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Photos, cycling, music, cats: a Monday clearance

I feel like I should be doing something. Can’t quite put my finger on it. Ah, well, you know how it is in the summertime. Things come along when they come along. Ideas too! And sometimes activity, as well. I’m sure it’ll come to me, or catch up to me, at some point.

I had to go into the office for a few minutes on Saturday. The tree outside my window looked pretty nice that afternoon.

We’ve had some pretty nice light lately, which is a thing you find yourself saying from time to time in these parts, even in the sunny part of the year. These are the woods behind our house, this evening.

That photo is timestamped 9 p.m., which is a magical thing, to be sure. Look how much light there still is in the sky! We’re just now approaching sunset. For my money, the late hours of daytime in the summer is the best part about this place.

Also, the cats. We didn’t check in with them last week, and site traffic no doubt suffered, as the weekly updates on the kitties are the site’s most popular feature. Just ask Poseidon who, I am sure, will tell you all about it.

Recently, we paused a bike race we were watching so we could watch a car chase. Which is to say, we paused a bike race so Poe could watch a car chase. He was invested.

He knew this particular chase wasn’t going to last much longer. There’s no tire on the front of that car. At the conclusion, he was trying to give the driver a few helpful tips. Get out of the car, lay down and listen to the officers’ instructions.

Poseidon would not be a good wheelman, I think.

For her part, Phoebe did not watch the car chase. I think she knew the inevitable outcome, or was embarrassed that her brother would assume the position.

Phoebe, I think, might be the better driver of a getaway car of the two. Whereas Poe would be like, “Hey, what’s up? Is this fun? This looks fun. Can this be fun?” Phoebe is always looking for a way to get out of any room, juuuust in case.

Smart girl, that one.

I had a brisk 34-mile ride on Saturday. I set no Strava PRs, and so that part was disappointing. But I did chase this guy down from a long way back, so there’s that.

He was a bit surprised when he looked over his shoulder and saw me. Maybe it was the huffing and/or the puffing.

Since we saw The Indigo Girls at The Ryman last weekend I’ve been doling out a few songs. That’s going to continue on for a while, because this was a great concert. This is the first track from their eighth studio album, 2002’s “Become You,” it sets the tone for the record, and it holds up like all of the best of their catalog. “Moment of Forgiveness” has a great set of lyrics, a wonderful refrain and a keyboard sound that doesn’t really come across here, but the spirit of the song, and more of Amy Ray’s spirit, does.

Speaking of the spirit of music …

More music! The Re-Listening project, to be specific. I’m playing all of my old CDs in the car, in the order I acquired the CDs. And right now we’re in 1999, listening to a double-live CD which was released in 1997, from a series of concerts in 1996.

Everybody got that?

This is Lilith Fair, which I didn’t see live, the timing and location never worked out, but I’m certain that, if I had, I would have been duly impressed.

The first track is from Paula Cole, who I did see at a different festival about that time. She had a cold, she said. She was afraid her voice would crack. She stole the the show.

There’s this cool song from Autour de Lucie, a French pop band I’d never heard of. Quite captivating, really.

Lilith Fair, of course, was a Sarah McLachlan-inspired project.

In its first summer, Lilith easily outpaced the then-fading Lollapolooza festival, in both audience size and ticket sales. It returned for two more summers and went on to become the top-grossing music festival of the late 1990s, racking up $60 million in ticket sales over its three-year run.

Indigo Girls, Joan Osborne and and Victoria Williams were among the other headliners. Then there was the incomparable Tracy Chapman, Fiona Apple and Natalie Merchant. It’s an amazing, embarrassing catalog of star power. The stage was full of huge and important musical acts, like Suzanne Vega.

But I’m betting the Songbird herself often stole the show. How could she not?

For my money, the best song on the double CD is this rendition of “Water is Wide” by the Indigo Girls, Jewel and Sara McLachlan. I listen to this over and over, just for the goosebumps.

