Twenty years ago today, yikes, I wrote my first blog post. I wrote four brief things that day. They were nothing to write home about, but I certainly did put them on the web. No one saw them, of course. Since then, I have published 6,538 more posts.
Nineteen years ago, this weekend, I launched kennysmith.org. My goal at the time was to make something aesthetically unique that had minimalist coding. Two hidden frames, with text on the left and a small photo collage on the right. Of course, no one was visiting. The site had 647 visits that month. (For those of you still around, I thank you.)
Last month, was pretty good. The site saw a 10,925 percent increase over August 2004 first month. In between, for whatever reasons, we’ve logged. 5.3 million visits. (And thanks.)
And so we launch year 20 on this URL, and year 21 of writing the blog. The party hasn’t begun yet. I’m waiting for the cupcake to get here.
Even so, this place has come a long, long way since then. So I have. I wonder what kind of fun and interesting things we’ll see in the months to come.
Today in outdoor fun, I picked up sticks. What should I do with all of these sticks, I wondered, and then I remembered we have a fire pit and we’ll need kindling. Stick problem solved.
I was going to cut away dead branches from a few trees, but that’s never as fun to contemplate when you’re standing under a tree as when you’re inside wondering what you should do.
The apple trees are coming along nicely. And I spent some time studying the chokecherry trees, and started reading about what you can do with chokecherries. Do you like tart jams, jellies or wines? Chokecherry might be for you.
I found some maple saplings that I’ll try transplanting this winter. And I pulled up, and then chopped up, a few more pokeweed plants. I also checked on the tomato vines, a new seasonally favorite habit. In a few more days more will go from the vine to the kitchen.
Next, we’ll have to figure out the herb garden. That’s what the weekend is for. There are a few bramble vines in there. And I’m looking forward to picking those berries sometime soon.
And we’ll need to keep a closer eye on the peaches. We’re going to have a lot of peaches. They’ve really lit their tree up this week.
Across the way, a darker tree looms. Check out this maple, which pins the yard to the road.
There are a lot of fun things to explore outside, so I’m taking it a bit at a time. Plus, ya know, outdoors being outdoors, it’s always changing.
I didn’t have that stack of kindling this morning, for example.
I’d planned a 30 mile bike ride today. It was precipitating when I left the house. Saying it was misting wouldn’t be accurate. Saying it was sprinkling would overstate it. Minkling. It was minkling. Minkling sounds fun. I rode through the little downtown, checking out some of the sites and taking photos for later.
Then I turned toward the southeast, to follow the next part of the route. I looked up and saw dark clouds. I felt a new precipitation begin, something much more sprinkling-like. I glanced at the time.
Which was when I thought of the one reason to continue on — because I planned this route — and weighed that against all of the reasons I should call it early. Instead of pressing on I took the next right. And then two amazing things happened.
I started riding without looking at a map. Then, three miles later, I found myself at an intersection I knew. That sensation of knowing a place, the feeling of some knowledge clicking in, you know the one, right? It probably isn’t much, that “Ohhhh yeah!” moment, but it surely seems like a big thing when it occurs. It’s just an intersection with a red light and a Sunoco, but it was a big deal. Those realizations of clarity, understanding a tiny bit of context in a new place always feel like a big deal.
As I rode back, the weather in front of me was better than the stuff behind. Still gray, as you can see behind this hay shed, but brighter.
The cattle in the pasture next to it seemed content, for cows. Why wouldn’t they be? They can see their winter food right there. That would be reassuring to them, if they understood calendars, and the tilt of the earth, and seasons.
Anyway, I set three PRs on Strava segments on this ride. And I am now in second place on the segment that someone drew up on our road.
That’s one of the many things I wasn’t doing 20 years ago when I started this place, sitting at an old MDF desk, using dialup: riding my own road for highly personalized bragging rights.
We inherited this giant L-shaped wardrobe. A functional IKEA piece. It doesn’t match our furniture, or fit amongst it, but it is perfectly serviceable. When we moved, as I have mentioned, the movers moved it downstairs for us. I’d disassembled it into its four base parts and they sweated and streamed and muttered and heroically got it down. And then those poor guys moved our stuff in.
Eventually, I put some of the pieces together. I may never rebuild it into one piece, because I rushed through dismantling it, because see above, and took no notes. And I have no instructions. But there’s this full-length, full-length-and-then-some mirror on one part of that wardrobe. And today I re-installed it.
Sorta. That’s a two-person job. There are four hinges, eight screws, and the ones in the middle are done. The rest will require some muscle, and perhaps some more muttering.
