no more bedhead

I haven't posted in a while. Okay, a long while. All right, it's been some time - get off my back will ya?

So, for your listening enjoyment, here is my current favorite Grateful Dead song.

So I'm sitting here listening to Radio Paradise. A song comes on that sounds pretty good, like I'd like to hear more from this group. Turns out it's Porcupine Tree, and the song is Mellotron Scratch. I'd heard another song of theirs a couple of days ago (Heartattack in a Layby) and I had the same reaction to that one. I did a little searching and listened to some samples of their music and kind of liked it, but I'm not convinced enough yet to buy an entire cd. I was thinking that they sound an awful lot like Yes, and perhaps I should dig some Yes out to compare. In the meantime, the next song comes on, and it's Heart of the Sunrise, by Yes! Having now the opportunity to hear them back to back, I just might take a chance on a Porcupine Tree album.

So, listening to Yes, which I haven't done in probably years, reminds me of a story.

[Flashback music and wavy lines play here.]

It was 1991, and Yes is on tour in support of their Union album (not their best by a long shot, but still they were on tour). I got hooked up with tickets from Ed at BMG, and we head out to the Patriot Center with my friend Larry, and one of his other friends, to see the show. Great show! After it's over, we go backstage. My goal is to meet Jon Anderson, whose singing I have really enjoyed for years, both with Yes, solo, and with other artists.

Turns out Jon Anderson is painfully shy. The most I see of him is when he pokes his head in the door of the hospitality suite, then he backs out quickly. I spend the evening talking with Trevor Rabin, Chris Squire, Alan White, and Rick Wakeman. (Yeah, I know. Sucks to be me.) Rick Wakeman is totally cool. We ended up talking for quite a while, and he was asking me questions about what I did, music, and retailing. When he found out I worked for Tower Records, he backed up and bowed at me in that "I am not worthy" way. Pretty funny.

Larry and his friend are not big on schmoozing, so they had made themselves scarce. When it was time to head out and we hooked up again, I asked them where they had been. What had they been doing for the last 45 minutes?

Sitting on the loading dock talking with Jon Anderson.

That's my Yes story.

In the course of doing some website work for a parish, I have talked on the phone with Kate a couple of times. When I was at her parish doing some training I noticed that she had a WMVY sticker on her computer. WMVY is probably my favorite radio station. So now every time we talk we compare good radio stations that we can listen to online. I have suggested to her WAPS, and she has suggested to me KLCC.

On Monday she told me about Radio Paradise. She described it as a station where you can make your own playlist. It's not. (Perhaps she was thinking of Paradise Radio, which seems to be mostly dance music, or Pandora, where you can create your own "station".) I tuned in to Radio Paradise, and I must say it's fantastic!! It's a streaming-only station, and they play a very eclectic mix of music. The best part is that about 50% of it is from artists I've never heard of before. And another 25% is from artists I haven't heard in a long time, or deeper cuts from artists I have heard of.

To give you an idea, here is their playlist for an hour this morning:

9:35 am - Cake - Mahna Mahna
9:32 am - Squirrel Nut Zippers - Hell
9:31 am - Erin McKeown - The Taste of You
9:27 am - Beatles - Two Of Us
9:25 am - The Cure - 2 Late
9:19 am - U2 - Where the Streets Have No Name
9:13 am - Eluvium - Prelude For Time Feelers
9:09 am - Thirteen Senses - Do No Wrong
9:06 am - Guided By Voices - Learning to Hunt
9:03 am - The Wailin' Jennys - Take it Down
8:58 am - A Perfect Circle - The Noose
8:52 am - Blue Man Group - Mandelgroove
8:48 am - Dave Matthews Band - Minarets
8:43 am - Los Lobos - The Town
8:39 am - David Sylvian and Robert Fripp - God's Monkey

So if you have some time, tune in this station. Well worth it!!

Tina Turner blows Beyonce out of the water any day.

Is Jason Bateman drunk?

I once hired Dave Grohl (Foo Fighters). The only interview I ever conducted where the interviewee wanted to walk around the store while we talked.

What the hell kind of song is "I'd like to check you for ticks"?

Aretha Franklin should not be singing backup to anyone. She should be out there front and center, belting it out and letting everyone else catch up!! (And the people say "A-men".)

Alicia Keys Rocks.

Damn, Amy Winehouse can sing.

Herbie Hancock looks the same now as he did 50 years ago. Jazz's answer to Dick Clark. Herbie played "Not My Job" on "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me" a month or so ago, and was hysterical.

It was like Christmas all over again. Ellen got her long-held wish, and I was along for the ride. We went to see Richard Thompson at the Kent Stage last night. It was an amazing show!! He was performing "1000 Years of Popular Music".

We arrived at the theatre, found our seats, and discovered that we were in the middle of a sea of khaki pants and alpine designed sweaters. On a sea of middle aged couples. We were the youngest people there. Ok, not really. There were a couple of kids that had been dragged there by their parents, and a couple of college students (it is next to Kent State University, after all). But other than that, yep...us.

The crowd was rather annoying. It was made up of old folkies who thought they were being witty when they were yelling things at the performers. Thompson took it in good stride, but his wittiness blew them out of the water. And I suppose the piece de resistance was during several of the songs when we looked over to see these middle aged white guys bobbing their heads in time to the music. Or, not in time to the music as the case may be.

But, enough about the crowd. Richard Thompson was incredible. He came out playing a hurdy gurdy and singing a song from 1290. We jumped forward a few years, then skipped the "black death" ("...nothing musical of note. It's my pustule and I'll cry if I want to."). We ventured forward, heard a madrigal and a carol, and kept moving forward into the 1500's - 1600's - 1700's. We stopped for quite a while in the nineteenth century, and finished the first set with some Gilbert & Sullivan.

