The uprising of dirty rock has been happening for several years now, and on the metal side most notable is the success of Georgia’s Mastodon and the slew of bands who have followed the dirt roads they traveled on: Blacktusk, Kylesa and Baroness. These bands, plus how everyone “in the know” is all about loving the Melvins (hey, Nude With Boots was great!) sludgy, swamp metal is everywhere now including southern Missouri. Leading the pack on a trip from St. Louis to Savannah are the beloved black robed ((Thorlock)).

Seeing ((Thorlock)) live is immediately arresting. They are not just 3 dudes in jeans and band t’s, but are Druidic priests in black robes. I can’t get over this, there is just something compelling about the visual element of their show that I feel forced to pay attention. Fortunately, the visual shtick isn’t the only thing about ((Thorlock)) that keeps my attention: their music friggin’ rocks.

Their songs are full of behemoth-sized riffs, great vocals that are powerful without losing their sense of melody and they sounds huge, which is more difficult for a three-piece. On their 2008 self-titled record, a few song titles indicate they also have a sense of humor: “Assneck,” “Triceratops,” and the chorus to “Mississippi Wheelwash” is “Giddy up, amigo/Vamos muchachos.” They even cover “Deuce” by KISS. The band obviously don’t take themselves too seriously.

No matter how silly the content of their songs seem, ((Thorlock)) is serious about rocking your face off. On record and live it is damn near impossible not to nod along. Perhaps ((Thorlock)) have addled my brain with their religion of cannabis-soaked riffs, I can no longer tell. Call me a believer either way because I am ready to follow this band to the swamp lands.

((Thorlock)) have a new 7″ coming out later next month that I cannot wait to hear. You can download their self-titled record here as well as stay up to date on ((Thorlock)) news and other good St. Louis based sludgy and heavy bands at Pissfork.net. Long live the South!

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During the discussion while everyone was crying tears of sorrow over how those times are dead and gone, I thought “what’s stopping us from doing this now?” I had an epiphany: an album listening party via the internet. We’d all listen to the record at the same time, “talk” about it via skype’s instant messaging service, then actually discuss the record using its conference call feature. Behold! #listeningkids was born.

After creating a Google Group, and setting a date, we were rolling. Two listening parties ago, one of the #listeningkids presented Titus Andronicus most recent album “The Monitor.” I had discovered Titus about a year and a half ago via a “song-of-the-day” podcast and was immediately drawn to their lo-fi, Bruce Springsteen meets the Sex Pistols punk/rock sound. It didn’t hurt that when I first heard the repeated chorus lyric “Your life is over” I was working a job I hated in a town I hated even more. The song was from their first studio album “The Airing of Grievances,” and I was very excited to hear Titus’s newest album “The Monitor.”

“The Monitor” opens with a bombshell. It begins with a prophetic quote from Abraham Lincoln before he was president, before the war started: “There is no foreign power that can destroy us quite like our self.” This theme is hammered over and over throughout the record’s 10 tracks. Like what Tim Kasher did tongue-in-cheekily in Cursive’s monolith “The Ugly Organ,” Titus Andronicus’s singer and lyricist Patrick Stickles embraces the contradiction of self-flagellation as masturbation. The very act of confessing ones short-comings, failures and suffering is excruciatingly painful but we get off on it; both listener and confessor. The problem cuts to the quick. How do artists still create art with the knowledge that that is exactly what they are trying to do? How does they overcome the self-inflicted pressure? They must overcome! both for the listener and themselves. Stickles and the rest of the Andronites attempt this by wrestling with and embracing their dirt-bag roots like the Boss himself and the rest of the Garden State are watching. Because they are, and so are we, and the album is a masterpiece because of it.

The five individuals that comprise Titus Andronicus are from New Jersey, and like the rest of the state, they love Bruce Springsteen and wear that on their sleeve. It is this love of Asbury Park’s greatest that shines the brightest in their music despite reflections of the Dropkick Murphy’s and Cursive. Each and every track on “The Monitor” is epic and fused with teenage joy and that joy is probably the most apt self-criticism on the whole record. As Patrick Stickles lyrically rips himself apart on each song highlighting how fake he is by constantly making pop culture references instead of real conversation, using alcohol to forget about his problems and numb his emotions, constantly calling himself some version of “fuck-up” and “quitter;” the band plays energetic, powerful and nearly bouncy Boss-inspired punk jams. Stickles fights against who he was and where he came from and how he thought fleeing with a particular girl to a particular city could save him from Jersey, the “town full of losers” and how that thought profoundly shapes who he is now and who he wants to be. But the music, the music!, disagrees with Stickles assessment of himself and his fate and speaks the words of the prophet: “there’s no place left to hide.”

