When I was 19 I got to see one of my favorite bands of all time, Uncle Tupelo, play at a club in Dal­las called Trees. I was a DJ at the Bay­lor Uni­ver­sity sta­tion and had heard that they were going to be in Dal­las open­ing for Dri­vin’ n’ Cryin’, which I didn’t really like, but gladly paid the $20 to see that night. My friend Kath­leen and I drove the 90 miles north­ward to go to the show and I was blown away. Jay Far­rar broke more stings on his gui­tar than I could believe and Jeff Tweedy was cool in a doughy kind of way on bass. They ripped through track after track and ended their set after about 30 min­utes. It was amazing.

After that Kat and I left. Like I said, I didn’t like Dri­vin’ n’ Cryin’, so I didn’t stay, but I fol­lowed the band I went to see for the next sev­eral years. I didn’t see them live any­more, but I got all of their albums and watched their pro­gres­sion from country-rock (start­ing with “No Depres­sion”) to a mix­ture of blue­grass and country-folk (“Ano­dyne”). I didn’t know about all of the inter­nal tur­moil that was going on within the band at the time, I just thought they were great. And it hit me hard when I heard that they’d bro­ken up. Great bands break up every other day, but this one hit me rather hard. I really liked them and now I had to stop being lazy and find some­thing new to lis­ten to.

Of course, I didn’t have to wait long. Far­rar went out and formed Son Volt and Tweedy formed Wilco.

And if I’d been look­ing for a band to like after the breakup of Uncle Tupelo, Wilco was real love.

Their first album “A.M.” is fan­tas­tic. It con­tin­ued an already estab­lished sound that Tweedy and begun with Uncle Tupelo and car­ried it a step fur­ther, in more of a Rolling Stones direc­tion. If CDs could wear out I would have worn out “A.M.” by now. It is still one of my favorite com­fort albums to lis­ten to.

Their sec­ond album is less than per­fect though. “Being There” has great moments, but inter­spersed through it are tracks that I could have done with­out (‘Outta Mind, Outta Sight’, ‘King­pin’, ‘Hotel Ari­zona’) and that made me not love it as much as I wanted to. Not say­ing it isn’t good, it is, but I didn’t have that total uncon­di­tional love that I’d felt with “A.M.”.

After that a year or so went by and they came out with “Sum­mer­teeth”. And I thought, “Hmm…that’s a stu­pid album title.”

And my love for them stopped there. It was like peo­ple who like kids from TV shows in the 70’s. Peter Billings­ley never aged beyond A Christ­mas Story. Mark Hamill never aged past Star Wars. Cryo­geni­cally frozen, my love for Wilco stayed. And that was 1999.

Fast for­ward to a week and a half ago.

My friend Jimi has an extra ticket to their show at the Pal­la­dium, his wife doesn’t like the exper­i­men­tal gui­tar work of cur­rent Wilco gui­tarist Nels Cline, and they can’t get a babysit­ter, so a free ticket is mine for the tak­ing if I want it. And I do. So we go.

And the show was great. They played for about 2 hours plus and, strangely, didn’t play much off of the 2 albums that I love so much. Mostly from “Sum­mer­teeth”, “A Ghost is Born” and “Yan­kee Hotel Fox­trot”. So now I’m catch­ing up on my edu­ca­tion by lis­ten­ing to their other albums.

And I have one thing for Mr. Tweedy. Please, Jeff, no more goofy album titles. I’d rather we didn’t break up again for such a long period of time. Thank you.

Dear Plain White T’s,

My son has very cool tastes in music. He’s five years old and he likes Johnny Cash, Weezer, The Avett Broth­ers, The Pix­ies and other hardly-ever-on-the-charts bands. He doesn’t like girl singers, just boy singers, but the boy singers he likes by and large are pretty awe­some and I’m proud to say that, yes, my son knows the words to Cash’s “Sea of Heart­break” and The Avett Broth­ers “Die Die Die”.

My wife on the other hand does not always lis­ten to cool music. She grav­i­tates towards the ‘mix’ sta­tions, and that’s where our trou­ble starts.

If you ever lis­ten to any of these ‘mix’ sta­tions you’ll real­ize that they are pretty much easy lis­ten­ing for 30 year olds. Songs you used to shake your fist in the air to, like Bon Jovi, or piano bal­lads from Elton John, or the offi­cial band of the ‘mix’ sta­tion, The Fray. These songs were once cool, long ago, and now are not, but these ‘mix’ sta­tions con­tinue to pump out these songs every hour so peo­ple lis­ten­ing in office build­ings can hum along to some­thing and hope­fully, god will­ing, get them through the day.

Sev­eral months ago one of the big songs on these ‘mix’ sta­tions was “Hey There Delilah”, a sappy syrupy love song writ­ten, I guess, to the singer’s girl­friend. The song is pretty lame, but for some rea­son my son, who has very cool tastes in music, loves it.

Plain White T’s! Grum­ble grum­ble grumble.

