music « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

music

adventures / books / cycling / I do not know what is happening. / Monday / music / New Jersey / photo / swimming / video — Comments Off
28
Aug 23

‘Just like children sleepin’, we could dream this night away’

I swam 2,000 yards this evening. It was that or go stumble through a run, and my knees said: swim, why don’t ya? So I dove in, donned the ol’ goggles and started the freestyle stroke, with the occasional kick when I could remember to, counting laps along the way. Somewhere around 360 or 400 yards, my arms stopped complaining and just carried on with the effort. That’s my longest swim since 2015, where one fine September day I put 2,900 yards in the books. It is my 10th swim of the summer, and I did it all uninterrupted. I’m pleased with what seems like an impressive progression, and wondering what I’m doing poorly if I’m not a.) super winded or b.) exhausted or c.) both, after the fact, and if I have enough time to get to two miles this season.

Three, four, more swims, right? Surely that’s outrageous and feasible, all at the same time.

I do not know what is happening.

This has been a nice exercise. Something about the rhythm, even for an inconsistent water splasher as I am, becomes meditative enough. If you’re concentrating on keeping the lap count right or, occasionally, focusing on your technique, all of the other things can go out of your mind.

This lets the other things come back into your mind, because when you splash the water away at the wall, more water moves back through.

I don’t know what that means, either. Not really. I didn’t spend my time in the pool writing this. Clearly, that’s the oversight here.

Anyway, laps, time spent not writing this in my mind, because time was spent thinking about class preparation, instead. Not every day is a day full of deliverables, and this was one of those days. But! Two thousand yards!

Phoebe was not impressed. But, then, she’s a classic sidestroker, swimming on the carpet as she does throughout the day.

On Friday, she was very cuddly.

Some days, kitty needs dictate events. And part of Friday morning was one of those days.

Poseidon continues to maintain a watchful eye over his kingdom. He’s lately improved his approach to climbing up the narrow scratching post. What was once a chaotic effort to get up there for “Now what?” has become a confident, measured attack for “Where else should I be?”

I expect he’ll be leaping directly on top of it before long. When, that is, he’s not on the top of the refrigerator.

“No peektures, please.”

So the cats are doing just fine. So are their talons, as you can see a bit there.

We had an interesting bike ride on Saturday. We started too late. My fault. It was already quite warm. But we started with a tailwind. (Which is counterintuitive.) And so we had some impressive splits in the first half of the ride.

It was all I could do to hang on, so there’s no video, no shadow selfies or other cool camera tricks this time. Even still, we had the wonderful opportunity to see a few cool barns. This one was between here and there.

And this one we rode past just after our turnaround about halfway into the ride. (But more about our halfway destination at a later time.)

Soon after, we got back to a place that was more familiar, which meant my lovely bride could drop me. I was dead, but knew my way back, at least. I went a longer way, just for the spite of extra mileage. And, right at the end of that, I blew another inner tube.

They come in bunches for me, and that’s not frustrating at all, getting to break out a tire lever on your rear wheel twice in two weeks.

I suggested a lovely and romantic night out. There’s a winery nearby and they serve upscale pizzas on the weekend and it’s supposed to be lovely. Reservations were made, and 3.6 miles down the road we went. We timed it such that we caught last bit of the sunset creating a bokeh effect of the cars making the drive down the last dirt road. By the time we parked and got onto the property the sun was gone. A three-piece band was playing, mellow strains floating over the rows of grapes on the still August air being our introduction. This was the view.

We were sat right away. And the group played “Harvest Moon” as if on cue.

The only Neil Young song you need, really.

Some time passed and the hostess came by to see where our waiter was. You could tell there was some back-of-the-house drama going on. Someone else came to take our order. She did not know the special pizza of the day. A third person, then, stopped by to tell us about that creation, which was when our actual waiter turned up.

This was the special pizza of the day. They called it a Cubano, something or other. And though I have little need for dill pickles in general and no need for them on my pizza, you had me at Cubano.

Being the special, I reasoned, must mean that it was good. And it was good. Somehow those pickles worked.

They also had a lot of pizzas they put honey on. The Yankee’s had honey, and it was delicious, and maybe honey is one of those things, like bacon, that’s good on everything.

What if you put honey on bacon?

After an hour our pizza showed up, which is great, because I was about to launch into my whole “… and this is why I don’t pick restaurants” bit, which is absolutely why I don’t pick restaurants. We didn’t have a waiter. The place that is serving only pizza was struggling to get pizzas out. But it was tasty. The music was fine. The singer had a terrific Jeff Tweedy vibe, but judged his audience not-yet-ready for the Uncle Tupelo or Wilco catalogs. He mumbled when he talked. Couldn’t make out a single word. Sang wonderfully.

Our waiter, our real one, brought our pizza and … that’s about it. It brought up questions about who gets the tip, which is really just a question about why we use a tipping system, anyway.

After pizza we got a little ice cream, a nice end to a lovely day.

