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I’m grading, so you get the simple version of the day

I made a Christmas present today. Can’t be talked about. You never know who reads this stuff. And another present arrived. Ssssh, don’t tell anyone.

Christmas? I am in no way prepared for the Christmas season. I never really am. But it doesn’t seem like that time of the year should be sneaking up on us. It never really should. But all of this happens every year.

If I wrote about that today, what would I do in the next six weeks? I should get back to grading, anyway.

I started the week with 148 items to grade, and I’ll finish those up tonight. It’ll be a fury. Or a flurry. It’ll probably be fuzzy.

Let’s return to the Re-Listening project. In the car, I am playing all of my old CDs in the order of their acquisition. And I’m writing about them here, occasionally, to pad out days like today. These aren’t music reviews, because who needs that. But they are sometimes a good excuse to dredge up a memory or two. They’re always an excuse to put some good music here.

And this good music is from Will Hoge. He’s from Nashville, and he fits the overlapping areas of Americana and country these days, but his debut was pure blue bar rock ‘n’ roll. He had a band that almost made it, then toured the South as a solo act with a supporting band. Dan Baird stood there and played guitar next to him, so it was basically a coronation. Carousel came out in 2001, and this song broke speakers all over alt rock stations.

I loved it immediately, it was the frenetic pace, the driving rhythm section, the desperate way he was screaming out the lyrics. Hey, it was 2001, but it was five or six years before I picked up this record.

It’s a debut album, which is great, but also limited. He was still growing into his craft. And I’ve yet to see him live, but it looks like a good time.

Here’s the title track.

Somehow, this was one of those CD mixes, one with a provenance I’ve forgotten. But whoever made this did me a real solid, or maybe I knew what I was doing, because there are five live Will Hoge tracks tacked onto the back, including this phenomenal Bill Withers cover.

He’s got a peppy little version of “Mess Around” that apparently no one has ever uploaded to the web. I’m not saying this version of the song being online would solve the web’s problems, but we can’t disprove it, either.

And there’s a sweaty bar version of one of the other key songs from this record, one I didn’t share earlier because I wanted to put it right here, in a live version worth hearing, in all of its clangy, brassy, Telecaster glory.

Since then Will Hoge has put out 13 more records, and I’m going to introduce his music to a relative soon, because some things just need to be passed down.

One day I’ll even get to see him play. He is doing some touring right now, just not close by. (Update: Turns out he was here about three weeks ago, and I had no idea. Come back, Will!)

The next time we return to the Re-Listening Project, we’ll go all the way back to 1992. This was a CD I picked up to finally replace an old cassette and I guarantee you that every time I’ve listened to it, I’ve wondered why I waited so long to do that. It’s going to be a great listen.

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8
Oct 24

Things that are constant

I am deep back into the grading of things which must be graded. Students were reading a piece written by a colleague and new friend in our department on privacy issues around social media platforms. Some of of the student commentary is thoughtful to profound. They’re taking it to heart, which is gratifying.

I started working on this after midnight last night and should wrap this up late Wednesday. Maybe Thursday, if I must.

I did step outside for a break, and found some lovely flowers brightening the backyard.

It is warm and sunny and beautiful in the second week of October, and this can’t last forever.

But it should.

Let’s return to the Re-Listening project. I am listening to all of my old CDs in the car, in the order in which I acquired them. This silly little feature here, then, is where I write about it, to pad out the site. These aren’t reviews, but it does make for a good excuse to put up some good music here. And the Re-Listening project will do both this week, with a 2001 release that I picked up around 2006 or so.

It’s a tribute album, and a solid one at that, honoring the great Hank Williams. I think of this almost exclusively as an in-my-car CD, which is where I listened to it, but that also makes it a bit eerie, given that its Hank Williams. But each track is inspired by greatness by the same man.

It’s an interesting mix, some of these efforts pay direct homage to the original artist, and some are done in the contemporary performer’s style. Just take a look at the track list, it’s a who’s who.

