Grammy love

During commercials while watching tonight's too-close-for-comfort Suns win over the Wizards, I flipped by the Grammys, just checking to see if anything interesting was happening.
And just once out of a dozen or so flipovers, something worthwhile was going on (that would be Beyonce and her wonderfully short skirt joining Tina Turner for a decent enough rendition of "Proud Mary").

I don't like the Grammys and I never really have. The only award I've bothered to follow is Best Contemporary Folk Album, which a shocking number of my favorites have won in the last decade or so (Steve Earle, Bob Dylan, John Prine, Warren Zevon, Tom Waits, Lucinda Williams, Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash). The award has become a sort of below-the-radar acknowledgment of who really deserves some props, or maybe a backdoor sort of lifetime achievement prize.

For me, mostly, the Grammy Awards show represents pretty much all that sucks about music and the entertainment industry that surrounds it. It's all show, no passion. It's all mainstream, no creativity. It's all popularity, no room for the fans who don't take their cues from ClearChannel radio. It missed the best and awards the mediocre-est. It's static, monied, unmemorable and mostly worthless. It's further behind the curve than music companies themselves.

And once in a while it's an open forum for some industry prick to attack the very fans who support the whole damn multibillion dollar boondoggle. I remember clearly when good ol' industry shill and recording academy president Michael Greene pulled out his ticket book to call all Internet fans of music criminals. Never mind the blindly accusatory tone that dick-hole took to the podium. I'll call him out on the absolutely blatant misrepresentation of the whole notion of downloading in his preaching. I can't believe that speech was so many years ago, and the "music" industry still hasn't taken step one toward getting its shit together in recognition of the shifts in technology.

Anyway... The one Grammy awards show I can clearly remember watching was 10 years ago, when I wandered across the street from my dorm to some long-since-closed restaurant to watch Bob Dylan take three Grammys (album of the year, best male rock vocal performance and best contemporary folk ablum [see?]) and perform in probably the strangest segments in Grammy history.



(Worth noting here is the fact that the same song that got "Soy-Bombed" was featured in a number of Victoria's Secret advertisements... a fact that makes the term "soy bomb" seem ever so much dirtier...)

So why did I even bother flipping over to the awards show during Suns commercials? For one moment, five years ago, when all the disdain that the Grammys have had for music fans like me washed away in a coup of rock n' roll brilliance.

With a shout of "This is for Joe!" from Bruce Springsteen, an unbelievably awesome group struck into The Clash's "London Calling" as a tribute to the great Joe Strummer, not even two months gone from this realm. Joining Springsteen were Elvis Costello, Dave Grohl and Miami Steve Van Zandt and I was blown away. If it was planned, I didn't know, so I just like to think that somehow that crew of musicians told the suits to fuck off and that they were gonna do a Strummer tribute, like it or not.



It was a great moment and a truly amazing performance because it was obvious that each of those dudes knew they were singing for Joe, singing like it mattered.

And so, no matter who won whatever tonight, or who won whatever whenever, I have a tiny bit of props for the Grammys because of that performance. Plus, I'm one of the very, very few music fans in my age group who say Grammy got it right picking Steely Dan's Two Against Nature over Radiohead's (overrated in every way) Kid A for album of the year in 2001 (though Beck's Midnight Vultures would've been my overall top choice).

So the music industry deserves maybe 1 percent attention during awards season, just in case somebody pulls out something as awesome as that Clash tribute.

DOWNLOAD:
Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Dave Grohl & Steven Van Zandt - London Calling (live Grammy 2003)

The Thanks I Get

Folks keep trickling in to the site looking for "The Thanks I Get," a bonus song from Wilco's latest album, Sky Blue Sky. So why not give 'em what they're looking for?

"The Thanks I Get" is my personal favorite from the Sky Blue Sky sessions and I think it works equally well as a soulful full-band romp and as a plaintive Jeff Tweedy solo acoustic tune.
Tweedy actually wrote the song for Solomon Burke to sing, hoping it would be included on the 2002 project that ended up as the Don't Give Up On Me album. It's an incredible record, full of specially written songs by the likes of Dylan, Tom Waits, Van Morrison, Brian Wilson, Elvis Costello and Joe Henry. The soul legend brought an amazing life and presence to the tunes... what I wouldn't give to hear him sing "The Thanks I Get."

So here are two versions, a solo acoustic one (pay attention to the banter at the end - that's where Tweedy tells the Burke story and talks about the upcoming Sky Blue Sky) and a full band recording from Conan O'Brien.

DOWNLOAD:
Wilco - Is that The Thanks I Get (live Conan).mp3
Jeff Tweedy - Is that the Thanks I Get.mp3

R.I.P. John Stewart

Folk singer and songwriter John Stewart died last month, passing away in the same San Diego hospital where he was born 68 years earlier. For some well-written obituaries about his 50-year career as a musician and songwriter, go here and here.

His career never hit the big time - my guess is he was just too clean cut and harmless to make much of a splash in the turbulent last 1960s and early 1970s when he did the bulk of his solo recording - but I've known his music my whole life.

John Stewart was absolutely my mom's favorite and I can clearly remember hearing his signature records - California Bloodlines and Willard - regularly as a child. I don't remember liking them, but they were there. And later when I branched out musically I gave them another shot.

His voice was deep and soothing like a great storyteller - which he was. Stewart seemed to be wrapped up in some visions of a truly good America, one that didn't exist because it had passed, or because it hadn't come yet. Such nostalgia runs through his songs, but he was no conservative - he stumped for Bobby Kennedy in 1968 after leaving the Kingston Trio.

If nothing else, Stewart had a varied and fascinating career. He got his start in a top-selling combo that seemed to be the safe alternative to all the new groundbreaking folkies led by Dylan. His most well-known song is "Daydream Believer," an impeccably catchy (and well, dreamy) pop gem the Monkees took to No. 1 for four weeks in the winter after the summer of love.

Stewart's run of quality troubadour albums started not long after Kennedy was gunned down on the campaign trail. He brought folk and country together with a storyteller's charm for a certain type of Americana that somehow skipped over Gram Parsons and the rest of the hippies.

Then, whether he was influenced by disco or glossy California rock, he turned once again, donning a white suit and sticking a red rose between his guitar strings for one of the gaudier album covers ever. But Bombs Away Dream Babies would be his biggest hit, with gloss to spare from the guitar, vocals and production (and who knows what else) of Lindsay Buckingham and Stevie Nicks. But the songs are top-quality, like he finally started writing with night in mind instead of day.

He never stopped touring. I don't know how many times my folks saw Stewart play, but that last time, in December of 2002, they brought us kids along. Stewart was an elder statesman of folk by then, but he never lost his die-hard fans and (I'm guessing, but I think this is a safe one) never put on a bum show.

It kinda hit me when I saw that he died, and it actually felt like weighty news to pass along to my mom. But later I put on some tunes and I don't think there'll ever be a day when John Stewart's music isn't a familiar comfort for me.

DOWNLOAD:
John Stewart - July, You're a Woman (live)
John Stewart - California Bloodlines (live)
John Stewart - Gold
John Stewart - Heart of the Dream

Catfish at the Cinema

Far and away the greatest benefit to being a relatively infrequent movie watcher is almost never watching a bad movie. I tend to get upset and offended at the time wasted to watch your average Hollywood action flick or romantic comedy, so I shy away from films as they hit the theaters, wait for the hype to die down and see what offerings get some props from reviewers I dig and have a little staying power.