Yesterday afternoon we sat outside, as has been our recent custom, and read. I breezed through the second section of Eudora Welty’s memoir, One Writer’s Beginnings (1984). As I don’t read a lot of fiction, I’ve never read her work, but she’s a marvelous writer, and she delivers it with the most deft touch, when she’s talking about her bygone days. This second section — all of this book adapted from a series of lectures she delivered late in life — is about traveling as a young girl with her parents to see the extended family. Traveling from Jackson, Mississippi to West Virginia and Ohio was a week, one-way, in the car. At times they were ferried over creeks and rivers. Sometimes the ferry was powered by a man pulling on a rope. It was the 19-teens, and the same world, but harder.

The whole section dives into her grandparents, and deeper parts of the family roots as she understood them. And the people here are developed with the depth and care you would expect of a keen observer and a more-than-able writer. The very last part, after they’ve gotten home from the long summer journey …

“The events in our lives happen in a sequence of time, but in their significance to ourselves they find their own order, a timetable not necessarily — perhaps not possibly — chronological. The time as we know it subjectively is often the chronology that stories and novels follow: it is the continuous thread of revelation.”

I bet even that paragraph means different things to people at different points in their lives. Looking back and marinating in it all, re-playing and re-rationalizing things, putting a narrative to it all. It would be different to a woman of 74, as she was when she delivered that lecture at Harvard, than it would have been to the students in the audience. And the professors and middle-aged people in the room that nodded along sagely, they’d have another understanding, too.

It’ll probably mean something different to me, next Sunday, when I finish the book.

links / memories / music / Re-Listening / running / tabs / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
15
Aug 23

Yes, the world’s best hobo song is included here

Last night I swam a mile. I didn’t know how much I would do, but it started raining on me at about 800 yards and I didn’t want to get wet, so I just stayed in the pool. Before you know it, that’s 1,650 yards and my shoulders felt like it.

The getting wet joke is a lame family joke. We’d gone on a vacation, a dive trip, and my step-father and his kids had just been certified for open water diving. Now, some of us had been diving for a long time, and some of us took to water naturally, and a lot of us had learned from different companies and through evolving teaching methodologies. So I got to be the stick in the mud who demanded the safety meeting the night before our first dives.

Good thing, too, because we learned that my step-sister thought that giving the Heimlich maneuver was delivering CPR. (To be fair, she was young.) Anyway, she wanted to go to the pool, but I wanted to go over hand signals and hypothetical situations. It seemed a good idea. She hated every moment of it. Finally, after a refresher on rescue breathing, and a run through of the basic Caribbean fish signals, we decided we were all at least in the same chapter of the book. So it was time to hit the pool. But it was raining, you see, and so she wasn’t enthused by that. (She was young.) So the rest of us went to the pool. I stayed underwater so I would not get wet.

But last night, I swam that mile and then I floated in the water listening to the raindrops until I got cold. It was delightful in every way.

I swam a mile and I … liked … it?

I do not know what is happening.

Maybe I’ll go for another swim on Thursday.

My laps have been pretty decent, by my standards. My riding has been OK, but light. My running, lousy as ever. Now I just need to put them all in a consistent routine. That’s the part that always gets me.

Today, just more peaches. We tried the new blender. (It blends!) We had peach smoothies. And then we blanched peaches to freeze. Our freezer has a lot of peaches in it now. A new colleague came over and took some off our hands. I brought in three more baskets from the tree. I made myself another smoothie.

We goofed off in the pool until dinner time. It was a fine day. Just peachy.

So let us turn our attention to the Tuesday Tabs feature. This is for all of those extra browser windows I have open. Some of these are worth keeping, somewhere, but perhaps not worth a bookmark at this time. So I’m simply memorializing them here, so I can finally close a few more tabs. (There are so many tabs.)

This is a relatively new one, and I must say, not really, but I have to start somewhere. 10 Alternatives to bi-fold closet doors (you’ll absolutely love):

The most common alternatives to bi-fold closet doors include barn doors, sliding doors, pocket doors, French doors, and curtains. If you want a more unique option, consider swinging doors, a room divider, mirrors, bookcase doors, and industrial doors …

If you’re tired of the same old bi-fold doors, choosing an alternative comes down to the overall look you want. Ready to try something new? Give these different looks a chance when you’re ready to close the door to your closet.

My home office has a bifolding door set. Not a fan.

Here are some nice places to explore here. Maybe I’ll get to one or two this fall. 8 Adorable small towns in Delaware

“The First State” is an amazing state along the Atlantic Ocean, Delaware Bay and Delaware River. This peninsula location means it is full of beautiful sandy beaches, riverfront views and gorgeous parks. The state also has a rich history dating back to it being the first of the original 13 states to ratify the constitution in 1787 (hence its ‘first’ nickname). Among the big cities and prominent attractions are a number of adorable small towns full of charm, history, and opportunity. From the Dutch colony of Lewes to maritime villages or the scenic beaches of Bethany Beach, Delaware is a beautiful and friendly state worth exploring.

