We had three-plus inches of rain last night. Everything stayed dried that needed to, I think. I still try to walk around and check most things after the big rains. This was, I think, our third overenthusiastic participation.
This afternoon I had yet another adventure in the 21st century’s second most annoying innovation: planned obsolescence. The details do not matter. You, too, know how these stories go. This is my third such instance in the last few weeks. It’s tiring and bothersome.
Here’s the fun part, the experience today took me to somewhere I hadn’t been. When I left I had nine percent of my phone battery and I needed to use that for the map. Also, I was running low on gas.
I worried about a scenario where my phone died, and then I had to improvise a fueling strategy. I bet you can’t even buy a paper map anymore. Lewis and Clark explored the continent with more resources than I had today. They’d be proud of how I overcome the adversity. It involved getting to the interstate, choosing the correct direction, avoid the interchanges to other highways, and then guess where my station of choice is located, which is one or two exits down from the house.
I made it to the station with 50-some miles in the tank. I got home with two percent of my phone’s battery.
The Smith Zoo and Nature Center got a member today, this cute little box turtle.
Last month this frog, a big chonky specimen, stopped by for a while.
Before the frog, we heard from a noisy fox for a few nights in a row.
In between the frog and the turtle, the reptile wing was completed by two visits from a 4- or 5-foot rat snake, twice. (Not pictured, for snake reasons.)
The frog I escorted to some woods. The turtle moseyed it’s way off all by itself. I took the snake away the first time, and then two or three days later it came back. I annoyed and startled it off. If it comes back again I’m going to herd it into a bin and drive it to the woods, some miles from the house. Maybe I’ll drive him around in a circle for a while first, to dissssssorient him.
Splashed around in the pool today, and then I did some swimming. It was another day of 1,000 yards. Three of those in the last week. So I’m going to up the distance next time. Because, I thought, when I’d finished, That was easy.
And later in the evening I thought, Maybe it wasn’t.
Of course, the only thing I’ve eaten today was a bowl of granola this morning.
Now I just have to remember how to use the underwater camera again. Not every button’s purpose has been memorized by my thumb and forefinger. I guess I should use it more.
I had a nice little swim this afternoon. It was little, just 1,000 yards. I am not a wise swimmer, but I am trying to be wise here. It’s early yet, I’m still building up distance or endurance or patience. I swam 1,000 the last time I was in the pool, and so my instinct today was to swim more. I thought I’d do 1,250 yards, but then I thought, no, the sensible thing to do would be to ease into things. And so I did that.
Dove in, the water was warm. Stepped on the strap of a kid’s goggles, and startled myself. A sea creature had gotten me! Laughed at myself. Started swimming. And swam and swam. This takes me a long time, because I am a slow swimmer.
But I found a random chart, with no attribution, on a random site that says my average 100 yard swim times are on par with people 15 and 20 years younger than me. So this chart is, obviously, incredibly accurate.
Of course, the times are for normal people, not fish, nor other species of superhumans or athletes. For all we know, they could be times of people who have never swam from one end of a pool to the other. It could be some ChatGPT chart that was really about cotton candy consumption times that got mislabeled, for all I know, but it suggests I’m swimming faster than young people, and I’ll take it.
We are installing a new closet system — and, Lord do I hate anything that uses the word “system” as a piece of unnecessary marketing. This is an installation for our guest bedroom. For the previous owners, this was a teenager’s room. The closet had the cheap, ubiquitous wire rack shelves. There were sliding glass doors. They’re coming out, too.
It was my lovely bride’s job to decide to upgrade the closet. It was also her job to pick the closet system. It was my job to remove the doors.
The secret to these projects is simple for us. She can build a thing. I can build a thing. We can’t build it together. So I left her alone, right there, to assemble the system. It became my job, after that, to make it actually fit.
The system has three clothes rods. Two at the traditional height and one that is lower. One side of each rod is anchored into the walls, and the other side of each rod will be attached to this MDF shelving unit. Each of these has two rods, one telescoping inside the other. And they’re all too large to work in tandem, and two short to work alone.
So it was my job to solve this problem. To the garage! And the hacksaw! The job was to slice through six medium grade hollow tubes of aluminum.
And then I sanded the burrs away.
She’ll install them tomorrow. I’ll let her put them into place. She likes to build things. It’s the sense of control and progress, I think. On these projects, I just say, I’ll be in my office if you need me. After some muttering, she’ll have made a nice little upgrade.
A now custom-built closet system.