Such was the exact process that brought me to Into the Wild and No Country For Old Men these last couple days and I reckon I have little in the way of anything but compliments. Talk about your simple, yet powerful movies - compelling stories, dialog that seems real-to-life as well as insightfully quotable and beautiful camera work. There isn't much more that's similar about the two films, so I reckon I'll move on in the order I saw them.

Sean Penn has been such a powerful presence in the last couple films I've seen him in (Mystic River and 21 Grams) that it's no surprise he's moved over to directing. He seems to be a deliberate detail-oriented director, taking a heavy hand (he wrote the screenplay as well) in the production as a whole, and really drawing the most out of the material. I doubt Penn will be a frequent director; instead he seems drawn to the unique story that plays out here.

Despite having heard a good bit about the film before hand, I was under the impression that it was mostly about the journey in Alaska. I'm glad that wasn't the case - it's more like Into the Great Wide Open than Into the Wild and that's for the best. Whether he's Christopher McCandless or his chosen name of Alexander Supertramp, the protagonist is driven by movement and experience, not simply the need to rush as far as he can from society. In truth he makes his biggest leap away from society not by trekking into the Alaskan wilderness but in that first moment he makes up his mind that he doesn't need money, or a home, or a job, or anything that ties him to anything else. It's that over-the-next-horizon restlessness that defines his character, no matter the horizon.

Emile Hirsch was a great choice for Alex, bringing a believability to his restless idealogue. He didn't spout the nonsense you might expect from a just-barely-on-his own kid. He wasn't constantly coming up with new justifications and rationale for his wanderlust. His philosophy was simple and mostly unchanging - the trappings of society are simply traps and the measure of a life is in the experiences of the individual. But he did - tragically - misjudge how crucial simple fellowship can be. It's something that he came to eventually and it's ultimately the story's greatest sadness that he didn't get to live out his years with that addition to his world view. Alex was no misanthrope, though he may have come across as one. In truth there's really no good word for his take on society. He loved his fellow travelers, the souls more at home on the fringes of society, and ultimately found as much strength in them as he did in the wilderness, though the realization was slow in permeating his restlessness.

On a final note, the music in the film was every bit as great as some friends have said. Eddie Vedder provides another way of reading the character and the action, much in the same way that Badly Drawn Boy uses the language of music to say things in About A Boy that the filmmakers just couldn't get to otherwise. Taken one by one, the songs are all quality, with an acoustic yet full sound that fits the landscapes of the film. But taking note of the lyrics, we see more parallels in Alex's journeys and a new dimension emerges.

Music is such a central part of Into the Wild that it was fascinating to follow it up with a film that had absolutely no music at all. That quietness to me translated incredibly well as space, in a variety of ways. It let the empty Texas landscapes stand even more imposing, more immense. It let the characters' inner thoughts play a role in the film, whether you had a decent guess what those thoughts were (as in the case of Josh Brolin's Llewelyn Moss) or whether they were as inscrutable as the darkness (as in the case of Moss' nemesis-by-chance, Javier Bardem's Anton Chigurh).

I didn't even notice the lack of music until one of the film's most suspenseful moments, where the ominous strings should have been. And it was no less suspenseful for the absence. People breathing, floor boards creaking, shadows covering doorways... all of this is real, all of it is in the moment, on the screen, and none of it needs an extra bit of manipulation. Kudos to the Coens for going against the grain there.

I've been a Coen brothers fan for years and years, but for some reason have stuck to just the comedies. There's little in No Country for folks looking for the fingerprints of the geniuses who created The Big Lebowski, et al. But the dialog is the tell. That's probably the greatest strength of each Coen film I dig - a richness of dialog that never seems forced, giving each character a uniqueness, full of lines you want to jot down and remember, with not a bit of it contrived or fake or in any way detracting from the movement of the story.

The story is cut of all fat, and because of that requires quite a bit of trust of the filmmakers. It rattled me at first, left me wanting the back stories of Moss and Chigurh, left me wanting to know who the drug dealers were who got gunned down in the Texas desert. I needed that at first, wanted to dig into each character to learn how to read the angles, but none of it was there. It was simply a mess dropped right in your lap and ultimately I think it was fitting. The $2 million and gun battle fallout just dropped on Moss. Moss just dropped onto Chigurh. And the whole mess just dropped onto Tommy Lee Jones sheriff Ed Tom Bell, just as mess after mess after increasingly larger and alienating mess had been falling on his for his whole life as a Texas lawman.

That slow sense of the world spinning out of control, of events running your life instead of the opposite, of a growing and desperate helplessness, is a theme I'm often drawn to, in movies or books or music. It's Yeats' "Turning and turning in the widenying gyre," rewritten with a homicidal maniac, an in-over-his-head welder and an aged sheriff, all dancing about on a chaotic parquet of drug trafficking, greed raining from all angles and blood lust.

While it's damn good, I can't say No Country is my favorite Coen film. It's abrupt and once you accept its main assertion that the world is fucked, the narrative elements lose a good bit of their significance. But I am pushed to explore the earlier Coen films. And I'm definitely going to start reading some Cormac McCarthy.

Go Get Gone

Start pouring the whiskey, the Fourkiller Flats are back on stage Friday at Club Congress.
The Flats are hard-charging twangy rockers who sound plenty legit singing about waking up in a Las Cruces jail or tossing beer bottles about in one holy hell of a fight. An EP from 2000 and a 2001 set of 10 originals and a cover of Whiskeytown's "Faithless Streets" (so I started this damn country band, 'cause punk rock is too hard to sing) are all the bastards have recorded so far.
It's been a few months since they've played a show, and last time they played nearly all unrecorded songs, so maybe it's time for a new album one of these days.
The band has this curious roller derby video up on their MySpace page and while the connection escapes me, it's a song they haven't released, so check it out:

The Flats are opening up for the Mother Truckers, an Austin-based alt.country combo that I haven't seen yet, but they've been getting a lot of props around here.

Welcome...

Catfish Vegas presents... has seen a surge in traffic lately, almost entirely from people googling about for celebrity deaths. And the untimely departure of Heath Ledger seems to have vastly accelerated that surge.
Mr. Chair occasionally logs what drives readers his way, and it's usually something to do with shaving testicles. Not that he's ever blogged on the subject, but if that's what the public wants, I 'spose he ought to deliver one day.
Aside from searching out a celebrity death pool, it seems like random visitors here are trying to scope out a hot congresswoman. And I did blog about a hot congresswoman, so that's the way it goes.
On Jan. 10 I had a few visitors seeking out Arlo Guthrie. And people regularly stop on by after searching out Wilco's "The Thanks I Get." There are a few other musical inquiries that steer folks here. And one other recurring query is for this see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil monkey statuette I linked to. Strange.

A fine winter weekend

I was kinda taking a breather there at the end of the year, then I got blindsided by the flu. But now I'm mostly recovered and starting to peek around for stuff to listen to and blog about and do.
This weekend is the Dillinger Days, celebrating the (very serendipitous) capture of the notorious bank robber by Tucson police in 1934. I know it sounds like fame on the order of "Largest Free-Standing Pole West of the Mississippi," but everywhere has to be known for something. Besides, it's a good idea for a downtown party, and screw everywhere else where you can't have an outdoor festival in the middle of January.
But the point of this is to say that the tunes are absolutely first rate.

