Can I Interfere in Your Crisis?

I work at a small breakfast lunch place in the relatively small community of Woodland Hills. One of the nicest things about the restaurant is the fact that any of us work there have the capability to connect our ipods to the stereo, and listen to pretty much anything that we want to listen to. I'm usually a bit nervous whenever I decide to plug my own ipod in. Will someone, someday listen past the shimmering guitar, and determine that Lawrence singing, "All the people I like are those that are dead..." might not be the best soundtrack for housewives, consultants, and car salesmen munching away on turkey sandwiches?

However, once I am outside of work I tend to find that most of my social dealings occur with people who know way more about obscure music than I do. Sometimes I bring this mentality into work with me, and I figure that everyone else around me thinks of "Mind Your Own Business" by Delta 5 as a dance party classic, and completely appropriate for Saturday brunch. It took one teenage girl's pointed exclamation of "What IS this?" to her friend to help me realize that my judgment may have been slightly off on that one.

Even though I admittedly attempt a certain level of envelope pushing with my song choices at work, I would never give so much as a second thought to the idea of listening to Pens while I was there. I think that if I ever were to try the majority of the people who dine/work at the Baker would veto them immediately. Pens tear into their songs, shambling, and clattering all the way to the end of each one. They fall apart, and put themselves back together again in about one hundred split second increments, and this is usually done within the time span of a minute and a half. They are one of the most exciting bands that I have heard in a really long time. I would even go so far as to say that the songs contained on Pens' Myspace page are more exciting than maybe eighty three percent of the live music that I saw last year. I'm kind of not so secretly hoping that they eventually make it out this way. Ideally this would involve them touring with my favorite live show discovery of last year, and fellow girl shamblers Finally Punk. From the looks of their Myspace page though, Finally Punk will be making it to the U.K. before Pens make their way over here. If you (like me) don't live in the U.K., but still want to hear more you can purchase records from them. All of the information is on their myspace page, which I linked to earlier in the paragraph. I really think that the four way split that they have coming out with Dum Dum Girls, Crocodiles, and Best Fwends has the potential to be on of the best singles of 2009.