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cycling / music / photo / Re-Listening / Wednesday — Comments Off
14
Dec 22

Pretend I have a good title for the prosaic, the basic, the music

I visited another dollar store today, found nothing but cheap plastic and small containers of food stuffs. This search for silly Christmas presents is going to require an upgrade tomorrow.

Tonight I started doing the laundry. Thrilling stuff, I know. We also enjoyed a nice, mild tilapia for dinner, and figured out the final details of the rest of our holiday travels. These things did not all happen in that order.

No one in their right minds does the planning before the fish.

Earlier in the day I did the recycling. Anyone need 400 words on that? Loading the car is the trick, you see. I have to break down a bunch of cardboard boxes, because we aren’t always in the best habit of doing that as we go. The boxes fit into the truck. There are four large bins that take the trip, one each for plastics, aluminum, steel and glass. Over time I have developed a stacking system that allows me to get all of this in the car. There’s also the other stuff to work around in the car: my bag for work, my lunch, an umbrella, some sneakers I’m driving around for no discernible reason. I made it all fit because it wasn’t raining in my driveway. But by the time I had it loaded, and covered the short 2.1 mile distance to the recycling center I was in a drizzle. This was what I’d hoped to avoid: recycling in the rain.

If you’re going to save the earth, the least the earth could do is generate some ideal weather patterns. Be appreciative, Mother Nature.

We’re actually in a moderate drought just now, so the rain, such as it was, was welcome.

It didn’t rain much, but the day looks like this. Every day looks like this. These are the colors we will absorb between now and late March.

I stood on the loading dock, for no good reason as it turns out, for quite a long time. Might as well get a photo out of the deal.

Next time, I’ll do one so that we can’t tell where the limestone ends and the sky begins.

I went on a short bike ride last night. I’ve been trying late night bike rides, but this hasn’t been working well.

Sunday night my legs were sluggish and there was some sort of setting problem with the trainer. I did about a half hour and, discouraged, I called it quits. Last night I was trying to correct the trainer problems, and even made some progress with it. But, nevertheless, it wasn’t right, so, discouraged, I called it quits once again after 30 more minutes.

Last night I figured it out. Really got the trainer and the bike dialed in. Half an hour in, I got into a fast group and I was able to hang on. It was the fastest half hour I’ve ever ridden. And then, at 59 minutes, I got a flat tire.

An actual flat tire on my virtual, video game ride.

My tube burst because my wheel wore out on the trainer drum and, you don’t care about this.

Tomorrow, new tires arrive, and I’ll get back to it. This is the final push toward breaking my personal milage record. (I suspect I’ll meet this underwhelming achievement on December 30th.)

Today in the Re-Listening Project we’re going to learn some things. And, the most important thing you’re going to learn about is Vic Chesnutt. He was from Athens, Georgia. He released 17 records, but his moment was around that fifth or sixth record. See, Chesnutt was in a wheelchair and was partially paralyzed from a car accident he had when he was a young man. He played guitar, but had limited use of his hands. The medical bills piled up, but so did the accolades among his peers. In 1996, a cover album, “Sweet Relief II: Gravity of the Situation” was released.

Chesnutt’s perspective of Americana, which was funny and pointed and gothic and lovely and frightful and pretty much every other emotion, was finally in front of broad audience. R.E.M., Nanci Griffith and Hootie and the Blowfish, Indigo Girls, Joe Henry and Madonna and more showed him off to the world. Here are a few from the and more column.

I’m not saying it’s not the best Garbage song. What I’m saying is it’s the best Garbage song.

And here’s a Soul Asylum performance worth actually listening to.

The undisputed best thing Cracker ever recorded.

And, finally, Vic Chesnutt appears on the last track, alongside the great Victoria Williams.