Both Shall Row.

bespoke / Indigo Girls / memories / music / photo / Re-Listening / Thursday / video — Comments Off
15
Jun 23

Thumb-made

I made a handful of cufflinks today. Sixty will go to a larger project that a friend inspired. But, as I went through my old cufflink making supplies, as one does, I discovered there were some colors and fabrics that didn’t exist in my personal cufflink catalog. So, having remembered the workflow, my fingers regaining their muscle memory, I made a few extras for myself.

Now I just need to pull a french cuff shirt out of the closet, to show them off.

So I made 72 cufflinks. The three-part History Channel George Washington docudrama. Just trying to clear things off the DVR. There are so many things on the DVR.

Let’s watch something else.

Last weekend we were at The Ryman with the Indigo Girls. This was the third single off their sixth studio album, 1997’s “Shaming of the Sun.” (I wrote some more about the record in February.) This is, perhaps, the least good song on a terrific album.

Amy Ray talks about how this is the beginning of a new kind of sound for the band. There’s more rock in there, some Patti Smith perhaps, and some literate punk elements, too.

Tom Morello did a remix of this song some years back. I had no idea this existed until now. It’s a remix. Every remix basically feels like this — Yes, I liked your song, though this is how it should have been done, in a longer, and still lesser, way — but at least you can hear Ulali on this version of the track. (Sadly the a capella group is not on this tour. Though they toured with the Indigo Girls for part of 1997.)

That song was a big part of the setlist on the original Lilith Fair tour, turns out. They released an EP alongside it. (That Morello remix was on the EP). In one of those curious examples of timing, the 1998 double live CD that went alongside that particular music festival is playing in my car right now.

I really ought to move beyond the late nineties, I know.

The Re-Listening project will probably bring us the Lilith Fair album on Monday or Tuesday — because this is suddenly a music blog? — but first we have to work through one other record. The Re-Listening project, of course, is just an excuse to write about, and play some of the music I’m listening to in the car. In the car, I am listening to all of my old CDs in the order in which I acquired them. Today, that CD is Dishwalla’s second studio album, released in 1998 “And You Think You Know What Life’s About.”

I know I picked this up a bit late, based on the 1999 album that came before it, in my CD books. Then as now, it’s a soft, crooning filler. Nothing too remarkable here. The Re-Listening project isn’t about musical reviews because, who cares? But, if you’re interested in that, the Critical Reception section of Wikipedia has an incredibly spot-on summation.

The Washington Post noted that “the band’s most bombastic choruses contain echoes of the slick power ballads that grunge banished.” Entertainment Weekly wrote that “when they pull out the cheesy Top 40 stops … like on the ballad ‘Until I Wake Up’, they come off like a modern-rock Journey—a guilty pleasure, but a pleasure nonetheless.” The Ottawa Citizen determined that “the band remains a non-innovator, relying on go-to guitar riffs and catchy rock melodies.”

Stereo Review concluded that “Dishwalla spends part of its second album whining about the success of its first one.” Rolling Stone thought that frontman J.R. Richards “has managed to shed his grumbly, disaffected vocals for a softer croon on tracks such as ‘The Bridge Song’.” The Boston Globe opined that “Dishwalla’s chameleon act seems in total defiance of establishing a trademark sound.” The Los Angeles Times wrote that “this angst-filled and metal-tinged sophomore try sinks quickly under the weight of overblown emotion and puerile lyrics.”

It started with such promise, too.

The second track gives the whole game away.

Already, you can see what a handful of harried, on-deadline music reviewers were finding out.

Their first record felt like a gateway into pop-friendly distortion bars and industrial sounds. Not as a slight, but I think this record just hit on all of the same things every other band hit on, about nine months later, and at about 80 percent saturation.

I saw them on their first national tour, they were opening for Gin Blossoms, and, at that moment, they were almost as popular. The lead singer, J.R. Richards, was doing his rock lothario bit when he split his pants on stage. He was embarrassed, as anyone would be. Not so much then, but after that first album, it was all downhill after that. This was one of those records I bought, listened to a few times, and found few reasons to ever play it again.