Let us return to the Re-Listening project, where I am writing about all of my old CDs, which I am listening to in my car, in the order of their acquisition. This is just a nice pad, a good excuse to listen to some music, and a trip down memory lane.
And we are still a few decades in the past. (Which is funny because I have new music burning a metaphorical hole in my pocket that I’d really like to get to while I still, loosely, remember their order.
Anyway, the next disc up was something a friend and co-worker burned for me. It was 2004, and I was at al.com and it was late in the year, so I was no longer new there. My buddy made this mix of remixes. It was primarily Beatles, which we had debated at length, mixed with the Beastie Boys, who I never really appreciated. It’s possible he might have been trolling me, come to think of it. But at the end of the disc, he included this track, which still holds up incredibly, incredibly well.
The rest of the remixes weren’t really my thing, but as I was listening to this on a recent night I was struck by the production values. The quality of the mixes was phenomenal, even for the early oughts.
That guy, and his wife, are still dear friends. Tonight, on Facebook, I saw photos of their son graduating high school. I held that boy in my arms when he was a newborn, and now he has a high school diploma.
And now I have to find a way to send those songs back to him. A project for next week.
But, since that mix disc doesn’t really count, we move on. I bought this next disc on January 6, 2005. It had a bonus CD. It didn’t change everything, they’d already changed everything. But, for $8.48 it proved a point I’d already realized about the importance of The Jayhawks.
“Rainy Day Music” was their seventh studio album. It debuted at number 51 on the Billboard 200 in April of 2003. They moved 19,000 copies that week. It was critically well received. Here’s a Wiki summary …
Rainy Day Music received generally positive reviews from critics. Dirty Linen described the album as “a low-key effort that features delicate harmonies, recalling California relatives such as Poco and the post-Gram Parsons Burrito Brothers”. Uncut called the album “all acoustic guitars, rich jangling melodies and heavenly harmonies” and wrote that Gary Louris “has come up with some of his most memorable compositions.” Will Hermes of Entertainment Weekly described it as “folk-rock laced with banjos, accordions, and pedal steel” and “the roots move one suspects fans have wanted for years, its classic rock flavor echoing the Byrds, CSNY, and Poco”. Mojo wrote that “their new-found economy makes for some pretty lovely highpoints” and that “Louris is unquestionably a virtuoso, playing his parts with a decorous restraint, and contributing cooing, affectingly human vocals.”
… but no one raved about it enough, for it is a nearly perfect record, even two decades later.
This was the first track, where Gary Louris and Tim O’Reagan put these beautiful, delicate little harmonies together that so typify the sound.
The (almost) title track, which comes along as the fourth track, where, even if you were new to this, you knew you had some stripped down jangly pop genius and singalongs on your hands.
This is the song that The Yankee and I sing together. She, who often mishears lyrics and sings her own, sometimes even more compelling renditions, has a nice spin on this one. For her, it becomes a song about pancakes.
I think it was a deliberate mis-hearing in this case, but we’ve done it this way for 18 or 19 years now, and I don’t want to ask.
The Jayhawks, incidentally, were the first band we went to see together. Mark Olson was back with the band for a time, and so we drove over to Atlanta to watch them in March 2005. This CD was probably the first deep batch of their songs she’d heard.
It was a solid show.
There are 13 songs on the CD, and 10 of them are stand-outs, but this has to be my favorite. Between the bus driver smiling with every passing mile, and the song’s bridge. It’s hard, I think, to feel the same visceral way about a song, after hearing it hundreds and hundreds of times over the years, but not so difficult with this song.
The bonus CD included six additional tracks. Two demos, two alternate versions of songs found here, and a classic live track and between them, I’ve gotten my $8.48 worth and then some.
One of the alternates was an acoustic version of “Tampa to Tulsa.” Yeah.
Rainy day, sunny day, every day in between. This is the record for it.
Put another way, I bought this on Amazon in 2005, which is how I could recall the date and the price. And, of course, there’s a button there, just in case I would like to purchase it again. And I thought, Yeah, OK, until I realized the CD is right next to my elbow right now.
The Jayhawks are on tour — their in Spain right now — and will soon return to the U.S., to visit the Midwest and west coast. Maybe they’ll add some fall dates a little closer to me. I’d definitely go.
And, with that, we are now only five records behind in the Re-Listening project. So we’re right on time.
