Remembering R.E.M.

According to some random Twitter-bro I didn’t realize I was following, R.E.M. has called it quits. One might think this would stir some emotions in me, as R.E.M. is, according to certain metrics, my favorite band of all time. The breakup is without a doubt swirling in the hipster-est reaches of my mind, but it is remains recessed. As I write this, Troy Davis is awaiting a Supreme Court decision regarding his ability to live, and the Atlanta Braves are down two runs to the Florida Marlins as they cling to an ever-narrowing wild card lead. I’m loading some classic albums on my iPhone and wishing I had internet access at the moment so I could look up some “facts” for this post, but mostly R.E.M. is an afterthought.

Currently, my most prominent R.E.M.-related emotion is almost a resolved contentment. R.E.M. has been past their prime for more than a decade. They were at great risk of staying together too long before releasing two surprisingly solid albums in the past few years. The members are in their 50s now and still trolling around Athens (the town is essentially a band member itself). They still sell out major venues when they tour, but support seems to be dwindling. In many ways, I’m glad R.E.M. called it quits before becoming embarrassing, though it would have been interesting to see if a band so emblematic of a specific hyper-cool subculture could ever become a self-parody. Would R.E.M. playing the 40 Watt in their mid-80s been has joyously endearing and relevant as geriatric Pete Seeger folk-rocking the stage at Carnegie Hall?

Ironically, my relationship with R.E.M. and the Athens indie culture they’ve come to represent developed in almost complete reverse. R.E.M. is my favorite band because they were the first band I truly loved that wasn’t my parents’ music or one song on the radio. But they were not my gateway into any deeper spheres of music. Born in 1985, I was late to the alt-rock party, and came to love the commercial R.E.M. that drew conflicted opinions from the original fans. My first impression of R.E.M. was “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine).” Because of this song, I used a rare K-Mart allowable parent purchase to pick up the cassette version of Document, followed closely by the compact disc versions of Monster and Automatic for the People.

I knew nothing of the Athens ties, of the rise of indie (hell, of indie in general), of R.E.M.’s longevity and stellar stylistic changes. I knew that Man on the Moon referenced “Classy” Freddie Blassie and Andy Kaufman, that Ignoreland said “bastards” in that kick-ass barnstorming opening, and that “Weird” Al Yankovic covered “Stand” (as “Spam,” arguably a superior song). I knew Monster rocked and had a song title that doubled as a naughty sexual reference or primitive form of expensive caller ID. I knew I heard R.E.M. songs on Q-102 sometimes. I fell in love with those three albums, picking up Out of Time shortly after and adding it the pantheon. I had never heard the word “jangle.”

It wasn’t until I got to Athens that R.E.M.’s relationship to my now-college town went beyond being “from there.” Once in Athens, I began to discover R.E.M.’s older offerings. I already owned almost everything since Monster. In reverse, R.E.M.’s original albums were less initially impressive. R.E.M. mastered the studio polish, keeping their uniqueness and songwriting in tact as their recording budget grew exponentially. It took me some time to begin appreciating “Radio Free Europe” for the low-fi guitar-rock revelation it was; by the time I really delved into Murmur, I was already knee-deep in hooky indie bands indebted to Mills, Berry, Stipe and Buck. I loved Athens and loved obscure alternative rock long before understanding my favorite band’s deep ties to the popularity of both.

Since then, I’ve fulfilled my relationship with the iconic group. I’ve seen them on the big stage at Red Rocks, bringing it with Stipe’s polished energetic display of horrible dancing. I’ve seen a “secret show” at the Georgia Theatre, when they emerged from the crowd for two songs at the end of a great Elf Power/Minus 5 set. I’ve seen Stipe randomly out in Athens, testing my usual disinterest in celebrity gawking. I’ve rediscovered their back catalog, downloaded an Automatic for the People tribute album, anticipated new releases, and now I’ll see them off into the sunset. I’ve heard their influence R.E.M.’s career could have ended satisfyingly with Bill Berry’s departure, but, though they never again achieved the same heights, they’ve done nothing to tarnish their image since then. Though they’ve lost the undisputed claim to my favorite band (I enjoy The Pogues catalog more from top to bottom, Warren Zevon stirs more emotions, and Modest Mouse and Built to Spill were more influential), no band will ever mean as much to me. For that I thank them for over two decades of output, art that will remain a part of my life for much longer.



A Quick Personal R.E.M. Primer



Document – This album evoked broadly optimistic nostalgia to me the first time I heard it. Did it sound instantly nostalgic in the late 80s? Or was I subconsciously summoning nostalgia before I knew what half the words in the previous sentences meant?