Where did you emo wannabe’s come from? Will you ever leave us? Prob­a­bly not, now that you have some other crummy song called “1, 2, 3, 4″ on the radio, on that ‘mix’ sta­tion that my wife lis­tens to and my son hears as my wife dri­ves him around Dal­las. Why can’t my wife lis­ten to some­thing awe­some like Hüsker Dü or Wilco or Grandaddy or some­thing like that? Isn’t there a law against music like this? Aren’t we clos­ing the prison at Guan­tanamo Bay because of peo­ple like The Plain White T’s?

Maybe we should water­board The Plain White T’s. That would be satisfying.

When the new Bat­tlestar Galac­tica came on the air sev­eral years ago one of the fun fan­boy things to say was “frak”, which was the Colonial’s way of say­ing The F Word. You could say it and it was like an in-joke and also it didn’t really mean any­thing, so you could say it in front of your kids (like I did) or other in-the-know nerds.

And now that show is over. Com­pletely over. And I can’t stop say­ing “frak”.

I’ll say it in the car when the kids are around. And she rolls her eyes every­time and then chas­tises me.] my par­ents, peo­ple I don’t even know, and I can’t stop say­ing it. I am a junkie for “frak”.

Lords of Kobol, hear my prayer, and, for frak’s sake, help me stop say­ing “frak”. Pretty please?

Dear Cute Col­or­ful Expen­sive Rain Boots,

Why are you a fash­ion trend? Who thought that tak­ing a pair of $2 rub­ber rain boots and adding col­or­ful paint was a good idea? Who­ever it was has made a lot of money off of all of the moms at my oldest’s school. Doing the min­i­mal amount of research for this post, I saw that Neiman Mar­cus sells a pair of rain boots for $225.00. They’re the Burberry Check Rain Boot, and I’m sure that Mr. Burberry will be laugh­ing the whole way to the bank as some silly woman drops down her AmEx Tita­nium card for a pair of them.

I once bought a pair of util­i­tar­ian, black rub­ber ones for walk­ing around the muddy lot that my house was being built on after destroy­ing a pair of ten­nis shoes. I got them from Wal-Mart and they were worth every penny of the $8 that I spent on them 3 years ago. I still have them. Maybe I’ll wear them to school some­time to try to fit in with the trendy ladies. Then again, I’m not a lady, so they might take it as a slight or an insult that I’m wear­ing rain boots minus col­or­ful paint­ing emblazened on them.

Do we really need things like these? And why do peo­ple feel that they have to spend tons of money on some­thing like this? It’s a free coun­try, I know, but come on, people.

I love ‘Lost’. This cur­rent sea­son is so great I would marry it if I wasn’t already married.

But I’ve noticed that ‘Lost’, which is prob­a­bly one of the best shows cur­rently on tele­vi­sion, keeps doing this stu­pid stu­pid dia­logue con­ven­tion over and over and over until you could make a drink­ing game out of it. Maybe you haven’t noticed it, but that’s my job, to notice the mun­dane and pointless.

It goes like this — two peo­ple are going some­where on the island, doesn’t mat­ter where, but they are alone, walk­ing, or eat­ing some­thing, or lis­ten­ing to a record, and one of them will sud­denly say a seem­ing non sequitor, the other will be con­fused, reply, “What?” or some­thing like that, and the other per­son will explain. In an episode a cou­ple of weeks ago they did it not once but three times in one episode. Like I said, you could have a drink­ing game.

So this is the way I would write it if I were writ­ing the show -

Locke and Sawyer are trudg­ing through the jun­gle, not a care in the world about Oth­ers or Smokey or Chris­t­ian pop­ping out or any­thing, just trudg­ing through the jun­gle. They haven’t spo­ken in some time.

LOCKE — “Five.“
SAWYER — Looks around con­fused, focus­ing on LOCKE. “What’d you say?“
LOCKE — “Five. I said five, James.“
SAWYER — Still con­fused. “…Five what?“
LOCKE — Now con­fused too. “…Uh…you know, about what you said ear­lier. There are five. Five.“
SAWYER — Now look­ing peeved. “I have no idea what you’re talk­ing about.“
LOCKE — Spread­ing his hands, ever the teacher. “About…2 hours ago we were talk­ing about…you know, that thing we were talking…about.“
SAWYER — “John, I have no idea what you’re talk­ing about. I don’t know what “five” means.“
LOCKE — Now very con­fused. “You don’t?“
SAWYER — “…No.“
There is a long silence as Locke looks at Sawyer. He is very con­fused now, to say the least, and try­ing to fig­ure out what “five” refers to.
LOCKE — “Hmm…I don’t know what “five” means either.“
Sawyer smirks. “Nice one.” He begins trudg­ing again.
Locke stands in the jun­gle, then fol­lows Sawyer. “I’ll think of what it means in a minute!“
SAWYER — “Sure you will, Sherlock.”

He heads off into the jun­gle. Locke quizzi­cally follows.

It would be funny. And then maybe the ‘Lost’ writ­ers wouldn’t do it anymore.