We had a party for the god nephews and niece in-law (just go with it) yesterday evening. The boys are at the age of physicality and not understanding the ability to hurt one another. How they don’t devolve in any waking moment to the most charismatic wrestling move now on television is a mystery. But they wail on each other, as kids do, in just about every other way. It’s fun for them both, of course, until it is not. They are both insanely careful around their sister, which is cute. I am still bigger than them, so I can use the news anchor voice or go stand over one when he is being a little too much. Sometimes it’s the little brother that has to be called to heel.
In other words, they’re boys.
So we recreated famous football catches and toured the basement. They were very interested in our basement, which is not nearly as cool as their grandfather’s basement, and I told them so, but they could not be dissuaded. We had pizza and macaroni and cheese for dinner. We played basketball as a last-ditch stalling effort before they finally left.
The youngest, by the way, has a girlfriend and they have kissed at school and he says they both liked it, and he is in the NBA. He is also graduating kindergarten in a few days.
Oddly enough, I wasn’t completely sapped of energy when they left last night. Must have been that real-strawberry popsicle.
The cats hid upstairs during all of this. They are not used to little people, is the best we can figure. Lately they are both quite friendly when an adult comes by for whatever reason. But these half-sized types are no good for them. They don’t really have a reason for this fear, they just know it on a run-upstairs-and-hide level, and they aren’t wrong.
When they weren’t dodging loud, smelly, pokey, little people, they’ve had a great week. Phoebe is anticipating the sun’s movement.
And she keeps a close watch on the front yard.
Poseidon, meanwhile, has the backyard under close and near constant supervision.
When he’s not taking some Poe-time under a blanket somewhere.
Goofball.
So the cats are doing just great, thanks for asking, and so are we!
I only got in 70 miles on the bike this weekend, mostly because Saturday, which I had imagined as a longer ride, was the day my body said “Hey, feet, aren’t you tired?” And my feet said, “Sure am. And what about you, back? A little stiff aren’t you?” And my back said, “Now that you mention it, yeah. And I just bet those hands are numb, too.” And my hands said “Pkkwbo fiwo iwbefnwne.” So I called it at 32 miles.
Most disappointing. It was slow, and I was well behind my lovely bride, and nothing felt especially good. And that’s why I shouldn’t ride a hard, fast, short ride the day before my longer ride, according to the hypothesis I came up with Saturday evening.
And since I was going slow, I decided to shot this hay storage. There are cow pastures on either side of the road, and that’s the leftover hay from the winter, and that should tell you how mild things were.
A version of that photo will probably wind up as one of the banners on the blog eventually.
Yesterday, I did a little recovery ride, designed to not tax myself too much. And my legs felt great on the out part of my out-and-back route. On the and-back portion I realized, Oh, there was a barely perceptible, but nonetheless helpful tailwind working in my fair a moment ago. That, of course, meant I had an insurmountable headwind on the way back in.
Anyway, today, I’m taking off, and I’ll get back to it tomorrow. In the meantime, since we’re here, let’s check on the month’s progress. May was a light month, in terms of mileage, but it’s still a productive (for me) year so far.
The green line is a projection, where I’d be if I rode an average of 10 miles per day. The ride line is where I was this time last year. The blue line charts my 2024 progress. So it’s been a productive, so far, and should be another record-breaking year.
No one is happier than my spreadsheets.
Yes, I have multiple pages of cycling spreadsheets. Never start doing this. Down this path lies madness, and mystery, and sometimes satisfaction, but usually a squinty-eyed, “How are these the data points I’m fixated on?” sort of feeling of “Huh?”
Our next door neighbor is a 1-year-old. And his parents, of course. But mostly the kid. His parents put a swing out under a tree, it is one of those four rope numbers, and it leads down to a plastic swing that looks like the manufacturer just messed up on the high seat molds and decided they could make something work out of it anyway. The boy is starting to come around to the idea of the swing, a little bit. It takes time, but it is a good swing and his parents are determined and, eventually, this will be a wonderful experience and future swings under that tree will be in the blur of memories he carries forward his whole life.
It’s an amazing tree. Huge, wide crown. Thick lush grass underneath. There’s going to be so much fun and imagination that comes to life as he continues to grow.
And he doesn’t even know yet that helicopters live in it.
Things continue to look beautiful in our backyard beds.
No jets or choppers are emerging from our greenery, though.
We are going to have some grapes again this year, though. If we can keep the pests away. (We’ll fail at that miserably.)
But it is fun to try!
I had a student ask me in the spring if I was excited that Jon Stewart was returning to The Daily Show. I’d mentioned some research we did on the program way, way back when and soon after that announcement came down and he remembered that. And afterward he asked me once or twice what I thought about the new episode.
