatus" even mean if the band didn’t even say those words themselves?

No. They’ll be back. Because as the band says, "Don’t stop the dance."

Motivation

I need to do more than just make it into work, sometimes go to the gym and then spend the rest of my time watching TV from the futon. Oh, and eating lots of junk. What is the point of the gym if I eat cookies all the time? What is wrong with me and most importantly,

MOTIVATION…Where are you?

Maybe I’ll find it again when the Spring comes.

Blah.

Hm… Downside to updating wordpress is

Hm…

Downside to updating wordpress is that apparently this won’t let me make a unique title in relation to the story. Email update a success. HootSuite needs practice.

Downside to both, can’t tag. That won’t help with the google searches.

#HootSuite Test 2.

Testing an update from hootsuite.com. Ho

Testing an update from hootsuite.com. Hopefully this just goes to Naturally Sharp.

Return to WordPress

I’ve just started playing around with a bunch of new social media tools. One of which is this nifty site called HootSuite, which is going to make it a bajillion times easier to post to my thousands of accounts. Ergo, Naturally Sharp blog, I finally will have time for you again.

Yay updates again!

If you too are constantly logging in and out of several blogs, different twitter accounts and managing facebook pages, I highly recommend you check out HootSuite. Right now the only downside is that it only connects to just one of my wordpress blogs. Hopefully that will get updated, but it’s the newest feature.

A final note. This is my first update from email!

Happy

It had been a rough week. Not really for me per se, but because I was stressing out for friends and family. My friend, Allison, broke her tail bone, my friend, Sam, just had a miscarriage and is really depressed and then I just found out my Aunt Cathy has breast cancer and has surgery this Thursday.
Add those stresses to school work and job hunting and I’ve been a little depressed.
Well the other night, I was at a music banquet, and I was talking to the Dean of the department and I said some ideas I had for the fine arts program to improve student relations/communications. He was really impressed and said if I wrote out an executable marketing strategy for this, he would pay me for doing that. So it isn’t a full time job, just a gig,
but it made me really happy.

Then the radio station called today and said they would take care of me for the Killers, so that made me happy.

Also, one of my professors had said I should call her at her day job at one of the region’s largest pr firms. So I did
and she was like, I was going to talk about possibilities for you, but then I found out that we are looking to hire an account assistant. So I have an interview tomorrow!

Plus, I’m like a week away from being an aunt.
And caitlin said she felt bad none of my sibling were coming to my graduation, so she was going to come.

And the only reason she hadn’t said this for sure until today was she wanted to talk to Marie because Marie graduates the same day and she didn’t want to look like she was choosing between us, but Marie said it was a no brainer that Caitlin should come to mine. I just felt really happy because my friends were being so awesome.

I’m still worried about my Aunt,
and my friend who had the miscarriage,
especially I know she already struggles with depression as is,
but with all this other stuff that basically just happened today, I feel happy and now everything will be OK for me and all my loved ones.

I needed today and I hope my friends get a really happy day like me, too.

Future Looking Up

Today at a Fine Arts banquet, I was talking with the chair about some of my marketing/promotions ideas for the department. He liked my ideas so much that he actually asked me to write out a strategy plan for the department and he would pay me!

It is more like a gig than an actual job, but this freelance thing feels right. I could do my own PR work. I feel like I do have potential and a future and I am excited.

Now if I can just talk to my one professor about that twitter job, I’m set…

Return to Updates / Living the Rock and Roll Life

I”m back and ready to write about my life again. For awhile, I was down and out and thought nobody would care about my ramblings, but then I remembered this is for me. I want to remember this turning point in my life as I transition from college to career. So that said, my return to blogging:

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This weekend was like a scene out of Almost Famous.