I wonder how long we’ll see stories like this, before they all feel inevitable, I mean. AI comes for YouTube’s thumbnail industry:

This March, when U.S.-based AI researcher Anand Ahuja launched CTRHero, “an AI to replace Thumbnail Artists,” he called it “his life’s work.” Trained on millions of successful thumbnails from various social media platforms, CTRHero could create thumbnails within minutes, reproducing faces with 99% accuracy, according to Ahuja. The tool outraged designers who felt their livelihoods were suddenly at stake: some threatened Ahuja with physical violence. Soon after its launch, Ahuja sold off the core technology for CTRHero.

…

For YouTubers, thumbnails are serious business, as they can make or break a videos’ reach. Top creators such as MrBeast test up to 20 different thumbnail variations on a single video, paying designers a reported $10,000 for a single video. This has spawned a microeconomy of freelance YouTube thumbnails artists around the world, who hone their design skills to attract clicks.

Stop me when it feels like everything is Ready Player One. How AI will turbocharge misinformation — and what we can do about it:

By some estimates, AI-generated content could soon account for 99% or more of all information on the internet, further straining already overwhelmed content moderation systems.

Dozens of “news sites” filled with machine generated content of dubious quality have already cropped up, with far more likely to follow — and some media sites are helping blur the lines.

Without sufficient care, generative AI systems can also recycle conspiracy theories and other misinformation found on the open web.

University of Washington professor Kate Starbird, an expert in the field, told Axios that generative AI will deepen the misinformation problem in three key ways.

Starbird is a brilliant scholar and one of the leading researchers in this field. Check out her work.

As you read this, I am eight CDs behind in the Re-Listening project. That’s the one where I’m listening to all of my CDs in the car, in the order in which I acquired them. I am writing about them here because, it’s a good excuse to post videos of good music. Also, sometimes there are memories attached to these things, but mostly it’s padded content. And all of it’s fun. Except when you run across that bad CD, sorta like the bad grape you weren’t expecting. There’s one in every bunch, and it all comes down to taste.

Someone else bought Sister Hazel’s third studio album so I didn’t have to. I’m not sure who gave it to me, because I did not write it on the CD and it has been at least 23 years and two months since it happened. My memory is good, but there’s a lot of stuff in my memory, ya dig?

“Fortress” featured three singles, “Change Your Mind” peaked at number five on the US Adult 40. “Champagne High,” one of the album’s better songs, reached number 22. “Beautiful Thing” did not chart, which, in retrospect, was probably a signal that the moment of success brought on by Sister Hazel formula had somehow passed them by. It’s a mystery to me, really, because it’s the same as what we were all used to from the boys from Florida.

They are rhyming the word “thing” with the word “thing,” though. Maybe people noticed.

But, look, the formula works. If you want a fun sweaty party band, Sister Hazel can take the stage and keep you happy.

As an album, “Fortress” was a minor hit, settling at 63 on the Billboard 200. The record you remember, “Somewhere More Familiar” made it to 47 in 1997. Nine years and four albums later they cracked the top 50 again. Maybe tastes change around them, but the syrupy, twangy Southern rock guitar and the upbeat harmonies stayed with the band. And you can hear it still, Sister Hazel is touring all over the eastern US for the rest of the year.

Next up is one of those albums you regret. It was released in 1997 and I got it in 2000 and I can only blame myself. The world wide web was out there, and I had three solid years to find out “Deconstructed,” a remix album, is just a bad project. Even if you like electronic music, you didn’t want this. There are no new tracks, and no real reason to listen to this. I have probably played it four or five times, total, and two of those were for the Re-Listening project. Anyway, Bush worked with DJs from the electronic genre of music to remix some of the band’s previously released songs. The first one is probably the best track … but … still … electronic, British or of any other nationality, just wasn’t for me.

Hey, it was a fusion idea that went gold, and settled at number 36 on the Billboard 200 in 1997. I didn’t like it in 2000. I don’t like it today. I never understood it on my few tries in between. Maybe it’s just me. (It can’t be just me.)

Let’s wrap up this post with a better one. Up next in the Re-Listening project was a 2002 purchase, something I no doubt got at a discount bin. Something Sony licensed for a few suckers just like me. But that’s not a problem, because “The Sound Of Country was a 2 CD sampler set full of important tracks. It grabs you right away, with some classic Roy Acuff.

That’s the more famous Acuff version, of course, but his 1946 original is something to behold. It’s not o this CD, but I have included it for you here.

One of the greatest songs ever recorded in the English language is also included here.

It’s a fundamentally perfect song. Chet Atkins is in there. The background vocals are none other than the Jordanaires. That song topped the country chart for eight weeks in 1958 and climbed to number seven on the predecessor of the Billboard Hot 100. At least three covers of that song have charted over the years.