I Can’t Get You Off Of My Mind – Bob Dylan
Long Gone Lonesome Blues – Sheryl Crow
I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry – Keb’ Mo’
Your Cheatin’ Heart – Beck
Lost On The River – Mark Knopfler
You’re Gonna Change (Or I’m Gonna Leave) – Tom Petty
You Win Again – Keith Richards
Alone And Forsaken – Emmylou Harris
I’m A Long Gone Daddy – Hank Williams III
Lovesick Blues – Ryan Adams
Cold, Cold Heart – Lucinda Williams
I Dreamed About Mama Last Night – Johnny Cash

Dylan, who rarely does covers, leads the thing off. Sheryl Crow yodels. Keb’ Mo’ is Keb’ Mo.

Beck is returning to his roots, and it’s beautiful and haunting. Particularly if you’re driving a lonesome highway. And that’s before you remember, “Your Cheating Heart” was the first posthumous release.

I am not a Tom Petty fan, in particular, but his cover of “You’re Gonna Change” is a standout. The Songbird took over “Alone and Forsaken.”

Hank Williams III, for the first 10 years or so of his musical career, did anything he could to distance himself from his father and grandfather. It makes sense, I suppose. When you see him, and you hear him, it’s obvious why he was initially hesitant to go that direction. He is the spitting image of sound and likeness.

Trey is back to doing metal and punk, with some country tinge, I think.

That’s one of the songs I’m always looking forward to when this CD is playing. That, and “Lovesick Blues.”

This record came out some 48 years after Williams died, of hard living, at just 29. The tribute genre was certainly a bit tired by then, but it’s difficult to imagine who could have done this better, or who got left off the playlist. It’s a fine thing, “Timeless,” and if it turned on another generation to The Hillbilly Shakespeare, then it was a project well undertaken.

It’s a record worth having for passive Hank Williams fans, and a good way in for people unfamiliar with his incredible, and unfortunately abbreviated catalog.

What’s next in the Re-Listening project? We’ll find out together, next week!

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1
Oct 24

Welcome to Catober!

Welcome to Catober, where we daily highlight the kitties, because once a week isn’t enough. They also get their own posts in October, because they slipped that into their contract when we weren’t looking. So, I’ll take turns highlighting each cat. Tomorrow we’ll have some amazing Phoebe cuteness. You can see the full collection of lovely cat poses right here.

I’m mid-thigh in grading things. Fortunately not hip deep, and only that deep because I stayed up far too late — even for me — grading stuff. And so today I graded stuff. Tonight, I will grade other things.

At this rate I’ll be grading things all day and night tomorrow. I believe I have it paced out so I can finish grading on Thursday. Just in time for this weekend’s stuff to start rolling in for grading next week …

Whoever set this schedule up deserves a talking to. Me, it was me. I deserve a talking to.

Here’s a video I shot on yesterday’s bike ride. There are a lot of fields turning a beautiful, bright yellow just now. I might have caught these just a few minutes too late in the evening for the color to really pop. Still lovely in their own way.

Since it is the beginning of the month, we should check in on the mileage. September was a good month, my best September ever, and it turned into the fourth most miles in any one month, be they ever so humble. And we can see the progression through the first nine months of the year on this neat little chart.

The blue line is this year, the red one is last year, and the steady green one is a simple what if projection of doing 10 miles per day. I’ve been trailing behind that, sadly, since mid July. Now I’m making progress and I’ll be back over the green line before you read this.

And there are some humble, yet cool-to-me milestones coming up on the bike. You’ll be underwhelmed.

I’ll be whelmed.

That’ll be the extent of it.

Let’s get back to the Re-Listening project for a brief update. This is the one where I’m listening to all of my old CDs in the car, in the order in which I acquired them. At some point, I figured I could write about it to pad out the site with a bit of content — share some videos and the like, but these aren’t reviews, because no one cares. So let’s get to it, so I can get caught up. (I’m only behind by three albums, I think.)

