We're five days away from the end of a decade that will go down as the
worst in music history and so forth. I am just about four years done
here at My Space of comment, thought and top tens.
I am watching
it snow. Big fluffy flakes, not unlike the cold wet crap that gave us
14 inches two weeks ago, nor the inch and half of rain and freeze of
this week but the kind of fluffy flakes to which people dream of white Christmases and hope they don't get into the ditch on icy roads. It's
been a strange year, a year that begin with change and still got the
same old Governmental runaround. Turns out that Obama wasn't the savior as people predicted, we forgot the idiots in the house and
senate looking after the lobbyists interest and not you and me. And
of course the FOX News Fucks kept pointing that out and they're still
POed after the Halfwit and Neo Nazi got kicked to the curb. And it
turned out that the Neo Nazi was running things.
I'm surprised
that I have survived this decade of 8 years of one of the worst
presidents we ever had and by far the worst VP the world has seen. I
saw greed running rampant even to this day. Crappy movies, crappy
albums and American Idol to boot. As I look back on this decade, I
don't remember with fondness about anything all that much, in fact the
more I forget about this decade the better. Two major ice storms in
2006 and 2007 that wiped power out of here for a week, The dammed
Parkersburg/New Hartford tornado that wiped out half of Parkersburg but
somehow spared the Honourable Chuck Grassley pig farm. And the tornado
made it as far as around Dike to which had another tornado a year ago.
And the tornado that rocked through Iowa City and another around Anamosa
in 2006 but somehow spared the new Wal Mart. And 2008, the worst year
ever in terms of weather, go from 62 inches of snow on the ground in
April to a damn wet spring of rain every other day till 10 inches of
rain on a swollen Cedar River, ballooned it to 31.3 feet and damn near
took out most of the low lying areas in Cedar Rapids. Apparently the 1993
flood wasn't enough we had to have a 500 year flood to go with that 100
year flood. And I hope to God that I never had to deal such extreme
weather shit ever again.
There wasn't very many highlights in
this decade. We bring in the new decade with my best friend and his
wife and ex GF Olivia up in Dubuque and spent New Years going to
Galena. That was the high point and then things changed. Losing Olivia
to the next guy that she would eventually marry, then seeing my best
friend getting married to his date a year later. I did eventually start
dating another west coast woman in 2001 but once 9/11 came around and a
week long trip to Seattle became a wasted time something changed in her
or she was too wacked on drugs, we parted on bad terms.
And for the next 8 years I didn't show much interest in falling in love
and basically wrote the decade off by going on bargain hunts to Madison
and Phoenix and watching technology bypass the CD into obsoletes.
The Pawnshops quit having big inventories of cds for me to check out but
then again we were starting to lose the record stores around here,
Relics, Rock n Bach, Ratz, Co Op all started shutting their doors up
here, and the chain stores such as CDs Plus, CD Warehouse, Wherehouse
Music, Sam Goody, Tower Records and FYE closing them down left and
right. In the end Best Buy won out but for the record and cd collector
such as myself, I had to pretty much hit the road to find decent music
stores.
And we lost plenty of decent eateries along the way.
MiCasa in Mount Vernon, best Mexican Food place ever in this state
closed up in 2003, Moreno's in 2006, Jimmy Jack's and Taco Time here
this year. Shakey's in Coralville was gone too. But I managed to find
other replacements to go to, Villa's Patio for one, Marco's Pizza
another, El Rancho in IC likewise. Something new will come around and
replace the old and the cycle will repeat on and on.
Musicwise, I
did okay finding things at Half Priced Books, which has become my
second home and a much needed alternative music to find cheap as well as
Goodwill and Salvation Army. But after 35 years of reviewing new music
and finding most of it wasn't that great, I threw in the towel and
starting next year will focus strictly on music of the past and yet to
be discovered. We have 80 years to choose from and besides, the major
labels don't put out great or even good music anymore, it's all crap and
all rap and autotuned pap smear pop. And after years of trying to
find what's so musicial about Kid A or Yankee Hotel Foxtrot as these
critics calls them the best albums ever in this decade, I shrugged my
shoulders and said they suck and turned in my reviewers' card. To me
the best album of the decade remained The Beatles' 1 or Brian Wilson
Presents Smile. Radiohead didn't change my view at all, it just made me
go back to listening to Pink Floyd from time to time.
My life is
at the crossroads as after the infamous 2008 flood, I found myself
three months later at Crookton Pass Bridge, outside of Seligman in late
august and listening to the silence of the night and watching stars from
above while trains came and gone. I was alone at that time and figure
that this was as good as it gets and really didn't want to return home.
I was tired of trying to keep the basement dry from all the damn water
in the basement due to constant rains in May and June, tired of shitty
winters and tired of remembering past realtionships that didn't go
nowhere or thinking of past GFs that forgotten me long time ago. Last
time i did go out to meet somebody was four years ago and unfortunly two
days before meeting up, my wisdom tooth shattered and I spent most of
that time under a OxyCondin haze and the worst tooth pain imaginable.
So after that and almost getting scammed by some Russian chick, I became a Solitary Man.
To
which my biggest supporter of the blogs took notice of this. Not that I
really cared all that much actually I did, but I met her during the
2000 St Louis Mingles Party and we chatted online off and on for most of
this decade till she took a shot a courage and asked me out in August.
Like Brooksie, Sassy was a contributor to the top ten and little did I
know that she was thinking of big plans for being together. And so the
St Louis Mingles Reunion Party of 2009 was only me and her but we did
managed to see the sights, the music stores and in the end she became
mine in the end. Wasn't expecting that but it was planned that way.
So
as we close down this decade, it looks like that I will bring in the
new year's with my best friend and his wife but also with a new woman
that has been here all along most of the ride. I don't know what the
next decade will bring, there will be chaos, there'll be tornadoes and
floods and hurricanes and high gas prices to contend with. I may not
make it back here ten years from now. I also can't say if I will
continue to blog and put top tens together like i have been the last
four years here and the last seven at the end of this year. I remain
hopeful, thats all we can do.
In 2010 I'm sure the Crabb Music
Review will continue onward but with a more eye towards the past and
bands that I think should be noticed. Im not on My Space any more. It's a waste of time and Justin Timberlake buying it out didn't help things either. I lost most of the blogs before 2008.
In the end I survived the decade and so did you. I don't have much hope for the next decade but if I do survive that, I'll be here to tout the moment. But the odds are not in our favor.
We'll see.
