The Sunday Rounds, Volume 143
The coffee is so good this morning that any second I expect Will Ferell to bust in, dressed as Buddy The Elf, and shout, "Congratulations! You did it!"
On to The Rounds...
(Note: All of this week's topic headers are titles of Matthew Good/Matthew Good Band song titles as I geek out for Tuesday's release of his latest, Hospital Music. If you're down with the whole file sharing thing, these titles are worth doing a search for.)
"Suburbia"
We got the most pleasant surprise this week.
On Thursday night I got home to find a message from some old friends who had moved away about 3 years ago, saying they were in town and would like to get their son and Bailey together (that was how we all met, via school, etc). Bailey was out of town for the night so I called back, we played some phone tag, finally connected, and asked, "So how long are you in town for?"
"Oh, for about the next 10 years, I suspect."
They moved back. And in style. When they left 3 years ago they said that someday they hoped to move back and buy a place with land, animals, acres, etc. Last night we got the tour of their new place (about 2-3 miles from us) and all I can say is that is so awesome to see nice people get what they've always wanted. House, lots of land, barn, horses, cows, future chickens, etc. Neither of them intends to farm for a living or anything (both have other professions) but it is how each of them grew up and things like irrigation, herding cows, and horseback riding are their hobbies and interests. It is akin to me getting to build a state of the art studio with a sound booth, Pro Tools, all kinds of audio junk, and a PS3 in the corner with every hockey title in the planet right next to it.
It is very cool to see good friends return. They're awesome people, their kids and our kids have always gotten along, and now we have more people to settle into middle age with. :)
"Apparitions"
Hard to believe but I actually finished Harry Potter & The Dealthy Hallows before my wife and our elder child, Bailey, who are among the two bigger HP dorks you'll ever meet. As it turned out, they went away overnight on Thursday, I was left to myself, my lawnmower broke (again, I since fixed it), and since I was a good 500 or so pages into I thought, "I'll read a chapter then blog or something."
I should have known better.
One of my personal criticisms against J.K. Rowling, particularly with her final 3 books (5 through 7), is that the middle section of the longer books in the series drag on. Too much detail, too much description, not near enough action. But, to her credit, in virtually all 7 of these books, the last act grabs hold of you and will not let go. And this is why I began reading at 7PM and didn't finish reading until around 11:30 on Thursday. It got to the point where putting the book down would be silly because it would just haunt me as I try to fall asleep. So despite an early rise for work on Friday I stayed up, finished it, and let it sink in.
The upside to being a casual Harry Potter fan? When the last page was read I simply thought, "This has been worth my time" and I left it at that. I don't need to ponder what few questions remain unanswered. Instead I am grateful to Rowling for giving me some good entertainment over the last 9 months (I picked up the first book over Christmas) and especially for giving my son a series of books he could love more than TV, movies, video games, or sports.
Kelly and Bailey finished the final book the next night. Kelly is now going to read a different series of books with Gavin (age 7) and Bailey and I are going to move on to some "classics", staring with To Kill a Mockingbird.
"Load Me Up"
I am in what I like to call the "This is going to kick ass" phase of the next edition of Soundtrack. Songs have been gathered, considered, moved from folder to folder (with names like "Final Mix", "Could Work", etc), and are now being placed into their would-be song sets. My amigo Rich recently shared that his wife commented, upon listening to the show, "Wow, he really puts a lot of thought into these." I take that as a high compliment because, yeah, I do put a lot of thought into these. Probably too much.
The August edition, as you may or may not know, is going to be "Take Covers" and, as I'm discovering here in pre-production mode, I could probably do a spin-off series of shows devoted to covers. There are thousands upon thousands! For the show I've broke them down into some categories (of sorts) that will be explored on a song set-by-song set basis: New Spins, Old Songs In a New Light, Transformers, and Genre Hoppers.
The final play list is up in the air and usually changes in the closing hours before I record and mix but I can tell you one thing for sure: The "Bonus" edition (where I include some MP3s of songs not used) could be massive. Music geeks, I hope, will love this edition of the show!
I may be out of town next weekend so it looks like the end product will surface around August 11th or 12th. Mark your calendar or something...
"Fell In Love With a Bad Idea"
I caught part of the YouTube/CNN debate and came away from it as many others did: Nice idea, decent concept... poorly executed. Memo to CNN or any other network for the next attempt: How about you just screen the videos for language and content and then, after that, pluck them at random. If a person wants to ask about Area 51, fine. If they want to ask about impeachment, fine. The law of averages will dictate that more "serious" questions will make up the majority of the questions.
What is maddening for many, I'm sure, is that even though the idea of letting real people ask their questions (and some of them were very good and/or clever) is nice, it still won't compel your average politician to actually answer the question.