Reconstruction of the Fables – Dark, southern, and very good, but honestly, its on here just because of “Driver 8.” “Driver 8” is fucking awesome.



Hindu Love Gods – R.E.M. backing Warren Zevon on a series of covers. Neither is at the peak of their powers, but you couldn’t come up with many better collaborations for me. Their cover of Prince’s “Raspberry Beret,” needs to be listened to by the world more often.



Out of Time – “Losing My Religion” is (rightfully) the monolithic force (and “Shiny Happy People” the point of shame) but some of the band’s best deep cuts (“Near Wild Heaven, Half a World Away, Me in Honey”) are on here.



Automatic for the People – As good a “start-to-finish” album as any I’ve heard. I could write an essay on each song. Here are some sub-hits.

“Everybody Hurts” – Easy to mock out-of-context, it still works very well on the album,



“Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight” – I found out they don’t perform this live well before I saw them live, which saved me from being disappointed at not hearing it. A small factor in my attending UGA was hearing this song blaring down the hallway on my college visit dorm tour, followed by a stoned-looking guy emerging from a dorm room with a cardboard box on his head and interrupting the tour.

“New Orleans Instrumental #7” – This is an evening on a quit balcony sipping a cool drink in song form.



“Man on the Moon” – After the Ninja Turtles theme song, the first “real” songs I memorized the lyrics too were this, Ace of Base’s “The Sign”, All-4-One’s “I Swear”, and Tag Team’s “Whoomp! There It Is.”



“Find the River” – So equally depressing and uplifting it makes me bipolar.



“Nightswimming” – When we found out this song was about skinny dipping, my friends and I wanted it to be dirty and ironic but we found it out was unfortunately just “good.”



Monster – Probably didn’t work like they wanted it to. Instead of R.E.M. co-opting to arena rock, it sounds more like R.E.M. making arena rock into weird R.E.M. songs. I like it better that way.



New Adventures in Hi-Fi – Makes me wish I could travel to the old west, only with more flashing lights and less murder and typhoid fever.



Up – If the Junior Boys had made this record, it would have been hailed as a masterpiece.



Man on the Moon Soundtrack – A fitting score and a great new single (“The Great Beyond”). Also led to Michael Stipe’s “Daily Show” quote “We wrote all the songs on it except for the ones that aren’t ours” and Stipe actually making an entertaining SNL appearance with Chris Kattan’s “Mango” character.

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Go Loaf

A meandering treatise on Archers of Loaf and my personal music history

This Sunday, July 24, I will - presumably groggy from a weekend of heavy physical activity and beer consumption in the face of the dawning work-week - make my way to East Atlanta. I will face my two of greatest dislikes – parking in areas with limited parking and staying up late on a Sunday night – for a concert I am not convinced will be “good”.

It will be the third show of the weekend for the venerable indie-rocker Archers of Loaf. The band members are approaching their forties, and their notably energetic live shows were said to have quieted down even before their original breakup a dozen years ago. Frontman Eric Bachmann’s post-Archers of Loaf project Crooked Fingers produced the most reliably sad indie albums of the past decade. Guitarist Eric Johnson attended law school following the Archer’s dissolution. They’ve grown up.

I’m hoping the reunion has rejuvenated the group and they’ll be every bit as energetic on day three at The Earl as they were on Friday nights at Cat’s Cradle in 1993. I’m possibly optimistic, but deep down, it doesn’t matter. I enjoy their music enough that I’ll have fun regardless and, more importantly; I’m seeing Archers of Loaf for more abstract than aesthetic reasons. For me, Archers of Loaf was a gateway band, and this concert represents something akin to a pilgrimage, albeit less hyperbolic.

I wasn’t a huge music fan growing up. I definitely lacked the pseudo-hipster chops I’ve developed. My elementary school CD case contained All-4-One, The Eagles, Presidents of the United States of America’s second album, some “Weird” Al Yankovic, some R.E.M., Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and Ace of Base’s debut album. Not particularly embarrassing, save multicultural boy-band All-4-One, but very limited (and only one early R.E.M. record, though I did have Automatic for the People). Regardless, I pretty much stopped with new music during middle school. I knew that I hated 90% of MTV’s Total Request Live, and most things on pop radio. I was tired of hearing the same 70 songs on my mom’s oldies station over on over on my way to school. I guessed I just wasn’t in to music.

This started to change when a little illegal toy called Napster crashed through my 56k modem and into my junior high heart in 1999. I was as astounded by the technological implications as I was flummoxed by my inability to even think of that many songs I wanted. I began my music discovery with an AOL Instant Messenger window and a recurring request: “Tell me a song to download.”

