A few spilled water glasses, and some very impressive “International First Class” stamping earned Let’s Wrestle their first Merge gear! They are currently touring the US in support of their debut album, In the Court of the Wrestling Let’s- go see them!
Our 2009 Year End List series begins today with Merge intern, Andrew Hamlet!
Songs:
Winter 2009: “My Girls” Animal Collective – Merriweather Post Pavilion
Spring 2009: “Meet Me in the Garden” Dent May & His Magnificent Ukulele –
S/T
Summer 2009: “Girlfriend” Phoenix – Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Fall 2009: “Walkabout” Atlas Sound feat. Noah Lennox – Logos
Concerts:
Paul McCartney and MGMT – Fenway Park
WYS w/ Peter Pixzel – Fabric
The Selmanaires – Local 506
Lake Inferior – Local 506
Fun:
Vondelpark
UNC winning the 2009 NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship
Merge intern Dianna here, checking in while everyone in the office is getting caught up after XX Merge (you may have seen me hanging round the front merch booth selling shirts and posters). If I had to sum up Merge’s 20th anniversary festival in one sentence, it would be: Well, that was a hell of a ride.
But one sentence doesn’t quite cover it! All manner of insane and awesome things went on this past weekend, both during the shows and behind the scenes. In the past five days, I saw (nearly) thirty-three amazing bands, had both a film crew and an impromptu Built to Spill sing-along in my living room (although not simultaneously), watched a band play in an alley five feet wide, and met scores of kind, wonderful people. It’s very humbling to be the 21 year-old intern at the record label’s 20th birthday party, and I feel so lucky to have been a part of it all.
Enough gushing, though! My place at the front merch table afforded me a great view of everything going on onstage, and so I bring you, in no particular order, a few of the many highlights of XX Merge:
- Lambchop! No joke, I had heard a few records, but I was not expecting to be totally and completely blown out of the water. I especially loved the “Once in a Lifetime” cover.
- Phil Morrison’s extra-large Conor hat, which really brought the laughs. Also: Phil Morrison’s beard.
- Michael Lerner of Telekinesis playing with Ivan Howard (the Rosebuds) and Matthew Caws (Nada Surf) after just one rehearsal, and TOTALLY nailing it.
- Superchunk’s fantastic set on Thursday night. The atmosphere in that room was amazing – it was obvious what everyone had come for.
- The Broken West covering Teenage Fanclub’s “It’s All in My Mind”
- The Magnetic Fields cockroach incident
- And last but not least, seeing super-lovely Wye Oak play to the 1500 capacity Memorial Hall. This duo can hold their own.
My tenure at Merge is coming to an end as I prepare to embark on new adventures, and I can’t thank Merge enough for letting me be a part of it. See ya next time, dudes!
Stolen cars, broken glass, bodily harm. It’s not the next Hollywood blockbuster, but it is just as exciting! Maybe.
The team of Merge Records interns work day in and day out to keep things going smoothly for the label. As the secret backbone of Merge, we expect nothing more than a CD or two and some good karma as reward for our menial-yet-indispensable tasks. And what do we get? A string of bad luck. Heather had her car stolen (she would later learn that it was taken by a less traditional carjacker, known as “Tow Truck Guy.”), Jose got a flat tire and shattered a full-length mirror in his bedroom, and I separated a joint in my shoulder after a dog collided with my bicycle and my shoulder collided with the pavement.
And that was just last week! It turns out while the bad luck affecting the Merge intern crew might have weekends off, it starts back early Monday morning. It’s a real workingman’s curse.
Anyway, about half the interns have been afflicted with an unknown condition characterized by coughing, sneezing, and a general feeling of crappiness.
This bad luck leads me to a single conclusion: a mysterious and ancient curse was placed on a box of records in the Merge basement and was unleashed upon the interns when the tape that sealed the corrugated cardboard was disturbed by infidels in search of ANCIENT EGYPTIAN BURIAL GOLD!!!
Or maybe we are just unlucky. All this goes to show that life truly can suck, so wear a helmet. And wash your hands.
Jay “J-Lo” Lowe
Merge Intern
As we all know, there’s an election coming up. In the basement at Merge, there are two very different tape guns, and opinions on which is the superior are mixed. Candidate #1 is a newcomer from the Duck company. Known in these parts as the Tape Shark, Tape Shark dispenses Tape and looks like a Shark. Like the sharks found in ball pits at McDonalds across America, Tape Shark gets a smell for tape and leaves no prisoners. Candidate #2 is known as Old Blue. Old Blue is Old and Blue. While Old Blue may not have the go-get-em’ attitude of Tape Shark, it is user-friendly and dependable.