I am pretty sure I bought this double CD, which was, no doubt, very cheap, for this one song. It was the correct choice.

I was going through a Roger Miller phase. I’d find reasons to play that song. I wasn’t the only one who fell in love with that. It won five Grammys in 1966. It should have become a Broadway show and a network miniseries. If it had come out a few decades later it would have been embossed on mudflaps. The legendary Buddy Killen played guitar on that song. His people knew my people. Maybe that’s it.

You get into some important later hits, too. This topped the charts in 1984, presaging what would become of country music a generation later.

Also atop the charts in 1984, was The Kendalls last number one.

The father-daughter act released 16 albums, seeing 22 singles making the top 40, and 11 climbing into the top 10, including three at the top of the chart. Royce died in 1998 (this CD was published in 2002), but Jeannie Kendall, who started performing at 15, is still strong more than a half-century radio.

The whole double CD:

Blue Eyes Crying in The Rain – Roy Acuff
Walking After Midnight – Patsy Cline
Oh, Lonesome Me – Don Gibson
Mama Tried – Merle Haggard
King Of The Road – Roger Miller
Big Midnight Special – Wilma Lee & Stoney Cooper
When I Stop Dreaming – Leona Williams
No Help Wanted – Bill Carlisle
Sweet Memories – Frank Ifield
It’s Only Make Believe – Conway Twitty
I Love You Because – Bob Luman
All My Ex’s Live In Texas – Whitey Shafer
Louisiana Man – Rusty & Doug Kershaw
Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind – Whitey Shafer
Okie From Muskogee – Merle Haggard
I Got Mexico – Eddy Raven
The First Few Days Of Love – Lorrie Morgan
Sweet Dreams – Don Gibson
Tennessee Waltz – Redd Stewart
Honky Tonk Merry Go Round – Patsy Cline
Night Train To Memphis – Roy Acuff
Tortrue – Kris Jensen
Thank God For The Radio – The Kendalls
God Bless The U.S.A. – Lee Greenwood

And with that, we’re only four CDs behind. The next installment of the Re-Listening project will feature an act that shows us what turn-of-the-century country and bluegrass music should have done.

errands / memories / music / Re-Listening / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
8
Aug 23

Mostly music

We had some big winds and a great lightning show last night. Other parts of the region got hit quite hard, but we did OK. There were two branches in the road when we went out to pick up some dinner. (We tried a local pizza place, ordering things that weren’t pizza. The manager’s son, who looked all of 9 years old rang us up. No idea if he got the price right, but his dad was right there, cracking wise for us, so I’m sure he didn’t undercharge.

The lasagna was OK. But plentiful. I got two dinners out of it, last night and tonight, and I’m happy with that.

Anyway, this morning we found that the hydrangeas got waked by the storm. Mostly the rain, I think. One is in the back, on the eastern side of the house, but close enough to the structure that it’s hard to imagine those gusts got in there. The other is on the northeast corner. But hydrangeas will lean from the weight of water alone, and these guys were big and proud and tall.

So we went to a hardware store for some stakes and twin. Poured out a pint of blood to pay for it all, visited the grocery store to stock up on a few supplies. (How long does that take, we’re still re-stocking things. It seems a slow process. That’s fine. No one is going hungry, it’s just the idea of it, Shouldn’t there be more things in the refrigerator? There will be in time. What’s the next great meal that provides an abundance and leftovers? Thanksgiving? Will I be wonder about this in November?

Anyway, I tried my hand at staking up the hydrangea bushes. I spent a long time pondering strategies. I spent an almost equal amount of time wondering if I was up to the task. Am I kidding myself? It’s a weird question to ask yourself over such a small matter. First, they’re flowering bushes. Second, and you can look this up, it’s a common problem, and everyone has an easy peasy attitude about the solution. On the other hand, having driven most of the stakes into the ground and tied up a lot of branches, they don’t look quite as nice as they did yesterday.

Which was when I stopped, and decided to check on the peach tree. It was fine in the storm, but gravity put some more fruit on the ground, so I brought them inside. I ate six or eight peaches today. I may have a few more in a minute. The kitchen is stocked in fresh fruit.

I guess we’ll start cutting those up tomorrow.

Tonight, I’m apparently working on someone else’s project. Instead of reading about that, though, read about this.

center>

We are still trying to catch up to the Re-Listening project, and this post is helping us make a lot of progress. Remember, the Re-Listening project is the one where I listen to my old CDs in the car, and in the order in which I acquired them. I think I am seven CDs in arrears right now. These aren’t reviews, just an excuse to post some music, recall the occasional fond memory and pad the site with some extra content. It’s fun! And musical! And there’s a lot of it, so let’s get to it.

Tracy Bonham’s first album was certified gold, earned her two Grammy nominations and in 1996 saw a single top the Billboard Alternative Airplay chart. (She was the last woman to top that chart for 17 years, if you want a bit of trivia.) “Down Here” was the delayed follow-up record, released in April 2000. I got it off the giveaway shelf at a radio station. It was a signed copy. It wasn’t commercially successful, but Bonham shows her talent throughout. Here’s the single.