Through this method, I exploited my network of well-to-do white peers until I had a bourgeoning 200 song library of classic rock staples. I went through my Zeppelin phase, my Pink Floyd phase and my retroactive Weezer phase before Lars Ulrich’s children felt their first pangs of hunger. My computer had become a commercial-free 96.1 The River.

Like most artistic-minded youths in small-town settings, I spent a long time patently unaware of non-homogenized culture. The theme song from Kids in the Hall was as close to underground music as I got. In my bubble, unaware of payola-influenced radio practices and the lowest-common-denominator appeal of mass culture, I assumed that what made it to the radio was the cream of the crop. Enough enjoyable “Flagpole Sitta’s” and “Impression That I Get’s” emerged from the murk to maintain this charade; I grew to believe modern music was dead and buried, and Linkin Park was holding the shovel.

Enter my Holy Trinity. My older cousin was much more in to music than me, a fact I discovered on a weekend trip to Atlanta. I heard the name and a single track¹ by an outfit called Modest Mouse. Intrigued, I went home and found² the single “Never Ending Math Equation,” a masterful low-fi juxtaposition of light-hearted philosophy and self-effacing angst which almost instantly rewrote my internal narrative on the state of music. The question begged: if this was out there, was there more? My cousin supplied me with two more names - Built to Spill and Archers of Loaf. I was delivered from radio.

Though all three are indie icons, they are united in my mind only. Built to Spill and Modest Mouse share roots with Oregonian indie label Sub Pop, but sonically each group conveys the strengths of very different frontmen. Built to Spill is built on Doug Martsch’s plasmatic guitar stylings and sheepish voice. Modest Mouse echoes Isaac Brock’s reclusive drunkenness through his grating double-tracked vocals, ethereal layering and moment-of-clarity harmonies. Archers of Loaf’s sound relies on Eric Bachmann’s pseudo-slurry full-throated delivery backdropped by a precariously balanced drum-and-wandering-guitar bombast.

On the strength of these three artists, I learned the way of indie rock. But they are not equals. Both Built to Spill and Modest Mouse made it to the underground spotlight in the mid-to-late nineties, while Archers of Loaf had called it quits by 1998. The former two kept rocking, with Modest Mouse even achieving mainstream radio play thanks to 2004’s “Float On.” As a result, I’ve seen Brock and Martsch’s outfits live and kept up with new releases; though they peaked before I was aware of them, I still grew with Modest Mouse and Built to Spill. Archers of Loaf, meanwhile, called it quits while I was still streaming midis.

Archers of Loaf also had the most scattershot output. While Modest Mouse and Built to Spill lost a bit of their edge in recent years, they still had discernible career arcs. Archers of Loaf, meanwhile, foreshadowed the Pitchfork hype-machine era, growing word-of-mouth acclaim for their wild live shows and exploding on the scene with a never-to-be-replicated live album. Archers of Loaf arguably peaked with the first song of their first album, slacker love song “Web in Front.” Though they never had a true dud of an album, the rest of their catalog saw a few choice cuts sprinkled here and there as the cacophony descended into synthetic weirdness. The last track from their final album, the eponymous "White Trash Heroes," is a nearly eight minute specter built over a haunting repetitive synth-chord progression. As the coda drones out, this is not even the same band that wanted to nonsensically be your spine³ .

Timeline placement forced me to experience my Archers of Loaf fandom with some level of disconnect. Crooked Fingers just wasn’t the same, and unlike the multitude of kids who idolized Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, there would be no shitty cover bands to replicate the experience of being there. You could argue, quite validly, that seeing a band live and looking forward to the potential of new releases ultimately means nothing. I’m sure a bunch of second-generation Beatlemaniacs would thusly challenge this framework (whereupon an army of Phishheads would condescendingly engage them). I’d be cheering for the Lennon/McCarthy disciples, but in my head I know I fall on the Phish side. Concerts are more than just being close to a band while their music plays⁴. Concerts are an opportunity to experience the full energy of a band, the essence of their being. Good concerts fill a large group of fans with this same energy, creating a shared experience so powerful that shuffling out of a crowded two-door club drenched in sweat, with ears ringing and knees aching, seems like a small price to pay for the memory created.

This is why hipsters create internal checklists of bands they’ve seen and namedrop the ones they caught early on; being the first to discover such an experience is a point of pride. Because clichés like “losing yourself” and “feeling it” exist for a reason. For those who love live music, every show opens with the potential for transcendence. Whether the show is truly special or not, just seeing band live gives fans a fuller understanding of what the band is about. Live shows enhance or unveil the endearing pretentiousness of The Flaming Lips, the ageless rambunctiousness of The Pogues, the ethereal hipness of TV on the Radio. We find out how intimately involved Win Butler is with Arcade Fire’s emotional music, that Carlos D is the only animate human in Interpol and whether or not the lead singer of Black Moth Super Rainbow is a caterpillar.

