I took this photo of my lovely bride 14 years ago, yesterday, the night before we were married. Today, on our anniversary, and every day, I think of the many smiles and laughs and quiet times we have shared. It’s an ever-growing list of wonderful history and adventures both grand and regular. We have a lot for which we are grateful in our relationship, but that the regular is such a delight is one of the most important parts of all.
It’s a special thing, to know and love someone for a great length of time, a great gift to still find new things to learn from one another. It’s a comfort to do all of that in the company of someone invested in you.
Fourteen years, all a blessing.
Tomorrow, it’ll be just a bit better; the day after, a little better still …
I made a handful of cufflinks today. Sixty will go to a larger project that a friend inspired. But, as I went through my old cufflink making supplies, as one does, I discovered there were some colors and fabrics that didn’t exist in my personal cufflink catalog. So, having remembered the workflow, my fingers regaining their muscle memory, I made a few extras for myself.
Now I just need to pull a french cuff shirt out of the closet, to show them off.
So I made 72 cufflinks. The three-part History Channel George Washington docudrama. Just trying to clear things off the DVR. There are so many things on the DVR.
Let’s watch something else.
Last weekend we were at The Ryman with the Indigo Girls. This was the third single off their sixth studio album, 1997’s “Shaming of the Sun.” (I wrote some more about the record in February.) This is, perhaps, the least good song on a terrific album.
Amy Ray talks about how this is the beginning of a new kind of sound for the band. There’s more rock in there, some Patti Smith perhaps, and some literate punk elements, too.
Tom Morello did a remix of this song some years back. I had no idea this existed until now. It’s a remix. Every remix basically feels like this — Yes, I liked your song, though this is how it should have been done, in a longer, and still lesser, way — but at least you can hear Ulali on this version of the track. (Sadly the a capella group is not on this tour. Though they toured with the Indigo Girls for part of 1997.)
That song was a big part of the setlist on the original Lilith Fair tour, turns out. They released an EP alongside it. (That Morello remix was on the EP). In one of those curious examples of timing, the 1998 double live CD that went alongside that particular music festival is playing in my car right now.
I really ought to move beyond the late nineties, I know.
The Re-Listening project will probably bring us the Lilith Fair album on Monday or Tuesday — because this is suddenly a music blog? — but first we have to work through one other record. The Re-Listening project, of course, is just an excuse to write about, and play some of the music I’m listening to in the car. In the car, I am listening to all of my old CDs in the order in which I acquired them. Today, that CD is Dishwalla’s second studio album, released in 1998 “And You Think You Know What Life’s About.”
I know I picked this up a bit late, based on the 1999 album that came before it, in my CD books. Then as now, it’s a soft, crooning filler. Nothing too remarkable here. The Re-Listening project isn’t about musical reviews because, who cares? But, if you’re interested in that, the Critical Reception section of Wikipedia has an incredibly spot-on summation.
The Washington Post noted that “the band’s most bombastic choruses contain echoes of the slick power ballads that grunge banished.” Entertainment Weekly wrote that “when they pull out the cheesy Top 40 stops … like on the ballad ‘Until I Wake Up’, they come off like a modern-rock Journey—a guilty pleasure, but a pleasure nonetheless.” The Ottawa Citizen determined that “the band remains a non-innovator, relying on go-to guitar riffs and catchy rock melodies.”
Stereo Review concluded that “Dishwalla spends part of its second album whining about the success of its first one.” Rolling Stone thought that frontman J.R. Richards “has managed to shed his grumbly, disaffected vocals for a softer croon on tracks such as ‘The Bridge Song’.” The Boston Globe opined that “Dishwalla’s chameleon act seems in total defiance of establishing a trademark sound.” The Los Angeles Times wrote that “this angst-filled and metal-tinged sophomore try sinks quickly under the weight of overblown emotion and puerile lyrics.”
It started with such promise, too.
The second track gives the whole game away.
Already, you can see what a handful of harried, on-deadline music reviewers were finding out.
Their first record felt like a gateway into pop-friendly distortion bars and industrial sounds. Not as a slight, but I think this record just hit on all of the same things every other band hit on, about nine months later, and at about 80 percent saturation.
I saw them on their first national tour, they were opening for Gin Blossoms, and, at that moment, they were almost as popular. The lead singer, J.R. Richards, was doing his rock lothario bit when he split his pants on stage. He was embarrassed, as anyone would be. Not so much then, but after that first album, it was all downhill after that. This was one of those records I bought, listened to a few times, and found few reasons to ever play it again.
I think we’re in another none of those stretches of the CD collection, stuff I listened to only a little, looking for the next heavy rotation winners.
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.
Guess who we’ll be spontaneously seeing soon? I’ll give you a hint.
That’s from the last Indigo Girls show I saw, in Indianapolis in 2017. This will be my seventh show. Reportedly, they’re on the road with a full band right now. I’ve never seen them play with a full band. This is quite exciting. And it moves us, quite neatly, into …
The latest installment of the Re-Listening project, the thing where I’m listening to all of my old CDs in the car, in the order in which they acquired. And this installment is the Indigo Girls’ “Come On Now Social,” their seventh studio album, released in 1999. I guess this was my third Indigo Girls album, after “1200 Curfews” and “Shaming of the Sun.” I caught up on the rest of the back catalog later, and this album’s consistency was what made me commit. You wear out a double live album and then find two studio albums in a row that you lean into, hard? Caught the live act two or three times by then, too? You found yourself a band.
This is one of those things I wish I could go back in time and put this on again, turn up the sound and hear it for the first time. I’d love to have this first impression again.
I won’t do this through the whole post, but since we’ll see them in concert again soon, here’s a live version.