An alternate title for “The Monitor” could have been “Born to Run (and then Retreat)” but I would argue that it could also be titled “Chimes of Freedom.” Of all the allusions to the civil war throughout the record: schism, the inner struggle, an entity ripping itself apart by it’s own volition; despite the tragedy, loss and ruin brought about by the conflict the fact is the slaves were still freed. Freedom rings like ears after a cannon firing in every IV-V-I and is present in Stickles’ caterwaul even at his most depraved.

This is rock ‘n’ roll! This is an album! Start to finish each note perfectly placed by design. Each song following the one before and not as powerful taken out of its full and proper context. Each lyric functioning on multiple levels: a collision of cultural contexts, symbolism, allusion and the marriage of the personal and the universal. Titus Andronicus have created a master-work and it is a damn shame more records like this are not released. Even after our listening party several members of the group commented on how they liked “The Monitor” and thought it was pretty good but “probably won’t ever listen to it again.” This is a tragedy! Are you listening? I mean, are you really listening? “The Monitor” is a massive record, impossible to digest in one sitting. New layers of meaning unfold with each listen. It must be paid attention to! It must be appreciated because records like this are not released often and they deserve more time than casual, background music listeners normally give. This record deserves to be studied, mediated over, and championed.

Larger works have the amazing ability to change our life but only when we slow down enough to really hear what it is being said. I do not know where I would be without albums like:

Breach Kollapse
Fucked Up The Chemistry of Common Life
Cursive The Ugly Organ
Bjork Medulla
Modern Life is War Witness
Wilco Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Converge Jane Doe
Deftones White Pony
Brand New The God and Devil Are Raging Inside Me

And so many others. “The Monitor” is topping my year end list so far for best album of 2010 and I hope it makes it onto many, many, many other top tens as well. That is, if more are willing to really listen.

Some of you may have read tweets about musical performances at Hartford here, or here, or here, maybe here or finally here. Let’s start with that last tweet #coheedkid.

#coheedkid’s story it pretty simple really. He’s a 16 or 17 year old kid who is a very decent guitarist and really likes progressive/rock emo bands like Coheed and Cambria or the Fall of Troy, etc. Every week him and his chain smoking, refillable coffee and soda drinking friends will swarm upon our patio and remain there all evening. About 4 to 5pm, after school now that it has started again, they show up and are in and out of the shop all night. There numbers have steadily grown since August, them and their goth clothes & the girls with their Hot Topic skirts with the Misfits logo on it without a clue where it originally came from or any idea who Glenn Danzig is.

Whatever. They’re just kids. Now, #coheedkid is nice and polite and always asks if he can take our house acoustic guitar out to the patio to play for the evening. We always obliged, and appreciate his asking. Once Open Mic Night starts, he signs up somewhere in the middle of the evening and plays two songs. They’re usually both some progressive/rock emo song by Coheed and Cambria. That is to say, the kid can rip it on guitar, usually making a mistake or two, but when he tries to play AND SING at the same time, he usually guffs it up significantly. So each week, towards the middle of the set, I have two, poorly performed 7-minute songs to look forward to. But God bless ‘em for getting up there and doing it. Everyone’s terrible before they’re good.

#coheedkid’s not even the worst part. I’d be very happy to listen to him try to play those songs all night than have to listen to a few people who read poetry during the evening. Supposedly, all it takes to be a poet is the ability to rhyme if you based it solely on the crap I’ve heard. Aren’t you aware the poetry can be about more than your relationship problems or frustrated rantings? People don’t clap after your performance because it was good, they’re just happy the poem is over.

A brief aside about the sound system. Two mics, on mic stands, into a Crate acoustic amp. Awesome.

To preface #freepaperlady‘s behavior, I need to explain a bit about our store. We carry the St. Louis Post Dispatch. It costs $1 (plus 10 cents tax.) People often buy the Post, or bring their own in, and read it in the store over a meal or just coffee. Some even leave their’s behind for others to enjoy (or for us to trash/recycle for them, whatever.) We even have a little cart by the door underneath our dish bus that collects these used papers. This is a courtesy for our guests.