I’m not sure what I’ll find out this Sunday. Maybe nothing. Regardless, I’ll have completed an homage of sorts. The three personal gateway icons of my internal music history will have been experienced in the flesh. In almost any conceivable way, this means absolutely nothing. This entire essay was an attempt to ascribe meaning in some way, but somewhere I lost track and just tried to convince someone to take my extra ticket. I suppose it comes down to the same pseudo-obsessive collector mentality that causes people to hoard baseball cards, vinyl, Pokémon, and Afghan rugs. I’m collecting a specific experience from my master list of musical artists. Archers of Loaf will complete one of my most important subsets, and that’ll be worth a twenty-spot and a painful Monday morning.

¹Nope, I don’t remember which one.
²I was using virus vessel KaZaa at this point.
³And it wasn’t. Looking back, everything about Crooked Fingers makes much more sense with this song in mind. Yet none of it is quite as good.
⁴Well, besides Interpol concerts.

NBA Preview

Having seen only 3 games to bias my opinions, I present to you my predictions for the current season.


East

1. Orlando – East Champion
Reason for eventual failure: Vince Carter still plays for this team. Miami can’t stop Dwight; they can’t beat Boston, though. All gonna depend on the seedings.

2. Miami
Reason for eventual failure: Supporting cast is absolute garbage, except Chris Bosh. And he doesn’t defend, rebound, or score in the paint.

3. Boston
Reason for eventual failure: They’re just so old. They’re too old.

4. Atlanta
Reason for eventual failure: Brought back the exact same team that failed horribly last year.

5. Chicago
Reason for eventual failure: Carlos Boozer’s fragility.

6. Charlotte
Reason for eventual failure: Relying on D.J. Augustin with a coach who actively despises young point guards.

7. New York
Reason for eventual failure: D’Antoni and Amar’e will reunite to finish among the league leaders total points, apostrophes and amount of dunks allowed to opposing big men in playoff games.

8. Milwaukee
Reason for eventual failure: Bench is too thin, offense is probably a year away from clicking.

9. Cleveland
Reason for failure: Antawn Jamison never has quite enough in him for any substantial runs, plus Jamario Moon and Anthony Parker are starting.

10. Philadelphia
Reason for failure: This team seems maxed out, which is kind of shocking considering they are pretty young.

11. New Jersey
Reason for failure: Devin Harris is somehow a better real-life player than he is in real-life. No, that’s not a typo. I don’t really understand.

12. Washington
Reason for failure: Just feels mismatched and weird; rookie point guards rarely deliver right away.

13. Indiana
Reason for failure: Lotta whites. Too many.

14. Detroit
Reason for failure: This is a terrible roster.

15. Toronto
Reason for failure: This is one of the worst NBA rosters I have ever seen.





West

1. Los Angeles – Champions
Reason for success: Still too deep and too big, still have the best center and best guard; and once every three games the best power forward.

2. Portland
Reason for eventual failure: Greg Oden’s bust shadow looms too deeply.

3. Oklahoma City
Reason for eventual failure: Still too young and a little too small to take it all the way. Jeff Green and James Harden may be good “fits” but they’ve yet to show they are talented enough to justify their draft positions.

4. Dallas
Reason for eventual failure: Dirk Nowitzki, rinse and repeat.

5. Utah
Reason for eventual failure: C.J. Miles is beyond a weak link in this offense; Jefferson and D-Will probably won’t fully gel until next season; Kirilenko’s hair.

6. San Antonio
Reason for eventual failure: Splitter, Healthy Tony Parker and George Hill inject some life, but Duncan just isn’t Duncan anymore.

7. Phoenix
Reason for eventual failure: Same old song.

8. New Orleans
Reason for eventual failure: Legitimately trying to convince teams that Emeka Okafur is a valuable playoff weapon.

9. Denver
Reason for failure: Seems like they’ll cling to Melo and bad chemistry for a little too long, setting up a complete dismantling by the deadline.

10. Houston
Reason for failure: As good as Scola and Aaron Brooks are, Yao Ming has to stay healthy all season for them to make any noise

11. Los Angeles Clippers
Reason for failure: Starting five can match up with anyone, but they seriously cannot survive an injury, and they are the Clippers, so they will have one.

12. Memphis
Reason for failure: Looks a better on paper than they really are. Probably the best video game team, besides maybe Golden State.

13. Golden State
Reason for failure: No idea. I could easily see them as the 6-seed. Just don’t think they’ll play enough D over the course of a game.

14. Sacramento
Reason for failure: Little too many solid players, Tyreke and Cousins probably not ready to carry them yet. If they hit their lottery pick this year, they could build a long-term contender.

