Hola amigos. Been a while since I rapped atcha. Here’s some pics to get you caught up…
Henry Playin Choo Choos (Loudly)
First time sitting in a chair!
Maxin and Relaxin
Claire & Tess
July 16, 2010
Best Songs of 2010 so far.
2010 is off to a great start musically.
I think the only disc I’ve heard since that post I just linked up that may potentially crack the top portion of the list is Violent Soho. It’s in the same vein as my favorite Nirvana album: Bleach (the only Nirvana disc close for me is “From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah”, which doesn’t count). Or to give you someone more contemporary, they remind me of Nine Black Alps.
Other than that one, I’ve been liking the Band of Horses and Blitzen Trapper discs a lot… but not enough to track the top group, I don’t think.
Best Songs isn’t something that I normally try to track so I don’t think these will be very well ordered — and there could very easily be something completely omitted — but here goes:
1. Ted Leo & The Pharmacists – The Stick.
This is my favorite song of the year, so far. I am sure.
2-4. Hot Chip – One Life Stand; I Feel Better; Hand Me Down Your Love
I hate to have one band with three “best songs” in my top 10 but the thing is: I’m sure I like them all more than #5. I would admit that this album fades a bit as it goes, but the strength of it’s start is enough to easily put it in my top discs of the year.
5. Charlotte Gainsbourg – In The End
6. The Morning Benders – Excuses
7. The National – Anyone’s Ghost
8. Ok Go – Back From Kathmandu.
No, this isn’t the Flaiming Lips
10. Los Campesinos! – Romance Is Boring
This is a disc much better heard in it’s entirety than singling out a song.
There are 15ish songs that could easily be in this top 10 if I redid this tomorrow night but for now: there they are! My best of 2010 so far!
June 2, 2010
Reply, Do Not
A while back I let a call from an unknown number go to voicemail (as I always do). The message left was from the dealership that sold us our Camry, offering to trade me a 2011 Camry for my 2007 straight up! … oh, and did we forget to mention extending your payments for another few years.
ANYWAY, the other tidbit in the call was that they wanted to confirm my email address: wowcalralberg@gmail.com.
This is going to come as a shock to you, but: that is not my normal email address (even if it is significantly better than my normal address). Now I was faced with a dilemma — in order to give the correct address I would need to return a call and talk to another human (something I seldom do), especially when it’s from a commercial entity.
Long story short – I did, for some reason, feel like I wanted to get email from the dealership though so I took the only logical step: I registered wowcalralberg@gmail.com and set it up to redirect mail to my primary account. Now wowcalralberg not only gets email: he gets email with awesomely informative subject lines and even better sender names:
Oh, and by the way, our best guess on “wowcalralberg” is that it’s a gross misreading of “monicahalberg”… maybe?
May 28, 2010
Summer’s Started!
We had lots of fun last weekend, including a trip to the farm with cousin Corryn, Lola, and Opa! We’ve been buying our milk nearly 100% from Sassy Cow Creamery for a while now. This year’s tour was of the organic setup – it was great to see exactly where the milk in our fridge comes from and get to chat a bit with the people that make it happen!
Henry was very excited to get pulled from the creamery to the organic barn behind the tractor!
Later we had some baseball practice. With the way the Brewers have been playing lately, I believe he may actually have a chance to get called up this summer.
Lest you think it’s all fun and games: we did have to observe & manage the garbage trucks as they moved through our neighborhood.
May 25, 2010
2010 Music… So Far
2010 has already been a banner year for new releases (as forecast). To avoid some end-of-the-year legwork this year, I’ve been keeping track of my album rankings as we go here. I’m sure even these early entrants will get re-arranged as I re-listen and such, but I wanted to get you a sneak peak — hopefully it’ll help out if you’ve got some money burning a hole in your pocket and are looking for some recommendations.
It’s been just incredible so far this year — Not even halfway into the year, I would tell you that I “highly recommend” spending your hard earned $10 on any of these 33 discs.
My Favorites so far – I haven’t put a lot of thought into how these compare with 2009 but I’d say any of them would have had a shot at #1 on my list last year.
Hot Chip :: One Life Stand
Hold Steady :: Heaven is Whenever
Broken Bells :: Broken Bells
Apples In Stereo :: Travellers In Space
Eels :: End Times
LCD Soundsystem – This is Happening
The National :: High Violet
Gorillaz :: Plastic Beach
Los Campesinos::Romance Is Boring
Great discs. Each of these discs (well, half of them anyways) – will be #1 on somebody’s list at the end of the year
Charlotte Gainsbourg::IRM
She & Him :: Volume Two
The Frightened Rabbit :: The Winter of Mixed Drinks
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club :: Beat The Devil’s Tattoo
Ted Leo :: Brutalist Bricks
Caribou :: Swim
Titus Andronicus :: The Monitor
Black Keys :: Brothers
Strongly Recommend - Really strong discs, although we’ve finally started to fade a little bit
OK Go:: Of The Blue Colour of the Morning Sky
Kasey Anderson :: Nowhere Nights
MGMT :: Congratulations
Surfer Blood :: Astro Coast
Very good stuff. Really hard to believe that 5 months into the year I have discs this far down from some of my all-time favorites… and I can’t even classify them as “disappointing”.
