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Having recently retired the Jacksonism moniker entirely (goodbye, connotations of failure and bad decision-making!), I’m proud to have my first show as Stephen Carradini and the Midnight Sons tonight. Interestingly, I will not have the Midnight Sons with me, but I am playing the songs on which they are collaborating with me. It’s the first time I’ve played live in three and a half years. I thoroughly anticipate that it will not be the last time.

I am excited to be playing under my own name. I have long derided people who play under their own name, because I felt that they were not creative enough to think up a name or friendly enough to find good musicians to play with. But I am finding now that there is good in it; you can’t break up with yourself, for one. For another, you can pick and leave off; you don’t have to be hard-charging at music all the time. You don’t have others to support, so it doesn’t have to be your all-encompassing passion. It must be at least a passion, but it doesn’t have to be your only one.

So, playing under my own name allows me a freedom to change, morph, waste time, get prolific, or whatever. I’m still me, releasing an album. It’s good.

So, if you want, come out to Starbucks on Campus Corner, 6:00 p.m. and watch me play some tunes that are going to be on my upcoming album “How We Live.” I am so excited.

I’m mostly amused at people who comment negatively on blogs. They’ve taken the time to read at least a part of something that they really disliked, then used up more of their time to comment that they disliked it. To have a piece that provokes that strong of a response is more of a compliment than an insult, really.

I used to get offended, but now I just feel honored. Thanks, flamers!

Those of you with texas inclinations should be pleased that I used the lowercase iteration and not the backwards lowercase “saxet,” which I have been known to do. I am that much of an Oklahoma Sooners fan.

It’s peculiar that I ended up such a monster fan. Growing up loving sports but living in Tulsa, I was far removed from most collegiate sports except the University of Tulsa Golden Hurricanes (what’s a Golden Hurricane?). Seeing as TU satisfied my love of the underdog but not really my love of winning, I was wide open to new allegiances (although I still cheer on my boys in blue and gold when they have big games). I ended up spending my undergraduate years at the University of Oklahoma, and I almost immediately picked up the mantle of Sooner fan.

I didn’t instantaneously become a rabid fan. But by the time Homecoming came around my freshman year, I was game enough to sit through a freezing cold windstorm to watch my Sooners whip up on Colorado. It’s on my top five list of Unfun Things I Have Endured Because I Love OU Football (the top of which being “Sleeping in a tent made of trash cans and plywood to get on College Gameday vs. Texas Tech”, which I’m pretty proud of in retrospect, but mostly it was terrible at the time).

And today, day of days, is the culmination of OU football. No matter what has happened before or what will happen after, we roll in to the Cotton Bowl and do battle with Texas. Even if both teams were 0-10 on the year other than the OU/texas game, we would still roll out in droves and watch excitedly from our homes because it is THAT BIG.

Alright. I’m dressed up in my sooner garb. It’s go time. Let’s go boys. Forget the two losses. Forget that Jermaine Gresham (who Kirk Herbstreit yesterday called “the best tight end we’ve seen in college football in a long time”) is gone. Forget that Broyles is out. Just do it. Beat Texas.

Where the Wild Things Are was simply astonishing. I loved every moment of it. It’s funny, emotional, powerful, touching, and charming in turns. There is not a moment wasted; there is not a line thrown away. The cinematography is perfect. In short, it’s nigh on a perfect movie. Judging from my recent comment on how I dislike movies on the whole, this is a pretty sweeping statement.

I took the GRE today. Scores:

Qualitative: 700
Quantitative: 680

1up! Level clear.

Re-posted from Independent Clauses.com, which I don’t usually do, but it’s important.

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So, new regulations came out for bloggers this week (but not for anyone else: newspapers, magazines, etc) about what we do and don’t have to say to avoid an 11,000 dollar fine.

What we have to say now: we get all our records for free to review. People send them to us, in hopes that we will review them favorably.

If you’ve read us for any amount of time, you’ll note that we often run bad reviews, because (duh) we’re not getting paid off by the freebies we get. We need them so that we can (duh) write about them. Because if I had to purchase every album we reviewed, the math would look like this: (4 albums x $10 + 1 EP x $5) x 46 weeks = $2070/yr.

(I’m allowing six weeks’ worth of days where we fail to post things)

If you multiply that out by 7 and allow for some positive variation, that’s almost $15,000 dollars over the life of this blog. Seeing as I am a college student, I’ve never even made $15k in a year, much less $15k off this blog. In fact, there’s no advertising on this blog. It’s totally free. Totally, totally unbiased, which is (I guess) what the FTC wants.
If we factor in the two editions of a print magazine that we ran (FTC: does running two versions of a print mag make us a print mag? or are we a blog again?), I’ve lost money on Independent Clauses. Full disclosure for the win. You readers aren’t getting faulty information while I get rich, because I’m not getting rich. At all.

In fact, I run this partly as a service to upstart bands (who need press quotes), partly as a service to my writers (who need resume fodder), partly because I really enjoy writing about music (whoa, what a concept) and THEN as a service to readers (sorry guys, but you really do come in fourth in my mind).

Also, I like folk best. I figure that should be disclosed while we’re making disclosures. And I hate grindcore. And hot country. And government intervention.

There. No fine for us. We’ve disclosed everything free.

Oh wait, my roommate bought the orange juice I drank this morning. I’m favorably biased toward him.

As a storyteller, I have almost a dozen new stories of wonder and excitement. They’re much better vocally, so be sure to ask me about !!! (pronounced chk-chk-chk), Flogging Molly, trying to check into our hotel, Ghostland Observatory, and Bon Iver. You’ll be entertained, for sure.

Also, I’m 45,000 words into my novel, out of 70,000. I’m pretty excited.

I’m making my first voyage to Austin City Limits. It may be my last in a while, as I probably won’t be in this area next time it rolls around. So I’m super-stoked, and this is why (pulled from Independent Clauses):

5. Daniel Johnston. I am not so much interested in his music as I am in actually witnessing him. Read my post here for more details. In fact, reading that essay again, I really recommend you do read it.

4. The Low Anthem. I really, really can’t wait to hear “Charlie Darwin” live. It’s a heart-breakingly beautiful song. The fact that the Low Anthem will be the first band I see at ACL makes it all the more desirable.

3. K’Naan. I have never been to a rap show where I actually knew the material. This, paired with the fact that K’Naan seems effortlessly effervescent, should prove to make an out-of-this-world show.

2. Bon Iver. The only folk artist who has intrigued and excited me more in the past year is Joe Pug. And I listen to lots of folk. I hope there’s a full band, because “For Emma” without the trumpets would make me sad, and defeat some of the joy of that song. Maybe he can jack the brass section from Los Amigos Invisibles.?

1. The Avett Brothers. This is more of a pilgrimage than a dedication to their music. “Ballad of Love and Hate” and “Murder in the City” (neither of which will get played, I think) are two of my most favorite songs in the world, and because there’s a slim glimmer of a chance that one or both may be played, I’m hustling on over for the entirety of their set. Also, I hear they rip it up live, which will be fun.

Honorable Mentions: Flogging Molly, Andrew Bird, The Walkmen.