music


21
Nov 23

Never good with a carpenter’s square …

It was a rainy day, cold and dreary, but that was just fine. Attention was needed inside, anyway. I busied myself putting some things in the basement and checking on the plants that are under growth lights down there. (Some are doing well.) I moved a few things around upstairs. I cleaned my share of the stuff off of the guest bed. I cleaned the guest bathroom.

All of that and many of the other quotidian chores of the day. It allowed me to ponder the etymology of the word quotidian. (I don’t normally think of etymology, but it’s a fun word.) It comes from French, and old English.

The version we use goes back 700 or so years, “something that returns or is expected every day.” And that sounds about right, for regular ol’ housework.

I also did a lot of grading, because grading needed to be done. Later this week, if I spend another hour on it, I’ll be all caught up. I intended to do that today, but I distracted myself by rearranging the shelves in my office closet.

I used the old step stool. I made this, I believe, in the 7th grade. It was the first or second project we made in shop class. It was the most basic carpentry-by-numbers project. My woodworking skills aren’t especially great today, but they were even less so then. No patience for sanding, had a difficult time cutting anything square, and no patience: the usual strengths one must possess. But, decades later, this is still in good use.

While I was never very good in the shop, my grades were better in the classroom. This, I think, is the only one of my wood shop projects that survived the years. Quite the functional souvenir. I wonder how many of my old classmates still have these step stools somewhere.

A few years ago, I made another stool, a different design, but not much better. It does its primary job, though, giving you couple of feet of extra height. Maybe it’ll work for about the same length of time.

I must return to the Re-Listening project, because I am behind. The Re-Listening project is pretty simple. I am playing all of my old CDs, in the order in which I acquired them, in the car. Then I’m writing about them here, irregularly, it turns out. These aren’t reviews, because who cares? But, it’s another way to pad out the site, I can play and enjoy some music and, occasionally, some memories. I am eight discs behind in terms of writing about them, and I have resolved to listen to a few of those over and over until I catch up here.

So let’s catch up, a bit. We go back to 2003, when I picked up the 2002 Maroon 5 debut. “Songs About Jane” was released in 2002, and it was re-released in October 2003 when it was getting some traction. I have that one, it seems. Five singles were put on the airwaves, and pushed and pushed into radios. The record topped the charts in Australia, France, New Zealand, the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, and reached the top-ten in 17 other countries. It peaked at number six here, selling nearly 2.7 million copies in it’s first year and change. Millions more were moved around the world. It was certified as platinum in 15 countries, and was a multi-platinum debut in eight of those.

Everyone, then, had this record. Let’s talk, then, abut the acoustic EP. It was recorded in New York City in January of 2003, and I have that for some reason, too. It sits right next to the debut in my CD book.

“The Sun” was on the record, but it was not a single. So, if you’re one of the four people who listened to pop music in the oughts who don’t have this record, maybe you don’t know this song.

There’s also a Beatles cover on the EP, which seems an anachronism for this band and time. But it’s pretty good.

Entertainment Weekly called it faceless pop.

From their crisply played but blandly facile songs to a weak-kneed cover of the Beatles’ ”If I Fell,” Maroon 5 cement their reputation as kings of the new faceless pop. Remember when Journey and Styx were derided as generic corporate rock? In retrospect, Steve Perry and Dennis De Young were idiosyncratic oddballs compared with Maroon singer Adam Levine, whose voice sounds more grating than usual without the much-needed studio gloss.

The reviewer might have gotten all of this right, in retrospect.

I remember playing these in Florida, on a 2004 trip. I surely played these discs a lot because, even though I haven’t listened to them in a long, long time, I remembered every key modulation when I played them for the Re-Listening project. But none of those bring to mind big memories. It was probably just a lot of back-and-forth to work music. But that trip to Florida was a fun one.

Tomorrow, we’ll return to the Re-Listening project, and we’ll find ourselves once more in 2004 with two terrific albums.