Well, in comes #freepaperlady (which as a nickname was coined by @travisbursik I think, he was the first person I heard say it anyway.) This lady is older, probably upper 50′s, who comes into the store in the last hour we’re open any given evening. Let me clarify, she only comes into the store in the last hour we’re open. She immediately looks underneath the bus for the day’s Post. It’s usually there. She picks up the paper, walks over to the bar and asksstops me from the closing tasks I’m busy doing to ask for a *ahem* free cup of water. After receiving such a cup, she then finds somewhere in the cafe to sit and spread the paper out. Literally, pages strewn about all over whatever table she’s sitting at. When she finally gets up and leaves the store, usually a few minutes before close, she doesn’t return the paper to where she found it & she doesn’t put her free water cup in the bus. She leaves it all on the table for me to clean up which is rude even for our paying (and tipping!) customers. We are not a full service restaurant and you’re not a paying customer. Thanks a lot biz.

Sometimes, and boy do I relish these times, they aren’t any Post’s left by other customers. Yep, no free papers for #freepaperlady. The other night was one such night! When she came in that evening, she went through her usual routine and after seeing no Post’s, she grabbed one of the free Riverfront Times which is also by the door and come up to the register for that cup of water. Well, the Post’s we have on sale are right there by the register, and we actually had two or so left. She asked me if she could just have one of the Post’s still for sale for free since “it’s so close to the end of the day.” Are you serious? I guess I could just give you a free cup of coffee as well since, you know, we close in a half an hour and I’m just going to dump it down the drain. Goodness. I tweeted about it here. While that was pretty hilarious, nothing compares to what happened tonight.

Tonight the woman came in and did her usual thing, grabbed a paper, asked for a water, make distracting small talk that distracts you from your closing task, but then the unthinkable happened. #freepaperlady takes the cup intended for water and fills it with half and half from the coffee station. This half and half hasn’t been used in hours and was probably last filled in the early afternoon. Yeah, room temperature milk that has been on the counter for probably 5 hours. Gross. Gross. Gross! It’s one thing to be cheap, but this lady is ridiculous. Next thing you know she’ll be asking us to refill the milk containers so she can have free cold milk. Then she’ll start adding sugar or honey from the condiments, or maybe even cinnamon & chocolate powder and make a free chocolate milk. I think if it gets to that point I’ll start calling her #hobolady and ya’ll will all be in on the joke.

Moving on.

A few more frequently tweeted abouts. There’s a ton of Mom’s who come into the shop with their non-descript kids for lunch. Because Hartford has a kids area, Mom’s feel pretty comfortable having group lunch sessions there so they don’t have to worry about keeping their kids entertained. This usually means a pack of wild, screaming 2-5 year olds and a bunch of oblivious Mom’s letting them run amok. One such tweets can be found here & here. (Also, #howfire is a meme I accidentally started on twitter last year when I misspelled wanting to spit “hot fire” onto something, or someone. The error was much to my chagrin and to everyone else’s delight. So much so that I eventually embraced it. Who doesn’t like begetting a meme? Unfortunately I don’t think the original tweet exists on twitter any longer. It appears twitter only allows you to go back like 3200 tweets. Lame.

There is one Mom in particular that I named #JoanCusakMom because she looks a bit like and sounds a lot like Joan Cusak. Nothing special or ridiculous about her, and she’s really nice, but she has that voice. It’s one of the few things that sets her apart from all the other Moms who buy $6 grilled cheese & peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for their screaming kids who only eat about half their meal before the plate and food is put into the bus and not the trash, $7 meals for themselves, a $1.50 8oz cup of goldfish and $3.80 latte and sometimes a $2.50 scone or scoop of ice cream but, oh God, can they not tip because they’re on a cash allowance from “Daddy” and only have so much to spend. At least that’s what I heard anyway.

As I coin new nicknames for our patrons I’ll be sure to let ya’ll know. Obviously as it happens on twitter first, then maybe later here if there’s enough confusion. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed the explanation of #freepaperlady and you’ll definitely LOL a bit more in future tweets.

Oh, and one last work related tweet about when a customer asked me if we had any Stevia.

I’ve been playing around with the layout of the website. I’m pretty poor at this web editing business, but know very well how to work around things. Maybe one day I’ll find time to learn how to do it (especially since I have the CS3 suite. It would make sense to put it to use.) Let me know your comments, and especially a way to make the twitter RSS in the top right look decent.