Tonight's selection is the 2001 album musicforthemorningafter by Pete Yorn.
I first heard about Pete Yorn when he was on the Rolling Stone '10 Artists to Watch in 2001' list. This was during the glory days of Napster and even though he had yet to put out a proper album I was able to find several of his songs and download them. Pete's tunes quickly found their way onto my playlist and I picked up this album the day it came out, March 27, 2001.
Later that week I traveled with Big Al out to Los Angeles for the Premiere of the Johnny Depp film, Blow. During the road trip we listened to this album approximately 57 times. Before we left good old Orem, UT, I had seen on Pete Yorn's website that he would be appearing at a record store in Long Beach the day after the movie and since my obsession was borderline stalker at that point of course we made the drive down the PCH to Long Beach to see Pete. We arrived about one hour early, had a quick bite to eat at a nearby cafe and then headed over to a cool little record store that could have been the filming location for High Fidelity called 'Fingerprints.'
Needing to kill some time we browsed the cd selections and noticed that Pete was just wandering and browsing the store as well. I inconspicuously made my way over to Pete's vicinity, we locked eyes and soon HE struck up a conversation with me. I was wearing a Duke T-shirt (they were playing in the final four against Maryland that day) and he mocked my Duke allegiance since he was a Maryland fan. I expressed my love for the album and we discussed his selections - I still remember he purchased If You're Feeling Sinister by Belle and Sebastian and he headed up to the make shift stage and performed a killer acoustic set. Good times.
Flash forward one month and Mr. Yorn just so happened to be playing a dive bar in SLC on my birthday. Big Al, myself and a few other friends arrived a little early to his show and Pete and some band members were playing Golden Tee. I stood there lurking and once again Pete struck up a conversation with me. He did the whole, 'do I know you?' routine and then before I could answer he said, "You're the f!&*ing guy from the f***ing Fingerprints..." Best birthday present I had ever received up to that point in my life. What can I say, I have led a pretty sad life.
Luckily for me musicforthemorningafter has aged well. It had actually been quite awhile since I had listened to the album. While cleaning up our Christmas tree on New Year's Day I was thumbing through my records (I was given an autographed copy of this album on vinyl by my good friend Vanwarmer back in the day) and stumbled across music. As I listened with P I couldn't believe how well the album still holds up - not a wasted track on it. Then last week while chatting with AB or Herms or whatever he calls himself these days, he said, "whatever happened to Pete Yorn?" and I had to break this album out once again. If you haven't heard this album - enjoy it. If you have but don't own it - buy it. I think I have purchased at least 5 copies to give to friends as gifts. Hopefully you'll do the same.
7 comments:
Can we just change the title of this post to 'Oldies' and call it 'good'?
If you want to continue to mock Mr. Yorn we can change the title of our friendship from 'good friends' to 'old friends.'
A)best come back since "pick your nose"
(when your mom yelled Kirk, where are you going? go out back and pick the grapes)
B)Pete is good in the same way a whole bunch of singer songwriters are good. Where he crosses to great, is in memory. much like high school football and middle school girlfriends.
Clearly I neglected to check the little 'email follow-up comments' box and just made it back around to this little Corbie-bashing-fest.
A) No - I'm not allowing us to become 'old' friends no matter how hard you try - I like Wheels way too much (plus she taught me the term 'bring back joke' and I'm not giving her up just because Mr. Yorn sucks.
B) The difference here is that at least middle school girlfriends are great in memory - not so much for high school football (at least not in the minds of the middle school girlfriends).
Why oh why must you continue to poke at me Mr. Brohammas? You know that it just brings out my violent side and you also know I'm not afraid of a short plane ride to Philly.
And, yes. somewhere in point 'A' is a missing parenthese but I will point it out now before Mr. Brohammas attempts to mock my literary issues.
My captcha right now is pyric...do you think the 'y' is silent?
I'm more effective than I thought since I only complimented KG on a come-back, which is not directly a slam at Corbie but then again my aim has always been a little off.
Now on point "B" I am a little surprised you would take any offense as "middle school girlfriends" could never have applied to you and KG.
At least as far as I know??????
I thought you would have been more on my side since if you will notice I basically called Pete Yorn marginal, much like most all middle school reality, and my former football prowess.
and finally anyone who takes offence at my grammatical corrections has never spell checked any of my comments.
but since you are rearin' for a fight:
We all know you are not afraid of a short flight, I'm pretty sure you ARE afraid of Philly.
Pete is even good enough to make long term wedding video's!
I thought he sounded good in Denver as well, and teaming up with Mr. Folds is possible one of the best opening slash headliner combos I have been to.
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