I’m beginning to feel more and more like myself. With every phlegmy cough it feels like the end is around the corner. Except for the coughs that feel like, somehow, the respiratory restrictions in my torso will force the collapse of all known gravity in the universe.
It’s all for show. I do feel a great deal better.
Here are a few more photographs from the Val d’Incles in Andorra. I think you’ll come to lichen them, as I do.
It seems that a good slate roof can last a century. I wonder what all of this weighs. Pity the person who had to lug all that up on top of the building as an apprentice.
Also in that valley, some green stuff growing on the stones that line the single-track road.
If I ever have a long driveway — ours is about 1.25 lengths of a car, which is ideal for snow purposes — I would do a lot of research on how to move in stones and promote moss and lichen growth.
It’d be nice to walk past that on the way to the mailbox, is all.
This, I think, would promote a slow, lingering walk, as opposed to the long, fast strides to and from the mailbox I take right now.
Speak of moving quickly, I am well behind on the Re-Listening project. This, you’ll recall, is the game where I am playing CDs in my car in the order in which I acquired them. These aren’t reviews, but a chance to enjoy some music, think fondly on memories and put some of that there.
Only I’m several CDs behind now, so we’ll be playing a bit of catch up over the next several days.
Today, it is the second and final record from The Refreshments. They were an Arizona bar band who signed a deal, got alt radio and MTV airplay and grew bigger, faster, than probably they wanted. Back in the studio, they found themselves butting heads with their label, and a bit with each other. Roger Clyne and the rest of the guys disliked all of this so much they disbanded after “The Bottle & Fresh Horses.” Shame, too, The Refreshments were great and this album is a lot of fun, even still, 26 years later. I got this as a hand-me-down from the campus radio station in the fall of 1997.
It’s funny, the instrumentation is clever and earnest and all of it was forgotten too fast. But we’re Re-Listening. I’m singing along.
In some ways, the whole thing feels like a continuation of Fizzy, Fuzzy. Even the characters narrative arcs were familiar.
And the jangly guitars got dustier and, more … southwestern … somehow.
This character actually is referencing the first record.
I think this is the song where the band decided they didn’t like the label meddling in their work. It just feels off, and the intensity is a little different. This song, or something else, that was an important catalyst in the band calling it quits.
This one is a referential sequel to something from the other album. This was, I think, the first time I’d ever had that happen from one record to the next. It was so novel — still is, I suppose — and gratifying and welcomed.
I remember reading some trade magazine, an article I will never ever find again in our digital age, about this song and how they overlapped. I was sitting in a burger joint, killing time between this and that, and found myself thinking that if I didn’t like them already, I would have had no choice but to appreciate The Refreshments after that.
No one thinks about things like this, but I wonder what would make up the best three-song series to close out a forgotten record. I’m putting these three tacks up for nomination.
They run the gamut in three songs. Just one of the reasons I was sad to hear of the band’s demise soon after. They went from a local opener in 1993 to a headliner in about a year. About a year later they were signed, but they were defunct by 1998. Clyne and Naffah have been playing in a full band as Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers since then, but I still think of The Refreshments first. They’re touring right now. They’re in the Midwest this spring, in fact, but still too far away.
Anyway, after this rush job on the Re-Listening project, I think I am five or six CDs behind. So guess what we’ll spend some time on next week!?