Anyway... from what I watched I thought the winners of the night were Edwards, Obama, Richardson, and Kucinich. Edwards is probably the most Clinton-esque of the bunch (even more than Hillary), with that air of genuine concern and high ideals, despite being a blown-dry multi-millionaire. Obama looked presidential. The guy has charisma to spare... there is no getting around it... Richardson actually answered questions and, I thought, showed that experience counts. If voted in primaries (I don't, as I'm registered Independent and refuse to 'request' a ballot from either major party) I'd probably be behind Richardson. Kucinich is in an interesting boat. He isn't going to win, isn't going to be picked as anyone's VP, and therefore can say just about anything he wants. He is not outrageous or off the cuff with his remarks, and comes off as very likable while also coming off as extremely un-electable to higher office.
Lastly, Anderson Cooper is a tool.
That's all I've got. I'm out of here like Usher from the chapel.
J
****************
CD of the Week: I'm enjoying two CDs I picked up with birthday loot quite a bit: Calling The World from Rooney and Three Easy Pieces from Buffalo Tom. Both took a healthy amount of time off between records (4 years for Rooney, 9 for BT) and it was time well spent, given the end results.
Calling The World throws it's obvious influences into the spin cycle and comes off all the better for it. There is nothing wrong with wearing your rock heroes on your sleeves when those heroes appear to be The Beach Boys, Queen, Cheap Trick and even *gasp* E.L.O.
Three Easy Pieces is a return to form for the trio that is Buffalo Tom. It far surpasses their prior two albums (Sleepy-Eyed and Smitten) and, at times, borders on the two superb albums they made in the early to mid 90's: Let Me Come Over and Big Red Letter Day. Self-produced, recorded on their own terms, and then signed to a medium level label (New West), Three Easy Pieces is the sound of three brothers of different mothers getting back into how they started: Making music for the sake of making it.
Finally, if you need a late 1990's flashback trip you should check out Absolute Garbage, a career retrospective from Garbage. 18 tracks, filling nearly the 80 minutes allotted, and leaning heavy toward their first two albums and lightly on the their later works. At their peak, Shirley Manson was the sex bomb of rock and I still think "Queer" and "Only Happy When It Rains" are 5-star works. They're both on this collection, as well as pretty much every other staple of the band.
********************
The Weekly Survey
1. Is summer going by too slow or too quickly or just right?
2. If you had to sing one song in public -- and let's say for the sake of argument God or angels or whatever blessed you with a great voice for at least the time necessary to sing said song -- what would it be?
3. Should we all work harder to get the word "Ramble" back into the lexicon? (As in, "I'm not joking, woman, I've got to ramble...")
4. Ask me a question.
Thanks for stopping by.
On to The Rounds...
(Note: All of this week's topic headers are titles of Matthew Good/Matthew Good Band song titles as I geek out for Tuesday's release of his latest, Hospital Music. If you're down with the whole file sharing thing, these titles are worth doing a search for.)
"Suburbia"
We got the most pleasant surprise this week.
On Thursday night I got home to find a message from some old friends who had moved away about 3 years ago, saying they were in town and would like to get their son and Bailey together (that was how we all met, via school, etc). Bailey was out of town for the night so I called back, we played some phone tag, finally connected, and asked, "So how long are you in town for?"
"Oh, for about the next 10 years, I suspect."
They moved back. And in style. When they left 3 years ago they said that someday they hoped to move back and buy a place with land, animals, acres, etc. Last night we got the tour of their new place (about 2-3 miles from us) and all I can say is that is so awesome to see nice people get what they've always wanted. House, lots of land, barn, horses, cows, future chickens, etc. Neither of them intends to farm for a living or anything (both have other professions) but it is how each of them grew up and things like irrigation, herding cows, and horseback riding are their hobbies and interests. It is akin to me getting to build a state of the art studio with a sound booth, Pro Tools, all kinds of audio junk, and a PS3 in the corner with every hockey title in the planet right next to it.
It is very cool to see good friends return. They're awesome people, their kids and our kids have always gotten along, and now we have more people to settle into middle age with. :)
"Apparitions"
Hard to believe but I actually finished Harry Potter & The Dealthy Hallows before my wife and our elder child, Bailey, who are among the two bigger HP dorks you'll ever meet. As it turned out, they went away overnight on Thursday, I was left to myself, my lawnmower broke (again, I since fixed it), and since I was a good 500 or so pages into I thought, "I'll read a chapter then blog or something."
I should have known better.
One of my personal criticisms against J.K. Rowling, particularly with her final 3 books (5 through 7), is that the middle section of the longer books in the series drag on. Too much detail, too much description, not near enough action. But, to her credit, in virtually all 7 of these books, the last act grabs hold of you and will not let go. And this is why I began reading at 7PM and didn't finish reading until around 11:30 on Thursday. It got to the point where putting the book down would be silly because it would just haunt me as I try to fall asleep. So despite an early rise for work on Friday I stayed up, finished it, and let it sink in.