Wikipedia cites a ridiculous review about how it sounds like an album recorded in 1997 rather than 2000. Hey! There’s someone who reads the industry trades!

I’d go with a line like this. It feels like a song on the soundtrack of a movie about movie soundtracks.

The important thing to appreciate about Bonham is that she’s a classically trained violinist, playing at making pop records.

Bonham put out four more records after this one, the most recent in 2017. She still plays a few live shows, and has continued her varied and impressive musical career. She’s now a curriculum developer for kids’ music education. She also produced a kids album, 2021’s “Young Maestros Vol. 1,” that is aimed at teaching music theory and confidence building.

That’s a cool followup to a pop music career.

In May of 2000, Matchbox Twenty’s “Mad Season” hit the shelves. Their second album, it entered the Billboard 200 at number three and was four-times platinum in the next 18 months. Because the music industry is, well, the music industry, this success was a quantifiable disappointment. Their debut, after all, sold three-times as many units.

There are two memorable tracks to me. One I forget about every time, until that soaring riff that sets the tone. Kyle Cook can.

And this track, which has a way of haunting you, and is best not heard on the highway at night.

They’re on tour right now, supporting “Where the Light Goes,” an album they released in May. (Also, they are apparently climbing the charts again, apparently thanks to the Barbie movie.) The new record was a surprise, I guess, because they said they were going to become primarily a touring band prior to Covid. I haven’t heard any of it yet, but it gets four-out-of-five stars on AllMusic.

And I love this promo photo. There’s Cook, a rock star, but looking like he wants to play it like he’s not. Especially so since he’s standing next to Rob Thomas, who is showing his ultra rock star confidence. On the end is Paul Doucette, looking like he’d really appreciate it if you could think of him as a rock star, too. Behind them all is Brian Yale, who is just wondering if you’re done with that drill he loaned you last week.

He’s got a project to get to and he needs his tools back.

Someone gave me a copy of the next entry into the Re-Listening project. Tracy Chapman’s “Telling Stories” came out in February of 2000 and I got it that May, when it was on its way to becoming a gold record. The title track is song one. It was also the first single of the record, and it’s laying the groundwork.

Rolling Stone has a concise 16-word summation of her fifth record, calling it a “strong and steady — clear-eyed, poetic folk/funk of the kind that first got Chapman noticed.” That’s correct, and is always the case with Tracy Chapman, it’s never enough. She’s such a unique performer to me, historically, that every song is enough, but every song leaves me wanting more.

This one was a leftover from “New Beginning,” and this is, in part, why Rolling Stone called this album strong and steady, because you could put this anywhere in her catalog.

For my money, this might be the best song on the record. The woman is a poet who happens to be holding a guitar. Oh yeah, the Songbird sneaks into the chorus, too.

I’ve never produced an album, so I don’t know how this works, but is the last song supposed to be so awesome? Because this is track 12 and it feels like a third-song sort of tune.

The summer of 2000, when I got this, was an unusual one. College was over, real life was beginning, sort of. It took a few months for things to get going — not an unusual story, not everything begins on schedule. But there was Tracy Chapman, getting a lot of plays. I was grateful for that. No idea why I didn’t buy this one myself, though.

Before that happened, there was this. I was working for a company that, at that time, had three stations in their cluster. One of those stations, the best one, I thought, was a mid-century big band/jazz music format AM station that the station owner tolerated because the old music, the sports, and the absolute legend that did the morning show paid the cluster’s bills. It was a great place to learn because you could make all sorts of mistakes and everyone left you alone. It was a difficult place to learn because everyone left you alone. But it was fun. And one night, in a bin of discard CDs, I ran across this record.

Contemporary jazz just didn’t fit the format, so they were happy to give it away. The only memory I have of this CD is putting it in a player in one of the production studios, and making a tape for a pen pal in Arkansas. She did cute things like send me a postcard made from a cereal box, and blowing up a beach ball, writing a letter on it, and shipping it my way. Then or now, I couldn’t keep up with that level of creativity.

But I did have access to studios, so I set about to see if I could talk over an entire record. And I did. I talked about everything, and about nothing, really, for the entire CD. The run time on that CD is 55 minutes.

My poor pen pal. She lives in Texas now, and she has a beautiful family. They have two daughters who are in musical theater. I follow them on Instagram. Pen pals are just one of the ways that I’m sure social media does us a disservice.

I’m going to write her a letter, using some unconventional format – not a cassette or an mp3, though. Can’t play that lame card twice, even with 23 years in between. There has to be a local good or product around here that would be a sufficiently silly novelty.

