2007. Let’s end it in tears.

I am secretly a big schlocky sap. Maybe not so secretly, but definitely, definitely sappy. I realized when I touched down in DC for my layover on the way back to New York, that I always get a little bit choked up when a plane lands, when the flight attendant says “Welcome to Washington DC (or Columbus or Portland, or, yes, New York). The local time is 8:30.”  I can’t really explain why. Maybe it’s all the people who are already in DC or Columbus or Portland or New York who know what the local time is and have no idea that I’ve just touched down in their city, or my city, or my former city or my family’s city.

My nine days in Columbus were… Good, I suppose. In that vague way that one can assess the sense of non-time the holidays spent with family can create.  

I was able to go see Kevin’s band the Outerspacists again. Steve, the frontman, is this amazing performing, just fucking crazy and screaming all the time– but not like cashing in on some sort of eccentricity bit– like yelling about how much LSU sucks and how the Buckeyes are going to kick major ass, which, funny for a crowd of Columbus’s skinniest, most stylish hipster kids, seemed to be a big hit.  Jokingly, after the show I asked Kevin if Steve had a manifesto, and he was like “Oh, yeah, totally, it’s on our My Space page.”

Steve lives right by the bar so while the out of town acts play, we go over and listen to records. He gives us two choices. Steve Miller Band or The Carpenters. Steve Miller Band or Jimi Hendrix. We listen to “Space Cowboy.” Kevin tells me things about him bandmate. Steve has the most extensive VHS collection in Central Ohio. Steve goes to famous OSU football coach Woody Hayes’s grave and talks extensively with him. The problem with Steve is that his middle aged girlfriend and her kids don’t approve of the band. Everyone smokes up. People come and go. Steve wants pizza and to get paid for the show,  so we leave. 

Kevin also tells me about Danielle. She’s gone to the Peruvian Amazon to do some Shaman apprentice program and to take this hallucinagen that she has to fast for weeks and get spiritually clean to take. She’s not supposed  to have outside contact with anyone, but Kevin says she can sometime sneak away to the closest town and call him. She says things like “If you don’t hear from me in three months, it means I’m doing amazing.” Kevin tells me about waiting in the parking lot of a hotel while Danielle was trying to make some extra cash to pay for the plane ticket. He tells me about how they went to this park to do acid and she was wading in a stream and broke her toe. When Steve interjects and says things vaguely related to how Danielle is fucking with Kevin, he just says “She always has to do her own thing, always.” And though he doesn’t exactly say it, I remember last Christmas when I was hanging out with him and Danielle, she said something about being into a new guy she was seeing, and I realize that it’s Kevin. That they’re both too bizarre to just come out and say their together. Kevin isn’t even jealous of the trees that she calls lovers. It’s sweet. 

Later, at my mom’s Christmas party, I was talking to my friend Erik Kang. His band Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s just signed to Epic this month, and he was telling me that he and a few local Columbus musicians were having online debates over the classic indie versus major label conundrum. He said people thought he was a sell out; he thought there were pluses and minuses to both sides. We started talking about Columbus music and I said something about Kevin’s band. Then Erik mentioned that band Psychedelic Horse Shit, and he was just like, all Columbus music sounds like that, just a bunch of pretentious stoner dudes. Then he shows me pictures on his I-Phone of the photo shoot he and the band just did for Spin Magazine.

 I think it would be really easy to make these two experiences with my Columbus musician friends into this polarizing black and white thing. Like The Outerspacists are so DIY, and therefore somehow more real. But the reality of the situation is that Erik Kang is incredibly happy. He’s been dreaming of making his living as a musician forever, and now he’s finally able to. And who wouldn’t be, to borrow a phrase from my stoner friends, totally stoked on that?

I know Erik through his girlfriend Lauren Yohey, who is a good friend from high school, and whose family is like my own. Erik was telling me about two sold out shows in Chicago they’re playing on New Year’s Eve, and I ask Lauren if she’s going. When she says no, I ask why.Erik says, “Because she hates my band.”

“You do?” I ask. “Why?”

Lauren smiles. “You know. Because they suck!” And they do. Kind of. 

Now my top albums of 2007.

MIA “Kala,” Animal Collective “Strawberry Jam,” The Mekons “Natural,” Jay-Z “American Gangster”, Yeasayer “All Hour Cymbals,” LCD Soundsystem “Sound of Silver”, Panda Bear “Person Pitch,” Arcade Fire “Neon Bible”, Devendra Banhart “Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon,” Deerhunter “Cryptograms,” Battles “Mirrored.”

I still don’t get why everyone is freaking out over the new National record. I’m trying though.

Lauren Yohey’s mom Lucy said to me, “You’re so good to your musicians friends.” Yeah, Lucy Yohey, but they’re so rarely good to me.