Polar Bear Club

Polar Bear Club is my favorite band from Rochester! Dan and I saw them a few months ago in Portland and totally surprised our friend Chris, the guitarist, who didn't even know we live here. Their sound is awesome sing along punk/hardcore. I just found this video of them playing The Get Up Kids' song "Ten Minutes" and another video of them doing their own song that I love, "To The Engravers."


Polar Bear Club - "Ten Minutes" (Get Up Kids cover) from Brandon Finnegan on Vimeo.


Polar Bear Club - "To The Engravers" from Brandon Finnegan on Vimeo.

Christmas song: Vermont "Santa Claws"

http://www.joanfrc.com/albums/santaclaws.mp3

Vermont - a side project of The Promise Ring, before Davey started Maritime - recorded this Christmas song, that I just found scouring Joan of Arc's website.

There are a lot of other mp3s on this site - you just have to go through the discography section.

THE END OF 2008.

I wanted to come up with some all-encompassing top ten list, covering the year in music and the year in everything else, but I don't think I can truly do 2008 justice. This was the year where I found out anything could happen at any moment.

There's only one song that sums this up and this is it: THE ESCAPIST by The Streets.



All these walls were never really there, nor the ceiling or the chair.
I am eking weeks of peace on a beach.
I see the breezes weave the trees,
these walls you find - they’re yours and mine
confined not by them I
I am in times that lie behind my eyelids,
the sunsets steal the rising silence,

I’ll not feel no fear, cause I’m not really here
I’m nowhere near here

Theres no rain on roof that grates and beats me
my favorite tree breaking lights to pieces
sprinkling, sharded light on me
throw a stone as high as you can and hearing with hand not hear it land
nothing taxing, dusting sand
my window and world spins and twirls,
the walls then fall, i recall the sore
white clouds white wash faded spotless
the weighty shadows, ranges of rocks
the cold is all illusion thought up
the stroll on the shore, snooze and explore
all possibilities in each new morning,
until satisfied reaching out, yawning
fish in a big dish, some rice and spice,
Salt over shoulder, never salt in soaked eye
the truth I’ve told was silence sometimes
but who soul does not hide any crimes
wrapped in walls, encircled by work
the walls fall - this story occurs
no barrier, no boundary, all hours I please
the freedom to stay all stray
be fiend or friend, cause no harm but charm - the peaceful end

I’ll not feel no fear, cause I’m not really here
I’m nowhere near here

Pale ancient woods, strewn white sandy bays
this ugly room pales away today
I am swimming, in the ocean
I sink slow motion, fingers, toes floating
every year til yesterday
seeing the eternal setting sea
I compare all this to me,
little fleeting momentary me
I blink my eyes, this is reminding me
life lies in the blink of an eye
the old die for reasons, new tide, four seasons
new life born is like changing
all these walls were really never there
nor the ceiling or the chair
I am eking weeks of peace on a beach
I see the breezes weave the trees
I am not here at all,
you dearly fooled,
I see busheling trees, the shush at the sea
the mischievous
fluttering seagulls
No!
I’m not trapped in a box, I’m glancing at rocks
I am dancing off docks
since this dance began - that's where i am

I’m not feel no fear, cause I’m not really here
I’m nowhere near

New Ride: Lemond Poprad

I bought a new bicycle a few weeks ago. I had been wanting a steel-framed road bike for a while, and have decided my bicycle is the one thing I will keep new-ish in my life filled with broken, vintage, and deteriorating whatnot.

I bought a 2004 Lemond Poprad off of some guy on craigslist. It was made in the USA of Reynolds 853 steel, presumably by one of Trek's bicycle factories in Wisconsin.

I really love this bike. Here are some of the parts:

Drivetrain: Shimano 105 2x9
Front Wheel: Bontrager Race Lite
Rear Wheel: Mavic Aksium
Tires: Continental Touring 28
Stem: Salsa
Brakes: Paul Neo-Retro
Fenders: Planet Bike plastic full fenders

Punk's Not Dead

Oh wow! Jawbreaker/Jets to Brazil frontman and CUNY literature professor Blake Schwarzenbach has teamed with the Kerouac of Punk, Aaron Cometbus of Pinhead Gunpowder to form a new band called Thorns of Life.

This has made my day / week. Their sound is superpop/punk with the trademark Jawbreaker heavy / introspective break sections.

