Wednesday « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

Wednesday

Yes, it involved duct tape

Today I tightened the bannisters, which were too wobbly. Now they are less wobbly. Also, they are cleaner. It’s the little things, really, finding the little things you’re actually capable of doing, and to do them sorta well. Also, I vacuumed. It wasn’t until late into the evening that I moved anything. Progress! In doing so I discovered more things I hadn’t realized were missing. Missing, in this case, meaning sitting under things in the garage. The two extra hacksaw blades will come in handy. And a box of wood stain was out of place, explaining why one of the shelves was so bare. Fixed that problem straightaway.

I still can’t find the main kitchen knife, though. Somehow it didn’t get packed with the rest of the knives. Also, the kitchen scissors are missing and this is all going to be hilarious when they turn up in October.

I set three Strava PRs this morning as we repeated the same route we rode on Saturday. Overall it was a bit faster, and less painful. The last quarter of the route is a slow and gradual uphill — nothing to write home about, but definitely something to include in your blog — and that was a slow grind. After a few more rides everything will start to feel much better. I’m willing it so.

But the views! Doesn’t this water look nice?

The Yankee was good enough to take a photo of me in a moment where my form wasn’t entirely terrible, but I wish she’d gotten one of those moments where I was leaned over the hoods, all intense.

The cranberry bogs are out there somewhere. No floating cranberries at the moment, though.

Here’s a very brief video of a few nice parts of the ride.

This evening, I’m going to try to get used to this.

Artistically, I made a hole in the waterfall. Surely there’s some rule about thermodynamics at play here. Or, perhaps, another rule about thermodynamics being violated. A hole! In a waterfall!

How cool is that?

On the subject of singalongs, as we drift back to The Ryman in June, sometimes you don’t need to pretend or preamble. Sometimes you just play the first chord and let the crowd do the rest. Sometimes it seems like everyone would be happy that way.

The self-titled, second album from the Indigo Girls was released in early 1989, went gold late that summer, platinum in 1992 and was certified double-platinum in 1997. Hothouse Flowers and REM famously appeared on the record, which won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Recording and was also nominated in the Best New Artist Grammy category. It came in at 22 on the Billboard Hot 200 that year, and there are easily a half-dozen songs or more that are deep cut classics.

But none more than “Closer to Fine.”

Amy Ray gave an interview in 2021 talking about age and longevity, and the people they look up to, and what it’s like to still be touring at (now) 60.

“When people go to concerts, it’s sentimental and fun, and reminds them of the old days,” she said. “I don’t want to be a purely sentimental act. And that’s hard. Because when you enjoy what you are doing, you don’t want to stop.

“Emily and I are like: ‘We want to keep doing this while we enjoy ourselves.’ And I’m like: ‘What if we still enjoy ourselves and we look like fools?’ And, sometimes, who cares? It won’t be the way it was 30 years ago, so what does that mean? Does it matter?”

But they’re still finding ways to share their happiness on stage, and their fans love it. (That pop song is almost 35 years old.) And it’s a multi-generational thing now. Fans bring kids. Musicians bring kids. I believe that’s Carol Isaacs’ daughter singing the last lyric.

You always wonder: what becomes of rock ‘n’ roll, the sound of noise and youth and angst and rebellion, when the performers get quieter, older and more settled? We’re now watching the third generation of rock ‘n’ roll stars hit those points. The answer is, it just gets more fun.

Did you catch the news about us moving? Did you read, with a sigh, the bit about loading and overloading cars and then driving them for 11 hours across some 20 percent of this great nation? Do you know what I did during this time? I listened to a lot of CDs as part of the Re-Listening project. And I am now well behind in writing about them here.

Remember, these aren’t reviews — because no one cares — but just a bit of reminiscence about some (occasionally) good music. Also, it’s an excuse to pad the blog and embed some videos. And the best news of all is, in six or eight more discs we’ll (finally) be out of 1999, because the joke here is that I’m listening to all of these in the order in which I acquired them. And, apparently, I picked up a lot of music in 1999. Today we’ll breeze through two records, both from California bands. This first one was released in February 1999. The second was released in September. No idea when I got them. And, in the case of this first one, why.

