I’m not sure what this says about me or the people I know, but someone I work with suggested I take a look at Weird Al’s song/video “White and Nerdy” and after I did, I realized he was singing about me, more or less.
Young’s “Let’s Impeach the President”
Annette said I should post this here (and not just on my official blog), and since I do everything my wife asks me to do, here it is:
“The Last Unicorn” (Or Bill HD’s 91)
I appreciate that this is kind of an inside joke about Bill’s 91 in golf earlier this year (a round that was gifted to him by a unicorn), but I thought others might enjoy this super stupid video. Boing-boing described it as being like pepto for your eyes. Indeed.
Delayed Dan Bern Post
This is very late because of various things going on here in the last week or so. Anyway:
Annette and I had a lovely evening out last weekend to go and see a Dan Bern concert at Ann Arbor’s “The Ark” on Friday night. Who is Dan Bern, you ask? Well, he’s kind of “alternative rock meets folk rock singer” of a sort of guy. There’s a picture here– I took one at the concert with my cell phone, but it was pretty lame so I thought I’d link to a “real” picture from Bern’s web site.
Somewhere a number of years ago, I came across Dan Bern’s CD (a self-titled release), and I have to say that it remains one of my favorite CDs in my collection. So, I found out that Bern was going to be in town and a) I immediately went out and tried to buy more of Bern’s CDs (I bought Breathe and My America II) and b) I listened to these Bern recordings before the show– to get ready, doncha know.
Anyway, Annette and I had a lovely meal and then went to the show. In brief, Bern’s show was an example of how and why it almost certainly always worthwhile for anyone reading this to go and see a concert put on by someone who puts on– oh, I don’t know– 300 gigs a year. Because here’s the thing: I don’t care how you feel about Bern’s music or even that type of music. For pure “perfomance value,” you’re better off with the likes of someone like Bern than about 90% of the people on the radio nowadays.
It wasn’t a very crowded show, and that’s even in the Ark, which isn’t exactly a huge theater venue. Most of the folks there were probably about our age and temperament, though there were a few somewhat younger types. There was one table of groovy young young people right up front, and they were a bit of a show in and of themselves. One of them, a white girl with dreadlocks (and btw, white people– dreadlocks is really not a good look on you), was passed out in her chair by the end of the show. Another got a little too into Bern’s last song, Jerusalem (and to the extent that Bern has a “big hit,” this is probably it, though I actually prefer the song “Marilyn” on this album, which he didn’t sing). There’s a lot of cool lyrics in this song, but the passage I will reproduce now for the purposes of the story later on is toward the end of the song:
I spent ten whole days in Jerusalem
Mmmm Jerusalem
Sweet Jerusalem
And all I ate was olives
Nothing but olives
Mountains of olives
It was a good ten days
I like olives
I like you too
Anyway, this particular extra-special fan didn’t so much sing along as shout along, and since she was right up front and we were all in a small space and she was really loud, she kind of succeeded in drowning out Bern and the two guys who served as his band. I think everyone was a little disconnected on that one.
And then there was hat girl. After the show was over, I was waiting around for Annette to get out of the line in the women’s room, and there was this young woman– like sophomore or junior in college tops– clutching a cowboy hat. She was telling anyone who would listen (including me) “It’s his hat! It’s his hat!” Indeed, it did look like the hat he was wearing at the beginning of the show.
“Well, you should probably give it back,” I said.
“Oh, I will, I will. I want to meet him and give him back his hat. It’s his hat!” She was an attractive girl and didn’t look disturbed overall, but her eyes had a little bit of that crazy look to them.
“Uh-huh.”
“I love Dan Bern! I want to meet him. Look at this, look at this!” and she showed me the cloth or hemp choker necklace she was wearing; it had these green things in it. “Olives! Nothing but olives! See? I made that!”
“Okay…” and that’s when Annette came back and it was certainly time to go.
All in all, a great evening out, one not quite as weird as these toward the end of the show events might suggest.
Happy Birthday, MTV
Here’s a link to a pretty good story on NPR’s Morning Edition. It includes a little “where are they now?” bit about the original “VJs.” (Spoiler: JJ Jackson died of a heart attack in 2004).
And just to tell you how old I am: I remember distinctly a time in which people thought “this is stupid,” and I also remember a time when all MTV showed was videos (and they only had about 150 videos) and we’d watch it for like six hours at a time. Times have changed, eh?
Seriously? The Who?
I got a notice from Ticketmaster alerting me to the availability of tickets for the upcoming tour of The Who. This raises a couple of questions for me:
- If half of the original members of a band are dead, can you really call the band the original name? In other words, I could go with “Roger and Pete on tour,” (which is kind of what Jimmy Page and Robert Plant did a few years ago), and I was willing to go with The Who sans Keith Moon (mostly because that is how I was introduced to The Who as a youth), but also without John Entwistle?
- It seems to me that if you are a band known for (among other things) breaking stuff on stage and in hotel rooms, wishing in a song to die before getting old, and other generally childish bits of behavior, then you shouldn’t be allowed to go on tour when you do indeed get old.
- Having said all that, I really liked The Who as a kid. It was my first big rock show, the first time that they were over-the-hill…. 25 years ago. Am I going to this round of shows, which will be making a stop in Detroit? Won’t get fooled again, baby….
More versions of “Stairway to Heaven” than seem possible
Check out the “Stairways to Heaven, Stairways to Hell” collection of mp3 versions of everyone’s favorite ‘Zepplin song.
They’re a little bit country…
The other day, I purchased the Dixie Chicks newest CD, Taking the Long Way. This marks two “firsts” for me: it’s the first time I have ever purchased a “country” album, and it’s the first time I have purchased a CD as a political statement. In brief, I bought this not so much because I’m a Dixie Chicks fan but because I admire their politics and I think it’s impressive that they continue to perform and speak out despite death threats and idiot assholes like this person.
So, how is it? Eh. Okay, I guess.
I like the song that’s getting airplay on radio and MTV now, “Not Ready to Make Nice,” probably the best. But on the whole, it seems like pretty luke-warm pop music to me, and, despite the fact that they are not (apparently) “real” country artists anymore since they don’t whole-heartedly support Bush and the stupid war, it still sounds pretty country to me. I dunno. Maybe it’ll grow on me.
“Drum Machine”
While listening to Radiohead on my iPod and surfing around the Internet and while in Florida (all of this is potentially the proverbial “long story”), I came across this very cool drum machine flash animation. Enjoy.
Does my iPod have Favorite Songs?
And, to further the question, does my iPod have different tastes in music than I do?
As this link and this link can attest, I am not the first person to wonder about this. I’m just wondering about my unit’s preferences.
On my iPod, which is a reflection of my iTunes set-up in my office at work, I have about 4,300 different songs. Most of this music is either there from a CD that I own or a CD that I checked out from the public library. (As an aside, I haven’t downloaded too much illegally, mainly because it doesn’t seem to be worth the effort to me. But I am honestly not sure how legal or illegal it is for me to have the library music there….) Despite this wide variety, there are two or three artists that seem to pop up all the time, all of which are Ypsilanti Public Library CDs:
- The New York Dolls, an early punk rock band;
- Japanese Shinto Ritual Music (it seemed like a good idea at the time); and
- Charles Ives.
At the time, these all seemed like good CDs to load on to my office computer and thus on to my iPod (what’s the harm?), but I am beginning to have second thoughts.
Okay, back to grading. And now instead of shuffling songs, it’s “The Name of this Band is Talking Heads,” also a public library find.