Good Morning. Hello. How are you? #1498
Seeing the Wedding Present, Durham, awkward encounters with rock dudes, Jellyfin, spousal communication during depression, getting shit in the mail rules, my new Ghostly box set.
Good morning everyone hello hi how are you? Boy am I sleepy. Just back from taking Jane to school. She was very cranky this morning, because her rubber-band bracelet had broken. I fixed in the car like a damn hero. She was not suitably grateful, commensurate to her big feelings of “this is the saddest I have ever been.” Ingrate.
Regarding yesterday’s call for a universal apology hand gesture while driving, friend of GMHHAY Mark Slavonia wrote in with a great idea:
I've sometimes wished that cars, in addition a horn, had a tiny green LED on the outside just outside the rear view mirror (maybe doubled in the back), maybe call it a "wink light", and it would just be a tiny positive signal to other drivers, saying "you go first" or "thank you". You could do it now with technology and sell it for, like $50.
This is a great idea and a car maker — specifically Volkswagen or Kia — should do it. It would be so awesome, and if they spent money on an ad campaign around the feature I suspect you could move the needle in the US pretty quickly. This makes me very sad I am not an auto marketer anymore, and do not have an ad agency and, like, ten automotive clients. I do not usually feel sad about this. I am usually quite happy to not be owning an ad agency and making ads for cars and evil tech companies. But sometimes it creeps back up.
Went to a adult-oriented rock and roll show, last night. A band that has been playing those sweet, sweet, hyper-fast jangly licks for forty years now, their 2,004th show ever: The Wedding Present. Two hundred or so people in the ¾ full venue, like god intended. Not the smallest venue I’ve ever seen them in (a corner bar in Austin), but not the biggest (Concorde 2 in Brighton. England not Mass).
It was a show focused on Bizarro, the album that got me into them, 35-ish years ago, before their masterpiece Seamonsters came out. They toured Seamonsters a while back that was great. This was great too, though. Coulda done without the 4-5 late period songs. Not because I don’t like late-period Wedding Present, but because they were not my late-period Weddoes songs. Wedding Present: one of those bands that has so many good songs you could write ten completely different setlists that all rocked. They did throw “Science Fiction” on the set, though, one of their late-period bangers. That was solid.
Yeah, this was a great setlist. Bizarro is a great album. I forget, because I wore it out back then and don’t listen to it much anymore, but damn. Lotta bangers. The hits “Brassneck” and “Kennedy,” of course, but “Granadaland?” So good. “What Have I Said Now?” “Take Me?” Jesus. Only two filler tracks on that record. Gedge, with his typical witty banter, acknowledged one of them, suggested they skip it. The audience didn’t entirely disagree.
Immediately upon walking into the Durham venue Motorco I nearly bumped into David Gedge. Rather than do anything debonair, or thank him for our actual Wedding Present he gave Emma and I, on behalf of our friend Aug, ten years ago. I just sort of smiled like an idiot and said “wow!” He scurried along.
Ten minutes later Mac from Superchunk arrived and I did the exact same thing. Gave him a weird smile, said nothing. Later, some fans said hi and he gave them a Merge tote bag and, you know, I don’t need another tote bag but… whoops.
I have become socially awkward in my rural years I guess.
Air quality was abysmal. Emma brought her CO2 meter. In the 3,000s. Probably got Measles. You guys hear about the Shakira show in New Jersey? Tens of thousands of people exposed to measles. This is how we live now.
Good shirt game on display: Neubauten, a vintage Pale Saints In Ribbons shirt, making me desperately sad that my Pale Saints shirt from that tour has gone away. A real sweet home-made Watusi shirt (Gedge only played one song from that underrated gem of an album. He played “It’s a Gas” and it was a gas). A Go Betweens shirt, Gang of Four, of course, from last month. Polvo. A North Carolina Educators Credit Union shirt, off the hook, man. I did my typical counterprogramming and wore a shirt from the current metal band Planning for Burial so, you know, no one commented on it.
Lotta old dudes drinking lots and talking about, like, Link Wray and stuff.
Opener was called The Tubs, from Ireland, and they had a bit of a following, actually. I can’t say they were, like, old crusty gutter punk music but they had a decent number of old crusty gutter punk fans? Very mysterious. Drummer gave good banter, kept telling us to not apologize for being American then we’d all apologize. Did a nice litany of American chain restaurants and we cheered commensurately for each one. Dude should regionally refine that schtick, cuz that crowd woulda lost it if he mentioned Bojangles or Cookout.
Weddoes played two songs from Seamonsters for me, thank you very much, including their masterpiece “Dalliance.” It was actually a great setlist, some real obscurities and gems. I, personally, am a big fan of “Crawl,” a B-Side to the “Corduroy” single, but could not for the life of you explain how it has made it into the 2025 Wedding Present set, let alone as the closer? Real weird one but happy to hear it. Same with “Come Play With Me” that was just fantastic.
That warehouse area of Durham wherein Motorco lies is such a great area, really brimming with nightlife and vibrance, at least until 10 PM ha. Made me want to move into the city. We drove into town coming from the north so we passed all those sweet, sweet, old Duke houses that racists used to own and now well-chuffed NIMBY liberals probably own but boy are those houses nice. Cities! I love cities!
