Whatever work it is they are doing in the road by my office, they are only doing first thing in the morning. I showed you, yesterday, how they cut a small hole into the role. This morning, they’d dug out a bigger, longer channel. This was what it looked like when I went to work this morning.
And it looked like that all day, too. No one came around for any more work, or to move the big yellow machines.
That patch asphalt, whatever it is actually called, was still tacky this morning. I was tempted to find a good stick and scrawl in a message, see if they’d leave it. (I’ve never written anything in a construction medium.) By this evening, it was solid. I wonder if they’ll leave the roll of tape and the drink bottle in hole when they fill it in tomorrow.
We went to Menard’s this evening. There’s no real story here. We picked up some cat litter and storage bins. The woman that was working the cash register was so slow that they opened three other registers whenever anyone fell into line behind us.
And, plus, she has three cats. One sleeps by her feet. One by her hip. One at her had. She had the robotic kitty litter cleaner. And she liked it. While it worked. It died a year-and-a-half in, after the warranty had expired.
If all else fails, I said, sometimes the old ways are the best..
No one got the reference. Just as well.
I began to understand why she took so long to ring up customers.
In today’s installment of the Re-Listening project, we go back to November 1999 for a new record from a California band. The point of the Re-Listening project is to revisit all of my old CDs in the order that I acquired them, so sometimes I am listening to something that was released earlier that I am just catching up on. But in this case, I know this record was newly released when I picked it up for at the time I was a big Counting Crows fan and I would not have wanted to wait.
I’ve felt, for some time, that I have more of less outgrown the Counting Crows. The Re-Listening project has largely reinforced that feeling. But today’s installment might be the exception to the rule. I think it’s because they’re finally displaying a bit of irreverence, and humor. After spending the rest of the decade being a mainstreamed line of emo, this was a, well, positive move.
It went double platinum, and the album, “This Desert Life” peaked at number eight on the US Billboard 200. It all started with the first track, the first and most successful single.
A friend of mine was a huge mark for Counting Crows, the sort that knew everything about every song before it came out. This, being 1999, was a bit more difficult then than now. But he put in the time to find these things out, and he’d share the interesting bits with people that would listen and so I knew some of the interesting things early too. One night that October, before the album was even out, but when the single was just beginning to get airplay, we were at a restaurant eating chicken fingers and playing foosball. There was a guy in the corner playing pop covers as a solo act and he did “Hanginaround.” We were leaning over the foosball table at the time, my friend and I, and we stopped playing, straightened up, and did the clapping refrain part in the third verse. The musician was surprised. Everyone else in the place thought we were weird. My friend and I, however, were very impressed with ourselves.
That song hit 28 on the US Billboard Hot 100, topped the US Adult Alternative chart and peaked at number five on the US Adult Top 40 which, I guess, is why they waited 10 full months before the second single was released.
I’m surprised how well this song holds up for me. I think it is the guitar distortion. The minimalism of it still seems fresh, somehow.
Perhaps then, as now, this was my favorite track on the record. Oh my, the many highways and several county roads where I turned this up too loud, and the parking lots where I stayed an extra two minutes to get to the best part.
And the hidden track, which never got enough attention, I think. As the youth say today, it’s a banger.
I guess the last time I saw them live was 2001 or 2002 or so. I think they were supporting “Hardy Candy,” which is the next entry in their catalog. They’re playing in Indy at the end of next week, but I’m not going. I think I had my fill. But they will show up a few more times in the Re-Listening project. Up next, though, is a band with an X-Files inspired name because, no matter how often I do this bit, I can not get out of the late 1990s.
