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The only time you’ve heard the word ‘baroque’ in a song

I had an afternoon meeting today that was scheduled for 45 minutes. I managed to stretch it into an hour and 20 minutes, because, sometimes, emphasis is necessary. After that meeting, I shared a stairwell with one of the participants. Apparently it was an awkward silence moment for the other person, because we started talking about the weather.

Had I been outside? No, not since I came in this morning. Is it amazing? The other person hadn’t been outside, either. I said I would give it a try after work, when I went for a little bike ride. And then we went our separate ways from the stairwell.

And the rest of the day I spent, happily, thinking about that bike ride.

After leaving the office I stopped off at the hardware store. I heard two guys there having a good workplace bull session which devolved into a debate over which one’s argument was more semantic.

I thought to interject, you know, set them straight, but I realized that both guys already thought they were the smartest person in the room.

That restraint, I think, is real personal growth on my part.

For the record, the first guy wasn’t being semantic; he was being pedantic. The second guy was just being sarcastic.

Otherwise my trip to the hardware store was a bust. I searched online the two big box stores. No joy. So I spent a part of the early evening peering into ChatGPT generated Amazon ads.

No one is talking about how shoddy the content has become on that site, but it’s a scourge.

All of which just kept me from my bike ride. I started late, and it was sunny, but soon that normal early summer look turned moody. Clouds were coming in, from Canada, I’m sure, and it made me wonder about those air quality maps. Remember those? From, what, one week ago? Smoke from Canadian wildfires descended on the east coast of the U.S. And, to a lesser degree, it’s happening again right now. This time over Minnesota and, I suspect, here. Nowhere in-between, just Minnesota and here. Look at this view.

The timestamp says it was 8:09. And you can tell by the height of the sun that we should have another hour and more of sun. But all of that smoke makes the sun look small and weak, which often happens when you’re near wildfires.

Anyway, because of the late start and the dimmer skies and how my legs absolutely died after a half-hour, I called it a short ride. Just 20 miles, but I only had to put my foot down one time. And I set a PR on the penultimate hill, a tiny bit over a quarter-mile that I got over at 21.6 miles an hour, taking three seconds off my previous best. Maybe there’s another second or two I can get out of that, but not much more.

Let’s go back to The Ryman. You wouldn’t have to ask me twice. The Indigo Girls don’t play a lot of things that you’d slot into the country music category, but the venue has a rock ‘n’ roll wing these days. And there’s a madolin, a fiddle, a steel guitar and a banjo in here anyway.

This is from their well-regarded eighth studio album, “Become You,” which is filled top-to-bottom with great tracks. “Yield” is no exception.

All of the time I’ve seen the Indigo Girls, something like seven or eight shows over the years, I’ve never seen these songs played with a full band. I’ll take Amy and Emily on stage any day of the week, but there’s an extra energy when they’re surrounded by talented players, in a place like The Ryman. You’re going to see a lot of that as these videos continue.

Yes, I can stretch this out for a couple of weeks. It is almost like you’re at the concert with us!

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13
Jun 23

‘We are fortunate ones, fortunate ones, I swear’

That time I got to hang out with Charley Pride in Nashville.

The reason The Ryman is called the mother church of country music, Wikipedia will tell us, is, in part …

The auditorium opened as the Union Gospel Tabernacle in 1892. Its construction was spearheaded by Thomas Ryman, a Nashville businessman who owned several saloons and a fleet of riverboats. Ryman conceived the idea of the auditorium as a tabernacle for the influential revivalist Samuel Porter Jones. He had attended one of Jones’ 1885 tent revivals with the intent to heckle, but was instead converted into a devout Christian who pledged to build the tabernacle so the people of Nashville could attend large-scale revivals indoors. It took seven years to complete and cost $100,000 (equivalent to $3,257,037 in 2022). Jones held his first revival at the site on May 25, 1890, when
only the building’s foundation and six-foot walls had been completed.