He died in 2009. He was described by one critic as “a neo-hippie, an ex-drunk, an ex–garage rocker turned earthy Southern songcrafter.” Don’t let the grime get in the way of the myth, though, especially when the myth grew better. The myth also obscures the complicated, and that seems as reasonable an approach as any when considering a songwriter that copped to the conceit of, ya know, writing songs. There’s equal parts misery and faith in most of his work, and whatever precipitate the two yield should be in there in abundance, too. It’s overdone, to be sure, but the writing is something to admire.

Today there’s a songwriting seminar in his name, and a songwriter of the year award is given out in his honor. I suspect he might have differing opinions of the virtue of those two things.

Next we have Primitive Radio Gods, which I picked up as a radio station freebie, and only because of that one song. And, until this very moment, had always thought this was a one-person band. (Sorry, fellas.) This is actually a three-piece. Guess I never read the liner notes. Anyway, they got to the very top of the Billboard Alternative Songs chart with the unthreatening, catchy “Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand.” You remember it, easy hip hop beats and a lot of samples, including B.B. King and gonging of distant church bells.

The whole of the album is like that. Modern alt rock, one important chord and a lot, a lot of samples used as fills. At the time this was impressive. Not avant garde, but mildly thoughtful. Looking back, it was technically impressive. Without thinking about it, I can reel off three different ways, we could pull down any sound, archived or contemporary that we wanted if we were to make a song like these today. But, mid-1990s? It was on a format you had on the shelf or you made it yourself, and the options of just searching through a database to find something that fit your meter were limited, to say the least.

These guys got caught up in a few years of record label difficulties. Drops, mergers, re-acquisitions, and so on. I haven’t picked up any of their later stuff, but they’ve released seven studio albums, or 11, depending on how you count. The latest was in 2020.

But on this, the debut, the one with the big and only hit there are 10 tracks. The one you might recall if you had a radio in 1996, this one, which has the distinction of sounding distinctly different from most of the record …

The title track, “Rocket,” is the best song on the thing.

For reasons I don’t remember, and mysterious knowing the timeline doesn’t easily and obviously overlap, I dubbed a friend Rocket. Maybe she was over at my apartment when this was on one day. Anyway, she knows that single and then she knew this song because I assigned it to her, for some reason. She’s married to one of my best friends and though I don’t talk with her directly on a highly regular basis, that nickname has basically replaced her given name in my brain for a few decades now. Weird how you tie one thing to another, for no reason at all. No telling why that happens.

If this feels brief or rushed today, I’d agree! And there’s not a good ending, either. I’ve almost finished the next album for the Re-Listening Project. I’m sure that’ll wind up here tomorrow.

memories / music / Re-Listening / Thursday — Comments Off
8
Dec 22

More from the Re-Listening Project

We return to the Re-Listening Project, where I am forever trying to keep up with what is in my car’s CD player. What’s in my car’s CD player is the entirety of my CD collection. Well, not all at once, that’d be a spectacular device. We’re surely decades away from having the technology to put hundred and hundreds and a few more hundred CDs on one simple machine.

But I can load several at a time in my car, and what I’m currently doing is listening to all of these old circles of plastic, in order. It’s a fun thing to do. And some of it is fun to write about. These aren’t reviews, but fun of memories, and a few good licks.

And this is the first record that, on this go around of the Re-Listening Project, that I’ve listened to twice. It got dismissed as mediocre at the time, but “Friction, Baby” has aged well as Better Than Ezra’s sophomore effort.

I listen to Tom Drummond’s bass line as much as anything.

But, first, Kevin Griffin’s post-alternative lyrics. This is 1996. I was 19 and, true to pop form, there’s a little something in there for most everyone or most any mood.

But that rhythm section, man, that still demands your attention a quarter century later.

I worked with someone during high school and college and the album title became a salutation and a closing because we both liked the record. She was from Vestavia, and, yes, this album is that suburban. I don’t know if I ever asked her what her favorite song on this was.

Do you ever wonder when the last time someone listened to something was? And how, after a long time away from it, if their impression had gone in some different way than your own? Perceptions are funny, inconsistent and perfectly valid that way. Anyway, there’s a nice mandolin on here, too. As I said, a little something for every mood.

