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I just won’t move fast

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

It’ll pass in good time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I don’t know what that means.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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8
Jun 23

I hope you can get there

Whatever work it is they are doing in the road by my office, they are only doing first thing in the morning. I showed you, yesterday, how they cut a small hole into the role. This morning, they’d dug out a bigger, longer channel. This was what it looked like when I went to work this morning.

And it looked like that all day, too. No one came around for any more work, or to move the big yellow machines.

That patch asphalt, whatever it is actually called, was still tacky this morning. I was tempted to find a good stick and scrawl in a message, see if they’d leave it. (I’ve never written anything in a construction medium.) By this evening, it was solid. I wonder if they’ll leave the roll of tape and the drink bottle in hole when they fill it in tomorrow.

We went to Menard’s this evening. There’s no real story here. We picked up some cat litter and storage bins. The woman that was working the cash register was so slow that they opened three other registers whenever anyone fell into line behind us.

And, plus, she has three cats. One sleeps by her feet. One by her hip. One at her had. She had the robotic kitty litter cleaner. And she liked it. While it worked. It died a year-and-a-half in, after the warranty had expired.

If all else fails, I said, sometimes the old ways are the best..

No one got the reference. Just as well.

I began to understand why she took so long to ring up customers.

In today’s installment of the Re-Listening project, we go back to November 1999 for a new record from a California band. The point of the Re-Listening project is to revisit all of my old CDs in the order that I acquired them, so sometimes I am listening to something that was released earlier that I am just catching up on. But in this case, I know this record was newly released when I picked it up for at the time I was a big Counting Crows fan and I would not have wanted to wait.

I’ve felt, for some time, that I have more of less outgrown the Counting Crows. The Re-Listening project has largely reinforced that feeling. But today’s installment might be the exception to the rule. I think it’s because they’re finally displaying a bit of irreverence, and humor. After spending the rest of the decade being a mainstreamed line of emo, this was a, well, positive move.

It went double platinum, and the album, “This Desert Life” peaked at number eight on the US Billboard 200. It all started with the first track, the first and most successful single.

A friend of mine was a huge mark for Counting Crows, the sort that knew everything about every song before it came out. This, being 1999, was a bit more difficult then than now. But he put in the time to find these things out, and he’d share the interesting bits with people that would listen and so I knew some of the interesting things early too. One night that October, before the album was even out, but when the single was just beginning to get airplay, we were at a restaurant eating chicken fingers and playing foosball. There was a guy in the corner playing pop covers as a solo act and he did “Hanginaround.” We were leaning over the foosball table at the time, my friend and I, and we stopped playing, straightened up, and did the clapping refrain part in the third verse. The musician was surprised. Everyone else in the place thought we were weird. My friend and I, however, were very impressed with ourselves.

That song hit 28 on the US Billboard Hot 100, topped the US Adult Alternative chart and peaked at number five on the US Adult Top 40 which, I guess, is why they waited 10 full months before the second single was released.

I’m surprised how well this song holds up for me. I think it is the guitar distortion. The minimalism of it still seems fresh, somehow.

Perhaps then, as now, this was my favorite track on the record. Oh my, the many highways and several county roads where I turned this up too loud, and the parking lots where I stayed an extra two minutes to get to the best part.

And the hidden track, which never got enough attention, I think. As the youth say today, it’s a banger.

I guess the last time I saw them live was 2001 or 2002 or so. I think they were supporting “Hardy Candy,” which is the next entry in their catalog. They’re playing in Indy at the end of next week, but I’m not going. I think I had my fill. But they will show up a few more times in the Re-Listening project. Up next, though, is a band with an X-Files inspired name because, no matter how often I do this bit, I can not get out of the late 1990s.

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7
Jun 23

Only the second half is fictional

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You can’t wait, I can tell.

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6
Jun 23

Raise your hands high

Guess who we’ll be spontaneously seeing soon? I’ll give you a hint.

That’s from the last Indigo Girls show I saw, in Indianapolis in 2017. This will be my seventh show. Reportedly, they’re on the road with a full band right now. I’ve never seen them play with a full band. This is quite exciting. And it moves us, quite neatly, into …

The latest installment of the Re-Listening project, the thing where I’m listening to all of my old CDs in the car, in the order in which they acquired. And this installment is the Indigo Girls’ “Come On Now Social,” their seventh studio album, released in 1999. I guess this was my third Indigo Girls album, after “1200 Curfews” and “Shaming of the Sun.” I caught up on the rest of the back catalog later, and this album’s consistency was what made me commit. You wear out a double live album and then find two studio albums in a row that you lean into, hard? Caught the live act two or three times by then, too? You found yourself a band.

This is one of those things I wish I could go back in time and put this on again, turn up the sound and hear it for the first time. I’d love to have this first impression again.

I won’t do this through the whole post, but since we’ll see them in concert again soon, here’s a live version.

I want to hear that again for the first time, almost every time, because even now, decades later, I’m still finding new things to be awed by in that track.

Also, I suppose that’s the second protest song (of my generation) I ever picked up on as being a protest song (non-Buffy Sainte-Marie division.) Anyway, I’m trying, right now to read the Meridel Le Sueur essay that’s spoken into that song. But Amy Ray just buries herself and she’s beautifully, wonderfully distracting.