Friday night, I found myself at a David Cook concert–you know, that guy who won “American Idol”? I might have lost some scene points by being at that, but I did bump into one of the guys from Saddle Creek who dropped some info on the DL about some of the label’s new signings that haven’t been announced. I won’t say names because this info is top secret for now, but one is an awesome group from Lincoln that I kind of figured SC would eventually sign. The other is from Canada and I had never heard of them, but considering the other Canadian imports have been some of the greatest additions to the SC roster, I’m sure this one will be no different.

Saturday was my first foray into the stereotypical Rock and Roll life: you know the whole sex, drugs and music image? Now I stayed a good girl, but my eyes were definitely opened. I hit up The Thermals concert @ The Slowdown. If you haven’t heard of these guys, check them out. Sure they sing a lot of songs about death and fascists and whatnot, which sounds depressing, but they are ridiculously upbeat. I also got to chill with these guys backstage and ask them a few questions. A full review and the interview will soon be up over at PopWreckoning.com. Now, while the show was good, there was some shit going down in the crowd that was quickly going bad. There were a few errant moshers and I turned around at one point to see this one guy shaking his finger at another. I turned around a second time and they were in a head lock. I turned around a third time and my friend Joel was breaking the fight up. Think this sounds crazy? Wait for the rest of my night, but first a pic of Kathy from the Thermals:

Like true rockstars, we went to the Orpheum apartments afte the show for a nap before further partying. Yes it was midnight and we were napping. We would need this energy for AFTERHOURS, aka crazy house party a Chris P.’s pad.

Now here is where my eyes were opened. I’ve been to house parties before, but nothing like this. In the backyard like thirty people were just chillaxin and drinking, despite it being freezing. So we went inside. A strobe light casting a tripy effect on the fan transformed the living room into a dance hall. Chris P. was over on some pro DJ equipment laying down some beats. People were already passed out on couches and others were already getting on each other right out in the open. I was a bit shocked, but chose to ignore some of that action and just dance with my friends. The dance floor was a blast. People were passing around candles (maybe not the brightest idea (no pun intended) around drunks, but they did look sweet in the lights. A little later, a total creepster was hitting on me, so my friend D. and I escaped upstairs to play with a cat. We were in a room with Panther, the cat, and a few guys came in and were disappointed that we didn’t have hard drugs. About then I decided, I should wrap up the evening (it was after 4:30 am, after all). I’m not naive and figured I’ve been in the vicinity of drugs before, but knowing that the guys in the basement had access to coke and shrooms made it just a little too real for me, so I bounced. This party was fun, but wild.

Turns out it wasn’t the only crazy party in Omaha last night. Today I went to visit my friend at the iconic Hotel Frank. This place is where a lot of Saddle Creekers got their start and is one of the few house venues in Omaha. It has gone under several names in the past and known for being a center of the arts…and of parties. So I guess Saturday night, some guys got a little crazy with red paint and turned the place into a war zone. They threw bottles and furniture down the stairs and despite broken glass being everywhere, they wrestled in the paint in the dark. Eventually my friend tried to kick these people out and put a stop to the vandalism, but a fight broke out. The paint was all contained in the West Wing of the House. Apparently, Middle House had no idea this action was happening and just continued their separate dance parties. The place is a little cleaned up now, but it still looks like a war zone. Just look at this cellphone picture. With red on the couch and red hand prints on the wall, it looks like somebody died…maybe they did? Who knows? This place is crazy:

And to think that people think Omaha is boring…

The Recyclable End of the Year List

Because it is that time of year and I like lists, I have been making more of an effort to search out various end of the year lists. Mostly I do this because I love letting it go to my head when I see other critics validate the bands I thought of for my top ten list (i.e. Fleet Foxes).

During my browsing, I found a “list” that claims to be the end all of lists for the best bands/albums of the year. I found this over at Vice Magazine, and they try to prove that end of the year lists are predictable and pointless. That maybe true to a degree, but as I read through their “list”, I had a hard time deciding if I thought they were hilarious or offensive.