I think we’re in another none of those stretches of the CD collection, stuff I listened to only a little, looking for the next heavy rotation winners.

cycling / Indigo Girls / music / photo / video / Wednesday — Comments Off
14
Jun 23

The only time you’ve heard the word ‘baroque’ in a song

I had an afternoon meeting today that was scheduled for 45 minutes. I managed to stretch it into an hour and 20 minutes, because, sometimes, emphasis is necessary. After that meeting, I shared a stairwell with one of the participants. Apparently it was an awkward silence moment for the other person, because we started talking about the weather.

Had I been outside? No, not since I came in this morning. Is it amazing? The other person hadn’t been outside, either. I said I would give it a try after work, when I went for a little bike ride. And then we went our separate ways from the stairwell.

And the rest of the day I spent, happily, thinking about that bike ride.

After leaving the office I stopped off at the hardware store. I heard two guys there having a good workplace bull session which devolved into a debate over which one’s argument was more semantic.

I thought to interject, you know, set them straight, but I realized that both guys already thought they were the smartest person in the room.

That restraint, I think, is real personal growth on my part.

For the record, the first guy wasn’t being semantic; he was being pedantic. The second guy was just being sarcastic.

Otherwise my trip to the hardware store was a bust. I searched online the two big box stores. No joy. So I spent a part of the early evening peering into ChatGPT generated Amazon ads.

No one is talking about how shoddy the content has become on that site, but it’s a scourge.

All of which just kept me from my bike ride. I started late, and it was sunny, but soon that normal early summer look turned moody. Clouds were coming in, from Canada, I’m sure, and it made me wonder about those air quality maps. Remember those? From, what, one week ago? Smoke from Canadian wildfires descended on the east coast of the U.S. And, to a lesser degree, it’s happening again right now. This time over Minnesota and, I suspect, here. Nowhere in-between, just Minnesota and here. Look at this view.

The timestamp says it was 8:09. And you can tell by the height of the sun that we should have another hour and more of sun. But all of that smoke makes the sun look small and weak, which often happens when you’re near wildfires.

Anyway, because of the late start and the dimmer skies and how my legs absolutely died after a half-hour, I called it a short ride. Just 20 miles, but I only had to put my foot down one time. And I set a PR on the penultimate hill, a tiny bit over a quarter-mile that I got over at 21.6 miles an hour, taking three seconds off my previous best. Maybe there’s another second or two I can get out of that, but not much more.

Let’s go back to The Ryman. You wouldn’t have to ask me twice. The Indigo Girls don’t play a lot of things that you’d slot into the country music category, but the venue has a rock ‘n’ roll wing these days. And there’s a madolin, a fiddle, a steel guitar and a banjo in here anyway.

This is from their well-regarded eighth studio album, “Become You,” which is filled top-to-bottom with great tracks. “Yield” is no exception.

All of the time I’ve seen the Indigo Girls, something like seven or eight shows over the years, I’ve never seen these songs played with a full band. I’ll take Amy and Emily on stage any day of the week, but there’s an extra energy when they’re surrounded by talented players, in a place like The Ryman. You’re going to see a lot of that as these videos continue.

Yes, I can stretch this out for a couple of weeks. It is almost like you’re at the concert with us!

history / Indigo Girls / music / photo / tabs / video — Comments Off
13
Jun 23

‘We are fortunate ones, fortunate ones, I swear’

That time I got to hang out with Charley Pride in Nashville.

The reason The Ryman is called the mother church of country music, Wikipedia will tell us, is, in part …

The auditorium opened as the Union Gospel Tabernacle in 1892. Its construction was spearheaded by Thomas Ryman, a Nashville businessman who owned several saloons and a fleet of riverboats. Ryman conceived the idea of the auditorium as a tabernacle for the influential revivalist Samuel Porter Jones. He had attended one of Jones’ 1885 tent revivals with the intent to heckle, but was instead converted into a devout Christian who pledged to build the tabernacle so the people of Nashville could attend large-scale revivals indoors. It took seven years to complete and cost $100,000 (equivalent to $3,257,037 in 2022). Jones held his first revival at the site on May 25, 1890, when
only the building’s foundation and six-foot walls had been completed.

