{"id":920,"date":"2007-09-29T23:42:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-30T06:42:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.hollandreno.zerominuszero.net\/?p=920"},"modified":"2020-03-21T19:15:59","modified_gmt":"2020-03-22T02:15:59","slug":"yes-i-am-a-tornado-chaser-32","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hollandreno.org\/2007\/09\/yes-i-am-a-tornado-chaser-32\/","title":{"rendered":"Yes, I am a Tornado Chaser"},"content":{"rendered":"
First off, I want to apologize for not only taking the majority of the summer off, but for also posting two days late. Yikes. <\/p>\n
The best song I\u00e2\u20ac™ve ever heard all summer long.<\/p>\n
As far as summers go, this one was a doozy for the old Tornado Chaser. I toured throughout the better part of it, traveling to several places I\u00e2\u20ac™ve never been and meeting many great people. I also got to see a ton of really awesome shows. But something else happened this summer that will forever register in my list of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153best ever-ness\u00e2\u20ac\u009d that I keep running in the back of my head:<\/p>\n
This past July I saw Slint perform on two separate occasions.<\/p>\n
While to most people, this wouldn\u00e2\u20ac™t seem like that big of a deal, to me it was like The Beatles and Nirvana raising the dead and getting back together for a prime-time special broadcast on all the major networks. We\u00e2\u20ac™re talking huge. <\/p>\n
Most people would have a hard time settling on one song that they could call their favorite. Not me. If you have ever listened to Slint\u00e2\u20ac™s album Spiderland<\/i>, you\u00e2\u20ac™ll know that about 18 minutes into it, there is a song called \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Washer.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d This is it folks\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6as far as I am concerned, this is the apex of musical composition. This is the best song ever written. On July 13, I was standing in Union Park in Chicago, surrounded by a few thousand people, when I saw Slint play this song. I\u00e2\u20ac™ve never really understood what people meant when they talked about \u00e2\u20ac\u0153religious experiences,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but that Friday evening, I think I came close. Watching that song in the flesh, the guys who wrote it recreating it right in front of me, was the most fulfilling interpretation of what I perceive as \u00e2\u20ac\u0153art\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or \u00e2\u20ac\u0153expression\u00e2\u20ac\u009d or whatever you want to call it. I still have a hard time finding the words to explain it to anyone that wasn\u00e2\u20ac™t there experiencing it with me.<\/p>\n
One week later, I was in San Francisco with a handful of friends where we saw Slint again, this time at Bimbo\u00e2\u20ac™s, a really classy 1930s-ish-type place. This time, I knew what was coming, and still, as soon as they started those opening chords, I had the same reaction. I know music is a highly personal thing for most people, and by and large, how it is interpreted is closely related to specific memories and so on, so I don\u00e2\u20ac™t expect everyone (or anyone for that matter) to respond the same way I do to this song. I have, however, posted a link to the song below, so everyone can check it out for themselves.<\/p>\n