VAMPIRE WEEKEND: SCHOOL SESSIONS

"m79"

Vampire Weekend team up with a Julliard-trained string trio to perform three songs from their self-titled debut in the room where they played their first shows: Columbia University's ADP Literary Society.


"walcott"

One of my most vivid memories is of coming back West from prep school and later from college at Christmas time. Those who went farther than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station at six o’clock of a December evening, with a few Chicago friends, already caught up into their own holiday gayeties, to bid them a hasty good-by. I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This-or-that’s and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances, and the matchings of invitations: “Are you going to the Ordways’? the Herseys’? the Schultzes’?” and the long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railroad looking cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate.

When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour, before we melted indistinguishably into it again.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

HAVE A NICE WEEKEND, VAMPIRE

Hey, it's been a hell of a week but the weekend is finally here and just to show you I'm not just some boring doctrinaire politico with an axe to grind (and even if I am) here's a nice little pop song to make you tap your feet and feel good inside. Sure, you can fight against it--the Tinkertoy organ, the pseudo-highlife rhythm, the strained vocals--but if you can loosen up and quit being a wet blanket, a buzzkill, and a playa hater you might actually enjoy this. Or go ahead and be a stick in the mud. Suit yourself. See if I care.

vampire weekend

You had me fooled! You tricked me. You got it now. A glass of brunello and a back rub wouldn't hurt, either...but this music is a great place to start and the words are clever, especially if you spend an inordinate amount of time reading and writing. Can you make them out? ("I've seen those English dramas, too...") Do you give a toss about an Oxford Comma?

(The Oxford Comma referred to in the song is the optional comma used before the word "and" at the end of a series; for example, in this sentence -- "Like the absinthe, the harlot was herbaceous, louche, and faintly green in the gaslight" --the comma after "louche" is an Oxford Comma, sometimes called a Harvard Comma, or a serial comma.)