It was demoralizing to find that the best approach was to take apart what I’d recently put together so I could get the mirror in place. And even that only partially.
I found a stopping point. How does one find a stopping point in an endless, intractable project? You say, “OK, enough of that.” And then you go outside.
It was a lovely afternoon, much better spent in the backyard than the basement. So I deadheaded daisies and hibiscus and pulled up a few weeds. I was rewarded with a new bowl of tomatoes.
This, in my estimation, was an excellent tradeoff.
I wanted to do this as a daily status update, as a joke, but I was afraid the joke would come off as boorish.
Early this evening I floated for 75 minutes, until the wind was chilly, and told myself I should do more of that, and for longer.
I only got out because it started raining. Wouldn’t want to get wet.
Also, it was dinner time. The day has moved swiftly, even when I have not, and that’s not an altogether bad thing. Though I would vote for consistency in days, and I would vote for them to feel longer than today did.
Let’s dive back into the Re-Listening project, because I need to catch up before I get … really behind. (Right now I’m 13 discs in arears.) I’m playing all of my old CDs in the order in which I acquired them, which sounds easy enough. But there’s a ridiculously overwrought process involved. First of all, the CDs are all in their big CD books. This part is neatly and ordered — though we’ll come to a moment, later in the Re-Listening project — when I don’t recall which book comes next.
From these books, I pull out the CDs and put them in a miniature CD book for travel. (Since the point, for some reason, is listening to these in the car.) Right now that book isn’t in the car, but here on my desk. I am patting it confidently now. Also, I am at the end of what that book will hold, so those CDs will need to come out of the mini-book and go back to their proper homes. So I need to reload the book. Oh, but four of the CDs that have been temporarily in the miniature book are still in the car’s CD player. They need to come out and go back to their proper place. Which means the reverse has to happen to refresh the playlist. Also, the last CD in the player is the first CD in a double-set. Everything is in the in-between. So let’s dive in.
In April of 2000 a friend of mine burned me a CD (remember doing that?) that was, at that time, seemingly a small release. (That was a thing that happened, and we didn’t even blame the supply chain. Things were just limited sometimes.)
It was Guster. We’re talking about Guster’s debut album, “Parachute.” They were just a local Boston act at the time. People were just barely downloading questionable tracks online. You can, of course, get the thing in all sorts of formats now. CD, vinyl, digital. Back then, the first few thousand prints were sold as being by Gus. It’s a different time, because that was a different time. But they put it out themselves, because Guster was a trendsetter, even in the mid-90s.
Adam Gardner and Ryan Miller split the lead vocal duties, which was what they were doing back then, but that felt odd pretty quickly. Owing to some of that, and it being their earliest recorded work, it isn’t as good as “Goldfly,” or anything else that comes after, but it’s worth having.
Probably, people bought this at their early shows. Or they heard it because their roommate or their sibling had it on. That song is the first one you heard. The blueprint for the next decade of what Guster was going to become follows up right after that.
I never got especially attached to this record because, by the time it was given to me I was already two more albums into their catalog. It seemed like going back in time to a more raw, nascent thing, and who wanted to go back to that?
This is the title track, with Gardner doing the lead. This song got mixed up for a lot of people with a Coldplay song of a similar name. And early 21st century digital media humor ensued.
Apparently some people thought this was, in fact, a Coldplay song. I find that difficult to believe. But I own no Coldplay records, so I could be altogether wrong in this.
Someone also burned me a copy of the first disc of a Dave Matthews Band concert album, “Live at Red Rocks 8.15.95.” I wonder why I don’t seem to have the second disc. Now there’s a 23-year-old mystery that’ll bother me for four or five minutes. Anyway, recorded in 1995, when the band was touring to support “Under the Table and Dreaming,” this was released in 1997 and given to me in the spring of 2000. It went double platinum and, from here, just reads like a live version of a greatest hits CD. Nothing wrong with that.
“Seek Up”
“Proudest Monkey”
“Satellite”
“Two Step”
“The Best of What’s Around”
“Recently”
“Lie in Our Graves”
“Dancing Nancies”
“Warehouse”
I wonder why I didn’t get that second — oh! Look! This is a version of “Warehouse” before the Wooo became a thing.
If you’re wondering about the Woo becoming a thing, it’s a bit of a call and response. Just a few years later, it was the thing to do with this song.
Somehow, I never really listened to this CD a lot. So there are no impressions or anecdotes to go along with this one. In fact, I’d all but forgotten I had it. I just never played the thing. Selected tracks always seemed to be on the radio, so maybe that’s a part of it.
