Good morning good morning hello hi how are you. Greetings from Somerville, MA. What a lovely morning.

Just got back from a nice walk down the Somerville Community Path to David Sq to see my friend Mark, who is in town for One Morning Only. One Morning Only is the old-people equivalent of One Night Only. Now we get coffee and go on walks. It was lovely. No he heads on to Vermont, then Europe.

Bandcamp Friday! What should I buy? I got new Squirrel Bait reissues, Tanya/Chris and Ana Roxanne in my cart. Suggestions welcome. Bandcamp Fridays are (one of many, apparently) exemptions from the “no spending money” rules.

Is it weird that Zevia Cola and Caffeine-Free Zevia Cola taste different? Diet Coke and Caffeine-Free Diet Coke do not taste different? I find it all very mysterious.

Went to see LCD Soundsystem at this “new” venue called Roadrunner. Bowery Presents joint. Boston’s version of Brooklyn Steel, but better than Brooklyn Steel. Phenomenal sight lines from every spot in the room, amazing sound. As other Bowery properties, a “sold out” show leaves plenty of room in the back and by the bars and, I am realizing, plenty of room to dance. People fucking DANCED. It is good to see Boston dance. For a 20 year spell there was, like, one show that Bostonians ever danced at — that Royksopp show at the Paradise in the early oughts. Now they dance. It is great. And the venue accommodates it. The Architecture of Dancing™.

Also they had TWO low-set handicap urinals in each men’s room. That is a nice touch.

I think I stood almost exactly where my old Rockets Burst From the Streetlamps practice space was: I was up a floor in the balcony, sort of most of the way down North Beacon, a bit off the block. I am sad that my old rehearsal space is gone. It is really fucking weird that Boston has this whole new area in Allston that looks like Brooklyn around the Barclays Center. Fancy offices and posh bars and public art and a bowling alley and amazing live venue and an arena and New Balance’s world headquarters. The asian buffet is gone, alas. But I gotta admit, it really is impressive.

Boston has built more and changed more in the last ten years than it did in the 20, 25 years I lived here. Maybe they were expending all their energy on the Big Dig back then. Maybe America is past the hump on not being able to build things. Feels like they build a lot of shit in Boston now. That whole casino area. That whole area by Target. Lots of evolution here now.

Really is a great town.

LCD Soundsystem were great. The new ending to “Get Innocuous” is fantastic. I am sad songs from American Dream take songs like “Losing My Edge” from the set. “All My Friends” and “Someone Great” still get me right here thumps chest.

I had a revelation that when I am seeing LCD Soundsystem in New York, I am psyched to hear “New York I Love You.” When I am seeing LCD Soundsystem not in New York, I am annoyed when they play that song.

I had a revelation that he does “New York I Love You” at the end of the set so if he fucks his voice on the long high note, it is fine.

I had a revelation that he does “Dance Yrself Clean” at the end of the set because the kids FREAK OUT and dance so hard during it, that if they played it early, they would run out of steam.

I had a revelation that I am paranoid of the people standing behind me at shows and I vastly prefer to stand in the back with my back against a wall and I am totally 100% sure this has nothing to do with America’s mass shooting epidemic nope nope nope.

I had a revelation that I do not like “Your City’s a Sucker” and I never need to hear it again.

I did not have a revelation but I had a lot of confusion about my habit of seeing the same bands a million times and maybe I need to see more new bands. Luckily I am seeing Gelli Haha next week.

The other night when I was trying to describe the Afghan Whigs show to Sean, he nailed it. To paraphrase: “The Usual Suspects is a really good movie but do you really need to see it thirty times.” I have been thinking about this a lot this week. I have seen three bands this week that I have each seen over a dozen times. I will (probably) be seeing another one tomorrow.

SOME bands, you see them 15 times, every show is unique and amazing and different. The Cure, most notably. You never know what you’re gonna get at a Cure show. You could be at a mid-tour stop in Topeka and they’ll bust out “Do the Hansa” or some shit for the first time in 30 years. For a hard-core fan, every Cure show is a thrill.

Bands like The Afghan Whigs, LCD Soundsystem, though: they are The Usual Suspects. There are one or two different songs in the set from the last time you saw them, even if it was 5, 10 years ago. Every few years (then decades, as they age), there is a new album, so two or three tracks you loved get dropped from the set, and some new ones you don’t have the same emotional attachment to get added to the set.

