music

adventures / Friday / music / photo — Comments Off on A rock ‘n’ roll show
1
Jul 22

A rock ‘n’ roll show

Did a little showroom floor shopping today. That’s twice I’ve done that in the last month, not counting quick grocery store visits. I don’t blame the pandemic for this. I blame the small amount of shopping I do, and also the internet. I walked around Target recently looking for shorts thinking This is easier on the website. And, today, we started the sofa-shopping process. I’m sure it will be a process.

Today’s process involved going to one store and sitting on seven sofas, a few of them more than once.

There is, of course, a sale. There is always a sale at a furniture store. Some of the gimmicks more thoughtful than others. But the woman we met today explained, in some tedious and plodding detail, the renovation sale they were undertaking. One half of the store is being reworked. And later this month they’ll flip it. And in the fall the whole store will be open again. But! For now! Everything is too crowded and it all must go at these low, low, toe-stubbing prices!

There is always a sale. Always a gimmick. And the drop cloths were a nice touch, but I am skeptical. The furniture store in my hometown held a going out of business sale for at least five years.

Anyway, we might have found one. We’ll think about it. There’s an even bigger sale next Thursday.

There is always a sale.

We made it over to the amphitheater, with easy parking, just in time for a concert. Opening the show was Toad the Wet Sprocket. It took 30 actual years, including a two-year Covid postponement, but I finally got to see this set live.

The Gin Blossoms are still happily using their 1996 “Congratulations I’m Sorry” aesthetic. It’s just perfect. Robin Wilson sounds good. Jesse Valenzuela is still pretty amazing.

(I haven’t seen them since 1996-97 or so, sadly.)

And, of course, the headliner, if you’ve been around this space in the last two days, was Barenaked Ladies. Canadian Music hall of famers Barenaked Ladies.

We walked in while Toad the Wet Sprocket was playing “Crazy Life,” which was a personal treat. At the end of the show Toad the Wet Sprocket and Gin Blossoms came out to join BNL in a cover of Traveling Wilburys’ “Handle With Care.” I had no idea how much I wanted to hear that song, how … singular a moment that would be.

It was exceptional. The whole show was terrific fun; well worth the two-year wait.

And then we hopped in the car and drove to Nashville to see friends tomorrow.

The whole day has felt like getting away with something. Shopping! Eating in the car! A concert! An overnight trip!

Crazy Life.

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

A patient seeker, musically speaking

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

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

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

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

(I still miss Steven Page.)

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

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

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

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

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

Looking forward to a regular thing

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just go go go

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A light day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Something a little fun … Penn & Teller!

And something amazing … The Punch Brothers!

More tomorrow, I assure you.

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