I played this one more, a not-for-release Black Crowes EP from 1998. This was sent to radio stations, complete with two callout hooks at the end of the thing. Those hooks were for promotional bits. I picked this up because the station I was at didn’t want it and I did. There are seven tracks here, and six of them are all of the Black Crowes catalog I need. This EP was meant to support “Kicking My Heart Around.”
“Jealous Again” is on here, and that song was eight years old by the time this came out. “She Talks To Angels” was seven years old. “Remedy,” “Thorn In My Pride” and “Sting Me” were all six years old. The one I really wanted, because I was never buying a Black Crowes album for just one song, was “Hard To Handle,” which was also eight years old.
Remember, this EP is from 1998. (I got it in 2000.) The Crowes’ version of “Hard To Handle” was from 1990, which explains a lot about that video.
But that song was, then 30 years old, of course.
For years now, my goal has been to find the right mixture of musically savvy, but musically inexperienced young people and hook them on that Black Crowes cover. When they appreciate the awesomeness and intensity of that, I will play the Otis Redding original and watch their minds evaporate.
That’ll be a tricky group to find, of course, because they need to be able to appreciate a certain level of glam rock/jam band, they need to know about Otis Redding, but they don’t need to know all about Otis Redding.
The only problem with this goal is that you can’t just go around and say “Do you know about Southern rock bands with disproportionate amounts of attitude relative to their talents, and do you have an appreciation that the King of Soul is better than most everything that came after him, but not know about his posthumous releases?” Believe me, I’ve tried. It kills a conversation dead.
And it can bring a long blog post to a quick halt, too.
There’s this superstition very real phenomenon where, if I pick a restaurant, something will go wrong and the dining experience will turn into a big dramatic nightmare. I first noticed this anti-superpower when I said, on a hot summer’s day many years ago, “Let’s go to Dairy Queen,” and so me and a college buddy went … and they were out of ice cream.
I suggested they lock up and go home, because what’s the point? And on the basis of that very true story, and a lot of other incidents that are far more consistent than random chance — one time, for instance, we went to a suburban Outback and they were out of steak! — I carefully avoid most restaurant-making decisions. To the chagrin, it must be said, of anyone that I’m dining with. The burden of the decision is on the other person or people, but we all have a much better chance of getting a reasonable meal.
Since we hardly go out to restaurants in a Covid world, this has become less of a problem.
Today …
Today I wondered, for a few moments, if that whole restaurant thing (which is very real, I assure you) would carry over to bike routes because, today, I picked the road we rode.
It was a simple out and back. Leave the neighborhood, head north until the road ends because, on the other side of that hill, there’s the river. Turn around and head back. There were two stop signs and one tiny little community along that road. And there were also several cars parked on the road along the way for one unhurried reason or another. But the route turned out fine. It was an easy little spin, and it was pleasant and I’m ready for a lot of rides like this.
I did get a close pass by a guy in his work van. This is an odd thing to do because, I know who that guy works for. There’s a particular local HVAC company that will get a little email about it.
Everything else on the ride was just fine. I may repeat part of the route tomorrow, just for fun.
Elsewhere today, we marked a significant moment in the house move. The last three boxes of our things, part of an advanced shipment, were finally brought into the house. Cleaning supplies and the like. The things, basically, that the moving company didn’t want on their truck. My god-sister-in-law (just go with it) has been holding onto these things. My lovely bride retrieved them today. Two boxes went into the basement. The other was quickly unpacked.
But that’s not the significant moment, no. I noticed, the day we moved in, that the stairwell to the basement had a light burned out. Owing to the way things have been organized, today was the first opportunity I had to carry the big aluminum ladder downstairs, extend it to almost its full height, and bring light to what was once darkness.
You don’t count how many lightbulbs you’ve changed in life — probably for the best, after a certain level of achievement the notation would make you go mad — but despite the great many light bulbs I’ve changed, this one gave me a certain feeling of satisfaction. Can’t quite put my finger on why.
It isn’t the first one in this house. It might not even be the last one I change this week, so flush with the feeling of momentum am I.
Also in the day’s list of boundless achievement I have watered many plants, studied the baseboards and vainly attempted to tighten an electrical outlet cover. Oh, and we determined which outlet in my lovely bride’s home office is a switched outlet. We have at least three of those in the house. One in each office and one in the living room. While that last one is fairly convenient, I have an unexplainable disdain to the entire concept of switched outlets. That I spent two or three minutes plugging in a table lamp and flipping switches today is the least of it.
I also watched a video on DIY drywall, so if you’re ever interested in a productive day or two, and appreciative friends … I have a project.