Wikipedia tells me Oleander is considered a post-grunge band. And on the page for this record there’s a list of some of their greatest touring achievements. None of it makes sense for me. I don’t like any of the acts they were playing with. And the writing is basic and, honestly, this sounds like a buzzy version of a Parks and Rec song.

But that could be because we’re watching Parks and Rec again. Speaking of TV, the first single was featured on Dawson’s Creek and a few movies. And, look, before we entirely fetishize the 1990s, not everything makes sense.

Somewhere around Columbus, Indiana this song came on, and I remembered this from too much radio play. But I couldn’t name the band until I fished out the disc to write about it here.

Not everything can be committed to memory.

There’s a “Boys Don’t Cry” cover that was released in the UK, and it makes you wonder how record labels make those decisions. Was it a test case for an American followup? Would this have worked on radio over here?

The record went gold, and topped the Heatseekers chart. Those two singles each did quite well on the Mainstream Rock Tracks and the Modern Rock Tracks charts. They put out another album after this, took a long break and then reunited. Oleander’s most recent album was released in 2013, but there’s not much online to suggest they’re presently performing, and that’s OK too.

That’s OK because the next 1999 act is a band still playing limited dates these days. They’re just a radio band to me, and I got this on the strength of the single, but “Nasty Little Thoughts” has good hooks all over the place, and some clever, and funny, lyrics.

This sounds much more like 1999 to me.

Both records, do, but from any distance you get to choose things.

This song got a lot of airplay on alt and modern rock stations at that time when they were the same thing.

But this is the track that I played over and over. Someone rightly pointed out that it was worth hearing, and decades later, that person is still correct. It still works.

Over the years Stroke 9 has released seven records. And this is cool, here’s a little livestream show they did in May of 2020. It’s neat to see bands when the artifice is stripped away, they’re playing on the back deck in hoodies, just being people, not trying to be the things that the industry wanted them to be.

That show, if you watch the whole thing, is basically this record. If you watch it for more than a few seconds you might notice the video is, for some reason, mirrored. It turns out that some of the songs they’re playing on this record were written right there in that house. It’s an interesting bit of personal continuity for the band, but it’s a real thing, and something authentic for fans.

I wonder how secure the handrails are in that house.

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5
Jul 23

My desk is heavy, FYI

Today I had a helper, and he was helpful all afternoon.

So now my desk has been reassembled, and I just have to make my home office space work. But! I have a concept, almost an idea, if you will, in mind.

In my last home office I think I rearranged everything three or four times. I kind of want to get it right from the start this time.

Otherwise, I am still very much in the mode of trying to remember which box I put that one thing into (Nah, I told myself 138 times while packing this up last week. I’ll remember which box and bin those things went in and why. It’s only a few days after all …)

As ever, The Yankee has been a total champ.

By next week I am hopeful we’ll have moved beyond taming chaos and into doing something more productive, or not at all productive.

I vote for the latter.

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28
Jun 23

I played “Country Roads” across West Virginia

Do you know how long this drive is? Hint: the answer is, “Longer than online maps suggest.”

So this is a quick photo post. We are staying at my godsister-in-law’s (just go with it) tonight. Tomorrow, we do the last walk through on our new house, sign 1.2 million documents to make it ours, and then watch all of our stuff come out of a truck and into the house. Ya know, the easy part.

I am so tired.

When the bucket of the dozer needs a series of supports, you’re talking about some serious machinery.

Do you know what it is like to stare at your bike for nine-plus hours, and not be able to ride it?

Yes, there was a lot of traffic like that. But, then, somewhere in eastern Pennsylvania, around dinner time (because we’d driven through breakfast and lunch already, so why not?) all of the cars just disappeared. Everyone had gotten where they needed to be. That’s always a warm thought, especially when you’re not there yet. But the sun was getting low, which meant we were getting closer.