First up are the aptly named Dusty Buskers, "the band that fits on a bike."

They've actually been pretty regular at booking shows, but the first I ran across these guys they were literally busking, with a fiddle, a madolin and a hat set up between them. I love their cover of Woody's "Hard Travelin'" and the Dead Milkmen classic "Punk Rock Girl."

After the Buskers is Tucson's own British bluesman, the lightning hot harmonica player Tom Walbank and his Ambassadors. I've never been short of amazed watching Walbank and his band jam and I don't think many performers around the world have carved out such a unique musical persona.


Playing last is the legendary Al Perry, who can strum an acoustic, lead an all-star Telecaster jam or honky-tonk it up, depending on the mood. He's been called the Unofficial Mayor of Downtown Tucson and I gladly concur.
Download: Al Perry - We Got Cactus

Happy Arlo Guthrie Day!

It's the 10th of January, and I still ain't had no sleep...

Today we celebrate one of my all-time favorite songs - "Darkest Hour" - and its author - the great Arlo Guthrie. It's a song full of mystery, driven by fleeting images. And if I knew precisely what it meant I'd get further into that, but as Arlo himself has said, the song came to him in a dream. And it truly exists best in a sort of dreamscape. The two lovers in the castle seem completely separate from the pre-battle atmosphere all around them.

Here's a live version from 2006: Arlo Guthrie - Darkest Hour (live in Dublin)


Next we have a treat, an incredibly early version of Arlo's signature opus, Alice's Restaurant. It's essentially more of a prototype than even a first draft. The 19-year-old Arlo is singing in 1966 at Gerdes Folk City and all that exists of the song at that point was the looping guitar pattern and the chorus. But there's no mention of Thanksgiving or the draft or anything that emerged when he recorded the song a later. What's there is the wit that's continued to drive his performances since. What I find most fascinating is how much more he sounds like Woody in those days. His banter is twangier, more Oklahoma than the Brooklyn-born Arlo really had much right to claim.

The main bulk of the song (at just 13 minutes, it's actually substantially shorter than it would eventually become) is Arlo talking about how the words to Alice's Restaurant are going to spread like wildfire - first out of the club and into the Villlage, then the rest of New York and then steadily across the East Coast and the rest of the country ("New Mexico, OLD Mexico") and the rest of the continent ("there's a slight chance it may get into Cuba"). And eventually the song will go over the whole world, and one day everybody in the world, at the same time and in the same key, will sing "Alice's Restaurant."

Download: Arlo Guthrie - Alice's Restaurant (live 1966)

Everybody have a great Arlo Day!

Get your picks in!

The window for participating in the Celebrity Death Pool 2008 is drawing to a close. Get your picks in by Jan. 13!

And as Mr. Chair said about the picks thus far: "If we are any good at this, Fidel, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Phyllis Diller better tie up any loose ends soon..."

Holy crap

These are dark days indeed for my Wildcats, on the road Wednesday to play the higher ranked Sun Devils?! I know the Mustard & Rust have been on a bit of a resurgence of late, and in-state dominance can't last forever, but what sportswriter in his right mind actually believes ASU is a better team? I'll admit that without our leading scorer this isn't exactly a game that's worry-free at this point in the season. But c'mon, one of the nation's most storied programs is essentially an underdog facing a team that hasn't been ranked in 13 years? Let's just say this doesn't add up and move on to celebrating another blowout come Wednesday night.

Goin' to Acapulco...

One of the things I love most about Calexico is the band's tremendous versatility. They've backed numerous other musicians on incredible albums (Richard Buckner, Neko Case), collaborated with others (Iron & Wine, Howe Gelb) and just generally become some of the best go-to musicians around.

Their versatility certainly extends to their own performances as well. The last two shows I've seen - less than two months apart - couldn't have been more different.

The first was a park show, drawing 10,000 people in an all-ages picnic atmosphere. It was one of the full mariachi shows, with Luz de Luna starting out the nearly three-hour set and joining Calexico on state for several songs later. It was rowdy and joyous, full of i-yi-yi's and a let's keep going vibe that ran well after dark.

Next was last Friday, when they played to 800 sweater-clad people inside a performing arts theatre. There were no mariachi players and the vibe was more sedate. A friend sat in on piano (not one of Calexico's most typical sounds) for the entire show - a more acoustic affair with several top-notch cover songs and a new one, "Absent Afternoon, which Joey Burns said was inspired by the funeral processions driving past his new home downtown.

The kind folks over at TucsonScene.com were kind enough to record part of the show and put it up on youtube. Below is a cover of Dylan's "Goin' to Acapulco," which features prominently in the "I'm Not There" film and earns Burns and John Convertino screen credits as "Brass Band Player #1" and "Brass Band Player #2." Before the song, Joey asked for all the reverb he could get out of the sound man, which hardly surprising since Jim James of My Morning Jacket sings the tune for the film and soundtrack.

Stu LeBlanc's Year in Haiku

(I'd like to welcome the illustrious Stu LeBlanc for an extra special guest posting here: 2007 in haiku.)


pissed her name
in the snow while she
stayed in the car

"I feel
dowdy", she said,
wearing my clothes

bad decisions
are requisite at a
toga party

all partygoers
drenhed in a soft
summer rain

stomping through
puddles, our wobbling
ways home

now a two-time
community college
dropout

rediscovery of
the advantages of not
washing my hair

just out of prison
and I hung out with
him anyway

at midnight
the organ goes into
the bonfire

Catfish at the record shop

Happy New Year everybody!
It’s not like you haven’t seen several hundred best-of 2007 lists by now (check out Large-Hearted Boy’s master list – sheesh!) but in this little corner of the blogosphere we’re gonna just go ahead and do the same.
So, without further ado, here’s the Catfish Vegas Presents… Top Albums of 2007

1. Okkervil River – The Stage Names
Rambunctious and energetic this time out, Okkervil River made their most unabashedly rock ‘n’ roll record yet, centering on the themes of fame and fortune, with nods to the night life and on “The Plus Ones,” a clever bit of addition that turned several classic pop songs on their heads.

2. Arcade Fire – Neon Bible
If the skinny bearded bohemian Springsteen had come up now and settled on a gypsy ensemble instead of a rock ‘n’ roll band, he’d come pretty close to sounding like Arcade Fire’s newest.

3. Wilco – Sky Blue Sky
Wilco’s most soulful record, Sky Blue Sky is also dominated by Nels Cline’s one-of-a-kind guitar shredding. Methinks the “dad rock” haters didn’t actually bother to listen to the album.

4. Feist – The Reminder
This album grabbed me for the first time (and never let go) on “Intuition,” when Feist’s repeated “Did I?” is echoed by a chorus that sounds three rooms away. It’s an album of great balance, great songs and the greatest singing voice this side of Neko Case.

5. Band of Horses – Cease To Begin
Hell yeah! The bearded dudes who made what was my favorite album of last year have come back with a record nearly as perfect. Band of Horses found their sound right out of the gate and have settled in beautifully.