The most productive thing of the day, aside from that light bulb, was when we lazed about in the water this evening. That was a fine end to an easy summer’s day.
Did you know that, when we drove 11 hours across some 20 percent of this great nation on the move that I listened to CDs? I listened to a lot of CDs. What that means for us, now, is that I am still playing catchup in the Re-Listening project. That’s the one where I’m listening to all of my old CDs, in their order of acquisition, and padding out blog posts for my own amusement. I am very far behind, so let’s get to it. Remember, these aren’t reviews, but an excuse to post some videos, and maybe dig up a memory or two along the way. It’s good fun, come rock out with me now.
I load these into the CD player blind, which is to say I often don’t know what is coming next. Sometimes I remember the order — since this album just ended, then thaaat one is next, and so on. More likely, and more fun, is when I don’t recall. There’s that little pause as the CD changer pulls one CD away from the laser eye and slides the next one into place. It’s like watching a movie fanfare on TV and wondering what you’re about to see. And when the first plucked strings of this CD sprang to life I said, and I quote, “YESSSSS!”
Angie Aparo, out of Atlanta, is indirectly, come to think of it, probably my first experience with radio payola. The owner of the station I worked for when this record was released in March of 2000 “encouraged” all of his employees to attend a performance Aparo was putting on at a small venue in town. Record label people wanted to see a big turnout and somehow, this was our concern. I went to the show, pressured as I was, and only later did I make the connection.
What’s important is the show was good. This record is stinking amazing. This was the single, all futuristic and almost from a different planet.
I knew that song before the station gave me the full CD, because it was programmed a lot, but what is pleasantly surprising is how deep this record is. You most likely know this song from Faith Hill’s cover. (Her cover isn’t as good as his original.)
And maybe you know this one from a cover that Faith Hill’s husband did.
The thinnest pop tune on the whole disc will stick with you for hours. So here’s that.
They aren’t all radio pop songs, but they’re all great in the car, great to singalong with, and, if you are in the car, good for a good hand dance.
Angie Aparo put out six more albums, then had some life-and-death health problems. After he recovered, he’s put out one more album, in 2018, and is still playing around the southeast. I’ve only seen his show that one time, in early 2000.
Somehow, around that same time, I picked up Bobby Bradford’s “No Saints Walkin’.” It’s perfectly acceptable blue-eyed blues, if you’re looking for that. I never played it a lot, owing to all of the good music surrounding it in my CD books, I’m sure. And nothing really stood out this time through it, that I recall. Here’s the title track.
I think his label released that album three different times across seven years. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it found a lot of success abroad.
Speaking of success, this is where I get to tell the radio success story. My campus radio station was one of a small handful across the country that reported their song counts to some influential charts and labels. The easiest way to explain this is to say that important music executives sometimes used that data to determine who they should push. “If it is a hit on low-powered stations with college kids, we should mainstream it!” And, friends, someone (not me, in fact, this was just barely before my time) at my station liked one guy a little too much. That person wrote down the performer’s name in the playlist affidavits a little too often. And, I fear, my college radio station is responsible for making Kid Rock a thing.
I don’t own any Kid Rock albums, mind you. I always changed the station if I heard him on the radio. I was doing that long before he started experimenting with three-sample lifts and chorus quotes in the hopes of being noticed by legacy performers. If someone at my station was an early trend setter, I was an early avoider. But then I stumbled on Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise. This band is amazing, even if Kid Rock is all over the first track.
It’s an odd thing to say, but he adds something invaluable to the song.
Now, before we go any farther, a little backstory is required. Robert Bradley came up out of Alabama. He sang at the Alabama School for the Blind. He was a busker in Detroit. And, there, four white guys decided to work with him, forming Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise. This record, their second, was a refined step up from their debut. RBBS’s fans noticed the difference, sometimes critically. And if you feel the same way about Kid Rock, here’s a version with out that guy.
I don’t recall which song I heard that prompted me to pick this up. But there’s a great deal here. This, after all, was an instant modern blues classic. Maybe the first in a generation.
(Also, that song sounds better live. This feels like the most real thing in the world, somehow.)
This one, this might be the song that got me.
Also, this record … it’s autobiographical.
RBBS produced four more studio albums after this one, and a double live CD, which I may have to pick up one of these days. Bradley ran a vending machine business for a while, returned to busking, and then put out another album on his own in 2018. I’m not sure what’s become of him since then. I hope he’s still out there around Detroit’s Eastern Market, singing and writing.