15. Minnesota
Reason for failure: Kahn.



Finals: Lakers over Magic

MVP: Dwyane Wade

Rookie of the Year: Blake Griffin



Biggest Reaches

East: Cleveland

Antawn Jamison has carried competent teams before, Mo Williams can still shoot and handle point well enough, Andersen Varejao is still the most annoying big man in the league (in a good way) and J,J. Hickson could blossom. Keep in mind that during his 7 years with Cavs, LeBron James made every teammate he played with worse, with the possible exceptions of Mo Williams, who got better at shooting threes but worse at shooting twos, and Delonte West, who repaid the favor by sleeping with Momma James. Without LeBron dominating the ball with his patented “Careen into the right side of the lane blindly and hope for a foul call” offense, I could easily see these guys outperforming their exceedingly low expectations.



West: Utah

Tough to figure this conference out, lots of talented teams at different points. Tyreke/Cousins feels like it’s a year away, Blake Griffin makes me want to take the Clippers, but they are the Clippers so I can’t. Hard to pick Houston and Denver to miss the playoffs, but a healthy Chris Paul should be enough to push Ariza/West into a first-round playoff loss, even though the decision to pair CP3 with Emeka Okafur is still one of the most baffling front office moves of the past few years. But Utah feels like a team that could absolutely punish people with a Jefferson/D-Will pick-and-roll game, feisty perimeter defense and great coaching. Still, picking a team with C.J. Miles starting to compete in a brutal conference is unsettling.


Biggest Wildcard: Carmelo Anthony to Knicks

A Carmelo Anthony trade to New York would drastically alter both teams. It would signal Denver going into rebuilding and most likely dealing Chauncey and sending them well into the bottom of the West, and it would rejuvenate the Knicks and turn them into a regular season contender. Yes Stoudemire’s defense would still cripple their playoff chances, but they’d be fun and wildly competitive in the regular season.





What wouldn’t shock me:

Just to hedge my bets, here are some things I’m not predicting but I’m not so sure about.

1. San Antonio collapsing. I could see a healthy Clippers team taking that spot, a Melo-full Denver or a wildly entertaining Golden State team sneaking into the playoffs.

2. Charlotte regressing with Augustin at point and missing the playoffs. An uninteresting Sixers team or an uninteresting Pacers team plus Danny Granger making the postseason.

How Grant Hill Ruined Tracy McGrady's Career

Sometime soon, the Summer of 2010, the NBA’s most anticipated and extravagant offseason ever, will feature the low-key signing of Tracy McGrady to an as-yet-unknown NBA team. McGrady will settle for a bench role and a paycheck worth a fraction of that of the big names who preceded him. The shame in all of this is that McGrady might have been bigger than any of them.

McGrady’s superstar days were already on the way out in February of 2009, when he underwent microfracture surgery on his left knee. The surgery signaled the end of McGrady's tenure with the Houston Rockets. It also marked the last of McGrady as an elite player, joining the growing list of athletes whose careers were never the same after going under the knife - Jason Kidd, Chris Webber, Brian Grant, Terrell Brandon, Allan Houston, Penny Hardaway, Kenyon Martin and Antonio McDyess. Already hampered by recurring back problems and the natural aging process, questions regarding McGrady's future in the league have taken a backseat to his legacy outside it. McGrady won two scoring titles and made 7 All-Star teams, yet it remains to be seen if he will be remembered as Tracy McGrady, the star-crossed uber-talent or T-Mac, the best guy to never lead a team out of the first round. The first whispers of this debate were heard as McGrady's Orlando Magic collapsed in 2004, blowing a 3-1 series lead to the Detroit Pistons, and grew to a roar as his inconsistency and discontentment tore apart a talented Rockets team at the beginning the 2009 season. In the most individual-centric of the major sports leagues, where legends like Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing are endlessly scrutinized for their failure to deliver a championship, how will we remember a guy who never even won a playoff round? Clearly, McGrady will never be the man on a team playing deep into the playoffs. It seems highly possible that in a decade or so, none but the most diehard of NBA fans will seriously remember McGrady as more than a prolific scorer and a general malcontent. Already, casual fans have turned on McGrady, with words like ball-hog and prima donna painting him as a soft, fragile and moody. What's most unfortunate is that it should never have come to this. And it's all Grant Hill's fault.

McGrady quietly slipped into the NBA as an unknown ninth overall pick in the 1997 draft. He made little noise as a high school project in his first three seasons with the Raptors, and was largely overshadowed by his high-flying teammate and cousin Vince Carter, who was named Rookie of the Year in 1998. Finally becoming a starter towards the middle of the 1999-2000 season, McGrady displayed eye-catching potential as he joined Carter and Doug Christie in leading the Raptors to a high-profile playoff showdown (and subsequent sweep) with the New York Knicks. A free agent at the end of the season, McGrady became the third big name in a highly anticipated free agent class that included all NBA-ers Tim Duncan and Grant Hill.