And it was good to see it in the mirror behind me.

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21
Jun 23

Gather ye songs while ye may

We had a late lunch outdoors at Buffalouie’s, one of our favorite local joints. It’s the sort of place where the owner thinks of it all as a party, and he’s the host. He knows people. Knows their names, remembers their stories. He has the great gift of recall, such that, despite the thousands of people that come through his doors each year, he can make a mental reconnection even if you haven’t been in for a bite in a long, long time.

He has always been good to students, for he knows where he makes his money. And he’s always been helpful to the students I know, for he knows a little free marketing might be a good thing. And he’s just a decent sort. During the beginning of the pandemic he made lunches for some time for all of those little kids who were missing out on free lunches — an important part of many kids’ diets — because they weren’t in school. All of it together makes one loyal. And the food isn’t bad, either. Much better than the nostalgic dive a block away.

So we were sitting out under an umbrella on the sidewalk when the funniest, saddest, happened. Someone we know walked by, doing that thing where they stare intently at their phone so they don’t have to make eye contact, or engage with you. It was perfect.

Then I had a moment that reminded me of the early scene from “Dead Poet’s Society.”

Seize the day, boys …

Seize. The da — ahh, never mind, then.

We went to the lake to float on floats, which we did for an hour or two yesterday. And then the thunder came through. So we called it early. That just meant we got to dinner faster, takeout Japanese to celebrate another big day, and that was Tuesday. Today, the usual, which means you get more music.

Since we saw The Indigo Girls two weekends ago, and I have video, I’m sharing video. This is from 1992’s “Rites of Passage.” Oddly, this record gets dismissed by critics in the qualitative sense, but they all give it a lot of stars for quantitative purposes. No one knows what they are talking about. This is the fourth studio album from Amy Ray and Emily Saliers, and it included contributions from the likes of Jackson Browne, David Crosby, Michael Kamen, Kenny Aronoff, Benmont Tench, The Roches, Nollaig Ní Chathasaigh and more. Six or seven of the songs have become standards in their catalog, including “Joking.”

The record peaked at 21 on the Billboard charts and is certified platinum. Maybe no one knows what they are talking about, but fans know what they’re buying. This wasn’t released as a single, but there was a video. And aside from the clothes, some 31 years later everything is the same.

OK, the clothes and that TV set. But every shot they put in the TV is still with us today, too. The activism went mainstream, and time is still funny.

We continue along in the Re-Listening project, as well, with Keb’ Mo’s “Slow Down.” This is the thing where I am listening to all of my old CDs in the car, in the order in which I acquired them. This record came out in August of 1998, but I picked this up in 1999. (Eventually, I promise, we’ll make it past Y2K.)

This is the second Keb’ Mo’ record I have, a few months ago we touched on “Just Like You” for the Re-Listening project. It’s good to have a few pieces from his catalog for hinting at some musical complexity. Variation is important. Here’s the thing, Keb’ Mo’ sounds so comfortable, so confident, so at peace with himself, that it doesn’t sound much like the blues.

Peoples Exhibit A, the opening track.

Now that’s a fine song. Good and fun. But is it the blues? He won his second Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album with this record, so I’m clearly wrong here, and that’s fine. This song is about that all-too-common phenomena many of us experience, the money going out before it can even come in. There’s a certain sadness,some blues, you might say, with the concept behind “Soon As I Get Paid,” but he’s just too joyous and the guitar is too comfortable.

There’s a lyric about not being able to afford the bar tab, Monday mornings, and the IRS, but it’s just happy listening, somehow. He’s got three Grammy awards for blues records, and has another a handful of nominations spread out across his 19 records. And, at 71, he’s still touring, crisscrossing the country several times between now and October. Hopefully he’s getting paid. But even if he’s not, you know what the tunes will sound like when he takes the stage.

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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!