Perhaps, in the long reach of life, you wonder why you did a thing, or spent so much time around a person or people. Maybe that’s why she’s unfriended me. (A fate worse than meh!) Maybe that’s why you stopped listening to a record you used to enjoy. That and other albums and other priorities. But it’s nice to go back and see what still works, and what you hear differently. Somewhere in all of that you get to decide what to lean into, and what deserves a cringe.

Anyway, we used this track on my college radio morning show. (Speaking of cringe!) Open mics, talking to the post and signing off for the day.

Top of the world, I guess.

I’m certain that I picked up this next album as a station giveaway. Probably it was the cover art that intrigued me. If anything, I’d heard one song on the thing. Probably something we played at the campus station. I don’t remember this getting a lot of commercial airplay, but as another sophomore album it got a lot of play from me in late 1996 and definitely 1997.

It’s Melissa Ferrick’s “Willing to Wait.” Ferrick is still touring. Still making music, and also teaching the craft, these days at Northeastern University. And while this is Ferrick’s second record, consider this. This is a career that started as a 21-year-old woman, opening for Morrisey. That’s ridiculous, but none too big for the Cracker Jack Kid. It’s honest, simple, complex, ragged, truthful, vulnerable, aggressive, and not at all a radio-friendly record. Which is probably how I came to see it on the giveaway table. But critics, and Ferrick’s fans, liked it. If any of those adjectives appeal to you, there’s something for you here.

This is the “Cracker Jack Kid” song, for the reference above.

I had this idea, listening to this record this time: what would this song, and it’s specific themes, feel like if a male did it?

Oh, and we didn’t cover this, but this album is full of intriguing instrumentation.

And some yodeling, or at least a fun little run of scat.

There was a girl — I was in college, so of course there was a girl — and this isn’t the song that I attached to that breakup, but this record was in heavy rotation at the time, and there’s this lyric here, about remembering the color of a doorknob, it sticks with you.

I lived in a two-floor apartment during the time I was listening to this a lot and also feeling that particular breakup. (I was the wrong religion, basically.) The downstairs was a cinderblock building. But the upstairs was simply two sheets of wood paneling. I could hear when my neighbor signed on to AOL. I could hear when she had mail. And, perhaps worse, when she didn’t.

Only now, thinking of how I sat on my stairs and learned one of the louder songs on this CD, have I thought about what music my neighbor heard for three years on her side of the wall.

Oh, look! A live version of one of the songs!

Someone played the stripped down version of their work is always so interesting.

And, just for perspective, that girl? The cheerleader grew into a woman who became a teacher, pretty perfect for her, I think. Her oldest kid is older, today, than we were back then. The last song on Ferrick’s record is titled “Time Flies.”

No kidding.

It was a bronze-colored doorknob, by the way.

music / photo / Re-Listening / running / Tuesday — Comments Off
29
Nov 22

A sidewalk shuffle

It was 58 degrees when I limped in from my run this evening. I did 4.25 miles, though I’d hoped for 4.5. I cut it short after I twinged my knee, which caused the limping, somewhere early in the second mile. And that’s how I came to spend the evening with an ice pack on my leg.

It’ll be 30 degrees cooler than that when I go to work tomorrow.

I’ll be somewhere much warmer, soon enough, for a brief time.

So I limped around the house, eating leftovers, cleaning up runaway rice, taking out the garbage, trying to find every way possible to bend over or squat down or get on hands and knees while wondering what I’d done to myself, waiting for the Ibuprofen to kick in.

We didn’t check on the kitties yesterday, and don’t think I didn’t notice that you noticed. You noticed. I know. This is the most popular feature on the website.

Phoebe has developed the habit of needing to be on the bathroom counter anytime I go through there. The easier for me to pet her, I suppose.

We have also come to the time of year where Poseidon has discovered a personally imperative need to be under a blanket. Any blanket near you will do. Body heat is important.