6. Iron & Wine – The Shepherd’s Dog
I love listening to all the varied rhythms that carry Sam Beam’s latest batch of tunes. As great as he is singing unadorned, it’s great to hear that he knows when to fill songs up as much as he does leave them open.

7. Radiohead – In Rainbows
The blokes from Radiohead rediscover guitars and make their best album in a decade. Not that they abandoned the experimental, they just reserved that for music industry kiss-off of jumping in with a set-your-own-price direct download. Kudos.

8. Ezra Furman & The Harpoons – Banging Down the Doors
This is the record I’ve been recommending to everyone I know lately. I stumbled onto a rave review at Razing the Bar and snagged a free download Furman’s record company was offering. This is outstanding stuff – hard charging acoustic rock, with hints of Clap Your Hands, Say Yeah, the Mountain Goats and Dylan throughout. This topped out Andy Whitman’s best of 2007 list and if I’d gotten it a few months earlier, it probably would’ve done the same for me.

9. Felice Brothers – Tonight At The Arizona
Believe me when I say that more than most people, I gravitate toward spare, country-folk music, and that the Felice Brothers have made one of the best debut spare, country-folk debuts I’ve heard in a long while. It doesn’t hurt that there’s more than a little Dylan floating around these songs.

10. The Gourds – Noble Creatures
For everyone (including myself) who wrote them off as bluegrass jokers after the amazing “Gin and Juice” cover, I’ll say this: out of everybody recording music today, the multi-talented Gourds are the closest to carrying on the tradition of The Band.

11. Bruce Springsteen – Magic
Bruce comes back from his folk detour for a new E Street Band record that stacks up better than The Rising. The production is just a bit too tight and polished for my taste, but the songs are incredible, with “Radio Nowhere,” “Gypsy Biker” and “I’ll Work For Your Love” as good as anything he’s written since the 1970s.

12. Meat Puppets – Rise To Your Knees
Certainly candidates for music story of the year, the Meat Puppets are back with another album fried by the sun. Rise To Your Knees is the proper sequal to Too High To Die, as caught up in dusty songs as much as the psychedelic hybrid they came up with on earlier albums. The album got me thinking… if only Kurt Cobain had met up with a motorcycle crash instead of a shotgun and hit out in the desert, with the Meat Puppets playing The Band to his Dylan…

13. I’m Not There Soundtrack
I really don’t know where to put this album. Tributes are such tricky business and most ultimately fail. But this collection of Dylan covers is pretty much the best music released all year. The two-disc set stays mostly away from Dylan’s biggest songs – “All Along The Watchtower” by Eddie Vedder and the Million Dollar Bashers and “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” by Antony and the Johnsons are the only “big hits” and really the two weakest tracks on the whole collection. Digging up those hidden gems is the soundtrack’s greatest asset – “Pressing On” by John Doe and “Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?” immediately drew me in, but what’s surprising is that even as a Dylan fanatic, I’d never even heard either before. Another highlight is the chameleonic work by Calexico, who back Willie Nelson, Iron & Wine, Roger McGuinn, Jim James and Charlotte Gainsbourg and even get parts in the film.

Honorable mentions are awarded in the following categories:

Top local albums:
Chango Malo – The Whiskey Years; The Deludes – Sedation Nation; Greyhound Soul – Tonight and Every Night; Golden Boots – Burning Brain

Indie stalwarts with barely miss albums:
Modest Mouse – We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank; Shins- Wincing the Night Away; White Stripes – Icky Thump; New Pornographers – Challengers

Representatives of the “2007 was a good year for noise” school of Stu Leblanc favorites that I couldn’t quite wrap my head around, but nonetheless dig:
Animal Collective – Strawberry Jam; Panda Bear – Person Pitch

The old-timers who can really do no wrong but didn’t make records that stack up with their career bests:
Lucinda Williams – West; Steve Earle – Washington Square Serenade; Levon Helm – The Dirt Farmer

Previous years-in-review:
2006
2005
2004
2003

Catfish at the Clubs: Best Shows of 2007

I guess it'd be more accurate to say "at the clubs and the parks and the amphitheaters and whatnot." I had some of the best musical moments of my life watching live music during the past year. I made my way to about 35 shows this year, from a dozen or more great local Tucson bands to some of America's greatest living legends.
It's next to impossible to rank this type of stuff, so here's 12 of the best shows, in chronological order.

Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks – Plush, Jan. 9
This show demonstrates as good as any one of the greatest treasures of seeing live music in Tucson: the opportunity to watch very great performers in very small venues. Still, I was surprised Malkmus didn’t book a larger venue. Since he played nearly all new songs, I didn’t know a single one the whole night, but it didn’t matter. He’s a strange genius on the guitar and Janet Weiss on drums is an incredible addition.
Download: Stephen Malkmus - Merry Go Round (live at Plush)

Robyn Hitchcock & The Venus 3 – Club Congress, April 14
One of Britain’s weirdest exports, Hitchcock’s wordplay is like no other songwriter. And he’s the best banterer I’ve ever seen. I’d caught him twice before solo acoustic, but with the full band (including Peter Buck) of his latest recording partners, it’s even better.

Guthrie Family Legacy Tour – Centennial Hall, April 29
Arlo has long been a favorite of mine, and this was the first time I got to see him perform. He’s a rich storyteller and a great songwriter in his own right, plus it never hurts to be able to draw on a song pool like his dad Woody left us. I left the show amazed in equal measure at his humor and his humanity. Download: Arlo Guthrie - In Times Like These (live Belladrum Tartan Heart Festival 2006-08-12).

Alejandro Escovedo & The Drive-by Truckers – Rialto Theatre, May 5
It might seem like a strange double bill, but they definitely went well together. I’d seen Alejandro once before, stuffed into Congress, but it was great to see him fill that room with sound. And the Truckers are one of the best live bands out there today, with enough songs to keep going and going and going (plus they were kind enough to preview some new ones).

Bob Dylan – AVA Amphitheatre, July 24
Dylan returned to the desert just over a year since his last Arizona shows and this performance was much better than the more sedate one at the TCC Arena. The Modern Times songs sounded great live and as usual, Dylan threw a couple curveballs into the set. The harsh and jagged “Masters of War” remains as stinging an indictment as it was more than four decades ago. Download: Bob Dylan – Señor (Tales of Yankee Power) (live Tucson 2007-07-24)

Chango Malo cd release show – Club Congress, Aug. 17

Leave it to Chango Malo to take over Congress inside and out, invite eight other bands and turn their CD release show into the party of the year. And in all that mess of bands and friends and beers, they rose above it all with a show as tight as it was drenched in energy. The album rips too.
All in all, the night was a strong statement about the quality of bands regularly playing downtown Tucson. The scene is excellent, varied, energetic and above all, musically inspiring.

Hotel Congress Festival – Aug. 30 to Sept. 2

A handful of local bands impressed on Friday, and the Friends of Dean Martinez mesmerized before the Weird Lovemakers brought the whole damn thing crashing down Sunday night, but the standout set of this festival (far and away) was Okkervil River’s Saturday set. I was front and center with a bunch of friends for the rambunctious and passionate performance that had as many sing-alongs to new stuff as it did old. I’d had a copy of The Stage Names for a few weeks by that time seeing most of it live was an absolute thrill.

