small frustrations and big mercies

[heresluck]

This evening before the Jeffrey Foucault show, renenet and I decided that two makes a pattern as far as h.l and crazy straight girls goes. The upshot of this conversation was: no more getting hung up on crazy straight girls. We're going to try to ease me out of both the crazy and the straight at once, but at this point I'd settle for one out of two

Comments

[sdwolfpup]

Once again you have led me down the path to music - I downloaded Peter Mulvey's free mp3 off of his website and now I'm pretty much desperate to get one of his albums. Any recommendations? I was going to go with the new one, "Kitchen Radio," since a song I know I like is on it, but I figured you could recommend one other. Thanks for feeding my music habit. Heh.

[heresluck]

The thing about Peter Mulvey is that you have to see his live show. The CDs don't hold a candle to the live performances. Check the tour schedule. Drive halfway across the state if you must. Just go see him play.

But the CDs are still good, and he's never made a bad one; you can't really go wrong with any of them. But he just keeps getting better, so I'd start with the most recent stuff: Kitchen Radio and The Trouble With Poets.

As for the other albums...

Redbird is an Americana collection done with Jeff Foucault and Kris Delmhorst; it's got covers of everything from traditionals to Bob Dylan to R.E.M. to Tom Waits.

Ten Thousand Mornings is another covers album, done live in the Boston subways where Peter used to busk. Elvis Costello, Dar Williams, Paul Simon, Leo Kottke, The Beatles... It's the CD I listen to least often, but it's still worth having.

Glencree is live from Ireland: a mix of covers, new versions of Peter's own older work, and some stuff not available elsewhere. It's got "Ithaca" on it, which is one of my favorite

[sdwolfpup]

Thank you for the information. I checked out his tour dates and he doesn't stop by my state until I'm leaving it, but I'll keep checking.

[renenet]

Remember how I was asking you why "Northbound 35" was so incredibly familiar to me? It's because I listened to it on a repeat for three days straight after I came across it a few weeks ago on a Peter Mulvey - Jeff Foucault - Chris Smithers radio performance that a fan turned into mp3s. So, um, yeah...track 7.

stuff about motorcycles, which boils down to: I would be a danger to myself and others on a motorcycle, so renenet won't buy one for meOh, I hope you don't think that I think you'd be a menace on the road. I'm confident that you'd be an excellent motorcyclist. It's just that the thought of what could happen to you makes me physically anxious just thinking about it. If and when you get your bike, I'll be genuinely pleased and excited for you. I'm just not ponying up $10-15,000 (even in imaginary money) for the privilege of being a basket case while you're out on the road when I can get that for free when I make you pay for it yourself

[katwrites]

We should start a group ... straight girls anonymous. My personal long-standing straight girl crush (five years and counting) just got engaged to her longtime boyfriend and is getting married this summer. SGA. I need it.

[heresluck]

Five years! I don't have that kind of patience.

But how frustrating for you, I imagine -- happy that this person is happy, but also... not.

For myself, it's not so much the straight as the straight + crazy factor that's doing me in. Otherwise I could at least have some self-respect about the whole thing.

It's occurred to me that this is my psyche's rather tedious way of avoiding getting involved with anyone: I get the (ambiguous at best) pleasures of a crush without any possibility of real-world follow-through. I didn't think I was this complicated, but what do I know.