We’ll return to 2006 or so, when I picked up a copy of Live’s 1999 record, “The Distance to Here.” It was the band’s fifth studio album, it went platinum in a month, debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 chart, topped the charts in three other countries, and settled into the top 10 in a half dozen more. They promoted three singles from the record, all which became at least moderately successful on the Alternative Airplay chart. But it never really worked for me. This is the last Live album I bought, and by the time Ed Kowalczyk left the band a decade later, I had no idea.

But I have two things here. This works a whole lot better now, for me, than it did back then. It could be a small doses record at the very least. And one or two of these tunes could be sticky — which is sometimes good and sometimes “get out of my head.”

The other thought was centered around this show at a concert. I saw the band at a festival when they were touring on this record. They closed their set with this song, and they were working out the instrumentation so that, one-by-one, the band slipped away off the darkened stage. Then there was only Kowalczyk, and the whole sweaty crowd was singing along and he stopped strumming his guitar, they kept singing, and he waved and walked off. It was better than this version, which came about some years later, but similar.

Kowalczyk rejoined the band after a few years away. And then he fired the band. They were all, as I recall, southeastern Pennsylvania high school classmates who got their break soon after, and became a 10-years-later overnight success. And now, they’re taking turns suing each other or some such. Kowalczyk is touring with the name, but all new band mates. They just came off the road from a midwestern swing last week.

In the next installation of the Re-Listening project, we’ll try out a pretty decent tribute album I’d entirely forgotten about — which is entirely the point.

And now, back to grading. And next for you, more Catober!

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18
Sep 24

Briefly typing around meetings

A quick follow-up to yesterday’s hasty Re-Listening project. Prior to our last installment there was a self-made disc, I called it Mixed Vegetables. It was just a random assortment of songs. Probably I was trying to use up a stack of CDs or something, but I put one standout tune on there.

This is The Pistoleros, a brother band from Tempe, Arizona — and they sound like it. They sound like the Chimeras and the Refreshments and Dead Hot Workshop and Gin Blossoms. I wish I could remember how I even found this song. Maybe it was on a sampler, or something I downloaded, back when that was a thing you did, but I don’t know. It’s great from the first bass riff throughout the tempo, the mariachi brass and distortion at the end.

That’s my lovely bride’s ringtone.

We went to campus for a faculty meeting today. Before that, I had a smaller one-on-one meeting. Before that we went to look for new office desks and bookshelves. That was a brief, but successful errand. The guy that manages the office furniture for the campus (I guess that’s his job, which seems like a big one when you think about it) said he’s always juggling stuff as various buildings get moved or built or renovated. The library is about to undergo some improvements, and some of them people who have offices there will be temporarily moved during that process. That could mean more office chairs, desk, and bookshelves. He told me to check back in if we needed some more.

I have a lot of books.

My one-on-one meeting was helpful and productive. It was one-part lay of the land, and one part sorting out my schedule for the spring term. I’ll be designing a new course, and also running a class I have right now. And, perhaps the best part, I know what’s ahead four whole months in advance.

Immediately following that, there was a faculty meeting. We decided we were faculty, somehow overestimating me in that assessment, and then commenced the business of the meeting, which was impressively kept on schedule. Department items were discussed, a good time was had by all.

We return once again to We Learn Wednesdays, the feature which finds me riding my bike around the county, hunting for historical markers. This is the 48th installment, and the 80th marker in the We Learn Wednesdays series. (That’s a lot of markers!)

And there’s not a lot to this one that I’ve been able to uncover so far. This is 117 Broadway, and the classic national plaque.

Built in 1849, it is today owned by a man who is apparently in the art restoration business. A century ago, it was a boarding house.

That’s all I’ve been able to find so far. I imagine it lands on the register because of its size relative to it’s mid 19th century neighbors. Though it feels a bit shopworn today, when t was new it was probably a fine sight after a long day’s toil.

Next week, we’ll try to answer the question, “Why is a post office historic?” If you have missed any markers so far, you can find them all right here.

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17
Sep 24

Come for the cats, be pleasantly surprised by something else

I have been asked by the house’s executives to get right to the important part of the day’s activity, which is, of course, the most popular feature on the site. So we will go directly to checking in on the kitties.