Now, Samuel Porter Jones is from a small patch of nowhere in Alabama, on the Georgia border. He grew up in Cartersville, Georgia, a small quiet town north of Kennesaw, which is north of Atlanta. I spent some Saturdays in Cartersville in 2006, wandering around taking pictures of the aging downtown while The Yankee was teaching her first classes. We were even younger then than we are today.

Anyway, the other reason they may call The Ryman the mother church is because it still feels like a church, from the pews to the faux windows to the classic mid-century church light fixtures.

So this building was inspired by the Georgian Samuel Jones — who could be coarse, who was outlandish, and who was one of the most popular revivalist preachers of is day.

But … do you know who else is from Georgia?

The bummer of this, one of the less recalled power songs from “Swamp Ophelia” is that my alarm went off in the middle of the song. And, it turns out, that when the alarm goes off the video recording stops. The last 30 seconds or so aren’t here, but the best of it, and the best of it, are here.

“Swamp Ophelia” is their fifth album, and, they played four songs from it, counting “Fugitive,” in this show.

On the record, this is one of those tracks that has a symphonic accompaniment, but it comes to life in the live show. I guess it just got lost for me on the record, but then along came the 2010 live album, “Staring Down the Beautiful Dream.” It included a masterful version of the song from a 2009 New Jersey show, a powerful, urgent version that is not at all easy to dismiss. So, hearing it live now, still feels new. And anytime Amy Ray sings her heart out, I’m happy to hear it.

Which is going to make the next several videos a lot of fun.

It is time for a Tuesday tabs feature. Tabs, they sure do add up. Bookmarks cost nothing, but some pages just don’t seem to rise to that level. And, yet, some pages are too valuable to simply press the little X. So they just sit there, open for ages. But, instead of keeping them up, I’m memorializing a few of those sorts of sites here, just on the off chance I do decide to look that one thing up again one day.

I’ve always enjoyed this idea. I wonder what the neighbors would think. I wonder if you could just do sections of your property. Replacing your lawn with wildflowers has loads of benefits

To prove it, a team at King’s College has broken a long-held tradition. In 2019, they stopped nearly half of the college’s iconic Back Lawn from being mown for the first time since it was laid in 1772 and planted a wildflower meadow mix in the topsoil of this region.

A sprinkling of poppies, cornflowers, and oxeye daisies later burst into life. According to new findings, the football field-sized patch of color now supports more than 3.6 times as many plants, spiders, and bugs as nearby lawns.

In fact, the biomass of invertebrates living in the meadow is 25 times higher than what lives in a regular lawn, including twice as many species in need of conservation.

Researchers say the meadow supported about four times as many declining plant species in 2021 as it once did as a lawn.

I clicked this one thinking I’d nail it, but I was surprised by what I read. It lands here because it seems obvious that it’d be good to adapt some of these approaches. Harvard-trained psychologist: If you use any of these 9 phrases every day, ‘you’re more emotionally secure than most’:

Emotionally secure people are empowered, confident and comfortable in their own skin. They walk the world with authenticity and conviction, and do what is meaningful to them.

As a Harvard-trained psychologist, I’ve found that this sense of self-assuredness makes them better able to navigate conflict and be vulnerable with others, mostly because they aren’t looking for external validation.

But takes a lot of work to get there. If you use any of these nine phrases, you’re more emotionally secure than most people:

I’ve seen one of these, but the rest will just have to go on the list of things to get around to watching one day. 6 must-see World War II documentaries:

Numerous documentaries have ventured to convey the seemingly insurmountable odds confronted by ground, air and naval forces, and the immense sacrifices that resulted.

As such, we compiled a list of five comprehensive World World II documentaries that best tell these harrowing stories.

OK, if you insist. Ireland self-drive tour – Your 7-day to 14-day itinerary:

Whether travelling for one week or two weeks, our itinerary provides all the major highlights of the beautiful Emerald Isle.

