Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

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.

Auburn / errands / history / iPhone / Tuesday — Comments Off
13
Dec 22

Start in ’22, end in ’23 … 1923, that is

So we got new phones. The Yankee’s phone was starting to show signs, and mine wasn’t too far behind. Makes sense, as she bought her old one before I did. But we got five-and-a-half years out of the old ones, and we were quite pleased with the deal she found for this go around.

She scoured the Internet, see, and now we have a wireless provider from Denmark. Sure, we have to pay our bills in Danish Krones, but that’s the price we’ve paid. Quite literally.

Anyway, they were supposed to arrive on Sunday or Monday. They showed up on Friday. I spent that evening backing up my old phone — no small trick! Many websites were consulted, because I was trying to back up my phone to an external drive. I was trying to do this because my computer doesn’t have enough room. After a long while I remembered I have this wonderful program called AnyTrans. Problem solved. Backup … backed … up.

So Saturday morning I turned the new phone on. It is bigger than what I’m accustomed to. And it doesn’t yet have a case. So use carefully, carefully, and use it only over soft surfaces.

We were supposed to receive charging blocks. Phones need juice. And, of course, Apple, sells those separately now. For environmental purposes. So consider this: Sunday afternoon we had a portion of our carbon footprint spent on computer-based messaging, and then a half-hour long phone call all wondering why those charging blocks didn’t arrive. The disinterested voice on the other side of the call had a simple solution. Proceed to your local cell phone provider store. They’ll just … give you some, or something.

Maybe something got lost in the original Danish.

Yesterday, we extended our carbon footprint when we drove to the cell phone store, donned masks and went inside demanding they give us those charging blocks, or else.

The else was implied. The implication was that if they didn’t give us those charging blocks … we still wouldn’t have charging blocks.

We still don’t have charging blocks. I think it was because we merely wore Covid masks, and didn’t lean into that implied no “Or else.”

“George” was impressed by his phone colleague’s tactics. (This is his real name, because he was cool.) He had us go through the story a few times. (I know, he couldn’t believe it either!) He talked to the boss. I think he called someone. We all shared a quality eye-roll and some good customer “service” jokes. He suggested we call the phone people once again.

So we further extended the carbon footprint — remember, these are sold separately now “for the environment.” Today, The Yankee spent more time on the phone trying to get phone charging blocks. And, apparently, the phone company will now send the phone charging blocks. Separately.

Thank goodness we’ve saved the environment.

Got my oil changed today. First time this year, so I’m a little overdue. But only in terms of mileage, and only just. Living in a pandemic and other realities have substantially depressed my driving. So I went to the oil place at the end of the day.

I think I was the last car they serviced today, and I’m not sure if that was a good idea. It’ll be some time before I feel comfortable about this because, while they did, in fact, vacuum the floorboards, they were done in about as much time as it took me to write these two paragraphs.

Also, the guy told me my right blinker was out, but my right blinker is not out. It’s possible he got the wrong note on the wrong car. End of a long day, and all. But what does that mean for, say, my oil pan?

You worry about these things. And you worry for a lot longer than it takes to change your oil these days, apparently.

I visited a nearby dollar store after that. Just thought I’d look for some gag gifts. You could hear people at the counter complaining about the prices of things. And it is true! Things have prices. And many of them are going up. “They” are trying to break us, it seems. Or make us go broke. These terms were used interchangeably.

I was mystified by how much Tupperware and plastic bins this dollar store was offering. I passed on the $8 LED lights. I was not convinced that they’d last more than a set of batteries, or even as long as that oil change took.

We haven’t looked at an old newspaper in a while. (OK, it has been almost a month.) Let’s go back to campus and read the alma mater’s classic rag.

This is from 99 years ago. I wrote for this same publication just … 73 years later. In the interim, design changed somewhat. But, in 1923, you sat down with this over breakfast, and maybe lunch, if you were a slow reader.

This is a four-page edition. Let’s pick out a few topics of interest.

Here’s a front-page story that’s telling. Record enrollment! Remember, this is 1923. So you’re in the middle of a still-poor South. An article in a story from the previous year explained they’d had a record graduation of 200-some students. So retention was clearly an issue, too. But electrical engineering was the biggest department on campus, agriculture was third and there weren’t nearly enough women on campus.

Speaking of what is today the College of Agriculture, this was the beginning of a boom period. The campus-proper is 16-square blocks, but of course there are things all over the state, and the acreage mentioned here now make up the test units spread across town. I spent a bit of time in these fields and barns.

Ag journalism major, ya dig?

The rest of that story is full of process, none of which matters anymore, but at the time, the gist was “patience is a virtue” and “hurry up and wait” and “your younger brothers, or your kids, will reap the benefits.”

The university itself, you see, was in some financially dire straits at the time. It took a long time for them to rise up to meet their peers. This period, in fact, was the beginning of that achievement. The effort continues to this very day, despite the current endowment being … $1.05 billion dollars.