Since it was a new media class, it seemed viable, even if these students have never even seen the product, let alone the Jon Stewart version. Somewhere along the way there was a good injection point and I said, what people forget is that, at its core, this show is a satirical critique of the media, rather than a commentary on society as a whole. And as I watched tonight’s episode I thought, This is the episode that proves my point.
His guest was Ken Buck, most recently the resigning Congressman from Colorado. And he … was not ready for this.
At the end of the interview, my lovely bride said, “He’s not happy right now, is he?” The question allowed me to return to my central thesis about the show. No, he’s not. He was expecting still another softball interview, but the difference is that Stewart came prepared, and was ready with real-time rejoinders, and names and facts. He doesn’t let things slide, which is what political operators are fundamentally trained for now.
Yes, Stewart has a staff. Yes they do four half-hour shows a week, and yes, he is only, himself, doing the one show a week and, sadly, for this limited run, but what he brings to this highly specific interview is different than every other interview you’ll see on TV, which is largely about cheaply, effectively (with conflict, if possible) filling time and getting to the next commercial break. There’s no substance in that formula. No opportunity for push back, even if you were so inclined. And many aren’t inclined. That’s one of the big problems of contemporary media, an issue Stewart has been pointing out for decades now, and perhaps never more clearly than in the A-block of this episode.
Buck wasn’t always pleased with how that went, even though it wasn’t, at all, adversarial. It could have been even less to his liking. Watch the interview, you see that Stewart bailed him out, or let a moment pass, three or four times. (Frustratingly, Stewart let one go that I wish he’d stuck with.)
We once again turn our attention 90 years into the past, because we’ve been spending the last few Fridays looking at my alma mater via the 1934 yearbook. (Part one is here. You can find part two here.) This is about the people living their young lives during the Great Depression.
This is not a complete study, of course, but just the interesting images and names that jump out. And what starts to jump out, at least a bit in 1934, is that there’s was a different, but familiar world.
Let’s take a quick look at just a few more photos about what is inside.
We’re just wrapping up the sports section today, and so we’ll start with this quick look at the 1934 basketball team. They were only 2-11.
It seems that the one interesting note is that the coach of the freshman football team was named the head coach. Sam McAllister had been the coach of the basketball and baseball teams for three years. It was his second job. He was 24-18 on the court, which the yearbook considers a success. “Silent Sam” left the plains, and turned up in Florida a few years later, spending 15 years with the Gators. But that wasn’t immediately useful to this team.
Just two returning players came to the first practice, so the squad was filled out with reserves and newcomers. One of the returning stars was David Ariail, first on the left on the back row. He was from Birmingham, was an All-Southern end on the football team, and was voted an All-American by his peers in that sport. Here, we learn he functioned nobly in every game.
He was drafted by the Cincinnati Reds, the NFL Reds, and played one game for them, and two for the Brooklyn Dodgers, also the football version. He also played a game for the AFL’s Louisville Bourbons, which is a team all but forgotten by everyone. Ariail became a colonel in the army, serving as a company commander in the 846th and the 656th tank destroyer battalions.
David entered the Army sometime in the mid 30’s and after serving in various units, was assigned to the 846th Tank Destroyer Battalion. The unit was made up of black servicemen with most officers being white. He held the rank of 1st Lieutenant and served as Company C Commander. On December 9, 1942, documents identify that he was now a Captain and became the unit’s Adjutant.
When the 656th Tank Destroyer Battalion was activated on April 3, 1943, Cpt. Ariail was assigned to Headquarters Company, functioning as the unit’s S-4 or Logistics Officer. By February of 1944, he had been promoted to the rank of Major and served as the Executive Officer of the unit, occasionally leading the unit when the Commander was absent.
The 656th shipped out from the New York port on December 16, 1944, and arrived in England on the 28th. After a month of additional training and preparations they boarded ships and sailed for Le Havre, France, disembarking on February 6, 1945. They were equipped with M18 tank destroyers and entered the line near Friesenrath, Germany, on the 28th.
Pushing toward the Rhine River at Remagen, Germany, they crossed into the bridgehead beginning on March 7th. The unit converted to the M36 tank destroyer late that month and supported the 9th Armored Division’s sweep to help encircle the Ruhr River in early April. They then dashed eastward to the Mulde River and turned south, entering Czechoslovakia near St. Sedlo on May 6th.
David was awarded the Bronze Star and also received the EAME ribbon with two campaign stars signifying the unit’s two campaigns of Rhineland and Central Europe. He also received the American Defense, the American Campaign, and WWII Victory Medal.