Sometimes it has been cool enough that they’ll even get near one another, which is otherwise unusual for these too.

Phoebe would like it to happen less.

Back to the Re-listening Project, where we’re listening to all the old CDs, in chronological order. These aren’t reviews, but just for fun, like all of music.

“6th Avenue Heartache was released as a single in April of 1996 and got a lot of airplay as it climbed to number 10 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks, and eight on the Modern Rock Tracks. It had Jakob Dylan singing over a Hammond organ and in front of Adam Duritz’s charming background vocals. So I bought the record. “Bringing Down the Horse” climbed to number four on the US Billboard 200, and it topped the US Heatseekers Albums chart. (I did that!)

This was a time when I was pretty sure that the judicious use of a well-placed Hammond organ was the most brilliant thing you could do musically. This record didn’t disabuse me of that notion.

Turns out, you can use a lot of that organ before you wear it out.

This was a car album for me, but it’s hard to imagine this didn’t play around our place a lot. Upbeat honky tonk from Leo LeBlanc who played with John Prine, Bill Medley, Aretha Franklin, Jose Feliciano, Merle Haggard, Clarence Carter and approximately everyone else, besides.

Sadly he died just before this record was released.

Gary Louris and Michael Penn are among the other huge stars that sing on the thing, but I didn’t realize all of that until much later. See if you can pick them out here.

Louris, who we’ll later hear a lot is in this one.

When I wrap up the Re-Listening Project I should start a Re-Louris project. I’m curious if there’s anyone he can’t effortlessly harmonize with.

Meanwhile, Michael Penn, who’s music I listened to ad nauseam, as if to dissect every possible tonal nuance, is in this song.

Speaking of over and over, the next record is the first one I’ve gone back and listened to twice on the Re-Listening Project. That has to mean something.

music / photo / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
16
Nov 22

The beginning of Thanksgiving

I finally figured out how to take photos of autumn leaves. It is the shutterbug’s lament, how to express the majesty of autumn. Even the best, high definition lens, top-of-the-line processor, perfectly saturated image leaves something out. You can’t get the emotion, the smells, the crispness of the air and the texture of the foliage in a photograph.

So, of course, here we are at the end of fall, the beginning of winter (it has been snowing again) but I finally figured out something important.

Night, and light.

This stand of American sweetgums is right by the parking deck I use on campus. There’s a nice set of street lights that, just now, are doing some quality work. Those red and greens are terrific.

I would have stayed to admire them, but I mentioned it has been snowing again meaning it is just cold. All the time.

I stopped by the grocery store, hoping to get ahead of the holiday rush, and found I might have been already been too late. There are turkeys …

… but not the size we want. On the left side of the case a bunch of eight and nine pounders. On the right side they go well into the 20+ pound range. I got a bigger one (More leftovers!) but it is sensibly oversized. Someone else needs that 29-pound bird. I need to leave room for all of the other tasty things that will be on the table.

We wondered about freezer room, but that’s not a problem. I could put this thing outside, in the shade on the windward side of the house, and it’d probably stay frozen. I did not — we have coyotes within earshot, after all — but I could have. It’s cold, is what I’m saying.

There are also turkeys living on the hillside behind us, but I don’t think those turkeys and this bird would … ahhhh … get along, seeing as how mine doesn’t have much to gobble about.

Since I mentioned, yesterday, the band playing in the studio, here’s that show. Hank Ruff and The Hellbenders:

He’s popular, and the studio was full of people who enjoyed their set. Tonight was sports, and, because we’re in the upside down, World Cup soccer talk, in November. I spent the rest of the evening reading, and being smothered by cats, who are presently desperate for attention, and body heat.

It’s cold.

IU / memories / music / photo / video — Comments Off
15
Nov 22

‘It’s all pop music,’ is a thing I said today

Tonight there was a band in the studio. Hank Ruff is a recent IU grad, and he’s making it as a performer. Beats grad school classes! He’s been on one of our shows before, just before Covid, he said. He would have been a sophomore then and I had no memory of that … until I looked it up just now.