On the way, he told a joke (several actually, but this one was a joke rather than witty repartee):

• Heaven: The English greet you at the door, the French do the cooking, the Italians provide the entertainment, and the Germans organize everything.
• Hell: The French greet you at the door, the English do the cooking, the Germans provide the entertainment, and the Italians organize everything.

The second set moved forward to the 1940's and focused on a song or two per decade up to 2006. We heard songs by the Beatles, Abba, Billie Holliday, and others. My favorite was See My Friends, by the Kinks. Thompson's version was abso-freakin'-lutely amazing!! He finished with a Nelly Furtado song. In order to bring the end of the show back full circle to the beginning, they switched in the middle to Latin, and slowed it down like early church music.

For the encore, he played something from the 90's. The 1190's. A song composed by Richard I.

Here is a pretty decent sampling (albeit short) of the 1000 years of music show:


And here is one of my favorite Richard Thompson songs - 1952 Vincent Black Lightning:



All in all, it was a great show. I wish he had performed some of his own music, but that just means we'll have to go to another show!!

Ladies and Gentlemen, for your listening pleasure, Bono on voice and Edge on banjo! May we present - Vertigo!

Was watching CSI tonight and was intrigued by the song at the close. I love Kate Bush, and I thought this version of Running Up That Hill was great. And very dark. Even better.



The group is Placebo. I know absolutely nothing about them, but I think I need to hear some more. Is it just me, or do they remind you of the group from the 80's, The Bolshoi? Darker, but similar. Hmmm....

I was getting stuff ready to take Beenie to camp this morning and I was listening to Weekend Edition Sunday. They were doing a piece on an artist named Mocean Worker. The music was great, yet vaguely familiar. Turns out he's the guy who did the song "Chicka Boom Boom Boom" a couple years back. (What's that called when a bunch of disparate things all come together and gel in your psyche? Synchronicity? Serendipity? Help me out!) And how cool is this - he skipped his senior prom to hang out in the studio with Miles Davis!!

His new song is "Shake Ya Boogie". Watch it. It's fantastic!!



Now check out these sites:
(if you hold ctrl when you click, you can open a new window, and still enjoy the music!)
NPR's Story about MoWo
MoWo's website
MoWo's MySpace page

It's 7/7/7, and there is a big concert series going on today. It's called Live Earth, and it consists of concerts in nine cities on seven continents. The idea is to raise awareness about global warming. I think it is a great thing to do, even if the tv coverage is crap. There has been no major network coverage until tonight, and the "hosts" on Bravo are a couple of freakin' idiots!! The stuff they're showing is just okay. You see a song or two, then the idiots come back on and blabber about stuff. Then the cycle repeats.

Now, before you get all over me, yes, I know it's all available on the intertubes, and presumably better. But, and Ellen may find this hard to believe, I don't have the time today to just sit around in front of the computer. So there. And speaking of freakin' idiots, I don't want to keep sitting here listening to Cameron Diaz lecture me on how she is so "eco-friendly" because she drives a hybrid car and turns the water off when she shaves her legs. Give me a break. Get Darryl Hannah back out here and we can listen to someone who is really making a difference! (She has lived off the power grid for 15 years, and drives a car powered by used french fry oil.)

A couple of things that I should point out, though. LiveEarth.org is the website for the event, and there is a lot of good information there. The one thing I missed that I would have liked to see was the performance from Antarctica. A group of scientists have a "garage band" called Nunatak, and they performed via satellite at Wembley Stadium in London to represent the seventh continent. Hopefully they'll post a video of their performance on their website.

I'm also sick of seeing the same performers and songs over and over again. If I have to watch Keith Urban or Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood one more time I'm going to scream!!

And I never saw Spinal Tap.

OTOH, they can keep playing Madonna performing her new song, "Hey You", which she wrote for this event, over and over again. I think it's a good song, and it shows some initiative on the part of the performer.

This was supposed to be a post talking about how we are all supposed to pull together to stop global warming before it's too late, and what a wonderful idea that President Al Gore had to bring people together (rather than drive them apart as Shrub does). It ended up being another rant. Sorry.

Go make a difference. Do what you can. Every little bit helps.

And remember today is the halfway point for the Millennium Development Goals (links here, here, and here). Goal #7 is Ensure Environmental Sustainability, so LiveEarth dovetails nicely with that. Be Green. It's good for all of us.

(7/8/07 - I found a list on the LiveEarth website of good suggestions of how to make a difference, so I'm passing it along here.)

We are pretty lucky in this area, we have a public radio station that plays a great variety of music (in the last ten minutes I’ve heard Counting Crows, John Mellencamp, and Men Without Hats) with no commercials. It’s WAPS - 91.3 The Summit. I am able to listen over terrestrial radio. They also play "independently produced" shows most evenings, and on the weekends. I like "The Polka Explosion" Sundays at 6pm. Listen to their webcast.

When I’m sitting around in the evenings working on the computer I dial in WMVY’s internet simulcast. They are a great station out of Martha’s Vineyard. They play a lot of the same music as WAPS, but there is more of a “folkie” bent to it. Recently I heard the Grateful Dead, Patty Larkin, Dar Williams, Norah Jones, Neil Young...etc. It’s great for just “mellowing out” in the evenings.

Another suggestion for Monday evenings from 5-8 is WWPV, the college station of St. Michael’s College in Burlington, VT. I suggest those times because there is a killer blues show hosted by John “One Chord” Connors. It’s a great mix of traditional and acoustic blues, plus whatever “One Chord” feels like playing. It’s good dinnertime music around our house. And I’m not saying that just because “One Chord” is my brother-in-law.

I don’t know what else WWPV plays, but when I just went to their MySpace page, they were playing Modest Mouse. Cool.