David stayed in the military for 30 years before his retirement. David Sr. served during the Korean War and at a number of posts including Frankfurt, Germany, and Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
He and his wife and two daughters and a son. He died in North Carolina, in 2001.
The other returning player was Frank Sindler, a junior architecture major, from Islip, New York. He’s second from the right on the back row, and was considered “an excellent floor man.” I’m not sure what becomes of him, so we’ll leave that alone for now.
Oh, the new basketball coach? Some guy named Ralph Jordan.
There was a new sport on campus in the mid-1930s. Some 37 people turned out to learn and practice the sport of kings. Most of their opponents weren’t schools, because not a lot of schools ran polo programs, I guess. And it was an open question, into the springtime, if the scheduled contests with LSU, Georgia and Florida would take place — if those institutions could find enough students who knew how to sit a horse. With all of that in mind, bright things were expected for Auburn polo, which had apparently earned some sort of championship the year before.
Polo first came to Auburn in 1932, via the the ROTC program and, specifically, Major G. H. Franke, mounted on the left, who led the ROTC program and was a star on the West Point team in his day. Also, the War Department thought polo promoted “skill in horsemanship and daring.” It stayed on campus until 1939. Tanks and war were presumably the reasons it disappeared, despite being a fan favorite.
Gustav Henry Franke was a lifer, an artillery man. Previously, Franke commanded the first US unit to fire on German forces in World War I. When World War II came he found himself commanding the Field Artillery Replacement Center at Fort Bragg in 1941, and then Artillery for the whole 6th Infantry Division. He also led the 81st Infantry Division at Fort Rucker (the modern Fort Novosel) and was largely responsible for the buildup of that installation. He would retire a major general in 1944. Both his son and grandson would later serve as army officers.
Sadly, the book doesn’t tell us who the rest of the ramblers are. Ramblers was never an official name for anything, but it feels like it should have been.
Speaking of names, I included this mostly for the title.
This was just the second year of swimming and diving on campus. They swam in a basement pool and wired their times to other schools, since the facilities were too small for competitions. From humble beginnings. Men’s swimming and diving have eight national championships, women’s swimming and diving counts five. There are 23 conference championships and 30 Olympians among the list of achievements as well, and to think, it all started with tank teams like these.
Marcus McGriff, a junior industrial engineer major from Livingston, Alabama, was captain of the team. He would later serve in the army, as an officer in Africa, where he received a legion of merit award.
It seems he left the army a lieutenant colonel. He died in 1972, just shy of 60.
Senior Lynwood Poole, a commercial art major from Montgomery, was the alternate captain. Probably just because of his name, and he brought his own swim trunks.
Poole, a diver, had to leave the team, a contemporary news account tells us, because of eye trouble. Whatever the problem was must have been minor, or solved, because Poole would also join the army. There’s nothing online about his service, but I know he also retired a lieutenant colonel. He died in 1979, at 68, in Florida, survived by his wife and two children. He and his wife are buried in Hawai’i. Their children are now in their 70s and 80s.
But the real star of the tank men was Howard Morris, a Montgomery junior studying electrical engineering. He was the captain, and the coach. Here, they list him as a conference champion, and I won’t even try to guess how they arrived at that. But was fast at the 440-free. He won all but one of his races that year. He was apparently a diver, as well.
He went into business, banking specifically. He got married in 1943, was showing horses a few years later. By 1950 he was a civic leader, a lieutenant colonel and nationally regarded as a dressage rider and horse trainer.
He became an official in the state banker’s association. At one point he was teaching artillery to Chiang Kai-Shek’s army. (So you can never say nothing interesting happened in the 1950s.) Tall, smiling, balding, he was also a long serving member of a prominent insurance firm. But all of those newspaper mentions about the banking organization end in 1963. He started Pinchona, a horse farm, near Montgomery in 1969. It’s still active today. Also in the 1960s, he served as president of The United States Pony Clubs, which teaches riding and the proper care of horses to children. If I have the right man, he died in 2002, at the age of 89.
Completely whiffed on the Wednesday feature yesterday. Whoops. This just a day after I skipped a planned Tuesday feature. It seems that, in my haste to be hasty, I’ve been too hasty. That’s the problem with speeding up, or taking one’s time, or both. Anyway, apologies for missing out on the markers. I’ll return to them next Wednesday. We’ll talk music below. But first … today was a peaceful, relaxing, “What was I supposed to be doing again? Oh, that’s right, nothing.” sort of day.
And then, breaking news via email. Isn’t that something? Wasn’t that something?