Always with the Re-Listening project I am trying to find some memory that matches a track, a mood that meets the album. Sometimes these things stand out. But, always, when Emily Saliers is painting a picture, it’s just an attitude. It’s a credit to her storytelling ability. Her imagery crowds out my memories. But to think of whatever this inspires in you isn’t such a bad thing, even if it is an imagination rather than a memory.

The difficulty here will be in not playing the entire album. But it’s my site, and I’ll play a half dozen tracks from it if I want to. Anyway, if you’ll overlook the VHS and NTSC analog quality that YouTube compressed here, this is a gem. For fun, I always sing the chorus as “There ain’t no way I’m gonna let this heart win,” and it changes the song substantially. That’s neither here nor there.

When the banjo and the mandolin come out … God bless the Indigo Girls.

Speaking of imagery. The other day, when this next track came on, I was at a red light. It was a bright morning. Lots of sun. But the mood here is anything but. I was initially drawn into the band for the harmonies, but then found the … let’s call it the visceral, emotional core of truth … but the thing that’s not at all subtle, not at all to be disregarded, is the quality of storytelling Ray and Saliers can put around all of that.

But then they have to pep it up a little. Here’s a little drum fill, a few horns, and an under-appreciated song from Saliers. This is the one song that charted off the album, small HAC hit that marked the end of the Indigo Girls’ crossover success. (Because the music industry is powered by corporations and so often has no real relation to what we hear, what we like or what artists play. But I repeat myself.)

Feels like a cookout song to me. Who needs a cookout?

This song references a real person, it was quite high profile in the late 1990s. Do you remember?

The hidden tracks are in that YouTube video, if you are interested. Just scrub to about the seven minute mark.

And, when we see the Indigo Girls next weekend, we’ll be having a blast.

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25
May 23

Can I interest you in some perfectly-priced accessories?

The day passed slowly, but quickly. Warm, but mild. Bright, but indoors. Quietly but … no, it was actually quiet. Quite quiet.

Yesterday we bumped into our neighbors and they invited us to spend the evening on their lovely patio, which we did tonight. We talked work and kids and vacations and accidents. They are delightful and humorous.

Somehow we got on the subject of wardrobes. He is a retail professor and knows a thing or two about a thing or two. And so we found ourselves chatting about french cuffs and cufflinks. She brought out some links of her grandfathers. And of course I had to say I’ve just been making my own.

He was interested in this, and then I tried to describe the process. Finally, I just went over and brought some out to show off, including this batch I made in June 2021.

He likes them. Loves them. Wants to make them and mass produce them. We’re talking unit price and creation time and source materials and I find all of this amusing. He also came up with a price point. It’s mildly funny hearing someone plan out a business from something you do with idle hands. The best part was that she went inside to fetch this or that, and when she came back out he was still going on about it. As she came back outside I said, “He’s still talking about those cufflinks.”

Because she knows her husband, without pause or reservation or even condemnation, she said “I know. And he will all night.”

And, basically, he did.

I fully expect he’ll have the business model all nailed down this time next week.

At least I hope so. And, like all of my wildest ideas, may it make a mint. Or at least a cut of the profits my neighbor makes.

OK people, when we wrap up this post we’ll be officially, and momentarily, caught up in the Re-Listening project. This is the one where I’m playing all the old CDs in my car, in the order in which I acquired the disc. It has been a big week, because I was once again well behind in this content-padding trip down memory lane. Yesterday’s installment was from Guster, and today’s feature is from … Guster!

This was September or October of 1999. “Lost and Gone Forever.” I know that because their third studio album came out that September, and we saw them in October. I had the clever idea to put the ticket with the liner notes in my CD book, and it is still there today. Brian Rosenworcel broke his kit in Nashville the night before. I know this because he wrote about it.

This song isn’t from that performance, being from 2016 and in Boston, but in 1999, at Five Points South Music Hall in Birmingham, this was the first song we heard.

For a decade, between 1994 and 2003, that was a terrific venue. I saw a lot of good shows there, including my first live Guster performance. Two college friends and I went. One of them is still a social media friend. I wonder if she remembers this show. It was a long time ago.

Again, different performance, but this was the second song in that show, and track 5 on “Lost and Gone Forever.”

This was the fourth tune from our concert, wonderful then as it is beautiful now.

I don’t recall the songs from the show, which took place on a Wednesday night, but I did discover a site that, somehow and for some reason, publishes setlists. They even estimate the length of the show, which has to be wrong, but they don’t list the other acts. I think The Push Stars opened for them.

Anyway, the record finished 1999 at 169 on the Billboard Top 200. They played eight of the 11 tracks that evening, including the single “Fa Fa,” which, for my money, is perhaps the weakest song in the band’s entire catalog. It peaked at 26 on the Top 40.

If I recall correctly, the guy that produced this record was on the early part of the tour, playing bass. If you read into the show notes link above — and you did, didn’t you? — you find out the guy hadn’t played a bass in years. Spare a thought for someone who is in a rhythm section with the Thunder God.

On this listen, as is so often the case on this fantastic record, “I Spy” really stands out.

Guster is a great band (and a great show each time I’ve seen them, catch ’em if you can), and “Lost and Gone Forever” is a a terrific record. Having two of their discs back-to-back is a wonderful treat. And, somehow, the Re-Listening project is just getting better and better.