Now, Samuel Porter Jones is from a small patch of nowhere in Alabama, on the Georgia border. He grew up in Cartersville, Georgia, a small quiet town north of Kennesaw, which is north of Atlanta. I spent some Saturdays in Cartersville in 2006, wandering around taking pictures of the aging downtown while The Yankee was teaching her first classes. We were even younger then than we are today.

Anyway, the other reason they may call The Ryman the mother church is because it still feels like a church, from the pews to the faux windows to the classic mid-century church light fixtures.

So this building was inspired by the Georgian Samuel Jones — who could be coarse, who was outlandish, and who was one of the most popular revivalist preachers of is day.

But … do you know who else is from Georgia?

The bummer of this, one of the less recalled power songs from “Swamp Ophelia” is that my alarm went off in the middle of the song. And, it turns out, that when the alarm goes off the video recording stops. The last 30 seconds or so aren’t here, but the best of it, and the best of it, are here.

“Swamp Ophelia” is their fifth album, and, they played four songs from it, counting “Fugitive,” in this show.

On the record, this is one of those tracks that has a symphonic accompaniment, but it comes to life in the live show. I guess it just got lost for me on the record, but then along came the 2010 live album, “Staring Down the Beautiful Dream.” It included a masterful version of the song from a 2009 New Jersey show, a powerful, urgent version that is not at all easy to dismiss. So, hearing it live now, still feels new. And anytime Amy Ray sings her heart out, I’m happy to hear it.

Which is going to make the next several videos a lot of fun.

It is time for a Tuesday tabs feature. Tabs, they sure do add up. Bookmarks cost nothing, but some pages just don’t seem to rise to that level. And, yet, some pages are too valuable to simply press the little X. So they just sit there, open for ages. But, instead of keeping them up, I’m memorializing a few of those sorts of sites here, just on the off chance I do decide to look that one thing up again one day.

I’ve always enjoyed this idea. I wonder what the neighbors would think. I wonder if you could just do sections of your property. Replacing your lawn with wildflowers has loads of benefits

To prove it, a team at King’s College has broken a long-held tradition. In 2019, they stopped nearly half of the college’s iconic Back Lawn from being mown for the first time since it was laid in 1772 and planted a wildflower meadow mix in the topsoil of this region.

A sprinkling of poppies, cornflowers, and oxeye daisies later burst into life. According to new findings, the football field-sized patch of color now supports more than 3.6 times as many plants, spiders, and bugs as nearby lawns.

In fact, the biomass of invertebrates living in the meadow is 25 times higher than what lives in a regular lawn, including twice as many species in need of conservation.

Researchers say the meadow supported about four times as many declining plant species in 2021 as it once did as a lawn.

I clicked this one thinking I’d nail it, but I was surprised by what I read. It lands here because it seems obvious that it’d be good to adapt some of these approaches. Harvard-trained psychologist: If you use any of these 9 phrases every day, ‘you’re more emotionally secure than most’:

Emotionally secure people are empowered, confident and comfortable in their own skin. They walk the world with authenticity and conviction, and do what is meaningful to them.

As a Harvard-trained psychologist, I’ve found that this sense of self-assuredness makes them better able to navigate conflict and be vulnerable with others, mostly because they aren’t looking for external validation.

But takes a lot of work to get there. If you use any of these nine phrases, you’re more emotionally secure than most people:

I’ve seen one of these, but the rest will just have to go on the list of things to get around to watching one day. 6 must-see World War II documentaries:

Numerous documentaries have ventured to convey the seemingly insurmountable odds confronted by ground, air and naval forces, and the immense sacrifices that resulted.

As such, we compiled a list of five comprehensive World World II documentaries that best tell these harrowing stories.

OK, if you insist. Ireland self-drive tour – Your 7-day to 14-day itinerary:

Whether travelling for one week or two weeks, our itinerary provides all the major highlights of the beautiful Emerald Isle.

On this scenic drive, see ancient historic sites and monastic ruins set in the beautiful Irish countryside. The stunning sheer cliffs of the coast hide secluded bays and sheltered beaches ready to explore.

Best of all, meet the locals in their friendly towns, small and large, that define the island.

When do we leave?

cycling / history / Monday / music / photo / Re-Listening / video — Comments Off
12
Jun 23

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.