Anyway, I think I am just three CDs behind on the Re-Listening project now. We may even catch up before the week is out!

memories / music / photo / Re-Listening / Thursday / video — Comments Off
3
Aug 23

Hard to Handle

We inherited this giant L-shaped wardrobe. A functional IKEA piece. It doesn’t match our furniture, or fit amongst it, but it is perfectly serviceable. When we moved, as I have mentioned, the movers moved it downstairs for us. I’d disassembled it into its four base parts and they sweated and streamed and muttered and heroically got it down. And then those poor guys moved our stuff in.

Eventually, I put some of the pieces together. I may never rebuild it into one piece, because I rushed through dismantling it, because see above, and took no notes. And I have no instructions. But there’s this full-length, full-length-and-then-some mirror on one part of that wardrobe. And today I re-installed it.

Sorta. That’s a two-person job. There are four hinges, eight screws, and the ones in the middle are done. The rest will require some muscle, and perhaps some more muttering.

It was demoralizing to find that the best approach was to take apart what I’d recently put together so I could get the mirror in place. And even that only partially.

I found a stopping point. How does one find a stopping point in an endless, intractable project? You say, “OK, enough of that.” And then you go outside.

It was a lovely afternoon, much better spent in the backyard than the basement. So I deadheaded daisies and hibiscus and pulled up a few weeds. I was rewarded with a new bowl of tomatoes.

This, in my estimation, was an excellent tradeoff.

I wanted to do this as a daily status update, as a joke, but I was afraid the joke would come off as boorish.

Early this evening I floated for 75 minutes, until the wind was chilly, and told myself I should do more of that, and for longer.

I only got out because it started raining. Wouldn’t want to get wet.

Also, it was dinner time. The day has moved swiftly, even when I have not, and that’s not an altogether bad thing. Though I would vote for consistency in days, and I would vote for them to feel longer than today did.

Let’s dive back into the Re-Listening project, because I need to catch up before I get … really behind. (Right now I’m 13 discs in arears.) I’m playing all of my old CDs in the order in which I acquired them, which sounds easy enough. But there’s a ridiculously overwrought process involved. First of all, the CDs are all in their big CD books. This part is neatly and ordered — though we’ll come to a moment, later in the Re-Listening project — when I don’t recall which book comes next.

From these books, I pull out the CDs and put them in a miniature CD book for travel. (Since the point, for some reason, is listening to these in the car.) Right now that book isn’t in the car, but here on my desk. I am patting it confidently now. Also, I am at the end of what that book will hold, so those CDs will need to come out of the mini-book and go back to their proper homes. So I need to reload the book. Oh, but four of the CDs that have been temporarily in the miniature book are still in the car’s CD player. They need to come out and go back to their proper place. Which means the reverse has to happen to refresh the playlist. Also, the last CD in the player is the first CD in a double-set. Everything is in the in-between. So let’s dive in.

In April of 2000 a friend of mine burned me a CD (remember doing that?) that was, at that time, seemingly a small release. (That was a thing that happened, and we didn’t even blame the supply chain. Things were just limited sometimes.)

It was Guster. We’re talking about Guster’s debut album, “Parachute.” They were just a local Boston act at the time. People were just barely downloading questionable tracks online. You can, of course, get the thing in all sorts of formats now. CD, vinyl, digital. Back then, the first few thousand prints were sold as being by Gus. It’s a different time, because that was a different time. But they put it out themselves, because Guster was a trendsetter, even in the mid-90s.

Adam Gardner and Ryan Miller split the lead vocal duties, which was what they were doing back then, but that felt odd pretty quickly. Owing to some of that, and it being their earliest recorded work, it isn’t as good as “Goldfly,” or anything else that comes after, but it’s worth having.

Probably, people bought this at their early shows. Or they heard it because their roommate or their sibling had it on. That song is the first one you heard. The blueprint for the next decade of what Guster was going to become follows up right after that.

I never got especially attached to this record because, by the time it was given to me I was already two more albums into their catalog. It seemed like going back in time to a more raw, nascent thing, and who wanted to go back to that?

This is the title track, with Gardner doing the lead. This song got mixed up for a lot of people with a Coldplay song of a similar name. And early 21st century digital media humor ensued.

Apparently some people thought this was, in fact, a Coldplay song. I find that difficult to believe. But I own no Coldplay records, so I could be altogether wrong in this.

Someone also burned me a copy of the first disc of a Dave Matthews Band concert album, “Live at Red Rocks 8.15.95.” I wonder why I don’t seem to have the second disc. Now there’s a 23-year-old mystery that’ll bother me for four or five minutes. Anyway, recorded in 1995, when the band was touring to support “Under the Table and Dreaming,” this was released in 1997 and given to me in the spring of 2000. It went double platinum and, from here, just reads like a live version of a greatest hits CD. Nothing wrong with that.

“Seek Up”
“Proudest Monkey”
“Satellite”
“Two Step”
“The Best of What’s Around”
“Recently”
“Lie in Our Graves”
“Dancing Nancies”
“Warehouse”

I wonder why I didn’t get that second — oh! Look! This is a version of “Warehouse” before the Wooo became a thing.