In an as-yet unrelated note, the Orlando Magic spent the end of the 99-00 season making a surprising push for the final playoff spot in the Eastern Conference. The Magic, previewed as a group of no-names and cast-offs were written off for most of the season before making their unlikely late season run, led by point-guard combo Darrell Armstrong and Chucky Atkins, and young, undersized center/power forward Ben Wallace. The Magic were just finished recovering from the Shaq-Penny hangover and were essentially built with the free agency of the summer of 2000 in mind, making their resurgence all the more remarkable. Armed with a group of hard-working role players, overflowing coffers and the fifth pick in the draft, the Magic set out to build a dynasty.

Once Duncan resisted the temptations of the Heat and the Magic, the two Florida teams turned their heads towards Grant Hill. Entering his 7th season at 28 years old, apparently in the prime of career, Hill had a winning pedigree from his years at Duke and monster statistics, averaging 25.8 points, 6.6 rebounds and 5.2 assists per game. Supplanting Scottie Pippen as the best small forward in the game, Hill became best free agent available. Coming in second was McGrady, still just 21 years of age and ready for the spotlight after putting up 15.4 points and 1.9 blocks per game in just under half a season starting for the Raptors.

Eager to depart the shadow of his cousin Vince (or, more likely, eager to sign a max offer), McGrady narrowed his choice to the Miami Heat and the Orlando Magic. Determined to make a splash after missing out on Duncan, the Magic were ready to open their pockets. On August 3rd, the Magic made their move, landing McGrady and Grant Hill in separate sign and trade deals, supposedly cementing their place among East contenders for the next five years. Though they didn't realize it then, the Magic had also struck as close to gold as possible in the draft, landing Mike Miller with the fifth pick in what will assuredly go down as one of the worst NBA drafts of all time (Kenyon Martin was the top pick, Michael Redd and Jammal Magloire were the only others to make an All-Star team, and Marcus Fizer and DerMarr Johnson went 4th and 6th, respectively).

Little did McGrady, or anyone in Orlando, realize, but the feature was not shades-bright. Grant Hill had injured his left ankle in the last week of the season, then worsened the injury by trying to play through pain in the Piston's playoff loss to the Miami Heat. Hill would miss the 2000 Summer Olympics, then the start of training camp, the bulk of preseason and 78 games in 2000-2001. He was never the same. Never even remotely close, honestly. The dream pairing never had a chance, which was especially unfortunate as McGrady met and exceeded nearly all expectations, blossoming into an All-NBA talent while Hill nursed his wounds on the sideline. To make matters worse, in clearing room for their Big 2, the Magic had jettisoned most of the Little Team That Almost Could, saying goodbye to Ron Mercer, Tariq Abdul-Wahad, Matt Harpring, Chris Gatling and Corey Maggette via free agency or trades. Even more devastating, they sent Chucky Atkins and Ben Wallace to Detroit to make the Hill signing work. Suddenly, Darrell Armstrong and rookie Mike Miller were the only players left who weren't below average.

And then there was McGrady. Hill's hypochondria thrust McGrady into the role of team leader, top scoring option, best defender, passer and rebounder. McGrady put up amazing numbers and, year after year, willed his team into the playoffs only to fall in the first round. His stats shined, but the years of being a one-man show took their toll. McGrady had shown glimpses of his Pippen-esque defensive capabilities, but being the primary ballhandler and leading scorer left him without the energy to mark the opponent’s best guy. He started slacking off on defense, and relied on his athleticism alone for weak-side blocks. His court vision suffered as, time and time again, his teammates proved incapable of more than the occasional spot-up three-pointer. Mentally, the burden surely wore on him, as the task of single-handedly leading a group of sub-par players was made all the more difficulty by the frustration of Hill's absence. To add insult to injury, Ben Wallace developed into a defensive force in Detroit while the Magic threw out a hilarious slew of washed up big men (Bo Outlaw, Horace Grant, Patrick Ewing, Shawn Kemp, and Juwan Howard) at center. The Magic also dumped Mike Miller for Gordon Giricek and were forced to start the likes of Jacques Vaughn and Tyronn Lue at point guard when Darrell Armstrong's age forced him into a reserve role.