So now we’re three CDs closer to being caught up. I think I’m only nine behind, now. And, in the next round of the Re-Listening project, we’ll go back in time to April of 2000 to listen to a record that was released in 1994.
Somehow the day passed quickly. It doesn’t seem like I got a lot down, and, on a Wednesday in July, that’s as it should be. I did get some things vacuumed. Moved a few more boxes and straightened up that sort of thing. Stuff that needed to be done, some which was past due, but nothing big, and nothing which should have filled the day, but there I was, 4 p.m., getting ready to call it a day.
Why, you ask? Because it was a Wednesday in July, that’s why. And also because we had tickets to see a show in Philadelphia.
We did not watch an opera. But we did hear an operatic song.
I think it was 2000 when I last saw John Ondrasik. It was at Five Points. Was he opening for Guster? Edwin McCain? Train? Probably someone else. This was right about the time Five for Fighting was getting a lot of airplay off that second record and I saw a lot of bands in those days. Anyway, that was a great venue. They existed at a time when the local Birmingham radio play was helping set the tone, and the people that book shows put those things together and you could see all manner of up-and-coming acts and an eclectic mix of true artists with their share of road miles in there. Five Points South Music Hall existed from 1994 to 2003. Then it became a night club, and then the shooting happened. That joint had been around for five years by then, but late on July night a fight turned deadly. Two killed, two wounded and the neighbors and the city had enough. That club folded. But the next year, 2009, it opened as Five Points Music Hall again. New owners. It last for less than a year. No one seemed to figure out why they shut it down. It got torn down in 2015. (I was in town, but not in town.) A hotel is in that spot these days.
Someone is probably singing Bohemian Rhapsody in there right now, but I bet they’re doing it un-ironically.
Anyway, tonight’s headliner was Barenaked Ladies. And it was a singalong kind of night.
And Kevin Heard serenaded us. This is, I guess, the fourth time I’ve heard this live. They’ve been using that multimedia show for the song for several years. They should keep it up. It works and the synch is pretty great.
I’ve got nine or 10 of those to consider doling out over the coming days. It was, as ever, a fine, fun show from BNL.
A note of gratitude for the people who have meant the most, as my time at IU comes to a close.
When I arrived at Indiana University seven years ago The Media School, at that time just a year old itself, was moving into its new building. Simultaneously, the dynamics of all of the student media outlets on campus were changing.
What was once a collection of independent groups — the newspaper had thrived in the basement of the old Ernie Pyle Hall, a building named after the journalism program’s most famous alumnus, the radio station operated out of a house, the TV station produced content from a dorm basement — were all being more formally pulled into The Media School’s new portfolio.
I was given the opportunity to advise and oversee IUSTV. No one else wanted the project, which was often mistakenly viewed as a pesky afterthought, a nuisance. Some people, though, just don’t know what they are looking at. Those first two years, we had to teach equipment and writing, but I also had to institutionalize things like deadlines, planning and various house rules.
Those things were the difference between struggling on a makeshift basement set and growing into two state-of-the-art television studios. Fortunately, I was surrounded that first year by a solid handful of upperclassmen that knew a few things. Together, we re-shaped the organization. Over time, the students that have come through have built on that, and the current roster continues to create good and important work.
My favorite part of academia is watching people grow. The time between a person’s freshman or sophomore year and their senior year is substantial. Their growth, in terms of their maturity and confidence, can be remarkable.
In those seven years, IUSTV produced 935 scripted episodes of TV and video productions. They have has also produced 328 podcasts. We’ve run 15 original shows – each with their own show bible, show runners, schedule breakers and everything else. I’ve watched, or helped, them create 12 of those – seven of which are still ongoing. This year alone, they continually produced 10 different programs and a handful of podcast series. The year before was no less busy.
Viewership from 2022-2023 compared to 2015-2016 before my arrival, is up an improbable 1,901 percent. One thousand, nine hundred and one percent. The social media metrics all show substantial increases. Some six-dozen students and shows have won statewide and regional and national awards. They’ve earned every bit of their success. And when they leave, IUSTV alumni work in the professional media all over the country and abroad.
With gratitude and pride I think of them all, seven years worth of them, in the collective. Their teamwork, and how they so generously support one another, creates lessons we all learn over and over. What makes the work they do great is that they do it together.
Today, we are now graduating students who tell us they enrolled at IU specifically to be a part of what IUSTV is building.
What IUSTV is building. That is what I’ll look back on proudly. That notion is what I’ll take away. Even as I am sad to know I’ll miss out on some truly talented, hardworking people there right now, even as I am excited about what is coming next, that continued growth at IUSTV is the part of IU I will truly miss.