Download: Okkervil River - Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe (live in San Francisco)

Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival – San Francisco, Oct. 5 to 8
I already wrote about this one extensively, so I’ll just say that Jeff Tweedy performing “Remember the Mountain Bed” was just one of those moments when life doesn’t get any better. Check it out: Part 1, Part 2.

And from the festival:
Jeff Tweedy - Remember the Mountain Bed
Emmylou Harris - Sin City
Gillian Welch - Pocahontas


The Hold Steady (with Art Brut) - TLA, Philadelphia, Oct. 23
I was definitely lucky when my East Coast travels coincided with this show. I've listened to the Hold Steady as much as any other band during the last two years and Boys And Girls In America has been as much of a go-to album as I've ever had. (Major props also go to the Hold Steady’s performance at Plush on June 4. I was a hell of a lot closer to the band there, but I gotta go with the Philly performance for a larger and rowdier crowd and top-notch openers.)
Check out NPR's All Songs Considered podcast to download performances from both bands (a couple weeks after the Philly show).


Ted Leo & The Pharmacists (with The Swim) – Club Congress, Nov. 1

It was a treat to watch some friends sharing the bill with one of their heroes.
Ted Leo absolutely rocks, but he deserves respect for much more than his music. He's unabashedly political and brings intellect to the pursuit than most activists.
Check his Web site for a "news" section that's more or less a blog
And find a live Ted Leo show here.



Bookmans Party in the Park (Calexico) – Nov. 3

"... let Tucson's favorite sons and their best mariachi friends let loose with what must be about the best of the dozen or so shows of theirs you've taken in. Remember how you first saw Calexico with maybe a couple hundred people stuffed into an art gallery by the railroad tracks, must've been 1999 or 2000. Remember how they seemed to have a pedal for the passing train, and how they set the room on fire. Remember how on three or four albums since those same musicians captured a hell of a lot more attention and without a doubt became one of the world's greatest bands. Sit in anticipation for a particular song, a Bob Dylan cover you'd been soaking in for months, with several different bootleg recordings, before finally hearing them back Willie Nelson on "Senor." Celebrate as the trumpets bellow loud and mysterious. Shimmy and sway as the show stretches many songs and songs and songs afterwards. Depart with a poster and autographs..."

Neko Case – Rialto Theatre, Nov. 15
I talked a friend into flying in from San Francisco for the show - one of only two solo dates this fall for Neko. Her guest performances at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival were nice little teasers for this show. The tunes from her latest album just soar live and there's plenty of quirky banter.
NPR broadcast Neko's show in LA the next night and has it available for download here.

Celebrity Death Pool 2008!

Ladies and gentlemen, it brings me great pleasure to announce that the Celebrity Death Pool is being hosted here for the first time in 2008.

We've got a three-time winner on our hands in Mr. Tim Finnagain, who is really starting to creep me out. He won the 2007 contest by correctly predicting the demise of Lady Bird Johnson and Brooke Astor. That follows his 2006 win for Shelley Winters, John Kenneth Galbraith and his 2005 win for the Pope and Arthur Miller (what do you 'spose those two are talking about in the afterlife?). And Finnagain was only one year off on Boris Yeltsin.

So let's see if anyone can dethrone our resident psychic.

New to the contest this year is a prize for our winner: One free year of Immortality, from the diety of your choice.

Put your picks in the comments - we're looking for about 10 guesses per person, but don't worry about going a few over if you're really feeling a psychic connection with the Grim Reaper.

Get your picks in by Jan. 7 and good luck!

UPDATE: Alright, because of some slackers out there, we're gonna extend the deadline on this here contest until JANUARY 13.

I'm So There

I'm off in a few to go see I'm Not There with some fellow Dylan nuts. I've read a ton about the film and how Todd Haynes approached the project (some of the more interesting articles are here and here) and I still don't really know what to expect.
There's no way I could possibly approach this as just a movie; I'm more of the mind to make it a couple hours of intense study and attempts to pick out all the subtle details pointing to Dylan's career.
I've been absorbed in the soundtrack since it came out. Calexico and Stephen Malkmus definitely come out as winners, but whoever played gatekeeper on the project gets the real credit. There's hardly a bum artists in the lot (I'm not a fan of Jack Johnson, though he's passable here), but the best part of the whole thing is the fact that it didn't just dredge up the hits again. The two biggest songs - All Along the Watchtower by Eddie Vedder, et. al and Knockin' On Heaven's Door by Antony - are the album's weakest moments to me.
Highlights start with Calexico and Willie teaming for "Señor" and include Yo La Tengo's "I Wanna Be Your Lover," Marcus Carl Franklin's "When The Ship Comes In," The Hold Steady's "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" and of course, Dylan's own "She's Not There," among many others.
Wolfgang's Vault hosted an I'm Not There concert from New York for a short time and I hope that it sees the light of commercial release, because The Roots' take on Masters of War may just be the most stunning Dylan cover I've ever heard.
So here's hoping it's a great film - and stay tuned for commentary.

Forty-three miles toward Ruidoso

Maybe I picked the guy up just because it's Christmas. It's a good enough reason, I suppose. Plus there are karmic factors at work, good deeds to build up and strengthen the soul and stuff. Besides, this world ain't always a nice place, nor is it true that our own decisions are the only things that could leave us stranded one day.

But I think the thing that most pushed me to act was looking at the dude in the pale gas station light and getting pissed off at the sudden and clear realization that it was easier to imagine myself as callous enough to just say no and walk away than it was to even begin wrapping my head around the notion of being as down-and-out as he was.

It was strange enough that I was there to begin with. I almost always take the back way from Phoenix to Tucson, which would've put me 20 miles away when I needed fuel, but figuring traffic would be light on the interstate I opted for the quicker route.

So there I was - at a Circle K on Ray Road, just east of I-10 - when a guy asked me if I was headed to downtown Phoenix. Nope, I said, Tucson. I went in for a coffee and when I got back outside, he said he was really trying to get toward El Paso. He'd already tried hitching on the interstate, but a cop picked him up and dropped him back there.

Weighing how helpless he looked against stranger-danger type notions that this was about to be the worst mistake I'd ever made, I kinda nodded and agreed to run him up to the nearest truck stop headed east.

He picked up a couple bags from behind the dumpster and thanked me as I bungee-corded the trunk shut.

His story - or at least the timeline - was a little shaky, but he'd been living on the streets of Phoenix since the end of November, when his car was stolen, and he was trying to get back to Ruidoso to see his eight kids, including an 11-month-old daughter.

The guy had a beard and scruffy longish hair under a ball cap, and even though from his stories and his general appearance he'd clearly fallen to hard times before this homeless stint in Phoenix, he didn't look the 38 he said he was.

He'd left New Mexico for Phoenix with a couple chicks to make a pot run, and he didn't tell anybody because he didn't want them to get the wrong idea about him and the chicks. One of them ended up taking off in his van and he'd been stuck since.

Collecting cans was supposed to earn him enough to get a bus back, but those had been stolen. The only clothes he had were from a dumpster except the coat, which a woman gave him, saying it was a gift of Jesus' love, or some such charitable words that had enough weight that they kept echoing in his mind when he thought to pawn the coat for a hit of heroin.

He quit using five years ago, but he'd been shot in the leg in Jacksonville, Florida during a pot deal gone wrong, and the painkillers led him right back to junk. By Christmas he was three days sober and he said he was even over being sick; he'd eaten a hot dog and a cheeseburger today, the most food he'd had since getting trapped in Phoenix.