Look how young everyone was! February, 2020:

Since then, a pandemic happened. Charlee went home to Green Bay and became a reporter there. Kendall is reporting in Milwaukee today. Hank topped the iTunes all genre chart for a day, knocking Encanto out of the top spot, which he rightly, casually, mentions.

I’d mention that every day.

Anyway, they have new single coming out in January, Hank Ruff and his band played for us this evening. I don’t know how many country acts have a saxophone player these days, but the guy in the far background has figured out how to make his spot work in this group.

I was going to make a “Is that country music?” joke, but about that time they played a song that Hank said his dad wrote decades ago. The song was “I’m Not Crazy (But I’m Out of Her Mind)” and that’s about as country a song title as you can imagine.

Safe to say they’re on their way, too. He said he and The Hellbenders played 15 shows in September. Good for them. They played three songs, ran their own audio and did a thoroughly professional load out.

I wonder where local band members go after they’re done for the evening.

“Evening.” Their mini-set was wrapped by 7:15 p.m.

After the shows I pointed the car to the house, checked the freezer for turkey room, set up some sanding for later this week, heated leftover chili for dinner, petted the cats and straightened up my home office. It needs more than a straightening, but it was in such a state that a straightening itself was a transformation.

Now I’m just waiting for the Artemis rocket to launch. Maybe everything will work right for their window, anyway. (Sometimes being a fan of science and amazing thing leads to long hours.)

Let’s spend some of that time on the Re-Listening Project. I’ve just working my way through all of my old CDs, in the order I acquired them. It’s fun, it’s nostalgic, it’s an excuse to post videos.

First up today, a soundtrack for a movie that was bad then and hasn’t improved with age. The movie gets terms like “cult hit” and “zeitgeist,” and the dreaded “mixed reviews,” but sometimes words get used without the writer knowing what they really mean. It made good box office money, and most importantly the music was good! Good enough, I suppose. The soundtrack was a platinum hit in Australia and Canada, and twice certified as platinum in the United States. Presumably that was on the strength of Lisa Loeb’s breakthrough single.

I’m sure I bought this because it had three or four songs that I wouldn’t buy on their own. I can tell you how important this was. I never listen to the thing. Almost never have.

There’s a good Juliana Hatfield Three song in there, and it’s always good to have The Posies to point too. Dinosaur Jr. makes you seem well-rounded, and there’s Loeb’s smash hit, not that I bought this for the Loeb song. “Stay” was good, still is, but “Stay” was already everywhere. And then there’s a Me Phi Me classic. It’s aged far, far better than this movie.

Maybe I should look up Me Phi Me’s full catalog.

Up next, the followup to Radiohead’s surprising smash hit, “Creep.” That song took over the airwaves off their debut album, and so the pressure was on when it came to producing and releasing “The Bends.” The record broke the top 10 in Belgium, Scotland, and on the UK Albus chart. Certified as a gold record in at least four countries and platinum in the U.S. and New Zealand and it’s a multi-platinum record in Canada and the UK. They rolled out seven singles, half the record, between September of 1994 and July of 1996. The angular guitars and the emotional falsetto helped draw a line in British rock of the period.

This was great car music for me. Probably a lot of late nights in the car. I drove a lot during this part of college, and so there was me, and, often, Thom Yorke.

“Blackstar” wasn’t a single, but was definitely a late night, car-clinging-to-asphalt track. That chorus is really something.

“Sulk” was a political song, addressing a 1987 mass shooting in England. Pay attention to what Ed O’Brien is doing with the effects on his guitar here.

Title track? Title track.

The Beatles, The Smiths, a David Bowie pastiche, and as critically divisive as a pop song can be, I guess.

After this brief toe dip in Brit rock, we’ll return to Americana pop … probably on Thursday, only on the Re-Listening Project.