Category: Heavy Rotation

Music Worth Overplaying

9.5 Doug’s mix :P

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My college buddy Doug sent me a retro+new mixed tape today of bands we’ve loved and newer stuff he likes, and it’s joyous and melancholy, and in heavy rotation. One of the few images that persists in my sorry small brain is Doug playing perfect air guitar in the window of our second story frat room to “Everybody Wants To Rule The World”. Thanks for sharing that blissful moment of music with me, and the knowledge that it is always there to lift us up. Word.

  • New Order: Waiting for the Siren’s Call, Krafty
  • Erasure: Breathe, I’ll Be There, Let’s take one more rocket…
  • Pet Shop Boys: (lots)
  • Robbie Williams: Kiss Me (redux)
  • Fisher: You
  • Mute Math: Typical, Plan B
  • Switchfoot: The Shadow Proves the Sunshine
  • Eluvium: Perfect Neglect…, An Accidental Memory…

8.5 Tom Petty: Saving Grace

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A classic road song from his new Highway Companion CD, produced by Jeff Lynn. Also try “Big Weekend”, Travelling-Wilburys-style fun – takes me back a couple weeks to my trip down to see my brother Dan. We may have arrived at the LAN party place too late, but we saw “The Bodies” exhibit at MOSI in Tampa, fixed his computer (power supply was bad), ate 10 lbs of cookies dropped off by mom, visited Andrea’s dad in the ICU in St. Petersburg (he’s doing much better now), and played entire days of Empire At War.

He and Val and Bailey are in Germany right now, visiting Niki (congratulations, newlywed!), and having even BIGGER adventures. Whoop!

“The Bodies” exhibit was full of real human bodies, displayed right in front of you, a hundred or more, posed and dissected in different ways for better views. They are preserved by replacing water with acetone, then replacing the acetone with silicone. There were whole bodies, bodies made only of muscle or arteries or the nervous system or the digestive system, bodies cross-sectioned into a couple hundred “disks”, fetuses at every stage of development, etc. etc. Amazing AND creepy!

Boom! There he was…

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Scritti is back, Green is on his game, I’m no longer rock-a-boy blue, look at all this goodness! Don’t miss the interview or the preview of the new album – you can hear the whole thing – links are on the blog. Happy day.

I’m actually behind a bit, there was a 1999 album I totally missed, lots of stuff to catch up on…

9.5 Death Cab For Cutie: Soul Meets Body

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Andrea fell in love with Franz Ferdinand after seeing them on SNL – the fact that they’re Scottish didn’t hurt their chances any – and she got me hooked. We went to see them last night. They rock the house, capital L-O-U-D. Totally contagious energy. The drummer and bass player switched places on occasion, and for a while they were both beating the living crap out of the drum kit.

Death Cab For Cutie were the “co-headliners”, I started listening to their stuff belatedly (the day of the show), but now I can’t get enough of Soul Meets Body…

Leo Kottke in the house

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We all took naps around 3 o’clock on Saturday while one of the kids from the neighborhood cut my lawn. (thanks Kelly!)

Then we got up around 5 and gathered up the troops. We took a blanket and a picnic dinner to the NC Art Museum’s amphitheater to hear the best guitar player on the planet lay down a wall of sound for two solid hours.

He was everything I hoped and expected, starting off with jazzy sounds, mixing in 15-year-old classics from my first exposures, rocking 12-string slides, and a beautiful darker tune in some minor key called “Industrial Park” (but he said the name in German hehe). All mixed with his droll disjointed ramblings that kept a permanent smile tatooed on everyone’s face – whenever we weren’t laughing out loud. We heard about everything from reincarnation to watermelon liberation to martian hibernation – something about a guy named Frizz Fuller and his crazy lyrics… “Martians at the window… And you in my arms… take down your antennae, don’t broadcast your charms…” And the whole time he’s just dinkin’ away on the guitar…

We brought the binoculars, and for the second half we were just a few dozen feet from him. I zoomed in on his hands and tried to figure out his playing technique. I couldn’t see a pick or a slide, but his dual melody-rhythms and walls of full twelve-string chords kept flowing out like he was using four guitars. So I guess his hands are just melded with his guitar, as I always expected.

Dang, that was fun!