Stuff that didn’t make the cut from my 2004 piece:

• Merge’s (very sweet and awesome) PR person emailed me the day the Funeral review ran: “Thank you, David — your review is responsible for us selling 50 copies of this album!” I thought that was really neat.

• There was a brief discussion about a possible 10.0 score for Funeral on the Pfork staffboard. Someone (maybe Chris Dahlen?) said “if this album gets a 10, I’m going back and giving Fiery Furnaces a 16.” When I settled on .7 I think I was at least subconsciously (pretty sure not consciously) aware that it was exactly .1 higher than Blueberry Boat, which I hated.

• My Pitchfork email directed to the wrong address for the first two weeks the review ran, so if anyone sent me hate mail during that time, I didn’t receive it. (Thank god.) Please do not re-send.

• However, after they fixed the glitch, a graduate student in an English program (he noted this status at least twice) wrote me to tell me that he hated my review so much that he would provide me with a better review template based on how one might review an actual pitchfork: “you might note the features of the handle. Is it durable? Will it rust quickly in the rain?”

• My dad calls me around Christmas: “Hey, David, I saw a piece by the pop music writer in the Washington Post about that Arcade Fire band, so I sent him an email telling him all about you — your musical background, piano, where you go to college now. Let me know if he gets in touch!”

• I played Funeral for my parents at Christmas and listened to the first few tracks with them, hearing their real-time review of it in person. “It’s really good! I love all of the instruments!”

• Getting drunk on election night and sharing my feeeeeehuhlings on the Pitchfork message board to no response. May or may not have used emoticons. Everything I said on the staffboard made me do the Charlie Brown walk immediately after posting.

• My roommate Ian helped me not die in the fall and deserved special commendation in that post for putting up with me (I edited him in). He reminds me that after a few months of 9.7 jokes (“Oh my god, this burrito is a 9.7”) I told my friends, “OK, one more 9.7 joke and then it’s DONE.” Ian and I went to see Chick Corea that night and at the end of the encore, he leaned over and said, “I’d say on a scale of 1 to ‘best keytar solo ever,’ I’d give that a 9.7.” As far as I know that was the last one.