On this scenic drive, see ancient historic sites and monastic ruins set in the beautiful Irish countryside. The stunning sheer cliffs of the coast hide secluded bays and sheltered beaches ready to explore.

Best of all, meet the locals in their friendly towns, small and large, that define the island.

When do we leave?

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12
Jun 23

I just won’t move fast

Got a bit of back lockup syndrome. I’ve been fighting shoulder aches and muscle spasms for about two weeks. It’s been the try a different way to sleep sort of thing. A get a household massage every other day sort of thing. A take a muscle relaxer and try to sleep it off sort of thing. Only, now, moving things around the house, it’s become a sit very still sort of thing.

It’ll pass in good time.

Fortunately, I can still do this. A little. For a time.

We had a nice ride on Saturday. The first 18 miles were great!

But after that first hour, my shoulder started sending the familiar signals. And then my back started sending new information to the brain, too. And so I found myself slowing down.

This year, a new bit of information has been passing through the ol’ central nervous system. It involves the tip of the middle toe on my right foot. It’s a contact thing.

I googled this on all of the cycling sites. They suggest my equipment might be getting old, but there’s only 3,500 miles on these Specialized Torches, which I purchased in February of last year. (But do you see the big paint scrapes on that pedal arm? I may need a new bike.) They also suggested my shoes might be too tight, but I checked them before this Saturday ride, and they are not.

There’s not a clever punchline or wrap up to that story, which, I’m sure, means it comes down to technique.

We saw The Indigo Girls at the Union Gospel Tabernacle, the mother church of country music. The former home of the Opry. The Ryman Auditorium.

Somehow, this was my first time at The Ryman. And I have video. I’m going to stretch this out for a while. So, for today, here’s the opening act, Aaron Lee Tasjan and his band.

Some New York writer once said Aaron Lee Tasjan had a unique take on what the author called “indie folk grit.”

I don’t know what that means.

But I did see Arlo Guthrie in this performance. You will, too. And if you caught the whole act, there’s a modern day John Prine emerging in that act, too.

Opened in 1892, the Ryman was famously the home of the Grand Ole Opry from the 1940s to the 1970s. It was, by then, a building showing it’s age. The performers didn’t like it. The audiences were hard on the venue. And so the Opry moved to the amusement park. Roy Acuff, who had a big stake in Opryland, wanted to raze The Ryman. He probably imagined his hand on the plunger. A big public effort, though, kept the building alive. It got exterior renovations in 1989, the interior was lovingly improved in the early 1990s. In the late 90s the Opry came back for special events and for an early-winter schedule. (They’re still doing the legendary old show over at Opry Mills, even though the amusement park itself is now long gone.) More work was done on The Ryman in the teens. Last year they opened a Rock ‘n’ Roll wing, and so all of this is fitting, to me.

I think I can get about two weeks of videos out of what I recorded at this show. It was great. But we’ll get into that.

Here’s a very quick installment from the Re-Listening project. Regular readers know I’m listening to all of my old CDs in the order in which I acquired them. We’re in 1999 right now. This is a soundtrack, and to a show I never watched or liked. If I say I’ve watched five complete episodes of South Park I’ve come in high. But the Chef songs were, at the time, kind of funny.

Problem is, what was kind of funny to me then is sub-sophomoric now. This thing went four-times platinum in Australia, and was also certified platinum in New Zealand, Canada, the UK and here in the States. It ended 1999 at number 65 on the year-end U.S. Billboard 200, so I’m willing to accept I have the minority opinion. You’ll just have to accept that I’m correct.

The songs that aren’t dated and insincere comedy, by and large, just don’t appeal to me. This is the only song I looked forward to.

Tomorrow, there’s no Re-Listening project. We’re all caught up! But there will be a great Indigo Girls song and some other almost equally amazing content. Also, my back will feel better.

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8
Jun 23

I hope you can get there

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.

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7
Jun 23

Only the second half is fictional

They’re doing some work in the parking lot directly across the street. Parking being an important element of a college campus, one hopes this will be completed over the summer, but each day more equipment and fencing arrives. And, this morning, they started digging in the road.

