A few weeks ago, Harlan and I went to see the Shins. What I think of the Shins is neither here nor there (more there than here, actually-- it wasn't my idea to go to the show). On the way over, I decided to play one of my favorite pre-show contests "Name Your Fellow Concert Goers."

See, the thing works like this-- you look around BART at who else is on the train and figure out if they're going to the same concert you are. The totally stoned black kids sitting around behind us? Definately not. Stoned skater boys hanging out by the doors. Nope. Tall guy wearing a button down short sleeve shirt with thrift store jacket and wearing big, horn rimmed glasses? Definately.

Coming back from the show, however, we saw some guy wearing a pink John Deer Tractor Trucker Hat. Now, first of all, I thought the whole trucker hat was mercifully over. But what the hell was up with a pink John Deer hat? I mean, on the one hand, wearing a John Deer trucker hat is about as ironic as it gets-- urban hipster rocking the hat of midwestern farm boy. But pink? Is that a play on the masculinity of John Deer by feminizing it and in that case, does that make the hat doubly ironic? But can you be ironic on something already ironic? Can you do that? Doesn't two bits of irony make a positive instead of a negative?

Anyways, the whole thing was LAME.

Oh, and as for the Shins, they made me think of that story in last week's New Yorker written by the dude who thinks indie-rock is too white. Or, at least, don't have any swing or any dint of rockingness to them. Which is my complaint with a large number of bands out there. The Shins have no swing to them. Or anything to them. At some point, a few people started to actually mosh and my first reaction was "Really? To the Shins?"

Of course, I'm madly in love with Radiohead, especially the totaly white and not-rocking "In Rainbows" but if anyone's seen them live, you know there's a little Prince buried deep in Thom Yorke's soul.