Arcade Fire Funeral (2004: Merge)

1. "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" - 4:48
2. "Neighborhood #2 (Laïka)" - 3:31
3. "Une année sans lumière" - 3:40
4. "Neighborhood #3 (Power Out)" - 5:12
5. "Neighborhood #4 (7 Kettles)" - 4:49
6. "Crown of Love" - 4:42
7. "Wake Up" - 5:35
8. "Haïti" - 4:07
9. "Rebellion (Lies)" - 5:10
10. "In the Backseat" - 6:20

1. I go to a crappy bar on Division in Grand Rapids, Michigan to hear some of my best friends spin some records. My buddy Elliot comes up to me and explains that he has been listening to this band that I would love called Arcade Fire. He tells me to look them up but I ignore him, assuming wrongly that Arcade Fire is an ambient techno group.

2. During Fashion Week in 2005, David Bowie joins Arcade Fire on stage to play the Arcade Fire song "Wake Up" live. I find out that David Bowie considers Arcade Fire his favorite new band. As a result, I finally give a listen to the 2004 album Funeral.

3. The first trailer for Where the Wild Things Are surfaces. It is a beautiful balance of Spike Jonze's vision of the Maurice Sendak children's book with Arcade Fire's "Wake Up" as the audio track. I show the trailer to everyone I encounter who is anywhere near a computer anywhere.

4. My friend Andrew tells me that I look exactly like Win Butler, the lead singer of Arcade Fire. I take it as a high compliment. Several others have noted similarities in appearance ever since.

5. I declare Arcade Fire's Funeral the best album of the 2000s. Shortly afterward, Pitchfork releases a list of the best albums of the 2000s. The top positions are filled by 1. Radiohead Kid A, 2. Arcade Fire Funeral and 3. Daft Punk Discovery. Though they gave Radiohead their highest honor, Pitchfork confirmed my hypotheses that Funeral was the best debut album of the 2000s and that Arcade Fire was the best new band of the 2000s.

Arts and Crafts: Concert Ticket Refrigerator Magnets

A few months ago, I received some junk mail containing some propaganda packaged with a peel-off magnet. I think the assumption was that you would stick the magnet to the propaganda and put it on your refrigerator. I saw little value in the propaganda, but great value in the magnet. This was the product:

That Foreigner ticket I'd held onto long after it was scanned at the concert now had a purpose. It currently holds up my grocery and to-do lists. I am writing today to share with you the secret wisdom of the ages, so that you too can have a Foreigner (or other band/artist) concert ticket refrigerator magnet.

Step 1: Acquire Magnets (I always have to stop myself from saying, "Cut a hole in the box." Curse you, Timberlake! Curse you!)

I opened every single inane letter addressed either to me or to some misspelled version of me or to resident for several months and didn't find another magnetic backing that I could use, so I journeyed to Hobby Lobby with my good friend Gabe. You might be better off going to a smaller store, like Michael's, because Hobby Lobby is incredibly large (especially in Texas). The first difficulty with Hobby Lobby is that you are bombarded by novelty and holiday items when you walk in. You have to cut through these like one would a kudzu in order to find anything of worth. The second difficulty is that the aisles are not labeled. This particular store appeared to spend all it's money renting out the gigantic building and very little on staffing the gigantic building. Eventually, I found an employee who pointed me to the magnets. They were overpriced, but at least I had (unlike Bono) found what I was looking for.

Step 2: Acquire a Concert Ticket

For many of you, this could be the hardest part. I have particular difficulty finding affordable nearby concerts with artists good enough to grace my refrigerator forever. In some of my peer groups, I would imagine I am looked upon as something of a hipster. I don't particularly understand it, but then again, I like Arcade Fire and Bright Eyes. I dislike Screamo. I tell my metal-loving friends that they should be listening to Muse and The Mars Volta instead. I don't blatantly disregard indie music as worthless. Having this opinion of me, they might look upon my Foreigner magnet and sense irony. Here's where they're dead wrong. Foreigner is sweet.

And so is Tears for Fears. This is Adam Friedli's ticket from the recent Tears for Fears concert in Detroit. Adam was unable to go to this concert due to a serious injury in the family. Amy and I had our tickets torn, but there was one ticket left intact due to Adam's absence.

