Jeff Mangum coming to St. Louis in January.  ‘Bout time.  As we discussed earlier this year, Neutral Milk Hotel played St. Louis frequently in its heyday, but the Mangum solo experience has not touched down here until now.  I’ve said this before: I’ll go see him play and enjoy it, but what I really want is new songs.  I don’t care if they’re “as good” as NMH; it would be interesting to hear what he’s thinking now.

Later this week I’ll have an interview with a long-term favorite band of mine.  Hint: they were part of the Mitch Easter/North Carolina axis whose records got me through the last two years of high school.

We had an election last week.  My candidate did not win.  I said so on Facebook and found myself receiving almost uniformly negative feedback.  I’m not going to rehash the arguments here.  I’ll just say that my vote was based on whom I believed would manage the economy better and reduce unemployment, and clearly a majority did not agree.  Obama’s my president, too, so I wish him the best, but I do worry about friends and family members who’ve been unemployed or underemployed.  For them, life is not going to improve soon.