Phoebe is usually the driver of this, because she knows she is very photogenic. Just sitting on the landing of the stairs, look at those pretty eyes.

She does not want to share the mail, however. Sometimes she gets mail, but she’s convinced all of it is hers. She sits on it.

Oh, sure, she lets us have the bills, but she keeps the bulk mail, magazines and the like. She’s not supposed to be on the counter, but our cats are jailhouse lawyers, and they’ve figured out that if you’re sitting on a bank mailer, you’re not sitting on the countertop.

Poseidon is no better about countertops. And here he is, different day, same counter, sleeping on a box full of produce.

He’s waiting to see what’s inside. He loves trying to chew on some of our veggies. This summer he discovered corn stalks. Corn stalks are bad for cats, so we have to hide them. And we have to hide them when he’s not paying attention, because he remembers they’re in the fridge, or stored away here or there. He remembers long after they’re gone. He’s probably dreaming about corn there.

And when there is no corn, he might switch between pouting about it, and trying to charm you into getting some for him.

But we, of course, tell him no. He’s never one not to try, though. He’s a persistent little so and so.

The cats, you see, are doing well, and they thank you for your interest.

I had a nice cool swim this afternoon. It was a 1,720 yard swim. They’re getting a little faster of late, but there’s only so much improvement of which I am capable of. I know it, because I can still shave chunks of time off in pretty decent increments. Probably it’s the cooler water.

Also, I’m swimming enough to know when my arms will stop protesting and just do the work. And I’m close to knowing lap lengths just by feel.

But to demonstrate my ability: this is the summer where I’ve finally started to swim in a straight line.

More or less.

Let us return to the Re-Listening project. Here, I am listening to all of my old CDs in the car, and I’m playing them in the order of their acquisition. I’m also writing about them here, because we need the content. These aren’t reviews, because they’d be woefully out of date and I’m no critic. They are, however, sometimes full of memories, and a good excuse to post a few videos. These songs are from 2003, from an album I got in 2006 or so, of the overnight success, Howie Day, who was, in fact, a seven-year overnight success.

“Stop All the World Now” was the second album and, the major label debut, for Day. Critically, it got a lukewarm reception, but it went platinum in 18 or 19 months, and the third single, “Collide,” which you heard on the radio and in TV and movies a lot, was certified gold. And, two-plus decades later, it holds up as a pop-rock record.

And it’s full of hum-along songs, tunes you pick up quickly on the first or second listen and want to come back for a few more times. This is the fifth track on the album, and it fits that bill with an instrumentation that feels simultaneously earthly and ethereal, which seems a feat.

It is also of it’s time. But, there’s a small window on the musical calendar where rock was in an ebb and alt was disappearing and singer-song writers with some indie-pop sensibilities could fill some airspace and some evenings. I don’t really know what that means, except that I do, and it also sounds right.

This was the first single from that record, the first time a broader audience heard him. It was August 2003, and this sounds like that. I don’t remember the first time I heard that song, but I do remember the work I was doing late that summer.

I was doing interviews and producing a documentary on an upcoming tax referendum. (The tax went to a statewide special ballot vote that September, but this is Alabama and so it didn’t just fail, but failed spectacularly. The director of the state Board of Education was in tears on TV that night.) Also, at about that same time I was busy covering Roy Moore being removed from the bench as Alabama’s Supreme Court Chief Justice. Being Alabama, he got another shot at the bench, largely on the same religious rhetoric that got him kicked off the first time.

Probably I picked up on Howie Day a little bit after that. Sharp-eared listeners might have found him on the “I Am Sam” soundtrack, which we featured here a few weeks ago. He covered “Help!”

Day has had a handful of ugly legal trouble of the domestic and chemical varieties, but he’s still out there doing it. Day is touring on the 20th anniversary of this record right now.

Next time in the Re-Listening project, we’ll have a glance at a post-grunge album at it’s most polished and most posty.

Tomorrow, a meeting, and also a meeting!