Step 3: Peel and Stick

Peel back the paper on the back of the magnet to reveal the adhesive side. I've always found this fascinating. One side sticks due to magnetic attraction, the other due to chemical adhesion. Two different ways, one result. Cohesion!

Now stick the magnet to the back of the concert ticket. In most cases, the magnet is going to be larger than the concert ticket by a minuscule amount. I chose to leave the slight overlap, as it is pretty insignificant. These magnets, however, are designed to be thin enough that you can cut them. If you want to trim it so it's smaller than the ticket, go right ahead. In order to align the magnet properly, I placed it on the table and then slowly lowered the ticket onto the adhesive side.

Step 4: Place Finished Magnet on Refrigerator

This beautiful new Tears for Fears refrigerator magnet won't be on my refrigerator for long. I hate to ruin the surprise, but this one is a gift for my good friend Adam Friedli. I'll be giving it to him when I visit College Station next week. It's not quite the same as remembering being on the floor looking up at one of the most underrated amazing music sensations of all time, but at least it can hold up his picture of his parents. Or that weird drawing I made of the topless redneck woman holding two 40s of Colt 45.

Arcade Fire Hit Number One

I love Arcade Fire, but I honestly never expected that they'd have a number one album to their name. Well, now they do. It's called The Suberbs, and if you haven't listened to it yet, you should. Their album beat Eminem on the Billboards.

Here's an article about this amazing phenomenon on Pitchfork.

Arcade Fire UNSTAGED

On Thursday, August 5, 2010, supporting the release of their new album The Suburbs (released Tuesday, August 3, 2010), Arcade Fire televised their Madison Square Garden concert on YouTube on the ArcadeFireVEVO channel as part of the UNSTAGED series presented by American Express.

The concert stoked the fires of my desire to see Arcade Fire live. Here are some clips from the concert:

Empty Room



Rococo



We Used to Wait



Neighborhood #3 (Power Out) / Rebellion (Lies)



Keep the Car Running



Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)



Wake Up



(NOTE: A couple of days ago these links went down and then were re-posted. Please drop me a line if one of the videos goes down)

Arcade Fire "Rebellion (Lies)"

Arcade Fire, "Rebellion (Lies)" from Funeral (2004: Merge)

Arcade Fire "Neighborhood #2 (Laika)

Arcade Fire, "Neighborhood #2 (Laika)" from Funeral (2004: Merge)

Gateway: A Mix By Justin Tiemeyer

Album art courtesy of Adam Friedli.

Arcade Fire Performs "Neon Bible" in an Elevator

15 Albums From Which A Justin Tiemeyer Can Be Constructed

(In chronological order)

1. Queen - Greatest Hits (1981, 1991)

Queen is the first because I can't remember the name of the Monkees tape we always listened to in my parents' station wagon. I remember being vexed in middle school when this guy named Austin asked me who my favorite band was and I had no answer. Some time later I discovered a passion for Queen, but when I hunted Austin down to tell him Queen is my favorite band he seemed unimpressed, as if he had moved on from that momentary conversation months earlier. Dick...

2. Aerosmith - Nine Lives (1997)

My best friend Jared and I got into Aerosmith fairly heavily because his older brother Paul was really into them. We just ate up anything Aerosmith at a fairly young age, but it wasn't until 1997 that we witnessed the release of brand new Aerosmith material for the first time during our obsession. We listened to Nine Lives day and night, each of us having bought it early on and thus possessing the CD with the naughty pictures all over it. The first time I ever traveled very far from home was with Jared and his family on a trip down to Gulf Shores, Alabama, and we listened to Nine Lives on our Discmans nearly the whole trip.

3. Pink Floyd - The Wall (1979)

When I was in high school I was convinced that I was the youngest person on the planet to both know as much as I did about Pink Floyd and to never have done any sort of drug while exploring the Floyd catalog. I remember listening to The Wall over and over again in my car, explaining the nuances of the album to anyone sitting next to me in my little Honda CRX. You see, it's about the war, but it's also about music, and more than that, it's about one man's struggle with emotional events as expressed by war metaphors in music.

4. Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy (1973)

 
This one time I went to Vertigo Records with my good friend Elliot Mayo, now world-famous DJ Elijah. I wasn't into looking at the electronic records just yet, but I did enjoy looking for cool Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin t-shirts. When I came across the Houses of the Holy t-shirt, I was faced with a dilemma: on the one hand, this was one of the most important albums I've ever listened to - it had changed me, but on the other hand, it was a t-shirt populated with naked children and I was still in high school. In the end I saved my money. I probably bought some issues of Uncanny X-Men with it. This would have been either during the Onslaught or Operation: Zero Tolerance days.

5. Smashing Pumpkins - Adore (1998)

Any time before my senior year of high school this album would have sounded much too dark for me. But when a girl I thought I was in love with began dating a good friend of mine I found myself really struggling with a kind of darkness that made this album accessible. I've since found several other boys who claim Adore to be their favorite album, and who can cite similar dark periods of life that the album helped them through. I would never again underestimate the healing power of a really sad album.

6. Red Hot Chili Peppers - By The Way (2002)

Because my brother and I drove around everywhere singing this album together we joined forces and created a band called Craig. We focused mainly on playing classic rock music and writing solid, interesting songs. Because we weren't trying to mimic either Green Day or Blink 182 we were different from all the other bands in the area. When I was kicked out of the band they changed the named to Craig and the Cowboys, which made me conclude that I am the negation of Cowboys.

7. Ryan Adams - Gold (2001)

I don't know what had happened, but I remember driving in my GMC Jimmy and crying while listening to this album. I dried my eyes and met Brian Vandenberg at a coffee shop where we were going to hear our mutual friend Matt play some music. Matt ended up writing a novel in a very Dickensian fashion, so I'm sure he'd be fairly happy to be called "Our Mutual Friend."

8. Zwan - Mary Star of the Sea (2003)

Has Billy Corgan ever sounded as happy, positive and enlightened as he did on this album? Has he ever released a record that comes with fun rainbow guitar stickers that I've found on my old belongings in my parents' basement from time to time? No. And I fear it will never happen again.

9. The Beatles - Abbey Road (1969)

Abbey Road wasn't the first album that flowed from one track to the next. According to Brian Wilson, that was Rubber Soul. According to the rest of the world, Wilson's band The Beach Boys recorded the second real album: Pet Sounds. Abbey Road, however, was the pinnacle of album-making. It never sounded so good until then and it never sounded so good afterward. Let's throw all of that away. The fact of the matter is that I can't imagine that a human could ever fall in love without ever hearing the George Harrisonsong "Something" from this album. That's the more important impact of this album.

10. David Bowie - Young Americans (1975)

Young Americans is by far not the best album put out by David Bowie, but it is the only album I owned on cassette during the lonely year in Toledo in which I couldn't get the car CD player to work. We bonded through struggle much like Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves did in Speed.

11. Neil Young - Harvest (1972)

I listened to this album enough times that I considered writing a book of short stories, one for each track on the album. The ideas were pretty interesting, but I was not very good at finishing things that I started back then. I didn't have any deadlines, so I never got anything done.

12. Prince and the Revolution - Parade (1986)

No need for an anecdote. It's simply the best.

13. Radiohead - In Rainbows (2007)

Becky, Elliot and I were walking around Manhattan, and I had this melody stuck in my head. It was Radiohead's "Reckoner." I didn't know any of the words. I just kept humming this melody. Suddenly, the sound was coming at me from behind. I looked at the storefronts and none of the stores were open. None of them were pumping Radiohead out of their speakers. None of them even had speakers. I was convinced for some time that Thom Yorke himself was walking several paces behind us singing this song to himself until a car pulled away and the music was gone.

14. Tom Petty - Wildflowers (1994)

You're just a poor boy along way from home
You're just a poor boy a long way from home

15. Arcade Fire - Funeral (2004)

I didn't fall in love with Arcade Fire because David Bowie loved them first, but it certainly didn't hurt. But seriously, how cool was it when David Bowie and Arcade Fire performed "Wake Up" together on VH1's Fashion Rocks. I don't know whether I was more excited about that or the Where the Wild Things Are trailer with the same song. Oooh.