Josh Ritter – So Runs The World Away
The New Pornographers – Together
Beach House :: Teen Dream
Ben Sollee & Daniel Martin Moore :: Dear Companion
Spoon :: Transference
Yeasayer :: Odd Blood
The Magnetic Fields :: Realism
The Morning Benders :: Big Echo => first couple songs had me convinced awesome, then dove
Drive By Truckers :: The Big Todo
Midlake :: The Courage of Others => starts really strong, fades really fast
Jakob Dylan :: Women and Country
May 20, 2010
Kids!
We’ve settled in a bit to life with two kids — it’s great to be at a point with a little more consistency to the schedule!
Tess has started to give some real smiles and sleep consistently at night (which, of course, doesn’t mean all the way through the night).
Henry has adjusted to the big-brother role incredibly well. He’s really developing a lot of personality recently and is at an incredibly fun (if sometimes stressful) stage right now 
April 6, 2010
A New Addition
We’re thrilled to have welcomed a addition, Tess Jean Halberg! Everyone is happy, healthy, and home.
“Does Henry know what’s going on?” was a pretty popular question leading up to the arrival. While he was quick to answer that “sister” was what was in mumma’s belly, I wasn’t so sure he could possibly really know what that meant. Turns out I should have given him a bit more credit as he was quickly able to connect the dots upon meeting her.
After a day or two of basically leaving her to her own business – spurred by seeing cousin Claire holding Tess on her lap – Henry got really excited about being around her. Now she gets tickled when she’s crying and has had a couple of pacifiers gently (<– yeah, right) placed in her mouth.
The dogs are doing well and have begrudgingly accepted their demotions from the #4/5 ranks down to #5/6. It doesn’t hurt that they are completely warn out from a couple exercise-filled days at my parents, followed by a lack of restful sleep at night.
Thanks to everyone who’s dropped us a kind word in email/SMS/Facebook/Twitter. We’re hoping you all get to meet her very soon!
March 24, 2010
David Gray
He’s high on my Best of the 00s list. His most recent album, “Draw The Line”, was on my Best of 2009. And he put on a great show last weekend at the Riverside.
David Gray has an incredible ability to replicate the sound – and more importantly for his vocal style – the intensity of his studio recordings, for live shows. How he manages to bring that sort of energy on a consistent basis is really impressive. I mean, seriously — this is live? Listen without your eyes on the video and you’d swear it’s an engineered studio recording.
… and if you’re a David Gray fan, I’d highly recommend checking out another video in that series – an interview on KGSR-Austin. Sounds like another album is on the way very soon here… and there’s a clue as to why “that wacky drummer” isn’t around anymore.
Here’s a great video from PabstRiverside, from the show we were at:
March 15, 2010
Rock.
I’ve been to a couple great shows lately that I haven’t had a chance to properly write-up.
One was a very laidback/intimate show featuring some great bands for the Muzzle Of Bees 5-Year Anniversary. It’s hands down my favorite music blog (local or not) – you really should be following it. On top of the great bands they brought to town, it was great to meet the sites founder, Ryan Matteson.
The other was one of the first “country” shows that I’ve been to. Justin Townes Earle put on a great show a few weeks back that my buddy Fox came to town for. Joe Pug made for a great opener and we got a killer fish fry at Toby’s beforehand (<– check out that site and tell me that fry isn’t going to be incredible). Awesome night.
Finally, we get to last night’s show. It had been a long time since I’d been to a live show with the word “punk” in the description – too long. but Ted Leo & The Pharmacists had the prescription to cure my slow music ills (<– groan). Loud, fast, no messin’ around, just can’t hold still – really great stuff.
You can hear the new disc on their MySpace page. You should definitely check it out.
March 13, 2010
Goings On
Why hello there. Just thought I’d check back in.
We’re getting very close to the big day, all of the sudden! Henry generally seems to have some idea that there’s a baby on the way – and that it currently resides in mumma’s tummy – although, I can’t really imagine how he could possibly comprehend it.
In the meantime, we continue to play choo-choos every waking hour.
We had a chance to hang out with Mike & Claire when we picked up Henry at Nana & Bapa’s house this morning. Both kids took some rides on the rocking horse – it’s the same one that my Mom and her siblings grew up with, so it’s sorta a rite of passage in the family.
Look Ma! No Hands!
Claire has started receiving weekly visits from the toothfairy!
I’ve been to a few good shows so far this year and Monnie and I are really looking forward to seeing David Gray again next weekend with Mike, Sheila, Rob & Emily! and, of course, stay tuned for the big news coming ahead!