It was during this time when McGrady, in the tradition of the misguided attempts by Kevin Frazier and Stuart Scott to turn ESPN into producers of hip culture, that McGrady became T-Mac. While it may have been just another in the long line of A-Rod inspired lazy nicknames, the donning of the name coincided with McGrady's transition from superb all-around talent and team player into bona-fide superstar. This distinction may not sound like much, but it is. Situation can be everything in basketball. The smaller team size and emphasis on individual stats and performance in the media don't do justice to the huge importance of teammates. McGrady could have been one of the all-time greats with the right running mates, but he spent his Orlando years developing the ego and attitude, and subsequent bad basketball habits, that come with being the best guy on a bad team. McGrady passed less out of inclination than out of necessity. His shot selection became poorer, thanks to endless end of the shot-clock isolations and the team's dependence on him to end scoring droughts and come through in late-game situations.

More importantly, the night-in, night-out burden wore on him physically. McGrady did everything, all game, every game. By the time he reached Houston, his body had already begun to deteriorate. His back gave out first, then he lost his legs. The athletic freak who blocked one-on-one jumpers and threw off-the-backboard self-oops in exhibition games became a Rip Hamilton/Ray Allen-type mid-range shooter and finesse finisher.

It's easy to blame McGrady for becoming T-Mac, the selfish star that couldn’t get it done. His dubious streak of first-round playoff exits haunts his legacy, and being Vince Carter’s relative will always tarnish one’s image. The biggest free agent of this summer, LeBron James, has finally been exposed as a prima donna, narcissist off the court who lacked the intangible “desire to win” on the court. LeBron slammed the door on the Kobe vs. LeBron and LeBron vs. Jordan debates with his willingness to ride the coattails of his biggest on-court rival to championships, showcasing nothing but his own ego in the week-long proceedings and all but admitting what his on-court game hinted at: he’s not a winner at heart.

The same will be said of McGrady. Of course, McGrady never had LeBron’s natural talent. But LeBron at least took a team to the finals, with the one virtuoso performance he gave us in his 7 years with Cleveland. (Though no one seems to remember that after that all-time fourth quarter and overtime, in which LeBron scored 29 of 30 points, he completely disappeared against the Spurs in the finals, folding as he’s always done in big games before and since). McGrady never had the help LeBron had, though. His Orlando supporting cast was more comparable to that of Dwyane Wade’s these past two seasons; though McGrady never had a healthy teammate with half the pedigree of Michael Beasley.

What McGrady gets crushed for is the Rockets failures; where he and Yao Ming failed to escape the first round for the next four years. Yet the two were rarely healthy together, and the two Utah losses were mostly the result of Carlos Boozer dominating Yao Ming than McGrady’s not stepping up. He scored 29 to go with 13 assists in the clinching game, while Boozer annihilated Yao and Juwan Howard to the tune of 35 points.

Sports fans hate feeling robbed of great performances, whether by injuries, fluke upsets that ruin big-time showdowns, or players who don’t perform to expectations for whatever reason. McGrady never lived up to his - in the bitterest of ironies, he watched the Rockets win a first round series while recovering from his knee surgery in 2009. There is a recurring debate over the best player to never win a championship. McGrady will undeniably go down as the best player to never win a playoff series. But the fault lies with Grant Hill’s gimpy ankle; for hamstringing the Magic’s roster for four long years as McGrady’s prime withered away. T-Mac will be unfairly lumped in with LeBron and Vince as stars who didn’t want it, but the tears McGrady shed after Boozer knocked the Rockets out in 2007 were real, and were something you will never see from a player who didn’t want it. McGrady’s career would have been unequivocally different playing alongside not just Grant Hill or Tim Duncan, but even Ben Wallace and whatever role-players Grant Hill’s money could have afforded while his body crumbled. Unfortunately, we'll never know. And soon, no win will even ask.

The Top 10 Albums of 2009

Top 10 Albums of 2009

Well, we are halfway through 2010, so here’s my best of 2009 list.

I haven’t listened to Bitte Orca or Discovery yet. Deal with it.

10. The Low Anthem – Oh My God, Charlie Darwin
They come out sounding like a Fleet Foxes clone, then an Iron & Wine disciple, before lead singer Ben Knox Miller uncorks his Tom Waits juice on “The Horizon is a Beltway” (he covers Waits on the next track), and the group proceeds to explore their bizarre Charlie Darwin concept across the great reaches of Americana.

9. The Decemberists – Hazards of Love
There’s a thin line between a rock opera and just playing the same three songs over and over. Still, those were pretty great songs, the cadence on “Isn’t it a Lovely Night” is astounding, and My Brightest Diamond knocks the Snow Queen out of the park.

8. Girls – Album
Earnest, affecting, and able to make “Lust for Life” depressing. It’s like if The xx only had a male lead singer and weren’t incredibly boring.