Alternative Press Videos on Youtube

Click for hi res image of them playing

Dear US government,

Please just let GM die:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/business/economy/13bankruptcy.html

Sincerely,

me

New LUCKSMITHS album

The Lucksmiths, my favorite band that is still banded together, have a new album. It's entitled "First Frost" and it's hitting my Discman and headphones in November 2008.

http://www.indiepages.com/matinee/catalog.html?id=cd049

The track listing is:

The Town and The Hills
Good Light
A Sobering Thought (Just When One Was Needed)
California In Popular Song
South-East Coastal Rendezvous
The National Mitten Registry
Day Three of Five
Never and Always
Lament of the Chiming Wedgebill
How We Met
Song of the Undersea
Up With The Sun
Pines
Who Turned on the Lights?

The Lucksmiths cheer me up. I can't wait to hear this.

Proposed Wall Street Bailout is Unamerican.

This just in, I agree with a Republican.

Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky states:

"The Paulson proposal is an attempt to do what we so often do in Washington—throw money at a problem.

We cannot make bad mortgages go away. We cannot make the losses that our financial institutions are facing go away. Someone must take those losses. We can either let the people who made bad decisions bear the consequences of their actions, or we can spread that pain to others. And that is exactly what the Secretary proposes to do—take Wall Street's pain and spread it to the taxpayers. The plan has not even passed, and already Americans are paying for it because of the fall in the dollar as a result of all the new debt we will be taking on.

I know there are problems in the financial markets, and I share a lot of the same concerns that our witnesses do. However, the Paulson plan will not fix those problems. The Paulson plan will not help struggling homeowners pay their mortgages. The Paulson plan will not bring a stop to the slide in home prices. But the Paulson plan will spend 700 billion taxpayer dollars to prop up and clean up the balance sheets of Wall Street. This massive bailout is not the solution, it is financial socialism, and it is un-American."

http://www.usnews.com/blogs/the-home-front/2008/09/23/sen-jim-bunning-the-bailout-is-un-american.html

Vintage VW Training for Vintage VWs

Today, this video helped me adjust my Volkswagen.

Renaults

Some of my photos were featured today on my favorite website, Jalopnik.com:

http://jalopnik.com/5042285/citroens-and-fuegos-roam-the-streets-of-portland

Honda Trail 90

On June 3, 2008 Dan and I went to southeast Portland and he bought this baby, a 1965 Honda Trail 90. You meet the nicest people on a Honda.

Of course, my head wraps itself around the Beach Boys' song "Little Honda" at the sight of this "little motorbike." Here is a great video of the original song:



Being an indie rocker, I much prefer Yo La Tengo performing the song:

Lifter Puller - "Nassau Coliseum"

Here is an incredible fan-made video for Lifter Puller's song "Nassau Coliseum." Lifter Puller broke up and sort of reformed as The Hold Steady. Lifter Puller was more noisy and abrasive, while The Hold Steady goes for more of a bar-rock deal in the best possible sense.

This video is incredibly weird, vulgar, and awesome. It should be presented with a South Park style disclaimer that states it absolutely shouldn't be viewed by anyone.

This song was inspired by a Grateful Dead concert at the Nassau Coliseum, on Long Island, NY, where the biggest drug bust in Grateful Dead history took place.

HOLD STEADY

I just stumbled on to this site, an index of Hold Steady lves shows and radio session downloads:

http://holdsteady.blogspot.com/

They even have Lifter Puller stuff.

VW Microbus Best of

Here is a link to some of the best pictures of Pre-1967 Volkswagen Split-Windshield buses, as selected by split window microbus fanatics of TheSamba.com

LINK

This is over 50 message board pages of pictures, but I highly recommend it. It is interesting to see people's perceptions of the car change over time. I believe the original VW Bus is such a subjective piece that people can place very different connotations to it. Hippie vs purely industrial, unsafe vs warm nostalgia; It's a strange psychological mirror of an automobile.

Above: 1. VW Samba as surfing icon, in garage surrounded by quiver of longboards. 2. VW Bus as American road trip icon. 3. VW Bus as chicken coop.

Megasquirt or not?

I have been seriously considering converting my VW to nasty sounding, yet quite non-aggressive Megasquirt Electronic Fuel Injection.

Here, at the Samba, I am discussing it.

Ruckus all over USA.

I came across this story today of some guy riding all over the United States on his Honda Ruckus. I would have met him at Spring Scoot, but he and I both only attended on one day, opposite days. It reminds me of everything I love about riding scooters. There are lots of great pictures in this account of his trip.

LINK

Secret Codes of Volkswagens.

Every old Volkswagen has a little plate riveted to it telling a bit of history of the car. I found mine on my 1971 Bus behind the drivers seat and yesterday decoded it. I used the information found on Type2.com as well as TheSamba.com.