Usually, I know about the story before the emails come out. Social media, despite it’s many frustrations, is a swift informer. But I hadn’t been on any of the apps in a bit, and then the New York Times wrote.
My lovely bride was swimming laps at the time. When she was finished I told her the news, and we set about wondering what the comedians and the satirists would say.
I also looked back at what I was doing on this day a year ago. We were in Alabama, and it seems I was looking at the ol’ family tree.
Five years ago, I said one of those bike things that sounds like something profound in a waxy wrapper of nothing. Still seems true, though.
There’s no way in the world that was a decade ago.
Fifteen years ago, we were in Savannah, and Tybee Island.
Twenty years ago, I stopped by the local civic center, on a whim, which was hosting a model train convention.
Now, I’m no train enthusiast, but there are granddads and dads and children all being kids together, so why not?
I walk in and meet some nice people; one man telling me of some very historic parts of his collection — he’d accidentally been given the paperwork that documents J.P. Morgan’s purchase of an entire railroad; three men talking at length about how best to paint a cliff face and so on. But the best part was stumbling onto a booth with college merchandise.
I found this tapestry that I love. I got it for a song.
Now I just need to figure out how to display it, without it being used for cover.
Funny the things you do, and don’t remember.
We return to the Re-Listening project, which is where I pad the page out with music. I’m doing this because I am currently re-listening to all of my old CDs, in the order of their acquisition, in the car. It’s a wonderful trip down memory lane and I’m dragging you along, because the music is good.
Today we’ll do a double entry, since it is back-to-back of the same act. I picked these up in 2004, but the albums are older than that. If we’re going back to my first listen in 2004, we have to hop in the time machine and go back another decade to when Barenaked Ladies released “Maybe You Should Drive.” It was their second studio album, and went double platinum at home in Canada, where it peaked at number three. It was the band’s first visit to the US charts, sneaking in at 175 on the Billboard 200.
The first of two singles, “Jane” was an instant catalog classic for Steven Page.
There’s a lot of great work from Page on this record. Here’s one more fan-favorite, the second single, which just feels like a deep cut at this point.
I picked up this CD after a handful of the later BNL records, and several shows. So many of the songs I knew. (Three of these tracks are on Rock Spectacle, which was my first BNL purchase.) And so I don’t know when I first heard this song from Ed Robertson, but it’s one of those beautiful works that I’d like to be able to hear again for the first time.
The day I bought “Maybe You Should Drive” I also picked up “Born On A Pirate Ship,” and I wish I remember, now, where I got them. But because I got them together, these CDs have always belonged together. The former came out in 1994, the latter was the followup, released in 1996. It was another hit in Canada, peaking at number 12, and captured more American ears. “The Old Apartment” was a breakthrough single and video, and Pirate Ship went to 111 in the American Billboard chart. It was certified gold four years later. Andy Creegan had left the band, Kevin Hearn came in soon after, but this is a four-piece record.
It is peak 1990s Canada pop.
I still think this is a song about a dog, Catholicism and a bunch of other random things. It’s inscrutable.
People that just knew BNL from airplay — well the Americans anyway — will recall this as their first song.
It used to be that “When I Fall” seemed like it had to be a full, live show performance. But then Robertson played it in one of the Bathroom Sessions, and you heard it in a different way entirely.
Page will occasionally remind you he’s working on a different level. This is one of those times. Seeing it live is the preferable way* to take in this song, so go back with me to a time when it’s amazing we had washed-out-color video and you can’t explain the tracking squiggles to the children of the future. But don’t fixate on that, follow the performance.
That song … Steven Page … it just feels like it should be a misdemeanor to not know anything more than their later pop hits.
*I think karaoke would be another ideal way to hear “Break Your Heart,” but that’s just me.
One of two Jim Creeggan songs on Pirate Ship, this one sneaks up on you every time, which isn’t creepy at all. And for four minutes it just gets better and better and better, and bigger and bigger, even when it lulls, which is a lot of fun.
And here’s Creegan’s other track, which refuses to fit in any pop music mold.
BNL is touring the US this summer, though we won’t be able to see them. We did catch them last year though, which was the third time we’d seen them in two or three years. Everyone wishes Steven Page was still in the band, most everyone has wished that for 15 years, but aside from the 2018 Juno Awards celebration of the Canadian Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame induction, that may never happen. (Though they haven’t definitively ruled it out, and that’s what hope is aboot.) The band stills put on energetic rock ‘n’ roll shows. They’re very much worth seeing.