Here’s what Gavin Haynes at Vice thought was the end all of lists:

Slice through the crap: this is The Only Top 35 Albums Of The Year Countdown You’ll Ever Need.

 

Number 35: Bonkers novelty rap collective. Shows staff have sense of humour.
Number 34: Reserved for Britpop ’survivors’ who’ve made ‘their best album in years’.
Number 33: Wacky side-project of big-name band singer, which is a wacky electro-pop concept album about magic animals.
Number 32: Something from Iceland.
Number 31:  The name that keeps turning up on every electro/house compilation CD released that year. eg. Simian Mobile Disco in 07.
Number 30: Real authentic alt.country dude who made the album in a cave in the Appalachians/once dated Joanna Newsom.
Number 29: Return of once-derided old-timer who used to symboise naffness, but has subverted expectations by making an album of honest, brooding ballads with a hip young producer.
Number 28: This space is reserved for Bruce Springsteen if he makes an album in the year of the list. If not, The Gaslight Anthem or Hold Steady should sub-in.
Number 27: Nick Cave.
Number 26: Disappointing third album from previously much-touted act, so bad editorial embarrassment means its been crowbarred in here as a Pravda-style exercise in shrinking them slowly rather than dropping them like a hot brick as would be most appropriate.
Number 25: The band that everyone was tipping as the year’s biggest act in January.
Number 24: You’ve never even heard of this one. You never will. Even as your read the blurb, you find your mind simultaneously erasing the entry.
Number 23: Glitchy & worthy & difficult record you’ve listened to once. Squarepusher, basically.
Number 21: British Sea Power.
Number 20: Token world muso.
Number 19:  The band who’ve got a reputation for being ‘influential’, and have a geographically specific ’scene’ organised around them that they put on semi-mythical ‘parties’ for at a semi-mythical ‘venue’. eg: No Age & The Smell, Chairlift & Concert Hall Of Williamsburg.
Number 18: Band who wrote album of songs inspired by the tragic accidental/drug death of their bass player last year. Somewhere, the blurb says ‘courageous’.
Number 17: Laura Marling.
Number 16: Cheesy pop band masquerading as ‘wonky-pop’/'nu-pop’/'underground pop’, which only barely disguises the fact that they’re Roxette with alt. dress sense.
Number 16: Put in a ’stunning’ performance on Jools Holland.
Number 15: DJ who made “the year’s party-starting mash-up compilation” that you’ve never actually heard at a party that wasn’t put on by media-insiders. And never made any of those partygoers do more than pout extra aggressively. 
Number 14: Elbow.
Number 13: Hyper-obscure album everyone was bamboozled into voting for cos Pitchfork gave it a 9.9, despite sounding like every other folk album ever.
Number 12: Rapper facing child sex charges.
Number 11: Dizzee/Bizzle (pop grime slot shared on a rotational basis)
Number 10: Album described as a ‘groundbreaking fusion of dance and rock’.
Number 9: Tape of Bob Dylan coughing up some phlegm in June 1972, found in someone’s attic, dusted off, reissued, and hagiographised in the Sunday papers as a heartbreaking work of staggering genius.
Numbers  8 – 2: Records that were OK: no one was mad about them, but no one disliked them much either, so they swum through the middle course, whereas intense records that some people were truly passionate about but others really hated all ultimately failed to make the cut.
Number 1: Coldplay (Q), Arctic Monkeys (NME), Sven Vath (Mixmag), Neil Young (Uncut), Neil Young (Mojo), Neil Young (Classic Rock), Neil Young (Home & Garden), people humming transcendentally over distorted tape loops of concrete being laid (The Wire).

Vice is a British publication so don’t beat yourself up if you don’t understand all the lingo. I think that explains why the humour is so dry and why many of the points are directed at UK bands. However, as I said before, I’m not entirely convinced this list is humourous and some mocked items are actually bands deserving of  praise like Laura Marling.

So what do you think? Funny? True? Let me know.