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I think I especially like warehouse districts because they can gentrify without displacing people. That apartment building in the background is new, so many new apartment buildings. That building is in the lot where, like, eight years ago we saw Grimes and Blood Orange and Flying Lotus. Now it’s an apartment building. Will they do that thing where they move in next to a legendary venue and they start complaining about it? Probably. Emma said that venues should play music loud all day while apartment buildings are filling up and honestly that is not a bad idea. Let the tenants know what you are getting into.
Anyway Motorco has lots of great shows and I was very tired after this and if I had infinite money maybe I’d rent an apartment in that building so I could do to sleep faster after shows.
We are listening this morning to a Ghostly Swim compilation, part of the VinylMePlease Ghostly box set that came out, like… um… I dunno. Six, seven years ago? Let’s check. 2019. Good guess, Rick. Anyway, Sam from Ghostly is a friend and Sev formerly (before the shit went down not his fault, Hi Sev) of VMP is a friend but despite these connections I did not manage to procure this box set in 2019 it sold out so fast it really is the best VMP release.
And, as you know, I made a new year’s resolution to not buy any records this year which was a great idea and I am doing great I have only bought like ten records this year, go me.
Except recently I realized that you know what is a great dopamine hit, emotional pain killer for dealing day-to-day with the horrors of our current world? Getting cool shit in the mail.
So, this last weekend, in the middle of my depression bout, I spent two hundred and seventy-nine dollars on a gloriously conservatively graded copy of The Story of Ghostly International, the 8-LP Ghostly Box Set and it did its job exactly right and boy was I super happy when it arrived in the mail, especially upon discovering that despite it’s NM/NM grading it was, in fact, flawless and brand new.
Getting shit in the mail, man. It rules.
There will come a time in, um, 11-to-12 years when I ask Jane if she wants to keep my record collection or if I can dispose of it and if she chooses disposal, boy you guys are gonna be getting a lot of cool shit in the mail.
I would like to record here for posterity that talking to your spouse about depression, when you are a depression sufferer, is the weirdest goddamn thing but also kind of good? On Tuesday after I had climbed out of my hole I was kinda euphoric, like I often am. Just sheer relief that the bout is over. And Emma and I were talking about it and she used the term Yo Yo and I was like, no, that’s not quite right because most of the time I am neither Yoing or Yoing (hrm that does not quite work… waxing and waning? Manicking and panicking? That is good. Oh man. Nostalgia.). Most of the time I am even keep, for long stretches, then you get a Panick then a Manick or whatever.
But, you know, I am in a good mood when I’m telling her all this so it is very weird.
Also on Monday I managed to tell her I was in a foul mood. Lol not that she couldn’t tell, but I managed to, you kow, acknowledge it, and — crucially — inform her that it was depression and I wasn’t actually pissed about any real thing she had to worry about. She kinda gets the drill now, I think I just sort of muttered out something like “work stress, the state of world is fucked, I feel sick, I’m tired, all of the things” and she got it.
And that is very hard! Even though I am verbally staggering and muttering, I got it out, and she got it. When we were earlier in our relationship she would want me to talk about it, while in it, which is, of course, a terrible idea and you will spiral. A friend of mine wrote in last night that they treat it like a condition that is an illness that passes and that’s exactly right. You can’t feed it.
Anyway all of this is to say I am grateful for my wife that I can talk about these things and we have figured out how to get through the bouts without it, like, worsening our relationship because that is the worst thing that can happen in one of these situations.
I am getting into Jellyfin as a Plex replacement. If you are a user of my Plex, don’t panic. I will keep Plex on. This is in addition to Plex. But it has come to my attention that the reason Plex is kinda sucking in my own house is because it cannot handle subtitles placed over uncompessed 4k video without re-encoding, and that is BS and apparently Jellyfin does not do this. I ran a test last night and it was noticeably more zippy and smoother in its playback of a recently-ripped UHD disc.
So this means I got to spend like two hours yesterday doing my favorite thing and updating all the posters on my movies in the gallery so that all the 4K movies have a 4k banner on them, sorting all the Star Wars and Bond films together, etc. etc. Very satisfying tedious work that I hope an AI never takes away from me.
Jellyfin does have some (seemingly rudimentary) social capabilities, you can add friends to your server. But it seems clunkier than Plex, owing to the fact that Jellyfin does not store everyone’s credentials on their own server — a faustian bargian that Plex made early on that arguably has lead to their downfall.
So, in the foreseeable future, Plex will keep running for the friends.
But if you are already a Jellyfin user, or you really want to dive into some tech weeds with me getting this thing shared to the outside world and friended up, let me know and you can be my Guinea pig.
Hrm I think that is all I have today. I have tomorrow off, that is very exciting. Four day weekend. That’ll be just spiffing. Maybe I can get Jane to do some more gardening this weekend. I’m hoping to finally build that DIY air filter kit that’s been in my workshop for like four months. And, of course, Walmart! Collection Center! Studio work! Boy it’s gonna be great.
Got a club mix for you today. Since I am listening to this Ghostly comp, figure I’ll add a track from it that I am enjoying. And added Shriekback for you, Jes. And I love the new Avalon Emerson stuff so much, whoops, put two on here, oh well. And These weird Dandy Warhols remixes are fun. And Kneecap, lot going on with those young gentleman these days, they seem to have a lot on their plate.
Have a lovely day.
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Thanks for reading.
And hey! Maybe buy one of my books!
Good Morning, Hello, How Are You vol 1.