I nodded some, and offered the occasional huh, yep or no shit, but just let him ramble. Somebody to talk to must've been at least as big of a gift as a ride out of Phoenix.

I let him off at the Love's in Arizona City. For a bit I considered taking the dude all the way to Tucson, but it seemed the most practical thing was to get him near some truckers rather than simply dump him off in another city where he could get harassed by cops at every turn.
I didn't catch his name, and even though I didn't sense any hint of a threat at any time, I never got comfortable.

I hope he gets home. I hope he actually wants to be home. He said a few years ago, before he got into dealing, some friends had asked him for advice on raising kids. Those were the proudest moments of his life, when he was an example of a good dad, not like the old man he had, who took to beating his kids regularly enough that it seemed he couldn't think of anything else to do.

I hope he doesn't get sucked back into dealing. He'd wanted to be a real G. It was easy enough at first, but you get a little successful and you get enemies. And he'd only gotten beat down because that's the way it turned out, not because he wasn't willing to beat somebody else down.

I hope being proud of his kids' skateboarding and knowing his wife wants to help him means something when he's no longer strung out and staring at a long and seemingly impossible road home.

I've never picked up a hitchhiker before, and I hope the 43 miles actually helped.

Burma Shake & Shimmy

OK everybody, it's time to announce the latest mix:

Burma Shake & Shimmy

Gillian Welch - I Want To Sing That Rock 'n' Roll
Billy Emerson - Every Woman I Know (Crazy 'Bout An Automobile)
Otis Redding - That's How Strong My Love Is
Van Morrison - You're My Woman
Bob Dylan - Workingman's Blues #2
Bruce Springsteen - The Promise
Feist - Intuition
Arcade Fire - (Antichrist Television Blues)
The Seychelles - 13 hundred songs, 3 and a half days
Wilco - Impossible Germany
Ted Leo & The Pharmacists - Me and Mia
The Deludes - Sedation Nation
The Swim - King Cortez
Dream Syndicate - Tell Me When It's Over
Okkervil River - Unless It's Kicks
Hold Steady - Can I Please Crawl Out Your Window
M. Ward & Zooey Deschanel - When I Get to the Border
Neko Case - Set Out Running
Arizona Amp and Alternator - Velvet and Pearl
Kristin Hersh - Your Ghost

Download the mix as a zip file. (Note: files are mixed mp3 and AAC - deal with it - and pay attention to the info file.)

This isn't a holiday mix, or a year-in-review type thing. I've basically done one mix in the summer and one mix in the winter for the past decade. The last few winter mixes have gotten a bit intertwined with year-end type thinking, so I've actively tried to limit the 2007 songs here. New-to-me stuff pops up out of the distant and near past all the time anyway, plus there are bootlegs to find, and I regularly discover new infatuations with albums I've known well for years, so there's never a shortage of tunes to consider. I'll probably throw together a best of 2007 later, but this is the official half-year mix. (Glad we got that cleared up... )
Burma Shake & Shimmy follows The Strangest Oscillations. (Follow the link for info on other previous mixes.)

Efficiency!

Less than two hours spent between Best Buy and Bookmans and I can confidently state that Christmas shopping is done! I certainly won't be handing out the most creative bundle of gifts this world has ever seen, but they're all right in line with what's been requested.
That said, I'm moving right along with winter - knockin' on the solstice, ready for a trip up North, set to embrace many friends after too many months and damn near prepared to let this year roll over zeros, to put 2007 into the books and get goin' with its successor.
On that note, keep your eyes peeled to Catfish Vegas Presents... in the coming days and weeks for a few treats.
First up will be the latest of the biannual mixes, with tunes stretching from 1955 to this fall, spread across rock, soul, folk, country and the usual unclassifiable desert concoctions, from favorites both new and old.
Shortly thereafter I'll be unveiling the year in review, complete with top music and film choices. As a special treat, I'm recruiting Stu Leblanc for a year in haiku, as well as his top song picks of 2007.
And this year, the Celebrity Death Poll will make its debut on Catfish Vegas Presents...
Then Arlo Guthrie Day is right around the corner and I know you'll want to hear what's in store.
Lastly, have a great holiday everyone and remember that rock 'n' roll, humor, good friends and family and a few beers every now and again are what it's all about.

Dan "Dewey Cox" Bern

As far as I'm concerned, Walk Hard already comes with impressive credentials as a film, springing forth from the realm of Jud Apatow.
But then today I got news that Dan Bern had a hand in writing most of the film's songs, and something tells me the music will be just as good as the rest of the humor.
Bern is a tremendous songwriter, made up of a little Dylan and an overflowing bucket of dry wit. He's an unapologetic lefist and sees power in songs just as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger did. He's a bit nasally, but he can play a mean harp, and if anyone alive could write a talking blues song for the Internet age, it's Dan Bern.
The first I ever heard of Bern was the song "Tiger Woods," and the memory is a bit shaky, but it was somehow tied up in Comedy Corner, a sketch group I knew and loved dearly. And the song got tremendous airplay (not quite the right word since it wasn't on the radio, but 'play' by itself just doesn't work here) at parties I and others threw all throughout college. You can't go wrong when a tune starts with the lyrics "I got big balls..."
It was later I started approaching the rest of his work, after hearing "Jerusalem" at a friend's house, but it was the New American Language record that really made me see just how skilled a songwriter he really is. He hadn't abandoned humor by any stretch, only now Bern used it to dress up heartache and disillusionment and the powerless that stems from the fact that world sometimes just ain't gonna be the way we'd like it, no matter how hard we try.
Here's a verse from "Black Tornado"

And everyplace I go is one less place I could call home
And every girl I kiss, well I just cross her off my list
I don't go far
I just go crazy
I buried all of my old clothes out in some field in West Des Moines
And if you judge me tonight
Judge me by the songs I write
That's who I am to you

From what I understand, Bern lives out in New Mexico now, but that doesn't bring him out to Arizona on tour with any frequency. I did get the chance to see him play once, just over three years ago, in Flagstaff. It was late October, leading up to an election day that would ultimate be a devastating one. He was passionate about change, about using his music to bring people together and to make some change in the world. And even if you don't succeed, that trying just may just add up to being the moments worth living for. So, it was a great show, and as I said at the time: "Anyone who calls his band the International Jewish Banking Conspiracy has a lot up his sleeve."

And the fact that this guy has his hands in writing songs for a biopic spoof must mean that the movie has a lot more going for it than just what's on the surface.














Check out some live tunes:
Dan Bern - Tiger Woods
Dan Bern - Jerusalem
Dan Bern - New American Language
Dan Bern - President
Dan Bern - Black Tornado
Find the whole set over at archive.org.

Merry Christmas, from Tom Waits

I saw this over at Aquarium Drunkard. Stop by, and pick up the Neko Case cover as well...

Gluttontastic

I invented a new food today: the bratadilla. Take a bratwurst, but instead of placing it inside a bun, wrap it up in a quesadilla.
It's the type of fantastic that can only exist in the presence of a deep and lazy gluttony.

Theorize

I like the cold. Not the real cold, but the cold here. I like the lower 40s at night, and sitting in the bright sun to take advantage of the day. I reckon I'll head on downtown for some coffee and some sun here in a bit, and make some more progress on Sometimes A Great Notion. About 200 pages in I definitely love the book, but it's a slow read, with constantly shifting points of view.
Then it's on to a holiday party, the first bit of recognition I'm ready to give to the season. That, and tonight the stupid-ass hay rides and hot chocolate stands hit the overly festive rich neighborhood just down the road. I'm not a total bah humbug type, but I can't stand the extra traffic and yank-mammas trying to find parking on the side of the road that stretches the last minute of my drive home from work out to about 10 minutes. Bah.
And then it's on to see The Theory. They're a local band I caught a few months ago doing a damn good acoustic set. I dig their set up - sexy chick singer/guitarist and stoic dudes on bass and drums. The bass player I know as Honeysocks, and the singer Harriet Brown performs solo as well.
The Theory - Meet Me On Saturday
Honeysocks - Dingos Ate My Band

The Unwelcome Guest

I can't let Mr. Chair have all the fun.

Say it ain't so...

And to the surprise of nobody except Roger Clemens' lawyer, the baseball world learned today that at least dozens of players over the past decade have been juiced to the gills.
Since there's absolutely no telling how many home runs, strike outs or early returns from injuries are due to the magic of chemistry, let's just figure that the pitchers and the hitters were more or less even, cheaters or not.
And rather than dwell on what's being called baseball's worst scandal since the Black Sox, or at least its darkest days since the 1994 strike, let's all just celebrate the game, music style.
But first, here's a photograph I have framed in my living room, of Jackie Robinson in the 1952 All-Star Game. Now that's baseball.



First up is a jumpin' swing tribute to Jackie:

Buddy Johnson - Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit That Ball

I tracked that one down from Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour, which has a wonderful episode devoted to baseball. And the host even gets into it himself:

Bob Dylan - Take Me Out to the Ballgame

And let's not forget another Minnesota native singing during the Seventh Inning Stretch:

The Hold Steady - Take Me Out to the Ballgame

Baseball ("the one constant through all the years...") doesn't do too bad in the movies either. The Natural and Major League are definitely two of the best, but my favorite has got to be Field of Dreams. It's baseball as magic, as a mythic America, a metaphor for fathers and sons and all that's good about life:

James Earl Jones baseball speech

And I was hoping to leave everybody with Vin Scully's call of the Kirk Gibson home run that won game one of the 1988 World Series, but I had no luck finding it online in audio or video, so instead here's Jack Buck's radio call:

Kirk Gibson - 1988 World Series

Golden Opportunities

My inbox today contained news of a great idea from a great band: Okkervil River is releasing a free covers album via their web site.

The so-called Christmas mixtape, Golden Opportunities, was recorded in bits and pieces while the band was on tour over the last couple years. And aside from a somber taken on their own "Listening to Otis Redding at Home During Christmas," it's all covers, taken from the likes of Joni Mitchell, Randy Newman and Serge Gainsbourg.
What's more interesting, as the first couple listens are starting to indicate and as Will Sheff made clear to Pitchfork, is that the songs chosen are thematically related to the band's latest album.
I see some instances (Joni Mitchell's "The Blonde in the Bleachers") in which the covered songs are direct inspirations for The Stage Names.
Two very interesting parallels are at work here: First, Sheff takes creative and imaginative inspiration from favorite songs in a similar (but subtler) way as he did on Black Sheep Boy. And second, Golden Opportunities functions as a companion to The Stage Names in much the same way that Black Sheep Boy Appendix both thematically extended its predecessor and took the paths less chosen.
Download the nine-song album (along with liner notes and artwork) here.
That Sheff is a careful lyricist is not surprising, but he's also quick on his feet and has a sly wit he doesn't often show. Dig this:
I was talking with drummer Travis Nelson when the band played Club Congress in September (I've been friends with them for several years now) and he was describing the Conan O'Brien show they'd recently played. The nutty Jeff Goldblum was the other guest, and the day before the taping, Sheff rewrote a verse of "Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe," a song filled with movie-related imagery, to reflect Goldblum's illustrious film history. They backed off the idea at the last minute on the advice of management, but the verse emerged shortly afterwards.
At The Independent in San Francisco, Sheff told the tale himself, injecting the verse at the beginning of the song.
Hear it for yourself:
Okkervil River - Our Life Is Not A Movie Or Maybe (Live)
And after downloading Golden Opportunities, check back with Okkervil River's web site Friday, when the band will post answers to fan's questions about the covers.

From whence they came...

Modest Mouse are one of those bands that I had two introductions to - years apart and unrelated - and still took a bit of time to grab on my own.
This, of course, was waaaay back when such was possible, not in the pre-Internet days, but definitely in the pre-everything-we-now-use-the-Internet-for days.
When "Convenient Parking" showed up on a mix tape from Portland, I'd never heard of the band, and if Zia didn't have the album, then in those days I wasn't going to find it.
The band stuck around in my head a bit, but I didn't hear anything else until "Gravity Rides Everything" came in on recommendation when I was living in Phoenix and asking close friends what their five favorite songs were (this of course being the first time I did that, not the much-expanded second time, when I polled 105 people). Freaktown said it reminded him of driving through the hills of his Southern California home at the time.
Ah, and Zia had Modest Mouse this time around. I told Dr. Chung when I bought The Moon & Antarctica, and he said they've been the next big thing for a while (presumably since I first heard and half-ignored them).
Revisiting that progression, I'm interested mostly in the fact that Modest Mouse is probably one of the last bands (at least new, indie-type bands) that I discovered without blogs or myspace, and in the case of "Convenient Parking," without burned CDs, Napster, mp3s, or even the Internet at all.
Word-of-mouth still drives most music discoveries (personally, to be sure, but I'd wager it's a pretty universal truth), but that secondary bit of exploration is exceptionally easy now. And in that regard, I think it's far easier to simply forget where, when or how I pick up that first scrap of information about some new music or other. I can trace Modest Mouse directly to CKB and Freaktown, and countless other bands back to the original friend (or occasionally zine or magazine) source. Not so much with newer stuff. (Iron & Wine a good example there - I can't for the life of me pinpoint a single source or two even. I vaguely remember having a sudden interest, then hearing a number of songs from wherever - most likely illegally - and buying several records in short order. Now I'm a fan all the way.)
This is mostly a roundabout way to start thinking about the Modest Mouse show tomorrow at the Rialto Theatre. It's my first time to catch them live, despite all those years.
And in that spirit, here are some live tracks, recorded for an XFM session:
Modest Mouse - Float On (Live)
Modest Mouse - Ocean Breathes Salty
Modest Mouse - The World At Large

Pat Garrett y Billy the Kid, por Sam Peckinpah

There's nothing quite like watching a movie and seeing Kris Kristofferson and Bob Dylan speaking in badly dubbed Spanish. Gracias a Dios the Spanish channel doesn't dub the soundtrack.

Da Windy Easy

I had a good conversation the other day with a good friend who's relocated to Chicago. He's one of many and I can't help but think all of my Chicago pals are sort of on the same wavelength -- they're all fighting off that stupid cold wind, they all have the same landmarks day-to-day, they meet up at bars I've never set foot in... It's such a fun city and I definitely need to visit again, hopefully this spring or summer.