When you’re young, it’s your first or second time, the show is revelatory. The first 2, 4, 7 times. But eventually it is comfortable and worn like a nice set of jeans. There are moments where they instill in you something like the passion of your youth, but mostly you sit and marvel that it’s happening at all. That you have survived, that the band has survived.

I have a lot of friends who have seen LCD way more than me – it is a band that attracts passionate lifelong fans. Which really is impressive given how little the set changes. It’s about the feeling, the dancing, the community, the catharsis, and, man, they do that shit real real well.

I went with Sean and a lady-friend that is in her early 40’s, and she was marveling about how “the kids really like LCD Soundsystem” and how weird that was. And yeah, I suppose compared to the Whigs, or Mercury Rev, or (probably) tomorrow’s Hold Steady show, a lot more kids. But it struck me as a weird thing to say because kids were always into LCD Soundsystem.

But then I realized that’s cuz she was a kid when they started. But I was already 31 when I fist saw them in 2003. I was already old. It’s all kids. Always has been.

Man. Of all the hipster electro bands from the oughts, who woulda thought LCD Sounsystem would be the one standing. I had my money pegged on Fischerspooner.

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I am listening to all the single tracks that have piled up at the beginning of my “to investigate” playlist. Advance singles, amazing tracks that I do not have the heart to delete when I am cleaning out the playlist. Right now it is Maggie Rogers and Sylvan Esso’s cover of Broken Social Scene’s “Anthems for a Sixteen Year-Old Girl.” Great cover. I would go see Maggie Rogers, I think. I say I would go see Sylvan Esso but they are local to the Triangle and I never go, so I would probably be lying I guess.

Oo now it is a really good cover of the Cocteau Twins’ “Sugar Hiccup” by someone named Hannah Peel. Takes a certain level of bravery to cover the Cocteau Twins.

It’s strike day! No school! No teachers! Is it working? I hope it’s working. Oh shit should I go on strike today? My main task for the day is to sit and think about three different very challenging problems at work. I wonder if I could stop thinking. because we all know stopping thinking about something is really just a better way to get at good ideas. Mind crimes against strikes. You can’t win I want to express solidarity but I think too much can I donate money to the sanity defense fund or something?

Craig Vetner died. Controversial figure who took on the federal government to beat them to sequencing the human genome. The “anonymous” donor of the DNA turned out to be his. He was a pioneer in mixing business in science in a way that won him a lot of critics, made him a fuckton of money, and more or less transformed the whole world of the relationship between business and science leading to great things like Moderna and terrible things like OpenAI and Anthropic. Took a $100 million of his money, endowed a non-profit, gave it his name, and then quietly spent the rest of his life working on science with far less controversey. Worked at the same base in Vietnam as a hospital technician, saw a fuckton of death, freaked out, almost committed suicide by swimming out into the sea.

In the mid-90’s, the agency I worked for had PE Biosystems as a client, along with Celera Genomics, the company they founded and funded for Vetner to do his human genome mapping work. They gave him $70 million to do this. This was a work of genius on their part because PE Biosystems made DNA sequencing machines so, boom, they doubled their customer base.

Those were the years that were the height of his fame and infamy.

I laid out the annual reports for both companies. Didn’t do the art direction, Carol did that. But I did the design and layout. Still very proud of them. The Celera one in particular looks great. Wonder if I have any of that scanned. I know I still have a physical copy. Hrm. Looks like no. But i do have a single blurry photo of the PE one:

RIP Craig.

I find it fascinating, people who are in infamy for a couple years, then just return to the mean of being mostly obscure.

Jane did not call me last night, which was sad. She did text me this morning, though:

So, you know. Important information.

Gonna give you the playlist of all these songs at the top of the queue. Most of them have already been put on a playlist for you, but here is a nice random assortment across genres. I am about 12 songs in now and it is still working real well:

It’s friday! I successfully didn’t let you down, and wrote every day of this trip. I know it was a little half-assed at times, I apologize. Gotta write through the block. Not every sentence can be a banger. Waiting around to craft a perfect sentence will kill ya the night was sultry.

I hope you had a lovely April, and I will see you Monday back in the woods of Chatham County, North Carolina.