Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Guest Blog - The Midnight Lumberjack defends his home forest

Thank you, thank you, it's great to be here. I just flew in from
vytriads.blogspot.com and boy is my head still in the clouds! Ha-ha! Oh, what's that? We're on? I don't believe you…what? Oh right, musical hometowns. Sorry. Let's get this blog into the sphere.

What's with all this Midwest bias over here? You guys use Springsteen nicknames. He's from Jersey, the armpit of the EAST COAST. I think you should all go for Bob Seger monikers: Comeback Baby (Jacob), Beautiful Loser (Coonhound), and Old Records (Irish). Yeah, that's the ticket. Anyways. Lets talk about the dark sides of your musical hometowns. Detroit? Kid Rock doesn't let anyone forget he is "straight out the [motor city] trailer." Minneapolis? Every tween's favorite whine-time band Motion City Soundtrack is from the Twin Cities. And Akron? Hey Irish, you failed to mention DEVO was Akron born and bred. Whip it, jerk.

You know a city with no dark side? Fairfield, Connecticut. Welcome to the most picturesque suburban town in the country. Check out this resume: GE World Headquarters. Meg Ryan. The exterior house shot from Who's The Boss. James Blake. The finest Jesuit high school in America, Fairfield Prep. Don Imus. The kid who plays the Mac in those Apple commercials. The world famous dive The Seagrape. Oh, and one more…

...wait for it...

...John Mayer.

A goddess among men. He taught us how every girl's body can be a theme park, how deep down we all want to run through the corridors of our schools, and why dad's better be good to their baby momma's babies. He gave every college douche bag a free pass to buy an acoustic guitar, memorize derivative chords and put it on display in his dorm room, hoping that one night he would be able to use this shtick: "Yeah, I play guitar, I'm okay. What's that? You want me to play something? No no, I'm not that good. Okay fine, do you like John Mayer?"

Ugh. All right, I admit it; I hate his stinking guts. But all that
aside, here are some truisms: He really can play the guitar. He is
moderately funny. He dates Jessica Simpson.

Yeah, that didn't help. It just makes me hate his fucking guts even more, this time out of pure jealousy. But a few things about him didn't help cool my hatred from the beginning. I was a teenage musician in the area when he hit it big and had to deal with constant and horribly misguided comparisons (I'm taller and better looking).
Growing up as a Beatles fan, he constantly bashed them in interviews. And once I left Fairfield I got asked if I knew/had ever met him ALL the fucking time. (For the record, I don't and haven't)

So, yeah, in retrospect, I got nothing. Fairfield sucks for music. I grew up living vicariously through New York. My high school band, The Rounders, was possibly the most successful act to come out of the area besides Mr. Quarter-Life Crisis. And that's only because we sent our demo to anyone we could find with a subscription to Rolling Stone.

So have your fun you Midwest bastards. But they way I see it, if I live in NYC for the rest of my life, I can start saying THIS is my hometown and then really get back at you jerks. But we'll save that for the future. That and flying cars.

Until then, this is the Midnight Lumberjack saying goodnight to all you woodland creatures and musical prostitutes.

Now where did I put my ax?

-Midight Lumberjack

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