I only wonder what it is that I even miss him for

218. Ted Leo/Pharmacists - "Timorous Me" (from the Tyranny of Distance LP, Lookout Records, 2001)
219. Chisel - "On Warmer Music" (from the Set You Free LP, Gern Blandsten, 1997)
220. Ted Leo/Pharmacists - "Me and Mia" (from the Shake the Sheets LP, Lookout Records, 2004)

I first saw Ted Leo and his Pharmacists at Taste of Randolph Street, during the summer between high school and college. Sweeney and I left from our friend Pat Lange's graduation party and drove up to the little festival in time to walk around a bit and admire the greasy ass food we were already too full to eat before the only band we were there to see took the stage and were even better than we'd hoped for.

This was a few months before Shake the Sheets, but I distinctly remember hearing "Me and Mia", and going absolutely crazy for it, barely able to contain myself waiting to hear it on record, or at least to figure out what the lyrics were so I could accurately quote them on my Away Message. This was months before we thought the lyrics had anything to do with eating disorders, the song was just amazingly catchy, and I can't begin to count the amount of times I heard an indie kid freak out to "do you believe in something beautiful" in college.

It would be a few weeks after this concert until I heard "Timorous Me" (and the Tyranny of Distance), but that soon displaced "Me and Mia" and "Hearts of Oak" as the song I would cheer for most the next time I saw Ted (I saw the band like 5 timesin the next two years). It's a great song about friendship, which gets me every time, and definitely got me all the time as a freshman entering college. Unlike "Me and Mia", which explodes in the first minute, this one takes a while to build before martial drums and Ted's dueling guitars freak it out. I still love it, but man, if you caught me listening to it walking down Fordham Rd. like 4 years ago, I prolly woulda been tearing up.

"On Warmer Music" is from Ted's old band Chisel. It could hardly be a simpler song, or a more effective one. I've never really bothered to figure out what exactly the lyrics mean to me. I still think that "I've found it a great behoovement/to study the transient movement" is kind of a terrible lyric. Still, when this song explodes at just about the halfway point, and then gets rammed right into your skull for almost two minutes it makes me wanna jump around happily like a punk like few other songs.