Nogs Online

The Decemberists follow up their succession of increasingly ambitious albums with their latest album, The King Is Dead, a further exploration of folk-country music and a return to the low-key sound we first heard on Castaways And Cutouts.

Having listened to The Hazards of Love (their concept album released previous to this one) many times in its entirety, and having listened to my advanced copy of The King Is Dead many, many times over the last couple days, I had an epiphany that the last track on Hazards, “The Hazards of Love 4 (The Drowned)”, was foreshadowing for what we would hear throughout The King Is Dead.  Queue up The Hazards of Love and this new album back-to-back on your iPod and you, too, will notice the splendidly seamless transition from the last track on Hazards to the first track on The King Is Dead, contrasting the musical styles on both albums.  Jangly and steel guitars are present throughout this new set of songs that continue to show off The Decemberists’ songwriting and musicianship.

Adding to the sound on this album, R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck lends a hand on The King Is Dead and his influence is heard throughout.  When I first listened to “Down By the Water”, the single which was made available several weeks ago, I felt a familiarity in the sound, but I couldn’t put my finger on it before I knew Buck had contributed to this album.  Upon my first listen of the second track, “Calamity Song”,  I immediately recognized Buck’s playing and a smile came across my face.  As a big R.E.M. fan, I could easily hear Michael Stipe singing the vocals, but I’m happy to hear Colin Meloy’s distinct voice put his signature on the songs.  Buck’s collaboration is very welcomed and only enhances The Decemberists’ sound.

The 10 tracks on The King Is Dead span only 40 minutes with no song lasting longer than 5 and a half minutes… a far departure from their previous five albums whose long single-track play times and numerous amount of songs per album were often a barrier of entry when trying to introduce a new listener to The Decemberists.  This shuffle-friendly set of songs can easily, and should definitely, be shared with your fellow music lovers.

Overall, I love The King Is Dead.  I’ve been listening to lots of Band of Horses, Uncle Tupelo, and Wilco lately, so this album fits right into my current rotation.  Whether you’re a long-time fan of The Decemberists or someone who finally wants to check out what they are all about, you need to buy this album.

The King Is Dead has been added to my list of albums that I can play while sitting around enjoying a quiet  Sunday morning with my family.

Must Download: “Calamity Song”, “Rise to Me”, “Down By the Water”, “June Hymn”, “This Is Why We Fight”

Dear WordPress, my traditional blog on which I’m writing for NogsOnline.com right now:

I’ve neglected you.  There, I said it.  I’m sorry.  But, I’ve found something new for this year.  I’ve started a tumblelog on Tumblr called John Cachero’s (Minimally) Stupendous Things.

You’re probably wondering why, right?  It’s not you, WordPress, it’s me.  I just don’t have the time to invest when we need to work together to make magic.  I just need something easy and quick; a fling that I can casually go back to, whenever I need, at any time during the day… even posting from my iPhone.   Tumblr can give that to me.  With Tumblr, I can quickly express whatever feelings I’m having at that moment, especially the random things that I like or a random photo or something.

I know you’ve had to watch me do that with Twitter already, but it’s not quite the same thing.  However, it’s in the equation still.  Look, I want all of us to work it out together.  Each of you has a purpose and here’s how I plan to make it work:

• Twitter will be there for when I need to express myself in just a few sentences.
• Tumblr will be there for when I need to express myself in a few paragraphs or for when I want to share a photo, video, or song.
• You, WordPress, will be there for when I need to express myself in a long-winded essay requiring several paragraphs.

So, see?!  I’m not getting rid of any of you!

Oh, yeah… every now and again, I’ll be writing articles for AltDaily.com or some other outlet for which I could technically use you, but would rather get the better exposure using them.  Again, it’s not you, it’s me.  I’m the one that neglected you to the point of being forgotten.

I promise that we will work together again soon.  Trust me.

Your author,
John

Choosing the best URL for your business website is not always easy, especially when everything good has been taken already.  But choosing a URL for a personal website shouldn’t be as difficult, provided that you plan on choosing your given name as the URL and that your name isn’t incredibly common.

Within a week of finding out the sex of our first unborn child and deciding on her name, I headed straight to GoDaddy.com and snagged www.zoecachero.com which was unsurprisingly available.  In a world where our online identity is becoming increasingly important, I figured I’d do my daughter a favor and grab her name as a URL, just in case this technology is still relevant by the time she’d have a use for it.  After all, her daddy has his name as a website – www.johncachero.com – and I’m glad I grabbed it when I did because there appears to be more than a handful of other John Cacheros in the world (I know this because my ego sometimes forces me to Google my own name every now and again).  Anyway, when my mind wanders while doing mundane tasks, I often fantasize that Zoe will one day become famous and will require having a website of her own for professional reasons.

A few months later, I had a conversation with a fellow professional photographer friend that had me second guessing my decision.  Kellie – www.kellieraephoto.com – decided not to use her first and last names + “photography” for her company’s name and URL; she used her first and middle names instead.  After a minute of surprise and exasperation, I asked her, “Dude, why didn’t you use your last name?  Your last name is awesome!”  She replied, “Well, if I ever get married, I won’t have to change the business name.”

*LIGHT BULB*

Kellie brought to my attention a solution to a problem that could potentially affect any woman who would like to use her name integrated into her company’s name.  Despite Kellie continuing the conversation, my mind wandered off, fantasizing about “Zoe Claire Photography” and “Zoe Claire Modeling” and “Zoe Claire – Evil Genius And Philanthropist”.  I immediately headed back to the aforementioned domain registrar and attempted to snag www.zoeclaire.com for my unborn daughter… but was DENIED.  That URL was already taken!  So, I did what the celebrities who discover Twitter late in the game do when they find out that someone had already grabbed their name as a Twitter account:

I registered www.TheZoeClaire.com instead.

This past weekend, I hooked up some hosting, installed WordPress, and went live with the site.  Until Zoe’s old enough to find her own use for the website, I’m going to use it primarily to post photos and videos of her so that our friends and family members who don’t have Facebook accounts can keep up with our girl.  Besides, once Facebook’s not too subtle plan for world domination through personal information aggregation is exposed and the site is shut down, we’ll still have a record of Zoe’s pictures and videos somewhere else on the Internet.

So, check it out.  The first post is already up and more updates are on the way!

NogsOnline.com has been relaunched again, this time with a cleaner interface, serving as the portal to all things John Cachero on the Internet.  Here you will find links to my musings, photographs, and videos all wrapped up in this neat little package.

The photos above were taken with the IncrediBooth app, made exclusively for the iPhone 4 by Synthetic Corp, the same company that brought us the Hipstamatic app.  I recompiled the strip horizontally and cleaned it up via Photoshop, but feel free to check out the original file straight from the app.  I highly recommend you buy IncrediBooth if you own an iPhone 4.