I want to hear that again for the first time, almost every time, because even now, decades later, I’m still finding new things to be awed by in that track.
Also, I suppose that’s the second protest song (of my generation) I ever picked up on as being a protest song (non-Buffy Sainte-Marie division.) Anyway, I’m trying, right now to read the Meridel Le Sueur essay that’s spoken into that song. But Amy Ray just buries herself and she’s beautifully, wonderfully distracting.
Always with the Re-Listening project I am trying to find some memory that matches a track, a mood that meets the album. Sometimes these things stand out. But, always, when Emily Saliers is painting a picture, it’s just an attitude. It’s a credit to her storytelling ability. Her imagery crowds out my memories. But to think of whatever this inspires in you isn’t such a bad thing, even if it is an imagination rather than a memory.
The difficulty here will be in not playing the entire album. But it’s my site, and I’ll play a half dozen tracks from it if I want to. Anyway, if you’ll overlook the VHS and NTSC analog quality that YouTube compressed here, this is a gem. For fun, I always sing the chorus as “There ain’t no way I’m gonna let this heart win,” and it changes the song substantially. That’s neither here nor there.
When the banjo and the mandolin come out … God bless the Indigo Girls.
Speaking of imagery. The other day, when this next track came on, I was at a red light. It was a bright morning. Lots of sun. But the mood here is anything but. I was initially drawn into the band for the harmonies, but then found the … let’s call it the visceral, emotional core of truth … but the thing that’s not at all subtle, not at all to be disregarded, is the quality of storytelling Ray and Saliers can put around all of that.
But then they have to pep it up a little. Here’s a little drum fill, a few horns, and an under-appreciated song from Saliers. This is the one song that charted off the album, small HAC hit that marked the end of the Indigo Girls’ crossover success. (Because the music industry is powered by corporations and so often has no real relation to what we hear, what we like or what artists play. But I repeat myself.)
Feels like a cookout song to me. Who needs a cookout?
This song references a real person, it was quite high profile in the late 1990s. Do you remember?
The hidden tracks are in that YouTube video, if you are interested. Just scrub to about the seven minute mark.
And, when we see the Indigo Girls next weekend, we’ll be having a blast.
I didn’t know this photo existed, but when we stopped by to see my grandfather, who is always full of surprises, he fished this image out of a stack. There were a handful of photos of him as a little boy, posing in a studio with his beautiful mother, and even some of his grandmother, who I knew.
Think of it. I have real memories of a great-great-grandmother who died, at 92, when I was in high school. I also had a great-grandmother who died when I was in college, and another great-grandmother who lived until I was 28. But this isn’t about those remarkable people. This is about this new-to-me photograph.
These people are my mother’s mother’s parents, my maternal-maternal great-grandparents. She died when I was three, but I don’t have any memory of her. He died when I was five, and I have a few glimpses of him in my mind’s eye.
Here, he’s holding my great-aunt. We estimate she’s about three years old in that photo, putting him at about 24 and his wife at about 21. She’s holding a great-uncle I never knew. But look how young!
My great-grandmother here looks like my grandmother. And from a few photos of this young woman I can see traits of most every woman in my family.
Earlier this month my mom texted me a photo of when she was a child, some four decades after the picture here. It looks like a vacation photo. She’s in oversized glasses, with her parents and her grandparents, the ones pictures here. Behind my mother is her grandmother, a mid-century grandma out of central casting. Her daughter, my grandmother, looks impossibly young in that way that never makes sense when you’re only accustomed to seeing someone in a different stage of their life. My grandfather is there, short sleeve button down, shiny watch, comical shorts (though I never knew him, I never think of him wearing shorts) and shin high dark socks. Now, except for those socks, it all works, because he has the mod haircut of the time and he’s wearing the best sunglasses 1960s technology had to offer.
Behind them all is my great-grandfather, my mother’s grandpa. That guy above. Long pants, long-sleeved shirt with a large windowpane print, with a neat little banded fedora on top of his head. He’s holding a cup with a straw in his left hand. They all look like they’re posing for a serious rock band photo, or as if something important has happened in front of them just as the photo was taken. They weren’t ready for a modern posed photograph, except for my great-grandfather, who is smiling just a bit.
He’s probably, let’s say, mid-early-60s in the image I just described. I remember him as an even older man, of course. Here he is, with two of his great-grandchildren. (He’d have 15 or so great-grandkids, but he wouldn’t get to meet the all. The best one is standing to his left, anyway.) He’s sitting in a creaky old lawn chair in his daughter’s lawn. I remember those chairs, and I spent a lot of time in that grass, beneath the kitchen window, around the little well building, and in front of the giant shop building.
He’s been posed in front a big building for both of those photos. It’s rather poetically symmetric in a way.
Trying to find a way to wrap up this post, I looked up some of that young woman’s lineage. With a few clicks, I was able to trace my great-great grandmother’s ancestors back five more generations, to when her great-great-great grandfather immigrated to South Carolina from Ireland aboard a vessel called the Lord Dunluce in 1772. He was 17-ish, came over alone, and had 100 acres coming to him, somehow. He got married, at 19, in 1774. He died in 1808, and is buried in South Carolina. Another part of her family, the Internet tells me, came from North Carolina after crossing the Atlantic at some point in the middle of the 18th century. That branch can be traced back, with no effort on my part, to the 16th and 17th century and places like Aarau and Zurich, Switzerland. Still others came over to Massachusetts, seemingly from England, in the early part of the 17th century.
But I’m going to wrap it up this way. My great-grandmother, in that first photo above, was picking cotton one morning. She was full-term, and, the story goes, delivered one of her children around midday. In the afternoon, she was back out in the field picking cotton again.
