Ummm hellllooo!!! One of my favorite bands, REMEMBER SPORTS (formally just SPORTS, which is how I will always acknowledge them in my heart), released their new album ‘SLOW BUZZ’ this morning. I got an email about it and everything!

LISTEN: It’s real good. That is as articulate as I’ll get about it. They keep getting better and better, man. Sometimes bands don’t! Sometimes they get worse. But bless their hearts, REMEMBER SPORTS, my little babies, are growing up.

I streamed the full album once, bought it, and have been looping it for three hours. Git it!

Their label is in San Francisco, so hopefully they’ll be over here soon. IN WHICH CASE I will attend their show DRUNK and ALONE and feel real good about everything for a little while.

Last summer I wrote them an embarrassingly bad email:

Dear SPORTS, et al:

I’ve been meaning to write this email for weeks. I kept overthinking it. There’s no point in overthinking it. This email can be simple, so I’m going to make it simple. It doesn’t need to be anything else.

Listen: My name is Ryan. I live in Oakland, California. I am, for the time being, screamingly alive in this cartwheeling freak show called Existence.

(lol)

Here’s the part you may or may not care about: I have been listening to ‘Sunchokes’ and very little else for weeks, maybe longer. I’m at work right now, and I’ll be god darned if I’m not looping it right the heck now. Y’all are from Philly, where I have a lot of friends, and where I have been many times before. Hell, I grew up over there on the East Coast, in Virginia . . . and maybe it’s just my imagination, or maybe it’s some of that godawful late-20s wistfulness, or whatever the hell else, but your songs remind me of a particular time and place that I’ll never get my hands on again. I don’t mean to sound sentimental. There is something very special about your music is all. It is unplaceable, I guess . . . it transports me back to some summers I had a long time ago, when I still had those. (And even if I were to strip away my own ghostly affections for these songs, this is still grade-A stuff all the way through.)

Is it OK that I’m saying this? I don’t mean to make you feel embarrassed—hearing from some dumb idiot all the way over in California, talking like he’s 100 years old. It’s just that I feel as though I like things less and less with each passing year and, god help me, this is a thing I sure do like a whole lot. You did good, is what I’m saying. You created something pure and beautiful when there was nothing there before. That right there is a hell of a thing. I guess I felt I had to tell you what it did to me. I’d hug you if I could. Thanks for making all this stuff.

And look: If y’all are ever in the Bay Area and in need of a place to crash, go ahead and send me an email. I’m serious as a heart attack, man. Just do it. I’ll gladly house you. I have a nice cat you could hang out with.

Finally: Please, for god’s sake, keep on making music, man. Virtually everything else is awful and meaningless. Don’t let the good thing you got inside of you perish just yet. H’okay??

For everyone’s sake, I’m going to stop writing this now~

Take care, OK? Y’all are real good. Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise!

Your friend,

Ryan ☆ミ
http://starsailor.co

. . . in which I offered to house them, should they ever come around. I don’t know, man! They’re probably putzing around in a shitty van. I thought maybe it would be nice if they could sleep surrounded by four walls and wake up and shower in the morning. Well, hell, the offer remains. Come on by, y’all. Love y’all.

~ ~ ~