pinball, pizza, humidity and transcription

been wondering where i've been? well, in wildwood of course! not too much in the world of music to report, although there are two ridiculous songs on ROCK radio right now that i'd like to get to the bottom of:

- a song about 1984 and other distopian type signifiers that's sung in the post-emo whiny thin pop punk voice
-a song about L.A. being on fire..on the day after tomorrow soundtrack, maybe?

how old do i sound writing this? anyway, both songs have little in the way of craft but are curious bits of anxiety on the otherwise paxiled out alt.radio, which only the other day i was thinking, 'man, who would have thought that tool and stone temple pilots would have been the most influential commercial bands from the '90s?' ya, i'm about four years late on this observation.

not able to do too much listening, as i've spent at least eight hours a day since i got here miring through transcriptions of the oral history stuff. a word of advice for people who ever want to hire transcribers - don't use u. of connecticut...i had to correct 'deaf metal' to 'death metal' about 20 times in an interview with a record store owner. there's a difference between misunderstanding the words and misunderstanding the entire culture. i think they had some cloistered nuns doing my transcripts. who was it that wrote the first scholarly piece about this problem? Boas? In like, 1910 or something? Like, you have to UNDERSTAND not just the language, but the culture, to be able to quote someone. Should have just taken the 9,000 dollars and transcribed it myself. Oh wait, that's what I'm doing right now...for free.

Mix CDs for the road? C'mon!