But, for now, I must return to the Thanksgiving preparations.


2
Nov 23

‘On your yellow bucket seat’

Today was Copeland Cookie Day in my classes. (And so was Monday.) Dr. Gary Copeland was a professor of mine. He retired soon after my cohort, and he passed away not too long after that. He didn’t get enough time with his beloved grandchildren, and no one got enough time with a widely beloved man. He was a giant of a scholar, a sweet-hearted man who always did a lot for his students.

In one class, he’d bring cookies, put away the syllabus and talk about whatever seemed important: conferences, papers, dealing with colleagues. A lot of the most important things we learned came from that non-class.

Because of that, that’s why I have a Copeland Cookie Day. I bring in snacks, put aside the plans and, for a few minutes, we just talk about industry, courses, war stories, whatever.

After classes were over we went for a run. It was too late in the day for a run. It was too late, which made it too cold. So I only did a quick mile, but I did see this part of the far side of the sunset.

I need to find my running gloves. And start dressing better than shorts and a t-shirt. ‘Tis the season, and all. Only, I have no idea where my running gloves are. I knew where they were, in a drawer, right by the refrigerator. But that was in the old house. And that was in June, in the chaos of packing our stuff when the packers no-showed, and when it was the middle of summer when gloves weren’t exactly a priority.

Where are they now? No idea, but mother nature is a necessity.

Since we’re at the beginning of the month, let’s look at the year’s cycling graph.

The blue line represents mileage I would accrue if I road seven miles a day, a basically arbitrary number I picked at the beginning of the year when I started this spreadsheet. Seven miles, on average, seemed doable.

Then I added columns, and lines, for nine and 10 miles per day. That’s why those three lines are nice and steady, daily projections are consistent, steady, reassuring.

But that purple line, that’s the one that reflects my actual mileage.

As I say so often, I need to ride more. Tomorrow, then.

But tonight, we dive back into the Re-Listening project. I’m playing all of my old CDs in the car, and in the order in which I acquired them. Right now, we’re in the summer of of 2003, when Guster’s “Keep It Together,” their fourth studio album, was released.

This is the first Guster album where the Thunder God, Brian Rosenworcel, played on a drum kit rather than his legendary hand percussion.

A bunch of musician’s musicians — Ron Aniello, Ben Kweller, Joe Pisapia, Josh Rouse and more — appear on the record, which peaked at number 35 on the Billboard Top 200. Thirteen tracks, I like 12 of them, and I love 11 of them. It’s a record that comes up a lot for me, and so the flashes of memories span, well, two decades now.

This is the first track, which was a trippy departure to hear as the first sounds on the thing.

“Careful” was released as a single, and it went to number 30 on the charts.

This was the lead single, which the label released before the album. “Amsterdam” climbers to the 20 spot on the charts. The band said, and you could never tell if it was a joke, that they wrote this just to get the label to fund a trip to Amsterdam for the video.

I think it was a joke.

Someone told me that this song reminded them of me. All melancholy and what not. I’m not sure if she didn’t understand the song or the word melancholy. Apparently, all of the guest musicians were allowed to record one pass (and only one pass) on this song. They didn’t hear the song before they played, or told chords or instruments. I don’t understand how that would even work out, but it’s a triumph. And not about a melancholy me.

“Jesus on the Radio” is now a crowd favorite singalong. They usually do this on stage as unplugged as possible, and if you look around on YouTube tons of fan videos have been uploaded. It’s odd that the band hasn’t done more with that fervor, he said mischievously. Here’s a version with Pisapia (who toured as the fourth member for seven years) on banjo.

There is a high quality version on the “Guster on Ice” DVD, also featuring Pisapia.

Here’s a more recent version, from four or five years ago, long after Luke Reynolds joined the band.

And, as the O’Malley family proved, most anything in your kitchen can be a percussion instrument.

Not just the O’Malleys, but all of their musical fans cover it and record it and upload “Jesus on the Radio,” too. And a few years ago the band made a supercut, and somehow, despite the changes in tempo from version to version, it mostly works. Except for that one.