The upside to being a casual Harry Potter fan? When the last page was read I simply thought, "This has been worth my time" and I left it at that. I don't need to ponder what few questions remain unanswered. Instead I am grateful to Rowling for giving me some good entertainment over the last 9 months (I picked up the first book over Christmas) and especially for giving my son a series of books he could love more than TV, movies, video games, or sports.
Kelly and Bailey finished the final book the next night. Kelly is now going to read a different series of books with Gavin (age 7) and Bailey and I are going to move on to some "classics", staring with To Kill a Mockingbird.
"Load Me Up"
I am in what I like to call the "This is going to kick ass" phase of the next edition of Soundtrack. Songs have been gathered, considered, moved from folder to folder (with names like "Final Mix", "Could Work", etc), and are now being placed into their would-be song sets. My amigo Rich recently shared that his wife commented, upon listening to the show, "Wow, he really puts a lot of thought into these." I take that as a high compliment because, yeah, I do put a lot of thought into these. Probably too much.
The August edition, as you may or may not know, is going to be "Take Covers" and, as I'm discovering here in pre-production mode, I could probably do a spin-off series of shows devoted to covers. There are thousands upon thousands! For the show I've broke them down into some categories (of sorts) that will be explored on a song set-by-song set basis: New Spins, Old Songs In a New Light, Transformers, and Genre Hoppers.
The final play list is up in the air and usually changes in the closing hours before I record and mix but I can tell you one thing for sure: The "Bonus" edition (where I include some MP3s of songs not used) could be massive. Music geeks, I hope, will love this edition of the show!
I may be out of town next weekend so it looks like the end product will surface around August 11th or 12th. Mark your calendar or something...
"Fell In Love With a Bad Idea"
I caught part of the YouTube/CNN debate and came away from it as many others did: Nice idea, decent concept... poorly executed. Memo to CNN or any other network for the next attempt: How about you just screen the videos for language and content and then, after that, pluck them at random. If a person wants to ask about Area 51, fine. If they want to ask about impeachment, fine. The law of averages will dictate that more "serious" questions will make up the majority of the questions.
What is maddening for many, I'm sure, is that even though the idea of letting real people ask their questions (and some of them were very good and/or clever) is nice, it still won't compel your average politician to actually answer the question.
Anyway... from what I watched I thought the winners of the night were Edwards, Obama, Richardson, and Kucinich. Edwards is probably the most Clinton-esque of the bunch (even more than Hillary), with that air of genuine concern and high ideals, despite being a blown-dry multi-millionaire. Obama looked presidential. The guy has charisma to spare... there is no getting around it... Richardson actually answered questions and, I thought, showed that experience counts. If voted in primaries (I don't, as I'm registered Independent and refuse to 'request' a ballot from either major party) I'd probably be behind Richardson. Kucinich is in an interesting boat. He isn't going to win, isn't going to be picked as anyone's VP, and therefore can say just about anything he wants. He is not outrageous or off the cuff with his remarks, and comes off as very likable while also coming off as extremely un-electable to higher office.
Lastly, Anderson Cooper is a tool.
That's all I've got. I'm out of here like Usher from the chapel.
J
****************
CD of the Week: I'm enjoying two CDs I picked up with birthday loot quite a bit: Calling The World from Rooney and Three Easy Pieces from Buffalo Tom. Both took a healthy amount of time off between records (4 years for Rooney, 9 for BT) and it was time well spent, given the end results.
Calling The World throws it's obvious influences into the spin cycle and comes off all the better for it. There is nothing wrong with wearing your rock heroes on your sleeves when those heroes appear to be The Beach Boys, Queen, Cheap Trick and even *gasp* E.L.O.
Three Easy Pieces is a return to form for the trio that is Buffalo Tom. It far surpasses their prior two albums (Sleepy-Eyed and Smitten) and, at times, borders on the two superb albums they made in the early to mid 90's: Let Me Come Over and Big Red Letter Day. Self-produced, recorded on their own terms, and then signed to a medium level label (New West), Three Easy Pieces is the sound of three brothers of different mothers getting back into how they started: Making music for the sake of making it.
Finally, if you need a late 1990's flashback trip you should check out Absolute Garbage, a career retrospective from Garbage. 18 tracks, filling nearly the 80 minutes allotted, and leaning heavy toward their first two albums and lightly on the their later works. At their peak, Shirley Manson was the sex bomb of rock and I still think "Queer" and "Only Happy When It Rains" are 5-star works. They're both on this collection, as well as pretty much every other staple of the band.
********************
The Weekly Survey
1. Is summer going by too slow or too quickly or just right?
2. If you had to sing one song in public -- and let's say for the sake of argument God or angels or whatever blessed you with a great voice for at least the time necessary to sing said song -- what would it be?
3. Should we all work harder to get the word "Ramble" back into the lexicon? (As in, "I'm not joking, woman, I've got to ramble...")
4. Ask me a question.
Thanks for stopping by.