Rough Draft

Super Bowl Bound

W00t! The Eagles are headed to Jacksonville for Super Bowl XXXIX. The 4th time was a charm and the Eagles finally win an NFC Championship game by beating the Atlanta Falcons 27-10.

The Eagles defense played an awesome game. Atlanta was one of the top rated rushing teams in the NFL and the Eagles held them to 99 rush yards. Vick was held to 26 rush yards on 4 attempts, most of which was in the first half. The Eagles defense put Vick under pressure all day and sacked him 4 times. Also of note is that both of the Falcons scoring drives were kept alive by penalties against the Eagles. One was a penalty on third down that gave the Falcons an automatic first, and the other penalty negated an Eagles interception.

Jeremiah Trotter is arguably the biggest factor in the Eagles greatly improved run defense. Reid moved him to middle linebacker following the Eagles loss to the Steelers in which they gave up 200+ rush yards. After that the Eagles held opponents under 100 yards rushing 5 out of the next 6 games.

The Eagles offense looked pretty good today as well, putting up 27 points against the Falcons. Westbrook was quiet in the first half, but they got him the ball constantly in the second half, and he delivered. There were a couple drives that the Eagles could have scored on and put the Falcons out of game even sooner. McNabb played pretty well, but overthrew open receivers several times. I think it says a lot about the Eagles offense that they made it to the Super Bowl even without Terrell Owens. He was undeniably a huge reason for the Eagles success throughout the season, but the other Eagles receivers, especially Greg Lewis and Freddie MItchell really stepped up in his absence.

The Eagles goal this year was not just to get to the Super Bowl, but to win it. So as McNabb said to the Philadelphia fans at the ceremony for NFC Championship trophy following the game, "Enjoy this now, but we're not done. We'll be bringing something else back for you."

The Arcade Fire

I went to see The Arcade Fire with Nick, Eric, and Mike last Friday. I first discovered them through Nick's Song of the Week in September and got pretty hooked on No Cars Go. It was only recently that I had started listening to their album, Funeral (which was Pitchfork Media's Album of the Year). The music has an overall dark sound, and sometimes the "noise" and frantic pace draw you in and make you feel trapped like the characters in the songs.

Anyway, onto the show. The first opening act was actually one of the members of Arcade Fire doing a solo violin performance. It was overall pretty good. He had a sequencer that he would use to record various bits of what he was playing and layer them together in real time. Very Howie Day-esque. The second opener was some solo guitar act. I honestly don't think anyone in the audience was listening. You could pretty much just hear the crowd talking during his entire set. Then came The Arcade Fire, eight of them in all (2 guitars, bass, keyboard, drums, 2 violins, misc percussion). They played a pretty long set (I think all of Funeral and a few more songs). Lots of switching up on instruments between songs. I think my favorite song was Neighborhood #2 (Laika), in which 2 of the band members donned motorcycle helmets and proceeded to bang drum sticks on each other's heads and eventually get into a scuffle. The song is about someone's older brother that doesn't seem to get along with his family. The song became deeper and easier to understand once I googled "Laika" and learned that was a dog sent into space by the Russians and they had no intention of bringing it back. The song also contains one of my favorite lyrics: "If you want something don't ask for nothing, if you want nothing, don't ask for something". All in all it was a really fun show.

Make sure you check out their mp3s on Pure Volume.

iGeneration

Check out these mp3s by MC Lars, self proclaimed "post punk laptop rap". He's been pimped on AbsolutePunk for a while, and Jeff just pointed me to the mp3s on his site, so I figured I'd spread the word too.

More Music Picks

Mike posted his Best of 2004 music list. We have pretty similar tastes in music, but our lists differ quite a bit. His top albums includes several I didn't mention, and my album of the year, Futures by Jimmy Eat World, isn't even on his list. Definitely read his write up on I Can Make a Mess Like Nobody's Business. I really only mentioned it in passing on my list, but it really is one of the top albums of this year. It's something I think almost anyone could get into.

I also agree with Mike's assessment that Midtown's Forget What You Know is 2004's Deja Entendu, as well as his prediction that even though we really want a new Finch album, it's going to suck.