Started, and then they stopped. No one was around, like they’d all walked off the job, they found a more valuable project to work on, or the end of the world arrived just as they began.

Maybe that’s procedure, a plan to cut a whole in the asphalt and put the business end in the ground. Maybe it minimizes hijinks and accidents.

I know, I know, that’s what the cones are for.

After we checked the air conditions — they could be better! — we went for a bike ride this evening. Today is the day I pronounce The Yankee as having recovered her legs and is now getting her form back. She dropped me at one of the turnaround points. It took me eight miles — eight! — to catch her wheel again. Or, in video form …

I set two small Strava PRs on segments in the last bit of the ride. Finally, in the last five miles, my legs woke up. I blame the air.

We return to the Re-Listening project, where I am listening to all of my old CDs in the order in which I acquired them. I’m listening to them there, enjoying the whole thing, and, to fill some space, writing about them here. These aren’t reviews, but fun excuses to play some music, and a bit of memory and whimsy, which is an important part of music.

And about that whimsy, (or, this is one of those oddly embarrassing ones) I’ll just begin our return to 1999 with a phrase from Wikipedia, “quickly faded into obscurity.”

Probably for the best really. Remember Chris Gaines, the TV character concept portrayed by Garth Brooks that went to number two on the charts and is certified double-platinum but was, somehow, considered not well received? (The Wikipedia link will give you a good primer.) Or ask this guy.

This was supposed to be a movie character, and this record was supposed to be a soundtrack. A pre-soundtrack. (We’ve been enduring silly marketing ploys for decades.) But that does look like the most popular entertainer of our time, who is from … Oklahoma. And he’s having an episode? All of this, apparently, confused audiences. Maybe the entertainment industry is right about the general audience after all.

This is one of the things about this entire experiment that was weird. Chris Gaines was supposed to be an Australian pop singer. A top-of-the-world guy. The first problem is, some of these songs are pretty great. And this one went to number 5 on the Bilboard 100 and hit 62 on the U.S. Country chart, which is probably part of the oddness. Crossover in 1999 … Garth Brooks could have done it earlier, but refused. Chris Gaines did it for him later.

Also, at the nadir of the music video era, there’s Garth Brooks, who we’re used to seeing as one kind of goofy, playing a different kind of goofy. So you can maybe see where a little of the confusion comes from.

Another issue here is that a lot of his songs sounded like they should be Garth Brooks songs. This one, a really good tune, hit 24 on the U.S. Country chart.

Interesting thing: when that song started this time through on the Re-Listening project, I was on the same place I was the last time I heard that song. Weird, right? Took a photo to document the occasion.

Another thing about this record, excuse me, the pre-soundtrack, this was supposed to be this character’s greatest hits. What’s going to be on the soundtrack if the pre-soundtrack had the hits? And how was this one of Chris Gaines’ greatest hits?

The problem, for our purposes, is that no one has uploaded a lot of this record to YouTube. There are more covers, a full tribute album to the fictional character, and a lot of play-alongs, but not the original songs. But we can watch this talented person play along to the Beatles homage.

But if you didn’t get your fill here, fear not. Garth Brooks wants to bring the character back.

“The Gaines project was a lot of time put in — because it’s not natural, you’re acting on a record — but I want to do it simply for people who love the Gaines project,” Brooks said of re-adopting the alter-ego. “And selfishly, I love the Chris Gaines record, so I want to do it for me. It challenged me as a vocalist. So I don’t know when we’re going to get to it, but it’s on the list.”

I bought this out of the discount bin, where the labels buried it in a hurry. But, given all of his accolades, and his being one of the world’s best-selling music artists, the industry owes him here. I say let’s see what Garth & Chris can do next. It’s all digital now, anyway. Except for you and me, in the Re-Listening project. In our next installment we’ll hear from what might be the last CD I bought in 1999.

You can’t wait, I can tell.