7. Various Artists – Dark Was The Night
It’s been too long since we’ve had new Books material. This double album had a ton of really strong songs and some enjoyable collaborations. It’s probably the best compilation album since the last live-action Wes Anderson soundtrack.

6. Dan Deacon - Bromst
No, it didn’t have a “Crystal Cat” on it, but Paddling Ghost was almost as addicting, and the music video for “Woof Woof” takes this album to a whole new level. On the whole, Deacon expands his repertoire and gives us self-aware electronic music that ebbs and flows magnificently.

5. The Very Best – Warm Heart of Africa
The Graceland of Brooklyn dance music.

4. Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
I’ll never understand why they decided to put a seven-and-a-half-minute instrumental epic in the middle of a pop album. But it’s a damn enjoyable album nonetheless, even though it sounds like Adam Gontier is constantly trying to seduce my girlfriend.

3. Antlers – Hospice
Jesus Christ

2. Passion Pit – Manners
No, it wasn’t profound. Bit these guys do glistening, wistful pop music about as well as anyone can do a genre.

1. Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
I’ll be honest, I thought “My Girls” was a wildly overrated song, and I thought Feels had higher peaks as an album. But it’s a testament to Animal Collective that I still consider this the best album of the year. Every track is challenging and enjoyable, two attributes they’ve become masters of reconciling.

Dammit, the BCS Worked

I hate the BCS. I hate the fact that college football, the most intensely scrutinized NCAA sport, has never had an effective method of crowning a champion. The BCS was proved to be broken at the end of the 2004 season, when Auburn managed to go undefeated in the SEC and somehow not play in the National Championship, instead sluggishly winning a deflating Sugar Bowl matchup with Virginia Tech while USC blew out an overmatched and undeserving Oklahama, a school which somehow avoids being lumped in with Ohio State as perpetually undewhelming National Championship runner-ups.

To reiterate: Auburn went undefeated in the SEC, a conference which has won the last three championships handily and, if Alabama takes care of Texas, could have four in a row and five of the last seven.

Unfortunately, the changes that catastrophe sparked were only cosmetic, and the BCS remains a financially monstrous impediment to any sort of playoff system. With five undefeated teams and one-loss repeat champion Florida headed into this postseason, playoff-clamoring sports fans were expecting points to be proven. Alas, reality set in, and the playoff movement may have been set back.

We knew that undefeated Alabama against unbeaten Texas was the perfect fit for the championship. The BCS gave us two other wrinkles. In the Sugar Bowl, they gave us unbeaten Cincinnati against a championship-calibre Florida squad. In an adorable Fiesta Bowl matchup, they sent unbeaten mid-majors TCU and Boise State to play amongst themselves while the adults took care of important matters. The mid-majors (and let's face it, the Big East is a mid-major, BCS-conference be damned) had an unbelievable opportunity to make some noise in a broken system. And they dropped the ball.

Cincy never, for one single moment, had the slightest chance against a Florida team that wasn't even playing at full intensity in a let-down game following their destiny-altering loss to Alabama. Florida flat-out proved that soft-scheduled Cincinnati had no business whatsoever in a title game, or even a playoff spot. The fact that Cincy was by large consensus considered a better team than TCU or Boise State cast a shadow over the yet-to-be played Fiesta Bowl, a shadow they never lifted.

With a national spotlight and everything to prove, both teams looked flat-out bad in a largely unexciting 17-10 Boise win. Dropped passes, busted plays, blown coverage and two quarterbacks who looked completely out-fo-sync and out-of-place marred the intriguing game and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that no team in the country had the right to challenge Texas or Alabama for a number one ranking at the end of the season. TCU and Boise State's only hopes against the big 3 (we are including Florida, whose SEC Championship loss to Alabama also hurt the cause by serving as a de facto playoff game) would be to outscore them, catching a break or two along the way. On Monday night, they couldn't outscore each other, managing only 10 points each on offense (a pick-six for Boise proved to be the difference).

The BCS is broken. We know this much. But to see major changes we need major controversy. The past few years have delivered plenty of it, but this season everything fell into place and the BCS worked flawlessly. The money-grubbing higher-ups now have their counterpoint to the Auburn debacle, in a short-memoried society, they can point to this season as proof that their computers get it right. And just this once, there is nothing we can say, so with no shame and no regret they can postpone a proper playoff system another year, another five years, as another seemingly endless stream of excuses keep a nation screaming for change in a tradition no one wants.

The 2:00 Train

Through the swelter
through the screen
a train engine
bellows
the train rumbles faintly

as i,
sweating
not sleeping
i yearn for the tracks

to feel the thunderous rush
the raw power of the steel
metal on metal
churning ferociously

they become a rough-hewn drone
from afar
muffled by the night