Once a hipster now a homster:

Does this look like the start of a midlife crises to anyone else?

I have been visiting some very cool coastal L.A. and New York on the scene blogs today. I am feeling very Midwestern in comparison to their urbane and topical posts. I have never done more than skirt the edges of hip hop culture so it shouldn’t seem strange to me that I feel so outside that rhetorical universe. I am not being ironic. I am trying to sort out my mixed emotional bag of misplaced comparison.

When I was seventeen I would hit every big show that came to town, at least the ones I could get in to see. I have a mental backlog of Toasters shows at 1227, The Alley, Farenheit, and Warehouse Raves galore, dancing and drugged in some vicinity of Washington Avenue downtown St. Louis. Or hand stamped for the all ages section of Mississippi Nights for the regular Wednesday night Urge show with the eight-dollar cover.

I was alive in a different way then. I was interested in what the popular culture was throwing up. I haven’t been in a very long time. Probably the last new CD I bought was Fiona Apple. How many years ago was that?

I have a vague desire to be interested in what’s new, but it requires cash to play those games and my green needs to result in food and rent. So that’s it then, be my guide. What’s new that I should be paying attention to? On a finite budget what’s worth checking out right now?