If you’re wondering about the Woo becoming a thing, it’s a bit of a call and response. Just a few years later, it was the thing to do with this song.

Somehow, I never really listened to this CD a lot. So there are no impressions or anecdotes to go along with this one. In fact, I’d all but forgotten I had it. I just never played the thing. Selected tracks always seemed to be on the radio, so maybe that’s a part of it.

I played this one more, a not-for-release Black Crowes EP from 1998. This was sent to radio stations, complete with two callout hooks at the end of the thing. Those hooks were for promotional bits. I picked this up because the station I was at didn’t want it and I did. There are seven tracks here, and six of them are all of the Black Crowes catalog I need. This EP was meant to support “Kicking My Heart Around.”

“Jealous Again” is on here, and that song was eight years old by the time this came out. “She Talks To Angels” was seven years old. “Remedy,” “Thorn In My Pride” and “Sting Me” were all six years old. The one I really wanted, because I was never buying a Black Crowes album for just one song, was “Hard To Handle,” which was also eight years old.

Remember, this EP is from 1998. (I got it in 2000.) The Crowes’ version of “Hard To Handle” was from 1990, which explains a lot about that video.

But that song was, then 30 years old, of course.

For years now, my goal has been to find the right mixture of musically savvy, but musically inexperienced young people and hook them on that Black Crowes cover. When they appreciate the awesomeness and intensity of that, I will play the Otis Redding original and watch their minds evaporate.

That’ll be a tricky group to find, of course, because they need to be able to appreciate a certain level of glam rock/jam band, they need to know about Otis Redding, but they don’t need to know all about Otis Redding.

The only problem with this goal is that you can’t just go around and say “Do you know about Southern rock bands with disproportionate amounts of attitude relative to their talents, and do you have an appreciation that the King of Soul is better than most everything that came after him, but not know about his posthumous releases?” Believe me, I’ve tried. It kills a conversation dead.

And it can bring a long blog post to a quick halt, too.

cycling / memories / music / Re-Listening / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
1
Aug 23

Happy August! (August? Somehow? Already?)

There’s this ~~superstition~~ very real phenomenon where, if I pick a restaurant, something will go wrong and the dining experience will turn into a big dramatic nightmare. I first noticed this anti-superpower when I said, on a hot summer’s day many years ago, “Let’s go to Dairy Queen,” and so me and a college buddy went … and they were out of ice cream.

I suggested they lock up and go home, because what’s the point? And on the basis of that very true story, and a lot of other incidents that are far more consistent than random chance — one time, for instance, we went to a suburban Outback and they were out of steak! — I carefully avoid most restaurant-making decisions. To the chagrin, it must be said, of anyone that I’m dining with. The burden of the decision is on the other person or people, but we all have a much better chance of getting a reasonable meal.

Since we hardly go out to restaurants in a Covid world, this has become less of a problem.

Today …

Today I wondered, for a few moments, if that whole restaurant thing (which is very real, I assure you) would carry over to bike routes because, today, I picked the road we rode.

It was a simple out and back. Leave the neighborhood, head north until the road ends because, on the other side of that hill, there’s the river. Turn around and head back. There were two stop signs and one tiny little community along that road. And there were also several cars parked on the road along the way for one unhurried reason or another. But the route turned out fine. It was an easy little spin, and it was pleasant and I’m ready for a lot of rides like this.

I did get a close pass by a guy in his work van. This is an odd thing to do because, I know who that guy works for. There’s a particular local HVAC company that will get a little email about it.

Everything else on the ride was just fine. I may repeat part of the route tomorrow, just for fun.

Elsewhere today, we marked a significant moment in the house move. The last three boxes of our things, part of an advanced shipment, were finally brought into the house. Cleaning supplies and the like. The things, basically, that the moving company didn’t want on their truck. My god-sister-in-law (just go with it) has been holding onto these things. My lovely bride retrieved them today. Two boxes went into the basement. The other was quickly unpacked.

But that’s not the significant moment, no. I noticed, the day we moved in, that the stairwell to the basement had a light burned out. Owing to the way things have been organized, today was the first opportunity I had to carry the big aluminum ladder downstairs, extend it to almost its full height, and bring light to what was once darkness.

You don’t count how many lightbulbs you’ve changed in life — probably for the best, after a certain level of achievement the notation would make you go mad — but despite the great many light bulbs I’ve changed, this one gave me a certain feeling of satisfaction. Can’t quite put my finger on why.

It isn’t the first one in this house. It might not even be the last one I change this week, so flush with the feeling of momentum am I.

Also in the day’s list of boundless achievement I have watered many plants, studied the baseboards and vainly attempted to tighten an electrical outlet cover. Oh, and we determined which outlet in my lovely bride’s home office is a switched outlet. We have at least three of those in the house. One in each office and one in the living room. While that last one is fairly convenient, I have an unexplainable disdain to the entire concept of switched outlets. That I spent two or three minutes plugging in a table lamp and flipping switches today is the least of it.