I asked around the office to get a feel for which tape gun does the best job of cutting tape. Jack Ball, Tape Shark endorser, states that Tape Shark is not a toy, like Old Blue. The technical name for Tape Shark is Tape Shark Pro, and Jack states that he is indeed a pro. Paul Cardillo, Old Blue supporter says “I hate the shark”. “I’m up here trying to talk to Billboard Magazine on the phone and you’re asking me about a damn tape gun for the Merge blog?” When I told Cardillo what Ball said about being a pro, Cardillo retorted “Jack doesn’t know what it’s like to work in shipping, and I’m the only Merge employee that looks like David Cross.”
Other Tape Shark fans include Wilson Fuller, who says “the Tape Shark is all about nuance”, and Maggie Fost.
Those in support of Old Blue include Jamie Beck, and myself. I just said “Old Blue is easier to use because it doesn’t have the hindering safety features of Tape Shark.”
Spott Philpott refuses to pick between the two candidates, and votes for the Ralph Nader of Tape Guns, Old Gray. Old Gray is not with us anymore, but remains in the loyal heart of one employee.
We could debate Tape Guns for several minutes, but the real issue here is that boxes need tape, or the whole system falls apart.
-beebo
Usually on the days I come in to Merge, Wilson and I end the day at Cosmic Cantina. For those not in the know, Cosmic is home to the cheapest burritos in the universe, and also one of our favorite characters in the land of 1,000 Characters. No matter what day of the week we end up going in, we are guaranteed to see the man we have named Big Papa Burrito (or the BPB when we don’t have time to say Big Papa Burrito). The BPB is big on fantasy novels, and we’re pretty sure lives on a steady diet of burritos. What’s even more interesting is the way he eats his burritos. BPB has class, unlike the rest of us savages who eat our burritos with our hands. He uses a fork and knife, dissecting the tortilla and going straight for the good stuff. I’m really not going anywhere with this, I just thought BPB deserved some recognition. There are few things in life you can depend on. For me, there’s the atomic clock, and then the fact that when Wilson and I go in to Cosmic, BPB will be there, eating his burrito with a fork, and reading a book with a wizard or a princess on the cover.
-Brian Burns/Beebo
(photo of Sonia on our “intern wall”)
(Beebo is the handsome young devil in green with Spott and Jack from Merge at Lindsey’s house-warming party ~Christina)
Over the past 2.5 years I’ve spent as an intern at Merge, I’ve not only learned how to burn massive amounts of cds using a machine that i have more ill will towards than any human (I have since nicknamed said machine HAL), but I’ve also met at least two dozen other interns who have somehow enriched my life, and have taught me things you just don’t learn in school. It takes a special kind of person to complete the massive mailings that are common assignments for Merge interns, but with the right company, it can be a lot of fun. I’m going to take this opportunity to highlight some of my favorite fellow interns, and today’s entry is on one Sonia Aneja.
Besides the usual mailings, interns are often sent on special missions. One of the most frightening experiences of my life involved Sonia and a trip to Crate and Barrel in Raleigh to pick up some new shelves. For the task, Spott loaned us his truck, which is a stick shift. Even though I’ve spent my entire life in the South, I never learned how to drive a stick shift, so Sonia drove. It became quickly obvious that Sonia only sort of knew how to drive a stick shift..and at this point we were well on to the dangerous one way streets of downtown Durham. The Durham Freeway is about 1.5 miles from the Merge office, and it took us at least 20 minutes to get there that day. Here are some photos from the office to the freeway..
Once we reached the freeway, all was in control, and the shelf mission was completed successfully. To this day i refuse to get in any kind of truck.
Another thing about Sonia was that she entered the Merge office with a vocabulary unlike anyone else I’ve ever met. I didn’t understand half the things she was saying most of the time, but what I picked up, I still use to impress people that are cooler than me. For instance, before I met Sonia, I thought the word “baller” was limited to describing someone who is really good at basketball (ie- You have to be a real baller to play for the Harlem Globetrotters). I learned from Sonia “baller” can also be used as an adjective to describe items (ie- those socks are BALLER), and also as a number. On MySpace, Sonia has BALLER friends. I’ve been trying to figure out how to count to baller, and I’m pretty sure it can’t be done. It’s the new infinity.
Sonia now works in NYC doing baller stuff for baller people.
That’s it for this edition of Intern Corner
- Brian Burns aka Beebo aka The Kid
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