I could do this all day. And I usually do, on Jesus on the Radio day, March 16th. I actually have the t-shirt. It was a Christmas gift a few years back.

Here’s the title track.

I could do this with the whole album, but I’ll wrap it up with a version of “Come Downstairs and Say Hello,” a thoroughly underrated song when it gets going, and, here, with symphonic accompaniment.

You will discover, about three minutes in, why the Thunder God is so named. It’s one of the few times on that particular record when he went back to his roots. (As I recall he was basically learning how to play a drum kit while they produced this record, partly to change the sound of the record, but, I think, also to give his hands something of a break.) Also, in the second half of that version, the brass, and certain of the strings make it sound absolutely triumphant. I wish they hadn’t come into the song until then.

I have the T-shirt featur that song too. I guess I should finally buy a Guster Is For Lovers shirt, to solidify my OG cred.

Original Guster cred, that is. I go back to the spring of 1997, when Guster Is For Lovers was one of the two things they sold.


1
Nov 23

Happy Halloween

I dressed as … me. Early in the day I had a Texas shirt on. Now I am wearing a Maryland shirt. I dressed as four percent of the United States. No one asked me, but I have categories for Halloween costumes. I would obviously fit in the not-wearing-a-costume category. Sometimes that one is also labeled the forgot-entirely category, or the “What do I have sitting around that I can justify as a lame costume?” category. I think costumes are for children, but at the same time, I don’t begrudge adults who have a lot of fun with it. (Some people have more than one costume and I admire how they spend their abundant free time.) Enjoy yourself, I say. But, if you’re over 15, leave the candy for the kids.

It’s a hard line approach i have to Halloween, let me tell you.

Much of today was doing busy personal work. Things like reorganizing my wallet with newly activated cards. Important work like watching half-hour long training videos for work. Valuable stuff like planning Thursday’s classes.

Much of that was a great casting about today. Rending this and gnashing that. But finally, here late in the evening, it all started to come together. Which means I will tomorrow have to lay things out a with a little more definition.

Other things today … lessee. A few, a tiny few, yard things, for it was overcast and damp and cold. And then I walked around delivering mail. Our carrier had a rough day of it yesterday. Three things for neighbors two houses up the street one direction landed in our box, and a magazine destined for someone two houses the other direction landed in our box. So I had to walk those things to the appropriate places.

Then the Canada geese flew overhead.

They were heading southeast by my reckoning, never a bad direction to go.

I also put a card in the mail today, all a part of the now regular test to see if things will arrive in anything approaching a timely fashion. When it came down to a post-2016-post-2020-post-everything, not many people, really, thought the mail would be the everyday thing that lost its reliability. It makes sense if you’re paying attention to the Postal Service, a big concern with many, and big, problems — but who pays attention to the Postal Service?

I am overdue in returning to the Re-Listening project. And we need to do some catching up, lest we fall behind like the postal service. Remember, if you can recall back that far in reading here, that the Re-Listening project is the one where I am listening to all of my old CDs, in the order of my acquisition. And I’m writing about it here to share some music and the occasional memory. These aren’t reviews, but they are fun little trips down memory lane.

Usually.

I’ve somehow accumulated some of the less pleasant associations with this record, so I’m not going to dwell on that here. The music was good, so I guess i played it a lot, and there it was in the background, or the foreground, when things happened. As will happen. But, when I played “Waiting for My Rocket to Come” the other day, I was pleased with how well most of it still holds up.

Jason Mraz’s debut was released in 2002, and I got this copy in December of 2003. The disc says the 19th. It sold 500,000 copies by the end of that and has since been certified platinum. There was the hit single, a top 40 introduction to all of us.

The record peaked at 55 on the US Billboard 200. And it climbed all the way to number two on the US Heatseekers Albums chart. Only Finch, a post-hardcore emo band I don’t recall at all, kept it from the top spot that May. I wonder what I was doing in May of 2003.

It seems like you should remember the yesterdays that were only two decades ago, he digressed.

It’s an impressive record. Tracks four, five and six are so distinct and different from one another, that you can forget he’s a young guy here, and that this is his first record.

Though, I’ll grant you, “Curbside Prophet” feels pretty dated 20 years on.

Mraz had all kind of success after his debut. His third record hit number three on the chart and was certified four times platinum. His fourth made it to number two, and spawned another top 10 hit. At least two more records made the top ten on the albums chart. He’s also won two Grammy awards. Most of which I had no idea about. But one other album should show up later in the Re-Listening Project.

It will probably happen before he goes on tour again. If you want to see Jason Mraz live it looks like you’ll have to wait until next summer.

Up next is Diana Krall’s sixth studio album. This one also has a date on the disc, Dec. 20th, 2003. I picked it up because I knew some people would like it, and because it was another opportunity to add a little complexity to the collection. This is a jazz and bossa nova tribute record with a lot of great standards. All of which means that Johnny Mercer has to show up. And, sure enough, here’s the Johnny Mercer track.

This one proves the critics’ point. Diana Krall is almost a singular pianist and an incredibly accomplished singer. But it all gets swallowed up by string arrangements.

Yes, there’s a Hoagy Carmichael number. Actually, a Carmichael and Jane Brown Thompson number. And there’s a story. Carmichael wrote the music, inspired by a poem palmed to him anonymously while he was back visiting IU. The poem said J.B. Carmichael put the initials on the sheet music, but it took more than a decade to solve the mystery. Jane Brown Thompson died the night before the song was introduced on radio by Dick Powell.

That story made it onto an episode of “Telephone Time” a mid-1950s anthology drama series. Wouldn’t you know it, that episode of “Telephone Time” is one of the few that haven’t been uploaded to YouTube.

The title track is a Burt Bacharach standard.

The album topped the Canadian charts, won a Juno and a Grammy. Also, she’s wearing nice shoes in the cover photo.

Diana Krall is still performing. And if you want to fly south, like those geese, you can catch her touring in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina and Colombia all this month.

In the Re-Listening Project installment, Thursday probably, we will once again discover how Guster is for Lovers.


13
Oct 23

Happy Friday 13th

Dates only stand out to me when I have something big scheduled for the day. I’m a day-of-the-week sort. I don’t think I always was. Once, in the dimly lit and fuzzy-around-the-edges Before Times, I might have been the sort that operated by dates. But if I know anything about a schedule now it’s because I have routinely reminded myself what day of the week it is, or looked at a screen which can tell me definitively.

I don’t believe this has hurt me in any way. Not a lot of missed meetings or anything like that. But I just don’t think much about the dates. And so it was late, today, before I even realized it was the 13th. Which is odd, because I had a pretty strong, I mean celestially strong, fix on Thursday being the 12th.

Who can say why these things are the way they are. You might argue that it’s an avoidance of something or other, but I think of it as an acceptance of what is. And what it is, at this moment, is the weekend. For this knowledge I thank the egg timer in my head that is forever counting the days of the week, and not simply “the dates.”

We enjoyed a late afternoon bike, just an hour jaunt around the usual jaunty loop. For me, the main roads went like this: fine, then fast, and then slow, then falling-behind-bad, then the don’t-wait-for-me pronouncement which usually comes with falling behind. And then there was the road where I thought I put on a Herculean surge, but it wasn’t, not really. After that I got dropped again and decided to add seven or eight more miles, for fun. So I turned my hour or so into a 26 mile ride.

I have a new idea for a video I want to shoot on the bike, but I don’t feel comfortable enough to do it just now. My wrist still hurts a tiny bit from falling on it last weekend and I didn’t really want to contort it for the experiment.

But that meant I had plenty of time for shadow selfies. My shadow had a pretty decent ride.

During the last little bit, right through here, the sun started losing it’s punch. Between the weakening sun, the moisture on my skin and the breeze, you could tell that all of the changes are coming. Fight it, ignore it, acknowledge it, doesn’t matter. A rain system this weekend will be pushed through by a cold front and that’ll be that.

Which means sleeves and pants (and gloves!) on the bike, so I can still enjoy afternoons finding trees that hang out over roads for photos like this.

But not tomorrow. Not in the rain. Maybe on a partly sunny, breezy Sunday afternoon. Or a similar Monday. Highs approaching 59 degrees both days. Huzzah.

I kid, of course. I’m going to be optimistic about this winter. First time in many years! I have resolved it so. I am going to be optimistic about the winter so I can enjoy the autumn. I am resolved.

This is my resolve.

Here’s the last video from the Queen + Adam Lambert show. I got a good eight days of videos out of this, and so we’ll close the week with the full encore. “Ay-Oh,” “We Will Rock You,” “Radio Ga Ga” and We Are The Champions. Whereas there was someone sitting near us who was surprised and excited that they worked “Bohemian Rhapsody” into the main set, no one in the building was surprised by the encore. Pleased, sure. But you could almost hear people clicking through the catalog in their head. Everyone knows what’s coming here. Everyone knew they had gotten a great show, and they were pleased they’d heard so many of their favorites. (I only missed out on one song, but that’s understandable.)

None of the songs in the encore are among my favorites, but they can’t all be on your short list, and it was still great to see Roger Taylor and Brian May blast and bang their way through the standards. It’s fan service at it’s finest, and there’s nothing in the world wrong with that.

Queen + Adam Lambert have 17 U.S. dates remaining on this leg of their tour. It’s a great show. If you are so inclined, get tickets. You’ll have a fun time. You don’t need the $1,000 tickets, either, to sing along and have all of the Queen memories.

Have a happy Saturday, the 14th!


12
Oct 23

‘Who waits forever anyway?’

I turned off my alarm and went back to sleep this morning and that was not the plan. I figured I’d have one of those little peaceful moments and then get up and, wait a minute, my lovely bride is asking me if I’m going to get up today. Of course I am, it’s only been … 90 minutes since my alarm went off.

The good news is that my alarm was set well before I needed it today anyway. I had an apple, got dressed, finished pulling my things together and we went to campus, and arrived a few moments early, as it turns out.

I spent six hours in a classroom today. Most of that time talking about video editing software. I used these clips, just stuff I found in the yard yesterday, as examples.

That video isn’t what they saw, but those shots figured into the How To of it all. I think it went OK. Next time, maybe, I’ll do that differently. If for no other reason than I think I was beginning to talk myself silly the second time through. Things were shared. Things were learned. I got thanked a few times.

That was one of the views on the drive home, which currently takes place in that 20-minute window between daylight and the gloaming. It’s such a romantic moment, before the darkness creeps upon us. I think we were talking about sports or some silly policy or something. We were in the car, but it was still a moment, and we might have trampled it a bit.

Just three more Queen + Adam Lambert videos from last week’s Baltimore concert. I feel like I have an obligation to share the North American tour opener. Also, it’s earned me 52,000 page views in the last week … so, yeah, you milk that.

“Who Wants to Live Forever” comes out of the 1986, psuedo-soundtrack to the Highlander movie. The song peaked at No. 24 in the UK. Certified gold there, and in Italy, it never did anything here, except stick in the heads of people who liked that movie franchise.

And then there’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” I don’t know how many songs have been on charts around the world across four decades and in two centuries, but this is one of them. (Yes, the opera is the original band recording. They couldn’t figure out how to do it live way back when, and that’s stayed the traditional performance version.)

“Bohemian Rhapsody” is also the most streamed song from the 20th century and, in 2021, it was certified Diamond in the US for combined digital sales and streams equal to 10 million units.

I wonder how the rights holders will re-introduce it to new audiences once more in the 2040s and 2050s.