I also watched a video on DIY drywall, so if you’re ever interested in a productive day or two, and appreciative friends … I have a project.

The most productive thing of the day, aside from that light bulb, was when we lazed about in the water this evening. That was a fine end to an easy summer’s day.

Did you know that, when we drove 11 hours across some 20 percent of this great nation on the move that I listened to CDs? I listened to a lot of CDs. What that means for us, now, is that I am still playing catchup in the Re-Listening project. That’s the one where I’m listening to all of my old CDs, in their order of acquisition, and padding out blog posts for my own amusement. I am very far behind, so let’s get to it. Remember, these aren’t reviews, but an excuse to post some videos, and maybe dig up a memory or two along the way. It’s good fun, come rock out with me now.

I load these into the CD player blind, which is to say I often don’t know what is coming next. Sometimes I remember the order — since this album just ended, then thaaat one is next, and so on. More likely, and more fun, is when I don’t recall. There’s that little pause as the CD changer pulls one CD away from the laser eye and slides the next one into place. It’s like watching a movie fanfare on TV and wondering what you’re about to see. And when the first plucked strings of this CD sprang to life I said, and I quote, “YESSSSS!”

Angie Aparo, out of Atlanta, is indirectly, come to think of it, probably my first experience with radio payola. The owner of the station I worked for when this record was released in March of 2000 “encouraged” all of his employees to attend a performance Aparo was putting on at a small venue in town. Record label people wanted to see a big turnout and somehow, this was our concern. I went to the show, pressured as I was, and only later did I make the connection.

What’s important is the show was good. This record is stinking amazing. This was the single, all futuristic and almost from a different planet.

I knew that song before the station gave me the full CD, because it was programmed a lot, but what is pleasantly surprising is how deep this record is. You most likely know this song from Faith Hill’s cover. (Her cover isn’t as good as his original.)

And maybe you know this one from a cover that Faith Hill’s husband did.

The thinnest pop tune on the whole disc will stick with you for hours. So here’s that.

They aren’t all radio pop songs, but they’re all great in the car, great to singalong with, and, if you are in the car, good for a good hand dance.

Angie Aparo put out six more albums, then had some life-and-death health problems. After he recovered, he’s put out one more album, in 2018, and is still playing around the southeast. I’ve only seen his show that one time, in early 2000.

Somehow, around that same time, I picked up Bobby Bradford’s “No Saints Walkin’.” It’s perfectly acceptable blue-eyed blues, if you’re looking for that. I never played it a lot, owing to all of the good music surrounding it in my CD books, I’m sure. And nothing really stood out this time through it, that I recall. Here’s the title track.

I think his label released that album three different times across seven years. I’m not sure why. Perhaps it found a lot of success abroad.

Speaking of success, this is where I get to tell the radio success story. My campus radio station was one of a small handful across the country that reported their song counts to some influential charts and labels. The easiest way to explain this is to say that important music executives sometimes used that data to determine who they should push. “If it is a hit on low-powered stations with college kids, we should mainstream it!” And, friends, someone (not me, in fact, this was just barely before my time) at my station liked one guy a little too much. That person wrote down the performer’s name in the playlist affidavits a little too often. And, I fear, my college radio station is responsible for making Kid Rock a thing.

I don’t own any Kid Rock albums, mind you. I always changed the station if I heard him on the radio. I was doing that long before he started experimenting with three-sample lifts and chorus quotes in the hopes of being noticed by legacy performers. If someone at my station was an early trend setter, I was an early avoider. But then I stumbled on Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise. This band is amazing, even if Kid Rock is all over the first track.

It’s an odd thing to say, but he adds something invaluable to the song.

Now, before we go any farther, a little backstory is required. Robert Bradley came up out of Alabama. He sang at the Alabama School for the Blind. He was a busker in Detroit. And, there, four white guys decided to work with him, forming Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise. This record, their second, was a refined step up from their debut. RBBS’s fans noticed the difference, sometimes critically. And if you feel the same way about Kid Rock, here’s a version with out that guy.

I don’t recall which song I heard that prompted me to pick this up. But there’s a great deal here. This, after all, was an instant modern blues classic. Maybe the first in a generation.

(Also, that song sounds better live. This feels like the most real thing in the world, somehow.)

This one, this might be the song that got me.

Also, this record … it’s autobiographical.

RBBS produced four more studio albums after this one, and a double live CD, which I may have to pick up one of these days. Bradley ran a vending machine business for a while, returned to busking, and then put out another album on his own in 2018. I’m not sure what’s become of him since then. I hope he’s still out there around Detroit’s Eastern Market, singing and writing.

So now we’re three CDs closer to being caught up. I think I’m only nine behind, now. And, in the next round of the Re-Listening project, we’ll go back in time to April of 2000 to listen to a record that was released in 1994.

It’ll make sense when we get to it.

Happy August!