But in the meantime, feast on some Chicago tunes:

First up is The Seychelles, a one-man outfit that splits the difference between indie rock and drum'n'bass. Sometimes I hear huge Pavement influences (musically, not vocally), sometimes it's far dancier stuff of a vintage I just don't know. Much of the Seychelles stuff has a great solitary feel that I really dig. It's a guitar/keyboard/drum machine combo that few people do quite so well.
The Seychelles - 13 Hundred Songs, 3 and a half days
The Seychelles - Breakdance at Tiffany's

Next up is Lost Armada, a four-piece that like many others owes a great debt to the Replacements and Neil Young. They can be full-on rowdy or back-porch strummy and do each with plenty of conviction. They've got one EP out this year, but here's an earlier demo track that shows power and songwriting chops. There's no shortage of barroom country/punks who have called the Midwest home, but don't skip over these guys.
Lost Armada - All Light Exchanged For Sight

New & Improved

The staff has put in some work to spiffy up the blog and we're sure you'll love the new look.
Navigation is easier as well and the blog list has been updated (look for more to come).
We'll also be experimenting with some more multimedia content.
On that note, it gives great pleasure to provide this gem, a rare demo by The Swim. Enjoy.
The Swim - Beautiful Endeavor
They're playing Dec. 1 at Che's Lounge, so anyone in Tucson, go on down and check 'em out.

Playgrounds

I just got back from watching Warren Miller's latest film down at the Fox Theatre (isn't it strange that I'd never been there before, then attended two events in three days? Monday's Iron & Wine show was incredible!).
I've long been a fan of his ski and snowboard films, which isn't a surprise considering he basically invented the genre. But for me it's always been more about Miller's narrative abilities and how he infuses his films with a great energy, taken from his simple mantra: If you don't do it this year, you'll be one year older when you do.
I haven't skied in nearly 11 years. Writing that, it kinda pains me that it's been so long. It was a trip during Christmas break my senior year of high school, out to New Mexico with the pop and the bro, to crash with friends in Farmington (shithole!) and venture out to the glorious Wolf Creek and the stuck-on-the-side-of-the-road Hesperus. (Coincidentally, the car-ride hours of that same trip were dominated via headphones by my newly acquired Recovering the Satellites album, which would later offer 'Angels of the Silences,' 'Miller's Angels' and 'A Long December' to Miller's Snowriders 2, the first of his films I'd see on the big screen.)
I was never much good. I could get down the not-too-steep hills just fine, but I was never too daring. What I liked most was zipping down fairly flat ground, not having to turn much, just enveloped in the nearly motionless gliding speed. To me, it was kinetic energy at its most peaceful. There's no other way on Earth to move quite like that, and it's absolutely exhilarating.
I learned at Williams Ski Area, an out-of-the-way mountain that was cheap enough and small enough to allow anybody more than enough runs in a day. There just simply weren't any crowds or lines. I still see that whole ski area in my mind clearly - though from a quick search on the 'Net it's apparently now called Elk Ridge Ski Area. But that map is still the same, and I know exactly what it represents.
I miss the feeling -- but skiing is expensive, and I live in the desert, and just a couple weeks after that last ski trip I blew out my left knee, which still doesn't feel completely strong...
Someday again I'll ski -- and that's the overriding inspiration that Miller's films provide.
But I also take away this tremendous spiritual uplift. The photography is gorgeous, the athletes are the best in the world, but Miller without a doubt captures skiing at its essence, which is the simple fact that it exists outside of day-to-day reality. It's an escape, it's pursued feverishly by people who can't be tied down, whose only drive is to go where there's fresh powder. Fresh powder, probably the most powerfully metaphorical playing field in all of sports. Skiing is exploration and escape -- and you're afforded a good bit of each just sitting there in the theatre.
I've now seen at least five of Miller's films on the annual big-screen tour (out of 58 total). It's just a ball of fun (though expensive -- I lucked into a free $20 ticket tonight). Playground was this year's title. There's little better for a pick-me-up as the winter arrives than getting a dose of Miller's quirky philosophy and get-up-and-go mentality. He's truly inspirational, even if you've never touched snow in your life. All he asks is that you grab a little adventure in your life.
See you next year, same time, same place...

Solid proof that Carson Daly is Hollywood's biggest douchebag

I'd long suspected as much, but now this proves it: Daly to defy writers strike.
That asshole isn't worth the weight of his smarmy grin without writers. Since when did an inexplicable habit of bagging starlets before they washed up earn people their own TV shows?

Seriously though. Six gigantic multinational corporations are trying to suffocate thousands upon thousands of hard-working writers even more than they've been for years. Support the writers.

Back to Back to Back to Back

Just try cramming more live music into a weekend. (I know it can be done, but it's definitely a special case.)

Start off Thursday with the Swim opening for Ted Leo & The Pharmacists. Watch your friends on stage opening for one of their heroes. Then enjoy the fantastic, fast and frenetic songs of one of rock's great unheralded songwriters.

Chill at home Friday before heading out to catch another of the rare Fourkiller Flats shows. Wish you had a ride home, knowing that whiskey drinking is the most effective and appropriate way to absorb the wailing, gravely twang of the Flats. Listen to mostly unrecorded songs, including one in all likelihood played for the first time live, thinking all the while that it's definitely time for a new album (right, gentlemen?).

Decide that a bright and beautiful Saturday in the mid-80s is perfect for sitting in the park, celebrating a used book store that's not only survived for 30 years, but grown and grown and grown and inevitably become an integral part of your own life. Settle in with a chicken quesadilla on a blanket front and center while a bunch of old blues session players crank out pitch-perfect, passionate tunes.

Then let Tucson's favorite sons and their best mariachi friends let loose with what must be about the best of the dozen or so shows of theirs you've taken in. Remember how you first saw Calexico with maybe a couple hundred people stuffed into an art gallery by the railroad tracks, must've been 1999 or 2000. Remember how they seemed to have a pedal for the passing train, and how they set the room on fire. Remember how on three or four albums since those same musicians captured a hell of a lot more attention and without a doubt became one of the world's greatest bands. Sit in anticipation for a particular song, a Bob Dylan cover you'd been soaking in for months, with several different bootleg recordings, before finally hearing them back Willie Nelson on "Senor." Celebrate as the trumpets bellow loud and mysterious. Shimmy and sway as the show stretches many songs and songs and songs afterwards. Depart with a poster and autographs, and the knowledge that such musical moments are priceless.

Let Sunday evolve slowly, but make sure to head downtown in time to catch the Skeletor parade. Mosey from there on over to the Ween show. Marvel at how packed the Rialto Theatre is, betting that none of the dozens of shoes you've seen there in the past several years had more people. Rock out with one of the strangest bands around. Ponder how despite never being fully joking or fully serious they've developed such a passionate following. Wish you knew a few more of their songs other than the Mollusk album.

Practically stagger out of the show, pausing to take in the painted masses and assorted weirdos passing by, hell-bent on some damn mischief or another. Let the fading crowd take over your thoughts, and provide the cinematic background for reflection on a weekend full of energy and curveball vitality and stupifying humanity, and sounds, wonderfully delivered sounds, that lodge themselves deep, as they should, offering continual refuge in the coming days and weeks from the numbing work and tasks that exist apart from the nights and the bands and the revelry and the nirvana of a well-orchestrated weekend.

Celebrate it all, and wait for the next round...