Photo: CNN

On the stereo: “Counting Down the Hours,” Ted Leo + Pharmacists

Okay, here it goes:

I think John McCain is losing his marbles and that he can’t be trusted. I think that his hotheaded, impulsive mentality makes him an incredibly dangerous candidate for the office of President.

There, I said it. He has given to our country selflessly in uniform, risked his life for our freedoms and committed himself to a life of public service. And it’s time for him to fucking retire. Seriously. Like, I’ll totally buy the mai tais or piña coladas or whatever the fuck you want to drink, Senator. You name it, really; it’s on me.

Can I go further? I would like to, as I’ve just found out that McCain will likely be leaking his pick for VP right after tonight’s rally at the Mile High Stadium in Denver, where Barack Obama will officially accept my party’s nomination of him for the office of President. That’s MY party you’re gonna crash, you rat. (more…)

Photo: Platt/ Getty

On the stereo: “Gamma Ray,” Beck

Last night’s speech from Senator Clinton was very good. It felt competent and sincere; it was well delivered; the move to distribute white “Hillary” signs to the floor, the text in her handwriting, was brilliant. It was about 85 percent of what I’d hoped for.

My mother and I have been texting back and forth this whole week, all about the convention; about what I see versus what CNN or MSNBC are covering, or C-Span, when she gets fed up with the punditry. It’s a funny thing — like, I’m wanting to know what’s going on in “the real world,” like what’s happening in the media, how our message from Denver is getting delivered (or hijacked, as is so often the case). And she, of course, wants to know what’s happening here, in “the real world.” But this isn’t the real world: We don’t control the message. That’s Rupert Murdoch’s job, unfortunately.

So I was sad to receive the following text from her last night, after my glowing text to her about Hillary’s speech: “Not blown away.” (more…)

Photo courtesy of Chris Walla

On the stereo: “Late-Century Dream,” Superchunk

The level of meta-meta-meta-post-everythingness around this event has me a little rattled. There are 15,000 journalists here. Is there reason for every last one of them to be here? No. Probably not even a third of them.

The Pepsi Center itself is a labyrinth of caves and passageways, wired with miles upon miles of CAT-5 cable to accommodate all these bloggers, TV and radio types, thousands of cameras and laptops and passenger pigeons and every other media transmission type you can imagine. No one really knows where they’re going yet, and no one has enough time to get anything done quite the way they’d like; we did an interview (which went really well, thankfully) with Melissa Long for CNN, but the lighting director didn’t get the three minutes he was promised to do his thing, and he spent the minutes after the interview apologizing profusely for how we were gonna look on national TV. But, you know, we’re a rock band. No one cares how we look, least of all us. Ha! Not really. But kind of.

Last night was pretty incredible. Much has been written already about how moving the Lion’s speech was; how cute the Obamas’ kids are; how Michelle absolutely owned it. It was amazing to be here, and it’s why I was so frustrated with some of the commentary I saw afterwards. (more…)

Photo: Getty

Death Cab for Cutie’s Chris Walla is on the ground in Denver for the Democratic National Convention and blogging for RollingStone.com. Here’s his first dispatch:

On the stereo: Fleetwood Mac, “Walk a Thin Line”

My nearest frame of reference for a political convention like the DNCC is SXSW, the annual indie rock melee in Austin, Texas. We’ve been there as a band a handful of times, and I’ve been twice on my own. It’s a train wreck of logistics: Hundreds of bands (many self-managed and very literally independent) trying desperately to find their credentials, their gigs, their accommodations (often the floors of friends) and perhaps most importantly their free beer. There’s definitely free beer to be found, but it’s something of a treasure hunt in Austin.

The free drinks seem easier to come by here at the DNCC, but everything else is much more difficult than SXSW. For one, there are black helicopters everywhere and snipers on rooftops, that sort of thing. More riot cops than I remember even at the WTO in Seattle in 1999. And mounted police. Bigass horses on every corner between about 15th and 19th Streets, for a few blocks on either side of Broadway downtown. (more…)