Here are the codes and their meanings:

12 = Unknown, possibly a code meaning 1971 model year
162 = Bumpers with Rubber Moldings
191 = Outer and Center Underfloor Reinforcement Plates (these reinforced the structure of the bus to compensate for the hole in the roof for the camping pop top)
E = Unknown

4747 = Neptune Blue on top and on bottom
51 = Dark Beige Leatherette Upholstery
A02 = USA DOT Specifications
177 = Rear Bench Seat
507 = Vent wings in Cab doors
697 = Rumored to be "Fitted With Continental brand tires"

10 2 = Date of manufacture: either February 10th, 1970 or Tuesday on the 10th Week of 1970
7998 = Unknown, possibly a serial number of production runs at the VW factory
UP = Port of Delivery was Portland, Oregon
2310 = Kombi wwith Sliding door on the right, Left hand drive
21 = Upright cooling 1600cc engine, Manual Transmission

I encourage all Volkswagen owners to use the online resources to discover the meaning of their M Codes.

The Oral History of WGSU

I started a new site to compile the history of Geneseo, New York radio station WGSU, where I used to be a DJ.

http://theoralhistoryofwgsu.blogspot.com/

Volvo 164 Update

Well, we finally did it. After months of scrounging for parts and lugging around two transmissions we finally got one into the reverse-less Volvo 164.

I am very pleased to report that after months of searching for parts, and 2.5 weeks in the shop, the 164 is kicking with the manual transmission. Anyone who has a 164 : this swap is completely worth it. The car is SUCH A BETTER CAR now. It does not sputter and die when cold starting, it roars and wants to peel out. The transmission makes all the power readily available and I love driving it. Jessica is pleased because it now goes in reverse.



If you didn't know, the car, when we bought it in June 2007, was equipped with a leaking, slipping automatic Borg Warner 35 transmission. This transmission is mediocre at best and only has 3 forward gears. I figured we could just put in a manual transmission at some point in the future.

We had initially wanted to do most of the work ourselves but we ended up taking it to a shop - a special Volvo shop - that would have all the right tools and knowledge. It ended up costing a lot more than we expected, as most of these old car projects tend to do.

These were the parts that I brought to the shop:
driveline
M410 transmission
another M410 transmission
pedals: clutch and brake
rear transmission support bracket

These were the parts the shop had to come up with:
crossmember (as it turns out this is common to 140 series cars)
front urethane trans mount
bracket for clutch pedal (custom fabricated)
redone clutch kit by Otts in North Portland
clutch cable

It was very hard to find all the parts but luckily the shop - Vol Tech in Portland OR - that did the swap (I do not have an adequate garage nor adequate skill for such an undertaking) was very resourceful. They pulled the crossmember off of one of their 142 race cars. They also fabricated a custom clutch pedal mount that looks very clean and well done.

In retrospect I wish I had done two things differently:

I wish I had gotten our full parts car over to the shop for them to take all the parts from. I had a parts car but only scavenged some parts from it before it was sold for scrap.

I wish that I had just gone ahead and installed the Ford Mustang T5 transmission. The cost would have been very similar in the end, and the availability of Ford clutches and trans parts all over would really have been nice. I have retained a spare M410 to have in case I still want to do this, but hopefully this will be the last of Volvo modifications for some time. I want the car's monthly cost average to drop to something more economical before we consider any more upgrades (megasquirt and spark conversion, new baseball glove style interior, bomber-style shark teeth painted on front fenders).

It feels good to have a truly unique car. The money I've spent on this pales in comparison to many people's Civics, BMWs, Acuras, etc that remain fairly commonplace and not as Jalopnik as my tastes. I definitely consider the 164 to be a type of found art, in a Richard Prince sort of sense.

I would like to thank all the people at Vol Tech, Cameron L., Suresh and Lee from Vancouver, William from SE Portland whose 1971 Volvo we ripped up for parts, and the people of Brickboard.com for all their help!

Further reading:
A history of the design of the Volvo 164 LINK

Rockets and Bluelights video

Rockets and Bluelights : Forrest Green and Autumn

Video

The Sheep Market

www.thesheepmarket.com

I like five songs.

Sorry I never post on this thing very often. Dear reader, I missed the Pinhead Gunpowder shows thanks to my stupid full time job.

Songs I like recently:

"The List" by Defiance Ohio off of The Fear, The Fear, The Fear

"What is your secret?" by Nada Surf off of The Weight Is A Gift

"Time of The Season" by The Zombies off of Oracle and Odessey

"Looking for Astronauts" by The National off of Alligator

"Subject to the Ladder" by Broadcast off of Tender Buttons

Go find them on your own.

Greatest band in world announces 2 shows!

Pinhead Gunpowder, who I would argue are the greatest band in the world, have announced they will play their 16th and 17th show since their beginning. Unfortunately the Anaheim show is sold out, and odds are the LA show will be too.

Pinhead Gunpowder "Losers of the Year" live 2001: