music

adventures / memories / music / Thursday / video — Comments Off on A patient seeker, musically speaking
30
Jun 22

A patient seeker, musically speaking

Just because I needed to put something here, and because I put up videos yesterday and we’re going to a concert tomorrow, I thought I might as well put up some more videos today. These are from a 2018 Barenaked Ladies show. it was a lot of fun, and tomorrow’s surely will be, as well.

Here’s a bit of Canada Dry, it’s a song full of references about Canada, but it’s really about relationships.

Jim Cuddy from Blue Rodeo and Alan Doyle of Great Big Sea are also on the studio version. They shipped this song as a pre-release to their 2017 record, “Fake Nudes,” which they were supporting on that tour.

A bit of One Week which, at the time of this show was somehow 20 years old.

(I still miss Steven Page.)

In the US, that song topped the Hot 100, Alternative Airplay and Mainstream Top 40 charts. (Internal contradictions were pretty routine in music charts by then, of course.) It peaked at number two on Billboard’s Adult Alternative and Adult Top 40 charts. It only made it to number three in the Canadian charts.

Light Up My Room, also from that 1998 album, Stunt. It’s one of the best songs on the four-times platinum record, along with maybe six or seven other songs.

And now, of course, it has been four more years. How was that concert four years ago? How is all of this 24 years old?

Anyway, we’ll seem them again tomorrow, with Toad the Wet Sprocket and Gin Blossoms. We bought these tickets in 2019 for 2020. Good shows come to those who wait, I guess.

adventures / Instagram / memories / music / video / Wednesday — Comments Off on Looking forward to a regular thing
29
Jun 22

Looking forward to a regular thing

Friday night we’re going to a rock ‘n’ roll show, a good ol’ fashioned concert. Lights. Music. Happy people. Crowds.

(I can still count on one hand the number of frivolous things we’ve done around people since March of 2020. This weekend will involve numbers four and five. Maybe this sort of thing will soon stop feeling novel. Maybe it won’t feel like I’m breaking curfew.)

This will be our first concert since Covid came along. This is a show we should have seen in July of 2020. We bought these tickets in 2019. So, in two more days, we will see the Gin Blossoms, Toad the Wet Sprocket and Barenaked Ladies. I haven’t seen the Gin Blossoms since 1996. I’ve, sadly, never seen Toad the Wet Sprocket. We saw Barenaked Ladies in 2018. It was my third or fourth time I’d caught their act, but my lovely bride had never seen them. They were celebrating 30 years then, had just been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame. They put on a great show.

Anyway, we’ll have pretty nice seats for a great show and we’ll wear masks and, I’m sure, have a great time.

So to get ready, here are a few BNL clips from the show we saw in 2018.

adventures / Instagram / memories / music / Tuesday / video / woodworking, sorta — Comments Off on Just go go go
10
May 22

Just go go go

Worked today, doing work stuff. Enjoying the beginning of summer by getting ready for the fall. I had an actual lunch! We got takeout from Chick-fil-A and ate it in a parking lot between Panera and Fresh Thyme and a funeral home. It’s a glamorous life, to be sure.

After work I got gas. Paid $3.19 a gallon, which was a dollar off the sign price, because of the Kroger fuel points plan. This loyalty program is one of the three great things about our local grocery store. And, at the beginning of the year we took advantage of what is essentially Kroger Prime. Used to be that every dollar you spent was added into a formula for a reduced price at the pump. Since you’re shopping for groceries anyway, this was an easy and obvious thing. But now your dollar amounts are worth double in the gas reduction formula. We signed up before the war in Ukraine and inflation drove up the prices, and so this has paid for itself several times over already.

After that, and I know you’re riveted, I went to the hardware store. Got some tack cloths. At the house I sanded wood until it was time for dinner. (And almost all of the sanding on this ridiculously long-stalled project is now down.) And then I ate and washed dishes and did a very small amount of house chores until it was time to write this. And here you are.

Five years ago tonight, we were with the Indigo Girls.

I think that was the seventh or ninth time I’ve seen the Indigo Girls live. I don’t go to a lot of concerts anymore — indeed, I think I’ve been to one other show, in 2019, since then, and we had two others canceled in 2020 — but Amy and Emily, I’d never turn down. They never disappoint.

OK, the sanding isn’t done. Everything is done through 400-grit. Later this week I’ll do the ends to 800-grit. Then it’ll be ready to clean and stain and install. Which is good, because there’s an ever-growing list of other things I need to make.

So, this summer work, bike and build is how I’ll get ready for the fall.

Auburn / Glomerata / history / music / Thursday / video — Comments Off on A light day
5
May 22

A light day

Ever get fundraising letters and emails from your alma mater(s)? This 1922 copy circulated in newspapers around Alabama, a sad story that came from one of my alma maters, and it is more impactful than all of those donation letters.

This was part of an important campaign for my alma mater. Auburn was in a deep economic hole compared to the other schools in the state, which had been uniquely successful in creating a deep economic hole for all of its schools anyway. So all that spring of 1922 they prepared for this campaign that they hoped would raise $1 million dollars which would equal … quite a few more million these days.

It was a substantial ask, am ambitious plan and, if you’d be willing to listen to the whole of the tale I can draw a pretty clear line between that campaign and the institutional politics that still appear there, 100 years on.

Ralph Boyd appears in the papers one time before this syndicated piece, in a small brief about his death in Montgomery that February. His last surviving sibling passed away in 2017.

And here he is the year before, somewhere in this group photograph from the 1921 Glomerata, the university’s yearbook.

In the 1922 yearbook there’s a mention of the Greater Auburn campaign. They called it the greatest thing Auburn had ever undertaken. But there doesn’t seem to be a mention of young Ralph Boyd in that edition.

So there’s not much here today, but I did run across that, which is really an excuse to share the greatest century-old graphic you’ve ever seen.

That’s recyclable, is all I’m saying. It’s also amusing that they were using the Auburn name in the university’s campaign efforts, a formal usage if you will, decades before they changed the institution’s name.

Something a little fun … Penn & Teller!

And something amazing … The Punch Brothers!

More tomorrow, I assure you.

Friday / IU / music / video — Comments Off on Unlike last year, there is no Lion King in this performance
4
Mar 22

Unlike last year, there is no Lion King in this performance

Yep, I’m ready for this to be over, too. And, finally, here we are.

Thirty-three percent of the people came to a morning meeting I run. And then there were two morning shows to oversee in the studio. That was interrupted by a tour. Immediately after I handed off the prospective new faculty member to someone else the singing show people stepped up with the latest news.

Two of the 18 people won’t be singing. That’s just live programming. Something will happen. But it requires a few changes to the script. So I had to go through the thing I set up yesterday and remove two people, and all the references to numbers. (The seventh contest was now the sixth, and the 11 was now the ninth and so on.)

This also allowed us to change the conclusion of the show, which was good. It was going to be too complicated, and this made it simpler.

And then suddenly it was time to do the show.

The singers came from campuses across the state, at least three of them. They were all good. Some of them were really quite spectacular. Goosebumps were given twice.

If that video isn’t working, try this link.

Some of the singers.

She sang Puccini.

I wish I had the chance to photograph the other 11, but, again, they were all quite talented and they gave the judges a lot to work with.

The best part of the show is listening to the professional artists being so kind to the younger singers. Everything was a dose of encouragement.

There were two technical issues, and the usual sort of adrenaline a live show brings while you’re trying to wrap it up. Most importantly, everyone seemed pleased.

Before we’d even struck the studio they were already asking us to do it again next year.

Second-most importantly, I left campus at 5:30 today.

After 50.5 hours, eight shows, a field shoot, a photo shoot and meetings, editing, rewriting, meetings, tour-giving, other meetings and toner-fighting, the week was mercifully done.

I’m going to sleep until Monday.

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