Arthur and Mary did OK. They are buried in Birmingham. She died in her early 70s in 1979. Arthur lived until 1989. He was the yearbook business manager the previous year, so ink was in his blood and I have some of his work. His dad was a prominent newspaper editor in the state capitol. He had a brother who was a small town editor, a wildly successful humorist and a state lawmaker. That guy, Earl, is in the Alabama Newspaper Hall of Honor. For their part, Arthur and Mary raised a doctor.

Bruce and Ethel Jones went back to Birmingham. He died in 1965, I don’t know when his wife passed away. They had a son, Claude Jones, who died just a few years ago, and that man had a full and interesting life. They have a daughter who still lives in the Birmingham area.

Which brings us to Posey Oliver Davis. He started without much at all, really. He was surrounded by subsistence farms and postbellum cotton, which burrowed deep into the red lands, as it was called at the time.

He became a school teacher, went away to college in his early 20s, and graduated seven years before this was published. For a short while he was at Progressive Farmer, then went back to campus in 1920 to become agricultural editor for the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station and the Alabama Extension Service. (I interned there.)

In our last look at the 1920s, WAMV came up. Davis begrudgingly took on a role there, struggled, moved the old gear and the new gear into Comer Hall (where I studied, seven decades later) and started WAPI (a station where I worked in my mid-20s). He became a pioneer of the medium.

He rose through the ranks at Extension and would become the longest-serving director in Alabama Extension history, viewed as a regional and national leader in agriculture during the Great Depression. Put it this way, when people talked about Extension’s mission of outreach, it would have been easy to think that’s what the O stood for in the man’s name. Frustrated by farmers that didn’t take the good scientific advice that Extension agents could offer, he doubled down. It would have been easy, one supposes, to ignore those that ignore your good works, but that wasn’t P.O. Davis’ style. “We must reach more people,” he famously preached in 1939. It’s a clinical, dry, passionate editorial — a catalog of what was being down, which illustrated what more needed to take place. Much of what Extension became in the second half of the 20th century, and beyond, started right there.

This piece that the paper is referring to? The one 16 years earlier? It got a lot right, hits hard on Davis’ recurring theme of crop diversification and misses a bit of the point and impacts of the Great Migration.

Not that the man could see into the future.

And, finally, here’s a little column filler. True today, as it was then.

I’ve looked ahead. Of the surviving issues of “The Plainsman” that are available, we’re going to jump ahead a bit further into the 1920s in our next irregular visit to the old paper, sometime early next year. But something interesting is coming. Just you wait.

There will be other interesting things in this same space tomorrow, so come back and for that.

iPhone / Monday / photo — Comments Off
12
Dec 22

New photos

We didn’t check in on the kitties last week. Imagine that, imagine my chagrin, realizing we neglected the far-and-away most popular regular feature on this humble blog.

It’s not like they didn’t try to remind me. Phoebe stood patiently, right there on the steps, trying to remind me.

And Poseidon stood by the door, looking out the window, ensuring that nothing would come up the walk to distract me.

And yet.

I walked down to the library to drop off the Craig Johnson book. These little berries were just hanging out above the children’s part of the building. You could see kids playing through the window, smell the kabobs from the food truck just behind you and feel the book ready to go in the drop slot.

Books are really heavy in your backpack, when all you’re accustomed to carrying is a computer or two. That’s what I’ve remembered today.

And here’s the sunset out front of the house. Looks awfully radiant, doesn’t it?

All of these are new photos taken on a new phone. If nothing better comes along I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.

Friday / IU / video — Comments Off
09
Dec 22

The local version of the Japanese show, ‘Tigers of Money’

We did a live production today, the annual Shark Tank game that I can only presume NBC or Mark Burnett haven’t heard of. This is a streaming program for the game design students, and it is is a key moment in their curriculum. Their showing their work to game design professionals. Getting challenged on their choices, and feedback on their efforts. The judges will ultimately vote — we don’t see that part, or the outcome — and some of these games will continue on. This is an even more part of the curriculum, as they eventually form LLCs, bring these games to market, and so on.

It seems like every year we change something about this show. And every year I have a different task. That part is fine. I spend a lot of time in our studios, and I’d much rather let everyone else call their shots — especially when we have students on the production crew. Last year I ran a manual camera for the interviews. This year, I was just the guy getting participants in the right order and doing whatever other little thing I could to help things run smoothly.

And, thankfully, the program ran smoothly. The game design students seemed to enjoy themselves, the little bumps that you encounter in a live production were merely little bumps, and, presumably, the faculty liked it a little.

Now watch these six presentations, and pick your winner.

(If it won’t play here for you, for whatever reason, you can join the dozens of other viewers on Facebook.)

The best part of it was, each time I went to the green room to call up the next set of presenters, everyone else was cheering them on. They’ve got a lot of camaraderie in that program. It is always nice to see that whole group pulling for each other.

memories / music / Re-Listening / Thursday — Comments Off
08
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.