I got an email from a Swell Season fan today who created a festive homage to The Swell Season. Check out this photo of Glen Hansard’s guitar reincarnated as a pumpkin.

Glen’s guitar as a pumpkin

Glen's guitar

Now that’s some impressive pumpkin carving….

Here’s the flipside to those rainbows, a bizarre fog “storm” that erupted this morning over the BQE where New York harbor meets the East River. Don’t know how long it was around before I noticed it, but it only lasted 2o minutes or so while I was watching. It reminded me of the miraculous wave of fog in the same location that enabled our man George Washington to evacuate his army from Brooklyn to Manhattan in August 1776.

FOG STORM:

MINUTES LATER, NO FOG:

at the risk of being a 1 trick blogger, some pretty rad stuff has happened outside my window lately, such as this ginormous rainbow. it appeared, lingered for about 3 minutes, and was gone.

This is the picture outside my window right now
So intense!!
What does this mean?!

There weren’t many people in Tennessee making a living off indie rock in 1996. Andy Kotowicz was one of them, and I was another. Andy worked at a label in Murfreesboro called Spongebath Records, and I worked at a small PR company in Memphis called Autotonic.

Spongebath hired us to work a release or two and Andy and I immediately hit it off. Though in his early 20s, he was already a true record man with an abiding love for the Flamin’ Groovies (he penned the liner notes for the 1999 Buddha reissue of ‘Teenage Head’) and the MC5. He had impeccable taste in music, which he shared with me generously and enthusiastically.

When Andy moved to NYC, I crashed on his floor a couple times before moving here myself. On one of those trips we went to a show at Tramps and ran into David Fricke. Talk immediately turned to Andy’s favorite subject, Michigan rock & roll. I remember clearly David Fricke – David Fricke – marveling at Andy’s encyclopedic knowledge of his home state scene.

When I finally did move to NYC and began looking for a job, I called everyone I knew. The first call back came from Andy. He took me out to lunch, and told me he’d heard that Shore Fire might have an opening. He said he’d put in a good word for me.

Shortly after I started at Shore Fire, Andy was offered a position at Sub Pop and picked up stakes for Seattle. He told me it was his dream job.

I’m sad to say that we fell out of touch after the move. We both got busy with work, families etc…

I ran into Andy at SXSW this past spring, and though we hadn’t spoken in a few years, we picked up the conversation just like it was another night at Tramps. He was that same warm Andy: easygoing and eager to talk music. We talked about our kids too. And work. He said Sub Pop still felt like a dream job.

When I heard the news yesterday that Andy passed away over the weekend I was shocked. I was reminded of the profound influence he had on me.

The concept of “sharing” is different now than it was when Andy and I first met. Back then, we traded cds and went record shopping together. We spent hours sitting in front of a turntable listening, talking.

For a hopeless record collector, the only thing more exciting than a rare find is that rare person who shares your musical worldview, and expands it. I can count on one hand the number of people who have had that kind of impact on me. Andy Kotowicz was one of them.

Well, not quite the top. We’re on the 16th floor here and there are some great views to be had. But the view I have out of my office was nothing compared to a maintenance working who ascended outside my window. I’m not particularly afraid of heights, but i don’t think i could do his job!